Jocko Podcast - 471: Better K-9s and Better Humans. With Mike Ritland

Episode Date: January 2, 2025

>Join Jocko Underground<For Mike Ritland, the goal has always been to make an impact, and for most of his life, he has done just that, both personally and professionally. Born in suburban Waterloo, Iowa, Mike’s parents instilled a solid foundation of integrity, compassion, and hard work that carried him through his teen years into one of the most pivotal decisions of his life. After graduation, without a second thought, Mike decided he wanted to serve his country as a Navy SEAL.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko Podcast number 471 with Echo Charles and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening. Good evening. I love this country. I love the principles that it was founded upon. I love the people who live here, the diverse mixed bag of hardworking, freedom-loving, independent individuals who make up our society. I love this land from the mountains in Colorado to the wide open cattle fields in Texas to the sun and waves of Southern California. I was born here, raised here.

I offered my life to serve this nation and protect its peace people. But as I look ahead, I fear for our trajectory. I fear for the future we're creating for the next generation. And that's why we need to talk. Because true change will only happen when honest, healthy, and thoughtful conversations take place. We live in a world inundated with noise. The sound of people shouting their opinions and sharing information. from every imaginable outlet screaming to have their voices heard surround us

But though we may be talking shouting cramming information into our minds like a football team with a stack of pizza boxes in front of them No one is actually communicating no one is sitting down and having real conversations no one is really talking And we sure is hell on listening to each other We've become a polarized and divided society that refuses to emerge from our echo chamber to listen to anyone with a differing opinion. We've grown so accustomed to the incessant noise created by biased news outlets, angry people convinced of their own assumptions, and an onslaught of information that we've lost the ability

to have any type of substantial positive conversations with our fellow man. As a result, we miss out on the power that comes from innovative, open minds, tackling our world's problems from differing viewpoints. and unique perspectives. And that right there is an excerpt from a book called UnFuck America, written by Mike Rittland. And Mike Rittland is a former seal, dog handler, dog trainer, author of several other books,

including K9 Trident Warriors, Navy SEAL dogs and Team Dog. He's the founder and owner of Trichos International, which trains dogs, sells dogs, offers training programs for dogs and fuels dogs with his team dog dog food treats and supplements. He also runs the Warrior Dog Foundation, which takes care of retired working dogs that would otherwise be euthanized. And finally, he is the host of the Mike Drop podcast, no holds barred conversations with a wide variety of people to learn perspectives and expand horizons. He's been on this podcast before over six years ago, episode 113. And he's back here to discuss some of his more recent lesson learned things going on in this world.

So there you go. Welcome back, dude. Thanks for having me. One quick correction. Trainer, not a handler, which people in the community are pretty particular about. So just as a heads up. Oh, because I said you're a former dog handler. And I should have said a former dog trainer.

Yeah, but I mean, got it. Hey, we want to get it right. It's real. There's, it might not mean much to echo Charles who's like, hey, bro, handler. Handler. What does mean? If you're training them, aren't you, aren't you handling them if you're training them? It's true.

So I was thinking about this book came out in 2021. Yeah. That was like, were you writing it during COVID? I was. I mean, that's really the reason it was written was, you know, the two weeks to stop the spread that turned into two years of fucking. madness. You know, sitting at home, the kids are home from school. You know, they basically went on spring break and then

didn't go back. And so like, like, you know, everybody's kids. And so you know, in my industry, a lot of things had slowed down in-person stuff. It did kind of shut off. And so I found myself sitting at home and I was like, well, I can go the way of a lot of people in Netflix and DoorDash or I can, you know, do something productive. and this had actually been a project that I had been approached by Penguin to do on the heels of the Team Dog training book. And basically it was, hey, we love your podcast.

And there's all these different viewpoints. And a lot of them are kind of hotbed political topics that our nation is faced with that causes a lot of debate and controversy. So why don't you jump in the mix too? So yeah, why don't you get started on that? And, you know, so for me it was like, obviously they've done enough due diligence to say that they think it's a good idea. My concern with doing it with them or any big publishing house was they're going to stifle my voice and edit the shit out of it and make it to where it's not even really worth doing. So I was like, well, you know, I've already done three under major publishers. Why don't I just do it myself?

And then I can do it at, A, at my pace, B, it'll be completely up to me how it gets edited. especially with a book like that because it's pretty edgy that way. You know, the last thing you want is a, you know, multi-billion-dollar publishing corporation and their HR team and lawyers going through something like that. Yeah, that would have been interesting.

Yeah, it would have been nine pages. Yeah, would have been nine pages. And the title might have been changed. For sure. Yeah, you're not getting the way with that one. So I don't,

I'm not going to read the whole book on the podcast. Get the book. But one of the things you talk about here You talk about America. And in this opening chapter, you call it the rich, spoiled brat. And you go through that, I think that's a pretty obvious metaphor. Anyone could figure out what you write to explain that. But you talk about some of these freaking statistics.

Mental health, on average, there are 132 suicides a day in the United States. 70,000, over 70,000 drug overdose deaths in the United States in 2019. Yeah, I mean, those, those. Those numbers are significantly higher now in both categories. Opioid crisis. 1999 to 2018, 450,000 people died from an overdose involving opioid. Like, that's insane.

Yeah, I mean, it's World War II numbers. Alcoholism. It's funny because you and I were talking to you and I just did a podcast. You interviewed me for your podcast, but we were talking about alcohol and I, and I you were you were you were trying to pressure me you're trying to peer pressure me into into like the benefits of alcohol and I literally have gone through this transition of you know when I was in the teams drank when I was at first got the teams drank a ton drank less the older and more senior I got and then eventually when I retired stopped drinking but still you know I get it

hey I get it you know still and I didn't stop drinking like immediately but it's pretty quick. And then it was like, well, I still get it. You know, I get it why the Patoon boys are going out and having a beer. Hey, it's part of the thing. It's part of bonding and you know who your brothers are. And I went through that. Like, I get it and still support it. And it was kind of like, well, and right now I've just gone. Yeah. I've gone. I can't find anything good about it anymore. So you talk about alcohol in this thing. And like, dude, it's excessive alcohol costs. The U.S. economy, $250 billion a year. Yeah.

It's crazy to think about alcohol. This is literally a poison that you're going to put in your body. It's going to make you do crazy shit. I had a friend that was when I was growing up. And he eventually did every drug, crack, heroin, you know, pot, LSD, the whole nine yards. And he would say the only drug that he thought should be illegal was alcohol. because he ended up, he was in jail a couple times, and the times he got put in jail wasn't because a heroin wasn't from crack.

It was from booze. He goes, nothing makes me do the more crazy shit than alcohol. Yeah. So, I don't know. Well, I guess to clarify, I wasn't, my intent was not to. You were exploring the bounds of my beliefs. Yeah, but not in a manner with which I am trying to highlight any benefits of alcohol. I guess I would say, you know, going further into it, I think, like on the, on the platoon front,

I think it's, it makes sense to do those outings occasionally. You know, I agree like three or four nights a week, no. Even once a week, no. But, you know, I think like almost like a, not hell week, but almost like an FTX is that, hey, let's send the boys out into fucking Beale Street on a trip and they all get shitface and see how they handle it. Like, I don't think it should be a regular thing, but I do see a benefit in seeing how guys handle themselves under the influence when they're around each other. And there's that unknown of the civilian populace of other dickheads that are drinking and bouncers and the great unknown. I, you know, maybe it's just, I'll throw it on pay per view.

Fuck, I don't know. But, oh, no, if you want to get ratings on paper view, you're the, that's a brilliant idea. Give a bunch of freaking deal guys, booze on Beale Street. Oh, yeah. Let's go. Give them a fistful of money. throw some chicks in the mix Yeah you can see why I don't think this is a good idea

Because we know this would make great reality television Dude how many team guys Wrecked their careers and or their lives A bunch And put a stain on the teams By doing dumb shit when drunk For sure yeah I mean it's like I said I mean I've never been a big drinker

I couldn't tell you the last time I had any Like if my dad's in town for Christmas or something we'll have a bourbon together or something, but that's about it. I mean, otherwise, I almost never drink. I don't particularly like it. And I know what it's doing to your body. I mean, it is. It's literal poison, you know.

That's how your body's treating it. And so, but to me, the biggest thing is the negative impacts that it has on society. Yeah, no doubt. They're just astronomical, you know, especially when you compare it to, say, marijuana as an example. I'm not a fan of that either. But if I had to pick one or the other, I think. I think weed would cause less problems than alcohol. I have friends that smoke weed every day, multiple times a day.

And they are way better off than the friends that I have that drink every day. For sure. It's not even close. Echo Charles, assessment. He's from Hawaii. You know what he thinks. Yeah. I would agree with that protocol for sure.

Well, why is that? Why is what? Yeah. Like, why is that? because my friend was right that when he said that alcohol makes you do crazy things yeah well

weed do you do crazy stuff on weed I don't know that that's true and known I don't smoke weed but I've never heard of anyone in particular who did crazy stuff on weed and I'll tell you why put simply what alcohol does is to you know the two voices in your head you know about this the one that says hey yeah yeah do that right

and then you have the regulatory brain voice that's like no no no don't do that because of these legitimate reasons, right? And then you play, you know, this is dance. So you go through life with that dance of those two voices. The alcohol just makes the voice that says, hey, no, don't do that. The regulatory voice just makes that quieter and quieter,

wider, that's it. And does it make the other one louder too? I guess by, I mean, as far as like, yeah, the result, yeah, it's louder, more prevalent, yeah. And that's the way it works. What do you get like when you're drunk, Echo Charles? It's the same deal, but I'm not like an aggressive person

to go like start trouble. in the public or nothing like that. So I just, but it's the same essential format where it's like, yeah, all the voices in my head that say, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, like this is true. This is a good idea, you know? Because you know what he does when he's drunk? He buys multiple URLs from go daddy.com.

Or like experiment with stuff, yeah, with video or special effects or whatever. But I'll tell you this where, yeah, if I'm embracing the protocol, I'll be like, to be honest, it's true. where yeah, all my ideas seem like the best idea in the world. That's why I have all these URLs, because I'm like, bro, I can make this website. And bro, I just see it being this massive success.

Every, you know, the voice saying yes, yes, yes, yes is super loud. And the voice saying, no, no, no, is pretty much quiet. Then the next day he wakes up and then the reality sets in, see what I'm saying. So what my drinking looks like is different than what maybe, I don't know, a general society person's drinking might look like. Yeah, when I used to drink, I used to, um, be more jocco. I would say that. A lot more extra jocko.

Same dude, but like a lot more of it. It's, yeah. It's kind of fun, but not worth the damn squeeze. Would you say that that's true though? And put very, very like fundamentally that that's true. The whole voice in your head, the one that's. Yes, I think that's true. But here's the other thing I noticed.

Like there's some people legitimately when they drink, they get the in fights. Yeah. There's some guys when they drink, they are laughing hysterically. There's some guys that slurs and fall down and like that's that. And you get to see all that in the SEAL teams. Like, hey, dude, watch out. Freaking Fred's drunk. Stand by.

We're going to be getting in a fight. Or Fred's drunk, help me carry him to the cab. Or Fred's drunk, dude, look at him. He's hilarious. You see what I'm saying? Yeah. I feel like, you know, because we know all the, all the, for like the common name, or angry drunk, the lover drunk.

Like, you know, I feel like we all have, or these different characters. they're inside, I mean, even when they're not drunk, they just have the regulatory voices that's saying, hey, that's not that appropriate right now. You know, or if you get in a fight which you want to, you're going to get in trouble, right? You know how we all have the regulatory. So I think we're all, I mean, the angry junk is inside.

There's some anger in there. Just, but it's just being regulated really well, which is good. That's what being a mature person is, you know, right? But then, yeah, when you start drinking, that voice that says, hey, no, don't freaking false that guy or whatever. It gets all quiet. and then you're in a fight.

Gambling, pornography. You talk about those addictions in this book. And then you get physical health, man. Obesity, heart disease, nutrition-based issues. From 1999 through 2018, the prevalence of obesity increased from 30.5%, which is already freaking crazy, to 42.4%.

Yeah, it's almost half. And the prevalence of severe obesity increased from 4.7% to 9.2%. Well, that's a problem. It's a huge problem. One of the things I talk about in there, which I think is the symptom of that problem is, you know, you hear about health care. Like, it's one of the most highly debated topics politically in our society. And, you know, everybody's trying to find this formula for the fix, you know, but the reality of it is is that health insurance,

only works if most people aren't sick. Like there is no formula that works when there's as many people sick as not. You know, it's just like with car insurance and like any type of insurance. You know, you're hinging or hedging your bet on the fact that most people aren't going to need it. You know, because with what it costs, even if you try to regulate costs, even if you, you know, subsidize stuff, even if you're, you know, importing things out of it. There's only so many people you can fit in a lifeboat. Right.

before the lifeboat's going down. Yeah. And so when people try to, like politicians try to say, well, if we do this, like you guys aren't looking at the problem. Like the root cause of the problem is the fact that there's too many unhealthy people in this country. Yeah. There is no fix. Why do you think RFK rolling into the health department is going to impact?

And when he starts changing some of the ingredients that are allowed to be put in food? I just hope that he's able to. You know, that's my biggest concern is between lobbying and, you know, the amount of people in our political structure that are tied into being benefactors of, you know, big food, big pharma, et cetera, that's going to be an uphill, uphill climb, you know, and he's probably going to meet resistance at every turn. I hope that he can do it because it severely needs to be done, but he's got his work cut out for him. I think one of the thing that's going to benefit this next administration that's wrong is the communication platform of X.

Yeah. Because imagine when they start posting like what they, what doge finds. Yeah. When they say, here's what your taxpayer money went to. Yeah. I mean, they've already started. And here's who's, here's who's trying to stop us from, you know, removing this ingredient from food. Yeah.

Here's the lobby that's trying to do. Here's who they're connected to. Yeah. I think it's going to be, I think the tools are in place to have impact like has never been made for sure. Yeah. And to me, the, the scary part is, is the, The one weak link there is if Elon Musk had not bought X, it would have never happened.

You know, there would be no platform to expose that kind of stuff. Did you ever do something like when you were in the teams, like make some crazy midnight purchase like out at the bar? You know, I got a buddy one time and we, you know, we get up the next day and he comes rolling and he's wearing like an outfit.

He had like, cowboy boots on. and like acid wash jeans and he had been drunk and like made some crazy purchase you know you ever seen that happen oh yeah dude what if your buddy rolled out and bought a a social media platform for 44 billion dollars nuts and it's just like oh yeah I'm just gonna do this yeah it's freaking epic but you know I mean as as big of a percentage of his net worth that that was at that time like I think a lot of people at first saw you know the the decline in in uh shareholder value of it and whatever and thought that he had made a huge mistake, but you look at it now.

And I mean, his net worth since what in the last year is, you know, almost doubled, I think. I mean, like it's just crazy the amount of money he's made from doing those things, you know. And it's not even to me the brilliance and the beauty of it is that I don't think that it has anything to do with money for him. Yeah, I would say you're right. And especially because there's that interview with him where he's going, I don't care. I don't care You can have it I don't care

I don't care about this anymore I mean at a certain point How many freaking Rolex watches are you gonna get? You know I mean you're literally flying shit to Mars Bro I don't know what else you're gonna do

You're in a pretty good spot So he doesn't care anymore Yeah So he's and what I like about that Is it's sort of the It's sort of the ultimate form of doing the right things For the right reasons

And winning Yeah And financially being in a position to do it and truly not give a shit or be beholden to anybody. Damn, Doge coming in hot. And how freaking crazy is it? That's Doge. You know what I'm saying? It's crazy.

All right. Education system, you talk about that in here. Ranking was 38th. Our current ranking, despite United States having the second best education system in the world, consistently scores lower than many other countries in benchmarks, such as math and science, and its education ranking was 38th in math scores and 24th in science. So we spend more money in anybody else and we're losers. Yeah.

Department of Education. I mean, if you look at the correlation and the parallel between where we ranked as a society, education-wise, the year before Department of Education became a thing. 1979, I believe. And where it is now, there is a one-to-one parallel that just knows dies. nose dive. Imagine that. You create a bureaucratic,

freaking managerial system. Yeah. And things get worse. Imagine. Didn't see that. What's funny is people on the surface, oh, we're going to eliminate the Department of Education. Oh my gosh.

Why don't you care about education? No, we're just going to give the money back to the people that do the educating, the states. That's the plan. To me, like all day. Yeah. there's got to be some nerves, some nervous people.

Oh, for sure. In those bureaucratic jobs right now. Oh, 100%. I mean, just looking at the, did you see the percentage

of people that actually go into the office that work for the government? What the percentage is? What is the percentage? It's 6% that go between 9 to 5 Monday through Friday. 6% of the U.S. government does that? Now, does they include like a mailman? Well, so here's the beauty of it.

When you remove security, police, you know, those types of shift jobs that are required for people to do that, it's less, it's 1%. So 1% of the U.S. government goes into the office five days a week, nine to five. There's going to be a reckoning. Huge. I mean, I think you could fire 80% of the U.S. government and nobody would notice except the people that lost their job. That's what Elon did at Twitter. Of course, we've all heard that over and over again. Twitter's not going to work anymore.

It's going down. Got more efficient. Sometimes I think that about my podcast staff. I think that too sometimes. As long as we're in agreement. I think I'd fired at least 50%. I should be good to go. Okay, another chapter.

How do we get so fucked every, anyway? Overcorrection and the exultation of victimhood. What's that all about, man? So, again, kind of looking at the, we'll say the 90s as being the birth of political correctness on a larger scale. Going back to, say, the 50s, where, you know, child rearing was pretty brutal. And I think most people would agree or argue that we as a society were probably harder on children than we should have been. And there weren't enough programs to prevent things like that from happening, CPS, et cetera.

enter the 1990s and there's this highlight on that type of stuff and in conjunction with speech and political correctness and things of that nature and just like with a lot of things the road to hell's paved with good intentions kind of mentality is that it's so bad you see the same thing with like whether it's you know BLM or certain trans rights things or whatever is is that you see a problem and you you fix it until it's broken the other way you know that the classic government adage is, adage, if it ain't broke,

fix it till it is. I mean, that's essentially what it is. But the, so the problem is you have an entire society that, you know, is now walking on eggshells

and is so overcorrected in terms of being politically correct and not punishing kids for certain things or not allowing, you know, schools to punish children or,

you know, having certain consequences for bad behavior as kids grow. up and no accountability. Parents are now suing teachers instead of, you know, corroborating or collaborating with them to say, hey, there's a problem with Johnny and we're going to fix it together. It's, you know, how dare you talk to my son that way and we're going to sue you and, you know, pull the kids out or what have you. And so now, fast forward a few decades and you have super self-entitled little selfish pricks that have never been corrected for anything that, you know,

feel entitled to everything, have never been told no. You know, have never had consequences for being disrespectful to teachers or being unruly in schools. And you've come full swing, you know, the other way. And now it's equally damaging just in a different direction. Now, you know kids these days because you've got kids yourself, right? There's a lot of kids that are freaking really awesome and normal. Are you not seeing that? I don't know that I'd say that there's a lot of them.

There are some. Whenever I get in this conversation with people, I always feel a little bit like a little bit of a bubble of some kind because I look at kind of the kids that are around my kids. Yeah. And I'm always like, eh, kids. You know, kids out there getting after it doing what kids do. I don't see too much of the crazy, you know, and like go to a wrestling tournament.

Like kids are freaking, yeah. They're getting after it, man. They're training their ass off. They're hard. Go to a, you know, a sporting event. And the kids, now look, can you see the. occasional kid that seems like a spoiled brat. Yeah, but I don't know.

I see less of it. And also, you think we've turned the corner a little bit on some of this political correctness? It seems like we certainly have. I think so we have. Again, this, you know, three or three and a half years ago when the book was written, it was kind of at the apex. At the peak. No, maybe not.

It was heading there. Get close. I would also say, you know. Your book corrected the course. I like to think that. I don't want to say that. You said it. I think, you know, in your sample of kids that you're around, too, if you think about it, wrestling, athletics.

I mean, athletics in general, that's not a very mean collective aggregate average of high school America. You know, I would say go go to a high school cafeteria at lunchtime and get a sense of where kids are at or any classroom. Echo Charles, next generation, because your kids are a little younger. Is there you identifying yet? Are you seeing kids? Do they seem that much different? I think I'm in the same boat to a degree as you where I live in a bubble and the kids that consistently come around my kids. Now that's the key word consistently.

Or I'm like, I don't see any entitlement at all or like spoiled. Maybe I see some like, hey, like, Brian, just said what's up. Say what's up back kind of a thing. But the kids eight years old. He's fired up. running and yelling and stuff like that. So it's like whatever. I don't see the entitlement except every once in a while.

Yeah, I will see it. But I think it's like one of those things where you kind of correct for that, you know. So if some kid who's spoiled who's entitled is coming around, it won't be consistent because I won't allow it to be consistent. So I've seen it. Yeah, yeah. I've seen it. I mean, to me for all three of us, technically it's all anecdotal, right? Yeah, yeah.

100%. And I'd say the overarching crux as to why I wrote that book was. exactly that is that, you know, we all have our own experiences. What most people see as being, say, the top 10 problems in the United States are what, what's what you hear on the media, it's what you see on social media, it's what you hear people bitching about. But what does the data say? Because to me, that's really what's reflective of what the problems are in between education

and kids getting in trouble from a legal standpoint as they become young adults. Like, those numbers have absolutely fucking skyrocket. And so, you know, to me, like, yeah, I mean, all of the kids that are around my kids seem like pretty decent kids. Just like, you know, some of the statistics that you see in the media a lot that aren't actually that big of a deal statistically. And from a top 10 standpoint in terms of what's the most damaging or dangerous and threatening to the United States, they're not even in the top 50, but we hear about it all day long. And so to me, that was kind of the, the. the foundation behind the book was, we're always distracted and arguing about things that, you know,

scientifically or data-wise don't really have that big of an impact on our society, but that's all we're focused on. You know, what are actually the biggest things? Well, it's being a fat ass, heart disease, depression, alcoholism, opioid addiction, eating like shit and dying from heart attacks or arthral sclerosis. I mean, there's all these different things that are killing hundreds, of thousands of people that nobody talks about. That's so glad that I covered my ass when I said,

I live in a bubble, right? Yeah. Because you're right. I'm literally sitting here thinking about it. And I was about to counter you with the fact that a lot of young, a lot of young kids, again, that I have visibility on, guess what? They don't sit around and watch TikTok videos.

They sit around and watch Jordan Peterson, you know, talk about stuff. They don't, they don't waste their mind on brain rot. Brain rot. Do you know what brain rot is? Yes, sir, they do. Yeah. They're not doing the brain rot thing. They're doing like the Andrew Huberman thing.

Right? So there's like a whole crew of people that are probably going to come out better, faster, stronger, smarter. Yeah. And there's a whole crew of people that are going in the other direction. And it's probably, you know, it's lopsided. Yeah. And your statistics that you point out,

this book show that yeah also to the um when you say anecdotal or whatever which is like that's a lot more significant than it might even feel sometimes because like and we talk about this every once in a while where like 40% or big percentage of america's like obese right like bro how many obese people do you see you're in your day to day bro kind of none yeah but what are you doing you're working out in your own gym by yourself you're going to jiu jihitsu with other jiu jihitsu people or Muay Thai or fit, you know, you're going back and forth or whatever, or surfing at the beach or whatever,

all these active things. So it's kind of like just by happenstance, your personal anecdotal experience, you're avoiding all of those people. So to you, they're like, there's no obesity problem. I would encourage both of you

to go to Lakeside, Walmart, and get your groceries tonight and see what the sample of caliber of person that's out there, you know. It's probably going to be a little different. A little bit different, yeah. Um, one of the things that you throw in here is, uh, escaping the echo chamber, which I think is like, obviously a very smart thing to do, escape the echo chamber.

No offense to echo our echo here. Tell me about this echo chamber. I mean, we're, we're all freaking locked in there. Yeah. So your, your algorithm is set up for it. Your phone is made to get you trapped in there. Well, and I think if you look at, uh, this current or this, you know, previous, past current election.

Look at the, from a media standpoint, the echo chamber that exists within the Democratic Party and or the liberal side is pretty significant. Now, if you look at the two candidates on the right, they were constantly challenging themselves going on, you know, heated debate, either, whether it's podcasts or interviews with mainstream media that's liberal or left-leaning, there's zero of that on the other side. So you've got four years of media, politicians, candidates that are all just sitting in that echo chamber, agreeing with each other, never having to defend their positions, never being argued with, just basically complaining about all the same shit and it being kind of corroborated internally. And then once you get to, you know, the last few weeks of the campaign where people are actually arguing and debating and it's laughable, you know, there's an inability to even. and answer simple questions because of that because they haven't had to do that.

And so the problem, obviously, is that one, one of the things I talk about in there is coming to the conversation with an open mind, which is a lot easier said than done, but it's crucial. You can't have an open mind and have a discussion with somebody if you're only living in an echo chamber. And also, you're never going to have good ideas if they're not being challenged. You know, like if you should welcome debate and welcome having. your ideas challenged, for that matter, even welcome having your mind changed. I do. I mean,

there's things I've certainly changed my mind that I was pretty adamant about, but over time and, you know, people making their case and challenging a certain position and me thinking through it, like, no, you know what, you're right. I actually agree with that and have changed my position on several things. But if you're never having to do that, that's never going to happen. You know, so it's a very stagnant mentality that a good portion of our society, even if it's not somebody that's not somebody that's in politics, but let's just say you're on Facebook and Instagram and TikTok or whatever. But to your point, you know, your algorithm is such to where all you get is the things you agree with, the things that already piss you off, that everybody else you know it pisses them off

and you guys get around each other and you complain about it. And that's all you surround yourself with and you never go anywhere. Dude, it was crazy in going up into the election to watch the other side. Yeah. just be totally like 100% convinced that oh you know um kamala's going to win in iowa she's going to sweep like it was it was crazy to see that yeah not to be that confident about things was very strange to watch yeah well and i think that's why is that you know they spent four years patting each other on the back you know and even lying to the american people i don't know if they actually believed it

or you know it's a snow job or what but you know it's the no the economy's great. I don't know what you're talking about. Joe Biden, sharp as a tech, smartest fucking guy in the room. Like, who the fuck are you think you're convincing that? That was crazy, right? Yeah. But is that crazy? Echo Charles? Sometimes it seemed a bit crazy.

Didn't seem a lot crazy sometimes? It depends on what you mean, because you're asking my opinion on it. Yeah. I think that that's how I think this whole thing is entertainment, by the way. I've said that many, many times. So under those circumstances, no, it's not crazy. What's, what else are they going to say is what I would ask and only in the spirit of you ask me if I think it's crazy I see what they're doing and I agree with you that that's what I believe that they're doing

as well but what else are they going to say and be like oh yeah Joe Biden he seems off he's kind of losing it cognitively what are they going to say oh you know what you're right you guys are right about that they're not going to say that that would be kind of crazy I think for them to say that dude it's like saying the sky is green though yeah it's crazy talk but if that's the show that's the show that's how I see it so Yeah, no, I mean, I guess under certain circumstances. Yes, it's crazy, but no. The show is crazy.

How about that? Yeah. It's the Truman show in real life. So we got your methodologies to escape the echo chamber. Maintain independent thought. Number one, take it upon yourself to discern what is bullshit and what is not. Be open to the fact that you may already be deep knee deep in bullshit and don't even know it. Be honest and don't practice blind allegiance to a political party or news outlet that you can't smell the stench of what

stepped in it to this day like even in the past several hours the past couple days uh i don't even know what the date is today it is the 12th of or the 10th of December 24 there was some things that happened in the past like little while where i thought i didn't even fathom a an alternative view i like a non-unified view. For instance, the CEO of a major health care insurer gets gun down and killed. And, you know,

I thought, wow, you know, gun violence, like assassination, lawlessness. Wow, that's crazy. It'll, you know, I'm sure. I didn't even, I didn't have the thought of, I wonder what the division will be on this. I didn't have that thought. I didn't have it.

I just thought, oh, you know, the world will see this and go, wow, oh, a crazy person has lost their mind and committed a murder. And it didn't take but hours before people were saying, yeah, but this health care company, they're bad. And they're responsible for people's deaths as well. And therefore, this guy is a hero, not just like, hey, I understand it. He's probably got some, been through some real. I mean,

as soon as I saw it as a health insurance thing, I was like, oh, this is a guy that either lost a family member or he's in some kind of pain himself and he's going out. But he's going to, but even with that, you go,

that's a terrible, you know, horrible, reprehensible thing to do. But no, it didn't take long. There's a complete, there's another branch of people out there

that are going, this guy is a hero. Yeah. I saw a little clip of a, professor at the pen where this guy went to college never been prouder to be a pen professor what that's crazy what what that's an ivy league professor that's insane yeah so there you go you can be so deep in this that you can find something like that happening and you go oh yeah but yeah blinded by your your allegiance and both sides are guilty i think you know you know you know you

know, something as simple as flying flags with politicians' names on them, I think, is a problem. I really do. Now, do I think it should be illegal? Of course not. But I think, you know, what it does is it speaks to that idolizing of a political candidate. And I think, you know, one of the chapters in there, Jay-Z isn't Jesus, is speaking to that, is that, you know, we've idolized our politicians, you know, and put them on pedestals as though they are. rock stars or a list actors or, you know, entertainers, what have you. And it needs to be the exact opposite. Like, we all need to realize, hey, fuck wad, you work for us. Like, we're going to hold you accountable, not the other way around. Like, you're not going to tell us how things need to

be. We're putting the people in those positions that reflect how we feel things should be run. And it doesn't really work that way. You know, whether, and I think social media does play a big and negative role, whether it's AOC on one side or, you know, pick, you know, some of the people on the right that fall into that same category with big followings that, you know, are posting shit on TikTok and Instagram that's funny, you know, it's always, you know, putting funny memes up or little skits that they do and shit like that. I think that's a mistake. While I understand people are trying to gain traction and following and influence and get reelected, the reality of it is that that position should be considered, you know, A, an honor and be something where, again,

you're working for the American people, not the other way around. And it just doesn't seem like most politicians feel that way. Another step to avoiding the echo chamber. Spend as much time researching, corroborating, and verifying the information you receive as you do taking it in. Don't just believe something because you want to believe it or because you like the person who is telling you to believe it. if you want to believe it or you really like the person telling you to believe it, you should be researching even harder knowing your own propensity towards bias. Yeah, there's a whole legitimate proven bias that we have.

If I like Mike, and he tells me something, I like, I kind of like your idea. Yeah, which I don't blame me on that one. But yeah, I mean, it's the same echo chamber. You know, if all you watch is one, one media outlet and you never see anybody else's perspective. I mean, if you want to see a. kind of classic example of that being highlighted, especially like on election night or anytime something politically divisive is going on,

it's like it's a breaking story. Switch back and forth between Fox and CNN, you know, and it's like, am I on the same fucking planet right now? Two different movies are watching. Yeah, I mean, it's like. It's crazy. It's like watching two people, you know, that are dancing together,

but to two different fucking songs, you know? It's like, the fuck's going on. You know, but that, That's unfortunately the reality and the world that we live in where, you know, if I want it to be true, then I'm going to think that it is. And, or I'm not going to take a lot of consideration or convincing to believe it. Yeah. Next one. Listen, watch and read news from varied sources and outlets.

It's important to have as much well-rounded perspective as possible. It won't be perfect or unbiased, but it'll be far better than being glued to one fucking channel or media outlet and spoon. Fed information without taking a deeper look into what's being presented to you. Yeah. This is a lot I picked this up in the military. Like you want to get different sources of Intel. Yeah.

Before you go and hit a freaking target. Yeah. Vote with your wallet. If you fundamentally disagree with the basis of a platform, stop using it. Don't engage it. And don't take part in creating a demand for it. Hold media outlets accountable and call them out for their dishonesty.

Have you gone on to Blue Sky? I haven't. I haven't gone on. Actually, I've looked at a couple profiles on it, but just hearing the things that are going on on it, it seems like it's totally insane. Do you know what blue sky is? I guess the guy from Twitter went and created something else,

but now he's gone from it. And it's just the level 12 version opposite of X. X is just like free speech, do what you want, freaking don't hurt anyone. And Blue Sky is like, you better be on board with everything and say the right things and you'll get banned. But what's crazy is it's like, you know,

uh, perverted stuff happening. And well, that's what, you know, that's my thing. Oh, yeah.

And so therefore it's okay for me to post this craziness. Like tolerance gone wild kind of. Yeah, tolerance gone wild. Dang. That's crazy. Tolerance gone wild. Yeah, but zero tolerance for no no tolerance or for lack of tolerance. Yeah, yeah, which is a crazy thing. You know what you need to have in a game? Rules rules. Rules. Rigs. Referee. You got to have some rules to the game, man. And if you don't if you're if you just if you stay within the rules, bro, it's good. You can kind of do what you want within the rules. Once you go outside the rules, though, you got to get told don't do that. Yeah. Don't do that thing. That's not.

and I've gone off about this one other time. Just be normal. Like, do normal. This is not, what you're doing is not normal. And normal can be really big, really wide and have a lot of things in it. But then you go across a certain line. Now, this is not, what you're doing is not normal. You can't do that thing.

I feel like the bumper sticker for that is just read the room. I mean, get some t-shirts made up. I mean, whatever. Yeah, fucking read the room. Yeah, fucking read the room, man. Take a look around. One of these things is not like the other. Well, I'm different.

Okay, you can be a little bit different. Yeah. Yeah, I guess that's the issue with the normal thing. It's like, well, what's normal? Blah, blah, but, you know, but I do what you're saying. There is like a certain, like a bell curve you could put together. Yeah, fully. You can do from here to here, but you can't go over there.

You can't go over there. But at what point, I guess, and I'm not asking this. I'm saying this is kind of the question, I guess, is at what point did you go pass the guardrails, you know? Like, I know you, bro, you believe in guardrails, but your guardrails is perp, pretty lax. Let's face it. I know that. You know that.

But it's like, well, what's the, you know, prescriptive guardrail positioning for everyone? Yeah. And so it's got to be kind of flexible in some way. And then who's to say, wait a second, he can flex that much, but I can't flex like this much. Like, what's the difference, you know, kind of a thing? And then it's like, well, it kind of degenerates from there. Yeah, but you got to be like, no, that thing you just did? Nope, that's over the line.

Yeah. And actually, which kind of gives a lot. more credence even, which I know, I know you're at least partially serious with the read the room thing, where it kind of is that. A little bit. Because there's a lot of stuff like that you can kind of say in certain rooms and it's like, who cares or whatever. And it's all good.

And it can be pretty inflammatory. But in other rooms, you can say way less inflammatory stuff. And it's like, bro, you shouldn't have said that, bro. It's not appropriate. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. So yeah, you got to read the room. You got to be knowledgeable in that way.

You're saying? It's like what you guys talk about before the camera's on versus when the camera. It's a very good example, sir. Don't take it upon yourself to regurgitate everything you hear. I really like this one. Don't hit the share or forward button within 30 seconds of skimming an article or watching a video. Doing so only furthers a biased agenda and creates more of a divide. Some things need to be said.

Some information needs to be shared, but a whole shitload of it doesn't. Be discerning. Dude, people like to just freaking hit shares. Yeah, before they even finish reading the article, it's like the not reading the instructions or directions on a high school test or whatever that like the last thing says don't even fucking fill this thing out, you know, and nobody did it and they filled the whole thing out. And, you know, yeah, it's just, you know, again, it goes back to, similarly to the echo chamber, I think is, and the corroboration of things is, you know, if you, if it's one one site that's like Sky News Network fucking underground. you know, whatever.com and that's your source, it's probably bullshit, you know, like, I'm not saying that even mainstream media doesn't perpetuate bullshit, but, you know, if, if you're only getting it from one thing and you're not really looking into it and you just

share it, like all that's doing is, is furthering the problem. One thing that this makes me think about is the idea that people think that they have to have a formulated and solidified opinion about everything that's freaking going on. Yeah. There's so many things where I have an idea, but it's not fully formulated and it's certainly not solidified. About what's happening. And there's a temptation to get in that game of like,

oh, something happened, let me tell you what I think. Let me tell you what I know. And it's like, dude, what do you know right now? What does anybody know?

There's another thing I brought back from like combat. Oh, reports are coming in that whatever. It's like, cool. That's the first report, and it's about to change 19 times before we know what the hell is going on. Yeah. I think it begs the bigger question of why are people like that? You know, why do so many people feel so starved to be heard for certain things that if you kind of think about it's like, who gives a shit?

What you think or even what anybody thinks about this? And I think, you know, unfortunately, we're a victim of our own success. as a society and even as a species, really, if you think about human history as we know it, you know, I mean, who knows fucking pyramids and before, you know, whatever. But we'll say from when the Greeks were at the height until present day, the human experience is by far

the easiest it's ever been right now in terms of survival threats, predators, food scarcity, disease. And so, you know, I think that, I think the human experience condition, what have you, is designed to struggle, to need something to overcome, to need something to be fighting against and be challenged over. If that doesn't exist, we're going to make it up. You will fucking make it up, you know, even if it's in your own twisted fucking brain. And I think when you couple that with physically not doing shit because you don't need to,

and being raised on red dye number five and high fructose corn syrup, like that perfect storm of horribleness is why you have people that are that bat shit crazy about things that don't even make sense, let alone, you know, really warrant somebody being upset about. Yeah. Because they don't have anything else to feel passionate about, you know. And, I mean, we've, I know I've had plenty of guests on.

I know you have too when you talk about the transitions from the military. and it's not the experiences that guys usually struggle with. It's going through those things and then now being in a vacuum of purpose, of having no real reason to get up every day. And then that's when you get depressed and when experiences that you've been through manifest into problematic mind frames. And so when you have all of those things kind of going on together, you have, again, just this perfect.

storm of a petri dish of um of of of horribleness from our society and and uh you know so i think if if people just had a reason to get up and and be passionate about something that didn't involve pronouns or you know fucking blue hair or i mean whatever abortion i mean like there's so many things that that you know i find myself thinking like if that's the worst part of your fucking day things really aren't that bad you know Like if somebody isn't calling you by whatever fucking pronoun you need to be called by, like that, that's your oppression or, you know, the thing that you're fighting against, you got things pretty fucking easy. Like you were born with a winning lottery ticket in your mouth and you should probably just shut up and be grateful.

So when it comes to the next chapter in this book, it's about parenting and it's called Who the Hell Raised These Kids? Not you two, apparently. Uh, yeah. Um, your daughters are old, what? Uh, 19 and 18 right now. Yeah. I was very cautious because it's been when we start this podcast, eight years ago, something like that, nine?

Nine years ago. So like when we started this podcast, my oldest kid was like 14. Yeah. Oh no, sorry, 16. And youngest was freaking six. And so I was real cautious about saying anything about parenting. about parenting because I was like dude the jury ain't out yeah bro like who knows what's going to happen these kids you know you don't know what's going to happen uh but yeah I think you you can

you can at your kids age 18 and 20 my oldest is 25 um you get a pretty good feel for the trajectory yeah of their lives and you know obviously when uh when you put this book together you got start talking about some of the rules that you set up and or some of the guidance that you give and I think start with this one right here give kids independence and let them fall on their ass sometimes so the thing that I say is let your kids brush up against the gargrails of failure the car's going to get a little dinged up no one's going to get hurt they're going to learn how to drive yeah I also tell people a lot treat your kids as adult as you possibly can.

So like as much as you can let them do, the more responsibility you give them, the more responsible they become. You let them make that peanut butter and jelly sandwich when they're five years old, and it's going to take 20 minutes. There's going to be freaking jelly on the counter and there's going to be peanut butter on the floor

and it's just going to be a mess and then it's going to take them 20 minutes to clean up. So it's a 40-minute evolution, which you could have done with one hand in like one minute and be cleaning and carry on with the day. you're giving them so much more education in life and so much more self-reliance. And you start doing that not just with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, but with the laundry and with the freaking school lunch and the breakfast in the morning

and the taking out the garbage. Like all those little things that you allow them, the responsibility is going to make them that much better off. And sometimes they're going to mess it up. And that's going to be cool. I agree. And I would kind of dovetail onto your. second platoon OIC's lesson of yeah we don't have to do it but is it the right thing to do like

that I think is parenting 101 now granted they have to get to a certain age before you can implement that yeah but once they do I think you should all the time you know it's like I don't really feel like going to school today maybe that's not the best example but but as a as a hypothetical it's like you could not go is it the right thing to do do you think that that's going to serve you well. Yeah, okay, do it then. Stay home. See what happens. Would I necessarily do that? Maybe. Maybe I have. I'll tell you one part of my parenting advice that I tell people all the time is if you can get your kids out of school for some reason, do it. If you can take them to work, if you can take them on a trip, if you can take them to the thing, whatever, you got to go downtown

and get permits from the city about the fence that you're going to build in the backyard. And you can take your kids to go do that. Go do it. Get them out of that school. And if you can take them to do something cool, even better. Yeah. And that's going to be awesome. And to, but to the point that you're making, I think a lot of times what kids mess up or what kids don't connect is they don't connect what's happening right now to their future. Yeah.

Because they think, you know, what I'm doing right now, eventually everything's going to be cool. So I did, I did. I did a career day. I did career day back in the day many moons ago. And, you know, I was going to talk about being in the Navy. Like, okay, this is what you do. And dude, who doesn't want to hear about being in the Navy, being a seal, about going to war, about carrying a machine gun, about shooting machine guns, about blowing things up, about jumping out of airplanes, about Scoobie? I got my slideshow.

It's got Scuba. It's got freaking draggers. It's got parachuting. It's got, you know, cool stuff. Hype. Hype. So I roll in there, and these kids were, I guess the age is maybe around sixth grade.

It's like 12, maybe seventh grade. So I roll in there. And by the way, you know, I'm in the team, so I'm talking to people on a regular basis. All good. I'm not like a boring speaker, right? So I roll in there. and I had to do it five times.

So they broke career day up and like they were going to their classroom and come in for 20 minutes or 25 minutes or something. I present to the little class, present to the little class, present to the little class. And I'm in the same classroom the whole time. The first one I do, I'm sitting there like, all right, everyone, my name is Lieutenant Commander Jocker Willink. I'm in the SEAL teams, blah, blah, blah. I'm looking at the crowd.

I'm reading the room. Dude, they don't give a shit. They don't care about anything that I'm saying. Like even the one kid that has like a Marines T-shirt on or something, he's like, doesn't care. No one cares. And I'm, okay, next slide, parachuting. Like, no one cares. And so I do the first one, and I'm trying to explain to them, no one really cares.

I escalate the next one. You know, like, well, what are you going to do? What do you want to do with your life? By the time I get to the last one of the day, I'm saying, hey, listen up, kids. Here's the deal. There's 20 There's 30 of you in this room You fast forward 15 years from right now

Some of you kids are going to own three houses One in the mountains one by the beach and one out in the desert You're going to spend time wherever you want Three of you are going to have one house You're lucky you're going to be here in San Diego You're going to have a good job or you're going to have a house Some of you are going to have a condo Some of you can have an apartment

some of you aren't going to have an apartment some of you are going to still be living at home some of you are going to be living in a car and there's two of you kids in this room right now they're going to be living under the bridge down in mission bay at 12 and it all starts with the decisions that you're making right now this is where it starts the decisions that you're making right now so that's my point is that kids don't recognize that the decisions that they're making right now connect to where they're going to end up in the future for Sure. And I think that's the litmus that I, even if it's subconsciously use, is if it's a, if it's a decision that's going to be a detriment to their future, like I'm not going to let you fuck that. Obviously. Yep. You know, if it's something that, you know, yeah, it may be a pain in your ass or, you know, maybe embarrassing or, you know, whatever, then, yeah, I'll ask you, hey, do you really think that's a good idea? Can you know, can you know, can you sell me on why that's a good idea? Okay. Well, do it then and we'll see what happens, you know. Yeah. But yeah, I think there's, there's too much helicoptering. And, and not enough.

I mean, look, the reality is, like, I would rather my kids make these mistakes while I can keep them between those guardrails and they can learn from it versus the first time they've ever had the autonomy to make a bad decision is when they're 19 and living somewhere else. And now the repercussions are fucking astronomical.

You know, that I don't want. And I think too many parents raise their kids that way. Yeah, and you're going to learn that through those consequences, right? If your kids are doing, if your kids are making mistakes and there's no consequences for them, it's going to be a problem. And the examples that you were talking about like, oh, your kid, you know, is in school and they get in trouble with the teacher. And they come home, you know, oh, I, you know, I got a zero on this test. Well, why?

Well, you know, we, she didn't tell us about the test. Are you serious? She didn't tell you about the test. I'm going to go in there and talk to her and we'll get you that grade upgraded. And instead of being like, oh, well, you. You didn't hear about the test. You're telling me that she gets, you're telling me the whole class,

no one knew about the test. That's what's happening? Like, well, no. Okay. So what do you got to do? Because what's your grade right now? It's a C minus. Okay.

So what do you get when you get a C minus? Like, how's your world look when you get a C minus? Are there privileges that you lose? It's another nice thing. I learned in boot camp. And officer candidate school. Privileges.

You don't realize what privileges are, Echo Charles, when you're a kid. You don't realize. You don't give me that look. You don't realize that there's privileges that you have when you're a kid. You don't realize that it's a privilege. Yeah.

You don't realize the depth. You don't realize the depth. You don't realize that a light in your room is privilege. You don't realize that a TV is privileged. You don't realize that an iPad is privileged. You don't realize that. Hair. Hair.

You've heard the story. There is a privilege that you don't necessarily, you are not necessarily granted that hair. And boy, I caught some shit for that. Somebody clipped up that thing of me saying. Yeah. I don't doubt it. telling a story, but they clipped it out in a way. Because when I said that to my daughter,

my daughter had already been in trouble. Yeah. And it wasn't, again, she didn't do anything freaking crazy, but she had gone outside the bounds. And I tightened her up. She was in trouble. And so then as I was, took away privileges from her, you know, phone privilege, because she was probably 14, 15,

so she had the phone, took away the phone privilege, you know, took away the computer in your room privilege. took away the no curfew privilege because I didn't have curfews for my kids and you know and whatever a couple other things right but then and then later I'm joking

with her you know as the privileges are coming back and I'm like okay well you know hey like remember you know and this was you know pretty harsh but it could be much worse well how could it be worse dad well you still have a door on your room which I think was awesome right a door on your room is a privilege

a mattress, you know, bedding, a pillow. And then, you know, jokingly, I said, and hair, you know, and my daughter laughed and got the message.

Yeah. Because it really is. It is a privilege. Like everything in life when your kid is a privilege. So when you can utilize those things to be removed from the situation,

you can be in a pretty rough. Yeah. You can be in a pretty rough spot. And you can realize, oh, I am thankful and I have gratitude for these things that I have. But you can utilize those

as a parent to help them learn lessons. Take away some of those privileges. And the privileges can be given back. But those things happen in life. And like you said, you can make mistakes when you're 19 years old. Well, you can give up the privilege of freedom. You can give up the privilege of a future.

You can give up the privilege of being able to walk by doing dumb shit. Yeah. And I think to that, I think the key with communicating that to kids, and really, I think anybody is, is, is staying calm, you know, is where I think a lot of parents and myself when they were younger absolutely fell into that category is, is raising your voice, losing your temper, like becoming visibly angry about it. Because that's when they stop fucking listening, you know, whereas if you're like completely unemotional and you're like, okay, well, I guess I'm taking this from you. And

if you get this, then you'll get it back. Any questions? Nope. All right. Like, if you say it that calmly, it's like, fuck. Like, he's not yelling at me. He's not yelling at me. he's not mad like he's indifferent you know it's like that's the best way to to communicate that because they'll they'll actually listen and then now they're not taking it personal and then they'll actually hear it and reflect on it yeah so we got asked uh on underground podcast somebody asked about spanking kids right and so i was like looking at the questions and i was at home and i was looking with the questions i was like oh no i don't really spank my kids and it's spake my kids and then my kids were home i was like wait i want to make sure you know confirm because i don't want to be out here

lying to the masses. And so my wife and my kids were sitting around downstairs and I came downstairs and I was like, hey, I got asked if I spanked, but I didn't spank you guys, right? And they're all like, nope, nope. My wife's like, nope. And then they started with like, if my son ended up saying, I wished you would have spanked us. It would have been easier. It would have been less psychologically damaging.

And we're all laughing because I would like just either, I had a couple protocols. I mean, obviously the privileges, but the other thing I was just like not talking. to talk to him. Like one of my kids, if my kids were out of line, it would just be like, you know, you did the perfectly calm thing. I would just be like totally shun them for three days. It's rough. It's, I don't recommend the three days worth of shunning.

I think it's too much. Maybe one day. Yeah, maybe a day worth of shunning. But there's, I would like be at the dinner table and, you know, the salt would be on the other side of the kid that's being shunned. And I would ask the other kid, you know, hey, pastor. me the salt and just like act like they're not there. Total asshole.

Sorry kids. I wish you would have whipped us. Take your belt off. And you mentioned this whole idea in this section to create an environment for learning life lessons at home. That's what we just talked about. Don't raise a victim. How do you prevent that?

So, I mean, to me, there's a couple things. I mean, number one is don't reinforce it. You know, if you coddle and set up an environment and reinforce that type of. behavior than, you know, one of my favorite quotes by the godfather of operant conditioning, B.F. Skinner, as it relates to dog training, is anything that's reinforced is likely to occur again. It's true everywhere, not just in dog training, but, you know, so if you create an environment where people are rewarded for being a victim, you know, and there's no consequence for doing anything wrong,

you're creating that, you know, I mean, you're reinforcing that victim mentality, and that's just going to carry further and further into adult life where there's going to come a time where it's going to be the shit or get off the pot moment and nobody's going to give a shit, you know, what they went through growing up or, you know, what they had to deal with at this point in their life or, you know, what person broke their heart or what financial, you know, hardships they're having or what have you. And I think the sooner you do that, the better off the kid's going to be. And there's never going to be that almost purgatory of entitlement. There is a certain you got to figure out that time in life where you realize that you

have agency and you can take control of what's happening. And look, there's going to be some things that are not in your control. We get that. But at a certain point, you go, oh, I made this mistake and this is why I'm in the situation right now.

I'll tell you what, the U.S. Navy drives that home real loud and clear. Even something as simple as boot camp, you're like, oh, I made this mistake. now I am paying the man and that just escalates through seal training is like oh

I made this mistake and now I'm paying the man or I prepared I planned I was ready we executed got the job done now I'm in a good spot and that applies to everything in life Yeah, and so if you can set conditions like that for your kid so that when they do the right thing the good outcomes and you let them know that the outcome is because they They were prepared and put forth effort. And when things don't go their way, it's like, oh, oh, you didn't know about the test, huh? And that's the teacher's fault.

No, that's not the teacher's fault. That is 100% your fault. And even if it is the teacher's fault, what can you do about it? You're going to petition to have the teacher fired? The teacher's not getting fired. The teacher's union owns the state. It's not happening. So what are you going to do?

You're going to continue with a bad grade? No, you have to figure out what you can do. to fix this situation. And to me, there's a really critical component of that consequence part, which is being consistent and following through. Because that's where I see a lot of people. And I've been in situations with my kids in their teenage years where I'm not going to say that I'm better than other parents,

but I would just say that most parents would have folded and said, okay, no, you know what? Stop. Let's figure this out. Like, come here. and not let them do what they were saying, well, fuck it, I'll do this then, okay? Give me a good example.

I'll do it off. There's too much personal information to share it, so I'll share it off camera. Leif Babin has a good example of that, where he was telling his daughter, like, they were in Texas somewhere where there's like little stickers in the grass or in the yard.

And his daughter's like, you know, he's like, hey, put your flip-flops on. I don't want to. Hey, put your flip-flops. on and I want to. Like put your flip flops on right now. No. Okay.

Yeah. And Liberty's little girl goes running across the yard and sure enough she made it whatever it was five steps. Yeah. So that's a perfect example. Yeah. She's not going to die. She's not even going to get injured.

She's going to have some little pain. Yeah. But she's going to get that lesson learned. Well, yeah. And I think, you know, an older example where where there's going to be more of that like in that case, not that it's not a good example, but there's really no skin in the game for Leif. Like he's not losing anything by that.

Let's say fast forward to, hey, if something happens and if it continues or you don't remedy this, you're not going to prom. It's like, okay, well, I want you to go to prom. Like, I want you to have that experience. I would love for there to be pictures. Like, I want you to have that as part of your high school experience. You know, so something happens to where the deal was

if you don't satisfy this requirement, you're not going to prom. That doesn't happen. A lot of times, well, fuck. Okay, but we'll figure something else out, but, you know, it's like, no, you don't get to go. I will use one example for that. My kids were probably seven and nine

at the height of Halloween being fucking varsity activity. Damn, dude. They're dressed up. We're ready to fucking go. Halloween's canceled. Sit the fuck back down. you're not going out because you lied to your mom and I, like straight to our face about something important.

So we're going to sit here and have a come to Jesus for 20 minutes. You can take the shit off and we're not going out. Like that sucked. Yeah. You know, like there's, I mean, I love Halloween. Love going out with the kids,

especially at that age when it's magic. And we didn't, you know, I will say there's times where like I still feel bad about that. But, you know, it's like, you know, and so I would say let that also caution you is that don't have a consequence

be something that's going to kill. kick you in the dick so much to where if you have to follow through with it, you're like, man, and you regret it, you know, so, you know, be, be strategic. Yeah. One time my son did something that was not approved. And he was a pretty little kid. And I went a little too hard in the paint. And I put him on a very Spartan protocol for life.

And it was very, very Spartan. And he was maybe six or seven. And it was like very strict wake-up protocols, you know, room inspections. Like I really went hard on him and removed basically all privileges as a child. And it, you had hurt. It sucked, you know, like, yeah, but I was doing it. And so then he slowly, and so I had said to him like, look, I have to be strict with you because, you know, this is this is not going to be good for you in the long run.

I gotta be strict with you. And so little kid, you know, he understood, okay, this is what strict is. And then as I, as he earned privileges back and, you know, got his stuff back and started living a more normal childhood life. And then something happened. And, you know, he did something a little bit, you know, brushing up against the guardrails a little bit. And I was like, hey, listen, do you want me to have to be strict again?

And he looked at me, little kid, and he goes, maybe that's what's going to be best for me. And I was like, oh, my God. I was like, oh, no, this poor kid, I created a freaking monster. Maybe that's what's best for me. That's great. That's sexy. That was like the first time he asked for a haircut. And so I shaved his head.

And I got done. And I go, okay, all done. And he goes, he looks at me. He goes, do I look more like a soldier now? And I was like, I got a tear in my non-shooting eye. That was classic. All right. So you go through, you already talked about the Jay-Z, J-Z isn't Jesus type stuff,

but you go into this personal protocol. And this is sort of the meat of the book. And I don't want to get into every subject that you cover, but you cover this protocol for assessing important issues and subjects. And so I don't want to go through all of them, but I want to talk about your protocol that you use. You say, I'd like to offer four cornerstone principles that can be used as a guide for assessing

and approaching any important subject issue or problem. If every individual implemented the practice of utilizing these principles, I think we'd see a lot of change. It's a four-step process. Here's how it works. Number one, remove emotions. Number two, remove politics. Number three, mind your own fucking business.

And number four, hold yourself to the same or higher standard that you hold others to. That's it. So talk to me a little bit about this protocol. What are we doing with this protocol? Well, you know, so the, I would say the backbone of it is removing the predispositions that I think inhibit us to be able to have conversations with people that we disagree with or that we're trying. to raise, you know, children-wise, et cetera. If you look at, you know, all of the divisive things that take place in our country and you follow those four things, like how many of those actually are problems that people

are arguing about now, like pick any political hotbed topic that you've seen in the last, say, six or eight months leading up to the election and put them through that ringer first and do you still have an argument? Yep. No. And I think not necessarily in that order, but number four, especially politically. Now, all of them I think are important whether you're talking with neighbors, you know, again, kids, people in your community, the higher up you go, I think the more you kind of need to go in reverse order. But especially in politics, you know, and both sides are horribly guilty of this is my guy did it and I'm going to look the other way and that's fine. But the second your guy does it, like we're going to shine. a fucking interrogation lamp on him and we're going to spend three weeks talking about it. And it's like, you know, take, I mean, pick, pick a topic and that's the case, you know. So again, I just think like if everybody going into anything that they're pissed off about or that they're trying to argue with somebody about, if you go through that checklist, A, nine times out of 10, you're not even going to have the argument with somebody because that's going to remove, you're going to realize, yeah, fuck, I'm wasting my time and I'm a hypocrite.

If it does lead to that, you're at least going into it with all of those boxes checked saying, okay, well, there's no emotion, there's no politics in it. You know, I'm holding my side to the same standard and, you know, that's going to get rid of it. So even if you do end up still getting in an argument with somebody, you've kind of taken so much of the teeth out of it to where now you can just have an actual discussion about it and not sit there just screaming at each other where neither side is listening to one another. Yeah, don't get emotional about it, which is very difficult because some people are hyper emotional about things and Sometimes it's a good reason. You know sometimes like some

Somebody was on welfare when they were a kid and so therefore welfare is a hugely important thing and they're super emotional about it So you got to be like okay got to remove that emotion remove the political well I'm right wing and right wing is against welfare so I'm against welfare. So let's get rid of that mind your own business how is that applying to the welfare thing I just well so to me I mean I guess from a welfare standpoint it's you know if it doesn't affect you then don't worry about it you know and again how many how many things like take abortion as probably the the most classic example of that is you know or gay marriage or I mean there's there are a litany of different things to where it's like you know take one step back again get rid of the emotion in politics and then ask yourself like

does this fucking matter to you? Like does it really affect you? If it doesn't, if it's somebody else doing something that they like, they're passionate about and it doesn't impact you, then stop fucking worrying about it. You know, too many times people,

you know, whether it's in communities or on a national level, you know, whether it's your neighbor or, you know, at a federal level, is that people are pissed and worried about things that don't really affect them.

You know, but they'll die on that hill. they'll sit there and spend hours arguing with somebody about it. They'll get emotional about it. And they'll let it, you know, border on control their life for something that doesn't even have any relevance. You know, I actually got in trouble for telling somebody to mind his own business on social media a couple of years ago, which is a whole other story. But it was funny because it somebody, there's a ton of comments asking like, oh, where is it in your book where it says mind your own fucking business? It was like fucking page 91 on this paragraph.

And that's a funny story. I'll share it with you after a show probably. Yeah, one of the other things I was thinking about this as I was reading it was really trying to understand what the other person's perspective is. And this, again, this is something I picked up. Like if you and I were planning for a mission and you were like, I think we should hit the target from the south.

And I'm like, I think we should hit it from the north. instead of me thinking, I'm right, you're wrong. I'm like, okay, why does you want to, okay, why do you think it's better hit it from the south? You're like, well, we're getting inserted over here. There's possible IED over here. There's a bad terrain feature over here. And look at this like nice little high ground we can take to Overwatch as we move in from the south. I'm like, well, actually, that makes pretty good sense.

Or I say, hey, you know what, that's all good, Mike? What I forgot to tell you is that there's going to be a fire mission that's going to the south. I didn't tell you that. fault so we can't actually come oh okay cool so now we have a real conversation but I actually want to know why you think that's better and I think if you can do that normally you can at least find some level of of understanding of that other person's perspective all the way down to you almost I was kind of doing it a little bit when we were just talking about this killer this murderer of the CEO of United

Healthcare Because I immediately almost went into like, hey, listen, that guy probably has a family member that suffered this and that. The thing is with that particular case, you go, even with that perspective, even with that perspective, I can't say, yep, go ahead and murder the CEO of the company. Like it did, there's, it doesn't work.

But most of the time, in many cases, unless the person is crazy, like I've often said like, hey, unless you're ISIS or like, like a died in the wool communist like i'm going to be able to figure out some little common ground that we have somewhere right like we're going to be able to figure something out but if you're in this case it's like oh now you're going to murder a person in cold blood that's it's not okay but most of the time it's like oh here's what you think oh you believe in welfare or you believe whatever the thing is right you believe in whatever the thing i often okay well i understand i

I at least have some comprehension of what you're where you're coming from. And in my mind, I actually try and figure out how I can help make them right. I actually want to believe what you're telling me. When you tell me some political opinion and I'm like, dude, this guy's an idiot. I immediately know that that's my ego. It's my emotions. It's my politics. And I go, okay, stop, listen and try and figure out how Mike can be right about this particular topic that he's talking about.

How can I agree with him? And I work my ass off to try and figure that out. And most of the time what I figure out is like, you know what? This opinion that I have not fully formulated and probably shouldn't be stabilized yet. It probably shouldn't be poured concrete. There should probably be some room to breathe because the world is a crazy complex place. You know, you and I talked about on the podcast, on your podcast, the amount of variables that are in war. And that's the same thing with so many complex topics that there are that why would you pour your opinion into

concrete and have no ability to maneuver. One of the things I say in there, not on that page, but later in the book, is listen to understand not to respond, you know, which is huge. And I think Jordan Peterson does an exercise in his couples therapy where he says, you know, if you're in an argument with your spouse, he'll have them flip sides, you know, and say, okay, now you're arguing her point to you and vice versa, you know, to really force you to understand where that other person is coming from, which is pretty, pretty brilliant. But I don't know how well it would work in some cases.

I can see that going off the rails pretty quick. Well, the reason I think that is because I'm a fucking idiot. I just start bagging on yourself. Well, listening is, I always explain that listening is one of the absolute most underrated skills in being in leadership. And it's also the cornerstone of building relationships with people is listening to what they have to say. As a matter of fact, again, when I was on your podcast, one of the questions from the audience was, you know, what do you do with someone that's not listening to you?

And very quickly I responded, you listen to them. If someone's not listening, you need to listen to them. Find out what's going on. The more you listen to them, the more likely they are to listen to you. and 99% of the cases in the world when you start listening to someone and taking notes on what they're saying and trying to incorporate their views

and things, they will eventually start listening to you. Is there one, there's a, it's not even 1%, it's like 0.001% that's just a freaking lunatic. You probably don't, if you're listening this right now and you're thinking, oh, you see, I knew it. I knew that guy was the guy

that wasn't going to listen and I should just beat him down. No. Yeah. You don't have that person. That person doesn't even function in society normally. Yeah.

For you in those environments, is there a statement that you use typically to open that door to listen? Or is it just totally dependent on the person, the topic, the situation? I might say like, dude, what's wrong? And generally speaking, trying to take some kind of an ownership of the situation. Like, hey, Mike, I don't think I'm doing a good job of understanding your perspective. Can you tell me what you're thinking right now? If it's your kid. Hey, listen, kid, I can see that you're mad right now.

Obviously, I'm not understanding what's going on. Can you explain to me what your viewpoint is? If it's your spouse. Hey, darling, I can see that this is, I'm not doing a good job of understanding what's happening. Can you share with me if it's your boss? Hey, boss, obviously, I've done something that was out of line. I want to know what that is.

Can you help me see it? Can you tell me what I'm doing wrong? You see what I'm saying? It's just like asking and taking ownership of the fact that you're not comprehending what's going on. That makes sense. And that's a good way to do that. And like then to your point, or I guess you made via Jordan Peterson, the intention of listening isn't then to come up with the response. The intention of listening is to nod your head, get out your freaking notebook.

Dude, I used to do that when I was in the teams. Like somebody comes to me with some problem, I'm getting out my notebook. Get out my notebook. I'm going to write down what the hell you're saying. And you're going to know like, damn, dude, the boss says, is taking notes on what's going on. That's a pretty positive thing, isn't it? Yeah.

So I really like these protocols running through, running things through these protocols so that you can actually freaking calm down and understand things better. And you do it. Dude, you apply this methodology in the book. You cover a bunch of topics from borders to guns, to the economy, to a bunch of social issues, to foreign policy, to environment. You cover it all. And you kind of break it down and show these different perspectives.

And I think that's a good methodology for actually teaching people how to do this when they get to watch you do it throughout the book, which is freaking solid. And then you get into the last chapter of this book, which is very uniquely titled You. You say this, that's why I want to end this book by sharing with you a handful of, things that you can put into practice immediately in your own life. All of these things, all of these are things that I strive to practice in my own life. They are things that I have seen proven time and time again to have a positive impact, both in the lives of individuals as well as society at large. I am by no means perfect or feel that I have arrived at any of these points, but you can bet your ass that I wake up every day doing what I can to progress, grow,

and learn. Most days. Most days. The first thing you talk about is shift your mentality. In many ways this book has been all about shifting mentality and perspective. The word mentality is defined as the characteristic of attitude or way of thinking of a person or a group. All of us should make it our mission to pursue independent and informed thinking to check and recheck our mentality about ourselves and the world around us constantly. It is a journey that each of us will be on for life. There are two mental shifts that I believe can do the most good in your life as an individual and as a society. And the first one is think for yourself. And dude, this is, This is what, it's weird.

I remember when I was a kid, and I was always liked war and liked to learn about war and study war. And, you know, I remember even as a little kid watching like PBS shows about the Nazis, and you would see the Germans, and you would see like the mass hypnosis of the people, like all freaking Siegheiling,

tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people. And it seemed, for many, many years of my life, it seemed like a unique thing. Like a thing where it's like, oh, dude, this, that guy, Adolf Hitler had some freaking kind of magical power. He had some kind of charisma. And then you learn a little bit more like, oh, it's also because the German economy had been crashed so bad.

So that's another reason why the people, were kind of down for the cause. Oh, and then also you learn that after the Treaty of Versailles, the German people, like, they felt like they got screwed and not to hold them. So now they're even more down for the cause. So by the time Hitler comes around, like, you just have this massive people, unique in human history that was ready to get on board with the program. But man, in the last, like, several years,

it's become much more obvious how just completely pliable, people's minds are. And the only reason that we don't have a mass movement like that unified right now is because there's just all these little mini mass movements that are going all the time and people are freaking scrolling through their phone and they're getting sucked down

to that algorithm thing. And next thing you know they're on some weird freaking belief system that's crazy, that's leading them to become angry and frustrated and psycho. And the Nazis did that to a whole bunch of of people at the same time. They happen to unify that message and they got them all going.

But it's it's it's sad to see this happening now with all these little offshoots that you can go down and you can get wrapped up into these, these rabbit holes where you're not thinking for yourself anymore. Yeah. Well, and I think again, it speaks to the the lack of purpose that so many people have, you know, is that they don't really have anything that they're that passionate about, you know. And when you don't have that, again, like we said, you know, you'll figure something out. Your mind and body will gravitate towards something. And the problem is that, you know, that passion needs to be real. It needs to be, you know, an ignited fire kind of coming from your soul.

And if it's something that's trivial, then it's going to seem ridiculous because it is. But, you know, it doesn't mean that you're any less passionate about it. It's just what you're being passionate about is a pretty trivial thing. you know but to you it's all relative it doesn't feel trivial because that's what your thing is and so I agree it's it's an alarming time to see or it makes more sense now or it's like okay now I get how Nazi Germany happened and I think a lot of people have kind of come to that realization over the last few years of of seeing you know people you know when Trump was was shot I mean fuck a good portion of the country you know was like wish they would have hit him it's like what

You know, it's like I don't like Biden. I don't want to see him get fucking assassinated, you know, like, what am I missing? Like, how's there that many people that are okay with that, you know? And same with the healthcare CEO, same thing. Like, there's, you know, there's probably, not probably, there's always going to be a portion of the population that cheers those things that, you know, is okay with that and applause or applauds something like that. but it seems like the balance is so far tipped now to where there's so many people that are okay with dehumanizing people that they disagree with over some of the littlest things that they're they're you know it's like they're now an inanimate object almost and they could fucking care less

there's no kind of human connection to to that person because well they don't believe what I believe and so they could have their head cut off and I wouldn't care it's it's frightening yeah my uh When I was growing up, my dad's a real conservative guy and one, like real conservative. And one of our family friends was a old, like crazy, what we would call like a crazy liberal guy. And we had dinner with this family a thousands, thousands of times growing up. And my dad and this guy who were on absolute. opposite ends of the political spectrum would freaking sit there all night and argue and make fun of each other and bring up facts and go at each other's throats metaphorically and at the end of the

night you know i have a good night we'll see you tomorrow like and and that just i don't think that really happens anymore it doesn't and i do wonder uh or i i suspect that social media and the internet's played an enormous role in that uh for the simple fact that that that that's And that and kind of the political correction, overcorrection of not being able to handle things the old-fashioned way. Like, it was interesting. My Uber driver on the way here was from Chechnya. We, of course, got to talking about Dagestan and wrestling and fighting and the differences between, you know, I'm like interviewing this guy on the way here. But, you know, our society.

Where does he train? He doesn't train here. You may see him coming through the victory doors here pretty soon. Could you use some of that. Yeah. Well, he had, he fought twice, one, one, two amateur fights in Chechnya. And, you know, he's like, in Chechnya, growing up, like, you either wrestle or you do judo, that's part of school for everybody. He's like, boys, you do one or the other.

And there is no choice. And just the stark contrast between the two societies. But he was saying one of the things that surprised him the most here, because we were at a stoplight and somebody, like, pulled out. And somebody was honking and flipping him off and yelling out the window. and he's like, that never, ever happens in Chechnya. He's like, nobody talks shit to each other. Nobody fucking flips anybody off. He's like, like, if you flip somebody off,

you better be ready to fucking fight right now and nobody gives a shit. You know, it's like people knock each other's teeth out for Malin off or for flipping each other off or whatever. It just doesn't happen. He's like, in Chechnya, like, if you pull out and there's some sort of disagreement

as to a traffic, maneuver or whatever, like people will, will ask, are you okay and do you need any help? Like, it's not an aggressive, you're fucked up, get out of my way. It's, is everything okay? Like, do you need a hand? Like, assuming you're screwed up because something's wrong. It's just like a polar opposite mentality. But back to that kind of point is that, you know, we live in a society now where, I mean,

you can say fucking anything to somebody with absolutely zero consequence. I mean, you can, you know, insult their family, their mom, their kids, their spouse, them. I mean, you can threaten them, frankly. I mean, I'm sure you've seen stuff too where people will say shit. Just like, dude, how the fuck is that, how is that what you think, you know, like some of the comments on YouTube or on social media, which I admittedly don't read very much of or very often. But sometimes some have gotten my attention because of how egregious they are. but I think that that's part of it is that you know it's like there there's no consequence for talking to somebody in in any manner like the most vile disgusting offensive threatening

disrespectful manner there's absolutely no consequence for it you know and I think that's a problem when you couple that with the fact that the weird timing of texting and social media and comments is that you know having a discussion or even a disagreement with somebody you don't have time to think about it that much, right? So everything is really off the cuff. Like when you have just enough time, like you may spend minutes or even hours figuring out how to respond to somebody's smart-ass comment. And so you have, you know, all of all of these like one up, I got you, catch me, fuck me, trick-fuck kind of comments on social media where people are, you know, have these well-thought-out things. There's no emotion behind it. You can't see the person's face. You can't humanize them at all

because it's just, you know, text on a little screen in your hand. And I think that that changes the way people view each other. Yeah. The idea like I'll see on social media of someone will say, you know, well, that's bullshit. Fuck you. Yeah. And, you know, the last time I said, I said, fuck you to another person, I can't, I can't remember. Yeah.

Like, that's, and the last time someone said that to me, I can't remember. Yeah. Like for someone to look at me and say, fuck you. Like that is, that is a, yeah, you don't do it.

Extreme kind of crazy thing that's going on. Like, we're about to fight. Yeah. Or I did something to you that like, you're, we are now enemies. But for just to be,

it's like a Tuesday afternoon and I'm going through this person who's talking about, uh, Biden or Trump or whoever. And my response is, hey, if that's what you think, fuck you.

That's, yeah. Is that serious? That's, that's where we're at. That's what we're doing. Yeah. So, yes, social media for, I wonder how that bleeds over to like real life.

Well, it doesn't. So, but no, let's say you're a kid. Let's say you're a 15 year old kid and you're on social media and you're telling people fuck you and this and that and the other thing. And now all of a sudden you're in a movie theater and someone's talking and you tell them to be quiet and they say, uh, hold, you know, I'm not, you don't tell me what to do. Do you immediately just go to like, fuck you and now we're fighting? I don't know.

I think there's an element of that. I do think that deep down, even if it's hardwired genetic, is that I think people still understand the primal nature of human beings and kind of what exists. And so I think it depends on the person in person. I think there's a lot of people that would talk a ton of shit online. And if you saw them in person, they wouldn't talk to you that way. But I think, you know, it depends on who that other person is with kids. Yeah, I think a lot of them would go right to, you know, saying what they would type in social media.

I do think as you get older and you get a sense of how somebody carries themselves, their presence, their nonverbal communication, eye contact, things like that. That plays a big role. Again, I don't even think you ever have need to have been punched in the mouth or been in a fight to realize when you're in the presence of somebody who absolutely will fuck you up, you know, for being disrespectful. I think people recognize that even if they've never been in a fight. Yeah, there's a little bit of primal activity going on there. One thing you say about this is this one mentality shift is something that you can begin pursuing right now. Start asking questions. Start thinking for yourself, educating yourself, researching for yourself. Expose yourself to a variety of deep thinkers, innovators, philosophers, political leaders, experts,

and friends who think both similarly and different than you. Certainly something that if you don't actively try and make that happen, it won't happen. Yeah. If you just, look, it's so much more comforting just to hang out

with a bunch of people that think what I think and I don't want to hear from everybody else. And by the way, your algorithm is set up to do that for you. Yeah.

And you go into the fact of voting. Here's another thing that you talk about, which I, well, I guess you could say I fully wholeheartedly support this.

Take responsibility. No matter who you are or what stage of life or you are currently and it's important to remember that someone is looking at you. You're an example to someone.

and you are an influence on someone. That alone should be a weighty responsibility. It is one none of us should take lightly. Take responsibility and ownership for what is yours. Don't blame your problems on other people. Put your head down and own the shit that you were to own. If you made a mistake, don't pretend you didn't. Don't try and cover it up.

Look at square in the face, own it, and take action to grow from it. In doing so, you'll show others that it's okay to fall down and get back up. I wrote a whole book about that. Actually, it's only one chapter in that book, but yeah. Take ownership, everybody. And then you get into this trifecta of health. Three components. Get the fuck outside.

Get off your ass. Get proper fuel. Step one. Get the fuck outside. Why is that? So taking one step back, you know, the book highlights, like I was kind of saying, And the premise behind it is, you know, there's all these data points that speak to much bigger problems than what typically is focused on in the media. It can be a daunting thing to see all of these issues, these data points, and be like, holy shit, you know, our country is in kind of a mess.

And now the daunting part is, what can I do about that, right? It's like, where you can vote and you can set the example. You know, I don't know what the adage is. is all high tides raise ships or whatever the hell that is. I know I mess that up. Whatever it is. You get the point, right? Do you know what it is,

echo? High tides raise all ships. That sounds about right. But hey, you know what? Yeah. All high tides do also raise ships. All high tides. We're good either way.

It's the highest it's ever been. But, you know, that's the reality is that so if everybody, you know, attacks that same problem of saying, okay, well, there's not a lot that I can control, but the things that I can control are me. So those first four kind of protocols of how you approach everything, coupled with the fact that, okay, well, I can keep myself healthy

because the reality is our country's biggest problem is drug addiction, alcoholism, and heart disease. By far, those three things kill way more people than guns than, I mean, everything else by a landslide. By getting outside, you know, getting sunlight, the Huberman, protocols of getting off your ass, staying active, and having that implemented as part of your

routine is going to be super beneficial. The second thing is fueling your body appropriately. Same thing is that stop rinse and snickers bars down with Mountain Dew and eat, you know, nutrient dense, whole foods that are relatively healthy most of the time. And then, you know, exercise and make your body strong and, you know, do those right things. So those three things, you know, staying active, eating properly and exercising, you know, take the biggest strain off of our society because if you're doing that, you're not an alcoholic, you're not addicted to drugs, and you're not clogging up our health care system. But even beyond that is that, you know, mentally you're going to be the most capable, you're going to be the most productive physically and mentally, which is just going to, you know, be an asset to the, to the, to the, you know, an asset to the, to the, you're going to the most capable. You're going to be the most productive physically and mentally, which is just going to be an asset to the country.

And if everybody does that, if everybody maximizes their own potential, the collective average of the country is way above where we're at now. And those are things that you can control. You talk about getting off your ass. And we were talking earlier about the fact that you were on this podcast before six and a half years ago and after that podcast at some juncture

you got off your ass and you started training jiu jitsu what was that all about let's talk jiu jutsu yeah i mean i already stayed pretty active working out but you know jiu jitsu is one of those things where um i think

i don't think i know that you know the cost benefit of juice being worth of squeeze like if you're going to be active and you're going to put effort into a physical activity I think you'd be hard pressed to find one that gives you the return that Jiu-Jitsu does, you know, for so many reasons, which I know you guys have talked about at length.

Another part was, which I mentioned on the last show, but I'll mention again for your listeners is the Andy Stump had the ask me anything and somebody was like, who's going to win in a fight between Ritlin and Rogan? And Andy was like, Rogan had fucked Mike up. And I was just like, well, fuck you. It's like, I don't care if it's even true. I was like I should probably do something about that. You know, not that I didn't feel like I could at least somewhat handle myself,

but not to the degree with which somebody who trains a lot and gets, you know, to be a pre-season jujitsu athlete or even combatives because I do, I don't compete. I don't focus on points or positions. It's all very kind of MMA or real world focused, you know, with starting from feet and, you know, doing takedowns and even throwing little strikes in here and there. and being mindful of the fact that that's a thing.

And generally speaking, no holds barred. I mean, we're not gouging eyes and shit, but we're doing a lot of things that aren't legal in competition. And just kind of focusing on that as a mentality. But for me, I found a huge, I would say, kind of release and balancing mentally with just, you know, whether it was ego or temper or frustration, things that I didn't really expect as a consequence, as a positive consequence of doing it,

but that have been just overwhelmingly beneficial for me with being more patient and letting things go and not letting certain little things bother me and what have you. It's been an amazing journey. I wouldn't say that it runs my life and I'm addicted to it, but I absolutely love doing it and I have to do it. I don't know, maybe I am addicted to do it. Yeah, we do call that an addiction. How many times a week do you get to train? It varies.

I mean, I would say on the, like the most I'll do in a week is four days. That's pretty rare. It's usually two or three. For me, I do find that sweet spot of two or three. Three, if it's, you know, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, or, you know, at least one day in between training for me is pretty important for me to be able to recover and not feel like I've been hit by a bus when I get out of bed every morning. Yeah, I just, you know, I train with a young, young, very skilled black belt, mostly private lessons.

And even the, you know, occasional group class that I'll do is, you know, there's usually some pretty competitive guys that are, you know, half my age and pretty athletic and make me feel fucking old, you know. But, yeah, I mean, I love it. And to me, that kind of the 3D chess component that just never gets old, you know, I mean, to me, it's to use kind of a band references, striking is kind of like drums, whether it's Muay Thai,

kickboxing or whatever, like there's only so much variance combination-wise that you can really bring to the table. That's a freaking good one. Jiu-jitsu is the guitar. It's the electric guitar with wah pedals and fucking effects, and you can bend the strings and, you know, sweet-pick.

And by the way, look, dude, drummers and drumming can be in totally insane, complicated craziness. It's awesome. but it doesn't it the amount of complexity and and infinite number of opportunities on a guitar fretboard are 10fold just like 10fold yeah and so yeah that's a really good I always just say it's like linear versus non-linear you know and and there you are limited in boxing how many what can you do

yeah only so many things you go and look a boxer will be like well no there's this and they're right they're right and every one of those things that you can you can everyone of those variables in boxing there's let's say there's 10,000 variables in boxing you can multiply that times but infinite infinity yeah to get to jiu jitsu yeah i mean there's just that there's the you're never finished component to it like there's always some other level or whatever and and i feel like with boxing or you know really any type of striking you get to a certain point and i don't think it takes that long before you're kind of as good as you're going to get, you know, you're not going to, because so much of it is hinging on speed and athleticism and quickness and reflex and, and a lot of

those things you can't change, you know, so it seems like, I mean, I haven't done a ton of striking, but I've done enough to where it's like, you know, within a certain point and relatively soon, you're about as good as you're going to get at that. Whereas jiu-jitsu, it's just like, it just keeps going you know just that fly there there is crazy levels to striking to like if you ever train with people that are what would be considered like a jiu jitzu black belt and striking yeah and you're not you're getting worked over the same way agree as like like we we mike regner remember right mike regner at city boxing he's you know he was like a champion kickboxer moitai guy like you think about kicking him and he's checking your kicking you

and like returning and it hurts way worse than what you threw at him and he doesn't care. Or Robbie Garcia who was like the hit man. Like he hits you with a body shot. Like you're sparring, you're throwing, he's throwing, but boom, yeah, dude. So, and they can just work you over. That being said, there is an even more exponential level change in someone that is a, you know, a black belt and jujitsu. Well, I guess to clarify, like I'm not insinuating that there aren't the same amount of levels of skill in striking. What I think is that individually your ability to progress is far more limited.

You know, like if, especially if you didn't grow up doing it, you know, it's like if you take a, say, a 25-year-old in good shape, you know, decent athleticism and you start putting them through the paces, boxing, Muay Thai, what have you. you know within a probably a couple of years he's probably about as good as he's going to get you know even if he trains for the next 15 he may get a little better I don't think there's the same learning curve and striking that there is in jiu jitsu learning curve is definitely an apex learning curve for sure yeah yeah that's the way it works and it doesn't stop that's what you know people will ask me like oh who would beat who would win the 53 year old jockel or the 25 year old jockel that's no contest The 30-year-old jock was no contest. Actually, myself, like six months ago, no contest.

You know, so you get better all the time. Yeah. And you learn all the time. And you can just the difference. And there's a huge difference between like black belt, that black belt, you know, guy over there and that other black belt guy over there. And it's like, oh, this is next level activities that are going on. Yeah.

So it is definitely. Definitely, do your kids do it? They have. So my youngest trains, I'd say more MMA style now. Oh, sweet. She does a fair bit of striking as well. You know, so both of them did it when they were real young for several years. And then for a period, neither of them did it for a little while.

My oldest wrestled in high school, which is great that the- All years? Four years of wrestling? Three. Okay. But, you know, it's neat to see, you know, a women's wrestling team, you know, at Texas school. It was also great in that they didn't have a ton of, you know, kids on the team. So they end up having to wrestle the boys a lot, which is good for them, you know. And so, yeah, so now.

Did the jihitsu cross over pretty well to her wrestling? Did she have enough jih Tzu to make an impact? Yeah, I think it was like with a lot of kids, it was a little problematic at first. you know, just being comfortable on your back versus, no, you never go on your back, you know, but that doesn't last very long, you know. So now I would say, even that, you know, when we'll still kind of mess around a little bit, she's still pretty heavy in the wrestling, you know, the collar ties and the arm drags and the, you know, flinching and, you know, just the standard wrestler stuff that you get into right away,

which is still fun. And she's, you know, her frame is pretty good size. she's really athletic and stays in good shape. And, you know, she's a handful. I mean, for sure. Do you think she's going to venture back to Jiu-Jitsu? I hope so. My daughter.

Yeah. You know, same thing. Jiu-Jitsu, wrestling, and, boy, she went back into J-Jitsu. She's real into J-G-D-D-D-Z right now. Yeah, I hope she does. I think she will. I mean, she has the personality that would lend itself to probably do that. So she's out of state right now.

I think if she comes back in the next year, which I think she very well made, then I'd say you could probably count on it, you know, but... I hope she does too, on. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Just to kind of close out the book here a little bit,

you say our country's facing a lot of challenges right now, and we need individuals like you to have the courage, to think independently, to live with sincerity and integrity, to and roll up their sleeves and contribute to the world around us. We each have a part to play and a path to take. That is and should be, different from one another.

There are times when you may feel like you're swimming upstream. You may feel insignificant or inconsequential in the grand scheme of life, but don't give up. Because your life, that individual thread that you've been given to weave alongside countless others is what will create the tapestry of the next chapter in history. What will be on that tapestry and what we will be remembered for is up to us. Marcus Aurelius There you go There you go

Good stuff dude And you wrote that book a couple years ago So what else you got going on So the big thing now is Just kind of continuing to do All the same stuff that I've been doing The primary focus is the dog food company Just because that's such a heavy lift

As you will know Just with product development And bringing new skews And even just continuing doing, you know, with consumables, it never ends, you know, which is good. You know, and I think, you know, product-based business is, I think you have to have something where people are going through it and reordering regularly. But, yeah, the expansion of that, I mean, it's kind of ironic.

I mean, over the last 15 years when I first started doing dogs for a living, you know, it was like, because I love dogs and I want to train dogs. And while I still do that, you know, coming full circle, it's like the bulk of my, day now is talking about shipping issues and truck delays and fucking packaging costs and you know and it's like shit that has nothing to do with dogs it's all the same stuff you probably are uh you know uh faced with all the time you know but uh but i love it i mean you know i wouldn't have it any other way i really enjoyed doing it and uh and it's fun i mean you know the the reason why i started the dog food company is in that same vein is that i just wanted to have a superior product and help

dogs and and help people get the most out of their dogs both from a training standpoint and from nutrition standpoint. So I'm still doing the online training. I still sell personal protection dogs. I'll still teach it. Do you sell, do people order the dogs in advance or how's that work? Yeah, I only do that one at a time. So, you know, there are some companies out there that'll have, you know, three, four, five dogs for sale on their website. I don't do it that way. if somebody says, hey, I'm interested in a dog, we have a conversation, and then, you know, kind of get the understanding of the family dynamic, the daily routine, and determine, hey, is this a good fit or not?

Because there are times where it's not where I'll say, hey, I really don't, your lifestyle from my perspective. Get a lab. It's just too dynamic. Yeah, it's too dynamic. You know, dogs thrive on routine and their currency is engagement. And if you can't do both of those things, at a certain level.

You just, you know, should get a fucking goldfish. So, um, or an attack cheetah or whatever, you know, hire a fucking bodyguard. But, um, so at that point, then I'll go find the, the right dog for that fit and then bring them, bring them, bring them into my house and spend, uh, however long it takes to, to get them ready to, to be delivered. Then I'll spend a couple days delivering the dog and then, uh, and then, uh, and that's it. It is a, it's a strange business because unlike really anything, it's such an intimate

transaction, you know. Even if you're, you know, say, remodeling somebody's bathroom, like you're in their house and whatever, but not with them. Here, you know, you're adding a family member. This customer is trusting you to put a potentially dangerous animal in their house with their, you know, so you're spending time with their kids like you're seeing. And some of these people are household names, you know, or their C-suite executives of,

you know, household name corporations or, uh, things of that nature. And so, you know, you meet some really, really interesting people and get a lot of good advice business-wise, which was an unintended positive consequence that I didn't anticipate. But that transaction is such where, you know, you're seeing these people that, you know, as they're putting their kids to bed, first thing in the morning, like you're staying in their house while they're doing their normal stuff. You see how they interact with their spouses. It's kind of weird. I wouldn't say. How many days do you spend? Usually three or four.

So it's, but then, you know, that's once I'm comfortable and they're comfortable with me leaving, at that, there comes a certain point where it's counterproductive for me to still be there because the dog's always going to default to me. Once, you know, everything's kind of good enough for me to leave, then it's still, you know, you're touching base and checking in pretty often, you know, they'll still have a lot of questions. And over that first few weeks, we're still talking quite a bit, you know, and then as a couple months gets down the road, then they're kind of firing on all cylinders and they don't need a whole lot of advice at that point. So dog food, dog training, selling dogs, the podcast. And then, of course, the Warrior Dog Foundation, which. And the Warrior Dog Foundation, which you have, how many kennels do you have set up for that?

30. And we're always full. I mean, we've got over 10 dogs on a waiting list right now. I mean, it's one thing where we're trying to expand and, you know, it's tough to determine whether or not it makes sense to expand where we're at, which I don't think it really does, or have regional places. Like I'd like to have a warrior dog West Coast, Warrior Dog East Coast, maybe a Warrior Dog North, have different satellite operations where, number one, is that if the dog, you know,

from whatever unit or police department is closer to there, then it's going to go to wherever the closest location is. But two, you know, these dogs don't play well with others. I mean, they're all kind of the Hannibal Lecters of the dog world, and that they've bet a bunch of people they weren't supposed to. And we're to a point where whatever unit they're coming from, you know, wanted to euthanize them and then that's where we step in. So these aren't the dogs that, you know, you can just adopt out and, you know,

like from the movie dog or, you know, Lassie or whatever, it's not that dog. This is the dog that's made a bunch of mistakes and, you know, hurt people and put them in the hospital that they weren't supposed to. And so we can't let those dogs out together. You know, you're letting them out one at a time. So 30 dogs is kind of pushing it for one location. And so we really need to expand. It's just, I don't know, you know, one of the biggest challenges, I think, from a nonprofit standpoint is you're kind of in one of two camps.

Either, you know, you're really firing on all cylinders in terms of the administrative staff, the fundraising, the, you know, reaching out, the advertisements, the galas, all that kind of stuff. or you know you're doing 97 cents of every dollar goes to the mission and you're not going to get email back right away and you're not going to get a Christmas card every year from on card stock that costs $9 for you know for the Christmas card and we've always been very lean and you know leaned more towards that trying to maximize the amount of you know dollars going to the taking care of the dog so the reason I bring that up is that you know that expansion is is pretty heavy lift financially and while we don't have dedicated grant writers and fundraisers and gala organizers and things like that it's tough to to accomplish that when you know when we're not not spending money on that so still you know been able to save well over 300 dogs in the last 15 years and and continue to do so and will so but I would like to see kind of the next phase of both my professional career and the foundation to kind of expand

and maybe add a few locations to bring some more dogs in. Yeah, that's good stuff. Does that get us up to speed? Yeah, I think that's all I got, I guess. People can find all that stuff that you just talked about at Mike Rittland.com, right?

You've got Mike Drop, the Mike Drop podcast. You're on Twitter and Instagram at M. Rittland. You've also also have at teemedog.com at teedog.com at Warrior Dog Foundation

and you got your YouTube channel which is at Mike Ritland. Does that cover all the bases there? That's every single base. I was going to put down all the different websites but they're all under Mike Ritland and you can find it from there. Echo Charles, any questions?

Oh yeah, quick question. Remember the Halloween scenario? Oh yeah. You know, we couldn't go out for trick or cheating. Do you remember, I mean, if you're at liberty to say, do you remember what they lied about? I actually, I have no recollection of what they lied about. I agree with you with the lying thing. Yeah.

I think, I mean, growing up, we got spanked very rarely for anything, but the thing we always, 100% of the time got spanked for was lying. Yeah. So it's like a weird, like, psychological thing that I have against, like, lying. It's like, but I tried to perpetuate that through the kids or whatever, and, bro, I would shut down Christmas. Halloween New Year if they lied overtly lied oh man 100% I'm with you yeah it's that's a tough it's tough because I think it's I think there are phases in childhood where it's more common than others and you know whether it's friend influences or you know stuff at school or whatever

it's like man it's a tough one to handle sometimes you know because uh A it's infuriating and so trying to stay calm and not get emotional is is tricky but B it's like man like the one thing I need you to do is fucking level with me, you know? And it's like if I can't trust what you're telling me, we're going to have big problems moving down the road, you know. My son lied to me one time. And it was actually the reason I'm thinking about it's because not just because we're talking about lying, but also because we're talking about dogs because what he lied about

was, you know, my wife and I had to go somewhere and were like, hey, walk the dog. Cool. You know, as I'm walking out, you know, you glance over and you see like the pinch collar in a certain spot. And other than that, he's not even wearing a collar. So if you're going for a walk, you're going to take the pinch collar

because he was a young dog at the time. He needed to be on leash. So I notice it and I kind of just frame a reference real quick like, oh, you know, you can see the pattern that it's in. Yeah. You know what this is.

So I come back, you know, we go back, we're gone for half an hour, whatever, 45 minutes, maybe an hour, come back. I look at that leash. It's in the exact same spot in the exact same pattern. I was like,

Hey, did you walk the dog? And he's like, yep. I go, hey dude, I'm going to ask you one more time. Did you walk that dog? And he goes, yeah. And I go, okay. I said, I know you didn't. You're done.

There's levels to being done. I'm going to allow you to have a lower level if you tell me the truth right now. Did you walk that dog? He's like, no. I said, okay, get your workout gear on. And I, you know, when he went through a little, he went through a little hammer recession. The funny thing was, the funny thing is. So Laif and Seth were around, you know, this is when he was a young guy. So these guys were around all the time. And he's like in the middle of some freaking punishing

burpee thruster kettle bell punishment. And I'm like, you know, what, you know, I said, do you think Seth and Leif ever messed up? Because I was going to, you know, do you think they messed up? Of course they they did. Do you think they lied to me? No. I'm like, do you think Leif and Seth ever messed up? And he's like, no never I was like bullshit they messed up all the time do you think they lied to me no so there you go

no lying that's what we're doing Mike any any final thoughts bro no I just again I can't thank you enough for having me out and taking up a full day to you know let me interview you and then and then do the reverse so thank you very much

I know your time is as precious right all man what's awesome to have you back here thanks for joining us once again thanks for what you did for the teams for our great nation and thank for what you continue to do now, you know, helping dogs, helping people, and helping them both become a little bit smarter and a little bit better, better canines and better humans.

My pleasure. Thank you. Thanks, brother. And with that, Mike Rittland has left the building, obviously putting forth some pretty good steps to improve America, to improve your community, to improve your family, to improve yourself. Yep. And a bunch of steps, one of the ones I noticed was get outside.

Get outside. Clean fuel. Get after it. Train jiu-jitsu. So we're looking for good fuel? I recommend jaco fuel. Hey, you know, he was like, yeah, eat good foods 100%. We're eating steak.

We're eating salads, right? We're eating chicken. We're doing this. You're even eating sushi. Right? We're doing it. But can't always get everything that we need through these protocols. Check out joccofuel.com.

Get the other thing that you need. Supplement your fuel system. You can get extra protein, milk protein, ready to drink, powder form. You can get energy. You can get super krill. You can get time war. You get just the supplements that you need. So check out jacofuel.com and get what you.

you need. You can get it at Walmart. You can get it at Wawa, vitamin shop, GnC, military commissaries, Afees, Hanford, Dashdores, Maryland, Wakefern, ShopRite, H.E.B. down in Texas. Meyer in the Midwest, Wegman's, Harris Teeter, Lifetime Fitness, Shields, and whatever gym you're at, they can have it there, too. If they don't have it there, email JF Sales at joccofuel.com and get it there. That's what we're doing. Is there a, like, a limitation to how big your gym has? to be or anything like that. No, no. However.

You could have four people that train at your gym and those four people could be fueled properly. Yeah. So even like you know the little Pilates place just for example or whatever, whoever. By the way, by the way, we're in chiropractic places. Yeah, yeah. We're in all kinds of like little niche places. Anywhere where people are focused on being healthy and fit and high performance, we're

in those places. So we're in. But yeah, we're in all kinds of different places. Hardware stores. Yeah, yeah, just roll it in. Yeah, that's what we're doing, man. joccofuel.com. Check it out.

Also, you said jiu-jitsu. Yeah, I did. Yeah, so if you're doing the ghee jiu-jitsu, which is, you know, hey, man, recommend it. So, yeah, if you're doing the ghee, jiu-jitsu, be sure to get a ghee, an origin geese. All made in America. And here's the thing, yeah, made in America, yes.

But in addition, you got the added fact. That's the best gie in the world, as far as quality goes as well. Trust me, that's all the process. And I wear the geese, so I know 100%. Also jeans, also t-shirts, hoodies, hunt gear, everything that you need. We got it going on. You need to work out.

And by the way, you might as well get it made in America, the United States of America. Not by some poor slave, child slave in some other country that's in an abusive environment that's working against their will. Don't put into that system. Don't put money into that system. Put money into America. OriginUSA.com. Check it out. It's true.

Also, Jocco store called Jocco store. Jocco store.com. So you can get your discipline equals freedom shirts. There's hats on there. There's hoodies on there. Shirts that say good. I want to propagate good a little bit more. You've been a different item.

Anyway, we got socks on there. Anyway, some cool stuff on there. If you want to represent while you're on the path, also what we have on there is this little subscription scenario called the shirt locker. It's a new design. Sure. design every month a little bit more creative designs funer designs people represent

that's when you can get your attention a little bit I don't mean bad attention I mean like you know the kind of where you wear your shirt and you'd be like oh where'd you get that shirt you know so anyway that kind of designs it's called the shirt locker it's all in jocco store dot com available available big time you're gonna need steak or did mention steak we want to be eating steak you must well eat the good steak check out Colorado craftbeef.com and primal beef.com awesome steak one from one from Colorado, the other from the Shenandoah Valley. Either one is going to be epic.

Awesome stakes, awesome people, awesome companies. Check out primalbeef.com, Colorado CraftBeef.com. Also, subscribe to this podcast. Also, check out Jocko Underground. Also, we got YouTube channels. We got psychological warfare. We got flipside canvas. Books by Mike Ritland, UnFuck America. Trident K-9 Dogs.

You're so funny. Because I was thinking the same thing when you're like, you're talking about the big publishers and edits. They would have made. You're like, maybe the title. Yeah. But that was a thing for a while, like that it was a big shocking thing.

And then the book came out that was called. Oh, yeah. Unfuck yourself. Unfuck yourself. Yeah, yeah, you're right. But there might have even been another one. But there was one big hit. Unfuck yourself was one of them.

And then that broke the mold. And now there's a bunch of books like that have a swear word. Yeah, I understand. One of them being unfuck America. Yes, sir. Trident Canaan dogs, Navy SEAL dogs, and Team Dog by Mike Rittland. I've written a bunch of books about various things from leadership to washing machines to kids' books. So check out those books.

Check out Mikey and the Dragons. Check out AboutFace by Colonel David Hackworth. We have a leadership consulting company. It's called Eschalon Front. We solve problems through leadership. So if you have problems inside your organization, they are leadership problems. And if you want to resolve those problems, go to ashlandfront.com and check out what we have going on. There's also events that you can come to.

One event is called the Dallas. The next one is in San Diego, February 23rd through the 25th. If you want to go to one of our events, please register early because they all sell out. On top of that, we have an online training academy where you can learn the leadership principles that we teach online, training courses. There's quizzes. There's live sessions. Go to Extremeownership.com if you want to learn these principles

in your business, in your life, in your family. Extremeownership.com. Check that out. And if you want to help out service members, active and retired, you want to help their families. You want to help Gold Star families.

Check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee. She's got an amazing charity organization. If you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to America's Mighty Warriors.org. Also check out Heroes and Horses. dot org, Jimmy Mays organization, which is called Beyond the Brotherhood, and of course, Mike Rittland's Warrior Dog Foundation.

Check all those out. Great organizations. If you want to connect with us for Mike Ritland, he's on the interwebs, Mike Rittland. And you can kind of find everything that he talked about and everything that he does at Mike Ritland.com. He also has the Mike Drop podcast. He's got Twitter and Instagram where he is at M. Rittland. and he's also got a YouTube channel,

which is at Mike Rittland. For us, you can check out jocco.com and I am at Jocko Willink and Echo is at Echo Charles. And just be careful, because as we talked about today, there's an algorithm that's going to try and lock you

into a little echo chamber that's going to make your life miserable. So be careful of that. Thanks again to Mike Ritland for joining us. Thanks for your service to America, your service as a frogman in the teams. And thanks for what you're doing still today

to represent. And thanks to all our military personnel out there around the world, including our canine dogs that are out there getting after it. Thank you for protecting our way of life here in America. As imperfect as it is, it is still worth protecting. And in that same vein, thanks to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol, secret service, and all other first responders. Thank you for protecting us here at home. And everyone else out there, There's a lot of complex issues and topics that you've got to navigate in the world.

And it can be a little crazy sometimes. Yes, sir. But I would recommend that at a minimum. Like Mike Ritalin says, you should get yourself squared away. Think for yourself. Take responsibility. Get outside. Get the proper fuel.

And get off your ass. And that's what we got. Until next time, Zeko and Jocko. Out. Thank you.