Modern Wisdom - #530 - Shawn Ryan - Navy Seal To CIA Contractor

Episode Date: September 24, 2022

Shawn Ryan is a former US Navy SEAL, former contractor for the CIA and a podcaster. The world's special operations are done in the darkness. If Navy SEALs are a spectre then CIA Contractors are their shadows. Shawn spent decades working behind enemy lines all over the world and has some crazy insights into that life, plus how it feels to re-integrate back into normal society. Expect to learn what it's like to train Keanu Reeves for John Wick, why physical abuse from your fellow SEALs might be just what you need, the crazy breadth of tasks CIA contractors are asked to complete, why the establishment elite are losing touch with every day people, Shawn's reflections on sobriety after drinking to deal with his anger and much more... Sponsors: Get 10% discount on your first month from BetterHelp at https://betterhelp.com/modernwisdom (discount automatically applied) Get 10% discount on all Optimal Carnivore’s products at www.amazon.com/optimalcarnivore (use code: WISDOMSAVE10) Extra Stuff: Subscribe to Shawn's YouTube Channel - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkoujZQZatbqy4KGcgjpVxQ Check out Shawn's Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/shawnryan762/  Get my free Reading List of 100 books to read before you die → https://chriswillx.com/books/ To support me on Patreon (thank you): https://www.patreon.com/modernwisdom - Get in touch. Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact/  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello friends, welcome back to the show. My guest today is Sean Ryan. He's a former US Navy seal former contractor for the CIA and a podcaster. The world's special operations are done in the darkness. If Navy seals are a specter, then CIA contractors are their shadows. Sean spent decades working behind enemy lines all over the world and had some crazy insights into that life, plus how it feels to reintegrate back into normal society. Expect to learn what it's like to train Kiyano Reeves for John Wick, why physical abuse from your fellow seals might be just what you need, the crazy breadth of tasks CIA contractors are asked to complete, why the establishment elite are losing touch with everyday people,

shorns reflections on sobriety after drinking to deal with his anger, and much more. Don't forget that if you are listening, you should have also got a copy of the modern wisdom reading list. It's 100 books that you should read before you die, fiction and nonfiction, and they're organized with summaries about why I like them and links to go and get them, and it's free. You can go and get it right now at chriswillx.com slash books. That's chriswillx.com slash books. But now ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Sean Ryan. Thanks for having me.

Sean Reign, look at the show. Thanks for having me. You got to help us out here. Thank you, man. Appreciate that. Thank you. Navy SEAL. CIA contractor, personal security expert,

guy that helped train Keanu Reeves to be John Wick. That the headlines, those are the big ones. That's the big ones. Yeah, yep. Good. What's Keanu Reeves like in real life? He is very soft-spoken. He's a very good listener, very good student.

We didn't really trade too many stories or anything. He just came out to train and I kept an extremely professional. But he was a very intelligent guy. He picks things up really quick. He's serious about what he's doing. And he's honestly, he's one of the best students or people that I've ever trained. He just really picks up on things.

What makes it for a good student of somebody that wants to learn about protection, weapons, aggression, precision? It doesn't take much. It takes a good listener. In that industry, you get a lot of people that come out who have been, they like to say they've been shooting since they were five or they've been hunting since they were, you know, were walking and they always have these stories and this is how I do it. This is how I've always done it. But when you get a guy like Keanu or a lot of women are like this too, they just, They're like a sponge.

They just retain, they listen, they retain the information and all they're worried about is what you're saying. Doing it right. And what you're doing. And that's what makes a good student. It's not with shooting. It's not, you don't need to be an athlete.

You don't need to be super intelligent or anything like that. You just need to be an athlete, you don't need to be super intelligent or anything like that. You just need to be able to listen and be able to retain information and say, you go aside. I did a firearms and fitness course at Atomic Legion out here in Austin. So they do weapons training. They've got a grandmaster shooter on the books, Geical Daleks Acostas, a fucking animal. And we did this firearms and fitness things. So picking up a sandbag, do two laps, dump the sandbag, take three shots.

If you hit the three shots, you get more shots and scores and blooded within this time window and you can extend the time window if you're more accurate and all this sort of stuff. And I had my ass handed to me by like, mothers of three, 55-year-old mothers of three, because they're able to, I was fitted then them, but their ability to be precise and to be able to control themselves under pressure, and obviously the shooting experience,

which being a Brit I haven't got tons of. But yeah, it was fascinating to see. And then those videos of Keanu, it's from what was it, five years ago, six years ago, when those ones went like hyper, hyper viral from Taren. It's been a while. Yeah, but the one where he was switching between all of those different weapons, you just go, that is...

Yeah, that was the first, I think that was the first, John Wick. Oh, okay. So he's been that skilled and then probably got even more skill as he keeps going through. Yeah, I can't take credit for Teejutam out of shoot. I taught him how to clear a room. Okay, and what was the, what were the main things that you trying to get him to be accurate with the? I just wanted to help him look realistic when he was entering a room or kicking doors in, because it's a bass-paced, very action movie.

And so I wanted to help bring a realistic standpoint. That's what I got asked to do out there, Taren asked me to just teach him how to clear a room. So I said, all right, let's do it. Cool, man. So I had this, I saw this news article I wanted to have a chat with you about. So this is from Bloomberg. Critics and fans have never disagreed more about movies. When Sony released its film adaptation of the video game Uncharted in February, critics were quick to tear it apart. The Wall Street Journal called it, bloodless, heartless, joyless, sexless, and with one exception, charmless. New York magazine

deemed it curiously empty. Moviefreak.com dismissed it as a bona fide disaster, and yet audiences are aided up. The movie, which stars Tom Holland and Mark Walberg, opened to a $44.2 million the box office and went on to gross $400 and 1 million worldwide. It's one of the 10 highest grossing movies of the year. And Chartered also initiated one of the biggest disputes between critics and fans in modern movie history. Audiences have given highest scores in critics to all 10 of the years biggest movies. The average audience score for Jurassic World Dominion on Rotten Tomatoes on IMDB is 67. The critics score is 34, so a difference of 33 points. The Grey Man is the same and charted is the same, disagreeing by more than 30 points.

It may seem as though critics typically pan the year's biggest hits, but that's not the case. Sometimes audiences tend to give blockbusters high scores. It can also be the other way around. The thing that I think is interesting about this is how detached the people in positions of power, whether that be in media, whether that be in legislature, the gap between what the normal person likes and enjoys and wants and what the critics think that they should want, perhaps, or what they believe would be good for the plebians

to actually want, seems to be diverging more and more. What do you think? I 100% agree with you on that. I feel like there's an agenda behind everything that comes out now. And I don't know exactly where that comes from, but it is not from the audience. And I think it's disconnected Hollywood so much that I mean it hurt their bank accounts real bad. And you're starting to see more A-list celebrities moving to the podcast world because nobody's

watching their movies anymore. They're starting to see them move into Amazon and Netflix series and not Hollywood. They're starting to see them produce their own stuff because nobody's watching. Nobody's watching that stuff anymore because it was so agenda driven. Why we saw this with, I think it was the Oscars last year that most of, was it no Mad Land? I think that cleaned up, it might be in the Oscars or the Golden Globes, one of the awards ceremonies. And all of the films that we're doing well in the box office, it's almost an inversion. If it does well in the box office, it's probably not going to do well at the awards and if it does well at the awards, it's probably not going to do well in the box office.

I think the last one, someone brought it up that did manage to do both was Dark Knight, Batman. But yeah, when you think about all the Marvel movies, stuff like that, the only one that got rated well was Black Panther, a great movie, but there's an agenda there. Yeah, right. You know, it's a signal to people. I, part of me, look, I do understand the whole diversity thing.

But when you make it the point of the movie to shove diversity down everybody's throat, it doesn't work. And then you look at a movie like Top Gun that came out, everything was in there, right? It was the result of diversity, but that wasn't the point of the movie. The point of the movie was fighter pilots, the USA,

it was very, I think it was a very patriotic movie and look what happened, it was, it just smashed everything in its way. And everything that needed to be in there to make everybody happy was in there, you know. And I think that's, that should be the example. My friend Douglas has an idea about how you can tell when a minority is fully absorbed into a culture and he says it's when you have to put up with the same amount of shit that everybody else does. And that's a great quote. It's a lovely way to think about it, right?

The fact that what you actually want is for people to not care anymore. To not care the fact that you're black or gay or trans or disabled or whatever, right? That is the position you want to get yourself into. And you know that when there is a degree of just day-to-day bullshit that you have to put up with that everybody else does too. And I think that you're right, when diversity is made a point. It almost seems patronizing to the people that it's trying to put at the forefront. It's like, well, your position in society isn't sufficiently deserving, or you wouldn't be given this if we didn't make it a big deal.

It's like, no, no, no, no, no. If the lead actor is a black man, let's not how about we don't reference the fact that he's black? Exactly. How about he's just the lead guy? And you see this with the James Bond discussion, right? All the time, like, what would it be like to have the first female James Bond or the first black James Bond or the first gay James Bond or whatever? Yeah. Why don't you just make

a new series? A new James Bond. Whoever's the good James Bond. So yeah, it's, um, it's an interesting one, man. I think that the more the elites become out of touch with what normal people want, the more that you're going to see the less faith normal people are going to have in what they do. I think that's why YouTube and in podcasting is getting so big because it's one of the only spaces left that's semi unfiltered, right? Yeah, unmolested. Yeah. So it's sad to see it go that way, but it's been going that way for a long time. But hey, it's good for us, right? One of my friends sent me that news article. He said, the spiraling lunacy of elites shows up in the most benign places. Right, you rotten tomatoes is pretty fucking benign as far as it goes, but yeah, man, it'll be interesting to see what happens. And one of the problems you have is with

a medium like podcasting and even Instagram stories to a degree as well, what you got with Instagram stories was a very unfiltered look at people that were super, super high status. So you got to see what Kanye West's dog was called, right? Or like Kim Kardashian's Starbucks order or whatever. Like it doesn't matter about what it is. The point being that it gave you a degree of transparency into the lives of people that previously would have been so untouchable. But that kind of, that transparency means that people need to be more real, because our ability to tune in to whether or not someone is bullshitting us has been now filtered and filtered and filtered a lot more tightly. Do you see somebody come out and try and give some press conference? Or you even watch a late night show now where you've got the two-minute segment to get out what

it is that you need to get out, and it just feels so strange, it almost feels scripted. And it might be, you know, all the, you guys have the late night shows. We don't quite have the same thing over here where they'll come on and say, oh, so are you going to do a squirrel impression? Let me see your squirrel impression. Like, you prepped fucking squirrel impressions backstage before you do this. And it just seems so clunky and it doesn't surprise me that people don't have faith. before you do this. And it just seems so clunky

and it doesn't surprise me that people don't have faith. Yeah, I 100% agree with you on that. I also, I don't know how to say this lightly, but I feel like the population is just getting dumber. And I think if you look at some of the stuff, because I mean, we you know in the same space basically and so I'm always studying

Social media what's taken off what's not taken off and and looking at you know Everybody else what's taken off for them and when I see if you go to YouTube trending You know or you look at what the explorer tab is going to show you on Instagram or tip top or you look at what the Explorer tab is going to show you on Instagram or tip top, it's mindless bullshit. It doesn't make any sense. And when it comes to podcasts like yours and like mine, there's some deep discussions that happen and you have to pay attention. And I don't think, I think there's a percentage of the population that cannot comprehend the conversation. At least starting to have a diverging group there as well. That being said, people want whatever is effective.

And I think that the people that are able to pay attention, that are able to have interesting conversations and learn about the point of view that they maybe don't agree with without losing their shit at it, those people will end up being in a much better place in life. So the people that don't have that are going to fall behind and people model the behavior of people that are successful. So I'm hoping that you will lead from the front, the people that are prepared to accept their own ignorance and say, I don't know. Why do you teach me? I'd love to find out about Rotten Tomatoes or how we're going to engineer a human DNA for space flight or whatever the fuck it is.

My friend, the same guy actually that sent me that article's got a theory that he calls the Midwit appeal theorem. By definition, most people are Midwits, therefore nothing can achieve mass significance without appealing to and allowing itself to be explained are midwits. Therefore, nothing can achieve mass significance without appealing to and allowing itself to be explained by midwits. If that's the bulk of the area under the curve, people that think that they have a degree of smart but don't know just how dumb they are,

that means that all of the stuff that takes off is going to appeal to them by definition. And if you're out on the tails, it can make you feel a bit lonely. This is something I had when I was back in the UK a little bit that I was like, I have all of these interests and I kind of don't really have many people to talk to about them. I kind of sucks.

But then you find, oh, hang on, there is a huge community of people in the world that want just to learn about stuff constantly, the rest of their life until they're dead, always learning, always curious. Yeah. It's awesome. So I was thinking about all of the stuff that you've done throughout your career, SEALs, CIA, personal security. A lot of those things, there seems to be two types of narratives to do with people that go to war.

One is that it's one of the most important things that we do, sending these people on the front lines. But then there is also situations like withdrawal from Afghanistan, like lack of success in other areas, especially in the Middle East for America. And there was a question that I thought of, which is, do you think it's more scary that everything that you do matters or that nothing that you do matters? That's a good question. I would rather everything matters. I don't know what it would be like if nothing mattered.

I would think that would be a very unfulfilling way to live, would you agree? Yeah. Yeah, so even right now, I think everything that I do matters. So I can't, I don't, for me, I wouldn't be happy if I was doing stuff that I didn't think mattered. It would be a very unfulfilling life. It's a dangerous position to get yourself into. That's when nihilism starts to creep in.

I mean, what do you feel good about nothing you're doing matters? You're just, we see it all the time, you know, people just skate and buy, but I don't think they really have anything good to, you know, to feel about or they're not really proud of anything. And I would, that would bother me a lot. It's a way to escape though,

because there's a pressure associated with having everything that you do matter, right? And an easy way to escape from that is to say, well, look, nothing does. I don't need to take responsibility for everything. And there's a bunch of ways that people can escape from this, you know, whether it's not believing that free will exists, whether it's believing

that humanity is a curse on the earth and is doomed and that we need to limit our ecological impact as much as possible, whichever route you go down from the philosophical to the ecological to the scientific to the transhumanist, all of these are different ways, I think, to make people feel better about the fact that they're scared that nothing that they do matters. Yeah, I've heard you talk a lot about psychedelics on here and I've done psychedelics for treatment, not for fun. And I will say that before I did that treatment, everything was a huge deal. Even the things that I didn't think were a huge deal, or I'm sorry, even things that I thought that were a huge deal. After I did the psychedelic treatment, I realized, you know, not all this shit is as important

as I... Has it gave you some perspective? It gave me a lot of perspective that I needed. Would you mind explaining what you did in terms of your course of treatment? I did. I did. I began, if you heard of that, I did.

I began and then I did five of me. And I did that about six months ago. When I did it, I haven't, I haven't drank since. I saw you did a thousand days clean. I did, yes. And I haven't had a drop of alcohol, haven't had a drop of clean. I did, yes. And I haven't had a drop of alcohol, haven't had a drop of coffee. My anxiety is gone.

I struggle with that a lot. My anger issues are gone. And I really struggled with that a lot coming out of the military in the agency and just getting back into civilian life. And so it helped me become more in the moment, which was my primary reason to go do that was I now have a one year old. And I just wanted to be in the moment with him. Would you class whatever it was that you were feeling like as PTSD or is this a, how would you say, a conditioned response to life from being a high level operator for a long time? Both. Yeah. I think both. Head injuries, PTSD. What head injuries? Where

do head injuries come from in your line of work? Blown up,ing out of helicopters. You're falling out of helicopters. Yeah. Oh, hi. Oh, maybe 10 feet. Okay. No, not too crazy. But you know, higher enough to land on your head and, and yeah, what about what's blown up mean when you've been blown up? I've been blown up in sniper hides where we've been mortared.

And you're just getting these concussions, your blown doors, you know, you're when you're when you're in a sealed team, when you enter a room a lot of times there's an explosive charge that you do to breach the door and gives you the element of surprise and let you in immediately. And so the concussion from that coming back. That's just a shockwave. Even if you're not blown off your feet, you're still maybe even able to operate within two seconds of that happening. Well, a lot of time, I mean, you feel it, but you don't realize the long-term damage that it's causing. And so, you know, anything from carl-goose-stuff rounds, rocket launchers, breaches, explosive blown cars up, blowing bridges up, blowing you name it, we've blown it up and it closed distances and just a life of that, you know, just taking that impact over and over and over and over and over and over again. I mean, I think you're only supposed to shoot two or three carl goo

stuff rounds. What's a carl goo stuff round? It's a huge rocket launcher. It's like, if you think of bazooka, that's what the Carl Deust. And what do you use it for? You can use it for anti-personnel guys and caves. You can use it on vehicles. You can use it on all kinds of stuff. They're kind of outdated now. Now they have the javelin. Yep. But in my day, that was just just kind of showing up. Well, I suppose what I've seen of the javelin, it sort of jumps out of the barrel and then seems to take off.

Is that right? Is that how the javelin's work? So I'm gonna guess one of the elements that that will be for is to try and protect the operator a little bit more so that you don't have that immediate explosion in the chamber itself. Yeah, I've never shot a javelin.

So I can't compare experience from that. I'm too old for that. But the goose stuff is some heavy impact in the breaching charges are heavy impact and getting blown up and pides is heavy impact. And anyways, that's where the brain injuries come from. You joined when you were 18, right? Mm-hmm.

What was the predisposition that you had there and what was learned behavior that you got throughout your entire career? I'm trying to work out which bits of you remained and which bits of you would deprogram through two decades of being an operator. That's good. I don't... What about the aggression? Like was there a aggression in there? Was there this shortness? Was there this over reliance or over importance on everything being a big deal? Was that always there? No, that was learned. That came, um, if there's a lot of pressure being on a team,

and the pressure is don't let your team down. And so everything needs to be done. If you're not doing anything, you should be doing something, make yourself busy, go, you know, get X, Y, and Z done. And so, and when you do let the team down, you know it. And it's, it's a horrible feeling and they let you know that too. What was some examples of a time when you did something that you felt was letting the team down? On my first deployment, I was boozed hound. We didn't go to war, and I was pretty upset about that. So I took to the booze very heavy, but we still needed to train and we still needed to keep sharp.

And we needed to be ready in case we needed to relieve a platoon, you know, if they took casualties. And my booze and got out of control, and the platoon let me know immediately that it was getting out of control. And woke up with a couple of them surrounded my rack where I was sleeping and in the middle of the night. uh, and you'll have cut at this point. Still half what cut. Oh, no, I was sober here. Okay. This was a night when you hadn't been. Yeah. Yeah. I was sober here. And uh, you know, they tune you up a little bit. What's that mean? Kick your ass around a little bit. Okay. You know, you know, hey, you're fucking up. Any need to get your shit together.

Physically? Yeah. So this is an enforcement mechanism that's commonly used? Used to be very common. Now I don't think it is as common. But yeah, it used to be, no questions asked. If you have a problem and it's, it's getting in the way

of the team, then you're going to be dealt with. This is some full metal jacket shit. That's what it sounds like. Yeah. How do you go back to being an effective pairing in a team after a bunch of people have just woken you up in the middle of the night and kicked the shit out of you. Well, you know, it's not, like I said, it's not uncommon, you know, it's, it's, it was very common. And so you never really, I mean, as much as, as a disappointment, as you are, there's no time for, there's no time to dwell, there's not really any time

for grudges and everybody gets out of line eventually. You know, so I wasn't the first one that happened to, I wasn't the last one that happened to. And so you can't take it personally, you just need to be, and they do that in training, too. You know, I mean, you're broad, like I said, or like you said, I joined when I was 18. And so this all starts day one, you know, in buds. And you're letting the team down,

because even though it's not technically, you know, a seal team, you're still, you're training with a handful of guys, and if the instructors call you out and they're like, all right, we're going to run that four miles again because Sean didn't want to put out. He wanted to have acid. Then you have your entire class that fucking hate your guts because they're going to run that four miles again. Or, you know, whatever evolution it is, we're going

to run the O course again. We're going to get back in that cold water again until somebody quits because so and so was cheating. Wow, so they'll do... They will single you out in front of everybody. And so by the time you get to the team, you're used to that. Yes. And they do it, even if you're in budge,

you may be the fastest swimmer. And if they see that you're not helping somebody out, helping the team out, but you finish first, they're going to pull you out and make everybody do the swim again, except you, because you didn't help anybody. So you're going to be sat on the sidelines, which makes you look like even more of a dick. While everybody else is suffering. Did they do that during buds where they would put everybody in the water until someone quits?

Yes. That seems like such a brutal practice. I don't think that that's actually the, that's what they tell you, but everything in buds is, it's very structured. They don't have time. Because if nobody quits, they have that full down of this and you're not going to test people on whatever else they need to, yeah, that's a good point. Somebody will always quit, but then when you get farther into buds, especially like the third day of hell week, it starts getting harder for guys to quit because you're already zoned out and you've gone through 75% of the quitter is already.

And so when there's only 25 guys left in the class out of 250, those are your, they aren't going anywhere. You're a lot more bound together as well, I suppose. One person leaving from 250 versus one person leaving from 25. Yeah. There's more pressure on them. Yeah, that's, so what else changed from you, you at 18 to you several decades later?

Attention to detail changed a lot. I was not attention to detail before I went in. Now I'm very attention to detail because getting tuned up, missing minor mistakes or not even necessarily half-ass and things, but just missing small things or you forget something. And the stakes are incredibly high. A lot has changed. My temper has changed.

How so? Before the psychedelics, I would say it was angry more than I was happy. Experience a lot of loss, you... A lot of trauma in a job like that. And makes you angry. Makes you angry. and makes you angry. Makes you angry. To see people take this country for granted, you know, after all the sacrifices that you've seen, that you've made,

that friends died, you know, what's an example of that? Well, you got angry about people taking the country for granted. Self entitlement is a big one. You know, you see a lot of people. You see right now we see everybody getting college tuition, you know paid for With the new administration which on one hand, I think that's great, you know because we're finally somebody's pumping money back into our own country Instead of sending an all to Ukraine and everywhere else in the world, but on the other hand You know, there's got that was an incentive, you know for guys to join the world. But on the other hand, you know, there's a guy,

that was an incentive, you know, for guys to join the military. Hey, you join the military, we'll pay into the GI bill, we'll take care of your college. Well, now that's not worth shit because college is free. So how does that make it feel? Is that what's actually happening now? I thought that it was a $10,000. I think it's, if I'm not, I'm not too familiar

with the bill, you you. You know, they're coming out so many of them. I can't keep up anymore. But um, but I know I've seen a lot of people that I know I saw one guy post on his Twitter, you know, that his tuition was his legs. And it makes them sick that they're going to pay everybody else's and this is somebody that's got double prosthetics. Yep. So anyways, you know, and then they can play more. Well, you need to pay for this. You need to pay for this.

I'm entitled to this. I'm entitled to this and you come home and that's what you, because that's what's in the media. It can build. For me, it builds resentment. A lot of guys, I think, can overlook it. I'm still working on that. Psychedelics have helped a lot. I think if you've made huge amounts of sacrifices,

whether that be physical, psychological, social, familial. Inevitably, you're going to feel the delta between how difficult life has been for you and the things that you've had to go through and the supposed victimhood of other people. It makes complete sense that that would be the sort of thing that would get you angry. Yeah.

And the psychedelics have had a significant impact on that. Major impact, major impact on that. Major impact. Major, it doesn't matter. You know, that's what it taught me, is that you can't control it and it doesn't matter. It really doesn't. I mean, you're a smart guy though, you've learned about stoicism and the dichotomy of control and, you know, you can't control the things you can't control. So focus on the things that you can.

Is there a limit logically, rationally, that you can get to, like you can read as many Ryan Holiday books as you want about stoicism, but it seems like this was a problem you couldn't think your way through. You actually needed something to kind of take you an extra step. I was letting all of it get to me. I was letting people kneel in for the flag. You know, we come over there. Was that a big trophy? Oh yeah, that was a major get to me. I was letting people kneel in for the flag, you know, we come over there. Oh, yeah

That was a major trigger for me watching people kneel for the national anthem Was it was it was huge for me? I mean, I I can't count how many funerals that I've gone to were you know guys have died For this country and then you come home and you got athletes making $60 million a year, you know, what do they have to complain about? Neal and for the national anthem. I mean it's it's Sickening, you know, and it bothers a lot of us Maybe a little more vocal about it But I'm gonna guess most veterans don't have the same sort of platform as well.

You know? They don't. But those are some of the things, you know, that you come home and you see that stuff. You know, you see all of it, you see writing in the street, you see all this stuff. All this stuff. All this stuff. All this stuff. All this stuff. All this stuff. riding in the street, you see all thelessness that you guys were trying to keep out of here. And now it's right here within. Yeah, the call's coming from inside the house. So yeah. Okay, so seals, you get through that, you only do a few years in the seals, is that right? How long did six years? Six years. Yeah. Then you decide to pivot from the seals

to the CIA. What led to that decision? Actually, I pivoted the seals to the CIA. What led to that decision? Actually, I pivoted to a real estate agent after that. Of course. And that did not, that went over like a fart in church. But I just didn't have the communication skills and I was coming right out of Iraq at that time. What was the reason for leaving to go to real estate, money?

Iraq at that time. What was the reason for leaving to go to real estate money? The reason I left the seal team the big reason is I saw I looked at all the older guys that have been around for a long time and I started brutalizing. None of these guys are married. Most of these guys don't even know their kids. Most of them come home't even know their kids. Most of them come home to a black lab every night or some type of a dog pet, you know, and I could see how lonely that would be. And so I decided I don't want to spend my entire career here because I want to have a family. And at least I thought I'd-

You have 24. 24. There's a lot of self awareness going on there. Yeah. Well, I mean, you grow up real fast, you know, in the seal teams. That's, you know, kind of what I was talking about earlier. And so I saw that. And that was a major factor. Another thing was I started seeing politics come into the seal teams. And I didn't like that. Also, it was... It was...

When I went to my first combat deployment, it was right after red wings happened. When the red wings for the Red wings was the Marcus Lat was the Marcus LaTrell, Lone Survivor. Have you seen that movie? That was Red wings. Came in, relieved them, and whoever was up higher was pulling off missions, literally just saying, you're not doing that. You're not doing that. They actually ended the entire Afghanistan deployment for all seals early.

That was my deployment. I volunteered to go to Iraq. That was just such a disappointment at the time because you train hard to go and do that job. When you show up and you don't do the job that you've been training for very much and it's happening everywhere around you that is infuriating and So that that was that was a factor that had to do with politics

But the major thing was the family stuff. I just I saw it it and I didn't want to, I didn't want to end up with a, be 45 years old coming home to a black lab and that's it. I had this idea I thought about a little while ago. It's the place that I grew up in the UK. It was fantastic moment that were amazing. But it was, not a lot of people were like me, necessarily, and not a lot of people were living sort of like longer term that I felt was right.

I didn't really know that it was wrong, but I just felt like there was something off. And I was thinking about a lot of the time, I'll hear from people who don't have role models around them, and that's why they resonate with stuff that they consume online, because they finally get a community of admirable people that they can look up to, that maybe they don't feel like they've got in their local environment. But what I realized is that a negative role model, an example of someone that you don't want to be like, is just as useful as someone that you do, because you can get a long way in life by just avoiding disaster and catastrophe. In fact, you can maybe even say that avoiding it is more important than getting things right.

Like not getting something wrong is a bigger deal than trying to get something right. Because they're getting something wrong will make you absolutely miserable. Whereas they're getting something right, you still can, you can still fuck up. So I think being around guys who maybe didn't have that foresight, I'm gonna guess, let's say that someone's 45. maybe didn't have that foresight, because I'm going to guess that's say that someone's 45. The seals haven't been around long enough for them to have had another 20 years of predecessors before them for them to be able to see the trajectory that they would maybe be on, right? Well also they weren't coming out. We went through a long time period where there was no war. From Vietnam, a couple of things in between there, like Somalia, you know, Iran, Panama,

when we pulled from Norway out, stuff like that, but nothing like ongoing, like Vietnam. So until from Vietnam to September 11, 2001, you know, there wasn't a whole lot going on, there was a lot. Chill. Yeah. And so you saw this massive transformation of what a seal, you know, kind of, I wouldn't

say looks like, but it was just very different. You know, when September 11th happened, because then you start seeing the trauma, then it gets very real. You know, prior to that, it was, you know, train hard, play hard. let's have a good time, let's drink some booze. There's not really anything going on in the world. Now, it this shit's real, you know, and I'm saying. So why would you think that the CIA wouldn't give you the same 45 year old Sean with a black lab. Well, so I did, but I got out and I became a real estate agent.

I couldn't stand it. I hated it. Then I thought, well, I missed the conradery. So I got into a fire academy. I was going to be a firefighter. And then I realized what didn't realize it basically told me that you're not going to get a job for two years after this. It's the same in the UK. And I started looking around and I realized if you don't have a grandpa or a dad or a mom or whoever who is in the fire service.

You're not getting in. It's pretty tight knit and it seems to be very close family ties in that service. I was 24 and I had a house and I was like, I can't sit around here for two years hoping that somebody hires me. So I had a friend who reached out in one of my resume and he was just like, hey, it's contracting. I was like, absolutely not. I'm not doing contracting.

I don't want to do contracting. So when I was at CIA, it was a contractor. What does that mean? It means that you're not working, you're not an employee. They can kind of wash their hands of you. And see the most dispensable people on the team. Yeah. I mean, the majority of the agency is contractors, but it's easy to wash your hands of them. So it makes sense, right? But, but really for somebody like the audience, there's not really much of a difference, you know, it's kind of just paperwork. But, but anyways, he said, I can't tell you who

it is for, you know, but just give me a resume and I trusted him. He was a guy that was in my platoon. We did a couple deployments together and he's like, it's not like these other guys because I'd seen, there's all kinds of different contractors, there's state department contractors, there's CIA contractors, there's DEA contractors, there's FBI contractors. And there's all these different companies, you know, and we would see a lot of the contractors and Baghdad when I got to Iraq. And you hear a lot of the contractors in Baghdad when I got to Iraq. And you hear a lot of rumors. And it just wasn't an outfit that I wanted to really be around.

Think a lot of, it sounded like a lot of the lesser known companies were kind of careless, what they weren't as professional. And they were, this was early on in the war, so they were trying to figure out what kind of resume they were looking for and everything. And I was like, I'm not doing that. You got everybody from seals to the guy that was guarding the Bank of America building,

just the local bank. And so you can see the gaps there. He sure me it wasn't like that, but he said it was classified. I can't tell you. So I pitched to my resume probably didn't hear anything for about six months. And then I got a call that was an email that was, hey, all this paperwork out here's 50 pages of a security clearance sheet. And be here with this equipment for a tryout. What was the equipment? It was just kind of holster,

we'll kind of close, what the weather's gonna be like, stuff like that. Bring a belt, bring gun holster, bring equipment to operate in, if you have it. So I put all that in there and went down and said goodbye to the fire academy and and Wanda making it. So that's the selection, CIA selection. I mean, what is that? Well, it's, it depends what job you're going for. For mine, it was a very intense shooting package. was a very intense shooting package, a lot tougher than the shooting packages I was doing in the SEAL teams.

And the difference between, I think the major difference between trying out for a slot like that at the agency and trying out for Buds is Buds, they know you don't know shit when you show up. And they know even when you get done with Buds and you show up to the SEAL team, they know you still don't know shit when you show up. And they know, even when you get done with buds, and you show up to the SEAL team, they know you still don't know shit. And they're there to train you and heckle you and give you a hard time and just develop you, help you develop into the best operator that you can be.

When you show up for an agency try out, they're expecting you to have all these skills wire tight. So there is no, let're expecting you to have all these skills wire tight. So there is no, let me help you with that. There's a performance task to the best of your ability, and we're going to watch. Can you give us an example of the sort of tasks that we're in there? Yeah, like shooting. Everybody show up on the 25 yard line.

Okay, there's your target. I want you to hit as fast as you can on the buzzer. Boom. And they have standards, but you don't know what the standard is. So you're just going to the best of your ability. It's a spread and speed and stuff like that. Yep. All of that. And it's the kind of, it will be the kind of shooting drill that you're just not gonna pass if you, you're not gonna pass it if you don't know what you're doing. You've been dicking about fighting fires and chopping stuff and practicing saving kittens out of trees

and going home to your house. Are you out of practice at this stage? Yeah. How the fuck did you pass then? I just did. You know, I just, I guess. I guess I was still young and I like shooting. So I just lucked out. And I think that I think they wanted me because there's a reason they don't tell you the

exact standard. It gives them a little leeway if they don't tell you the exact standard. It gives them a little leeway. If they don't like you, they don't get roused. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And no one can say, hang on a second, T got in, but I didn't even know blah, blah, yeah. Yeah. What else?

What else? What else? What else? What else? What else? What else? What else? What else?

What else? What else? What else? What else? What else? What else? What else? What else? like psychometric evaluation. Yeah, make sure you're still sharp. Yep. But it's a lot more cut down. You know, you don't have to display all of your skills every single time once you're in. But that initial one is how do you drive?

How do you work as a team? How do you shoot? How do you clear this room? Here's a problem. We want you to solve it. There's a hostage in there. You need to go in and get them and meet us at this restaurant at whatever time, you know, and so

They're watching all of your problem solving skills. They're watching how you work as a team. They're watching how you lead they're watching You know your tactics. How did you how did you enter the room? How did you treat the hostage? Once you secured the hostage, you know, what was your e-back route? Why did you choose that route? Did you notice the guy on the corner that was taking pictures of your car and Got this license plate right here, you know, and all that kind of stuff is happened They're all we call them FTX's field training exercises, but you're just constantly being evaluated the entire time and and If you don't measure up then you're gone. There's no remediation. There's no let's work on that roll it back. There's

You don't need the criteria. You're out and that's it Going into the CIA I'm gonna guess that the feeder profile must be multiple different organizations, probably people from Green Berets, Marines, seals, maybe like NSA, maybe intelligence operators or whatever, perhaps not so much for what you were doing, but I can imagine if someone happened to be an unbelievable translator or something, or had great communication skills, but they knew could shoot a bit, maybe they might try and put those in. My point being that it must be strange going from an environment where everybody's been trained differently,

different cultures, different backgrounds, different understanding of what it means to clear a room, to communicate, to maybe even different call signs, different signals, all this stuff. How do you get a melting pot of these people coming from such diverse backgrounds to function at all together? That's a great question. And it is like that. So the program that I want to end up, you had to have six years. So I just barely made the requirement. You had to have six years of special operations experience. And so you, they're taking Delta guys, seals, screen berets, Rangers, and Marsock guys with some Air Force PJs and CCT guys. So everybody, you know, we all have the same knowledge, but it's just minor differences.

The thing that really got in the way at the beginning was the, what's the word I'm looking for, the rivalry between branches, the seal. There's always friendly rivalry and unfriendly rivalry. We're better than them at this and did a lot of egos, a lot of a personalities. So trying to figure out what the best way to do things with if I'm a seal and you're a Marsoch Marine, who's, who's right, who's style are we going with? What's the biggest difference that you noticed who was trained most differently

or who came in with the different, the most diverging opinions when it comes to ways to operate? I don't think there was a specific outfit that was like that. It was more the individuals. And there were guys that couldn't let it go. You know, like, like seals. It's like, you got to be able to let some of the things that you learn to go and learn new things. When once you're in, you know, it is, it's a fucking team again.

And you have to blend in and you have to function. And it's a lot of times it's the real young guys because their egos are going crazy and then you got the real older guys, the older guys, you know, some of these guys coming in there, 50. I've been working with a 65 year old. It was the better 65 year old man I've ever met, but he's stuck in his ways. You know, he's done the same thing over and over and over again and has not changed. And so to change somebody like that, it's hard.

And then you got the younger guys like me, you know, who did six years and they think, hey, I'm, I'm the fucking best at what I do. I just, I'm a fucking seal. And nobody gives a shit. If you're a seal, they want to know that you can do the job and that you can work as a team. But the majority of guys, you know, they like to share their experiences and they like to hear your experiences

because they're learning, they're becoming more well-rounded. And so once you're in, a lot of that kind of shit goes away. Yeah, because you're not a team at the start, right? Yeah. It's still a degree of competition between you. There's no bonding. There's no reason to do that. And I suppose as well, if there was two different groups that felt like they both had skill sets, like I would imagine that if it comes to demolition or water stuff, most people would think, I might be worth listening to the seal, but then if there's someone that's doing shooting, then perhaps there's multiple different groups that have different styles, whatever it might be.

Okay, so you get through and then what's the biggest change in terms of the culture, CIA, seals the CIA? Totally Totally different, completely culture, totally different. The hazing, that kind of stuff is a 100% no go. There's no hazing, there's no tuning people up for fucking up, there's, you're working with women, you're working with nerds, you know, you're working with a whole slew of different people in the seal teams. You're with 16 guys and everybody's a mediator.

Everybody wants to go to war. Everybody's hardened. Everybody's in shape. You move over to the CIA and in the outfit that I was in under the agency. All those aspects are still there, you know, with my immediate team. But then you're dealing with your dealing with spies, you're dealing with intelligence people, you got to wear suits sometimes, you got to wear what you're wearing in the SEAL team sometimes. One day you might be meeting the president of Afghanistan or, you know, high end diplomat

from another country, and the next day you're pumping the mountains in Afghanistan with an M4. I mean, you just, the job is so broad when you get over there. And with the agency. How much does that feel like, did it ever feel like it was a nerfed version of the world to you? Like it was all of the sharp edges that had been removed and you were having to be domesticated.

Now you've got to wear the suit, you've got to say, please, and thank you. You've got to smile. Or did you enjoy the transition into a more professional environment? I liked both. You know, there were times when I missed being a high one. When you're with 16 guys for two years straight or six years, or, you know, however, you're with your team, there's a lot of trust there. And you don't have to watch what you're saying.

You don't have to watch your mouth. You don't have to worry about any of that stuff, you know. And when you move over to the agency, you have to watch your mouth. You can't be... Because someone will write you up to say... Talking about a thing. The girl you want to take home at the bar at the end of the night there. You just got to be a lot more tight-lift.

And that took some time for me to get used to. A little bit of adaptation. Yeah, but I also liked it because it was a more sophisticated outfit. And the job was constantly changing. For example, when I was in Iraq, it was sniper op after sniper op after sniper op after sniper op. When I went to the CIA, it was all these different things. And you know what I mean? It was spying. It was meeting people.

It was getting dirty. It was going out in gun trucks and humped mountains. And it was everything from the teams, not all of it, but a lot of it with all this other stuff. And you just never know what the next day is gonna bring. It was really challenging, and a lot of job satisfaction. I learned a ton of things.

I was gonna say, is that the most fun that you had during your career? Yeah, I think so. I liked both of them, but the agency was just a little bit different. It was, I mean, it's the agency. You're flying under the radar. You might be one of three people in a country.

I mean, it's just really, you're out there doing it on your own. And with the SEAL teams, you've got air assets. You have drones. you have AC-130 gunships, you have Apache helicopters, you have military units that are ready to come get you out if you get into trouble with the agency. Sometimes you have that. A lot of times you don't. A lot of times it's you and the few other guys that you're with or women.

How does that feel to be one of only three people, perhaps, in a country doing some clandestine operation, knowing that you're a contractor that the agency could use the hands of? For me, I never really realized the magnitude of it until it was over. You know, so you're just so busy and embedded in what you're doing and how important it is and running all these different aspects of what's going on there. You're only one of a few people and it's not always like that, but you don't have time to think about that kind of stuff. It's just you're in the moment all the time.

You know, boom, boom, boom, getting things together, getting the next mission ready. And it's really cool. I love it. I did love that aspect of it. Is that by design? Is the agency continuing to move you quickly with momentum so that you don't get the opportunity

perhaps to sit back and think, fuck, this is maybe something that I should be scared about. This is maybe something that I should be concerned about. Not necessarily because you get a choice. Sometimes you get a choice. What do you mean? Well, for example, I won't get a choice. Sometimes, what do you mean? Well, for example, I won't get a choice on what country I'm going to. They'll brief me. Hey, you're going here

and you go to that country and then when you meet with the leadership of that country, then they may disperse you somewhere else. You know what I mean? So there are guys in this outfit that they like to be at headquarters where everybody's at they have bars they have. Women, men, parties, great food, awesome gym, you know, all the amenities. You're sleeping in air conditioned room, you have your own room, queen size, king size, that's what they like to do. Yeah.

I would always volunteer to go to the harder spots where it was hey, you know, you can stay here, but we have this other place, you know, and you're going to be living on the side of a mountain or you know, or something like that and there's only going to be five of you. You're going to be really busy and it's a really dangerous area. And when I hear that, my hands like, I'll do that one. Because I liked it. I liked the job. What I didn't like is being around your headcourses because it's it's political. You have to worry about your say. You have to worry about how you dress. You have to worry about who you're talking to. You have to, you know, it's it's more about the political bullshit,

not offending people than it is about getting the job done. And all I gave a shit about was working. I don't care about the parties. I don't care about the women. I don't care about the gym amenities. I just wanted to work. And you can make a gym anywhere. It's nice to think that there is a role there for different types of people. It seems to me like the seals, in reflection, it seems like the seals actually select for a very narrow band of capacities, temperaments. Whereas the CIA here, it seems like you can have some sledge hammers and then you can have some scalpals and then you can have some button pushes.

Exactly. And they will work together. Exactly. You see a lot more of the impact that you're making too because in the SEAL teams, you might get a directive from the agency or from higher up that's go do this, but you have no real, you don't know what the guy you're going after was involved in or what the agency you get a bigger picture of what's going on in the entire space. So you understand the context of why you're doing what you're doing. I mean, how it seems like you were pretty patriotic before going to the CIA, but obviously

you've been given this much broader view now of how what you're doing contributes to wider goals for America or freedom or whatever it is that you're working toward, was that, how did that feel? Did that push that patriotism, that sense of purpose, that sense of belonging and meaning that you had in work? Absolutely. You're previous to so much more information that when you see it, all the pieces come together, you're like, oh, this is why we're doing this. This is what this guy does.

This is what he's going to lead us to, you know, all these things. And with the teams, it's, this is what we're doing. That matter why go do it, you know. And so to have like that broader spectrum, but just bigger picture, it helps. And with what you're doing. What do you think the future of warfare looks like? I don't think we're gonna see a lot of ground wars anymore. What's that mean?

I think it's gonna be a lot of like what China's doing now. I think it's going to be a lot of cold war, I guess is what you would call it, where it's not in your face kicking doors down, it's not invading necessarily. I mean, I know that's happening in Russia Ukraine right now, but if major superpowers start fighting, I don't think it's going to be a lot of ground. I don't think it's going to be a lot of Marines. I don't think it's going to be a lot of special operations. I think it's going to be a lot of computer stuff hacking propaganda stuff like that. I think that's what's-

So you go from- Or, you know, the- Yeah, yeah. And there's the other option. Yeah, this, but, I mean, now it seems like all these superpowers are starting to come to a head. And I, that looks very, very different than Taliban, al-Qaeda, al-Shabab, things like that.

You concerned at the moment about the state of global geopolitical peace and stuff? Who isn't? Yeah, I definitely... You're a specialist, right? You understand this to a greater degree than me who's like, the headlines look good this week or had the headlines look good this week or had the headlines look bad this week. Yeah.

Well, let's look at China. Are you familiar with some of the stuff that's going on? Yeah, I mean, give everybody a little overview of what they need to understand about what you think's important. Well, I mean, China's doing exactly what they should be doing for their goal. I mean, the fentanyl crisis that's happening with the

cartels, and that's all common from China. China's teaching, they're bringing chemists in, they're teaching these cartels, how to cook. The world's most potent fentanyl, they are, they actually already have the next drug that's worse than fentanyl. They're teaching them how to do that, but China is something else. You know, I don't. No, I don't. Okay, but there's something out. No, I don't. But there's something out there which is more lethal, more addictive.

It's already being introduced. And so that's eating. I mean, look at, I just walked around Austin. There's all kinds of homeless out there shooting drugs. It's in every city. It's everywhere. And that's coming from China. Then you look at the green initiative.

We're seeing it, this is what's gonna happen. And I'm not necessarily anti-green. I'm all about what's best for the planet. But we keep talking about, oh, we're gonna be energy independent with green energy. No, we're not to be energy independent with green energy. No, we're not. We're not going to be energy independent because China is going to supply all of our energy equipment. And so they're going to be able to do exactly what Russia is going to do to Germany this

winter. They're going to slip the switch and they're going to say goodbye to gasoline and they're fucked. And that's what's going to happen to us if we have China produce all of our solar panels, all of our lithium batteries, all of our wind equipment. All they have to do is flip the switch, and let's be honest, I mean, how many products have we had come in from China

the last, not very many, you know, the quality control over there, they don't give a shit about that stuff. And so they're gonna control our energy, whether we like it or not, because we're not making that stuff. They're buying up our farmland, they're paying off our politicians.

I did an interview on that, on how many of them, and it's not one side, you know, that's another thing that is a little concerning is everybody, they're dividing us, you know. iPod is in clandestine work. They're dividing us and they're doing a damn good job. A lot of this shit that you're seeing on social media, it's on bots, you know, and it's designed to split this country apart and it's working. I learned that the second biggest Facebook page before the BLM movement started was

begun in the internet research agency in Russia. That was where it was founded. And they were organizing rallies around the US with real people turning up to them, but it was being organized from the IRA. It's crazy, right? When you think about it. Wow. And so that, to me, is the new warfare. And it's, like I said, they're doing exactly what they should be doing for their goals. We are not. We're worried about woke bullshit or whatever. Well, there's a really important question, I think, to be asked when you look at the long-termism future of whether or not a democracy is compatible with long-term effectiveness of a country. I don't like the idea of living under an authoritarian

regime, but if you say, look, you can either have freedom with a loss or you can have varying degrees of authoritarianism with a win, You go, there literally might be a position where you get to where by allowing everybody to have a say and by giving people the opportunity to get on the step and start shouting about whatever the particular current grievances. That might be the thing, which means that the authoritarian regime ends up winning. And you go, okay, so if that's the situation, how do you push back against that? Because there's no one, no one's going to accept a decrease in their civil liberties simply because there's someone else that's using a different set of rules on the other side

of the world. But I do think it's not outside the realm of imagination that it literally could be that a CCP style authoritarian regime is simply more effective. You go, okay, well, you get to go down swinging, but you go down. Yeah. I hope that doesn't happen. you go down? Yeah. I hope that doesn't happen. Sometimes I sometimes I wonder if they both lead to the same place. I mean, was it Stalin that said capitalism will eventually eat itself? I can't remember if that was him. Maybe. But if you look at some of the stuff that's going on, you know, like Amazon or Walmart or Facebook. They've grown so big and we are capitalist right here in the US. Well, they've just obliterated small business. Nobody's one's last time you want to a best buy. It's destroying destroying business. And so basically, I'm wondering if that's going

to become an authoritarian government. Oh, because you've condensed power into the hands of so few simply because of market dynamics. Yeah, maybe, I mean, the free market was a lot more free before the internet because you weren't able to leverage as well. It didn't matter that you had the biggest store in Bastrop because Austin was 20 miles away and it would take too long to build up new customer bases and the brand didn't mean anything to anybody or whatever or definitely from state to state.

But yeah, when you have the unlimited scalability that's afforded by the internet, it does condense power into the hands of very few. And that's an interesting point that if you run capitalism forward for long enough with this sufficiently scalable technology, where the costs of increasing leverage is efficiently low. You do end up with an oligopoly because all of the power ends up just continuing you just compete away, compete away, compete away, and then don't get me, I fucking love Amazon. I've Amazon Prime, I've buy stuff off there all the time.

You know? It's just too convenient. But that's precisely why it happens. The reason that it happens is because the economies of scale afford them the ability to be able to do this. Yeah, that's... It's interesting to think about, right? It is. Yeah. I wonder whether... I wonder whether longer term there is going to be a pushback against that. I just... I think that people have become so accustomed and this is me speaking

to myself with convenience that, that anchoring bias, pulling somebody out of a situation in which they've got all of that convenience and saying, actually, maybe you should wait five days for your groceries to arrive, but you'll be supporting local business. I don't want to wait five days for my groceries to arrive ride with them tomorrow. I know I can get them tomorrow, so why would I go to a less efficient purchasing? The only way I think people would do that is if the quality is better. So, a lot of people do do that with, they'll go to a farmer's market and get real organic, or they'll go to a farmer like we do and we'll get real, not that the other beef's fake, but I know where it's coming from and I like the cuts and you know

I'm getting at. But you moved into personal security after you left the CIA. This is something that a lot of people take very seriously here in America. what do you think most people get wrong when they're thinking about that personal security setup? It'll never happen to me. That's the biggest thing that they get wrong. They don't prep their weapon the right way. They don't train with it enough because they don't take it seriously because they haven't seen it happen.

I think that's the biggest thing. Another thing that I see, or when you get into the industry, it's a little bit deeper and you have the people that make that a lifestyle, is they get more than they need. And they buy all this equipment and they don't learn how to use it because it's complicated, you know, I've when I used to teach People personal protection and stuff they would these guys would show up, you know with lasers with scopes with all these things and they don't even know they can't even cite them in all these things and they don't even know, they can't even cite them in.

And those are the ones that are coming out that are asking for help. A lot of people just put these together and they just blow money and they really don't know how to use them. And I think that's a mistake. So people are replacing. Because you're asking about actual products, right?

Yeah, okay. But also in terms of mindset. Mindset is a major one. That's the biggest one. That's the biggest mistake. They don't believe that it's going to happen to them. They don't believe that it's going to happen or which the people that come usually do. But well, they know that it's going to, right?

Like, you mean in terms of training? Sorry. I was thinking in terms of an assailant or, you know, some bad guy that's going to try and do something to you. There is an asymmetry in that interaction because that person's already made the decision that they're going to rob your house or trying to tack you in the street. They know that it's going to happen. There's so many mindset things that people paint these scenarios in their head and that's how it's going to go down and it's not going to go down like that. And you see that not just in personal protection, but all the way to a lot of people think things

are going to happen here. And they think that it's going to be one day, it's going to be all right. We got to fight for the country. That's not how these things happen. It's a slow rollout and it gets very confusing. Do you mean like a civilian militia that's going to push back against whatever regime? Yeah, whatever. Or if we get invaded by China or whatever happens. And a Russia.

There's not going to be a day that it happens. It's gonna be, or the zombie apocalypse. Let's call it the zombie apocalypse. But you get these guys and they think that one day that the zombie apocalypse is gonna happen, we're gonna get invaded and it's gonna be, you need to eliminate everything that wears this or looks like that.

It's not how it goes down. How it goes down is very slow and it's confusing and you really have to pay attention to target identification because the whole world just doesn't flip, you know, at once. Another thing that I see a lot or, you know, people don't, they want to get real big into shooting and they want to prep for the end of the world or whatever and They put so much emphasis on that but they're physical there are 150 pounds overweight More people die of a heart attack every year than anything else and they don't have an AD and there are 150 pounds overweight

You know an 80 left a fibrillator And it's like that's great that you're you're getting ready for all these things that might happen maybe one day, but you're 150 pounds overweight and you don't even know how to use a defibrillator. And they don't like it when you tell them that, but that's the real threat. That's the most imminent threat to that person. They don't like it when you tell them that. Or you get somebody that's a lot of overweight stuff here, but I'm just gonna jump on my rooftop and with all my guns and it's like,

how the hell are you even gonna get up there? You know, but I mean, I'd like to see a try. But a lot of that, a lot of that kind of stuff are in paint painting the scenarios where if somebody attacks me in a parking lot, this is how it's going to go down. That's not how it's going to go down. Before you engage somebody, I mean, there's so many processes that have to go through your head, who's standing behind that person,

you're gonna shoot them, can you actually shoot this person? You know, are they doomed to you, what you think they're doing to you? Like it takes time to process that stuff. That's why you said targets. Identification. Target identification is so important. You have to process all these things that are happening

and within seconds. And most people will be done and gone before they even realize what all happened. So does that make sense? Absolutely. Yeah. What about when it comes to people's homes, what are the things that you wish more people knew about personal protection in the home around the home? Just I mean basic stuff, you know a dog like to protect your house that dog is the number one deterrent for anything for any any FBI statistics pointed that for years and years and years is that right? Yep. The dog is the number one deterrent. But I think the biggest thing with home security nowadays

is the internet. People are posting, you can map your whole house out. If you follow certain people on Instagram, especially some of these influencers, if you pay attention, you can map their whole business. Is that taking videos in behind them? Yep. The window that's latched in the kitchen to vent the fumes out or whatever, yeah, okay.

Yep. Or they post where they live, and then you can look it up on realtor.com, and there's the whole layout. There was a video that I saw recently about a gang in the UK who was using social media to steal from influences and houses. There was this girl that was on a reality show a few years ago called Molly May and she had hundreds of thousands of dollars of jewelry stolen from her house because she'd put it on Instagram, obviously, as you do, because that's a job. And yeah, whole host of stuff was taken out of a house. Then you and she was out of the house

because of one her Instagram story, Europe. Look at me, I'm in Cancun, Mexico. Perfect. No one's in your house. How long down there? You know, so, you know, and they got, you're right, they got 200,000, a million, two million people falling on them

and they're posting, hey, I'm in Cancun. There's a few thieves in there that would love to have that nice Rolex. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So I think those are the biggest mistakes that people make. You know, they take home security, so seriously. And then it's these stupid little mistakes.

Hey, I'm out of town. And nobody's watching the house or, or, you know, like right now, I'm an Austin, my wife and kid are at home. I'm not telling anybody on social media that I'm an Austin until I get home and then I'll tell them. Yep. Yeah, very smart. Tim Ferris wrote this article called 13 Reasons Not to Get Famous.

It's a very interesting problem to have that almost no one is going to encounter. What happens when you overshoot fame? You get too much exposure, but Tim's had a billion podcast plays, more probably one of the OGs of this world. And he was talking about how after a little while, he had to never post holiday photos until after he got back because people would ring the hotel that he was staying in. All of the hotels in the area that he was staying in and asked if Tim first was there, then they would turn up. There was a guy that camped out front of his house for a week because he was adamant that Tim was sending him secret messages in his podcast saying that he wanted to be with him. So this guy found out where Tim lived. All sorts

of stuff that he has to do now to kind of future proof himself. And again, this is a problem that very few people would have, but it's also kind of not what you're seeing is a person who has an unbelievable net that they are attracting potential bad actors in from. Well, everybody has that. It's just varying degrees. bad actors in from. Well, everybody has that. It's just varying degrees. And what you're basically doing, if you have a smaller audience of people that follow you, but you continue to do the same things, is you're just rolling the dice. You're saying, look, I'm not Tim Ferriss there, for I have nothing to worry about. You know, if you've got a private social media with 500 people on there and almost all of them are your friends, I think you can probably feel a little bit more secure that that's not the case. But if it's a public social media, yeah, I mean, that makes complete sense. And for Tim, you know, he was how seriously he takes

personal security, Rogan is well, man, like he, that guy does not fuck about with his security. And what you're seeing there are examples of people that are kind of existing at the close to the upper echelon of normal people, right? It's before you get to presidents and sports stars and CEOs of companies and stuff like that. It could be anybody, though. You know, I mean, we're talking about famous people and, you know, I'm sure you deal with some of that as well. But it doesn't necessarily have to be famous people. It could be,

let's say you live in a town of 6000 people and you're the only heart surgeon in town. You're wealthier than 95% of that town and your kid goes to school and you do only have 50 people following you. Everybody knows you're the wealthiest person in town. So the minute you go to Florida to go to the beach, guess what? Everybody in town knows that you're gone and they're gonna go right over there if they want, you know, and so it could happen on any scale.

How do you advise people to deal with threatening others in public? You're in a bus or you're on a tube. I'm seeing increasing videos of these appear on the internet of someone that's just being belligerent somewhere in public. And if you're in in a enclosed space where you can't get away right now, well, maybe you can, maybe it's a sports game or whatever.

Have you got advice for people and how to deal with that? I mean, yeah, the thing that I tell him to do is just avoid it at all costs. I think a lot of these confrontations happen and it's unnecessary. It's two egos going out at it. And like, for example, it just happened to me yesterday. You know, we're sitting in that park,

stayed at the JW Marriott, and there's a park across the street. And homeless guy asked me for something. I was like, sorry man, I don't have anything. And he got my rate with me, charged me, was telling me I needed to stand up and do do do do do do. And I was just like, hey man, just, you gotta be careful, you know, you really need to be careful with people that don't have anything to lose when you have something to lose. And so the first thing I would say is just get

the hell out of there. If there's any possibility of you being able to exit that situation. To get off of the next tube stop, get off the next bus stop. Just let it go. You know, I think a lot of people can't just let it go. But if you're in imminent danger, then I mean, you have no really no choice to but to confront it in my mind. And so I would advise, especially today, you know, crimes on the rise, there's writing not right now, but it happens a lot more than it used to.

I mean, carry a gun. Guns going to give you that confidence, especially if you know how to use it and all kinds of different scenarios. My wife was a realtor in Boca Raton, Florida, showing really high end houses. And it took one time where she got in an uncomfortable scenario with somebody that wanted to come look at the house, she didn't have a gun. That never happened again. And so I'm a huge gun advocate.

I really think that if you have the means to get one, you have the time to learn how to use it, then you should be carrying one. It's just different times today. Do you hope for a time when that's not the case? Absolutely. So what I see among some people, especially the sort of Uber-Prepas or the Duma Optimists,

as some of them are now called, there is a little bit of a degree of glee at the potential conflict that's coming. It's almost like they want it to happen. Well, those are the people I was talking about earlier that are preparing for the zombie apocalypse that are going to jump on their rooftop. And those people are living in a fantasy land that not into war.

They never will be. I think that they feel avoid in their life because they never went to war. And so they're like hoping for some kind of crazy opportunity to show all of the hours that they've spent at the range or whatever it is. Yeah, there is a, that's an element, a very unique one that I've noticed since I've been in America, that there is a contingent of people that I think relish the opportunity of a ballistic conflict happening regularly. ballistic conflict happening regularly, and the opportunity for them to put, for them to justify their preparation, their money, their time, their sense of belonging or righteousness

about what they've been preaching and telling their friends about for so long. And that, yeah, I want to show that all of the work that I've put in was worthwhile. Yeah. And you're saying what you're saying is that you want to shoot somebody. Somebody that's a bad guy, maybe, or somebody that deserved it. But if you want to, that your threshold for when you are actually going

to pull your weapon out to use it, is going to be lower than other peoples. And that means that you're potentially going to escalate the situation sooner than it needed to be. And that's what I get concerned about. That's one of the things that I get worried about that there's a contingent of people out there that very small contingent of people out there that very

small contingent, I'm sure that most people are doing their personal protection for the right reasons, but they're doing it because they want to prove something. I mean, Chris, it's a valid concern. To be in a 100% honest, that's part of the reason why I left that business model is I was teaching that kind of stuff and I was teaching very advanced stuff as well and it got to the point where I was like, man, the last thing I need is somebody walking into a school wearing my brand, you know, across their chest and I started, I swirly started thinking about like, and I started, I swirly started thinking about, like, what am I willing to teach somebody?

You know, why, why in the fuck do you need to know how to take an entire building down? You don't need to fucking know that. You might want to know that, but you don't need to know that. And so I brought my courses all down to just basic fundamental stuff. Think about it this way. I've never thought about this before, but that's so interesting.

Think about the fact that you restrict the government mandates that there are certain types of weapons that aren't allowed. You can't have a rocket launcher. I'm going to guess. You can't have certain types of automatic firing weapons. You can't have maybe even particular bullet sizes and grains and stuff like that, right? There are certain things that you're not allowed to have. Claymore's shit, I'm gonna guess.

But no one's stepping in, as far as I'm aware, to restrict the type of tactical knowledge that someone's allowed to know. You know, if you've got some retired guy from the seals and the agency, you have the cognitive equivalent of an arsenal of things that civilians should not potentially have access to because they're in the wrong hand that won't believe it'd be dangerous. And like, why is it that you can't have a thousand grenades in your garage? Or it's because nobody really should need that, I would hope. And also, it's just dangerous and lots of things can go wrong.

But if you know the equivalent of a thousand grenades in a garage, and you can give that to somebody, that's something that nobody's talking about, that somebody that no one's mandating for. Yeah. It's gone through my head several times, you know, and I'm glad that it's up to the professional you know, that's teaching what they're willing to give up and what they're not willing to give up, but you know, some of them may regret that one day what they gave up. You mentioned earlier on that you've been through a good bit of grief.

A lot of people, the first grief that they're going to feel will be parents passing, perhaps, dogs or friends when they're younger. What have you learned about the process of grief and dealing with that? learned about the process of grief and and dealing with that? Everything passes. It's going to hurt. There's no way to get around it. I think a lot of people feel a lot of guilt. You know, you might, everybody groups different. And you have to know that it's going to pass. And when it does pass, you have to be okay, you know,

that it has passed. Because a lot of people will feel guilty that they don't have more emotion about whoever that was close to them that just passed or has passed. But you have to think about what that person would want for you. Do you think that your best friend, when he dies, do you think he's going to want you moping around for the rest of your life, feeling sorry for yourself and complaining that your best friend just fucking died,

or do you think he wants you to live your life to the fullest? And if he's a good friend, then he does want you moping around forever. He wants you to live your life to the fullest because he can't anymore. And especially with some of the losses that vet stake veterans is, you guys were fighting for something over there.

We all were. We were fighting for freedom. So you need to come home and honor the sacrifice that that person made and live your life to the fullest and know that they're smiling down on you, you know, when you're doing it. That's a beautiful tribute, right, that the reason for you being there is for the freedom for you to come home and do what you want it to do. But if a byproduct of you being over there and someone giving their life for that is you

coming home and no longer being free because you're trapped by emotions, yeah, it's an interesting way to frame it. Jocco said exactly the same thing about the guilt that comes from no longer feeling the strength of grief that it's almost like you, it feels like a betrayal maybe of the person that's passed. I should still feel terrible about this. And if I don't, that's like a trail to the memory. Yeah. If you've lost anyone? No. So this is why I'm lopping my way through this, right? Like I'm observing, I'm watching this happen in other people's eyes, but I can completely see the dynamic and absolutely see the dynamic. I mean, that's so ruthless, right? Because you end up becoming the architect of your own misery. Yeah. It's, it's, it's guilt, man.

It's a, it's a real thing. But, grieve, grieve until you, until you feel it going away and then, and then be happy that it's, that it's going away. Everything, everything is going to be okay. You know, you just always have to remember that. Everybody dies. What has the transition been like for you now as a father, like stepping into that role, you know, you've been someone that for best part of 20 years was a varying sized hammer, hammering things. And now you can't do the hammering thing with a crying child or with a late night or

an early morning, although you might be familiar with that. Like what's that transition like? As it's softened you, are you finding yourself becoming the cuddly teddy bear that you never wear or something? Oh yeah, I love being a dad. I think it happened at the perfect time. Sometimes I like to say I wish it would happen sooner, but I don't think I would have been ready. Tell me, Ford. I am turning 40 at about a month. So, but I love it. It's changed everything. I love it. It's changed everything. You know, it's watching my wife develop into a perfect mom is awesome. And just every day, my son is doing something new. And, you know, the

other day just climb the stairs for the first time. And it's just to see him make all these different little achievements and just watching them stand up for the first time or it's just awesome you know and then that's a piece of you and and it also makes you scared you know what's he gonna be like what's he gonna get be like? What's he going to get into? What kind of problems is he going to have? You want to protect him from everything and you can't. You can't protect him from everything. But I'm still learning. I'm very new with this. But I just love being a dad. You've had people that you were responsible for previously, right? The other members of your teams that you were responsible for. But now it's a very different type of responsibility.

Oh, it's totally different, even knowing that even knowing and saying, you see the parents had freak out all the time. My kids sick, they're going to the emergency room. I'm never going to be that guy, right? My kid just got sick and I thought he couldn't breathe. Walking off pussy. Yep, you might think you're going to be like that, but I'm not, I'm not like that. I'm like, oh, shit, am I the dad that's being paranoid or am I the, but it's just, I find myself airing on the side of caution a lot more than I'm used to.

Yes, very interesting. The stakes have been raised now. Yes. Fascinating. Well, I mean, think about all of the time, I'm sure you've spent, even before you started doing your own stuff in terms of coaching, that you would have spent a lot of time teaching people things, guys specifically. Yeah. Now, you've got one. I can't wait. He's not at that age yet where I can start doing that, but I Think about it all the time. What am I gonna teach him? You know

What life lessons? Yep, you know, am I gonna what kind of wisdom am I gonna Emporate on him and and it's it's always fun to think about. I can't wait, man, I'm not a father yet, not as far as I know at least. And I can't wait to be a dad as well. Like I look forward to being able to take all of the things that I've spent time, you know, accruing for myself that I really value

and then distilling them down into a bunch of little creatures to try and help them to get past the things that I felt held me back, to expedite them towards success, to make them feel happier and more fulfilled and more present, more love to more, all of that. I can't wait. There's something one of my friends said this to me before. He said that he's now engaged, I think, and then it'll be marriage and then family, I think, is kind of the trajectory for him. So he's locked in on a set of train tracks now.

And he was very successful with his business throughout his 20s and his early 30s. He's like, you know what it is, man? I realized that basically all I did, running my business and all the self-development and learning and books and stuff that I read. All I was doing was just preparing myself to be a good dad. It's like, fuck, that's cool. That is cool. So cool.

What do you think that's coming in the near future for you? We'll see. I'm at the stage right now where life is so good and so fun. This genuine year is the golden years. It takes this to a friend earlier on. It's like, how's everything going? I was like, do this is the good and so fun. Like this, this genuine year is the golden years. It takes this to a friend earlier on. It's like, how's everything going? I was like, dude, this is the golden age for me. Like I'm just having so much fun over here.

I'm doing exactly what I want it to do for a very long time. I get to, we're going to go cold and sauna after this. Then I'm going to go and play pickleball and then I'm going to go nail six hours of work when I get in. Like, that's the life that I want to live. On a contribute to a project I care about, I want to have a positive impact on people's lives,

I want to leave the world better than I came in, and I want to have some fun along the way. Like that's it for me. So the difference in the person I am now versus the person that I was certainly 10 years ago, certainly five years ago, and probably even two years ago, there is a bit of me that thinks, I'll have to reach an upper bound. Like I'm going to, the growth's going to have to slow down at least at some point, or

also I'm going to be like fucking Thanos or some shit. Because it's just every single period that I look back on is so much more development than it was before. And with that in mind, I'm maybe similar to yourself. Like I'm quite glad that I haven't had kids so far. Reason being that I know my capacity as a father now is twice that of it three years ago, and a hundred times that of it ten years ago. Yeah. So there is a strong justification, I think, for guys that are maybe still man-child at age 30, which I definitely

was. To be like, look, man, like, just if you're on the right track, maybe just pump the brakes a tiny little bit, then get yourself to the stage where, because to think about the difference that you're going to be able to have with that child's upbringing, with how much more you're going to be able to enjoy it as well, because you're going to be able to have with that child's upbringing, with how much more you're going to be able to enjoy it as well, because you're going to be able to understand your emotions three times, five times as much. You're going to be able to not be as caught up. I mean, you know, think about even the difference

that you've had over the last six months since doing the psychedelics, you know? Like, and this is your son's about one year old, right? Yeah. Yeah. So you've seen both sides of fatherhood, pre and post psychedelics. I mean, how different is that? Very different. I'm a huge fan of psychedelics now.

The treatment. Was that your first ever experience, the aboga? Yes. Shit, the bad. You really went. I won't allow people's time. First. But the benefits from that are just, I mean, there's just so many.

You know, I mean, I didn't even go down there with any intention of not drinking anymore. And I just didn't want it. And it was, people asked me how I do it. You know, how did you quit drinking? It was nothing. It was, I don't crave it. It wasn't a hard thing for me to do. It would have been hard had I not done psychedelics,

but when I did the psychedelics, I didn't have any cravings. I didn't, I'm not making a state, you know, I'm not like, look at me, I'm who's free, I just don't want it. It's easy. It's easy singing the world. Yeah, I mean, that's the stage.

I never drank regularly as a club promoter for a long time, and that meant I was around parties and stuff, and drink maybe once every four at night. But it would be like a full send, but it would be like a fun party or we do whatever. We go into a different city or something. And then I took a break for six months and came back for six months, and it came back for

like four, started drinking again. I really don't enjoy this that much anymore. So I had another break for six months, loved it, started drinking again for two, I'm just going to do a thousand days, I want to see if I can do three years, ish. And one of the most addictive things that I've done is sobriety. And it's so strange, one of the problems that you have is that with as soon as you say the word sobriety, it alcohols the only drug where if you don't do it, people assume you have a problem. So it sounds like you're recovering. You go, well, no, it's the same as being sober from heroin. It's the same as being sober from spending too much time

on my phone. As far as I see it, sobriety is a productivity tool for me, but it's also like an emotional enhancement tool, it's connection blah, blah, blah, blah. And I just realized that for me, I much prefer life generally when I'm not drinking. Now, I would happily microdose a psilocybin. I would happily carve a, right, which is like this root drink that you can have. And it's the most mild thing in the world. Like, I'd be happy to take that, or I'd be happy to take like a low dose of an edible, I'm such a pussy with edibles as well. But my point being, there are other ways for you to get

a little bit loopy, or like nicotine gum lozenges and stuff like that. Like, if you want to get a little bit of a buzz on or change your state, there are things to do, cold plunge, breath work. Like, there are things that you do. And for me, I just realized that alcohol really didn't agree with me all that much. I just, I don't have a massive fan of the effects of it. I don't, if you actually look at it as a profile of the experience that you get, I don't think it's actually that fun. There are significantly more fun things to do with substances or with experiences that

have fewer detrimental effect, both acutely the next day and the next couple of days after that, and then long term in terms of your health. And they're going to make you feel good, genuinely good during the experience. And I understand why people get hooked on alcohol, I understand it's an incredibly addictive drug, but for me, it just, it wasn't that enjoyable. It was just the thing that was available. It was fun for me, but you know, what so many positive things happened after I quit drinking, and it's only been six months, but I mean, so you just, you went from drinking pretty regularly to Iboge, gone.

Gone. Wow. Drinking a bottle a night, you know, a bottle of wine. I used to drink a lot more. A lot more. A lot more. But, I toned it down. It was a bottle of wine a night. I don't really think it was a problem as a good wine down, but man, I'll tell you to

the benefits. I mean, I don't know about you, but I mean, my business just went from doing this to I quit drinking and it was, you know, my podcast just went crazy. And I know that I'm developing into the person that I'm supposed to be 40 years old, a lot faster than I'm young, you know, because that shit gets in the way. It changes everything. 100% 100% Are you still not drinking?

I drink when I'm away now. So I used to have a rule where the best way that I had for introducing alcohol was if I was ever going on holiday or doing a road trip somewhere else, I would alarm myself to have a bit. I was doing fourth of July in Nashville, watching a quarter of a million people and country music with a half hour orchestral accompanied fireworks display. It's like I'm not having a beer here. I'm raising a beer. But I wasn't doing it at home. I've now got myself to the stage where I came out to Austin and it's very social out here and everyone likes to drink and go and watch live music and stuff.

I've now got to the stage where Austin is also within the bucket of a place that I don't drink in. So I'm starting to build that up over time. But it's so strange for me thinking about sobriety and actually it's been such a huge part of my life for six years. And when I talk about it, the increase in mental sharpness, the improvements in my sleep, the improvements in my mood, the consistency that you build habits at, right, the extra time, the extra money, extra energy you have, all of that stuff. And that's not, I'm not saying that you need to stop doing something that you find that

is fun, like drinking or socializing or whatever to replace it with spending the night doing your tax returns or whatever. My point is that I realized that I could supplement going out and drinking or the hangover that That time would have filled up as well with something else that I genuinely enjoy like going to play pickleball or going through a hike or getting another training session in at the gym or learning a new sport or whatever, getting rid of alcohol opened up all of those opportunities to me. And when I did it at the time, it was the single most impactful lifestyle change I made, all the breathwork, all the meditation, all the everything that probably after the podcast was the single biggest impact that it it had, just opened up all of that time and consistency and energy. What do you think the hardest thing about putting the bottle down was for you?

Frankly, it wasn't very hard. Wasn't? No. No, no dependency on it at all. It was a complete lifestyle choice. The only slight thing that I came up against was a little bit of social pressure. And I think that for most people, I call it elective sobriety. It's the closest word that I've been able to find for people that aren't doing it to get away from a dependency, but to do it as a productivity strategy. The most difficult thing that they're going to encounter is peer pressure from friends, because in a drinking environment, it tends to be social,

there is like an accepted routine that everyone goes through where the people that are drinking try to encourage the people that aren't drinking to drink. And there was a... That's one of the challenges you come up against, but even for me there, man, it was so easy because I was the club promoter, I was one of the lead guys of this big company, so had a good bit of status especially within the nightlife world. So even for that my pushback as soon as I was firm twice like everyone listened because i had enough status for people to kind of just stop pushing by understand that if you have friends who are more. friends who are more inclined toward drinking. There's a whole host of reasons as to why your friends

start to encourage you. I mean, they might start to feel a little bit of distaste the fact that you're doing something that maybe they wish that they could do. There's also an element I think that when you go out drinking with other people, they know that you're making a sacrifice both now and tomorrow and in terms of your health

and in terms of money and in terms of time, to be with them. And if you stop doing that, it kind of creates a them and us scenario. The tribalism kicks in. And there is a distance that's created between the two of you. And I'm sure you'll have heard about the psychological experiments. So they'll bring people into a room, they'll toss a coin, heads go left, tails go right. And they'll say to the tails people over the first night, what do you think about the heads people?

They're like, oh, they're a bit so stupid, aren't they? Like, where, much more? Where much smarter than them? My point being that any opportunity for people to be tribal and they'll do it. And as soon as you start to create another out of yourself, that'll happen. But the bottom line is like, if your friends only want to have you around when you're destroying your health along with them, then they're not really your friends. And if you find out that you can only bear to be around your friends when you're destroying your health along with them, then they're not really your friends.

And if you find out that you can only bear to be around your friends when you're drunk, then you definitely need better friends. Yeah, that was the hardest thing for me was we do with all these friends now, because before it was, I just drank with them. And now most people that drink that much, they don't have any other hobbies. What do you have friends or do you have drinking partners? Exactly. Exactly.

I had a lot of drinking partners. But so that was interesting. You know, and there's still, there's still people, some of them are my best friends that I'm, you know, would talk every night sometimes. And I wonder, you know, the next time we get together, what's that going to look like? Now that I'm not drinking, because our whole relationship was built up. Predicated on drinking, human alcohol together.

Yeah, man, I mean, one of the best things I think about this is that the pre-conceived ideas about the ages that people can make, like significant lifestyle changes at, becoming a father at 38 or 39, getting sober and getting control of your emotions through psychedelics at 39, all of these things of moving from the UK to the US at 33. It's nice. I like the idea of breaking role models, especially around age.

Age is something that you don't really even think about until you're probably in your early 30s, and you go, actually, hang in a second, work out to taking longer, and I get tired on a nighttime, and I go to wake up to go to the bathroom if I drink too much water on an evening. Just stuff happens. And then you realize, well, hang in a second, the preconceived

ideas I had around age are coming for everybody. Not everybody is going to deal with the grief of a friend being blown up in war. Not everybody's going to deal with it, fatherhood, even, right? Not everybody becomes a father, but everybody gets older, everybody does. And yeah, the more that I think about it, the more that breaking stereotypes around what you should be doing at a particular age. And then also trying to reinforce the things that you should be doing at a particular age. You should have control of your emotions. You should be able to have a disagreement with somebody without you getting invested and agitated. You should be able to have a disagreement with somebody without you getting invested and agitated. You should be able to control the substances that go into your body.

You should be in charge of that. I did 500 days without caffeine for the same reason just because. I wanted to make sure that it was me that was in control of them. And I was like yeah, I am. If you don't psychedelics? Not therapeutically. Okay. I've done maybe between five and ten psilocybin trips of varying degrees. But I know that I should do, and I know that it would be probably something that would be very good

for me. There is a degree of trepidation, I think, just because I've spent so much time speaking to people about them, and I know how much of a big lifestyle change it is, and you go, what the fuck's on the other side of this? There's almost a bit, there's almost a part of you that thinks, well, if I don't know what's coming, and I don't know the changes that might happen, that would almost maybe be a little bit easier. But I know that this could be something that could upend a lot of things and life's pretty good. Yeah, I think that'll change. I think I'll end up doing some therapeutic stuff at some point, but there's also still a lot of low-hanging fruit, I think, to pick up without having to assist it pharmacologically. And yeah, I'm so fascinated by the human mind and human

nature mind and everybody else's and how everybody interrelates and stuff. Soba, right? So at the moment, the world's a sufficiently colorful place without me needing to add anything else in just yet. Good. John Ryan, ladies and gentlemen, dude, I appreciate the fuck out of you. Where should people go if they want to check out what it is that you're doing now? Just Google John Ryan show. Everything will come up. Thanks man. Thank you.

I really appreciate the opportunity. of death.