Piers Morgan Uncensored - Ex Navy SEAL Shawn Ryan On Trump, Palestine and Psychedelics

Episode Date: October 23, 2024

Few people can say they went from battle hardened warrior, to Hollywood consultant, to successful YouTuber; but ex Navy SEAL Shawn Ryan certainly can. He joins Piers Morgan on Uncensored from his own YouTube channel ‘The Shawn Ryan Show’ and brings with him the same level-headed honesty that his fans know and love. Piers asks Ryan about America’s wars, his participation in those wars, the conflict in Israel and Palestine, the upcoming US election and his return to civilian life. Ryan shows incredible vulnerability by opening up about his mental struggles, and his advocacy for psychedelic therapy. This interview is meant to be savoured, not binged. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Their ability to do these precision strikes and take out leaders that we've been after, what they're doing is extremely impressive, and they're actually doing the world a favor. Would they see her as a natural command green chief? I don't see a big military backing of Kamala Harris happening. Was that war a success? You could say that it was actually overtime and abject failure, because there was no real game plan for what happened after that. I think that's a major black eye on the country. I think it's very similar to how we left Vietnam,

and the US has a history of doing that. A shame to say it, because I'm an American. How we left those people, how we left our allies, was atrocious. When you realized you weren't dead, what is that feeling like? Sean Ryan joined the US Navy in July 2001. A few months later, of course, the world changed forever. His 14 years in combat as a Navy seal and a CIA contractor

saw 20 deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan. Millions now known for the short of the short war. Sean Ryan Show, which has become one of the biggest podcasts in the world. Ryan also trained Keanu Reeves to play John Wick, the deadliest hit man in Hollywood history. Well, now, from a safe distance, he joins me for the first time on Uncensored. Sean, great to meet you. Good to meet you, Pierce. Thank you for having me.

You've become a kind of phenomenon in the podcast world, right up there with Joe Rogan. You've been duking it out who's number one right now. Why do you think that is? I think that people are just really attracted to authenticity now and honesty. And that's just something that I pride myself on. I always have. And I think that it is a very refreshing podcast for people to watch when it comes to those two things. I was researching you in your story and the podcast before I did the interview.

And I was very struck by something that happened at the weekend where you decided to make a, full Mia Kalper apology to people that listen to your podcast and watch it over what you categorized is misinformation that had gone out on the podcast. I want to play a little bit of that and then come back to you and talk to you about it. There was some misinformation put out on my podcast, the Sean Ryan show, in regards to the Hurricane Helene episode. It was put out on the podcast that Vice President Harris went to North Carolina to pose on a C-17. That's cargo plane full of supplies that were never intended to reach the hurricane victims. Friday morning we received a message on social media from a crew member on that bird,

that plane that said that that was only partially true. The supplies never left that day because that specific plane broke down. They ushered the supplies to a different plane and that was delivered. the very next day. You know, I just found that so refreshing, Sean, if I'm honest with you. You so rarely hear people just do that where something went out that was wrong

and you just throw your hands up and say, it was wrong. And here's what we said, and here's why it's wrong, and here's the truth. And, you know, I don't know you personally, but it immediately made you, to me, so much more credible and authentic,

instantly, just by the fact you were prepared to do that. Tell me about why. you did that and tell me about what you think of the fact there's so few people prepared to do that these days. I mean, why I did that is, you know, it just goes back to why you ask me, why you think my podcast is successful. I really pride myself on honesty, integrity, and authenticity. And, you know, I have, I do. I have, I have my own opinions. I have my own biases just like everybody else. But I would never, ever put that on top of my honesty. and integrity and that's you know without that what do we have you know and and so it wasn't

it was a really hard thing to do um i thought about it all weekend uh or until sunday morning and then when i got the official word that yes the national guard unit came out and made a statement and i knew you know hey i i never intended to put that any false information out and and and you know i I hope that it's an example. I mean, I think that misinformation and that the media puts out is part of the reason why the world is where it's at today, not just my country, but the entire world. I mean, we see so much division

and nobody knows what to believe, and everybody's looking for some sort of a source that's honest, and it's increasingly hard to find. Were you pleasantly surprised by the reaction? that you got because it was overwhelmingly positive. People were kind of like, thank God, this is great. Wow, I can't believe he's done this. You know, it's like a real kind of,

just by actually setting the record straight and being straightforward and honest, as you say, that really seemed to hit a nerve with people who perhaps themselves are swimming in a tidal wave of disinformation and were just delighted that you did that. Yeah, you know, I kind of crawled in a hole after I released it. So, yeah, I was definitely surprised at the response. I was 100% expecting to be blasted and all over the Internet and all over legacy media. And it was refreshing for me to see that it was actually quite the opposite and that people accepted my apology.

At least it appears that way and that my name isn't completely tarnished for putting out false info. Well, good for you for doing it. You're in a great place, I think, to talk about America's place in the world, not least militarily. At the moment, you have America obviously helping Ukraine repel Russia, which invaded it two years ago. America is also helping Israel, of course, in its fight against Hamas and Hezbollah and Iran by proxy. And you've also been to Iraq and Afghanistan multiple times during those wars. Where have you got to in your head about what America's place should be in the world? Historically, America has been the global policeman.

But has that worked? I mean, has it been a good thing for America to be? Or has it actually been an ongoing act of self-harm? Man, that's a tough question and a really good one. Has it increasingly brought harm? I think that we are definitely in a place right now where we need to start to concentrate on our own country and not so much on everybody else's. With that being said, I mean, Ukraine, Russia, obviously extremely complicated war that's happening. My thoughts are we need to find some type of a resolution that everybody knows that we're looking for or work.

working toward. I don't think anybody really knows what the end of this looks like or what anybody, what leadership wants the end of this to look like. There doesn't seem to be a, a well-established goal of how this ends. And I think that's really frustrating people with the Ukraine-Russia war. With that being said, I mean, I think that, you know, there's a lot of information out there going on. I mean, I've heard, I've heard. I don't want to say this is 100% true, but I've, I've, I've, I've, I've, I've, I've, I've, I've interviewed people that have discussed that, you know, that the, the region that's being fought over is very rich in natural gas. And that obviously plays a pretty substantial role. And, and, and, and if that's true, and, and, and, and, you know, the, as much as I don't want to be there and I don't want our country involved in this. I do understand, you know, basic economics.

And if we are going to rebuild that area and there's going to be natural gas piped out of their end of Europe, I can see how that's in the long term, very economically sound for the United States. And, you know, that's a hard thing for me to say. But, hey, you know, it's no secret that everybody in the world has special interest when it comes to natural gas, oil, natural resources. Yeah, I mean, a lot of people felt that was one of the unspoken reasons why America fought the Iraq War, for example, was that obviously Iraq had a lot of oil reserves. And my brother fought in the British Army there. He was a colonel in the British Army in Iraq. And he was struck by the fact that there was a lot of activity around these oil reserves when he got there, which made him think there were ulterior motives to what was going on other than just toppling Saddam Hussein. So I don't think it takes a genius to work out.

There's often multiple reasons why these conflicts are fought and places are defended or attacked. It's interesting. I mean, that big picture of question I gave you, there's always been this sense that America, whether it's leading NATO or a country like Kuwait is invaded by Saddam, as it was in the first Gulf War and so on, but wasn't a NATO country,

that there's a kind of compulsion for America to race to defend that kind of. situation or to generally defend freedom and democracy. But when you actually look at the conflicts that America has got involved with, when you try and see victory, it's often quite hard to see victory. I mean, you might see a short-term military win, as you saw in Iraq in the Second War, or indeed, the first one. But was that war a success? Is a very more complicated question. I mean, you could say that it was actually overtime and abject failure. that it led to the rise of ISIS and all the hell that that wrought

and so on, because there was no real game plan for what happened after that war. What do you think of that? I mean, I think you're absolutely right. And I would love to jump to what happened in Afghanistan with the withdrawal. I mean, look at that. We spent over 20 years in that country occupying it, fighting in it, and only to give it up. to the same people that we were fighting immediately, immediately.

I mean, as soon as we left, it was turned over to the Taliban. And I don't think that's a win at all. I think that's a loss. I think that's a major black guy on the country. I think it's very similar to how we left Vietnam. And I think that the U.S. has a history of doing that. I'm, you know, ashamed to say it because I'm an American. But how we left those people, how we left our allies,

especially in Afghanistan, was a atrocious. It was actually disgusting. It was a complete betrayal of people who had risked their own lives to help America and the Allied forces that were with it. You know, I really felt sickened by the way. So many of the translators and so on were just completely hung out to dry, literally hung by the Taliban. And now you look at what's happening to the millions of women under the Taliban regime.

It's gone back to an even darker place, and it was before this all started. I mean, they're literally being expunged as members of society. It's shocking. Yeah, it's really, I mean, spending that much time over there, it's really sad to see because to see the people that we trained up convinced, even just convinced them to fight alongside with us, made empty promises. Those promises obviously were not delivered.

And I mean, those people just continue to be terrorized. They're still trying to escape out of there. And, I mean, you know, Pierce, there's just so much that goes into it. I mean, even the fact that that U.S. facilities, a lot of them that were over there as we did the turnover, they didn't even destroy classified material. We didn't even attempt to conceal. the Afghan nationals that were working alongside with us. All the paperwork, all the addresses, all the names, all the family members, all the pay stubs,

biometrics. None of that stuff was destroyed over there. And so when we literally handed over these facilities, buildings, skiffs over to Taliban, I mean, we basically handed them, hey, here's a kill list. Go hit everybody on this list because they were helping us. I mean, it's disgusting. Yeah, it is. It is disgusting.

When you look at the situation in Israel, for example, what is your take on that? Because I've listened to a lot of military people about this, and they say, look, Israel had no choice but to defend itself after the horror of October the 7th. But then the big question becomes, what is a proportionate response? What's the correct moral response, perhaps, to what happened?

Many people now feel Israel's gone too far and maybe now pushing to have a full-blown war on the Lebanon, and maybe directly with Iran, entering into a completely uncharted territory. What's your take on what's going on there? You know, I don't, I am not as spun up on Israel in the Gaza Strip as much as I should be, and so I'm very reluctant to give you an opinion,

but I will say that the effectiveness of the IDF in the Israeli intelligence operations, their ability to do these, precision strikes and take out leaders that we've been after. I mean, look at how long it took us to get all these different leaders throughout the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. And they are just going down the line and hitting these guys nonstop. And in that aspect, I think what they're doing is extremely impressive.

And I think they are actually doing the world a favor by ridding it of these people. As far as mass casualties are concerned, I think that they probably need to go back to the drawing board and figure out how to stick with the precision type attacks in eliminating these high threat, high value targets. And let's leave the normal people alone out of this. They had no choice to be in this either. It's really interesting you say that because when I saw what they did with Hezbollah, taking out the leadership, hitting them all with the pages exploding and so on and so on. Obviously, incredibly sophisticated and successful operation. But you do wonder, well, if you could have done that with the leadership of Hezbollah, why couldn't you take out the Hamas leadership the same way, just cut the head off? And maybe

that could have solved one of the big problems they have there, which is that uniquely, Gaza has a 50% population who are under 18 who are kids. So inevitably, if Hamas have, as we know they have, have been hiding in these tunnel networks deliberately amongst civilian population where half of them are children, then if you try and take on Hamas in that area, however precise you try and be, you're going to kill a lot of civilians and they're going to be mainly kids. That's what's happened.

And that is, I think, the reason that that isn't working in the way that their attacks on Hezbollah have been applauded as successful. People look at what's happening in Gaza and think, you're just killing too many children here. This can't go on. Yeah, it's a real shame what's happening there, and I hope they figure something else out. When you were serving, Sean, what did you learn about yourself? What did I learn about myself?

I learned, wow, that's a really tough question. What did I learn about myself while serving? I learned I can tell you I learned after serving that not everything is how it appears when you're in. And that I had a lot of good times. I wouldn't take my service back.

But when you're in the thick of things and bullets are flying and you're going on operations every day and you don't have time to really do a full scope of why you're there, you are just very concentrated on the mission at hand and keeping yourself and your teammates alive. And when I left, when I left and I started doing the podcast and diving into why we're there

and I started getting into the military industrial complex, I started to get really upset because I realized at least my opinion is that we were there for nefarious reason. especially in Iraq. And when you see who the key players were, you know, Dick Cheney, Aliburton, it, once again, another black eye on America.

And it was fools on what turned out to be a false pretext that Saddam Hussein are weapons of mass destruction. You know, I remember feeling particularly, I actually ran a campaign in the UK to stop the Tony Blair Labor government from going along with that war because I did not think that the criteria he had been met to justify it. You know, many people to this day think it was an illegal war.

I've had long conversations with my brother about it. I felt affronted on his behalf that he was sent to fight a war based on what looked like it was just bogus information and turned out to be bogus information. And I do think that the industrial military complex stuff that goes along with this, the oil reserves, all the rest of it, you just put it all together and you think, this stinks. And the people who are actually carrying this out

like you guys, my brother, like you and others, you're doing it absolutely with the best of intentions to serve your country as valiantly as you can. But actually, as you say, when you come out at the other end and you see the reality, you must feel like you've been

slightly played. Yeah, that's half of it, you know. But I will say also, Pierce, we did a lot of good work there as well. And I'll give you an example. We did a lot of sniper operations over there. And as you know, Iraq is very tribal, kind of similar to Afghanistan. And what we were doing was we were kind of ridding Baghdad of IED emplacer's big bombs.

And we would do these reconnaissance missions before we ever went out. and I remember one in particular we did. We found where they were blowing the U.S. convoys up at, where they were planting the IEDs. And it happened to be in a single mom's home with, I believe, three children, if I remember correctly. And she was so happy to see us there because bombs were blowing up in her front yard. She was scared her kids were going to get blown up. and she just wanted these bad guys out of there.

And so she opened her home up to us and told us the exact time, day, that these guys come around on a motorcycle, plant bombs in her yard, they have killed other kids, and we were able to eliminate that threat. And it never happened in that area again. And we were able to train conventional units on how to do business like we were doing there, and they carried that on, they carried it forward. and through my entire deployment, nothing else happened to that,

to that unit or in that area of Baghdad. And so, you know, while we were there for probably the various reasons that weren't in the best interest of the American people, we did rid the world of a lot of very bad individuals. And same in Afghanistan too. You know, I mean, we, if anything good came out of that war, other than, you know, ridding the world as terrorists, you know, they, the Afghan people,

when we went in there, they were able to see and feel a glimpse of what real freedom looks like. Women started going to school. Women, you know, always saw women's rights start to open up. I mean, when we got there, they weren't even, you couldn't even play a game of pool in anywhere. And, I mean, that's how strict some of this was. And, and, you know, the penalty over there, isn't getting a citation, it's death. And so to give a glimpse of what what freedom could look like in the country, I think really motivated, to be honest, the majority of Afghanistan to start to fight for their freedom. And now that it's been taken away, now they really see how important that was. And so we did give the Afghan people a glimmer of hope of what it could look like. And I think that was

very important and I think that's something that they'll remember for for decades. How many times did you think I'm going to die? More times than I can count, but, you know, it, yeah, I mean, a lot of times. Dozens of times? Probably. Wow. And for someone who's never been in that position, hopes to never be in that position. What is that, what is that feeling like when you're literally

thinking, I could die here? It is like getting a very fast life review. All of your regrets come to mind, all the things that you wanted to do that you didn't do. It feels like it all goes through your brain in about a second. And I remember the first time it happened. I had, I basically convinced myself that I was already dead. And when I did that, it kind of took the fear away and things became very clear. And so from that point forward, every time I was in a situation where I thought I was going to die and I thought me and my team wouldn't make it out. I mean, for sure. Like, we might not make it out of this.

It was, we're not going to make it out of this. And we have to be okay with that. And so I would just convince myself that I was already dead. And that in a weird way would calm things down and enhance performance. Wow. That's incredible. And conversely, you realized you weren't dead and you'd come out the other end what is that feeling like it feels pretty damn good it feels pretty damn good uh when your boys come back to get you uh after an operation

like that uh there's just there's no better feeling in the world than seeing a helo door open up or or a bradley door open up and you see another american there with a bunch of empty seats saying Let's get the hell out of here. And you just, there's nothing like it in the world. It's a very, very bonding, humbling experience. You eventually left the military because you just saw too many people whose own personal lives were so kind of disastrous. You know, marriages collapsing, weren't seeing kids, etc.

A lot of them having serious mental health issues. In fact, I think you said, even though more friends that you serve with kill themselves than actually dying combat, which gives an indication of the kind of huge emotional mental trauma that goes hand in hand with what you guys were doing. Was there a kind of come to Jesus moment for you? We just thought, I'm done. I've got a choice here. I'm either in this now for a long period of time more or I'm just going to go and get a life.

It was a tough decision. First, I left the SEAL teams, and I didn't spend a lot of time there. It was just shy of six years. But as a young man, 24 years old I was when I left, I could see, we didn't even really know the term post-traumatic stress disorder, traumatic brain injury. None of that stuff had been discussed or was even. even talked about that then. I don't I don't even know if they if that terminology existed when I left in 2006. So there was nobody knew anything about that stuff. But one of the things that I did pick up is a young guy in the SEAL teams. And I left for a variety of reasons,

this being one of them, is I just looked at all of the all of the operators and warriors that I looked up to. None of them were married. None of them had any family. If they did have family, they didn't talk to them. They weren't close to them. And they had a black lab to come home to at the end of the day or when the deployment's over. And I could just, I could see it was going to be a very lonely life if I didn't, if I wanted to continue to deploy.

And so that factored into my decision on leaving the seal teams. and try and try in business in the civilian world which didn't go great the first time but but it's you see it I mean it's impossible not to see the lifestyle

at least back then when I was in where it was going to end up Can you ever find peace and contentment when you've been through what you went through? I found it I've tried a variety of things I went to therapy for, I think, three and a half years, twice a week. That helped a lot.

I put the bottle down for the, I put hard alcohol down for a while. That helped a lot. And then, you know, what really helped me, what really, really, I think the most significant thing that I've done for myself is psychedelics. and and I had interviewed a handful of of gents that I used to work with about psychedelic therapy and I was totally against it at first. I thought, you know, this is for hippies, not for me. And but I had one guy that was the final straw that came on my podcast. His name's DJ Shipley, Seal Team Six guy.

And he just, I could tell him, I interview. with him how much it had impacted his life and and between him and all the previous guests that have just told me, you know, all positive things and through my own research on how it works and why it works, I decided I needed to go down to Mexico because it's illegal in the United States. To get psychedelic therapy, I did a psychedelic called Ibogaine and another one called 5MEODMT in a week. And when I came out of it, you know, peers, I went down there to be more in the moment with my family. And I got that plus some, plus a lot more. I got more in the moment with my family. I was more compassionate, more patient, more in the moment with them. But on top of that, I haven't had a drink

and I've had a drink since the experience, which has been over two years now. Wow. And yeah, And so I haven't had a sip of alcohol for over two years. It'll be three years this February. All my prescription drugs that I was on, Adderall, sleeping pills, some benzos, all of that stuff went away. And this was, this took no effort. It wasn't like, you know what, I'm not drinking anymore. It was like, it was like the psychedelic therapy showed me all the poison that I was putting into my body and took all of my addictions and cravings away.

And so all prescription drugs went away, all booze went away. It's still gone away. And so I would recommend that to anybody who's dealing with any type of mental trauma, not just military people. There's just so much benefit that comes out of that. This is going to be a tough question. This will be a tough question, but do you think you would still be here if you hadn't gone through that? I think I would still be here.

I had a suicide attempt very early on when I was in talk therapy. And that was actually the reason that I quit art alcohol. And I never did try it again. I had had thoughts of that. I've had suicidal thoughts, but I've never acted on him again. So I think I would still be here. I think I would be a lot.

I think I would be a miserable person if it wasn't for that, though. You've become such an influential podcaster that you had very recently Donald Trump and J.D. Vance on the show. Trump, of course, being president, maybe again. How political are you? Do you actively identify either with Democrat, Republican, Independent?

Do you have a political place or not? I think my place is more in the center than most people. I would lean towards, I leaned more conservative than liberal. But I'm sorry, what was, what was, you just wanted to know. You're kind of isolated. I just ask you what your personal politics. And the supplementary was going to be this, which is that Trump has a kind of unique style on the global stage, which I was quite interested to talk to you about. He never actually went to war anyway. He didn't start a new war anywhere in his term of office, which is probably surprising to many people who see him as the new Hitler.

But he also chose to forge quite friendly relations with the likes of Vladimir Putin, President Xi, Kim Jong-un, in a traditional enemies of America and so on. on. Do you think that's an effective strategy? I mean, if he wins again in three weeks, do you think that's a strategy that actually helps America rather than hinders it? I mean, my personal opinion is I absolutely think it helps. I mean, I think that we should definitely go to discussions before we go to bullets. And so, and then there's the old saying, keep your friends closer, your enemies closer. But, you know, I mean, what he was able to do with, with, with, with Korea. And, and, I mean, he opened dialogue with, with, with, with, with, with leadership and other parts

of the world that nobody's been able to do before. Yeah. As far as I'm as far as I know. And so I found that to be extremely refreshing. And, and I thought it was very important that we are, we're building. relationships with with countries that we see as adversaries and in opening a dialogue. I mean, I just, I think, I don't know how you cannot think that's important to have dialogue. How, I mean, if Kamala Harris was to win, your knowledge of people serving still perhaps is

pertinent to this, but would they see her as a natural commander in chief? She doesn't instill, I must say from me sitting across the pond, she doesn't instill, I must say, from me sitting across the pond. Isn't there still a great sense of being a natural commander and chief? What do you think? I think that they would see she is a a probably not you know military recruiting is is detrimental right now. I don't I don't see a big military backing of Kamala Harris happening. I think you're right. You pivoted before you you you did what you're doing now. a spy, the CIA, but you took advice from the British MI6, our own spooks over here.

What was the best advice I gave you? Well, I actually went through the MI6 course with those gents when I was on the SEAL teams, and they taught me a lot of very important trade graft in the Virginia, D.C. area that I'll, that I still use to this day. And it was an amazing course. I mean, you know, it's very complicated to go over tradecraft, but, you know, I mean,

there's a lot of things that stick out that they taught me, but I remember the first thing that really resonated with me is we were doing the, we were doing an advanced surveillance, counter surveillance course. And I remember we were tracking a guy through downtown Norfolk, Virginia. and this is a training exercise, and we were going into 50-story Bank of America buildings, I mean, shopping malls, grocery stores, lingerie shops, you name it, the most awkward places that you could be in as a man, and that was on purpose. But one of the things that they had said is if you're going to think that everybody's

following you all the time when you're conducting surveillance, and they were right, you think everybody is on your tail. And they said, look, here's the, here's the rule of thumb is you see them once, that's fine. You see them twice. That's a coincidence. You see them three times. They're on you. That's not a coincidence anymore. And that that's probably the first thing that they taught me that stuck with me through my entire career through the agency as well. And did they encourage you to deploy a British accent so that you were a bit more James Bond like or not? I tried it, Pierce. It didn't work out very good. I know you're a big movie fan, and I want to just discuss that quickly,

because you actually train Keanu Reeves to be John Wick in the Hollywood franchise, one of the most popular franchises ever. What was that like as an experience? It was a really good experience. You know, correction, I'm not really into movies, and I haven't watched John Wood. WIC before I trained him. But I just went out there.

They asked me if I would be willing to train him. I said, yep, let's do it. And he came out. I kept it very professional. And he was actually an amazing student. He was, he paid attention to every detail, every footstep, everything that I was doing. He would mimic. And his questions on why I was, why I was doing?

doing certain things. All of his questions were really, really good. They were really good questions. He wasn't just doing it. When I was teaching him, I didn't feel like he was just doing this and going through the motions for a movie. He wanted to understand each and every motion

and movement that I made and very, very professional down-to-earth guy from my experience. What is the most realistic, military film you've ever watched? Great question. I would say the first one that comes to mind is Black Hawk Down. Yeah.

I was actually going to prompt that because I thought that, just from everything I've gleaned from my brother and my brother-in-law was an army colonel and stuff, that seemed to me to be utterly realistic. Yes, that would be the most realistic, in my opinion. I think that they did it. phenomenal job on the movie 13 hours as well. I mean, the way that they captured the team dynamic,

the team room, the relationship between the contractors and the staffers at CIA, I mean, it was all, they got more than just the battle, right? They got the culture too, and that was really cool to see. The Navy SEALs, obviously SEALs Team 6 in particular, have a global reputation as a result of a number of high-profile missions that were made into movies, you know, Captain Phillips to Zero, Dark 30 and so on. The SAS in the UK are getting a lot of attention at the moment because it's the anniversary of

the storming of the Iranian embassy in London back in the 80s, which was the first time the world had seen the SAS in action live on television. It's pretty extraordinary. So my question is, you know, you know Sealed Team 6 better than most. You probably know a lot about the SAS. You may well have been alongside them. If you actually had a bar room, rule. Who would win? Team six. I knew you'd say that. Of course, they would say the complete opposite.

I'm sure they would. Hopefully we'd never see that have to happen. When you were doing training for SEAL Team 6, what is the single most awful thing you have to endure when you look back on it? What's the thing you never want to have to do again? Well, I wasn't in SEAL team six, so I can't answer that. I was a Navy SEAL, but I was not at...

Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, yeah. But you were a Navy SEAL, so what would be the toughest thing you did? The toughest thing that I did as a SEAL would probably be... In training, it would definitely be... It would be Hell Week. That was a horrific experience that I never want to do again. And what's the single worst part of Hell Week? The cold.

the cold and the chafing do you know about the chafing i can see in your face that you're reliving the chafing as we speak yeah so the chafing so you know when i was in they would they would have you you would do these four mile timed runs you could do 12 mile runs you're always running and sometimes they would have you put a wetsuit on underneath your camis and they would have you put sand and all the crevices of your body every one where you can think of. And then it's four mile time run time. And guess what that does?

It rubs the skin off of everything. Oh, my God. And then you hit the salt water, and it feels like you're going into a pool of hydrochloric acid, and it's freezing. So, yeah, I don't think they do that stuff anymore, but back in my day, that was the norm. Now it wouldn't pass the woke criteria for probably being,

it's workplace bullying. Probably not. But they still have a great product coming out of there. So, you know, maybe it's for the better. Sean, it's been great to talk to you. Really appreciate you coming on on, Uncensive. You too, Pierce. I appreciate you having me, and I hope to do this again.

Yeah, I'd love to. You're doing great stuff with that podcast. It's fascinating. And I just think the way that you go about things, clearing up stuff if you get it wrong, trying to be in the middle somewhere, just trying to get to the truth, having people on who have all got different views.

That's what I'm trying to do. I think it's important. I think we've got important roles to play in this otherwise very toxic tribal world we now live in. That means a hell of a lot coming from you, Pierce. Thank you. It's been great to talk to you. Thank you very much. You too. Cheers.