The Iced Coffee Hour - Harvard Navy SEAL: "America Is About To Enter Another CRISIS!"

Starting point is 00:00:00 You don't go to war to end all war. You go to war to purchase a limited amount of freedom for a limited amount of people, for a limited amount of time. An ISIS sniper shoots a former Navy seal from Milwaukee as the U.S. medic saves the lives of Iraqi citizens. Once I've seen all this stuff, I can't unsee it. I can't just sit back and relax. I can't just not go and help these people knowing full well that they need help. In May, the 25-year-old Milwaukee native went to Mosul to volunteer as a medic. Mattos' job was to treat wounded civilians.

Starting point is 00:00:30 You don't go to war and come back the same person. You just don't. It changes you every single time. Hopefully for the better. I try to make it for the better. The worst thing, and I remember, I remember when I saw this, my brain said, this isn't real because it's not in black and white.

Starting point is 00:00:46 And I was like, that's a weird thought. Why am I thinking that? It was because I'd only ever seen things like this in history books in black and white photos. If your Y is big enough, you just, you just do what you got to do because if we don't go, that girl dies. You just make the decision to go because that's my job as a seal. That's my job as a man to protect the innocent. And that's what I swore to do. And that's what I chose to do that day.

Starting point is 00:01:18 Ephraim, thank you so much for coming on, the iced coffee hour. It's an honor to have you here. You were a Navy SEAL that realized you couldn't help as much as you wanted to doing that. So you became a civilian to go fight ISIS. Yeah, well, first off, thanks for having me on. I really appreciate it. That's sort of the beginning of the story that the transition, which led me into, you know, ultimately going back into a lot of different conflict zones with my organization to, yeah, to protect and care for people in these really, really rough, rough situations and trying to do the best we can to help them.

Starting point is 00:01:47 And in fact, your story is so remarkable that it was actually covered by a mutual friend of ours, John Allen, aka Mr. Ballin. He made a video on, I think it was like, how many of you? It was like 14 million or something like that. It's one of these most watched videos ever, which is pretty amazing. I'm super grateful for him for doing that video. Oh, yeah. So when it comes to a lot of that, do you think people in America take their freedom for granted?

Starting point is 00:02:08 I think yes, but I don't think it's, I don't think there. I think, you know, the American military and our forces and stuff, we do a very, very good job of protecting the homeland. And so it's kind of a good problem to have where people don't understand war. They don't understand conflict. Because quite frankly, if they did understand war and they did understand conflict, that means that we failed at our job in the military to protect the homeland. So the way that you need to remember and sort of maintain that respect for the guys who fought and died and do everything they do to protect this nation guys are still active, that's why we have things like Memorial Day, Fourth of July, Veterans Day, things like that, is to try and remember and keep it in the public consciousness. So you can tell those stories of what the guys have done before to protect us without having to actually experience it. Yeah. Do you think it is important for people to know about the evils that exist in the world and the war and stuff like that? Or do you think that like you said, it's the job to keep it out of the eye of the public and just let it be so they can make sure that we have peace in America? Ignorance only leads to problems, right? So if people are not aware of the threats that are around the world, then they're going to make decisions whether it's on for leadership or for government.

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Starting point is 00:03:59 protect the nation as much as is possible. So I think that we need to be aware of it. I mean, it's not something that you need to like inundate children with and be like, oh, you know, the world's going to blow up tomorrow. No, but everybody who's, you know, an older teenager, especially in adulthood, I think people should keep their eye, like what's going on around the world and try to stay as informed on it as possible, but don't let it consume you. It shouldn't be your whole life. You shouldn't be sitting in America worried and frustrated and super angry about, you know, the war in Burma or different

Starting point is 00:04:28 conflicts in Africa and things like that. You should still enjoy your freedom, understand what's going on, but enjoy your freedom and support people who are out there trying to hold back the evil that's out there. That made me think of one last thing, which I've heard over and over again, and it seems obvious, but it's also somewhat of a surprise to me. The fact that, that, you know, however long humans have existed for and how we've gone through like the rise and fall of different empires and everything. And now we have planes that can fly in the air and we have all of this technology. We have information available to everybody. Yet we're still ending other humans' lives over massive wars where you have people that essentially have to do things because of what I guess like presidents do or what the people on the upper people do. Doesn't it seem like a little antiquated that we're still taking lives like that, it seems like animalistic almost. You know, the saying, you know, war is hell. Like all war is is horrible and is a tragedy. But the simple reality is I think we as a culture and as a people need to understand the simple fact that war is never, ever, ever going to go away.

Starting point is 00:05:36 We need to lessen it as much as possible. We need to seek peace as much as possible through diplomacy and things like that. But war is never, ever going to go away. So one of the things I always say about war is you don't go to war to end all. war. You go to war to purchase a limited amount of freedom for a limited amount of people for a limited amount of time. And then you have to go do it again. And there's a more deep and fundamental aspect of conflict. And that is that a lot of different ideas cannot coexist. We love the bumper sticker coexist. You know, it's a very American idea to have, you know, all groups of people, just sort of living in harmony. And that's true when we all have the same values. But when you, when you go,

Starting point is 00:06:18 So for me, it's like I've been able to travel all around the world and interact with so many different cultures and so many different belief systems. And what you have to understand about people who do things that we see as evil, they are completely convinced that they are the good guys. They are completely convinced that they are in the right. You know, for example, an extreme example would be like an ISIS fighter. I've seen ISIS fighters literally get into a car that's, you know, that has 2,000 pounds worth of explosives in it, drive out and blow themselves up trying to kill us. And why are they doing that? Because they truly, truly believe that they are doing the right thing. They truly believe that they are fighting a righteous cause. Otherwise, they're not going to do

Starting point is 00:06:57 that. They're not psychopaths. They're not insane people. They are normal human beings who have accepted a bad ideology, a destructive ideology. And so what we have to understand is that if you want to end war, if you want to have peace, is that we have to have the same values. We have to have the same belief system when it comes to what is right and wrong. What I find fascinating, though, is the fact that we have such different beliefs from these people in all of these different countries with all of these different religions and beliefs and everything. And yet we all can agree not to push the big red button.

Starting point is 00:07:32 So far. So far. Knock on wood. This is real wood. So we all better knock on. Okay. So that for me shows that there is still some sort of like human. connection, some fundamental shared belief between, you know, the people over here and the people

Starting point is 00:07:49 over there. Is it that, though? I feel like people don't want to self-destruct. That's more you think it's out of fear. You look at the situation in the Middle East right now. You look at Iran. Iran has already said if they get a nuclear weapon, they're going to nuke Israel. Like, they've already said that they're going to do that, right? Now, would they actually do it? Who knows? Because they might actually, in the last minute, realize we don't want to get nuked back, right? Because Israel has nukes. The reason people don't use nukes, in my opinion, is the concept of mutually assured destruction. So it's like, hey, let's leave you. other alone you stay over there we're gonna stay over here and let's not push the red button

Starting point is 00:08:18 because if you push the red button i'm gonna push the red button too and i think trump's is bigger yeah exactly trump's red button is big yeah his is bigger yes i think it's more of self-interest more what graham said i don't i don't think it's necessarily the shared humanity unfortunately i wish it was um but i think it's just self-preservation so why don't you think world peace could be achievable that people can just not resort to violence because human beings are fundamentally flawed think about the arguments we have with people that we love and that we care about, um, our own family, you know, uh, so imagine that on, on like these, on this grand scale, um, ultimately, you know, it's going to lead to conflict. Just think about on your own,

Starting point is 00:08:57 your own personal life in your own head. How often you argue with yourself? How often do you battle in your own head? I should do this, but I'm going to do that or vice versa, right? Um, so we as individuals, we don't even have peace in our own heads. How are we going to manifest peace for you know, billions of people all around the world with entirely different ideas. So that's, that's why I just, I just don't think it could happen. I mean, I would love it if it did, but I just, I just don't say it happening. So what type of person becomes a Navy SEAL? I would say it's people, um, with, uh, a couple screws loose in their head, uh, in a, in a good way. Um, guys were just a little bit crazy, a little bit out there. Um, there's a lot of different

Starting point is 00:09:33 reasons why guys join. I, I really joined to, you know, protect my country and I wanted to fight evil and serve. That was truly my heart. I signed the papers when I was 17 and went to boot camp and all that when I was 18. But I would say one of the fundamental things people always ask, like, okay, well, who's going to make it through? Right. So it's still a train. We've all heard of it. Like, it's very brutal. The guys who make it through, there's the one thing that I, that I've seen, that all guys have who have made it through every single one is everybody has a very, a very strong core sort of sense of humor. In the darkest, darkest hours of hell week or combat or whatever you find yourself in later, you can always

Starting point is 00:10:14 find somebody who's going to crack a joke. You can always find somebody who's going to laugh a little bit. You know, things can be lighthearted in the midst of the most terrible, terrible situations. And that's what I've found is probably the common thing between all seals is they're like the funniest people you'll ever meet. And they have like just fantastic senses of humor. That's interesting. Is there anything beneath that sense of humor? Like is it a certain like, Because I feel like sense of humor is kind of an extension or a symptom of something deeper. I think it's an acceptance of reality. So you're able to laugh at the pain.

Starting point is 00:10:48 You're able to laugh at your situation when you just accept that, like, hey, this is what it is. And we got to go through this. Sometimes the only way out is through. When you're like, Tuesday night, Wednesday night of Hell Week, you've never been that miserable in your life. You're hallucinating. All these things are going on. You just sort of accept the situation that you're in and don't get frustrated by it because

Starting point is 00:11:04 there's nothing you can do to change it except for quit, which is not an option. Okay. So what is hell week? So in seal training, you have to go through several months of training to get to the final sort of, not the final test, but it's the final sort of selection test as far as where they're testing, how tough you are. And it's five, five and a half days of, you stay awake basically the entire time. You get two, one or two, like hour and a half, two hour naps. But those happen like three, four days in. So you're up for four days.

Starting point is 00:11:33 You're up for, yeah, you're up for, I believe it, I believe it's 96 hours from the, point you wake up on Sunday morning, I think it's like Wednesday afternoon, you get your first, they call it a nap. And so it's like 90 minutes or 120 minutes. I'm not sure exactly. Are you allowed to have any caffeine or like stimulants or is it purely just? You can take whatever you want to before it starts. So Sunday morning, you can wake up and take whatever you want. Obviously, whatever is legal. But then after that, I mean, no, they're just, they're going to give you whatever they're going to give you. There was one, one thing they did to like mess with guys' heads. So every couple of hours, they would have a table.

Starting point is 00:12:07 set up and they would put some Gatorade because they keep you, they actually keep you fairly well fed. The food's not great, but they keep you well fed because you have all these calories. They can keep pushing you and pushing you and pushing you, which is different than a lot of other selection courses where they sort of starve you. And when you're being starved, you really can't move that fast. You really can't carry that much weight and you get really emaciated and whatnot. But in Seal train, it's like they feed you when they feed you when they feed you, but they expect you to keep moving. So every few hours, they'll actually set up Gatorade stations. And so you'll go and you can grab you have like 90 seconds and you can chug as much gatorade as you want uh you know from these cups

Starting point is 00:12:40 but on one of the one of the days i think it was like monday night or tuesday night of hell week um we ran over to the table we got our 90 seconds to have some gatorade and they had only put they put oral rehydration salts in the water so it was no flavor nothing and so it's just tastes like salt water which is it obviously is not great and that literally broke people so guys were so expectant of having you know that was their self-fation that was they were they were thinking like, okay, in two hours, three hours, whatever, I'm going to be able to have some Gatorade. And like, they plays, everybody has their own strategy for making it through Hellweek. And so you, I saw two guys in particular just like that were close to me, uh, quit when they

Starting point is 00:13:19 went over there. And one guy just saw his face dropped and he almost started crying because he was, it was only salt water. He just, and he couldn't, he couldn't do it. Um, and so he, so he quit at at that point. So yeah, they play these, they play these mind games with you. So all of Hellweek, you're, you're getting surf torches, you're laying in the water. You're running with a ruck. you're carrying a boat on your head, you're paddling out in the ocean with the boats, you're carrying logs around. And it's, I forget the exact number of miles that you do,

Starting point is 00:13:46 but it's like multiple marathons. Like you run like 100, 150 miles. And the entire time, you're carrying at least 40 pounds per guy of something, whether it's a boat or whether it's a ruck or whether it's a log or something like that. Yeah. You mentioned carrying the boats. Have you ever met Mr. Goggins?

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Starting point is 00:14:53 profit with NetSuite. And guys, for just a few more weeks, you can access their one-of-a-kind flexible financing program at NetSuite.com slash iced. Once again, that is netsweet.com slash iced. netseweed.com slash ICED. Thank you so much, NetSuite, and back to the episode. You mentioned carrying the boats. Have you ever met Mr. Goggins? I've not met Goggins. No, no, definitely, definitely familiar. He's here in Vegas. I wonder, do you think... He lives here in Vegas? Yeah. Oh, cool. Yeah. Do you think that all Navy SEALs have that level of like, because that's like,

Starting point is 00:15:25 inhuman when I hear the things that he's done. Like, I straight up and think he's like, he has to be from a different planet. Yeah, well, he's, he's definitely taken the mental toughness thing and really, really run with it, no pun intended. I think, so when I look at Gagins, my read on him is obviously he's the real deal. You can't fake that. That's first and foremost. Like you can't fake that level of commitment to what he's doing. And then number two, it's like he is a professional athlete. Like he is out there like as an endurance sports guy. Like he is and he's crushing it. And he absolutely has found a different part of his brain to go into to be able to do these kinds of things. And I'm not sure what his motivation is. I'm not sure why or his drive

Starting point is 00:16:02 is, I'm not sure what that is. But he found it and he's and he's going for it. And I, so I would say like for me, I have that level of drive, but not to get out and run. I have that level of drive in combat, you know, if I'm, if I'm in a bad situation or something like that. And I, and I think to, and I think what Goggins message is and what people can really take away from it is, and I, and I don't know this, but I think maybe this is what Goggins is trying to teach is like everybody to an extent has that, right? Like, think about the intention. intensity of we just talked about Hellweek. We're talking about, you know, Goggins and all the extreme things that he's done. Imagine, imagine if somebody, you know, put a gun to your,

Starting point is 00:16:41 you know, to your wife's head or to, uh, to a, you know, a family member that you love, they put a gun to their head and we're like, hey, you're going to go through Seal Hellweek or you're going to go run those 150 miles. And if you quit, you know, we're going to pull the trigger, right? You have it in you to not quit. You might not have it in you to, to run it that fast. you might not have it, and you've just physically to, like, carry the boats that you need to and hell awake or something. But you have it within you to not quit. You have it within you to push and push and you will complete those 150 mile, 150 mile race or whatever, or you'll die trying because you found the motivation, you found the drive, you found the reason to do it. And I think that that's the message

Starting point is 00:17:19 that Goggins is trying to push. It's like, dude, find your why, find why you're doing what you're doing and you're unstoppable. You know, it's funny. On a very small scale, I mean, obviously I can't relate to that sort of example. But on a lot of tasks, I imagine that if there were a gun points to my head, and they said, if you don't do this task, you don't finish by a certain time, they're going to pull the trigger. If I think to myself, that's the situation, all 100% finish it. Then I know, like you said, you have what it takes to finish it. It's possible. And so for me, that's always been a good reminder that you can push through anything that seems really difficult in the moment. Because if you're at that, you'll find a way to make it work. And that just means it's possible, and therefore you could do it.

Starting point is 00:17:58 Yeah, absolutely. And as soon as you find whatever that motivation is, whatever that drive is, great. Like, you're unstoppable at that point. And sometimes people just find things that they really love doing, right? Maybe you just really love selling real estate. And you just dive into this. We're talking about fish tanks earlier. It's like, you're super into that. And you can spend hours and hours and hours doing that. So there's those things that you enjoy. But then there's those times in life where I do not enjoy this. I do not want to do this. But it's just got to get done. And it's time to man up and get it done. So how did you make it through Hell Week? So my strategy, my mental strategy was different. I've never heard anybody else sort of have the same strategy I did. So what most guys do is they sort of think meal to meal. So every, I think it's like every six hours, they give you a meal and there's like the drinks in between that. But from day one of seal training, including going through boot camp and everything, I was preparing myself mentally for Hell Week. And so for me, I took every week as sort of one day. Every week was a day. So when it came time to Hell Week, I was like, all right, this is just. just another week. And I've heard other guys say, too, it's like, well, one way to look at how a week is it's actually kind of nice because you don't have to wake up, you know, because the hardest part of the morning is like when you wake up in seal training, you're like, dude, this sucks. I do not want to go. I do not want to go out there. Most of the guys that quit, they quit as soon as they wake up in the morning and they go ring the bell before the day even starts, right? Because that's that, that misery sort of breaks them. So for me, mentally, it was just a matter of, I was like,

Starting point is 00:19:23 this is, this is who I am. This is what I want to do. And quite frankly, you're going to have to put a bullet in my head or I'm going to die trying. Like I'm not, you're going to have to drag me off this beach because this is who I am. This is what I want to do. And yeah. What are the differences between the people who make it through and don't make it through? Are there any like characteristics that you see that you could point out in the beginning? Like, this guy's not going to make it.

Starting point is 00:19:44 In the beginning, most of the time, no. I mean, don't get me wrong. You have some like really strange oddballs who kind of show up and you're like, okay, this guy's like, he's not going to make it. You can just kind of tell because they're like emotionally unstable or something. but you have like a class of maybe 400 guys show up for training. And so there's some odd balls that you can tell right off the bat, okay, that guy's not going to make it.

Starting point is 00:20:03 But for the most part, no, it's completely unpredictable. There's nothing I can say if I was to look at 100 guys who were about to start seal training. I might be able to pick out two or three of them that are not going to make it just if I know their personality. But everybody else, it's, man, it's totally up to you to make a decision at that moment. So in steel training, it's all about, you know, team building. You work as a team. But in reality, it's sort of an individual sport. like they're not going to kick you out.

Starting point is 00:20:27 So this is another thing to understand about seal training that's very different than others. Is if you go through, let's say, Green Beret selection, I don't know the exact numbers, but this is just the general idea. So let's say 100 guys show up to Green Beret selection. They put them through incredibly strenuous and incredibly difficult selection course. At the end of that, you might have the maybe like 40 or 50 guys who made it through, right, who finished the course. But then they'll take only 20 of them. And they say, you know, only 20 of you. the other 30 of you who made it through,

Starting point is 00:20:56 you can try again, but we're only selecting these 20 or whatever, out of the 100. When you go to seal training, if you're standing at the end, you're in. And so because of that, they make it excessively,

Starting point is 00:21:08 excessively brutal. There's some good parts about that and there's some bad parts about that, but they make it excessively brutal because really the only way to weed you out is if you quit. So they just make it as horrible as possible. Was there any person that stood out

Starting point is 00:21:23 as just having the highest level of intensity. They didn't show any signs of discomfort or suffering. And if so, where are they now? There were some guys who it didn't seem to phase them that much. I actually had a buddy who I went through, he was the class ahead of me, we were both from Wisconsin. He was just so mentally tough. And he was just, once he finished how weak I was talking with him,

Starting point is 00:21:45 he was like, oh, wasn't that bad. I mean, it was tough. He was like, wasn't that bad. And he was just like, didn't seem phased by it. Unfortunately, a few months later, he got dropped from training for like, I think made some bad calls on some different stuff. So he didn't make it through some of the training stuff. But I remember, I was like, dude, this didn't faze you at all. You know, like, for me, it like crushed my soul. And then I

Starting point is 00:22:05 had to like push past that. But he was just like, no, it wasn't that bad. And which I'm like, that's nuts. But yeah, he unfortunately didn't finish the, didn't finish the course. But yeah. But for the most way, it affects guys, you know. That's interesting. Do you think there was something like in childhood where he experienced that was just so hard? Where at the, like this pales in comparison? No, no, I think he's just wired to just... Some dudes are just wired different.

Starting point is 00:22:28 You know, Gagins might be one of those guys, like, just wired different. Like, he's, you know, and I don't know what that is. But, yeah, I... It's a pretty, pretty rare thing to have those guys that just aren't that affected by it. I'd be one of the guys who quits in the morning. He wakes up and it's like 68 degrees in the room or whatever. He's like, it's a little cold in here. A little chill.

Starting point is 00:22:47 I like to go back to my heated house. Yeah. 69 is like, no. A little too cold. 70's perfect. 71, I'm hot. You know what's crazy. So during that we're talking about the nap.

Starting point is 00:22:57 So you do have to wake up from this nap, right? So it's like four days in, you are allowed to sleep on a cot in a tent for, I think it's two hours. And then the instructors come out with blow horns and they wake you up. And the very first thing that you do, so keep in mind, you've been doing this incredibly brutal,

Starting point is 00:23:14 soul-crushing, physical training exercise. And then when they, wake you up, you have to go jump into the freezing cold ocean and salt water. So the other thing that's going on is because you're constantly covered in sand, you have chafing. So you have chafing between your legs under your armpits, around your neck, around your belt. It's like between your legs and stuff like your thighs and such. It's like raw hamburger meat. And you have like bald spots on top of your head from carrying the boats and the sand just grinding away at your scalp. And so you have all these wounds. And then they've all started to start, they've all started to kind of heal over over those two

Starting point is 00:23:50 hours and then you have to go break the scabs jump in the freezing cold salt water and that was that was the moment when um that's when i saw the most amount of grown men weeping and these were all guys who were going to make it through these were all guys had reached the point where they're not going to quit so all those guys made it but i remember running to the ocean and seeing i think i know for sure at least i saw two guys um to my left uh crying um because it was so miserable so yeah getting up in the morning's not the deal. What was the closest that you got to quitting throughout the entire time? And how did you, what place did you have to go to to decide to stick with it? So my, I actually came very close to quitting on night one of hell week. We had been doing log PT, so carrying around the logs. And one of the guys

Starting point is 00:24:37 who was on our team, he sort of, he pretended to be injured. And he was like, and we were, we were holding the log above our heads. And he, he pretended to be injured. And he just sort of fell to the ground all dramatically. So when that happened, all of the weight from the log shifted to me, and it, like, popped in my back. So it was a, I got a bulging desk, and I didn't realize this till later. So I had a bulging disc in my back. And I, like, screamed. And I told the, told the guys, I was like, drop the log, drop the log. So we put the log down. The instructors are screaming at us. They're screaming at him to get the thing going again. And so, and then after that, I had this limp. And I was like, this is not good. This is really, really not good. And also prior to

Starting point is 00:25:13 starting hell week about 48 hours prior to that i got what's called vge viral gastroenteritis which is basically the flu you have diarrhea and vomiting for basically about five days so i got that the friday afternoon before hell week so for the left for the three days prior to hell week i was in a hotel room just vomiting and uncontrollable diarrhea and when hell week started um i i thought i was good to go but i was not um had some gatorade and stuff before i started hell week and i immediately vomited it up within the first two minutes of Hell Week. And I was just projectile vomiting and doing pushups and my own vomit for the first bit. And then I got this injury.

Starting point is 00:25:49 And so this is all like night one of Hell Week. We're laying in the water and it's, you know, freezing cold. And they had us, you know, whatever, just kind of doing sort of torture or something. And then I was, I basically in my head was like, I told myself, I was like, I'm done. Like this is, this is my limit. I'm in excessive pain. And it wasn't because the moment was so bad. It was because I thought, I can't do this for another two, three, four, five days.

Starting point is 00:26:10 I was like, man, I'm only, I'm only a day into this, not even a day into this, and I'm already hurting. There's no way I'm going to make it through. So I started feeling sorry for myself. And I was like, well, I'm going to fail out anyway. Might as well just end my suffering now. I started feeling sorry for myself. And in that moment, I snapped out of it. And I sort of pictured myself in the future as a seal. And I was like, no, that's the guy I want to be. And then from that point where I was like, I got angry at the instructors because I was like, these guys almost got me to quit. Like they almost got me to quit.

Starting point is 00:26:42 And then I was like, all right, never again. And so that was the, I came very close to quitting. And then at that moment, something snapped in my head and quitting was never an option. Did you say surf torture? Yeah. What is that? But before we get into that, as many of you guys may know, I am a single man. Despite all of these comments we're showing on the screen right now that are saying how much of a catch I am.

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Starting point is 00:28:17 life and getting married, I will officiate. Yes, I officiated Graham's wedding. I can do yours too. All you got to do is message hashtag ICH to your in-app concierge and you can skip that entire waitlist. Thank you so much, the league for sponsoring this episode and back to the podcast. Did you say surf torture? Yeah. What is that? It's the simplest thing. You literally just go lay in the freezing cold water for as long as the instructors want you to lay in the water. And what they do is they test the temperature of the water and they have a chart that they look at. And it tells them how long they can keep you in there before guys start getting hypothermia. And so if the water's a little bit warmer, you stay in the water longer.

Starting point is 00:28:52 If it's colder, you stay in a little less because, again, they're going for your core temperature. And before Hell Week in particular, they'd have you swallow a pill, which goes through your digestive track. And so what they do is when you come out of the water, they walk by with a little computer scan. and it reads your core temperature because that pill is in your core and knows exactly what your core temperature is. So they have it down to like a science. They know exactly how far they can push you. And so then guys who are a little bit too low, they'll pull them out of the water and they'll make them, you know, do like pushups or jumping jacks on the shore. And then everyone else, like you don't have hypotherma. You're good. Go back in. And so then you go lay back in the water. And you're laying

Starting point is 00:29:26 right in the water right with that, right in the surf zone. And so you're just getting this water, this salt water and everything is going up and down your body. So it's like going up your nose, all the sand that's being kicked up. It's going in your ears. It's going in your eyes. It's going up your nose. And you lay there for a very, very, very long time. And they do this multiple, multiple, multiple times. So you finish that for like 45 minutes or however long it is based on the temperature. And then it's like, all right, cool. Pick up your log and you're going to go run eight miles with this thing in the soft sand. And when we come back, you put the log down, all right, cool, back in the water for another hour. And like, that's what Hellweek is. And then,

Starting point is 00:29:59 all right, now you're going to carry this boat 12 miles on your head and you're going to bring it back. and then you're going to go get sort of tortured, you know, so that's, that's what it is. Yeah. It's very disorienting stuff. If you're physically incapable but mentally capable, do they still kick you out? Like if you just collapse, but you want to keep going, would they then kick you out? Yeah, absolutely. They would.

Starting point is 00:30:17 So it's brutal. It's medieval. It's, they're not there to cobble you. They're not there to, nobody cares about your feelings. Nobody cares about what you as an individual want. Their job for the seal instructors is to choose guys who are going to represent the American people on the battlefield. And we had a saying in the seals like the, the, um, the American taxpayer deserves to have the best warriors representing them on the battlefield. And so no, they will

Starting point is 00:30:44 kick you out in two seconds. If you can't take it, you can't take it too bad. Look, I pay a good amount in taxes and grand pays an extreme amount of taxes, but I still feel like I don't deserve that. Yeah. Like I also feel like from what I heard from Mr. Ballin is that a lot of the Navy SEALs to me are underpaid. I mean, to go through that, I think that deserves like 500 grand in year. Yeah. Well, they also don't want to attract the wrong crowd, right? Or maybe that would attract better talent? I don't know. Well, I think you want to attract guys who want to do the job. That's the thing. So the thing we always joked about. So, okay, so when I signed up for seal training, there just so happened, there was like a shortage. They didn't have enough guys to go through seal

Starting point is 00:31:22 training at the time. And so this was pre, you know, pre-Bin-Lodin shooting. In which case, you know, recruiting has been easy since then but uh they didn't have enough guys even showing up to training because again they're not going to lower their standards um so they were trying to get more guys to at at least show up so one of the things they did was they offered a 40 000 bonus if you finish seal training so if you sign up and you finish you get 40 000 minus taxes um i remember when we got our bonus we were all laughing because we were like we would all do this for free was literally our attitude obviously we you know we're young but it's like you got to pay your bills but we're like we'd do this for free. You don't have to pay us anything. We're happy to do this. We want to do this.

Starting point is 00:32:03 And so the amount of money that you're paying guys doesn't really affect it too much about who's showing up as far as recruiting. I don't think. At least not the guys who are going to make it through. Nobody's in, you know, Tuesday night of Hell Week. And they're like, well, I wish I was getting paid 50K more per year. I'm going to think I'm going to get out of the Navy. I'm not going to do the seal thing anymore. Right. Like that's not that's not even entered into the sort of the equation. Like if you're if you're a seal, your family is going to be taken care of. Obviously, you have to be financially responsible, but you'll be taken care of. You'll be able to save money if you don't spend, you know, if you don't have bad spending habits and stuff. But now, to be fair, like when you become a seal, you do get some special pays and things like that per, per month, like extra stuff added on top of your normal Navy pay. What's the base income of a Navy seal? I do not remember. And I've been out for seven years, so my numbers would be totally off.

Starting point is 00:32:53 I believe it with Mr. Ball and it was saying somewhere like $60,000 a year. Okay, it could be something like that, yeah. The benefits. I'm sure the benefits increased it. Yeah, because you got health care, and everything's taken care of. Yeah. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:33:03 But to be fair, yeah, it's like we should take care of our elite guys and Green Berets and Rangers and seals and all that stuff for sure. But also, I mean, the guys would do the job for free, quite frankly, because we just love it. How was the expectation versus reality of that? It was actually worse than what I thought it was going to be because I watched the Buds Class 234 Discovery Channel documentary that was done in like the late 90s or early 2000s pre 9-11. And I remember watching, you know, the instructors, like, for example, there's one where they have, where the students, the SEAL trainees have to do this 50 meter underwater swim.

Starting point is 00:33:42 And they finish the swim. And then the instructors are like, hey, guys, like, you just proved to your bodies that you can control it through your mind or something like that. And they were kind of like given, like, you know, hoo-ya. You know, they were kind of like being nice to the guys a little bit. And I remember specifically when we did that 50-meter underwater swim, I got back and I was like, oh, they're going to be like nice to us. They're going to like give us this sort of mental, you know, like, whatever, some sort of lesson about

Starting point is 00:34:03 like mental toughness or something. No, they beat us as soon as we were done. And when I say beating, it's just physical, you know, physical, you know, PT or whatever. But yeah, the expectation was actually much worse than, it was much worse than I thought it was going to be, ironically. And how was Hellweek relative to like Seer training? Seer training. Oh, Hellweek's, it's like on a whole different ball game. You could compare Hell Week to like, if Hell Week is the Green Bay Packers, Seer Training is like your local JV, like, no way. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:34:36 Seer training is not, at least at least the seal training that, a seer training that I went through, like it was not, it's not that big of a deal. It's not me wrong. It's challenging. But it's not even in the same like realm of, of anything. Yeah. And just for people to get an understanding, my very limited knowledge on that is they like release you.

Starting point is 00:34:52 to some forest and then chase you down essentially. Yeah, so there's some of that. The seer training that I went through, so Seared survival, evasion, resistance, escape, basically you're simulating, running from an enemy that's trying to capture you. Eventually, they do capture you, and then you're put into a simulated prison for a few days.

Starting point is 00:35:09 And don't get me wrong, that was challenging. It was uncomfortable, but it's just not in the same ballpark as, like, Hellweek. So, for example, like, let's say 100 guys show up to seal training. Before you even get to Hellweek, you're going to lose 50 guys because they quit. once you start hell week you're going to lose of the guys that are left you're going to lose another 50 to 60 percent of them so at the end of that you have you know you're down to like 20 guys

Starting point is 00:35:30 seer training um i think we lost anybody like you know so it's it's challenging but it's not yeah it's just an entirely different realm i would say so going through that when you come back to america and you see people complaining about traffic or maybe someone cut them off or something like that do you feel like people are just too soft um i feel i think that people are a bit entitled and we get used to things. My wife's probably laughing if she's watching this because she'll see me get angry. I get road rage.

Starting point is 00:35:58 I'm like, how are you coming off? But, yeah, I think that society as a whole, we've become far too effeminate. We've become far too soft. We've become far too weak. And I think that that's not just on the physical side of physical strength. It's the mental game.

Starting point is 00:36:15 People have become so entitled. They become, yeah, again, very just effeminate and weak. And everything bothers them. And everybody has to, everybody demands that each individual in society bows to their own particular, you know, thought process and what they want. And I think that that's a huge problem. So if I can go back to take this philosophically a little bit. So if you look at the beginning of the Bible, you look at the beginning of Genesis.

Starting point is 00:36:45 You look at when Adam and Eva in the Garden of Eden, you know, snake or Satan or whatever, comes to them and he tempts them with the fruit to, you know, and this is sort of the fall of man, like when man no longer is perfect. The thing he says is that you will become gods knowing good and evil, right? And so the first sin, the very, the very foundation of what makes humans flawed is that we want to be God. We want to choose what is good and evil. We want to make up whatever we want to as far as what's right and wrong. And obviously that's going to cause strife and all this other stuff. But the deeper thing is it causes ego and entitlement. And when people walk around, they see themselves as a God in a way, little G. And they, and they are saying like, I am God.

Starting point is 00:37:30 I choose whatever. I choose what reality is. And everyone else has to coutow to that. And I am God. I, you know, I deserve to be driving faster than everybody else on the road. They're not, they're not actually thinking that, but on a deeper level, that's what ego is. So I guess what I'm trying to say is, The big thing is just ego. Everybody is so self-obsessed with themselves, and then that causes a lot of the strife and turmoil. You mentioned something really interesting in there, which was Little G, because it just so happens. We have them here today sitting right beside something. This is Little G.

Starting point is 00:38:03 Okay. Yes, sir. Okay, but we should. That's a great nickname for him. I like it a lot. All right. That's great. About people being too effeminate or soft, do you think every guy should know how to fight?

Starting point is 00:38:15 every man needs to know how to protect and care for those around him. I think that that is a fundamental part of what it means to be a man. I think that the ability to physically protect yourself and protect others, I think, is important. I think that guys who are weak, guys who choose to not know how to protect others, who cannot defend themselves. I think Jordan Peterson's actually talked about this, where if you have guys who are weak, and they are not able to protect themselves or others, it is impossible for them to be virtuous and truly like a virtuous man

Starting point is 00:38:51 because they're kind and they're peaceful and everything, not because they're good and their heart, not because they're capable of violence, but because they're just so afraid of getting into any kind of altercation. And yeah, I think it's a duty of every man to know how to defend himself and that way he can protect others because ultimately it's not about you.

Starting point is 00:39:09 It's about protecting your wife and your kids and society as a whole. So yeah, you absolutely need to. Do you think it's an obligation for men to be in somewhat good physical shape to have a six-pack or to not be obese or something like that? I think it's incumbent upon every human being to be as healthy as you realistically can. We don't need to go overboard. But I think that, yeah, humans should absolutely be healthy. And, you know, there's, I don't think everybody needs to have six-pack abs, but like there's an objective measurement of, let's say, body fat percentage that is healthy.

Starting point is 00:39:40 and that's going to give you a long and happy and healthy life. And I think that that's incumbent upon the individual to try to strive for that. And again, we all fail. We all fail at that. And for me, I'll be the first one to raise my hand and be like, yeah, that's been a struggle of mine for the longest time. And at one point, I was actually like 100 pounds overweight, like 100 pounds heavier than I am right now and like suicidal and was like in a horrible, horrible place. Had a full-blown mental breakdown for like a year. but ultimately it's like the goal needs to be healthy it's not about fat shaming it's not about

Starting point is 00:40:14 um attacking how people are it's not about looking down on people it's about you need to take care of yourself so you can take care of others and so you can quite frankly so you can be happy it's very very difficult and again speaking of a personal experience to enjoy the world to enjoy your family to enjoy things in life um if you are extremely unhealthy so yeah i think it's i don't think it's just a man thing i just think it's a human thing got to be healthy when you were in that dark place and you mentioned you were suicidal. That's interesting because the fact that that was probably harder for you than hell week is like... Without a doubt. And people go through that. So if people think that they can't tolerate something like Hell Week, maybe that's just not what they can take or the

Starting point is 00:40:53 region in themselves that they can't take, but they have other things, problems that they're dealing with that could be harder. People go through hell years. True. I know. Yeah, lifetimes probably. Yeah, absolutely. I will absolutely say that so for me, I went to this really dark place. I developed an actual, an actual addiction to food. Not just any food, but like specifically like bread and sweets.

Starting point is 00:41:17 I don't know if it's gluten. I don't know, I don't know specifically what it is. There's a lot of sugar and bread. Yeah. So it's like the, but like I can have like Ezekiel bread, for example, or non-suggery bread.

Starting point is 00:41:25 It's fine. So I don't know what exactly it is. But I developed an actual addiction was diagnosed with like the actual addiction. And I had to go through the, um, uh, AA type program to get myself off of this.

Starting point is 00:41:38 And I put myself through it. I actually just listened to Russell Brand's book Recovery, which is hilarious and phenomenal. So anybody who's dealing with addiction, definitely go check that book out. And I listen to the audio version of it. And it's really great. So, like, I had to put myself through that to deal with this actual addiction. And, yeah, I can honestly say, as somebody who has fought in three wars, I've been through all kinds of hell on earth.

Starting point is 00:42:06 I can tell you that the most difficult thing was getting control of the addiction and then getting control of my health and everything else that went with that without a doubt. So to people who struggle with eating healthy or I think there's a lot of people who actually are addicted to food who just don't realize it. And people who are going through that, it's like you don't have to beat yourself up and go like, oh, I'm a weak person. I'm a terrible person. I'm the worst human being ever. because I made it through Hell Week with a herniated disc in VGE. It's like I've been shot. I've fought in the rewards.

Starting point is 00:42:40 I've done all this stuff. And the hardest thing I've ever had to deal with was that. So I would just encourage people who are in that situation. Keep working at it. Keep trying to figure it out. Don't give up. And don't just let yourself go and keep trying to get out of that hole. Do you think all of this stuff that you saw in war being shot at led to this?

Starting point is 00:43:03 Or do you think that this was like somewhat detached? hatched from all of that. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, I went for, I went for years, you know, going through, you know, seal training, whatever. But then, like, you go to combat and it's like, there's this constant stress that you have, and you have to cope with the stress in one way or another. And some guys, they deal with it with alcohol, some guys deal with it in a healthy way through exercise and stuff, which is, like, the way to do it. And for me, it's like, I started abusing, I started just eating too much. I started abusing food. And that eventually turned into a full-blown addiction and then when I was out of the military it's like I'd been in in combat and such after that

Starting point is 00:43:39 I went through this this dark period where um yeah for about a year year and a half I just um I think all my demons just came up and just just smacked me in the face and just man just brought me to my lowest point and nearly killed me but uh pulled through and uh you know so I'm able to keep you on what was your first job after completing seal training um so once I completed seal training, I was assigned to a West Coast SEAL team. And then I was within within the team, everybody has different specialties and jobs. And my job was actually as the radio operator. So my job was to I was the lowest ranking guy. And I was with the, I was assigned to be shooting buddies with the highest ranking guy in combat and be his, and be his radio man. How old were you at the time? Oh, man. Actually,

Starting point is 00:44:26 I think I turned 22 in Afghanistan. That's insane. Yeah, as my first deployment. Yeah. Okay, so your job, how did that work exactly? Like, could you walk us through the steps of, you know, calling in or working with someone of that ranking? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So when we go on an operation, the ground force commander, he's the highest ranking officer who's on the ground, his job is to direct the troops. And he doesn't need to be sitting there constantly on the phone talking back to

Starting point is 00:44:53 headquarters. He doesn't need to be requesting aircraft or if somebody gets shot, God forbid. He doesn't need to be the one calling in the meddaback. He needs to be focused on big picture. keeping, you know, all the different players in the game where they need to be, right, on the battlefield. And so my job was basically stick directly with him attached at the hip. Anything communication that needed to happen, it was my job to know all of that. So I knew the frequencies.

Starting point is 00:45:18 I knew where all the different elements on the battlefield were. And I would communicate between the different elements. I had three different radios on me and I would have to switch between them. I would have a different voice in each ear. Plus, I would then have to switch channels from time to time to talk to, like, you know, a third or a fourth element all at the same time while I'm fighting, firing my weapon, and the ground force commander is talking to me and giving me instructions, and then I'm trying to relay. So basically it was like a glorified combat switchboard operator.

Starting point is 00:45:44 Just making sure everything, making sure everything functions under fire, yeah. Would you say all of the years of training that you did adequately set you up for what real life combat is like, or was that still just a completely different world? I was definitely prepared for it. The training that our special operations guys go through is top-notch. And so when the first bullets were fired, first time in combat, I felt cool and calm and just followed my training, did what I was supposed to do. And I felt very much prepared for it. When I walked out, I was never thinking like, okay, I don't know what to do.

Starting point is 00:46:18 What am I doing? I never felt that in combat as a seal, never. What was the goal in Afghanistan? What was your specific mission? Yeah, so our specific mission, we were in an area in Southeast Afghanistan near the Pakistan border. And so the Pakistan border was controlled by a group of guys called the Haqani Network from the Haqani family. And so they controlled both sides of the border from Pakistan and Afghanistan. And so when I deployed in 2014, so 10 years ago, they, the Haqani network basically had unlimited weapons and ammo and terrorists coming across from Pakistan into Afghanistan. And at the time, U.S. forces were withdrawing from Afghanistan. And sort of, we call it retrograding. Basically, they were kind of, slowly over the course of months and years, we're sort of slowly falling back to

Starting point is 00:47:07 sort of core positions within Afghanistan. So our job was to basically just go out, find Taliban, because there's tons of them coming across the border, pick a fight with them, and kill as many of them as possible. That was it. That was the job.

Starting point is 00:47:21 There was no, you know, we weren't like trying to dismantle the network. It was just slow these guys down as this influx of weapons and personnel is coming and trying to hit the bigger bases, basically. How do you pick a fight with him? Is it just going and... Just walk outside?

Starting point is 00:47:36 Just go walk outside. Just go walk right where you know they are. So you don't initiate, but you put yourself in a position where they'll engage with you first? Kind of, yeah. I mean, they're not just like standing around outside with rifles and like we're sneaking up on them and sniping them. Those kind of missions do happen. That's not the mission we were on. They...

Starting point is 00:47:58 Our thing was like we would go hit a house or something like that where we know there's weapons or something. and on our way to the house, they know that we're coming for the weapons. They know what our objective is. And so then now a big fight pops off. Or we do a mission where we're clearing through a series of houses and eventually they all kind of come out of the work to try to fight us.

Starting point is 00:48:18 And then we would just basically fight them at that point. Yeah. So it's kind of putting yourself out there, not as bait because we are the hunters, no doubt. But yeah, picking a fight and trying to knock out as many of them as Boston. You mentioned combat and actually going and taking people's lives. Was there anything that surprised you about the first time that you had to take someone's life? My first time that I got, so, so I'll say like in Afghanistan, you know, when we, when we're fighting, 99% of the time you really aren't even seeing the bad guys. You hear, you hear the bullets snapping past your head. You see the bullets impacting on the wall.

Starting point is 00:49:02 or leaves falling down on top. He has bullets are going over your head in a tree line or something. Most of the time you're not really seeing them very, at least during our deployment, the Taliban would stay very well hidden. They'd fire from dark windows. They'd fire from hidden in tree lines and things like that. So I don't know if I even personally shot anybody in Afghanistan. My first time for sure, knowing that I took someone's life, I can't talk about that just

Starting point is 00:49:30 yet at this point in history maybe in a couple years I can talk about it. My, I was surprised. Actually, I wasn't that surprised. I was just, it wasn't that big of a deal because it had to get done. I was on a sniper mission and, yeah, took a couple guys out. And it wasn't, you know, I didn't get any joy from it because war is tragic and it's horrible and taking anybody's life. You know, I often think, I often think about the guys that I killed and was like, you know, know that's somebody's son don't get me wrong I did the right thing I needed to take those

Starting point is 00:50:05 guys out I have no regrets and I sleep just fine um but it just it just hits me it just hits you the tragedy of war like why do why do we have to keep doing this you know kind of going back to the beginning of our conversation it's like okay why why do we keep fighting and killing each other and it's so frustrating and it annoys me because um for me I'm actually my my personality I'm very much like a home body I just want to be home with my wife with my family I just want to live a nice quiet life um but Unfortunately, the world doesn't work like that. And sort of the particular skill set that I have, I go into places.

Starting point is 00:50:37 And that's not my reality. I mean, this is a nice, peaceful, calm existence all the time. So, yeah, as far as taking someone's life, if you know for sure that what you're doing is the right thing and you know for sure that that person is going to kill or hurt someone, you know, for me, it's like I had no problem with it. But I do recognize the tragedy of what's going on. I'm like, okay, I just spent my day hunting these guys down and, you know, taking them out. You know, it would be much better if I had spent my day, spent my life, you know, if I could spend my life building and making humanity better in some sort of way, you know. So I recognize the tragedy of it. There's no enjoyment there.

Starting point is 00:51:15 Maybe in other situations where you've had to take someone's life, what were the psychological effects of those, maybe where it wasn't so cut and dry? I've never been in a situation where it wasn't cut and dry. The only time, as far as me having to actually take someone's life, that's always been a cut and dry, very easy situation. The difficult part, one of the most difficult decisions, it wasn't a difficult decision because I knew it was the right thing to do, but I was in a situation where it's like I had to leave someone behind to die who I was trying to rescue. And we could not rescue this person. We were under fire. and I had to like leave this person and just go I'm sorry and you know that was that took a little bit more of a toll on me mentally but again I know that I made the right decision if had I tried to stay with that guy it was as an Iraqi civilian unfortunately who'd been shot by ISIS and we were trying to get him out I had to make the decision to leave him because I was like I'm going to die if I go up there I'm going to get shot like I'm going to die right here right now and I'm not going to rescue him and then ironically within 10 seconds after me not moving forward to to get this guy and sort of leaving him,

Starting point is 00:52:27 I ended up, I did end up getting shot from a different angle. I was like, I would be dead had I been up there. So that's the tragedy of it. That's the horror of it. You know, when you see war movies, you always see, you know, guys rescuing people or, you know, it's not, a lot of times it's not morally ambiguous. But in that situation, it was like, yeah, you have to make a decision to just leave someone to die. And that's not a decision that, you know, I won't ever have to make again.

Starting point is 00:52:56 But yeah. How long were you in Afghanistan before, before coming back to the United States and then going back out again? I was actually, I was in Afghanistan a very short amount of time. I was only in country, I think, for about four months because the particular outposts that we were working from, we were planning, the U.S. military was planning on shutting it down. So when I went there, it was only a few months. And then I, yeah, we all came back to the. came back to the States four or five months in. And yeah, and then I wasn't, that was 2014,

Starting point is 00:53:26 and I wasn't deployed again for about another 18 months, because you got to go through another 18 month cycle with a new seal platoon before you go out on another deployment. And then what was the second deployment that you did? The second deployment I did was, ironically, it sort of, it solidified what I do today. So on my second deployment, I was deployed to Southeast Asia, and we did basically nothing.

Starting point is 00:53:51 So our job was to go to partner nations, our allies, and work with their special operations units. And so specifically, I was in Thailand for six weeks of this deployment. And when I was in Thailand, I just remember I was so frustrated with the fact that you had a full seal platoon. And we are a four-hour helicopter ride away from villages in Burma, where people being raped and massacred and genocide is happening. happening and it's like we're just sitting here on this side of the border doing nothing about it. And to be clear, I understand the U.S. government, we can't just go get involved in everything. So I'm not saying the U.S. government needs to go into Burma. Now, maybe a little different story. But I was like, we don't, we don't need to go in there. I get that. I was, that's really one of the reasons that I was, that it solidified in my mind that I need to get out and go help people. And actually, if I can backtrack just a little bit, I talked about Mr. Ballin talked about this on his, on his YouTube video. When I was in Afghanistan, we talked about taking someone's life, I was in a situation where I almost had to shoot two little girls. And I made the decision in my head that I was going to kill them if they got any closer. And they had already kind of crossed the line to where they would hurt me if they detonated. We believe that they were

Starting point is 00:55:05 carrying suicide backpacks. And so, and one of the girls was, you know, maybe like eight, the other ones, like five, just little girls coming straight at us from the, or coming straight at my position. And so I was screaming at them to get away, get away. I let them get close enough to where if they blew up, they would hurt me, but they would not hurt my team. And I'm not exaggerated when I say, like, had they taken another step and a half forward, I would have shot both of them because they got to the point where they almost were close enough to hit my team. And so I already had gone through the mental exercise of saying, okay, I have to shoot these little girls. And that is the worst feeling in the world. that is something that messed with my head after that deployment and after that mission.

Starting point is 00:55:54 That's something that gave me flashbacks. That's something that brought me nightmares and sleep. I was like, what is happening in this world where little girls are being used by the Taliban to run at us? And I don't know for sure, but I would bet that the Taliban sent those little girls at us and were filming from some angle, probably for me to shoot the little girls. That's total guess. I have no evidence of that. But just looking at the situation, I'm like, that's probably what happened. What, to then use that and turn around and say, look at what the Navy SEALs shoot children.

Starting point is 00:56:21 Yeah, exactly. So I had that experience in 2014. And so then in 2016, I'm deployed to Southeast Asia. And my heart in my head was now, all right, there's these civilians in conflict zones. How can I help them? Like, what can I do to help them? I can't save all of them. I'm not Rambo.

Starting point is 00:56:39 But, you know, I want to do something. I want to do something. And so, anyway, during that deployment in 2016, I was very frustrated with the fact that I couldn't go help these people who I know genocide is happening right over there. And there's nothing I can do about it. And so when we got back from that deployment, like I knew I was getting out of the military and then I was going to find a way to go to these war zones and do what I could. And I didn't know what it ultimately was going to turn out to be.

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Starting point is 01:00:18 Sure. So I'll tell that story a little bit more in detail. So we were on a patrol through a particular neighborhood in Afghanistan. And we came across a child's backpack. The dog, the bomb sniffing dog sniffed it and saw that there was and sat on it, meaning that there's a bomb that let us know that there's a bomb inside that backpack. And so it was an IED sitting on the side of the road for the Taliban to try and kill us, right? And so our EOD, our explosive tech, he went up and put a small charge on it. We stepped back a little bit and blew up the IED in place. When that happened, the Taliban knew exactly where we were because the bomb had gone off. They thought that they had hit us. So they thought that we were weak. They thought we would have wounded. And so then they swarmed us to try and kill us.

Starting point is 01:01:03 But we didn't actually have any wounded. And so we ended up intercepting them before they got to us. Our platoon leadership made a really solid decision. and we're like, hey, we're going to get in position and wait for the Taliban to come to us. So we did that. And we ended up killing, I think, like, 20 or 25 Taliban as they were, like, assaulting our position. And it was a really, really good decision by our platoon leadership. But during that firefight, one of our Afghan allies was shot four or five times, I believe, in, like, the hips in the groin area.

Starting point is 01:01:31 So he's, like, screaming bloody murder. And we had to move back a few tree lines to set up a perimeter so we could call in a helicopter to evacuate him out. while we're in that circle, in that perimeter, we started intercepting Taliban radio communication saying that they knew where we were. The Taliban knew where we were. And they were planning on attacking us from the south. And in the perimeter, I was the only guy on the south in the open covering this particular field of fire. And so I was waiting for this attack to come from the south. And the only people that ever came from the south was these two little girls wearing the same exact kind of backpacks

Starting point is 01:02:09 that we had just blown up an hour earlier. They were running the same kind of things. And like, girls aren't going to school at that point. So very, very high likelihood that they were, that the Taliban sent them specifically straight at us, because the Taliban never attacked us after that. It was only the two little

Starting point is 01:02:27 girls. Very specific. They came exactly when the Taliban attack was going to happen and whatnot. And those girls had no idea what they were doing. They were probably just given these backpacks and told to go run out this direction. That's probably what happened. And they were, they were terrified. They were tears screaming down their face. They were horrified when we sort of made eye contact. I was watching them through my scope. So the one girl's face was sort of like blown up in my, you know, in the scope there. And I'm looking at her and I have like, I have my crosshair right

Starting point is 01:02:53 in the middle of her face. Because that's what you do with suicide bombers. You shoot them in the face. And I'm like screaming and like begging this girl, don't come any closer. And I don't speak the language. I'm just like waving at her. I'm just like with one hand on the machine gun because I'm laying down. And I'm just like, get away. Get away. way. Couldn't you fire a warning shot or something where you miss her, but now she sees the idea that, like, there's a bullet that's coming? In theory, yes, it all happened so fast that that wasn't an option.

Starting point is 01:03:20 Okay. I just had to put the scope directly on her. I was like, if she gets closer, this all happened over the course of, like, 10 seconds, right? So I immediately put the crosshers right on her face and was just like, as they're running straight at me, I don't have time for a point. And I was also using a machine gun, too. It would have been challenging. I'm not sure if it was going to work.

Starting point is 01:03:42 And why do you think they turned around last second? Because they saw me. They saw me laying on the ground pointing the rifle right at them because I started waving my arm. I was like, because I'm camouflaged a little bit. So they're not necessarily going to see me. And so then I started screaming at them. And I just saw the girl look straight down the scope.

Starting point is 01:03:56 Again, her face is like blown up in my mind. And I'm like, you know, yelling at her. And then they saw me. And then we're like, all right, we don't want to die today. So they turned around and went straight back the direction. they'd come from and then we never heard from the Taliban again that day yeah how do you how do you process that and how are you so open about speaking about these things i've noticed with some of the podcasts i've listened to like you're very candid about your experience and i i think that bottling

Starting point is 01:04:23 the stuff up doesn't doesn't help me doesn't help anybody uh we talked earlier in this podcast about like people need to know what the evil is that's out there so i've part of my job is to talk about that and like let people know hey here's what's up here's reality In a way, I found it actually was kind of cathartic for me at the beginning to sort of talk about this stuff because like, how do you go home and tell people about this? How do you, how do you, how do you sleep at night? How do you, you're like, how do you just move on with your life and just pretend that that didn't happen? And like, that's not even the worst of what I've seen. That's like a small amount of what I've seen. And so it allows me to tell the world about like

Starting point is 01:04:58 what's going on. And then also, too, with my organization, Stronghold Rescue and Relief, like, we still go into these situations. We intentionally seek these kinds of situations out to help people in those situations. And so I have to tell people about the reality of what's going on. These are deeply personal stories. You know, if you're just hanging out with me and we're just kind of chilling,

Starting point is 01:05:17 like I'm not going to bring this stuff up, but I will talk about it on a podcast because these stories need to be told and it's a way to help me heal, but then also have some good come out of it because if we're able to raise support to help others. How did the Taliban justify that? Like, what's going through their mind

Starting point is 01:05:35 where they think that's, reasonable to send out two little girls like that. I'm just curious. Yeah, so that's the fundamental question. We talked earlier about like, why can't we have world peace? Right. Because fundamentally, they don't value them the same.

Starting point is 01:05:48 So if you're driving through certain parts of Afghanistan or even Iraq, certain areas, you'll see that they'll have a goat in the, if the man is driving, they'll have a goat in the front seat and have the wife in the backseat. Literally, because they just don't value these terrorist organizations. They do not value women and human life in general the same way they. we do. And it's difficult for us to understand because we think we think that like, oh, there are certain values you need to have. Like, oh, we, we love and protect our wives and we love and protect our children and all that. Other cultures, especially these very twisted,

Starting point is 01:06:20 you know, terrorist groups, they do not care. I'll say a lot of the violence that I saw in Iraq was ISIS killing civilians, Iraqi civilians, Iraqi Muslim civilians who were just trying to get away from ISIS. And so ISIS would look at Iraqi Muslim civilians. They, look at them lower than dogs because you are abandoning what they what they what they think is you know the true islam or whatever right so these terrorist groups they in their minds it's like you're worse than the christians you're worse than the jews you're worse than the americans you know um if you leave us because you're leaving the true caliphate you're leaving the true empire you're leaving true islam right and so their their entire concept of morality is not the same as ours

Starting point is 01:07:04 and this is one of those things where it's like you can't not peacefully coexist with people like that. You cannot have them in your house. You cannot have them in your country. They need to stay over there. And if you come over here, you know, you're going to find out like, just just stay away from us and stop doing what you're doing. But yeah, entirely different value systems. It's difficult to fathom. You said that the story with those girls was not the worst that you've seen. Yeah, no. What would you say is the thing that maybe keeps you up most at night or the worst thing that you've seen? I'll say that nothing, nothing keeps me up. night. I sleep. Well, I don't sleep great, but nothing, there's nothing that truly like keeps me up.

Starting point is 01:07:43 There's images in my head constantly that I'll see. So when I was in, so I left the military in 2017 and I bought a one-way ticket to Iraq, basically to do humanitarian aid work. And I ended up with a group of other American volunteers and we were sort of embedded with the Iraqi army and we ended up becoming basically the Iraqi army's frontline combat medics because I just didn't have the medical personnel and I was not a medic but the level of training that I had as a seal basically made me a medic and the other guys as well um and so I the unit that we were attached to the Iraqi army unit they were assigned to actually go into West Mosul and clear West Mosul from the from the west side and so 30 days into that battle we've been the Iraqi army was fighting street to street house to

Starting point is 01:08:29 house and we were treating the wounded and ISIS is gunning down civilians and all this stuff and it's a horrible, horrible, undescribable tragedy and just evil. But on June 2nd, 2017, we came across a road. It was like it had been a, I believe, a four, six lane highway previously that was right in front of ISIS headquarters in the city overlooking the river and overlooking a lot of Mosul. And ISIS was holed up in a hospital, like a four or five-story hospital. and they had a bunch of civilians in there as using them as human shields to prevent airstrikes from taking them out.

Starting point is 01:09:07 So that's what they would do. And so as we got up close to there, we discovered on that road that the day before, ISIS had killed about 200 people. And so there was 200 bodies in the street and it was because what had happened, it was a mass exodus of civilians

Starting point is 01:09:23 all tried to get up and run away at the same time. And ISIS from their perch, from the high ground, just raked them all with machine guns and killed all of them. So we're talking women, we're talking kids, we're talking babies, pregnant women. The thing that always sticks out of my head was there was a, so about six feet away from where people could turn the corner and get to safety, like literally six or seven feet,

Starting point is 01:09:51 right there. There were three bodies of an Iraqi family. There was a father, a mother, and between them was their baby. If you looked at how the bodies were laying, the father clearly was the one holding the baby. And the mother was, you know, carrying some other stuff as they were trying to get just five or six feet away to safety. And the father had clearly been shot in the back from the machine gun fire. And when he was shot, he had clearly fallen forward. And his baby, he fell forward into the rubble of the street.

Starting point is 01:10:25 And his baby's head was bashed in. So there's a little one-year-old, maybe six-month-old, just tiny little baby with its head bashed in, laying between its dead mother and father, six feet away from freedom. And but then on that street, there was piles of bodies where people have been killed and then they tried to climb over the bodies

Starting point is 01:10:44 and then they were killed. And more people tried to climb over the bodies than they were killed. And so you're looking at the worst thing. And I remember when I saw this, my brain for a second, my brain literally said, this isn't real because it's not in black and white.

Starting point is 01:11:01 And I was like, that's a weird thought. Why am I thinking that? It was because I'd only ever seen things like this in history books in black and white photos. The atrocities of the Nazis, the atrocities, you know, Pol Pot and the Camerooges, you know, all the different communist killing fields and such as well. I'd never seen something like this in real life. I was like, how was this in color? I don't, my brain, it took me like three seconds to process what I was looking at as I looked out over the bodies.

Starting point is 01:11:26 But within that, within the pile of bodies, there was a little girl who was still alive. And she was like maybe three or five years old. And so we were like, she's, you know, 50 to 100 yards away from ISIS. Isis is all around her. And she's like hiding under her dead mother. And we were like, all right, well, we got to go do something. We got to get this little girl out because she's not going to survive the day. She's going to get cooked in the heat in Mosul.

Starting point is 01:11:54 And so, yeah, we launched a rescue mission. to go get her. And so that whole situation, that level of brutality, was something I just had never seen before. And I've seen those images and I've seen stuff like that. Unfortunately, dozens of times since then, not on that scale, not 200 people, but the same thing working in Burma in particular

Starting point is 01:12:16 and where there's all kinds of evil happening there as well. So, yeah, just really, really, really dark stuff. So to understand this, you realize you couldn't help out, enough as a Navy SEAL. So you became, went back to being a civilian and then went to these places because you realized you, I guess, weren't beholden to the command of the Navy. Well, so to be clear, like my job as a SEAL is a very important job and it was, it was making a difference in the world and it was an important job for sure. My thought was just there are people in these

Starting point is 01:12:52 active war zones where they have nobody to come help them. They don't have Navy SEALs and Green Berets and Army Rangers and Marines to come help them. They don't have that. They doesn't exist. And so when ISIS shows up at their front door or when the Burma Army shows up at their front door, they have no idea what to do. There's nobody coming to help them. They're on their own. And so this, so why I got out was it wasn't about like, oh, I don't want to be controlled by the government. That wasn't at all. I was just like, there's, there's a need over there that nobody's filling. I'm only one guy, but I'm going to go fill that need as much as I can. And how are you able, like, legally to do that? Because I imagine that you are still taking lives

Starting point is 01:13:31 and you're a U.S. citizen, albeit in a different country. Like, is there any sort of like legal stuff that's happening there or when you are in those countries? How are you affording, you know, the weaponry, the foods, all of that stuff? Was it just provided to you by the government? Yeah. So each situation is different. First and foremost, we're only going to work in situations that are clearly black and white, good versus evil. And so the situations that we choose to go into, there's no ambiguity. You know, we're not going to go into some place where it's like, you know, maybe the U.S. supports one side or whatever.

Starting point is 01:14:04 Like, that's not it at all. That's one. Number two is our focus when we choose a place to go into is like we're going there as humanitarians. We're there to extract people and protect people as needed. So our attitude is we're not going there to fight. Occasionally it does happen, but we are not going there to fight. That is not our intention.

Starting point is 01:14:21 And then the third thing is when we go into these places, we always work with local authorities, always at their invitation in conjunction with them. We're not running around like cowboys. We're not showing up and just hopping in a car and doing whatever we want. Like, no, the first thing we do is, you know, we have an invitation from the local group from the government. And then we have and then we find ways to help them. As far as weapons, we only carry weapons. If they allow us to carry weapons, we do not bring weapons or anything like that internationally. the only the

Starting point is 01:14:51 we also with the weapons and ammo it's like they always give it to us there's been a couple times where we've had to just buy a couple of like hand guns or pistols or something in the country local forces

Starting point is 01:15:01 and local authorities know that we're doing that so we have you know some so we can protect ourselves if there's you know something squirrelly happens but yeah we're not there going to try to be rambo we're going there to try and evacuate people medically

Starting point is 01:15:14 and then also do some front line mentoring for the groups that already are there and we're like hey here's how you can best protect this village. Here's how you can best stop these bad guys from coming in here and raping and murder and everybody. And that's, that's our mission set. Yeah, but it's always in conjunction with them. We're there to serve those people. We don't take any pay from them. Everything we do is nonprofit. So we go and find people who would never be able to pay us and we offer them the same services that, in a way that, that Americans have. You know, we have seals and rangers and stuff to

Starting point is 01:15:45 to protect us. These people don't. And so we bring what we can there to some knowledge that we can there to help those people survive. And how is it all afforded? Like, how do we pay for everything? Yeah. Yeah. So I run it.

Starting point is 01:15:55 So Stronghold Rescue Relief is a nonprofit 501c3 organization. And all of the money that comes in, 100% of it is just donations from people. So the way it works is we work primarily on a sort of subscription style Netflix style model. So 99% of our funding that comes in, it's from on average, like $20 a month donations, from thousands of people. And so because of that, we're able to raise several million a year to go and serve people

Starting point is 01:16:22 who otherwise would never be able to have this kind of help. And it's, you're directly, we are directly saving lives that, if we do not go to these places, nobody's going there. Because the gap and the need is so big, we're only able to, we're only a drop in the bucket of what's needed.

Starting point is 01:16:39 And I'm sure you have a link to that, which will be down in the description. If you guys want to help support that, which would be absolutely amazing. Or do the desire to call, come from to help people like this? You know, I don't really know. I think it's something that's innate. My father always taught me to, you know, protect others and look after others. And I think that that's something that was instilled in me at a young age. Yeah, I think my father was such a, was such a servant

Starting point is 01:17:01 of other people. He was also, and when I say that, he, like, took care of our family incredibly well. And then also, when I was young, he was in the, in the Air Force Reserves. And so he got activated after 9-11. and was, you know, was part of, it was on, he worked on C-130 aircraft transport planes and things like that. So he was over in Iraq and Afghanistan and the Middle East and stuff. So I was aware of that. The impulse to serve and help other people is, I think a lot of it just comes down to, you know, that statement, you know, greater love, hath, no man than this, that he laid down his life for his friends. And I truly believe that humanity, where all brothers and sisters, people say that and they don't really truly, truly mean that. I was like, I truly mean that.

Starting point is 01:17:45 I've had people ask me, like, why would you go to Iraq and get shot to rescue a little brown Muslim girl as a white Christian male from America? And it's like, because I don't see her as all those things. I see her as a little girl that needs help. And I'm going to go help her. And once I've, everything that I've seen, once I've seen, once I've seen all this stuff, I can't unsee it. I can't just sit back and relax.

Starting point is 01:18:08 I can't just not go and help these people knowing full well that they need help. imagine if there was some sort of emergency here outside and somebody was dying and it's like, well, you're going to call the cops so you're going to call an ambulance, you're going to go and try to help them. You're going to stop everything you're doing to try and go and help that person that's bleeding out

Starting point is 01:18:28 or whatever right outside because you have goodness in your heart. And so I just see that on a different scale. It's like I go to other countries and stronghold rescue relief. We go to other countries to do that. And so this specific instance with this girl that was hiding under her,

Starting point is 01:18:43 mom's body. How did you go and actually bring her out? Was this the video that like kind of went viral? Yes, this was the video that went viral. So we, um, the group of guys I was with, we were all, again, just American civilian volunteers. And, um, we talked with the Iraqi army and the Iraqi army, um, basically called the American military. And the American military agreed to give us a smoke screen. So the American military started firing a smoke screen to kind of blur the vision of the, of the, of the ISIS fighters in that particular area. And then the Iraqi army, they were driving an American-made tank, but it was Iraqi army. And they drove, basically, they were like, that's all we're going to send.

Starting point is 01:19:23 We're going to send this tank. That's it. And so basically, they drove this tank straight up to ISIS headquarters in Mosul, which is just like a couple blocks away from where ISIS was started, where the Caliphate was declared by al-Baghdadi in the leaning mosque. Anyway, so they drove this tank straight up to ISIS headquarters. We're 50 to 100 meters away. Like we're right there. And so the rest of us, we just went in on foot behind this tank. And as soon as we get out behind the tank, ISIS, they immediately, they think that they're

Starting point is 01:19:53 being assaulted. They see the smoke screen. They can hear and sort of see a tank coming. They see little figures running around. They think that they're under direct assault and that Iraqi forces or something are going to come push them out. So they unleash everything they have. They have pre-sided mortars.

Starting point is 01:20:07 They've got mortars going off that are landing behind us because we're moving forward into Isis territory. And then they're firing at us through the smoke from the front and from the sides. There's rockets going off. There's, you know, mortars popping off. And so we got up close to the, um, uh, where the pile of bodies was. And just because of the angle, basically one of the guys had to run out and grab the little girl.

Starting point is 01:20:29 His name was Dave, Dave Eubank. So Dave Eubank runs out and grabs the little girl. Um, my buddy, Sky Barkley, he laid down covering fire. I also laid down covering fire. And we're firing directly into Isis positions. Like I'm, look, I'm firing. through the windows where ISIS is. Like they are right there.

Starting point is 01:20:44 And those are the same windows where these 200 dead bodies that were literally tripping over as we're moving into ISIS territory. They were all killed from those windows. So we're just, you know, laying down what we can with covering fire. And then so Dave grabs a little girl and he brings her back behind the tank. And then we tried to grab, we grabbed two men as well who were also injured in that pile of bodies. we brought them back with us and on our way back as the tank is just backing up. We can't communicate with the tank. It doesn't see us.

Starting point is 01:21:19 We're moving back and that's when one of the guys we were trying to drag out of there. He unfortunately fell off of this angled table that we were dragging him on and this tabletop thing. So he fell off. I rolled him out of the way of the tank treads because again, this tank is just backing up and backing up and it's not stopping. So I roll him out of the way of the tank treads. tank misses him by four or five inches, like no more than like the width of my hand. And that was the point where I had to look at this guy and go like,

Starting point is 01:21:47 dude, I'm sorry, because we're still taking, we're taking fire. And now ISIS thinks that they've won this battle. They don't really know what's going on. So they're doubling down on the machine gun fire because they think that we're running away. Yeah. So,

Starting point is 01:21:59 and then after I let this guy go, I stepped back behind the tank and was just thinking like, like, dear God, like, I can't believe I had just had to do that. And then boom, got hit in the leg. from a burst of machine gun fire from our, from our right,

Starting point is 01:22:12 and fell down behind the tank, and the tank was maybe three or four feet away from running me over. And I didn't hear it. I didn't think about it. If the other guys on the team hadn't screamed at me and, like, sort of hitting me to get up, I would have been run over by that tank because it would have just folded me flat

Starting point is 01:22:29 and would have killed me, because I was just staring at my leg, kind of in shock, like, what the hell just happened. So I stood back up. Luckily, the bone was not hit. So it was just a flash wound in and out through my calf and so I was able to move out of there on foot. As I'm throwing a tourniquet on my leg, I'm, um, we want to talk about the other horrible image. There was a little girl. She may be,

Starting point is 01:22:51 I don't know, maybe 15 years old, a young girl. She'd been shot in the back of the head by Isis and her whole face, she must have been hit with like a 50 caliber or something because her entire face was gone. She'd been in the back of the head and then from her hair line to her jaw that her entire face had been blown off and it was just a black hole of, uh, dry. blood. And so as I was walking backwards throwing a tourniquet on, but blood pumping from two holes in my leg, I literally tripped over her body and she was standing right there. She was laying there right between my feet and like just, and then the smell of the of the rotting flesh just, you know, hit me. And then we continued moving back. And then in order for us to, in order for, we had to

Starting point is 01:23:32 basically move across this highway again one more time to get to safety. And there was no way we'd be able to move the man or like for all of us to run across it was just wasn't going to happen we were going to get shot so i was already shot and so i just volunteer was like i'm going to run across the street and tell them to send an armored humvee out here and so i ran across the street back to iraqi army lines and the iraqi army they're they're all right there watching this and so i just run at them and i'm screaming humvee as i'm hobbling across no man's land um to try to in case i got shot again and you can hear this is also in video too you can hear the is snapping past me as they're they see me and they're taking shots they're trying to kill me.

Starting point is 01:24:12 Luckily I make it to safety. And then they sent a Humvee out to rescue the team and sort of bring them back that last like 100 yards or so. What does it feel like to get shot? For me, it felt like getting hit with a sledgehammer. And then the burning, it felt, so the physical sensation is like getting hit with a sledgehammer. And then once the adrenaline wears off a little bit, it feels like somebody just took a red hot poker out of the fire and just shoved it through your leg.

Starting point is 01:24:42 Because as the bullet goes through, it burns. It burns everything. So, yeah, it's excruciating. But again, if you're going to get wounded, like, as far as wounds are concerned, mine was very, very minor to be very clearly. Yeah. But how do you accept the possibility of dying? I guess this goes back to what we were talking about before.

Starting point is 01:25:08 If your Y is big enough, you just, you just, you just. do what you got to do because in that situation I actually when we first got back behind the tank and ISIS was shooting at us I was like this is insane what like what is going on and I'm like I'm standing around and there's dead people everywhere all in the ground around me and there's bullets coming in and hitting the bodies and hitting the dirt around us I just can't quite see us but they're firing through it I'm just like dude I'm in the kill zone and when that first when this mission first started I actually started to I don't know I don't know what was happening

Starting point is 01:25:39 I think I might have been going into like terror shock or something because like my legs and my arms kind of stopped working and I think I think I was going into shock because I was so afraid. And then in that moment I thought of two things. I thought first is I'm a Navy SEAL and I'm going to die out here before I let down the brotherhood and don't represent them well on the battlefield. I'm a seal. It doesn't matter. Like if I die out here, so be it because of that. And the second was, if we don't go, that girl dies. That girl has a 100% chance of dying today if we don't go.

Starting point is 01:26:15 And so you just make the decision to go because that's my job as a seal. That's my job as a man to protect the innocent. And that's what I swore to do. And that's what I chose to do that day. So what I'm most curious about is how do you assimilate back into society? because I know for myself, if I saw what you went through, I don't think I'd ever be normal after that. I don't think I could comprehend what I saw.

Starting point is 01:26:43 I don't know if I could ever fit back in because I just, and again, this is me having not experienced it, but even if I see something on Twitter that's like, you know, one of those videos, it screws me up for like the day. And sometimes like multiple days depending on like what I see, even if it's just a few seconds on my phone. Is that just the way my mind is wired? or like how do you cope with that?

Starting point is 01:27:07 Well, I would say several things. One is, I'll reference like the seal training. So seal training toughens you in one regard, but it also selects four guys that are already sort of predisposed to be able to handle things a little more. So there's that. And but the rest of what you just said,

Starting point is 01:27:27 yeah, like that I experienced all that as well. It's difficult to come back and then just sit down and, you know, have an actual, you know, super serious conversation about the Green Bay Packers, you know, it's like, it's kind of difficult to do because you're like three months ago. I just, you know, like I was just, I just got back from a war, you know, and now we're talking about the weather and small talk and these different things. When I was younger, when I first got back from, from war, it, um, I would get frustrated with people. I would get mad and I would just go like, why don't you understand, you know? But the real, and then I, as I matured, I realized, I was like, well, you, of course you don't understand. Um, and that's okay. It's good that you don't understand. It's good that you don't have these same things. But yeah, for the rest of your life, you just see the world entirely different and your priorities are different. It can be difficult to assimilate back into society and just kind of go work a regular job.

Starting point is 01:28:18 And I think that's part of one of the reasons why we see like, you know, veteran suicide numbers are so excessively high. I think a lot of guys, they've seen things, they've done things. They've been a part of something bigger than themselves. And then they come back and you're like, well, none of this matters. You know, and again, that's not a healthy attitude to have because like, no, life does matter. Life goes on. You fought to protect this and now enjoy your life. But there's also, I would say the biggest thing that I've struggled with is survivors guilt, knowing so many guys personally who died in combat, having seen so many civilians and such, die in combat and dying war zones.

Starting point is 01:28:52 And having come very, very close multiple times myself to having almost been killed. But I just wasn't for whatever reason. That day I got lucky or God was looking out for me or whatever and I didn't die. and other guys did die. And so there's guilt and it can be difficult to move on with your life and just enjoy your life

Starting point is 01:29:11 knowing what other guys have sacrificed and what other people are still going through. So I would say for me that's probably the biggest thing for me is yeah, it's probably just guilt. Why do you think you survived? Do you feel like that was luck

Starting point is 01:29:23 or do you feel like your training prepared you? Well, I will say certainly training does help. Knowing what to do your, we would call them, you know, your spidey senses going off. There are certain instincts that you have, and other guys have them much stronger than I do.

Starting point is 01:29:39 So there is a certain level of just training. So you put yourself in the correct position and knowing what your limitations are, knowing what the animal is capable of. And so there are, there is that element of training. I'll also say there also is an element of luck. There is a huge element of luck where if, because here's the thing, like if the enemy knows where you are and they have a good weapon that's zeroed in, they're going to kill you. Like that's it. Like they're going to kill you.

Starting point is 01:30:04 That's how we're able to defeat them. So there's no, I don't believe that, you know, you know, God moves bullets or anything like that out of the way. I believe discretion is the better part of valor. You have to use your head. You have to use the training. You have to suck it up and make tough decisions in combat. But I will say, though, I'm also a firm believer in the idea that all things work together

Starting point is 01:30:29 for good to those who love. God and those who are called according to his purpose. So these tragedies, these bad things, do I think that I was hand selected for some greater purpose? No, because I'm not special. Do I believe I have the ability to do something special because I've gone through all these things? Because I've seen all this tragedy and all this death and all this war and all this destruction and now I can take all that and draw attention to it and help save lives and help end some of that suffering now? Yeah, absolutely. And so that's where that's where I see my role in life is to sort of be self-selected and go, all right, I'm my volunteer.

Starting point is 01:31:03 I'll go help out in that situation. Is it ever like a switch that you could flip on and off at this point where you go and see those things and then come back and can, you know, separate the two? Yeah, I mean, I think so. There's a, there's, the switch isn't flipped necessarily right away. It can take decompression time. It can take a month or two or a couple of months to kind of. get back down to normal, get back down to baseline for sure when coming back. Um, because, yeah,

Starting point is 01:31:32 you're in these incredibly, you know, intense situations. Like just in December, uh, I got hit with, or my position got hit with three bombs from a from fighter jets. Three fighter jets came in targeted our building. The first one, you know, nearly killed us. We ran out of the building. The next two bombs hit the building and destroyed it. All my gear, everything. Uh, that was in, in Burma. And, you know, so it's like you're in that level of intensity of that crazy kind of, you know, situation and yeah it takes some time to decompress from that when you come back um but i've done it now so many times where it's like i know i'm going to be fine i know that i'm going to be heightened my my senses are going to be heightened for a little bit i'm going to have some crazy dreams as my brain

Starting point is 01:32:09 is processing you know what's going on and and realizing hey you're safe you're fine it's okay you're home um but um yeah i feel like i have the ability to to flip that switch but with that being said you don't go to war and come back the same person you just don't don't. Every single time I go out the, every single time I go out the door and I'm in a combat conflict situation, it changes you every single time. And hopefully for the better. I try to make it for the better. What strategies do you use to decompress? Do you have like certain things you like to do? For me, I like to, I guess sort of like destimulate, meaning I like I like to go spend time with my wife and with my parents and just sit in the quiet, you know, for a couple of weeks and just sort of

Starting point is 01:32:55 of relax and let my brain just accept the fact that it's safe. I like to read and just kind of come back to that. And then I also, I also am intentional about dealing with the stuff that I know is going to give me nightmares later. Like I know, I know it's coming. I know the nightmares are coming. I know it's going to happen as my brain is decompressing because my brain is just trying to make sense of what happened, right? It doesn't have to be this horribly traumatic thing. I know it's coming. And so I'll sit by myself and I'll just literally play through what happened. Sometimes I'll write it down. I'll talk with other people about it, my family and such. And I'll just say, here's what happened and just accept it. I think the big thing is just accepting like, yep,

Starting point is 01:33:37 this happened and acknowledge the fact that you're not there anymore. Your home, live your life. So I guess that's kind of my general strategy for that. I was just curious when you're in combat like that, how do you know when to retreat or give up? I can so, so there's this statement. that I live by, it's, again, discretion is the better part of valor. There is no one litmus test that I can give you to say, like, oh, this is the right decision. You need to, you know, if as long, you know, if you hit this criteria, you know, this is the decision you need to make every time. Every single battle is different.

Starting point is 01:34:07 Every single situation is different. Every single army is different. Every single enemy is different. Every single day is different. Every single weapon is different. So it's so, you have to make extremely difficult life or death decisions with not nearly enough information. You don't really know, you don't have all the information, but you have to make the best possible decision that you can. So there's no, um, there's no way to, there's no way to really to know.

Starting point is 01:34:32 You just have to make the best decision that you possibly can. I know that's kind of a, of a vague answer, but, um, you just have to, you have to look at the situation and just accept that 50% of the time you're going to make the wrong call. After spending so much time in combat, how does that affect your everyday life in terms of like just awareness? Do you have heightened awareness when you're just walking into a place or are you all like constantly sussing out certain people and like looking for for bad guys. I know for a lot of cops out there, something that they experience is it's hard to to not judge a lot and to always be trying to like perceive people essentially. Is that something that you experience as well? To an extent, but very different than how

Starting point is 01:35:14 police experience it. So so so my my experience with that is my brain, unfortunately, is always locked in like fight or flight mode. So I'm a very light sleeper. You know, so it's like my brain often thinks that I'm in a, in a bad situation, even though I'm not. That's very different than police officers. So police officers, in my opinion, have it a thousand times worse because of what you just said. I'm not in a, my role is not going around constantly sort of looking at individuals and, you know, these really crazy situations and I'm going home at night to my own house. and I could be called in at any point

Starting point is 01:35:51 because if there's some mass shooting or something, God forbid, in the city. So police officers, in my opinion, have it much worse than we do than combat veterans do because you're always on call. You always have your badge on. You're constantly looking at your neighbors

Starting point is 01:36:04 and your own community and you're looking for threats to protect them, but you're also constantly looking for that. And so your brain is going to be working very, very different and you're going to be viewing things very different than, for example, like I would be.

Starting point is 01:36:20 Yeah. So when's the last time that you were facing combat? A few months ago. A few months ago, and that was in Burma? Yeah. So what's happening there? Yeah, so the situation in Burma, Burma was a British colony pre-World War II. And then during World War II, the, so Burma has like, about 12 or 13 sort of major tribes.

Starting point is 01:36:39 The central largest tribe is the ethnic Burmese people. During World War II, the Burmese people fought with the Japanese against the, uh, against the British in Burma. But then halfway through the war, the Burmese people switched sides because the British were winning, the allies were winning. And so then they fought alongside the British to get rid of the Japanese. Now, when that happened, the British left Burma, ultimately, and basically the Burmese were left in power with all this weapons and all this kind of stuff. And so then what happened was, unfortunately, the Burmese generals got power. And so they basically started trying to subjugate the entire country in all.

Starting point is 01:37:20 all the other ethnic minority groups. Again, it's not all Burmese people. It's like just the people who got in control of the Burmese army. So what's been going on is World War II has never ended. And so what's going on in Burma is the Burma army. They are this, they basically control the country. They are the central government.

Starting point is 01:37:37 It's imagined if the U.S. Army, some U.S. Army general was like, got rid of the president, got rid of Congress, and was like, I'm in charge now, right? That's the situation in Burma. And so the Burma army, they are trying to subjugate all the ethnic minority groups there's so there's

Starting point is 01:37:55 everything from genocide to I guess genocide is the biggest thing but it's like it's everything from genocide they're trying to take the land from these people

Starting point is 01:38:06 for subjugation slavery child human trafficking drugs all this kind of stuff and so we work in East Burma with one of the tribes we work with the Karen tribe they're just one of the tribes

Starting point is 01:38:17 that's being persecuted but we work directly with them to help them against all these attacks and things that are constantly happening to them. And we run the only, we set up and run the only ambulance service in that part of East Burma where there's never been ambulances before. And we run them in ruggedized hyluxes like pick up trucks and move, move patients and such. And what are the ethnic minorities in Burma? Like I feel like that's not typically, so Burma, I'm very confused on this. I'm not like very strong geographically speaking, but isn't that Myanmar the same thing? Yes, yes, it is

Starting point is 01:38:51 Myanmar. So why is it called Burma instead of Myanmar? And what are the ethnic minority? I feel like that's not typically a place that like people would kind of go. Right, right. Okay, that's a fair question. So in general, the Burma was called Burma before the Burma army took over. Okay? The Burma army, they changed the name to Myanmar. And so as an act of defiance, people, most people in Burma, at least the people that I've worked with in Burma, they do not call it Myanmar. They call it Burma because they don't recognize the authority of these corrupt genocidal maniacs to change the name of their country. Right.

Starting point is 01:39:24 However, if you do call it Myanmar, it's like, I'm not going to mad about it. Nobody gets mad about it. We understand. So, yeah, it's Myanmar or Burma. I personally just use the term Burma. So there's a lot of different ethnic groups. I don't know the names of all of them. There's a lot of them.

Starting point is 01:39:37 But there's the Kachin, the Sean, the Wa, the Arakhan, the Koren, the Koren, the Kareni, the Mon. And I'm definitely missing. But it's all kind of just like Southeast Asian kind of. Yeah, yeah, it's all Southeast Asian cultures. And they all have their own distinct languages and cultures and everything like that. So it's quite the, quite the melting pot of all these different cultures and such. How long do you see yourself doing this far?

Starting point is 01:40:01 That is a fantastic question. So I got married a year ago. And so I want to take Stronghold Rescue and Relief and make us obviously much, much bigger than we are now and help more people over time. but I do definitely see as the years go by I definitely want to be personally like less and less involved like in the sort of the frontline aspects of the job

Starting point is 01:40:24 as time goes on. Also right now I'm currently at Harvard University knocking out my MPA. It's a one year intensive MPA. So I just finished the summer term and then I have to do two semesters at more than full time. And so I'm using that as an opportunity.

Starting point is 01:40:39 I'm using this as an opportunity as well to just sort of see what other options there are out there. I want to grow the organization and lead the organization into the future. But I'm not sure what exactly my role is going to be, you know, five years from now. I really don't know that. What would you do if it were not this? If I didn't run stronghold?

Starting point is 01:40:57 Yeah. Man, that is a very, very interesting question. I would love, there's so many things in life that I would love to do. I would love to, I'd love to be a doctor. I'd love to be a lawyer. I'd love to, you know, be an engineer. There's so many things that I would love to do. I'd love to be an academic.

Starting point is 01:41:13 I'm a total nerd. I love reading. Um, you know, so there's so many things in life that I would just, that I would love to do. And quite frankly, I don't, I don't even know what I would do outside of this, uh, if this didn't exist. This is definitely like where my, where my, uh, where my head and my heart is at, for now at least, yeah. What are some of your favorite books? Oh, man. Um, so I read a lot of history books. Um, one of my favorite books is, uh, Band of Brothers. So that was like, and that's like one of the original sort of books that I read when I was a teenager. There's

Starting point is 01:41:44 another book. It's, it was a, so actually, so this is actually funny. The first book that I ever read, I was, I was either 10 or 11, and the first book that I ever just went and just grabbed up, grabbed on my own, it was at school. I just grabbed it off the shelf, just randomly. It was yellow, and I grabbed it off, and I sat there and I read it, and it was basically a child's version of Lawrence of Arabia. And so T.E. Lawrence, during World War I, he worked with, he was a British officer, and he led Arab armies to fight the Turks throughout the Middle East. And I just was like, man, that's like insane. That's so crazy, so incredible.

Starting point is 01:42:22 So that was like the first book that I ever read. So I'll read a lot of military stuff. Probably my favorite book that I've read more than any other book is Gates of Fire by Stephen Pressfield. That book is incredibly, it's just wonderful. Some of my other favorite books are letters from a stoic. I read Seneca like a crazy person. I love it.

Starting point is 01:42:41 And it really helps me out. I'm reading through the Bible right now currently. I'm also reading through Guns of August, which is about World War I. So lots of history, lots of that kind of stuff, yeah. What do you think is your biggest achievement? Oh, geez. I would say probably,

Starting point is 01:42:58 I guess the probably the thing I'm most proud of in life is that I was able to dig myself out of that hole back in 2020, 2021, when I was suicidal and hated my life and wanted to give up. I think my biggest achievement in life was not giving up in that moment. Being a seal is cool.

Starting point is 01:43:20 Being the CEO of a big organization is cool. Going to Harvard's cool, but quite frankly not giving up in that moment. That was my biggest challenge ever. And that's the thing I'm probably the most proud of, yeah. If you could credit one thing to being able to escape that hole, would you say it was AA or was it like a support group,

Starting point is 01:43:39 like your family? year. I think probably the single biggest thing that got me through it was my parents. Because at the time I didn't know my wife. Probably my parents, my parents were incredibly kind and supportive and understanding and they let me stay in their house. And again, it was a dark, dark time. Like, I was really sleeping on the floor in my parents' house after having been a seal and having done all this other stuff. And then it's like I lost everything and was just having a total mental breakdown, you know? my parents, my parents are definitely the single biggest thing. My single, my single biggest unfair advantage in life is just good, hardworking Christian middle class parents. You're going to have kids? Yeah, I hope to. Yeah, we'd love to. I feel like you'd be a pretty good dad from what I've, from everything I've looked into so far. Yeah, I hope so. Yeah, I hope so.

Starting point is 01:44:31 What's your biggest insecurity? Oh, man. My biggest insecurity. I would say my biggest insecurity is probably, this is more of like my biggest fear. My biggest fear is that I would relapse back into that dark, that dark place I was in before. My biggest insecurity is that I, all the progress I've made in life that I would kind of throw all that away through, you know, through addiction or, you know, just selfishness or whatever. I would say that's probably my biggest insecurity. What was the impact of Biden pulling? out and leaving all the equipment. Oh, we have yet to see the

Starting point is 01:45:12 impact of that. So just I believe it was a week or two ago the Taliban did a huge parade at Bogram Air Base showing all of the helicopters and the armored vehicles and the machine guns. Yeah. So they just did a huge middle finger

Starting point is 01:45:28 to the United States. Think about the terrible things that terrorists were able to do and have been able to do in the past with just a few rifles or just a few box cutters or whatever. Now imagine they have machine guns night vision goggles, rifles, unlimited ammunition, armored vehicles, helicopters. For the love of God, they have helicopters now. The terrorist attacks that are going to happen in the future, there's a huge, there is a huge danger that they are going to be massive.

Starting point is 01:45:56 So that's on the security side. The other thing is, and this is a bit vulgar, but it's the reality. Every single day, right now, in Afghanistan, there are. women and girls who will say are in relationships that they do not want to be in and we'll leave it at that every single day. These are girls who had the opportunity to go to school. These are girls who experienced freedom, many of them for the first 10, 15, 20 years of their life. And then it was all snatched away from them. And now they're being sold off to Taliban fighters. They're being married off to, the Taliban fighters, families are trying to survive. And the women, because of, and I don't want to go political here, but because of what Joe Biden did every single day, this moment, at this exact moment, there was a woman,

Starting point is 01:46:52 and there are women and girls who are suffering because they are in relationships that they do not want to be in. And again, we all know what we mean here. And so that is a dark, dark, dark, evil repercussion of terrible foreign policy. How should that have been handled differently? And what was the reason that we decided to pull out? The pullout from Afghanistan started or the conversation started under the Trump administration.

Starting point is 01:47:23 Trump started talking with the Taliban about, okay, how do we end this thing, right? Because it's like, are we going to be there for the next 100 years? You know, there's an argument to be made for that. Or are we just going to, you know, we have to do something. We have to leave at some point. So there was an agreement made with the Taliban that we were going to pull out, and that happened under Trump. Biden comes into office, and then he, from what I understand, the timeline got extended a little bit, and then we just sort of pulled the plug and got out of there.

Starting point is 01:47:52 So the argument of whether or not we should have stayed in Afghanistan is one portion of the discussion. So on that end, you can make the argument that we should just completely leave. That's fair. You can also make the argument that, in my personal opinion is, we should have kept a small force there, just keep Bogram Air Base, keep a quick reaction force of Rangers and sales and green berets, and a few attack helicopters and aircraft, and we can keep the Taliban from controlling the country,

Starting point is 01:48:17 basically forever. And then that also gives us the ability to project power in that part of the world. And it'd be just a fraction. It wouldn't cost that much of our actual defense budget. So my personal opinion is we should have just kept a small base there. All right. So that's one side of the argument. The other side of the argument, and the real problem here is the way that the withdrawal happened.

Starting point is 01:48:38 The complete collapse, everything that happened at the Kabul airport, all of that is completely 100% unacceptable. And look, when you're in a historical situation like that, people are going to make mistakes. I do not expect either, you know, the president, President Biden, I don't expect the Joint Chiefs of Staff. I don't expect all them to make perfect decisions. Of course not. They're humans. They're dealing with sort of an unprecedented decision. situation. However, the way that it was handled and all the mistakes that were made and the

Starting point is 01:49:09 dozen plus service members who were killed, not to mention all those who were wounded, not to mention the dozens and dozens and dozens of Afghans who were killed during that, nobody's been held accountable for it, and that's the real problem. Mistakes can be made. Mistakes will be made. I will make mistakes. We will all make mistakes. Nobody's been held accountable for it. Nobody was fired. And so when you look at that, it's a huge slap in the face to every person who fought in Afghanistan. It's a huge slap in the face to every woman who is now married off to some Taliban fighter. It's a huge slap in the face to every little girl who's being sold by her parents so they can have money and survive. It's a huge slap in the face to everything.

Starting point is 01:49:50 If you aren't even going to try to hold anybody accountable for what happened, what happened is it's evil. What happened is evil one. And it's completely, completely unacceptable how it went down. How do you think things should change going forward? What do you think needs to be done for that situation? I don't know enough about the situation to sit here and say definitively, this is what our foreign policy should be toward Afghanistan. I don't think we've seen the last of Afghanistan. We will probably, we were talking about this.

Starting point is 01:50:23 Actually, I was talking with some of the other veterans at Harvard. we were talking about like how long until troops have to go back into Afghanistan you know special operation soldiers or the CIA in some way shape or form probably not that long if they're not already there because there's too much weaponry there's too much

Starting point is 01:50:40 there's too much ammunition there's too many helicopters and armored vehicles and stuff in the hands of eighth century barbarians who want to murder all of us to not go in to do something about that so I don't know if that's going to look like in my personal opinion is send long range bombers

Starting point is 01:50:56 blow up all those aircraft, or sorry, blow up all of the supply dumps, blow up everything. And again, I don't know the logistics on that. So I'm not saying it's easy to do that, but I think go in and blow up all the hardware and get rid of it so it can't cause a problem for the future. What do you think is something

Starting point is 01:51:14 the average American public is unaware of that they should know about? Well, I think a big thing that's going on right now is if you look at China's aggression in the world. So I think that there's there's several things going on. When you talk about just sort of society as a whole. So there's all these different armed conflicts. The Chinese thing is a big one.

Starting point is 01:51:36 You look at Haiti's falling apart. That's going to affect what's going on here. People need to be looking at what's going on in Venezuela with Nicolas Maduro refusing to hand over. He obviously lost the election. He rigged the election. Refused to turn over power. You have Haiti's falling apart to the gangs. The UN peacekeeping force there is totally failing.

Starting point is 01:51:52 At this point, maybe look at their act. probably not that's going to cause violence drugs you know refugees fleeing that's going to cause all kinds of problems just in the western hemisphere here and then you look at China's aggression and I think that I think that Americans we unfortunately are a little bit ignorant of history if you want to make good decisions today you need three things you need to understand history you need to understand psychology and need to understand a little bit of philosophy right so history how did we get where we are psychology how do we are psychology how do people actually think in philosophy?

Starting point is 01:52:26 Philosophy is what do people actually believe and what are the ways in which they're making decisions? And I feel like we as Americans do not look at those things enough and we're ignorant of history. So for example, you look at China. Most people don't know about China. Like, why is China so aggressive? Like what's going on? What's the history there?

Starting point is 01:52:44 Well, it goes back to the early 1800s when Britain started smuggling opium into China. So that way the Chinese would get a deal. addicted to opium, that way they would trade opium for Chinese goods, because at the time, the Chinese only wanted silver, and the Chinese didn't want very much else to do with the outside world. And so Britain basically got all of China addicted to opium, and then that caused several wars, which the British won, and so then they forced more opium onto China. When that happened, basically for a hundred years, China was just sort of overrun by the British and by the and then obviously the Japanese went in there as well.

Starting point is 01:53:26 And so the Chinese call that the century of humiliation, which ended around the end of World War II. So when you look at Chinese psychology, you have to look at why they're making the decisions that they're making today. You have to look at the history, and then you have to look at the psychology. They were also Confucian at the time,

Starting point is 01:53:39 which meant, at least at that point, China, they believed that they were sort of the central moral good of the world. And so they still, in a lot of ways, see themselves as the central sort of moral good of the world. They see themselves at the center of the universe. And so they are incredibly humiliated. And I'm going somewhere with this, I promise.

Starting point is 01:53:59 So when you look at their actions, it starts to make sense. You see like, oh, this is how a humiliated sort of narcissistic group of people acts. I mean, like the Chinese Communist Party. They're humiliated, but they're also narcissists. And so then you look at the fentanyl crisis happening in the U.S. Where's all that coming from? It's all coming from China. They're sending all the supplies and everything that needs to be, that the cartels in Mexico need.

Starting point is 01:54:24 to make fentanyl. That's coming from China. China is sending that stuff to Mexico and it's being smuggled up into the U.S. You think China doesn't know that? Of course they know that. They are literally repeating 200 or 175 years later what happened to them. And so if we are ignorant of our history, if we don't look at psychology, if we don't look at the beliefs and philosophy of the other players on the board, we will continue to make bad decisions as the American people. and that applies to us as individuals as well, but that's another topic. But yeah, so I think those are some of the things that people should be looking at and trying to understand better. Should we be concerned about the war that's happening in, like, Gaza right now as well?

Starting point is 01:55:07 What I will say, so after October 7th, my organization, we went into Israel. We ended up not in the south, not down to Gaza, but we went into the north of Israel where Hezbollah was firing rockets into Israel. and we were helping set up medical care and bringing in medical supplies and things like that. Because again, our mission there is to help the civilians, the Israeli civilians who were just caught in the middle of rockets firing down and the Israeli defense forces, they're firing back into Lebanon trying to stop these attacks and things. So should we be concerned about the war happening in Gaza? Absolutely. I mean, it's a it's a tragedy, what's happening. But we also need to remember our sort of more.

Starting point is 01:55:50 We need to have some moral courage here as well. So the Israeli military, they are, here's the thing. The Israeli military, they are going after hostages right now. I forget the exact number, but if you look at what happened on October 7th, per capita, imagine per capita, it's like 49-11s happening in America all in the same day. And hundreds, or I don't remember how many it is, but dozens, I think at this point, still, hostages are still stuck in these terror tunnels. in Gaza. And so the Israeli military are trying to get their people back and war is bloody,

Starting point is 01:56:28 war is ugly, and they are doing their best to get these people back. And quite frankly, Hamas has done an incredible job of putting out propaganda that it seems like half the world is swallowing, maybe more than half the world, is buying into the Hamas propaganda. So let's back up a little bit. we're talking about ISIS. Remember, ISIS took over a hospital and they kept Iraqi civilians in the hospital with them. That way, air strikes couldn't take out their command center. And so many, many, many Iraqi soldiers were killed fighting ISIS to get them out of that hospital later, whereas an air strike could have just taken them all out, right? But we all recognize when ISIS does it, we all recognize, oh, that's evil. You don't use humans as, you don't use civilians

Starting point is 01:57:15 as human shields. You are scum. You deserve to be slaughtered in your entire cause. is evil, right? But for whatever reason now, Hamas is doing the same thing. They are keeping Palestinian people. The Hamas is taking over hospitals and churches, or so not churches, but mosques and schools and whatever else. And they are keeping Palestinian people hostage. And so Israeli soldiers are dying to go into these places to try and find these hostages. Make no mistake, Israeli soldiers are dying every day in Gaza to protect Palestinian lives. Because at any point, the Israelis could just drop a bomb on anything that they want to, but they choose not to. They could carpet bomb and just wipe the entire place off the map if they wanted to.

Starting point is 01:57:58 They have the technological ability to do that. But Israeli soldiers and Jewish soldiers are going in there and Arab Muslim soldiers who are part of Israel. They are going into Gaza and fighting and dying to protect the Palestinian people and to get rid of Hamas. There's no hatred for Palestinian people. Of course, there's going to be some people are racist and whatever else. they're going to be racist no matter what. But they are going in to try to get their hostages back and to try to rescue the Palestinian people who are being held hostage by Hamas. And many of the Palestinian people, you know, some of them support Hamas.

Starting point is 01:58:33 But they've been lied to, right? So it's not good that these civilians are supporting Hamas. But quite frankly, they've been lied to by Hamas. And quite frankly, they're at the gunpoint of Hamas as well. And so I think we as the Western world, we need to let Israel finish the job. get their people home. And when I say, finish the job, I mean, get their people home, get rid of Hamas. And the horror and terror of war is that Hamas is hiding behind civilians.

Starting point is 01:58:58 And that's what's causing the massive amount of civilian casualties, which is a tragedy. At the risk of sounding completely ignorant, I mean, Graham and I, we don't talk about any stuff like this because this is not where we research. This is not what we look into. I mean, mostly about finance and entrepreneurship and business and stuff like that. Sometimes health. Ask us about credit scores. Yeah, yeah.

Starting point is 01:59:17 But it's interesting because I do like to try to understand, but I feel like just, I'm sure a lot of viewers can relate to this. Like, even as I just scroll X, I think X is probably the best place to be getting information. Twitter. I feel like it's probably the best place because under one article or post, you can see dissenting opinions and supporting opinions. So I can kind of like get a gauge on both rather than media, which kind of just like throws an agenda down your throat. I still feel like both sides have different, what appears to be facts. So it's not even an interpretation of the same fact, but it appears as though they have completely, like facts that completely disagree with one another. Like one side says, oh, look

Starting point is 01:59:59 what these Israeli soldiers did. And then, you know, some people say, oh, look what, you know, Hamas is doing. Look what these Palestinians have done, this and that. And it's so hard to try to get an accurate opinion or grasp on what's going on. Yeah. I guess without actually talking with someone that's been there. Yeah. No, it absolutely is difficult. And these things are complicated.

Starting point is 02:00:18 So this is, again, we have to kind of go back to the values. Regardless of, so what's happening right now, the arguments that are happening on Twitter X in media, whatever, it's about like, oh, the Israelis did this. All the Palestinians of this, right? Because everybody's arguing about the conflict itself that's happening at the moment. Let's all take a deep breath. Go back October 7th. Hamas went into Israel, raped and murdered on mass, and took, I forget the number of hostages, more than 100 hostages, I believe, into the terror tunnels in Gaza.

Starting point is 02:00:49 Like, that's fact, done. Hamas are the bad guys, period, done. And if you agree, if you believe that the good guys, it's like, okay, cool, well, now you're supporting terrorism. Like, that's, that's on you. And I can't really help you with that. And the Israeli military wants their people back. Imagine what you would do if someone took your wife or, you. your mother and you knew for sure that she was being raped and she was down in some terror tunnel

Starting point is 02:01:14 by these people and she'd been held there for months for 10 months at this point and you just wanted to get her back like imagine what you would the lengths you would go through to get her back right so not to be fair you might also be angry and you might start making bad decisions and hurting people that are not guilty of that right so that is possible and that does happen for sure i'm not saying the israeli military i'm not saying at all that they're perfectly innocent and everything but the cause of getting these these hostages back and and nobody talks about this too i believe it's five we have five american citizens who are being held in those tarotunnels right now when was the last time the president came out and did a press conference about the american hostages being held why isn't

Starting point is 02:01:53 seal team six and delta force in there you know making heads roll and getting our people back right so i think the hamas is evil idf is doing the best they can but um so so that's that's on one end um i'll kind of comment as well on like people not knowing all the different things that are going on. So this is a problem that I see as well. And for me, it's like I want to be up to date on all these different conflicts that are going on because this is like the world that I live in and I go into conflict zones to help people who are caught in the middle. So actually this year at Harvard I started this summer. I started a company called the Overwatch and basically it's going to start out right now as a weekly newsletter and it's going to cover the latest news from

Starting point is 02:02:34 multiple sources about what's going on specifically with armed conflicts, international crises, and government specifically on all those things. And what's also different about it is we're going to add links for additional context. So if there's a story about, you know, for example, the newsletter that went out today, it was about, one of them was about, you know, we're talking about the Venezuela situation and whatnot. We put a link in there. So you can just click on it and you can go to sort of a neutral page or a YouTube channel or a Wikipedia page or something, and you can research more about this and make up your own mind. We just want to throw facts out there, just so people are aware of like, okay, what's going on in the war in Ethiopia? What's going on?

Starting point is 02:03:15 The war in Burma, like, you know, outside of just Israel and Ukraine, right? There's other things happening. Yeah, what's going on in human trafficking? What's going on with the drug boards on our southern border? And so we talk about all those things and just sort of give a quick highlight about 15 or 20 stories of what's going on around the world. And so people can kind to get a quick digest. And if they want to, they can click on the other links and kind of go down these other rabbit holes to learn more and more about it. Where can people access that? It's called the overwatch.co is the website. And it's just a free newsletter. People can sign up for it. And it's curated by me. And hopefully over the years will make it bigger and better and

Starting point is 02:03:50 do more stuff with it. But yeah, this is the problem that I want to solve is people always ask, what's happening in Burma? I've never heard of that. And it's like, I get that question all the time. and totally fair, because I don't even know what's going on half the time in different places. So this is a solution to that problem to help people out. I met someone from Burma in Thailand. And she was telling me she had to escape it because it was so dangerous. Yes. Which I thought was really interesting.

Starting point is 02:04:12 Absolutely. Yeah. Actually, so a funny story. My wife is actually from Burma. No. Yeah. So I was, I'd finished this mission and was at a clinic deep in the jungle. And I met her.

Starting point is 02:04:24 And I knew within five seconds of talking to her. I was like, I'm going to marry her. If everything checks out, I'm going to marry her. here. But actually she was a refugee from Burma and lived in a refugee camp in Thailand on the Thailand side of the border until she was 10 and then she was able to go to Canada, where she grew up and then she had just returned to Burma to see what she could do to help her people. And yeah, and then so we ended up getting married, got married last year, July 4th. Congrats. How long did you date? Thanks. July 4th.

Starting point is 02:04:50 Yeah, July 4th in Canada because that was the only day that nobody had anything going on. Yeah, wow. Dude, so, okay. We got married pretty much right away. So I met her, and then four months and 16 days later, we got married. And it was because we knew, like, we knew we were going to get married. And then her, so her family, they have like a, every three years, her family from around the world comes together for a family reunion. And her grandfather was getting super old.

Starting point is 02:05:17 So we were already talking about maybe we'll get married in a year or something like that. But the whole family was coming in anyway. And so their family joked and we're like, well, why don't you guys just get married when everybody's here during the family reunion? And then we kind of like looked at each other and we're like, yeah, like, let's go for it. So we ended up, yeah, we met and then got married four months and 16 days later. Yeah. And so now we're able to go back to Burma and work together.

Starting point is 02:05:42 And it's amazing. What your parents think about that? Oh, they're totally supportive. My wife is an absolute angel. She's the absolute best. What is it about her specifically? Like as soon as you met her that you knew. You know, this is going to sound super corn.

Starting point is 02:05:53 But it was like my soul recognized her. I was like, I was like, I know you. And I know that sounds super whatever spiritual weird. But it was like, I met her and I was just like, I know you. And yeah, and like we're meant to be together. She felt the sparks as well? Or did you have to chase? No, she did not.

Starting point is 02:06:09 No, she did not. You had to chase? Yeah. Well, she was, yeah. So we were chatting and I had to go off on another mission like a day later. And so then we exchanged numbers. But I, you know, I asked her out on a date and we met up in Thailand. And yeah.

Starting point is 02:06:23 So then eventually, yeah, she was like, all right, he's all right. And then ended up, yeah. He's okay. He's all right. He's all right. Yeah, Harvard. He's on this. Maybe it's a seal.

Starting point is 02:06:34 Okay. Saves lives. Hey, it's okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it was, uh, it was, yeah, it was good. And what was, and what was the line that you used to like, went over?

Starting point is 02:06:42 Yeah. I'm trying to find. Oh, the line. Right now. I got to know a pickup line. The line to win her over. Uh, there was no line. I was just, I was just honest.

Starting point is 02:06:48 I think the best thing, the best thing with that is just honesty. I was just like. little bit. Well, we've been chatting for several hours. So this is actually funny. When I asked her out on the date, I did it over text. So I was about to go off on this like deep recon mission with like this group of Corinne guerrillas like deep into the mountains. And one of the guys like on this mountain top, he had like one bar of signal from like a local Burma army cell phone tower. And so he put up a Wi-Fi hotspot. And so I messaged her. I was like, hey, it was really great meeting you. I would love it. I would love to take it. I don't know if you have a boyfriend or

Starting point is 02:07:23 not. I was like, but if you're single, like, I'd love to take you out on a date when we get back to Thailand. So I sent this message to her and I saw that she read it. And then as she read it, like, like the guys were like everybody was like racking, you know, was putting rounds into the rifle, we're ready to walk off on this patrol like deep into this, into this area. And I was like, you got to be kidding me. You got to be kidding me. So she like, I saw it. She left me on red. And then for like the next three days, I was off on this like reconnaissance mission. checking out this particular area. And I was just like, oh God, I hope she says yes. And then we got back to that mountain top three days later, turned it on. It was like, sure. And it was like, perfect. So you went three days. Yeah, I was like, went three days, not knowing what, what her response was going to be.

Starting point is 02:08:09 Yeah. So I get back. I'm like, I'm just like covered in sweat and like, you know, cuts. And, you know, I've got like, this, this like poisonous bug. You had like bit my neck. And, you know, I was like, I'm just like miserable. I'm just standing there just covered and, like, you know, And like, the first thing I checked was to see if she said yes.

Starting point is 02:08:26 And she was like, yeah, let's go on a date. And I was like, yes. So. That's so cool. Yeah. So, yeah. So what do you think is something that the average American could take away from your story to improve their own life, whether that be just mental performance, overcoming something? What do you think is like the biggest takeaway that you could teach somebody else?

Starting point is 02:08:42 I would say all depends on the different things. One is I would say the story. So the fact of, you know, like how I went to a really, really dark place. and I chose, I was like, I'm not going to give up, I'm not going to commit suicide, I'm not going to let this defeat me, I'm going to keep trying again and again and again. I'm going to figure out what's up. I would say, so if other people are in a dark spot, don't give up, that's one. Two, if your dark spot is particularly your health and possibly food addiction,

Starting point is 02:09:11 I get help with that. Again, I recommend Russell Brand's book, Discovery, or sorry, recovery. And the other thing, too, is if people aren't sure about God or their faith, or whatnot, I would encourage them to read the Bible, check out their local church and explore that and see what happens in their life. So where could our audience go to help you out? Yeah, so if people want to help out our organization, Stronghold Rescue and Relief, they can go to stronghold rescue.org. And then if people want to check out the other newsletter thing about

Starting point is 02:09:43 the armed conflicts and all that stuff, they can go to the overwatch.co. Cool. I'll put all of your info down below in the description. I really appreciate this. Thank you so much for being so One of my favorite episodes, I honestly think we've ever recorded. Like that, your storytelling ability is incredible. And I love how candid and honestly transparent you are about it. So it's great. Well, thank you guys for having me on. I really appreciate it.

Starting point is 02:10:03 Thanks so much. Until next time. Until next time.

The Iced Coffee Hour - Harvard Navy SEAL: "America Is About To Enter Another CRISIS!"

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