The Joe Rogan Experience - #1546 - Evan Hafer & Mat Best

Episode Date: October 7, 2020

Special Forces combat veterans turned entrepreneurs Mat Best and Evan Hafer are co-founders of Black Rifle Coffee Company: a veteran-owned and operated premium, small-batch coffee roastery. When they're not busy at BRCC, you can hear them with co-host Jarred "JT" Taylor on the Free Range American podcast.

the joe rogan experience train by day joe rogan podcast by night all day hello gentlemen we're rolling we're rolling holy shit evan and matt i've known you guys for a long time and i've enjoyed your coffee for a long time so i'm happy you guys could come on here and talk some shit. Appreciate it. Oh, man. I love it. I love being on shows with Matt, especially with you. This is fucking incredible.

Dude, your ridiculous setup that you put in the kitchen with all the coffee and the espresso. I videotaped it so people could see, but the measuring of the weight of the grams of the espresso. I know you got into it. You were into coffee before you were in the military, right? Yeah. And then you started bringing coffee and a roaster and a whole setup with you overseas.

But like, were you this like measuring it and the exact temperature of the water and all that jazz? Oh, yeah. I think like way back in late 90s, I guess, is probably where it all began. And I always say this where, you know, every good story starts with a, with a, with a good check basically. And I met this barista back in the late nineties and she turned me on to espresso. So I started really going down the rabbit hole on coffee. So she was just like really into espresso. She wasn't, she was just, she was hot and she was a barista. So, but that was the, the, the gateway to this entire

thing. And, uh, then as I continued to kind of evolve my, my coffee nerd, you know, sense of me, I, I, uh, I kind of was like, well, you know what, this Green Beret thing sounds pretty cool. I would love to be able to do that jump out of planes, maybe overthrow some countries. That's that sounds pretty rad. But it never left. And so I was still way into coffee, I was roasting coffee on fires and on my stove and getting a different weird espresso machines and the funny thing is back in when i was an sf guy people would make fun of me all the time like you hipster douchebag what do you do if we were together i would have made fun of you a lot you're like sweet 30 minutes to make a cup of coffee what are you fucking doing what are you doing well that's

why it's a funny contrast between this badass Special Forces guy and someone who's like really meticulous with their coffee. No cream. Don't you dare. No way. Jack Carr kind of makes fun of it in his books where he talks about like putting honey in his black rifle coffee. And half of it is just to kind of mock the fact that people who really love coffee won't

put anything in it. It's a travesty. They won't. And Jack is one of my friends. So when he came out to the house, he was doing research for his book. I was making him a cup of coffee. And he was like, dude, this is fucking insane. Like, how long is this going to take?

I was like, man, it takes as long as it takes. So that entire setup that we just put in your studio, I had that in my coffee lab in my house, that entire thing. thing wow and i'm out here and i was roasting coffee on my stove and going going way down the rabbit hole with with jack and he's taking notes you know for his book and and he's a former seal you know so we're talking shit and he's like you must have just been picked on in the teams right i was like yeah maybe yeah i guess that's why you know i was like if you must have just been picked on in the teams, right? And I was like, yeah, maybe. Yeah, I guess. That's why, you know, I was like, if you just have to run fast, because if you're going to do something weird like this, you got to be able to run really fast, do a lot of fucking pull-ups and push-ups, and shoot really well.

I think that was one of the things where I was like, man, I got to be really good at all these things because it's got to offset all my debaggery over here. With coffee! People have to respect you, even though you're so balls deep in a coffee. It's an interesting story. When we both had similar professions, post-military as contractors, and I was in this fob and I'm sitting there. I'm like, why the fuck is there this this like 50 000 espresso machine for a very small base in the middle of nowhere we'll come to find three hour three years later i'm chatting with evan i'm like yeah dude i don't know the agency bought some stupid ass espresso he's like yep that that was me

i could put it so he convinced the supplier or whoever to officer to buy this super intricate freaking espresso machine in the middle of nowhere i'm like of course it was you of course it was yeah so i that's the exactly so the entire story so i'm working at the agency then so fast forward a few years later and my the the logistics person came to me and he or she was like hey what what kind of espresso machine or coffee machine should we buy and i was was like, oh, don't worry. I'll send you the links to it. And it was like $30,000 espresso machine. I imported it from Italy and had it flown in through some other logistics situation. And she's like, so this is it. I'm like, yeah, but we still need a grinder too, right?

And that was something that kind of lived in not only like infamy that I'd gotten the entire logistic system to buy me this express machine from Italy. There was no oversight? Like no one was like looking at the accounts and going, what the fuck is? Contrary to popular belief, you know, congressional oversight and budgets at times is a little bit hazy when you're in war. They just kind of say, here's lump sum, you know, here you go.

Here's $23 million as long as you can justify it. Maybe we'll be okay. when you're in war they just kind of say here's lump sum you know here you go here's here's 23 million dollars as long as you can justify it maybe we'll be okay uh well you know how the government works too at the end of a fiscal year they're like we got some money to spend or we don't get this budget next year oh and honestly in iraq early on it it was like a dumpster fire with cash just the tax dollars that were just burnt in that place on just dumb shit. You couldn't even imagine if, when I look back on it now as a guy that's very vested in what's happening to my tax dollars,

I'm like, what the fuck were these idiots doing? Like, this is so dumb. It was so dumb. Like what was, besides espresso machines, what was the other ridiculous shit that the money was being spent on?

Oh, well, here's a great example. So, and I've got a myriad of them, but we had a field of up-armored vehicles that were really fucking expensive, like $500,000 a pop, give or take. $1,000 a pop, give or take. We couldn't take him anywhere because they were so obvious that it was a up-armored vehicle that you just drive around and people would want to take pot shots at you for the fun of it. So you have these beautiful half a million to a million dollar cars that you can't use. So you got to go when, when we're working in the low vis capacity means like, you're just trying to blend in just not get shot man like don't pick a fight like let's just blend in do our job get the fuck out of here but if you have a really expensive looking like g5 or something that's just really a g5 in the

middle of fucking baghdad in a war zone people are going to want to take pressure washed and all clean mercedes that big g-wagon yeah a g-wagon it's like a bulletproof g-wagon yeah really yeah dude so g-wagon all of this stuff is up armored so when you look at this like any vehicle you want you can get a level of armor to it but if you buy the most ridiculous and expensive vehicle in the middle of fucking war-torn country x you're going to stick out like a sore thumb and the whole intent of the mission is to blend in so to my point you'll have fields of shit that you can't use because some dumbass is pulling the trigger on your government tax dollars going this looks good to me might as well just see how that looks. Yeah. Why don't they take like an old Chevy Blazer

and then retrofit it? Well, there's that too. You can do that. Do they do that? Oh yeah. You can, when you look, go down the rabbit hole in armored vehicles and obviously you probably wouldn't,

but if you wanted an armored vehicle of any kind, you can get it. Now there are different armored vehicles from different companies so for instance mercedes builds their armored vehicles from ground up it's it's one of the the best if not the best armored vehicle in the world uh it's built from ground up jamie has it right there yeah yeah the g-class originally was a military vehicle yeah that's why it's so durable like my wife has one of those it's like the door is like fucking good chunk it's not like any other car it's so thick like the gauge

steel oh they don't they don't make cars like it no it and that that it's so boxy it's got such good angles to it that i think that it really fits well because there is they look fucking incredible do you remember the weight on like a level seven like how those things are so heavy it it offset the gravity of the earth it was fucking heavy like those things are so heavy and so top heavy it that was the other issue too you're not going anywhere fast in those things so if you need to get out arm it up right so you must have like steel plates at the bottom of it. It's all built from ground up. So it's not as if you have a steel plate that you can remove or something or that's been retro welded in.

It's built on the factory line for it to be an armored vehicle. So all the seams are tight. So do they make them for military guys or do they make them for like dictators? No, they make them for really rich pr they make them for for for everybody rich pricks yeah or dictator x or military whoever it is who doesn't want to get blown up yeah and you can take i think it's something like uh three rounds of ak-47 so 762 by 39 and a three inch square and that's through the entire vehicle so when you're getting when you're getting lit up in one of those it's it's at one it's a it's an

interesting experience that you're never going to forget uh and then two you're feeling pretty good especially if they're shooting at you with ak or just like whatever i'm gonna have a snack you guys keep so have you been inside one while it's under attack oh gosh yeah yeah yeah what is it so what is it like just ting ting ting ding, ding, ding, ding? Yeah, some tinks. And obviously, you know, your job is not to stick around and kind of absorb the rounds. But a level seven is what it's called. And so when you're in a level seven armored vehicle that's getting shot at by either 7.62x39 or, you know, increase of, of rifle or belt fed, it will absorb a certain amount of rounds. Sometimes it'll be loud and sometimes it'll be really muted and quiet depending on just

where it strikes. Yeah. Where it strikes, how it strikes. So if it's striking an angle, if it's perpendicular to the round, where is it hitting? Uh, you know, so how close are you to the shooter? Uh, how perpendicular you are to the round? How big is the round? So it'll kind of, it'll sound different depending on where you're at.

And you can kind of gauge like, where's that coming from? How much weight does it add to the overall truck? Oh gosh. A shit ton. Those doors, if you were to put your finger in one of those level seven doors by hand, it's just going to get trimmed off. You'll get it trimmed off. And that's a really weird factoid about level sevens is you never want to roll down the

windows and you really can't on a lot of them. So if one of your teammates farts in the vehicle, it's the worst because you can't open the door, roll down the window. You're like, really, dude? Yeah. You can't go through Chick-fil-A drive-thru in one of those things. No, you can. You can get it.

I think you get the window down about this far, give or take. But it'll also take a finger off if you decide to roll up the window. The window is going to be three and a half to four inches thick. That's how big it is. And it's not glass. It's a plastic, essentially, or some type of plastic. But you can see through, and you can see through. It looks somewhat like glass.

If you get close to an armored vehicle, you can see. How many dickheads are listening to this right now going, I need that in my life? Oh, man. I need one of those. There's actually a lot of companies that do that. They take like Tacomas or Tundras and they outfit them with level sevens. I mean, I think that's just kind of badass. One day I want one of those.

Doesn't that Devrolo company do that? Do you know that company, Devrolo? Oh, yeah. That's what I was talking about. Yeah. They do that plastic coating on the outside. What is that shit called? The hard plastic coating on the outside.

It's like synthetic Kevlar or something like that. Yeah, yeah. It's like this hard plastic. It's like, I forget what it's called. Usually, they use it for undercoating some cars, but a lot of cars, they do it on the outside as well. And then they'll do the whole bulletproof treatment of them and then they what are those things are like five hundred thousand dollars too they're pretty expensive expensive with jamie go to dev rolo it's um they'll do a 700 horsepower engine option oh yeah all kinds of crazy shit

well like when you look at the we'll call it the mercedes and there it is you'll have sometimes you'll have a v12 twin turbo v12 and a mercedes that's got to be six seven hundred wheel that's got to go to go to their uh just their model range where the model range is yeah and then go to the predator limousine look at that thing yeah they make a limo but the the predator i think is their top of the line oh that's that's that's their f-150 they do an f-150 they also do a tundra but that's there's that line that shit on the outside linex is that what it's called yeah is that what it's called yeah that's linex yeah yeah so it's this really durable plastic that you can't scratch or dent so now that you're in texas is that going to be your texas truck i think i might have to dev x oh they call it dev x so

it's like a version of line x i'm sure right i think it used to be called line x yeah those things are mean looking i like it yeah that's dope also okay so it does they do it for jeeps too there yeah oh they deal with everything yeah Yeah, it's Line-X. Because they've been doing... Mercedes, ew. What are you doing? Yeah, it's disgusting. Unscratchable, but it looks like shit.

They look okay, I guess. It's kind of like a matte looking, but the texture... Yeah, I've seen people do that with Jeeps and shit. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I think Dudley did it to one of his. Did he? Yeah.

I think his Jeep was just at the office. I think he's got some kind of Lion-X or something. I don't know. I just saw it. I just saw it in Utah. I didn't notice that. I'm probably just imagining. I might have not been paying attention, though.

We were looking at so many different things when we were up there. Yeah. So this company does that. But I think there's a lot of rich Russian guys that drive around those things. Yeah. Yeah. That's kind of a rich Russian thing to do, right? Number one ballisted car in USA.

Yeah. If you're a rich Russian, chances are someone wants to kill you. I would say that's a really high percentage. It's a high possibility. It's a high possibility. So when you got out of the military, how long was it before you started Black Rifle? It was started basically at the same time.

Is there coffee in this thing right here? Yeah, yeah. There's still coffee in there. What is this? What kind of coffee is this? That is that Cinnabon that I roasted special for this place. That Ethiopian shit that you sent me? It's a Costa Rican.

Yeah, what did you think of that Ethiopian? It's the fucking bomb diggity really i love it i love i was turned on to ethiopian coffee i had this guy peter giuliano he's a coffee expert back in the day i had him on the podcast like a few years back i was just interested i was like what like what is it like these people that are really into coffee i started reading about people who are really into coffee i'm like i want to know what the fuck is going on like what is happening like these real heavy coffee nerds because i would just get coffee and pour cream in it and then i was into like mct oil and grass-fed butter and

coffee for a while but the problem with that is people in the podcast got so annoyed with me going every 30 seconds because you've got all this grass-fed butter and mct oil in your throat right just like coats you and um so i got this guy peter giuliano come on and he just explained to me the whole thing how all coffee came from ethiopia and then and then the difference between uh wet processing and dry processing and coffee rust and all these different things like well we went down the rabbit hole for like three hours best analogy I have for coffee, it's so similar to wine, right? You have the wine connoisseurs

that can taste all the tasting notes and all that. Then you have the average consumer that goes and buys Bada Box just to get drunk or just for the caffeine. It's very similar where if you go down the rabbit hole

like Evan specifically. With everything, cigars, with everything. There's just dorks that take it to the next level. And I think that for every one of those, whether it's wine or cigars or coffee or whatever it is, right? And which is a total sidebar story, but as well, which is I went and had dinner with Crowder one night and we went to this cigar bar. And he's a hardcore cigar aficionado.

Is he really? Yeah. And so he was taking me down, you know, cigar street with whatever he's doing. And I was taking him down coffee street. And so the geekiest conversation in, in America was taking place between Steven and me as we're trying to eat steak in this, this bar in Dallas, not too far from his office. But I think for every one of those, you actually find a niche subculture of people that also share your same passion

for just obscure details and things. So when you're talking about wine or coffee, you do have some type of common kinship, I guess, because I get it. I totally get why people are into this one little thing, and they want to go as deep and as interesting as they can. I totally get it because I'm like that with coffee. I never get bored of it if I go to Panama or Guatemala or Costa Rica.

Coffee is so fascinating from every aspect, whether we're looking at it from a historical, the international historical consequences of this entire commodity, whether it's commodities trading, whether it's growing and processing the future of coffee, where is it headed? How are we optimizing the growing process so we don't run out of it? Whether you're looking at it from a roasting or a drinking all of that you can go as deep and as detailed as you want and it doesn't get fucking boring i could spend the rest of my life ever thought about farming in america is it possible to do in america like

can you do it in texas no the climate's just not correct no it's we only have kona out of hawaii right which is fucking fantastic i love kona coffee yeah it's some really amazing flavors that come out of the big island for whatever reason right it's a soil is that what it is yeah it's a soil so when you have uh the high lava uh or but let's be honest that's not america no haw. Hawaii's not America. It's crazy. I mean, I love Hawaii. Don't get me wrong. But they should be allowed to be their own fucking country.

They're an island in the middle of the ocean. It's five hours by plane from America. How the fuck is that America? I think they should be protected by America. Sure. Don't get me wrong. Yeah, yeah. But the idea that that's regular America? Like, come on, man.

There's a specific look Hawaiians have. Like, oh, that dude looks Hawaiian. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. But there's a guy from Iowa. Oh, that guy looks Iowan. No. No.

That's because they're Highlanders. That's not the way that it works. Right. I mean, come on, man. It's fucking crazy that that's America. Yeah. Plus, you kind of don't want america to fuck it up so right exactly keep it out there so like none of the american politicians can fuck that thing to the point where

we can't go out there and at least enjoy it and in a peaceful and in a way that's beneficial for everybody i mean we've done they've done an amazing job of not fucking it up yeah thinking about how many people come there. You know, like every year, people are constantly going to Hawaii and they've somehow or another managed to keep it together. Well, I think it's pretty much America's like vacation spot where we're like, we'll take that island. So, you know, we have bachelorette parties.

We can just roll out there and sit on Kauai for a couple of days and drink, you know, margaritas. The thing that I was thinking about when I was flying out there, which is really kind of a morbid thought in some ways, where I was thinking about all the fat that has flown across the ocean so they can go eat more fat on the island of Hawaii in this sense of like just people and the obesity of just generally flying seven hours, landing on an island, and then essentially sitting and eating in a buffet and then flying back and i was thinking about the fuel that's being utilized to cart just general fat back and

forth that's what i was thinking about when i was flying to hawaii in january and uh fat and booze yeah fat and booze so much booze gets consumed there so much and with me too when i go there i just immediately start drinking i don't drink during the day here like very rarely but when i go to hawaii like the moment i land fuck yeah there's something about the island vibe that you're like it's 11 a.m mimosas why not give me something with an umbrella yeah something with a pineapple slice in it let's party yeah i fucking love it there. And it's my favorite hunting destination. Oh, mine too.

Because it's a great place to go to get tuned up for elk hunting. Oh, yeah. Because you get so many opportunities when you go to Lanai. For access, right? Yeah. And ethically, they have to kill those things. Yeah. There's no ifs, ands, or buts about it.

They bring in snipers on a weekly basis. Is that bad out there? They have 30,000 deer plus or minus you know they don't really know they're doing overhead surveys and shit on an island with 3,000 people and it's tiny have you been no i haven't bro it's bonkers when you're there at nighttime and you hit the flashlight or hit the headlights and you just see thousands of eyes yeah you're like whoa this is crazy well axis breed like hogs as you know and i think a lot of people don't know in like texas with the

exotics here what happened over the last you know whatever hundred years is the rains and storms wash out the high fences and then you get the axis that escape and now they're like rampant where i live in hill country just an hour away i mean they're they're fucking everywhere there's almost more than that like whitetail. My wife saw an axis near our house. We were driving right next to my house on the way here. We saw about a 34-inch axis and about, I don't know, 30 females out there in the field on the way in.

Wow. And the crazy thing with Texas is they're considered exotics. So as long as you have a hunting license, there's not the regulations like there are in the season with whitetails. They're walking groceries, which is awesome because they're like they're so delicious they consider elk exotics here yeah yeah which is so weird because elk used to be native they used to be native here but they they were you know extirpated and then now that they're back again they're because they're not standard for Texas, they're now considered

exotics. So there's no hunting season for elk out here. Have you immersed yourself at all in the Texas hunting culture yet at all? I've only been here for a month. Okay. It's wild, man, because you go to- I haven't even said y'all yet. Y'all?

You haven't? I've tried it. It's an ill-fitting shoe for me in my vocabulary. I can't use it. I'm like a cultural mutt. I'm like, what's up, bro, from SoCal, y'all? And it's like, wait, ill-fitting shoe for me in my vocabulary i can't use it i'm like a cultural mutt i'm like what's up bro from socal y'all and it's like wait what the fuck is this guy he said bro shred the gnar and then y'all yeah shred the gnar y'all but the hunting out here is crazy because like some of the higher fence ranches and we're talking tens of thousands of acres and

you know if you ask them like can you shoot a giraffe they're like everything's got a price tag old boy and i mean anything goes but i'm not shooting a giraffe no no i but no but apparently but it's out there i have a friend who shot a giraffe giraffe and he says they're fucking delicious really yeah they had to shoot one giraffe right so here's the thing about giraffes they are like every other animal they want to control breeding right so every other male large male wants to control breeding and when you have a large male giraffe that fucks up all the other male giraffes you're like okay we got a real problem with this guy right and so they had to take out this giraffe so he was in africa at the time and they shot this giraffe and they ate it and he said it was unbelievably delicious did they reference what it tasted like? I would imagine it's... Giraffe. I would imagine... It's got to be in the deer family, right?

Like, something like it? Dinosaur? What family is giraffe in? I have no... Here's my thing on it, though. I'm not eating anything that is so friendly. When you go to the zoo, a baby can feed it. Right.

Like, my daughter... I have video of my daughter when she was two. I was holding her, and the giraffe comes with his crazy tongue and takes the lettuce from her hands. And she's laughing. I mean, they're just too chill, man. And they're the only animal that I have no problem with at the zoo, too. I used to have a bit about it.

Because every other animal at the zoo, you're like, let him go. What the fuck is this? The giraffes have no problem with that fence. They're like, another day with no lions. And they're just strolling over to where the lettuce is. I feel like that's how they talk very proper. Yeah, that's how I think.

Yeah, I got a couple of those. Just hanging. Do you have an okapi? No, I'm just joking. I'm sure they have them out here. We do have a zedonk at our ranch. What a pretty animal though, the okapi.

Wow, that's beautiful. Have you seen the zedonks here? Is it a zebra donkey? Yeah, they cross pollinate and it's got zebra legs and then a donkey body it's super weird looking oh jamie yeah because a lot of those animals if they get out like a z donk crossover then you have like you know red stag and elk can actually mate together and make a hybrid crossbreed seriously yeah yeah that's why they'll never keep on the same look at that yeah cool huh but that's a infertile animal, right? Yeah, I believe so.

Most hybrids are like that. I kind of want it as a pet. Wow, what a beautiful thing. What is that fucking thing with the giant? Yeah, look at that cocksucker. Woo! Look at the size of those. I think that's a Watusu.

I think you can Google that, Watusu. What the fuck kind of neck does it have to carry that around? Look at that headgear. It actually says Florida, Florida Airboats. What? That's a Florida Airboat. That's a Watusu. That's what it is?

It's very similar to a Texas Longhorn, but they got these really thick horns on them. That's like a sprinter's thighs. I think there's a Y in there. Yeah, right there. Wow. It's a Y in there. It's like W-A-Y-T-S-U or something. Hmm.

Don't ask me. I can't spell. Wild ass looking animal. Well, Texas has, I did a bit about Texas tigers. There's more tigers in captivity in Texas than all the wild of the world. Right. One state, more tigers than all of the planet. And they're all in dudes' yards.

Riddle me this. Do you think after joe exotic that the the increase of texas ownership yeah look at that motherfucker holy shit look at that that's if you saw showed me that i'd be like oh that's avatar that's fake right that's in a movie yeah it's real wow what are that what that thing tastes like it tastes just like cow i've had it i like how that's your first oh look at that one what the fuck man it tastes like i like it tastes just like cow i've had it i like how that's your first oh look at that one what the fuck man it tastes like i like it that's joe's first question huh i wonder what that tastes like you need to know it's like cruising through well everything doesn't taste the same that's true

i've had people that have never had elk before and i serve it to them they're like holy shit i'm like yeah yeah yeah this is the real thing you feel different when you eat it. You're like, whoo! You feel pumped up because it's so filled with nutrients and vitamins and everything. It feels like alpha brain for your body. Yeah, there's something to it. There's definitely something to it. There's a reason why they're running away from mountain lions all the time.

I don't know if you ever tried it, but I've been taking grass-fed organic beef liver pills and stuff. Yeah, I and stuff yeah i do that you do it yeah yeah i had a company hook me up and man i take that in about 30 minutes after i eat i'm like super charged if i just took like a b12 shot it's the weirdest thing and i think you had to like work your way up in dosage yeah that guy uh paul saldino uh carnivore md yeah yeah yeah he's sell i think it's heart and soil supplements yeah he sells uh grass fed uh beef liver beef heart trachea collagen i take all that shit yeah trevor does all that the trevor thompson he takes yeah all that shit right yeah trevor's super health conscious yeah i i believe in that 100 i mean human beings are supposed to be eating. When wolves kill, the first thing the alpha does is eat the liver.

The other wolves stand by and wait, and the alpha eats the liver. It's the most nutrient-dense part of the body. Do you keep it? Do you keep your liver when you— I love liver. Yeah. Yeah, I think it's—I buy liver at the store, too. I buy calf's liver, like, when I run on an elk liver.

I love heart, too. Heart's delicious. Deer heart is my favorite. My brother, like, chops it up and, like, sears itars it in oil like almost fried a little bit it's delicious and an elk liver is like it's as big as this fucking table it's so big it's an enormous enormous organ yeah and i've always looked at the last couple years it's interesting because people will go why are you keeping that it's funny because i'm you know pulling my knife out going through you know as i'm field dressing it and i'm like oh we need to keep the heart and liver

and it's funny because people some people don't like some people like what the fuck are you doing i'm like man it's really good i want to one day shoot a bison and then cut the liver out and squirt bile on it and eat it raw because that's what the native americans did apparently it was like their favorite thing to do really yeah they would cut the liver out and cut slices of the liver and squirt bile on on the liver and eat it raw i want i want to taste that i want to know what does the bile do why just it's like salty i guess huh yeah i mean they had all sorts of you know ways to get nutrition right that were of not just natural, but like instinctive, like the liver. Like today, we don't necessarily eat liver.

If you gave a survey of how many people eat liver on a daily basis, it's probably not even one-tenth of 1%. But back then, it was really important for nutrients, because especially if you're living on the plains in the winter and there's there's no vegetables you're not getting any vegetables you know you're like the comanche basically lived off bison right and when they would shoot a bison that one of the first things they would do is cut the liver up and eat it raw with bile on it i want to know what it tastes like that's my favorite part about living in texas is i live a bunch of next to the hillbillies and i mean that in a complimentary sense but like my neighbor, I don't know, two months ago was like, hey, man, I just killed a bison on this ranch.

I got extra meat, and he gave me 150 pounds of organic bisons. I love it because everybody's killing shit around here, and you eat so good. Well, at my studio in LA, I had three commercial freezers. So when dudes would come over, I'd give everybody meat. I gave meat to people that you would never think would be out there eating elk. Just never put your freezer on a GFI switch. I learned the hard way in my garage. The GFI switch went off, and I didn't check my freezer for like four days.

Ruined three Axis and one White Tails. I would think the three days it would still be frozen. Not in the Texas summer in the garage. But is it a good seal, like a really high-end freezer? Probably not. I think I bought a cheap one that first time. When my neighborhood caught fire a couple years back and I had a freezer, commercial freezer in my garage,

we had evacuated, but my friend Bud stayed by. And when the firefighters were in the area i said hey man i go go into the freezer i go that meat is still gonna be good and pull it out and serve it to the firefighters so they felt they fed like fucking 100 firefighters are you kidding me yeah it was awesome that's i had hundreds of pounds of meat in there right and it was but it was still frozen yeah it was still good that's. It was still good. That's crazy. Yeah, a good seal for like a Yeti cooler. Right.

Those fucking Yeti coolers, man. It's insane. They are the shit. Yeah. You can take one of those coolers, fill it with ice, leave it in 100 degrees sun for five days. You open that bitch up, there's ice in there. Yeah.

It's crazy. It doesn't make any sense. Well, it does make sense, but it's just shocking. doesn't make any sense well it does make sense but it's just shocking when we were when we were i would row down this the middle fork of the salmon and in um in idaho so we'd do like five six day trips and i would pack shitty coolers with dry ice and ice and they would last five days so even with a yeti cooler a little bit of shade you can stretch that out for i don't know man you could get a week at least out of that stuff. But the funny thing is with what just meat in general, as far as

like one of the questions that I was, I was trying to ask you earlier was when you're on that carnivore diet and you were eating nothing but meat, were you eating wild meat or were you also eating some, you know, beef and some other things i was eating both i was eating the why i was eating like a lot of elk which i always do but elk is very lean there's no fat in that so i would also i would cook it in tallow okay first of all so i had a lot of beef fat i would take scoops of tallow and just eat it i would eat scoops of beef tallow grass-fed beef tallow and then i would also cook it in bacon i would eat bacon like i'd have like four or five pieces of bacon you have to get fat otherwise you'll get that rabbit starvation

shit going on you know like so i was just trying different ways to get fat in my diet and you did that for a month yeah a whole month and lost 12 pounds and uh i got real aggressive seriously yes yes it gets you aggressive. Like testosterone? Yeah, I think so for sure. But also I think it's just there's something about your body thinking all it does is eat meat. Right. I mean, I think like one of the things that my friends have said that have turned vegan is like it makes it more peaceful and calm. Right.

And it makes sense. You're grazing. You're a herbivore now. Right. Like you're just out there eating grass and rice all day like of course like it seems like your body would be calm but on the other side of it if you're eating meat all the time your body's like we gotta kill yeah like it's it's i think there's something to that i really do because i wasn't trying to be aggressive right but i would i would find myself like saying things that were a little

too aggressive or like it was aggressive it's like the world's worst fucking excuse you're like god you're kind of an asshole today Joe I've just been eating meat man I wasn't being a dick but I was like a little quick to judge things like a little fuck him it's a little too much and then it's just there was something I think there's something to that you said I had a lot of energy man that was the other thing that was interesting. Oh yeah. All day long.

That was what was weird. It was like, there was no crash. There was no crashing during the day. It was like, I had extra energy. It was crazy. It felt weird.

You know, it's like there was no, I was eating no sugar. Right. What about eggs? Yeah. Fish, eggs,

fish, all that. Anything that's an animal. Yeah. I was anything that's an animal. The only thing that kept me from eating that way was I got bored. So I love pasta. I love food.

I love going to a restaurant and they make you a nice crab cake or something. I love when chefs create things. I don't want to say, hey, I only eat meat. I like sushi. I like it with the rice. I like it. It tastes good. It's one of the things that i enjoy so for that it's like i i could do it longer if i want i could keep doing i could eat like that forever but i enjoy food too much i think right but it's the only reason i'm motivated in life to be pretty good at business is so i can buy pretty good

whiskey and be a fat fuck anytime i go to a restaurant and buy the lobster roll that's 37 and i'm like it's cool man yeah there's there's some logic to that not worrying about what food costs and just it's just there's something about i feel like when you go to a restaurant you're going to like an art gallery yeah it's like this guy's an artist or this woman's an artist she creates these dishes and then you're going to like an art gallery. It's like this guy's an artist or this woman's an artist. She creates these dishes and then you're experiencing their art. You know, I don't want to just eat meat all the time. So when I go to restaurants, I eat whatever the fuck I want. But I think 80% of my diet's meat.

Yeah. Probably around 80%. I've been trying, like I went strictly essentially vegetables and meat for probably the last six months just to see kind of what's going on. And honestly, I felt really good. And then I shifted just to meat five or six days ago. So I'm running just meat now. Yeah. So I'm interested in what you did.

And I guess, you know, I should probably do a little bit more research. But Trevor and I have been talking about it. Well, I'm using grass-fed, a lot of grass-fed butter. I kept all the bones. So I'm using all the bone marrow and things like that out of my elk. Oh, that's great. I love bone marrow. And for the most part, you know, the elk that I shot a couple weeks ago, that thing was really fat. It had a really healthy layer of fat

on it, which is more, it was a lot more fat than I thought that we would get from those. Especially in the rut. I know. Yeah, mine was pretty fat too. It was pretty impressive. But I'm trying, you know what I mean? Where it's, you know, I've talked to Trevor a lot over the last several months on how are you feeling? Are you crashing at this time? He stopped it, right?

He did it for a while, but then he got off of it. He said his hormones kind of plateaued. Well, he was doing something crazy too. He was doing carnivore and he was only eating for like 30 seconds during the day or something where he would scourge himself. What? It was crazy. Really? Yeah. He was fasting until like 4 o'clock in the afternoon.

And then, so he's doing intermittent fasting. He's doing it every day till four or five in the afternoon. And then he'd give himself a feed window of two hours or something like that. And he's, he was prepping for his, uh, he's, he's doing a couple of races. Plus he's doing some guiding up in Alaska. he's doing a couple races plus he's doing some guiding up in alaska so he's doing all of these kind of mental exercises plus the fact that he's optimizing his diet doing exercise physical exercise he's got this really interesting way of kind of looking at life but he's only giving himself maybe an hour of a feeding window a day for a while. I like how you call it a feeding window.

That's how they call it. Yeah. Yeah. It's weird. That intermittent fasting thing is a weird sort of torture cult. They're like torturing themselves. There's benefits to it for sure. There's real benefits to not eating all the time

because you give your body a break and you let your body digest food. And there's benefits to going into ketosis when your body goes into ketosis when it doesn't have glycogen anymore and starts eating fat and burning off the fat there's a lot there's a host of benefits right i'm not the guy to tell tell you about them but there's also a thing where guys do where they want to see how long they can go yeah you know like marathon runners there's just something to it like they want to see how far they can push it and so there's a thing where you're hungry but you're like nope not until six i don't eat until six yeah that's super aggressive internet minute fasting is weird to me when they eat for like two

hours a day i get it if it's like 12 yeah but like 18 20 hours that's that's that's too much for me we would be up in the mountains uh cruising around we were going shed hunting and it's 4.30, 5 o'clock and he's like, I can't eat yet. I'm like, you haven't eaten all day. You just went and ate something? No, I'm not eating until Thursday. I don't fuck around with that shit when I'm in the mountains. If I'm hunting, I eat all the time. I eat constantly.

I'm not doing any intermittent fasting when I'm walking 10 miles a day in the mountains. That's crazy. When you have to, I never know when the real work is going to begin. Right. Right? Yeah. And I don't want to be in that position.

And I found myself in that position the last couple of years where it's time to turn it on. And shit, man, I was on a stock a few weeks ago and it took me over an hour to move 30 yards just trying to move on this big bull as slow as I could there were cows everywhere so I had eyes everywhere looking for me it's amazing if you don't move fast and you have the right camo what you can get away with you can get away and I didn't know what I could get away with or I couldn't get away with. And I feel like I'm doing Tai Chi or something,

you know, just moving as slow as you can. And then you never know when, how long is that stock going to be? And then how long is the post work? If I shoot this animal, how long am I going to have to track it? Where is all the work in this going to start and end so i'm the same way i have to eat throughout the day i have to keep putting fuel in my body

because i'm always expecting shit's gonna get real like 10 minutes from now yeah and those hunting situations like you just don't know you don't know if you're gonna have to pack out in an hour like you should be fueled up because if you get really tired and you just feel weak and woozy you could push through it in a regular day sure but if you're out there in the mountains and you're at 8 000 feet and then you have 100 pounds of elk on your back and you have to walk over this ridge it's gonna take you two miles to get to the truck good fucking luck yeah yeah you should have prepared that'd be gassed up more yeah i eat man you gotta eat but i think there's real benefits to you know occasionally fasting and then that intermittent fasting i think

human beings probably eat too much oh generally if you look at americans in particular we're fat as fuck yeah well the wrong stuff too i mean i've always made that joke when people are like having a donut and they're just like i have no energy and they're chugging coffee i'm like eat some fucking good carbs and some meat and you're gonna feel great it's just yeah the diet in america is very interesting to me especially when we travel and we're with some of the other guys that don't have the same dietary habits as us and i'm like that's you ate gas station burritos and a hot dog and that's that's what you had today and i'm like and i don't and i'm not like discrediting it it's your life do what you want but it's it's weird and then they feel like shit

all day and you're like well no wonder you had yeah it's just too available yeah it's it's too there's too much all the time and i think that's where the intermittent fasting at least you know for a lot of guys it's it it can really help because it's ultimately saying i'm not going to take part in just the ease of all the food that's available all the time. And I'm going to take part in it, you know, two or three hours a day or whatever it is. Just give yourself some discipline. Yeah. Give yourself some discipline. Now, when you're, you're eating this all meat diet, how much of what you're eating is, is the elk and wild game? And how, what are you,

what are you using? I'm using right now i'm only using wild fish so salmon for the most part um and elk so i'm that's it that's it so i brought what about other fat sources uh well i mean outside of that little uh little on it nugget that you gave me those protein bites yeah yeah Those are so fucking addictive. So good. So good. But I think for MCT, I use a lot of MCT, and I'm not saying it's good whatsoever. I just want to see what the fuck happens to my body

when I do nothing but good, when I say non-processed fats, wild meat all the way through, and then stick to it for two, three, four weeks and see how I'm feeling. Just make sure you get enough fat. Yeah. That's the real problem with people when they get really tired, because your body is most

certainly going to go into ketosis at certain points in time. But there's also something that happens when you eat so much protein, your body converts that protein into glucose. I think it's called glucogenesis or something like that right and you'll experience that too but you're gonna need fat if you don't you're gonna get fatigued it's gonna it'll start fucking with you and that's one of the reasons why i got really into tallow and really started eating a lot of bacon and things like why do you think there's such like a national misconception that fat's bad for your body because i hear that from a lot of people like i don't want to eat it it's fat well they were told that for the longest time they were well first of all there's

real evidence that sugar and and these companies that made sugar paid scientists to fuck with data to put heart disease and all these uh problems that people are having with clogged arteries to push that off on saturated fat. And to take that away from sugar. And sugar is terrible for you. Sugar in that form is so unnatural. Fat in the form of meat is very natural. It's what human beings have been eating

since the beginning of time. It's normal. Yeah, monounsaturated, polyunsaturated, saturated fats, all pretty good for you. Just stay away from trans fat. Well, unsaturated fats that come from vegetable oils like i think it's called linoleic acid it's fucking terrible for you really not only is it terrible for you there's real evidence that it makes you hungry that like you're you're eating it and there's no nutrients in it so your body gets hungrier look throughout human history there's never been a time until recently where people got oils directly from plants in large quantities like that.

If you got oil from plants, it was like oil from avocados, like natural. Or you got your oil from beef fat or chicken fat or things. That's natural for human beings. These saturated fats that are natural um your body knows what to do with them your body doesn't know what the fuck to do with canola oil what is it your body's like what the fuck is right your body gets a hold of like some raw honey your body knows exactly what to do with it but your body gets a hold of like fucking corn syrup and that kind of shit it's like what is this it just doesn't make sense to your body.

And I think we've gotten into this processed food thing. And processed food is almost entirely, like if you, first of all, it's a human, it's a new human creation. Yeah. And it should never be your first choice. Your first choice should be natural foods. Your first choice should be, foods. Your first choice should be...

Look, apple, steak, all that, that's normal. You can eat that. That's easy. Your body knows what the fuck to do with that. But you get into seed oils and all these really heavily processed seed oils. There's real evidence that that is a giant part of what's wrong with the health of Americans today, is these ultra processed vegetable oils. They're fucking terrible for you. But it doesn't seem to me like

that's a stretch in logic, right? So for just the American diet in general, for us to look at the traditional food pyramid and say, well, that's bullshit. Ultimately, you know, if grains and processed foods sit at the cornerstone of your entire diet, you're going to have some issues. You can kind of look around and you don't even have to be a rocket surgeon to figure that out. Right. It's like, holy shit. Obesity is an epidemic in the United States. We're eating a ton of processed food and all the guys that I know that are healthy are eating whole foods for the most part. And it's not because you have more discipline or because you have more access or wealth. I know a ton of guys that are not very wealthy that eat whole foods and they're feeding in

certain windows and they're still in the military, still doing fucking incredibly difficult missions and they're really healthy. So when I look around, I say, well, okay, if you stick to whole foods and you limit your amount of caloric intake, we're not dealing in a high, you know, high intellect thought process here. It should be pretty easy. But I think what people want is they want their easy button, right? They're like hungry. You see Jack in the box, you pull in, you get a burger. You're like, oh, like oh now i feel better but meanwhile you just force some shit into your system and your system's got to burn off all this bullshit that you poured in there but there's even foods that people think are healthy that

are not really good for you like for instance white rice is better than brown rice yes like people think white rice like oh i'll have brown rice. I'm being healthy. I'll have brown rice. It's got to be one of the biggest misconceptions out there. That fucking stuff, there's arsenic in that. But it's brown. Yeah, it's not good. It's brown. It looks like grains.

That's all I eat is white rice, man. That shit is terrible for you. It's terrible. There's a reason why Asian cultures for a long time have been getting rid of that outside, that husk. God, the Japanese got it right with food, I'm telling you. They did. Sushi, white rice white rice seaweed just all day favorite yeah well there's a lot of countries that figured it out we're just not one of them we're like ultra processed seed oils sugar corn syrup yeah preservatives fucking gallons of preservatives glyphosate on all our plants.

Yeah. There's also evidence that like animals, and I've been getting into this lately, animals that eat these ultra processed foods, then you eat them. Like animals that eat like ultra processed corn, then you eat that animal. Like you're getting some of the bullshit from the corn and some of the bullshit from that. All these seed oil acids, you're getting these things in your body too but that that makes sense to me it makes complete sense to me when we look at what they're eating and then you're eating them for sure like there's really not a direct or you're not stretching and connecting

a lot of complex thought there in the sense of when people are trying to sell me on the idea, like, no, it's great. Don't worry about it. It's like, no man, like those chickens are eating arsenic and they're packed in, you know, right on top of each other, shitting on each other everywhere. Like I'd rather have a free free range egg. I'd rather have that. I'd rather have free range chicken. It's no offense to however you want to eat, but it's just a preference of eating. It's pretty easy. I think that the argument comes from maybe corporate impact in marketing where they'll just Americans will consume it without thinking and go, well, it's good because Jack in the Box told me that it's organic well i think there's any one thing in this country where there is a massive

lack of understanding in terms of like the the way people perceive what's good and what's bad it's nutrition because there's so few doctors that really know what the fuck they're talking about there's doctors out there that'll tell you you don't need supplements you don't need supplements you need a healthy balanced diet and then you look at them. They got a gut. They're bloated. They look like they're dying. Like, what the fuck is going on, man? I just typed in brown rice versus white rice

just to see what would pop up. And all five, six articles that come up say the opposite of what you guys just said. That it's good for you? That brown rice has an advantage over white rice. Advantage? What's the advantage? It says that there's nutrients and antioxidants

and white rice has empty calories. Yeah, listen. Rice is basically just carbohydrates. It is just calories. But the shell of the brown rice is not good for you. Google this. The negative consequences of brown rice. Yeah, I think it's not necessarily a nutritional thing.

There's something in the... You get a lot of vegan propaganda in these articles that are written by these people. Well, the one I went to was a company I get food from sometimes. Not to... Like, I'm paid by them, but... Do me a favor. Google the negative...

What did I say? The negative impact of brown rice, negative health consequences of brown rice. But that's got to be across the board with food companies. I was actually just listening to a doctor discuss this. Brown rice. Brown rice is the brand and germ attack, both of which are responsible for giving it the high fire

of the brand germ also irritates the digestive tract leading to digestive problems bloating diarrhea constipation leaky gut syndrome

I would skip that source usually Times of India is bad right but they eat a lot of rice over there I get all my facts

from Wikipedia man it's usually not the best source that we would start with I would say well that's the problem like where do you get that's what I was trying, where do you get?

That's what I was trying to say. So I just typed it in. Web MD is usually pretty good. I just typed in brown rice. The problem with brown rice. Go to that Invictus Fitness. What is that? Here we go. The problem with brown rice.

Dyson often insists that people should eat brown rice. Majority of your protein. Brown rice has also been reported. High levels of inorganic arsenic, which is what I said, often says people should eat brown rice majority your protein brown rice also been reported high levels of inorganic arsenic which that's what I said which is a toxin known to potentially cause liver lung kidney and bladder cancer some arsenic is just naturally occurring mineral but the inorganic kind comes from chemicals and pesticides a researcher named Alan Aragon helped run to do he's a very highly respected fellow, read his shit online, run

two different research projects comparing the effects of white rice and brown rice on the body. See the findings below. White rice actually has an equal or better nutritional yield and also has a better nitrogen retentive effect than brown rice. This is also because fiber and phytate, what's that word? Phytate? Phytate?

This is also because fiber and phytate content of brown rice act as an antinutrient, reducing the bioavailability of the micronutrients it contains. Since no one is reading the fucking link, I'll just lay things out here for you. Great. Yeah. So the problem with things that are posted online is that there's a lot of people that want to get you to eat a certain way right and they'd like you to eat whole foods they'd like you to eat plant-based foods they'd like you to eat carnivore they'd like you to eat keto and they'll try to spell things out with user bias or with uh you know confirmation bias to try to like only like

if you've talked to people that are carnivore-based people, they'll just tell you, this is the only way you should eat, and this is why. You talk to people that are vegans, this is the only way you should eat, and this is why. And more now than ever before, people think that plant-based is the way to go. So oftentimes when you Google brown rice or white rice or vegetables or whatever, you'll only find the positive consequences. oftentimes when you google like brown rice or white rice or vegetables or whatever you'll only find the the positive consequences like it's very rare to find the negative consequences of eating leafy green vegetables but they they exist the negative cons first of all oxalates like um what

my cyrus's old boyfriend her ex-husband he had to get fucking surgery because he was getting these kidney stones because he was eating so much leafy green vegetables are you kidding me yeah you get oxalates yeah yeah can have another reason why i shouldn't eat greens but then there's other people that tell you the greens are super healthy for you and there's all these benefits to eating greens and that a certain level of i think a certain amount of eating greens there's like an there's there's a hermetic effect where your body is like like certain plants have chemicals that they release to try to discourage predation right so they'll release these chemicals and these chemicals that will they'll discourage animals from from eating them in fact when it goes back to giraffes, there's certain giraffes that have actually starved because, and this is really crazy, when the giraffes upwind were eating certain plants, the leaves downwind caught the fact that they were being eaten. And they changed their taste profile.

So they release a certain chemical that makes the the giraffes discouraged from eating them and so these giraffes hated eating this shit it's really crazy nature is crazy yeah chemicals that plants release they don't plants don't want to be fucking eaten right you know like and they have to figure out how to survive so nature has all these strategies for survival and one of the strategies that plants have is they release these chemicals in order to make themselves taste like shit or even be poisonous. Well, I've been hearing more and more of this. And it's interesting because when I look at what's going on with your gut, right? And I was just having this conversation earlier with a retired special forces guy, good friend of mine.

And we were talking about our life in the military and what's happening in our gut biome, right? What's happening with the balance of your ecosystem down here. And we were, we've, we've, we've lived this life of going overseas and in overseas repetitively on, on a, on a, on a yearly, sometimes more annual cycle in these developing world countries and combat zones. We're nuking our gut every time we go over there on anti-malarials, anti-inflammatories, all of the different things. We're just dropping bombs in our gut. And then we're eating high preservative foods, so meals ready to eat. And you're eating MREs, you're not sleeping,

you're nuking your gut with antibiotics. It's the burning tires and burn pits. And so now how much is happening down here? And when we're talking about plant-based or carnivore or paleo or any of these other things, how much is it really dependent on the individual and whether or not they were breastfed as kids? How many anti-inflammatories

have they taken what type of lifestyle do they have where your ancestors come from yeah where your ancestors come from i think anytime we try to templatize system and or some type of system and say oh that's going to work for everybody right it's fucking might not work for anybody that's what's super complicated about diet there there's some people that they're they eat a vegan diet and it's perfect for them. They have no problem with it. And there's other people that get really sick. And there's other people that eat a carnivore diet and

they feel like dog shit. They feel terrible. They feel lethargic. And I don't know if they're doing it right or wrong, but there's some people that eat it and they feel great. You gotta find what works for you. But the thing is people are so dogmatic about diet. And it becomes an ideology it becomes like a religion yeah and especially like vegans and carnivores the vegan people and

the carnivore people are like they're like the right and the left wing of america they're like the antifa and the proud boys they're like fucking yeah they really are they are they fucking believe 100 in their way of life only this This is the only way. And they'll tell you based on their own anecdotal evidence. The thing you need to know, though, about vegans is there's a number. I think there's a giant number of them that eat meat when they're drunk. Oh, yeah. It's a huge percentage, right? Yeah.

I'm not even going to call those guys out, but it was interesting. My wife posted holding up like six playsets like a year or so ago. And man, a vegan, she got posted on some vegan page and they just went after her. Like, I hope you effing die, you this, you that. And I was like, damn, she's just having a fillet, man. But I think that anything on like the diet side and fitness, it's super individualized for success because not everything that works for you would work for me. And I think a lot of people are too lazy to figure out and do the actual effort to see what best diet for them their work

routine what cars work it's easier just to say i'll be lazy today it's hard to figure out what works for you you gotta be real honest about it and you know so many people they like they like here's the argument for like if you get drunk and you wind up eating meat you also get drunk you eat donuts right you also get drunk you eat donuts right you also get drunky like they were talking about this on meat eater uh there's a podcast out right now with that uh paul saldino guy that i was just talking about yeah they got into this and it's uh human beings like things that taste good but are bad for you right so if you're gonna analyze your diet and you're gonna really do it right you gotta be disciplined so like if you're going to analyze your diet and you're going to really do it right, you've got to be disciplined.

So if you're going to do it, you should really do blood work. You should really exercise and write down your routines and write down how you feel after you exercise. And then try to figure out what you're doing right and what you're doing wrong. And that's one of the reasons why people like the carnivore diet is because it's one of the best elimination diets. You're basically taking everything out except meat. And then you kind of find out, hey, my body doesn't react well to this or my you know my body has a real problem with that or some people it's caffeine and some people it's just fucking whatever it is it's like you got to find out what what's fucking with you and most people don't most people just you know they go to a doctor the doctor prescribes medication they keep eating the same old shit but

now they have chemicals in here that are supposed to offset whatever negative stuff that they have in their diet what's an interesting segue on that too because that's like in part some of the non-profit stuff i do on this side is is solely based on that the individualized treatment for veterans specifically in law enforcement because you see a lot with the the military dod the va it like you're saying you show up don't feel good, and it's a blanket treatment, right? Here's some antidepressants, here's all that. But it's a bandaid for a bullet hole. And if you're not actually figuring out what the cause is, and you're treating symptoms, then the third and fourth order effects of those treatments are going to

make that individual worse. Some of the issues they have, like I think I have PTSD, if that's a guy saying they're PTS, they go through and they find out they have TBI and 40% memory function, short term memory function. And so now you go to cognitive therapy, and you get the guys or gals working through it that way. But the only way to figure that out is through brain scans and blood work and actually focusing on the individual rather than being lazy and say, hey, here's some antidepressants when the whole time the issue was something completely different. And then you have budget problems, right? Right. So the veterans hospitals don't have enough money to send you through all these different

scans and all these different doctors and specialists and try to fine tune what's wrong with you. Well, I think that that's, you know, one of the things that we talk about a lot is the, our, our politicians will say our leadership, they, they love to go to war. They love it. Like, you know, Hey, how many times can we send more guys to war? How many countries, you know, and I'm, I'm a participant in that endeavor by the way, right. I've invaded Iraq. I've spent a lot of my adult life in war, specifically in both Iraq and Afghanistan. But the thing that I've noticed in my adult life is that politicians love it.

They love to send, you know, 18 to 26-year-old men and women. They love to send them to war. What they hate is paying the fucking bill. That's what they hate. They hate paying for the after effects. They hate standing by their word in the sense of, hey, we're going to take care of you, all your health problems, your education. We're going to start really fixing the VA system so there's long-term care. What most veterans that I know, what they have to do is they have to continue to lobby the government over and over and over for them to prove that

what's happened to their body is connected to their service. But the issue that I continue to see is that this is a lack of, one, it's a lack of experience for our politicians. They don't quite understand what war is and the long-term effects on individual soldiers. After decades of service, and I think, you know, hundreds of my friends, every one of us has some type of long-term effect from their service, every one of us, in the sense of, do you have sleep issues? Do you have, you know, gut issues? Do you have, you know, inflammation? Are you missing a limb?

inflammation? Are you missing a limb? And really, it's disgusting the amount of emphasis there is ongoing. And then the lack of emphasis on care, it really, it saddens me as a society when we have to rely on nonprofits to pay for the care of veterans because the military or the DOD and the tax, the taxpayer essentially, and I think if they understood this, if they knew they weren't paying for the long-term care of our service members to the degree that they needed, they would absolutely have no issues stepping up and saying, Hey, we have to do something about this. And it's, it's really, when we look at the entire system and how it's put together, there's no way that a person, this is a good story from my friend Clint, he's missing both his legs recently from last year. During COVID, what was happening is

that his leg was changing as far as the shape of it because he was growing an additional layer of bone where his leg was blown off. And he needed a new leg, but he couldn't get in to get a new leg. So he was confined to his wheelchair for almost six months during this process and he couldn't get an appointment. There's no reason why that should happen.

Yeah, it's unacceptable. There's literally zero reason. We can't have the largest transfer of wealth from a taxpayer into the military industrial complex in modern history without zero ethical argument as far as our entire political system, and then not continue to care for our veterans. There's just no way that we can do that as a society, because I think ultimately that defines us and who we are collectively, and it's not a good grade. Well, there's a long history of the United States doing that. Remember when people were coming back from the first Gulf War and they were having all these issues with radiation because they used that,

what is it, depleted uranium rounds. And they kind of denied, first of all, that they use them. They denied that this effect was related to that. And then birth defects and all sorts of denied, first of all, that they use them. They denied that this effect was related to that. And then birth defects and all sorts of weird radiation sickness issues that people were having. They were calling it Gulf War Syndrome. But they did their very best to not take care of these people. Exactly. Well, you look from Agent Orange in Vietnam

and the long-term effects of that and all the studies and research that's coming out right now with the burn pits and the carcinogens and how much cancer. But they're like, oh, you can't really draw the conclusion that it came from burning shit for six months, you know. And to Evan's point as well, it's tragic, to be honest, that there's tens of thousands of nonprofits that are having to do the legwork without government grants or funding. The money is coming from people that are participating in philanthropy saying, I want to do something good for these guys and gals that have real issues. Like to Clint, he's missing his legs,

and you're going to make him be in a wheelchair for months because of, for me, that's just absolutely unacceptable, and there has to be change. What about the story you were telling right before the show about your friend who lost her arms? Explain that. One of her good friends, Mary, she's a EOD tech, had both of her arms blown off when she tried to catch some ordinance that they were going to dispose of. And essentially, she has a full time caregiver. And she went to go see her family for I believe it was a month. And during that time, she didn't have the caregiver because she was with her husband and family and they were taking care of her. Well, the VA

determined after that stint that she doesn't need a full-time caregiver because she obviously was fine that month she was away. And this is a young lady who, amazing person, like just nubs. She calls herself Wonder Nubs, bless her heart. she's fucking hilarious but she she can't do things that come so easily to us like grab things use the toilet like and she has a really funny twitter about you know wiping her ass i believe she said but um the fact that that's happening and someone in the va wasn't like oh that's fucking stupid here you go full-time caregiver like that i mean they're just trying to find a way to cut money left and right. And it's just numbers on a piece of paper. Yeah, it's numbers on a piece of paper. And it's, I don't think people want to be reminded, right? One, it's these are bad decisions, as we look back

in history. And we look at Iraq, in particular, and we look at, you know, the tens of thousands of service members that served in Iraq, to include myself, I don't know if they want to be reminded of that section of our history on a regular basis either. And so when we have amputees and we have health issues with the burn pits, that really I think is our cause that we need to talk about as our Agent Orange is, you know, I think Jon Stewart just recently brought it up. We're active in the Hunter 7 Foundation, which does a lot of research in this. But there's zero reason why the government is not funding to the tune of millions of dollars of research to figure out what's happening to the service members with their

directly related, you know, lung and health issues from burn pits. There's zero reason because the only reason is because if they acknowledge that it's a problem, they're going to have to pay for it. Can you explain burn pits to people? Yeah. It's a, it was essentially a big pit where you would put all of your garbage. Everything. Everything. So that's batteries. That's all all of your garbage, everything, everything. So that's

batteries. That's all the plastics. It's anything and everything that is required. Yeah. It's fecal matter. It's tires. It's anything that is directly associated with, uh, your living condition in a war that you need to, to get rid of. And you would shove it all into a pit and then it would burn 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Whoa. And yes. There you go. And how close is this to where you guys were living? Uh, in every one of the fire bases I was at, uh, four and a half years is how much time I have on the ground in Iraq. And every one of my fire bases, there was a burn pit. And not only that, you're going to have young privates out there with sticks, rolling it over in the smoke with probably some, you know, knitted fake mask that they're wearing that they got. And they're the ones in there actually rotating the trash to burn it through completely.

So they're completely subjected to that environment from a very long time. subjected to that environment from a very long time whose fucking idea was that uh really smart really really smart uh you know officers and contractors the same guys that decided that you know the invasion was going to be a really good idea of iraq they're the same people making those types of decisions in the way that you know obviously when when we look at this now and we look back on it and we go, that's dumb as fuck. There was somebody in a series of people at that point in time in 2003 to 2009 in Iraq that were saying, this is a good idea. And that type of mentality, I think, is the same type of mentality today that says,

this is a good idea for us not to fund the research to figure out what the fuck is going on. So we can do something about it. And when we talk about it, right, our, our voices are only so big, but I think if people knew what was happening with our generation of veterans, because, you know, I'm'm 43 you're 33 34 34 you've got all these guys that are coming up with strange cancers like weird one of the jaco's friends and our friends he just died of cancer he's a metal vonner recipient had a strange heart organ cancer or some kind of cancer in his back and he just died six months down the road. And what's happening, and when we talk about the other foundations and people that are diving into some of this research, it's incredibly underfunded. They're starting to have this direct connection between the burn pits themselves and the chemicals

that ultimately we're exposed to or were exposed to. And a lot of the cancers that guys are coming, when I say that, they're developing, I guess. Obviously. Yeah. I mean, it has to be. There's no fucking way that's good for you. There's no fucking way.

And that's in the same camp? Yeah. Yes. It's right there on the fob. You would have to put, I would take a towel and I would wet it. And then I would put it down underneath my, my, my, my door going into this little container or shipping container. And I would put another one on the top just so I could,

just so I could sleep the rest of the evening because the smoke was so bad from the burn pits as it would move in. You couldn't sleep because you couldn't sleep without coughing. And it was going, that was every day, depending on your fire base. That was every day. So it wasn't the fact that, hey man, I got all my fingers and toes.

You know, I survived seven years of war. I feel like a counter argument to that would be like, well, whatever idiots you signed up for it. But if I- That's not an argument. I know some would say that, but I think that if you're willing- Find those people.

Yeah, exactly. If you're willing to spend a hundred thousand to a million dollars on a guy or a gal to train them up to do a specific job, because you look at how much it costs to put them through training and school after school after school, and then they get out and we're just like, have fun, especially guys and gals. Like we're talking tier one units. I have friends that have done 16, 17, 18 deployments. And it's an injustice because they're willing to sacrifice their life, limb and body and eyesight for, you know, I guess the politicians ascend to war, but then it's, it's, it's a moral obligation as our society that we have to look out for them when they come back and it's not happening. It's insane that this is

prevalent that they have these burn pits at every base that's fucking insane and for the most part most people don't what is this jamie in afghanistan at its peak more than 400 tons of waste was disposed using burn pits daily jesus christ yeah but and then the question is like what else do you do like san francisco. One soldier described the smoke as thick as San Francisco fog. Another called it, like, pollen dust. The color of smoke could be blue and black or yellow and orange. However, it was mostly black. Everyone inhaled and ingested it.

It was absorbed by their skin. Fuck. Which is interesting because, you know, I think a lot of people that have deployed, you said hey we got to get this trash burnt you know we got to do it like well we signed up for it we got it but then you got to give them the research and the medical clinicians that understand this going forward and after the fact to actually hopefully not die like this from cancer no no no no no you got to not do that no i agree but i'm saying but there's no way you would say hey let's let these guys breathe in this shit and then take care of them no you should not burn that shit they've got to figure out another way to get rid of it agreed i mean but even landfills

are fucking terrible one of the things they're finding out in these when they're doing these satellite overviews is that methane like like they're trying to find like the largest sources of methane and what's contributing to greenhouse gases. It's fucking landfills. Landfills where you take all your food, they pour it into the ground, they just cover it up with dirt, and it's just leaking methane into the atmosphere. It's fucking terrible. Like, I don't know what the solution is, but the solution is definitely not burn it right where the soldiers are sleeping. soldiers are sleeping. No. And I think that now that as we continue to, to evolve, hopefully as a society, and we look at the way that we deploy service members overseas, we've at least identified

this as a problem. But the, the big thing that I see is we have to continue to, to look at the problem, fund the research and look at the direct connection between these types of activities, meaning burn pits. We're looking at burn pit and I'm saying, that's burn pit, but it's also, you know, I know Tim, obviously he's been on the podcast. He's SF guy. I'm an SF guy. But when we look at the long-term effects of, we'll call it the special operations community, because I'm obviously from that subculture, but sleep deprivation, anti-inflammatories, anti-malarials, burn pits, multiple rotations, PTS, this is a holistic health issue for most of these guys returning.

If they don't have direct or visible combat wounds, they have some type of residual, If they don't have direct or visible combat wounds, they have some type of residual. They've been affected by the war in a long-term residual way. And I think what happens is as the VA continues to evolve, at least past these wars, we have to look at it as a collective and say, how do we turn everybody's attention within the VA system to directly take care of these guys in a very positive and impactful way so we don't have people like Mary Dagg that get denied a full-time service caregiver? How's that stand now? Is it still the way it is right now? That was like five days ago. I haven't talked to her since.

I'm actually going to call her after this. days ago. I haven't talked to her since. I'm actually going to call her after this. But yeah, at least give the resources and the funding necessary because I'm sure VA as an organization wants to do good and wants to do great things. I think that when people just say, the VA sucks, it's the wrong way to look at us. It's the way, it's how do we critically think and solve the problem and put in process and a plan to go, here's the resources you need so we can fix the issues that are right in front of our face. Yeah. I couldn't imagine being a VA bean counter or being someone who works for a VA bean counter who gets the call that you have to like cut the budget by X amount. So figure out where you're

going to slash these benefits. And then you have to look at these people that you're talking to, either on the phone or through email. You can't even look at them as a human. You got to look at them as a number on a ledger. It's crazy. It's crazy. And then you have, you know, incredible giving nation that backfills that need through, you know, nonprofit organizations. Yeah.

I, I, I guess my only intent in that conversation is I think the government needs to do a much better job of leading the conversation than being towed around by the entire conversation. They need to get out in front of it. They have to take responsibility for it. And I think that's the big one, which is taking responsibility for, you know, war just in general and then taking responsibility for the after effects of the individual soldiers, sailors, Marines, post-war. That just seems to me the thing to do. And I think most people, if they realize these things were happening, I think the last time I tried to schedule a VA appointment, it was going to take me 200 plus days to get in to see a physician,

you know, about a shoulder injury. Really? Yeah. 200 days's 200 days to get on the list. And I'm going to be special. I'm not, I'm not, you know, missing anything. Right. But there are a lot of people that have been directly affected by this that need care. And now we have the ability, I think, and based on the current administration to go see a primary care provider outside of the VA, which I think was a huge step. But there's still a lot to do, right? And there's, you know, for us, having this company and what we're doing with it, you know, it's a big, it's a big part of the mission of how we run the company, what we're doing with the company. It is a huge part of our mission, just in general. It's something we do every day. And it's awesome. And I think that's one of the reasons why people love you guys so much i mean it's uh the amount

of support that you guys have out there in the public i think did i send you that picture when i was in italy and that guy was in front of me in line yeah guy in front of me in line with a black rifle coffee t-shirt on like all right man it's it's there's something to what you guys are doing that resonates with people that it's not just a coffee brand, but it's a coffee brand that supports first responders, military veterans. And it means a lot to people, I think, because of that. Yeah. I think it's something I'm really proud of with the company too, is giving a more like visceral understanding and perspective of the veteran experience because before the company and kind of the commercials and stuff we did, I think there was a very singular perspective of what a veteran was. It was kind of the commercials and stuff we did, I think there was a very singular perspective of what a veteran was.

It was kind of the chest beating, you know, chiseled Navy SEAL. Tattooed, bearded. Yeah, and while that exists, I think that it's good to shed light on. Man, you're tattooed and bearded. I know, right? I didn't go full Navy SEAL and gel my hair today.

Sorry. But like bringing light to the community that there's so many creative people and veterans or humans we're just we're just americans and they a lot of a lot of these guys and gals have other professions and they're talented they're artists they're and i think humanizing that a little bit allows people not to look at veterans like the two ways that i've seen a lot throughout the years or you're their captain america or you're a pill-popping depressed veteran that you know goes to bed every night

beating your wife. And you're like, I 90% of us are in the middle of just people that wanted to do hopefully normal people trying to do some extraordinary things in the name of a free society. I think there's, it's just a cool thing that people like supporting companies like yours that that do have a great message and do do good things. It's a nice aspect that you guys can put that message out there and people understand what you're about and that this is a company that was really started by two guys who are veterans. I mean, it's a big company now, but it really just came down to you guys and your love of coffee

and just deciding to do this and then start doing good with the money. And people love that, man. They really do. It resonates with people a lot. I mean, I've had Black Rifle t-shirts on before, and people talk to me about it. It means a lot to them. Well, I mean, we're thankful that it means a lot to them

because we wouldn't be in the position we are to kind of focus on the things that we think matter and support the organizations that we do. And, I mean, I think that's both of us. End user and end user experience is exactly what we want, to have a great quality product and something that motivates people to wake up in the morning and kick ass. And if they didn't purchase it, we wouldn't be here doing what we're trying to do. There's also a thing about with you that's like with you, Evan, it's so obviously authentic. Like there's a video of you roasting coffee with a frying pan over a fire like you

you're such a dork with this it's so obvious it's real i mean i love people that geek out on shit i just fucking love it even if it's something that i love coffee but even if it's something that i don't even love i just love when people are really into shit it's very contagious well and it it's it's super fun as i was talking earlier right it's i'm i'm's super fun, as I was talking earlier. I'm really fortunate just as an adult in America right now, so many different ways. But I get to do this coffee. I'm going to say I'm in coffee every day, and I get to explore any piece of the entire aspect of coffee anytime I want and get as detailed into it as much as I want.

But the thing that I've found that is just as interesting, if not more interesting than coffee, is the company gets bigger. You know, developing our ecosystem as a company, we have 400 employees now, right? It's a bigger company. 50 plus percent of them are veterans. And as I look at our ecosystem and how we support different nonprofits and what we're doing on the company, it's this incredible high quality product because I love going to these countries in Central and South America, working directly with the farmers and then pulling it back through and then uniting the customer and the company as one in this really fucking cool ecosystem. And it wasn't something that I started out necessarily thinking about where, you know, I wanted to be in charge of a company of 400 people.

That's not what I started out to do. I literally was roasting coffee in my garage because I was trying to find something else to do when the CIA told me that I couldn't work for them anymore, right? Like, fuck. Why did they tell you you couldn't work for them anymore? Oh, man. You know, a wide variety of reasons. You know, I worked there for nine years.

I deployed probably seven out of those nine years. I was angry, you know, and I don't want to say that, you know, it was directly my fault. But the organization that I started with in Iraq and kind of went from Iraq to Afghanistan and left later, uh, I was, I was tired and burnt out and I was fucking angry. And honestly, they had probably every right to tell me to hit the road. Uh, and I'm glad that they did. At the end of the day, it was a wake up call, a wide variety of reasons. I'm glad that they did. At the end of the day, it was a wake-up call,

a wide variety of reasons. I was callous. I was emotionally unavailable. There was a fucking laundry list of things that were broken. How did you get past all that? You know, I met my wife in Denver, and we got pregnant. I hate when guys say that.

We? We. She got pregnant. No, I fucked my wife and she got pregnant. Now we're talking. And I really thought about it. And it was hard for me to think about it. But I was most fearful of not being able to love my daughter because I didn't have the emotional capacity to do that. And it was eye-opening.

It was actually very scary because that's not the kind of person that I wanted to be. And we've all seen examples of people who are that and then realize it later in life. The saddest thing in the world is when you see a parent and then they have a grown kid that they fucked up, you know, because they weren't because they did have all these other problems they never dealt with. And then it's too late.

And then you have this angry child who you were never there for. And then you're like, fuck. Exactly. I looked at it. Um, and I knew in order to be, uh, a loving father, uh, a good husband and a good man, I, I had to change a lot of shit. Like I really had to have a very difficult series of conversations with myself and give myself a lot of fucking tough love. with myself and give myself a lot of fucking tough love. And starting a business was one of the things that I needed to do because it gave me, I couldn't work for anyone else after that. I was

kind of done with, um, working for other people. Uh, I was not necessarily searching for purpose, but I knew that I really wanted to do something with coffee and, you know, wide variety of reasons that I love coffee. Black rifle was an homage to my service rifle. Uh, and I found myself wanting to teach myself a new skill. And then what I wrote was a mission statement and my mission statement was just a mission statement for my life in general, which was to transition out of government service and live a happy and fulfilling life. It had nothing to do with money, running a company or hiring people. I just wanted to find how to be happy and fulfill myself outside of being a commando or a CIA guy,

whatever that definition for myself was. But more importantly is I've continued to develop myself, and I'm not saying I'm even close to being a template for anyone. It's a constant state of evolution to be a better man. And I also knew that all the lies that I told myself up to that point of, you know, I'm a Green Beret. So, you know, I'm less than a one percentile and I'm a fucking badass and I'm this and I'm that. All of that would have been a lie if I would have been a bad father. All of that would have been meaningless, would have been garbage. It's

just propaganda. Every one of my combat rotations, every one of my friends that has been killed or maimed in this war, it would have been a complete unjustifiable lie to myself to say if i don't be the best man that i possibly can be and work on it now then all of that is for not it's all shit so i i literally after my first year in business i was sitting in my garage and I had sold everything that I had owned, you know, and I was chips in on this entire thing. And I didn't have anything left to sell. I didn't have, I was living in this shitty rental. My wife was, you know, packing boxes and roasting coffee. My wife was, you know, packing boxes and roasting coffee.

And I was getting kind of down on myself. And I was crying on this Pelican case in my garage. And I, I, it was a distinct turning point in my life where I said, get up, stop making excuses, stop being a fucking pussy and do something about your life. And when I say that, like that's the conversation, that's the exact conversation I had with my, with myself. And I've had that conversation almost every day in the last several years about just how can I continue to develop this ecosystem that meets my mission statement for my company that quite literally has nothing to do with money? But how do I continue to be positive impact in my environment versus negative taking away or, you know, contributing to toxicity, which is, man, I don't want to have anything to do with that life anymore.

man, I don't want to have anything to do with that life anymore. There's a lot of people that have, they have a problem with the way they are and they make a decision to change, but they fall back into their old patterns because it's comfortable and because they're used to that. So how did you avoid doing that? How did you make real change? Well, one, it's recognizing it,

right. It's, it's kind of recognizing that you have an addiction when you have an addiction. Um, uh, you know, when you have emotional or anger issues and you're, you know, you're, you're just angry or whatever it is for, for, for no real reason. Uh, I think one, you have to recognize you have a problem. And I think, you know, I've continued to recognize that I have a problem and it, it, it's, it's like quitting a habit or anything that you're doing, whether it's quitting smoking or, you know, um, working through a very disciplined diet, it, it, it's every minute you have the ability, sometimes every second you have the ability to make a decision and have a conscious effort to focus on improvement. And when I feel myself, cause there are times when I feel myself sliding backwards a little bit into more of a negative Evan.

Uh, and we do it all the time. And this is one thing I will say about the guys that we have together is it's not just myself. It's, you know, my friends in the military, they're called, you know, it sounds so ridiculous, but it is, it's like we have our battle buddies for a lack of a better term. But it is, it's like we have our battle buddies for a lack of a better term, but Matt and Jared, our other partner, um, we, we formed a team and the other people within our company that formed a team, we can talk to each other in thing is is matt and i will do it all the time if we're talking and we're talking about negative and we're grinding ourselves into a negative hole we're like stop stop right now we got better shit to talk about pull ourselves out dust ourselves

off and you can't if you're by yourself it it's much more difficult. I think when you have really good friends and for, for us, we're business partners. Uh, I can be that guy for him and he can be that guy for me. And Jared can be the guy for all of us. And we have really good friends. We have good business partners and we have good people in the company that they help. people in the company that they help. They really do. And leaving one culture, one subculture of, you know, really tight knit special operations group of guys, starting a business by yourself is difficult enough, right? It's a very, I would imagine it's a, it's an extremely difficult endeavor. Doing it without your friends and people you can trust and people you can rely on i can't even imagine because the things that we've had to go through in the last several years

and the reminders like matt won't let me be a shitbag it's just not possible he won't if i start being a um a lazy desert for like a week and I was like, you get a hundred fucking words, bro. I'm just kidding. But it's true. He won't let me be a shit bag and I won't let him be a shit bag either in the sense of if I see him dragging, if there's something going on, I call him.

Like, what's going on? How are you doing? What can I talk to you about? So I think one, it's focusing on yourself, identifying you have a problem, looking at every minute and every second at times, depending on when it is, uh, on how to be better. And then building and building a supportive team around you that understands what's going on and how they can continue to get you up. And

we've had to do this for a lot. We've had to cut a lot of toxic people out of our lives. We've had to cut some toxic people out of our lives because they're just negative weight. They'll hold you back. That's probably been the most challenging thing for me over the years has been there's always going to be extraneous influences that impact you. But I've had to change environments about five different times and find the right team for me and that, you know, my core competencies work with theirs. But because a lot of people have asked us over the years, like, how'd you get the team? Like, well, you went through seven different teams, you know, toxic relationships, or ones that just didn't mesh well together. And the hardest

part of that is just taking that leap of faith and saying, well, this is going to be really weird, but I'm packing my rucksack. It's what I did. I had a good life. I was making a lot of money in my business at the time. And, you know, I didn't like the direction things were going. And Evan called me and was like, do you want to do you want to jump into Utah and let's go and I packed up moved out of my house broke up my girlfriend at the time, drove to Utah and my tundra and one bag and said,

Well, time to start over at 26, seven years old. And I completely started over. I lived in an Airbnb for six months. And I think at face value, that was terrifying. But the second I landed in Utah and gotten that Airbnb, and I was like, fuck, all I got to worry about is the one bag of clothes I have and going to work tomorrow is something that I'm passionate about and that I love and the rent's paid. So we're good. And from there on, like I've just chased that feeling. And then all the toxicity that kind of has impacted my life with relationships, just get out. It's also got to help that you're doing a business with friends as opposed to doing a business with a bunch of

corporate dorks. Yeah. You know, I, I see people that are involved in business and I see the conversations they have and it's almost like they're speaking some strange language, some fake language. They all get together and talk corporate talk, and then they get out of there, and they take this big deep breath, and they have a drink, or they drive home because they're living bullshit. They're living a lie all day long. They're pretending to be someone they're not. I call that the ivory tower syndrome. They just blow hot air and don't do anything and they don't believe in their mission. And I think that's been the most impactful thing for us is we believe it, because you want people to be open, candid, radical transparency. Obviously, we're not saying,

you know, making fun of people, but we want to be able to say, fuck, let's get this done, instead of, and that's why I think we've done so well so far is because we just stick to the mission and grind it out. I mean, we're all kind of a bunch of knuckle draggers that are dumb. We just outwork our intelligence, intelligence. Yeah. And I think to your point, you know, maintaining mission focus, you know, all of these things that we learned in the military, right. Missions, write your mission statements, maintain your mission focus, uh, radical transparency. You know, I'm a zealot at the end of the day I love coffee I love the company I love the ecosystem and it's easy for me I can go in and high five everybody and we can joke around in the company we have incredible atmosphere

as far as the ecosystem of the company I love going to work there I would hate to go to work in a really, in a corporate environment. I actually hate the word corporate. Yeah. Because it's, it, to me,

it just says, this is stodgy spreadsheet driven bullshit where you've got a bunch of people that pontificate about things that they have no idea what they're talking about. And what they want to do is they want to run a company only for the profit versus the pursuit of authenticity under a real mission. There's a huge difference. I've stepped into corporate environments a lot, and especially like finance guys are some of the worst fucking people ever in the sense of, you know, they're not funny. They have no sense of humor. I've told

bankers to get the fuck out of my office when they're like 15 minutes late just to get some like payback and how many times that they've screwed good people over. So the company itself in the sense of any company and how you kind of create that environment. I don't like the standard corporate templatized system that people work through. It's, it's really, it's confusing to me as well, because you know, when people are fake, you know, when you're having a conversation with some executive and he's like, Oh yeah, Susie, you're an incredible asset to the company. And it's like, you don't know who that person is. It's, it's inauthentic. It's fake. And I would hate to go to work in a place like that every day. And most people do. Yeah. Yeah. That's,

that's a giant problem with human beings today is that most people don't have a purpose. They don't feel good about what they're doing. You know that's that thoreau quote uh most men live lives of quiet desperation and that that is real man that that's really what a lot of people are going through every day just not having any real real connection to what they're doing where they feel good about it they feel like they have a purpose they feel like it makes it like they they matter like they really do matter you know feel like it makes it like they matter, like they really do matter. You know, and then when a lot of these people and they wind up getting fired by their company, you know, after 30 years of working there, and they realized that they didn't, they were

nothing, they didn't mean anything, it wasn't important. It's devastating. I think a lot of people like kind of succumb to like that social construct. And like, this is what you have to do the nine to five kind of thing, but not to be a fatalist, but something like my positive mindset, like we're all born terminal. The second we come out of that womb, we're going to fucking die. And I've always wanted to be super proud because, you know, I think there's certain aspects of the former jobs I had, you have to kind of agree and be comfortable with the fact that there's a high probability of dying and or life changing events. And I think once you realize that it's not a matter of if it's going to happen, it's when

whether that's when I'm 60 and have a heart attack, or I live to be 90, or I die tomorrow. And that drives me every single day, because I look back and go, I don't want to miss out in this fucking crazy thing called life. You know, with with it you have one chance to like live this cool fucking experience whether or not you believe in after life or not but we're all gonna die and it's it's very bizarre for me that people don't take leaps of face because they get so trepidatious in everything that they do and they're like whoa what if and they hate that uncomfortable feeling we just fucking punch it in the face and go get it but the problem is roots. People, they grow roots before they know what they actually want to do. And what I mean by that is, look, you go to college, right?

And then you have student debt. So these are roots, right? Now you have to pay off that student debt. So you have these obligations. Then you get a job and maybe you lease a car. Maybe you get an apartment. Now you have roots. You have bills you have to pay.

You have obligations that you can't shirk. So maybe you try to save. So you save a little. Maybe you save 10% of your income every week. So you're putting it away, you're putting it away, and you realize how quickly that goes away. You have taxes. And then you find yourself five, six, seven years in.

You're like, I want to make a change. But you have all this shit that you're paying for. And then you reward yourself for this terrible job that you hate by getting a new car. Or maybe you buy a fucking boat or whatever. You know, that's what people do. And then you're 38 and you're like, God damn it. I fucking hate my life. But now maybe you have a child.

Maybe you're married. Maybe your wife doesn't work anymore because, you know, she's pregnant. And you're like, fuck. Like, what am I going to do with my life? And then you find yourself stuck. And you take pills. You take antidepressants. You do something.

And this is the story of the American life that is untold. And this is a lot of people's existence. They find themselves in this meaningless path. And then they hear about guys like you. And they get excited. They're like like maybe i can figure this out and some of them do and some of them start a business in the garage and some of them get together with their friends and say let's let's partner up let's do something and let's take

a chance like let's plan and two years from now we'll we'll make the leap let's start it online let's do something and that's the that's the real american dream is finding independence, being your own boss, finding something that you really love instead of just doing a job, finding a job that actually means something to you. Yeah, it's like finding the excuse to do it. And I think there's two avenues there. You can always find an excuse not to do something. But if you look for the excuse of why you should, your output is going to be so much

better. And I've had that conversation with people where they say, I just don't have the time. You can always find time to work out. Like you want to be your fitness goals. Find a fucking retention band in a kettlebell and we'll fuck you up. Trust me. Give me 30 minutes. And I think that's applicable to anything and everything.

If you wanted to get into music, you can find 20 minutes in the day or get 20 minutes less asleep to practice your guitar or learn graphic design i mean the opportunity is out there especially especially with the technological era like everything's free right now you can go on youtube and become a master in any any technical skill for the most part you might not have the accreditation of a degree but it's there the information's there the only inhibitor is you these i don't have the time people don't know what the fuck they're talking about. I hate that. I can find you some folks. I can find you some folks.

Like my friend Cam Haynes. That motherfucker works a full-time job, eight hours a day, and often runs a marathon a day. Right. And then he goes at home, and then he shoots his bow for hours, and then he lifts weights.

So shut the fuck up. There's people that find time. That's like over and over and over. You know, it's cam. Like I love following cam because guess what? It's nothing but positivity comes out of his mouth. He's freaking a rock star when it comes to all of the things that you just mentioned, guys like that exist. We don't have to be, you know, a Goggins or a Haynes or a Dudley or any of these guys. It's a matter of, Hey man, you want to make some changes?

You're going to have to also risk a little bit too. And that's one thing. You're going to have to experience discomfort. You're going to have to suck it up. It's going to hurt a little bit. You know, if you want to have stronger legs, you know, squats aren't the best fucking thing in the world to do, you know, twice a week or once a week. They don't feel good.

They don't feel good. That's the way your legs get strong. Yeah, that's the way you get stronger you don't grow from being comfortable no it doesn't work that way you gotta experience that awful feeling that's why most people don't grow most people don't grow because they gravitate towards comfort well that's one thing i will say about this is you know combat to me taught me so many different things about myself. But the one thing that it taught me was that life is finite in, in order to live, in order to live, you got to risk, you got to risk it and you got to suck a little bit, you know, for the payoff at the end, you know, that, that last minute of light that you have in this, in this world, you don't want to be sitting there doing

an audit of all the things you should have done. That would be the fucking worst. That's really the only thing I truly, truly fear in life is to be on a deathbed and go, I should have done this. I mean, I'm sure there'll be small things, but that's the driving force in everything of my life

is I don't want the regrets. Not even a letter. You know, those are the things where it's like, I want to jump out of planes. I want to experience a foreign language. I want to go to war. When you look at those things as a younger, when I looked at them as a younger man,

I look at them now, I'm not going to be whatever age it is, thinking back, going, man, I really wish I would have tried to be a commando. I've already got that. Now I can man, I really wish I would have tried to be a commando. I've already got that. Now I can focus, I think, a lot more of my energy on how do we, you know, become a better father, how to become a better business owner, a better friend.

But I didn't leave anything on the table in the previous 20 years. I didn't leave any of that shit on the table going, man, I really wish I would have done that. No, man. Like I, I pushed it as hard as I could with, is with whatever was given to me. Like I did the best that I could with what I got. And, and honestly, I'm probably about, I'm operating, I think at about 150% right now, I'm overextending what capacity I have up here to try to put it all together. Like, it's honest, like I'm just trying to fucking run it as hard as I can because the machine that I've was given is like, I'm very fortunate. I understand that, but I got to run this thing way past its capability to get the most out of it.

Now there's some guys that, you know, maybe they're phenoms and they're much more intelligent than I am. That would be, you know, one of the things I joke around i say is like man i'd love to be an astrophysicist unfortunately i'm just not that bright so i'm gonna have to settle for what the fuck i'm doing but would you yeah theoretical physicists would be fucking awesome i'd love to do that i don't know no no i think you found the right spot that's i think people find the right spot if you if you put enough attention into what you're doing and you gravitate No, I think you found the right spot. I think people find the right spot. If you put enough attention into what you're doing and you gravitate towards what you love,

you find the right spot. Yeah, you do. You do. I used to think that I was a giant loser because I couldn't work a job because I was like, I'm just too lazy. I'm just too undisciplined. I really used to think that.

And then I realized like, oh, no, I'm not lazy. I just hate things that suck. Right. You're probably a creative. Yeah. It's pretty much the same as me. But once I figured out like things that I love, I'm like, oh, look, all of a sudden I'm not lazy anymore. Now I'm obsessed.

And I used to think, oh, I used to think that was a weakness that like, oh, I'm not disciplined. I'm just obsessed. I'm just a crazy person. Right. So if I find something that I like, I can get really good at it because I'm crazy. Right. crazy person right so if i find something that i like i can get really good at it because i'm crazy right and then i realize like oh well all that shit that they tell you about like adhd and being hyperactive and not being a pale attention that's actually you have energy

yeah right you don't want to sit in a fucking chair when you're 10 years old while some person who doesn't give a fuck about you or what they're teaching right it's just rambling on in front of you and you're just going crazy you can't wait to get out of there and there. And the doctor's like, this man needs to be on some medication. This young man has problems paying attention. Well, he should. He should. Well, he's got a goddamn chance. Maybe he could fucking rocket out of this system.

Maybe he's got enough energy to get away from the gravity of this bullshit that you're teaching them every day. So instead of saying, oh, this girl needs to be on medication, maybe that girl has a goddamn chance of escaping the hell that you live in. Right. I couldn't, I can't agree more than that. I think all of us have this like ball of fucking energy and it zaps everything around us.

And if you try to point it in a direction where it doesn't work, like I could never be a finance guy, could never be a numbers guy, not a, any of that. I am too fucking ADHD. But what that allows me to do is think in the clouds and be super creative and write and build content and music and all these things.

And we had a really cool exercise in the business. We did kind of like, remember when the creative problem, yeah, creative problem solving. And we all had to take this like pretty intricate test. And it was the best one I've ever done. But it pretty much kind of tells you where you live as far as if you're like an ideator, a developer, and all these characteristics of your brain. And that's kind of how you build a team because Evan's like an implementer. He's like, get this fucking shit done. And I'm more of like a ideator where I come up and develop ideas, but then I don't have the follow through, at least on like the business side. And so learning about yourself just because

you live in the clouds doesn't mean that, you you have adhd and you need to take anti-freaking whatever i just think we have this terrible idea of how to how to develop human beings there's not a kid in the world that wants to sit at the desk eight hours a day there's not a kid in the world no it's not normal but those they do great there's a big system for you right but even them i don't know how healthy that is they probably, like, it doesn't mean that you can't be an accountant or an astrophysicist. No.

Like, but you need activity. Yeah. And children are deprived of activity most of the day. And I should have been out, like, portaging boats on, like, really nasty, you know, in British Columbia somewhere by some asshole dude that was, you know, in, in, in British Columbia somewhere by some asshole dude that was, you know, here's 10 minutes worth of work. Now you're just going to work you into the ground.

And when I say that, it's, that's the, that's the level of, I guess, patience that I had for any of it in the sense of you can't sit a kid at a desk or at least kids like me for six or eight hours a day or anybody in this room buddy yeah my daughters are my daughter's six years old now we're just having this conversation about school is vtc because of you know covet man she's six years old and you want her to sit in front of a laptop for six hours a day you should watch those classes i sat in while my 10 year old was at school and i watched how the teachers talk and i i watched like what was going on like holy shit and she looked at me she goes it's so boring yeah she's looked up it's so are they just talking monotone the whole time well in texas they let him go to school right she's in

school here she goes to actual school you know and-year-old goes to school next week. She was doing video for the first couple weeks, and then they're easing them back into school. Look, this is a travesty. These kids are getting, especially kids in public school systems, especially kids that have working parents. This is fucking devastating for them. Devastating.

Devastating. And it's going to fuck up their development for years to come. Because if you took you like if you took six months and didn't learn anything for six months that fucks with your development well guess what that's what happened yeah that's what happened a lot of these kids they're not learning shit when they're sitting in front of their laptop they're barely paying attention you can't expect kids to sit in front of a laptop like what terrible it's a terrible idea and it's a terrible

way to experiment on kids which is're, you're pulling this out of your, you know, you're pulling this out of your ass. Yes. I think this is going to work. Let's put them in front of a laptop and we're going to sit them there for six or eight hours a day or whatever it is. We're going to give them a lunch break. It's having this conversation with my wife.

I'm like, this is a horrible idea that they're experimenting with kids. Just ultimately you have to give them some type of pre-existing assignments but you can't sit them in front of a laptop the other thing is i don't want to teach my kids how to sit in front of a laptop for six hours a day to give them the discipline to do that they were telling my daughter she had to eat lunch in front of the laptop what's the same thing yeah you have to get lunch in front of the laptop yes they have to see you eat lunch. Mm-hmm I go no you don't I go. Let me talk to teacher get the fuck out of here You don't have to eat lunch in front of laptop comes come sit at the kitchen table. Let's talk

What's like the desired outcome in that form of education? There's their assholes. They don't know what the fuck they're doing This is all making it up on the go. Yeah, yeah If they could justify in some way that a kid should eat lunch in front of a laptop instead of eat lunch at their kitchen table like why why this is what we do so you could see them eat lunch get the fuck out of here yeah and why why would you ever think that that's acceptable to do this and what's also the teachers don't have any oversight either and some of these teachers are so bored they're so bored, uh, and I've watched them talk rude to the kids. Like this is gross. This is, it's so bad for them. When, and at least now, uh, the one shining star, I will say to this

is that hopefully we come out of this with the ability of some type of homeschooling system that actually works. Because the one thing about homeschooling for that actually works because the one thing about homeschooling for you know the nation is you know what's the one stereotype of homeschooled kids that's we've all kind of religious psychos yeah they're weirdos right weird like now but now we're we're at least living in a time where yeah hopefully this catches up and we can educate children from our home and maybe a balance between the home and the school that gives them some form of adjustment that works for them. That's the one thing I will say about this where I'm like, God, this has been a good thing from a perspective in my life, which is I don't travel as much. I've chopped a bunch of travel out of my schedule. My wife stays home with the kids. I've been home with the kids way more than I have in the last five years. And it's forced us to look inside the family a lot more than on the go,

constantly driving outside of the family, doing things outside of the family. It's really forced us to be, uh, I think a much tighter family unit with the, with the four of us. And I'm always trying to find the positive in it regardless. Like I'm not, I'm, there's plenty of negative out there. We've all talked about it and hear it on the fucking news every day. I will say the forcing function in all of this has made my family, I think, tighter, much tighter. And I hope it has for a lot of other people, but I know it's been very detrimental to a lot of family units too, because they have a lot of financial, they have a lot of financial issues. They have,

you know, domestic violence issues. But for my family, it's really forced us to look inside and really work on us. And so I can say we're going to try to come out of this a much better family. Well, it's like all struggles, right? Some struggles make a better person. Some struggles destroy you. And it really depends on what the struggle is and where you're at when you come into it. And I think for a lot of people, this is a real eye-opener about your health.

And that's what I'm hoping, that more people pay attention to your body. There's a direct correlation between your health and your ability to overcome diseases. And I really, really hope that that message gets out there and that more people understand that if you are obese if you are obese if you you do have a bad diet these are things you can handle you can do something about this and this is the wake-up call please like fucking take care of yourself because it may be the difference between catching this shit and living through it and it may be in some cases breezing right through it like i have a bunch of friends that caught it and like, yeah, I had a cough for a day. What the fuck is going on?

Like, quite a few friends that had a cough for a day and felt like shit for two or three days afterwards and then we're done with it and we're working out five days later. Yeah. Most all my healthy friends is that way too. They're athletic. It's like, I coughed a little bit,

kind of felt sick one day, and the next day I was fine. Paul Rodriguez, okay, who's a friend of mine, who's a comedian, he's, I mean, Paul's gotta be in his 60s right he was famous in the fucking 70s paul paul i i tested everybody and uh we we did this comedy store documentary and i tested he was the only one who tested positive uh for the antibodies and i go when do you think you got it and he goes i don't know he goes he goes i think I had a cold in February. He's like, he had a cold for a couple days.

And he fucking parties. He's not out there eating wheatgrass and fucking doing squats. He's having fun. That's his shit. He's a comic. He's a real old school comic. Getting down, partying, fine. Walked it off. I mean, what the fuck is going on but for people that are unhealthy i just really hope that this is this is the wake-up call take care of your

goddamn body take care of your health right take some vitamin d and zinc and c and just make that a priority make it a priority to whereas if you got sick you're not worried it's interesting too because a lot of things that people rely on as far as substances will absolutely go away if you got sick, you're not worried. It's interesting too, because a lot of things that people rely on as far as substances will absolutely go away if you follow a healthy diet and exercise routine. I mean, the euphoria and like how I feel post-workout is one of the most amazing feelings I've ever had. So it's not only like a bodily function,

it's a cognitive one as well. Just all the endorphins you get and you're like i'm ready for the day and then you feel accomplished i mean it's like incremental success makes great success and those little wins throughout the day and i think working out is one of them more people need that feeling of fuck i feel good yeah food is probably the most overused tool to deal with anxiety and exercise is the most underused tool to deal with depression and those two things like food will fuck you up if you just eat to to cool calm yourself yeah and exercise will help you in a gigantic way if you use it to to deal with depression and anxiety

and everything so let me let me ask the question though because I've heard you talk about it on the show, which why is it that we can't have that national conversation? Why do you think our – I mean, we just had the presidential debates last night, but why is it – Those were not debates. That was fucking – I put it on my Instagram. I'm like, you don't need me. You need big John McCarthy. John McCarthy. Yeah.

Get the UFC ref in here. Let's go. But he's the he's like the most authoritative ufc referee because he was a cop yeah he's amazing stand over there stand over there like he he fucking controls the situation you know he would have controlled that man yeah why can't we have the conversation because you can't be mean you can't we have the conversation? Because you can't be mean. You can't say, hey, stop shoving sugar and fucking saturated bullshit and fucking oils and vegetable grease and all the crap and fucking all the nonsense that people stuff in their face.

Stop. Stop doing that. You're fat. It's fucking you up. Yeah. There's a fucking picture, man, from like 19 early 1900s of a guy at a carnival and he's the the fat guy at a sideshow right and he's a normal fat guy for today right if you looked at this picture and like you know he was like an exhibit he was an exhibit oh wow he was

so he was so fat that people are like holy fuck look at this guy you could see when disneyland was open you could see when Disneyland was open, you could see a hundred of those guys rolling around on scooters. He's a normal person today, like a normal overweight person. Because people didn't have the access to bullshit back then. Like to get that fat was hard. When you don't have that kind of sugar in your diet, the amount of gluten and grains and fucking nonsense that people eat today, it's so easy to get that fat.

But back then it was really hard. See if you can find that picture, Jamie. I typed it in and I found a lot of giant fat guys. From back then? Yeah. But find the one that was in a sideshow to Carnival. That's what I typed in. I don't know how to find that particular one.

Harold Huge, alive, 712 pounds. Well, go to the one in the upper left-hand corner. Look at that guy. That guy you could find anywhere today. Yeah. You can cruise down to the supermarket. That was a sideshow guy. That's a sideshow guy back then.

Harold Huge. But that's a drawing, unfortunately, the Harold Huge. Look at that guy up there. Happy Jack. Go to that guy right there. That guy's fucking right down the street. You go to the barbecue store. Yeah.

Barbecue store. Restaurant. That guy's waiting in line for more bread. How do you change that, right? Where if you say something like that, you'll have people that are heavier and say you're fat shaming. I am. Yeah. That's what I'm doing.

Yeah. That's how you feel bad. You feel bad if someone fat shames you and then you make decisions that you can't fat comfort. Right. That's the thing. Look at that. That's nothing.

Four fat men at the circus. Jesus Christ. Like that's Jared Taylor right there. The subculture that we grew up in, right? In our twenties, when we were 18 to 20, 30, whatever it was like, man, we'd have, we would have guys slapping food out of your hands and going fatty. Cause in the middle, it back in the, back in the day, and I'm not saying back in the day, right. I guess it's something that makes me sound a little bit, I'm washed up enough to say

that. Yeah. We're washed up enough, dude. You could fat shame the shit out of people. And that's just the way it worked, which was, Hey fatty. And if you weren't meeting a task or, you know, it worked, which was, hey, fatty. And if you weren't meeting a task or, you know, task condition standard, you would have guys in NCOs, non-commissioned officers, in your chow line, selecting your food for you, going, dude, you're going to eat this. You're not going to eat this. And then people would go to eat something and literally slap it out of your face and go, you're not eating that. Now, there's these open discussions, and you read it, and all of a sudden,

we're bad people because we want people to be healthier if we say, hey, that person's obese, or that's fat, and that's unhealthy. How did this turn to people being bad guys? Because people are trying to be nice. Because to people, that's all it is. They think it's good to be nice, and it is good to be nice but the reality is when you're mean to someone

about certain things that you actually can change like it's one thing it's like you say to someone you got a stupid fucking nose man like well you can't do anything about your nose but if you say to someone like hey bro you're fat as fuck and then they have to feel that like oh my god i hate being fat make a choice make a choice do something well is it better to be nice to someone about that yes most certainly is it better if you have a friend and i've had friends that i pulled aside and said listen man you got to lose weight you got to do something lose weight you know how many of them have done that zero yeah they don't listen like the only time it ever works is when the person decides that they want to make a change and oftentimes that comes from pain and oftentimes that comes from

being mocked and yeah it's not nice it's not nice to yeah but you know it's shame so not nice is dying of diabetes especially if it's coming from an empathetic empathetic position where you're like i'm saying this because i want you to live which means i like you but the thing is people are lazy and when you tell them that they're fat all people like to consider is like you are shaming a person because of their body shape and that's terrible and that's awful that's true but if you also say to that person like hey i love you i care about you but i'm gonna be honest with you you're fat as fuck and you need to lose weight that's also fat shaming well but this is there's very few ways to get through to someone if someone's drunk if they're a fucking alcoholic

and they get drunk every night and you pull them aside and go hey man you are a fucking drunk and you need to stop you need to get your shit together and they they feel bad because they love you like wow evan says i'm a drunk i respect evan fuck what am i doing god damn i gotta get my life together somehow or another that's okay but telling someone that they're a fat fuck is not okay because you're fat shaming well because you're making them feel bad because of their addiction to food versus their addiction to alcohol like what if you see someone smoking every day go hey man those fucking things are addiction to alcohol? If you see someone smoking every day, you go, hey man, those fucking things are going to kill you.

Are you cigarette shaming? What are we doing here? It's true. Evan told me I was drinking a little too much whiskey at one point and I said, you're offending me. It's your being, you're shaming, alcohol shaming me. He actually told me that he identified as somebody that doesn't drink at all.

Yeah. I identify as a non-drinker now, so I'm fine. This whiskey identifies as water so your argument is invalid evan do you know that they're using gender neutral language in the seals now yeah did you see that i called it made it all the way to the seals i sent it to jocko and i sent it to goggins and i was like what the fuck is this shit i was the same i i uh i was i was texting or talking to jocko this morning because they did you did you read it where they hadn't seen it gender neutral uh it you can't identify as him or her

it's there they've changed this entire uh i think it's a how did that get in there how'd that get all the way to the seals how did someone not say hey fuck you? I think that it's the same way that most of these policies kind of, they bypass logic. They go through some type of bureaucratic mechanism where somebody thinks it's a good idea. And typically this is going to be an officer that's looking to be promoted off of some merit where they're going to go, I'm going to change this. This is going to be a good thing for my career because this is where I'm going to hang my hat on this.

I'm going to look progressive. I'm going to look progressive. I'm going to look really good for the rest of the command. This is going to resonate with the rest of the culture that we're living in right now. People are going to go, ooh, even the SEALs are being progressive. Exactly. And I think that's how it happens.

When you gunned down the bad guys, were you a they or a them? What were you? That's the ridiculousness of it. I mean, these are like trained warfighters doing one of the most difficult jobs on the planet. And we're going to bring, you know, bureaucratic, like weird fucking bullshit into it. It's like, no, we are training them to do the world's worst act, which is kill another human being in hopefulness that it's saving more human lives. I mean, this is not a PC job. You're getting trained with hand grenades, rocket launchers, guns to put night vision on and sneak into houses and shoot motherfuckers in the face.

And the danger is if you do make it politically correct, you're going to cost U.S. service members lives. That's the problem. And then if you bring all this bullshit into it, then you're decreasing the survivability and the training that these guys and gals need to succeed and be a high functioning unit to live. This is not a game of sensitivity. This is a game of life and death. And people say, oh, you're exaggerating. It's not going to cost people lives to be polite and use non-gendered language.

No, this is one step on a fucking greased uphill yeah exactly and this is what happens if you let that shit get in there it's going to be like people used to say like why does anyone care about what goes on in college campuses this does not happen in the real world stop worrying about like leftist ideology that's permeating in school well look at what happened in seattle look what's going on in portland that shit bleeds out into real life and if that shit bleeds out into the seals you got real problems well i i think that's a really good point from the entire warfighter when we look at the entire warfighter across America, we have a very small subsection of guys that carry the lion's share of the warfighting and the special operations community,

the infantry and the combat arms. So when we look at that, that's a really small number of guys. And to Matt's point, it's the most politically incorrect profession in the United States, quite possibly in the world, because what you're doing is you're taking human life. You can't have these two things. You can't be politically correct and shoot people in the face. You can't have both. I'm sorry,

America, you can't have the two. You have to have your war fighters that are out there, to. You have to have your war fighters that are out there, especially when you're America, you have to have the guys that are trained to go out at night and do this every fucking night and take it to every terrorist, every bad guy internationally to protect you in your sleeping beds. You have to do that. You can't have a politically correct warfighter. Knock, knock. I'm sorry. You identify as a,

as an, as a, you know, politically correct, nonviolent terrorist. I guess we'll move on to the next house. That doesn't work. It's completely illogical.

You can't fight wars with a politically correct attorney. And guess what? They're not politically correct. No people that you're opposing these these fucking dictators and all these different terrorist organizations, they're not playing by those rules. If you play by those rules, you're handicapping yourself. And it's just nonsense. It's nonsense. Yeah. And those types of people have no regard for human life. And I've seen it personally, when politics get involved in wars, it kills people. I mean, I have a few instances where there were, you know, you can't drop ordinance on guys you just got ambushed by because the local village said you can't use, you know, bombs from planes.

And you're like, we, one of our guys just got shot. You know, we killed the three that ran out the front door, but the six that ran out the back door, I'm just supposed to let them go alive from an ethical perspective. They're gonna go do this again and I hope they don't go plant bombs and blow up a whole engineer vehicle and kill six Americans.

Like, where's the efficacy in that? Because you didn't wanna offend somebody? Politics don't work in war. Obviously you need rules and regulations and ROE and things that, but that's where the training comes in. You're acting on an ethical basis on the ground. But again, I don't think anybody understands, if you haven't been there, how dynamic and

complex some of these situations when it's completely dark, you're under night vision and a laser and you're having to make moments, seconds, milliseconds to make a decision whether you survive or you don't. There's no black and white with that. It's very complicated. And that goes back to the whole thing where you got to look out for veterans and post service because they're put in some very, very, very difficult situations. Yeah, when you're yelling at someone and giving out orders, you can't ask them what pronouns they use. And they're gonna lie and deceive. I mean, what pronouns they use. And they're going to lie and deceive.

I mean, you know, my team leader and squad leader both got killed because of that. We did a call out and they said no one was in the building. They swore to Allah and all this stuff and we went in there and we got hemmed up really, really bad. So, you know,

there's no moral decision making on their side, as far as, well, I better tell the Americans where we are hard pointed in this building with AK 47s and suicide vests. No, they're going to lie their balls off because they're trying to fucking kill

us. When I think that when the expectation for the, the overall, you know, the, the warrior class, really what it is for them to kind of adapt to this politically correct culture. It's, you know, the warrior class, really what it is for them to kind of adapt to this politically correct culture. It's, it's, we've seen it, I think, and I've seen it, especially

when we look at some of the other countries that we actually have fought with. Some of these guys have to come to the United States, for instance, to get really good weapons training, because weapons are illegal in places like the UK. So you'll have British soldiers that'll come over here, especially their special forces. They'll come over and train with us because they have restrictions on how often they can use firearms in the UK. So a great, that's a great plan. Let's make all firearms illegal. And then, oh, by the way, our special operations have a hard time training with them. And there's a very distinct and huge difference between the proficiency and the way that they're utilizing their weapons and the way that we do it because of our culture. So our

warrior class as a society, we really have to look at it and say, how do we protect them? You know, if we're going to continue to maintain, you know, our sovereignty and security of the nation, we really have to create a place where these guys are not affected by the bullshit that goes on in the United States as far as, you know, woke cancer culture bullshit. them from this. And we've also got to just decide that these guys are trained at a high proficiency level to do something exceedingly difficult. And we want to keep them, we want to keep them over there. Like they, there are a break glass in case of war and now wars of just perpetual essentially. So keep them separate from the rest of this because we really want those guys to be proficient so we can go to bed every night and kind of rest easy. You know what I mean? One of the things you talked about, about where this probably came from, it's a reoccurring

theme in Jack Carr's books as well, is that there's these officers that are career politicians really that are also in the military and they're really just trying to advance their career. And it's one of those archetypes that resonates. Like you go, oh, I bet that guy's real. Like it makes sense. It makes sense as like sort of an evil, sort of a bullshit artist that happens to be an officer and claims responsibility for all the good things

and doesn't take responsibility for the bad things, winds up getting people killed or winds up being corrupt. How often is that really the case it's it's often and we run into it and i've described it a lot as you have a group of and it can be non-commissioned officers or officers and you have a group of guys non-commissioned officers or guys that have enlisted in the military and they, they either went to college or didn't go to college, but they've enlisted and they've worked their way up through the ranks. Officers have gone to college. They've gone to either ROTC or the Academy. And there's very two distinctly different ranks, ranking systems. So enlisted, I just go down, raise your hand, join the military, work your way up. The officers are typically in charge of the NCOs.

That's most of the time. There are some special operations units where that's a little bit more fluid. But in any government bureaucracy, specifically in the military and I think even in the intelligence community, you have personality types just like you do in the military. And I think even in the intelligence community, you have, you have personality types, just like you do in any organization. You have the mission first guys, people that are like, I'm ready to fucking do whatever it is I need to do in order to accomplish the mission. They're the, they're the bread and butter of what's happening overseas. And there's a ton of those guys. And then you have a minority of me's and the me's are the guys that are, I'm here to elevate and rank. I'm here to shirk responsibility and make sure that I take responsibility for others, for other people's actions. essentially. And I'll do anything to get promoted to include what they call throwing our guys under the bus. So Andy Stump's a good example. He was an officer, but he, he, you would never know that, right? He would never throw his guys under the bus. Jock was a great example. He'd never throw

his guys under the bus. You know, good leaders eat last. They're not careerists. They're not trying to do anything or say anything in order to get promoted. They're mission first, very capable and driven people that ultimately don't care if they get credit for what happens. And most of the time, those guys sacrifice their career and their promotions because they're going to always default to what's right the me's are always going to default to what's best for me and then what happens is those me's start to get a they move up much faster and more effectively than the mission guys and the subsequent effect of that which you see is you have the me guys that are moving up in ranks.

And then it is a massive downside to the guys that are mission first because they want to focus on their team and getting what they need to get done, done. And then they pretty much get out of the military because they're like, ah, I don't like this political crap. I hear that.

I hear that all the time from guys. It's a big, the retention on a lot of the really great guys and gals that serve, I think is directly correlated to the me people because they're essentially all about professional progression rather than how do we do the best mission and then give the team, everything's a team effort in life. You can't accomplish shit in your own, really. Just like a podcast, you need the producer, you need the book. It's a team effort.

And sure, you have the leader, but when you have the officer types and even at some NCOs that are, it's, I did it. And they put a lot of the guys at risk where they'll do dumb shit on target or it happened to me where it was like we did a land, sea, and air movement for the sake of doing it and I was the routes NCO. I'm like, hey, why aren't we landing on the X or the Y? Like, we're good to go. Like 160 said we're in like, shut up best. This is what we're doing. And it was essentially because an officer wanted to use his Rangers by land, sea or air for whatever no write up that he might get a bronze star for

when the only thing that happened was risking the lives of Americans and special operation guys, because you just made them move x amount of clicks farther on that movement to target, which, you know, IEDs, ambushes. that for the enlisted men and for the NCOs and for all the people that have the right thoughts in mind and the right intentions in mind, they would not want that to be there. And I would imagine that that's the majority of the people. Yes and no. I think that that's why the special operations community has such a high rate of volunteer because they're escaping the conventional military where there's more careerism in the conventional military. And when you go to the special operations world, there's less of that.

You're more of, it's more of a peer system. It's driven on the individual capabilities in the sense of this is my team. Everything that I do is going to be evaluated by my team. And ultimately, if I'm an officer that's messed up, I can be fired. My team can fire me. There's less of that in the conventional military system because there's a hierarchy of tradition. Now, I think the conventional military

can definitely take a page out of the Special Operations Community book and ultimately make really good decisions on how they select officers and leaders just in general. Because leadership is, one, it's a dying art. I think it's a dying art in general because of what's happening. Because you have to be accountable. Yeah.

The military has an incredible institution of knowledge on how to really curate good leaders. They do. In the special operations community, of course, I'm biased, but they create incredible leaders. They know how to really curate people's talent and put the right people in the right positions and then develop leaders. people's talent and put the right people in the right positions and then develop leaders. Well, that's why Jocko does so well bringing that knowledge to business and doing all these speeches where he's so well sought after because they want to hear a real leader. They do. With the highest stakes in the world, combat and talking about what leadership entails. Absolutely. And for my example that I made earlier, that was a one-off. I mean, the leadership that came out of Ranger Battalion, I mean, that I couldn't have been more thankful to be a part of that unit. And you see a lot of those guys that worked their way up through the

ranks of Ranger Battalion move on to tier one units and do have extraordinary heroic careers. And it is, you can definitely tell the cultural differences from a special operations leadership to the conventional. And that's not a knock on the conventional because I think if you raise your right hand, you're epic. But I think there's some knots to be untied with some of the leadership and the career officers because there's a certain point probably when you pin a star, you're no longer an officer. You're a politician. You're a politician and you're appointed by politicians. So once you move up past a certain rank, you're essentially appointed by politicians. And which now every four to eight years, obviously, there's a rotation in how you're selected, who is selected for what.

So you'll start to see different aspects of the officer corps shift based on administration because it's led by the administration. And then it takes a few years and then ultimately it goes back and forth and back and forth. But, you know, to go back to your original question is how do you continue to develop that? I think the checks and balances are, it's a very traditionally based organization, right? The military is incredible in a lot of different things. And one thing that there has to be is there has to be somewhat of a firewall from what's happening and the newest trend and, you know, the newest trend in social science and how it affects our military, I think there really has to be a big wall as far as what's affecting it and what isn't. And I think that as far as how we get the right people in the right places in the military, boy, that's probably a three-hour podcast in itself as far as unpacking that.

They're so incredible, and not to take away from anything that's happening, but that there are some incredible people that continue to serve in the most honorable capacity in the United States military day in and day out. capacity in the United States military day in and day out. They're mission first people that we never hear about, uh, that go through 20, you know, 30 years of a career, they retire and they move in next door and you'd never know what they did. Yeah. And those are the guys that, you know, when we, when we look at the community, when we look at what we're doing, just in general, those are the guys that I really respect in the sense of, you know, we have our subculture and our friends. But, you know, the people we're trying to earn our respect for are the guys that we know have always served in silence, that are the silent professionals that continue to do the work day in and day out. in silence that are the silent professionals that continue to do the work day in and day out.

And if we have their respect and we can continue to promote in different aspects of what they're doing in their mission, we do that all the time. And when we do that, what I mean by that is, you know, we, whether it's donating money or time or all the things that we try to do. We've shipped hundreds of thousands of bags of coffee overseas to guys that are serving the country, to our friends that are in command driven units that are doing really difficult work. And our little sacrifice that we make, and it's really not a sacrifice, our little commitment to them is just ship them coffee. How do we dedicate more time and money and encourage the good people that serve the country day in and day out that are really, they're the heroes, right? When we look at this, when I look at the SEAL team memo, for instance, and I say, there's a guy up there that made some

change because he wants to, you know, get a promotion, but that's not really going to change the teams. You know, the teams are going to stay the same. Those guys are going to go to work every day, just like they have. They're going to be silent professionals doing very difficult work day in and day out. It doesn't matter if I, you identify them as lamp or their them's or whose or whatever it is, they're going to still do the mission. Thank goodness they're doing that mission. So, you know, how do we just keep promoting it?

But that's the fear that I have of people that don't have an understanding of this that are involved in policy. You know, when you talk about people defunding the military and when I talk to Tim Kennedy and he talked to me about the stark difference between the previous administration and when Trump took over. And one thing, say good things or bad things about Trump all day long, but one good thing you can say is he gave the military the money that they needed and he let them off the leash. He didn't politicize it.

He just gave them the money that they needed and they stopped ISIS in a year. Yeah. And he talked about it in great detail. He's like, the difference was so stark between the previous administration and when Trump took over, and having the resources to do what they needed to do and get the green light. And he's like, we stopped ISIS in a year. There was no one ISIS camps that they wouldn't airstrike because of politics. And then when they transitioned over to kind of the ground force command level and said what do we got to do to wipe isis they go here's the plan go dead done that's the way it needs to be in my opinion if

you want to stay safe yeah yeah and not just us but other parts of the world when you have radical fundamentalists like that that are doing wild shit man and you could watch the videos that do get leaked i mean it's fucking horrific. And the idea that somehow or another these policies are dictated by people who don't understand what's happening there and not by military people, not by people that are on the ground. That's crazy.

I don't know exactly what the answer is to that, which is when you have professional politicians and especially career politicians, uh, that really they're fundamentally corrupted by ultimately the, the military lobbying aspects of, of, of our country, they're going to be driven left or right in any one of these countries. And when I say that, you know, Afghanistan is a really good example. Uh, how many days did it take us to overthrow Afghanistan or the Taliban in Afghanistan? What? 150 days. And that was back in 2000, September,

October, November of 2001. Right? So roughly 90 days after the towers went down, we invaded Afghanistan to overthrow the Taliban. It took us less than six months to essentially go from north to south in that country with a small contingent of special operations and CIA guys, roughly, give or take. Then you have a long-term war of occupation, which has lasted almost 20 years now. And we have the special operations units that essentially invaded, overthrew the Taliban. And then we have a long-term war of occupation. And we have several different administrations that have continued to increase troop size. To what reason? Why?

And then Trump, like him or not, is saying, well, let's downsize our troop involvement in Central Asia or Afghanistan. I think the only bipartisan agreement that they've had in the Senate and the Congress in the last six months was to maintain troop levels in Afghanistan. Right. For what reason? Right. Exactly. Why? And when Trump talks about it, this is where it gets creepy.

He says there is a military industrial complex that wants to go to war. reason right exactly why and when trump talks about it this is where it gets creepy he says there is a military industrial complex that wants to go to war they want to keep war going they want that money endless war a lot of money no one even brings it up he says it and it doesn't become a big issue he brought it up in an interview on fox news and that was it that was it and no one not until everyone's like no it wasn't a giant deal. Like, wait a minute, you're saying we have a large contingent of soldiers over there just for money?

Is that what you're saying? Like, what are you saying? I think, you know, and I think personally, yes, I think large-scale wars of occupation are about the transference of wealth from the taxpayer to the military-industrial complex

because I've seen it. A small scale special operations contingent, as far as we'll use Afghanistan as the template, you can do a lot with a force multiplier. And it's by, with, and through your local national, your local nationals. Uh, and I think it's typically a more mature soldier, uh, that's already has a mature and developed brain too, by the way, you know, past the age of 24, typically special operations guys are a little bit older. Um, and then you have a force multiplying effect and ultimately you don't have a a large-scale war of occupation, which now you have 18-year-old kids that are driving around in tanks, that are flying around in big, robust C-5 logistics. But it's more cost-effective to do that. And I think it's also not as, I think it's also not as politically advantageous for politicians.

So people love to support and celebrate the previous administration for all the great things that Obama did. Okay, but he increased troop levels in both Afghanistan. They say, well, he withdrew from Iraq. But no, we had another surge in Iraq after that. And we surged in Iraq after that. And we surged in Afghanistan after that. Well, there's really not a coherent and logical argument that I can hear or that I've heard in the last 10 years that I've either been in Afghanistan or Iraq for a large-scale military occupational force in either one of those countries. So when

you have a president that's saying, I think we should downsize our footprint and you don't have in, you don't have the left or the right supporting that. It seems fucking crazy to me. It seems one, it seems crazy. And two, where, where are our media outlets and where are the other people saying, maybe we should break this down and look at it from the second and third order effects of a troop downsize? Can we still maintain the sovereignty and the security of the United States at a more cost-effective rate, meaning less blood, less treasure? Can we do that? My answer to that is

absolutely we should be able to do that. Absolutely. But you know why we can't? Because it's more cost-effective for us to have a special operations, smaller contingent, and it's less, it's more costly to move big logistics, you know, tanks and airplanes and fuel and everything else. That's where taxpayers, you as a taxpayer are essentially paying to fund all of that. And that's my two cents on it, at least. It's crazy. It's crazy that that's both Democrats and Republicans and that there's no one step stepping up and saying this is nonsense. We need to stop doing this. And I don't understand. I don't exactly understand why either.

I really don't because I keep waiting. I keep waiting for the congressmen and the senators and a few of these other people to step up and say, wait a minute. and the senators and a few of these other people to step up and say, wait a minute, can we, can we decrease our footprint in these countries and still maintain security and, and, and ultimately protect the sovereignty of the United States? I think we can, but nobody is stepping in to the shoot after Trump and essentially backing him and saying, yes, I think this is a good idea. Whereas the left should be all over this. They should be, hey, less war, right? I mean, this is the hippie movement.

Like, less war is good. No, you had the left fighting him over his Syrian troop withdrawal, which is insane to me that you had media outlets that were defending the increase of troop levels in Syria. But I don't understand. Like, why is it just the sheer amount of money? So are they influencing the politicians and the politicians all uniformly agree to go along with this?

I'd say probably a large part is government contracts, right? Bullets, oil, you know, they'd all cost money, missiles. And a lot of those are government contracts ran by private entities. And the cash flow that goes to the government, they have to subsidize and go to other companies to get what they need. And there's a lot, I mean, hundreds of millions of dollars, I mean, trillions. This is trillions of dollars. On overall scope. Senate rejects Paul proposal on withdrawing troops from Afghanistan. Wow. That's today.

No, July. I'm sorry. Yeah. and what was the vote on that i forget i know yeah so where they agree so you know we can where they agree is we need to maintain uh or increase or maintain troop levels in afghanistan that's where we can get everybody to agree that that sounds that that's completely rational and coherent. What is their argument for it? What is their, I mean, I don't know what, like, especially coming from the left. failed state, which then puts us back into the previous circumstance where the Taliban continue to increase their power, ultimately developing a new terrorist organization or harboring terrorist organizations.

And my answer to that is, you don't need tanks on the ground to do that. You need a bunch of commandos and a few CIA guys. There's 23 provinces in that country. It's really not that big. You have Pakistan, obviously, and a few of these bordering countries, but you don't need a large-scale occupational force to do what you're talking about. So what does the large-scale occupational force serve? the large-scale occupational force serve? From my perspective, it serves the transference of taxpayer dollars from the taxpayer into the military-industrial complex. That's what it serves. Now, the argument is that they need all of this in order to maintain stability within

Afghanistan. That's the argument. They need all of it. That's not a good argument? I don't think so, because I think that they've proven that they can they can if the mission or the end state. And that's the other issue. What's your success criteria? So lay out the success criteria for Afghanistan. Have you ever heard the United States government's success criteria for for Afghanistan? No. Right.

And that's because there really isn't one in which is a fucking problem. Right. And that's because there really isn't one in which is a fucking problem. When our leaders go to war without success criteria, it's really easy to maintain a military footprint for an endless amount of time because you're always chasing a new definition for what it means to succeed. for what it means to succeed. There's no definition of when, there's no end to it. So why is there not minimum success criteria is something that you need to have on anything. What do I need in order for this organization to deem itself a success? The expectation for our, our, our politicians and our leaders is they have to publish minimum success criteria for any war they ever go into. And then once we meet that, there needs to be a post effect plan as to how the hell do we get out? So do you think essentially what happens is the military industrial complex or the lobbyists or the special interest groups, they, do they make agreements with politicians? Do they communicate with politicians and tell them what their goals are? And here's where we're going to help you. This

is what we want you to do. How do they get them all to agree on this? I think that they have a very complex way of organizing and funding think tanks, the way that people think about war, the way they think about stability. I think that they have access, right? So when you have access, and most of these companies, if you go to DC, you know, drive around, look at what companies are inside the Beltway, look at what companies are publicly traded, publicly traded large companies within this type of industry. And they have access. And their entire monetization strategy and how they make money requires war. So how they continue to grow their company and profit

directly is related to how much war is being conducted. So if they have close relationships with all of the politicians within DC and their entire monetization strategy is built on, on increased war, do you think they're working for the taxpayer to kind of withdraw troops? When I say that, it's like, it's, it's, it's, it's directly contradictory to what I think the majority of the public would like to see. I think the majority of the public would like to see. I think the majority of the public would like to see a decreased footprint, decreased war, especially large-scale occupational wars. And they don't financially benefit from that.

It's contradictory. Wouldn't you like to hear Trump talk about this? Oh, my gosh. I would love for any politician to keep talking about this. But it seems like he's at least the only president in our recent lifetime that's actually brought up the fact the military industrial complex is actually influencing these decisions. I would love to have any politician, especially Trump or the president, talk about the military industrial complex and how, how effective DC politics is and

how effective we, we are in the DOD as, as a nation in funding overseas wars and say what you want. And I want to say that as far as the pro-Trump, anti-Trump, but, you know, a lot of the left, anti-Trump, but a lot of the left, they continue to parade around about all the great things that Obama did. He increased our war capacity overseas. He didn't decrease it. Did he shut down Gitmo? Did he do any of these things that he said that he was going to do? For a group of people that claim that they're so anti-war, the one thing that they should be saying, gosh, this guy might have a point. We might want to decrease our footprint overseas. They don't.

But to contradict what we were saying earlier, the benefit of Trump was that he added funding to the military. Right. He gave them the green light. He let them off their leash. Like, where do you draw the line? I think it's a more cost-effective way, too. So if you have minimum success criteria, for instance, in the case of ISIS in Iraq, you have success

criteria that are clearly laid out, which is defeat and destroy ISIS and eliminate any stronghold, essentially any occupied land that they have. You go to work and you take it all away from them, and then you're done. You leave. That's what you do. And that's what they did, essentially. And now, granted, we still have forces in Iraq, but not to the degree that we did when we were increasing to push ISIS out. So with success criteria and ultimately clearly defined goals and objectives

directly associated to any war, that is a absolute expectation that we should have for any politician voting yes, and we should hold our politicians accountable for strict adherence to the success criteria of any war. The problem is, is they keep changing. Every two to four years, they keep changing the success criteria. Well, that's endless war. And he's right about that. These guys want endless war and both sides. So both sides want it.

Democrats and Republicans. Why? Why do we want endless war in these places? That doesn't make sense to me. It really doesn't. And the only thing that makes sense to me in this capacity is that these guys all have a direct benefit or they're all being persuaded by the same organizations to keep the troops and keep the transference of wealth from the taxpayer into the military industrial complex that's fucking terrifying absolutely it is like it is absolutely terrifying and we as a nation should be we should be having that conversation that's the conversation that i want us to have as a nation versus the conversation that we're having about, you know, like crazy shit. Like crazy unimportant shit that's really,

it's honestly boring. And I think it's a distraction and a sideshow to what's really happening. But it's just crazy that you're not hearing this conversation anywhere. Like this conversation is happening on this podcast and it's reaching millions of people. But why is this unique?

That's what's nuts. What's nuts is that this isn't on CBS or NBC or Vice or any of these places. This is not in this long form. You're not getting this conversation. You're not going to get spelled out the way you just spelled it out. No, and I think that there's a— Maybe Vice. Maybe Vice has had some pieces that I missed. I'm sure they have.

And I'm sure there are a lot of people that would love to debate me over what's actually happening. You'd be hard-pressed to find people with two guys sitting across the table that have more experience, specifically in these countries, working in these countries.

I have seven and a half years in Iraq and Afghanistan in my life. Seven and a half years in both military and as an agency contractor. And, uh, when I look at what we do in, in those, in those, in those countries, and I'm, I'm not thinking about it in theory, right? I'm not thinking about it in theory. I'm looking at it saying, this is what I saw. This is my firsthand experience. And this is what I've kind of looked and being able to reflect on it for the last five, six years since I've, you know, since I left the military and the government, been able to reflect on it and really ask a lot of complex questions as to why do we

keep doing the same thing over and over and over again? And it's frustrating because I understand what it takes to stabilize these countries. I see it. And I also understand what doesn't work. And we're doing a lot of shit that doesn't work. Well, and the hard part with that, I think, is there's been such a diversion away from the wars that no one's actively thinking about how many U.S. soldiers, men and women in the military, are currently deployed. There's so much going on in the nation that that conversation's not even happening. I'd venture to say most people are like, oh, we still got people in Afghanistan,

and they're going out on missions and stuff. And it's like an injustice to not have those conversations about what's the end goal, what is the success criteria for Afghanistan, because I'm sure they want to go out and do their job, and they're willing to risk their lives for it, but what's the end goal, what is the success criteria for Afghanistan, because I'm sure they want to go out and do their job and they're willing to risk their lives for it, but what's the job? And you don't really see any of that coming out of what that mission, what the end goal looks like. And if there is an end goal, why are we there kind of thing?

And I haven't heard it, not even from friends that are on the ground i'm like they they have a um they have our international strategic counter-terrorist objectives which is a nice sanctuary for any terrorist organization and i'm sure that we could pull it up but at the end of the day we're occupying a foreign country with our military we should be talking about this on a national level as to what are our goals, what are our objectives, what are our success criteria, and when the fuck do we get out of this place? We should be having that conversation on a regular cycle because guys are still dying. We're still spending a lot of money and we're still spending a lot of our time and lives with the men and women that serve our country These people are still getting wounded and killed in places like Afghanistan

And we're not having a national complex conversation about it, and it's it's crazy to me It seems certifiable like as a country. It's like you guys are crazy. You need to have this conversation It almost seems like it's too uncomfortable for people to discuss. And particularly because it's going on for so long, since it's happened since 2001. It's so long. It almost seems like people just, it's too much. They don't, why is this? I don't know.

They just keep moving. You know, it almost seems like that. And then obviously someone's taking advantage of that and profiting off of it it's a hard conversation you're going to have kids that are going to afghanistan that were from the from the first wave of soldiers that were fighting afghanistan you're you're having children they're children they were born yes after september 11th and now they're there now they're there to to me as a guy that's served in both of those countries, and to me, as a guy that loves our country,

we really need to have that national conversation with everybody and say, this is a generational war, everyone. Is this something we really want to continue to pay for with our blood and our treasure? Is this something we really want to continue to pay for with our blood and our treasure? Is this something we really want to do? And I think when I obviously, you know, I'm biased, but I think these are the important issues that we should be discussing, right?

So how much more do we really have, do we really have the patience for, not necessarily the patience, but how much war is really acceptable and how do we elevate and have these complex conversations without the interference of people that ultimately profit from war too, which is, I think that's the conversation. We have to take that out and have this as a society and they don't want to have it. The interference of people who profit from war, and that is something that's happening,

and it's happening behind closed doors. It's not happening in a transparent way. We can clearly see where the decisions are being made. It's happening by the influence of the politicians that are being influenced behind closed doors. Absolutely. And if they're being influenced behind closed doors, they're also being influenced overtly through, I would say they're overtly being influenced

by think tanks and studies that are funded by large institutions that are geared to profit from this. So instead of the government spending its time really investigating and looking at complex war plans and how we pull out of these places, we're trying to figure out how we can change memos so we don't offend anybody. It's fucking crazy.

Yeah. It's crazy. I never expected this conversation to go down this road but uh it makes sense yeah i mean i didn't either actually we started no i didn't either i was just chilling here and i was like i'm just gonna listen for the next fucking 20 minutes talking about coffee and eating the right foods. Fuck. No shit. That's the beauty of podcasts, right? Yeah, it's crazy. When you just get a chance to talk.

Let's wrap it up with that. I mean, is there anything else you could say? Is there anything people can do about this? Is there anything that you think people should be aware of that they're not, other than what you just said? I think, you know, honestly, I don't know. I don't want to be a defeatist. I think that it's, honestly, I don't know. I don't want to be a defeatist.

I think that it's one of those things, and you've talked a lot about it in your podcast. I think the expectation for us to expect more out of our politicians, I think, in sourcing different types of information from a wide variety of people. I think for us, this is white noise, right? When you look at all the white noise issues that are out there, we have big issues, you know? We have big issues. How the fuck do we get off this rock if there's a bigger rock coming towards us? That's a big one. Holy shit, do you think we should figure that one out?

I don't know, but these are complex conversations that I think we should hold our leaders accountable for sticking to the hard problems and having those conversations versus these ridiculous sideshow white noise conversations that ultimately are just a distraction from from what we as a nation should be making our government do for us. It's just such a complex wave, such a complex web, brother. So there's just so much to think of.

It's almost impossible for a human being to look at the whole picture from above and see all these different factors that are playing against each other. Oh, absolutely. I think we're... It's mind-numbing when you start to critically think about one thing and then the bajillion things that are going on in society. It's why you need good leaders. Yeah.

And good leaders who are not financially motivated, which is almost impossible. That's the thing. It's like getting the money out of politics. Because if they look at this and they go well it's futile already might as well just profit from it right well that's the worst thing ever is when politics stopped becoming a service to your country it became political gain and monetary gain because you can get paid but when you find out that politicians that they they make a hundred thousand dollars a year but they're worth a hundred million bucks. Yeah. How, how the fuck was that possible?

Yeah. And everybody's like, no one, nobody, no one says, Hey, get in front of us and tell us exactly where you got that money. Yeah.

Break it down. Tell us why is your husband worth this much? Or why is your wife worth this much? I understand you're only worth that much, but your wife's worth $50 million. Uh, and your kids are all worth 50 million a piece or whatever it is how does that happen yeah and now and why is like why are we just like

whistling and like looking around and pretending this stuff doesn't exist what a noble cause he works for a hundred thousand dollars and you're like he paid 1.3 million dollars in his tax filings uh what's going on here man what? What the fuck is going on? Man, thank you. Thank you a lot. Thank you. I really appreciate it. Thanks for everything, man.

This is awesome, man. Thanks for the way you guys run your company. Thanks for the ethics and just the way you guys carry yourselves. I appreciate you guys very much. Thank you. Appreciate the opportunity. Come on.

That's awesome. All right. Bye, everybody. Bye. All right. Bye, everybody.