The Joe Rogan Experience - #729 - Jocko Willink

Episode Date: December 1, 2015

Jocko Willink is an author, black belt in Brazilian jiu jitsu, and retired commander of the most highly decorated special-operations unit of the Iraq War: US Navy SEAL Team Three Task Unit Bruiser, which served in the 2006 Battle of Ramadi. His book "Extreme Ownership" is available now via Amazon -- http://amzn.to/1Nmzm9E

All right, ladies and gentlemen, we are here and I'm here with Jocko Willink of Extreme Ownership, how U.S. Navy SEALs lead and win. I'm really excited to read this because I really enjoyed your podcast with Tim Ferriss. And I've seen you around the UFC a bunch of times, but I didn't know much about you. But you're one of those dudes, you know, where I look at this guy, I'm like, that guy probably knows some shit. There's just something about you. Like when I see you, you know, you're hanging around with Lister. I saw you a few times at the UFC.

I'm like, that guy probably knows some shit or he's seen some shit. And then I saw or listened to the Tim Ferriss podcast. I go, okay, well, that makes a lot of sense now. If you haven't heard that podcast, it is excellent. And you're the first guy ever to come with your own notepad and your own pen too. I just want to point that out. Just trying to be prepared. Well, that's your whole thing, man. I'm a big fan of your social media posts too,

because I like feeling like a lazy fuck whenever I look at your social media posts and you have a picture of your watch 4.45 in the morning, mornings, dudes out there working out. I like it. Yeah, it's interesting. Cause, uh, you know, I obviously had zero social media presence like three months ago or whatever the case may be. And Tim Ferriss was, you know, basically said, Hey, you need to get on this social media stuff. And I said, okay, can you kind of show me what to do? And he says, yeah, sign up. So then I signed up and then he dropped that podcast that gets listened to by a bunch of people. And all of a sudden I was engulfed in the social media world. And I found Twitter to be the one that, uh, was the easiest to use and you don't have to write a lot. So, you know, I don't like people

that talk a whole bunch without saying anything. So I figured that one's pretty cool. Yeah, that was the thing that I was thinking when he was encouraging you to use social media. I was like, a guy like you, you're not a peacocker, you know. And there's something about social media that as a person who's an avid social media user, there's some peacocking to it, you know, and I try to do it with humor and I try to, because it's, it's an important aspect of promoting comedy shows and podcasts and things along those lines. But, uh, you were much more of a keep it to yourself. One of the things that I loved about the Ferris podcast, you were talking about, um, how you would have, uh, commanders would come to, uh, various leaders and ask them, what do you need? What do you need? Uh, and guys would have commanders would come to various leaders and ask them, what do you need? What do you need?

And guys would have all these requests and all these things. We need Wi-Fi. We need this. And you were like, we're good, sir. We're good, sir. And the idea behind that is when you did need something, if you really did need something, someone would come to you. Yeah. And you would get it quickly.

Absolutely. When I needed something and I spoke up and said, hey, boss, this is what I need and this is why I need it, they would instantly give it to you. Yeah, you would get it quickly. Absolutely when I when I needed something and I spoke up and said hey Hey boss, this is what I need and this is why I need it They would instantly give it to me because they knew that I was telling the truth and it wasn't some you know Half-assed request that wasn't real. It was something that we legit needed and they'd give it to me well this is the value of someone who keeps their words short and means what they say and says what they mean and doesn't have a lot of bullshit involved in their vocabulary or and this coming from a professional

bullshitter i mean this is what i do i bullshit i talk you know fill a lot of hours of just shooting the shit about nonsense yeah and i mean i i have to you know look in the mirror myself i mean i just wrote with my with my partnerif Babin, who I served with, we just wrote a 300-page book about us for all practical purposes. Now, of course, it's about our team and it's about what we learned and what we experienced, but there's no doubt that there's some level of self-promotion when you're writing a book that's got your name on the cover of it. Now I'm sitting here talking to you and I guess that puts me in the same league, maybe not the same league, but at least I'm playing the same sport. Yeah, we're definitely playing the same sport, but that, but there's benefit to that

because I think what you have to say, and especially what you had to say in the Tim Ferris podcast is, is very important. It's, um, it's not just important, it's unique. Because your perspective is of one who was involved in the most intense activity a human being can participate in in today's world. You were involved in combat in Iraq during the worst time of the war, and you came through it with some pretty intense lessons. And you can, I think anybody listening to that podcast can get a lot out of it. There's inspiration to be gotten from that podcast for sure. But there's also an understanding that can only be, I don't think anybody else can relay what you experienced,

but you, you know, you can have all these guys that write these, you know, movies and they could write screenplays and television shows about it, or guys can write books about it. Embedded journalists can write about it. It's not the same. It's not the same. I got a sense from just you talking about it on Tim Ferriss podcast, literally a shift in my perspective of what it's like to be there. Yeah, it is, you know, for me, it was my, and I know this might sound weird, but it was my lifelong dream to be in combat and to be in a leadership position in combat. Ever since I could remember wanting to do anything of any substance with my life, I wanted to be some kind of a commando. And so I really felt, and the Battle of Ramadi was, you know, like you said, it was 2006. It was

Ramadi, Iraq. It was the worst place in the world at the time. And I knew that. And I felt like my whole life had sort of been preparing me to be there in that position, taking care of those guys to the best of my ability and going out and sending them out to go and kill the enemy and supporting the conventional forces that were there that were unbelievably brave and humble and just miraculously patriotic. And we formed a brotherhood that, you know, to this day, I don't think it'll ever be replaced. And you can see why, you know, these stories of war stand the test of time. And when we talk about the Peloponnesian wars, we talk about war for all time because there's, there's something there. And I think it's what you began with, because it is the ultimate human test. You know, it's the ultimate, it is other people are trying

to kill you and you're trying to kill them. And that's just the ultimate test. And not that it's a great test or a test that everyone should want to have happen because it's, it's awful and horrible and wretched in many ways, but at the same time, it's there and it's present and there is no avoiding it. There is no avoiding it. War is part of the world. It's part of the human nature I know Dana White, you know says fighting's in our DNA Well, you don't have to go but one or two degrees further from fist fighting to where you know Tribes of human beings are trying to kill each other Yeah, it's one of the subjects that I've talked about with my friend Duncan we were we were going over this and we

about with my friend Duncan we were we were going over this and we essentially came to the conclusion that the history of the human race is a history of military warfare I mean whenever you talk about the human ways race you talk about the Civil War you talk about you know World War one World War two Korea Vietnam you talk about Wars and in between those Wars people preparing for more war or trying to avoid war the Cold War in between those wars people preparing for more war or trying to avoid war the Cold War in between wars you know you talk about the the various conflicts throughout history whether it's Genghis Khan or whether it's Napoleon or whether you're talking about war I mean almost all of our

history has been trying to keep people from fucking with us and trying to take things that we think will help our people. That's essentially the history of the human race Yeah, and I think what really strikes people and why there's a an almost sick fascination with it in some ways is because there it's you know, we say that, uh, combat is like life, but amplified and intensified. So it's similar to regular life, except for the consequences are obviously everything, you know, you, you can die. That can be the end of you. And so when you're in that moment,

and when you read about that, and when people read these books or watch these movies, they get some sense of what that must be like. And I think that's why there's, like I said, some attraction to it. I mean, that's why there's hundreds and hundreds of war movies and hundreds and hundreds of war books, because people try and understand what that emotional content really means. Well, there's no higher stakes. So anytime you're involved in an activity that literally there are no higher stakes, other than the loss of your loved ones and the grief that you would suffer because of that, the loss of your own life is about the highest stake possible. And when I talk to people like you or many of the other guys that I've talked to that have served

and been involved in combat, one of the craziest aspects of it is many want to be back there. aspects of it is many want to be back there. Many experienced that life tuned up to 11 and they, they recall it like it's the best time of their life. There's no doubt about it. Best time of my life. No doubt about it. No doubt about it. Feeling that pressure, um, knowing what was at stake. And again, for me in a leadership position, you know, everyone feels a little bit different from me in a leadership position You're not worried about yourself getting hurt or killed you're worried about your guys getting hurt or killed and that's the most important thing and the thing that's keeping you awake at night and the thing that's driving you and so

There's an intensity there but But having so much pressure and so much at stake, when it goes away, it definitely leaves a hollow, empty space inside. There's no a solitary sport. You know, you have your team behind you. You have coaches. You have guys that you prepare with, that you train with. But once you're locked up inside that cage or you step inside that ring, it's really all just about you. The experience is yours. When you're at war, your experience is protecting all those around you as well as staying alive.

And losing friends and thinking that you could have done something differently and maybe someone would still be here that's that's a completely different kind of thing to leave and to come back to regular civilization and then to watch all the shit that you did in iraq go to pieces now you watch just fucking chaos over there now every day in the shit that you did in Iraq go to pieces now. You watch just fucking chaos over there now. Every day in the news, whether it's the civil war between the Sunni and the Shia or whether it's what's going on with ISIS. And it just seems like whatever gains that you guys made there are slowly being eroded every day. Does that also like pull at you? Oh, yeah, absolutely. So we don't, like I said, we fought. And when I say we, I'm talking about a giant group of 5,000 or 6,000 Americans or the one, one AD, just a huge group of awesome guys, soldiers and Marines. And we were

a part of them. And so they, they, we all fought very hard for the city of Ramadi. I mean, it's a city. It's a city like a city in America. It's got roads and it's got houses and it's got buildings and it's got a government center. It's got a soccer stadium. It's a city like what we have in America. And we went in there and fought to take this city back from these savages that owned it at the time. And why do I call them savages? It's because they tortured people. They skinned people alive. They beheaded people. They raped

little girls and little boys. It was just disgusting. And so we went in there and fought against them and beat them. And what we did in doing that is the people that actually lived there. Again, this is a city with human beings in it. And I always have to tell this story or at least relate to people that you'd be running down the street. There'd be guns firing around and you'd kick open the door to a compound to somebody's house and you'd get in there and there'd be, you know, a guy, a dad working on a car and there'd be two kids kicking a soccer ball and there'd be a mom cooking lunch. And so there's people there and those people

wanted us to be there and wanted us to defeat the insurgents that were terrorizing them. And we did. And they were joyous about that. And so when you talk about what do I think now when I see ISIS, the black flag of ISIS, I mean, is there any other more dramatic image than I could tell you then that the black flag of ISIS now flies at the government center, Ahmadi? It's horrible and it's sickening. And they went around and anybody that had had anything to do with theing. And they went around and anybody that had had anything to do with the coalition there, they went around with a list of names and they murdered all of them and all their families. And, you know, we as a country, we kind of left them hanging. And we kind of left them hanging. of have a responsibility to manage that area.

Now, as crazy as that sounds, like people want to say we're not in the building. We're not in the business of nation building. We're not in the building process or the the the business of organizing or structuring a nation, building a democracy out of one which did not have one ever. But you kind of have to. Well, look what we did in Germany and Japan. Yeah. We're still in both those countries. Yeah. We stayed there.

And guess what the two, you know, what are the two economic superpowers behind America? You know, I know those two are both in the top five. Germany is definitely ahead of Europe, you know, besides China. But Japan, those are economic superpowers. They're very successful countries. And we formulated their new structure. Now, there's a lot of resistance in this country. There always was a lot of resistance to going to Iraq in the first place because people didn't understand the connection between 9-11 and Iraq. And it seemed like it was manufactured. It seemed like to people on this side that, you know, we're looking at it and we're looking at Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld and all these chicken hawks that wanted us to go over there. And why? But once you're there, you, you kind of have to have a different approach, don't you? Well, there's no doubt you have to have a different approach. You have to

believe in what you're doing. And again, when you're number one and every, every soldier or Marine or service member will tell you that when they're in combat, they're not thinking about, you know, the strategic mission of the United States of America. They're thinking about the guy that's next to them and what they're going to do to keep that, keep their buddies alive. And that's, that's all there is to, and that's true. And anyone will tell you that. But that being said, when you come back from that operation and you have time to think about what you're doing there, then you've got to believe in what you're doing. And if you don't believe in what you're doing, then you're going to have some serious issues. And so for me, you know, it was pretty obvious that what we were doing was, was absolutely the right thing. I mean, you've got insurgents there

that were foreign fighters that want to kill everyone in America. They hate us. They want to destroy us. They want to do nine 11 over and over again in this country. They want to kill us all. And so for us to be there fighting them, I am totally on board and was on board and remain that way today. Now, these insurgents that came into these places like Ramadi and were taking over the city and killing all these people and torturing all these people, why were they doing that to them? It's the same thing that ISIS did when they went back. I mean, they want to have a chunk of land at the time they, they'd said that Ramadi was going to be the, the seat of their Caliphate. It's going to be the capital city of their Caliphate. That's what they were trying to do. So in a sense, like once war

started over there, it became a holy war. Yes. And it's a holy war, but it's interesting because the people of Iraq, there's people in Iraq, most people in Iraq, when you talk to them, they're normal people that want to have a job, you know, build a new addition on their house, fix the roof, uh, get some good food for dinner that night, raise their kids so that they can take over the family business or whatever. That's what they want. They're not a bunch of people running around doing what ISIS is doing. But who is the powerful force in, you know, in Iraq right now? Now everyone's scared of ISIS. And one thing about this is there, you know, because Iraq is they don't have this kind of patriotic feeling that we have in America, which I know I know it may be dying in many cases. But there's a lot of Americans that still believe America is the greatest country on Earth.

And that and even if you don't believe it's greatest country on Earth and even if you see it for all the all that's false that it Has you appreciate the fact that in this country you have freedom and so you can kind of fight for that no matter What you're thinking about you're fighting for freedom. You're fighting to protect your family. Well in Iraq, they're like, okay, um I'll fight for whoever I'll fight for whoever or support whoever is just gonna allow me to live I'll fight for whoever or support whoever is just going to allow me to live. They don't have the same attitude. That's why when ISIS came into Ramadi and the Iraqi troops kind of ran away, they're like, well, we don't know what's going to happen. We don't really they don't have that core belief that they're fighting for. And so I think that's where some of the challenges come in. And as they grow that they will they will perform better.

But it's definitely going to take quite a bit of time. I think patriotism in America was at its all-time high around September 11th. Right after that happened, you never saw more flags. I mean, I remember driving down the street and every car had a flag hanging from it. No doubt about it. I mean, it was a buddy of mine, Jay London, sold flags. That's what he used to do, sell car flags, flags that you put on cars.

Had a good business going on for a while. But like a lot of things, people got accustomed to it. They got settled in and everything got back down to its normal level. So there's this big buzz of patriotism. Well, there's a big buzz of patriotism when you feel threatened and we never feel threatened in america everyone is driving around in a nice big suv that gets eight miles to the gallon with big air condition blasting they're looking at their iphone texting people socially interacting through the through the wi-fi and they're not concerned about their safety. And so when you're

not concerned about your safety, what is there left to be patriotic when you don't understand what it means to live in fear? So yeah, September 11th comes and you get attacked and you feel that fear. Guess what? You rally around this, this thing, America that's protected you and your family, but you didn't even think about it before, but now you're thinking about it and you go, you know what? I'm gonna put a flag up on my up on my vehicle, this vehicle that I drive around in complete luxury, which is what America is like. America is unbelievably luxurious compared to the rest of the world. civilians just randomly haphazardly suicide bombing essentially with a plane right into a building like all that was so evil that everybody just there was no there was no gray area in that it was pretty clear it was about as clear as any event ever in human history agree now when you found out i mean you were already involved in the military when all this was going on. Yeah.

You signed up like long before like you, if there's anybody that I've ever met that I've ever heard talk about it, that was, I mean, this is how you feel. You were born for this. This is your goal, your post in life. Yes. What pulled

you into that? You grew up in New England? I did. What part? Connecticut and Maine. Okay. Yep. In the sticks, on a dirt road, you know, just kind of a general American. A general American. So what was it that drew you to it?

Like, where did you develop this sense of patriotism? Well, I would say prior to the feeling of patriotism, you know, I, like I said, I always wanted to be some kind of a commando. And I would say that you when you join the military, I'd say people that are somewhat patriotic, join the military. But when you travel around the world, and you're in the military, that kind of confirms your patriotism more than anything else, because you see what the rest of the world is like and how unbelievably amazing America is. And again, does America have faults? Yeah.

America's got all kinds of faults. There's all kinds of things that we could do better. And there's things that we've done in the past that we shouldn't have done. And there's things that we'll do in the future that we shouldn't have done. have done. But when you compare that with the rest of the world and how the rest of the world lives and what it means to be in an oppressed society, you know, you, you're extremely thankful to be in America. This is once you've already been in the military and already started travel. So this is just, you just had this draw towards it almost like your destiny to be in the military. Yeah. Yes. That's a, it's strange that it just came out of nowhere.

Like there was no like event in your life. It just seems like this was just something that it was always, you were always attracted to. I mean, running around the woods as a little kid with BB guns shooting each other. And that seemed like a good job. Well, and it's funny,

you know, in SEAL teams, you don't, you don't grow up, you know, you don't, you don't grow up, you know, you don't, you continue with your childhood, uh, you know, play time for your whole adult life. And it's awesome. You know, that's the best thing about the SEAL teams is you get to do what you always wanted to do and they pay you money and you get unlimited ammunition, And they pay you money and you get unlimited ammunition, unbelievable types of weapons, bombs, explosives, you know, grenades.

And they just give it all to you and they say, get after it. Well, they get excited when they find a guy like you. Here we got a smart guy who was born to do this, who's really looking forward to it. It's perfect. I guess so. I'm sure the recruiter was pretty fired up when he met me. I would be. If I was a recruiter, I'd be like, we got one. Check. Check the boxes. But it's even more intense because it's not just you get to play, but only the strong get to play. The weak all get weeded out, and what's left is people of similar character. That's what I've found most fascinating.

I think that's one of the things that's so romantic in the public's eye about the idea of the SEALs or Green Berets or Rangers, people that it's very difficult to get in there, and only a select few have the intestinal fortitude, the willpower, and the ability to lock on onto a task and a goal and get through it. Yeah. And then when you're in the SEAL teams, none of that means anything. And like all the training and all that selection process is just doesn't mean anything because you all, that's just the baseline of where everyone's at. And so when people talk about this intense training, when you're in the SEAL teams, you don't talk about that training that you go through to get in there, but that's just the baseline for everybody. So it's just to make sure that

you're not a pussy. Just exactly. Yeah. And here you are 44 years old. You're still getting up at four o'clock in the morning doing deadlifts. It never left you. It did not leave me. It's not going to, is it? It is not going to. So you get through, once you get through the intensity of buds and you get through, you know, all the people that are going to quit and you get through all the training, what is life like from there on out? Like how structured is like training and physical activity and things like that from there on out? You know, again, being in the SEAL teams is awesome. It's such a fun job that I literally didn't consider it a job except for maybe 13 months out of my career. 13 months I worked directly for the admiral that was in charge of all the SEALs. months I worked for the directly for the admiral that was in charge of all the SEALs. And he's a great guy. And I learned a ton from him and from having that job. But it wasn't a fun job. And even he would tell you it's not a fun job. You know, you've got to, you know, you're wearing a uniform

every day. And in the regular SEAL teams, you're, you know, you're wearing a pair of shorts, and you're barely wearing a shirt because you're out there in the field, or, you know, getting ready to go in the field. So it's a great life. And you're constantly training, you're barely wearing a shirt because you're out there in the field or, you know, getting ready to go in the field. So it's a, it's a great life and you're constantly training. You're hanging out with a bunch of guys that are pretty much have the same attitude as you. For the most part, there's a couple of guys that don't cut it. And there's some guys that are super studs and you're, you're doing your best to emulate them, but you're hanging out with a bunch of great guys. And, you know, when I was a young sealAL, we'd get to Friday and we'd,

you know, go out, have a beer. We'd get done Saturday. We'd still go to work Sunday. We'd still go to work. We'd go work out. We'd hang out. We'd work on our gear. We'd get ready. And there was not even a war going on. We were just into it. You know, we were just fired up for the SEAL teams. And that was, so it's a, it's a great life. And then once the war started, the intensity definitely picked up because, you know, everybody knew that we were going into combat and Everyone pushed that much harder That being said back in the 90s

We used to train really really hard because there was an unknown element You know, there was an unknown element where you didn't know what was really going to, you didn't know what combat was really like. So you trained as hard as you possibly could figure out how to train. We trained. And then once combat started and we're like, okay, well, we kind of know what we're dealing with now. It'd be like a fighter going to a camp. If he's never fought in the UFC before, he's going to train super hard to make his debut. Well, maybe after he wins really easily his first couple of fights, maybe he backs off on that training camp a little bit. Not we did that but it definitely mentally was there uh to to push hard even before combat so you're just essentially saying that even before

you were going to war you were gonna be ready you you were you were gonna make sure that you had all your boxes checked you had all your ducks in a row. 100%. How much physical training is there once you're actually deployed? It depends on where you are and what you're doing. You know, it depends on what type of missions you're going on. But, you know, being in the SEAL teams is a very physical job. And again, you know what it is? It's a baseline. Everyone expects that you're going to be able to put on your rucksack and your gear and go out and move and shoot and communicate.

That's the baseline. Everyone's expected to do it. Whatever you have to do to make that happen is kind of on you. Although we do do, you know, team, what we call PT, physical training, but we do team PT. But a lot of it is on you as an individual or your smaller element, you know, group of guys. And that's how you got to stay in shape. You do not want to be the guy that, you know, can't carry his weight. That's just, you'll get kicked out.

But it's not structured. It's not organized. Like, say, if you're deployed in Iraq. What I was getting at was I always wondered, like, I would imagine the type of workouts that you do, they're exhausting, right? You know, you're deadlifting. You're doing cleans and presses and all this crazy shit and chin-ups and running up hills if you had to go to war right after a hard workout like that it's going to take something out of you yeah you've got to use you've got to use common

sense right so how do you know like when to stay in shape or what to do yeah you're you're you're not going to do like a massive squat workout while you're on deployment. That's going to put you in the hurt locker for three or four days. It's just not smart. You know, you're going to – it's like Pavel, you know, the Pavel – Tatsuli. Yeah. You know, he kind of – I heard that from him years and years ago, you know,

because he was training some SWAT guys up in L.A. And I talked to some of those guys and they said, you know, well, you don't need to go to exhaustion to get stronger. So I said, oh, okay, cool. Let's try that. And so, you know, you've got to be ready to operate. That's your primary mission. You got to be ready to go out on the battlefield and get after it.

So you're not going to crush yourself so hard that you're incapacitated. Yeah. He's not a guy that believes in going to failure, right? He's got some interesting ideas. And I'm not like some follower from just one of those things I heard along the way. Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of different philosophies when it comes to training.

So when you're deployed, it's essentially all entirely on you other than the group-organized PT trainings? Just about. Yeah, just about. So do you guys get together and say, hey, we're going to go running or we're going to lift today or we're going to... Let's go do some pull-ups.

What about martial arts training? How much martial arts training is involved? Again, that depends on, you know, what the situation is and who you're working with. You know, if you were a junior officer that was working for me, then you were going to be training jiu-jitsu all the time. If they're working for you.

So it depends on who they're working for. Yeah. You know, I needed training partners. And so I got them. So when you did that, would you take guys and teach them some basic stuff and then just choke the shit out of them? Is that the move? Pretty much. Pretty much.

Do you talk them through it while you're doing it? Like, defend, get your arm here, look out. But I would actually improve. I'd go on deployment and come back and some guy that maybe I was having good battles with before I left, I'd come back and be better. Because all of a sudden, you go and work on really good offense against a bunch of strong psycho seals that don't want to tap and you got to make it work so you know I'd come back and and be better I wouldn't I wouldn't get worse on deployment that's for sure that's Eddie Bravo's theory he believes that the real way to get better is not to train with people better than you but

to train with people that aren't as good as you and just constantly drill finishes over and over and over again sharpen them up like a samurai. And then when you do spar with people that are your level or better, you'll be much better just because you're constantly used to finishing. Yeah, and I think there's a combination of both. You've got to train with people that are better than you, and you've got to train with people that are worse than you. And we do that in SEAL training too, because the SEAL training that I ran before I got out

was not like the SEAL training we see with the guys with the logs carrying those around or boats. Like I said, that's the basic training, and no one really cares too much about that once you get in the SEAL teams because it's just over. It's just to smash you in the beginning? Just to smash you, like you said, make sure that you— You're not a pussy. Exactly. Have the intestinal fortitude to bring it. But once you get in the SEAL teams, then you go through something called a workup workup and that's when you've got seal platoons that are trying to work together

and we do crazy simulated combat on these guys that is awesome i mean it's it's devastating and what we would have uh paintball um again this is like little kid stuff, right? You get, you get awesome paintball guns, unlimited paintball rounds. We had this, this, uh, like the best laser tag system that anyone could ever imagine this crazy expensive laser tag system where you could go out and fight each other with laser tag. And when you were getting shot at, if the rounds weren't theoretically hitting you, then there was a little speaker on your shoulder that would make noises as if rounds were going over your head so that you would know to get down. And there'd be explosions going off on these little speakers. And then when you'd get back from these training operations, all the, they have little embedded GPSs in them. So you'd put it out on Google earth and you could watch the whole battle unfold and watch what people did right

and wrong. And my point in this is that sometimes, many times, especially in the beginning, when the SEALs weren't quite up to speed yet, they didn't know how to work together that well, three or four or five opposing four SEALs. So these are guys that are pretending to be bad guys. They would kill them all. They would just go out there and murder them all. And as these guys got better and started to work together, and the leadership started to step up and take command and, and do a better job of leading, then all of a sudden they, the SEALs would start to beat the opposing force and annihilate them.

What an incredible tool to learn how to organize and to stay together and work together as a team that what did they used to do in the past? Well, that's a very interesting topic because it's very similar to what the UFC did to martial arts. Because, as you know, in 1991, you and I could sit here and talk and you could be a Kung Fu guy and I could be an Aikido guy. And we could be like, no, my martial arts better. And you could be saying the same thing. And we could theoretically debate it all day long but we'd never actually do it and it's different so in combat obviously you can't you know we can't say okay let's find out which one's better and we're on the same team we're just going to kill each other to find out

you can't do that so the first thing that happened was simunition and that's you know they basically started paintball but it's high speed paintball that you know fits in your real gun fits in a real gun fits in a real gun so you take your you put a new barrel on your that, you know, fits in your real gun. Fits in a real gun. Yeah, fits in a real gun. So you take your, you put a new barrel on your, your standard, you know, issue weapon, and now you're shooting paintballs out of your real gun. You have 30 rounds, you change magazines, like very, very similar to real combat. And all of a sudden, just like a punching bag, you know, when people say, oh, the punching bag doesn't punch back. Well, when you go into a, into a house and you shoot a bunch of paper targets, they don't move, they don't shoot back. So it's, you know, guess what?

You win every single time. And you can get pretty confident with your tactics, but your tactics aren't getting tested. And so when these great technologies came out, simunition, paintball, and these laser-type systems, it was a complete change. And we definitely changed our tactics. Our tactics evolved just like fight tactics evolved with the with the advent of the UFC and people said oh This doesn't work the way we thought it did and you know this idea of all we're just gonna go running into a room and no One's gonna stop no matter what no actually if there's a machine gun

Just lay in paint into you as you go in you're stupid if you go run into that room So we made these simple adjustments, but it was an interesting progression And it definitely imprinted the fact that you have to make your training as realistic as possible. And it also, it also shows you how people, humans have a tendency to believe in what they're doing just because it's kind of what they believe in. And, you know, again, I think those, those traditional martial arts that were so popular, you know, back in the day, people truly believed that like, no, I will actually stop you with, you know, with my chi, my chi will stop you. And they, they really thought that I had one of my jujitsu buddies was, you know, had some chi guy in 1995, like you

cannot take me down. And he said, well, what do you mean and he said no I once I settle my chi You cannot take me down and he said well, okay Settle your do you want to try it and the guys like sure you can try all you want so the guy you know stands there and settles his chi out and My buddy goes are you ready? And these guys says yeah, and he just like double legs in the ground, but it but the guy believed it That's what's crazy And that's what that's what people gets get Lord into you you know our egos lures into a lot of stuff that

we need to watch out for well the the belief is based on you know being taught it by people who also believe it too and it's it's so confusing because no one's experienced it in in real life which was why what the initial question was when they used to prepare like back in vietnam or you know during the uh the first well when was this stuff invented like during did they have it during the first gulf war barely barely very small groups had it you know not not as many as should they have the laser setup and everything no we didn't get the good no they had that they had a worse laser system know, they've been trying to do it for years. But what did they used to do like during the Vietnam era? You go off the experience of guys that had been in World War Two in Korea and try and pass that on. And luckily, and honestly, you know, being in combat,

the basic principles of combat are not these super crazy complex things. You know, the most basic principle that we talk about is cover and move, which is if you and I are going to go assault a building over there, I'm going to take cover. I'm going to engage that building so that the enemy can't put their heads up. And while I'm shooting at the building, shooting where we think the enemy are, you're going to get up and maneuver into a better position. Once you get into a better position and you get some cover, you're going to start shooting at the enemy. And that's going to allow me to move. Once I get to a better position, I'll start shooting again.

And we'll continue to do that, supporting each other as we move to a target. And then once we get there, we'll kill the bad guys and it'll be done. That's the most basic principle. But there's times where before, you know, in between Vietnam, which is where we had major combat and people learned that cover move and guys that were in Vietnam were the people that taught me cover and move in between that time.

And the time when we started using simunition and the, and the lasers, the better products, we actually forgot some of those lessons as crazy as that might seem. We actually forgot some of these very simple, basic lessons of, of gunfighting. And so it was great to have it back. And it was, you know, when we, when we went to combat, finally we were more prepared for it. Yeah. I would imagine that kind of simulation, you're calling it simunition. That's a, that's an actual name brand and it's a name brand. That's the paint. Yep. So simunition is the paint and then the laser, what is the name brand. Okay. It's a name brand. That's the paint? Yep. So semi-initiation is the paint and then the laser, what is the name brand of that stuff?

The one that we used was called Ditz and it was made by Saab. And I don't know, I don't even know if they still make it or if that contract's still going, but it was awesome. I like your analogy to martial arts, like testing it in an actual competition, because it would seem that that would be the only way that anybody would ever actually learn what mistakes not to make and how they could easily be replicated in combat. And then the repeated actions of doing those over and over again and ingraining them in your mind is probably the only thing that you could draw upon when you're in those intense situations of an actual firefight. Yeah, and there's another good comparison. I don't know if you've ever heard somebody kind of say this, but, you know, they'll say, like, let's say I train some kung fu stuff where I'm like an eye attacker and I rip your throat out and all that stuff. And you train, you know, jujitsu, Muay Thai, wrestling and boxing, right? So people will say that you're not ready for the fact that I'm going to poke your eyes out, or you're not ready for the fact that I'm going to try and grab your throat or whatever. And therefore I have an advantage and, and that you have some kind of a

training scar because you aren't used to doing that. You see what I'm saying? So if, like I said, if all I do is train to grab your eyes and poke your throat or whatever pressure point type attack, then that means that I'm better prepared for a street conflict. both know like a guy that does that versus a guy that trains in mixed martial arts boxing wrestling muay thai jiu-jitsu that guy's going to destroy this other person in a street fight and the guy will grab for his eyes and then he's going to get his arm broken off and he's going to get punched in that 47 times but my point in telling that that is that this we had the same type of people in inside the seal teams that said, if you get used to training with paintball, then you're going to develop training scars from it. So you're not going to be used to your regular weapon. You're not going to be used to the recoil of a real gun. And you're going to have more courage because it's only going against paint and while that while there's some small piece of truth to that just like there's some small piece

of truth to the fact that if if you never think about what it's like to be punched while you're doing jiu-jitsu well then it's gonna be a surprise for you the first time you you are in guard with someone and they crack you in the face there's some small truth to it but it's not a reason to throw out you know that type of training it just doesn't make sense and the other thing that's good about it is, you know, in jujitsu and Muay Thai and boxing and wrestling, you're going live against another human being that's maneuvering on you and trying to defeat you. And when you have paintball or laser, you're going against another human being that's trying to maneuver on you and defeat you. So therefore it's very

effective in, in teaching you what real combat is going is gonna be like What was it like the first time you were deployed and when was that? the first time I was deployed in 2003 and Deployed to Baghdad Iraq and it was great That's not what most people would think of it wouldn't never think of that that word It's very it what was interesting about my first deployment to iraq was that again i was so happy to be you know in a position where i was a platoon commander and we were doing real missions and i was excited and happy about that and you know that doesn't mean i was running around with a smile on my face we had a

legit job and we had to get it done it was also a time where the the insurgents there wasn't an insurgency yet we hadn't even really heard that word in 2003 and so the operations that we did were relatively simple and our tactical advantage over the enemy was good enough that we just annihilated them. You know, it was like, it was like an unfair fight, which is how you want it to be. You want to have an unfair fight in combat. And so we would go in, you know, two o'clock in the morning, we'd find out where a bad guy was in some house or some office or some building. And we'd load up our vehicles and go in the middle of the night, blast their door open with big explosive breaching charge, clear their house in about 30 seconds, grab them, grab their buddies, bring them all back, interrogate them, find out where their friends are and go out and do it again. And it was awesome. And it was awesome.

And it was like a rock star deployment we'd come home at three o'clock in the morning and be done and debrief the operation and get ready to do it the next day we probably were in i don't know four or five firefights during that whole deployment a couple ambushes and i had one guy get get wounded not very bad so it was it was it was fun it was good and we were ready for it um and the contrast comes when you go to my next deployment the next deployment to Ramadi which was completely different so and on that deployment different. So, and on that deployment, everything bad that can happen to a guy in a leadership position or an element happened to us, everything bad that could happen happened. And so it was, it was radically different than my first deployment so your first deployment was uh in a sense a lot like what people expected the war to

go like after we had experienced desert storm desert storm which was just this overwhelming success just the only casualties were when that one scud missile had hit a barracks. And it was just, that was what America thought war was like, well, this is how good we are at it right now. We just go over there and we kill everybody and we lose a couple people and we're real sad about that, but we wrapped it up tight. So your second deployment, what was that like and how did it begin? Well, it began with our deployment orders changing. So we were literally two weeks from going on deployment. So now my first deployment to Iraq, I was what's called a platoon commander. I had 15 or 20 guys underneath me, depending on

what time during the deployment it was. And we were an assault force. We were like, we jokingly called ourselves Baghdad SWAT because that's what we did. I just kind of described what those missions were like. My second deployment, now I was what's called a task unit commander. and I had two of those seal platoon platoons with 15 to 20 guys that were underneath me and then we had another 70 60 or 70 support personnel so these are people that do Intel people that man the radios people that clean and repair our weapons and people that keep the camp running and all that. So it's about 100 guys, but there's only 35 or 40 SEALs. And we found out about two weeks before we went on deployment, our deployment changed.

Instead of going to Baghdad and really doing more Baghdad SWAT operations, we were told we were going to Ramadi. And I was again, and people always say, you know, I can't believe you fought that. And I can't believe how twisted you are and all, I can't believe what a sick individual you are and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But yes, I was extremely happy and motivated that we were going to Ramadi because it was the worst place in Iraq. And that is exactly where I wanted to be my whole life. So yes, I was fired up to go there. It's just so crazy that, I mean, it's so counterintuitive to the way most people think. I guess so.

And I hung around with a bunch of guys that thought the same damn thing as me. Let's go get these guys. Let's get after it. Well, that's why you are who you are. I mean, that's, that's why it's important to have people like you in the world. Like there's a spectrum of human beings. There is a spectrum of human beings. And you're, you're on this extreme edge of exactly what you want when you have an army. If you put together a military force, you want a guy like you that has that attitude. You don't want a guy who's going to the worst place in the world and saying, why the fuck why didn't i become a baker like my dad i could be making cupcakes

right now instead i'm shooting people yeah yeah no you uh and and and the seal teams and the rangers and the special forces does a very good job of of attracting the type of people that you're talking about, the type of people that are fired up to do that job. And not encouraging it and growing it. It seems like the amount of camaraderie and the intensity of the friendships and the bond, the brotherhood that you develop with those people just intensifies it all. Yeah, it's a big gang. It's a big, awesome gang that you're a part of that's badass,

and you're a part of this fraternity, this brotherhood. So, yeah, they definitely fuel the fire. And I shouldn't say they fuel the fire. We fuel the fire. We are the fire. And I shouldn't say they fuel the fire. We fuel the fire. We are the fire. You know, the guys that are there, the guys that I worked with, they're the fired up guys that are completely ready to do this job.

So you get over there. You're in Ramadi. Totally different situation than Baghdad. Totally different situation than Baghdad. Immediately you realize this? Immediately. Immediately. We were going. And immediately you realize this? got attacked the, I don't know, maybe the third or fourth night that we were there, every guy was on the roof of our building, shooting back at bad guys that were shooting at us.

It was, and then, and then we started conducting operations almost immediately. And the operations were just, just radically different. I mean, the enemy owned the downtown area of Hamadi. They, they were the dominant force down there. So whereas before You'd be going through kind of semi permissive environment in Baghdad meaning that You know, it's a bunch of civilians and they just want to get out of your way and then you'd go and find this bad Guy well in Ramadi the bad guys were gonna find you and it was different and they were everywhere They were who would train them the bad guys were going to find you and it was different and they were everywhere they were who would train them you know some of them were former regime elements so some of them were you

know ramadi was uh was a iraqi military city as well so there's some of them left over actually a bunch of them left over and then you had syrians coming in foreign fighters uh people coming in from all over saudi arabia j coming in foreign fighters people coming in from all over Saudi Arabia Jordan I mean they'd come in from all over the place to to come and engage and get their jihad on and were they motivated because America was now occupying Iraq is that what was was driving them I think more than the fact that that America was occupying Iraq is that they wanted to take that land I mean America was no longer occupying Iraq is that they wanted to take that land. I mean, America was no longer

occupying Iraq when they went in and took Ramadi. This time we were gone. We'd been gone for four years. So the occupation of Iraq was not the driving force behind this. So once you get there and once you realize right away, it's different. You're experiencing casualties at a level that was unheard of in Baghdad. And you are engaging with an enemy that's very prepared and overwhelming. They're everywhere. And they did. They were similar to us, meaning they did like first world country type stuff. They had medical evacuation plans where one of their guys would get wounded.

You'd see him get evacuated. You know, you could watch on the screens, you could watch what was happening. A vehicle would come in and gather them up and take wounded guys away. They'd bring in reinforcements. They had communications, they did fire and maneuver. They did, you know, the same basic tactics that I was talking about. They did those tactics as well. And so it was a real well-trained and well-coordinated and determined enemy. Was this expected? Well, we knew what Ramadi was like. But I would say it was expected.

But it's hard to mentally picture what that's going to be like when you when you're going to go up against guys that are that prepared so this was tactically and as far as like the strategy that was involved to try to take a city like that this was a fairly new experience for the united states military right we we'd never what other mean other what Somalia, like what other urban war had the United States engaged in like this, where you're in a city? Well, I mean, obviously World War II had all kinds of urban conflict. And in Vietnam, there was portions, you know, the Battle of Hue City was a huge urban conflict. Somalia was definitely urban combat, but you're right in the fact that we weren't going in there to try and stay. And that was one of the biggest differences or changes in strategies that the U.S. military had that turned the war around. grew in this 2004 2005 the insurgents started getting more and more unified and better and

more well trained and more organized in america what we did was kind of go back to our strong bases so there's bases you got to understand this in iraq 2005 2006 if you went to a base in let's say baghdad international airport there's a huge U.S. military base. There was, you know, Subway, the sandwich shop, Subway, Starbucks. These places had become little outcroppings of America. And so what we did when the insurgency got worse and worse and worse, and also the public opinion of the war went down and down and down. And all of a sudden we're saying, okay, we're not going to, we're going to minimize casualties as much as possible. So what does that mean you do? You go back to your base. And we, we did that as a country. We kind of said, okay, we're not going to take huge risks

anymore. We're going to pull back to our bases. We're going to try and support the Iraqis as much as we can and let them go out and try and accomplish missions. And we still did do missions, but we definitely had strong, had moved back to these big bases. Well, there was a guy, uh, there were several people and one of them was general Petraeus. He wrote this, you know, the counterinsurgency manual. Cause now, now, now what you had was you went from this idea of we were fighting kind of terrorists and, and all of a sudden we're fighting an organized insurgency. And that was a huge strat strategic shift. And so now instead of going out and bad, grabbing a bad guy and then coming back, the, the, the new strategy, and it was implemented

in Ramadi by a guy named Colonel Sean McFarland was seize, clear, hold, and build, which means you're going to go into these enemy controlled neighborhoods. You're going to take buildings. You're going to hold those buildings. You're going to build them into your own forts and you're going to have American and Iraqi soldiers live in those enemy controlled territories until the enemy was gone. Had that ever been implemented before? It had been implemented in Tal Afar in northern Iraq by a guy named H H C McMaster was another kind of legendary military army colonel at the time all these guys are generals now because they're awesome guys he had implemented up there he had actually turned that plan over to

General McFarland and General McFarland came down to Ramadi and implemented the plan there. But what was hard to understand is no one really knew about this. No one understood it. All they said was, oh my God, wait a second, you're saying we're going to go into these enemy-controlled neighborhoods where there haven't been American or coalition forces for a year, year and a half, two years, you're saying we're going to go go in there right before we arrived in Ramadi there was a road that the Marine Corps tried to penetrate down they hit 13 IDs and 500 meters so 13 and 500 so essentially what is 500 meters is like it's every 50 meters or so a little less than 50 meters what is that in football fields? I'm like five football fields. Yeah, that's insane. It is Wow

so so This new strategy to go in there and push in there was considered to be by many people was considered to be too risky Too dangerous and and really in some cases crazy like this is a crazy strategy We haven't been able to get down there and now you're saying we're gonna go down there and live there And really, in some cases, crazy. Like, this is a crazy strategy. We haven't been able to get down there, and now you're saying we're going to go down there and live there? So it was a very dynamic change. So this is a gigantic, gritty, boots-on-the-ground approach to taking over a city. Like, one step at a time, one building at a time.

That's it. Wow. That had to be insane. Yeah. But one building at a time That's it Wow That had to be insane Yeah, yeah, is there any documentary footage of this were there any embedded journalists there were there embedded journalists You know you can go on YouTube and just Google Ramadi 2006 and you'll you'll see some good stuff There's a documentary that came out. I think it was on the History Channel. It's called a chance in hell the battle for Ramadi and that what's good about that one is it interviews a lot of guys that we worked with while we were there and what I was just trying to convey to you about the fact that a Lot of people were saying this was a suicidal operation

You can hear these guys that were officers in charge of battalions and companies You can hear these guys that were officers in charge of battalions and companies. They're saying the same thing. They're getting told by their peers like this is a crazy idea and you guys are all going to die if you go in there. Wow. Now, what is morale like when something like that gets brought down when these are the orders and this is what you have to do and everyone's telling you it's a suicide mission. Well, that's, that's where leadership comes in. Yeah. Because, you know, one of the, one of the toughest things that I ever had to convey to my guys was this fact that we were going to be working alongside Iraqi soldiers, conventional Iraqi soldiers. So you picture this, we, that first deployment I talked about, we were, we were only working with SE talked about, we were, we were only working with seals. I mean, we were seals. The guy to your left was a seal. The guy to your right

was a seal. The guy behind you was a seal. The guy in front of you, you knew you could trust them. You knew them. They were, they were your brothers. So now we get to Ramadi and the mission changed coming down from the special operations forces that were in charge of, of all special operations in Iraq. And the new, the new mission was to it, the new mission I'm trying to think of the exact, uh, was to train and fight company and platoon sized elements of Iraqi soldiers, train and fight company and platoon size elements of Iraq soldiers. And when they say fight, that means like, that's a verb saying we're going to fight with them. So all of a sudden I'm telling my guys, Hey, you know how you're used to working with a bunch of seals. You're going to now,

when you go out, the majority of the guys you're going to be with are Iraqi soldiers. That's the majority of guys. Now, Iraqi soldiers are, Iraqi soldiers are, they're barely even military, I mean, people. They're just unmotivated, poorly trained. In fact, in many cases, their loyalty is questionable. I mean, these are guys that would shoot Americans in the back. So now I'm telling my guys, okay, you're're gonna go out there and do this and obviously the first Reaction I got was

This is this is crap. This is garbage. Why would we ever do that? This is the worst battlefield seals have fought on since Vietnam and you want us to go out there with a bunch of a bunch Of Iraqi soldiers watching our back. That's crazy. And and when I heard it, I thought it was crazy, too watching our back that's crazy and and when I heard it I thought it was crazy too so what do you do then what what do you do then you're gonna send your guys into harm's way in a much more vulnerable way and you got to get them to do it so first of all I had to understand what we were doing on in my own mind I had to understand why I were doing in my own mind. I had to understand why. I understand why would somebody be telling us to do this? Because it seems freaking crazy to me.

So as I sat there and thought about it, I realized, you know, okay, why is the president making us do this? Why is the general, why is the Pentagon making us do this? Why are the generals and colonels on the battlefield here in Iraq? Why in God's name would they be making us go out with Iraqi soldiers? It's crazy. And then I thought to myself, why? Okay, why?

Let's answer that question. Oh, newsflash. If we don't do it, if we don't get the Iraqi soldiers trained up and ready to maintain the security in their own country, then who's going to do it? Who's going to do it? Who's going to train them? And furthermore, who's going to hold the security in their own country, then who's going to do it? Who's going to do it? Who's going to train them? And furthermore, who's going to hold the security in their country? And the answer was nobody.

And the answer was us. The answer was we would be here forever because these Iraqis need to be able to get up and stand on their own two feet. And so when I explain that to my guys, like, hey, I know you don't want to work with Iraqi soldiers. I understand. I understand there's more risk.

Here's why we're doing it. We're doing it because if we don't do it, if we don't want to work with Iraqi soldiers. I understand. I understand there's more risk Here's why we're doing it We're doing it because if we don't do it if we don't get these guys up to speed if we don't teach them how to defend Themselves and how to defeat this this enemy they're never gonna be able to do it and we'll be mired in this conflict forever and once once they understood that strategic picture they were able to Get their head around it and then slowly accept what we were doing. How common were their complications dealing with the Iraqi soldiers? And did you guys have to take steps in order to watch over them to make sure? I mean, you're talking about guys

shooting guys in the back, shooting Americans in in the back did you have plans in place to make sure that someone was watching them at all times like yeah yeah so you didn't you couldn't treat them like did someone did they speak English uh no we had interpreters and oh yeah it's a nightmare um and and we would have some of the Iraqi soldiers some of the some of the leadership of the Iraqi soldiers would be very good some of the grunts would be very good and someone would be just disastrous and did we have to change? Yeah, they didn't we had to change our tactics so that we didn't use the terms left and right Because they didn't understand left and right or or no numbers a lot of them couldn't count. I mean it was they couldn't count Yeah, yeah, so they're totally uneducated totally uneducated Wow

Can't count. Holy shit. Yeah, go four doors down. Mm-hmm Mmm something you could tell a five-year-old. Yes Whoa, yeah, so so that was that was definitely challenging. I think you're allowed to call them savages when they can't count Is that the rule if you can't count the four four? I reserve the term savage for somebody that commits atrocities against human beings. Somebody that rapes an eight-year-old girl, like they're doing, wholesale doing that, and ISIS is doing that right now.

That's part of their gig. Yeah, I reserve the term savages for them. So what steps did you guys have to take to ensure that the seals and the other American soldiers were protected in working with these people? I mean, you just had to keep your eye on them. I mean, and, and honestly, at this point, the, you saw this, this, uh, happened a lot more in Afghanistan, which was the, what do they call it? happened a lot more in Afghanistan, which was the, what do they call it?

They call it, uh, I forget what they have a term for it. But when the, when the friendly, allegedly friendly Afghan soldier turns and shoots everyone in the back, that happened more later in Afghanistan. And when we were in Iraq, it was pretty seldom that it happened, but we just had to be aware of it. We had to, you know, you always had a guy that was like standing off the firing line and making sure that no one was, you know, pulling their weapon out and aiming at Americans. So that was a job. Yeah. We just, you got to keep an eye on these guys. You absolutely had to keep an eye on these guys. What a crazy added element. And the other, I mean, and just again, cause there's dichotomy and everything at the same time, you'd have some guy that was, you know, some Iraqi soldier that was willing to take a bullet for your buddy, and so

It's that's what makes war so complex and confusing is it's not cut and dry and it never is So how did it start panning out once you started this? seize Please it's clear hold and build It was a tough fight, basically, with every one of these combat outposts. That's what they ended up calling these combat outposts. Every one of them was a pretty tough fight.

So they're buildings. You're calling them combat outposts. Combat outposts. Are they 10 stories? How many stories are these buildings? Most of them were two or three stories. Two or three stories. And so you set up a perimeter around the building,

key people stationed in them, guns at the windows, looking out constantly. And it would be, we'd take the building down, and then they would do a massive construction project in the middle of a combat zone. So these army engineers, God bless them all, would roll down there with their bulldozers, and they'd'd put these big concrete barriers up and they'd put sandbags in all the windows and they'd build machine gun nests on top. And again, they're doing this in the middle of like mayhem. Wow. And then you'd have this secure combat outpost. And while they were doing that, this is sort of was our, our addition to this type of operation was while they were doing this big construction project, obviously the situation was very vulnerable for the American forces. And so what we would do is I would push our SEALs out into perimeter buildings

that were maybe 200 or 300 yards away. And so when the enemy would come to attack, we'd kill them. What a crazy scene that must have been to be taking these buildings and then Reinforcing them and then turning them into military bases and then one after others you doing this too. Yeah Yeah, it was it was an awesome effort I think a good number we put in one combat outpost and there was they the army engineers put in 30,000 sandbags in one combat outpost Three buildings just all good things a lot of sand out there yeah

no doubt about it no doubt about it wow and so how many buildings did you guys wind up taking overall probably probably a total of like 10 combat outposts each one having two three or four buildings and again let me clarify when i say we i'm talking about this massive effort of the 11 ad which is the the first brigade first armored division and all the battalions that were underneath them including one marine corps battalion and the reason i'm pointing that out joe is uh those guys were just unbelievable heroes they really were they were awesome you choked up yeah these guys were these guys were awesome they really were yeah i can only imagine the uh emotional attachment that you have to that

yeah and you know they you know you can look you can google navy seals and find you know 20 million news stories about them um and that's great but these guys you know to to have seen them Kids you know because you know you're talking about earlier how The seals you know guys like me. This is what we want to do well these guys Didn't all necessarily have that attitude and as a matter of fact the guys that were in Ramadi with us when we first got there They were reserve unit out of Pennsylvania, the two to eight iron soldiers. They were reservists. These guys were teachers that like, like what you see when they talk about these reservists, these guys were teachers and professors and, you know, bakers,

and they had real jobs in the real world and wanted to get home to their family. And yet they were there grinding it out against a hardened enemy. And so, uh, yeah's it's a it's a it's a crazy thing to see and it's it's very humbling uh to be around people like that it really is how long did this battle go on the battle for ramadi well we got there you know the like i said the 228 had been there for 14 months 14 months on the ground lost around 100 guys i think 94 um and then the 11 ad came in in may and implemented seize clear hold and build and by the time uh i left october, 2006, and by the, by January of 2007, the battle was for most, for the most part over. And these enemy attacks that had been, when we were there 30 to 50 a day, went down to like one a day and then one a week and then one a month. like one a day and then one a week and then one a month.

And I have pictures of probably about six to nine months after we left, we got pictures that guys sent back to us of they were running road races down the worst, what were the worst areas of Ramadi. They were playing soccer games. There was people out in the streets. There was guys, SEALs, or not SEALs, but soldiers with no body armor on just walking around meeting people. It was a, it was a miraculous turnaround. And the people of Ramadi that we had fought to support and help were, were joyous and were, had a stable city to live in and were ready to carry on with their lives.

See, I think stories like this get left out of the mainstream narrative of course they do they most people me included just don't know about it aren't aware of it have a very insulated idea of What this war was about what happened over there and what are the pros and cons of this war? what are the pros and cons of this war? what are the pros and cons of taking a city like this and turning it into a relatively safe place Relatively it was definitely a safe place. There was less murders there than there is in Detroit Wow

I mean it was it was a complete turnaround and again you do you can do that because the people there wanted to be Stable they wanted that they wanted that. They wanted peace and they wanted freedom and they wanted the insurgents out. I absolutely wanted the insurgents out. Do you think that most people in America have a distorted perception of, of the military in general and of the Iraq war in particular? I think it's hard for me to give a perspective of what civilians think, you know, right. It's, it's very difficult because, you know, it's hard for me to give a perspective of what civilians think, you know, right. It's, it's very difficult because, you know, it's really easy to slip into like just a straight John J. Rambo, you know, there are no friendly civilians, you know, it's really

easy to get there. Uh, but definitely when I hear various, you know, people talking and you go, this person has no idea. This person has no idea that it's weird because they'll clump the people of Iraq. They'll clump those people together as a group. And it's the wrong, they have the wrong impression of what those people are like, you know, and, and guys that have been to Iraq and have gone into houses and talk to the local populace there and broke bread with them and drank their tea. You're like, oh, that these people, these people definitely wanted us there. Like when I hear this thing about, you know, that they didn't want us there and we were occupying, it's like, oh no,

there was, there was times where we'd kill an insurgent and they would cheer. They would cheer like, thank you. Thank you for killing that person. He was a terrorist and he was, you know, trying know, trying to rape my daughter. They were happy we were there. What is Ramadi like now? It's been overrun by ISIS. They keep saying now that there's going to be an effort by the Iraqi military to take it back. And God bless them and good luck.

They would have to do the exact same thing. They're going to have to do the exact same thing. They're going to have to do the exact same thing. It's going to be tough. It's going to be very tough. And without the United States military force backing them up and leading something like that, do you think that's even possible? It's going to be difficult. It is possible, but it is absolutely going to be difficult. It's going to be very difficult.

Absolutely going to be difficult. It's going to be very difficult. That's one of the things that, again, you know, and leadership, leadership is such an important thing. It's such an important thing because it really does change. It changes every variable in a situation and so when you have good leaders you you can win and i don't know who in particular is in charge of this iraqi force that's going in there the iraqis have some very strong leadership and if they've got the right person in position they they will be able to take it back now america absolutely has incredible military leaders some incredible military leaders and when you when you have to step up and lead a an assault like that on a city i mean american leadership would be would absolutely make a change and would be extremely positive for the situation on the ground do you think that america should go back into iraq well first of all we're already back in iraq we're on the

ground we got 3 500 troops there this is a and i hate to answer your blunt question with a philosophical answer, but war is very difficult and very tragic and very evil in its own right. And so you should be very, very cautious about pulling that trigger and initiating a war. Because horrible things are going to happen. Horrible things are going to happen. Enemy are going to be killed. Friendly are going to be killed. Americans are going to be killed. Civilians are going to be killed americans are going to be killed Civilians are going to be killed this idea that we're going to go into a a war in an urban environment

And we're not going to kill any civilians. No civilians are going to die and you have to understand that And I I talk about this when people ask me this question There is two types of will That you have to have if you're going to go to war two types of will One is the will to kill people And like I said, it's going to be enemy and you're going to focus as much as you can on killing the enemy And some civilians are going to die there That is what is going to happen, and you have to understand that that is part of what you are getting into.

So you have to have the will to kill, and you also have to have the will to die, because Americans are going to die and young men are going to come home in coffins and that's a horrible thing. And so if you're going to go to war, you should be going to war with a clear vision to win, to win. And I think if we have the will and we have a plan on, on winning, then we should, we should execute that plan. But if we're hesitant and if we don't have the will, then we should stand by until we develop that will. And we can sit outside and we can shape and we can try and shape events, which we should. We should have a leadership role in the world. We should be

looking out for American interests. I know that sounds like taboo language in this day and age, but we're America and we should look out for American interests around the world. That's what we should be doing. And there's nothing wrong with that. That's what other countries are doing. They're looking out for their interests. And when, when we're all looking out for our own interests, there's a balance and things can move forward. So do you think right now with the, the, the limited amount of troops that are in Iraq, it's a, you said 3,500 now at one, what was it at the height? I don't know, over a hundred thousand. I mean, at the height, it was probably even close

to 200,000. What would it take to develop that will that you talk of? Do you think that the United States needs to see some other Paris like event? I mean, we already had September 11th. They killed 3000 of our people on our home soil. Um, but that was 14 years ago. And for a lot of people that might as well be another world. True, true. Um, I, I, I got asked the other day about the warning signs, you know, do you, are we paying enough attention to the warning signs or are there enough warning signs? And I, you know, I, I just, I kind of shake my head. I mean, what more warning signs do you need? Then go watch YouTube videos.

And they're like, we are coming to kill you. We are going to destroy you all that look that's the warning right there the warning has been issued stand by for people like me that are completely on the outside of the military it seems like isis came out of nowhere it seems like once arab spring started happening we start pulling out of of Iraq, all of a sudden you started hearing about the ISL or ISIL or ISIS. They used the term ISI, which was Islamic State Iraq. They used that in I think 2007 was the first time they used that as they started to take area over in Syria. They threw the L on the end of it,

you know, which is Levant, which is the historical name for that region. And the other one is Syria. So it's the same people. It's the same people that were there and will continue to be there until we route them out. What I was getting at was that it wasn't something that anybody here

had heard about as an organized thing. We had heard about insurgents in Iraq, but we had never heard of it with a name like ISIS. Now that it's a name, it's like an identifiable enemy. And when you're in a war against terrorism, one of the things that I think kind of freaks Americans out, especially those that don't have a connection with the military, is this idea of a war against terrorism is this open-ended proposition. There's no enemy. You know, like, there's no definitive end to this. Like, when Japan surrendered, World War II was over.

People were kissing in the streets. rendered World War II was over. People were kissing in the streets, that iconic image of the sailor kissing his girlfriend in the street. None of that happened for us in this country. There was no definitive ending. And when we've pulled out of Iraq and we're planning on pulling out of Afghanistan, and then we see ISIS build up and get bigger and stronger and scarier. And we see what happened in Paris and we see what happened in Lebanon and in Nigeria. And we see these terrorist attacks. And we're like, well, when is this? Is there ever going to be a point where we have a soldier and his girlfriend kissing in the street? Is there going to be an end?

Is there going to be confetti blowing in the main street in a parade? It doesn't seem like it. I would say that that's an accurate assessment, that it doesn't seem like it. Yeah. We got a long fight. And you asked, where did ISIS, how do we start hearing about them? Well, the same thing we were talking about earlier, social media. They've got social media.

They're aiming it at, you know, disenchanted people all around the world that can cling on to something that will give them some sort of identity. Yeah. That's one of the most bizarre things about this when you see people like these young girls from the UK joining ISIS. And, you know, they're escaping their country and going over there and joining ISIS. Like, what is happening here? Like, how disenchanted do you have to be where that looks attractive to you? Yeah, and the two girls, I'm sure you saw this. And these are the two poster girls for ISIS.

One of them died three to six months ago and they just got the latest report on the other one that was trying to escape ISIS and they beat her to death. Yeah. I mean, unquestionably, it seems to be a growing force and a more dangerous force every day I got at again I think it was on Twitter someone hit me the other day on Twitter you know this is an idea and you can't bomb ideas was the was the statement to me and you know I try and avoid like getting into these massive sort of political debates or whatever um especially with 140 characters yeah and that being said um nazism was an idea that was defeated through military force slavery in america was an idea

that was defeated by military force imperial japan was an idea and a religion that was defeated by military force Imperial Japan was an idea and a religion that was defeated by military force and none of those ideas would have stopped without military force and this is an idea that can be defeated with bombs and this is also an idea that unfortunately in this country gets connected to all Muslims the idea behind what these people are doing gets connected to all Muslims when in reality, most of the Muslims in the world, they don't want something like ISIS to be in control. They don't want to be in a perpetual state of war. They don't want to have to worry about these quote unquote savages and what they're doing. Yeah. I mean, the ISIS has killed hundreds of thousands of, well, I don't know. I don't know what the number is, but we know that ISIS has killed thousands and thousands and thousands of Muslims. You know, they went into Ramadi and killed hundreds and hundreds of Muslims

that had worked in some way with the coalition forces so that they could have a peaceful city. They murdered them all. So let's say Donald Trump becomes president and he listens to your podcast with Tim Ferriss and he reads your book and he goes, Jocko, I'm coming to you for advice. What do I do? I don't know why I said Donald Trump for president. I'm hoping that's, that's our own ISIS. Let's, whatever, fill in the blank, new president person becomes, notice I said person, I didn't even go with woman or man. What would you do if you were in a leadership position? If you were in a position to make a decision or to start a process, what would you do?

We would destroy them. You would just go right back in? We would destroy them. And you think that that's what America should do right now? Yes. Yes. It is a cancer that is growing. It is malignant, and it needs to be destroyed.

So what steps would you take like what what would you do if you were in a position of power right now? You know it's interesting people get this Idea that this is some crazy complex situation, and it's gonna be all hard and all this I could pull together like two first lieutenants from the Marine Corps Which is like the junior officer in the Marine Corps, and say, come up with a plan to defeat ISIS. You got two hours, and they'd do it, and it'd be a good plan. This is not a complex situation.

How many people are you dealing with when you're talking about ISIS? I don't know. 20,000? 10,000? 4,000? 100,000? It's tough to tell. Yeah, it's tough to tell. It doesn't matter. You assess it, you bring what you need to the table you defeat him. So what do you think is holding back? From us doing something like I have no idea Is it frustrating to you? Yes

because if you got kids and you see Again a malignant cancer on humanity that is growing unchecked when we have, we're, we're like the master surgeons that have the ability to go in and eradicate this disease. And instead of doing that, we're just, we're just not doing anything. So do you blame this, the current administration? Do you blame the, the climate of the American public right now, the political climate where people just don't want to be involved in another war or enter into another prolonged interaction? I think people are

always looking for the easiest way out and going in is a hard decision to make. It's a very hard decision to make and it's be very unpopular decision. And it would be the short term pain that everyone's afraid of. That's what one of the things that's so disconcerting to me about drones, because it seems to me that what drones are is a way that we can avoid American casualties so people don't complain about it as much. So we send this robot in there to fly in and then launch missiles. And the good thing is it doesn't create American casualties. But the bad thing is it doesn't seem to be nearly as effective.

It's like sort of a wishy-washy attempt in some ways at war. It seems almost like it would be something that you would use in a supplement as well as a military attack. Like they would be a part of it instead of being the only thing that you use to try to combat these people. Does that make sense? I don't know if we have enough drones to get the job done. And they're effective, but I mean, a drone is going to take out, I don't know, 20 bad guys. So there'll be a lot of drones in action. I don't know if we have that kind of capability yet. But we will.

Someday. Yeah, well, someday we'll have a robot army and we'll be dealing with some Terminator-type situation, right? Yes. But right now, it's almost like we need to get smacked like something needs to happen before we hit back and i can't i cannot in good conscience agree with you because i don't even want to say those words yeah you know it's just a horrible thought you don't want to put it out it's a horrible thought yeah it's a horrible thought especially when you start talking about a dirty bomb yeah you know and like oh here oh, here's a sector of America that no

one can live in anymore because it's been contaminated. It's radioactive now. I mean, that's real. And again, for some reason, the warning signs, which can be seen, you know, anywhere you look, we're ignoring them. I think people, speaking for myself and speaking for the people that I come in contact with, I think people are becoming more and more concerned about ISIS on a pretty much daily basis. I think one thing that Paris did do is it woke a lot of people up as to possibilities that something like this can happen and that this isn't the end. And this is this is

ramping up and that if they have the kind of resources to pull off something like the paris attacks who knows where this is going totally agree with you it is a very uh scary time what what do you think is going to happen if you had a guess what do i think is going to happen in terms of a terrorist attack in America? No, no, no. In terms of our approach to dealing with something like ISIS. Yeah. I think it's very difficult to predict the future, not, not to be just a big cop out over here. I'm not trying to do that to you, but there's so many different ways that this could go.

And, you know, now you've thrown Russia into the mix because they took down the Russian airline. You've got a guy like Putin who is a gangster, you know, and I say that in both contexts of, of negative and positive. I mean, the guy is in a negative way. He's a gangster. That's, I mean the guy is knit in the negative way. He's a gangster That's that's like scary with his thought process and the same time like props The guy's a gangster and he's gonna smash some people You've got now turkey in the mix. I mean, it's just a very it's a complex situation. That's getting more complex all the time and Well the scariest part about it is that America is not in a leadership position. We are not influencing the world the way we once did. We are not, people are not looking to us

as the, as the leaders there we're in the backseat and that's scary. We should be in a leadership position. There's nothing wrong with that. It is not bad to have a benevolent country. And I know people are going to go crazy, but a generally benevolent country that's sitting here, you know, given billions of dollars of aid around the world, never taken any soil and kept it. I mean, we've, you know, I guess in modern times, we've never taken any soil and kept it. We've given Germany back to Germany. We gave Japan back to Japan. You know, we've, we've, we're a fairly benevolent country. Again, I know we've got faults. I know we've done things wrong in the past. I'm sure we'll do things wrong in the future, but to have us not in a leadership position is a very disturbing time. And when you say that we're not in a leadership position, what do you think the shift is and where do you think it happened?

I think it's been happening. And I think, you know, I think the current administration is definitely not, um, as experienced as you would hope. And I think there you know, I think the current administration is definitely not as experienced as you would hope. And I think there's a lot of a lot of naive attitudes about what the rest of the world is like. So this administration, you think, was the beginning of the shift away from America being in a leadership position? Yes. What do you what kind of a president do you think would change that? what do you what kind of a president do you think would change that somebody that has a better understanding of the nature of the world like a John McCain type guy yeah maybe like it like like you know again I'm not to sit here and

try and think of who the best presidential candidate would be I mean we have a hard time figuring that out in America as a whole. But again, you look at a guy like Putin and you look at a guy like Obama. You know, Putin's whole existence has been geared towards this. You know, I mean, a KGB guy. I mean, he's been a player on the world stage and a part of it for his whole life. And he's got an acute understanding of it. And he's a black belt.

You know, he's a legit black belt. And you just see these other. You see the naivete of of this administration. And it's it's it's really hard to it's it's hard to understand. There was one thing that Obama said. It was yesterday or today that just drove me crazy. He was talking about the attack on Planned Parenthood in Colorado Springs. And he said, things like this don't happen in other countries. It's like, how the fuck do you say that just days after what happened in Paris?

I was reading that just today before we started the podcast. I was reading it. I was like, that is one of the craziest things that someone could say after hundreds of people were killed in Paris. Cause he's talking about it in terms of gun violence from a religious perspective that what the fuck happened in Paris? What? Because it's not about babies. It's different. Like, yeah. And he, I mean, he said something the other day, too, was I'm not interested in some notion of America leading and winning. What does that mean? Exactly. That's, yeah, it's very, it's just, it's very disturbing.

What does that mean? Did anybody ask him to qualify that? No, he was kind of speaking. Yeah. That's a weird statement for the guy who's the commander-in-chief of the greatest army the world has ever known. I'm not interested in staying number one. Not yet. I think the concept of a benevolent leader, of a benevolent nation, you know, if you do concede that the world will always be in chaos and there will always be, at least in terms of like foreseeable future, you know, the next hundred years or whatever, until something crazy happens. hundred years or whatever we're we're until something crazy happens i mean it would have to be something monumental life-changing that stops conflict all around the world you'd have

to if you're a rational pragmatic person you're looking at the future you'd have to say well we're gonna have conflict especially if you look at places like you know the congo or you know parts of the middle east where people don't count. And there's places where, like, you would have to educate them to the point where the future would look radically different than the present. Right. So if that's the case, if the if conflict will be something that we're going to have to mitigate no matter what, wouldn't you want to be the one that gets to decide? Wouldn't you want to be the person in the position of power? Yes, you would be. It's like, it's a much smaller scale,

but this is what I've always tried to tell people when they say, why would you want to learn martial arts? And what I always say is, you don't want to learn martial arts because you want to go beat somebody up. You want to learn martial arts for two things. One, because you want to learn how to overcome incredibly difficult things. And in martial arts, you're going to encounter times where you want to quit. You're going to get your ass kicked. It's going to be difficult, and it's extremely difficult to get good at it. Two, if you do get into a situation,

you want to be the one who gets to choose whether or not someone gets hurt. You don't want to be helpless because being helpless is a terrible place to be, but it doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to go out and fuck people up. And that's sort of the same idea on a macro scale that you would look at the concept of America being a benevolent entity or a benevolent superpower. Absolutely. A hundred percent. Right. You know,

I mean, you know, it's, it goes with everything that we do. And when I say we, I'm talking about you, you know, you train,

you work out, you try and be strong. You know, you keep yourself aware of what's happening. It's not because you want to go around kicking people's asses. It's because you don't want to have to kick anyone's ass. You know, people are not looking at Joe Rogan and be like, oh, I'm going to beat him up right now. No, they're going out. That guy, I know he trains all the time. And if someone gets in your face, they're going to know that immediately. You know

that when you can tell, you can tell by the some, the way someone carries themselves, what, you know, what they have and what they know, what they understand. You know, I got asked the other day, if you were president, you know, you asked me if I was got advice. They said, if you were president, what would you do with ISIS? And I said, if I was president, ISIS would not exist. President Jocko, they make it happen. They would not exist because we would have a presence in the world that would prevent the growth of this kind of ideology. But what kind of a reaction do you think you would have from the American public,

from the insulated American public? I mean, this is probably one of the most sensitive times ever, in terms of they throw around the term Islamophobia, if you even criticize anyone that just happens to be Muslim. I mean, we're in a strange time when it comes to incredibly sensitive, maybe hypersensitive people that maybe don't have a good grip on reality. Well, what would you do? Take them over there in buses? Yeah, that'd be one thing. That'd be because I've already talked about this Islamophobia. I mean, I fought alongside these Muslims. I fought alongside them to help them. My friends did and America did. We fought alongside these people to try and help them and we did so how that gets twisted in some World to where you know, we're not

We're evil is completely beyond me Well, I think because there is legit Islamophobia out there in the world just like there like there's a legit hatred of Christians, there's legit hatred of Mormons. I mean, you're going to find groups of people that are hated. And there's also people that aren't willing to look deeper into some global issue. If you have a global issue that there's these people that call themselves ISIS or ISIL or whatever they call themselves, and they call themselves the Islamic state you know, they call themselves the Islamic State. Oh, Islam. Oh, Islam's bad.

Muslims are bad. Muslims are evil. I was watching something. There was a – Sam Harris had posted up on Twitter. There was this guy who was – I believe it was in Virginia. He was at a, like, county – one of those meetings where you're talking about building something in the town and He was he was talking about putting up a mosque These people were screaming at him that

Muslims are evil and your evil cult is not going to come into our town You're trying to invade our town and get out of here with your evil cult. I'm like, okay, that's Islamophobia. That's right there. I mean, you're talking about a peaceful guy who just wants to be able to worship his, you know, his ideas, his religion in peace in this place. He wants to build a mosque and people want to, you know, they're furious at this guy. That's real Islamophobia, right? But there's a big difference between something like that and what's going on

in other parts of the world with ISIS, a giant, giant difference. And I think that when people want to throw around that term Islamophobia, I think a lot of times what they're doing is they're just trying to be correct. They're trying to be politically correct, socially correct. They're trying to be sensitive and they're trying to let everybody know that they're not racist, that they're not xenophobic, that they're not Islamophobic or whatever, that they're open minded and progressive. So they're throwing around these terms and it kind of clouds the water. OK. I mean, yeah, these are these people are running around calling Islamophobia. I don't know.

No one's ever called me that. Not yet. I'm sure they will. Get ready today on Twitter. It's happening. It's happening right now. Yeah, I don't see how they could do that. Again, we fought alongside

Muslim people we ate with them. We put our lives in their hands and they put their hand their lives in our hands and you know America and my friends were killed trying to help them. So How I'm a person that could be called an Islam aobist is, is kind of a stretch, I think. Yeah. Well, rationally, but you're talking about people that aren't necessarily rational. Well, you know, people paint their own layers onto things and make them into what they're not. Well, I think it's symptomatic of what's going on with, with our culture too, is that this, on with our culture too, is that these hypersensitive, oversimplistic ideas and people that would say these things like this, don't have a real grip like you have of what it's like over

there. And I don't think anybody does other than people like you that have been over there and have been in combat. I don't think it's possible. I think that's one of the problems that we have. We're behaving like children in a lot of ways because we really have never had to live on our own. Yeah, and it's actually very similar to what we were talking about earlier with the traditional martial arts, where you can sit there in your fantasy world and Think that your chi is going to protect you and that as long as you spread love you're gonna be protected because your chi is strong and

Until you've been in a fistfight you're gonna believe that and so that that's kind of what you're saying Do we need to get spanked? Do we need to get into a fistfight before America realizes like oh no There's real problems in the world that need to be handled This is one of the weirdest times ever but i have a bit in my act about um this is the first time ever where someone broke into the white house and if you know that in 2014 it was the first time anybody gained access and there was a woman guarding the front door it's unarmed woman guarding the front door and a woman who's in charge of secret service because diversity. And one of my favorite parts was there was an article written about when the guy, uh,

knocked the chick over, ran inside and they said, uh, it was reviewed and gender wasn't an issue. Well, okay. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. Like you mean if Brock Lesnar was guarding the door, the same thing would have happened. The guy would have knocked him over and he would have, no one would have ever caught the guy. He just would have ran by, and that's fucking ridiculous. But it's that same kind of crazy thinking. Politically correct, asinine thinking. You should have a fucking team. If you're going to make the president sleep in a house that's in the park,

you should probably have a team of fucking assassins surrounding that building at all times. And you should keep a lookout for dudes that are sprinting across the lawn, knocking over chicks that are guarding the front door. There's no doubt about it. But it's the same thing. It's like we're so soft and we're so used to being in this insulated world that we have here. This nice, sweet bubble where we drive our eight mile per hour or eight mile per gallon SUVs. I don't know how you would ever really illuminate all these problems that you're bringing up. I don't, I don't know how you get these into the head of the average person.

Like in world war two, like you and me, if we were 13 years old, we weren't old enough to serve. We still knew that there was a war going on because we couldn't eat steak. We couldn't use any metal. We were gardening at night. We were shutting off the lights like we were impacted. All of America was impacted at the height of the Battle of Ramadi, the height of it, at the height of the war of Iraq, at the height of the war in Afghanistan. America, Americans at the mall were not impacted at all.

At all. At all. Not only that, they weren't even allowed to show photographs of coffins. It's like the first time ever in the history of the United States, the history of the United States taking pictures during wartime where they made it illegal to show photos of coffins, which is just absolutely insane. Like, how are you going to let people understand what's happening if you don't even allow journalists to show photographs of coffins? It's the bubble you're talking about.

Same thing. What made you decide to leave the military well a bunch of things i mean it wasn't like one day i woke up and said all right i'm done uh you know obviously if if you haven't caught this up to this point i i loved i loved the SEAL teams. Yeah, I loved being in the military. At the 20 year mark, I had a bunch of different things that kind of weighed in, you know, I had a family that I hadn't seen or didn't know, pretty much. So you start thinking, well, you know, maybe I should pay attention to them a little bit. I had completed sort of my last real job, operational job in the SEAL teams. And it was going to be a long time before I was in command again of a SEAL team or

of something that was important from a war fighting perspective. So that was kind of, kind of another thing that I looked at that was tough and, and yeah, I just, I guess I, that's it. That's it really. So what was your transition? How long ago did you begin to get out? I got out in 2010. Wow. So it's five years ago, five years. Yep. And what was your transition? This is five years ago. Five years, yep. And what was your transition? We started this company where we go and work with civilian companies doing leadership and management.

And, you know, my buddy Leif that I was talking about earlier, who was one of the platoon commanders that was with me in Ramadi. And, you know, he had run into a company. I had run into a company. And they asked us to do some stuff. And the next thing you know, you know, I gave one kind of leadership training to a company, and then they said, come back and train all of our divisions. And then the parent company of that company watched me and said, hey, can you come to our CEO summit? And then went to the CEO summit, and then a bunch of those CEOs said, hey, can you come? And the next thing you know, I'm doing this.

So what is the process? CEOs said hey, can you come and the next thing you know I'm doing this So what is the what is the process like when you're when you're doing these these speeches or you're setting things up? How do you organize them and what you you obviously your lifetime was in the military, right? So what was it about you and about what you brought to the table that was so attractive to them? I think it's because the principles of leadership and that's what we did That's what we talk about and that's what we teach is because the principles of leadership, and that's what we do. That's what we talk about. And that's what we teach is leadership. The principles of leadership do not change whether you're, whether your mission is to capture, kill bad guys, or whether your mission is to manufacture something or sell something or produce something you're trying to,

you got a group of people, group of individuals, and they're going to be diverse. They're going to be different. They're going to have different intelligence levels. They're going to have different personalities. They're going to have different goals. They're going to have different motivations. And you got to take all those people and unify them and try and get them to accomplish a mission in the most effective and efficient manner. And that's leadership.

and efficient manner and That's leadership and it doesn't like I said that those principles that we used in combat don't change regardless of what the mission is and But what's good, you know, and I said this earlier Life is like combat but amplified and intensified Combat is like combat is like life But amplified and intensified and and that means means when we tell a story like a leadership story about combat, it's so obvious what the principle was. Whereas in the business world, it might take six months or a year or maybe you barely even notice what the failure was, you know.

And when we make those stark examples from combat, people go, Oh, oh, I see how we're failing in this too And that's that's why I think people really took hold of of what we did and how we put it across So this was something that you were approached to do this wasn't like an idea that you had had and you thought about like this Would be my new thing. Yeah, and I mean regardless of like all this Garbage that I talk in my life and I'm always telling people to like plan and be prepared. Yeah. I almost completely fell into this with the fact that, you know, someone said, Hey, can

you come and talk to my people about leadership? And I said, well, yeah, I've been talking about leadership for, you know, the last several years in the SEAL teams. And I've been in a leadership position in some pretty tough situations. And, you know, that's just that's just happened. Now, do you teach a course or is this this is like a one time seminar type of a thing? We do both. Well, so sometimes we go in, you know, we'll do like a keynote speech.

And those are good. Those are good. Those are great. You know, we get a lot of positive feedback about those. But then sometimes we'll go in with company and we've done like two year contracts with companies where we've trained everybody that they have. And we get all their leadership aligned on the same page. And, and we'll, we'll go in, you know, for maybe a couple, an assessment, we'll look and see, we'll learn about what business they're in, we'll learn about what they're doing, how they're doing it, we'll see what areas they can improve on. We'll formulate a plan around that and then we'll come back and we'll train leadership. That's fascinating. So you have to kind of construct a course. Yes.

Yes. I mean, the basic, like I said, the basic principles are always the same, but some organizations have different problems than other organizations. They all have the same, you know, five, seven problems, you know, whatever that number is. Some of them are really bad at this or really good at this, or they're failing here, but they're winning here. So we got to go in, check them out, see what, see what the issue is. And then we get it turned around. Is this rewarding for you? Do you, do you enjoy doing this? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I, I, well, number one, I can talk about combat all day long and I can talk about, and even more than that, I can talk about leadership all day long because it's, it's, it's the, it's the most challenging thing.

The most challenging thing about being in combat in a leadership position is not, you know, trying to figure out what the enemy is going to do and trying to, trying to organize a good plan. The most challenging thing is dealing with all these human beings. That's the challenging thing is getting these guys and girls to do what they need to do, what you need them to do to get them to believe in it. That's what's challenging.

And we definitely learned lessons, positive and negative. That's one thing about our book that people have got a lot of feedback is This book isn't like hey look what we did. Look how awesome we are No, this book is a lot of those chapters in that book are hey, this is what we screwed up Here's the failure that happened. This was a horrible situation and it was my fault That's where we learned the lessons and I think that's what's made people relate to it more because we're not just saying hey we're the greatest

thing in the world no we were we were humbled by combat we were we were humbled by the enemy we were humbled by our own guys that did amazing things when we were around so I think that's a little bit different as well and again I think that's one of the things that makes people that appeals to the People is they look at this and they go. Oh I can relate to that. I can understand it. I failed to I made a mistake Oh, how did they handle it? Oh, they did this. Okay, got it When you're talking about combat you're talking about people organizing and staying together and figuring out how to lead you're talking about these extreme consequences the most extreme ever and're talking about these extreme consequences,

the most extreme ever. And when you have these extreme consequences, obviously when there's a lot on the line, people are going to focus and some people are going to fall apart and some people are going to pull together, but you're going to get people that understand the gravity of the situation. It would seem to me that it would be much harder to impart that into people in the business world Amplified and intensified so in combat lives are at stake absolutely in business world Have you ever had to fire anyone before no it sucks Have you ever had people lose their job and couldn't pay their mortgage and feed their kids because you screwed up as a boss? No, that's pressure that is mass. Have you ever lost?

Hundreds of millions of dollars worth of capital because you made a bad decision No, but you know why it's because I'm not a leader see so there's good things and not being a leader This is the benefits of non leadership So so, you know, we when people ask me that questions they ask that question all the time I'm like, Hey, it's not about, it's not about lives, but it's about livelihoods. And you've got people that are relying on you to succeed and win. And again, sure. You get killed in combat. That's obviously the worst thing that can happen. But if you lose your job or you, you know, your, your people lose their jobs. I mean, people kill themselves all the time when they make bad business decisions.

It's that much pressure. It's that much pressure for sure. And so that's why it does translate because business people relate to that amount of pressure and they understand how it feels to have that bearing down on them. It just seems to me for a guy like you that maybe you'd be even more attracted to going into business than you would be to teaching people how to lead their businesses better. Yeah. And we, I mean, it is a business, we do have a business and it is definitely what we're doing. Um, and that being said, for me to now go into business, I'd have to learn some new business. Well, why not just take the skills that I do have, which is, you know, we know about leadership. So let's just help other people. And that is rewarding. It's, it's very rewarding to

talk to someone and have them go, I did what you told me to do. And this is the result. This is the outcome. That's very rewarding. And, and another piece of it is, you know, everything always ties to me back to America. The, the, the businesses in this country are the economic power of this nation. And our economic power is the backbone of our authority in the world. And so to help businesses grow and achieve is, is very rewarding because I know that it's a, it's a very patriotic thing to do. Capitalism is, is, is a very patriotic piece of America. That's an interesting perspective. That's an interesting way to look at the big picture. And I agree with you. I'm going to say something that people hate me saying, but I'm going to say it because I need to say it to you.

You should have a podcast. People always get mad at me because I say this all the time to interesting guests. But this is not something that's difficult to do. And you'd be fucking great at it. not something that's difficult to do and you'd be fucking great at it. And I think that your perspective on the military and your perspective on our, our, our situation overseas, I think would be very unusual, very unusual and very educated. And I just think there's, there's no one out there that's doing that. Like, like you could do it. Well, we definitely, I've, I've, you're not the first person to say that to me. As a matter of fact, when Tim Ferriss, like we got done with the podcast and he pressed stop on

the thing and he just looked up at me and said, you need to do your own podcast. Good for him. I've talked to some of my, some of my, some of my buddies about it and, uh, we're, we're working. This is all you have to do, man. Get a fucking phone. You have a phone, press record, you know, sit down with people. It's not hard to do. It's easy. Trust me. No, it's, it's interesting too. And I'm, I'm getting over the fact of, uh, like I told you earlier, and like I, like I said, on the Tim Ferriss program, you know, people that just talk for no reason. And it's hard for me to get used to like the, the fact that somebody wants to hear what I have to say. That's a SEAL or a direct business person. But I'm definitely, you know, I'll probably end up doing something with it.

Well, I think, you know, great military leaders, whether it's Sung Tzu, The Art of War, whether it's Miyamoto Busashi from The Book of Five Rings, Kung Su, The Art of War, whether it's Miyamoto Busashi from The Book of Five Rings, great warriors from the past have written books that civilians have gotten a lot out of. And I think that someone like you, instead of writing a book, and your book I'm sure is great, and I'm sure there's a lot of lessons in that, but on a daily basis to be able to do something like this, anytime you want, just fire up your podcast. Anytime something like Paris, like the Paris attack happens, you could give your perspective instantaneously, upload it onto the Internet. And there's just never been a time like that. It's wonderful that we could sit down and read what Miyamoto Musashi wrote hundreds of years ago. I mean, it's amazing. Motu Musashi wrote hundreds of years ago.

I mean, it's amazing. It's interesting to try to peer into the mind of one of the greatest swordsmen that ever lived and see his philosophies on life. But I think that today, with the advent of the internet and with the ability to broadcast yourself virtually instantaneously, I think you could make a gigantic impact in sharing that perspective and taking those experiences that you have so deserved and so earned and and giving people this insight that there's just they're just not gonna get it you know I'm getting it from you like I said I got it from you from that Tim Ferriss episode And I'm getting it even more from you now. It's a perspective

You're just not gonna get from someone who wasn't there. You're just not gonna get it. You're gonna get these fuzzy But you know you know it's like two people said you ever heard two people talk about martial arts Don't know shit about martial arts. You know that's what it's like to hear someone like me talk about the military really yeah and it's it's again, it's another it's like to hear someone like me talk about the military really? Yeah, and it's it's again It's another thing that that is I'm Sorting out in my own head, which is this idea of broadcasting myself It's just it's just weird I mean you grew up you were into this, you know I think you've been a comedian for you pretty your whole adult life, right? 26 years.

Yeah. So 26 years you were getting on stage. That's what you wanted to do. And honestly, when I first joined the SEAL teams, that was the most frowned upon thing was to be broadcasting yourself that you were a SEAL, that you were, that what you did. And it took me a long time. I mean, writing this book was a, it's a really hard thing to do because you sit there and you, you know, you're supposed to be humble, right? You're a warrior. You're supposed to be humble.

Okay, well, I'm going to write a big book about myself. I mean, that just doesn't work. And so it was really hard. And Leif and I, that was one of the biggest things that we did as we edited it and edited it and edited it and edited it We went through it just to just to make sure that we were coming across and saying things In a manner that really reflected That humility which again it's very hard to do because it's a dichotomy

It's a dichotomy because you're saying hey, you got to be humble as a leader But i'm gonna write a big book about myself you know it's just crazy yeah so when you're sitting here like oh you should have a podcast and I'm thinking you know you should broadcast yourself and again well the way I was raised because I spent your whole adult life in comedy I spent my whole adult life in the SEAL teams and I was raised by these old Vietnam guys that were bad asses. And they were like, Oh, you don't talk about this. Right. And so I'm kind of going against this,

the way I was raised. And, and so again, I'm, I'm getting over it. Um, I'm trying to get over it, but at the same time, I don't want to get completely over it because that's part of, you know, that's part of the way I was raised and what I believe in. I see their point of view. I totally understand why they would say you don't talk about it. But what I think the benefit of talking about it today as opposed to their time is that through the internet you can broadcast in a way that would be like, look, no one's going to take a Navy SEAL back in the day and give them a gigantic television show where they could say whatever the fuck they wanted, broadcast anytime they wanted. But if you have a successful podcast, you can reach hundreds of thousands of people with each episode, which is just like a successful television

show. And because of that, you have the ability to educate people and give people this perspective that I said that I got from you, that I'm not getting from anybody else unless they've been there. But I get it from you. I get it from Tim Kennedy. I get it from Brian Stan. I get it from Andy Stump. I get it from people that have been there. And you get a different perspective than you're ever going to get from someone who's just pontificating or guessing, waxing poetically on the nature of man and war.

It's all bullshit. Until you talk to someone who's actually been there, you don't really understand what they're saying. I think it would be gigantic. I really think you should do it. I really think it would help a lot of people. I think it would help a lot of people understand from the perspective of someone

who actually knows what they're talking about. And there's not a lot of that in the world. I think this is also what you're talking about when you're talking about the leadership in this country. I don't know if you should be someone who has served in the military in order to qualify for being the president, but I don't think it's a bad idea to throw it out there, to say that at the very least, you should spend some time living in these environments where we're involved in massive conflict. At the very least, you should visit them spend a lot of time with the people who have lived and served and fought in these countries.

So you understand clearly with no fuzziness at all, what the fuck is going on in the world well there's no doubt that i think military service i mean it was so good for me it was so good for me and would it be good for everybody what about jamie over there look at him i don't know either see he just. I don't know either. See, he just said, I don't know. I'm not 100% sure. I guarantee Jamie would get a lot out of it. I'm sure he would, too. I guarantee you would. But he might wind up like that dude in full metal jacket with the rifle in the bathroom.

Private Pyle, get some. Yeah. The military was great for me and and but again you you were born for this i mean this is like something you were drawn to like a magnet to metal filings yeah yeah no i was i was drawn to it but i was still like when i joined my dad my dad said to me You're gonna hate it because you hate authority. That's what my dad said. Okay And you know, but that's that gives you an indication as to what kind of kid I was I was like Completely out of control and didn't listen anybody and I was probably similar to what you were like, I'm guessing You know, I was just an out of control kid that just did whatever. And so joining the military, it, it, it put the structure around me and all of a sudden I could take all this energy that I had.

And, and what's really nice about is you get this clean slate where they're like, okay, if you do this, you'll be successful. Here's what you do. Check these boxes. And I was like, okay, I'm ready to do those things. And you just do them and you develop the discipline, you know, the discipline. And I talk about that all the time, you know, the discipline. And I talk about that all the time, you know, the, the fact that discipline equals freedom and the more

discipline you have as a human, the more freedom you're going to have, which is completely counterintuitive. You know, people think, Oh, you're living this disciplined lifestyle. So that means you, you, you don't have any freedom. And it's actually the exact opposite. I have freedom because I have discipline. I have, I have, you know, financial freedom because I have financial discipline. I have more time. I have more time because I have the discipline to get up in the morning, you know, before most normal people get up. Those are the kinds of disciplines that you put into place. And those definitely get instilled through the military. Well, I think the one thing that discipline definitely does

help you with is it helps you get things done and when you get things done when you you you actually do things you you you you have more success if you have more success and sometimes a big part of success is just not being fucking lazy and just doing it yeah just get that's like 90 of it is just showing up get there and start working like you're not gonna feel perfect every day if i felt if I only worked out when I felt good, I'd be a fat fuck because there's a lot of days I don't want to do it. It's pretty much the same with everybody that, that actually gets good at something that you get. There's gotta be those days you push through and they're, they're probably going to be more numerous than the days you don't and so the benefit of discipline in my eyes has always been

That through discipline I get things done. I always tell my I always say that I'm like The most lazy disciplined person I know because I don't want to do it Yeah, but I always do and I'd be interesting to get your perspective on this this statement. So I also think that discipline is a pathway to creativity. And I'll tell you, when I talk about creativity, there's another misconception about the military. When you're on the battlefield is an absolute exercise in creativity. Okay. I already talked about how you're going to lead these people. What are you going to do? How are you going to influence them? How are you going to talk to them? How are you going to say

the right things? That's creativity. Now you throw on top of that. What am I going to do the enemy? How are we going to attack them? How are we going to disorganize them? How are we going to get in their heads? That's all just massive creativity. And when I look at people that are artists like yourself, because you're a standup comedian, you, I would imagine that the more disciplined you are, the, you know, you got to get up and write, you got to write stuff down. You got to read and find out about what's going on in the world. So you have more things that you can jab at and make fun of. You got to increase your vocabulary so that you are quicker and sharper. So that when people are saying things, you have more words to battle back at them

All those things all that freedom that you get on stage Comes from the discipline that you you study you learn you read you write you talk you go through things Is that an accurate statement absolutely accurate? there's a great book on it the Steven Pressfield wrote a book called the war of art and Pressfield was essentially like a ne'er-do-well until he was like 40 years old. He was kind of a fuck-up. And then figured it out. Somewhere along the line, figured it out.

I used to keep a stack of them in my old studio and I'd hand them out to guests if I thought they needed it. Like, just take this. Just trust me. Read this. Because a lot of artists and comics, I bet musicians as well, but writers for sure, one of the big problems is sitting down and doing the work. And Pressfield talks about that in the most concise and beautiful way. And he labels it like an enemy.

He calls it resistance. You have to sit down and you have to overcome resistance and that the pro goes to work and it doesn't matter if you're sick doesn't matter if you have kids It doesn't matter what you you're a pro and you go to work and that and that just it puts it in your head That this is what I do this is what and you have pride in that and then when you are in front of that keyboard and you're you're you got you look Down the count it says I got a fuck a thousand words today I put a thousand words in you yeah, and you you're doing the work and out of that work Gems blossom little things, but you might have a day where you just write nothing, but dogshit

So what show up again tomorrow and tomorrow that dog shit a flower will emerge You never know and that's the only way to develop real like like, to really develop your potential 100% in anything, whether it's as an author or even as a martial artist. There's a lot of creativity in martial arts. To be a great striker, you have to be creative because you have to develop patterns or execute patterns that aren't going to be perceived. Like, if a guy has a real simple one, two, one, two, you're going to time that shit. And you're going to, we were talking before the, this, this podcast about Holly Holmes victory over Ronda Rousey. And one of the things that we were talking about was that Ronda had this very linear, straightforward attack. You knew she was coming and Holly is a

master at, at countering. So all she had to do was wait and move and Ronda was coming in one direction. There was no variation. There was no creativity. There was no creativity. It was a mad bulldog rush that had worked on everybody else before. But she found one person who was a virtuoso at movement

and she needed creativity and it wasn't there and she needed that experience that came with having faced someone who knew that position and knew knew had a deep understanding of that movement and she didn't have that in her repertoire and so that's the result that we saw like a striker like anderson silva is extremely creative if you watch she's got a fight versus Tony Fricklin in Cage Warriors. Cage Warriors? What the fuck was it called in England? Small organization in England.

I think it was Cage Warriors. Cage Warriors, yeah. Where he practiced this step-in uppercut elbow, like a sideways elbow. And his coach was going, you're fucking crazy. Stop practicing that. And he would make his wife hold the pillow Because his coach didn't want him to practice in anymore because he thought he was wasting his time So he practiced stepping his wife would hold a pillow for him and he'd step in and throw this uppercut elbow

That's what he knocked out Franklin with and he obviously yeah Franklin was outclassed in that fight But he wanted to make a point and like the front kick that he landed in the face of Vitor Belfort. Vitor never saw that shit coming because nobody had done that to him before. Because nobody had done that in the history of the UFC. Nobody had ever knocked anybody out with the first kick you learn in martial arts. But the creativity to try something like that. He would throw punches to your thigh from standing. He would throw a jab to your thigh standing he would throw a jab to your thigh

He would throw a crescent kick an inside crescent kick to your face like what the fuck it was it was part of what made him Such an effective striker is that he threw these things that you just didn't expect him to do There's a lot of creativity in Jiu Jitsu. You know that yeah Well, I got you know Dean Lister and Jeff are my my guys jeff glover is one of the most creative guys in jujitsu today he's one of my favorite he does this thing for folks who don't understand jujitsu don't know what we're talking about he does this thing called a donkey guard he's so fucking crazy this guy he gets on literally he faces you with his butt to you and he launches himself backwards like a donkey kicking and wraps you up

and it looks so preposterous while he's doing it that so many guys especially when he first started executing it just had no idea what the fuck to do yeah yeah there he is right there look how crazy he is he's he's out of his mind he He's so he's so comfortable in every like, you know He trains it. We know we're the same gym and he trains every day with whoever and he puts himself in the most Ridiculously horrible positions. I'm talking like okay. He'll let people get a rear naked choke on him I mean he all watching what in God's name? How was he gonna and he will escape he just put himself in horrible positions all the time just to work on it I just to work on his defense and just to be in in a bad way

How does he avoid getting hurt because he's not a big guy? He's super super super flexible. I'm like crazy flexible, and you know he gets dinged up But he just is very flexible, and he knows where to put his body. You know he's just a He's kind of a freak because i knew that he trained with you i was gonna ask you like the idea of you and him training together for folks listening to this was the majority of our podcast is audio probably like 90 you're about what 240 or something like that yeah 235 yeah and jeff's like what 150 yeah yeah yeah what the fuck yeah that's that's a big, I don't want to, I weigh 200 pounds.

I don't want to train with anybody who's 210. The fact that he's 150 pounds and he's training with gorillas, I don't know how the fuck he does it. I don't know how he does it. He's just super relaxed and he just moves and moves really well. That's amazing. That's amazing. No back problems. He's all right. No neck problems. He's all right.

No neck problems. He is 100% at all times. Yeah. That's amazing. Yeah. Dean's getting a little more dinged up. Dean looks like he ate a Dean. I saw him the other day.

I'm like, what are you, 300 fucking pounds? And I don't mean it in a fat way either. He's huge. Yeah. He looks gigantic. He's pretty big. Yeah. Has he just been power lifting or something like what is he doing? I think he just eats a lot

Yeah, but he's definitely lifting too because it like food doesn't go right to your neck his neck Has a genetic mutant. He's a genetic mutant and Yeah, he's I mean both those guys are mutants they're actual grappling mutants where if you and I were to like concoct some weird you know like potion and create

beings you know you'd make like a Jeff Glover because he's weird flexible wiry and he would be really good and then you'd make a Dean Lister who's just a big mutant who you when you catch Dean you have to like do everything perfect because he's his defense is really good and he just doesn't it's really hard to tap him with stuff you know like like he'll just give people you know his foot and be like yeah go for it and it takes me like three days

i'll have to soften his foot up with like nine foot locks, then just crank it, crank it, crank it, and then on the third day I'll get a deep one, and it'll already be like hurt. So you have to soften him up over days, like tenderizing meat? Yeah. Well, that was why it was so shocking when Josh Barnett tapped him, because Josh Barnett tapped him in like an old-school side headlock choke, which is very rare. It's very rare that you see a high level guy that executes that choke like the way Josh did.

But Josh's got that old school catch wrestling knowledge too, which is just such a different approach. And you get used to certain approaches. And Josh has a very different approach. And he's a very physically strong guy as well. Yeah. And, I mean, you know, Dean is just a mutant. And he is a gifted, incredibly gifted grappler. But his training methodology and lifestyle is not really conducive to competing like like that you know unfortunately that's a nice way

of saying he's kind of lazy yeah let's just make those noises and not say anything hey you know he he could definitely train harder and uh you know i've i've trained with all kinds of guys in the world uh world-class guys all over the place. And Dean is absolutely, you know, one of those guys that is up there with like, you know, uh, Hickson who I've trained with.

I haven't trained with Marcelo, but he's like that crazy good. Really? Wow. Well, no, he was one of the first real leg lock masters really understood. Like,

and, um, uh, who brought him in to into where someone brought him into ADCC pride no I know he fuck why am I why am I blanking Alan Belcher Alan Belcher brought him in when he fought who's smart Paul Harris who's the best leg locker in MMA and in that fight Alan just stopped everything Paul Harris threw at him and literally Every single movement that I saw like oh that that's this that's this you know like I knew exactly what Dean had showed him And exactly what those movements were that's amazing. What is Dean doing these days? Is he gonna still compete or uh? He's you know he's teaching jiu jujitsu and, you know, hanging out, getting after it, you know.

I would love to see him just like get completely refocused and make a run at winning ADCC or whatever one more time before he hangs it up. When you say he's dinged up, what kind of shit? Just normal old jiu-jitsu type guy. His neck will be sore, his shoulder will be hurt. Just that kind of stuff. But he is a mutant. He is a mutant that could... If I think in ADCC, his last...

I think it was in China. His match against Buchecha. When Buchecha's just a complete beast. And, you know, they went at it. And that was a very close match. And again, if you watch training videos of Buchecha getting ready for ADCC, he's training like a complete savage. I mean, he's bringing wrestlers in, he's cleaning jerky, he's flipping tires, He's doing everything that one does to prepare for a situation like that. And, and Dean does not do those types of things. You know, he'll come in and train a little bit and go on his natural ability as a mutant human being to get it done. It's always frustrating when you see a guy who is so naturally gifted,

who kind of like lays back, but that's, it seems to be, that's a lot of what happens is the people that are naturally gifted don't have to work as hard so they don't work as hard it's it's also part of you know when i talk about jeff and dean both those guys they're both and you know you could throw eddie and you could throw all kinds of people into this category who are, who are, uh, kind of game changers. You know what I mean? Well, you know, I don't know Eddie that well, I've hung out with him a couple of times,

but I definitely know Jeff and Dean and they're, they got some, they got some, some weird stuff about him, right? I mean, they got some weird personality stuff. And in, from my perspective, that is, you know, no, if you didn't have that weird personality thing, then how are you going to be, you know, a 15 year old Jeff Glover and be like, Oh, you know what I'm going to do all day? I'm just going to train jujitsu all day, every day. I'm going to sit there. I'm going to watch YouTube videos. I'm just going to get good at this. I'm going to train every day. I'm going to compete all over the country. I'm just, that's what I'm going to do. That's, you know, if you're not some, if you don't have some, you're normal you're not gonna do

that our normal person's like oh cool I'm gonna get a job at Walmart and then I'm gonna do it you know I'll train it I'll train for an hour and a half night these guys are like oh no no I'm just gonna train all day every day and I'm gonna live in you know on the mat and Dean same way like if he didn't have that weird like spark that made him that makes him. I mean he's got some weird Like knowledge what's weird about him is if you ask Eddie Bravo about you know the rubber guard He knows all this details about it But if you ask him about a foot lock or what have something that he doesn't know that well

He'd be like oh yeah a little bit You'll ask Dean about something that he knows nothing of like you've never seen him do before he'll know All these detailed of the moves I don't know if he I seriously don't know if he goes and watches it on YouTube or if he like studies or writes it Down, but he's got this weird little almost rain man You know idiot savant type Weird thing in his head. He was one of those guys that had a really hard time transitioning into MMA Absolutely his striking Just never seemed fluid like and he you know I know he worked hard at it. He just

For whatever his body's designed for things yeah, and you see that with everybody because everyone's got Strength and weaknesses and everyone's gonna be good at something and bad at something else You know you and I know all these examples of people that are like this every fighter You know has got some weak area and then you get occasionally you get a guy that like GSP. That's just like well-rounded, right? But you know everyone even even things physical things physical attributes You know some people are just super mutant strong and some people are just super crazy flexible and some people have unbelievable natural cardio and some people don't and so it's the people then there's some people that are really good at grappling there's some people are really good at striking there's some

people that are good at putting all those things together which i always thought fedor was very natural at combining his striking with his grappling and kind of making it all fit together better than most people could yeah um yeah i agree with you on that i think that was one of the things that really stood out about him was that he didn't fall into that trap that a lot of people do where if you're a really good wrestler but you have knockout power you just knock everybody out fedor he would be you'd be stunned and he would see your arm he would dive in a Kimura yeah you know he would he would always take the opportunity that presented itself whether it was a grappling situation or whether it was a

striking situation and his well-roundedness was one of the things that made him special on top of his knockout power and his aggression his he was so well-rounded it was his ability to flow with whatever was happening and he also had that hump humility And he had that calm like you said like you saw Holly had the other day I actually I actually again talk about social media I post and I'm posted much on face the Facebook before but there's a video of Holly talking about

She got beat by Sophia Mattias in kickboxing, right? It was a vicious fight. Watch it later. Kickboxing or boxing? Kickboxing. It's,

it's, it's, it's insane. I mean, she gets destroyed. Holly gets completely destroyed, hanging on the ropes, getting punched in the head.

It's awful. Then you watch the post fight interview with her and it, it, it's unbelievable because everything she says, she takes complete ownership of the loss. She's like, I had a great training camp. My coaches were telling me to do the right things, but I wasn't doing what I was supposed to do. I wasn't fighting the way I was supposed to fight. The reason I lost tonight is my fault.

I did this and I will have to change things if I'm gonna beat her and Hearing someone and the other part that was cool about it was She was getting emotional like you could see like she want to cry I mean she was crushed, but she she kept control of her emotions and Was another you know I saw that video video I'm like man this girl is is gonna do gonna do well in this fight I mean I I had a pretty good feeling about it well she's she is incredibly solid that's for sure and that is so admirable when someone does take ownership of their mistakes yeah it's so important it's so important that's like we wrote the book the book

is called extreme ownership that that's that's literally the families and gentlemen right there But but that's that is like the key though the reason it's called that is because when we made mistakes We owned up to him and furthermore when both Leif and I ended up in positions where we were teaching leadership Leif was teaching the junior officers that were coming out of the SEAL training, putting them through the junior officer training course. And I was teaching, like I said, the advanced guys. And so you'd get two SEAL officers. And like I said, we put these guys through horrible training scenarios where everyone was getting killed and blown up and they'd be buddy carrying people through the desert. And it's just awful. And you come back from these

situations and you talk to one of the, let's say, one of the good leaders and you'd say, Hey, what went wrong? And the guy'd say, well, number one, I didn't give a clear enough plan. No one really understood what my vision was. They didn't execute because I obviously didn't give them a good enough briefing. And you'd be like, okay, fair enough. And that guy would go and fix that problem then you'd get a guy that was would not take ownership of stuff that would come in and say uh you should say what went wrong that training you know that that was you guys did a terrible job what happened he said well you know my my assault force commander didn't wait for my

command before he left and he screwed up and my platoon chief wasn't heads up about where our casualties were being taken and my LPO and they did make all these excuses and it really was the difference between like who would be successful and who wouldn't be because the guy that takes ownership of the problems what do you think the rest of his team does just just if if that person takes ownership of the problems, everybody on that team does the same thing. They don't say, yeah, you're right, boss. It is your fault.

No, they go, hey, boss, you know what? I actually could have done a better job. And that spreads through everybody. Whereas when someone says, it wasn't my fault. It was Joe's fault. What does Joe do? Joe goes, no, it wasn't mine. Yeah, exactly.

You blame each other. And guess what? The problem never gets solved. Exactly. So to hear Holly talking about that after the fight and taking complete ownership of a loss was very impressive to me. And she went on to beat her like six months later, I believe. Yeah. Yeah.

It's one of the most important things in getting good at anything is recognizing when you're not good. Recognizing when you make mistakes. Yeah's it seems so simple right but you know why because ego oh ego is a monster everybody's ego yeah it's like even even me because i sit here and i like teach people about you know you got to keep your ego there's a chapter in there like you got to keep your ego in check when when somebody i'll even ask somebody i'll be like hey is there anything I could have done better than that in that speech or in that class and They'll be like well. You know one thing that you could do and I like immediately. I'm like wrestling like my ego I'm such a loser. I'm sitting here telling them about to put their ego in check and I So everybody does everybody does it all the time. No one can take criticism. And, you know, part of that biggest step of moving forward is learning how to take ownership of stuff when it goes sideways.

And it definitely will. Well, you need some form, some amount of pride and some amount of ego to get good at things in the first place. Because it's such a counterintuitive notion because you have to have a belief in yourself. You have to be able, like when you start out at jiu-jitsu, you're a white belt. Like I remember being a white belt and being like, oh my God, I am fucking never going to get good at this. I'm going to suck forever.

But to look at people who are better than you and know they had to have sucked at one point in time. Okay, there's got to be somewhere along the end of this tunnel. There's got to be a light. I just got to keep going. Yeah. And that takes ego, right? Yeah.

I was going to say, I mean, ego drives, you know, you to be successful, me to be successful. Ego is what's driving you. The problem is when you let ego go too far. Yeah. And, you know, everything, you know, everything takes balance. There's a dichotomy in everything. every part of you has a dichotomy you know you can get so into the physical aspects of things that you end up like doing a bunch of steroids and going crazy and ruining your health right that's that's not good right the other end of the spectrum you know you can sit around and

play video games and turn into a yeah yeah well there there's yeah bodybuilding is the best example of that right because yeah that's it's kind of dying out though isn't it kind of bodybuilding i don't think so i would fall on out there still well to you and i it is but i think there's a giant culture of people out there that want to look like huge mutants still it's i think i mean i'm not in that world but what i mean bodybuilding is a great example that because when you start lifting weights you're like god i'd like to be stronger and you start getting a little bit bigger you're like oh look at that i got a muscle whoo this is cool and then you keep going and then you keep going but some guys get so fucking crazy they won't stop until

they have 22 inch arms and they want to have thighs that are so big They have to walk like they're they've got a barrel in between their legs and you know and they just can't help it They just take it to some completely unhealthy place. Yeah, that's uh, that's rough. Yeah Well, it's it's just the nature of trying to get good at something you got to recognize What's good, and what is just fucking insane? Yeah, and it happens in training camps with fighters all the time Oh, yeah, over training or train so big big part of problem of the problem with with mixed martial arts So obvious to when you're over training somebody because all of a sudden like one night They'll just fall apart, and they just won't be able to do anything right

I'm always like all right go eat two steaks and take two days off You know because they will get to a point you just feel them. You just feel them fall apart yeah well you have to monitor your heart rate that's a big thing that a lot of fighters don't do monitor your resting heart rate in the morning and if it goes up more than five beats in a day or two most likely you're overtrained or you're sick or you're struggling with something that would make steve maxwell taught me that trick yeah he's like every fighter should do that none of them do they should monitor their heart rate and every morning his heart rate is like seven. Yeah, Steve Maxwell can fucking he can deal with anything. Yeah, he's just one of those dudes, but he's just he's another guy I want to talk about a guy who's got a lifetime of wisdom

When it comes to strength and conditioning and what he calls physical culture and the culture of you know, taking care of your body strength and conditioning and what he calls physical culture and the culture of, you know, taking care of your body. Guys, 62 or 63 years old, fit as a fiddle, travels all around the world, training people. That's all he does. Doesn't have a house. Doesn't, he has a bag that he brings with him when he travels around all of his stuff's in that bag. Yeah. I ran into him in San Diego cause he's been downsizing. The first time I ran into him in San Diego, he was down to living in an RV, like a small RV. That's when I first met him, too. And then I hear him on a podcast, whatever, a year later or two years later, and he's, no, I have all my worldly possessions in a backpack.

Yeah. He sold his RV and he's like, fuck it. I don't even know if he has a bank account. I mean, he's a strange cat man Yeah, he really is a strange cat, but a very at peace guy for sure. Yeah, I mean, it's very interesting I wouldn't want to live like that. I don't like living like that, but he's also been the guy that's lived the other way He's had the house and he's had the family and his son Zach is a very successful juiu-jitsu competitor.

And, you know, got divorced and gave up the gym. He had all the trappings. He had everything. He's like, I like it better like this. I like backpack life. And maybe the key word there was trappings. Yes. You know, maybe he somehow built all these things around him that ended up making him feel trapped. Yeah, for him, it's just he figured out what he enjoys.

He enjoys training. He's still doing jiu-jitsu to this day, and he teaches a course Jiu-jitsu for lifetime and it's all about maintaining your health while you train And you know he's written articles on training smart to avoid injuries as you get older And you know how to pick the right training partners and make sure you know you know what he's trying to hurt you But that you could keep an active martial arts lifestyle deep in your 60s like he is. Yeah. You got to be thankful that you started jujitsu a little bit younger because you got to get, and even today, if you start jujitsu as an older, we have all kinds of older guys coming to the gym. And it's that first like year where they just don't know where to put their body yet.

And they don't notice, they don't know to say no to that 21 year old juiced up Marine. That's like in there to get after it. Like they smack hands to roll and this guy's going to tear them apart. And that's, that's how guys get hurt. If they're, if they're older and you know, know, you need to ease into it a little bit. Pick your training partners carefully. You gotta pick your training partners carefully. There's always gonna be the guy that hurts people.

There used to be this giant German dude that used to roll at our gym. He used to always get everybody in leg locks and blow their knees out. And he's just, you know, never rolled with that guy. I'm like, eh. I've been leg locked by Dean,

I don't even know how many times like i mean we might be talking thousands of times uh heel hook knee locked but you know i've never been hurt you know and i've yeah i've gotten him you know not thousand times but plenty of times and we've never hurt each other you know because we we know what we're doing yeah i'd way rather roll with a black belt for belt than some fucking psycho blue belt. It's just too dangerous sometimes. They spaz out and they headbutt you accidentally and weird shit happens. One of the things that I think is amazing is that Anthony Bourdain has gotten crazy into jiu-jitsu over the last I think two years now

He just earned his blue belt. He's 59. Yeah, that's awesome. Which it's amazing He lifetime of smoking cigarettes doing heroin like never never was fit never exercise at all when I first met him Like he would laugh about fitness. He just wanted to drink beer. And, you know, he, the first time he did my podcast, we got so high. I don't even know how we talked.

And then I just did his TV show. Like a couple of weeks ago, we were in Montana. All he wanted to talk about was jujitsu. Yeah. He's obsessed. I'm showing him some techniques. We're talking about different guys that like to do different things at different approaches and gi versus no gi and John Donahue and you know Gary Tonin and Eddie Cummins

and all these different I'm like this is amazing I can't believe like you what a transformation this guy is overtaken jujitsu definitely I mean people can get into all kinds of weird stuff right people get into surfing people get into skiing people get into rock climbing There's definitely something more in jiu-jitsu that Gets into people's heads and it definitely happened to me I mean I was completely and I still am I mean I still cannot like stop a YouTube video of a cool move

I mean, I just I just have to watch it. Yeah. And I think it's because there's such a cerebral part of it. There's something about it. And I see this, you know, we teach kids and you'll see the, the, the knucklehead kids, the kind of knuckle dragon kids are kind of big. They don't really get it, but then you get this kid, like some smart kid that you can tell they're smart. And those are the kids that get really into jujitsu because they realize like, Oh, if I learned this, I can beat that big kid. kid yeah and that's where it starts but yeah jujitsu can definitely be addictive well jujitsu is the only martial art where it really works like in the bruce lee movie yeah where the little guy really can beat the big guy because the reality is like If you watch the old K-1 days where Bob Sapp was fighting, when Bob Sapp was 375 pounds with abs.

You've never seen anything like it. Was he on steroids? He was steroids. There was nothing human left. And he beat Ernesto Hoost twice, who is arguably one of the top two or three greatest kickboxers ever and Bob Sapp just bum rushed him and donkey Kong them just beat him down with clubbing punches because he was so much bigger than him he was more than 150 pounds bigger than him probably I think we're who's in it

at his biggest is probably like 230 maybe 230 maybe. And to your point, I was in Japan. I was with Dean, as a matter of fact, when Noguera submitted Sap. That was insane. That was insane. That was insane. That was a perfect example. Perfect example. But boy, it had to be Noguera, though.

Because Sap dropped him on his head. Piledrived him on his head. I saw him the next day, Noguera, like after the fight. And he was hurt. I mean, he was beat up bad. Oh, my God. He took some abuse. His neck was fucked up apparently forever after that.

His neck essentially never recovered after that fight. You know, that was one of the fights that Fedor passed on. Fedor wouldn't fight Bob Sapp. It's like, eh, you can take your fucking clown show. Take your circus act. And Ogura's like, okay. Fedor was like, no thanks on the freak show. Take your circus act. And Noguera's like, okay. Fedor was like, no thanks on the freak show. I'm going to fight.

But then again, he went and fought Hong Man Choi, who's a giant guy too. But giant, actually gigantism giant. Not giant like juice to the gills giant. But look, Bob Sapp, I mean, all power to him. They didn't have a law against it. And he went in there and they were paying him. And that's how he made a ton of money doing that. But the point is that in jiu-jitsu, like maybe in MMA, it's a little bit different because, you know, obviously Bob Sapp dropped Noguera on his head.

And most people would have been done then. But Noguera was legendarily tough. But a small man can tap out a much larger, stronger man on a regular basis. I watched Rico Rodriguez in Abu Dhabi go against Marcelo Garcia. I was there. Were you there? Yeah. In LA?

Yeah. That's awesome. It was amazing. And when Rico threw him on his back, when Marcelo took Rico's back, so Rico threw himself backwards and slammed on top of, like Marcelllo's like a backpack on Rico's back. Rico's like 240-something, maybe even heavier. Threw himself backwards and landed all his weight on Marcello. Marcello shook it off and leg-locked him.

Incredible. Incredible. I mean, Marcello was like 160 pounds, maybe 170, maybe. But just so skilled and so dangerous with his jiu-jitsu that he was the favorite in that, which is incredible. And that's where I think that addiction comes in because I think it's just a cerebral thing where people realize that it's, like you said, it's this real force. When one of my, my kid asked me, you know the movie The Incredibles? Yes. These people have superpowers.

And my son asked me, hey, dad, is there really such a thing as superpowers? And I'm like, jujitsu. It's definitely a superpower. It's a superpower, you know. If you remember the days before anybody knew it, if you knew a little tiny bit, man, no one could stop you. It was awesome. Well, it's also amazing to see the progression of jiu-jitsu in comparison to 1993. Because the jiu-jitsu of 1993 was so primitive in comparison to what you have today. Like, the guys who are winning with jiu-jitsu, God, the setups were so obvious.

You could see the arm bars a mile away. There was nothing crazy or weird about it. And you look at that in comparison to today, like a Jacare. Like, when Jacare gets arm bars, it's like a jacare like when jacare gets arm bars it's like a work of art i mean you you watch his setups you go good lord like he tapped chris camozzi with an arm bar and i've watched the transition the way he controlled them on the ground and the scramble to arm bar i probably watched it 40 times in a row i just played it back and forth and went fuck yeah one more time

fuck i need like perfect placement of the shin the knee the pressure the hips everything's in place the control of the arm it was a it was a done deal from the moment he started his movements yeah you know that to me is like that's just as beautiful as any painting that anybody's ever made there's no doubt 100 there's an art to that. No doubt about it. What year did you start? It was 92 or 93. Damn, you got in early.

I got in early. Luckily, I had a- Pre-UFC. Yep. We knew. When we watched that first UFC, we all knew. Wow. Well, there was three or four of us that knew that Royce Gracie was going to win.

Royce. That was going to win. That's amazing, man. We had this old SEAL Master Chief, old Vietnam era SEAL Master Chief named Steve Bailey. And he was like a high-level white belt. And he had trained with LaRoy and Gracie up in the garage, up in Torrance. And so he knew. He knew jiu-jitsu. The garage.

The infamous garage. It was like the epicenter of j knew jujitsu. The garage, the infamous garage. It was like the epicenter of jujitsu. No kidding. It's crazy. But this guy, Steve Bailey, had trained there. And, you know, one day we were over on deployment over in Guam, and he said, hey, who here wants to learn how to fight? And I'm like, hey, I want to learn how to fight. And he just took us all and just choked us all out, you know.

I mean, like, okay, you attack me and just choked us all out. I'm like like okay you you attack me and just chokes on like okay I'll listen to whatever this guy's saying so so he taught us you know the basic you know like the rear naked choke and the arm lock and like the Americana or something like you know we're talking like four or five different moves and with those moves like I never I every scrap I'd get into you know I just forced someone into the rear naked choke or force them into, but they had no idea what was happening. So it was actually amazing. But, uh, but again, I thought at that time that, that, that that was jujitsu. Like there was this finite thing.

A lot of people did. Yeah. And then you realize, you know, that it's completely unending and it changes every day. That it's completely unending and it changes every day John. Jacque Machado had a guy that moved to black belt and He was a very good Martial artist he was very physically strong this guy He was a big like bulky dude like a naturally big bone strong guy that gave people a lot of problems and then Decided and like like didn't just decide this, but said it publicly. I've learned all I can learn about jiu-jitsu.

And now I'm going to learn all I can learn about Muay Thai. And everybody just went, oh, dude, we're done with you. It was like, it was so ridiculed in the jiu-jitsu community and in the people in John Jock School that everybody, like, I was like a blue belt at the time. And I was like, what the fuck is this guy on? Like, you learned everything? How can you learn everything? There learn everything there's no end jujitsu doesn't end yeah it goes on forever like you can't get you can always get better it's not it's not something until you achieve the speed of light and that's another another great thing about jujitsu is because it like combat, it reflects life. And if the day you start saying that you're good to go, like in leadership position or whatever task you're working on, the day you say I've learned everything there is to learn about this is the day you start to lose.

And I know that humility is something that you have to keep yourself in check because again, I got asked the other day, you know, when were you, you know, when was your high point of leadership? And I'm like, I never had a high point of leadership. I was always trying to learn. I was always trying to figure out what I was doing wrong and what mistakes I was making. Cause if you don't do that, that's probably, that's something I learned from jujitsu. You know, if you don't do that, then you're going to get passed by. And other people are going to figure some new way of doing it.

And you're going to be left in the dark. Yeah, as much as I like to use the term, that was perfect, there really is nothing perfect in human beings. There's always room for improvement. There's always a shorter path. There's always a quicker victory. There's always new things to learn. victory there's always a there's there's there's always new things to learn and as soon as you start thinking that you've mastered something to the point of of an end like you've you kind of missed out what it's all about in the first place it's all but you're constantly uncomfortable

you're supposed to be constantly uncomfortable yeah and then in these little victories that you get the good thing about when people tap you get a oh i get a little nice feeling right here yeah and then they're like let's go again and they're like oh fuck back to being uncomfortable and there's no getting around and then he taps you and you're like ah shit yeah should have quit while i was ahead no no because you're missing the point the point is that it's it's a long path a long arduous path and i think anything that's worth doing is probably like that There's no doubt about it. And that's another another piece again another place where jujitsu is like life is You think At some point you think you know like you think you're good you think you're doing pretty good and then you just get smacked you know, you get smacked with something and

Like now like when you were 25 you were like, I'm pretty good to go. You know, I pretty much know what's up. And then when you're 30, you're like, I didn't know anything when I was 25. Yeah, I was an idiot five years ago. Yeah. And it's true. one of the things that provides some small portion of like maturity as a human being and as a man is when you get to the point where you actually realize that you don't know everything and you're like looking at yourself, like I'm 44 and I'm like, yeah, I'm going to learn so much in the

next three years, five years. I'm going to look at myself at 44 and go, yeah, you see how stupid you were then. And when you come to that realization, I think that's a pretty positive thing because it takes a while to figure out that, Hey, you don't have everything figured out. You're, you're pretty stupid right now, even though you don't think so. Another thing that things like jujitsu teach you, and I say jujitsu, but it's really, uh, an all martial arts thing. The problem with the other martial arts other than jujitsu is at a certain point in time, you can't really practice them 100%.

Like striking. You really can't practice striking 100% for very long or your brain starts to give out. Just a fact. And jiu-jitsu, you can. Jiu-jitsu, you can do it deep, deep into your 50s. I mean, there's like where Anthony Bourdain, he's pushing 60. He's still doing it. And, you know, it's not that he's going to be a world beater, but he can get the most out of it.

The most that he can get out of it, that stays the same. Like what you get out of it stays the same, regardless of the success. Like what you're getting out of it, even if you're getting tapped, what you're getting out of it is doing your best and overcoming and improving upon what your best is every day. And doing so in a situation where there's extreme consequences. You're going to get strangled. You're going to get your arm broken if you don't tap. You're going to get your leg fucked up if you don't tap. It's not as extreme as combat, obviously, but it is as extreme you can get in a sport that you're participating in,

an activity that you're participating in voluntarily in America at 530 on a Tuesday, where you're going to get 30 people that are going to show up, slap hands together, and then hug it out after it's over and go, you're going to be here tomorrow? Yeah, I'll see you, man. And then, you know, back again tomorrow, same thing. That's another kind of primal piece that makes jujitsu so intense is if you and me roll, like, and I get you or you get me and I tap. In my, like, heart, I know that if you and I were fighting for survival, I just lost and you'd have killed me. And I see this with little kids. When little kids compete, you tell

them, Hey, listen, just go out there, have fun. It's going to be fun. You know, just go out there and do your best. I don't care if you win or lose, just go out and have a good time. You tell them that you tell them that you tell them that if they get tapped, they, they start crying. It's so emotional. And why is that? Because a part of them inside their head that they don't even know exists, knows that that person, had they been in a mortal struggle, they got beat. Yeah. They got their ass kicked. Yeah. It's not like someone, this is what I always say, like somebody dunks a basketball on you, that sucks, but it doesn't mean anything unless you decide it means something.

Well, what does basketball escalate into? Fights. All sports escalate into fights. So let's get rid of the bat, the ball, whatever else. Let's just fight. That's why I think the UFC has been so highly successful because it is. It's the ultimate

you know in combat sport again you know barring combat itself yeah well it's also why the dorks and pencil necks hate it so much because they think it's a regression back to the the primal days of caveman combat like what are we supporting some fat fuck wrote an article for like the New Yorker or New York Post or something like that about the Ronda Rousey loss, about how barbaric and disgusting it was and what bullshit that we were fed and that we were made out that she was this unconquerable and to watch her beaten unconscious was disgusting. You don't get it, man. You don't get it.

What you're doing with your fat face, like shoving cheeseburgers down your mug, is way worse than anything that she did inside that octagon. It's interesting because that kind of attitude can cross borders into other things. And, you know, I end up talking to people, you know, through our company, people that are smart. I mean, like I'll be in a room with everyone's went to an Ivy League college and been super successful and they're worth millions and millions, if not hundreds of millions of dollars. And I was given one of these talks the other day. And we, you know, of course, they ended up asking me about ISIS and all that. And as I'm sitting there looking and I'm thinking to myself, like these people are all looking at me and thinking I'm just a savage, right? I'm just like, hey, I'm a knuckle dragger.

We just need to go kill everyone. And so I tried to explain to them. I'm like, listen, I almost feel ashamed to say this to everyone here because everyone here is an intellectual and is very very smart but there are some problems in the world that there is not an academic solution to and sometimes violence is the solution and again there can be a million arguments against that but the reality of it is in the world it's like you were talking about earlier in the world there are evil people that do evil things and the only way to stop them is to confront them and destroy them and unfortunately we we are so disconnected from

that that it makes people look at ufc, oh my God, how could that happen? And it makes people look at, you know, a military attack and say, oh my God, how could that happen? It can happen because we're human beings and we're imperfect and there are evil people in the world. Well, the people that think there's no ever, there's no excuse for a violent solution. Take those people, bring them to Ramadi right now, right? Yeah. I mean, how do you deal with evil when it exists? How do you deal with it?

Do you hug them? Do you knock on their door with flowers? What do you do? I mean, what is the solution? They don't have an answer. The only reason why they even have that attitude is because they live here in this sheltered environment, in our beautiful bubble that we call the United States of America. That many brave men and women have provided and will continue to provide regardless of what is

said about them. And God bless those folks out there on the wire. Yes, sir. And with that, extreme ownership. That was three hours, man. We just banged out three on the wire. Yes, sir. And with that, extreme ownership. That was three hours, man. We just banged out three hours. Damn. Crazy. Right here, Jocko Willink and Leif. Leif?

Leif? Leif Babin. Leif Babin. Extreme ownership, how U.S. Navy SEALs lead and win. And Jocko is on Twitter. Jocko Willink on Twitter. Is that what it is? Jocko Willink.

And what is it on? Do you have anything else? A website? Well, yeah, we have a Facebook for Extreme Ownership. We have an Extreme Ownership Twitter. Yeah, we're out there in the social media world broadcasting ourselves. And soon a podcast, right? And I will do a podcast.

He's gonna, see? I knew it. I will do a podcast. I knew it was gonna happen. Echo Charles, be ready to record a podcast, brother. Thank you very much, sir. This was awesome. I really, really appreciate it. And I will put up a link on Amazon

after the podcast, so go out and buy this book, folks. Thank you very much, Jocko. Appreciate it, brother. Thanks for having me on. Oh.