The Rich Roll Podcast - Paul de Gelder On The Shark Attack That Saved His Life

Episode Date: February 26, 2018

Imagine being attacked by a 9-foot bull shark. One moment you’re swimming peacefully in Sydney Harbor. The next minute you’re being rammed and pulled underwater, your leg and arm hopelessly trapped in the shark’s jaw. The pain is unimaginable. Death is certain. But somehow, against all odds, you wriggle free. Ultimately you lose that arm and that leg. But that shark? It doesn’t claim your life. Instead, it gives you an entirely new one. This is the extraordinary and inspiring ‘never say die' story of Paul de Gelder. Truant and wayward throughout his teens, Paul left his Australian home town at an early age to start a new life. Despite some early success in the Australian music scene (he once opened for Snopp Dogg), he failed to find the purpose he so desperately sought. So he joined the Royal Australian Army as a paratrooper in November 2000 at the age of 23 — a defining moment that brought his life structure, discipline and ultimately more meaning than he could have ever imagined. Over the next several years, Paul was deployed as a United Nations peacekeeper, honing the art of jungle and urban warfare, unarmed combat, specialist communications, combat first aid, parachuting, and snipping. Rising through the ranks, Paul ultimately achieved his dream of becoming Royal Australian Navy Clearance Diver — Oz's version of a Navy SEAL. But trouble hunted him down in the form of a brutal shark in February 2009. Paul lost two limbs, and his career as a daredevil Navy Bomb Clearance Diver was flung into jeopardy. Determined to transform the horrific experience into a net positive, he fought through excruciating pain — smashing challenge after challenge — amazing the medical staff with his unparalleled will to succeed. In the 7 years since the shark attack, Paul's life has changed in every aspect. Today he travels the world as a top motivational speaker, passionate environmentalist, adventurer and mentor to school kids. He has spoken at venues all around the world, including the United Nations, promoting ecological conservation and (quite ironically and heroically) shark conservation. Along the way, he continues to dive with sharks all over the world — including Great Whites without a cage. One of Australia's most in demand speakers, Paul has been featured on every major U.S. and Australian media outlet. Since 2014, he has served up co-hosting duties on Discovery Channel's Shark Week, hosts the Nat Geo special Fearless (in which he embedded with an anti-poaching team in Zimbabwe), and worked on behind the scenes footage for the 2016 Hollywood blockbuster The Shallows with Blake Lively. Today I am proud to share Paul's story — a death-defying tale of survival, perseverance, positivity, grit, hope, rebirth and the extraordinary breadth of human possibility. One of the most inspirational people I have ever met, this is a conversation that will leave you breathless — and inspired beyond measure. For the visually inclined, you can watch the podcast on YouTube here. Peace + Plants, Rich

Quick announcement before we get into it. I am very excited to announce that Julie and I have a brand new cookbook coming out April 24th. It's called The Plant Power Way Italia. We're very proud of it. If you enjoyed our first book, The Plant Power Way, I think you're going to freak for this one. It's inspired by our retreats in Tuscany and the cuisine of the Italian countryside. It's super next level, incredible photography, 125 entirely new, and of course, delicious plant-based Italian countryside. It's super next level, incredible photography, 125 entirely new, and of course, delicious plant-based Italian recipes. And it's available for pre-order now

from all your favorite online booksellers. You can learn more at richroll.com. Pre-orders are very important to the book's viability. And so it would mean a great deal to us if you reserved your copy today. Thank you so much. I greatly appreciate it. And now on to the show. You're not fully aware of what you can accomplish, especially if you're letting fear hold you back. If you can remain motivated and positive through your mind, reminding yourself that you're limitless and you are strong. Your greatest fears can actually become your greatest strengths. And you can do things that

you tell yourself you can't do. Your mind is far more powerful than anything you can imagine. That's Paul DeGelder, this week on The Rich Roll Podcast. I want you to imagine, just for a minute, imagine being attacked by a nine-foot bull shark. One minute, you're happily swimming in Sydney Harbor, and the next minute, suddenly, out of the blue, you're being rammed and pulled underwater, your leg trapped in the shark's jaw. You reach with your right arm in an effort to punch the shark because that's what you're told you're supposed to do, only to realize that that arm is also trapped. The pain is unbearable. Death, death is certain, And not only can you feel it, you accept it. But somehow, against all odds, you manage to wriggle free.

And ultimately, you end up losing that arm and that leg. But that shark, that shark doesn't claim your life. Instead, it gives you an entirely new one. Instead, it gives you an entirely new one. This is the extraordinary and truly inspiring story of Royal Australian Navy clearance diver Paul DeGelder. My name is Rich Roll. I am your host, and this is my podcast. Welcome to it.

And if you're looking to be inspired this week, I can tell you, you are in the right place. Super excited to share this one. And there's a bunch more I want to say about Paul before we dive in. But first, we're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones

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To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts

and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of care, especially because unfortunately, not all treatment resources adhere to ethical practices. Thank you. to support and empower you to find the ideal level of care tailored to your personal needs. They've partnered with the best global behavioral health providers to cover the full spectrum of behavioral health disorders, including substance use disorders, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, gambling addictions, and more. Navigating their site is simple. Search by insurance coverage, location, treatment type, you name it. Plus, you can read reviews from Thank you. Okay. My man, Paul DeGelder. So Paul has a very impressive bio that I was just about to read, but you know what? I think I'm just going to let him

tell the story. It's much better that way. And this story, a death-defying story of survival and perseverance and grit and rebirth, it's just, it's insane. And I knew it would be, but what I wasn't prepared for was just how inspiring Paul is as a human being and as a speaker, as an example of positivity and hope and human possibility and service, really. positivity and hope and human possibility and service, really. Service to those who have suffered similar challenges, service to those who feel stuck and lost, service to the ecological preservation of our oceans. And ironically, and perhaps most impressively, service to the preservation of sharks, the

animal that tried to take his life. Final note, before we get into it, we did video this podcast. So if you want a visual to go along with the verbal, I strongly suggest you check that out. You can find it at youtube.com forward slash rich roll. And with that being said, let's talk to Paul. What's up, buddy, man. It's good to Paul. What's up, buddy, man?

It's good to see you. Thanks for making the trip. Yeah. For making it happen. It's been talked about for quite some time. I know. So you first came on to my radar via John Joseph. He's like, yo, you got to check out my boy Paul.

He's a badass. You got to get him on the show. He didn't say just that, knowing John. Yeah, well, it's something like that. He said like 16 more sentences yeah before taking a breath yeah yeah yeah so yeah so i started following you on instagram and i was like wow this guy's inspiring he's doing some cool stuff um and then we just bumped into each other up at point doom and now here we are man yeah man it worked out i'm excited to uh yeah i'm excited to share your story uh you're definitely an inspiring cat and what you've overcome is just mind-blowing.

And the extent to which you extend yourself in service of others and in an environmental context is really impressive. And like I said, inspiring. The funny thing is none of that feels true. What does it feel like to you? It just feels like I'm just living life. Yeah. It's weird.

The story has now kind of just lost. It's not like it lost meaning. It just really, to me, never felt like it had a huge meaning. Everyone says, oh, my God, you know, that must have been horrible. I was like, yeah, it's a bad day at work. And that's really all it was. And I, maybe that's testament to why I don't have any PTSD or I don't have any nightmares, no flashbacks. I've never had counseling and I think I'm pretty normal except for the things that I do for my job. They're not normal.

Do you find that when you get up, you do a lot of talks, you get up in front of people all the time and share your story. Do you have that weird experience of kind of being disassociated from your own story? Because you've told it so many times. You're like, did this actually happen? How much am I editorializing here? Especially when you're doing it a lot. So I did a company where they wanted me to hit every shift. And I had to do it 18 times in six days.

Oh my God. So, three times a day for eight days. And by the second day, I hated the sound of my own voice. I didn't know which part of the story I was up to. I was thinking to myself, have I already told this part? I can't remember. I've said it so many times. By the 18th day, I just, I couldn't do it anymore. I took a whole month off and just didn't talk about myself at all. One of the things that I found though is that when I get up and tell it, it starts to tell me more about the story.

Like I learned more about myself because I realized like, oh, that happened because of like I make these weird connections that I wasn't really kind of consciously aware of. And things that you might have forgotten about that you have been retelling the story for a certain amount of time. And then all of a sudden, 20 times you've been on stage and all of a sudden, the 21st time you'll be telling the story and you'll think, oh, especially to me, because it makes it more interesting when I remember things I've forgotten. Or I talk to someone that was there that day and they remind me of something I've forgotten. Right, right, right. Like sticking one of the guys having to stick his hand inside my leg and pinch closed an artery so that I wouldn't die. It's crazy stuff. It's crazy.

Well, rather than just kind of launch into the day that kind of catalyzed all of this, I'd like to go back to the beginning because this is very much like a hero's journey. You know what I mean? I think in order to kind of really fully appreciate and understand like where you are now and what you had to overcome, like I think it's important to understand your upbringing and your childhood because that in and of itself is an amazing story yeah yeah that was interesting uh not the sort of thing i'd i'd rather relive the shark attack to tell you the truth than growing up i think as adults we forget how hard it is being a kid and being a teenager because back then you have no frame of reference. You have no idea how to deal with anything.

Everything is new. Every stress is real. It's only when you get older that you realize, oh, you know, this is just another thing I can get through this. But when you're a teenager, it's rough. I mean, you were just, the way I read it is you're a kid who just didn't connect with school and had this lust for adventure and excitement. And because maybe healthy options for how to pursue that weren't necessarily totally available to you, you kind of went over to the dark side for a while. Yeah. Well, it didn't start out that way. Normally, when I was younger, I was okay at school.

And when you're young, you don't realize that you're poor. Six people on a policeman's wage in the 70s and 80s. We were doing it pretty tough. You had four brothers and sisters? Myself, my two younger brothers, and my baby sister. And mum was from East End, London. So we ate sheep's brains and livers and kidneys and all the garbage that no one else wanted. What part of Australia?

But it was cheap. We were down in Mornington Peninsula in Melbourne, about an hour and a half south of Melbourne. Dad was away a lot with the cops. He was out late at night. And we moved to Canberra, which is the capital of Australia, when I was 10. He got posted and we all just sort of up-picked and moved. And still going okay. I don't know what you guys call it.

I got there about year five and year six and then moved to an all-boys Catholic school because my parents always made us go to church. We were altar boys, went to Catholic schools. And that's where it started to go downhill a little bit i started getting picked on uh quite bad because i was very short i was very skinny i had big ears freckles all over my face and i was i was you know an easy target so it wasn't a lot of fun at school but i was quite well read whenever dad went away with the cops and he came home he'd always bring me a book as a present so we had the you know the full volume of encyclopedia britannica from something

like 1966 or something so i'd read all of those and i had this wide knowledge of the world and how the universe worked back in 19 pre-internet like it's like somebody listening to this who was born after you know 1980 is like what are Yeah. So, the Encyclopedia Britannica was like, how many volumes? I don't know. We had it too. Oh, man. But it basically encompassed all of the world's knowledge. And so, I was well-read and I knew there was adventure out there to be had. And I grew up on David Attenborough. You know, that was my hero, the guy that travelled the world and saw all these crazy animals.

And then you see Indiana Jones and it's like, oh, my God, there's this crazy world out there and I so badly want to see it and be a part of it. But I'm in Canberra and it sucks. And Canberra is very pretty. Canberra, for anyone who doesn't know, is the capital of Australia. It's where all the politicians hold parliament. It's also, funnily enough, the only place in Australia where weed,

pornography and fireworks were decriminalised. Funny that. But I hit about 14, 15 and I stopped swimming because i was just i'd had a gut full of it uh i stopped like a you're on the swim team or whatever yeah dad was the coach so he couldn't really get out of it so we're up at five o'clock in the morning before school swimming a couple of k's uh every day and then after school as well me and both my brothers were all state swimmers uh so i stopped that i stopped running i was doing i was a cross-country athlete and i started uh looking at girls and started smoking and drinking and because marijuana was decriminalized there was a bit

of a floating around so i started smoking weed as well hanging around unsavory characters. And I just fell deep into it. And at the same time, I was listening to Snoop Dogg and NWA. Well, before Snoop Dogg's time, you know, NWA and Ice-T and all these West Coast rappers talking about smoking weed and hanging out. And I was just like, yeah, that sounds cool. And I sort of lost my focus for a bunch of years there. But I also think, you know, Canberra or Canberra, how do you say it?

Canberra. Canberra or anywhere else, like our school system just isn't set up to really support somebody who has that flair for adventure. It's sort of like, all right, what are you studying for? Well, you're going to go to college and here's the four careers that are upwardly mobile. well, you're going to go to college and here's the four careers that are upwardly mobile. And for somebody who's got a wild hair up their ass, it's not like developing that is anything that's really kind of encouraged. And on top of that, they don't teach for the specific techniques that people learn in. I had trouble, like a lot of people do, reading what was on the blackboard while the teacher was writing,

listening to the teacher and writing in my book all at the same time. I'm the impidium of a very poor multitasking man. So I couldn't keep up with it all. So I'm writing what's on the board, but at the same time, I can't listen to the teacher because I'm focused on this. So I'm missing out on something. And if I don't do that and I listen to the teacher then I'm not taking notes to study at home and it was just all a mess and I just could not keep up so the the techniques that they used back then and still use in a lot of schools today just they weren't right for me with you yeah yeah yeah so you start finding uh you know a way to you know find that adventure yeah dope and partying and like. We were still poor as well and we didn't have all the cool stuff.

So, I found a way to go and get all that. You just took it. I'll read between the lines on that one. I got busted. We were breaking into cars and breaking into houses very occasionally and shoplifting. I got caught shoplifting twice, but I told them my dad was a cop and they let me off. Then we'd go out drinking and I had a fight with someone

and I kicked a bus shelter window in and ended up a night in jail. And it still didn't give me the kick in the ass. And your dad's a cop and you're the oldest one, right? Yeah, and I'm supposed to be setting the example. So is he kicking your ass? He kicked my ass out of the house. So I hit 17 and he called me at my friend's house and he said i'm sick of your shit come and get your stuff and fuck off and i i instantly had all of that freedom that i wanted and i had no idea what to do with it you split so where'd you go um i was very lucky that

i had two friends of mine from indones two girls, and their parents paid for them. They were quite well off. The parents paid for them to live and study in Australia, and they had their own apartment. So they took me in, and I lived with them for about a year and a half. Still didn't get my ass into gear. Sat around smoking weed, eating their leftover Indonesian food. I look back on those days, and I wonder what the hell was I thinking? How could I be so down into that hole that I don't realize I'm wasting my life away?

And it just went on. And it's probably one of the only regrets that I ever have in life. It's probably one of the only regrets that I ever have in life. Nothing else, really. Just wasting time because it's so valuable and you never get it back. And I spent all of those years not learning a single thing and not growing as a person. But all of those dominoes play into making you the person that you are today. You know what I mean? Like, perhaps you wouldn't be doing what you're doing now

had you not had that experience to motivate you in a certain way to grow in later years. Well, it's true. There was a moment where all of that came into play where I was in hospital. But I finally got a job working at the lofty heights of Kitchen Hand. I think I was 19 or 20. And it was at one of the most popular clubs in Canberra.

So, obviously, lots of people go there. Lots of girls. Lots of drugs. And I fell down that hole for a little while as well. But eventually, I came up. I was just about to turn 21. And I was living with a couple of the guys from the club and I went to a farewell for a friend of mine who was being deported back to Papua New Guinea, you know, getting kicked out of the country for criminal activities. So obviously he's one of my friends.

And so at that party, I got jumped by 20 guys. One guy was trying to get me to buy him a drink and I was just telling him to basically fuck off. And he threw a glass of beer at me and I just thought that's enough so I got up to have a go at him and um I hit one guy one of his friends that tried to pummel me in the face and then all of their friends jumped up and I just I ended up getting my ass really badly kicked and I went home and I did I took that long hard look in the mirror that your parents always tell you to do I did and I went home and I did I took that long hard look in the mirror that your parents always tell you to do I did I looked at my beaten-up broken face and I just thought something's got to change or I'm gonna be dead or in jail by the time I'm 23 and I didn't want that you know that

I still had this vision of this incredibly adventurous world and so I did the only thing I could think of which was remove myself from that environment that i become a product of and i threw everything i owned into a tiny little car that i had no license for and i'm drove 12 hours up to the glimmering lights of brisbane well when you're from canberra brisbane's pretty glimmering yeah yeah um and a friend of mine got a job for me behind a bar in his strip club that he was working he was DJing at and I started making rap music with his flatmates two American guys one was from New Jersey one was from Pasadena they were working

at the record stores they were running a community radio station running night like little hip-hop dance parties around the place and making music and I grew up on the first my first cassette that I've ever owned was run DMC is tougher than leather and then ice T's iceberg and then NWA and then Westside connection it was that was you know I had by that stage I had about 340 cassettes in a box so I loved rap music and so I just thought well i've been listening into it long enough might as well start making some um took a little while you guys had like a you had kind of a moment right like you gotta go yeah we put out an ep and then off the back of that we got the opening act for snoop dogg in in 98 which was incredible you know coming from little old melbourne little picked on kid to

opening for snoop dogg was a pretty big step uh had a lot of fun is that music like online anywhere um i think it's on itunes but i'm not sure if it's on american itunes it may be be strictly tied to australian um i played it for my girlfriend in the car the other day. She was pissing herself. She also said it was quite good. She expected worse. But I wrote about the things that I knew about. So my song was called Smoke and Hydro.

But after that, not a lot of money in white rappers in Brisbane in 1998. And the financial constraints ended up taking its toll and the whole group just imploded. Right. And there you are just working at a strip bar. I'd actually quit the strip club at that point to focus on the music. And so I had nothing.

Myself and my other friend from Canberra who'd moved up there to work on the music with us, we were just stuck. We talked this real estate into letting us live in one of their houses for four weeks until we found another place. And my friend who's now a famous comic artist, you know, has his own stalls at Comic-Con and stuff, he drew characters of the real estate agents to pay our rent.

And we slept on ripped couch cushions we showered at the local pool because we had no water we had no electricity we ate off paper plates and ate two minute noodles and that was it for weeks and weeks and weeks yeah yeah so did you have another moment of looking in the mirror and going yeah kind of i was just i was just thinking i can't keep doing this. I didn't know where to go. I was really lost. I tried to change my whole life and I failed. And I just thought, where do I go from here? I don't know where else to turn.

And so- Well, because when you moved to Brisbane, isn't the solution. You took yourself to Brisbane. Yeah, I know. That was the problem. But I was trying. you know, it wasn't like I wasn't just moving and then sitting on my ass again. I was really trying to grow as a person

and build a career. And I thought that was in wrapping and it wasn't. But like we do sometimes when we're a little bit lost, you turn to the person that will always be there for you. And I called mum. Had you been in communication with your parents during this time or? A little bit by that stage. Yeah. Dad and I had not made up. We hadn't talked, but I'd been talking to my mum occasionally once, you know, once we started, I was working in the strip club and making some money and I felt a little more achieved. the strip club and making some money and I felt a little more achieved. And she just said, well,

talk to your brothers. They've both joined the military. It should be noted that one of them joined the army to stay out of jail. He followed in my footsteps. Did your dad talk to him? Yeah, probably. Forcefully. But, you know, I did. All right right there's no point asking for advice and then not following it up so i talked to my brothers and they said yeah look it's great you know you get they were both in artillery uh so they said you get paid to travel you get paid to play sport you get to hang out with your mates you get to shoot guns and rockets and cannons. One thing they said though was don't join infantry. So I joined infantry. Why did they say that though? Because it's just hard. It's the hardest job physically in the military and they just didn't think that I'd be able to do it. So they were trying to

convince me to go into something a little simpler where I wouldn't get kicked out. And so was that decision to do that in defiance of them or what was the motivation to go the harder route? It was a little bit in defiance to them, but to me, I didn't see it as the harder route. I saw it as if you join the army, you join as a soldier. That's the definition of being a soldier. Everyone has their different opinions and I agree, artillery and everyone is part of the military working system. But being a soldier, there's something really prideful in that, that you, as an infantry grunt, you stand a little taller and you wear that uniform with a little more pride because you know that if you go to war, you're going to be up there

in the front seats, you know, trading bullets with the enemy. That's where I wanted to be. That sense of adventure was like, I'm not sitting back there shooting cannons at people. I want to be up there fighting. So I did that and I passed basic training, which was a surprise to everyone. The biggest surprise was to my friends that the

army actually gave me a gun. I mean, and you're all jacked up right now, but were you still like a skinny kid at that point? Oh, dude, I was like nothing. I was a, what are you guys? I was going to call it a paddle pop stick. Do you guys know what that means? Like, what do you guys call it? Popsicle stick. Popsicle stick, popsicle stick yeah okay i was tiny i had no i could not keep fat on my body i ate like an animal but from all the years of running and swimming i just couldn't keep any muscle or fat on so i was wiry though i was strong i could walk forever i could run forever um past basic training past employment training for the infantry and at the end of that they said you know who wants to jump out of a plane and i'd never been accused of doing anything

too clever so i put my hand in the air with this goofy expression on my face and say yum and they went congratulations you're gonna be a paratrooper and i just thought that sounds badass yeah and so it was off to sydney first time to sydney to be a the newest soldier and I just thought that sounds badass yeah and so it was off to Sydney first time to Sydney to be a the newest soldier at the third battalion Royal Australian Regiment Parachute Battalion and I got my when I did my parachute course got my maroon beret made me stand even taller and I just felt this incredible sense of achievement And one of the biggest turning points there was when I was doing my psych evaluation before I joined the army. And I passed everything. I passed aptitude testing, I passed the medical, and I finally passed the psych evaluation. And as I was walking out of the room, the doctor said, good luck with your career. luck with your career. And it hit me that I had this thing called a career that I never thought I would have. To me, a career was like what a lawyer had and a doctor and something you can build on and you can grow. You can never underestimate the power of one word in changing

someone's whole mindset about something. I thought, fuck me, I'm going to have a career. changing someone's whole mindset about something I thought fuck me I'm gonna have a career this is real I have a real job I can be proud of and that powered me through some of the darkest days being an infantry soldier is not easy ten mile fighting withdrawals in full gas suits and gas masks in the middle of the night in pouring rain with a 120-pound pack on your back, things like that. But you remember why you're doing it and it drives you on. You're doing it for your mates. And what, so what years was this? I joined the army November 2005, 2000. And I stayed there until April 2005. And how did you not get deployed? I did once. Oh, okay. To Afghanistan.

I got deployed to a place called East Timor. And most people have never even heard of this place. It's a small Southeast Asian island. Half of it is owned by Indonesia and the other half is owned by the natives, the East Timorese. And there's a thin, you know, river that separates the two from each other, except the Indonesians didn't care about that. And they were going over and slaughtering these people. The stats was 250,000 of them were killed, murdered, starved, and died of illnesses. I've never even heard that before.

Yeah, yeah, it was really bad. So Australia went in, a multinational force went in under the United Nations. Australia played the biggest role because it was so close to us. And we went in there and I spent six months in 2002 patrolling that border to keep the Indonesians out, you know, kidnapping soldiers that crossed the border and interrogating them, went on snipers course, did airborne rappelling out at the Blackhawks and just a lot of it was boring, a lot of it was exciting. Did you see action or was it just recon? No, no.

The Indonesians, there was a lot of rumours going around about the Australians and one of them was that we ate babies. So the Indonesian soldiers in East Timor were not too confident in dealing with us. So one of the guys that we kidnapped and took up into the mountains because he was stealing money from the locals, we sat him on the edge of a cliff while we discussed where we were going to take him and he was praying and he was crying. He thought we were going to just shoot him in the head and kick him off the edge of the cliff which we would never do that right you're some kind of savage yeah exactly but you know that's in part to what the special forces guys did when they went in there first off

um there were some pretty hairy moments when they were dealing with the indonesians in those periods like you know one of the new of the New Zealand Maori SAS guys got captured and they cut off his ears and cut off his nose and cut off his head and all this stuff. So, the New Zealand SAS commander just said, off you go, boys. And is that conflict still going on? The conflict itself isn't going on, but there is civil unrest still. They're a nation that is divided by a political system, which is very common all around the world, obviously.

You can now, you can still, you can go there. You can go to Dili, the capital of East Timor, which is where a lot of the major conflict was, and you can go there as a tourist. So it's not hugely dangerous. It's not like papua new guinea one of the most dangerous places in the world that most people have never heard of also um so that was a huge turning point for me right but then you decide you don't want to stay in the army right yeah well i'd seen well i hadn't seen action but i'd i'd done my job for real and it made me realize it made me appreciate so much, for starters.

I'd never been to a third world country before. I'd never even been overseas before that. So I was seeing these people raking through our rubbish with homemade rakes. We'd set the rubbish on fire, mind you, just to salvage whatever they could. People with nothing, but they were happy. And they collected their water in the street or washed in the river, but they were still happy. And I went home with this appreciation of everything that we have, especially a toilet and a shower and just healthy food and not having malaria, all of that stuff. And so, I was like, oh, I want to do it again.

I want to do my job for real and I got asked to go to Iraq me and me and one of my teams and they cancelled the trip four days before we left and so that just kind of crushed us all and I just thought well stuff this I'm gonna go somewhere where I can get deployed and I'd heard about these guys called clearance divers I didn't really know much about them. I knew they were a bit special. They were a little like the SAS and the commandos. No one looked directly at them.

Right. So it's sort of like a special forces SEAL team kind of situation. It's similar to that, but it doesn't come under the special forces umbrella. We only have SAS and commandos and they fall under SOCOM, Special Operations Command. As a clearance diver, you can go and join a unit called the Tactical Assault Group for the East Coast. And that's the commandos and the clearance divers working together as a counterterrorism unit, which is very cool that's um very fun job lots and lots of shooting in gas masks and uh heckler and koch mp5s and very accurate close quarter

shooting it's a lot of fun blowing up doors um killing terrorists yeah but uh sorry i get excited about that stuff okay but like near it's i I think of it sort of like the frogmen. Yeah. Which I guess the SEALs are now the antecedent of the frogmen. Exactly. You know, like being specialized in, you know, water tactics. We're referred to as Navy divers or clearance divers. But unlike America, we don't have as many people in our military branches.

So as clearance divers, we have to do everything. We do the salvage and repair. We do the mine countermeasures underwater. We do the land-based explosive ordnance disposal. We do the maritime tactical operations, you know, attack swimming in the middle of the night, reconnaissance swimming on pure oxygen rebreathers, using the minimum magnetic rebreathers to dive deep and deal with anti-acoustic, anti-seismic,

anti-diver tampering device mines, all this crazy shit. I understand about 5% of what you just said, but what I'm imagining is, you know, hurt locker underwater. Exactly. Yeah. It's a lot of fun. I was living my dream. This is the elite of our navy yeah

and the training i i read a little bit about what the training is like for for you know getting into that i mean it's super intense yeah it's it's you're like swimming across sydney harbor in the middle of the night yeah like that five or six hours and then followed by five hour pt sessions on the soft sand um stretcher carries pack pack marches, first aid stands, mind games, breath hold, on and on and on and on for 10 days. And I was talking to one of my chiefs the other day, and the course was called CDAT. They've changed the name of it to something now.

But I was asking him how it was going because they were running a selection course, and he goes, goes oh it's going pretty good where we started at 42 we're down to 17 and i said oh wow what day is that day two day two oh my god it's like almost you know 50 percent down we lose most of the people on day one because you turn up and you get your issues and then you break straight into PT and it's this grueling five hour run session and you finally make it back to the dive school it's dark you're hurting you get probably five minutes to stretch and rehydrate and then they say all right boys line up we're doing it again and that's whenever i just people yeah and you're wearing these um high-vis blazers and people just not they take it off and they hand it in and they're out of there like i'm out yeah but you had been a runner and you'd been a swimmer

so you were like sort of sorted out you were good to go yeah but you know i i still for some reason i didn't believe in all of these fancy sneakers and all this fancy gear all the guys had. I just had this beat up pair of old Converse that I used to run in. And I turned up and they're like, oh, look at this fucking army guy in his Converse. Like straight up those flat bottom, like basketball canvas shoes. Nothing. And they've got all their fancy Adidas and Brooks and what have you. And they're kind of like chuckling at me.

And then we jumped in the water or went for a run and I smoked them all. And I was the second oldest on the course. I was 28 by that stage. And they were all 21, 22, 23. But you'd had the army training also. Exactly. That's what they didn't realize. You were mentally kind of prepared for what was going to be thrown at you.

And my feet, you know. After doing two days of pack marching, they all collapse in their bunks and they're all taping up their toes with strapping tape. One of the guys had to tape up both of his balls. I just took my boots off and went to sleep because I was used to pack marching every day. Well, you're probably going to get up in an hour anyway. Yeah, exactly.

anyway exactly so you're finding your groove like this is this is working for you yeah man i i was i just hit 30 years old and i was just living my dream i was living down at bondi beach i was riding a big black italian sports bike i was traveling the world with my mates shooting guns and blowing stuff up and then you turn to work one day and a fucking shark eats you right so let's let's walk through it let's walk through that day yeah um it was early in the morning we were doing a counter-terrorism exercise the the goal was to uh test this new equipment that the R&D department of the military had created. It was unmanned video and sonar designed to detect attack swimmers and attack divers coming in to put bombs on our ships and equipment. So they set it up on the pier in Sydney Harbour alongside the Navy base. And it's very central to everything. You can see the Harbour Bridge. It's not that far away. The Opera House very central to everything. You can see the Harbour

Bridge. It's not that far away. The Opera House that everyone knows about. You can see all of that. I was just out there last year and I took one of those ferries. So I'm visualising it perfectly. Yeah. So when you're moving away from the Sydney Opera House and that's behind you on your right hand side and you get to that fort in the middle of the harbour, Fort Denison. Yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about. So if you look 45-degree angle over to the Navy base right by the pier, right there is where I got attacked. No one has been attacked in Sydney Harbour in 60 years at that point.

No Navy diver ever. That was kind of a banner year, though, overall for shark attacks. There were like 21 that year, I think, or something. It was a little less than that, but there was a guy the day after me at Bondi, which is, you know, as the crow flies probably five miles away. And he lost his hand as well. So I've got the new guy in the water. He's pretending to be an attack swimmer. He's pretending to be an attack swimmer.

All the R&D guys and my chief are up on the bow of one of the warships watching, and this equipment's on the pier trying to detect him. And he's swimming around for about half an hour, and I thought I'd do him a good turn, and I said, jump out, mate, I'll take over for you. I rolled over the edge of the little black Zodiac in a black wetsuit and a pair of fins and i was doing what we call finning i was on my back on the surface just kicking my legs and it was a three-tier thing we were going to do surface swimming to see if it could detect us we were going to do scuba to see if it could detect us

and then pure oxygen rebreathers with no bubbles to see if it could detect that so we're still in the first phase you know know, this is 40 minutes into testing on the very first day. And I'm in the water on the surface. And this is like, this is simple routine shit. Yeah, this is nothing. This is like the boringest day ever. And I had to get up at four o'clock in the morning for this shit. So it's end of February.

Oh, it's February 11th. So the start of February, which is the end of summer for us, it's probably the hottest season of the year. But it was kind of chilly. It was overcast. The water's murky in Sydney Harbour. So combining all of that, you can't see through the water at all. And I'm on one of my first runs towards one of the warships that I'm, you know, pretending to attack. And I look over my left shoulder to make sure that I'm going in the right direction

and before I can turn back I just get this massive whack in my leg like someone's hit me with a baseball bat and it didn't really hurt it was just surprising more than anything else and I turned around to see what it was thinking the guys in the boat maybe got too close I couldn't hear because I had water in my ears and I turn around and my brain couldn't comprehend what I was seeing because I'd never seen a shark's head up close in real life like that before and it took me a few seconds and I thought holy fuck it's a fucking shark and all these things ran through my head and I thought okay okay okay I've seen I've seen the crocodile hunter I've seen discovery channel I'll jab it in the eyeball right and so I tried to punch it in the face right is that a myth or is that like no that's like that people have said it works um I just thought eyeball

because that's the softest spot so I tried but I couldn't move my arm for some reason and I looked down and I could see all the teeth half embedded into my thigh. I could see the lips pulled back, all the pink gums and the teeth going all the way up my leg over my wrist, which was by my side. So it had my hand in its mouth, which is why I couldn't move it. And it's still at this point, it didn't hurt. I can see the teeth embedded in my hand. I just thought, okay, left hand. So I reached for the eyeball, but it had me by the back of the leg. And I was inches away from that eyeball, just desperately trying to get my finger in it, but I couldn't reach. So I tried to grab it by the nose and push it off,

sort of lever it off that way. But all that did was push the teeth of the lower jaw deeper into my hamstring. So I stopped that and I cocked back to give it a whack in the nose. And just as I was coming in, it started to shake me. And this all-encompassing pain rattled me to my core and all the strength went out of my punch. And I yelled and I think that's when the guys in the safety boat saw what was going on. And when it's shaking you, the lower jaw detaches, right? And it goes side to side. So it becomes like this sawing effect. Yeah, it's movable.

So yeah, it just basically was sawing the flesh out of my body. While I'm in agony, terrified, drowning, this is my worst nightmare. I was terrified of sharks. Really, the only two things I was scared of was sharks and public speaking uh so and now this is your life i know it's weird that's the way the universe works it out man yeah you know your your greatest fears can actually become your greatest strengths and that i think at the end that's really the theme of your of your whole story yeah you know you got to embrace that shit because you don't know you don't you're not fully aware of what you can accomplish if you're letting especially if you're letting fear hold

you back and to be confronted with that in the most vicious life-threatening way possible i mean it's just it's it's beyond imagination you know and and i've seen that there's photographs online you can see the pictures of your arm yeah the actual attack video is on youtube yeah yeah it looks like that i watched that and it's sort of like a loch ness monster thing because it's all like grainy and you're like what's actually going you can't really tell what's going on no um but those still photographs of your of your arm and and the back of your leg are just I mean and then I know when you get up a tight you tell you say like you show these pictures with some event and like 50 guys like passed out or yeah 50 over the years 53 people

have passed out 51 men only two women yeah I mean it's as gruesome as it comes i mean that image of your arm is i i almost wish i didn't see it it will haunt me forever i don't think i've had any pass out in america though i'm heading off to um atlanta to talk to ibm uh on sunday uh so i'm wondering if i'm going to get my first American casualty. I'm a little bit worried though, because you guys like to sue people. Oh, come on. You give the warning. I do. I give the warning. I make very lighthearted of it. We have a good time, but some people just- Just tell them to turn away. I do. One of the guys said he wasn't even watching. He said he just listened to me speaking

and he passed out. Well, maybe that guy needs to hear your message a little bit more than the rest, you know. But it's a lot of fun. Not that day though. That was not fun at all. So, there you are. These guys are hauling you out. You know, it's interesting that like fight or flight response, typically you hear that the pain comes later, you know, because the adrenaline is so, you know, on overdrive in that situation. But you are already that the pain comes later you know because the adrenaline is so you know on on overdrive in that situation but you are already feeling the pain i mean the the the amount of blood that you were losing i mean i it's it's shocking that you're alive like it's totally incredible that you didn't just bleed out yeah it's it's testament to what the human body is

capable of when you have these super capable guys you know exactly those guys ever to like you know deal with the situation and to be you know calm under fire yeah well one of the guys hadn't even slept that night he was actually hung over as hell passed out in the bottom of the boat can you imagine waking up to your buddy being eaten by a shark and having to do first aid one of the guys literally reached his hand in and like pinched an artery right yeah because they couldn't stop the bleeding they put a tourniquet on using the strap from a life jacket because we didn't have any medical equipment we didn't think it was going to be a day like that at all because this is where we work every day so one of the guys the new guy who i'd pulled out of the water earlier had to stick his hand inside my leg and pinch closed an artery.

Otherwise, I would have died. And it should have been that guy, right? You were like, you were swapping out for him, right? Well, everyone was saying that if it was him, there's no way he would have lived. He was much smaller than me. The shark would have killed him. So, maybe it was for a reason. You saved his life.

Well, unconsciously maybe. Depending maybe how you look at it yes uh all right so so your rush to the hospital they save your life you know walk me through this next phase of of you know this ordeal uh i remember i remember waking up at one point and looking down and seeing that my foot was still there and that was that was pretty a pretty big deal i thought you know i've seen my hands gone. I've processed that. There's nothing I can do about it. I'm a very realistic person. I generally don't let emotions get away with me. And I've used that as, I guess, a coping mechanism for quite some time. So, I'm just thinking, okay, hands gone. But if I can keep my leg,

then maybe life will go on as normal. Maybe I can keep this job that I love so much. And then I passed out again. And the next time I woke up, all my family and friends were there. And I had that, you know, worried, trying to be smiley, positive faces on. And I had tubes all down my throat so I couldn't talk. And they made up this board for me with letters so I could type- tap out the words I wanted to say. My first words were fucking shark,

which made them all laugh. But I was more about trying to ease their worry than anything else because I was drugged to the eyeballs so I couldn't feel anything. I was in a very jovial state. Yeah. And I still had my leg. They crushed you with Vicodin in the boat, right? No, we didn't feel anything i was in a very jovial state yeah and i still have my leg they crushed

you with vicodin in the in the boat right uh no we didn't have anything oh you had no nothing you had nothing in the boat no so the the pain went away basically as soon as the shark had ripped out my hamstring and ripped off my hand and swam away because it took all the nerves with it so i knew what was going on because i got to the surface and I started to try and swim back to the boat and I saw my hand was gone. Didn't know how bad my leg was because I couldn't move it. I was swimming back to the boat with one hand and one leg through a pool of my own blood.

I got my right arm above my heart to stem the bleeding. In that video, you can tell like you're swimming back to the boat. Yeah, with the stump of my arm out of the water trying to stem the bleeding above my heart yeah um and so and you you were able to maintain consciousness or did you pass out no i had to i had to get back to that boat i didn't think i was going to make it i thought the shark was going to come and kill me but the guys got to me i passed out once i got into the boat but then one of the guys thought i was going into cardiac arrest. So he started pummeling me in the heart, in the chest to wake me back up.

And it worked. And I woke up and I'm like, oh, hands freaking been eaten off by a shark. I look up and my buddy's beating the shit out of me. I'm just thinking today's bullshit. And the pain still didn't kick in at that point. I was cracking jokes. I was looking at my buddy saying, hey, so you reckon you can get someone to look after my motorbike? Because don't think i'm riding at home today and the pain didn't really

typical military guy you know what i mean but the human body is amazing that it has defense mechanisms that can that can put you into that kind of state to survive it's an incredible thing i was just trying to focus on anything except dying right and. And we should say, because I don't think we did, it was a nine foot bull shark. Yeah. Right. And what is it, you know, what's the difference between a bull shark and a great white? Bull sharks are generally smaller than great whites. They're much more aggressive. I was told by people that they have more testosterone than an adult bull elephant uh they will bite first ask questions later they will investigate with their mouth they like to live in murky waters uh they can live in salt water and fresh water and they're found all you know one of them was found 1500

kilometers or miles up the kentucky river i think it was um so all those years of going up thinking that swimming in the river you were safe oh they're there now I see them in a very different light right but we're gonna get into that yeah there's there's a lot of bull sharks in Sydney Harbour and we knew that were there they just never bothered us so eventually has there been any attacks in Sydney Harbour since? No, no. But the pain really didn't come on strong again until the ambulance got there. And then they started banging the morphine in. They gave me so much they couldn't give me anymore and I was still in agony. But my blood was at such a low level that I didn't have any oxygen. I didn't have any energy. And I was physically having trouble making my chest go up and down so I could suck in air.

So I had to get coached through that as well because I actually thought I was going to die from suffocation. But that didn't happen either, thankfully. I had some good paramedic coaches helping me breathe. coaches helping me breathe. And I spent a week in hospital with my leg thinking and hoping that I might be able to keep it. But every day my foot got a little bit darker and a little less lifelike. And I started to prepare myself mentally and emotionally for having to lose it. And the surgeon came in one day and broke it all down for me, told me exactly what was going on with the leg. You know, 25 centimeters of the sciatic nerve was gone. The whole hamstring was gone. I would never be able to move it or feel it again,

but I could keep it. And I just thought, there's no way. I don't want to carry that unfeeling, unmoving lump of wood around with me. You're just going to limp around. Yeah. I'm going to have this huge chunk missing out of the back of my leg. My fitness will suffer. My motivation, my happiness will suffer. And I don't want that. I just want to get on with life. And so I decided to have the leg removed.

And that was pretty bad, actually. Afterwards, I went to a- I remember you said, like like they had you all jacked up on ketamine and you were like, turn me into the Terminator. That was my mindset. I'm just like, doc, take my leg and turn me into the Terminator. Well, two things. First of all, you kind of are the Terminator because you have these incredibly badass, you know, appendages now that are, I mean, you're literally the bionic man yeah you know like those are some high-end yeah this is the best is it yeah i'm very lucky i'm thankful i don't have to pay for it the leg is uh i think two hundred thousand dollars uh it's got a running mode it's

waterproof um really really good stuff it's got six micro processors in it i don't know what any of that shit does but when you shook my hand like your fingers yeah yeah it closes so you have it's good and how do you control how does that is there like uh something on the end of your it's all in the socket wow so the hand is all the mechanics in the socket that goes up to my elbow there's the brain they call it um the batteries like a two little phone batteries and then two sensors, one on the top on the inside and one on the bottom on the inside of the socket and they press against my skin. They're in exact spots where I have strong forearm muscle activation. So, if I say I pretend to make

a fist and then I pull my fist back towards the top of my arm and flex that top arm muscle, that activates the hand to open. If I want to close it, I flex it the other way, force it down, and it closes. Wow. Did it take a little while to wire your brain to be able to send those signals properly and make it function? Yeah. And because I hadn't used them in so long, your muscles cramp up because you're constantly trying to flex them. And then you can't rub them out because you've got this hard carbon fiber socket over it. So, a lot of painful days with the leg muscles cramping up

that you can't get to. And are there like foundations that pay for that? Like, how does that all work? I was military. So, the military paid for it to begin with. And then once I left the military three years later, veteran affairs started looking after it. So, I've been very lucky. Right. All right. So So the other thing I wanted to mention is, you know, and you, and you recounting this, you're like, I just wanted to get on with my life. That's, I have to believe that on some level, that's a function of the mental and emotional training that you received in military, because the more predictable human response would be like, I don't want to live or like, you know,

just more of a giving up kind of impulse. I think the drugs helped. I'm not going to lie. The ketamine mixed with morphine. I think you're right, but it more so came into play about two days later because immediately after I had my leg removed, they couldn't control the pain.

They were jacking me up on so many drugs and nothing was stopping the pain. I was jacked up on ketamine, going down the K-hole. I was on morphine. They put me back in general population instead of the little quiet corner I was in. So all I could see was this curtain around my bed, my legs gone in agony, my hands gone.

I can hear all these voices in visiting hour the guy in the bed next to me sounded like he was dying i'm tripping out i'm in agony and all i wanted to do was die i in those 20 hours of pain that lasted in those 20 hours all i wanted to do was die i wished that the shark had killed me. I even asked my mum to go and find me a gun so I could kill myself. This was my absolute lowest point ever in my life. And I wouldn't wish this feeling on another human soul. But fortunately, I got through it. I got through the 20 hours. And after that, I was laying in my bed thinking, okay, what now? What am I going to do? And it was just such a complicated situation, but I hate complicated situations because they're too bloody complicated. I like things to be

simple. And I feel like a lot of times in our lives, we overcomplicate things when most things can be broken down to a simple choice. So I made a simple choice. What do I want? Do I want a good life or do I want a bad life? It's the fundamental choice that you get to have. What do I want? That's our power. It's the only real power we have is our choice. So I thought, okay, well, obviously I want a good life because no one's willingly going to go and have a bad life unless you're special. So I'm thinking good life. Okay. How do I do that? What am I going to do? I can't even get up out of this bed. How am I going to fast rope out of a helicopter? They're never going to let me play with explosives. My whole career is based on the fact that I can do anything

that these people ask me to do. And now I can't. So what am I going to do? And I thought, well, I can sit here and I can cry myself to sleep and I can wallow in my self-pity and say, poor Paul, oh, woe is me. And I can get addicted to my amazing pain meds that I was self-administering. I get addicted to my amazing pain meds that I was

self-administering. I could push all of this love and support that I was being given away. And people from around the world I didn't even know were sending me letters of support. I could just reject it all. Or I could do what the military trained me to do. I could pick myself up, dust myself off and get on with the job. I could use all of that love and support that I was being given, use that as a tool. And I could look at the great things I still had in my life and the great things I still had yet to achieve and have a good life. It seems like you ran that calculus in an incredibly compressed period of time, because when you listen to other

people that have suffered the loss of limbs or you know whether it's you know veterans coming back from battle like they eventually a lot of them you know the ones that you hear about who are out inspiring the world like they eventually get to that place but more often than not there's months you know or long extended periods of time where there is that wallowing in the self-pity and all of that before they can kind of get it together to move forward. Yeah, well, I knew the hardest part was still to come. So I didn't have time to waste on all that deciding bullshit. Like I said, I'm a very realistic person. And I just I knew what I wanted to do because I was scared.

I was really scared of losing my career and everything that I felt completed my identity. So I needed to work straight away. Two days after I had my leg chopped off, I'm trying to train in my bed. I'm doing one-arm chin-ups on the bar above my bed when the doctor walks in. And he's like, what the fuck are you doing? You're going to blow out your stitches. But there was no way I was going to stop. I had a goal.

I had a huge, big, ridiculous goal of being allowed to go back to work. And did you make like a conscious decision to maybe compartmentalize, is not the right word, but to sort of train yourself to focus on that forward path and not dwell? Was it like a second nature thing because of the training that you had? Or was it like a practice that you had to kind of, you know, cajole yourself into getting into that frame of mind? I had to remind myself a lot. And one of the reminders was exactly what we were talking

about before, remembering how low I had been in the past, remembering the days of sitting on the couch day after day, stoned out of my brain, remembering what it's like to live in a house with no electricity, no running water, you know, and swearing to yourself that you will not go back to that. Anything is better than that. So you just work your ass off. Right. And you said that you regret all that time wasted as a kid but now you're relying on that memory to empower you forward exactly it's a duality of life isn't it you you needed that experience in order for you to weather this storm it's funny how life works out so you you sort of launch yourself immediately into this rehab situation and you're like doing push-ups and all kinds of crazy stuff like right away right they kept trying to slow me down

my doctor actually whenever he he gave me um because i had to keep continue going in for new surgeries had another surgery on my hand, another surgery, another three surgeries on my leg. And he would double the amount of time he told me that I had to recover and not do PT because he knew I was going to half it and try and heal twice as fast. So, I spent nine weeks in hospital training the whole time. My family and friends were amazing. They brought me weights and protein powders. And I sweet talked the nurses into giving me double rations because i needed i'd lost 10 kilos in 10 seconds so i needed to bulk up and get strong again um and i read constantly i had to keep my mind active so that i wouldn't dwell on the bullshit i knew that was going to be the biggest thing so what were you reading um i was reading dan

millman's um peaceful warrior That's a great book. Yeah, amazing. That really changed my perception. A very good friend of mine, Tanya Morrison, gave me that. And what did you get out of that? What was the applicable tool that you extracted from that book? It was the idea that you are limitless, that your mind is far more powerful than anything you can imagine and you need to listen to it. You have to listen to your body as well, obviously, when you've got injuries and you

know what that's like after doing five Ironman, but your mind is the hammer, your body is the nail. If you can remain motivated and positive through your mind reminding yourself that you're limitless and you are strong and you can do things that you tell yourself you can't do you know that's you telling your brain instead of your brain telling you that you can achieve all this shit so just trust in in it. And if you say to yourself, I can do this, I'm going to do this, just fucking do it. Don't think too much about it. Don't dwell. Because that's when you let doubt creep in.

But also the sense that you are not your body and you are not your mind. I mean, The Peaceful Warrior is very much a spiritual book. I mean, there's some crazy out there shit in that book. You know what I mean? yeah you know i mean there's some crazy out there shit in that book you know what i mean that that has you uh thinking more broadly about what consciousness is and and what the kind of you know your universal flow of energy means and how to kind of leverage that yeah it's been a few years since i read that book i need to touch that again uh he's done a few since then as well hasn't he yeah but it just it got me on the path to where I needed to be.

Instead of worrying about what was to come, I was setting goals and challenges for what was to come. And I was worried about the pity and the people staring and not having a hand and a leg. And so when you worry and you do that you do something about it so i got onto the internet they wanted the navy wanted me to talk to a counselor and i didn't want to talk to some person i didn't know about how i was feeling because i already knew how i was feeling shit i didn't want to talk about it i just wanted to know that that's like a classic

classic military cop trope like in cop shows you know and there's a shooting and then they make them go talk to the shrink and they don't want to say anything yeah but i it wasn't like an alpha male thing it wasn't that i didn't want to deal with it it was just that i was already dealing with it i already knew what i needed to do so i didn't need to waste time talking to someone about it so i got onto youtube and i got onto google and i used technology to help me. The wealth of the world's knowledge is in a few keystrokes. So, I started Googling what is the greatest prosthetics in the world, what hands are out there, what legs are out there. And I got onto YouTube and I started

watching these videos of Paralympic athletes doing ridiculously amazing things. And that started to give me hope that if they can do it, there's no reason that I can't do it as well. I'm going to have the military in my corner paying for these prosthetics. So I might as well try and get the best that I can. And so what have I got to worry about? And I would presume that when you're in this rehabilitation phase, you're in some kind of center where there's a lot of other veterans that are dealing with something similar right no no we didn't it's not like america we don't have a huge big military hospitals it was a wing of the general public hospital so there wasn't anybody else kind of going through the same thing that you were going through that you could at least connect with and

i was the only one yeah everyone else this was a huge story in australia when it happened i mean this was like a major yeah it went all over the world i was getting letters from kids in germany and france and italy um but yeah it was pretty massive um because like we said that no one had been attacked in sydney harbor in 60 years um so there was media all over it. And luckily, my family were dealing with that. At the end of the nine weeks in hospital, 60 Minutes came and wanted to do a story. I did two of those. The reporter became a very good friend of mine.

We went and dove with sharks together. But after six months, I went back to the Navy and asked them if I could go back to work and they said no. I said to go to the diving teams, you have to be deployable for war and obviously you're not deployable for war. I said, well, look, I get that. That's fine. I'm not as swift on my feet anymore and my trigger finger doesn't work all the time. So, what I can do though is I can go and pass on this knowledge that you've given to me. And, you know, the movie Men of Honor with Cuba Gooding Jr.

and Robert De Niro, that's like a staple. And so I'm just like, he went and taught diving. I'll just go and teach diving. This is me rationalizing it in my head. Like, oh, I'll just go and work at the diving school. Watching that movie over and over again. Yeah, exactly. And so. Like, oh, I'll just go and work at the doctor. Watching a movie over and over again. Yeah, exactly. And so they said, oh, okay, well, look, you can go and teach at the school three half days a week.

So I went five full days a week and just didn't leave. And I really felt that I needed to prove myself and prove that I deserve to be there. So I just busted my ass every day. And I did that for three years and I was literally killing myself. It was so hard trying to keep up with everyone. Also, maintain my training and the long hours we were doing, we'd be at work at six o'clock in the morning sometimes, finish at two o'clock in the morning and then have to be back there at six. And it was just wiping me out. And I went to my boss at the dive school one day and asked him what the chances of me moving back to the dive teams or somewhere else for divers

was and he said zero and so that was when i decided that i was going to leave the military and that was terrifying how long ago was that? That was, I left August 2012 officially. I stayed part of the Navy Reserve diving team and continued to do work with them, but it was on my own terms. Right. And the idea then, I mean, are you looking at like, okay, I mean, you have all this sort of notoriety in Australia, right?

Yeah, not by that stage. You know, this is three years later. So all of the media stuff had settled down a bit. But I did get asked. I'd started speaking a little bit and nothing terrified me more than that. And I turned down speaking jobs while I was in the Navy. But a group called Canteen, which is a group for kids with cancer. They asked me to talk to their kids at a camp and I just thought, well, I don't want to, but how do you say no to kids

with cancer? So I thought, all right. And I put this little presentation together and I went in and did it. And I made these kids laugh and I made them forget that they were sick and forget that they grew up in a hospital ward and it made me feel so good to make them feel so good and it was this realization and I wanted that feeling again you know it was like serving my country coming home and and feeling like oh my god that was amazing I walked out of that room feeling on top of the world and so i went from there to my old school i did 30 kids and then went to 1200 at my old school which was a terrifying again but were some of the same teachers there yeah yeah they're like this guy me around the school like it's like i always knew paul had built something great i'm like dude you used to kick me in my ass and where's your dad in

this whole thing um dad's still back in canberra at that point um no actually he was um he was working in abu dhabi uh in the uae so he was working for customs um uh integrating a lot of their computer systems so they'd talk to each other um mom was still in canberra things with your i mean oh a long time ago yeah no we around my sister's sister's 18th birthday party, me and a few other army boys rode down on our motorbikes and we sat around and I had a few beers with my dad for the first time and we squashed it all.

That's so Australian. But, yeah, it was just a moment came when I was talking to those 1,200 kids at my old school and my mum had come and my best friend had come and I stopped halfway through. And before I went on stage, the principal was talking, everyone, all the kids are coughing and spluttering and talking and you can't hear anything. And then I get up to talk and halfway through I stop and it's dead silent. I stop and it's dead silent. Like you can't hear a single thing. You could literally hear a pin drop. And I looked at my friend and he's like wide-eyed looking around going, holy fuck, this is crazy. And so I continued on and it just gave me this, I don't know, this sense that I was making a difference in all of their lives at once. And that made me feel pretty amazing.

And maybe I can help them through some of the crap that I went through and guide them around the obstacles. So I continued on and I just started getting paying jobs and it turned into this whole big career. And that's why I felt comfortable leaving the military. I was still terrified because I didn't know, long are you the flavor flavor of the month how long is this do i want to be 10 years down the track you know like dying out on this story for it you know exactly so i was a little worried about once it all fizzled out what i was going to do um i just

figured oh well i can't live in sydney my pension, but I could probably live in Vietnam like a king. So that's still my fallback plan. Yeah, but the irony is that quite the opposite has occurred. And I think there's something beautiful and magical about what happens when you give yourself over to service. Right. I mean, obviously, this this impulse to serve is nourishing you and giving you a sense of purpose and fulfillment, you know, perhaps on an even more profound, deeper level than anything you had done prior. And to trust that and to say, like, I'm just going to keep I'm going to keep doing this. And when you're in that spirit and action of giving of yourself for the betterment of others, In my experience and what I've seen with other people, the universe shows up for you. Oh, 100%.

I've become a firm believer in whatever you want to call it, the universe, karma. Everything great that I have in my life now is because of things that I've done selflessly. And it's people like, well, you can't just do things to get things back now that you know that. And I'm like, I know. I know I don't.

I actually really, really enjoy doing things and expecting nothing. I like to help people that I know will never be able to do anything for me. I walk my dog, for instance, down this little laneway down at Marina Del Rey and there's rubbish everywhere. And I hate it. It bothers me so much. There's cigarette butts. And so, I started picking up the cigarette butts. I take one of my doggy bags, the poop bags, and I start picking up all the rubbish all along this little walkway. And now, I walk down there and it's clean and it's amazing. And the last day that I did it, I got down to the beach and I met this guy and he gave me free tickets to the comedy store. You know, just little thank yous along the way.

Yeah. Karma coming quick. Yeah, exactly. And now I have this, I would not change a thing. I wouldn't take my hand and my leg back to have my old life back. That's the amazing thing. So, you like, that was what I wanted to kind of work towards. Like this idea that this gratitude that you have for that experience, as opposed to, you know, why me? Yeah. I don't know if I'd call it gratitude, but it definitely. But gratitude for the life that you get to live.

The gratitude for the life I have right now. It's ridiculous i live in la did you know that i did know that i live down in marina deray i know i have a view of the ocean and i gotta tell you i was i was in bondi last year and i was like this is pretty good yeah i was like i could definitely hang out here yeah you can see why i was living my dream yeah at that point and i i still love i'm heading back to Bondi in a couple of weeks to do some speaking jobs. I love it there, but this is America. This is like everything you see in the movies.

Like I was watching Goliath with- what's the guy's name? Used to date Angelina Jolie. It's a series with Billy Ray Thornton. Billy Ray Thornton, is that his name? Billy Bob Thornton. Billy Bob Thornton. And they're filming this show called Goliath all through Santa Monica. And I'm like, oh, I go there to drink. Oh, I go there to eat. And it's just, it's such a surreal experience coming from a tiny little town in Australia to living in LA. And I ride my bike along Venice Beach with the dog and I train at Gold's.

I talk to Arnold Schwarzenegger at the gym most mornings. Yeah, he's there all the time. Yeah. He's nice. Does Luke Ferrigno still show up? I haven't seen him yet, but apparently he comes. Mickey Rourke was there the other day. That gym is so crazy.

I used to live on Marine and 4th, like right around the corner from there a long time ago. And I would go there and there's so much history, you know, it's like, this is the birthplace of bodybuilding. It's just packed with like so much, so much of that is just bred into the DNA of that place. And yeah, there's Arnold, like these people come in, but there's also this weird thing where, you know, it's like the same people, they clock in at like nine in the morning and they clock out at five like they're there all

day yeah and it's this weird like mishmash of like porn set meets prison yard you know what i mean and everything in between it's a little like yeah yeah i've got this buddy down there who used to be a celebrity bodyguard um a tall black guy. I think he's like 65, 70. And he had a stroke and he can barely move one side of his body. And he's still there every day. He can barely move between the machines without falling over. But he's there working out.

There's young, there's old, there's fat, there's skinny. There's such a melting pot of people. And it's inspiring just to be there. Without all the celebrities and stuff, there's people just there because they want to work on their fitness and they want to be strong and healthy and they want to make their lives better. Yeah. And you're always posting those Instagram videos. Yeah. Well, they're all filmed by Arnold's training partner. He wanted to follow me around and make a mini doco out of my training. That's cool.

And my friend, Mike Ryan, who's a trainer there, he's always on my ass about my- He's like, oh, you know how the shark stuff is good, but have you noticed how all your views peak when you do some workout stuff? So, I'm like, all right, I'll test this out. And he was right. right. I get a lot of views on the workout stuff and people write to me asking questions about my prosthetic arm and my weightlifting arm and how I use my leg to train and do squats and stuff. Have you ever gone in and worked with veterans that are kind of in the early phases of dealing with what you've been dealing with? Yeah. Back in Australia, I did. I went and worked with the Soldier Recovery Center in Brisbane. I was actually dating a Navy nurse a few years back now down in San Diego,

and she worked at one of the hospitals down there. And I used to go in and chat to some of the wounded guys still in the hospital beds. But not lately. I don't like to force myself on groups or people because I know that there's a lot of people that want to get involved and they're always bothering the veteran services. And I don't like to be like that. If people asked me to go and help, I would do it no problem at all. But I'm not good at asking, hey, do you want me, little old Paul DeGelder from Australia to come in? I'm surprised they haven't asked you. Like, I was thinking like, oh, well, you know, there's so many veterans in the u.s that are dealing well there's

so many veterans in the u.s that have overcome so much um you know people like marcus latrell right um and noah galloway um there's a huge group of these people that are doing just incredible things for their veteran community and their injured veterans as well. So, I think they probably have their coffers full, but that's not to say I would never turn them down. Right. So, you're in this incredible situation. You get to speak to all these groups and travel all over the world. Like, what was the impetus to come to the United States?

Like, how did that all come about? I was doing lots of speaking in Australia and Discovery Channel asked me for an interview one year and I saw, yeah, it's just another interview, whatever. By that stage, I was quite comfortable in front of the camera. It wasn't a big deal. And they liked it and they liked it so much, they flew me out to LA to go on the late night talking show during shark week called shark after dark and I guess they that was me and Mark Cuban

were on the couch together and I guess they liked that because they gave me a co-hosting job the next year with this this insane cameraman called Andy Cusagrande. This guy, the things he does, man, the things he's, we've done together now. I saw my first great white shark with him. I did my first cage diving with great white sharks with him in the same show in the same two weeks of filming. They like that so much. They gave me another one and another one to the point where I was out here having some meetings a couple of years ago about TV shows and my managers said everyone out here loves you everyone knows who you are but you're not here you need to be here if you want this to grow and so I thought all right and I went home and I thought about it and I broke up with my girlfriend and decided to move to America okay she was holding me back anyway so romantic yeah well you know she didn't

she didn't want to move to America so many things she didn't want to do and I just wanted to continue to grow as a person and with a career and so I decided I'm just going to move to America and then a month after I made that decision I was still in. I got an offer by Nat Geo Wild to have my own show. And I just thought, holy shit, how is this happening? It just keeps getting better and better. And so we talked to Discovery because I was doing some shows with them. And they said, no, you can't go work with our competitor. So I decided, well, do I want my own show?

Or do I want to stay with my loyalties to discovery and stay on shark week and i just thought you know what i talked to everyone who got everyone's opinion and i decided to stay with discovery and they gave me three shows a year for two years a working visa in america development money for my own show and so I just I moved to America and I Airbnb'd between Sydney and America for 18 months and finally got a place three months ago and now I'm just waiting for a green light for one of my shows to get cleared I'm working on another show with one of your friends can't talk about it no I can't talk about it yet. But he's what an amazing dude. If we can pull this off, it would be not just good for me and him,

but the main focus is it'll be good for a small subsection of the community, which is the best part. And now it's just getting bigger and bigger. I just got signed to one of the biggest speaking bureaus in the world. So I'm out here for the long term, man. I love this place. Americans are so sweet. They're so welcoming. I just had two days ago, I was having lunch with my girlfriend

and a couple secretly paid for my lunch. Wow. That does happen in Australia. Yeah. I think I've been thanked for my service three times there. And it's not that you expect it. It's not even that you want it. It's just that it's very sweet for people to say it still.

And so I still appreciate that because we've never had it before. Right. And you're part of this Shark Week ecosystem, which is just massive. Yeah. That's like a cultural phenomenon here. It's such a big deal. But I want to explore the evolution of you being someone who is victimized by a shark to being somebody who, you know, basically now advocates for shark preservation and the, you know, the ecological implications of, you know, our relationship as human beings to sharks. Well, it's the right thing to do.

it's the right thing to do and ever since i joined the military my focus has been more on serving and doing the right thing and you know i've been trained as a protector so i see now that i'm not a soldier anymore um that's not my job but my job is to protect and to serve. And I see a lot of wrongs being done against our planet, against the environment, against the oceans, and especially against sharks. And over the years, out of necessity, I had to learn a lot about that because every time there was a shark attack in Australia, guess who the media turned to? I'm going to call you up. Yeah. And you're the guy who's typing, you know, fucking shark with one finger or whatever you know like from the hospital bed and now you're like the spokesperson for sharks exactly um and so everyone was asking me how I got into sharks and I was like it was out of necessity I had to how did you get into sharks you didn't have a

choice sharks were into you it got onto me yeah but i didn't want to get on tv and sound like a dumbass and so i started to do my research and i started to talk to the conservation groups and learn from them sea shepherd and um a bunch of others that are out there sharks for kids out of the bahamas is an amazing one for kids um and so i learned and i learned and as we know knowledge dispels fear so break down the situation with respect to shark preservation like how do we treat sharks what's the problem you know what are we doing wrong you know for somebody who has no context for this other than like i'm scared of sharks or i know that sharks are threatened and certain people eat sharks or whatever like what's actually going on there's a lot of smaller satellite problems involved with

sharks such as people actually fishing for them for sport fishing them to eat there's the drum lines and the shark nets just kills but that's the big one this is the drumlines and the shark nets. Yeah, the trawling just kills tons of them, right? But that's the big one. This is the commercial fishing is the major contributor, legal and illegal. So Sea Shepherd, I think last year, found a Chinese trawler with 1,500 tons of shark fins on board. Just the fins. Just the fins.

Just the fins. So they were catching all these sharks, slicing the fins off, then throwing the carcasses overboard. And there's over 100 million sharks killed a year in the ocean. That's unbelievable. And some of these sharks, they don't reproduce quickly. Some of the ones that they fish for actually take 35 years to fully mature before they can have pups so the birth rate is so slow and the kill rate is so high 90 percent of all the oceans large fish have been wiped out and so explain how it works with commercial fishing though they

they drape these gigantic nets there's there's two ways that they do it um the way you're talking about where they yeah they like football field size nets they just drag them through the ocean floor picking up everything just totally destroying coral reefs and habitats for fish uh catching whales dolphins sharks seals everything indiscriminately. And it's all dead. And anything that they don't want. So they'll have a quota, a certain amount of fish that they've been asked to catch. Like they're trying to catch tuna or whatever. Exactly. And if they've got 10 tons of tuna and 20 tons of everything else, they'll just throw the rest of that away a lot of the time until they can get more tuna.

It's all dead. So it's just waste. call it they literally call it waste um and then they've got the monofilament nets as well where they will lay them on the bottom of the ocean maybe um two kilometers at a time there's probably about 200 kilometers worth of these monofilament nets surrounding Australia every day. And they stand about six metres high and they catch everything that swims into them indiscriminately and kill it. And then they do the same thing. So it's the commercial fishing. That's why Richard Oppenlander calls fishing by its definition as overfishing.

Yeah. Sustainable fishing is a myth is overfishing. Yeah. There is no... Sustainable fishing is a myth. You cannot sustainably fish. And people think, well, I'm just going to... On a commercial level. I'm going to eat these farmed salmon. Holy shit. Do you know how bad they are for you?

They're full of bacteria, diseases. They're full of antibiotics to get them out of the diseases. The salmon actually have to be fed dye pellets so they have that pink color because they're like dirty, muddy brown if they don't because they're not eating their natural food. A lot of them are eating pig shit out of China. And now they're going to be genetically modified. Yeah. Yeah, that's safe. So explain the role of the shark as the apex predator in the ocean and why the shark is so important to maintaining a proper ecosystem. They keep the balance.

And the easiest way I've found to explain this to people who don't quite understand, and that was me for a long time, so I know what you're getting at, saying apex predator and they keep the balance and they're good for the ecosystem. It's a lot of words that don't really mean a lot to most people. So I'll give you an example. There's a lot of them and there was a town in America, I can't remember what it was, and they fished all of the sharks out because they were eating the food that they wanted to catch, the fishermen, sorry. So they fished all of the sharks out. There was no sharks to eat the rays. The rays decimated the mollusk population and destroyed the mussel and scallop industry. Wow. So all of those people were all out of work, all lost their jobs, all their boats were wasted,

lost their homes because they couldn't pay their mortgages because they killed the sharks. And they think at the time they're doing the right thing in the best interest of enhancing their ability to, you know, increase their yields. Exactly. It's that classic human hubris of thinking like, oh, you know, we just take care of this one thing and we'll solve the problem without appreciating the cascading effect of those kinds of decisions. It comes back. It always comes back onto us in an untold effect. That's the thing. That's why every time we mess with nature, we're disrupting it all.

And so what's going on like in Australia with the Great Barrier Reef and the sort of decline of- I don't want to slam my head on the table. I mean, it's insane. It's reaching a tipping point if it hasn't already passed it. These mining and oil companies as well keep trying to put a mining route directly through the Great Barrier Reef. It's just amazing that that would even be considered. They want to put an oil rig in the Great Australian Bight, which is the big bite looking thing at the bottom of australia it is

a massive whale sanctuary there is so much life out there and they just want to put this big old rig out there and do blast testing and destroy the sonars of the whales and the dolphins and everything living out there so all of the citizens are having to fight this because the government is just yeah let's make money they've slashed the country's marine parks by 50% the biggest cut of marine park protected marine parks ever that's happened under our new prime minister and they're putting out nets and drum lines to pretend that they're protecting the swimmers yeah it's amazing you know it's interesting in the context of diet when people say well you know i'm pretty much like on your page rich but you know i like fit i eat fish or whatever and fish seems harmless in the context of thinking of

sentient beings because you can't see them yeah or yeah it's just like oh well you know cows are one thing pigs are one thing but like fish is in a different category but when you fully appreciate the impact of commercial fishing and what it's doing to our planet it's just it's indefensible yeah and it's wrong now as well like the science has shown that fish have complicated social groups they They have a centralized nervous system. They have memories. They're a lot more than we thought they were than the dumb goldfish memory thing.

They feel pain. And talking to, well, talking about you, you never really got the chance to talk to you earlier, but talking about you to John Joseph and another friend of mine Ian Norrington who's a Brit in Australia. Is he the bodyguard guy that John initially like he was the connect between you two guys. He was yeah he reached out to me in the early days saying hey I read it all about you you have quite an impact on the community You could make it even more drastic if you thought about going plant-based.

And the seed had already been planted by a guy called Damien Mander. Yeah, I know Damien. Well, I don't know him personally, but I know his story is incredible. Yeah, he's an amazing man. And him and I worked in the same Navy department, the clearance divers. And I went out there to Africa to film a documentary for nat geo and i embedded with his anti-poaching unit we went out hunting poachers and i did the the shooting training and unarmed combat and all that stuff and he his meals were always separate from the rangers i mean what

are you eating dude he's like oh i'm i'm a vegan i was like what's that? And he said, well, I don't eat anything that's from an animal. And I said, oh, okay. Why do you do that for? He said, well, because I felt like a hypocrite. I was out here protecting the animals and eating the animals. And me being the rational guy that I am, I'm like, yeah, okay. That makes sense. Totally totally how are you still so huge i know so explain who damien mander is for people that first of all damien did an incredible ted talk everybody should watch i'll put it in the show notes uh but i mean this guy is a fucking badass he's a monster uh and so he was a navy clearance diver like me he went over and joined that special forces group that I told you about, the tactical assault group. Then when he got bored with the military, he became a private military contractor out in Iraq.

And he did probably 12, 13 tours of that place. And then just got sick of the death and the poverty and the anger and the hate. And he went on safari looking for a new cause. And on safari in Africa, they came across a rhino with its face hacked off. And he just thought, okay, this is my cause. This is why I came here. I was meant to be here to see this, to help make this stop. So against every known possibility, this giant white man from Australia went to Africa and managed to get together these group of people and convince them to be rangers instead of poaching the animals.

And it's turned into this, you know, a beast of its own right. You know, a beast of its own right. And where he's just started the, I can never pronounce it, the Ashkavinga. This group of women, the first women anti-poaching rangers ever. And they're out there hunting the poachers, protecting the animals selflessly. You know, he sold all of his homes in Australia to get the money to put this together. He lives very, not poorly. What's what i'm looking for minimally minimally with him and his wife and his child and went and lived at their house and it was kind of

perfect at the end of the day we sat back in his hammock and had a beer and listened to the hippos sing 100 meters away in the creek near his house and listen to the crocodiles. And it was one of the times that I actually did feel a little bit threatened in my life because it was nighttime and I needed to go to the toilet, but the toilet was on the other side of this dark patch away from the house. And I was literally thinking everything here wants to eat me. I'm not sure i need to go to the toilet that bad but what he did really was take this special forces sensibility and apply that to a world where he could make a difference that has traditionally you know people of his mindset they've been like you know kind of the tree huggers right yeah you know sort of very you

know left wing hippies yeah exactly and he comes in with all his training and his you know sort of very you know left wing hippies yeah exactly and he comes in with all his training and his you know ability to like make shit happen in a very real way he basically created a paramilitary group out of these ranges yeah like he they're not fucking around nope they're legally allowed to shoot poachers on site yeah it's amazing i didn't know that you i didn't know that you knew him yeah yeah we've spent a bit of time together. He's a good man. Yeah. And I think he, you know, because of who he is and his background, he, you know, he's a powerful figure because I think he's somebody that like a dude, you know, like a, like a type A personality guy can look to and realize like, oh, you know, being plant-based,

like being quote unquote, like compassionate can take the form of somebody like that, oh, you know, being plant-based, like being quote unquote, like compassionate can take the form of somebody like that, that, that, that, you know, like an average guy can look to a guy like that and say, you know, I want to be like that guy. I relate to that person. Yeah. I take great pride when people see me working out in the gym and I'm doing chin-ups with 70 pound dumbbell around my waist or this morning I was doing 120 pound dumbbell presses and they come they always come over for a chat because you rarely see a half robot dude lifting weights so and it's gold so everyone talks to each other and they all come over and have a chat and they're like oh you know how are you so fit and

you're ripped and blah blah and I say well it actually started and became more prevalent when i went vegan a year and a half ago and that blows their mind they're like what what steroids are you on i'm like broccoli yeah it's this new steroid called spinach so it's been a year and a half yeah and so it was damien and john and and in ian were the main influences all played their part yeah and it just kept i tried it once and i failed dismally because i went in unprepared and then um i gave it another go a few months later and i went um because i was the sort of guy that i had to eat all the chickens in the world i had to get all that protein into me to get the muscles and i know they never delivered I never had big muscles I just couldn't

put weight on it didn't didn't work and so I thought okay well I'll cancel out red meat I did that pretty easily cancel out white meat did that pretty easily because I still had my beloved fish I love seafood I grew up spearfishing with my grandfather and eating stingray and all that so that was the big one um that and eggs I was lactose intolerant when i was 15 so dairy wasn't a problem i stole money from the poor box at church and so god smoted me because i bought chocolate with his god money um so lactose intolerant since i was a teenager and so eggs and seafood and i got rid of the seafood but it was was the eggs. It was like, okay, this is my last. This is my final source of protein.

I must protect it. And then I learned so much about all the other sources of protein. And now eggs literally gross me out. And what is the impact then on your training and recovery? What recovery? I don't need any recovery. I train every day in some form or fashion. I haven't had a serious injury since I started in over a year and a half. It was almost

like it just happened instantly. The modern day meal that most people have is so much now a huge chunk of meat. That's sort of how we value our meal. Okay, my meal's big enough because I have this huge chunk of meat in it and then a little bit of veggies or it's like pasta with meat all through it and no veggies at all. And now that I don't have that distraction of the animal products, I'm so much healthier. I have so many more nutrients because i'm eating all of these vegetables that i never ate before like who knew spaghetti squash was incredible all right i make that stuff all the time i make tofu scramble it looks exactly like eggs but tastes better when you add all the the veggies and uh hot sauce and it's and just I by no means starving I'm by no means grossed out by the food

I eat I make gourmet meals my girlfriend is not a vegan at all but I cook most of the time and she's at my house all the time right so she's eating vegan yeah she's over yeah basically you know my breakfast every day I actually look forward to going home after the gym because I make this bowl I call Magic Oats. I discovered probably the best vegan protein on the planet. It's better than any whey protein I've ever had by a company called High Performance Nutrition. I'm not sponsored by them or anything, but it's banana maple french toast flavor and my my smoothie bowls are probably 80 broccoli and spinach and you can put just one scoop of this stuff in and it tastes like gold yeah i get some some pb2 and some chia seeds and some buckwheat and just combine it all

together a big scoop of almond butter and it makes me happy every time i eat it yeah so when you're at the gym and and you tell these guys well i went vegan or and then and then they ask you where you get your protein or like how does that conversation usually go i didn't really think that it was going to happen as much as everyone makes fun of it about happening you know what i mean like everyone's like oh where'd you get your protein and you see the memes all the time on Instagram. Oh, where'd you get your protein? I was like, oh, that's just whatever. They don't really say that all the time. Here they do.

Yeah. The funny thing is it's in What the Health actually. And the doctor says, I've never in my whole career had someone come in dying of a lack of protein or a protein deficiency. Yeah. I think that was garth davis yeah yeah um so i get it in food like same place the cows and the gorillas and you get yours from i just don't get it from meat because it's not good for you it's interesting that cruel that your life keeps getting better as you are removing things from your life first

you have to remove these limbs you know now you're removing animal products it just keeps getting better as you are removing things from your life. First you had to remove these limbs. Now you're removing animal products. It just keeps getting better. So you live your own kind of version of minimalism. It's a different kind. Yeah. It's just going to be me and the dog soon. Yeah.

Shed the girlfriend. Shed the meat products. Gained America. And I'm strong. And I feel good not just in body, but I feel good in my soul. I live a whole life where nothing has to die for me to live. And simply because it's unnecessary. It doesn't have to happen. and i would assume that most of your

listeners are probably vegans veganish not necessarily no i mean this show you know look i have lots of people on that are plant-based but i have lots of other people on too i mean there's a lot of vegan plant-based people that listen but i wouldn't categorize it as a vegan podcast like there's all kinds of people that listen um i i just got to a point where I realized a lot of these things I did because I was misinformed or I felt like I had to because I was a man and I'm a soldier and I had to keep up that illusion. I'm so comfortable in who I am now. I don't need to prove myself anymore. I served my country in two different branches of the service. I survived a shark attack.

I go and do volunteer work and charity work. I can wear a pink shirt if I want and I can eat vegetables. And as long as I'm doing good for people and I'm not being a dick and I'm healthy, then I'm happy. I'm really in a good place. And it's a lot to do with not having death in my life. It's pretty powerful to hear that coming from a guy like you. Someone like me, long distance runner or whatever, is a very different animal from a military guy, a kind of guy who looks like you and has done the things that you have

done. And I think it speaks to a larger conversation about how we define masculinity and what it means to be a man. And it calls into question a lot of these paradigms that we've set up about what that looks like. You know, if you're a man, then you need to eat this way and behave in a certain way. And in truth, I think it beckons or it calls for really considering the truth of what it means to be masculine, which is to be a protector. Exactly. Right? Yep. To know when to exert your strength and to know when to show compassion.

See, and if you- And if you don't have to eat these animals, why would you do that? And when you realize by removing them from your plate that you actually feel better and perform better, it's like a light switch goes on. And then you can become that ambassador, that protector, that spokesperson for, you know, a kinder, more compassionate world and do it in the frame, in the body of, you know a kinder more compassionate world and do it in the frame in the body of You know this this very kind of you know Typically a masculine persona. Yeah, it's the big bad man thing to go and eat. Yeah

Meat and ribs and baby back room blah blah blah blah blah and I've had a couple of my friends give the vegan plant-based lifestyle a crack. My mum, for one. And she was looking after my dog when I first moved out here. And she called me one day. She said, look, I don't think I can do this much longer. He's too big. He's a great day in Cross.

And I just, you know, my hips hurt. My rheumatoid arthritis is really bad. I get up in the middle of the night and I nearly fall over all the time i'm gonna have to get a cane and i just thought okay this is it i've tried i've tried to talk to her about it so many times and she's just so stuck in her ways and so it might it might sound gross but i i went and booked her in for three colonics to flush out start flushing out the toxins i banned her her from wine and coffee. And I gave her this huge list of things that she shouldn't be having. And I gave her a whole list of foods that she can use to cook with and how much water she needs to drink. And within four days, I'm not even joking,

within four days, she calls me back and she says, Paul, I got up in the middle of the night last night and I just walked to the toilet. I didn't feel bad. I didn't feel dizzy. My hips weren't hurting. I actually this morning went out walking with the girls again, something I haven't been able to do in months. That's crazy. It's amazing the difference that it can have on your health and well-being.

I'm 41 now. I don't feel like it. I feel stronger and better than I've ever felt in my life yeah and it's just not part of the conversation when you go to the doctor no it's like the two weeks worth of nutrition course they have oh your hips are you got a rat well you're gonna need to take this and you're gonna need to take that you're gonna have to start slowing things down and that's I mean that dramatic of a difference in such a short period of time I mean it's unbelievable even drugs can't do that no that's incredible yeah it sold me well let's talk a little bit about this uh you know this

evolution from being attacked by a shark to being you know somebody who like how long did it take before you got back in the water to go be with sharks again and what was that like oh man that happened quick because 60 minutes came to the hospital before i was even at home and they wanted to do a story and so i uh they convinced me to go diving in an aquarium with some gray nurse sharks and while i knew nurse sharks i think you guys call them sand tigers um while i knew enough about sharks to know that they weren't going to harm me they still look scary. They've got all the teeth hanging out of their face.

And so I didn't feel very comfortable looking at that so much. I looked at the tail. But I did that very quickly. And then I didn't do it again for quite some time, any progression from there. I did that same dive a few times for charity events and things like that but by then you know they didn't even feel like sharks they were just like swimming puppy dogs and then 60 minutes came back around again and they said look it's amazing what you've done getting back to work we want to do you know where's paul now

and they wanted me to go to fiji and go diving with bull sharks and like we want you to face the animal that you know 60 minutes like the big deep fights face the animal that changed his life forever it'll be great for ratings yeah yeah um and so I'm like all I'm thinking is they're gonna pay for me to go to Fiji yeah they'll probably pay for my margaritas too. All right. Yeah, I'll come to Fiji. So I went and shot that. And to be honest, at not one point did I feel threatened. I didn't feel like the sharks were after me. I got to see them in just a natural light.

There was, I think, six different species of sharks there, billions of fish. The only thing I got bitten by was an eel someone once told me if you put something bigger than its mouth in front of it it won't bite you so this eel came out and I was like I wanted to get close to it and I put my fist up to it which was bigger than its head and a little bastard bit me on the knuckle I had finally let go and I started pumping my fist and all this green stuff came out of my hand and I thought oh my god what has it injected me with and then i realized i was 110 feet down and there's no red at that depth so it was just my blood but the sharks i it was eye-opening at the end of that dive i got to hand feed a bull shark and it wasn't trying to eat me it wasn't trying to eat me. It wasn't trying to kill me. It wasn't a vicious lurking monster waiting to devour my face.

And you're not in cages. You're just out with it. No cages. No cages. No. Just out there. Yeah. And no PTSD about doing it.

No. Yeah. I sometimes wonder if I'm a little bit broken. Shouldn't I, by all accounts, have something wrong with me? I don't know. It's funny. I had Alex Hon. It's funny. I had, um, I had Alex Honnold in here yesterday, you know, world's greatest free soloist climber. The guy climbed,

uh, El Capitan without ropes. Like he's done just the most unbelievable things. And he had, you know, everyone asks him like about his relationship with fear and his relationship with death. And I think there's some overlap between how he perceives it and perhaps how you perceive it coming from different experiences. And what was interesting is that he was saying, look, you know, what I do, like if, you know, he's on those rock feet, you lose your grip, like you're dead. Like there's no, I mean, there's no if, ands or buts about it. It's not like, oh, you're putting yourself at risk it's a very binary thing right and so that makes him have to be very present with the reality of death so he lives with uh a sensibility about death that most people just compartmentalize or put in their you know in their unconscious mind like we

walk around thinking we're not going to die or, yeah, we kind of academically know everybody's going to die, but, but, you know, maybe it's not going to happen to me, you know, that kind of thing. And as somebody who survived what you've survived, you had a, you know, a brush with death in, in, you know, in the most palpable way possible. And so I would imagine your relationship with death and your appreciation for life is different than most human beings. But the other thing about Alex was that they're like, how can this guy do this stuff and maintain his focus and concentration and presence when he's in this situation of being on these rock climbing walls? So they did an MRI

on his brain to see if there was like something wrong with him. They're like, this guy's amygdala must not fire, which I you know, I guess is responsible for the fear impulse. Right. And they found out he's like, no, I actually have an amygdala, you know, but it, but it doesn't, it doesn't like, you know, function in the way that most human beings do. So perhaps there's something there. Maybe you should get an MRI of your brain. But I think it has to do with your experience. Like, I mean, after you've survived what you've survived for, I would imagine your relationship with life and death is different. Like, you know, what does fear look like for you? Well, I already accepted death. When I was under

the water for those 10 seconds, drowning in total agony, I came to a realization that I was going to die. My brain was telling me, okay, you're going to die right now. You're not going home today. This is it. And so I accepted it already. And I just thought everything sped up in my brain. And I was thinking a million miles a minute. And I just thought, well, I've lived 10 lives in these 31 years. If it's my time to die, then I'm okay with that. And so I let go and a calm came over me and then the shark removed my hand removed my hamstring and because of my wetsuit I was positively buoyant and I popped to the surface and I looked around and the the tail of the shark splashed water in my face and I saw my safety boat and I thought oh shit I'm not dead I better get out of here so I start swimming back

to the boat and so I I already accepted death and I realized that it's nothing to be afraid of. And so how does that color your day-to-day life? Well, I don't have to hold on to the mortal coil like everyone else does because I know that death is not scary. You know what's scary? Not living. Not doing everything that you possibly can to live the best life you have because trust me when you come to the end of your days the only thing you're gonna have is your regrets and if you don't have any of those it's a sweet home run you got nothing to worry about so then you're

feeding bull sharks by your hand yep and now you know the end for shark week last year at the start of um 2017 i was diving with great white sharks without a cage in the middle of nowhere, bum fuck Western Australia. Like a handful of people maybe have done it. That's insane. And yeah, it's incredible to be 110 feet down with three massive male great white sharks swimming around you. And all you have is a gopro on a stick how do you um i mean what is the the you know the situation in which a great white or a bull shark is going to be provoked to attack you versus being you know simpatico with them in the water

uh look the first thing is they're a wild animal. You're never going to be able to predict what they do 100% of the time. You kind of have to just rely on your experiences and rely on your knowledge. And I've learned from the best. The guy, Andy Casagrande, I've done a bunch of shows with him now and I always keep my mouth shut and my ears open when I'm dealing with people like that. I have a lot of trust with him. I did that dive with him. And so, I've learned how

to read the sharks, how to read their posture. And really the greatest thing, the greatest piece of advice that anyone ever gave me was don't act like food, they won't treat you like food. Yeah, but what does that mean? Never retreat. Always keep your eyes on them. Sharks can actually see you looking at them. A lot of the times tiger sharks, great white sharks, they'll try and ambush you from behind. As soon as you turn around, they actually register that you're looking at them

and they swim in the other direction. Whoa. Yeah, it's mind-blowing. It's funny to see because they come out of the murk at you and it's literally like you're watching a horror movie of this gigantic great white shark swimming directly at your face and you want to turn and you want to swim as fast as you can back to that cage but you can't because it'll eat it'll chase you down and it'll eat you and you've been in that situation yeah coming at you and you have to maintain your composure to such an extent that you stay.

It's like staring down the bull. Wow. Yeah, it was crazy. And it did. It swum up to me and I saw the nose and I saw the eyes and the teeth and then the fins out the side. And it was like a minibus with teeth and fins coming at me. And I just had to stay there even though I was very, very nervous that it was going to bite my head off. And it just went at me. And I just had to stay there, even though I was very, very nervous that it was going to bite my head off.

And it just went around me. And that was it. And then eventually we swam back to the cage and I came to the surface and I was fine. And I got to see these remarkable animals without the bars in the way, one-on-one, not acting like food and not as prey. So if I find myself out in the ocean and i'm confronted with a shark stare him in the face yep just keep your eyes on it

try and watch it at all times i don't know if i can do it man i don't know if i'm going to be able to handle that well that's your other option do you go out in and out here in like malibu or west side and go in the ocean no I haven't had any need to. I used to like surfing, but I'm just not very good at it on this prosthetic leg. I've seen this kid has this. He's created this really great surfing prosthetic. I want to get one of those because it looks much easier to stand on. Because I do like surfing.

I'm just really terrible at it when I can't feel my foot or my knee. Because I do like surfing. I'm just really terrible at it when I can't feel my foot or my knee. But I hear Laird out here has a motorized surfboard or something. I want to get one of those. Oh, I don't know. I have seen those like hydrofoil surfboards that are like boosted board skateboards. But they're surfboards and they sort of rise up with a hydrofoil underneath it. And they're like electric motorized.

Yeah. And people ride around on those. I love one of those. I've surfed a 10-foot wave, but I got towed into it on the back of a jet ski. The only problem, I don't have- In Australia or out here? Yeah, in Australia. I don't have anyone to tow me around in a jet ski just to watch me surf, unfortunately.

So when you go and you give these talks, what's the message that you're you're trying to leave people with it really depends on what the client asks me to talk about because i talk to everyone from primary school kids and six seven eight years old surprisingly enough all the way through high school, all the way through college, all through military groups or big business. I've got IBM coming up, Microsoft, big investment corporations, 12 bankers, 12 CEOs in a room and just me. Right. And we talk about whatever they need to focus on. So, there's a lot of common themes. There's embracing change because a lot of them

go through takeovers and they're getting melded together with other companies and it's a change of culture and it's a change of personnel and everyone always fights against change because it makes them uncomfortable and they don't want to do something different when they're comfortable doing it this way. So talking to them about embracing change and the opportunity that comes out of changing with the situation, overcoming adversity, obviously, working the team network, being able to focus on looking after each other and doing a better job that way. So it's not just helping people on a personal level. It helps people throughout the whole process of living, being happy, the secrets of being happy. So you would probably believe, I would normally say you wouldn't believe, you would probably believe how many unhappy people there are.

There's no question about it. And I meet them every time I finish my presentation. Sometimes I break down in my arms just because they're so grateful, because you've given them a little nugget to make them believe that they can still be happy. And what is the message that you're delivering on happiness? Well, it's all about what you value and what is going to improve your life. They have to be on common ground. What we were talking about earlier, doing things for other people. I've never had a greater sense of happiness than doing things for other people that can't pay me back.

It's mostly weaved throughout the story. The things that have really broken my heart and the things that have made me elated and the value that i found in things that i really didn't think i would and that giving with no expectation of receiving is a big one um even if it's something as simple as going to the blood bank it doesn doesn't cost you anything. It costs a little bit of time. Go in, throw some blood down a tube because I went through 150 donations and I could have all the doctors in the world. I could have the best surgeons, but without that blood from those 150 amazing people, I would not be here today. It doesn't take a grand gesture. It just, would not be here today. It doesn't take a grand gesture. It's just a pat on the back, a well done, a handshake. Take someone out for a coffee and be a kind ear. If it's someone that maybe doesn't have anyone to turn to at work because they're not really well liked, maybe just put up with it and

go and have a chat with them and make them happy because you might change that person's whole day or whole outlook on life. And that only comes back to you. It makes you feel good that person's whole day or whole outlook on life. And that only comes back to you. It makes you feel good. That's where happiness is found in service. It's so true. And it's such counter-programming from what we're kind of told growing up because we're kind of set in motion on this path of like trying to get as much as we can out of everything. And we approach situations with a perspective of like, how am I going to gain from this? What's in this

for me? Like, how am I going to come out of this better than I was before? Uh, and that doesn't really lead to happiness. You know, it does not. And when you approach a situation and encounter whatever it may be from a perspective of how can I give, how can I contribute to this, then you're on a different, you know, that's a different plane of consciousness. And it's not my default, but when I remember and I practice that. It's exactly. You know what I mean? It's a practice. It's a practice.

It's like, it's not just like, oh, well, that guy just, that's his instinct and that's how he does it. Like, no, you have like remind yourself to do that. How do you get good at anything? How do you learn to ride a bike or learn to read or play a sport or do your job? You do it over and over and over until you get really good at it. It's the same with happiness. It's the same with gratefulness. It's the same with positivity and motivation. You have to keep practicing it. And the more you do, the easier it gets. Improvise, adapt, overcome. Yeah. That's the business. That's your trifecta, right? Yeah, man. And that's what they drill down on you in the military, right? Did that come from that experience? It did. It wasn't really drilled into me like it is. I think it's one of the mantras for the Marine Corps out here uh i think i heard it maybe once or twice way back in basic training but it had an impact on my brain like it was seared into my brain and i had no idea why and then i got into the gym one day after hospital and i had one hand and one leg and that'll really throw out your bench press and squats and so all of a sudden

that improvise adapt and overcome clicked in and i'm like okay all right i might not be able to do push-ups i can't weight bear on the end of my arm i'll improvise and i pulled a bench over and i put my right elbow on the bench and my right left hand on the floor and i did push-ups like that and i thought well i can't do dumbbell curls and i thought well i'll adapt you know the next step i'll adapt and i got online and i found the lifting hooks that they use for heavy deadlifts where you loop it around your wrist and then you use the hook to put under the bar and you can lift heavier without gripping it and i got that thing and I slipped the material loop over my forearm and I let it hang down and I put a dumbbell in it and I can do 70-pound curls with that thing now.

I flick it up into the hooks and I can do flies with it. You don't have two legs for squats. Does that mean you skip leg day? You never skip leg day. You do pistol squats. You do them on the smith machine where it does the balance for you there's there's always a way with the right tools and sometimes the right tool is just the right mindset that's an example on a very micro level but on a macro level like

this these three ideas are really the the arc of your life right i use it every day you had to improvise you had to adapt and you ultimately had to overcome in order to be sitting here and getting to do what you get to do and now i'm just enjoying the ride i know yeah it's it's all going to come back you know i use those every day there's always trials we all have our stories you know that's one of the big things i i do try and share. Everyone says, oh, Paul, you know, you were elite military trained and you can do this and you can do that. And I was like, no, I'm like, I was a failure first. And I still struggle with a lot of stuff. And I drop mugs in the kitchen and I smash them because I'm clumsy and I'm just a person just like all of you I make the

same mistakes but I don't give up because I know that there's always going to be a better moment there's always going to be a better day I find joy in everything that I do and everything that I share with people and there's just no reason to quit. We have this overwhelming suicide and depression problem going on at the moment. It's all around the world. It's huge in Australia. It's huge here. And it's just really sad to see, especially amongst our veteran community, of people just not feeling like they can deal with it anymore.

Maybe there's nowhere to turn to, that maybe there's nowhere to turn to, but there is always somewhere to turn to, and there is always a better day. It's interesting that sometimes these calamities, like you experienced, are really the catalyst to growth and being able to embrace life in the way that, in the way that you have, because they force you to your knees and you have to confront yourself in a very profound way. Um, and you know, I know that's why you look back on this experience

and like, you know, you, you value the life that you have right now. Most people are not going to get attacked by a shark or bottom out on drugs and alcohol or have a near death experience. They're just living their lives in a kind of monochrome, you know, monotonous way where they feel like they're doing everything right. Like I made the right decision and I got the safe job and I'm doing all these things and I'm super depressed and I'm on these medications and I'm overweight and I feel like shit. i i can't see my way out of this because it's a situation that's not so bad that you're gonna just walk out of it that it's like a low grade in their misery yeah it's a low grade discontent that's the worst

which is the worst right live like that stop stop eating shit work on your fitness go have a freaking adventure there's a big bad world out there with so much adventure and fun to be had go and see some shit that you've never seen before which is probably most of the world if you're comfortable comfortable in your misery already in life just get uncomfortable it's it's the the best thing ever and that's a muscle just like anything else like the other things we were talking about like that can start with a very small thing oh yeah to exercise that and then you can turn the volume up on it step by step i love it yeah it's it's so much easier it's it's exactly what I did when I left the hospital. And I had that huge goal of getting back to work. It didn't just happen. That was impossible. No one believed that it could actually be done, a one-legged, one-handed clearance diver. You can't go back to work and go diving. And I did it in six months. Get up earlier, eat better, drink more fluids, get off the drugs, exercise more. Just tiny little things that built up over time to learn how to walk, go to the gym, box jump a meter high, go in the ocean, swim more. It progresses, but the smaller the goals and challenges you set for yourself, the more they build up.

The more you turn back and you look behind yourself and you go, holy shit, look at all of that stuff I've done. Okay, what's next? Now I know I can do all of that. What's next? Let's do something a little harder, a little more fun, a little more challenging. And before you know it, those small, easily achieved goals have become an impossible dream. Yeah. It's the imperceptible actions that you take anonymously every day with rigorous consistency that change your reality. And people want to think it's like they want to do the dramatic thing overnight. They want the hack, the shortcut or whatever.

And it's like, it's not about that, man. It's about the journey. It's just like do that tiny thing that makes you a little bit uncomfortable. Flex that muscle. You get a little history with that. You realize like, hey, I didn't die. Like I can do this now. And that's what, that I think is the path that it's the less sexy path.

It's not the dramatic path that you're going to be able to, like, get a bunch of likes on Instagram for. But that is truly the method for sustainably changing your life in a profound way. Yeah, if the Instagram likes is what you're after, then just make a story about all the little things. I was hanging out with a guy yesterday who did the 100 things to make people happy, I think it was. And his mission is just to go out and start helping people in need.

And he's made a website and now he advertises these people that need help. And all these other people are offering to give them assistance in some form or fashion as well so they can help out it's it's just the act of giving and the act of just small stuff and that started with an idea yeah yeah an imperceivable little atom i think that's a good place to end it dude all right are you uh speaking publicly anywhere coming up soon? If people want to, you know, figure you out and come and see you in person, is there any opportunity to do that or? Not at this point, no. Everything that I've got going on is for private corporations, but I've only just started out here. So, I only have a few. I've got, you know, I'm doing some stuff in Hawaii and Atlanta and for the Entrepreneurs' Organization if you're part of that and also for the Nantucket Project if you've got any idea what that is.

I do because I went to high school with Tom Scott. Oh, okay. Tom's great. Tom is actually coming over here in a week or two. I haven't seen him in a long time. I'm going to have him do the podcast. But Tom and I, we were high school classmates. Yeah yeah he's a nice guy so i watched it i actually have it pulled up here i was watching uh your presentation at nantucket project and it's

it's quite amazing what he's built with that it's really cool i did not realize what it was when i got there it was just another speaking job for me and i turned up there and i i literally got off the plane this past summer yep yeah i got off the plane. Was it this past summer? Yep. Yeah. I got off the plane, went straight to the school, talked for 45 minutes to the school kids, went from there to the stage, went on stage and did my presentation. Then I got off and then I found it was the rest of them were like the president of Mexico, the president of Rwanda, the guy who started TED Talks, Captain Paul Watson. I'm just thinking, geez, I'm glad that I went on first. You didn't know that. No idea. Jennifer Garner and Mark Shriver and I'm just thinking oh my god and little old Paul DeGoldo. Yeah it's cool it's cool what he's built. Did you meet Neil Phillips? I'm not sure. I think he

presented last night he's a African-American guy who started a school in Florida for kind of empowering underprivileged African-American kids. I did meet someone very similar to that. I'm not sure if he was from Florida though. Anyway, he was another classmate of mine. Like Neil and Tom were like best friends in high school. They collaborate on stuff. And I know Neil presented at Nantucket Project. I don't know if it was last summer.

Okay. Have you heard of a guy called Jason Flom? Yes. So he was there and I got talking to him and him and I became pretty good friends in a very short amount of time. And the things that he's doing is amazing. Yeah, it has to do with-

Freeing convicts. Right, exactly. Falsely accused convicts. Yeah, he's got a foundation set up for that, right? Yeah, that's amazing. I follow those stories all the time. And you think your life's hard. Try being in jail for 30 years, falsely accused.

Unbelievable. So you're doing more with Nantucket Project then? Yeah, I've got a couple of satellite gigs coming up, Palm Beach and Hamptons. But it's only, you know, this is very early days for me out here. Now that I've got the, well, the contract's not exactly signed. I probably shouldn't have said that. I'm more than likely going to be signed with American Program Bureau. And so I'll have a team of people advertising my services.

So any CEOs out there who want to hire Paul to come out and talk to their troops? Oh, hell yeah. I'm always trying to get my passing out numbers up. Yeah, cool. And the best way to connect with you, probably Instagram, right? At Paul DeGelder. Instagram, the the website paul de gelder.com uh they're the two best and most fluid ways and the book and time for fear yeah pick it up right the second one here in the states second one's in the editors now surrounded by monsters what's the next one going to be about

uh it's it's a bit of a follow-on with more lessons that i've learned along the way um behind the scenes on uh discovery channel shark week shoots catching crocodiles and diving with sharks and stuff cool when is that coming out well it's with the editors now so if it was up to me to be tomorrow but um hopefully within the next couple of months nice man all right dude well you're an inspiration and uh i can't wait to see where you take this dude it's incredible what you're doing and uh and um yeah you're impacting a lot of lives in a really profound and positive way. As are you. Thank you for that.

Thank you for your service. Thank you, mate. All right, man. And come back and talk to me anytime. Yeah, hopefully I'll run into you in Malibu again. Yeah, cool. Peace, Lance. I don't know what to tell you. If that doesn't leave you inspired and grateful, then I don't think what to tell you.

If that doesn't leave you inspired and grateful, then I don't think I can help you. I loved it. Hope you guys did too. Please do me a favor. Drop Paul a line on Instagram at Paul DeGelder and let him know what you thought of today's conversation. And please check out the show notes on the episode page at richroll.com. I've got tons of links and resources on everything

that we discussed today to expand your experience of the conversation beyond the earbuds. Another reminder, Plant Power Italia, our brand new cookbook inspired by the Italian countryside and the retreats that we've conducted in Tuscany. It's an amazing new book. It's coming out in April. It's available now for pre-order. So go to your favorite bookseller and reserve your copy today, and I would greatly appreciate it. If you would like to support my work, please subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts or on whatever platform you enjoy this content. That really does help us out with the show's visibility, extending reach, growing the audience,

all that kind of good stuff. And it only takes you a second. You can also support the show on Patreon at richroll.com forward slash donate. If you need help with your diet and your nutrition, check out our meal planner. It's got thousands of custom tailored plant-based recipes, grocery lists, even grocery delivery right at your fingertips. Everything you need to eat the way you deserve for just $1.90 a week when you sign up for a year. To learn more and to avail yourself of the experience, go to meals.richroll.com

or click on Meal Planner on the top menu on my website, richroll.com. I want to thank everybody who helped put on the show today. Jason Camiolo for audio engineering, production, interstitial music, help with the WordPress site and the scripts and all, he does a lot of stuff. So reach out to him on social media

and give him a pat on the back for me will you sean patterson for help on graphics michael gibson for videography and theme music as always by analema thanks for the love you guys see you back here soon have a great week be grateful be strong and walk tall. Peace, plants. Namaste. Thank you.