The Sevan Podcast - #301 - Ed Calderon

Episode Date: February 16, 2022

Ed is a non-permissive environment specialist and writer with operational experience along the Mexican-American border. He helps train people with how to handle different situations, given his experience living in Mexico and working in the police force there. He specializes with the border.  https://www.paperstcoffee.com/shop https://www.barbelljobs.com/ "The Sevan Podcast" T-Shirts https://asrx.com/collections/the-real... Follow us on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/therealseva... Support the show Partners: https://cahormones.com/ - CODE "SEVAN" FOR FREE CONSULTATION https://www.paperstcoffee.com/ - THE COFFEE I DRINK! https://asrx.com/collections/the-real... - OUR TSHIRTS ... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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We can book your reservation. And when you get to the main event skip to the good bit using the card member entrance let's go seize the night that's the powerful backing of american express visit amex.ca slash y amex benefits vary by card other conditions apply bam we're live i think we're live shit it's always weird when i don't see like right away the eyeball pop ah there it is take a second guys good afternoon good morning 11 a.m 11 a.m pacific standard time on the which is the west coast of the north American continent. How do you know it is California, Oregon, Washington, Canada, Alaska, Baja, California. Speaking of Baja, California, our guest, what's up, Matt?

Our guest, Ed Calderon. I think he shows up. I hope so. Yeah. Yeah. I got a lot of confidence. I'm going over to my emails to see if he emailed back you know it's a big guess when they when you don't have a phone number contact with them oh shit i didn't send you the um you sent him a link yes okay i'll send you over

the notes right now i didn't. There's there's no. There's no links, but I'm going to send them to you anyway, Matt. I'll send it to Will. Yeah. And we got a good week coming up. Who do we have tomorrow?

What's tomorrow? What do we have tomorrow? What's tomorrow? Who do we have tomorrow? We have someone good. Let me see. We have the raw meat eater. Who? Oh, yeah, yeah. The guy who's been the raw food meat eating experiment.

We got him tomorrow. That's going to be fun. I'm picking his brain. that's going to be fun. I'm picking his brain. Um, and then after that we have rich froning and van sleut, um,

to talk about the new documentary, uh, undisputed. And then we have Hans Kim. If you do not know who Hans Kim is, you have, like I said before, you have to go type in his name and watch some of his work. Go to his Instagram account.

It's H a N S Hans Kim. K I M. He is so. Yeah. He's hilarious. Yeah. He's so darn funny. I'm so glad we got him. Akira the Don too. Oh yes. Yes. Akira the Don in the morning. Yes.

I don't remember who told me to get him, but thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Trying to see. Yeah. And we got another cool week lined up right after that too. We're rolling, man. This is good stuff. We've got some good people. We have some interesting guests too, that I think will expose you guys to, to some cool people. Getting nervous about it. I'm you're nervous, dude. The thing is, is you play it cool. Like you, you're okay. Yeah. I'm

cool. You play it cool. like you don't see it especially like early on before i was like able to do a lot of these back ends or i was like forward facing i'd be like staring at the youtube like come on like rechecking the email but you know maybe he's uh maybe he'll slide in a couple minutes behind i want to tell you guys uh something about um uh kind of an insight that popped into me, into my head recently. When someone like does me wrong or, you know, is doing something that's like, I think is unethical or immoral or shows lack of integrity. Oftentimes there was a phase in my life in the last five years where I would call them on it. And recently a friend of mine said that,

hey, you don't need to, was pointing out to me me and I'm not sure if I'm going to explain this perfectly right, but you don't need to call every single person out on it. And specifically they were talking about, um, family members. You just have to know that the relationship has changed. Meaning, um, if I, if I see someone doing something that I assume has a belief that I know – let's say I don't see them hurting kids, but I know that they have beliefs that would lead to kids getting hurt, I don't necessarily need to tell them that. I just need to be aware of it and show and know that it changes my relationship with that person and where I can and can't trust them. Let me use even something more simple. I'll be more specific. I saw an old lady the other day.

She was, I don't know how old she was, but she could barely walk. And she was leaning on a baby crib and she was walking along the, she was a baby stroller. She was walking along the cliff in Santa Cruz, California, and she's pushing a baby stroller. And I'm thinking to myself, I would never leave my baby with that lady. Because if something happened, like let's say a one in a million, a bird came down and grabbed the baby. This lady didn't even have the dexterity to fucking push the bird away. And we have that here in California. We have giant birds.

But let alone if the stroller fell over, she could do nothing to help the kid. As a matter of fact, the stroller was – she was using the stroller to lean on as much as the kid was sleeping in the stroller and um i i don't do that another thing is when when it's so hard to put yourself in other people's shoes and know what they're going through but when and i use this example a lot when we had the shake-up over at crossfit and i worked there um you know i have three kids at home i had i a mortgage to pay. I have a family to take care of. And when people, wow, look at that mustache. Look at that mustache. Yes, the man. Hey, did you put something in it, Ed? Absolutely nothing. Just taco grease from all uh roadside taco spots i've been hitting all all along my travels that's about it i'm gonna send you a link to some clay i'm not a

product guy but this is some mud okay okay and and i and i just want you're just gonna see i mean i look look at my hair look at look at my shit my shit's going on right. I just slapped the mud in it five minutes before we got on the air. This is a completely new thing for me. For the longest, you know, I was basically, you know, I didn't know I can grow one of these, basically. You know, I have a mixture of Black Scaltec and Native blood and Spanish and a little bit of Eagles lobbying in me. So no hair on my

chest i can't grow a beard if they paid me but but apparently the mustache is you know it's good to go i guess i have this friend uh dave castro he's uh mexican he can't grow hair on his body he's i mean what a lucky man he is a hairless cat he's a hairless sexy beast yeah yeah i don't need ancestry.com i just thought oh my god nothing are you married ed uh no no i'm not no do you have kids yeah i have one i have one kid yeah how old your kid she's uh seven right now oh i have a seven-year-old boy congratulations that's uh it's a it's the best job in the world it really is are you pretty private about your your personal life due to the nature of your uh vocation and hobbies and habits i tend to be careful but uh you know some

things are just known um some things are hard to hide and also like i i get this question a lot you know like uh all of you all the stuff you've done and all the things you've been through uh aren't you afraid you know if i was afraid i wouldn't have signed all all that all those years ago um also i i don't know anything i didn't do anything wrong and i'm you know not in anybody's pocket so and i'm not speaking anything that is completely secret or unknown i'm just uh speaking about it through a different lens than most people are accustomed to hearing some of these things out of Mexico. And finally, you know, it's this or go and crawl into a hole and never come out. I was watching this podcast with you.

It's not easy interview. How many podcasts have you been on? I have no idea. i have no clue let me feel sorry for myself for a second here it's not easy interviewing someone who's been on a shitload of podcasts for two reasons you want to bring your a game for them you want it to make it seem like it's worth their time that you came on the podcast you need their background but you don't want to waste their time and you want like you're in my house now and i want you to leave here thinking like, oh shit, that was fun. You know?

Yeah. Yeah. I get it. Um, it is, uh, mostly every time I go on, like I go on, there's something going on. So I talk about what's going on and, or if I can, you know, bring light to something that, you know, not a lot of people in the U S are kind of paying attention to, or they should be paying attention to, uh, as far as what's going on with their neighbor you know to the south um for those of you who don't know this is ed calderon did i pronounce your name right yeah that's that's good how do you say it calderon uh this is ed calderon oh

and he popped up on my radar like everyone does through my single source of all things, Instagram. And his 18,000 posts, I'm wondering – I bet you he is in some top-tier percentage of most posts. What's crazy is with 18,000 posts, you'd think there'd be a lot of boring shit and there probably isn't a count with a better ratio of non-boring shit to absolutely just unbelievable shit on there and um it's hard to say what he is it's really really hard to say what he is he's not normal um he is an artist, but his tools are so different than everyone else's. And his training and his schooling – and he's a master observer, and he spent a lot of his time doing it between the two countries of Mexico and the United States. countries of mexico and the united states and because of those skills he's acquired and all the training he's had he's a he's a great resource to uh to people who have business on the border yeah how's that yeah that's that's pretty good i mean literally like you could pigeon the whole

guy and say well he's a narcotics expert on the smuggling of humans and trafficking blah blah but like even if someone wanted to know something as obscure as like, hey, is the wall, do you think the wall is going to hurt migrating animals? I'm sure you have an opinion on that. I do. I recently took a friend of mine who is a SEAL and a CIA contractor as well, a highly trained individual. And, you know, we went on to the border wall,

and I basically told him how to free climb that thing, you know. And it is, you know, it's a phenomenon for me. I grew up next to the border. So I saw, I remember the border when it was just metal slats, and not even that, some places were just completely clear. You would see 50 people at a time just, you know, going through. You know, they would say if there is a moonless night and if there's fog, it's magic hour in Tijuana as far as immigration goes, you know, because that defeats every single technology you have on that border. And you would see them just go across.

you have on that border um and you would see them just go across now for for for us as locals of tijuana we would see this and it would be like it's part of the background um many people crossing back and forth between the state without using a passport yeah it is it is completely part of the normal the baseline normal you know is it both ways do people come back and forth or just in that's another interesting phenomenon right now now, marijuana trafficking is happening from California into Tijuana. Oh, good. That makes me feel happy. Fuck those guys in Tijuana who we bought all our weed from in high school. California is bringing their A game as far as weed now, as far as trafficking into Tijuana. You know, California is bringing their A game as far as weed now, as far as trafficking into Tijuana. And immigration is going the other way.

You know, San Diego, too, is the nickname that Tijuana is getting because all the sky rises coming up luxury apartments and apartments that are pretty well off. Most of the economic migrants of San Diego are finding their home now in Tijuana. You know, despite all of the news, despite everything that they say about Tijuana. You know, the border in a way is becoming, you know, meaningless with it, with a lot of this economic migration now going the other way. Ed was born in Mexico. He did 10 years with the law enforcement over there. Sure. And is that correct yeah yeah 12 years uh counter narcotics work uh working with the government in mexico yeah that's that's what i did and then came to

the united states legally yeah i uh i had a uh i had an opportunity uh and i i crossed into the united states and went through my legal immigration process. I did it during Trump's election, which was not easy to do such a thing at that time. Basically, something that would take about six months took two years for me because of the political climate going on at that time. But yeah, I got my... I'm a permitted resident, um, taxpaying permanent resident. Um, and now I kind of, I'm, I'm trying to figure out my space specifically, you know, in, in, in the United States, I've been bouncing back and forth between

California and Kentucky right now, as far as trying to figure out my, my permitted residence, as far as, you know, where I, where I settle in, where i settle in but you know work is uh work is on the road you know i go where i'm needed and that's what i've been doing and you're a working machine i right before we got on the um call i um i said sorry guys i'm really doing him a disservice of how much experience and notoriety and what a wealth of knowledge this man is on all levels. I mean, he is a, he's a, for, especially for how young he is, he is a true treasure. And we'll talk about that in a second. Um, how much experience he has life experience he has and the value of that. But I, I, I text a friend who is very, very high up, uh, was very, very high up in the DEA

and, um, more than 30 years, I want to say 40 years retired uh real big shot over there and i said hey do you know who this guy is he said absolutely i trained with this guy and i'm like well and he goes he won't know who i am but yeah i definitely yeah i took trainings from this guy i was like wow yeah i've i've trained some people that i basically because of my because of my status, it's like I was born in Mexico. I work for a foreign armed intelligence group and I migrated to the United States legally. I in no way, shape or form can probably ever get clearance of any kind with the government. Right. But but I'm, you know, I'm, I'm pretty knowledgeable about some things that some of these people need and aren't aware of. So every now and then I get, you know,

pulled into these training assignments for the government and I don't know who any of these people are. I just know that they, I just know that. Oh, right. There's no, there's no need to tell you. Oh, yes. There's not even that there's no need to just tell me, Ed, give me your phone. Give me an ID, and they leave it on a clipboard in the security gate, and I get my big visitor permit thing on my chest, and I go in, and I can't see certain things, and I just go in to do my thing. things and I just go in to do my thing. So they might, they might take you into a room with 20 guys. You don't know who they are. You train them on border crossing with a, with a high value target and then you leave. And then maybe six months later you find out that was the president's security detail. Yeah.

Well, yeah. If you ever find out. If I ever find out. You know, I do, I do stuff like that for the government sometimes. You know, I've done that for State Department. I went and visited the FBI's OSAP program, basically their overseas program, where they send agents overseas and how to prepare themselves for stuff like that. The unconventional is what I'm known for. When I say unconventional, I mean not using a bob know, not using a bobby pin to to open up a pair of handcuffs.

I'm speaking of some of the stuff that I learned directly from people that apply things, you know, criminal sources. I spent a long time having conversations, documenting, learning from some of the best teachers on the planet right now when it comes to fourth-generation warfare. By this, I mean groups that are non-state actors getting the better of a government. This is who I learned from. And I quickly found out that some of the stuff that I posted online, as far as my social media accounts like Instagram, were completely unknown to even the highest levels of the training community when it comes to some of these escape and evasion, restraint, defeating restraints, bribery. Basically, I do a whole class on bribery and how to bribe foreign officials if that becomes a need in a in a hostile environment

apparently there's not a lot of people like that that can talk about some of these things so these god will you teach someone how to bribe me make it like 10 million or more i was gonna say ed are you still running your courses because when i i when i first saw you was on sean ryan's um show there from Vigilant Elite and you at that time you were still doing courses kind of based off Ed's Manifesto and you were talking about how once you would arrest these people or they would kind of do something and you would say okay hold on how'd you guys do that what'd you do there and you would be writing it down in that in that notebook there are you still doing courses on your own like that or not yeah yeah i'm about to go to

texas uh i'm at a company called tax seven in dallas uh a lot of people that come to some of these classes are mostly you know world travelers some of them you know some of them never say who they are they just come in and they they you know i can i can smell the million dollars worth of government training on them. And some of them are just legit people that don't want to be trapped by fear as far as them fearing something that is unknown. You know, like, hey, what if somebody breaks into my house in a home invasion and zip ties me to the toilet and i can't get free uh basically i you know i usually explain it this way a lot of these things are unknown to you before you come to this training floor with me and just like just like a ghost it seems scary but once you walk through it the ghost disappears and ceases to have any control over you as far as a fear. Whatever your normal was a few hours ago or a few days ago,

once this training is over, that line is going to be way, way ahead of most people out there as far as what your normal is. Your normal is going to be being able to weaponize things from Home Depot. Your normal is being able to do something in case there is a drugging or somebody gets drugged in your group if you're traveling somewhere in Puerto Vallarta, for example. Your normal is going to be preparing for defeating restraints that might be put on you by somebody that's trying to do something horrible to you or your family. And also normalizing some of that knowledge base for people, you know,

every now and then I get asked, Hey, do you do classes for minors? And I'm like, no, that's your job. What do you mean by that, Ed? Well, I mean, I can take your, you know, I can bring in a bunch of 12 year olds and show them how to get out of zip ties or, or you as a father knowing this knowledge ties or, or you as a father, knowing this knowledge base or skillset or as a mother, knowing this knowledge base of skillset that I,

about that I showed you take some of this, some of this, and it started infusing it into your, you know, the lives of your kids. I don't, you know, the snack drawer has a padlock or a pair of handcuffs or zip ties on it.

And my kid knows how to break through the three of them. I make it fun for her, but she's learning a skill. When we were kids, we would play hide and seek. We were having fun, but we were learning a survival skill something you know some of these kids uh that go through uh active shooter training now which is something that is you know soul soul crushing to me to see but they have to now learn in a conventional training segment active shooter shit, what they would learn just by having fun, which is run and cover and hide and don't move. Yeah. Right?

So things like that is something I try and reconnect people with. I always say, you know, a lot of these classes that I do are mostly about remembering who we were and remembering some of the skills that our parents, grandparents had that were let go because of complacency, making what was legally legal, you know, turning a tool into a weapon, you know, like people carry around knives and they say, Ed, what are the laws on carrying this, the self-defense knife? And first off that's retarded. That is a tool. That is a tool. That is a not, there's's no lives there's no laws about

carrying tools so always focus on things being tools and if something happens you know you run into a cheesecake you can cut it if you if you run into somebody putting their arm through the car window and trying to carjack you it turns into a fillet knife right right i look what they've done with the surgical mask they've used it as um something to protect doctors or people from um sweat dripping from a doctor's mouth into an open wound to taking over a whole planet and brainwashing them it's amazing yeah or taking the clip from inside of a you know one of the oh and using it to open up handcuffs or or think about it you know i have i've been in places where you have constitutional carry of firearms wearing a mask you know wait explain that to me i'm not following so if you there's places in this

country where you can carry a firearm with you legally right and you're also obligated to carry a mask with yeah it is two-thirds of the way to the bank robbery already it's fine it's fine you know it's a it's i i view it as an experience i'm gonna get uh you know i i've i've always kind of uh thought about life as a ride and i always say that in some of my talks. Yes. And I think this is part of the weird carnival part of the ride, I guess. You know? Some weird stuff.

This is Alice in Wonderland when she takes some of those growing pills in that Disneyland ride, I guess. This is when you're on the carousel and you're at the top and you realize some of the bolts in your carriage are falling out. You're like, oh, shit. Yeah. Yeah. When you start seeing some of those – some of just the insanity around you as far as what people believe is true and what people fight about, you start realizing that just keep your hands in the cart as it's going downhill.

You talk about that in a show i watched uh about what's normal and you mentioned the word normal here and it's something that i really have to remember and i'm gonna stroke myself a little here but i film movies in 100 countries in 100 of the poorest countries in the world i filmed uh i filmed three live famines on three separate continents i filmed in 49 states i I've seen some really, really horrible shit, like shit, like not like the shit you've seen probably. Well, maybe, maybe if you were, if you, if you stomped around central America, you've seen those kids eating out of dumps and burning shit. And, but, um, I didn't see, I haven't seen violence, but I've seen, uh,

absolute, um, civilizations on the brink of just collapse. And so, so my normal is when I hear people talk about food droughts in the United States, I'm like, you're a fucking idiot. There is no, there's, there is no food drought anywhere in the United States. You can eat healthy at the worst seven 11 in the world. You don't have to eat Doritos and Coke. You can buy some hot dogs that don't have sugar and move on your way. Like, I don't want to hear, I've seen fucking, I spent months and months in places where kids are dying from starvation and where there's no water the whole existence is about getting water um so my normal isn't like these normal like this this the pandemic is a fucking absurd joke to me

uh because i just i don't i don't i know that there's a whole continent who would give two shits about it no one in africa the vast majority no one the amount of the people i saw in the poorest parts of china or or india or or Central America are worried about a fucking mask. I mean, it is a luxury. Yes. It's a luxury. It's a luxury to worry about masks and pushing people not to go to work and stay home. Yes.

When a lot of these people are actually working in irregular commerce. I mean, Mexico has a lot of that and had a lot of that. Yes, people got sick, people died, but it is a luxury for them to stay home and not go out and sell what will feed their family for that specific day. And yes, Mexico has poverty of that type in some places. of that type in some places. When COVID happened, I was helping out some people for the government working, advising on some of the COVID centers that were being built up along the border.

So I didn't stop traveling. I went on a bunch of empty flights. I got all the vaccines and I still got sick twice. I'm not saying I'm not an anti-vaxxer. I'm aware that some there's some studies out there that say that some of those vaccines might lessen some of the some of the effects of the virus on people. But I'm also aware that despite all of the vaccinations, it has eaten away a giant segment of the elderly population in places like Mexico. I've got to witness it with vaccines and all. Isn't that crazy that you say you got the vaccine, but we live in a climate where you still have to say you're not an anti-vaxxer? It is. My wife is white, but I'm not racist. I mean, if I would have met a black girl, I would have married her. like i mean it's just fucking nuts that we i'm i hear you i'm not

judging you i'm just saying like you gotta say it it is it is it is uh again and and for me it's a luxury you know just to say that because there's people out there that haven't had any of that and don't have a choice and they're still going about their lives yeah um but you know it for me it has been it's been coming to grips with some of the weird, I mean, the weird aspects of control and weird aspects of perception in the United States. Simple one, you know. Everybody was losing their minds when it came to food

and toilet paper and stuff like that. And, you know, I have friends who are on both sides of the political spectrum you know as far as politics on my end i can't vote because of my immigration status i have to become a full citizen to be able to vote so i can't even vote can pay taxes though and i and we thank you for that as a first generation armenian i thank you for your taxes and i'm sure you make good money on these seminars so so I appreciate it. I make what I can, and I know it's a thing, and we all have to pitch in. And I was raised Catholic, and all that Catholic guilt behind me, so I have to work my ass off.

Anyways, you saw everybody losing their minds over toilet paper and some food shortages. And also, a lot of my conservative friends were rooting for one side and a lot of my not conservative friends were rooting for the other. Speaking horrible stuff about illegal immigration and illegal immigrants on one end. And on the other end, speaking about how horribly it was being managed as far as a pandemic and everything and uh i don't know i never experienced any produce shortages in the united states uh uber eats you know was rolling everybody was staying in and eating in and who do you think was working in all of those kitchens? Right. It became apparent that illegal immigrants in this country became essential

workers. Right. Despite the politics and who was in the White House and who was in the White House now, they became essential workers, but they, but they're still, they're still a lynching post for a lot of people's politics.

That specific part of it made me question a lot of things as far as my own personal beliefs and some of the people around me, what their beliefs were. What is the problem with immigration in Mexico? We don't have – we can't have people just flooding over the border or then – or else then why the fuck have a border? But then why not put something in place where people can come and go and work and do all their shit and people can come across legally? Is that the – what is the problem with the immigration? By the way, I've had Jorge Ventura on the show a couple times. I don't know if you know him, but he knows you, and he's a great dude. First – no, he may even have been born in el salvador or his parents for sure were yeah uh you know again i'm i don't i don't make a living off specifically reporting on the war and making stuff uh news related stuff about the border but i can can, can I, I have opinions about it because both I've, you know, trained border patrol and, and, and, and, and,

and law enforcement on the U S side. And also I've worked as law enforcement in the Mexican side. And you lived and you grew up in Tijuana, grew up in Tijuana. That's about it. That's an expert PhD. Arrested a bunch of people. Smugglers also also helped a bunch of lost migrants that, you know, some of them would get dropped off in the, there's a Costco in Tijuana near the border. Some of these migrants, innocent people that have no idea what's going on, would pay some of these smugglers $5,000 and be dropped off at that Costco in Tijuana and tell them. And they would say, yeah, this is San Diego. Just run, you know.

So I'm aware of the I'm aware of the problem in more ways than one. And I'm aware that that it's not a black and white problem. Right. that it's not a black and white problem, right? The most corrupt federal agency in the United States, as far as convictions and people being caught doing shady shit, is the Border Patrol. I, as a law enforcement professional in Mexico, got to witness some of this corruption by seeing Border Patrol agents pointing their car towards

somewhere where nothing was happening and people making their way through with backpacks on. I got to see that. Like, you mean like behind them? Like, oh, we didn't see that. Yeah, I got to see some of that. And also on the U.S. side, I got to see some insanely moving and touching expressions of humanity by some of these border patrol agents that would out of their pocket pay for things like candy, diapers, toothbrushes for some of the

floods of migrants being literally tossed over the border, some miners being tossed over the border, some of them drugged. And I'm aware that it that, you know, a lot of people want to vilify them and say they're all bad. And a lot of people want to vilify them and say they're all bad. And a lot of people want to make them seem the hero in saying that they're all good. I think as a person that worked in law enforcement in Mexico where we're not all good and not all bad, I'm aware that the problem is more complex. There's more colors than black and white. And I think people need to wake up about that fact. It is a broken system.

Yes. There are a lot of challenges that some of these people face trying to, you know, manage a border where the politics are not on their side. And the cartels that they're working against as far as smuggling of people and drugs and other things. All of that is growing and they're shrinking as far as the support and the money that they're getting you know that's what else is what else is a big smuggling item besides people and drugs what else is on that list uh guns and bullets was being smuggled uh to down into mexico um that's another aspect of it again uh i most mexicans are very conservative in their views you know a lot of people look at some of my opinions and say ed you're a conservative i want to smoke a joint at my gay best friend's wedding and have a gun on me that that's those

are my political views right that that would be my you know my perfect america i would be standing right next to you i quit smoking but i'd have a way i'd have a whiskey you know we all have our own poisons right they're all poison you know just just in small quantities but uh you know you you you you view this whole it is it is very complex as far as what's going on. Guns and bullets are coming down into Mexico and feeding. People focus on the Ukraine, Afghanistan, Middle East problems. And there is open warfare going on with child soldiers, with IEDs, with chemical weapons being dropped from drones, trench warfare. At our border?

Go to where all of your avocados come from. Right. Go to Chipotle, and if you order guac on your burrito, then you are part of what's going on. Wow. You are part of that whole situation, right? Yeah. The government recently put limits, I think, restrictions on avocados.

I made a post about it. People are into crypto and NFTs. Invest in avocados. I said that yesterday. invest in avocados. I said that yesterday. And then the news about avocado sales restricted from coming out of Michoacan, which is where a lot of them come from, because they had threats on a government employee for the United States down there. So what I'm trying to say is the interconnectivity of the United States and Mexico is far beyond what most people on the conservative side want to admit right and it's also you know it's also not as easy or not as

as simple as just doing open borders like the other side wants to think of the left to think right right um it is a very complex issue it's not that simple. We are connected by blood. You know, there's more people out there than than not have some some at least neighbors or people that have Mexican descent that live in around them. You know, if you buy over eats or go to some of the most best restaurants out there. Remember, I took a governor. I used to work security for a governor in baja i took him to a restaurant in san francisco he had some u.s marshals with us helping us out with his security we went to check out the uh the kitchen in this restaurant you know one of the best restaurants in san francisco at that time.

Everybody there spoke Espanol. They're all Mexicans. That's the same thing I've seen throughout this country. I can't think of one restaurant I go to in Santa Cruz, California, where there's not some Latin dude. I don't know if they're Mexicans, but some Latin dude working in the kitchen. We're interconnected. You know, Mexico is a young country.

There's youth. That's why the cartels don't have a shortage of hands. You know, it's being – and also that's why there's no shortage of young people climbing that border fence that they made. Is the word Mexican word fuckeryery like is that like 300 years ago there was no such thing as a mexican then now there's a mexican they got fucked they're the poster child for catholicism is it like holy shit what happened they're like mexicans are mexicans are basically these people who lived in mexico who were raped by the spaniards and instead of addressing the issue we're just going to call them mexicans now i don't know like do you know

what i mean yeah well it's like like you know you see a dog walking down you're like i had a great day and people would be like what kind of dog is that a great day but i know somewhere inside he was made from five other dogs yeah i mean someone had to be like now you're a great day like and mexicans are kind of new right i mean it's so there's there's this whole like i get a weird you know trip by going to being in the united states and seeing people the latinx themselves call themselves latinx or i don't know i don't approve or or the whole uh the whole aztec tattoos which is also also fascinating because you know aztecs with the with the big uh feathered uh feathered uh reg, which is completely made up. It wasn't historically accurate.

Also Aztec, maybe Mexica, and not all of us were Mexica. Example, my grandmother was from Michoacan and she was Tlaxcaltecan. It's fragmented. It's not as easy as just saying Mexica or I was Aztec. It's segmented.

You go to Kentucky and then you go to L.A. Those two are the same country, and your mind is blown. I go to a different state every weekend, and it is the same concept. Mexico is very fragmented. Depending on where you are, you can go to Monterrey, you can go to Oaxaca, and it's going to be two completely different countries and two completely different perspectives on what's going on you know 400 years ago though if i landed there who were the people i mean there was a bunch of them you know the main ones were

the mexica or what is you know the blanketly called the the aztecs were which were a bunch of tribes basically that uh centered in the Valley of Mexico. And they were the big dogs at that time. You know, they had running water, you know, they had drainage, they had culture and they had the zero. They had, you have to think about it this way. The Spanish came with issues. You know, I get a kick out of also some of these people calling for decolonizing, you know, Mexico or decolonize. They're Mexican and they wanted to talk about decolonizing and

stuff like that. It's kind of hard to decolonize, you know, 30, 40, 50, 20 percent of your blood, you know. The difference is that instead of getting rid of the natives, a lot of the Spanish intermingled. The Spanish were coming from a country that had its own dealings with conquest. Interesting side note and story. Hernan Cortes came to the Americas bearing the Virgin of Guadalupe, which was a statue that was hidden from the Moors

when the Moors actually conquered Spain. So they were coming with their own issues of conquest, right? And they landed here in mexico and said you know what let's go they they've scouted around started figuring out who was who and basically gathering allies of all of the all of the enemies of the mexica of the of the empire the The Spanish didn't conquer Tenochtitlan. Those weren't the guys that took down the Mexica empire. All their enemies combined did, you know, all of the Spanish did was just, you know, basically say, Hey,

I think we can all take them if we're together. Right. That's what happened. So, you know, if you, if you kind of think about it this way, you know, we have a lot of guilt on our end as far as that conquest because we basically killed ourselves in a lot of ways as far as some of the cultural stuff that happened. That Virgen de Guadalupe that Hernan Cortes brought had a crystal scepter in one hand and a baby Jesus in the other and a crown. No shit. And she was stepping on a crescent moon. and no shit and she was stepping on a crescent moon and then you go further on in history and now the virgin of guadalupe right now which yeah that one oh wow look i didn't know that's the

origins of that look at the uh black crescent moon she's stepping on you know why would why would that be there you know it's because the spanish brought with them, and that was their main trauma as Catholics and as Europeans were that the Moors conquered them. to basically turn a Mexica deity, which is what you see when you see the Virgen de Guadalupe. It's a Mexica deity. It's an Aztec deity. They transformed an Aztec deity into a Catholic palatable deity that the natives could venerate and pay the church for. So they basically tore down an earth goddess statue and just this is this is what replaced it um it's an interesting story um yeah wow hey um switching subjects here a little bit in that episode 1408 that you did with uh joe rogan in the chair next to you there's a bag is that your bag a bag and a jacket did you set your bag and your jacket down next to you in the chair next to you there's a bag is that your bag a bag and a jacket did you set

your bag and your jacket down next to you in the empty chair yeah and and is there a gun in there yeah there's a yeah wow I wonder how many people have brought guns on to uh it wasn't it wasn't it wasn't that uh it wasn't that dramatic it's uh no of course not not for you that's normal for you it's just you had your wallet a piece of chewing gum and you're in the block yeah it is it is it was uh it was a training gun and some training equipment that's what that was in there including a pair of handcuffs wow i showed him some stuff you know he wanted to see what i was about so i showed him how to get a handcuffs and, you know, weird, uh, manipulating stuff with guns and training knives and stuff like that.

Not an actual living live firearm. Uh, like I left some of that stuff for him, uh, David Blaine later, David Blaine, the magician later went on there and tried to break the pair of handcuffs that I left him and he couldn't. Oh, that's cool. And I told him, well, that's because it's not a prop you know these are real handcuffs i always uh i always have my backpack with me and it's always around um what people kind of don't figure out about me is that most of probably 70 of what i own is

traveling with me right now as far as my duffel bag and a backpack uh i live off those two things so they're always with me so you're very simple man uh i keep light you know because i move around a lot uh i wish i wish i could have you know all this stuff but that's not my trip right now later on probably when i slow down yeah the grass is greener do you think you'll end up in mexico that that'll be where you uh set up your your your twilight years no i don't know i have no idea it is uh i've been i've been on the move for about five years now i think kind of non-stop uh every now and then it's like spend christmas in california or stop for a few for a month uh in ut in Utah, wherever there's a good space. One of the blessings of my life, I think, right now,

is that I've invested in a lot of people as far as training and education and stuff like that. So I get some amazing offers every now and then. Hey, example, Sean Ryan, just inviting me out there to film, uh, film some of these weird videos and me showing some of this stuff and then just getting to hang out somewhere out in there in Tennessee and just enjoy, uh, and just, you know, figuring, figuring some, some things out about the culture and, and, and just living locally for, for a month. If that is something that i that i'm interested

in anywhere i stop is usually somewhere i want to learn something um you know went to utah and learned about long-range shooting by some of the best people that your government's produced you know um go to arizona and uh learn about santa muerta and how it's taking root in the United States as a cult. Now go to Tennessee and Chattanooga and just roll some jujitsu with some of the guys out there or something. You know, that's, that's usually what I try and figure out for myself when I travel, you have to be light if you want to do stuff like that. Yeah. And what a, you started the show talking about your, you adapt or you have friends in, in,

on both sides of the political spectrum. And, man, it doesn't – you name some of the most conservative hotbeds in the United States and some of the most liberal. It doesn't get much more liberal than Chattanooga and doesn't get much more conservative than certain parts of Utah. Where is your accent, Ed? How come you sound like you were born in, I don't know, Washington? Yeah, I get that a lot. It's great. I guess it's working.

I went through language school specifically because they wanted me to be able to speak English without an accent. In the States or where did you do that? No, that was in Mexico. Specifically, they wanted me to be able to talk to people about whatever over the phone you know drug deals and stuff like that in an english and a you know californian accent um growing up on the border i learned english by watching mr rogers you know but the accent i had to i had to work on it you know um do you spanish was your first spanish was your first language. Yeah, Spanish is my first language. Every now and then I get like, Ed doesn't even speak Spanish. Mira, cabrón, yo hablo español y con huevos mexicanos, cabrón.

Que vergas. Sorry about all the bad language. Bad language away. It's my favorite. And also I can fake my way into speaking like I can't speak Spanish. You want to check that out? Please, please. Mucho gusto. Mi nombre es

Ed Calderon. Me gusta mucho su cultura. Coco es la mejor película de Pixar. Die los muertos es encantadora película. Me gusta mucho. So I used to fucking fake that shit for people. Wow.

For part of the job right that's like spanish for high school spanish for that's still yeah that's still pretty good pretty pretty good pretty fucking good for how bad it was that's awesome it's a it's a mind fuck you know trying to switch that to so to have like a like a gringo accent going out of mexico i turn that on every now and then for people it's that's all that adaptation to your environment is so cool and being able to take whatever best conceals, whatever the reason why you're there, or if you don't want to be seen, or if you don't want to be noticed, not a lot of people know this about me, but I, back in the day, I used to go to art school and it was cool to paint

graffiti and I'd be out in Oakland and San Francisco. And I'm obviously very white from the suburbs. Right. But I've realized very quickly that if I dressed like a tweaker and then moved moved as if i was a homeless or a drug addict nobody messed with you yeah like they've got nothing to offer right so i could just adapt to that environment but to hear you do those different dialects and like that that's just like a whole nother level that was really cool thanks for sharing there's a there's a concept in the u.s called the gray man concept which i'm not a fan of um the the the concept of being able to blend

into your environment and dressing in in in muted clothes so you won't be able to be seen or all of all these weird concepts you know the problem with that that mindset is that that could work if you don't leave your normal environment every day that might work you know uh but once you i mean i with this giant mustache go to oaxaca which is mexico and i will stand out like a motherfucker and even if i shave the office mustache and rave and dress locally i'm too tall you know everybody there is you know hobbit sized how tall is hobbit size let's be clear here how tall are you it's probably right there i mean like uh shorter than five you know probably four something you know um honey let's move to oaxaca yeah i'm only five five i would love to go somewhere oh sure talk down to people oh go there

it's great okay well it is but uh like you say the best thing you can do i always tell people you have the superpower all of us do of narrative by this i mean if i arrive to your bar mitzvah in a denali and fucking do a few donuts in the parking lot and then park my car and throw a beer can into the fucking woods i have now can i have i've now told you my story who i am that might be complete bullshit but i i've just done that that is an extreme example of it and something i talk to people about but we are in control of that in a lot of ways and we just don't realize it you know the perception aspect of it do you dress in gray or do you dress in such a way where people make up their minds about who you are before they even talk to them

and and again i wish i can tell you the cia showed me some of this stuff but this is all scam yeah hood rat uh fuckery that i learned from people that would scam other people um small tip for people if you're ever in a place where you think is very unfriendly and you want to figure out a way or to find an individual in that environment that could allow you access or at least be a guide in such an environment, untie one of your shoes and walk around with it. The first person that tells you to tie your shoes is going to be the most accessible individual in that environment.

Wow. Wow. And now you have access. I feel you. I feel it. And now you have access. I feel you. I feel it. And now you have access to somebody that can be open for a conversation. And also, you started that conversation, but he thinks he did. Yeah.

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and it'll show you similar items at a lower cost. Add coffee to your list? Then swap it for one that's cheaper. Craving chips? The app will suggest some on sale. Or hopefully she. Ed, I was, you'll like this, I think. I was on the Mombasa-Nairobi highway. It's what – Mombasa is a city on the east coast of Kenya on the Indian Ocean, and then Nairobi is their capital inland, I don't know, 400 miles. And I was in the middle there somewhere. Not quite in the middle. I was probably like 100 miles outside of Mombasa.

And I was with a caravan of two cars driving and one of the cars broke down and i was with these fucking people who were the biggest pussies in the whole fucking world and they freaked out because you know kenya there's no white people there's no mexican people there's just like i mean the the you can tell the difference between the different tribes there are black people if you just have fucking like the awareness of a snail right you're like oh they're from somalia those are kenyans those are nigerians i mean you can i mean it's not just black people like it is in the u.s maybe and so but one of the cars broke down the people that i was in the people in my car all jumped out and jumped into this other car and me and the in the bodyguard were like concerned i was the cameraman right we were

concerned about all the people freaking out, and it was all white people. And they jumped in the car and took off. So I'm there with this giant fucking 300-pound white dude from West Virginia who's the bodyguard. And me with two $15,000 Canon 1DXs with the most fucking amazing lenses on the Nairobi-Mombasa Highway. With fucking just – I mean my shoes are more valuable. No one – the 10,000 people around me don't have shoes. I'm on a crazy highway with fucking just i mean my shoes are more valuable no one the 10 000 people around me don't have shoes i'm on a crazy highway with 18 wheelers going by it was it was nuts eventually uh we jumped in the back of a pickup truck like an hour later someone was nice enough

and we drove us into town but i had no skills like i probably should have just thrown the cameras away i'll give you a small tip and i please too late but okay it's fine by the way no one ever threatened us it was like in the four hours i was out there everyone was cool as shit but we stuck out stood out like a sore thumb like people coming over and like touching you like are you real act like act like act cool and act like you belong there you know even if you're lost yeah i start kissing babies there's uh i work with a group that filmed something down in mexico in a pretty shady place as part of a security contract thing that i did uh they were concerned about their camera equipment being you know stolen and or fuck with yeah so i came up with a quick solution

really quick one uh biohazard stickers on a water cooler right and a big sign that i made with a sharpie that said covid testing equipment and we went through military checkpoints police checkpoints and some shady checkpoints and nobody wanted to touch those fucking coolers right yeah yeah um a lot of people don't realize that aversion or being a aversion is also a concealment factor for shit. You know, people don't want to get searched. They make themselves vomit. They vomit on themselves. Oh, you know, people don't want something to be looked at closely.

So they make it disgusting as shit. You know? Yeah. It is. It is. It is. It is another little small lesson from some you know shady people out there as far as how to hide things wow uh but yeah i mean i've been in places where i'm like lost as

shit you know maybe not nairobi but in other places where i'm like i don't know what the fuck i'm doing and i immediately go into if you go into defensive mode if you're you know i don't know like i'm not that guy you know i, I'm not the, uh, everybody, everybody's a threat. Everybody's, uh, have a plan to kill everybody in the room and all that stuff. I'm more of the line of figure out what you have that you can give away to somebody and somebody in that environment, figure out something you can do or skillset. You know,

I always carry around small magic tricks for kids to give away if I find myself in a situation where the adults are unaccessible, but maybe the kids are. And I can just be friendly towards that. Even stickers. Stickers. There's a magic trick, which is basically a bendable coin that you can use to bite and then flip back. Oh. Right? And that one is a fucking showstopper for kids.

Or flashlights. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. They sell these big cases of flashlights at Costco that are probably like $2 each. I took those to Africa on three of my trips to Africa. Just shitloads of little flashlights. Kids love that shit. Hand them out. like two two dollars each i took those to africa on three of my trips to africa just shit loads of little flashlights kids love that shit hand them out uh you know things like that small things yeah a cell phone uh one of one of my one of the uh you know they took me down once uh working with a on a contract i had a bunch of guys with me who were high-level military guys and I was the guide basically they were

talking about you know satellite surveillance and you know being able to you know track things with their equipment and all this stuff and having to pay a company to advise them on local shit that's going on i was like oh that's all that's great i gave my i gave a phone to the uh to the parking attendant guy at the at the at the at the resort we're staying in and i said if you feed me all the information i need you can keep that phone when we go it's probably a you200 phone, smartphone, uh, with credit in it. So before we would go to the hotel and call them and say like,

it's everything cool. Anything happened at night? You know, any weird shit happened? Oh, everything's fine. A few cars that came in here that print kind of weird. Oh,

okay. Thank you for letting me know. Hey, where's the best, uh, the steakhouse here or where would you take a small pomeranian to the vet if something happened it's a person that had a we're with had a pomeranian uh i wouldn't take him to this i would take him over here probably and this is where the our rich

clients go it provided me with the best intelligence yes yes and it's it it was an investment of 200 as far as the phone while some of the people that i was working with were invest invested probably somewhere in around six thousand dollars on this weird security consultation thing that you know we didn't use you know it's an example of uh a lot of us already know a lot of these things, and we see them as high-level ninja shit that the government might do or some spy agents. But we do it every day in small ways in our daily lives. We just don't realize how you can apply it to other aspects of bad situations if you're in them. I'll give you an example if you go on vacation. So I had a boss who explained this to me um every

time we went to a hotel and we traveled a lot we never stayed anywhere for more than five days and anytime we went somewhere every single person he saw upon landing at the hotel he gave a 20 dollar bill to every single person so for him that if we saw 10 people you know the bellman the guy who takes your car the lady at the front desk desk, just, he would give out a $20 bill. And, um, he would explain to me that, Hey, you, you're now paying them more than they're making an hour. If they're making $22 an hour, you just gave him $20 for three minutes worth of work. They now work for you. That's how he would explain to me. And so I realized even in my own life, if I'm going to go to a hotel for, let's say a week and the room is $400 a night. So now you're after taxes and everything, you're at 3,500 bucks, right? Yep. Bring $300 in $5 bills. And the entire time you're there,

give every single person who works at the hotel a $5 bill and your stay will be completely different. Yep. When you get to the pool, you'll be the first one to get the drink offer. The guy who comes to your, when you ask for one towel, two towels will come. When you walk in and you don't have a mask and they're telling everyone else to put their mask on, you don't have to put your mask on. Like everything changes for you. But that's wrong because that's bribery. That's corruption. Why are you advocating corruption?

I am a hundred – But do you understand how a lot of us – well, a lot of people stateside are blocked in that regard. They don't realize how things are blocked. Well, yes. I'll give you two perfect examples of that too. There's no such thing in the United States, and I'm being pretty absolute, as homelessness. That's a mischaracterization of drug addicts. I was homeless for two years, and I lived in a car for five years.

When you call someone homeless, then you're trying to address the homeless population. There's a very small percentage. When I was homeless, it was just me and one other guy of the thousand homeless people that I knew that weren't drug addicts. They were drug addicts, and that's what their fucking situation was. And so if you address them as homeless, you'll never fix their situation. Do I know what the situation is to fix drug addicts? No, I'm not claiming that. What I'm saying is you're blinded by the magicry and fuckery of words. And the other thing is why would I give money to a fucking charity that I haven't vetted when the kid at Starbucks just said, please, thank you to me. And he said, sir, would you like me to top your coffee off?

That motherfucker gets a tip because he's contributing to the society. Yeah, I'm like anyone who thinks it's like bribery. Like we should – I mean you have a tip. Yeah. Because he's contributing to the society. Yeah. I'm like anyone who thinks it's like bribery. Like we should. I mean, you have a kid. We should be rewarding the people around us who help us in order to. It lifts all of society up. You know, random faceless acts of kindness. Yes.

Yes. One a day minimum. Maybe it's a Catholic in me or maybe it's just the guilt aspect. It's your mom, dude. I bet you have a good mom. Oh, yeah. She was not like these, again, Latinxers who would say, oh, my mom would hit me with the chancla, which is like the sandal. My mom had a fucking car antenna.

Oh, my God. So I guess she was into no nonsense and i she was a saint uh you know i whenever i got the car on tennis because i fucked up horribly and was your dad at home too yeah yeah but my dad's you know he was always at work basically you know it was almost like my mom, you know. I just, I recently went to visit my family down south. Different, completely different dynamic, you know, comparing it to some of my American, you know, friends and family that I have. it's matriarchal in a lot of ways, as far as it's not, not as far as he was perceived to be in charge, but it was actually in charge, right?

You know, it's all, it's all, it's all the, it's all based on some of the, you know, Virgin of Guadalupe or the Virgin Mary kind of veneration that they have down there where they put more emphasis on the mother's side of it instead

of the father. Again, it's probably related to some of our weird cultural roots uh your parents were alcoholics my dad was my dad was definitely a workaholic my mother was uh she was very uh she's a best way i can describe her was a mixture of steve irwin uh you know crocodile dundee and uh i don't know patch adams you know she was a she was a mix oh so she was flamboyant she's a character oh yeah she was i mean everything i do and everything i am is you know usually like the knife design i have uh i named it the elvia and

it's because it's her knife design she would uh grind down uh grind down all fruit knives and to uh curve shape because that's what you like to peel with yeah that became the best-selling knife at blade show i think a year back there wasn't any available when i went there to promote it um she was uh she was a character. Hard life. Hard life. She grew up in a place in Tijuana called Cartonlandia. It's basically cardboard land. Oh, I thought it sounded like cartoon land.

Say the name of it again. Cartonlandia. Wow. It's a cardboard land. It was all washed out during one of the floods. She lost all of her little kid friends back out during one of the floods um and she lost uh she lost all of her little you know kid friends back then and one of those floods um dad left at an early age that changes your normal that shit changes your normal yeah she grew up uh she grew up as a mother

to her two younger sisters damn so and that's that and that was my mom you know that yep that was it have you been to india ed no i have not dude dude you gotta go it'll trip you out i i haven't been to that ring that that i the the the notorious and infamous ring around new york around around Mexico city that I always hear about. You're talking about the people. I just heard, I just hear there's a fucking ring, the world's largest fucking ring of cardboard houses on the planet that you could probably see from space around Mexico city.

You know, 5 million of the 10 or 30 million people live in cardboard surrounding the outskirts of the city. And it just sounds, I mean, poverty is a different thing in Mexico. Like, uh,

we don't have overweight, uh, overweight drug addicts with smartphones, uh, hanging out, hanging out at Starbucks, you know, that,

that is, that is not, that is not poverty in Mexico. It's not, that wasn't nice. Ed. It is. It is.

I mean, again, I've experienced myself experience homelessness as well. Uh, well, and I get to walk around L.A. So if people want to have an argument with me, I'll meet you at Skid Row and we can talk about it, right? Skid Row at the Starbucks in Beverly Hills has 20 of those guys you just described. We have a manufacturing place in L.A. where we make a lot of our merch. And it is mind-blowing to see how they own the sidewalks, basically. It's theirs. But again, poverty in Mexico is different.

People actually starve to death and freeze to death outside. And it's not a choice. I was asked this by somebody recently. starve to death and freeze to death on the outside. And it's not a choice. Um, people, I was asked this by, uh, somebody recently, like, you know,

like why, why aren't there, why, why isn't there a large homeless population here in Tijuana? And the truth is that they die out. It, they be, they come in waves.

Some of them are deported back into Mexico from the United States. Some of them come wanting to cross and all of them get addicted to some of the fentanyl and fentanyl heroin mixes that are now the norm in a lot of these border towns. Is it safe to be homeless in Tijuana? No. No, no. So people need to realize this. In most municipalities in Mexico, it is illegal or at least regulated that you should have an ID with you. And if you don't have one, that means 36 hours of imprisonment.

So being homeless is a crime in Mexico, basically. What if you have an ID, though, and you're sleeping on the sidewalk? They'll pick you up and then for being what they call it. Vagrant? It's not vagrancy. They call it something else in Mexico, but you'll get picked up anyway. That's why you see pickup trucks stacked with homeless people in the back sometimes, all handcuffed. It's because they're meeting an arrest quota.

So they have to arrest a set amount of people. And also, that's why if you're in Tijuana, notice all the homeless people never have shoelaces or belts on. They'd just rather put like a rope on there. It's because the first thing that gets cut from them is belts and shoelaces. They get arrested by the municipal police. And it's basically just a recycling thing they do. They clean up all the homeless people. They put them in prison. They hold them down. 36 hours later, they're back out. So that's one of the things you can just look at someone. I've heard you talk about just looking at things. If you saw someone as a rope, as a belt, you're like, okay, this person's a frequent flyer in the jails.

Yeah, this person's a frequent flyer in the jails, and he probably can't run that much. Oh, that guy. That's a great picture. That's some Wi-Fi on there. That's from L. That's some of the, you know, some of the, there's a two-story house somewhere out in L.A. right now. Someone has it on the sidewalk. a two-story house somewhere out in LA right now. Someone has a, on the sidewalk. A two-story homeless shelter?

Homeless camp? Yeah. Oh, that's dope. Yeah. Some of these guys are just, you know. You got to see India. These slums, they're clean, but they're massive and they're filthy. It's so weird.

I'm talking like a million people and like a giant well in the center of town and fucking cows and monkeys and dogs everywhere and then just beautiful women walking around it's nuts it is the most bizarre scene there's some places like that in tijuana uh and you know i i grew up there and yeah every now and then i get the the the word you know sh shithole spat at me when I talk about my hometown. There's some bad parts about it, but even in the bad parts, there's light and there's color. I've had some of the best meals that I've ever had in my life in some of these shanty towns on the periphery of Tijuana. There was a film crew that... The women and kids are usually great.

It's the fucking drug addict men in these fucking parts of the world that are just fucking it up. Yeah, it is lack of opportunity. It is corruption at a high level in politics and all the money being fucking fun and funneled somewhere else. And, and is being fucking put into the margins of communities like that.

You know, you know, again, I had a film crew that I was working with and they were like, Ed, take us to a cool restaurant. And I was like, why the fuck would I take you to a restaurant?

And I went over and there was some guys, basically construction guys doing work. And I said, Hey, whatever you're going to buy for lunch, just buy double what you're going to buy, and I'll give you the cash. They use the lid of a fuel drum as a cooking surface. And we had, and according to some of the guys that I was with, well, that was, those were the best tacos that they ever had.

Yeah. And it is, it's a bunch of construction guys basically making everything. And one of their wives coming over with the tortillas and the salsa that she made at home. Things mean more. There are more, the,

the appreciation of some things like that basically we've i paid for the food and also what was left fed them for two weeks you know and uh the appreciation aspect of it uh going back there months later uh one of the ladies came over and gave me like a like like a thing she knitted. Right. And I was like, you don't need to do it. I mean, you don't need to do any of that. But I just the realization, even as a Mexican, that that that our presence there was felt that much that they felt they need to do something like that for us. That was, you know, it's an eye-opening

thing yes some of these places are desolate yes some of these places are rife with crime and and drug addict drug addiction and violence and some of these places are some of the most violent places on the planet right now when it comes to numbers places like in tijuana we have a whole community called la san justa wada which is pretty close to where one of the places I grew up in. And it is like six bodies a day. Damn. Right? And you see these places like this.

And, you know, how can people live like that? Or how can people live there is something I commonly see people talk about. And all of these people that talk about it or question it are people that have the luxury of choice right their normal is different than other people's normal uh normal is a fluid concept you know just like gender is in the united states oh geez don't get me started don't get me started it's a fluid concept you need to as a country you need to own it uh hey so when you say concept you mean it's not real? It's just between my ears?

It's my imagination? Yeah. I think in essence it is. Okay, then we're on the same page. These people are poor. No, no. It's a fluid concept. You can talk about that as well.

But also, normal is a fluid concept, but also just like shorts, a fluid concept. If I went to, um, what was that town? I would be tall. I would no longer be short. I would be tall. Oaxaca. Yes. Well, send me to Oaxaca and short becomes fluid. Yeah. Oh, that was five, five, four. You know, there you go. I'm five, five. There you go. You would be, you would be, uh, the, the, the giant midget basically.

Yes. Ed, there you go. You would be the giant midget basically. Yes. Ed. There you go. You're on my podcast. You can't call me a giant midget. That's what they call themselves out there. It's all fluid. It's all fluid. Ed, I was really into macro photography for several years. That's when you like take pictures of bugs on plants because you have no real talent so you just take pictures of small shit and great i like that a

lot and it was it's so fun and there's something so zen and peaceful about it but i could walk up to a bush and i would look at the bush and there would be no bugs in it and i would take some deep breaths and i would take some deep breaths i'd fidget with my camera and I would start seeing things that don't fit patterns that are fucking out of whack. And I'd be like, ah, I see you. And all of a sudden there'd be three bugs and then 10 bugs and you couldn't even fucking believe it's a bush full of fucking – it's a planet with just shit going on. But when you walked up in the first three minutes, you don't see shit. And I know three minutes doesn't seem like a long time, but it is a long time. Most people don't breathe and ever just sit down and look at a flower or a bush for three minutes.

And then all of a sudden, I'm like, well, shit, here we are. And I take off my bag, and it's time to start documenting the 20 bugs in there. But only because I start seeing patterns that are whack. Is your job – does that resonate with you? Yeah. That you yeah that this whole pattern thing like okay this is a safe space wait a minute yeah well i you know i have this drill i do with people or uh you know we have i tell people they always scan you know midsection basically uh threat direction threat direction and intention so midsection basically look at somebody's waistline and hands first why because that's what's going to kill you

okay i can't i can't spit poison at you like a weird lizard from jurassic park so that's not going to be it um why why waste what's at your waist most people conceal weapons at their waistline okay and also most people move around with conceal weapons at their waistline. Okay. And also, most people move around with their hands at their waistline. Okay. If you can't see one of their hands, then it means that that should start putting perceived threats into your head and mind. The problem is a lot of us are very social beings and have never experienced violence. So, the first thing we see in somebody is their face.

I can smile at you and shoot you in the face from my hip. Then you will never see it if you only concentrate on somebody's face. Professional people will do this. People that are going to rob you on the street will usually have a, hey, what's going on? Give me the money right now. And it's to keep people's attention down and the threat level down as far as their face. So again, intention, threats, and direction, finally on the feet and where, where are their feet pointing? Are they're pointing away from me? Are they pointing towards me? If they're pointing towards me, it means that they're approaching um so you start piecing things together um i like telling people i like telling people that you know this is a skill set you have

to work on every day you know there's no you know there's no uh there's no trick there's no trick to getting good at it just like any magic trick it's all about repetition and mastery right yeah um observation wise you you you learn you learn some of that and i you know tracking you know i got to learn tracking skills from some pretty fucking amazing people and one of the first things they had me do was take off my shoes you take off your shoes and why you shake off your shoes so you slow down and you're more aware where you're stepping right so slowing down is a big aspect of it. And another aspect of it is educating your baseline. You go anywhere,

you know, I can go to, you know, I went to Portland and the baseline there when there were riots were going on is everybody was wearing black, you know, even the, even the state police were all in black

which was pretty funny that they were all color coordinated right uh so i perceived that i should be wearing black probably as a as a way to kind of be in that environment uh and i realized quickly that most of the kids there were not even from there and it became apparent because whenever the riot police would start firing tear gas and they would disperse into places that didn't make any sense like where like what do you mean they dispersed into a soccer field that was closed in and the locals there were few and far between i could see them disperse into places that made sense right you know being somebody that's from mexico right ride gas and tear gases like you know, I use it as cologne.

Right. Oh, shit. It's it's it's a it's more common there. Like it's very it's very common. Also, we use a strong stuff. They were using two percent CS gas on these protesters. It was all for show. I saw the cans and I was like, oh, that's that's fine. You know, it's OK. You know, kick that to the side a bit. Damn. But you would see people run to places that didn't make any sense. That's what, you know, then I realized, oh, all these people were bussed into this riot, you know, riot.

All these people were bussed into this riot. And then most of the people that are local are the ones that dispersed to places that made sense. Small observations like that you have to do by slowing down or standing still just like you were standing in front of this bush that turned to be turned out to be a whole ecosystem of insects um all of us are you know another aspect of you know the things that i show people is that you know we have our eyes to the front which is most predators have the eyes to the front so we're predators by nature so the whole aspect of showing somebody anything nefarious you know like ed that's nefarious that's ambushing somebody that's uh that's very scary what you're showing we were we were ambush predators you know that's that's that's why there's no more mammoths

you know apparently uh because we're very good at that all of us and it is an aspect of our nature that has been neutered from us in a lot of ways by you know violence doesn't solve anything it does a lot um how about those fucking english soldiers or whoever they were who would just line up on opposite sides of the field and then they'd say go and just cross and shoot each other what the fuck was that was that the stupidest period of warfare in the history of mankind maybe you know uh there's a there's a mexican example of that uh i don't know if it's true or not but i heard a historian uh that once the spanish got done invading all of mexico they took some of the glasgow tecan warriors some of my ancestors on a boat and said well the philippines is next

and you fuckers were pretty good here so let's go you know so at some point in history a bunch of glasgow mexican glasgow tecan warriors fought japanese pirate and samurais on the ocean with the spanish wow and and they were effective because they didn't follow uh you know conventional warfare they would fucking climb over uh uh lines of soldiers to fucking just whip out their uh you know clubs and or whatever they would have projectile weapons and, you know, fuck over the other side. Yeah. Combat with rules is really weird. Do do do bad guys have an advantage because they don't have rules as opposed to the good guys? I mean, you know, I could say that a video of the Taliban dancing with night vision and M4s after you guys left Afghanistan are proof of this. They'd say, you have the watches, but we have the time.

What they are willing to sacrifice as far as a nation and what they're fighting for is way different than the united states was doing there you know vietnam is another example uh fourth generational warfare is basically small non-state actors fighting for for control of their local uh communities or populations that is what mexico is taking the world to school in right now. You know, as far as what that's, that's why I'm hired to advise on a lot of things. It is, it is not that they have the advantage. It is that the government side of it, the conventional side of it, even, even the unconventional special forces side of it are slow to change. of it are slow to change. They're slow to move from a counterterrorism, global terrorist fighting force to now fighting, you know, what, what threats are perceived now, you know, what's a perceived threat right now? Are you, uh, is the U S fighting global terrorism now, or is it on the defensive with, uh, uh, a big Chinese, uh, state actor, uh actor pumping in fentanyl into Mexico

and sponsoring a specific cartel while it generationally pumps in a lot of poisons into your country. While it brainwashes kids with TikTok or rewards them with shit on TikTok. And you can't say anything bad about them or disney won't show your you know netflix series or your uh your reality show or whatever which is mind-blowing to me you know uh yeah you can't say anything bad about that i've been you know in the you know people that ask me like aren't you worried about their cartels i've had closed doors closed on me because of some of the stuff that i've some of of the things that I've reported on and said about China and its

interference in Mexico and the United States, you know, that, that, and this is, this is, this is America, you know, this is, this is the United States that I have come into, you know, it's a trip. Yeah. If you try following me on Instagram for the last year, they'll give you a big warning. Do not follow this man. He's full of misinformation and – Shadow banned, you know?

Yeah. Why don't they just kick me off? It's so weird. Well, all my idols are shadow banned. My enemies are revealed is a quote that Anonymous posted up somewhere online, I think. Yes, yes, yes. I 100% believe that. All my idols are shadow banned.

My enemies are revealed. I think that alone says a lot about our modern, what's going on right now. And specifically, I get a lot of people, Ed, you should go to this other app or should go to this one conservative app over here. It's like, you're missing the point. Yes, I agree. like you're missing the point yes i agree

you know if you're here listening and you still find me throughout even through the shadow band you are the resistance whoever you are you know like uh i have graffiti artists that follow me because they like some of my background and the ways that i i learned how to break into places when i was uh skateboarding cartel uh houses as far as the pools that they had. They would chain them up after they would get raided when I was a kid. Break in there, fucking skateboard on that fucking pool. Are you doing any music these days? Any painting?

Any writing? What are you doing that's creative these days? Every now and then I post these things called fever dreams. They're all part of a journal that I keep, a therapy journal. I've been going through a series of therapy-related issues for five years. I mean, all along my immigration process, I've been just going through. years i mean all along my immigrant immigration uh process i've been just going through you know i learned the word ptsd or the the concept of ptsd uh after you know after coming to the united states stuff like that you didn't have the luxury of having ptsd in mexico you're already getting

soft at it's it's it's not even the luxury it's uh it's we didn't have the word the language the language for it there was naming is the origin of all particular things. Yeah. I mean, if we if you have the language for it, that's a start. You know, I've been sober, alcohol. I've been alcohol free for about a year and a year and two months now. Oh, wow. Congrats.

And I have nice skin. You have nice skin. I wonder if that's why. Did you always have nice skin? and you have nice skin you have nice skin i wonder if that's why did you always have nice skin no it's uh it's a it's uh swimming in the ocean and running around in some fucking mind-blowing beaches in kalima that are cartel controlled for the past few days okay tell so sorry i didn't mean to cut you off a year and a half without alcohol yeah and and a lot of these things i uh the big i think the big draw of my instagram account is the openness that I have had as far as not only talking about some of the things that are interesting that I'm currently doing and moving around there and sharing news from Mexico that is completely unbiased and direct from the source on the ground stuff.

To sharing a few memes that make light of being Mexican, you know, and kind of laughing a little bit about ourselves and not doing so in any, like, I'm not offended about any of the Mexican meme stuff and stuff like that, to showcasing some of the stuff that I carry in my pockets. You know, there's a right now, if you can, if that where the blue pillar is, if you can click on below that one, you know to sharing moments of my life like this one um i went down and visited some family and uh they're all guadalupanos and i've been reconnecting with some of that spiritual side i've never kneeled in front of anybody in my life except my aunt who uh give gives me that uh blessing you know oh that's such a great shot of you hugging her uh the the whole the whole aspect of uh healing and going through the processes is that i'm going through in the open and having that

uh aspect of hey dude it's all right to not uh wake up at four in the morning and do kettlebell uh exercises and have your hands bleeding it's all right that not all of us can be these elite warriors that are about just being extreme and just not feeling pain. I am a cautionary tale. I've been broken. My world's ended a few times. And I write about some of these things through the fever dreams. What do you mean your world's been broken a few times? Like really, like you thought you were going to die or you were depressed and tried to commit suicide or what do you mean you've been broken?

I mean, imagine being in a country where you're, imagine where you are right now. Yeah. If I told you in two years or in a year, you're not going to be where you are, you're going to be in a completely different country starting from zero. Ah, I'd freak out the fuck out out with the money you have in your pocket oh no there you go there you go which is exactly what happened to me i don't even have shoes on ed

yeah that's fine don't do that to me a little bare. It's fine. So a rebirth, basically just it's a complete fucking ego check. I think it's important to. Were you homeless? Yeah, for a bit. Yeah. It's important. It's important to realize that you have to concentrate on new beginnings and always keep in mind that there is always an end. Right.

trade on new beginnings and always keep in mind that there is always an end right um something that i was shown at uh my first my first command position that i ever had when i was working i had a uh i was a regional sub commander and uh they had a like 80 something agents underneath my care and i was like why the like why the fuck me, right? Yeah. Somebody and a very amazing mentor of mine, a man by the name of Liza Ola, a lieutenant colonel from the Army. He said, well, this is your job now. And he gave me a silver coin. All right. And I grabbed it and said, put it in your pocket.

And I said, always carry it with you. And he told me, I'm going to give you another one when your job's over. When this job is over, I'll give you the other one. It's up to you if I give it to you and you put it in your pocket or if I put it over your eyes. Oh, shit. Oh, shit. He said it's up to you wow and he explained to me every job you start

every process you start in life everything in life has an ending to it it is it is important to concentrate and realize that this job will end it's up to you it's up to you to realize how that's going to happen. And that, uh, that was life changing, you know, uh, every time I go somewhere, every time I start a new project, every time I figure something out, every time I log onto Instagram, I'd realize that one day that's going to be gone. Yeah. One day it's going to be over and I'm onto the next thing. Um, I was, uh, I was a kid playing in a punk band and skateboarding in one month.

And then the next month I was being shaven. My head was being shaven bald by a bunch of ex-Special Forces guys in a refurbished prison and being trained to be a paramilitary agent. Right? And then I said, I'm never going to do anything else in my life. This is where I am. This is where I need to be. And all of a sudden, that is completely over

and gone, and I am left without anything. So what's next? I've been going through a few of those in my life. Ed, are we going to have you for a few more minutes? Do you have to go? I got about 15 minutes more. Okay. I need 30 seconds to go pee in the bushes.

Go ahead. Hey, Ed, I got a quick question about your Instagram. Do you post everything on there yourself? No, no. Okay. I have some people that help me out with not only maintaining it, but also posting things for me that I forget to post. But a lot of it is very personal. It is very much a ride along with me. It is very much a look at some of the stuff that I'm doing as basically a ride along.

We've been starting to expand onto Patreon. I've been shadow banned for months now. It's hard to find me on Instagram. So I've been, I've been trying to, to, to fix that by having a place where people that are really, that really want to support and follow us and to share some of the, some of the aspects that are, have been kind of difficult to share openly on, on, on Instagram. So. Yeah. Being exposed to everything you have been in the heightened sense of awareness of your

environment, is it tough for you to ever just turn that off or tone it down a little bit? Like if you're just going out to dinner and you're in your, in a safe environment or you're, you know, you're here in the United States and there's relatively no threat. Is it, is it hard to tone that down or are you always just kind of scanning looking? Is that just a part of you now? Uh, you know, I always talk about, uh, the biggest lie that it was ever told to me is that I was going to get better or heal. That was the biggest lie that it was ever told to me. And it's not true. Uh, if you go through some of the things that I've gone through, and I'm not unique, you know, and I've met people that have gone through

things way, way worse than my metric than myself. It doesn't matter. It's not a measuring competition. Broken is broken. Change is change. And despite the fact that a lot of us want to go back to whatever we perceived as normal, you know, that, that, that place is gone. It doesn't exist.

It is a fantasy that gets sold to us. It is about learning how to live with things. It is about learning how to weaponize some of the failures in your past and sharpen them and use them as a weapon you know oh it's the kyle creek thing again yeah do you hear do you already you comedians are the exact same way writers are the same way take all the shit that's happened to you in your life and once you're able to process it and settle it down creativity and new shit will go from it the worst shit that happens to you in

your life when it finally settles down and is rotting shit inside of you if you're creative if you're able to turn it into that you'll see seedlings come out of it right like out of the dead carcasses yeah horrible experiences are the exact same way yes but we i keep uh you assimilate them right is that what you mean you don't heal from them you assimilate them. Right. Is that what you mean? You don't heal from them. You assimilate them into your character. You you accept them. If somebody throws an arrow at you. Yeah. A symbolic arrow and it lands on your back. You rip it out and you use it to stab the motherfucker in front of you. If he if he's a threat, you know. Yeah. But the thing is that a lot of us take that arrow out and throw it away and forget about the arrow.

Or sit there and complain about it. And sit there and complain about it, or we get fed this lie that you're going to get better, you're going to go back to normal, you're going to go back home. Veterans get this lie as well. You go to war, go to war you know everything matters everything is life and death you get millions of dollars worth of equipment

as your responsibility your focus is clear your purpose is clear enemy over there friends over here keep friends safe keep this line hold the line all of a sudden all that shit's gone yeah you get off the bus as we call it you know and who are you now you know are you gonna go back to normal what is normal what is normal yeah basically the the thing i'm talking about is uh realizing that you're not a fixed point and normality isn't a fixed point it is a it is a constant thing that is moving in front of you. A friend of mine told me, we are walking backwards into the future. And all we have is the smiles of our ancestors to guide us through. Say that again? We're walking backwards? We're walking backwards into the future. And all we have is the smiles and the faces of our

ancestors to guide us through. And it's not just our ancestors it's also people like me people like other of my friends and and and colleagues that have gone through shit and we are looking at you saying don't be an idiot you know uh don't do this don't do that uh this is dangerous uh we are cautionary tales uh there's a big there's a big poison and emulation when it comes to personalities out there uh and and and and it takes a lot of somebody like me to basically be public about my sobriety my immigration process which a lot of people are very touchy they don't want to talk about it because it's something that you kind of feel ashamed of or feel private about if it's not me talking about it if it's not my voice talking about it who i don't see somebody like myself out

there that's no me neither that's why i speak about it you know but they're out there so just no just no they're just they're they're and you're and you're just blazing the way man you're fucking so awesome how are you handling all of this attention how are you how how does it how does a a humble boy who's just trying to fucking survive day to day being raised in tijuana manage now the internet oh my god stevan you have ed calderon ed calderon holy shit i mean it's ed calderon uh how like how are you handling that i mean when i told people i was having you on they're like holy fuck you've made it you've arrived someone with your podcast i'm i'm selfish about it as far as using it for what i think it should be used for uh we just paid for

an eye operation for one of my you know he was a good friend of mine i used to work with but left he's left a kid behind after he was killed uh government doesn't support families that are doesn't support the sons or siblings of people that are unmarried because of weird policies down there so i just paid for an eye operation for somebody like that i got equipment for a whole group of people that are completely ill-equipped and under-equipped in mexico uh we're working on some donations uh for a uh the the uh the recon sniper foundation know, I just raised $4,000 for the Ryan Terry Foundation for the border former border patrol agent

that was killed by some of those guns from Fast and the Furious, which some of my friends were also killed by them. But again, who would I be if I would just focus on I'm Mexican and fuck everything on the US side or I'm on the US side. So fuck everything on the Mexican side.

I have to be I have to I have to find a way to basically bridge a gap as far as what's going on between both sides. Everybody wants everything to be either one side or the other right now. Yeah, I'm guilty of that sometimes for sure. And my experience is, you know, there are no sides, you know, right. Yeah. Are you religious, man? Do you believe in God? I was raised Catholic. I am a Guadalupano by heart. Basically, I'm a devotee of La Virgen de Guadalupe. And I was exposed to the cult of Santa Muerte, which is a very misunderstood and very much culturally appropriated faith in the United States.

That's the basis of my faith, I would say. Is there a moment in your life when you have experienced something so unknown unknown maybe some people would call it a moment of eternity maybe you experienced it in danger maybe you experienced it in skateboarding maybe um yeah yeah i mean i've been close to you know not being here yeah i i'd say you know most people will think i'm to talk about some weird cartel story or getting shot at or being beaten half to death with all of these things happened to me. When I was coming off drinking last year,

there was a moment that I felt my chest cave in, you know, alcohol is one of those drugs that'll kill you if you leave it you know i think it's one of the only ones that will do such a thing meaning if you meaning if you stop cold turkey and you've been on it for so long you could have a you could die yeah crazy that's the second time i've heard that in 300 shows i've done that's crazy going through that whole process uh i felt very ashamed of it in a lot of ways so i locked myself in and i kind of went out went uh through it solo uh with nothing but an altar of the virgin mary in a corner and a and a mattress in the other somewhere kind of hit like shut myself in uh i had people that would check in on me but it was mostly a kind of a it was a process that i had to go through it was a hell of a process to go through uh at some

point during the night i felt my chest my chest kind of cave in and uh you, very close to calling 911. Passed out. I woke up in the bathroom vomiting. And very close to just, you know, quitting. And out of the blue, I got this long letter, uh, every now and then I get them through email and, and, uh, there's a lady that helps me out sorting some of these emails out. And I always tell them if there's anything personal, uh, personal nature, just send it my way. And I, I'm usually, I usually try and respond. Um, kid, uh, kid who has, you know, uh, a lot of issues in his past, uh, who went to one of my classes and he just got, uh, you know, his, his, his first job and he's working for a law enforcement agency somewhere out there in the United States, somewhere out there in the U S um, sent me a picture of him graduating and also a picture of, uh, of the extra,

of, uh, of, uh, of his kid, unborn kid. Oh yeah. The ultrasound that's dope.

And, uh, and, uh, the whole, you know, thank you for inspiring him to go that route three years ago when we interacted. And at the end of it, he said, and this is from my mom.

Oh. And it was a rosary that is exactly like the rosary my mom gave me when I graduated. Wow. is exactly like the rosary my mom gave me when I graduated. Wow. So in that moment, I kind of saw the sign. I don't think God comes out from the sky and slaps you on the back of the head. Damn close.

That was close, though. Yeah. I think it's through the bending of probability and alignment that we see the divine. Say that again? Through the bending of probability and alignment that we see the divine. Say that again? Through the bending of probability and alignment? I think it's through the bending of probability and alignment that we experience the divine. And I think at that moment, I was pulled out of something. Wow. How long were you in that room?

How long was the detox, so to to speak that was a month of a bit over a month wow wow and no no did you have comms with the outside world did you have a phone yeah yeah it was you know but just leave me alone for a month i'm gonna quit drinking yeah wow not again not smart don't do that it's horrible i i think everyone should fucking lock themselves in a room my greatest moment is i locked myself in a room for five days once and and what i fucking witnessed was uh life altering isolation is a gift uh yeah isolation is a gift and again if you fear it if you're fearing alone i think it's mostly you fear that conversation that you're going to have with yourself that is what you're fearing

not being alone uh when things get quiet when there's nobody around when there's no distraction when you're fucking bullshit humor uh self-defense mechanism that you've developed over years of being i have a fantastic one oh most of the people that have been through shit have a but once there's nobody there to make laugh or entertain you're fucked you need to talk to yourself you know there's nothing outside of yourself look within miyamoto musashi used to say um it is a process it is a process i think a lot of us that go through these insane life experiences don't get that, you know, because it's scary. And, you know, facing the void and blinking, you know, some people die, you know, in that experience. If anything, I think that specific experience for me was pretty close to the divine. And I had a pretty intense experience, a solo experience.

And then for a couple months, I was trying to process what happened. You know when something like that happens, you're trying to process it. And I figured, okay. And I was basically losing my mind. I couldn't find any help. I couldn't find any books. I couldn't find any books. I was struggling to process this experience. So I decided I was like, okay, I'm going to jump in my truck and I'm going to drive to Moab.

And I'm just going to camp in my truck alone for a week and just like fucking decompress and get to the quietest place I know on the planet. But I decided before I leave, I need to take my car stereo out because I don't want to listen to any radio or any music on the way. So that night I went to bed. And then in the middle of the night, I got up like at three in the morning to check my truck for something. And I stumbled upon some robbers and they had pulled my stereo out and had my speakers out and then ran off. So I had my stereo, my speakers there. But shit, the shit was taken out for me. I didn't have to do it.

Put the shit in a box sold it bought some if we got some extra gas money for my trip and hit the road and i was like holy shit wow and it reminds me of what you were saying about the bending of probability and uh um alignment i was like thank you yeah nice i mean nice thanks for taking that shit out for me and and and and i and they ran off before they could take it i mean i, I was just like, holy shit, this is crazy. It's acceptance. It's another aspect of healing, another aspect of going through some of these things.

Horrible shit happens to people. Tragedy is part of life. Horrible things. But Ed, if you believe in God, why are all these orphans dying of hunger over here? What, what's this happening over there? Um, it is part of life. That is part of the whole experience. Part of the whole ride. There's a lot of things that happen now. Are you going to do anything about it?

Yeah. Is it, is it, is that your place? Uh, I've, I, I've been a lot of ways. I think that is all I have right now doing something about some of the things that I've, I've gone through and some of the things that I witnessed and some of the things that I wish were better. Uh, that's been a big aspect of my current existence. That's been a big aspect of my current existence. How old are you? I'm 39. Oh, shit. You're still young. Will you get gray hair? Do dudes of your ethnic descent get gray hair?

You do get gray hair? Oh, yeah. I'm going to get all the pico nevado, like a snowy hilltop later on in life probably. Before I let you go, what are you doing next What are you doing next? What, what I want to have you on again, like in six months, what can I like, what can I be like, Oh, Ed, you said you were coming out with a book or a movie. Please come back on my show. What can I lure you back here with? Give me the, um, what do you got coming up?

Working on two books right now. Uh, one of them is the collection of the fever dreams, which is basically made process of sobriety. of them is the collection of the fever dreams which is basically a process of sobriety uh the trauma of going from you know uh being a kid that is uh singing on stage in a weird backyard somewhere and with his punk rock band and then burying four of their four of his friends that were just recently killed somewhere in a dystopian landscape somewhere in tijuana as a police agent um that's one that's one of the things that we're working on and another one which is very important near to near and dear to my heart is a devotional manual of a sort that that i'm working on

specifically talking about some of the elements of spirituality that i've been reconnecting with that i grew up with and that i've've held during some of the worst times of my life. Specifically talking about my experiences growing up as a wallet of Bano and then being introduced to Santa Muerte by some of the people that I, that I work with and some of the people that I got to work against, you know, what's a wallet wallet did Banyo.

What, what did you say? out what's a wallet wallet de baño what what did you say i heard you say growing up as a wallet de baño guadalupano guadalupano yeah which is basically a devotee of the virgin of guadalupe okay or the uh i wasn't even close not even close on that one uh And of course, our Patreon. We just set up a Patreon. I'm shadowbanned as all hell. On Instagram? I'm shadowbanned on Instagram, so there's no way to find me unless you type in the whole Ed's Manifesto underscore thing.

You know what's crazy, though? You're in my feed pretty strong right now. I mean, I know people say that to me all the time too like but but i i try i try and do pay promotion and i do a lot of i do a lot of uh reels which basically puts some of my content out there because they're in competition with tiktok so they're desperate i guess yeah um but other than that i keep getting news related things uh taken down because they violate community standards and their news related things, which it's, it's been, it's getting to a place where people have to realize we have, I have no sponsors. Like I, like, I'm not,

I'm not like any of these other tactical community guys that have like, I'm sponsored by Colt. I'm sponsored by, I have nothing. Yeah. I have no sponsors at all. and it's not because we haven't tried it's just that i i probably piss off a lot of people with all the things i say maybe i don't know um but we just i have no sponsor so one thing we've been trying to do is uh if you like the feed if you like what i put out if you like what we're doing uh we started patreon i'm sharing some more aspects of some of the stuff that i do there some segments of some of the classes that i do there and also just you know basically begging people for you know the means to say sustain this weird ass trip that i'm on

um so if you can please uh support us through what is the patreon count ed manifesto yeah and there's a link on my instagram account or on our website, www.edsmanifesto.com. I know this is easier said than done, but why not pen out a revenge Hollywood movie? Bad guys do something, good guys come in, they fuck them up and win and and and you put stamp your name on it we all go see it and you have some money all i'm gonna say is that i can't talk about it yes yes ed what a pleasure um seven pages of fucking notes here i didn't even have to touch them once you're a fucking podcaster's dream wet dream uh you are a gentleman amongst uh amongst all gentlemen how great having you on your integrity is refreshing uh thanks for being you ma'am thank you for having me on i enjoy these conversations

uh and specifically i just enjoy being able to to you know support people that support me. So, you know, thank you for investing in me. And I hope my investment in you guys was worth it. Dude, totally. Thank you. Thank you.