The Team House - Green Beret and double amputee Justin Lascek, Ep. 69

Episode Date: November 21, 2020

Justin is a veteran of 10th Special Forces Group where he served as a medic and deployed to combat in Afghanistan where he was caught in an IED blast that nearly ended his life. Please support Justin by checking out his website: https://justinlascek.com Get access to bonus segments with our guests: https://www.patreon.com/m/TheTeamHouse NEW! Team House merch: https://teespring.com/stores/my-store-10474963 Team House Discord: https://discord.gg/wHFHYM6 SubReddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/TheTeamHouse/ Jack Murphy's memoir "Murphy's Law" can be found here: https://www.amazon.com/Murphys-Law-Journey-Investigative-Journalist/dp/1501191241 The Team Room Reading Room (Amazon Affiliate links): https://jackmurphywrites.com/the-team-room-reading-room/Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

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with free support services to help them on their parenting journey. Everyone deserves someone they can turn to for help with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today. Hey everyone. Welcome to episode 69 of the team house. I'm Jack Murphy here with co-host, David Park. We are here tonight with our guest, Jason Lassick, who is a former Green Beret, served with 10th Special Forces Group. Justin, you're good. What did I just say? People say Jason all the time, but you're good, man. Keep rolling.

I'm sorry, Justin. And I'm not even drinking. I'm having a selfie. That's the problem. Justin Lassick, who serves in 10th Special Forces Group. He is a combat veteran, and also he is a double amputee. So there's a lot for us to talk about here tonight. I really want to thank Justin for taking the time with us.

And I just wanted to, before we roll into this, talk about... when you slid into the DMs because this kind of like knocked my socks off. So I've been, you know, ex-soft vet bro guy in the media for like, what, eight or nine years now. And every so often I get these messages. It's really nice, actually, from guys who are in like Ranger Battalion or Special Forces. And they're like, Jack, I joined because I heard something you, some podcast you did or some article you wrote. Or, you know, you were part of the inspiration, part of the reason why I signed up. And it's like, wow, man, that's so, like, humbling to hear that.

When you slid in, you said that and a lot more, you said, Hey, Duder, I don't know if you remember, but we corresponded a little bit before I ever enlisted. And I was like, wow, that's pretty cool. But I don't remember that, but that's awesome, man. And then you said, and then a while later, I almost died. Lost my legs and my balls. And I'm still here. Hope you're doing well.

And I was like, holy shit. And, you know, we've said here on this podcast and this live stream before, like, you know, we're not necessarily here to, like, romanticize special operations or glamorize it. Like, we're supporters of the troops and we're supporters of the capability. We think it's important for our government to have these capabilities in their arsenal. But, bro, like, it's not a video game. And no one here knows that better than just. So Justin Lassick. So Justin, thank you so much for joining us tonight. I appreciate that, man. And it's very nice to meet you and Dave.

I'm honored to be here. So thank you. And then the fact that we're live, this will be, this will be fun. And then, you know, I think that with the directed audience here, like we have a specific audience. And I think that there'll be a valuable conversation. At the very least, hopefully it'll be amusing. But hopefully we get something out of it too. And I would argue that, I'm a triple amputee too because like it said in the email, my testicles are removed. And that's something that at least one person doesn't forget and as me because I may never be a father again. It's highly unlikely it will be.

We have some samples that were, we have some samples that were taken post blast and it's just unknown and unlikely that there's much there. And if anything, it's in vitro fertilization. But I appreciate the invite. I'm excited to be here. And then now we have a face-to-face on our correspondence. Absolutely, man. And, you know, the story we kind of ask everyone to start with here is to tell us their origin story.

Kind of what was your path into the military? Where did you come from? It started with a spirit animal in the Desinoran Desert. Now, I was born in Colorado. I grew up in Georgia, went to Georgia Southern University and graduated there, have an exercise physiology degree. I started a Strengthening conditioning company shortly after that, and it's called 70s big. So a lot of the guys in special operations that I encountered back then, whether they're still in or not, I'll get messages all time.

Guys are like, I followed you back then. And sorry this happened, but it's good to see you. So I had 70s big. I wrote some books, mostly e-books on my website. So four on my own, one with two professors, just strengthening and nutrition-related stuff. And then I was doing seminars. And so I'd always get a few soft guys, whether it was seals on the West Coast or, you know, GBs throughout the country. And I had a calling towards it. I think there's a lot more circumstantial societal players, namely G.I. Joe. But there are a lot of influences that push me towards it. And I'd say the reasons that I joined and the reasons it came for doing the job are almost like two different things. Once I actually got the green hat on, I had about a year.

And then we deployed. We did a six-month deployment to Afghanistan. And there was a lot of combat on that. and let me just point this out for most of our audience. I don't think I'm cool because I've been in combat. I don't think I'm cool because of anything I've done in combat. A lot of people have done way more shit. Probably at least Dave's sitting there

because he's got that classic shaved head goatee like I have a former soft guy's going on and then Jack and I got the beards. But I don't think any of this is cool. I just was fortunate, I guess, until I wasn't enough to see a lot of combat. And I was very close to dying a lot on that first trip, probably four or five like legit times like RPG going a foot over my head when I bent down to pick something up. And, you know, so I was fortunate that nothing happened.

And a quick shout out to the 509th infantry. They were our uplift and, you know, our attached infantry on that trip. And I had my first trauma casually with them. I lost my first trauma patient in combat from them in a vehicle rollover. So they're a great unit. Just wanted to say what's up to them because I know some of them are watching. But then I had 11 months in between trips. And then I deployed again in February of 19.

And a month into it, I stepped on a bomb. And then there's a lot to stem from there. But just to do the obligation of like the SF guy thing and being the medic, I do want to point out that I fought very, very hard to get, there's a specialized training we do in our job. And I fought very hard to get more of that to prepare for that trip. And I feel very strongly that. that if that didn't happen, or if Jamie Reesberg, who was the 10th group surgeon,

who used to be in charge of our medical schoolhouse, if he didn't make a big deal about us carrying blood, basically on mission, then I'd be fucking dead. And we can't cuss on this, right? Yeah, you can. Okay. But I'd be pretty fucking dead, and I almost died, even though we had the, you know, my guys did a great clinic,

TXA, blood, ketamine, a lot of ketamine. And then I had an experience on my own. And then I had a horrible, type of recovery and I'm about 21 months post injury roughly right now. So that's kind of the quick once over right there. Let's just back up a little bit. I want to hear about, you know, you're kind of, you're growing up in Colorado and a little bit more about, you know, your background in sports physiology and the path you took into the military. So I spent most of the time growing up in Georgia. We moved when I was young and then I left Georgia

and I bounced around, you know, Texas, Florida, Utah, enlisted. So I did run a guy's gym. His name is Mark Ripito in Texas. So that's kind of how I got involved in doing seminars. Human performance and physiology. Anatomy and physiology, I'm very interested in. Anybody that's been on a team with me knows that. But I am fascinated by leveraging that to improve performance, and that was back then.

And nowadays, I'm interested in leveraging all of that to improve wellness and quality of life. And that includes emotional health. And that's one of the things I've focused on now. But so back then, strength and conditioning oriented, everything from mobility, nutrition, the actual strength training portion, which, you know, top mechanics, and then the actual programming, because that is quite a shit show in general in the community. And I just wanted to be simple, do the least amount of dose of stress that you can and to get performance, because that's what we need in this job.

We need to, whether it's GBs or SEALs or any soft or any. military or tactical or job or you're dependent on your body you need to be able to perform within a certain energy system domain with a certain level of strength and then you need to be able to recover from that and then to repeat that over and over like when i i don't know about you guys but one of the last missions on my first trip i didn't even have snevel gear and i weighed 300 pounds and i was like 210 at the time so it's like 90 pounds of shit with my a bag and food water ammo grenades and all that stuff so you got to perform and so that i was very interested in that and then that that's transferred really well into being an 18 Delta, which is an SF medic.

So the experience was very useful and I still use it. And it's still at the time, I never got paid. I never monetized it because I always wanted to help people. And so that trend continues, both the lack of money thing and the helping people thing. You said that when you were, when you were training, you were running into all these, you know, soft guys. When you were growing up, did you, did you want to go in the military? Was it, did you know anybody from the military?

Like, was it, was it only meeting these guys that kind of drove you in that direction? Or had there been a thought prior to that? No, it's just a piece of it. I ended up, I still have two very good friends I met around the 0910 timeframe. One of them has his own podcast for Air Force stuff. He's a piece of PJ. And then the other guy saw a lot of combat in the infantry. He had a lot of issues after that combat.

He did, like, I think he's got like, six years of combat or something insane. And, you know, that turns into substance abuse problems and almost suicide. And luckily, he's still alive. But to answer your question more directly, it wasn't necessarily the guys.

It definitely helped, because they kind of helped paint the picture. They definitely told me what I don't want, because I don't want to be a conventional infantry guy after hearing that friend's stories. And to be honest, I was I felt weak and lonely all the time as a kid.

So, like, I always thought that I started lifting weights when I was like 11 or 12 to look like wrestlers. But it was just because I think I didn't want to be fucking weak anymore. And I always daydry. You know, kids sometimes have a, what do you want to be when you grow up? And the kids like, I want to be a doctor. And then that fizzles away or materializes. And I didn't have any of those. I just always imagined, honestly, just saving people.

That's what I would daydream about. and or doing something in an extreme circumstance and overcoming it and happened. And I don't need to do that anymore because I did it. That's probably the biggest thing. I look back, I do a lot of introspection, a lot of journaling. And so I look back at like things that may have played a role in why I did things at a certain time. Because you have to definitely do a deliberate introspection to understand in order to accept and then fucking take action on whatever you want to do with intention. So that process I've done a lot.

Basically, that's all I've done since I got hurt. And so I kind of know what the situation was when I was a kid and then growing up into being a young adult, being a dude, because when I enlisted I was 26, turned 27. And I didn't know a lot. And then I thought if I hate every day of this, which is probably not entirely true, but you know, you hate a lot of your time in military if you fucking hate inefficiency. but I thought if I hate every day then maybe it'll make me better and I don't think that actually is how it played out but you do get better from this experience and most importantly because you're exposed to you know whether it's like guys like you or guys that you're on teams with you guys probably know more about this than me because you're so far removed from your time and service but you know that those relationships you had and those experiences you had with those people, that's why you do that and that's why you put up with all the bullshit. And so I guess like that gave you kind of like why I started it. And then what it became after that is that I wanted to kill people that deserve to be killed,

save people that deserve to be saved and free people that deserve to be freed because Green Brays are supposed to deopress a liberer, freely oppressed. And so that's what it became about. And that's unfortunately when you do that kind of shit and you are committed to that job, there's not much left for whoever else is inside there that's not wearing the green hat. And I can tell you guys, because it's very obvious that it doesn't last forever. You two know that because you're not in the job anymore, but it doesn't last. And so not having an identity outside of that job, I think, is a mistake.

And that's why I mean, some of the advocating for improving how we treat our guys in special operations and the military in general, guys and girls, especially women. And so that's kind of like a once around the world and kind of shifting you and maybe segueing into like how things are now or what what it became when I was doing the job pre-injury. It's interesting that you say that because a lot of times when I talk to people, you know, folks who've gotten out of the service, like there's no such, they talk about transitioning, but there's no such thing as transitioning out of the military. You have to almost do a hard reboot. You have to like reinvent yourself because if you keep on trying to. to hold on to that identity, it's sort of like, you know, the high school football team when you just can't, can't get past it. You know, when that was the height and every day you miss it and

you compare everything that you do in your life to those moments, it's nothing. It's flat. Yeah, yeah. It's like walking on the moon and then coming back and, you know, you're having to start all over again. You know, who was the famous astronaut? I think was it Buzz Aldrin, literally walked on the moon. And when he came back, he was selling used cars at one point. Yeah, he was an alcoholic. You know, he had a lot of problems he had to get through. And, you know, I think everything you, both of you have said is absolutely accurate.

So you go to Afghanistan. When you got there and your mission was a little bit different. Can you tell us a little bit about what you were doing? Did you feel prepared for it? What was it like for your first experience there and things like that? It was pretty unique a couple deployments because both of them were with the same type of mission and everybody who might be listening, like I'm not going to give away the OPSEC, but a lot of the stuff that happened in the area where I was operating and there's a lot of

open source stuff about it. But I'll glaze over it, but we were doing daytime valley clearance and living at an outpost, which is not as common anymore. we did you know soft guys did the vso the village stability operations in which they'd live in in a village and then they kind of influenced the area and that's kind of what we did because i was thinking about it a couple days ago and it popped in my head we're kind of almost sheriffs of the town at that point we're not like it's not the same because it's not our community but uh i remember coming up a week before i got hurt we were exfilling it has actually snowing and so obviously there's no

fucking iosar when it's snowing and we have had the option to stay out there and there were just ridge lines above us and team sergeant who's one of my favorite people and one of the greatest you know one of my favorite people to do anything tactically with he was fantastic to work for and we were on my first deployment together I was like we can't stay here so we're driving back and we see this little girl and she's barefoot she's like three she's like chest high from where I'm sitting and we had we're in these one dot ones they're like these fancy all-terrain humvees with no armor whatsoever so it's like a razor and I see her and she's waving they would come out and

all the time the villagers and waved to us because we're part of the element that liberated their people from ISIS. I can say that. We're fighting ISIS in Afghanistan. And the ISIS would fucking kill the shit out of these people. They would throw rockets in the middle of kids and

families and stuff. And it's fucked up. So at least that whole free people that deserved to be free thing, that kind of happened even though it's like, why the fuck are we there in Afghanistan? But to circle back to your question, Dave, daytime valley clearance mostly

those times when we got that daytime AC130 that shit was cool just to clarify there other time it was just you know Viper and and the Apaches Vipers F-16 but so just a lot of that I mean 15 soft dudes with like

70 to 100 partner force like stuff that a brigade should be like that's not exactly our tasking but that's what our unit does like we get we get the end state and then we are giving whatever amount of materials we have, and then we're basically told to figure the rest out, and we would go beg, borrow,

and steal people to go on, to beg, borrow and steal indigenous populations, in this case, the Afghans, to work by with and through in order to accomplish whatever it is we're doing in this case, which is just fucking the enemy up, because it was just kind of like a normal war situation.

So it was a, we never got attacked on my first one. We did a handful of times on the second one. Nothing serious. but I mean shitting in wag bags like I had a 20 minute wag bag class if either of you

fucking dudes came to my outpost you would get a 20 minute wag bag class for me because I had I'll say a guy from some sort of agency come and take a shit on the floor in my fucking outhouse and I'm the medic and I'm a 33 year old man picking up another guy's shit

like a German shepherd but so anyway daytime valley clearance like if anybody's ever lived in an outpost that's what it was. MRE's first trip had a little bit of a cook the second time. It was kind of cool until it wasn't. The outpost life sucks, though, especially when you know what is at the fob.

What's that look like for an ODA, living inside the village and also having a fight ISIS at the same time? I mean, what's that interaction like with the local community? And I imagine there's also some sort of mission cycle, planning cycle that you're... Yeah. Well, as you would expect, like, we have, you know,

your specific job, Jack, like, you know, that's a different base defense type situation than when you're rolling into a fob and everybody's guarding it for you. So, you know, we would have, we did some fire guard. We did fire guard the whole time. Like one of us was awake at all times in our talk, even though there was an infantry talk. So, um, uh, what was that like it, you know, Afghans come to the gate for medical treatment. I'll go to the gate and treat them. They don't come inside because we don't know who they are a source for. So I'll still help that, you know, I had a kid who had like, some sort of bone disease thing.

I would give them a lot of meds and take care of them. And that kid was around the second trip. The kid still left there. But mainly, I did lead some, I personally led a couple convoys because we had another outposts and we would go check on it every now and then. And I personally led some convoys where we gave away humanitarian assistance stuff to the villagers. And I tried to let the Afghans do it as a primary, but I was down on the ground with them, you know, in a sea of 40 kids, sort of dangerous, I guess.

but I just remember what their faces looked like. So there's one thing that, I'm going to have like a weird, almost like pause in this because when I was leaving that trip, the secretary defense at the time, Mattis was there in country. And he talked to a group of Rangers and Green Berets. And he told us that don't leave this experience with like becoming a more

hateful human being because of, you know, being scarred by war, come back and, uh, experience post-traumatic growth and, become more of a compassionate human being as a result of it. And I assume you guys respect that dude.

He's very respected in our community. And so I was like, well, I should fucking listen to that guy. And so I started doing that. I think that's what I'm circling back to is that like there are a lot of like war is insane, right? Like it's a, it's an insane human experience that eventually we hopefully may not have to experience too much of it anymore, whether it's our foreign policy or whatever, how society progresses.

And it's insane and it's not good, but there are moments in it that hopefully people like us can take home and remember the good in it. That, you know, it's very easy to dehumanize the people that you're in Afghanistan with because they're just trying to get by. Just like, you know,

all of us could have been born that little girl. That's my point. In the same way that we could have been born, poor as fuck in a slum in Jamaica or Somali. or anything. We could have been born any of them. And that's one thing that I would want dudes to try and remember is that there's this human aspect that is really important. And if we lose that,

if you can't have compassion, then you're just walking around hateful. And that definitely is going to fuck your symptoms up. It's definitely from a neuro perspective. I read a lot of neuropsych stuff. That's going to fuck your symptoms up. So I'm sorry, I'm trying to convert this over to things that are useful for people.

And the compassion thing is really important to me. I mean, compassion is vital. And the thing is, is it dehumanizing people, you know, anybody, it's the easiest route, especially when you're in that type of situation. And then I imagine it's that way in emergency medicine. Like, it's that way when you're faced with these brutalities all the time, dehumanizing people is the easiest route. Yeah.

I mean, compartmentalization is our, I mean, we're kind of taught that, especially as medics. I'm not saying it's wrong. There are things that are wrong in how we're taught, and that's okay. But I don't think the compartmentalization is wrong, because I've had, again, I'm not cool, but I've had situations. In my memory of it, and granted, combat memory can be unique to the individual, so I'm open to being wrong here, but I felt like there were 20 to 30 people that were on the brink of losing their fucking minds when we had someone die. and I had to organize it. That's my job.

And you guys don't know this. I didn't tell you in there a little pre-chat, but when I was hurt, I treated myself. I don't fucking know why. My heart rate was like 60. I wasn't dying at the time. I was completely calm and I cut my shirt off

and I said I'd eat a saving lock. Go get the blood from this guy. Give me TXA. Give me blood. And then please, fucking to God, give me ketamine. And I treated myself. So like, Dave, help me out.

What the fuck am I talking about? I'm on a tangent. No, you're just talking about, you know, your life inside these villages and what it was like integrating with the local population. Okay. It's like nothing what I'm talking about. You know, yeah, and then the compartmentalizing and how that helps. Okay, thank you. Our job sometimes, you know.

Yeah. So the compartmentalization is there. It's good. But what it's not good for is when you're not in those environments. Right. And maybe you guys have experienced this as on your own or you've seen friends do it. But when you take something and you compartmentalize it, that seems like it just goes away. But what you're doing is you put it on a shelf and then it just turns into a piece of coal.

And then when you have a bunch of pieces of coal, it shit burns down eventually. And that either is either, I don't know how many green braes you guys are aware of in the last, let's say, six months that have died via alcohol-related incident, where they're somewhere and they are driving home and they fucking die because they're drunk. that's not unrelated to emotional health problems. It's not the same thing as a suicide, but it's not unrelated to it because it's behavior that is a problem. So like the compartmentalization is definitely a problem. And you see it at a higher organizational level,

but you also see it at the individual level regarding someone's own emotional health. And so it can be very useful in combat. And arguably we need to do that because if you fucking panic, Like, have you guys seen someone shut down in a firefight? Yeah. Okay. So, I mean, like, that's actually one of the three common evolutionary things to do in that situation. It's either fight, flight, or freeze.

And, you know, we need people that don't freeze or flee. We need people that fight. And so that's what we basically train ourselves do. And I took that very seriously, obviously, because I fucking did it when I got blown up. but so yeah so the compartment it's funny because some of these topics at least from my mind is that

we see like the the tactical relevance but then we see how you can come back and like maybe once the tactical stuff is over these topics are relevant in a different way talking about compartmentalization yeah so Justin let's

let's work up to the event where you got wounded that was on your second trip Can you? Being a parent can be really challenging. It's normal to feel uncertain about whether you're doing the right things to raise healthy and happy children. That's why Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five

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Can you tell us about that? Yeah. Well, generally, this area was not even two clicks away from the outpost that we were living at. And then we had another outpost that we had some first. friendlies that non-Americans are about 800 meters closer. And I took contact at that location the week, roughly the week prior. And we were going down a valley, and there had been some operations in this valley of different schemes of maneuver. And this terrain was such that if you're not on a path, like you cannot traverse it type thing.

So you're funneled into paths or you're at the valley floor. And when we were in the valley floor, we were finding IEDs all. over the place in places that, you know, you expect them, the corners of building, doorways. Well, we weren't in near any buildings. They were in like choke points and wadis and stuff. Like one of my Afghans walked through a tripwire and it did not go off like an hour before I got hurt. So we found, uh, between two different ODAs that we found a fair amount. I'm sure quarterback might be like, why did you continue mission? Well, I mean, you weren't there, so shut the fuck up. But, uh, but, uh, we continued because the, the point was that we're going to

going stay overnight and we're going to pick a fight and kill people. And I do want to point out that for the six months prior to this event that me, Justin, when he was being the Intel sergeant temporarily and otherwise was requesting American EOD quite frequently because I had them on the first trip. I didn't have them on this mission. I'm not saying it wouldn't have happened, but it does kind of piss you off when you're me and you think about it after the fact. But so we have the Afghan EOD, which I think you guys probably know who I'm talking about, the ones who go on mission with our units. And they're very good.

They just didn't have the equipment to find a copper wire ID. And people walked over this spot around it. I was playing an assault. Actually, I had my Ruck on. I was planning an assault. I was working with two other guys on my team, one of them on his first trip. And I was playing in operation. and just adjusted my ruck, took a step with the left leg, and boom.

And then there was the initial, I don't know how long, maybe three to five, maybe ten seconds of just complete and sheer fucking terror and pain, where I was holding my hands out to the team sergeant and saying, help, help, like 10 times. And then when he got to me, I just, they said I went calm. And then I remember it all. I said, was that an RPG? Because I had a lot of history with RPGs, because it felt. like it hit me at an angle. But it blew my left leg off.

My right foot was still there, but like the right leg was blasted in my calf, basically down to the bone. I have some pictures, not that you guys want to see them, but, you know, charred, blasted down to the bone, extreme searing pain and were my testicles or not. And also took stuff into the perineum, urethral injury, had like a chunk of something in my ass. And then the guys, through that specialized training I referenced earlier, I had trained all three of these dudes.

They're all my, some of my closest friends, even now, but before this, and they just happened to be there. I had like six tourniquets on total, three in each leg. I was pretty muscular. My thighs were pretty big. You did a lot of hemcon on that hemorrhage control. And I did the things you got, I've already told you guys, cut the shirt away, tried to get the things that. I realize like if I'm going to live I need a perfect clinic is what I thought

and our interpreter had the blood on his back in a cooler and so typically sometimes when weird shit happens especially when it happens like 10 meters away from you those Afghans are like fucking going somewhere else so I was like find that dude get the blood because I was just worried

I would get blood they medevac me the guys the dudes on the team have to move me for a couple hundred meters if I'm not mistaken but down like, you know if you're, let's say you're salting south and you know everything behind you was relatively clear. So the LZ was that way. But it was also down like 15 meter terraces, a handful of them. I think like three to five of them. So the movement party, I was being vertically

hoisted down these things because I was in a Sked, a Skedco, which is the roll up litter. So I had the straps under my arms and over my chest. They had to move me. I was in and out because, because of ketamine. I got a 100 miggs I am and then 58 migs IV so I had 150 migs of ketamine in for this and then I started getting towards the end of the movement I think it was kind of burning off and I

started remembering more and then right before the helicopter landed I was convinced I was going to die so I just grabbed the closest guy and I was like I am going to die and he's like no you're not and I said I want you to tell

I was devourable divorced at the time, but I told him to tell my ex-wife that I loved her. And then I fucking woke up on the medevac, probably 10 minutes later, it's like flying and the door was open. And so in my head as a medic and a G.B, I'm like, what the fuck is the door open if this is a medevac? Or is this not a medevac? So I'm like thinking weirdly coming out of being dead and on ketamine. And I look over and see a guy in a flight mask. Like, I've done a lot of handoffs to the flight medic. So I grabbed him by the chest, I lift his peltors. I'm like, are you the flight medic? And he's like,

and I said, then give me some fucking ketamine. I pushed him in the chest and then I passed out again. And I was out until I woke up many hours later after a very long surgery where I got over 60 units of different types of blood products, including 35 units of actual blood. And that's not because I needed the blood, but because they're doing a vascular surgery, which ended up saving my right knee, which I'm pretty glad that they did. And they had a walking blood bank from the fob, like, you know, people wrapped run the building donating blood. So very, very grateful to that medical logistics system that is in

place that you can only learn from doing war, I guess. And then the, you know, the Fob doing their essentially 18 Bravo stuff, right, Jack? Like the Fob doing their drills of like, if we need people to give blood, this is what it sounds like. And if we need people to do man the defenses, this is what it sounds, you know. So I was at the role two at the Fob and then I eventually got pushed to where a bath is and then uh i woke up i think there the first time and i had a tube down my throat and i was restrained and i couldn't breathe just like 20 minutes do that initial surgery or if you're not comfortable saying you're not able to say but they did that initial that big surgery where you got 60 different blood products out in the boondocks somewhere before you got

moved to bagram out of thob i don't know what it was like when if i don't know if you guys were in afghanistan or what you saw when you're on your do you're on your do you're deployments, but this fob was pretty hefty. So they had like a good OR. They had at least two ORs, I believe, and where they could run two concurrent surgeries

at once. And they had just come off. I want to give them props to all those people, because they'll probably find this video. They did like 24 hours of traumas before I got there. So they call it the 36, because I think my surgery, I think they worked on me for 12 hours or something. All said

and done between probably prep and that. I've got pictures of some of it, which if anybody, my 18 Delta friends, I was basically huckabuckabucked for the thing. And we don't have to get into what that means, but, you know, I was very, very gruesome type situation. Then I have pictures of it, but all those people fought very hard. Yeah. So to answer your question, Jack, pretty decent OR and then better, better capability at the roll three and then the role four is Germany. Now, I have just for your interest in the tactical environment because I think this shit is fascinating because I did it all. But you can move surgical teams, forward surgical teams around the battlefield if you know who to talk

to because you need your soda to bless off on it. So I would end up doing that and finding the right people to convince to let me do what I wanted. So they were at, for instance, on my first trip, this is going to be sort of confusing. I'll hold my fingers up. I was at I was at this outpost trip one this outpost trip two

they're like 20 clicks from each other and I had an FST at this outpost on the first trip so I would move them around the battlefield as my point so you can't there have been green berets live saved at the fucking outpost I lived at by what you're talking about jack which is where these baller ass people come in and set up shopping within 45 minutes

and they fucking run surgery and they can save someone's life they can you know one guy got shot through the spleen diaphragm and I think it stopped in his liver. They stop gap that shit at the outpost I lived at and then they took him straight to bath. So it's like a different, anyway. Jeff, right?

Well, I mean, I think he was more, more mobile than that, more in a tactical one of our guests who's also an author. Jeff Wilson. Yeah. Brian Wilson, Jeff. Good. I'm bad with names tonight. My track record

It's pretty bad. Yeah, it's because you shoot too many gustavs in your time, I'm sure. A little bit of drool coming down. But, yeah, so you're talking about moving the field surgical team and getting them closer to you and keeping them in the battle space sort of in orbit in a way? Yeah, and for the 18 deltas, I won't, I'm not going to use all the terms,

but there are other entities that are available sometimes in your battle space. I don't know what the situation is right this second in Afghanistan because it's a little different. But yeah, you have different, you can have J-Soc elements, you can have just your normal army medical components, and then you also have like some ones in between. But largely what I'm referring to is what you're talking about, Dave. Does they allow you to augment your golden hour? And the golden hour, for mission planning purposes, is a big officer thing in the sense that you need to be within the golden hour if you're going to go do an operation. If you're not, then it's not really getting approved unless it's, you know,

a higher tier than what we're at. So, yeah. So go ahead. So from the time that you got hit by the blast, your initial thoughts were obviously about staying alive, and then it was the ketamine. So you were out of it. And for those of you don't know,

ketamine is sort of a disassociative that kind of puts you in La La Land and you don't really care what's going on. and then you were out during the surgery, your first surgery that saved you. And then was the first time that you awoke with sort of realization and realization that you were going to live, but also realization of the gravity of everything, was that when you were at the FOB? Negative. That was Bogram. So the first time I actually woke up, I had an ET tube in my throat.

And so if you guys remember your training from your Delta's, this triggering a gag reflex because you have to be unconscious to have one of those in and I was conscious. So I was very upset with these nurses. I don't know how long it lasted, but on ketamine, everything is drawn out

into a very long amount of time. Every moment, when you're in the mindset and setting of all the things that I went through, it's torturous. And so ketamines, I've had it in medical appointments since. and I'm just, I'm not interested in it because it's not enjoyable.

But ketamine's very fucking weird. So like the moment when I was laying there dying, telling my friend, my teammate, that stuff I told you earlier, that moment is, has a different imprint in my memory than it would have if I was just in pain. So I did wake up. I was not only on ketamine,

but I was also gagging and I was also being held. I was also tied down everywhere because one of the medics at the role two, so when I wake up I met the roll three in Baff. He said they're trying to put an arterial line in and I like picked him up and like pulled him on the table. I was just raging probably, you know, ketamine rage. And they had all kinds of drugs on me. So they'd be like, why the fuck is this guy still moving type thing?

So I was probably very cantankerous and so I appreciate all their efforts. But to answer where you're getting at, I wake up 6 March the day after. and I'm in Bogram and actually two of the guys that put turnic on me were there and these are two of my best friends and so I get to see them I see all kinds of different people

I'm actually like making jokes I started the joke I want to claim credit for this I started the joke in all these states the ketamine and the pain and all that by saying like hey you just got to put one front in front of the other you know what I'm saying

and at that point I only had one foot and I thought at that time I thought I was going to keep my right leg because I could see my foot. And then that got amputated like three or four, maybe five days later. Justin, you want to hear something fucked up. I interviewed a British soldier years ago. He had a tattoo on his leg. It's from a British football team, soccer team.

I don't know which team. I know nothing about that stuff. But the team's motto was, you'll never walk alone. He got blown up in Afghanistan. They amputated his leg. So where they amputated it, the tattoo, it's, just said you'll never walk. Damn.

He walks now. He probably... Also, those British and Australian motherfuckers, they get really... They're rowdy, man. Yeah, I know. I'm friends with a lot of soft guys from Australia. Either way,

run or Trevor's out of the pond. They get fucking weird. Yeah, but that guy, he's got a prosthetic, and he is walking now, to his credit. You know, good guy. That's good. But I'm sorry, go ahead,

Justin, continue, please. No, you're good. Go ahead, Dave. So, I hope you don't mind if I get personal, but I'm curious, you know, because we're talking about compassion and compartmentalization and getting bitter and things like that. When you wake up and you realize sort of the severity of it, and I know that in our field, that dark humor prevails, right? We joke about things in order to normalize it in order to make it easier.

But where were you mentally when that sort of reality set in for you? Not as negative as you'd think. So ketamine is still ketamine. And when you're on 100 migs an hour, which is what I was on for like a month, shit gets real weird. And it's so you don't know what's going to. going on most of the time, which I'll get to in a second. And then, uh, you can feel silly and loopy. You have no short-term memory. So it's like, it's like taking like 10, 18 bravos and then

taking like a tenth of that. And that's like what they're operating. That's a poking fun at you, Jack. But, uh, but, but, uh, it's, it's like, uh, there's not a lot like your short term, there's no like long-term memory until like you're reminded of something. So I was, I would say that the ketamine probably enhanced my empathy. It's weird, but like everybody that came in my room, at least at Walter Reed, I remember doing this. You know, a relatively poor woman would come in to change the trash out. And I'd be like, hey, I just want you to know, I appreciate you. And I want you to have a good day.

And she'd be like, oh, okay. Thanks, you too. Like, I would talk to everybody that came in my room, whether they were delivering food or there was a doctor. And so while on ketamine, it's not like it was cool because it wasn't because I was in excruciating fucking pain a lot. And I would have pain crises. I had a pain crisis once that lasted like literally eight hours. And because how the residents can't get to you and they're overbooked and oversched and overshedged and overcasts and underslept, I stared the wall for hours and sweated my, like cold packs under my armpits. And so between the excruciating pain, the mindset was just more of survival.

And when you're in survival mode, I don't know if you guys have had the unfortunate problem of being in a hospital for a long period of time, but it's fucking miserable. So like, it's not, I don't wish it on anybody.

Being in the hospital sucks. It's loud as fuck. There's shit going on all the time. I have, I have probably one of the major PTSD things I have is from alarms. From the ICU. And being medically restrained. There's a lot of trauma-based stuff

regarding those three things, fight, flight, or freeze. And you got either terror, helplessness, or rage. So terror is associated with flight, helplessness with freeze, and then the rage with fight. So I had a lot of, like, helplessness there.

But one of my, my family was always there. So one of my parents, my dad and my brother came to Germany. And that fucking absurd picture that you have, Jack, where I'm like in the hospital wearing the beret with my fucking legs blown off and I'm off swollen. I can't hear you

Are you might it? Are you muted? I don't think so. Okay, got you got you now. But that picture was in Germany. Yeah, that was German. And one of my teammates was on his way to Afghanistan and he just happened to come see me and he had that stuff and he's like,

you're thinking what I'm thinking? It was his idea. Anything that knows what I'm talking about, they know what, like he and I used to do that stuff all the time. But just joke around. But yeah, so I had my family with me. and that is a huge help.

And then you get seen by people too much in the hospital. Too many people come see you. I did meet Ron Gruncowski. Let me tell you guys this because I wanted you know how I built rapport with them. Because this is like I think a cool Green Bray story. At least I feel cool doing it. He walks in and I'm like, we know Rob Gruncowski come in.

And I have like loved this dude for it. So for everybody else, he's a tight end for the Patriots. I don't know where he plays now. But he, you know, he's very good. but he was very hurt and he had just retired like two days before. And so I also think that their job is very brutal on their body.

They get fucking destroyed, but also the brain thing is what I'm more concerned about. And that's a whole dissertation that we can do later. But so I wanted to build rapport of them. And I was like, him and his dad came in. And I don't know if you guys know anything, but like their family apparently like parties and they're kind of like all similar,

I guess, like golden retrievers. And I love them. And I don't, and that's how he just comes off. I don't think he's actually like that. But he came in. I was like, okay, here's the situation.

Step down an idea. I'm a green beret. Lost my fucking legs. Balls got blown off. But my dick's still there and it still works. And then Gronkowski and his dad are like, oh! And they're like clapping each other on the shoulders and shit.

And there's like three women in there that are like, what the fuck is going on? And so immediately me and Gronkowski are like, me and Gronk are like, we're hanging out. And then I'm asking him about his body. And when his dad heard me be like, yeah, you should be retired, dude. Like you should take care of. His dad was like, hell yeah, because you can tell. he cares about his son. And then they had to pull him out and you could tell Gronk was like,

he literally was like, no, I want to hang out with this guy. So that's when we, just a review for our non-green beret people, like we want to look at people's capabilities, limitations, and their desires. And like when we need to leverage them to work by with and through them to, you know, coerce, disrupt, or overthrow an oppressive government or some such thing, then that's what we got to do. That's awesome.

That was some doctrine throwing out you guys right there too. I hope you guys are taking notes out there. Yeah, I hope that's not on the test. So you're laid up in Germany now. I imagine the next step was Walter Reed. Correct. I was at Germany for about a week. The amputation of the right leg occurred there.

What do you want to get into? Because I can talk medical stuff. I can just tell you how stuff sucked. But this is, again, like we talked about earlier, I will talk all about so everyone can know what it is that happened to me over the course of the entire thing. But I want people to get something out of it other than just like, holy shit, this sucks. And he like overcame that because I don't really think much of that.

I think more of what we can do with it, what we can learn from it and implement as like a culture and then, you know, as individuals going forward. But what do you want to, what do you want to go from here? Tell us why they had to take your leg. So like you were, you know, your body was somewhat intact. They had to make an amputation. I'd be interested. What were the medical reasons why they had to amputate? Yeah.

And how you felt about that. I mean, when you reflect back on this whole experience, I mean, what your thoughts are, and how your thoughts have changed about it even to now? Luckily, I haven't had a change of opinion on the actual amputation because I feel that there was no other choice. And I do now this, I do not say this often about my time since I got injured, but the way that the medical personnel took care of me, the surgeons, and one in particular is a plastic surgeon who is why I have my knee

for a second reason. They did amazing work because unfortunately they've had a lot of practice at dealing with amputees. We've had, I want to say, four or five thousand of us since all this started. The numbers are up in Walter Reed somewhere, but the medical indication

for amputating the right leg several days later was that I had intense fungal and bacterial infections in it and it was decreasing my pressure. and that probably could have, if I had to guess, it was probably related to the infection also. But when you, there's the shitty destroyed leg, right?

And whenever you have tissue that is devitalized, you have to cut it out because it will get infected. And so if everyone, if in case anybody doesn't know this, the 18 Delta is trained to do wound debreedments, which is cutting out devitalized tissue as well as amputations. So I've done these things before. So I kind of like, know what's going on based on what they're telling me.

And they have a Doppler, which is, it's like an ultrasound to see, to gauge blood flow. You can hear it on the speaker. So they would check my dorsalis pita's pulse on the top of my foot. And it would be like, that's what it sounds like when you have fluid going through a blood vessel. It kind of sounds like a whoosh as it's getting pumped. And then one day it just wasn't there. And I remember they put it on and I was like, because every time I'd be like, yeah, like it's there.

I have the foot. And then it just wasn't there. And I went, fuck. Like I said it like that. And I don't know how long it was, but they came in and they were like based on what's going on. You have these infections, blah, blah, blah. Like we think that it's indicated to amputate. And I remember this conversation and I just remember being like, fuck, do what you got to do.

You know, like, fucking save my life. And that's what happened. I don't know what would have happened if they didn't. you probably wouldn't have been well. They probably would have had to take it eventually in order for me to live. So the indication for that, and then obviously the indication for the left leg

is it was just blown the fuck off. Like it was literally like this much, probably like almost six inches of charred tibia sticking at the end, black, black chard tibia. It's kind of fucked up, huh? Like, you know, I mean, since we're going there, I mean, your bean bag, just vaporized?

So they took a piece of my epida. So you have your actual nut, where are we at here? You have your actual testicle. And then you got this thing on the back end of it that's making sperm is called the epididymus. And then you have a tube called the Vastephyrins that goes to your wiener. And that's what guys get clipped or tied when they get a vasectomy. And by the way, Deltas can do that in most of their clinics. They can actually do vasectomies on their friends.

But it's very easy to do, apparently. I haven't done one. But that being said, they took a piece of, my epididymus and then they aspirated the vass deference, which is why I gave you that in a cool anatomy lesson. But so they, those, the little piece of epididymus could have something in it. And then whatever semen was, because there's usually some semen just sitting and being a parent can be really challenging.

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the age of five with free support services to help them on their parenting journey. Everyone deserves someone they can turn to for help with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today. In this case, sperm, because the semen comes from the prostate gland, like basically in your butthole. And then that is pushing fluid in, pushing fluid into the weener with the sperm and to ejaculate out. And that's like how orgasm occurs in men. If you want to know the hormonal situation too, I can do that. But so the vast deference in the epididymis are what are saved. But yeah, the picture I saw Jack of just what my testicles look like. Just the

pictures in general, I was like, I don't know how the fuck I survived. Yeah. And that's from a medical standpoint, not just like, wow, that's me. So what was all of this like for you? You know, as you get to Walter Reed, your, the situation for the rest of your life is becoming more evident, you know, from, you know, your reproductive organs, you know, two legs amputated. It must be starting to settle in on you now. And I'm just very interested, especially to hear from someone like you that you're such a, a high-performing individual, special forces, Green Beret, also, you know, a strength coach. I mean, you were a PT stud before you went into the military. So, like, you're a guy who is at the top of your game. And now all of a sudden it's like going from, you know, a million miles an hour to zero.

Like, just stopped. I was stuck in a, I was literally in a bed for two months. And then part of that I was paralyzed because they had three different epidurals in my back, which they would fail for one reason or another. or have pain crises. So, yeah, I mean, you go from, you know, squatting 405 for six or something, and then they're rolling you over to clean your asshole and to pull poop out of your butt. And that is, I mean, it fucking sucks just to clarify, but you really don't,

like, at the time, you can think about what you want life to be, but there's no fucking clue. I mean, I was dating a girl at the time, and I had to tell her, like, I don't know. what the fuck's going to happen in six months. Like usually when people are amputees, even a single below the knee, those motherfuckers are here for like two plus years. And I was like, my ass isn't going to be because I don't want to stay here. But like, I don't know what's going to happen.

And like, it's, you know, my willingness and capability to like do anything in a relationship is just poop right now. Like it's not there. But it's just mainly a lot of surviving. Because it's, but maybe to your point, Jack, that like our mentality and the job. You get the next thing to look towards. I didn't have closures. My amputations weren't closed until the end of March. So right around, I think 30 March or 1 April was the last one. And you guys don't know this. I would show you if we're in person, but they took 71

centimeters, an incision that's like a big lightning bolt on my back. They took the skin off and they put that over my right stump to close it. And they didn't take any muscle, but they also to blood vessels. And so that's how there's skin on my right leg. So when you see my right leg, there's like hairy fucking fucked up skin with shrapnel all over the place, like literally just specks of shrapnel everywhere. And then there's just a demarcated

suture line, and then there's back skin. Like the freckles from my back are on my leg and stuff. So going back to the answer, you have that next thing to look for. So you have like, okay, I'm going to get closure. I'm going to get these amputations closed one at a time.

And those are fucking horrible surgeries, at least the ones I had. And then it's like, then you have to start getting off IV meds just to get out of an inpatient. So like they're taking ketamine, which I literally was on for from 5 March to 7 May. I was on ketamine to come off that. And then now they're going to, they loaded me up on narcotics, especially by mouth. We say PO for medical stuff. My PL meds were methadone, 20 mig, 20, 30 meg, that's the shit they get people to get off heroin. That shit sucks.

And if you, if anybody, I would tell casualties this that are soft casualties afterwards, I'll say it again, like the fucking deny methadone. Never, ever take it. Because it's the most intense narcotic. It's the most intense way to get the shittiest pills you can get. And coming off of it is like coming off heroin. And I did that too. I did that in May and June and July.

I had a nine-hour pain crisis one time weaning because I would step down 10 migs of methadone every week. and so I knew that if I stepped it down Wednesday, Friday was going to fucking suck. And then I would spend the entire week weekend recovering and then feel okay Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday for rehab and then just feel like complete dog shit when I started the next weaning off process. I'm on a tangent now, but like I guess what I'm saying, Jack, is that we, you always, there's always this next fucking thing to do when you're casually, when you're that fucked up, you always have the next thing to do. And I was, I was very, very involved in all the medical conversations.

I would have, I would be retarded on ketamine and then have these very cogent, very like deliberate, well articulated medical conversations. And the doctors would just like have a hard time accepting that I could even function on the drugs I was on. But I would, they would come in and they would be like, hey, what are, what's your epidural meds? And I'd be like, I understand you're busy because like I know more about that now. but like use your fucking computer. And so I just had butcher block paper. I was like, I want butcher block paper everywhere in this room.

And I want that one to have my IV meds. That one to have my epidural meds. That one to have my schedule. That one to have my surgeries. That one have my past surgery. Like I don't want people coming in and asking me questions because that's what the hospital life is. You know,

like they, it's constantly people coming in. So I'd have to come in and I'd have to come in and I'd have to learn and be like, like, I'm sorry. I want to know what your name is, what your job is and what you're here to do for me right now.

And that's it. I'm not going to talk to you other than that because otherwise I love talking to you. So I'll talk to you for 20 more minutes. But that means I won't have a fucking rest. So there's always that next thing. And so the parents help with that too. But the mindset didn't really kind of maybe this is where you're getting at. But it didn't really get shittier until I became an outpatient.

And I was living at Walter Reed in their barracks things. So while you were going on, I mean, you were just sort of goal oriented the next thing, the next thing the next thing and that was because I think you know some people even in that initial stage lose heart you know they start evaluating their life they start looking at

this is what I this is what I was this is who I was this is who I am I don't know what I'm going to be beyond this I think I know where you're going Dave I got two responses to that the first is that 6 March 2019 when I woke up I was like well I'm fucking done doing this

I'm done doing tactical stuff. Like, you get blown up that bad once. You're like, I don't want to do that again, ever. And then obviously I was right about that because that shit sucked for like six months. The second thing is that I think you guys would be at least mildly amused of this story. I remember in June, I became an outpatient in mid-May. And then I was doing physical therapy every day. I would do like three hours.

I would do more. They were like, the people who walk the best do these things. And I was like, I'll do those things. I'll do those things times three. So I'd spend hours in physical, I wasn't even in a leg yet. And then I got my leg. I can't remember when I got the left leg,

but I think 18 June was the first day I walked. And I didn't own the legs till the end of June. So within four months, I actually took the first literal steps. There's a video of that on my Instagram, on the early portion of it. But here's the story is that I remember, when you're casually nowadays,

you have to go and join, which I don't think SF should do. I think it's a mistake. But you have to go join the warrior transition unit or battalion or whatever. And then you're subjected to a lot of regular army stuff. And I quickly did not tolerate any of that. And that's, I just didn't do it a lot of it. But I had to go do all these mandatory things.

And people, every step of the way would say, this is a check the block thing. We know it's not like something that's going to be, you know, helpful for you as an individual. I'd be like, why the fuck my, you know, that drives me insane. So that's, that's like a story for another time. but this particular woman, she's a young woman, I had to write my goals, and I was like,

I want to walk with assistance by the end of June. I want to walk, or walk with like a walker or something by the end of June, walk with assistance by the end of July, and then walk without assistance by the end of August.

So that's why I put in my little official army goals. And she was like, ooh, I don't think you'll be walking without assistance by August. And so you guys can only imagine. Because in my head,

I'm like, bitch! Like, like like you know you're pissed and then uh so then i just have a quiet fucking rage and then end up walking with that assistance like two weeks later yeah fuck her she did that uh so i don't know was that where you're going with that like uh yeah i mean we i mean we're going wherever you're going. All right.

I can dance. So the one thing, you were asking kind of like, you guys are kind of asking about mentality-based things and identity. And very early on, I knew that this, this job, like I'm done with it.

And I was okay with that. And I knew that every necktie wearing or star-wearing person that came in to see me, I would tell them exactly what I'm going to do, which is what I have done. by the way. I'll get have a podcast.

I haven't written any books, but I've started writing them and then maybe I'll get into public speaking if the pandemic is ever under control. But I just knew that I don't know where you guys were in your career. Jack, you got out like, you know, before you're 20, I think.

But I kind of, unless I was going to go to a higher tiered unit, I couldn't see myself staying in because administrative stuff in the Army is not while I was in the army. I joined the army to to fucking go to war, I guess, and to like do combat. And more importantly, to be utilized as an asset

was someone who would critically think within those contexts and those environments, whether it was deployment or J-SET or whatever. And I poured my life into it. And then when I woke up, I was like, I know that I don't want to do that ever again.

Like, the reason I'm saying this is because I think that I see a lot of people regardless if they're injured or not, that they do go through that identity thing. And you guys went through it in your transition. And you both, at least Dave, I think you said something like it's a hard reset. And I don't know what the right answer is.

I don't know the answers. I just, what we can do is improve it. Because like I would want a guy to cultivate himself and cultivate whatever, you know, self-compassion or love he can have for himself and his family. I want him to do that while he's doing the job so that he doesn't fucking have an existential crisis when that job is gone because it will be gone.

You cannot do it forever unless you die doing it. And I can tell you that that's not fun. You put your finger on it exactly, Justin. I mean, even a guy we both know, you know, Dale Comstock, you know, he was a Delta operator. He did it. He did it all. He's done it all. But he told me, you know, it's like you can't be a soldier forever. Eventually you got to retire.

Eventually you get too old to be soldier and out there slinging around. down range, it hits everybody. And I think, you know, you guys are exactly right. I mean, it's an identity issue. And if you never build an identity for yourself outside the military doing something else, what happens? Okay, this is going to sound like a dick move of me. But like sometimes you've got to tell people what they need to hear.

You'll end up being one of those veterans at VA that still weren't fragments of their uniform from Vietnam with all patches and the hat and everything on because you never formed any sort of separate identity. outside of that. Yeah. And I think it's really important because this job is unique.

I have trouble like summarizing it as like something that's generally positive because I'll be the first to admit I'm a little jaded. And then I obviously am fucked up beyond, literally beyond repair. So I'm a little jaded with it.

But I don't want that I don't want that to get in the way of people always say give back and I don't think there's an obligation to give back anybody that's not in like you did your fucking service to not only the country but your unit I don't think anybody has to give back but it's okay if you do and I just I would want to steer people to doing that

in a way that is truly productive and I and I I guess I'll be an outspoken one to kind of call out aspects of the community because what you just said is the point Jack like that's what the fuck we're supposed to be doing. Like if you guys, we're all on a team and one of us is fucked up. And if we truly care, then we're going to go up to you and we're going to try and unfuck you.

And that's going to be like, we also have to do that within the context that we may not know what the fuck is good for you. Or we may not know what's good for ourselves because I'd say that's largely what is going on in the community. Because like if you don't know there's a problem, then you can't fucking even talk about it to fix it. So I think, uh, yeah, It starts with the identity, but there's a lot, there's a lot to unpack there. And like I have, right now I got a list in case we needed it. I have problems and I just wrote things down. I wrote in-state and then I wrote Solutions.

And this isn't a podcast or an interview about solutions, but it should be in our community and so that we can discuss these things and try to find out how can we make things better than they are now. And the thing that I would, since I'm on this rant, that I would majorly, that I would want to highlight the most is that one of the tenets of special operations is that humans are more important than hardware. And all I want people to do,

and I can give you my opinion, all I want anyone to do is that at every level in our organization and all of soft, to ask if that's true. Right. That's all. And because if that answer is no, we're not more important than hardware,

whose responsibility is it to fix it? not only is it everybody's, but it's not the fucking commander that's in charge of either 10th group or a battalion or Yusac or Socom or the army. Because I don't know if they would call me friends, but I'm friends or acquaintances with all those guys that are in charge of those echelons. And they're not bad people. But the way that the bureaucratic organization works is that it is not very efficient. But if we're talking about emotional health as a problem, it's not General Bodette at Usasok. he can't pass the equivalent of legislation that is going to top down trickle and make it better. We saw that with EO and Sharp, things that need to happen.

But the solution is that now we do this annual training that everybody is forced to go to or it's PowerPoint. And I can go on a tangent on how that's even more irritating for soft maybe than conventional because it's like you've learned helplessness in the conventional military of like this is what you got to do. But in soft, like we have we have the ability to like do more than just. mandatory bullshit training in it and that's what needs to happen to your point there about humans being more important than hardware is there a single person out there that believes that we're going to give our soldiers a brief to there's the don't beat your wife brief there's the don't kill yourself brief uh there's that you know don't sexually assault women brief that you mentioned is there anyone

out there who believes that soldiers or anyone will not do these types of things because they got a brief on it. The only good thing out of what you're talking about, Jack, is that I've had whether you want to say it's fortunate or unfortunate experience of sitting there for a company SART majors brief for the weekend that say all of those things, because all those things are in the same brief nowadays at least. It's all the same weekend brief. And we don't get one every weekend in SF, but like sometimes for the big holidays we do. And I remember Thanksgiving, maybe 16, you know, one of the past years, we had this company Sarram major. And it was funny is like we're trying to, you know, like you're laughing in formation type thing.

We're actually in formation for some reason, which is not common, I guess. But so I agree. The problem that you find in the regular military, Jack, I don't know how familiar you are with this, is that the people that are supposed to be running, let's say, the sharp, the sexual harassment or the portion of the organization are the ones committing the sexual harassment or the ones losing the rape kits. and I've done we don't have to get into this but I've interviewed at least by 30, 40 women and every single

one of them had some sort of story about sexual abuse in the military. So it's not that I want to fucking burn the military alive. Now if a fucking commander is like facilitating losing rape kits, then that's something you should get your ass kick for or at least your career's ass kick for.

No, but go ahead, Jake. I'm not detecting any live here, Jason. I mean, I, I'm sorry, Justin, geez, I'm losing it. You're good. I'm not detecting any lies, man. I mean, I've heard similar stories where the sharp rep, you know, you have a girl that gets sexually assaulted

in the barracks, they call the sharp rep. The sharp reps show up. Just make sure her door is locked and they leave. Yeah. Like, holy fuck. It really is hard. I, I think I cried doing the fucking podcast, but I

cried learning that stuff. It was like rough just learning it and these like I have friends that like that I've been friends with for years and they told me about this stuff like after knowing them for a long time and this is at every branch of service and every unit and I will say that from at least my little bubble of like just sort of looking into this that our organization of Army SF while it probably fucks this up sometimes is not as bad as other places but that doesn't mean it's okay and so what's what's the so what of bringing this up other than shock and awe is that I would

say uh sorry just blatantly saying this is kind of weird sometimes based on who the audience is I would say there's a culture problem in the military and in our in our soft soft culture there's a problem

in it and the end results in the conventional military one of them is the sexual abuse which I fucking hope to God and think maybe thank fuck it's not a huge or as big of an issue in our particular unit but the emotional health is the second symptom that is problematic regarding this culture

issue that I'm referring to. I don't really know what all the components of the culture problem we need to address are and then I don't know what all the solutions are, but I know that it's fucked up and that if it continues like that that's, it just means that another one of my friends is going to fucking kill

himself because that happened. And nobody knows it. And I'm not going to get into it and not going to dime any particular unit out. But like, in our community, and I'm talking about Army Special Forces, so I wanted to be very clear when the people that I respect,

like General Clark at Socom and General Baudet at Ussesoc and Gil Ferguson working with Baudet at Usasak, who was former 10th Group commander, all these people that I respect, and I do enjoy interacting with, it is when you don't

acknowledge a suicide in our ranks, that is fucked up. And I'll say it right now. Everybody in the chain of command should be fucking ashamed of that. You're saying that they tried to sweep it

under the table, pretend it didn't happen? I'm not saying that, Jack, I'm just saying if it's not acknowledged, because there are guys in the past year that have fucking killed themselves, and we don't know all of those situations in our community. The three of us sitting here, we may not know because I know that that's happened. I'm not saying, who did

it? That's not important, because I don't want people to be fucking crucified or anything. What I want to happen is that I, like, at the very thing, the very first thing is that I don't want these guys to feel shame for it as individuals, because I like the guys that I just named or any of the other people below or above them, but that fucking happens. And that's not, if you don't acknowledge a problem exists, then how can you begin to fucking work on it? Right. That's, that's the issue. And so, so I'll be clear. And I'll be clear to not only those individuals, the guys that might be in positions of authority,

or my peers that are E6s and 7s, or even, you know, all the guys that I know, I am fucking bitter. I am, this is not me enraged, but I experience an exceptional amount of fucking rage over all of this. And I'm not even talking about this stuff

that has happened to me, but just the emotional health stuff, I'm not saying anything's doing anything wrong as an individual, but we are doing things wrong, that happens. If guys are killing themselves, or they're just accidentally killing themselves because they're so drunk driving, these are problems. Right.

And so, and they're not listed as, they're not memorialized. They're compensated differently, which I think is fucking bullshit because, especially if someone has seen combat, then combat plays a role in emotional health. TBIs play a fucking role in emotional health. And Kevin Trujillo, I think he's just he's a colonel I think but he was my battalion commander great great fucking guy

hung out at my outpost with me there's like three GBs and him and the CSM that came and hung out one time but he he co-authored a paper that is essentially talking about the operator syndrome and what you're finding now is you're going to have whatever emotional health things exist you think of this as like a lethal triad it's kind of like a medical term but you have whatever emotional health things exist. You have whatever horrible shit comes from combat and then you have TBIs. So you have these three points

that are then turning a guy into what he is when he's doing this job after probably just two or three years. He's like that. And that's called the operator syndrome. There's a paper. Trujillo was in on it. I haven't talked

to him personally. I'd love to interview him about it. But that's that means there's a problem. There's a, in medical stuff to give you guys, to give the audience a context. Syndromes are like, we have these symptoms that are correlated to other ideologies of disease, essentially. So you have symptoms, like, if I have a cold, symptoms are like, the nose is running and I've got a fever or something. The ideology is that, like, I'm drinking every night or not sleeping or I'm overworked.

I'm working too much shit and kit, and then I'm eating shitty food and dipping and being unhealthy and then kissing the wrong people. I don't know, whatever, going to the wrong strip clip. So we have to look at each one of those components, but you have to look at it as the whole operator, because that's what the syndrome is. TBI is a huge thing. And everybody that does this job, and I'm sure it's same for you guys. When we run our shoot houses, like bangers, door charges, even one banger, if you're on the catwalk or if you're in the room or even if you're in the next room over, that shit still has an effect on your brain. because once I started learning all this and I was in a

shoot house I was like, that's definitely fucking my brain up. Because I've been within like 150 meters of at least 25 pound bombs and I know what it feels like to be around the RPGs and those bombs in a singular firefight and we do the same thing with, I mean

Jack, I'll ask you a question. How many Gustavs have you shot or been to AG4 in a single day? What's the max? What's your PR? Not very high. I started off as Okay. Scunner, but I did not actually get in on any of those marathon ranges.

So I avoided that. But to towards your point, those kind of marathon sessions on the Bop chart, the blast overpressure chart, you're not supposed to fire more than like maybe, or AG, more than like eight rounds a day. But it was very- I'm pretty sure it's like three, dude. It's like the womb rounds, I think it's three. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a little bit more.

But guys, you know, what you're getting at, you know, guys, AG or fire 30 rounds a day out at the range, that happens a lot. And it's completely fucking wrong. It's totally wrong. Same thing with mortars. Being a parent can be really challenging. It's normal to feel uncertain about whether you're doing the right things to raise healthy and happy children. That's why Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five, with free support services to help them build confidence in their parenting journey. Everyone deserves to have someone they can turn to for support with parenting.

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So, I mean, my point is that all these things have an exposure in that even shooting a 240 or Mark 48, that still has some overpressure stuff that is influencing your brain. So we have TBIs. We have the actual combat stress, which you could just call, you know, maybe P.E. PTSD or something. But when you see fucked up things in combat, here's the problem in our community is that like trauma or like the acceptance of it is just not there. It's just like so normalized that everybody has some has something. So it's like it's not important to anybody because it's like, if everybody's got nipples and it's not cool when somebody has them, you know? So like, uh, so when you have the, the actual exposure to traumatic events like literally there's a there's a book that I would recommend anybody who's ever done this job to read. And I mean, like, legitimately read and actually do the exercise. It's called, it's Waking the Tiger.

It's a trauma healing book. And the guy's like, literally anything can be trauma. Anything that if you feel immobilized and helpless, you go back to the fear, the fight, flight, or fight, flight, or freeze shit. So anything that is derivative of those, any of those can cause trauma. Technically, when you're in the military and you're not allowed to out, when you really want to be out, and let's say you've been sexually abused, that is a cause of trauma in itself, not just the sexual abuse trauma, which was enabled by the Army. And this is a

real story. But so anything that is like resulting in terror, rage and helplessness, like, you can go to the ideology of those things and all those things can be trauma. So like trauma healing needs to occur. And there is nothing in the military period in the DOD system that is specific for trauma healing that does fuck all. So there's that's one thing. And then there's nothing in our units, like they have talk therapy available and they do have some good programs. Like there's civilian providers which I would tell the dudes listening

that if you're active, you can see some of those civilian providers. It doesn't go on your record though. That's a con. But the pro is that they don't notify your chain of command of any bullshit. Just leave it at that. Anything that violates UCMJ has to be reported to a commander if it's a military

behavior health thing. And I might be wrong and we'll fucking hear about it, I'm sure. But but the only thing that the civilian providers have to report is if you're going to harm yourself, a spouse, or a child. And so you can tell them whatever the fuck you want. And it's not going, they don't even take notes. But talk therapy is not what heals trauma. That's a different conversation. But like talk therapy can only go so far. And for our population, unless it's marriage counseling, which I would argue that if you're not healing the trauma for the GB or the dude or whoever has been in the combat or the trauma,

then you're not going to heal the marriage. I'll just fucking say that up front after having, you know, failed one of those. So the talk therapy doesn't do anything. So we just talked briefly about TBI, combat stress, and then whatever

emotional health thing is the result of just doing the job of being over-scheduled, over-worked, over-physical exertion. You guys know what it is. Like, I remember, here's a story. There's a dude who's in Ranger Regiment. He's one of my buddies in third group.

And we were in the course together. And he was in Ranger Regiment for like 10 years. And we're roughly the same age. And I'm like, kind of brand new in the Army. And he's been doing this shit for like 10 years. And someone was like, how old are you? And he was like 29 or 30 or something. They're like, they're like, damn, dude, I'm 31. And he's like, well, fuck you. I've been a war for 10 years.

And I just thought it was really funny because he's been like, he's got like gray hair. He's all wrinkly and shit. And he's like dips and stuff. He's just literally been fucking doing Ranger things for 10 years. So like, what the fuck do you expect? So, we have to take care of that though and there are ways to take care of it while doing the job and there are ways to take care of it afterwards and sometimes those things you know like a vendegram sometimes those things dock up to work well and then uh sometimes they don't i'd like to hear

your thoughts on that justin about like uh what we can do to the force while guys are still in that's sort of you you address it in your letter about the sort of maintenance uh that should be done to the troops because like when i've uh researched these things one of the things i had people tell me was the units can't really address this the way they should because if we went and got treatment for every soldier, every Green Beret, every ranger who has TBI, PTSD, these units would be non-deployable. They'd have to take all those guys off the line

and not, and what commander, what battalion commander, what company commander is going to go to their chain of command and say, look, sir, we can't deploy, we can't go on this deployment, we can't do it. Our guys got PTSD. I need to get him to the clinic. So, and I say this in the essay,

but in soft medicine, we have a, we have a saying that says, treat the injury, not the operator. It's because we are ignorant. And it's fuck. We just do brute force and ignorance things, and we fucking, if our heels hurting when we're on a trek and selection,

or when we're fucking carrying a ruck in SUT or we're on infill in a real fucking mission, we're carrying like a hundred pound ruck on X-fil out of a mission in the middle of the fucking dark, and you're leading the way for 100 people so they don't break their ankles. Like this, maybe we shouldn't fucking be in the conflict.

I mean, I would start, you have a lot of ways to go about this, right? Jack, you can look at macro, you can look at micro, you can look at developing new green berets, and you can look at what we do with the existing guys. So that's at least four data points right there, and you're asking about the current guys.

And so the thing that I would challenge, I would challenge government and foreign policy to question, what it is that we're getting out of these things and what is the actual comparative advantage? Because when I didn't really talk about my friend, Sturgle

Simpson, who's musician, but I went on tour with him and I would speak at these arenas before COVID shut the tour down. And one of the things I would say is like, you know, there is a cost to doing war and there's a cost to the people that are conducting the war and their families because I am very close

friends with the goals, some of the Goldstar families from the guys we lost. very awesome amazing green berets that have you know just between two of them they're they have seven seven total children between two different guys with their separate wives and so like so the thing I would I would challenge everybody is like that is the general approach to what our foreign policy is which is in the grand scheme of things like why are we in a place where I think I get it from you Jack like you post the things all time when a document comes out and the people that are in charge of this war

don't know why we're fucking doing it or what the end state is and that there is no end state like that means that will Lindsay and Ryan Sarder dying and or Mike Riley Elliot Robbins or Joey Collett any of these guys that died on the deployment that I was on like

yeah why what what did it do and the only thing that makes me not want to fucking claw my eyes out regarding that question for myself is because I was fighting ISIS and like I grew up in the course wanting to kill ISIS because they were fucking killing everybody. And so

that little girl is the only thing that kind of like that my missions actually did something in a very specific location in a valley where people got to have their homes back after what we did. And that does happen against the Taliban, so I don't want to take that away from any of my

homies that have fought Taliban. But I would, so the first thing and I'll just leave at that because again, I don't have the answers. I don't know what fucking foreign policy is supposed to look like in its stead. I am a humanist now. Like, I've gone through a pretty big metamorphosis because you have to when you fucking lose your legs

and your nuts. Like, you have to go through metamorphosis to make fucking sense of like, why the fuck am I here? Why did this happen? Like, what can be done about it? How can we improve this? Because this fucking sucks. And so, like, what's the answer? And so is the answer, like, should we keep doing fucking more things? Like, the indicate, in medicine, there's an indication and a contraindication for drugs. Contraindication is like, that's something that that should definitely not happen in.

And then the indication is like, this is why we give the drug. We should have an indication for war, like, you know, that there's actual threat or, you know, whatever it is, define it. Why is it that in the strategy for a war, we don't have the same shit that I have in my missions that I set for myself. When these conditions are met, this is what I'm doing. When I cross this fucking, when I go red, white and blue and I cross these lines of my fucking scheme maneuver. This is what's going to happen.

Guns are going to shift. Fucking shit is going to bombs are going to land on this spot. This is the coordinated fucking shit that I want to happen when I do these things. And if I do that in a valley, why the fuck can't we do it for the war? So that's thing number one. And then the culture has to change. So how do you change culture?

You don't go to the leaders. Sorry all generals and tie wearing folks. Like, while you have not really done anything for me, but I do respect that you guys are trying to do your best. but your job is not culture and how do we influence culture

when we want to coerce, disrupt, and overthrow and oppressive government in the context of conventional or unconventional warfare. We fucking go to war. We have psychological operations. We do what Cambridge Analytica does on a different scale. We do it by with them through humans.

And we can also do that with social media and we can influence humans to do that. I've actually learned how to do that in the course. So like when I'm doing this right now, because I'm overtly doing it right. I don't have to be subversive or anything. I'm overtly challenging the status quo in order to try and initiate change.

I'm doing what the fuck you taught me to do. So, like, we have to change culture. And so the only way that I think we can change culture is doing it at all levels, which is why I wrote the essay, because I want fucking E5, Dingleberry, you just showed up to a team that is going to get made fun of for a few months,

and the team sergeant and the CSM and the fucking guy that's working in the USSoc, in the Socom offices. I want everybody everywhere to think about, man, if this is true, because if we're being intellectually honest and one of the dudes is saying,

hey, these are fucking problems that we got to fix, then your intellectual honesty is like, let's assume he's telling the truth and that these things actually exist because they fucking do because they see them. But if we're doing intellectual honesty properly, then we have to at least do the thought experiment of doing it.

This would be the case for any belief that we have that I would argue for. And forgive me, Jack, And Dave, but I spent a lot of my time writing in a notebook and sitting on my deck, so I have a lot of time to think about this shit. So like anything that when you have a belief about something, whether we're in the military or not, we have a belief about, let's say the war in Afghanistan, what we should be doing if we're doing intellectual honesty is we deconstruct and construct that belief so that we fully understand why we believe that thing. So if I believe that the war in Afghanistan is just and we're accomplishing something, then I would need to deconstruct that. Why do I think that? So this is what our proposed end state is and deconstruct it or I construct my belief from nothing. I don't believe in anything. Oh, I'm a Descartes bullshit.

I think therefore I exist. So now I have to contemplate where if I, there was a society, how would I want it to function? If there was a military, how would I want it to function? And they usually come to a different answer than what is currently going on. So I want that to happen for the question. Are humans more important than hardware? And I'm going to fucking bother it, whether it's YouTube. or the community.

I'm going to bother the fuck out of all of you guys. Because, like, I told you guys this when we started. Like, I'm your medic. If you ever need me, I'm there for you. But like, like Jack said earlier, it's not about what a dude wants or what people want. It's what they need to hear sometimes. And so I'm that fucking guy right now. And I'm unabashed because I don't have anything to prove.

I don't give a fuck. So the major question is to start a new culture. And so we have to cultivate that. It has to be planted and watered and loved. shined on and all that bullshit stupid analogy for plants it needs to occur for the culture and then I have other answers but that's the most important thing like if nothing else from this conversation I would want that to be the question because I would want every team to add to talk what can we do better for ourselves are we fucking doing too much who here is having a bad relationship

with their wife who here is having who here I got a friend man in four years he's been home like nine months. They talk about this dwell time ratio, but that doesn't fucking matter when you go to like level two human bullshit or SLC to get promoted to seven or this medical thing or that thing or this stupid NTC

so one of the solutions I would say from a macro perspective to go to the next item is that ask less of your force if you're a politician and for military commanders find ways to have your guys do less because we're not

ever going to do too less or too little. We're never going to do too little as fucking green berets or rangers or any of these fucking units. So find ways to get us out. Why does NTC exist? Someone should have that conversation. What fucking purpose does it serve? Because it's pulling a lot of guys in the middle of a pandemic away to do

stupid bullshit that is not conducive to what their actual mission is. And that stuff happens all the time. So what, what things, what events can we do less? How can we unschedule ourselves? I know of people, I'm trying to be vague, so I don't dime anybody out,

but I know people who schedule White Space into training. And then the people that are in charge of them are like, well, you got to fucking fill this in. It's like, no, like, he, trying not to be too specific. But it's basically like, you know, it's good for your guys and you got to put something else on paper

for everybody above you. And that's, that's, That's not treating humans like they're more important than hardware when you just want to fucking task them out all the time. When I was in Iraq in 2005, and I'm sorry to tell a back on Iraq story from way back in the day, but we were doing operations. It's called the team house, man. Yeah. Okay, okay. This is our safe space.

We were doing operations every day, and our command, our battalion command wanted an hour by hour training schedule from us in Iraq in combat. It's like, what the fuck is even going on right now? But with soft culture, you know, because of some of the questions, I think, about ethics and soft and some of the scandals that have happened the last couple of years, there have been some big think tanks have been commissioned and paid a lot of money to do these big studies on soft culture. I wanted to talk to you about this with the Australians. And we'll get to them next. But these studies, and I think I've read all of them, I mean, they're quite irritating to read. because these academics get paid a lot of money and they go and you know who they interview?

They interview like Admiral McRaven. Like they go and interview these generals. And Admiral McRaven was the highest paid college administrator in the country, I believe. Like his experience, this meteoric rise through the ranks of soft to the very top where he's brief in Obama and now he's the highest paid college administrator.

I mean, his life story is nothing, But up up and up, he has nothing in common with team guys. I'm sorry, he just doesn't. And I'm not trying to throw shade on McRaven. I'm just saying he has nothing in common with the guys on those seal platoons and those ODAs. And when they do these interviews with these high-ranking generals and colonels and stuff like that, they are not getting soft culture. They're getting a very narrow slice of officer culture.

And these guys who, they walk onto these blue chips jobs, It just is not reflective of our culture And one of the people who ran the study One of these studies I tried to tell him He's like because he showed it He's like what do you think of this Jack And I was like

Bro let me show you what soft culture really is And I showed him all kinds of posts Of guys ranting and posting racist shit On Facebook all day And talking about George Soros Undermining America I was like bro this is our culture And like we have to acknowledge this

And that this is who we are Like we are not Animal McRaven I'm sorry, buddy. We're not. And I do, you just reminded me of something, Jack, and I feel obligated to say it now because I do want to defend the homies when they do something right. There was this time when I was in Walter Reed and General Clark came and saw me a fair amount and a very nice individual. I did talk to General Thomas before he retired, who was the previous Socom commander, but I do want to kind of give the credit where it's due. General Clark, there was like me. I'm going to be vague about these next individuals.

A guy who probably had 25 years in as an SF guy plus, and then another guy who was from J-Socke, who also had 20-plus years who had some regular Army time, he asked us that, do you remember the cultural review? This would have been fall of 19. Do you remember that there's a cultural review in Socom and General Clark? In front of Congress, I believe.

yeah so like they did a review and uh and so that was going on and then he released i think a memo and actually uh you know agreed with his memo and he wanted he wanted to tighten up because he's like in charge of so com so he's like fuck you know where people are getting kicked out of country but he asked us including me and i'm you know i have like seven years in i'm not i'm really not that military experienced um and he was willing to he's just listened to me and he listened to the other guys too and they had a different context than I did

and there's value in that and General Clark personally sat there and talked to a small handful of us for the purpose of knowing what we thought about the whatever they called it, the ethics review and then what we thought was one of the problems and I guess that's a defense of General Clark

and one echelon but again to the point earlier and maybe to where you're going with this you don't get an idea of culture unless you do that and General Clark is doing it in a way that he's only talking to the casualties because he can't talk to everybody and that's okay

like he shouldn't fucking talk to every enlist a guy for an hour because then he'd never get anything done but that's yeah you it's weird that a bunch of sergeants major weren't interviewed for that there were like one or two involved in some of those studies but it's like very little conversation with enlisted guys on teams.

And I'm not trying to say soft culture is bad. There's a lot of great things about it. And there's a lot of good guys out there. But there is a very negative part of soft culture as well. And that's the part that tends to not make it into these studies somehow. I think that's, though, something that also we need to clarify for the people listening and watching is that, you know, when you say that, you know, the racist post and the, you know, George Soros posts, like, that's not. soft culture. That's a specific fragment of soft culture, but it's a specific fragment

of conspiracy theory stuff with that, with our guys, with our community, it's common enough that I would say it's a part of our culture. I mean, how many guys did you work with that had these ideas about, you know, whatever it is, that there's some sort of like government conspiracy theory. I mean, I, you know, most of my time is prior to social media, so that wasn't even then, man, like during the Clinton administration. you talk to those guys.

Well, there were... I knew guys who believed that we never landed on the moon. I knew guys who thought our government did 9-11. And I'm not saying that's common. I'm not saying that's the norm, but I'm saying like this line of thinking is a part of who we are, and we're lying to ourselves if we say otherwise.

I mean... Go ahead, please, Justin. The only thing I would say about that is that what Jack is described, is not germane to like special operations. That is a part of greater society. And I'll briefly say this because this could take us on a tangent. And I don't know if this is where you want to go, Jack,

but there's an attention-based economy. I said this to you guys earlier. There's an attention-based economy on the internet. And all of the apps that we use on our phones are fighting for our attention. Because for every second you are on that app, there is a monetary value. Every time you open it, every time you fucking look at a picture, every time you type something,

they know how long you look at an individual picture. They know how fast you scroll. They know everything about everything you're doing on every fucking app you're on, and they all are fighting for your attention. And so it's a car wreck analogy. When you're driving on a highway, whether you want to look at the car wreck or not, because I tried to not look at them unless I'm responding to it,

which I did recently. But people slow down, at least on average enough that even if there's someone on the side of the road, it backs traffic up, at least in Colorado, right? So we know that that happens. That's social media because they give you the car wreck because that's what holds you on the app longer.

And what the car wreck means is that you get extreme views because it's reinforcing either circle, I don't know if this is dating me as someone who's young, Dave, but circle jerk is a term that is like people are like beating off on their own ideas and thinking that they're the greatest fucking thing in the world. So you get this circle jerk of whatever you're already into because you're not going to like if I hate Trump, I'm not going to get a bunch of Trump on my fucking feed because the algorithm sees the data and sees that like, oh, when he sees Trump, he does not do something.

Or he reacts this way to certain types of Trump posts. So there are literally thousands of data points on every American. There's 5,000 data points for every American for the 2016 election. And I'll just say this and I won't get into it. But Cambridge Analytica ran 5.9 million ads for Donald Trump in 2016. You know how much Hillary's campaign ran? 66,000. Anyway, I'll just leave that there.

So this is happening. Like this coerced, disrupt, overthrow, this is happening in society, and it's happening on everybody's fucking personalized feed that they have on their phone. And so any conversation you have about like kind of addressing culture anywhere

has to talk about the regulation of data rights, because data rights are human rights. And I can leave that there. But so now coming back to the topic that Jack was referencing that you guys were maybe having a disagreement about the amount of people that are doing this in soft is that regardless of what the arbitrary percent is in society, that is reflected in our community. And traditionally, the military is composed of people that are more, at least in today's

terms, Republican, a little more of a war hawk foreign policy in support of that type of thing. And I'll be honest, like all of this experience, I would even say that it influenced the way I would want to tactically do things because I would want Greenbrae's to not fucking be in combat because I think we're good enough to not. We can fucking stir up trouble otherwise because we know it's happening because Cambridge Analytica does it. And there's, I think you posted us an article, Jack, where they did it in the Dakotas regarding this election and this past year

like infiltrating local environmental rights bullshit. So like this shit is happening. That was standing rock out of the Dakota. Oh, okay. Yeah. Prior to all this. So I guess that was all a rant to say that like if you're, when you're finding these things, it's only being perpetuated by the things that exist on everybody's fucking one of these.

Like, everybody has one of these. And mine is different than yours, Jack, and it's different than Dave's. And it will try and give me everything that was going to make me want to use it more. And so there is inherently there, that is other than climate change, that is probably the most. And then maybe some fucking social stuff going on right now.

That's like one of the most biggest existential problems. we have because you like we're fucking green berets if we went into a country and someone was like hey all you have to do is spend 10,000 dollars and you can reach everybody in Kenya this is a real story there's a podcast by the guy that did the social dilemma Tristan Harris or whatever his name is it's called your undivided attention they did this their studies they fucking go and they they they're doing like basically CI counter almost like counterintel stuff to try and like not let the terrorist organizations win the fucking propaganda game. So there are organizations that are doing good guy stuff.

But, I mean, you fucking learn what Cambridge Analytica did. Like, that's... Being a parent can be really challenging. It's normal to feel uncertain about whether you're doing the right things to raise healthy and happy children. That's why Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five, with free support services to help them build. build confidence in their parenting journey.

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You can save an extra $10 when you spend 40 or more on a great selection of participating items. Just look for the signs and save at Bakers. That's what you think, what Green Beret would be doing. That's fucked up. One more. I mean, I think we need to get to some user questions. But before we move on, there was one thing on soft culture I wanted to ask. Did you see that study about the dudes weightlifting without their shirts on and, you know,

our soft guys. Oh, man, I really like to hear your thoughts on it. This was like, someone was actually paid, like a PhD paid. And she wrote a whole, like, 10,000 word essay about, like, the, I guess the vanity of special ops guys and how we like to work out without our shirts on. And like out in the middle of Afghanistan, you know, where, where there's, where there are no women around, it's like, okay. And I just think of, like, a 45-year-old PhD, like, sitting under a tree with her journal,

like watching like some dude like Justin here like Whifton weights and like making copious notes like yeah Yeah and she doesn't know that squat up squat a little deeper Justin Squat a little deeper and she doesn't know that it was quite possibly just Performative for her because she was a female no oh come on Dave come on oh come on No it couldn't it couldn't come on we who knows we don't know if you were gonna if you were gonna if you were gonna try and hook up with a bunch of dudes and you want to watch Morg out with the shirts off,

it might be a way to do it. But I did not see the study. I know that you're about to talk about some questions, and I want to give you a better, deliberate answer that'll be a little more concise than how I normally am about solutions, Jack. And I'll just kind of push through a few of them, and they might come up later. And if they just sit here for people to consider,

that's fine too. But leadership who listen is really important. These are things I wrote down yesterday. Leadership who listen. I mentioned that thing about General Clark. That's a sustain. but that needs to happen all the way down at the fucking lowest leadership

in a special operations unit and they need to act accordingly because if you listen and don't do anything about it then I don't know whenever I'm in a relationship and someone asked me like my opinion on something and I tell them, or I ask them their opinion

and then I don't do what they say, they get upset. So maybe that's going to occur with commanders too. If you ask us what we think and then you don't do shit about it, then we're probably going to be pissed. I think there are a lot of army standards that need to be removed from certain soft things, which is related to the Australian argument,

because in their study, they said that they had an elitist type culture. And I don't know as much about SAS because my friends are in two commando, which is a little bit more ranger playing with CAG maybe, just kind of kid of an American equivalent. They're kind of light infantry, but they do domestic CT as well. So anyway, I think that's interesting. because they, and that are those intellectuals or whoever was evaluating the Australian

Defense Force thought that their, they're like separateness made it worse. And I think that there needs to be a little more separateness in our community. But that's a debatable thing and I could be completely fucking wrong. So I'll move to the next one. Reduce the opt tempo, period. Mental health. These are some of the things I wrote down for this. And it's like a list of like four or five things and it's done.

The care needs to be enduring, not when you're broken. so in the essay I wrote I gave the analogy for a machine gun if I fucking don't take care on machine gun and it breaks in combat if I survive that firefighter should kick my own ass right like Jack as my Bravo

should fucking kick my ass if I let that happen because now he's got a fucking broken saw or something trauma care should be implemented we should find ways we should learn about trauma care check it out

this is that book I was talking about I was waking the tiger so like finding those experts and putting them getting those experts and somehow integrating them into our human performance realm whether that's with our Thor program whatever they're calling it nowadays in SF

or whatever the other echelons are but we need trauma specific therapy and I have thoughts on that but it'll leave the scope of everything we're doing I put don't make it mandatory you got to have the

it's kind of like you guys might, this might be past your guys' time, but they have this thing called SOCEP. It's essentially like sports psychology and like they do some like memory techniques. So they have one of these people in the court, they have these people in the course that like do things

during SET, but they also have that capability at the unit. Maybe the trauma therapy should link up with them because a lot of the same stuff like mindfulness meditation is extremely helpful and should be done by every, I think every person, but like every operator on their free time. But making that stuff

available and maybe linking it up so that it's like seamless with the mental performance and emotional performance could be together as opposed to like no emotional performance and then trying for some shitty mental performance. The last thing I have is I have written down something about the legalization of certain types of drugs like in society and then with the military. but specifically what I do want to mention

because this is like no shit, something that all people need to know in the military. There is a drug called maranol and it's synthetic THC and it can be prescribed in the DOD because I have the prescription. I'm giving it. And I have worked with doctors

that I've come across and in my unit. I've presented to like hundreds of doctors on these Zoom things. Maranol is not approved by every med command. And let me give you an example of how maranol or aka synthetic THC, aka THC, can help a person that might be afflicted with like an emotional health, TBI, and other things. If you can't sleep, then you are not going to recover. You're not going to produce brain-derived neurotropic factor in your brain, which is going to heal your brain.

You're not going to reduce the inflammation your brain. Sleeping is what heals your brain. And all of us, as I noted earlier with the blasts and then the other shit, have problems with their brain, at the very least from all the blasts. And so you need to fucking sleep. everyone needs to sleep like nine hours a night. And like I know guys aren't because I'm their fucking medic. And then also most guys can't sleep more than like three hours a night. And then when they get cancer,

because we get all these weird fucking cancers when we're breathing in burn pits and fucking with these crazy HF radios and stuff, there's all types of different cancers. And I've worked with doctors to figure out what a good dosing is for a green beret with cancer so that he can fucking sleep at night. And then he does sleep at night for the first time

since he got cancer, like thing. So marinal is something that no shit can't help guys. Like, when I hear that guys can't sleep or they're in chronic pain, like there are a lot of lifestyle things, and I can bitch it, I don't know what you guys do or don't do, but like I can bitch at someone for dipping or eating shitty

or, you know, all these other things are not meditating. But like, if you can't sleep, you're, it's just accelerating your death, literally, because you can't live without sleep. So maranol is something at the very least for chronic pain and sleep.

But the primary thing that it's indicated for in the military is Cachexia, which is like, when you go through chemo and you're like, you can't eat and you're very skinny and you're losing weight, that's Cachexia when you're like losing, you're not getting calories in so you're like losing mass. So that's like the primary indication for it. So people get all weird about it because they don't understand it,

first off, and then they don't know how to prescribe it. And they don't know the benefits of it. And I think that's a mistake, because I read all the research for the cannabis and the triptamine-based psychedelic stuff because when I hear the new when I see the news articles it says this is the treatment for major depressive disorder which I have or PTSD which I have and so I see that these things are supposed to help with

these things and these things these other things help with cancer or cessation of smoking and all this shit so I read all the research because I'm a fucking medic and it's my job and I read every drug that I give because that's my fucking job and so every medical person including in the military even though it's not legal should learn about these things because maranol is legal to prescribe. And there are many times when it can help. And it's not like, you know, SF in general or or even my unit because I'm the one that is kind of campaigning for this is just going to be a bunch of like, you know, THC using people. But even if that was the case, I'd argue what, what's the solution instead? You give people methadone and narcotics and then you encourage them to drink at your official social functions that you have at your company level. Like people are fucking dying. Nobody's dying from, you can't die from taking. You can't die from taking.

too much cannabis or THC. I can give, or ketamine for that matter, because like, you can't, we can't OD someone on ketamine. That's why it's a great drug for trauma. I can get a kid 300 migs, which is twice what I got. And they're going to, their brain will stop for a while. And then they will come back and everything's fine. Like, they're not going to die unless there's something other drugs going on. And that's the case with, with maranol.

So, like, if you take too much maranol, you're going to sleep for like 12 hours. Darn. So anyway, I thought that was important enough to say. but those were my solutions, Jack, mostly about the culture and having leadership that listens, considering at least discussing policy changes,

reducing the opt-tempo, and then changing how we conduct ourselves with mental health and emotional health stuff because the care should be enduring, not catastrophic failure. We should be able to get care for our trauma on work hours. We shouldn't have to get care

for our physical, emotional, mental, or spiritual well-being on off hours. maybe the spiritual can be off hours, but you should get the primary bulk of your care provided for by the people that fucking sent you to war in the DOD, and that does not happen. Which,

to give a plug and maybe a contact for you, Jack, and Dave, that's why the Special Forces Foundation exists. And I've done a lot of work with them. That's why I went on that, like, music tour I mentioned earlier. But I work with them. That's why I initially got on social media

when I got blown up, because they were raising money for the Gold Star families. And so I work with them, and I'm always thinking, I'm leaning forward on how can I get wherever the DoD drops the ball, how can, and this is not just me, this is Gary Garza, the sergeant major who runs the organization. He was,

you familiar with the 4th Battalion nowadays that we have a group? Okay, he was in charge of one of the elements in there. He's, he's, he's a, he's pretty cool. He can, like, he can, like, figure out a way to, like, work with any, he's a human error guy, you know, like, he's a level three. So, um, he's, uh, networking, but he's, he's, uh, networking, But he's like, okay, we see the gap with the DOD or the Green Beret Foundation in some cases, which he had issues with once upon a time.

And how can we improve this and provide a service that these things are failing, particularly the DOD and how they're not providing for guys, whether it's like getting massages or like cold treatment therapy or helping with financial issues, et cetera. And so the Special Force Foundation does that. Like it takes care of the people that not only are – affected and afflicted by the war, but also their families. And that's what's important to me, is the Gold Star Wives. And, I mean, my friend Sarah gave me permission to talk about her.

Sarah Lindsay is Will Lindsay's wife. And Sarah has four little girls. And two of them are two. They're twins. And I was friends of Will. Not a really close friend, but enough to hug him every time I saw him and try to get him to go to the range when he was stuck doing admin bullshit. And does the DOD give enough to someone who lost their fucking husband,

who did the job for 12 years, who was a senior E7, who deflected promoting because he wanted to be a dude on the fuck on the line? And then he never got posthumously promoted to 8, which I think is a little fucked up if I was going to say so myself. But aside from that, when you see little girls that fucking out loud notice when they have pancakes for the first time since their dad was. there? Like, that's fucked up. And it's heartbreaking, man. But the foundation and Gary, they help those families. And so I'm proud to help that. I think Gary would be an interesting

person for you to talk to because he's way less uncouth than I am. But anyway, that's the once over the world. That's what's important to me is trying to, is solutions because we can bitch about all we want. It's like if you guys aren't a team, you just bitch and bitch and bitch, you don't do anything about it? Well, they're like, shut the fuck up, dude. Like, get that, get out of here. And so, like, every step of the way of anything that I've ever been a part of in the fucking military is like, I'm going to lose my mind if I don't play a role on this.

So I'm going to try and influence or manipulate the situation to get the end state that needs to happen to accomplish this fucking mission. And why are we not doing that for our people? That's really why. That's my main message. And that's, I'll stop running my suck now, Jack. Justin, no, this is your time, man. No, and I think it's really good to talk through all these things.

Honestly, we could easily, you know, spend a lot more time on these issues, and I think we should at some point. We have some viewer questions that we need to get to. And then after the viewer questions, if you don't mind, and I know we've been going for a while, but, you know, you talk about depression and post-traumatic stress, and these different treatment modalities, I'd like to hear your story,

like how you came to this place if you don't mind sharing. And if that's too personal, then we're totally okay with that. My man, I kind of, like, my schick is like being vulnerable now. Like, that's why people follow me. So I, you kind of have to own that shit at that point. And what I hope, by doing that,

aside from answering your question, hopefully there's like some methods that people can use because it's unique to me so it could help everybody but maybe there's things that don't help you that might help me which I would argue that they do but uh I would say that by the act of being vulnerable I'm showing that you can do it and I'm doing it live with you know the 15 people that are just kidding Jack the 6 million people that are watching and then uh I'm willing to it's not a martyr I don't think when people say anything about the hero stuff, it fucking weirds me out and you know, panic attacks and shit, but

I just hope that people when they see it happen. The reason I do all the stuff that I do, especially with social media, is because if people in this community or the people that want to be in this community see that this is happening and that if they have any kind of respect for me based on the injury or anything about anything that I'm doing, my ideas, my identity is not my ideas, but like if they, if they respect the ideas or at least the challenging of their own ideas, then that's going to be the thing that might make them think differently about it

or change the stigma about it. Because when there's a green beret who, I mean, I'll just be honest, like, people think that like when you're fucking decked out in your combat rig and you have a beard that you look cool because you fuck, because you,

I mean, that's, we think we look cool. That's why we fucking do it, right? Like, because it's awesome. Like,

they're fucking explosions and people, people like and then nobody dies it's like it's the coolest thing in the world until it's not so like if i if i can normal if i can be that to someone and then also be like hey man like i've fucking at this table that i'm sitting at right now wanted to blow my fucking brains out before and i've had a gun on this table and i sat here and thought about it for nights then maybe it a identifies a problem and b initiates a conversation so that somebody can get gleaned something out of it. That's the long answer, Dave, to say, like, fucking fire away.

And I know if you want to get to the, I'm fine. I'm not on a time crunch or anything, but, like, I'm just letting you know that, like, that's why I'm here. And that's, if you think, that's my schick. And I'll just own it. Justin, there are way worse sticks in this world than vulnerability.

Way way. You say that, but when's the last time that anybody is fucking vulnerable that, like, you know from this job? It just doesn't happen, man. We've had a few on this show. Well, we, We have people on the show who are into their... Fair, yeah, fair enough. And they've had a lot of time to reflect on their experiences in war, and they're not so caught up in trying to pretend that there were some big bad-hats.

Yeah, we don't mind bravado, but we don't encourage... This show isn't about bravado. This show is about... Oh, for sure, yeah. People in extraordinary circumstances and what they did, you know. So, Joey, thank you very much. Was he based out of Stuttgart or Carson? And how does he feel about the troop withdrawals that are about to happen downrange?

I'm not a Carson. I never went to Germany. We have a battalion in Germany. And then first group has a battalion in Okinawa. If any young ins are looking at the unit and where you might end up, you don't really have a saying where you go. But actually, you kind of do, because I manipulated my situation to come here instead of fifth group. What was that last part? And you see that, Justin?

You're a fifth group guy, weren't you? I tried to manipulate it. It was because I wanted to live in Colorado, man. And then what it ended up doing is it put me in combat. How do you feel about the troop withdrawals that are about to happen downrange? I mean, based on the conversation earlier, like, the grain scheme of things, I'd like it. It's not a rhetorical question when I ask why we're in Afghanistan. So the manner in which we withdraw can be problematic,

and it can make things very difficult for our counterparts in Afghanistan, the ones that we've been working with. So there, I mean, this is why Mattis resigned with the Syria conflict. The war in Syria is that he had some discrepancy. So depending on how that happens, the bottom line is I think it needs to happen. Like, I don't see value there. and I especially don't see value where we are like boots on the ground.

If you wanted, we don't have to get, I don't know if this is relevant for this podcast, but like if you're going to conduct, if you want to fuck with people, like if your goal is to fuck with Iran, Pakistan, China,

Russia and the Central Asian states that were all formerly in the Soviet Union, and if you want to fuck with those areas and that's why we're there, because it's the only thing that makes sense to me is we're fucking with our adversaries in the area. You can still do that without, committing all the resources.

But then, and I'll just leave this hanging here, and we can see, you can ask the next question. Then what, where does the money, how does the military industrial complex continue its machine if you're not at war?

That's rhetorical and it's not at the same time. And so that's the end of that answer. Hammer Nails, thank you very much for the donation. Let's see here. Oh, I may not. I'm getting a failure to connect. Can you scroll? I know we got a bunch more.

Uh, yeah. We're at. Uh, okay. So, uh, the Stuttgart question and then hammer and nails. Thank you, sir. And then we got Andrew. Can we circle back to when he mentioned 18 Delta's being able to perform vasectomies? Is he saying that some meathead soft guys are clipping their garbles? Yes. End of question. No, the capability is there. and if you're medical providers in your clinic, if you're cool with them,

and if the clinic should be set up where the deltas can do medicine. Otherwise, we don't get clinical medicine unless you just keep up on it on your own or you're a good at it to begin with. And so, yeah, if the Delta establishes the right relationship

with the right medical providers, he can take his burly ass forearms and fucking clip some nuts with his friends. And there you go. It's a party. Joey says, this dude is amazing speaking the truth Rangers lead the way

Be Piazzi He says I was also blown up It was all about morphine Mixed with percocets and skin crafts I think it means skin grafts I initially peeled off my own skin In the shower at the burn center And Fort Sam Houston

Don't feel alone brother Yikes Right on man We've got a really good burn center down at Fort Sam Houston or the one in San Antonio. I met her, Jack, I met a ranger there. I guess, were you a Ranger too, Dave? Yeah, so I met a Ranger.

He is a triple amputee that hurt after me. I think it was in a wall or something, but he is one arm, and that's it. So Rangers, they, I've met a lot of Rangers that are amputees, unfortunately, and I tell you what, dude, just to give props to Rangers and then to give props to my 509th Infantry Boys,

their platoon sergeant was from Ranger Regiment and he did 10 years in regiment before he was a PSG at 509th and so he was on our deployment and I was like, your experience is what? And this is my first deployment. I was like, all right, you're assaulting with me. I was like, I want fucking you

because I like to assault, but I want to learn. And so he was awesome. We had goose teams, man. The platoon was fucking trained to shit. A Goose team. I fired a goose a lot on mission. I was like, if you fucking carry a weapon in my element, you will fire it.

And so they did. Anyway, Rangers leave the way. Glad that guy's all right. Sucks that he had to fucking peel his skin off. Hope he's doing all right now. Zach says, plus one for Waking the Tiger, Peter Levine. What are your thoughts on Levine's somatic experience method versus EMDR and other trauma therapies, what are the key obstacles to widespread access?

They're not mutually exclusive, so I'll briefly explain what each one of them are. EMDR is a, it's got a lot of research in the neuroscience, and it's essentially a light, some sort of fixture or screen that has a light that goes back and forth, and then if your therapist is doing what they should be doing, then you should be recalling the traumatic event, and then that's happening. And there's literally some weird bullshit neurologically that, like, changes the, I don't know all the full neuroscience. I haven't actually read that research, but that's EMDR. There is utility in it.

It's very well supported in the trauma community. The felt sense or like the waking the tiger methodology is briefly when you have something traumatic occur, you have it stored here, right? But I briefly told you guys what my legs looked like after I got blown up. So there is trauma in those legs, right? because they're, even if all you're getting is like a routine surgery, you get, you get incised open with a scalpel. That is a fucking injury and it's traumatic. And now you're fucking, all your tissues then have to heal and they produce a scar.

And then what happens next with the, with just the physical properties will influence that localized trauma. And then the combination of the psychological and physical can also cause problem to that. So I've gotten worked on, there's this thing called myofascial release. And you can go to myofascial release.com to read more about it. I won't get too deep into this, but it's essentially like pulling, it's almost like light joint approximation of like pulling or putting hands on certain areas. And there's regardless of you believe in like spiritual energy, there is literal energy being transferred because heat is thermal energy and that can go from one hand into my body,

right? So that's at least a transfer of energy. So I've had situations where the body worker, her name's Jen, she's great. She has had her hands on my stumps. and I felt like my fucking feet were there. I've felt I've just started crying. I've had like transcendental experiences. So,

we help protect and grow everything you've worked so hard to build. We are AccroShore. We help protect and grow everything you've worked so hard to build. We are AccroShore. The felt sense in the Waking the Tiger book is about being in tune with what your body feels like because trauma is a complete dissociation. Ancient shamanic cultures, aka shamans,

their goal was to reunite the body and soul is what they considered like healing to be. And so it's not that he's saying do that, but all that bullshit where I was talking about

fight, flight, or freeze, that all came from that book. And then terror, rage, and helplessness, those are symptoms of PTSD. And had I not read that book, I would not understand that dealing with the army

is what triggers my fucking rage. So that as one thing. So his question was like this or that. And I would say both. Because in most things what you find when you're in medical stuff, whether it's treating a sprained ankle or treating a cancer, the holistic approach matters. And so the ideology, you know,

I repeat the same shit. That's how I teach. But like you have the ideology and the symptoms, right? So you got to address both. And so you have to treat the symptoms of your PTSD or depression or whatever the fuck. And then you also have to treat the ideology, which is addressing the trauma, which is why those symptoms are there. And so this is just more of a reason for people to read Waking the Tiger, but for that guy, EMDR, I would still pursue that if you can during the pandemic. And there

are YouTube channels. Actually, don't do it on your own. I've done it on my own, but I used to jump out of airplanes and almost died, so don't listen to me. A alternative to EMDR is EFT, which has the same clinical efficacy of EMDR. Okay, cool. Which is just the tapping. Now, if you go back and look at like the people who kind of, the guy who started at Gary Craig, he thought it was about Chinese meridians and things like that. But really, the science is shown both with EMDR and EFT and also another technique

called Havening is that stimulus, while you're going through these traumatic memories, stimulus input from the torso and above creates a dissociative effect. which reduces like the inflammation as it were of that memory or or like starts to pull the inner. Same thing happens in waking the tiger too, Dave. Yeah. It's a there is a progression of a progression of exercises in that book. And I don't know what specific tapping you're referring to,

but one of them is just literally like slapping your body parts and just feeling the cessation associated with that body part and then being like, that is my foot or that is my hand or my arm. And so that's probably like an early stage. of what you're talking about. But yeah, I mean, you guys might be familiar. We briefly mentioned it in our pre-show talk about the ketamine therapy, which I've gotten to ketamine medical infusions.

And it's not for me because the mindset and setting of being blown up is not conducive for ketamine. But that's also a promising research as well as some of these other things. But what I don't want guys to do is to think that I do is one thing. And that's like, then like I'm good with my therapy for myself. Like it's holistic. like what I not to jump to a tangent

but like my day like I literally spend like two to six hours a day fucking working on myself every day whether it's literally just sitting on my deck not doing anything to slow my mind down because this is going to fucking make it go insane all the time from a neuroscience perspective so I mean I spend

I do all kinds of things for myself and I keep the things that work so I'm journaling, I'm meditating the meditating is huge and we haven't even talked about that So I don't want guys being like, I'm going to go at my ketamine therapy or my EMDR or I'm going to read this Waking the Tiger book and that's it. I think the waking and tiger book, if you're only going to do one thing,

is probably the best one to start with or seeing a trauma therapist. But there's a lot, don't just think that there's one thing that's going to make it all go away because it's a practice. And then eventually trauma can be healed and it won't have the, not power, but it won't have like the same effect. And that is possible. And time does help.

with PTSD. That is a thing. But like sometimes the traumas are latent and they influence behaviors and they turn into compulsive or numbing behaviors which are distracting or trying to dissociate from feeling the negative feelings. And so understanding those feelings, you'll hear these same things. You have to deliberately introspect so that you understand and accept so then you can have deliberate intention. Yeah. Right? You can have intention based action rather. That's a better way of saying it. So if you don't look into why I'm having these negative feelings and you don't know, and you don't even know that they're there. You're just like, instead you're just,

I'm angry and like fucking punch a hole in the wall or something. I mean, I don't know how many, what rate of Green Beret's punch holes in walls when they're in their 30s, but it's probably too high. So just do the holistic approach and you don't have to choose me as someone, but like find find the people that are going to help you learn what those things are. and I for sure will be fucking talking about these things on my podcast and my material because that's what matters to me.

But pursue these things, but just don't think that, just don't have an expectation. Because like if you, every time you go out with your friends to like pre-COVID or whatever the fuck and you go to a bar, like, if you expect the same night every time, you're going to be, your expectation in reality are not the same. And so that can really fuck with your therapy if you're expecting something to happen and it doesn't. You just let whatever happens. And if anything, the healing, the trauma that Waking the Tiger book says it's not about understanding the meaning. It's just letting it happen. Because when that woman puts her hands on my body and does the bodywork of my own fascia release,

like shit happens. I don't know what the fuck's going on. And the book is saying, don't worry about what's going on. Just fucking let it happen. And I'm like, okay, I'll just fucking let it happen. And then like, I just feel better. So that just with that modality is what I'm talking about. The second part of Zach's question was,

what are the key obstacles to widespread access? And I have a theory about that, but I don't know if you do. To trauma therapy? To like the Waken the Tiger, like EMDR, things like that. The access to these therapies in general? Or for soft guys. Widespread access. It's just, I mean, the emotional health system in the country is broken.

Yeah. I mean, we can name a bunch of things off right away, like military, industrial complex. prison industrial complex like economic despair you can rename all these like major societal things and the prison system is in the war on drugs and everything like these all play a role and I think they're all interrelated so that's why when I when I want to focus on a particular topic it can it can have the most effect if you address this one thing but emotional health we don't have a good understanding of it and honestly I've done a lot of digging into

like the last 100 years is trying to understand why things are the way they are now. And you can see a lot of that in just world events and like trying to just learn as much history as you can. And so my opinion is that to get to the point is that the way that we conduct emotional health treatment is flawed. It's not very good. And then the people that are getting, that get into trauma therapy are usually because they have experienced trauma themselves from my experience and talking to all these people. but it's just a paradigm that that doesn't fit like it's the same thing with exercise but like I just spent like 10 minutes talking about how you need a holistic approach to fucking getting better and like everybody who's overweight knows what the answer is to not be overweight

and that but there are things like numbing and comforting behaviors because there are like there are negative emotions and we don't openly talk about them in society there's no compassion for the self to acknowledge and like honor those feelings and like explore them and understand them because they're scary and they suck fear shame and vulnerability this is all bernay brown stuff which is uh kind of a weird thing to bring up on a team house podcast but uh but fear shame and vulnerability will will uh will get in the way of uh you feeling like you're worthy and so when we have a when we have a nation of people that kind of grow up generationally to not really feel that they're worthy and that they always have to be working and they always have to be productive.

And then you're exposed to a bunch of weird shit in war. And then you're also exposed to all that, the ranting I did about this, like, you're set up for failure as a human in fucking Western society. You're set up for failure. And you're set up for success in a lot of ways. So I, I am maybe a negative bias because I do think there are a lot of great things about SF community. Jack mentioned that. And I, so, but we, there are failings. And when there are failings, they're just very apparent.

And generally, I think it's just that the field sucks, and you're about to see a revolution in it in the field of emotional health because all of the stuff that's coming out with therapeutic compounds that are referred to as psychedelic-based compounds. That's about to revolutionize this field. And I think that all medical providers and emotional health caregivers or whatever they call it considers providers, everybody needs to be familiar with these things because they are coming. there are publicly traded companies on the fucking stock exchange that are that you know are investing in developing psilocybin which is the cycle active component of mushrooms so this stuff is about to cause a revolution and so we might see an improvement but it's going to be it's going to be slow especially in the military everything's glacial so we have to figure out a way to stopgap it in the meantime or to do something with what we have With trauma therapies, I think there's also just a simple fact that our current system of therapy is it's set up. It's not set up for them. The current model is you go see a therapist who talks to you for an hour.

They bill your insurance a certain amount. That's how they make their living. I'm not saying they're not compassionate, but they're not looking to cure you. They're not looking to fix you. They're looking to earn a living. Yeah. So something that everybody has to remember. to your point, Dave, is that

50% of providers or 50% of doctors are in the bottom half of their class. I mean, just by math. So, yeah, you do have a lot of bad providers. So if you are looking for a therapist, regardless if it's talk therapy or trauma therapy, which if anybody's been in combat, go for trauma

therapy, seek that out. Like, meet, talk to, ask questions to your therapist, and then fucking fire them if you want. Not because you don't like what they say, but if it's not helping or if they're just not someone that you're going to dive with, then if you're not comfortable talking to them, then it's not going to work. But the

thing about EMDR is you don't need to talk necessarily. Right. Because I know a therapist, I haven't worked with her, but she's like, yeah, I mean, talk therapy doesn't work. She just fucking told me that. Jack, you're going to read a question. Yeah, EMDR can help you in five sessions. Who makes money from that, right?

Yeah. Joey says, this is the type of dude we need leading the VA, which is fucking A. Yeah. Andrew says, since Justin mentioned in vitro fertilization at the top of the show, should people in his situation be granted an exception to the human

cloning ban? Well, I do want to point this out because this is some fucking bullshit. All of us in this special operations job, Triccare doesn't cover getting any kind of sperm samples done before you leave for a trip. That's fucked up because now I'm fucked because of that. And everybody in positions of leadership should be

fucking ashamed because I likely will never be a father again and I have to fucking live with every fucking day and getting a little worked up but that's yeah so so yeah the i some people don't even believe ivf should be a thing so that's obviously fucked up too but uh i do i will campaign i will fucking go to fucking dc if i have to because i don't want another green beret feeling like this ever again yeah yeah because they shouldn't you should be able to go beat off into a dixie cup and and have that shit put on ice god bless it uh voltage blue he says do you think that a lot of

baseline that saw fall on could easily be undertaken by conventional units in the military to reduce opt tempo and burnout? So I guess he's saying a lot of or a lot of the missions that special operations do could they be done by conventional units to ease the burden

on the opt tempo and burnout that our guys get into? No. Sometimes yes, but mostly no. That's the bottom line. but like we had the S-FAB experiment and you have expedited people

that are supposed to be in culturally sensitive situations that shouldn't be in them and then you have blown green risk or actual attacks like happening. As green hat wearing people, and again, I don't think anything highly of the green hat, when you have someone put a brown hat on after six months and they think,

and they're basically trying to do nearly the same shit you are and their command is coming in, like a bunch of big dick players trying to like take over your shit like that that's a turf war so that's a little different but it's just that the thing about s fab or anything that's similar to it or conventional or even infantry that is trying to be cross-trained into essentially a fid type force is that you don't have the institutional knowledge of doing it because that's what our unit has we have we're also office of strategic services in world war two got split in the CIA and then eventually special forces um and we have that institutional knowledge of the decades of different types of conflicts. So we have a different sharpened knife for the actual mission. And other than Marrsoc, which I'm less familiar with their doctrine, and I would argue that maybe this is a hit on Marsoc because they don't have this institutional knowledge, is that we're the only unit that's trained specifically for unconventional warfare,

the doctrine of it. So no other unit should try to do, well, I mean, we know Kag does, but at least at our level and on down, nobody should be doing UW unless you are deliberately taught it because you can fucking fail or you can fucking die, but failing

means that like all the efforts that you put into it just go nowhere. And regardless if we're on the UW or the Fid side of it, like, you know, trying to stab off an insurgency in Iraq or trying to overthrow the northern or overthrow the Taliban with the Northern Alliance in the early days of Afghanistan.

Like you have different mission sets, but trusting the leader, I think maybe the leadership is the problem, because the institutional knowledge isn't with the officers, because in the conventional military, the officers, when you can look at, you can take any case study out of the last 18 years or whatever and look at why this shouldn't be the case. But generally, if you're trying to do the sensitive stuff, then you need to go to soft, and your life will be marginally better than it is in the conventional force.

none says appreciate the solutions Justin not Jason haha thank you Alejandro with regards to reducing opt tempo for the force how do you tell or convince the powers that be that not every mission is worth doing Jack I'm going to defend you because you were saying that people

when you're doing the stream that they'll fucking talk shit to you as the stream's happening and it happened and so I just wanted I don't know what that means how I'm defending you but like you called it And this guy fucking, he's going to nitpick. I'm sure there's someone nitpicking all these stupid things I'm saying. But how can you convince people to reduce opt tempo is essentially the question?

I don't have to, well, I do have to convince them. But all I have to do is say, what are the statistics for how many people have killed themselves in the last year in the military or in soft or in 10th group? That's all I have to ask. That's all. Brad says thank you for your service and your opinions. Jureen, through some money in the tip jar also. Thank you, buddy.

Joey, please talk about the Aussie S-A-S-S situation. I have a feeling you got a little rant on there, and probably I do as well. We'll get to that at the end, okay? John, put some money in, thank you. Zach says, what does Justin want to talk about or talk about more that he hasn't been able to say thus far? I'm going to take probably like 30 seconds to say something.

something that is going to be more about me and not really for the greater community. But, and I mentioned to you guys earlier, and it's not something that, this is where we're going to go. So I'm not getting promoted. I've been in almost like eight years, and that's a really long time for someone to still be an E6 and SF. I was eligible for promotion in 2019, and I'm not getting promoted. I even went up to the level of the Secretary of the Army, and nobody was able to accomplish this mission. and so instead of me, because what that does is it means I get less money on the back end.

And so there is a finite amount of money that is worth Justin's legs and lack of fatherhood. Just the same way that there is a comparative advantage for Will Lindsay and Ryan Sarder's life. I don't even get to talk about Ryan. So there's just like there's a cost to it and it's worth it's worth doing business for the government. That's what I learned. And the reason this had an impact on me is because, after going through that, and this happened fairly recently, I understand that I don't matter,

it just fucking breaks my heart, man. And I just haven't accepted it. And that's why I'm even talking about this shit instead of just telling dick jokes and combat stories with you. Because the way I feel right now, it does several things. It shows me that, regardless of the best intentions of an individual, they can't overcome the bureaucracy of stupid-ass bullshit that ends up not doing any.

Like when I tell my civilian friends any of this, they're like, oh, what, you didn't lose enough legs? So like any civilian that ever hears any of this, they're like, why? And I'm like,

I don't know. I don't know why someone can't just go flick the fucking switch and make me an E7. And so instead of me bitching about money, what's the so what? And the so what for me is that I am a green beret. I'm also white, which people are going to get real butt hurt about me saying that. I am not completely fucked up on my face. So like I look probably like a green beret, like when you see stuff on me on the internet.

And I, this is still happening to me. And so what about the fucking how many women we will never know about that they lost a rape kit for in the military? Or what about all my friends down there at the fucking unit? I say down there because I live up in the mountains. So Fort Carson is literally 2,500 feet lower in elevation. But all my friends, quickly, here are just several. These are real examples. Hey, I'm going to probably get divorced if I go on this next trip.

Too bad. Hey, I've done these two or three combat deployments in the regular army. I've already done one combat deployment here. I just want to go to the other battalion, so I go to Europe instead of Afghanistan. Too fucking bad. Hey, I want to go to med school. and there's like an age cut off. Oh, well, you have one and a half years left for your level three requirement after you went to level three.

So you're not allowed to go. Next year, I'm going to try and apply to PA school. Oh, well, you're going to Germany instead and you're going to be leaving about the time that you're going to be tried to apply. Those are just really quick. Those are my fucking some, those are my friends that I just talked about. Those are real people, man. And so in the military, even in our unit, even though things are a lot better, I fucking hate the mentality. Well, this is what you signed up for. Because I didn't sign up to be treated like a

fucking indentured servant. I didn't sign up to be a fucking slave. Staff sergeant is my slave name, man. Like, I'm a fucking person, and I have been able to become a real person after I got hurt. So the one thing, there's two things that I learned from this. And the one, the one thing that has to do with the immediacy of it is that people in the military are oppressed. And the fucking low, the slogan of my unit is de oppresso liber. If I don't fight for the oppressed, I'm a fucking asshole because I'm a green bird. That's what I'm supposed to be. That's what the movie was all about is showing that there are good, righteous people in the world that do the right thing, right?

And I've done bad things. I'm not fucking perfect. Like, I do stupid shit all the time. So please don't think I'm not a martyr. But what I understand is that there are people even in my unit that are oppressed and they can't do shit about it. they're not the one that has their legs and their nuts blown off, but I can't because I have a fucking voice. And now everybody

is going to have to fucking listen to me because I'm not going to shut up. So that's the first thing. And the second thing is that this reverberates beyond just me and the military because I'm literally a minority right now. After being a white motherfucker for my whole life, I don't have legs,

so I'm disabled. Like I have a handicapped parking spot and I fucking need it. Some days I can't walk. Something can happen and I can be in a wheelchair for fucking weeks just for no reason without me. So I'm disabled and so what that does when you are someone who is one narrative to tell about this

and I'm going to try and work past this is that you're dicked over by your government right because I'm not being promoted and all the other bullshit that has happened that is not worth getting into and I've been essentially oppressed by my government and then I'm also like part of a minority So I have an incredible empathy, which was from the catalyst of Secretary of Defense Mattis, that says, consider what all people are going through. And when those people are subjected to injustice, can you do anything about it?

And will you? And the answer from now on is that, like, you fucking want me to go to war? Like, this is my war now. I don't, this is why, this is why I'm alive. So, so I know, the, the two results are that I know what it feels like to be in the military and fucked over and that nobody is there to save you. And that happens all the times those guys down there. And they're still doing the job. And there will be more guys behind them doing the job.

And they're going to continue getting destroyed. And so if, if nobody knows about it, then how can you fucking fix it? And then that is going to extend to things in society because my fight is not just with the military. because my identity is not the military. My identity is not a G.B. The most I've ever said any of these fucking words, Greenbrace, SF, or anything about combat is with you guys. I don't talk about this stuff much,

not because I don't want to, but because it's just, it's not who I am. So who I am is, that would be the thing I'd want to mention, is that the, I'm telling everybody right now, this is an information, this is a war of information.

And I'm going to fight it. I'm telling everybody that. Because they're not my opponents. Excuse me. They're not my enemies. Anybody that is General Clark or Bodette or Secretary McCarthy or any of my 10th creep leadership, nobody's my enemy. But if they need to be my opponent temporarily to make them, to initiate conversations

that result in change, then I will fucking do it. That is what Batman did. and Batman's pretty cool. So if I have to fucking do that, then I'll do that. But if there was like something that those were, that's what I would want to say. The biggest changes come from people

inside the bureaucracy that speak out. And look, the force only has itself to blame because they raised all of us to say like, hey man, if something's fucked up, say something about it. And like, here you are saying. Open door policy, blah, blah, blah, yeah. You know, I was in the, in the same way in my own way,

saw things that were fucked up and it's like, hey, man, like, someone should, like, probably speak out and say, hey, that's wrong. Like, we should be doing better on that. And hey, man, you burn bridges doing that and you make enemies, but that's life. That's how it goes, man.

And, you know, you got to stay focused. I just don't, I just don't fear any of that because I don't care. Because a lot of in our culture, there's a huge, like, tough guy thing, right? Like a lot of guys still feel that they have to try and prove themselves I mean you're literally told that all the time in training

that you literally have to prove yourself every day which is okay because you need to be committed to this job because if you're not then people die that's just how it is but one thing like I'm not gonna I'm not gonna try and make things

difficult for my chain of command and that goes up to Congress because I am talking to Congress I'm trying to talk to Congress people. So I'll be around doing this, man, because I don't really know what I'm going to add to what you just said. It's just, I'm going to be overt, but I'm going to be as respectful as possible because this matters. And it matters because fucking kill themselves all the time, man. Look, man, you got your legs and your balls blown off.

Like, what the fuck are they going to do, write you an article 15? Well, they can't unpromote me anymore. So what are they going to take away from you, really, at that point? point. That's true too. I'll be out soon. Final out is, is relatively within a month within a month I just found out today. So that'll be, that's

cool. But yeah, I mean, the gloves are not on. I don't want you, I know you don't want to dying people out and you don't have to be specific if you don't want to. But when you say that you don't matter,

there was obviously a process that you went through to come to feel that way that you don't matter to the military that you don't matter to the system your service doesn't matter is that am I interpreting that correct I don't matter to the organization I matter as an individual

I don't think I don't matter because sometimes I say that and people when they know that you've thought about killing yourself in the past people get real worried about that I'm not suicidal like in general but, and that was a long time ago too. But I, isn't the organization the one that says that your actions are what matter? I think I can just put a period on that sentence and not fucking say anything or a question mark on that sentence.

Like, our actions are supposed to matter, right? So when there are things that are done, the only time, every time someone saw me in the hospital, whether they had three or four stars or neckties, they always asked me, what can we do for you? And the only thing I ever fucking said was, I want my family and friends taking care of

when they want to come see me, which is a benevolent organization thing. I don't even have to ask for that, by the way. And then down the road, I'm concerned about this promotion thing, because I was fucking talking about that on ketamine. I did SSD3 in fucking wall. to read.

So, I mean, I'm just saying the same thing over, Dave, but like, I don't think I matter to the organization for them to accomplish the things that, like, the only thing I ever fucking ask them. Well, I have asked other things. And 10th group has listened to a lot of them. So they do have credit and then they do have blame. And that's fair because if I fucking do an operation and they are watching me do a PMT operation and a fucking blizzard, which has happened.

And then they tell me the good and bad things I do, just like I say in the essay, that's an AAR. We should be doing that. And if we don't, we're fucked up. So I think when you go to the Secretary of the Army and they can't make that happen, I'm going to say this,

and I don't want the person who worked on this to take this personally or the Secretary himself. But when that happens, you fucking need to reevaluate what the fuck is going on. Like, do these things make sense? Is there like a hard cap?

Should I only get eight years worth of service of fucking compensation? when a sergeant major is going to retire in 20 years, he's going to make more than me. And I don't have nuts or legs. That's like me problems. And so I don't want to make me problems, everybody problems. But for me personally, the organization and any organization I'm part of, and I've told them this, at least at the higher level, that I don't have any faith that any organization I'm a part of can do the right thing.

And so maybe I can be a catalyst for that. Maybe I can either piss them off or no. make them ashamed enough or make them think enough or just make them like proud enough that they want to fucking do something different and whether or not that does anything for me whatever because like i'll fucking take care of me just like i always have it i don't need the fucking army to do it uh chris asked a question here actually reflecting back what we're saying earlier says you know keg does unconventional warfare and i mean i'll throw my two cents in there that that's in syria or you could look at early on in afghanistan um Put, I lost it here. Potato. Here we go. Thank you for the generous donation. Continue the good work, Justin.

Because of your advocacy, I found the SFF and became a donor. Thank you for all that you have done and we'll continue to do. Ariel, thank you. Alex. Thank you for the donation to the foundation. That is actually like they don't keep any of it. They don't pay themselves. I think they might have one employee that's an admin employee.

Gary's not going to pay himself when he's out. Thank you for that. They actually put a lot of... They and maybe indirectly me put a lot of thought into how that money can best be spent for the people that need it. Alex says, Favorite holiday memory from Special Forces?

I may... I'm trying to think if I know who this is. Favorite, man? I mean, I had a really bad Christmas after David Brabender got killed in December of 17. We have some good Christmas parties, and they're not rowdy. I'm probably one of the only fucking people

that have been on teams that are just not rowdy. And that, like, when guys were getting drunk and doing stupid shit on deployment, we were, like, fucking at our outposts, clean as fuck, and tickling each other and, like, giggling all night and stuff. That sounds really stupid, but, like, we just entertain ourselves in like ways that aren't rambunctious so I don't know

if this is an Alex I know but I don't really have a good relationship with holidays man because I got divorced and trying to make this will be the first set of holidays this season where I try to heal from that

uh KS Anthony says thanks for waking the tiger and Brenda Brown Rex and for the raw honesty and courage and throwing a spotlight on this potato chimes in again. Besides SFF, what are the best organizations for a donor to support? And how can a civilian help in more ways than cutting a check?

The Semperfion America's Fund is a great foundation, but my understanding is they have a fuckload of money. So if you're going to donate to, like, SFF was significantly helped by Sturgle's efforts with his tours, but it's still kind of rough. relatively grassroots organizations. So, again, I always tell people, especially when I spoke in these arenas to people, money's hard to come by, especially like with everything's going on.

So please don't feel obligated to donate money unless something that you have and you want to give. The things that someone could do without donating money, I had an SF guy text me. He read my article. We went through the course together, and he was asking what he could do. and even for me, like what can you do for me? What can he do?

And I just said, like, hey, man, just take care of yourself and learn, learn how to take care of yourself to the maximum capability because that makes you better and it makes you more present

for everybody in your immediate circle, whether that's your family or your team or your culture, your company, whatever your job is. You learn to take care of yourself. So I think that if that becomes more of the norm

to have self-care, which includes rest and play, then people will be better at being who they can be. So that's thing number one is take care of yourself. And then thing number two is actively seek out ways to learn how to critically think. Because when we, if you see something on social media, try and think about what the incentive of the person posting it,

even if it's the fucking president. What is going on why they're posting that? Is it an emotional reaction to something? that's not probably not germane to the definition of leadership. And I'm not even talking about the president, but you can use it there. Is it because they're trying to do something? Are they trying to satisfy what the algorithm is showing them that if they do this type of behavior, then they get more likes and attention?

So I'm talking about critical thinking with just respect to social media, but critical thinking in general. And I kind of went on that slight rant earlier about constructing and deconstructing your beliefs. Like understand why you believe things. and understand that your beliefs and your ideology, your ideas and your beliefs are not your identity. If you believe in a soul, those things do not change what the fucking, they don't change your,

well, depends on what you believe, I guess, so whatever. But those things don't make your identity, though. Like you persist, whatever it is to be Justin,

persist beyond this conversation. If I were to say something, even if it was horrible, and it was like, lambasted by, you know, the left. or the right, whatever, because I piss both off,

then you would want to understand why you believe those things and to critically think through them. And so people always talk about how divisive and how much derision there is, how much divisiveness is in society. And they're always like, we need to like, you know, you need to promote unity and talk with each other. And like, sometimes people aren't fucking worth talking to. And like, you know that more than me, Jack,

because you've got, you know, you have the Twitter thing to deal with. I just mainly mess with Instagram and people are real nice over there but so I'd say take care of yourself and work on the actively seek out how to learn to critically think and understand biases

and understand why things are the way they are because then when you say like I can't fathom fucking talking to a Trump supporter when you say that that that really rings some bath party stuff in Iraq. It kind of creeps me out

because when you fucking segregate an entire fucking political party from being involved in the government, they make an insurgency dude. Like, so I would say take care of yourself and critically think because when you understand

if you know it's a snake then then you know it's you know how to deal with a snake. That's that's what I would say. None says Deopresso Liber indeed. Keep it up brother. We're counting on your voice

and SFN says, I admire you, Justin. Thanks also, Jack and Dave. You're welcome, bro. We're happy to be here. And Justin, this has been amazing, man. And we're going to have to do it again with you sometime. I sense there's a lot more to talk about. I do want to return to that issue of Australian special operations

and some of the stuff that has come out in regards to the soft culture. And just a little bit of background or some people maybe not tracking this, this scandal has been kind of unfolding in the Australian government. in the Australian media for, oh, geez, like four years at this point. And there were these allegations of war crimes happening in Australian special operations. And the press got a hold of more and more information. There were a series of SAS whistleblowers from within the organization. There was video that leaked out that portray apparent executions and murders.

More and more information came out in the Australian government, out in military after years of denials and deflections and lies, they did finally come around and say, yes, there were indiscretions, and they launched a big investigation. The results of it were released this week, and it was announced that something like 39 civilians were murdered, straight up in cold blood murdered,

not like one of those things, like iffy things in combat shit happens, but like actually murdered. And they announced that one of the entire Sabre Squadron, within the Australian Special Air Service or Sasser is being disbanded. So that's kind of the backgrounder on that. Justin, where are you on this, man?

Well, I kind of left out a little piece of like my background. I've worked with Australian Soft. Specifically before I was in the Army, I trained them. I've been to two commando. I've given an impromptu presentation on like physical training to them. I got to tour their facilities. I have friends over there.

CCT also. Air Force guys. Yeah. So also, if you've never been there for Anzac Day and you want to destroy your liver, then show up to Anzac Day because those motherfuckers go to dawn service and start drinking afterwards. And then they literally fucking drank for 24 hours straight. And like, I went home with my buddy at like 10 p.m.

I was like, I'm fucking exhausted, dude. And he was like, yeah. And then we got up and I did a seminar the next day with those guys. And some of them were still awake. So anyway, so I would say that I don't know as much about the SAS guys because SAS and two commando don't really get along. It's probably a little worse than Navy and Army in the in the States. They fucking hate each other from what I understand. And granted, you probably have interviewed Australians and shit.

The thing I found interesting out of this whole thing, I'm sorry, I stepped on you. They call the commandos the doze. the commandos call the fucking sass guys cats oh i heard they call them the poo-poo barrows because of the color of their berets uh well i just know cats it's just it's probably like a little they can just be like yeah the cats and it's kind of like saying the jimokes over there i guess but um and granted i don't know any sas guys so i can't like defend them appropriately but uh the thing that i found interesting and i kind of alluded to this earlier jack uh first off i do want to make a general statement.

Committee war crimes is like an individual. That's like fucked up. And these guys clearly did some fucked up things and like that's not acceptable. And then for that to be a normalized culture is unacceptable. And then we actually kind of learn this in the course. Sometimes you can't control your partner

force. And like I'm not saying that I've seen this shit happen for anything, but like I'm just saying that like the partner force does what the like we can be like, hey, this is unlawful. whether we're talking about like a strike or something and they're like they'll go and do something that is that we can't do because they don't give a fuck because it's their fucking country or it's like the local police doing crazy shit. So that that's just like a kind of a reminder to everyone that a combat is chaotic because trachercide is a thing or is a potential thing that when we do it when I in my past when I've done scheme maneuvers we are deliberately making sure that we can support. each other, that our elements can support each other within a cell, that the cells can support

each other, blah, blah, blah. So, like, you can, you can kind of a plan for it to prevent some these things, but, like, the normalized culture of, of, of doing the bad stuff is obviously fucked up. But what I thought was interesting about this, Jack, which I wanted to ask you about, and we can finish it off offline too. But I found it interesting that all of the reports were saying that it was like the discrepancy of the elitism unit is how they framed it, how they were set apart from the regular military. Because Canberra, if I have my geography right, like most of the defense forces is Sydney in the East Coast, and then the SAS is on the West Coast in Perth. And so they're literally like fucking hours away in an airplane. And so my understanding is they were saying that their isolation allowed them to develop like an elitism that was, I don't know, uncanny or unheard of.

to the point that it led to this. And to me, I just kind of say, I mean, maybe they had weak leadership too. And I've been in environments where we have like oppressive officer type leadership. I don't know what the right checks and balances are. But what I wonder about is like if if the intellectuals or the academics are the ones who evaluated this situation and that's the conclusion they came to, then like how close to reality is that that they're just being a bunch of elitist assholes? Because it should be more like these guys are just like,

these guys are just shitty people. And like, so your selection process has to account for that too. But that's the thing that I found interesting is like they clearly did fucked up things. It's, I kind of, you know, text my buddies about it and they,

uh, it's, you know, how can you move past that? Because like, you want to believe you're in the right. And then when you do things that aren't, that's fucked up.

And we know that at least people have been accused of that in the Navy. I'm not saying army doesn't do it. I don't know any examples of this type of shit. But like, when you over, I'll go back to this, when you over deploy and you over task saturate and you overwork people and they're constantly in a barrage of combat. I mean, like, I don't know what you guys, you guys did for rotations, but like some, some GPs and Rangers did six on, six off. You know, like, I know Rangers, because they, they shifted to that three month deployment cycle that have had like fucking 11 deployments or some shit. You know, like, you accumulate a lot of time in combat when you're in a fucking war. And that takes a toll on people.

And there are people that, like, Jack, that are like, all right, for whatever reason, I'm fucking done doing this and I want to do something else. And I don't know, like, how long you were in your career, Dave, but like, you got the guys that do 20. But sometimes you have the guys that, like, from periods five to 12 of their career, they were fucking deploy, deploy, deploy. And then when they're in charge at year 13, they're fucking insane. And they're on steroids. and guys you've heard stories steroids drugs fucking selling arms whatever all that bullshit like that's

that's not acceptable and uh i don't know what the answer is but that's i just found it interesting that they were like the elitism of the unit in how it's not how they lost military bearing is why this happened because i would make the argument in army s f or excuse me us sff that i would want less army involved in my job because i'm a fucking professional so it's it's a double-edged sword with the elitism because the feelings of being an elite soldier, the highest spree decor, even that we have a long tab, that we have a special beret that we wear. All of those things make you different than the rest of the military. And I know a lot of civilians out there don't really get this,

but it's that feeling that enables you to do some of the things that you do, that you are an elite soldier, that you can do the things that no one else can do. now but when that becomes like something that we're above the law or that like we're so much better where the we're this and that alpha male Spartan warrior and all of these other people are subhuman um you know like the the new zealand special air service they have i think their motto is first among equals and they don't have that sort of elitist culture where they feel that they're better than everyone else they're just another unit right which one was this i'm sorry uh kiwi sas oh got you yeah SAS in Australia is Who Dares wins, right?

That's their motto. Which the models are quite different, I guess. But first among equals, I think, is the unit motto. And so what is that right calibration? Well, there's also the whole environmental factor. And like you said, the over-deployments is if you rotate, especially if you rotate into the same province in Afghanistan, three, four times. and you roll up the same shithead who's laying down IEDs,

who's killed people you know or whatever else, and you roll them up, right? And then you take him into the authorities. He gets bribed out or political pressure from the local mullah. They let him go. How many times are you going to roll that person up before you decide that there needs to be a fine answer? But I totally hear what you're saying, Dave.

In the case we're talking about here at the Aussie S-A-S, we're talking about where they took two 14-year-old kids aside and slipped their throats. It's part of like a fucking gang initiation ceremony. So we're talking about different things. I mean, obviously there's no justification in the rule for that. But no. So again, two sides to this. On one hand, I totally agree with what you're saying that these populations,

politicians and the policymakers, we put these soldiers in these situations over and over and over and over again. And they do it without, speaking to what Justin has been saying, this whole damn podcast, they do it without any real thought into what the downstream effects are of that. What's the effects on this dude 10 deployments later? What are the social effects when that guy comes home? Like, they don't, they don't, that doesn't factor into the calculus. There's not a program that exists that aims to reintegrate someone in that sense. And that needs to happen with trauma healing. Otherwise, you're going to have people that go insane.

That's a really good point, Jack, because that would just make me beat the drama. I've been beating the whole time, which is an emotional health one. By the way, Dave, those guys need to get better intel so they can fucking whack that dude without having to keep rolling them up. But I know how it is sometimes.

because if that guy kills one of your friends, it's, that's, you'll be pissed. But then, like, this other shit is, like, really heinous. And so I can see how, like, I was a pretty headstrong, new guy, I guess, not headstrong in the sense that I was annoying to them, but I, I integrated very well into more senior guys. So I was always, like, a liaison between senior and junior, just because of my age.

And I have studied team and group dynamics. actually quit a grad school program in sports psychology. So, like, I'm fascinated about that stuff. So I could read those environments. And I would do something about them because I'm, I'm not going to let something happen if it fucking is inefficient or shouldn't on my team because that will drive me insane. And that's just not me.

So, but if I had gone into an environment where all the senior guys were all like that and then, like, their goal is to fucking implicate me. Like, I know stories of Green Berets in a much lesser in non-murder and non-murder and non-fucking life-oriented things. But I know other examples of that of guys early in more of like your time, Jack and Iraq that are dealing with like initiation stuff. And I didn't really have to deal with that.

Maybe it was maturity or my... I could perform right away. And I guess I got a decent amount of respect enough to play a role in planning. So it's just really hard because what you want is like people to be like, hey, no, we can't fucking do that. But I can easily see how a situation can get out of control. And maybe to your point, Jack, not having your finger on the fucking pulse of what is going on with your people means that the people are fucking wildcards.

Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, the flip side of it, you know, the other side of it. And I got into an argument on the Twitters with a dev group guy, like just yesterday, about this subject. He was like, how come, you know, everyone writes these articles about the guys you asked to do the dirty work, but they don't write about the politicians? it's like dude I get it I get where you're coming from to a large extent but at the same time that doesn't absolve

us as the soldier or the seal or the operator or whoever it is from doing like just straight up murder like it's still fucking wrong yeah just I mean we've we've kept you here for a long time

and I don't want to keep you here like any longer than you want to be here but dude I got to live with myself so I mean it's fine I do this all the time, so I'm used to it. I feel as though we've missed a really important part of you that we've just kind of glanced over it. You know, you know all these methodologies for trauma healing. You know all these things.

You talked about, you know, having, sitting in that table with a gun on the table for nights in a row contemplating suicide. Like, what are you willing to share with us about your? personal journey. Because obviously you're very passionate about all this. I'm going to give you, I'm going to give you basically a sit rep, and then I'm also going to give you a reference. The reference is just anything that I do, particularly the podcasts. So if anybody, there's one that is, I think, episode seven, it says some lessons.

And those are, that's something that I've even made advance advancements beyond that, but I think that was July or something. And then there's another one, I think episode two, which. is like emotional well-being. And so emotional well-being, I think, is useful because I lay out, if you don't have a paradigm of how to think about anything, then you can't, like, really think about it. So if you don't have a paradigm of, like, how emotional health is going to work and what are the things that are important to work on, which I'm, like, if you talked to me a year

ago, I wouldn't have shut up about this thing. But I have this concept that there's pillars of emotional health. And they're introspection, empathy, communication, self-compassion. And these, I'll do this. the hearts of the camera. These four things hold up a pillar that is called compassion. And I, like, made that little image on Instagram one time. So you have to...

Those are the things that after... This is before the second deployment. So before I got blown up, I started journaling. Let me back up. People fucking died on the first trip. And I basically was separated from the time I got to group and then ended up getting divorced. So it sucked. And then I was put on the B team

for like four months. And then team sergeant scooped me up. And then, uh, so I was, I was pretty upset. And like, I had that mentality that I, I fear that a lot of you other guys have felt that is like, I just want to be in Afghanistan again. And I can tell you that's not, that's not any fucking answer whatsoever. That's never the fucking answer.

Because combat is not an answer. combat is only going to make things in more disarray. So you've got to get your shit in order before you do the combat. And that's something that, you know, the unit never said to me, but that's what I'm going to say to the unit. But going back to me, I was pretty depressed. I've been meditating since 2015 regularly. And then I learned it in college, a graduate college in 2008.

But I was kind of like back into, I was like meditating more. And then I started journaling. And the journaling is like my form of deliberate introspection. I don't really enjoy talk therapy. I get something out of it in the sense that when I leave, I'm like, that was nice. But it's like, that's just more stuff. That's like, that was stuff that now I need to like, it ends up being me talking too much about shit like this, I guess, like stuff that I've learned.

And so I find a lot of utility in writing objectively about things, because subjectively writing doesn't fucking accomplish anything. and then asking why. So like, what are my feelings? Why? What are my, what am I grateful for? Why? Like, the why is really important.

And so there are three books, Dave, that are, I think, 100% books. I talk about this in the emotional, the emotional well-being episode on number two, maybe even the intro. There's only like eight episodes of my podcast. I'm going to kick it up once I'm out of the military. But one of them is nonviolent communication. And I think that anybody who's fucking married needs to read that because I wish I had read it. when I was married. So non-violent communication gives you a paradigm of how to communicate without

inflaming the situation. And I'll just leave it at that because it's really useful. And it also could be a retard's way of teaching empathy because you can reverse the process and do it for someone else instead of yourself. And so if my girlfriend's upset, then I can be like, oh, what might she be feeling? Or I can blatantly be like, hey, do you feel X, Y, and Z? She's like, only Y. And I'm like, okay, then what need is being met or not being met for that feeling?

Because feelings don't have to do with like another person making them happen. It's like what your response is to something that happens, a catalyst. And so understanding the feelings and the needs is really important. The second book is Bray Brown's The Gifts of Imperfection. So you can learn about fear, shame, and vulnerability and how numbing and comforting behavior is used to make fear, shame, and vulnerability go away. and I'll say this and I'll move to the next one. We wake up all the time or we go to bed all the time like, oh, I should have done this today or I need to do this today.

And life is full of shoulds. And so then you immediately make an issue of like evaluating whether or not you're worthy. And so instead, and this sounds dumb as fuck, especially to operators. So just bear with me. But when you wake up in the morning and you can think of that like no matter what the fuck happens today, if I do nothing and all I do is beat my dick and lay around all day, I'm still worthy of my own love and consideration. Those are just words in the beginning, but once you start to understand feelings, emotions,

needs, and you start to, like, you start developing relationships with them, but also you develop the skill on how to let those manifest in sensations and then let them do what they want to do, which, I mean, now I'm getting into meditation. doing that stuff is really important. So the whole worthiness thing like when you think

I should do this, I didn't work out today, I'm a piece of shit. That's a green beret thing. I didn't fucking dry fire. I'm a piece of shit. So just fucking stop doing that and stop identifying with that because all these things are narratives. And we can talk about poetry, but this

comes up in some of the poetry, right? But like narratives are not kind. They're not, well, maybe the ones Jack said earlier, like, I'm a fucking Green Beret. Like, I never had any of those going on. But I'm a green boy. I can do anything. I'm a super soldier. Like, that's a, that's a dumbass narrative right there.

Because then that's how, that's how you step on a bomb or something. Not that I did that. But then the narratives are usually unkind to the self. And so I'm a piece of shit because I did X, Y, and Z in the past. Like, you have to learn to come to terms with you're doing the best that you can at a given moment. but if all you do is plateau, then that's a failure right there. Same thing with organizations or society.

If it just plateaus, it's dumb as fuck. So the third book is Man Search for Meeting by Victor Frankel. It's about an Auschwitz survivor. He spends the first half telling you about Auschwitz, so it's fucking heavy. And then the second half is logotherapy, which is essentially a form of cognitive behavioral theory,

probably, there's a lot of takehomes from Victor Frankel's stuff and everybody's take home is different. But like the one thing that I learned early on from it is that it can be a perspective changer. And meditation is the tool that allows that once you, because you have to understand theory and then practice, right? So like you have to understand bullet drop or the ballistics coming out of the barrel to understand why you need a holdover. And then you need to practice your holdover. So the same shit applies to everything else.

And so one of the skills that I think is really important to develop is the ability to explore and introspect. I think journaling should be that thing. It doesn't have to be, but it is a really good way. And I defend that in the podcast. And then meditation is really important. And then just briefly, I'm not sponsored by them, but like Sam Harris's waking up app is a great meditation tool. It is available for free, I think right now just for a month. but then you can, if you don't have the funds to pay for it, which I would encourage all

Greenbraes to do this, just email their support and they will give it to you for a year free, fucking no questions asked. But that style of meditation, I used Headspace for a very long time, which is another app. There's Calm, but I think there's a ceiling with Headspace and I don't know about Calm because I've used it. Sam Harris's app, the ceiling is like way up here where its Headspace stays out here. So the things that I'm learning that are stemming from Buddhist practices and Sam's not a Buddhist by any mean, Sam Harris is a neuroscience and philosopher if you've never seen him on like

Bill Maher or some shit, he's like a debater. But it's very useful and has significantly had an impact on me in the last like couple months in a positive way where I can take let's say rage because I fucking keep talking about that. I can take that and it's and when I'm in my meditative state

I let that, I start noticing where do I feel that in my body? Oh, it's like a tightness in my chest with anxiety or fucking just like every muscle wants to tense. Everything just seems like it's just wanting to contract. That's rage. And then what happens if I just sit there with it and make that the object of focus? So I'm just doing an advertisement for Sam Harris is waking up now. But that's really fucking useful because then when you do the theory of understanding your

emotions and shit with your journaling and then you do the practice of something that is mitigating them, then now you're doing like the deliberate or say the, the, action with intention to become better. Because action, just for the sake of action, I want to drink this beer just because I'm fucking numbing and comforting and I don't understand what, like, that's not an intention. If you want to drink a beer because you're like, I fucking love beer. Had a week.

I like the carbonated taste. I want to sit on my deck and fucking look at the mountain and I want to drink a beer. Then that's intention. But when you're like, if a guy's coming home and he's like slamming three beers because he's just trying to numb and comfort all the fucking stress of what is going on at the unit, those are two different types of intentions. So now, kind of fast forward to today, my day looks like this, Dave,

as this was supposed to be the sit rep that I've now turned into 15 minutes. I wake up, I drink coffee on the deck doing nothing. Sometimes I meditate in bed. Sometimes I look at my phone too. And then I realize why I shouldn't do that because it is fucking stupid. Because the way you feel after looking at your phone when you wake up in the morning is a fucking stupid. like you're so I sit there on the deck I literally just look at stuff I look at animals I fucking look at the wind I look at the mountain I listen to the cars I just I'm in a present state I'm in a mindful state and then to be honest a lot of the times doing that or while meditating it completely turns into a moment of bliss because if you're completely just aware of the moment you don't have the fucking regret of the past and the worry about the future all you have is that present moment there sensations of it on your body, what it sounds like, what it looks like, what it feels like.

And if you accept at that moment that there's nothing else but that moment and you sit there in it and you accept that moment is all that matters, then nothing, there's no good or bad. There's no love or hate. It's just there's equanimity in it. And you find equanimity in consciousness too when you meditate. But also, more importantly, if you accept yourself in the moment, because if you accept the moment, you accept yourself. by using some logic.

That means if you accept yourself, you can kind of innately love yourself. And I don't know many green berets that can say that they love themselves without making a masturbation joke. So then the rest of the day, I have a sauna because I have benevolent organizations that can get me certain things that are expensive. And so I have the luxury.

And I have the luxury of a sauna, so I use it daily. So sometimes I'll work out and then sauna or just sauna. I do yoga, which is just a mindful practice to, fucking to unfuck my body because it's I don't have legs. So it's like my back is fucked up all the time.

My neck is fucked up all the time. So I do a lot of that stuff. And then, you know, my evenings might, I might play some call of duty or, you know, whatever,

or read books or write. But I do a lot of journaling. And that's what, you know, the books that my computer are sitting on right now are the Bhagavagata Gita, which is a Buddhist book, the waking the tiger and my journal.

Those are all on my table right now. And then I've got fucking books everywhere. So that's what I personally do. But I am aware that I have the luxury of all the time in the world because I can tell, forgive me anybody that I might still sort of be working with. But I can tell them to kind of fucking leave me alone. And when they do that, it's better for me because anything that the Army does and fails to accomplish properly, it makes me very angry. And I try not to let that happen, but it happens. And then sometimes it's flippant.

but I lost my train of thought. Justin, I forgot what I was saying. If there, you described a very specific situation, and if there's anybody who's listening right now, whether you're soft. I remember my train of thought, yeah. No traumatic stress, whether it's some guy, some girl, whomever, if they're sitting there

with either a literal or a proverbial pistol on the table, looking for meaning, looking for a reason to go on. What woke you up? What got you here? When did you put that away? And why? Well, the answer that they need and the answer to your specific question are two different things. What I would tell that person that wants to die is some very basic things.

I've almost done it and it sucks. That's thing number one. Thing number two is the consequences of almost dying. will stay with you for fucking ever, probably in your soul. It probably has some effect. I don't know. Depends on what you believe. But what I would tell them is that there are people that understand how they feel.

And more people than they know understand how they feel. And nobody talks about it. And that's kind of, it's not okay. But for this individual, it's like, it's okay that nobody talks about it. And all I would want them to know is that I have, fucking, I've been in so much pain that I have literally told a doctor I want to die. Not that I was suicidal, but I was literally just like, I'm in so much pain I want to die. Please do something.

I've been, I've wanted to die before I did. I've almost died more than just the blast. I've had a piece of shrapnel like fucking like three feet long go whizz and pass my head. Like, you know, like it's all insane shit. So my point is not so much that I have almost died. That's the beginning of it. but what I want them to understand is that there is, in my experience, I have gotten to a point where I have been sitting and I don't feel like that anymore.

And furthermore, that I have experienced whatever you want to fucking call anything that's out there, whether it's infinite consciousness or heaven or God, I know what that feels like, and I didn't before. And it's not because I almost died. because of the fucking meditation and shit like that. But I felt that and truly felt in a singular moment that I that I was happy to be there

and that I love myself. And so if that is possible for someone, because I'm telling you it is, because it's happened to me, it could be possible for you too. And that's what I would tell them. because that's not going to it's not like a

it's not an actual tactic that's a strategy it's not a tactic for how they can get out of that individual situation because really the only thing that you can do is honestly just fucking drink a glass of water and go take a shower. I've said that in the podcast like if you fucking feel like blowing your brains out and you're like because like when people make a plan they do it really quick according to

people that study this shit. I haven't looked at the research but apparently when a guy makes a decision within five minutes he's fucking dead. That's just like how it works. So it's usually contemplating it or feeling so much emotional or physical pain that you no longer want to live. And so you can't, if you, it's fucking Newtonian physics, right? If you are in motion and nothing stops you from being in motion, you stay in motion or you don't move if nothing acts of force on you. So if you don't do something different, that will continue. And so it's just like with people who are drug addicts who I have the utmost compassion for

but also like some of them are assholes and they have to get to the point where they want to change and improve and then they have to be the catalyst for that. Now how society and how therapists actually do that change is probably not very efficient but an individual needs to be like

they have to I would just encourage them to know that it's possible to not feel like that and that it will only manifest if you start to make a change into fucking whatever the end state you want. And so that's why I'm not even kidding.

I'm like, if you're, if you've ever been sobbing and you fucking want to die and you drink a glass of water and go take a shower, like you, you won't feel shitty after it unless you shit in the shower, you know, like you're going to feel better. So that,

that's like that right there. And you can remind yourself because this happens in meta, which is loving kindness meditation, which is on Sam Harris's ass. you can generate compassion for yourself. Like, may you be happy, may you be free of suffering. And those are like, but that should be part of the fucking therapy. But like, it's just, it's possible to feel different.

And you have to remind yourself that anything you do that is towards that end state of being better, that is an act of fucking self-compassion and love for yourself. If you, if you, if you, like, are at the brink of wanting to die and then you drink a glass of water, like, why the fuck would you drink glass water if you want to die? nobody does that you just die but then you drink a glass of water that's proof that you're like doing something to fucking live and that's proof that you're doing something

to try and improve and then you go take a shower and you feel all warm and clean and shit like you feel all nasty and ugly and you feel like I'm fucking ugly and shit like you're not going to want to like feel good so I'm not even kidding drink a glass of water fucking shower and just know that

that feeling doesn't have to stay there forever that's the only that's that's the main thing that I would want to tell someone that is thinking about that Justin where can people go to find your podcast more about all you can search Justin Lassick anywhere on the internet and it'll come up but my website will give you is a conduit to all this stupid ass social media um but any social media or podcasting app you search my name on it'll come up Spotify Stitcher iTunes the only thing that doesn't work right now

SoundCloud. It comes up on YouTube too if you're one of them, YouTube folks. Mr. Potato over here says these stories of winning the internal battles are extremely important even to those of us that didn't serve. They're incredibly inspirational.

No one feel proud of the positive impact. And I agree, man. I mean, people I mean, I especially think people from our community who see this, it'll give them a hell of a lot to think about. If they sit through the whole thing, I hope they do. And Jack and Dave, thank you so much for having me. And then thank you for everyone else to sit here and listen to me. If you disagree with me,

that's completely fine about anything that I said, because what you should be doing is disagreeing with most people you listen to because you should think about what it is that you feel is important. And if they're like, I'll be honest, don't come to me and tell me what you think about it unless I'll listen to you guys if you're in this community. I will always fucking do that. And if I can't help you, I'll find out how I can, whether it's the foundation or otherwise. But if you're just wanting to, like, argue because you trigger certain political things and you get responses, Jack probably knows this very well. I just don't respond to that stuff. So I just, but if you don't agree with me, good, figure out why.

And then see if that results in you making something better. Justin, I have kept you for like almost three and a half hours here. Can I get you for like another 15 minutes just to do the bonus segment with us if that's cool? Yes. Okay, man. I'm going to say no on live. I'm totally twisting your arm here.

But guys, thanks so much for joining us tonight, all the people who are watching this live. Please like, share, and subscribe to the channel if you haven't already. And down in the description of this video, you will find links to, well, you'll find links to Justin's page. you'll find the link to also our Patreon page if you're interested in supporting the channel

and keeping this whole thing going we really appreciate everybody who's already contributing and all of you guys who are keeping this whole endeavor going here we are episode 69 a year plus later bringing you guys the best episode number for me in my opinion

exactly in next week we're going to be here with Joe and Diane two women who served in Army psychological operations. They're going to be our guests on episode seven. So that's going to be that. And Ian chimed in last second.

Justin, this has been straight up the realest talk about emotional well-being I've ever heard. Thanks so much for your candor. I'm sure you have helped people out there. Cool, man. I also want to maybe tease your next interview, man, because SciOps is probably the fucking future of warfare. You might find that GBs are no longer necessary because you don't have to go on the ground to do shit anymore. You can just fucking beat Cambridge Analytica. Justin, thank you so much for not only joining us tonight, taking your time and sharing your story, but sharing yourself.

You know, it's not easy, and especially coming from the world that we come from. Yeah. It's not easy to open up like that, and we deeply appreciate it. Well, appreciate that. I'm here for you guys, and that's going out to everybody. but if for some reason there's a soft person, then there's a sign that says this is where the brotherhood begins.

And I have many, many friends that should stay in because they're such great people that do not stay in. And the brotherhood, nobody feels like there's a brotherhood right now, at least in the circles I run in. So this is how we keep it going. We just try and be there for each other. So if anybody needs me, then I'm there for you from this community. And then this is also basically a call to figurative arms for people to be there for each other.

Because I can't tell you how many people fucking have died in the last year from non-combat stuff. What we know about. So thank you so much for listening and giving me the platform and letting me go on my tangents. I'm going to keep doing it. So settle up. We'll do it again, Justin. There's a lot more to cover here. And until then, man, thank you everyone again for joining us tonight.

And we'll see you next Friday. Sweet. Jack, I got to take a piss. All right, go for it, man. And we'll come back in a couple minutes.