The Team House - Special Forces Intelligence Sgt. | Steve Forti | Ep. 218

Episode Date: July 3, 2023

Prior to founding Fit Fight - a global competition fitness app, Steve was a consultant for Johnson and Johnson’s orthopedic trauma division, utilizing eight years of critical care and trauma nurse experience. In the military he earned the rank of Master Sergeant after serving over 23 years in Army special forces. He is a level one sniper and attended John’s Hopkins applied physics lab as well as the special operations planners course in Norfolk, Virginia. Steve earned a BS in nursing from Quinnipiac University, completed a critical care residency at Yale New Haven Hospital systems and holds a BS from Southern Connecticut State University. In March of 2020 Steve was asked to join the amazing team at the Hospital for Special Surgery as a Chief of Staff for crisis management, the number one orthopedic surgical hospital in the world as they transformed the entire hospital into a Covid-19 treatment center to do their part in the fight to save lives during the height of the Covid-19 crisis. As the crises ebbed, he was asked to join the leadership team there as a chief wellness and resiliency officer. Today' Sponsors: The AARP Veteran Report⬇️ https://aarp.org/VETREPORT Free, Twice Monthly email newsletter that salutes military service & provides a mixture of inspirational human stories and practical info for vets. https://aarp.org/VETREPORT The Lite Sleeper⬇️  (VETERAN OWNED & OPERATED) the perfect addition for the light backpacker, ground sleeper, or prepper/survivalist. https://THELITESLEEPER.com/discount/teamhouse click the link to get The Lite Sleeper and get 10% off your first order! https://THELITESLEEPER.com/discount/teamhouse  To help support the show and for all bonus content including: -AD FREE AUDIO -AD FREE VIDEO -Access to ALL bonus segments with our guests Subscribe to our Patreon! ⬇️ https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse Team House merch: ⬇️ https://teespring.com/stores/my-store-10474963 Social Media: ⬇️ The Team House Instagram: https://instagram.com/the.team.house?utm_medium=copy_link The Team House Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheTeamHousePod Jack’s Instagram: https://instagram.com/jackmcmurph?utm_medium=copy_link Jack’s Twitter:  https://twitter.com/jackmurphyrgr?s=21 Dave’s Twitter:  https://twitter.com/dave_parke?s=21 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/ Intro music by https://www.youtube.com/user/RemixSample Want to sponsor the show? Email: ⬇️ [e-mail] #specialforces #intelligence #theteamhouseBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

Hey, folks, I just want to take a minute to ask you to go in rate this podcast, let the Team House know how you think we're doing, go and rate us on whatever platform you're listening to this on, whether it's iTunes or Spotify or whatever else. Those ratings really help us out, and we really appreciate the feedback to let us know what you like and what you don't like. And if you do like the Team House and you'd like to support us, go check out our Patreon page and you can actually support the stream and well as get access to our team house. the team house and you'd like to support us, go check out our Patreon page and you can actually support the stream and well as get access to our bonus segments and bonus episodes. Yeah, if you're going to give us a great review, please do. And if you're going to give us a not so good review, why don't you just send us an email and we'll talk about it. Special Operations, covert ops, espionage, the team house. With your hopes, Jack Murphy,

and David Park. Hey, welcome to the T-Mouse. Episode 218. I'm Dave Park, here with Jack Murphy, who has been taken, like, some stairway. No, with our special guest host,

Andy Milburn, and our guest tonight is Steve Forty. Thank you, everybody, for joining us. So, anyway, let's get started. Sorry, my computer wasn't on silent. Steve, please. Please, tell us about your origin story. What's your background and what led you into the military?

Well, first off, thank you so much for having me. I was laughing myself on the way in here because I was thinking of myself, all the really awesome guests must be away this weekend and traveling for the fourth. So thank you for having me. So what got me in the military? You know, it was set of different life circumstances. And I was never that kid that had set out or planned. to go into the military and I wasn't the kid that even played G.I. Joe in the backyard, truly.

As Chris Miller had kind of said, you know, on the show that I listened to, I came from sort of a hesitant family when it came to the military because of my father's story. And my father was someone that went into the Marine Corps when he was 17 years old, Vietnam era, was severely wounded in Denang in Vietnam in 1965. spent the rest of his life paying for that. He was severely burned and severely injured. Traumatic brain injury, the whole works. He had 70% body surface area Barnes, the poor guy,

and then would die at the age of 40 from cancer from Agent Orange. So we were not, you know, this family that we were always patriotic and everyone served in World War II and everyone served in Korea if they were of the appropriate age. But it wasn't something that was necessarily on my... on my horizon. And then when my father did pass away, I was stuck in that place of not being able for it to continue to go into school and not really understanding like, okay, what's my next move? What's my next step? So after a short stint where I was living up in Boston, I was going to

Northeastern University. And when I was living up in Boston, I got a job at a bar and was having a really healthy social life that was absolutely going nowhere. Thankfully, I recognized it pretty early. And I got on a train in Boston and I went to the recruiter on Trumbull Street in New Haven. And I went to New Haven just because I had to get some ID. I had to get paperwork to actually do that. And I enlisted from there. Was your, you know, given your father's experiences, especially like the Agent Orange

and things like that and, you know, the government's lack of acknowledgement of that was was he at all like anti-military or just kind of anti-service because of that because of Vietnam whatnot? I'm just surprised you got to that question so quickly. No. And that was the shocking thing about it because what it actually happened is I was 18 years old. I had my documents. I went and I enlisted and I didn't ask and I didn't tell anybody. And then I kind of went to him dishonestly like asking for permission, you know,

even though I had already kind of done it. And I barely got the words out where I had said to him, like, hey, I just want to let you know. I'm really giving this some consideration, you know. And he said, it's up for every young man to decide the capacity in which he will serve his country. Great way to put it. And it landed. And I said to him, I was like, well, and I want to be honest with you. And I told him.

And he said, well, I knew that when you asked me to lunch. So it was sort of this interesting interplay. Parental presence. It was good. And it was a gift that I think I realized what a gift that was more now than I did at the time. I knew it was awesome. I was like, wow, my dad was great about that. But when you think about it, like here's a guy living in like eight out of ten pain,

24-7, burned. He is ill. And, you know, I didn't know the truth at the time, but they were giving him 15, 20 percent for non-hontor. some phoma you know so here he is and the fact that he could give that gift of like because he could have easily and i don't think anybody would have faulted no easily just been like i did this for the for this generation like you go and if he had said to me no i don't know that i would have pushed past it yeah in fairness to yourself too we we had this awesome conversation beforehand but but the fact you know i'd be interested in here you're you're you're

chain your decision your decision chain wasn't that irresponsible right because you didn't join the rain call you felt that that was that was perhaps out of bounds and that was deliberate um because you know his experience was so different and even i gotta tell you even when um he was at his sickest never once did he waver in his commitment to the country or to the core i never actually saw him complain about cancer or the pain or whatever it was he never said i got screwed or none of it you know but there was sort of as we had talked about before it felt too far because i think we all want to be like our dads to some degree and then at the same time we don't want to be anything like them yeah at times but i think there was part of me that would have liked to have had that avenue

to have said like you and i had this one shared experience right didn't get along we truly didn't. So to have this one shared thing of both going through the core, whatever, but it did feel wrong. It did feel wrong to me. It felt like it would have stung too much. And I don't know if it would have or not. If it did, he certainly wouldn't have showed it. I don't know. But I made my choice for the military. And I told him was the desire to go to special forces to become a green beret. And I didn't know this at the time. I didn't know the history. But when he was in Vietnam. He had come across a lot of contract type people and a lot of green berets that were already there for years. And he said, it's smart. You'll have autonomy. Now, autonomy is a relative

thing, but there was truth in what he said. You know, he's like, you're not just a number. It's a relative thing. If you're in the ring, all everyone's called autonomy. But, but, but yeah, absolutely. The way, just one word, he summed up beautifully. Do you remember a lot of false recon guys gone out? go to to become green berets and when you are and it's suppose this is during the 90s you know right around the same time that that you're in see a lot of guys were getting out and when you asked them that question they wouldn't sum it up as well as your father did but it came down to that yeah you know hey listen I'm a bright guy I've got a future ahead of me I've I've enjoyed my

time of my ankle but I'm not necessarily treated like a girl yeah exactly yeah yeah And you're, so that's, that's a, that's a, that's very interesting to hear your father make that observation back then as a kid. Yeah, right? Like he was like he was a kid. Yeah. He was probably looking at 24 and 25 year old season of combat guys, Mac V. Saug, you know. So did you enlist on the 18 x-ray or? No.

So I went, they didn't have, I didn't know about the 18X ray. And I, um, went into the regular infantry. Okay. And my plan was actually to do this, going to the regular infantry, and then like maybe an ROTC scholarship and back to college and, you know, fulfill that sort of path that had just been part of my existence since I was a kid. Like you, in the 90s, you got a liberal arts education from a college university. You, you know, paid the tuition. You went and that was sort of the right of passage. So I never thought there was another path or another way, you know.

I didn't even know there was these things, especially from Connecticut. We had no, we were not from any type of affluence whatsoever. We were actually fairly poor. Again, relative. But I never thought that there would be this military service piece. I never thought there would be anything but working towards completing a degree. So I went into the reserves and with the idea of going to ROTC and my father passed and I, voila, that was happening.

And then I heard about a LRS unit in Rhode Island. It was an airborne national guard unit. And I was like, oh, that sounds a lot cooler than being in the infantry. So I went up one day. I met with the recruiter and I drove. And as I was driving up, there was a sign. It was like Camp Forgody up in Rhode Island. And it said like a company 19 special,

uh, this is a company second and 19 special forces group. And I just kept driving. And I just literally drove up to the gate. And I mean, the story once had been hysterical because I like walked in and I was like, you know, I want to find out about this and become special forces. You could do that. And, you know, of course, there was some ball busting when I going in where it was like, hey, we're looking for a 19-year-old non-PLDC, non-airborne, non-selection. Right.

Like, oh, my God, here's the right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So there was that. But then they agreed. And I was a very good, I don't want to say, I was a good athlete.

I was a very fit and strong person. Athletes involve skill of, like, shooting things with balls and making points. I was a little bit more on the knuckle dragging side of that, you know. So I found this place at the right time and committed to moving into the Special Forces program. So when you enlisted, you went, like, where did you initially go? Fort Benning, Georgia. So you went to Fort Benning for the infantry, one stationing training or whatever? Yeah, I went to Osset at San Hill.

And then what unit did you end up at? So it was with third, 35th infantry unit when I got. got back and I was there literally, so this is during a Clinton age, and we literally heard we were getting cut in like five months, like all the reduction in forces and rift. So I was already out looking for it. I tried to assess onto active duty to range of Italian and there was a block on transitioning from reserves or National Guard onto active duty. Okay. So there was no active duty option for me. Yeah, there was no anything.

So it was like, what's the most I could do? And somebody had told me they're like, you know, if you get special forces qualified, you could then possibly assess onto active duty. So I was like, okay, now we're kind of moving in the right direction a bit. I still had no money for college. I wasn't interested in college. Right. So within a very short time, I don't even know if I got issued my gear from the third 35th reserve unit and then transferred into the National Guard in Rhode Island and went through their pre-assessment and selection program. And what really moved along for me is they gave me this list of things that I had to do.

and you're going to laugh at one of them because we're all old enough, I think. But we had this list of like our physicals and our MNPI and all of the different things, requirements that we needed. And I was the only one that had them all done. So a slot popped up to go to selection. And it was sort of like probably not going to make it, but we'll send you anyway. And you're at least going to learn what to train for from when you go back in a couple of years. And what year was this?

92. So that was, was that about the time when they were making all the reserve units, guard units? Yes. And then. So there was still the reserve component. They weren't taking anybody else in because I actually called up to the 11 special forces group of at Devons. And they weren't taking anybody in. Their ranks were full anyway because they had 10th group up at Devons at the time.

And they were just backfilling. They were in a surplus. Right. So they weren't really looking for it. But we started seeing guys trickle from that unit down to the National Guard. And we were sort of wondering what's going on. And I think there was a simultaneous. standing up of the civil affairs where some senior SF guys were finding their E8 slot and E7s

Yeah, you know. That continued for them. Yeah, so there was sort of this weird shuffle going on. But what there was plenty of slots was it was like junior bravos and junior commo guys and junior deltas, you know. And so I got to go to selection and try out. And I made it, you know. And the thing that was the difference at the time was, of all the things.

Like some people had their physical, some people had their psych, some people had all their stuff. A lot of people were hesitant on the electronic funds transfer, the direct deposit. Oh, interesting. Everybody wanted their physical check still.

And I think I was like the new adopter, and that became like a prereck at that moment. Yeah. So even though there were guys with more seniority that were waiting for the selection date before me, I was literally the one person they could send. And they, I think, they did it and probably like held their nose like oh god he's like he's not ready whatever um so it gave

me my shot and uh i was smart enough i think to curiously enough that one discriminator probably was not random you know what i'm saying i mean they you had the prescience right this is going to be a thing yeah i felt that way i'm going to follow the money yeah and i was like well if an e8 gives me a checklist of things to knock out and says these are requirements i didn't read into it like it was Today where you'd be like, well, is this a real requirement? Or is this a, you know, sort of a... That's amazing how... Because I was in a guardian, an SF guardian around that time.

And I was there for two years. And myself and the guys that I was with, none of us got to SFAS. Like, it was, there was a huge backlog of people that just... It was taken forever to get there. You still insisting on a hard check? Yes. There it is.

Yes. Smoking gun. Yeah, I mean, I went to like... Actually, cash on demand, so... I went to PLDC in January. I went to Airborne in March. I went to selection in April and the Q course in June. That's fantastic.

It was literally, so it was almost, it was as close to a Rep. 63. Yeah. Rep.63 was the Guard program. They called it back then for the 18 X-ray equivalent. So I was as close to that as I could possibly get. So within two years, I've been listening, I was a very young. You were there back there.

I was not legal to dream. drink or I was just legal to drink when I graduated the Q course. Yeah, that's fantastic. I was a little over. So it worked out. So what you got there

and you became a Bravo. Did you choose that or was that chosen for you? I mistakenly thought it was valuable. Not knowing you know, like medic or comma

was infinitely more valuable. I think I also looked at. I was like, could always reclass, but this one's six months. Sure. Yeah. Right. And then you say, I mean, it was the, the core curriculum piece, right? The whole thing was still 11 months or so.

But the core piece of it was like that five or six month academics versus the Delta course, which was 11 or 12 months. So I was like, let me get this done. Let me get tab. You can always reclass up. And I think somebody gave me that advice now that I'm saying it out loud. I think somebody was like you can always reclass. So I went to the Bravo course and met some fantastic humans.

that were kind enough to mentor me in the direction of talking less. And I managed to get through the Q course at a pretty young age. Oh, now were you like the youngest guy in your... I was the youngest guy for a while. Yeah, yeah. And then not long after me, there was a kid that came in through Utah, through the Rep. 63 program whose father was like a colonel or a general or something, which is the way he got the contract.

And then he broke the record by like 10 months. but prior to me it was a long time before somebody at that age had made it through the Q-course. There was three waivers I needed. I needed an age waiver and I needed a time-in-service and time-in-grade waiver.

So I had to get all three waivers. It'd be interesting to see the demographic for the Q-course over the years, you know, what the mean age is. Yeah. You know, I've always thought one of the... I mean, obviously you had the emotional intelligence that's what carried you through.

I always thought one of the strengths of Army SF was the fact that they were taking older guys in. Yeah. You know, who, and not a necessary correlation, but you tend to get that a little bit more of, someone who's more judicious. But anyway,

so the Marine Corps kind of copied that in Marsock. Absolutely. They said, I want that dynamic. And we've ended up with a demographic. When I was the regimental commander, about 32 was, you know, 32 was, average guy in Marssock but I didn't look at the you know the average age of guys coming in but it'd be interesting to see for the Q course yeah that's been and what what they've learned from that

yeah yeah and when do you think you're useful right like so you finish the training exactly you cut your teeth on a few deployments like you're probably from the time you finish that level of training you're probably three to four years away from being a balancing stabilizing effective force on the team. Yeah, that's a great point too. I wonder what others think. There's people more knowledgeable than I, but. But the way that the Army and the Marine Corps does this, though,

I would, you know, they're not taking a newbies, and now I'm not doing a comparison with services, but one of the problems, not one of the problems, but, you know, it's a very different demographic in the seal in NSW get kids who come in through Buds, Army and the Marine Corps, SF. So in other words, I don't know enough to disagree with you.

But I think probably the rationale would be, hey, this guy may be a newbie on the team, but he's already done two free combat deployments as a Marine NCO or an Army NCO. Or had a career before he enlisted

where he had to show up for work every day like an adult and take care of his affairs. You know, people don't understand the administrative necessity. And I think, I don't know if it's worse now or then. And now it's a little bit more automated. But, like, you know, keeping and maintaining a security clearance was far more challenging back then, right? And then, like, you could lose it for a number of different ways. Like in North Carolina, you could lose your security clearance.

Speeding tickets. Drunk, if you, if someone drove your car and you were in the car inebriated and they were inebriated, you would get your security clearance revoked. You got a ticket. You got the same DUI or DWI that they did. So there was a number of different, even the threat of any domestic issue whatsoever, your security clearance is getting suspended. And there was not a single billet within all of SOF that you could be there without. I'm sure it's still that way today. You couldn't even be an instructor somewhere without a parent.

Yeah. Real quick, I just want to give a shout out to our sponsors. First off, the light sleeper. Unfortunately, we don't have it because Jack took it for his. camping trip, that's how amazing it is. But just going to, I'm going to put you on a spot. What's the greatest invention or the only piece of gear of the military

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like and subscribe to our channel. It really helps us out. We're on that March to 100,000 to show that we're legitimate YouTubers. So give us a go. That's the thing is it, March to 100,000? It's, it's a March. You guys are, what, like 79K? 79K right now. Solid. So when you hit 100,000, the dynamics change as far as looking for sponsors and advertisers. Well, I mean, it helps the algorithm a lot. Like, YouTube takes us more seriously. So when people are searching for, you know, our topics, they come up in searches.

It just, it helps all around. And we get a cool plaque, which I know Jack really covered the coats. You know, it's interesting because talking about special forces guard and talking about age. You know, when special forces would- What do you point to me when you said? Well, no, you were talking about the age of special forces. Oh, yeah, yeah. Not that you're, I don't think you're- I think you're.

I think you're very young, Annie. But, you know, when special forces were first started, it was that, you know, bring in these people with you know professional experience you know electricians and plumbers and people from other countries who spoke languages and whatnot right I mean I think that was

not a lot to do with the origin and you know we lost a little bit of that I think you know as special forces became more under big army and and things like that and you know where you do lose sort of that age and life

experience the guard is an interesting place because, you know, a person in special forces can have, they can still develop those, they're bringing outside experiences into this unit. And while they may not practice shooting, moving, and communicating every single day, so many of the other skills that are hard to develop, a lot of times guys in the guard bring those skills. Yeah. It's, it's, it, I think it's our greatest strength as a guard soft element. Right. And we'll take, I don't want to use this last name, but we had a guy of my team named Keith.

And one of my best friends, he's one of my brothers. But now here's a guy that could take apart any diesel engine and put it together. Now you think, like, well, what good is that? Well, if you're on a Fob in Wardak province and you need to keep the lights on, and that's how the batteries are getting charged for the radios, then being able to run a diesel generator is a critical thing, as well as operate a forklift. He could weld.

He was a true wrench turner. And I've learned so much by just being in proximity to him that I've now applied to my life here as an adult. Right. And that's one aspect. We had a gentleman named Mark on my team who was a detective, and we were standing up the AP3 program in Afghanistan in 2009, which was essentially a police force.

Okay, who better than to structure, organize, and train people, how to search or train us. how to train people, how to search, which as we know, you know, the audience knows, most of them probably do, but, you know, Greenberries are essentially, you know, trainers that, you know, fight with a partnered nation force, but you train them before you move with them. And in a lot of these, you know, conflicts, not to get too class witsy in here, but, you know, you're looking for military guns facing outward, but there has to be a law enforcement gun facing inward or democracies fall or attempts at any organization. In Afghanistan, that became a role. That was reality of it, right? So we launched the pilot for the AP3 program in 2009 out of Metrolam. And that was our mission over there.

And, you know, a lot of guys, like you said, first of all, a lot of guys shrugged off the mission. Like, oh, I can't believe it. We want to be with the commandos kicking in door. Right. We had passports to go outside the wire every second we wanted to. Like, we had no restrictions whatsoever. We can grab a partner force element. We could go out.

We could do presence patrols. We could knock on doors. We were in a true community-type environment. So when it comes to things like community interaction and intelligence gathering and things like that, you couldn't beat it. And it's only in an SF team that's nationally guard dominant that you're going to have individuals. Like I was a critical care. So I was an 18 Bravo and a level one sniper at that point in time. But I was also a critical care nurse certified with significant experience for airway management test teams.

Now we had two amazing 18 deltas on our team, right? but then to have a third sort of delta that could certainly stabilize and certainly get line IV access and certainly could Drake or crack somebody if I needed to. You know, so there's those hidden skills that you get in a guard element, that civilian force. And, you know, lastly, if we look at the importance of that civilian citizen soldier over our history, if you look at the numbers from World War II, it has always been apart from our country's origin. Yeah. I was telling you. Go see Hamilton. And it's dangerous if it's not. You know, some of my concern, frankly, is we have a class of warriors that is separate

from mainstream American society. I'm not bemoaning that. I'm just wondering right now if it's healthy. You know, even during Vietnam, what ended Vietnam was the fact that everyone faced the prospect of going there, right? It may have been a shitty, useless experience, but it was shared. Afghanistan, Iraq were not shared. Right.

You know, so I, I mean, this isn't that's interesting, yeah. But I, the way you worded, I think, is, is from, is a much better way. You know, it's rather than us saying, well, you know, why doesn't everyone give a shit? Well, they don't give a shit because it isn't a universal experience. What you're talking about is the value that that universal experience brings both ways into the military, but also bleeding back into society because of that feeling of, shed experience. It also increases the footprint or you know the I guess let's call it a spider web because what used to be like well my son served he did three years down at Fort Bragg and now he's out

and he comes back to a certain part of the community okay that's one scenario but when National Guard units are deploying from all over the country the likelihood of you knowing the son or daughter of someone that's actively serving right sort of on loop over a two decades war. It brings it a little bit closer to home. And I always thought like regardless of what you feel politically, I think at this point in time, we're done with

war as a nation. Without weighing in my own beliefs or anything, I think as a nation, they're kind of like can we pump the brakes on the wars? Can we pump the breaks on sending people overseas? Can we pump the breaks on lives lost? And can we just focus that energy inward

to bend? You know? And you're seeing it with charity involved. You're seeing it with community involvement. You're seeing with this need to be more connected. Yeah. Yeah, no, it's, you know, that's absolutely true. One thing that you mentioned about sort of that, that group think or that's not necessarily group think,

but sort of the essential community, it's one of the arguments for ROTC also, right? You don't just want, you know, you want people who are coming from many different backgrounds. Getting a taste of it. Getting a taste of it. And, you know, not everybody, through the academy and yeah I think that we we definitely have war fatigue at this

point you know and you know I think the veterans are an important voice of that where a lot of veterans are like hey like we just did 20 years with no measurable consequence or no measurable effect can we think about this before we go into the next one yeah there's another element of something Steve is talking about it's going to be thinking that the and I see there's some marine reservists to the enlisted guys there's I love Marines you know but Marines can be scary after a period of time in the fact that you know you could take an 18 year old and you put him in this particular life and he stays that all his adult life and God bless him he's going to be and you put him to it you know repeated cycles going to war you

don't always get a terrific human being at the end you get I mean underneath you get a guy you can trust you can tell anything to you know I'm not saying goes he isn't a wife Peter isn't that but he's not necessarily a guy you want to spend a lot of time with because he has issues we've created those issues but one thing I've noticed among reservists and and you know not to sidetrack the story the best officer I ever met in my life and it pains me to say this because I'm a Marine. It was a 20th group guy. What made him different is he had done all this other shit. He'd be in a coal miner. He'd work for Arnold Schwarzenegger. He was a Hollywood script writer for Christ's sake. And I learned a ton from that guy. I had way more time in the military,

but he could teach me how to be an officer. And I thought about this a lot, you know, and how he could do that. A lot of it was his personality, his character, but a lot of it was just he took the experiences that he had. And every day, it was almost like, hey, do you? what we do here isn't that hard you know right and what's interesting about what you say is we talk about this with the transition piece right first of all I think transitioning out of the military is the worst damn word like we don't use that to describe any other aspect of like I'm transitioning out of singlehood or I'm transitioning out of not having children like we don't use that so I don't understand how that became I'm transitioning right this marriage

or did you like we didn't transitioning right of a single I'm going to use that right and we didn't leave our civilian world in transition so I don't know and I was literally talking about it with my brother like J.C. Gleck he's like a brother to me as to call him a friend as a an understatement and he we just had shared a LinkedIn post and I seldom do but I just was actually responded to a post this morning where like these aspects of changing life which I've reinvented myself more times than most right yeah but these aspects of changing like we can label them as these things but isn't not the end of the day, like, what can't be better for everybody if we just called it like growth change? Like, you know, you're leaving the military and you're not in this idea that there's no measurable skill set.

And I hear this all the time. Like I have no transferable skill sets. Like your skill set in the military as cool as it isn't is not your ability to put rounds on target. There is an entire other host of support efforts, administrative responsibilities, leadership tasks, responsibilities, different things that go into being a warrior. A wish of is a hard, hard skill. It is. And to say, like, oh, I, you know, he's getting out and we have to help these people transition into it because they don't have measurable skill. We have to retrain them.

It's fiction in my book. I love that statement. I wish, yeah. Yeah. Well, it's being recorded so we can use chat BT and have it all read back. The big of that is, see if I can't claim it was mine, but I love it. You can claim it. Yeah, I've always, like, disagreed with the idea of transitioning.

Like, when you leave, you have to reinvent. vent yourself. Like there's no, that was something that you did. But, and I think when you talk about the measurable skill, that's also a challenge of somebody, for somebody who hasn't necessarily worked in the civilian world. And it's also a challenge for civilians for recognizing what, not just a, you know, a colonel or, you know, captain bring in terms of leading people, but, you know, a young NCO, the circumstances under which they led people, whether it's in combat or in like a high volume supply room, right, a high volume supply chain that it's, it's, you know, there are a lot of people out there, a lot of veterans, I think, that are really trying to help with this idea of

one, veterans being able to describe, you know, their jobs and their skills in a way civilians understand and to civilians, you know, they're trying to train civilians how to understand that what this person brings to the table. But it's very, you know, it can be, it can seem like a square pagan round hole, but it's really not. But I am the direct beneficiary of a bit of luck and having my path cross with, I can name more, but I'll say like four extraordinary people at HSS. So I had success when I got out of the military. I started my own company and some more successful,

some personal success and financially not, but I was happy with the effort and the end state, you know. And then when COVID hit, you know, a dear friend that I had done some work with who was not in the military, reached out to me to come in and assist with some crisis management at HSS as they transformed the hospital into a COVID treatment facility. And I got the call from him, and this would lead to a cascade of phone calls to... Can we... I don't want to stop you, but I also want to get too far ahead.

Can we go back to your time in the guard? And what was that like for you being? And I definitely want to hear about HSS. But we're that many moons down the road. You're a young, very young, long tab, we're 18 Bravo now. What does it look like when you show up to your team? we had a weird dynamic on the on the team that I was at and and not weird in a negative way so we had some um guys that actually are still my friends today who their first team sergeant and sergeant major were v sott guys we had guys in bad tuls germany with 10th group yeah you know in the 80s and that's how they were cut and one of my you know again I'm blessed with when I keep saying one of my closest friends they're all as a result of the military um but you know um but you know um one of my friends, Mike is a, you know, Battol Tenth scribe before they shut it down.

And he carried the legacy of the Green Beret like it was, like it should be, actually. Like, like he understood that his mission was not cool guy door kicking in Oakley's. He understood his mission was a force multiplier training the force. And he instilled that, right? So we had those individuals. We had the same individuals with like fifth group guys that their guys were Vietnam. So we had those individuals, right, that had the, that stratification from the Vietnam era to their early formation, right?

And then they were now in these mid-level and senior-level leadership in the 90s when I joined the team. So when I reflect on it, you know, when the cringing and the chills I have of embarrassment on the back of my neck for some of the things I said and did at the time subside, right? You realize like there was a great deal of patience and decency and mentorship and professionalism, mentorship to the degree that I didn't even know was happening at the time. And some of it was military, but a lot of it was this personal choice piece. You know what I mean?

Where it was like, you know, what do you think of my nickname? You know, it wasn't a nickname, but one guy that Mike would always say, he'd be like, Stevie. Like, what are you doing? Like, just reel me in a little bit, you know, after like my sixth night of drinking and still, you know, being fit enough to PT really well and run really fast. you know he'd be like but you can do it but why and there was that constant sort of shaping of me as an individual where it gave me that pause the next night where it's like all right i don't want to hear it and then it would turn into i don't want to let him down and then it would turn later into i want to impress him

and others between success and failure for so many people isn't it just having a the mentor voice yeah and and and and yet i mean that that is hugely valuable i would argue steve your experience was probably an anomaly. It was. In the 80s, because even when you talk to, I mean, sorry, 90s, 90s, even when you talk to SF guys, certainly in the Marines, there was a lot of, you know, hey, I went through this shit, now you're going to go through shit too. Sure.

Yeah. And there was plenty of the uphill both ways. Like when I went, you know, selection, right, when I went through selection, and this is after I've been around for a bit now in retrospect, I'm like, what in the hell? Like, we had a very limited number of slots that we were. was a reduction in force right people's injury rates seem to be higher than they ever should have been um i saw a lot of really talented great guys get cut inexplicably you know and it was sort of like this what the hell's going on here where it was like this particularly called a protector of the tab yeah you know

um so my experience was a bit um there's a bit of grace there was there was something or maybe it was my old man over my shoulder whatever it was it worked out for me because of the people and it was not my talent. Like what I'd brought to the table is I was very strong and very fast. Beyond that, I don't know what they saw on me at that point. You obviously brought to the table a willingness to listen and learn. Eventually, yeah, eventually. Which is not universal among young men, you know, so your mentor sensed that, I would guess. I hope so. I hope that was part of the equation, you know, and then I think if they see you start moving in the right direction, then they'll invest the time in you. But that's really what it was, you know. And then I had some

early successes. Very few National Guard guys were getting to go to SOTEC, the sniper school. And I did very well there. I got sent and I was a first time go, which gave me a little bit of street cred. We couldn't get, Ranger slots, we couldn't get. There was so much we couldn't get. And that slot came down the pipe and I was able to get that and perform well. And that gave me something that at the time, very few in the guard had. You're talking like 1994. Right. Just not, you know, It was sort of a, and then to continue to perform in some physical capacities and some competitions and things like that. So, and I think that was sort of what it was like.

So it was a bit charmed, my experience, because of the people that I happened to fall under the command of. So what were you doing in the civilian world while you were in the guard? So I was a guard, what they called a guard bomb at the time. Like I was on active duty constantly. I deployed with fifth group multiple times. As we were a, I forget what they're called designated DTA, designated training affiliate with fifth group.

So, you know, two trips to Egypt, 95 and 97, SEAL Team 3. We started hitting some of the other additional inter-service courses that we were picking up. There was just a bunch of different shorter J-sets or, you know, foreign internal defense missions that we would go on. So you were able to keep yourself in a fairly decent cadence as I was knocking out a bachelor's degree in political science and history. So real quick, for anybody out there who's young and considering the military, being a guard bum when you're young, no bills and stuff like that is probably the best, it's the best lifestyle you can have. You know, if you have SF, intelligence, stuff like that, because anytime these teams are deploying and they need to. somebody you can like Roger up yeah go to your time save your money come back

sleep in the armory till you're ready to do it again you know the life yeah yeah and and and that's really funny you said that about sleeping the army but there's a there's a whole cadre of individuals a whole group of people that do that and you get to network and know people in different locations and then you develop a certain skill set where now you begin entering into this training space and you start becoming part of this pre-deployment process where you're not deploying with that group but you're helping get them ready you know and then other schools become available to you and you can make a good run out of it in particular

like you said if you're knocking out college and doing something like that at the time or you're not quite ready to move in a direction in your life and um that's something we need to get over a society like there's no you don't have to template you know the the trajectory of your life can be can be different and challenging and unorthodox and still be rewarding and meaningful you know and I was the I got there I don't know how but it worked out for me yeah you know and this this saw pre 9-11 so what did special forces look especially you know from the guard side you were doing these you know these deployments with these active view teams what did special forces look like at that point yeah so um complete renaissance

right like so it was almost all for an internal defense there was really little emphasis um on any type of kinetic activity you know um And, you know, there were always fid missions to strap hang on, whether it was Eritrea or whether it was done in Latin America or there was a lot of drug interdiction work in the United States and overseas. So if you were a common guy in particular, or even if you weren't, but could talk to a bird, you were a valuable skill set where you could strap hang with the DEA. So there was a lot of stuff like that that was going on. But it was this post-Cold War reduction in force. there was no enemy. Right?

Like there really wasn't like an on the horizon. There was some talk about North Korea in the late 90s and they're growing in this direction and they're becoming this and that. But nobody really took it seriously enough maybe as they should or I don't know the answer to that. I certainly didn't. Huge expending cuts, which I bet you even

Army SF witnessed. I know the Marine Corps, we joke about it, but it's true. You know, toilet paper was chained to the wall by the country. Yeah, yeah. It was like every fly. But the benefit of SF Guard is they got in on some of that war on drug money.

Yeah. Right? JTS. Like you said, like going with DEA. So there were those opportunities. And they also standardized universally the training between the active duty and the National Guard. So there used to be certain opportunities to shortcut different things. Like if you came in from the Air Force and you went through pre-selection, you didn't go through Army basic training.

There was a bunch of little sort of things that I think diluted the quality of the quality of the, soldier that was being produced. And then that all got aligned. And then 9-11 happened. And the relationship between the National Guard special operators and the active duty special operators was no longer this active duty nasty guard person. And it was like, huh, he's not in National Guard combat. He's right here with me.

Right. Right. Like National Guard is losing bodies as well, losing souls as well, and they're hurting. Right. And I've seen this guy on his second and third and fourth deployment now. So I think there was a street credibility, a recognition of the need. And what once was like sort of a, you know, like probably the activity holding their nose at going on an active duty deployment pre-9-11.

As the force began to fatigue, I would suggest that it became a bit of an acknowledgement, maybe not vocal, of the necessity. Right. And maybe even a bit of gratitude. because I will say, aside from the occasional comment here and there in the 90s, I have always been treated with decency and respect and camaraderie by the active duty counterpart. Truly.

Yeah. There's been some moments where you meet an occasional, you know. Right. You meet that guy. Right. But that guy's everywhere. That's more of the statement about him. That guy's everywhere.

Exactly. And it's no matter what. You know, whether it's your National Guard. And we got him in a different way. Or your support or you're on, you know, you're not on the dive team, you're on a warfare team. Yeah, that's very true. The only person who's really interested in the hierarchical view, you know, as you described as someone who's incredibly insecure, isn't it? Yeah, but they have to define clearly what they think is, you know, the cutoff points right here.

Just behind me. I'm in the chess club and you're in the checker club. I'm the standard. Yeah. Yeah. So, so you had, you had been in this guard unit then from, like, what, 95? 92. 92. 92, I'm sorry.

92, yeah, 92. And then you were there. Qualified in 93. And then what happened for you guys on 9-11? So 9-11 was interesting. No, to set the backdrop, right? So Rhode Island, we have guys traveling from all over New England to go there. and some of the guys that were in our unit at the time were active duty members of the are active members of fdn y and ypd

right so that's right um and you had this um when 9-11 happened for a company 219 in rhode island i'm not saying this is accurate or fair but from our perspective it seemed to land a little bit differently for us okay um i had a home in milford connecticut at the time and I could see the smoke plume. I was in the air traveling when 9-11 happened and got grounded at midway and drove back. And as I drove back through whatever the, you know, we've all driven them. If you're in the military of the mountains in West Virginia, that whole triangle. Yeah.

You're driving through. And as we were driving through there, I remember like that was where I hit the first flashing lights of a convoy with heavy equipment on it, like excavators, cranes, that kind of thing. And that must have gone on for 45 minutes. Sorry. It was an incredible moment. to see the nation unified. That's the tears, right? To see the nation coalescing that way of like,

we don't even know what we're doing, but we're going to try to do something. Nobody was asking for anybody to go yet. They didn't even know what they were dealing with. The ground was still too hot to be there. But people were mobilizing to do something. And I think for me and many of the people that I now call friend in space and brothers,

it was a gift to be in proximity to do something about it. Now that actual do something about it wouldn't happen for our unit for a number of years. It wouldn't happen until Iraq in 2005, 2006, then in Afghanistan, 2008, 2009, and then 2011 and 2013. But generally speaking, there was this huge lull. So right after 9-11, we all got activated. We ended up in Kuwait. I don't remember for how long. Truly. It could be six months. Could have been 10. I have no idea. It seemed like a long one because we weren't in Afghanistan. And the idea was we were going to Kuwait and we were training up and we were aligning our battalions and then we were going to go back to Bragg to refit and then go back over into the box. And that's what we wanted.

I mean, we all wanted that so desperately. I think a lot of people did. But we were really like the, like I said, we had a member with us that was literally on a second or third day with FDNY when his firefighting company was decimated by the casualties. you know so we felt it very personal and when we didn't get to go it was incredibly frustrating and that that went into the mix of events that happened where it was like okay I deployed in 95 and 97 and 98 to some degree and then in 2002 and now we've hit this spot where it doesn't look like we're going anywhere as a battalion so you know I'm not going to keep watching people go off to war and that was when I got off and went to nursing school yeah and I got off and I just

Stop. What, what took so long? Because there were SF units. They got, like, I know fifth and the 19th out of West Virginia got deployed pretty quickly. Like, what took so long to get, you got, to get your unit there? Yeah. So I can't actually, so I can't, or second the 19th. Yeah.

Second the 19th. Yeah, I can't accurately speak to it just because I wasn't at that level. So, and if I would be speaking, it would be very speculative. right but what had happened to some degree was they had taken different companies from different battalions and I'm not saying it was political that was the rumor at the time and I'll say that that it was sort of like you know certain people from different units and it was I think it was an idea of spreading it around a bit and that everybody's going to get their chance anyway so stop your complaining these are the guys that are going now and for the listeners I say guys

because it's all male units. And these are the guys that are going, and then they're going to get their time, and you'll probably be following. You'll probably be ripping them out in six months or nine months, and that's how it's going to go. And then that went down, and it was proving to be administratively catastrophic,

is my understanding. So then they were like, all right, you know what, this isn't going to work. We're going to consolidate the battalions, and no one's going anywhere until the battalions are consolidated, and we will deploy them as battalions. Well, now we've had two-thirds of our battalions, deployed and now we get reconsolidated and they're like well they just went and they just went so a company

got put in this predicament where we weren't going to be going into war until the battalion spun up so a lot of people started to jump out and strap hang on other units I attempted to do that and I think all of us did and then it got to the point where there was such an exodus or a potential for such an exodus they put the brakes on it and they were like no more interstate transfers no more this no more that and then I would say somewhere around 2006 2007 the battalions became realigned and they started deploying as battalion elements in a normal cadence yeah that that's tough because in that time I'm sure that there were SF units that were deploying a lot and needed a little bit of a reprieve not a lot truly so there was a natural cadence that was happening with the bigger

of it was is we were a story but there was a group in Ohio that had the same issue happened, a group in Texas, a group in California. So the disenfranchisement of it wasn't shared just by a company alone. It was companies dispersed. I see. Everywhere though, not in proximity to the battalion headquarters. Right. And again, not commenting, but the battalion and the headquarters and just they got in the box

first. That happened. Right. I see. Yeah. Where was your headquarters at? So West Virginia and Utah. It was West Virginia.

Yeah, yeah. Okay. West Virginia and Utah. So that was fifth and second, right? So it was. Or 19? Yeah, you're taxed. So it was 19th.

So our group headquarters was Utah. Uh-huh. And then our battalion headquarters was West Virginia. Okay. So West Virginia had two companies. Might have been a, might have been a company and a support element. And then it might as was another one that. co-located and then there was Rhode Island and and at the time because they wanted like to do

this they wanted you guys to deploy as a unit they they weren't let you do the interstate transfers they were like slowing down the strap hanging where you could just fill the billets yeah even if you were willing to you know that must have been an incredibly frustrating yeah I mean it drove a lot of us to be like yeah done yeah gonna go figure something else out yeah and especially those of us that like I I didn't have a skill set on the military side and I had made a commitment. There was a guy that was in our unit who was pursuing medical school named Jason Smith who actually would complete medical school. It's a sad

story. He's one of the casual, I don't know if he's a casualty of war or casually something, he took his own life a few years ago, but he became a physician, but he and I had a conversation and my mother had passed. And I saw this team of individuals working on her to try to save her life. This was in 2001, right before 9-11. And it sparked something in me where I knew I wanted to be in proximity again. I wanted to be able to do something in those moments. So that was when I was like, I'm done, and that was when I filled out my nursing school application. I got my prerex done for medical school with the intention of nursing,

and then hopefully an acceptance into medical school and then becoming a physician. Was electronic funds transfer one of the prerequisites? probably as I'm thinking about it certainly for the GI Bill yeah so so you you went to school then to be an RN an ICU or not when you're going to nursing school do you pick what field do you want to be in or is it no you just get your registered nurse and then depending on how your interview and depending on what you want to pursue you might end up in like an ICU or you might end up in an ED it was actually pretty rare normally you have to go to the floor for a couple years to just do what they would call regular nursing or bedside nursing. And then I

seemed to get lucky again and got picked up for a critical care internship at Yale. And it was like four months of ICU, four months of sick you, four months of cardiothoracic ICU, four months of emergency med. So you didn't have any real patient responsibility per se, but you had again that mentorship piece and you got to see critical care performed. You got to learn how to operate vents and get great IV access and port-a-cath access and those important skill sets so when did you graduate nursing school and then the ICU or the critical care care piece of that 2004 when you like when you were in school or when you were working in the hospital because you spent a number of years in the military 11 12 years in the military often on yeah and you were a special operator and

it feels like a long time when there's this war going on to like a lot of people get out in a peace time military and they're frustrated they never went to work but you were actually there you know during a war and you never got to go after spending all your time training for that did you have any particular feelings about that I was devastated and you felt so there was the part of it where you were angry at a system right and again I'm not even claiming to understand what really went into it, right? I think sometimes we take these things like Steve Forty's actually not that important. Like this had nothing to do with me. Right. And even if those... Right. Yeah.

And even if those rumors are true, there's usually, generally speaking, when you peel back the onion on all these things, people generally act with good intention. Yeah. I really, I think that proves out over time, you know? Sometimes it's organizational incompetence, not necessarily not with... Malintent. Yeah. And sometimes it is politics and favoritism and people are active. Sometimes, but if I'm going to make that claim, I need to know it.

But that's a definition of a political decision in the military, one that does not favor you or one that results in your punishment. Oh, sure. I know that there were always general officers who had it out for me personally. But I was heartbroken. And then the worst thing was, you know, like you walk through the community with a full willingness to serve and you start hearing that, you know, who you know who you. should meet you know so-and-so had two tours and and you're like please make it stop so you get to the point where you're not even telling people you ever served at all right um which is why a lot of us after some time and some settling ended up re-enlisting and going back in and then ultimately doing

what we had wanted or allegedly i'm avoiding using the term transition it's okay but talk to me about nursing school that must be in a period of huge growth it was like yeah We'll get the dates over, but I just want to hear about it. Yeah. So nursing school is interesting. So I'm in this group. I'm 30 plus years old. I'm one of three men in the class.

How big is the class? Probably 50 or 60, I guess. And it was like sort of two split, but probably 50 or 60. Really good test takers, really good smart women that not only understand. nursing but also understand the test taking procedures and the prep and how to prep and all that and I'm a I never really went to college were you treated any differently as a male do you think a hundred percent and and it's funny because you know you had these moments right now that wouldn't fly today yeah where we weren't um you know we'd be asked to leave during like OBGYN rotations where like you know part of the curriculum was that you were supposed to you know participate in like are for C-section, stuff like that. And even back then, someone were like, no, it's not happening. So you'd miss out on an educational opportunity or things like that, not overwhelmingly.

Like it was, you know, and of course you hear the comments and some of them are earned, you know, like the way you fold your scrubs. Right. Typical man and that kind of thing. You would hear those comments, but it never bothered. It was part of the joke and the shuck and jive. But you were sent out because you were a man and what you were seeing was very private. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. And you couldn't just say, actually I've seen this before. and it's right yeah it's yeah it's a big deal yeah and then you get to a point where you you know spend a couple years nursing and you you know catch a few babies in a parking lot and you know all of that piece of it goes away yeah like you would be thrown out for the routine did that happen oh yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah it's one of those life goals that i'll deal with that okay we got it got a double top on that oh yeah yeah yeah i always thought that would be the coolest

coolest thing to do actually yeah and it's one of those life goals that i'll never achieve and deliver a baby and well you never know right oh yeah but it's one of those things where it's like so when you look at the criticality of a patient their tolerance for the little stuff right like you sort of directly so when someone's bleeding out doesn't matter right like whoever you are be the most competent person to fix this problem apply this turnic kit yeah manage my airway you don't care but when it's like in a clinical setting right right like when you're working in less of an acute environment, that's when the personality piece comes out where it's like, I don't want him in here, you know, get him out of here. And I think that, I'm sure that swings both ways,

even when it comes to how they treat the staff. Oh, I get it. I get it. It's right. Yeah, like, or even how they treat the staff. Like if you're bleeding out, it's like who is the most competent person, right? Like just get that most. And then if you're there for something more routine, I think that's when the personality. Yeah, that makes perfect sense. Meanwhile, if you're doing like male urinary stuff, like they're not like, hey, nurses, like, hey nurses, check me out. Probably. Yeah, guys are like, yeah, guys are saying. Right? I don't know.

But then again, I've never been in that position. But then you have somebody that's critically ill, right? Just serious urinary involvement. And then all of a sudden it's like who is the skilled person that's going to make me comfortable? Right. What was what did you find was the most difficult thing? I mean, you know, obviously I'm not. In nursing.

I mean, you were, you were drawn to this. You had a passion for it. Pediatric abuse. Pediatric abuse. Oh God. And if I think about it, I get emotional. Yeah. Like to have like a kid.

in that was intentionally abused or burned, molested, these things that you see in particular in a level one type trauma center and a level one trauma center that's also a burn unit and you see like an immersion injury or somebody took an iron to a kid, just like that kind of thing and you go through and maybe it's just because of who we are, right? But here's the reality. When you talk at, and I don't drink anymore as I mentioned, but when you talk at a bar what would you say oh i'd kill that guy or kill that whatever right but the reality is you feel the crippled nature of that moment yeah and the absolute inability to do anything else yeah than to bring

that kid some comfort yeah and you got to eat the frustration yeah and that's why you go crying in the parking lot in the parking garage and you drive from frustrated or many of us would go and that was sort of where the mentorship became a beautiful thing because the more senior people would identify that in you and sometimes they'd be there like you good you need a minute you know that little bit of like i see you yeah it's going to be all right you know um anything with kids involved i don't keep your marbles i mean you've you've got habits you've developed habits i don't i haven't made you long but i can tell you've developed habits that that allow you to to to continue keeping your marbles is the one is the best expression that i can i can use all in

one pile. So I think I used to white-knuckle it, right? There was a quote that I had written in a journal a long time ago. It was, you know, Andrew Jackson. And when I start saying it, you all say I'm finishing for him, but it's, you know, I was born for a storm and a calm doesn't suit me. And I think I spent a lot of time, like, locking up, look how, look how calm I am. Yeah. But inside, you're just white-knuckling it. And then as I began to get older, you start putting these things in place. For me, one of those things was sobriety, you know, as a gesture. One of those things was sobriety where... But what led you to that?

I mean, all of the habits suddenly mean to... Yeah. It's interesting. Yeah. So... And doubtless where you're about to say will help people, whether they're... Oh, what a great outcome that would be. Well, you know, where I am right now is because of vigorous study and a curious nature in the topic, right?

but I would say the thing of not drinking became just a byproduct of like all right being a parent is hard being successful as hard I got enough emotional baggage with the alcoholic history of my family like all of this is hard and I you know what set out to be a journey to to prove to somebody how wrong they were about my drinking led into like 30 days to 90 days and then all of some people are like what are you doing different You look great, you know. And then a year later, I got some guys I really respect that I used to sort of, you know, viking out with with the booze and the physical fitness and that kind of thing. And they're coming in and talk to me about sobriety.

And before you know it, you know, the August 1st will be eight will be eight years. And I never ever envisioned that I'd be somebody that wouldn't have a drink for eight years. Right. You know, and I don't judge anybody for whatever choices they have. but I also don't pull back on understanding that for myself and for others there's a consequence to all our choices and right now I love not being hung over

and I love having the mindfulness to take care of my body and my mind I love focusing how do you maintain that I mean you've got a schedule right now that's insane so how do you how do you maintain being in the moment for any part of the day yeah so you tie it to activities Right. So you take the things that you don't love to do or even things you might be skeptical

about or things you think can wait and you pair them with the essentials. So I'll just give an example. And this is a guy named Seth Hickerson who has a, he's a veteran himself actually and he's done a lot of great work in the space. He was an earlier adopter and teacher of this. But it would be called like an emotional control routine. So you develop these habits. And like my habit in this space so every day I get six minutes of breath work first click of the seat belt in the morning first time I log on to a computer right and you start your breath breath work yeah two minutes and you need and that's all you need so six minutes just like mindful and any one of them resident breathing right there's a series of different ones like

resident breathing box breathing and all of these different things that are part of a fundamental basis it's it's one of the levers we can pull right the overarching topic that I speak about and is my job right now is something called autonomic down regulation it's the idea or autonomic self-regulation right so before we thought about what being a warrior was what never stopping rail against the machine like nay just do what's required right but when you look at the craft okay LeBron James is not getting ready to go out onto the court listening to we will rock you right you find him on the bench right now doing

breath work and mindfulness because we know that's the key to performance Autonomic self-regulation is the mastery of the modern-day warrior. And whether or not you're in a war or not, it's what it is. So the levers that you can pull are things like, and they're so unsexy. Like sleep hygiene. Do you mind pausing for a moment to explain what you mean by autonomic self-regulation? So glad you just asked that because I was just going off on my normal tangent. Dave prompted me.

Yeah, beautiful. So what it is is we all, we all have. this fight or flight response and it's effective and in guys with the lives that we've led it's actually a little bit more vigilant and it's a little bit more effective and there's these biochemical reactions that take place and with those reactions have outcomes and some of those outcomes are negative consequence no bear with me i know no no this is so let's say we're in fight or flight you and i we don't know each other right and we walk into a room and we're not on the same team and we look at each other and something's sort of peeking up right so i see the way you look you see the way you look

exactly what you're talking about the other day Dave right you know easier to do with a stranger sorry we yeah we we were talking about this the other day about how a lot of us are very uh very um what's the word um we we live within certain rules but we keep our circle tight right and people outside that circle are subject to we tend to different rules yeah very different Yeah, and that's part of the village. We can actually go back to that because that's actually an evolutionary trait. Yeah. Okay, well, we'll go back to that because there's a social media tie in as well.

So, but you and I don't know each other. We size each other up. Maybe you think, hey, look, like somebody that you don't want to deal with. Maybe I don't want to deal with you. And there's a dance that takes place. But either way, hypervigilance begins to creep in. You feel the heartbeat and the heart rate. And as you live that more, you get there quicker, but you manage it better.

Yeah, right? You feel the ears, everything. It's a little bit louder, but you can't tell the nuance. You detect movement really well, but you don't see the details. And I'll just stop there. There's about seven other other other. Right? So that's the space.

Now, that's a state of hyperarousal or hypervigilance or autonomic up regulation. That is fight or flight. Which gets out of whack very quickly. I think that again, for me, that was out of whack totally. Totally. So that that would be activated when it didn't need to be. Right now, I'm going to call you out on something. Show me with your hands how you clear a malfunction and a weapon.

Okay, right. You didn't do the sexy James Bond, right? Because at that moment of stress, you lose the manual dexterity, you slap it and rack it, right? That is because that's what you can do in a state of autonomic upregulation. Right. So ask yourself, if you're swinging a baseball bat, where do you want to be on that fight or flight? If you have to shoot a puck, what if you have to make an incision as a surgeon or right coat? But yet we live in this.

Small muscle skills. Yeah. But we live in this state of hypervigion. Now let's get away from the skills. What about parenting? How well are you as a dad going to detect the nuance, the face, the grimace of your child, if there's an anxious moment or a scare moment where you hit that on the head, you nail it as a dad. And you're like, I see you right now. This is what's happening, right?

So we live in as... I'm still learning. And we all are. We all are. I mess that up all the time. And we, first of all, everyone does. Right. we do it more because of the lives we let.

And with all of that upregulation comes a problem and that problem is inhibition. It's the idea that you can't recognize the consequence of your action. So blowing up and screaming to get the desired end state gets the end state but you don't recognize the consequence. And you're thinking of a very specific moment right now as I'm saying this, right?

And that happens to all of us. Now we've led lives, some more than others, that get us to a state of hypervigilance more quickly. We have an obligation, a moral obligation, as a parent, as a team leader, as an employer, right, to pull the levers. So we operate within those confines of what we can control. So instead of actually saying, like, I'm calm in a storm,

actually not feeling the storm. And how do you do that? You do it with sobriety for some people, and everybody's levers are different. Sleep hygiene, gratitude, forgiveness, right intimacy right physical fitness all of these different breath work meditation self hypnosis all of these things there none of these are speculative now yeah they have been proven and proven like on mri and proven on uh e g where they measure the amygdala response the fighter flight control

center so these aren't up for discussion when people like oh that doesn't work it works if you apply it so what do we do like i said before we tie them to our daily lives Steve, I would argue no one's going to argue with you on that. Most veterans I know have, you know, believe in it. What I've, you know, I'm, I've started doing for what it's worth, meditation, everything, and it has changed my life. 100% has changed my life. But a lot of guys find it really difficult to start, really difficult.

Because what pulled us into the military are ADHD. Yes. Yeah. And it's really, really hard. So I'm going to push back, okay, as leaders, whether you're a leader as a parent or whether you're a leader in the military or whether you're a leader at HSS, which I happen to be around amazing leaders, okay, the extent at which a person like you mentors, we go back to the mentorship piece, a person coming up and saying before you get there where you're out of

control and we have to regain control, these are the levers that you need to push and you need to automate the pulling and pushing of these buttons and levers to keep you where you need to be to be LeBron or to be, you know, whoever it is you need to be at that moment. And whether it's as a parent and whether it is as a warrior, you know, you have to autonomically self-regulate. It's not an option anymore. So you said it changed your life. There's a skepticism and that same thing with like, and I'll give you where I'm totally full of shit here in a moment.

about it but there's a moment where we know like we know sobriety is a bad idea for or not lack of sobriety is a bad idea for most veterans it really is yeah yeah we got 22 per day yeah there's there's no case where someone said you know man I I just went on a bender and it really never got everything my wife thinks I'm hot again I'm getting along with my children I'm back to church on Sundays and none of it would have happened without the drug addiction right a hundred percent right but we don't make room for the idea of sobriety. We actually go the other way with it. And even when you talk about my early days in a team, it was like, I don't want the guy

that can't do this hungover. Right. You know what I mean? And it was even like a can you do it while you're hung over. The whole bonding thing, team bonding, you know, whether you're in the Marine Corps, I'm sure, conventional army, SF, a lot of it was wrapped around alcohol. Absolutely. 80s, 90s.

Yeah. and there's no escaping it. You are a weirdo if you didn't drink, and it didn't matter if you're the most competent, capable guy in the world. Yeah, right. And how do we slip that to where it's like this idea? Now you're a weirdo if you drink, yeah.

Right, like, how do we change? Well, listen. I want to be invited back to the team house. Yeah, but look what happened with drinking and driving. Like, drinking and driving was accepted practice in the 80s and early 90s. And if you got caught, it was like, oh, you're an idiot. I have to say, I honestly, I was never that person. Yeah, truly.

I was awful in a number of different ways, you know. But I'll give you that long, and I just want to be fair to myself and to you all about, like, how full of shit I can be. Like, it's a problem in our lives. Yeah, yeah. And this should be thrown in the ocean. Yeah. Yeah.

But I literally would get on a plane and go to war probably before I would. Yeah. I used that line before when I sound the, like, and I just sort of struck me. I was like, what's it going to take for us to recognize the damage this thing is causing. I want to get back to what you were talking about when I interrupted you and we asked you to, but you were talking about your routine every day, which I think like, and yes, of course, you're a slave to your phone that's partly, largely beyond your control. Yeah. But you anchor yourself, right, with things that you do every day. I think that's what a lot

of people are missing, just making it a habit, right? You're talking about breath work, two minutes a day. Two minutes, three times a day. How many guys get up and just automatically will do CrossFit or, you know. And CrossFit is great to an extent, okay? But if not properly supported, vigorous exercise is it going to create a state of hypervigilance? Right. And in the presence of alcohol and poor nutrition and poor rest and sleep hygiene, like the pillars begin. There's a hierarchy and it starts with sleep.

You're not going to be sane or decent or good at anything without sleeping unless you're trying to be. good insomniac. Like otherwise, otherwise you're going to fail. Okay, so that's one. And then what else we do? Well, everything else is a supportive effort for sleep. So moderate, sometimes vigorous exercise. Nutrition is something that supports sleep.

Alcohol abstinence supports sleep or alcohol moderation. It doesn't have to be moderate. You know what I mean? But like intimacy supports sleep. Ratitude supports sleep. So when we get down to it, how do we create a culture where we recognize the importance of sleep? pillars.

Yeah. Right. It's like how wrong the food pyramid has been. We're also wrong with the, if there was a lifestyle choice pyramid, actually flagged that moment, we should do a lifestyle choice pyramid. But if there was a lifestyle choice pyramid, we would have it all wrong right now. Yeah. Yeah.

So I remember my senior drill instructor saying, you only need like three or four hours sleep. The rest is just for dreaming. Yeah. And you were like, brilliant. Yeah. And that's stuck in my mind. That's the only thing I learned from him. You know, and, you know, sort of rolling this,

and this is great information for anybody, but rolling this back to veterans. And, you know, I don't say in particular soft veterans because I think a lot of, a lot of, like, regular infantry veterans, you know, went through this when they were out on firebases. But, you know, you talk about sleep, the hypervigilance, and things like that.

And I think it's what happens to a lot, of people in those circumstances, especially if it's for a prolonged period of time or when it's repeated over and over and over again through multiple deployments is not only are you going a lot of times with very little sleep because you're running nighttime ops and then up during the day training and doing that stuff. But the hypervigilance also, it gets stuck. And it's not like, it's not like I'm in a room and there's a target in front of me or it's, you know, one second before the shot clock goes off, it's always one second before the shot come.

That there's always a target in front of me, even if I'm in a room sitting by myself. And there was a psychologist or psychiatrist, I can't recall right now by name of Claude Bernard in the 1800s, and he was the one that first sort of started working into this and leaning into the space of the fight or flight response. And the initial hypothesis, which they couldn't prove then, but can now because of functional MRIs and different technology,

is that in the absence of a threat, we will redefine and reassess what the threat is. Right. Okay. So what was once like Sabretooth, Tiger, Seacrook primate, going to kill us and rip our limbs off, now becomes cell phone at 3% and I might get a call from my boss. Right.

Right. We've redefined what a threat is. Right now, they've actually begun doing work in this space when we talk about like Instagram and this connectivity and the impact that that has and relative to being thrown out of the village if you're not getting enough attention, likes and dislikes or you're fearing this

and why is that relevant? What do you think your shelf life was even 400 years ago without a community to support you? Right, death. Days. Yeah. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like unless you were a different time of a badass that had a different support structure.

Right. You know, but you throw a kid in the mix and you can't leave the kid to go hunt and, you know, so being a person, part of the village and that's why the social media piece I think and this is speculative most of what I say is not anecdotal but this is somewhat anecdotal is like the social media piece in that power is that it becomes a real fear or I mean genuine fear a triggering event we may look at it from outside and say that's ridiculous but it is you know and especially for the kids yeah you know and for some

and adults too I mean it's yeah why else would it have the power to get children to take their own life. Right. Right. It's because in a state of hypervigilance, as I said, one of the things that goes is inhibition. You're not recognizing consequence because how bad would it be if you had this really healthy pause as you were fleeing certain death? Right. You're like, I need to jump from building top to building top, but this doesn't seem like a great idea. Let me contemplate. Yeah. So evolutionarily, it's sort of reinforced this action without consequence mentality. It is a neural patterning. It's a networking that's ingrained in us. Yeah. And we will upregulate and we in particular have this capacity because of the lives that we led to get ourselves

the rest we need and then to flip a switch and be in fight or flight right and then eventually we lose sight of what downregulated is right yeah that's where many of us are living and there's physiologic consequences to that and those things you're talking about the pillars the the habits are the things that bring you back into connection with yourself and stop you getting out of reg Yeah. So everything, it doesn't, you know, everything, here's again, I think one of the problems I had before, and now it's certainly becoming clearer. I was thinking, well, I can't be in the moment because all this shit's happening, you know,

that I've got a plan for. But what you've just said, so as you pick up, what I've discovered is I've picked up these habits, and I'm nowhere near where you are, Steve. But I've discovered them actually much better at handling those things when they come along and what I need to do is trust myself and say right now you don't need to think about that shit because you'll be fine and you'll be able to handle that. But right now you need to reconnect with yourself.

And that is the hardest part. I'm nowhere near in the same realm as LeBron James, but I imagine, you know, he knows he's going to hit some hard challenges on the court, things he can't possibly foresee. And, you know, in time, so he just focuses on himself. And to be realistic, if he does make an error, he'll have 90 minutes and a hyperbarrier. chamber in his bedroom to think about it right like there's resources that he has available to

that most people can only dream about but the lowest lying fruit is accessible to just about everyone right now so sleep to some extent others get a vote on your sleep but if you take something like breathwork right i'll put it to you this way when we teach this at the hospital and when we teach it in different environments okay we try to stick to the things that you could do regardless of the environment that you're in so if we take something like resident breathing five seconds in five seconds out it's already been studied it's already proven to work better when paired with other activities right so the whole like I don't have time for two minutes of breathing arguments gone right you got to

breathe anyway right you miss low breathe well thank you for saying that it's a beautiful way to put it so if we were to get that so what would be what do we do do when we leave a range right what do we do every single time right clear our weapons yeah but he checks the weapons checks it twice police Check it again, the whole thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right? And then, yeah, right?

So you go through that. Well, what happens if that then becomes clear your weapons, holster your weapons, circle up? We're going to do two minutes of box breathing or two minutes of running of breathing. Now, right now, if you were to try to do that, I think half the people would laugh at you and the other half would be like, I'm in. 10 years ago, everyone would actually laugh at you. 15 years ago, you would probably end up as a psych about. Right. Right.

Right. So there's a shift, a positive shift that's happening across many industries, but it's not how. happening quick enough. Yeah. If we think about this space of hypervigilance and you measured it and if people like, and we can measure it to some degree, not accurately enough, but if there was a ring that would tell us when somebody's in that state, what do you think the color of that ring would be when somebody was bullying someone?

Right. Right? Like do you think bullies go around in a state of normal vigilance and they're very chill and they're like, this is fun? They lack the inhibition, they lack the ability to see the pain they're causing, they lack the understanding to see consequence. well why what's going out at home that's putting them in this state right right yeah they've got a massively enlarged amygdala I'm probably I'm probably using the

you know I say it probably doesn't massively sensitive amygdala yeah lit like yeah you know it's the size of a walnut but it controls a lot yeah right and it controls some incredibly powerful chemicals one of which is adrenaline there's no way around that fact that when that gets triggered it needs to be untriggered. And normally you would go through this process where if there was a threat that was available, you would respond to that threat, right? And then you would recover when that threat abated

and you would go on living a state of normal vigilance. Well, what is the term is how a static load. What is the load of walking on the Vegas trip right now? With the beeps, the buzzers, the teens, the lights, just the brightness of the visual field, possible criminal, you know what I mean? All these different threats, right? Presence of alcohol.

there's so much all aesthetic load even that time square yeah and that's just one element of these things yeah very interesting so i don't mean to shift gears but i want to talk about you know so you're you get a job in nursing right you you work in the critical care and how long like do you do that what's that like for you Yeah. So from 2003 to 2008, it was when I was an ED nurse. And highs and lows, right? Like I talked to you about, like, you know, dealing with a child abuse and things like that. And not just abuse. Like, you know, we dealt with a young boy.

It's a famous case. I can't say the name. But if anyone Googled it, but it was a drowning of a young boy. And that at the time was challenging. then became more challenging for me as a parent, right? These things come back in those types of cycles. But I think what was good about the job for me was, I think we all have a sense of service.

We want to do some good in the world and make a buck, right? And I think we put them sort of somewhat equally. Like there's probably no amount of money, maybe, but probably no amount of money that would make the very, the value of our work completely unimportant, right? Like, you know what I mean? Like, we're not going to cross a moral line or we're not going to do something that's totally self-serving.

So somewhere in there, there's a balance between fiscal responsibility and achievement and then value in the work that you create. And for me, nursing at the time was that. It was a economic solution, not an amazing one, but a decent one. And it's gotten better. I worked a ton of overtime, so it was actually pretty good. it didn't interfere with my National Guard life like I was still able to

you know do some stuff if I wanted to or at least that was my plan so did you stay in the National Guard or did you no no I got out completely when I got out but my plan was when I went back and everything I thought eventually that I might sign back up yeah you know but but I I didn't

until a few years later for different different reasons but there was this feeling good about your work and if you had a night where you didn't And those things I mentioned, like the child drowning was like a once in a career moment, right? Or the burns and the pediatric burns and abuse and stuff like that. Those were few and far between relative to the amount of good you get to do.

And even if you have somebody come in with a relatively stable, anaphylactic reaction, you're still saving their life and that feels good. Right. You know, where if you spot it, like when I worked in the ED, like one of my personal pride points was how quickly you got somebody to the cath lap. Somebody comes in an active MI and the speed at which you get IV access, get them prepped, get them triage and get them on the table to be cast. Time is tissue. I used to love that excitement and that meaning in that.

And it was the idea of keeping calm, keeping them calm, working fast and efficiently and having a positive impact on somebody's life. Another flip side of that is sometimes you come in and people with drug dependencies really try on your patients and your decency. you know and sometimes there's really really mean people in the world but that's part of any workplace but generally speaking I felt very good about the job I got to do and I it was one of the it was the difference between like having to do a job and getting to do a job and I felt like I was getting to do that job yeah do you you know it's interesting because it's a really interesting comparison because you hadn't been to combat at this point in time but now you're in this comparable environment in terms of very high

stress. But one of the things you can mention is like when somebody comes in with my heart infarction in your you know, Kath and them and you're trying to keep them calm. Does keeping with, does trying to keep somebody calm while you're doing something stressful, does that actually help you self-regulate and keep you calm also? I would, I hadn't thought about it, but I know that nothing gets easier and always knew that nothing got easier or better under that like tense rigor you know i know communication calm clear communication means every time and i knew that then and you develop those skills you know you even develop a pitch like when somebody comes in and you got to tell him listen mr so-and-so or mr seaman

so-so you are in fact having a heart attack but you're going to be okay because we got a cath lab and dr so-and-so's on i don't like drama but you're going to see me move quickly and you set this stage for like what's going to happen and you look for the buy-in you look for that headnot that moment i talked about earlier where it's like i don't care who you are right fix me but you just hit on a key point the communication up front you know i i i have i don't have any medical experience at all but as a as a user um you know i've seen where things go awry it's often been simply that upfront explanation of what's going on to the the patient has not occurred.

It's also interesting because you reminded me a couple of things when you talked about your tone and that one when there's when there is like in a firefight if if you notice like really skilled JT tax or CCT guys they're so calm on the radio and also whoever let the team leader squad leader commander whoever is the authority figure when they're on the radio if they're calm on the radio, then everybody else kind of settles down. If they're high-pitched, then I feel like that kind of sets a tenor, right? That that that communication style, either in an emergency situation or a high-stress situation, like it makes a ton of difference not just to you, but to the, you know, but to the people around you, obviously. It's interesting. I had the

gift of being an AST for like the first five weeks of my deployment in 2009. A.S.A. AST is a position up at like the, you know, one of the positions up in the siege of SOTIF or the SOTIF where you're a liaison essentially. And for anybody listening that would need to know that piece of it. And I was like literally like they make you an AST generally speaking when you're competent, right? Because they're, you're managing multiple teams outside of the wire and you're representing. And, you know, so I did it, you know, kicking and screaming. And everybody's selling me on it.

They're like, no, you're going to live in a shipping container. you're going to have a day and I'm like no I want to be out with the guys but what that does is that brings you into one the planning process and you get to understand what the importance of these things that everybody makes fun of like the con-ups and I'm not saying they need to be 60 pages long but you understand the importance of mission planning and you see who does it well and who doesn't so that's a gift but the other part is when you have people and you start chatting on SAT 102 you talk about the J-TACs and the CCTV it's really nice when you're first time on the radio on SAT-102 you talk about the J-TACs and the CTTs it's really nice when your first time on the radio on SAT 102 in front of like an entire theater isn't when you're the one receiving fire right yeah and when you said that about those guys it was like i always thought i thought to myself like you know they always seem to act like they've been there before because chances are they've been there before yeah you know like i don't know what their first call looks like but even before they get there they've on the radio and drop so many bombs at so many different times so many different locations that there is that second nature piece to them yeah and uh i have such admiration oh yeah me too

to begin with but it's like you said so when you're down on the ground you do set a tone and also too you know what's the battalion commander thinking when he hears a 03 or e7 like breaking on the radio and communicating a nine line horribly yeah like you're being evaluated every time you yeah hit the key yeah to send so it's interesting that you brought that and it also like it also matters around indage right because even if they don't understand what you're saying they're taking cue off how you're saying it 100%. You know. So what caused you to go back in to the military?

Because now we're, it's 2007, 2008? Yes, precisely. Yeah. And like we're deep in it now. People thought it would be over by now. Yeah. Right. And to that point, it was getting to be this idea that last chance coming up.

Right. like 2007, 2008, like, you'd better get downrange if you're planning on it because this is wrapping up, you know. And what had happened is my friend and really just, again, a brother, Mark came up to me. And he was driving through town and I had said, you know, this is before like cell phones were so commonplace. Like we used them, we were texting, but Blackberries were still in play, right? Like, let's be realistic.

Like it wasn't this, you know, communication until we didn't have Wicker or something. signal or anything like that and WhatsApp and he was driving through my town and he had said to me he was like he's like hey I don't know if he called me on cell or he might have shot me an email but he asked me to meet him at this restaurant we had gone to in Milford Connecticut so I met him there and he said to me my unit was originally in Newport Rhode Island and he said to me do you remember you know you told me if I was ever taking a team to Afghanistan he would enlist and go with me And I said, well, it sounds like something I would say drunk at the Pelham. Right.

And he goes, we were in fact at the Pelham, which universally meant we were drinking, whether it was the first sentence of the night or not, would probably decide as to whether or not we were inebriated. But it was such a no-brainer for me. He was just one of the best people I know. And I always went back to this thing where it was anything that was good about me in my life, anything that was good about me was because of these men. and anything that was shitty about me was in spite of their best efforts.

Right? And I believe that firmly. And here's a person that has never asked anything of me. And he wasn't begging me, but he wanted me to go on a deployment. And I didn't want him downrange without me. I believed in my skill set and my friendship. And so I think I started, I think I called a recruiter the next day or the day after, whatever it was. I don't want to pump myself up.

But it was within a day or something. Somebody fact check this. Yeah. seriously can't have the recruiter's going to be right in the comments it was four months yeah but uh you know very quickly enlisted and re-enlisted took a reduction in rank and um you know was gratefully um you know reassigned without my security clearance um had to be resubmitted and everything had to be done but uh still had the copy of the old one that's how we used to do it back then so all the answers yeah yeah yeah yeah and uh i'm not

I remember I lift at another address, but I'm not going to put it on the SIF. Now you can just reach out to the Chinese because they have it all. So many bonuses for the analog there. So we so did and I re-enlisted and within a few weeks or months or whatever begin spinning up and that was when I went to the the combat trackers program. Like I think honestly I believe there was like a we need to get you officially on board so we can cut orders so you can go next Friday. Right.

Like it was that quick. And I left and I went to the combat trackers program and I watched Yuka, which was amazing. And then began sort of a back to the old life of almost being a PMT guard bum where it was like I went to that course. I went to a sniper requal. I went to, you know, a few different,

a safauk, few different schools. And then our official PMT started. You know, so we did our pre-mission training up until January of 2009. and January, I think January 3rd of 2009, I went to Bragg for some more long gun training in January 10th. The unit had already deployed right after Christmas, right before the first of the year.

So the unit was forward in Bogram. They hadn't gone anywhere yet, but we stayed back for long gun training, and then we flew over and rejoined with our teams. And that was in January 2009. So after living the cushy, like, soft, fat and happy life. I'm just kidding.

Like, what was it like going back into the military after, after sleeping on a real bed and, you know, set your own schedule? So what happens is, and maybe this just happened to me, but between 2005 and 2009, the dynamics changed to what it meant to be a green beret. It leaned way more heavily into this kinetic space. The DA, yeah. the vernacular changed the radios the 60 went to the 240 like so many of these different things happened so you actually show up and I would imagine if I was other people that didn't know me on the team they're probably like this guy sucks yeah you know and it wasn't inaccurate right like you there's an entire catalog of things that evolve in that short compressed period of time that you had to relearn everything like it was still an nine line Right, but there was some fundamental elements that had changed with them.

Tactical, but also cultural. You know, they changed the very, yeah, very different. It's very different, almost a different service, and we saw it at some extent of the bank world too. You know, like the word operator. When I went through the Q course, the word operator was exclusive to guys on the other side of the fence. Right. Period. Right.

And then when, and I remember very distinctly this kid said to me is like, yeah, you know, this guy's an operator. and I was like, and again, he's over the fence. Yeah. I was like, what do you mean he's an operator? He's like an operator like us.

And I was like, I'm not an operator. I'm an operator now. Yeah. This is amazing. Yeah. You know, I did nothing.

Yeah. And my skill sets deteriorated. Yeah. So that was sort of an awakening for me. And it took a bit to outwork those cultural, as you brilliantly pointed out, and some of the tactical deficiencies. even acronyms.

We didn't call them TTPs. I know people are looking at Sweden. There is different language used for every single thing. A con-up. Pre-combat inspections, PCIs. Yeah. All these things. PMS was what we noticed.

And then there was the con-up. We didn't have a con-up. We had five paragraphs. Yeah. Right. Smeak. Exactly, right? So all of these things changed so drastically.

So I paid a bit of a price for that, and that was something you had to like humbly work through. Yeah. And then that all changes. You get a firefight and you perform well. Right. Then it doesn't matter. Yeah. Use of radios alone. The radio down to the individual operator.

Yeah. You know, I mean, it's all kinds of things that changed. Cryptos. So quickly. So quickly. But it changed. It wasn't just enabling communication. It changed the way things would run.

Blue Force tracker. Yeah. Yeah. Right. All of these different things and systems. And it wasn't enough for your commo guy. to know beforest tracker right every single person had to know every single person had to be able to load crypto into the radios and the vehicles like all of these things and it was a ton and very

candidly if pm tm.t was the place for you to master all this you were fairly screwed yep too much and we haven't even talked about all the counter id bullshit that you had to learn about yeah the technical as well as the tactical stuff the ttps yeah which were all consuming yeah yeah I left my team for two weeks to go through the crow's weapons training and then came back to a team that had been patrolling and training on ranges for two weeks together. It was like once again, I was the outlier. So I had this skill for, you know, and then what happens first we get in Afghanistan? We got, you know, Humvees. And then we would eventually get the weapon systems.

But like, you pay a price for that. But if you're the junior bravo, you're the guy going to the crow's weapons training. Right. Right. Right. So there was incredible learning for it, but all of that came at a pretty solid price for me. Right. And just personally, like a harder lift than I anticipated. I didn't expect I had to reestablish my reputation at 34 years of age. Right. After being a rock star when I left, or at least in my head of rock star. I don't think people would argue that point, but being. Let's send in your own lunchtime. Yeah. But at least certainly being a physically,

and technically and tactically competent person when I got out and then coming back to be like yeah now you feel like you're struggling a little bit to trade water like think of how sefouc evolved right there was no savauk when i left and now the way that you enter a room we called it cqb and the way that you're entering a room and the the the button hooks that you're taking and those zones that you're clearing are now completely changed and you got you got guys on a team that are legitimately like i thought you said this guy was great yeah yeah yeah to the guy that i'd you to come yeah you know so I didn't anticipate having to work that hard to regain credibility yeah and to some I probably didn't yeah you know sometimes I got 40 you'll

probably get some comments but whatever now it had you so you were the junior Bravo at this time yeah okay what was it was there a transition for you you know going from civilian life was it jarring going from civilian life back in a military life incredibly so and the reason was you know I knew how to run a code I knew how to save lives at this point I was charge nurse every shift that I was working I was a well respected person right now if my MOS was medical right I would have been golden okay but there were moments like when we would do LTT or when we would do we get IV access and stuff like that people would see a little bit of a glimmer of somebody that had

I mean, I had more needle sticks and anybody, any 10 deltas at that point in time, and it's not because I was so awesome. I just worked in a busy emergency room in Bridgeport, Connecticut. And that's what they do to you when you first start. They're like, go get IV access for the next 10 shifts and you blow out veins until you get it. But if I had a medical-driven M-O-S, but because I had a weapons-driven M-O-S... Not a lot of spig-nines in... No, no, yeah, exactly.

And one of the things about that was, you know, there's commo guys that are really into guns. Yeah. Right. And they have these skill sets and there was commo guy. There was, you know, different guys, like there was an engineer that was a professional armorer. Right. So you have this skill set that's less than the job that you're supposed to be in,

even though you have all this other skill sets that you can bring to the table. Right. I had the long gun skill, which is always helpful. And I was a person that would never leave your side. And I think people appreciated that. And I carried more than my weight. Yeah. you know, a purpose to be that person.

And I tried to work harder. Not always successfully. We had some hardworking guys on the team. Isn't it interesting, though, Steve, what you're talking about, we can all relate to right away wanting to be accepted by the team. That visceral desire right then. It never leaves you. And then back to the village.

Yeah. Yeah. Because what is the shelf life of your existence if you're thrown out of the village? And if you're in Afghanistan and you're the least liked member of an 11 or 12-man team? Yeah. That's a shitty example. Life is hard. It's scary.

Life is hard. Yeah. It's an upregulated existence. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that's why. Which is vicious circle because the more upregulated you are, the shittier you become.

The less proficient. Yeah. The harder it is to fit in. So, so you guys deployed and you deployed Afghanistan, right? And where did you guys go initially? So, well, as I said, I went to Bachram to be in AST for a few weeks. And then we were down in our camp airborne, Wardak. Wardak.

And that was when, and a place called Meta-Lam, we were split in the Jal-Ras Valley. So there was a group at Camp Airborne. And then there was a group training, the AP3 program out with Meta-Lam, which was a fairly beautiful area. It was a beautiful area. It was a fairly calm area for a while. But then by the time we would leave Jal-Raz, it would. the three at one point in time it was the three highest casualty months of any area in all of rc east um and it was um may june july uh april may and june of 2009 it just sort of

yeah yeah uh and it happened to quick really quick um we weren't the victims of it the kids that were co-located with us in the 10th mountain um we're getting lit up And again, couldn't love and like and respect us these kids anymore. They ran the gunfire. They were QRF. They were great hard work in human beings. And we would watch their vehicles getting pulled up on low boys with all too high frequency. So that was interesting.

So when you were out there, was that, was your initial tasking for the police program? Yeah. the AP3 program and it was a high level like it was highly visible right because they were recognizing the fact that in a very Klaus witsian model that unless we stabilize things internally then we're not getting out of Afghanistan and we took I personally took pride in the mission because it was like if we're going to do this right we're going to be one of the few jobs here were the work and the mission like we stood up the school for it we didn't just We didn't just stand up a battalion.

We stood up to school to produce. So it was like if you did it right, one, you could go outside the wire anytime you wanted and you could do some great work and sort of the collateral missions that come very naturally to special operations folks. But then the work would endure when we left in August. Right. And that I took pride. And we told us that was the exit strategy, which it should have been.

Could have been. and could have been probably yeah yeah depending on the the political headspace yeah like if that if the appropriate resources and heft were put into that and then the appropriate accountability was put into it i i think it was a winning strategy what what resource did you guys did you guys have to develop the curriculum did they send like a civilian law enforcement and with you did did nds come in yeah how did that all come together um i'd be speaking sort of inaccurately on it because it was handled by other people. Okay.

So I wouldn't really. So the schoolhouse was established. There was a separate line of effort that was established towards it. Mark, who asked me to go in the first place, was the one that was kind of ripped out and overseeing the logistical piece. And that was literally like buying boots, uniforms and like issuing these things and all of that. And then the training piece started with, I believe it was. my team and then there were some other U.S. partner forces that were I think an ad hoc group that

was put together. There was even some lawyers like JAG officers that were involved in the legal aspect of things. It was warrant driven. The theory was it was going to be warrant driven arrest, right? Yeah. Yeah. And also, well, that and community police. So the idea was we were pulling these folks out of their villages they were being trained in a central location of metralam a teams were deployed to keep security in their absence and then they would be redeployed to their villages with their partner force a team so they were coming from all over the country then for this all over the rc all over the area yeah so um and that was bad yeah it's tough right it was tough to keep them there it was hazardous it was risky uh-huh right so if you were a 18 or 19

19 year old guy with a couple sisters in Kabul and now you're working for the Americans. You're putting your family at some element of risk. Yeah. So a great distance would have been better. Yeah. Right. Like if we were pulling them from, you know, Helmand. Right.

And vice versa. I think there would have been some safety in that anonymity. Yeah. But that's not how it went. And I don't know why it didn't go that way. Like these things seem all reasonable to us, right? Like, oh, just take them from Helmand. But there's complexities there that I wasn't part of that I'm talking.

certain were we we didn't ask the right questions i think you know in planning a lot of this yeah other of the people that we were working with you know it also like it seems you know it seems uh streamlined to bring people from that area in and train them there it's just that you're right that there's no anonymity so as soon as they're there training probably everybody who was there was singled out. And I bet it's one of those things where like, and I'm not accusing anybody

of anything here, but I bet it briefed beautifully. Right. You know, and this force will go here. And like, I bet it was laid out and every six months we're going to produce another 500 and whatever and in 10 years we're going to have a

38,000 person and there was probably even a graph that had like one person multiplying to two to four. We, we We won the wall every six months by PowerPoint. Yep. But you know what I mean? Like it was probably this great thing where it's like, this is the plan. We are doing this.

Yeah. Step one, bring in recruit. Step two, question mark. Step three. Profit. Yeah. So what, in addition to training these guys, eventually they stood. Like, were you taking them out on the economy or were you taking them out as part of the training?

Yeah. So they went through the training. and we had to teach some of these guys how to drive and some of them had to drive stick like that's the level right so the training was more challenging than I think we had anticipated

the time to proficiency was more challenging right and then we would go out with them getting them motivated to act of their own accord was challenging

so they need to be watched which I don't know that would be any different here. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like there's a reason there's shift supervisors and sergeants and patrol sergeants. That's right. So we had assumed that role, which put us on the roads a lot.

We were constantly outside the wire, just constantly. How was it you guys were avoiding like the IED threat and everything that? We don't know. We don't know. And we've had the conversation. Mark, my team sergeant, fantastic guy, who's a police officer. I think it might have been the beards. I think it might have been the posture.

And I think it might have been sort of this like calculated decision on the part of the other side where it's like, well, we'll take some heat, but probably not this much heat. Yeah. Whereas if they kill 40% of an ODA. Right. Right. Like I think that was what, because it certainly wasn't skill. I mean, I'd love to say it was, but we know better. Right.

It's random when it happened. It's stuff. Yeah. But will you just mention, I listened to, gosh, I remember his name in a moment, but a regular warfare podcast. And the question was, what makes the unit good or bad at Canteran Surjeet? So what makes the unit better? And he didn't say, you know, the answer wasn't, well, they really need to practice, you know, this and that.

It was humility. Understanding that you probably don't know what's going on and being comfortable with that. you know so so what you just described you describe it very well and you you said look there were dynamics going on that that enabled our survival now nine out of 10 right guys would have said yeah well we were really careful and we did this and that but yeah they would never have accepted well the taliban left us live we don't know why they let us live yeah yeah but there was a reason and it probably wasn't anything we were doing or not doing it was just that's what happened yeah it happened to be a calculation you know and we got into a few ticks where we we were somewhat relentless

right I know like it wasn't an easy day for him so I don't know how to say it sounded weird or sounded like no you you got it we got we pursued it to the point that we couldn't they knew that was going to be a cost they knew there was going to be a price a cost or a seriously long inconvenience yeah right um so I think that disproportionate reaction offered us some because we were the only OD-A on those two MSRs. Yeah. MSR Montana and I can't remember the other.

So I would say that that was probably part of the calculus but that only takes you so far. You're kind of culvert. Right. And if they think they can get everybody, well, it doesn't really matter. Yeah. So, but I think that probably went into. How, you know, how did you

train these guys because that's a very unique situation being both law enforcement but being in law enforcement in a semi-permissive environment so they have to have some infantry skills too right and you know not just infantry

but like some room clinic like house house like how would those guys respond in a tick not our interpreters responded better than those individuals

truly and I'm not disparaging I don't know maybe it was a training issue I think that there was a group of individuals there very much committed to the cause and I think there was a group of individuals there that were very much committed to a paycheck yeah and sort of working both sides of it yeah it's like yeah I'm wearing the uniform but don't worry bro I got your back yeah I think you know so getting people to do things of their own accord. So really, I think what happened is it evolved to the position where it was like, okay, we could have them as a presence patrol or they can serve a valuable purpose as a early warning. You know, they've got radios and they've got interpreters and we've got the ability to dispatch

more forces there that could work with some of the different Kandex and the different, you know, infantrymen in the area that Afghan, you know, forces. So I think they serve, what I would define as a community watch which isn't the worst thing you know I think it would have been good to call them that and then maybe scale back

the training and scale back the presence and even disarm you know what I mean like if they're armed now they're a target and I think to even you know put them the one thing I'd just say is there would always seem to be this unwillingness that Americans and Brits and Aussies

and you know sort of have there always seemed to be this unwillingness of like going to the map you know where it's like there was some you know and like I said my interpreters they would throw it out. What do you mean by going to the mat you mean following through? Like going out to kill bad guys. Oh right yeah yeah yeah. Like this sort of

of their own accord like bullshit this is my town this is my community. Oh they have they lacked it. You're saying they lack the same oneness that the other, that the U.S. and other forces had. Yeah. And, you know, and on our own soil, and our own histories, and maybe that's part of our histories.

Yeah. You know, maybe they, I mean, listen, I'm sorry, we proved them right. Yeah. They told us and warned us that we were going to leave them hanging and we swore to them that we were not. Right. And we did. I mean, so where's

my... Yeah, who was wrong? Yeah. Right. Where's my argument? here so maybe they were strategically playing it because they had a better sense of how it would go and they weren't blinded by the optimism and the faith that that some of us had yeah yeah i think they always you know i i don't know i i think you're absolutely right steve i i think you know even they probably even if they didn't have the prescience at strategic level to realize what a cock out we were going to make up Afghanistan they knew despite our best intentions we were there for a limited period of time and they knew the continuity of the Taliban you know and it

was it went way beyond what was going on then it was so embedded in their culture and their history right it was almost intuitive for them the long game not to work with us and and or I mean all in in fantasy you know put on put on a brave face to it sure and every time we proved them right right the less we did the less they did the more we up resourced right we didn't we didn't we didn't start off spending X dollars a year and then tapered down. No. Right.

Right. It was same thing in Iraq. Oh, right. All right. So why aren't you out in patrol? We don't have any gas. Shit, we've got gas for you. Yeah. Instead of realizing. And you wonder.

And you wonder. And you wonder what happened with the demilitarization in Iraq and the impact that that then had in the ability to solidify the ground force in Afghanistan. We can't be like, they had no idea. Right.

Yeah. It was also, you know, we have, you know, we have this sort of naive idea also of what democracy meant to them and any, you know, any, in their idea of what nationalism was, you know, in terms of we never, at a policy level, I think that a lot of, you know, Marine soldiers, people on the ground knew, but on a policy level, we, we never, we never. appreciated that they were and for good reasons

for them but way more concerned what happened with their village and their tribe than what happened in Kabul which was you know which was two mountain ranges you know which was

so far away because the roads weren't even paved in so many places you know it was it's another place for them and I've always thought about this piece of it too which is rather unpopular so probably should say it on a podcast no you absolutely should

this this podcast I discovered is a great forum for a popular statement but it's like can we get on board with the fact that they weren't buying what we were selling right like so in other words we're like freedom right and that is critically important to us

like I'll go guns up in a minute if I think things in the world are going the wrong way in terms of like personal liberty or the protection of my children right so but if you look around most of the world there's a solid acceptance of this like sort of relative subjugation right like you know like I don't need all the freedom as long as some of this other stuff over here is taking security right like I don't need to be a here I don't need to be able to do whatever I want I just kind of needed to be able to do most of what I want in my little sphere right and I think that was where we went wrong

because we were expecting them to go down swinging. Like we were, I mean, we were more willing to go to a gunfight in many times than they were. Right? And we were always shocked. We're like, how could you not? And they're like, I can't get killed for a cause right now. I'm taking care of my two sisters. Right.

You know, and we never, I feel like I didn't. I'll just say, instead of saying we all the time. I didn't understand that until years after the conflict. Yeah, I didn't understand it. I started working. I was one of the early on in the, task force pineapple and then another effort called Operation Liber we raised some money got some people out but it wasn't until those moments where i got that reflective about the um error in our strategy yeah

like we're putting our i mean you could plan logistically but to then sort of project our ideals onto somebody i there i mean there were those those elements in afghanistan there were afghanese you know or Afghans who went hard. But I feel that they were, it was a limited group. Was that nationalism driving that, though, or was it their own personal ethical code? I think it was their own personal ethical code. I don't necessarily think they were fighting for a free Afghanistan.

They were fighting for a free, you know, Jalalabad or a free, you know, They were fighting for, they were fighting against, you know, Taliban. Right. They were, and. In some cases, fighting, they were fighting because that's, that was ingrained in their, you know, in their background. Yeah. They heard the tales of their grandfathers killing the Russians. Yeah.

And even to the point when we were fighting the British. Yeah. And even to the point, you know, you'd give them a CZ and you'd see the disappointment. You know, they wanted the AK like it, you know, and you would see the. appointment when you hand in it. Yeah. You know, so I don't know. I mean, I'm talking a lot here, but like, what did you find most shocking about? Well, it's your show. I mean, nobody wants to hear. But you know, like that was the thing that I found the most shocking of that lack of will. Like, you're not buying what we're selling and how could you not? Like, freedom is awesome. Like,

you know, this idea that we're pitching this. And it is a relative. thing. Like, it's critically important to me. I couldn't exist without it. But that's how we were raised. But people that are basically really trying to feed their family and get through a winter. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, you know, for a lot of for a lot of the, you know, Afghan Americans that like went back at some interpreters who would tell us stories about when they left and for like a lot of the Afghans, who

who I who like fought hard and you know risk their lives every day um like the Taliban was was bad uh you know the Taliban you know would treat women horribly and you know would would you know like their vice and virtue cops would just do horrible things if a mother was holding her adult son's hand because it was a man and a woman holding hands in public you know a lot of them like they knew it

and they weren't you know like said I don't think they were fighting for a high idea like freedom or democracy they were fighting for their village for their town

their city for self-determination And, you know, they didn't want the Taliban to roll through. You know, they didn't care about a national government in Kabul, but they cared about what happened locally. Right. I think one of the things I was struck with was they weren't fighting for freedom. They were fighting for a lack of oppression. Right.

And those are two different things. Very different things. Right. And I think that is where... And they would accept lesser oppression. But if they could guarantee the safety of their family or the next meal. How many nights do you hear a toddler cry for for hunger before you're willing to do anything to alleviate their discomfort? Right.

Right. Throw in community health. Throw in antibiotics. All of the things that should be available. Now, that's what made the thing so damn heartbreaking. Right? Like, you get to this certain point. And, you know, there was a comment, one of the politicians,

I honest, one of the, I can't think of what was it. I'm not talking about the Donald Trump comment, but there was a comment made last week where it was something like, generally speaking, I think it's a good idea that we all stop fighting wars for a while. Like, that's such an honest, sincere sentiment of, like, whether it's in Ukraine right now or wherever it is, there's children walking in the streets. Can we really not get this right at this point?

Yeah. Like in this day and age, and if we look at like where we're sending money, right? 2.2 trillion for Afghanistan or something like that. And if it's anything like the government accounting. Right. Right. Let's be realistic.

Yeah. Hey, billions. Right. So we're talking like, you know, what happens if you take that $2.2 trillion that we spent, combined with the Brit money, combined with NATO, combined with all these different things,

all the ISAF effort. What's the impact that has on researching malaria, childhood cancer, eradicating malaria, sickle cell anemia. Like, what could we do with that same effort, that same heft that we put into and then abandoned in Afghanistan over two decades? The money and the effort and the brain power

and the societal load, you know? astonishing, yeah, all right. And at the end of the day, you would have a winning body count with like malaria. Right. It would be like you saved 60,000 children's lives versus lost X number of. You know, the thing is though, is that like in retrospect, it was we threw away money or whatever. However, like having fought with Afghans and, you know, knowing them, some of them, you know, as friends and it's, it's also that if we would have, if the U.S., if our government, which our government policy-wise is horrible at fighting wars, You know, if there would have been a different outcome for Afghanistan,

if we would have withdrawn because they had stabilized and, you know, and everything was fine, they had repelled the Taliban or we had carved out, you know, the posthune, given the posthune tribal areas, their own, their own, their, own sort of country and said, look, you're not Afghanistan, you're not Pakistan. You guys are you guys. You know, this is Afghanistan or whatever. Like if there would have been a different outcome, I don't feel like we'd be asking these questions because the quality of life, you know, when you have an element in a country that's burning down schools with girls, with the girls inside, and beheading people in soccer stadiums and stoning women to death because, you know,

because they did the wrong thing it's and again we never went to Afghanistan to stop any of that stuff right right we went there to to destroy al-Qaeda and we did that and so we won that war then we started another war

against the Taliban but what is it that started that continued but what the heck is it that makes us think so I understand going to wreck al-Qaeda or Taliban or whatever it's going to be like I get that you know it's a retribution that you can't do that to the United States and there's right there's a need for that right

but I actually am in more I am maybe it's my age or I'm a stage in life I'm more comfortable right now going to war for humanitarian reasons versus strategic objectives right because we don't seem to be really good at prioritizing our strategic objectives 100% the thing is the problem Oh, go ahead. No, no, no, I was just saying, I've been thinking about that a lot. The deployment that, strangely enough, still, I feel, I mean, two deployments of my life, and it's not about me, right, seemed still unambiguous morally. My first and my last, my first was a Mogad issue.

But, yeah, Mogad issue turned into the shit show. But initially, it was for humanitarian reasons. Right. We didn't have strategic. And I felt great about that. last deployment was canterisis. I felt good about that appointment too. It was very clear cut,

but it was, Islamic State was not an existential threat to the United States. If you'd looked at it purely in strategic, you know, but yes, I'm agreeing with you 100%, 100% as I look back. Because we go through all these mental gymnastics to show that things are U.S. or not U.S. interests and in the end it turns out Afghanistan wasn't it. Well, and yeah, and the thing is, it's from a humanitarian,

from what I'm saying, from the humanitarian view, like, you know, like making these people lives better for a while. And, you know, people can talk about the cost of war and, you know, the Afghan suffering and the Iraq suffering. But if you weren't there, like, talking. to Iraqis and Afghans who very much wanted these things

you know and it's like this isn't just like you know white imperialism or American imperialism and these poor brown people like we were there with them

and you know if we went to war for humanitarian reasons I mean there are so many countries in the world right to go to war with for those reasons It's we made a mistake, I think, after ejecting AQ, like we went there to kill Al-Qaeda. We did that. We did that fast.

And then we developed this prolonged war with Taliban, still using sort of the same template for Al-Qaeda. But the Taliban wasn't al-Qaeda. They weren't foreigners on the soil. Right. Right. They were benign. They were not benign, but so it's so to your point where there were finger pointers at the Taliban. Like they knew what was happening or finger pointers at Al-Qaeda.

Right, right? Many Afghans were mortified by what took place. So there was that. And as the Taliban became members of their own community. And, you know, when the Taliban, I think all of you know more than I do about this topic and probably 99% of the listeners, but the Taliban initially were a moderate stabilizing force against criminal activity in the 90 yeah they offered justice they offered justice when i think two or three young women were horribly attacked and that was the beginning of a thing where it was like people taking back their own

community yeah and that went wrong because we know nature loves a vacuum and but that was the genesis of it so it sort of came into power and then morphed like like any dictatorship right yeah but the immediate they offered justice which you know security call it what you will al-Shabaab and Somalia some areas similar kind of thing you know Sharia courts your your daughter is insulted I mean your son's insulted your daughter's attacked or whatever right what are you gonna do go to the police or you're gonna go to right who's he's not gonna fuck around he's gonna take care of it right it's interesting the IRA did the same thing

in Catholic eras northern Ireland drug dealers and all that got kneecapped you know it was yeah well but the mafia you pay you paid protection right

you pay protection so that your shop doesn't get burned down but while you and it's horrible I'm not like justifying but while you're paying protection if your shop gets robbed there's going to be a remedy

right yeah and for all the listeners we're not suggesting no But this is how this studio is still here after. Oh, great. No, but what we're saying is real. Because if you consider, like, you know, no one touched, like you said, the protected businesses, right?

And not that that's, not that extortion is ever acceptable, but it shows the need for some type of structure. Right. In any type of community. In an unstructured community. Where there is a, like, strong. sort of civic or civil, you know, yeah, uh, structures. And the Taliban, yeah, they did that and then, then they, well, like most initial founders, they were deemed to not be radical enough, right?

And then they were removed. Right. And then you had a lot of the solifist, you know, uh, influences. Um, so, so you did that trip. Like, how did you feel? when you finished that trip like you finally got your war on right and and and for people who haven't been there i think one of the worst feelings in the world would have been to have been in the military during war to to have been in a special operations unit particularly during a war

and not having gotten your war absolutely you know you you um Right. So the saying is if not me, then who, right? Right. So you don't want war, but if there is a war, you want to participate and you want to do well, right? So I was glad to have had that experience, but as most of us, it wasn't enough, right? So that led to sort of the reclassing and the 18 Fox Space, you know, and beginning that additional route to try to, begin deploying in a different way. And can you tell us what is the 18 Fox?

So Special Forces Intel Sergeant, and it is someone specifically trained to use All Source Intelligence at a team level and to some degree collect and disseminate information upward to help inform a battlefield that is being shaped in line with whatever strategic objectives are set. So you get a very decent analytic framework to work from. Let me just say, you get a decent analytic framework

and you begin to understand some of the different technical pieces that go into that data collection as well as topography like ArcGIS and even things like you're learning, you use Google Earth in different ways. And you really do become, very proficient at understanding a certain climate, not meteorologically, but the climate on the ground, and how that climate on the ground is likely to impact and affect the commander's intent. Right. So that's what, you know, it's six months of that learning it. And a lot of it is, you know, really poorly written in terms.

and depending on when they're due, you know, put a due date on Monday morning at 8 o'clock, and I'm going to challenge how awesome the work is going to be. But that was the Special Forces Intel course, but I liked it. It certainly suited me more than being a weapons guy. And I didn't want to do the medic piece of it. I just didn't want to. I'd done a lot of it, you know? Right.

And I think that was a good call. and then, you know, I had the opportunity for going to the Applied Physics Lab, the Soaic, and that was eye-opening. That was a completely new way of thinking about the key dynamics of armed conflict, and the people that put that course together were brilliant, and the people I was in the class with were very, very smart and competent, and educated and seasoned. I was among the younger and the least seasoned in the space.

I had a practical piece that they lacked, and it was multi-agency. So it was very, very interesting. And you got to see how other agencies did things, and you got to work with really, really decent human beings. And so what does physics have to do with Intel or why? Like, what was this course about at the applied physics lab? Yeah. So I know this is open source, but I don't know how much. But there's been a longstanding relationship.

relationship between John Hopkins and the sort of, I don't know what to call, I want to say, the military industrial complex, but like the DOD that sort of whole DC scene. And the applied physics lab works on all sorts of different complex problems. I mean, there was an article a couple of years ago that you can Google about them, you know, shooting rockets at meteors to try to knock them off kilter. So it's a very well-funded organization that does a lot of different grants and research and things like that. they're working on how to bring down balloons on altitude. It should be a really difficult one to figure out, right?

It's just a random problem. Weather balloons. So that was the, and I think that's just the home for it, because within that there was some sort of, you know, sociologic capacity that they had. And there's an educational structure and an accreditation process that I think facilitated that, learning and exchange of ideas.

So physics to the extent that we learned about different technologies and things that were applied for data collection and analysis. So I think that is probably where it evolved from, probably from many decades ago. Yeah, fascinating. And so then after that, you have other schools that you went to? Yeah, a few deployments. Okay, so what was your next deployment?

Romania. Romania? Yeah, Constanta. We did a training mission there with the Polish and Norwegian special operations groups there. And did that. And then worked on a different project down in D.C. after that. And had began building my family. And then there was one very, very somber terrain ride down to D.C. on the Agassela after like a two-day weekend.

And it was like this realization that you got to stop. Yeah. Like there's a cost for everybody involved in this and you need to figure out a different path. Yeah. And that was. And what was happening is as I was doing that, we were supposed to be getting ready to deploy again. and then the cards didn't fall in the favor for that deployment and it was like you know what I'm not going to go find work anymore I'm done and it's

time to shift my focus were you were you looking for one more combat deployment or yeah yeah yeah I really was and it wasn't just that and I think part of it was I told you about that initial part of the skill set where it was like this learning curve for me and I felt like I got it about halfway through and now it was back and I wanted to apply it. And the other thing is with these new skills I had picked up, I became inherently more valuable to any team. And I wanted to put that to use for at least one deployment and then see where that took me. But you ended up getting a combat deployment.

It was here in New York, right? I mean, it was funny the way things were. out. I mean, I would, I would guess that validated everything you just talked about and more. More so perhaps than if you had gone because you were totally out of your comfort zone, right? Yeah. And, well, it was different. We, it was a problem that there was no framework for. Right. So, and you have these like pockets of things to alleviate. You want to alleviate stress. You want alleviate anxiety you want to alleviate uncertainty do you mind taking a second just set the problem yeah so um what happened was um COVID was evolving and emerging so it was March I want to say March

28th or 29th and one of my dearest friends and best friends in the world non-military and as I'm going through this talk with you I realize how unbelievably fortunate I've been because I kept thinking like I had a couple friends in the world but I actually got a lot a lot more than than anyone should have. You know, it's a gift. And this friend of mine, John, who's the, he's a senior VP at HSS, and he's the chief communications and marketing officer there. Brilliant guy.

One of the most. HSS. Sorry. Hospital for special surgery. It's the number one orthopedic hospital in the world. And we're proud of it and proud of who we are. And we get to, I get to play a very tangential role to supporting staff that. that makes people's lives better every single day directly.

It's extraordinary. When I used to work at Bridgeport Hospital, I go to a cocktail party, and people would bitch to me about what the terrible experience they had at Bridgeport. Now I go to a cocktail party, and all I hear is how much people love HSS and how they change their mom and dad's life and all this. It's really quite a gift, you know. And I got a call from John saying that we're about to essentially paraphrase, I'm going to connect you with the surgeon-in-chief, Dr. Brian Kelly and the CEO, Lou Shapiro, both great leaders, by the way, and a woman named Laura Robbins, again.

Like, I've literally worked for the top. In my career, if you take this, like, let's call it, let's call it, like, nine great leaders I've come across that I've taken tips and things to emulate from. And four of them I've worked for at ages. Maybe it's five. I apologize if I'm forgetting someone in the moment here under the lights. but like the majority of the great leadership I've seen actually has been at the hospital for special surgery so he called me up and he said you know essentially we're turning hSS into a uh COVID treatment facility and we don't know what you want you to do precisely um but I'd worked with him before on some things

and he said as something to the effect of we think we might be better off if you're on the team and what he didn't know was at the time I was literally in the process of like dusting off the resume to go work as a nurse in ERs in New York. Because the train was coming on the tracks. You were see, you could, it was palpable. Yeah. You know? And then just as a person and as a family,

we're like, we gotta get in a fight here. You know, it's what we do. So it was like, how did this just have, like resumes here? Yeah. And so I got on the phone with Brian Kelly, a doctor, Brian Kelly, who's brilliant person, athlete, friend.

And he was talking about, talking about what they were undertaking and what they were about to do. They stopped all elected procedures on March 16th very heroically for a hospital that only does that. Right. And began this process. That has a global reputation for. Yeah. Yeah.

That is a magnet for people all over the world to come for those procedures. 100%. And before they needed to. In a health care system that's based on profit. Yes. A very brave decision. Very smart of you to pick up on that piece of it. And it was one of those things where it was like,

We don't have an ER, we don't have other ways that revenue comes in. And Lou Shapiro and Dr. Kelly made the decision, like this is the morally right. That's the leadership piece I talk about. Like they do the right thing when nobody's looking. So how could I not wanna work for these people? You know?

So we had a couple conversations and they very graciously, and I wanna be clear. There was like some article written that caused some cringeworthy moments for me that sort of like painted me out to play a much bigger role than I did, HSS would have been just fine without Steve 40. I think at one point I was haloing in one of the articles.

You know, like, you know, and nothing could have been further from the truth. The level of intellect and competence there is extraordinary, which what drew me to it. But I did get the idea. But what did you bring to the fight? You're a modest guy, but try not to be modest. What did you bring that they didn't have in-house on team? So I- Because that was something.

Yeah. Well, I think what they didn't have was someone that had lived an adult life in proximity to sort of catastrophic events, right? Like, you know, my own personal story. My mother died of an alcohol overdose. My father died of cancer. My grandfather took his own wife in an alcohol-induced state. Had been to combat, and legitimately so, at a fairly high level.

Worked in level one trauma centers. I was a nurse. I could relate to the nursing staff and the job that they had to perform. under the conditions that they needed to perform. I had critical care experience. So there was all these little like bunch of like the quote would, I guess would be like four times such as this where it's like, you know, and there was like sort of a comment or a joke that was made where it was like, if there was a senator would be like, we need to find,

we need to hire a board certified critical care. Right. Right. Military combat veteran, special operator, intel analyst, you know, you know, sober. It's the type of job that you can't possibly chart yourself to. Yeah. It just, when the job comes up, they're like, this is the perfect, because of all these things, this is the perfect person for it. And I don't know if I was a perfect person, but I was a person there that they had and said yes to.

And we initially didn't know what the job was going to be, but at least I could, you know, enter a room. and look them dead in the eye and say it's going to be all right because it always is right it is right we're here right because i've been here before and i'm promising you it's going to be all right i don't know how right but we're going to be uncomfortable together for a bit so at a minimum i was able to do that with some element of credibility yeah and then also you know with prior to this i i had been studying different fields of this you know down regulation piece for a very long time just from my own unlocking you know I wasn't great when I came back from Afghanistan I was fine I was getting a job and people liked me and respected me were you still drinking at that point

yeah okay no no I had four years of sobriety under my belt at that point in time and I had this gift of when I decided to drink it literally was like just gone yeah never had the thirst again yeah you know and I'm grateful for that and it was easy to say yes to after I spoke with Lou Shapiro and after I talked to Brian Kelly and Laura Robbins and these great leaders and John Englehart like I wanted to be with them and if we went down swinging this was as close to a deployment as it was ever going to be for me right what what niche so you see you've described very well what prepared you for this and and no one can really replicate your qualifications it was I mean across the board some of which no one would want to have those qualifications

you know very hard-earned and you talk about period of uncertainty right no one really knew no one could tell you what your role was but talk about how how you carved out a niche for yourself find work right we've all said that before like yeah yeah so when i got to the hospital i realized it was all these things that were in play that i thought i might be helpful with that i wasn't like they're brilliant people there like the logistic supply chain building out of like these individuals had these things all in line so i was like all right well i got to going to earn the right on this team somehow and it literally became where I began walking the hospital I was literally patrolling the hospital and I was meeting people and I was finding the

people that weren't okay and I started asking everybody and everybody seemed to be fine and then I started asking about patients or no yeah yeah just people I mean I'd come across the occasional patient but I wasn't giving any bedside care but I was caring or at least supporting or trying to support the people that were providing it and what was interesting is You know, first, you have a plan, and it's like, well, the nurses are undergoing a great deal of stress right now, so I'm going to have to bring in some resources and pay attention, and I'm going to have to advise the leadership of what we can bring in for them. And then what I was finding is, like, you know, the nurses, some of them were stressed, right?

But they're kind of been preparing, and you find these professions just like being a Ranger or a Green Beret or Force Recon. You begin inoculated, begin getting inoculated to these events. You have some resilience to them. But you start looking at things like the environmental folks who like clean the rooms. Central sterile processing that make the hospital run. No other glory. Security, right? The F-22s were not flying up the Hudson for them.

Right. I mean, they were, but it didn't feel that way, right? And here they are. And then you start talking and digging it a little deeper, and you're finding, you know, single moms that are, you know, walking 55 blocks because public transportation's not working or functioning or safe. And they got a 13-year-old, a 12-year-old, and an 8-year-old at home in a fourth-story walk-up or third-story walk-up in Astoria. And they're going to be like, oh, my God.

Like, imagine, so it was like, okay, I can't control any of this right now. So how can I start? So I think what I brought to the table was that analytical framework. Right. you know and having been in some of these situations before and I brought the ability or at least I tried to bring forth the ability to provide them the tools that they could use in the environment to begin taking the edge off of that stress at least make them feel like it's going to be okay and if it was something as simply as me going into the room we're sitting with them on the floor in the hallway whatever it was but the real interesting thing was these pockets of places like all this sudden our security guards we never we don't have any emergency room right so all of a sudden we have a emergency room that we basically fabricated to begin receiving patients. You know, all of these fundamental changes of people and just to be able to sit with them and tell them that it's going to be okay, to connect them with resources, whether it was

mental health resources or meditation resources or breathwork or whatever it was. And there was this part of this whole community that I became part of that we all started reaching out to one another's and saying like, this worked for me here, this is working, here's a resource I found that's free. and you started round tabling all these different resources and discussions on how we can decompress the institutions until this thing ebbs. And it was a gift when 90 days after that they asked me to join the team full time. Because if they didn't, I'd be looking for another deployment. Right.

But you created that gift. Yeah. You know, so what you, it's very interesting, what you were talking about, was probably second nature for you, right? You know, we're walking the hallways. I mean, you were a, you know, you were a master sergeant. Army has master sergeants, right? Yes.

I'm getting right. I think it was Dave. I forget who was. David of Jack was making fun of me last time. Oh, it wouldn't be me. Yeah, yeah. It wouldn't be me. Anyway.

Yeah, I'm sure, I'm certain with the Army. It's the Air Force that really misses me up. I have no idea. Yeah. Check something. I know. Senior whatever. Yeah. But my point is that you went.

NCO, walking around, kicking boxes, talking to people was kind of second nature to you, solving their problems. But for a lot of people at that hospital, they must have, you know, who were very capable, very compassionate people. And yet they didn't have the time to do that. Or maybe it wouldn't have occurred to them because they were just overwhelmed with everything that was going on. Yeah, I hadn't thought about it that way. I think, you know, well, I'll speak to my perspective. I have always taken pride. I was never the lead slinger, gunslinger,

badass on the team. Like, that's just not who I was. But I was generally the guy, I hope at least I was to these people, that when they were really not doing well emotionally, when they needed to share something that wouldn't go anywhere, if they needed a complex problem fixed or really, I know,

and they've said this to me, if they needed solid, like no bullshit guidance, I was the guy. Right. So I hope I fulfilled that role to some people at HSS during it where it's a bit second nature for me to want to be helpful and care for people. The thing I like is caring for people. I like to alleviate people's stress. So that was the part that I hope I was most effective in.

If you talk to guys on my team, they would never be like, I was a really good shot. Don't get me wrong. And physically, I was a problem for most people. but if you said like what's the attribute what was your rat standing yeah it's say like he's never going to leave your side or he's a good guy or he's an intangible or whatever but it wasn't my soul I mean I was a terrible soldier

and I always hated the army like I don't know about you but like I literally despise like I loved the individuals but I had this like hatred and most people get over it like most people get over the loss of like being disappointed by another leadership failure right but for me it was like the first time every time.

Right. Every day it's like your first day. Yeah. Yeah. It sucks. Oh, it's brutal. And it's always over the most like benign things where it's like, why are we in another effing airfield on that, you know, the day before Thanksgiving?

Like, can someone make a decision so we can go to Fogo to Chau? Right. And get a decent meal. Right. And every time I was like shocked. Right. And then like Christmas Eve. Why on earth are we waiting to get released?

Right. You know? Right. How come you couldn't tell us four days before so we could have bought airfare at a reasonable price. But every time I was completely shocked. Yeah. And I think the only time I stopped being shocked was when I finally left the military. Right, right. Because I think if I re-enlisted,

I'd be like, I cannot leave. Right. Right. Like, I was so bad at that. What is going on? Well, it's the same thing that always goes on. And I'd have friends who may be like, this is, this was unexpected. I think that's a topic of a podcast because I've met so many guys who said that. But typically they weren't in conventional. You know, I I don't know.

I wouldn't have lasted a week in the army. I don't think, and that's not hitting the army. It's just, you know, I mean, you think about when you have to do a jump with, just a conventional jump with the army, you trust up like a turkey, you show up eight hours before. Right, right, right. You can't even take a piss after you've been checked. Right. I mean, it's just, you've taken something that could be fun and they make it horrible.

Well, that's what the military is good for is taking the fun out of the coolest shit. That is. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, you think this would be fun? Yeah. Oh, you know, jungle warfare. Ha ha.

Yeah. Yeah. But no. Great topping. No, but you're right. But I think that it's sort of that, that, like, I think a lot of people in the military have that love, the hate relationship with, you know, the, oh, my God, this is just so messed up, you know. And like you say, every time it's messed up.

it's sort of like if I go outside when it's cloudy and I get upset because it rains after like the fifth time you'd think that I wouldn't be surprised by that anymore but that's and it's always cloudy in the military but it's almost like a it's almost like a relationship yeah we're like if I just show army like not even the army

if I just show army how deeply I care about army you're not going to leave that right right and then army's like sorry But there's a lot of truth in we said, Dave, I can't count. You know, I still keep my hair short. So invariably, whatever airport I'm passing through someone to come and go, hey, let me guess Marines. And, you know, and invariably it becomes, yeah, I was in the Marine call. Yeah, how was it?

I hated every fucking second. Yeah. I hated it. How long were you in four years? But always afterwards, it's like, you know, I've missed it ever since. Well, yeah. It's like, it's like, hey, Army, look at my PFT store. It's a shared experience.

Yeah. You're all bishing and complaining about it. Yeah. You know. Yeah. Things will be different when I'm a master sergeant. Yeah. You're just more frustrated and you have to let more people.

Yeah, yeah. Now you get it from both things. The them, the them you're bitching about keeps moving up in the lake. Right, right. So when I was a, yeah, when I was a private, I mean, aside for, I remember looking at my battalion commander and thinking, that dude's so old. I can't imagine him even having sex with his wife. That's one right.

Yeah. He had a kid and I was just, this must be a, you know, he must have been 40 years old. And then, and then before I know it, I'm a colonel and now I'm thinking, wow, you know, these one stars and two stars. But at that point, you're also looking at the private school, and did their mom give them information to slip to be here? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's true. Yeah.

Yeah. No, but that's funny how you mentioned it's like a relationship because it is. It is. You just have to agree that you're, you know, you have to accept. that you're always going to be disappointed. Before that, hilarious and true diversion, though. Point I want to make, though, and leadership is a really hard skill. We think of hard skills as shooting.

No, you can teach a monkey how to shoot, right? I mean, given basic hand-eye coordination, it takes people different times. You cannot teach everyone leadership because they need a quotient of emotional intelligence in order to take it aboard and to keep learning and progressing. So getting back to the value of someone coming out of the military, 100% that is what they offer.

And you just, you proved it. Yeah. You know, we can talk about it all there, but it is the truth. You offer a company something that chances are, no matter how brilliant their guys are, whatever schools they've been to, they don't know how to do that. Yeah. I think planning, which is a component of leadership, right? But what I get frustrated with is, you know, I always, and I've helped shut up. a lot of guys off of the special operations community into different ventures or grad school or try to give them good counsel, you know.

And I think that one of the things that makes me want to physically slam my face through the wooden table is when someone's like, yeah, you know, I'm really good at project management. What the hell is that? You're so much better than that. And I'm not saying project management isn't a critical task, right? But that has a qualification. You must get your PMP. Right. Exactly.

But as if art or artistic aspects don't exist in the military. You know, as if creative problem solving, innovation, entrepreneurship. Like, as if these things are void and it's like, well, I'm going to get out. And because the stereotype is that I'm going to be really organized. And let me dispel some myths to anybody. Like, there are some people in the military, like my friend Mark, who are extremely organized. And I know that because he used to fill out my travel vouchers for me. And then there's me.

where like I'm giving them like, you know, a box of receipts and one of them's from a previous deployment. Right. So there are... Traveling like a Lance Corporal, I was told. I was told once as a major. Perfect, yeah. But it's like one of those things where the capacity for...

If given the chance to step out of this area of task management where it's like, no, I'm going to make sure everybody does what they're supposed to do. Well, corrections officers do that. And that's a great profession. You know what I mean? And I'm not knocking at it. But getting to that conversation of what do you want to do? What makes you happy?

What brings you joy? What's going to make you engaged? Like, I understand you've been disappointed by Army for the past three decades. But let's get you a career. Army's moved on. Army doesn't think about you anymore. You walk in. Armies with somebody new who's 18.

Amazing. And then when you walk up and you're like, hey, Goldman Sachs. And then, you know, you're like, now I got your purse in there, right? where it's like you walk in and you love your job and it's and that should be able to be a match yeah i think that should be a match for most people in the world yeah should be a priority but in particular our veterans that are going through this in particular ones that have a retirement that don't have to rush and jump into whatever the next thing that presents itself in people should be pursuing these things with passion yeah that go beyond like you said p and p and p and p that literally took

the words out of my mouth it's like that's great and if that is your passion i'll help you with it But don't let somebody tell you that that is right, right? Or that that is the right and left limit. Yeah. You know, like, oh, you know, there's a lot of things that these young men and women are so talented in doing. And they should be allowed to it. Like even in a place like, you know, Sergeant Major, they could find amazing homes at high levels of human resource management. They've been doing it for a while at scale and far more critical environments.

Often far more critical environments. But those conversations, those bridges are never made. Yeah. Yeah. And like we talked about before, like that takes education on both sides, right? It takes an education on the military side to know what the world looks like out there. And it takes an education on the civilian side knowing what, you know, what an actual soldier, sailor, airman, marine, what they actually look like in terms of what their jobs have been, even if they were infantry or even if they were, you know, 100%? that but there's these qualities that happen right like there's always that kid and it's like 31

degrees and raining you know it's got a smile on his face yeah right there's something to be learned from that and there's a benefit in a lot of different environments corporate or otherwise that you'll want that kid guy or girl whoever it is that you know positive attitude resilience right decent judgment like all of these things they've been brought up or they know intuitively some of the things you've been talking about that now we're trying to bring ourselves to that level attitude how many times attitude is everything yeah right we heard that when we were private keep a good attitude smile fake it till you got it whatever it is there's all

science driven things behind that yeah I mean my god my grandmother taught me 90% of what I needed to know yeah yeah yeah you you your fears your stress are just thoughts yeah don't go to bed angry yeah take a walk when you're hot under the collar yeah take a deep breath yeah Take a deep breath is the physiologic sigh. And Andrew Huberman does an amazing spot on that. If you don't listen to the Huberman Lab, you should. It's amazing.

But he talks about the Physiolet. You said Huberman Lab? Huberman Lab. Yeah, Andrew Huberman, out of Stanford, professor of ophthalmology at Stanford Medical School, brilliant researcher, brilliant human being. And he's done so much in this wellness and resilience space by bringing sort of democratizing,

digestible bits of information that people can implement into their lives. So, you know, we've kept here almost three hours, but I cut you off earlier when you were talking about down regulation because I wanted to sort of follow the chronology of your story. But you said that you had at this point you had already started looking at down regulation. But when did, I mean, was it a big, was it just a slow process for you to start implementing into your life? or did, you know, at what point did it become a big focus of yours? 2015, let me a second, I want to make sure I'm accurate at this. 2015, I came across a company at a Boston called Whoop. Oh, yeah, they made that, yeah.

And one of the people there was kind enough to give me sort of a trial, and I started seeing what they were reading about and started to dig up. Now, I've always geeked out, like the amount of knowledge in my head, head that I have no business having across topics that I will never tap into is really absurd. But I've always been someone who likes to consume and read and understand. I think that's sort of an ADHD piece where it's like if I'm being stimulated, I feel a little calmer. And I went deep into like articles.

And same thing I did when I was in medicine. Like when I was a registered nurse, I read everything that the medical students and the residents were reading. When I was in a cardiothoracic ICU, I would read everything that they were reading because I never wanted to. wanted to be the person in the room that didn't have the answer. And you don't have to be an MD to know the knowledge and answer the question. And one of us are capable of reading a peer-reviewed journal.

Right. And we could even assess it to like, it seems more solid than this one. I'm going to believe this one until I have two that say this. Right. We can all do that. But for some reason, society, we believe, like, it has to be like an Instagram influencer with no qualification that endorses the idea. Right.

So I started looking into heart rate variability and I was doing a lot of working out and riding and hiking and I was trying to see like how I can affect my sleep. I was a terrible sleep in my entire life. And all of a sudden I sort of find these little correlations that happened between my sleep pattern and what I did during the day before or in the mornings of. And I started to discover for myself that the things that happened immediately after waking up were far more critical to my night's sleep. than the things that I did right before and by far and the science is proven that out right now first 90 minutes of your day actually is probably more critical to your sleep

and your over well-being than anything else really simple things you give an example no caffeine for 90 minutes after waking up period full stop I used to literally if I could have had an espresso maker next to my bed as my alarm that would shoot coffee into my open mouth I would have done it right

but um it disrupts a natural biochemical process that allows for focus and calm to take place. Wow. Yeah. And all you got to do is stay for 90 minutes and that afternoon crash that you get immediately goes away and you'll feel it on the first day that you do it. And then you'll say, well, that couldn't be.

But you do you do have caffeine after that, do you? Yeah, because that it becomes a performance enhancing drug versus a focus inhibiting action. Interesting. Right? So it's something like that. Bright light on your face within 15 minutes of waking up. Artificial or otherwise. You'd be well-served to put one of these right in there,

whatever room you're getting ready in and have that. If it's artificial light, Andrew Ruberman again says you need 15 to 30 minutes, but bright light plays such an important role in setting the time of when you begin converting into that melatonin, serotonin space, and getting ready for your drawdown in your sleep. Gratitude, okay? Gratitude needs to be practiced in a state of arousal. You need to be thankful when you're feeling the feet.

and you're in this great space and there is a biochemical process that takes place when you are grateful and if you want to practice that you can what's more important than the thing we need to learn more about is forgiveness gratitude is something I do to you or do for you I want to thank you both for letting me be here tonight this is like therapy for me and I'm not bullshitting you that I'm being very serious is amazing for me right now and I'm so grateful so I'm thanking you both to allow you to feel that and you both will downregulate. But if I want to do that for myself,

well, that starts with forgiveness for ourselves and for others. How many things are there in our world that we carry with us pissed off about, we just saw us go off on a diet, right? Army but breaking our heart every chance we get, right? Is it time for Steve to forgive Army? You know, Army, I understand. I knew you tried

to do right by me. You had your own stuff going on. But Army was just doing the best Army. Army was doing the best they could. Army had their own issues. Yeah, seriously. So our man, a tough child. So we go through these things, and there's so many of these different lovers we could pull if we just make the space for it.

But if we don't make the space for it as leaders or parents, right, or siblings or whatever it is, they're never going to be part of what's normal in our society. Okay. I'll give you a physiologic example. When you're in a state of hypervigilance, the energy demand, I'm simplifying this to the order. that's going to be like there will be endocrinologist actually slamming their face against the wall if they happen to overhear this explanation but essentially we have an energy demand that exceeds a consumption model when we are in a state of hypervigilance yeah okay everybody say you want to change your

body fat composition you have to sleep right well it's the sleeping sure but it's the sleeping which is what part of a fast but it's also the sleeping as a pillar of down regulation okay yeah but if you're in a state of hypervigilance your energy demand is such is that you're going to begin catabolizing muscle, catabolizing muscle to use your energy. Glycogen is going to be produced by your liver through a process called gluconeogenesis, and then you're going to have an insulin insensitivity. If you want to solve the problem, and this is speculative and anecdotal, it's both of the things science shouldn't be,

but I think if you want to change this onset of diabetes of the young or this increase in body fat composition of our teenagers, I think we should take a look at down regulation, and we should take a look at the elimination of social media because the numbers do not support that sports programs don't exist. The biological markers are not supported by. They're not exercising as much as they used to are climbing in trees,

but it is supported that they're not outside, which we know is naturally downregulated. So until we start fixing these things, right, because when you're metabolizing muscle and not burning body fat, you get a condition that we've all already heard the name for. That's skinny fat. That's this shift that takes place where people lose 10 pounds of overall weight,

but they increase their body fat by 5% and 10%. And then they have a type 2 diabetic picture. Right. The physiological piece of this is extraordinary. And until we start working on these things by pulling these levers that we can to live longer and live better and healthier, we're not going to solve the bigger problems. And those bigger problems of hypervigilance,

manifest themselves into suicide rate that we've all gotten the call on. Right. The divorce rate. The alcohol and abuse. None of these things are going to go, and we're never going to get back to be getting good social drinkers of alcohol if we're in a state of hypervigilance. It's not happening. It's fascinating.

We have a... That is a brilliant way to sum up, them. You know, we've had a lot of people on it. We've talked about post-traumatic stress quite a bit on the show, and we've, and we've, you know, we've talked to, you know, we've talked about stella ganglion blocks. We've talked about plant-based medicine. You know, we've talked about a lot of these things, but I think one of the things that we haven't really talked about up in this point,

at least not deeply, is this idea. Because I believe that all of those are, I think they're all good pattern interruptions. And they're all, you know, they're all a good way to, like, give you that break. But also, is there a way, once you're past steli-gangling blocks, once you're past hero doses of psilocybin and things like that, are those continuous? Is there a way to maintain once you interrupt that pattern? Those are the habits you're talking about, right? The habits. I'll frame it another way.

So let's imagine a world of proactive versus reactive. What I would argue is the need for those interventions are few and far between. It's the difference between a yoga instructor and a nutritionist versus a psychiatrist. Right. So I would say, like, step one, everyone that can be proactive and address it proactively should. Now is that going to eliminate all psychological trauma? Of course not. And a horrible example of that that nobody wants to talk about is military sexual trauma.

War zone rates are horrific, right? And you have people in an upregulated state that then undergo a physical sexual trauma. They don't stand a chance. So the interventions that you talk about right there in a reactive setting are necessary and appropriate. And some people just because of a confluence of different events that come place where it's like, I'm not meditating or breathing my way out of this. I need a pro. I need some drugs.

I need some guidance. I need a break in the pattern. Right. And it's for up to. Yeah. But that should be the anomaly. And I think most of this could be addressed proactively and sort of like, and I say institutionally or patternly or whatever the right word is, like as a pattern where we

implement these things into our lives. Like, you know, I use the example all time in the OR where they do a timeout before first incision. Right. Right. Well, what about weapons? Can we do breath work before and after both of those events? Right.

Right. Could you imagine? So what do we do? We get in a scrape overseas. We fire a bunch of bullets. People get wounded, whatever the thing that happens is, and then you go through and every army does some format of a lace report. Right.

Right. Well, what is the emotional triage that we need to be doing? What if every time you went somewhere and we're about to embark on something, I checked in with you for like your feelings, just making it up. to five score on technical competence, anxiety, sleep, and personal care, right? And what if we checked in and you came in every morning? I was like, how are you doing today?

Well, what do we say right now? We get this stupid, double thumbs up, living the dream, sarcastic, annoying and it doesn't tell us anything. But what if I came in you and I said, how you doing today? And you say, I'm about a 4334. And I know immediately where you are in the scale and what I can do to assist. Why are you anxious?

I tried to call my wife this morning and I didn't get her. she dropped the kids off at school and I really don't know where the hell she is. And then I could say, hey, can you keep calling his wife or texting his wife until we get an okay and a thumbs up on her? Right. And then somebody's on it. So at least you know somebody's on it while you're trying to perform whatever critical function is. Right. That would be extraordinary leadership.

And that's my goal for this endeavor I'm on right now to get to there. That level of honesty. We're, you know, I feel like we go for a whole other hour. Like where can people find you? You know, we talk about social media, but are you active there? Are you working on any, are you working on any publishing? So I've been approached a lot. It's funny that you bring it up.

I've been approached for speaking and I've been approached for a book. You know, my commitment is to HSS and I speak in the industry a lot, you know. But I think the message is important and whether that message is delivered to veterans. or the general population. I don't think it matters. Everybody knows a veteran. The communities are so much more intertwined. People could find me on LinkedIn,

but I don't have any social media presence, but people can find me at Steve 40 on LinkedIn. I'm the chief wellness officer at HSS, and I encourage people too just to share knowledge or if you need a hand with anything, like anybody that knows me. I think those links to, Steve, they're going to be really interesting for a lot of people.

Andrew Hubert. Huberman, yeah. Huberman. And then you mentioned one other, you mentioned was it Seth? Yeah, Seth Hickerson.

Hickerson. He, and I would have to, I'll check on the, on his company. You know, he was a guy that did some great work with us early on, or is a guy that did some great work with us early on. I haven't worked with him over the past like year and a half, but I wanted to make sure I credited him when I brought up

the emotional control routine thing. But there's a lot, and he has a mind. Is it steady mind? Steady mind, yeah, yeah. Okay. So he has, My steady mind is his company.

My steady mind. He works with NASA, and there's a guy named Alex Raines out of Oklahoma that works for his company. And John McCaskill, who's a Navy SEAL, who's somebody you should consider

having on the program. I'll even come back. He's a friend and an awesome guy, and he works in that, he has the Men Talking Mindfulness podcast. So I'll make sure I provide these resources, but, you know, We've got to get to a point where we're open to those.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I think one of the things that needs to happen in a lot of those instances is it people like you need to speak about them because so much of that, you know, like you talked about yoga, so many of those things, even though we can look back at, you know, Buddhism, mindful meditation, the aposton, you know, things like that. But then it went through this new age sort of, you know, where everything was presented through a new age lens, you know, in the United States. And nobody in the military wants to be tied to, you know, like the ideas, some of the ideas, whether the ideas themselves are laughable or the way they're presented are laughable. Yeah. But if you sheer that sort of, you know, that marketing and endeavor, right? Because New Age is really just marketing. If you shear that away and go back to a lot of

the original sources and then add that to now like what you say can be proven, you know, we can look at things now. Yeah. And say, wow, like this stuff is real. You know, and, you know, one of the things you say about the way it's presented is struck a card with me because I know if this existed in the military back in the day or even probably now, they'd be like, do push-ups until you down-regulate. You know, I'll keep yelling if you don't down-regulate, like where it should be. Down-regulate yourself, private? Yeah, yeah, right?

I can have, I can down-regulate you all that. Yeah. You know, so I think that's an important part of this where we recognize a different approach to these things. And I think there needs to be a bit of an al-a-cart. And, you know, like, I'll give you a great example, right? No one talks about religion. known right it's somehow how it's a third rail it doesn't really matter what the religion is but when we

talk about like the certain premises of different religions across the board most religions have elements of forgiveness have elements of gratitude have a code of conduct have a meditative component to it yeah you know and i think part of what we're facing in society right now is an abandonment of that structure right so to provide all of these things if you have a religious propensity that's great encourage pursuing it if it needs to be yoga or taoism or buddhism or whatever that is or if it just needs to be self-hypnosis or even if it needs to be cross-fit properly supported people need to know there are levers for everyone to pull and they fall you pull you pull the first one for me it was sobriety and then into sleep hygiene and then into breathwork and

i was actually yoga for about two years and all of these things went and you take these elements with you of what works and you literally can change your life with breathwork and instead of running to the medication instead of running to the pharmacologic intervention, we do this, right? Run a marathon. Everybody, I'm going to run a marathon. I'm going to do a halter marathon. Well, what was your 5K time? Well, no one's run a 5K because it's not heroic enough.

And we think that breathwork or sleep hygiene couldn't possibly fix our depression. Right. But study after study says it does. I think one of the benefits of some of the other interventions, like I say, whether it's a stella gangling block or plant-based. or you know what some of these are things is it if you tell somebody in distress you know when they are in that place where nothing seems like it could get better and they're like yeah breathing if they breathe for two or three days like they may not the the thing is is it if you give them a

break if you if you give them an opportunity to see that yeah that like you know step outside that box or look through a window and see something different, then they might be open to... They give you the space to... It gives you the space to... Yeah. Remember we talked early on about the assault on the census that take place, right? So if you're in this state of this chronic upregulation, you're not even in the room.

Right. Right. So how do you create space where they can be in the room and they could be present enough? Right. So sometimes breathwork, even for that two or three minutes, they'll create that hopefulness, will create that space. And then you have something to build off of. You know, that's why I like teaching the tool, right?

Because if you teach the tool of resonant breathing, they're going to get anxious again, especially if they're in a bad state and especially if they have damn good reason of a loss of a loved one or rending of a relationship. But what do we teach now? Like, what is the, if you were to ask a room full of people, and I speak publicly about this. And if I, and nobody ever answers honestly, but if I go to a room full of people and I is like, how do you deal with stress? 50% of the people will say a glass of red, which is the worst possible thing. And I'm not even on my soapbox about not drinking right now. But if you're talking about

decreasing anxiety, then alcohol is literally an accelerant for them. Right. But we say it, we preach it, and it's often leaders that are stating it. Right. Instead of saying that's the last thing you need. Right, right. So you're right, though, but there is a time for emergency intervention. There's a time for institutionalization. Like these things exist, and if you don't catch them soon enough or sometimes even when the, you know, elements of whatever the assault is hit at such a fever pitch that there's nothing but medical intervention and everything is going to work.

Right. It happens. Right. But it shouldn't have to. It's an escalation of force. And you want to. You want to use the pencil flare first before. Right.

So have you or do you, what are your dreams, I'll say? What are your dreams about bringing this to not just the veteran community, but the active duty military community? Yeah. It requires a cultural shift, right? So there's been a bit of a renaissance because nobody talked about. sleep or sleep hygiene in 2006 and 2007, but they're talking about it now. And there's a lot of people doing good work in the space.

Okay. But there's two things. Here's my dream. Okay. You want to solve the retention problem in the military? Well, you're going to need to solve the communication problem, which is a byproduct to hypervigilance, right? You only need to crush a 21, 22-year-old once by saying the wrong thing at the wrong time.

in any industry. And if whether you're Goldman or HSS or New York Press or the US Army or the Coast Guard or law and for whatever it is, nobody can afford those miscommunication opportunities where they say like how can you be so X, Y and Z versus let's talk about how we got here. So we can't afford those anymore. We have a workforce that's depleted as it is. We can't retain the people we want in the military as we want to. So that's the institutional solution there. We need to figure out. how to make this part of it. And that's going to require research and numbers. Real research and real numbers. And I'm talking measuring data points. And if you say like the military and you analyze a unit, there's a million elements that AI is going to allow us to take a look at. But you take a look at frequency deployments. You can take about the ethnic composition of the force. You can talk about the sleep hygiene and the physical fitness piece. And all of these things will go in to make up with some predictive modeling over the stress. And when I say like the ethnic, composition.

I bring that up. People are like, well, what if you have an individual that's a Muslim who is first generation that's deploying to a war zone

in a Muslim dominant country, there's a different allostatic load on that individual and some considerations should probably be made before we deploy that person. It's all hypothetical.

Right. Just as any other thing might be, if we were at war with Canada and we had a Canadian with family members in Montreal, then they would feel that same touch. Right.

So that, My dream is that at an institutional level, we start taking these things seriously and start mitigating these things institutionally. And that at an individual level, we start equipping these people in the world, all of them, with the tools necessary. So in the institutional level, we make room for the mitigation of it. At an individual level, we give them the training they need. Because we'd be more inclined to talk to them about a gym membership, but we'd be better served to teach them meditation. The iPhone is something that should be thrown in the ocean, and not the iPhone specifically. Right.

But any cellular device should be tossed in the ocean. But if we're not, there are things like Headspace and the Calm app and different things. And there's another one, I think it's called. That's one called Breathwap, actually. Okay. Right. And I think there's another one called Reverie, which is Salt Meditation app. These are good uses of that technology.

So if you're going to accrue some screen time, it should be screen time. It should be screen time that Don regulates us. Yeah. Upregulates us. Yeah. And that's my dream. So how do we get there? Well, I enjoy speaking about it.

And I'd love to speak more publicly about it. It's not about compensation or anything like that. Just getting the message out and making whatever I got left in the world, right? I'm 52. I hope it's a solid run. I think it'll be. I've taken pretty good care of myself, but we never know. But if I got 20, 25, 30 years left, we know that our lives don't exactly.

lead to longevity. Right. Right. But if you got X number of years left, well, what's my biggest achievement that I can make or what's the biggest impact? I think it would be addressing groups in a large scale among these topics

and helping them make space for it in their lives. It's fantastic. Steve, thanks so much. Thank you. I really appreciate it. It's amazing. I'm going to, so the 20-year war is like a coffee table book. It's fascinating and it has the profiles

of I don't even know how many you know veterans in it and I think you're page 130 Steve happens to be one of those veterans also Andy let's plug your book

quick too because you know we talked about leadership and we you know empathic like soon to be out in paperback this is honestly one of the best military books that I read because in it as a leader, like Andy, there's a lot of like self-reflection on like his choices as a leader and stuff like that, which I think is very human.

For any of your orthopedic surgical needs, the HSS, the hospital for a specialized surgery, special surgery, special surgery is like the best in the world. It is. I mean, without equivocation. Like with, it is numerous, numerous rating agencies. I think everyone places us at number one where we just got awarded number one for children's in the Tristan area, which is saying something. So if you, if there's a muscular skeletal issue that you have more on. More knee replacements than any other hospital in the United States, which is a topic close to a lot of our hearts. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

And the talent that you, that is there at HSS rivals. I mean, there's no, it's an extraordinary place and I'm so grateful to be a part of it. Oh, you know what? I'm sorry. I forgot questions real cook. We'll breeze through these because I know we've kept you here super long, but let me just, uh, do you mind pulling up the Patreon questions?

Or do you have it? We really deeply appreciate your time, your insight, your wisdom, your experience. So that's how that works. Behind the green cut. That's right. That's our saltwater tank, reject saltwater tank. Louis Vasquez, thank you very much. How did your work in hospitals mentally prepare you for combat?

Yeah, I think all of these things. So I always think about that, right? So I think sometimes that the mandatory age should be required for enlistment should be like 28 because I think there would be a lot less post-traumatic stress because life has a way of inoculating you to some of the challenges. and I think that understanding the physiology and understanding the mechanical piece of the human body gave me a great deal of confidence in my ability to receive care or give care if it was needed. I think one of the things, and this is an important one, and this is anecdotal again,

I think technical proficiency can be correlated or tactical proficiency can be correlated with post-traumatic stress. anecdotal but when you feel good about your job and you feel competent about it just takes the edge off of that stress and that strain decreases that out of static load and for me being in a position to help others and having the skill and knowledge to medically help others made me feel a great sense of purpose made me feel a good sense of belonging and I think that is the way in which it help prepare me things get a little bit less scary if you've seen some element of them before Joe's got you. Thank you very much. Did you work a lot with SOT A's as being an 18 Fox?

I did. And as an 18 Bravo. And I think it's an extraordinary line and profession. And we think of the cool guy stuff all the time, the lead slinger and the door kicker as we go to a more sort of quantified battlefield where like, triggers are needed in order to action objectives, the number of triggers and the specificity of which technology can identify them and exploit them, the importance of that skill set is just going up and up. So a couple of skill set like that with the tactical competence is going to make you a very, it's like the opposite of what I did. I went into like weapons sergeant and found out after the fact that if I went in as a medic or a comma person, you'd be infinitely more deployable.

Well, I think the future deployability is career fields like that. Yeah. And, you know, we talked about 19th group, and now we're talking about Sadi, so I just want to give a shout out to Gene Vance, you know, he passed away in 2002. Anyway. Was that the, what stood up to West Virginia? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. And then Cat-Chance. sir thank you for the donation and the sticker a cat sticker um D did you get that all right I'll pull it up real quick um and patron see here okay oh wait those are messages sorry guys uh all right uh I oh we have a couple here um hi Steve as someone with a rich background of fitness health and wellness what do you think about the proposed changes of going back to the APFT. And also, what do you think about the Army's biggest challenge

roadblock in regards to soldier fitness and fiscal ratings across the Army? All right. In reverse order. The biggest threat to national security, I think, right now, is the inability for us to field a force. And when we get down to the number of people that are willing to serve and able to serve and capable of serving without felonies and drug issues and all these different exclusions,

that is the, by far, I think, our biggest threat to national security and lowering the standard is never the answer. The idea that we would go back to the APFT right now or the original format of the APFT is quite possibly the most hilarious thing that I've ever been disappointed with Army about. Like we've been training in a different way. And even if you're not going to go back to the Army,

whether the new Army Combat Fitness Test or ACFT or whatever it was, that they change to, even if you didn't follow that by the letter and that has to morph, we can't possibly think that pushups and sit-ups and running is the entirety of the measure of the lethality of an individual. So I think it's both historical and tragic. Yeah. And I don't understand. It goes back to this.

I remember when they've, throughout history, they've made these like wide sweeping legislative changes in the military. And I'm all for change. right, I think it's a good idea. But like when we needed better body armor, we're talking like 2002, 2003, and there was a company called Dragon Skin that was out. And they're like drop testing it and field testing it

and nuking it and doing all this stuff for like, I'm exaggerating and I'm sure my facts are somewhat wrong. But it was like over the course of like five years that it still hadn't been fielded when they finally did like a 60 minute episode on it. Right? And it still never got fielded. Yet they'll do a reversal like this without an ounce of study.

Right. And it's just, what I understand is it's an individual saying like we're going back to the old way. Well, this is what we did. It was fine for us. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. Here's your wool. Yeah. And your musket. Yeah. So I think it's tragic. And I think I have no choice but to laugh about the absurdity of it if it's true and if it does go that way. Yeah.

It's just we injure soldiers. We release. I think for the most part every soldier that we get off active duty whether it's at five years or ten or fifteen years I'm not certain that we're leaving them better stronger and more mobile than we found them right and we have an obligation to do better than that um bill gage hey a bill bill is a former guest um love the show and the high side uh keep it up question for steve uh what are your thoughts on the future of the green bray with so much emphasis on cybersecurity, where there will always be a need for unconventional warfare? And do you ever see a war like the early days of Afghanistan that was cyber only example,

defeating an adversary with cyber only like SF did with embedded teams precision bombing? No idea. But I do know that what's the old saying that when they said like with the nuclear bomb, it's like how is the next war going to be fought? And they said it was sticks and stuff. But the one after that will be sticks and stuff. Yeah. I don't think the need for individuals on the ground is ever going to go away.

I think that clandestine is going to be a thing of the past. I think field craft is going away. When AI can analyze gait more accurately, when we can currently analyze a fingerprint, it's going to make any type of fieldcraft really obsolete. And I think that the only domain where, there's going to be a new kind of grit in the cyberspace. I really believe that there's going to be a new kind of gritty and scrappiness. I know that sounds silly, but I think that's what the future of special operations,

and it's the new domain. And why would you blow up a bridge to prohibit trucks from going over it when you can reallocate trucks that are moving on the road to a different location or shut the refrigeration units off of them without an alarm notifying the owners of the trucks that the alarm is off and the spoilage occurs. There's so many ways for sabotage. What we're seeing in Ukraine,

kinetically is the tip of the iceberg. I mean, cyber war, what the Ukrainians are doing, and I do hope they talk about it afterwards, because it plays right into what you're saying. Really? And I have no visibility on that, but it just seems intuitive to me. when you could shut off water supplies or natural gas

like I'm so vulnerable right now you know I got natural gas pipe to my house I got electricity that runs that I don't even know where it's generated or how it's generated right right you know you're more Mr. 14 I'm 30 years old majoring in cybersecurity and a while ago I tried to enlist in the army

but it wasn't qualified if I got in I would have gone with sire than try out for us f Intel certain like you is there any way I can still get to do what you did, like what PMC or private intel agencies should I apply to after I get my bachelor's so that I can still somehow live my dream. That's not great. That's an interesting question. What I would say is you said you didn't get in, and I don't know if that was an act.

I think it was medical. Okay. It was medical disqualification. If I remember, right. Well, if it's orthopedic, hit me up on LinkedIn. There you go. But I don't know on the civilian side. I would say that they're going to have to,

I'll tell you what, they are going to have to make physical accommodations for the technical aspects of jobs. And it's the same thing like, if they're going to require these soft skills that truly, there's this fundamental idea that everyone has to be a gunslinger. Right. And that served the Marine Corps and the military really well

because chances are if you were forward deployed in Western Europe, in the 40s you might end up having to engage regardless of what your job was that's changing right now we have guys operating and gals operating drones from all sorts of areas in the world so I think that the military is going to begin laxing on those physical standards so make sure you got a hard good answer on that and I wouldn't give up pursuing it and I know plenty of people that push and press for a waiver and

get them over time. Yeah, and that's one of the things we're seeing people with this amazing talent, you know, in cybersecurity. Yep. But a lot of them have that amazing talent because they weren't outside playing a ton or, you know, competing in in sports. They were, you know, honing their craft. Exactly. And there has to be, there has to be a real, you know, a real, a real answer.

answer to that other than just, well, this is the military. You're a soldier first. Yeah. I mean, yeah. 100%. Yeah. So that's it. That's our show.

We deeply appreciate everybody. We really appreciate you being here. Great to be here. Who do we have next week, D? Mark Polymorpolis next Friday or next Tuesday? Next Friday. Mark Polymopolis. I'll be back.

Thank you. Yeah. Yeah, he'll be here because Jack will still have the light sleeper out in the interline. Yeah, I've got Jack's apartment. That's right. All right, everybody, please like and subscribe. Join our Patreon. If you haven't already, just $5 a month can help keep our lights on.

Thanks, everybody. Thanks, Steve. Thank you all, Steve. Yeah. It was.