The Team House - The Team House Year in Review and What is Coming in 2022

Episode Date: January 1, 2022

The Team House year in review 2021  Want 2 bonus episodes per month and access to the bonus segments?  Subscribe to our Patreon!👇  https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse  Team House merch:  https://teespring.com/stores/my-store-10474963  Social Media Links:  The Team House Instagram: https://instagram.com/the.team.house?utm_medium=copy_link The Team House Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheTeamHousePodJack’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] #theteamhouse #specialoperations #covertopsBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

Being a parent can be really challenging. It's normal to feel uncertain about whether you're doing the right things to raise healthy and happy children. That's why Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five with free support services to help them build confidence in their parenting journey. Everyone deserves to have someone they can turn to for support with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today. Being a parent can be really challenging. Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five

with free support services to help them on their parenting journey. Everyone deserves someone they can turn to for help with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today. Special operations. Covert ops. Espionage. The Team House. With your hosts, Jack Murphy,

and David Park. Hey, folks, welcome to our New Year's edition of the Team House, our New Year's message that we did one of these last year. And we're going to do another one this year, just kind of doing a year of review and talking about the episodes that came out over 2021 and kind of where we're going into the future and what we have planned for 2022. I think in 2021 was really a year of expansion for us. 2020 was really just trying to establish ourselves and kind of what we do and what we're all about. And then this last year has been kind of expanding outwards and really building the team house. Increasing the quality, like the technical quality of the show was really important. And I think it increased tremendously.

we brought D on to produce, so many little things that made a big difference in the show. And then just making sure that we were bringing you more of what you wanted. And I did a little bit of statistics here to share with you as far as the guests who we had on the show in 2021. And some of the guests are counted twice because they did more than one thing while they were in their military service or governmental service. So over the last year, we had one guest who served in JTF2, Canada's counterterrorism unit. He was very polite, by the way. We had six U.S. Special Forces veterans on the show. We had one gentleman who served in Mac v. Saug, Studies and Observations Group in Vietnam.

We had two who served in the Special Air Service. We had two guests who served in Army Counterintelligence. We had one guest who served in Denmark's Sirius Patrol. We had four guests who worked as mercenaries during their colorful careers. We had one guest who served in the regimental reconnaissance detachment. That was something you guys kept asking me for. Have an RRD guy on. We did it.

Actually, we had him on the show twice. We had five Rangers on the show. We had one ground branch guy. We had three former FBI agents. We've had five journalists on the show. One SEAL Team 6 guy. One Secret Service member. Ten CIA officers.

One member of the Diplomatic Security Service. two J-Soc operators, one person who did cyber special reconnaissance in support of J-Soc. We had one J-TAC, one FSB defector, three guys who served in the conventional forces, one person who served in the Coast Guard, and one Apache pilot. So I think we covered quite a bit of ground in 2021. We get it done. Yeah. So also, the 31st, the front.

like this show is legitimately on New Year's Eve. So if you're watching this show right now, get a fucking life. Happy New Year. Happy New Year. I hope you had a good Christmas. Yeah, yeah.

But thank you so much for joining us. Our, you know, it's funny because people now, we're at the point now our channel where people with smaller podcasts and smaller states, you know, channels are asking us, Like, how do you guys make a successful podcast?

I was like, you just keep talking. And honestly, thank you. You know, from our humble beginnings, when really, you know, Patreon supporters, before ad revenue, before anything else, when Patreon supporters were helping us keep the lights on, you know, you guys have been incredible. And we want to keep bringing you the content that we have and allowing people. And I love, I love like all the different people that we've had on.

And, you know, a lot of them, one of the comments we get a lot from people when we invite them on the show is, well, you guys have had some legends on that show. Like I was just an analyst or just this or just this. I don't have those kinds of stories. And we're like, that's, that's not what we, we love war stories. But we want to capture the other stories. Yeah, but we're not hung up on just war stories. We want to tell everybody's story, everybody who had a different type of experience or who was part of some sort of history.

We, we want to give them the opportunity. We want, you know, this is like living history for us now. And I think when you have that sort of like diversity of guests, in their professional backgrounds, it tells this much larger story and gives this much larger insight into what is otherwise a hidden, if not clandestine and covert world, right?

Because a lot of the stories, our guests tell they intersect with one another, they overlap with one another. Right, and there are a lot of unsung heroes out there who may not have been shot at or ever, you know, pulled a trigger on a gun, but who were every bit as vital in, you know, these parts of history, but we would never hear their stories.

Yeah. And no, absolutely, Dave. And I would just like to reiterate what Dave said, that, you know, I really appreciate all of you guys supporting the show. And it really was the Patreon supporters who jumped in and kept this show running and helped it actually grow during a pandemic over the thing. So, I mean, it was really cool. And it really is a viewer-supported show.

Yeah. It always has been. Yeah. And even if you're not a part of our Patreon, first off, what's wrong with you? No, I'm kidding. We appreciate your support. We appreciate you watching our channel, liking our video, subscribing. All those things help us tremendously.

Just for some other interesting statistics from the year 2021, our videos had a combined viewership of 1.8 million views. we're up 14.8,000 subscribers. And I think we're coming up to like, we're getting close to like 30,000 subscribers, I think. We're at like almost, are we at 27 getting close to 28 now? I believe so. Something like that.

We're rolling. We're at 28. We're at 28? Wow. Yeah, it's awesome. So I think we'll probably hit 40,000 in 2022, which is a good place to be. Yeah. And I thought what we would do for this year of review is just kind of start off going through,

spend about a minute or two talking about each one of the episodes that we did during 2021 and maybe bring to light some ideas or people who missed some of those previous episodes. Maybe they'd like to go back and check them out if they missed it. And then we can talk a little bit about what's coming in 2022. Yeah. If you're a new viewer, we understand it. We do long form. We want to give people time to take.

tell their stories. We want to get personal with them. And we understand that it's almost impossible to go back and watch all this content. We get it. So we'll give you sort of a brief summation. A thumbnail sketch. Yeah. And maybe there might be something that interest you. So from our last New Year's message a year ago, I mean, well, so the previous episode we just, for this year, this year's Christmas episode was with Mark Lee. that wonderful artist that was a pre-recorded episode do you know what the pre-recorded episode we did for last christmas was it was gregg corker that if time flies doesn't it it does it doesn't feel like that long ago yeah um so gregg uh was kind of the last episode of 2020 and then our new year's episode

for uh 2021 and then the first episode for 2021 was a canadian jtf2 operator jeff Pazzi. That was a cool episode, man. And you don't get to hear from too many Canadian counterterrorism operators, you know, small but professional unit that they have. And, you know, it's interesting because I remember, you know, first off, he was an amazing or is an amazing guy. It was a great interview. I remember a lot of people, not a lot of people, but, you know, people saying, oh, well, he, like, he's not talking about a lot of stuff. And understand that even getting these guys on the show some time is an insurmountable task, which we surmount. But we understand, Jack and I both understand that there are a lot of things that our guests can't talk about. And this isn't hardball. It's the

team house. So a lot of times when our guests come on, it's because somebody else has vouched for us saying, hey, like these guys are not, they're not going to try to get a gotcha question. They're not going to like stay on you about something. It's professional. It's at a professional level. Yeah. You know, we feel privileged that, you know, one that you all watch, but two, that these guests do come on.

They share their time with us. And we're just, you know, so we're not going to get, we're not going to try to get somebody to open up about the inside truth of something. Well, I will. but if it's secret and they can't talk about it, then I get it. It's professional, right? Yeah. But, you know, on that note, Dave, I have grievances to air also about some of you fuckers in the comments section

who start talking shit about our guests like, oh, they say, uh, um, listen, buddy, listen, pal in the comments section. You're assuming their gender. I don't give a fuck who they are. I don't give a shit. What their gender is, you scumbag. We have people on this show, and I spend a lot of time getting people on this show who have never been interviewed before. Like, that's my thing is I want unique interviews with unique guests, people who are not normally interviewed.

So we're bringing you, like, exclusive interviews, like new stuff that you've never heard from before. And so we have people on here. They're not professional speakers. They're not public speakers. This isn't Jocko Willings TED Talk, okay? and yeah what is it deep just to jump on that first of the people that come on the show are extraordinary people yeah yeah so the scumbay commenter who's saying oh this guy saying uh um like or whatever you try going on a show live and talk about your achievements which you have none like try that on for size

and see if you're not going to say um or you know say like or whatever you know strip up a little bit And I don't say that to rag on Jock O'Willink. I mean, what I'm saying is he's a polished public speaker. He's good at what he does. We're having people on here who they're doing a sort of public speaking. They've never done it in their lives. So give these people a fucking break in the comments section. Get off their ass.

And like, if you don't like it and you're like, oh, there's too many omes and Oz, get the hell off of here and go watch TED Talks. Get out of here. Go away. I don't need you. You're fired. You're fired. Just go.

Use Team 20 for Manscape, though. That's my airing of the grievances about the comment section. The next episode was episode 76 in 2021. We had Nick Brockhausen on the show. Yeah. Who is a huge character, an amazing guy. He served in Mac V. Saug in Vietnam, and then went on to have all kinds of adventures as a security contractor after the war.

working with Jeff Miller also. Yeah, that was a fun show. Nick is the author of a couple books about Sogg, and also he co-authored a book with Jeff Miller, Vagabonds, which is about their time as security contractors. And yeah, so Nick is a very colorful character, so is Jeff, and you guys should go check out his books, both of their books if you haven't already.

That was a fun one. The next episode we did, I really enjoyed this one, and I enjoyed his book, John Gardner. He served in the Australian SAS, the Rhodesian SAS, served in a sort of gray area as a South African intelligence guy, and then as a private security contractor. And his book is actually behind you, Dave. It's The Fading Light by John Gardner.

I hope you guys will go check that out. John is a very interesting guy, and, I mean, that was a pretty extensive interview we did with him, So I hope you guys will check that out. Then the next episode, 78, was with Adam White, who served as a counterintelligence agent in the army. And, I mean, that's like a sprawling interview about Iraq. I mean, we didn't even get to Afghanistan in that interview. Yeah.

And actually, that's the one where we, me and Adam, Elon musted up. And you got to see your pal Jack smoking the reefer on a live stream. So Mary Jane. Yeah. The devil's lettuce. I don't do that very often. I usually just get, I drink more than I probably should. Which, you know, here's a fascinating.

And we know that, like, this video isn't going to get, like, quite the views that, you know, some of our other videos do because it's just Jack and I bullshit. So we're going to give you some insight scoop. One of our first guests, before the team house was the team house, before we really had a theme, one of our first guest was going to be Gary Boosie. And, yeah. And that fell through, unfortunately. But I was just, and I'm making a comment about Gary Boossey now, which I don't know is true. It's just seemed funny at the time I should caveat that. But as opposed to, like, smoking the reefer with Adam, we might have been doing lines of Coke with Gary Boosoo.

Who knows? Actually, he probably is clean and sober. But he is. He is. Yeah. Well, we went out and had coffee with him one night. and yeah, Gary, yeah, Gary is sober.

He's still a, he's a huge personality, to say the least. Yeah. He's quite a guy, obviously. Yeah, he is. The next episode 79, this was one that didn't get as many views, because I think people didn't know what it was. I really hope you'll go back and take a look at it, is we interviewed Casper Domso,

who served in Denmark's Serious Patrol, which is one of Denmark's special operations units. They have the Frogman Corps and the Jagger Corps. But then the third one is Sirius Patrol, and these guys patrol Greenland largely on dog sleds. And it's just like two guys out there for months at a time. So that's like a really unique interview from someone you don't get to hear from so often. I feel like there might be a couple others, but I feel like his is one of two interviews that are so underrated and I wish would get more exposure. not for our benefit, but for theirs.

His and then Marty Peterson's. We'll get the Marty in a moment. But those are two episodes where I'm like, I think people would really, really find this interesting. And it doesn't have the sizzle of like Sealed Team 6 or Delta Force or CIA, but it is really fascinating. Yeah, yeah, it's one of a kind, really. Episode 80 was with Chris Hoar,

who's the son of the legendary Congo mercenist. or a mad Mike whore and talking all about his father and his life and various adventures all over Africa. That was a really fun interview. Again, didn't get as many views as probably it should have. So I hope you'll reconsider that one and go and take a look at that because it's really some off-the-wall stories there too. The next episode was the one you guys kept bugging me about.

You wanted an RRD guy on the show. We got Mike Edwards. dude I served with in Ranger Battalion and he went on to serve an RRD. He's a super good guy and that one got a lot of views. I mean, people really were interested to hear from an RRD guy. I don't blame you. I mean, it's an interesting unit. Mike's an interesting guy.

That was a fun interview and we had Mike back. Again, we'll talk about in a sec. Episode 82 was with Lina Niani. One thing about Mike, he teamed up with Adam to do Project Exodus. They have a organization that are trying to get our Afghani. allies out of Afghanistan and stuff. And I've been meaning to talk to them about that because I've been doing stories about that subject.

I need to reconnect with them on that. Hino Miani, who's a Special Forces, combat diver, an officer, got to talk about some really unique missions and stuff that he did around Asia and in Africa also. That was a fun episode.

Yeah. Basil Bazz, episode 83, old school ground branch guy. Dude's got some stories. And a few of them, he was even willing to share with us. And an actor now on the blacklist and other. Yeah.

Okay, so here's another episode that didn't do, get quite the attention that, in my opinion, it should have because I don't think people understood what it was. Craig Gant, he was in the FBI's mobile surveillance team, MST. Like those guys are like highly trained to conduct like counter surveillance, counterintelligence operations and do like some really sneaky Pete kind of stuff. And Craig was a great guy too. I mean, just to talk to him, his time as an analyst as well. Yeah.

It's really cool. So I hope you guys will go back and check that out. That is episode 84. The next episode was with, was with West Morgan talking about his book out about, um, The U.S. military operations in the Peck Valley in Afghanistan. His book was the hardest place. That was a cool episode. Yeah.

So if you were really interested, you know, it's always fun to hear from operators and analysts and people who were in the thick of things. It's also really interesting sometimes to get these journalists on who have, you know, done this extensive amount of research to give a bird's eye view of what is going on in the area. And that was a fantastic interview. Yeah, yeah. And Wes is just like super knowledgeable. You know, he's a subject matter expert on this, on this thing, on this subject. Right. And can really speak in depth to it.

The next episode we did was with a guy I really admire Chuck O'Connor, who was one of the original members of SEAL Team 6. He was their master breacher. And he still works training training. Being a parent can be really challenging. It's normal. to feel uncertain about whether you're doing the right things to raise healthy and happy children. That's why Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five with free support services to help them build confidence in their parenting

journey. Everyone deserves to have someone they can turn to for support with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today. Showing your good side has many rewards. Become a donor at Griffith Plasma and your plasma can make life-saving medicines. Millions of people depend on these medicines to live healthier, more active lives. And every time you donate with Gryphals Plasma, you're compensated. You can receive over $500 the first month. Learn more about plasma and how it helps people at Gryfflesplasma.com. Units on breaching. And so we talked about his career and about problems with explosive breaching and how we can do it better to reduce the traumatic brain injuries that guys are getting.

So Chuck was really cool. He's a really cool guy. Another really cool guy, episode 87, Danny Colson. He was another, like, colorful character. And it was really fun. That was a lot of fun. And I still have, like, nerdgasms because Agent Colson from the Marvel universe, cinematic universe, is actually named after Danny Colson.

And Danny is like a walking piece of history. He's the founder of the FBI's hostage rescue team. I mean, that guy had a lot of knowledge and a lot of stories to share. Yeah, and his book was really fantastic. If you want to see what it was like to be a G-man back in the day. Dude, the story started off. He was working for Jay Edgar Hoover chasing communists around. Yeah.

Yeah. And we, so we had Danny on twice. And we had, so the one after Danny, episode 88, was with, Dennis Franks, who was also an FBI agent, and we're talking about chasing around drug cartels and the Russian mob. That was a fun one. And then Bill Gage, who was in the Secret Service. And Bill definitely came on. He spilled the tea.

He told some pretty fun stories about what goes on in the Secret Service. He wasn't there for the Columbia story. He missed out on all that fun. But there's still some cool stuff in that episode. The next one up, we interviewed Lindsay Moran, who was a CIA. case officers served in the Balkans. She's a lot of fun. I always enjoy talking to her.

And that was a really fun interview to do. That was episode 90 if you guys want to check it out. Again, another colorful character, Mike Perry, was episode 901. He was quite the storyteller. Like, very, very entertaining. Special Forces officer,

SIF Team Commander, did a lot of interesting stuff. So you can go check that out. And then we had Nick Brockhaus and Jeff Miller back on the show together to talk about their newer book, Vagabonds. And like before

private security contracting really went corporate, it was much smaller. And these two guys running around the 1980s and 1990s, like trying to drum up business and find different security contracts to do. And these guys were like running around Mexico. They got involved. Do you remember them telling the story about the Satanic Panic stuff?

Yeah. Yeah. They got dragged into that. They were like recovering people in Chechnya. There's some insane stories. So yeah, that is a... What was the number of that episode? That was episode 92.

I think that one's... It's a must watch, I think. The next one was Peter McAlees, who served in the British SAS, the Rhodesian SAS, 44 Pathfinder Company, and then was hired as a mercenary to assassinate Pablo Escobar.

It's like another must watch episode if you guys haven't seen it. Peter's an amazing guy. Yeah. Go check that out. Yeah. Yeah. We were fortunate to have in studio Jessica Donati. She's a Wall Street Journal, journalist who spent a lot of time in Afghanistan.

And she wrote a book called Eagle Down about U.S. Special Forces in Afghanistan. I really hope you guys will go and check that out. Jessica's, she's the shit. You should go check her, read her book, if nothing else. but the interview was a lot of fun as well. Yeah. Then the next episode 95, we had another counterintelligence agent on the show.

That was a fun one. And yeah, I hope you guys will check that out. We had some pretty cool stories in there about counterintelligence. Then we had Mike Edwards back on for round two. He had some more stories to tell. and actually we were fortunate that like the whole family was in on that one his wife was there his daughter came in on the end my daughter came on the show at the end uh that was fun and then we had for round two a friend of mine from fifth special forces group caleb phillips yeah um to talk about his that episode was specifically about his time in special forces it was i mean it's always fun to talk to caleb he's like one of my best friends uh then again another round two with mark palomaropola who's a long time CIA officer had him on. And then again, another round two with Danny Colson

to finish up talking about Waco and Ruby Ridge and like some really controversial stuff. Then our episode 100 team house party, by far the longest episode we did because we just turned the cameras on and started live streaming and just had pizza and drinks and friends of ours drifting in and out for like five hours. Yeah, that was enjoyable. I mean, I, for one, I was fun.

I was like lit when we were done with that. I was lit. Your girlfriend, Maria, it was on. Alana was back on. Ian Carusagee popped in. Ian Scotto came in for a while. It's going to be a little while still before the episode 200 party, but I look forward to it. It'll be fun.

Yeah, I still haven't recovered from the one. Like, hopefully by that. I'll be able to drink again. Well, I'm a drink. The funniest part about that at the end was our debate about Batman and whether he fillets or not. Yes. Batman does go down south.

He does. And then we had Chris Peranto on the show. Yeah, it was a fun show. Yeah. He's a really good guy. Yeah. Doing the Battleline podcast with my buddy Ian Scotto. So if you guys haven't, go check out Battleline.

Yeah, for sure. There's good stuff on there. Dave's on there. I'm on there. And others, I mean, you'll find something you like on there. And then we had Steve Silva, who served in DSS, the Diplomatic Security Service. Again, kind of a unique interview. And Steve had like a real depth and breadth of experience in DSS.

So I hope you guys will go and check that out. And then episode 103, the widow spy with Marty Peterson. That was actually an incredible story about her journey from becoming a widow, her husband, who served in SOG and then served as a CIA paramilitary in Laos was killed. She decides to go and get some payback and joins the CIA herself, becomes a case officer and is stationed in Moscow. She is the first female case officer to work in the Soviet Union behind the Aaron Curtin. I honestly, in this day and age of promoting women and women's empowerment,

and all these things. I cannot believe that she is not a household name. I cannot believe that these people with this the power to promote, you know, this type of thing. Like some of the women that they promote are like why,

I'm sorry, but why is Kim Kardashian more famous than Marty Peterson? Marty Peterson, everybody should know her name. There should be a mini series on HBO or Netflix or the big actress. Yeah, yeah. Like it should be a, a perfect 10 episode miniseries her story when you talk about powerful women it's always these

women in media you know or or when they're honored or stuff like this how could a woman like this go unrecognized i just don't understand it yeah and i mean marty did the job in denied areas running strategic assets i mean incredible stuff yes yeah moscow in the 70s doesn't get harrier right for a CIA opera it's like the super bowl of espion i i i would say, first off, for any of you who just want a really good story, read her book and listen to this episode, for any of you who have daughters who you are trying to find role models for or trying to encourage, if I had a daughter, you know, I would want her to watch this episode because it is, and I'm saying we have some great women on here who are great role models, but I feel like

Marty's, Marty was like a, she stands out. She was a, a, a groundbreaking. you know um she was the glorious stymant of the or of the intelligence world i don't mean you know what i mean like she yeah yeah she deserves to be known and uh read her book also the widow spot it's a phenomenal book uh episode 104 we had paul how on the show i don't think the dude needs any introduction like you know who he is if you haven't seen the episode go and watch it i'm talking about his career in J-Soc service in Mungadishu during the Battle for the Black Sea in 1993. We also got to talk about Panama and his time down there during the invasion. Yeah, look, you know the deal.

Go watch it. It's part of Special Operations History. Episode 105 was one of the more unique interviews we did. I'm really happy that we could have Jade Parker on the show, who what she did was unique. You don't get many interviews of people like this. She was basically doing counter-IS operations online going into these, like, chats and stuff. She's a fascinating woman, too, because she just kind of got interested in this field and happened into it from a completely unrelated. She wasn't like government or intelligence or anything like that.

she just like developed the talents to to create this right this like job opportunity and did some pretty badass stuff targeting some real assholes yeah and uh and so she tells she has some pretty great anecdotes and stories about targeting ISIS uh in the electronic domain if you will um but yeah she's she's one of the smartest people i know and um i hope people will check out her interview and You should probably hassle her a little bit to start publishing and like writing books and stuff. Yeah, her take with her accelerationism stuff is legit. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah.

Then we had Christina and Ryan Hillsburg on, a husband and wife CIA team. And that was one of the funnest interviews that we did in the last year. Yeah. A lot of the stuff we cover, it's quite serious. And I'm glad that we're a serious channel and we cover some heavy topics. but talking to them too was just really fun. Yeah, yeah, it was. And, you know, it's sort of like how they met, you know,

how they were both kind of checking each other out. And work together in the agency. It's cool. I get, yeah, this was our biggest episode for 2021 talking to Tony Brooks about his book, Leave No Man Behind. He was one of the Rangers deployed to find Marcos Luttrell after Operation Red Wings went south. And it's a great story, and Tony tells it very well.

And obviously there's no shortage of public interest in this. Yeah, yeah, it's surprising. I mean, I guess it's not surprising, but it is in a way kind of surprising, like how many people are absolutely fascinated by that story. I think because the book did so well and the movie did so well, it's people know about it. Yeah.

You know, and yeah, no, I mean, I don't mean to sound like salty or anything like that. I'm glad that people are paying attention to Tony and his book. It's just interesting what the public mind is kind of centers around and what it kind of doesn't really pay attention to. But nonetheless, I mean, I'm glad that people watch the interview and that Tony's getting the attention and that, you know, hopefully people are reading his book. I think it's definitely good that there's another take on somebody else on the ground,

like, you know, Rangers who went out. A different perspective. Yeah, totally. And, I mean, that was like a pretty gnarly story he had to tell. about recovering the bodies of, you know, fallen seals and, um, and pilots. I mean, that's some tough stuff. Uh, then we have up on, and not really an episode. It was a bonus episode that we made public just to show what we do for bonus episodes. Uh, we had my friend Chuck Rogers on the show, who is a fiction author. And, um, always fun to talk to Chuck and, uh, intersects

with the military stuff, the same way that our Mark Lee episode we just did, does. Um, so I, I hope people will go and check out Chuck Rogers. And he's one of my favorites, if not my favorite action-adventure author out there. So I hope you guys will check out his work. Then episode 108, West Bryant, who was a J-Tac, served in the strike cells, and did a, wrote a whole book about strike cell operations fighting ISIS. And I'd highly recommend people check out that book because other than like, Jade Parker and West Bryant, there haven't been too many public accounts about how we targeted and killed ISIS.

Like, that story has not been written yet. Wes and Jade tell a part of it. Yeah. And so I hope you'll go and check that out. Because that's like contemporary, no shit counterterrorism operations. Like you said, living history. And then again, this wasn't a formal episode of the team house, but it was something that was topical was happening at the time. We did an episode about the veterans who were scrambling to evacuate Afghan allies as the country collapsed and fell to the Taliban.

It was actually Mick Mulroy, who mentioned it to me and said, hey, we should do something about this. And I was like, well, we have this platform, the team house. We cover these sorts of topics. This is happening right now in real time. So we had Mick Mulroy on. We had Mike Jason on to talk about that subject as it was happening. and I'm glad we did. I think it was the right thing to do.

Absolutely. And I was glad that we could, in our own way, spread the word about what was going on. Episode 109, another must watch, Jamie Caldwell, who is a former unit operator, must see Team House episode. Like, go check it out, man.

This guy was at Torabora. He was deployed to Iraq. I mean, Jamie's career is like, I don't, I don't, he's going to make fun of me for saying this. It's almost like something out of a video game to listen to some of his stories. It's like, really, man? But he got to do some incredible stuff in the military. And I hope you guys will go check it out.

Episode 110, a very unique interview. A former FSB officer, Jan Newman. That's a unique interview right there. And I hope you guys will go check it out about how that dude joined the FSB. Did FSB operations, sort of nebulous, kind of dark stuff that went on during his service there and how he ultimately defected to the United States. Yeah. Yeah. That is a really fascinating view into a foreign intel service that has its own problems during a time when the country, you know, Russia was having problems.

And it really kind of, it's very unique. Terrific insights. Yeah. And then the whole story about how the CIA helped them defect to the United States. It's CIA and FBI. I got to go back and listen to that one because that was the one we were having some audio issues with and I was just, I couldn't even,

I didn't even pay attention to the whole thing. I got to go back and listen to it. Yeah, check it out if you haven't. The next episode, I'd say this was our most controversial episode for 2021. We had David Phillips, the author of Alpha about the Eddie Gallagher story. And people got big time butt hurt

about that episode. and I make no apologies for it. I did. Like Jack and I kind of differed on this. Like I definitely feel as though there should have been more of a count, a point, counterpoint. You know, because generally the people that we interview are like historians. This was more of an investigative journalist. And we like, I 100% like have faith that David Phillips did his work.

but unfortunately like I do I did feel like well yeah I can see like people's point of view like people who maybe listen to both sides because I really haven't I haven't paid much attention and hadn't paid much attention

to the Eddie Gallagher case like I knew the broad brush strokes and I feel for myself just me personally that I could have gone in better prepared to be able to bring up some of the counterprivile points that other people who are very familiar with the case would have brought up.

So, you know, yeah, so like when, you know, and this is just, like, Jack knows a lot more about these types of things in general. I've followed the whole thing. Yeah, in general than I do. Front the back, unfortunately. But I felt, you know, generally when somebody comes on, either Jack or I will read the book. I read it. Yeah.

And in this case, generally that works for us because we're talking about a person's personal story. So really, only one of us really needs to have the roadmap, the book to follow and be familiar with. And then the other one, like we can fall in, you know, and ask the more, you know, in-depth questions outside of the broad outline. In this case, though, it was a very different type of story or different type of story. or a different type of book. And I feel like looking back on it, I wish I had read the book in advance and then sort of, you know,

researched like what people's counterpoints were. But that's just how I feel about my own participation in it. Yeah, I mean, I don't know what counterpoints you would bring up necessarily. I think that from my point of view, I mean, people talk about here out both sides, which I think is really important. I would kind of agree with that point of view if Eddie Gallagher was somehow muzzled or silenced and wasn't allowed to say his piece, I would

absolutely agree that, you know, we should air that side as well. But Eddie has done podcast after podcast. He's been on Fox News. He wrote a book. I mean, I think he's like buddies with President Trump. I mean, this guy has exposure. He has a platform. He has told his side of the story. So both sides are very much out there. And I think Eddie's side of the story has been told ad nauseum.

There have not been very many opportunities to hear the point of view of the other seals in his platoon. And I felt that's what our episode with David Phillips represented. To me, that was something that was very interesting about it is in the comments. And if you guys go, you don't even have to watch

the episode if you haven't seen it and you're not interested in it. But if you like, you know, internet drama, like the comment section is very spicy. And we haven't gone through and deleted people's comments and things like that.

Like that's, we're not about that. But it's interesting how people, Jack and I are both huge supporters of veteran, you know, of veterans in general, but, you know,

of charities and things like that. But it's interesting how some people were like, oh you guys yeah you know you won't even listen to a vet like you're going to take a journalist over a vet and it's sort of like well what about the the other four vets who did who like spoke out against him like we are their voices count like which vets are we not listening to or is it just the veterans you agree with yeah yeah so um you know there are definitely two sides of that story and you know Brian's you know Brian

Brian. David? Yeah, sorry. David did a ton of work, you know. And the other thing that was interesting to me was that he, was that he's done a lot of writing in the past before that. Like he approached this book. He was actually on Eddie's side initially and thought that maybe it was post-somatic stuff, you know, thought that it might be these things because he had done a lot of work

in the past to the benefit of veterans, you know. Yeah, I actually know that for a fact because I remember interviewing him about some of the stuff he did about like DMT and stuff being used to treat PTSD. Right. And well, not only that, he had won a journalist award. I can't remember which one for some of the work that he had done on, I believe, Fort Carson soldiers, you know, getting them some justice. But here's the deal.

Again, I know it's a controversial episode, but I feel that. from the perspective of you, the viewer, and with respect for your intelligence, you can read Eddie's book, you can read David's book, you can watch the interview we did with David, you can watch the many interviews out there that Eddie Gallagher has done, and you can come to your own conclusions. I'm not telling you what to believe. I'm not trying to force-feed you anything. This information is out there, and I think we should all look at it as adults and not have like emotional over-the-top reactions about it, like happened in the comments section, as it often does. Like, this is information, and you should take it and think about it and weigh it,

and you come to your own conclusion. You should think about it and come to your own conclusion, which might be different than mine. And, you know, it's okay. We can disagree on some things. For sure. The next episode was with Bob Adolf, who we had on once before, this time we had him in studio, served in special forces, and then he served as the UN chief of security in Iraq and a few other places. And Bob was fun, man. I actually, I went out for drinks with him beforehand, and I wish some of that conversation could have been on air as these things happen sometimes. But I really enjoy the conversation with Bob. He's a very smart, articulate guy. It was fun to have him here in studio. Yeah. Yeah, he has a fascinating, I mean, fascinating past.

Next one, this was a good get. I had to work him a little bit, Gene U. I was very, happy to have Gene U on the show. A first Special Forces Group officer served in the Philippines, served in South Korea, served in Iraq. And now he is the CEO of Black Panda, which is a security company specializing in cybersecurity now. And Gene has stories for days. And he's another one of those guys who just sit down and listen to him talk for hours and hours.

He's written three books about his military experiences. So like I said, he has a lot of stories. Go check that out. It's episode 113 with Gene U. highly recommend that one. Yeah. And it's funny, a side note about Gene is, you know, in your career or like there are urban legends everywhere, right?

Like the people who bought a crocodile and let it loose in the sewers. And like there are like legends about different things everywhere. nobody actually knows the origin. Well, there was a legend that Jack had known or sort of, you know, had heard of about pizza delivery in Sears School. And then it come to find out that it was Gene. Like it wasn't just an urban legend, but Gene was the person who, you know,

who accomplished that. It takes a certain person now. to just roll the dice. And I love that story where he's like, I could feel this spirit talking to me. There was a fork in the road. My life was going in two directions. And the spirit was saying,

what are you going to do, Gene? Yeah. I love that story. The next episode was, this was a great one, Ray McPadden, who served in 10th Mountain Division and 2nd Ranger Battalion

and talking about his memoir and his time in Afghanistan. He just had an incredible story. You read the book. Yeah, it's, it was, sorry, yeah, it was a great book. I mean, it was, we're talking about Ray right now, right? Yeah, Ray McPadden. Yeah, so it was, first off, Ray's an amazing guy.

Forest Ranger out at Yellowstone. Yeah. And he invited you and I to come out there and get the VIP tour. Yeah, sorry, I was looking ahead. But, yeah, he, yeah, it was a great book. It was a really good guy. Next episode up was with Mick Mulroy, a proper interviewed team house episode with Mick, who served as a CIA paramilitary operations officer.

And I think it was good to hear, you know, him be able to come on and talk publicly about, like, hey, this is what a PMO does. This is what a, you know, ground branch guy does. This is what the job is and really like shed some light on there. You know, it doesn't have to be something. obviously we've had a lot of CIA people on here and any intelligence service has its secrets, but there's some good healthy public engagement, right, taking place there. Yeah, and I think, you know, Mick is, you know, he is one of the first, I think, modern,

like paramilitary operations officers, you know, who has been able to speak so freely. And, you know, obviously everything that he talked about has been cleared by the publication review board and everything. It's really rare these days to, you know, everything is so tight hold for so long. Like we're having guys on who were, you know, paramilitary a long time ago. Or maybe up recent, but they can't talk about more recent. So it was really nice, like getting like mixed insights into how, you know, special activities went from very small to just kind of blowing up after 9-11, you know. Then we had episode 116, Luis Fernandez. That was a really fun one.

He was in the 82nd Airborne served in Afghanistan. He's a great storyteller. He's a lot of fun. That was a great episode, and we're glad that between Ray and 10th Mountain and Luis in 82nd, we're able to have some conventional guys on to tell their story, which is often different than the sort of normal special ops narrative or story to tell a different, a different side of the conflict. And that's one of the things I think is very interesting is, you know, special operations is very sexy in the minds of Americans. And, you know,

movies are made about, you know, special operations forces, you know, the commando and whatnot. To hear the conventional guys, you know, guys in the 10th Mountain, guys in the 82nd. And what they were doing because the special operations model in Afghanistan and Iraq was typically was typically push out for a raid a nighttime raid you know maybe maybe go back reset push out again and then be back you know at the fob or whatever to sleep during the day or do some train during the day or whatever but it was this it was sort of more like a SWAT team a wart team a wartime SWAT team type thing where you're getting called out where these conventional units were like your beat cops who are out there all the time, but in very, very hostile environments where they were

constantly undermaned, undersupplied, and under fire, you know, and it's a hard grind out there. They really, their stories honestly need to be told a lot more because I would say that even though the special operations mission seems sexier, the conventional. The infantry is the army. The infantry is the army, and they were actually in far more, like, knocked down, drag out day after day engagements than, you know, special operations has the luxury of choosing their time. Black helicopters in the night. You know, yeah, you know, they're not sort of being put out there as bait, you know, engaged by, you know, recon by fire type thing. Movement to contact. Yeah, exactly.

And they're doing it for 16 months. Remember Ray says... For 16 months. That's insane. Yeah, crazy. With very, like, very little support. That was, yeah, because Ray talked about that. And actually, you know, about how they're just out there with almost no support at all, you know.

Episode 117, we had another Ranger on, Ross Ritchell, talking about being deployed to Baghdad and doing ops in Sotter City. and he wrote a novel called The Knife, I believe, if I recall correctly. And Ross had a great story. And we're also able to talk about like the transition to civilian life and PTSD and kind of have, I think, a healthy conversation about those topics. Yeah, and we've been fortunate to have that conversation with a few people. And I know that people have reached out to us, you know, veterans who have been struggling post-traumatic stress. but either have not wanted to acknowledge it or didn't realize it or, you know, we're worried about the stigma of coming forward with it. And actually hearing people on our show and how they've kind of dealt with it, you know, from all types of units.

You know, they've said, hey, like, watching your show has actually helped me come to the decision to seek help for this. That's cool. episode 118 dare I say one of my favorites actually we had Douglas London on the show who served in the CIA for 34 years and like Doug did not hold back he was not holding back folks

He spilled some tea Yeah or sip some tea What is it? It is spilled it is built okay Yeah told it like it is Some really incredible stories Did not shy away from from criticism of his former employer either

I mean he had some things to get off his chest And I thought it was a terrific interview. I really enjoyed talking to him. And then again, you know, this episode didn't get the attention it should have either was Matthew Chaps, Cothran, who was a Marine K-9 handler. And he is the host of Zero Block 30 on Barstool Sports. I actually talked to him yesterday. Oh, did you? Yeah, I did a short interview with him because he was getting fucked over by the VA.

And he threatened them in the sense. He said, I'm going to record this review interview you're doing on my, on my. my VA disabilities and I'm going to play it on our show and within like two hours they've reversed everything they're like you're on permanent disability don't worry about it it's all taken care of really yeah that's amazing man that's what we need to do we need to we need to we need to we need to shame yeah yeah for and it was like you know he was like imagine the people who don't have that kind of platform and they can't do that right you know old people destitute veterans right people were not very tech savvy trying to navigate the veterans affairs system and yeah they're fucked and so

you know uh chaps as he goes he goes by uncle chaps on the on the show uh he's very passionate about trying to help other veterans with that kind of stuff and that is such a fun episode he is such a great storyteller he is so entertaining like if you if you're commuting to work or whatever and you're just stressed if you need to get away from the wife or get away from the husband or other kids or whatever. He, he, he and, uh, and Louis Fernandez are like, both fun. They're, they're both like so entertaining to listen to you. They're, they're just, they're, they're a great time. And Chaps was no joke either. I mean, he was a canine handler in Fallujah. He took around through the arm, um, struggled, struggled to transition back afterwards and, uh, assaulted a

police officer while I was drunk, ended up in jail, did what he did a couple months in, in jail. Yeah, I don't remember the time. And I mean, fortunately, like, fucked up his life pretty bad. And he had to turn everything around. Yeah. You know, wasn't an easy journey for him. Yeah. You guys can also check out Jack on Zero Block 30. Yeah. He did an interview. Jack was on zero block 30 recently. Yeah. And Chuck Chaps out on his. You know, we, like, we, we have friends in this community that, you know, we don't feel like it's not competition because people who, you know, love this kind of stuff. It's, you know,

there's, there are great people, you know, Chaps is one, check him out, check out Ian and Chris on Batteline. Check out Ryan Fuget

on combat story. Like there are some other phenomenal people in this space. And we all have a different style and, you know, just don't leave us, please.

But we don't, but we don't mind. If you guys had to choose, choose us, obviously. We're, we're polyamorous when it comes to our relationship

with you as, we just don't want to lose you. No, no, I try to have, and I hope we always have good relationships with those people who are sort of adjacent to what we're doing. And I think it benefits the viewers at the end of the day because you and I and D, we can't cover it all. No. It's impossible.

So it's really good that, like, Ryan is out there, that Ian is out there and that they're doing similar things. Yeah, absolutely. The next episode was Sean Naylor, a pretty prolific national security journalist, covered tons of special operations stuff, did a lot of stuff on, on Afghanistan. He wrote Relentless Strike, the history of J-Soc. We did, we did three hours with Sean and still didn't get to everything. We're having him back on the show next year. I'll talk a little bit about that when we talk about what's coming in 2022, but we're going to do a second episode with Naylor for sure.

You know, and there's also like going back to Ray's story. Ray, we did an hour. bonus show with him. About a rack. On Patreon. So, when he was in. There's some, there's some baller stuff on, on Patreon.

Yeah. Bonus content for you guys. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, I was sifting through the Patreon. Sorry. No, please.

And Mike Vining's Patreon episode is like insane. It's about like the, when they tagged up with, HRT and like Posse Comitatis was issued and stuff. In Georgia. Yeah. For the Georgia person. Oh, yeah.

I mean. That's on Patreon. And it's like a 40 minutes. There's George Hand talking about locking out of subs. Javier Mackey and the monkey. The monkey story. Yeah. Like there are some,

because sometimes when people, like when our guests know they're behind a paywall and that the people who, you know. It's a more limited audience. It's a more limited audience who are into us and into the content. They feel a little more free to talk about things that, you know, they may not want just out there in the public. Yeah, I mean, there are literally, at this point, there's got to be like days worth of bonus segments with all kinds of fascinating people.

So, yeah, I mean, I think it's a pretty good deal for the Patreon supporters. Then we had another journalist on Toby Hardin, who wrote first casualty about the first CIA team into Afghanistan. And you read that book. Yeah, it was phenomenal. And he had unprecedented access to. to the people to, you know, the first CIA team into Afghanistan. You know, the agency, they didn't bless off on it, but they didn't, but they were aware of what was going on. They didn't put the kibosh on him. And he was allowed to interview some of these

people with an agency lawyer sitting in the room, you know, just to make sure that everything was copacetic. But they gave him a lot of, not they gave him, but they didn't restrict him from having this access. And there's, it's an amazing read. It was a great interview. Yeah. Some stories that I'd never heard before. So I hope people will go and check out his book. And then we had Caroline, episode 122. It's another pretty unique interview. She started off in a Coast Guard and then became a CIA analyst. And she was, what did they call it, Advanced Analytics? I think, yeah. So she was doing like the meta analytics at one point, like big, big data stuff for the CIA.

And I mean, that's like something I'd love to know more about, like, but probably I'm not allowed to know anything about what's going on up there. But Caroline was really cool. And she wrote a book called A Fairly Smooth Operator, which is out now. If you guys want to check it out. The episode is 122 if you want to watch her interview. Then the big crossover event with, another YouTube channel combat story, Ryan Fuget,

we had him on the show talking about his service. He served as an Apache pilot, did stuff in Afghanistan, some pretty hairy missions, and then transitioned over and worked for the CIA. And now he runs the YouTube channel

Combat Story. And I've been interviewed by him. Dave has been interviewed by him. So, like, yeah, if you like the Team House, you'll like combat story. There's a lot of, like, crossover appeal. And Ryan is really just a fantastic human being. And he's very polished, you know, in the way he interviews. Like he, he's very insightful, very perceptive. He asks great

questions. One, you'd love his episode on here. He's a very fascinating person. And two, you would love his podcast. Yeah, I can guarantee. And then we had in studio, Ken Glodette, who served in the 173rd in Vietnam, then in the Rhodesian White Infantium, and where he did some combat jumps, then in 44 Pathfinder Company in South Africa, served under Peter McAleese. Again, some crossover appeal here. And he continues to this day of work as a private investigator. Ken is another interesting, very colorful, interesting guy who you could probably listen to,

tell stories all day. And, yeah, we talked to him for about two hours. Yeah. Hearing some of these stories. Yeah. Good stuff. and then we had our interview with James Lawler or Jim he goes by episode 125 who served as a CIA operations officer for many years that was just last night well last night for us you know for you guys

a few weeks ago yeah and that again one of my favorite episodes I think because his stories were just like so wild and very insightful and listening to like he was a hardcore case officer like it was a fun interview and he is a fascinating human being he's like a very like I sense like a suit and tie sort of case officer but like that's the kind of guy you want at the CIA yeah like he developed dudes for like a decade before he recruited them as a source in one or two cases who's talking about yeah like that's some gangster stuff stuff right there. That's like a plotter, a thinker. That's a guy who's playing chess, you know, over a long period of time. Yeah. No, it's fascinating. And, you know, I just actually found

of something, first off, watch his episode, you'll love it. We talked about Jack being interviewed on combat stories. We just, and Jack was interviewed like a year ago, maybe. Something like that. And we actually just posted that on our channel. So if you haven't checked that out, either check it out on our channel or combat stories. You know, whoever you want to give those. advertising dollars to but check it out and um and i just realized we're recording this on let's say 1218 you guys are watching this on 1231 please in the comments put the winning lottery numbers from the last week i'm not sure if this how how time travel works but yeah it the only time i've ever experienced the time travel is when i drink too much during the show

And then like I wake up the next morning like, whoa, what the fuck? Or three days later. Yeah. Rip Van Winkle. Yeah. Like Andy Milburn's episode was like that. Yeah. And then the last episode for 2021 was Mark Lee, who's my friend who did the covers for my novels.

He served in the Singaporean military and is a really prolific artist who does a lot of military-themed artwork. His art is fantastic. And just so you guys know, there's a little bit of a nerd alert here. Very little of the interview was about the military and his time in the Singapore military. Like, we went full on, we geeked out majorly. So we know for a lot of you, that's not your cup of tea, but some of you're going to fuck. I think you're going to love it. It was, I mean, it was intended to be a fun, relaxing Christmas special.

Yeah. So a little bit off, off kilter for what we normally do, but that's okay. Yeah. It's supposed to be fun. And that's 2021. I mean, we covered a hell of a lot of ground in the last year, I think.

It's been amazing. You guys are amazing. Our guests have been amazing. Every time we sit in front of these guests, I just, I feel so blessed that they have, first off, chosen to take a Friday night,

you know, to spend two or three hours with us. And, and open themselves up to criticism in the comments, like this person says a lot. Like, you know for for somebody who is not a celebrity or used to public exposure it's kind of a big risk to go on a live yeah yeah a live we're recorded live nobody else out and if i say any one thing that's just a little wrong

that you're going to have all these people ragging on you yeah yeah like i don't i don't care i'll just tell you guys like kiss my ass but like some people like normal people actually like did they really want to subject themselves to the i was i said normal people jacques is that i'm obviously see not normal. Yeah, I'm a mutant. And my skin, my skin is a mile thick. Um, but yeah, the average like regular person, even like somebody who's a veteran. You shouldn't waste your eyes. That, that probably saw that. Oh, I do have the beard oil. Yeah. You know, which I use, but yeah. Oh, that's a, that was a great. I, we're not paying us to do this right now, but check out household soap number five. Uh, yeah. That, they're a great company. Like, I don't know if they're

even paying us anymore to advertise for them. But like, they have some really nice. Small veteran-owned company. The guy makes his own soap. It's awesome. And the beer oil. I use the beer oil to this day. It's really good. So that was 2021 year in review.

The channel grew in the podcast grew in Leaps and Bounds. I think some terrific guests. The technical quality of the show, the audio, the video, overall production quality, really improved thanks to D. Brought in a lot of sponsors, which, it helps the channel grow obviously. D. D is a hustler. Yep, that's thanks to D. Tuffle pig. So let's talk a little bit about 2022. What's coming in the future, what we hope to do with the channel this coming year. And we have guests scheduled out, you know, near term. If you guys want, I'll talk about who we have, the guests we have coming up over the next couple months. January, we have somebody who served in the Secret Service in U.S. Special Forces.

We have a dev group squadron commander coming on. We have a, actually you can see his book right behind Dave. Mark Giaconia served in 10th Special Forces Group. We're going to have him on. Andrew Milburn is going to be back on the show in studio. Actually, I have to talk to you about that, Dave. We might have to, instead of Friday night, it might be Saturday night. Okay. I just, whatever it is, I just need to take, like, what is it, the thing that's like the liver detox?

I got to prep for that one, man. It's like a porn star doing anal. We might have to. Exactly what it's like. So we'll lock in the date beforehand, but we'll talk about that. That's exactly what it's like. February, Sean Naylor's coming back. I have somebody coming on who served as an Australian diplomat, had a lot of crossover with their intelligence and special ops guys. That's going to be a pretty unique one.

We have a guy from the Chilean Special Operations Forces coming on. Yeah, that would be fun. And then we have, I think I spent quite a while trying to track this guy down. Kus Stadler, who served in the South African Rekkes. This is a super cool book. If you guys haven't read it, go out and get Reki. This is a super cool book. Now, we're going to have him on the show.

And then March, Rick Prado, he has a book coming out, CIA, legendary CIA officer. We're going to have him on the show. And then we have, we're going to have the first U.S. Special Forces soldier in Afghanistan. It's going to be on the team house. And then we have a CST. We haven't had a CST on the show yet,

the cultural support teams, which they're defunct now, but it was an endeavor to take women, and put them on to and integrate them into special operations teams deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq. And I've talked to one young lady, she's super cool. Awesome. She's super cool. Awesome. And we're going to have her on the show in March.

Yeah, that'll be good. And that's kind of what I have scheduled out. Actually, well, this is way in advance in July, Jim Morris, my buddy who served in special forces in Vietnam, and then wrote for Bob Brown for, for some. Soldier of Fortune magazine. Jim Morris wrote a new book about his military experiences, but also about how he used hallucinogenics after the war to broaden his horizons and recover from PTSD. It's called The Dreaming Circus, if you guys want to go and pre-order the book.

I think it's his best work yet. Jim's a terrific guy, a really interesting guy, but that's way in the future. That's coming out this summer. Yeah. So that is our 20-21 year in review. You know, by the time we see you guys next time, we'll all be another year older. We have some other things cooking beyond the scenes like the whiskey is formulating a team house whiskey. Dee's been hard at work on that.

Maybe some team house cigars. Who knows? We're going to try to take our merch a little more seriously. We have merch. There's a link down in the description. You can get some coffee mugs and some hoodies and t-shirts and stuff like that. But we're thinking of like maybe working with Mark Lee to have him do up some like actual quality designs and put that on our merch store. Also we're working a little bit on the giraffe logo.

That's cool. Yeah. There are some, I guess like higher level guests that I'm going to work on. I mean, I hate to use this term like higher level. I guess like big names, but sometimes the small names are the ones that are more important to me, and I get kind of like stars in my eyes about. But there are some, I got some work to do on my end. One of the things I would like to do in 2022 as it becomes financially viable for us as the channel grows,

is we do a lot of remote interviews. We'd like to do more in studio interviews. That's part of it. But when we have to do remote interviews, I would like to FedEx. the guests, USB mics and cameras to improve the audio and visual quality. You know, we have like a lot of expensive gear here in our studio, but if we're doing a remote interview with the guest, we're kind of constrained by whatever the technical restraints are that they have.

Right. And if they're on an old shitty laptop, that kind of is what it is. And there's only so much we can do about that. what will help mitigate that is actually like FedExing them a camera and a mic. Right. Yeah, and I think it's important that people understand that we do these live 99% of the time. So we can't go back and take out the audio. Right.

It's live. Right. So that's another layer. Yeah, we don't have the advantage of post-production. Right. And we're really the only ones that do what we do in a sense. Right. I mean, I don't think there's anyone else.

that does these sorts of interviews live. Live, no shot. People are, no way. No way. We're on a tightrope here. Yeah. And I like it. Yeah, so do I.

I mean, the decision to do these episodes live is completely insane. It was ridiculous that I, that I ever did it like that. But now I can't, like, I'm kind of, like, addicted to it. I love it. And I can't imagine, like, going back and do it, like, doing a pre-production and a highly produced show just sounds so boring to me. And I like the audience participation, too. not you you you you scumbags in the comments making making fun of us but uh you make fun of us all day

long i but our guests like i i do enjoy the the um the audience participation when they have questions for the guests and you kind of have that back and forth i do i do enjoy that type of conversation yeah yeah it's yeah i i think doing the live is amazing yeah but otherwise um in 2022, you know, we just hope to continue to increase the production quality to get some really good interesting guests in here. I think we had a really good spread of people in 2021. I'd like to continue that. I mean, it's a niche regardless. Like, this channel is sort of like an inside baseball kind of channel at the end of the day, which limits our reach and our scope, I suppose. Yeah. But at the same time, I feel like we, we,

We have a pretty good selection. Like we have somebody from Secret Service, somebody from DSS, a couple FBI, and then a lot of CIA, a lot of special forces, a lot of Rangers. You know, and I hope to have like a good mix going to. You guys are Army sluts. Yeah, well, we don't, we're not really a SEAL channel. We're kind of SEAL skeptical, you could say. We're having a dev group commander. We are.

And I am, we had, you know, in the past we had Jeff on who's a, who's a super good guy. Yeah. who is a seal and Chuck another super good guy. Jack, you're also kind of working on some other seals that haven't been on a bunch of Yeah, yeah. Like again,

I'm all about that having people who are not normally interviewed. And yeah, again, I don't mean to sound sales. That's just hard to do with seals. I don't want to say to it. No, I don't,

I don't mean to seem too salty, but my perspective is that the seals have a very strong platform. And there are a ton of, SEAL podcasts. Like, they don't really need the team house to, like, try to replicate that and, like, get those same people on and re-interview them. I feel like, listen, those guys, there are a lot of SEALs out there, and they're being interviewed, and that's awesome and good for them.

And some of those channels are really cool. The team house is, like, different, and we're trying to do something different, and we're having different types of people on. So, I mean, the SEALs have a platform. It's not like, we're not depriving them of anything. by focusing more on the lesser known people. Right. Yeah.

No, I agree with all that. So guys, let us know in the description. I want to embarrass Dave a little bit. Go for it. Because he said it on the combat story. We did it on a Patreon when he first got his award, but you did get the O'DNI Award. Yeah.

And I'm just going to make it public to everybody on the team house just to get you a little root, like a little rooose. Well, fortunately this video is only like like $3,000. And the people who are seeing this will probably have already, like, watched it. But, yeah, I got an audio. Day's a badass motherfucker. Dave got the award a long time ago, but it was declassified. So now, like, you couldn't talk about it until very recently.

Yeah, this last year. Yeah. Yeah, for mixing it up with some bad actors over in Afghanistan. Yeah. Yeah. There's some good stuff, though. Yeah. And, no, it's pretty cool.

No, thanks. I, no, I hope that, you know, you guys will, let us know what you'd like to see from the team house. You guys recommend guests to us a lot. And sometimes they really pan out. Like Marty Peterson was somebody in the comments or something was like, you should interview Marty Peterson. She's a hero.

I was like, who's that? And I went and looked her up and read her book. I was like, hell yeah, we need to have this person on. So I'm open to recommendations. Let us know what you would like to see from the channel going forward. And we take it under advisement.

we think about it and bat around ideas. Yeah. Yeah. No, we definitely love your recommendations because, you know, you guys obviously, you've heard of people who we haven't. Like we have a lot of contacts within sort of the modern. And Jack obviously is very well read in this area and knows a lot of these people from, you know, from, you know, Rhodesia and South Africa and whatnot in Vietnam.

But there are still like a lot of. There's great resources out there that we don't know. There's so many books. And then there are people who don't have books who are just, they have a great story. But again, full disclosure, I think I've kind of like enlightened people to my philosophy a little bit in the show. But like, if you recommend somebody who's like a big time celebrity dude or something like that, like I'm probably not going to schedule them because they've been interviewed a hundred

times already. Yeah, we just don't want to. So this is where our, our. acumen as as savvy businessmen uh fails us because obviously there are names out there that if we had on the show all our numbers are you know you can go through our videos and see which videos have the highest views by far and anybody who knows anything about youtube or podcast knows the more views you have the more monetization you have um so there's definitely a formula to making a lot of money in this industry, but we want to tell stories.

We want people, we, you know, we don't just want the people that are going to get 40, 50,000 views. Like some of them, we want them too, but we want to have the people who might only get five or 10,000 views, but they're a story that you're not going to hear anywhere else because they're not making a lot of money. through that. Well, like, Jamie Caldwell, right? Unit guy. You could probably, you knew it would do well. But Jamie's not a guy who's on a ton of podcasts and stuff like that.

Not even talking, like, he's on podcast talking about, like, fishing and stuff because he's a former pro-fisher. Right, right. But, like, a story about his career, he doesn't really, there aren't many at or at all any podcasts with him out there. So, like, that's a get. Like, that's a, Paul Howe. Like, those are awesome. Right. we can get guys who are on every podcast, but I like that.

We don't do that. Yeah. Yeah, no, me too. And I think we had the conversation a long time ago, Dave, we're talking about how, like, if we tried to, like, just make it commercial and follow the template, like, the YouTube template of, like, this is how you grow a channel and get successful. This would just become, like, another job for us. Right. And it would get to the point where, like, we just kind of dread coming in here and doing this. Right.

in our brand new Mercedes. We would hate that drive. I mean, yeah, you would have, you know, some money or whatever. Maybe it would be more successful, but it wouldn't be fun anymore. Right. You know, right. I think that would be a problem for all of us. Yeah.

And that's one of the, like one of the joys about this, about the long form and about this is, every time we're with every time we have a guest on it's such a delight you know because this person this person is letting us into their life you know this person is is opening up on on on a on basically live TV essentially live TV for anybody to watch for anybody to judge

and and like they're sharing a part of themselves with us not just their story about a firefight, which that's all good and well. You know, I mean, I'm not taking anything like, we want to hear those too. Some of the, those stories that we've heard on here have been amazing and, you know, and, and hair raising, but just even the more simple moments, you know, was it, was it, was it Sarah Carlson who like took her archery set to Libya? Right? Sarah was great.

Yeah, like that's such an interesting thing that, you know, really humanizes the people in these organizations that seems so impersonal. Yeah, I loved her book. That's going way further back. She was cool. I loved her book and in our interview with Sarah. She was fun. Yeah, man.

I mean, it's been an interesting journey and I'm looking forward to 2022 and seeing what we can do next to grow the channel. I think you mentioned like the goal is to get the, like, you know, thinking around I think if we could double our viewership by next. year, that's a home run. And it can become, quote, unquote, a full-time job, but whatever. You know, we can get Jack off the street. I'm getting a link coat.

Oh, yeah, we need first. Yeah. Well, I look forward to that day. Until then, happy New Year's, everybody. And we will see you next Friday. We'll be live again with Steve. Stratton, who served in the Secret Service and Special Forces. Oh, next Friday? Oh, next Friday. Again, lottery numbers, people. I forgot that this is in the future.

Time traveling. All right, guys. See you next time.