Unsubscribe Podcast - The Explosion That Almost Killed Me ft. Braxton McCoy | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 227

Episode Date: August 24, 2025

Braxton McCoy is an author, public speaker & decorated U.S. Army veteran who survived catastrophic wounds during the 2006 battle for Ramadi, earning the Purple Heart and the Army Commendation Medal with “V” Device for Valor. Grab his book! https://braxtonmccoy.com LIVE TOUR TICKETS ON SALE NOW! https://unsubcrew.com/liveshows Watch this episode ad-free and uncensored on Pepperbox! https://www.pepperbox.tv/ WATCH THE AFTERSHOW & BTS ON PATREON! https://www.patreon.com/UnsubscribePodcast MERCH: https://www.bunkerbranding.com/collections/unsubscribe-podcast ------------------------------ THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS! BOOKING.COM https://booking.com PONCHO OUTDOORS Go to https://ponchooutdoors.com/unsub for $10 off your first order GHOSTBED Get an extra 25% off when you use code UNSUBSCRIBE at checkout. Go to http://GhostBed.com/unsubscribe to get started! THE PERFECT JEAN F*%k your khakis and get The Perfect Jean. 15% off with the code UNSUB15 at http://theperfectjean.nyc/UNSUB15 #theperfectjeanpod ------------------------------ UNSUB MERCH: https://www.bunkerbranding.com/pages/unsubscribe-podcast ------------------------------ FOLLOW OUR SOCIALS! Unsubscribe Podcast https://www.instagram.com/unsubscribepodcast https://www.tiktok.com/@unsubscribepodcast https://x.com/unsubscribecast Eli Doubletap https://www.instagram.com/eli_doubletap/ https://x.com/Eli_Doubletap https://www.youtube.com/c/EliDoubletap Brandon Herrera https://www.youtube.com/@BrandonHerrera https://x.com/TheAKGuy https://www.instagram.com/realbrandonherrera Donut Operator https://www.youtube.com/@DonutOperator https://x.com/DonutOperator https://www.instagram.com/donutoperator The Fat Electrician https://www.youtube.com/@the_fat_electrician https://thefatelectrician.com/ https://www.instagram.com/the_fat_electrician https://www.tiktok.com/@the_fat_electrician ------------------------------ unsubscribe pod podcast episode ep unsub funny comedy military army comedian texas podcasts #podcast #comedy #funnypodcast Chapters 0:00 Welcome To Unsub! 2:54 Meet Our Guest 5:18 Protecting Public Lands 25:45 Braxton’s Military Experience 32:26 We Made A Slur? 34:55 Braxton’s Deployment 56:41 Zach Bryan 59:48 The Glass Factory & Braxton’s Injuries 1:28:46 Braxton’s Book 1:30:55 Braxton’s Recovery 1:41:16 Braxton’s Fight For Public Lands Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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You know, one of the biggest things we say is bully journalists. I was just waiting to see where that was going. I'm like, oh, you know where it was going. We're going to have a good time today, my friend. Say hi to Eli. He's racially ambiguous, Brandon. His hair is fucking fabulous And don't I

A dark joke disposition And there's a fat electrician We'll come to unsubscribe Today's unsubscribe episode Is brought to you by booking.com Booking dot yeah It's in the read From vacation rentals to hotels across the U.S.

Booking.com has the ideal stay for anyone Even those who might seem impossible to please Whether you're booking for yourself, your partner. Your sleep, light, rise early, mom. Or your high-maintenance group chat. You can find exactly what you're booking for at booking.com. You've got to bounce. I'm going to make his face look really pretty.

Oh, that's, fuck. You're going to need more to piece of paper. That's why they're drinking at home. Yeah. Everyone ready? You're going to have to do the pop. So on the count of three, we're going to pop this next to the microphone. Ready?

Everyone? Three, two, one. Welcome to the Enabler podcast. That was a cool coin you showed us, though. It's 10 days. Just immediately. The best part is 10, 11 days from now you get another one. Jesus Christ.

Oh, that's horrible. The health journey, everyone's like, what the fuck? Hey, we have been very healthy. Like, everyone's doing very good. I will pat everyone's back on that way. To be fair, it's Sunday. We're just kind of chilling this weekend. We're having a couple of drinky doodles.

Yeah. Still eating really good too. Oh, yeah. Hold on. I'll introduce. We'll get in the way out real quick. Hi, everyone. Welcome to the unsubscribe podcast.

I'm joined today by Eli Double Tap, Brackson McCoy, Brandon Herrera, myself Donned Operator. Thank you so much for being here. We've been on the fitness journey for quite a bit now. I've gained 15 pounds, Brandon. you've lost how much? I am half a pound under 20. Working on that.

I try. Tomorrow we're doing legs. Oh, we're doing legs tomorrow? You're doing legs tomorrow. I'm going to be sick. You see me a picture tonight. I'm vomiting. What's it?

Go to the fucking gym brand. You're like, I'm friends with you on Steam. I see you're playing the Battlefield 6th beta. Side note. Braxton McCoy is one of the most cowboy. Oh, boy. You got lucky on that one. On the what now?

Oh, the name? The name. Like, who names is the kid Braxton? I don't know. It was a shitty general. My mom figured, you know, Bragg. No, you sound cool as fuck. Yeah, dude, that's all I hear.

If I was in a bar fight, I would want to have Braxton McCoy next to me in a fucking bar fight. What about any more? I'm getting old, man. So, like, growing up, like, on Fort Bragg, my parents were both Army brats. That was the running joke is that Braxton Bragg, was the best general of the union ever had. Yeah. And it's kind of true.

So they named me after him, I guess. I still think it's a dope-ass fucking name. It's a dope of shit. It's a very strong cowboy name. Very strong. Hi, welcome to the unsub. Yeah, thanks for having me, man. You're thrown into the mix on this one.

Did you get to watch a single episode? He was hard-armed like two minutes ago. Oh, yeah, totally. That was me, actually. Easily confusable. I was like, man, I don't feel like Tony has enough ammunition. Let's just throw some more out there. Let's just feed.

Feed it. Where are you coming from? Idaho. Yep, eastern Idaho. I grew up in southern Utah, but now I live in eastern Idaho. I've been there about eight or ten years or so. Oh, wow. Okay.

So, yep. Pulling on my stop watching my show notes. What the fuck are you doing, Eli? Get my show notes ready. Okay. Just interrupt him texting people. Go on. Cool story, bro.

Yeah, dude. Uh-huh. That's the next again, Braxton. Okay, yeah, yeah. Yeah, babe. I mean, yeah, Brexit. Sorry, force of habit. Wow, and how does that make you feel?

She's such a bitch. Dude, you have, we were talking on a little before the podcast, but you've been on a lot of big podcasts, which, how was that? And what was the very first big podcast you were on? The first big one was probably Jocko. I did Tim Pool before that, I think. It's hard to remember. remember, but Jocko was probably the biggest for sure. And he's a stud, man.

I love that guy. He's on our Board of Advisors now at Sagebrush, too. Nice. He's a stud. Board of advisors for what? We started up a not-for-profit to defend, protect public land and wildlife and stuff from the right-wing perspective, because all the rest of them are a little bit gay. I like this guy.

I think we made a friend. Quick friend. It's not the like, oh, like the tree-hugging. Oh, you have a guy. have to protect all the wildlife. Don't, don't harm a woodland creature. It's like, no, no, like, you can, you can hunt and, like, do outdoorsy man shit on it, but, like, we want to protect it for future generations. Yeah, for sure. And it's like, protect the cool trees with AR-10s. You know what I mean? Instead of chain yourself to them. It's like, we'll put a

fucking APC over there. You're like, we'll chain you to them. Yeah. I mean, we believe in, like, consumptive use and all of that for sure. Yeah. You know, it's TR's principle. It's multiple use. I didn't mean to drag us into this, but just you said Jocco. No, go for it. Or I said Jocko. You made me say Jocko. Like it's invoking his name.

You made me say Jocko. Well, he like haunts Philip's dreams over there. He's like that watch shows up in my nightmares. What happened? He just feels like a . You better get up at 4 a.m. and do CrossFit, buddy. Anyway, sorry. No, you're good, man.

so yeah we multiple use mandate right that's how it was set up that's how it should be uh you've got extraction grazing hunting fishing recreating and also just for looking at and we believe in that kind of stuff and i don't want to see a bunch of goddamn solar panels and all other bullshit i want to look at my trees as trees not like solar panel trees was made by some gay south african or something You're not going to... I don't know if I should... He's got a harem of 14 test tube tricks.

What are we talking about here? I'm not speaking... This is not speaking for the campaign. I'm on my own over here. Now, I was thinking... I was like, well, endorse Brandon. It's like, this feels a little pointed. Somehow...

No, it may... It was... A lot of people... I didn't know what to level. Brandon, this morning, you were talking about the different ways they show it or get it across to try to manipulate, hey, look what they're doing. They're just giving it all away versus, oh, actually, it is actually research before, hey, this plot of land we actually can get rid of versus this one, not so much, right?

And so before I say what I'm about to say, let me make it abundantly clear. Like, I was against Mike Lee's amendment to the big, beautiful bill that would sell out public land. That was, I was not in favor of that. But there were a lot of people that were manipulating it. And I just, I don't like, whether it's left, right, agree, disagree. I don't like the manipulation of data to try to convince people of things. And like, there were a lot of maps that were being shared around like, this is the public land that like could be sold off in the new bill. And it would look like a third of all public land in the country. But in reality, it was like, that was just the stuff that was available. In reality, I think it was like 1%. Total. It was, it was, it was, it

was something along those lines like one point three i don't remember the exact number but there were i was annoyed by the amount of maps that i was seeing on social media that made it look like oh my god we're selling all of fucking utah you know because they were well how much were they selling uh whether you're done is set a floor no ceiling so it was like these must be sold off and then the rest to be evaluated and there's already a process in place for this called flipma the federal land and the beer is getting to me already. Federal land management and policy act,

72. And what it does is you can evaluate a piece of property and say, hey, we've got to expand our city here or maybe we need a landfill or whatever. And then it goes through this process and then it can be divested to that incorporated city or whatever. So that process exists and they were just pretending like it didn't exist because they were trying to bypass that.

procedure so that Elon could pave the West with solar panels and e-girls you can now apparently marry on on on on X yeah I mean I'm not saying you're wrong I understand I actually think you're coming from the right place but he was manipulating the whole conversation intentionally that's my sure well I like it just those are the conversations especially with your side because that is that, how was that conversation? I think that's a really difficult one because you'd figured a lot of people would be looking at that on the right

or left on the right side. You're like, oh, they'll understand this and then was there actually a wave of pushback and you're like, yo, what the fuck? Yeah, well, because data manipulation maybe, as you were saying, it's like, oh, well, they're manipulating the data or how they were saying it.

I mean, I just want everybody to have the right conversation, you know, like let's look at the facts as they are instead of, because you'll have groups in the left, groups on the right, that'll just try to make the conversation, change the Overton window to what they want the conversation to be. I'm like, no, let's talk about the real thing being proposed. But I was on your side through the whole thing.

Like, I thought it was very well, very well structured the way you did it. Well, I appreciate that. And you're not, you're right. The, the left is particularly bad at this. They'll, they'll take a piece of data and then spin it in a direction that just makes it virtually useless, like almost not true. Well, it is mostly not true. And that's made the, the right wing just kind of reaction like they're reactionary now towards any. information that comes from the left and rightly so because they get lied to all the time so it's it makes it difficult to have the conversation like actually hey man this is what it this is what they're aiming at and plus you got to be a goddamn nerd to even know all this stuff there's so many acts involved

they go back to 1872 1890 1860 like you got to get way in the weeds and no one wants to do that unless you're a nerd even the people in power don't do it oh my gosh they're there are some of the most clueless people you'll ever talk to. There's like four state politicians in my state that have ever read our Constitution. I'm talking about a state constitution. It's like, dude, homework, man. Also, I loved you in 1923. Well, if it keeps going to be like, there will be blood levels.

It'll be like the bill of the butcher or some shit. I'm just kidding, feds. Jesus crying. No, he's not. You can't even joke anymore. One of us. He's one of... Heardly hit squads to show up in Idaho.

Fucking black helicopters in my round pen. You're like, I can't even joke about the things I really believe anymore. You're speaking of the board. No, it's just... Who was the president that did the most for it? Like, conservation would have been Roosevelt, right? Yeah, the most was TR for sure. Yeah.

Yeah. And he really fought for that. He actually introduced a lot of the... Like, hey. I forget what was happening at that time. We're like, hey, just ripping up forest, ripping up woods, and then he was the one that put a stop. Wasn't it?

Yellowstone was like the starting point for everything, correct? Yeah, yeah. Yellowstone, well, yes. In a broad spectrum, I would say yes. The other cool guy that never gets credit is Pinchot, his dad, so you're talking about the robber baron era. And some right when you're... Oh, yes.

Go on. Act like we're retards because we are. And explain it to all of us, audience included. Like, I understand the robber baron era, but I've never heard of, you said Pinchot? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I have no clue who this is. So his dad was a timber baron. And, you know, they had stripped, his company had stripped the shit out of force all across America.

And instead of saying, you know what, you go continue this legacy and get rich and move this company forward and all that, he said, you know what? You're going to fix what I screwed up. So he sent him to Germany and France to get into. education and forestry and before you get all uppity fucking Europeans they went over there because they'd already their is that can i use that word yeah sure so for it they'd already they'd already go forest and so it was like hey we're doing reconstruction our forest over here maybe you should protect the stuff you have what was the forest wearing oh my god it was probably the tree brought it on itself i think jogging after midnight and a miniskirt sad's giving me the eyeball right

wasn't wearing enough Connor for leaves the tree was blowing that whistle pretty okay now go on I had to ruin your story no no you didn't so he goes over and gets educated and then comes back and he's part of the Boone and Crockett Club with TR and these guys

that had kind of like already decided they had this ethos so they were going to conserve this stuff and actually one step back before I get back to Pinchot So TR, he was, you know, he's born like this very wealthy guy in New York and, you know, Harvard, Yale, all this kind of stuff. Then he goes out west to Nebraska, the line moves. Nebraska, I don't know, you guys keep trying to claim West, but you're like Midwest now.

But it was West then. So he comes out and he goes on this buffalo hunt. And he kills this buffalo. It's like this big, long, arduous thing, I'll, you know, spare you. But he finally kills this buffalo. Go into it. We love, like, this part, one thing the podcast loves is fucking history lessons. Okay.

And right now you're telling him very well, so I'm fully involved into this. So he finally waxed this buffalo after he's like sleeping outside in the rain and the guides were all really impressed because they thought he was like this blind, you know, nerd from rich nerd from New York. And he kind of was blind and rich. But he wasn't this nerd. He was tough. And he wanted to like get this stuff done. Anything he put his mind to he wanted to accomplish. Because wasn't the visual impairment?

Was that based on boxing? He was kind of blind anyway, but he was asthmatic as a kid, and then he always said when he started boxing at Harvard that that cured, you know, his asthma. I don't know if I'm a doctor, so I think that's true. And then he did take one really hard hit in the military. It made it worse for sure. Yep, and that's when he's like, ah, that's the one that fucked me up, and that's when he got into judo, if I do remember, right?

Really? Huh. I think that's correct. I can't remember for sure, but I'm just going to go with it. I'm vibing. I'm concluding over here. I think that's right. So he's out there and he was kind of famously a bad shot because he couldn't see worth and he finally waxed a buffalo and then he comes back and he's talking to the guides

and they're impressed that he was just tough enough to sleep outside and all that kind of thing. And then the guide is explaining to him like there's almost no buffalo left, man, you know. And he has this moment where he realizes like, holy, shit, I might have killed the last buffalo, you know, because he only saw one damn buffalo the whole time. Oh, shit. So I, for me, I think that's the start of his realization. His conservation ethos begins there, and then he ends up going back to New York and, you

know, going on with life. And then his wife and mother die on the same day. So he goes back out west, buys his cattle ranch, and starts, like, learning how to be a cowboy. And there's a whole bunch of crap in there, like, going for him. fights and all sorts of shit but we'd be here for five hours if I did that yeah yeah that wall of buffalo schools wild because to your story it they wiped out 98% of all but it was if the editor could put that up on the screen too like that's an incredible visual representation of and it wasn't just buffalo was elk antelope mule deer they were they were killing uh big horns mountain goats

They were just whacking everything. But Buffalo were the most famous. Brandon, what kind of shirt is that? I'm glad you asked, Eli. This is a poncho. Brandon and I actually wear poncho so much. We constantly end up wearing the same nice poncho shirt. Good thing nobody's ever pointed that out before.

Now, if you guys have ever seen one of our live shows or this podcast in general, you'll see Brandon and I wearing these incredibly comfortable great-looking shirts all the time. Finn, pull it up with pictures. They're literally always wearing the same shirt. I got turned on a poncho like a year ago, been wearing them ever since. I personally prefer... I think this is the Western, because it's got the pearl snaps, because it's hot in Texas, and I like something breathable.

Who's the thing I find really cool? Brandon, do the glasses trick. So ponchos have this neat little thing in the pocket where you just take your glasses. No, the other one. Be more specific. Let's give the shit about that. All right.

Watch everyone. So if you got fat fucking fingers and you smudge your glasses all the time, the bottom of the shirt actually acts. It has like a microfiber. so you can clean your glasses. I make him clean my phones. He does. I like the hidden little pocket on the breast.

Wait, what? Right over here. Got a little zipper pocket. I don't even know about that one. Is that where you hold Cody's heart? And his drugs. Things you might need to know. Pancho has put a lot of thought and detail into each one of their shirts.

Oh, holy shit. They're soft. They're really fucking soft. Yo, what? That's my one thing is fucking fabric sensitivity. I don't wear uncomfortable shirts. is comfy as f***. That's why we wear them all the time. So poncho's got a bunch of great styles, the original western denim and ultra light.

If you're looking for the perfect shirt, something breathable, and stands out in a good way, give poncho a try. Go to poncho outdoors.com slash unsub and get $10 off your first order. That's P-O-N-C-H-O-Outdoors.com slash unsub. While we're talking about elk, do you know what this asshole carried up a mountain to hunt a if it's too heavy if it's too heavy of a rifle don't say that I don't know Brian what did you take up a mountain to hunt an elk with

look I didn't want to go like they had like all these super lightweight and they're like oh do you want to borrow my like four pound six five creed more I'm like no I'll just I'll carry something I actually want to use like as so I had a scar 20S

that's like cool the heavier DMR version of the scar in 65 that I was just like man you know what? This is an actual rifle that I will use for other stuff and I'm like, I just want to, if I'm going to take something with it or if I want to take like an elk or something, like I want to take it

with something that I actually will use like one of the five guns I use for real world shit. Sure. And I started regretting that about eight hours into the first day. We're going over mountains for days and you're like, this is heavy. I'm like, yeah,

I know asshole. In a place in a place that we're like, we're used to like sea level elevation yeah and we're up in deseret yeah deserate yeah i think that's about like i think you started about five right there and then you're just climbing from there just dying just dying i was like why the fuck did you bring that home with a scar and what's funny is that like i because i was expecting to have to take like a two three 400 yard shot eventually and the shot that ended up taking him because i brought two guns i brought the the scar 20s and then i brought my uh level 4570 if it was within

you know closer range and ended up the day that we actually that I took mine I was the shot was within 50 yards so I absolutely did not need 6.5 that guy you had that 20 pound gun though

yeah fuck I loved it yeah the gun plus the optic plus the ammo it was fun that was a good time that was a fucking great time 10 round mag so we carried uh yeah I think I had 10 I'll just strip that bitch down it I wanted to get rid of it all together

I clearly it was not a weight saving loadout so you had so FDR or yeah he went not FDR but Roosevelt went on FDR was not doing much hiking yeah no he's just rolling it and he's like guys watch it it's fun on the way down

sucks on the way down editor can we get some sort of chat GBT GROC image of FDR in the wilderness doing hiking. The mobility wheelchair with the tracks on side of it. Tank treads. It's still handheld. It's manual at that time. Oh, fuck.

But so he had this come to Jesus moment with, oh, shit. I have maybe killed the last Buffalo. Now I want to actually get into conservation. Yeah, I think that's what started out. So it kind of came years later. really started pushing on it but i think that's where it began at least the thinking about it in the correct way started there there was this you know the americans came over here from britain and and other places in europe and they had they had like stripped everything like we talked about

earlier they had stripped that entire continent over generations and generations and then they got here and there was just trees everywhere and animals and game and all that just and they felt like there was such an, I feel like, they thought there was such an abundance that they would never exhaust it. So I don't say, I don't like to look back at history and be like, these were terrible people that were, didn't callous and too cavalier about what they had. They just didn't understand. And at the time, the continent looked so vast, you know, they, I don't think they thought they could destroy it, but they were getting damn close to it. Uh, and Pinchot gets back, uh, T.R, you know, president now. And Pinchot is teaching it. I think it was yeah. I think it was

Yale. He was running like a forestry class. If you don't mind me derailing, who is Pinchot? Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah. So Pinchot is the guy whose dad was a timber baron and then got sent back to Germany and France to learn how to like not do it. So he was like a rich, rich guy. And his dad was like, no, you're going to be the Lorax bitch. Like, that's what you're going to be. So God, that dad. Hey, I know I fucked up. So you're unfucking it for me. Good job, champ. Exactly. Yeah. And he. he was a stud too like so he's teaching these classes that either Yale or Harvard I can't

remember which one right now and he would be like looking at his students and say okay let's figure out what because now TR's president let's figure out what force we can preserve and the reason they knew they needed to do it one reason they knew they needed to do it was there was also like grass barons going on so they did 400 million sheep or something like that and they were just overgrazing and then stripping everything out like in terms of trees so these big banks on mountains were not holding up and mudslides were destroying towns and all this and kind of ironically some of the first push for like hey help us came out of mountain towns in Utah they were like dude something's up you guys got to help us like we've had like 35 people

die in mudslides you know help us out so they start breaking up these barons and that's sort of how pincho enters a picture with TR and he's teaching it yellow Harvard again I can't remember which And he would go to his students and say, figure out which force. They were kind of trying to prioritize. Look at this map, which force are most important. And then they would, like, pick two or three. And then you'd bring them up to TR and TR, like, put them on TR's desk. And TR, look at them and be like, let's go downstairs and box.

So they would go downstairs and they'd box for a while when they come back up. Such a dope. He was, they were fucking awesome. Real quick, too. What was causing the mudslides that was killing all those people? uh in ecological terms like the the roots are help hold the roots of the trees are helping hold the dirt onto the mountain and then the roots of the grass are helping as well so when you kill both it just becomes like a mudslide hell there's nothing to keep the bank from eroding

or the slide or the mountain side from eroding there's no structure to it yeah exactly all the stuff kind of works together uh so they wow they started preserving i think they between the those two while TR was in office, I think it was over 100 national force they put protections on. Just like 190 million acres, I think he did. Or no, maybe he did 120 million acres while he was in. And now we're at about like 193, I think. It's why I interrupted that story. TR was beating the fuck out of people in the basement.

Yeah, him and pincho. Imagine boxing the president. He was doing the show all the time. Just you're like, oh yeah, Teddy Roosevelt wants to see you. Come on. Let's spar a little bit. totally especially when you're just at Yale or Harvard kid and you're like I got these papers for you what you can't say no to the president so he's just getting punched in the face

still really smart on their side with going like hey I'll just bring this up to my students have them break down and then deduce what the problem is and actually come find out the problem because at that time no one's going to think about oh hey the roots And the grass are holding all this together. And once you start removing this, then you have landslides or mud slides as repercussions because of it all. I love fucking crazy. So that he's using just like college students.

It's like free labor. I'm going to say, figure this shit out. Figure out why people are dying. Thank you. Okay. Also, I want to punch you in the face when you come back. That would be funny. You could tell which staffers, Teddy, probably.

liked and didn't like. By whether it would find him. Get it in the ring. Yeah. Whether it was light sparring or I just come back to me with another bad fucking idea. One black guy, two black eyes. Oh, he really don't like you, dog. Yeah.

Oh, we need to present another quarterly financial report to TR. I don't want to. Yeah, that wasn't crazy. I know when they discovered Yellowstone, that was like, oh, this is a bunch of this can't run out. Look at all this beautiful. land, waterfall. They had everything.

They were in there and they're like, this is fucking dope. Use, use, use, use. And then it was like, hmm, pause. Yeah, they had to station the fucking army to guard Yellowstone when they made it apart. There was like a company out there shooting poters and shit.

No shit. 100%. Yep. What people just try to get in? Yeah, like. Um, boy. Bro, imagine if... No, 19, no.

I can't remember exactly here. I don't sound retarded. unsub community real quick. If they were like, hey, you have to guard this, like, property and you, and the government or whoever's like, yeah, you guys just shoot anyone that's trying to cut down trees. You got a lot of people volunteering for that job for a very reduced trade. It's true. Wait, you get paid?

You're getting paid? There's a lot of GWI veterans look at the jobs right now. Oh, yeah. This is great. Just shoot anyone that fucks with the land. I am the laureate. and I aim for the thorax. Yeah.

So you were in the military. What year did you join? When did that whole journey begin before we get to the fun part of your military career? It was, I enlisted, I think, in 2003. He was in the military? Yeah. Oh, God. fucking veterans

I know they're the worst we hate them apparently Brandon's one of the biggest veterans we know god damn it's like trolling

that we were I was fucking about earlier I walked up to him I was like heard you had a surgery or something sorry what happened

2003 you joined yeah army yeah well army guard Utah guard okay I didn't

I didn't understand what I was doing at the time but I kind of growing up I was like you know a little sort of a horse ranch kid riding bulls and shit and chasing girls and doing what too much Copenhagen that kind of thing and bushlights and and so I kind of did I didn't really I thought I would just keep riding bulls and colts forever I didn't understand I didn't understand to be in the military but I if there was no war I didn't understand the purpose of it and then 9-11 happened. When I was junior in high school, and I was like sluff in school, like I always did, sitting in my cousins. And they're like, hey, school's canceled. I'm like, fucking sweet.

I'm not going to get an absent for this one. And then we turn on the TV. It's like, oh, maybe not so sweet. And from that moment, I was like, all right, I'm going now. So I, like, did the, it wasn't fully delayed entry. It was like early enlistment or something. So, like, well, I was still in, or in school, I just enlisted. And then I left right after high school when God.

trained up and I went to Benning and then came back. Infantry? No, I wasn't. But I went to Benning. Dude, oh, you have no idea. My recruiter, this fucking guy. Dude, when you have to go to Benning and you're not infantry, you got,

like every single military person we brought on here has been fucked by the recruiter. Oh, I just love, even after 20 plus years, you're like, this guy. It's like 20 years in a divorce And I'm like that motherfucker Didn't even get a Dodge Challenger Dude He shows me like this high speed Recruiting video you know

Oh yeah Like fucking halo on and shit The Rangers Just like yeah Yeah exactly Yeah SF everything I'm like bro this looks bad ass

You know He's like you think You're pretty tough You know I don't know I was like yeah He's like you think you'd carry an extra Like 10 pounds

I'm like yeah man Who can What are these guys Or something He's like, all right, if you can carry a radio, you can get this enlistment bonus. It was like $6,000 or something. Yeah. It was not great.

Oh, he went as far. This motherfucker went as far. He got $6,000 bonus, dude, to her time of war. You could have done infantry and got like 12 to 20 for a three-year contract. I was so mad. He went as far. I went through MEPs. He made me do like, or he had me get an airborne physical.

I was like, oh, I'm sweet. man you know like i'm gonna be able jump out of planes and shit and then at benning like two weeks before you graduate they're like hey if you're airborne you got to come and you know you go talk to the drill sergeant i get in there he's like what fuck are you're doing in here i mean i'm going airborne he's like the fuck you are he's like you ain't got no airborne in your shit man get the fuck out of here so oh wow you're a recruiter just oh yeah he got an award though i bet it's like got this plaque enlisted the most guys

you know I'm still mad at you Matt on a first name basis with this mother you don't know like binning is if you're infantry like 99% of the time that's the only time you go to bidding a lot of times if you're any other MOS

you'll go to Jackson or still a whole bunch of different areas you can go instead of bidding Benning especially early 2000s or before it was that's infantry training. That is not the fun drill sergeant. It's not the not fun

basic training. And then when it's like, hey, bud, you're going to radio. Well, it gets even worse. You're waking up every morning, screaming infantry running around and shit. I thought I was going to. They made you do the

Infantryman's creed too. Oh yeah. They're like, man, I'm not. That's what I wanted. I thought I was going to be infantry. And then I get done and graduate and they're like, hey, you got to go to Fort Gord And I don't even know what that is It's like calm shit Where is that at?

Augusta No shit And they were like Were your drill sergeants really confused too? No they just thought I was retarded They're like bro you didn't read this shit Like hell no I didn't read this shit man Yeah

Oh I love this story so funny This is like your nightmare scenario of everything going wrong And it just happened to you Thankfully, your military career went really stellar at that I'm sure Yeah, it got a lot better You had to go to like double maps

They had to finger your butthole twice as hard Yeah, I was like What the fuck, man? Yeah, it was done Not even infantry What's what I wanted? That's what pissed me off So you did your training?

You're not even a doctor Today's unsubscribe episode Is brought to you by booking.com Booking dot yeah Cody, how much do we have to travel? We travel a lot Actually, with the live tours set. We use booking.com to set up everything as we go on this next journey of life.

Because God knows it's a lot of travel and anything to make it easier is much appreciated. Brandon, so when you have to book for your partner, but they only want 800 thread count sheets. Oh, that's easy, Eli. Get a new partner. No, go to booking.com. Oh. Before we had any sort of relationship with booking.com, I have used the service before. I genuinely. Sometimes they have really good deals. One of the great things about booking.com is it provides really accurate reviews, like really detailed reviews. It saved me once.

Cody, did you use booking.com when we stayed at that sweet vacation home? Heck yeah, what else would I use other than booking.com? Find exactly what you're booking for. Booking.com. Booking dot, yeah. Book today on the site or the app. Dude, there's one time at MAP, or not at MAPS. You got me on Meps now. At Gordon. They were like soldering shit together.

You know, I grew up welding and all the stuff. I don't need to teach me how to solder. So I'm like sitting in the back of this stupid classroom and got damn computers everywhere and shit. And I took a bunch of wire and I soldered up this little cowboy guy that was like drinking a beer with a hat on. Oh, they're like teaching class.

You're doing arts and crafts. I just imagine your military drills. It's like, what the fuck is this retard doing that? He just sees that. He's like, this guy's going to be somebody one day. Like, I'm starting to Etsy shop. Hello, Joe Solterge. Do you like my cowboy?

His name is Sam. Why is he Asian now? What the fuck? That was your boot camp experience. Don't bring that on him. You minority. Oh, God. Why does that sound worse when you call somebody a minority like that?

I'm not like a white guy on the podcast. Come on, man. Anything sounds worse. Anything sounds like a slur when you put you fucking behind it. A dirty fucking plop. that's the that's my favorite one we invented i didn't even i wasn't even a part of it that's all the kind of consensual guys right apparently i forgot yeah pepperbacks too yeah they're just like well let's invent a slur that like has literally no racial connotation of any kind and then just

now it's banned by youtube oh so we might actually have to censor that plops yeah plop yeah it means nothing it literally means fucking nothing that's the limit the usage it actually we're just going to have to figure out what if this gets demonetized from that word. We'll have to, we'll have to figure out, like, ask our YouTube rep. Like, did we accidentally just make a new fucking word that YouTube doesn't allow? What's a pepperback? Is that an Italian? Should be a Mexican probably.

That's a pepper belly. Pepperback. I don't know. That is our Pepperbox. Shout to Pepperbox. Go get your two week for subscription free right now. We do a pretty much an ad free. free app or

streaming service and it's so we can do non-censored content there's no censorship so everyone can do have fun say what you want but also you have like Cody's shooting videos completely different yeah it's YouTube but it's not fucking gay yeah we just started on streaming service

and so the people it's called pepperbox so we say hey pepperbacks so the people on oh I see pepperbacks you dirty little pepperbacks but I can show people getting shot so it's awesome yeah literally because on youtube when i break down police videos like they don't like when you see someone get murdered crazy but on pepperbox you can see someone get shot in the face it is strikingly

different like you are looking at pixelation Cody can't even have the gun sound so he just makes quacks no it's duck I've seen some of those videos I thought you were just like goofing around the quacks of justice yep yeah the quacks of justice now that is the only way you can stay monetized to make any money is to to do all of that. And then you still get hit sometimes, right? Yeah, I still get hit on that, man. So, yeah.

Pepper box. Now you just watch none of that. And you're like, oh, this is a different kind of video now. It really does hit different. Yeah. Yeah. Takes away the humor. Kind of.

The uncensored video. I'm like, oh, I just watched a guy die. Like. All right. Comment below. Thumbs up. So you had your, how many times? did you have to end up deploying with

your unit No shit I was just that one time I kind of worked out 05-06 right 05-06 okay 15 no it was supposed to be 14 I think

so you you thought you were like you were with the infantry guys and you got deployed as like what was your job going out there when you got deployed? PSD stuff personal security detail stuff okay it kind of worked out because I got back

to my unit and I absolutely hated my MOS is the absolute gayish ever, dude. It's like all these nerds talking about numbers and putting fucking antennas up. Especially coming from me, like, I'm a cowboy shit, riding bulls. And then you're thinking, this is what I'm going to do. This is why I went to war.

And then they just robbed that. They're like, you're a radio guy now. Dude, I didn't go to war to, like, listen to people talking a fucking radio. I'm like, I'm here to shoot people, man. so it kind of worked out they're going to be like a sociopath whatever

well so I get back to my unit and it was gay but I had a cool like my section chief was cool and this deployment with this other unit was coming up and they needed like a PSD team so he's like you got decent PT scores and all this stuff you shoot all right see if you can get on that

so I went and put a packet in or whatever for and they they put me on the PSD team so I got to at least do something you're attached to so PSD if you're in the military every battalion is going to have that usually it's for a SART major major colonel lieutenant colonel you will have a team with you just a squad that rolls with you so if you're doing dismounted patrols whatever there you're what's PSD stand for private security detail oh okay cool is there anybody that you were on that team for that like your job was to protect that was actually like just like neat like anybody anybody of note that stands out it's going to be a random sergeant major uh we worked with mcrystal's team once um but we were just like augment yep and he's kind of a douche uh but all of his guys had pearl handled 1911s yeah that's cool as fuck really he the soldiers did he bought him for him i think i assume that's neat That'd been weird to run into that over there. I'd be like, well, he was only, like, he would only get on the ground for like four minutes at a time.

Oh, yeah. I just want that metal. There's a friend that we have that did some of that in Iraq that I'm not sure we can talk about, but was private security for Mitt Romney. No shit. Yeah. Wow. You ended up punching him in the face.

Punching him in the face. like yeah yeah I remember that yeah I don't they were going through a hard part of territory and Romney tried to get out of a Hummer and they just it's like your job my job is to make sure you stay in this vehicle so you're going to stay in this fucking vehicle like that sort of yeah and he got popped in the mouth I'm gonna need a mailing address and this got some beer and whiskey or something depending on it for what you did thank you very service I swear did you tell that on the podcast? He's never been on the podcast. Why did he?

No, he was. Wait, how do I know that story so well? We'll tell you after. We're we all together. No, I've heard that. We were all together. Okay. Depending on how much time you got tomorrow, we'll introduce you to the guy. Oh, yeah, I'm in. Give your, you know, CVS flowers. Yeah, dude, I'm like, give Philip

to, like, buy him something nice. Thank you, sir. You're an American hero. Cool story. You don't want to give too many details, you know, on this, that, or the other, but like, yeah, it's a very, very funny story. It was, yeah, it was a, you know, like a highfalutin congressman type person. Senator. Yeah, Senator.

Sorry. He wanted to get out the Humvee during an incident. They're like, no, don't do it, don't do it, don't do it. Our boy made sure that that didn't happen. Which, imagine, like, receiving contact and thinking, like, oh, I want to jump out of the bulletproof vehicle. Bro. Yeah, weird. I've never done that.

Yeah. Dismount left, action, right. Imagine you have no gun and your only job is don't get killed. That is the one I'm going to stay inside this. Tink, tink. Nah, we're not going out there. These soldiers got to let them do their job. The dumbest ones are journalists every time?

In keeping with tradition. Journalists being dumb? Fuck. Oh, my God. You got like one tagging along and then something happens and they're like trying to get out, take a picture or something. You're like, are you fucking retarded? like their vest is like open and their helmet's not even on you're like yeah man you get

one of the biggest things we say is bully journalists oh yeah like always bully journalists i actually have that tattoo on me you have that tattooed on me you have that tattooed on no i don't oh i was like that's dope as shit he is one of us i do hate on there's there's like there's a couple journalists that are like actually shockingly refreshingly good at their field right like the the real guys that want to tell the, the real story, and actually have morals and guidelines, I would guess less than 10%. Oh, for sure. I'm talking like 1%.

Yeah, 90 plus percent are just some of the worst people you'll ever spend time around. I just keep thinking of Civil War, the 824 movie that came out last year. You remember the journalists or like trying to tell they were like, let's do this, let's do this. And the Delta, like, slash still guys are like, no, no, no, no, just. reeling them back The thing I took away from that movie is that not even Hollywood can write

a likable journalist We all hate them Bullied them So he even tried to make him the hero And it didn't fucking work So you did your You got attached as a PSD unit And then were you just

For your battalion Yeah Yeah battalion, yeah Battalion, yeah Well it was So we got over It was supposed to be for the colonel The LTC

Yep and then we got there and Ramadi was pretty hot at the time. That's a surge. It was a warm period of Iraq. So they kind of, they stopped going out.

Higher ups stopped going out very often. Not even calling them names. It's just, you know, it's like, do you want to go drive through South Chicago right now? Because that's basically what it is on a Friday. And so they took our PSD team,

and they kind of broke it up and just made us into whatever came down the pipe sort of deal it was just like the retards like we're like the mules like hey go get those idiots and see if they'll go do this

yeah they're up for it yeah exactly it was really I mean great so we just did anything like sometimes it'd be like a log pack sometimes patrols and just whatever one time it was a supposed

like they found a cell phone or whatever turned out to be just some poor guys fucking chicken farm so like land in helicopters and kicking chicken coop doors in and shit i bet they were so hype leading up to that mission you had everyone on base and then it's like hey it's going down tonight we got the cell phone we here on the map dude yeah it was retarded we get there and then everyone's like like the you know people want to be a hero so they'll I'll have Uh, sevens and above are like, really trying to take it serious. No one else is like, bro, this is a fucking chicken farm. Like, like, Zarqali is not chilling at this chicken farm, dude.

That was, that was a dumb one. Uh, so a few, like, air assaults here and there and stuff like that. And actually, one, we were, we were supposed to be going to this island in the river. There's, like, weapons caches, you know. Having a shit. And they'd found, and we're like, okay, we're going to go hit this. And they, we're hitting. that already hit it for like 24 hours before we went we tried to talk them out of it we're like

why are you doing this this is insane like we're now just going to go land on a pile of uxo like this sounds like a terrible idea but we so on route we're in so in romadi they wouldn't let us like use good helicopters so we had ph 46s you know it's like black hawks are expensive you know literally make yeah we had 46s for shit like this national guard baby dude well and it was Marine pilots. So we were working for two Mardiv. Yeah, it was, it was, you know.

This is so, Marines, it was crazy going over there, and we had, this is M4s, and not M16A4s. And when we got there, seeing the Marines at the same, this was Liberty, and they had M16A4s and M16A2s, and then they didn't even have optic, like some had iron sights.

I had a boy who deployed with 16A2s with irons. Yeah, that's just what he used his entire deployment. Wild to see when you're the good, like an army is still not Air Force, it's not Navy. You still have the shit equipment, but also for like reserves, National Guard. You guys would get fucked a lot of the time too. No training or training like once a year for range. Oh, yeah, they would, I don't know, I didn't make it a year, but it is, I think it is that once a year. This is during a war and you still had to deploy.

Oh, I wanted him. I was like, give me over there, dude. I'm like, I'll learn on the field. Oh, you want to borrow my ghost bed pillow? Does it smell like you? Yes. Do you feel that cooling technology? It's definitely not a hot pillow. I got to get out of here.

Give me my pillow. I'm the one that has to sleep here. You guys have your own houses in your own pillows. Quit touching it. All right, real question. Can the gang do a pillow fight? Not what these are. A slow motion pillow fight?

No, they're heavy, it'll hurt. Are they really? Yes, they're premium. Dude, that would actually suck. That actually, I don't think I'd want to get smacked with that. I'm swinging it hard, okay? Your son, you walk up and just tee off on your kid. If I smack you with this, you're going to be a ghost.

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Use the code unsubscribe to sleep better and stay cooler. We actually had a pretty good spin-up at Camp Shelby and then NTC. And at that time, like, Rangers were doing almost all of the actual, like, EP shit in other places. They ran, they were our OCs, so the lanes were pretty good. Oh, shit, okay. But we were still retarded and ill-equipped. But we had to take that shit, Marines. So what was the big, running all these missions,

how many months were you out there before the big accident happened, incident? So June, it was either May or June to January, that very beginning. of January January 5th so pretty early on I barely made it into 06 no shit I actually I know nothing of the any sort of incident like I know it's been alluded to like when we've been talking here like off camera and whatnot but I actually know nothing about this if you don't mind getting into that just a little bit yeah um so my rackie decided to strap plastic explosive to himself and some ball bearings and blew it like turned himself into a human claymore and I happen to be in like the wrong place so we were actually just a brief rundown on it because i've you know like talked about

it but um we were doing we were recruiting for ips and at this time we were our team was living in a little compound at the south western edge of the base iraqi police yeah i'm sorry yep i'm just i'm always i was just about to ask so thank you for that so i a is iraqi army ip iraqi police during the surge and then 04208 we would be getting IA IPs and I forget the other one we did it was like militia essentially because we started bringing them in just to cover down on your story if anyone has any like oh what are they talking about go on with yours now I appreciate it thank you yeah so we were like living with these Iraqi police guys in this little compound talking to them every day and one of the things the army was doing or actually was like

Paul Bremer. I'm sorry. Yeah. No, shit. Do you live down a cop with him? Well, it wasn't actually a, it wasn't actually a true cop or a cop either one. It was, it was like basically on the base, but it was just down on the edge of the base. We were like covering that sector.

I think they just didn't want us around. They were like, go live with those Iraqis. We fucking hate you. I cast Brown. Like, all these stupid farm kids Why the fuck is their shit on the port-of-shitters? Why are they squatting on the port-a-shitters? I haven't seen a proper jumping jack in weeks.

Oh, I got videos of that too. That shit is amazing. The first time, I was like, they got to be doing this on purpose. This is got, they're trolling us. They're not. The biggest troll us ever. And the push-ups are worse almost. Oh, yeah.

It's like a damn accordion. And they're like, peener is hitting the ground. It was like, it was terrible. When we first got in there, the, like, lieutenant was, he was like, hey, I was told I got to keep my pistol when we go to bed. Because we take their guns from them, you know? Yep. And we're like, I don't give a fuck. Who told you you were keeping pistol?

You're not keeping a pistol, dude. And he's like, I can't keep control of my guys without it. Or like, take it up with somebody else. me your fucking gun and we don't trust your ass so that was kind of there was one IP that I really loved but the rest of them I didn't trust at all nice so the idea that the of the mission was we were recruiting new IPs Iraqi police and we had like 330 slots or something to go to a different Middle Eastern country not the one you guys are thinking a different one and They would get trained up there and then come back.

So, you know, Paul Bremer was doing all kind of dumb shit. And we had like Shia, police and SUNY and Sunni pollution shit. It was just bad. So we were recruiting people from Ramadi. Hey, come clean up your own town. You know, this is this feel good story. Well, it was supposed to be a three-day mission. And I think it was the end of the first day we had already filled every slot for, you know, to go get trained.

and they're like, no, you've got to keep doing the mission because hearts and minds are some shit. Yep. And so we get to the third day, and there's so many Iraqis coming through, and this is a glass factory. I should probably tell that part, so it makes sense. There was a glass factory that was almost attached to, we ended up annexing it later on, but it was almost attached to the fob that we lived on, but it had been a functional glass factory. It's maybe your book, right? It is, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, thank you. Thanks for folks, sir. Braxton McCourt.com. And Amazon? No, I hate that. Amazon. Anyone who has a private rocket company is not my friend right now.

It almost seems like you've had some resets. No, I actually looked you up. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I know the name of your book is Glass Factory, correct? Yeah, yeah. Okay. For real, though, where can we find that? On my website, brachshmancourt.com.

Thank you. Please buy it. Boom. It go into a lot more. And it's not a war book, I would say, since we're talking about this. It's more about healing after getting wounded. And I think it's related. I tried to write something that was relatable to people and was reflective of what I was actually seeing happen to my friends when they got home.

So I didn't feel like that book was out there. Everything was just, this is how I won this medal. And, you know, and no one was talking about, yeah, I got 14 DUIs. And, you know, like, I didn't get 14. My worst. Yeah. Only 13. Yeah, just one.

Yeah. Billings, Montana. What happened to the last side to you, buddy? Have a DU metal with a fucking oak cluster. We should make that actually. God damn American hero right there. That was a thing in the Navy where, like, in order to be chief, you had to have fucking your DUI badge on it. And a divorce, right?

Yeah, divorce than a D. You're not a real G-Wat veteran. So glass factory. Oh, okay. So this glass factory, think of like an American factory. It's basically like that. Just less safety regulations. Yeah, Hodglican.

Without OSHA. Yeah, no OSHA. But it had like a wall around it. And we were using that wall. That wall had like a man gate, like a man-sized gate, and then a vehicle gate. And so we blocked the vehicle gate and then use the man gate to let people in. And then we'd wand them and, you know, TSAM and shit. And then send them to the Marine element.

I think it was P3 that was doing the actual recruitment and all that stuff. So we were just the idiot security. Dude, I, again, hats off to you because that is one thing. It was like my biggest fear when seeing that idea of like checkpoints for vehicles or wanding or any of that. I was like, I hope I don't have to do a single minute of that. I just kick down doors, do patrols.

I want to be out there. I don't want to be a target where, well, I hope you're not going to clack off today, and then you have to just want. Because, dude, they're just walking up, and then you have to wand them.

Okay, you're good. Okay, so you are a soft heart. Like, they don't have to worry about anything because they can get right up to you. And then, so that's why I was always terrified of that. Same for vehicle checkpoints.

Vehicle rolls up and you're just hoping it's not a V-Bid so they can clack off. And they started making aware that IA's IPs would have to do them instead of soldiers because running into issues of, hey, these guys are just going to pull up to an American soldier checkpoint, clack off, and then good to go. Which they did that really well at Warfare, the movie. Yeah, oh, dude, warfare, they fucking crushed that movie. Showing like the Sending Iraqis out. Yep. Yeah, exactly.

If you haven't seen warfare. No, I'm not. You'll have so much PTSD from it. I was about to say. Brandon, who was telling us they were sitting there and people, you could tell they walked out from it because they were G-Watt veterans? Ethan and Techie.

Yeah, Ethan and Techie were sitting there watching the Warfare movie and they saw other people walk out during the hardcore parts of the movie because it kind of nails home. How gnarly it is. Fucking, like, nailed it. Nailed it to a T. It was mind-blowing on how well they did it.

A-24 next level, but how they captured every part of that, especially that G-Wa era and war actually combat. I've tipped my hat still and I was like, holy fuck, this is wild. Dude, I don't know if I want to watch it now. I'm like, I'm doing good. I'm in a happy spot. Dude, I still want to figure out if it was Jocko on that one part, though. I know he was part of that mission.

I don't know if he was, if that was him in it. But I do think that was his unit at the time. Like, 100% want to say that was his unit. Brandon, the one seal that comes up, and he's like,

we're frogmen, we're frogmen, we gotta go, we gotta go. You don't feel pain frog man. Come on, fucking hoo- hoo-oh.

Come on, I wouldn't. I wouldn't think so, but I honestly, I have no clue. So good, though. So good. Okay, so you were-

Was he like shoving his wash in their face? Yeah. You see the fucking time right now? I was up at 4.30. You're bleeding out. It's a fucking move or something. It's leg day, bitch.

Dude's disoriented from a... Late day's really funny. Better see you at 3 a.m. Do you like your legs on that rooftop? Good. My favorite... Before I, like, started hitting Twitter hardcore,

I think my favorite tweet was to Jocco. like this is like seven eight years ago I text them like I showed a picture of my watch it was two in the afternoon and I just I'd like poured some water like on my gym mask and I was like I'm up doing the thing and he he just he just replied on my tweet with no if we actually asked our audience to go just like one week we just everyone tagged Jocko with times late in the day you know everyone would start doing it immediately he's like why are tens of thousands of people doing this watch photo at three in the afternoon with like pee on the floor

like that's exactly what I did he said no crushed my workout pee on the floor do the hard thing doing the hard thing that's all you say doing the hard thing because it's open for everything come on the floor oh god Jock was like what the fuck

Did I do? Well, it's just like Zach Brian. You don't have to do anything. Sometimes we'll just accidentally bully. And we all like Zach Brian. Oh, God, we haven't told Braxton about the Zach Brian thing. Oh, God. I'll let you lead this.

All right, we did a live show up in Austin, Texas. We, you know, we sat around. We did this bullshit. We just did our live show. We're coming back. Jake, our, what would you call? call him, our manager, our lawyer. Our lawyer, he's like, hey, play Leaving Austin by Zach Bryan.

Is that what the song saw, Leaving Austin? It's something like that. Well, I think one of us put that on, and he was trying to play, like, Dolly Parton and shit like that. Yeah, so. We put on, like, Leaving Austin by Zach Bryant, right song. Yeah. And then we try to, I think we try to turn off Zach Brian.

No, no, we put it on, and he was like, oh, Zach Bryant's gay. Never listen to Zach Brian. Oh, yeah, he says Zach Bryan's gay. So we're like, all right, play like, I don't know, five dudes coming in my mouth by Zach Brian, Jake. Alexa play, like, six bodybuilders pissing on my foreskin by Zach Brian. Could you just play that, Jake? And he got so mad. He got so mad.

This was an entire hour. And in our defense, we were absolutely shiwrecked. This is after a live show. We're like on a party bus on the way home. Oh, yeah. And he is getting really mad. about this. Oh, sorry, I accidentally triggered.

I triggered the Alexa. I just realized that. Playing 10 black dudes pissing on me by Zach Brian. That's what we got Philip around, man. He's like on it. We started talking about it on Twitter one day. We started throwing out the Zach Brian quotes like the, you know, just like come in my mouth by Zach Brian.

Oh, my gosh. We played docking like Interstellar by Zach Brian. Could you dock right in my cock like Zach Brian? and this motherfucker dude he got all Twitter he deleted his Twitter he did

so we talked about we talked about it it was also in a BTS and then on Twitter that man made a post about a song and then his replies were just like hey Alexa

play this and it's hundreds hundreds of comments of that just was really bad and we just Did it again. Oh, shit. Thanks, Philip.

Hey. Twitter. Mike Lee is a really big Zach Bryan fan. Yeah. So, yeah. Zinn and your foreskin by Zach Brian. He didn't see in the replies,

and he probably had no idea at first of why he did a tweet. Why do these people hate me? Yeah, he's like, what the fucking I do? He's generally, like, he's probably one of my favorite country artists. Like, there's no malice there, but, uh, sorry, shit's just funny. I just want me Ah, there we go Feel it

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They fit him really nice. Oh, pants. Talk to my priest now So my new friends I think I sin just by like being there But anyway We've derailed way too much From the last factory

I was so sorry So wanding people Oh yeah So that was kind of like the three days There was some other shit in there But And then on the third day This is a weird segue right

Hey black dude's pissing on somebody Oh yeah so this time at the war It's called healing this is how I dealt with my PTSD it's called a healing that's a great shirt too it's called the yeah yeah I buy that one

we're making it you got in like a brush pauper whatever you want I'm just kidding poncho yeah poncho let's get together on this okay Wandi

Okay, wanting. All right. So day three, like I say, some other bullshit has happened, but nothing, like, no big deal. Everything you kind of, and we had been promised three peaceful days by the shakes, you know. Always. And they kind of gave it to us. There was some shit, but nothing big. So by the shakes. So I'm going to have in the morning.

So the sheikhs. So it's the heiks. The sheiks. Okay. Yeah. They're like, oh, yeah. Yeah. It's the people you'll meet up with the different Sunnis or she is. and they'd be like oh hey like it'll be good like nothing bad's going to happen right yeah yeah it's

like clergy right yeah exactly about the dark magic yeah please tell me how you get your woman to cut your grass for you since we're here live in a desert yeah they got like ladies out there with a sigh i'm not kidding in a little burrow and they're like piling grass on he's in there smoking hookah and drinking tea they do all the manual labor that's why they hit a wall at like 20. Asian women are like 60. Over there, it's like, man, that's an attractive. And then it's like 20 to 21.

It's like, because they are doing every bit of manual labor. They are carrying the heaviest shit you will ever see. You're like, God, damn, and all the kids on top of it. They're like, uh, they hit a wall at what? Which, what age? 20 to 21. Oh, that's what? Never mind.

Keep going. So, to end. of day three. This story's never getting finished. No. Your story. I was just waiting to see where that was going. Don't you know where it was going.

You don't seem to, you know where that was going. Mm-hmm. So end of day three. It's like midnight and there's still a bunch of people out there. And my first line later, John, so at this point I've been, I was now a Bravo team leader, and he, you know, obviously still, you have a boss. And my first line leader is Alph team leader, John. And John, we're radioing up and we're like, hey, man, it is fucking midnight.

Like, we need to call it. We got to go to bed. We can't be wanting people in the dark. This is retarded. And Command was like, no, no, get a few more through. So he just took it upon himself. I don't know if I've ever told this publicly before, but he just took it upon. himself and he goes out there he's like you guys get the fuck out of here dude we're done you know and sent

him off and then we left and then told them what we had done like yeah we told these guys go home so then they say hey well you've got to do another day you know because these people they feel like they didn't get their opportunity we're like bro they don't have an opportunity that opportunity's already gone well they don't know that you know we didn't tell them who got picked blah blah blah So hearts and minds bullshit So they go We got to do one more day So fourth day now

Of what was supposed to be a three Three day mission And we don't even promise Three peaceful days So we go to S2 in the morning Intel guys in the morning For a brief And the intel guys say

Hey be on the lookout for a V bed We've got Intel You're going to get hit with a V bed You know And we're just like What the fuck are we doing? It's a white pickup truck which one make Toyota oh yeah dude they do say that kind of shit yeah and what's crazy driver profile

brown dope dude I can't believe still like they were wanding until after at night they're making you wand at night is wild I was wondering like because there was a certain part in that story where you're just like taking it back like any anything after night, I don't know, like, they were on lockdown. It's like, oh, it's getting nighttime. Oh, that's why I'm like, what the fuck? We also had that, but they were, I think the theory was these people were already there. They've been under Overwatch for a while, I guess.

Anyway, so fourth day, we get told we're going to get hit with the V bed and we're like, all right, we get in the truck, dude. And I was like, all right, let's go get fucking blown up because we know how this is going to go. and we ride the truck through the base whatever and get there and we get to the man gate and there's like a thousand Iraqis lined up already at the gate and these are not punctual people so we know like we know already like something is uh something's wrong you know so we radio up and we're like hey this is bad then these people they shouldn't be here like this whatever and they're like Roger, continue mission. That's not a verbatim quote, but that's essentially what we got told.

And so John and I go up to the gate and we're like looking. We already set up our security positions and blocking positions and stuff. And then we go up to the gate and we're looking. And I was like, dude, I don't want to put my guys out there. This is insane. This is just a terrible idea. And he feels exactly the same. And he's the boss, obviously.

And he says, all right, we'll go out there. I said, all right, works for me. And so we get our interpreter. who we called Carlos because he looked like he was from Juarez even though he was from like Southern I'm right

Mexican looking mother I got I'll find a picture and show you I don't want it to be on the internet case he's still alive you know yeah we're like hey Carlos we're going out here

and we're going to start asking questions and see what's up so we go out start asking questions you know try to keep this fast and you know it's like why are you here

right now you know and the answers are oh either my cleric told me to be here or i just wanted the best chance of their job basically and i mean neither one of these are actually good answers you know i don't believe you and then this dude comes up and he starts tapping on my shoulder he's like pretty frantic and i don't know what he's saying like i knew some words but they were not friendly words so i have no idea what he's hollering at me in arabic you know and i'm like carlos translate this like tell me what's up and he's like he says he sees a grenade with wires and I'm like oh fuck so we got a

trip wire out here somewhere I mean that's where my brain went and so we had at that time we had like the prick radios for you know comms and then our team had an internal system so you could like push the button here and just talk only to your team so you could like play those games that you're not supposed to play like you're like and you're like uh Hillary Clinton you know what I mean and that's not a Fed thing is a different

we want to know if you would marry Hillary Clinton is that game so like internal comms we were like hey don't come out here we don't know what's

we think there's trip wire or so on and then this semi truck crashes through our concertina wire on the eastern perimeter we'd set up

and of course everyone's thinking holy shit that's a big ass V-Bet. Like, this is going to be bad. Massive V-bed. Did you get lit up instant? Oh, yeah.

So everyone, including in Abrams, but not with the main gun. Okay. Yeah, yeah. Which would have been badass, but it didn't. It's fucking dope. We're like, send it, dude. So everyone, you know, now we've got that situation to deal with. And Iraqis are running around all over the place.

And John's like, do you want to take the truck or the crowd? And I was like, I'll take the crowd. You go get the truck. And then we got some help from Colonel Mack and his PSD team came out trying to like round these Iraqis back up and then a couple of dog handlers, Sergeant Kahn and Chessie was his first name, I think. He came out and we had their dogs, you know, trying to get this crowd under control. And we were putting them in lines and we needed that like, do you have a government issued ID? Do you not have a government issued ID? Do you have a government issued ID?

and you are former bathist because if you are then we can't we'll just fake it you know yeah um so we were doing that and then i hear i'm like my medic was a former 80 second guy uh on the infantry side and he's you know sitting in the gun he's like let me out there you know he's getting pissed so i'm talking to him and i'm like no staying there we're good and then i hear like looking over the broom of my k-pot i see this dog i growling and it's got this dude's arm and his mouth and all of a sudden it's just like two white flashes and i thought we got hit with idf uh with like rockets or mortars or missiles or something is it indirect fire yep um yeah not that country that everyone likes to talk about well just making jokes also the k-pot is

differently you're getting on equipment too you're like i had a k-pop like no mitches even yeah they just really screwed you over all that equipment at that point. Yeah, we were, what was that, uh, Mitch was like, that's the thing you wanted at the time. Oh, yeah. Mitch was the night, like, he had to have a K pot. Sucked. And then did you have like the M82 old jungle? We were the first brigade to field the fucking pajamas, the ACUs. Oh, no shit. And it was dog shit. Everyone hated them. But we did have, so we had, uh, DCU, like, pouches and all that shit. But then our, uh, what was the, IFAC? IFAC. Or IFAC was a, or not IFAC.

No, what is it cut? The fucking, IBA. IBA. Yeah. IBM. Was it IBAs? It was like the FLACFest, IBA, right? Yeah.

I mean, we had like plates or whatever, but yes. It's happy plates and all that shit. Yeah. And so it goes off and I thought we got hit with rockets or mortars or something because there was like two, at least in my head, two distinct explosions. But I woke up on the ground, f***ed up. And I thought it was dead, man. I could just see.

so my like all the bones and my right hand were broken and my right radius and owner broken but my right humorous wasn't and then my left humorous was broken and then this hand is like functional so i got myself propped up on my elbow and i was looking down and i could just see like guts and i thought i was for sure i was like you're blown half you're fuck dude like you're dead and i was like rubbing this organ in my fingers trying to figure out if it was mine you know Like, I didn't pass anatomy, so I didn't even know if she could, like, feel these things, you know? So I'm like, I love your brain. It's like, shit, is this mine?

I don't feel it. Should I feel this? I don't know. Exactly. How far was the guy? Like 15 meters of stone. Jesus. Yeah, it was pretty close.

And at that time, I can hear John yelling, like every Mick kid, right, you go by Mac. everyone calls you mac it's not even optional it's just like tradition or something so i can hear him yelling mac mac mac and i'm like i have no idea what's going on one thing movies get right is it's almost it does almost sound like you're uh drowning you know that underwater distortion yeah and so i was like trying to get oriented uh and then i start feeling like some weight go off my body a little bit and then pretty soon those guts got like pulled away

and then I could see like my hips and shit and then they rolled me over so now I'm thinking like at least I'm not blown in half and then they rolled me over and then I could see my legs and my legs are just absolutely like I've got bilateral femur fractures and bilateral hip fractures and I had like something like 30 holes

and my between my knees and hips on each side and your god like my tibio was fucked up yeah when they rolled me over it was like a bag of wrenches you know no shit yeah it's bad and then holy fuck damn i'm just i'm blown away just because like the fact that you're clearly mobile and like you look great like just walking around like you i would never have expected something that bad well i appreciate that thank you yeah that's wild because he was like yeah as brandon is saying you would never tell just by your mobility motion standing like but 30 holes and then how many your arteries did it fucking miss

everything on your arteries okay I'm like the when your femurs break your glutes and your quads are so strong that they contract shunting yep and then it's terrifying part go on yep so then the compartment syndrome started right then and it kind of worked out because it acted like an internal tourniquet so when they started cutting my uniform off and my medic was out there at this point and he was cutting my uniform off uh and he gets like to my thighs now i can start to see like holes and then i was thinking ah you're still probably fucked you know because like that's bad um and then he gets up like a little higher and he's like you're not wearing underwear and i'm like fuck you dude it's cold out here i love the mind so it's still the joke

is that one of the things you thought i was like is my dick good well yeah because i didn't wear underwear so he could just like see it and as soon as he said that i was like i'm good man i just got out of the pool yeah i was in the pool so i'll speed it up here uh no i like by all means like this is unless you you're not comfortable talking about but i think that is a lot of people just don't understand that kind of trauma or that how fast everything happens happens, but then how slow everything happens at the same time. Yeah, it feels like an eternity. And when I could see all the holes, like some of them, not every one of them,

every time my heart would be, you could see just blood like run out. But it, because of that compartment syndrome, it wasn't like squirting or anything. It was all pretty deep. I always say it looks like if you took like a water bottle and took the lid off and just like squaws it rhythmically. that's what it looked like and so then they're trying to figure out what the fuck to do turnicates were

not exactly a great option because there were so many problems so they just bandaged it and they're like we got to get you the fuck out of here man and they put me on a five ton to medevac which I don't even know

do they even have suspension on those things because it didn't feel like it no horse and carriage is pretty much what they put you on yeah exactly go get my old man's wagon, dude. The Amos showed up.

You're just like, hook on, like wooden wheels on the rocks. It's like the fucking the prank videos they do where they try to like get the thieves in the back of a box truck. And then as soon as they get it,

they roll the door down and then just drive them around. He's fucking get them flop into one side of the other. It's pretty much how it was. Except for strapped to a litter. Well, thank God they have at least nice roads out there. Oh my gosh.

very nice really soft the iraq roads dude they're no one world over the navajo the Navajo res actually I won't go if anyone's

drove through like four corners it's basically like that is how the Iraq roads are no fault of the Navajos I guess that's what I'm told no offense Navajos my grandfather had a feather from the Navajo tribe

so I feel like I get a Is that like your like, I have a black friend. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, I really do love endings.

I grew up with them. I'm a joke. Well, not the ones I had purchased very much. But, I don't know if beers was a good idea. By all means. Have another. So you, man, Philip's going to have a hard attack over there. I know.

He's like, fuck. Oh, he thumbs up. He's right. He's great. So the compartment dude So that saved your life too Oh totally it did Oh and it gets better

The roads We get to Ogden Gate Which is like the rear gate Of the Fobb Fobramati at the time And the troop medical clinic Is like right down that The hospital for the base

Was right down that road Some Friam Sergeant Major Had put speed bumps Down there Because people were speeding or whatever Yeah so it was like speed bump Boom boom Like this is

You can't get to the fucking oh my god that's such a sart major thing to do to bro and you you know i'm not going to you know it's like some logistics guy that was just bored or some shit too he's like the only soldier i lost rolled his truck we got to slow down in here unless there is emergency and now i can't get to the fucking exactly mad-based fast and i got a commendation because i put in spreeks like that he like ran some risk assessment was like hey you know gets his nerd Quint glasses up. Have you seen, you know, Generation Kill.

Love it. Back in the day. It was like, you got to police that moustache. Yeah. That's, that's who makes me think about, put the speed bumps there. Police that moustache. Didn't even think about the downsides to, hey, why you might need to get around quickly on the fucking base, especially. Especially to the medical question.

Yeah. Kind of important. Kind of fucking important. Why would you ever need to get people there fast? Yeah. Yeah. Especially with a black. fly zone so getting an aerial medevac is almost impossible anyway oh shit yeah it was bad so you got

speed bumps you're just oh yeah bouncing your way oh yeah morphine yet do they no so Jesus well yeah yeah probably lucky on that one yeah when we get to the medical clinic and that you know he started doing the blood pressure and all that shit uh which we didn't have that capability in our aid bags at that time i'm sure they do now but get to the the aid station and you know they start working on you whatever and they kind of immediately realize you got to get somewhere like a trauma hospital this is not good so they put uh lines in start pumping blood into my body but they wouldn't give me any morphine because my blood pressure was so low it would just kill you um so they do that and then he put me on a bird and the idea was go to blod the air force base yep

And that's where you want to go. That's where, like, the smart people are with, like, they have TVs and shit. Do movie theaters. They have a swimming pool, outdoor and indoor pool. Trust me. That's where, if you were good, you got to go to Belas. I know Belas. I grew up with the public education system of Alabama.

Where's Balada? Belada is an Air Force base in Iraq. It was near, it was in between, more Moctadilla. Yeah, it wasn't it closer to Urbiel? Yeah. It's like in between. You had Baghdad and then Moked Adia, and I think it's like the Diala River. The good doctors were there.

Yes. Yeah, the Air Force. The people that. The Air Force was in the Air Force. Okay, I understand now. Air Force lived there. It's dope as shit. Dude, yeah.

So we get up in the air and there was a couple of us on there, including the dog. His name is Bruno. And he was on there. He lived. The dog did. Sergeant Ken, unfortunately, passed away. And Colonel Mack died as well, which sucked. Was he a full bird or just a lieutenant colonel?

That's fucking wild to lose a lieutenant colonel too. The balls that guy had, yeah, to be out there too. Dude, he's out there with a bunch of five, sixes, fours. I think the next highest ranking guy was a six that was actually out there. Oh, so same blast got them as well. Yeah, Colonel Mack, it sucked, man. Like, I liked, we all liked him because he was just like that.

A true leader. He just came up to me right before I got wounded and he's like, I know you got some fucking Copenhagen. I'm like, yeah, I do. So he can, like, give him a dip, you know? And he's like, this shit's fucked. I'm like, I know, sir. He was awesome, man.

And he was a great guy, dude. I don't want to get depressed about it. But so he passed away and then dog handler, Sergeant Ken, also a great guy. He, Sergeant Ken had been at Fob Hit on the Syrian border way over there. And he was bored of shit. He's like, you guys. got to get me to Ramadi's that's where everyone's doing shit so he had volunteered to get over to Ramadi too so it's just a bunch of uh the best dudes in the world you know uh great guy uh he

passed away bruno made it and then actually deployed again to afghanistan no shit yeah the hard-ass dog right hard-ass dog man that dog was badass and right before he got wounded one of the things i had said to uh can over the radio was i was like he or no actually it was face-to-face He's like, you want us to come out and help? And I was like, yeah, I'm glad you got that dog off my truck because he was just out there sleeping, you know, on my hood. I was just joking because we loved it, you know. Yeah, he just thud.

So we get to the aid station, get in the bird, and I get him like barely coherent at this point. And we take off and we're trying to get to blood. And they ended up stopping into quatum, TQ, because I was losing too much blood. And so they started like more blood. blood, more saline, or whatever it is in those IV bags. How much blood have they put in at this point?

It had to be leaders. Oh, yeah. It was definitely a lot. And then we try to, do we take off from there? But I still just had them in my arms, like the lines. I think. I started to remember exactly. And then I don't think that's your fault.

What the fuck? Give me the details, bro. You only had 30 holes in you. Kind of a lot going on. Yeah. Like, were you conscious for all of this? yeah okay that's fucking yeah i mean start to go in and out from pain a little bit but and then we take off from tq and we end up stopping in flusia for emergency surgery they're like this guy

flusia had a better trauma hospital than romadi they're like this guy's not going to make it so stopped in flusia and they put a pick line in my jugular and i think that one either had two or four bags going in and they put me in traction splints and they dude they split my quads from like knee to hip on both sides to try to relieve the compartment syndrome and what is compartment syndrome it's like your body starts swelling from the inside out essentially so like all of your fluids are like i don't know i'm not a doctor but your fluids start pressing both directions i guess it's just creating pressure inside it essentially saved you and also very bad at the same exactly because you like because how many minutes is

This is, like, minutes in, your femoral, especially if both were cut. If you're a femoral, if you're hitting the femoral, and compartment syndrome didn't happen. You have two to four minutes to live max. Yeah, fucking max. You're leaking blood everywhere. Yeah, like, and it's not leaking. It is squirting across the goddamn room. Like, where he was saying, oh, it's this little pump that every time your heart beats for arteries, it shoots across the goddamn room.

That's the high pressure side. Yeah. If you're into trucks or whatever. Yeah. But yours is like, oh, hey, compartment, that, that syndrome is just crushing everything wild, fucking wild, especially with that many holes, too. Oh, dude, it sucked, yeah. And I would say to add to his point, if you're like a truck guy, it'd be like putting a channel, or not a channel lock, a vice grip on a line or something, you know, to, like, slow it down. So we get to Flusier, they get me in traction splints, and then they split that, knee to hip on each side.

and that fucking really sucked because you know you're like virtually no pain no pain medication at all at this point and you know you're like your brain's barely there but you could you can hear it when the scalpel goes you can like hear it in your ears it's weird i always say it sounds like a muddy zipper yeah so that sucked and then once they got me stabilized ish there then they hit me with morphine or maybe it was at ballade that they did that but they finally got me to ballad and then it was morphine hell and all that until they got finally got me to landstool and then from landstool to walter reed and so that was damn so how many minutes was from explosion to actual morphine then did they say if they ever i don't i don't know for sure it was a while though it wasn't well i don't know i guess i don't really know for sure when i wrote the book i went back to my medical records and then talked to my friends because obviously i'm not going to have a clear memory of stuff so i remember things one way and then i would talk to my buddies and be like

does that sound right you know so i try to get is right as possible so whatever i've got in there is probably going to be closer but i don't think you could like they don't write it down what what they do though is the minute you're off the field they scan your uh id card your cat card and you stop getting combat pay. They made sure of that real quick. That is the most government shit I've ever hurt. They're like, bro, where's his ID card?

We need that. We got to stop it. Okay. And he's taxed again. Woo. Holy shit. That was heavy. What's your favorite Zach Bryan song?

Yeah. I'm like a spiritual boomer, man. I listen to old cowboy shit mostly. And then I really like Bach. So I listen to like a lot of box. but all right

lighter note that's what you're listening to these days my daughter likes to listen to Zach Bryan so if I make her drive I'm tortured

with new music and his is not torturous I will say that have you heard speaking of like old country have you heard

that new thing that's going around it's Johnny Cash's grandson did Folsom Prison Blues he sounds

just like his grandfather. It is like spitting image. Yeah. You know, he's got an older guy. Like, obviously Johnny Cash was, you know, not a spring chicken or anything like that. But like, he sounds just like his grandfather. It's weird. I did hear about that. I don't know music. So I am. Yeah, I don't know. I feel bad. I'm not trying to be offensive. I don't listen to a lot of music is what I'm driving in. Don't worry. You don't have to worry about being offensive to Zach Bryant on this podcast. We've got some lore, apparently. With the back story, I'm like, oh, dude.

So how was the response from your book, though, or the individual seeing how far you've came from that? Because that is, dude, no morphine's fucking wild. For at minimum 30 minutes, there's no, nothing. At minimum 30 minutes, I'm guessing. And then it had probably, yeah. Oh, yeah. Well, thankfully, military was pretty good at, like, they try to speed it up, but then speed bumps.

And once you went to on a bird, it's like. But you went to multiple places, apparently, before. There was morphine, right? Yeah, yeah, three, I think. Or, yeah, three. Yeah. Thankfully, Iraq, when you're in a helicopter, it's pretty, it's not that big of a place. No.

You're looking at an hour drive a lot of times, so a helicopter, then you're back down. They're cooking, too. Yeah, they whole ass. But you had that response, though, from that had to been, like, super motivating or inspirational to a lot of veterans in helping them, too. Because they're like, holy shit, okay, homeboy went through way, way. shit and this is his story on how to overcome that okay I want to read this book or this is how this helped me you had to have some messages about that right yeah the

best parts were I it's really cool and helpful when civilians reach out to and be like hey this helped me and so I don't want to you know poo-poo any of that because I really enjoy the getting those messages as well but you know when you've got pros that were there and they're like dude I read that I helped me with some shit I was going through in my life You know, that's, yeah, that's the best part. When I wrote it, I had, like, no social media presence. I was, like, riding Colts and guiding hunts and shit.

So I didn't, like, have a profit motive, which I think helped. I knew it wasn't just sell very many copies. So I just tried to be as clear and honest and upfront about shit as I could. So, like, for the first five years, the book was out, sold, like, 500 or something. And then I get on and start talking shit. like aOC and then all of a sudden people are like I gotta read this guy's book you know

so it's been really just like the last three or four years and it's been great when did you write it? I think I started it in 2050 I think it published in 2017 I think was the year that it came out where can we buy it now uh braxumaccom

where to get it you're going to have a lot of people especially these fuck heads out there yeah you got a lot you shitters out there they're very supportive. This is now the second time we've mentioned where you can buy your book and I promise you we will have comments

that ask where to buy it. Yeah. Bro. I'll tell you some stuff off air about that because I don't want to be mean to anybody, but yes. Be mean. You can like write something out

in bold letters. Like, hey man, it's going to take this long for it to ship and they're like, hey, two days later, where the fuck is my book? It's like, dude. I told you. I mean, honestly,

I find that, like, incredibly, I don't know what the word is, inspirational, I guess. Because I knew nothing about, you know, the incident that happened or any of your recovery or anything on that. And what you just described is incredible that, like, you just walked in here like a normal-ass guy. Like, the fact that you're walking in itself is a miracle. But being as mobile as you are and everything is, that's got to be fucking awesome, man. That's, I'm really happy for you. Thank you. It's great, man.

It's blessings. And it's like, I just got lucky and blessed, man. And you didn't use it as an excuse. I guarantee you how much therapy did you do for, like, your physical therapy was not an easy journey? And you're like, no, I'm doing it, right? There were days where I didn't want him for sure. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it was like six or eight years or something like that.

Jesus Christ. But you would never, like, again, we cannot stress. You would never be able to tell that was the level. No. you went through and that's what's awesome at the end of it it's fucking sucks but it's like holy shit look hey you just nutted up and then did the hard work he improvised adapted and came yeah he came all over and now you're like here i am you do uh do any athleticism too like running once i finally got to where i could run i did some for a while uh had been a colt

starter for my whole life minus that brief period really almost my whole life i guess uh so that kind of keeps me pretty busy but this last year and half it's been or i maybe yeah about a year and a half it's been a lot of talking shit and writing and less horse training than normal uh in fact it's roughly 18 months ago or something like that i busted my hip in my back again uh what you're doing but man i got bucked off this half draft cole and I thought she stepped on me. It hurt. I was like,

who, that was a good one. But luckily I have it. Hold on. You're like, oh, I got blown up. Better step on a fucking horse again and get fucked up.

Yeah, man, I love them. I can't get it. I just can't get it out. It's like in my soul. I can't. I just can't stop.

But this fucking horse, it was totally my fault. Well, she's a bitch too, but. We, It was like, I was ready to... It was like friends of mine talking about their last marriage.

Yeah, exactly. It was my fault. You're a bitch, too. Yeah, it's totally my fault. Sweet. It was a terminology-wise, inside horse is like a horse you own, and the outside horse is a client horse that's been brought there for you to ride for him.

This is an outside mayor, Philly, and she was half drafts. She was half-percher-on, half-quarter horse. And I liked her. fine she everything you've been going good and this was i was about to go move cattle for the guy that owned her and show her show him like hey here she's doing good take her you know she's yours so i'm warming her up in the round pin and she was just fighting me on the bit a bunch and i was like no you're going to fucking listen to me you know and she decided no i'm actually not going to listen to you

and she just blew up and i was in a slick fork saddle and like not a colt saddle and uh she tossed me pretty good and i hit like she she sent me like straight up and i hit my hip on the saddle on the way down and kind of did like a cartwheel into the ground and i was like wow that hurt uh so i got up walked around for a minute i have rods in my in my legs and my left hip which is the one that broke so it's luckily like i can't move like i'm not superman or something i have like uh help yeah mobility issues do you happened from 30 holes yeah but you know

if the rod hadn't had been there I wouldn't have been able to walk it was there extra structure yeah it pinned the rod which was not great oh shit yeah did you have that replaced or well no you didn't go to the doctor did you there's no well well is not an answer well once you bend the rod

then it's like it's a big deal to get it out because like think of like a bent wood screw trying to pull out it's in your bone you know so I just I just So I get up, I'm like walking around I'm like, ooh, that's pretty sore And I walk around for a minute And then I'm like, well, we got to move these cows

So I loaded her up and drove over Braxton just Braxton McCoy I got to move this cattle now I just bit a fucking rod in my body I didn't know that I thought I was just bruised You know, I thought I was just being

So we go move cows for a few hours And I told him I was like, hey she bucked me off right before this let me keep her for a couple extra weeks I'm not going to charge any money just let me make sure she doesn't do that again and I get home and I like it's late and I take my shaps off

and my wife like throws a fit if I walk out of the laundry room with like horse shit you know on me I can't imagine why so I'm like taking them off in there and my leg is like black and blue she's like what happened I just bucked off and like no big deal

then finish the season And then it's winter And I sat on the couch for like two days But like pretty much didn't get off the couch Like just resting Like watching TV and shit And then Monday came around I'm like all right I got to be productive

And I tried to stand up And I like could not move my leg I'm like oh fuck something's wrong And she's like you're going to hospital I got a doctor I like And his name's Mike And I'm like ah I'm good She's like you're fucking going

So I go And he's I go there and he's like What's going? on i tell him my hips kind of screwed up not moving very good he takes x-rays and he goes is you seen your back it's like well how am i going to see my back mike he's like come look at this

and he's like you fucking idiot broke your back dude so like the the transverse process like the little wings off of your vertebrae just snapped the one off on yeah I think it was my left so it might be the right I can't remember

but yeah I just broke it off so it's just like floating there I was like can we fix that And he's like, no, you fucking retard. He's like, it's all healed now, you idiot. So, yeah, I didn't get any smarter over the years is the thing. Damn, dude. How do you fix that? If you bend the rod in your leg, I'm still stuck on that.

Like, do they just... You can't. I mean, you'd have to remove the whole fucking rod, right? Which apparently you can't because like you said, like the bent wood screw analogy, like that, that was actually very, very good as far as explaining that. I think they'd have to do a total hip replacement for what the reason. that you're hitting on I think they'd have to cut the the ball off of the head of the hip and then pull it out and that rod goes so that one was a I can't remember not retrograde it's like gamma or something so it went through the top of the hip down and then screws into the end of your femur like you're the ball of your femur right and then the hip rod there's like an islet in there and the hip rod goes through that so they would have to be able to get that out in order to get the femurot out to start over it would just be a huge process that sounds cumbersome and annoying and they'd be i mean if you have never watched a hip replacement

video oh man it is the most fucking they use a goddamn sludge hammer to knock it out and knock it back in place it is not a delicate process not at all and that's essentially what they would oh yeah yeah and when they put those rods in i didn't know this shit until later like watching Instagram or whatever there's like an impact and they're like getting an impact gun and they're like screwing it in I'm like fucking looking at those videos

watching those videos I feel like that's how like our grandparents are gonna or excuse me our grandchildren are going to come back and watch that shit like God these guys are basically bloodletting yeah it's like a little leeches yeah yeah

we gotta get that bad blood out God put some silver fish in there with us they got ghosts in his blood do cocaine about it give the baby heroin yeah your baby's shitting too much give them heroin

the laxatives it's like this was like four generations ago like we shouldn't be laughing it's modern medicine's pretty rad all things considered but we're not there yet holy shit god damn bro you're just going through the ringer and you're like no

I want to do this more yeah thanks for coming to our dumb podcast this is awesome man this is fun of myself I'm glad you're having a good time man we're having a blast yeah this is fucking great what was it like

did you watch anything or did any research before this or were you like no let's go in cold I've seen like some of your guys stuff on YouTube and then Philip and I watched so like I see

your individual gun content and your breakdown stuff and then we watched a little bit while we were driving like good Americans down the freeway and I was like I didn't know if I wanted to be

overly prepped and nervous about it and I watched a little bit I'm like oh fuck this is gonna be fun plus you sat down with three bush lights in the beginning before we even started out we're like yeah all right

this is gonna be a time we're gonna have a good time today my friend yeah the one thing we want to do on this podcast is like you know every white dude with a beard has a podcast now but we just want to hang out and drink a couple of beers. It's awesome.

Beer cast. Have fun. Listen to stories. That's why even the history segments you did at the beginning leading into like, hey, this is my thought process on that. Community. They eat that shit up. Every time he says the word community, we have to drink.

Oh, okay. It's a rule. But that's one thing I wanted to kind of bring back around. So you had obviously all of those experiences that were, you know, clearly very formative, very impactful. um where did that transition over to now like one of your big um i guess missions in life is protecting public lands where did that where was the bridge there um about 10 years ago something like that uh rob bishop and some other politicians from utah had put together this public lands

initiative and it sounded really good to a guy like me was like hey more local control it was the movement was the idea was to transfer uh ownership of the land from the federal government to the state government and i was like shit man local ownership sounds way better you know so i sounded good and then a buddy of mine started talking to me about hey there's some hiccups here might not be as clean cut as you think it would be and i started researching it and i joined like this organization with a friend of mine uh well it was an established organization. I just joined it and started learning more. And it doesn't take very long once you start to get in the weeds to go, hey, this is bullshit. Like the whole intent of

transfer is to sell it off the entire intent. To me, the most practical argument here is right now those lands are being held in trust for the American citizen and they're resting on a tax base of 330 million people. Well, if you transfer them to, say, Idaho, where I live, that's a 1.8 million person tax base. How do you move that on to them without causing, like, huge problems? You either have to increase property taxes to, you know, you're going to have to tax a shit out of them in order for them to take care of it, or you're going to have to sell it. Oh, the maintenance burden of that?

Maintenance burden. there's actually a program called PILP payment in lieu of taxes that is designed to take care of rural communities like the one that I live in. So there's a ton of public land where I'm at, a shitload, and property taxes are not being collected on that. Well, property taxes help pay for schools, roads, you know, firefighters, sheriff's apartments, so on. Well, they can't collect tax on the public land. So the federal government says, well, we'll put together this program and we'll pay you. money to your rural communities in order to take care of this. So if you transfer it to the state, well, now that rural community doesn't get that money.

So how are they going to pay for all this? They have to sell it. The state will have to sell it. There's no way around it. And that's without even getting into road, bridge, fire, all these other, like fire mitigation, all these other costs. They just can't afford it. There's no way.

They get sold off to either China or Black Rock or who. whoever comes in and buys up all this fucking land. Saudis, yeah. People that notoriously, you know, by and large, the people that are buying this land, not big fans of us or our culture or anything that we cultivate this land for. Yeah.

And coming from a ranching community, a lot of small ranches, like the people that I care about, they're running a lot of times 90, 10, percentage-wise, deeded to undeated acres. So they own like 10% of what they're running their cattle on. The other 90% is public land. Like BLM stuff? B-LM Forest Service.

Kind of like the Bundy Ranch kind of stuff. I know that's its own separate issue. Yeah, that would be its own podcast, but yes. Who else does it, Brandon? Those guys, they already hate me, and I'm, like, actually on their side with a lot of it. But, yeah. Yeah. So if you were to do that, their ranch is just absolutely cooked. There's no way they can buy. So one common argument you'll get is we'll just let the rancher buy that land. There's other reasons not to want this. But, well, he can't. I'm telling you right now, he absolutely can't. There's no way in hell. If you've got a stocking rate of 35 acres to a pair, so you make maybe 500 bucks. a year per 35 acres something like that after inputs are done how are you going to use that

to buy something that's going to sell at probably a minimum right now because the land prices are where they're at 3,500 an acre how's it take five generations no one's going to first of all no one's going to loan to him on that right even if they would there's no way he can't do it and then there's another reason not to there's many reasons not to but another important reason not to is out west a lot of our species are migratory because of the mountains so and they'll summer up on the mountain and then winter down in the flats when you start fencing all of that stuff off you're just going to destroy the mule deer population which is already struggling in virtually every state but Wyoming so you just kill off keystone species for no reason and not just

is the reason why it doesn't uh they're not particularly affected in wyoming is because it's more flat? No, what happened in Wyoming, they finally reached stasis. They lost a bunch too. They used to be at about a million, their herd used to be about a million animals. I think they're at 400,000 right now. But they were able to hit stasis because Eastman's and some biologists there, and then I think some money came in from another group. I wish I could credit them, but can't remember. They identified this one ridge line that was private, and it wasn't a big chunk. that was a corridor and they were able to purchase it and remove the fences so then those deer could migrate again from summer range to winter range without being interrupted and then the the herd reached stasis and some of migration is like it can be 150 miles sure it's not like 12 acres or something right like white that was the choke point it was a choke point exactly like white tell from what I understand out here a lot of times they'll establish like a five mile radius or something they're not they don't

migrate in the same way but if you had total control over everything what would you do to solve all this yeah like like getting total control like okay well we might get a little scary on that part but that's what that's what i want to hear he's so passionate do i have the nuclear codes yeah like you're so passionate about this let's let's say you had all the control in your hand right now like what would you do if i don't think this is i think it's possible but i don't think it's probable at least in the short term the answer is federal ownership so it's still held in public trust and you have that money you know the the large tax base to take care of it and then more localized input with oversight from you know scientists that are actually and i don't mean like

gay scientists that are like stick shit in your arm i mean like like people that are out there trying to save trout and stuff you meet professionals that and knowledgeable of what they do yeah crazy that that's not a normal hold hold oh yeah i fucking trust people that know what they're doing why would you ever do that i hate that we don't do that here i mean like that's i don't think that's super off the table by any means because we already have federal ownership yeah it's doable they just won't yeah there's just like give relinquish i'm i'm always a big fan of like relinquishing it makes sense, you know, relinquishing federal control to, like, local. I understand that.

The, the best form of government, like, as it, I don't know, so box back over here. Keep going, Brandon. No, no, you're right. The best form of government is always the most local. So for things that can't be controlled, like, obviously, like, you, for a federal government, there are certain duties that make sense. And then for whatever you can, distill down to the state, for whatever you can from there, distill down to the county, to the city, to whatever.

and ideally the most perfect form of government is the self, the person, the individual. It's almost like you're a good politician, Brandon. No, no, no, no, no. Politician's a fucking slur. Don't ever call me that again. That hurt. I just took poison damage by you calling me politicians.

Minus one, minus one. Finn, bleep out what Cody said to make it racist. Finn, I know where you live. Don't do that either. But no, like I feel like, you know, nobody knows what the local communities need more than the local communities. Yeah, I agree with some of that. I don't trust humans.

That's my problem with them. I'm like, eh, eh, you're putting a lot of trusting people at the local level, then you're like, they'll be like, I got an idea. It can be cheaper to buy too, but I understand theoretically. But one thing to add to that that I think is true, like if you're, you find some kid that is passionate about it that lives in the area and you just he's maybe not credentialed

he doesn't have his masters in crested wheat or whatever but he knows how to I'm talking about a kid that like grew up there still better than gender studies yes

yeah that's another podcast I have opinions oh I bet we can They tried to do that shit to our fish out there. They're like, queer in the streams of the West. That's a real science paper. I'm like, you know what?

Give me that new to. I just want that merch. That's a great queer in the fish. Queer in the streams. Queer in the streams. That was a real scientific paper, a real one. How much did they? Alex Jones is tweaking.

They didn't stop at the frogs. Wait, there's queers in the streams? bro so you have how close to California are I don't know I don't know I don't know

I'm like okay hey here's what we're trying for as Cody said you're like just some kid in the holler yeah you find that kid that's actually

been working in it and he's still doing it and you pay him some money to say hey what would you do to improve this and then you give him the opportunity

to kind of manage all of this shit around him and then you have some oversight on there because maybe he you know maybe he goes a little too hard but he probably won't uh some things people we did used to overgraze and all that and you will still see occasionally some dickhead overgrate something usually lease property it's not his uh like private lease uh you'll see some of that but most people have kind of figured out hey maybe i could put a couple extra pounds on my beef this year but i'm not going to have as much forage next year so

it doesn't make sense. Like we need some kind of balance here. You find a kid like that and you say, okay, you're in charge of this range. It's a job. If you f*** it up, we're firing you and finding someone else.

And you just have it on a yearly, like annualized. Show me your performance review. And I don't mean like, uh, how many trees were you able to rip out of here. It's like how healthy is this ecosystem. How well did you manage it?

What projects did you? That kind of stuff. Genius. It needs to be a little. bit more yeah for sure nuanced because you always have any like for example a company that goes public now you're you're not you're no longer running your company for the future for like for example like with a founder like a founder's idea of where the company needs to go five 10 15 years in the future like steve jobs or somebody like that now you're going for performance review for

the quarter and that's how you end up with things like social security things that we knew that would never work but everybody involved that was getting the pats on the back when it you know did well in the beginning things that they will all be long dead by the time it fell apart it's like i'll never see a dime of social security doing it doing it like that and hiring an individual a kid and then a team based around performance is literally how we hire anyone for unso pepper box it is based off of hey let's see what you can do with i don't give a shit about your piece of paper, your college education. This is you, unprompted, doing this

and learning this by yourself. When you present a good deck or a good reel, you're like, holy shit, you edited this, so you're all self-taughts. Like, yeah, you love this. This is why you do this. For the love of the fucking game. That's the same thing. It's like, that kid

would be, for the love of the game, is why he's learning that ecosystem and how to develop the best way. That's right. I love what he's saying, dude. That's how it's how it should be Cross. Yeah, everything. Brax is like, hey, kid, you grew up here?

All right, figure it out. If you f***ed up, sorry, you're going. And that's the incentive, too. It's like, oh, shit, I have to do the best. I don't, it's not about the paper or any, like, it is, I have to do the best job I can right now and lead this team. And then if I do really good, I get to do this next year. Exactly. Yeah.

Unless you have a septimper, then you're just out. But then there's the Eli problem that you brought up earlier, which is, you know, humans. typically tend to sock. Yeah. So how do you hedge against that? I think that is where if you're self-motivated and you are self-taught, a lot of the times you're doing it not because it's like, oh, look at my money. Like, aha, I'm getting paid to do this.

They're doing it because they want to do the best they can in that field. Editors, even for me at the end of the day, I don't not care about the, I love the idea of business or the marketing campaigns or the podcast and getting those analytics up don't paychecks are nice but at the end of the day do not give a shit about that it is how do we structure this for the most success okay this works really good let's implement that oh that's fucking dope okay that worked really really really good okay let's continue to do that and then train up the team to follow suit and that's hopefully then hopefully the team also is good people at the end of the day.

Yeah, we've shot so many editors. But editor, leave that in. Finn, show your face. Scared. But I think it is. Like you mean it. It is being, and people do suck a lot of the times that is, it's what sucks. People suck and they're like, I'll get lazy.

I'll get complacent. But if you can replace them every year. and it's not here's a four-year cycle you get this for four years that's as fucking dope shoot you suck you know what you're going to

I'll get around I'll kill you I don't think many people are at your home wait if I fuck this up I die in Los Angeles in Los Angeles but I think

Oh you know I love that Oh and I think on that No, in real life. Sorry. Oh, you're good. That had nothing to do with anything.

We're just like, oh. Oh. You want to move to the after show? Sure, man. 10, 20 minutes, 10 minutes on the after show. Brother, I've got to say it's been a genuine pleasure. This has been all. Seriously.

Thank you for coming on, man. Thank you for having me, man. That's our. Fucking amazing, dude. Guys, thank you for joining unsubscribe today. We were here with Eli Double Tap, Braxton McCoy. Brandon Herrera, myself Donald Operator.

Please join us on the after show on Patreon. And Braxton, where can we find you on the social medias? Braxton McCoy.com, that's probably the easiest. I'm not hard to find on Twitter. I talk a lot of shit on there. Glass section. Is that also where we can find your book? Braxton-Moy.com?

Yeah, thank you for the book. For the third time? Yeah, that's my link tree. Go to my website, I guess. Is that where we can find your naughty links? Yeah, that's where I take my clothes off. riding them colts it's my only friends

yeah you're like the only cowboys only cowboys dot com oh fuck they're going to clip that shit stop it

no see you guys on that after show love you love you love you guys You don't know my name. We just be my name. You don't know my...

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