Latest / INSPIRE STORY / #019_ How To Survive A Shark Attack

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#019_ How To Survive A Shark Attack · INSPIRE STORY

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: M m m hmm.
• 0:06
  Speaker 2: What's up, buddy. Man, it's good to see you. Thanks
• 0:08
  Speaker 2: for in the trip. Yeah, making it happen.
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: It's been talked about for quite some time.
• 0:12
  Speaker 2: I know. So you first came on to my radar
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: via John Joseph. He's like, Yo, you got to check
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: out my more pool. He's a badass.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: To get him on the show, he didn't say just that,
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: knowing John. Yeah, it was like sixteen more sentences, yeah,
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: before taking your breath.
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So yeah, So I started following you
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: on Instagram and I was like, Wow, this guy's inspiring.
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: He's doing some cool stuff. And then we just bumped
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: into each other up at point toom.
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: Now here we are man, Yeah, man, it worked out.
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm excited to share your story. You're definitely an
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: inspiring cat. And what you've overcome is just mind blowing.
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: And the extent to which you extend yourself in service
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: of others and uh in an environmental context is really
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: impressive and like I said, inspiring.
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: The funny thing is, none of that feels true.
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: What does it feel like?
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: It just feels like like I'm just living life. It's weird.
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: The story has now kind of just lost. It's not
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: like it lost meaning. It just really to me, never
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: felt like it had a huge meaning. Everyone says, oh
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: my god, you know that must have been horrible. I
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: was like, yeah, it's a bad day at work, and
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: that's really all it was. And maybe that's a testament
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: to why I don't have any PDSD or I don't
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: have any nightmar there's no flashbacks. I've never had counseling,
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: and I think I'm pretty normal except for the things
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: that I do for my job. They're not normal.
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: Do you find that when you get up you do
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: a lot of talks and get up in front of
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: people all the time and share your story, do you
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: have that weird experience of kind of being disassociated from
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: your own story because you've told it so many times
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: you're like, this, did this actually happen? Am my editorialize this?
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: Especially when you're doing it a lot. So I did
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: a a company where they wanted me to hit every
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: shift and I had to do it sixteen eighteen times
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: in six days, so three times a day for eight days,
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: and by the second day, I hated the sound of
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: my own voice. I didn't know which part of the
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: story I was up to I was singing to myself,
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: Have I already told this part? I can't remember. I've
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: said it so many times. By the eighteenth day, I
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: just I couldn't do it anymore. I took you a
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: whole month off and just didn't talk about myself at all.
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: One of the things that I found, though, is that
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: when I get up and tell it, it starts to
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: tell me more about the story. Like I learned more
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: about myself because I realized, like, oh, that happened because
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: of it, Like I make these weird connections. Yeah, but
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: I totally wasn't really kind of consciously aware.
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: Of and things that you might have forgotten about that
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: you have been retelling the story for a certain amount
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: of time, and then all of a sudden, twenty times
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: you've been on stage, and all of a sudden, the
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: twenty first time you'll be telling the story and you'll think,
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: oh shit, well, actually this happened as well, and I
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: totally forgot about that. So there's elements over the years
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: that have added themselves and made the story even more powerful,
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: especially to me, because it makes more interesting when I
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: remember things I've forgotten, or I talked to someone that
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: was there that day, and they remind me of something
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: I've forgotten, like sticking one of the guys having to
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: stick his hand inside my leg and pinch closed an
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: artery so that I wouldn't die. It's crazy stuff.
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: It's crazy. Well, rather than just kind of launch into
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: the day that kind of catalyzed all of this, I'd
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: like to go back to the beginning because this is
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: very much like a like a hero's journey, you know
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: what I mean. I think in order to kind of
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: really fully appreciate and understand like where you are now
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: and what you had to overcome, Like, I think it's
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: important to understand your upbringing and your childhood because that
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: in and of itself is an amazing story.
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that was interesting. Not the sort of thing
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: I'd rather relive the shark attack today. Growing up, I
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: think as adults we forget how hard it is being
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: a kid and being a teenager because back then you
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: have no frame of reference, You have no idea how
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: to deal with anything. Everything is new, every stress is real.
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: It's only when you get older that you realize, oh,
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: you know, this is just another thing. I can get
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: through this. But when you're a teenager, it's rough.
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: I mean you were just the way I read it is,
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: you're a kid who just didn't connect with school and
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: had this loss for adventure and excitement, and because maybe
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: healthy options for how to pursue that weren't necessarily totally
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: available to you, you kind of went over to the
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: dark side for a while.
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Well it didn't start out that way normally. When
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: I was younger, I was okay at school, and when
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: you're young, you don't realize that you're poor. Six people
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: on a policeman's wage in the seventies and eighties, we
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: were doing it pretty tough. Mum was boorer brothers and sisters, myself,
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: my two younger brothers and my baby sister. And mum
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: was from East End London, so we ate sheep's brains
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: and livers and kidneys and all the garbage that no
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: one else wanted, but it was cheap. We were down
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: in Mornington Peninsula in Melbourne, about an hour and a
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: half south of Melbourne. Dad was away a lot with
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: the cops. He was out late at nights, and we
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: moved to Canbro, which is the capital of Australia. When
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: I was ten. He got posted and we all just
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: sort of uppicked and moved and still going. Okay, you know,
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: I don't know what you guys call it. I got
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: there about year five and year six, and then moved
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: to an all boys Catholic school because my parents always
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: made us go to church. Well, all to boys went
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: to Catholic schools, and that's where it started to go
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: downhill a little bit. I started getting picked on quite
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: bad because I was very short, I was very skinny,
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: I had big ears, freckles all over my face. I
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: was an easy target. So it wasn't a lot of
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: fun at school. But I was quite well read. Whenever
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: Dad went away with the cops and he came home,
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: he'd always bring me a book as a present. So
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: and we had the you know, the full volume of
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: Encyclopedia Britannica from something like nineteen sixty seventy six or something.
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: So I'd read all of those and I had this
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: wide knowledge of the world and how the universe worked
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: back in nineteen.
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: Internet like, somebody listening to this he was born after,
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: you know, nineteen eighty is like, what are you talking.
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, So the Encyclopedia Britannica was like how many volumes?
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: I don't know, we had it too, man, but it.
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: Basically encompassed all of the world's knowledge, and so I
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: was well read and I knew there was an adventure
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: out there to be had. And I grew up on
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: David Attenborough, you know, that was my hero, the guy
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: that traveled the world and saw all these crazy animals.
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: And then you see Indiana Jones and it's like, oh
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: my god, there's this crazy world out there, and I
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: so badly want to see it and be a part
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: of it. But I'm in Canberra and it sucks. And
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: Canberra's very pretty. A Canberra if anyone who doesn't know,
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: he's the capital of Australia. It's where all the politicians
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: hold Parliament. It's also, funnily enough, the only place in
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: Australia where weed, pornography and fireworks were decriminalized. Funny that.
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: But I hit about fourteen fifteen and I stopped swimming
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: because I was just had had a gutfull of it.
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: I stopped.
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: Like you were on the swim team or whatever.
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Dad was the coach, so you couldn't really get
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: out of it. So we're up at five o'clock in
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: the morning before school swimming. A couple of k's every
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: day and then after school as well. Me and both
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: my brothers were all state swimmers, so I stopped that.
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: I stopped running I was doing. I was a cross
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: country athlete, and I started looking at girls and started
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: smoking and drinking. And because marijuana was decriminalized, there was
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: a bit of a floating around, so I started smoking
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: weed as well, hanging around on savory characters, and I
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: just fell deep into it. And at the same time,
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: I was listening to Snoop Dogg and NWA, well before
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: Snoop Dogg's time, you know, NWA and Iced Tea and
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: all these West Coast rappers talking about smoking weed and
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: hanging out, and I was just like, yeah, that sounds cool.
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: And I sort of lost my focus for a bunch
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: of years there.
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: But I also think, you know, Canberra or Canberra, how
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: do you say it? Canberra, Canberra or anywhere else, Like,
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: our school system just isn't set up to really support
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: somebody who has that flare for adventure. It's sort of like, what,
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: you know, what are you studying for while you're going
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: to go to college? And here's the four careers that
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: are exactly awkwardly mobile and for somebody who's got a
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: wild hair up their ass. It's not like developing that
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: is anything that's that's really kind of encouraged.
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: And on top of that, they don't teach for the
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: specific techniques that people learning. I had trouble, like a
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: lot of people do, reading what was on the blackboard
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: while the teacher was writing, listening to the teacher, and
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: writing in my book all at the same time. You know,
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: I'm I'm theme of a very poor multitask and tasking man.
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: So I couldn't I couldn't keep up with it all.
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: So I'm I'm writing what's on the board, but at
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: the same time, I can't listen to the teacher because
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: I'm focused on this, So I'm I'm missing out on something.
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: And if I don't do that and I listened to
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: the teacher, then I'm not taking notes to study at home.
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: And it was just all a mess and I just
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: could not keep up. So the techniques that they used
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: back then and still use in a lot of schools today,
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: just they weren't right from me.
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so you start finding, you know, a way to
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: you know, find that adventure partying, and like we were
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: still poor as well, and we didn't have all the
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: cool stuff.
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: So I found a way to go and get all that.
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: You just took it.
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: I got between the lines.
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: I got I got busted. We will taking into cars
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: and breaking the houses very occasionally, and shoplifting. I got
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: caught shoplifting twice, but I told him my dad was
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: a cop and they let me off. Then we go
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: out drinking and I had a fight with someone and
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: I kicked a bus shelter window in and ended up
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: a night in jail. And still still didn't give me
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: the kicking the ass. I just as a cap and
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: you're the oldest one. Yeah, and I'm supposed to be
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: setting the example. He kicked my ass out of the house.
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: So I hit seventeen, and he's just He called me
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: at my friend's house and he said, I'm sick of
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: your shit, come and get your stuff and fuck off.
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: And I instantly had all of that freedom that I wanted,
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: and I had no idea what to do with it.
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: Split So where'd you go?
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: I was very lucky that I had two friends of
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: mine from Indonesia, two girls, and their parents paid for them.
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: They were quite well off. The parents paid for them
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: to live and study in Australia and they had their
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: own apartment, so they took me in and I lived
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: with them for about a year and a half, still
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: didn't get my ass into gear, sat around smoking weed,
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: eating their leftover Indonesian food, and just I look back
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: on those days and I just I wonder, what the
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: hell was I thinking? How could I be so down
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: into that hole that I don't realize I'm wasting my
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: life away? And it just went on. And it's probably
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: one of the only regrets that I ever have in life.
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: Nothing else really, just wasting time because it's so valuable
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: and you never get it back. And I spent all
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: of those years not learning a single thing and not
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: growing as a person, and.
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: All of those dominoes play into making you the person
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: that you are today. You know what I mean, Perhaps
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: you wouldn't be doing what you're doing now. How do
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: you not have that experience to motivate you in a
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: certain way to grow in later years.
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: Well, it's true there was a moment where all of
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: that came into play where I was in hospital, but
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: I finally got a job working at the Lofty Heights
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: of Kitchen Hand. I think I was nineteen or twenty
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: and it was at one of the most popular clubs
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: in Canberra, so obviously lots of people go there, lots
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: of girls, lots of drugs, and I fell down that
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: hole for a little while as well, but eventually I
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: came up. I was just about to turn twenty one
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: and I was living with a couple of the guys
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: from the club, and I went to a farewell for
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: a friend of mine who was being deported back to
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: Papua New Guinea getting kicked out of the country for
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: criminal activities. Obviously he's one of my friends, and so
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: at that party, I got jumped by twenty guys. One
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: guy was trying to get me to buy him a
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: drink and I was just telling him to basically fuck off,
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: and he threw a glass of beer at me, and
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: I was just like, that's enough, So I got up
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: to have a go at him, and I hit one
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: guy one of his friends that tried to pummel me
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: in the face, and then all of their friends jumped
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: up and I ended up getting my ass really badly kicked.
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: And I went home and I did I took that long,
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: hard look in the mirror that your parents always tell
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: you to do. I did it, and I looked at
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: my beaten up, broken face, and I just thought, something's
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: got to change, or I'm going to be dead or
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: in jail by the time I'm twenty three. And I
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: didn't want that. You know that, I still had this
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: vision of this incredibly adventurous world, and so I did
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: the only thing I could think of, which was removed
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: myself from that environment that i'd become a product of.
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: And I threw everything I owned into a tiny little
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: car that I had no license for, and I drove
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: twelve hours up to the glimmering lights of Brisbane. Well,
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: when you're from Canberra, Brisbane's pretty glimmering. And a friend
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: of mine got a job for me behind a bar
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: in his strip club that he was dejaying at, and
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: I started making rap music with his flatmates, two American guys.
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: One was from New Jersey, one was from Pasadena. They
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: were working at the record stores. I were running a
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: community radio station, running night like little hip hop dance
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: parties around the place and making music. And I grew
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: up on the first cassette that I've ever owned was
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: run DMC is Tougher than Leather, and then iced Teas
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: Iceberg and then n w A and then West Side Connection.
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: That was you know I had By that stage, I
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: had about three hundred and forty cassettes in a box.
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: So I loved rap music and so I just thought, well,
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: I've been listening to it long enough, might as well
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: start making some. It took a little while.
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: You guys had like a kind of a moment, right
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: we had a girl.
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we put out an EP, and then off the
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: back of that we got the opening act for Snoop
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: Dogg in ninety eight, which was incredible coming from little
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: old Melbourne, a little picked on kid too. Opening for
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: Snoop dog was a pretty big step.
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: Is that music like online anywhere?
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: I think it's on iTunes, but I'm not sure if
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: it's on American iTunes be strictly tied to Australian. I
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: played it for my girlfriend in the car the other day.
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: She was pissing herself. She also said it was quite good.
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: She expected worse, but I wrote about the things that
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: I knew about. So my song was called Smoke and Hydro.
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: But after that, not a lot of money in White
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: Rappers in Brisbane in nineteen ninety eight and the financial
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: constraints ended up taking its toll, and the whole group
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: just imploded.
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: Right, and there you are, just working at a strip bar.
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: I'd actually quit the strip club at that point to
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: focus on the music, and so I had nothing. Myself
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: and my other friend from Canberra who'd moved up there
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: to work on the music with us, we were just stuck.
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: We talked this real estate into letting us live in
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: one of their houses for four weeks until we found
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: another place. And my friend, who's now a famous comic
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: artist has his own stalls at comic con and stuff.
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: He drew character of the real estate agents to pay
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: our rent, and we slept on ripped couch cushions. We
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: showered at the local pool because we had no water,
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: we had no electricity. We ate off paper plates and
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: ate two minute noodles and that was it for weeks
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: and weeks and weeks.
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, So did you have another moment of looking
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: in the mirror and going.
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, kind of just I was just thinking, I can't
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: keep doing this. I didn't know where to go. I
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: was really lost. I tried to change my whole life
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: and I failed, and I just thought, where do I
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: go from here? I don't know where else to turn.
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: And so well, because when you moved to Brisbane, isn't
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: the solution. You took yourself to Brisbane.
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that was the problem. But I was trying, you know.
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: It wasn't like I wasn't just moving and then sitting
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: on my ass again. I was really trying to grow
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: as a person and build a career. And I thought
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: that was in wrapping and it wasn't. But we do
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: sometimes when we were a little bit lost, you turn
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: to the person that will always be there for you.
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: And I called Mum and.
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: Had you been in communication with your parents during this
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: time or.
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: A little bit by that stage? Yeah, Dad and I
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: had not made up. We hadn't talked, but I'd been
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: talking to my mom occasionally once, you know, once we started,
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: I was working in the in the strip club and
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: making some money and I felt a little more achieved.
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: And she just said, we'll talk to your brothers. They've
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: both joined the military. It should be noted that one
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: of them joined the army to stay out of jail.
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: He followed in my footstepe. I tuck him, yeah, probably forcefully,
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: but you know I did, all right, There's no point
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: asking for advice and then not following it up. So
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: I talked to my brothers and they said, yeah, look
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: it's great, you know, you get They were both in artillery,
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: so they said, you get paid to travel, you get
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: paid to play sport, you get to hang out with
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: your mates, you get to shoot guns and rockets and cannons.
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: One thing they said, though, was don't join infantry. So
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: I joined infantry.
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: Why did they say that though.
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: Because it's just hard. It's the hardest job physically in
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: the military, and they just didn't think that I'd be
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: able to do it. So they were trying to convince
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: me to go into something a little simpler where I
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: wouldn't get kicked out.
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: And so that was that decision to do that in
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: defiance of them or what was the motivation to go
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: the harder route.
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: It was a little bit in defiance to them, But
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: to me, I didn't see it as the harder route.
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: I saw it as if you joined the army, you
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: join as a soldier. That's the definition of being a soldier.
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: Everyone has their different opinions, and I agree artillery and
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: everyone is part of the military working system. But being
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: a soldier, there's something really prideful in that that you
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: as an infantry grant, you stand a little taller and
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: you wear that uniform with a little more pride because
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: you know that if you go to war, you're going
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: to be up there in the front seats trading bullets
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: with the enemy. That's where I wanted to be. That
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: sense of adventure was like, I'm not sitting back there
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: shooting cannons at people. I want to be up there fighting.
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: So I did that and I passed basic training, which
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: was a surprise to everyone. The biggest surprise was to
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: my friends that the army actually gave me a gun.
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: I mean, and you're all jacked up right now, but
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: were you still like a like a skinny chop at
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: that point?
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: I was like nothing. I was a what are you guys?
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: I was going to call it a paddle pop stick?
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: Do you guys like? What do you guys call it
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: popsicle stick? Yeah? I was tiny. I had no I
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: could not keep fat on my body. I ate like
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: an animal, but from all the years of running and swimming,
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: I just couldn't keep any muscle or fat on. So
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: I was wiry. Though I was strong. I could walk,
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: ever I could run forever, passed basic training, passed employment
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: training for the infantry, and at the end of that,
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: they said, who wants to jump out of a plane?
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: And I'd never been accused of doing anything too clever,
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: so I put my hand in the air with this
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: goofy expression on my face. It's a and they went, congratulations,
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: You're going to be a paratrooper, and I just thought
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: that sounds badass. And so it was off to Sydney,
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: first time to Sydney to be the newer soldier at
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: the third Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment Parachute Battalion. And I
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: got my when I did my parachute course, got my
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: marown beret, made me stand even taller, and I just
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: felt this incredible sense of achievement. And one of the
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: biggest turning points there was when I was doing my
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: psych evaluation before I joined the Army, and I passed everything.
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: I passed aptitude testing, I passed the medical and I
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: finally passed a psych evaluation and as I was walking
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: out of the room, the doctor said, good luck with
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: your career, and it hit me that I had this
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: thing called a career that I never thought I would
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: have to me, a career was like what a lawyer
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: had and a doctor and something you can build on
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: and you can grow. You can never underestimate the power
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: of one word in changing someone's whole mindset about something.
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: I thought, Fuck me, I'm going to have a career.
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: This is real. I have a real job I can
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: be proud of. And that powered me through some of
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: the darkest days being an infantry soldiers not easy. Ten
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: mile fighting withdrawals in full gas suits and gas masks
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: in the middle of the night, in pouring rain, with
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: a one hundred and twenty pound pack on your back
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: and things like that, But you remember why you're doing
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: it and it drives you on. You're doing it for
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: your mates.
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: And so what years was this?
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: I joined the army November two thousand and five, two
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: thousand and I stayed there until April two thousand and five.
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: And how did you not get deployed?
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: I did once, Okay, to Afghanistan. I got deployed to
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: a place called East Timor, And most people have never
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: even heard of this place. It's a small Southeast Asian island.
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: Half of it is owned by Indonesia and the other
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: half is owned by the Natives the East t Maries
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: and there's a thin river that separates the two from
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: each other. Except the Indonesians didn't care about that, and
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: they were going over and slaughtering these people. The stats
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: was two hundred and fifty thousand of them were killed, murdered,
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: starved and died of illnesses.
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: I've never even heard that that.
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it was really bad. So Australia went in.
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: A multinational force went in under the United Nations. Australia
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: played the biggest role because it was so close to us,
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: and we went in there and I spent six months
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: in two thousand and two patrolling that border to keep
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: the Indonesians out. But you know, kidnapping soldiers that crossed
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: the border and interrogating them, went on sniper's course, did
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: airb on, repelling out at the black Hawks, and just
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: a lot of it was boring, was it just? No? No,
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: the Indonesians. There was a lot of rumors going around
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: about the Australians and one of them was that we
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: ate babies. So the Indonesian soldiers in these team all
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: were not too confident in dealing with us. So that
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: one of the guys that we kidnapped and took up
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: into the mountains because he was stealing money from the locals.
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: We sat him on the edge of a cliff while
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: we discussed where we're going to take him, and he
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: was praying and he was crying. He thought we were
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: going to just shoot him in the head and kick
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: him off the edge of the cliff. We would never
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: do that. You're some kind of savage exactly. But you
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: know that's in part to what the Special Forces guys
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: did when they went in the first Off. There were
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: some pretty hairy moments when they were dealing with the
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: Indonesians in those periods. Like you know, one of the
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: New Zealand Maori Sas guys got captured and they cut
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: off his ears and cut off his nose and cut
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: off his head and all this stuff. So the New
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: Zealand Sas commander just said, off you go, boys.
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: And is that conflict still going on?
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: It don't. The conflict itself isn't going on, but there
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: is civil unrest still. They're a nation that is divided
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: by a political system, which is very common all around
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: the world. Obviously, you can now you can still you
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: can go there. You can go to Dilly, the capital
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: of East Timor, which is where a lot of the
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: major conflict was, and you can go there as a tourist,
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: so it's not hugely dangerous. It's not like Papua New Guinea,
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: one of the most dangerous places in the world that
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: most people have never heard of. Also, so that was
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: a huge turning point for me.
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: Right, but then you decide you don't want to stay
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: in the army, Right.
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well I've seen well I hadn't seen action, but
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: I'd done my job for real, and it made me realize.
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: It made me appreciate so much for starters. I'd never
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: been to a third world country before. I'd never even
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: been overseas before that. So I was seeing these people
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: raking through our rubbish with homemade rakes and we'd set
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: the rubbish on fire, mind you, and just to salvage
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: whatever they could. People with nothing, but they were happy.
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: And they collected their water in the street or washed
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: in the river, but they were still happy. And I
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: went home with this appreciation of everything that we have,
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: especially a toilet and a shower and just healthy food
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: and not having malaria all of that stuff, and so
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: I was like, oh, I want to do it again.
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: I want to do my job for real. And I
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: got asked to go to Iraq and me and one
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: of my teams and they canceled the trip four days
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: before we left, and so that just kind of crushed
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: us all. And I just thought, well, stuff this, I'm
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: going to go somewhere where I can get deployed. And
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: I'd heard about these guys called Clearance Divers. I didn't
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: really know much about them. I knew they were a
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: bit special. They were a little like the sas and
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: the commandos. No one looked directly at them.
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: It's sort of like a Special Forces Seal Team kind
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: of situation.
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: It's similar to that, but it doesn't come under the
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: Special Forces umbrella. We only have sas and commandos and
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: they fall under SOCOM's Special Operations Command. As a Clearance diver,
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: you can go and join a unit called the Tactical
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: Assault Group for the East Coast, and that's the commandos
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: and the Clearance Divers working together as a counter terrorism unit,
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: which is very cool. It's very fun job. Lots and
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: lots of shooting and gas masks and Heckler and coch
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: MP fives and very accurate close quarter shooting. It's a
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: lot of fun blowing updoors, killing terrorists. Yeah, but so
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: I get excited about that stuff.
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: Okay, But like it's I think of it sort of
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: like the frog man. I guess the seals are now
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: the antecedent of the frog man exactly. You know, like
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: being specialized in you know, water tactics.
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: Were referred to as navy divers or clearance divers. But
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: unlike America, we don't have as many people in our
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: military branches, so as clearance divers we have to do everything.
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: We do the salvage and repair, we do the mind
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: countermeasures underwater, we do the land based explosive ordinance disposal.
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: We do the maritime tactical operations, you know, attack swimming
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: in the middle of the night, reconnaissance swimming on pure
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: oxygen rebreathers, using the minimum magnetic rebreathers to dive deep,
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: and deal with anti acoustic, anti seismic, anti diver tampering
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: device minds, all this crazy shit.
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: I understand about five percent of what you just said.
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: But what I'm imagining is, you know, hurt locker.
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: Under water exactly. Yeah, it's a lot of fun. I
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: was living my dream. This is the elite of our
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: Navy is the training.
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: I read a little bit about what the training is
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: like for for you know, getting into that. I mean
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: it's super intense.
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's you're.
• 28:17
  Speaker 2: Like swimming across Sydney Harbor in the middle of the night.
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, like five or six hours, and then followed by
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: five hour PT sessions on the soft sand, stretcher carries,
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: pack marches, first aid stands, mind games, breathold, on and
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: on and on and on for ten days. And I
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: was talking to one of my chiefs the other day
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: and the course was called see that. They've changed the
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: name of it something now, but I was asking him
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: how it was going, because they were running a selection
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: course and he goes, oh, it's gone pretty good. Where
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: we started at forty two, we're down to seventeen. And
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: I said, oh, wow, what day is that? Day two?
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: Almost fifty.
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: We lose most of the people on day one because
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: you turn up and you get your issues and then
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: you break straight into PT and it's this grueling five
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: hour run session and you finally make it back to
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: the dive school. It's dark, you're hurting. You get probably
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: five minutes to stretch and rehydrate, and then they say,
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: all right, boys, line up, we're doing it again. And
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: that's whenever I'm just yeah, and you're wearing these high
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: vised blazers and people just n they take it off
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: and they hand it in and they're out of there.
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: But you had been a runner and you'd bene a swimmer,
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: so you're like sort of sorted out. You were good
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: to go.
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but you know, I still, for some reason, I
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: didn't believe in all of these fancy sneakers and all
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: this fancy gear all the guys had. I just had
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: this beat up pair of old Converse that I used
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: to run in. And I turned up and they're like, oh,
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: look at this fucking army guy in his converse.
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: Like straight up those flat bottoms.
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, like basketball can nothing just they just and they've
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: got all their fancy Adidas and Brooks and what have you.
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: And they're kind of like chuckling at me. And then
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: we jumped in the water or went for a run,
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: and I smoked them all. And I was the second
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: oldest on the course. I was twenty eight by that
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: stage and they were all twenty one, twenty two, twenty three.
• 30:17
  Speaker 2: But had you'd had the army training also, exactly. That's
• 30:20
  Speaker 2: what they didn't really prepared for what was going to.
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: Be through and my feet. You know, after doing two
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: days of pack marching, they all collapse in their bunks
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: and they're all taping up their toes with strapping tape.
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: One of the guys had to tape up both of
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: his balls. I just took my boots off and went
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: to sleep because I was used to pack marching every day.
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: Well, you're probably going to get up in an hour anyway, exactly,
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: so you're finding your groove like this. This is working
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: for you.
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Man, I hit thirty years old and I was
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: just living my dream. I was living down at Bondi Beach.
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: I was riding a big black Italian sports bike. I
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: was traveling the world with my mates, shooting guns and
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: blowing stuff up. And then you turn to work one
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: day and a fucking shark eats you.
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: Right, So let's walk through it. Let's walk through that day.
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah. It was early in the morning. We were doing
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: a counter terrorism exercise. The goal was to test this
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: new equipment that the R and D Department of the
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: Military had created. It was unmanned video and sonar designed
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: to detect attack swimmers and attack divers coming into put
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: bombs on our ships and equipment. So they set it
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: up on the pr in Sydney Harbor along alongside the
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: Navy base, and it's very central to everything. You can
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: see the Harbor Bridge, it's not that far away. The
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: Opera House that everyone knows about. You can see all
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: of that, and just.
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: Out there last year and I took one of those ferries,
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: so I was I'm visualizing it perfectly.
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, So when you're moving away from the Sydney Opera
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: House and that's behind you on your right hand side,
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: and you get to that fort in the middle of
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: the harbor, Fort Dennis. So if you look forty five
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: degree angle over to the Navy base right by the pier,
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: right there is where I got attacked. No one has
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: been attacked in Sydney Harbor in sixty years at that point,
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: no name diver.
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: That was kind of a banner year, though overall for
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: charcutiers there were like twenty one that year.
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: I think it was a little less than that. But
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: there was a guy the day after me at Bondai,
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: which is you know as the crow flies, probably five
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: miles away, and he lost his hand as well. So
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: I've got the new guy in the water. He's pretending
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: to be an attack swimmer. All the R and D
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: guys in my chief are up on the bow of
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: one of the warships watching and this equipment's on the
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: pier trying to detect him. And he's swimming around for
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: about half an hour. And I thought I'd do him
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: a good turn, and I said, jump out, mate, I'll
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: take over for you. You know, I rolled over the
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: edge of the little black zodiac in a black wet
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: suit and a pair of fins, and I was doing
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: what we call finning. I was on my back on
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: the surface, just kicking my legs and it was a
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: three tier thing. We were going to do surface swimming
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: to see if it could detect us. We were going
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: to do scuba to see if it could detect us,
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: and then pure oxygen rebreathers with no bubbles to see
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: if it could detect that. So we were still in the
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: first phase. You know, this is forty minutes into testing
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: and on the very first day and I'm in the
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: water on the surface like this is simple routine, share
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: this is nothing. This is like the boringest day ever.
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: And I had to get up at four o'clock in
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: the morning for this shit. So it's end of February.
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: It was February eleventh, so the start of February, which
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: is the end of summer for us. It's probably the
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: hottest season of the year. But it was kind of chilly.
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: It was overcast, the water's murking in Sydney Harbor, so
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: combining all of that, you can't see through the water
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: at all. And I'm on one of my first runs
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: towards one of the warships that I'm pretending to attack,
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: and I look over my left shoulder to make sure
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: that I'm going in the right direction, and before I
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: can turn back, I just get this massive whack in
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: my leg, like someone's hit me with a baseball bat.
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: And it didn't really hurt. It was just surprising more
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: than anything else. And I turned around to see what
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: it was, thinking the guys in the boat maybe got
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: too close. I couldn't hear because I had water in
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: my ears. And I turned around and my brain couldn't
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: comprehend what I was seeing because I'd never seen a
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: shark's head up close in real life like that before.
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: And it took me a few seconds and I thought,
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: oh fuck, it's a fucking shark, and all these things
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: ran through my head, and I thought, okay, okay, okay,
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: I've seen I've seen the crocodile Hunter, I've seen Discovery Channel.
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: I'll jab it in the eyeball.
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: And so I tried to punch it in the face.
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's like people have said it works. I just
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: thought eyeball because that's the softest spot. So I tried,
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: but I couldn't move my arm for some reason. And
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: I looked down and I could see all the teeth
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: half embedded into my thigh. I could see the lips
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: pulled back, all the pink gums, and the teeth going
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: all the way up my leg, over my wrist which
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: was by my side. So it had my hand in
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: its mouth, which is why I couldn't move it. And
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: it's still at this point it didn't hurt. I could
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: see the teeth embedded in my hand. I just thought, okay,
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: left hand. So I reached for the eyeball, but it
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: had me by the back of the leg and I
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: was inches away from that eyeball, just desperately trying to
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: get my finger in it, but I couldn't reach. So
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: I tried to grab it by the nose and push
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: it off, sort of lever it off that way, but
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: all that did was push the teeth of the lower
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: jaw deeper into my hamstring. So I stopped that and
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: I cocked back to give it a whack in the nose,
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: and just as I was coming in, it started to
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: shake me. And this all encompassing pain rattled me to
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: my core and all the strength went out of my
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: punch and I yelled, and I think that's when the
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: guys in the safety boat saw what was going on.
• 35:57
  Speaker 2: And when it's shaking you, the lower jaw did hatches right,
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: and it goes side to side, so it becomes like
• 36:02
  Speaker 2: this sawing effect.
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's movable. So that yeah, it just basically
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: was sawing the flesh out of my body while I'm
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: in agony, terrified drowning. This is my worst nightmare. I
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: was terrified of sharks. Really, the only two things I
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: was scared of was sharks and public speaking.
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: So and now this is your life, I know, sweet,
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: that's the way the universe works it out, man.
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, your your greatest fears can actually become
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: your greatest strengths and.
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: I think at the end that's really the theme of
• 36:37
  Speaker 2: your of your whole story.
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, you've got to embrace that ship because
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: you don't know, you don't you're not fully aware of
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: what you can accomplish if you're letting, especially if you're
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: letting fear hold.
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: You back, and to be confronted with that in the
• 36:52
  Speaker 2: most vicious, life threatening way possible, and it's just it's
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: it's beyond imagination, you know. And I've seen the there's
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: photographs online. You can see the pictures of your arm.
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the actual attack video is on YouTube.
• 37:07
  Speaker 2: It looks like that. I watched that and it's sort
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: of like a luckness monster thing. It's all like crany
• 37:12
  Speaker 2: and you're like, what's actually going You can't really tell
• 37:14
  Speaker 2: what's going on, but those still photographs of your of
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: your arm and the back of your leg.
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: Are just yeah.
• 37:24
  Speaker 2: And then you know, when you get up, you say, like,
• 37:26
  Speaker 2: you show these pictures some event and like fifty guys
• 37:30
  Speaker 2: like passed out.
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, fifty over these fifty three people have passed out,
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: fifty one men only two women.
• 37:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean it's as griesome as it comes. I mean,
• 37:41
  Speaker 2: that image of your arm is I almost wish I
• 37:44
  Speaker 2: didn't see it. It will hant me forever.
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: I don't think I've had any pass out in America though.
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: I'm heading up to Atlanta to talk to IBM on Sunday,
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: so I'm wondering if I'm going to get my first
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: American casualty. I'm a little bit worried though, because you
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: guys like to sue people.
• 38:02
  Speaker 2: Oh, come on, you give the warning.
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: I do. I give the warning. I make very lighthearted
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: of it. We have a good time. But some people.
• 38:11
  Speaker 2: Just just tell him to turn away.
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: I do. One of the guys said he wasn't even watching.
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: He said, he just listened to me speaking and he
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: passed out.
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: Well, that guy needs to hear your message a little
• 38:21
  Speaker 2: bit more that, you know.
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: But it's a lot of fun. Not that day, though,
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: that was not fun at all.
• 38:27
  Speaker 2: So so there you are, these guys are hauling you out.
• 38:30
  Speaker 2: You know, it's interesting that that, like fight or flight response,
• 38:35
  Speaker 2: typically you hear that the pain comes later, you know,
• 38:38
  Speaker 2: because the adrenaline is so, you know, on on overdrive
• 38:42
  Speaker 2: in that situation. But you are already feeling the pain.
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: I mean the amount of blood that you were losing.
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: I mean it's shocking that you're alive, Like, it's incredible
• 38:51
  Speaker 2: that you didn't just bleed out.
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a testament to what the human body is
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: capable of.
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: When I have these super capable guys, you know, exactly
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: best guys ever, like you deal with the situation and
• 39:02
  Speaker 2: to be calm under fire.
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, one of the guys hadn't even slept that night.
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: He was actually hung over his hell passed out in
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: the bottom of the boat. Can you imagine waking up
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: to your buddy being eaten by a shark and having
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: to do first aid? That would have been a lot
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: of the.
• 39:16
  Speaker 2: Guys literally reached his hand in and like pinched an artery.
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because they couldn't stop the bleeding. They put a
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: tornycail on using the strap from a life jacket. Because
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: we didn't have any medical equipment. We didn't think it
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: was going to be a day like that at all
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: because this is where we work every day. So one
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: of the guys, the new guy who I'd pulled out
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: of the water earlier, had to stick his hand inside
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: my leg and pinch closed and arterie. Otherwise I would
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: have died.
• 39:42
  Speaker 2: And it should have been that guy. You were like
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: you were swiping out for him, right.
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: Well, everyone was saying that if it was him, there's
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: no way he would have lived. He was much smaller
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: than me that the shark would have killed him. So
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: maybe it was for a reason, well unconsciously.
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: All right, So so your rush of the hospital, they
• 40:05
  Speaker 2: save your life. You walk me through this next phase
• 40:08
  Speaker 2: of this ordeal.
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: I remember I remember waking up at one point and
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: looking down and seeing that my foot was still there,
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: and that was that was pretty a pretty big deal.
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: I thought, you know, I've seen my hands gone. I've
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: processed that there's nothing I can do about it. I'm
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: a very realistic person. I generally don't let emotions get
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: away with me, and I've used that as a, I guess,
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: a coping mechanism for quite some time. So I'm just thinking, Okay,
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: hand's gone, but if I can keep my leg, then
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: maybe life will go on as normal. Maybe I can
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: keep this job that I love so much. And then
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: I passed out again. And the next time I woke up,
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: all my family and friends were there and they had that,
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: you know, worried trying to be smiley, positive faces on,
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: and I tubes all down my throat so I couldn't talk,
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: and they made up this board for me with letters
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: so I could type tap out the words I wanted
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: to say. My first words were fucking shark, which made
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: them all laugh. But I was more about trying to
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: ease their worry than anything else, because I was drugged
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: to the eyeballs so I couldn't feel anything. I was
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: in a very jovial state, and I.
• 41:18
  Speaker 2: Still have my They're crushy with vicant in the boat, right.
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: No, we didn't have anything.
• 41:23
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah, nothing, you have nothing in the boat.
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: No, So the pain went away basically as soon as
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: the shark had ripped out my handstring and ripped off
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: my hand and swum away because it took all the
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: nerves with it. So I knew what was going on
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: because I got to the surface and I started to
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: try and swim back to the boat, and I saw
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: my hand was gone. Didn't know how bad my leg
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: was because I couldn't move it. I was swimming back
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: to the boat with one hand and one leg through
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: a pool of my own blood. I got my right
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: arm above my heart distained.
• 41:52
  Speaker 2: In that video, you can tell like you're swimming back
• 41:54
  Speaker 2: to the boat.
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: With the stuff of my arm out of the water,
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: trying to stem the bleeding above.
• 42:00
  Speaker 2: My heart and so, and you were able to maintain
• 42:04
  Speaker 2: consciousness or did you pass out?
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: No? I had to. I had to get back to
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: that boat. I didn't think I was going to make it.
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: I thought the shark was going to come and kill me,
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: but the guy's got to me. I passed out once
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: I got into the boat, but then one of the
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: guys thought I was going into cardiac arrest, so he
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: started pummeling me in the heart, in the chest to
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: wake me back up. And it worked, and I woke
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: up and I'm like, oh, hands freaking been eaten off
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: by a shark. I look up and my buddy's beaten
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: the shit out of me. I'm just thinking today's bullshit.
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: And the pain still didn't kick in. At that point,
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: I was cracking jokes. Was I was looking at my
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: buddy saying, hey, so you reckon. You can get someone
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: to look after my motorbike because I don't think I'm
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: riding at home today. And the pain didn't really military.
• 42:45
  Speaker 2: You know what I mean. But the human body is
• 42:47
  Speaker 2: amazing that it has defense mechanisms that can that can
• 42:50
  Speaker 2: put you into that kind of state to survive.
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: It's an incredible thing. I was just trying to focus
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: on anything except dying.
• 42:58
  Speaker 2: And we should say, because I don't think we did.
• 43:00
  Speaker 2: It was a nine foot bull shark.
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and what is it?
• 43:03
  Speaker 2: You know, what's the difference between a bull shark and
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: a great waite.
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: Bull Sharks are generally smaller than great whites. They're much
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: more aggressive. I was told by people that they have
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: more testosterone than an adult bull elephant. They will bite first,
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: ask questions later, they will investigate with their mouth. They
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: like to live in murky waters. They can live in
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: saltwater and fresh water. And they've found all One of
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: them was found fifteen hundred kilometers or miles up the
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: Kentucky River. I think it was so all those years
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: of going up thinking that swimming in the river you
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: were safe. Oh there. Now I see them in a
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: very different light.
• 43:48
  Speaker 2: But we're going to get into that.
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a lot of bull sharks in Sydney Harbor
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: and we knew that were there. They just never bothered us.
• 43:56
  Speaker 2: So eventually, has there been any attacks in Sydney Harbor? No?
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: No, But the pain really didn't come on strong again
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: until the ambulance got there, and then they started banging
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: the morphine in. They gave me so much they couldn't
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: give me anymore, and I was still in agony, but
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: my blood was at such a low level that I
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: didn't have any oxygen. I didn't have any energy, and
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: I was physically having trouble making my chest go up
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: and down so I could suck in air. So I
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: had to get coached through that as well, because I
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: actually thought I was going to die from suffocation. But
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: that didn't happen either. Thankfully, I had some good paramedic
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: coaches helping me breathe. And I spent a week in
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: hospital with my leg, thinking and hoping that I might
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: be able to keep it. But every day my foot
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: got a little bit darker and a little less lifelike,
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: and I started to prepare myself mentally and emotionally for
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: having to lose it. And the surgeon came in one
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: day and broke it all down for me, told me
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: exactly what was going on with the leg. You know,
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: twenty five centimeters of the psiatic nerve was gone, the
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: whole hamstring was gone. I would never be able to
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: move it or feel it. Again, but I could keep it,
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: and I just thought, there's no way I don't want
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: to carry that unfeeling, unmoving lump of wood around with me. Yeah,
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: I'm going to have this huge chunk missing out of
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: the back of my leg. My fitness will suffer, my motivation,
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: my happiness will suffer. And I don't want that. I
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: just want to get on with life. And so I
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: decided to have the leg removed. And that was pretty bad. Actually, afterwards,
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: I remember you.
• 45:38
  Speaker 2: I said, like they had you all jacked up on
• 45:41
  Speaker 2: ketamine and you were like, turn me into the terminator.
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: That was my mindset. I'm just like, Doc, take my
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: leg and turn me into the terminator.
• 45:48
  Speaker 2: Well, two things. First of all, you kind of are
• 45:50
  Speaker 2: the terminator. Incredibly badass. You know appendages now that are
• 45:56
  Speaker 2: I mean you're literally the bionic Man. Yeah, you know,
• 45:58
  Speaker 2: like those are some high a Yeah.
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: This is the best, is it? Yeah? I'm very lucky.
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: Thankfully I don't have to pay for it. The leg
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: is I think two hundred thousand dollars. It's got a
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: running mode, it's waterproof, really really good stuff. He's got
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: six micro processes in it. I don't know what any
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: of that shit does.
• 46:16
  Speaker 2: But I can shut my hand like your fingers.
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah. The hand close, Yeah, closes, and it's good.
• 46:22
  Speaker 2: How do you control it? Hordes? That is there like
• 46:24
  Speaker 2: something on the end of your.
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: It's all in the socket, So the hand is all
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: the mechanics in the socket that goes up to my elbow.
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: There's the brain they call it. The battery is like
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: a two little phone batteries, and then two sensors, one
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: on the top on the inside and one on the
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: bottom on the inside of the socket, and they press
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: against my skin. They're in exact spots where I have
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: strong forearm muscle activation. So if I say, I pretend
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: to make a fist and then I pull my fist
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: back towards the top of my arm and flex that
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: top arm muscle that activates the hand to open. If
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: I want to close it, I flex it the other way,
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: force it down and it closes. Wow.
• 47:06
  Speaker 2: Did it take a little while to wire your brain
• 47:08
  Speaker 2: to be able to send those signals properly.
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: Into the function? Yeah? And because I hadn't used them
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: in so long, your muscles cramp up because you're constantly
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: trying to flex them, and then you can't rub them
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: out because you've got this hard carbon fiber socket over it.
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: So a lot of painful days with the leg muscles
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: cramping up that you can't get to.
• 47:24
  Speaker 2: And other like foundations that pay for that, Like how
• 47:26
  Speaker 2: does that all work?
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: I was military, so the military paid for it to
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: begin with, and then once I left the military three
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: years later, veteran affairs started looking after it.
• 47:35
  Speaker 2: So I'd be very lucky, right, all right. So the
• 47:38
  Speaker 2: other thing I wanted to mention is, you know you
• 47:41
  Speaker 2: and you were counting this. You're like, I just wanted
• 47:43
  Speaker 2: to get on with my life. That's I have to
• 47:46
  Speaker 2: believe that on some level that's a function of the
• 47:50
  Speaker 2: mental and emotional training that you received in military, because
• 47:54
  Speaker 2: the more predictable human response would be like I don't
• 47:58
  Speaker 2: want to live, or like, you know, just more of
• 48:01
  Speaker 2: a giving up kind of impulse.
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: I think the drugs helped. I'm not gonna lie the
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: ketamine mixed with morphine. I think you're right. But it
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: more so came into play about two days later because
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: immediately after I had my leg removed, they couldn't control
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: the pain. They were jacking me up on so many
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: drugs and nothing was stopping me stopping the pain. I
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: was jacked up on ketamine going down the K hole.
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: I was on morphine. They put me back in general
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: population instead of the little quiet corner I was in,
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: so all I could see was this curtain around my bed.
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: My leg's gone in agony, my hand's gone. I can
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: hear all these voices in visiting hour. The guy in
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: the bed next to me sounded like he was dying.
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: I'm tripping out. I'm in agony, and all I wanted
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: to do is die. In those twenty hours of pain,
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: it lasted. In those twenty hours, all I wanted to
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: do was die. I wished that the shark had killed me.
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: I even asked my mum to go and find me
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: a gun. I could kill myself. This was my absolute
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: lowest point ever in my life, and I wouldn't wish
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: this feeling on another human soul. But fortunately I got
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: through it. I got through the twenty hours, and after
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: that I was laying in my bed thinking, Okay, what now,
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: What am I going to do? And it was just
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: such a complicated situation. But I hate complicated situations, So
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: they're two bloody complicated. I like things to be simple,
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: and I feel like a lot of times in our lives,
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: we over complicate things when most things can be breaken
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: down to a simple choice. So I made a simple choice,
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: what do I want? Do I want a good life?
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: Or do I want a bad life? The fundamental choice
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: that you get to have what do I want? That's
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: our power. It's the only real power we have is
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: our choice. So I thought, okay, well, obviously I want
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: a good life, because no one's willingly going to go
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: and a bad life unless you're special. So I'm thinking
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: good life. Okay, how do I do that? What am
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: I going to do? I can't even get up out
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: of this bed? How am I going to fast strope
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: out of a helicopter? Theyre never going to let me
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: play with explosives. My whole career is based on the
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: fact that I can do anything that these people ask
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: me to do, and now I can't. So what am
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: I going to do? And I thought, well, I can
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: sit here, and I can cry myself to sleep, and
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: I can wallow in myself pity and say poor Paul,
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: oh woe is me? And I can get addicted to
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: my amazing pain meds that I was self ministering. I
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: could push all of this love and support that I
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: was being given away, and people from around the world
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: I didn't even know we're sending me letters of support.
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: I could just reject it all. Or I could do
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: what the military trained me to do. I could pick
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: myself up, dust myself off, and get on with the job.
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: I could use all of that love and support that
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: I was being given, use that as a tool, and
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: I could look at the great things I still had
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: in my life and the great things I still had
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: yet to achieve and have a good life.
• 51:13
  Speaker 2: It seems like you ran that calculus in an incredibly
• 51:16
  Speaker 2: compressed period of time, because when you listen to other
• 51:19
  Speaker 2: people that have suffered the loss of limbs or you know,
• 51:23
  Speaker 2: whether it's you know, veterans coming back from battle, like
• 51:26
  Speaker 2: they eventual a lot of them, you know, the ones
• 51:28
  Speaker 2: that you hear about who are out inspiring the world,
• 51:30
  Speaker 2: Like they eventually get to that place. But more often
• 51:33
  Speaker 2: than not, there's months, you know, or long extended periods
• 51:37
  Speaker 2: of time where there is that wallowing in the self
• 51:40
  Speaker 2: pity and all of that before they can kind of
• 51:43
  Speaker 2: get it together to move forward.
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I knew the hardest part was still to come,
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: So I didn't have time to waste on all that
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: just siding bullshit. Like I said, I'm a very realistic person,
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: and I just I knew what I wanted to do
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: because I was scared. I was really scared of losing
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: my career everything that I felt completed my identity. So
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: I needed to work straight away. Two days after I
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: had my leg chopped off, I'm trying to train in
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: my bed. I'm doing one arm chin ups on the
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: bar above my bed when the doctor walks in and
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: he's like, what the fuck are you doing? Blow out
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: his stitches? But there was no way I was going
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: to stop. Now. I had a goal. I had a huge, big,
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: ridiculous goal of being allowed to go back to work.
• 52:27
  Speaker 2: And now, did you make like a conscious decision to
• 52:31
  Speaker 2: maybe compartmentalize not the right word, but to sort of
• 52:35
  Speaker 2: train yourself to focus on that forward path not dwell.
• 52:39
  Speaker 2: Was it like a second nature thing because of the
• 52:41
  Speaker 2: training that you had, or was it like a practice
• 52:44
  Speaker 2: that you had to kind of, you know, cajole yourself
• 52:47
  Speaker 2: into getting into that.
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: I had to remind myself a lot, and one of
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: the reminders was exactly what we were talking about before,
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: remembering how low I had been in the past, remembering
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: the days of sitting on the couch day after day,
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: stoned out of my brain, remembering what it's like to
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: live in a house with no electricity, no running water,
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: and swearing to yourself, you will not go back to that.
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: Anything is better than that. So you just work your
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: ass off.
• 53:16
  Speaker 2: Right, And you said that you regret all that time
• 53:18
  Speaker 2: wasted as a kid, but now you're relying on that
• 53:20
  Speaker 2: memory to empower you forward.
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: Exactly. It's a duality of life.
• 53:25
  Speaker 2: You needed that experience in order for you to weather
• 53:28
  Speaker 2: this storm.
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: It's funny how life works out.
• 53:31
  Speaker 2: So you sort of launch yourself immediately into this rehab
• 53:35
  Speaker 2: situation and you're like doing push ups and all kinds
• 53:38
  Speaker 2: of crazy stuff like right.
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: They kept trying to slowly good my doctor actually whenever
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: he gave me because I had to keep continue going
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: in for new surgeries. Had another surgery on my hand,
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: another surgery, another three surgeries on my leg, and he
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: would double the amount of time. He told me that
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: I had to recover and not do pt because he
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: knew I was going to have it and try and
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: heal to my fast. So I spent nine weeks in
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: hospital training the whole time. My family and friends were amazing.
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: They brought me weights and protein powders, and I sweet
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: talk the nurses into giving me double rations because I
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: needed I'd lost ten kilos in ten seconds, so I
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: needed to bulk up and get strong again. And I
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: read constantly. I had to keep my mind active so
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: that I wouldn't dwell on the bullshit. I knew that
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: was going to be the biggest thing.
• 54:26
  Speaker 2: So what were you reading?
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: I was reading Dan Millman's Peaceful Warrior. Yeah, amazing. That
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: really changed my perception. A very good friend of mine,
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: Tanya Morrison, gave me that.
• 54:39
  Speaker 2: And what did you get out of that? What was
• 54:41
  Speaker 2: the applicable tool?
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: It was the idea that you are limitless, that your
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: mind is far more powerful than anything you can imagine,
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: and you need to listen to it. You have to
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: listen to your body as well, obviously when you've got injuries,
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: and you know what that's like after doing five vine men.
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: But your mind is the is the hammer, your body
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: is the nail. If you can remain motivated and positive
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: through your mind, reminding yourself that you're limitless and you
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: are strong and you can do things that you tell
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: yourself you can't do you know, that's you telling your
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: brain instead of your brain telling you that you can
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: achieve all this shit. So just trust in it. And
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: if you say to yourself, I can do this, I'm
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: going to do this, just fucking do it. Don't think
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: too much about it, don't dwell, because that's when you
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: let doubt creep in.
• 55:41
  Speaker 2: But also the sense that you are not your body
• 55:44
  Speaker 2: and you are not your mind. I mean, this is
• 55:46
  Speaker 2: Ful Warrior is very much a spiritual book.
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you know.
• 55:48
  Speaker 2: I mean there's some crazy out there shit in that book,
• 55:50
  Speaker 2: you know what I mean that has you thinking more
• 55:53
  Speaker 2: broadly about what consciousness is and what the kind of
• 55:57
  Speaker 2: you know, your universal flow of energy means, and how
• 56:00
  Speaker 2: to kind of leverage that.
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's been a few years since I read that book.
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: Then I need to touch that again. He's done a
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: few since then as well. Yeah, but it just it
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: got me on the path to where I needed to be.
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: Instead of worrying about what was to come, I was
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: setting goals and challenges for what was to come. And
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: I was worried about the pity and the people staring
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: and not having a hand and a leg and so
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: when you worry and you do that, you do something
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: about it. So I got onto the internet. They wanted
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: they maybe wanted me to talk to a counselor, and
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: I didn't want to want to talk to some person
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: I didn't know about how I was feeling, because I
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: already knew how I was feeling shit. I didn't want
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: to talk about it.
• 56:45
  Speaker 2: I just wanted to know that classic classic military cop
• 56:49
  Speaker 2: trope like in cop shows, you know, when there's a
• 56:51
  Speaker 2: shooting and then they make them go talk to the
• 56:53
  Speaker 2: shrink and they don't want to say anything. Yeah, but
• 56:56
  Speaker 2: it wasn't like an alpha male thing. It wasn't that
• 56:58
  Speaker 2: I didn't want to deal with it was that I
• 57:00
  Speaker 2: was already dealing with it. I already knew what I
• 57:02
  Speaker 2: needed to do, so I didn't need to waste time
• 57:05
  Speaker 2: talking to someone about it.
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: So I got onto YouTube, and I got onto Google,
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: and I used technology to help me. You can the
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: wealth of the world's knowledge is in a few key strokes.
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: So I started googling what is the greatest prosthetics in
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: the world, what hands are out there, what legs are
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: out there? And I got onto YouTube and I started
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: watching these videos of Paralympic athletes doing ridiculously amazing things,
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: and that started to give me hope that if they
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: can do it, there's no reason that I can't do
• 57:34
  Speaker 1: it as well. I'm going to have the military in
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: my corner paying for these prosthetics, so I might as
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: well try and get the best that I can. And so,
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: so what have I got to worry about?
• 57:44
  Speaker 2: And I would presume that when you're in this rehabilitation phase,
• 57:48
  Speaker 2: you're in some kind of center where there's a lot
• 57:50
  Speaker 2: of other veterans that are dealing with something similar, right, No, No,
• 57:54
  Speaker 2: we didn't.
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: It's not like America. We don't have a huge, big
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: military hospital. It was a wing of the general public hospital.
• 58:04
  Speaker 2: So there wasn't anybody else kind of going through the
• 58:06
  Speaker 2: same thing that you were going through that could at
• 58:08
  Speaker 2: least connect with.
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: I was the only one. Yeah, everyone else.
• 58:12
  Speaker 2: This was a huge story in Australia.
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, this was like a major It went all over
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: the world. I was getting letters from kids in Germany
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: and France and Italy. But yeah, it was pretty massive because,
• 58:27
  Speaker 1: like we said that, no one had been attacked in
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: Sydney Harbor in sixty years, so there was media all
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: over it, and luckily my family were dealing with that.
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: At the end of the nine weeks in hospital, sixty
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: Minutes came and wanted to do a story. I did
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: two of those that the reporter became a very good
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: friend of mine, and we went over with sharks together.
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: But after six months I went back to the Navy
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: and asked them if I could go back to work,
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: and they said no. I said, to go to the
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: diving teams. You have to be deployed for war, and
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: obviously you're not deployable for And I said, well, look,
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: I get that. That's fine. I'm not a swift on
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: my feet anymore and my trigger finger doesn't work all
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: the time. So what I can do, though, is I
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: can go and pass on this knowledge that you've given
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: to me. And you know the movie Men of Honor
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: with Cuba Gooding Jr. And Robertson, It's like a staple.
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: And so I'm just like he went and told diving,
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: I'll just go and teach diving. This is me rationalizing
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: it in my head like God work in the Yeah, exactly.
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: And so they said, okay, well, look you can go
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: and teach at the school three half days a week.
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: So I went five full days a week and just
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: didn't leave. I really felt that I needed to prove
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: myself and prove that I deserve to be there. So
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: I just busted my ass every day. And I did
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: that for three years, and I was literally killing myself.
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: It was so hard trying to keep up with everyone,
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: also maintain my training and the long hours we were doing.
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: We'd be at work at six o'clock in the morning,
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: sometimes finish at two o'clock in the morning, and then
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 1: have to be back there at six and it was
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: just wiping me out. And I went to my boss
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 1: at the dive school one day and asked him what
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: the chances of me moving back to the dive teams
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: or somewhere else for divers was, and he said zero.
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: And so that was when I decided that I was
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 1: going to leave the military. And that was terrifying.
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 2: How long ago was that?
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: That was? I left August twenty twelve. Officially, I stayed
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: part of the Navy Reserve diving team and continued to
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: do work with them, but it was on my own
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: terms and.
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 2: The idea then, I mean, are you looking at like okay,
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 2: I mean, you have all this sort of notoriety in Australia, right.
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: Not by that stage. You know, this is three years later,
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: so it had all of the media stuff had settled
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: down a bit. But I did get asked. I'd started
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: speaking a little bit, and nothing terrified me more than that.
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: But and I turned down speaking jobs while I was
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: in the Navy. But a group called Canteen, which is
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: a group for kids with cancer, they asked me to
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: talk to their kids at a camp and I just thought, well,
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: I don't want to, but how do you say no
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: to kids with cancer? So I thought, all right, and
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: I put this little presentation together and I went in
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: and did it. And I made these kids laugh, and
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: I made them forget that they were sick and forget
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: that they grew up in a hospital ward. And it
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: made me feel so good to make them feel so good.
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 1: And it was this realization and I wanted that feeling again.
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: You know. It was like serving my country coming home
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: and feeling like, oh my god, that was amazing. I
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: walked out of that room feeling on top of the world.
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: And so I went from there to my old school.
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: I did thirty kids and then went to twelve hundred
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: at my old school which was a terrifying again, but were.
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 2: Some of the same teachers there.
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, they were like scating me around the school.
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: It's like going always you Paul had built something great,
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: and I'm like, dude, you used to kick me in my.
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 2: Arse, and where's your dad in this whole thing.
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 1: Dad's still back in Canberra at that point. No, actually
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: he was. He was working in Abu Dhbi in the UAE,
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: so he was working for Customs integrating a lot of
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 1: their computer systems. So they'd talked to each other. Mum
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 1: was still in a whole long time ago. Yeah. No,
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: we around my sister's sister's eighteenth birthday party. Me and
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: a few of the army boys rode down on our
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: motorbikes and we sat around and I had a few
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: beers with my dad for the first time, and that
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 1: we squashed it all.
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 2: That's so Australia.
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: But yeah, it was just a moment came when I
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: was talking to those two twelve hundred kids at my
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 1: old school, and my mom had come, and my best
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: friend had come, and I stopped halfway through and before
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: I went on stage, the principal was talking and everyone,
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 1: all the kids are coughing and spluttering and talking and
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: you can't hear anything. And then I get up to
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: talk and halfway through I stop and it's dead silent,
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: like you you can't hear a single thing. You could
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 1: literally hear a pin drop. And I looked at my
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: friend and he's like white eyed, looking around, going holy fuck,
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 1: this is crazy. And so I continued on and it
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: just gave me this I don't know, this sense that
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: I was making a difference in all of their lives
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: at once, and that made me feel pretty amazing. And
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: maybe I can help them through some of the crap
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 1: that I went through and guide them around the obstacles.
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: So I continued on and I just started getting paying
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 1: jobs and it turned into this whole big career, and
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 1: that's why I felt comfortable leaving the military. I was
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: still terrified because I didn't know, how long are you
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: the flavor of the month? How long is this? Do
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: I want to be ten years down attract story for it,
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 1: you know exactly. I was a little worried about once
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 1: it all fizzled out, what I was going to do.
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 1: I just figured, oh, well, I can't live in Sydney
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: on my pension. But I could probably live in Vietnam
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: like a king. So that's still my fallback plan.
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but the irony is that quite the opposite has occurred.
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 2: And I think there's something, you know, beautiful and magical
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 2: about what happens when you give yourself over to service, right.
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 2: I mean, obviously, this, this impulse to serve is nourishing
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 2: you and giving you a sense of purpose and fulfillment,
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 2: you know, perhaps on an even more profound, deeper level
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 2: than anything you had done prior. Uh. And to trust
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 2: that and to say like, I'm just going to keep
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 2: I'm going to keep doing this. And when you're in
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 2: that spirit and action of giving of yourself for the
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 2: betterment of others, In my experience and what I've seen
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 2: with other people, the universe shows up there.
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: Oh oh, one hundred percent. I've become a firm believer
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 1: in whatever you want to call it, the universe, karma.
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: Everything great that I have in my life now is
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: because of things that I've done selflessly, and it's people
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: are like, well, you can't just do things to get
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: things back now that you know that, I know, I know,
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 1: I don't. I actually really really enjoy doing things and
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: expecting nothing I like to help people that I know
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 1: will never be able to do anything for me. I
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: walk my dog, for instance, down this little laneway down
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 1: at Marina del Rey, and there's rubbish everywhere, and I
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 1: hate it. It bothers me so much. There's cigarette butts,
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 1: and so I started picking up the cigarette butts. I
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 1: take one of my doggy bags and poop bags and
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: I start picking up all the rubbish all along this
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 1: little walkway. And now I walk down there and it's clean,
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 1: and it's amazing. And the last day that I did it,
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 1: I got down to the beach and I met this
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 1: guy and he gave me free tickets to the comedy store,
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 1: you know, little thank yous along the way like yeah,
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 1: kurma coming quick, Yeah exactly. And now I have this.
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 1: I would not change a thing. I wouldn't take my
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 1: hand in my leg back to have my old life back.
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 2: That's that amazing thing. So you like, that was what
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 2: I wanted to kind of work towards, like this idea,
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 2: that this gratitude that you have for that experience as
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 2: opposed to you know why me.
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know if i'd call it gratitude, but
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 1: it definitely but.
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 2: Gratitude for the life that you you, the.
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: Gratitude for the life I have right now. It's ridiculous.
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: I live in LA. Did you know that I live
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 1: down in Marina. I have a view of the ocean.
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 2: And I was in Bondai last year and I was like,
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 2: this is pretty good. I could definitely hang out here.
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you can see while I was living my dream
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: at that point, and I still love I'm heading back
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 1: to Bondai in a couple of weeks to do some
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: speaking jobs. I love it there. But this is America.
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 2: This is like.
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 1: Everything you see in the movies. Like I was watching
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 1: Goliath with what's the guy's name used to date Angelina Jolly.
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 1: It's a series with Billy ray Thornton. Billy ray Thornton
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 1: is that is wright Billy Bob Thornton. And they're filming
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: this show called Golthe all through Santa Monica and I'm like, Oh,
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 1: I go there to drink, Oh I go there to eat.
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: And it's just it's such a surreal experience coming from
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: a tiny little town in Australia to living in LA.
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 1: And I ride my bike along Venice Beach with the
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 1: dog and I train at Golds. I talked to Arnold
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 1: Swarzenigger at the gym most mornings. Yeah, he's nice.
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 2: Still show up.
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: I haven't seen him yet, but apparently he comes. Mickey
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 1: Rourke was there the other day.
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 2: That shim is so crazy. Like when I used to
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 2: live on on on Marine and Fourth, like right around
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 2: the corner from there a long time ago, and I
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 2: would go there and there's so much history, you know,
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 2: it's like this is the this is the birthplace of
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 2: Barty building. It's just packed with like so much, so
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 2: much of that is just bred into the DNA of
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 2: that place. And yeah, there's aren't old like these people
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 2: come in, but there's also this weird thing where, you know,
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 2: it's like the same people. They clock in at like
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 2: nine in the morning and they clock out at five,
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 2: like they're there all day, and it's this weird like
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 2: mishmash of like porn, set.
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: Meats, prison yard and everything in between. A little like yeah, yeah,
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 1: I've got this buddy down there who used to be
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 1: a celebrity bodyguard, A tall, tall black guy. I think
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: he's like sixty five seventy and he had a stroke
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 1: and he can barely move one side of his body,
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 1: and he's still there every day. He can barely move
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: between the machines without falling over, but he's there working
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 1: out as there's young, there's old, there's fat, there's skin,
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 1: and there's such a melting pot of people and it's
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 1: inspiring just to be there without all the celebrities and stuff.
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 1: There's people just there because they want to work on
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 1: their fitness and they want to be strong and healthy
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 1: and want to make their lives better.
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and you're always posting those Instagram videos.
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well they're all filmed by Arnold's training partner. He
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 1: wanted to follow me around and make a mini doco
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: out of my training. So, and my friend Mike Ryan,
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 1: who's a trainer there. He's always on my ass about
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 1: He's like, oh, you know how the shark stuff is good,
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 1: but have you noticed how all your views peak when
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: you do some workout stuff. So I'm like, all right,
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 1: I'll test this out. And he was right. I got
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 1: a lot of views on the workout stuff, and people
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 1: write to me asking questions about my prosthetic arm and
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 1: my weightlifting arm and how I use my leg to
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 1: train and do squads and stuff.
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 2: Have you ever gone in and worked with veterans that
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 2: are kind of in the early phases of dealing with
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 2: what you've been dealing.
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, back in Australia, I did. I went and worked
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 1: with the Soldier Recovery Center in Brisbane. I was actually
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 1: dating a Navy nurse a few years back now down
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 1: in San Diego as she worked at one of the
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 1: hospitals down there, and I used to go in and
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 1: chat to some of the wounded guys still in hospital,
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 1: still in the hospital beds, but not not lately. I
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 1: don't like to force myself on groups or people because
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 1: I know that there's a lot of people that want
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: to get involved and they're always bothering the veteran services,
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 1: and I don't like to be like that. If people
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 1: asked me to go and help, I would do it,
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 1: no problem at all. But I'm not good at asking, Hey,
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 1: do you want me little Asia.
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 2: They haven't asked you like I was thinking, like, oh, well,
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 2: you know, there's so many veterans in the US that.
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 1: Are dealing well, there's so many veterans in the US
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: that have overcome so much, people like Marcus Lattrelle and
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 1: Noah Galloway. There's a huge group of these people that
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 1: are doing just incredible things for their veteran community and
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 1: their injured veterans as well. So I think they probably
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 1: have their coffers full, but that's not saying I would
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 1: never turn them down.
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 2: So you're in this incredible situation. You get to speak
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 2: to all these groups and travel all over the world,
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 2: like what was the impetus to come to the United States,
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 2: Like how did that all come about?
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 1: I was doing lots of speaking in Australia and Discovery
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: Channel asked me for an interview one year and I saw, yeah,
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 1: it's just another interview whatever. By that stage, I was
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 1: quite comfortable in front of the camera. It wasn't a
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 1: big deal, and they liked it. And they liked it
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: so much they flew me out to La to go
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 1: on the late night talking show during Shark Week called
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 1: Shark After Dark, and I guess that with me and
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 1: Mark Cuban were on the couch together. And I guess
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 1: they liked that because they gave me a co hosting
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 1: job the next year with this insane cameraman called Andy Cuss. Grandy,
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 1: this guy, the things he does, man, the things we've
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: done together. Now, I saw my first great white shark
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 1: with him, my first cage diving with great white sharks
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 1: with him in the same shown the same two weeks
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 1: of filming. They like, that's so much they gave me
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 1: another one and another one, to the point where I
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 1: was out here having some meetings a couple of years
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 1: ago about TV shows, and my managers said, everyone out
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 1: here loves you, everyone knows who you are, but you're
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 1: not here. You need to be here if you want
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 1: this to grow. And so I thought, all right, and
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 1: I went home and I thought about it, and I
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 1: broke up with my girlfriend and decided to move to America.
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 1: She was holding me back anyway. Yeah, well, you know,
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 1: she didn't want to move to America, so many things
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 1: she didn't want to do, and I just wanted to
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 1: continue to grow as a person and with a career.
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 1: And so I decided I'm just going to move to America.
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 1: And then a month after I made that decision, I
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 1: was still in Australia. I got an offer by nat
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 1: g O Wilde to have my own show, and I
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 1: just thought, holy shit, this is how does this happening?
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 1: It just keeps getting better and better. And so we
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 1: talk to Discovery because I was doing some shows with them,
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 1: and they said, no, you can't go work with our competitor.
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 1: So I decided, well, do I want my own show?
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 1: Why do I want to stay with my loyalties to
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 1: Discovery and stay on Shark Week And I just said,
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 1: you know, I talked to everyone and got everyone's opinion,
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 1: and I decided to stay with Discovery. And they gave
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 1: me three shows a year for two years, a working
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 1: visa in America, development money for my own show. And
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 1: so I just moved to America and I AIRBMB between
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 1: Sydney and America for eighteen months and finally got a
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 1: place three months ago. And now I'm just waiting for
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 1: a green light for one of my shows to get cleared.
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 1: I'm working on another show with one of your friends.
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 1: Really I can't talk about it yet, but is what
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 1: an amazing dude. If we can pull this off, it
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 1: would it would be not just good for me and him,
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 1: but the main focus is it'll be good for us
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 1: a sub section of the community, which is the best part.
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 1: And now it's just getting bigger and bigger. I just
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 1: got signed to one of the biggest speaking bureaus in
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 1: the world, so I'm out here for the long term. Man,
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 1: I love this place. Americans are so sweet, They're so welcoming.
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 1: I just had two days ago, I was having lunch
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 1: with my girlfriend and a couple secretly paid for my lunch. Wow,
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 1: that doesn't happen in Australia. I think I've been thanked
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 1: for my service three times there. And it's not that
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 1: you expect it. It's not even that you want it.
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 1: It's just that it's very sweet for people to say
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 1: it still, and so I still appreciate that because we've
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 1: never had it before.
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 2: And you're part of this Shark Week ecosystem, which is
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 2: just massive. Yeah, that's like a cultural phenomenon here. It's
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 2: such a big deal. But I want to explore the
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 2: evolution of you being someone who is victimized by a
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 2: shark to being somebody who you know, basically now advocates
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 2: for shark preservation and the you know, the ecological implications
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 2: of you know, our relationship as human beings to sharks.
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 1: Well, it's the right thing to do. And ever since
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 1: I joined the military, my focus has been more on
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 1: serving and doing the right thing. And you know, I
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 1: have been trained as a protector, so I see now
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 1: that I'm not a soldier anymore. That's not my job.
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 1: But my job is to protect and to serve. And
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 1: I see a lot of wrongs being done against our planet,
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 1: against the environment, against the oceans, and especially against sharks.
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 1: And over the years, out of necessity, I had to
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 1: learn a lot about that because every time there was
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 1: a shark attack in Australia, I guess who the media
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 1: tained to you.
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 2: And you're the guy who's typing, you know, fucking sharks
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 2: one figure or whatever, female like from the hospital bad
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 2: And now you're like the.
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 1: Spokesperson for sharks exactly. And so everyone was asking me
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 1: how I got into sharks, and I was like, is
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 1: that of necessity?
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 2: I had to how did you get into sharks? You
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 2: didn't have a choice. Sharks were into you.
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 1: They had got onto me. Yeah. But I didn't want
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 1: to get on TV and sound like a dumbass. And
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 1: so I started to do my research and I started
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 1: to talk to the conservation groups and learn from them.
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 1: See Shepherd and a bunch of others that are out there.
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 1: Sharks for Kids out of the Bahamas is an amazing
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 1: one for kids. And so I learned and I learned,
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 1: and as we know, knowledge dispels fear.
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 2: So break down the situation with respect to shark preservation, like,
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 2: how do we treat sharks? What's the problem? You know,
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 2: what are we doing wrong? You know for somebody who
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 2: has no context for this other than like I'm scared
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 2: of sharks, or I know that sharks are threatened and
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 2: certain people eat sharks or whatever, like what's actually going on.
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 1: There's a lot of smaller satellite problems involved with sharks,
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 1: such as people actually fishing for them for sport, fishing
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 1: them to eat. There's the drum lines and the shark
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 1: nets just kills, but that's the big one. This is
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 1: the commercial fishing is the major contributor, legal and illegal.
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 1: So sea shepherd I think last year found a Chinese
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 1: trawler with fifteen hundred tons of shark fins on board,
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 1: just the fins, just the finn. So they were catching
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 1: all these sharks, slicing the fins off them, throwing the
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 1: carcases overboard. And there's over a hundred million sharks killed
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 1: a year in the ocean.
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 2: That's unbelievable.
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 1: And some of these sharks they don't reproduce quickly. Some
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 1: of the ones that they fish for actually take thirty
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 1: five years to fully mature before they can have pups,
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 1: so the birth rate is so slow and the killer
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 1: rate is so high. Of all the oceans, large fish
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 1: have been wiped out, and.
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 2: So explain how it works with commercial fishing. Though they
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 2: drat these gigantic nets.
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 1: There's there's two ways that they do it. The way
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 1: you're talking about where they yeah, they like football field
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 1: sized nets. They just drag them through the ocean floor
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 1: picking up everything, just totally destroying coral reefs and habitats
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 1: for fish, catching whales, dolphins, sharks, seals everything indiscriminately and
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 1: it's all dead and anything that they don't want. So
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 1: they'll have a quota a certain amount of fish that
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 1: they've been asked to catch.
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 2: Like they're trying to catch tuna exactly.
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 1: And if that, if they've got you know, ten tons
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 1: of tuna and twenty tons of everything else, they'll just
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 1: throw the rest of that away a lot of the
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 1: time until they can get more tuna. It's all dead,
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 1: so it's just waste. They literally call it waste. And
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 1: then they've got the monofilament nets as well, where they
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 1: will lay them on the bottom of the ocean maybe
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 1: two kilometers at a time. There's probably about two hundred
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 1: kilometers worth of these monofilament nets surrounding Australia every day,
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 1: and they stand about six meters high and they catch
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 1: everything that swims into them indiscriminately and kill it and
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 1: then they do the same thing. So it's the commercial fishing.
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 2: So why Richard Ipronlander calls fishing by its definition is overfishing.
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there is no no. Sustainable fishing is a myth.
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 1: You cannot sustainably fish and people think, well, I'm just
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 1: going to I'm gonna eat these farmed salmon. Holy shit,
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 1: you know how bad they are for you. They're full
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 1: of bacteria, diseases. They're full of antibiotics to get them
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 1: out of the diseases. The salmon actually have to be
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 1: fed die pellets, so they have that pink color because
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 1: they're like dirty muddy brown if they don't because they're
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 1: not eating their natural food. They're eating a lot of
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 1: them eating pig shit out of China, and.
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 2: Now they're going to be genetically modified.
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's safe.
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 2: So explain the role of the shark as the apex
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 2: predator in the ocean and why the shark is so
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 2: important to maintaining a proper ecosystem.
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 1: They keep the balance. And the easiest way I've found
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 1: to explain this to people who don't quite understand. And
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 1: that was me for a long time. So I know
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 1: what you're getting at saying apex predator and they keep
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 1: the balance and they're good for the ecosystem. It's a
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 1: lot of words that don't really mean a lot to
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 1: most people. So I'll give you an example. There's a
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 1: lot of them, and there was a town in America,
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 1: I can't remember what it was, and they fished all
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 1: of the sharks out because they were eating the food
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 1: that they wanted to catch the fishermen. Sorry, so they
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 1: fished all of the sharks out. There was no sharks
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 1: to eat the rays. The rays decimated the moles population
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 1: and destroyed the muscle and scullop industry. So all of
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 1: those people were all out of work, all lost their jobs,
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 1: all their boats were wasted, lost their homes because they
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 1: couldn't pay their mortgages because they killed the shop.
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 2: And they think at the time they're doing the right
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 2: thing in the best interest of enhancing their ability to
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 2: increase their yields. Exactly it's that classic human hubris of
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 2: thinking like, oh, you know, we just take care of
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 2: this one thing and we'll solve the problems without appreciating
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 2: the cascading effect of those kinds of dec.
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 1: It comes back. It always comes back onto us in
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 1: an untold effects. That's the thing. That's why every time
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 1: we messed with nature, we're disrupting at all.
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 2: And so what's going on like in Australia with a
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 2: Great Barrier Reef and the sort of cline.
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 1: I want to slam my head on the table.
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 2: It's insane. It's reaching a tipping point if it hasn't
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 2: already passed it.
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 1: These mining and oil companies as well keep trying to
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 1: put a mining route directly through the Great Barrier Reef.
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 2: It would even be considered.
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 1: They want to put an oil rig in the Greatest
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 1: Gian Bite, which is the big bite looking thing at
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 1: the bottom of Australia. It is a massive whale sanctuary.
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 1: There is so much life out there, and they just
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 1: want to put this big old rig out there and
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 1: do blast testing and destroy the sonars of the whales
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 1: and the dolphins and everything living out there. So all
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 1: of the citizens are having to fight this because the
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 1: government is just yeah, let's make money. They've slashed the
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 1: country's marine parks by fifty percent, the biggest cut of
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 1: marine park protecting marine parks ever that's happened under our
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 1: new prime minister. And they're putting out nets and drum
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 1: lines to pretend that they're protecting the swimmers.
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's amazing. You know. It's interesting in the context
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 2: of diet when people say, well, you know, I'm pretty
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 2: much like on your page, rich, but you know, I
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 2: like fish or whatever, and fish seems harmless in the
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 2: context of thinking of sension being.
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 1: Because you can't see yeah or yeah.
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 2: It's just like, oh, well, you know, cows are one thing,
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 2: pigs are one thing, but like fish is in a
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 2: different category. But when you fully appreciate the impact of
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 2: commercial fishing and what it's doing to our planet, it's
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 2: just it's indefensible.
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 1: And it's wrong. Now as well, maybe the science has
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 1: shown that fish have complicated social groups, They have a
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 1: centralized nervous system. They have memories. There are a lot
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 1: more than we thought they were than the dumb goldfish
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 1: memory thing. They feel pain and talking to well, talking
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 1: about you. You never really got the chance to talk
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 1: to you earlier, but talking about you to John Joseph
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 1: and another friend of mine, Ian Norrington, who's a brit
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 1: in Australia.
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 2: Set the bodyguard guy that John initially like he was
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 2: the connect between YouTube guys.
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 1: He was. Yeah. He reached out to me in the
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 1: early days saying, hey, I read it all about you.
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 1: You have quite an impact on the community. You could
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 1: make it even more drastic if you thought about going
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 1: plant based. And the seed had already been planted by
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 1: a guy called Damien Manda. Yeah.
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 2: I don't know him personally, but I know his story
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 2: is incredible.
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he's an amazing man. And him and I worked
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 1: in the same Navy department, the clearance divers, and I
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 1: went out there to Africa to film a documentary for
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 1: NATGIO and I embedded with his anti poaching unit. We
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 1: went out hunting poaches and I did the shooting training
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 1: and unarmed combat and all that stuff. And his meals
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 1: were always separate from the rangers. And I know, what
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 1: are you eating, dude, He's like, I'm a vegan. I
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 1: was like, what's that and he said, well, I don't
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 1: eat anything that's from an animal. And I said, oh, okay,
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 1: what do you do that for? He said, well, because
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 1: I felt like a hypocrite. I was out here protecting
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 1: the animals and eating the animals, and me being the
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 1: rational guy that I am. I'm like, yeah, okay, that
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 1: makes sense totally. How are you still so huge? I know?
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 2: So explain who Demien Mander is for people that. First
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 2: of all, Demion did an incredible Ted talk everybody should watch.
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 2: I'll put it in the show notes. But I mean,
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 2: this guy is a fucking bad as uh huh.
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 1: He's a monster. And so he was a Navy Clearance
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 1: diver like me. He went over and joined that special
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 1: forces group that I told you about, the Tactical Assault Group.
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 1: Then when he got bored with the military, he became
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 1: a private military contractor out in Iraq and he did
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 1: probably twelve thirteen tours of that place and then just
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 1: got sick of the death and the poverty and the
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 1: anger and the hate, and he went on safari looking
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 1: for a new cause. And on safari in Africa, they
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 1: came across a rhino with its face hacked off, and
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 1: he just thought, Okay, this is my cause, this is
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 1: why I came here. I was meant to be here.
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 1: To see this, to help make this stop. So against
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 1: every known possibility, this giant white man from Australia and
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 1: went to Africa and managed to get together these group
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 1: of people and convinced them to be rangers instead of
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 1: poaching the animals. And it's turned into this a beast
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 1: of its own right where he's just started the can
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 1: never pronounce of the Ashkevinger. This group of women, the
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 1: first women anti poaching rangers ever and they're out there
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 1: hunting the poachers, protecting the animals selflessly. You know. He
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 1: sold all of his homes in Australia to get the
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 1: money to put this together. He lives very not poorly,
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 1: what's what I'm looking for, minimally with him and his
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 1: wife and his child. And when I lived at their
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 1: house and it was kind of perfect. At the end
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 1: of the day, we sat back in his hammock and
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 1: had a beer and listened to the hippos sing one
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 1: hundred meters away in the creek near his house, and
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 1: listened to the crocodiles. And it was one of the
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 1: times that I actually did feel a little bit threatened
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 1: in my life because it was nighttime and I needed
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 1: to go to the toilet. But the toilet was on
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 1: the other side of this dark patch away from the house,
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 1: and I was literally thinking, everything, he wants to eat me.
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 1: I'm not sure I need to go to the toilet
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 1: that bad.
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 2: But what he did really was take this special forces
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 2: sensibility and apply that to a world where he could
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 2: make a difference that has traditionally, you know, people of
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 2: his mindset, they've been like the you know, kind of
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 2: the tree huggers, right, you know, sort of very you
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 2: know left, Yeah, exactly, and he comes in with all
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 2: his training and his you know, ability to like make
• 1:27:57
  Speaker 2: shit happen in a very real way.
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 1: He basically created the paramilitary group out of these ranges.
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 2: Like they're not fucking around.
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 1: Nope, they're legally allowed to shoot poaches on site.
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's amazing. I didn't know that. You I didn't
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 2: know that. You knew him.
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, we've spent a bit of time together. He's
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 1: a good man.
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think, you know, because of who he
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 2: is in his background, he you know, he's a powerful figure.
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 2: Because I think he's somebody that like a dude, you know,
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 2: like a like a type a personality guy I can
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 2: look to and realize like, oh, you know, being plant based,
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 2: like being quote unquote like compassionate, can take the form
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 2: of somebody like that that that you know, like an
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 2: average guy. I can look to a guy like that
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 2: and say, you know, I want to be like that guy.
• 1:28:41
  Speaker 2: I relate to that person.
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I take great pride when people see me working
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 1: out in the gym and I'm doing chin ups with
• 1:28:51
  Speaker 1: seventy pound dumbbell around my waist. This morning, I was
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 1: doing one hundred and twenty pound dumbbell presses and they
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 1: come that always come over for a chat because you
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 1: rarely see a half a robot dude lifting weights and
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 1: its gold. So everyone talks to each other and they
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 1: all come over and have a chat and they're like, oh,
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 1: you know, how are you so fit? And you ripped
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 1: and blah blah. So well, it actually started and became
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 1: more prevalent when I went vegan a year and a
• 1:29:15
  Speaker 1: half ago. And that's not stand in mind. They're like,
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 1: what what steroids are here on I'm like broccoli, Yeah,
• 1:29:25
  Speaker 1: this is a steroid called spinach.
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 2: So it's been a year and a half and so
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 2: it was Demian and John and Ian were the main influences.
• 1:29:33
  Speaker 1: All played their partner, and it just kept I tried
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 1: it once and I failed dismally because I went in unprepared.
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 1: And then I gave it another go a few months later,
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 1: and I went because I was the sort of guy
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 1: that I had to eat all the chickens in the world.
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 1: I had to get all that protein into me to
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 1: get the muscles, and they never delivered. I never had
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 1: big muscles. I just couldn't put weight on. It didn't work.
• 1:29:55
  Speaker 1: And so I thought, okay, well, I canceled that red meat,
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 1: and I did that pretty easily. Cancel out white meat,
• 1:30:01
  Speaker 1: did that pretty easily because I still had my beloved fish.
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 1: I love seafood. I grew up spearfishing with my grandfather
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 1: and eating sting ray and all that. So that was
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 1: the big one. That and eggs. I was lactose intolerant
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 1: when I was fifteen, so dary wasn't a problem. I
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 1: stole money from the poor box at church, and so
• 1:30:21
  Speaker 1: God smoted me because I bought chocolate with his God money.
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 1: So lactose intolerance since I was a teenager, and so
• 1:30:28
  Speaker 1: eggs and seafood, and I got rid of the seafood,
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 1: but it was the eggs it was like, Okay, this
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 1: is my last this is my final source of protein.
• 1:30:36
  Speaker 1: I must protect it. And then I learned so much
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 1: about all the other sources of protein and now eggs
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 1: literally grossed me out.
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 2: And what is the impact done on your training and recovery?
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 1: What recovery? I don't need any recovery. I train every
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 1: day in some form or fashion. I haven't had a
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 1: serious injury since I started in over a year and
• 1:30:59
  Speaker 1: a half. It was almost like it just happened instantly.
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 1: I'm the modern day meal that we most people have
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 1: is so much now a huge chunk of meat. That's
• 1:31:14
  Speaker 1: sort of how we value our meal. Okay, my meal
• 1:31:17
  Speaker 1: is big enough because I have this huge chunk of
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 1: meat in it and then a little bit of veggies
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 1: or it's like pasta with meat all through it and
• 1:31:24
  Speaker 1: no veggies at all. And now that I don't have
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 1: that distraction of the animal products, I'm so much healthy.
• 1:31:31
  Speaker 1: I have so many more nutrients because I'm eating all
• 1:31:34
  Speaker 1: of these vegetables that I never ate before. Like who
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 1: knew spaghetti squash was incredible? I make that stuff all
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 1: the time. I'm a tofu scramble. It looks exactly like eggs,
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 1: but tastes better when you add all the veggies and
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 1: hot sauce. And it's just I, by no means starving.
• 1:31:54
  Speaker 1: I'm by no means grossed out by the food I ate.
• 1:31:57
  Speaker 1: I make gourmet meals. Is not a vegan at all,
• 1:32:02
  Speaker 1: but I cook most of the time, and she's at
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 1: my house all the.
• 1:32:05
  Speaker 2: Time, so she's eating vegan.
• 1:32:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Basically, Yeah, my breakfast every day, I actually look
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 1: forward to going home after the gym because I make
• 1:32:14
  Speaker 1: this bowl I call magic Oats. I discovered probably the
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 1: best vegan protein on the planet. It's better than any
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 1: way protein I've ever had by a company called High
• 1:32:26
  Speaker 1: Performance Nutrition. I'm not sponsored by them or anything, but
• 1:32:29
  Speaker 1: it's banana maple, French toast flavor. And my smoothie bowels
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 1: are probably eighty percent broccoli and spinach. And you can
• 1:32:39
  Speaker 1: put just one scoop of this stuff in and it
• 1:32:40
  Speaker 1: tastes like gold. I get some PB two and some
• 1:32:44
  Speaker 1: chea seeds and some buckwheat and just combine it all
• 1:32:47
  Speaker 1: together a big scoop of almond butter, and it makes
• 1:32:50
  Speaker 1: me happy every time I eat it.
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, So when you're at the gym and you tell
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 2: these guys while I went vegan and then they ask
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 2: you where you get your protein or like, how do
• 1:32:59
  Speaker 2: your session?
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 1: Usually, I didn't really think that it was going to
• 1:33:04
  Speaker 1: happen as much as everyone makes fun of it about happening,
• 1:33:07
  Speaker 1: you know what I mean. Like everyone's like, oh, wait
• 1:33:09
  Speaker 1: to get your protein, and you see the memes all
• 1:33:11
  Speaker 1: the time on Instagram, oh't wait to get protein. I
• 1:33:13
  Speaker 1: was like, Ah, that's just whatever. I don't really say
• 1:33:16
  Speaker 1: that all the time here they do.
• 1:33:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:33:21
  Speaker 1: The funny thing is it's in what the health actually
• 1:33:24
  Speaker 1: and the doctor says, I've never in my whole career
• 1:33:28
  Speaker 1: had someone come in dying of a lack of protein
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 1: or a protein deficiency. Yeah.
• 1:33:32
  Speaker 2: I think I was Garth Davis.
• 1:33:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, So I get it in food, like the
• 1:33:37
  Speaker 1: same place the cows and the gorillas, and you get
• 1:33:41
  Speaker 1: yours from. I just don't get it from meat because
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 1: it's not good for you.
• 1:33:45
  Speaker 2: It's interesting, that's cruel that your life keeps getting better
• 1:33:49
  Speaker 2: as you are removing things from your life limbs.
• 1:33:53
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 1:33:54
  Speaker 2: Now you're removing animal products, which just keeps getting better. Yeah,
• 1:33:57
  Speaker 2: So you live your own kind of version of minimalism.
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 2: H it's a different kind.
• 1:34:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's just going to be me and the dog soon. Yeah,
• 1:34:07
  Speaker 1: shed the girlfriend, shed, the meat products gained America. And
• 1:34:13
  Speaker 1: you know, I'm strong and I feel good, not just
• 1:34:16
  Speaker 1: in body, but I feel good in my soul. I
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 1: live a whole life where nothing has to die for
• 1:34:25
  Speaker 1: me to live, and simply because it's unnecessary, it doesn't
• 1:34:30
  Speaker 1: have to happen. And I would assume that most of
• 1:34:33
  Speaker 1: your listeners are probably vegans veganish.
• 1:34:36
  Speaker 2: Not necessarily no, I mean this show, you know, look,
• 1:34:39
  Speaker 2: I have lots of people on that are plant based,
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 2: but lots of other people on too. I mean, there's
• 1:34:42
  Speaker 2: a lot of vegan, plant based people that listen, but
• 1:34:45
  Speaker 2: I wouldn't categorize it as a vegan podcast, like there's
• 1:34:48
  Speaker 2: all kinds of people that doesn't.
• 1:34:51
  Speaker 1: I just got to a point where I realized a
• 1:34:54
  Speaker 1: lot of these things I did because I was misinformed
• 1:34:57
  Speaker 1: or I felt like I had to because I was
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 1: a man and I'm a soldier and I had to
• 1:35:02
  Speaker 1: keep up that illusion. I'm so comfortable in who I
• 1:35:06
  Speaker 1: am now, I don't need to prove myself anymore. I
• 1:35:09
  Speaker 1: served my country in two different branches of the service.
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 1: I survived a shark attack, I go and do volunteer
• 1:35:16
  Speaker 1: work and charity work. I can wear a pink shirt
• 1:35:19
  Speaker 1: if I want, and i can eat vegetables, And as
• 1:35:22
  Speaker 1: long as I'm doing good for people and I'm not
• 1:35:26
  Speaker 1: being a dick and I'm healthy, then I'm happy. I'm
• 1:35:31
  Speaker 1: really in a good place. And it's a lot to
• 1:35:34
  Speaker 1: do with not having death in my life.
• 1:35:38
  Speaker 2: It's pretty powerful to hear that coming from a guy
• 1:35:41
  Speaker 2: like you, you know, someone like me, long distance runner
• 1:35:43
  Speaker 2: or whatever.
• 1:35:44
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 2: It's a very different animal from you know, a military guy.
• 1:35:49
  Speaker 2: You know, a kind of guy who looks like you
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 2: and has done the things that you have done. And
• 1:35:55
  Speaker 2: I think it speaks to a larger conversation about how
• 1:36:00
  Speaker 2: define masculinity and what it means to be a man,
• 1:36:03
  Speaker 2: and it calls into question a lot of these paradigms
• 1:36:07
  Speaker 2: that we've set up about what that looks like. You know,
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 2: if you're a man, then you need to eat this
• 1:36:11
  Speaker 2: way and behave in a certain way. And in truth,
• 1:36:14
  Speaker 2: I think it beckons or or it calls for really
• 1:36:17
  Speaker 2: considering the truth of what it means to be masculine,
• 1:36:21
  Speaker 2: which is to be a protector exactly right, to know
• 1:36:25
  Speaker 2: when to exert your strength and to know when to
• 1:36:27
  Speaker 2: show compassion. You don't have to eat these animals. Why
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 2: would you do that? And when you realize by removing
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 2: them from your plate that you actually feel better and
• 1:36:39
  Speaker 2: perform better, it's like a light switch goes on. And
• 1:36:42
  Speaker 2: then you can become that ambassador, that protector, that spokesperson
• 1:36:49
  Speaker 2: for you know, a kinder, more compassionate world, and do
• 1:36:52
  Speaker 2: it in the frame, in the body of you know,
• 1:36:55
  Speaker 2: this very kind of you know, typically mascul persona.
• 1:37:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's the big bad man thing to go and
• 1:37:03
  Speaker 1: eat meat and ribs and babyback and blah blah blah blah.
• 1:37:08
  Speaker 1: And I've had a couple of my friends give the vegan,
• 1:37:12
  Speaker 1: plant based lifestyle the crack. My mum for one, and
• 1:37:17
  Speaker 1: she was looking after my dog when I first moved
• 1:37:19
  Speaker 1: out here, and she she called me one day she said, look,
• 1:37:22
  Speaker 1: I don't think I can do this much longer. You know,
• 1:37:24
  Speaker 1: he's too big. He's a great day and cross. And
• 1:37:27
  Speaker 1: I just know my hips hurt, my rumor ted arthritis
• 1:37:30
  Speaker 1: is really bad. I get up in the middle of
• 1:37:32
  Speaker 1: the night and I nearly fall over all the time.
• 1:37:34
  Speaker 1: I'm going to have to get a cane. And I
• 1:37:36
  Speaker 1: just thought Okay, this is it. I've tried. I've tried
• 1:37:38
  Speaker 1: to talk to her about it so many times, and
• 1:37:40
  Speaker 1: she's just so stuck in her ways and so might
• 1:37:43
  Speaker 1: It might sound gross, but I went and booked her
• 1:37:46
  Speaker 1: in for three colonics to flush out start flushing out
• 1:37:48
  Speaker 1: the toxins. I banned her from wine and coffee, and
• 1:37:52
  Speaker 1: I gave her this huge list of things that she
• 1:37:54
  Speaker 1: shouldn't be having, and I gave her a whole list
• 1:37:57
  Speaker 1: of foods that she can use to cook with how
• 1:38:00
  Speaker 1: much water she needs to drink. And within four days,
• 1:38:05
  Speaker 1: I'm not even joking, within four days, she calls me
• 1:38:07
  Speaker 1: back and she says, Paul, I got up in the
• 1:38:10
  Speaker 1: middle of the night last night and I just walked
• 1:38:12
  Speaker 1: to the toilet. I didn't feel bad, I didn't feel dizzy,
• 1:38:15
  Speaker 1: my hips weren't hurting. I actually this morning went out
• 1:38:19
  Speaker 1: walking with the girls again, something I haven't been able
• 1:38:21
  Speaker 1: to do in months. That's crazy. It's amazing the difference
• 1:38:25
  Speaker 1: that it can have on your health and well being.
• 1:38:28
  Speaker 1: I'm forty one now, I don't feel like it. I
• 1:38:30
  Speaker 1: feel stronger and better than I've ever felt in my life.
• 1:38:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's just not part of the conversation when
• 1:38:35
  Speaker 2: you go to the doctor.
• 1:38:36
  Speaker 1: No, it's like the two weeks worth the nutrition courts they.
• 1:38:39
  Speaker 2: Have, Oh your hips are you got right? Well, you
• 1:38:41
  Speaker 2: didn't need to take this, and you need to take that,
• 1:38:43
  Speaker 2: and you're going to have to start slowing things down.
• 1:38:45
  Speaker 2: And that's I mean that dramatic of a difference in
• 1:38:48
  Speaker 2: such a short period of time.
• 1:38:49
  Speaker 1: I mean it's believe even drugs can't do that.
• 1:38:52
  Speaker 2: Now, Yeah, that's incredible.
• 1:38:54
  Speaker 1: It sold me.
• 1:38:55
  Speaker 2: Well, let's talk a little bit about this, you know,
• 1:38:58
  Speaker 2: this evolution from being attacked by a shark to being
• 1:39:01
  Speaker 2: you know, somebody who like, how long did it take
• 1:39:03
  Speaker 2: before you got back in the water to go be
• 1:39:08
  Speaker 2: with sharks again?
• 1:39:09
  Speaker 1: And what was that? Like? Oh man, that happened quick,
• 1:39:11
  Speaker 1: because sixty minutes came to the hospital before I was
• 1:39:14
  Speaker 1: even at home, and they wanted to do a story,
• 1:39:16
  Speaker 1: and so they convinced me to go diving in an
• 1:39:20
  Speaker 1: aquarium with some gray nurse sharks. And while I knew
• 1:39:25
  Speaker 1: nurse sharks, I think you guys call them sand tigers.
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 1: While I knew enough about sharks to know that they
• 1:39:30
  Speaker 1: weren't going to harm me, they still looked scary. They
• 1:39:34
  Speaker 1: got all the teeth hanging out of their face, and
• 1:39:36
  Speaker 1: so I didn't feel very comfortable looking at that so much.
• 1:39:39
  Speaker 1: I looked at the tail, but I did that very quickly,
• 1:39:44
  Speaker 1: and then I didn't do it again for quite some time.
• 1:39:51
  Speaker 1: Any progression from there. I did that same dive a
• 1:39:53
  Speaker 1: few times for charity events and things like that, but
• 1:39:56
  Speaker 1: by then, you know, they didn't even feel like sharks.
• 1:39:58
  Speaker 1: They were just like swimming puppy dogs. And then sixty
• 1:40:01
  Speaker 1: Minutes came back around again and they said, look, it's
• 1:40:04
  Speaker 1: amazing what you've done. Getting back to work. We want
• 1:40:06
  Speaker 1: to do it. You know, where's Paul now? And they
• 1:40:09
  Speaker 1: wanted me to go to Fiji and go diving with
• 1:40:11
  Speaker 1: bull sharks. And they're like, we want you to face
• 1:40:14
  Speaker 1: the animal that you know, it was sixty minutes, the
• 1:40:17
  Speaker 1: big deep votes face the animal that changed his life forever.
• 1:40:20
  Speaker 2: It'd be great for reading.
• 1:40:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah yeah. And so I'm like, all I'm thinking is
• 1:40:25
  Speaker 1: they're going to pay for me to go to Fiji. Yeah,
• 1:40:28
  Speaker 1: they'll probably pay for my margeritas too, all right, yeah,
• 1:40:31
  Speaker 1: I'll come to Fiji. So I when I shot that,
• 1:40:35
  Speaker 1: and to be honest, not one point did I feel threatened.
• 1:40:40
  Speaker 1: I didn't feel like the sharks were after me. I
• 1:40:43
  Speaker 1: got to see them in just a natural light. There
• 1:40:45
  Speaker 1: was I think six different species of sharks there, billions
• 1:40:49
  Speaker 1: of fish. The only thing I got bitten by was
• 1:40:51
  Speaker 1: an eel. So someone once told me, if you put
• 1:40:54
  Speaker 1: something bigger than its mouth in front of it, it
• 1:40:57
  Speaker 1: won't bite you. So this eel came out. I was like, oh,
• 1:41:00
  Speaker 1: I wanted to get close to it, and I put
• 1:41:01
  Speaker 1: my fist up to it, which was bigger than its head,
• 1:41:03
  Speaker 1: and a little bastard bit me on the knuckle. Had
• 1:41:07
  Speaker 1: finally let go, and I started pumping my fist and
• 1:41:09
  Speaker 1: all this green stuff came out of my hand and
• 1:41:11
  Speaker 1: I thought, oh my god, what does it injected me with?
• 1:41:14
  Speaker 1: And then I realized I was one hundred and ten
• 1:41:16
  Speaker 1: feet down and there's no red at that depth, so
• 1:41:19
  Speaker 1: it was just my blood. But the sharks. It was
• 1:41:24
  Speaker 1: eye opening. At the end of that dive, I got
• 1:41:26
  Speaker 1: to hand feed a bull shark and it wasn't trying
• 1:41:30
  Speaker 1: to eat me. It wasn't trying to kill me. It
• 1:41:31
  Speaker 1: wasn't a vicious, lurking monster waiting to You're just out
• 1:41:37
  Speaker 1: no cages, no.
• 1:41:38
  Speaker 2: Cages, not just out there. Yeah, and no PTSD about
• 1:41:42
  Speaker 2: doing it.
• 1:41:43
  Speaker 1: No, Yeah, I sometimes wonder if I'm a little bit broken,
• 1:41:47
  Speaker 1: shouldn't I buy all accounts? Have something wrong with me?
• 1:41:51
  Speaker 2: I don't know. It's funny I had I had Alex
• 1:41:54
  Speaker 2: Hanold in here yesterday. Yeah, world's greatest free soloist climber.
• 1:42:00
  Speaker 2: The guy climbed El Capitan without ropes, like he's done
• 1:42:03
  Speaker 2: just the most unbelievable things. And he had, you know,
• 1:42:08
  Speaker 2: everyone asked him like about his relationship with fear and
• 1:42:11
  Speaker 2: his relationship with death, and I think there's some overlap
• 1:42:14
  Speaker 2: between how he perceives it and perhaps how you perceive it,
• 1:42:18
  Speaker 2: coming from different experiences. And what was interesting is that
• 1:42:22
  Speaker 2: he was saying, look, you know what I do, Like,
• 1:42:24
  Speaker 2: if you know he's on those rock feet, you lose
• 1:42:27
  Speaker 2: your your grip, like you're dead. Like there's no I mean,
• 1:42:30
  Speaker 2: there's no if ends or butts about it. It's not like, oh,
• 1:42:32
  Speaker 2: you're putting yourself at risk. It's a very binary thing, right,
• 1:42:36
  Speaker 2: And so that makes him have to be very present
• 1:42:38
  Speaker 2: with the reality of death. So he lives with a
• 1:42:42
  Speaker 2: sensibility about death that most people just compartmentalize or put
• 1:42:47
  Speaker 2: in their you know, in their unconscious mind. Like we
• 1:42:49
  Speaker 2: walk around thinking we're not going to die, or yeah,
• 1:42:52
  Speaker 2: we kind of academically know everybody's going to die, but
• 1:42:54
  Speaker 2: but you know, maybe it's not going to happen to me,
• 1:42:56
  Speaker 2: you know that kind of thing. Yeah, And as somebody
• 1:42:58
  Speaker 2: who survived what you've survived, you had, you know, a
• 1:43:01
  Speaker 2: brush with death in you know, in the most palpable
• 1:43:04
  Speaker 2: way possible. And so I would imagine your relationship with
• 1:43:07
  Speaker 2: death and your appreciation for life is different than most
• 1:43:10
  Speaker 2: human beings. But the other thing about Alex was that
• 1:43:14
  Speaker 2: they're like, how can this guy do this stuff and
• 1:43:16
  Speaker 2: maintain him maintain his focus and concentration and and and
• 1:43:20
  Speaker 2: presence when he's in this situation of being on these
• 1:43:24
  Speaker 2: rock climbing walls. So they did an MRI in his
• 1:43:26
  Speaker 2: brain to see if there's like something wrong with him. Right,
• 1:43:29
  Speaker 2: They're like, this guy's amignala must not fire, which you know,
• 1:43:32
  Speaker 2: I guess is responsible for the fear impulse, right, And
• 1:43:36
  Speaker 2: they found out he's like, no, I actually have an amigoala,
• 1:43:39
  Speaker 2: you know, but it but it doesn't it doesn't, like,
• 1:43:41
  Speaker 2: you know, function in the way that most human beings do.
• 1:43:44
  Speaker 2: So perhaps there's something there. Maybe you're an MRI of
• 1:43:47
  Speaker 2: your brain. Well, I think it has to do with
• 1:43:49
  Speaker 2: your experience like you. I mean, after you've survived what
• 1:43:53
  Speaker 2: you've survived for I would imagine your relationship with life
• 1:43:55
  Speaker 2: and death is is different. Like you know, what does
• 1:43:58
  Speaker 2: fear look like for you?
• 1:44:00
  Speaker 1: Well, I already accepted death. When I was under the
• 1:44:03
  Speaker 1: water for those ten seconds, drowning in total agony, I
• 1:44:07
  Speaker 1: came to a realization that I was going to die.
• 1:44:10
  Speaker 1: My brain was telling me, Okay, you're going to die
• 1:44:11
  Speaker 1: right now. You're not going home today, this is it.
• 1:44:14
  Speaker 1: And so I accepted it already, and I just thought.
• 1:44:17
  Speaker 1: Everything sped up in my brain and I was thinking
• 1:44:20
  Speaker 1: a million miles a minute, and I just thought, well,
• 1:44:23
  Speaker 1: I've lived ten lives in these thirty one years. If
• 1:44:27
  Speaker 1: it's my time to die, then I'm okay with that.
• 1:44:30
  Speaker 1: And so I let go, and a calm came over me.
• 1:44:33
  Speaker 1: And then the shark removed my hand, removed from my hamstring,
• 1:44:37
  Speaker 1: and because of my wet suit, I was positively buoyant.
• 1:44:39
  Speaker 1: And I popped to the surface and I looked around
• 1:44:42
  Speaker 1: and the tail of the shark splash water in my face,
• 1:44:45
  Speaker 1: and I saw my safety boat, and I thought, oh shit,
• 1:44:47
  Speaker 1: I'm not dead, I better get out of here. So
• 1:44:49
  Speaker 1: I started swipping back to the boat. And so I
• 1:44:53
  Speaker 1: already accepted death, and I realized that it's not it's
• 1:44:56
  Speaker 1: nothing to be afraid of.
• 1:44:58
  Speaker 2: So how does that color your dead life?
• 1:45:00
  Speaker 1: Well, I don't have to hold onto the mortal coil
• 1:45:03
  Speaker 1: like everyone else does, because I know that death is
• 1:45:05
  Speaker 1: not scary. You know what's scary not living, not doing
• 1:45:09
  Speaker 1: everything that you possibly can to live the best life
• 1:45:13
  Speaker 1: you have because trust me, when you come to the
• 1:45:15
  Speaker 1: end of your days, the only thing you're going to
• 1:45:17
  Speaker 1: have is your regrets. And if you don't have any
• 1:45:20
  Speaker 1: of those, it's a sweet home run. You've got nothing
• 1:45:23
  Speaker 1: to worry about.
• 1:45:24
  Speaker 2: So then you're feeding bull sharks by your hand yep,
• 1:45:26
  Speaker 2: And now.
• 1:45:28
  Speaker 1: For Shark Week. Last year, at the start of twenty seventeen,
• 1:45:31
  Speaker 1: I was diving with great white sharks without a cage
• 1:45:34
  Speaker 1: in the middle of nowhere, bum fuck Western Australia. Like
• 1:45:37
  Speaker 1: a handful of people maybe have done it.
• 1:45:40
  Speaker 2: That's insane.
• 1:45:40
  Speaker 1: And yeah, it's incredible to be one hundred and ten
• 1:45:45
  Speaker 1: feet down with three massive male great white sharks swimming
• 1:45:50
  Speaker 1: around you and all you have is a GoPro on
• 1:45:53
  Speaker 1: a stick.
• 1:45:54
  Speaker 2: How do you, I mean, what is the the situation
• 1:46:00
  Speaker 2: in which a great white or a bull shark is
• 1:46:04
  Speaker 2: going to be provoked to attack you versus being you know,
• 1:46:08
  Speaker 2: sympatica with them in the water.
• 1:46:10
  Speaker 1: Well, look, the first thing is they're a wild animal.
• 1:46:13
  Speaker 1: You're never going to be able to predict what they
• 1:46:15
  Speaker 1: do one hundred percent of the time. You kind of
• 1:46:18
  Speaker 1: have to rely on your experiences and rely on your knowledge.
• 1:46:23
  Speaker 1: And I've learned from the best that the guy Andy Cassegrandi.
• 1:46:26
  Speaker 1: I've done a bunch of shows with him now, and
• 1:46:29
  Speaker 1: I always keep my mouth shut and my ears open
• 1:46:31
  Speaker 1: when I'm dealing with people like that. I have a
• 1:46:34
  Speaker 1: lot of trust with him. I did that dive with him,
• 1:46:36
  Speaker 1: and so I've learned how to read the sharks, how
• 1:46:38
  Speaker 1: to read their posture. And really the greatest thing, the
• 1:46:43
  Speaker 1: greatest piece of advice that anyone ever gave me, was
• 1:46:46
  Speaker 1: don't act like food. They won't treat you like food.
• 1:46:49
  Speaker 2: But what does that mean?
• 1:46:51
  Speaker 1: Never retreat. Always keep your eyes on them sharks and
• 1:46:54
  Speaker 1: actually see you looking at them. A lot of the times,
• 1:46:56
  Speaker 1: tiger sharks, great white sharks, they'll try and ambush you
• 1:47:00
  Speaker 1: from behind as soon as you turn around, they actually
• 1:47:03
  Speaker 1: register that you're looking at them, and they swim in
• 1:47:06
  Speaker 1: the other direction. Yeah, it's mind blowing. It's funny to
• 1:47:10
  Speaker 1: see because they come out of the murk at you,
• 1:47:12
  Speaker 1: and it's literally like you're watching a horror movie of
• 1:47:16
  Speaker 1: this gigantic great white shark swimming directly at your face.
• 1:47:21
  Speaker 1: And you want to turn and you want to swim
• 1:47:23
  Speaker 1: as fast as you can back to that cage, but
• 1:47:26
  Speaker 1: you can't because it'll eat It'll chase you down and
• 1:47:30
  Speaker 1: it'll eat you.
• 1:47:30
  Speaker 2: And you've been in that situation, Yeah, coming at you,
• 1:47:33
  Speaker 2: and you have to maintain your composure to such an
• 1:47:36
  Speaker 2: extent that.
• 1:47:36
  Speaker 1: It's like staring down the ball. Wow. Yeah, it was crazy,
• 1:47:39
  Speaker 1: and it did. It swum up to me and I
• 1:47:41
  Speaker 1: saw the nose and I saw the eyes and the
• 1:47:43
  Speaker 1: teeth and then the fins out the side, and it
• 1:47:45
  Speaker 1: was like a mini bus with teeth and fins coming
• 1:47:48
  Speaker 1: at me. And I just had to stay there, even
• 1:47:50
  Speaker 1: though I was very very nervous that it was going
• 1:47:53
  Speaker 1: to bite my head off. And it just went around
• 1:47:57
  Speaker 1: me and that was it. And then eventually we swam
• 1:48:01
  Speaker 1: back to the cage and I came to the surface
• 1:48:02
  Speaker 1: and I was fine, and I got to see these
• 1:48:05
  Speaker 1: remarkable animals without the bars in the way, one on one,
• 1:48:10
  Speaker 1: not acting like food and not as prey.
• 1:48:13
  Speaker 2: So if i find myself out in the ocean and
• 1:48:16
  Speaker 2: I'm confronted with a shark, stare them in the face.
• 1:48:19
  Speaker 1: Yeap, just keep your eyes on it, try and watch
• 1:48:21
  Speaker 1: it at all times.
• 1:48:22
  Speaker 2: I don't know if I'm going to be able to
• 1:48:25
  Speaker 2: handle that.
• 1:48:26
  Speaker 1: Well, that's your other option.
• 1:48:27
  Speaker 2: Do you go out out here in like Malville or
• 1:48:30
  Speaker 2: west Side and go on the ocean.
• 1:48:32
  Speaker 1: No, I haven't had any need to. I used to
• 1:48:35
  Speaker 1: like surfing, but I'm just not very good at it
• 1:48:38
  Speaker 1: on this prosthetic leg. I've seen this kid as this.
• 1:48:42
  Speaker 1: He's created this really great surfing prosthetic. I want to
• 1:48:44
  Speaker 1: get one of those because it looks much easier to
• 1:48:46
  Speaker 1: stand on. Because I do like surfing, I'm just really
• 1:48:49
  Speaker 1: terrible at it when I can't feel my foot or
• 1:48:51
  Speaker 1: my knee. But I hear laird out here has a
• 1:48:56
  Speaker 1: motorized surfboard or something. I want to get one of those.
• 1:49:01
  Speaker 2: I don't know. I have seen those like hydrofoil surfboards
• 1:49:05
  Speaker 2: that are like boosted board skateboards, but their surfboards and
• 1:49:09
  Speaker 2: right they sort of rise up with a hydrofoil and
• 1:49:12
  Speaker 2: and they're like electric motorized. Yeah, and people right around
• 1:49:15
  Speaker 2: on that.
• 1:49:15
  Speaker 1: I'd love one of those. I've surfed a ten foot wave,
• 1:49:18
  Speaker 1: but I got towed into it on the back of
• 1:49:20
  Speaker 1: a jet ski. Probably I don't have Australia around here.
• 1:49:23
  Speaker 1: In Australia, I don't have anyone to toe me around
• 1:49:25
  Speaker 1: in a jet ski just just to watch me surf.
• 1:49:28
  Speaker 2: Unfortunately, So when you go and you give these talks,
• 1:49:32
  Speaker 2: what is the you know, what's the message that you're
• 1:49:35
  Speaker 2: trying to leave people with.
• 1:49:37
  Speaker 1: It really depends on what the client asks me to
• 1:49:41
  Speaker 1: talk about. Because I talk to everyone from primary school
• 1:49:45
  Speaker 1: kids six seven eight years old, surprisingly enough, all the
• 1:49:50
  Speaker 1: way through high school, all the way through college, all
• 1:49:53
  Speaker 1: through military groups or big business. You know, I've got
• 1:49:55
  Speaker 1: IBM coming up, Microsoft, Big Investment corporate, twelve bankers to
• 1:50:02
  Speaker 1: twelve CEOs in a room and just me and we
• 1:50:05
  Speaker 1: talk about whatever they need to focus on. So there's
• 1:50:09
  Speaker 1: a lot of common themes as embracing change because a
• 1:50:14
  Speaker 1: lot of them go through takeovers and they're getting melded
• 1:50:18
  Speaker 1: together with other companies and it's a change of culture
• 1:50:20
  Speaker 1: and it's a change of personnel, and everyone always fights
• 1:50:23
  Speaker 1: against change because it makes them uncomfortable and they don't
• 1:50:25
  Speaker 1: want to do something different when they're comfortable doing it
• 1:50:28
  Speaker 1: this way. So talking to them about embracing change and
• 1:50:31
  Speaker 1: the opportunity that comes out of changing with the situation,
• 1:50:35
  Speaker 1: overcoming adversity, obviously working the team network, being able to
• 1:50:42
  Speaker 1: focus on looking after each other and doing a better
• 1:50:45
  Speaker 1: job that way. So it's not just helping people on
• 1:50:49
  Speaker 1: a personal level, it helps people throughout the whole process
• 1:50:54
  Speaker 1: of living being happy, the secrets of being happy. So
• 1:50:59
  Speaker 1: you would probably believe, I would normally say you wouldn't believe.
• 1:51:02
  Speaker 1: You will probably believe how many unhappy people there are.
• 1:51:06
  Speaker 2: There's no question about it.
• 1:51:07
  Speaker 1: And I meet them every time I finish my presentation.
• 1:51:10
  Speaker 1: Sometimes I break down in my arms just because they're
• 1:51:14
  Speaker 1: so grateful because you've given them a little nugget to
• 1:51:18
  Speaker 1: make them believe that they can still be happy.
• 1:51:21
  Speaker 2: And what is the message that you're delivering on happiness.
• 1:51:23
  Speaker 1: Well, it's all about what you value and what is
• 1:51:31
  Speaker 1: going to improve your life. That they have to be
• 1:51:35
  Speaker 1: on common ground. What we were talking about earlier, doing
• 1:51:39
  Speaker 1: things for other people. I've never had a greater sense
• 1:51:42
  Speaker 1: of happiness than doing things for other people that can't
• 1:51:46
  Speaker 1: pay me back. It's mostly weaved throughout the story the
• 1:51:53
  Speaker 1: things that have really broken my heart and the things
• 1:51:56
  Speaker 1: that have made me elated, and the value that I
• 1:51:58
  Speaker 1: found in things that I really didn't think I would
• 1:52:02
  Speaker 1: and that giving with no expectation of receiving is a
• 1:52:05
  Speaker 1: big one. Even if it's something as simple as going
• 1:52:09
  Speaker 1: to the blood bank. It doesn't cost you anything, costs
• 1:52:11
  Speaker 1: a little bit of time, go in, throw some blood
• 1:52:14
  Speaker 1: down a tube. Because I went through one hundred and
• 1:52:17
  Speaker 1: fifty donations and I could have all the doctors in
• 1:52:21
  Speaker 1: the world, I could have the best surgeons, but without
• 1:52:23
  Speaker 1: that blood from those one hundred and fifty amazing people,
• 1:52:27
  Speaker 1: I would not be here today. So it doesn't take
• 1:52:30
  Speaker 1: a grand gesture. It just a pat on the back,
• 1:52:33
  Speaker 1: a well done handshake. Take someone out for a coffee
• 1:52:37
  Speaker 1: and be a kind ear. If it's someone that maybe
• 1:52:39
  Speaker 1: doesn't have anyone to turn to work because they're not
• 1:52:42
  Speaker 1: really well liked, maybe just put up with it and
• 1:52:45
  Speaker 1: go and have a chat with them and make them
• 1:52:47
  Speaker 1: happy because you might change that person's whole day or
• 1:52:51
  Speaker 1: whole outlook on life and that only comes back to you,
• 1:52:55
  Speaker 1: it makes you feel good. That's where happiness is found
• 1:52:58
  Speaker 1: in service.
• 1:52:59
  Speaker 2: It's so true, and it's it's such counter programming from
• 1:53:03
  Speaker 2: what we're kind of told growing up, because we're kind
• 1:53:06
  Speaker 2: of set in motion on this on this path of
• 1:53:10
  Speaker 2: like trying to get as much as we can out
• 1:53:12
  Speaker 2: of everything, and we approach situations with a perspective of
• 1:53:16
  Speaker 2: like how am I going to gain from this? What's
• 1:53:18
  Speaker 2: in this for me? Like how am I going to
• 1:53:20
  Speaker 2: come out of this better than I was before?
• 1:53:22
  Speaker 1: Uh? And that.
• 1:53:24
  Speaker 2: Doesn't really lead to happiness. It does not. And when
• 1:53:28
  Speaker 2: you approach a situation and encounter whatever it may be,
• 1:53:31
  Speaker 2: from a perspective of how can I give, how can
• 1:53:34
  Speaker 2: I contribute to this? Then you're on you're on a
• 1:53:38
  Speaker 2: different you know, that's that's a different plane of consciousness
• 1:53:41
  Speaker 2: and it's not my default. But when I remember and
• 1:53:45
  Speaker 2: I practice that.
• 1:53:46
  Speaker 1: It's exactly you know what I mean.
• 1:53:47
  Speaker 2: It's a practice. It's a practice. It's like it's not
• 1:53:51
  Speaker 2: just like, oh, well, that guy just that's his instinct
• 1:53:53
  Speaker 2: and that's how he does it. Like, no, you have
• 1:53:54
  Speaker 2: like that?
• 1:53:56
  Speaker 1: Do you get good at anything? How do you learn
• 1:53:58
  Speaker 1: to ride a bike or learn to or play a
• 1:54:00
  Speaker 1: sport or do your job. You do it over and
• 1:54:02
  Speaker 1: over and over until you get really good at it.
• 1:54:04
  Speaker 1: It's the same with happiness, it's same with gratefulness. It's
• 1:54:07
  Speaker 1: the same with positivity and motivation. You have to keep
• 1:54:10
  Speaker 1: practicing it and the more you do, the easier it gets.
• 1:54:14
  Speaker 2: Improvise, adapt, overcome. Yeah, that's your trifecta, right, yeah, man,
• 1:54:21
  Speaker 2: And that's what they drilled down on you in the military,
• 1:54:23
  Speaker 2: right with that? Can did that come from this experience?
• 1:54:26
  Speaker 1: It did? It wasn't really drilled into me like it is.
• 1:54:29
  Speaker 1: I think it's one of the manches for the Marine
• 1:54:31
  Speaker 1: Corps out here. I think I heard it maybe once
• 1:54:34
  Speaker 1: or twice way back in basic training. But it had
• 1:54:37
  Speaker 1: an impact on my brain, like it was seared into
• 1:54:40
  Speaker 1: my brain and I had no idea why. And then
• 1:54:43
  Speaker 1: I got into the gym one day after hospital and
• 1:54:46
  Speaker 1: I had one hand and one leg and that'll really
• 1:54:49
  Speaker 1: throw out your bench pressing squats, and so all of
• 1:54:53
  Speaker 1: a sudden, that improvise, adapt and overcome clicked in and
• 1:54:57
  Speaker 1: I'm like, okay, all right, I might not be able
• 1:55:00
  Speaker 1: to do push ups. I can't wait bear on the
• 1:55:02
  Speaker 1: end of my arm I'll improvise, and I pulled a
• 1:55:06
  Speaker 1: bench over and I put my right elbow on the
• 1:55:08
  Speaker 1: bench and my right left hand on the floor and
• 1:55:10
  Speaker 1: I did push ups like that. And I thought, well,
• 1:55:13
  Speaker 1: I can't do dumbbell curls. And I thought, well, i'll
• 1:55:17
  Speaker 1: adapt the next step. I'll adapt. And I got online
• 1:55:21
  Speaker 1: and I found the lifting hooks that they use for
• 1:55:24
  Speaker 1: heavy deadlifts, where you loop it around your wrist and
• 1:55:27
  Speaker 1: then you use the hook to put under the bar
• 1:55:28
  Speaker 1: and you can lift heavier without gripping it. And I
• 1:55:30
  Speaker 1: got that thing and I slipped the material loop over
• 1:55:34
  Speaker 1: my forearm and I rested, I let a hang down
• 1:55:37
  Speaker 1: and I put a dumbell in it, and I can
• 1:55:39
  Speaker 1: do seventy pound curls with that thing. Now I flick
• 1:55:43
  Speaker 1: it up into the hooks and I can do flies
• 1:55:44
  Speaker 1: with it. You don't have two legs for squats, Does
• 1:55:47
  Speaker 1: that mean you skip legg day? You never skip leg day.
• 1:55:50
  Speaker 1: You do pistol squats. You do them on the Smith
• 1:55:53
  Speaker 1: machine where it does the balance for you. There's always
• 1:55:56
  Speaker 1: a way with the right tools, and sometimes the right
• 1:55:59
  Speaker 1: tool is just the right mindset.
• 1:56:02
  Speaker 2: That's an example on a very micro level, but on
• 1:56:05
  Speaker 2: a macro level like this. These three ideas are really
• 1:56:09
  Speaker 2: the arc of your life, right. You had to improvise,
• 1:56:15
  Speaker 2: you had to adapt, and you ultimately had to overcome
• 1:56:18
  Speaker 2: in order to be sitting here and getting to do
• 1:56:20
  Speaker 2: what you get to do.
• 1:56:22
  Speaker 1: And now I'm just enjoying the ride. It's all going
• 1:56:25
  Speaker 1: to come back, you know.
• 1:56:26
  Speaker 2: I use those every day.
• 1:56:27
  Speaker 1: There's always trials. We all have our stories, you know.
• 1:56:30
  Speaker 1: That's one of the big things I do try and share.
• 1:56:33
  Speaker 1: Everyone says, oh, Paul, you know you were elite military
• 1:56:37
  Speaker 1: trained and you can do this and you can do that.
• 1:56:39
  Speaker 1: And I was say no, I'm like, I was a
• 1:56:41
  Speaker 1: failure first. And I still struggle with a lot of stuff,
• 1:56:44
  Speaker 1: and I drop mugs in the kitchen and I smash
• 1:56:48
  Speaker 1: them because I'm clumsy and I'm just a person just
• 1:56:51
  Speaker 1: like all of you. I make the same mistakes. But
• 1:56:55
  Speaker 1: I don't give up because I know that there's always
• 1:56:59
  Speaker 1: going to be a better moment, there's always going to
• 1:57:01
  Speaker 1: be a better day. I find joy in everything that
• 1:57:05
  Speaker 1: I do, in everything that I share with people, and
• 1:57:09
  Speaker 1: there's just no reason to quit. We have this overwhelming
• 1:57:16
  Speaker 1: suicide and depression problem going on at the moment. It's
• 1:57:20
  Speaker 1: all around the world. It's huge in Australia, it's huge here,
• 1:57:24
  Speaker 1: and it's just really sad to see, especially amongst our
• 1:57:27
  Speaker 1: veteran community of people just not feeling like they can
• 1:57:31
  Speaker 1: deal with it anymore. Maybe there's nowhere to turn to,
• 1:57:34
  Speaker 1: but there is always somewhere to turn to, and there
• 1:57:36
  Speaker 1: is always a better day.
• 1:57:39
  Speaker 2: It's interesting that that sometimes these calamities, you know, like
• 1:57:46
  Speaker 2: you experienced, are are really to catalyst to growth and
• 1:57:52
  Speaker 2: being able to embrace life in the way that you
• 1:57:55
  Speaker 2: have because they force you to your nees and you
• 1:57:57
  Speaker 2: have to confront yourself in a very profound way. And
• 1:58:01
  Speaker 2: you know, I know that's why you look back on
• 1:58:02
  Speaker 2: this experience and like you know, you you value the
• 1:58:05
  Speaker 2: life that you have right now. Most people are not
• 1:58:08
  Speaker 2: going to get attacked by a shark, or bottom out
• 1:58:11
  Speaker 2: on drugs and alcohol or have a near death experience.
• 1:58:15
  Speaker 2: They're just living their lives in a kind of monochrome,
• 1:58:18
  Speaker 2: you know, monotonous way where they feel like they're doing
• 1:58:21
  Speaker 2: everything right, like I made the right decision and I
• 1:58:24
  Speaker 2: got the safe job, and I'm doing all these things
• 1:58:26
  Speaker 2: and I'm super depressed and I'm on these medications and
• 1:58:28
  Speaker 2: I'm overweight and I feel like shit and I can't
• 1:58:31
  Speaker 2: see my way out of this because it's a situation
• 1:58:36
  Speaker 2: that's not so bad that you're going to just walk
• 1:58:38
  Speaker 2: out of it. That it's like a low creable. Yeah,
• 1:58:42
  Speaker 2: it's a low grade discontent.
• 1:58:45
  Speaker 1: That's the worst r live like that. Stop stop eating shit,
• 1:58:52
  Speaker 1: work on your fitness. Go have a freaking adventure. There's
• 1:58:56
  Speaker 1: a big, bad world out there with so much adventure
• 1:58:59
  Speaker 1: and to be had. Go and see some shit that
• 1:59:01
  Speaker 1: you've never seen before, which is probably most of the world.
• 1:59:04
  Speaker 1: If you're comfortable in your misery already in life, just
• 1:59:09
  Speaker 1: get uncomfortable. It's the best thing ever.
• 1:59:14
  Speaker 2: And that's a muscle, just like anything else, Like the
• 1:59:16
  Speaker 2: other things we were talking about, like that can start
• 1:59:18
  Speaker 2: with a very small thing. Oh yeah, to exercise that,
• 1:59:21
  Speaker 2: and then you can turn the volume up on it.
• 1:59:24
  Speaker 1: Step by step. I love it. Yeah, it's so much easier.
• 1:59:28
  Speaker 1: It's exactly what I did when I left hospital and
• 1:59:33
  Speaker 1: I had that huge goal of getting back to work.
• 1:59:35
  Speaker 1: It didn't just happen. That was impossible. No one believed
• 1:59:38
  Speaker 1: that it could actually be done. A one legged, one
• 1:59:40
  Speaker 1: handed clearance dive. You can't go back to work and
• 1:59:42
  Speaker 1: go diving, and I did it in six months. Now
• 1:59:45
  Speaker 1: I did it by small goals and challenges. Get up earlier,
• 1:59:49
  Speaker 1: eat better, drink more fluids, get off the drugs, exercise more.
• 1:59:55
  Speaker 1: Just tiny little things that built up over time to
• 2:00:00
  Speaker 1: learn how to walk, go to the gym box, jump
• 2:00:04
  Speaker 1: a meter high, go in the ocean, swim more. It progresses.
• 2:00:09
  Speaker 1: But the smaller the goals and challenges you set for yourself,
• 2:00:14
  Speaker 1: the more they build up. The more you turn back
• 2:00:17
  Speaker 1: and you look behind yourself and you go, holy shit,
• 2:00:20
  Speaker 1: look at all of that stuff I've done. Okay, what's next?
• 2:00:24
  Speaker 1: Now I know I can do all of that. What's next?
• 2:00:26
  Speaker 1: Let's do something a little harder, a little more fun,
• 2:00:28
  Speaker 1: little more challenging, and before you know it, know it,
• 2:00:30
  Speaker 1: those small, easily achieved goals have become an impossible dream.
• 2:00:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's the imperceptible actions that you take anonymously every
• 2:00:42
  Speaker 2: day with you know, rigorous consistency, that change your reality.
• 2:00:47
  Speaker 2: And people want to think. It's like they want to,
• 2:00:49
  Speaker 2: they want to, you know, do the dramatic thing overnight.
• 2:00:52
  Speaker 2: They want the hack, the shortcut or whatever, and.
• 2:00:55
  Speaker 1: It's like it's not about that, man, It's about just like, do.
• 2:00:58
  Speaker 2: That tiny thing that makes you a little bit uncomfort
• 2:01:00
  Speaker 2: will flex that muscle. You get a little history with that,
• 2:01:02
  Speaker 2: you realize like, hey, I didn't die, like I can
• 2:01:05
  Speaker 2: do this now. And that's what that I think is
• 2:01:08
  Speaker 2: the path that it's the less sexy path. It's not
• 2:01:11
  Speaker 2: the dramatic path that you're going to be able to
• 2:01:14
  Speaker 2: get a bunch of likes on Instagram for, But that
• 2:01:16
  Speaker 2: is truly the method for sustainably changing.
• 2:01:20
  Speaker 1: Your life in a profound way. Instagram likes is what
• 2:01:24
  Speaker 1: you're after. Then, just make a story about all the
• 2:01:27
  Speaker 1: little things. I was hanging out with a guy yesterday
• 2:01:30
  Speaker 1: who did the thee hundred things, a hundred things to
• 2:01:36
  Speaker 1: make people happy, I think it was. And his mission
• 2:01:39
  Speaker 1: is just to go out and start helping people in need.
• 2:01:42
  Speaker 1: And he's made a website and now he advertises these
• 2:01:47
  Speaker 1: people of the need help and all these other people
• 2:01:49
  Speaker 1: offering to give them assistance in some form or fashion
• 2:01:53
  Speaker 1: as well, so they can help out. It's just the
• 2:01:56
  Speaker 1: active giving and the act of just small stuff.
• 2:01:59
  Speaker 2: And that started with an idea.
• 2:02:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, an imperceivable little atom.
• 2:02:07
  Speaker 2: I think that's a good place to end it. Dude,
• 2:02:09
  Speaker 2: all right, are you speaking publicly anywhere coming up soon
• 2:02:13
  Speaker 2: if people want to, you know, figure you out and
• 2:02:15
  Speaker 2: come and see you in person. Is there any opportunity
• 2:02:18
  Speaker 2: to do that or not at this point.
• 2:02:20
  Speaker 1: No. Everything that I've got going on is for private corporations.
• 2:02:26
  Speaker 1: But I've only just started out here, so I only
• 2:02:29
  Speaker 1: have a few I've got. You know, I'm doing some
• 2:02:31
  Speaker 1: stuff in Hawaii and Atlanta and for the Entrepreneurs Organization
• 2:02:38
  Speaker 1: if you're part of that, and also for the Nantucket Project,
• 2:02:41
  Speaker 1: if you've got any idea what that is.
• 2:02:43
  Speaker 2: I do because I went to high school Tom Scott.
• 2:02:46
  Speaker 1: Oh, Okay, Tom's great Tom.
• 2:02:48
  Speaker 2: Is actually coming over here in a week or two.
• 2:02:50
  Speaker 2: I haven't seen him in a long time. I'm going
• 2:02:52
  Speaker 2: to have him do the podcast. But Tom and I
• 2:02:53
  Speaker 2: we were a high school classmates.
• 2:02:54
  Speaker 1: He is a nice guy.
• 2:02:55
  Speaker 2: I've watched it. I actually have it pulled up here.
• 2:02:57
  Speaker 2: I was watching your presentation at Nantucket Pack and it's
• 2:03:00
  Speaker 2: quite amazing what he's built with that.
• 2:03:03
  Speaker 1: I did not realize what it was when I got there.
• 2:03:06
  Speaker 1: It was just another speaking job for me. And I
• 2:03:08
  Speaker 1: turned up there and I literally got off.
• 2:03:10
  Speaker 2: The plane in the past summer.
• 2:03:11
  Speaker 1: Yep, Yeah, I got off the plane went straight to
• 2:03:14
  Speaker 1: the school, talked for forty five minutes to the school kids,
• 2:03:17
  Speaker 1: went from there to the stage, went on stage and
• 2:03:20
  Speaker 1: did my presentation. Then I got off, and then I
• 2:03:22
  Speaker 1: found it was the rest of them, like the President
• 2:03:24
  Speaker 1: of Mexico, the President of Rwanda, the guy who started
• 2:03:27
  Speaker 1: Ted Talks, Captain Paul Watson. I'm just thinking, geez, I'm
• 2:03:31
  Speaker 1: glad that I went on first, No Idea, Jennifer Garner,
• 2:03:35
  Speaker 1: Mark Shrever, and I was just thinking, oh my god,
• 2:03:38
  Speaker 1: and little old Paul to Geldo.
• 2:03:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's called what He's Built. Did you meet Neil Phillips.
• 2:03:43
  Speaker 2: I'm not sure presented last night. He's an African American
• 2:03:46
  Speaker 2: guy who started a school in Florida for kind of
• 2:03:49
  Speaker 2: empowering under privileged African American kids.
• 2:03:53
  Speaker 1: I did meet someone very similar to that. I'm not
• 2:03:55
  Speaker 1: sure if it was from Florida though.
• 2:03:58
  Speaker 2: Anyway, he was another classmate of mine. Like Neil and
• 2:04:00
  Speaker 2: Tom were like best friends in high school. Okay, they
• 2:04:02
  Speaker 2: collaborate on stuff, and I know Neil presented at nantucka project.
• 2:04:06
  Speaker 2: I don't know if it was last summer, but.
• 2:04:07
  Speaker 1: Ok, have you heard of a guy called Jason Flomm, Yes,
• 2:04:10
  Speaker 1: so he was there and I got talking to him,
• 2:04:13
  Speaker 1: and him and I became pretty good friends in a
• 2:04:15
  Speaker 1: very short amount of time. And the things that he's
• 2:04:19
  Speaker 1: doing is amazing. Yeah, free convicts, falsely accused convicts.
• 2:04:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he's got a foundation setup for that.
• 2:04:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's amazing. I follow those stories all the time.
• 2:04:29
  Speaker 1: And you think your life's hard, try being in jail
• 2:04:32
  Speaker 1: for thirty years falsely accused. Unbelievable.
• 2:04:36
  Speaker 2: So you're doing more with Nantucket project.
• 2:04:38
  Speaker 1: Then, yeah, I've got a couple of satellite gigs coming up,
• 2:04:40
  Speaker 1: Palm Beach and Hampton's. But it's only you know, this
• 2:04:44
  Speaker 1: is very early days for me out here. Now that
• 2:04:47
  Speaker 1: I've got the well, the contracts not exactly assigned. I
• 2:04:51
  Speaker 1: probably shouldn't have said that, but I'm more than likely
• 2:04:54
  Speaker 1: going to be signed with American Program Bureau and so
• 2:04:57
  Speaker 1: I'll have a team of people tizing my services.
• 2:05:01
  Speaker 2: So the CEOs out there who want to who want
• 2:05:04
  Speaker 2: to hire Paul to.
• 2:05:05
  Speaker 1: Come out and talk to the hell, Yeah, I'm always
• 2:05:07
  Speaker 1: trying to get my passing out numbers up. Yeah.
• 2:05:10
  Speaker 2: Cool and uh And the best way to connect with
• 2:05:12
  Speaker 2: you probably Instagram right at Paul the Gelder Instagram.
• 2:05:15
  Speaker 1: The website Poldigelder dot com. Uh, they're the two best
• 2:05:18
  Speaker 1: and most fluid ways and the book and for fear, Yeah,
• 2:05:21
  Speaker 1: pick it up right the second here in the state,
• 2:05:24
  Speaker 1: second ones in the editors now surrounded by monsters.
• 2:05:26
  Speaker 2: What's the next one going to be about?
• 2:05:28
  Speaker 1: It's it's a bit of a follow on with more
• 2:05:29
  Speaker 1: lessons that I've learned along the way behind the scenes
• 2:05:32
  Speaker 1: on Discovery Channel Shark Week shoots catching crocodiles and diving
• 2:05:37
  Speaker 1: with sharks and stuff. Cool.
• 2:05:38
  Speaker 2: When is that coming out?
• 2:05:39
  Speaker 1: It's with the editors now, so if it was up
• 2:05:41
  Speaker 1: to me to be tomorrow, but hopefully within the next
• 2:05:44
  Speaker 1: couple of months.
• 2:05:45
  Speaker 2: Nice man, all right, dude, Well you're an inspiration and
• 2:05:49
  Speaker 2: I can't wait to see where you take this. Dude,
• 2:05:51
  Speaker 2: it's incredible what you're doing. And uh and yeah, you're
• 2:05:55
  Speaker 2: impacting a lot of lives in a really profound and
• 2:05:57
  Speaker 2: positive ways, as are you. Thank you for that, Thank
• 2:05:59
  Speaker 2: you for your servious All right then, and come back
• 2:06:03
  Speaker 2: and talk to me anytime.
• 2:06:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'll hopefully I run into your Melbolle again.
• 2:06:06
  Speaker 2: Cool peace lands, m hm.
• 2:06:13
  Speaker 1: Mm hmmmm mm hmmmm mm hmmm.