Latest / The MeatEater Podcast / Ep. 924: MrBallen on SEALS, the War in Afghanistan, and a Career in Storytelling

Transcript

Ep. 924: MrBallen on SEALS, the War in Afghanistan, and a Career in Storytelling · The MeatEater Podcast

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: This is the meat-eater podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug-bitten,
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: and in my case, underwear-less.
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: We hunt the meat-eater podcast.
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: You can't predict anything. Brought to you by First Light.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: When I'm hunting, I need gear that won't quit. First
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: Light builds no-compromise gear that keeps me in the field longer.
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: No shortcuts, just gear that works. Check it out at firstlight.com.
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: That's F-I-R-S-T.com. L-I-T-E dot com. All right. Hot damn, everybody.
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: Joined today by John Allen, known as Mr.
• 0:46
  Speaker 3: Ballin.
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: And I finally found out how you became Mr.
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: Ballin. Oh, yeah?
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: John B.
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: Allen. There it is. People don't know that. It's like
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: a secret. People assume it's John Ballin.
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: It's not.
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: It's John B. Allen. Yeah.
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: Joined today by John Allen, who has many millions of
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: YouTube subscribers, um, where he tells dark and mysterious stories,
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: many right in our wheelhouse of like wilderness experiences, crazy
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: stuff out in the woods, people vanishing out in the woods.
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: A lot of wild stories. You have a real penchant for,
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: for wilderness wildness. Uh, former Navy SEAL came out of
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: that world and got into storytelling. Um, we're gonna talk
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: a lot about his life, the stories he tells, the
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: mysteries that kind of haunt him. Um, The ones that
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: you kind of know what's going on. I'd like to
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: talk about a couple where you kind of know what's
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: going on and some where you legitimately are perplexed.
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Before we get into that, though, we got our
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: annual Christmas tour coming up. So me, the Lavian lover,
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: Yanni's going to be there. Clay, Brent, Phil the engineer's
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: going to be there. Dr. Randall's going to be there.
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: We're doing our annual Christmas tour. We got six stops
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: this year's Christmas tour. First, home state, going to Grand Rapids, Michigan,
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: December 14th. 20 Monroe Live is the place. Tuesday, December 15th,
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: we'll be in Milwaukee, Wisconsin at Turner Hall. Wednesday, December 16th, Madison,
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: Wisconsin at Barrymore. Bubbly Doug Dern is going to join
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: us on that one. Thursday, December 17th, Des Moines, Iowa
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: at Val Air Ballrooms. Friday, December 18th, Minneapolis, Minnesota at
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: Pantages theater. And then this is the first time we've
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: ever done this town Saturday, December 19th, Fargo at Fargo theater. I, I,
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: you are Gary. If you come to the live show,
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: here's my guarantee to you. You will laugh your ass off.
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: I would say, I guarantee you win something, but not
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: everybody's going to win something, but you will laugh your
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: ass off. You'll have a great time. Go find anybody
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: that's come to the Christmas tour before. And they will
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: tell you it's a, Two thumbs up on all things
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: Christmas tour. Can't wait to see you guys at those shows.
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: Tickets aren't on sale yet, though. This is like a pre-deal.
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: This is a pre-pre. So this is the pre, and
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: then the next pre is pre-sale, and then it's kind
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: of dumb. But someday you'll be able to buy tickets.
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: Can they buy tickets, Nate? 16th. We're also going to
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: interview at the Grand Rapids show. We're going to interview
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: the last American smelt dipper. who I grew up with
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: that don't that don't grab you by the booboo. What we'll,
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: we'll see in grand Rapids.
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: What's a smelt dipper.
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: Oh dude. So how familiar are with great lakes? You
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: grew up in that.
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: I mean, I went to bootcamp in the great lakes,
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: but I was mostly indoors getting scolded by my drill
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: sergeant equivalents.
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: Okay. The great lakes is like America's experimental aquarium. You know,
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: there's the stuff that was there originally. And some vestiges
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: of it are still around. And there's all the stuff
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: that's been released on purpose, on accident into the Great Lakes.
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: Like the common carp was let go in the Great
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: Lakes on purpose. They brought in these, these alewives came
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: in there and the alewives blew up and there are
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: millions of them are dead on the beach. So they're like,
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: we'll need to bring in something to eat the alewife.
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: You know what I mean? We'll bring in something to
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: consume the alewives. And it just goes on and on
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: and on and on and on. And then, Ships come in,
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: and they have ballast, and so they release zebra mussels.
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: It's just insanity in the Great Lakes.
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: Through the years, one thing they tried was they tried a,
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: in a stroke of genius, they put in the rainbow smelt.
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: Of course.
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: Which is a great fish, though. Very popular fish. And
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: I have, in my life, coincided with the great smelt blitz.
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: Like when smelt really took off and you would go
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: down and they'd run in the spring. They're anadromous. They'd
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: run the rivers in the spring. They're about finger length,
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: two finger length. You eat them whole.
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: Nice.
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  Speaker 1: Bones and all fried. So I grew up doing it.
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: Like it was like to the point where people would
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: fill beds of trucks with smelt. They'd fertilize gardens with smelt.
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: Like you just eat, you'd freeze gallons of smelt. I even...
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: I can say this now. I even like illegally sold smelt. Okay.
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: So smelt dealer. Yeah.
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: Well, we would get so many, you know, we'd sell
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: the smell. It was just, it was insanity.
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: And then like all things in the great lakes, you
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: put it in, it goes nuts and then it vanishes.
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: This is just kind of, that's how, that's how introduced
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: species work. So, um, typically, and then they find some
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: sort of equilibrium. Uh, So this buddy of mine, Matt Drozd,
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: who we were all smelt dipping enthusiasts, he could never
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: shed the lifestyle.
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: He's a smelt guy.
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: He's a smelt guy. And he has gone, he goes
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: to incredible extremes to dip some smelt every spring. And
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: so I asked him when we were playing in the
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: live tour, I said, you got to come on and
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: we got to get a smelt update for you.
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: Smelt update.
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: What's going on with smelt? So man, John Allen, tell
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: me about getting into the military, man. Like, like how
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: did that shake out? Because I'm assuming you came in
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: like post nine 11. I did. So you knew it
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: was going to be, you knew that it wasn't going
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: to be just good times and hanging out. Like you
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: knew it was going to be like, like war.
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, no, for sure. Uh, I, I grew up in
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: a town called Quincy mass. So just South of Boston mass. And,
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: you know, I graduated high school in 2006, uh, And
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: a lot of my buddies in high school, when they graduated,
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: they joined the Marines and the Army, and they went
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: off to Iraq and Afghanistan. And I was always sort
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: of inspired by that in and of itself. I had
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: grown up playing with GI Joes. I thought the military
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: was the coolest thing. But my family was... they're just
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: super smart people, like academics.
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but like academics and writers and stuff.
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: Brilliantly smart storytellers, you know, journalists. And so it just
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: was always a thing that I was gonna go to college.
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: Even though I never really aspired to go to college,
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: it was just sort of part of my upbringing. Um,
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: and so I do go to college actually in part
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: because my mom, who's a professional writer, wrote my college
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: essay that basically got me into school. But I did
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: graduate from college.
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: Did you at least make a couple tweaks on your own?
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: No, shameless. Just right out the door. Like, well said, Mom.
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: My grades were terrible in high school. And so I
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: applied to school out in University of Massachusetts. It's in
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: Western Mass. And so I send off my application and
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: it's got bad high school grades. And this essay, this poignant,
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: beautiful essay she wrote about the last time I saw
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: my best friend. She wrote it from my perspective. The
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: school got in touch with me and they were like, well,
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: you know, your grades... not really what we're looking for,
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: but my goodness, that essay, you are in young man.
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: So I got in on the strength of her essay,
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: but anyways, I graduate college and I've been telling my
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: family all along that I was going to, I'm gonna
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: go to law school. I'm going to go be a lawyer.
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: I don't even know why I had that pegged as,
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: as my route. I didn't want to do it at all. Um,
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: but really throughout college, I couldn't stop thinking about those
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: guys I knew from high school that, you know, went
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: overseas and I didn't, I didn't know if I really
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: wanted to serve. I just kept coming back to wanting
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: to be in the military. And then I had this
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: pivotal meeting, if you will, with these two family friends.
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: These two guys who I grew up knowing, you know,
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  Speaker 2: these two guys were just family friends. They were the
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: brothers of my mother's best friend. Just at cookouts and stuff,
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: I would see them. Totally nondescript, typical dudes, like 20
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: years older than me. You know, I didn't think much
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: of them. I knew they were in the military, but
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: I didn't really know what they did. And then sometime,
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: I was a sophomore in college, I found out that
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: those two guys were on SEAL Team 6. And they
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: were just super low-key about it. But they were retiring.
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: And so people were going to have to go to
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: development group to go to the base for their retirement.
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: And it was like, wait a minute. They were on
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  Speaker 2: Team 6? It blew my mind completely.
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: Because you felt like if they're on it, I could.
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: I didn't even... It was almost like... couldn't believe that
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: the dudes that i basically had discounted as man whatever
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: just those are just the two dudes i see at
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: family cookouts and stuff yeah are like commandos you know
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: fighting the war on terror overseas and it was it
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: was it came at a time where i was already
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: sort of thinking a lot about the fact that people
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: my age were serving overseas and one thing led to
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: another where i i decided to go visit with these
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: two guys um who I already knew. It isn't like
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: I'm meeting them. I know them. But now it feels
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: like I'm meeting them for the first time. And I
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: hit them up and I'm like, hey, can I come
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: see you guys? Like, just talk to you about your
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: military career? And they're like, yeah, come out to this location.
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: And they give me this location. It's in New Hampshire.
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: And it was like this kid's camp. And I knew
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: that my mom's best friend, so these two guys, it's
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: their sister, she ran a music and art camp for kids.
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: And I'm like, that's weird. I guess I'm meeting them
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: out of the art camp. And so I drive my
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: way to this camp in like scenic, rural New Hampshire.
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: And I go through the gate and I see my
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: mom's best friend and she's like, oh yeah, just go
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: up that access road there. They're up there. They have
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: a man cave up there. You can go find my
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: brothers up there. And I'm like, okay, this is a
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: little weird. Kids running around like there's art camp. It's
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: literally a kid's art camp. And I take this access
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: road up into the backwoods a couple of miles down
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: the road. And I come to this shack that was
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: just like two by fours. and like plywood, like a
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: crudely made shack that was the size of a garage maybe.
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: And as soon as I get out of the car
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: and it's like gravel, so I pull up, everybody can
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: hear me pulling up. I hear the sound inside, there's
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: no windows. So I just hear the sound of like
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: grown men, like belly laughing and bullshitting with each other
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: inside of this, the shack. And I get out of
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: the car and I start walking over to the door,
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: which is just on, you know, hinges or whatever, no windows.
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: And the talking inside the shack stops and I'm just
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: like walking over to the door. And then I like
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: open it up. I'm 19. I'm like this kid. I
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: look inside. There's nothing inside. There's no furniture. It's not
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: even like a building. It's like literally someone set up
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: a fort out here. And there's something like 10 very burly,
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: intense looking men we've never seen before and the two brothers.
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: And they're all sitting on upturned like painter's buckets. And
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: they're like chewing tobacco. They're just sitting in a circle bullshitting.
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: And one of them looks at me and just goes,
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: who the fuck are you?
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: And I was like, oh, my name is John.
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: I'm... I'm the son of Jesse. And I was just kidding. Yeah.
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: And it turned out, these are like a bunch of
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: active duty team six guys who are training with my,
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: with the two brothers to get ready for deployment. And
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: so I had this amazing day of like almost meeting
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: the two brothers for the first time in a sense
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: where I'm like, wait a minute, you're like commandos. Like
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: what the hell is I, I play video games with
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: Navy SEALs. You're telling me that's what you do. And
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: they like brought me out shooting. Like we're like, I
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: just hung out with bros who were just active duty
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: SEAL Team Six guys, and then also these two brothers,
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: which now they feel like heroes of mine. And I
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: didn't even have like a, I'm gonna go be a
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: Navy SEAL moment. It was, I was just so fascinated
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: with the fact that this is really what they did.
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: It was almost like meeting a professional athlete or something.
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: It feels so disconnected from real life. Like, you don't
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: know people that play shortstop for the Red Sox. You
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: don't know those people. They exist, but that's separate, right?
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: And I asked them all, some variation of like, why
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: did you do this? Why'd you join? And all of
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: them had this sense of like, I don't know, I
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: just kind of fucked everything else up. And I, uh,
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: I thought this was a pretty cool thing, cool challenge.
• 12:49
  Speaker 2: You know, I always wanted to serve to some degree,
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: but I wanted to see if I could, if I
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: could make it. Because the training for SEAL training, it's, it's,
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: you know, it's famously open to the public in some ways.
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: You just got to be like an American citizen in
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: decent enough shape. You can go try out. But very
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: few people make it through it.
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: You don't need to be in the military to try out? Well,
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: you do.
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: You do have to join the military. But you can
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: come off the street and raise your hand and say,
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: I want to go try out.
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: So you come off the street and enlist. Anyone that
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: enlists can start the process.
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: You can basically be ushered directly into training. You go
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: through boot camp first. But it's set up to go
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: to SEAL training. And my takeaway from this pivotal day.
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: If you don't make it, do you walk?
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: No.
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: You're still enlisted.
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: You become needs of the Navy.
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: Not enlisted, but you're in.
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: You go chip. chip paint off the side of ships
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: in Japan and you paint road markers, you know, in different, it's,
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: it's terrible.
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: You don't want to gamble.
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: Oh, it's a big gamble. It's not good. It sort
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: of pushes you to like try your best, you know? Sure. Yeah.
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: But yeah, I left that meeting feeling like I had
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: aspirations to maybe join the military. It was in the
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: back of my mind. And then I was just so impressed,
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: just so completely impressed with these guys and the fact
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: that they all had sort of earned their reputation in
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: a sense. I, I really didn't know what they actually did.
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: My understanding of what Navy SEALs do is the same
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: as anybody else who was broadly aware of special operations.
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: Was it wrong? No, actually, it was pretty close. I
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: flipped a switch for myself. I continued telling my family
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: I'm going to go be a lawyer, but secretly began
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: really training hard as if I'm going to go to
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: SEAL training. And then as soon as I graduated college,
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: I immediately, like within a month, was in the recruiter's
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: office enlisting to sign up to go to Bud's SEAL training. Yeah.
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: And it worked out, but yeah, it was a calling,
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: I would say. Did you feel like you breezed through
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: all the trials?
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: Not even close.
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: It was tough.
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: Oh, fuck no. I did not breeze through it at all.
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: There were things I was good at. I think that
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: you have to have something going in. You need to
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: have you're either a good runner or you're a good
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: swimmer or you're just really strong or you just, there's
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: something about you typically needs to carry the day. I
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: was a good runner. Um, but man, the, uh, there
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: were just some tests that were just exceptionally stressful. Um,
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: I'd say most notably are like the underwater tests you do. So,
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: so SEAL training, it takes, call it two years. If
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: you go the enlisted route, you got to go to bootcamp,
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: This is if you start as a civilian. You go
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: to boot camp, that's in Great Lakes, Illinois. You do
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: two years, two years, two months of boot camp. And
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: then you, I went to a prep school in Chicago
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: that is to get you ready for BUDS. I don't
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: think they do that anymore. And then you go out
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: to San Diego for like the famous part of training,
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: which you keep saying it is BUDS, which stands for
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: Basic Underwater Demolition SEAL School. That is SEAL boot camp.
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: It's the famous part of training and that's six months long.
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: And then if you graduate that, statistically, you're going to
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: be a SEAL. There is quite a bit of follow-on training.
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: It's advanced SEAL training where you're like actually taught what
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: to do. But the make or break is the six
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: months out in San Diego and six months long. And
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: it's broken into three phases, first phase, second phase, third phase.
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: The most attrition happens in that first phase because it's
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: just physically brutal. You're up all night. You know, you're
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: getting beat up constantly. It's just like, you know, whatever
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: you think of as like brutal boot camp style training
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: times 10, that's sort of what it is for first phase.
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: And if you make it through that, you go to
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: second phase, which is the underwater phase.
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: That's what the stressful part was?
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: For me, yeah, I was a good swimmer, but I
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: discovered that I am prone to panic underwater. And it's
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: something that you have to figure out how to handle.
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: And it's... Some of the tests they give you, including
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: there's one... called pool competency, where it's a 20 minute test.
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: Pool?
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: Pool competency.
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: Not shoot and pool.
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: Not shoot and pool. Maybe I'd be better at that.
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: You basically, you go, there's this thing called the combat
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: training tank. It's this huge pool. It's got a six
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: foot section that slopes down to the nine foot, slopes
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: down to the 15. And pool competency takes place entirely
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: in the nine foot section of the pool. You jump
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: in the pool. Usually there's about eight students, I think,
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: that are taking the test at any given time. They
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: start at different points. You get in the pool. And
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: you got a picture when you're on the pool deck
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: waiting for your test, it's very stressful. Everyone's yelling at you.
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: You're getting hosed off. You're not allowed to look at
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: the pool. You got your stupid tanks on, but you
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: got to sit on the ground facing away from the pool.
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: And it's just that they create a very stressful environment.
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: It's all seals in the pool deck yelling at you.
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: But then you jump in the water and you think
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: about it, your hearing is gone. It's like silence. You've
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: been underwater before. It's like peaceful. And you sink down
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: in this, this huge.
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: Wearing tanks. Oh yeah.
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: You scoop the tanks on them. And you just see
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: in front of you, because you jump in on the
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: side of the pool, you're looking essentially across, perpendicular across
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: the whole pool. You see all the other guys who
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: are testing. And the test, pool competency, it basically is
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: two instructors per student coming down and tying knots in
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: your hoses, turning your air off, flipping you around, literally
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: beating you up underwater. And each student, we have the
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: same set of effectively emergency procedures to recover your air source.
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: But they give you progressively harder challenges to overcome starting
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: at the beginning of the test through 20 minutes. The
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: test is the procedures they give you, you follow them
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: in the same order every single time. And if you
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: do that, you will eventually solve your problem, whatever problem
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: they've given you. But they know some of the problems
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: take longer to fix than others. By the time you
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: get to them, you're out of air. You're totally hypoxic.
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: So it's a test of, you're basically out of air
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: towards the end of the test, you're barely hanging on,
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: but in that state of near passing out, can you
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: still follow steps one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten,
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: knowing at this point, they're not gonna fix your problem,
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: so you're not gonna get air. But you have to
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: systematically showcase that you can do all these procedures, and.
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: Eventually, when you're like.
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: Chicken-necking, you barely breathe, you fix your stupid air source,
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: which sometimes might even be where your head's cocked to
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: the side, because there's still a knot, but it's a
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: breathable air source where it's, there's not a perfect seal.
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: And so every breath you take requires drinking pool water
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: to get a little breath of air. And that's the
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: rest of the test. You'll be tested on that. So
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: it's like you're looking out across the pool and it's
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: just a sea of chaos, but it's silence. And you're like,
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: I'm about to do this for 20 minutes. And it's just,
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: the whole test is just, you're progressively becoming more and more,
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: you're like hyperventilating. They come down to like turn your
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: air off and they watch when your bubbles are exhaling.
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: So you're like on an exhale as the, as each
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: of these breath holds begin. And it's just like breath
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: holding and stress induced situations for 20 minutes. I mean,
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: it's sort of been, uh, the, the test pool comp is,
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: is it's likened to simulated drowning. Like, can you handle
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: simulated drowning? Uh, and it's like such a gut check
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: and I was horrible at it, but I eventually passed it.
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: But by the skin of my teeth, some guys are
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: phenomenal and they can just go and they get the
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: whole Hawaiian surfer guys. They'll go in there. They can
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: hold their breath for five minutes.
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: The panic's low i had a buddy of mine explain
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: to me he's like he's like they use the thing
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: that struck him most he's like they use cold water
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: yeah to like break you down oh yeah and i
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: remember thinking well i'm already done because if i can
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: bring my wetsuit down Yeah, dude. If I can bring
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: my wetsuit, I might have a good time because I don't,
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: the water doesn't stress me, but the cold, I can't
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: like the cold water. I can't handle. No. I mean,
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: I can handle like long hikes, no food, but cold water.
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: My kids laugh about it.
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: Cold water's tough, man.
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: My kids want me to get into a pool with them.
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: I'm like, let me put my wetsuit on.
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: I'll jump in. We, I mean, basically every day in
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: the early part of SEAL training, when you get to
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: the compound to start your day at, you know, four
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: or five in the morning, like every day begins with
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: jumping in the ocean, which is sort of like not
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: a big deal. But psychologically, you know the whole day
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: is going to be awful. You're already pretty much sleep
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: deprived to begin with. And every day starting with go
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: get wet. And the water's not even that cold. It's not,
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: It's cold. It's not frigid. But every day began with that. Like,
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: I don't want to get in the water. And that's
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: the first thing I'm going to do. And all day,
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: I'm going to be cold. It's mental. It's difficult. It's
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: difficult to handle.
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: Where did you wind up getting deployed?
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: I deployed to Afghanistan, the first tour. And then I
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: went to South America, Peru, the second one. And actually,
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: your question was like, you know, when I joined, it was,
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: it was war, right? Like I rose my hand at
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: a time of war. Oh yeah.
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: Like, you know, you're going to be.
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And I, uh, it's weird. Like in many ways,
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: the experience I had in Afghanistan was exactly what I
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: expected it to be in terms of combat. It did
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: it by no means did we get to Afghanistan and
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: we're like shooting off the plane, but you know, it's
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: not like that. But I mean, it was fairly routine,
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: you know, that we would get into a gunfight. And
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: some of these gunfights, to be clear, were like, someone
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: shot us from a mile away, and we have no
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: idea where, if they even were shooting at us, but
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: we definitely heard the snap of a round, like, not
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: a snap, we heard the gunshot, like, someone's probably shooting
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: at us, and we'd, like, take cover and try to
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: figure out where they were, and then you'd never find them. Like,
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: that's a gunfight. Nothing really happened, no one got hurt.
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: But then, alternatively, we would have... Not a lot, but
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: you'd have like very intimate, very close quarters gunfighting where,
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: I mean, my experience was you just sort of default
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: to your training. I mean, there's nothing else you can
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: do when you're running down an alleyway or you're turning
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: a corner and you're looking at the end of the
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: alleyway and you know there's like someone with a gun
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: who's trying to kill you. There isn't, you're not really
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: able to think that hard about it. And you'll think
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: about it years later. But in the moment it's survival.
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: And what you do when you're trying to survive is
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: you just do the things that are just ingrained. And
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: one of them is just like target recognition, like trigger discipline, like,
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: you know, listening to the commands of your team, you know,
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: just doing what you've been trained to do.
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: Is the second time way different than the first time
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: and the third time way different than the second time? Yeah.
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: Um, but it's all mental, um, because functionally I was
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: just as talented at handling a gunfight on the first
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: volley as I was on the end of the deployment
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: I'd actually make the case I was worse by the
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: end of deployment because you're more complacent but when I oh.
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: You're just like I guess what I'm getting at when
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: I say that is in terms of um you know
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: if you experience like a super high stress situation be
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: the let's say you're driving on the highway and all
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: of a sudden you're doing 360s on the ice like
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: my understanding of there's people that everything slows down yep
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: there's people everything's that everything speeds up, there's people that
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: become fixated on a certain detail, right? And then, undoubtedly,
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: there's people that are just, I'm spinning down the road,
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: I need to do this, right? Did you find that
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: that sort of thing changed? Yes. Like that the holy
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: shitness of it wore off, maybe? I don't know how
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: to put it. No, no, it's a good question.
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: I would say that when I first got to Afghanistan,
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: I was brand new guy, you know, I'm completely well-trained.
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: I mean, I've done all the training as anybody else.
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: I'm ready for this deployment. I've just never employed my
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: skillset in real life, but I'm so green. You know,
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: I've never done anything combat related. I've only done training.
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: And that really hits you hard when you, at least
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: for me, when I got in country, it was like,
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: holy shit, like I'm really going to do this now.
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: Whatever this is, I'm going to go do it for
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: real now. And I remember when we touched down, I
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: was part of the early group that arrived in country.
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: You don't, it isn't like your whole SEAL team just
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: like goes at once and you show up and just
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: start doing stuff. It's like a rotation of people that
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: go in. Sometimes you go in weeks ahead of the
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: rest of your team and you typically get to wherever
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: you're going to be stationed, which for SEALs is a
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: lot of times like in these sort of outstations that
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: are out in the middle of nowhere. you turn over
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: with the team that's currently there, who's been doing this
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: now for months. And so, we turned over with SEAL
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: Team 8. And so, I got in country with, I think,
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: two other new guys and two other senior guys. Like,
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: five of us arrived in country. And my understanding is
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: we're gonna get to our outstation, we're gonna land at
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: the big base, travel our way out, like, an hour
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: to our outstation, which is, like, out in the sticks,
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: sort of. And, you know, we'll have a couple of weeks,
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: at least, learn the ropes, talk to SEAL teammate, we'll
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: wait for our team to get here, we'll sort of,
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: you know, get our bearings, and then I'll go do
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: Navy SEAL stuff. That was my mental map. Yeah. Completely
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: not accurate. So we land in Afghanistan, and I remember
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: we had to sign this, uh... I joke that it
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: was like a permission slip. You get there and the JAG,
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: who's the Navy lawyer, They have you like sign a
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: document saying like, you, you understand that you're going to
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: be leaving the wire and you could be like killed
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: or maimed. Yep. Totally get it. Like signing my permission
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: slip to go to war. I forget what it was,
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: but it was some goofy, like legal understanding of what
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: you're getting yourself into. And I'm like, all right, I
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: guess this is weird. But then we drive out.
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: Like, as if it wasn't abundantly clear through this entire process.
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: Oh, that's right.
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: One last check in here.
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: And so we hop in these up-armored vehicles, they're called MRAPs,
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: and they're like 60,000 pound, huge, like IED-proof vehicles. And
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: I remember I had meticulously arranged all my equipment and
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: I'd put it in the ISU, the big shipping container
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: that got sent ahead of us. But something I didn't
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: even consider is that I would potentially need to arrive
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: in Afghanistan and immediately put my kit on and go
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: use it. And so I have all the things that
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: I might want to molly onto my kit, you know,
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: all the different holsters and all the different mag pouches
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: and all the, that I was going to put together.
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: Cause remember my head is like, I'm going to get there.
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: I'm going to have at least a few days to
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: think about what I want to put on my kit,
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: how I want to arrange it. But as soon as
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: we get there, the team eight guys like, dude, let's
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: get the fuck out of here. Come on guys. Like
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: the five of you, let's go hop in the MRAP.
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: We're just going to go and let's just knock out
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: a mission tonight. So you guys can kind of like
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: break it in because there's so many missions you have
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: to do until they can go home. Like, turnover ops
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: have to happen. And so I'm like rummaging through the ISU.
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: I'm the brand new guy. The MRAP is literally idling,
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: waiting for me. And I'm like trying to find my
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: Pelican case to like put my kit together. It's all
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: new shit. So it's like nothing's been frayed. Everything's brand new.
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: And I'm piecing together this kit. And then I'm running
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: over to the MRAP. All my BDUs are completely brand new.
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: I look so pathetic. I'm like the greenest of green guys.
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: And the dudes in the vehicle, they, they had hit
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: an IED on the same route we're going on the
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: day before. And one of them has this like huge
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: cut across his face and he has like a Mohawk
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: and he's wearing a cut off shirt and he's like
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: as hardened as it gets. And I'm running in like
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: straps hanging off of my stupid kit that I didn't
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: put together. And I jump inside the MRAP and they
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: seal the door and they're, they're just like, they don't
• 27:46
  Speaker 2: give a shit. Like they're, they're just so checked out,
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: checked out, like don't want to be here anymore. And
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: we drive out of where we were. It's called Fob Shank.
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: It was this big, you know, established NATO base. And
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: they put, like, the jammers on. The vehicle can project
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: a radio frequency that keeps any radio IED from blasting.
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: And so, like, they're like, oh, jammers are on. And
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: it's like, oh, that's right. We're in a place where, like,
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: explosions happen. And, like, this is an IED-proof vehicle, but
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: you'll still get fucked up inside of this thing if
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: you hit an IED. And we're gonna be driving on
• 28:17
  Speaker 2: the only paved road in Afghanistan, 45 minutes. And I'm
• 28:21
  Speaker 2: looking out the window and the windows are like, you know,
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: three inches thick because they're super bulletproof. And I'm surrounded
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: in my vehicle, there's a bunch of vehicles, by only
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: teammate guys who are like hardened, jacked, just been doing
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: combat for the last six months, and I'm like the
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: newest of new guys. They're not even talking to me.
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: This is like a staple of Vietnam movies I want
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: you to know. The senior laying out. I'm a great
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: connoisseur of Vietnam movies and like the new guys.
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: Oh, I felt so pathetic. And so we rolled through
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: these bazaars, these, you know, these Afghan bazaars. And this
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: is in 2013. At this point, NATO has been in
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: Afghanistan for a while. And there's this weird... deference that
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: the locals tend to pay to NATO. NATO's, like, these
• 29:07
  Speaker 2: massive 60,000 ton, like, war machines are roaring through their bazaar,
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: these narrow streets, these people out everywhere, and people, like,
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: barely get out of your way. They don't get, it's like,
• 29:19
  Speaker 2: you don't even exist at this point. But we had
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: this thing where we couldn't slow down. We couldn't go
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: below a certain speed going through these bazaars. because the
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: jammers that were designed to protect us in case there's
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: a radio IED that's gonna be detonated near us, if
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: we went too slow, it wouldn't protect us. So you
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: had to go a certain speed through these bazaars. And
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: so you're looking at it, It's like, imagine if you
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: drove 20 miles an hour too fast through a crowded,
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: busy street full of people. You're not driving, but you're
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: looking out the window, you're like, oh my God, we're gonna...
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: The driver's blasting through, just like weaving through these bazaars. Sure. And,
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: you know, we get to these mountain passes, and this road,
• 29:57
  Speaker 2: Route Utah, it's the only paved road in Afghanistan at
• 30:00
  Speaker 2: the time. It was the target of IED attacks all
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: the time. And so there were pockets of the road
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: that would be badly damaged from IED blasts. But what
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: are you gonna do? Stop and like fix the road
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: to keep driving? No, you gotta just drive over it.
• 30:14
  Speaker 2: And so we would be driving along the side of
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: these mountains where the mountain is practically a cliff face.
• 30:20
  Speaker 2: The road, even if it was in great condition, So
• 30:23
  Speaker 2: narrow and it wasn't designed for 60,000 ton M wraps.
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: It was designed for little Toyotas and they'd be barely
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: hanging on. So we'd have to turn these corners where
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: the wheels literally are hanging a couple of inches off
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: the road. No guardrail. It's pure death. If you go
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: down below and like, there's all these pockets in the
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: road from blast. So it's just like this crazy thing.
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: This 45 minute, like white knuckling ride. I'm thinking if
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: we get engaged while we're out here and they kept saying, yeah,
• 30:49
  Speaker 2: if we get engaged, we'll stop, we'll pop out. We'll
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: just like take some shots. We'll call in an airstrike, whatever.
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: They're just talking about it. Like, yeah, here's what we're
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: going to do if we get engaged. And I'm thinking like,
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: my mags are all over the place. I don't even
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: know if my gun will work right now. Like I
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: put my gun together, like on the fly. And so I,
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: I'm so stressed. We finally get to our base, which
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: is just this fob, but not a fob. It was
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: like a little outstation, just HESCO barriers and And it
• 31:13
  Speaker 2: looks like out in the middle of nowhere. I mean,
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: it was on the leading edge of sort of the
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: NATO war effort. It was one of the last spots
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: before Kabul. Kabul was, I think, about an hour away
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: from us. But this is sort of the last established
• 31:26
  Speaker 2: area for spec ops, and it's sort of a staging
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: point to go out and try to stop the flow
• 31:31
  Speaker 2: of suicide bombers and weapon caches. And so we get
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: to this rugged, not even a base, it's like just
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: HESCOs and some shacks and stuff. And like, this is
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: where you're gonna live for the next six months as
• 31:42
  Speaker 2: we deploy, as we do combat ops out of here.
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: And we get there and it's like the evening and
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: I can hear out in the mountains the sound of
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: like an A-10 warthog. It's like doing a gun run
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: over a village that's like right over there. And it's
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: too dark, you can only see the tracers. And it's just,
• 31:58
  Speaker 2: it sounds, you're like, you're in a war zone. That's
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: what it feels like. I mean, and so anyways, that night,
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: I'm thinking they can't be serious that we're going to
• 32:06
  Speaker 2: go on a mission tonight. I mean, give me a break.
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: We just got here. They must know that I'm green.
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: They're going to give me a little bit of time here. No.
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: So as soon as we get there, after like 30
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: minutes or so, and I'm hearing the A-10 out in
• 32:19
  Speaker 2: the distance having this gun run, the Marines were getting
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: contacted or something, the guy who was running the platoon
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: for SEAL Team 8 grabbed me and the other guys
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: who had just shown up from my platoon. They're like, hey,
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: we're going to have a little brief. We're just going
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: to go out tonight and do a quick, quick patrol.
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: I'm like, all right. And so I go into the
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: briefing room, which is just a shack, this like metal tin.
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: Like imagine a garage that's been gutted of everything. There's
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: just a couple of tables and like fold out chairs
• 32:46
  Speaker 2: and the teammate guys, they are cowboys. Like first, just
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: all of them are jacked. Just like there's, they're all
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: wearing like shorts and like they have Mohawks, they got beards.
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: They've been deployed all this time. They are like the
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: coolest and most intimidating group. And they've been doing this
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: for months now. They're used to what we're about to do.
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: And I've never done a combat operation. And I walk
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: in there and the main guy, I forget his name now,
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: but he's like, he's a really smart, I think he's
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: a Rhodes Scholar. And he's like this brilliant guy who
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: became a SEAL. And he's like, all right guys, so
• 33:19
  Speaker 2: we gotta do some turnover operations. He's talking to the
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: teammate guys and now me and the four other new
• 33:25
  Speaker 2: SEALs that have come from team two. And he's like,
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: all right, so we're just going to head up to
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: like this mountain range that's near us. We'll just drive
• 33:32
  Speaker 2: up there. The new guys, you guys can just drive
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: like just to get the ropes. You're going to drive
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: these MRAPs, the 60,000 ton vehicles. And there's some caves
• 33:40
  Speaker 2: up there. And we're pretty sure there's some fighters up there.
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: So we're going to go in there. You know, definitely
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: bring your silencers. Like we want to make sure your
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: guns are silenced. But more than that, just bring a
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: good knife. We're going to keep it nice and quiet.
• 33:52
  Speaker 2: We're going to go up in the mountains and we'll
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: see what happens. Like that's the whole briefing. And he's like,
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: here's a map. You know, we're gonna, we're just gonna
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: go up there, see what happens. And they're like, all right, cool.
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: Then the dude's like, yeah, let's go play video games
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: for the next 20 minutes before we go out. And
• 34:04
  Speaker 2: I'm like, okay. And I go back to my room
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: and I'm finishing putting my kit together. Cause it's not
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: even set up yet. And, and I remember thinking like,
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: what the fuck have you gotten yourself into? Like, I
• 34:14
  Speaker 2: obviously know this is the job I've been training for.
• 34:17
  Speaker 2: I obviously know this is, I was, I was excited
• 34:20
  Speaker 2: to go to Afghanistan as everybody else in my platoon was.
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: But I had this stupid mental model that I was
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: gonna have this transitional period. You're gonna get there, you're
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: gonna slow roll your way into combat and you'll figure
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: it out. No, it's like you're gonna arrive and go
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: to war. And I remember dropping to my knees before
• 34:37
  Speaker 2: we were supposed to go out that night and praying
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: that we did not go out. Like, and I'm not religious. Please.
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: You weren't a regular... Not really. You didn't hold counsel
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: with God on a regular basis.
• 34:48
  Speaker 2: This is like, I don't know what else to do.
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: And so we ended up actually not going out that night.
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: We went the next day, and I was very thankful
• 34:55
  Speaker 2: to have a little bit of a breathing room. And
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: then we go out the next day, and nothing happens.
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: As I discovered in Afghanistan, it's pretty typical. Oh, we're
• 35:05
  Speaker 2: going to go into this village. We hear there's like
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: 75 fighters, and there's bomb makers. There's going to be this.
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: and you get there, nothing happens. It's like friendly villagers, like,
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: nothing happens. Okay. But then conversely, it was fairly common
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: to be like, ah, we're gonna go out, like, this
• 35:17
  Speaker 2: is nothing, we don't expect anything, and you get killed, like,
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: just destroyed by whoever's out there. Um, but, so, that
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: operation that we ultimately did, the first one, I basically
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: wished we, I didn't want to do it, I was scared.
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: I'm like, I don't know if I'm ready to do,
• 35:32
  Speaker 2: I've been trained, but I don't know if I'm gonna
• 35:34
  Speaker 2: be capable of walking into a cave with my knife
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: out and potentially going, hand-to-hand and killing somebody with a knife.
• 35:41
  Speaker 2: I don't know if I can do that. I'm sure
• 35:43
  Speaker 2: I would be capable of doing it, but it's just,
• 35:46
  Speaker 2: it's such a departure from your civilian life. Even in training,
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: we would do really intense training stateside for the SEAL teams. Like,
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: really intense. Like, role players, I mean, we would do like, uh,
• 35:58
  Speaker 2: there's a training you go through where you basically prep
• 36:01
  Speaker 2: for what it would be like to be in captivity.
• 36:03
  Speaker 2: And it's very hands-on. I mean, you're effectively tortured and
• 36:07
  Speaker 2: put through the ropes for a long period of time.
• 36:09
  Speaker 2: So I'm used to training that's extremely intense. Nothing beats
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: actually mortal combat because that's what it is.
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: I can imagine that, man. Like the training thing in
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: the backyard, you know, you're not in captivity. Yeah. I mean,
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: it's probably better than no training, but I mean, it's
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: gotta be totally different, man.
• 36:34
  Speaker 2: It's crazy. And also I would say, and maybe it
• 36:37
  Speaker 2: was something that we all sort of intentionally did to, to,
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: to make the situation feel better or something, but very quickly,
• 36:45
  Speaker 2: very quickly, I would say within maybe two to three
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: weeks of being in country, I went from being the
• 36:50
  Speaker 2: guy who was scared to go on the operation to
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: being not excited to go, but utterly indifferent, utterly.
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: And I, I, that's where you landed.
• 37:02
  Speaker 2: All of us did. The only thing we would be
• 37:04
  Speaker 2: concerned about would be like, are we doing something that
• 37:07
  Speaker 2: needlessly risks the lives of our team? Because there were
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: definitely times where in order to try to capture someone
• 37:14
  Speaker 2: or go after some known bad guy, the only way
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: to do it was to do it in a way
• 37:19
  Speaker 2: that was sort of risky to the team. Now, obviously,
• 37:22
  Speaker 2: there's quite a bit of risk every time you go out. Um,
• 37:24
  Speaker 2: but there were the only time that people had real
• 37:26
  Speaker 2: gripes was if it's like, why are we need seemingly
• 37:30
  Speaker 2: needlessly risking our lives here? We're okay with the baseline risk. Um,
• 37:35
  Speaker 2: but yeah, I, I, uh, we, we, I never slept
• 37:39
  Speaker 2: better in my life than I did in Afghanistan minus
• 37:42
  Speaker 2: the first few days. That was the worst sleep in
• 37:43
  Speaker 2: my life. Um, and I, I tell people that you,
• 37:48
  Speaker 2: you enter into this state, uh, you're not literally in
• 37:53
  Speaker 2: survival mode all the time. I mean, you're not every
• 37:57
  Speaker 2: second of every day in Afghanistan defending for your life,
• 38:00
  Speaker 2: but you live with a pretty constant state of, at
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: any point, we could get attacked here. The base where
• 38:08
  Speaker 2: we were was sort of always potentially vulnerable to a
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: suicide attack. And those happened across the country. And with
• 38:15
  Speaker 2: enough regularity, that we had some mitigating things in place
• 38:19
  Speaker 2: to try to protect ourselves. But I mean, to be honest, if, if,
• 38:22
  Speaker 2: if fighters decided to overrun where we were, they'd probably
• 38:27
  Speaker 2: be able to do it, even if we were ready
• 38:29
  Speaker 2: and saw them coming. And so you lived with a
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: baseline understanding that for sure people could die here. It's
• 38:36
  Speaker 2: part of the deal. And then that's not revelatory. You
• 38:38
  Speaker 2: go into, you go into the, the war zone knowing that,
• 38:42
  Speaker 2: but I, uh, you enter into a sort of a
• 38:45
  Speaker 2: weird zen place where I don't think I ever really,
• 38:48
  Speaker 2: and this is bad in a way, I didn't really
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: think about my wife back home beyond like I would
• 38:54
  Speaker 2: talk to her periodically, but I couldn't, I wasn't really
• 38:57
  Speaker 2: capable of thinking about anything other than my current existence.
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: You were married to the same person then you're married
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: to now.
• 39:05
  Speaker 2: Correct, yeah. She met me pre, she met me when
• 39:08
  Speaker 2: I was talking about becoming a SEAL. I met her
• 39:11
  Speaker 2: in college. And she's been with me to today, Amanda.
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: Good for you. Yeah.
• 39:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so it's just, it's weird. Like, it's, uh, you
• 39:18
  Speaker 2: end up becoming very primal, I would say, where you'd
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: go out and a lot of times, like, rounds would
• 39:26
  Speaker 2: start being shot at you and your team, and the
• 39:29
  Speaker 2: scariest point in my limited, because it is a limited
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: combat exposure. I didn't do a million combat ops. I've
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: done a few. But in the ones that I was in,
• 39:38
  Speaker 2: the first few rounds that come in are the scariest,
• 39:40
  Speaker 2: at least when we were there, because our rules of
• 39:42
  Speaker 2: engagement said that we couldn't proactively shoot anyone. You had
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: to be shot at first. And so when I talked
• 39:48
  Speaker 2: about Why are we needlessly risking our lives? Some of
• 39:51
  Speaker 2: the operations we would plan for, because we did all
• 39:54
  Speaker 2: our planning ourselves, you sort of invited people to shoot
• 39:58
  Speaker 2: at you in order to then be able to be
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: on the offensive or respond to the threat. So we
• 40:03
  Speaker 2: would literally design operations where we want to go here
• 40:08
  Speaker 2: because if we get shot at here, we can defend ourselves.
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: But think about what that really means. You're the bait.
• 40:13
  Speaker 2: You're going in there and you don't know where the
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: first round's going to hit. And so when the first
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: rounds come in, Um, a lot of times, no one
• 40:20
  Speaker 2: knows where they're coming from. Unless they're super effective, and
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: then you do. But I remember the, there was one
• 40:26
  Speaker 2: particular engagement in this town called Zargan Shah, this pretty urban,
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: tightly compacted Afghan village where I'm pretty sure the first
• 40:34
  Speaker 2: few rounds were fired at me. I don't know for sure,
• 40:36
  Speaker 2: but I know it was very early in the engagement
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: where I was, I walked across this, like, four-way intersection
• 40:42
  Speaker 2: where there's low walls across the entire intersection. But when
• 40:45
  Speaker 2: you walk across the middle, There's no cover. There's no anything.
• 40:48
  Speaker 2: You're just sort of exposed for a second. And there
• 40:51
  Speaker 2: was like a tall tower that sort of overlooked it.
• 40:54
  Speaker 2: And there was a shooter up there who fired several
• 40:56
  Speaker 2: rounds into the intersection. And I was the one that
• 41:00
  Speaker 2: had just walked past the intersection. He missed me. And
• 41:04
  Speaker 2: this was deep into the deployment. I remember being instantly
• 41:07
  Speaker 2: out of breath. And I'm... Oh, is that right? Yeah.
• 41:10
  Speaker 2: Like immediately, it was as if I had sprinted 10 miles.
• 41:14
  Speaker 2: I like fell to the ground because I... it wasn't immediate,
• 41:17
  Speaker 2: because the rounds hit, then you hear the snaps. It
• 41:19
  Speaker 2: isn't like, you know how it works.
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's already done.
• 41:21
  Speaker 2: It's already done. Yeah, you're fucking dead or you're not.
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: You already got missed.
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: And so, I, like, dove behind a low wall, and it,
• 41:27
  Speaker 2: the weight of what had just happened was, like, so intense.
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: My body's reaction was, like, some sort of cortisol dump
• 41:33
  Speaker 2: or adrenaline dump, but it was, like, I was out
• 41:35
  Speaker 2: of breath. But then training kicks in, and you just,
• 41:37
  Speaker 2: you just go for it. Um.
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: You eventually got injured, though, right?
• 41:41
  Speaker 2: I did, I did. Yeah, actually, that same town, I, uh, We,
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: this is at the tail end of the deployment. We
• 41:47
  Speaker 2: were there, we were going to be there for six months.
• 41:50
  Speaker 2: I ended up getting medevaced out at five months. There
• 41:55
  Speaker 2: was this one town, Zarganshahr, what I was just telling
• 41:57
  Speaker 2: you about. It was, it was just, it was a,
• 41:59
  Speaker 2: it was a very hectic place. Lots of, lots of
• 42:01
  Speaker 2: fighters in there. It's also a place historically that it
• 42:05
  Speaker 2: was so close to where our base was, where we
• 42:08
  Speaker 2: stayed for the deployment. And so many teams had rotated
• 42:11
  Speaker 2: through where we were. It was not just teammate before us,
• 42:14
  Speaker 2: before them. It was like, any number of spec ops
• 42:16
  Speaker 2: guys that were there. And the number one place that
• 42:19
  Speaker 2: you would typically go was Zarganshah. It's literally across the
• 42:23
  Speaker 2: road from where the space was. And a big reason
• 42:26
  Speaker 2: for that is Zarganshah was, as I recall, it was
• 42:30
  Speaker 2: one of the last known staging points for suicide bombers
• 42:33
  Speaker 2: before they'd make their way along Route Utah right up
• 42:36
  Speaker 2: to Kabul and they'd blow themselves up.
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: Oh, okay.
• 42:38
  Speaker 2: And so... there was some, there's a basic understanding that
• 42:41
  Speaker 2: the dudes that were at our base, whatever unit you
• 42:44
  Speaker 2: were with, some part of your job was trying to
• 42:47
  Speaker 2: identify and stop the flow of suicide bombers, which meant
• 42:50
  Speaker 2: going into Zarganchar and literally looking for them. And so, um,
• 42:55
  Speaker 2: we went in there a fair amount, but it was,
• 42:56
  Speaker 2: it was a lot of times, it was the only
• 42:59
  Speaker 2: place that we, we went in any of the missions
• 43:02
  Speaker 2: we did where the fighters were very brazen. there were
• 43:06
  Speaker 2: these long stretches in Zaganshar where it was almost like
• 43:10
  Speaker 2: the village or the town was built sort of haphazardly,
• 43:13
  Speaker 2: but there were these almost like long roads where from
• 43:17
  Speaker 2: certain angles you could see down almost like the entire
• 43:19
  Speaker 2: length of this huge village. But at other points, everything
• 43:22
  Speaker 2: is obscured. But there were these few vantage points where
• 43:25
  Speaker 2: you could basically see like over a mile down the city.
• 43:28
  Speaker 2: And we'd drive into the city, And women and children
• 43:32
  Speaker 2: would run out into the desert because they'd see the
• 43:35
  Speaker 2: NATO trucks approaching. We only could do operations during the
• 43:37
  Speaker 2: daytime due to rules of engagement.
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: In the town?
• 43:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, pretty much everywhere. With rare exceptions. Sometimes we'd go
• 43:44
  Speaker 2: like super early hours that technically was the morning, but
• 43:47
  Speaker 2: it was still dark out. But we would roll into
• 43:49
  Speaker 2: Zaganshahr and you'd see people running away. And it's all
• 43:54
  Speaker 2: women and children, so you know whoever's left is gonna
• 43:56
  Speaker 2: be military-age men. Um... But we would look down these,
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: so we'd see the women and children run, and we'd
• 44:02
  Speaker 2: pull onto one of those roads, and we'd look down
• 44:05
  Speaker 2: the road, and the new guys would drive the vehicles,
• 44:07
  Speaker 2: so I'd be, like, driving sometimes. And you'd see, like,
• 44:11
  Speaker 2: you know, half a mile away, standing in the road,
• 44:13
  Speaker 2: a dude with an AK-47, and he's showing you, like,
• 44:17
  Speaker 2: I don't care that you're here. This is utterly not
• 44:21
  Speaker 2: the case outside of Zaganshahr.
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 44:23
  Speaker 2: A big reason for it, it's very simple. If you're
• 44:26
  Speaker 2: identified as a combatant, and you're threatening a NATO force,
• 44:31
  Speaker 2: you're fucking dead. And it's not, there's so many things
• 44:36
  Speaker 2: that can get you killed at that point. If you
• 44:38
  Speaker 2: brandish a weapon or do something sort of threatening to NATO,
• 44:42
  Speaker 2: we have the most air assets available to us, we
• 44:46
  Speaker 2: have targeting systems, we have, and this is not even
• 44:49
  Speaker 2: to be braggadocious, it's like we can practically point to
• 44:52
  Speaker 2: a map and say, hey, we know there's a guy
• 44:54
  Speaker 2: right there. And whether it takes us five minutes or
• 44:57
  Speaker 2: five hours, find you and kill you or we'll capture
• 45:00
  Speaker 2: you so like to brandish a weapon like that to
• 45:03
  Speaker 2: an an entire convoy of by the way we would
• 45:06
  Speaker 2: roll in with special equipment we had certain vehicles they
• 45:10
  Speaker 2: knew we were spec ops we would we would oftentimes
• 45:13
  Speaker 2: talk to some of the people we would capture after
• 45:15
  Speaker 2: a gunfight who had survived and they knew when spec
• 45:18
  Speaker 2: ops was showing up so they knew the difference to
• 45:21
  Speaker 2: have someone standing there brandishing a weapon I mean, that's
• 45:24
  Speaker 2: a level of confidence that you only saw in Zaganshahr.
• 45:27
  Speaker 2: And I admit, and I give credit where credit's due,
• 45:30
  Speaker 2: it was intimidating because their equipment is terrible. They don't
• 45:33
  Speaker 2: have really any of the resources we do, but they're
• 45:36
  Speaker 2: prepared to go toe-to-toe with the strongest military and some
• 45:40
  Speaker 2: of the best war fighters in the fucking world. No problem.
• 45:46
  Speaker 2: So we went in one day, and we... This is
• 45:49
  Speaker 2: the day I got hurt. I wasn't the only one.
• 45:52
  Speaker 2: We went into the village, and the way the rules
• 45:55
  Speaker 2: of engagement worked is, I mentioned this to you before,
• 46:00
  Speaker 2: you needed to be shot at in order to shoot back,
• 46:02
  Speaker 2: in essence. There were some rare situations that would allow
• 46:05
  Speaker 2: you to be offensive, but for the most part, you
• 46:07
  Speaker 2: needed to be responding. That was sort of the gist.
• 46:09
  Speaker 2: And it also had to be daytime. So we go
• 46:12
  Speaker 2: into Zarganshar, we begin our infill, and Zarganshar is like
• 46:15
  Speaker 2: a really urban environment. Like, everything's really tight on top
• 46:19
  Speaker 2: of each other. And we began making our infill and
• 46:22
  Speaker 2: we stopped because we realized there was a courtyard. We
• 46:25
  Speaker 2: were in an alleyway between a couple of buildings and
• 46:28
  Speaker 2: we would be walking into a courtyard. And there were
• 46:31
  Speaker 2: two-story buildings on either side. And, you know, from a
• 46:34
  Speaker 2: strategic standpoint, you don't want to walk into an alley.
• 46:36
  Speaker 2: You don't want to walk into a courtyard where there's
• 46:38
  Speaker 2: multiple angles on you in case there's shooters in the
• 46:40
  Speaker 2: second floor. And we knew, given the fact that we
• 46:43
  Speaker 2: rolled up, saw women and children leave. We also earlier
• 46:46
  Speaker 2: had heard some chatter on the open source radios. There
• 46:48
  Speaker 2: were fighters in town, guys are brandishing weapons, like they're here.
• 46:51
  Speaker 2: And so we stopped. No one had shot at us
• 46:54
  Speaker 2: at this point, broad daylight. And our team lead, he's like, hey,
• 46:58
  Speaker 2: hold on a minute, let's take some covers. We backed up,
• 47:01
  Speaker 2: we got behind this bridge. And he's like, wait a minute,
• 47:04
  Speaker 2: if we go forward, I think we're going to walk
• 47:06
  Speaker 2: into an ambush. It seems like based on the chatter
• 47:08
  Speaker 2: we're hearing on the radio, it very much appears like
• 47:11
  Speaker 2: there are fighters in those second floors. and they're gonna shoot.
• 47:13
  Speaker 2: They know the rules of engagement. They know they get
• 47:16
  Speaker 2: one shot to knock off a few of us with
• 47:18
  Speaker 2: that first volley. And you could hear it on the radio.
• 47:21
  Speaker 2: They were talking about, like, when to shoot. But if
• 47:24
  Speaker 2: we go back, if we retreat, the way Zaganshahr was
• 47:26
  Speaker 2: built is it's like this, again, very urban, very tightly packed,
• 47:30
  Speaker 2: pretty sprawling town. But then just outside of the city walls,
• 47:34
  Speaker 2: it's like there's no infrastructure, no buildings, nothing. It's just desert.
• 47:38
  Speaker 2: So it's like this really... densely populated space and then
• 47:42
  Speaker 2: nothing to the outside. And so if you think about
• 47:45
  Speaker 2: trying to retreat, trying to exfil out of Zarganshah, you're
• 47:48
  Speaker 2: exfilling into an open area where you're sort of exposed.
• 47:53
  Speaker 2: And so we found ourselves in this position where either
• 47:56
  Speaker 2: we had to go forward into the courtyard, knowing very
• 47:59
  Speaker 2: likely there'd be an ambush or retreat because we put
• 48:02
  Speaker 2: ourselves in a bad tactical spot. But from those second
• 48:05
  Speaker 2: floor windows, we saw they would have the drop on
• 48:07
  Speaker 2: us as soon as we exited. So there's a period
• 48:10
  Speaker 2: of time where invariably we're gonna be, our backs are
• 48:13
  Speaker 2: gonna be exposed. You know, fire an RPG at us,
• 48:15
  Speaker 2: one of us is getting killed at least. And even
• 48:19
  Speaker 2: though we're in this bad of a situation, you can't
• 48:21
  Speaker 2: call in an airstrike. You can't be like, we're in
• 48:23
  Speaker 2: a bad way. We gotta get out of this. You
• 48:25
  Speaker 2: can't do it. And so we sat there for like 20,
• 48:27
  Speaker 2: 30 minutes. And my team lead, he's amazing. very stoic guy,
• 48:32
  Speaker 2: he's currently over at Team Six, one of the best
• 48:34
  Speaker 2: guys I've ever met. He finally just went up and
• 48:37
  Speaker 2: down the line and we're all hiding sort of behind
• 48:40
  Speaker 2: this bridge and we're listening periodically to the chatter coming
• 48:43
  Speaker 2: through of these fighters talking about, you know, getting ready
• 48:46
  Speaker 2: to shoot us. And he's like, take one last piss,
• 48:49
  Speaker 2: like have a sip of water, like we're Navy SEALs,
• 48:52
  Speaker 2: we're gonna go forward. If we're gonna get shot, we're
• 48:54
  Speaker 2: gonna get shot in the chest, you know? We're gonna
• 48:56
  Speaker 2: go forward into the city and conduct this mission. And
• 48:59
  Speaker 2: so I remember taking a piss, like kneeling and taking
• 49:01
  Speaker 2: a piss behind this wall and thinking, is this the
• 49:04
  Speaker 2: last time I'm going to pee?
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: Is this it?
• 49:05
  Speaker 2: Like, this is the end. And so we get our
• 49:08
  Speaker 2: shit together. But it was like motivating in a way.
• 49:10
  Speaker 2: We weren't like bloodthirsty. It was like, fuck it, dude. Like,
• 49:12
  Speaker 2: this is what we came here for. And so we
• 49:15
  Speaker 2: walk through this alleyway and it brings us out to
• 49:18
  Speaker 2: this courtyard. It's a pretty big courtyard. again broad daylight
• 49:21
  Speaker 2: it's eerily quiet you know the women and children are
• 49:23
  Speaker 2: gone it's like just like it's a ghost town and
• 49:26
  Speaker 2: then at some point machine guns open fire on us
• 49:28
  Speaker 2: this is on body cam we've watched the video back
• 49:30
  Speaker 2: it's eerie it's like silent and it's an ambush I
• 49:35
  Speaker 2: say this and I usually try to be careful how
• 49:37
  Speaker 2: I say it but The people who got shot off
• 49:41
  Speaker 2: the jump in this initial volley were Afghan partner force
• 49:44
  Speaker 2: who were with us and our dog, which was a
• 49:47
  Speaker 2: blessing because this was a situation where it wasn't just
• 49:51
  Speaker 2: a couple people in the windows, there was fighters all
• 49:53
  Speaker 2: over the village, like, waiting for us. And as soon
• 49:56
  Speaker 2: as the shooting began, you know, we were probably outnumbered
• 49:59
  Speaker 2: pretty significantly, but you don't know where anybody is. This
• 50:01
  Speaker 2: is a very guerrilla warfare, very urban warfare. And if
• 50:05
  Speaker 2: we're gonna survive this, that are gonna get us out
• 50:08
  Speaker 2: of this situation are the Navy SEALs, just because from
• 50:10
  Speaker 2: a skill perspective, from a weapons perspective, we were able
• 50:15
  Speaker 2: to get out of this. If SEALs were getting shot
• 50:17
  Speaker 2: in that initial volley, I gotta be honest, I don't
• 50:19
  Speaker 2: know how it would've gone. So, fortunately, and that's where
• 50:22
  Speaker 2: I'm trying not to be crass, the partner force and
• 50:24
  Speaker 2: the dog get hit, SEALs take our positions up against walls,
• 50:28
  Speaker 2: and one of the things that we're great at, really
• 50:30
  Speaker 2: special operations generally, but SEALs in particular, is you're trained
• 50:34
  Speaker 2: how to do basically everybody's job. Like, for example, when
• 50:38
  Speaker 2: you go into a building, it's a highly choreographed thing.
• 50:42
  Speaker 2: When you're clearing a building, it's extremely choreographed. But the
• 50:45
  Speaker 2: only way it can work is if you've trained so
• 50:48
  Speaker 2: much with your team that in the dark on night vision,
• 50:51
  Speaker 2: you can read everybody's body language, because you don't have
• 50:54
  Speaker 2: time to communicate back and forth. And so everybody knows
• 50:57
  Speaker 2: everybody's job and how to do it, and you can
• 50:59
  Speaker 2: just visually understand the tendencies of your teammates when you're
• 51:02
  Speaker 2: clearing a building. to include if somebody gets shot, you
• 51:05
  Speaker 2: know exactly to step over them and take up their position.
• 51:07
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's unbelievable. And so we all just began
• 51:11
  Speaker 2: clearing buildings, like immediately, because there's buildings everywhere, but there
• 51:15
  Speaker 2: wasn't the luxury of having a lot of people to
• 51:17
  Speaker 2: do it with. It was like onesie-twosie going into buildings.
• 51:21
  Speaker 2: You know, a lot of people weren't in buildings, but
• 51:22
  Speaker 2: it was like intimate, you know, door-to-door fighting for the
• 51:26
  Speaker 2: next six hours or so. Um, at one point I
• 51:29
  Speaker 2: was up on a rooftop with another guy and he
• 51:32
  Speaker 2: was filming from his body cam and we're laying down
• 51:34
  Speaker 2: on the, on the roof and there's like maybe a
• 51:37
  Speaker 2: foot tall lip that sort of, the wall extended a
• 51:40
  Speaker 2: foot higher than the actual flat of the roof. So
• 51:43
  Speaker 2: we're like laying down and rounds are impacting right there.
• 51:47
  Speaker 2: Cause there's a guy in the alley who can see
• 51:48
  Speaker 2: us and we're like, fuck dude, like what are we
• 51:50
  Speaker 2: going to do? Like we're pinned down. It was just,
• 51:53
  Speaker 2: It was this crazy thing, so we were fighting our way.
• 51:56
  Speaker 2: We managed to roll off the roof and get out
• 51:58
  Speaker 2: of there. But for the next six hours or so,
• 52:01
  Speaker 2: it was just intimate, sporadic gunfighting. But by the time
• 52:06
  Speaker 2: it got dark that night, even though we had in
• 52:09
  Speaker 2: many ways sort of survived the initial volley, the dogs survived,
• 52:13
  Speaker 2: the Afghans who were shot, they survived as well. We
• 52:16
  Speaker 2: had medevaced them out. Like, we were sort of on
• 52:19
  Speaker 2: our toes now. We now were cleared to start We've
• 52:22
  Speaker 2: been engaged, so now we're able to sort of, the
• 52:24
  Speaker 2: rules of engagement are off. And, but the night really,
• 52:28
  Speaker 2: it just, it didn't really amount to much. We, the
• 52:30
  Speaker 2: people that were shooting at us, they would just vanish.
• 52:32
  Speaker 2: And there were known tunnels that were dug under the
• 52:35
  Speaker 2: city for these fighters for years they've been fighting. For
• 52:38
  Speaker 2: years and years and years. There's like secret tunnels to
• 52:41
  Speaker 2: escape the town. And so it's like somebody would be
• 52:44
  Speaker 2: shooting at you, and then they just vanish. And you
• 52:46
  Speaker 2: wouldn't be able to find them. And so it sort
• 52:49
  Speaker 2: of just felt like we were getting our butts kicked
• 52:50
  Speaker 2: all day. we were able to, you know, survive, but
• 52:53
  Speaker 2: it didn't go well. It just was like, wow. So
• 52:55
  Speaker 2: we walked in here, they got the drop on us.
• 52:58
  Speaker 2: We sort of were able to keep our wits about us,
• 53:01
  Speaker 2: but we didn't, we didn't find a bomb maker, suicide bomber,
• 53:03
  Speaker 2: weapon cache. We just got shot a bunch, narrowly survived.
• 53:06
  Speaker 2: And here we are now it's like, you know, 10
• 53:08
  Speaker 2: o'clock at night or whatever it is. And it's the
• 53:10
  Speaker 2: city's kind of gone quiet again. And so by this point,
• 53:14
  Speaker 2: you know, our team lead reminded us like our job
• 53:16
  Speaker 2: now is not just to stay here and try to
• 53:20
  Speaker 2: shoot something, you know, like, We didn't accomplish what we
• 53:22
  Speaker 2: wanted to do. It didn't go well. Let's get out
• 53:24
  Speaker 2: of here. But as we're getting ready to leave, and
• 53:27
  Speaker 2: by this point, we've all broken up across the city.
• 53:30
  Speaker 2: You know, we're in these disparate little fire teams that
• 53:32
  Speaker 2: are spaced out pretty far away from each other. And
• 53:34
  Speaker 2: we had these maps that were printed out, like an
• 53:37
  Speaker 2: overhead view that showed each building. We had numbers for
• 53:40
  Speaker 2: each building. You know, it's like we sort of knew
• 53:44
  Speaker 2: where everybody else was, the different fire teams. But for
• 53:46
  Speaker 2: the most part, you're sort of on your own, like five, six,
• 53:48
  Speaker 2: seven dudes at a clip. And so there's like this
• 53:50
  Speaker 2: effort to try to figure out where's the best place
• 53:53
  Speaker 2: for us to meet up, for us to then exfil
• 53:55
  Speaker 2: and get out of the city without getting killed. And
• 53:58
  Speaker 2: so as the team leads are doing that, our fire
• 54:02
  Speaker 2: team overhears one of the drones overhead that's being flown
• 54:06
  Speaker 2: by someone, I think in Las Vegas. They were flying around.
• 54:09
  Speaker 2: By this point, there's air assets stacked over us because
• 54:11
  Speaker 2: once an engagement starts, you got everything known to man
• 54:14
  Speaker 2: at your disposal. And they told us over the radio,
• 54:18
  Speaker 2: not our fire team, but we heard it over the radio,
• 54:21
  Speaker 2: that there were these potential military-aged men that were set
• 54:26
  Speaker 2: up near the exit of the village. So, they knew
• 54:29
  Speaker 2: the route we were likely gonna take on the exfil
• 54:31
  Speaker 2: because you plan a bunch of stuff and you give
• 54:34
  Speaker 2: all the potential routes you'll use to go in and out,
• 54:36
  Speaker 2: and you give it up to your higher command. And so,
• 54:38
  Speaker 2: as you leave, you can call in, like, hey, we're
• 54:40
  Speaker 2: gonna exfil, we're taking this route. And they know to
• 54:42
  Speaker 2: follow you, to basically protect you on the way out.
• 54:44
  Speaker 2: And so, knowing we were likely gonna be taking this
• 54:46
  Speaker 2: exfil route, this drone operator spotted what they thought was
• 54:50
  Speaker 2: military-age men set up behind a wall or in this field,
• 54:54
  Speaker 2: maybe they're gonna shoot at you guys when you leave.
• 54:56
  Speaker 2: And so, it was not like you better go prosecute them,
• 54:59
  Speaker 2: but just be aware. Our fire team happened to be
• 55:02
  Speaker 2: physically closest to where those potential military-age men or ma'ams,
• 55:06
  Speaker 2: as they're called, were. And so, we decided we would
• 55:09
  Speaker 2: just go look. We would go over there, They told
• 55:11
  Speaker 2: us there was this T intersection. You could walk down
• 55:13
  Speaker 2: the stem of the T and you could look over
• 55:15
  Speaker 2: this wall and there'd be this field and you'd see
• 55:18
  Speaker 2: them in this field, you know, and we would be
• 55:20
  Speaker 2: able to make a decision about what to do. Are
• 55:21
  Speaker 2: they military-aged men? Are they kids? Are they women and
• 55:24
  Speaker 2: children who have come back? Is it nothing? We don't know.
• 55:27
  Speaker 2: But because it represented a risk to the entire convoy,
• 55:30
  Speaker 2: we went over to look. So we sneak down this alleyway.
• 55:32
  Speaker 2: It's dark. It's dark enough. We're on night vision. It's
• 55:36
  Speaker 2: been quiet for a while. There's been a big lull.
• 55:39
  Speaker 2: And so me and the, I think it was six
• 55:41
  Speaker 2: other guys that I was with, we make our way
• 55:42
  Speaker 2: down the stem of the T to the T, the
• 55:45
  Speaker 2: head of the T. And when we get there, we
• 55:49
  Speaker 2: realize there's been some sort of miscommunication because we snuck
• 55:54
  Speaker 2: down this alleyway very quietly. So like we've made no noise.
• 55:57
  Speaker 2: We're on night vision. Here we are. And we start
• 55:59
  Speaker 2: hearing talking. And it's not English, it's Pashtun. It's on
• 56:04
  Speaker 2: the other side of this wall. It's on the immediate
• 56:06
  Speaker 2: other side of the wall that we're right next to,
• 56:07
  Speaker 2: the six foot high wall, seven foot high wall. It
• 56:11
  Speaker 2: turned out there were military aged men that were in
• 56:14
  Speaker 2: this field. But we were of the belief we'd get
• 56:17
  Speaker 2: to the wall, look over, and they'd be somewhere out there.
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: Out yonder, yeah.
• 56:20
  Speaker 2: They weren't. They were on the immediate other side and
• 56:22
  Speaker 2: they haven't heard us yet. And now we're in a
• 56:25
  Speaker 2: similar position as when we first got into the city where, well, we're...
• 56:30
  Speaker 2: we're closer than you and I are right now, physically,
• 56:32
  Speaker 2: to these people who don't see us. Either we engage
• 56:34
  Speaker 2: with them, and it's as intimate as it gets, besides
• 56:37
  Speaker 2: the wall being between us, it might as well be hand-to-hand,
• 56:40
  Speaker 2: or we try to get out of here and figure
• 56:42
  Speaker 2: out another way to handle this, but they're going to
• 56:43
  Speaker 2: hear us, probably. I mean, it's amazing they haven't heard
• 56:45
  Speaker 2: us yet. And so, without saying anything, because you couldn't
• 56:50
  Speaker 2: make any noise, the team lead, the same guy who
• 56:52
  Speaker 2: I have such a high opinion of, the guy who
• 56:54
  Speaker 2: was in charge of the whole movement that night, He
• 56:57
  Speaker 2: knew that, you know, even though, realistically, it'd be tough
• 57:00
  Speaker 2: to defend immediately engaging with them, just because we weren't
• 57:04
  Speaker 2: entirely sure if they had guns or not. We looked
• 57:06
  Speaker 2: over the wall, we could see that it looked very
• 57:07
  Speaker 2: much like they had weapons. It was like, if we
• 57:10
  Speaker 2: don't engage with them right now, there's a very high
• 57:12
  Speaker 2: chance that this is gonna turn bad for one of us,
• 57:14
  Speaker 2: we're gonna get shot and killed. And so the decision
• 57:16
  Speaker 2: was made to, let's start shooting. And so he got
• 57:19
  Speaker 2: down on a knee, another guy stepped onto his knee
• 57:21
  Speaker 2: and began engaging, and there was at least two. I've
• 57:24
  Speaker 2: heard as many as five, I don't really know. Two
• 57:26
  Speaker 2: of them had, uh, grenades that they had pulled the
• 57:29
  Speaker 2: pins out of. They were holding, like, a booby trap
• 57:30
  Speaker 2: in case they were discovered. Unclear what their intentions were generally,
• 57:34
  Speaker 2: but they were fighters, and they had grenades ready to go.
• 57:37
  Speaker 2: And the way a grenade works is you pull the pin,
• 57:38
  Speaker 2: you hold the spoon down, and until you release the spoon,
• 57:41
  Speaker 2: it doesn't detonate. But imagine you get shot, and you
• 57:44
  Speaker 2: drop the grenade, but now you booby-trapped your body. It's
• 57:46
  Speaker 2: a way to ensure your, you know, whoever you're up
• 57:49
  Speaker 2: against gets hurt in the process. As soon as the
• 57:52
  Speaker 2: shooting began, they threw those grenades over the wall. And
• 57:54
  Speaker 2: one of them hit my shoulder, and landed on the ground,
• 57:57
  Speaker 2: and we're all very tightly together. And I tell people that,
• 58:02
  Speaker 2: you know, we were in the drone overhead that had
• 58:05
  Speaker 2: spotted this. They had a targeting infrared spotlight on us.
• 58:08
  Speaker 2: It's almost like, imagine a flashlight shining down from God
• 58:11
  Speaker 2: that you can only see the light on night vision,
• 58:13
  Speaker 2: but it was flashing in and out like you're in
• 58:15
  Speaker 2: a strobe. And when the grenade came over the wall,
• 58:18
  Speaker 2: I was not one of the people shooting. I was
• 58:20
  Speaker 2: like sort of holding my position next to the guy shooting.
• 58:23
  Speaker 2: And I see this grenade come over the wall. And
• 58:24
  Speaker 2: what happened in the blink of an eye felt like
• 58:26
  Speaker 2: it took 10 minutes. I see it for a second
• 58:29
  Speaker 2: in the light and then it disappears. I see it
• 58:30
  Speaker 2: for a second in the light. It's getting closer and
• 58:32
  Speaker 2: closer to me. And by the time it's hitting my shoulder,
• 58:35
  Speaker 2: I was super aware that I'm about to die. Like
• 58:38
  Speaker 2: full stop. There was a grenade about to kill me.
• 58:41
  Speaker 2: And all I thought when it landed here was it's
• 58:43
  Speaker 2: going to blow my head off and my mom won't
• 58:45
  Speaker 2: be able to have an open casket because my head's
• 58:46
  Speaker 2: going to be fucking gone. Light goes off, light goes
• 58:49
  Speaker 2: on again, the grenade's now falling to the ground, because again,
• 58:52
  Speaker 2: this is the fraction of a second that feels like
• 58:54
  Speaker 2: it took ten minutes. Light on, light off, light on,
• 58:56
  Speaker 2: and as it's falling, it got to like my hip level,
• 58:59
  Speaker 2: and I'm like, oh, maybe I'll survive. Maybe it'll just
• 59:02
  Speaker 2: blow my legs off, and I'll get out of here alive.
• 59:04
  Speaker 2: It finally hits the ground, and it blows up, and
• 59:08
  Speaker 2: to be honest, I was shocked at how it felt.
• 59:10
  Speaker 2: because no pain whatsoever. It just felt like someone took
• 59:13
  Speaker 2: a handful of rocks and just sort of threw it
• 59:15
  Speaker 2: at the back of my leg. I fell to the ground.
• 59:19
  Speaker 2: It was absolute madness. I mean, the thing is, even
• 59:22
  Speaker 2: though there had been this lull in the fighting, there
• 59:25
  Speaker 2: were loads of fighters still in the village, in Zarganshah.
• 59:28
  Speaker 2: And one of the things is, a lot of these
• 59:30
  Speaker 2: fighters are, they want to be martyrs, and they're perfectly
• 59:33
  Speaker 2: fine with sort of dying in an effort to kill
• 59:36
  Speaker 2: one of us, or potentially killing their own people in
• 59:39
  Speaker 2: an effort to kill one of us. And so, as
• 59:41
  Speaker 2: soon as the explosions and gunfighting began in this little
• 59:45
  Speaker 2: intimate alleyway here, fighters were just firing RPGs arbitrarily in
• 59:50
  Speaker 2: our direction, knowing full well they could be striking their
• 59:52
  Speaker 2: own people. But it didn't matter, because this is smarterdom.
• 59:55
  Speaker 2: And so it's like, tracers and RPGs are sort of
• 59:59
  Speaker 2: periodically being fired into this area. I'm down, my gun's
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 2: falling off of me, my helmet's come off. There's pretty
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 2: good a loom from the moonlight, but I... my vision's
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 2: pretty bad. I tried to move, I couldn't move. There's
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 2: just constant gunfighting happening. I have no idea the state
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 2: of the people around me. I end up getting pulled.
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 2: I was effectively, like, on the hat of the T.
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 2: I was up there. I got pulled down to the
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 2: stem of the T, which was a narrow alleyway. I
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 2: was dragged down there and put up against a wall,
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 2: and then whoever did that went back down to the
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 2: contact zone. Just more gunfighting back and forth. And we
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 2: had these, uh, tourniquets to stop the bleeding on our
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 2: kit that were put on with rubber bands that were
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 2: set to be quick release, specifically. So if you're bleeding
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 2: to death, you can still quickly pull these off.
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: That's a good idea.
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 2: You know? And I, uh, I was so weak from
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 2: blood loss and just so shocked from, like, like actually
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 2: in trauma from the shock, I couldn't break the elastic band.
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 2: I couldn't do it. And as I'm like trying to
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 2: pull it off, I'm sitting with my back against this wall.
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 2: To my right is like the bottom of the T.
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 2: And that's like the main of Zarganshah. And we know
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 2: there are fighters here. And I'm thinking any moment now,
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 2: fighters are gonna run down this alleyway. I'm the first
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 2: thing they're gonna see. I'm gonna get shot and killed
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 2: if I don't bleed to death by then anyways. And so,
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 2: I can't get the tourniquet off. I'm bleeding to death.
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 2: I'm looking down the alleyway. I'm like, well, any minute now.
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 2: And I'm also, I'm hearing the chaos at the head
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 2: of the T, which is more shooting and explosions and
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 2: whatnot between my team or the guys I was with
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 2: and the guys on the other side of the wall.
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 2: And then all of a sudden, as I'm having this
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 2: moment of knowing death is coming, my hearing completely goes, like,
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 2: absolutely deaf, but I can see. And then my vision goes.
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 2: But I'm totally lucid. I'm very aware that I'm alive,
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 2: but I can't see and I can't hear. I'm just
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 2: in this darkness in my head. And I know for
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 2: a fact, I knew this is dying.
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: Dude, yeah, you're like Helen Keller all of a sudden. Yeah.
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 2: I tell folks, it was so matter of fact, I say,
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 2: you know, in virtue of being a human, your entire
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 2: life has been existence. Everything you've done, everything you can remember,
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 2: your entire life is existing. You don't think about it.
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 2: You don't wake up and think, today I'm going to exist.
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 2: Today I'm going to breathe. Today my heart's going to pump.
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 2: You just do the things that allow you to be
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 2: alive and exist. But the same way your body is
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 2: very capable of seamlessly, every day, allowing you to exist
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 2: and live, it's also ready to shut down. Like, you're
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 2: ready to die, you just don't know it yet. It's
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 2: just as familiar, but you only do it once. And
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 2: I'm sitting in this void, and I know that's what's happening.
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 2: And I'm like, fuck, like, this is it. I'm dying.
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 2: It wasn't even sad. It was just like, fuck. Fuck.
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 2: And I was hung up on what.
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: Were you having, like, wish I would, uh.
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 2: A little. Well, I had one that was sort of funny.
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 2: I was caught up on, will my name be in
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 2: the paper for my obituary? Will it be John Allen
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 2: was killed in action or Jonathan Allen was killed in action?
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: You thought about that.
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 2: Hung up on that. And then I also thought about
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 2: the fact that I hadn't had kids yet. And I
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 2: was like, eh, it's a bummer. Like, no legacy. But
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 2: then I remember this feeling of almost letting go. It
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 2: felt physically like I was letting go. And I just
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 2: remember the feeling of hitting the dirt next to me
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 2: because I was sitting, I slouched over. And it's like,
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 2: that's it. I'm dead. I'm very, I'm about to die.
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 2: And then out of nowhere, my medic, who's a SEAL
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 2: as well, calm as can be, he apparently came charging
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 2: down the stem of the T, saw me, leaned over,
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 2: pulled my tourniquets off. He managed to stop the bleed
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 2: in my leg. And as I'm laying there, I like
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 2: come to, my vision comes back, my hearing comes back.
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 2: I'm still very fucked up, but I'm aware that I'm,
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 2: coming back to life in a way and here's kyle
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 2: madness all around us he's like hey what's going on
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 2: buddy uh yep stop the bleed just uh you know
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 2: put your gun up and uh just stay right here
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 2: we're gonna be just fine like we're not gonna be
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 2: fine like it couldn't be clearer that we're not gonna
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 2: be fine but he and so one other guy had.
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: A collapse did it strike you like a hallucination or
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 1: was it like clear that you were that you were
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 1: fine or fine-ish and he was there.
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 2: You know, it felt lucid. It did.
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: It felt real.
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 2: It felt real. But what didn't feel real is that
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 2: the experience I just had felt so real. It was like,
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 2: I'm dying now. For sure, I'm dying. And so to
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 2: open my eyes, it wasn't like, am I in heaven
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 2: or something? It was like, wait a minute. Did I
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 2: hallucinate that? And so the team, they were incredible. I mean,
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 2: the blast fucked all of them up. One guy, the
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 2: shrapnel went into his lung and collapsed his lung We
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 2: all survived, but he could, he was basically unable to breathe.
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 2: And then every breath he took, it's like his lung,
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 2: his other lung is like filling with blood. It's like
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 2: this horrible thing. So he's getting constant needle decompressions where
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 2: the medic is putting a needle into his intercostal space,
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 2: like driving a needle with an opening on the back
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 2: that relieves pressure in your lung. And so he's like
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 2: a porcupine with all these needles because you have to
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 2: keep doing it to keep the pressure from not fully
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 2: collapsing your lung. So it's just where there's a ragtag group.
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 2: I can't walk. There's They managed to call in, they,
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 2: one of the team lead, he managed to call in
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 2: an airstrike on the dudes on the other side of
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 2: the wall. And we managed to run out of there.
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 2: I was hoisted up and carried. I sort of half ran,
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 2: my legs are trash. I was put in a helicopter.
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 2: We had a hot extract. These pararescue jumpers, these Air
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 2: Force spec ops guys, they came in and they took
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 2: me and the guy with the collapsed lung away. They
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 2: flew us to a shank, the place I originally landed
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 2: when I first arrived in Afghanistan for treatment. And the
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 2: other five guys that were down there, like they're broken
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 2: off from the main group. They're badly beaten up. It
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 2: isn't like they were unhurt, but they had to fight
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 2: their way back into the city to reconnect with the
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 2: rest of the SEAL team. Like what they did was incredible.
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 2: But then I got brought to a medical tent and
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 2: I was wheeled in. And I remember on the flight
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 2: over to Shank, I didn't know the state of my injuries.
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 2: I figured I was going to be okay at this point,
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 2: but I didn't really know. And they had asked me,
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 2: the PJs on the flight, like, hey, do you want morphine?
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 2: And I was like, no, I don't, because in case
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 2: I die, I want to be lucid. I want to
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 2: be aware that I'm dying, you know? Get to the
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 2: medical tent, and when we're wheeled into the tent, there's
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 2: all these doctors and nurses. It's a big, white, bright
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 2: tent inside. They're, like, ready to do whatever surgery's required.
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 2: I still didn't really know if I was okay or not.
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 2: Figured I was at this point. It's been, you know,
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 2: 20 minutes of riding in the helo. No one's acting like, oh,
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 2: my God, he's dying. But I just don't know. and
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 2: it's just very hazy. And when I got brought in there,
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 2: the SEALs that were stationed at Fob Shank, who I
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 2: know all of them, they had been tracking that mission.
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 2: There's a way to track each mission in real time
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 2: when you're overseas. And they had seen that there were
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 2: two SEALs who were hurt. And I guess whatever was
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 2: passed to them suggested they could be catastrophic injuries that both,
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 2: maybe one could die. And so they were in the tent.
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 2: There was like 12 or 15 of them like in
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 2: the back corner. They put on their best uniforms and
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 2: they were just standing there with these solemn looks on
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 2: their faces as me and the guy with the lung
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 2: are wheeled in because they're basically there in case we
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 2: die they're there to support us and so i went
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 2: from thinking i'm okay to being wheeled into that tent
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 2: and seeing them in the corner and it like hit
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 2: me oh fuck are we like i was a die
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 2: here yeah and then they like this don't look good
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 2: yeah dude the guy gave me the nurse or doctor
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 2: gave me ketamine i think it was he said all
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 2: right you're not gonna remember anything gave me ketamine and
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 2: then i I passed out. They did the debridement, got
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 2: all the shit out of my legs. And then I, it's,
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 2: I have no memory. I wake up at like 20
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 2: hours later or whatever later in Germany. And it's like, yeah,
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 2: you're fine. Bad flesh wound, but you're okay. Like we're
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 2: going to manage your wounds, but you'll be all right.
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 2: And then like a week after that, I was back
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 2: home in Virginia, pushing a shopping cart down the aisle
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 2: of Home Depot, just back to back to life. Yeah, man.
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 2: So I got medevaced from there. And then I did
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 2: deploy a second time to South America years later. But
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 2: there's just residual physical issues, mental issues. I was a
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 2: fucking shit show by the end of that deployment that
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 2: I was ultimately medically retired after that.
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 1: At what point did you, coming out of that, like
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 1: you'd already gone to college. See, that opens up all
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 1: kinds of opportunities, as we've been trying to explain to
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 1: our 16-year-old. That opens up opportunities that you may or
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 1: may not want. So you'd been to college, you had military.
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 1: At what point did you start conceptualizing like what you would,
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: what you do now? Because it wasn't like being a lawyer.
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 1: So like, I get it. You go to regular college,
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 1: you go to law school, you take the bar exam.
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 1: Like I get it.
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 2: Yep.
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 1: You know, there's probably books about how to do that.
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 1: But then you kind of hit on this deal that isn't,
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 1: there's no blueprint.
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 2: No.
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: Like, do what you do now, you know?
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 1: So, like, at what point did you start to think, like, man,
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna, like.
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 2: I tell scary stories on TikTok.
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm gonna, like, tell... scary stories.
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 2: You know, I.
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 1: I haven't just been through one. I might traffic in
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 1: these someday, right?
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, it was my... I left the military
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 2: at the end of 2017, and even though I was
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 2: aware I was gonna be medically retired, it doesn't happen immediately.
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 2: There's a process to it. Uh, it was sort of
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 2: abrupt when I finally got the orders to leave. And
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 2: I didn't really have a plan.
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 1: Was it unexpected? Was it like unwanted? No.
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 2: I was probably going to get out of the team.
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 2: The truth is, I was certainly skill-wise capable of doing
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 2: the job. I think ideologically, I think I began to
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 2: wonder what we were doing, why we were doing it.
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 2: And I honestly felt like I was a detriment to
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 2: the team. I felt like I'm a pretty outspoken person.
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 2: And I remember our second rotation. So we, our first rotation,
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 2: a rotation is your training, a rotation is a two-year
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 2: block in the teams where it's like you get ready
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 2: for deployment for a year and a half with the
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 2: same guys, and then you deploy for six months. So
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 2: it's a two-year block called a rotation. My second rotation,
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 2: when I came back from Afghanistan, you know, when I
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 2: have a new group of guys that I'm with, a
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 2: new platoon, I was just such a negative Nancy, like
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 2: so cynical. to the point where it wasn't even funny.
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 2: It was just, I fucking hated the job. I think
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 2: I had a lot of, a lot of resentment, a
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 2: lot of just, I don't even, it's hard to even
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 2: classify exactly why I just was bitter about everything. And
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 2: I fucking hated our leadership at seal team too, to
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 2: the point where I got an open conflict with some
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 2: of the very senior people who are way, way more
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 2: important than me. I just, I, I strayed away from it,
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 2: and I felt like it wasn't a good.
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 1: And you recognized that the solution was to get out.
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 2: So I would have gotten out. Part of the reason
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 2: I was medically retired is I was espousing these very
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 2: dark views about how I felt about stuff to people
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 2: around me, and they're like, you better ought to see somebody.
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 1: I know I was asked, I wanted to get into
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: your career now, but maybe it's not possible to answer
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 1: this quickly. During that really chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, I
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: texted a buddy of mine who'd spent many years there,
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 1: in and out of there. I was like, man, what's
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 1: your take on what's going on? This is just a
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 1: text exchange. Sure. Should have happened a long time ago,
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 1: which seems so weird to hear from someone that had
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 1: so much invested in it and also that had left
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 1: friends dead there.
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 2: Yep.
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 3: What did you feel watching that? I, you know, truthfully,
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 3: I had already had a little bit of a recognition
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 3: that I didn't necessarily agree with what we.
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 2: Did sort of on the ground, literally what we did
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 2: on deployment in Afghanistan and more broadly, like the U
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 2: S in general. Um, so by the time the withdrawal happened,
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 2: it was just sad for so many reasons and not
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 2: so much because of all, you know, Of course, I
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 2: feel bad for a lot of the people, the civilians
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 2: that got caught in the chaos of this in Afghanistan,
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 2: but all the people on the NATO side that were
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 2: killed in the line of duty and people that were
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 2: maimed along the way. Um, so it was like sad,
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 2: you know? And I think there's no way to look
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 2: at that withdrawal and feel like, oh, we won, you know? Yeah.
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 2: There was no win. It was like we were there.
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 2: And there was a whole bunch of reasons we should
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 2: or shouldn't have been there, but we were there for
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 2: a long time. A lot of horrible things happened and
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 2: now we're out. And this is not even me trying
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 2: to say we didn't lose or something. It's more like
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 2: no one really even knows what was gained or lost.
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 2: It just was this tragic 20 plus years of fighting.
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 2: I found that I had already begun to wonder, like,
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 2: there's so much, and this is important, and I say
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 2: this in a In order to be, for example, a
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 2: Navy SEAL and to do a good job, if you
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 2: think about what a Navy SEAL is, a Navy SEAL,
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 2: and you could really make the same comparison to any
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 2: special operations with any military, you are the best war
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 2: fighters that your country has to offer. And whether you
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 2: like it or not, humans, they need war fighters. Even
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 2: though we live in a civilized society here in the West,
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 2: the reality is war fighters are going to exist, whether
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 2: you agree with that or not. Um... In order to
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 2: be really good at fighting wars, you need to have
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 2: a particular mindset to do it. And it's not something
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 2: that you necessarily have innately. A lot of times in
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 2: my exposure to having gone through the training, you're given
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 2: the mindset of how to be a warfighter. You are
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 2: literally trained in words and in actions by the senior
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 2: people that put you through training how to be a warfighter.
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 2: And a big part of it is killing is something
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 2: you're going to be doing. Killing and being around death
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 2: is simply a part of this job. It's not even
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 2: something that we push to the side or we talk
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 2: up like it's something great. It simply is a part
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 2: of what you're going to be doing and it has
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 2: to be normalized. It must be normalized. It's not about
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 2: creating the boogeyman and the people you're going to go
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 2: attack or go to war with. It's about understanding that
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 2: your country needs you to do this. You must be
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 2: comfortable with it. And when you go through the pipeline
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 2: of becoming a Navy SEAL, you are around men, because
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 2: it's only been men who've been SEALs so far, who
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 2: have really done and seen the worst of the worst.
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 2: They've been in the thick of it, and they're here to, like,
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 2: talk to you, and it's so motivational. And honestly, a
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 2: lot of times, the talks we would get from these
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 2: grizzled veterans were never to talk about how great it
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 2: was to go, you know, employ your skill set. It
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 2: was like, what an honor. to be the person who
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 2: got to do that. Like, someone's gonna do this for
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 2: our country, why not you? You should take, you know,
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 2: pride in being the best at this. So then by
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 2: the time you go to war, if you're, and I
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 2: hate to say it this way, but it's the way
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 2: it's framed, if you're lucky enough to go to war
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 2: as a Navy SEAL, it's the place where your skill
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 2: set is, it's designed for it. That's what it's for.
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 2: You get there and you're so ready. Mentally, I told you,
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 2: that experience of being scared about that first exposure to
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 2: combat I know it's not uncommon. I don't know if
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 2: a lot of people have that experience, but I know
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 2: it's not uncommon. But you know what else is not uncommon?
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 2: Is how quickly you completely adapt and become extremely good
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 2: at being in war. Extremely good. To the point where
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 2: it is fun, in a way, to go out and be,
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 2: you know, to be playing like the most dangerous game,
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 2: you know? But what ends up happening, and it's something
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 2: that's taken me years to understand, is You go, you
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 2: have this exposure to the thing you've been trained to do,
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 2: the thing that you've built an identity around. Think about
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 2: the way the world, for the most part, the way,
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 2: I'm sorry, Americans view Navy SEALs, generally speaking. Like, when
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 2: I meet people and they find out I was a
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 2: Navy SEAL, it is rare that the reaction is not
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 2: some huge level of admiration, respect, even if they disagree
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 2: with the politics around whatever the United States has done
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 2: or hasn't done. There's always like, wow, thank you for
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 2: your service.
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 1: I think Americans are good at separating and understanding those
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 1: two things. 100%. Thankfully, they're good at that.
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah. But then what ends up happening is you, over time,
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 2: after you get back, and again, I had one combat tour.
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 2: I can't imagine how this would be after 10, 15.
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 2: There's so many people that go through so much more
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 2: than me. you naturally reflect, like we do on anything
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 2: else in our lives. You reflect on what it is
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 2: you did, good or bad. You just think about it.
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 2: I sometimes think about college. It's neither good nor bad.
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 2: This class I took, or these friends I had, whatever.
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 2: You think about all the stuff. We're always processing the past.
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 2: But when you separate yourself from having been in war,
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 2: it's really hard to look back at decisions made in
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 2: the fog of war, as they call it, and understand them.
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 2: Because they're... Decisions you make when you've been trained to
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 2: kill and you've been trained to be at war, you're
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 2: making decisions that are... You've been trained to make. I
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 2: hate to say it that way. You've been trained to
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 2: be aggressive, to be violent, and to be ready to
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 2: step into the fray and do, you know, your country's
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 2: bidding or whatever. When you sort of come back to
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 2: reality years later, It's just hard to reconcile that you
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 2: did those things. They're not wrong. It isn't even like,
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 2: oh my God, we did something horrible. A lot of
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 2: the things you're thinking about are the sort of standard
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 2: fare for war fighting. Like you go into a building
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 2: where there's a guy trying to kill you and you
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 2: end up prosecuting the target and you kill the guy.
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 2: He was shooting at us. He was shooting at us.
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 2: But like, I have memories of like, oh, there's the
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 2: guy that was, you know, the father of the kids
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 2: that we pushed over there who were crying in the corner. I'm,
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 2: I'm fingerprinting their dead father. He tried to kill us.
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 2: We're at war. It happens, right? But like, I'm a father.
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 2: I've literally, I've watched kids cry over their dead parents
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 2: that we killed. It's like, that is the part of
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 2: thinking about war that's hard to unpack.
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 1: Got it.
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 2: And so when you watch the exit from Afghanistan in
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 2: such a horrible way that it went, like the plane's
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 2: taking off and Afghans are clinging to the plane... and
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 2: falling to their deaths from the last transport plane.
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 1: When that was happening, that was all I watched.
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah. It's hard not to feel like, what the fuck
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 2: was that for? What good did we do? And even though,
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 2: you know, that's a deep discussion in and of itself,
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 2: as an individual, I think a lot of people that
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 2: have been to war, many more with more experience than me,
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 2: it feels like you did something that you were trained
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 2: and that you were trained to do that you believed
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 2: was good to do, but then the humanity of yourself
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 2: just kind of creeps in over time and you start
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 2: questioning what it is you were even doing and it
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 2: isn't like you're like i'm a bad person but you're
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 2: like i feel like i have had this life over
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 2: here and i've had this life over here and they
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 2: absolutely are not congruent like the person i was in
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 2: afghanistan good or bad is not the person i am
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 2: now and it almost feels like i need to keep
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 2: it a secret that i ever like lived this life
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 2: even though i was a good navy seal in afghanistan
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 2: i was i was really good at my job i'm
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 2: really good at it i did all the things that
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 2: i was trained to do and if you evaluated our
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 2: tour in Afghanistan, you would say, wow, you guys were
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 2: really effective over there. Like, you did a bunch of
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 2: things you were supposed to do, and I was a
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 2: part of that. But then, I'm a human, and so
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 2: it's just, it'd be one thing if it felt like
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 2: there was a boogeyman. Like, if it felt like there
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 2: was a clear existential threat that we were quelling. But
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 2: it never really felt that way. It felt like we
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 2: were in somebody else's land, and they were defending themselves
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 2: a lot of the time. Not all the time, because
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 2: there were plenty of horrible people we came in touch with. But, like,
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 2: the father, like, he had a shitty shotgun with slug rounds.
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 2: He fired, like, one slug round. And then he gets
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 2: obliterated because you can't do that. We also came into
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 2: his house in the middle of the night. Now, we
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 2: had intelligence that said that there was something in there
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 2: worth going for. But what would happen if someone barged
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 2: into your house in the middle of the night? Is
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 2: it possible you might defend yourself? Yeah. Especially if your
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 2: kids are there. And so those are the things that
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 2: as a human being, it's hard not to be like, fuck, man,
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 2: I have kids. You know?
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 1: And so.
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 2: But this is the sacrifice, in my mind, that soldiers,
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 2: military folks make that go in harm's way. Of course,
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 2: there's the physical sacrifice. Of course, you might die. Of course,
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 2: you might get maimed. And that is an enormous sacrifice, undeniably.
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 2: But there's also this other part that's described as moral injury,
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 2: where You do things that you were trained to do,
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 2: that you were encouraged to do, that is part of
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 2: like the geopolitics. This is what we're doing as a country.
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 2: And you did those things, but now you got to
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 2: live with the fact that you did them and no
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 2: one's going to tell you they were wrong. You just
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 2: got to literally live with them. And that's difficult, especially
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 2: when you watch that sort of half-assed exit from Afghanistan.
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 2: You're like, great.
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah. When you see other guys from your community, I mean,
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 1: is there like a, um, I don't know, man. Well,
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 1: let me put it this way. I got a handful
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 1: of friends that were like career firefighters.
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 1: Totally different, but just the things that they have to
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 1: deal with.
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah.
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 1: I mean, you do that shit 20 years. I mean,
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 1: the stuff that you see, the stuff that you have
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 1: to deal with.
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 1: If you're a little kid, you think it's cool. Oh, yeah.
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 1: Running into burning buildings, whatever. Kids want to be firefighters.
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 1: You get a sense that over time, When I'm talking
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 1: to my friends, I get the sense of being like,
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 1: almost like, man, I'm like, sorry, man. Do you know
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 1: what I mean? I'm sorry that all that went on.
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 1: You gotta feel that way with your colleagues.
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 2: Questions that you got to, I guess I should ask you.
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 1: Is that like a, does that feeling pop up?
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 2: You know what's interesting about that is I'm describing effectively
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 2: like the second order effects of having gone to war.
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 2: And again, This is not even me trying to be humble.
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 2: I just think it's important for perspective that we have
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 2: been at war, you know, decades, there's been decades of
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 2: war fighting and there have been so many people that
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 2: have dealt with so many combat tours in a row,
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 2: like some of the Marines and the army infantry that
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 2: we would see overseas. These guys are doing nine, 12
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 2: month deployments multiple times. Like these are guys that have
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 2: terrible support and they're getting effed up. Their friends are
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 2: dying left and right. Like there's, There's a huge amount
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 2: of trauma and problems that arise from that, for sure.
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 2: And I've only really gotten a little taste of that myself.
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 2: Not ironically, but there's a flip side to the coin,
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 2: which is not equally bad, but it's bad for certain people.
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 2: And that is, it's referred to as chasing the dragon,
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 2: at least in my limited exposure to the teams. You
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 2: get to a SEAL team, you don't really have a
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 2: say in where you go. You have some level of say,
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 2: you know, in what platoon you get put into, to
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 2: a degree, but you sort of get sent off to
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 2: a SEAL team. You basically get placed in a platoon
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 2: of 25 guys. And where you end up deploying to
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 2: is dependent on so many different factors, but none of
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 2: them are, boy, I'd really like to go to war.
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 2: That's what I want to do. Like, who can... Everybody
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 2: wants to go to war.
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 1: That's sort of how it works.
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 2: But you don't really have a say in it. You
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 2: just go wherever you're deployed. is attached to. And so,
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 2: there have been guys I know personally who went through
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 2: all the same training as me, that literally were in
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 2: my graduating class, that went to the same SEAL team
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 2: as me, that in virtue of just the way the
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 2: cards were dealt, they never went and saw combat. It
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 2: has nothing to do with capacity at all. It's just
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 2: your platoon didn't go.
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 2: That creates enormous problems for guys that do all the
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 2: training to go be a Navy SEAL. Really? Oh, yeah.
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 2: It's called chasing the dragon as you keep reenlisting. You
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 2: keep staying in because you hope you get to go
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 2: to war soon. But then what if you never do?
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 2: It's like you've chased that thing you never got to do.
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 2: And so those guys, they struggle with like imposter syndrome,
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 2: like big time imposter syndrome. And so that's an issue
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 2: that I definitely see as well. But in terms of like,
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 2: There's another one, survivor's guilt.
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 1: It's a big one.
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 2: There's the literal survivor's guilt where, you know, somebody died,
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 2: you live. You see that. I've seen it firsthand with
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 2: some people that I know. But actually, one of the
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 2: guys that helped save my life, the medic, he... So he,
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 2: from an injury perspective, physical injury perspective, the grenade blast,
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 2: I don't think it actually physically harmed him. He was
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 2: concussed by it.
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 1: He was.
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 2: every bit as affected by it, but from a mechanical
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 2: injury perspective, he was not really injured. And he saved
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 2: my life. He did all these things that saved people's lives.
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 2: I mean, you can point to the people that are
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 2: alive because of him. The rotation before that, so when
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 2: I was not at a team, I was in training,
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 2: he's older than me, he did a rotation to Afghanistan
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 2: on the previous tour, and he as well was a
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 2: medic on the ground, and he was involved in a
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 2: couple of, I think there was an IED blast where
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 2: One person, he had his legs blown off, he survived,
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 2: but the medic was a part of saving his life.
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 2: I think there was another guy, another IED blast where
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 2: the medic is close to both of these things, but
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 2: never actually got hurt. He saved their lives completely. But
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 2: this person, he developed this feeling that somehow he was lucky,
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 2: but in a bad way. That like, I'm the guy
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 2: that never really got hurt. Everybody else is getting hurt.
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 2: Everybody else is bleeding for their country. And I'm just
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 2: in the right place at the right time. And it
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 2: became like a big problem for him that he felt bad.
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 2: It's hard to imagine that. But the way the men, frankly,
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 2: that I've seen in special operations, it's so... Like, you
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 2: want so badly to be somebody that the others rely
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 2: on and trust. It's like reputation is everything and it's like,
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 2: that anything that could potentially damage the way you view yourself,
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 2: if you think your reputation is damaged, it's crushing. So
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 2: like the guys chasing the dragon, they worry that, frankly,
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 2: guys like myself, even though I've had, again, the one
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 2: combat tour, that I somehow think less of them because
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 2: they haven't seen combat. I don't. Not at all. I'm like,
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 2: I've done one tour. Similarly, guys that have been close
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 2: to tragedy, close to death and destruction, but they themselves
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 2: never were hurt. they as well suffer from this idea.
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 2: Do other people think that I just got really lucky?
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 2: Even though you saved these people's lives, like you're winning
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 2: awards for saving people's lives, dude. So it's just like,
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 2: it's a big mind fuck, to be honest. There's just
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 2: so much identity wrapped up in it. And I think
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 2: I struggle with it a lot on the way out.
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 2: You have kids, you got a boy?
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 1: I do have a boy.
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 2: I have a son who's about to be six and
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 2: two girls who are older.
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 1: Would you let him do what you did? Like if
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 1: you had a say in it?
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 2: I don't know. I mean, would I want him to
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 2: be a SEAL? Absolutely not.
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 1: You know Bo Jackson told me that he wouldn't let
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 1: his kid play football?
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 2: No kidding.
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 2: What did he say? Did he give a reason? Yeah. Head.
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 1: I can't remember the details, but yeah.
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 2: Banging your head. I think that in a way, becoming
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 2: a SEAL and going through the experience that I had,
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 2: there are many things about it that I don't regret it.
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 2: I don't regret it.
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 1: I feel.
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 2: like, there are some issues with what I did. Me, personally, internally,
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 2: I struggle with some stuff that happened and how I
• 1:27:57
  Speaker 2: conducted myself. But it taught me so much about resilience.
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 2: It taught me so much about accountability, even if it's
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 2: just my own accountability. Um, it also, frankly, in a
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 2: weird way, set me up to be really able to
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 2: handle the pressure of being a YouTuber.
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's interesting.
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 2: You know, yeah, yeah. Because, I mean, don't get me wrong.
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 1: It's got to seem like child's play, man.
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 2: It does and it doesn't. You know, it's weird. Yeah,
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 2: so I leave the military and I end up, by happenstance,
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 2: I posted something on TikTok that went viral. It was
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 2: me telling a story about these missing hikers. It was
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 2: this mystery. It goes super viral and I've always loved
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 2: telling stories. I didn't really have a clear career path.
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 2: And I was like, what the hell i'll tell more
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 2: stories i like telling stories.
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 1: Okay hang tight for a second because i want i
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 1: want to understand like a transition piece yeah like i'm
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 1: sitting where i am because i've always made minor turns
• 1:28:52
  Speaker 1: yep very minor turns and none of them were a
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 1: question like i was gonna be a writer from a
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 1: young age yep And like, I've just made minor swerves.
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 2: Yep.
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 1: And here I sit.
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 1: But you went, you went like, like solid, solid 90.
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Okay.
• 1:29:15
  Speaker 1: Was it, were you sort of like, did you have a,
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 1: what do I do now? Or did you have a,
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 1: I know exactly what I'm going to do now.
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 2: You know, I've discovered that I do well with not
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 2: slight turns. I do well with like one eighties or nineties,
• 1:29:30
  Speaker 2: not one eighties nineties. Um, when I, growing up, I
• 1:29:33
  Speaker 2: was around very smart people, my parents, my sisters, like
• 1:29:36
  Speaker 2: brilliant minds, like academically very successful. And I certainly had
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 2: the aptitude to, to probably be as successful as they
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 2: were academically, but I just wasn't really interested in it.
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 2: I preferred to go drink in the woods with my
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 2: friends and not go to school. Um, but then, uh,
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 2: I went to college because my mom wrote my college essay,
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 2: got me to school. And I immediately after one semester
• 1:29:59
  Speaker 2: effectively flunked out. I technically withdrew, but bad behavior, you know,
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 2: horrible grades. It was clear that I was not cut
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 2: out for college. So in order to avoid expulsion, I
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 2: came back home, uh, to live in my mom's basement
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 2: and figure out my life. And it was in the
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 2: moment when I came home that I realized what a
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 2: mess I had made of my life, you know? Like
• 1:30:21
  Speaker 2: I've had all these things handed to me. I shouldn't
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 2: even have been allowed to go to college. I had
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 2: bad grades. If it weren't for that essay, I wouldn't
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 2: have gotten in. I wasn't paying for college, my parents were.
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 2: And so I had a, probably the first time at
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 2: the age of 18, you know, I'm in my mom's
• 1:30:34
  Speaker 2: basement being like, huh. So it's not really cool that
• 1:30:37
  Speaker 2: I've rebelled from not being an academic like my family.
• 1:30:42
  Speaker 2: I've just become a loser, you know? shit the bed
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 2: in high school, college, and now what? And my mom,
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 2: God love her, she was ruthless. When I came home,
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 2: she's like, cool, you want to go to college? You
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 2: figure it out. You pay for it. You do it yourself.
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 2: You're going to pay rent. You're going to get a job.
• 1:30:59
  Speaker 2: And you're an adult. You figure it out.
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 1: And I needed that.
• 1:31:02
  Speaker 2: But I found that I thrived when it was like, well,
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 2: I better make a drastic change.
• 1:31:08
  Speaker 1: In my life. Got it.
• 1:31:10
  Speaker 2: And I... I would go to school locally. I went
• 1:31:13
  Speaker 2: to UMass Boston, which was not a community college, but
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 2: you could basically get in if you're from Massachusetts. I
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 2: got a job at a gym scanning ID cards at
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 2: like 5 a.m. to let people in. I'd ride my
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 2: bike there at like 5 in the morning and I'd
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 2: scan ID cards and I'd go to the school and
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 2: I'd study philosophy because I thought I'd go to law school. But, um,
• 1:31:31
  Speaker 2: I sort of, it was the first time I'm like, wow,
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 2: I'm taking my life into my own hands and doing
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 2: something on my own. And it was like really powerful.
• 1:31:38
  Speaker 2: And then it was around the time that I'm realizing
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 2: the power of, I'm gonna be an adult, I'm gonna
• 1:31:44
  Speaker 2: go to school, I'm gonna have a job, that I
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 2: have that, not chance encounter, but that really intense encounter
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 2: with the two brothers, where I'm discovering that these guys
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 2: I had written off as just random dudes at cookouts to, like,
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 2: Navy SEAL commandos. And I was so taken with what
• 1:31:59
  Speaker 2: they did. And they all talked about it being this
• 1:32:02
  Speaker 2: calling to go be a SEAL. They talked about how...
• 1:32:05
  Speaker 2: I screwed a bunch of stuff up, but I decided,
• 1:32:07
  Speaker 2: you know what, I want to see if I can
• 1:32:08
  Speaker 2: do this, because I just want to see. And they
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 2: went off to SEAL training. And I'm like, that kind
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 2: of fits my mold, you know? Like, I've kind of
• 1:32:14
  Speaker 2: fucked some things up. I'm on the straight and narrow now,
• 1:32:16
  Speaker 2: but I don't know if I want to be a lawyer.
• 1:32:18
  Speaker 2: I kind of like the idea of going to the military.
• 1:32:21
  Speaker 2: And so, I didn't really tell my parents. They knew
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 2: that I was considering the SEAL teams, but they didn't
• 1:32:26
  Speaker 2: know how committed I was to it. But in my mind,
• 1:32:29
  Speaker 2: I was like, I'm going to graduate college, because I
• 1:32:31
  Speaker 2: feel like I want to the thing I said I
• 1:32:33
  Speaker 2: was gonna do, I'm gonna graduate college, and then I'm
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 2: gonna go be a SEAL. That's my new thing. And so,
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 2: I began training for that. I graduate college, I go
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 2: to SEAL training. It's such a departure from academia. It's
• 1:32:44
  Speaker 2: the opposite it might as well be. I did well with, like,
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 2: sudden and complete change, but I think I've also done
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 2: well when there's something on the line. You know, with
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 2: becoming a good student and graduating college, I think what
• 1:32:57
  Speaker 2: drew me to that is it's binary. Either you'll do
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 2: it and you'll prove everybody wrong, And you'll be the
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 2: loser that you sort of have become now, the guy
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 2: in his basement with no future. And then with SEAL training,
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 2: it was like, you'll either succeed or you won't. And
• 1:33:10
  Speaker 2: if you don't, people are gonna know. They're gonna be like, man,
• 1:33:13
  Speaker 2: you didn't make it. Not shocked, right? And you'll be
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 2: chipping paint on the side of the USS, you know, whatever,
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 2: in Japan. And so, when I got through SEAL training,
• 1:33:21
  Speaker 2: I actually realized that I think I'm someone who does
• 1:33:24
  Speaker 2: well with big, huge life changes. And so... Part of
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 2: the reason I think I soured on the SEAL team
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 2: so much when I was in, after I came back
• 1:33:33
  Speaker 2: from Afghanistan and I was negative Nancy, I think it's
• 1:33:36
  Speaker 2: in part because it's like, all right, I became a SEAL. Like,
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 2: I'm kind of over this. You know, I'm struggling with
• 1:33:42
  Speaker 2: doing the same thing. And so, again, I recognized that
• 1:33:47
  Speaker 2: I probably was not an asset. I was a detriment.
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 2: And then when I got out, it was like, okay,
• 1:33:52
  Speaker 2: now what? And I floundered around a little bit. I
• 1:33:55
  Speaker 2: started a charity that helped veterans get jobs. It was
• 1:33:58
  Speaker 2: a small-time thing. I did some consulting work, but I
• 1:34:00
  Speaker 2: didn't really have a place. And then I was following
• 1:34:04
  Speaker 2: Gary Vaynerchuk. He's an older guy who... He's been on
• 1:34:11
  Speaker 2: social media since before social media. He's sort of like
• 1:34:13
  Speaker 2: an early influencer. And his message, if you were to
• 1:34:18
  Speaker 2: distill it down to one thing, is... everybody should make
• 1:34:21
  Speaker 2: content because the barrier to entry is near zero. Pretty
• 1:34:24
  Speaker 2: much everyone's got a phone and an internet connection. And
• 1:34:26
  Speaker 2: if it doesn't work, you don't lose much other than
• 1:34:29
  Speaker 2: maybe you embarrass yourself online. But if it works, you
• 1:34:31
  Speaker 2: can build brands. There's all this opportunity right now with
• 1:34:35
  Speaker 2: social media, with content creation. And so I was like, oh,
• 1:34:39
  Speaker 2: fuck it. I'm okay with embarrassing myself. And I even
• 1:34:41
  Speaker 2: thought of it that way, but yeah. And I began
• 1:34:43
  Speaker 2: posting content. This is like 2019. I'm out of the military.
• 1:34:47
  Speaker 2: Don't know what I'm going to do. And this is
• 1:34:48
  Speaker 2: actually a part of my chapter of my life that
• 1:34:50
  Speaker 2: was so painful. I initially began making content around being
• 1:34:55
  Speaker 2: a SEAL. Because, like, what else is there to talk about?
• 1:34:57
  Speaker 2: And I don't really know what else I would talk about.
• 1:34:59
  Speaker 2: And it was, I would call it pretty benign. I
• 1:35:02
  Speaker 2: was very cognizant of not sharing anything sensitive. It isn't
• 1:35:05
  Speaker 2: like I'm sharing details that you're not supposed to hear.
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 2: But it was sort of a, hey, look at me,
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 2: I'm a Navy SEAL, was definitely the vibe. And I
• 1:35:14
  Speaker 2: attracted the ire of the entire active duty community. I
• 1:35:18
  Speaker 2: was disowned, like aggressively disowned. People thought that I was like,
• 1:35:23
  Speaker 2: who's this fucking dude? This one, two platoon wonder thinks
• 1:35:27
  Speaker 2: he's the man like talking about being, I was hated, reviled. And,
• 1:35:31
  Speaker 2: you know, it's funny. There's so many seals that have,
• 1:35:34
  Speaker 2: there's content everywhere about Navy. There may be still movies, Navy,
• 1:35:37
  Speaker 2: still books like that's everywhere. And, um, but what I
• 1:35:41
  Speaker 2: think a lot of people don't realize is that And
• 1:35:43
  Speaker 2: I'm part of this in some ways, but it's really
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 2: the minority of SEALs are actually part of the loud
• 1:35:48
  Speaker 2: Navy SEAL stuff.
• 1:35:50
  Speaker 1: That's the thing I've wondered about. What is the ratio
• 1:35:56
  Speaker 1: equivalent to? Like media, politics, is it that there's so...
• 1:36:01
  Speaker 1: That it's not a higher representation? Than the normal public,
• 1:36:05
  Speaker 1: but it's got to be higher than the normal public
• 1:36:08
  Speaker 1: to be in high-profile positions coming out of the SEALs.
• 1:36:11
  Speaker 2: It's weird how many SEALs are in public doing stuff,
• 1:36:16
  Speaker 2: whether it's creating content.
• 1:36:17
  Speaker 1: They're everywhere.
• 1:36:19
  Speaker 2: And God love them. I pretty much know all of
• 1:36:21
  Speaker 2: them at this point, the guys that are out, and
• 1:36:23
  Speaker 2: they're awesome dudes. And trust me, how people perceive them
• 1:36:27
  Speaker 2: is often very different than they really are. Um, so, uh, there,
• 1:36:31
  Speaker 2: there is a huge contingent of active duty SEALs that
• 1:36:35
  Speaker 2: really look at anybody who goes out in public and
• 1:36:38
  Speaker 2: talks about being a SEAL in any capacity as like,
• 1:36:41
  Speaker 2: that's not allowed. That's not allowed.
• 1:36:43
  Speaker 1: But then they can't go on social media to say it.
• 1:36:46
  Speaker 2: It's very true. But you know what you end up
• 1:36:47
  Speaker 2: getting is you end up getting like phone calls and
• 1:36:50
  Speaker 2: emails and you, you get people that are- Private communications.
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 2: People are, these are, they're not afraid of conflict. Like,
• 1:36:56
  Speaker 2: think about it. Imagine being actively detested by a group
• 1:36:59
  Speaker 2: of people whose job is to go, you know, commit
• 1:37:04
  Speaker 2: to go to war. And so I was living in
• 1:37:06
  Speaker 2: Virginia Beach and I was aware that there was a
• 1:37:08
  Speaker 2: growing feeling of disdain towards me. And I noticed it
• 1:37:12
  Speaker 2: because guys I served with in Afghanistan were sending me
• 1:37:15
  Speaker 2: messages to be like, bro, I do not agree with
• 1:37:17
  Speaker 2: what you're doing online. Like, it's a fucking embarrassment. Go
• 1:37:20
  Speaker 2: fuck yourself. And truthfully, I was, I felt like I
• 1:37:24
  Speaker 2: was conducting myself in a way that was not sell out,
• 1:37:28
  Speaker 2: so to speak. But now, looking back at it, I
• 1:37:31
  Speaker 2: was totally being like, hey, I'm a Navy SEAL. Follow
• 1:37:34
  Speaker 2: me on the internet. No matter how I dressed it up,
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 2: that's effectively what it was. And if I was active duty,
• 1:37:40
  Speaker 2: and I saw me doing the things I was doing,
• 1:37:43
  Speaker 2: I would have a similar opinion. Like, who the fuck
• 1:37:45
  Speaker 2: is this dude? You did one tour to Afghanistan, and
• 1:37:48
  Speaker 2: now you're going to represent the SEAL teams? Meanwhile... all
• 1:37:51
  Speaker 2: the guys inside the teams, they know, in virtue of
• 1:37:54
  Speaker 2: my limited experience, that I am fully aware there are
• 1:37:58
  Speaker 2: dudes in the teams who are active, who've done 15
• 1:38:02
  Speaker 2: combat tours... Yeah. that will never say a word.
• 1:38:05
  Speaker 1: Got it.
• 1:38:06
  Speaker 2: And I know they exist, but by going out in
• 1:38:08
  Speaker 2: public and talking about my experience, I'm sort of allowing
• 1:38:11
  Speaker 2: the public to sort of, wow, like, this guy, he's
• 1:38:14
  Speaker 2: the top of the top, wow. But the guys in
• 1:38:17
  Speaker 2: the community are like, you know what you're doing. You're
• 1:38:18
  Speaker 2: allowing civilians to view you in a really high way.
• 1:38:23
  Speaker 2: And so it got to a point where I did grow,
• 1:38:26
  Speaker 2: I mean, a modest following. I think there was like
• 1:38:29
  Speaker 2: 50,000 people total that followed my content about seals um
• 1:38:35
  Speaker 2: and it was devastatingly painful it was not worth any
• 1:38:38
  Speaker 2: of it because i'd open up my dms and it's
• 1:38:41
  Speaker 2: like just a list of people that they want me
• 1:38:45
  Speaker 2: to know who they are this is not anonymous this
• 1:38:47
  Speaker 2: is like This is my name, here's my phone number,
• 1:38:50
  Speaker 2: here's my email, here's where I live, and here's how
• 1:38:52
  Speaker 2: I fucking feel about you. And it was like deep cutting.
• 1:38:56
  Speaker 2: And it was like every little thing I said on
• 1:38:57
  Speaker 2: the internet, it would be, they would examine it. And
• 1:39:00
  Speaker 2: they would say, here, you said this about this particular
• 1:39:03
  Speaker 2: incident in Afghanistan, here's what really happened. And it would be,
• 1:39:05
  Speaker 2: you know, some absolutely fine nuanced issue that technically I'm wrong.
• 1:39:10
  Speaker 2: But the whole point is, you're fucked up for doing this.
• 1:39:14
  Speaker 2: And it was devastating. And I didn't... Mr. Ballin didn't exist.
• 1:39:18
  Speaker 2: I don't have the, oh, I'll just go tell scary stories.
• 1:39:20
  Speaker 2: Everything will be fine. I don't really have anything. I
• 1:39:22
  Speaker 2: don't really have a meaningful career. I'm sort of starting
• 1:39:25
  Speaker 2: social media, if you will. And I made the decision
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 2: to just delete it all. I was like, this is
• 1:39:31
  Speaker 2: simply not, and it wasn't now I'll get my friends back. Gone.
• 1:39:36
  Speaker 2: Bridges are burned. You know, it's not, it's not going
• 1:39:38
  Speaker 2: to be damage control. It's protect my mental health, really.
• 1:39:44
  Speaker 2: And so I delete everything and I didn't reach out.
• 1:39:47
  Speaker 2: I never tried to get mad at anybody. I, for
• 1:39:50
  Speaker 2: the most part, just accepted that people felt a type
• 1:39:52
  Speaker 2: of way about me. And then in my now, what
• 1:39:56
  Speaker 2: do I do? Not just, oh God, what content do
• 1:39:58
  Speaker 2: I make? No, more broadly, what do I do with
• 1:40:01
  Speaker 2: my life now? I did experiment a little bit with
• 1:40:05
  Speaker 2: social media, not seal stuff at all. Didn't go anywhere.
• 1:40:09
  Speaker 2: Very cringy, just like stupid shit. No one was paying
• 1:40:11
  Speaker 2: attention to it. I was still sort of doing consulting
• 1:40:15
  Speaker 2: and doing some charity work, but I didn't really have
• 1:40:17
  Speaker 2: a purpose. And then it was just... I've always been
• 1:40:21
  Speaker 2: a huge fan of strange, dark, and mysterious true stories.
• 1:40:25
  Speaker 2: Just personally, I love mysteries. Not like murder mysteries. I'm
• 1:40:30
  Speaker 2: talking like world mysteries, like crazy stuff, like people going
• 1:40:33
  Speaker 2: missing in the woods and crazy evidence found about them,
• 1:40:36
  Speaker 2: stuff like that. And... There's this one story that always
• 1:40:39
  Speaker 2: fascinated me about these hikers that go off into the
• 1:40:42
  Speaker 2: Russian mountains in the 50s and they vanish.
• 1:40:45
  Speaker 1: Tell me a quick version of the story.
• 1:40:46
  Speaker 2: So these nine hikers.
• 1:40:48
  Speaker 1: This is your breakout?
• 1:40:49
  Speaker 2: This is the breakout, yeah.
• 1:40:51
  Speaker 1: So in 1959.
• 1:40:51
  Speaker 2: This is something.
• 1:40:52
  Speaker 1: You're already aware of or you find out about?
• 1:40:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, no.
• 1:40:54
  Speaker 1: This is a story you already liked.
• 1:40:56
  Speaker 2: I love this story. I thought it was fascinating. And
• 1:40:58
  Speaker 2: I had been, again, doing stuff with social media. But
• 1:41:02
  Speaker 2: at this point, I don't view it as the thing
• 1:41:04
  Speaker 2: I'm going to be doing. You know, the seal stuff.
• 1:41:07
  Speaker 2: I'm never doing that again. It's been, it's gone from
• 1:41:09
  Speaker 2: the internet. So I don't have a presence at all.
• 1:41:12
  Speaker 2: And I was like, you know, I'll just, I'll try
• 1:41:15
  Speaker 2: telling this story because I think it's really cool. Like
• 1:41:17
  Speaker 2: I personally love scary, real stories. So these, these nine hikers,
• 1:41:22
  Speaker 2: they're the most experienced hikers in Russia in 1959. And
• 1:41:26
  Speaker 2: they were going out to do what's called their level
• 1:41:28
  Speaker 2: three hiking test, which is like the, the top mountaineering test.
• 1:41:31
  Speaker 2: certification you could do in Russia at the time. So
• 1:41:34
  Speaker 2: if you pass this test, you are like the top
• 1:41:36
  Speaker 2: mountaineer in the land. And the way it works is
• 1:41:39
  Speaker 2: it's sort of like when you get your PhD, you
• 1:41:41
  Speaker 2: do your own research, you sort of present your own stuff.
• 1:41:44
  Speaker 2: You build new information into the zeitgeist. Well, with this,
• 1:41:47
  Speaker 2: it's so this, this, this test is so advanced. You
• 1:41:51
  Speaker 2: plan the route and you show with how, how hard
• 1:41:54
  Speaker 2: it is to do this route, that if you can
• 1:41:55
  Speaker 2: complete this, you are a level three hiker. And so
• 1:41:58
  Speaker 2: you map it out and you give it to whoever's
• 1:42:00
  Speaker 2: administering the test. I think it's a university. And then
• 1:42:02
  Speaker 2: you go out and you do it. And if you
• 1:42:04
  Speaker 2: successfully navigate the route you've given, then you're a level
• 1:42:06
  Speaker 2: three hiker. And so these hikers, they go out and
• 1:42:10
  Speaker 2: they've given their route to the university and they have
• 1:42:13
  Speaker 2: these rendezvous points and how long it's gonna take them.
• 1:42:17
  Speaker 2: And they set out and they bring cameras along. And
• 1:42:20
  Speaker 2: these are like nine young, fit, like happy, just like
• 1:42:24
  Speaker 2: beautiful young people. A lot of them are dating each
• 1:42:26
  Speaker 2: other and they're like taking selfies. It's 1959. It's almost odd,
• 1:42:30
  Speaker 2: the pictures they're taking, because they seem so current. How
• 1:42:33
  Speaker 2: many miles are they hiking? We can look it up,
• 1:42:36
  Speaker 2: but it's a decent distance. This is going to take
• 1:42:38
  Speaker 2: weeks to hike through the Ural Mountains.
• 1:42:39
  Speaker 1: Oh, so a big old hike.
• 1:42:40
  Speaker 2: This is a big hike. This is a multi-week long hike.
• 1:42:42
  Speaker 1: Not running up a peak or something.
• 1:42:43
  Speaker 2: No, this is serious.
• 1:42:44
  Speaker 1: Like an excursion, like an expedition. I got you.
• 1:42:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And so off into the mountains they go. And
• 1:42:50
  Speaker 2: the Ural Mountains are these huge windswept, just like snow
• 1:42:54
  Speaker 2: and ice. There's little pockets of forest down below, but
• 1:42:57
  Speaker 2: it's mostly like just jagged ice, just peaks everywhere. And
• 1:43:01
  Speaker 2: so into the mountains they go. And then they don't
• 1:43:04
  Speaker 2: turn up for their, they don't finish the route on time.
• 1:43:07
  Speaker 2: I don't know if they hit one or two of
• 1:43:08
  Speaker 2: their rendezvous points, but I think it was February 12th
• 1:43:12
  Speaker 2: of 1959. They were supposed to be out of there
• 1:43:14
  Speaker 2: and they weren't. And remember, the people that are overseeing
• 1:43:18
  Speaker 2: this test, they're talking about, these are like the best mountaineers.
• 1:43:22
  Speaker 2: And so if they're delayed, no one's like, oh my God,
• 1:43:24
  Speaker 2: we need to go get them. It's more like, all right,
• 1:43:27
  Speaker 2: something happened, they'll be out of here. So a little
• 1:43:28
  Speaker 2: bit of time passes and they're waiting to hear from
• 1:43:32
  Speaker 2: them and they still don't come out of the mountains.
• 1:43:35
  Speaker 2: So a month goes by and they haven't turned up
• 1:43:38
  Speaker 2: and the families of these nine hikers are really, they're concerned.
• 1:43:41
  Speaker 2: and they're getting in touch with the university and police,
• 1:43:43
  Speaker 2: and finally they launch this pretty lame search for the hikers.
• 1:43:48
  Speaker 2: It's just like students and teachers, and a few police
• 1:43:50
  Speaker 2: I think went out as well. And they hike their
• 1:43:53
  Speaker 2: way up to this huge mountain face. They're down in
• 1:43:57
  Speaker 2: this valley looking up at this mountain face, and it's
• 1:44:00
  Speaker 2: all snow and ice, and they see there's this one
• 1:44:02
  Speaker 2: canvas tent that's just conspicuously located on the side of
• 1:44:06
  Speaker 2: this mountain, like in a really strategically nasty spot to
• 1:44:09
  Speaker 2: put your tent. It's very sloped, it's windswept, like it's
• 1:44:13
  Speaker 2: an awful place to be camping out. They don't see
• 1:44:15
  Speaker 2: any people and they walk up and they find the
• 1:44:18
  Speaker 2: tent is vacant. And the hikers are gone and the
• 1:44:22
  Speaker 2: tent is, it's collapsed, there's some snow on top of it,
• 1:44:24
  Speaker 2: but they open it up and inside is a lot
• 1:44:26
  Speaker 2: of the equipment that the hikers had left behind. You know,
• 1:44:30
  Speaker 2: cold weather equipment is in there. And, um, also they
• 1:44:33
  Speaker 2: noticed that the tent on one of the sides of
• 1:44:35
  Speaker 2: the tent, it had been cut open and they were
• 1:44:37
  Speaker 2: able to determine it had been cut open from the
• 1:44:40
  Speaker 2: inside out. So someone had cut the tent open from inside. They,
• 1:44:44
  Speaker 2: at this point, the search got much bigger, because now
• 1:44:47
  Speaker 2: they're like, something obviously has happened. It's like negative 40
• 1:44:50
  Speaker 2: degrees out here. They've been missing for a month. Here's
• 1:44:52
  Speaker 2: their abandoned campsite. Something's off here. A bigger search goes
• 1:44:55
  Speaker 2: out there, and they end up picking up footprints that
• 1:44:58
  Speaker 2: were near the campsite, that are going down the mountain,
• 1:45:01
  Speaker 2: sort of on the far side of the mountain. And
• 1:45:03
  Speaker 2: the footprints are, some are two boots, some are one
• 1:45:06
  Speaker 2: boot and a barefoot, some are two bare feet. and
• 1:45:08
  Speaker 2: they're making their way down the mountain, they find at
• 1:45:10
  Speaker 2: least eight sets of prints. And the cadence of the
• 1:45:14
  Speaker 2: steps was walking pace. So they're not running. So they're
• 1:45:18
  Speaker 2: starting to put together this mental picture of like, okay,
• 1:45:20
  Speaker 2: wait a minute.
• 1:45:21
  Speaker 1: So these hikers- All the tracks are the same vintage?
• 1:45:24
  Speaker 2: What do you mean?
• 1:45:25
  Speaker 1: Like they feel they're all sets of tracks or travel
• 1:45:28
  Speaker 1: at the same time?
• 1:45:28
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 1:45:29
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 1:45:29
  Speaker 2: All the same time. And so they're like, all right.
• 1:45:31
  Speaker 2: So they cut the tent open. left their stuff behind,
• 1:45:35
  Speaker 2: exited the tent with one boot on, no boots on,
• 1:45:38
  Speaker 2: in negative 40 degrees, and they're walking, not running, walking
• 1:45:42
  Speaker 2: down the side of the mountain.
• 1:45:43
  Speaker 1: And they don't know.
• 1:45:43
  Speaker 2: That's all they've seen so far. They follow the tracks down.
• 1:45:46
  Speaker 2: And at the base of these, this mountain, it brings
• 1:45:49
  Speaker 2: them to this forest. And the prints sort of disappear
• 1:45:52
  Speaker 2: into the forest. They go in the forest and they
• 1:45:54
  Speaker 2: find three of the hikers. They're deceased. There's a big
• 1:45:57
  Speaker 2: cedar tree that is... It's in this clearing, and at
• 1:46:01
  Speaker 2: the base of the clearing is this burned out little fire,
• 1:46:03
  Speaker 2: like a puny fire. It wouldn't have been enough to
• 1:46:05
  Speaker 2: keep you warm. And one of the hikers, one of
• 1:46:07
  Speaker 2: the men, is curled around it like he was trying
• 1:46:09
  Speaker 2: to get warm, and he's got tattered clothing on, and
• 1:46:11
  Speaker 2: he's died of hypothermia. And then the tree, there was
• 1:46:15
  Speaker 2: signs that one of them or multiple of these hikers
• 1:46:19
  Speaker 2: had tried to climb the tree. There were broken branches
• 1:46:21
  Speaker 2: pretty high up. And there was human tissue pretty high
• 1:46:23
  Speaker 2: up in the tree, but no one's in the tree.
• 1:46:26
  Speaker 2: And the other two hikers are found. nearby in similar
• 1:46:29
  Speaker 2: states of decomposition. They're down, they died of hypothermia. And
• 1:46:34
  Speaker 2: their clothes are pretty ragged, but like they've hiked down
• 1:46:36
  Speaker 2: here and they've died. So, three of the nine hikers
• 1:46:38
  Speaker 2: have been found. They also find that one of the hikers,
• 1:46:40
  Speaker 2: I think it was the one who was near the fire,
• 1:46:42
  Speaker 2: actually had flesh from his hand that was in his mouth.
• 1:46:45
  Speaker 2: As if he was eating his hand. And actually, I
• 1:46:47
  Speaker 2: don't know if it was his hand, but it was
• 1:46:48
  Speaker 2: definitely his flesh. So, they look and they can't find
• 1:46:51
  Speaker 2: the rest of the... Oh, I'm sorry, they find two
• 1:46:54
  Speaker 2: other hikers nearby. So, five have been found, four are missing. So, five,
• 1:46:58
  Speaker 2: sort of scattered around in this forest, starting with this tree.
• 1:47:01
  Speaker 2: Unclear what happened to them, all died of exposure. And
• 1:47:04
  Speaker 2: they are indeed missing boots and missing their equipment. So
• 1:47:06
  Speaker 2: it's like, okay, I don't know what brought them down here,
• 1:47:08
  Speaker 2: but they died of exposure. Thus, they found it was
• 1:47:12
  Speaker 2: too hard to look for the remaining four because the
• 1:47:14
  Speaker 2: weather was quite bad. It's the winter. And so they
• 1:47:17
  Speaker 2: waited until May because at this point, the search party's like,
• 1:47:19
  Speaker 2: probably the other four are dead. There's no way, you know,
• 1:47:22
  Speaker 2: they're alive. And so, sure enough, in May, so a
• 1:47:25
  Speaker 2: couple months later, they go back out there to look
• 1:47:27
  Speaker 2: when the snow's melted a bit, and they find this
• 1:47:29
  Speaker 2: collapsed snow cave that they hadn't seen in February. And
• 1:47:33
  Speaker 2: they find the other four hikers that are in this
• 1:47:36
  Speaker 2: collapsed snow cave.
• 1:47:37
  Speaker 1: They're dead.
• 1:47:38
  Speaker 2: But their injuries are catastrophic. One man, he had a
• 1:47:43
  Speaker 2: crush injury that was consistent with being struck by a
• 1:47:46
  Speaker 2: speeding train or a speeding car. but he had little
• 1:47:49
  Speaker 2: to no lacerations or bruising on his chest. Like, his
• 1:47:52
  Speaker 2: chest was caved in, but missing was, like, the mechanism
• 1:47:56
  Speaker 2: by which this happened. Um, the woman... Oh, there was
• 1:48:01
  Speaker 2: a man who was missing his eyeballs. Could have been predation, though. So,
• 1:48:04
  Speaker 2: at first, they're like, okay. And then the woman, she was...
• 1:48:08
  Speaker 2: Her lips were missing, and they looked like they had
• 1:48:09
  Speaker 2: been surgically removed. and her eyelids and her eyeballs were
• 1:48:13
  Speaker 2: also missing. But again, they sort of chalked it up
• 1:48:15
  Speaker 2: to this is potentially predation. But it was noted that
• 1:48:19
  Speaker 2: the lines of the lips being gone were fairly neat,
• 1:48:23
  Speaker 2: almost like what you see with cattle mutilations.
• 1:48:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, this has got cattle mutilation vibes to it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:48:28
  Speaker 2: The woman had on men's clothing, or some men's clothing,
• 1:48:32
  Speaker 2: and the men had some of the women's clothing on.
• 1:48:34
  Speaker 2: No one was dressed appropriately, and there were trace levels
• 1:48:37
  Speaker 2: of radiation that but trace levels of radiation on the clothing.
• 1:48:41
  Speaker 2: They're all dead. And so, all nine hikers are now
• 1:48:43
  Speaker 2: accounted for. The best mountaineers in the land have all
• 1:48:46
  Speaker 2: died under this totally bizarre condition. And the families were outraged,
• 1:48:51
  Speaker 2: you know, because it just seemed like, okay, well, you
• 1:48:54
  Speaker 2: have to get to the bottom of this. Like, something
• 1:48:55
  Speaker 2: obviously happened out there. And so, the government, they did
• 1:48:59
  Speaker 2: launch a, initially, pretty hardy investigation. By this point, it
• 1:49:04
  Speaker 2: was sort of a known drama unfolding in Russia. People
• 1:49:06
  Speaker 2: were aware of this story. But then Russia quickly shut
• 1:49:11
  Speaker 2: the investigation down and said, okay, we're done investigating it.
• 1:49:14
  Speaker 2: They said, we figured out what happened. They said an unknown, no,
• 1:49:18
  Speaker 2: I'm sorry. They said a compelling force was what was
• 1:49:22
  Speaker 2: responsible for their deaths.
• 1:49:24
  Speaker 1: And then they- The ones in the snow cave.
• 1:49:26
  Speaker 2: All of them. All of them, their deaths were because
• 1:49:30
  Speaker 2: of a compelling or either compelling or overwhelming force. And
• 1:49:34
  Speaker 2: there was no further explanation.
• 1:49:35
  Speaker 1: What the hell does that mean though?
• 1:49:37
  Speaker 2: No one knew. And the case was- They don't mean like,
• 1:49:40
  Speaker 2: they don't mean exposure. No, they didn't say they died
• 1:49:44
  Speaker 2: from exposure. They said they died from a compelling.
• 1:49:46
  Speaker 1: Or overwhelming force. But would exposure be bucketed under compelling
• 1:49:48
  Speaker 1: force or not? You know what I'm saying?
• 1:49:50
  Speaker 2: Like- I don't know. I mean, the thing is, is
• 1:49:52
  Speaker 2: you got to figure that by now, I'm sure there's
• 1:49:55
  Speaker 2: some issue with translation, you know, but the reason the
• 1:49:58
  Speaker 2: story took on a life of its own is because
• 1:50:01
  Speaker 2: the case itself at the time was made confidential.
• 1:50:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:50:05
  Speaker 2: And so, years later, this is actually the reason I
• 1:50:08
  Speaker 2: told it at the time, this is in 2020, I
• 1:50:10
  Speaker 2: told that story, the pictures were redacted. Some of the
• 1:50:14
  Speaker 2: pictures were redacted and you can go for yourself and
• 1:50:16
  Speaker 2: see pictures from not just the ones the hikers took
• 1:50:20
  Speaker 2: before whatever happened to them happened and they're very eerie.
• 1:50:23
  Speaker 2: I mean, like I said, there's selfies, everyone's so happy,
• 1:50:25
  Speaker 2: this is so great. This is like a, you know,
• 1:50:27
  Speaker 2: a formality doing this test. Even though it was hard,
• 1:50:30
  Speaker 2: they knew what they were doing. They were going to
• 1:50:31
  Speaker 2: ace this test. And there's like a couple pictures taken
• 1:50:34
  Speaker 2: at the tent, the one that they would ultimately find,
• 1:50:36
  Speaker 2: and everyone's fine, they're getting ready for bed. And then
• 1:50:39
  Speaker 2: something happens. And then the next pictures you see are
• 1:50:42
  Speaker 2: of their bodies being found, and they're like in various
• 1:50:44
  Speaker 2: stages of decompos... It's eerie. And then on top of that,
• 1:50:48
  Speaker 2: there was multiple reports from military and civilians in Russia
• 1:50:53
  Speaker 2: that reported seeing what they called fireballs over the Ural Mountains.
• 1:50:57
  Speaker 2: Hard to say what these were, if they really coincided
• 1:51:00
  Speaker 2: with where these hikers were in the mountains. The Ural
• 1:51:02
  Speaker 2: Mountains are huge. But there were numerous independent reports of
• 1:51:06
  Speaker 2: around the same timeframe that those hikers were out there,
• 1:51:09
  Speaker 2: there were fireballs shooting up and down, up into the sky,
• 1:51:13
  Speaker 2: including a senior military official said as much. But it
• 1:51:16
  Speaker 2: was never, no one figured out what it was. And
• 1:51:18
  Speaker 2: so it's just this big mystery. Years later, I would
• 1:51:22
  Speaker 2: tell a 60-second version of that story. I think that's
• 1:51:25
  Speaker 2: really fascinating. And the way I told it, it was
• 1:51:27
  Speaker 2: on TikTok when TikTok had really just begun its thing.
• 1:51:31
  Speaker 2: And I also thought it was safe to post on
• 1:51:33
  Speaker 2: TikTok because no seals are gonna be on TikTok. Like,
• 1:51:36
  Speaker 2: I can do the new thing over there and no
• 1:51:38
  Speaker 2: one's gonna be mad at me. And I told the
• 1:51:40
  Speaker 2: story and I said, at the end of this story,
• 1:51:42
  Speaker 2: you're gonna Google two words. And the words are Dyatlov
• 1:51:45
  Speaker 2: Pass because that's the name of this mystery. If you
• 1:51:48
  Speaker 2: Google it, you can see pictures. And then I tell
• 1:51:50
  Speaker 2: a quick version and I ended it on, you should
• 1:51:53
  Speaker 2: Google Dyatlov Pass. It's fascinating. And I was at this
• 1:51:56
  Speaker 2: water park in Pennsylvania in 2020 with my family, Great
• 1:51:59
  Speaker 2: Wolf Lodge, this indoor water park.
• 1:52:01
  Speaker 1: Love them.
• 1:52:02
  Speaker 2: Huge water park family. And I tell it, and then
• 1:52:06
  Speaker 2: I left my phone in the room because I'm going
• 1:52:07
  Speaker 2: down the water park with my wife and kids, and
• 1:52:09
  Speaker 2: I don't want my phone wet. I'm never away from
• 1:52:12
  Speaker 2: my phone, but I left my phone in the room.
• 1:52:14
  Speaker 2: And I came back a couple hours later, and there
• 1:52:16
  Speaker 2: was over 5 million views on that video. And I've
• 1:52:19
  Speaker 2: never gotten any attention on the internet ever, besides negative attention, really. Um,
• 1:52:23
  Speaker 2: and I was like, wow, this is something that's divorced
• 1:52:26
  Speaker 2: from being a seal. I'm fascinated by it. I love
• 1:52:29
  Speaker 2: telling stories. And, uh, I wasn't like, boy, here's a career,
• 1:52:33
  Speaker 2: but it was like, oh, here's a spark. I don't
• 1:52:34
  Speaker 2: know what this is. Like I'll tell more stories. I
• 1:52:36
  Speaker 2: love telling stories. And, and TikTok wasn't even monetized really
• 1:52:39
  Speaker 2: at the time at all. It was just like, cool.
• 1:52:41
  Speaker 2: Someone's paying attention. And so I went into a flurry
• 1:52:44
  Speaker 2: of just telling every story I could find about missing
• 1:52:48
  Speaker 2: lighthouse keepers and aliens and all this stuff I could find.
• 1:52:52
  Speaker 1: Are you doing original research and chasing things back to
• 1:52:54
  Speaker 1: sort of like primary source? Are you just kind of
• 1:52:57
  Speaker 1: reading people's work and delivering stories?
• 1:53:00
  Speaker 2: So the way that I've done it is definitely of
• 1:53:02
  Speaker 2: the latter variety where I'm not pretending that I've discovered
• 1:53:06
  Speaker 2: these stories. Oh boy, look what I found out. It's
• 1:53:08
  Speaker 2: more like I'm gonna tell you a story that you
• 1:53:11
  Speaker 2: might have heard of, but you've not heard of it
• 1:53:12
  Speaker 2: the way I'm gonna tell it.
• 1:53:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, got it.
• 1:53:14
  Speaker 2: And the way I typically tell stories is I am
• 1:53:18
  Speaker 2: really good at holding information until the end, so there's
• 1:53:22
  Speaker 2: always something to wait for, a plot twist or a reveal.
• 1:53:25
  Speaker 2: Not to the point where it's like, come on, bro,
• 1:53:27
  Speaker 2: we know the thing that you've hid, the obscurity thing
• 1:53:30
  Speaker 2: that you did, we know what it is. It's like,
• 1:53:32
  Speaker 2: I told a story, um... Well, as an example, there
• 1:53:36
  Speaker 2: was this couple in Utah in the 70s. They're out
• 1:53:38
  Speaker 2: on their first date. It's not going well. They're at
• 1:53:41
  Speaker 2: a diner. There's no chemistry. They both know it's not
• 1:53:43
  Speaker 2: going well. And they know at the end of this,
• 1:53:45
  Speaker 2: you know, diner date, they're just going to go home
• 1:53:47
  Speaker 2: and probably never see each other again. And so the guy,
• 1:53:50
  Speaker 2: who's not normally a particularly adventurous guy, he says to
• 1:53:54
  Speaker 2: the girl at the end, he's like, hey, you want
• 1:53:56
  Speaker 2: to like just ditch this thing and go for a
• 1:53:58
  Speaker 2: hike with me right now? Like it's nighttime, you know?
• 1:54:01
  Speaker 2: And she would later say she was so caught off
• 1:54:04
  Speaker 2: guard by it. And he seems so like he knew
• 1:54:06
  Speaker 2: it was an awkward request. It was almost like they
• 1:54:08
  Speaker 2: both recognized this date ain't shit. This isn't going anywhere.
• 1:54:11
  Speaker 2: We got nothing to lose. And she's like, you know what? Yeah,
• 1:54:13
  Speaker 2: let's do it. Let's go on a hike together in
• 1:54:15
  Speaker 2: the middle of the night, whatever.
• 1:54:16
  Speaker 1: Let's go.
• 1:54:17
  Speaker 2: And so suddenly the date is really exciting. It went from,
• 1:54:19
  Speaker 2: this is going to be nothing to like, great. Oh
• 1:54:21
  Speaker 2: my God. Their chemistry is picking up. They go outside,
• 1:54:23
  Speaker 2: they hop in the car, they drive over to this,
• 1:54:25
  Speaker 2: this canyon and where this guy apparently went hiking all
• 1:54:28
  Speaker 2: the time, and he reassured her, like, it's a known trail,
• 1:54:31
  Speaker 2: we'll just go up this overlook, it's a beautiful sight,
• 1:54:34
  Speaker 2: the moon's out, we'll come back, and that'll be it. So, like,
• 1:54:36
  Speaker 2: now it's exciting, the state's going great. And so they
• 1:54:39
  Speaker 2: start hiking into the woods, you know, it's dark out,
• 1:54:41
  Speaker 2: but decent illumination, and as they're walking, they're holding hands,
• 1:54:45
  Speaker 2: there's nobody out, and they both would later say that
• 1:54:49
  Speaker 2: for some reason, as they're walking, it just started feeling
• 1:54:52
  Speaker 2: like something was wrong. something off they couldn't place it
• 1:54:56
  Speaker 2: but they don't know each other they don't have the
• 1:54:58
  Speaker 2: ability to be like hey like what do you feel
• 1:54:59
  Speaker 2: something weird here it was like they don't have they
• 1:55:02
  Speaker 2: don't have a history with each other so they both
• 1:55:04
  Speaker 2: quietly are are feeling like this sense of dread come
• 1:55:07
  Speaker 2: over them as they walk deeper and deeper into this
• 1:55:09
  Speaker 2: forest which again it's a marked trail but it's nighttime
• 1:55:12
  Speaker 2: who's going hiking in the canyon at night and so
• 1:55:14
  Speaker 2: deeper and deeper into the woods they get and they
• 1:55:17
  Speaker 2: both at some point are like speed walking because they
• 1:55:19
  Speaker 2: had to go to a a turnaround point that was
• 1:55:21
  Speaker 2: going to be, that's where we're going to go. We're
• 1:55:23
  Speaker 2: going to look out over the canyon. Then we're going
• 1:55:24
  Speaker 2: to turn and come back. And so as their dread
• 1:55:27
  Speaker 2: is building, they're like naturally speeding up. Like, let's just
• 1:55:29
  Speaker 2: get there, turn around, come back. They stopped talking to
• 1:55:31
  Speaker 2: each other. It's no longer fun. They're just silently maneuvering
• 1:55:34
  Speaker 2: into the woods. And at some point, the guy, he
• 1:55:37
  Speaker 2: steps on something that he, he remembers thinking it felt
• 1:55:41
  Speaker 2: soft and he's looking straight ahead. He's not looking down.
• 1:55:43
  Speaker 2: He steps on something soft and he stops and he's
• 1:55:46
  Speaker 2: holding the girl's hand and she feels him stop. And
• 1:55:48
  Speaker 2: she stops too. She doesn't step on anything. And the
• 1:55:50
  Speaker 2: two of them, without saying anything, without investigating, without doing anything,
• 1:55:56
  Speaker 2: they just instantly, they have not reached the turnaround. They
• 1:55:58
  Speaker 2: turn and they leave the canyon. Boom, they leave the canyon, right?
• 1:56:02
  Speaker 2: And by the time they get out of the canyon,
• 1:56:04
  Speaker 2: like they didn't really even talk about what happened. They're
• 1:56:06
  Speaker 2: both like so relieved to be out of the canyon. Like,
• 1:56:08
  Speaker 2: oh my God, that was kind of scary out there. Like,
• 1:56:09
  Speaker 2: oh man, I don't know if I want to do
• 1:56:11
  Speaker 2: that again. Ha ha ha. So they end up leaving.
• 1:56:14
  Speaker 2: And this experience, even though they have no idea what
• 1:56:16
  Speaker 2: that was, it meant really not much to them. It
• 1:56:18
  Speaker 2: was like they spooked themselves. That's what they thought it was.
• 1:56:20
  Speaker 2: It ended up bonding them. And they got married. This
• 1:56:23
  Speaker 2: couple ends up getting married because of this weird first
• 1:56:26
  Speaker 2: date that, like, sort of went badly and good at
• 1:56:28
  Speaker 2: the same time.
• 1:56:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:56:29
  Speaker 2: Years later, they're at home and the TV's on. And
• 1:56:33
  Speaker 2: one of them, the husband or the wife, is in
• 1:56:34
  Speaker 2: the kitchen, the other is watching the TV. And there's
• 1:56:38
  Speaker 2: a reporter who's on the TV and they're talking about
• 1:56:40
  Speaker 2: this interview they've just conducted with this death row inmate. And, like,
• 1:56:44
  Speaker 2: apparently this inmate had given their tell-all before they are
• 1:56:48
  Speaker 2: gonna get executed. And they... they cut to the interview
• 1:56:52
  Speaker 2: with this person. And it's the journalist and the death
• 1:56:55
  Speaker 2: row inmate. And the journalist says something to the effect of,
• 1:56:58
  Speaker 2: was there ever a time before you got caught that
• 1:57:02
  Speaker 2: you almost got caught? Like, was there ever a time
• 1:57:05
  Speaker 2: it almost happened before the jig really was up? And
• 1:57:08
  Speaker 2: this death row inmate's like, actually, yeah. I was out
• 1:57:12
  Speaker 2: in Provo Canyon one night in the night, 1970, whatever
• 1:57:14
  Speaker 2: it was, and I had just killed this girl. And
• 1:57:17
  Speaker 2: I was dragging her across the road to hide her
• 1:57:19
  Speaker 2: off the side of the trail. And this couple out
• 1:57:22
  Speaker 2: of nowhere comes bombing around the corner and the guy stepped.
• 1:57:27
  Speaker 1: On the body.
• 1:57:28
  Speaker 2: And I thought I'd have to kill him. But for
• 1:57:30
  Speaker 2: some reason, they just turned around and they left. That
• 1:57:33
  Speaker 2: was the only time. It turned out that the couple
• 1:57:36
  Speaker 2: had accidentally walked into Ted Bundy, the most infamous serial
• 1:57:40
  Speaker 2: killer of all time. There you go.
• 1:57:42
  Speaker 1: We had this series we were doing called Close Calls.
• 1:57:46
  Speaker 2: Oh, nice.
• 1:57:46
  Speaker 1: There's a story about, we interview a game warden at
• 1:57:50
  Speaker 1: length who was working a serial poacher case um never
• 1:57:57
  Speaker 1: got anywhere on it but one night he trailed him
• 1:57:59
  Speaker 1: for a long time following his truck and lost him
• 1:58:05
  Speaker 1: um he got out to look at a mud puddle
• 1:58:09
  Speaker 1: and determine that his truck hadn't gone through the mud
• 1:58:11
  Speaker 1: puddle because the mud wasn't stirred up the way he
• 1:58:13
  Speaker 1: thought it would be so he goes off in a
• 1:58:15
  Speaker 1: different direction oh boy but he got out and examined
• 1:58:18
  Speaker 1: the mud puddle and he's like no he didn't go
• 1:58:20
  Speaker 1: this way and takes off later there's a guy um
• 1:58:28
  Speaker 1: I can't remember what event she got caught for, but
• 1:58:29
  Speaker 1: there was a guy in for something much more serious
• 1:58:31
  Speaker 1: than serial poaching. And he's telling a guy a story.
• 1:58:38
  Speaker 1: He's telling a story. One night, you know, I was
• 1:58:41
  Speaker 1: being trailed by a game warden. And I drove through
• 1:58:44
  Speaker 1: a big puddle, parked my truck behind a juniper, and
• 1:58:48
  Speaker 1: got out with my rifle. And I was going to
• 1:58:50
  Speaker 1: hose him with my rifle the minute he crossed in
• 1:58:53
  Speaker 1: front of me. And he goes, and that lucky son
• 1:58:55
  Speaker 1: of a bitch got out, stared into that mud puddle,
• 1:58:57
  Speaker 1: and drove.
• 1:58:58
  Speaker 2: Off a different direction.
• 1:58:59
  Speaker 1: Oh, my God. And then this guy went and met
• 1:59:01
  Speaker 1: with him, you know, and talked. So, yeah, like, very
• 1:59:03
  Speaker 1: similar story where this guy realized he was, like, later.
• 1:59:07
  Speaker 1: This game weren't realized.
• 1:59:09
  Speaker 2: Dang. Stories like that are crazy.
• 1:59:10
  Speaker 1: No, it's wild, man. So, how many do you have now? Like,
• 1:59:14
  Speaker 1: how many stories do you have? I mean, I know
• 1:59:15
  Speaker 1: you got, like, millions of. People tune into your stories.
• 1:59:19
  Speaker 2: We've, uh, I mean, so the way we structure the
• 1:59:22
  Speaker 2: stories a lot of times are like per episode on YouTube,
• 1:59:25
  Speaker 2: there'll be like two or even three individual stories that
• 1:59:29
  Speaker 2: are within the episode. They're not connected. It's just individual stories.
• 1:59:33
  Speaker 2: And so if you look at each story individually, not
• 1:59:36
  Speaker 2: total of uploads, because our total uploads on YouTube is
• 1:59:39
  Speaker 2: like five or six hundred or something. We're probably north
• 1:59:42
  Speaker 2: of a thousand or twelve hundred stories. And in the
• 1:59:45
  Speaker 2: early days, it was just me Googling, finding stuff, writing
• 1:59:48
  Speaker 2: it and doing it. Now we have a team of people. Ironically,
• 1:59:52
  Speaker 2: my sister, she's brilliant. She's a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist.
• 1:59:57
  Speaker 2: She came over from the Boston Globe. She's my chief
• 1:59:59
  Speaker 2: creative officer. She heads the writing room up for me.
• 2:00:02
  Speaker 2: And my mom, who's also a professional writer who wrote
• 2:00:04
  Speaker 2: my college essay, she's written for me.
• 2:00:06
  Speaker 1: So she's writing for you again.
• 2:00:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah. But we have a great writer's room. A lot
• 2:00:10
  Speaker 2: of care has gone into figuring out how to find
• 2:00:13
  Speaker 2: people that can really write in my voice. And then
• 2:00:15
  Speaker 2: even though we have a great system of creating scripts. Invariably,
• 2:00:19
  Speaker 2: I think one of the things that I've just gotten
• 2:00:21
  Speaker 2: good at doing is we tell the story, but I
• 2:00:24
  Speaker 2: will often riff and sort of take the story as
• 2:00:27
  Speaker 2: it needs to go on days we film. But yeah,
• 2:00:29
  Speaker 2: a thousand plus stories easily. Yeah, it's crazy. It's so weird.
• 2:00:34
  Speaker 2: I mean, that one viral moment on TikTok.
• 2:00:37
  Speaker 1: What year was that?
• 2:00:38
  Speaker 2: That was in 2020.
• 2:00:39
  Speaker 1: What year did you get injured?
• 2:00:40
  Speaker 2: Well, I got injured in 2014. I finally was officially
• 2:00:44
  Speaker 2: discharged end of 2017. And so I'm a civilian again,
• 2:00:48
  Speaker 2: January 2018.
• 2:00:49
  Speaker 1: Okay, so you were cast about two years.
• 2:00:52
  Speaker 2: I was an outcast.
• 2:00:53
  Speaker 1: Then you found your Russian hikers.
• 2:00:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, dude. And you know, I'll say this about the
• 2:00:59
  Speaker 2: people that had the most negative things to say to
• 2:01:01
  Speaker 2: me from the teams. It took time, but I mean,
• 2:01:05
  Speaker 2: after I fully changed and was doing this new venture,
• 2:01:10
  Speaker 2: Two things. One, I've never once publicly bad-mouthed or in
• 2:01:16
  Speaker 2: any way insinuated that anything those guys did was wrong.
• 2:01:20
  Speaker 2: But rather, it was just really painful. And that in
• 2:01:22
  Speaker 2: many ways, I brought it on myself. I know the
• 2:01:24
  Speaker 2: culture of the teams. I was a SEAL. I know
• 2:01:26
  Speaker 2: how people view that stuff. So I think, like, the
• 2:01:29
  Speaker 2: fact that I wasn't making excuses and sort of said, okay,
• 2:01:33
  Speaker 2: this isn't working. I don't want to do this anymore.
• 2:01:34
  Speaker 2: And then I started doing something new that is, you know,
• 2:01:37
  Speaker 2: it's a new venture. It has nothing to do with
• 2:01:39
  Speaker 2: being a SEAL. Um, I think that that in many ways,
• 2:01:42
  Speaker 2: it didn't get me back in by any stretch, but
• 2:01:44
  Speaker 2: I think people respected and appreciated that. I saw what
• 2:01:48
  Speaker 2: I was doing, stopped it and did something new. And I've,
• 2:01:51
  Speaker 2: I've gotten loads of messages from people that are now
• 2:01:53
  Speaker 2: very supportive, which.
• 2:01:54
  Speaker 1: Is nice to see.
• 2:01:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. It's great to see.
• 2:01:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:01:56
  Speaker 2: It's not like, Hey, we're cool now. It's more like,
• 2:01:58
  Speaker 2: I respect that. I respect that you heard it and
• 2:02:00
  Speaker 2: you changed. That's cool.
• 2:02:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Tell me about the book you got there.
• 2:02:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So actually I brought this one for you. Uh,
• 2:02:06
  Speaker 2: this is our third book. Uh, it's called the terror within. Um,
• 2:02:11
  Speaker 2: it's a graphic novel. It's nine stories. Uh, each of
• 2:02:15
  Speaker 2: them can live on their own. Uh, it basically is
• 2:02:17
  Speaker 2: like a, you know, we do the strange, dark, and
• 2:02:19
  Speaker 2: mysterious as sort of our, our, our genre. And so
• 2:02:22
  Speaker 2: we've chosen stories that intentionally sort of touch on each
• 2:02:25
  Speaker 2: of those genres as we see them. Uh, it's beautifully illustrated.
• 2:02:28
  Speaker 2: You can pick it up and just grab one story
• 2:02:31
  Speaker 2: and just go for it. Um, but yeah, that's our
• 2:02:35
  Speaker 2: third one. So it's called The Terror Within. The theme,
• 2:02:37
  Speaker 2: the through line of this one is, uh, it's sort
• 2:02:41
  Speaker 2: of like you don't know who, you never know who's
• 2:02:43
  Speaker 2: walking down the street near you. Like you don't know
• 2:02:45
  Speaker 2: what people are really capable of, like the terror within
• 2:02:47
  Speaker 2: all of us. There was some crazy statistic, even though
• 2:02:50
  Speaker 2: this has really nothing to do with serial killers, but
• 2:02:53
  Speaker 2: right now, and this is going to be, someone's going
• 2:02:55
  Speaker 2: to fact check me and say I'm wrong, but the
• 2:02:57
  Speaker 2: gist is there. There's something like several thousand right now
• 2:03:01
  Speaker 2: in the United States, uncaught serial killers.
• 2:03:04
  Speaker 1: Sure, man.
• 2:03:05
  Speaker 2: And it's like, That could be your barber. That could
• 2:03:08
  Speaker 2: be the person at the grocery store with you. And
• 2:03:10
  Speaker 2: so this is sort of poking at this idea that
• 2:03:13
  Speaker 2: there could be darkness in people that you just don't
• 2:03:16
  Speaker 2: know about. So it's a great story. It comes out
• 2:03:18
  Speaker 2: October 6th, and you can pre-order it right now, Terror Within.
• 2:03:21
  Speaker 1: You'll find it on Amazon or whatever.
• 2:03:23
  Speaker 2: Yep, pretty much anywhere you get your books. And so
• 2:03:25
  Speaker 2: this is actually free. I'll sign it and give you
• 2:03:26
  Speaker 2: a whole merch box for you.
• 2:03:28
  Speaker 1: Oh, thank you.
• 2:03:28
  Speaker 2: I wear flannels in everything I do. And I got
• 2:03:34
  Speaker 2: you a sick flannel as well.
• 2:03:35
  Speaker 1: Oh, thank you.
• 2:03:36
  Speaker 2: Pass that along to you.
• 2:03:37
  Speaker 1: Let me hit you with a couple quick ones. Yeah.
• 2:03:39
  Speaker 1: As simple as yes or no, or you can get
• 2:03:40
  Speaker 1: a little more if you need to. Are you like
• 2:03:42
  Speaker 1: a Bigfoot guy? Because you like the occult and you
• 2:03:44
  Speaker 1: like the unexplained. Are you a legitimate Bigfoot guy?
• 2:03:47
  Speaker 2: I wouldn't say, so I can't do short answer. I'll
• 2:03:49
  Speaker 2: give you the shortest answer. I wouldn't say I'm a
• 2:03:51
  Speaker 2: true Bigfoot guy, but I am definitely open to the
• 2:03:54
  Speaker 2: idea of it.
• 2:03:54
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 2:03:55
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 2:03:56
  Speaker 1: Do you feel that there are like aliens running around
• 2:03:59
  Speaker 1: right now on planet Earth?
• 2:04:03
  Speaker 2: I think that the chance that there's life outside of
• 2:04:07
  Speaker 2: human and the life that we know, I think it's high.
• 2:04:12
  Speaker 2: I would say, I don't know.
• 2:04:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, life?
• 2:04:16
  Speaker 2: Life, sure.
• 2:04:16
  Speaker 1: Somewhere, I think it's extraordinarily high. Are they chilling here?
• 2:04:20
  Speaker 1: I think, no.
• 2:04:22
  Speaker 2: Me, that's me. If I'm being super pointed about it,
• 2:04:27
  Speaker 2: I'm going to be cynical and say no. Yeah, but
• 2:04:30
  Speaker 2: I would say the reason I say no is I
• 2:04:31
  Speaker 2: am of the belief that that if there's life out there,
• 2:04:34
  Speaker 2: I have this analogy that's not mine. It's one Neil
• 2:04:37
  Speaker 2: deGrasse Tyson, the astrophysicist, gives, where it's like, we're comprised
• 2:04:42
  Speaker 2: of X number of DNA strands. Let's call it 100
• 2:04:44
  Speaker 2: DNA strands make us human. Chimpanzees are like 98 of
• 2:04:49
  Speaker 2: the human 100, but two are different, right?
• 2:04:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, carrots are 67.
• 2:04:52
  Speaker 2: You get the idea. And it's like, we automatically assume that... Well,
• 2:04:56
  Speaker 2: think about how do we treat chimpanzees? How do we
• 2:04:58
  Speaker 2: treat carrots? Well, chimpanzees, we... put in zoos and we test.
• 2:05:03
  Speaker 1: I made some pickled carrots on my garden last night.
• 2:05:05
  Speaker 2: Or like earthworms. You don't stop and chat with an earthworm.
• 2:05:08
  Speaker 2: You step on an earthworm and don't even notice it.
• 2:05:11
  Speaker 2: And so when I think about life outside of planet earth,
• 2:05:14
  Speaker 2: I wonder sometimes, are we wrong for assuming that we
• 2:05:18
  Speaker 2: automatically are like equal to the other life out there?
• 2:05:21
  Speaker 2: What if we're the earthworm? What if we're the ant?
• 2:05:23
  Speaker 2: Are we so insignificant that they wouldn't even notice us?
• 2:05:26
  Speaker 2: And so my cynical mind says that That's why I
• 2:05:29
  Speaker 2: don't think there's very likely aliens just, boy, I can't
• 2:05:32
  Speaker 2: wait to talk to these humans.
• 2:05:33
  Speaker 1: These guys are great. Yeah, what I don't get, what
• 2:05:37
  Speaker 1: I don't accept is that they would, that whatever life
• 2:05:42
  Speaker 1: is out there, molds, bacterias, something, that humans have this
• 2:05:49
  Speaker 1: thing where we want them to kind of resemble us
• 2:05:53
  Speaker 1: and share our motivations. Yes. But there have been millions,
• 2:06:01
  Speaker 1: there have been millions of species on earth. There are
• 2:06:04
  Speaker 1: currently tens of millions of species on earth. Only one
• 2:06:08
  Speaker 1: shares our motivations.
• 2:06:11
  Speaker 2: That's true.
• 2:06:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And we've only been transmitting electronic signals for a
• 2:06:16
  Speaker 1: hundred years. So you have a 4 billion year old planet.
• 2:06:20
  Speaker 1: You have 75,000 years of modern humans and you have
• 2:06:26
  Speaker 1: 100 years of transmitting signals, and you think that in
• 2:06:29
  Speaker 1: some other planet that shit's gonna line up?
• 2:06:32
  Speaker 2: It seems far-fetched, to say the least.
• 2:06:35
  Speaker 1: I'm a big Star Wars guy. I hear you, man. Now,
• 2:06:40
  Speaker 1: do you think evil is personified, or do you think
• 2:06:42
  Speaker 1: it's just scattered around? Do you think there's an evil source?
• 2:06:46
  Speaker 2: Oh, man.
• 2:06:46
  Speaker 1: Because you deal a lot in evil stuff.
• 2:06:49
  Speaker 2: Good question.
• 2:06:49
  Speaker 1: Evil people.
• 2:06:50
  Speaker 2: What's your perception of evil? Well, evil's tough because, not
• 2:06:55
  Speaker 2: to get too deep into it, but I think that
• 2:06:58
  Speaker 2: we are all, actually, to reference the book, The Terror Within,
• 2:07:01
  Speaker 2: I think people, not just that there are people that
• 2:07:05
  Speaker 2: have done terrible things that we don't know about, like
• 2:07:07
  Speaker 2: serial killers who are uncaught, but I think that we
• 2:07:09
  Speaker 2: are all, as humans, capable of doing pretty brutal things
• 2:07:14
  Speaker 2: when put in the right environment. And I can actually
• 2:07:16
  Speaker 2: pretty much speak to that in real life. I mean,
• 2:07:19
  Speaker 2: if you think about what it means to go to war,
• 2:07:21
  Speaker 2: On some level, you need to be brought into this
• 2:07:23
  Speaker 2: mindset of being ready to commit violence, right? It doesn't
• 2:07:27
  Speaker 2: mean it's evil. Plenty of people would say this.
• 2:07:29
  Speaker 1: You don't view it as it is. Or I shouldn't
• 2:07:31
  Speaker 1: say you don't. But I'm reading what you're saying is
• 2:07:36
  Speaker 1: it's not handed out. It's just there. Yeah, I think
• 2:07:41
  Speaker 1: that's right. It comes forth.
• 2:07:43
  Speaker 2: I think that evil exists and we're all capable of it.
• 2:07:47
  Speaker 2: I think that systems, like social systems, are what prevent
• 2:07:50
  Speaker 2: us from committing evil.
• 2:07:52
  Speaker 1: I imagine it that way. I imagine that it's not distributed.
• 2:07:56
  Speaker 1: It's not assigned.
• 2:07:58
  Speaker 2: No.
• 2:07:58
  Speaker 1: But it rises forth.
• 2:08:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think we all got it, and it's controlled
• 2:08:03
  Speaker 2: through society. Badly.
• 2:08:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that might be the first thing we disagree on here. Okay,
• 2:08:13
  Speaker 1: when you sleep in the woods, because you.
• 2:08:18
  Speaker 1: You like to go backpack and hike and stuff. More
• 2:08:20
  Speaker 1: in the Navy, but sure. Yeah, when you sleep in
• 2:08:22
  Speaker 1: the woods, is it spooky or peaceful for you?
• 2:08:25
  Speaker 2: I mean, the last time I did that, actually, let
• 2:08:29
  Speaker 2: me think. Probably pretty peaceful. But I would say there
• 2:08:33
  Speaker 2: are certain places I wouldn't necessarily go based on my
• 2:08:36
  Speaker 2: own research.
• 2:08:37
  Speaker 1: I wouldn't go to.
• 2:08:37
  Speaker 2: Like, there's this notoriously haunted forest in Connecticut. I would
• 2:08:42
  Speaker 2: probably avoid that place, even though a lot of people
• 2:08:44
  Speaker 2: like that. Um, when I was in, in the Navy,
• 2:08:46
  Speaker 2: we did some cool stuff out in Alaska. We like
• 2:08:48
  Speaker 2: hiked up and built little snow caves and slept in
• 2:08:51
  Speaker 2: snow caves. It was like, awesome. I'm like by myself
• 2:08:53
  Speaker 2: in an Alaskan forest. It's awesome.
• 2:08:55
  Speaker 1: So, but you know, some people become, I guess what
• 2:08:57
  Speaker 1: I'm getting at on that one is that you could
• 2:09:02
  Speaker 1: like almost bifurcate people. There's people that when they're like
• 2:09:04
  Speaker 1: way out in the woods, like way up in the
• 2:09:06
  Speaker 1: mountains and their head is like this litany of things,
• 2:09:10
  Speaker 1: like the personality, like The crazy ax murderer guy being
• 2:09:14
  Speaker 1: like high on the list animals where they feel like
• 2:09:17
  Speaker 1: I am now in a place of risk. True. There
• 2:09:20
  Speaker 1: are other people that be like, I am now in
• 2:09:21
  Speaker 1: a place free of risk.
• 2:09:23
  Speaker 2: Oh man.
• 2:09:25
  Speaker 1: Then no one knows I'm here. Do you mean like
• 2:09:27
  Speaker 1: in their mind, like this is relaxing. I'm not within
• 2:09:32
  Speaker 1: the chaos of all these people around me.
• 2:09:36
  Speaker 2: How do you feel about it? You've got to be
• 2:09:37
  Speaker 2: the peacemaker.
• 2:09:38
  Speaker 1: Chill.
• 2:09:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I bet. Much more chill.
• 2:09:40
  Speaker 1: Otherwise, I wouldn't keep doing it. But I don't lay
• 2:09:42
  Speaker 1: in my bed at night at home with my wife
• 2:09:45
  Speaker 1: feeling like, you know, who's going to come through the door.
• 2:09:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:09:48
  Speaker 1: But I just, it's just like, it's, I don't know,
• 2:09:51
  Speaker 1: I'm in a place of greater peace away from there.
• 2:09:55
  Speaker 1: And I think that really probably what's going on is
• 2:09:58
  Speaker 1: my chore list. the buzz in my head has less
• 2:10:04
  Speaker 1: components to it. Yeah.
• 2:10:07
  Speaker 2: I dig that.
• 2:10:08
  Speaker 1: There's just not as much things I could do.
• 2:10:11
  Speaker 2: I think that people represent bigger threats to us than,
• 2:10:14
  Speaker 2: I mean, I say this not having had tons of
• 2:10:16
  Speaker 2: experience in the wild like you have, but generally speaking,
• 2:10:21
  Speaker 2: people are a bigger threat than environment. Obviously, you can
• 2:10:23
  Speaker 2: go into an environment and not be prepared for it
• 2:10:26
  Speaker 2: and it'll kill you in a heartbeat. But if you're
• 2:10:28
  Speaker 2: prepared for an environment and you're smart, I think that
• 2:10:30
  Speaker 2: you're probably in a more peaceful and safe environment than
• 2:10:33
  Speaker 2: being in a city where frankly, there are people that
• 2:10:37
  Speaker 2: are perfectly willing to let the terror within them come free.
• 2:10:40
  Speaker 2: And you might be caught in the crossfire.
• 2:10:42
  Speaker 1: One last one for you. If you look like the
• 2:10:46
  Speaker 1: hiking disasters, the wilderness disasters, the national park disasters, whatever,
• 2:10:51
  Speaker 1: missing people, trips gone awry, right? Do you have a little,
• 2:10:57
  Speaker 1: do you have a bit of advice where you're like,
• 2:11:00
  Speaker 1: If blank happens blank or no matter what happens, don't.
• 2:11:06
  Speaker 1: Oh man.
• 2:11:06
  Speaker 2: Honestly, a lot of the stories that it goes really
• 2:11:10
  Speaker 2: bad for people have to do with either really poor
• 2:11:15
  Speaker 2: communication to people that are not like their loved ones
• 2:11:18
  Speaker 2: and friends. Okay. Uh, or worse, like overconfidence combined with that,
• 2:11:22
  Speaker 2: like telling someone that you're, you're more prepared for something
• 2:11:24
  Speaker 2: than you really are. There's this horrible case. This is
• 2:11:28
  Speaker 2: the very short version is this guy, he was a
• 2:11:31
  Speaker 2: big outdoor enthusiast. He was a, uh, he was a
• 2:11:33
  Speaker 2: outdoor photographer. This is in like the 1990s or eighties.
• 2:11:37
  Speaker 2: And he goes out into the Alaskan wilderness. He does
• 2:11:39
  Speaker 2: it every summer. He goes out for like two, three
• 2:11:42
  Speaker 2: months at a time by himself and just takes pictures
• 2:11:44
  Speaker 2: of this particular bird or something. but he loves it.
• 2:11:47
  Speaker 2: And he's like pretty much broke and he raises enough
• 2:11:49
  Speaker 2: money each year to go on this trip. And so
• 2:11:53
  Speaker 2: he'd done it like several times over and he goes
• 2:11:55
  Speaker 2: out this one year and he tells his family where
• 2:11:58
  Speaker 2: he's gonna go, yeah, I'll see you in like two
• 2:11:59
  Speaker 2: months or whatever. But the guy that he had asked
• 2:12:05
  Speaker 2: to pick him up at the end of the summer
• 2:12:06
  Speaker 2: had apparently just not gotten the memo that he was
• 2:12:09
  Speaker 2: being asked to get picked up. And so at the
• 2:12:11
  Speaker 2: end of the summer, he didn't have a ride. And unfortunately,
• 2:12:15
  Speaker 2: this is where I think the communication part is important.
• 2:12:18
  Speaker 2: This guy, I think his name was Charles, he had
• 2:12:23
  Speaker 2: had this experience like two, three years earlier where he
• 2:12:26
  Speaker 2: had been late coming out of a trip into the wild.
• 2:12:29
  Speaker 2: And his family had been worried about him and they
• 2:12:31
  Speaker 2: had called the authorities. And they had gone out looking
• 2:12:32
  Speaker 2: for him and he had come out on his own strength.
• 2:12:35
  Speaker 2: But he was really embarrassed that there was this search
• 2:12:37
  Speaker 2: that was launched for him because it made him look
• 2:12:38
  Speaker 2: like he didn't know what he was doing. And so
• 2:12:40
  Speaker 2: he made his family swear that if he ever was
• 2:12:43
  Speaker 2: late coming out of the trip, don't you dare panic.
• 2:12:46
  Speaker 2: Don't you call it in. Don't you do anything. And
• 2:12:49
  Speaker 2: so basically he ends up being in this terrible position
• 2:12:51
  Speaker 2: where he doesn't have the equipment, the food, or anything
• 2:12:53
  Speaker 2: to survive the winter.
• 2:12:54
  Speaker 1: And he's admonished his family not to do anything about it.
• 2:12:56
  Speaker 2: No one's calling it in. And finally a search is
• 2:13:00
  Speaker 2: launched for him. He's barely hanging on. It's wintertime now.
• 2:13:03
  Speaker 2: And this plane comes swooping in. over this lake where
• 2:13:06
  Speaker 2: he was camped out near. And it's an Alaska state
• 2:13:09
  Speaker 2: trooper plane and they see him. And he raises one
• 2:13:12
  Speaker 2: hand up and he's waving, but he doesn't realize that
• 2:13:16
  Speaker 2: in this part of Alaska, if you put two hands up,
• 2:13:18
  Speaker 2: it means you're in distress and you want to get
• 2:13:20
  Speaker 2: picked up. And he put one hand up and he
• 2:13:23
  Speaker 2: basically signaled, I'm okay, don't pick up. And the trooper
• 2:13:26
  Speaker 2: was like, here's a dude out in the middle of
• 2:13:28
  Speaker 2: nowhere in Alaska. He's got a camp set up. He's
• 2:13:30
  Speaker 2: just smiling and waving. So he didn't get picked up.
• 2:13:33
  Speaker 2: He ends up dying out there.
• 2:13:34
  Speaker 1: No, really?
• 2:13:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he ends up dying out there. But it's just
• 2:13:36
  Speaker 2: sort of like you probably should say, hey, to a degree,
• 2:13:39
  Speaker 2: don't call it in. But if it's like several weeks
• 2:13:41
  Speaker 2: into the winter, maybe come get me. So tell people
• 2:13:44
  Speaker 2: where you're going.
• 2:13:45
  Speaker 1: All right, great.
• 2:13:47
  Speaker 2: Mr.
• 2:13:47
  Speaker 1: Ballin, you can find him on YouTube. Find him where else?
• 2:13:50
  Speaker 2: It's Mr.
• 2:13:50
  Speaker 1: Ballin, no matter where you go.
• 2:13:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, search Mr. Ballin. We have a podcast, YouTube, books.
• 2:13:55
  Speaker 2: We have some live dates that will probably be coming up.
• 2:13:58
  Speaker 2: So just, yeah, search Mr. Ballin everywhere you want.
• 2:14:00
  Speaker 1: At the live shows, you tell some good rippers. You
• 2:14:01
  Speaker 1: tell some good stories.
• 2:14:02
  Speaker 2: I love telling a good live story. Yeah, we've got
• 2:14:04
  Speaker 2: one coming up in New York, in Comic-Con coming up
• 2:14:07
  Speaker 2: in October.
• 2:14:08
  Speaker 1: Oh, excellent, man.
• 2:14:09
  Speaker 2: Excellent.
• 2:14:09
  Speaker 1: Thanks for coming on the show, buddy.
• 2:14:10
  Speaker 2: Thank you very much.
• 2:14:11
  Speaker 1: I appreciate it. Thanks a lot.
• 2:14:12
  Speaker 2: Take care. Thank you.