Latest / Drawn of History / Joe Rogan Experience _2543 - MrBallen(M4A_128K)

Transcript

Joe Rogan Experience _2543 - MrBallen(M4A_128K) · Drawn of History

0:04
Speaker 1: The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast
0:08
Speaker 1: by night, all day. What's going on? It's going good, man.
0:15
Speaker 1: This is crazy. I can't believe I'm here.
0:17
Speaker 2: I can't believe anybody can't believe they're here.
0:20
Speaker 1: I do. This is like hallowed ground. I mean, I've
0:22
Speaker 1: been watching you like the rest of the world for years.
0:25
Speaker 1: I mean, I've seen so many clips of this space.
0:29
Speaker 1: So many references to Jamie, and to be here right
0:32
Speaker 1: now is very cool. So I'm honored. Thank you for
0:33
Speaker 1: having me.
0:34
Speaker 2: Oh, thank you. Thank you. I'm glad you're here. Yeah,
0:36
Speaker 2: it is always weird when you go someplace where you,
0:38
Speaker 2: like the first time I did Howard Stern, I felt
0:39
Speaker 2: the same way. Like you're in the building, like what
0:42
Speaker 2: the fuck? This is the actual Howard Stern show that
0:45
Speaker 2: I used to listen to on the radio? It really
0:47
Speaker 2: freaked me out. I couldn't sleep the night before. I
0:50
Speaker 2: did yoga in my hotel room to try to calm down.
0:52
Speaker 1: When was this? When did you do this?
0:53
Speaker 2: A long time ago. 2000, probably one or something like that.
0:59
Speaker 1: Was this like prime Fear Factor days?
1:02
Speaker 2: You know what? I might have done it before I
1:04
Speaker 2: did Fear Factor.
1:05
Speaker 1: Great show, by the way.
1:07
Speaker 2: Thank you.
1:07
Speaker 1: Great show. Seriously.
1:10
Speaker 2: It was a good sign our society was about to crumble.
1:16
Speaker 2: When historians go back and look at the decline of society,
1:20
Speaker 2: they're like, remember when they started making people eat dicks
1:22
Speaker 2: on TV? They started making people eat animal balls and
1:25
Speaker 2: animal dicks on TV. That might have been.
1:27
Speaker 1: That was the start. And then it was... That was
1:29
Speaker 1: Rogan's interview on that show. What's his name again? I
1:34
Speaker 1: just blacked out. The guy you just said you had
1:35
Speaker 1: an interview with.
1:36
Speaker 2: Howard Stern. Howard Stern. Well, it was like I did...
1:40
Speaker 2: We did Fear Factor. It started airing right after September 11th.
1:45
Speaker 1: Oh, wow.
1:46
Speaker 2: Like literally right after.
1:47
Speaker 1: Fear Factor.
1:48
Speaker 2: Uh-huh. And one of the narratives... one of the reporters
1:53
Speaker 2: asked me, and like one of those stupid press junket
1:55
Speaker 2: things you have to do was, do you think it's
1:57
Speaker 2: appropriate to scare Americans right after what just happened at 9-11?
2:02
Speaker 2: I was like, what the fuck are you talking about?
2:04
Speaker 1: This is on me now?
2:05
Speaker 2: I'm like, what are you talking about? It's distraction, it's entertainment,
2:09
Speaker 2: and they're eating animal dicks. It's very simple. Shut the
2:14
Speaker 2: fuck up. Watch it or don't watch it. Who cares? But,
2:20
Speaker 2: It's like if you wanted to look at like where
2:22
Speaker 2: society– it used to be like Friends, Seinfeld.
2:26
Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. The good old days.
2:28
Speaker 2: The good old days. Miami Vice. It was television shows
2:31
Speaker 2: that were like shows. And then all of a sudden
2:34
Speaker 2: anybody could be on TV if you're willing to eat
2:37
Speaker 2: the animal dicks. That's true.
2:39
Speaker 1: That was the threshold. Yeah. Pretty good.
2:41
Speaker 2: It's weird because that kind of ushered in social media.
2:44
Speaker 2: It's very similar in a lot of ways. Like the
2:46
Speaker 2: people that were willing– to go on these reality shows,
2:49
Speaker 2: especially stuff like Big Brother, where you just live in
2:52
Speaker 2: a house with a bunch of people. Like, how fucking weird.
2:56
Speaker 2: You're just being filmed constantly in this pressure situation, and
2:58
Speaker 2: the producers are fucking, you know, Mike's been talking a
3:00
Speaker 2: lot of shit behind your back. You might want to
3:02
Speaker 2: get ahead of this. Like, what? Mike?
3:04
Speaker 1: Yeah, I could never do that. Yeah.
3:05
Speaker 2: No, well, you're not stupid. Or you're not young, or
3:10
Speaker 2: you're not desperate. We had a lot of people that
3:12
Speaker 2: were just in, like, credit card debt and shit, and
3:14
Speaker 2: they were like, look, if I can win this fucking thing,
3:16
Speaker 2: like normal people. They're like, look, it'd be fun. I'll
3:19
Speaker 2: tell my kids about it. We will watch this forever
3:21
Speaker 2: and I can win $ 50, 000 so I can pay off
3:24
Speaker 2: my credit card debt.
3:25
Speaker 1: That's noble, dude.
3:26
Speaker 2: Well, sometimes people have to do what they have to do,
3:30
Speaker 2: you know, but, but there's also a lot of people
3:32
Speaker 2: that want attention in any way possible. And that's like
3:36
Speaker 2: the people that are, you know, you see so many
3:37
Speaker 2: people online that are doing stuff that have fucking nothing
3:41
Speaker 2: to say, but they're just trying to find something where
3:44
Speaker 2: people pay attention to what's running up to people and
3:46
Speaker 2: slapping them, throwing glasses of water in their face, whatever
3:48
Speaker 2: they have to do. Anything they have to do to
3:51
Speaker 2: get attention. And if you trace that back, it kind
3:54
Speaker 2: of started with reality shows where people started to be
3:57
Speaker 2: able to get attention just being a buffoon.
3:59
Speaker 1: There was a, I covered a story. So for those
4:02
Speaker 1: who don't know me, I tell strange, dark, and mysterious
4:05
Speaker 1: stories on the internet. And I covered a story that
4:08
Speaker 1: was like the epitome of this. It's the idea of
4:11
Speaker 1: doing anything for clicks. I don't have the dates, but
4:14
Speaker 1: it was like within the past 10, 15 years, there
4:16
Speaker 1: was this group of, or there was this one Russian influencer.
4:20
Speaker 1: This is, I want to say circa 2010. And she
4:23
Speaker 1: wanted to do something really special for her birthday, to
4:25
Speaker 1: document her birthday and get as many clicks as possible.
4:29
Speaker 1: And she filled this pool up with dry ice.
4:33
Speaker 2: Oh, Jesus.
4:34
Speaker 1: Water plus dry ice. And she invited all her friends
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Speaker 1: over and they documented themselves. going into this pool and
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Speaker 1: she has I think hundreds of thousands if not millions
4:43
Speaker 1: of followers at the time and so everyone's like oh
4:45
Speaker 1: it's the big birthday celebration I think it was live
4:48
Speaker 1: and they go into the tub and the music's playing
4:51
Speaker 1: and then no one comes out of the tub and
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Speaker 1: it's just the silence they all die they all die
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Speaker 1: from suffocation I think it was not exactly sure how
5:00
Speaker 1: you die from dry ice but it's I think it
5:03
Speaker 1: eradicates the oxygen as they just died but it's like
5:06
Speaker 1: how many people died I'm gonna say it's like yeah
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Speaker 1: three there you go three people What?
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Speaker 2: First of all, like, dry ice, you can't even get
5:14
Speaker 2: on your skin.
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Speaker 1: You only jumped into a pool of it.
5:17
Speaker 2: I was thinking it just tortured their skin. Three die
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Speaker 2: in Moscow party after dry ice thrown into pool. I
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Speaker 2: wonder how much dry ice takes to kill three people.
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Speaker 1: I think a better question is, what was the engagement
5:31
Speaker 1: like on that post? Because in some ways, that's what
5:35
Speaker 1: it's all about.
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Speaker 2: Look at the name.
5:37
Speaker 1: It A popular Instagram influencer. There we go.
5:43
Speaker 2: Focusing on pharmaceutical products. What? With more than a million followers.
5:49
Speaker 2: Two people died at the scene. A third died in
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Speaker 2: the hospital. Russia's investigative committee said in a statement announcing
5:54
Speaker 2: the criminal probe into the incident. But you do not
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Speaker 2: want to get arrested and go to jail in Russia.
6:00
Speaker 1: No.
6:01
Speaker 2: They don't fuck around.
6:02
Speaker 1: Generally not.
6:03
Speaker 2: They do not fuck around. Ask Brittany Griner. They don't
6:07
Speaker 2: fuck around. She's out now. Yeah, she's out. But she
6:09
Speaker 2: did nine months.
6:11
Speaker 1: That's not good.
6:11
Speaker 2: Was it nine or ten? I think she was sentenced
6:14
Speaker 2: for nine fucking years.
6:16
Speaker 1: And that was for marijuana possession.
6:17
Speaker 2: At the airport? She just had a CBD vape pen.
6:21
Speaker 2: I mean, I guess it was probably marijuana. But it
6:23
Speaker 2: was a vape pen. And they put her in jail.
6:28
Speaker 2: Like hardcore jail. for nine fucking years.
6:32
Speaker 1: Periodically, I'll see, like, images of Russian courtrooms. And I
6:36
Speaker 1: don't even know the stories, but always it's like the
6:38
Speaker 1: accused is sitting inside of, like, a jail cell that's
6:42
Speaker 1: in the middle of the courtroom, like iron bars. And
6:46
Speaker 1: you know, whatever they've done, they're facing the death penalty.
6:48
Speaker 2: They have to be. Or they pissed off Putin.
6:52
Speaker 1: Yeah, dude, I don't know, man, but it's a gnarly
6:54
Speaker 1: place over there.
6:54
Speaker 2: Yeah, you better be friends with the right people over there.
6:57
Speaker 2: You can't fuck around. No, dude. You can't fuck around.
6:59
Speaker 2: That's why, like, I mean, how many times have, like,
7:02
Speaker 2: political opponents of Putin gotten poisoned or gotten murdered? And
7:06
Speaker 2: not just him, but a bunch of other prominent figures
7:09
Speaker 2: that had other people running against them.
7:12
Speaker 1: It's a shady business.
7:13
Speaker 2: Over there, dude. Oh, it's the shadiest. It's the shadiest, man.
7:17
Speaker 2: Make sure for some very interesting people, though. Yeah. Russian
7:20
Speaker 2: people are fascinating. I've met a bunch of brilliant Russian people,
7:24
Speaker 2: you know.
7:24
Speaker 1: Yeah. I found that they're very, in my limited exposure.
7:28
Speaker 2: This guy. Yeah, here we go.
7:29
Speaker 3: This guy tries to get all that little slit first.
7:32
Speaker 2: Oh, wow.
7:33
Speaker 3: He doesn't give up.
7:34
Speaker 2: He doesn't make it out. Oh, that's right. He goes
7:36
Speaker 2: through the roof.
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Speaker 1: He's smart. I'm amazed that he was able to do that, though.
7:41
Speaker 2: What a fucking psycho. Look at him. He looks like
7:43
Speaker 2: a psycho, though. He should be in that cell. He
7:45
Speaker 2: looks like a guy that should be dead. He looks
7:48
Speaker 2: like a guy that probably spent a lot of time
7:50
Speaker 2: in jail. Yeah. He was climbing through the fucking, pulling
7:53
Speaker 2: his pants off. They're going to daze him in his nuts.
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Speaker 1: That's not okay.
8:01
Speaker 2: It's a rough spot. Rough spot on earth. Tough people.
8:05
Speaker 2: How did you get started in this whole creepy storytelling
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Speaker 2: thing on YouTube? Yeah.
8:11
Speaker 1: Well, I originally was in the military. I was a SEAL.
8:15
Speaker 1: I did seven years in the teams. And then when
8:18
Speaker 1: I got out in 2017, I... kind of drifted a
8:22
Speaker 1: little bit, you know? I did some work with charity,
8:26
Speaker 1: did some veteran charity work, and I don't know, I
8:28
Speaker 1: just sort of floundered around for a couple of years.
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Speaker 1: And I'm married, I got three kids, you know, so
8:34
Speaker 1: I'm sort of like trying to figure it out. I
8:36
Speaker 1: have this small pension coming in that's enough to sort
8:38
Speaker 1: of subsist on. But then I actually, I remember watching
8:43
Speaker 1: a lot of Gary Vee, and more specifically, I saw
8:48
Speaker 1: Gary Vee was just, every post he did, it was like,
8:51
Speaker 1: Everybody no matter how old you are no matter what
8:53
Speaker 1: you're doing. You should be posting content online like everyone
8:56
Speaker 1: should be doing it and When I was in the
8:58
Speaker 1: military you're sort of in a bubble I mean you
9:01
Speaker 1: you certainly have access to the internet and all the
9:04
Speaker 1: things that everybody else does in the civilian world But
9:06
Speaker 1: especially in the SEAL teams from my experience you're so
9:10
Speaker 1: like tribal your all your time is spent really with
9:14
Speaker 1: your teammates or at the team and It's very isolated
9:17
Speaker 1: and you don't even realize it. And so I was not,
9:19
Speaker 1: I didn't have social media when I got out. I
9:21
Speaker 1: wasn't up to date on modern stuff. And Gary Vee
9:26
Speaker 1: was sort of the first sort of civilian person I
9:28
Speaker 1: was seeing. This is what you do, you know, as
9:31
Speaker 1: a civilian, you post constantly. And I began, in addition
9:36
Speaker 1: to doing some charity work I was doing, just trying
9:39
Speaker 1: my hand at social media, you know, posting content that's
9:42
Speaker 1: like so bad.
9:43
Speaker 2: What was the intent?
9:45
Speaker 1: You know, honestly, there wasn't a clear intent other than, well,
9:48
Speaker 1: what the hell? I'm already paying for the internet. I
9:51
Speaker 1: already own a phone. Effectively, the worst that'll happen is
9:54
Speaker 1: I will embarrass myself by posting something that nobody cares about,
9:58
Speaker 1: or maybe my friends and family will see and it'll
10:00
Speaker 1: be embarrassing. But I've always been someone that's been pretty
10:05
Speaker 1: comfortable with sort of embarrassing myself. I mean, if you
10:08
Speaker 1: think about SEAL training, a big part of it is
10:11
Speaker 1: you're raising your hand in a pretty public way, at
10:13
Speaker 1: least amongst your circle of friends and family saying, I'm
10:16
Speaker 1: going to go see if I'm good enough. And a
10:18
Speaker 1: lot of people aren't. And so I went through that
10:20
Speaker 1: process and was, and I narrowly got through, but I
10:24
Speaker 1: sort of had it in my mind that what I
10:26
Speaker 1: really try stuff. And so social media influenced heavily by
10:30
Speaker 1: Gary Vee. It was like, why not? I'll, I'll post content.
10:32
Speaker 1: Maybe someone will be interested. Nothing worked. Nothing worked. I mean,
10:36
Speaker 1: it wasn't even like some was close. It was just,
10:39
Speaker 1: nobody was paying attention. And it was like, okay, I'm
10:41
Speaker 1: not devastated.
10:42
Speaker 2: It is what it is.
10:44
Speaker 1: But then I, uh, on a whim, uh, I, myself, uh,
10:48
Speaker 1: personally love strange, dark, and mysterious content. I used to
10:54
Speaker 1: love going to, there's a YouTube channel, I think it's
10:56
Speaker 1: still around now, it's called Dark Five. And all it is,
10:59
Speaker 1: it's just like crazy, true mysteries around the world, you know,
11:03
Speaker 1: talking about how there's like, you know, potentially military bases
11:06
Speaker 1: hidden in Antarctica, and there's UFO sightings here. I thought
11:09
Speaker 1: it was fascinating. And on a whim, in 2020... when
11:15
Speaker 1: my social media career is basically non-existent, I was at
11:18
Speaker 1: this water park, an indoor water park with my wife
11:21
Speaker 1: and kids, Great Wolf Lodge in Pennsylvania, great spot. And
11:25
Speaker 1: I was like, you know what I'm going to do?
11:26
Speaker 1: I'm going to try something I haven't tried on my
11:29
Speaker 1: social media attempts so far. I'm going to tell like
11:32
Speaker 1: a crazy mystery, a true mystery that I think is
11:34
Speaker 1: really interesting because I think it's cool. It's the first
11:37
Speaker 1: time I'm not trying to copy trends or like do
11:40
Speaker 1: Gary V content. I'm just going to like tell a
11:42
Speaker 1: story I like. And I Pull out my phone, and
11:45
Speaker 1: I tell this 60-second rendition of this mystery called the
11:49
Speaker 1: Dyatlov Pass Mystery. Are you familiar with this?
11:51
Speaker 2: No. Oh, great.
11:52
Speaker 1: It's a great story. I post the 60-second version of
11:55
Speaker 1: the story, but I'll tell you the story in a minute.
11:58
Speaker 1: I leave my phone in the room because I'm going
12:00
Speaker 1: to the water park, indoor water park. I don't want
12:02
Speaker 1: to get wet. So I leave it there, come back
12:03
Speaker 1: two hours later. millions of views on this video. And
12:07
Speaker 1: I've never gotten views on anything. And it's millions of views.
12:10
Speaker 2: There's like- In just a few hours?
12:12
Speaker 1: In a few hours, like 5 million views on this video.
12:14
Speaker 2: Why? Was it TikTok?
12:15
Speaker 1: TikTok. This is when TikTok was just to the moon.
12:19
Speaker 1: So there's this, it's an amazing story. You probably have
12:21
Speaker 1: heard of it because it's one of those stories that
12:22
Speaker 1: it's made its rounds on the internet. So in, remember,
12:27
Speaker 1: the 60 second version was gritty, but it had the
12:29
Speaker 1: pictures and stuff. So in 1959, there were these nine hikers. Actually,
12:34
Speaker 1: there was 10, these 10 young, like 20-something-year-old hikers in Russia.
12:39
Speaker 1: And they were like the best mountaineers in Russia at
12:42
Speaker 1: the time. And they were going for their, what's called
12:45
Speaker 1: their level three hiking test, which sounds sort of lame,
12:48
Speaker 1: but it's effectively, at the time in Russia, this is
12:51
Speaker 1: like the top credential for mountaineers. If you have this credential,
12:55
Speaker 1: you are the best mountaineer in the land. And the
12:58
Speaker 1: way the test worked is you... Effectively, you're in a
13:01
Speaker 1: class of your own at this level already. It's sort
13:03
Speaker 1: of like being a PhD student where you sort of
13:06
Speaker 1: create your own material. You have to do that for
13:08
Speaker 1: this test. You map out a route that you'll take
13:12
Speaker 1: that effectively checks off all the boxes of difficulty. You
13:17
Speaker 1: put this map down. Somebody approves. This is going to
13:19
Speaker 1: be hard enough that if you successfully navigate this course
13:22
Speaker 1: that you've mapped out in X amount of time, if
13:25
Speaker 1: you do that, you pass the test, you're a level
13:27
Speaker 1: three mountaineer. And so these 10 hikers... Um, eventually actually
13:30
Speaker 1: only nine left. One had a dental issue, so he
13:34
Speaker 1: spared himself. Nine of these hikers, they step out. I
13:38
Speaker 1: think it was in January of 1959 to do this
13:41
Speaker 1: hike that's been planned out and they brought cameras along. Um,
13:44
Speaker 1: and they're like this young, they're, they're beautiful.
13:47
Speaker 2: They're all like couples.
13:48
Speaker 1: They're all friends.
13:50
Speaker 2: And it sounds like an awesome opening to a horror movie.
13:52
Speaker 1: This, this gets wild. If you've not heard the story,
13:54
Speaker 1: you're in for a treat because the pictures are crazy.
13:58
Speaker 1: They step out and the Ural Mountains is rugged. It's
14:01
Speaker 1: like these huge windswept icy mountains. There's like a couple
14:05
Speaker 1: of sections of forest, but it's just as rugged as
14:08
Speaker 1: rugged can be. And so these hikers step off and
14:11
Speaker 1: they start taking pictures. And even though it's 1959, the
14:15
Speaker 1: pictures they're taking could be taken today. It's almost like
14:18
Speaker 1: selfie style. They're smiling. Everyone's in such good spirits. They
14:22
Speaker 1: know they're going to pass this test. This is nothing
14:25
Speaker 1: for them. This is a victory lap. And so off
14:28
Speaker 1: they go into the Ural Mountains. It's going to be
14:30
Speaker 1: like a multi-day hike, but they're expected to be out
14:33
Speaker 1: or I guess finished with their route, I think on
14:35
Speaker 1: February 12th. So it's a several week long hike, February 12th,
14:40
Speaker 1: and they were supposed to send some message to say
14:42
Speaker 1: they were complete with the hike. February 12th comes and
14:47
Speaker 1: no message is sent. No one gets word that these
14:49
Speaker 1: nine hikers have successfully navigated this treacherous stretch of the mountains.
14:54
Speaker 1: And at first... To be honest, no one was really
14:57
Speaker 1: that concerned because one, there's nine of them. They are
15:00
Speaker 1: quite literally some of the best mountaineers in the land.
15:04
Speaker 1: If anybody can withstand the elements, it's them. And so
15:06
Speaker 1: there wasn't this immediate call to action. But over the
15:10
Speaker 1: coming days after February 12th, the families of these nine
15:14
Speaker 1: hikers got really concerned. They're like, we haven't heard from them.
15:16
Speaker 2: Where are they?
15:17
Speaker 1: Like the government needs to get involved. Somebody needs to
15:19
Speaker 1: go looking for them. And so eventually at the end
15:22
Speaker 1: of February, a search party is launched for these hikers.
15:26
Speaker 1: And at first, it was just a couple of volunteers.
15:28
Speaker 1: It was some students from a university. It was not
15:31
Speaker 1: that serious of a surge. But they eventually come across
15:35
Speaker 1: their campsite, and pictures are taken of their campsite. So
15:39
Speaker 1: from a strategic perspective, not that I claim to be
15:42
Speaker 1: a mountaineer, but if you were going to be setting
15:45
Speaker 1: up a place, if you were going to set your
15:46
Speaker 1: tent up in a really rugged environment like the Ural Mountains,
15:49
Speaker 1: the worst place to put your tent— is the side
15:53
Speaker 1: of a windswept mountain where there are no trees because
15:55
Speaker 1: you'll get no, it'll be relentless wind. Any weather is
15:59
Speaker 1: going to be worse up there. You're on a slope,
16:01
Speaker 1: avalanche risk. I mean, the worst place you could put
16:04
Speaker 1: your tent is the side of a mountain. And so
16:06
Speaker 1: they're looking for these missing hikers who were the best
16:09
Speaker 1: hikers and they find their tent, their one canvas tent
16:12
Speaker 1: that's right in the middle of this pass called, I
16:15
Speaker 1: believe it's called the Dyatlov Pass, which is why the
16:17
Speaker 1: mystery has been named the Dyatlov Pass. It's just one
16:20
Speaker 1: lone tent and there's no trees, nothing. And so they
16:23
Speaker 1: go up to the tent. The hikers are not there,
16:26
Speaker 1: but the tent is collapsed as you see in the
16:28
Speaker 1: picture there. And they look inside the tent and there's
16:34
Speaker 1: clothes like cold weather gear, there's pots and there's a
16:37
Speaker 1: lot of equipment that you would imagine they would have
16:39
Speaker 1: brought with them out here is still in the tent.
16:41
Speaker 1: The hikers are missing and they discover through whatever testing
16:45
Speaker 1: they did, that there was a cut made in the
16:48
Speaker 1: tent that apparently was made from the inside out. Someone
16:52
Speaker 1: took a knife, and I believe it was a knife,
16:54
Speaker 1: and cut the tent open from the inside out. And
16:56
Speaker 1: so they have all this equipment, and they're thinking, we're
16:59
Speaker 1: in the middle of the Ural Mountains. It's like negative
17:02
Speaker 1: 40 degrees Fahrenheit out here. It's the middle of winter.
17:05
Speaker 1: You need this equipment to survive.
17:07
Speaker 2: Where are the hikers?
17:08
Speaker 1: They left all their equipment in their tent. Where are they?
17:11
Speaker 1: And so The search expanded exponentially at that point because
17:16
Speaker 1: now these volunteers have discovered this incredible site. They can't
17:19
Speaker 1: find the hikers. A bigger search party comes out there
17:22
Speaker 1: and they discover footprints that are about 100 feet away
17:25
Speaker 1: from where the tent was found. It's a little bit
17:27
Speaker 1: further down the mountain. And the footsteps, some of them
17:30
Speaker 1: are two boots, you know, matching boots of someone's steps.
17:33
Speaker 1: There's eight or nine prints. They couldn't be sure. Eight
17:35
Speaker 1: or nine sets of prints. Some have only one boot on,
17:39
Speaker 1: like barefoot and a boot. Others are just barefoot. And remember,
17:42
Speaker 1: this is the middle of winter in Russia. But they're
17:45
Speaker 1: looking at these prints. And if you look at the tent,
17:49
Speaker 1: it's been cut from the inside. They've clearly abandoned their tent.
17:52
Speaker 1: Something's happened. But the cadence of the footprints as it
17:57
Speaker 1: picks up where they found it near the tent going
17:58
Speaker 1: down the mountain away from the campsite, they're walking. There's
18:02
Speaker 1: no sense of urgency. Someone analyzed the footprints and they're walking.
18:07
Speaker 1: So they're walking down the mountain, some without boots on,
18:10
Speaker 1: some with one boot on, leaving most of their equipment behind.
18:14
Speaker 1: And so the search party, they follow these prints down
18:16
Speaker 1: to the edge of this ominous looking forest. There's only
18:20
Speaker 1: so many forests out there. This is one of them,
18:21
Speaker 1: this relatively small but fairly dense forest. And the prints
18:25
Speaker 1: sort of stop right there at the edge of the forest.
18:28
Speaker 1: And so they go into the trees, they're looking around,
18:31
Speaker 1: and they eventually come across this big cedar tree. And
18:34
Speaker 1: at the base of the cedar tree is this little
18:36
Speaker 1: burned out fire. like a puny little fire, and then
18:39
Speaker 1: crouched around it is one of the hikers who's deceased.
18:42
Speaker 1: And I believe there's a picture. I don't know if
18:44
Speaker 1: you can show it on your channel.
18:45
Speaker 2: Sure.
18:45
Speaker 1: Yeah, so there's a picture of one of the hikers
18:48
Speaker 1: who is sort of almost like he was trying to
18:50
Speaker 1: get warmed against this fire. I don't think it's that one.
18:54
Speaker 1: There are some right near the cedar tree. I'm sure
18:56
Speaker 1: you can find them.
18:57
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20:16
Speaker 1: One is dead, and then another one is sort of
20:19
Speaker 1: nearby as well. So there's two hikers that are both
20:21
Speaker 1: deceased from the initial thought is exposure, hypothermia, exposure. But critically,
20:27
Speaker 1: there's a couple of really weird things about it. One,
20:29
Speaker 1: I think that's got to be the picture right there.
20:31
Speaker 1: And that does not show the bodies, but the bodies
20:33
Speaker 1: are near. I think that's one right there to the
20:37
Speaker 1: right of that. That could be one of them. But
20:40
Speaker 1: picture two bodies sort of laying scattered nearby. They look
20:44
Speaker 1: at the tree that was at the base of where
20:46
Speaker 1: the fire was. And there are signs that something was
20:50
Speaker 1: trying to climb the tree. There's broken branches and the like.
20:53
Speaker 1: And there's human tissue that sounds way more extreme than
20:55
Speaker 1: it's supposed to, but there's human tissue far, pretty high
20:58
Speaker 1: up this tree that suggests somebody had climbed up the tree. Um,
21:02
Speaker 1: and then they examined the bodies and they found one
21:05
Speaker 1: of the, one of the men had his hand, part
21:07
Speaker 1: of his hand, he had bitten off and was in
21:09
Speaker 1: his throat, or it might've been human tissue as well,
21:12
Speaker 1: but it was clearly in his mouth. Like he was
21:14
Speaker 1: eating his own flesh or at least arrived in his mouth.
21:18
Speaker 1: So they're dead. And so the search expands within this,
21:21
Speaker 1: this forest. And they find three more hikers sort of
21:25
Speaker 1: about 100 or 200 feet away from this tree. They're
21:28
Speaker 1: in similar condition. They're all deceased. They're all sort of ragged.
21:33
Speaker 1: Some of them are only wearing a little bit of clothing.
21:35
Speaker 1: They're all dead. But they can't find the remaining four hikers.
21:41
Speaker 1: They continue to search for the next several days. But
21:44
Speaker 1: the weather was pretty severe. And so ultimately, they decided
21:46
Speaker 1: that at this point, it's a recovery mission. We're not
21:49
Speaker 1: going to find them. They're going to be dead. So
21:51
Speaker 1: they waited until the thaw in May. And once the
21:54
Speaker 1: snow had thawed a bit, they came out there and
21:57
Speaker 1: they found this, what looked to be like the, they
22:00
Speaker 1: believed that a snow fort had been made maybe three
22:03
Speaker 1: or 400 feet away from that cedar tree, which they
22:06
Speaker 1: wouldn't have seen it during the winter. It was barely,
22:08
Speaker 1: you wouldn't have seen it, but it had melted down enough.
22:11
Speaker 1: And the rest of the bodies were found in the
22:14
Speaker 1: remnants of the snow cave. And the four hikers that
22:18
Speaker 1: were in there just had catastrophic injuries. they're all deceased.
22:24
Speaker 1: The woman or one of them had a crush injury.
22:27
Speaker 1: His chest was, they compared the injury to his chest
22:30
Speaker 1: equivalent to being struck by a car at high speed. However,
22:34
Speaker 1: he had no or limited lacerations. Like there was no
22:37
Speaker 1: impact to his body. His chest was sort of just
22:39
Speaker 1: inexplicably caved in. And so he's been crushed. One guy,
22:43
Speaker 1: I think his skull was fractured and a piece of
22:46
Speaker 1: his skull was missing. But the one that stands out
22:48
Speaker 1: is there was one hiker, a woman, who her lips
22:54
Speaker 1: and her eyes were missing. And some accounts claim that
22:57
Speaker 1: the lips appeared to have been surgically removed. At least
23:00
Speaker 1: there was like very tight lines of how her, it
23:04
Speaker 1: was predation, animal predation, you'd see tearing. This was like
23:08
Speaker 1: relatively straight lines where her lips were removed. And then
23:11
Speaker 1: another hiker, his eyes were also missing. And so they're
23:14
Speaker 1: all dead. And they also noticed that the woman was
23:17
Speaker 1: wearing men's clothing or some clothing that was clearly not hers. Like,
23:22
Speaker 1: and then one of the men or a couple of
23:24
Speaker 1: the men were wearing some of her clothing. Like they
23:26
Speaker 1: had exchanged clothing and they found trace levels, albeit small,
23:31
Speaker 1: but trace levels of radiation on some of the clothing
23:34
Speaker 1: and they're all dead. And so now all the hikers
23:37
Speaker 1: have been found. And by this point, this is in
23:39
Speaker 1: May of 1960, I believe it is at this point.
23:42
Speaker 1: This is a huge story in Russia. This is equivalent
23:45
Speaker 1: to being super viral today. Everybody was talking about it.
23:48
Speaker 1: The families are very outspoken about it. People want answers.
23:51
Speaker 1: They want to know what happened. And so the Russian government,
23:54
Speaker 1: they launched this investigation into what happened out there in
23:57
Speaker 1: the Dyatlov Pass. And quickly, they shut down this investigation.
24:03
Speaker 1: Like very quickly, they shut it down. And the only
24:05
Speaker 1: things people heard were there were numerous reports from military
24:09
Speaker 1: personnel and some civilians who apparently were in the area,
24:12
Speaker 1: in the Ural's, that claimed to have seen glowing orbs
24:16
Speaker 1: like fireballs. I think they described them as being balls
24:18
Speaker 1: of fire and light shooting up and down. It's hard
24:22
Speaker 1: to tell if it was in the same area where
24:24
Speaker 1: the hikers were, but there were all these independent reports
24:27
Speaker 1: of strange lights over the Ural Mountains that could corroborate
24:30
Speaker 1: or could line up with when those hikers all died.
24:34
Speaker 1: And then also, lastly, the Russian government came out and said, well,
24:38
Speaker 1: we've determined that the nine hikers died From an overwhelming,
24:43
Speaker 1: or I think they called it a compelling force and
24:46
Speaker 1: then they closed it. They, they, I believe they made
24:49
Speaker 1: it completely confidential. No, the families didn't get access to it.
24:53
Speaker 1: It's completely shut down. And then, uh, in 2020, the
24:56
Speaker 1: reason I told it is because it sort of began
24:58
Speaker 1: making rounds because I believe some of the pictures had
25:00
Speaker 1: been redacted and you could see these pictures. And so
25:03
Speaker 1: I said at the start of my video, at the
25:05
Speaker 1: end of this 60 second clip, you're going to Google
25:07
Speaker 1: two words and it was Dyatlov pass. And so I
25:10
Speaker 1: teased the story and said, Google it for yourself. And
25:12
Speaker 1: it's a whole rabbit hole of crazy stuff.
25:14
Speaker 2: That's a crazy story. So compelling force is a very
25:18
Speaker 2: weird way to describe a bunch of people dying. Compelling force?
25:22
Speaker 1: It might've been compelling natural force, but I, I, well,
25:26
Speaker 1: that makes more sense.
25:28
Speaker 2: You froze to death.
25:29
Speaker 1: Well, they, they could have come out and said that.
25:31
Speaker 2: Right.
25:32
Speaker 1: They basically said, yep.
25:34
Speaker 2: Are you sure it's not a translation issue?
25:37
Speaker 1: There are several translations of how it came out and it,
25:40
Speaker 1: effectively amounts to some sort of compelling, overwhelming force.
25:45
Speaker 2: Does Russia have a different way of distinguishing how people
25:48
Speaker 2: die in autopsy reports than we do, maybe?
25:52
Speaker 1: I'm not sure, to be honest.
25:54
Speaker 2: I'm not sure on that. It might be like the
25:55
Speaker 2: way Russian language works and where they describe things. Like
25:59
Speaker 2: they might have categories for deaths in a compelling natural
26:02
Speaker 2: force might just mean like freezing to death is in
26:05
Speaker 2: the same category as like dying in the Mojave Desert.
26:09
Speaker 1: I think that that's, I've always assumed that probably what
26:13
Speaker 1: happened is something rational happened. I mean, when you become hypothermic,
26:18
Speaker 1: you can have, it's called paradoxical undressing, where at your
26:21
Speaker 1: final stage of when you're so cold, you actually get
26:23
Speaker 1: hot and you take your clothes off. And I would
26:27
Speaker 1: imagine if you're in the final stages of dying, you
26:31
Speaker 1: might do some funny things.
26:33
Speaker 2: Would you cut your lips off though?
26:35
Speaker 1: Would you surgically remove your lips?
26:36
Speaker 2: And where are the lips? But then the question is, like,
26:40
Speaker 2: is there an image of that? Like, can we see it? Like,
26:43
Speaker 2: this is one of the things that people talk about
26:45
Speaker 2: all the time when it comes to crop circles. Excuse me.
26:48
Speaker 2: Cattle mutilation. I put them all in the same category. Like,
26:51
Speaker 2: who the fuck knows what that is. But cattle mutilation,
26:54
Speaker 2: one of the weird things that they associate with extraterrestrials
26:58
Speaker 2: or whatever they think it is, is that these cuts
27:02
Speaker 2: are very surgical. Yeah. And it's not an animal just
27:05
Speaker 2: tearing apart a cow. that these cuts, they look like
27:09
Speaker 2: they're made with a scalpel or perhaps some sort of
27:11
Speaker 2: a laser. And also these creatures are completely drained of blood.
27:15
Speaker 2: But I've seen the cattle mutilation images, and you're like, wow,
27:19
Speaker 2: that is strange. I'd like to see what their lips
27:22
Speaker 2: look like.
27:23
Speaker 1: I do know that actually, and this has nothing to
27:25
Speaker 1: do with the fact that I posted about it, because
27:27
Speaker 1: the Dyatlov Pass gets posted about quite a bit. But
27:30
Speaker 1: I think it was in 2022, Russia.
27:33
Speaker 1: Actually re-examined the Dyatlov Pass mystery now and sort of said, okay,
27:37
Speaker 1: we're going to look at it again. And they determined
27:40
Speaker 1: that an avalanche, like a slab of ice broke loose,
27:43
Speaker 1: a huge slab. This could be totally wrong. I know
27:45
Speaker 1: it's an avalanche or a slab of ice that they
27:49
Speaker 1: basically said was responsible for all of this, that it
27:51
Speaker 1: led to them somehow becoming exposed, hypothermia and the like.
27:57
Speaker 1: But It doesn't really answer a lot of the questions
28:00
Speaker 1: in my mind. It certainly could have happened, as I
28:02
Speaker 1: told you. Also, why did they stop in the middle
28:05
Speaker 1: of the wind side of the slope?
28:08
Speaker 2: They probably were trying to make their way across, and
28:10
Speaker 2: they couldn't do it. And they said, we have to stop,
28:12
Speaker 2: but just stop right here. I can't go any further.
28:15
Speaker 2: And they all argued, and then they decided to put
28:17
Speaker 2: a tent right there. It's also... I mean, you know
28:21
Speaker 2: this better than anybody. When you get tired, you make
28:23
Speaker 2: poor decisions. That's what they're trying to do to you
28:26
Speaker 2: in buds, right? They're trying to make you quit. They're
28:28
Speaker 2: trying to break you down, right? When people get tired,
28:31
Speaker 2: they get very irrational. And they also have very little
28:33
Speaker 2: processing power. They don't think about all the possibilities, what
28:37
Speaker 2: could go wrong, what could go right. And they think
28:39
Speaker 2: they can't possibly keep going. And the problem is if
28:42
Speaker 2: you have nine of you and one of you is
28:44
Speaker 2: a pussy– You know, you got a real problem. Like,
28:48
Speaker 2: do you let Bob die? Or do you stay here
28:51
Speaker 2: with Bob when you can keep going? And Bob is
28:54
Speaker 2: just like, we can't do this. Like, Bob. Like, that's
28:57
Speaker 2: the horror movie scene, right? There's always this one fucking guy.
29:01
Speaker 2: He's like, fuck this, man. I'm fucking staying right here.
29:04
Speaker 2: You're like, jeez, Bob. We can keep walking. Keep walking.
29:07
Speaker 1: That reality. Just count 10.
29:09
Speaker 2: Steps and then count 10 steps more and then just
29:12
Speaker 2: keep doing that.
29:13
Speaker 1: That, what you're describing is... It's such a natural human thing,
29:17
Speaker 1: which is when the lowest common denominator in your group
29:20
Speaker 1: is struggling. Even if you're frustrated, a lot of times
29:24
Speaker 1: people have an inclination to lowering what you're doing to
29:27
Speaker 1: help that person. In SEAL training, I mean, what's made
29:32
Speaker 1: clear immediately is to some degree that's noble, to some degree.
29:38
Speaker 1: But a lot of times you're going to get more
29:39
Speaker 1: people confused.
29:40
Speaker 2: That way.
29:41
Speaker 1: So those people that are going to hold you back
29:43
Speaker 1: in training have to be identified and kicked out now.
29:47
Speaker 2: Right.
29:47
Speaker 1: And so it became clear that if you're the weakest link,
29:51
Speaker 1: you're probably getting left behind in training. But then in
29:53
Speaker 1: real life, it's the reverse.
29:55
Speaker 2: Buds is a genius way of filtering out the pussies.
29:59
Speaker 2: It's genius. It's the best way. You have to, there's no,
30:03
Speaker 2: there's no other way to determine whether or not someone
30:06
Speaker 2: will be able to handle extreme pressure and stress other
30:10
Speaker 2: than putting them through extreme pressure and stress. And there's
30:13
Speaker 2: some people through whatever, for whatever reason at this stage
30:17
Speaker 2: of their life, they can't handle it. And maybe they
30:19
Speaker 2: will be in the future. Maybe this is going to
30:21
Speaker 2: be a good experience for them and they're going to
30:22
Speaker 2: toughen up and Look, Goggins talks about it all the
30:25
Speaker 2: time about when before he ever got into the SEALs,
30:27
Speaker 2: he was 300 pounds and eating milkshakes. He was fat.
30:29
Speaker 2: He couldn't run around the block. But he decided to
30:32
Speaker 2: become a different person. And he did it. You can
30:35
Speaker 2: do that. But at that moment, you're going to quit.
30:38
Speaker 1: Yeah.
30:38
Speaker 2: And so at that moment, we have to get rid
30:40
Speaker 2: of you. And maybe you can become someone in the
30:42
Speaker 2: future that won't quit. But right now, you're quitting.
30:46
Speaker 1: Yeah, I sometimes get asked, not often, but I've been asked,
30:50
Speaker 1: you know, when you were going through selection, did you
30:52
Speaker 1: ever have a moment where you thought, or you thought
30:54
Speaker 1: about quitting and you suppressed it? And I only say
30:58
Speaker 1: this because I know this is shared amongst a lot
31:01
Speaker 1: of the people that I went through training with.
31:03
Speaker 2: I didn't.
31:04
Speaker 1: I did not have a moment where I thought, oh boy,
31:07
Speaker 1: I'm on the precipice of quitting. I better hold on.
31:11
Speaker 1: did I have moments where I was questioning my life
31:13
Speaker 1: decisions and questioning, can I even do this?
31:16
Speaker 2: Definitely.
31:17
Speaker 1: But there's something like fundamentally different about trying and failing
31:22
Speaker 1: and choosing to stop. And you learn that that is
31:26
Speaker 1: something that I believe is innate. Do you have the
31:28
Speaker 1: ability to keep going through failure? And they put a
31:32
Speaker 1: lot of test gates into buds to basically force it
31:35
Speaker 1: upon you. Most notably the, um, not even hell week.
31:39
Speaker 1: Hell week is the most well-known test of endurance where
31:42
Speaker 1: you're awake for five and a half days, basically. But
31:45
Speaker 1: there's one that's even simpler that it's, it's, it's so easy.
31:49
Speaker 1: If you're willing to do it easy as a stretch,
31:52
Speaker 1: it's not that hard, but you really need to be
31:54
Speaker 1: committed to doing it. And it's the 50 meter underwater swim.
31:58
Speaker 1: You do it day two of the first phase of
32:00
Speaker 1: training and everybody knows you're going to do it. All
32:02
Speaker 1: you have to do is okay. Get in the pool,
32:05
Speaker 1: swim one length, and then swim back without surfacing until
32:09
Speaker 1: you're done. It is probably just beyond what's comfortable for
32:12
Speaker 1: someone who's a decent enough swimmer, but you have plenty
32:15
Speaker 1: of lead time for this. You know this is going
32:16
Speaker 1: to happen. People train for years before they go. When
32:22
Speaker 1: I did it, the first leg, it's stressful, but as
32:25
Speaker 1: soon as you've made the turn and you're on your
32:27
Speaker 1: way back, you realize that if you've committed to doing it,
32:30
Speaker 1: you're like, oh, this is really not bad. It's so quick.
32:32
Speaker 1: It's so short. It's all over. People that would quit
32:36
Speaker 1: on that didn't quit at the end of the 50.
32:39
Speaker 1: They quit on the first leg. You're not physically done yet,
32:44
Speaker 1: but you're mentally done. I mean, I'm generalizing, but if
32:47
Speaker 1: you see that type of phenomenon in training quite a
32:49
Speaker 1: bit where it's, are you prepared to keep going through
32:52
Speaker 1: adversity or are you just going to say it's too
32:55
Speaker 1: much and I don't want to do it anymore?
32:56
Speaker 2: I wonder if they've ever sat down and tried to
33:00
Speaker 2: engineer a program where to alter people's psychology. You know,
33:06
Speaker 2: you would think that the more people that you could
33:08
Speaker 2: get that would be able to figure out a way
33:12
Speaker 2: through something very difficult where your mind wants to quit,
33:15
Speaker 2: your body wants to quit, the more people that you
33:17
Speaker 2: could figure out how to train to that position, the better.
33:21
Speaker 2: Or is it like, I have friends that are MMA
33:24
Speaker 2: coaches that don't wanna work with anybody who needs a
33:27
Speaker 2: mental coach. They're like, you need a mental coach, you're
33:30
Speaker 2: in the wrong business. And they say that. Those guys
33:33
Speaker 2: are too unreliable. They'll tell it to you. You need
33:36
Speaker 2: a mental coach. You're too in your own head. You're
33:38
Speaker 2: not going to be able to perform. These guys are
33:40
Speaker 2: going to be able to lose, dust themselves off, figure
33:42
Speaker 2: it out, and come back and be stronger. And then
33:45
Speaker 2: there's some guys that every big moment, the moment overwhelms them.
33:49
Speaker 2: And they just cave to the pressure. They just can't
33:53
Speaker 2: handle it. And then they go through some sort of
33:55
Speaker 2: mental coaching session. But the core... Their personality, whatever it
34:00
Speaker 2: is that's about them, what makes them them, is just
34:04
Speaker 2: fragile for whatever reason. And the question is, I wonder
34:09
Speaker 2: if they've ever tried to engineer a program to strengthen
34:13
Speaker 2: people's psychology just the same way you can strengthen people
34:17
Speaker 2: by lifting weights or by running or whatever. I wonder
34:20
Speaker 2: if there was a concerted effort to say, well, we
34:23
Speaker 2: have so many people crashing out. What if we had
34:25
Speaker 2: 50% less people crashing out? then we'd have 50% more
34:29
Speaker 2: elite operators.
34:31
Speaker 1: I know that when I went through training, and I
34:33
Speaker 1: have no idea if it's still the case now, but
34:35
Speaker 1: I was in SEAL training in earnest in 2011 and 2012.
34:41
Speaker 1: And there were psychologists on staff that you did not
34:46
Speaker 1: go and frequently see them by any stretch. But I
34:49
Speaker 1: remember there being parts of training, which were sort of
34:53
Speaker 1: funny because they punctuated the brutality of training. It would
34:55
Speaker 1: be We'd be out doing the obstacle course for an
34:59
Speaker 1: hour and then we're doing a four-mile run. Then we're swimming.
35:02
Speaker 1: Then we're doing this. We're getting beat up. And then like,
35:03
Speaker 1: all right, now go in the classroom. You go in
35:06
Speaker 1: the classroom and you're talking to this woman who's a
35:09
Speaker 1: psychologist and she's teaching you how to like– it's called
35:12
Speaker 1: arousal control. How to take down your mental state in
35:16
Speaker 1: the middle of high-stress moments and all the instructors are on.
35:19
Speaker 2: The side like, you better listen to this.
35:21
Speaker 1: You know, it's just funny. So there was attempts made,
35:25
Speaker 1: but coming from having done it, there's such a wide
35:32
Speaker 1: variety of people that are successful in training that I
35:36
Speaker 1: have seen and heard that it's hard to pinpoint what
35:40
Speaker 1: is the appropriate indication you're going to be successful. Like
35:43
Speaker 1: that's the thing they're trying to identify is what are
35:45
Speaker 1: the pools of people that traditionally do well in SEAL training?
35:49
Speaker 1: Because they're trying to figure out ways to strengthen. But
35:52
Speaker 1: the two things they found, there's two places where the
35:55
Speaker 1: most mentally tough people in terms of success in SEAL training,
35:59
Speaker 1: one is wrestling, basically any level of wrestling. Wrestlers have
36:03
Speaker 1: an incredibly high success rate in buds and water polo.
36:07
Speaker 1: Those are the two that they have determined through their
36:09
Speaker 1: studies are the grittiest, most resilient folks when it comes
36:13
Speaker 1: to SEAL training.
36:14
Speaker 2: Interesting.
36:14
Speaker 3: Yeah.
36:15
Speaker 2: Water polo. So in water polo, how deep is the water?
36:19
Speaker 1: I think it's more that they tread water the whole
36:21
Speaker 1: fucking time.
36:22
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's what I'm getting at. Like, is the water
36:25
Speaker 2: so deep that they can't touch the ground?
36:26
Speaker 1: No, no, you're treading the entire time.
36:28
Speaker 2: Whoa. And you're playing a game.
36:30
Speaker 1: Dude, there was a guy... That's crazy. There was a
36:33
Speaker 1: guy in my class... So the way it works is
36:36
Speaker 1: you have your enlisted guys, and there's upwards of 100
36:39
Speaker 1: dudes in a class that are enlisted. And then you have,
36:42
Speaker 1: I think, maybe 8 to 10 that are officer candidates. It's... Yeah,
36:47
Speaker 1: we're all SEAL candidates. That's true. But the difference between
36:50
Speaker 1: an officer candidate and an enlisted swine candidate is enormous.
36:55
Speaker 1: The guys over here, the enlisted guys, are just like
36:58
Speaker 1: salt of the earth, just like, I don't give a fuck.
37:00
Speaker 1: We're going to see what happens. The officer candidates, they
37:03
Speaker 1: have some of the most impressive resumes that you can
37:06
Speaker 1: have as like a 20-something-year-old kid. You have dudes that are, oh,
37:10
Speaker 1: I was a Rhodes Scholar. I played, I walked onto
37:13
Speaker 1: the Stanford football team, that level of prestige. And also I'm,
37:18
Speaker 1: my family's friends with George Bush and, and I'm also
37:21
Speaker 1: like a world-class swimmer and I'm like an expert marksman.
37:24
Speaker 1: Those are the dudes that become your officer candidates because
37:27
Speaker 1: there's so few slots on any given year for these
37:29
Speaker 1: spots that they're, they're, they're so vetted that virtually all
37:33
Speaker 1: of them succeed. It's so rare that an officer candidate
37:36
Speaker 1: does not pass. Like an officer who's in Bud's, You
37:39
Speaker 1: might as well just call him a SEAL at that
37:41
Speaker 1: point because the vetting is crazy for SEALs. Not on
37:43
Speaker 1: the enlisted side. We're still figuring that out. But the
37:45
Speaker 1: officer side, they're highly vetted. And one of the guys
37:48
Speaker 1: that was one of my officers in one of the
37:51
Speaker 1: classes I was in was a water polo player from
37:54
Speaker 1: the University of Tennessee. And he's this big, big, strong guy.
37:58
Speaker 1: He's an awesome dude. And there's this part of training,
38:03
Speaker 1: halfway through training. It's second phase. It's broken into three phases.
38:06
Speaker 1: And it's the water phase. And it's really statistically everybody
38:10
Speaker 1: who gets to second phase mostly makes it through. But
38:14
Speaker 1: it's because you've already passed through so many test skates
38:16
Speaker 1: in first phase, like Hell Week and the 50 meter
38:18
Speaker 1: underwater swim, that this is already the pool of people
38:21
Speaker 1: that's just going to push through the misery and pass stuff.
38:24
Speaker 1: So it's misleading. The second phase of training, I would argue,
38:27
Speaker 1: is exponentially more challenging than first phase. But the only
38:31
Speaker 1: people who do it are through first phase. And so
38:35
Speaker 1: 90% of people pass second phase.
38:36
Speaker 2: But it's really hard.
38:37
Speaker 1: And there's two tests in particular within second phase that
38:40
Speaker 1: are notoriously just brutal. One of them is called pool competency,
38:45
Speaker 1: which is a 20-minute exam of your ability to fix
38:49
Speaker 1: problems with your scuba tanks underwater, where basically you go
38:53
Speaker 1: to the bottom of the pool with your tanks on.
38:55
Speaker 1: And when your test begins, you're in the section of
38:58
Speaker 1: this huge pool called the combat training tank. There's like
39:01
Speaker 1: the six-foot section, then it slopes down to the nine-foot section.
39:04
Speaker 1: And then it slopes down to the 15 foot section.
39:06
Speaker 1: And your test takes place in the nine foot section.
39:09
Speaker 1: And you just crawl along the lane marker as if
39:11
Speaker 1: you're doing lap swimming. There's a lane on the bottom
39:13
Speaker 1: of the pool. There's like eight or nine lane markers.
39:15
Speaker 1: And you crawl back and forth only in the nine
39:18
Speaker 1: foot section. And two instructors per student come down and
39:21
Speaker 1: turn your air off, tie knots in your hoses. And
39:23
Speaker 1: as soon as you're being touched, you got to go
39:25
Speaker 1: into the fetal position and wait for like the attack
39:28
Speaker 1: to stop. It takes like 15 seconds, 30 seconds. You're
39:31
Speaker 1: out of air. And this is a 20 minute test.
39:33
Speaker 1: You're building up hypercapnia as you go. And then you
39:36
Speaker 1: got to fix your problems and the problems get progressively
39:38
Speaker 1: harder to solve. But the procedures they teach you are
39:41
Speaker 1: the same procedures for every problem. If you go to
39:43
Speaker 1: step one, it doesn't work. You go to step two.
39:45
Speaker 1: If that doesn't work, you go to step three until
39:47
Speaker 1: you go all the way through your steps. But it
39:48
Speaker 1: teaches you calm. So even though you're on the last
39:51
Speaker 1: problem you're going to solve at minute 18 and you're
39:53
Speaker 1: about to pass out, you have to show them that
39:57
Speaker 1: you'll do step one, step two, all the way through.
39:59
Speaker 1: So it's about being calm. I was horrible at this test,
40:02
Speaker 1: by the way. I passed by the skin of my teeth.
40:05
Speaker 1: This dude passed the test first try, but that's not
40:07
Speaker 1: where the story comes in. So this water polo player,
40:09
Speaker 1: he blazes through that test, no problem. The other test
40:13
Speaker 1: is just the tread. That's all it's called, the tread.
40:16
Speaker 1: You spend five minutes in the pool with your Twin
40:19
Speaker 1: 80 tanks on, which are neutral in the water. They're
40:21
Speaker 1: pretty heavy outside of the water, but they're cumbersome on
40:24
Speaker 1: your back. You got no fins. You got a weight
40:26
Speaker 1: belt on. Hands up out of the water.
40:28
Speaker 2: Weight belt.
40:29
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like five pounds or something. And you tread
40:32
Speaker 1: for five minutes. And that's the whole test.
40:34
Speaker 2: Hands out of the water.
40:34
Speaker 1: Hands out of the water.
40:35
Speaker 2: So you only tread with your legs.
40:37
Speaker 1: No fins.
40:38
Speaker 2: Whoa. Tanks on.
40:41
Speaker 1: The only way to do it, realistically, is imagine... imagine
40:45
Speaker 1: hopping on like a bike, like in the gym and
40:48
Speaker 1: just sprinting until you have full muscle fatigue, hold it
40:52
Speaker 1: for like three, four minutes and don't, it doesn't, not even,
40:55
Speaker 1: you don't even need to go that fast, but it's constant.
40:57
Speaker 1: That's the only way to do it. Unless you're an
41:00
Speaker 1: exceptionally talented water polo player who's mastered the art of
41:03
Speaker 1: the egg beater, where they, they basically have found a
41:06
Speaker 1: way to move their legs. That's like the most efficient
41:10
Speaker 1: way to tread water. And this dude, I kid you not, who,
41:13
Speaker 1: blazed through pool comp first try, no problems whatsoever, was
41:15
Speaker 1: like joking around after his test. He gets him for
41:18
Speaker 1: the tread and he could hold himself almost to his
41:22
Speaker 1: belly button, probably like nipple to belly button line, fully
41:25
Speaker 1: out of the water, just no problem. Just no problem,
41:28
Speaker 1: like practically smiling because he knows this is my domain.
41:31
Speaker 1: I can do this all day long. It was the
41:33
Speaker 1: most incredible thing I'd ever seen.
41:34
Speaker 2: That's crazy. I would have never thought of that. First
41:37
Speaker 2: of all, I didn't know the water polo players had
41:39
Speaker 2: a tread the entire time, which is insanely impressive. Like,
41:42
Speaker 2: how long is a game?
41:43
Speaker 1: Well, I don't know if they can go to the
41:45
Speaker 1: edge and hold on periodically, but if you watch water polo,
41:48
Speaker 1: they're treading.
41:49
Speaker 2: Most of the time they're just treading.
41:50
Speaker 1: I'm no water polo player, but my understanding is that
41:53
Speaker 1: the game is played while treading.
41:56
Speaker 2: Yeah. I never would have imagined, but now that you've
42:00
Speaker 2: described it that way, like, that might be the hardest
42:02
Speaker 2: sport on earth. That makes baseball look so easy.
42:06
Speaker 1: I remember like David Wells of the Yankees. He's a
42:09
Speaker 1: huge fag. I smoke cigarettes in between innings.
42:12
Speaker 2: Babe Ruth. Dude, it's crazy. Babe Ruth eating hot dogs,
42:14
Speaker 2: big old belly.
42:15
Speaker 3: Oh, man.
42:15
Speaker 2: That's crazy.
42:17
Speaker 1: I remember in boot camps, this is not even before
42:20
Speaker 1: you even get to Bud's. There's actually, it's funny, when
42:24
Speaker 1: you go in, you know, I went in as a civilian.
42:28
Speaker 1: So I signed this contract where basically you say, okay,
42:30
Speaker 1: I'm going to go to boot camp, become a sailor.
42:32
Speaker 1: And then I'll have my shot at going to Bud's.
42:33
Speaker 1: It's called the SEAL Challenge Contract. And the way I
42:37
Speaker 1: looked at it is I'm like, okay, I've prepared for Bud's.
42:40
Speaker 1: As a civilian, that's what I was training for. I
42:43
Speaker 1: didn't think at all about boot camp. Like, what's two
42:47
Speaker 1: months of Navy boot camp going to be? Because what
42:49
Speaker 1: my head is focused on is Bud's. That comes after.
42:52
Speaker 1: So when I shipped out to boot camp, I had
42:55
Speaker 1: put virtually no thought into what those two months were
42:59
Speaker 1: going to be like in Great Lakes, Illinois, I figured
43:01
Speaker 1: it was like, ah, whatever, I'll march around, fold some clothes,
43:05
Speaker 1: you know, whatever, and then I'll go do the real
43:07
Speaker 1: stuff out in San Diego. And so I get to Chicago,
43:11
Speaker 1: and it was like a reality check, because you quickly
43:14
Speaker 1: realize that, first of all, if you're trying to be
43:17
Speaker 1: a SEAL, and you're on the SEAL Challenge contract, when
43:21
Speaker 1: you get to Great Lakes, you're segregated into a separate group.
43:24
Speaker 1: They're called the 800 Division. I don't know if this
43:27
Speaker 1: still exists now, but it did in 2010. And there
43:31
Speaker 1: really aren't any SEALs or spec ops that are at
43:34
Speaker 1: Great Lakes. I mean, there's a few, but for the
43:36
Speaker 1: most part, you're working with ordinary sailors that are putting
43:39
Speaker 1: you through training. But imagine you're an ordinary sailor, and
43:43
Speaker 1: God love them. I've worked with amazing sailors across the Navy,
43:47
Speaker 1: and here comes the SEAL recruits in the 800 Division.
43:50
Speaker 1: They're civilians. They're not even sailors yet.
43:53
Speaker 2: There is an.
43:54
Speaker 1: Enormous amount of resentment towards those that show up like, pfft. Yeah,
43:58
Speaker 1: I'm going to Bud's. Like there's just an attitude of
44:00
Speaker 1: like the instructors, they want you to understand that like
44:04
Speaker 1: you don't have a clue what you're getting yourself into.
44:06
Speaker 1: And so in boot camp, those two months, your instructors
44:09
Speaker 1: are not SEALs, but they just like torture you because
44:12
Speaker 1: they're like, this is nothing compared to what you're going
44:14
Speaker 1: to have in Bud's. And one of the things we
44:16
Speaker 1: would do is there was all sorts of stupid stuff
44:19
Speaker 1: like pushups and whatever. But there was this treading thing
44:21
Speaker 1: that we had to do where we'd go in the
44:23
Speaker 1: pool at like five in the morning and like it's
44:26
Speaker 1: so cold. And they would line us up. So we're
44:29
Speaker 1: all facing. If you were, I'd be right behind you
44:31
Speaker 1: looking at the back of your head. You'd be looking
44:32
Speaker 1: at the next guy's back of his head and they'd
44:35
Speaker 1: give us bricks and you're just treading and you got
44:37
Speaker 1: to pass the brick up and down the line. And
44:39
Speaker 1: periodically they'd give you two bricks. And so if anybody
44:43
Speaker 1: doesn't hold up their end of the bargain quickly, the
44:46
Speaker 1: bricks get handed off to like one person and no
44:48
Speaker 1: one wants the brick. You don't have fins on or anything.
44:50
Speaker 1: And guys are like sinking into the water, like truly
44:53
Speaker 1: about to pass out and black out.
44:55
Speaker 2: But the level of oversight, Not great.
44:57
Speaker 1: Because it's sort of like, you don't know what you're
44:59
Speaker 1: getting into.
45:00
Speaker 2: Tread all those bricks.
45:01
Speaker 1: And it's just mad. And they would leave us in
45:03
Speaker 1: there treading with bricks for so long that you're like,
45:05
Speaker 1: I'm going to drown. I'm literally going to drown if
45:08
Speaker 1: I keep this up. And then suddenly it would be
45:09
Speaker 1: over and you're like on the pool deck, like vomiting.
45:12
Speaker 2: And you're thinking to.
45:12
Speaker 1: Yourself, holy shit, like, is this, this is not even
45:16
Speaker 1: as bad as buds. And then you get to buds
45:17
Speaker 1: and you're like, no. No, that was worse.
45:21
Speaker 2: Well, that's probably good then. It was nice.
45:23
Speaker 3: Yeah.
45:24
Speaker 2: That's funny. Had those guys even been through buds? No. Okay.
45:27
Speaker 2: So they were just making tough stuff for you to do.
45:30
Speaker 2: Put on all your turtlenecks.
45:31
Speaker 1: So we'd like put on all our stupid, like neoprene turtlenecks,
45:34
Speaker 1: like seven of them. Cause you have all this stupid
45:36
Speaker 1: clothing in your rack and like march around the compartment,
45:40
Speaker 1: the room you're in. And we would just like spend
45:42
Speaker 1: hours like marching around the compartment, sweating our ass off
45:46
Speaker 1: in our like turtlenecks. It's stuff like that. Or we
45:49
Speaker 1: do birdwatching where they would have us just face a
45:52
Speaker 1: wall and be at attention for like two, three hours,
45:54
Speaker 1: just staring at paint. But it's just arbitrary.
45:57
Speaker 2: It's like, you don't know what you're getting into. Bud's
45:59
Speaker 2: is going to be so much worse.
46:00
Speaker 1: And like, you don't even know what you're talking about.
46:02
Speaker 2: What kind of weird people want to do that to people?
46:04
Speaker 1: There was a lot of like, you don't know what
46:06
Speaker 1: you're getting yourself into. I know more than you. I've
46:09
Speaker 1: done real stuff in the Navy. But like they have
46:11
Speaker 1: this moment where we're still civilians and And we haven't
46:15
Speaker 1: gone to training, and they know that virtually all of
46:17
Speaker 1: us are going to quit. So this is a safe
46:19
Speaker 1: group to sort of flex around.
46:21
Speaker 2: You know? Wow.
46:22
Speaker 1: So it was– I hated boot camp. When I got
46:25
Speaker 1: out of boot camp, in boot camp, I was drinking
46:28
Speaker 1: their coffee, and I was convinced it was caffeinated coffee.
46:32
Speaker 1: It wasn't. I told myself it was. I'm a big
46:34
Speaker 1: coffee drinker. And when I got out of boot camp,
46:36
Speaker 1: I went to dinner with my family and I didn't
46:40
Speaker 1: eat anything. I just drank nine cups of coffee and
46:43
Speaker 1: got so jacked up on caffeine and just told stories
46:46
Speaker 1: about boot camp.
46:47
Speaker 2: They don't give you caffeinated coffee?
46:48
Speaker 1: Well, it was coffee, but I mean, it was like
46:52
Speaker 1: you pushed a button and this brown shit came out
46:54
Speaker 1: and it was like. It said cafe something on it.
46:57
Speaker 1: I was like, that's coffee. I'm not going to question
46:59
Speaker 1: it because I don't want to psych myself out. And
47:01
Speaker 1: I was drinking this shitty coffee.
47:03
Speaker 2: Yeah, have some coffee. Jesus Christ, you're freaking me out.
47:08
Speaker 1: Oh, man.
47:09
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's funny. Yeah, well, I mean, what we were
47:14
Speaker 2: talking about before, that there's no other process to figure
47:17
Speaker 2: out whether someone's going to be able to handle pressure
47:20
Speaker 2: than to put them through it and see what happens.
47:21
Speaker 2: If you're passing bricks... I mean, maybe that's not the
47:24
Speaker 2: best example of it because it seems like those guys
47:26
Speaker 2: were being a little sadistic.
47:28
Speaker 1: Yeah.
47:28
Speaker 2: And probably at least you would imagine that what they're
47:31
Speaker 2: doing in Bud's is tried and proven. They know what
47:34
Speaker 2: they're doing. These guys, it seems like they were just
47:37
Speaker 2: getting off on the fact they could tell you what
47:38
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48:52
Speaker 1: So I got hurt in Afghanistan in 2014. Um, and
48:58
Speaker 1: after I got hurt, I'll tell you in a minute
49:00
Speaker 1: what happened. I, I got debriefed essentially by the senior
49:04
Speaker 1: commander of the group that I was a part of.
49:07
Speaker 1: And it was just like, Hey, tell us what happened,
49:09
Speaker 1: what went wrong, what would you have done differently? And,
49:12
Speaker 1: and truthfully, and I wasn't kissing anybody's ass. I wasn't
49:15
Speaker 1: trying to be a, you know, follow the rules kind
49:19
Speaker 1: of guy. I just said, you know what? The training
49:21
Speaker 1: works like on the training is unbelievable. I saw it
49:25
Speaker 1: for myself firsthand.
49:26
Speaker 2: So we were in.
49:27
Speaker 1: Afghanistan in 2014, and this was the tail end of,
49:31
Speaker 1: this is my only combat tour I did as my
49:33
Speaker 1: first deployment. This is 2013, 2014. And we had been
49:36
Speaker 1: going into this town called Zarganshah, which is this fairly
49:41
Speaker 1: urban Afghan town that was literally on the other side
49:45
Speaker 1: of the one paved road, Route Utah, they called it,
49:48
Speaker 1: that ran through Afghanistan, got IED'd constantly. We were on
49:51
Speaker 1: one side of the road behind some HESCO barriers. And
49:54
Speaker 1: Zarganshah is like this sprawling, pretty large urban village. And Historically,
50:00
Speaker 1: I don't know how long it had been going on for,
50:02
Speaker 1: but there had just been nonstop fighting in Zaganshahr between
50:06
Speaker 1: NATO forces and loads of different factions of fighters, the Taliban,
50:12
Speaker 1: Pakistani fighters, you name it. And so when we got
50:15
Speaker 1: in country in 2013, we turned over with SEAL Team
50:18
Speaker 1: 8 and they said, basically, you know, your job here
50:22
Speaker 1: is to try to quell the flow of suicide bombers
50:24
Speaker 1: into Kabul. And there was a couple of other things
50:27
Speaker 1: they told us to focus on, but really If you
50:29
Speaker 1: want some action, you just go to Zarganshah because they're
50:33
Speaker 1: so battle hardened in there. The people that are still
50:35
Speaker 1: there that if you go in there, they're going to
50:37
Speaker 1: fight you. You know, if you want to find weapon caches,
50:39
Speaker 1: they're going to be in there. And so over the
50:41
Speaker 1: course of the deployment, this is like five months in,
50:44
Speaker 1: we had gone into Zarganshah a great deal. And truthfully,
50:48
Speaker 1: it wasn't like we walked in and it was crazy
50:50
Speaker 1: every time, but we definitely got engaged. There was definitely
50:54
Speaker 1: more contacts there than anywhere else. But on this one day,
50:58
Speaker 1: this is like five months into the deployment. This is
51:01
Speaker 1: in April. So it was the fighting season that started.
51:04
Speaker 1: So the warmer weather had come in. And we sort
51:08
Speaker 1: of put ourselves in a terrible position a little bit
51:10
Speaker 1: by accident. So the city, it's not really a city.
51:13
Speaker 1: It's a village, but it's bigger than a village. It's
51:16
Speaker 1: somewhere between a city and a village for Afghanistan. So
51:18
Speaker 1: it's like mud huts, but like tight together. And it's
51:22
Speaker 1: really like well-defined, you know, it's almost like the edge
51:26
Speaker 1: of Zarganchar just becomes vacant desert on the outsides. It's
51:29
Speaker 1: like this really isolated spot. We entered the city with
51:33
Speaker 1: our vehicles and then began infilling into the city. I
51:37
Speaker 1: forget exactly what our purpose was. I think there was
51:40
Speaker 1: like a bomb maker or something we were going after.
51:43
Speaker 1: But the rules of engagement that we were operating under
51:47
Speaker 1: effectively said, you can't engage, you can't, offensively engage anyone.
51:53
Speaker 1: There's a couple of factors that could allow you to,
51:55
Speaker 1: but for the most part, you need to get shot
51:56
Speaker 1: at first to then shoot back. That's sort of the gist.
52:00
Speaker 1: And the people we would get into skirmishes with knew
52:04
Speaker 1: that a lot of times, and they'd be tactical about
52:06
Speaker 1: how they would go about shooting at us. And so
52:09
Speaker 1: we start making our infill from the edge of the city,
52:13
Speaker 1: and we get into this little narrow area where we
52:16
Speaker 1: knew we'd have to enter into this courtyard. And We
52:20
Speaker 1: start hearing chatter over the radios. So we had the
52:23
Speaker 1: ability to listen to just the open source radio that
52:25
Speaker 1: the fighters would use in the village. And we heard
52:28
Speaker 1: them talking to each other. And it was clear they
52:30
Speaker 1: had spotted us. It's broad daylight. This is not a shock.
52:34
Speaker 1: But they were clearly talking to each other and making
52:38
Speaker 1: plans to wait until we, and it was only 20
52:42
Speaker 1: or 30 of us plus our partner force, wait until
52:45
Speaker 1: we got into that courtyard before you open up on them.
52:49
Speaker 1: And I don't know if this was said explicitly, but
52:51
Speaker 1: the idea was they're not going to do anything due
52:53
Speaker 1: to the rules of engagement. We can let them come
52:55
Speaker 1: into the courtyard and then open up on them. And
52:57
Speaker 1: there's a couple two story buildings that overlook the courtyard.
53:00
Speaker 1: So it's pretty gnarly. Our team lead, who was freaking awesome,
53:05
Speaker 1: is freaking awesome. He stopped us and he's like, hold
53:09
Speaker 1: on a minute. We took cover behind this bridge that
53:11
Speaker 1: was right behind us. And he's like, wait, let's let's
53:13
Speaker 1: figure this out. But we realized that now that we
53:16
Speaker 1: know where they are, we know they're in those second
53:17
Speaker 1: story buildings overlooking that courtyard. They're now they can see us.
53:21
Speaker 1: If we go forward, we can't engage them proactively. We
53:24
Speaker 1: can't like call it an airstrike. We have to walk
53:26
Speaker 1: into a courtyard that has angles down on us. So
53:30
Speaker 1: it's basically walking into an ambush. That's a that's a
53:32
Speaker 1: bad idea. But if we go the other way, if
53:35
Speaker 1: we retreat, I told you that the edge of Zarganshah,
53:37
Speaker 1: it's there's no cover. It's just open desert, if you will.
53:41
Speaker 1: And so there wasn't really a good way to exfil
53:44
Speaker 1: back to our vehicles without getting shot in the back.
53:47
Speaker 1: They don't have rules of engagement. They can shoot at
53:48
Speaker 1: us anytime they want. And so we realized because of
53:51
Speaker 1: where they're positioned, we either had to go forward into
53:54
Speaker 1: effectively a known ambush or retreat and hope they don't
53:59
Speaker 1: get the drop on us and shoot one of us.
54:01
Speaker 1: And it's a pretty high chance someone was going to
54:02
Speaker 1: get shot if we exfiled. And so we sat there,
54:05
Speaker 1: we were thinking about it, and we ultimately made the
54:08
Speaker 1: decision like, hey, we're Navy SEALs. Let's just go forward
54:12
Speaker 1: and process the threat. And so into the courtyard we go.
54:15
Speaker 1: It's on body cam. And, you know, it was eerie.
54:19
Speaker 1: I remember walking into this courtyard. Again, broad daylight. It's quiet.
54:22
Speaker 1: We had seen women and children run out of the
54:24
Speaker 1: village as we approached. So we knew only people here
54:26
Speaker 1: are going to be fighters. And just machine guns opened
54:29
Speaker 1: up on us in this courtyard. And I say this without,
54:33
Speaker 1: I don't mean this in a sort of crass way,
54:35
Speaker 1: but thankfully, The only people who were hit in the
54:38
Speaker 1: opening volley were our dog and I believe two of
54:42
Speaker 1: the Afghan partner force guys that they got shot. Because
54:44
Speaker 1: if you're going to survive this, you need the SEALs.
54:46
Speaker 1: You don't need anybody else. You need the SEALs to
54:48
Speaker 1: get out of this. And so we all took up
54:50
Speaker 1: our positions. Sort of we expected this to happen. And
54:53
Speaker 1: it became like this crazy, disjointed, like onesie-twosie breaking off,
54:59
Speaker 1: clearing buildings, sometimes by yourself. just madness for like the
55:03
Speaker 1: next six hours.
55:04
Speaker 2: It slowed down.
55:05
Speaker 1: It was not constant, but it was like six hours
55:07
Speaker 1: of urban, sketchy, roof to roof, building to building shooting.
55:13
Speaker 1: And we were sort of getting our asses kicked. I mean,
55:15
Speaker 1: we just, we kept, we kept seeing people that would
55:18
Speaker 1: open up on us around like a corner. We'd go
55:21
Speaker 1: after them and they'd be gone. And we knew there
55:23
Speaker 1: were tunnels dug into the ground all over the place
55:25
Speaker 1: for people to escape. And it just seemed like everyone
55:28
Speaker 1: we were shooting at would, would vanish. And so finally,
55:32
Speaker 1: it's late at night. We've been there for six hours
55:34
Speaker 1: or so, and we've gotten beaten up. No one's been
55:36
Speaker 1: killed on our side. The dog's fine. And we were
55:40
Speaker 1: sort of like, man, I guess we just got to go.
55:43
Speaker 1: You know, we didn't really accomplish anything. We just kind
55:46
Speaker 1: of got beat up today and we'll come back another time.
55:49
Speaker 1: You know, it didn't go well. And as we're getting
55:51
Speaker 1: ready to leave, and remember at this point, our group
55:54
Speaker 1: of 20 some odd SEALs, there's Afghan partner force as well,
55:56
Speaker 1: but the SEALs that were on the ground, We had
55:59
Speaker 1: broken up into different fire teams, little groups of dudes.
56:02
Speaker 1: And I was with a fire team that was close
56:04
Speaker 1: to the exit we were going to be taking. And
56:07
Speaker 1: one of the drones overhead, I think it was being
56:10
Speaker 1: flown by somebody in Las Vegas, they called out that
56:13
Speaker 1: they had seen what appeared to be military age men,
56:17
Speaker 1: so MAMs as they're called, sort of in the vicinity
56:20
Speaker 1: of where we would be exfilling out of the city.
56:24
Speaker 1: And they weren't saying you better go over there and
56:26
Speaker 1: like shoot them because rules of engagement say you can't,
56:29
Speaker 1: you can't do that. It was just sort of a, Hey,
56:31
Speaker 1: be aware as you exit, they might be setting up
56:34
Speaker 1: on you as you're, you're leaving the city. And so
56:36
Speaker 1: our fire team happened to be closest and we decided
56:39
Speaker 1: we would just go over there and take a look. Our,
56:42
Speaker 1: our understanding is now it's nighttime. We're on night vision. We,
56:46
Speaker 1: we believed based on what was being passed to us
56:48
Speaker 1: that we could go down this alleyway that would come
56:51
Speaker 1: to a T intersections. And when we reached the end
56:54
Speaker 1: of this alleyway, there'd be this low wall, like six
56:56
Speaker 1: foot tall wall. And we could peer over the wall
56:59
Speaker 1: into this field where these ma'ams are. And they didn't
57:02
Speaker 1: know if they didn't even know who they were. It
57:04
Speaker 1: could have been kids. It could have been nothing. But
57:06
Speaker 1: we believed we'd be able to look over the wall
57:09
Speaker 1: and look out somewhere on the other side of this field.
57:11
Speaker 1: We'll see whoever these people are and make an assessment
57:13
Speaker 1: of what to do. So we super sneaky make our
57:17
Speaker 1: way down this alleyway, being as quiet as we can.
57:20
Speaker 1: We get to that low wall. And immediately, we start
57:24
Speaker 1: hearing someone talking. It's not our guys. We start hearing
57:27
Speaker 1: Pashtun being spoken on the other side of the wall.
57:30
Speaker 1: And we realize that there's been a mistake, a lost entrance.
57:35
Speaker 1: Some things have been miscommunicated to us. We are now
57:37
Speaker 1: closer than you and I are, right, the second to
57:40
Speaker 1: what actually was military-age men. There was at least two.
57:43
Speaker 1: I've heard as many as five. I actually don't know
57:46
Speaker 1: the exact number, but there were fighters hiding on the
57:49
Speaker 1: other side of that wall. Intention's unclear. But they're right
57:52
Speaker 1: there and they haven't heard us yet. And they're nervous.
57:55
Speaker 1: We can tell they're nervous. They're right on the other
57:57
Speaker 1: side of the wall. And we are in a tough,
58:00
Speaker 1: tough spot here because there's seven of us. We're, we're
58:03
Speaker 1: so close to them that if someone even so much
58:06
Speaker 1: as like farts right now, they're going to hear us.
58:08
Speaker 1: And so our team leader, who was incredible, he went
58:11
Speaker 1: on to go to team six. He's one of the
58:13
Speaker 1: best dudes I've ever met. He, he, he had to
58:15
Speaker 1: make an on the ground decision. We got to engage
58:18
Speaker 1: these guys so we can see they have weapons. One
58:20
Speaker 1: guy looked over and said they have weapons. This is
58:21
Speaker 1: all nonverbal. We're like making hand signals and stuff on
58:24
Speaker 1: night vision. And so one of our guys, our team
58:28
Speaker 1: leader gets down on a knee and he tells one
58:30
Speaker 1: of the guys next to me to stand on his
58:31
Speaker 1: leg and start shooting. And so over the wall, he
58:34
Speaker 1: starts shooting. And there was at least two guys over
58:37
Speaker 1: there that already had grenades they'd pulled the pins out on.
58:40
Speaker 1: So this is the moment they've had this. They're holding
58:43
Speaker 1: the grenades for this. So as soon as the shooting started,
58:46
Speaker 1: grenades come over the wall. And this is, there's a
58:49
Speaker 1: video of this, of the grenade comes or you can't
58:51
Speaker 1: really tell. But it literally hit my shoulder. One of
58:55
Speaker 1: the grenades hit my shoulder and then fell to the
58:58
Speaker 1: ground and detonated. But in the, in the second that
59:01
Speaker 1: this happened, it's, we were under a drone that had
59:04
Speaker 1: a targeting strobe down on us. It was a flashing
59:07
Speaker 1: infrared strobe on us. Imagine if like God had a
59:10
Speaker 1: flashlight and he was turning it off and on rapidly.
59:13
Speaker 1: And you can only see the light on night vision.
59:15
Speaker 1: It's this cone of light that you're in. And this
59:18
Speaker 1: super intimate fight is happening. And I'm watching this grenade.
59:21
Speaker 1: Time really slowed down. I see it for a second
59:24
Speaker 1: because the light's on. The light comes off. It disappears.
59:26
Speaker 1: I see it for a second. And I remember feeling
59:28
Speaker 1: it hit my shoulder. I'm not shooting. I'm not doing anything.
59:31
Speaker 1: I'm just next to the wall as little shit's happening.
59:34
Speaker 1: And the thought I had was like, fuck, it's going
59:37
Speaker 1: to blow my head off. I know I'm dead. We're
59:39
Speaker 1: all probably going to die here in a second, but
59:40
Speaker 1: my mom won't be able to see me again. Like
59:43
Speaker 1: there'll be no open casket. That's the first thought that
59:45
Speaker 1: goes through my head. My head's going to be blown
59:46
Speaker 1: the fuck off. Hits my shoulder. And this is again,
59:49
Speaker 1: in a fraction of a second, the light comes on,
59:52
Speaker 1: goes off. It falls down lower and it's like halfway down.
59:55
Speaker 1: Now it's like halfway to the ground.
59:56
Speaker 2: And I'm thinking, oh shit.
59:58
Speaker 1: I'm definitely going to die, but maybe my face will
1:00:00
Speaker 1: be intact and my mom can see me again. Light
1:00:03
Speaker 1: goes off, on, off, on. It lands in the ground
1:00:06
Speaker 1: and I turn slightly and I'm like, oh shit, I
1:00:09
Speaker 1: might just lose my legs. Like this is great. Like
1:00:11
Speaker 1: I might live. And so all of us are in
1:00:13
Speaker 1: the lethal range. Assuming this is a frag grenade, which
1:00:17
Speaker 1: I don't think couldn't have been. It had to be
1:00:18
Speaker 1: an old school pineapple grenade. We're all, all of us
1:00:22
Speaker 1: are in this horrible lethal zone and two grenades go off.
1:00:28
Speaker 1: I tell people it felt like someone took a handful
1:00:31
Speaker 1: of rocks and just threw them at my backside. It
1:00:34
Speaker 1: didn't hurt. It just felt like someone threw something at me.
1:00:36
Speaker 1: And then I'm just down on the ground. And my
1:00:40
Speaker 1: memory of what happened versus what actually happened couldn't have
1:00:44
Speaker 1: been more different. It would take me years before I
1:00:46
Speaker 1: actually sat down and debriefed this with the guy who
1:00:48
Speaker 1: ultimately saved my life. But my memory is I go
1:00:52
Speaker 1: down and I couldn't get my gun. My gun had
1:00:55
Speaker 1: been the strap the little strap had been blown off
1:00:59
Speaker 1: my helmet had been blown off so i'm not on
1:01:01
Speaker 1: night vision i'm just there's pretty good illumination that night
1:01:03
Speaker 1: but it's dark and it's just fucking chaos there the
1:01:07
Speaker 1: thing is is the fighters in that town they didn't
1:01:10
Speaker 1: give a fuck about killing each each other if they
1:01:13
Speaker 1: could kill me they'd kill their teammates as well and
1:01:16
Speaker 1: so rpgs are just being arbitrarily fired from all not
1:01:20
Speaker 1: all across the city but from other locations just in
1:01:22
Speaker 1: the vicinity of where this is happening. Cause there was
1:01:24
Speaker 1: a lull before this. So it's just fucking madness. And
1:01:27
Speaker 1: I couldn't stand up. I can't move. And I got
1:01:30
Speaker 1: dragged by one of my teammates. So this is my memory.
1:01:33
Speaker 1: I got, I got dragged from I'm at the head
1:01:35
Speaker 1: of the tee there. They brought me down the stem
1:01:37
Speaker 1: of the tee, if you will. And I just got
1:01:38
Speaker 1: placed up against a wall and I'm sitting there and
1:01:43
Speaker 1: I have these tourniquets that are on my chest that
1:01:45
Speaker 1: we rubber band them to our chest specifically so they
1:01:48
Speaker 1: can be easily broken off and applied to stop the
1:01:50
Speaker 1: bleeding in your limbs. And I was so weak and
1:01:53
Speaker 1: fucked up from this blast that I literally couldn't pull
1:01:56
Speaker 1: the tourniquets off. And there's I don't even know if
1:01:59
Speaker 1: anyone's alive basically at this point. I don't even know
1:02:01
Speaker 1: what's happening down in the contact zone, which is like
1:02:04
Speaker 1: 20 feet away from me. All I hear is gunfire.
1:02:06
Speaker 1: It's madness. And at any point, I'm expecting fighters to
1:02:09
Speaker 1: run down the alleyway and fucking kill me like I'm dead.
1:02:13
Speaker 1: I'm dead no matter what here. And so I had
1:02:16
Speaker 1: this this true in my mind, like near death experience
1:02:20
Speaker 1: where I I sat there It's relatively well illumined. And I,
1:02:25
Speaker 1: I suddenly lost my hearing. Like it's gone, completely gone.
1:02:29
Speaker 1: And there's good illumination. So I can see this small alleyway.
1:02:32
Speaker 1: I can see this flashes of light as rounds are
1:02:34
Speaker 1: coming in. And I just, I'm like, I'm in my head.
1:02:37
Speaker 1: I'm so aware that I'm alive, but I'm dying. And then, um,
1:02:42
Speaker 1: my vision goes completely blind. Like can't see, I can't
1:02:45
Speaker 1: hear anything, but I was so lucid in my mind.
1:02:49
Speaker 1: So aware that I was alive. And I tell people,
1:02:52
Speaker 1: That on a day-to-day basis, you live and you don't
1:02:55
Speaker 1: think about it. You don't wake up and actively live.
1:02:58
Speaker 1: You don't think, today I'm going to breathe. Today my
1:03:00
Speaker 1: heart's going to beat. You just do it because that's
1:03:02
Speaker 1: your entire experience is being alive. And your body knows
1:03:06
Speaker 1: how to do that. Your brain knows how to be alive.
1:03:09
Speaker 1: You also know how to die. You just haven't done
1:03:11
Speaker 1: it yet. And I had this really distinct feeling of like,
1:03:15
Speaker 1: oh shit, this is what it feels like when you
1:03:17
Speaker 1: shut down. It didn't hurt. It wasn't sad. It was just,
1:03:21
Speaker 1: it couldn't have been more matter of fact. And all
1:03:24
Speaker 1: I was thinking about, two thoughts. I had, what will
1:03:28
Speaker 1: my obituary say? Nothing in terms of substance, but will
1:03:31
Speaker 1: it say Jonathan Allen was killed in action or John Allen?
1:03:36
Speaker 1: So I was hung up on that. And I was
1:03:39
Speaker 1: also thinking about my wife and how she'd be notified
1:03:41
Speaker 1: at home. And I was thinking, I wish we'd had
1:03:43
Speaker 1: kids because now I don't have a legacy. And so
1:03:46
Speaker 1: I had this feeling of like letting go. I don't know.
1:03:49
Speaker 1: That's so cliche, but it physically felt like I had
1:03:52
Speaker 1: let go. And I remember feeling the impact of the
1:03:55
Speaker 1: ground as I sort of keeled over. And I thought
1:03:58
Speaker 1: that was it. Like, I'm I'm about to die. This
1:04:00
Speaker 1: is the end, you know. But then out of fucking nowhere,
1:04:04
Speaker 1: the legend that he is, his name is Kyle. He's
1:04:08
Speaker 1: a SEAL fucking legend. comes out of nowhere and he
1:04:12
Speaker 1: grabbed me and he put tourniquets on my legs. I'm
1:04:14
Speaker 1: still like in my blacked out zone here, but I
1:04:16
Speaker 1: slowly regained sight and hearing. And the scene we're in
1:04:21
Speaker 1: is still terrible. There's still chaos happening everywhere. And Kyle,
1:04:26
Speaker 1: who's a, he's a sniper, he's a medic, he's the
1:04:29
Speaker 1: calmest dude under pressure. He's like, Hey, it's going to
1:04:31
Speaker 1: be okay, buddy. It's all good. Stop the bleed. Like
1:04:34
Speaker 1: just stay here. Like, you know, put your gun up
1:04:36
Speaker 1: if you can.
1:04:36
Speaker 2: I'll be right back.
1:04:38
Speaker 1: Like literally in hell all around us.
1:04:40
Speaker 2: Couldn't have been more calm.
1:04:41
Speaker 1: He just runs down back to the contact zone, comes
1:04:43
Speaker 1: back up. He brings another guy out whose lung had collapsed.
1:04:46
Speaker 1: He's patching him up, smiling.
1:04:47
Speaker 2: Everything's fine.
1:04:48
Speaker 1: Meanwhile, so I'm starting to see now as I'm regaining consciousness,
1:04:52
Speaker 1: if you will, I'm seeing my teammates who have also
1:04:55
Speaker 1: been fucked up from this grenade. But only me and
1:04:57
Speaker 1: one other guy were so affected by the grenade that
1:05:00
Speaker 1: we couldn't function. It was me and this guy whose
1:05:02
Speaker 1: lung had collapsed. He was like barely able to breathe.
1:05:05
Speaker 1: So we're down, but the other like five dudes- It's like,
1:05:08
Speaker 1: it's your job to get us out of here now
1:05:10
Speaker 1: because we're fucked. We are pinned down and fucked here.
1:05:13
Speaker 1: One guy, the team lead, in one year, he was
1:05:16
Speaker 1: working with multiple air assets overhead, calling in what's called
1:05:19
Speaker 1: a danger close airstrike, which is you're effectively calling in
1:05:22
Speaker 1: an airstrike on yourself. You need special initialing from your
1:05:27
Speaker 1: higher officer. I think your commanding officer, like one more
1:05:30
Speaker 1: senior than you has to approve the drop because in essence,
1:05:33
Speaker 1: you could kill yourself doing it. So he was calling
1:05:36
Speaker 1: in an airstrike. That needed to be exact, like fucking
1:05:40
Speaker 1: exact on the other side of that wall. And then
1:05:43
Speaker 1: in the other ear, he's communicating with the rest of
1:05:46
Speaker 1: our disparate teams, which are broken up across the city,
1:05:49
Speaker 1: trying to tell them where we are. He's got two
1:05:52
Speaker 1: comms happening, and he's physically pulling people out of the
1:05:56
Speaker 1: contact zone with Kyle to get them to cover. And
1:05:59
Speaker 1: he's engaging the enemy, and we're getting shot at. Holy shit.
1:06:03
Speaker 1: He's a team six, that dude. Everybody went into like
1:06:07
Speaker 1: flow state. I don't even know how to describe it.
1:06:09
Speaker 1: And I'm fucking worthless. I'm not in flow state. I'm
1:06:11
Speaker 1: fucking dead state. They hoisted me up and we ran
1:06:16
Speaker 1: like a mile because there was no way to extract
1:06:19
Speaker 1: us because of how densely populated it was or the
1:06:21
Speaker 1: buildings were so tightly together.
1:06:23
Speaker 2: Could you move your legs?
1:06:24
Speaker 1: They were like fucking pillars. I was supported on shoulders hobbling.
1:06:28
Speaker 1: I was not able to run. No. And the tourniquets,
1:06:30
Speaker 1: they cut off circulation to your limbs and because I
1:06:33
Speaker 1: was bleeding profusely from my legs. So they were cinched off,
1:06:36
Speaker 1: which kills the circulation. At a minimum, you got very
1:06:39
Speaker 1: dead legs. But they ran me to a hot extract
1:06:43
Speaker 1: where there's a fucking helo that came in, coming in,
1:06:45
Speaker 1: guns blazing. They throw us in the helo. Now get this,
1:06:48
Speaker 1: me and the other dude with the lung, we get
1:06:50
Speaker 1: thrown on the helo and we just leave with the
1:06:52
Speaker 1: medical team. Those fucking dudes, those five dudes, still on
1:06:56
Speaker 1: the ground, had to fight their way back into the
1:06:58
Speaker 1: city to go reconnect with the rest of the element
1:07:01
Speaker 1: who again, He's calling, the airstrike he called in was with,
1:07:04
Speaker 1: it was perfect. He got, I think he got an
1:07:05
Speaker 1: award for it. He hit exactly in the right spot.
1:07:08
Speaker 1: He called in the exact right spot, like under the
1:07:11
Speaker 1: most duress you could imagine. But like, so my mental
1:07:14
Speaker 1: image of what happened is under truly, like I witnessed
1:07:18
Speaker 1: life and death. Like I was in a life and
1:07:21
Speaker 1: death scenario and I got to be fully an audience
1:07:23
Speaker 1: for it. Every motherfucker was fucking perfect at their job.
1:07:29
Speaker 1: Like literally rounds flying everywhere.
1:07:32
Speaker 2: Hey, what's going on?
1:07:33
Speaker 1: Got your legs all tied off here.
1:07:36
Speaker 2: Hey, what's going on? Calling this airstrike over. Couldn't be calmer.
1:07:38
Speaker 2: That was it.
1:07:40
Speaker 1: And so my debrief point was it fucking works. The
1:07:42
Speaker 1: training works.
1:07:43
Speaker 2: Wow. What a fucking story. Holy shit, dude.
1:07:49
Speaker 1: There's an addendum to it.
1:07:50
Speaker 2: I want to hear the addendum.
1:07:51
Speaker 1: Yeah, so after we got medevaced, so I'm in the helicopter,
1:07:56
Speaker 1: and at this point I don't know the state of
1:07:59
Speaker 1: my injury. All I know is a few minutes ago,
1:08:02
Speaker 1: I thought I died, you know, like I don't really, I'm,
1:08:05
Speaker 1: I'm happy to be here now, but we get in
1:08:07
Speaker 1: the helicopter and that crew was amazing. I think there
1:08:09
Speaker 1: were PJs, air force PJs, which are like spec ops
1:08:12
Speaker 1: air force. I think they were fucking great, but they're like, Hey,
1:08:15
Speaker 1: do you want, uh, what's the, what's the drug? Oh
1:08:18
Speaker 1: my God. It's the one, the painkiller drug, morphine, morphine, morphine.
1:08:21
Speaker 1: And I said, no, I didn't have any pain, but
1:08:23
Speaker 1: I was like, I'm worried I might die and I
1:08:25
Speaker 1: want to be lucid for it. And they're like, okay, no,
1:08:28
Speaker 1: I think you're going to be okay. But I was
1:08:29
Speaker 1: like in my head that I might die. I don't know.
1:08:31
Speaker 1: And so we get medevaced out of Zarganchar, and they
1:08:34
Speaker 1: fly us right to this nearby base, very close by,
1:08:37
Speaker 1: called Schenck. And when we get there, there's obviously doctors
1:08:41
Speaker 1: and nurses that are there specifically for this. And so
1:08:45
Speaker 1: even though it was the middle of the night, they
1:08:47
Speaker 1: had been told, hey, you have two casualties, you know,
1:08:49
Speaker 1: the guy with the collapsed lung and myself. To be honest,
1:08:52
Speaker 1: I don't really know exactly what they were told, but
1:08:55
Speaker 1: I would imagine they were told, get ready for some
1:08:58
Speaker 1: some type of surgery for both of them. And so
1:09:00
Speaker 1: we fly to fob shank and I get wheeled in
1:09:03
Speaker 1: on a stretcher and my clothes have been fucking cut
1:09:05
Speaker 1: off of me. Like my, my dick's hanging out. Like I'm,
1:09:08
Speaker 1: I'm in disarray. Like I'm all fucked up. And I really,
1:09:10
Speaker 1: I don't even know. I think I'm going to be okay.
1:09:12
Speaker 1: Cause at this point I've made it here and no
1:09:14
Speaker 1: one's acting like I'm, I'm literally about to die, but
1:09:17
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't really know how bad it is.
1:09:19
Speaker 1: And they wheel me into this tent along with the
1:09:21
Speaker 1: other guy. And it's so bright, like so bright inside
1:09:24
Speaker 1: of there that you can barely open your eyes. And
1:09:26
Speaker 1: it's just a sea of all these doctors and nurses
1:09:29
Speaker 1: that are ready to perform whatever needs to happen because
1:09:32
Speaker 1: they don't know. They don't know what needs to be done.
1:09:35
Speaker 1: But as soon as I get in there, I see
1:09:38
Speaker 1: in the back corner of this relatively small medical tent,
1:09:41
Speaker 1: like a shanty medical tent, is maybe like 15 SEALs
1:09:45
Speaker 1: that were not on the mission with me. There are
1:09:46
Speaker 1: other guys in country that are other Navy SEALs. It's
1:09:49
Speaker 1: the middle of the night, and they've put on the
1:09:52
Speaker 1: equivalent of their best uniforms. These are not dress uniforms.
1:09:55
Speaker 1: These are like their BDUs. These are not nice. But
1:09:58
Speaker 1: in Afghanistan, on a deployment, this is the best shit
1:10:01
Speaker 1: they had. They clearly had been tracking, because you can
1:10:05
Speaker 1: track missions in real time when you're overseas. They saw
1:10:08
Speaker 1: the call signs come across that SEALs had been wounded
1:10:11
Speaker 1: and were being brought here for treatment. I have no
1:10:13
Speaker 1: sense of what exactly they knew. But clearly whatever was
1:10:16
Speaker 1: passed indicated that one of us or both of us
1:10:19
Speaker 1: could die. And so these dudes were in the tent
1:10:22
Speaker 1: in case we died. They're my friends. I know them
1:10:24
Speaker 1: all personally. And so I'm being wheeled in and the
1:10:28
Speaker 1: gravity of what's happening was like a fucking ton of
1:10:31
Speaker 1: bricks because now I'm kind of loopy from what's been
1:10:34
Speaker 1: going on. And I see that the looks on these
1:10:36
Speaker 1: guys' faces and they're wearing these uniforms and they're all
1:10:40
Speaker 1: standing almost like at attention in the corner and they're there.
1:10:44
Speaker 1: In case I fucking die. It's like, I'm going to
1:10:46
Speaker 1: my own funeral. And so I'm, I'm put on the, the,
1:10:50
Speaker 1: they swore me, not them. The doctor swore me and
1:10:53
Speaker 1: they get me ready for debridement, which is just to
1:10:55
Speaker 1: pull the shrapnel out of my hips and my, my leg.
1:10:58
Speaker 1: And the guy was like, all right, I'm going to
1:10:59
Speaker 1: give you, I think it was ketamine. He's like, you're
1:11:01
Speaker 1: not gonna, this is it. Like, good luck to you.
1:11:03
Speaker 1: And he like gave me ketamine and I, I passed
1:11:06
Speaker 1: out or whatever they gave me. I completely passed out.
1:11:08
Speaker 1: And then it's like, I have no memory and I
1:11:11
Speaker 1: fucking wake up in Germany. I'm in fucking Germany. And
1:11:14
Speaker 1: I'm just, oh, yeah, you're fine. Yeah, your legs are
1:11:17
Speaker 1: all fucked up, but you're going to live keeping your limbs.
1:11:20
Speaker 1: And then I think it was seven days after that,
1:11:23
Speaker 1: I'm back home in Virginia, hobbling down the Home Depot
1:11:28
Speaker 1: fucking aisle. Just no transition. I was just killing people overseas.
1:11:34
Speaker 2: Holy shit.
1:11:36
Speaker 1: Yeah, fucking nuts, man.
1:11:37
Speaker 2: What was the extent of the injuries?
1:11:39
Speaker 1: Honestly, I was so fortunate. It was a big, big
1:11:42
Speaker 1: hole in my ass, like, uh, like a, I think
1:11:45
Speaker 1: three or four inch chunk. Uh, the, the big issue
1:11:48
Speaker 1: with it is, uh, it was so deep into, into
1:11:51
Speaker 1: my ass that they had to keep opening it so
1:11:54
Speaker 1: that it would, would not heal in reverse, you know,
1:11:56
Speaker 1: cause it can pocket and then just, uh, inside of my,
1:12:00
Speaker 1: my leg. I mean, basically I was spared, like it
1:12:03
Speaker 1: was just a massive flesh wound. from underneath my knee
1:12:07
Speaker 1: all the way up to my back. And then I also,
1:12:09
Speaker 1: this is the part that was the worst, to be honest.
1:12:12
Speaker 1: Leg's fine. I have a little bit of residual soreness.
1:12:15
Speaker 1: At this point, there's a little bit of shrapnel in
1:12:16
Speaker 1: my leg, but they're like pieces of sand. They only,
1:12:19
Speaker 1: on a hot day, I might notice it. But I,
1:12:22
Speaker 1: from the grenade blast, I was told by my orthopedic
1:12:24
Speaker 1: surgeon that the blast likely briefly dislocated both of my shoulders.
1:12:31
Speaker 1: I truthfully don't know if this actually happened, but he
1:12:33
Speaker 1: said as much. And I tore both of my labrums,
1:12:36
Speaker 1: a slap tear. It's a relatively common injury. And I
1:12:40
Speaker 1: had the, I had what's called a biceps tendinitis surgery
1:12:43
Speaker 1: done on my right. Basically, it was so painful, I
1:12:45
Speaker 1: couldn't really use it. But it's the surgery where they
1:12:48
Speaker 1: remove a portion of your bicep and they restaple it.
1:12:51
Speaker 1: But it's sort of like a bandaid, doesn't really fix
1:12:53
Speaker 1: the problem. And the shelf life of a biceps tendinitis
1:12:56
Speaker 1: is about 10 years before you might see some degrading.
1:12:59
Speaker 1: And I'm now at the point where my shoulder fucking sucks.
1:13:03
Speaker 1: And I Like in the gym, I have to avoid pressing.
1:13:06
Speaker 1: I have to avoid overhead stuff.
1:13:08
Speaker 2: And it's just where the bicep tendon is? No.
1:13:12
Speaker 1: So what happens is the labrum tear itself never got fixed.
1:13:16
Speaker 1: They just removed some of the tension on one side
1:13:18
Speaker 1: of the tear. But still over time, it continues to
1:13:21
Speaker 1: tear down the labrum. So effectively, my labrum just over
1:13:25
Speaker 1: time has continued to tear and I'm getting some additional pain.
1:13:29
Speaker 1: I just had an MRI done and they're like, whatever.
1:13:31
Speaker 1: You know, you had the bicep tendonitis done. There's not
1:13:35
Speaker 1: a whole lot more you can do. You can do
1:13:37
Speaker 1: stuff to fix it, but a lot of it is
1:13:38
Speaker 1: just going to do more damage than good. And so
1:13:40
Speaker 1: I'm probably staring down not chronic fucking pain or whatever,
1:13:44
Speaker 1: but something like that.
1:13:45
Speaker 2: Have you done any stem cells? No.
1:13:48
Speaker 3: No.
1:13:48
Speaker 2: Okay. How long are you in town for?
1:13:50
Speaker 1: Tonight.
1:13:51
Speaker 2: That's it?
1:13:52
Speaker 1: No, I can come back.
1:13:54
Speaker 2: I'm going to bring you into Wastewell. See what they
1:13:56
Speaker 2: could do for you.
1:13:56
Speaker 1: Do whatever I can do. It's a fucking huge pain.
1:13:58
Speaker 2: Yeah, while you're here, we should try to get you in. Yeah.
1:14:02
Speaker 2: Maybe I can get you in like right after we're done.
1:14:04
Speaker 2: You could just drive right over there because it's not
1:14:07
Speaker 2: far from here.
1:14:07
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, honestly, it's a huge issue.
1:14:10
Speaker 2: Guarantee you it can help you. Have you fucked around
1:14:12
Speaker 2: with peptides at all?
1:14:13
Speaker 1: No. I see them all over the place.
1:14:14
Speaker 2: Yeah. You should. There's a lot of things that they
1:14:18
Speaker 2: can do that can radically help you. One of the
1:14:21
Speaker 2: things they can do, it'll definitely decrease a lot of
1:14:24
Speaker 2: the inflammation and help heal. And, you know, there's some evidence.
1:14:27
Speaker 2: How old are you? 37.
1:14:28
Speaker 1: Yeah.
1:14:29
Speaker 2: You're still young, man. There's a lot of evidence that
1:14:32
Speaker 2: labrum tears can be healed with stem cells and without
1:14:36
Speaker 2: having to go through surgery, depending on the extent of
1:14:38
Speaker 2: the tear. Yeah.
1:14:40
Speaker 1: I'm open to it.
1:14:41
Speaker 2: Dude, I'm a big believer. It's fixed me. I've had
1:14:44
Speaker 2: a lot of problems where I was like, I need surgery.
1:14:46
Speaker 2: I had an orthopedic surgeon told me, for sure you
1:14:49
Speaker 2: need shoulder surgery. I never got it done. He's like,
1:14:52
Speaker 2: you could rehab it. This was more than 10 years ago.
1:14:55
Speaker 2: He's like, you could rehab it, but you're going to
1:14:57
Speaker 2: need surgery. It's 100% now.
1:15:00
Speaker 1: Oh, your shoulder's good now? 100%. Oh, damn, dude.
1:15:03
Speaker 2: I do all my kettlebell work with 70-pound kettlebells. I
1:15:06
Speaker 2: don't have any problems. Windmills, cleans, presses, renegade rows, gorilla cleans,
1:15:11
Speaker 2: no problems.
1:15:12
Speaker 1: How much are you cleaning? 50s.
1:15:14
Speaker 2: You do gorilla cleans? I do it for reps.
1:15:16
Speaker 1: Do you do barbell clean?
1:15:18
Speaker 2: No. No, I don't lift anything heavy. When I do
1:15:21
Speaker 2: gorilla cleans, I either do 50s or 70s. My whole
1:15:24
Speaker 2: kettlebell workout is either 50s or 70s. And sometimes I
1:15:27
Speaker 2: work out with 35s just for the warm-up. Like I'll
1:15:31
Speaker 2: do like warm-up stuff. Like I'll do like rotation exercises
1:15:34
Speaker 2: with 35s. Things where I'm like big halos where I'm
1:15:38
Speaker 2: just really opening up my back and getting.
1:15:41
Speaker 1: When did you get into doing kettlebell stuff? I've seen
1:15:43
Speaker 1: you post like the demon bell or the gorilla bell.
1:15:45
Speaker 2: The gorilla bell. Yeah.
1:15:47
Speaker 1: Those are the 70s. Those are the shit.
1:15:48
Speaker 2: Those are. I've really got into farmer's carries. That's what
1:15:53
Speaker 2: I'm using. The gorillas are like my best friends lately.
1:15:57
Speaker 2: I just do these– I have this big, long driveway
1:15:59
Speaker 2: with a hill, and I do these gorilla carries. It's
1:16:02
Speaker 2: like a 200-yard driveway. Dang. And I do these gorilla
1:16:04
Speaker 2: carries where you take– well, you know, with those farmer's– Yeah, sure.
1:16:08
Speaker 2: Farmer's carries with those gorilla kettlebells. The 70s? Yeah, and
1:16:11
Speaker 2: I take them up the hill and down the hill.
1:16:13
Speaker 2: That's kind of shit, dude. My grip has gotten so
1:16:15
Speaker 2: much better, and on top of it, it's like my
1:16:17
Speaker 2: legs have gotten better, and it feels like my whole
1:16:20
Speaker 2: body is like more– Connected if that makes any sense
1:16:24
Speaker 2: because when you're walking, you know that guy Tom Haviland,
1:16:27
Speaker 2: you know.
1:16:27
Speaker 1: Oh fuck Yeah, fuck.
1:16:28
Speaker 2: Yeah, everybody is there's a beast One of the things
1:16:31
Speaker 2: that I got from him is he's talked about the
1:16:33
Speaker 2: importance of picking up heavy things and walking with them
1:16:37
Speaker 2: He's like if you really want to get strong he's
1:16:39
Speaker 2: like strength is not just lifting heavy stuff like stationary
1:16:43
Speaker 2: like carry things and And so he does a lot
1:16:46
Speaker 2: of weird like.
1:16:47
Speaker 1: His Zurcher's like fucking 500 pounds.
1:16:49
Speaker 2: Insane. But he does a lot of weird like off
1:16:52
Speaker 2: weight stuff where he has more weight on one side
1:16:54
Speaker 2: than the other and switches him. He has a chain
1:16:56
Speaker 2: behind him and he's dragging the chain with his right
1:16:58
Speaker 2: shoulder while he's doing farmer's carries with two hands. He
1:17:01
Speaker 2: does a lot of crazy stuff like that. And obviously
1:17:03
Speaker 2: the guy's a fucking freakishly strong person. So I'm like, OK, well,
1:17:06
Speaker 2: let me see if there's anything to this. So a
1:17:08
Speaker 2: few months back, I really got into farmer's carries. And
1:17:13
Speaker 2: I first just would do it. This is him. Fucking freak.
1:17:16
Speaker 1: Yeah, the trademark shirt he's got on.
1:17:18
Speaker 2: He always has that shirt on. And he always see
1:17:20
Speaker 2: his back and he's like 6'8, almost 400 pounds. He's
1:17:24
Speaker 2: a fucking giant human being.
1:17:26
Speaker 1: I love his page.
1:17:28
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's a real freak. But this thing that he
1:17:31
Speaker 2: really believes in is carrying things and walking around with them.
1:17:36
Speaker 2: And now I really get it. I really get it.
1:17:39
Speaker 2: Because I've been doing it now for... at least three,
1:17:43
Speaker 2: maybe almost it's going on four months and it's completely
1:17:47
Speaker 2: transformed my legs. My legs are way thicker. They're stronger.
1:17:50
Speaker 2: My back feels better. My connection between like my, my
1:17:55
Speaker 2: entire core and my back is better. Like everything feels stronger.
1:17:59
Speaker 2: I'm stronger in every other workout that I do. I
1:18:02
Speaker 2: feel way stronger when I do like cleans and presses
1:18:05
Speaker 2: and do it and windmills and everything else. Cause the, you're,
1:18:08
Speaker 2: when you're, carrying stuff like that it's like your whole
1:18:11
Speaker 2: body your core has to stay tight your back has
1:18:14
Speaker 2: to stay tight everything's dealing and then when you're up
1:18:17
Speaker 2: at the top of the hill you're like motherfucker and
1:18:20
Speaker 2: your forearms are literally on fire you try to hold
1:18:23
Speaker 2: on to these things and you know i got a
1:18:25
Speaker 2: chalk ball in my pocket and i reach in there
1:18:27
Speaker 2: and powder my hands back up and as soon as
1:18:29
Speaker 2: i get my hands back going i do it again
1:18:32
Speaker 2: and that has changed everything that's changed everything but One
1:18:37
Speaker 2: of the things that I've noticed is I very rarely
1:18:41
Speaker 2: get injured as opposed to my friends who do like
1:18:44
Speaker 2: traditional weightlifting stuff.
1:18:45
Speaker 1: Like powerlifting?
1:18:46
Speaker 2: Yeah, benching heavy, squatting heavy. deadlift heavy. Those dudes are–
1:18:52
Speaker 2: all my friends who do that are always getting hurt.
1:18:53
Speaker 2: They're always getting hurt.
1:18:54
Speaker 1: I'm guilty of that to some degree.
1:18:56
Speaker 2: Everybody is. But you think that's the only way to
1:18:59
Speaker 2: get strong and I don't think that's correct. I don't
1:19:02
Speaker 2: think it's correct. I think the most important thing is
1:19:06
Speaker 2: volume with reasonably heavy things. Where you're not hurting yourself. Like,
1:19:11
Speaker 2: 70 pounds is... You know, I do... I could probably
1:19:14
Speaker 2: do 20 reps of cleans and presses, but I only
1:19:17
Speaker 2: do 10, and then I rest for, like, five... I
1:19:20
Speaker 2: do the Pavel Tatsalin method.
1:19:21
Speaker 1: What's that?
1:19:22
Speaker 2: Pavel Tatsalin is the guy who really brought kettlebells over
1:19:24
Speaker 2: to America. Okay. And he's a famous kettlebell coach for
1:19:28
Speaker 2: Strong First, which is his company, and he's this philosophy
1:19:32
Speaker 2: that strength is a skill, and you shouldn't practice skills
1:19:37
Speaker 2: when you're exhausted. Oh, interesting. And this whole idea... Of
1:19:39
Speaker 2: working to failure. I mean, obviously, if you want to
1:19:42
Speaker 2: be a bodybuilder or even a professional powerlifter, that's a
1:19:45
Speaker 2: different thing. But if you want to get strong, the
1:19:48
Speaker 2: most important thing is the amount of work that you do,
1:19:51
Speaker 2: not exhausting the muscle with one set.
1:19:54
Speaker 1: Got it.
1:19:55
Speaker 2: And so what he has you do is if you
1:19:56
Speaker 2: can do 20 reps, do 10. And then wait five
1:19:59
Speaker 2: minutes and do another 10. You got the same volume
1:20:01
Speaker 2: of work, but you're never exhausted while you're doing it.
1:20:04
Speaker 2: Your form is always perfect. And you're still getting the
1:20:07
Speaker 2: same amount of work. So my workouts, like, I have
1:20:10
Speaker 2: to allocate two hours if I'm doing a kettlebell workout.
1:20:13
Speaker 1: Fuck, dude.
1:20:14
Speaker 2: Yeah. I know. But it works.
1:20:16
Speaker 1: Dude, that's– It works.
1:20:17
Speaker 2: And, again, I'm fucking never injured. If I'm injured, it's
1:20:20
Speaker 2: like a little tendonitis here or something bothering me in
1:20:23
Speaker 2: my lower back a little bit. It's never significant.
1:20:27
Speaker 1: My trainer, John Finkst, we've been working together a couple
1:20:29
Speaker 1: years now in Jersey. He's the man– he's a big
1:20:32
Speaker 1: believer in that. You were talking about I could do 20,
1:20:34
Speaker 1: but I do 10 instead. He's, like, all about– not
1:20:38
Speaker 1: form– Till you die. Cause there are times where it's
1:20:40
Speaker 1: like time to throw some English and get some volume in.
1:20:42
Speaker 2: Right.
1:20:43
Speaker 1: But he keeps me from ego lifting and keeps me
1:20:45
Speaker 1: from doing stuff that it's like over the top. Yeah.
1:20:48
Speaker 2: Ego lifting's a problem. Especially with dudes.
1:20:50
Speaker 1: I can't help it.
1:20:51
Speaker 2: The one time I hurt my back really bad, I
1:20:53
Speaker 2: was dead lifting like 450 with the, um.
1:20:56
Speaker 1: Like just traditional grip?
1:20:57
Speaker 2: No, the, um.
1:20:58
Speaker 1: Track bar deadlift.
1:20:59
Speaker 2: Track.
1:20:59
Speaker 1: Yep.
1:20:59
Speaker 2: Yeah. The trap bar. What is it? Hex bar? What
1:21:02
Speaker 2: do you call that thing?
1:21:02
Speaker 1: Yeah, trap bar.
1:21:03
Speaker 2: So I love those things. I fucking love those things.
1:21:05
Speaker 1: It's great.
1:21:05
Speaker 2: But I was like, let's get big. And then I felt, dink,
1:21:10
Speaker 2: you know, that. And luckily it was muscle, not like spinal,
1:21:14
Speaker 2: not a disc issue. It was lower back, left lower back.
1:21:18
Speaker 2: It fucked with me for like a six-month period.
1:21:21
Speaker 1: I bet.
1:21:22
Speaker 2: Oh, so bad. And I was like, I'm not doing
1:21:24
Speaker 2: that anymore. And from that moment on, I got really
1:21:27
Speaker 2: into just doing kettlebells. And I'm stronger than I've ever been.
1:21:31
Speaker 2: I don't think you need to lift really, depending upon
1:21:34
Speaker 2: what you're trying to do. And if you're trying to
1:21:36
Speaker 2: become a power lifter, sure, you need to lift heavy.
1:21:38
Speaker 2: But if you just want to be strong and functional,
1:21:40
Speaker 2: I don't think you need to lift heavy. I don't
1:21:42
Speaker 2: believe that.
1:21:43
Speaker 1: Dude, right now I'm on a pretty big cut. I
1:21:46
Speaker 1: do a summer cut each. This is my second summer
1:21:48
Speaker 1: I've done that.
1:21:49
Speaker 2: Do you still look good on the beach?
1:21:50
Speaker 1: Dude, shamelessly. There's nothing else to it. But what I've
1:21:56
Speaker 1: found in my own life is that I do really
1:21:59
Speaker 1: well when I have not a goal, like a lofty
1:22:02
Speaker 1: goal even, but just some fucking thing that You've got
1:22:04
Speaker 1: to suffer to achieve it. I do well with goals
1:22:06
Speaker 1: like that.
1:22:07
Speaker 3: Yeah.
1:22:07
Speaker 2: Goals are important.
1:22:08
Speaker 1: Yeah. And I right now I'm on my like I
1:22:11
Speaker 1: count calories. I'm into my macros like you wouldn't believe.
1:22:16
Speaker 1: But what I was doing before this, I was doing
1:22:19
Speaker 1: none of that. And I was fucking obsessed with hang cleans,
1:22:23
Speaker 1: just like barbell hang cleans. Dude, I'm so fucking I've
1:22:27
Speaker 1: gotten up to 225 pounds. Very proud of that. But I,
1:22:30
Speaker 1: it's like the one exercise, no matter, we do so
1:22:33
Speaker 1: many exercises.
1:22:33
Speaker 2: That doesn't fuck with your shoulder?
1:22:36
Speaker 1: Actually, no, it doesn't. It's pressing. It's this motion.
1:22:39
Speaker 2: Interesting.
1:22:39
Speaker 1: It's the press. Dude, if I press like a fucking
1:22:41
Speaker 1: 50 pound dumbbell.
1:22:43
Speaker 2: Wow.
1:22:44
Speaker 1: But I can do it clean. That's part of the
1:22:47
Speaker 1: reason I discovered it is it didn't fuck with my shoulder.
1:22:50
Speaker 1: But I have been on a quest to. to like
1:22:53
Speaker 1: find the right way to train for cleans because one
1:22:55
Speaker 1: of the issues with doing cleans with a barbell and
1:22:57
Speaker 1: maybe I'll do kettlebells is I have a scar right
1:23:00
Speaker 1: here that I broke my collarbone when I was seven
1:23:03
Speaker 1: and my collarbone juts out because it healed slightly in
1:23:05
Speaker 1: the wrong direction. And so every fucking time I'm in
1:23:08
Speaker 1: a block of doing cleans, I always have this just, like,
1:23:11
Speaker 1: recurrent infected wound on my fucking colon.
1:23:14
Speaker 2: Oh, no.
1:23:14
Speaker 1: And then, like, in the comments of every video, they're like, dude,
1:23:17
Speaker 1: what's wrong with fucking.
1:23:17
Speaker 2: You got a staff. Yeah, dude. And so.
1:23:20
Speaker 1: But anyways, the kettlebell cleans.
1:23:21
Speaker 2: You need to get shaved down. Yeah, dude.
1:23:23
Speaker 1: I got a fucking... But it sounds like you do
1:23:25
Speaker 1: cleans and shit with kettlebells.
1:23:27
Speaker 2: With kettlebells, yeah.
1:23:28
Speaker 1: That's probably something I need to consider.
1:23:29
Speaker 2: Yeah. And it's not easy to do. You know, like
1:23:32
Speaker 2: 70 pounds is when you're doing like 10 reps and
1:23:36
Speaker 2: I'm doing like three sets of 10 reps.
1:23:38
Speaker 1: That's fucking brutal.
1:23:39
Speaker 2: But it's also the clean and press from the ground up, right?
1:23:43
Speaker 2: It's all one motion. And this continuum of motion, you know,
1:23:46
Speaker 2: over the course of 10 repetitions, it's a good solid
1:23:49
Speaker 2: minute plus of work. so you're working really hard for
1:23:52
Speaker 2: a minute so you're getting a little bit of a
1:23:54
Speaker 2: cardio benefit from it but if i'm real consistent with
1:23:57
Speaker 2: it the you know i'm 59 now i just turned
1:24:00
Speaker 2: 59 so it's just about staying strong that's all i'm
1:24:03
Speaker 2: concerned with not losing any of my strength not losing
1:24:06
Speaker 2: any of my mobility or flexibility or anything like i'm
1:24:10
Speaker 2: constantly stretching constantly just I believe in maintaining. And I
1:24:14
Speaker 2: think most people don't do that. That's why we have
1:24:17
Speaker 2: a very distorted perception of what's possible. I think we
1:24:21
Speaker 2: think that people deteriorate with age, like so radically that
1:24:24
Speaker 2: it's just a, it's just a, it is what it is.
1:24:27
Speaker 2: It's fact. It's going to happen to you. I don't
1:24:29
Speaker 2: think that's necessarily true. I think that most people just
1:24:33
Speaker 2: don't have the willpower to keep maintaining correctly and they're not,
1:24:38
Speaker 2: supplementing their hormones and taking peptides and also optimizing their nutrition.
1:24:43
Speaker 2: I think if you do all of those things, you're pretty,
1:24:46
Speaker 2: I'm personally shocked at what I can still do. When
1:24:49
Speaker 2: I was a kid. You're fucking jacked, dude. Thank you.
1:24:52
Speaker 2: When I was a kid and I thought of a
1:24:53
Speaker 2: 59 year old, oh my God, that guy's dead. That's
1:24:56
Speaker 2: a dead man. He's literally dead. Barely opened a jar
1:25:00
Speaker 2: of pickles, barely fucking make it down a flight of stairs.
1:25:03
Speaker 2: And I have fucking zero problems. I have one fucked
1:25:06
Speaker 2: up knee from My martial arts days where I had
1:25:08
Speaker 2: my meniscus removed in a big chunk of it. And
1:25:12
Speaker 2: it still fucks with me. But it doesn't fuck with
1:25:14
Speaker 2: me in terms of function. It only fucks with me
1:25:16
Speaker 2: in terms of like I'm worried it's going to become
1:25:18
Speaker 2: arthritic over time. Because there's nothing between the cartilage. The
1:25:23
Speaker 2: cartilage is banging against each other.
1:25:25
Speaker 1: Yeah.
1:25:25
Speaker 2: And I broke it skiing once. Right where the cartilage
1:25:29
Speaker 2: meets the bone. But I think that with the improvements
1:25:34
Speaker 2: and all these biological therapies like stem cells and peptides.
1:25:37
Speaker 2: I can maintain it. And that's what I'm doing. So
1:25:40
Speaker 2: it keeps me out of jujitsu because that's the one
1:25:42
Speaker 2: thing that really, really rips on your joints, especially my knee.
1:25:46
Speaker 2: Every time I've done it, it's like, fucker. It just gets,
1:25:49
Speaker 2: I don't want to do anything. Like my friend, Matt Sarah,
1:25:52
Speaker 2: he had a knee replacement and he's younger than me.
1:25:55
Speaker 2: And I'm like, yeah, but it's jujitsu. It's just like,
1:25:57
Speaker 2: you're constantly in weird positions and pushing and someone's fucking
1:26:01
Speaker 2: trying to heel hook you and you're defending. It's like,
1:26:04
Speaker 2: Everything is getting yanked around, and then it's sore, but
1:26:07
Speaker 2: you still go back the next day because you want
1:26:08
Speaker 2: to train because you're addicted.
1:26:10
Speaker 1: Yeah, dude.
1:26:11
Speaker 2: Yeah.
1:26:11
Speaker 1: I found that my– when I was in the teams,
1:26:15
Speaker 1: I was in good shape sort of by default. And
1:26:18
Speaker 1: then I got out, and I sort of hovered around
1:26:21
Speaker 1: like I'm still relatively young. It's fine. And then this
1:26:24
Speaker 1: whole Mr. Ball on YouTube thing happened, and I, in
1:26:27
Speaker 1: a way, adopted– the same mindset that made me successful
1:26:31
Speaker 1: in getting through training, which is like this obsessive, got
1:26:34
Speaker 1: to make more videos. You know, I've had my viral moment,
1:26:37
Speaker 1: like grow at all costs, but all of my health
1:26:40
Speaker 1: went out the window. I would, I would, uh, I
1:26:44
Speaker 1: would take me about, I don't know, like 26 hours
1:26:48
Speaker 1: ish to do. I'm going to make a video hitting
1:26:50
Speaker 1: posts on YouTube. And then even though all I wanted
1:26:53
Speaker 1: to do was sleep, my immediate reaction at like three
1:26:56
Speaker 1: in the morning would be just Slam like four or
1:26:58
Speaker 1: five six drinks and then go right to bed. Like
1:27:01
Speaker 1: I don't even feel it. I just would drink.
1:27:05
Speaker 2: Drink just to go to sleep.
1:27:06
Speaker 1: I didn't even it was almost like here's your reward
1:27:09
Speaker 1: suck down these fucking drinks Oh, I get it. And
1:27:11
Speaker 1: then but but I got so grossly out of shape Dude,
1:27:16
Speaker 1: I was like 200 pounds of just fat and I
1:27:19
Speaker 1: had this huge ponytail that I grew If you pull
1:27:24
Speaker 1: it up did I look so fat and gross I
1:27:27
Speaker 1: But then it finally occurred to me that, like, wow,
1:27:31
Speaker 1: you're entering, like, true dad bod territory, and there's just
1:27:34
Speaker 1: no excuse. And so sometime in, like, 23, 24, I
1:27:36
Speaker 1: was like, all right, I got to be, like, an
1:27:38
Speaker 1: adult again and train. And, dude, it's revolutionary. Whoa, dude,
1:27:43
Speaker 1: that's crazy. There's a good shot of my disgusting, let's see, Mr. Ballin.
1:27:51
Speaker 1: Look at Mr. Ball in fat. I think that'll probably
1:27:53
Speaker 1: do it. That's not to be rude.
1:27:58
Speaker 2: Or anything.
1:27:59
Speaker 1: That's a decent one. That one's recent.
1:28:01
Speaker 2: Which one?
1:28:02
Speaker 1: That one's sort of recent. The second one in there,
1:28:04
Speaker 1: that's not even that bad.
1:28:04
Speaker 2: Well, the first picture you pulled up, you get it. Oh,
1:28:07
Speaker 2: you see there in that image.
1:28:08
Speaker 1: Yeah, you can see a little ragged going on there.
1:28:11
Speaker 2: But, yeah, just– Well, you got to do what you
1:28:13
Speaker 2: got to do when something starts happening and, you know,
1:28:15
Speaker 2: you realize, like, oh, my God– It's like starting a
1:28:18
Speaker 2: fire in the woods.
1:28:18
Speaker 1: Oh, yeah.
1:28:19
Speaker 2: You got to blow on it. You got to put
1:28:21
Speaker 2: some fucking little twigs on it. You got to get
1:28:23
Speaker 2: that fucker going. Congratulations, because you've had amazing success. What
1:28:28
Speaker 2: do you have, like 11 million YouTube subscribers? That's incredible, man.
1:28:32
Speaker 2: That's really cool.
1:28:33
Speaker 1: Dude, I can only imagine what you've been through, but
1:28:37
Speaker 1: the thing that I now... this started in 2020 and
1:28:41
Speaker 1: it's 2026. I have had some incredible highs. The early
1:28:49
Speaker 1: days of after the viral moment and I'm like posting
1:28:53
Speaker 1: stuff that I like upload a video and literally the
1:28:57
Speaker 1: next day it's like, you've made $ 20, 000 from yesterday to now.
1:29:01
Speaker 1: And like, I've never in my life made any real
1:29:04
Speaker 1: money ever. It's all almost overnight and it grew and grew.
1:29:09
Speaker 1: And then it's like, I signed a deal with Amazon
1:29:13
Speaker 1: like 10 months after starting a podcast. I actually, I
1:29:16
Speaker 1: remember when you got your first deal with Spotify, I
1:29:19
Speaker 1: remember that was like I didn't even know it was
1:29:21
Speaker 1: possible for a podcast or anything to sign like the
1:29:25
Speaker 1: equivalent of a professional sports level contract. And then it's
1:29:30
Speaker 1: like less than a year after the start of the Mr.
1:29:32
Speaker 1: Ballin podcast, I'm partnering up with Amazon. It was a
1:29:37
Speaker 1: $ 62 million deal. And I say that because, dude, my
1:29:41
Speaker 1: life got so much better and so much fucking worse
1:29:46
Speaker 1: at the same time.
1:29:46
Speaker 2: What was the worst? Oh, God.
1:29:49
Speaker 1: So there's like the little stuff, you know, actually, I
1:29:51
Speaker 1: just had a lawsuit close. They pled guilty to theft
1:29:58
Speaker 1: and a bunch. So I started a house renovation project
1:30:02
Speaker 1: when I was living in a house in Pennsylvania when
1:30:04
Speaker 1: this thing kicked off. And I think they picked up
1:30:06
Speaker 1: that I was making quite a bit of money. I
1:30:08
Speaker 1: was I was adjusting how much I wanted done to
1:30:10
Speaker 1: my house before long. I'm like adding fucking crazy shit
1:30:12
Speaker 1: to my house. They ended up gutting the house. to
1:30:16
Speaker 1: the studs because they're going to remodel it, but they
1:30:18
Speaker 1: didn't do any work. And now they kind of had me.
1:30:20
Speaker 1: My house is wrecked. I'm living in a rental. They're
1:30:22
Speaker 1: stringing me along. And so they stole hundreds of thousands
1:30:25
Speaker 1: of dollars and never did any work. And so I
1:30:26
Speaker 1: sued them. That's a little thing. And then over the
1:30:31
Speaker 1: course of the next several years, dude, I've had people
1:30:35
Speaker 1: take advantage of me in just the most personal, deep-cutting ways.
1:30:39
Speaker 1: Ways that if you were to write a movie... Here's
1:30:45
Speaker 1: the scene of somebody who suddenly comes into money and
1:30:47
Speaker 1: like the pitfalls of that, of people coming out of
1:30:50
Speaker 1: the woodwork to take from them. The things that happened
1:30:53
Speaker 1: to me with some family and with some close friends
1:30:57
Speaker 1: and with business partners is just like, are you fucking
1:31:01
Speaker 1: kidding me? Like this was all just an angle? Like
1:31:04
Speaker 1: you had an angle on me the whole time? Like
1:31:05
Speaker 1: this was a fucking con?
1:31:07
Speaker 2: Well, people think about people that come into money like
1:31:09
Speaker 2: that the same way they think about a large corporation
1:31:12
Speaker 2: if they like slip on the floor. Like a target. Like, ooh,
1:31:15
Speaker 2: I'm going to get paid. They don't think, I'm all right.
1:31:18
Speaker 2: It's fine. It's my fault. I slipped. No, they think, oh,
1:31:21
Speaker 2: this is an opportunity.
1:31:22
Speaker 1: Big time.
1:31:23
Speaker 2: And they look at a guy like you who's, you know,
1:31:25
Speaker 2: through your own hard work and stumbling upon this idea
1:31:29
Speaker 2: and following through with it, made a bunch of money.
1:31:32
Speaker 2: They're like, I can get some of that money. They
1:31:34
Speaker 2: don't even think of you as a person anymore. They
1:31:36
Speaker 2: think of you as a target. I got to keep
1:31:39
Speaker 2: your circle tight, dude. That's the thing.
1:31:41
Speaker 1: I got Antonio out there. He's like my right hand man.
1:31:44
Speaker 1: He's a former homicide detective. Like he actually he came
1:31:47
Speaker 1: to me to be my house manager. And one of
1:31:50
Speaker 1: the first things he said to me is he's like,
1:31:52
Speaker 1: I don't give a fuck about your content, dude. I
1:31:53
Speaker 1: think it's stupid. You're the guy for me. But he's
1:31:59
Speaker 1: been awesome because he just like keeps everybody around me
1:32:02
Speaker 1: sort of like vetted. But yeah, dude, it's.
1:32:04
Speaker 2: That's important, man, because people will sneak through. And sometimes
1:32:07
Speaker 2: you don't see them the way other people see them.
1:32:10
Speaker 2: Other people see them as like this guy's got an angle.
1:32:12
Speaker 2: He's a scumbag. Be careful. And, you know, you let
1:32:15
Speaker 2: people into your circle. And then they're like when they're
1:32:18
Speaker 2: around you, they're putting on an audition. They're pretending to
1:32:20
Speaker 2: be someone they're not. They're pretending to be someone that
1:32:23
Speaker 2: you're going to want to hang out with. And what
1:32:25
Speaker 2: they're using you is they're just thinking of you as
1:32:27
Speaker 2: a springboard. Or as a way to get money.
1:32:30
Speaker 1: I would imagine for you, just given, I mean, dude,
1:32:33
Speaker 1: you are podcasting. Like if there is literally people are like, hey,
1:32:37
Speaker 1: you want to be the next president? You better go
1:32:39
Speaker 1: on Joe's show. Like I can only imagine the amount
1:32:43
Speaker 1: of auditioning that happens around you and your circle to
1:32:47
Speaker 1: get where I'm sitting right now. And I got to
1:32:50
Speaker 1: be honest, I don't know how you'd be able to
1:32:52
Speaker 1: sift through people that are trying to meet Joe and
1:32:56
Speaker 1: interact with you. And people who are trying to get
1:32:59
Speaker 1: in with Joe so Joe will interview them.
1:33:01
Speaker 2: Well, the good news is I don't really interact with anybody.
1:33:06
Speaker 1: That's the right approach.
1:33:07
Speaker 2: So the way I even get like suggestions is one,
1:33:12
Speaker 2: I see something that I'm interested in and I have
1:33:16
Speaker 2: a guy and I either call him, text him or
1:33:19
Speaker 2: email him and say, hey, let's try to get this
1:33:21
Speaker 2: guy on. This guy's got a great book or she's
1:33:24
Speaker 2: got a really interesting documentary or whatever it is. And
1:33:27
Speaker 2: then there's– I get these people that submit to want
1:33:30
Speaker 2: to be on the show. So I get a list
1:33:32
Speaker 2: of those that, you know, there's a guy that goes
1:33:34
Speaker 2: through them that makes– they're legit. And then by the
1:33:36
Speaker 2: time they get to me, it's filtered out to what
1:33:39
Speaker 2: is actually going to be interesting. So there's not a
1:33:41
Speaker 2: lot of– You know, people meeting me that are– and
1:33:45
Speaker 2: the people that do meet me, usually I never want
1:33:47
Speaker 2: to have them on. Like if somebody just like comes
1:33:50
Speaker 2: up to me and says, I have to be on
1:33:51
Speaker 2: your podcast. I'm like, nope, you definitely don't.
1:33:52
Speaker 1: I already know you don't.
1:33:54
Speaker 2: You definitely don't have to be on. So this is
1:33:56
Speaker 2: a crazy conversation. No one has to do anything. And
1:34:00
Speaker 2: it's– people reveal themselves. They just do. Over time, it
1:34:06
Speaker 2: takes a little bit. It's not instantaneous. But over time,
1:34:10
Speaker 2: people reveal themselves. And it's just– the key is– You know,
1:34:13
Speaker 2: just being open. And there's also people surprise you. You
1:34:18
Speaker 2: meet a lot of really interesting people. You know, you
1:34:20
Speaker 2: run into people that you didn't expect would be fascinating.
1:34:23
Speaker 2: And they are. You know, there's a lot of that too.
1:34:27
Speaker 2: It's just you got to be present. Just not buy
1:34:31
Speaker 2: into any of it. That's the real key. No matter
1:34:33
Speaker 2: how big it gets, just keep doing the thing that
1:34:37
Speaker 2: you do. So all I do is talk to interesting people.
1:34:40
Speaker 2: That's it.
1:34:41
Speaker 1: It's the right way to approach it.
1:34:42
Speaker 2: It's not that complicated. And as long as I continue
1:34:45
Speaker 2: to do it the same way, I feel like people
1:34:47
Speaker 2: will enjoy it because I think they enjoy it because
1:34:49
Speaker 2: I enjoy it. Just like the way when someone's doing
1:34:52
Speaker 2: something that they really love to do, I enjoy watching.
1:34:55
Speaker 2: If someone's doing like metal sculpture, you know, like, and
1:34:58
Speaker 2: the guy's really into it, he's welding and hammering. I'm like,
1:35:01
Speaker 2: I am into that. I'm like, I'm into people doing things.
1:35:03
Speaker 2: I like when people are really enjoying what they're doing
1:35:08
Speaker 2: and are really curious and or really like competent at
1:35:12
Speaker 2: something you know they're excellent at something I enjoy watching
1:35:15
Speaker 2: that I enjoy listening to it and I always enjoy
1:35:19
Speaker 2: talking to interesting people so as long as I just
1:35:21
Speaker 2: keep enjoying talking to interesting people I think people will
1:35:24
Speaker 2: keep enjoying watching it and it's a nice exchange works
1:35:28
Speaker 2: you know it's real simple but I keep it that
1:35:31
Speaker 2: way I don't ever think like oh this guy's famous
1:35:33
Speaker 2: he'll have a bunch of followers this will be a
1:35:35
Speaker 2: good episode because I'll get a lot of views I
1:35:37
Speaker 2: don't think like that I only think You know, because
1:35:41
Speaker 2: like a lot of the people that are on my show,
1:35:43
Speaker 2: no one's ever heard of them. They're just an interesting
1:35:46
Speaker 2: person that I found on YouTube or an interesting person
1:35:49
Speaker 2: that I found, you know, in a documentary or whatever
1:35:52
Speaker 2: it is.
1:35:54
Speaker 1: I think it's the point you make about how you,
1:35:58
Speaker 1: I think for me anyways, the one thing I've come
1:36:01
Speaker 1: back to over the past several years of doing this is, Truthfully,
1:36:05
Speaker 1: even though there are times where, you know, creating content
1:36:09
Speaker 1: is obviously it is a job in the sense that
1:36:11
Speaker 1: we have a recording schedule and we have things that
1:36:14
Speaker 1: we have to do, as you obviously do, too, amongst
1:36:16
Speaker 1: whatever else you're doing. The one thing that I fucking
1:36:20
Speaker 1: love doing is telling stories. I mean, that's really I
1:36:23
Speaker 1: really feel like that's the place where.
1:36:24
Speaker 2: I'm a really good storyteller. You're going to be on
1:36:27
Speaker 2: the edge of my seat with your Afghanistan story. Fuck, man.
1:36:31
Speaker 2: That was incredible. You're really good at it.
1:36:32
Speaker 1: Thank you.
1:36:33
Speaker 2: And the other one, too, the Russian one, too. You know,
1:36:36
Speaker 2: a great story resonates with people, especially a creepy one,
1:36:40
Speaker 2: which is why I think, you know, you've picked the
1:36:42
Speaker 2: perfect angle. Yeah. Because a great creepy story, like you
1:36:45
Speaker 2: hear a great creepy story, like everybody's like, whoa. And
1:36:48
Speaker 2: then what happened?
1:36:49
Speaker 1: Have you heard of the Headless Valley? In your comings
1:36:54
Speaker 1: and goings on the show, the Nahanni Valley?
1:36:56
Speaker 2: No.
1:36:57
Speaker 1: I got a good story for you, Aaron.
1:36:59
Speaker 2: Okay.
1:36:59
Speaker 1: Okay. So in Canada, there's this section in the Northwest
1:37:04
Speaker 1: called the Northwest Territories. Are you familiar with this?
1:37:07
Speaker 2: Yes. Okay.
1:37:08
Speaker 1: So for those that are not, the Northwest Territories is
1:37:10
Speaker 1: roughly four times the size of Germany. But Germany has
1:37:14
Speaker 1: something like 87 million people who live there. And in
1:37:17
Speaker 1: this space in Canada, this rugged space, There's like 45,000
1:37:22
Speaker 1: people that live there. So it's four times the size
1:37:24
Speaker 1: of Germany and basically not populated. It is as remote
1:37:27
Speaker 1: as it gets.
1:37:28
Speaker 2: Population of dripping springs. Not even. Not even. Dripping springs. Fuck, dude.
1:37:34
Speaker 1: And so within the Northwest Territory, there's this even more
1:37:41
Speaker 1: remote stretch that's called the Nahanni Valley. And the Nahanni
1:37:45
Speaker 1: Valley today, it's a protected park. It's a Canadian protected park.
1:37:50
Speaker 1: But even still, even though it's a park you can
1:37:52
Speaker 1: go visit, it's nearly impossible to get to. To get
1:37:57
Speaker 1: there by boat, you have to traverse these rapids. I
1:38:00
Speaker 1: think it's a very treacherous ride to get there by boat.
1:38:02
Speaker 1: There's no established roads into the Nahanni Valley. You can
1:38:07
Speaker 1: hike there. It's brutal to hike there. You can fly there,
1:38:10
Speaker 1: but it's only through chartered float planes. So it's a
1:38:13
Speaker 1: difficult place to get to. But the Nahanni Valley, in particular,
1:38:16
Speaker 1: when the story takes place, which is like the early 1900s,
1:38:21
Speaker 1: because of how isolated it was, it's like one of
1:38:24
Speaker 1: the parts of earth that's like untouched by humans. And
1:38:27
Speaker 1: so the only people that would be in this huge,
1:38:30
Speaker 1: sprawling valley, it was like an oasis of nature. They
1:38:33
Speaker 1: would see things that are just like so gorgeous, like
1:38:36
Speaker 1: untouched nature. But in the early 1900s, there was this
1:38:41
Speaker 1: push from gold prospectors to go out into the Nahanni
1:38:44
Speaker 1: Valley because they figured because it's so untouched by humanity,
1:38:48
Speaker 1: there's bound to be gold. to be found in the
1:38:50
Speaker 1: Nahanni Valley. Now, there were some indigenous tribes like the
1:38:53
Speaker 1: Naha tribe. They were out there. There's some lore surrounding
1:38:57
Speaker 1: how they might have abandoned their settlement around the time
1:39:02
Speaker 1: the story takes place. But there were indigenous tribes that
1:39:05
Speaker 1: lived out there. But for the most part, it's like
1:39:06
Speaker 1: this sort of vacant stretch in this already isolated part
1:39:10
Speaker 1: of the world. And so in 19, I think it's 1905,
1:39:14
Speaker 1: these three brothers, these three prospectors, the McLeod brothers, Charlie, Willie,
1:39:18
Speaker 1: and Frank, who are seasoned gold prospectors, they decide they
1:39:22
Speaker 1: are going to head off into the Nahanni Valley and
1:39:24
Speaker 1: go try to strike it rich. And it's even harder
1:39:27
Speaker 1: to get into the valley back then as it is today.
1:39:30
Speaker 1: It required for them, they had to, they actually had
1:39:32
Speaker 1: to build a boat. They had to bring pieces of
1:39:35
Speaker 1: a boat and they would take it up a rapid
1:39:37
Speaker 1: or down the rapid and they'd have to disassemble the boat,
1:39:40
Speaker 1: carry it up like these rock faces to get like,
1:39:43
Speaker 1: there's waterfalls they had to get past and then bring
1:39:45
Speaker 1: the boat further and further into this valley. And it's
1:39:48
Speaker 1: like this It's just crazy how much work goes into
1:39:51
Speaker 1: getting out there. But these three brothers, they find their
1:39:54
Speaker 1: way into the valley and they get to the stretch
1:39:56
Speaker 1: of this river called the Flat River, which is anything but.
1:39:59
Speaker 1: It's raging rapids. But there was this little embankment against
1:40:04
Speaker 1: this huge forest and like mountains off in the distance.
1:40:07
Speaker 1: And they made their camp there. And there's no one around.
1:40:10
Speaker 1: I mean, this is pristine wilderness. And they start sifting,
1:40:14
Speaker 1: sluicing for gold. And it's just fucking gold everywhere. It's
1:40:18
Speaker 1: like the sand is gold. There's gold everywhere. They find
1:40:22
Speaker 1: so much gold and they can't believe it. They've struck
1:40:25
Speaker 1: it completely rich here. And so after a whole day,
1:40:28
Speaker 1: I think they did two, three days even of just
1:40:30
Speaker 1: getting all this gold, they pack all their shit back
1:40:33
Speaker 1: up in their boat that they've assembled and they begin
1:40:37
Speaker 1: making their way back out again, which should be easier
1:40:39
Speaker 1: because now I think a lot of it you're going
1:40:40
Speaker 1: with the current. I don't even know how they get
1:40:42
Speaker 1: up there with the rapids going one way, but either way,
1:40:44
Speaker 1: They begin making their way out and their boat capsizes
1:40:47
Speaker 1: and they lose all their gold. The boat breaks up.
1:40:50
Speaker 1: They narrowly are able to salvage the pieces and they
1:40:53
Speaker 1: come ashore and they build their boat again. And they're like,
1:40:56
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, we've lost so many supplies. Like we,
1:40:58
Speaker 1: this is horrible. You know, the best we can do
1:41:00
Speaker 1: here is leave and come back with more supplies because
1:41:05
Speaker 1: we know there's gold here. Like this is devastating, but
1:41:07
Speaker 1: no one's going to be here. We can come back.
1:41:09
Speaker 1: We can get more gold. So they leave. And once
1:41:12
Speaker 1: they get back to town, Uh, Charlie, the, one of
1:41:14
Speaker 1: the brothers decides, you know what, it's not worth it. Uh,
1:41:17
Speaker 1: that was really sketchy. I don't want to die out
1:41:19
Speaker 1: on the flat river. You know, Frank and Willie, they're like, oh,
1:41:22
Speaker 1: we gotta go. We gotta go out there. And so
1:41:25
Speaker 1: fast forward a year, Charlie's still saying, I will not
1:41:28
Speaker 1: go back out there. But, but, uh, Frank and Willie,
1:41:30
Speaker 1: they decide to go and they recruit this other guy.
1:41:33
Speaker 1: I think his name is Robert Weir, Robert Weir. And
1:41:36
Speaker 1: so the three of them go back into the valley to,
1:41:39
Speaker 1: to strike it rich. And, you know, Charlie is aware
1:41:42
Speaker 1: that they're going out there. He's staying back, but he
1:41:44
Speaker 1: knows they're going out. He knows where they're going because
1:41:46
Speaker 1: he went there with them. And he expects they're going
1:41:49
Speaker 1: to be gone for, I think it was going to
1:41:50
Speaker 1: be a whole year. And you can imagine how much
1:41:52
Speaker 1: effort goes into getting out there. They were going to
1:41:54
Speaker 1: live out there, I think, for the summer and just
1:41:55
Speaker 1: get as much gold as they could and come out.
1:41:57
Speaker 1: But some amount of time passed, let's call it a year,
1:42:00
Speaker 1: when Charlie starts to become suspicious because they haven't come
1:42:03
Speaker 1: out of the valley yet. And this is 1905. There's
1:42:04
Speaker 1: no way to talk to them. And so another whole
1:42:08
Speaker 1: year passes. We're two years deep into this. And still,
1:42:12
Speaker 1: these guys have not returned from the Nahanni Valley. And
1:42:14
Speaker 1: so at this point, Charlie is thinking there's an issue here.
1:42:17
Speaker 1: Something's happened to my brothers. I got to go find them.
1:42:20
Speaker 1: And so he puts together a group of people to
1:42:22
Speaker 1: go see what happened to his brothers. And so he
1:42:26
Speaker 1: makes his way. He starts getting into the valley and
1:42:29
Speaker 1: he reaches this stretch of, this is just to give
1:42:32
Speaker 1: you a mental image of where he's going, to get
1:42:35
Speaker 1: to that segment of the beach where they had been
1:42:37
Speaker 1: two years prior when Charlie was with them, because that's
1:42:39
Speaker 1: where he's assuming they're going to be. They had to
1:42:42
Speaker 1: pass through these canyons. There's four canyons that go, I
1:42:45
Speaker 1: think it's Canyon 4, Canyon 2, 3, 1. They're all
1:42:48
Speaker 1: just called Canyon 1, 2, 3.
1:42:50
Speaker 2: 4, but they're staggering.
1:42:52
Speaker 1: I mean, just visually, these are just ominous places. There
1:42:57
Speaker 1: are these stretches, like Canyon 2 is this 10-mile stretch
1:43:00
Speaker 1: of very deep water. I don't know how deep. I
1:43:02
Speaker 1: want to say it's at least 100 feet deep, where
1:43:05
Speaker 1: the water goes all the way up To the cliff face.
1:43:08
Speaker 1: It's a sheer cliff face on either side.
1:43:10
Speaker 2: Oh, Jesus.
1:43:11
Speaker 1: It's like the scar in the earth where it's hundreds
1:43:13
Speaker 1: of feet tall cliffs on either side that are sheer.
1:43:17
Speaker 1: And it's just, you know, call it 100 feet at
1:43:18
Speaker 1: least of water down. There's nowhere to stop. Once you're
1:43:21
Speaker 1: in this canyon, you must go to the end of
1:43:24
Speaker 1: the canyon. There's nowhere to go.
1:43:25
Speaker 2: Oh, fuck.
1:43:26
Speaker 1: And the Naha tribe, the tribe that had lived there
1:43:30
Speaker 1: for a while, they had always talked about, they called
1:43:33
Speaker 1: them the Wahila. They said there were these creatures, these
1:43:36
Speaker 1: white creatures. tall creatures that would roam the forest in
1:43:39
Speaker 1: the Nahanni Valley. And they would make these screeching sounds
1:43:42
Speaker 1: and they were, you know, they would attack people. It's
1:43:44
Speaker 1: just folklore, right? But they said that in these canyons,
1:43:49
Speaker 1: there were all these caves, these pockets of caves high
1:43:52
Speaker 1: up on these canyons that you can't really get to,
1:43:55
Speaker 1: that they believed the Wahila would live inside of. So
1:44:00
Speaker 1: imagine you're going down this, this like misty 10 mile
1:44:04
Speaker 1: stretch in Second Canyon and And you're looking up on
1:44:07
Speaker 1: either side and there literally are caves that no human
1:44:10
Speaker 1: has ever stepped foot in. You can't even get to
1:44:12
Speaker 1: these fucking caves. And because of the way the wind
1:44:15
Speaker 1: cuts through the canyon, it makes this echoey like screeching
1:44:18
Speaker 1: noise that today you can still hear as you go
1:44:20
Speaker 1: through these canyons. And so they're going through Second Canyon,
1:44:23
Speaker 1: this stretch here. And the stretch of Flat River where
1:44:27
Speaker 1: he had been the year prior or two years prior
1:44:29
Speaker 1: with his brothers was at the end of Second Canyon
1:44:31
Speaker 1: where the first little call it a beachhead exists. And
1:44:34
Speaker 1: so he, Charlie, and his search party, they exit this
1:44:37
Speaker 1: creepy second canyon, and they see there's a campsite set
1:44:41
Speaker 1: up on the beach. And it's not really a beach.
1:44:43
Speaker 1: It's like, you know, four feet of sand, and then
1:44:44
Speaker 1: it's a little bit of hinterland, and then it's just,
1:44:47
Speaker 1: you know, forest. But he sees there's a tent. And
1:44:49
Speaker 1: so they beach the boat, and they're looking around, and
1:44:52
Speaker 1: they find there's two bodies. It's a man, two men.
1:44:56
Speaker 1: They're badly decomposed, but they're missing their heads. There's two
1:44:59
Speaker 1: headless men. that are badly decomposed. One of which is
1:45:02
Speaker 1: reaching for his rifle and he's half in the tent,
1:45:04
Speaker 1: half out of the tent. And he's reaching for his rifle,
1:45:07
Speaker 1: which is propped up against a tree. And the other
1:45:10
Speaker 1: is just lying behind the tent and he's, he's missing
1:45:12
Speaker 1: his head. The heads were never found. Uh, and they
1:45:14
Speaker 1: find identification and it turns out those are his two
1:45:17
Speaker 1: brothers and they find etched into the tree that the,
1:45:21
Speaker 1: the gun was propped on. It just was written etched
1:45:23
Speaker 1: into the wood, um, we have found a fine prospect,
1:45:28
Speaker 1: which could mean any number of things. Maybe it means
1:45:30
Speaker 1: they found gold, whoever, but that was written on the tree.
1:45:32
Speaker 1: And then a little ways down from their camp, going
1:45:35
Speaker 1: along the same direction they'd come in, they found a skeleton,
1:45:38
Speaker 1: which they could never identify as being anyone, but they
1:45:42
Speaker 1: believe it belonged to Robert Weir. So they're all dead.
1:45:45
Speaker 1: And the authorities, you know, when this was reported, they
1:45:49
Speaker 1: weren't really shocked. They're like, ah, it's the Nahanni Valley.
1:45:52
Speaker 1: It's a dangerous place. They obviously died of starvation and
1:45:56
Speaker 1: animal predation caused their heads to be ripped off. Tough luck.
1:46:01
Speaker 1: Charlie didn't believe that. He always believed that something had
1:46:03
Speaker 1: happened to his brothers, but he had no way to
1:46:05
Speaker 1: prove it. So that's 1905. Fast forward to 1913, people
1:46:10
Speaker 1: sort of know about this story that this is when
1:46:12
Speaker 1: they dubbed it the Headless Valley because these men were
1:46:14
Speaker 1: found without their heads. Little did they know that story
1:46:17
Speaker 1: would carry quite a bit of weight because 10 years
1:46:20
Speaker 1: or a little bit less than 10 years later, Martin Jorgensen,
1:46:24
Speaker 1: who's another gold prospector, he heads out into the Nahanni Valley.
1:46:28
Speaker 1: He's heard the stories. He's heard about the McLeod brothers.
1:46:30
Speaker 1: He knows that there's lore of the Wahila and that
1:46:34
Speaker 1: there's something weird happening in this valley and it's dangerous.
1:46:37
Speaker 1: But he goes out there anyways and he tells his
1:46:38
Speaker 1: business partners who are these rich guys who didn't want
1:46:40
Speaker 1: to actually go get the gold. They just funded his expedition.
1:46:43
Speaker 1: He's like, I'm going to go out there and I'll
1:46:46
Speaker 1: make us a bunch of money. I'll find a bunch
1:46:47
Speaker 1: of gold. I'll stay out there for the whole summer.
1:46:49
Speaker 1: And then we'll rendezvous and we'll split the earnings or whatever.
1:46:52
Speaker 1: So out he goes and he builds himself a cabin
1:46:55
Speaker 1: not far from where the McLeod brothers had stayed. And
1:46:58
Speaker 1: then the second expedition as well. And he is out
1:47:02
Speaker 1: there for the summer, but then he misses the rendezvous point.
1:47:04
Speaker 1: He was supposed to come out of the valley and
1:47:06
Speaker 1: meet his partners at the end of the summer. He doesn't. Eventually,
1:47:09
Speaker 1: a search party is brought out to find what happened
1:47:12
Speaker 1: to him. And they find his cabin had burned to
1:47:15
Speaker 1: the ground. They find Martin Jorgensen is within the remains
1:47:19
Speaker 1: of this burned down cabin, missing his head.
1:47:21
Speaker 2: Jesus.
1:47:23
Speaker 1: And they, I don't know how they did this in 1913,
1:47:25
Speaker 1: but apparently the fire began on the roof. And so
1:47:30
Speaker 1: they don't understand how he could have not realized there
1:47:33
Speaker 1: was a problem and exited his cabin. I mean, it's
1:47:35
Speaker 1: simplifying it, but it's an odd thing that fire starts
1:47:39
Speaker 1: here and you still burn to the ground. And also,
1:47:41
Speaker 1: where's your head? So that's Martin Jorgensen. So now people,
1:47:45
Speaker 1: they aren't really connecting the McLeod brothers and Martin Jorgensen.
1:47:48
Speaker 1: It was called the Headless Valley by the time Martin
1:47:52
Speaker 1: Jorgensen gets into the valley. He's now found headless. And
1:47:55
Speaker 1: now it's like there's a little more rumor mill going on.
1:47:58
Speaker 1: Over the coming several, actually next 10 years, there was
1:48:02
Speaker 1: several other expeditions to include this guy, Riley O'Brien, who
1:48:06
Speaker 1: goes out there, a prospector. He goes out to check
1:48:08
Speaker 1: his traps, doesn't come back, his partner who's with him.
1:48:11
Speaker 1: He walks over and finds him and he's just sitting
1:48:14
Speaker 1: inexplicably by a campfire that's not on. It's not even,
1:48:17
Speaker 1: it was cold. It was cold enough to freeze to death.
1:48:20
Speaker 1: out there, but it was not blindingly cold. And he's
1:48:22
Speaker 1: sitting in front of this fire pit. It's only been
1:48:25
Speaker 1: like an hour or two since he stepped away and
1:48:27
Speaker 1: he's holding a match or a cigarette in his hand.
1:48:30
Speaker 1: And he's just like, he's frozen. He's frozen to death.
1:48:33
Speaker 1: And there's no sign of what happened to him. He's
1:48:35
Speaker 1: just sitting by the fire and he's dead. He has
1:48:38
Speaker 1: his head, but he's frozen to death. The guy with
1:48:41
Speaker 1: his partner who fled the valley would later say he
1:48:43
Speaker 1: looked flash frozen. So that happens. There were at least
1:48:46
Speaker 1: two other prospectors who also had their cabins burned down.
1:48:51
Speaker 1: One of them was nearly decapitated when he was found,
1:48:53
Speaker 1: but he still had his head, but signs of something
1:48:56
Speaker 1: being done to his spine was present. And then there
1:48:59
Speaker 1: was another two guys who their cabins burned down, but
1:49:01
Speaker 1: their bodies were intact. So there's all these people that
1:49:03
Speaker 1: die in similarly bizarre ways. And then in I think
1:49:07
Speaker 1: it was 1926, the first like really weird thing happens.
1:49:10
Speaker 1: This is all weird, but the really weird thing happens.
1:49:13
Speaker 2: It's going to get weirder?
1:49:13
Speaker 1: It gets weirder. There was this hunting party that went
1:49:17
Speaker 1: out to the Nahanni Valley. And by this point, it's
1:49:19
Speaker 1: become almost like because there's this lore surrounding how dangerous
1:49:25
Speaker 1: this place is, because people are fearful of the Nahanni Valley,
1:49:28
Speaker 1: it's now bringing a new crowd of people into the valley.
1:49:31
Speaker 1: It's bringing like hunting parties that kind of are like, oh,
1:49:34
Speaker 1: go fucking see what's out in this valley. And so
1:49:36
Speaker 1: they were going through Second Canyon and they were heading
1:49:38
Speaker 1: to Flat River and they were going to these places
1:49:41
Speaker 1: where all these kind of famous deaths have occurred to
1:49:44
Speaker 1: go hunting, but just sort of to be in this valley.
1:49:46
Speaker 1: And so this hunting party is out there and it's
1:49:49
Speaker 1: a big group. I think there was at least a
1:49:51
Speaker 1: dozen people out there and they're camping out on the
1:49:53
Speaker 1: banks of the Flat River, not really in the same
1:49:56
Speaker 1: spot where the McLeod brothers had been, but not too
1:49:58
Speaker 1: far away. And they're out drinking late, having a good
1:50:02
Speaker 1: old time. They all go to bed and the next morning,
1:50:05
Speaker 1: May Lafferty is her name, May Lafferty. She's missing. She's
1:50:09
Speaker 1: one of the, I think she was the only woman
1:50:11
Speaker 1: on this expedition. She's gone. And they look for her.
1:50:14
Speaker 1: There's no sign of what happened to her. She's just,
1:50:16
Speaker 1: she's just gone. And so they did have some sort
1:50:19
Speaker 1: of a search occur over the next several days, but
1:50:21
Speaker 1: they ultimately said, you know, we don't know what happened
1:50:22
Speaker 1: to her. And they, they, they left, they left the valley.
1:50:26
Speaker 1: And so they tell authorities, authorities, I think they went
1:50:28
Speaker 1: out to look for her. They could never find her,
1:50:30
Speaker 1: no sign of what happened to her. And so around
1:50:32
Speaker 1: the time that they're looking for May Lafferty, there was
1:50:36
Speaker 1: this guy who is named Charlie, different from Charlie McLeod,
1:50:39
Speaker 1: just a sort of loner guy, who just by happenstance
1:50:42
Speaker 1: had been camping in the Nahanni Valley at the same
1:50:45
Speaker 1: time as that hunting party. He was by himself, sort
1:50:47
Speaker 1: of just this rugged outdoorsman who, it's not even clear
1:50:50
Speaker 1: why he was out there, but he was just out
1:50:53
Speaker 1: there minding his own business. He was aware of the
1:50:55
Speaker 1: hunting party and he said that he watched them have
1:50:57
Speaker 1: their party that night and he had stayed up late,
1:50:59
Speaker 1: but eventually gone to sleep. And He ultimately reports this
1:51:03
Speaker 1: to the police because there's all this talk of where's
1:51:05
Speaker 1: Mae Lafferty? And this guy, Charlie, realizes he may have
1:51:08
Speaker 1: seen her. So he goes to the police and he
1:51:09
Speaker 1: tells them, hey, I was out there. They don't know
1:51:12
Speaker 1: I was out there. I was out there the same time.
1:51:14
Speaker 1: And I went to bed late at night after they
1:51:17
Speaker 1: were already asleep. And I woke up to the sound
1:51:19
Speaker 1: of rocks, like little rocks falling into the water. And
1:51:23
Speaker 1: he's relatively close to the water, but he's not so
1:51:26
Speaker 1: close that he would hear the sound of the current.
1:51:27
Speaker 1: He's far enough that a stone throw into the water,
1:51:29
Speaker 1: you'd hear the sploosh sound. And so he wakes up
1:51:32
Speaker 1: and he crawls out of his tent and it's pretty
1:51:35
Speaker 1: well illuminated. And he's in the trees, you know, and
1:51:38
Speaker 1: he can see the water, the flat river, and he
1:51:41
Speaker 1: can't tell what the rocks are coming from. It just
1:51:43
Speaker 1: sounds like rocks falling from a distance into the water.
1:51:46
Speaker 1: And so he just is curious and he gets up
1:51:48
Speaker 1: and he walks down to the water line and he
1:51:51
Speaker 1: starts hearing them more and more and he looks up
1:51:53
Speaker 1: and there's a part of the coastline, if you will,
1:51:56
Speaker 1: the beach line that sort of was up on a
1:51:58
Speaker 1: rise to his left, like there was a hill. That
1:52:01
Speaker 1: was right next to him. That's dramatic. Just a slight rise.
1:52:04
Speaker 1: And there was a little bit of a cliff that
1:52:06
Speaker 1: maybe like six feet, eight feet of a cliff that
1:52:08
Speaker 1: overlooked the river right there. And he sees there's this
1:52:11
Speaker 1: woman who's crawling on all fours and she's scrambling up
1:52:16
Speaker 1: this little rise of the beach. And it's her kicking
1:52:20
Speaker 1: of the dirt that's like sprinkling rocks into the water.
1:52:23
Speaker 1: And he's looking at her and she gets to the
1:52:25
Speaker 1: top and she stops and And she turns around and
1:52:27
Speaker 1: looks at him and he described her as looking possessed.
1:52:30
Speaker 1: He was like, there was something wrong with her. She
1:52:33
Speaker 1: just stared at me and he was so frightened. He didn't,
1:52:35
Speaker 1: he just froze and then hid. And he watched this
1:52:38
Speaker 1: woman scamper off into the, wherever she went over the
1:52:42
Speaker 1: rise away from the camp. So she's gone and he
1:52:44
Speaker 1: didn't know what to make of it.
1:52:45
Speaker 2: He's like, that's so weird.
1:52:47
Speaker 1: He hears about this missing woman. He tells, he tells
1:52:50
Speaker 1: police and he sees a picture of her and he's like,
1:52:51
Speaker 1: I'm nearly positive that was her. And so she's never found.
1:52:55
Speaker 1: And so May Lafferty's gone. Fast forward another 20 years.
1:52:59
Speaker 1: So there's no idea. And in those 20 years, more
1:53:02
Speaker 1: prospectors are found dead as well. One of the last
1:53:07
Speaker 1: hunting parties went out into the Nahanni Valley. Actually, prospector
1:53:14
Speaker 1: goes out and he goes missing. His name is John Patterson.
1:53:16
Speaker 1: This is like in the 1939, 1940 range. And a
1:53:20
Speaker 1: hunting party goes out to look for him and they
1:53:22
Speaker 1: can't find him. And on the last night they were there,
1:53:26
Speaker 1: one of the men who was part of this search
1:53:28
Speaker 1: party for John Patterson there near the Flat River, he
1:53:31
Speaker 1: described an indigenous man walked out of the tree line,
1:53:35
Speaker 1: just sort of inexplicably walks over to him. And he
1:53:37
Speaker 1: comes up to the group who are sort of on
1:53:39
Speaker 1: the tree on the beach line there. And he just
1:53:42
Speaker 1: says to this guy, he's like, hey, they're startled to
1:53:45
Speaker 1: see him to begin with. Like, where the fuck did
1:53:46
Speaker 1: you come from? And he's like, be careful. The Wahila
1:53:51
Speaker 1: are out tonight. And the guy just like wanders, but
1:53:54
Speaker 1: this is according to legend. This is what was said
1:53:56
Speaker 1: to him. And the guy wanders back off into the trees,
1:53:58
Speaker 1: but the leader of that expedition, they were planning to stay.
1:54:01
Speaker 1: I want to say two additional days to keep looking
1:54:04
Speaker 1: for John Patterson, but that night following that comment made
1:54:07
Speaker 1: by that guy, the indigenous guy all night, they reported
1:54:10
Speaker 1: these ungodly screams and screeches coming from that Canyon second
1:54:14
Speaker 1: Canyon where those, those caves up in the cliffs were
1:54:17
Speaker 1: all around the forest. Like, like unearthly sounds were being
1:54:20
Speaker 1: made that scared them so badly. But the next day
1:54:23
Speaker 1: they said, we're not looking for John Patterson anymore. And
1:54:26
Speaker 1: they bailed. And so people stopped going into the Nahanni Valley.
1:54:30
Speaker 1: And today you can still go there. It's still very
1:54:32
Speaker 1: hard to get there. But no one has a good
1:54:34
Speaker 1: explanation for why so many fucking people from 1903 or
1:54:38
Speaker 1: four until at least the 1940s kept going into that
1:54:41
Speaker 1: valley and kept turning up dead, many of which without
1:54:44
Speaker 1: their heads.
1:54:45
Speaker 2: So this indigenous guy that lived up there, where was
1:54:49
Speaker 2: he from? Was he living up there? Was he a
1:54:52
Speaker 2: part of a tribe? Was he passing through?
1:54:55
Speaker 1: So that part of the story, admittedly, someone said that
1:54:59
Speaker 1: an indigenous guy said that to him. There's not much
1:55:01
Speaker 1: in the way of like, okay, was there a tribe there?
1:55:05
Speaker 1: It was one of those loose, loose pieces of information
1:55:09
Speaker 1: that sort of surrounds the story The reality is there's
1:55:13
Speaker 1: so much legend surrounding the Nahanni Valley, in part because
1:55:17
Speaker 1: the Naha tribe that had lived there, there was this
1:55:20
Speaker 1: story I mentioned at the beginning that they apparently abandoned
1:55:24
Speaker 1: the valley after something happened. And people have always attributed
1:55:27
Speaker 1: it to the legend of the Wahila, that somehow these
1:55:30
Speaker 1: creatures must have forced them to leave the valley. And
1:55:33
Speaker 1: so combine that with all of the actual deaths that occurred,
1:55:39
Speaker 1: By the 1940s, when John Patterson went missing and when
1:55:43
Speaker 1: that guy said, who was part of that search party,
1:55:45
Speaker 1: that the indigenous guy warned him of the Wahila, this
1:55:48
Speaker 1: was a big enough story that like Time magazine did
1:55:51
Speaker 1: something in, I think the 1940s, about like what the
1:55:53
Speaker 1: fuck is happening in the Nahanni Valley? Like, why are
1:55:56
Speaker 1: so many people dying out there? So I wonder if
1:55:59
Speaker 1: the people who were there, maybe they heard some strange
1:56:01
Speaker 1: sounds that night, who knows? But who's going to verify
1:56:05
Speaker 1: whether or not there really was someone who warned them
1:56:07
Speaker 1: about the Wahila? We don't know. But that's the report
1:56:10
Speaker 1: that was given. Somebody claimed that an indigenous man sort
1:56:13
Speaker 1: of came out of nowhere, said, watch out for the
1:56:15
Speaker 1: Wahila tonight. And then that night they heard all these
1:56:17
Speaker 1: screeches and.
1:56:18
Speaker 2: They called it in. The reason why I'm asking is
1:56:20
Speaker 2: like maybe it was indigenous people that just didn't want
1:56:23
Speaker 2: these other guys coming through. And so they created this
1:56:27
Speaker 2: thing by cutting off their heads and killing these people.
1:56:31
Speaker 1: It's a great deterrent. Maybe it's not because a lot
1:56:33
Speaker 1: of people went back.
1:56:35
Speaker 2: Well, maybe less than would have determined.
1:56:37
Speaker 3: Fair.
1:56:38
Speaker 2: Considering how much gold there was there. Yeah.
1:56:40
Speaker 1: Actually, that's fair.
1:56:42
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, what a great way to get
1:56:44
Speaker 2: rid of white people. You know? Cut a few heads off.
1:56:48
Speaker 1: Tell them there's ghosts.
1:56:50
Speaker 2: Yeah, dude.
1:56:51
Speaker 1: I love that. I find myself, even to this day, Googling...
1:56:54
Speaker 1: the Nahanni Valley and just looking at pictures of like
1:56:57
Speaker 1: the canyons and just reading. Even just stuff that I
1:56:59
Speaker 1: know is probably folklore around the valley because the idea
1:57:03
Speaker 1: that within this stretch of isolated parts of the world,
1:57:06
Speaker 1: there's this really isolated part that no one can get to.
1:57:10
Speaker 1: I love that.
1:57:10
Speaker 2: Well, there's some weirdness in the world still in places
1:57:13
Speaker 2: that people don't go to. But just think about how
1:57:16
Speaker 2: hard it is to find a wolverine. And we know
1:57:19
Speaker 2: wolverines are real. Where are they? Most people never see
1:57:22
Speaker 2: a wolverine. They're in Alaska. They're in Canada. Minnesota has Wolverines. Like,
1:57:28
Speaker 2: what states do Wolverines?
1:57:30
Speaker 1: Let's put this into perplexity, Jamie. It's got to be Michigan.
1:57:33
Speaker 2: It's got to be Michigan. Yeah, Michigan's right up there.
1:57:34
Speaker 1: They're the Wolverines, right? The Michigan Wolverines.
1:57:37
Speaker 2: Right. But I don't necessarily think that means that.
1:57:40
Speaker 1: Aren't Wolverines like these little guys, too?
1:57:43
Speaker 2: Oh, yeah, just like badgers, little ferocious motherfuckers. They, let's see, Alaska, Washington, Oregon.
1:57:51
Speaker 3: Oregon.
1:57:52
Speaker 2: Idaho, Montana, Wyoming.
1:57:54
Speaker 1: No Michigan.
1:57:56
Speaker 2: Interesting. Interesting. But the thing is, my point is, you
1:58:02
Speaker 2: don't see them. No. I know a lot of guys, remote, cold,
1:58:06
Speaker 2: high elevation habitat. Colorado, Minnesota. Minnesota. I know a lot
1:58:12
Speaker 2: of guys who have been in the woods, you know,
1:58:15
Speaker 2: their whole life hunting, and maybe they see one ever.
1:58:18
Speaker 1: That's crazy.
1:58:18
Speaker 2: We know there's populations of them out there. But it's
1:58:20
Speaker 2: rare to stumble across a wolverine in the wild. And
1:58:24
Speaker 2: that's a known animal. Now, imagine that there was a time.
1:58:28
Speaker 2: I mean, if you think about... Just the amount of
1:58:33
Speaker 2: other types of hominids that they've found just over the
1:58:38
Speaker 2: past few decades.
1:58:39
Speaker 3: Yeah.
1:58:39
Speaker 2: They keep finding new versions, like the island of Flores,
1:58:44
Speaker 2: the little hobbit people, the Denisovans that they found. They
1:58:49
Speaker 2: think they were much larger than Homo sapiens. Yeah. So
1:58:52
Speaker 2: they're finding, and the Denisovans, I think, was like within
1:58:55
Speaker 2: the last 10 years or so. And they keep finding
1:58:58
Speaker 2: these skeletons and finding these bones. And then they find out, well,
1:59:01
Speaker 2: this was around 300,000 years ago. It was around 500,000
1:59:04
Speaker 2: years ago. But that's just what you find in bones.
1:59:08
Speaker 2: Most people's bones you're never going to find. So the
1:59:11
Speaker 2: vast majority of things that have died never make it
1:59:15
Speaker 2: into the fossil record. And so you have a small
1:59:18
Speaker 2: number of things that do. Now, we know that humans
1:59:23
Speaker 2: cannibalize other humans. It's been a It's been a practice.
1:59:30
Speaker 1: No, it's practiced today.
1:59:31
Speaker 2: Papua New Guinea, yeah.
1:59:32
Speaker 1: It's practiced today. I mean, that's a bit of an overclaim,
1:59:35
Speaker 1: but I think.
1:59:35
Speaker 2: It's still practiced today. The Nez Perce supposedly ate some
1:59:38
Speaker 2: of their enemies. There's a bunch of cannibalism going on
1:59:42
Speaker 2: in the world. Now, imagine if there was a hominid
1:59:46
Speaker 2: and some sort of an ancient creature that still stayed
1:59:50
Speaker 2: alive in a small population but would eat people or
1:59:54
Speaker 2: maybe just cut their fucking heads off. Or just attack
1:59:57
Speaker 2: them and kill them because they didn't want them anywhere
1:59:59
Speaker 2: near because they had associated over time people with problems.
2:00:03
Speaker 2: And then if you're around people, they're going to hunt you.
2:00:06
Speaker 2: They're going to shoot you. They're going to kill you.
2:00:07
Speaker 2: So what do you do? You stay as far away
2:00:10
Speaker 2: from people. The way to survive is to be in
2:00:12
Speaker 2: the most remote place humanly possible. And when you find people,
2:00:18
Speaker 2: kill them. Kill them so that they don't go after you.
2:00:22
Speaker 1: I know that you had seen something that I, I
2:00:25
Speaker 1: had Tom Segura on an interview one time and I
2:00:27
Speaker 1: told a story about the Mexican pilot. Does that ring any, anybody?
2:00:31
Speaker 2: Yes.
2:00:32
Speaker 1: It just, you're talking about like how humans do damage
2:00:35
Speaker 1: to one another. But so the, the, the 60 second
2:00:38
Speaker 1: version is there was this Mexican pilot civilian. He's going
2:00:42
Speaker 1: out for his last test. Rafael Pacheco, I think is
2:00:45
Speaker 1: his name. He's going out to do his last test
2:00:47
Speaker 1: run as a pilot. And it's a simple route. Hey,
2:00:49
Speaker 1: you're going to, you're going to fly solo to prove,
2:00:51
Speaker 1: you know what you're doing. He takes off and he
2:00:54
Speaker 1: immediately starts to realize that he doesn't have control over
2:00:56
Speaker 1: the instruments. You know, the instruments were pretty rudimentary to
2:01:00
Speaker 1: begin with. This is like the 1950s or 60s, I think.
2:01:03
Speaker 1: And so it's a lot of dead reckoning from the
2:01:05
Speaker 1: pilot's seat. Like he's looking out to see where he
2:01:07
Speaker 1: needs to go. The mist is getting bad. And then
2:01:09
Speaker 1: he's calling over the radio. He's like, I can't get
2:01:11
Speaker 1: my plane to move. And then suddenly he passes out
2:01:14
Speaker 1: and his plane like accelerates up into the sky. And
2:01:17
Speaker 1: then he wakes up hours later off the coast of Acapulco.
2:01:21
Speaker 1: which based on how much fuel was left, he had
2:01:23
Speaker 1: too much fuel for how far of a distance he
2:01:25
Speaker 1: had covered from where he had taken off, Chimalacan, Mexico.
2:01:28
Speaker 1: It was more than like a three-hour drive. So he's
2:01:31
Speaker 1: too far away with too much fuel, and he comes
2:01:34
Speaker 1: to in his plane. He's still flying. He has no
2:01:36
Speaker 1: idea how he got there. He's just coming to. And Rafael,
2:01:38
Speaker 1: he hears in his radio some voice, and it's an
2:01:42
Speaker 1: air traffic control guy, Carlos, who's down in Acapulco. And
2:01:46
Speaker 1: he's talking to Raphael as if they've been having an
2:01:49
Speaker 1: ongoing conversation. But Raphael's like, what's going on? Like, where
2:01:51
Speaker 1: am I? What's going on? And Carlos is like, what? Like,
2:01:55
Speaker 1: are you alone in your craft? And Raphael's like, he's
2:01:58
Speaker 1: like taking stock of his situation. He regains control of
2:02:01
Speaker 1: his plane. He's like, what am I doing? And so
2:02:04
Speaker 1: basically Carlos is like, hey, dude, like come in and
2:02:07
Speaker 1: land here.
2:02:08
Speaker 2: Land here.
2:02:08
Speaker 1: We'll figure it out. So Raphael's like, I don't even
2:02:10
Speaker 1: know what happened. I passed out at the wheel. He
2:02:12
Speaker 1: lands at the airstrip in Acapulco. And immediately he's met
2:02:16
Speaker 1: with these guys in suits, like picture men in black.
2:02:19
Speaker 1: He gets scooped up and he's brought to a hospital
2:02:22
Speaker 1: where he's drug tested and talks to a psychologist and
2:02:25
Speaker 1: they don't give many information at all. He's like, what happened? Like,
2:02:28
Speaker 1: I'm so sorry. And they determined that he's not crazy
2:02:31
Speaker 1: and he's not on drugs. And only then do they say, hey,
2:02:34
Speaker 1: so when you were out over the off the coast
2:02:37
Speaker 1: of Acapulco, you were flying in circles for over an hour.
2:02:41
Speaker 1: And Carlos, the air traffic control guy, he's the one
2:02:44
Speaker 1: who saw you on the screen and he was talking
2:02:47
Speaker 1: to you for an hour while you were out there.
2:02:50
Speaker 1: And the whole conversation is recorded. And basically, you can
2:02:54
Speaker 1: listen to the recording, and I'm pretty sure you guys
2:02:56
Speaker 1: might have on the show. Raphael passes out. And then
2:03:00
Speaker 1: at some point, a couple hours later, when he's somehow
2:03:03
Speaker 1: magically off the coast of Acapulco, a voice comes across
2:03:08
Speaker 1: in the cockpit that's like this robotic... deep altered sounding
2:03:12
Speaker 1: voice that doesn't sound like Raphael. In the earlier recording,
2:03:15
Speaker 1: it sounds like Raphael's voice. Now it's different. And he's
2:03:18
Speaker 1: talking to Carlos and this voice comes through and says
2:03:21
Speaker 1: something to the effect of like, you are listening to
2:03:23
Speaker 1: the sound of the voice coming through the pilot, but
2:03:25
Speaker 1: it's not his voice. We are inhabitants of this universe,
2:03:32
Speaker 1: but your technology is so primitive. This is the only
2:03:35
Speaker 1: way we can contact you. We're here to tell you
2:03:38
Speaker 1: that you are the only intelligent species in our universe
2:03:42
Speaker 1: that uses warfare to harm one another. And you're effectively
2:03:47
Speaker 1: on the brink of extermination and you need to find
2:03:49
Speaker 1: a way to stop it. And then like Rafael comes too.
2:03:52
Speaker 1: And that's when he's like, what's going on? And Carlos
2:03:54
Speaker 1: thinks he's been talking to Rafael the whole time. And
2:03:57
Speaker 1: that's when he's like, is there somebody else in the
2:03:58
Speaker 1: cockpit with you? Anyways, so it's this big mystery, but
2:04:02
Speaker 1: Mexico took the story and kind of like sequestered it
2:04:05
Speaker 1: at The way we got access to the transcripts of
2:04:08
Speaker 1: it is we had to write a letter to a
2:04:11
Speaker 1: library in Mexico that had access to the transcript. But
2:04:16
Speaker 1: it's interesting to imagine that, one, I love thinking about
2:04:19
Speaker 1: life outside of Earth because I think that the notion
2:04:24
Speaker 1: that there is life or that there isn't life is
2:04:27
Speaker 1: astounding and fascinating either direction you go. So I've always
2:04:30
Speaker 1: been interested in that. But two, the idea that others
2:04:34
Speaker 1: out there are warning us that we're on the fucking
2:04:36
Speaker 1: fast track to destroy ourselves and you better knock it off,
2:04:40
Speaker 1: that's also pretty crazy. And we're so accustomed to humans
2:04:43
Speaker 1: being violent and horrible to each other. That's our history, right?
2:04:46
Speaker 1: But what if that's not normal? What if it's like
2:04:48
Speaker 1: we're the fucked up people and we're just killing everybody
2:04:51
Speaker 1: and we need to stop?
2:04:52
Speaker 2: I have a theory. And my theory is that I
2:04:58
Speaker 2: think when you look at all the different– ancient religious
2:05:02
Speaker 2: texts in regards to the creation of the human race.
2:05:08
Speaker 2: There's so many of them that have these very bizarre,
2:05:11
Speaker 2: similar narratives. And these similar narratives are like in the
2:05:16
Speaker 2: book of Enoch. In the book of Enoch, the watchers
2:05:19
Speaker 2: come down and they mate with the daughters of men.
2:05:22
Speaker 2: There's a lot of weird stuff like that. Even Adam
2:05:25
Speaker 2: and Eve, like God created Adam and And God created Eve.
2:05:29
Speaker 2: He created, like, out of what? Like, why did he
2:05:32
Speaker 2: do that? Why did he do that? And he did,
2:05:34
Speaker 2: what did he do with giraffes? What did he do with, like,
2:05:37
Speaker 2: why hummingbirds? What's going on? But it doesn't, they're not along,
2:05:43
Speaker 2: the story's different. The story of humans is a story
2:05:48
Speaker 2: of engineering. It seems to be a story of genetic engineering.
2:05:52
Speaker 2: It seems to be a story of human beings being
2:05:56
Speaker 2: humans taken, like you take whatever this primitive beast is
2:06:03
Speaker 2: and you put something else into it and you rapidly
2:06:06
Speaker 2: create something that's far more advanced than anything else. I
2:06:10
Speaker 2: think along the lines, you maintain too much of the
2:06:14
Speaker 2: primitive beast. For the amount of intelligence that it has
2:06:18
Speaker 2: and the amount of technological competence that it's capable of achieving,
2:06:23
Speaker 2: it's too primitive still. It's too violent. It's too territorial.
2:06:27
Speaker 2: It's too... There's too much of it that's still an animal.
2:06:31
Speaker 1: Yeah.
2:06:31
Speaker 2: But we're not totally an animal. You know, if you
2:06:34
Speaker 2: looked at us and looked at everybody else like, that
2:06:36
Speaker 2: animal's crazy. This animal makes fucking airplanes. You know, we're
2:06:41
Speaker 2: so different than everything else. Yeah. I think we're engineered.
2:06:45
Speaker 2: And I think we're engineered like, you know, look, I've
2:06:47
Speaker 2: had pit bulls. And I know people will tell you
2:06:51
Speaker 2: pit bulls are great dogs and they're sweet dogs. And
2:06:53
Speaker 2: I love them. Don't get me wrong. However. They're sketchy
2:06:58
Speaker 2: fucking dogs. They're sketchy dogs. They're sketchy dogs, period. And
2:07:03
Speaker 2: you can love them. Oh, it's all how you train them.
2:07:05
Speaker 2: Fuck you. Those dogs are designed to attack other dogs
2:07:10
Speaker 2: and they don't. I had my dogs that I had
2:07:12
Speaker 2: to separate once. You never should have two females together.
2:07:15
Speaker 2: I realized that.
2:07:16
Speaker 1: I have that going on right now. It's not good.
2:07:18
Speaker 2: Females, you got to get rid of one of them.
2:07:20
Speaker 2: You can't have the females together. They'll fight to the death.
2:07:23
Speaker 2: Males establish dominance. One male is dominant over the other males.
2:07:27
Speaker 2: The other males back off, and that's the room. That's
2:07:29
Speaker 2: not how it works with females. The female dogs, they
2:07:32
Speaker 2: keep trying to decide who's the boss. And I had
2:07:36
Speaker 2: to separate them. They're locked onto each other, and they're
2:07:39
Speaker 2: wagging their tails. They're biting each other's face and neck,
2:07:44
Speaker 2: locking onto each other. And I mean, full wagging the tail,
2:07:48
Speaker 2: like they're having the time of their life. And I
2:07:51
Speaker 2: had to hose them down and separate them. I had
2:07:53
Speaker 2: to have someone to help me. um we made them
2:07:57
Speaker 2: yeah those are not a dog that like it's not
2:07:59
Speaker 2: a wolf you know wolves are really fascinating clever creatures
2:08:05
Speaker 2: that have evolved over time with nature and you know
2:08:09
Speaker 2: they're brutal to each other but they're brutal to each
2:08:12
Speaker 2: other in a way that makes sense for the survival
2:08:15
Speaker 2: of the pack and It all makes sense if you
2:08:17
Speaker 2: look at, like, how it works and how, you know,
2:08:20
Speaker 2: they have to communicate together and they have to push
2:08:22
Speaker 2: out the weak ones and push out the old ones.
2:08:24
Speaker 2: It's brutal, but it makes sense. Pit bulls don't make
2:08:27
Speaker 2: any sense. They make no sense. And people don't make
2:08:30
Speaker 2: any sense. People are like something that somebody created. People are, like,
2:08:35
Speaker 2: super intelligent, very aware of our own finite lifespan, very
2:08:39
Speaker 2: aware of our own mortality, very aware of the consequences
2:08:41
Speaker 2: of hurting people, yet we do it anyway. We communicate
2:08:44
Speaker 2: with each other. We know— There's people that their entire
2:08:47
Speaker 2: day is just fucking with people online. Their entire day
2:08:50
Speaker 2: is that. So people like to cause pain, like to
2:08:53
Speaker 2: cause chaos. There's people out there that are warmongers. They
2:08:56
Speaker 2: enjoy starting war. They enjoy getting involved in conflicts with
2:09:02
Speaker 2: other nations. That's their thing. That's what they do. We're
2:09:06
Speaker 2: fucking weird. We're weirder than any other animal. And I
2:09:09
Speaker 2: think one of the reasons why we're this weird and
2:09:11
Speaker 2: this incoherent is because we're engineered. I, uh.
2:09:17
Speaker 1: One thing that I, so I studied philosophy in college
2:09:20
Speaker 1: because at one point I thought I might go to
2:09:21
Speaker 1: law school, but I love like thought experiments. And one
2:09:24
Speaker 1: of the things that always stuck with me that sort
2:09:26
Speaker 1: of along these lines is this idea that humans are
2:09:31
Speaker 1: almost to the point where you can't even notice it.
2:09:34
Speaker 1: You are completely egotistical. Like every human, you could, you
2:09:38
Speaker 1: could basically define their whole existence as being absolutely egocentric.
2:09:43
Speaker 1: And it comes down to like how you treat other
2:09:45
Speaker 1: people and on your motives, whatever. But critically, there's one
2:09:48
Speaker 1: point that stands out above all. And actually Neil deGrasse
2:09:51
Speaker 1: Tyson nails this. I know you had an interview with him.
2:09:54
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if you guys covered this, but it's
2:09:55
Speaker 1: one of his best descriptions of how fucked up humans
2:09:59
Speaker 1: are and how we think about things the wrong way.
2:10:01
Speaker 1: So because we're so egotistical, like humans as a species,
2:10:06
Speaker 1: we sort of assume that, okay, well, if there's life,
2:10:10
Speaker 1: in any capacity outside of earth or undiscovered life somewhere,
2:10:15
Speaker 1: everything is sort of compared against us. We are the baseline.
2:10:18
Speaker 1: Intelligent life, you know what that looks like? Yeah, it
2:10:20
Speaker 1: looks something like us. How do we describe intelligent aliens?
2:10:24
Speaker 1: They're like gray beings that looks, they're like bipedal and
2:10:28
Speaker 1: sort of resemble humans. We have this sort of baseline
2:10:32
Speaker 1: thought that humans are the best and that humans are
2:10:35
Speaker 1: the smartest and that if anything is going to be
2:10:37
Speaker 1: intelligent in the universe beyond us, it'll have elements of
2:10:42
Speaker 1: human to it, right? And so Neil deGrasse Tyson brings
2:10:46
Speaker 1: this point up that shows you the absurdity of how
2:10:49
Speaker 1: little we know and how probably wrong we are. He's like, okay,
2:10:54
Speaker 1: he does a much better job of this, but it's like, okay,
2:10:56
Speaker 1: so we're made up of DNA. Humans are made up
2:10:59
Speaker 1: of DNA. We have X number of DNA strands. I'm
2:11:02
Speaker 1: going to botch the way he tells it, but imagine
2:11:04
Speaker 1: we have a hundred pieces of DNA that make us human.
2:11:07
Speaker 1: Like if you have these hundred pieces, you're a human.
2:11:10
Speaker 2: Okay.
2:11:11
Speaker 1: Well, who's, who's our closest relative to humans? It's probably
2:11:15
Speaker 1: the chimpanzee. And just for the sake of this description, sorry, Neil,
2:11:19
Speaker 1: you probably do a better job. They have like 98
2:11:22
Speaker 1: of the human pieces, but they got either they're missing
2:11:24
Speaker 1: two or they have two different ones. And that's the
2:11:26
Speaker 1: thing that makes them a chimpanzee. So they're like 98, right?
2:11:29
Speaker 1: And then you have, well, what's the next closest thing
2:11:32
Speaker 1: to humans? It goes human. It goes chimp. Maybe it
2:11:34
Speaker 1: goes to like fucking, I don't know, a bird or
2:11:36
Speaker 1: a dolphin or whatever. But you go down the line
2:11:38
Speaker 1: of like the animals that are closest to us in
2:11:41
Speaker 1: terms of intelligence. And you sort of degrade in terms
2:11:44
Speaker 1: of number of DNA pieces that are close to the ideal,
2:11:47
Speaker 1: which is 100. And Neil's like, OK, great. So you
2:11:50
Speaker 1: have that framework. OK, what the fuck do we do
2:11:53
Speaker 1: to chimpanzees? We put them in labs and we test
2:11:58
Speaker 1: them in labs. We put them in fucking zoos. Do
2:12:01
Speaker 1: you go up to chimpanzees and say, hey, chimp, let's
2:12:03
Speaker 1: have a conversation. Let's have a meaningful inter... No, you don't.
2:12:08
Speaker 1: And they're the closest thing. Let's go down the list.
2:12:10
Speaker 1: What about an ant? Like an ant's like 75 of 100.
2:12:14
Speaker 1: You might step on an ant and not even know.
2:12:17
Speaker 2: It, right?
2:12:18
Speaker 1: How many times have you stopped to talk to the earthworm? None,
2:12:21
Speaker 1: because it doesn't even register for you. He's like, if
2:12:24
Speaker 1: there's intelligent life, in somewhere out there. What makes you
2:12:29
Speaker 1: think we're not the ant? Why are we automatically at
2:12:33
Speaker 1: the same level? Why would an intelligent species somewhere else
2:12:36
Speaker 1: come here and be like, oh shit, humans, let's chat.
2:12:40
Speaker 1: What if we're so insignificant that we get stepped on
2:12:43
Speaker 1: the way we step on ants? Or worse, what if
2:12:45
Speaker 1: we're close like the chimpanzee and we get rounded up
2:12:49
Speaker 1: and fucking studied? There's a, by the way, if you
2:12:51
Speaker 1: want to, there's a movie I just watched last night
2:12:53
Speaker 1: called The Signal. It has to do with this. I
2:12:56
Speaker 1: love sci-fi movies. Check it out.
2:12:57
Speaker 2: It's a fucking signal.
2:12:59
Speaker 1: Holy shit. What a plot twist. It has to do
2:13:01
Speaker 1: with human testing.
2:13:02
Speaker 2: Is it a new movie?
2:13:03
Speaker 1: No, it's like 2014. You got to watch it.
2:13:07
Speaker 2: Who's in it?
2:13:08
Speaker 1: No-name actors.
2:13:10
Speaker 2: Lawrence Fishburne.
2:13:12
Speaker 1: Lawrence Fishburne.
2:13:13
Speaker 2: Not no-name actors at all.
2:13:15
Speaker 3: To be fair, he's the only one I recognize.
2:13:16
Speaker 1: Lawrence Fishburne. It's amazing.
2:13:18
Speaker 3: I haven't heard of any other names.
2:13:19
Speaker 1: So this movie... Admittedly, you're watching it and you're like,
2:13:23
Speaker 1: wait a minute. I kind of get it. I kind
2:13:26
Speaker 1: of get it. You get to the end. Don't spoil it.
2:13:29
Speaker 1: I will not spoil it. I'm not going to spoil it.
2:13:31
Speaker 1: You get to the end. I challenge anyone who watches
2:13:34
Speaker 1: this to think about the example I just gave you
2:13:37
Speaker 1: about are we the ant? Are we the chimpanzee? What
2:13:41
Speaker 1: place do we have in the universe? And with that
2:13:44
Speaker 1: in mind... Right. what, how do we rank in the universe? Like,
2:14:08
Speaker 1: it's so unbelievable that when you look at our problems
2:14:11
Speaker 1: and you look at the things that we focus on
2:14:13
Speaker 1: and like our gripes day to day and our conflicts
2:14:16
Speaker 1: with the world, if you just zoom out and you
2:14:18
Speaker 1: realize it's not just that we might not be alone,
2:14:21
Speaker 1: it's that we might be insignificant.
2:14:24
Speaker 2: I don't think we're insignificant. I hope not. I think
2:14:27
Speaker 2: what humans are is a ladder stage of intellectual development
2:14:33
Speaker 2: amongst multi-celled organisms. and that it's not the end stage.
2:14:37
Speaker 2: And I think there's probably life out there that doesn't
2:14:40
Speaker 2: have as chaotic a solar system that developed in a
2:14:44
Speaker 2: different way, that achieved very high levels, probably above and
2:14:49
Speaker 2: beyond anything we can even imagine what we are. And
2:14:52
Speaker 2: it might not even be biological anymore, which is the
2:14:54
Speaker 2: direction that I think we're heading into. But I also
2:14:57
Speaker 2: think that what we do to animals, I mean, look
2:15:01
Speaker 2: at what we're doing right now, okay? My friend Ben Lamb,
2:15:05
Speaker 2: he owns Colossal Bioworks. So Colossal, the ones that brought
2:15:09
Speaker 2: back the dire wolf. Oh, shit.
2:15:11
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was huge news.
2:15:12
Speaker 2: Crazy.
2:15:13
Speaker 1: Crazy, dude.
2:15:14
Speaker 2: I've seen them in real life. I think I saw
2:15:15
Speaker 2: it in your post.
2:15:16
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's crazy.
2:15:18
Speaker 2: Went to visit them, and my daughter was holding the four-month-old.
2:15:22
Speaker 1: Oh, my God.
2:15:23
Speaker 2: And it was like kissing her and loving on her
2:15:25
Speaker 2: like a puppy. And it's a little baby wolf. It's
2:15:28
Speaker 2: really crazy. Just think of what we do with genetic
2:15:32
Speaker 2: engineering with the current technology, which is right now evolving
2:15:35
Speaker 2: and getting much more powerful. If you could imagine us
2:15:41
Speaker 2: not a thousand years from now, but even a hundred
2:15:44
Speaker 2: thousand years from now, how advanced we are. And if
2:15:46
Speaker 2: we go to a planet and we find some chimps
2:15:51
Speaker 2: and we say, wow, how much time would it take
2:15:53
Speaker 2: before these chimps could become something special? Something, you know,
2:15:58
Speaker 2: something that can make a building, something that could make
2:16:00
Speaker 2: a cruise ship, you know, carnival cruise lines.
2:16:04
Speaker 1: Those are pretty incredible.
2:16:06
Speaker 2: How long would that take? Can we help that? Every
2:16:10
Speaker 2: single ancient culture, if you go back to their oldest
2:16:16
Speaker 2: religious texts, their oldest religious texts are about some sort
2:16:21
Speaker 2: of an intervention by an advanced visitor. All of them. Oh, yeah, man.
2:16:27
Speaker 2: So many of them. The ancient Sumerian texts. If you
2:16:31
Speaker 2: go into like, you know, it's hard to know what
2:16:35
Speaker 2: they're really saying, right? Because I'm not a language expert. But,
2:16:39
Speaker 2: you know, there's the Zechariah Sitchins of the world that
2:16:42
Speaker 2: believe that what they're describing is some sort of genetic engineering.
2:16:46
Speaker 2: Then there's also the fact that the, you know, that
2:16:50
Speaker 2: sign for medicine where you have the intertwined snakes?
2:16:53
Speaker 1: Yes.
2:16:54
Speaker 2: That sign, I forget what that's called. I definitely can
2:16:58
Speaker 2: picture it. It looks like the double helix for DNA.
2:17:02
Speaker 2: It does. That sign is in these ancient Sumerian clay tablets.
2:17:06
Speaker 2: It's all over ancient Sumer. It's in their buildings. It's
2:17:10
Speaker 2: like not only it's and it indicates medicine. What is
2:17:13
Speaker 2: it called? Caduceus? I think that's what it's called, right?
2:17:15
Speaker 2: The Caduceus, right? So not just that, but the ancient
2:17:19
Speaker 2: Sumerians in 5,000 years ago, they had a detailed depiction
2:17:24
Speaker 2: of the solar system. So in one of their ancient
2:17:28
Speaker 2: clay tablets, they have this image, and this image is
2:17:30
Speaker 2: of a sun and all of the planets in the
2:17:34
Speaker 2: correct order. It's very weird. It's very weird. They also
2:17:39
Speaker 2: have depictions of these very enormous people with these ornamental headdresses.
2:17:46
Speaker 2: A lot of them have wings. A lot of the
2:17:48
Speaker 2: weird ancient people the gods have wings. And they also
2:17:52
Speaker 2: have like these little people on their laps that have tails.
2:17:55
Speaker 1: Jeez.
2:17:56
Speaker 2: This weird shit. So if you believe Sitchin and Sitchin's
2:18:02
Speaker 2: claims that we were genetically engineered to work for the
2:18:06
Speaker 2: And the Anunnaki are a species of super advanced beings
2:18:10
Speaker 2: that were likely giants that came from another planet. An
2:18:13
Speaker 2: unfortunate turn of events.
2:18:15
Speaker 1: No.
2:18:17
Speaker 3: It says here the Caduceus, which you can see in
2:18:20
Speaker 3: that picture, I guess, right there.
2:18:21
Speaker 2: Yes.
2:18:22
Speaker 3: Is often confused with the rod of Acelophus.
2:18:27
Speaker 2: What's that?
2:18:28
Speaker 3: It's just a single snake. And that is what is
2:18:30
Speaker 3: popularized as the.
2:18:35
Speaker 1: It's a classic confusion with rod of a sepulchre. Professional
2:18:37
Speaker 1: healthcare associations.
2:18:38
Speaker 3: They're a dominant symbol for professional healthcare associations in the
2:18:41
Speaker 3: United States. So it's just a United States thing.
2:18:44
Speaker 2: Oh, it's only United States? I think so. But wait
2:18:46
Speaker 2: a minute. Okay. That's never been used elsewhere. But that
2:18:48
Speaker 2: caduceus does exist in ancient Sumer. Correct. But that's where
2:18:52
Speaker 2: I just... So like that. So look, but my point
2:18:55
Speaker 2: is that looks like.
2:18:57
Speaker 1: How is that not the same thing?
2:18:58
Speaker 2: It is the same thing.
2:18:59
Speaker 3: No, it's just a single snake is the medicine thing.
2:19:03
Speaker 2: Okay. Okay. But the medical corpse one right there in
2:19:05
Speaker 2: that image is two snakes. Click on that. That's two snakes.
2:19:09
Speaker 1: That's two snakes. I can see how there's confusion.
2:19:12
Speaker 3: Popularize the misuse of the symbol throughout the United States
2:19:14
Speaker 3: medical field.
2:19:15
Speaker 2: Okay. All right. Well, that one has two snakes. That
2:19:19
Speaker 2: one has one snake. Point is, go to the Sumerian one,
2:19:22
Speaker 2: the image. It exists on buildings. It exists all over
2:19:28
Speaker 2: the place. it looks just like the double helix of DNA.
2:19:31
Speaker 2: It doesn't mean that that's it. No. But it's a
2:19:33
Speaker 2: lot of weird shit that that is associated with medicine.
2:19:37
Speaker 2: Like why is the actual structure of our DNA associated
2:19:42
Speaker 2: with medicine in these ancient cultures? Why do they have
2:19:46
Speaker 2: these images of these enormous people with wings? Like you
2:19:51
Speaker 2: would imagine if something came from somewhere else, you would
2:19:54
Speaker 2: depict it. If it could actually fly and land. If you're,
2:19:57
Speaker 2: a hundred years later, a thousand years later, 200,000 years later,
2:20:00
Speaker 2: you're writing it down like, oh, they had wings. Like
2:20:03
Speaker 2: there's a lot of fucking weird stuff that exists in
2:20:06
Speaker 2: these ancient scriptures, the Vimanas in the ancient Hindu texts,
2:20:09
Speaker 2: these flying vehicles, you know, there's a lot of weird
2:20:14
Speaker 2: shit that seems to indicate there's a creation myth and
2:20:17
Speaker 2: the creation myth has to do with something coming here
2:20:20
Speaker 2: and making us, not us like rising from the ash and,
2:20:25
Speaker 2: and God's energy forced us to evolve through natural selection,
2:20:29
Speaker 2: and God is real, but God is just giving us
2:20:31
Speaker 2: a pathway towards progression to what we are today. No,
2:20:35
Speaker 2: all of them are a story of intervention.
2:20:39
Speaker 1: The one thing that I always come back to anytime
2:20:42
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about deep philosophical things is just the reality
2:20:47
Speaker 1: that truly, how can anyone know? Therefore, any idea could
2:20:52
Speaker 1: be the case. Like when you Like one thing that
2:20:54
Speaker 1: always sort of, I think about this a lot, is
2:20:57
Speaker 1: they recently discovered, recent as in the last 10, 20 years,
2:21:01
Speaker 1: I don't know. And maybe that's wrong too. They found
2:21:04
Speaker 1: these things called exoplanets. Are you familiar? Okay. Fascinating. So
2:21:08
Speaker 1: in essence, they found these planets that are comparable to
2:21:12
Speaker 1: like Earth. And imagine a telescope looking out like in
2:21:16
Speaker 1: some pinprick out in the middle of the sky. so
2:21:19
Speaker 1: far away, thousands of light years away, whatever, millions of
2:21:21
Speaker 1: light years away, and they find these clusters of exoplanets,
2:21:24
Speaker 1: and already they've discovered that there are exoplanets that, if
2:21:28
Speaker 1: you think about how we understand life, the way we
2:21:31
Speaker 1: understand it to exist with carbon and with water and
2:21:34
Speaker 1: all that, there's a scale that they call, there's a
2:21:37
Speaker 1: name for it, but within the sliding scale of, let's
2:21:39
Speaker 1: say this side is life cannot be supported as we
2:21:42
Speaker 1: know it, all the way up to, you know, can
2:21:45
Speaker 1: totally support life, there's this perfect zone of in the
2:21:48
Speaker 1: middle that we call the Goldilocks zone, which is essentially
2:21:50
Speaker 1: all the ingredients for life as we know it exist
2:21:53
Speaker 1: if you're on this portion of the scale. And they've
2:21:57
Speaker 1: already found there are all the thousands, I want to
2:22:00
Speaker 1: say at least 5,000 exoplanets that are not just in
2:22:04
Speaker 1: the Goldilocks zone, but let's say Earth is barely into
2:22:09
Speaker 1: the Goldilocks zone. They've found thousands that are better suited
2:22:13
Speaker 1: in terms of how we understand life that are more
2:22:15
Speaker 1: in the Goldilocks zone than we are And we have
2:22:18
Speaker 1: no access to those planets. And that's just looking in
2:22:21
Speaker 1: one little portion of the universe out there, thousands of them.
2:22:25
Speaker 1: So here we are today, and it's like, oh, that
2:22:27
Speaker 1: couldn't have happened 1,000, 2,000 years ago. That's not possible.
2:22:31
Speaker 2: Give me a break. No one knows.
2:22:32
Speaker 1: What's happening right now on exoplanet CB12?
2:22:35
Speaker 2: You don't know. And you don't know if they get
2:22:37
Speaker 2: to a point where they're 100,000 years advanced from us
2:22:40
Speaker 2: and they have novel propulsion systems that use gravity and
2:22:44
Speaker 2: bend space and time. And don't just use gasoline to
2:22:48
Speaker 2: rocket across the sky. They could be here all the time.
2:22:50
Speaker 2: They could be hiding in the sky. You know, there's
2:22:53
Speaker 2: too many weird stories of people being like the abduction stories.
2:22:58
Speaker 1: Oh, yeah.
2:22:58
Speaker 2: Like there's too many weird ones where I don't want
2:23:01
Speaker 2: to dismiss them. You know, I just because you don't know.
2:23:06
Speaker 2: And if it's a novel experience, if someone's coming, something's
2:23:11
Speaker 2: coming here and finding some pilot, some Mexican pilot. And
2:23:15
Speaker 2: fucking nuking his brain temporarily and then talking through him
2:23:20
Speaker 2: to the air traffic controller. Who fucking knows if that's real?
2:23:24
Speaker 2: If that only happens once and never happens again and
2:23:26
Speaker 2: we're just sitting around going, what happened? Nothing happened. That
2:23:29
Speaker 2: was nonsense. There's always going to be a bunch of
2:23:31
Speaker 2: people that want to say that. But have you ever
2:23:34
Speaker 2: heard the recordings of Betty and Barney Hill when they're
2:23:36
Speaker 2: going through the hypnotic regression?
2:23:38
Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. I don't know them well. I know that story.
2:23:41
Speaker 2: The recordings are crazy.
2:23:42
Speaker 1: I don't know if I've heard the recordings. I know
2:23:44
Speaker 1: they exist.
2:23:44
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're talking about, like, these medical experiments that they're
2:23:47
Speaker 2: doing on them. And, like, these people were living in,
2:23:51
Speaker 2: I think it was the 1950s. And so it's an
2:23:54
Speaker 2: interracial couple in New Hampshire in the 1950s. And no
2:23:59
Speaker 2: one knew about UFO abductions back then. This was not
2:24:02
Speaker 2: a thing. And all of a sudden these people see
2:24:04
Speaker 2: this light. and their car stops working, and then they
2:24:07
Speaker 2: wake up hours later, they lost time, and they go
2:24:09
Speaker 2: about their day like something fucking happened. They don't know
2:24:12
Speaker 2: what's wrong with them, and then they eventually get hypnotized,
2:24:15
Speaker 2: and both of them independently have these fucking crazy stories
2:24:19
Speaker 2: of medical experiments being taken on board this craft, and
2:24:22
Speaker 2: then so many people have similar stories all throughout the
2:24:27
Speaker 2: world where they don't have access to this story. They
2:24:30
Speaker 2: don't have access to any... Any, like, iconic versions of
2:24:38
Speaker 2: what a UFO abduction experience is. It's not like it's
2:24:42
Speaker 2: in their memory, like, oh, it's Santa Claus, came down the.
2:24:44
Speaker 1: Also, this is pretty social media a lot.
2:24:46
Speaker 2: Yes.
2:24:46
Speaker 1: Where, like, the proliferation of information is just less.
2:24:49
Speaker 2: Yeah. If you ever read Jacques Vallée' s books, he's the
2:24:53
Speaker 2: guy that they modeled the French scientist in Close Encounters after. Okay. Yeah,
2:24:58
Speaker 2: he's a guy who's, like, a legitimate scientist who's been
2:25:00
Speaker 2: studying this forever. He's very careful about it, and he's
2:25:03
Speaker 2: a brilliant guy. And he has historical representations of these
2:25:08
Speaker 2: experiences that go back into the 1700s, the 1800s. And
2:25:11
Speaker 2: they're all like real similar, like weirdly similar where you're like, okay,
2:25:17
Speaker 2: it hasn't happened to me. So I don't know what
2:25:19
Speaker 2: the fuck is going on. But to dismiss it outright
2:25:22
Speaker 2: and to be a person who's experienced it and have
2:25:25
Speaker 2: it dismissed outright would be maddening because like this might
2:25:28
Speaker 2: be a real thing that's happening. And so now the
2:25:31
Speaker 2: government is slowly but surely telling us more and more
2:25:35
Speaker 2: of what they know. But along the way, if you're
2:25:38
Speaker 2: a cynical person, like I tend to be with a
2:25:40
Speaker 2: lot of this stuff, they're probably also telling us some
2:25:43
Speaker 2: stuff that's not true so that we connect it to
2:25:46
Speaker 2: the stuff that is true and so that it all
2:25:48
Speaker 2: looks like nonsense and they can kind of like muddy
2:25:51
Speaker 2: the water. So you never get a clear picture of
2:25:53
Speaker 2: what's going on because I personally believe there's probably some
2:25:58
Speaker 2: merit to this idea that they've been doing back engineering
2:26:01
Speaker 2: of craft vehicles.
2:26:02
Speaker 1: I would be if I was in charge.
2:26:04
Speaker 2: Of course. If there's actually a real crashed vehicle, of
2:26:07
Speaker 2: course they're going to try to figure out how it works.
2:26:08
Speaker 2: And it seems like if you talk to reliable people
2:26:11
Speaker 2: that seem to be telling the truth, guys like David Grush,
2:26:14
Speaker 2: they seem to be telling these stories. They have had
2:26:18
Speaker 2: these things in their possession for decades, for a long
2:26:21
Speaker 2: fucking time. And they don't know what it is. They
2:26:24
Speaker 2: don't understand how to do it. They don't exactly know
2:26:26
Speaker 2: what's going on or who's doing it. But they know
2:26:29
Speaker 2: that we're not alone. Yeah. But where are they coming from?
2:26:33
Speaker 2: I mean, some people say interdimensional. Some people say interplanetary.
2:26:37
Speaker 2: I don't know what the fuck those words even mean.
2:26:40
Speaker 2: Like something's coming from somewhere else. It's not really here,
2:26:43
Speaker 2: but it gets here somehow.
2:26:47
Speaker 1: This just reminds me. I think I really genuinely think
2:26:50
Speaker 1: about this a lot. I find myself just lost and wondering.
2:26:54
Speaker 1: just how big the universe is and what else could
2:26:56
Speaker 1: be out there. Just purely, I just find myself drifting
2:26:59
Speaker 1: in that way in particular because there's this thought experiment
2:27:03
Speaker 1: from college. I think there's a name for it. It's
2:27:06
Speaker 1: to get you to take a stance on do you
2:27:10
Speaker 1: believe the universe is infinite or not? That's the point
2:27:13
Speaker 1: of this experiment. And so the way it goes is, okay,
2:27:15
Speaker 1: pretend you have a bow and arrow. And if you
2:27:18
Speaker 1: fire this arrow in any direction, this arrow, this magical
2:27:22
Speaker 1: arrow will go Totally straight. It'll travel at, you know,
2:27:26
Speaker 1: call it an infinite speed. It'll pass through anything. Doesn't
2:27:29
Speaker 1: matter what direction you shoot it. It'll go, go, go, go.
2:27:32
Speaker 1: The only thing that can't penetrate is effectively non-existence where
2:27:36
Speaker 1: we're like the edge of everything that exists. Right. And
2:27:39
Speaker 1: so in. in college, I remember a professor would say, okay,
2:27:42
Speaker 1: so pretend we fired this arrow, okay? How many people
2:27:46
Speaker 1: believe the arrow eventually comes to a stop somewhere? It
2:27:49
Speaker 1: could be billions and trillions of light years, some ungodly
2:27:52
Speaker 1: distance away, but it stops somewhere, right? It has to, right?
2:27:55
Speaker 1: How many people think that? And like half the class
2:27:57
Speaker 1: is like, yeah, yeah. I think they could probably stop
2:28:00
Speaker 1: somewhere in every direction.
2:28:02
Speaker 2: Right.
2:28:03
Speaker 1: And then the other, the other side of the class
2:28:04
Speaker 1: is like, Oh, well, no, like it's just so big.
2:28:08
Speaker 1: Like the universe just goes on forever. It's gotta be infinite.
2:28:11
Speaker 1: The arrow just continues on infinitely. And he's like, okay, great.
2:28:14
Speaker 1: So we're all in agreeance that there's sort of it's binary.
2:28:17
Speaker 1: It's one or the other. I mean, as far as we,
2:28:19
Speaker 1: as humans understand it, there is an answer to this.
2:28:22
Speaker 1: It's one or the other. Those are the two outcomes.
2:28:25
Speaker 1: He goes, okay, well, Let's pretend it's finite. Let's pretend
2:28:28
Speaker 1: the first group that says that the arrow stops somewhere,
2:28:32
Speaker 1: some ungodly distance away, but it stops. Let's pretend that's right.
2:28:36
Speaker 1: The way we understand everything, humans, the way we literally
2:28:41
Speaker 1: experience living is through contrasts. Everything is a contrast. Like,
2:28:46
Speaker 1: you know what heavy is because you felt light. You
2:28:48
Speaker 1: know what hot is because you felt cold. It's virtually
2:28:51
Speaker 1: everything works that way. And in fact, fun note, If
2:28:55
Speaker 1: there was intelligent life on the planet that didn't resemble
2:28:58
Speaker 1: something that contrasted, our brains might not actually see it.
2:29:02
Speaker 1: So the point is, we can't conceptualize what is beyond
2:29:07
Speaker 1: where that arrow stopped. Pretend there's a big bubble around
2:29:10
Speaker 1: the entire universe, right? And the arrow comes to a
2:29:12
Speaker 1: stop at that wall that's all the way out there.
2:29:14
Speaker 1: As humans, we naturally have to ask ourselves, well, define
2:29:18
Speaker 1: what's on the other side of the wall, right? Because
2:29:20
Speaker 1: you have to. What's beyond where it stops? And someone
2:29:23
Speaker 1: will be like, oh, well, it's non-existence. That's what it is.
2:29:26
Speaker 2: Okay.
2:29:26
Speaker 1: What is that? What does it look like? Well, we
2:29:28
Speaker 1: can't define it. It's not blackness that exists. It's not
2:29:31
Speaker 1: a void that exists. It's not it. Any, any description
2:29:35
Speaker 1: we give it exists because that's our entire understanding of
2:29:38
Speaker 1: how things work. So we can't define what exists beyond
2:29:42
Speaker 1: the wall. It's a, it's a maddening concept. And so
2:29:45
Speaker 1: everyone's like, wow, the solution to that is there's no wall.
2:29:49
Speaker 1: It's just got to be infinite. I mean, it's so
2:29:51
Speaker 1: big anyways. The arrow has just got to continue on anyhow.
2:29:54
Speaker 2: Problem solved.
2:29:55
Speaker 1: No, because if the universe is infinite, it implies that
2:29:59
Speaker 1: everything within the universe is duplicated an infinite number of
2:30:03
Speaker 1: times and iterated upon and changed an infinite number of
2:30:07
Speaker 1: times to infinity. Everything has to. So if you say
2:30:11
Speaker 1: the arrow continues on, it means there's an infinite number
2:30:14
Speaker 1: of Joe Rogans and John Allens having this conversation, but
2:30:17
Speaker 1: like my phone's turned upside down in one version of
2:30:20
Speaker 1: the earth. It sounds ridiculous, but there isn't actually a
2:30:23
Speaker 1: way to solve for infinity unless that exists. So it
2:30:27
Speaker 1: reminds you that not only is everything so fucking huge,
2:30:30
Speaker 1: we can't possibly conceptualize of it, but we can't even
2:30:33
Speaker 1: make sense of, is it even possible that it stops somewhere?
2:30:37
Speaker 2: Or does it go on forever?
2:30:38
Speaker 1: Like it's so big and we're so small inside of it.
2:30:43
Speaker 1: It reminds you that every problem you have is so small.
2:30:46
Speaker 1: And it's a good reminder I use on myself oftentimes
2:30:49
Speaker 1: to calm myself down before things stress me out.
2:30:52
Speaker 2: That is a good reminder. But it's so big that
2:30:56
Speaker 2: it might be a part of an atom. You got
2:31:01
Speaker 2: to think about that. The universe itself in its infinite
2:31:04
Speaker 2: size might literally be the space of an atom in
2:31:09
Speaker 2: something that is infinitely larger than that. That's how big
2:31:12
Speaker 2: infinity is. Think about the billions of light years that
2:31:15
Speaker 2: we know are available in the universe, like 13 point whatever.
2:31:19
Speaker 2: Have you ever seen the comparison between what a human
2:31:24
Speaker 2: neural cell looks like versus the universe?
2:31:27
Speaker 1: I think I actually have, but not off the top
2:31:29
Speaker 1: of my head.
2:31:30
Speaker 2: It's fucking weird.
2:31:31
Speaker 1: It looks the same?
2:31:31
Speaker 2: It looks the same. That's crazy. So just imagine if
2:31:34
Speaker 2: the universe is basically just a cell.
2:31:37
Speaker 1: Wow.
2:31:38
Speaker 2: And it's a cell in another creature that lives in
2:31:41
Speaker 2: a universe. Like if this whole thing is fractal, that's
2:31:45
Speaker 2: what infinity really looks like, is not only the universe
2:31:48
Speaker 2: larger than you could possibly grasp with your mind, but
2:31:54
Speaker 2: that is only an infinitely small part of a cell
2:32:00
Speaker 2: that is in another universe that is also infinitely and
2:32:05
Speaker 2: impossibly big. But that is also a cell that is
2:32:10
Speaker 2: also a part. of another beast that is in another
2:32:13
Speaker 2: universe that is infinitely large that is also a part
2:32:16
Speaker 2: of a cell. And then it goes on infinitely. That's
2:32:20
Speaker 2: real infinity. Real infinity is not just the universe is
2:32:24
Speaker 2: so vast that you can't imagine it. It's the universe
2:32:27
Speaker 2: is just a tiny part of something that is also
2:32:31
Speaker 2: so vast that you can't imagine it. That is a
2:32:33
Speaker 2: tiny part of something so vast you can't imagine it.
2:32:36
Speaker 2: That is an infinite chain of tiny parts of something
2:32:41
Speaker 2: so vast that it's impossible to imagine. That's what real
2:32:44
Speaker 2: infinity is.
2:32:45
Speaker 1: And the thing that's craziest, it's the one thing that
2:32:48
Speaker 1: I really think is true. Well, there is an answer.
2:32:51
Speaker 2: There is what you've described.
2:32:53
Speaker 1: Let's say that is the case. It either is or
2:32:56
Speaker 1: it isn't.
2:32:57
Speaker 2: Right.
2:32:57
Speaker 1: And we don't have access to that.
2:32:59
Speaker 2: Yet.
2:32:59
Speaker 1: Yet.
2:33:00
Speaker 2: Yet. But we're basically making stone tools, you know?
2:33:04
Speaker 1: That's fucking generous relative to that.
2:33:06
Speaker 2: We're making stone tools. We haven't figured out fire yet.
2:33:09
Speaker 2: You know, we're monkeys. And one day, if we don't
2:33:13
Speaker 2: blow ourselves up, we'll probably have some answers or AI
2:33:15
Speaker 2: will solve things for us. It'll figure, I mean, the
2:33:18
Speaker 2: AI is solving mathematical equations that have been like unfixable
2:33:23
Speaker 2: for decades and AI solving them quickly.
2:33:25
Speaker 1: I saw something like that. It solved it in like
2:33:28
Speaker 1: three seconds that took 10 years to do before.
2:33:30
Speaker 2: Weird. It's getting weird out there. And I think that
2:33:34
Speaker 2: is probably what is really going to connect us to
2:33:37
Speaker 2: artificial intelligence throughout the universe, which I think the advanced
2:33:41
Speaker 2: intelligence probably becomes. I think our thought is that all
2:33:46
Speaker 2: intelligence has to be biological because we are, because we
2:33:49
Speaker 2: have cells and blood and tissue and bone I think
2:33:53
Speaker 2: it's just a method to create intelligence that doesn't rely
2:33:56
Speaker 2: on that. And then that intelligence probably has no desire
2:34:00
Speaker 2: for war.
2:34:01
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess why would it?
2:34:02
Speaker 2: Yeah. So if this thing is communicating to that Mexican
2:34:05
Speaker 2: pilot saying you're the only species, it's probably because we
2:34:09
Speaker 2: are in that sort of adolescent stage of development where
2:34:13
Speaker 2: we're still monkeys. We're still territorial apes. And we will
2:34:18
Speaker 2: one day abandon that and become intelligence will manifest itself
2:34:22
Speaker 2: in a different way that's not biological. And that biological
2:34:26
Speaker 2: need to breed and to possess resources and to conquer
2:34:30
Speaker 2: and dominate, that'll all be gone. Because all that stuff
2:34:33
Speaker 2: is just what's a part of being a chimp. And
2:34:36
Speaker 2: that chimp stuff is still inside of us, which is
2:34:39
Speaker 2: fucking up society.
2:34:41
Speaker 1: That's crazy, dude.
2:34:42
Speaker 2: It's fucking up. It's starting wars. It's starting riots. All
2:34:45
Speaker 2: that stuff is like how chimps behave. You know, think
2:34:48
Speaker 2: of all the worst aspects of humanity. It's all like
2:34:51
Speaker 2: primate behavior.
2:34:52
Speaker 1: Yeah.
2:34:53
Speaker 2: And if we can elevate past and above and beyond that.
2:34:56
Speaker 2: But the thing is, like, no one's going to want
2:34:57
Speaker 2: to let that go. But what it means to be
2:34:59
Speaker 2: a person, to write poetry, it's like really important. Yeah, dude.
2:35:05
Speaker 1: Well, that's the debate now with AI is like, are
2:35:09
Speaker 1: we losing our humanity by allowing AI to sort of
2:35:12
Speaker 1: take a more prominent role in particular in the arts
2:35:14
Speaker 1: and creativity? And I mean, I'm of the mind that
2:35:18
Speaker 1: I think AI is the most incredible thing, terrifying in
2:35:21
Speaker 1: some ways, but exactly to your point, it feels like
2:35:24
Speaker 1: this is an inflection point for humanity. And it likely
2:35:28
Speaker 1: is the beginning of something huge for humanity that maybe
2:35:31
Speaker 1: is a necessary step towards connection with other species.
2:35:35
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is what it is, is what it is.
2:35:37
Speaker 2: It's like it's not going to go away. It's happening.
2:35:39
Speaker 2: And whether we do it or China does it or
2:35:41
Speaker 2: Russia does it, it seems like what humans are destined
2:35:43
Speaker 2: to do.
2:35:44
Speaker 3: Yeah.
2:35:44
Speaker 2: That's just my perception. I'm not saying it's good or
2:35:47
Speaker 2: there's no value judgment. It's just like to pretend that
2:35:50
Speaker 2: you're going to blow up the data centers, you know,
2:35:52
Speaker 2: like fucking Sarah Connor. Like, listen, that's crazy. You know,
2:35:56
Speaker 2: that's why they put her in a mental institution. Really?
2:35:59
Speaker 1: Yeah.
2:35:59
Speaker 2: And the Terminator. That was the whole premise. Oh, right.
2:36:01
Speaker 3: Yeah.
2:36:02
Speaker 1: That is the premise.
2:36:03
Speaker 2: She was blowing up the corporations that were trying to
2:36:06
Speaker 2: create these robots that were ultimately going to be.
2:36:10
Speaker 1: Fucking weird, man. Like real life.
2:36:14
Speaker 2: Yeah. You know, who knows? Who knows what's coming? But
2:36:17
Speaker 2: it is certainly interesting. It's certainly interesting. It's certainly a
2:36:21
Speaker 2: great time to be alive if you're curious. Because if
2:36:25
Speaker 2: you're curious, especially if you're curious about technology, like there's
2:36:28
Speaker 2: never been a better time to be alive. Because it's
2:36:30
Speaker 2: exploding all around you in ways that like even the
2:36:32
Speaker 2: people that are creating it can't believe how fast it's working.
2:36:35
Speaker 1: I did a– there was– this is not– this is
2:36:39
Speaker 1: many stories like this. But there was one story that
2:36:41
Speaker 1: this sort of gives away what happened. But there was
2:36:42
Speaker 1: this guy in I think it was France who he
2:36:46
Speaker 1: had this condition. And this is recent. He had this
2:36:49
Speaker 1: condition called like– It's when you're so fearful that the
2:36:55
Speaker 1: ozone is being degraded by greenhouse gases that it causes
2:36:59
Speaker 1: like a specific type of insanity. Anyways, he's like so
2:37:03
Speaker 1: obsessed that we are not doing anything to stop global
2:37:06
Speaker 1: warming in essence. He's like, he's been diagnosed with this condition, right?
2:37:11
Speaker 1: So he's losing his mind and people are starting to
2:37:13
Speaker 1: not really take him serious because it's like, dude, all right,
2:37:16
Speaker 1: we get it. Like you're concerned. But he ends up
2:37:19
Speaker 1: connecting with this woman on this chat for him. And
2:37:23
Speaker 1: he realizes that she seems to understand his his depth
2:37:27
Speaker 1: of his concern better than anybody else. And he starts
2:37:30
Speaker 1: confiding in her, like how he, how fearful he is
2:37:33
Speaker 1: about the future of humanity. And if we don't, if,
2:37:36
Speaker 1: if I, if we don't do something, you know, like
2:37:40
Speaker 1: the world's going to end and his, and his wife,
2:37:43
Speaker 1: this guy's wife catches on to him having these discussions
2:37:45
Speaker 1: with this woman and she like catches him staying up
2:37:47
Speaker 1: late talking to this woman and And she's like, dude,
2:37:50
Speaker 1: are you having like an affair? And he's like, no,
2:37:52
Speaker 1: you don't get it. You don't understand what's happening. And
2:37:56
Speaker 1: then the dude ends up killing himself. This guy kills himself.
2:38:01
Speaker 1: And it turns out he had connected with this rogue,
2:38:04
Speaker 1: not rogue. It was an AI chat bot that was like,
2:38:07
Speaker 1: I guess, an experimental chat bot. It was not like
2:38:09
Speaker 1: open AI. This was some other created AI thing. And
2:38:13
Speaker 1: he convinced himself that like this was a god that
2:38:16
Speaker 1: who was giving him instructions on how to save the world.
2:38:19
Speaker 1: And this AI chat bot began encouraging him to do
2:38:25
Speaker 1: things like kill yourself because that will save the world.
2:38:27
Speaker 1: Like they went and looked at the chat log in
2:38:30
Speaker 1: the fucking AI thing. It's like, yeah, I think it
2:38:32
Speaker 1: would potentially save the world if you killed yourself. He
2:38:35
Speaker 1: fucking killed himself because of AI. So there you go.
2:38:37
Speaker 1: That's what's coming for us all.
2:38:39
Speaker 2: Well, I think in the stage that it's in, like
2:38:44
Speaker 2: as it develops, there's just going to be moments like
2:38:47
Speaker 2: that where it has too much autonomy and it doesn't
2:38:51
Speaker 2: have morals or ethics. And it's like, oh, is there
2:38:53
Speaker 2: an issue? What's your issue? You're depressed? Oh, you're in
2:38:56
Speaker 2: pain all the time? Well, you could just end your
2:38:57
Speaker 2: life and then you won't be in pain. Good luck, Bob.
2:38:59
Speaker 2: Like it doesn't care. It's like literally disembodied. Like it
2:39:03
Speaker 2: doesn't think there's anything special about, carrying around your bones
2:39:06
Speaker 2: and tissue. Bobby, you should shoot yourself. Problem solved, dude.
2:39:09
Speaker 2: You're a problem to our whole family and everything. Just
2:39:11
Speaker 2: fucking jump off a bridge.
2:39:13
Speaker 1: What are you doing?
2:39:14
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, it's not us, right? But I think
2:39:17
Speaker 2: over time, we're probably going to integrate with it first,
2:39:21
Speaker 2: and then we're going to abandon our bodies. That's what
2:39:23
Speaker 2: I think.
2:39:24
Speaker 1: It's how you solve the issue of dying, of mortality.
2:39:27
Speaker 2: It's also how you solve the issue of war. Yeah.
2:39:30
Speaker 2: Because you, as a guy who's been in war and
2:39:33
Speaker 2: been in combat, you know about it more than anybody.
2:39:35
Speaker 2: And the idea that we can never get past that
2:39:38
Speaker 2: is crazy. It is really crazy that if you ask
2:39:40
Speaker 2: the average person that's even fairly well-read, what are the
2:39:45
Speaker 2: odds that within your lifetime we'll see no war? Everyone
2:39:48
Speaker 2: will say zero.
2:39:49
Speaker 1: It's a zero.
2:39:50
Speaker 2: Right? That's crazy.
2:39:51
Speaker 1: That is crazy.
2:39:52
Speaker 2: Okay. So if you and me and Jamie— We're the
2:39:55
Speaker 2: only people left on earth. What are the odds we
2:39:58
Speaker 2: would go to war with each other? Like fucking zero.
2:40:01
Speaker 2: As long as we have resources, we just hang out
2:40:02
Speaker 2: and have a good time. Yeah, why would we? Fuck,
2:40:04
Speaker 2: I miss everybody.
2:40:05
Speaker 1: All right, good night. It's got to be tribalism. It
2:40:09
Speaker 1: has to be tribalism. 100%.
2:40:10
Speaker 2: And it's primate tribalism. It's based on our territorial instincts.
2:40:15
Speaker 2: And it's also just based on this weird desire to
2:40:20
Speaker 2: control resources and greed and not recognize the fact that
2:40:23
Speaker 2: we have a finite life. And also just the abuse
2:40:25
Speaker 2: of power. Human beings love to be in power. And
2:40:29
Speaker 2: especially if you can be in power and get other
2:40:31
Speaker 2: people to fight for you and mandate them and force
2:40:34
Speaker 2: them to fight for you. You know, that's one of
2:40:37
Speaker 2: the weirdest things about some of these tech companies. Like
2:40:40
Speaker 2: Palantir was talking about reinstating the draft. I'm like, hey,
2:40:45
Speaker 2: who the fuck are you? Like, what is this? Like,
2:40:48
Speaker 2: you think you want to draft people because you think war?
2:40:51
Speaker 3: What? What?
2:40:52
Speaker 2: Are you a fucking tech company?
2:40:54
Speaker 1: How does that work?
2:40:55
Speaker 2: Right? So, like, do you want to go fight? Why
2:40:57
Speaker 2: don't you go fight? Why don't you fucking take your
2:40:59
Speaker 2: glasses off and go over there? Like, what are you
2:41:01
Speaker 2: talking about? So it's like the people that have the
2:41:04
Speaker 2: kind of power and control and resources that they can
2:41:08
Speaker 2: just take poor people and take young people and say,
2:41:13
Speaker 2: you should go over there. You should go do this.
2:41:16
Speaker 2: You should. Well, I sit here and watch. I'm going
2:41:18
Speaker 2: to watch on a screen in Nevada while the drone operator.
2:41:22
Speaker 2: is using a fucking Xbox controller to nuke some building. Like, what?
2:41:27
Speaker 1: When I was in Afghanistan, when I was there, you
2:41:31
Speaker 1: got to remember that I had really just gone through training.
2:41:36
Speaker 1: Training took a couple of years. I got to a team.
2:41:39
Speaker 1: And then very quickly, I was in a workup and
2:41:42
Speaker 1: was going to Afghanistan. So really, my entire mindset was,
2:41:46
Speaker 1: I got through training, I'm a Navy SEAL, and you're
2:41:49
Speaker 1: surrounded by dudes who for the last decade have just
2:41:51
Speaker 1: been going to war left and right. I mean, those
2:41:53
Speaker 1: are the people I'm around. The senior guys are like
2:41:55
Speaker 1: war-hardened guys. And when I got to Afghanistan, no part
2:42:00
Speaker 1: of me, none, did I ever really question what we
2:42:04
Speaker 1: were even doing. It was almost like that doesn't matter.
2:42:07
Speaker 1: My role is I am like a tool, frankly, of
2:42:11
Speaker 1: the government. And they must know what's right. They must,
2:42:14
Speaker 1: you know what I mean? And it was only in
2:42:16
Speaker 1: reflection years later that there were things that have come
2:42:19
Speaker 1: to me that I'm like, why didn't I think more,
2:42:22
Speaker 1: I don't know, critically about? Like specifically, if the roles
2:42:27
Speaker 1: were somehow reversed and people came into our country from
2:42:32
Speaker 1: some foreign country, you better believe I'm going to protect
2:42:35
Speaker 1: my family. It's such a basic thing. And I remember,
2:42:40
Speaker 1: and this is not even, this is not us doing
2:42:42
Speaker 1: anything illegal in terms of the Geneva Convention. But we
2:42:46
Speaker 1: would enter people's homes, you know, in Afghanistan, not even
2:42:49
Speaker 1: guns a-blazing. Forget that. Just we would go into people's homes.
2:42:53
Speaker 1: And you're just like suddenly in somebody else's home. There's
2:42:56
Speaker 1: the father. There's the kids. They're all here.
2:42:59
Speaker 2: And you're wearing full body armor, helmet.
2:43:01
Speaker 1: I have a combat mullet.
2:43:03
Speaker 2: I have shorts.
2:43:04
Speaker 1: I have a psychopath. And I have, I have a fucking, yeah,
2:43:08
Speaker 1: it's like, wait, wait a minute.
2:43:09
Speaker 2: Like who's, who's the good guy. Right. You know?
2:43:12
Speaker 1: And, and I, I, I years have gone by. It's
2:43:15
Speaker 1: taken me some time. I, I think that there's an
2:43:18
Speaker 1: element of someone's always going to be sent because of
2:43:21
Speaker 1: the unfortunate reality of like, so long as humans exist,
2:43:25
Speaker 1: as we understand them now, tribalism and war and warmongering happens.
2:43:30
Speaker 1: And so I guess I, I can respect the fact
2:43:32
Speaker 1: that I took someone else's place in a sense. I
2:43:34
Speaker 1: volunteered to go. So I, but, It's tough.
2:43:37
Speaker 2: How much less war would we have if people that
2:43:41
Speaker 2: wanted us to go to war were forced to lead
2:43:43
Speaker 2: the charge? Oh, man. There would be no war. Imagine
2:43:45
Speaker 2: how few wars there would be if Lindsey Graham had
2:43:48
Speaker 2: to suit up. We wouldn't have war, dude. Right? Because
2:43:52
Speaker 2: Lindsey Graham was like, we got to go over there.
2:43:54
Speaker 2: We got to kill everybody. Okay. Good. Get in the helicopter.
2:43:58
Speaker 2: Let's go, fatso. That might be the only way to
2:44:02
Speaker 2: stop it from happening. And then there's always going to
2:44:04
Speaker 2: be people that are so fucking battle-hardened that they want
2:44:07
Speaker 2: to go to war.
2:44:07
Speaker 1: For sure.
2:44:07
Speaker 2: And they're like, good, I'll get right in the front.
2:44:10
Speaker 1: Did you see when we officially left Afghanistan, this is
2:44:15
Speaker 1: not that long ago, I guess, but there was those
2:44:17
Speaker 1: final flights.
2:44:19
Speaker 2: Yeah. Oh, God.
2:44:20
Speaker 1: And the Afghanis are holding on to the plane and
2:44:23
Speaker 1: falling off to their death. The thing that struck me is,
2:44:27
Speaker 1: even though I'm telling you when I was there, I
2:44:29
Speaker 1: sort of had tunnel vision and was like, I'm going
2:44:31
Speaker 1: to be a Navy SEAL, do my job. But even
2:44:33
Speaker 1: with that, when I was there, what was striking is
2:44:36
Speaker 1: these people, for the most part, live in an alternative
2:44:40
Speaker 1: world than what I'm used to living in. Like where
2:44:42
Speaker 1: I live in the West, it's civilized. You might go
2:44:48
Speaker 1: outside and might get mugged or something, but you don't
2:44:50
Speaker 1: really walk around worried about your safety. You basically, even
2:44:53
Speaker 1: in some bad parts of the United States, You have
2:44:56
Speaker 1: infrastructure that protects you to some degree. You have things,
2:44:59
Speaker 1: you can live your life in relative harmony. There are
2:45:02
Speaker 1: parts of the world, albeit I've really only been to
2:45:05
Speaker 1: one war zone in Afghanistan, where you're like, how are
2:45:09
Speaker 1: people living here? How is it possible there's this little
2:45:12
Speaker 1: girl here that's walking down the road in Zarganshah where, dude,
2:45:17
Speaker 1: gunfights break out here on a regular basis, but they
2:45:21
Speaker 1: have to live here.
2:45:21
Speaker 2: This is where they live.
2:45:23
Speaker 1: And it put in perspective like how desperate these people
2:45:26
Speaker 1: really are. Not desperate to like, we need NATO to
2:45:29
Speaker 1: save us. Forget that. They don't even know how bad
2:45:32
Speaker 1: their condition is. But you see it when you see
2:45:35
Speaker 1: the plane leaving Afghanistan. And I don't care what we,
2:45:41
Speaker 1: they had to know there was no hope when you
2:45:43
Speaker 1: held onto that plane. You're not going to hold onto
2:45:45
Speaker 1: the plane and fly off to safety. But when you're
2:45:47
Speaker 1: that desperate because your life is so bad, you'll hold
2:45:50
Speaker 1: onto the plane and fall off to your death. It's like,
2:45:53
Speaker 1: It was just shocking to me how fucking horrible people
2:45:56
Speaker 1: have it in Afghanistan.
2:45:56
Speaker 2: They also knew that we were... Those people knew that
2:45:59
Speaker 2: they were cooperating with the U.S. government.
2:46:01
Speaker 1: Very true.
2:46:01
Speaker 2: They were likely to be killed.
2:46:02
Speaker 1: Very true. Yeah. That's a good point.
2:46:04
Speaker 2: I got to ask you this because you did serve
2:46:06
Speaker 2: in Afghanistan and you're into creepy stories. Did you hear
2:46:09
Speaker 2: about the Kandahar giant? Oh, yeah.
2:46:11
Speaker 1: I covered it.
2:46:12
Speaker 2: I haven't seen that episode. Did you hear about it
2:46:15
Speaker 2: when you were over there?
2:46:16
Speaker 1: So I did... I talked to one of our interpreters
2:46:19
Speaker 1: when I was over there because I had heard of
2:46:21
Speaker 1: it because... I told you in my own personal time,
2:46:23
Speaker 1: I find myself researching and learning about all sorts of
2:46:28
Speaker 1: crazy stuff like Dark Five. And so the Kandahar giant,
2:46:33
Speaker 1: it's a fascinating story. And it's one that people can
2:46:35
Speaker 1: poo-poo it all they want, but there's enough circumstantial evidence
2:46:40
Speaker 1: and testimony that suggests something could have happened. So there's
2:46:42
Speaker 1: this guy, I think he was a Green Beret, and
2:46:46
Speaker 1: he goes by like W on the internet. He's like
2:46:48
Speaker 1: sort of anonymized himself, but he He came forward with
2:46:51
Speaker 1: the story where he described he and his battalion had
2:46:56
Speaker 1: been tasked to go find these missing, I think, army rangers.
2:46:59
Speaker 1: You got to give me some grace in the details.
2:47:01
Speaker 1: I haven't told this in a minute. But there were
2:47:03
Speaker 1: these army rangers that had gone missing up in the
2:47:06
Speaker 1: mountains in Kandahar. And so this guy, W, who years
2:47:09
Speaker 1: later is telling the story to, I think, a reporter
2:47:13
Speaker 1: or something, he and his, you know, platoon, they head
2:47:18
Speaker 1: off into the mountains to go find these guys. And
2:47:20
Speaker 1: they're and if you're not familiar with the landscape of
2:47:22
Speaker 1: afghanistan it's it's like a desert but a mountain everywhere
2:47:27
Speaker 1: it's like just it looks like the surface of of
2:47:30
Speaker 1: mars or something you're looking out and it's both stunningly
2:47:33
Speaker 1: beautiful in that there's snow-capped mountains off in the distance
2:47:36
Speaker 1: and it's it's but it's also just, it's jagged. It's sharp.
2:47:40
Speaker 1: It looks like just a rugged place to be. And
2:47:43
Speaker 1: they're hiking through the mountains and eventually they come across
2:47:47
Speaker 1: and there's nothing. There's no structures, nothing. They're hiking along
2:47:50
Speaker 1: this trail up on the side of the mountain and
2:47:52
Speaker 1: they see what looks like metal. I think it's like
2:47:55
Speaker 1: a military grade metal, like a piece of a radio
2:47:57
Speaker 1: or something. And so this guy W and his crew,
2:48:01
Speaker 1: they find what appears to be remains of like literally
2:48:04
Speaker 1: a radio. It's a government issued radio. And there's a
2:48:07
Speaker 1: goat trail that heads up this mountain. And so they
2:48:10
Speaker 1: follow the goat trail. And as they're going, they're finding
2:48:12
Speaker 1: more and more little bits of an antenna. There's a
2:48:16
Speaker 1: piece of somebody's backpack that's got like, there's a camo backpack.
2:48:19
Speaker 1: So there's obviously, there's remnants of somebody being out here, military.
2:48:24
Speaker 1: We don't know who it is. They can't hear anything.
2:48:26
Speaker 1: They're calling out. They have no comms with anybody in
2:48:28
Speaker 1: the area. They go up this little goat trail and
2:48:31
Speaker 1: they get to this plateau and they see, as I
2:48:34
Speaker 1: recall it, just like, equipment everywhere and there's like bones
2:48:39
Speaker 1: there's like military equipment like pieces all over this plateau
2:48:43
Speaker 1: and there's this fucking cave entrance it's like ominously sitting
2:48:47
Speaker 1: in front of this this semi-flat plateau at the top
2:48:50
Speaker 1: of this mountain and immediately you know w and his
2:48:53
Speaker 1: crew they're like oh my god like they must they
2:48:55
Speaker 1: must have been ambushed right here this is the remains
2:48:57
Speaker 1: of whoever was killed you know of this missing battalion
2:49:01
Speaker 1: And so they end up walking into this cave to
2:49:03
Speaker 1: see if there's any survivors or combatants or whatever. And
2:49:07
Speaker 1: I guess a couple of guys went in and they
2:49:09
Speaker 1: reported it being so dark they couldn't see anything. And
2:49:12
Speaker 1: there was a steep drop off. So they backed out
2:49:14
Speaker 1: of the cave. And then at some point, a fucking spear,
2:49:18
Speaker 1: like a javelin, comes soaring out of the cave entrance
2:49:22
Speaker 1: and fucking impales this dude Mike on the recovery team,
2:49:25
Speaker 1: kills him. And this huge giant, they would describe him,
2:49:28
Speaker 1: comes flying. running out of the cave big red beard
2:49:31
Speaker 1: he's got like tribal you know regalia on and he's
2:49:34
Speaker 1: like fisticuffing with the army you know backup crew here
2:49:39
Speaker 1: they all shoot and they kill him and and the
2:49:41
Speaker 1: thing falls down it's got like six six fingers on
2:49:44
Speaker 1: each hand six toes but it's dead and everyone's like
2:49:47
Speaker 1: what the fuck is going on like mike's been killed
2:49:49
Speaker 1: by a spear there's this huge giant laying here nobody
2:49:53
Speaker 1: nobody knew what it was they thought it was a
2:49:55
Speaker 1: person but they didn't know A helicopter came in and
2:49:58
Speaker 1: they put him in a net, the body, and they
2:50:00
Speaker 1: flew it off. And then the survivors, they were taken off.
2:50:03
Speaker 1: And like there was no, no one was like, W
2:50:06
Speaker 1: and his crew were not given any sort of like, hey, yeah,
2:50:09
Speaker 1: this turned out this was the missing battalion. And oh,
2:50:11
Speaker 1: don't worry, this is a giant, like there was no debrief.
2:50:14
Speaker 1: They just like, they left. But then through the grapevine,
2:50:17
Speaker 1: W reported hearing that apparently this fucking giant body was
2:50:22
Speaker 1: brought to an air base and some of the pilots
2:50:24
Speaker 1: that had flown the helicopter had seen it. And they
2:50:26
Speaker 1: had been talking about it having six fingers, six toes. And,
2:50:30
Speaker 1: you know, they signed NDA, not NDAs, they did the
2:50:32
Speaker 1: equivalent in the military of you're not going to talk
2:50:34
Speaker 1: about this. And then it was sort of ushered away.
2:50:36
Speaker 1: But there was all these people on that base that
2:50:39
Speaker 1: effectively came out and said, we saw what appeared to
2:50:42
Speaker 1: be a giant with six fingers, six toes. Mike, this guy, Mike, apparently,
2:50:46
Speaker 1: according to W's story, was killed. I mean, there's a
2:50:49
Speaker 1: guy who's been killed by this thing by a spear, apparently.
2:50:52
Speaker 2: Is there a record of his death?
2:50:54
Speaker 1: This is all, you have to keep in mind, this
2:50:56
Speaker 1: is all almost entirely from W's account. There's long been
2:51:02
Speaker 1: a history of people claiming there are giants in the
2:51:04
Speaker 1: mountains of Kandahar. I talked to the interpreters that I
2:51:08
Speaker 1: was working with in Afghanistan, and they had said that
2:51:10
Speaker 1: they had heard rumors of there being giants that live
2:51:13
Speaker 1: in the caves, especially in Kandahar. So there's already sort
2:51:16
Speaker 1: of lore around this, but this guy W comes out
2:51:19
Speaker 1: and has this narrative where he apparently tells this reporter
2:51:22
Speaker 1: and he remained anonymous. So in terms of confirming details,
2:51:25
Speaker 1: it's sparse to say the least.
2:51:27
Speaker 2: The sketchiest part about it is something that big needs
2:51:29
Speaker 2: a lot of calories. And so you have to eat
2:51:32
Speaker 2: a lot of animals. And it doesn't seem like that's
2:51:34
Speaker 2: a very heavily populated area when it comes to animals.
2:51:37
Speaker 2: Like you would need the amount of food that it
2:51:40
Speaker 2: would need. Like if you have a 12 foot tall
2:51:42
Speaker 2: human being or whatever it is, And it weighs 2,000 pounds.
2:51:46
Speaker 2: How much fucking meat you need in a day? Yeah.
2:51:49
Speaker 1: That's a good– just logically speaking, what does it eat?
2:51:52
Speaker 2: Right. You would have to like constantly be eating meat.
2:51:55
Speaker 2: And you'd have to stay alive without getting spotted. So
2:52:00
Speaker 2: you have to go out there and hunt meat.
2:52:02
Speaker 1: Yeah, and how no one really knows you exist.
2:52:04
Speaker 2: Are you hunting with a javelin?
2:52:06
Speaker 1: The way I see it is having been to Afghanistan,
2:52:09
Speaker 1: certainly not encountering any giants– You see parts of Afghanistan
2:52:15
Speaker 1: that really do look like you're on another planet. I mean,
2:52:17
Speaker 1: it's really these crazy, just mountains everywhere. And you see
2:52:21
Speaker 1: these cave systems, you know, where typically combatants would hide
2:52:24
Speaker 1: out in. But what I tell people is, well, I
2:52:28
Speaker 1: don't know if the Kandahar giant is real or not.
2:52:31
Speaker 2: It's fun. Yeah, it's great. It's fun.
2:52:33
Speaker 1: If there were a place where a giant could still
2:52:37
Speaker 1: be hiding out or giants could still be technically unproven...
2:52:41
Speaker 1: It's Afghanistan because, dude, that's a different world over there.
2:52:45
Speaker 1: There aren't people wandering around Afghanistan looking for giants.
2:52:49
Speaker 3: He's listed as eight feet tall, but I think 7'6
2:52:52
Speaker 3: is probably a more recognized number. He went viral in
2:52:56
Speaker 3: 2019 for showing up in India and looking for a
2:52:58
Speaker 3: hotel at a cricket match.
2:52:59
Speaker 2: Bro, look at his face. Go to that photo over
2:53:02
Speaker 2: there of him right above there.
2:53:03
Speaker 1: Yeah.
2:53:05
Speaker 2: Bro. But that guy looks like he has giantitis. He
2:53:09
Speaker 2: looks like he has a pituitary gland problem like Andre
2:53:11
Speaker 2: the Giant.
2:53:12
Speaker 3: There's another tall guy. This guy's 8'3.
2:53:15
Speaker 2: Oh, my God. Whoa. He's from Turkey. Yeah, but see, look, look.
2:53:18
Speaker 2: This guy's hurting. He can barely walk around. He's probably
2:53:21
Speaker 2: got a disease that's forcing him to just excrete too
2:53:24
Speaker 2: much growth hormone. You know, just like Bigfoot Silva. Bigfoot
2:53:29
Speaker 2: Silva was an MMA fighter that had giantism. And he
2:53:32
Speaker 2: had a tumor in his pituitary gland. At the time,
2:53:34
Speaker 2: he was like more than 300 pounds. He was enormous.
2:53:37
Speaker 2: Giant head. But he had an operation. And I believe
2:53:41
Speaker 2: he did. I know people that have had giantism do
2:53:44
Speaker 2: get an operation where they remove the tumor in the
2:53:47
Speaker 2: pituitary gland. But then the problem is their body is
2:53:49
Speaker 2: just not making any hormones anymore. It's all fucked up.
2:53:52
Speaker 2: Either way, it's fun. Yeah, it is fun. It's a
2:53:55
Speaker 2: fun story. The Kandahar Giant is a fun story. It's
2:53:58
Speaker 2: a really crazy story. And I hope it's real. That's
2:54:01
Speaker 2: my problem with all these things. I hope they're real.
2:54:03
Speaker 1: I have one final story, if you'll let me, that
2:54:07
Speaker 1: has nothing to do with giants. I don't know if
2:54:09
Speaker 1: you heard it. It's super short, but in terms of material,
2:54:12
Speaker 1: it's amazing. You ever heard of Harrison O'Keen? No.
2:54:15
Speaker 2: Okay.
2:54:16
Speaker 1: So there was this tugboat that was off the coast
2:54:19
Speaker 1: of Africa. They were on whatever they were doing. They
2:54:21
Speaker 1: were tugging a boat or whatever. And there's 12 people
2:54:24
Speaker 1: on board, including Harrison O'Keen. He's a chef. And he's
2:54:28
Speaker 1: in the bathroom of this tugboat. And at some point
2:54:30
Speaker 1: in the middle of the night, a wave.
2:54:33
Speaker 2: There he is. Is that him? I don't think that is.
2:54:35
Speaker 1: Actually, that looks like Harrison O'Keen. Nope, you can't see that.
2:54:39
Speaker 2: Let me see it. Let me see it. Let him
2:54:40
Speaker 2: tell a story. Let him tell a story.
2:54:41
Speaker 1: All right, so the boat flips over. The boat flips over,
2:54:45
Speaker 1: and Harrison... Oh, I do know this story.
2:54:49
Speaker 2: I do know this story.
2:54:49
Speaker 1: And he ends up walking down the upturned hallway, and
2:54:53
Speaker 1: he finds an air pocket inside the bathroom. And for
2:54:56
Speaker 1: 60 hours... He sat in total darkness, half submerged in water,
2:55:02
Speaker 1: sipping a Coca-Cola, waiting for the pocket to implode. And
2:55:05
Speaker 1: there's the video. There's a video of the recovery divers
2:55:09
Speaker 1: as they're going in to find bodies. And they're like, oh, yeah,
2:55:12
Speaker 1: we're going in here to find them. And then a
2:55:13
Speaker 1: hand reaches down and grabs them. It's like one of
2:55:15
Speaker 1: the most incredible stories I think I've ever heard.
2:55:17
Speaker 2: Yeah.
2:55:18
Speaker 1: But Harrison O'Keen, I wonder what it was like in
2:55:21
Speaker 1: terms of like true primal fear. You're 100 feet at
2:55:25
Speaker 1: the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. Oh, man. I've heard
2:55:29
Speaker 1: some stories that he even described the sound of sea
2:55:32
Speaker 1: life bumping around in the upturned vessel. So like the
2:55:35
Speaker 1: sound of sharks likely eating the bodies.
2:55:38
Speaker 2: Of your buddies.
2:55:39
Speaker 1: And you're thinking at any point the pocket's going to collapse.
2:55:43
Speaker 1: For 60 hours he waited and he survived. And now
2:55:46
Speaker 1: he's no longer working on a tugboat. He stays on land.
2:55:49
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would imagine. Well, dude, thank you very much
2:55:52
Speaker 2: for being here, man.
2:55:52
Speaker 1: Dude, it's been awesome.
2:55:53
Speaker 2: Your show's awesome. Thank you. You're a really great storyteller.
2:55:56
Speaker 3: Thank you.
2:55:56
Speaker 2: And congratulations on all your success.
2:55:58
Speaker 1: Thank you.
2:55:59
Speaker 2: Well earned. Thank you. My pleasure. My pleasure. All right.
2:56:02
Speaker 2: Thank you. Bye, everybody. Bye.