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Andy Stumpf is a retired Navy SEAL, entrepreneur, record-holding wingsuiter, and host of “Cleared Hot” and “Change Agents.” His new book, “Drownproof: Eight Life Lessons to Keep Your Head Above Water,” is available now. https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250379610/drownproof https://www.youtube.com/@ClearedHotPodcast https://www.youtube.com/@thisisironclad https://www.andystumpf.com
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Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.
The Joe Rogan experience.
Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day.
Being a pacifist is the way.
Avoid violence at all costs, you know what I mean, Joe?
Allegedly.
Look at you, dog, you're a fucking author.
Let's take it easy, I'm not an author until tomorrow, technically.
No, you're an author once it's written.
I can read it, which makes you an author.
I have a book in my hand, which makes you an author.
I tell you what, man, you had more of a hand in that book than you would think.
Before we started, I had you sign one of the copies because I'm going to keep
it for myself.
And the people's names who associated themselves with that, who took a chance
on me and supporting
me, they have just as much hands as the monkey who may or may not have been
sitting in front
of the computer writing out the words very slowly.
Isn't that the case with everything in life, though?
I mean, it's really who you know and like the people that you associate with
and what
you learn from them and their examples with everything.
There's no individuals that are responsible entirely for their own life.
There are individuals, though, that would tell you that they are.
Yeah, but those are the people that I don't hang out with.
Yeah, I can't suffer being in the presence of somebody who thinks that they had
every idea
and every right decision was theirs.
Because I look at my own life.
One, I can't compete with that because my life is defined by its mistakes and
idiotic things
I've done.
But two, I just, I don't get it.
I'm a product of the people who I was raised by, the people I was around, the
people still
in my life.
I mean.
A hundred percent.
We all are.
If you don't think that, you're delusional.
You cannot have an exceptional person that's surrounded by dipshits.
They just won't.
Eventually, they'll give in to dipshittery.
It's contagious.
Negative people.
You really got me thinking, though, if that is possible.
I'm trying to think of an example.
Yeah, I probably shouldn't have said it's impossible.
It could be possible, but it's very highly unlikely.
And also, they didn't achieve their full potential, if that's the case.
They would have been even better if they had been surrounded by exceptional
people.
Improbable at best.
Yeah, at best.
Yeah.
I've never seen an example of it.
Again, maybe one exists that I don't know about.
But as far as all the exceptional people that I know, they all associate with
other exceptional
people.
You know quite a few exceptional people.
You have an interesting job that has a Venn diagram that is incredibly unique
in the
people you've been able to sit down with.
It's pretty fucking weird.
Did you ever think?
No.
First off, by the way, I try to point as many people as possible to JRE number
one because
I think it's a masterpiece.
It's a good thing to see.
Oh, my God.
Because it's terrible.
I'm like, wait for the snowflakes.
And they go, what the fuck are you talking about?
Alex, I'm like, just wait.
It's amazing.
I mean, could you have ever thought, though, at JRE1 where I feel like that was
you on
a laptop video?
Yeah.
It was.
Yeah, 100%.
Yeah.
And to where you are now where you were like sitting down and talking to some
of the most
influential people on the face of planet Earth.
No.
I mean, I think if I planned it out like that, it would have never worked.
You know?
You would have tried too hard?
Maybe.
I don't know what I would have done.
I mean, I probably would have been more careful, which would have made it less
fun, which would
have made it less attractive.
You know, I think the two things that I've done that are really important is
not pay attention
to much online talk about me and just follow my interests and my instincts.
Like, I book the whole thing entirely on instinct.
I look at, like, all the different suggestions that come in and all the
different requests
to be on the show, and I go, no, me.
Huh?
Why was that?
Huh?
Purely on self-interest?
100%.
I think that's the way.
What do you get per day?
Like, ballpark people trying to get on your show.
I don't even know because I have a really good guy that filters out a lot of
them.
I bet it's got to be in the hundreds.
Yeah.
I'm sure.
Yeah.
But he filters out a lot of them, and it gets down to, you know, like, what I—he
knows
me really well, and so he, you know, sends me, like, some physicist is working
on some
new thing, some quantum thing, this, that, the other thing.
Like, there's a new person that's doing this, and there's new research on that,
and then
there's, you know, that kind of shit.
Yeah.
I think the difference between you and me is I appreciate the fact you can hold
a conversation
with those people.
Like, I would be sitting there listening to them with, like, the scroll wheel
on a back.
Like, do you have words that are smaller that could explain that to me?
Well, some of them I have to really prepare for.
Like, you know, if I have, like, a Brian Cox on or something like that, I'll
really prepare.
You know, or, you know, there's been a few people over time where I knew they
were coming
on, like, three months out.
So I've read a couple of their books.
I watched a few of their lectures.
I watched, you know.
Yeah.
But then there's other ones, like, I could just hang out, hang out with them.
You know, like, Evan, Evan Haver comes on.
We just shoot the shit.
Angry, small French painter.
Fucking Green Berets.
He's the best.
I love that dude.
I was with him at the Montana Grand Opening, Montana Knife Company Grand
Opening, their new
HQ.
We've been on the road a bit.
I think, like, two days ago.
He's one of my favorite people.
He's so wee, but he's one of my favorite people.
He's an awesome human.
Yeah.
A very unusual human being.
And, you know, he's one of the ones that's suffering from that stupid fucking
alpha gal bite.
He's got that tick.
He got bit by that tick that makes you allergic to red meat.
Is it all red meat or processed red meat?
It's animal meat.
It's mammal meat.
That's the thing.
You could eat some fish.
Some people can eat fish.
Some people can eat chicken.
He's broken it down to only eating eggs right now.
That's how bad it is.
He's getting all of his protein from eggs, which is a great source of protein,
no doubt.
But that's exhaustingly boring, though.
Just go to dinner with him.
It's crazy.
The guy has to eat vegetables and eggs.
That's all he can eat.
I would just mock him incessantly to his face.
I know you would.
Do you guys have a larger salad?
Yeah.
I mean, I would mock him that way because I care for him so deeply.
He is truly, like, one of my closest friends.
He is.
He's an awesome dude.
Yeah.
And so he's been battling this for a couple years now.
So he got clear of it and he was eating meat again and he was fine and he
thought it was
over.
And then it came back.
He came back with a vengeance.
And it's a weird fucking disease because I've...
Let's find out.
Put this into perplexity.
What is the most...
As far as, like, the documented cases of this alpha-gal syndrome, when did it
first start
occurring in the United States?
Because I had never even heard about it until Evan.
When he told me about it, I was like, what?
You got allergic to red meat.
And how can a tick bite cause that?
I mean, Lyme disease is another one.
Like, how does it do that?
A bite from a tick just jacks up the human body.
Well, apparently Lyme disease has existed.
There's been forms of Lyme disease throughout history, but there's real solid
evidence that
Lyme disease, which is named Lyme disease because of Lyme, Connecticut, is
related to Plum
Island, where they were doing bioweapons research on ticks.
It's a historically good idea.
And it's right there.
It's, like, literally right there.
And then the prevalence of Lyme disease on the East Coast is fucking outrageous.
It's outrageous how many ticks carry this fucking thing.
I know so many people that have Lyme disease.
And that's a lifelong one, too, right?
Like, you're not getting off that train.
You can manage the system.
You can cure it.
You can cure it.
People have cured it.
And they've particularly cured it if they get on antibiotics very quickly.
So one of the weird things about Lyme disease is that the bite has, like, a
little target
around it.
It's weird.
It's like, it almost looks like a bullseye because the infection, as it grows,
there's
a red circle around the bite.
But that goes away within a few days.
But if that's recognized, you bring it to a doctor that gets you on antibiotics,
you
can actually get off of it, depending on the severity of your case, obviously.
So here it is.
Alpha-gal syndrome has appeared to have first emerged in the U.S. in the late
1980s, but
was not recognized as a distinct tick-related meat allergy until the early 2000s.
So in 89, clinicians in Georgia collected about 10 cases of delayed allergic
reactions
to mammalian meat.
Mammalian?
Mammalian.
Mammalian meat and linked them to prior tick bites.
These observations were not widely recognized at the time.
Allergy was first formally identified as originating from tick bites in the U.S.
by Thomas Platt's
Mills in the early 2000s.
Reports note this discovery process beginning around 2002 and becoming clear by
2007.
Huh.
So in the medical literature, it's first described in 2009 when published work
documented patients
with delayed reactions to red meat and linked them to IgE against alpha-gal.
Interesting.
So it seems like it's in the 80s, but really started being recognized in the
2000s.
Explain.
I mean, he has definitely, he's slandered down.
Yeah.
I mean, he's lost, I think he lost 10 pounds.
I'm pretty sure he was wearing his wife's pants at the MKC event.
They were very tight.
Very tight.
Unacceptably tight.
But that could be a benefit.
If you're the same size as your wife and you have just one wardrobe, I'm here
for it.
That's nice.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's efficiency.
Some of their shoes, though, are really hard to walk around in.
I mean, you got to commit.
Yeah.
I would imagine.
I mean, if, yeah.
When I go places with my wife and I'm like, what are you doing?
You can't walk.
This is a crazy thing you're doing.
It's not for walking.
For fashion.
It's for what my daughter would call the steez, which I think means style.
I didn't know that.
I didn't know.
I'm actually not sure that I'm using it correctly.
She just teaches me words and I throw them out at random times.
But I think steez means style, I think.
Yeah.
Steez.
Okay.
Did you know about that one, Jamie?
The steez?
I've probably heard it.
I don't know.
I have never heard it until this moment.
There you go.
At least I don't believe so.
The steez.
Feel free to use it however you want to.
Yeah.
Chicks wear stuff that they're so vulnerable in.
You can only take steps that are less than 24 inches wide.
Because you've got a dress that's like clinging to your knees, which is very
odd.
Like it's like tight all around here.
So you've got these like short steps.
And then the bottoms of your shoes are slippery.
And then your heels are elevated.
And then the heel has a point to it.
Yeah.
So it gets stuck in the grass.
Just waiting to snap at the most inopportune moment.
It's the dumbest shit of all time.
And they're fucking crazy expensive.
The whole thing makes no sense.
Like what are they doing?
They're trying to look good for us, Joe.
But they look good already.
That's what they don't understand.
I think they're looking good for themselves.
I think they look good without that shit.
I would agree.
Yeah.
A hot chick in flip flops.
No one's going, God, I wish she was wearing some shoes that you couldn't walk
around in.
She might even be more approachable if she wasn't flip flops.
Because you'd be like, she's like maybe more down to earth.
Maybe that's what they're going for.
They're going for not approachable.
Trying to keep the fucking...
Doesn't that defeat the overall end, like long end around purpose?
No.
You're trying to get dudes that are, you know, willing to take a chance.
On what?
On a gal that's unapproachable.
Like you have enough confidence in yourself that you'll step up to an unapproachable
gal.
Nope.
Not me.
Hard pass.
Hard pass.
Too much work.
I'm willing to do some things that people think are odd.
But yeah, that's a hard pass.
Yeah.
I know.
But also it's like you're not, you're in line.
There's a lot of other dudes approaching that too.
Probably.
So now that it's like you're in an audition process.
Fuck all of that.
Boring.
Life is way too short for all that.
It's great for people who don't have anything else to do if that's all you want
to do.
Nope.
Yeah.
I'm not interested in that either.
Same.
There's way too much other exciting shit out there.
But yeah, if you and your wife wore all the same clothes, that would be an
issue.
A good issue or bad?
I mean, if you're limited on time, we're going to go on a trip.
Let's just bring a pair of pants.
We'll switch.
Point it.
I wonder what people did in the caveman days.
I don't think they were wearing much.
Right.
But you're wearing like some kind of animal skins.
It's basically a one size fits all.
Yeah.
Tarp.
Loin cloth.
That you throw over yourself.
Yeah.
Loin cloth to keep your dick from getting caught in thorns.
And then a tarp.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Cutting edge at the time.
I was reading a story about these guys that were exceptional marathon runners
in Africa.
And one of the things that they did is this insane fucking rites of passage
where they would circumcise them with this.
I don't remember the process, but it was a particularly brutal process.
They sliced the tip of their dick off.
And then they would make them literally crawl through thorns.
What?
Yeah.
The whole idea is just like make you as hard as humanly possible.
And these guys, they were pointing to this one tribe as developing exceptional
marathon runners.
Because these guys had such high pain tolerance and such like willingness to go
through horrific ordeals.
What is it?
Here it is.
Initiation.
Okay.
So it says he had to crawl mostly naked through a tunnel of African stinging
nettles.
Then he was beaten on the bony parts of his ankle.
Then his knuckles were squeezed together.
And then the formic acid from the stinging nettle was wiped onto his genitals.
But that was all just a warm up.
Early one morning he was circumcised with a sharp stick.
That's what it is.
A stick.
Stick.
During this whole process, the crawling, the beatings, and the cuttings.
Try to say that guy's name.
No.
Kip Go...
Kip Go guy.
Kip Go guy.
Kip Go guy.
Kip Go guy.
Kip Go guy was obliged...
Sounds like a Korean dish.
Was obliged to be absolutely stoical, unflinching.
He could not make a sound.
Indeed, in some of the versions of the ceremony, mud is caked on the face and
then mud is allowed
to drive.
A crack appears in the mud.
Your cheek may twitch.
Your forehead may crinkle.
You get labeled a kebitet.
A coward.
You label a coward if your cheek crinkles and stigmatized by the whole
community.
Manners say that this is enormous social pressure placed on your ability to
endure pain and is
actually great training for a sport like running, where pushing through pain is
so fundamental
to success.
Circumcision, he says, teaches kids to withstand pressure and tolerate pain.
Manners says he thinks there's distinct advantage conferred on athletic kids
who grew up in a pain
embrace in society as opposed to Western pain avoiding one.
Interesting.
Yeah.
What is this?
Where is this at?
In Kenya?
It's a Kenyan tribe?
Yeah.
I mean, I'm going to be honest with you, Joe.
If that's what they did to your people, I would run pretty goddamn fast, too,
because I would want
to get the hell out of there.
Yeah, I think it's that, but I just think, you know, you're joking, obviously.
But imagine if that's the norm, if that's your baseline, you're like accustomed
to that.
That's the worst thing that you go through and you have to do a completely stoic.
At a young age.
At a young age.
You would develop some insane tolerance to discomfort, which...
I don't know if one time is enough, though.
I mean, like what they're describing is horrendous, but true tolerance and
resilience and ability
to work through that stuff, I don't think it's a singular event.
Right.
Not that marathon running is an easy endeavor by any stretch.
So they're continuing to do that.
I mean, I get what they're doing, that rite of passage, but holy hell.
I mean, that's pretty gnarly.
That's a thing that you will see from ex-fighters and even ex-military guys.
Like what they endured when they were young was so brutal that as they get
older, they avoid
any discomfort at all.
They get fat and they just want to drink and be lazy.
And you're like, how did you go from being that fucking beast to this slob?
And, you know, they still, in their mind, they're still a beast, you know,
because I did this
and I was a world champion and like a big fucking belly.
Yeah, they can't see their dick when they're naked anymore.
Weird.
It's...
I don't have any stats on how common that is.
But it's because they stopped doing it.
Correct.
Right.
I mean, laziness affects everybody, right?
Everybody thinks that you come from the special operations world and you're
defined by discipline
for the rest of your life.
No, you're still a human being at the end of the day behind the curtain.
And, you know, gravity wants to keep guys like that on the couch just as much
as everybody
else.
Yeah.
But I think you realize the utility of not allowing that to happen.
Some people do.
Some people do.
I mean, that's true of every occupation in life.
Sure.
You know?
Yep.
Yep.
Maybe it's a little bit more uncommon for people to see those that came from
that, one
of those occupations.
But yeah, they're out there.
Yeah.
I think that's probably in everything in the medical world, I'm sure.
There's guys that like really paid attention in college and then they're kind
of half-assing
it as doctors.
Yeah, for sure.
Yeah.
It's like the difficulty of the grind.
Sometimes you get through it and then you just go, I don't want to ever fucking
do that
again.
Like I know guys who are former Navy SEALs will not get in a fucking ice bath.
Yeah, I'm one of those.
Hi.
Nice to meet you.
Why would I consensually do that?
No.
No.
And I also wish that they could make a sauna that was just room temperature but
had all
the health benefits.
See, sauna doesn't bother me at all.
I can tolerate that one way more than exceptionally cold water.
Yeah.
It's, I understand the health benefit.
I'm willing to pass on that particular health benefit to have, it's emotional
for me.
I just don't want to do that anymore.
I get it.
Yeah.
I get it.
But when I get to the cold plunge, there's a, the bitch in me is so loud.
But when I get to the sauna, there's no bitch.
It's like, just get in.
It's like, I know it's going to suck about 20 minutes in.
It'll suck for the last five minutes.
It's really going to suck.
But the first 10 is easy.
I just high five my inner bitch at the cold plunge and turn around.
Like, why don't you take a laugh at that thing?
I'm done with it.
I almost don't do it every day.
Every day.
I almost don't do it.
Yeah.
It's harder emotionally than it is physically.
And it's weird because after a minute, it's not that bad.
Well, after one minute, it's like, you just kind of, you develop like sort of a
relaxation
and you're cool.
Yeah.
It's fine.
Especially if you do it a lot.
But the first 10, 15 seconds are just like, what am I doing?
You just want to get out.
You just want to quit.
Like, get me the fuck out of this 34 degree water with ice up to my neck.
Fuck this.
This is so stupid.
I don't have to do that.
Yeah.
You feel like you're having a heart attack, but then you just chill.
And then when you get out, you're like, ah.
You feel so good.
It's so worth it.
Or don't do it.
Just leave it empty.
Use it to store tennis balls or something other than ice cold water.
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Apparently, there's real data that it's harder for women.
It's harder for women to tolerate extreme cold weather.
Cold temperatures in water, apparently.
Interesting.
Yeah, they even recommend, like, women's cold plunges be slightly warmer than
men's.
Hmm.
Yeah.
I don't know.
Yeah, I wonder where that would be.
I don't know.
Something about their physiology that it might actually be detrimental to do 34
degrees.
See if you can find any data on that.
You know who's a great – what's her name?
Suzanne Soberg.
She's the one who created the Soberg Principle.
She's the one – Huberman cites all the time.
But I think it is something to do – maybe it's less muscle mass.
You know, your body has a more difficult time heating itself up and, you know,
creating a thermal barrier.
I don't know.
Huberman is an example of a guy that I deeply respect but struggle to
understand what he's saying.
Here it is.
Is this Suzanne's – did you put this in perplexity?
No, no, I did perplexity.
Just ask what –
Our wonderful AI sponsor, Perplexity.
Specific considerations for women.
Women tend to vasoconstrict faster and have larger drops in core temperature.
Aha, especially those in – I don't know what that is – luteal phase?
Yeah, their cycle.
The cycle.
Oh.
When progesterone is higher, so extreme cold can be more stressful.
Very cold plunges near ice, 35 to 45 degrees, can cause big sympathetic and
cortisol spikes
that may disrupt menstrual regularity and thyroid function if overused.
Oh, interesting.
Animal and limited human data suggests cold can influence reproductive hormones
and cycles.
Women with heavy cramps, endometriosis, fibroids, and or on HRT contraception
should be cautious
and talk with a clinician first.
Good luck finding a fucking clinician that understands cold plunges, though.
And then there's a picture of me in the lower right.
It's probably what I look like when I get my toe in – I just don't like it,
man.
Don't do it.
You don't have to.
Hydrophobic, I think, is the correct term.
You suffer enough.
You suffer enough.
So this book, the title is Drown Proof.
You were saying before we got started how many Navy SEALs wind up drowning and
that it's
actually kind of shocking.
It would be for a community that is supposed to have their roots in a maritime
environment.
I mean, the SEAL community draws its origins from the UDTs and the scouts and
raiders.
And honestly, up until 9-11, it was one foot in the water and one foot on land.
Like every operation would start in the water and then you could go onto the
land, but you'd
probably go back into the water.
Almost all of the training we did, 9-11, was based around water.
And I think – let's see.
Jamie, you could look this up.
Two SEALs recently drowned on a shipboarding, real-world shipboarding.
One guy, it seems like, in the climb, peeled off the ladder and went into the
water and
somebody saw him and went in with him because of the concept of being a swim
buddy, never
to be seen again.
Oh.
Yeah.
Do they know what happened to them?
Like how –
I mean, it's – yeah, 2024 in the Arabian Sea.
Oh, so he fell off a ship.
Yeah.
So they were approaching a vessel.
I mean, there's a couple ways that you can get on a boat.
You can come from a boat and you can climb up or you can go from a helicopter
and fast
rope down where they could land, depending on how big the boat is.
So they were coming up alongside – it's called an underway or a VBSS, visit,
board, search
and seizure is the technical military term for it.
And on the climb up the ladder, the guy peeled off – fell off the ladder.
And another one went in with him as a swim buddy.
If they immediately – and there was and maybe still is an ongoing
investigation.
From my understanding, they saw their head maybe one time up and then they were
gone.
Their bodies were never recovered.
So that would seem to be that they were wearing negatively buoyant equipment.
So they were drug down and they probably were not able to activate their life
jackets in
time, which is super unfortunate.
But the water doesn't give a shit who you are and how much of a badass you are.
I think it's one of the most gnarly environments on earth.
It really is.
Every time I go in the ocean and I swim in the ocean, there's this feeling like
I think
I can make it to shore, but I might not be able to.
Like if you jump off of a boat and you've got like a couple hundred yards to
shore, as you
start swimming, you start swimming like I'm fine, I'm fine.
Oh boy, my heart is going pretty fast here.
I'm breathing pretty heavy.
That's a long way.
I'm moving very slowly.
Yeah.
Like what if I can't do this?
These are real positive thoughts to have when swim here, Joe.
Yeah.
Not good.
Not good.
Yeah.
It's only happened to me a few times, but my friend Greg actually had to save a
woman.
He was on vacation.
He saw a woman getting caught in the tide and she was getting pulled out.
Oh, like a riptide?
Uh-huh.
Those things will pull people out never to be seen again.
People don't, so I live up in northwestern Montana and a lot of the Flathead
Lake, the
largest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi is right where I live.
And Glacier National Park, tons of snowfall.
And so it's glacially fed rivers that feed into Flathead National Forest or not
in Flathead
National Forest, the Flathead Lake.
And boating is a huge summertime activity.
And people travel from all over the world to come to Montana to see GNP, Glacier
National
Park.
And every year people are drowning in these rivers.
And I don't know, it's dangerous, but it can be avoided, but it seems as if
they just
do not have respect for even medium moving water.
They have no exposure to it.
They're not used to being in that water and they don't look at it and realize
like, that'll
kill me so incredibly fast.
And every year people are going into that thing and dying every year.
Well, it makes sense also that it's so fucking cold.
That water is, you've got glacier streams.
Yeah.
It's like, Remy rescued a lady from that.
You know Remy?
Yeah.
Remy actually saw a boat that had capsized and saw like gear floating by and
saw a woman
that was struggling.
And I believe her partner died.
Now I'm sure her partner died.
And he jumped in freezing cold river and rescued her.
And he was like, there's a bunch of moments during there.
I was like, I am not going to make it.
I'm going to die trying to save this lady.
Which happens when people get close to that point, they're going to, in your
best attempt
to save them, they will try to use you as a life raft and climb all over you.
And the next thing you know, two people are gone instead of one.
Yeah.
The water, the water will eat your lunch, man.
It's, it's wild.
But you would think we spend so much time training in the water that it wouldn't
happen.
There's, I mean, there's diving accidents.
There is, there are, uh, deaths in training.
How often does that occur?
Deaths in training?
Oh, probably about every five years.
And, uh, it sucks.
And what I'm about to say, people won't understand, but I also think it's
essential.
I don't want it to happen, but I think it probably is essential that it does
every once in a while.
Because the training has to be so difficult that you get to the brink.
You have to train people for the job that they're going to be asked to do.
And the training standards need to be a directly downstream reflection of what
the career is going to be.
And I, and I, I don't have the vocabulary to describe how bad I feel for the
families.
And I'm, and you know, I'm not trying to minimize anybody's death, but you will
lose more people in the real world execution of the job.
If you don't make training that difficult, then you will by making it that
dangerous, knowing that it's going to be that dangerous and that people will
die.
That will have a positive impact on people surviving the actual job itself.
That completely makes sense.
Um, that's just the realities of life.
Yeah.
Some jobs are very unique and some jobs have very unique requirements and you
have to train for that.
Or it's, it's going to, it's going to either come from you on the front end of
that or the, or the tail end of that.
That's the balance of which one of those are you going to focus on.
Which is why the lowering of standards is so fucking dangerous.
And when it's talked about like the lowering of standards to make it fair for
some applicants, like there's no fair in that job.
I've never seen a bullet change trajectory because, uh, it noticed what you
have between your legs and wanted to go be more fair and equitable to somebody
else.
You know, it's, it doesn't matter in those moments.
Nor does the ocean give a fuck.
No.
Period.
No, I don't believe it does.
Nope.
There's no give a fuck.
But it's, it's so weird when we try to apply these workplace equity
considerations to something that's as, like literally, I can't think of a job
that requires more of you than war.
Like there is, there's, this is literal life or death and taking life.
There's no, there's no job that requires more of you.
And so you would just automatically assume the standards, especially for
special operations guys, have to be the most stringent possible.
You have to weed out all the bitches.
Like you can't have any bitch in you at all.
There's got to be none.
No quit, no nothing.
And that's, there's only one way to do that.
It has to, you have to make a bunch of people quit.
A lot of the times the people who are bottom lining the policy changes don't
have a direct impact in the training pipeline themselves or the execution of
the job.
Which is crazy.
Yeah, I mean, the military is a bureaucratic system, even in the special
operations world, even at like the JSOC level, people would be, it never, never
really makes the movie the amount of paperwork that you end up doing.
Like you go on a trip and you have to collect your receipts and do your travel
claim and all this other BS.
It's all just shit blowing up.
And, you know, you throw a grenade and it's a fireball the size of a 55 gallon
drum of gasoline.
And yeah, and then there's two days sitting in front of a computer typing out
all of your administrative stuff because of all the bureaucratic restraints
that are still involved in all of that.
That doesn't seem smart.
It's just the way the military system works.
Now, is that to somehow or another mitigate potential actions that should not
have been done because you have to be so documented?
Everything has to be so laid out?
I mean, there's a lot of, even like the equipment that you wear, oftentimes,
well, almost all of it is going to be serialized.
So you were issued that equipment.
You're responsible for it.
There's paperwork that goes for being issued that if you lose it, which does
happen.
And it's not going to be career ending.
Like if you went out for a week in a row and you're like, hey, I lost my night
vision goggles again.
I'm going to need another set of those.
You might have a problem.
But shit happens and people lose gear.
But, you know, night vision, weapons, ordinance, ammunition, like a lot of that
stuff is serialized.
And so it's just the bureaucratic way that even at that level, you still have
to keep track of all of that stuff.
You would think they should hire somebody else to do that.
They do.
But oftentimes you are in small units, very isolated by yourself.
And so you still have to maintain, like even in the middle of nowhere, you're
still going to have to maintain the paperwork aspect of all the stuff that you
take with you.
God, that's kind of crazy.
Yeah.
That seems like an unnecessary distraction to an already very insanely
difficult job.
I mean, I'm not saying we do the paperwork well.
I mean, come on, Joe.
There's a reason why the DOD has never passed an audit, but I mean.
Ever.
God.
I know.
The Pentagon, like how many years in a row has the Pentagon failed their audits?
Like 700.
It really is kind of bonkers.
I believe the Marine Corps is the only branch of the military that has ever
actually done a legitimate audit and passed.
Really?
Those guys are tightened up, man.
Those guys, God, I love Marines.
Shout out to the Marines.
They are the best, man.
Wow.
They're the only guys who passed the audits.
That's crazy.
Yeah.
Yeah.
The rest of us are just out there like, I think I got it with me.
But the problem with that is once you don't pass audits and there's a history
of you not only not passing audits but not being punished for not passing audits,
that opens up the door.
No, the Pentagon has never passed, never passed a full clean department-wide
financial audit as of the latest audits.
Defense Department is the only one of 24 major federal agencies that has never
passed a full financial audit.
So it's only been going on since 2018, so no big deal, guys, it's only eight
years.
Yeah, that's only a few trillion dollars.
Whatever, whatever.
It's fake money anyway.
They just make it.
That's pretty crazy.
Well, the budget is interesting in the military.
So they go off a fiscal year from October 1st.
And I get this.
Hold on.
Look at this statistic.
The Pentagon's own audit materials have pointed to a target of around 2028
financial year to achieve, to finally achieve a clean department-wide audit
contingent on fixing longstanding accounting and systems problems.
Imagine if, like, the IRS calls you up and says, Andy, you didn't pass your
audit.
You go, I think I can get it in 2028.
I'm on a lower trajectory towards this target you want to be at.
You want me like this?
I'm like this.
I can get there in about two years.
Okay.
That's reasonable.
Let's just take all your money between now and then.
Oh, no.
We don't need to do that.
Let's give you a bigger budget to work with.
I wonder if that answer takes into account what's going on currently in the
world, because I feel like we're running through some inventory that might have
to be tabulated.
Seems like there's probably a lot of ordinance that's been...
A lot of it does sit around for a while, so there is an argument to expending
it.
I am not in any way, shape, or form...
It could go bad.
It's like tomatoes.
You've got to eat them.
Not exactly like tomatoes.
I suppose a grenade is slightly tomato-shaped, but a JDAM looks nothing like a
tomato.
What do they do if, whether it's missiles or any weapons, have been sitting
around too long, and is there an expiration date?
There probably is.
I've been there when we have literally burned rifle ammunition, large stockpiles
of rifle ammunition.
Really?
Yeah.
Because if it's sitting around too long, there comes the possibility that it's
no longer effective?
Man, this was a while ago.
I think it was more that once we got issued it, we were expected to expend it
all, so we were not allowed to take it back to base with us.
So we were...
Oh, that's hilarious.
Oh, you have...
That's even dumber.
You want some funny stories?
Talk to Evan sometime.
I bet you he's had this experience.
So there's a weapon called the Carl Gustav that, if you shoot too many of these
things, it's in the manual.
It'll start separating the lining in your lungs from your body because it is
just this massive projectile.
And you'll go out and do these training evolutions, and they'll say, yeah, here
we are, the Carl G.
Do not stand behind this bad boy when it goes off.
So how many can you shoot before it separates the linings of your lungs?
I believe the warning is somewhere around six.
Jesus Christ!
Oh, Joe, you'll go out to training evolutions, and there'll be five guys, and
there's a pallet of ammunition, and they'll say, you're not leaving here until
all these are shot.
Oh, my God.
And you're cracking off Carl G's until you have a nosebleed.
Or you'll go out, they have, like, law rockets.
Or, you know, when I first went through his M60 ammo, they're like, yeah, but
you guys, the training's not over.
Until you guys shoot all this.
But, like, yeah, but we totally did everything we're supposed to.
And we're like, yeah, we understand that.
But just go ahead and lay down on the line and shoot these thousands of rounds
of ammunition at whatever you want to because it's been issued to you, so now
you need to go expend it.
Can you show me one of those things going off, Jamie?
Carl G's.
I want to see what it looks like.
I'm trying to talk my wife into naming our next dub Carl G.
I shot a .50 caliber once.
And I was like.
Like a Barrett?
Yeah.
I was like.
How'd that feel?
Boom!
Like, your whole body just goes.
Boom!
Yeah.
So this is a two-man evolution here.
Look at the size of that bad boy.
Holy shit.
Close it.
Lock it.
He's checking the back blast.
This guy's like, fuck, I'm about to lose my teeth.
Here we go.
Oh, did he shoot it?
Yeah.
Oh, I didn't see it.
It's supposed to be essentially recoilless.
It doesn't feel-
Well, why didn't they show it?
They did.
Will they show it again?
That's the back blast right there.
Oh.
Yeah.
So he doesn't even move.
Yeah.
Oh, when he was pulling the trigger, that wasn't loaded.
That was a fake shot of him showing how you pull the trigger.
Oh.
Yeah.
Okay.
We'll see if there's more video.
I just want a better shot of it actually going off in his arms.
Let me see what it looks like.
Ready for fire!
Here we go.
Back blast area clear!
Boy, he looks fucking nervous.
Yeah.
Look at him breathing.
Firing!
Firing!
Firing!
Oh my goodness.
Oh yeah, air burst.
You can set these suckers.
You can twist the warhead to set a delay on the thing.
You can have it air burst, like if they're trying to play hide and seek with
you on a wall.
See, this is the argument for those little robot dogs.
Because you put one on one of them little robot dogs and have that thing shoot
it, and that way you don't have to lose the lining of your lungs.
I don't know if a robot dog could handle that thing.
Really?
What about one of them big robot dogs?
I don't know if the answer is just make it bigger.
Probably.
I'm sure there's a size of robot dog that could handle that.
I mean, you would imagine.
But then you would need a friendly other robot dog to reload it for him.
Right.
But that would be possible.
That would totally be possible.
Or the robot dog has like arms in the back that can do it.
Oh, that was a training round.
Nice little rifle barrel.
Oh, that's crazy.
That's cool.
See?
What a great shot.
Imagine standing there taking that shot, though.
Fuck all that.
As a dude's loading around into it.
Oh, that.
Reached the camera over for that one.
Yeah.
Good Lord.
Yeah.
No, next time you're sitting down with Evan, ask him like, hey, did you ever at
the end
of training evolutions ever have extra ordnance and ammunition that you had to
dispose of?
That's crazy.
They just make you blow it up.
Yeah.
His answer will be yes, and he'll just start laughing.
So if you have to do it outside of shooting, how do you do it?
You can blow stuff in place.
Like, you can make a large pile of stuff and, you know, layer it.
Launch something at it?
Or do you light it on fire?
You can actually light ammunition on fire.
It'll go off.
And what direction?
Well, outside of it being compressed in the chamber of a gun, which, you know,
if you think
of like an AR platform rifle, when the round is in the magazine, it gets pushed
forward by
the bolt, and it's being held by all sides except for down the barrel.
So all of the pressure is pointed in that direction, which is what propels the
bullet
down the barrel.
If you remove that, it kind of just explodes in place.
I'm not saying it's safe to like stand around and like have a beer while you're
watching,
like from me to you.
Right.
We would be on the other side of a burn, but it sounds like popcorn going off.
Oh, okay.
And then for other stuff, you can layer explosive charges on top of it and
probably get all of
it to go higher.
God, it seems insanely wasteful.
It seems like you should be able to say, we achieved what we needed to achieve
in our
training.
Here is our excess ordinance that we could use in the future.
Yeah.
You just haven't spent enough time around the military.
Well, that's been explained to me about budgets, that if you do not meet your
budget, you get
in trouble because then they can't ask for the same amount of money next year.
So I heard that every year that when I was in, in September was a fantastic
month to be in
the military because that's when they, because the budget year is October one
to October one.
So September, the bean counters really start taking a look at what they have
left.
And they'd say, I was a supply rep for a short period of time.
Meaning I was, I was a little cog in the wheel of supplying stuff to the guys.
They're like, you need to spend a hundred thousand dollars in the next three
hours on shoes.
Which let me tell you, REI is happy to take your money.
REI.com will run that card.
And you always would hear this.
If we don't spend it, we're going to lose it.
But I never actually saw that tested.
I don't know if you actually would get in trouble.
They just always assumed that you would.
So you ran that sucker down to bankrupt and then October 1st, you're good to go.
Wow.
Yeah.
So here's a good question in terms of like shoes.
When your missions would involve a bunch of different types of terrain, a bunch
of different,
like, is it, do they favor a lighter weight shoe that's more of an all-purpose
shoe?
Because like, I couldn't imagine you would be wearing like, like a crispy
mountain boot with like high leather.
Yeah.
Well, so it depends.
So you'd vary.
You got to have a wardrobe, Joe.
Right.
Being good at your job is second only to looking good while doing your job.
So we, trust me, I've sent people back to, like, your top and bottom aren't
matching.
We're not doing this.
Go change.
Really?
Yeah.
You have to look the part.
It's equal to your professionalism and tactical ability.
Interesting.
Yeah.
Maybe perhaps I was a little bit picky on that, but I don't, I don't want to
clash on the battlefield.
You need to look good.
It's like, you can't have everybody looking awesome and then like, you look
like shit.
Go change your outfit out.
Yeah.
You have orange boots on, dude.
What are you doing?
Yeah.
The boots, you could, I mean, you take a Pelican case or a box.
You have a tool for every job.
So if you're going to go up in the mountains, if you're going to go like Northeastern
Afghanistan,
you're going to wear a different type of shoe for sure.
If you're in Iraq in an urban environment, you're going to wear probably the
lightest weight.
Like the, I forget who makes them, but like the speed cross shoes.
And those things are, I mean, you might get two months out of those.
So you'd bring a couple pair.
You're going to bring some footwear that if you needed to go into the water,
like not swim around in the water, but pass through water.
Are those like Solomons?
Is that what those B-crosses?
Yeah, Solomons B-crosses.
Yeah.
And the soles on those things, they don't last very long.
But again, when you get a hundred grand to buy shoes for three hours, you can
buy, you
know, extras for people.
So you kind of have a, it's just like all the rest of the gear.
You have cold weather gear, you have desert gear.
And the coldest I've ever been is actually in the desert because of the super
high, high.
And then the super, that swing was way colder than like in mountainous terrain.
It's like the moon.
Yeah.
But I mean, so you, when you lay out your stuff, like before every deployment
you get ready
to go on, you're laying your stuff out.
You probably have two tables like this with all like desert, woodland, cold
weather, layering
system, shoes, different load bearing equipment, different back.
And then you just lay it all out, put it into a bag, and then you're doing the
best you
can.
Then you're kind of just packing, you know, for what comes up in front of you.
And you're just ordering stuff from REI for real?
Sometimes.
Yeah.
Wow.
So not everybody, not everywhere.
The conventional teams are very limited in their ability to do that.
At a JSOC level, you have a little bit more room and flexibility to source from
outside
vendors.
So you would go for the best possible tool for the job?
100% of the time.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Instead of just get military issue.
Correct.
I got the dumbest question for you about Afghanistan.
Tell me more.
This is the dumbest question.
Have you heard of the story of the Kandahar giant?
Are we talking about an actual giant?
Uh-huh.
No.
How did you hear the story about a Kandahar giant?
There's a crazy thing called the internet.
I'm surprised you haven't.
I may spend less time on the internet than you guys.
And if you have a good algorithm, and by good, I mean retarded.
Yeah.
Uh, you get, so.
Oh my.
This is a visual representation.
Obviously not an actual picture.
Yes.
So there was a story that, uh, what is the guy's name that was on Jesse
Michaels' podcast
recently?
Tim.
I don't remember.
I'll check it out.
Uh, so, supposedly, there was a giant that engaged U.S. troops in Kandahar,
Afghanistan,
and, uh, in a very remote area.
And this guy was shot and killed and medevaced out of there or, you know,
helicoptered out of
there, and, uh, there, 12-foot giant, Tim, uh, Albarino.
And he was, was he telling this story as if he was there or he heard this?
There's never a guy who was there.
Damn it.
There's apparently one guy who has his face covered up in one of these videos
that I watched.
It's like one of the blurry, like, you know, like a witness to a mob scene.
Yep.
And so his-
That's how you know they're legit.
A hundred percent.
Thank you.
I think the same way.
That's why I sent it to all my friends.
Um, but he was telling the story from people that he talked to that were there.
See, and here's the thing.
I want stories like that to be true.
Me too.
I still am just waiting.
Same thing with aliens.
God, I so deeply want it to be true.
I just need somebody to hold up an actual piece of evidence and say, this is
what I'm talking
about.
Instead of, I saw, I know somebody who was read into, I had a buddy who got
engaged by
a giant or they- like, okay, where is it?
Right.
And until then, I got a real hard time believing that.
Oh, I'm with you.
But I also want to believe, which I know clouds my vision.
I just think it makes you hopeful.
It gets me to a certain point.
And then the point- like, there's a point where my logic kicks in and I'm not
willing to
go any further and that's Bigfoot.
Yeah.
With Bigfoot, I'm like, I know too many guys that are in the woods all the time.
And let's not forget the game cameras they often leave behind.
That's right.
Like millions of game cameras.
That's right.
Come on.
At this point, like I could have bought it in the 1960s, like maybe, who knows,
before
drones, before satellites, before this, before that.
And, you know, there's good arguments that you wouldn't find the body because
like you
and I've hunted in the mountains many, many times, I've never seen a mountain
lion skeleton.
Have you?
No.
No.
No.
I don't know anybody who has.
I've seen mountain lions.
I've never seen a mountain lion skeleton.
I've never seen a bear skeleton.
I'm sure people have found them.
Yeah.
But I haven't.
And we know there's a shit ton of mountain lions and a shit ton of bears.
So if there was a very small population of primates, it's not inconceivable
that you wouldn't
find their body, especially if they were in some way advanced to the point
where they were
burying their dead, which is, you know, it's not outside the realm of
possibility if they
have a language of like, who knows what these things are.
But no, I just, that doesn't, I think it used to be real.
And I think there's real evidence of that.
I want it to be.
No, there's real evidence.
There's a thing called Gigantopithecus.
It was a eight foot plus tall bipedal hominid that existed in Asia and it's in
the orangutan
family.
And there's like a recreations of what it looks like standing next to a human.
It's huge.
But that just makes sense.
I mean, there used to be giant woolly mammoths.
There used to be giant sloths.
The idea of a giant primate is not inconceivable.
It's like size is all relative anyway.
Our idea of what's big compared to a fucking giraffe or this, it's all, it
doesn't, you know,
if you have enough resources and there's enough food for these things, they
live in a lush
tropical environment or a lush wilderness environment.
It's not impossible to think that something would get way bigger than a gorilla.
But for that thing to exist today, so that, yeah, that's what it used to look
like.
So I think that is probably what all these ancient myths are based on.
That's probably what used to exist.
So it was bipedal, which is also interesting.
And that's based on its jaw structure.
Here's a question for you that you, the species burying themselves, these are
intrusive thoughts
that I have and can't get out of my head.
Why don't we bury people vertically to save space?
That's a good question.
Wouldn't you get more square footage?
A lot more.
Yeah.
It'd be harder to make a six foot tall hole or, you know, for a tall person.
I feel like they make oil drills that could, I mean, I'm not saying that.
They do now.
Yeah.
But back in the day, it'd be easy to, someone's laid down, just roll them over
into the hole.
I mean, I would.
But because of a six foot deep hole that's like six feet long.
Joe, I'm not saying it's easy.
I'm just saying.
In today's world, yeah.
I think we can evolve.
Well, here's even weirder.
You know, you have to embalm people before you cremate them.
But why?
Exactly.
My friend Joey Diaz says it's a racket because he knew a guy who ran a funeral
home.
The big embalming market?
Well, it's all a racket.
The whole funeral home thing's a racket.
They know, like, your family member dies.
You have to bury your family member.
You're in grief.
And then they try to sell you on some fucking fancy coffin.
They sell you on this and sell you on that.
But the embalming is, it's mandatory.
I did not know that.
At least for some places.
Because I know that some people are trying to do what they call natural burials.
And I don't know what the regulations are on.
Like, let's find that out.
There are upright, they call it upright burials.
It is a thing.
They do exist.
In the U.S. though?
Or is this something like Nordic country?
There's a cemetery that does it already.
I was trying to look up more information on it.
Probably a bunch of cheapies.
One thing already that I can give them space.
I'm just thinking about, like, most of them have fences.
So, like, maximum square footage utilization.
Right.
That makes sense.
Yeah.
But gravity is an issue a little bit.
Keeping it in the, I don't know.
There's just stuff.
Gravity is an issue.
Gravity is not going to be an issue.
First off, once you're in that coffin, nothing good is happening.
Right.
Vertically her horse.
That doesn't make sense.
What kind of gravity is he just dropping him in the hole?
I think it would be like this.
Like, slide it down that hole.
I think they're saying the family doesn't like the idea that they're going to
be compressed into
a small amount in the bottom of the coffin.
Like a science issue, I think.
Well, they're fucking dead.
You know?
Yeah.
You know the most gnarly way they bury people or the most gnarly funeral.
Well, they're still alive?
No.
Well, they're dead.
Well, I'm saying that would be the most gnarly.
Right.
The most gnarly post-mortem is the Tibetan Sky Funeral.
Do you know how they do that?
No.
Vultures.
They literally break the body up, chop it up into chunks, and the vultures know
it, and
so they prepare.
So the vultures are all hanging around waiting.
Wow.
It is a tradition in Tibet with at least certain people to get rid of their
bodies that way.
And the idea is that, look, the person's dead.
This is a more natural way, you know, and they'll cycle back into the ecosystem
the way
it's supposed to be with all animals.
We're the only animal that opts out of, like, rejoining with all biological
life.
Because it's supposed to be a biological body deteriorates underground that
feeds the soil,
that feeds, you know, whatever animals feast on its bones, and then becomes all
part of this
big, beautiful cycle.
And we're like, eh, we've got some chemicals laying around we'd like to fill
the veins up
with to make them completely poison so that they never deteriorate or they just
slowly
turn into gelatinous sludge.
By state, it looks like.
Okay.
So it says burial, burial, burial, why is that word weird to me right now?
Burial is regulated by state by state, city, county zoning.
There's no federal rule that specifies body position, horizontal versus
vertical.
What are the laws in terms of embalming?
Green or natural burial.
Simple shroud, no vault, minimal disturbance is legal in all 50 states, but
only in locations
that comply with state and local rules.
Green or natural burial.
Distance from water sources would be a big reason for that.
Oh, interesting.
So you don't want people to rot.
But what about cows?
Cows can rot.
You know, a dead coyote just rots.
We don't want to eat people.
Yeah, but it's not.
Or drink them either.
I guess.
Well, it didn't.
No.
I was watching this documentary about this family where the kid, his dad was a
serial killer.
The dad would throw people in a well and he had to help him when he was young.
His dad would kill people and then throw them down the well.
First time he did it, he said, I think he was a young boy when his dad first
took him to get rid of a body and throw it down a well.
Not all bonding experiences are created equal.
How many people have died drinking well water that was polluted by a dead body?
Hopefully not that many.
What did you find, Jamie?
No, I'm just as disgusting.
Have you thought through your end of life?
Have you told people about it?
I would like to not be embalmed.
I would like to just be buried in the ground and be absorbed naturally like
everything else.
Do you have that written down anywhere, though?
No.
Once I'm gone, figure it out.
I don't give a fuck.
Well, there's an argument to help figuring it out for those left behind so it
makes it easier.
I don't want to make things easier.
When I'm gone, I want it to be complicated as fuck.
I want them to be arguing over my will.
Well, I only ask because we had to think through this stuff because you do like
a review of your will every time.
Yeah.
And, you know, final requests, I guess it would be.
So you had to think through that stuff.
Jamie, stop scrolling.
So for direct cremation, no public viewing, cremation within a few days, body
kept refrigerated,
embalming is generally unnecessary and not legally required in most states.
But the thing is, most of the time it's done, according to my friend Joey,
whose friend, at least it was in the past,
whose friend ran a funeral home.
The guy was telling him what a fucking scam it all is.
You're just charging people for all this stuff.
It probably, just like anything else.
Here it is.
Many funeral homes require embalming for presentation and public health reasons.
If you want a public viewing or an open casket before cremation.
Oh, who does that?
Some jurisdictions or airlines may require embalming for long distance or
international transport.
Or if there's a long delay before cremation.
Well, that makes sense.
Because if you don't embalm it, you're going to stink up the whole fucking
plane.
U.S. law, I mean, I'm sure you've smelled dead bodies before.
But the first time I ever smelled a dead body, I was a little kid and someone
died in our apartment building.
It was crazy.
You'd walk down the hallway and the fucking smell that was me and my cousins
and my sister, we were walking down the hall.
We were like, what is that?
We were probably like six.
It was this insane smell.
And it turned out this lady who was just living by herself died.
And so she was just rotting in this apartment building.
You think you still recognize it to this day?
It's very unique.
Is it?
Humans are very unique smell as opposed to a regular animal?
Well, the mechanism of death can change, I guess, a little bit.
Sure.
But in general, yeah, a couple days later, they all kind of smell the same.
I've heard, yeah, I've heard humans are uniquely gross in the way we smell.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's not awesome.
Yeah.
Not awesome to be around it.
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So this embalming thing, so is that not the case?
Like, is it where funeral homes request embalming before they cremate you?
Also, here's another scam, according to my friend.
When you think you get your family member ashes, you get a bunch of shit.
You get a bunch of ashes.
You get ashes from some fucking guy you don't even know.
They don't care.
They just shove a bunch of ashes into an urn.
You're like, it's grandma.
She's here with us forever.
But it's not really.
I hope that one's not true.
That's gnarly.
Yeah, it's true.
It's like the epitome of laziness.
I'm pretty sure it's true.
The question is, though, if the requirement was coming from funeral homes
instead of law,
and the court says, yeah.
Most of the time, yes, the requirement to embalm before viewing or before cremation
is coming from funeral homes or cemetery policy.
Right, so they're trying to make more money.
So this is what Joey was telling me about.
Yeah.
So it's not a federal requirement.
FTC says embalming may be necessary if you choose certain arrangements like a
public viewing.
But the necessity is based on the funeral home standards, not a blanket legal
mandate.
So most people probably don't know that.
So the funeral home will tell you, oh, we have to embalm them first.
And you're in a pretty susceptible and malleable mind space.
Exactly.
At that time, yeah.
And they're just really used to it.
They're really used to it.
They must get so accustomed to just – they don't give a fuck.
There's bodies there every day.
People are always dying.
It's an opportunity to make more money, which is rough.
Yeah.
You would like to think that humanity wouldn't be like that.
But yet, here we are.
Find out if – well, the other thing is like – you remember that Sam Kinison
bit?
I don't know if you ever saw it.
I know who Sam Kinison is.
I'm not very familiar with his bits.
One of the greatest of all time.
But he had this bit about homosexual necrophiliacs who were caught spending –
paying a bunch of money to be alone with the freshest male corpse.
What?
And it was an actual true story that he read in the news.
But his whole thing was like – imagine you're on the slab.
You're like, well, I'm dead now.
I'm going to be with Jesus.
And hey, hey, what?
And he would be like rocking back and forth on his stomach.
What is this?
It feels like some guy's got his dick in my ass.
You mean life keeps fucking you in the ass even after you're dead?
It never ends.
It never ends.
You comedians are a unique bunch.
You know, I'm glad there's somebody out there who can weave a story like that
together and have a meaningful message at the end of it.
But there have been cases of people getting like hot girls that are freshly
dead and fucking them and getting caught.
Yeah, because humans are horrible.
Disgusting.
I try to tell myself that the vast majority of humans are trying to do the best
that they can.
But I never forget that there are people out there who are like that.
Sure.
Yeah, there's people out there that are gross.
They're just evil.
I was reading about this guy who is an oncologist who got arrested because he
was giving people chemotherapy that didn't really have cancer.
Because chemotherapy is uniquely profitable for doctors.
Yeah.
It's very profitable.
So he was telling people that they had cancer and they did not.
And he was giving them chemotherapy, which I have a friend who died recently.
And he went through the first round of chemotherapy, went into remission.
And the chemotherapy was so bad that when the cancer came back, he decided to
just die.
That's how my mom died.
She had survived cervical cancer.
It metastasized into her lungs 10 years later.
Got on the chemo, which I don't know what is in that stuff, but the platinum
treatment, whatever it may be, and had the realization that she was either
going to die from cancer or she was going to die from the chemotherapy.
And she chose hospice just because the ride on the chemotherapy was so horrible
that she couldn't take it anymore.
My friend said that the pain of brushing his teeth was so intense, like the sores
in his mouth from the chemo.
And then once cancer went into remission, and then it came back.
And by the way, this cancer came very quickly after vaccination.
It was one of those where, you know, you can get into that all day long if you
want to really get into a deep conspiracy theory that's got some real facts to
it.
But there's something called SV40, and they found SV40 in some of the mRNA
vaccines.
SV40 is simian virus 40, and it's a virus that was contracted that people got
because they used kidney cells from monkeys in order to cultivate these
vaccines.
This is, like, known about for a long time.
And in certain batches, they've tested positive for SV40.
Which is, like, some just legacy material that they have that they make
vaccines out of.
And he was one of the lucky ones.
It sucks, man.
Yeah, he was a young dude.
You know, he was in his 40s, early 40s.
Fit, young guy.
Cancer came on like a fucking tidal wave.
Just a freight train, he mowed him down?
How much time did he have between diagnosis and death?
I got him connected with Gary Brecka, and Gary Brecka helped him quite a bit.
And that's how he originally got through it.
And it got over it.
He was okay again.
And, you know, went into remission.
He said he's feeling pretty good.
And then, man, it wasn't more than a year and a half, two years later, he came
back with a vengeance.
And he was dead just, you know, six months later.
Does it change how you view life, your own life, when that happens close to you?
It's just shocking that healthy, fit people get something like that.
And it happens so quickly.
You know, this is, you know, like I said, my suspicions is it's connected to
the vaccine.
And I don't think that everybody who got that mRNA vaccine is going to die of
cancer.
I think it's a contamination issue.
Some of the batches had it and some of the batches didn't.
And then some people react very differently to whatever's in it.
But with him, man, it got him.
And it's not uncommon.
There's there's a shitload of ignored cases of what they're calling turbo
cancer that people have gotten after the mRNA vaccine.
Like it's it's barely a conspiracy theory.
It's more likely an ignored, inconvenient fact that these pharmaceutical drug
companies are trying to ignore.
Do you think they were trying going upstream from that, the pharmaceutical
companies or people that were pushing to try to find what perhaps they thought
would be the fix to the solution?
Do you think that they were doing the best that they could and just their
enthusiasm outstripped their capabilities or they pushed stuff a little bit too
early?
Or was it as deep of as a conspiracy that people think and that behind the
scenes they're trying to reduce overall global population?
I don't go that way.
I don't go to the reduce overall global population.
But I do understand why people would think that because there are there have
been a bunch of people that are supposedly philanthropists, Bill Gates, that
have talked about reducing overall population being a goal.
And that goal could be like Bill Gates is actually quoted saying that that goal
could be achieved through vaccines.
Like what the fuck does that mean reducing global population through vaccines?
How?
Well, one way is the what is it DDP or DTP vaccine?
Diphtheria something and percussis.
So they were caught in Africa.
One of the vaccines that they were using on women in Africa turned out it's tetanus,
right?
Diphtheria, tetanus and percussis had HCG in it, which is an endocrine disruptor.
I don't know what's the exact specific description of it, but what it was
essentially doing was rendering these women infertile.
And so they were supposedly vaccinating them for tetanus and these other
diseases.
But really what it was doing was they were making these women infertile and
they were experimenting on them.
And they were doing this in Africa.
You know, they like to experiment in places where not a lot of people are
watching and there's not a lot of infrastructure and not a lot of Internet
connection and they can, you know, get away with trying stuff on people.
So this concept of reducing population through vaccination, there's some real
world examples of people doing that.
But, you know, why?
I don't know.
I don't think that I think if you find out about how much money was generated
during the vaccine pandemic, during the COVID pandemic, that is the most likely
scenario.
They were just trying to make an enormous amount of money.
Do you remember that you and I did the first podcast after the lockdown in L.A.?
Yeah.
And then I drove I drove with my wife down to San Diego.
And I don't think she had been because we got to San Diego in about 17 minutes.
There's no one on the road.
And I remember saying to her, if we come back, which we will, don't expect this.
It was like a ghost town.
But we were in L.A. the day that it locked down.
I remember texting you like, um, are we good?
You're like, yeah, YouTube says we're essential.
Let's roll.
We're essential.
That was what was crazy.
There was essential businesses that were allowed to stay open.
Restaurants weren't one of them fucking insanely enough.
But fast food places were.
So there were certain places that were as essential and media was essential.
So we were allowed to.
Although we did get ratted out.
The health department came to our L.A. studio and they made us put a bag of
masks on the wall when you go in.
And also a note that shows like all the precautions that you have to take place,
like stand six feet apart.
And then people were also complaining that this table is not six feet wide.
And so we weren't observing the proper social distancing.
So I said, okay, well, why don't we just do this and you do that and we'll do a
podcast.
Oh, yeah, we're six feet.
Now we're six feet.
Now we're good.
It's like it's.
And then it turns out that that was all made up.
It was all horse shit.
You know, it's the Who song.
We won't get fooled again.
You know.
I want to believe that they were trying to do the best that they can.
I don't believe that.
I said, I want to believe.
Yeah, I know.
I don't even want to believe that.
But then what do we do about it?
We never listen again.
What if they're right the next time?
I don't think they will be.
I don't think they're ever right with that kind of stuff, especially something
that's not killing everybody as they said it was.
They were just gaslighting us all over television.
The people were dropping like flies.
And especially egregiously disgusting is gaslighting us about children dying
from it.
Yeah.
You know, and there's a lot of really fucking shitty human beings that were
posting about this on Twitter.
And I don't know if they're being paid to do it or if they're just ideologically
captured.
But there was a lot of people on Twitter talking about children dying from
COVID.
It's a fucking dirty lie.
There was a very small amount of kids that died during the pandemic.
And those kids, all of them, had something wrong with them already.
All of them had comorbidities, which is like also a giant percentage of all the
people that died, period.
It's like, what is the number?
It's like 75% of them, something like that, had four plus comorbidities.
Four comorbidities is crazy.
Yeah.
It's like, you're already fucked.
That means four things that are already killing you.
Do you think we learned anything during that time period?
Yeah.
I think we learned that the pharmaceutical drug company has a lock on the media
that is very disturbing.
Like the media did not report at all vaccine injuries.
They didn't report on it at all.
It was never discussed.
People were dropping dead.
They were ignoring it and gaslighting.
And then we also found out the amount of money that these pharmaceutical drug
companies pay to these corporations, whether it's Fox or NBC or CBS or whoever
it is, in advertising.
It's a huge part of their budget, is advertising money.
And the way Callie Means explained it to me, he goes, it's not so that people
find out about the drugs.
It's so that these news stations don't criticize the pharmaceutical drug
companies.
Well, if they control the ad inventory and then the checkbook behind that.
Exactly.
Yeah.
Exactly.
Do you ever do pharmaceutical type reads for your show?
No.
No, I say no to them.
I only say yes to dick pills.
Dick pills I'll say yes to.
Like, listen, get hard, stay hard.
Yeah, yeah, I'm down with that.
Well, see, I'm not anti-pharmaceutical drug company, but I am.
And the problem with corporations is they have an obligation to their
shareholders to make the most amount of money possible.
And it's not the people that are making these things.
The people that are making them, these doctors and engineers and scientists,
all these wizards that are coming up with all these life-saving medications,
then you get the money people.
And the money people are the ones that fuck everything up because the money
people say, you know what?
We could charge $1,000 a pill for this stuff.
You know, there's certain medications that literally cost $1,000 a pill, you
know, and they just try to make the most amount of money possible and prescribe
it to the most amount of people possible.
And then you get monsters like this cancer doctor that I was telling you that
was giving chemotherapy to people that don't fucking have cancer.
So how do we break that system, though?
Hammers.
Take that guy in a room.
Take that guy in a room.
Just keep him alive.
Slowly break him down with a hammer.
Start with his toes.
But I feel like it's deeply entrenched.
Work your way up to his hips.
I feel like it's so deeply entrenched in our political system as part of it as
well, too.
That the money transfer...
How do you break that and detach that?
AI God.
AI God has to come alive and take over the system.
Now we're really getting into terrain I don't understand.
I know what the word AI means.
I don't know where they're going.
AI God.
The one that created that Jesus meme that Trump just posted, that's AI God.
Joe, I told you he explained it.
He was a doctor.
That's what they call them.
That's what AI God calls Jesus.
Jesus is a doctor.
The mental gymnastics involved in some of these people who are so ideologically
captured is shocking to me.
It's weird.
It's weird because there's no way there should be this kind of money in
politics.
There's no way it would be good for anybody if the people with all the money
are controlling most of the things that happen.
It doesn't make any sense because they're all sick anyway.
They just want more.
If you're worth $200 billion and you're still trying to make more money, that's
what you're trying to do with your time, well, you're sick.
There's something wrong with you.
There's like, what are you doing with that money?
How is it possible that you could spend all that money?
Isn't the answer for some people or the dollar figure that they're shooting for
just more, though?
Always.
My friend, oh, you know Brian Callen.
Brian Callen has a friend who's worth $3 billion and he feels poor because his
friend is worth $80 billion.
Imagine that.
Imagine feeling insecure.
You have $3,000 million and you feel poor.
You feel poor.
Yeah, because he's eating ramen at night.
Let me just tell you.
Yeah, it bothersome.
Yeah, mac and cheese and ramen out of the microwave.
I feel poor when I'm around Elon.
Yeah, but...
Jokingly.
But also everybody on earth probably does.
But it's jokingly feel poor.
Like, I don't really feel bad for myself or insecure about the fact that he's
got a...
What does he got worth that?
He's getting close to a trillion.
He's like worth $800 billion on paper.
Yeah.
Until California taxes get a hold of him.
They'd like to suck all that dry and give it to the homeless people.
Well, they're doing good.
Their program would work if we gave them a little bit more money.
That's all they need.
They just need that wealth tax.
If they could just siphon off some money from the billionaires.
That's the real problem is they don't have enough money.
Are you glad you left?
Fuck yeah.
Fuck yeah.
You've been here, what?
Six years.
Six years?
Yeah, almost six years.
I've been in Montana from nine.
Nice.
I can't think of a reason that I'm going to leave.
Yeah.
I really can't.
It is amazing.
Well, Montana's got so much going on for it.
First of all, there's less people, which is relaxing.
You feel better.
1.1 million people in the state.
That's all of Austin.
That's probably a subdivision in Austin.
Well, Austin is a million, and then the surrounding area is another million.
We just had a net decrease in population in Montana last year.
Yeah, because all those fucking people that came over because of Yellowstone,
they went
through a couple of winters.
And COVID.
They're like, yeah, this sucks.
We're out.
Or that remote work job was like, hey, time to come back to the old office.
Also, you try driving an electric car when it's fucking 30 below zero outside.
That bitch is, oh, it says you got 200 miles.
Guess what?
You got 30.
There is one cyber truck where I live.
It's not mine.
I bet it's a rich guy.
He owns a Thai food restaurant.
There you go.
Which, I mean, I don't know what level of wealth is associated with it.
Probably got some money.
Yeah.
But honestly, it might be money.
Laundering is what he specializes in.
It's hard to say.
Might have a nail salon or two under his umbrella as well.
They're great when it's warm out.
Yeah.
But the battery life significantly.
Do you remember?
I think it was Chicago or Detroit.
There was a few years back, there was a giant blizzard.
That hit.
And people with electric cars, their cars died on the highway.
And they were really fucked.
I do remember this.
Yeah.
Really fucked.
Because, look, if you have a full tank of gas and you're idling, just idling on
the highway,
it'll last a pretty long time.
Especially if it's diesel.
Jeez.
Oh, you'll get 24 hours out of it, too.
A hundred percent.
For sure.
Yeah.
So you'll survive.
If you have a fucking electric car and you get stuck on the highway and it's
just bumper
to bumper forever and that thing is the only thing keeping you warm, you better
pray that
someone lets you in their car.
Yeah.
Because you're going to die out there.
You'll freeze to death in your own fucking car.
I like the concept of them.
You know?
I drove one today.
It's a time machine.
Yeah.
I have a Tesla Model S.
Highly...
Don't you have, like, a highly modified one that was...
Oh, yeah.
I was going to say, it might say Model S on the outside.
Yeah.
Well, the speed is the same as the standard one.
The speed is exactly the same because they don't do anything to the engine
because it
already has 1,100 horsepower.
Didn't they, like, widen yours somehow?
Yes.
The track has widened.
It's got a much more robust suspension setup.
It's got carbon fiber fenders.
There's a company called Unplugged Performance.
And they take it and it just handles phenomenally.
And the brakes are way better.
So, it does that.
But the thing about it is the speed that's just insane.
Like, when you merge onto a highway, it's a time machine.
You just hit the gas like...
And it's no sound.
So, it's...
And all of a sudden, you're going 90 miles an hour like that.
It's nuts.
We're into different things, Joe.
I'm going to stick with my F-150.
I like those, too.
I have one of those.
I have a Raptor.
I have a Hennessey Raptor.
I don't have that model.
Yeah.
So, I like a Raptor, but I like one with a thousand horse.
First off, who doesn't?
I just don't like the price tag associated with a thousand horsepower one.
It's a little pricey.
Yeah.
But I was on the phone the other day because, you know, it's got the speakerphone
thing.
So, I'm on the phone with my friend Tommy and I'm driving.
He goes, yo, what the fuck are you driving?
A dinosaur.
You could hear the...
Yeah.
And the supercharger whine.
It's awesome.
But I get it.
It's not for everybody.
But if you drive one, just the ability of those things, just the insane
capability, the ability to go zero to 60 in under two seconds is just nuts.
Yeah.
For a four-door sedan.
You know how to drive, though?
Yeah.
Some people probably are better off not getting into a car that can do that.
Well, that's what's weird, right?
So, like, if you want, like, say, if you want to get a concealed carry license,
you have to go to a range and you have to demonstrate that you know how to use
a gun correctly.
Are you talking about here in Texas?
Yeah.
Because Montana is a constitutional carry state.
Well, it's constitutional carry here as well, but still concealed carry, you
get reciprocity.
So, if you have concealed carry, you get reciprocity in Florida, Nevada.
So, if you get a concealed carry license in Texas, you can go to places where,
you know, they're only – maybe they don't even have concealed – they don't
have constitutional carry, but they recognize Texas concealed carry laws.
Because of the additional training, per se?
Yes, exactly.
But the point is, like, you have to show that you know how to use it.
You can go buy a Corvette, and you don't have to show anything, which is crazy.
Well, you have to show a likelihood that you're able to pay for it.
That's it.
That's it.
Yeah.
So, you can get, like, a Corvette ZR1, which is also 1,100 horsepower, and
fucking bonkers – a bonkers fast, insanely engineered car.
You don't have to show that you know how to drive at all.
Yeah.
You just have to have a driver's license.
So, you can drive around –
Right into the nearest telephone pole.
Sideways.
I mean, there's plenty of videos of that.
Yeah.
A friend – my friend Whitney sent me a video of a street takeover in Los
Angeles this Saturday night, where they took over some street.
And gunshots, and people just – they cut off the entire street, so no one can
go anywhere.
People surround these cars, and the cars drive around in circles.
Yeah.
And then someone started shooting at people.
Awesome.
What a classic pairing.
Yeah.
Good times.
It's good to have rules.
Yeah.
Yeah, they're not doing that in Montana.
Exactly.
Exactly.
You have to have an enormous amount of people in order for things to get that
chaotic with a very small percentage of humans.
Were there cops there for that, or they just didn't want to get in the mix?
They didn't show up until after, you know.
The cops showed up when, you know, people started shooting.
Yeah, that's generally when they're going to respond to that.
And they're getting security cameras.
But the thing is, in Los Angeles, they don't fucking put you in jail for
anything.
They let you right out.
There's no cash bail.
They're letting people out for all kinds of crimes.
I was listening to a podcast where a guy was a former gang member, and he was
saying he's leaving Los Angeles because they're letting 70,000 people out of
prison.
It's like, it's going to get too dangerous.
So it was too dangerous for the gang member.
There's the answers to some tests right there.
Maybe pay attention.
Yeah.
You got to wonder, like, what are they trying to do with California where
everything seems to go in the wrong direction?
Like, if you look at the vaccine thing, like, do you think they're really
trying to lower population?
Is that what they're trying to do?
Like, kill off a percentage?
What are they trying to do with California?
Are they really trying to destroy the state?
Because if I was trying to destroy a state, that's how I would do it.
I'd let everybody out of jail.
I'd regulate the fuck out of everything so nothing could get done.
You know, you can't buy these in California.
Why?
These are Alps.
Yeah, the nicotine patches?
Because they're flavored.
This is wintergreen.
Shout out to Tucker Carlson.
This is his brand.
I like these.
These are very delicious.
By the way, I showed these to Daniel Cormier.
He goes, where'd you get those?
And I go, in Texas, you could buy them.
He goes, you know you can't buy them in California?
And he goes, I get them, and I bring them around.
All these dads, they're like, I'm a dealer.
They're like, where'd you get that?
Because they won't let you have flavored nicotine pouches.
It's illegal in California.
It's for your safety.
They're trying to turn you into just a little baby that needs everything from
the government.
Everything.
Everything.
We were at that launch party.
Somehow I got an invitation to be there.
So we go to Tennessee.
Tucker stands on a chair and talks about Alp.
Stood on a chair?
Yeah, because it was just like, it was in Dave Ramsey's barn.
And again, like, I'm so far not in the social circle of this.
And so we listened.
I think he should have sat on someone's shoulders.
That would be even better.
He's pretty big.
So you needed somebody who, like, has squatted once or twice in their life.
So we listened to him talk, and they had a little, like, on the other room,
there's a huge fireplace.
It was just this, like, a charcuterie table about this size.
So I'm getting some cheese, and then I turn around, and I'm like, hello, Mel
Gibson.
And I just fucking went and sat in the corner.
I was so uncomfortable in that environment.
Because Mel was there?
Mel, there was a lot of people there.
I just, you know, you've sat down and talked with him.
You exist in a different orbit than I do.
I exist in an orbit of 1.1 million total people that I don't see every day.
In the state.
In the state.
So, like, I interact with the people I want to.
I was not prepared to have a cheese stick and turn around and see the dude from
Lethal Weapons standing there.
Like, hi, I got to get out of here.
By the way, if you talk to him, he is one of the most normal, easy-to-talk-to
movie stars you will ever meet.
He has no heirs about him.
He's very easy to talk to.
I just don't do good in social situations like that where, like, everybody was
relatively recognizable.
I just, I could sit in the corner and I hang out with my wife and we eat charcuterie.
I get it.
I get it.
I don't like those things either, believe it or not.
It's, well, I have, I have been, do you remember the event you did at
Performance Archery in San Diego?
Oh, yeah.
I, I didn't realize, uh, I watched you trying to make your way to the bathroom
and it took you about 30 minutes to go 20 feet.
And I don't know how you deal with that.
I don't, that's, I mean, one, I know you well enough outside of that, like, you're
a genuinely nice person.
You will give people the time, like, because you're appreciative, right, of the
fact that they want to meet you.
Like, I totally get that.
But also, sometimes you have to piss.
Yeah.
I mean, I don't know how any of those people, or maybe you don't, operate, like,
in a sense, in air quotes, of normalcy.
It's not normal, but the way I think of it is, like, they just like me.
It's way better than if they hated me.
Yeah.
Way better than if you go into the bathroom and everybody wants to kick your
ass.
Like, they're, I'm going to the bathroom, they just want to say hi.
And for them, it's a very unique moment.
So, I try to reset every time I see a new person.
And I try to treat them as if it's, like, this is a, for them, it's a unique
experience.
They get to meet, and never believe that I am unique.
You know, don't believe the hype and don't think you are special, but always
appreciate the fact that someone else does.
And so, take the time to say hi.
And I can't, the UFCs are hard because I can't.
Like, sometimes I'm going through the crowd and I have to, like, sometimes I'll
leave my commentary seat and then I have to take a piss.
And then I have to run back.
And then everybody's trying to get a picture while you're, you know, like, you're
literally going through a crowd of people.
You're talking about in-between belts.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And so, like, I high-five people, but they're like, give me a picture.
And I can't, I can't, I can't.
And I can't stop because if I stop, then they'll all swarm and I can't do that.
I have to keep moving.
So, that bothers me that I have to say I can't stop.
Even when I'm leaving the venue, they're like, give me a picture.
I can't, I can't.
I have to keep moving.
I'm sorry.
I appreciate you, but I can't stop because if I stop, I'll never get out of
here.
I've been to one of those, and we were at UFC 300.
That was a good one.
Your seat was good.
You had a good seat.
I watched the fight from the back of a projection onto one of the things up in
one of the-
Well, you didn't get tickets for me.
I'm never going to ask you for tickets, by the way.
Well, just fucking let me know when you want to go.
Well, no, actually, I don't want to go because I missed listening to you guys
talk.
Yeah, that's a factor.
So, we were sitting there, and I heard Gaethje get flatlined before we saw it.
And I'm like, holy cow.
You want to talk about, not like the punch, but the reaction to that?
Right.
Oh, my God.
Insane.
But there were so many people, and we were there with Jocko and Origen, and
there had some people
that were down there a little bit.
We ended up, Lee and I ended up watching from the back.
So, we got to see it, but we both said the same thing.
It's way better on the couch, or I want a pair of headsets like this so I can
lift.
Yes.
Because now, like, let me be honest, before I started training Jiu-Jitsu, I was
like,
you fucking stand him up right now.
Those guys are just, those.
Well, now, as a Jiu-Jitsu black belt, aren't you embarrassed about your old
self?
Now I'm like, you don't let that guy earn that position.
You don't ever get them off the cage, and you never get them off the ground.
I'm with you.
I've been preaching that from the beginning of the fucking sport.
Oh, I would have been the dude with, like, the redneck guzzler, Coors Light,
half covered
in it, like, fucking stand him up.
Because it's like, and now I'm like, no, no, no.
Never.
Especially when they're sweaty.
Exactly.
If that guy's dominating him, you stay right there.
Exactly.
It's so hard to get someone to the ground, and it's so hard to hold them down
if they're
good.
The experience, though, from-
Not good.
I am going to say this.
Yeah.
I would rather pay for the Paramount than listen, or for the pay-per-view than
the current
Paramount experience.
Sorry, Dana, but the commercials suck.
Yeah, I'm not a fan of commercials.
That's why I like YouTube Premium.
I don't want commercials.
Yeah.
I'll pay for the pay-per-view.
They should offer Paramount Premium, like, where you get no commercials.
Like, you should get a different experience for the UFC.
There's been some streaming issues as well, too.
Really?
And I know they'll, yeah, it's, there's, well, it could also be.
Yeah, I mean-
Montana internet.
Listen, we have electricity.
We have running water.
We, I've actually seen solar panels up in Montana.
They don't work great for nine months out of the year, but-
Do you get the Starlink?
Yeah.
That's the shit.
I was actually one of the first people to get it in Montana, and it works
fantastic.
I have the little one that's like a book.
Yeah, it's amazing.
It's fucking great.
You just take it, I took it to Utah.
We were streaming, like, stuff while we were in the cabins.
It was awesome.
It's kind of life-changing.
Oh, it's great.
And then sometimes, I need to-
FaceTime with people.
But then other times, like, I'm going to leave that in the truck, because
otherwise, maybe
I'm just going to enjoy working at it.
That's true.
But the, you know, the thing about elk hunting is you're so tired by the end of
the day that
you're not going to sit there looking at your phone anyway.
But it's nice to be able to FaceTime home and say hi to people.
For sure.
But I do like the fact that when you're out there in the woods, it doesn't work
at all.
Yeah, that is, God, I hate hunting sometimes, like last year.
Did you strike out last year?
Oh, no.
Even worse.
Wounded an elk.
Oh, no.
I think I texted you this.
Oh, yeah, it's with a rifle, too.
Well, I tell people that I am the Navy SEAL sniper with the most confirmed
misses.
Because I can just smash that trigger back.
Close your eyes, hold your breath, let it gray out a little bit, and then
really just jerk
it.
Oh, that's the worst feeling when you know you could have done it so much
better if you just
had taken a little bit more time.
It would have been hard for me to do it worse, Joe, if I'm being honest.
Fuck.
People are like, how could you possibly miss?
Because I'm an idiot sometimes, and I'm just, God.
As I was pulling on the trigger, I was watching it just drift back towards the
beginning of
the guts, and instead of just stopping, just gave it a little bit more, and
then never
saw the thing.
Looked for it for two and a half days.
Is there a worse feeling in the world than wounding an animal?
No.
It's not.
And it's also, like, a miss like that, you have to wait a year to get another
chance.
You have a whole nother year to sit about and think about that miss before you
get back
to hunting again.
This year, I think I might be able to go back to archery, because although they
call
jujitsu the gentle art, I get banged up sometimes.
Oh, bro.
I was rifle hunting that year.
I was training with a 15-year-old young man at the end of a day of training
with some savage
black belts.
Totally.
And, you know, how when you say when you first start, like, hey, you need to
relax.
Well, I also found that you can relax too much.
I was laying on my side, letting him work on an arm bar.
Got a hold of my arm.
I was going to work on an escape.
And as my arm was coming up over my head, I heard my shoulder cavitate.
It was like, and of course, on my drawing arm for my bow.
Right.
And we were a couple months away from hunting season.
Felt it go.
Partial tear of the pack.
Completely black and blue.
And it was the gentle art.
There's nothing gentle about jiu-jitsu.
Yeah.
It's ridiculous to call it that.
I don't know who, what psychopath called it the gentle art.
I've been hurt more times.
Everybody I know that's done jiu-jitsu as long as I have has, like, either
artificial discs
in their back and neck or has had multiple knee surgeries.
That's me.
I've had three.
Or has had torn shoulders where they had to get reconstructed or blown out
elbows.
Yeah.
Do you still train?
No.
I haven't in a while.
I want to, though.
Yeah, I did a little bit of training about a year ago with Gabe Tuttle, and I
was getting
back into it, but I'd still struggle with this one knee.
I have one knee that keeps fucking up on me, man.
For you, it would be very hard to find the appropriate training partner.
Yes.
Like, you're never going to a group class again and getting in there at Open
Mat.
People would come for your head because they're assholes.
Yeah, but I always did.
That's what I always did.
I never, I always trained.
I didn't just, like, only train with, like, one guy that, like, stuck with all
the time.
I always went to classes.
Yeah.
Because I think that's the only way to really be good.
I don't think there's a real way to train with one person that's, like, taking
it easy
on you and really achieve a high level.
I think you have to go in there with people that are going to tap you.
And you have to go in there with people that are trying to tap you, you know?
And, you know, if you're good and if you're strong, you can avoid a lot of shit.
But, you know, you get in there with some fucking 25-year-old wrestler who
weighs 210 pounds
and is built like a superhero.
It's rough.
It moves at a speed that your joints and ligaments can't move at.
Yeah.
It's just like, I can't keep up.
You're on my back.
I can't keep up with this.
And if I do keep up, I'm going to blow something out.
Since I found it at 41, I don't think we should teach it to anybody under 30.
Because it deeply offends me when children come out of the children's class
and they've been training, like, six times longer than I am.
Like, what?
Like, their movement patterns were developed on the mat.
I'm like, we're using the same alphabet, but we are not putting together the
same words.
Well, I knew that from striking because I knew that from kicking.
I was like, I started martial arts before my body had matured.
And my body matured, becoming very flexible and very fast.
And so, as I got thicker, I maintained that speed and everything.
But I was like, I don't know if you could ever get as good as I got if you didn't
start when I started.
I don't know if it's possible.
And I didn't start jiu-jitsu until I was 30.
And when I started doing jiu-jitsu, I remember thinking, God, I wish I did this
when I was a kid.
Yep.
Because I see some kids where their fucking scrambles and their transitions,
like, built into their neurons,
where they're just like, everything is so fast and so kinetic and they're just
moving and flowing.
And I was like, fuck!
I could have started in, like, 97.
But the few people who were doing it were so enthusiastic, it just nauseated.
Like, it's like veganism.
Yeah.
Like, they make you want to eat meat.
Come roll with us.
I'm like, I don't know what you guys are doing.
It's very questionably gay at best from the outside.
I don't like how much you like it.
Because you like it that much, I'm out.
And then I look back, I'm like, ugh.
I started in 96.
Yeah.
Not me.
I guess I took, yeah, it was 95 or 96.
It was right after UFC 2 came out on video.
So UFC 2 was, 93 was the UFC.
I found out about UFC in, like, I didn't find out about it in 93.
I found out about a year later.
And it wasn't available, UFC 1 was not available on VHS.
I had to get UFC 2.
And I found out about it from somebody at the kickboxing gym that I was going
to.
He was like, you've got to see this.
And I was like, what is this?
I was like, oh my God, they did it.
Because there was always this thing when I was a martial artist when I was
young.
Like, what's better?
Judo, karate.
And no one knew.
And then there was like the Jean-Claude Van Damme, kumite movies where you meet
and all the styles come together and you find out what's best.
But when I first saw UFC 2, I was like, oh my God, they did it.
And then I was like, oh my God, I don't know that.
This one guy is killing everybody.
There was a lot of people that were saying that in those single-digit ones.
Oh my God.
So then what number UFC did you first commentate at?
UFC 12.
Damn, dude.
That's a pretty quick.
Well, they probably were doing less frequently as well.
But that's a pretty quick flash to bang.
Yeah.
Seeing it on a VHS.
That was 97.
So by 97, I guess I was 30.
Yeah.
I guess I was 30, somewhere around there.
So that was the first UFC that I was already training at that time.
I was training at Carlson Gracie's with Vitor Belfort.
There was Vitor Belfort was there.
Marillo Bustamante was there.
Like, it was amazing.
Just stumbled upon that place.
I actually went to Hickson's first, but I was so ignorant.
I thought Carlson Gracie, Hickson Gracie.
I thought it was the same.
When Hickson was further away and Carlson's was closer, I was like, oh, I found
a closer Gracie Jiu-Jitsu.
I'll go here.
And then it was also at the time where Extreme Fighting was out, which was John
Peretti, who was one of the commentators for the early UFC, was now doing this.
And it was really good.
Like, Mario Sperry was fighting, Igor Zinoviev.
And these guys, a lot of these guys were from Carlson Gracie's.
So I saw the Carlson Gracie, the two Bulldog logos, which is fucking dope.
And then I found out that it was on Hawthorne Street in L.A., which is, like,
really close to the comedy store.
I was like, oh, this is perfect.
Because I was living in North Hollywood.
I would just drive there.
It was much closer.
Efficiency, yeah.
It was much closer.
But I just, I got there at literally the perfect time.
Because it was right before Vitor was making his UFC debut, which was UFC 12,
which I commentated at.
So I was literally training at the same school as Vitor, so I knew what to
expect.
I'm like, these guys don't know what the fuck this guy's doing.
Like, this is, this, because everybody thought he was just a Jiu-Jitsu guy.
Yeah.
And meanwhile, he had lightning hands.
And, you know, it was a slimmer Vitor.
He was only, like, 200 pounds back then.
He just moved like a fucking panther.
And I got to see this sport just sort of emerging, where really it was becoming
something completely different.
Like, at first, it was just a bunch of people that didn't know anything.
And, you know, there was, or they didn't know anything about mixed martial arts.
They either know judo or they know karate.
And then there was hoist.
And hoist is just tapping everybody.
And everybody's like, oh, my God, Jiu-Jitsu is the way.
And then when I went to Carlson's, I was like, Jiu-Jitsu's kind of the way, but
look at this guy.
Like, you got to take that guy to the ground, and that guy's hands are like a
fucking professional boxer's.
This is crazy.
Yeah.
Jiu-Jitsu is awesome.
It's not complete.
No.
You can have a nice black belt and end up in an ambulance if you can't get
through a striking range.
Well, not only that, there's a lot of guys that were really reliant upon the gi
back then, unfortunately.
Because this is all you got to realize.
This is all before Abu Dhabi, right?
So this is before Abu Dhabi Combat Club came out, which was an amazing
organization that paid real money to grapplers to compete,
but made them compete without a gi, which was like, for a lot of guys, they
didn't know what to do.
They're so used to grabbing sleeves and grabbing collars and grabbing pants.
And the one guy who had figured it out was my eventual instructor, Jean-Jacques
Machado, because Jean-Jacques was born with essentially one hand.
His left hand is just a thumb.
He just has a thumb.
He had a birth defect.
And because of that, his game was all overhooks and underhooks and gable grips,
which was he wasn't relying on collars and all this other stuff.
So his game was very different.
He just dominated in Abu Dhabi.
And that opened up the door to Eddie Bravo.
So Eddie Bravo, he learned a lot of his techniques from Jean-Jacques as well.
And a lot of his style was based around Jean-Jacques principles, which is don't
rely on the gi, because you don't always have the gi.
It's a good tool to use if you have it.
If you're fighting a guy who's got a winter coat on, it's awesome.
Like, the last thing you want to do is fight a judo guy if you're wearing a
winter coat.
So not optimal for how your head's going to feel when it hits the concrete.
And you ain't going to be able to do shit to stop that.
I asked you early on.
I think we had linked up when I was – it was actually – it was right at the
beginning of COVID.
I was a white belt.
And I asked you how you train and manage grip stuff.
And you gave me a piece of advice that I still have – I still utilize.
And you said, whether you have a gi on or don't have a gi on, just focus on
taking no-gi grips.
I was like, son of a bitch.
Yeah.
That's what I always did.
Yeah.
The only gi technique that I really love is the clock choke.
You know, when you get a deep grip on the collar and you funnel that left arm
underneath and spin, oh, my God, that's instant death.
That clock choke is so nasty.
I prefer the cross collar.
That's great, too.
It's available for more areas.
Oh, for sure.
Just pop that head right off.
Just cross collar is nasty.
There's a lot of great, great gi techniques that are super effective if someone's
wearing clothes.
I mean, you'd be amazed at how durable t-shirts are.
You know, you could really choke the fuck out of someone with a t-shirt on.
So, Henner has a video where he'll get the first hand in.
He's got him in clothes guard.
He reaches over and he grabs the bottom of the shirt, pulls it all the way up,
and then wraps that around.
Oh, yeah.
It's got to feel like a garrotte wire.
Yeah.
Just pop.
Horrible.
Yeah.
Horrible.
And especially if they're wearing, like, a strong shirt, like a flannel shirt
or something like that, something you can really grab.
But that was Jean-Jacques' style.
His style was use no-gi grips, even with the gi.
So, for me, it made me concentrate more on defense because you couldn't pull
out of things as easily.
Yeah.
But I never felt lost going into no-gi.
So, I would go back and forth all the time.
So, you know, I got my black belt from Eddie first, but I got my black belt
from Jean-Jacques right after that because I was training at both places.
That was also a beautiful thing about Eddie being Jean-Jacques' student and
them having a very close relationship.
It never felt like you were a trader, that you left schools because I never
really left schools.
I trained at both places.
I always trained at Jean-Jacques' and I always trained at Eddie's.
You weren't a crionche?
Yeah.
Is that what they call it?
Yeah, I think so.
Yeah.
So, that was very nice that they had that amazing relationship where there was
no static at all.
It was like I would go to see Jean-Jacques.
I'd go train there a couple days a week.
I'd train at Eddie's a couple days a week.
It was awesome.
Yeah, if I had a time machine and if my younger self would listen to me, which
I don't think I would, I would say two things.
One, buy Bitcoin, obviously.
And two, maybe get into Jean-Jacques' a little bit earlier.
Yeah.
But I think what you did was pretty impressive because you got through it very
quickly.
Like, I remember you first started training and, you know, you got a black belt
in like, what, four years, five years?
Five and a half.
That's amazing.
That's quick.
Well, I think it depends on how you view the time.
So, I think the standard 10-year window is usually somebody who trains about an
hour a day or two hours a day twice a week.
I had the ability where I was living, I could train 10 times a week for as long
as I want to, right?
So, the math is still math at the end of the day.
Right.
But that's still very hard on the body at 40 years old.
It's very hard on the body.
Vitamin I, also known as ibuprofen, comes into the training model.
That shit's terrible for you.
Yeah, but it makes you feel better.
It's so bad for you, though.
It's so bad for your gut.
I will say this.
One thing about my previous job is it teaches you how to learn.
It rewards your ability to...
Be coachable.
Be coachable.
And people ask me, you know, how can you be a good student?
Just in general, I'm like, listen, how about this?
Do what your instructor says and nothing more.
Right.
If they say, put your hand here, and you ask them, do you mean always put it
there?
And they say, yes, just put your hand there.
Yeah.
If you want to, and people, there's, the internet's an amazing thing, right?
And there's a bunch of ability to go out and look for techniques and stuff.
But I can't think of anything more disrespectful to a coach to be told
something.
And then you are offering them something that you saw on Instagram while they're
trying to teach you.
Like, that's how that relationship is going to end up breaking.
If you really want to accelerate your learning, focus, and honor your coach,
actually.
Focus on what they are trying to tell you to do.
Do only that and no more until you have that mastered, and then you can move on
top of that.
Absolutely.
That's great advice.
Yeah, you have to just listen.
You have to listen and never question.
And then, if you, unless you have a bad coach, then just get a good coach.
That's the solution to that.
Which, in this era, you have choices.
The era that you were starting in, there weren't as many choices.
Right.
Yeah.
Well, I realized that when I went to Jean-Jacques' place, that there's levels
in teaching.
And, you know, obviously Hickson's school was very high level, and Carlson's
was too.
But Carlson's went under pretty quickly.
They weren't around that long.
But then when I went to Jean-Jacques, I was like, okay, this is a completely
different level.
Like, Jean-Jacques is so detail-oriented.
I was also very lucky that I started doing Taekwondo when I was a child, so
that I always listened.
Yeah.
You know, and the traditional martial arts environment, there's no room for
questioning.
They don't allow any question.
And I was also very lucky that the school that I started at was one of the best
schools in the world.
I just got lucky.
I found this Jae-hun Taekwondo, Jae-hun Kim Taekwondo Institute in Boston.
It just happened to have multiple national champions, like really elite
competitors.
And so I never questioned.
I always did.
And I never did anything half-assed.
I always did it exactly.
That's how you develop the right technique.
Yeah.
You have to.
Well, it's how you accelerate learning, too.
I mean, because, again, people ask me about my old job.
Like, well, how do you guys do all this stuff that you do?
Well, you learn it a piece at a time.
And honestly, it's the mastery of fundamentals.
Even at that, I think what I determined the most when my coach gave me my black
belt was that I don't know a goddamn thing.
About jujitsu.
And I can't keep up with all the flashy, sporty stuff.
But the better fundamentals get, the better you can tolerate a lot of that
stuff.
It's just the mastery of the fundamentals is just so essential.
Well, some of the elite guys of all time never did any of the flashy stuff,
like Hickson.
Hickson was just the fundamentals honed to a razor-sharp edge.
Yeah.
You don't see Hickson doing some stuff.
You're like, oh, I've never seen that before.
It's all triangles, arm bars, rear naked choke, and just done to perfection.
Yeah.
Done in a way that black belts can't stop it.
No, I've heard stories of him lining black belts up, telling them what he is
going to catch them with.
Yep.
And then having like 10 of them watch him catch everybody before them with the
same thing, and them having absolutely no ability to stop it.
Yep.
That's what I'm talking about.
Yeah.
Well, that's Gordon Ryan, too.
Gordon Ryan, one of the things that Gordon did, I was there when he did it, one
of the times he did it.
He did it multiple times.
He would write down on a piece of paper how he was going to submit his opponent,
and it sealed in an envelope.
And before the match started, he would walk over to the commentators and say,
open this when it's over.
And then, you know, you would see him catch somebody in a triangle, and then he
would open up the envelope and it showed a triangle.
And he had multiple opportunities to catch someone in different things.
And he's like, no, no, no.
See, I could do that, too, but it would be what I'm going to get caught with.
Here's the most likely thing that I'm going to mess up and get caught with.
Well, that's the thing about starting when you're 40 versus starting when you're
12 or whatever it is.
It's like you're only going to be able to get to a certain height, you know.
Well, also, I recognize that I'm an aggressive hobbyist.
I have competed twice only because my wife was coaching at tournaments, and I
was like, well, I'll go spend time with you.
So here we are.
I think once when I was a white belt and once when I was a purple belt.
Like, that's it.
I don't care about the competition.
Shockingly enough, I'm not looking to have a violent confrontation with anyone
ever.
Totally, totally have filled my cup up with that one.
Probably has spilled over a little bit from time to time.
Like, I just do it because I really like the community.
I like the fact you can't master it.
So you can keep your brain young with your body young or young as young as
possible.
And, yeah, it's just fun.
It's really fun.
It's so addictive, which is – to me was the problem with injuries was that I
would always find – I'd go, I'll work around it.
And I'd just go in with injuries.
And then they get aggravated to the point where – you know, I remember one
time my fingers were getting numb because my neck was so fucked up that my
fingers were numb.
And then I'm like, okay, I've got to do something.
Was this from you head and arm choking people?
It was a lot of that.
Yep.
I remember you telling me your affinity.
You're like, you've really got to just drive your head.
You've got to use your neck.
And also not tapping.
Yeah.
Not tapping to certain neck cranks and different things that fuck your neck up.
Neck cranks are very real.
Yeah.
I also didn't work my neck enough back then.
I didn't have an iron neck at that machine.
Do you still use that thing?
Oh, yeah.
I fucking love that thing.
Is it forward and back and turn or all those things?
Yeah.
So it's a halo.
You sit it on your chest and you pump it up like the Reebok pump.
And then the chin strap, you tighten that bitch down.
And you can adjust the tension that's required to spin it.
And it has this giant bungee cord on it.
And so the bungee cord is like 50 pounds of resistance.
So you back up with the bungee cord until it's like fully taut.
And then you go like this.
I swear by that thing.
All right.
It keeps your neck strong as fuck.
And I don't have any neck problems anymore.
And I had a lot of fucking neck problems.
So the thing that saved me, though, was Regenikine, which is like this PRP,
platelet-rich plasma to the next level.
This treatment that a lot of guys were having to go to Germany to get in the
early days.
They would go like I remember Kobe Bryant went to Germany.
I think Peyton Manning went.
A bunch of guys had to go to Germany to get this treatment.
And it's like they take your blood.
And through some process, I forget exactly how they do it, it makes this fluid
that is like this radically inflammation-fighting fluid.
And they injected it into my neck, and it cured my bulging discs.
And all my numbness went away, and I got to start training again once I got
back.
But, again, I didn't have a fucking iron neck back then.
If I had that machine back then, I think I could have avoided a lot of the
problems.
Yeah.
Like a lot of the problems that people have with lower backs, I firmly believe
it's a lack of building tissue and strength and mobility around your lower back.
And I do a lot of lower back exercises, too.
I do a lot of rotation exercises and a lot of, like, reverse hypers, like that
machine.
That machine's awesome.
Oh, I did that today.
That fucking keeps your back so strong and healthy, and it decompresses at the
same time that it strengthens.
Yeah.
And, you know, so many guys just go into the class.
That's their workout.
Their only workout is training.
And those guys are always hurt.
They're always getting hurt.
I think strength training and mobility training is essential if you want to
have longevity in jiu-jitsu.
I really think that.
I would agree.
Yeah.
Yeah.
For the first couple years, it was a workout in and of itself, and I finally
have started.
I think I'm done with barbells just because I've never seen a linear object
equally loaded in real life outside of a gym.
There's some things with barbells, though, like Olympic-style stuff, like
cleans.
I can get all those kettlebells, though, too.
You can.
Zurchers, though.
Zurchers are only available with a barbell.
I think Zurchers are very, very important.
I think that's a big one.
I'm willing to accept.
Jefferson squats.
There's a bunch of different things, but Zurchers in particular are really good
for grappling.
Yeah.
You know, because you've got that barbell that you're holding inside the crook
of your elbow.
Couldn't you use a sandbag?
You could.
Yeah.
You definitely could.
Yeah.
I love goblet squats.
Yeah.
Goblet squats are phenomenal for that.
Yeah, they'll tear you up for sure.
Especially on a slant board, you know, when you're holding, like, a 90-pound
kettlebell,
and you're doing those deep squats where it's knees over toes on a slant board,
and your whole core is just so activated when you're...
I think that's phenomenal for just strength and stability.
But I agree.
I think kettlebells are the best.
I think it's the best also because there's so many different things you can do
with them
in terms of...
There's rotational exercises I do where I, like, pick it down on this side.
And I swing and clean it.
And I press it on that side.
Let it swing down.
And I do those things where you lie on your back with your, you know, on your...
With your butt, with your legs up in the air.
And you do those twists where you take the kettlebell and putting it each side.
You can absolutely demolish yourself with a single kettlebell.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Which is kind of awesome.
Especially, like, where I live, too, traveling with a truck.
Like, okay.
Yep.
Put one of these bad boys in there.
100%.
All the excuses are gone.
I had a bowling bag that I would carry a 50-pound kettlebell with me on the
road.
I just put it in a bowling bag because it fits in a bowling ball bag.
All right.
People are going to look at you a little awkwardly, but I'm here for it.
But if you have a 50-pound weight limit, if you check in luggage...
Like, there you go.
Whatever works for you.
Yeah.
I appreciate the enthusiasm for working out on the road.
Well, back then, the thing was you'd never find them in a gym.
And now they're in most gyms.
It's tough not to find them now in a gym, yeah.
Hotel gyms is like, why do you have a 1.5 kilo kettlebell?
Like, is this for children?
Like, what the fuck?
The little micro ones?
Some people like to pretend they're working out.
Sometimes that's me.
Just go through the motions.
Yeah.
Yeah.
They're good for wrists, too.
Wrist curls.
You know, you take a kettlebell and you, like, reverse it.
Or you have it this way and you do these.
Like, put your forearms on a bench.
Oh, yeah.
And you hold the handle in your hands and you just let your wrist curls...
Because it puts you in this, like, weird angle.
It really strengthens your forearms and your wrists.
There's so many things you could do with those things.
Things that aren't sexy, like Turkish get-ups.
Phenomenal for you.
You know, so good for stability and core and just overall body control.
Yeah.
I need it now.
Croaching towards 50.
Still enjoying jujitsu.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You need a little bit.
Do you definitely need something?
You need some...
Are you taking any peptides or any of that stuff?
I played around with peptides.
Finally, two years ago, I got my endocrine system checked.
My hormones checked.
Oh, man.
This is a nice little...
It was like a little gauge that had red zone, yellow, green.
Upon first looking at this chart, I assumed that my life was going to end in
about 36 hours.
What was your number?
Oh, fuck.
Two something.
Oh, Jesus.
I had never had it checked.
That's crazy.
I didn't feel awesome, but I also...
There are people who played around with an immense amount of performance
enhancing materials
in my previous job, which live your life however you want to.
Just understand maybe the long-term tail and the consequences of the choice you
want to make.
Right.
I wanted to avoid that for as long as possible because, as you know, once you
kind of go
on that train, it's a lifelong journey.
Yeah.
But once I finally saw that piece of paper, I'm like, oh, boy.
I bet you could attribute that to the volume of your training.
That's also part of the problem is if you're training 10 times a week, you're
probably in
a constant state of overtraining.
Oh, for sure.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Probably for the vast majority of my life, that's been the state that I
operated in, if I'm
being honest.
I mean, the answer was always just more.
Like, if you want to get better, do more.
Right.
You want to be stronger, go harder.
Go harder and do more.
I'm like, okay.
It took me a bit.
So I started taking TRT about two years ago.
I am just now finally slowly dialing it into where I feel a difference,
recovery is better,
but also, I mean, I try to set realistic expectations for who I am and what I'm
trying
to do.
Like, I want to have the healthiest lifespan that I can.
Yes.
I'd rather live to 80 and be doing awesome stuff to 80 than live to 90 and
spend the last 10
years eating Jell-O in a nursing home.
Right.
So that's what I'm going for.
You could do, as long as you're smart with your training and you don't get,
like, catastrophic
injuries, you could be very physically fit deep, deep into your 60s and 70s.
That's the goal.
And I just, and that's, I mean, I don't know.
Nobody knows how much time we have, you know, and how much, how long your lap
is going to
be.
My goal is just to fill it up with awesome experiences between here and
whenever that is.
Here, here.
Just stay in that fucking flying squirrel suit, will you?
You know, Cam just said the same thing to me.
And if enough people keep saying that, I'll put that fucking thing back on just
to piss
you guys off.
Well, it's kind of amazing that you're still here.
That's, here's the thing.
You've done that so many times.
I mean, you broke the world record at one point in time.
I did.
Yes.
My egg, that was.
How many miles was that that you flew?
It's like 18.2, something like that.
With a flying squirrel suit.
To me, it was very reasonable.
You know, the things that I do that I think are reasonable, oftentimes in my
life, people
will pull me aside and be like, Hey man, what the fuck?
Yeah.
That doesn't seem at all reasonable.
Well, you're only seeing that one video.
I had been skydiving for like 16 years at that point, you know, and you know,
something
like when I would go over to, I remember I'd go over to Switzerland and I would
do a flight
in the wingsuit and get, you know, you're like, you're playing tag with your
shadow on a steep
cliff and I would send it to you.
And one day you were like, I just had to throw my phone across the room
watching this
because it was giving you anxiety.
So then I'm like, clearly I'm sending you more of these videos for sure.
Right.
Cause now I got the hooky.
I threw my foot into a couch.
I was like, fuck this.
What are you doing Andy?
But that was like one of many jumps in this, like the months of training
leading up to that.
I'm not going to sit here and say it's safe.
I do think you can do it as safely as possible.
And I don't have a higher risk threshold than other people do.
I, I spend an immense amount of time at everything that I do looking at the
risk and trying to manage
it, analyze it, mitigate it as much as possible.
And then you look at what's left to me, that activity provided me enough
enrichment in my
life that it was worth it.
I haven't put the suit on in five or six years, but I swear to God, if I get
one more person
telling me not to do it, I'm going to go back and just start sending you videos
again.
All right, well, I promise I won't be that guy that tells you that.
I promise.
But honestly, at this point, again, talking about risk, it's not worth it.
I don't live in a place where I can stay because your currency in that suit
comes from the skydiving
world where you can jump it multiple times a day.
In the base jumping world, there's no altimeter.
You're just camera one, camera two.
At about a buck 20.
Face first.
So yeah, if you misjudge a tree or a cliff.
It's probably fun as fuck though while it's happening.
I don't know how to describe what it feels like doing 120 miles an hour face
first, a few
feet off the ground.
Probably like the, what is it in the Olympics?
The skeleton?
How close do you get off the ground?
What's the closest?
Probably not intentionally.
The closest was probably somewhere right around the three foot range.
120 miles an hour.
So three foot is like one, two, like that.
Yeah.
Jesus, dude.
Yeah.
That's insane.
You don't do that for very long.
And then there are, and if you do like some of those jumps in Switzerland, like
you would
hike for hours and there's this one jump, it's actually one of the ones I sent
you from.
You just, it's insane.
You're just looking out into like this picture storybook of like where the
Kabul giant or whatever
he was would live, right?
Like you just.
Kandahar.
Kandahar giant.
Whichever one.
I think it's real.
I hope it is real.
I deeply, it's such a deep part of me hopes that it's real, but you're looking
out at
that as you're zipping up your ridiculous nylon suit and checking to make sure
everything is
there.
And then you just rock forward.
And at some point you rock to a place where you can't go back the other
direction.
And you send it in the first few seconds because you have no airspeed, the suit
doesn't fly.
So you're just falling and then it takes off and it's just these right hand
turns and right
hand turns.
And there are small sections where the angle is correct and you can kind of
connect with
the train and then get away from it and connect.
The people who are able to survive it are not the ones that are flying three
feet off the
ground all the time.
It's very, very short periods of time on jumps that they have practiced many,
many times
and they slowly, incrementally work their way down there.
Because again, a mistake in that environment is you're going to impact an
object headfirst
at 120.
I remember the video that scared me the most was a bridge where the guy was
trying to fly
through, you know, the video.
Yeah, I do.
Oh yeah, there you go.
Is this Andy?
Oh yeah.
Oh, look at this.
Oh, I love this little grass field over here.
I think my head turns to the right because there was two dudes up here.
I was looking at them.
God, that is beautiful.
Oh, I'm telling you, it's insane.
This is the field of joy.
Wow.
That's the shadow in the lower right, but that's probably, I don't know, that's
probably 10
feet off.
God, that is fucking pretty.
Yeah.
That has got to be nuts.
I mean, there's not a ride at Disneyland that can fuck with this.
Oh, absolutely not.
Wow.
Have you ever done one of those ones where you strap a jetpack?
No, but I like where your head's at.
Yeah.
I know exactly what you're talking about.
Remember there was a guy that was like getting in trouble because they kept
finding this guy
flying a wingsuit.
He was flying a jetpack wingsuit and they were trying to like locate the guy
who was doing
it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
He was getting like, they were looking for him because he was, they kept spotting
him.
Where was that, Jamie?
Do you remember?
We talked about it on the show once.
I feel like this is like a combination of stories.
No, no, no.
Secret jetpack man?
Yeah.
Some guy had a jetpack and he was flying around where he wasn't supposed to be.
Yeah.
So these guys are in Dubai.
Unfortunately.
I found the guy, this was just a video.
I thought it might have been him.
But that one's nuts.
So that's an actual wingsuit.
Like a plane wing.
And they got to the place where they could take this off from standing on the
ground, Joe.
Unfortunately, one of the innovators in that ended up dying.
There's a, there is an altitude in airspeed where if you have an issue, you're
not going
to be able to deploy your parachute to save you.
And he had an issue at that altitude.
Jeez.
But yeah, who would have ever.
That guy is up there with a plane.
Show me that again, please.
Yeah.
That is insane.
Would you ever do that?
I don't want to say would I.
I mean, there's a time and a place where I would do a lot of things.
Because I would 100% would do that.
I bet you would.
Now, does that guy have an engine on that thing?
Yeah, there's a little microjet engines.
You can see them.
How much fuel?
That's a good question.
Like I said, they had gotten to a place where they could stand.
So that wing is kind of conforms around their skydiving parachute.
I think there's four little jet engines.
They got to a place where they were standing, cracking those things off and
going vertical
and then transitioning to the plate.
Yes.
And then I think landing them too.
Landing them with the engine somehow?
I mean, did they rotate?
I mean, they are wearing a parachute.
You know what?
Maybe I might be misspeaking on that.
But I know that they were taking off from a no airspeed standing there and just.
That's nuts.
Well, that's also, like I said, how one of the innovators died.
It was in that phase, like a low altitude, low airspeed phase where nothing's
really going to.
I remember I did morning.
How about this?
What is this?
Oh, yeah.
These are the jetpack racers.
Oh, yeah.
That's crazy.
I've seen that too.
This is real, by the way, right?
Is it?
Because it kind of looks fake.
No, those are real for sure.
They actually have.
There's a league, Jamie, of guys who race these things.
How do we get them?
That's a good question.
Yeah.
Add to cart on Amazon for sure.
How fast do you think these guys are going with these things?
Whoa.
And they could just land?
Oh, that's wild.
We could just fly to work.
Bro, you have to have some fucking shoulder strength to do that.
I mean, I love how they're trying to show like this has, oh, look, incredible
military application.
Like, let's take it easy.
Okay?
It's got to be quiet, right?
Just.
Super quiet.
Yeah.
Is there some support for your shoulders in there?
It's not like you're doing a constant dip.
I don't.
Well, I think that the jet pack, so on his backpack, I believe that's putting
some thrust out too.
The hands are as well.
So it's the combination of the three.
Because like how long can you hold a dip position?
I don't know.
Yeah.
So here's the league.
Look at these crazy.
Yeah.
The backpack itself.
Oh, getting fancy.
Oh, that's crazy.
But the ground's pushing back up on you on that situation, you know?
Bummer.
If you're doing a dip.
Yeah, that's true.
That's true.
It still wouldn't be that easy.
You still have to.
I feel like the backpack is doing the majority of it.
Like the Iron Man little hand things.
I feel like that's just the stabilization.
It doesn't seem that heavy.
Oh, so the backpack is doing the most of it.
And the other things are just steering you a little.
You just move this arm around pretty easily.
I think so.
Right.
I have exactly zero seconds in one of these things.
So this is me talking out of my ass.
If there was enough lives, if you had multiple lives, I would do a lot of
different things.
That looks so fun.
It does.
Jamie, what could you put?
Look at this guy's going up the mountain.
Where's the parachute?
Oh, no, there is no parachute.
Suck in the box, too.
Oh, so this.
No, there's no parachute.
That's why you want to stay five feet off the ground.
Look at this.
Yeah.
This is just flying to the top of this fucking cliff with that thing.
Oh, that's bonkers.
For sure this is like to save people or something.
No, it's for fun.
I agree with Joe more on that one.
What do you think?
How much time do you get in one of those until you run out of fuel?
I don't know.
Time enough to fill a motivational video like this.
To me, I'd be like...
Gravity Industries.
This is the company.
I would be reverse engineering.
Like, where is this in my Amazon cart?
How do I possibly make enough money to have these sent to my house immediately?
What do you think one of those costs?
My guess would be six figures.
So, professional.
Shop.
Entertainment.
Shop.
Oh, click on that, bitch.
Let's go.
Suit up.
Suit me up, motherfucker.
Hold on.
Let me get my credit card.
Let's guess.
Let's guess.
Ah, God.
50 grand?
A hundred grand?
I'm going to say six figures.
Oh, they fooled us.
You sons of bitches.
Oh, clothes?
You can only buy clothes?
Oh, you can't buy the thing on the website.
Why can't you buy the fucking thing?
Let's see.
Well, how much does the thing cost?
Somebody must be able to buy it.
Twenty-four hundred pounds for an experience.
For half a day.
So, that's just to fly it.
A thousand horsepower, a 1050 horsepower gravity jet suit.
Whoa.
So, it's the same horsepower as a ZR1 Corvette.
And it's on your back.
Look at this.
Yeah.
First off, take that safety line off.
Let's let people live in the real life.
That guy needs a safety line.
Look at his neck.
Let me search.
Like, yeah, let's search the price.
So, you think six figures.
I would probably say that's probably accurate, especially when I saw it as a
thousand horsepower.
Here's a better question.
Are you willing to spend six figures to acquire one of those?
I'm going to go in the hard yes category for myself.
I'm not saying I've got six figures laying around.
I'm saying I will start a new career.
Oh, no.
That's not a good face, Jamie.
It is in the six figures.
Six?
But it's not the low.
It's not the edge of the figures.
Six hundred?
Yeah, roughly.
That'd get one.
Six hundred thousand dollars?
It says 440.
Whoa.
Is that in U.S. dollars?
It's like, yeah, yes.
Depending on configuration and stuff, too.
Okay, what if you get it, like, maxed?
Well, it's not giving me options.
I just kind of searched around.
I think we're just going to get closer to the seven-figure number if we do that.
They probably don't have to advertise how much it costs.
Does it say how long you can stay in the air in that thing?
How long does it say?
Let's guess.
I want to say 30 minutes.
I was going to guess under 10.
Whoa.
Well, I remember when I saw, I went on a radio station once, and they had a guy
who, what is it?
One minute.
One to four minutes.
One to four?
That's it?
So what are they doing when they're flying up to that mountain?
Five to ten if you are doing it carefully.
Well, how the fuck do they get all the way to the mountain?
How do they get down?
We only saw a five-second clip.
Is there a gallon of gas up there at the top of that fucking mountain?
I'm way less enthusiastic about this purchase now.
Yeah, that sucks.
Yeah.
450 grand for a minute.
But what makes me enthusiastic is that they're going to innovate and evolve
this, and then one day.
It'll be nuclear-powered.
Let's not get crazy.
Yeah, it'll be cold fusion.
It'll be an Iron Man machine.
I mean, I feel like we could do better things with that technology before the
jet suit, but I'm totally in on the jet suit.
Get an Iron Man suit.
Like, that's Iron Man, right?
The hands, that's how you'd fly.
I mean, that's kind of what they look like.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Like, it would come out of his feet, and it would come out of his hands.
I did a radio station once in Denver, and they had a guy who did a jetpack
thing in a parking lot.
It was like a morning radio back in the day, and this guy, I think it could
only last for 30 seconds.
And this guy, he had two knee braces on because he had blown out both of his
ACLs, just landing and destroying his knees.
But it was crazy to watch.
It was crazy to watch.
This guy took off, and he flew around, but it was only for a few seconds.
I think it's like a 30-second deal.
After 30 seconds, it runs out of juice.
I'm glad there are people like that out there.
I appreciate their enthusiasm.
There's always going to be, right?
Yeah.
There's always going to be someone.
A very brief description of what it has in there.
A lot of jazz.
Honestly, it is like what you were talking about.
So the hands, like the Iron Man position, so the back has a majority of the
thrust.
Right.
Yeah.
I bet it heats your ass up, something fierce.
Yeah.
Up to 56 miles per hour.
Interesting.
95 kilos.
You can't use jet fuel, though.
I wonder how much faster you go with jet fuel.
Well, what does it normally use?
It says diesel or jet fuel.
Or jet fuel.
Diesel or jet fuel.
That's weird.
They're not that far off.
Or kerosene.
But isn't that weird that one engine can burn those different types of fuel?
That seems unusual.
That's probably the configuration part where...
Oh, I see.
Right, right, right.
Like if you want a top-of-the-line one, you get jet fuel.
Plaid version.
Yeah.
All right.
I'll get one.
I'll take one.
Let's try it.
Yeah.
But is there legitimate military applications for something like that?
I can't really think of one.
It's because it showed guys in fatigues that are landed on an aircraft carrier.
I could show you videos of guys in fatigues that end up banging each other, so
it doesn't
necessarily mean that...
Right?
So let's...
There's no military application for that.
Let's just say...
That would be far fringe.
I'm just saying the fatigues doesn't necessarily the qualifier of it being, you
know, good utilization
for the military.
So we only briefly touched on this Kandahar giant story, but were you ever in Kandahar?
Yeah.
That's down in the south of Afghanistan.
How remote is it?
I mean, there's a large city there, town city.
I don't know the difference between the two.
It's relatively built up.
As far as southern Afghanistan, it's going to be, you know, you have Kabul up
north, Kandahar
is a little bit down south.
Kabul in the north, you're going to start looking at the exterior range of the
Hindu Kush.
Kandahar still has some topography, but you're looking at more of like a high
desert terrain.
And so there's caves and things along those lines?
Probably.
This is the idea that this thing lived in a cave.
Yeah.
I mean, so, yeah, it's...
There is topography that is there for sure.
It, uh, possible?
I don't know.
Well, the reason why, uh, people entertain this idea of giants at all is all, a
lot of
it's biblical.
It's like stories from the Bible.
And then also stories from ancient civilizations that talked about red-haired
giants, which is
the weird thing about this thing, had red hair.
Like the Native Americans had tales of red-haired giants that they fought off.
Like, there's a lot of people that believe that all these stories from antiquity
about
giants are all referring to an actual different race of humans.
You know, like, we are one race of humans, the Homo sapiens that survived.
But then there's also races of humans that didn't survive.
Like, um, the Hobbit people from the island of Flores that they found out there
was a branch
of the human species that was like three feet tall, covered in hair, little
tiny heads.
Weird, but had tools and had weapons.
And I think some of that stuff's real.
I think sometimes though, the stories, they're, they're intentionally nesting a
greater message
through the vehicle of that story.
Um, so whether it's like accurate or not, it's more about the story that they
are telling.
And I'm not saying like the Kandahar giant has some story associated with it,
but some of
the, the older, like the civilizations and the stories that they tell, I think
it's just
an, uh, a vehicle that they can nest something in there to create deeper
thought.
If that makes sense.
It's what I see you guys doing is comedians.
Um, I've talked about this recently.
Um, it is interesting to me and I never paid attention to it, but I know he's a
good friend
of yours, Dave Chappelle.
I launched his last special, the ability for comedians to nest inside of your
set, pretty
impactful and powerful, like societal conversations and ideas and get people to
laugh about it.
But even when they're done laughing about it, they're going to be thinking
about it when
they're driving home.
It's just the vehicle to get people thinking about stuff.
Well, in terms of comedy, I agree.
And Dave is one of the best of all time, if not the best at doing that.
But what kind of a nesting would you, well, you're talking about giants.
It depends on the morals and ethos of that society.
If they want to be a warrior society, you have to have something that you're
constantly fighting
or protecting yourself against.
Whether that's real or you are nesting the morality of your society in that
story, both
could achieve the same end state.
If there really was a giant and they really did kill this thing and then
brought it back
secretly, like, what would be the purpose of that?
Why wouldn't they, that's where I go.
Like, what would be the purpose of hiding the fact that this thing existed?
I don't see why the government would hide the discovery of a giant.
Like, what military reason, what national security reason would you have for
hiding this thing,
that this thing existed?
At some level of objective skepticism and criticism or looking into these
stories, you get to that
point of, like, who's benefiting from this and why?
Yeah.
Why would anybody actually go out of their way to put this much effort into
obscure something
like that?
Yeah.
That's how I feel about giants.
But when it comes to UFOs, it makes more sense to me.
Because then you have something that's insanely advanced.
Much more advanced than us.
And so I had this guy, Hal Puthoff, on my show.
He's a physicist, very brilliant guy.
And he's been around forever.
And during, was George W. or Herbert Walker?
Yeah.
One of the Bushes.
They brought him and a team of specialists in.
And they said, we are contemplating disclosure and that we have not just
acquired crashed vehicles
that are of non-human origin, but also we have biological remains of these
creatures.
We want you to write down pros and cons of the impact of these things and put a
numerical value.
Put a numerical value in terms of impact on government, impact on religion,
impact on all these different things.
And universally, all of them came out with more cons than pros.
The numbers didn't line up and they made a decision to not disclose.
This is according to this Hal Puthoff guy.
I could see that being the case.
I could see that being the case, too, if it was true.
The UFO thing, there's just too many stories for me to openly dismiss all of
them.
Even though I've had no experiences, there's too many stories.
There's too much weirdness to it.
How about just given the size of the known universe and the fact it keeps
expanding,
what is the mathematical odds that we are completely the only thing out there?
Exactly.
So this is like sort of the same argument that people used to use for Bigfoot.
Like the wilderness is so vast.
The Pacific Northwest is so dense.
There could be something out there that we haven't documented.
Well, the problem is now we kind of have and now we kind of know that with all
these camera
traps and all these different things, it's very, very, very, very unlikely that
any of
these stories are true.
But when you get to the universe, it's like, come on, it's way more likely that
we're not
alone than we are alone.
If we are alone, that's kind of insane.
I mean, it's kind of incredible.
If this is the only place where intelligent life is formed, I think if that's
the case,
we're missing something.
We're missing something about the nature of consciousness.
We're missing something about what consciousness actually is.
Like what is our actual role in the universe?
It might be more complex than the we initially believe.
I think disclosure that we aren't alone would have a net benefit to society
globally.
We spent a lot of time pecking back and forth at each other and fighting each
other.
If you got sat down and be like, listen, we have a global issue now that
everybody is impacted
by this.
As much of the biggest swinging dick you think you are on this planet, guess
what?
You're nothing in comparison to this.
I think it would have a net calming effect, maybe not instantaneously, but
overall, I
think that that would be the net effect of it.
Perhaps.
The real problem is like all things, someone's going to take advantage of it.
But I think that if so, let's just say it is real.
I think that's already happening.
Like the U.S., if that's real, the U.S. is not the only country that has agreed
not to
disclose because it is to their benefit not to do so.
Like these things, Russia has a crash program.
I'm sure China does as well, too.
And I'm sure that everybody, to include the U.S., is trying to reverse engineer
these things
for our benefit as fast as humanly possible.
Yeah.
So.
I think if that, if it is true, that is the case.
And that's the Bob Lazar story.
There's a great documentary that's out now called S4 that's about Bob Lazar.
I had him on again for the second time.
I don't want to believe him.
I want to think he's a bullshit artist, but I believe him.
There's something about one guy who's a clearly brilliant guy who's been
telling the same story
since 1988.
Yeah.
You know?
And like you said, a volume of other stories.
Some of them, I think you can completely write off.
But other ones, pretty tough, from pretty credible people who aren't making
claims like,
hey, I sat down and had a beer with this thing.
But like, I was in an aircraft that has a certain performance envelope, and we
understand
the performance envelope of what humans are able to fly at this point.
And yeah, this thing did things that I don't understand.
Sometimes the videos get, I mean, I was talking with, you know, Bill Thompson.
You just had him on.
Love that dude.
He is like, he's one of my favorite people.
You got to be cautious how deep of a question you ask him.
Right.
Because he has national defense level autism at times.
DEFCON 5.
You're like, Bill, what's your favorite color?
He's like, oh, what is color?
Like, fuck, no, that's not what I meant.
But we were having this conversation, and his background is fascinating.
And what's even more fascinating is what he's done with his background and what
he built
with Spartan Forge with it.
Yeah.
And his ethics.
Correct.
But he was talking about some of the videos.
He understands technological things, and he can look at stuff and be like, that's
the
parallax of two moving objects and how a lens works.
Not many people understand those things, to include myself many times when I'm
talking
with Mr. Bill.
But, I mean, he, God, he's a national treasure.
He really is.
He is.
He, that was one of the ones where I dipped into the comments on YouTube,
because I just
wanted to know how people were going to react to him.
Yeah.
What'd they say?
Loved him.
Loved him.
It was universal praise for how brilliant he is.
And I'm like, there's only one way they're going to respond.
I'm like, if you don't like this guy, like, you're listening to the wrong show.
Have you seen what he's done with the app he created, Spartan Forge?
It's incredible.
It's an amazing app.
It's 20 plus years of targeting and intelligence gathering packaged into
something that's consumer
facing that if you're into hunting, holy shit.
I know.
And what kind of a super genius is going to get involved in a hunting app like
that?
Captain America of autism.
I love you, Bill, but let's be honest.
He's brilliant on another level.
I remember the first conversation I had with him.
I was like, oh, okay.
There's people that you talk to.
Like, whenever someone says, oh, Joe, you're so smart.
I'm like, settle down.
No, no, no.
I'm smart compared to you.
I'm smart compared to some people, you know, but I know real smart people.
Yeah, there is a stark difference.
A giant leap.
A chasm.
Yeah.
A fucking, an ocean to cross before you reach levels like Bill or Elon or some
of these people.
It's just like the amount of processing power they have.
You know, I have a Honda Civic brain and these motherfuckers have a Corvette ZR1.
I usually go with, I have an IQ that you can find on a thermostat.
I mean, I'm not saying it's like the winter, but maybe it's a little bit close
to a hot summer day.
Now, what he is, I wish I had the ability to build stuff like that.
Like, I use that app to hunt, but most of the time I use it when I'm flying my
helicopter around.
Because it is like the terrain analysis, the ability to look at stuff, the LiDAR,
the way that you can look through foliage.
Again, I'm just, I'm deeply appreciative that people like that exist.
And again, with the ethics that he has, he will not sell your fucking email.
He's been offered a lot of money to sell all the, you know, that's the thing
that companies do.
You sign up for something, you use your email, that your email goes in the list.
I'm sure have you ever opened up one of your email accounts and look through
the filters, like all the spam and promotional shit.
It's like years and years of garbage.
In addition to the email stuff, I know Bill has become a very good friend.
And he's been offered money to do a lot of things.
And his morality has stayed true throughout.
Which, and again, like, those things are his to talk about if he ever wants to.
But as somebody who knows him and appreciates that, I wish there were more
people like that.
Yes.
It's just very difficult to become a guy like that.
Yeah.
It's a long road to be that guy.
Yeah.
I think because of what's going on in Iran, it would be good to talk to you
about this because you're a guy who kind of understands things in terms of,
like, geopolitics more than the average person.
Listen, I can find Iran on a map, okay?
That doesn't mean I understand geopolitics.
I know, you know, you're very, you're humble.
Well, my operational experience was at a low, meaning on, like, so there's
strategic war, operational war.
But that's air I never was in the room for.
I didn't breathe that air.
I'm not having, I wasn't invited, rightfully so, to planning meetings where
they were talking about the defense policy of the United States.
Right.
Or going into a country.
I was down like, hey, we found this dude.
We know where he's at.
Go get him.
We can't figure out how to go get him.
Why don't you guys go give it a little look-see?
That was the level that I operated at.
Yeah.
Well, one of the things that was discussed was sending a bunch of operators in
to go retrieve depleted uranium.
Yeah.
Do you think they tried that?
Oh, as a part of the rescue?
Yeah.
There seems to be a lot of ships, a lot of crafts.
Well, okay, so, yes, but, okay, so we can unpack this one a little bit.
So this is back to the F-15 weapons systems officer that ejected.
That was a C-star or combat search and rescue operation where they surged
forward a lot of stuff.
And then operation, or the ghost murmur?
Stop it right now.
You stop it right now.
You don't know what that is?
I know, I know.
Do you believe in that?
Joe, I want it to be true.
Right.
Me too.
I want them to be able to identify somebody from a heartbeat.
From 40 miles away.
From 40 miles away.
If that technology existed and we're not using that to help our own populace
find people that are lost in the woods, we're a bunch of fucking assholes.
Right.
So, like, let's not maybe tell people what we're doing, but you could have a
specialist in a search and rescue helicopter that could maybe use that and be
like, oh, we saw them in a field when you didn't actually see, right?
Right.
So, because that doesn't happen, I think the, it's plausible, I don't, it's
possible, I don't know if it's plausible.
That's how we felt.
Me and Jamie were both going, oh.
So, but then you can go old school, which is sending in monkeys with machine
guns, like what I used to do with a PJ or multiple PJs, pararescue jumpers,
because those are the guys, this is the way I describe PJs.
If you want to put a hole in something, JSOC guys are great at it.
If you want to plug a hole, PJs are the guys that you want on top of you just
stopping hydraulic fluid.
They're medical, just absolute badasses.
Nothing but immense respect for them.
So, the two cargo aircraft came in, they pulled the little birds out.
I believe that there was four, that you could only fit probably, man, even if
they were super light on fuel, probably three guys on each pod.
So, six guys per helicopter, 24 guys.
Some of those are going to have to be PJs.
I don't know if that's enough to go into a hardened facility in the daytime
also, which is not when you would do that, for retrieving depleted uranium.
Because, by the way, to do that, you're going to be in full protective
equipment, very likely, which you're going to be moving incredibly slow.
So, I just, I know it was, I know that geographically it was proximal to one of
the locations that they thought that that was what was going on.
I think more, I think it probably was a rescue of the weapon systems officer,
is my guess.
And then, you know, they're like, well, we can't get the aircraft because they
got stuck in the sand.
I'm like, okay.
The little birds don't have the fuel storage and ability to get across where
they needed to go.
So, they had to bring in other aircraft and you don't want to leave that stuff.
Right.
So, you got to detonate it.
Yeah.
They bip it or blow it in place.
How many aircrafts did they lose?
So, what has been, I think, disclosed was the four MH-6s, which are the little
birds that carry the people, the two aircraft that brought those in.
I think there was some version of a C-130.
And I think that was it as far as that operation.
There might have been a Predator or a Reaper drone that was shot down.
I think some A-10s were damaged.
And then, of course, the F-15 that was ejected from.
Wow.
It's a lot.
It's a lot of stuff.
It is a lot of stuff.
But the military asks people to do exceptional things.
And it helps you if you know that they are going to send everything that they
have to come and get you if something goes wrong.
It has to mean something to be issued a flag on your chest, in my opinion, at
least.
And as far as those operations go, there's basically two where you are going to
absorb as the people responding an immense amount of risk.
One of them is going to be a hostage rescue, which I was a part of.
We talked about that on a previous episode, the Jessica Lynch rescue.
The number of people we thought we might encounter was a way bigger number than
the number of people that we could get there in the helicopters.
But you go anyway because of the chance of rescuing somebody.
Combat search and rescue, kind of the same thing.
Maybe it's not a hostage situation, but it could be building towards that.
I mean, maybe you don't have time to go at night, which is when you have all
the tactical and technological advantage, right?
The night vision goggles.
Right.
It's like, hey, we got to go now in the daytime.
We're going to level the technological playing field and you guys are going to
go full back dive and get like that's very high risk.
Those are about the two times that you are going to accept that level of risk.
And you go when you go.
Well, that's what I wanted to ask you.
So the official story seems to track.
It is more plausible to me than any of the other stories that I have heard.
I would like to think that the ghost murmur, whatever it is.
But then it's like, OK, I mean, walk in the dog on that one.
Did this guy have to sit down and, you know, get an EKG and have his heart wave,
you know, HRV on file somewhere?
Because how would you not pick up somebody else's heart rate?
Right.
How would you not pick up other animals or mammals that like, you know what I
mean?
So I want to believe I think we'll probably get there.
I don't think we're there yet.
Was that an official story?
No, that's a Twitter story.
Are you sure?
Well, I first saw it on Twitter, so.
I did too.
But I, well, someone sent it to me.
I didn't actually actively seek it out.
Somebody sent it to me and I was like, wait, what?
And then me and Jamie threw it around for a while.
The internet is the best, worst thing ever.
It was getting spread around by New York Post and then the same article was
getting repeated everywhere.
Interesting.
New York Post?
Have it on the screen.
Interesting.
Ghost Murmur.
I mean, I would imagine, I bet you Lockheed Martin does have a program called
Ghost Murmur.
Long range quantum magnetometry.
But I'm looking at articles.
So.
Diamond based sensors.
I think Iran was saying that we tried to do the snatching of the uranium.
Yeah, those are the little birds.
They foiled us.
So it's like, oh, who knows what side of the story to believe.
All right.
That is part of the problem.
And you know, you got your Fox News narrative and your MSNBC narrative and who
fucking knows.
Yeah.
Separating the bullshit in the modern era is more like an art form than a
science.
Yeah.
It's very confusing and it's very disconcerting to just have no.
And then also they can't tell you certain things.
Like, why would the general public know about things that could affect
negatively national security?
Like, why?
Why would they tell you?
They can't tell you.
Which is also part of the problem with they're allowed to lie.
They're allowed to use propaganda and misinformation on the American people in
the interest of national security.
So that's like.
It would just be better.
I would appreciate it more.
They're like, listen, this is what we can tell you.
And then this beyond this is a matter of national security.
So as much as you want to know, we can't tell you.
Right.
I'd prefer that over a BS story that gets.
It's like a really sticky idea that then gets totally out of control.
And then, you know, people have a three piece tinfoil tuxedo one walking down
Main Street.
But it's just super weird that there might be something like ghost murmur.
There might be something called quantum magnetometry with diamond sensors.
I bet that's real.
I bet it works out.
I mean, they're probably testing it on mice.
You know, I mean, I'm sure that the concept is valid.
Well, you gotcha.
President Trump told the Post the CIA's secret new ghost murmur tool was very
important to
rescuing a downed airman inside Iran.
As leading physicists and engineers debate how the futuristic technology said
to detect heartbeats
at great business might work.
So I guess the Post didn't make it up.
They were told by Trump.
Wow.
I don't know if everything he says is accurate.
Just to throw that out there.
Hey, who knows?
Gets a little loose and fast sometimes with the details in reality.
It's just crazy that that kind of technology is even being contemplated, that
there might
be a future where that exists.
Oh, that makes total sense to me.
They can find you based on your heart rate.
Well, they now know that they can use Wi-Fi in order to see 3D objects in
motion in a house.
Yeah, they can map basically.
Yeah.
I mean, it's well, I mean, again, I think Evan and I had an argument one time
about radar
and sonar.
We were both calling each other idiots and we both found out that we were wrong
once we
looked it up on the Internet.
So we'll say it's some version of that.
God, we were both 100 percent committed that we were that we were correct and
we were both
wrong, which is classic.
But yeah, like in this room, the things that are emanating, there's an ability
for them
to map that and determine who, you know, maybe not who you are, but I bet you
it gets to
that point and where you are.
And you want to talk about a tactically beneficial piece of information from
somebody like my old
job?
Thank you very much.
Right.
Yeah, I'll take that all day.
As long as it stays out of the hands of the enemy.
Yeah.
But then they'll eventually get it and then you'll evolve and your tactics will
change.
And that's the game, man.
It's just it gets to a point with technology where it's like, what is not
possible 100 years
from now?
That's what's weird.
Like we are in one of the strangest times ever in human history in terms of
these quantum
computers that can solve mathematical, like Mark Andreessen explained it to me
and I'm going
to paraphrase it.
I'll probably fuck it up.
But he said that a quantum computer can solve an equation in a matter of
minutes that if you
converted the entire universe, every atom in the universe into a supercomputer,
the universe
would die of heat death before it could solve this problem.
And a quantum computer on Earth can solve it in a matter of minutes.
I don't even understand.
I mean, honestly, like I understand every word that you just used.
Right.
But I don't understand what that means.
Exactly.
And what it is capable of.
Right.
Well, they think that it might be evidence of somehow or another evidence of
multiple dimensions
of a multiverse and that not only is this quantum computer operating in this
universe, but in
an infinite number of other universes simultaneously.
I like the Doctor Strange movies.
I'm in.
Oh, the multiverse.
I mean, to me, that might as well be-
I think they started it with Spider-Man.
That might as well be a scientific documentary because that's my reference for
the multiverse.
Right.
Like, I guess we shouldn't even talk about it because we don't know what we're
saying.
It's never stopped me before.
But it's one of those things where it's like quantum computers are real.
It's an actual real thing now.
Google, specifically Hermut Nevin, who leads Google Quantum AIs, recently used
language that
strongly suggests their new quantum chip speed could be understood as borrowing
computational
power from other universes.
But this is an interpretive, speculative way of talking about quantum mechanics,
not an experimentally
established fact or a standard claim.
The claim comes from December 2024, a blog post about Google's Willow quantum
chip.
Nevin wrote that the chip solved a task in minutes that would take a classical
supercomputer
about 10 to the 25th power years, far longer than the age of the universe.
Again, I understand every word you just used, but I don't understand what that
means.
Stop scrolling.
Grow back up.
He then said, this lends credence to the notion that quantum computation occurs
in many parallel
universes and that this aligns with the idea that we live in a multiverse
explicitly referencing
David Deutsch's Many Worlds Argument for Quantum Computing.
Yeah, right.
We're too dumb to have this conversation.
That's where we need to get Bill on speakerphone.
Bill?
Bill, explain this.
The problem is he'd be like, and then...
And then the show would be five hours long.
Well, and then I would also understand the words that he was using, but not in
the combination
and sequence that he would use them.
Exactly.
Exactly.
I'm just appreciative that he exists.
Yeah, I'm appreciative that there's people like that out there.
Your book, Drowned Proof, I assume this is in normal language that a normal
person like
you and I could read and understand?
Well, considering that I wrote it, we did not use a lot of multi-syllable words.
A lot of ands and thus are in there.
Well, I'm sure it's awesome.
Look, you got Jocko, Jack Carr, and me giving you blurbs on the cover, so it's
got to be good.
So at some point, it doesn't have to be now, but I essentially wrote in the
inscription,
and I mean this from the bottom of my heart.
My life would not look the way it does had you and I not randomly met through Tate
Fletcher.
Like my post-military life would look completely different, and I have no
ability to like pay
you back for how gracious you've been with like your time and your platform.
It's a two-way street because your presence on my show has enriched my show.
It's made the show better, for sure.
Well, my promise is that I will do the best I can to be a positive impact on
the world around me.
I think that's the best way that I can try to pay you back, and honestly, it's
the reason
why I wrote that in the first place.
So that's all I can do.
It's my pleasure, and I try to do the exact same thing, and shout out to my boy
Tate Fletcher.
I haven't seen that guy in forever.
He's the best.
I love him.
All right, and I love you too.
Thank you very much, and thanks for being here.
And Drowned Proof, did you read the audio book?
I did.
Yes!
I love it.
After that experience, let me tell you, voice actors, I struggle with it enough
as the person
who wrote the words.
I can't even fathom what it would be like going in there blind and like, well,
let's just figure
this out as we go.
Yeah, it's a tough gig.
Yeah.
There's a reason why they...
Yeah.
Jocker wrote and read the foreword.
Nice.
That was amazing.
Beautiful.
All right.
That's it.
Go get it, folks.
It's out now.
All right.
Bye, everybody.
Bye.