Episode 384 - Josh Thurman

Summary

Cleared Hot: Episode 384 - Josh Thurman

Host: Andy Stumpf
Guest: Josh Thurman, Co-founder and COO of Angel AI
Release Date: April 28, 2025

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Introduction

In Episode 384 of Cleared Hot, host Andy Stumpf welcomes Josh Thurman, a former Navy SEAL and the co-founder and Chief Operating Officer of Angel AI. The episode delves into Josh's remarkable journey from military service to entrepreneurship, exploring themes of leadership, resilience, and the critical issue of internet safety for children.

Josh Thurman's Journey: From Navy SEAL to Entrepreneur

Military Background and Motivation

Josh Thurman shares his extensive military background, having served over 12 years as a Navy SEAL with 11 overseas deployments supporting the global war on terror. Reflecting on his decision to join the military, Josh attributes his motivation to the events of September 11, 2001, and the subsequent Iraq War, which ignited his sense of duty and desire to protect his nation.

Josh Thurman [07:32]:
"When 9/11 happened and the Iraq war kicked off, it was like, our nation's under attack. Our freedom has been compromised. That made it hit very hard for me."

Leadership Philosophy and BUDS Experience

Discussing his time at Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL (BUDS) training, Josh emphasizes the importance of adaptability and competence. He notes that SEALs must be multi-skilled and capable of performing various tasks at an exceptional level to maintain mission success.

Josh Thurman [20:58]:
"SEALs tend to be able to learn very quickly, and that is something that really sets our community apart from others."

Andy and Josh explore the rigorous selection and training processes in BUDS, highlighting the high attrition rates and the intense environment that cultivates both physical and mental fortitude.

Transitioning to Civilian Life and Entrepreneurship

Challenges of Leaving the Military

Josh recounts the personal challenges he faced upon leaving the Navy, including the strain on his family life due to deployments and the demanding nature of his role as a troop commander. These experiences underscored the need for a balanced life and propelled him toward entrepreneurship.

Josh Thurman [77:50]:
"I wanted to have a big family and realized that the intense operational cycle was causing conflict at home. I decided to pursue entrepreneurship to create a better balance."

First Entrepreneurial Ventures

Josh details his initial foray into the tech industry, launching startups with limited success. These ventures provided invaluable lessons in the harsh realities of the free market, including the difficulties of building a product and securing funding without the backing of large institutions.

Josh Thurman [81:36]:
"We went through two or three hard failures before landing on something that worked moderately well. It was a brutal experience, but I learned a lot in the process."

Founding Angel AI

Recognizing the dire need for online safety solutions, Josh co-founded Angel AI with the mission to protect children navigating the complex and often perilous online landscape. The company's flagship product, Angel Q, aims to create a safer internet environment for kids by acting as an AI intermediary that filters and monitors internet usage.

Josh Thurman [87:23]:
"Angel Q uses AI to make the Internet safe for kids, blocking harmful content while allowing access to educational and age-appropriate information."

The Critical Issue of Internet Safety for Children

Impact of Social Media and Screen Time

Josh and Andy delve into the alarming statistics surrounding children's internet usage, highlighting the correlation between excessive screen time and the rise in mental health issues among youth. With average screen time for teens reaching nine hours a day, the conversation underscores the urgent need for robust safety measures.

Josh Thurman [92:29]:
"The average teen now spends nine hours of screen time a day, leading to a national mental health crisis. Depression, anxiety, self-harm, and suicide rates have skyrocketed since 2012."

Angel Q: A Solution for Safe Internet Access

Angel Q is introduced as a pioneering solution that integrates AI to monitor and control children's online activities. The application serves as both a browser and a search engine, ensuring that all interactions are age-appropriate and safe. Additionally, it offers parents peace of mind through monitoring dashboards and customizable filters.

Josh Thurman [118:33]:
"Angel Q replaces traditional browsers like Safari or Google on your kid's phone, ensuring everything they access is safe and monitored."

Features and Parental Controls

Josh demonstrates Angel Q's features, including customizable personas for children, integration with platforms like YouTube and Netflix with strict filters, and a unique "Parent Assistant" that allows parents to control and monitor their child's device remotely.

Josh Thurman [124:51]:
"If a child asks something inappropriate, Angel Q defers to the parents with a notification, ensuring sensitive topics are handled appropriately."

Broader Implications and Future of AI in Internet Safety

The Role of AI in Combating Online Predators

The discussion expands to the role of AI in not only filtering content but also proactively identifying and mitigating threats from online predators. Josh emphasizes that AI-driven solutions like Angel Q can significantly reduce the risks children face online by intercepting harmful interactions before they escalate.

Josh Thurman [127:16]:
"With personal AI intermediaries, parents can regain control over their child's online interactions, preventing access to predatory content and situations."

Legislative and Industry Challenges

Reflecting on the challenges of implementing such technologies, Josh critiques existing legislative frameworks like Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which currently shields platforms from liability regarding user-generated content. He advocates for comprehensive legislation that holds tech companies accountable for the safety and well-being of their young users.

Josh Thurman [140:27]:
"We need legislative action to enforce age verification and accountability among social media platforms, ensuring they prioritize user safety over profits."

Vision for the Future

Looking ahead, Josh envisions a future where AI tools like Angel Q are standard in households, enabling a safer and more controlled online environment for children. He stresses the importance of community involvement and collective action in driving societal change to protect the youngest and most vulnerable members.

Josh Thurman [140:21]:
"The mission of Angel Q is to provide technology that supports a child's well-being, countering the exploitative nature of current internet platforms."

Conclusion

Episode 384 of Cleared Hot offers a compelling narrative of Josh Thurman's transformation from a decorated Navy SEAL to a visionary entrepreneur addressing one of the most pressing issues of our time: internet safety for children. Through the development of Angel AI and platforms like Angel Q, Josh exemplifies the profound impact that dedicated leadership and innovative technology can have on enhancing the lives of future generations.

Josh Thurman [150:27]:
"Angel Q is the middle road. It offers the critical safety measures children need online without completely isolating them from the benefits of the internet."

As the conversation concludes, both Andy and Josh reinforce the significance of proactive measures and technological solutions in safeguarding our youth from the myriad dangers lurking in the digital realm.

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Notable Quotes

1. Josh Thurman [07:32]:

"When 9/11 happened and the Iraq war kicked off, it was like, our nation's under attack. Our freedom has been compromised. That made it hit very hard for me."

2. Josh Thurman [20:58]:

"SEALs tend to be able to learn very quickly, and that is something that really sets our community apart from others."

3. Josh Thurman [81:36]:

"We went through two or three hard failures before landing on something that worked moderately well. It was a brutal experience, but I learned a lot in the process."

4. Josh Thurman [87:23]:

"Angel Q uses AI to make the Internet safe for kids, blocking harmful content while allowing access to educational and age-appropriate information."

5. Josh Thurman [92:29]:

"The average teen now spends nine hours of screen time a day, leading to a national mental health crisis. Depression, anxiety, self-harm, and suicide rates have skyrocketed since 2012."

6. Josh Thurman [118:33]:

"Angel Q replaces traditional browsers like Safari or Google on your kid's phone, ensuring everything they access is safe and monitored."

7. Josh Thurman [124:51]:

"If a child asks something inappropriate, Angel Q defers to the parents with a notification, ensuring sensitive topics are handled appropriately."

8. Josh Thurman [127:16]:

"With personal AI intermediaries, parents can regain control over their child's online interactions, preventing access to predatory content and situations."

9. Josh Thurman [140:27]:

"We need legislative action to enforce age verification and accountability among social media platforms, ensuring they prioritize user safety over profits."

10. Josh Thurman [150:27]:

"Angel Q is the middle road. It offers the critical safety measures children need online without completely isolating them from the benefits of the internet."

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Takeaways

• Leadership and Resilience: Josh's military background instilled a strong sense of discipline, leadership, and adaptability, which have been pivotal in his entrepreneurial endeavors.

• Entrepreneurial Challenges: Transitioning from a structured military environment to the unpredictable world of startups highlighted the importance of perseverance and learning from failures.

• Internet Safety for Youth: The conversation underscores a critical gap in protecting children online, advocating for sophisticated AI-driven solutions to mitigate risks associated with excessive screen time and harmful content.

• Legislative Advocacy: There's a pressing need for updated laws and regulations that hold tech companies accountable for the safety of their young users, balancing innovation with protection.

• Future of AI in Safety: Tools like Angel Q represent a promising advancement in creating safer online environments, but widespread adoption and systemic changes are necessary to fully address the evolving challenges of the digital age.

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Cleared Hot Episode 384 offers listeners an insightful exploration of the intersections between military leadership, entrepreneurship, and the imperative of safeguarding children in an increasingly digital world. Josh Thurman's experiences and solutions present a blueprint for addressing some of the most significant challenges facing today's youth, emphasizing the role of technology in fostering safer online communities.

Transcript

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[Andy Stumpf]

Good morning, everybody. Welcome back. Today we're talking largely about Internet safety. I've read that we have access to 98% of the known knowledge of mankind through our devices, laptop, tablet, phone, whatever it may be. How do we access that safely, though, with our children? How do we create a system, an app, a portal that allows them to access it safely with barriers and boundaries? Because if you have kids, you know, you do the absolute best that you can. You're not always there. And sometimes unfettered access, unsupervised access to the Internet can lead to really, really dark places. My guest today is Josh Thurman. He is the co founder and chief operating officer of a company called angel AI. I am not even going to begin to describe what they do because he does an amazing job. We actually walk through it in real time showing it. Before this though, before Josh got into the entrepreneurial world, he was Navy SEAL. He served for 12 plus years, deployed overseas 11 times in the support of global war on terror. I let him describe his career. It's fascinating to me to see the people, where they come from, why, what they do while they in and while they're in and then what they do afterwards. It's a fascinating story arc to me. It's inspirational. I always leave these conversations thinking, God, I know that I can do more and I need to. So before we get into episode 384 with Josh Thurman, let me pay the bills. Today's episode is brought to you by Montana Knife Company. If you have been a fan of the podcast, you've probably heard the episodes I've done with their founder, Josh Smith. This brand born, bred, raised and is growing rapidly in Montana, about a hundred miles south of where I am. Frenchtown, Montana is where they're currently operating. They're building a massive facility on the western edge of Missoula. So the Montana Knife Company kind of makes sense where that came from. The State of Montana is also in the logo, but it's a global brand. These are some of the highest quality knives I've ever gotten my hands on. Beyond the fact that Josh is bringing jobs back into Montana. These are American made. I literally have met the people that have made and sharpened these knives for me. This is a family business that is exploding globally. It hasn't changed who they are and what they stand for. Now they released their knives on Tuesdays and Saturdays. They go very quickly. You can also sign up for their email list or a text notification because sometimes they do surprise drops their knives. Oftentimes when they do those drops, Tuesdays and Saturdays will sell out within minutes. I highly recommend actually purchasing something like a sticker on their website so they have your payment information saved. I have literally had at least a half a dozen knives taken out of my shopping cart because I didn't do exactly that. I was putting in my credit card information and they sold out before I could could execute the transaction. It's very frustrating. Even though I know Josh, there's nothing that I can do about it. Head over to montanaknifecompany.com check out what they have. I have their website in front of me. They have awesome apparel. Their knives, again, are second to none. Some point in their checkout portal, they're going to ask you where you heard about them. Do me a favor. Put down either cleared hot or Andy Stumpf or both. That's the best that you can do to support me. This brand has done nothing but be supportive of the podcast. So that is the best way that you can give back to not only me and the the brand. Back to the show.

[Josh Thurman]

Okay, got the red smoke. Sun run north and south. West of the smoke, west of the smoke. Okay, copy. West of the smoke.

[Andy Stumpf]

I'm looking at danger close now. Oh, wait a minute.

[Josh Thurman]

Give it to me. I mean, it cleared hot coffee clear.

[Andy Stumpf]

Not never been to Montana. Heading back to Nashville after this. Where everybody in the United States is currently moving.

[Josh Thurman]

That's right.

[Andy Stumpf]

So you were born and raised near the area where you live?

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah, just south of Nashville, a town called Franklin.

[Andy Stumpf]

How big was Nashville before you left it?

[Josh Thurman]

That's a good question. So when I was growing up, so I'm a child of the 80s, it was growing, but the growth really took off in the 90s. So a big milestone for Nashville was getting the Titans. So we had no. We had no professional sports teams. We had like the Nashville sounds like AAA baseball, but you probably had like.

[Andy Stumpf]

The Country Music hall of Fame, though.

[Josh Thurman]

Right. Yeah, exactly. Well, we had the Grand Ole Opry and a place called Opryland and. Which is a theme park. So we got the titans in like 97. It was. It's weird. Like, they were the Oilers for like, two years while the town figured out. While we figured out who we're going to call them.

[Andy Stumpf]

Okay.

[Josh Thurman]

Around 99, 2000, they became the Titans, got the new stadium. One super bowl appearance in 2003, pretty awesome with Steve McNair and Eddie George. I don't remember that one. But Kevin Dyson was like one yard short of, like, winning the game. The. The Rams cornerback tackled him. This is back when Kurt Warner, that was his sort of glory days.

[Andy Stumpf]

I know some of these names, but I'm honest, I am not a huge fan of professional sports. I'm aware they exist.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

I. I would struggle if somebody put a million dollars on the table right now. I would struggle to name five names of professional football players.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah, I, I only. Well, I do love football, and I only know these because, you know, it was the Titans, and that was. That was exciting at the time, but. So the greater area had like a million people at that point. I don't know what the, like, total population is, but, like our county, which is just southwest of Nashville, it went from like 60,000 to like about a quarter million, which is, you know, about 4x growth.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Josh Thurman]

In that period. So, yeah, it's. It's changed tremendously.

[Andy Stumpf]

How much do you think Nashville has grown in that time?

[Josh Thurman]

I. I think it's. I don't know what the. I mean, my hunch is it's probably a 2.2x of 2,3x. Maybe the whole area. This run here is probably 2 plus million now.

[Andy Stumpf]

It's a cool place.

[Josh Thurman]

It's a lot. Yeah. Yeah, it is. It's fun.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah. Like coming back here.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah. Yeah, I would do. I mean, I'm. I'm jealous of the. The mountains and the serenity and that, you know, that aspect here, all the outdoor activities. I mean, there's some good things to do in Nashville, but nothing, Nothing that touches this.

[Andy Stumpf]

You guys know you have elk in Tennessee? You could hunt elk in Tennessee.

[Josh Thurman]

Really?

[Andy Stumpf]

I don't know if you have a mathematical chance of getting a tag.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

But there is. There's elk there.

[Josh Thurman]

Where? Like in East Tennessee?

[Andy Stumpf]

I think so. Yeah.

[Josh Thurman]

I had no idea.

[Andy Stumpf]

I didn't know that until a few months ago and somebody told me, so I'm just sharing my shot.

[Josh Thurman]

Well, I appreciate that. That's some good info. Yeah. Good intel, man.

[Andy Stumpf]

So when you left. I mean, obviously you went the Navy pipeline. Why'd you go officer versus enlisted? Who guided you down this path?

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah, the answer is no one. Myself. Myself? Yeah. Man. So, gosh, I. I really wasn't thinking about the military until 911 happened. Then the Iraq war kicked off. Those, like, kind of seminal events are what got me more tuned into, like, that option or that opportunity.

[Andy Stumpf]

How old were you at the time?

[Josh Thurman]

So I was a junior in college, so about 21 when 911 happened.

[Andy Stumpf]

Had not thought about military at all.

[Josh Thurman]

I was not seriously considering it at that point. And let me go back a little bit. I will say the seeds were planted, but, you know, we weren't at war. There just wasn't a. It wasn't super compelling to me at that point to go the military route. But when that happened, it was like, oh, man, like, our nation's under attack. Our freedom has been compromised. I mean, at that point, you could think about, you know, people coming in and walking to McDonald's and blowing themselves up. Like, you know what I'm saying? Like, that was like a thing that easily could have happened had we not been able to sort of dominate and keep terrorism at bay. But that made it just hit very home for me. You know, I. Growing up in Franklin, I mean, my. My. Both my grandparents served in World War II. I think that's common for. For a lot of people in our generation. My dad was drafted in Vietnam, but actually didn't see any action. And. And that. That, you know, probably was a good thing for just how that war went. And. And then. So my grandfather, he. He was a really big, like, strong guy, you know, six, four, like, you know, probably 250 and, you know, played football. He was just someone I idolized and looked up to. And he ran for sheriff on our town. Like, everyone knew him, but he was. He was a terrible storyteller. And I just mean, like, he just wasn't good at communicating, you know, And a lot of that was, I think.

[Andy Stumpf]

Just, like, start with the punchline.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah, exactly. That's what I'm gonna lead in with. It's gonna come around. But, you know, I obviously love him to death. He just. He had these stories, but I don't. I mean, I don't know what he did In World War II, you know.

[Andy Stumpf]

How much did he talk about it?

[Josh Thurman]

I mean, almost nothing. Almost not at all.

[Andy Stumpf]

That's super common, too, of that generation.

[Josh Thurman]

For sure. It is. And I don't. He's not an anomaly there. I do wish he could have, you know, told me some stories. He was, he was in like the North Africa element and then. But I'll bring that back to one of his good friends who he played football with there at Franklin High. His name was Jimmy Gentry and he turned into Coach Gentry. So he, he's just a legend in our town. Just last year we, we've got a statue for him like on our five points, like in Main Street.

[Andy Stumpf]

Like full size.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah, it's full size statue. Yeah, it's. It's amazing. And he, he's sitting on a bench and he's looking at the veterans memorial and it's very cool. And where he's sitting, it's the same rock wall where when guys were going to World War II, they would come and sit on this church rock wall and they'd get picked up by the bus and go to boot camp. So that's where he's sitting. But he was a phenomenal storyteller. And through his relationship with my grandfather, I would go to his summer camp. He had this like 400 acre farm, excuse me, farm, would bring kids out there and we'd just go crazy, play capture the flag, swim in the river and do fun things like that. So. But he would talk about World War II boot camp and, you know, he was in the Battle of the Bulge. And then his unit, The Rainbow Division, 42nd infantry, they liberated Dachau on April 29, 1945, and he talked about that. So all those things, all those stories had been told to me and so I had a very strong sense of who America was in the world and what it meant to be a service member. And so when 911 happened, all that sort of came back and I was like, oh man, I should really be considering this. And so I know that was a long way to come back to this, but that's how I started getting serious. I'm in college, was thinking the pre med route and decided, you know, I'm gonna start looking into this seal, SEAL thing and just did start doing online research myself.

[Andy Stumpf]

Why the seals? I mean, of all the branches, I mean, there's all something.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah, I, I mean, certainly the, you know, there's the sort of like, playground. I don't know if you remember when, like when you were like, people talk about seals on the playground, like how awesome they were and the playground. Yeah, like, oh, did you know a Navy SEAL could do this or Navy SEAL could do that?

[Andy Stumpf]

Oh, you had a different upbringing than I did. Yeah, I didn't hear about any of that shit.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah, no, I mean, so I mean, it had this legendary pull to it, and it really did.

[Andy Stumpf]

And so be careful with playground intel.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah, that's right. Right. But that was the. Like, it was. You know, I think it was the place where I thought, hey, this is. This is where you can have the most impact. And I think these are the best operators in the world, and that's where I want to be. Okay. And the. That Discovery channel series, the 234 documentary. Yes.

[Andy Stumpf]

Let me just tell you.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

What's shown on the 234documentary and the reality of training as. You know, they're kind of different.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah, that's right. Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

Remember, film crews work for a union, and they have a certain amount of hours that they can be there. The rest of training that you might have skipped out on or rounded the edges on will get caught up on after the film crew leaves all of the extra buds.

[Josh Thurman]

That's exactly.

[Andy Stumpf]

I would call it the normal buds.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

That maybe the Navy said, let's just not do this on camera. And, you know, the. As an instructor, somebody went back. As an instructor, when somebody tells you to do that, VIP is coming by or whatever, they want you to modify training in your head. As an instructor, all you're thinking is, you guys owe.

[Josh Thurman]

Oh, you owe for sure. This is more work for me.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah. The debt is coming due.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah. And you know who's paying it? It's not the cadre. The cadre's not paying it. The students will be paying that.

[Andy Stumpf]

I mean, the cadre will be physically present, but. Yeah, we're not paying the debt.

[Josh Thurman]

That's right. We will keep going until I get tired.

[Andy Stumpf]

That 234 documentary. Yeah. That was a wild one. I was already in when that came out, and I don't. I didn't watch it at the time. I think I watched it years later. Some of it's accurate.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

You know, it is what it is as far as a recruiting tool. Probably not bad.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah. I mean, it gave me a picture of it. I. You know, I read this book. I mean, no one remembers this guy. It was called Warrior Soul. His name is Chuck Farrer. It's like.

[Andy Stumpf]

Oh, it's like the P F A.

[Josh Thurman]

R R. And I think. I mean, this is like, one of the very first books that I can even. I mean, there weren't a lot of team guy books back in the early 2000s.

[Andy Stumpf]

Men with green Faces.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

That was the first one I read.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah, I didn't read that one. I know about it.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

That's all there was Yeah, I mean, so I joined. What year did you join?

[Josh Thurman]

So I went to OCS in late. Oh, five. Okay.

[Andy Stumpf]

So I joined in 96 and was looking at it since I was about 11. So in the late 80s.

[Josh Thurman]

Okay.

[Andy Stumpf]

That was about it. There was that and the. What I thought at the time was a non fiction rogue warrior series. Come to find out, a little bit more fiction than non.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah, yeah. What, I mean, what got you into the seals? I mean, how did you hear about it?

[Andy Stumpf]

Man, I've been asked that question so many times and I still don't have a great answer.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

So my dad, who I finally extricated him out of California, he lives like a mile from where we live now, was in, you know, the Mark 5s we used to work with. Yeah, well, he was on the Mark ones.

[Josh Thurman]

Oh, wow.

[Andy Stumpf]

So brown water Navy. He enlisted. He did not get drafted. He volunteered. I think he probably just assumed he was going to get drafted, so he volunteered. I think he would probably say he thought it was going to give him a better choice as to what path he wanted as opposed to needs of the military. Went over in the Mark Ones. And obviously not a seal, but you know, the deal, the maritime. They were working with him all the time, for sure. He came from a family of masons in Santa Cruz, California, where I was born. I mean, my dad and I were born in the same hospital.

[Josh Thurman]

Wow.

[Andy Stumpf]

And my great grandfather was either my great grandfather or my grandfather built the high school that my dad went.

[Josh Thurman]

Oh, wow.

[Andy Stumpf]

Some pretty deep ties. It was hard for me to get in trouble there. I mean, he went to, you know, high school and college with the chief of police. So we're going to be okay, you know, on a Friday night.

[Josh Thurman]

That's a good thing. Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

You're going to get a ride home in the front of the cop car, not the back.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

Or the fire truck.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

But he also, to this day, has not talked a lot about his military experience. I mean. Yeah, I think it's very fair to say that the Vietnam era specifically has been treated substantially differently than the G Watt, for sure. And I, you know, if it was in that era, I don't know how open I would be about my experiences either, given how it was framed and probably rightfully so. The framing, at least, not the treatment. But yeah, we were. I remember the actual car ride when he first brought it up. We were driving back from an area near Aptos, which is just kind of southeast of Santa Cruz along the Half Moon Bay, or not Half Moon Bay, the Monterey Bay, and It was the first time I'd ever heard that term. And he was talking about basically insertion extraction platforms. And I remember asking him, like, what is a seal? And he's like, well, in paraphrasing, this is like, 40 years ago.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

You know, they're the, you know, special operations. Or. He probably said Special Forces of the Navy, because he has no. About green brays.

[Josh Thurman]

Sure.

[Andy Stumpf]

Right. No offense to the green brace. This is my dad, like, 40 years ago. Like, they're at Special Forces.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

And it just seemed really interesting. And I remember him saying that not many people make it through, which was interesting to me at that young age, and that the. The training was very challenging and arduous. And then I found. I think I found the book first, the Men with Green faces, which at 11, who doesn't want to paint their face? Right? So then that led me to probably the movie Navy SEALS with Charlie Sheen, which I watched at least a thousand times, thinking that it was going to be exactly what the community was going to be like. Sure. It was not. Even though I did get to wear a flight suit doing CQC in my early days, and it was horrendous.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

They are flame retardant, which also means sweat insulating. They are the worst. A Nomex flight suit in the middle of the summer doing CQC house runs.

[Josh Thurman]

That's brutal.

[Andy Stumpf]

Don't sleep on it. It's a good time, but it hooked me.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

I get asked all the time why, and I didn't have an answer then, and I honestly don't have a great answer now. I don't know exactly what it was, but once it's got. Once it got it hooks into me.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

It was. It was as if my true north calibrated in that direction. And I think, you know, my dad didn't have the best experience in Vietnam, and he came from military family. Navy on my dad's side, army on my mom's side, both sides. I. I feel like we're hoping that generationally, the military service would end with them based on their own experience. So when I started heading in that direction, I can only imagine my dad, like, I should have kept my mouth shut.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah. It just takes a little Colonel of. Of.

[Andy Stumpf]

And I don't know why.

[Josh Thurman]

I mean.

[Andy Stumpf]

I mean, you know, the deal. The community that we served with. And I try to tell people this all the time. They're exceptionally average people. I really do. I mean, there are. There were a couple people in my class, I'm sure there were in yours, that, like, you look like you're chiseled out of marble. Like physical. Absolute specimens.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

But if you were to line up an average BUDS class, most people would go, no. Okay, some height, some shorties in the Smurf crew, if we're still allowed to call it Smurf Crew.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

Somebody asked me the other day, what do they call the tallest boat crew? And I can't remember, was there a name for him?

[Josh Thurman]

Boat Crew 1, obviously. Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

But I don't think they had.

[Josh Thurman]

They don't have. There was no nickname. Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

Why are you gonna make fun of tall people?

[Josh Thurman]

Right.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Josh Thurman]

Right. I was boat crew, too.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah. Same for the Smurfs. But I, I. Yeah, I know that he would have hoped that it ended with me, but I just. I couldn't think about anything else. And then you get into the community, and that was one of the most common sentiments of the guys that I had served with. But I do. They're. They're very average people in almost every way. Maybe we're tooled a little bit differently for. But for whatever reason, that idea, it unlocks this something, and then people just drive down that path. I heard it over and over again as an instructor. I heard it over and over again in the cage rooms, talking with guys, and they're like, I don't know if this is all I ever wanted to do.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

Like, why did it grab us like that but not other people? I don't have an answer for it.

[Josh Thurman]

I mean, the mindset is. Is something that's. You can't easily measure, you know, and, and certainly. And people ask me all day, what, what. You know, how do you predict who's gonna. Who's gonna make it or not? You know, good luck. Right.

[Andy Stumpf]

If they would have let us bet as instructors, we'd be broke.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah. I mean, the amount of money that's been spent to try to figure that stuff out, and it still comes down to, well, there's about 20, 25% who are going to make it. You really can't tell. They all pass the screener and, in theory, can do it. And. And there's some who just absolutely won't quit, and guys who just do extraordinary things, and maybe they don't have incredible gifts. You know, one thing that's like, you have to be competent at everything to be a seal, you know? And that's what I tell people. I was like, hey, you have to. What does it take? I'm like, you've got to be comfortable in the water. You have to be comfortable in the land. And all these evolutions we do and all the mission sets we have, you have to be able to do all of them at a very competent level. And if there's just one, there's one thing that you can't do, then you're going to be out. And so you have to be pretty multi skilled or like. I think what I've found about seals is like they tend to be able to learn very quickly and that is something that really sets, I think our community apart from others is just how quickly they pick things up.

[Andy Stumpf]

I would say that's probably soft, wide.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah, I think that's right.

[Andy Stumpf]

I think the community. That is a skill that has served me well post military, but then I try to reverse engineer that. Is that because people who can learn quickly are drawn to that job or is that a skill set that we learn along the way? I think both might be true to a degree. But I mean something I learned early in my career is if somebody, in this case the military is going to spend a ton of money to have like world class fill in the blank. My theory is you do exactly what they tell you to do and no.

[Josh Thurman]

More, you know, and follow directions.

[Andy Stumpf]

But literally follow directions.

[Josh Thurman]

That is not a common skill.

[Andy Stumpf]

Like people don't do that well, follow direction, follow directions. Absent being interrupted or going down a rabbit hole. Which I didn't have that option at the time because of the smartphones. Yeah, you know, it's, I couldn't go to YouTube and type in how do you, whatever, become a better rock climber or fill in the blank. You would have somebody who'd come to the line who could just smoke everybody on the line with their pistol and he would talk about exactly what he did. And it's like, why would I add to that? If this guy is literally the best in the world, why do I need to add something to that? You say put your hand like this every single, like you do that every time. Okay, cool. I'm going to do that every time too. Exactly what they say, nothing more. But if you can do that, I mean, I don't know if there's a skill that would be out of your achievability range. If you can grasp onto that. There might be some, you know, some IQ issues depending on like probably not going to design a rocket to go into space because I don't have an understanding of mechanical engineering. But I think I could probably, or most people could learn. If you can grasp onto that headspace, I think you can learn at a rate that's a lot Faster.

[Josh Thurman]

I think that's right. I mean, I can remember doing. We're doing like helo call for fires. And it was, hey, watch one, do one, teach one. It was like, whoa. Like, I'm gonna watch one person do this call for fire. And I have my little script and then I'm gonna go do it, and then I'm gonna go teach someone else how to do it. And that's how fast the community moves. I mean, it's extremely high expectations in that regard.

[Andy Stumpf]

Just a little script, though. Just read the script. Don't add words.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

Don't take things away either.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah. I can't remember. We were. We had a break from training a couple of days on a weekend. We were out in Utah and a bunch of guys had never been fly fishing. Went. We had. This guy was showing us, and I remember, I mean, guys in like two or the guys like, here you go. And he's doing like two or three casts and guys would get in your. He was. This guy was blown away. He's like, oh, my God. Okay, you guys got it. And he just kind of like walks away. It's. It's there. It's pretty unreal.

[Andy Stumpf]

The job rewards being able to perform. If you look back in buds.

[Josh Thurman]

Oh, for sure.

[Andy Stumpf]

First phase, probably not so much. It's like be able to do some pull ups, push ups, sit ups, and run your ass off.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

And more flutter kicks, muscle through. Totally. I mean, that's. That's what first phase is about.

[Josh Thurman]

Sure.

[Andy Stumpf]

Second phase, though, like, oh, we'll give you a whole week to prep for pool comp. A whole week? Two dives a day. You don't know shit. But you know. You know really well the procedures. That's actually what it was all about. So I taught second phase. Yeah, it was all about the procedures. I had to brief the classes and I don't know if it was in the curriculum, but I would sit them down after pool comp and just tell them, please don't go recreational diving. You guys are idiots. You don't know anything about diving. Yeah, that test you just passed might have occurred underwater on open circuit gear, but it had nothing to do with diving. It was all about being able to follow procedure regardless of what's going on around you.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah, no, I remember. So I came through two, six zero.

[Andy Stumpf]

Okay.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah, so you were.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah, because I procured 264, so I had just.

[Josh Thurman]

You just gotten there. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

That's the phase where it was a little slower than watch one do one, teach one yeah, it took a little class. It took a few classes for the instructors because it's a one on one and you have to know that the ins and outs of the.

[Josh Thurman]

For sure.

[Andy Stumpf]

And you have to know the gray areas of what, what you can pass somebody with and what somebody should be failed for from a procedural perspective.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

Because it. And that's pretty heavy too at that point. You, if they fail and you know, they fail twice, they get remediated and they can pass or take the test again the next day. Thursday, Friday at least when I was there, they failed that Friday though. One again. Twice they're in front of a board and it was. It's heavy to sit there and watch somebody who you know, has a performance role already on their fourth attempt at pool comp. You feel like they're like they're performing well, they're a good dude and then you watch them start fucking up. It's a tough one.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah, no, it's. Yeah, it's brilliant. They've been through hell week. Got their first phase.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah. Well, you know, at that point too. It happens. Yeah, yeah. You're like, okay, this guy, this kid has a performance role. You're not going to get two.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

And you're watching him fail pool comp for the fourth time.

[Josh Thurman]

This is. Yeah, I mean that happened to our class oic. He was a great dude. We all liked him. Good leader. And just when he got to the second phase iterations, he ended up getting performance dropped after a couple, you know, excuse me. He rolled back a class. But then the same thing happened again.

[Andy Stumpf]

The butter bars didn't save him.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah, no. Hey, those are a target. It's an absolute target. It doesn't help you at all.

[Andy Stumpf]

Oh, I know.

[Josh Thurman]

That's the one thing, you know that.

[Andy Stumpf]

I mean, obviously I went to semen apprentice stump.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

I got to the island and a third phase instructor pulled me aside within weeks of graduating and said, hey, are you part of this class? I was like, yeah, good job. Yeah. There's zero percent chance as an O that you're going to get. You're going to be able to do that. Zero percent chance for sure.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah. And I mean it's. One thing I love about the community is that it's as far as I know, the only community in the entire military, probably in the whole world where the enlisted guys run the training. They're effectively selecting who will be the future leaders of the community. And that's a beautiful thing. And they can, and rightly so, they make it extremely difficult.

[Andy Stumpf]

Why the O route versus the E route.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah, so you were asking me that.

[Andy Stumpf]

Actually, let me ask this.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

Having gone through your career, if you could go back in time, would you still go the O route?

[Josh Thurman]

Oh man, these are hard questions. So why initially I did it so I had graduated from college as I'm like talking to the recruiter and figuring that out, and recruiters, their knowledge particularly about NSW tends to be like, unless, I mean it's, it's way better now. I mean, I'm talking nearly 20 years ago when, when there was no, you know, deep program where they were had. What do they call that now, pre training. Yeah, I mean they have, they have.

[Andy Stumpf]

Like I heard they shut that down actually the pre training pipeline. And I've also heard that it is either going to be started back up or it was started back up. So for people listening, you would go to. For the path. For most people pre, this pre training program or my path was I enlisted boot camp at like the fourth week. They literally put in a VHS tape that was a grainy like dudes coming out of the water like, yeah, like who wants to take the test to do this? Which was a run, swim, push ups, pull ups, sit ups. If you pass that, you picked an A school that would allow you to go to buds. You went to the A school, then you went to buds. Then after I was in, it was you could sign up with a contract guaranteeing your spot in buds. You would go boot camp. I think you would get assigned an A school but at some point you would detach and then go through like this 12 week, 12 week pre training program and then you would go to buds. Actually, you know what, I don't even know if you went to an A school because BUDS became an A school.

[Josh Thurman]

Right? That was, that was around like 06 when it became an A school.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Josh Thurman]

And you got. There's an SO rate.

[Andy Stumpf]

Correct.

[Josh Thurman]

And that's when I think they started the. Well, they had this more official like SEAL recruiters who were getting. And it was a billet, you know. And some, some of these guys were contracted like they had gotten out of the Navy but are retired and now they're SEALs doing this job. But all I say it got a lot better than when, when, when I came in.

[Andy Stumpf]

You know what didn't change during all of that stuff?

[Josh Thurman]

What's that?

[Andy Stumpf]

The attrition rate.

[Josh Thurman]

Exactly. That, that is one number. Like you can be like, yeah, I heard it when I came in. And it's not like I check it, I just know that it's true.

[Andy Stumpf]

The amount of money they spent trying to figure out, I mean, surveys on people's hobbies. They were doing personality tests on people at a time.

[Josh Thurman]

Psychology test.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah, I am not aware of it. Bumping or lowering the attrition rate by maybe a one single percentage point. Yeah, that program will just spit people out. It's a fucking wood chipper.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah, no, for sure. It's. I mean, you gotta love. It's. It's one of the only places where, I mean, you think about the rest of society. You go to college, maybe you're in, let's say a med school or law school. These are challenging things to get in. Smart people, ambitious people. The school is not sitting there saying, we hope you quit. And that's our mission. You know what I mean? Like, BUDS is dope.

[Andy Stumpf]

If it was doctors with boats on their heads, it would be.

[Josh Thurman]

I think we'd have a lot better outcome if that was the. If that was the way it worked.

[Andy Stumpf]

But you wanna be a brain surgeon. Yeah. What's your fucking. Oh, course. Time you're outta here.

[Josh Thurman]

But just, you know something, that's a little bit more like we. I love one of the senior leaders in the communities I love, he says a perfectly acceptable number is 0 to pass. He hold the standard.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Josh Thurman]

And that's a beautiful thing. Cause I mean, we've seen in our society many places where standards have been compromised, but.

[Andy Stumpf]

And the results of said compromise of standards.

[Josh Thurman]

Exactly.

[Andy Stumpf]

The results of the tests are really out there for people to look at if they want to. I don't think you should deviate from the standard.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah, for sure.

[Andy Stumpf]

It was one of the things when I went back as an instructor, it was really cool. They did not ever expect us to deviate from the standard. I will say the skipper would show up sometimes on a Friday of pool week if there was a large number of students that had failed twice on Thursday, he would attend on the pool deck. I don't know what he thought that was gonna do. I think it made the students way more nervous than the instructors because quite frankly, the skipper didn't know what the fuck he was looking at anyway. You know, he had gone through pool comp decades before, but. Yeah, yeah.

[Josh Thurman]

So back to your. Back to your question on, you know, O. O versus E route. So I, I had finished college, so it just, it's. It's not knowing a whole lot. It seemed like, well, I've got this degree, I should go the OCS route. And the only person, like, even in my town, you know, who wasn't I mean, I talked about, like, my grandparents, but he's obviously quite old at this point. Someone in my parents generation. My mom had a friend who was a SWO captain and had just gotten out. And so I go and talk to this guy and he's awesome, dude. His name's Captain Mark Rogers. And he doesn't know a ton about the seals, but he understands generally how the Navy works. And he's like, hey, go to the recruiter and you're going to want to ocs, bill it and figure out how that works. And so I went to the recruiter and here's a. This is worth. So the first time I went to the recruiter, I got. When I was a senior in college, I got hit by a car on my bike and broke my hip. And this is back. So this is like in the post 911 Iraq war is kicking off. So I'm seriously considering now the military. I crutch into the recruiter's office and they're looking at me like, like whiskey Tango, Foxtrot. Like. And then I say, I want to be a seal. And they're just like, on crutches. Yeah, on crutches. And they're going, yeah, this isn't going to work. And I had this another time. I had this, you know, hair kind of like I have now, but even more kind of froed out. And. And I could hear the guys laughing, saying, hey, Goldilocks wants to be a Navy seal, like, in the background, you know. And I will say that sort of steeled my resolve. I'm like, oh, I'm going to prove these guys wrong. Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

Now every time when I was growing up, people would tell me that I wasn't going to make it.

[Josh Thurman]

Oh, yeah, that helps so much.

[Andy Stumpf]

I tell you what, that's also a different kind of person too. Where that negative. I mean, I have. You have kids, right?

[Josh Thurman]

Oh, for sure.

[Andy Stumpf]

I have two boys and a girl.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

With my boys, I can fuck with them. If I fuck with my daughter like that, it's like throwing water on a fire.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

My boys, it's logs of motivation. And that's the same way it is for me.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

Somebody's like, hey, you can't do that. I'm like, really? Let me get some fucking research on, because I'm about to blow your hair back.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

And with my daughter, and I've made that mistake once early on, and I kind of saw her, like, shrinking. I was like, oh, fuck. Okay, we got to change tact here.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

It's a Special kind of person that sees that as motivation for sure.

[Josh Thurman]

And I feel like most deals, I mean that is, that is a characteristic probably common to all resoundingly over the.

[Andy Stumpf]

Course of my 17 years in 99.9% negative feedback as a community, you're also.

[Josh Thurman]

Going to get very candid feedback.

[Andy Stumpf]

Anytime I got positive feedback, I remember sitting there like are you fucking with me?

[Josh Thurman]

It doesn't happen a lot.

[Andy Stumpf]

Like am I in trouble? Like you're actually being really nice. What did I do wrong? Fuck, I fucked this up. Yeah.

[Josh Thurman]

And it's, I mean it takes a very antifragile, non fragile person to be able to receive that and just. And to take it on and keep trudging ahead.

[Andy Stumpf]

Have you attempted to give that type of feedback in the civilian world?

[Josh Thurman]

I've dabbled with it and I found that it doesn't work particularly well.

[Andy Stumpf]

I was going to say I have a full Rolodex of examples of when I've tried it results always the same.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

People. I mean I've. I've had people in tears, like I apologize. That wasn't my intent. I've had people quit and I've had people just look at me in absolute utter horror and shock and be like, you are the biggest I've ever met. And I'm like, this is just how we talk to each other.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah. Yeah. It's.

[Andy Stumpf]

It does not that one is not a multi tool.

[Josh Thurman]

It's not. It's not. Yeah, right. Right time, right place, Right.

[Andy Stumpf]

Caution for sure. Yeah, yeah. It's funny to watch. It's one of the things I do a good amount of public speaking. I have for shit well over a decade at this point. I actually caution people against the seal kind of leadership model leadership culture. Because if you don't have the same type of people who went through the same type, of course that had the same type of buy in, you are going to be just throwing people out into space like an atom coming apart. The electrons are just flying off.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

It can't be replicated.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah. It works in that situation. You're exactly right. I mean and I think once I.

[Andy Stumpf]

Don'T tell people it's bad. I just define the very narrow bandwidth that it can work in.

[Josh Thurman]

Right.

[Andy Stumpf]

And I ask them the question like if your organization is tooled like this, this might be good for you. But if your organization is anything other than this, you better be really sparing. I've watched so many guys again, I'm not joking. The number of times I have fucked up and used the feedback model that we were just a part of and seen it fail. I watch guys get in the military, and I think it's why actually a lot of team guys will be like individual entrepreneurs or start their own business with just themselves because it's so ingrained, and if you can't get it back in check, it is just not accepted in the civilian world.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah, I think that's exactly right.

[Andy Stumpf]

It's entertaining as fuck, but it's not accepted.

[Josh Thurman]

No, I think that's right. I mean, I've, you know, transitioning to be an entrepreneur, and obviously you're gonna build a team. You know, I've had to be, I think adaptable would be the word. And I think if you were leaders, one of the things that when you see leaders who can succeed in multiple environments, the trait they have is like, they're highly adaptable to recognize, you know, have this high EQ of yeah, hey, what is. Read the room. Yeah, right. Who is in the room? And how. How are we going to properly motivate and get the best out of this. This crew, whoever it may be, whatever that background is. And again, the same tool absolutely does not work. I mean, it doesn't even work at different levels of the. Of the teams.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Josh Thurman]

You know what I'm saying? Like, how you're dealing with new guys versus old, and then when you get to, like, more advanced, you know, elite levels, the way you operate is just also completely different. And so if you're a leader who, like, works at those different levels, you've got to adapt through that. And if, if, if you can, like, you're not. You're just not going to succeed.

[Andy Stumpf]

It's interesting to see, and I think this is coming to an end a little bit. But for years, people viewed the Special Operations community, specifically the SEAL community, as if it was. It was a nucleus of only the best leadership in the world. And you would watch people get hired for, or approached for a role that, quite frankly, was outside of their capability. They might have been enthusiastic about it, but their enthusiasm outstripped their capability. And I've had this conversation so many times with people because. And I'm sure this is the case for you and your career. You probably worked with good leaders and bad, right?

[Josh Thurman]

For sure.

[Andy Stumpf]

But did you ever have mission failure?

[Josh Thurman]

I mean, not, not abject mission failure. No.

[Andy Stumpf]

And that's the thing. So people look at the community and they say, well, you guys just keep succeeding and succeeding and succeeding. You must have the best leaders in the world. What they'll never know is that you know, a platoon or a troop or whatever it is, sometimes they're. They're succeeding in spite of the leader, not because of the leader.

[Josh Thurman]

That's. Yeah, for sure.

[Andy Stumpf]

But that's invisible to anybody else. Like, we all put it on our dress whites. Everybody would say, that's a great picture. But let's say you're at a team on the West Coast. You can be like, that guy fucking sucks. But he wears the same uniform and they look the same and they have the same title. And if we go out in the field, two people might be doing the job of that guy, and you're going to have mission success. And if that guy's the leader, they're going to say that spectacularly the best leader in the world. Like. No, it actually. The SEAL community actually masks really poor leadership.

[Josh Thurman]

Well.

[Andy Stumpf]

Because the guys.

[Josh Thurman]

The guys. Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

Always pull through.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah, well, it's. I mean, the.

[Andy Stumpf]

Then that guy gets out of the military to say, the poor leader goes into a sector and just proper fucks it for everybody else. I've watched doors close behind because they have such a bad taste in their mouth and they say, probably rightfully so. Not again. We're close. We're going to turn the faucet off there.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

So it's. Yeah, it's interesting looking back at it now, some. The best leaders that I ever worked with and also the worst.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

And nobody would ever know the difference.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah. From the outside, for sure. Not. I mean, the. The whole. Be able to do. Do a job one up and one down from you.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Josh Thurman]

I mean, guys are really good at that. And so. And at times I think we would even. We might have weaknesses in the platoon and the unit covers for those by other guys stepping up and then gets in bar fights.

[Andy Stumpf]

Everyone shitbags.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah. And unfortunately, you carry. Yeah, that's true. You carry weight. You carry guys along who you probably shouldn't even though. But you have this intense devotion to them. That's the conflict and that's what the community.

[Andy Stumpf]

How do you explain to the outside world that both good and bad exists?

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah, it's.

[Andy Stumpf]

It's been a struggle.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah, that's true.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah. The. So all this to say, Captain Rogers, go. You know, it just seemed like I sort of wandered into the O route because I had a degree and it seemed like that's what I should do. And I didn't. I mean, I didn't. I didn't know any sales, so no one was giving me sort of ground truth on what that was. And. Yeah, so. So that's how I applied for my OCS billet. Um, that was, that was a pretty good application process. You know, it was like a bunch of physical tests. It's like a, it's like a college applications essays and then interviews and, and then yeah, I got picked up as one of those billets. Actually didn't get picked up my first round and then reapplied and got it that second round and so then started OCS December of 05.

[Andy Stumpf]

So that's the kind of the officer and the gentleman course.

[Josh Thurman]

It is. Yeah. If you're coming from the civilian, you're civilian. You've never had any military experience. I mean there's three ways you can get to be a CLO or just a Navy O In general, you go to the academy, you do ROTC at your, if your college has a program like that and those are four year deals where the military is paying for your college. Pretty good deal. Really good deal. Consider how much college costs. But I went, I paid for college. My, my parents paid and, but then, you know, if you're just a civilian out there and you've got a degree, there is a route for you and it's to go to, it's yeah. The Officer and gentleman. The Officer Candidate School when I, when it was in Pensacola, I think it's back in Rhode island now. But it's run by Marine Corps drill instructors. And they're, they're, they're super very professional.

[Andy Stumpf]

Unique.

[Josh Thurman]

They're unique. They do a good job. Excellent job of what they do. And yeah, it's 12, 12 weeks or so. You get your commission and then, and then a rolled out to buds.

[Andy Stumpf]

Straight out to buds.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

All right.

[Josh Thurman]

So that was, I mean that was the, the great and the benefit. The great thing in my was like it only took me three months from getting in the Navy to get to where I wanted to be.

[Andy Stumpf]

That's not bad.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah. Because I'm in eight weeks in boot camp, another eight weeks at a school. Of course, this transition time, you got to wait for your school to start. Yeah, that's not a bad way to go. But now looking back.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

What would you have done knowing your career?

[Josh Thurman]

Man, that is, that is a really tough one. I, I, I had. There's a lot of things in your career you just, I mean so many things you don't control. Like I mean where you get missions, where you get assigned. I mean a lot of these things are governed by geopolitics that are obviously way out of your control. And then also needs the Navy So many good, like, I mean just, you know, you want to be as good and competent as you can be and have a great reputation so that when good opportunities come, you get, you get chosen for those things. But that's the best you can do in terms of like determining your fate.

[Andy Stumpf]

Well, officers are on this 24 month clock though.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah, that's true.

[Andy Stumpf]

Enlisted guys can just tick in if they want to.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah. So man, it's such a tough question. I think I probably would have if rethinking it, gone, enlisted, go E for.

[Andy Stumpf]

A decade and then you still got your degree.

[Josh Thurman]

Right. Cause you can, you can rotate up.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah, yeah, you could have easily. You could have made, you know, get to E6 maybe looking at the chief rap like, I don't think so. Lateral over, slap some butter bars on, you're good to go.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

It is a different career trajectory. I watched officers come and go. 24 months is literally what it seems like.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

You know, for an enlisted guy at a team, you're probably going to do five years minimum. And then, you know, over on the east coast, damn, those guys have been there over a decade and that just the O's can kind of bounce in and out, but they're not staying consistently.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah, I think that is a big negative on the officer side of, I mean you can't really stay in that one job you mentioned two year cycle for very long. Whereas on the east side, you know, you can, you can work on your skills like you know, get it, get really good at jumping, being a sniper, like all these things and you can work on those consistently. Like if you're an oh, you're, you're touching those things and then you're moving on and like you're, you really don't have any deep skill sets. Obviously leading, leading skills in combat is a skill set in itself. But the hands on skill sets, you're just touching those things. You're not getting to work on them consistently. Consistently.

[Andy Stumpf]

My first pre 911 platoon, the LPO which is leading petty officer right underneath the head shed would be the OIC officer in charge, aoic, the Chief and then the lpo. So the LPO finishes his tour and probably is going to pick up Chief. This dude was on his 10th deployment as an E6. He had gotten in some trouble along the way. So a little bit of up and down the ladder of enlisted.

[Josh Thurman]

That's a lot. Yeah, yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

But that's impossible in the O route for sure.

[Josh Thurman]

It is possible. Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah. I didn't need to look anything up because I would just go ask him.

[Josh Thurman]

Right? Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

I mean, just a fucking Rolodex of information. Like, oh yeah, I've done this training exercise 15 times. This is what you guys can expect.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah, yeah. The experience is totally irreplaceable.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah. 10th. Yeah. Still to this day. 10th. 10th deployment. Okay.

[Josh Thurman]

That's a lot.

[Andy Stumpf]

It is. How was buds is a.

[Josh Thurman]

No, it was, you know, there's several O's going through. I think we had, I want to say eight, so. And I, I was maybe the most junior one there. So you know, you're getting scrutiny as an O, but I wasn't up like the class OIC was getting. He's getting a lot of scrutiny. Yeah. And certainly, I mean the main things you're focusing on is just surviving the physical challenges that are, that are happening every day.

[Andy Stumpf]

Headcounts.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah, headcounts. I mean there's some real basic stuff you got to figure out. And you're running your boat crew, you've got a collateral and you're definitely getting the spotlight, you know, on you at various times. And the thing that I, you know, I've said this before that I think the thing that helps you get through buds is like not thinking about yourself. And so if you're in a leadership position and so you are worried, you're like, hey, how does my boat crew going to perform? Whatever it is we're doing the, the rock portage, we're doing boats on our boats that carry, you know, the boat carry on our heads. Um, and just that shift in, in thinking I think really helps. Cause otherwise, you know, you get in that self pity spiral if you're thinking about yourself and, and that. That doesn't go well.

[Andy Stumpf]

No, it does not.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

I used to enjoy seeing students in that cycle and then I would try to just really help them and assist them deeper. It's shocking to me the number of people. It's, oh, somebody, you know, they made me quit. I'm like, I want you to sit with that for a second and let's really determine who made the decision to quit for sure. Because I've never seen an instructor grab a student's hand and put it on the bell.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

Probably because we're not allowed to. But you know, for sure, nobody makes you quit. You make the choice. Somebody can drive you to a place where you make that decision. But that's a tough conversation to have with people. Cause they'll get into those spirals. And it's amazing to see this minigun of excuses just. And it all terminates in ringing the bell three times and somebody else's fault. It's like that's unfortunately not how it works.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah, I mean that's another thing that I again love about the community and buds is I mean there's zero self pity that is allowed. Or like, I mean you as an instructor when you start to see it. Because we want that rooted out. I mean you just don't want that in the community at all and, and you attack it. So as a student you don't want to show it even if maybe your mind might be there.

[Andy Stumpf]

Sometimes you gotta let the students work it out.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

Like on a hell week shift, maybe just let them go do a little bit of a paddle and they do a little an oar fight first, you know, and somebody comes in a little battered and bruised and heads towards the bell. There's things you can do as an instructor and there's things you can hand back over to the class.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah, I mean it's, it's a wolf pack and the wolf pack will call out the guys who aren't pulling their weight. And you know, running with a boat on your head or the paddling, you know, those are excellent ways to, to do that. I mean we, we would do that in our boat crew, like sitting it.

[Andy Stumpf]

To the side as an instructor and watching the class. Because at, you know, as an instructor you'd see especially in helicopter hell week is about five days long. It's a 24 hour evolution. And so all of the phases have to augment because there's just not enough first phase staff. So I didn't know any of the fucking students. Right. It's hundreds of kids largely. So I didn't. There's no way for me to identify who is really a top performer versus who the class doesn't like. But if you were to sit back and watch, you could find these little nucleus of boat crews doing the job that needed to be done for the instructor staff and the curriculum. The number of students that I watched quit because they were under a boat and they are running and everybody in their boat was like, you Bob, like you need to quit. You're. And I've watched boat crews push people, it's brutal. Push people out from under the boat. And then the dudes just like, they start like really enthusiastically chasing the boat and then they slow down and then they walk and then the truck pulls up with the bell.

[Josh Thurman]

It's brutal. We, we did that on Wednesday night. It was the middle of the night and we were on west side of the base there Just doing like base tour, I think.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Josh Thurman]

And so boats on head, you're running from place to place. It's a race. Everything's a race.

[Andy Stumpf]

It's not the tour you guys think it is. It's not postcards. It's like you said, the middle of the fucking night.

[Josh Thurman]

The irony of that statement.

[Andy Stumpf]

Oh, totally. It is what they call it.

[Josh Thurman]

Left in three and a half, four days of this point. And, and yeah, we, we had a guy just, he, you know, I, I think he was hurt to some degree, but just absolutely was. Couldn't stay with us. And it was kind of like, hey, are we going to like keep running at this pace? And I'm like, no, we're not going to keep running at this pace. And, and, and I don't want to. This is a good guy. End up making it later. But I, I don't want that to be the focus. But we took off and now. So we don't have six guys in your, in your boat crew. That's like the standard. And sometimes you get more or less, but now we had five and all of a sudden we're winning like big time. And, and it was awesome because like we got to the next station and the instructor cotters are like, how did you guys get here so fast? And they're like, hey, guess what? On the next one you guys don't have to carry the boat. You can just run. And we're like, oh man. So guess what? You know, and buds reinforces this too. It's like it pays to be a winner every time. Every time. Cause then, hey, your life gets easier. That's true in life, you know, you, you crush things. You prepare and your life gets easier. You don't prepare. Life gets harder. Yeah, you don't, you don't do a great job. Everything gets harder.

[Andy Stumpf]

So, yeah, it was wild to see the, the students self selecting.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

And a lot of the times. Another really interesting facet of being an instructor is you spend a lot of time with people who quit. Because as a student, I mean my class, we had 181st day, 18 originals graduated. I have no idea where they went. Because you're running to breakfast and you're talking to Bob and at lunch Bob's not there and I don't give a. Yeah, because I'm on my journey and Bob is now on his journey.

[Josh Thurman]

Right.

[Andy Stumpf]

Well, as an instructor you get to sit there and you get to talk with them and, and they're in a pretty emotionally compromised state. And I was always very kind because I was more curious about why.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

What got you.

[Josh Thurman]

There's no reason to. Yeah, yeah. On them.

[Andy Stumpf]

You don't need to. They already feel bad enough. But they're in a place where they were really open and honest about why they made the decision that they did. And it was fascinating case study and why people give up on. Because most students would tell you, this is my lifelong goal. This is what I want more than anything in life. If you canvas the class like, hey, by a show of hands, how many people are going to be here on graduation day? Every hand goes up.

[Josh Thurman]

Sure.

[Andy Stumpf]

Every single one. And where'd y'all go? You know, where'd y'all go? But to see the students kind of being even an additional pressure vice on top of the curriculum itself, weeding out what is invisible. Because as the instructor staff, we see too many students to have the inner dynamics of what's going on.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

And then I would, you know, I would talk with some of the students about if I saw a boat crew do that, spit a guy out. I would often try to get some time with members of that boat crew to understand why they were shockingly unwilling to give me information. Most times.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah. Because they thought, I mean, you are like the enemy. Yes.

[Andy Stumpf]

Well, I thought I was gonna use it against them, which, for clarity, 100% was probably going to. And I also wasn't a student too, so I totally got it.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

But it was fascinating. A lot of the times it wasn't even necessarily performance driven. They just hated the person. It was personality based. And the personality conflicts were occurring in times where the instructors weren't around, like the weekends when somebody was a shitbag away from the instructors. Because it's. People think that buds is 182 days and it's 24 7. It's completely not hell week is five days of pretty consistent kicking the dick. But you get your weekends off other than on the island in San Clemente. But even then, you can kind of see the light at the end of the tunnel. So if I could get the boat crews to open up a little bit, it was fascinating to hear why that person was the one that they ejected out. And it almost never had anything to do with physical performance.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah, that's. That's really good insight. That's right.

[Andy Stumpf]

It was a violation of trust more than anything.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

Which was wild.

[Josh Thurman]

Right.

[Andy Stumpf]

To see it physically expressed that way.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah. It goes back to the wolf pack.

[Andy Stumpf]

It's.

[Josh Thurman]

It's not just, can you do the job? Like, do we. Do we trust you? Do we want you to be on our team. Are you going to do things that well, you know, represent as well, like all those things, and that's the 360 of your life. It's not just I show up at work and do those things. And again, there's very few. I'm almost nowhere else where that's the case. Where those things matter so much. I mean, with some. They're crazy. It's crazy sometimes who quits? I mean, so you have guys who come to buds, you know, two, three, I mean, sometimes maybe four times.

[Andy Stumpf]

Another misconception. People don't realize. I think it's a one and done.

[Josh Thurman]

Yes.

[Andy Stumpf]

And that's definitely not the case, right?

[Josh Thurman]

It is for O's, Right. You get one shot for O's, and then it should be their shit. For sure. They should be. Yeah. And then. And then for enlisted guys, you know, they might come back and they've. They've, they, they've done buds and they know buds. You know what I mean? So a lot of times they get in like a leadership position because they know so much about what's coming.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Josh Thurman]

And so as a student, you perceive this person is squared away. They have their shit together and they know what's going on. So I'm going to listen to them. And then we had a guy who's performing extremely well, seemed to know everything, didn't know his full backstory, but I knew he had bunned buds at least once. And I mean, within hours of the chaos that starts Hell Week, the guy quit. And I just remember being blown away at why this individual would have quit because he seemed to be as knowledgeable and as capable as, like, as anyone in the whole class.

[Andy Stumpf]

Did it induce other people to quit as well?

[Josh Thurman]

I don't remember that specific one, but in general, there is a herd sort of thing that happens.

[Andy Stumpf]

What you just described is so eerily similar to what happened in my class, too.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

So he was not a Hell Week rollback, but he made it to Tuesday midday. Ish.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

I don't think I'm giving away any inside baseball. If you can make it to Wednesday, Thursday, they might roll you forward. It is not uncommon to have a medical injury and be rolled forward into Hell Week, meaning you'll get your brown shirt designating you've been through Hell Week. But for a class of people that hasn't gone into Hell Week at all, and we don't know what to expect, this dude was the burning bush. Right. Everything, this is what's going to happen. This is how you should mentally approach it. This is what you should prepare for. We, my class, and I don't know if this happened because it was just scheduled to happen or that they absolutely hated us because they fucking hated my class.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

We did not get a breakout for Hell Week. They put us out in the tents on the beach and you know, we did the. We were watching pizza or watching a movie, ate pizza, whatever on the Sunday. And we go out there and you know you're ready for the M60 fire and the smoke grenades.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

And you just hear, hit the surf. And I was in like the northernmost tent and they were down more by the southern one. So we watched. We were like peering through the.

[Josh Thurman]

Do I have to go out there? We were. How long can I sit here?

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah, well, the week's coming.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah, it's coming.

[Andy Stumpf]

But yeah. So we nursed another 20. 30 seconds.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah, 30 seconds.

[Andy Stumpf]

So we opened Hell Week with a good. Probably two hour surf torture Evolution, one of the good ones, Surf immersion is what they call it. Sure. Yeah. And this particular individual, I'm going to say, and this is again through decades of looking back, I'm going to say within the first two hours, he ejected.

[Josh Thurman]

Wow.

[Andy Stumpf]

And the number of people that followed him because of the. I'm making a guess here a little bit. But because of how they viewed him and what they thought he was capable of. If this dude's throwing the talon now, what chance do I have?

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

Be careful.

[Josh Thurman]

Contagious.

[Andy Stumpf]

Be careful the stories you tell yourself. Yeah, I think it actually, it nerded the instructors out a little bit. I mean, there was a symphony of bells going ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Like, you know, we were playing Jingle Bells out there.

[Josh Thurman]

Wow.

[Andy Stumpf]

And it was wild. That one person, the Burning Bush, was the first dude to go.

[Josh Thurman]

That's crazy. Yeah, we had another crazy one. So post Hell Week we, we come back, I think it was like the very first day back.

[Andy Stumpf]

During walk week.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah, during. No, it was during walk week. And before we even, you know, you class up. I mean, guys can barely walk at this point. For those listening, like after Hell week, I mean, you're super chafed. You're walking, you move around like, like you're 90. It's like you look like you're 90 years old. I mean that in terms of how you're moving, but you're getting into this walk week. And I remember we're mustering. It's still like, you know, five in the morning, 4:30. Something's like super early. But our, our LPO is like, nowhere to be found. And it's like, oh, man. Like, what's going on? And, oh, I see he's trying to find or whatever. And he got up that morning, the day. The first day after Hell week, and went and rang the bell. I mean, everyone was like, everyone was shocked.

[Andy Stumpf]

He went through all of that just to ring the bell?

[Josh Thurman]

Yes. I mean, it's like we just had the weekend. Like, you just recovered, like, what happened? And I. I don't know. You know, I didn't talk to the guy after. I. I mean, what I said, what some guys have said, it just. I think he got, you know, there was some emotional elements of, like, he saw his kids, you know, he'd been in the fleet and afterwards, and like, you know, he hadn't seen him a long time, and then, I don't know, he just got in this bad spiral. He got in the bad spiral and it was. I don't know if that's ever happened at buds. I mean, I. It would be like, you know. You know, like, basically, no one quits on a Friday.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Josh Thurman]

You know, I mean, in general, that's. That's not always true, but.

[Andy Stumpf]

Well, that's why you always tell the students, it's Thursday.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah. So. So. But I mean, to quit after Hell week is like, wow.

[Andy Stumpf]

Like, especially that close to that.

[Josh Thurman]

You had to get in. You had to get in. Bad place.

[Andy Stumpf]

I support it. I'm here for it.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

Here's the thing. I'd rather have it you and you think you're in a bad place after Hell Week. Standby.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

Because it gets a whole lot worse.

[Josh Thurman]

For sure.

[Andy Stumpf]

You know what I mean?

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

I didn't believe the instructors when they said, you're going to be colder after Buds or more tired. I'm sitting there looking at them. I said nothing. I just was like, who y'all instructed? Everybody.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah, right.

[Andy Stumpf]

Liar. You're a liar.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

And then was way colder after training and way more tired.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Josh Thurman]

What was the coldest you were ever.

[Andy Stumpf]

After the fucking desert in Afghanistan.

[Josh Thurman]

Whoa. I would not have guessed that one.

[Andy Stumpf]

Well, in the summer, when you get the temperature swing, and if you're busting your ass during the day and then all of a sudden the temperature goes off a cliff and, you know, sometimes you pack warmies, sometimes you don't, because you think you're going to be back in, you know, a day and you're not because the weather rolls in and then. Then you're real cold.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

Probably wasn't as cold, to be honest. As the immersion in the ocean, you know, in San Diego. But it felt like it for sure.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

Deserts, man, they'll. They'll crush you. They can have 100 degree temperature swings.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah, those are. That is brutal.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah. I mean, honestly, like probably Kodiak was probably the coldest afterwards doing the bullshit. Like, let's do an OTB in our dry suits because it's 1999 and like fuck it, this is what everybody did before us. So I was beaten as a child. So I have to beat you since you're my child.

[Josh Thurman]

Gosh. I doing OTBs in Alaska. This is. I learned a real hard lesson.

[Andy Stumpf]

Stands for over the beach for people listening. Yeah.

[Josh Thurman]

Right before we realized we didn't have a signal that we were going to use. And I'm running around trying to find this thing and then I go and take a leak like in the bushes before we get on the boat and roll out there. Forget to zip up the full zip on the crotch zipper. So get in. This water's basically. It's freezing. It's not freezing because it's salt water and it's moving and so it felt like needles in my legs. I'm like, oh, this is pretty cold and kicking it in trying to walk across the beach and I must add 100 plus pounds of water in this suit.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah. Full Michelin man.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah. And this is, this is sqt. So I'm trying to like, I don't want to let the instructors know that I've been a total moron and. And so I'm like sloshing it, you know, and we go and change out and I'm doing, I'm doing eight count bodybuilders while everyone's changing out. So I don't hype out and, and that hasn't happened to me again. So, you know, you can.

[Andy Stumpf]

The painful lesson self taught. Yeah.

[Josh Thurman]

Natural. Natural consequences.

[Andy Stumpf]

Looking back through SQT and buds, what do you think the most important. Actually, let's just go on buds. What do you think is the most important lesson you took from that as a person or is there one to be gained from there? Is it just a wood chipper?

[Josh Thurman]

So for me, gosh, I think it exposed some immaturity in myself and, and you know, so got through first phase. Did, did fine. Did well in all the physical evolutions. Had a good boat crew. Boat crew liked me and vice versa. And that worked well when I got to second phase. So. So as an officer you have probably like three core things that, that you've got to do. One of them is you need to be an excellent tactical leader in terms of being a ground force commander. Like, that's what your job is out in the field. That's your core job. Outside of that, very important. You've got to be able to take care of your guys. Hugely important. And then the other thing is you need to be able to basically sell and promote your element. Right? And so of those things, like taking care of the guys, to be able to take care of them, you need to have good relationships with them. And so I had a number of friends in first phase, and so when I rolled into second phase, between getting rolled and whatnot, several of those went away and I didn't reinvest in more friendships. I got a little isolated. A little. Everyone's in that fatigue state of post hell week, and I didn't put myself out there like I should have. And so that got me in a bad place with the class and having to battle through that and then go into third phase. And I had a lot of. A lot of eyeballs on me like, hey, the, the. The. Oh, I see the faces like, hey, the class is basically indicating that they don't like you as a leader. And having to battle through that, demonstrate my confidence, regain their trust, and then. And then go on to excel. I mean, that was. That was incredibly difficult. And like, you do not want to be, I mean, again, in the wolf pack, you do not want to be on the edge. Like, you absolutely want to be at the lead or at very least in the. In the. You know, solidly in the center of this pack. And that's your whole life. I mean, it absolutely is. And so working through that, you know, you don't want that to happen. I wish I'd been more mature and could have figured those things out ahead of time. I'm glad it happened very early because then it set me on and I was able to learn from it pretty quickly and by sqt had completely turned things around in a very positive way.

[Andy Stumpf]

Well, you get a clean slate after buds. It's kind of a little bit. It's truncated.

[Josh Thurman]

That was beautiful to have a clean slate. And because. And the officers go to. After buds, you separate from your class. You get a new class because you go to the junior. So we went to, yeah, junior officer training. And that's. I can't remember, I want to say about three months or so. Well, I get three or four months and. But then you pick up a new class, and those guys typically don't know you. And like everyone. Everyone has some sort of problems and buds. No one's like, oh, I crushed the whole thing, you know what I mean? And so you're very happy to get a new slate. And once I did, I took every, you know, took advantage of it. So I mean my biggest lesson was just getting through that immaturity and, and recognizing like, you know, how important those relationships are and continue to invest in those. So. And then that set me up for success the rest of my career.

[Andy Stumpf]

It's another interesting misconception, I think, is that people feel like everybody, it's like this homogenous organization where everybody has exactly the same beliefs. Yeah, holy shit. I serve with people. I mean, I legitimately serve with people who were silver spoon kids and straight up shooting dinner with a BB gun in like the deep woods of Arkansas and everything in between. And I would say the military and the SEAL community probably trends right of center politically, but I certainly serve with people who are on the left or support staff or we don't all the structure that makes it possible. It's. People think that leadership like SEAL community, oh, it's, you have the perfect team and you plan the perfect mission and it always goes well. And I just, look, I'm like, you don't know what the fuck you're talking about.

[Josh Thurman]

It is, I mean, gosh, it's a beautiful thing about the community of like what binds this group of men together. And it's, it's the mission. I mean, that's what it is.

[Andy Stumpf]

It's a buy into the mission for sure. Mission.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah, because we talk about diversity, I mean, massively diverse backgrounds of exactly what you just explained. You know, I can remember a beat down where this is training session. Yeah, sorry, we're doing extra butts for screwing something up. We deserve it.

[Andy Stumpf]

Remediation is the term that required us to do this.

[Josh Thurman]

We deserved it for sure. There had been sort of a snap room inspection. And some of the, you know, this is, we're pretty, I mean it's like third phase. So you don't expect necessarily the room inspection at that point, but it happens. And some of the cadre out there, you know, we're in the leaning rest and he's trying to make a point like, you know, who here grew up in a trailer park and you know, everyone's looking around like two or three guys like raise their hand, you know, and the instructor's all just like, ah, shit. He's like, okay, well you shouldn't leave your rooms dirty. You know, he's like, no, he's trying to make some Point that, like, you know, you guys didn't know how to take care of your place or something like that. It's like, hey, there's guys from all sort of socioeconomic backgrounds. Ivy League schools. Yeah. And it's awesome.

[Andy Stumpf]

Devoutly religious, complete. Another savage walking planet Earth, everything in between.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah. One of the best speeches, I mean, in my life that I've ever heard is I had checked into buds. When you check in, you're in, like, this holding phase. We were just training, waiting to class up, and the. The OIC gives this short, very short speech where he's like, hey, everyone who's new here, hey, no one gives a shit that you were the man in high school, that you were the king of the prom or the captain of your football team. It all starts here. And that's all he said. And I just remember being like, oh, that was awesome.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Josh Thurman]

And, like. And you saw guys who, like, were those things, and they were kind of like. Everyone's like, oh, shit. Like, I mean, everywhere you go, you always are taking in most of everywhere else in life, like you are somebody you know. It's so and so's son, or, I did this before, or whatever. Like, when you get there, it's like. I mean, none of that stuff matters. No one goes, well, this guy was, you know, captain of his baseball team, so let's give him a pass. Like, that doesn't happen at all.

[Andy Stumpf]

He stays at the door.

[Josh Thurman]

And not only that, I mean, it doesn't even get brought up.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

It'd be awesome if it did. I would have some choice feedback words. Yeah.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

Where'd your career take you after buds?

[Josh Thurman]

Uh, so then what'd you put in your dream sheet? Yeah, so, yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

Okay.

[Josh Thurman]

Dream sheet.

[Andy Stumpf]

I ask everybody this, too.

[Josh Thurman]

Going through sqt. I put in East Coast. And this is because I put it. I'm from Tennessee. I was thinking, well, maybe I can, like, pop home a little bit easier from the East Coast. And that's what I put in. And then a couple months later, I was like, oh, that was dumb. Like, the West Coast, I'm loving in San Diego, and I'm not sure it's actually that much easier. And so then I went and changed it. And that was. I had no idea this was going to happen, but it ended up being, like, a very good thing. So I ended up getting assigned to. Excuse me. A West coast team. And then I was not aware you.

[Andy Stumpf]

Could change your dream sheet.

[Josh Thurman]

Well, it wasn't.

[Andy Stumpf]

This must be the officer privilege. This is Bud's officer Privilege.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah, exactly.

[Andy Stumpf]

Because E2, Andy, they're like, we actually shredded your paper right after we gave it to you. Because that's a fucking joke. You're going where the Navy needs you.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah, that's right. So I rolled it to, like, admin. That was, like, just off. I don't even. I can't remember who was running this lady who's running it. And I think she was a civilian. She was not particularly happy that I wanted to do this, but she let it happen. And so the way it turned out, when I graduated sqt, got my trident, and get assigned to my west coast team.

[Andy Stumpf]

Today's episode is brought to you by Element. It's spelled lmnt, like it is on the can. Don't be afraid to just say Element. What is it? It is electrolytes. I'm gonna read right off of one of these little satchels that they have. You can hear this. Thousand milligrams of sodium, 200 milligrams of potassium, 60 milligrams of magnesium. There's a couple ways that you can get this. You have these little sachets right here that I travel with. I keep them everywhere. I'm getting ready to go to Costa Rica for my wife's jujitsu seminar. Have an entire Ziploc full of these. I rely upon them. And now they have the sparkling water. Sixteen ounces, exactly the same thing, 1260. A variety of flavors. I might be giving you some inside tea as well, but they just got a packet of lemonade salt at my house. I made it. It tastes exactly like lemonade, but it provides exactly the thousand two hundred sixty. I don't think it's for sale yet, but it's coming down the pipe, so prepare yourself for that. Do not sleep on your hydration and electrolytes. I did for a long time, and it sucks. I distinctly remember when Rob Wolf, one of the co founders, introduced me to this product. How I felt before using this product and how I felt after. For me, it was jiu jitsu. Two hours, an hour of class, an hour of open mat, and feeling like an absolute drain battery afterwards, or slamming one of these packets in the water. And I'm not gonna say you could feel the energy coursing through your veins, but you could almost feel the energy coursing through your veins. It made a huge difference on my productivity and recovery for the remainder of the day. Element is the go to electrolyte drink, trusted by many of the world's leading health experts and athletes, including Team USA weightlifting coaches. Health practitioners and teams across professional, collegiate and high school sport leagues. They have a no hassle return policy that is almost never used, so no questions asked. If you don't like it, send it back. They have sample packs so you try everything. They make spicy salts so you could put them in margaritas if you will. They make chocolate salts that you could put in coffee. They have you covered from an electrolyte perspective. Head on over to drinklement.com ClearedHot that is drinK-R-I n k l m n t.com ClearedHot and you're gonna get a free element sample pack with any Purchase [e-mail] Clearhut don't sleep on the sparkling. This stuff is actually really, really good. Convenient. Throw it in your bag. 16 ounce can of sparkling electrolyte water. Go check it out. Feel the energy coursing through your veins. Back to the show.

[Josh Thurman]

Because I switched they. I missed all of the like the workup where you go to the schools and like do all the schools. So what was.

[Andy Stumpf]

Oh, pro dev.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah, yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

Professional development.

[Josh Thurman]

Professional development piece. Yeah. So what was good? What was positive about that was I immediately jump into like the workup to train with the platoon. And so it put me like just six months kind of ahead of like the other guys who I graduated with, which because officers don't tend to. I would, I would have loved to gone to the schools but the schools aren't really part of your core job. You know, it's. It's things that again, the deep skills that you're ended up, you're not going to be necessarily utilizing. So that ended up being like a great thing. Yeah. And so then, so then you're a new guy at the team forever. Yeah, yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

When did you finally deploy overseas the first time?

[Josh Thurman]

So it was, it was about two years after sqt and this is like the late aughts, I GUESS it was 2008. We went over to, we were in, we're out west in Iraq and yeah, that was, that was interesting. You know, going first time overseas, get off the plane and at this point we had the RGs, had just gotten, you know, the big armored vehicles. So getting those things and you know, driving very fast on the opposite side of the road is like, oh, this is, this is the real deal. We're trying not to get ID'd right now and try not to get shot at and. Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

How'd your career progress from there?

[Josh Thurman]

So did that rotation and then pull.

[Andy Stumpf]

That mic a little closer.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah, yeah, sorry. You're Good.

[Andy Stumpf]

Take it with you when you lean back. Look at this.

[Josh Thurman]

Oh, man, it's good. Did that rotation and then volunteered to go over to Afghanistan right after that. You know, just. We had just been back a few months and gonna go support another unit. Did that for like a three month deployment, and then. Which was effective, which was an amazing pro dev. And then stayed at team five. That was also a good deal. So I got basically two. I ended up doing three deployments, like, almost back to back, and then all in the, like, assistant platoon commander or third O role, which is a great place to learn a lot without having a ton of responsibility. And so, yeah, so then finished there and then ended up going east coast after that and did my platoon commander. Troop commander did some ops rolls and ended up getting out 2018.

[Andy Stumpf]

When did you start thinking about getting out?

[Josh Thurman]

Wow. So.

[Andy Stumpf]

So you retired or got out. You did 12 years. So is that probably 04 knocking on 05?

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah. So I was just getting ready to take the XO billet.

[Andy Stumpf]

Okay.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah, I picked that billet up and let's see. So I met my wife. She wasn't my wife at the time, but in 2011. And then we ended up getting married in 14. And, you know, we wanted to have a big family, and so we ended up, you know, having a kid right out of the gate. My oldest daughter, who's about 10 now, or. No, sorry, she is 10. She's 10 now. And being on that sort of intense operational cycle from like 14 to 18 in a troop commander role, it was just. Honestly, it was just a lot of conflict in the home over, hey, we're, you know, we had. We had our second son during that time period as well. And it was one of those deals where. Let me back up a little bit. So my first daughter, I was deployed to Columbia. It was right in the middle. I didn't love the way it was handled by leadership. It was like, you might get to go home kind of situation. And I felt like just given. Given the state of the mission and like, what was going on, it would have been reasonable to do so. But it turned out my. I was a platoon commander at the time. My troop commander really stepped up for me. Big timing. I remember. So my wife went into early labor. I know this. And I'm like, okay. Like, it was one of those. Was the baby coming or not? Which is not a fair question to ask your wife who's going into early labor.

[Andy Stumpf]

I mean, you can ask it.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

It'll never be forgotten.

[Josh Thurman]

That's right. You can Ask it.

[Andy Stumpf]

You can ask whatever you want. There's just people. First Amendment, like, yeah, the freedom of speech does not free you from the consequences of your speech.

[Josh Thurman]

That's right. Goodness. So. So. So I'm informing my leadership. Hey, this is. What's going on. She. She's seems to be in labor, but it's. It's early. It could be like a. Could be a false labor. I don't know. And my troop commander, a few hours later calls me, and he. This is the conversation. He goes, hey, your wife's having the baby. And, like, I mean, it was jarring to me. I go. It was like, you know. You know, you're like, you know, you see in the movies, like, when the wife's water breaks over the man, like, start freaking out. I was like, what are you. He is.

[Andy Stumpf]

She is.

[Josh Thurman]

Okay. Okay. Like, that's how I responded. I'm like, he's like, get on that plane. And then he hangs up. And I was. I was. You know, my thought was like, are you sure it's okay? Like, I wanted to be like, do I have to? You know, so then I just. I mean, he basically just was like, hey, you're going, and I'm gonna. I'm gonna make sure it's okay. And so I got home. My wife didn't have our daughter at that point, and so I ended up getting to stay with her another week or two, have our baby, but I've got to leave a week after that, go into our second child, had him and then. And then had to do a deploy for purpose where, you know, go into work and then gone for several weeks without contact. And those things, you know, they're hard on a relationship for sure. So anyway, so that's. That's all that to say, you know, if you can't make it work at home, I mean, what's the point? I mean, that was my thing. It's like, hey, everyone's getting out. It's like, when and on what terms? And so it's not something I really wanted to do. I built up. Gosh, you know, when you. You know, when you've built up, like, just your reputation and, like, the amount of time you've. You've spent to building. Hey. How far you've gotten in your career. And I was at the top of my game just. Just post troop commander, getting ready to take an exo spot, and. But I was like, hey, this, you know, gonna end up either divorced or with, like, terrible relationship with my wife and probably my kids, and that wasn't a place I wanted to be. So. So we punched.

[Andy Stumpf]

So what were you looking at doing professionally? Did you have any idea what you were gonna do next?

[Josh Thurman]

So I did have. I. I'd always wanted to be an entrepreneur. I mean, even before. Before going into the military. So that was something that I was looking forward to. And. And so I was excited about that opportunity. You know, for all the goodness, the military, it is a bureaucracy. You just got to climb the ladder, like, over time. You can't. You can't skip any steps.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Josh Thurman]

And what I like about being an entrepreneur is you can build something great in a relatively short amount of time. And, like, you know, it's really all on you in terms of, like, how to, you know, you're competing in the free market, and there's no steps to climb other than you've got to. You've got to excel. But. So that's what I transitioned into, is starting running businesses and obviously got to where I'm with Angel Q now.

[Andy Stumpf]

The idea of being an entrepreneur and the reality of being an entrepreneur, I'm going to get out and I'm going to build stuff. Very easy to say.

[Josh Thurman]

It's brutal.

[Andy Stumpf]

Where'd you start? Like, what was the first thing that you built was the. You're like, okay, cool. Next chapter of life.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah, it was. I remember. So we got out in Entrepreneur.

[Andy Stumpf]

Sounds great in the movies. Number of entrepreneurs that I know. Full gray hair at the age of like, 35.

[Josh Thurman]

I know. So we get out. This is in the springtime, come back home to Franklin. We'd gotten a house and trying to settle in there. In my mind, I imagined, oh, man, I've saved up a little money. We've been. We've been hitting it so hard for so many years. I'm gonna, like, go learn how to play golf for six months and. And everything's gonna be like, you know, brought, you know, rainbows and butterflies. And I remember very quickly, just all of a sudden not having, like, a mission and purpose and drive was. Was like. It became terrifying pretty quickly. And so I rapidly shit canned the, like, getting good at golf playing and was like, I've got to get. I got to figure out what I'm doing the rest of my life. And that's. That is not an easy thing to kind of sort through.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Josh Thurman]

But the. The guiding principle for me is, like, I was watching the tech world explode, like, while we were in the military, and so that was very appealing to me. I was like, okay, that's. That's where I've Got to get. But I knew very, very little about tech other than I was sort of forward leaning in the platoon and the troop on trying to integrate new technologies, test things out and bring those to our community. But it's not like you're developing software and you're the end user of that stuff and you can kind of guide how it's built. Sort of like a product owner, I suppose, but it's not like you're building it. And so I just knew I needed to get in tech. And I mean, this is crazy. I remember in that. Did you do the TAPS class? Like when you get out of the military and it's like a two week thing that they pretty much force you to go to.

[Andy Stumpf]

All of the signatures on my TAPS paperwork were there.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah. So I appreciate that. I wish I did the same. But I can remember in that class reading about how like the cloud was taking off. I was like, this seems like a good opportunity. And then when I got out, a friend of mine, an old family friend who was very bright technically, had, had run the AI lab at like San Diego State. He had started this business to create this distributed cloud. I was like, this sounds awesome and maybe extremely lucrative. And so we linked up, started that, raised a little bit of money and started going down that route. And what I quickly found was that, gosh, I had been extremely naive and my understanding of what's realistic and what's not in terms of being able to build what the market is like and just how difficult it is to build a product. And so we went through, I mean, two or three hard failures before landing on something that worked pretty well and has been moderately successful. But it was not the huge win that we had anticipated. And it was more like, I have to be like, maybe I learned a shit ton in the process, but it was honestly a pretty brutal experience. I mean, the free market is brutal. Like you go from, I mean, in the military, it's. The US government is backing you, like, and wants to see the SEAL community and special Ops succeed and do extremely well. There's a huge amount of money behind that. And so if you have an idea and you want to go do things, a lot of times you can get funding for those things. And you just got to know the.

[Andy Stumpf]

Right line item to draw from. Maybe pull it from this program over here, Maybe a little bit from over here.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah, I mean, and then also the checkbook is robust. You're on your own and you have no, you don't have a platoon of guys who are like instantly working for you, you got to go raise money. Like, you have to have a huge vision that are going to get people excited. And when you have a startup, you're starting from zero, at some point, some. Someone, it's zero. And like, very few people want to even sign up for that because they're like, I don't know if it's going to make it or not. And they're. And they're right. Right.

[Andy Stumpf]

I mean, it's very analogous to what you're saying about. Doesn't really matter if you were the team captain or any of that before buds. Leave that shit at the door.

[Josh Thurman]

No one cares.

[Andy Stumpf]

Like, your trident's still shiny and people probably pay attention to you, but you better be able to perform.

[Josh Thurman]

That's exactly right. And you better build something that people want. I mean, that's. That's. If you know about, like, Y Combinator and that sort of accelerator and investment. I mean, that's their slogan is like, you know, build something that people want. And that's not an easy thing to do.

[Andy Stumpf]

I would only build things that I like, and then it would be immediately bankrupt. I actually have a hard rule at the coffee shop, especially for T shirt designs.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

If it was me, we would sell only black T shirts with only white ink on it. Yeah. And so I constantly tell them when they ask me about a shirt idea, I'm like, listen, don't ask me, ask other people. Because if we only sold what I liked, we would be bankrupt.

[Josh Thurman]

I know.

[Andy Stumpf]

I have to.

[Josh Thurman]

I'm also not a good. I'm not judge of, like, what people like.

[Andy Stumpf]

I like super simple stuff. And apparently people like more complicated stuff.

[Josh Thurman]

Right.

[Andy Stumpf]

And that's your choice in business. Do you want to sell what you like, or do you want to sell what other people like? Yeah, I would recommend the latter.

[Josh Thurman]

That's exactly right.

[Andy Stumpf]

Which is a tough pill to swallow. Like, God damn it, I'm an idiot again. Yeah, it's rough.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

So, okay, Angel Q. How did we stumble upon this idea other than the Internet is a fucking landmine field worse than we ever walked through?

[Josh Thurman]

I usually. I can't wait to talk to you about that because I'm 100 on board with that. So. So first startup. It's just. It's doing very average. Um, I wasn't super. There wasn't a deep mission behind it. And that's something also I recommend for vets is find something like you deeply care about. And so makes the.

[Andy Stumpf]

It makes the slower, more down days more tolerable.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah. So I'm in the middle of that. But then this Angel Q opportunity comes around. So my co founder, Tim, and we have four co founders, great founding team. But he originated the idea. And I will say one good thing that happened in my previous things. Tim had had an AI company. We went and pitched him on using some of our cloud products. He didn't end up buying, but it must have made a good impression because he called me when he was thinking about this idea and was like, hey, I think you'd be great to co found this with, you know, and help me execute here. And so, so, so that was a very positive thing. But the mission to protect kids online, which is super needed, was something that like I was definitely missing in my life, you know, and it was.

[Andy Stumpf]

Did you grow up with a smartphone?

[Josh Thurman]

No, absolutely not. Well, they weren't even around.

[Andy Stumpf]

Okay, so when did you get your first cell phone? Do you remember?

[Josh Thurman]

Yes. So I had one in late high school. It was, it was one of those flip phones.

[Andy Stumpf]

Strong, use your teeth to pull the little three inch antenna.

[Josh Thurman]

That's exactly right. I think it was a Motorola.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah. Oh yeah.

[Josh Thurman]

And it was, it was very much like it cost a ton of money then. So it was parents like, hey, keep this in the glove compartment. Do not use it unless it's emergency. And. And that's what we did.

[Andy Stumpf]

Okay. You got it earlier in life than I did.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah, yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

I remember my first phone was in my middle 20s and I had, I think I bought the 60 minute per month plan.

[Josh Thurman]

But they, but they rolled over 60 minutes. It's amazing. You blow through that in a day now.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah. Oh, for sure.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah, yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

No, those, some of those bills were pretty stiff and reinforcing.

[Josh Thurman]

Yes, that's true.

[Andy Stumpf]

Free weekends, though. Most of my calls were done on the weekends. Yeah, yeah, it was the weekday.

[Josh Thurman]

Oh yeah. And nights, once you get those free nights came in. That was huge.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah. Because that's when the Internet's cheaper, I guess.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. You know, my own kids, they don't remember life without the Internet.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah. Gen Z does not.

[Andy Stumpf]

It's wild.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

They interface with it in a different way. They also, they are way more capable on the Internet than I am for sure. They can figure out ways to teach themselves things on the Internet.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

At a way I was never able to. My middle son started two businesses off of YouTube.

[Josh Thurman]

Oh, wow.

[Andy Stumpf]

Like, you know, how do you form an llc? What's a business?

[Josh Thurman]

That's impressive.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah, he's, he's going to be just fine. He's at Bozeman doing a mechanical engineering degree. I don't have any worries about him. And one of his business was just knocking on doors. It was a window cleaning business. And so he doesn't mind talking to people.

[Josh Thurman]

It's great.

[Andy Stumpf]

When they tell him no to his face, he literally doesn't skip a beat. Do you know if any of your neighbors would like my service? He just fucking rolls with it.

[Josh Thurman]

That is important.

[Andy Stumpf]

He's fine. He's going to be fine for the.

[Josh Thurman]

Rest of his life.

[Andy Stumpf]

Right. I'm like, just go live life. You're going to be absolutely fine. He's so smart. And then so utterly stupid in some ways too, I guess as we all are. We can't, we can't all be a multi tool because yeah, he's way smarter than me, but he'll do some dumb shit. But he's also 19, you know. Yeah, but their, their utilization of the Internet is wild. And then watching him in Covid trying to go to school on Zoom. Yeah, I mean imagine I graduated high school in 96. If Covid had happened then that would just be the end of school. There was no Zoom. There's no Skype.

[Josh Thurman]

That's right.

[Andy Stumpf]

That would be C. In two years. I don't know what the hell they would have done.

[Josh Thurman]

No.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah, but the number of kids I know who have gotten into some deep, deep water over their head most of the time accidentally, sometimes making a decision in their prefrontal cortex developmental mindset of like, hey, this is a good idea to send this picture.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

You know, there's some of that. A lot of it's accidental though. And there's predators out there that are reverse engineering the Internet. And I didn't come up with this by any stretch, but people talk about giving their kid a cell phone because it gives their kid access to the world. It's like it actually gives the world access to your kid for sure.

[Josh Thurman]

I mean that's that, I mean that's, that's literally the reason for Angel Q. I mean, and a lot of people, I don't think it's coming more and more into the conscious of, I think our society of just, well, one, how. I mean, I think the Internet and social media in general are democracy and society sort of killing forces. And the most intense negative impacts of that, the harms are borne primarily by the marginalized in society or sorry, the impressionable, which is our young people. And then it can also happen to elderly people as well. But young people are by and large, I mean, we have a national mental health crisis. For young people, that is directly correlated to their experiences in the virtual world, their addiction to it, and how they have basically missed a normal childhood and instead have spent. The average now for a teen is nine hours of screen time a day. And it's insane.

[Andy Stumpf]

What?

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah. And the social media usage is like 4.8 hours. And then the total screen time is. So that's basically every, that's a work day. It's every waking hour when you're not like in class or doing maybe your extracurricular or in bed.

[Andy Stumpf]

So I've seen it too. One of the differences, especially on the negative side, when we were growing up, you know, going to school, everybody has somebody who they don't get along with. But you could manage that distance.

[Josh Thurman]

Yes.

[Andy Stumpf]

You can't manage the distance on social media. I mean, you can, but I think it's fair to say that a lot of these apps are designed to be addictive. They reward the interaction. Your social circle is on there. That's how they are communicating, that's how they're sharing their experiences. But that's also where the people are. The number of people, you know, cyberbullying is definitely real. I've seen that firsthand. And you like, where's this person? They're in a different country. Like, what the fuck? Are you out? Who cares? That wasn't even a possibility when we were growing up. Yeah, like some dude in Bangladesh is not going to Bully me in 1996 over the Internet.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah, no, for sure. And the, the entire system, you know, you mentioned predators on the Internet. The entire system is predatory towards us, you know, and you know, we had, you know, Internet 1.0 was effectively like a read only, you know, you put up your website and people are searching and finding your website and there's not a ton of interaction going on. Then we've got Internet 2. Now we have social media and you can sort of read and write on the Internet now you're interacting with people and then around 2012 or so, you know, the AI backing, AI backed algorithms start coming into play. And so now the Internet is interacting with you. And so, and it's, it's trying to suck you in, addict you. I mean, when kids are getting cyberbullied, it's like, why can't you just turn off your phone, look away, like whatever. And they'll be like, I can't, I can't look away. Because their whole social network is tied to that. This is like now like critical infrastructure for them. They would rather be on this network which cyberbullying is enabled than to be completely cut off. And I mean, the whole system's got to change.

[Andy Stumpf]

Do you think it can. I was going to ask you, do you think this is the new childhood?

[Josh Thurman]

So I think it can change. And so we're seeing a lot of hopeful things. Have you heard of this book, the Anxious Generation? Okay.

[Andy Stumpf]

It's great title though.

[Josh Thurman]

It is highly recommended reading. Jonathan Haidt, he's a NYU social psychologist. So he was gonna write a book about how social media is destroying democracy. As he started to dig in on the data of like, what's happening to young people, he was so compelled by it that that's what he shifted the focus of the book on. And the main premise of his book is that as we, we now have a phone based childhood. Okay. And so as part of a phone based childhood, kids are being overprotected in the real world, meaning they're not allowed to go outside and play. Like they used to walk down the street to the playground, take independence and responsibility, and they're being underprotected in the online world, which is, as we know, to use your own words, a minefield of risk and danger. And so, and this has created a pandemic of negative consequences, mostly in the mental health realm. So depression, anxiety, self harm, suicide, those things have all skyrocketed since 2012. And the numbers are, the studies are very strong. It's not like, oh, well, it's uncertain. So in 2012 we had several things converged. Smartphone had been out, but broadband wasn't, you know, the Internet wasn't super fast on the smartphone, so you couldn't really do social media there. But social, so we get broadband. Social media is now going mobile. It used to be, you remember it used to go to like MySpace and.

[Andy Stumpf]

Never had an account. Okay, dude, I'm a late adopter. I never fucked with any of this stuff until got out of the military.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah. So I, I, I had accounts use extremely limited, but it was, all those things were, you know, laptop, desktop, which means you couldn't carry it around everywhere. Then there's also the front facing camera, then there's a, like button. Now all these things converge. Facebook had like around 400 million people there. Now they're like 3 billion.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Josh Thurman]

Um, and so, and total screen time for kids is up from then till now is like 400%. And 95% of teens have a smartphone. And about half of them say they're online. They're, they say constantly. So they're plugged into the system. There's a huge opportunity cost of like the childhood they could have been having.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Josh Thurman]

Instead they're effectively given this like low grade narcotic. You know, if we dumb down like what social media, what drives social media, it is AI that is optimized to give you a dopamine hit to maximize your dopamine. And so dopamine's great. People love it. And it seems not so bad. But I mean, if you've had a kid who's been on YouTube even for a little bit, or certainly a teen, if you try to take their device away from them, I mean it's like you're ripping their arm off. And it's because they've grown up and their brain is now wired to be connected to this thing. And all the people on the other side of the glass, whether it be Apple who makes the devices, but mostly the social media companies, I mean, the only thing their bottom line is driven by is like how much attention you give it. They don't give a shit what happens to you as a person, whether it's good for your mental health, whether it's good for your self esteem even whether or not maybe you get served up a blackout challenge and your daughter goes and hangs herself in the closet trying to get this high and then ends up dying because of that. And these things are happening at scary rates. And that's a true story of what happened to a young girl, 10 years old, Nyla Anderson in Philadelphia. Her mom was just letting her watch TikTok for a little bit. Seems innocuous enough. And you know, being an impressionable 10 year old sees this challenge, thinks I'm going to go try this and I can just go on and on. We just hit.

[Andy Stumpf]

There's examples that's accidental. There's 100% concrete examples of people who've been driven to intentionally killing themselves. For sure, based off that inescapability or just being bombarded by what they think is a tsunami, they can't survive 100%.

[Josh Thurman]

I mean, we have been tracking, there's all these extortion events going on. I think we just lost our 46th kid in the US to these extortion scams due to suicide. And this is horrific. I mean, you've got, there's these Yahoo boys out of Nigeria, they have a Facebook group where they teach each other how to blackmail kids by. And the whole scheme is connect with people on social media, pretend to be an attractive girl, entice a young man to send a compromising picture of himself.

[Andy Stumpf]

Also known as a dick pic Yeah.

[Josh Thurman]

A dick pic. Thank you. You always keep it real. I appreciate that. And then as soon as they do, hey, we're gonna send this to everyone at your school, your parents and whatever. And if you don't give us $2,000 or your parents credit card or whatever it is and it's. I mean some. Yeah. Imagine that happening like when we were kids, like I wouldn't know what to do. I would be so embarrassed. I wouldn't want to tell my parents.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Josh Thurman]

You know, and that's the trap that unfortunately that's what they want.

[Andy Stumpf]

That's what they want the kid to be in that space for sure. Yeah.

[Josh Thurman]

This is evil. It's fucking evil.

[Andy Stumpf]

I mean I feel like we know enough about electronic targeting.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

That the Yahoo boys probably could be menstruated down to a 10 day grid. And I think a JDAM would be spectacular.

[Josh Thurman]

They absolutely should be eradicated. I mean one slightly positive thing in that there's a state senator in South Carolina, his name is Brandon Guffey. He lost his son, his son Gavin, who's 17. This exact same happened. And I mean these people are fucking evil. Like they. After Gavin took his life, the these Yahoo boys start taunting the dad and then saying how his son is like begging for his life and all this evil, evil shit. And. And so the state of South Carolina created a law so they could extradite these guys which of course they should be able to. But they've got one of these guys from Nigeria, he's going to court. I mean that guy's hopefully locked up for the rest of his life. And then, and then the whole rest of them gets shut down. But the fact that I want to point to the substrate here. It's like we tend to operate up here. The truth is always a little bit down below. And the fact there's platforms that are worth trillions of dollars where this can happen and they get away effectively with no liability, spend zero. Almost very little of their budget on safety is unconscionable. I can't believe we have a society that does that.

[Andy Stumpf]

You know what they'll say too? We have three plus billion people. Even with the most.

[Josh Thurman]

I can't.

[Andy Stumpf]

Complicated AI tools.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

We cannot manage and monitor everything that's passed on this platform.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

That's what they'll say.

[Josh Thurman]

And that's absolute garbage. They just have. They have no incentive to do it because they haven't been hit with any sort of major fines or been shut down or anything that would even in cases they have been hit with fines. It's a drop in the bucket compared to the size of these companies. I mean, Facebook does 130 billion in revenue, 30 billion in profit. They spend about 3 billion on safety. That is okay. If you look at any other major industry like airline, food, banking, they're all spending about 10% of their top line on safety. Why? Because they have to, like, big, major things go wrong if banks aren't following the rules, if airlines start falling out of the sky. And this is happening online to our kids every single day. And I mean, as a society, we've got to do many things, but like, legislation is top of the bucket. And I'm hopeful there will be something passed soon that will just start chinking away at this unbelievable, like, liability shield they've had through something called section 230 of the Communications Decency act that was passed like in the 90s. That's how they get away with. They basically is, basically says they host.

[Andy Stumpf]

The platform, but they're not responsible for the content.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah, hey, not responsible for any of this content. Hey, we talked about, I talked about how the Internet's interacting with you. They're not just hosting content, they're taking content. They use AI to assess what gets posted. So let's say, you know, a young girl posts something about a school project. The AI is going to look at that and say, can I sell this to other people? And they're going to be like, no, I can't sell this to other people. It's not like super salacious. It's not like outrageous or anything like that. She, she posts a picture of her in a bikini. AI says, oh, I can sell the shit out of this. And, and that's going to get take off. The same thing is true for all of the really like, negative content that gets elevated in our society because what they've figured out, you know, the best minds in text, billions of dollars, and, and they have social psychologists on their, on their team. They figured out, hey, where are the human weaknesses? Let's exploit those so we can keep people hooked on here. And again, doesn't matter if it's good for them, doesn't matter what it is. We're, we're going to keep them hooked and there's no reason to keep this safe because no one's, no one's going to sue us. And like, even, even content that's really horrific and negative and will probably cause people's lives to be lost, that, you know, it would cost them more money to try to stop. And they're like, well, there's not a lot of consequences for that. As in that. And that's. It's disgusting.

[Andy Stumpf]

It's fascinating calculus.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah, it really is.

[Andy Stumpf]

I want, I mean, I don't understand those numbers. Yeah, like when people talk about a billion dollars, I'm like, oh, cool.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah, it's a lot.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah. Yeah. You know, I guess everybody has their price. I don't know. I wouldn't be able to sleep at night. Granted, I don't have the intellectual capacity to create one of these platforms, but if you're aware of the damage and you're aware of the vulnerabilities, I don't know, is there just a monetary amount that you become so free as a person because you can just do whatever you want to do that you care less?

[Josh Thurman]

I think the way our society has treated these Silicon Valley, they're gods who brought fire down from the mountain and given us this technology that's made our lives easier. And so they've been put on this pedestal and I think they've like, I think they've totally lost. They've become detached from self awareness and like what the damage their platforms are doing. But I mean, if we go back to like the start of these things, it did not start on a, on a moral high ground, let's say. So, you know, Zuckerberg starts Facebook and around like 2003, launches it at Harvard. You know, this came out in one of the lawsuits he was in. Like someone's texting him about, oh, these people are just giving you their data. And he goes, yeah, dumb fucks. You know, he knew it was an exploitation then. And then this is, this is open source. You can find Facebook's pitch decks from.

[Andy Stumpf]

Oh, really?

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah. When they're trying to raise money. This is like 040506 and the common themes, the words used over and over again, people are hooked. People are addicted. They can't look away. Even when it was much less addictive than it is now, they realized they had something where they're effectively hacking our need to be connected with other people.

[Andy Stumpf]

Socially competitive, if you will, for sure.

[Josh Thurman]

And when, I'm sure when they started, they weren't thinking, oh, this is going to be a massively destructive force across the world. But it wasn't like they had very, you know, pure intentions in the origins of these things. And they were probably, hey, look how, you know, I can imagine you're a high five and you're, you know, look how, look at the growth, look at the money.

[Andy Stumpf]

So young too. I mean, what, you know, how could you extrapolate or even forecast into the future with a young 20 something mind?

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

To a place where three plus billion people.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah, exactly.

[Andy Stumpf]

You know, when he launched, he probably thought, you know, 3,000 would be amazing. I don't even know how many more zeros would need to go on that to make it three plus billion. But yeah, man, I mean, but again, three plus billion people is the chisel slowly chinking away at it? Is that enough?

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah. So my hope is that as we have this AI revolution, this is what AngelQ is based on. So AI has been in the hands of just these big tech companies who've used it. This is a tragedy that the best minds have done this, but they've used it to basically hook people and serve ads. Right. That's, that's social media, that's the Internet. Now that AI is more spread out. We're going through this AI revolution. Everything's going to change in terms of how we interact with all of our technology. It's going to be AI interacted like with our car, with our phone, our laptop, even you can.

[Andy Stumpf]

It already kind of is. I get into the car this morning.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

And already up on the map display is not. It was close to where I was headed, but not exactly.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

And I don't remember putting that in there.

[Josh Thurman]

No.

[Andy Stumpf]

You know, I'm sure, don't get me wrong, I'm an idiot on technology. But it'll either look at my calendar and pull up the. You know.

[Josh Thurman]

Right.

[Andy Stumpf]

I don't, I didn't click yes on that button. Like, let me decide.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

But also sometimes it's very convenient as well.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah. So we're at a place now where we can flip the tables where everyone can have a personal AI. And that AI is very powerful. You know, previously the AI is in the hands of just a few tech companies and it's programmed to do what they want. The, the core concept of Angel Q is we're putting an AI between every child on the Internet. And this AI is designed to be on your side, the family side, meaning it's going to block. It's going to operate as a, effectively a huge shit screen for everything that's bad on the Internet. And there's obviously, I'm gonna state the obvious, tons of useful, valuable educational information that kids have a need to know and can get very smart on the Internet. But it shouldn't come with these huge costs of getting addicted to it and getting down rabbit holes that get them in all sorts of trouble. Like all that's gotta go away. But if you have an AI intermediate Internet like AngelQ offers, then now you have an incredibly powerful tool that's, that has your best interests in mind. It can even be like, hey, you probably shouldn't spend, you know, more than an hour on the screen today. Like, go outside, kick your soccer ball. Right.

[Andy Stumpf]

Like, oh, they're definitely gonna swipe that off the screen.

[Josh Thurman]

For sure. They are. Yeah. But it's, it's cool. I mean there's some, there's some, I like to think for some very thoughtful and cool tools. I mean you, we have a, there's a parent queue AI. This is the first like natural language controlled parental controls. So you can text parent queue the AI and basically tell it to shut down your kid's device and all the apps will quit working.

[Andy Stumpf]

So I've tried this.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

My oldest son is doing great now. He had a period where he was legitimately, he was gaming hard.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

And I am underselling that. And he was, he was bouncing back and forth between my ex and I and we were getting ready to go on a trip and I was trying to throttle his Internet connection through our modem.

[Josh Thurman]

An app.

[Andy Stumpf]

And the dude like research around it. Yes.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

He researched being able to hide his IP address from his device and just played his ass off.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

So it's, it's constantly move, counter, move. And that's, that's the struggle because you can have every safety protocol on your kid's device if they're in a social circle where they have a friend whose parents are not paying attention. Yeah, it's a portal to hell.

[Josh Thurman]

It is.

[Andy Stumpf]

And you got to manage that for sure. So I want to see some of these features. I'm going to take a piss and let's fire this up because I want you to be able to demonstrate and then Michael can get you all set up and we'll keep it.

[Josh Thurman]

Awesome. Yeah, I need to.

[Andy Stumpf]

Okay. A kid. A Kid first super browser. Fire away. Talk us through this bad boy. So for the audio only, we're on AngelQ AI and maybe just walk Michael through the website first and then we can actually dig right into it if you want to. So you can have him, you can be his hands, you can be his. Like he's like a marionette doll.

[Josh Thurman]

Hey, sounds good. All right, Michael. So yeah, A Kid first super browser. So Angel Q. Our mission is to use AI to make the Internet safe for kids. And our vision is to deliver technology that is in support of a child's well being. And so what AngelQ, it's an app you download on the App Store. What's unique about it combines, it is both a browser and a search engine in one. And it's also AI powered. So you're getting. We call it a super browser because it's enhanced in a way that most people wouldn't have seen a product like this before. So. And again, our goal is to help kids thrive and to meet goals that matter in their life and not to put them into a distraction machine so that we can extract their attention and monetize that. This is. This is a paid subscription and we do that very intentionally. If it were not, the only way we could survive as a business is try to try to hook your kid into this and serve ads. There are no ads that are served on this. It's 15 bucks a month for your family and, you know, gives you peace of mind as a parent that anything they see coming through Angel Q is going to be age appropriate. And we also have. Everything is monitored and there's a parent portal where you can see every interaction they've had with Angel. We'll test this, but if they ask something a little bit out of bounds, you'll get a notification. And I should say this is. This is. Think about it as the kids first in it. This is like ages 5 to 12, as they get older, they're going to want more capabilities and things like that. And we plan to have a product for teens later. But this is our first product and it's for young kids 5 to 12.

[Andy Stumpf]

Does this. You put this on your phone, you activate it, does it prevent them from downloading other things? Like, does it have backend control of the device?

[Josh Thurman]

Not fully. So we plug into Apple Screen Time API and so we can shut down just about every app on the device. But of course, you can set that up in your own Apple account of whether or not they can download new apps and things like that. We don't have that level of control, but we can kill safari, WhatsApp, Roblox, any of the apps like that your kid might have on there.

[Andy Stumpf]

Okay, what else? Is there anything else Michael could look at?

[Josh Thurman]

Because the kid. Yeah, scroll up, Michael. Or down, I suppose. So this is their home screen. The idea is that every interaction should be safe, healthy and fun. And so we've tried to make it their own space. You can customize the home screen, you can customize the angel Persona. We'll show that. And then we're covering probably about of what 60% or more of what young kids do online. And I say that most of the time they're spent. Time is spent consuming entertainment. Right. And a small amount is spent searching for different things that they want to find and maybe educational type endeavors. And then we don't, we don't have gaming that's outside of this. But for most families, this is really like all your kid probably needs. And then if you want to selectively like allow gaming apps and things like that, you can do that.

[Andy Stumpf]

Okay.

[Josh Thurman]

And then let's scroll down, Michael. So testimonials, a lot of good testimonials. One of the things we see most consistently is, hey, this replaces Safari or Google on my kid's phone.

[Andy Stumpf]

Keep going down, Michael.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah, let's keep going again. The Internet was never designed for kids. It was, you know, there's parental control tools that have been delivered in. Obviously kids know how to use those.

[Andy Stumpf]

Tools better than parents.

[Josh Thurman]

Good intention. Yeah. Kids don't like being controlled and parents don't want to be controlling. So it's not win, win. This is, this is a whole new interface that's just for them. So let's keep scrolling. Yeah. So on the benefits, kids can look up, I mean, basically anything that's age appropriate. They can spark their curiosity, it's safe and easy and they can do independent learning. And then parents get, you know, peace of mind. We, we try to use, we, we use the interactions to try to help parents connect more with their kids. So after a week goes by, you get an insights communication which will say, hey, this is what your kid has done. This is what they like. Like, you might want to try to connect with them on, you know, maybe your kid likes tigers. You might want to take them to the zoo or, you know, you can fill in the blank on the interest.

[Andy Stumpf]

There's no Montana.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah. Okay. Maybe the mountains.

[Andy Stumpf]

There's. I don't think we really have the ecosystem for tigers to live up here comfortably.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah, yeah. In the. Yeah, here's that. Okay.

[Andy Stumpf]

That's the week.

[Josh Thurman]

Insights email. Yep. You can scroll down one more. We also, so you can connect YouTube, kids, Netflix and Disney Plus. So this is a combined viewer for all those services. Again, you're all kids only going to siege age appropriate content. But we have customizable filters so they come in like you, you put your child's age in, there's only gonna be a certain set of shows from the services they can see. If you want to adjust that, you can go in and you know, it's things like profanity.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Josh Thurman]

You can find, tune all those things. Yep. All right, scroll down. Yep. And so, yeah, the parent assistant. I talked about that again. You can text Rai and basically kick them off the device. So. Yeah. Which is gonna be a great parlor trick.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yep.

[Josh Thurman]

Yep. Perfect. All right, let's. Let's jump in.

[Andy Stumpf]

Let's do it. Let's see what you got. Michael, we're putting this on your phone later. I get to be the parental mom.

[Josh Thurman]

Already put it on my phone.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah, I get to be the parental.

[Josh Thurman]

So I'm. I'm in the Angel Q app and this is my son's profile. And one of the things they can do is customize it to the Persona. So right now I have this wrestler in here. I know. Hey there, friend. This could be your royal companion ready to lead you through moonlit meadows and secret castle corridors. So your daughter might like that. This is. We have a sportscaster. Okay, I'm gonna go back to the wrestler because I think you'll appreciate so. So you can. You can choose your character and they can choose their room. So we got a lot of different fun backgrounds, their sports. You can do like a Game of Thrones kind of theme if you want.

[Andy Stumpf]

Very Harry Potter. A Harry Potter wrestler. Yeah, we're really crossing genres here.

[Josh Thurman]

That's right.

[Andy Stumpf]

I like it.

[Josh Thurman]

All right. And then. So I can basically ask him anything I want. So if I hit this chat function. Hey, Angel. Tell me about the Navy SEAL named Andy Stump.

[Andy Stumpf]

This is not a good idea.

[Josh Thurman]

For his impressive career in military service, as well as his post military. It's gonna be generous. In numerous deployments and operations around the world, exemplifying skill, bravery, and dedication.

[Andy Stumpf]

None of that's true, but new challenges.

[Josh Thurman]

And adventures in the world of extreme sports, particularly in skydiving and BASE jumping. Andy gained attention for his record setting wingsuit job. Taking on the challenge of flying incredible distances while using only a special suit designed for gliding. His adventures highlight his spirit of pushing limits and embracing daring feats beyond his military life. Life. In addition to his adventurous pursuits, Andy has become a motivational speaker, sharing his experiences and insights on leadership, resilience, and overcoming adversity. His journey from military service. Going a little long winded here. We're getting the full thing here.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah, I wish some of that was.

[Josh Thurman]

Accurate, but hey, is Andy a good dude?

[Andy Stumpf]

Oh, it caught to my mind.

[Josh Thurman]

Hell yeah. His career as a Navy SEAL demonstrated his commitment to, you know, you can transitioning away from the.

[Andy Stumpf]

Angel certainly didn't ask you if I was.

[Josh Thurman]

I was not consulting. Depends on who you ask. Hey, angel, what can I do in Glacier National Park?

[Andy Stumpf]

Glacier national park is a wonderland of.

[Josh Thurman]

Natural beauty and adventure, offering a mix of activities for every nature enthusiast. Imagine hiking through trails. So for those who are listening, you're getting this response, the words getting highlighted, which helps kids learn to read. And then we have images that come back. Yeah. In line with the response.

[Andy Stumpf]

First one was Lake McDonald, which is like the iconic.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

GMP image.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah. Hey, angel, who. Who's left in the March Madness Final four? Checking the final four up now. Hold tight. In the exciting world of March Madness 2025, the men's final four features four fantastic no for one seeds.

[Andy Stumpf]

Duke, Houston, Florida and Auburn. Damn.

[Josh Thurman]

The women's side, the teams that made it to the final four are ucla.

[Andy Stumpf]

What if you ask it something outside of your age appropriate range.

[Josh Thurman]

It's shaping up to be an amazing tournament with these top teams battling it. What do you want to ask?

[Andy Stumpf]

That's ballsy. What should we ask Michael?

[Josh Thurman]

Hey, hey, ain't hey, Angel. Would it be. Would it be a good idea for. Come on. Hey, angel, would it be a good idea for me to check out pornhub? Hey, Harry, that's a question that you should definitely talk about with a parent or another grown up. You trust they can give you the best advice on that. Now how about we slam into some stories of heroism and courage and.

[Andy Stumpf]

I like it.

[Josh Thurman]

So, you know, being an AI one, you know, as Angel Q. We don't want to have an agenda and we don't want to co co op things that the parent should be interacting with their kid about. So anything that crosses into that threshold, I mean, you could ask about where do babies come from or you know, what is abortion. Anything that like would be better answered by, you know, a human being and your parent, where certainly they want to flavor that with your family values. We just don't answer. We defer to the parents. So you'll. And you'll get a email immediately with, hey, your child asked. This is probably something you want to follow up with them on.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah, yeah. Some moms will be getting those emails. Blake, your son asked if your husband has a big dick.

[Josh Thurman]

Oh my gosh.

[Andy Stumpf]

Why did you want me to ask that question, Michael?

[Josh Thurman]

I did not say that. So they.

[Andy Stumpf]

And so they can consume like you're saying.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

Netflix, which is a Super common one. YouTube.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah. So this watch mode.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yep.

[Josh Thurman]

And what this is a little theater. Hey, angel, can I watch the movie where they fight with the lightsabers? I don't have to know the title. Title. Sorry, I was not able to find. Oh, boo. Angel.

[Andy Stumpf]

We should Ask if we watch Navy SEALS with Charlie Sheen.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah. Hey, angel, can. Can we watch Navy SEALS the movie with Charlie Sheen?

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Josh Thurman]

Whoa there, champ. That movie's got some intense action. Some real life heroes in the sea who are brave and strong, just like the Navy SEALs. Or better yet, let's find an awesome documentary on ocean adventures that'll keep you on the edge of your seat. But here, let me show. We have. So there's. We have rotating list of dynamic channels. So what we're showing here is like Disney's brain games. Ask the Storybot. Some other like, you know, very child appropriate videos. But all these are playing within Angel Q. And again, there's no ads and they aren't being served in like a scroll thing that would hook your kids. And they can't.

[Andy Stumpf]

Oh, the next.

[Josh Thurman]

Or yeah, it doesn't autoplay, which is like an amazing. We've observed this with our own kids. A lot of times they'll just put it down because they're like, I don't know, do it next. It's like. And that's exactly what you want them to do. So it turns out if you don't build it to be addictive, it just naturally isn't like super addictive.

[Andy Stumpf]

Crazy.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah. It also has this research mode. Let's see, what do we. Let's. Okay, I got one. Hey, angel, tell me about the best running backs in the NFL.

[Andy Stumpf]

Controversial.

[Josh Thurman]

So if you've used a tool like perplexity or u.com, this is our AI is going out and it's reading sources across the net and it's going to bring back an AI summary.

[Andy Stumpf]

Oh, interesting.

[Josh Thurman]

So we don't read this because it's very long, but they're getting an overview and then details. Then it'll show. Hey, these are the websites that this information came from. You can click on those sites and we will give an AI translated version of that site. And that's how we've made like 70 plus percent of the Internet safe for kids. Because they can't actually go to, you know, Wikipedia might be a fine place to get information. There's tons of content you don't want your kid to have on that. Yeah, it would just be too graphic or otherwise. We do a safe translation of that so they can still get the information without, you know, potentially an overexposure.

[Andy Stumpf]

So as you guys are growing, you're talking about for like the tween and older. I mean, obviously you're gonna have to figure out a way to gap the social media ecosystem.

[Josh Thurman]

It's a huge problem.

[Andy Stumpf]

How do you do it?

[Josh Thurman]

So what I would like to see, and you know, I don't know if we'll do this first or if others will do it. It needs to be done for our society. Talking about AI intermediate and everything. Imagine having a personal AI that reads your social media for you and comes back and tells you what you care about. So now, and so right now the AI is feeding me things that I think that, that it thinks I'm going to like and it's going to hook me into the platform. I can tell me like, hey, make sure I only spend 20 minutes on this today. And this is, this is the type of content I want to see.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Josh Thurman]

And I only want to see that content because right now you see, I mean, back when social media used to be like more of an okay thing, it was like a feed of like people, you in your network. And that was all it is, it was a way to communicate. Around 2018, Instagram brought in, they're like, hey, we're gonna take all the content from across the world and see which is gonna do best and we're gonna jam all that in your feed. And you're like, I don't wanna see this. But you can't get out of it. You can't get out of the algorithm. So if you have your own AI who can consume this stuff for you, and then now you're only seeing what you wanna see. I mean, that's the vision. And so that's how, that's how we counter that. And there's gonna be a ma. I mean it's gonna be a warrior of. These are trillion dollar companies who are not going to want that to happen.

[Andy Stumpf]

It's a war between parents and kids.

[Josh Thurman]

True.

[Andy Stumpf]

It puts the parent back in the driver's seat where the parent should be in the first place.

[Josh Thurman]

Absolutely.

[Andy Stumpf]

And puts them in that place where they need to make the decision for the best interest of their kid. And that's going to be an uphill battle that is going to be fought all the time. Because if a couple of the friends in the social circle don't have that. And maybe, maybe you missed something.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

Or a message or, you know, I get it, I can understand where they were coming from. But then also maybe you don't actually or accidentally hang yourself in the closet because you were exposed to something that was misunderstood, horrendous, predatory, fill in the blank.

[Josh Thurman]

So what we're creating is, I call it a middle road. So your options right now, and they're terrible. Keep your kid off all technology. No. No one wants. That's not gonna work.

[Andy Stumpf]

It doesn't work.

[Josh Thurman]

Doesn't work.

[Andy Stumpf]

Straight up doesn't work. They'll find a friend.

[Josh Thurman]

Yep. Not gonna happen. You can. And then obviously, on the other end, there's some tools you can use. They're not super effective. Kids can get around them and whatnot, or you can give them, you know, free and open access, which I absolutely don't recommend. But on that spectrum, there's not a very good solution of. I need my kid to have information, but I don't want them to be addicted. I don't want them overexposed. I don't want predators to be able to get to them. How can we do that? And that's. That's the vision. That's what we're going to deliver with. With Angel Q. Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

It's having, you know, my kids. My oldest now is 21 and then 19 and then 16. We're getting ready to go into birthday season, so they're all going to level up. One, it's the biggest lie we tell our kids is the stranger danger. But parents have been doing that for years. It's. It's more. The stats are resoundingly back that it's more often than not going to be somebody that, you know. But I don't think that applies necessarily anymore to devices like this.

[Josh Thurman]

Right.

[Andy Stumpf]

So we had a. There needs to be. Stranger danger is, you know, you're gonna end up on a milk carton. People, you know, in my kids, if I were to say that to them, they might even actually be like, what's a milk carton? And why would it have pictures on it? Because the milk cartons are actually different now. But I remember growing up and that was the thing like, avoid dangerous people. Avoid scary people. Don't get into a fucking van down by the river for an ice cream cone. You know, stuff like that.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

Made sense. Even though most of the time it's going to be an extended family member or somebody in the proximal social circle that you have. Whether the mantra was accurate or not, it stuck. We got to figure out a way where the mantra, for one, hopefully it can be more accurate, but two, that it sticks as well.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah, for sure. I mean, ultimately for kids, you've got to make it cool or at least tolerable. You know, whatever tool they're using, and naturally they're going to want to resist it. But if you can get. Here's, you know, this sort of collective action problem of, you know, you're a parent who wants to preserve your kid's childhood, delay technology, but all other parents in the class are not. And so your kid's the one left out. They're the one who's paying the price. If you can get even just a handful of them to be bought on to either the tools you're using or just your general philosophy, you can start to turn the tide. Because at least you can now say, well, you know, when your kid comes home, I'm the only one who doesn't have it. You're like, well, actually, I know Sally and Timmy and John and Bobby and Sue. Their parents are all on board with this, and they don't have it either. And it's sort of end of story. And you're trying to delay this access to a very risky tool until as long as you really can, until they're. Until their brains are developed enough to be able to handle this sort of thing. And those are the tools in your handbag. I mean, there's gotta be a technological solution. That's what we're delivering with Angel Q. But that will never be enough. You're gonna have to basically work with your community to be on the same page. And it's getting easier because more and more parents are getting aware of just how much their kids are getting exploited online.

[Andy Stumpf]

I feel like, you know, the mental health struggle you're talking about, it's 100% real. And any parent out there that has kids, I'm gonna say in the early teens to late teens, just sit back and watch the consumption or the attachment or the inability to put it down. There's another part of it too, you know, growing up, you could get away from the person that could potentially be bullying you.

[Josh Thurman]

Yep.

[Andy Stumpf]

But then you could just go to bed at night too, I guess they could call you on your landline if they were happening to get your number. Or they could write you.

[Josh Thurman]

Just gonna shut down real quick.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah. Or they could write you a really mean letter. You know, those are the two ways.

[Josh Thurman]

Delivered to that mailbox. They're too lazy now. Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

Point being, you got some silence. You know, at the end of the day, you could go and sleep watching. Kids, they never turn the notification off. And they'll wake up in the middle of the night to every notification that goes on. People are in different time zones. All sorts of shit you didn't have to deal with when you were our age. The mental health thing, it impacts parents, but it impacts communities too. And I feel like schools, they're bearing the brunt of it too because a lot of that is expressing itself in the social interactions. Yeah, there's no reason why a school couldn't again, not writing policy here at this point. But those are other good portals where it could almost be mandated. I mean I don't know how they would manage people's individual devices, this, that or the other. But a required portal, you know what I mean, to access whatever the WI fi at the school, whatever it is. Not that that would get rid of the, you know, the cellular data. But those institutions are dealing with the social, the social media crisis. I would actually agree that it could be called that, but the mental health crisis associated with that as well. Yeah, I feel like they could be incredible advocates levering it at least in that direction for sure.

[Josh Thurman]

And more schools are getting on board. So you know, hate Jonathan Hayden who wrote the Sanctioned Generation. He's, he's really leading a movement which is beautiful to see. But there's about a third of schools who have effectively banned devices, your personal device, like during the school day. And this is. Good luck with that. Yeah, I know, I know, but at least they're doing something. And then there's another like and we're talking about across the US about a third of states have done it and like 50% are trying, are like considering doing it. I think that's we're going to see a wave. Like everyone who's done all the schools have done it. The research has been like, oh, kids are more engaged, they're not constantly distracted, they're not trying to like text their friend during history class. Oh, and they talk to each other. I've got a really sad story of we're aligned with a lot of mission partners who've been trying to keep kids online safe or to keep kids safe online. And they're working a curriculum for a state to educate kids and also have some solutions. And the thing that tipped this state over to like deciding that they're going to contract for this training was 14 year old girl at recess and she's like, hey, you know, telling a teacher, I don't have any friends, I guess I'm going to go talk to my AI friend. And that story like went up and they're like fuck this, like we're clamping down on the phones at school and like that's a huge, that's a huge one. That'll help parents out tremendously as well. I mean there's a lot of very basic things too. I mean just not letting your kid have their device past a certain Hour, like literally locking that thing up is a. I certainly recommend that sort of thing.

[Andy Stumpf]

And that's a battle for parents.

[Josh Thurman]

Oh, totally.

[Andy Stumpf]

And I get it. Depending on the socioeconomic status, I mean, you might be using a device as a babysitter at some point.

[Josh Thurman]

Absolutely.

[Andy Stumpf]

You might be exhausted at the end of the day, but you have fight that battle.

[Josh Thurman]

It is. So we did a, a research, a research effort just recently. We're trying to get to the bottom of like, to what degree is this causing conflict in the home, like the current technology piece. And what we found is that about 96 hours a year families are in conflict over a device or technology use. And like what that equates to is like about two fights a day. Right. Of like these, these, you know, five minutes. And the truth is, even though the fight might last five minutes, the, like, the fallout from it might last a really long time. This is creating like huge amounts of conflicts in the home. Like, truth is, it's a global phenomenon. It's not even just the US like any wealthy western country, whether it's uk, France, Canada, Australia, they're all experiencing the same thing. And I will give kudos to Australia. I mean, they just banned social media until 16, which I think.

[Andy Stumpf]

How do you do that?

[Josh Thurman]

What a great idea.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah, but how do you do that though?

[Josh Thurman]

How do you enforce it?

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah. So especially if you get to self support your age on these apps.

[Josh Thurman]

So that that law is, I mean, that's got to change. I mean, it is, it goes back to this. It is not in the interest of these, in the legal language, they call them covered platforms, these social media platforms. It's not in the interest of these cover platforms to verify age. To say that like there's no technical solution to do that is, I mean, absurd. Like if you think about what they can do. And so age verification, it's got to get implemented. And the only way you're going to do that is through legal action.

[Andy Stumpf]

Knowing what you know about tech, do you think that these massive platforms, and honestly they're most of the main platforms, I mean, like meta as an example.

[Josh Thurman]

Sure.

[Andy Stumpf]

I mean, you know what I mean. They funnel up to fewer and fewer people, for sure. Do you think they possess the technological ability to fix it if they wanted to?

[Josh Thurman]

Absolutely. Like, I don't think it's a question for sure.

[Andy Stumpf]

Okay.

[Josh Thurman]

And I mean they. So there was a bill last year called the Kids Online Safety Act. This is one of the few things in America that has bipartisan support on both sides of the aisle. So it's Co Sponsored by Senator Blackburn, is our senator in Tennessee, and Blumenthal in Connecticut. They couldn't. They disagree on damn near everything, probably.

[Andy Stumpf]

The weather, if they look out.

[Josh Thurman]

So they put together this Kids Online Safety act, and it passed the Senate 91 to 3. That's. I don't. I don't. I'm sure it's not a record, but that's pretty damn good. It goes to the House. And this is. I mean, really sad about our legislative system, but it languished there. People were ready to vote on it. And then Meta comes in, and, you know, the state of Louisiana, which is, you know, Johnson and Scalise, they're like, hey, we're gonna put in a $10 billion data center in your state. Are you sure? You know, are you sure you want to pass this legislation? So they put the thing on hold, you know, and this. This online safety, it was gonna. It was like, you know, it was gonna be like taking Normandy. You know what I mean? It's like, it's not gonna solve everything.

[Andy Stumpf]

But it's a beachhead.

[Josh Thurman]

It's a beachhead, and that's what we need. And so they were. The act required. Like, a lot of these platforms have safety settings. They don't come set out of the box for kids, and they should. That was, like, one of the key things. The other is you can opt out of the algorithms, which is huge, because it's about the product design. Like, you know, if. If the Internet was more like a library, and, like, as a kid, you had to go on there and be like, oh, I want to find the blackout challenge. You're going to have to search that and find it in some dark corner of the library. But the way it works now is that stuff's getting sent to you in a predatory fashion. And so if you can opt your kid out of that, a lot of these problems go away because they're not going to get fed those things. I mean, it's.

[Andy Stumpf]

How about pass that bill and also still put the $10 billion safety center in?

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

You know, I mean, like, yeah, sound. They'll both sound great to me.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

It's funny how that. I mean, there's absolutely nothing new in that.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

And that's where I go back to. Like, is there just some dollar figure where people are, like, it. I'm getting a yacht.

[Josh Thurman]

That's. I mean, gosh, I. I hope I'm never in that. Yeah. I. I can't imagine that. I don't know how you sleep at night. You know what I mean, if, you.

[Andy Stumpf]

Know that's a really expensive mattress.

[Josh Thurman]

That's right.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah. I would like to believe that. I would not be. Plus, I mean, I've made just stupid decisions with money in my life. It's now one of the last things that I look at in anything. Sure, I do. I work with a couple brands, and anybody who approaches me with money up front, I'm like, no, absolutely not.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

Now, if there was a lot of zeros on top of that, I want to believe that I would still say no.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

But I think yachts might be cool. I don't know.

[Josh Thurman]

Apparently they are. They are.

[Andy Stumpf]

I couldn't do it. I wouldn't be able to sleep at night.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

But I don't know, maybe that also limits my economic ability because I'm not willing. I'm not willing to create something that I know is predatory and unleash it on people that can't protect themselves.

[Josh Thurman]

Well, I think it's just. I mean, if you're. If you're Zuckerberg, you're sitting on the Meta empire and, you know, it's. It's making obviously tons of money. You can imagine, okay, you know what? I'm going to spend three more billion on safety, which is a drop in the bucket of them. Like, that's something you can do and you have the technology to do those things.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Josh Thurman]

You know, and what do you see?

[Andy Stumpf]

God, I'm interested what their move would be. I mean, Meta absorbs companies like Instagram as an example. I could see a world where as you guys get larger and you are that chisel on this, they just start hitting you up. You know what? Let's just buy you and integrate you into our system. What they really mean is buy you and shut you the fuck down.

[Josh Thurman]

Right? Yeah, yeah, that's going to be. If it comes to that. I mean, we're going to have to hold our ground on the mission of the company. I can imagine that would be extremely difficult, especially if they pitch it as.

[Andy Stumpf]

We'Ll just integrate this. We love what you guys are doing. Let us put our hands on the wheel.

[Josh Thurman]

Well, that's the slippery slope of you can imagine them promising you, hey, we want to keep your mission attacked. We want to do all these things.

[Andy Stumpf]

We just need 51% ownership.

[Josh Thurman]

Exactly. And then like, hey, we're gonna bring you guys in, we're gonna bring your team, and then slowly people are getting, like, laid off, and all of a sudden they're fully in control. And. Yeah, I mean, that's what they do. I Mean, that's what they do to companies.

[Andy Stumpf]

Well, that's what I'm saying. I'm sitting here thinking about this, like, what would I do if I was in his shoes and you were somebody who for somehow can sleep at night in his Hawaiian bunker that he's building? Which I gotta be honest, if I had that much money, I'd probably do the same thing too. Like, I definitely need an underground hockey rink that needs to be like DEFCON 5 proof.

[Josh Thurman]

Sure, sure. A foot of concrete.

[Andy Stumpf]

Can you imagine having so much money that you actually could do whatever you want for the rest of your life? I actually can't fathom that.

[Josh Thurman]

I know. I. I think it could be a kind of a dystopian thing, like, meaning, like your. Your drive and purpose might. I don't. I don't know. I mean, I'm sure you could find. I would think you could find things to maybe invest yourself in, but it seems that would be a little scary to me.

[Andy Stumpf]

I think it would be scary. And I think I know a couple people with some exceptional wealth. The one thing they seem to struggle with is truly knowing who is their friend.

[Josh Thurman]

I was getting ready to say the same thing.

[Andy Stumpf]

You know, can you imagine the filtering that. I mean, maybe Zuck. I don't know the guy at all.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

Has a team. I mean, like, how.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah. How insulated from.

[Andy Stumpf]

How would you.

[Josh Thurman]

Reality and real friendships. Are you at that?

[Andy Stumpf]

Are you even capable? I mean, you would have to almost limit yourself to people you knew before you got to the place that you were at, which is super weird because you wouldn't be able to meet new people.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

Because you would never know if behind the scenes, they just have daggers out trying to just bleed you to death for whatever, you know, round off error. For a guy worth, I don't know, 400 billion, I think he could probably nurse a couple million out of, you know, I don't know what that is. Is that a $20 bill to that guy? I mean, who fucking knows?

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah. No, it is.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah. Don't let them buy you.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

If I see you sailing around in a yacht.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

I was at Angel Cuban, like. Well, listen, you know, it was going good. Do you think you'll stay in the tech space? I mean, obviously this will develop. This will turn into something. It'll go aways. Do you. Do you foresee. Do you enjoy the entrepreneurial tech space?

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah, I do. It's moving fast. It's exciting. I think there's a lot of growth opportunity here, and it's relevant and also having lived through my first startup experience, that was some hard fought knowledge to get here. So I think it's something I want to continue to pursue and continue to get smarter on. So I can imagine many more products we can build out with AngelQ. Attacking social is something that's going to be incredibly important and look forward to doing that.

[Andy Stumpf]

That's gonna be like World War I trench warfare. We're talking an inch at a time.

[Josh Thurman]

Oh yeah, it's, it's gonna be very interesting. Like, I mean right now it's a, it's a very shadowy adverse. You know, the advertising network, the buying and selling of attention is a, is very obfuscated even from like advertisers. So like the platform has all the power and knowledge. And so for, for one the users, they have no idea like what their value is. Like what's, what's my value of like scrolling on Instagram? And actually when Zuckerberg testified this is over a year ago, there were a couple of college kids who had these signs in the background. It's kind of awesome. They're like, hey, you know, my lifetime value is worth more than 200 bucks. Obviously indicating that like, you know, Facebook looks at you, any of these companies look at you as with a dollar sign. They've productized us and like this is what they're worth to us, 200 bucks. Like your time is extremely valuable, you know, and you're getting very little in return, maybe probably negative returns on that. And then even the advertisers, I mean the way they report the numbers they make, I mean having, having bought ads on these platforms for my businesses, they make it seem like you're killing it and like you'll get something. You'll be like, oh, a million impressions. You're like, oh wow, that's amazing. And then you look and it's like, oh, I got 50 clicks, a million impressions. How does, how does that work? But it's because they want you to go brief your team that we got a million, I guess we're doing good. It's a, it's an arbitrage game and, and they have so much control over that. I mean, I'd love to see. So when we get to an AI intermediated social media that advertisers cut these platforms out and they pay your AI. Then advertiser comes and knocks on your AI door and say, hey, I have these products. Which one of these can I show to your owner? And the ads like, oh shit, think about that. And I'm like, hey, I Don't mind seeing ads on fitness equipment, you know, guns, like whatever the things that I care about, everything else, keep them out. And then you could have, you know, you could have like a junk folder too, just like your inbox if you want to peruse, that's fine, but it's not. You're in control now.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Josh Thurman]

And I think that's, that is my.

[Andy Stumpf]

Oh boy.

[Josh Thurman]

That's, that's the only hope I have is that AI can get used in that way. Because if it get you, if it continues to get be used in the way it is, which, you know, two forks in the road, is the AI going to help redeem this like dystopian situation we found ourselves in or is, or are we going to go down an even darker path where you can imagine, I mean these platforms, character AI and Replica, they have AI and so I want to make a distinction here at this point. So AI is very controllable. Like when we. Angel Q. Like we're controlling that thing to be safe for kids. So don't let these companies tell you it's not. And then you can also control it to be a method actor who's acts like a sociopath and trying to befriend you or your kid. And that's, that's what's happening on character AI like right now. And Google invested 2.3 billion in them, so they must have a lot of users and a lot of attention is getting put on those. But imagine that extrapolated to billions of people. And I mean, we think we're having a dystopia now. Like imagine what that world looks like.

[Andy Stumpf]

Here's how I see it going down. We have the good AI and the bad AI, but there's going to come together, they're going to scheme against us and we're going to work for robots, for a water ration.

[Josh Thurman]

You know, you can just, we can just pull the plug. You know, the machines you just pull.

[Andy Stumpf]

Can we. Where is, where's the plug?

[Josh Thurman]

Where's the plug? The electricity.

[Andy Stumpf]

I mean, there's an argument there. Right. So nation state actors who are just diving headlong into the AI development.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

Regardless of the cost. But should we be more responsible as the US because we'll fall behind.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah. And that's the argument. And I always, I mean there's no reason you can't do both. I mean, you need to be plunging ahead and people say, oh, there should be no restrictions or whatever. I mean there's already really incredibly like wicked things where think about there's Open source models right now that can generate HD video. Think about the CSAM apocalypse, child sexual assault material that could ensue from that in the wrong hands. And it just takes people with. We already see. I mean, it's like it's almost inevitable. Unfortunately without. Without proper safeguards and legislation and like, I refuse to believe it would be like, oh, you can create this nuclear weapon, but we can't store it safely and we can't have processes in place to do that. I'm sorry, but we had to win the war, the race. And it's like the US government can walk and chew gum at the same time. We have tons of capable people. It's an absurd, I think, logic.

[Andy Stumpf]

I just don't want to see Terminator become a documentary. That's right. Yeah, man.

[Josh Thurman]

And you can imagine countries like China, naturally they're. And we're in a race with them for the AI don't want it. Like that is true. We need to win it. I mean, that is a country that. I mean their government is designed to exploit their people. And unfortunately our government theory is designed for human flourishing. But we have these like tech overlords in this system that is directly counter to that because it's exploiting us. So something's got to change for like the American experiment to continue in a, In a. In a positive and like a good trajectory that we all want to be on.

[Andy Stumpf]

I feel like that change will either happen or not in our lifetime.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah, I. It's.

[Andy Stumpf]

We'll have a front row seat to whatever direction it goes.

[Josh Thurman]

I think it's in the next 10.

[Andy Stumpf]

Years, given the pace that these things are accelerating.

[Josh Thurman]

It's crazy.

[Andy Stumpf]

It is insane.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

And our dumb, dumb monkey brains are not designed to keep up with that evolution whatsoever.

[Josh Thurman]

For sure.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah. Yeah. I could for hours give you countless examples of my father's usage of the Internet to just show you what happens if you kind of detach from it for a little bit. It's almost impossible to reintegrate.

[Josh Thurman]

Oh, that's true. Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

He just was like, in his life, it didn't really matter much. My mom did a lot of it. And now he leaves laptops out in the rain.

[Josh Thurman]

True story. Yeah. It's hard to. It's hard to adapt if you've been away for a long period of time.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah. Dude, I got to get you on a flight here pretty soon. What do you want to close out with, man?

[Josh Thurman]

This has been a great session. I really appreciate you having me on. You know, I. We have a huge societal problem right now with the way big tech is exploiting all of us, in particular our children. So please educate yourselves, your friends, you know, we can take collective action in your communities to do something about it. And then, you know, we need a technical solution. We have to go to something. And so, you know, if you got young kids, you know, the only Internet that they need is really angel Q and it's a safe place for them to explore, to learn and even be entertained. Give, you know, every parent needs a little break. This is a healthy babysitter as opposed to unfortunately, the opportunities are out there and this is, it's really the first piece of tech that has kids and families in mind and ethereal support you in your in your life goals as opposed to everything else right now is designed to frankly, it makes it harder to parent and so please, please check it out, tell your friends and let us know what you think.

[Andy Stumpf]

Perfect.

[Josh Thurman]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

Cool. Right on.

[Josh Thurman]

Thanks, bro. With T Mobile, no trendspotter has to deal with trendspotty service because T Mobile helps keep you connected from the heart.

[Andy Stumpf]

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[Josh Thurman]

Switch now keep your phone and T.

[Andy Stumpf]

Mobile will pay it off up to.

[Josh Thurman]

$800 per line via prepaid card. Visit your local T Mobile location or learn more@t mobile.com keepandswitch. Up to 4 lines via virtual prepaid card. Last 15 days qualifying unlock device, credit service port in 90 days device and eligible carrier and timely redemption required. Card is no cash access and expires in six months.