Episode 385 - Mike Ritland

Summary

Cleared Hot: Episode 385 - Mike Ritland

Release Date: May 5, 2025

Hosts:

• Andy Stumpf: Host of "Cleared Hot," former military personnel with diverse experiences ranging from jet piloting to dog training.
• Mike Ritland: Former Navy SEAL, accomplished canine trainer, and host of the "Mic Drop" podcast.

---

1. Introduction and Background

Andy Stumpf begins the episode by introducing Mike Ritland, highlighting his extensive background as a former Navy SEAL and a renowned canine trainer. Andy shares his personal connection with Mike, mentioning that he was among Mike's first podcast guests on "Mic Drop."

Andy [03:30]: "Former Navy SEAL, very, very accomplished canine trainer. I would send you over to mikertlin.com as the best place to gather information about him."

Mike emphasizes his dedication to stepping out of his comfort zone, a theme that resonates throughout his career.

---

2. TSA Firearms Handling Experiences

The conversation shifts to TSA's handling of firearms, with both hosts sharing their experiences navigating airport security with weapons.

Mike [04:02]: "They called my name and asked my ID. Unlike Dallas, where it's a huge scene."

Mike contrasts the efficient handling at smaller airports with the chaotic processes in major hubs like Dallas, advocating for streamlined and respectful firearm handling methods.

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3. Working with and Training Canines

A significant portion of the discussion revolves around canine training, focusing on bite suits and the psychology behind training aggressive dogs.

Mike [05:48]: "If you want a fast, fun ride without having to overthink it, take the BMW. If you want to get in a fight with a motorcycle and blow off steam, take the Ducati."

Mike shares his methodologies for training dogs to handle high-stress situations without resorting to punishment, emphasizing positive reinforcement and understanding canine behavior.

Mike [38:18]: "Dogs don't think in a language. Everything is an A plus B equals C. You need to make A + B not equal C enough times to where the dog questions it."

He discusses the importance of creating new associations to break destructive conditioned responses in working dogs, highlighting techniques that prioritize the dog's well-being and effectiveness.

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4. Jiu Jitsu Techniques and Misconceptions

Both Andy and Mike delve into Jiu Jitsu, exploring its practical applications and debunking myths about its effectiveness in real-world scenarios.

Andy [08:21]: "It's not magic. You need striking and all this. I look back at the things that I was taught, I'm like, none of that works."

They critique traditional training methods, advocating for a focus on fundamental techniques that can be reliably applied in combat situations.

Mike [22:55]: "Don't fight anybody. Just like, don't get in fights."

The conversation underscores the importance of self-control and practical defense over competitive or overly complex techniques.

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5. Operation Neptune Spear and Intelligence Operations

The hosts briefly touch upon Operation Neptune Spear, the mission that resulted in the death of Osama bin Laden, discussing its execution and the surrounding theories.

Mike [29:38]: "The U.S. Navy SEALs were deployed to capture the terrorists, resulting in a complex and controversial link."

While acknowledging the mission's success, they explore the complexities and the critical nature of specialized training within intelligence operations.

---

6. Personal Interests: Motorcycles and Cars

Transitioning to lighter topics, Andy and Mike share their passion for motorcycles and cars, discussing their favorite models and the emotional connections they have with these machines.

Mike [107:06]: "I like that connection and feeling to the vehicle. It's similar to Jiu Jitsu in the way you push the envelope."

They compare the thrill of riding motorcycles and driving high-performance cars to the discipline required in martial arts, highlighting the blend of skill and passion.

Andy [112:21]: "The Ducati V4R is incredible. It takes more mental energy, but it's more rewarding when you do."

---

7. Political Views and Government Efficiency

A substantial segment delves into political opinions, focusing on government inefficiencies, defense budgeting, and the need for systemic reforms.

Mike [137:06]: "If you served and you're discharged honorably, you're not going to pay any income tax. It would be life-changing."

They critique current government operations, advocating for transparency, accountability, and smarter budgeting, especially concerning military expenditures and veteran support.

Andy [143:07]: "Accountability is key. Without it, there's resentment and lack of respect."

---

8. Veterans' Experiences and Support Systems

The duo discusses the challenges faced by veterans, emphasizing the importance of support systems post-service to prevent issues like depression and loss of purpose.

Mike [126:51]: "More veterans are killing themselves through suicide than the conflicts have killed Afghanistan and Iraq combined."

They highlight the critical need for better veteran support through initiatives like retired canine centers and improved healthcare services.

Andy [131:05]: "If you served, feel respected, and taken care of, it changes the entire experience."

---

9. Closing Remarks

In their concluding remarks, Andy and Mike reflect on the importance of accountability, personal responsibility, and continuous self-improvement, both in professional and personal realms.

Mike [156:18]: "Taking responsibility builds respect and dissolves resentment."

They reiterate their commitment to supporting each other and their communities, emphasizing the value of mentorship and leadership.

---

Notable Quotes:

• Mike Ritland [05:48]: "Dogs don't think in a language. Everything is an A plus B equals C."
• Andy Stumpf [08:21]: "It's not magic. You need striking and all this."
• Mike Ritland [137:06]: "If you served and you're discharged honorably, you're not going to pay any income tax. It would be life-changing."
• Mike Ritland [126:51]: "More veterans are killing themselves through suicide than the conflicts have killed Afghanistan and Iraq combined."
• Mike Ritland [156:18]: "Taking responsibility builds respect and dissolves resentment."

---

Conclusion:

Episode 385 of "Cleared Hot" with Mike Ritland offers a deep dive into the intersection of military experience, canine training, martial arts, personal passions, and socio-political insights. Through candid discussions, Mike and Andy shed light on the critical aspects of training working dogs, the practicalities of self-defense, and the pressing need for systemic reforms to support veterans and enhance government accountability. Their conversation serves as both an informative guide and a call to action for listeners to prioritize responsibility, respect, and continuous personal growth.

Transcript

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Morning everybody. Welcome back. Today's guest is Mike Ritland. I've known Mike for quite some time and actually at the end of the episode we were talking about his podcast, the Mic Drop podcast, which is fantastic by the way. And I had been on it years ago. I didn't realize I was one of his first guests. I think we started it at relatively the same time period. Former Navy seal, very, very accomplished canine trainer. I would send you over to mikertlin.com as the best place to gather information about him. It's going to tell you everything that you would want to know and I'll drop it in the show notes. It's a little bit of background, the dog training, what they do with the dogs, the dog food, all of the stuff that we ended up talking about on the podcast. So I'll send you towards that man. We talked about a variety of things, what he's considered to be the founder of on the Internet, whether there's truth to any of that stuff, we really get into it. So let's just get into the episode. Before I do that though, stick with me for a little bit. Let me pay the bills. Then we'll be off and running with Mr. Mike Ritland. Today's episode is brought to you by Black Rifle Coffee. Look at this. Got some right here from the local shop in town, BRCC Kalispell. Let's head over to their website, shall we? I am looking at Operation Neptune Spear. For those of you unfamiliar, that was the military operation. Operation name for the military operation that killed Osama bin Laden. Are there conspiracy theories surrounding it? Yes, there are. Is there contention about who may have done what? Yes, there is. But who cares? We're talking about coffee. So this would be part of the exclusive coffee subscription, the ecs. I haven't even gotten my bag of this yet, which is quite frustrating. The bag art spectacular as usual. Who doesn't want to see an owl wearing night vision goggles? I do. That's actually doesn't look like what's on the bag on the bag is a dude. What looks like. What's an M4, some panos on, you know, throwing it back. A little homage, if you will, to Operation Neptune spirit. Oh, and there you go. There's a. What's it about? What's the ECs about? What is a micro lot? I don't even know the answer to that. What is a micro lot? A micro lot offers a distinct and sought after exotic coffee roast carefully chosen by Evan Hafer, also known as Micro sf and the BRCC coffee development team. You guys know the deal. You can look at all their different types of coffee. You can get all types of merch, apparel, things to make coffee in, things to drink coffee out of their new energy drinks. Head over toBlack Rifle Coffee.com. it's the number one way to support me and the podcast is by supporting the brands that I work with. Okay, I got the red smoke.

[A]

Okay, copy.

[B]

West of the smoke. I'm looking the danger close now. Give it to me. I mean it. Clear.

[A]

Hot campaign clear. Not a lot of the workers there. And so it's. It's real hit or miss. It's like some people, you get in and they're like, oh, it's like they're almost scared of the gun. And they call their manager over or whatever.

[B]

Oh, they get excited here.

[A]

Oh, really? Yeah.

[B]

I mean, they're just like, what do you got?

[A]

What?

[B]

What do we got in here?

[A]

Yeah, but it seemed that way. Picking it up was super easy, you know?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Like, they brought it out to me, like, called my name and asked my id. Whereas, like, in Dallas, it's the. A huge.

[B]

Which, by the way, is the way firearm should likely be handled by TSA and security. Yeah, yeah, I've seen them. Just rifle cases just spit out at major airports. Like, I don't know what's in there. Maybe it's golf clubs, maybe it's not.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Michael. Did you notice that the other Michael is the first guest ever to bring his own drink? Koozie? I think we need to take a moment to celebrate this.

[A]

I think we should.

[B]

Why do you travel with. Let's hold it up.

[A]

Let's.

[B]

Why do you travel with your own koozie?

[A]

It's made out of fucking wool and it's handmade.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

So that's really the gist of it. Yeah, It's a sentimental thing.

[B]

Like, everywhere. If you go anywhere, you take that thing with you?

[A]

Yeah, pretty much. I mean, Yeah. I mean, I traveled here with it. I flew with it.

[B]

What other kind of shit do you travel with? So obviously firearm koozie.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So where it's from, pretty far ends of the spectrum here.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Is there anything in the middle? Do you like lighter? No.

[A]

Crack pipe sometimes.

[B]

I mean, you can always source that locally.

[A]

I mean. Yeah.

[B]

What else you got? Yeah, you got your little.

[A]

My. We'll call it a satchel.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Yeah. I keep kind of everything in here.

[B]

Like Indiana Jones cares one. It's no big deal.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Michael doesn't get that reference at all.

[A]

She's pretty masculine. Yeah. I mean, I just keep all the same shit that anybody would carry, I guess. But, you know, I like to have.

[B]

Can we be clear that just not anybody carries their own koozie? Like, let's just start with that promise.

[A]

I like to be a little special.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

And different.

[B]

But some of you guess probably got a firearm in there.

[A]

Got a firearm in there yet?

[B]

Stuff to stop bleeding as well.

[A]

No, actually, I don't. So.

[B]

God damn it.

[A]

You're supposed to be your first responder. But sometimes I will carry a tourniquet. But the smallest one I have is still like. I find that it kind of gets in the way, you know, it's like. I don't like anything bigger than that to carry and to go. Like full blowout kit. You'd need something bigger than that. That. With all the other I have in it.

[B]

So we sell at the coffee shop some fieldcraft survival little kits. I'll hook you up with one before you take off. They're tiny. There's a couple versions. There's like a very large trauma kit and a small one. I'm kind of the same way. I just. I usually will. Yeah. I mean, my fanny pack is, shockingly enough, also has a firearm in it. Yeah.

[A]

That was a surprise. What. What do you carry? Do you.

[B]

Well, this is how we get banned from YouTube. Currently going with the 365 fuse with the red dot and a light underneath. This thing is badass.

[A]

Yeah. I have. I would say almost the same setup. Very similar.

[B]

Dude, I'm pretty sure this mag. Yeah, it's 21 plus one.

[A]

Yeah. I don't have the red dot, but it's. I do have a. It's a little bit tricked out on the trigger and.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And the grip.

[B]

Do you feel that grip? It comes. Stifled like that. It's got the extended magazine port.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And a frame size like that. 21 +1 if you want to.

[A]

That's crazy.

[B]

I mean, I don't know what to tell people other than if you need more than 21.

[A]

Yeah. You're probably not going to get it done anyway, so. Yeah, so yeah, yeah, it's, you know, it's funny, I mean I was shocking.

[B]

You have a light on your pistol. It's almost as if half of every day is in the darkness.

[A]

Almost.

[B]

Do you know the conversations I have with people about that who would tell me that I don't need a light and they also don't have sights that can be seen in low light or no light situations?

[A]

Yeah, I have Trijicon night sights, but I still haven't crossed over into the red dot thing. I just, I don't know, like it to me it feels kind of clumsy, but really.

[B]

Yeah, it's a little bit of a different presentation.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

The way I get around it or I've gotten used to it is I will press it out as if I'm just going to use the iron sights because if you set it up correctly, you should be able to co witness. And so if you line up your iron sights, the red dots right there.

[A]

Yeah, I, I admittedly haven't spent a lot of time messing with it either just because it's like it's kind of one of those, if anything.

[B]

How's that possible, sir? You're an ex Navy Seal, you should be an expert.

[A]

That's true. Well, I can throw knives.

[B]

Can you kill people with your pinkies?

[A]

Yeah, oh yeah.

[B]

Isn't it fantastic the things people think about our old.

[A]

Well, to me, I don't know about it seems like that, that, that is shifting a little with social media and, and guys from our community going and doing things and you know, I think dispelling some of those myths of being embarrassed or beaten at things that people didn't expect them to be beaten at, you know, type of stuff.

[B]

But the one that constantly gets me is that they think that all special operations people know how to fight. Yeah, that is not my experience.

[A]

Yeah, I mean fist fight. Yes.

[B]

Fist fight or even grappling as well. Like if it's a physical confrontation, they're.

[A]

Just gonna, I would say unarmed combat.

[B]

Sure. Yeah, yeah. So you graduated. 215. Right. You were my huya class.

[A]

I remember. I know, yeah.

[B]

And I don't remember. In our training pipeline I went to in a selection program that I was going through for command on the east coast, they brought in. Well, somebody will call a hand to hand expert.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Leave the name out of it.

[A]

Does it start with a D?

[B]

Yeah, first name and last name, double D if you will. Where I was struck in the head multiple times. So for a Week. We either got struck in the head in the afternoon after house runs, or in the morning and then did house.

[A]

Runs, which is the best way to do it.

[B]

That was literally the only that I remember. And again, because I've heard this individual may or may not be litigious in nature, so we'll leave a lot out of it, but the stance, the whole theory behind it, the. And I remember him saying. Cause he was the one who actually was there. You're good to go. You fucking murk people in bars with this. Like, this is the one solution. I avoid violence at all costs. Michael and I both do Jiu jitsu. I've been at it for about seven years at this point. Really enjoy it. You do Jiu jitsu as well, right? It's not magic. You need striking and all this. I look back at the things that I was taught, I'm like, none of that works.

[A]

Yeah, woefully inadequate.

[B]

None of it works.

[A]

I mean, it's. It's kind of embarrassing, really. I mean, I know it's come a long way. Yeah. But. But yeah, I mean, I. I guess to be fair too though, is that taking a step back, if you think about the amount of time that we have to spend on everything else that you have to be really, really good at, it doesn't make sense to spend much time doing that. Having said that, the little bit of time that, that we did put into it could have been way better spent than it was, and I think it is now.

[B]

But I think what would have been cool is if they could have introduced Muay Thai or boxing or Jiu jitsu or whatever. Let people pick, right? Or just call it mma.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Get people with enough that they could go. I mean, in the morning, like over my last, I was at trade at the opso at trade at. Or the training officer. Which one? I don't remember. It's 13 years ago. I think it was the opso training over Team three, Opso at trade at the first floor on the northern side was that massive gym.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You could get guys started where then in the morning they could just train with themselves. You know what I mean? Like, you're a purple belt at this point, right? Yeah. You could easily in the morning, go lift for whatever and then do 30. You know what I mean? Like, you can still have that ability. Ability to polish the blade. Yeah, it's possible and I think it's important.

[A]

Yeah, I agree. I mean, the, the amount of hand to hand altercations or interactions in combat, while limited, can absolutely be the difference between life and death, you know, so, like, I don't think we should be professional MMA fighters, but there, There needs to be a. A minimum standard level of competency. That for sure wasn't there. I don't know if it is now or not, but I hope so. Yeah.

[B]

I think if it is, it's probably more because the guys are actually pursuing it on their own.

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[B]

And. And I think honestly, the. Those type of practices or martial arts, I think I bet you a lot of people have found them before they even went into the military. So it's just carryover at this point.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Because the popularity is going through the roof.

[A]

Yeah, I think so. And I know for me, like we. I had a similar experience with the combatives program, you know, around the same time.

[B]

And the head striking.

[A]

Yeah. To me, the thing that always.

[B]

People would think I'm joking, that's fine. I just got hit in the head for a week.

[A]

Yeah. I will say that. That bone in your hand. Sure. It is an effective striking mechanism for in close, I guess.

[B]

Do you know it's not the fire hands associated with said mechanism?

[A]

Yeah, no, I mean, it's like, it's thing. I mean, to me, it would be like focusing in jiu jitsu on one technique. Like, let's say it's arm bars. I mean, whatever it is, it's. But that's all you focus on, you know, it's like, well, if you can't get in a position to strike somebody that way, then it's useless. If somebody's keeping range on you, you're.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And to me, the biggest thing, the. The thing that I had, the biggest problem even knowing nothing was the stance, you know, and the. You can kick me in the knee all day if I stand like this, it's like, no, you can't.

[B]

No.

[A]

Like, if you run into anybody who knows how to throw leg kicks, you are screwed.

[B]

Have you ever had somebody who is an actual fighter give you like a. Just like a little 30 little.

[A]

Yeah, it's horrible.

[B]

It feels. I've seen it drop people like a sniper shot to the chest.

[A]

Yeah. I mean, it feels like a log is hitting you in the leg. I mean, it's crazy.

[B]

How much more does that give you appreciation for watching the ufc and they're standing there trading those shots.

[A]

Yeah. Or I mean, like, like some of the actual Muay Thai fights in Thailand where they're just sitting there teeing off on each other for 15 round. Like. Yeah, the. I think it's called cotiate training. Like the bone hardening where you like lightly tap your forearms and your shins to slowly build up that. Yeah, I mean more in the.

[B]

Into the shiatsu training these days. Little massage, sit on a comfortable couch.

[A]

Happy ending maybe.

[B]

I mean, it's.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Michael prefers a male therapist over a.

[A]

Female, so like the strong hands. I'm not getting into this conversation. Too late. Too late. You're already in it.

[B]

How'd you find Jiu jitsu?

[A]

So I have two kids and when they were kind of in the late elementary, junior high time frame, there was a pretty decent MMA gym not far from where we lived and I just wanted to put them in it basically. And so put them in it. They were in it for a little while and then, you know, I would go and watch and I was like, you know, why don't I give this a shot, you know, and did. And, and probably not too dissimilar to some of your experiences early on. When a 16 year old, 112 pound kid makes you feel like you're getting raped by an octopus, I was like, this is embarrassing. And so then, yeah, I just kind of went full tilt into it. And I did get pretty injured or pretty badly injured early on. I had a full tricep tear with an avulsion fracture.

[B]

How did this happen?

[A]

I was, it was a pretty seasoned blue belt that like, was a fair bit bigger and stronger than me and I was in his guard and he just went to trap my, my arm for a sweep and it was almost more like a palm strike. And I think I just had, you know, beat up elbows and tendons from, you know, the job. But it just like, I don't know if it just hit me right at the right spot at the worst time or whatever, but it just snapped. And it wasn't violent, you know, it wasn't like, you know, being thrown really hard or, or posting really hard or anything like that. I mean it was just a very simple, just kind of little trap like that and, and it just snapped. And immediately I was like, you know, I mean it was that, like, I wouldn't say it was super painful. I mean it was painful, but it was that burning sear, like hot poker feeling.

[B]

Something's not right there.

[A]

And immediately like I laid on my back and I tried to raise my arm and it just went like that. It was completely disconnected. And so that took almost a year to get back to where I could just do like push ups really, you know, normally. And so I took another, probably six or eight months from that time until I Started rolling again. But I was really hesitant to do it because especially with doing what I do for a living with dogs, like having one arm completely immobilized me. I could put me out of business, you know, I mean, it was a really negative impact business wise. So. Couldn't handle dogs. Couldn't catch dogs in a bite suit. Yeah.

[B]

It's just not worth it.

[A]

Yeah. You know, so. So when I came back and that we had that conversation a few months ago about primarily doing private lessons for that reason. And so I went to an academy, a checkmat academy for a few months and it just wasn't a good fit. Ended up going back to the, the coach that I originally, you know, had my kids in and, and then did that for several years and he ended up moving. So now I'm with a bigger gym in Dallas for the last couple of years. That is good. I still do primarily private lessons. But the nice thing is the coach, you know, understands all of what, you know, my injuries are and is very strategic about our training. But when I, when I went to every one of these guys, I said, you know, my number one priority over learning jiu jitsu is to, is to try to not re. Injure myself to that level.

[B]

Yeah. Supposed to enhance your life, not your professional life.

[A]

Yeah. So I said, you know, that is my number one thing. Like, I can't have, have an injury like that. I know there's no guarantees. I just want the training methodology to mirror that. That is my number one goal, you know, and so it's been good. I mean, it is a little limited. They are strategic about, you know, bringing certain guys in that, that go to their normal classes or there's times where I'll go to group classes. But even then, like, my coach will say, hey, I want you to roll with this guy or I want you to, you know, whatever.

[B]

So the worst jiu jitsu injury I've had was from a 15 year old.

[A]

Really? What was it?

[B]

I. My shoulder came out of the socket and was a pec tear is what it ended up being. Completely my fault. It was my business partner's son.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

We had just finished an hour of rolling with just savage black belts on the mat, like full fighting for your life for an hour.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And this. How big would you say he was actually working at the coffee shop today?

[A]

Well, now he's big.

[B]

How big would you say he is?

[A]

He's, I think he's like 190 or 200.

[B]

He's 16.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So on the street you'd like might cross the street at night, you know what I mean? He's a huge kid. Super, super nice kid. We're rolling. I wanted to work on an armbar escape. So I was laying on my side, I let him grab my right arm and he threw his leg over the top and fell back. And I think I was so relaxed that I wasn't defending myself at all. And I think there was just too much laxity. So when he pulled, it cavitated out, which was one of the most disgusting noises I ever heard, and then came right back in. He heard it. He was like pale white afterwards. And I mean, my whole bicep was. I didn't know what it was at the time. My whole bicep and form turned black and blue. My chest turned black, blue. Swollen in the end, went to the hospital, they didn't see anything. You know, the shoulder was looking like it was stable enough. And in the end it was a pect tear, like a partial pector on my right pack and a little bit of involvement in my shoulder. It's horrible, man. All because I was laying there.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Just like, ah, whatever, no big deal. And I think he pulled early and it was just at that angle. It was one of the most disgusting noises I've ever heard, pal.

[A]

Is it super painful?

[B]

Only in that moment when it went out and then when it went back in.

[A]

Yeah, man.

[B]

But yeah, I think, I mean, I screamed tap.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And everybody kind of looked around like that's a noise you don't often hear. And I just. And I just. It was the same thing. I just sat there with my arm at my side knowing that something was wrong. And all you can think in your head is, how bad is this? How am I?

[A]

Yeah. And for how long?

[B]

Yeah. I mean, we're talking straight. It was gnarly. And yeah. 15 year old me up.

[A]

Yeah. He was smaller then.

[B]

I mean, he's smaller than me, but.

[A]

I like, you know, he's still a big guy.

[B]

He's a big guy. Completely. Again, completely my fault. You can be because I was. People tell you, hey, just relax. Well, guess what? Don't relax too much.

[A]

There's a point.

[B]

All I think all I needed was probably just a little bit of tension.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

In my shoulder and it would have protected it, but.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Yeah. That set me off the mats for, I don't know, a couple months.

[A]

Yeah. Did you not have to have surgery for it?

[B]

No.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

No. And it's like you can see like the tendon on my. Like I. I looked into it, but it's not a full tear. Yeah, it was a partial tear. So I just kind of work around it. Yeah, I don't know anybody out there listening can figure out a way to fix it, be great.

[A]

How experienced was he at that point?

[B]

He's a white belt. Oh, no, that's completely my fault. Like I said, completely my fault. But I was, you know the deal. You have to let people work though too.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And it was the last, last round. We were going at a chill pace. He wasn't going hard.

[A]

Yeah, it just, I mean, I think it was kind of that same thing with me. Like we weren't going super hard. Yeah, it was, it was a pretty normal role and it was just a weird angle and just kind of the exact wrong place at the wrong time kind of thing.

[B]

And it's not a no consequence activity.

[A]

No, for sure.

[B]

It's a full contact sport.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

The gentle art, my ass.

[A]

Yeah. But I will say, like, compared to boxing, Muay Thai, it's still one that you can, you can at least, you know, go, go easier paced.

[B]

You know, I can't even mess around with that ballistic stuff anymore. My head, I have been hit in the head so many times or just the, the concussion history that I have, I have no interest ever in practicing a ballistic art like that.

[A]

Yeah, me either. I mean, I do think. Do you guys practice striking and takedowns and like takedowns? For sure.

[B]

They're up in the Whitefish gym. They'll do a jits with hits is what they call it. And they'll put on bigger gloves. They're not hitting each other hard.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But their, their strikes are allowed. But again, you know, they're probably doing a lot of open hand and probably just touching and, and reminding you, hey, you could be inverting underneath somebody with your face directly underneath their fist is not a good idea.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, I do think that's important. I mean, if the practicality of it is, is a primary goal of yours. Because that's one thing I do see. I'm sure you see the same thing. Like as it gets more and more popular, it's becoming more and more like karate and taekwondo in the 80s in some places.

[B]

Yeah, you know, there's, there is in my opinion, which only counts for me. It seems like there are people who are really interested in the sports side and there seem to be people really interested in the self defense real world application. Sometimes there's some overlay in between the two and I think both are fine. Like if you want to just go do the sport thing. Right on. If you want to do the self defense thing. Right on. I think if you only focused on a rule set where points can determine the outcome, there's a chance where the self defense aspect of that is really going to be diminished. But as long as you realize that, like, go live your life and do that, I'm all about it.

[A]

Yeah, no, I agree.

[B]

Also, don't fight anybody. Just like, don't get in fights.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's, to me, it's always been like, I don't compete, I don't have any interest in competing. And you know, same with, like, I will say I find myself even, even with my coach kind of reminding him because he's, he does compete, he's a pretty high level guy and the gym is pretty successful. A lot of competitors come out of there and you know, so they're very focused on pans and worlds and you know, all of the big, big competitions. But to me, the drawback with that is there's a lot of kind of fancier. This is the new thing right now, you know, type of stuff that I have no interest in, you know, Old man jitsu. Yeah.

[B]

I mean, that's all I want to do. Which largely encompasses me just laying on you.

[A]

Well, I think. Yeah, yeah. And enjoying it. Yeah.

[B]

Consensually, of course. Training partners, we agree to this. But yeah, yeah, like, I'm not trying to out cardio a 20 year old.

[A]

Yeah, well, and, and I think, you know, Hydra Gracie, I think is, is the best example of like, if, if you can do the basics or, I mean, whether it's pure Jiu jitsu or even looking at the Dagistanes in, in mma, I mean, you look at how dominant they are on the ground and look what they're catching. Guys like Charles Oliveira with, you know, a basic head and arm choke that he can't keep them from doing. You know, it's like, so you don't need to, to be super fancy. I mean, to me you were at the command, you know, to me, like I was never there. But I, I know enough about basics. Whether it's in shooting or, or dog stuff or combatives or whatever is that, you know, if you master the basics to the level where you never have to think about them, to me, that's a hard person to beat.

[B]

You know, the key to the command that I, and this is again only my opinion. I bring this up sometimes when I, when I'll talk to people because they make the it's as if that particular place or the JSOC umbrella has this allure where they think that it's full of a abnormal superhuman people, which is completely not the case. You and I could both talk about our individual buds experiences. Fucking average, skinny bean poles that if they would have let me bet on as an instructor, I'd be broke because I'd be like, no, no, no, where's the dude looks like he's chipped out of marble. He'd be the first guy to quit. And it's the skinny little quiet dude. You're like, fuck. Okay. JSOC is not. They don't go to some other pool to fill up jsoc, they screen from. You know, the army guys will screen from all four branches, even though most of them are coming from the army, the Navy, obviously it's coming from the SEAL community, but it's. They're not people who are a master of everything. And that's what people think JSOC is. They actually are really, really, really, really good at only a few things because they stripped away all the other bullshit.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So it's mastery of the fundamentals and one or two job like it's really, you know, you know, find, fix, finish, exploit, analyze. You're really working on the finish. Like get to the threshold of the door and take down this objective if that's all I ask people. And imagine a conventional team, they would be just as good at that stuff if you took away all the other bullshit and they didn't have to do three weeks of closed circuit diving in the San Diego Bay.

[A]

Going back in hydro.

[B]

Yeah, totally. Collecting golf balls over, you know, by the, by the bridge or two weeks of over the horizon Zodiac stuff and all that time we spent in the killhouse. You're going to be really good. And then let's not forget there's like a 12 to 115 to 1 support to operator ratio there. Yeah, I mean, come on.

[A]

Well, I think also the, the fact that, you know, every SEAL platoon at a regular SEAL team, every time it starts back up you have a new crop of a handful of brand new guys, you know, so you're always resetting to that lowest common denominator.

[B]

Crawl, walk, run. Do you ever get out of the crawl?

[A]

You don't. Yeah.

[B]

You're in a 24 month cycle. Six. Six months of which you're on deployment and then every restart of that. 18 months.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You crawl again.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, because you can't go faster than, you know, a bunch of 20 year olds that just got out of buds, you know, so you're always starting over, whereas, you know, at the command, it's like you're starting with a bare minimum. That's just several years of experience.

[B]

And they're only bringing in a few people a year, you know, because they aggregate the people out to the squadrons and the experience level in roster is so deep. But again, it's all in that narrow responsibility. If you were to task a JSOC command with a combat swimmer operation, let me tell you. Yeah, that's going to be a fucking shit show. You know, you should probably get that sdv. You know why? Because guess what they focus on.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Like, this is not that hard of a formula, but again, it kind of goes back to people thinking that everybody from Special Operations is just a ninja. It's. No, yeah, well, I wish. I wish that was the case.

[A]

Yeah, I think. I mean, even compared to a regular SEAL team, I don't think they're doing as much combat swimmer nowadays either. But I mean, yeah, to me, there would be no reason to do an underwater mission that's not exclusively relegated to sdv, you know, there's just no reason for it.

[B]

Why give it to anybody other than those that specialize on it? It's as if a hostage rescue mission were to come up, probably give it to the people. Let's say it was an airplane. Guess what? Cag. Fucking Europe.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[B]

Can you imagine a worse tactical environment than trying to enter an aircraft that had been taken hostage? There's no way.

[A]

Yeah. I mean, there's so many things that. That can and probably will go wrong in that. That. Yeah. I mean, what a. What a horrible fucking environment to have to go into.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And those guys are masters at it.

[B]

I mean, good on him. And for people. Know what I'm talking about, you know? JSOC largely formed after the horrendous catastrophe of Desert One. The original tasking for Delta at the time was Aircraft and Development Group was cruise ships. Neither of those things have ever happened for real, by the way.

[A]

Yeah, well, the.

[B]

That's where it came from.

[A]

I mean, the Achille Lara was probably the closest thing, which I don't know if that was.

[B]

I think they just did recon on that.

[A]

Oh, did they?

[B]

Yeah, I don't think they actually took down the vessel.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Because didn't they end up killing the guy and throwing him overboard?

[A]

I don't. I don't remember. Right. The only reason it's even fresh in.

[B]

My mind, Michael, look up the Achille Lauro, which I have no idea how to spell.

[A]

Okay, I'll give it my best shot.

[B]

It was a ship. You could add ship to that.

[A]

Yeah, I think it's Achille, like the tendon and then La, U R O I think is how it's spelled. But the only reason it's even a little fresh in my mind is I actually just had Vice Admiral Harward on my show. I don't know if you remember him. He was.

[B]

I do.

[A]

Seal Team 3xo when I checked in and then was the Commodore. And.

[B]

1985 hijacking by Palestinian terrorists. The ship was owned by who gives a. Later renamed by its owner, hundreds of passengers. On the death of leon Klinghoffer, a 69 year old Jewish American pastor who's in a wheelchair. See some things I remember. Let me see. The U.S. navy SEALs were deployed to capture the terrorists, resulting in a complex. Complex and controversial on that link because I don't think they did anything other than. Yeah, click on that. Eventually, I believe it was Gold Squadron though who rolled up that. Who caught the guy decades later. Formerly armed Palestinian terrorist. Hi the ship off the coast of Alexandria, Egypt. 320 criminals, 80 passengers. The next morning they also threatened to kill the British passengers. At this juncture, highly trained U.S. navy SEAL. That's right, highly trained.

[A]

Highly.

[B]

Maybe just trained force.

[A]

Moderately trained.

[B]

Yeah. Capture kill terrace for the Harmony Killi Laura. Passenger crew went to Tartus, which is in Syria. They killed the 69 year old Jewish American confined to a wheelchair as a result of a stroke. His body was then pushed overboard. Okay.

[A]

It doesn't say. Really?

[B]

Go down a little bit more, Michael. Let me see here. Unbeknownst to the terrorists. Okay, so there was an assault force trailing them in F14s which honestly I still think is the most badass looking aircraft ever. And then two C4C141s somewhere simultaneously. Let me see. A delicate international standoff ensued. But the situation was resolved before. Yeah. I knew they didn't take it out.

[A]

So that's the closest thing. One time almost they were trying. Yeah.

[B]

They were thinking very hard about it.

[A]

I think to pick between a jumbo jet and a cruise liner. I'll still take the cruise liner.

[B]

Oh my God.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Every time I sit in an airplane, I think about it like how from a tactical perspective, if you're on the inside, you have the advantage.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

People are gonna die. It's gonna be ugly, ugly, ugly, ugly.

[A]

So, yeah, there's no way to. I don't know how you. I Mean, how do you even begin to try to do that?

[B]

I've had thoughts. Sleeping gas. Yeah.

[A]

One way to do it.

[B]

I don't know if.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Do you flood the cabin with fentanyl and make everybody pass?

[A]

I mean, I don't know, Kill everybody?

[B]

I just feel like opening a door or a window and getting enough people in there, and then you still have to deal, you know, with the north, south problem. Like, do you go into the middle and you split the thing in half? I mean, come on.

[A]

Yeah, I think. Yeah. In just off the cuff, thinking through it, if you're not gonna sedate everybody, it's a pretty good idea, isn't it? It is. I would say that's probably the best idea is just flooding it with ridiculous speeds, you know, where you're blowing past, you know, because, like, to me, if you think about it, almost like each. Each row is.

[B]

You have to get the people into that confined environment to be speedy.

[A]

Right. But, you know, if. If you. If you consider or think each row is a hallway.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And. And so if you know that there are 30 rows and you have 30 guys and you just. Even if it's north, south, and you meet in the middle and then. And now you're clearing each. Wanted it. Like, I don't know how else you do it. Like, I'd be curious to.

[B]

I don't send in a dozen dogs.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah. People getting bit.

[B]

Everyone's getting.

[A]

Everybody's.

[B]

Everybody's gonna get bit, but I think it'll result.

[A]

Yeah. You're not gonna get shot. You're just gonna get bit, so.

[B]

Oh, God. People have no idea what happens when those dogs get let off the chain.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Especially when they get a taste for it.

[A]

Yeah. I mean, you probably saw it.

[B]

I've been bitten by one. This scar on my face is from a command dog. Yes. Now, should I have been down on my knee petting him and letting him lick my face and then stood up right next to him? No.

[A]

So it wasn't an operational thing.

[B]

No. It was in the goddamn airloft. I get snipped and I was like. And it's like, immediately my shirt's red. I just walked over to medical and they put sterile strips on it. My fault.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I love dogs, though.

[A]

Yeah. Well, I think, you know, the. The misconception because, you know, so many people grew up with dogs and had pets and. And play fight with them.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

That there's a misunderstanding of, you know, when a dog who's bred, raised, and trained, you know, for generations to be very Singular. Singular. Purposely built and driven to, to injure people. And you look at just from a kind of a physics standpoint of the, you know, pounds per square inch of pressure that they have in their pieces of spikes and serrated teeth. You know, it's a kind of akin to like for the people because I run into it all the time, like, well, I'll just, just shove my hand down his throat, you know, and it's like, it's kind of like saying if you have an 18 volt DeWalt drill bit or like say a wood drill bit, like you're gonna spin it and you're just gonna grab it and, and stop it.

[B]

Have you ever heard people say if you're bitten by a shark, just jam your thumbs in its eyes?

[A]

Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of similarly ridiculous.

[B]

Let me know how it goes. I've watched a working dog in person, in whatever, I would say 8k, but I don't know what her eyes are. Grab a hold of. The dude was dead. His teeth had sunk in over the top bones of the collarbone. And you know, when the dogs do the tugging, pulled this motherfucker from inside of a building out into a courtyard by his collarbone. Yeah, that's like good luck putting your fist down its throat.

[A]

Yeah, it's. I mean, it's. I think, you know, until you get in a bite suit and putting it on, like you can feel how heavy and thick.

[B]

Yeah, it still hurts.

[A]

It's like being wrapped with phone books, you know, and you're like, I'm not even going to feel it. And they'll still break your skin and rip your flesh open. Even through all of that. I've been actually bit all the way through a bite suit before. There was a. It was. I was actually working with Collin county as a sheriff's department in North Dallas that they had this dog that they were having trouble getting him to let go. And he had I think 15 or 16 live street bites. And every single one of them, wherever he grabbed was, was ruined. Like one guy was hiding.

[B]

You coming with?

[A]

Yeah, I mean, like, like all the way off.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And I mean like the entire muscle group, like one guy was. Was hidden in a tree stump and. And all that was visible was his calf. And so the dog bit his calf and pulled his entire calf muscle off. Like, not most of it. I mean, pull it. I mean, the way you would eat a chicken leg. Like pulled the whole thing right off. God. And that dog. I admittedly, like, I've worked with a lot of departments and a Lot of times guys are like, you know, hey, this dog's a pretty hard biter. I'm like, nah, I'm sure he is. You know, and. And these guys are like, you know, he bites pretty hard. And I was like, okay. So I go in a, in a semi comp weight suit, which is like a middleweight. It's not the super heavy training weight, Michelin man suits. Like most. Like, if it's your first time in a suit that they'll usually put you in, no gauntlets underneath. And yeah, I remember when the, when the dog first grabbed a hold of the outside of my forearm, I was just like, man, that does bite hard. And it was a cold day. About 30 seconds later, my hand was wet and I was like, there's no way I'm sweating. And I looked down and dude, blood is just streaming out of the suit, down off of my hand. I was like, holy. And. And the dog doesn't let go, you know, so now how do you get.

[B]

Him to eventually let go?

[A]

Well, I mean, it's just like jiu jitsu is. And for anybody out there that runs into a dog that attacks them on the street, like, the pro tip piece of advice I'll give you is take their air away from them. Like, you see people sticking their thumbs up their ass, picking up by their tails, trying to set them on fire. I mean, like spraying them with a hose, mace, all that shit. Like, if the dog has a collar, you're 10 steps ahead of everything. And something as simple as, like, if you take the backhand of your collar, kind of like a twist it. Yeah, just roll it over, lift, and lift straight up. It may take a few seconds. You can always get the dog off you by choking them. So now, from a training standpoint, from my perspective, it's a bad idea because.

[B]

What if they don't have a collar?

[A]

I would use a belt.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Like, if you don't have a belt, usually, I mean, find something.

[B]

You got to shut the airway off as well.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, you can try. I mean, it's kind of like with people, like, if you. If you're in PT shorts, the dog has no collar, and you're out in the middle of, you know, nowhere on a gravel road, like, you're out of luck. Long story short, have a belt on you, but if you don't, like, yeah, you can try to grab their throat. Very, very minimal amount of success, you know, with trying to do that, though. So.

[B]

So, but so that dog that didn't want to let go is There any way to train that out of that dog once again, at that point?

[A]

Yeah. And I would say that that behavior generally is, you know, not to get too far in the weeds, dog psychology wise. But that's, you know, for dogs that are. Are bred that way, that's their kind of highest level of reward, is being able to bite. Which is why you probably ran into dogs that get really amped up. When guys are stacked on a door and they're barking and spinning, and I.

[B]

Have, like, these dogs, we'd start getting our kit on and like, hey, dog handler, can you. Can you please muzzle that fucking psychopath? And just sitting in a helicopter and I remember, like, looking over and a dog just staring at me just like. Or doing fucking even house runs. And those fuckers that just give you a little nip on the way by, I'm like, ow, asshole. Like, I'm the guy. Just a little excitement to be like, motherfucker.

[A]

Yeah. Well, it's like a pressure cooker, right?

[B]

Yes.

[A]

That's the best way to think of their mind in that environment is like a pressure cooker. And if you use a scale of, say, 0 to 10, where, yeah, once it hits 11, it explodes. And that's when the dog is redirecting to the handler, to a good guy itself. Like, I've seen dogs that get so amped up and they're out of reach of anybody, they'll turn around and bite their own leg. They're so, so wound up. But so in that environment, number one is you have to realize that. That when the. When the dog's mind is at that level, you're not going to reach it very easily through punishment. And unfortunately, that's what. What most people and trainers and handlers do is, you know, okay, we're stacked on a door, the dog's in the back. This context, the dog seen, you know, 500 times, and in every instance, he's gone in and bitten somebody. So the one thing I tell everybody all the time is dogs don't think in a language, right? Which is hard to wrap your mind around.

[B]

Makes sense.

[A]

We, you know, think in a language, dream in a language, talk shit about the guy that you're behind at Lowe's in a language. But so with them, everything is an A plus B equals C. Very simple association. And so the problem with that context is that it's always, you know, a is stacking on the door plus B, you know, going in equals C. You get a bite. And so when you've done that enough times to where that Formula in the dog's mind creates a pattern where the presence of A equals the anticipation of C. That's when it's a conditioned response on a problem. If C is an undesirable behavior, which in this case it is. So the key, and I'm not going to say it's easy, but it's very simple, is you need to make A +B not equal C enough times to where the dog questions it.

[B]

And then they're looking for the answer from the handler.

[A]

Correct. And so in that environment, instead of putting a prong collar or a remote collar on and punishing the dog, because again, the dog's been bred, raised and trained to be naturally forwardly aggressive and not take shit from anybody. So when that dog is at a 10 or a 9 and you, you know, put, put punishment into him, that's when you create conflict between the handler and dog. Interesting. And, and then that's when, when those problems now cascade and avalanche into a much bigger problem where now the dog is not going to let go when he's in the fight. Because the other problem with, with that part of that equation is in training is the dog is on the bite, he doesn't want to let go. So what do we do? We make him let go. Right. So what the. It's like an opposition reflex kind of thing. And so the two ways that you combat that in the first scenario is instead of trying to punish it, I'll stand there with a clicker, which, you know, there's varying degrees of dismissiveness, I would say, within the working dog world as to how to approach it. There's still a lot of very archaic old school guys that just want to, you know, make the dog do what they want. From my perspective, again, putting yourself in the dog shoes, just like anytime you're teaching anybody or anything, anything, you have to look at it from their shoes. And so I just wait, you know, and the second the dog stops barking, even if it's for a split second, I'll click and let him go in and bite. So, so now he understands when I shut up, when I'm calm, that's when I get to bite, you know, so instead of picking a fight with him.

[B]

Oh, okay, you're looking for that gap, right?

[A]

And at first it's going to be a millisecond of silence. You know, obviously the goal is to cap that drive for, in some cases, maybe minutes. But baby steps. You know, the first thing is, is get that light switch on in the dog's mind where, oh, it's when I stopped barking, I got to go in, you know, and then you're, you're building duration, you're building distraction, you're, you know, you're working on that. But that's the foundation. And same thing with outing is that most times in training, the dog gets to bite for a very brief amount of time because it's part of a bigger exercise. You know, we're doing call outs, doing vehicle extractions, whatever, and there's a lot of other players. And so the dog goes in, he gets the bite, and now he's on the bite and he's amped up and nine seconds later you're, you're screaming at him to let go. Well, his fight isn't done yet. He's still at that 11. And so just in the same vein is that if you, you know, choke the dog off, if you punish the dog off, I'm even more resistant to that, that type of training because again, like what you're doing is you're basically either picking a fight with a dog because he's in it. Right. I mean, just like if you get in a street fight and your wife taps you on the shoulder to stop doing it, like you're, you're gonna have no idea. So the amount of, of pressure and compulsion that you have to apply to the dog when they're fighting that way is, is severe enough to. One of two things is going to happen. You're going to pick a fight and he's going to turn around and start fighting you now or it's going to be so overwhelming to where the dog quits basically. And the pressure is so intense he gives up and shuts down. Both of those things are equally problematic. And the last thing I want with a dog that I'm putting, you know, potentially my or my guys lives on that dog shoulders. The last thing I want is a broken spirit and a lack of confidence. Going in a room with a twice convicted felon on meth with a screwdriver. Yeah. So same thing is that like when I work with departments and this is something I'll do fairly regularly is problems with outing is one of the most common issues with working canine programs. And so I'll get in a suit and let the dog come in and I'll do like a, you know, the jiu jitsu reference would be a flow roll or you know, we're just kind of going easy. Easy. Yep. I'm given enough stimulation to make it enjoyable. I'm not putting a lot of, a lot of on the Dog. But. But I'm basically going to wait until that dog is physically exhausted before I even ask him to out that first session. And sometimes that may take several minutes. If it's say, northern Colorado in January, which I worked for the department, and it was like an hour and 20 minutes, you know, because it's four degrees out totally, and the dog's young and in good shape and an ass eater. And, and so. But either, no matter how long it takes, you wait until the dog is now like, you see the eyes relax, the pupils aren't so dilated. Like, he's calm and you can tell he's worn out. And so now I'll bring the handler in and say, okay, you know, straddle the dog, pet him really, really calmly and whisper in his ear to let go. And. And then the dog is like, okay, you know, now, now that pressure cooker boiled way the back down. And so now when he does. And you can feel it. One of the reasons that sucks being a decoy is you need to be in basically the lightest weight suit so that you can feel the dog and the dog can feel you. Because especially in the real world around here, you know, two months ago, everybody's wearing puffy jackets, and if the dog grabs material and just starts pulling, he's not hurting the guy, you know, So I want to teach the dog to find me in the suit, which hurts, but you can feel it. So like when that dog starts to get ready to let go, you'll. You'll feel a little bit of type. You'll, you know, be pulsing in the jaw and you can feel them kind of backing out and not countering in as much and things like that. So you get a feel for it as a decoy, you know, years of experience wise. But so then as soon as he lets go, similarly, I'll have a clicker in my hand. I'll mark it or I'll have the. The handler say yes, and I'll feed it back to him and reward him with getting another grip. At that point, the dog is exhausted. So you're probably only going to get maybe half a dozen quick reps in. But. So I'll give him a little bit of stimulation, have the handler, you know, tell him to out again, nice and calm, give him a regrip. And so I'm rewarding the dog from. Of letting go by giving him a regrip. So it's not that the game's over and I'm taking away from you what you want nine seconds into it, which is going to create a bunch of problems. And so it's really simple stuff, but it takes. There's a fair bit of nuance. You know, the decoy has to be pretty skilled to understand how to get that out of the dog and bring the handler in and get the handler to handle the dog exactly how you want them to in that environment. And it really needs to be driven by the decoy, not the handler, because you know everything about where that dog's mind is at by what his mouth is doing on you.

[B]

Michael and I were discussing yesterday, a video series, basically me filming him almost losing his life. Can we get him down to your facility in adulthood? Yes, Michael, we'll go BASE jumping. I'm gonna get taken BASE jumping. Well, unfortunately, his parents might have listened to the episode, so we might have to say we're going on a field trip.

[A]

Let's call it.

[B]

So we got BASE jumping on our video series. Are you down to be just fucking mauled in a dog suit? The lightest dog suit possible, so you can feel the dog and train.

[A]

As long as it doesn't actually hurt me, then, yeah.

[B]

How about if there's a 33.

[A]

Yeah, injured. I meant injured. Yeah.

[B]

What if there's a 33% chance that it might. Is that okay?

[A]

That's one third. That's quite a bit, yes. Yeah, I'll think about it.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Yeah, I would say, I mean, like me picking the right dog is. Is important. You know, a seasoned dog that isn't, you know, doesn't have a 12 inch long muzzle with, you know, that's. That could do like tendon damage. I wouldn't use one of those. Thanks, I appreciate that. Yeah.

[B]

And so, yeah, so we have base jumping. One of the other episodes he and I did, we were talking about the shocking statistics of 80% of men think they could land a commercial airliner. And so I gotta get him. And he was like, yeah, I could do it.

[A]

No, I know. I didn't say it with that much confidence.

[B]

The fuck you didn't. I said, do you think you could. He goes, yeah, so I'm gonna find a simulator. We're gonna film that for sure. But that's. That's more just entertainment.

[A]

Yeah, I really should use the real thing if you're that confident.

[B]

So then of course, I pulled up a cockpit view of like, you know, an A380 or just your normal one. I'm like, where would you start on the switches?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

People have no clue what is up there.

[A]

Well, I think there's a similar statistic Maybe even higher. Of most grown men that think they can fight. Yeah. You know, and it's the standard, like. No, when I go to this place, when I see. It's the. I see player. Yeah. You know. Yeah. Most people don't even know that they can't fight. You know, they think they can, and I think it's the same thing.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But that is gonna be great. Video him.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Just, I'm assuming, just wadding up an airliner in a simulator, screen just going black. But I really want to see the last minute, like, right before the ground. I think it's gonna be great.

[A]

Do you think the same thing about helicopters? Yeah. Helicopters seem way more complicated for some reason. I mean, it's the same process. Right.

[B]

Like, yeah, the. The controls are a little bit different, and I would say more.

[A]

Seems more touchy.

[B]

They're more involved. Yeah. But the. The avionics, let alone just. You got to get the airplane configured properly.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You know, I was like, well, so how would you put the wheels down? He couldn't even find it. You know, there's things that people forget. They think they're just going to get up there and navigate it down. But I think that'd be a great video if I can get him hanging off the edge of the Purine Bridge in Twin Falls, just interviewing him about his thoughts in the moment. Maybe. Yeah. No, he's gonna have to go on his own. I'll let you count down from whatever you want, you know, like,996.

[A]

I feel like you just have to get it over with.

[B]

And then a dog suit. I think we have the first three videos of a great video series. I think it would crush, I think.

[A]

So what are you gonna call it?

[B]

I don't know. Hopefully, like, Michael gets fucked up or.

[A]

You know, Michael almost dies.

[B]

We'll do it. It. What is. What would you say is the most impressive dog breed? And why is your answer miniature dachshund?

[A]

Well, mostly because you have one.

[B]

God, he's a little. But I love him so much.

[A]

I mean, to me, like, I get asked a lot. You know, what your favorite breed is. I don't really have one. Obviously, I work with Malinois and shepherds predominantly, but, you know, I've seen some really remarkable dogs in every breed, and I've also seen very poor examples in every breed, even in Malinois and. And shepherds and. And you name it. So what I will say is I do have, I would say, a. A very healthy appreciation for function. It doesn't really matter what the function is, you know, as long as the dog can do something that. That we can't. And they can augment our lives in whatever capacity, whether it's a seeing eye dog to a. A rat terrier to a herding dog, you know, of course, you know, I'm a little biased. Just. I've also seen so many remarkable things from Malinois and shepherds.

[B]

They are an amazing species.

[A]

Yeah. You know, are there dogs that can do certain things that they can do better than them? Yes. But in every case that I've seen, that's the only thing they can do at all. Everything else, I mean, yeah, there are, you know, some. Some hunting dogs that can bite harder. Yeah. You know, or kill things faster or damage more, but not. Not by much. You know, some dogs are faster, some dogs are a little more athletic. Some dogs are maybe cognitively a little more advanced and can learn a little faster. Some of the border collies. But for a utilitarian dog, if I was, you know, if it's Last of Us or Zombie Apocalypse, like a thousand %, it's a 65 pound Malinois that's well trained would be my go to dog.

[B]

So not a miniature dachshund for.

[A]

For companionship. Yes.

[B]

And judgment.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Leah weighed him the other day because she's convinced he's losing. I swear to God, this dog has already got her figured out.

[A]

Yeah, he probably does.

[B]

He will just sit there and just make some noises by his food and she'll ask me, when did you feed him? Like 20 minutes ago. He's fucking working you right now.

[A]

Yeah. Well, so right there, the second he stops doing it, that's when you feed him.

[B]

Yeah, but he also just ate. It's like, motherfucker, you're just trying to work mom. So she weighs him. He's 12.5 pounds. He is the most judgmental dog ever. He'll just sit there and just. He hears everything. And I feel like he understands. And just in his head goes, no.

[A]

No, but how old is he?

[B]

One.

[A]

One? Yeah.

[B]

She went, actually, I think he might turn one this week.

[A]

Oh, wow.

[B]

And we're arguing. Not arguing, we're discussing whether or not to have a birthday party. I'm like, leah, how dog doesn't know that it's his birthday? We need to do it. He's our also the first dog she's ever had.

[A]

Really?

[B]

I couldn't believe it either.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

Apparently she had some hamsters when she was young.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But the first dog she's ever had. She was a little Trepidatious. And yeah, he's a little pocket wean. He goes, everyone, a little satchel.

[A]

Can you walk me through the mindset or the, the mental process as to why that. That breed?

[B]

So my daughter has a miniature dachshund. So I've been around them since probably 2000 and I don't know, 8. Dude, they're just like the coolest dog. They're so loving and affectionate. If you're their people, they hate you. If you're not their person and you cannot get them to stop barking.

[A]

Yeah. I will say that breed and mini corgis are very popular ranch dogs in Texas.

[B]

They, I mean, he is, has no idea that he is six inches tall. Yeah, he will charge vehicles. He will charge people. He'll go after bigger, not go after, but he'll approach bigger dogs. I just really like their personalities. They're cool as shit. I fell in love with them when it was my daughters. When I got divorced, I lost custody of my dog. And so I don't even remember how Lee and I were talking about. Oh, I remember why. We had a goofy conversation about vision boards of which I don't have one. But she asked me what would be on it. I said, probably a miniature dachshund and a helicopter. Yeah. So I accomplished both. And I haven't yet though, flown with him. That's the next one. So let me run this by you because this is the guy who type rated me in the helicopter, has done some work with dogs. This is what he recommended to expose them. So, and this part I have done. I've taken javelin to the helicopter and he's sniffed around it and been inside of it, totally turned off, just getting comfortable with what it is. Then the guy said, basically have my wife there, but turn the helicopter on and just sit there at idle for like a minute the first time and then, then take him out of the helicopter. Probably do that two or three times just to get used to the noise. And we do have the ear pro form. Then when you're ready, start it, hover for two minutes, set it back down and let him out. And the whole time kind of just watching the dog's behavior, make sure he's not fully tail tucked, all that stuff. But at some point in that he'll kind of just relax and then you should be good to go with exposure to the helicopter. Is that reasonable?

[A]

It is. I would add one key component to it though. Okay. In keeping in tradition with the A plus B equals C or making certain contextual associations, obviously he loves food, Right?

[B]

Oh, yes.

[A]

So how. How far is the helicopter normally from where you guys actually live?

[B]

10 minutes.

[A]

Okay. It's a pain in the ass. But what I would do is start feeding him in the helicopter.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

You know, at a minimum, like, right.

[B]

When he gets into it or like, maybe when the evolution is ending.

[A]

No, I mean, at first. I mean, if he's already been there and had some exposure, I would say just now bring him in there and set the bowl of food. I don't know how big it is inside there, but just feed him in there and then leave.

[B]

He's with me all the time anyway, so it's not like as a normal errand. Yeah, we could definitely do that.

[A]

Yeah. So I would just start doing that. Do it for maybe a week before you ever turn it on, and then I would recreate that same process. And then when you're feeding him, turn it on while he's in there.

[B]

While he's eating.

[A]

While he's eating. Yeah.

[B]

Okay. We also have a set of doggles for him, which is completely unnecessary. And it looks like about the size of a GI Joe set, but how can you not.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. He's got a tactical vest.

[B]

He does. I'm not even sure he can see out of those things because they literally. They're like the guy who sent me the vest sent me the whole thing. So.

[A]

Have you put the. The earmuffs on him?

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

And he's final them.

[B]

He doesn't seem to give a. Yeah.

[A]

So I would.

[B]

I mean, do you. I mean, I just put him over the top of his ears. Do you have to, like, stuff his ears up inside of there? Can you just.

[A]

You should. I mean, like, if you think about it almost from, like. Think of it like a. A swimming mask.

[B]

Okay, so get them up inside of there.

[A]

Yeah. I mean, even just covering, it's better than nothing at all. But the most protection is going to be where the entire ear is. Is stuffed in there. You do want them big enough to. Where it's not like, yeah, crumpling or.

[B]

His head's not that big.

[A]

But I. So I would. I would make that as part of your routine is. Is put. Put them on them before you even get to it. Yeah. Walk him in there. Feed him with those on.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

And then. Yeah, do it for a handful of sessions and then start it while he's in there because there's. There's less from his perspective, less chaotic, overwhelming stimulation by already being in it when it started, then walking up to it while it's on.

[B]

How would you expose him to actually going for a flight?

[A]

I mean, similarly, I would probably start it with walking him in there, feeding him, starting it up while he's already in there and then flying that way you're not overstimulating him on the way there. So that now when he's in there, he's already a little bit frazzled. Okay, he's already in there. He started up. I would feed it, start him up, start it up, maybe even shut it down. I don't know how long that process is or how big of a pain in the ass it is, but shut it down and then bring him out after it shut down and, you know, and kind of build him up to where you're walking him there while it's turning. If that's something you ever would do with them.

[B]

You could. I just want him to be comfortable. And then when would you take the food out of that?

[A]

And just, just like, once it seems like he could give a. Okay, if that's the first time, great. He may not give a. How is he? Like, you take him to like Home Depot or.

[B]

Yeah, he just hounds around. He just sniffs and just cruises.

[A]

Do you ever see the, like, you know, the apprehension, like, no clause, like, no.

[B]

He just goes, yeah, psychopath.

[A]

He's probably not gonna give that much of a. About it then.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Like if he'll walk in and out of power. And I love, you know, Home Depot because there's people like ripping sheets of plywood and kids walking around with ice cream cone.

[B]

He crushes. Like the Salt Lake City airport doesn't give a. Stuff like he. We have. We have traveled with him a lot.

[A]

Yeah, it's probably not going to be that much of a challenge for him then, because that's the thing. You probably saw dogs jumping out of planes and.

[B]

Yeah, I was one of the first people to do a tannin with the dog. The dog didn't enjoy it as much as I did. I feel like it wanted to kill me.

[A]

But the thing with that, though, is the dog at least is not rationalizing that you're jumping out of a plane.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Right. So to him, it's windy, it's loud, and there's a feeling of weightlessness. Same of going in a. In a fast elevator if a dog's never been in one.

[B]

But he didn't enjoy the cameraman that was buzzing around. He was locked on.

[A]

Yeah. A lot of prey drive stimulation. Yeah.

[B]

Just you could see the head in the film. I didn't notice at the time. I was like, oh, dude, he was eyeballing you. Even in freefall. He was eyeballing shit.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah.

[B]

Okay. Yeah. Because that's my goal.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

To be able to just crush Montana.

[A]

Yeah. So I would do the first few trips where you're bringing him in before you started up, after you've been feeding him in there a little while. But again, it sounds like between how food motivated he is and how environmentally he. How environmentally sound he is everywhere else, it's probably not going to be a huge challenge where you'd see where I would be more concerned and say maybe baby step that a little, little more spread out is if taking him to Home Depot he's, you know, spooked by the, the doors opening or. Yeah.

[B]

So if he's at the coffee shop all the time, cruising around, we take him everywhere.

[A]

Yeah. It was kind of all the same thing, you know. Again, the environmental exposure component to especially working dogs is, is the most common reason I'll wash a dog out is the, the double edged sword of Malinois and bite. Dogs are that edge that, that gives them such a great advantage on being suspicious enough and kind of civilly aggressive enough to be effective in the field. If there's even just a little bit too much of that defensiveness edge, a lot of times it will manifest in environmental nerves being a little weak. And they're a little bit. They're suspicious of everything, not just people. It's what the fuck is that plastic bag blowing across the parking lot doing? And they're doing that kind of shifting like those are the kind of things I hate to see. And, and because the problem is, is if the dog isn't bomb proof in that way, then you know, who knows what you're going to get into environmentally in a, in a real world operation. And if the dog is spooked, then they're not going to do their job.

[B]

So it seems like they'd be constantly stressed out.

[A]

Yeah, they are.

[B]

Which would. I mean, having had some stress in my life before, it's exhausting.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

How could you expect them to do their job if they felt.

[A]

Well, they can't, you know, and so like I said, that's the, the most common reason why, why we'll wash dogs out is because of that.

[B]

Are you aware that on the Internet you are considered to be the originator of the Epstein didn't kill himself.

[A]

I am. It's incorrect. Yeah, that's a nice segue.

[B]

I was thinking about it.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Guys, I forget how. I mean, I knew we were gonna Sit down and talk. And I was like, I wonder what Mike is known for on the Internet, of all things. Yeah, yeah. That we might need to pull this up and play it.

[A]

Yeah, he's already working on it. Look at that.

[B]

Oh, he's pretty good. I thought it was hilarious when I saw that segment.

[A]

Well, it's. I mean I've shared it before, but there's kind of a funny story behind it in that it wasn't a pre. Planned thing, you know, it. It was. I remember hearing Rogan actually talking about the controversy about it, you know, about Epstein killing himself. Yeah. Or not killing himself. And, and so a betting man.

[B]

Where would you put your money?

[A]

Not killing himself.

[B]

I would have to agree.

[A]

To me. I mean it's, it's like, come on, people. Yeah. I mean it's kind, it's insulting frankly, you know, but God knows what.

[B]

How can you scroll back up? How could you just blurt something out that is not an accurate representation of what happened?

[A]

I love that it's blurting.

[B]

Why are you on a real estate ad?

[A]

It's weird. Have to play this before it.

[B]

We have to.

[A]

Well, I couldn't find it on YouTube. I've not seen blurted out before. Actually.

[B]

I think I would add. I would say you just added it.

[A]

If, if you see the, the coverage and you decide I want one of these dogs, either buy a finished, trained, you know, fully trained and, and finished dog from a professional or just, just don't get one at all. Epstein didn't kill himself.

[B]

Oh, Jesse Waters.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah. So two, two things, I guess. One, it was, it was just becoming a thing in the news where, where you know, people were kind of debating it and they sent a car for me because that's the, the Fox Dallas studio or whatever. And so I was just in the car like scrolling on my phone on the way there and I saw a few different clips of it. But fast forward to the interview. I like Jesse Waters, but especially at that time it was the Waters World on Saturday episodes. And to me it felt like he was being kind of a dick during the interview. Like he was asking kind of silly questions like, you know, just like does, you know, do dogs lick your ass if they're covered in peanut butter? It was that kind of stuff, you know, it was like, well, hold on.

[B]

What'S the answer to that?

[A]

That's. I can. Can neither confirm nor deny, but this is a high probability.

[B]

Remember the video series we talked and the person we're going to use?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Yes, Michael. Fourth video I've already Tested this one out.

[A]

What just happened?

[B]

He dog sits javelin while we're gone. So it's like, oh, that's why we're short on almond butter when we get home.

[A]

Why is the crunchy peanut butter gone?

[B]

I think dogs would eat peanut butter anywhere, you psychos.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, there's. There's a, a contingent of the population, I think that's into that. But yeah, it just, it just, it seemed like he, he wasn't taking it serious. And, you know, the reason he brought me on there was. It was right after the Al Baghdadi raid where the dog didn't get killed, but.

[B]

Yeah, but he knocked himself off, right?

[A]

Yeah, you know, injured the dog. And so I, you know, my intent was, was twofold. The, the kind of PSA that I threw out at the end was pre planned because stuff like that typically will have a lot of people that don't do any research. You know, want. Want to go get one of these dogs and buy a puppy and, you know, a good working puppy makes a horrible house pet, you know, and so I wanted to kind of convey that message, but also just highlight how incredible the, the dogs are and what they do for us. And, and it just seemed like he, he was kind of scoffing at the whole thing, like he was making more jokes about dogs, generally speaking. And, and it kind of irritated me. So it was a complete off the cuff. Just. I just threw it in there as just kind of a with him thing. And to Fox's credit, though, that was pre recorded like two days in advance. And they kept it in there. So awesome. Like, when I said it, I, I assumed that they wouldn't keep it in there, and they did. And so I watched it and it's like a Saturday night at seven or whatever, and like nine seconds after it aired, dude, my phone did not stop blowing up for probably a month. And it was like people that I hadn't heard from in 20 years, you know, like this one guy was like, yeah, I'm up here and like a Buffalo Wild Wings in North Dakota. And there's this table behind me watching your video over and over, laughing their asses off. And it's like a dude I hadn't talked to since high school. So, yeah, I mean, of all the things that, that I've done since I've been out of the Navy, the fact that that one is kind of the. The lead charge on Wikipedia is a little frustrating.

[B]

That subject matter won't die either. No, it is. I don't know why I want the current administration to be successful, I want our country to be as secure and safe and as strong as possible. But I also think we got to be able to call out the. When happening. And there was a large promise on a lot of things, and it seems like they're kind of about, yeah, why not release what you said you're going to release. If there's some shit in there that's really hard to explain, take your time to explain it. That's part of the platform that he ran on.

[A]

Agreed. Yeah. I mean, it is frustrating to have a list of things that are gonna happen day one. You know, obviously there's rhetoric there that I think anybody with a half a brain can understand. It's not gonna happen the first day.

[B]

I like the bullshit. Like, look at these binders we gave to these social media influencers. Can you please treat the American people with at least some level of respect?

[A]

Yeah, I agree. I think it was poorly handled, you know, and it didn't reveal anything. You know, it was all stuff that had already been largely known.

[B]

What makes the most sense to you about what he was and what he was doing? Because I have a theory. I bet our theories are very similar.

[A]

I mean, I think that if you look at his background and how he amassed the wealth that he did based on that background, that doesn't add up. So obviously there's something else there that, that is completely uncovered or covered, rather. I think that he got himself into a network of very powerful people and provided a service and recorded it and blackmailed them and made a ton of money. I think most of it actually just came from. And I do think, like, I'm not a huge, you know, New World Order Illuminati guy or anything, but I do think that for whatever reason, that there's. There's a higher probability of pedophilia in elite circles of power and wealth. I don't know if it's like the A list actor that, you know, gets so much ass that he gets tired of it and now needs something else that pushes the envelope. I mean, I don't know what it is, man, but it seems like there's a higher percentage of people in those circles that engage in that kind of stuff, including our own U.S. government. And I think that that's probably why you don't. I don't see a lot of it being released, is that there are people that are currently in positions of power and influence that, that are probably on that list. But I think he did two things. I think he. He mostly made money in providing a Service for people at a very high level for, you know, child sex trafficking. And I think whether or not he actually videotaped it and blackmailed him, maybe, maybe not. But I think there's an understanding that he knew all of the people that were doing it. And there's enough of those people with enough power and influence to say, I don't want that guy going anywhere near a courtroom knowing what he knows.

[B]

I could see him being loosely tied to our. Or directly tied to our intelligence apparatus as well. Yeah, to. I think largely the same thing that there's no way that he was operating at that level. Just in the. The number of times that he bounced up against law enforcement was kind of setback. I think that he was providing not only that service, but I think if there. If he was tied to the intelligence community, he was doing so to people that they wanted that service tied to so they could then have leverage upon them. Yeah, I think that that would. That explains to me his ability to operate largely what it seems like in plain sight.

[A]

Yeah, that makes more sense.

[B]

And, you know, people like, it's the CIA. I'm like, listen, the CIA is an umbrella. There's a bunch of people inside of the CIA, and if. Let's say there was, there's a half a dozen of them that were involved in that in some way. Is that the CIA? I guess, because they're working under that charter. But let's not confuse the organization with individuals. You know what I mean? I just. It's too weird, you know, I actually could see the diddy stuff. Right. Maybe innocent until, you know, proven guilty. You know, 10,000 metric gallons of lube is odd, you know, but I mean, it's.

[A]

Doesn't have that.

[B]

But I could also see the same. I could see the same type of situation being at the very least allowed. And if I get really gnarly about people's intentions, you could see being facilitated from those in power for the same reason, leverage. And then you can control whatever it is that they. Whatever world or ecosystem that they're in. Yeah, I could see that.

[A]

Well, especially in the entertainment industry, where, I mean, let's be be honest, the people who are famous a lot of times aren't the most talented, you know, especially in music. It's whoever what label props up and creates and wants. I mean, take Britney Spears as an example.

[B]

She's one of the greatest artists of our time.

[A]

Well, we can agree to disagree. Maybe.

[B]

Do you ever search over to her Instagram?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

To just take a quick look at what somebody Struggling with mental health, looks like.

[A]

Yeah. If I'm having too good of a day and things are too balanced. Yeah, I'll take a look at what she has going on. But.

[B]

But it actually makes me feel sorry for people who grew up that way and became that famous that early.

[A]

Yeah, I agree. And it seems like it happens to most of them. But, but I think in the entertainment industry because. Not that there's not a ton of money in politics and everything else, but because it's kind of. That's the only thing, you know, they're not creating policy. They're not, you know, doing contracts with foreign governments. You know, there's a lot less intricacies, I think, in entertainment. And so. So it's pretty cut and dry. It's just, it's all about money and how to make it. And if you can control the people who are making a lot of it and get them in contracts that are horrible because they don't really have a choice. You know, to me that, that makes more sense. Yeah. But, but in that exact same kind of framework of, it's a broader scale of, of using, you know, uncomfortable and illegal things to, to, to. To leverage people into just making them do whatever you want.

[B]

Somewhere out there there's a Rolodex of some pretty gnarly.

[A]

For sure.

[B]

I hope it sees a light of day.

[A]

I hope so too.

[B]

I mean, I actually don't care if it didn't fucking nearly imploded our government. I'd rather see our government have a hard restart by ejecting those people, entities, organizations, than for this just to exist and never be addressed.

[A]

I agree. I mean, to me it's kind of the same thing with tariffs and stock market and everything else right now is that, you know, if it takes a hard. Excuse me, reset that. That is painful for a period of time, but that gets us back to kind of on the right track. I'd be all for it.

[B]

Yeah. Yeah. I don't think there's. I think continuing on the path that they were. We were on was going to end up being extremely painful. And I think the path. And I'm not an expert on tariffs and, you know, geopolitical events or any of that stuff. And I'm aware of the stock market. I quite frankly don't understand.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

How it works. And I'm glad that there's people out there who are experts in that, but there's going to be pain involved somewhere. I would rather, just. My personal theory in life, I'd rather take it up front for A little bit more of an enjoyable tail end than wait for the destruction on the tail end.

[A]

I agree. I don't know why so many people are, are so short sighted that way. You know, like to, to watch the stock market as an example. And you know, one bad day and people are screaming that the economy is collapsing and you know, and it's like, and then the next day it's, it goes up 1200 points and you know, it's like you have to see the bigger picture, you know, And I do. You know, I admittedly too, I'm not, you know, an economics professor. Economics professor. But at the same time it's like tariffs seem pretty cut and dry to me and that like if you're going to charge us, it's only fair to charge you back. Or we both say, hey, neither of us are going to charge anything. Like what's complicated about that?

[B]

That is the part of the conversation I've seen missed by a lot of people. They'll say, well, tariffs, this idea of using tariffs is a horrible thing. And I'll ask them, are you aware of the number of tariffs that are currently on US goods? And if that was such a horrible thing, why did we accept that? So if it's bad if we tariff other countries. And again, I'm not an economics perspective or a professor either, if it's bad that we're applying tariffs, why isn't it bad that other countries are applying tariffs to us?

[A]

Agreed. Yeah. It doesn't make any sense.

[B]

It doesn't. And I don't know why that's lost in the conversation. I don't know if it's a great way to recalibrate again because I don't understand the depth and complexity of what's going to, the long term effects are going to be. But if they were okay for other countries to do to us, why is it the worst thing on earth that we're doing them to other countries as well?

[A]

Yeah, I think it's because of that shortsightedness and that in the interim it could make people lose jobs or could see a huge spike in normal day to day household goods or you know, make vehicles now twice as expensive, you know, for a period of time. I, I do think one misstep is the, the kind of lack of understanding from a business owner's perspective to say, anybody who has things manufactured somewhere else to just say, you know, hey, we're going to do tariffs starts in 30 days. If you don't like it, make it here. It's like you have to Know, it's not that easy to like, they don't.

[B]

I had this conversation yesterday.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

As if, as if, because a policy wants to shift back production to the US that overnight they're going to find people who are skilled enough or that the materials are here or that the factory is here. It's probably a five to ten year process. Should we be heading down that pipeline? I think we should. For self sustainability to think it's going to happen overnight is psychotic.

[A]

Yeah. I mean it can happen, you know, and that's the thing that I think that frustrates at least me and I think most people that are for that long term train of thinking. But you know, there has to be an implementation process that's smarter about going about that or you're just going to put everybody out of business, you know.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Because the reality of it is is that there's a reason why things are made other places, you know. So, you know, to just say to company X, who's making product Y in China or wherever, or let's say it's Canada, you know, to just say we'll make it in America. If you don't want the tariffs, it's like even with the tariffs, it's probably still cheaper.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You know, or even, it may not even be feasible for, for me to make product Y in America and, and charge what I'm charging or even, even if you were to charge whatever you had to, like now you're not selling it because it's so far overpriced that nobody's going to buy it, you know. And so to me it like, I don't know if we, we give our politicians too much credit to think that they're thinking from that perspective, but it doesn't seem like they are in a lot of cases.

[B]

I think it's the talking points that they run on. Today's episode is brought to you by Element, spelled lmnt, but said Element man. I have been working with these guys for quite some time. What is Element? Well, it's a thousand milligrams of sodium, 200 milligrams of potassium and 60 milligrams of magnesium. It is electrolytes, it is salts. It is your best weapon against being depleted with all of those things, especially if you live an active lifestyle. I'm getting ready to go to my wife's jiu jitsu seminar in Costa Rica. I have a 1 gallon Ziploc bag full of these bad boys. I would take the sparkling ones, but they're harder to travel with. Perhaps I Can talk Rob into shipping some down there. But if you like salt, if you like recovering, if you like being hydrated, if you like having electrolytes, head over to drinkelement.com clearedhot I'll talk about the specific offer they have over there, but let me just give you an idea of what they offer. Citrus, watermelon, raspberry, grapefruit, orange. There's an unflavored if you want. They make some spicy ones that I've talked about. Mango chili. That is a great one for a margarita. For your hot chocolates or coffees, there's a chocolate salt and a chocolate caramel. Variety packs. Then of course, like I mentioned, they have their new 16 ounce beverages. They're ready to go. Citrus, grapefruit, watermelon, black cherry, lime and of course a variety pack as well. These things are unbelievable. The difference between when I train hard or I'm just active and have one of these beverages, if not two. Depending on where I'm at, the climate, the temperature, how much I'm sweating, the activity is unbelievable. I feel it in my joints, I feel it in my recovery, I feel it in my ability to think. The system is just humming at a more optimal range when you're making sure that you're hydrated and your salt and electrolyte balance are where they should be. Like I mentioned, if you head over to drinklementtea.com ClearedHot which I'll link directly in the show notes, you're gonna get a free element sample pack with any purchase [e-mail] ClearedHot and don't forget to try the 16 ounce sparkling element electrolyte water. Like I said, 1000 milligrams sodium, 200 milligrams potassium, 60 milligrams magnesium. These things are awesome. It's my go to after Jiu Jitsu. Oftentimes there's one in my bag. Drinkelement.com Cleared hot. Don't mess around with your salt and your electrolytes. Stay in the game. Back to the show. You know, when you're on a campaign trail, I think you can be loose and fast. Right. You're in fifth gear. I think the wheels of bureaucracy, especially given the size that we have, you're not even in first gear. It's like a tenth of a percentage of first gear.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So you can talk fast, but it moves slow.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Which sucks.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. And, and over promising and under delivering, I think, you know, is a problem. I mean take the Israel stuff, the Ukraine war. Similarly, you know, I mean, I Remember hearing there was a hard line not long ago of saying, hey, if all of the hostages aren't released by this state. Yeah. It's going to be hell to pay. Like, like where's the hell being paid?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Because there's still like 50 or 60 of them. We haven't done anything about it. You know, why not? Like, and to me, like, you can't say like that and then not do something, you know, I mean, you have kids.

[B]

It's the same experience as my own as a parent. Go ahead and play that game.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Play the. If you do this, I'm going to do this, and then they do that and you don't. And your baseline and template is just constantly shifting.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah.

[B]

It's not a good approach, in my opinion.

[A]

Yeah. I mean, I'm all for carrying a big stick and, and making those threats, but you have to follow through with.

[B]

Them, you know, and only make the threat if you're actually going to be able or willing to follow through with it.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Otherwise pick a different tool.

[A]

Yeah. You know, I mean, I feel that way about all foreign policy, like whether it's Iraq, Afghanistan, I mean, anything we've been involved in. I think, you know, if you look at it almost like a street fight, you know, if you walk by a black rifle down the street and there's a bar brawl going on, like you can choose to walk in or you can keep walking. If you walk in, I don't care how well intentioned you are or how you conduct yourself, you're going to create enemies no matter what. Even if you do nothing, you're going to create enemies because you were there and stood by. Now granted, even if you walk by, you may create enemies, but to me, like, I'm only walking in that place if I have to, you know, and I think you can, you can look at that micro example and apply it to the macro of saying we're not going to send our guys anywhere unless it's absolutely necessary. But if we do, I'm going to let the gloves come completely off and we're going to go, you know, full Tecumseh, Sherman, Civil War, Atlanta, burn the entire place to the ground and wipe you off the map. And then we're going to leave and the next person that fucks with us, we're going to do the exact same thing. So you can just not fuck with us, us and we won't mess with you at all. Or if you do it, then that's what's going to happen, you know, And I Think as maybe oversimplified as that seems, I do think some of life's most complex problems actually require the simplest solutions, and I think that's one of them.

[B]

The simplest solutions are the ones that are most likely to work.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I mean, look at military operations. You want to have not a guaranteed failure, but a hard time. Make a really complex plan. Plan.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

That has moving pieces and assets everywhere and.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Let me know how that goes for you. Or the really simple plan. Yeah, like we're just gonna walk there.

[A]

I think jiu jitsu is the same thing. Oh, man.

[B]

My game is I, I so deeply appreciate people's passion for the sport and how they want to go down these rabbit holes. I would like to shave away absolutely everything that just doesn't work.

[A]

Yeah, well, I think that's, you know, it's to the your own game point. You know, it's like, you know, pushing 50, a number of injuries. Like I'm not doing flying arm bars and inverted octopus guards and, you know, all these different things that, like, I can't even get my body to do that, let alone be good at it, you know.

[B]

But I do love the fact that people go down those rabbit holes like nothing but respect. It just doesn't work for me and my station in life. So. Yeah. Old manjitsu, I'm going to lay on you. And I want to have good fundamentals.

[A]

Yeah. Do you have a. Either a most successful or a favorite submission?

[B]

I mean, I'll just kind of. I mean, I'll take what people give me.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You know what I mean? I. I guess.

[A]

Do you have one that's the most satisfying, Michael?

[B]

Cross collar choke.

[A]

You think that's probably what you've got me with the most, which isn't saying much. But it's a low bar. Yeah, it's a very low bar.

[B]

It's a good one though. Cross collar choke is just a good one and it's fundamental.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You can hit it from guard, you can hit it from mount. I guess you could. I've never tried it from side control. That would be weird.

[A]

What about a shirtless meth head?

[B]

Shirtless meth head I probably would not engage with because I don't want to get herpes or any other blood related, you know, transmissible. Transmissible disease. I would probably. You're gonna have to go with air choke or a blood choke at that point. So probably take their back and just choke them unconscious.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But also, I'm not, I don't want to touch methods.

[A]

Yeah. Are you mostly A ghee guy, I assume.

[B]

I do both. I have found, though, that most people wear clothes.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So there is a large level of applicability.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

In the ghee. I don't think you should rely specifically on the collar itself, but up here, I tell you what, six months out of the year, people are wearing a GI top.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You know.

[A]

Yeah. I mean, I'm wearing one.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

A lot of their GI tops has zippers, too.

[A]

Oh, and hoods. Yeah.

[B]

No, I mean, there's an argument. There's. I think both are great. I was actually talking with Rogan about this years ago because I was asking him because he has a. Well, he is a black belt, but I guess he was given a black belt by. I want to say it was one of the Machados. I want to say Jean Jacques, but I don't want to misspeak. And he was given a black belt by Eddie Bravo. I didn't realize. And maybe now, maybe it's changed or maybe just both of those coaches wanted to just reward him for the time and effort that they put in. Because I think if you're a black belt, you're just a black belt, you know? But I was asking him how he trains. He said he trains both. But the way he focuses on not relying on the GI is he'll roll with no GI grips, even in the gi.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Which is a. It's a cool thing to do. It actually saves your fingers quite a bit.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Having said that, I'll grab the fuck out of somebody's pants if I need to. You know what I mean? So it's like.

[A]

Well, you mentioned Eddie Bravo. I think the. I think the EBI Plat. Not platform, but like the GI pants and rash guard top is. Is one of my favorite ways to train for that reason. Well.

[B]

And it lets you. So, Michael, would you say. Fair to say that most of our classes are GE classes? Yeah, he offers a no GI class. But at Open Mat, afterwards, after a class, you can easily go back and forth. You just pop the top off, roll with the no GI guys, put it back on, you're back rolling. So I think there's a good level of applicability there.

[A]

Yeah. I think, you know, jeans and a T shirt is what you're going to run into a lot too, you know.

[B]

So have you ever been shown how to pull up the back of the fucking shirt?

[A]

I have.

[B]

And then cross collar with that. It's like a garrote wire across their neck.

[A]

Yeah, I have. I would say I wouldn't like In a real world scenario, I don't know that I would try to employ it. I haven't done it enough to feel competent enough to actually apply it.

[B]

But in a real world scenario one, I would never want to jump guard and be on bottom with somebody like that. I would want to. I would probably arm drag and try to get to their back and choke them unconscious that way at least that point all their tools in another direction and be behind them.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, I think, yeah. Closing the distance and either for me, I'm a huge fan of the Daniel Cormier I think probably is the best example of doing it at a high level in, you know, world class competition, which is the high crotch, like tilt. A world takedown. I'm sure there's a real name for it that I didn't just make up, but just I feel like what you named it is what it should be.

[B]

Tilt. A whirl.

[A]

Yeah, I mean it should be like that weird imbalance of just, just and, and not like a, A collegiate wrestling high crotch where it's almost fireman's carry like, but just getting in deep right up under their hips and just lifting straight up and that weird pendulum of imbalance. Just like to. To see it, it looks like you're body slamming somebody, but all you did was pick them a foot off the ground and. And their. Their own leverage, you know, and on concrete, like that's probably going to end most fights. If it doesn't, then I'm jumping on them, taking their back and same thing, you know. But obviously if you run into a good striker or whatever, then you know, an arm drag or a body lock or you know, some sort of other takedown that is. Or more controlled.

[B]

Running away. Yeah, just walk away or nice little tool. Would you rather be shot or stabbed?

[A]

I guess it depends on stabbed with what and where. That thing, man, I hate. I don't. Probably shot, honestly.

[B]

Yes, I agree. First off, I. When people ask me that, I'm like, is there an option And C where neither of those are. But as a guy who has been shot, I am way more scared of knife injuries than I am of a. I'm assuming that the person sucks at marksmanship and I'm going to catch a zinger. I would rather have that than get filleted.

[A]

If it's a through and through shot, hands down.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

If it's, you know, fragmenting bone, I don't know. That's a tough.

[B]

If it's a trained marksman, maybe I'll take the knife at close between the eyes.

[A]

I'm going to take the knife. Yeah. I mean, yeah, knives are horrible. And you know, the, the incidents for infection and like sepsis style infection are way higher than a knife, you know, like, you're almost guaranteed to, to get up from, from the aftermath of it, you know, because nobody's knife is clean. And.

[B]

Yeah, I mean, I think meth heads have autoclaves. You know what I mean?

[A]

They really are stuck around with a tattoo. Style, cleanliness.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, it's. It's a wild world that we live in. How much longer are you gonna stick with the dog stuff? We're talking a little bit. You know, you don't have to talk about where you were thinking about maybe lifting and shifting, but we're both almost pushing 50 at this point. What do you got, what do you got planned for the. Let's assume we're both gonna obviously live to 100. So the second half, it may be.

[A]

200 by the time we get there. You know.

[B]

Would you want to live for 200 years?

[A]

Maybe. I think it depends on functionality. Functionality for sure. You know, if I was as functional as I am now. Absolutely.

[B]

Same here. You know, if I'm in the wheelchair, you know, pudding phase of my life.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

No, I wouldn't.

[A]

That begs a broader question, which is probably a Black Mirror episode or, or something similar. Is that almost kind of the. Was the movie with Arnold Schwarzenegger back where he goes to Mars? Total Recall.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

So imagine a scenario where you get to 70, 80, whatever, you're basically an invalid, but you're still cognitively with it enough to realize that your life sucks. And you have the option to basically go in a Matrix style vegetative state and go to any period in time, be whoever you want and do whatever, whatever you want, but it's in a dreamlike state where it feels real. Would you do. And you can do it indefinitely. Like you could go live in the 50s as a teenager driving a 57 Chevy. I mean, what. Whatever, you know, Roman Empire.

[B]

I mean, would you know it's fake?

[A]

I would say no. So you can now spend eternity wherever you want.

[B]

Man. I mean, this is. This comes to deeper questions, like, what is life? What is existence? Which I, because I'm dumb enough, I don't like to think about those things because.

[A]

Well, I think for me the biggest hurdle with that is what comes after. Like, what actually comes after? Because what are you missing out on? You don't know.

[B]

Yeah. And in that experience, if you chose that, that would be about. That would be a Specific choice about just yourself. That would be about you or I or the person making that choice about an experience for only them and a. I don't know what comes after. I mean, I would put myself as agnostic. I'm not an atheist and I'm not religious. I'm open to both. I just, I don't know, man. So I've never, you know, religion has never stuck with me. I've been exposed to it. It's never stuck. So I don't know the answer to that. I don't have, I don't know the meaning of life. I don't know the definition of existence and what I mean, are we sitting here at this table, are we in a simulation theory? I don't know. I don't know though. The way that I have come to think about my own personal life as far as what I want to try to do or who I want to be is I want to be able to be a positive impact on the world around me, the people in place that I am. You can't do that if you take that choice because it's all fake. You might feel like you can, but the reality is is you wouldn't be able to.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So I would land on probably not making that choice. I would rather live a shorter amount of time but actually try to impact people's lives as opposed to extend my own personal life and live in a simulation forever.

[A]

Yeah. I think what, what complicates that decision making process is assuming that physically you're at a point where you're basically useless anyway. Yeah. And so to, to your loved ones, you would be dying because you would go in a fucking warehouse somewhere and sit in a, in a pod. Yeah. You know, and just be technically still alive. But you know, so to me that like, obviously I wouldn't do that now, but you get to a point where you're in a nursing home, you know, like you're in hospice. You have months to live for whatever reason. Yeah. But you have the ability, they have the ability to just keep your brain alive and let you go through that experience.

[B]

I think part of being a human is knowing that it's going to end.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah.

[B]

I, I, and again, I'm functioning as an idiot. Like literally a functioning idiot. But I think if you knew you could do that, I think it would change the way people viewed their life because they could say, I'll just take care of you know what I mean? I'm not gonna risk anything. I'll do the, I'll do all the Risky shit. When it's not real. When I'm hooked up to the machine.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I think knowing that you have a limited amount of time. Have you ever seen those. I've seen advertisements from. I don't actually have one. Have you ever seen those wall charts that list out the average amount of weeks that a human being lives?

[A]

Yeah. It's like 4,000. Right.

[B]

And people cross them off as they go.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You know, the stoics thought a lot about mortality. They actually thought it was important to consider your own mortality and because it will shift the way that you spend the time that you have left. Because we don't know. I think if you remove that, I don't know what would happen. My suspicion is some weird shit would happen for sure.

[A]

I think, you know what. What begs the question, you know, your statement about part of, you know, the. The crux really of the human experience is knowing that it's a finite amount of time, is that while. Yes, that's absolutely true. It's true. Because there's no other option.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You know, and so it's like, while that's the human experience, if the human experience evolves to a point where it can now determine whether or not that is actually the human experience or not. It's this weird rabbit hole. It's like. It's like space, you know, it's like just. It's hard to. Like you really can't wrap your mind around it.

[B]

No.

[A]

But yeah, it's. I mean, it's. Anyway, I completely deflected from your question.

[B]

No, that's okay. I mean, assuming that we don't have that option.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And let's say we're getting ready to go on the second half of the lap of our life.

[A]

Yeah. Dogs wise, I mean, they're. There's something that I'm passionate enough about to where I always want to be doing something with them. Now, even if you were to compare what my life is like day to day now versus say 10 years ago, it's quite a bit throttled back in that regard. Like, I'm doing very little travel and working with departments and teaching at conferences, things like that. I do a very, very limited amount of that now compared to, you know, 10 years ago was constant. Same with like selling personal protection dogs or, you know, maintaining the online training. All of those things are, are they have a shelf life. And I don't know how much longer I'll. I will do any or all of them. I would say sooner than later, I'll probably get to a point where I'm. I'm not doing much of that at all. It'll be kind of a one off because I want to do it. You know, maybe a previous protection dog client or a friend of mine wants one or I just feel like training a dog or, you know, something like that. I will say it is and has been exhausting in some ways because there's. It's kind of like toothpaste out of a. Out of a tube. Like you can't really put it back in. Like when you're in the thick of. You train dogs and you sell dogs. Like it's not a faucet. You can turn on and off really, or not very well, especially when that's the main thing that you're doing. And so it's hard to travel, it's hard to take a vacation. You know, you miss things.

[B]

Not if you have a miniature dachshund.

[A]

That's true. Just take them with you.

[B]

Pocket wean.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah, we all have one of those.

[B]

One. One is not.

[A]

That's true. Plus, his is pretty impressive, by the way.

[B]

He. Dude, I honestly, I have to stop myself from posting pictures of his balls on Instagram because sometimes he'll stand there and I want. What I want to do is take a picture of something past, but I want to get it through the sack. People need to understand how. What he's packing. I mean, Michael, you've seen it in person. It's impressive. If he was a human being, they'd be cantaloupes. The nuts on that guy.

[A]

It reminds me of the Christmas vacation. You ain't seen a set on that one, Clark, where do you see the set on that one? Yeah, yeah, it's. It's. Well, and I think so many, so often people are not used to seeing them because most dogs are not intact. Yeah, but, but yeah, you know, the dog food company is really kind of the. The pivot it for me because it's more of a traditional business now, which does make it a little less exciting, you know, but as I get older, you know, you can only work dogs in a bite suit for nine hours straight, you know, several days in a row for so long and, and being gone all the time and, and, you know, juice being worth the squeeze monetarily, working with departments isn't particularly profitable either. I do think, especially early on in a. In a training career, it's. It's imperative because it gives you a ton of experience and credibility for the other things. But there is a point at which it's like, I don't want to be scrubbing dog shit off of walls when I'm 60, you know, and slinging dogs out of the back of a truck, you know, driving through the night to, to deliver dogs to people and stuff. You know, that, that gets to a point where I just don't really want to do that at that level anymore. So. So yeah, really early. I think the dog food is kind of the big pivot and the other things that I have going on, whether it's the show or some of the protection dogs, the online training, I still obviously oversee the whole warrior dog foundation. And so that's something I'll do basically until they don't need me to. I'm kind of keyholed into that. You know, I can't really evict 30 fucking retired dogs, you know, so as long as people want to support it and, and there's a need for it, I'll keep doing it. I would love to get the federal government and Eli Crane actually and his crew have been really, really good about trying to jumpstart a federal funding program for retired working dogs. I'd love to get to a point where my organization and the handful of others just like it don't need to exist because to me, that's how it should be. I would rather the US government in the interim fund, the ones that are doing it via charity right now, but with the, the end goal being that they build probably regional canine retirement centers and all working dogs that aren't retired to their handlers or fellow unit members can, can go there and live instead of just being put, put down. Because that's, that's why we exist is because that's what happens or happened.

[B]

Man, that's rough.

[A]

Yeah, I mean it, yeah. I mean it started back in August 2010. Like it wasn't, wasn't some grand plan of mine that I thought, oh, I want to start a non profit. It was. I was approached by a command with two dogs that had both, you know, deployed a number of times. You're probably familiar with them actually. But yeah, it was like they asked me and I don't know, five or six other dudes in a similar scenario of a, you know, dog trainer, purveyor of working dogs, if we would take them. And my first response was no, it was like two broken old ass eater dogs that the handlers can't even take because they're too dangerous to be around their families. What do you want me to do with them? And you know, a month or two goes by and they ask again and so I was like, well, I can read between the lines on that. Everybody else has said no. So I just said, you know what, what's going to happen to these two if, if none of us take them? And they said, well, unfortunately, you know, the operational dogs and handlers have all of our bandwidth. We just don't have the resources to take care of dogs that aren't in the rotation, so we'll probably just euthanize them. And I said, fuck that, send them to me, I'll figure it out. And that opened the floodgates and here we are 15, 16 years later and several hundred dogs from everywhere. We've taken dogs from customs, border patrol, Secret service, police department, all different special operations unit, federal law enforcement, you name it, you know, and, and these are all dogs again, that aren't, aren't the norm. I would say they're kind of the, the Hannibal Lecter of the dog world and that they're, they're ones that the handlers can't take or, or in some cases they're not even at their shelf life expiration date. They have bit too many people they weren't supposed to too many times.

[B]

And they gave you Biden's dog?

[A]

Yeah, I would have taken it. I would have loved to have helped him with that mess. Yeah.

[B]

But, oh, let's just say I've heard on the streets that he bet a lot more people than dozens, multiple dozens. Yeah, old Commander, I believe his name.

[A]

Was Commander or something. Somebody had to run the show. I mean, I can tell you what happened. Like you can tell by the way he conducts himself that that's most people's problems with their dog. When probably the most overused and biggest misconception I would say in dog psychology is, is a dominant alpha protective dog. Very, very few dogs are naturally genetically hard, hardwired to be that way out of the gate almost always. It's a power vacuum. What they are hardwired to genetically is, is that if there is nobody running the show, then they know somebody has to and they will do it. And that's when you have the worst of both worlds. You have a dog who's not hardwired to actually be that way on its own, who's filling a power vacuum. So it.

[B]

Are you saying Commander was running The White House?

[A]

100%. He was, he was dragging Joe around by his nuts, his shriveled old bag. Yeah, that's what happens, you know, so you've got an anxiety ridden dog that is doing something that they're unqualified for. That they don't want to do do. And then that's when you have dogs that are biting everybody for no reason and, and not paying attention.

[B]

But yeah, if you can get the, the dog food business right. You're meeting your. Michael and I were literally having this conversation yesterday about, you know, people, they will write emails in and they ask about stuff and a lot of the times they ask about, hey, I'm doing this job, but it just doesn't fill my cup. But I think I might love doing this other job. Should I give up what I'm doing that's filling my. That's meeting my economic requirements and pursue my passion? What should I do? My answer is always like, you know, maybe try to figure out a way to do both. But let's assume you could get the, the dog business running to a place where it didn't require a lot of your time. Whether that be the food, the dogs that you're taking in. What would you do outside of that world? What are you passionate about outside of that world?

[A]

Yeah, for me, it's. There's a few things I would. I mean, I know this is kind of the standard answer for a lot of people. I want to travel. I do want to travel.

[B]

That's my answer too, man.

[A]

There's a lot of the world that I think deserves to be seen that I haven't seen and that I would love to see. You know, for me, that, the couple of things, business aside, you know, on a personal side, like, I wanted my kids to be on their path first before I do really any of that. Because when I, when I go, I want to go for me, me, you know, like, yeah, I would love to take them to certain places and do family trips that way. But a lot of the places I want to see, I want to go experience and, and kind of go balls deep into it and really, you know, get every drop out out of that experience that I can. And so I don't. There's a lot of things I would want to do that I just wouldn't feel comfortable taking them on. Outside of that, I do really enjoy jiu jitsu. I will probably continue to do that until I can. Can't. That only takes so much time, though. And we were talking the other day, I do have a problem with pacing more than I should for where I'm at. But having said that, you know, just my body responds how it does and.

[B]

Like, your body will give the appropriate feedback. You're done for the week.

[A]

Yeah, it's a good, it's A good feedback loop, for sure. Yeah. You're not gonna do it for a while, whether you like to or not. Yeah. Yeah. So for me, I. I like to train, like, every other day or every couple of days, but. But anyway, so I really enjoy. I've gotten into speed, frankly. Not. Not the drug, but motorcycles and cars. You know, for me, you know, coming from 18 to 30 in the. In the military and doing that and then spending the next 15 years continuing to kind of scratch that itch from an adrenaline and excitement dopamine standpoint of, you know, because getting in a bite suit is. Is exciting lighting, you know, Mike will find out here. Surely get pumped. Yeah. Cujo sick balls, right?

[B]

I feel like we could go POV camera on dog. POV camera on Michael.

[A]

We can do both.

[B]

And let's. I mean, let's not forget the drone.

[A]

You have a drone for the escape bites.

[B]

It's for the con. Listen, the people need and want to see this. They don't want to. They need to. All right? So just. You're going to sacrifice yourself.

[A]

The last one we'll do is. Is we call them flea or escape bites, where you just say, take off running. And I always love it when the guy. The new guy in the suit says, well, for how long? It's like the dog will tell you. You won't get to decide when you stop. But yeah. So, you know, to me, especially motorcycles, like, there's a lot of TR and cars, but there's a number of tracks here in the United States and in Europe that I would love to. To spend some time on.

[B]

Do you do streak or dual sport or both?

[A]

For bikes? Yeah, kind of everything, really. Okay. I would say it. It depends on my mood. Like, when I walk into the garage, my mood dictates which bike I get on. 100.

[B]

I already like this.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So, you know, what's your street bike of choice?

[A]

Your people are going to call me an elitist, but 100 Ducati, in my opinion, can't be beat.

[B]

I used to have a Ducati Monster 1100 Evo.

[A]

Oh, nice.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

So you know the deal.

[B]

Excellent bike. I mean, what's your dream motorcycle?

[A]

I mean, I have it, actually. I mean, it's the V4. The Ducati V4R, which is the. Their. Their track. Homologated bike.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

They. I don't know how familiar you are with their line.

[B]

I mean, Michael, why aren't you pulling pictures of this up? What do I even pay you for?

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[B]

Other than bite suits.

[A]

Well, they also have kind of even A step above that. You know, they have their street bikes and they, they kind of parse it between 1100s and thousands. So they're their 998 cc is the homologated race bike that is trickled down from the MotoGP and World Superbikes. This one.

[B]

Yeah, you say that penigale, right?

[A]

Yeah. Yeah, Yep.

[B]

So that is a sexy ass bike.

[A]

Yeah. And it pains me that Ducati doesn't just put the race exhaust on instead of that triangular vacuum cleaner looking thing because mine has the dual wheelbarrow race exhaust. It's two pipes that are right under the tail section.

[B]

That is actually a very.

[A]

And it's, it's incredible. I mean like, don't get me wrong, like BMW is, is a very close second.

[B]

God damn, that is a good looking bike.

[A]

Especially the, the M1000RR, which is kind of their version of. That is an amazing bike. It's. And it's actually a lot easier to ride. To me, what I, what I love about Ducati is that they are harder to ride. So. So again, like if I want a fast, fun ride without having to overthink it, I will take the BMW. If I want to get in a fight with a motorcycle and blow off steam and feel like I'm riding a fucking bull, then I'm going to take that one. Because it takes a lot more mental energy, a lot more input from the rider to get the most out of it. But it's more rewarding when you do. But again, like there's times if it's been a long day or whatever and I just want to kind of have fun and relax, maybe I'll take the BMW now. I also love like the bagger stuff. Like I've got an Indian as well that, you know, you can put your feet up, Bluetooth, lean back. I mean, it's like sitting on a couch.

[B]

Oh yeah.

[A]

You know, that's fun too. And it has its place. You know, overnight trips or a long Sunday ride or whatever is fun, I would say. Lately I found myself riding BMW makes, makes. It's technically an adventure bike, but not really. It's their M1000XR.

[B]

Look that up, will you, Michael? Up here it's very cool. Dual sport terrain. You're talking logging roads and all that. So I have a KT KTM 1290.

[A]

It's a super Duke, Super Adventure R.

[B]

I think it's, I don't know. Whichever one it is.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

It's cool though. Yeah, because it does good on the street, but at the same time it also does. Well, yeah, I see what you're saying. Yeah.

[A]

The thing that's really neat about this, especially for where I'm at, like if I was up here, I would probably have a 1250 or like the Ducati Multistrada. But you know, you're not, you're not even going on gravel where I'm at, you know. So like those are street track tires, hybrids.

[B]

Yeah, I would not take that on a logging road.

[A]

Yeah, for sure. I mean even if, even if you put the suspension as soft as it goes and put knobby tires, that would still wouldn't be the bike you'd want to take on it. But, but what I love about that bike bike is it's, it has the, the sport bike 1000cc engine in it. So it's a 200 horsepower motorcycle and will, will almost hang with a sport bike. I mean it's almost as fast, but you're sitting in a seating position that you can ride for four or five hours and not get exhausted. You know, whereas the sport bikes like you really for me at least like where I'm at, age wise, experience level, injury, 30 or 40 minutes on one of those is about as much as I want to spend on them. And then my body's kind of similar to jiu jitsu is like, all right, your lower back and neck are finished riding for the day.

[B]

You know, that's why I like that ktm. It is super upright position. I don't do well on the fully swept forward leaning out like.

[A]

Yeah, I can appreciate it. Yeah, like I said, they're fun for 30 or 40 minutes. And then you know, so to me, like, because you know, with the dogs especially like, like traveling is difficult and you know, vacations are almost laughable in that regard. So you know, for me, I take 15, 20 minute vacations most days. You know, I'll go jump on a bike in the middle of the day and go. There's this like 20 mile loop around my house that you hit some, some pretty good kind of rural ish roads with big sweeping bends and some long straightaways and some, some pretty good curves and it's just, it's a good 20 or 30 minute little rip that just kind of resets you or whatever. So I really enjoy that. Car wise, it's a little different. You know, to really enjoy and experience the pushing the envelope on them, you, you kind of have to be on a track. I mean you can have fun on the street. It's just not the most responsible thing to do, you know, With a bike, it's one thing, like, you're probably not going to hurt anybody else. You're going to kill yourself on it. But you can also have fun riding these at 30 miles an hour. You know, whereas in, in most of, like the supercars, the, the 650 and above horsepower Euro exotic supercars, like those aren't that fun to drive easy. You know, they're almost kind of begging you to push it. Ducati is very much that same way in the bike world.

[B]

But what's your dream car?

[A]

So I guess it depends on the price.

[B]

Like, money is no option. Of course, we're billionaires.

[A]

Yeah. Probably the. It's not out yet yet. So I would want to maybe see how it does in the real world. But McLaren is coming out with. It's called the W1.

[B]

Dear Michael.

[A]

Yeah, this thing is incredible.

[B]

But I'm gonna guess it's just probably completely carbon fiber.

[A]

It's. It's a lot of carbon fiber, but it's.

[B]

Whoa. Do not sell. You. You just hit accept cookies. Ooh, the gull wing doors.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah. So this thing, it's not out yet. I mean, scroll down, Michael.

[B]

Let's look at this thing.

[A]

Yeah, it's a, it's a monster, but.

[B]

Oh, my God.

[A]

Yeah, so, I mean, it's a couple million dollars.

[B]

So like, to billionaires like us, what's the matter? You have to be a billionaire in your mind palace.

[A]

Yeah, well, that's true. Gotta manifest it. Well, I mean, like, you know, a lot of people would say, would say Bugattis or, or Koenigseggs or Paganis, you know, the, the several million hypercars. The problem I have with those is, like, this is more driver focused. You know, those are.

[B]

That engine.

[A]

Yeah, it's, it's a work of art.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Now, under a million dollars is. Is a tougher question. I will say, you know, I've been very fortunate in what I've been able to either drive or have. And I would say that the two cars that, that I've enjoyed the most out of everything that I've driven. And again, like, like the car and bike scene is pretty big in Dallas.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And so I know a lot of guys that have, you know, garages full of, of cars like that. And so I've been fortunate enough to drive pretty much everything I've wanted to drive. And I've had, you know, a number that, that I've really enjoyed too. And I'd say that the two that under a million dollars that, that I think are the Two best cars out for the money is the Ferrari 488 Pista and the, the new McLaren 750s. Those two, I think, think bang for your buck. It's all relative. I mean, they're still very expensive cars, but for what you get in performance and the emotion, the connection to the road, I think Ferrari is very similar to Ducati in that way. If, if the, the act itself of driving is what motivates you to do it, Ferrari is a tough brand to beat.

[B]

What is your daily driver? And don't say Prius.

[A]

No, it's a F150 truck.

[B]

I mean, that's my dream car.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Is the Hennessy Raptor.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah. To me, that thing's nuts.

[B]

It's nuts. Also, if anybody out there has a quarter million dollars they want to give me so I can buy it.

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[B]

See, I like trucks. Yeah. That's amazing. I've never been in a Ferrari though, so I don't, I can't really talk about the experience.

[A]

Yeah, it's one of those things where I think the, the best way to try to relate it would be, would be parachuting versus flying. Okay. You know, or, or yeah, I mean, I guess so. It's like take flying as an example. If, if you're piloting a 757, the experience that you get from that is what it is. Right. It's probably pretty sterile by comparison to jumping into an F16.

[B]

Oh, yeah.

[A]

You know, so, so to me that's kind of the, the, the difference, you know, and where I would throw motorcycles in is, is, you know, piloting a jumbo jet is normal. Cars, trucks, etc. Jumping in a fighter jet is like driving a sports car or supercar. And they're going to have different personalities and they, and they surprisingly do. If you're into that now, if you don't really give a, and you just want to be seen in a Lambo or whatever, then it doesn't really matter. Get whatever you like the way it looks the most. But if, if the, the experience and the connection to the road and the emotion, the sound of the exhaust and shifting with paddles and, and pushing that envelope and, and really testing yourself as a driver, competency wise, then you are going to notice a huge difference between a Porsche, McLaren, a Ferrari, a Lamborghini, you know, whatever. And so to throw motorcycles into the mix, I would say that's where free fall and wingsuits come in, you know, is that even when you're flying, there's still a two dimension aspect to it. Compared to parachuting, being on a bike is that 360°, you know, 4D experience. Whereas even in the, in the fastest, most exhilarating sports car, it still is. Not the same way that it's exciting on a bike. But so for me, personality plays a big role. And I'm sure people would think it's ridiculous hearing or hearing that a car has personality, but they do. You know, again, if you're into it and you know and have done it enough to know the nuance between what's what, you can absolutely tell between the way a suspension is on one car versus the other, throttle response, turbo lag. Even tires make a huge difference. Like if you have, you know, more kind of all season type, better traction in shitty conditions, tires versus street legal, almost road slicks. There's a huge difference in how the car behaves.

[B]

Seems like a never ending rabbit hole. People who go down that path.

[A]

I mean, it's probably the same with wingsuits.

[B]

Oh, for sure. It's the same as people who nerd out on electronics or you know, another guy.

[A]

Guns.

[B]

Guns.

[A]

I was going to say. Yeah, like for me, I'm not into guns that much. Where you know, if you put, if you blindfolded me, which wouldn't be a smart idea when you're handling guns.

[B]

But you know, hold on, continue with this because I'm always thinking this is.

[A]

Video number five, Michael, blindfolded. But you know, if you lined up a Sig, a staccato, you know, a Glock of whatever, am I going to be able to tell a difference? Probably not. Maybe, you know, but like, yes. Do I like a little bit lighter trigger? Do I like a little stipling in the grit? Yes. But am I going to know stock to, to modified? Sure. But I'm just not that into it. Like, you know, to me it's like, I like that gun. I don't need to have nine other ones, you know, so I'm just not into it that same way where for whatever reason cars and bikes are that way. And it's interesting because I, I was never that kid growing up.

[B]

Huh.

[A]

Like I was never the guy that had the Lambo countach on the wall, you know, I didn't give a about, you know, what Crockett and Tubs were driving in Miami Vice. Like it was cool, but I didn't care, you know, and it wasn't until I was in my late 30s, early 40s to where it just kind of all of a sudden, for whatever reason clicked and for, I mean I was driving, I want to say six, seven years ago. I was driving a Subaru Forester that was my, my daily driver. And I had three of them over the course of 10 years. Had a truck before that and then went back to a truck and then just kind of got into, into the cars and bikes. I think, you know, on the, on the personal protection dog side, you, you are typically dealing with very high net worth individuals, for sure, that generally are into that. And just over the years I think it kind of rubbed off. And then, you know, sometimes it'd be like, hey, you know, you want to drive this? And I'm like, no. You know, and then they're like, shut up. Drive it. You know, and I drive it and I'm like, holy, it totally makes sense now, you know, and it is not.

[B]

That I don't want to drive it. I don't want to wreck it and have to pay for it.

[A]

Yeah, well, like, hey, if you said drive it, like it's insured and you told me to do it, the issue.

[B]

Is not my desire to drive. The issue is my desire, desire to pay for the damage I might do.

[A]

But you know, there's a, a childish keeping you young. You know, it's like when we were seven, playing with matchboxes. It's like the adult version of that, you know, like, and I, I don't like the hybrids, like, of, you know, Ferrari, McLaren, Lamborghini, they've all come out with these hybrid and, and in the true kind of definition of hybrid, it is performance wise, a, a cool mix of a traditional internal combustion engine that's generally twin turbo or, or supercharged, some sort of force induction with the instant torque and, and punch of a, of an electric car. And so historically, you know, whether it's naturally aspirated or forced induction, there's, there's a certain amount of lag down low and a lack of throttle response. Some cars are better than others. That's the best car I've ever driven in terms of being a twin turbo car that doesn't feel like it has any lag whatsoever. Whatever. I mean, it rips your face off the second you touch the throttle. Porsche is probably the worst. No, McLaren, I would say McLaren 720s and older has the worst turbo lag in the world. Like, you step on the, on the throttle and you're like waiting, you know, and then it rips your face off. But it's, it's very.

[B]

Well, it's got to spool up.

[A]

Yeah, it's very dissatisfying. And so now they're coming out with cars that have, you know, two independent front motors that are electric metric with a twin turbo V8 in the back. And so you step on it and it gives you Tesla plaid punch. And then when the turbos kick in, it just never stops, you know. And so performance wise, like, they're just ridiculous. But they're not as fun to drive for some reason. They feel more numb and less engaging and. And just cheap. It's really strange. I mean, it's kind of like. Did you grow up driving a stick shift?

[B]

Oh, yeah, yeah.

[A]

It's kind of the same.

[B]

We're probably the last generation for sure.

[A]

I mean, you almost can't buy them anymore. Yeah, BMW Cadillac actually makes. They've got a.

[B]

Do you know how to drive a Chef Michael?

[A]

Yeah, I drove one for a long time.

[B]

Damn it. That was.

[A]

You're surprised by that?

[B]

I'll give you an example of why. When he said the Hannibal Lector. What movie is that from?

[A]

Sounds of the Land.

[B]

Go yourself. All right.

[A]

How old are you?

[B]

23?

[A]

25. He's 19.

[B]

I've never seen the boondock since.

[A]

Yeah, that is kind of criminal.

[B]

Yeah, so.

[A]

But, yeah, so, you know, it. Different strokes for different folks, I guess. But yeah, to me, the. Just that connection and feeling to. To the vehicle is what I enjoy probably the most. And same with the motorcycles. Like, there's just something about it that is just. I don't know, it's hard to explain. I've never done a wingsuit. I imagine it's similar.

[B]

Skip it. You know, skip it takes.

[A]

I don't see any reason to do.

[B]

It, but no, it takes a lot of time. Just like driving these cars safely, though, to take a lot of time. And it's. If you're passionate about it, you start at the beginning, but you enjoy it so much along the way that you don't even realize you're kind of hitting these mandatory knowledge and experience wickets. It's cool you've identified that, though. Yeah, I get a lot of emails from people who. They haven't. They. Their words, not mine, have described life as being like, joyless. You know, they don't. They haven't identified anything that they're passionate about. And the only advice I really can give anybody is keep exploring.

[A]

Yeah, just go do. I think it depends on. On your age too, but especially if you're younger. To me, the right answer is, is find some level of service that at a minimum, you can feel a sense of purpose and, like, what you're doing. Matters like, at a minimum, you should have that in your life. Where.

[B]

And that's in every community. People look at a national level, which I think is great. And I actually, actually would support like, two years of mandatory service. Not necessarily the military, but like Red Cross, doctor Like, whatever, just serve. And if you could do it outside of where you live, I think that'd be spectacular. But every community has somewhere where you can volunteer.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

It is a state, a federal, or at a local area that exists. I agree with you.

[A]

Yeah. And I think, Adam, again, like, even if that doesn't help you figure out what you want to do for the rest of your life. Life, it's at least doing something that's net positive to society, and it's giving you a broader spectrum of exposure to things that may help you find what it is that you want to do. I think that's the veterans who struggle when they get out. I think that's the biggest reason for that. I don't think it's exposure to traumatic experiences. I think it's losing a sense of identity and purpose, and they feel useless. You know, they go from feeling very needed, which, especially for men, I think is crucial and valuable and competent and respected to none of those things. And I think that's far greater negative and depressing and. And puts them on that path of. Of going down a dark, dark road than something they experienced overseas.

[B]

I think they have to have a shift in mindset a little bit, too. If you look at our old job, they were valuable, they're very competent. But we lived in a world where people presented us with the problems to solve. We weren't often looking for them ourselves. And you know this as well as anybody else who goes out and goes into business on your own. You have to find this problem that you want to solve. And so it takes that shift in mindset of I am now at a place in my life where nobody is going to be giving me problems to solve. I have all the tools necessary. I though, have to go find that problem.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah.

[B]

It's a tough shift.

[A]

No, it's a great point, too, because. Yeah, I mean, I think most men. Yeah. I mean, to me, that's kind of the secret sauce is you want to feel like you matter.

[B]

Yeah, for sure. Who wants to feel like they're useless?

[A]

And if. And if what you're doing doesn't give you that feeling, I mean, how do you. How do you succeed with that? You know, I don't think you can, you know, but how long did you.

[B]

Get out what year did you get.

[A]

Other teams at the end of 08?

[B]

What, you know, looking back on it, what do you think of your service now? Looking back on it, because I'm at 13 years now of when I separated, actually. Hold on, carry the one on that. 14 years. At this point, almost in June it'll be 14 years. My thoughts on service have changed specifically about my own or the utility of it or the meaningfulness of it. I'm curious your thoughts.

[A]

I would say similarly, they've definitely shifted. I wouldn't say in a negative way, but there was a certain component of naivete and just feeling like that was the right thing to do, wanting to challenge myself, see if I could do it. You know, kind of all the normal cliched reasons why a lot of guys do what we did. To me, the biggest shift I think is looking upward into the echelons of our government and realizing, you know, that the assumption that I had, that they had our best interest in mind is not there. You know, and to me that's probably the most disheartening now. It certainly doesn't take away from the sense of pride that I gain from having done what I did. I'm glad I did it to do it all over again. I would, I would do it all over again.

[B]

Same.

[A]

I wouldn't do it now. Not that they would. Would even have me back now. But yeah, I think, you know, it as the world has gotten smaller through I think technology and social media and Everybody having a 5K camera in their pocket at all times and seeing some of the things that our government has done, things they've been involved with, how they've handled things, it becomes very apparent that, you know, the most cliched and cringy typical political response of like support the troops, you know, the Bill Clinton half thumb is total. You know, I think there are some that absolutely feel that way. But I think if you were to take our government as a collective. There's a lot of things I don't like about it when it comes to how they employ the military, what they do with military members afterwards, what they don't do. And so I don't question anybody, including myself, the, the commitment and, and the kind of nobility and, and honorable nature with which service exudes. What I would say is that it kind of further makes a distinction. For it was about the fact that I was saying, hey, and I, and I find this about all military or this is how I feel about them, is that I, I have, have the utmost respect for somebody who's willing to volunteer to possibly give their own life in service of their country however their government sees fit. And they're just trusting that their government has their best interests in mind and is going to use them in the best way possible. I don't think that they do that. I don't think that that takes away any honorable nature with which people serve their country, though. And so I still look on it favorably and I still would encourage and respect the hell out of people who continue to volunteer to serve now. But it does leave a bit of. A little bit of a bad taste in my mouth in relation to how our government uses us and just how they conduct themselves on the world stage on our behalf.

[B]

I would be shocked if there's a generation of veterans that doesn't arrive at that place at some point. Point in time. Yeah, I don't think we are living. I don't know if anybody's creating new at this point. I think we're almost on a little bit of a repeat cycle over time. Yeah, I really think that that is a, A common place, especially as you get older, when you look back on the service and the things that the government asked you to do and for the reasons that they told you that you were doing them. And then over the course of time, you get a different optic on those reasons.

[A]

Yeah, I mean, of course it's easy to armchair quarterback everything, but to your point, I think, you know, you can go back a few millennia and I think that that was still the case, you know, so human nature is what it is. Some things never change. And I think this is as good of an example of that as any. But, but yeah, you know, whether it's Vietnam, you know, the World War II guys, maybe I do find myself kind of looking at that period. Not that any of us were around then, but that seemed a little different, you know, than anything else. I mean, even going back to, I mean, maybe the Revolutionary War, but even that. Like, you know, I've done some tours in New England, some pretty in depth historical tours, and hearing other sides of even the Revolutionary War, like John Adams and how he was. He was kind of a tabloid whore and. And manipulated some of the news sources to make things seem a certain way when they really were.

[B]

No, this would never happen.

[A]

Imagine again.

[B]

Nobody's creating new shit. We're doing the same shit through different mediums.

[A]

Yeah, so. But, But World War II does seem a little different now. You know, maybe it's the way that it's portrayed. Yeah, but it does seem like if there were A existential crisis sitting on America's doorstep that needed to be addressed. Like if I look at our nation's history and just as kind of a broad stroke that to me seems like it stands out as being the most appropriate or, or reasonable for our involvement and, and not just getting involved, but when we did, how we did, the fact that it's, hey, it's not a six month deployment. You go over there and you come home when you're finished. Yeah. You know, and the way the entire country got behind it, you know, of course that's our side side, you know, like we don't know what anybody else's side is, you know, in terms of whether it's Nazi Germany or the Japanese or, you know, obviously they thought they were the good guys too. Yeah, it's hard to understand how that's possible, but how much of that is, you know, state run media that, that portrayed things, you know, who knows? But so, yeah, I mean, I guess coming back to my original point is that I just think nations and the world needs people who are willing to do that in a big enough number to kind of keep the balance, you know, globally. But it is heartbreaking I think when you think about so many fucking great men that you and I know, loved, trusted, lived with, cared about, you know, that are no longer here because of the decisions that our government made, you know, that's pretty fucking hard to.

[B]

Or the impact of those decisions that, you know, terminated their loss of life after service. Yeah, there's a huge difference between the price and the cost. You know, I, and this is something I didn't think about when I was in. I mean I was, I look back now, I didn't realize how much I put my family through. Like sleepless nights worrying about what I was up to. I was full on. The universe consisted of and started with me and that was it. And this is what I want to do. And hey, cool 911 happened. I'm going to get to do operationally my job. Let's, you know, let's put the gas pedal in the Ferrari to the floor. The stress and all of that, you know, the price tag. We signed on the dotted line. I understood what I was conceptually, I guess signing up for. The cost though is all of that wear and tear that you put on the people that support you. I mean I think we could win every single battle and engagement with individuals, but we'd lose every single war if it wasn't for the families that support the people that come back. And that's the cost and that shit is forgotten.

[A]

Indeed.

[B]

And it's, you know, the guys, I think at this point I saw a stat now for our era, there are more veterans that have killed themselves through suicide than the conflicts and have killed Afghanistan and Iraq combined. Yeah, that's gnarly and that's, that's indicative of the cost of asking people to do those things. I don't think the government is suited or tooled to probably help those individuals. I personally think that there might be a role for an NGO or another entity outside of the government to help with that. But it's, it's invisible.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You know.

[A]

Well, and I think, you know, to the cost aspect of it. There's a difficulty, I think in a double edged sword in technology, specifically with air traffic. The fact that you can fly over there in a day and fly home in a day. If you look at manned combat in its entire scope for as long as we've known, oh, it never happened.

[B]

They were taking month long journeys to get home or weeks on ship. Chips.

[A]

Yeah, and, and especially before even chips were involved, you know, you think about like Spartans, you know, a three month hike back after that to decompress and be with just the guys and rationalize it. You know, you're hunting together, you're sitting around a fire at night. Like the difference between coming home that way and nine hours ago I was in Baghdad getting shot at and now I'm holding a 2 year old. Like holy, you know, like that's not normal or healthy or it's like, shouldn't come as a surprise as to why that doesn't pan out. Well, you know, and so to me, to, again, to your point of the cost is that our government needs to, to look at both of those instead of just the price, you know, and they don't do that, you know, and it's the same with dogs. It's even worse with dogs, you know, is that they're considered a line item. Yeah. Consumable. Yeah. You know, and so it's a travesty. But I also think, think, you know, the government could do a better job at incentivizing people, you know, post military service too. I think things, you know, simple things. And I don't know, you know, again, I, maybe the numbers don't shake out, but something as simple as, as far as making guys feel like they're taken care of, like what if, you know, the US government implemented, hey, if you served and you're discharged honorably, whether you went to combat or not, is that for the rest of Your life, you're not going to pay any income tax, you know, like that, the percentage of people that fall into that category, like.

[B]

It'S 0.05% of the population.

[A]

Does that adjust our budget and deficit? Probably not. I doubt it. You know, but think about what that would do for everybody who's ever served their country. Like it would be life changing.

[B]

I haven't considered that one, you know.

[A]

And, and that should be a simple thing to do. Same with health care. You know, I've had a number of issues with the va. I think a lot of guys have to me, if you look at the amount of money that's spent on the VA's budget, you know, but when you, you consider the fact that there's real estate, there's utilities, there's equipment, there's, I mean the, the system that is the va, how expensive that is. Now, again, far smarter people than me could tell me maybe this is a pipe dream and it would actually be way more expensive. Expensive. I don't think it would, maybe it would overwhelm our current medical care system. But if you were to say, okay, we're disbanding the VA entirely and now you just, when again, when you get out honorably, here is your veteran insurance card. You go wherever the you want, wherever you live, you go to your nearest doctor, whoever you choose, and you just hand them that card and they bill the government. I would bet that that would be cheaper than what it costs to run the va.

[B]

I would be utterly shocked if it wasn't.

[A]

Yeah. And, and so to me it's cheaper. The standard of care is a thousand times better. You get to pick, it's right down the road. Why wouldn't you do that? Like to me that seems like a no brainer. Those two things, you know, financially I don't think would hurt the country, but those two things would make the overall getting out of the military experience for every single veteran that's ever served life changingly better. Yeah, it seems like a simple solution to me. Maybe it isn't, but, but I, I, I don't know, you know, I would love to hear, you know, somebody who's in the weeds in that realm to, to pick that apart and tell me why it's not. But I don't see the downsides, you know.

[B]

Yeah, I hadn't thought about either of those. I do like the income tax one.

[A]

Yeah, simple. I mean to me, because it's like, you see the, I don't know what the company's called but like the, the VA Mortgage.

[B]

Oh, there's. I know what you're talking about. It's like there's an entire ecosystem that exists around that.

[A]

Yeah. I mean, so it's, it's like to me, it's insulting. You know, it's like we're going to let you borrow a hundred percent of your home loan. You don't have to put 20 down. Like, how is that a way better deal? You know, it's like you're going to let me go further down. Yeah, it's like deficit spending.

[B]

Look at your low monthly payment, Mike.

[A]

Yeah, I mean, we're going to let you borrow more money. We're going to let you be more irrelevant, irresponsible, like. But, you know, they pitch it through.

[B]

They're giving you a looser lending criteria that would allow you to qualify for potentially more.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I mean, whether or not you're qualified to pay for that more.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You know, that's a discussion to be had.

[A]

But I think again, like, you know, now you compare that to. You don't pay income tax. You know, there's a big difference between those two things.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, there's a couple. I mean, Michael, Google how many veterans there are. I know that about 0.05% of the US population is currently serving.

[A]

I think it's like 3%. Right. Or is it 1% for veterans?

[B]

Yeah, I'm just trying to think of the. So 3% of 360 million. We're about 10 million people right there.

[A]

That's 15 million.

[B]

15 million. All right, so that would be 15 million people removed from the tax basis. Let's say half the population is under 18, so not paying taxes, sort of 180 beat 165 million people. It might make a dent, it might be a blip, but it wouldn't be galactic.

[A]

Take. Yeah, but you know, to me, the, the, the way that, I mean, even some of the things that I do see now with whether it's tariffs or, you know, the five million dollar, the golden visa, easy pass for like very Florida. Yeah, I mean, I actually like that idea, you know, with the stipulations that you have to invest X number of dollars and start a business and employ so many. You know, there's, there's got to be some, some.

[B]

It's not even a unique idea. There's countries in Europe that do that as well. I don't know if they call it easy pass, but they should. Yeah, they don't.

[A]

They oughta. Yeah. You know, but I guess, you know, to me, even if. Let's say, hey, it would make a noticeable difference, you know, especially when you see, you know, Doge has its, its pros and cons. I think it's mostly pros, but the amount of waste that's already taking place. Yeah, like, you know, you could, you could clean so much of that up up and, and still come out way ahead. You know, if there was some sort of piggyback program where it was like, you know, hey, if we do this, we have to cut from, you know, wherever. I mean, I've always been a, obviously a proponent of, of a healthy budget for the Pentagon. But man, if you can't pass an audit for eight years, like, you don't deserve it, you know, I mean, have.

[B]

You ever seen the woman on. It's a clip. And maybe I'm seeing a clip. I know you're talking about where she is arguing that they did pass an audit while saying that they didn't. Yeah, no, no, it's not that we don't know where the money is. And the guy is like, but you.

[A]

Didn'T pass the audit.

[B]

No, no, we didn't pass the audit. But we know. It was the craziest circular logic that I've ever seen.

[A]

Yeah, it's like the most obnoxious gaslighting. You know, it's like, and it's Jon Stewart, he's like, it was John Stewart, you're right. And he's not even being a dick about it. He's just like, right. He's like, if you didn't pass the audit, how do you know where the money is? We do. Okay, well where is it then?

[B]

We just can't show you.

[A]

We can't. Yeah, we're not exactly sure. It's like. So you are, you're not like to watch that. You're just like, holy, what is she in charge of? You know, everything. Yeah, I mean, but maybe I have.

[B]

No idea who that woman was.

[A]

But I mean, I think you, you could, in that same, same realm, you could, you could pay our soldiers probably double what they pay now. Give them better equipment, better house, better everything and still cut billions, I mean probably trillions over a 10 year period from, from our defense budget and still be in better shape if it was just done appropriately. I do think, I think going back to, I think it was Socrates that said, I think it's around 40,000 people. Like there's this magic number of whether it's a city or. I mean obviously there weren't companies back then, but past a certain size, like there is no efficient way to run it, you know, And I think that's part of the problem is it's so big. Yeah. Like one person can't be in charge of all those things. So there's just so many people in the middle that there's just by default a certain level of inefficiency and right hand not talking to the left hand that there's not really a way around doesn't mean that it's acceptable. But it doesn't seem like they're really even trying to fix it. You know, it's like the one. And I think you and I can. Can speak to it maybe more frankly than. Well, I mean, your average taxpayer has just as much, you know, reason to be to be bitching about it. But I think for guys like us to say, I'm okay with and actually support a reduced defense budget but be smarter about it. Yeah, I think carries more weight because we're not just saying give them whatever they need. It's like you could give them whatever they need, pay them more and take better care of them and still spend less money if you would just do it smart.

[B]

There are so many ways where you could reduce the bigger number. I mean, were you ever in a supply role at all for one of your platoons?

[A]

Thank God, no.

[B]

But so, and I, you know, briefly, and I'm not saying this applies to the whole industry at large. Why is there a different cost for things sold to the government versus individuals? Why is it so much more expensive? Austin, there's a fucking way right there. We could cut cost. Yeah, I am. I actually, I would love to see the Department of Defense budget drastically reduced while efficiency goes through the roof. Because both can be true.

[A]

For sure. Yeah. Yeah.

[B]

Make sure that they have absolutely what they need, the best cutting edge shit. And I'm here to tell you right now, it could be done. I'm not going to say at a fraction of the cost because I don't have enough data to support that, but cheaper than it's currently being done?

[A]

Significantly less. Yes. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. And why it's not. Is. I mean, why it's not.

[B]

My personal guess is there's enough people in that system with their fingers in the pot. There's more incentive for it to stay the way that it is than to change.

[A]

For sure. And I think, you know, and it's on the smallest scale at supply departments, at individual commands, all the way up to big defense contractors that now have General Lutz's nuts on their board of directors, and he still has a bunch of friends that are in the military that if, hey, if we go to war with so and so and you know, our defense budgeting committee allocates McDonnell Douglas with this $47 billion contract every three months. Everybody wins, you know, except the United States.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You know, and I think it's really that simple is that. I mean because you see it even just a little bit of uncovering of doge, of, of like to me the. One of the biggest ironies is the, the NGO thing. The, the loophole of you know, sitting members of Congress that have a sister, you know, that starts whatever nonprofit. You know, it's like it by its very definition and in name is a non governmental organization. Yeah. Why is it being funded by the government? Like does that. Not completely.

[B]

Because it allows them to do outside of the government purview.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

The agency use cutouts.

[A]

Yeah. And so now my sister's, you know, making $2 billion a year and I'm getting 10% of that that, you know, because I, it's just the problem. I. The biggest problem I think is like we can sit here and about it and, and people can run for office and, and whatever, but the reality of it, it's a system that is a hamster wheel of corruption where to try to fix it. It's like asking the fox to audit himself in the hen house. Like of course he didn't do anything wrong. Of course, you know, whatever chickens he killed, he was supposed to or deserved or whatever. It's like, like you're never going to get people who don't need to hold themselves accountable, who are benefiting superiorly from it to actually do the right thing when, when they don't have to and nobody's looking over their shoulder.

[B]

What's the saying? Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

[A]

I mean man, you see it day in, day out. You know, I'm sure you get asked like were you ever going to run for politics?

[B]

No.

[A]

Like I'm not dragging my family through that. You know.

[B]

That is actually one of the biggest sticking points points for me too is you just as somebody who participates in politics, as somebody as an observer and some a voting citizen. It is one of the most vitriol filled spaces that I've ever seen.

[A]

It's nasty.

[B]

Yeah. And like you said, the family's getting drug into that. What? What?

[A]

Yeah. Why would I do that? You know? No, I mean I have a, a theory on that too that I put in my Unfuck America book, which looking back on it probably wasn't the best title to use. Or it was the best sales would indicate that if that's your metric, it wasn't a good title. The. No, but you know, from, from a politics standpoint, like I'm not the, you know, trees of liberty need to be watered with the blood of tyrants type of guy that thinks that we should burn the whole fucking country down. However, the current system, I don't, I think most people could agree is, is not working. You know, when you look at favorability ratings at whatever. Yeah. Department or group or whatever you entity you look at, they're embarrassingly low. And so.

[B]

Well, I don't think the founding fathers ever imagined the structure that they created being used at the size, scope and scale that it is for sure. I think it's outside of the parameters that they imagined.

[A]

Yeah. And I actually am stealing this idea from rural Texas jury duty. And so, you know, they do these, these six month stints basically in the county where my kennel is, is located. Back when I was living out there, I got, you know, summoned to do jury duty and grand jury duty. So it's, it's a six month period where basically the entire voting base of the county and I would do the same thing for the House of Representatives. It's not going to work at the high level of president, but I think because the House of Representatives is the gate with which everything else, whether it's spending bills and, and this is obviously including the Senate, whether it's, it's judges, cabinet members, you know, vetoing presidents bills. Like the amount of power that, that should be actually used and not partisan parsed out is actually significant. And I think it's the most powerful branch by a long shot. But so in that same realm is you have every region, whether it's a county, I mean how you're going to separate it out, I think you would just piggyback the, the, the counties. But, but each voting base of the county basically has to put A list of 10 names together of people that they think who have been living here long enough, who aren't felons, who pay their taxes, et cetera. And so now at the end everybody, you know, submits their list of 10 people and the top however many 12 or 14 with reserves or whatever gets summoned and says, hey, enough people put your name down to where now you're one of the grand jury personnel that has to sit for the next six months and review these cases and decide whether or not they go to trial. And I thought about it and I was like, you know, you could do that at the same level for Congress. You know, take whatever, you know, this district for Congressman 3A in Texas or whatever, you know, whatever it is, use that same metric and say you guys decide who's going to be the person. Now you're removing the elbow rubbing of funds, right? Like I own a construction company and I give you $5 million for your campaign. And hey, by the way, when the public works contract comes up, you're kicking it to me. It removes all of that. It removes nasty ads like nobody even knows who, who it's going to be until it's too late. And, and so now it does two things. One, it removes the. I'm sure there's still a potential for corruption. I'm not saying that this is a, an open and ship flawless idea. But, but I think it's without doing a hard reset where you're completely overthrowing the United States government, but restoring the, the power to the people to decide who, who goes to office and they're most accurately representing the wishes of their actual constituents, I think it's the best way forward. And so now you don't get a choice. Like if your name is, is the top guy or gal in that district, you, you're basically just like with jury do. You don't get a choice choice with that either. Now there'd have to be some sort of stipulation where depending on what the circumstances are, let's say you have, you know, special needs kid. I mean I'm sure there's some, some waivers, but that's why you have the top 10 people. Maybe it's the seventh person on the list because the first six had had reasons why it just didn't make sense. But, but now you've got a collective mean average of the most well suited by the majority of the population with no other buyers, bias or influence, political, economical, financial, whatever, being forced to go do that. And you're also getting rid of the terms, you know, you're, you're instituting term limits by default. You know, so now the people. Because I truly believe if you want to run for office, that should disqualify you. You know, I mean, there's a reason why you want to do it and show me the good one. I mean, yeah, there are a handful of guys, even some from our community that I think are there for the right reasons. Eli would absolutely be one of them. But, but I think, you know, if you put somebody in a position where they don't want to do something and, and there's an and there's that Sense of civic duty, of saying holy. Like, I didn't realize that many people in this region, county, district, whatever, thought that I was the guy that they want representing. I'm like, to me, that should be a sense of honor and pride and make you want to go serve your country and you don't have a choice. But I think, you know, that sets the stage for now. Any Supreme Court nominations, you know, are going through that body of people via the Senate, all the cabinet member picks, any of the bills, and I would also separate any foreign spending, you know, any type of foreign aid whatsoever should be a standalone, voted on by itself by the entire House of Representatives because you should have to look your constituents in the face and say, I sent your fucking money to Egypt. Like I said. Yes.

[B]

Yeah, you shouldn't be able to bury it. Right.

[A]

Yeah. You shouldn't be able to earmark that into anything, you know, any, any foreign aid for any reason. I don't give a shit what it is. Should be a standalone bill. I think, you know, that's as good of a step forward for a drastic change, but not so drastic to where you, you risk losing the entire country over it. I'm sure there would be some flaws, there would be some hurdles, but to me it's like, that seems like a good way to reset that, that corruption button and now make it way more difficult for a lot of the things that seem to happen and go unnoticed or unchecked now, no longer to do so. And you can only do it for, you know, three years maybe. I mean, I don't know what the right, right amount of time is, but. Because I do think two years is too short, six is probably too long. Yeah, you know, maybe it's three or four, I don't know. But I think that's a good, good way to at least try to unfuck the problems that, that are started because everything has to go through them, you know, and again, you can't do that on a presidential level because it's just too big in scope. But if you know a region of a couple hundred thousand people, I'll say, you know, Jim, Jimmy Jones is my guy and, and that many people want him representing their region in Washington D.C. i think that's as good a fit as any.

[B]

Yeah, I'd be interested to see how the system played out. Out of the time you spent in the teams. What do you think is the most important takeaway you've taken from that time? Is there anything that sticks with you to this day?

[A]

Accountability, you know, not to Sound cliched. That seems to be a lot of people saying. But I think, you know, one of the things that bothers me the most in my adult relationship, whether it's personal, professional, or even looking at our elected politicians as people who can't say I that up, because so few people do it. You know, it's, I didn't, I wasn't responsible for that. No, he, he fucked, you know. You know, because that carries over into the political divide, partisan wise, too. It's like, if you can't hold your guy to the same level that you're holding the other guy, you can go fuck yourself. Totally. You know, and I think that that is hammered into us so well as a new guy in a platoon where it's like, dude, if you up, you better own it and tell me right now.

[B]

Yeah, the earlier the better, actually.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Nothing that doesn't age like a fine red from France.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Small back.

[A]

Yeah. And it's like, hey, who did this? I did it. I it up. My bad. Yeah. All right, here's your punishment. Don't do it again. You know, maybe end up taped up in a cloud closet with Tabasco sauce down your ass crack. But that in and of itself is a, that Video number six, the happy hat with this is.

[B]

I'm just grabbing these ideas. I'm just, what could make good content.

[A]

He's like, why the did you invite.

[B]

This guy on the show? Listen, the best thing to do when you're exposed to generational trauma is to pass it on.

[A]

Yeah. Now we can relate.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. You got that going.

[B]

You're in the trust tree.

[A]

Yeah. But, yeah, I, I do think, I think that's what our, what our society lacks probably the most is just general, basic accountability.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You know, and I think, you know, whether it's, you know, a parent with their kids, teacher with their students, coach with their athletes, I mean, pick a, an element of society. I think nothing builds and breeds resentment like a lack of accountability. And nothing, I think, reinforces elements of leadership like, like owning your mistakes and being accountable for them. Yeah.

[B]

And it's not that hard to do. It just sucks.

[A]

I mean, to me, if anything, you know, the, the initial brunt is like getting the tip of your dick caught in a mousetrap. Video number seven.

[B]

Why aren't you writing this down, Michael?

[A]

I want these to be forgotten. Oh, I forgot to hit record on this. Damn it. But, yeah, I, I, I honestly think, though, so after that initial sting, it's actually a relief because when to me.

[B]

People respond to it as well. And you know why? Because at the end of the day, we're all human, but we have this lens that we look and judge other people through that we don't judge ourselves through. Like, I know I am an imperfect person. I am going to fuck up, and it's not fun to say when you did fuck up, but you'll do it personally, professionally, and everything in between. So will everybody else. Because every person that you're looking at is imperfect as well.

[A]

Yeah, well. Yeah.

[B]

And that is why I think the recovery arc or the. Yeah, the recovery arc stories are actually so powerful when people are willing to do that and rebuild. That's why they have the ability to do so. And people will accept that change and accept them for who they are if they're willing to step up in front of it.

[A]

Yeah. And I think, you know, the more entrenched in a leadership role that you are, the more imperative it is that you can do that. Because, I mean, I don't know how it was with your kids. It took me a while to learn this.

[B]

This.

[A]

But, you know, telling your kids that you made a mistake is huge.

[B]

I have apologized to my kids many times, and I try to do it as soon as possible. And I just. I explained, though, I just talked to them, like, age appropriate, obviously, but I'm doing the best I can. I don't have an instruction list. Sometimes my emotions get the best of me. I shouldn't have said that. This is what I should have done. But. Yeah, you address it up front.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You have to do it.

[A]

Yeah. And I think they a. They respect you more. They. They value your level of authority or it. It highlights where you are in the hierarchy better. You know, it dissolves some of the resentment kids have for their. For their parents. Not all of it, because I think all kids resent their parents a little.

[B]

Bit, but until they become parents.

[A]

Yeah, they go, son of a man. For sure. Yeah. But. Yeah, and. But I think it's, you know, it's that way with kids. It's that way with employees. Employees, too, you know, because it's like, as an employer, like, the last thing I want is to say, hey, who this up? And everybody points their finger. No, I want somebody to say, I did that. I that up. I'm sorry. You know, like, I have way more compassion and wiggle room and. And empathy for somebody who's like, yep, I did it. Yep. As opposed to me having to, you know, Sherlock Holmes it and figure out three days later, now that I've just wasted Three days of my time and you lie to me. You know, it's like that's how you get fired. Yeah. Like I don't need you working for me if you can't, you know. So. Yeah. That it goes up and down, down the chain both ways. So I will say, you know, I have said this a number of times and I'll. I'll repeat it till the day I die. I mean to be able to spend from 18 to 30 around a group of men, you know, 200 and some odd other older, seasoned and guys who've been around the world who have been doing a dangerous job like to be in that environment. Like you couldn't pay to put people in that age range in a better environment, I think, you know, and I'm. I'll be forever grateful that, that I was fortunate enough to be in that environment because man, what a. What a fucking breeding ground and learning opportunity.

[B]

I agree, man. Dude, we've been at it for three hours.

[A]

It doesn't feel like it.

[B]

I know. I gotta meet my wife at noon. What do you want to close it out with? Cause she'll both of us up. She's goddamn three stripe black belt.

[A]

Can you not take her or.

[B]

I have beaten her one time.

[A]

No. Is it usually a stalemate?

[B]

No, no. You don't understand. As I was.

[A]

That's impressive.

[B]

As it was winning, I saw the shift in her eyes and I realized it's not worth it.

[A]

Wow. It's not worth it at home or it's not worth what's going to happen?

[B]

Yes. Just in general. No, no, no. Even if you can beat your spouse, don't do it.

[A]

End in draws if push came to shove.

[B]

Yeah, dude. Size and strength are real. I'm a fucking 220 pound dude.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

She's not a 220 pound dude.

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[B]

She is better at Jiu Jitsu than me. I could overpower her.

[A]

Yeah. You're. You're good enough to wear it. Size and strength matters. Yeah.

[B]

That would be the delineating factor not.

[A]

To draw this out. I know you got to go. I am curious at what point in your path did it. Did you realize that you could. Was it not until you were a black belt or was it before then?

[B]

It was before then.

[A]

Yeah. Purple, brown. She's not going to listen to this, right? God, hell no. Somebody's going to tell her proudly, but.

[B]

Right at around late purple, early brown.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah.

[B]

It's not magic.

[A]

Yeah. It's a formula. Yeah. You know. Yeah. In terms of your question how would I close it out? I mean, for me, just. I appreciate you bringing me on and, and for anybody.

[B]

You had an open invite for years.

[A]

Yeah, well, I, I appreciate it either way. And I'd love to have you come, come back down for sure if you ever find yourself.

[B]

I'm not coming in the summer.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah, I don't blame you. Maybe October, November, even. October still hot. But yeah, yeah, I'd love to, Love to have you back on. I mean, because you were one of my early guests. It's been six, seven years now, probably.

[B]

It has been a long time.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. But, yeah, no, just for anybody listening, I appreciate any of the support. Warrior Dog foundation is, is the thing I would, I would plug and not any of the companies, just any help on that front. You know, we always, always need it and, and appreciate everybody's support. But yeah, just thanks for listening. I appreciate you having me on.

[B]

Yeah, man. Until next time.

[A]

All right.

[B]

Right on.

[A]

Marketing is hard, but I'll tell you a little secret.

[B]

It doesn't have to be. Let me point something out. You're listening to a podcast right now and it's great.

[A]

You love the host.

[B]

You seek it out and download it.

[A]

You listen to it while driving, working.

[B]

Out, cooking, even going to the bathroom. Podcasts are a pretty close companion. And this is a podcast ad. Did I get your attention? You can reach great listeners like yourself with podcast advertising from Libsyn Ads. Choose from hundreds of top podcasts offering host endorsements or run a pre produced ad like this one across thousands of shows. To reach your target audience in their favorite podcasts with Libsyn Ad ads, go to libsynads.

[A]

Com.

[B]

That's L, I, B, S Y N ads. Com Today.