← Julian Dorey Podcast
Julian Dorey Podcast
#369 - “Sickening!” - Navy SEAL on Military Corruption, Charlie Kirk & Religion | Mike Ritland
02:48:42
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- [00:00]
A
If you're paying more than $1 a month for any ED or hair medication, listen up at Joy and Blokes, when you start TRT or enclomiphene, you can add any ED or hair loss prescription for just $1 a month. $1 add ons with your hormone plan and right now, all labs are 50% off. I'm Josh Whalen, founder of Joy and Blokes. I built this company because men are tired of paying for fragmented care without results. Every Joy and Blokes lab includes a visit with a licensed clinician who connects your symptoms to your biomarkers. You'll get a real plan that covers hormones, performance and confidence. If you're considering TRT or Enclomiphene, this is the most efficient way to do it. Get started@joyandbloks.com and use a promo code podcast. New customers get 50% off their labs. And for a limited time, you can take advantage of our $1ed or hair loss add ons when you start TRT or Enclomophene. Not available in all states. Compounded medications are not FDA approved. Learn more@joannblokes.com throughout your Navy SEAL career, you at different points fought against literal terror. You and I can both agree that they were evil people, right? Yeah.
- [01:09]
B
If I could pinpoint an essence of the SEAL team. Don't tell me how to be a good team guy. Show me how to be one. But when I look back at Iraq as an example, 17, 18 years of Afghanistan, I think a lot of it was a state. Fast forward now you have Israel, Palestine, Ukraine. It's like, what. What role are we actually actively playing in creating this problem?
- [01:30]
A
So we're Talking about huge GDPs, obviously, the largest of which is China. Communist Party leadership that rules with an iron fist, place that does mass surveillance on us. If you were pointing at your number one list of concerns over the next 10 to 15 years, is China still at the top of that list?
- [01:47]
B
Maybe.
- [01:49]
A
Maybe.
- [01:49]
B
I'm more worried about.
- [01:52]
A
Hey guys, if you're not following me on Spotify, please hit that follow button and leave a five star review. They're both a huge, huge help. Thank you. Anyway, it is great to have you back, Mike. We did episode 215 together and then I was just down in Texas recording with you. So I'm looking forward to hopefully not sounding like an idiot when that comes out.
- [02:21]
B
I. I really enjoyed our conversation, you know, and I. I'll reiterate the sentiment of, you know, you're. You have such a unique I think both background and perspective contrasted with all the people that you've had on your show. And it makes for, to me, one of the most well rounded perspectives out there, really, because, yeah, I mean, and so to me, it's, it's always nice to, you know, one talk to fellow, I don't know, show hosts, I guess, that have had a lot of the same people on and, you know, and kind of deal with some of the same headaches and struggles or hurdles that, you know, doing a podcast full time can come with that. Not to make it sound like, overly dramatic, but that, you know, people who don't do that aren't, aren't going to be able to relate to you, you know, but that coupled with just your, your experience of having so many people on with such broad ranging perspectives, I think it gives you a really, really unique view on so many things that, for me is, is fascinating to talk to you about. So I appreciated it.
- [03:24]
A
Well, that's, that's always cool to hear, but it's cool to hear from people that also get what we do, you know, and from someone I've seen for so long doing so much shit. I really, last time you were here, you know, we got to go through like, your whole personal story and everything you did with the Navy seals and also like, basically like launching a lot of the K9 program there and then continuing that after your career as well. So people can definitely go check that out. I know we did some, some discussions about, like, some of your actual dog training tactics on Patreon back then, so maybe we can get to some of that today. Yeah, as well. But I think the thing that really blew Alessi and I away last time Alessi was in studio with me, last time with you was how much you were such a common sense, kind of like, breakdown guy. What I mean by that is there was basically an hour that podcast before we were talking about your backstory where we were just going through some basic different policy points, a little bit of geopolitical stuff, and like, your knowledge of everything is amazing. Which, that part didn't surprise me. But, like, your no nonsense approach had us looking at each other like, you should run for office. Like, I might actually vote for you.
- [04:33]
B
Yeah.
- [04:33]
A
Are you still thinking about maybe doing that?
- [04:35]
B
I don't know that I was ever thinking about it, you know. Well, not seriously, anyway. I mean, I've had, you know, I guess first off, I appreciate the kind words I. You know, to me, the almost frustrating part about it is that, like, I don't think that that my perspective is all that unique or you know, outside the box really. I mean, to me, like similar to you. You know, we talk to a lot of people from a lot of different walks of life all over the country and you know, I find that about 90% of the things we, we tend to agree on, you know, maybe even closer to, I think where most people disagree and where you see a lot of these like, crazy, whether it's left wing or right wing, because there's plenty of crazy right wing theories or, or approaches to fixing problems also I don't think there's as many, but, but, but it's in the approach. You know, it's like the, the outcome is, is generally fairly heavily agreed upon by almost everybody. I mean, I wouldn't even say it's the 80, 20, you know, maybe it's 80 in the middle and 10 on either side. But you know, most people just, you know, they want to live somewhere safe, you know, if they want to have a family, which I think most people do, obviously not everybody, if they do, they want their kids to go to a good, good school, get a good education, be able to afford a lifestyle that, that's at least comfortable and, and you know, they can get Christmas presents or whatever, take a vacation, you know, once or twice a year and, and live a relatively normal American lifestyle. You know, to me there's nothing in that, that's, that's extreme or, or that's, you know, not understood and fairly heavily agreed on by most people. It's in the approach. And that's where I think the, the over influence of the Internet and social media play such a huge role in influencing people to think in very extreme ways that are in kind of vacuums contrasted to the way most people think. You know, if you get off your phone or off social media and you go talk to people again, there' little disagreement in, in most categories I think. You know, so to me that, that's kind of the most frustrating part about like the book on America and the discussion we had and reading some of the comments is like as flattering as that may be to hear that stuff. To me it's frustrating frankly that most people don't just have that same kind of approach of looking at it from a pretty simple, you know, no, no nonsense kind of, no bullshit way, but, but they do.
- [07:05]
A
Well, it's one thing as to expressing what you want, it's another thing of them putting that into practice, you know, from policy perspective. And that's what was impressive because like some of the ideas you had about, well, I, hypothetically we could do something like this. Like a lot of it made sense to Alessi and, and I, and that that was cool. But you know, there's an election, when we're recording today, there's an election going on in New York here where Mamdani, unless I'm shocked and somehow he doesn't win. Like he's, he's gonna win. And this is a guy who frankly has full blown socialist policies. They've been tried a million times, they don't work. It's not your prototypical Democrat versus Republican election. It's something different here with him. That said, what is very interesting about him, when you're looking at this from a political how does this happen? Perspective, it's that all those things that you just talked about, like on a general level that everyone wants, he at least went out to people and expressed that he wanted that for them too. Now, whether his policies work or not, unfortunately, is a separate conversation. That's probably not true. But there's something to be said for, for the fact that you're talking about a guy here who went and spoke to people in New York who had turned and like voted for Trump in the last election and didn't excoriate them and instead asked them why and they said, you know, the economy was, was better, certain other things were better. And he said, okay, what if I, you know, did some things to actually make that happen for you? Would you vote for me? And now, you know, just speaking to them on that level, he's probably going to get those votes.
- [08:34]
B
Yeah. Yeah. And I think it', it reminds me of or, or kind of highlights the polar opposite that happened to the Democrats in the presidential election is that it's not even so much that everybody is in love with Candidate A, it's, it's that they dropped the ball so bad with, you know, between Biden staying in way too long and then tripping over himself in the, in the debate and making it abundantly clear that he did not have the mental capacity to keep going, having no primary, you know, just handing the torch to Kamala the way that they did and, you know, whether she had enough time or not, you know, there's people that would, that would argue either way, it doesn't even matter. I mean, the fact is, is that they just really dropped the ball and did not prepare well and did not execute their, the run up and campaign to the election and that's why they lost. And I think both on the Republican and Independent side, you could even argue on the Democratic side, because there's plenty of far superior alternate candidates to Mamdani that they just didn't. Didn't do it, you know, and that baffles me. I do think there's maybe, and I understand why there's such an emphasis on a. On a mayoral campaign in the United States. Like in the, in the grand scheme of things, no matter how up the mayor of New York is, is that gonna swing the needle, you know, necessarily one way? Maybe, maybe not. But it is fascinating, I think, the reflection that one mayoral race has in one city. And granted, it's, you know, America's city basically, but. But it's still. It's just. I think there's a lot of lessons to be learned, a lot of very obvious errors that were made. And what I would hope is that both sides can at least learn from a day like today and not make those same mistakes. But it seems like they continue to do it over and over.
- [10:23]
A
Yeah, that's what's frustrating. I mean, there was whatever it was like eight years at Bill de Blasio here not long ago, and then obviously he was in charge during the whole front end of COVID which doubled the disaster of him. And you would think people might remember something like that and be like, well, maybe, you know, we shouldn't vote for the guy he's endorsing. Deep's over here laughing. He remembers the chaos.
- [10:45]
B
Yeah, I think Americans are just. Most Americans are short sighted that way where, you know, Adams comes in and kind of hits the reset button and gets things to where now people are comfortable. And to me, like that, that comfortability piece, you know, whether you're a stoic or a common sense person, whatever is like that, that is the, the catalyst that kills everything. You know, when people are comfortable, they. They get complacent. Bottom line.
- [11:09]
A
Yes.
- [11:10]
B
And it is striking that it only took four years, you know, for people to. To forget that de Blasio completely turned the city upside down and screwed it over. I don't know how you fix that.
- [11:21]
A
Isn't it amazing how short memories are?
- [11:24]
B
Yeah. I mean, in this, in the same vein, I mean, can you imagine in October of 2001 that what would be happening here in this city would be happening, like with. With the sentiment of. Of. No. Of not just where the country was at, but especially New York City with the World Trade center still smoking that, you know, 20 plus years later, that we would be in this position where the overwhelming leading candidate is a guy like Mom Donnie. I mean, like, there's no bingo card that would have ever been on. And yet here we are.
- [11:53]
A
Yeah, I think the thing that offended me a lot was, like, the dude was out campaigning with people who had said America deserved 9, 11 and stuff. That. That's where you draw a line for sure.
- [12:03]
B
You know, especially in this different.
- [12:05]
A
Yeah, I love that New York has a lot of everything. I, I love the culture of it, but there's a line between, like, common sense and just being an asshole about stuff. And a lot of people that, that live in the city right now were alive and, and living there, you know, 24, 25 years ago, seeing that. And it is amazing that something like that could be ignored, including in some cases by some of those same people.
- [12:32]
B
For sure.
- [12:32]
A
By the people that will vote for him are people that were standing there that day. And I'm not saying that to like, shred them. Maybe they're upset about other things, but, you know, I was even having a conversation with someone the other day about the Israel Palestine thing, and this person was someone who was on the pro Israel side. And we were talking about, obviously, the mistakes that have been made here in, especially over the last couple years. And I said, you know, what's crazy, what will be crazy to see is that I'm rooting for this peace deal. I obviously, I hope this, this stands. I can't say I have a ton of optimism on that because of what's going on, but hopefully it does. That said, it'll be interesting to see where this is five, ten years from now, or more importantly, where it would be if, like, Israel would change a couple things. Would people forget some of the stuff they did? And I'm not saying whether that's right or wrong, but I actually thought the possibility was maybe because society has proven over and over again, it's like, we have the thing and then the thing's gone and they go, now we have a new thing.
- [13:36]
B
Yeah.
- [13:36]
A
And they just move on.
- [13:38]
B
Yeah. I mean, distraction is a real, A real, I think in today's day and age, because, you know, again, when people are comfortable, it's very easy to sway them in whatever direction you want them to be swayed for a period of time until the new shiny object shows up. But the reality is, like, unless a certain issue is. Is impacting your life negatively to a point to which you're, you're angry about it, you know, not just maybe a little uncomfortable or distracted or whatever, like the, the length of the cause or the dedication to your. Your cause is very, very limited and has a pretty short Shelf life, you know, and because you see it with, whether it's BLM or antifa stuff or trans rights or Israel, Palestine, Ukraine, it's like pick a thing. And I think the, the interesting thing about all of, all of what I just said is that if you take it back to, and I think we spoke a little bit about this the last time I was on is that you know, human beings are designed and meant to suffer and struggle. They need things to overcome. So when we live in a, in a day and an age and in a society where there's very little of that from a kind of an external standpoint, you know, say 200 years ago where 90% of the population in the United States were farmers, I think Philadelphia I think was the biggest city with 40,000 people. It's a very different idea and understanding of a. How the world works, what your day to day is, what things that you're worried about, etc, fast forward 200 plus years later and now you have a society that doesn't know where their food comes from, is not responsible for sourcing any of it. You know, doesn't have to, you know, maintain any of the things utility wise in their house. Most people. And so there's this disconnect and, and so now people don't have the struggle of survival in a day to day capacity to ever have to worry about. And so they default to whatever cause that resonates with them the most that they feel like, well I let me get behind this because I'm passionate about it and I care and whatever until it fizzles out or something else pops up that maybe I care more about or whatever. And so I think that's why you see such a reliance and, and a quick initiative on so many Americans parts to get so almost not, not almost violently involved in some causes that aren't even taking place here in the United States because they just don't have any other problems to worry about.
- [16:08]
A
Yeah, you were asking me, I forget what the exact question was when I was on your show, but you were, you were asking me about like young men and, and military service and whether or not, you know, it would be a benefit if we were required to have it like in the old days with a draft. And I think there's certainly something to be said that. But assuming like we didn't have a draft and don't have a war to go fight, which I hope we don't, you know, you are looking at a generation now that's coming up where there is a sentiment of let's say, I don't want to say hopeless at all. That's overstating it. But there's less like hope and inspiration, I guess you could say than in previous generations. And particularly with young men right in the vein you were just talking about. It's almost like they don't have a big war to struggle for. That should be a positive. But they also maybe don't feel like they have the same opportunities that their dads had or their grandfathers had in this country. You know, as someone who is a self made guy and went and did a really hard thing being in the Navy SEALs, did that very well for a long time. Also sacrificed some of your health to do that. Like what, what do you say to a 14 year old, 15 year old kid who's trying to find his way in life, doesn't know what he wants to do yet, but you know, wants to be able feel like he's a man a decade from now.
- [17:29]
B
To me the, the easy answer and the one that I would say always fall back on is if you don't have purpose, right? And this is at any age, not just 14, but since your question was a 14 year old, if, if you don't have purpose, you don't know what it is that you want to do, go serve some something else until you figure that out, you know, because to me it's a win win in the two ways where number one is that now at least you're a productive, net positive member of society. You're doing something that's benefiting our society. But what you're also doing is you're figuring out the things that you like, that you don't like, that you're passionate about, that you're not passionate about things that give you that purpose. And it may take half of your adult life to figure that out, but that's okay because you're not on food stamps, playing video games in your parents basement, you're in the Peace Corps, the military, Boys and girls Club, soup kitchens mean volunteering, helping, building homeless, homeless people, houses, whatever. Like if you just go do that. There's, there's also a huge component I think to feeling purposeful when, when you're serving somebody else. Even if that isn't your thing, the fact that you know that you're helping our society, you're helping other people, like that makes you feel good even if you don't think you want to do that. I mean there's a million studies that you know, prove the helping of other people and what that does to, you know, just your mental process and ultimately how you look at things, it makes you more grateful for what you. I mean, there's a million benefits to it. And so to me, like, that's such a simple thing. And, you know, to the mandatory service thing, you know, the military isn't for everybody. I'd say it's not even for most people. I don't think mandatory military service is necessarily a good idea. I do think a two or three year, you know, if you're not going to go to college or a trade school, and maybe the argument could be made, even if, or especially if you're going to do that, that you do two years first in, say, a list of 10 different things, you know, again, whether it's, you know, Peace Corps or the Red Cross or the military Boys and Girls Club and whatever is that it makes you serve something bigger than yourself before you enter the real world. And I think that one thing could make an enormous shift in making everybody understand a. How the world works, to be more appreciative of what they have and realize that there is a lot of opportunity. You just have to actually go find it. It's not going to just be thrown in your lap.
- [19:55]
A
Yeah, no, I. I think there's certainly an argument to be made for that. But you also, like when you do something like serve as long as you did and you're at the tip of the spear, in your case, you're in the Special Forces. And then you, you, for people who haven't heard your story, you were essentially like, kind of forced into retirement because your lung capacity went down to what, like 60? Yeah, something like that. So you've done it for a while and then you get out. Did you, like, have a human moment where you're like, what the fuck do I do with my life at that point? Or were you right in it? Like, let's go.
- [20:30]
B
Yeah, I was right in it. I mean, I had already made the shift to being interested in. In working canines, broadly speaking. And so for me, it was okay. This specific door that I wanted to go down is now closed, but there's two dozen other ones that are very similar to that that are now open. And I get to pick. You know, I mean, to me, that's one of the most rewarding, exciting, and also stressful parts of going away from a 9 to 5 or working for somebody else and doing your own thing is while, yes, all of the responsibility and accountability falls on your shoulders, you also get to do whatever you want, however you want to do. It, you know, and so I never, ever struggled with that transition period out. Like, there was never a point even for a day where I was like, man, what am I going to do? Or how am I going to make this all work? You know, to me it was more of, you know, I don't even know that I'd say it's a glass half full or half empty thing. It's like that cup is refillable and you get to refill it however you want with whatever drink you want, you know, is that I get to now pick. Like, yeah, I wanted to stay in and do this, but now I can do a million other things in that same vein and I get to run the show. Like, this is awesome. Unfortunately, a lot of veterans, and especially combat veterans, I think, I'm not going to say they don't look at it that way, but they don't find themselves in that same position. I do feel very fortunate in that this was something I was already interested in. And there's a lot of, you know, avenues or lanes that you can pick in that industry to, to continue to do the same types of things that I wanted to do in the military. But, but to me, that, that's really the secret. I mean, the oldest question on earth is what's the meaning of life? Right? And you know, to me it's, it's a very simple. It's purpose. Doesn't matter what the purpose is. Like if every day when you wake up, the thing that you're doing makes you want to get out of bed and do that thing, you're never going to be miserable. You will always, you know, enjoy what you're doing and be part of that struggle. And that struggle and the hurdles that you have to overcome are going to give you a sense of fulfillment that I don't think you find anywhere else.
- [22:41]
A
It sounds like you're, your mentality is like less than like a pure Goggins. Like you just gotta get up and do it, man. That's versus it. It's like you have to be able to find that passion and then once you do, yeah, there's gonna be stuff you always don't like with anything you're building, but you can at least enjoy yourself.
- [23:01]
B
Yeah. Yeah. Because then, then there's a, there's a why behind it. You know, there's a reason why the struggle makes sense. You know, it's kind of like getting in good shape or I mean, pick anything. You know, if there's a goal in a, in a light at the end of the tunnel or. You know, to me there's a, there's a parallel between dog training, frankly, and most things in life that I find myself kind of coming back to. But you know, wherever you're at with your dog is point A. Wherever you want to get is point B, you know, and so you plan out what A to B looks like and then you execute it. That's true with everything. You know, you want to get the girl, you want to get the black belt, you want to become a five star Michelin chef, you want to run a business that makes 10 million a year. I mean, whatever it is, understanding what that is first and then developing a plan and executing it is the key to success, you know, so, because everybody needs that, that struggle and something to overcome. I mean, you see it again, not to beat the dead horse, but in so many of, especially the Gen Z and maybe younger millennials, when there isn't that human nature will find something to attach itself to in that way, you know, and, and the phone will, will guide you into that thing if you let it. And most people do, you know. So, yeah, I mean, again, it's just, it's a really simple principle of find out whatever it is. Now with the, the Goggins thing, like, hats off to him. Like, I don't know the guy personally, I've never even met him, but obviously, like he's as dedicated as they come.
- [24:35]
A
Oh yeah.
- [24:35]
B
But even with that, like there's still a, a why or a purpose, you know, and his purpose is very specific to, to the struggle. It's seeking struggle. And he does that all day, every day.
- [24:46]
A
Yep.
- [24:46]
B
For me, I like a little bit more of a happy medium approach. Like there's, there's enough scientific data that says seeking out hard things and forcing yourself to do them set you up for success in every other aspect of your life. And I think that's important. And I do that on a regular basis. For me personally, doing it all day, every day is not what I find fulfilling. You know, to me, there has to be a balance. I want to be able to celebrate the victories, to enjoy the fruits of labor, to, you know, take vacations, have time off, buy things that I don't need because I enjoy whatever that thing is. To me, that, that's the happy medium. You do have to be careful with it. If that consumes you, I think quickly you'll become miserable. And you see a lot of people that at a certain level of net worth aren't particularly happy, you know, and, and so I think you've got to be careful with it on both ends because I think, you know, again, I don't know the guy. To me, there does seem to be, you know, a level of obsession there that maybe isn't particularly balanced. But on the same token, like, that's just for me. Like, you know, if he can look at himself in the mirror and say, dude, I'm living my best life, this shit makes me the happiest I've ever been. Awesome. You know, and if that's what works for him, Fantastic. And, I mean, I'm proud of him. He's built a hell of a dynasty, frankly, in the struggle department, and he's inspired a ton of people, and he's got an amazing story. So I think, you know, it's great to see all the things that he's done.
- [26:15]
A
Yeah. And I'm certainly one of those people that's very inspired by the guy. And I agree with you 100%. I think it's what works for you. And that's the thing. I'll listen to episode 1080, the first one he did when Joe Rogan. That's one I'll listen to, if not every year. Every other year. Year. I've probably listened to that podcast about six, seven times before. And, you know, he. He's a guy now who has been around in the ethersphere for the past seven, eight, nine years. And so people have gotten to see the quote, unquote, okay, does he walk the talk over time? And the thing about that dude is he's the same guy today as he was all those years ago. And without naming names, it's. It's always tough when you see people who really blew up, and maybe for a lot of good reasons, too, and did a lot of good, who, over the years, you start to see the luster wear off, and you start to see that, you know, maybe it's even not just, oh, they're. They're just a man, too. Like, they have their flaws. Sometimes it's like the flaws end up outweighing the positives on. And maybe that's the. The limelight does it to them, and it. And it changes them or whatever. But, you know, I watched a video of David Goggins, like, limping across some fucking finish line at night. This is like two months ago or something. His knees are, like, buckling and falling apart, and I'm like, you know what? Say what you want, this motherfucker is about it.
- [27:37]
B
Yeah. And. And when the cameras are off, too, you know, not. Not just when his phone's out or somebody else's phone's out or there's a documentary crew with him. You know, he's, he's that day in, day out. Jocko is very much that same way, you know.
- [27:50]
A
You know Jocko, right?
- [27:52]
B
I do, yeah. I've been on his show twice. He's been on mine once and, and I knew him, you know, way back in the day too. Not well, but. But yeah, I mean, he's that same kind of guy where, you know, I think most people, when you see a Persona or a certain brand online, it's very, you know, manufactured, it's very polished, it's very, you know, intentional to a very specific angle. And then you meet him in person and again it's kind of that don't meet your heroes thing. Like you can pretty quickly see like there's two sides to this coin, you know, and I get why. I think, you know, to the comfortability piece or, you know, luxury kind of wears people out or, or changes them a little bit. I mean, I think Conor McGregor is as good of an example as that.
- [28:34]
A
Yes.
- [28:34]
B
Especially in the fight game because it is quite literal fighting. And when you're hungry, you know, when you're, it's like Rocky 4, you know, it's like Rocky 3. He had to hit, hit the Rocky 4 reset button and, and go back to old school and be hungry and cold and tired and all that again to kind of re. Revisit that mentality. And you know, so I think it's, it's mostly that is that, you know, if you grew up your entire life struggling and you work your most of your adult life, you get to your, you know, Middle Ages, 40, 50, 60 years old and now you don't have to worry about money. I mean, there is a certain element of complacency that I think is just going to over time weave itself into your personality a little bit. I think the key is, is identifying, you know, when you start to stop doing the hard things enough to remember what they're like, then, then you have to self regulate and self govern and make sure that you're gut checking yourself often enough to, to take a piece of, piece of humble pie. But you know, back to the, that, that question of purpose and you know, whatever works for certain people. I want to reiterate, like if, you know, finding that should be your pur. Life and if, if you can't find that or you don't know what that is, serve something bigger than you. Until you figure out what that is. If you go your entire Life never finding out what that is, then your purpose was to just always find somewhere where you can help out, you know? Yeah. And I think the. The entire world, and especially this country would be far better off if everybody just took that. That mentality.
- [30:03]
A
Yeah. I think a huge part of that is also it forces you to build relationships. And in today's world, where everyone's their own little cell, no pun intended.
- [30:11]
B
Yeah.
- [30:12]
A
And separated from a lot of people and social skills are down as a result, the post Covid opposite of a boom, whatever you want to call it.
- [30:19]
B
Right.
- [30:19]
A
Happen with people and their personalities, particularly anyone who was a kid. But I would say it certainly applies to adults too, where, you know, we don't interact as much when you get out there. And. And you know, the also selfish part about it is you're doing a nice thing for other people, which makes you feel good. You know, you're doing it with a group. It gives you that exact purpose that you're talking about. I couldn't agree more. And I will say one of the things my parents always really were about giving back and doing things in the community. So I grew up doing it. But one of the things about applying to college that as I was going through it, pissed me off, was the whole box checking part. That would include what kind of community service do you do? Because people would do community service just to do community service. And I remember like when I was in, I guess, sophomore, junior year, where you have to be doing it, I'm like, okay, well what one am I really going to focus on right now? And I was like, all right, let's do the Boys and girls club. I got that in quote unquote, but loved it. And so even after, you know, I was in college, had applied, and everything was all good, I kept doing it.
- [31:30]
B
Yeah.
- [31:30]
A
Because it was like the greatest feeling ever. You were working with these excited, you know, five to nine year old kids every day. It was right around the corner from my high school. They lit up every time you saw them. You got to play. I mean, you like playing with them after school. It's like you, you get to go play too. It's the coolest thing. And I wish more people would have actually treated like that part of their life where you got to check the box as like really going full force into it. Because I got way more out of it than those kids did.
- [31:55]
B
Yeah. Well, so when you say it pissed you off or, you know, frustrated you, whatever. What, what would be your solution to.
- [32:02]
A
To that I should say this. I think it's great that there is an aspect of college that wants to see the people are at least forcing themselves to get involved in the community. But I, I think a lot of, when you talk solutions, I think a lot of it starts at home. I think I was really lucky to have, first of all, two parents at home, which was a huge advantage. My parents had a great, great, have a great marriage, which like, count my lucky stars for that. And secondly, like, what values do they instill? And one of those values I think should be that it should be like we're, first of all, we won the lottery being born in this country. Let's start there. Yeah, you know, so there's a, I think there's a responsibility that comes back with that because also not everyone in this country has the greatest situation. So how can we help pull other people up and not just pull them up, but inspire other people to, you know, make change and, and do great things themselves, which is still possible in this country. I know it's a little harder with the American dream, but it's still possible. And that's not possible in a lot of places.
- [33:04]
B
Yeah, well, and even with that, I mean, you know, to, to say that it's harder, I think it's, there is some, it's relative that can be applied to that and that. I don't know that I would say that it's necessarily harder opportunity wise in this country. I just think it's different, you know, because there were certainly challenges in the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s that we don't have now. You know, whether it's technology helping or, you know, life being easier because there's, you know, standard of living is higher. I mean, there are, there are things that are easier now than there were back then. Even in terms of applying opportunity. I'm certainly not naive to the fact that a 20 year old or a 25 year old right this minute, you know, their ability to buy a home, to have, you know, a, a marriage where the wife stays at home and, and the, you know, the father is the only one working and they have, you know, a nice house and enough money again to, to celebrate Christmas whenever is harder. Now statistically, there's no, no two ways about it, inflation, et cetera, but there's actually more opportunity to do whatever it is that you want. It's just, you have to, to maybe dig a little harder to find it, you know. So to me, I think it's impossible to, to say like, you know, hey, 20, 25, technically or statistically is more difficult for X, Y, and Z than it was in 1950. Like, you can pick any metric and say that it's harder financially X, Y, and Z. On that same token, you can say, well, it's also easier in 2025 to do a, B, and C. You know, so more than anything, I think just looking at, at that kind of principle that, well, it's harder to do this, like, sets you up for failure because you're focusing on the negative. Like, so instead of saying, like, we don't have the same opportunity that our grandparents had, it's like, let's, let's just say that you're right, okay? Like, we can argue about the stats all day long. Let's just say, okay, you know what? You win. You're right. It's harder. What are you going to do about it? Like, what difference does it make that it's harder? Like, the reality is, is it is what it is right now. And you can either focus all of your energy on finding opportunity, making opportunity, creating it, going after it, you know, figuring out a way to, to make enough money to be happy, if that's your thing, or, I mean, whatever it is that you want to do. Like, every ounce of energy and mental bandwidth that you focus on, how much harder it is than your grandpa had it, or, you know, whatever struggle is, or, you know, the Internet's my kids up, or, I mean, again, you can, you can focus on the negative or you can spend that time focusing on the positive, you know, because at the end of the day, like, that's, that's what's going to get you where you want to be.
- [35:49]
A
You gave me this coin.
- [35:51]
B
Amen. And that buckle when.
- [35:52]
A
And that buckle right there. Yeah, you're. You're like owning the headphones. You're an Al Pacino. But you gave me this coin when, When I was down there in September with your mic drop logo on it. But it's got some Marcus aurelius written on it. 1. On one side of the coin, it says, when you rise in the morning, think of what a privilege it is to be alive. And on the other side it says, if it is not right, do not do it. If it is not true, do not say it. Particularly on the first side, though, rising and thinking about what a privilege it is to be alive. I have the meditations out there on. On a board that sits outside my room. And I do read them each morning. And I try to memorize some, but I always gotta. I find myself having to read them again. But. But the very first one on there is that you have the power to control your mind, not outside events. Realize this, and you will find peace. When you combine that with one of the other meditations, which is the one when you rise in the morning, think of what a privilege it is to be alive. You are immediately realizing that we can keep the things in our control that happen up here in our head. And that is literally half the battle right there, because we are living on a beautiful place that we had such a small chance, 1 in 4 trillion chance of even being here in the first place. So it takes all the perspectives of all the things that are happening to us, at least I'm speaking for myself here, that are out of my control and, you know, feel like, you know, it's. It's struggle and stress and whatever. And instead, when I start my day and I read that, I realize I have a lot more good going for me than anything else, even if I'm not where I want to be. And there is something very, very powerful to be said that almost 2,000 years later, the. Particularly the 15 main meditations that Guy Marcus had are as relevant today as they were back then, for sure.
- [37:40]
B
And what I love about meditations and, you know, Epictetus and, I mean, there's. There's a number of philosophers from that era that have such timeless wisdom, which to me tells us that human nature is human nature, you know, 2,000 years later. Plus, we struggle with the same things. We're distracted by the same things. We're motivated by the same things. Our purpose is necessary in all the same ways, you know, and that. That kind of appreciative mentality, I think, highlights exactly what I'm. What I'm trying to highlight in nowhere near as eloquent fashion as he did. But it's just, you know, focus on. On what you have, you know, being or affirming things, being grateful for things. It just sets the tone for. For the day. And to me, it's. You can see reflections of that in. In all aspects of life. You know, something is as simple as, let's say, professional football. You know, if the Eagles fumble, right, and the entire team is sitting there pissed and frustrated because they fumbled the ball, and that's what they're worried about, is how they just fucked that up and not worried about, okay, well, let's make them fumble, or, okay, well, let's get a stop and march down the field and score a touchdown, like, you know, or pick anything. Jiu Jitsu. There's a million examples of where you get in a bad spot like don't focus on being in the bad spot. Focus on getting out of it. You know, pick anything in life where you find yourself at a, at a crossroads of, of being, you know, frustrated, defeated. Something didn't go your way. One of the quotes from, I believe it's from Meditations also is, you know, the way to navigate things. So few things are under your, under your actual control, is that if you find yourself in a bad spot, there's. There's one way to look at it. Do you have control over this thing? If it's yes, act. Do you have control over this thing? No. Let it go. It's that simple.
- [39:33]
A
You know, real quick, Mike, I want you to continue this point. I gotta go tell the construction guys to chill one second. We'll be right back.
- [39:41]
B
Did you dress up for Halloween?
- [39:43]
A
You know, I, I didn't. I usually drip. We're. We're back on air now. Mike was just asking me if I dress up for Halloween. I usually come dressed as Julian Dory when it's costume parties. So I did that the other night. But then my one friend was like, he wanted to shed the bulletproof vest. So technically, I was like an agent of the law at one point. So it was, it was something. It was drunk effort, I guess.
- [40:06]
B
Do people know it's Julian Dory when you show up dressed as him?
- [40:09]
A
You know, it's. Your guess is as good as mine. I'd like to think so, but probably not that. Yeah, they're like, who. Who is that guy?
- [40:15]
B
Who's this guy?
- [40:16]
A
But anyway, you were just riffing on, on some great points there. We were talking about meditation, so I do want to stay on this. When, when did you first read Meditations and, like, find that.
- [40:27]
B
I mean, when I first, I guess, was exposed to it, which sounds kind of naughty. As I mentioned it, I mean, it was back as a. I mean, as a late teens, early 20s. I, I, I guess was made aware of it or, or became conscious of it. Very, very elementary in terms of really digging into it, looking at it. Whatever. What I did find is, you know, spending from 18 to 30 in the military, in the SEAL teams. You know, looking back on it, I mean, at the time, I for sure didn't realize it, but so much of the way most of the men in that realm conduct themselves is very stoic and very meditations. Like, not entirely. I mean, there's certainly some, some elements of, I mean, our society, not just, just the military, that doesn't. But, you know, to, to be in a group of people, especially at that age, surrounded by guys that are, you know, 10, 15, 20 years older than you, that have been all over the world that have, you know, done some pretty dangerous stuff and, and, and you know, have proven themselves day in, day out is such a unique and, and just amazing breeding ground to, to grow up and come into manhood being surrounded by 200 guys like that.
- [41:46]
A
Absolutely.
- [41:48]
B
So, you know, in a, in a roundabout or maybe less formal way, the principles, a lot of the principles of meditations. You know, I kind of grew up under, you know, in that aspect of the military, but then, you know, when I got out at 30, started all the different businesses and for, you know, about a 10 year period, it was pretty singularly focused on just doing that. You know, I wasn't working out as hard. I mean, pretty much everything took the back burn. I mean, I still worked out and, and did some of the things that I enjoyed doing or whatever. I had, you know, young family at the time and that obviously takes a lot of bandwidth. But I, I didn't do a lot of kind of self improvement, you know, from a philosophy standpoint or, you know, meditation standpoint or mental health standpoint. I mean, even, you know, eating habits, physicality. I mean it was kind of just checking the box, doing the bare minimum because I was so overly focused on, on entrepreneurship. And then as that got to a point where I wouldn't say it became easy, but it was kind of over. Starting to get over that crest of difficulty that when you're in those first several years of entrepreneurship, it's just like looking straight up Mount Everest, you know, once you get to where it's like, okay, now I can see the top. Around 40 is when I started to kind of delve further into, you know, philosophy and just I would say, generally speaking, trying to broaden my perspective on the human mind and condition and experience and over the last probably three or four years have gotten way more into it and done a lot more reading in that regard.
- [43:29]
A
But that's interesting that you got really into it after you did all the hard things after I needed to get in successful. Yeah. Like a lot of people, they develop that foundation to try to help them climb Mount Everest. You're like, I already did that, but now I'm interested in it. Let's go.
- [43:46]
B
Yeah, I think again, it, what it does more than anything is really highlights how amazing the SEAL teams and I mean the military generally speaking. But I think the, the harder the job, just like the harder of anything in life, the more impactful it's going to be, especially as a, as a young adult. And you know, so many of the principles are very same, very, very much similar and very paralleled. And so I, I feel like I got an on the job training, 12 year apprenticeship with a lot of that kind of stuff first. And I would credit, you know, pretty much all, all or almost all of the successes I've had in entrepreneurship, you know, are piggybacked off of the lessons I learned, you know, in the military. And I think applied them without realizing I was even applying them.
- [44:33]
A
I know you, when, when you went to war and had do the operations you did, like that's what you trained for. And we talked about that last time. Like it's, there's an exciting aspect to it as well because that's, that's what you live for. Like you work so hard to be able to get to that point where you can put your skills to play. It's very nerve wracking, highest stakes, but it's where you feel like you're belong where you belong. That said, you know, you're in for a long time, you're in all these different theaters when, you know, when, when you would wake up. Some days I gotta imagine you're like, oh shit or we gotta deal with this thing or that thing. Yet if you had that mentality throughout the day, you wouldn't be able to do your job well. So did you have like a way of getting your mindset into, all right, game time, let's go, we're gonna handle business or was it more just kind of falling into line with all the other guys there who had that expectation of themselves?
- [45:25]
B
It was far more the latter. I mean, I will say, you know, credit where it's due, my, my experience in high school and even, you know, my parents, I would say laid a really good foundation for, you know, just kind of putting the work in, not complaining about things, you know, doing what needs to be done. They weren't like super hard asses about it. I think they did a really, I would say, masterful job frankly. And they would never even agree to that if, you know, they, they heard me saying that. But enough support to feel loved and nurtured and supported, but not coddled. You know, like, they did a really good job at kind of walking that fence line of, of doing both, you know, and then, you know, joining the military, especially the SEAL teams at 18 is not particularly common either. It's still, you know, 18 to 25 brain wise, you're, you're still developing and, and so to be in that position and learn and just see guys leading by example. You know, one of my favorite, most favorite quotes, I think, I think it's from Emerson, maybe Thoreau. What you do speak so loud I can't hear what you say. One of my favorite quotes of all time. Yeah. And to me, that like, if I could pinpoint an essence of the SEAL teams, it's that it's like, dude, like, don't tell me how to be a good team guy. Show me how to be one. And that's what they did, you know, like, so as a 18, 20, 22, 25 year old, you see guys in their 30s and 40s that aren't complaining about a single thing, no matter how big of a sandwich they're asked to take a monstrous bite out of. Roger that, we got it. Like, hey boys, this, you know, whatever, this is canceled. We got to do this now. You know, to me, like you're kind of inherently going to adopt that mentality when you're surrounded by it. And these are the guys that, you know, reverence, I don't even think really fully captures the, the feeling that you have towards your instructor cadre in SEAL training. And then the seasoned guys, when you check into a SEAL team, like those guys are like Apollo and Zeus. I mean, like, you just look at them like they're gods, you know, because they conduct themselves in a way that makes you feel that way about them. You know, they don't have to tell you I'm in charge or you're going to respect me. What they do makes you want to do those things. And so just being surrounded by that for over a decade, it's like that, that's, I, I think world's the world's greatest teacher. Which, you know, is one of the reflections I have in the Unfuck America book is that, you know, a lot of people find themselves kind of lost, you know, wondering like I'm one person. You know, voting doesn't seem to matter. Like, what can, what can Joe Schmo me, the, you know, the guy picking up garbage in New York due to, to fix New York City or whatever. It's like, you can start with you. If everybody says, you know what, I'm going to be the example that I want everybody else to be. I'm going to hold myself at least to the same standard that I expect everybody else to hold themselves to like rising tide, raises all boats kind of thing. Is that be that example? I know it's, you know, thrown out there a lot and it's maybe Corny or cliched, but. But it's true, you know, and so I think just by doing the thing, like, don't talk about it, be about it, you know, kind of thing. And. And I learned that day in, day out in the SEAL teams over and over and over.
- [48:42]
A
You ever seen my buddy Tommy G's YouTube channel? He does documentaries on YouTube. All right. You gotta look at that. He's awesome. He does all kinds of different stories, covers it around the country, and is focusing on doing some stuff around the world now, too, which is really cool. But he's one of my really close friends, and he's got this amazing quote where he's like, I can't boil the ocean, but I can boil my pot.
- [49:07]
B
Yeah.
- [49:08]
A
And that's. To me, what you just said is exactly that. It's like, control the things that are around you, Leave the world that is around you a better place than. Than how you found it. And then if you can lead by example, maybe enough people do the same. And it's just a math game at that point, for sure, you know?
- [49:23]
B
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's. It's viral in a sense, that way, you know. Is it. I mean, you see it in neighborhoods, right? Whether it's like something as. As dumb or as simple as, like, HOA things, you know, or just subcultures within a housing development, you know, it's like, well, I see so and so taking his trash back up, you know, right away. So everybody else did it. Well, I guess I'm going to do it. Yeah. The shopping cart at Target's like everybody else is doing. And I'm not going to be the one turd in the punch bowl that leaves, you know, know, there's still people that are going to do that, you know, but the more people that set that example, like, yeah, you know, people see that and it's like, hey, this guy's doing the right thing, even though he doesn't need to. I should probably do that same thing. I think most people have. Have an inherent kind of human nature aspect to, you know, when they see things that they can clearly identify, like, hey, this is the right thing to do. I'm going to do it, you know, And I think, yeah, just. I love that quote. I mean, because I think it more simply encapsulates, you know, be the example. It's. It's a more tangible way to kind of get your arms around it.
- [50:27]
A
And.
- [50:28]
B
Yeah, I agree. 100.
- [50:30]
A
Do you think most people are inherently good?
- [50:32]
B
I do. I really do. I mean, I. But There, there is a caveat, though, in that. And it's hard to kind of dissect because I think, you know, kids, as a parent, you know, you see kids when they become, you know, three, four, five years old, there's this very fascinating look into, into human psychology because it's far more genetic at that point than it is a learned behavior. Not entirely, because even at 18 months, like, they're absorbing things that the parents do and don't do and how, how you talk to each other and, you know, kids seeing their parents doing the right thing versus not or whatever is certainly going to influence that. That. But there is, you know, a window into that kind of selfish human psychological component with toys, with food, with, you know, Narcan their siblings out or, you know, blaming somebody else, me, whatever that. I think, you know, if it's, if it's allowed to just run away, it. It can, you know, so where it becomes kind of a chicken or the egg thing is, you know, even at a super young age, how much influence are they getting from their parents? I think it's more than most people realize, but they're. There's still an inherited genetic component to it. But on the same token, it's like, well, human nature, generally speaking, I think is mostly good. You know, there's plenty of bad people. But where would that come from if it wasn't hardwired? You know, like what, what would. What would have started initially with the first civilizations on the planet, you know, passing that on for millennia to where most people live by a certain code. Even if you want to say, hey, it's a religious thing, okay, but that still came from somewhere. If you're religious and you say God handed that down. Well, according to the Bible, we're all children of God, made in his image. So that would explain that if, if you subscribe to, to faith from a, A Judeo Christian standpoint, even if you don't like, well, where did that come from? You know, it came from somewhere. I saw a really, really interesting interview. I think it was with Ben Shapiro on Bill Maher. And you know, because. Because Bill is very atheistic, you know, Ben Shapiro is obviously a very staunch believer in Judaism. And, you know, Bill was talking about, like, I don't need religion to tell me how to be a good person, you know, and I, I'm not even going to try to, to quote, it's, you know, summarizing, paraphrasing what have you. But, you know, Ben was basically like, well, you were kind of born on third base, so Stop taking credit for being a good guy when like our entire society for hundreds of years has been shaped, influenced and, and directed by large influences of Christianity and Judaism. You can argue, you know, religion till you're blue in the face, but the fact is, is that those principles come from somewhere, right? There's, there's really no element of that that you see in the animal kingdom with very, very rare exceptions. We've all seen the viral tiktoks of, you know, the bear helping the deer or whatever. But those are anomaly outliers like the AI ones. Well, maybe, maybe they're not you gotta watch these days. Maybe I'm the old guy that doesn't know he's being duped. But, but there are, I mean there, there are some, some examples even, you know, prior to AI, where there's things in the animal kingdom that are a little counterintuitive to survival or kind of genetic and ingrained behavior. Human beings are a very unique part of the planet in that way. And so again, like, this isn't about religion is right or it's wrong or not. It's the fact is, is that you can look at human beings as a species on planet Earth in 2025 and pretty clearly identify, irrespective of region, of religion, of cultural influences, that there are a lot of things that are generally accepted as okay and not okay. Of course, there's wide variance, country to country or society, society. But there's still a core belief in certain things. Murder is wrong, stealing is wrong, you know, like those transcend all of those things. And so I think the question is, where do those come from? You know, and you know, so to me, coming full circle, the long tail on the kite of your question is, are they inherently good? I think so, to a certain extent. You know, I think it has to be there or you wouldn't see you know, such a heavy reliance on, on living a certain way.
- [55:03]
A
At this point, the religion point is really interesting because I think there's a, even potentially another layer to that. Like if you look just for example, let's say the Ten Commandments and read those, they make a lot of sense. It's like that seems like this is a good way to treat the world around you and the people in it. And that obviously subscribes to a couple different organized religions there. Christianity, Judaism. But let's live in a world, for example, where we found out, you know, we die and we find out every organized religion is wrong. The story actually wasn't exactly quite what it said. Some other, whatever the hell is going on up here? It's something else that said, even if that were the case, the ancient teachings found within some of these organized religions, beyond the stories they use to frame it, actually speak to our literal human nature in a lot of ways. So if you build society with some of those good principles, regardless of the truth or falsity of the story, not mine to judge. I think that that is an incredible actual aspect of the influence of religion. I'm always talking about the things that are negative about organized religion, things that happen around the world, and obviously that needs to be discussed. But I think it's important to also give light to what you're saying, which is where it can actually be a long term, like, cultural positive. And I don't know if I ever really thought about it in that light, but you just made me think of that.
- [56:37]
B
Yeah, I mean, it's got to come from somewhere, right? I mean, because even if you predate Abraham, you know, is that, you know, society still operated on a certain level of code.
- [56:49]
A
Right.
- [56:50]
B
You know, and that doesn't just come from nowhere, you know, or it has to be explained somehow because it's not possessed anywhere else on the planet by any other species. So I, I think, you know, it's, it's, it would be very difficult and, and by all means, like, if somebody can say, hey, like, if I'm wrong, I'm happy to change my opinion. It's like prove, prove me wrong. You know, the, the Charlie Kirk thing, you know, it's like, where did it come from then? Like, if you can, you know, legitimately explain and show some sort of ability to prove that it, that it, you know, was influenced by something or came from somewhere, you know, I'm happy to say, yeah, that makes sense, and I'll believe that. But, you know, again, it's almost kind of if you can't say where it came from or whatever, it's hard to argue that it's not human nature. Again, whether it's influenced by God handing a set of rules down or not is the. That we abide by them overwhelmingly. So I think that's the proof by itself.
- [57:55]
A
Throughout your Navy SEAL career, you at different points fought against literal terrorists. So I think it's fair to say you and I can both agree that they were evil people. Right?
- [58:08]
B
Yeah.
- [58:12]
A
I'm always careful how I ask this because I don't want this to be twisted, but, but did you ever find yourself thinking, you know, after eliminating some of these guys or even before you go to do it, did you ever find yourself thinking, thinking, yes, these people are evil, but man, I wonder how they got that way. And what, you know, they were a kid once who maybe wasn't evil, wasn't born evil. They were born into an environment they didn't choose and a lot of things happened to them and maybe some of those things were avoidable. Did, did you ever think about that?
- [58:46]
B
Absolutely, yeah. And, and still do to this day, I would say more so now than I did when I was actually on active duty. Because there's, there is a certain kind of simple principle when you're, when you're in the thick of it that I think prevents you from introspection or, or even just thinking about it from that standpoint or, or frankly any standpoint other than I'm trying to get me and all these guys that I'm here with and know, love and trust home, you know, and so it's pretty singularly focused on, hey, this is the mission that we were, we were handed. There are times even where, you know, we may say, hey, does this make sense? Does this seem like the right thing to do? And, you know, one of the amazing things I think about special operations, or at least my experience with it, and I know there's been other guys that I never worked with that had similar ones as well, is, is having kind of the free thinking autonomy to question what we're doing, how we're doing it. You know, does this make sense? Is, is it, is it worth doing? You know, and being able to have those discussions with our leadership at a pretty high level and in an organic way where they would actually sit there and listen to you, doesn't mean that we wouldn't end up, end up going and doing it anyway, necessarily, but sometimes we wouldn't. You know, there were certainly times where, where we would bring concerns up the chain of command and it would either shift what we did, shift how we did it, or make us not do it entirely. I would say more, more times we would end up going and doing it anyway than not. But being able to voice those concerns I think is important and healthy and valuable. But there's also an element of, hey, you volunteered to do a job. Your country said, this is the job you're going to do, now it's time for you to go do it. That has to kind of be the backbone of, of military service for it to work. You know, so what I find interesting about your question, and, and I would even kind of expand on it is, or I would say, not only did I find myself Thinking, you know, how did this person get here? But also what role did, are we actually actively playing in creating this problem? That's something I found myself thinking of both while we're doing it and also even more so well after the fact.
- [61:08]
A
So like this morning when you were having a moment of silence for Dick Cheney, you were thinking about that?
- [61:12]
B
I didn't. But yeah, I, I mean, I don't hate the guy, certainly don't, don't love.
- [61:18]
A
The guy that makes one of us.
- [61:19]
B
Yeah, I, I will say, I mean, I don't like the guy, you know, and, and it would be impossible and disingenuous to argue some of the, the positive things I've seen, you know, written about him today. I think he was, it would be easy to argue the point that he was the, the largest orchestrator of a lot of the things that I think were mistakes during the entire eight year Bush presidency. But irrespective of that, you know, when I look back at Iraq as an example and about 17, 18 years of Afghanistan, I think a lot of it was a mistake. I think Iraq was an entire mistake. You know, and it's easy for me to, to arrive at that conclusion where I'm at in my life now. And I don't say that to, you know, take away any of the, the nobleness with which a number of our countrymen gave their lives to support that cause. Because again, I think, you know, anybody that says, hey, I'm gonna, you know, dedicate and, and give up to, and including my life for this country, like that's a noble cause no matter what our government, you know, does or, or says or what they send them to do, what, what have you, is that I think it's a, a very noble thing for somebody to say. I'm, I'm willing to sacrifice that on behalf of, of our country. But what it also further highlights is the importance of putting the people in office who are going to take that responsibility serious enough to not make mistakes. You know, nobody's perfect. But you know, to me, you know, sending American troops overseas should be an absolute last ditch effort where everything else has failed and, and if we don't do it, but there's an existential threat on, yes, on the way of life here in the United States. And I cannot see an argument that's realistically made in Iraq for that. I would also argue that, or point out rather, you know, that if you look at the region as a whole and you go back to 2003 before we went into Iraq, and where it's at now. I don't know how you could possibly argue that, that that region is better off now than it was before we went there. You know, as much of a bastard as Saddam was, he kept Iran busy enough to where they weren't supplying Hezbollah and Hamas. I don't think you would see the Israel, Gaza, Palestine mess that you see now if, if Iraq hadn't kept Iran busy by being its neighbor and the threat of going to war again like they did in the early 80s and how catastrophic that was for both countries, if that wasn't a threat that I don't think you'd see near the same level of emboldenment that, that you've seen out of that regime for two decades.
- [64:27]
A
Yeah, I agree with you, and I think I agree with you on all of it. And I want to come back to something with like, soldiers who are training for war. But before we go there, just stay on the point you were just making. You know, I look at a place like Iran, I look at the things they fund, I look at the things that their leadership stands for. I look at the fact that 8 or 9 out of 10 Iranians righteously so stands against, you know, supporting the regime. They don't like it. And I, I think it's wrong. And I think the world would be a better place if those guys weren't in charge. But I also recognize that sometimes, as hard as it is, especially when you're dealing with a country that doesn't exactly have a top three gdp, if you know what I mean, you know, you have to let the people within that country handle their business. Agreed. And, and you know, that does suck. I'm not going to sit here and say I love that, but the repercussions of putting a hundred thousand soldiers on the ground and calling in, you know, NATO forces or something like that to start some war in the middle of a region that has a lot of oil and a lot of cultures from, let's say, a collegiate faction who aren't going to like that. You know, if we haven't learned that lesson from Iraq. I almost can't help people at this point. I'm like, you know what, what else do you need to see? Because it's also extremely important what you said. The guys who are over there fighting it, you guys are told to go over there and do it. It's not your call. You know, it's a bunch of suits in DC doing that. So you better hope the guys in DC actually know what the they're doing. And the Last time around they didn't and I would hope enough of them learn that lesson. But sometimes I really do worry about that.
- [66:07]
B
Same here. And I think, you know, one of the biggest problems or elements that makes those mistakes continue to repeat themselves.
- [66:18]
A
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- [66:56]
B
Or the incestuous relationship between higher up military officials, big government contracting companies and the, The Boeings and McDonnell Douglases and Raytheons and Halliburtons and you know, that whole, you know, you throw lobbying in and, and you know, interests where people who are saying, hey, if we go to war with Country X, my net worth is going to skyrocket by 20 fold in six months. Like if that's not a conflict of interest and negatively influencing decision making at the highest level possible, I don't know what is. Because you see it over and over and over. Dick Cheney being as good of an example of that as possible is that, you know, it's, you know, you can give the correlation doesn't equal causation. But I think you can just as easily say like you can't ignore the fact that you know, Dick Cheney's net worth did what it did from going into Iraq to 10 years after the fact and not say that's at least worth looking at. You know, and to question that is not un American. You know, I would say it's the opposite. To not question it is un American, that should be the basis of all of our concerns are that, you know, the beauty of the Constitution is that that is America's bible that you should base your entire decision making process off of. And why there isn't a more staunch constitutionalist approach in policy making and especially in foreign policy decision making is beyond me. I'm baffled at, at why we don't just look to that document more than we do other than there's money involved.
- [68:47]
A
That's what always comes back to is the money. Now you have friends that they served with or that you know, from the Military and the communities who, plenty of friends who didn't do this, but then certainly friends who took jobs and I'm not excoriating this, but took jobs at Lockheed Martin or north of Grumman and some of these other places. You know, I, when people look at like the evil of some of that stuff, I tend to think, you know, it's more, there's always a handful of individuals who probably are evil there and then a lot of people who are there. It's more the conformity of the group. Think of the organization trying to get their quarterly report done and that leads to bad outcomes. But have you had discussions, you know, offline with some of your friends who work in some of these places and you know, maybe make money off of wars like Ukraine or you know, funding wars in the Middle east about that conflict of interest? And if so, you know, what, what are those conversations?
- [69:44]
B
Like, I don't know anybody on a personal enough level to where I feel like if I had that conversation with me, one, they would level with me. Two, if they didn't, I'd be able to sniff it out that are in positions to legitimately benefit like what we're talking about. Like, I don't know people, like, I know people who, who have gone and worked for the Booz Allens, the Haliburtons, the Raytheons, etc, but nowhere near at that kind of level. You know, to me you would need to sit down with, you know, somebody who's been, you know, a three or four star for a while in frankly any branch of the military, has spent time at the Pentagon, has spent time, you know and knows Joint Chiefs of Staff and, and that kind of level of, excuse me, connection and, and power, again, well enough to know and trust the conversation you're having with them. Because again, just nobody I know has ever been at that level. To me, the, the tricky part is I understand the benefit of having people who have spent 30 or 40 years in the military at the highest levels advising and even sitting on boards at companies who are making products for the US Military because that, that's an easy thing to understand. Why that's beneficial is that if private sector companies are creating products and technology for the warfighter, of course you want war fighters who have spent their entire adult lives there to be able to help advise them. So it is kind of a tricky, how do you audit that or, or keep it honest and make it to where it's not now influenced by, hey, if you come on the board of Raytheon and you know, if you can talk with, you know, the sec, Def. Sec. War, the Joint Chief, whatever, and, and get this thing to pop off and, you know, you're sitting on 20, 000 shares of our company and we'll give you a 10, 000 share bonus if you, you know, get this thing to, to be passed or this allocation of funding for, you know, the new F. F40 fighter project. I mean, whatever. Like, I don't know how you circumvent that or how you kind of clean house in that way, because there, there is a necessity for us to be a, an effective, war fighting, capable country, to lean on the experience of military commanders and people with that experience. So that's a tough fix. I, I wish I had an answer and I don't know what the right answer is.
- [72:18]
A
Yeah. Is it even realistic to say, you know, the thing we all think of which is like, oh, just get the money out of politics. Like, is that even.
- [72:27]
B
I think it's possible or it's relatively possible or mostly possible maybe. You know, I think we actually talked about this a little bit the last time I was on, but I think, you know, we're, we're where and when you can have super PACs and large sums of money being infused into political campaigns. There's no way. It's not going to be corrupt, you know, because the bigger the donor, the bigger the ask. I mean, plain and simple. And, and when it takes, you know, upwards of a billion dollars to become president, there's no way to, to not have a candidate who, once they get into that position is beholden. Even with a guy like Trump, you know, he certainly didn't use all of his own money. And there's also, you know, even more money for him and his entire family to be made, you know, by continuing to, to do some of the things, I mean, you're seeing some of it with crypto of, you know, pardoning people that he doesn't, you know, I don't know if you saw this. I saw this clip just yesterday or maybe the day before where I think.
- [73:35]
A
The guy is cz.
- [73:37]
B
Cz, you know, gets, gets pardoned. And a reporter asked Trump like, what's the deal with pardoning cz? He's like, who. He's like, I don't even know who the guy is. It's like, dude, like, that's not great, help me out here. Yeah, like, you can't say that you pardon somebody and you don't know who they are.
- [73:52]
A
Like, at least I'll give him this. At least he's honest about it. Holy. I mean, my God.
- [73:57]
B
I mean to me, like they're both equally unacceptable.
- [73:59]
A
Yeah. It's not great.
- [74:00]
B
If you truly don't know who he is, then you shouldn't be pardoning him. If you do know who he is and you don't want the optics of, of pardoning him and what that looks like, you can't lie about it, you know, like they're both equally terrible. You know, I can't believe that's.
- [74:16]
A
That is real.
- [74:16]
B
Yeah.
- [74:17]
A
He says he has no idea, no.
- [74:18]
B
Idea who that is. It's like, okay, well then given Biden a ration of for auto penning people, like, that's really no different. If you're pardoning people that you have no idea who they are, like, help me understand that then.
- [74:32]
A
Yep.
- [74:33]
B
You know, and to me, like, you've, you've got to hold everybody to that level of accountability, including the people you voted for, including the people who you're a fan of of. You know, you can't give passes to the guy that's on your team when he does something that the guy on. When the other side does, you lose your mind and throw a fit about it. So like, seeing stuff like that doesn't give me a lot of hope. Back to your question on the, you know, finance and money and politics. I mean, one of the things that I talked about was using kind of the, the grand jury method of selecting politicians because then there's no money in that. Right. Is that if you're sending out a census style survey to every region and says, hey, you know, in this county, in this region, you know, however, you know, the districts are broken down is that, let's say District A, everybody who's been a resident for 10 years, you know, is up to date on their taxes, not a felon. You know, there's a handful of kind of boxes that need to be checked that says, hey, like this guy is, is on paper at least mostly or largely trustworthy, who do you think should be your congressman? You know, and then whoever gets voted into that wins, you know, and just like with jury duty, like you have to submit it, I think that that's a good way to start. Now that's of course not going to work for, for president. But to me, the, the, if you want to call it the beauty. I think the, the important aspect of doing it that way with the House of Representatives, Congress Congressmen and women in particular is that that is the, the primary check and balance or gatekeeper of the entire three branches of government. In terms of policy decision making, funding, you know, legislation being passed, veto power, you know, raising and lowering debt ceilings. I mean, there, there are so many things that have to go through that branch of, of government that if you have people who in most cases don't even want to be there, but enough people in their district say, this is the guy I want representing us again, then, then he doesn't owe anybody anything. It's not something he sought out to do. And when he's in that position, you know, his moral, his character, the way he conducts himself, his reputation amongst his community is, is at the highest level of anybody in that community. Like, what better person to represent that community than somebody like that? And so if you don't have people who, you know, want to do it in the first place, and then once they get in there three weeks later, their only objective is to now stay in power and get reelected. And you know, I mean to me, like, you're never going to have an honest system when that's the reality of 97 of all Congressmen and women that get elected. So, so I'm not saying it's a perfect fix, but I think, you know, shy of a full blown revolution, which I don't want. Right. I think that that's a good way to, to start and, and buy that, then you can, you know, term limits aren't nearly the problem that they are now. I think you could make it a single source. You know, from a funding standpoint, any type of foreign aid is a standalone bill, right. And it has to be voted on and approved one at a time. And I don't like, to me it's like, well, that's too big of a pain in the ass. You have to wrap it into all these other bills. No, like it's your fucking job. And if you're going to give our money away from a taxpayer standpoint to, to other countries, you should have to answer for that. You know, you should have to, to be able to be called to the carpet and stand in front of the people who nominated you to be in that position and answer why you gave $40 billion to Ukraine this quarter. Yes, I think that, you know, to, to pick one thing to focus on that's going to give you the most bang for your buck that I think, you know, while not easy or without its hurdles, the, the most doable from, in, from in terms of actually implementing it into our government process. To me that seems like the most doable because then that can keep the Senate, the executive branch, and in some cases Even the judicial branch, if they have to be nominated through that, you know, but the accountability piece just isn't there, and I don't know of another way to. To implement it without doing something as drastic as. As something like that.
- [79:03]
A
Yeah, and I love that idea, too. But, you know, you're also raising the point. It's like you have. You have to call things both ways. And there were obviously a lot of things in the last administration to be incredibly disappointed in, whether it was censorship of things or. Or taking powers that the government's not supposed to take, or prosecuting political enemies. I think when you start to do those same things out of spite, you know, in this case, now the opposite side got in. You're giving them exactly what they want, the people you hated, because now they have the narrative to be like, look at this. And, you know, they can go do protests, like the no kings protest or whatever, which, you know, protests seem to be very cringe in the modern age, but, like, they can point to a couple things, and even if they're taking some of it out of context, it's like there's enough things that they can say, hey, see, we told you they were going to do this, this and that, and they did.
- [79:59]
B
Yeah. I mean, to me, the no kings thing to me seems a little silly. And that, you know, the fact that it can take place, I think, kind of disproves the. The tyranny approach. Yeah. You know, but I mean, that is what it is. But, you know, to me, the. The precedence being set that we're talking about in terms of, you know, going after political opponents with, if you want to call it, you know, lawfare I think, is the term I've heard used. I agree. I mean, you did see that, you know, in the Biden administration on a number of cases, and then now you're. You're seeing some of those same examples. And the bitch of it is, on the left, it's the, see, we told you so on the right, it's, well, they did it Right. It's like that doesn't just set a precedence by doing the thing that you were bitching about four years ago, it solidified, modifies it, and now that becomes the norm, you know, and so now you can probably just expect that every new administration is going to go after the previous one, and that is a horrible place for our society to be in. Yeah. I don't understand the unforced errors. It's one thing to make mistakes, it's another thing you know, to do dumb shit that you just end up tripping over your own dick on and making the problem worse. And I do see a number of examples of that happening. I mean, it's frustrating. There's no two ways about it.
- [81:27]
A
It's a strange place to be because on the one hand you want to be able to say things where it's actually relevant and true of like no one's above the law. But as much as you want to stick it to someone or get an individual that you think is, is doing things that are wrong, I think the bigger question here is how do we keep not the system in place. The system has a lot of problems, but how do we keep like American principles in place? And I don't want to be on in a tough slippery slope here, but once in a while that does mean that maybe someone who probably should get some justice. This doesn't because it's better for the whole. It's not to say like, oh, you know, they're bigger than the system themselves and they prove the point that you can do it. No, it's more like, let's not suddenly have something like what you said, setting in every administration lawfare precedent where people, including people who, whether you like them or not, probably shouldn't be prosecuted, are getting prosecuted.
- [82:33]
B
Yeah, I think, you know, a fairly recent and clear cut example of that is that Leticia James, you know, I think that that's a good example of what, what she did, I think is, is very clearly wrong now to go after her for something like mortgage fraud after the fact in that way I think is, I'm not going to say it's as wrong or not. It doesn't even matter. Like, I also think that it's just dumb because it does solidify that, that precedence. You know, to me I could understand saying, hey, if you run on a campaign where you're saying I'm going to go after the President and then you do and there's trumped up charges and whether you think they're trumped up or not or whatever, to me it's, it's pretty obvious there was a very clear cut political angle to, you know, what she did when she was in office. But there's also just as clearly identified political angle of going after her now the way that, that, that's being done. I don't like the, the lady, I think she's, you know, a terrible example for that position of authority and, and should be disbarred from that. But to me that would solve it. You know, it's like, hey, what you did was wrong. So you can't do that anymore. Not okay, let's use the law against her and try to put her in prison over it. And yeah, you know, it, it, I think the most frustrating part for me is that, you know, it seems so incredibly childish what you see within the entire House of Representatives. I mean really all three judicial branch or all three executive. Jesus, I'm gonna it up twice. All three branches of government is that you have people acting like they're five years old on a playground arguing over dumb. That ultimately is making the country weaker. I mean the shutdown being in what, it's fifth or sixth week at this point. You know how long the Constitution took to draft.
- [84:34]
A
A while. Right.
- [84:36]
B
I'm going to take that as a no.
- [84:38]
A
Yeah, that's four months. It's definitely a no, but four.
- [84:40]
B
It took four months. If you think about that. Right. Our government for rapidly approaching half that amount of time can't even get the, the government back to being not shut down. Wait, that only took. Took four, four months?
- [84:57]
A
I thought it was longer.
- [84:58]
B
Yeah, I mean I think most people would assume it took way longer than.
- [85:01]
A
Yeah, I thought it was a couple of years.
- [85:02]
B
If you think about the scope, the brilliance, the authority that that document has had for as long as it's had and how well it's worked, how quickly they were able to draft that, agree on it enough to approve it and declare it. I mean, to me it's embarrassing that our government is in a position now where something like, like health care is keeping the government from being able to even function properly. I mean, it's pathetic.
- [85:30]
A
Or a bill to your point, that's over one thing has 80 poison pills over totally separate things plugged into it at 12 o' clock when the votes at 1 o'.
- [85:41]
B
Clock. Yeah. And half the guys don't show up to even vote.
- [85:43]
A
Yep. Yeah. No, I, I, you know, I studied the shit out of the Revolutionary War. I love that stuff. And it's actually crazy. You look at this skyline right here. They were, this was one of the ground zeros of, of fighting that thing and, and all the history there that happened. But you know, those guys were so ahead of their time and had elephant balls.
- [86:05]
B
Yeah.
- [86:06]
A
To do what they did. But to, you know, I do try to think about what would they if, if you just took 10 to 20 of like the main leaders of that revolution and brought them to today and took them on a bus down to Washington D.C. and just let them walk, walk outside for two hours. What they would think? I think they'd throw up. I think they'd be like, this is everything that we did not set this up to be. And you've taken the freedoms that we allowed for the government to be able to make decisions that, where the people are represented to be used in bastardized ways so that the people can think they're represented and really just have a bunch of other things that they didn't vote for, be voted on and go through.
- [86:54]
B
Yeah, to me, the, the, one of the most fascinating things about that group of people is they were like your age or younger. I think that there's parts of it that they would be amazed by in terms of how far it's come. Kind of, I would say utilitarian wise, like the, the different aspects of how much the government has grown. And then they would quickly become violently ill. Seeing that at where it's gone, you know, it reminds me of like the dad conversation. I'm not mad, I'm disappointed. You know, I think that's what you get from him.
- [87:31]
A
That's probably what Ben Franklin would say.
- [87:33]
B
I think so. You know. Yeah. I mean, to me, the, the most important thing about that group of people, at least, you know, looking back at them, obviously none of us know any of them, but, but the results speak for themselves is that, you know, it wasn't any less messy then. Like they argued, disagreed, fought, insulted each other just as much as, as takes place today. But the big thing that they did very differently again in this isn't up for debate. I mean, you can see the historical record of. They figured out ways to compromise and, and get down the road and, and move on and, and we don't seem to do that. And you know, it's like they were, they were mature enough to be able to see the forest for the trees and, and move on and figure out how to negotiate in a way where it's a net positive impact on, on society generally speaking.
- [88:29]
A
I think part of the problem today, and it's not the whole problem, but it's a piece of it, is that politicians are so beholden to people behind keyboards at all times, meaning if they do the right thing, and by right thing, I mean compromise on something that's bigger, better for the bigger picture. They get excoriated online, including by people who aren't real sometimes, you know, campaigns that are run against them to, you know, try to remove them from power or whatever, such that they always cower to the madness of the crowds. It's where democracy actually works against itself and what it's supposed to Be, and that's one thing I'm not saying those guys back then didn't have to deal with that, but they didn't deal with it anywhere near the scale or instantaneous scale that, that we deal with it today.
- [89:17]
B
No. And especially from a foreign influence standpoint, you know, if you think about even just 30 years ago, for any state actor to actively engage in and influence any policy in the United States was incredibly difficult from a propaganda standpoint. Right. Because at that time, let's say 1990 or even 2000, really, you know, for any other country to express an opinion, to influence a generation, you had to either be on the news, in some sort of publication, whether it's a book, a magazine, a newspaper etc, or on the radio. That's not very easy to do, you know, when there's editorial gatekeeping and you know, human beings in a place of being able to look at this and say, who is this? Where is this from? No, we're not, we're not publishing that. None of that is the case anymore. You know, and so now you can have, you know, bot farms of, of thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, potentially millions of fake accounts that don't seem fake, you know, that are blasting propaganda just non stop. And you combine that with, you know, now two generations, millennials and Gen Z of kids who have grown up where the majority of their political and governmental influence comes from their phone.
- [90:42]
A
Yes.
- [90:42]
B
You know, or from social media. So the entire planet in a very nefarious way has direct access to every single American citizen all of the time. You know, that's never been the case ever before. Now it works both ways. I mean, we have access to, to them also even in places like North Korea or Iran where.
- [91:02]
A
Oh yeah, we do it too.
- [91:03]
B
Yeah. You know, but I, I think, you know, that's why you see such, such, such a breeding ground for fanatical, you know, type of positions and you know, distrust. And then it feeds into the government machine that exists now. Where I think, to your point, you know, when you have sitting congressmen who are more worried about how their TikTok reel is doing, you know, and how many followers they have on Instagram or X, you know, it turns into a very rock starish so, you know, a list celebrity type of mentality, you know, where it's like they're, it's like, don't, don't forget you work for us. Right. It's not the other way around. Like you don't tell us how things are going to be. We're supposed to Tell you. And, you know, it seems like most of them get in this position where now they have this big following and everything they post, they're. They're watching and how people are reacting. And are those people even real? And, you know, so you have. Have this very skewed perception of reality on. On both ends of the spectrum.
- [92:04]
A
I think you're giving it too much credit. I think. Forget like, you know, Hollywood actors and whatever. I think it's below that. I think it's like high school.
- [92:11]
B
Yeah.
- [92:12]
A
I think it's like a high school popularity contest with these people. And you're 1,000% right. They're worried about the things that are just going to keep them in power.
- [92:19]
B
Yeah.
- [92:20]
A
You know, and, yeah, it's a separate conversation. We don't need to go into it. But an obvious point, seeing as your system that's preferred is not set up right now, is that the people who are in there sometimes are in there forever. There's no term limit. They're fucking dying. Literally dying of Alzheimer's on the floor.
- [92:34]
B
Yeah.
- [92:35]
A
You know, and yet representing the people just because they're that politically entrenched, it's. It's crazy. And, you know, I don't. You talk about the influence and the ability for that to happen more than ever these days. Of course, you're correct. I don't think there's a funnier or really sadder example, though, of when you talk to people who are either very pro Israel or very anti Israel. Who are. Who Both will tell you to your face that their side doesn't have an aspect of that.
- [93:03]
B
Yeah.
- [93:03]
A
I'm like, are you kidding me? Every one of you has 11,000 likes one minute into a tweet. Yeah, I know that's not real. I know that both sides of these issues are propagandizing. I'm not making a commentary on who's right and who's wrong here. I'm just saying in general, that's the world. World we're living in. Click, click. Money. Money. View. View. Yeah, and it's sad.
- [93:23]
B
Well, yeah. And it's compounded by, you know, the joke he made about my lion rescuing the deer? Is that. How much of that is even real? Because I've had. I'm sure you have to. I've had very pro Israel folks on the show and very pro Palestinian folks on the show. And. And when there's this just incessant, you know, this is a fact, this is a fact. This is a fact, this is a fact. It's like, wait a minute. You know, like, can we try to real time fact check some of this stuff? You know, and it's like, it gets to the point where it, it's like I don't know who to believe. You know, so many of the things that are being said, you know, have been proven to be false and there's examples on both sides of that. And so very quickly it's like I'm not sure that I believe anything. Like I don't know what to believe. And now like I can't even believe my own eyes or ears. Because technology has gotten to the point where it makes it impossible to discern something's, whether something is actually real or not, you know, which, which to me I think kind of puts the nail in the coffin as far as the, the technology and propaganda influences that you almost have to just kind of tune it out entirely and, and then it defeats the whole purpose of even having that as a, as a technological capability, you know, But I've, I've found myself doing that where it's like I rarely watch, you know, news or, or follow accounts where, you know, there's very clear cut slanted agendas being pushed on it and, and you know, I find myself just kind of ignoring all of it because I, I don't even know what to believe anymore.
- [94:58]
A
It actually goes back to another meditation of Marcus Aurelius, ironically, where he's like, what's, what one person sees is not the truth. It's a perspective.
- [95:06]
B
Yeah.
- [95:07]
A
You know, you can take the, you can take the image and go like this and see something, but if you could go like this, you see something entirely different. And I try to remind myself that all the time, but it gets hard because to your point, the, the war that we saw in Gaza and the war that we're still seeing in Ukraine are, I, I would have in the past actually I think been wrong to call them the first like iPhone wars, which on a major scale they are, are. The better way to put it though, unfortunately is they're the first wars that of, of a distortion of reality because you do have an aspect of misinfo videos that include AI or straight up acting and propaganda and that goes for every side on, on both of these issues on, on both of those wars. And it, it makes it really depressing because I do my best here just like you do to have the different size represented and everyone makes their case and let everyone else out there decide it for themselves. Once in a while my opinions come in as well. But like people want these answers to be perfectly Black or white, and they're just not. Yeah, you know, you can sit here. I would actually argue in both of those wars, you look at the leadership on both sides who are different. Right. There's not really a lot of good right now. There are not a lot of good men in those positions. I would argue probably none. And so you may have a situation like, oh, you don't like that Russia attacked Ukraine. Hey, I agree with you. There may also be some, some diplomatic decisions that were made on the build up to that that weren't right. That, that also forced a little bit of that. Say what you want about Putin, I certainly don't like him. Them. But then that also doesn't mean that like, that means the leadership in Ukraine is like the second coming of Jesus. I got news for you. They're not. You know, but people, it like melts their brain if, if you bring nuance into it and talk to someone who has an opinion in either direction on any of those matters. And that, that makes me really sad because, you know, it ends up being these Twitter finger wars with, you know, bots saying 33,000 likes, 104,000 likes, whatever this number of comments. And while we're counting all those likes and comments, 10 people are dying, 20 people are dying, someone's son is gone. You know what I mean? And it's just like, it feels like we're, we're totally desensitized to it.
- [97:43]
B
I agree. 100. I, I do think it's important to point out that I think the, the history of, of warfare and, and how it's covered, how, how that story is told from a historical, and even when it's happening, a current event standpoint has always been slanted.
- [98:04]
A
Yes.
- [98:05]
B
You know, you look at state run media, which was largely, largely the case in every country up until around Vietnam, I would say Vietnam, I think was at least, it seems like kind of the first test bed for real time war correspondence. What do you got?
- [98:25]
A
Got Cronkite up there?
- [98:26]
B
Oh, yeah, yeah. You know, you, you were seeing footage that's relevant. You know, you go back to Korea, World War II, everything prior to that and, and especially World War I and before its newspapers, you know, so it's, it's so incredibly delayed that, you know, every country has an ability to tell the exact story that they want told. So it's not that it's necessarily any different. To me, it's a scale issue. You know, it's a scale and reach issue, is that now you have individuals who can do it and basically Every individual, you know, and so I think when you couple that with Western societies who largely lack struggle, like we were talking about at the very start, and they need something to get behind, it makes it even easier for them to be manipulated into saying, this is my cause, this is my, my, my thing. This is what I want to get behind. This is what I'm passionate about. And so it's just by orders of magnitude, it's, it's highlighting and kind of putting that here's the, the agenda or the slant on the story that we want told. It's, it's magnifying it and just blowing it completely out of the water in all of those same ways, just way worse.
- [99:39]
A
Yeah. Now you, I, you actually did a recent podcast that I didn't watch.
- [99:45]
B
I appreciate it.
- [99:45]
A
1.
- [99:46]
B
Sorry.
- [99:47]
A
Part of it was, part of it was because I wanted, I knew you were coming on and I kind of wanted to see like where you were at with things. But it was, it was a few weeks ago you put one out with, I believe, an ex Special Forces guy talking about the Israel, Palestine thing. And this was an issue where he had been pro Israel and now he's pro Palestine. And so you were getting, I think it was like four hours long too. So you were really getting that perspective on it. But now that we do have this, you know, tentative, I'll call it peace deal, where, you know, it's not the continuing barrage, at least at the moment. H. How, how do you view this thing? Do you have any hope, not even necessarily for like sustained peace in a two state solution in the Middle east, but for like some form of, I even dare to say this, like, normalcy.
- [100:40]
B
Yeah, I, I mean, the short answer is, I don't know, like I, I don't even know what being hopeful looks like almost because it's been so distorted for a long enough time to where again, it's, it's so hard to believe what anyone who's hyper passionate on either side, it's hard to believe them. One of my litmuses, I would say, and I don't know if, if you find yourself subscribing to the same kind of methodology when you talk to people about deep things that they're passionate about, is that the more emotional somebody typically gets about something I find myself, the less likely it is that I start to believe them. You know, and it's not to say that automatically if somebody's emotional about something that they're lying. The reason I bring that up is that, you know, if there's one Thing I've learned and like, again, a lot of it stems from dog training. A lot of what I've learned about people is actually from training dogs and training dogs for people. Training people how to handle the dogs that I've trained for them. Like you, you learn an incessant amount about human psychology and canine psychology, the parallels, etc. The reason I bring that up is that there's a very kind of poignant adage that I, I always remind myself, especially in dog training and interviewing people, is that when emotion runs high, logic runs low every single time. And so kind of naturally, like, the more emotional somebody gets, the less logic and reason you see infused into that perspective because it's clouded. When do we make our worst decisions? When we're emotional? When do we make the most mistakes? When do we panic? You know, when, when are we the most impulsive? When are we the most mean? When we're emotional? You know, on the flip side, when are we the most calculated and the most logic driven? You know, it's when you're not emotional, when, when you're using logic and reason to, to sift through and sort through different components of whatever issue you're talking about. And you know, again, like entrepreneurship, if you're pissed because somebody didn't show up on the show, fuck that guy. He's not coming, you know, because you're mad about it. It's like, okay, take a step back for a second, Think about the big picture of the show. Does it make sense to do whatever, you know, direction you want to take the show or whatever, how much of that is an emotional decision versus a rationale, rational one, and like, show me a time where the emotional decision is the right one. Like, it generally doesn't happen, you know, and so again, just like, when I see people, you know, mudslinging and name calling and raising their voice and sitting on the edge of their seat and, you know, everything about their body language says, I'm angry about this, I'm emotional. Like, I'm not able to even control my own physical response to the question that you just asked me. Like, that tells me a lot about what the fuck you're saying. Things like how you're saying it, all of the different nuances, non verbally that you're communicating tells me more than, than what you're actually saying, you know, and so those are the parallels that I see. You know, when there's these issues that, that people get really, really heated about. It's like that, that immediately puts me in this position of, of being even More skeptical than I was before. And so, you know, in terms of where my position is, it's like I, I, in a lot of ways don't really have one or almost have a fatigue with the entire issue in itself because of that is because it's so toxic and so nasty on both sides where it's like, if you can't. And again, it goes back to the politics side of it. Like if you can't hold your own side to the same level account, like if, if either side is going to say, we've done nothing wrong, we are the victim here in every single instance. Like, that's not actually nonstop. It's like, how are we going to have a conversation when you start with saying something that is frankly impossible?
- [104:42]
A
Right.
- [104:43]
B
You know, so, yeah, it's really. The whole thing has worn me out to where like I'm, I'm kind of over talking about it for, for those reasons.
- [104:52]
A
Yeah, I was actually, we were talking about doing a debate in here. This is like towards the end of the summer, beginning of the fall, between two people on very opposite sides of the issue. And then when we were gonna go schedule, it is right when the peace deal happened. And one of them, I actually still have to call next week or this week and talk to him about it. But the other one I got to talk to the other day and I said, you know, I like you, I'm fatigued with this. And secondly, the idea of having the debate was also. Because it's an ongoing, complete, like, immediate conflict at the moment. And now, like, I'd like to see the temperature go down a little bit. That would be good for all. I'm not saying it solves all the issues or anything like that, but it does feel like the bots have won. And I don't mean any bots on either side. I mean, just in general, it feels like the bots have successfully made this the issue that is at the center of everything, no matter how you look at it. And that is just not. Not the case. It is a big deal. It is horrible what's going on. It is consequential to the world. I don't want to, like, undercut it, but when you can't talk about a single thing going on in society without mentioning Israel, Gaza, you're probably looking at it not quite the right way. And when you say people get emotional about it, the thing that keeps coming in my head is that I have not talked with a single person who is hardcore on one side of the issue. You that like either one who is not extremely emotional about it. Which tells me, guess what? The Overall answer across 75 to 100 years is somewhere here, right? Imagine that.
- [106:33]
B
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's, you know, I try to conduct myself that way all the time for that exact reason is that I know for me, like the more emotional somebody gets, the less I listen to them. You know, it turns into the, the Charlie Brown teacher, you know, where you're just, just, you're just drowning it out and not even paying attention. But I think more importantly is that again, it's just a reflection of, of where their head's at and it's not in a, an appropriate headspace to actually have a, a reasonable discussion with, with somebody on anything.
- [107:04]
A
I was reading this the other day. Back when the ancient Roman Empire was at its peak and there were all kinds of military campaigns. Literally the way the generals would make a decision was when they would be faced with something that was extremely difficult or high stress or the essence of time certainly was not on their side. They would step back and ask themselves as a rule, what would I wish upon my worst enemy right now if they were in my position, what decision would I want them to make make? And it was why they were able to be so successful for so long because they implemented this rule in that it took, it would literally take the emotion out of the situation. Because the answer was always something that was highly emotional, reactionary and anger driven rather than tactical and strategic driven. And that is something we could all take a lesson from in society today.
- [108:04]
B
Yeah. And again, you can see that in, in all walks of life, life, you know, even things that are not nearly as serious, you know, whether it's playing a game, business relationships, what have you, you know, personal relationships, you know, when you're, when you're upset with somebody, you know, is that the time to talk about serious life changing decisions? No, it's not. Because you're, you're going to say things you either don't mean or that are overblown. You know, you're going to make irrational decisions that are based on emotion and not, not logic. And yeah, I just, I think it's a mistake. And, and you know, to me, the, the way somebody acts when they're angry with somebody also tells you a lot. You know, I, I think again, just as much in personal relationships, not to turn this into a Dr. Phil episode, but you know, one thing kind of in that same vein that I remember hearing that I really liked is listen to people when, when they tell you things, when they're Mad. Yeah, because it's something they've been wanting to tell you for a long time. It's been something they've been thinking about and wanted to tell you for a long time. And so to me, there's an element in that and that, you know, it's like people when they're discussing these things are, Are having those moments of lashing out and, and being mean about things and, and overblowing things. But I love that, that Roman Empire aspect of, of, of strategy, looking at it that way, which I think sounds like it. It in a, in a large way goes in line with Sun Tzu and knowing your enemy in that same, same way. But maybe in a roundabout way. But yeah, like, to me, the, the dumbest part about all of this is that these are lessons that we as human beings have known for millennia and we still them up, you know?
- [109:54]
A
Well, we forgot about de Blasio four years ago. You think we're gonna forget about a fucking lesson from 2000?
- [109:59]
B
Yeah.
- [109:59]
A
You know what I mean?
- [110:00]
B
Yeah.
- [110:00]
A
Sadly, you know what that rule does, though, that what the Roman generals would do is it made them look at themselves from outside their body as if they were watching themselves in their own documentary.
- [110:11]
B
Yeah.
- [110:12]
A
You know, if it's a hard thing to think about. So sometimes I, I do try to think about that. I remember Joe Rogan used to talk about that all the time where he's like, imagine every day there's a movie being filmed of you and what you're doing is being captured. How would you act and what would you do?
- [110:26]
B
Do?
- [110:26]
A
It's one thing to think that concept be like, oh, of course. It's another thing then to live throughout the day, especially when you're alone, and actually like, put that visual into place and not do these things. And maybe not sit here and scroll on your phone for 15 minutes and wonder what that would look like. But when you are in a group of people like that, in a high stress situation, and you can, you can do a literal exercise that forces you to do that, it's amazing that good decisions often get made. And by amazing, I mean not amazing at all.
- [110:55]
B
Boring.
- [110:56]
A
Yeah.
- [110:56]
B
Calculated. Yeah. Not exciting. Yeah. I mean, it's a brilliant way to look at it. You know, if there's one way to kind of keyhole or force yourself to do the right thing when nobody's looking is view it that way. Yeah. You know, imagine everybody can see what you're doing right now. Are you still going to do that thing?
- [111:13]
A
Yeah.
- [111:13]
B
The answer is no. Then there's a Reason for that, you know, which I love, is that coin providing some solace, some comfort for you.
- [111:20]
A
Absolutely.
- [111:20]
B
Kind of molesting it. It's kind of hot.
- [111:27]
A
I'm one of these people like, you put some in my hand, I'm going to use it. Oh, yeah. It's just how I am. Like, yesterday, we had this guy, Gus Gonzalez in here. He's a cave diver around the world, does crazy. And he gave me, like, this cave line at the beginning, and I realized the whole time I was, like, going like this and that. So if it's not this or something else, I just. I don't know. It, like, helps me think thing. So the coins give me a little inspo today because I got a fellow Marcus Aurelius fan in here.
- [111:54]
B
I actually think the. The. If it's. Don't true, don't say it. If it's not right, don't do it. I think that's Epictetus, actually. I don't know if.
- [112:02]
A
Damn it.
- [112:03]
B
Couldn't look that up.
- [112:04]
A
But did we get that wrong?
- [112:07]
B
Did I get that wrong?
- [112:08]
A
That's what I'm saying.
- [112:09]
B
Yeah.
- [112:10]
A
I'm here singing your praises as to what you got on the coin. It might not be the right guy.
- [112:14]
B
Well, no, Mark.
- [112:15]
A
The not true. Don't say it. No, it's Marcus.
- [112:18]
B
Okay.
- [112:18]
A
I was gonna say. I feel like I heard him say that.
- [112:20]
B
Yeah, you heard him say that. I read heard him say that. I audiobook heard him say it.
- [112:24]
A
Well, I watched that movie. I mean, maybe, you know.
- [112:27]
B
Oh, yeah. Have you watched the second one, May?
- [112:30]
A
You know, I actually did recently.
- [112:32]
B
Yeah.
- [112:33]
A
What'd you think? Gladiator we're talking about.
- [112:37]
B
I'm almost embarrassed to admit this, because it's stupid, right? That I would be so distracted by something so trivial, yet I found myself. You probably know what I'm gonna say. Say Denzel's accent in. In the movie is so out of left field. I was distracted by it. It's like he. He's one of the best actors of our time. How. How did you not do a better job at sounding like everybody else?
- [113:04]
A
Here's the thing. He was amazing in the movie.
- [113:07]
B
Yeah.
- [113:07]
A
But if you go, what? And I'm, like, the biggest Denzel fan ever. If you go watch his entire clip career. I think Denzel made a decision very early on.
- [113:16]
B
This is me.
- [113:16]
A
That this is how I talk. So no matter what the role is, the one thing that will not change is I'm from Mount Vernon, and this is how I sound.
- [113:25]
B
Yeah. And. And I. I want to clear something up before the comment section explodes, which it probably already will, before they hear me say this. It's not a race thing. I wasn't, I know, really went there. No, no. The reason I bring that up because I found myself. Did you watch Napoleon?
- [113:43]
A
I did not.
- [113:44]
B
I heard it was terrible for the exact same reason. It's equally terrible. Like there's an element of, of the accent that, that just does not fit so bad to where it like at least for me. I mean maybe my simple mind is, is that like I just found myself distracted by it. Like. And again, it's almost embarrassing to say, like, can't you look past that? It was distracting. It was that distracting. Overall though, I actually did really like the movie.
- [114:14]
A
I, you know, I'm not happy they made it because they made a perfect film the first time. Every frame of that is told in the most beautiful, perfect, visually appealing way possible. But they did make it. And for all the that it got, I found myself disliking it a lot less. I think visually it was, was incredibly done. Some of the storytelling was a little bit stale and a little bit repeated. You know, Pascal was put in not the best spot to almost try to be like a repeat like son of Russell Crowe, you know what I mean? But it was not like I was entertained by it and I, I thought it was good and I do like anything like ancient Rome. So I wasn't like really pissed about it.
- [115:02]
B
But you know, do you think they could have done a better job casting wise for Pascal? Could they have had a more physically dominant presence, wise guy play that role and it would have been a better fit? I think so.
- [115:18]
A
I mean he looked pretty good. I see what you're saying. It wasn't quite like Russell Crowe looking like he was peak going to go fight someone on the street of Australia like, like back in the day. But I think he was like a little limited by the script of the character. I think he kind of had to play to that. It's kind of like what Brad Pitt thought about Troy, which I actually think is a underrated, misunderstood movie. Everyone who was in that movie hated it.
- [115:47]
B
Really.
- [115:48]
A
Every single person. Peter O' Toole said he walked out 15 minutes in and there was a disgrace. Brad Pitt said it was the biggest mistake of his career. Orlando Bloom can't even watch it because he hated the whole thing and hated the scene where he had to crawl back to his brother, really. But like, you know, it's actually, especially if you watch the director's cut, it's a really solid movie. It doesn't have like the mystery and stuff like that, like Brad Pitt was saying, but it's well done. And Brad Pitt was a guy who didn't necessarily go all the way with the accent, but it was just enough that, like, yeah, he wasn't trying too hard and he kind of nailed the stoic Achilles. Yeah, I thought.
- [116:26]
B
Yeah, I thought it was a great movie. I had no idea that the entire cast hated it.
- [116:31]
A
Yeah. There maybe part of it was like, it's like such a well known story that they were like, well, we got to put some spin on it to keep the audience in suspense. But I don't know. I literally re watched it like a month ago. The director's cut. Yeah, it's. It's. I'm not gonna sit here and say it's the Godfather, but, like, it's really good.
- [116:49]
B
Yeah.
- [116:50]
A
You know, it's gonna be interesting to see how Nolan Odyssey, though.
- [116:53]
B
Yeah.
- [116:53]
A
Because that's the sequel.
- [116:55]
B
Yeah. And I can't imagine him. Anything up?
- [116:57]
A
No.
- [116:58]
B
So, yeah, I'm excited for that one.
- [117:00]
A
I would watch anything Christopher Nolan does. Yeah, he's so like, even like Inception, the MO Is a movie that's so hard to follow and I only ever watched it once. But like, even that one, everything else is done so well that at the end you're like, I'm not really sure what happened, but that was a good two and a half hours. Yeah.
- [117:22]
B
Do you have a favorite of his?
- [117:25]
A
Dark Knight?
- [117:26]
B
Yeah.
- [117:27]
A
Dark Knight is a perfect film, start to finish. And like, Nolan shot that beautifully. And of course, like, I could name every film, like, Interstellar obviously is unbelievable. You know, I think Dark Knight Rises is an unbelievable movie that was. That was misunderstood the time it came out. But Dark Knight, the thing that does have to be said is like, this is not hindsight 2020 of like, oh, Heath Ledger died. So we're going to say nice things about him. Heath Ledger, in every frame of that movie is perfect. There is not a thing he does with his body that's wrong. There is not a tick of his face that moves in the wrong direction. There is not one tone or motion of the voice that's off, off. Every single thing is so perfect that he took the most cartoonish super villain, like, ever. And even though, you know, this is a superhero movie where things are literally supposed to not be real, you were suspended in belief that, like, this is 100% real. This guy exists. Yeah. He was like, he's amazing. And Nolan obviously captured that. Great. But, yeah, I've That's. That's a top five or six movie all time for me.
- [118:38]
B
Me. Yeah.
- [118:39]
A
What about you? What's your favorite?
- [118:41]
B
N. Interstellar All Day Long. That's my favorite movie of all time. So, like, hands down, it's absolutely my favorite, you know?
- [118:49]
A
So good.
- [118:50]
B
Yeah, yeah, it's amazing. I mean, yeah, just everything about it. I. I love movies like that also. I'm not really a sci fi guy, generally speaking, but that movie, like, has enough. I could see that happening in it where it doesn't feel like it's not real, you know, and. Yeah, just the. The story. And to me, there's a special part of it where the relationship between. Matthew McConaughey, I can't remember his. Coop Cooper. Yeah, it's my favorite movie of all time. Clearly, between him and his daughter, that. That just really resonates with me. You know, being a father of two of them, there's a. That part of the story for me, I think, is what seals the deal for it, I think.
- [119:38]
A
What's the line? Love is the one thing that doesn't bend to time and space. Yeah, I. I think. But to your point, like you say sci fi, there's, you know, they had Kip Thorne, the legendary physicist, work on that film, and there are a lot of physicists. They're never going to say it's perfect, but that have talked about it and said, like, hey, that actually there's a lot that they got right there and the way that it was portrayed. And then later, I think when we got the first imagery of a real black hole, probably like five years after the movie came out or something like that, people were like, holy, Nolan kind of nailed it.
- [120:13]
B
Yeah.
- [120:13]
A
Ahead of time. So, yeah, I mean, it's a. It's a perfect. Yeah, perfect film. And it does make you think about a lot of stuff. One of the things about Christopher Nolan with his films is that looking back on it now, hindsight 20 20, he's a guy who seems to quietly like, I've never heard him talk about society and stuff like that, but in his films, he got his. He has his finger right on the pulse of where things are. I noticed when I watched Dark Knight Rises again recently, which was filmed in 2011 and came out in 2012, I was like, oh, like, there's a lot about. It's a superhero movie, has some crazy plots, but like. Like, there's a lot about society, like elites versus everyone. You know, the. The pain that comes after chaos that I'm looking at today. And I'm going Ooh.
- [121:08]
B
Yeah.
- [121:08]
A
He knew what was going on. Interstellar is another one that has some themes about, you know, us being able to be on this planet, that as the years go by, you're like, huh, yeah, maybe that's not outside the realm of possibility.
- [121:20]
B
Yeah.
- [121:21]
A
And then, yeah, deep Sean and me over here, of course, Oppenheimer and everything, who was a guy ahead of his time for multiple different reasons.
- [121:29]
B
Yeah.
- [121:29]
A
You know, he told that story really well.
- [121:30]
B
Yeah. Yeah. I can't think of anything he's done that I wasn't impressed with, you know, but an amazing dude. No doubt about it for sure.
- [121:40]
A
So we'll see what he does with the Odyssey. But back to some of the stuff we were talking about. We're starting to work our way around the world and things going on. I always like to get your opinions on these things, but one of the things that I feel like has gone really under the radar while everyone's so distracted fighting on Twitter over Israel and Palestine, is that you still have other major countries around the world making moves and doing things that matter at scale. Because we're talking about huge GDPs, and obviously the largest of which is China. You know, you're talking about a billion people. A place that's run by a Communist Party leadership that rules with an iron fist. A place where all of their innovation that is capitalized is still owned by the government. So it's one in one with them. A place that does mass surveillance on us. And obviously we just had a TikTok deal go through to stop that part of it. But there's a bunch of people that we don't know where they are or where. How they got in, basically, who have come through the border and set up shop around our military bases and farmland. Here we have a reverse Opium war going on with them. They've bought up influence around the world with ports and economic development in places that can never pay back the debt, whether it be in Africa or Europe or South America. And their GDP continues to be almost hand in hand with ours. So do you. You know, we had talked about this a bit last time, and I'd love to see where we're at now, like a year and a half later. Is this still, like. If you were pointing at your number one list of concerns over the next 10 to 15 years, is China still at the top of that list?
- [123:20]
B
Maybe, maybe. I would say it's a. It's a tie between them and ourselves. You know, I'm more worried about just like in. In the Roman Empire, the collapse within More so than I'm worried about them being able to defeat us in a more overt way now. I think it's impossible to argue that they don't have a heavy influence in, in our collapsing of ourselves within our own country. But yeah, I think like, if we can't manage to get along better than we do, there is no hope for the country in the long term. You know, it just to me there, there's no scenario that exists where things continue to go the way that they're going and we have an ability to crawl out of the hole we've found ourselves in and get back to the top the way we were 30 years ago.
- [124:21]
A
How, how do we maybe start acting normal around each other again?
- [124:28]
B
What's the pathway that to me it's, it starts with, with each individual, you know, setting the example and being the example. The, you know, if everybody lived their life like Joe Rogan said on, like somebody's following around with the camera and it's being broadcasted. I, I think until people do that, you really can't do it because, you know, you can't expect other people to do things you're not willing to do. You know, if you're not willing to, to hold yourself accountable and, and do the things that you expect everybody else to do, then nobody's going to do that.
- [125:03]
A
Them. Right.
- [125:04]
B
And so it starts with that. There's a host of other things which I'm happy to kind of go down. Please list wise. I think the nuclear family needs to be brought back to the forefront of being the predominant dynamic in the overwhelming majority of American households. There's too much data that says the positive benefits that are gained by, by having a nuclear household in a traditional American fashion that are positive and got us to that point because when that's broken down and kids are now learning from classmates and from the Internet and school and the bigger influences outside the home, then the forming of them as human beings and members of society are incredibly easy to manipulate. They're super malleable and, and then they're, they're there for the taking by whoever wants it, you know, and I think we've seen over the last decade plus that there are a lot of nefarious people that want our country to collapse, that have taken a high vested interest in doing that and have been overwhelmingly successful in doing so. Fixing the government from again from the influence standpoint and term limits and having. Having a government that actually represents the people is a necessity for that to happen and to get more kind of in the Weeds. I think to me it's pretty obvious that manufacturing needs to go back to the 1990 and before level of like before TPP. Yeah. There are too many scenarios that exist where when it's not the case, doesn't matter what we think, doesn't matter what we want, doesn't matter what we do. If you don't have the ability to make most of the things that your society uses, depends on everybody else who does make those things. Have you by the balls? You know, there's no way around that. And we've outsourced so many things, not just to China, but outside the US to where if the, if the entire collective world wanted to just completely destroy us, I think they could through economic means, they wouldn't have to do any. Even cyber warfare. I mean, they could just say, we're not selling you guys anything. I think the only reason that, that they haven't is because their economies rely too heavily on us for now. But I do think that sooner than later there will come a point where they can handle not relying on us buying so many things from them and, and ultimately will. And I think, you know, when you combine all those things together, it's a recipe for failure. So I think we need to fix all of those things.
- [128:08]
A
All right, I want to come back to the cyber warfare aspect, so we'll put a pin in that. But yet a few points there. The first one being the nuclear family when that idea was formed. We're just looking at this on, on a level, you know, people's life expectancies were lower. Right. And there were, despite the populations were smaller and things like that. And it's not like excusing how people look at it today, but now, you know, for some people I talk to, they're like, okay, you marry a girl at 28, you might live to 120. You don't know how you're going to feel at 50. And people, people do get divorced, I believe, and I can cut this if you don't want to talk about this, but like, you got divorced once as well, right?
- [128:50]
B
Yeah.
- [128:51]
A
So you're speaking at this from both angles of it as well. Like, would maybe the way I should start this is like, do you look back on your situation and obviously like, you seem to have handled it well and have a close relationship with your kids and everything seems to be fine. But do you look at how that could have gone wrong because, you know, you and your wife didn't end up being together and you're like, I see how the percentages play out where a lot of kids do get up from this. Is that kind of how you look at it?
- [129:18]
B
That's for sure. Part of it. I think it, it kind of boils down to, I would say statistics really, in a way and that to say that, you know, having a nuclear family is a recipe for success and there's no, no way for that to go wrong. I'm not saying that, that. I'm also not saying that, you know, you can't get divorced and still co parent and raise, you know, healthy, productive, positive, mentally healthy children. What I think, you know, looking at the broad spectrum, is that in, in your percentage chance, your highest percentage chance for producing productive members of society is to have the overwhelming majority nuclear families. It's not a guarantee. It's not a guarantee that if you are, they're going to be great. It's not a guarantee if you're not, that they're not going to be great. But the stats don't lie that, you know, there are fewer nuclear families. And I think that from an influence standpoint, your kids, especially when they're really young, need that to your point. Agreed. Like when you're 20 and 80, you're going to be very different.
- [130:26]
A
Different.
- [130:26]
B
You're gonna be very different when you're 30 than you are when you're 20.
- [130:29]
A
Right.
- [130:29]
B
Every 10 years, you know, I think you, you change. Most people change quite a bit. I think the, the key window of opportunity is that childbirth to, you know, teen years where, you know, when that window is closed, I'm not going to say it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter nearly as much, you know, so kids coming from, you know, when, especially in that first five or six years before they go to school and now they're spending more time with other people than they are their, their actual immediate family, that window in particular is crucial, you know, and I think to, to pinpoint a mechanism that says, hey, statistically, when there are more families that are having kids and when those kids are in their formidable years, their family is together, that's going to set us up for success. More than the opposite of that.
- [131:21]
A
Yeah. And I think you're also pointing out it's more when you say nuclear family, it's more than just like, oh, are your parents together? And whatever. It's like, what are they doing too?
- [131:29]
B
Right.
- [131:29]
A
What kind of example are they setting when you're at the dinner table, if you are even at the dinner table together, is everyone like this or are people actually talking? Is there, are there principles in the household, how do they parent? What's the relationship between parent and child? You've mentioned throughout this conversation today about like the coddling of society and things like that. And you are pointing to a societal wide, obviously not everyone, but a larger percentage wise problem of like coddling that goes on in the parent child relationship as well.
- [131:58]
B
For sure. You know, and again, I'll, I'll credit my parents in, to me setting a really, really good example of how to, how to kind of walk that fine line of supportive but not coddling.
- [132:11]
A
Right.
- [132:12]
B
They were hard when they needed to be hard. They were nurturing when they needed to be. Nurturing, supportive when they needed to be. And you know, at the end of the day of a lot, like, we all always knew that they, that they loved us and supported us and they set a really good example. Do you have to be married for that to happen? No. And maybe the better term is, is not necessarily a nuclear family or redefining the dynamic is having two involved parents that are playing those specific roles in their, in their children's lives for the entirety of their child. You know, do you have to be married for that to happen? No. Does it make it easier? Absolutely, it does. Are there up families where their parents are still together? Yes. Are there great families where their parents never even got married? Also? Yes. But again, to paint it with kind of a broad, A broad stroke. And again, maybe the nuance or the, the important thing to highlight is that when kids are growing up, they have the masculine and feminine roles in their lives in an appropriate way, where they're setting the tone in both of those arenas and they're, they're contrasting and contributing to each other kind of the way nature, I think, intended.
- [133:27]
A
Yeah, I, I agree completely. And you're talking about again, like the, the percentage play on society, which is then what you see play out Overall. And you're 100. Right. So I, I hope that in this era, you know, as a part of like turning some things around, that is something people focus on more. Because I think when you look at the last 20 years, with all the wars, the economic downturn, the broken homes as a result of that, the lack of hope, that's how you have young kids turn to like hardcore wokeism or stuff like that. And now if there's a positive right now, I think there's been a little bit of a reset on that where people are like, all right, wait a minute, what the. Were we talking about here? And hopefully one of the downstream effects is that some of these, like actual civilizational wide values use like a nuclear family actually take precedent again.
- [134:17]
B
Yeah, and I want to, I guess highlight one other aspect is that, you know, within the kind of the, the realm of that nuclear family, when you have, you know, kids that are growing up and, and they're influenced by, you know, two parents that, you know, are again setting that example. A typical argument you hear, and you kind of brought this up up early on in the discussion was the lack of opportunity. You know, I'd say one of the first counter arguments you'll hear to what I just said is dude, you know, you can't live nowadays, right, where both parents aren't working. Again, there's comparisons that people will make to the way things are now, the way, you know, compared to the way things were, say let's say in the 1950s, where it was kind of peak unique nuclear family in this country. From an American culture standpoint, I do think it's also important to look at the standard of living, you know, is that, look at the standard of living of people in the 1950s, you know, and it's like a lot of families, most families, the husband went to work, the wife stayed home with the kids. They also didn't have five TVs and four cars and a 4,500 square foot house and an expectation to DoorDash trash 90% of their food, to Amazon and to Netflix. You know, there's a lot of things that we take for granted and assume that from a standard of living standpoint are, are the necessities that absolutely are not, you know, that, that back then they, they had none of those things, you know, and so, you know, when, when kids grow up again being spoiled and coddled and given everything and now they enter, you know, they're 20 years old, living on their own and they still expect to drive a seventy thousand dollar car and live in a nice house and have the latest smartphone and be able to, you know, stream whatever they want and have the latest laptop and have their own vehicle. You know, all of these things. It's like, well, yeah, you, you can't live the way your parents had, lifestyle wise while you were growing up. The second you enter the real world, if you have that as an expectation, no, that's, that's never going to exist. That didn't exist back then, you know, in terms of as soon as you left the house that, that you're now living to the same standard of living that your parents did. So I do think, you know, a little bit of reframing the perspective on what's Necessity versus not is also a crucial part of that argument. Even entertaining the possibility of, of, of having, you know, the predominant dynamic in American households be, be the nuclear family.
- [137:02]
A
For sure. Yeah, there's, there's a lot there to unpack. First off, the point about, you know, the commonality being both parents having full time jobs now to be able to get by is something we got to work on in society as well. And you know, for my future wife, whoever she's going to be, I want her to do what she wants to do.
- [137:22]
B
God bless her.
- [137:23]
A
Right?
- [137:24]
B
I know, that poor woman, they call.
- [137:26]
A
That a life sentence. But you know, I, I want, I'm gonna want her to do what she wants to do. If she wants to have a career, I want her to be able to do that. But like, I also want to have a bunch of kids and I'm gonna have to get someone on board who, who wants that too. And I would also like her to have. I work so hard now because I would like her to be able to have the opportunity to be home with those kids. That's something I was very lucky on. My mom had a great job and left it behind to raise me because that's what she want, okay? So you understand that's what, that's what she wanted. And I think that turned out amazing for me and not everyone in this country. A lot of people in this country don't have that opportunity. Their parents don't have that opportunity to do that. And I'd like to create that, but also to the point of, you know, like success and how you pass that down. It's also interesting hearing you talk about it because you're a very successful guy and you have kids and obviously like you've raised them well and they're to going, going out in the world and, and going to start doing their thing at some point. And you've had this at the top of mind. But in my old career on Wall street, not to say every example I saw was bad. I saw some good examples too, but I saw many examples of people who would be clients who, you know, are worth hundreds of millions of dollars and their kids are dead. They're dead. They never had a shot because they grew up with like you said, four cars, whatever they wanted and just had this built in entitlement as to how the world works. And then even worse, they all had these trust funds which I, I think are, I, I think it's like dripping poison into a kid so that, you know, when they got out there and they were around doing whatever. Well, they always had this to fall back on and go spend their money and, and pretend it was theirs that, you know, they were putting everyone else on. And really they're just miserable because they lack that purpose and they know it, it's not theirs. And I actually felt bad for that. And that's something like I'm in a career where if I end up getting a lot of success here and I plan to, yeah, a lot of money will come with that at some point. And even as someone who's not a father right now, that is something I already actively think about because I don't want my kids thinking about any of that. I don't want them assuming they're gonna get any of it. I don't intend to set up trust funds for them. And like I want my kids to go make their own way and, and, and, and make something of themselves in the world. And part of that also is like, I'm gonna have to find a woman who's okay with this. I have zero interest in 15 room mansions and like that. It's not to say like I don't like a nice thing once in a while. I like having a nice laptop and like that. But like I'm not gonna sit here and go spend on this, this and that. And I damn well don't want my kids having that expectation around them because I think what they see is what they expect in the world. And if you're growing up, you know, in silk pajamas and some mansion with a maid, it's like, well, how can you ever expect that person to go out and, and do something? You even used the example earlier of like Rocky 4 where he had to put himself back in the cold, you know, to be able to do it. There's the old Hagler quote prize fighter where he's like, it's really hard to get up and train for a fight when you're at 4am when you're sleeping in silk Baja pajamas. Yeah, that is, that is something you got, I think you have to think about, especially if you're like coming into success, about how you're going to instill the right values in their kids so they can, you know, actually selfishly for them, go make their own way, you know.
- [140:44]
B
Yeah. I mean, to me the, the answer is really simple. It's not easy. You know, most parents, especially if they didn't come from a lot, now find themselves successful. They've got young families. You hear, you hear this a lot. I want what I want for my kids, what I Didn't have. That's a dangerous proposition most of the time. It's not to say that you want, you know, the same level of struggle. Especially you know, some super successful people came from just God awful childhoods. It's not to say that, that you want to put that on them. To me, the, the simple answer and not easy one is that you use the same level of meticulous intentionality and strategic planning that you did to get to where you are professionally with raising your children in a way where they're not going to turn into that entitled. It's not an easy thing to do. But what that means and what that looks like or, or translates to is thinking about things before they get them saying, hey, you can have this, but not that you're going to have to work for this. If you break it or lose it, you don't get another one, you know, and you're, you're constantly navigating those decisions, having to evolve your perspective as they get older and you're going to up, I mean, realize like you're going to make some of the wrong decisions. The key is, is identify when you, when you made the wrong decision and do your damnedest not to make that mistake again. But you have to put the same level of effort into ensuring that that doesn't happen as you did, making sure and ensuring that it did happen for you. And to me, that that's the way you get around it or, or you navigate it.
- [142:25]
A
It's a great way to put it. I think it's also one of those things like you have to do it and experience it. Yeah. For sure what it is. There's parts I can mentally prepare myself but like I'm not gonna know until a minute.
- [142:36]
B
Yeah. And, and you'll get thrown curveballs, you know, because that's where emotion comes in. You know, as a father especially, you have daughters who bat their eyelashes and, and know how to pull your strings and, and what have you. You know, it can be tough sometimes to, to dish out a little bit of tough love and, and lesson learning, you know.
- [142:56]
A
Right.
- [142:57]
B
You need to go slap, slap your guy around again.
- [143:01]
A
We're, we're doing all right. Let's take a quick break. We're, we're gonna let them drill for a minute. We'll be right back. All right. We're back. Yeah, actually I, I, I saw. Can you move a little this way? Sorry. I saw, what's it called? Chris Cuomo in action doing that behind the scenes when I was over visiting my friend Nishan At News Nation. And that skill of like, oh, you come. You come back from a commercial break and you go, oh, so. And you just rattle off like, it's a skill. It's that. That's what I'm saying. Like, he would be talking, like, with a producer, not about the sh. Show, like shooting the. On something. And then suddenly they wouldn't even do a countdown. It would just be like a silent 3, 2, 1. Be like, yeah, no, no, totally. Hi, welcome back to News Nation. I'm Chris. I was like. And he would just go into this whole thing and he's not reading anything. I was like, wow. A lot of repetition in that.
- [143:54]
B
Yeah. To me, there's a same level of skill with actors being able to do that. You know, like, they'll be doing some really depressing or heavy emotions emotional scene, and it's like it wraps, and then they finish telling some stupid, like, joke to, you know, five of the cast members or whatever, and, you know, they're all laughing or whatever, and then it's like, all right, do it again. And then they just, you know, and they're right back into. It's like. I mean, especially in that lane, I think it's almost like psychotic, you know, like sociopathic, that you can be that convincing to that disparity on polar opposite sides of the emotional spectrum and just turn on a dime like that. Like, there's almost like, man, what's wrong with you? To be able. Yeah, you know.
- [144:38]
A
Yeah, I've heard both ends of that spectrum. There's that where you have. I can't think of examples right now, but there are a lot of actors who are just like that and able to do that. Then there's the polar other end, which is also like a form of, like, psychotic nature where you have, like, Daniel Day Lewis, who does not get out of character for, like, six months in a character. Character.
- [144:55]
B
Well, I heard that going back to Dark Knight, that Heath Ledger, that. That was a struggle of his, is that he was, like, so into that character that he was, like, troubled by it. You know, it killed him.
- [145:06]
A
Yeah, it killed him. Jack Nicholson. Nicholson warned him before he went to go do the role that, like, he knew. He's processed. He was a method actor, the whole bed. And he's like, that is a really dark character. I know this, like, superhero and everything, but it's a total sociopathic individual who's larger than life in all the wrong ways. And you got to be careful with that. And, you know, he. He kept the famous diary where he basically locked Himself in his room for weeks, months, and became this person. And obviously, like, you know, it was hard for him to, to turn that off. And I think that, you know, it was hard for him. He would sleep like an hour a night. So then he had had sleeping problems and that let them. Yeah, you know, it's always sad to see that happening. Yeah. But one of the things I wanted to talk about with you, Mike, is something that happened a few days after you and I sat down, down in Texas, which was the whole Charlie Kirk assassination, which was shocking on, on every level for a litany of reasons. But we, we've been hitting the themes a lot today. You've been bringing them up about trends in society that aren't good of us turning on ourselves. And to me, when you, you see any political commentator, regardless of what their beliefs are or anything like that, especially someone like Charlie who, like him or not, went on to college campuses and had an open dialogue with people, which I can appreciate very much. You know, when you see people like that gunned down, doesn't even matter how brutal it was. And this was in particularly brutal like when, when you were attacked for political beliefs and exercising your first Amendment right in this country. I think the precedent of something like that is actually even way worse than the lawfare stuff we were talking about. What are your thoughts there?
- [146:53]
B
I agree 100%. You know, for me, the, the thing that I found myself thinking about as, as the days and even, you know, a couple weeks after that transpired was number one, is that it rattled me more than I expected it to. Not to say that I, if you had told me before it happened that how would you feel if that happened? No, that would suck. I was not prepared for, I think the emotional. I don't, I don't know that I would necessarily say toll in a way, a toll, but maybe roller coaster that transpired after that happened and I, I found myself trying to figure out why it was having such an impact on me. And, and what I, I came to the conclusion of is. And what bothered me the most about it was the, the reflection of our society that I saw in, in the fact that a. It happened and more importantly, the response to it happening where people are laughing and celebrating it and, and cheering. That happened. And so in, in my same fashion, I, I kind of always plinko game my emotions down to finding the root cause of, you know, okay, well, this is what I'm feeling. It's because of this. Well, okay, but why. Because of that. You know, I find myself kind of funneling it down to trying to come up with, like, the most basic premise of where that. That emotion's coming from. And what I kept realizing is that, that, you know, because you've had a number of the same guests that I've had on that are combat veterans, and I, I would ask you, have there been stories where, you know, decorated combat veterans sitting in this chair have shared a story about operations that were successful, where they're taking enemy combatant lives and, and they were kind of laughing and celebrating the fact that they did that? Did you ever.
- [148:52]
A
I don't think I've ever encountered that, no.
- [148:54]
B
No. Were they celebrated? No, never. I have, you know, and I. I will say that not. Not in a way where, like, what I'd seen, you know, on social media, where it's like a mockery of it, but where it's. It's being essentially celebrated as, you know, we did this. We killed these four guys. And, you know, and it's like, yeah, we. We got them, you know, kind of. Of like a victorious type of walk down memory lane with it, where it's like we're. We're proud that we were victorious on the battlefield, and there's like a celebration of that victory. The only time I've ever experienced that is when you're doing that with people who you consider your mortal enemy or people who are also trying to take your life, where you're celebrating being the one to come out on top in that environment. Environment. So what. What I found is the most striking was that now there are pockets of our society who are acting in that same way, which tells me, again, Plinko, gaming it down to the kind of. The root cause is that almost by deductive reasoning. What that tells me is that there are a subset of our population that views political opponents as mortal enemies. And to me, that was by far the most worrisome aspect of the whole thing, is that it made me realize as soon as you dehumanize people, there's really no lower form than that. And if we're at a point in our society where on both sides of the aisle, in a lot of ways, we're considering our political opponents mortal enemies, where we're cheering someone's death because of. Of the things that they say that we disagree with the reflection of our society, that that. That has. Is catastrophic. And that's. That's what made me worry the most about it.
- [150:55]
A
I'm. I'm with you. I think the celebration was gross. And, and by the way, when you asked me about, you know, have I had the guys in here celebrating going terrorists, like celebrates a strong word. And we saw that with the Charlie Kirk thing where there were people like, oh, I'm glad light is dead and saying it just like that. I really haven't had that. But do I have people sit in here in those situations who talk about like, yeah, we neutralize that guy.
- [151:21]
B
Yeah, and it was awesome.
- [151:22]
A
And, and like say in a very matter of fact way. Yeah. And, and I, I understand that. And I also completely agree that when you are starting to now see people make no distinction between that type of situation and one of their own citizens simply opening their mouth and saying things that maybe they disagree with, that's an issue. And I, and I saw that right away on social media and that really pained me to see. And then also I did see that formulate in anger on, on, you know, the Charlie Kirk side, like those people to where then you had people going on social media who would say something. And I'm paraphrasing here, for example, like, obviously no one should ever be killed. That's horrible. I'm, I'm very sad that happened for his family, but I'm not going to sit here and pretend that I agreed with any of his ideas. And then they would list off things they disagreed with. And you would have people on the right side like trying to call up their employers to say he disagreed with Charlie Kirk, so fire him from his job. Like two rights do not make a run or two wrongs do not make a right here. You know what I mean? So we, we have to people, even in a situation like that, which is highly charged and emotional and people saw it, it was awful. I mean, as a combat veteran, like you've seen stuff like that before. The average person is lucky enough to never have to see something like that. People saw that from four different angles. So it is more charged. But I wish people could have been way more reasonable about it. And I wish, wish, you know, unfortunately it is just the nature of it. He's a political commentator who was gunned down. But I wish we didn't have a situation where it was someone like that, because then it makes it. It takes the political aspect of it and exacerbates it. And I understand this actually to a degree of ten or a hundred. And that's. That is what we've seen. And sometimes it feels like, I don't know, now we're seven weeks, eight weeks past it. Whatever it is, it feels like a lifetime ago, which is crazy. And you know, I'M like, no disrespect to him at all, but I'm, I'm like sick of the back and forth on it. It's like we need to have more constructive conversations here. I would like to see more people on the left and right make a priority out of going to debate themselves together civilly, especially on college campuses and stuff like that, and lead by example rather than tweeted at each other and hating each other. But I also think we, the audience, all of us, we have incentivized the extreme people to say the things that rile us up based on our beliefs and hit the like button on that or comment on it if we dislike it, which pushes all those people into the algorithm and less the people who are like, hey, let's cool it, you know.
- [154:13]
B
Yeah, I think again, I mean, not to always go back to social media being such a double edged sword, but I think this is a classic example because if you think about the magnitude in terms of the impact the, the emotional impact that Charlie being shot had, it seems reminiscent of jfk. You know, it's kind of a similar heaviness, you know, to it happening. I'd be curious, I don't know if there's a way to Google or chat GPT. Did you, you know, was, was there or did we see any celebratory media responses after JFK was, was assassinated?
- [154:55]
A
Yeah, we could Google it. I don't, I can't think of.
- [154:57]
B
My guess is no. Yeah, because I think you'd have seen replays of them over the years. And, and so to me like that, that's the thing is that, you know, there were obviously people who didn't vote for him, who didn't like the guy. Guy who disagreed with everything he stood for and thought he was taking the country in the wrong direction. That's that still fit. And see, that's why you don't with stuff that's gonna happen. You know, you, you can dislike somebody and disagree with everything they stand for and think that they're harming the country, even with the direction politically they're taking it, taking it in and still feel very emotionally sorrowful for them, for their lives being taken.
- [155:36]
A
Yes.
- [155:36]
B
And I, to me that's that, that huge paradigm shift where it's like this dehumanization that, that we've seen even, you know, for the last 10 years, really. I mean I would say leading up to the first Trump presidency on both sides is where, at least from my recollection is where you really started to see that like you know, Hillary saying the things that she did, Trump saying the things that he did, and followers of both parties falling in line with that, and. And now doing the same thing. And I think it further highlights the need for a very stoic, very emotionally stable, reserved, and emotionally competent leader for. For the country. Like, you need somebody who. And one of my favorite pieces of advice for this is for parenting, I'll pass along for you and should, or when that day comes, is don't be the thermometer. Be the thermostat in the room. Like you need. You need a leader who is the thermostat, you know, not reflecting the temperature, who's setting it, you know, and if you don't have that, this is why you have this ridiculous swing on both sides that just, you know, roller coasters or pendulums back and forth and. And it just keeps upping the antity Annie and getting worse and worse as every year transpires, 100%.
- [156:57]
A
That's. That's great advice. And, you know, I've seen people come up to me. I used to talk about this Wawa theory where I would go to the Wawa and I'd see the dude in the nom hat, have the door held for him by the girl with purple hair and a nose ring. And I know that if the two of them were on Twitter, they'd be fighting each other, but they smile and there's no weird look, no nothing. People getting along because they're touching grass and they're in the real world. And that does give me some hope. Sometimes when I look outside and I see the world is not Twitter. Remind myself that every day. It's not necessarily that Twitter and things like that. And what gets attention on social media does not help the collective conscience, but it does not have to be that far. Can you knock on that wall, Joe, right there?
- [157:42]
B
Just.
- [157:43]
A
Just give it like four knocks so they know. Sorry, people. We've been dealing with this construction over the past four or five weeks. It's been a little bit. Little. A little difficult. So just bear with me on that. But, you know, seeing. Seeing that play out in the real world, I did. I did find myself. We. We were on air when. When Charlie got shot. And it was, you know, it was. It was. It was very. I mean, it. We were all shook. And when we finished recording and. And the guys left, you know, I stood at my window out there and I watched people during rush hour coming home from the train. And these are all people who, you know, they represent every end of the political spectrum. And ironically, I didn't see anyone really even buried in their phone or anything like that. I saw people walking along talking to each other, and I was like, you know what? It can be like that out there. It can. It can be a little better than just everyone yelling at each other. But I. I do hope. Hope that something like this is certainly not a precedent in any way. And. And, you know, all political violence should be condemned in the harshest of form. Not just political violence, but any violence whatsoever against speaking, including speaking that you hate. And I'm thinking of some of the things that I hate in my head right now. The other side of that is far worse.
- [159:11]
B
I agree. And it's interesting. I was recording that day also, and, you know, being in a show is a strange microcosm of silence that rarely exists outside of. Of a recording studio. I mean, really, the only other thing I can think of is either when you're asleep at night or if you're on a plane with no wi fi and you're disconnected because we are so connected. Second by second, day in, day out of news flashes and, you know, alerts on your phone and people calling or texting saying, dude, this just happened. Turn on the news, or whatever, right? And so the first break that we took, it was right after it happened. I mean, it was. It was like two minutes after it happened. So it was just. He'd been shot. There's no other details where I was like, man, that's wild. I wonder what happened Then we sit back down and went for, like, almost three hours, hours before we took another break. And then by that time, of course, you know, the video was out. And it was just such a weird feeling, getting it broken to us in. In two pieces or phases with several hours apart. And I had, you know, a guy who'd been a undercover cop and a SWAT guy and, you know, decades of drug deals gone bad where he'd almost been killed, and, you know, lots of. Of things gone wrong in these undercover operations and lots of wild stories from a guy who understands evil, knows violence, and has lived kind of by the sword for a long time. It was really heavy. Yeah, Just like this unspoken, like, he and I weren't really saying anything. We're just kind of looking at each other weirdly. And it reminded me, of course, not the same, but there was a similar feel or vibe to the morning 911 happened when I was in at Seal Team 3, and. And we were all just kind of stunned and shocked and. And almost didn't know what to think. There. There was an element of that that same day which I was not expecting again. And I think, again, it boils down to what it reflects and symbolizes and, you know, where he was shot and how, and just all of the different kind of intangibles or parameters that. That. That complete the story to symbolize what the taking of his life actually meant with all of those things kind of woven into it that you know, that were really, really earth shattering. Yep.
- [161:38]
A
Yeah, it was. It was definitely. I agree with you. It was more heavy than I thought it would be. Just, you know, I. What I would add to that is it's. It's not even so much like, you know, those 911 and Charlie are two very different events for. With wildly different reasons. It's the fear of. Of precedent setting. You know, when you're watching 9 11, you're like, someone did this. The whole world's about to change. Right. When you watch something like this, which, you know, the case is a whole nother thing, but, you know, this has now happened. The whole world, and particularly our country, could change now in a very wrong way if we're not careful. And I think that that fear is. Is something that's palpable.
- [162:20]
B
Yeah, I think the. The not knowing, you know, it's the fear of. Of what's coming now because of this and. And there being such an overwhelming feeling of uncertainty wrapped around it that. Yeah, it was. It was palpable for sure.
- [162:37]
A
Well, Mike, this has been an awesome conversation. They're getting ramped up with the taking the walls down over there. We've been talking for almost three hours, so I think that's.
- [162:45]
B
That's.
- [162:45]
A
I think that's fine. They've been pretty patient with our other recordings, but it's always great talking with you. It was awesome going on your show. I guess that's coming out pretty soon, so we'll make sure we get that to all our people so that they. They can watch that and hopefully not see me make an idiot of myself. But you're an amazing, amazing interviewer. Your show is great. You've been doing it a long time. Mic Drop podcast. We will have that not only linked. I'll probably collab this with Eric as well, so people can literally hit it and see subscribe right on the. Underneath the title of the video. But I look forward to doing this again sometime, my friend.
- [163:18]
B
Likewise. Thank you much. Always, Always a pleasure being here.
- [163:21]
A
All right, everybody else, you know what it is. Give it a thought. Get back to me. Peace. Thank you guys for watching the episode. If you haven't already, please hit that subscribe button and smash that like button on the video. They're both a huge, huge help and if you would like to follow me on Instagram and X, those links are in my description below.