Andy Stumpf

Summary

The Antihero Podcast – Episode: Andy Stumpf Release Date: February 24, 2025

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Introduction

In this episode of The Antihero Podcast, hosts Bryn Tucker and Tyler engage in an in-depth conversation with Andy Stumpf, a decorated Navy SEAL and founder of JSOC. The discussion delves into Andy's extensive military career, the harrowing night he was injured in combat, his recovery journey, and his transition to civilian life, including his ventures into podcasting and entrepreneurship.

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Military Career and Training

Early Motivation and Enlistment ([06:00] - [10:12]) Andy Stumpf recounts his decision to join the Navy at the age of 17, influenced by his family's strong military background. His father served in Vietnam, and his maternal grandfather was in the Navy before transitioning to the Army Nursing Corps. Andy was drawn to the Navy SEALs after reading "Men in Green Faces" at age 11, fueling his ambition to undertake the rigorous training.

Notable Quote:

"From about 11, I knew what I wanted to do." – Andy Stumpf [06:14]

Training Phases and Selection ([10:13] - [23:00]) Andy details his initial training, including an eight-week radar scope operator course, followed by Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL (BUDS) training. He explains the intense physical and mental demands of BUDS, highlighting the emphasis on calisthenics, running, and obstacle courses as critical filters to select the most resilient candidates.

Notable Quote:

"BUDS is mostly calisthenics based. You could actually overdo it." – Andy Stumpf [12:20]

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Deployment and Combat Missions

Operational Deployments ([23:00] - [35:00]) Andy shares experiences from various deployments, including missions in Afghanistan and Iraq. He emphasizes the unpredictability of combat operations, noting that "zero went as we planned" ([16:56]).

Notable Quote:

"Every single mission we went on was planned and precisely and exactly zero went as we planned." – Andy Stumpf [16:58]

Encounter with SEAL Teams and Operations ([35:00] - [50:38]) Andy describes interactions with different SEAL teams, their specialized roles, and the nature of operations pre-9/11. He reflects on the limited combat experience within his unit, citing incidents like Operation Red Wings and the challenges posed by harsh environments.

Notable Quote:

"I wish we graduated Jason Bourne. But we don't." – Andy Stumpf [20:46]

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The Night of Injury

Incident Overview ([49:31] - [72:00]) Bryn Tucker prompts Andy to discuss the night he was injured. Andy narrates a mission in Iraq where his team was targeting a kidnapping cell. During a breach operation, Andy was shot in the hip, leading to significant injuries, including damage to his sciatic nerve. He vividly describes the chaos of the encounter, the immediate aftermath, and the challenges faced during recovery.

Notable Quote:

"I got shot... it interacted with my sciatic nerve, which immediately I was not able to use my leg from the mech point of injury all the way down." – Andy Stumpf [60:28]

Recovery and Rehabilitation ([62:00] - [73:26]) Andy discusses the physical and emotional toll of his injuries, including struggles with medication and alcohol. He highlights the importance of personal resilience and the support from his sister, who was studying to become a nurse practitioner. His journey to sobriety and reclaiming his life underscores the challenges faced by veterans transitioning to civilian life.

Notable Quote:

"There was a physical aspect of that, but the emotional and mental aspect was worse for sure." – Andy Stumpf [71:42]

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Transition to Civilian Life

Post-Military Ventures ([73:26] - [84:30]) After leaving the Navy, Andy worked with CrossFit, teaching strength and conditioning protocols, which played a crucial role in his rehabilitation. He then ventured into podcasting, initially collaborating with Joe Rogan and later establishing his own show. Andy explains his relationship with brands like Black Rifle Coffee, emphasizing that while he collaborates with them, he maintains independence over his content.

Notable Quote:

"I am not a spokesman for Black Rifle. I am not an employee of Black Rifle. I have an advertising deal and I own one of their coffee shops." – Andy Stumpf [82:38]

Podcasting and Content Creation ([84:30] - [102:23]) Andy shares insights into running his podcast, discussing the importance of integrity, handling misinformation, and maintaining authenticity. He addresses challenges related to social media backlash and the responsibilities of content creators in managing guest interactions and public perceptions.

Notable Quote:

"If you can admit when you're wrong. There's no issue with integrity." – Andy Stumpf [103:36]

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Personal Reflections and Future Plans

Life Balance and Future Endeavors ([103:36] - End) Andy reflects on maintaining a balanced life post-military, prioritizing simplicity and personal interests like skydiving and helicopter flying. He discusses future plans, including expanding his podcast and continuing his entrepreneurial ventures, while emphasizing the importance of staying grounded and connected to his passions.

Notable Quote:

"I just started flying helicopters, so I'll probably die covered in aviation gasoline." – Andy Stumpf [105:40]

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Conclusion

Andy Stumpf's journey from a dedicated Navy SEAL to a resilient civilian entrepreneur offers profound insights into the struggles and triumphs of transitioning from military to civilian life. His candid discussions about injury, recovery, and maintaining integrity in content creation provide valuable lessons for veterans and content creators alike.

Final Notable Quote:

"If you're out there long enough... you're going to throw a seven at some point." – Andy Stumpf [56:43]

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This episode serves as a compelling narrative of perseverance, the complexities of military life, and the challenges of redefining oneself beyond the battlefield.

Transcript

[Bryn Tucker]

In fact, we can edit this out if you don't talk about it. But the. The night you got hurt.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yep.

[Bryn Tucker]

Mind talking about that?

[Andy Stumpf]

I call it a work injury or marksmanship award. It's my favorite.

[Tyler]

Hold on.

[Andy Stumpf]

We're not recording.

[Bryn Tucker]

Want to buy a rifle?

[Tyler]

Do you want to buy a shirt.

[Bryn Tucker]

To support military man?

[Tyler]

People want to see their sausage get made.

[Bryn Tucker]

An appropriate level of inappropriateness. Something happens in my family tonight. The adult horse isn't. Isn't coming to rescue my. My family. My kids. Like it is first resp.

[Andy Stumpf]

That.

[Bryn Tucker]

That are. That are going to save my family.

[Tyler]

They want the culture to be down. They want people to not want to be cops. And the people that do want to be cops are now walking into the job scared to do the job.

[Bryn Tucker]

I'm going to try to act like it didn't happen, although we. We all know it did.

[Tyler]

JV team for life.

[Bryn Tucker]

So I think what's going to be unique about this is you have a whole bunch of people that watch you and know exactly who you are. They may not. They may not know your story.

[Tyler]

I don't. I tried finding it. You have everybody come on and tell.

[Andy Stumpf]

Their story, but yeah, my story's boring. You guys didn't do your research.

[Bryn Tucker]

You can spice it up.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Tyler]

I mean, you don't have to be factual if you don't want to.

[Andy Stumpf]

All right, so I can do this, right?

[Bryn Tucker]

Yeah, that's right. You could be a guest at a future topic. That's a twofer.

[Andy Stumpf]

How easy it is to not be a future topic. Easy it is to just be precise.

[Bryn Tucker]

So.

[Tyler]

Yeah, well, you're precise. And we made you a topic on One Live.

[Andy Stumpf]

I was trying to do like a $50. You know what I was. I was trying to write. I'm like, hey, Andy Stump is this Democratic naturian candidate left as. And the payment wouldn't go through. I tried like seven. I wanted to be like a. Whatever. I'm like, that guy did like 20 bucks. I'm like, I'm gonna do 50 bucks and talk on myself.

[Tyler]

Troll yourself.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah. Couldn't get it to work. So I was just commenting in the normal section. If you get too long winded, I'll give you one of these right here. All right.

[Tyler]

How will you know when you just get bored of hearing it?

[Andy Stumpf]

That's gonna get ignored.

[Tyler]

Wrap it up. But what's gonna happen is he's gonna accidentally put it up.

[Bryn Tucker]

Yeah. Not know.

[Andy Stumpf]

And then Annie's gonna be like, oh, I'll ignore the. Out of that. Or else like, hey, that. That's the end of this.

[Tyler]

I'm not done.

[Bryn Tucker]

He's already onto us. He's like, what's your repercussions? You can put that up. What are you gonna do about it? Nothing.

[Tyler]

I'm gonna.

[Bryn Tucker]

I got an Airsoft gun. It's a. It's a right on. He's a. He's a toothless dog back there. He's got. He can bark all he wants, but there's really nothing you can do about it.

[Tyler]

I'm ready.

[Bryn Tucker]

I'm ready. Let's do this.

[Tyler]

All right. Welcome back to the Anti Hero podcast. Part Delta force, part street cop. All truth. I'm Tyler, owner of Refracted Wolf Apparel. Use promo code Anti Hero and get yourself 15% off the best and outsider culture graphic tees, stickers, hats, flags, zip up hoodies, ranger panties and team room flags.

[Bryn Tucker]

And I'm Bryn Tucker, owner of first responder cigar company and first responder coffee company. Use promo code FRCC15. That's FRCC15. To get 15% off the world's best coffee and cigars.

[Tyler]

And of course, this episode is brought to you by human performance teams. HPRT.com the best in TRT peptides, weight loss and ketamine for the veteran first responder community. They have the best rates. And if you use promo code [e-mail], you get 20% off not only your first month, but every single month. So it ends up being pretty cheap. And if you have blood work done, whether it's the VA or your personal doctor, if it's been done within the last six months, I'm tapping, sorry. If it's been done in the last six months, you upload it. And you have no cost for blood work, so they won't have to do it for you. So go to hptrt.com, get the best NTRT treatment for veterans and first responders. Save 20% when you use promo code hero.

[Bryn Tucker]

And don't forget our lives every Thursday night at 8:00pm Eastern Standard Time. Andy Stumpf, who's our guest tonight, will also be on the live after this. And our patreon, we have five and $10 tiers. You'll get behind the scenes content. There will be questions to Andy that the rest of you won't get to see. But if you're on Patreon, you will get to see it, including discounts from all of our sponsors. And behind the scenes. Behind the scenes, we're doing that now. A little bit of training videos. We're adding A lot of things to our Patreon. So hop on there, find out what all we got going on. Speaking of Andy Stumpf with us today. That's who we have on the show is his name. Is the name of him. I asked him what he wanted to be introduced as. He gave me no answers, so I had to make up the introduction. He is the founder of jsoc, the mastermind behind the UBL raid. He is a major donor to the Democratic party and a January 6th denier.

[Tyler]

Oh, my goodness.

[Andy Stumpf]

I mean, I think we've wrapped it up, right?

[Bryn Tucker]

Yeah. Welcome to the show, and good luck with that.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah, yeah, for sure.

[Tyler]

I'm just going to clip that.

[Andy Stumpf]

You're not going to need to, because somebody else will, and somebody will find a way to actually take that seriously. Yeah, you can't win on the Internet. It doesn't matter.

[Tyler]

I mean, you can if you don't care about anything, and then you just capitalize on it.

[Andy Stumpf]

That's a rough life, man.

[Bryn Tucker]

We got. We got a lot to get into. I want to keep it a little bit chronological, but there's so many. We're gonna put a pin in that because we're gonna come back to. To. To that.

[Andy Stumpf]

Okay.

[Bryn Tucker]

The comments section, podcasting, being out there in front of everyone.

[Andy Stumpf]

How far back are we going? Like, first was late or.

[Bryn Tucker]

No, we won't go back that far because then Drew will get involved in the show. Okay, let's. Let's just go back to the beginning of your military career. How old were you and why the Navy?

[Andy Stumpf]

17 when I signed on the dotted line.

[Bryn Tucker]

Why?

[Andy Stumpf]

I still don't know why. Actually, I know why I chose to do that. I think in some way, I thought it was going to get me into the military faster. It was the delayed entry program, which is not some special program. What it is is a way for recruiters to knock billets out, lock you in in the hopes that you actually probably make it to your actual date of shipping out, because you still have to go through MEPs and all that stuff. I come from a Navy family on my dad's side and an army family on my mom's side. So my dad's dad served in World War II. My dad served in Vietnam. He was on the first squadron of patrol boats in the Brown Water Navy that used the jacuzzi jets, the Mark 1s.

[Bryn Tucker]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

So at least when I was in, we were using Mark Vs. It was a really cool tie in. Not so sure they performed any better than the Mark 1s, but they had a Bigger number behind them. So my mom's side was Army. Her mother was in the Nurse Corps, but before that she had been in the Navy and was actually discharged due to post traumatic stress treating frontline soldiers in World War II. She lied, got into the army and continued in the Nursing Corps. Married her husband, who I have just passing memories of because he died when I was very young. I think he was in the Supply Corps. So army on one side, Navy on the other. Neither side was enthusiastic or probably very hopeful of me wanting to go into the military. But I remember the day my dad, I worked for him. He owned a construction company, a masonry company in Santa Cruz, California. He was talking about his experience in Vietnam, which was very infrequent that he would even do so. And he mentioned the seals. He was not a seal, but he worked with the seals because it was an insertion and extraction platform. And for whatever reason, just the. I think I asked him a couple amplifying questions like probably first off, like, what are those? What do they do? It seemed fascinating to an 11 year old. So I went to the place that my current children have no understanding of, which is called a library because they carry all the information in the world around in their pocket and found probably the most traditional book for people who go this field pipeline, which is Men in Green Faces. It was. There's very few books that are written from that time period, which is a drastic change from the modern era, which is a whole topic in and of itself. But it just lit off this insatiable desire. So from about 11, I knew what I wanted to do. So when I could go see the recruiter when I was a junior in high school, I did. She came back. She was actually a mechanic with the Blue Angels before her recruiting duty. She came back and literally we threw the paperwork down in front of my parents who signed it. And then I was off. I had to still graduate high school. So I was off a couple days after graduating high school and kind of straight into the pipeline. There was no guarantee you can get a sealed contract now or you could at least towards the tail end of when I was in. I've heard that that has gone away and that it still exists. So I'm not sure where the truth in that is, but it was a little bit of a crapshoot. You know, you go to boot camp, you take the screening test. Going to use air quotes for those of you just listening, because it was pull ups, push ups, sit ups, a run and a swim, which I man, hard to fail, but you'd be shocked at the number of people. I think the pull ups were eight, I'm not joking. And I think maybe 50 for push ups and 50 for sit ups. And anybody who's been in the military knows that there's varying degrees of quality for push ups and sit ups. Right. Like it's, they need. It's the big end of the funnel. And then you pick your operational school, your A school as it's known in the Navy. I picked radar scope operator because it was the shortest course offered. Went to that school.

[Bryn Tucker]

How short?

[Andy Stumpf]

Eight weeks.

[Bryn Tucker]

Still kind of long.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah. And I've also still never seen a radar in my life. We will die if we are in the ocean somewhere. I might be able to turn it on, but that's it. And then straight from there to buds, the initial pipeline, and then straight from BUDS to the West Coast. Most of my time is on the west coast, some time on the east coast, back to the west coast and then retired out of the west Coast.

[Bryn Tucker]

Yeah. It's funny you say that when you're like the shortest one eight weeks. The army has a, a plethora of four week and six week schools, you know.

[Andy Stumpf]

And you're fully qualified for your job after that.

[Bryn Tucker]

Yeah, yeah. I mean. Well, I mean the Navy doesn't have infantry, but infantry is an extra four weeks, correct?

[Tyler]

No, it's. Well, when I was in was osa. So you did your nine weeks of basic training and then we were there for like 21 weeks. So maybe like two.

[Bryn Tucker]

Yeah, I know like air defense had a air defense like Stinger. The Stinger missile operator, not the Avenger crew. That was a four week class, I think. Truck drivers. Four weeks.

[Tyler]

Why? What's truck driver? You know, I drive.

[Bryn Tucker]

Hey. Oh, I don't want to get off on a tangent, but not one, not everyone does. And not everyone can drive stick shifts. Well, we'll probably talk about the story later. We had some rangers come over to Syria with us because we need some guys to drive some trucks and we didn't put out that you had to be able to drive stick shift. And you want to talk about the most excited group of rangers that are like, we're going to go on a mission. They've been doing nothing. They're so excited. And we found out half of them couldn't drive a stick and had to send them back. And we'll learn, we'll learn how to drive. Not, not for a mission. I can't, you know, I can't.

[Andy Stumpf]

So we had, we had knowledge requirement to do that.

[Bryn Tucker]

Those are just man skills we have lost. We've lost man skills. I digress. Which is eight weeks still is a long time to be somewhere that you don't want to be at that stage in your life. Did we just work out a lot as well? Because you had your next stage in life in mind or just kind of took it as it was?

[Andy Stumpf]

This is like 20 years ago, so I'm trying to remember how motivated I was 20 years ago.

[Tyler]

Because was radar, whatever, where you would fall if you failed the Pipeline?

[Bryn Tucker]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

Okay. Yeah. So, I mean, the attrition rate is what it is, and, you know, the odds are not in your favor. It's the Anti Hunger Games, so most people are going to default to the school that they go to. So I would have ended up working on a vessel. I think they call it the cic, the Combat Information center, of which I've never seen one.

[Bryn Tucker]

How's that for motivation, though, to get through buds after eight weeks of being in a job you don't want to be at? Like, I can't. I can't quit.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Bryn Tucker]

I can't get back to that.

[Andy Stumpf]

It wasn't as motivating for a lot of people. I mean, the math is what the math is. I was working. I think I remembered more than anything, I was running a lot. BUDS is mostly calisthenics based. You could actually overdo it with strength and conditioning training because that's not what you're going to be doing in the Pipeline, but what you are doing is running your ass off. And there was a beach, because the OSA school was actually at the Dam Neck Naval Annex, which is a base I served at. Later on, I had no idea what was at the northern end of that base. You would just hear shit blowing up. Sometimes you're like, all right, I guess that was a catastrophic accident of some kind. But, I mean, I knew what kind of boots they wore in training, and I knew they ran a lot, so I definitely remember running a lot. I don't think I was working out other than calisthenics, though. Other than that.

[Bryn Tucker]

I don't think you need to. And we've talked about that on this podcast, too. Young, young men. Especially today when there's so much more information.

[Andy Stumpf]

Oh, God.

[Bryn Tucker]

They see team guys and pick your special operations team and they think of, like, really muscular big dudes. Your assault, you know, your classic assaulter.

[Andy Stumpf]

Not in the selection.

[Bryn Tucker]

That's right. And I say, if you'd have seen those guys at selection, they were. They were skinny little men and they Were young and baby faced.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Bryn Tucker]

And they could run five miles in 35 minutes or less. Like. But, but that's who you need to be to get through a selection process. Don't. Don't show up doing your PR and squats and bench because you're not going to make it.

[Andy Stumpf]

So I am 6 foot. I floated about 220. Now I was 155.

[Bryn Tucker]

Wow.

[Andy Stumpf]

Whoa.

[Bryn Tucker]

It's a big swing.

[Andy Stumpf]

Well, I was 6 foot, 150 when I graduated high school. So, you know, I was on the upswing. No, I was a bean point, but I was an absolute bean pole.

[Bryn Tucker]

This is what annoys me. I think even more though is we talked about. You have a library in your pocket. We have the most, I guess you could argue. Well, we also have the most disinformation, but we have the most information now. And people still show up uninformed.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Bryn Tucker]

And it blows my mind. It blows my mind. Guys like us just had to read books and ask friends and we still got more information showing up to things than these guys did with the Internet in their pocket.

[Andy Stumpf]

So I went back as an instructor for 18 months and I actually think there are websites that exist that list almost every activity in every phase of training. I actually think it is to the detriment of the person that studies that deeply. Because if you get yourself into a place where things really suck and you start talking to yourself about, well, I have to finish this, and then I have all this other stuff I have to do too. Yeah. There's a balance between the two. The person that puts their head down and just suffers through whatever they're doing and focuses on that, in my anecdotal experience, does way better than the person who knows every evolution and everything that's about to happen. Oh, that's.

[Bryn Tucker]

That's a. So we had a. We had a guy, one of my. On my dive team. He goes to dive school. I mean, he'd been on the dive team for a couple years and he fails dive team and he dive school.

[Andy Stumpf]

How is he on a dive team without going to dive school?

[Bryn Tucker]

You can, you can get assigned to a, to a dive school. Gosh, I keep saying you can get assigned to a dive team without being dive qualified.

[Andy Stumpf]

But what do you do when the guys are diving?

[Bryn Tucker]

Getting our gear on the boat, like so it's. It was. And you know, at this time, we, you know, we're fighting two different wars. It was a little more common, but it is understood, like, you will go to dive school to stay on this team. So he was there and he knew all about dive school. And then he fails dive school because there was a portion in dive school called like. It's like a rescue like Iteration where the cadre acts like he's drowning. You have to go in there.

[Andy Stumpf]

Life saving. In our particular screening process, they're not dying, but they are killing you.

[Bryn Tucker]

I forgot how horrible it was. Absolutely horrible. But apparently we had never told him this story. And he goes to dive school thinking he knows everything about dive school. And then when he fails this, he's like, you guys never told me about this iteration. And I was like, I didn't know about that iteration either. And it goes to your point, I think you can think you know too much when everyone else just. You're just surviving through this. You don't know what the next thing is, but you'll survive that too.

[Andy Stumpf]

Fast forward that thought process to the execution of the job overseas too. Every single mission we went on was planned and precisely and exactly zero went as we planned. So if you are not able to figure shit out on the fly, you're going to have a real rough life.

[Bryn Tucker]

One of my favorite sayings is a plan is just a list of things that aren't going to happen once you hit the ground.

[Andy Stumpf]

Fortunately accurate.

[Bryn Tucker]

Yeah. And that's not to say, hey, don't plan. But man, it's, it's a really funny, yeah, you better plan.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah, you better plan. But if you think that the plan or the. What I should say is, in my experience at least, if you think the real world is going to respect your plan, you have a real rough day coming.

[Tyler]

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[Bryn Tucker]

Cool.

[Tyler]

They have the patented, they have the patented cooling technology.

[Bryn Tucker]

Nailed it. Nailed it. Yeah. Nailed it.

[Tyler]

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[Bryn Tucker]

Tyler, how many critical incidents do you think we've covered so far in this podcast, man?

[Tyler]

At least five, six.

[Bryn Tucker]

And, and they're not going to stop, you know. There's you. You cannot stop them all. So they're going to happen. And you really have, you know, two charters at that. Obviously one is to stop them from happening. But since you can't stop them all from happening, you owe it to the people that you protect and depend on you to react to those situations in the most effective and efficient manner. And right now, really, whether you know, you're a fire department, ems, law enforcement, you're, you're stuck with essentially radios.

[Tyler]

And Apollo is the best way to manage resources during these events because it's designed by first responders for first responders.

[Bryn Tucker]

It gives first responders a common operating picture which allows them to see where everybody is in real time, overlaid onto a map to see where they are. You can drop pinpoints and let them know where they need to go. And without constant talking on the radio, everybody knows where the incident is, where it's happening and where they need to be.

[Tyler]

Apollo is an app based application. It's just download and go.

[Bryn Tucker]

It's an app and so it works with androids, it works with iPhones.

[Tyler]

Apollo makes sure on the back end everything works and you can just plug and go. They handle all the licensing, all the encryption compliance, all the security, it's all handled by Apollo. It's crucial to know where everyone is and what they are doing in order to effectively control chaos in one of these, either natural disasters or shootings or anything like that.

[Bryn Tucker]

So if you want to learn more about Apollo, scan the QR code and ensure your department is ready to react to any crisis in its most effective and efficient manner possible. JV Team for life did you recycle anything during buds? Any phases?

[Andy Stumpf]

I did not recycle any phases. I think I failed an evolution here or there. I don't know. I probably failed one of each run or an obstacle course or a swim along. I mean you do one of those every week for 26 weeks. But no, never. I never got rolled back or recycled through training.

[Bryn Tucker]

I'm gonna save some of the, the details of buds because you can go to any, you go to any SEAL book and read all about buds and. But there I'll actually, I think there's a SEAL cooking book, the perfect pull up instruction book, talks about buds. The what what, what point in buds you remember the first time doing something really cool and you're like yeah, this is, this is SEAL stuff right here. This is what I signed up for.

[Andy Stumpf]

There is nothing cool that happens if.

[Bryn Tucker]

People would be come on the first time you put on a draeger you're in your.

[Andy Stumpf]

This sucks dick. Why did I sign up for this job? The rebreather operations are not awesome for people listening. A dragger is a closed circuit system. So it has a chemical scrubber that scrubs out the carbon dioxide in your breath. You breathe pure oxygen, it doesn't make any bubbles. You can be really sneaky. There has been in the history of the SEAL teams, one combat swimmer operation ever. I'm not aware of any other one. Well, I take that back. There's probably some STV stuff that I'm not even aware of. But they do. I mean they're diving mix, they're doing all sorts of stuff. And I actually know almost nothing about SDV operations. But if you were to look at SEAL training, it is so low speed. You're in the ocean, you're in the sand. You're carrying around telephone poles that probably came from the 1940s and are incredibly waterlogged. You're carrying around boats on your head, you're climbing on cargo nets, you're doing team based evolutions. The entire first phase is literally calisthenics. I'm not joking. Hell Week occurs during that time period where most of the attrition occurs. You learn basic hydrographic reconnaissance at the end of that. In second phase, you learn open circuit diving, then closed circuit. So bubbles then, no bubbles. In third phase, I mean, if anything, in third phase you're touching a weapon for the first time. I think we started with the SIG 2 to 6 even back when I was in. And then you go out to San Clemente island and they introduce the absolute most basic firearm safety, fire and maneuver. But we're, I mean we're talking simplified battle drill one Alpha. I mean, you three point your gun that way. You three are allowed to take four steps back and then you better lay down again. That was it. So there was no when I went through night vision goggles. You're not jumping out of airplanes, you're not doing missions, you're not planning for missions, you're not doing clearance, you're not working in vehicles, you're not working on boats. Is a selection course, but it's more a crucible than anything. I wish it was as high speed as people thought. I wish we graduated Jason Bourne. But we don't.

[Bryn Tucker]

And as you know, SF is the same way. When I got my Green Beret, I thought I would be a sniper, a breacher, an assaulter. Like all these things you think of Green Berets. I was just the master of the basics. And nothing more. Nothing more.

[Andy Stumpf]

I would. Well, the Greenberry pipeline is probably almost two years, right?

[Bryn Tucker]

Depending on your mos.

[Andy Stumpf]

But you guys are learning in that pipeline. Actual unconditional warfare. And you have the, you know, Robin Sage exercise. And then I'm kind of talking out of my ass here because I never went through the pipeline, but I. Some good friends buds is. Is not even that. And I'm not trying to talk about it negatively, but I think it's important to talk about it. What it is. It's the filtering program where we're looking for people who are physically or mentally strong enough or hard enough, however you would want to describe it, to be able to do the job and then you learn the job. I would say personal opinion, five years is how long it takes to actually be. I mean, you're dangerous when you first start. Just not to your enemy, to yourself.

[Tyler]

Yeah, totally.

[Andy Stumpf]

You are like, hey, here's a machine gun 20 year old. And you're just like, awesome. That was probably the most awesome thing the first time when I check into a team. But I wish it was as high speed as people thought. It's an amazing filter, but it's not perfect because there are still. There's weeds in every lawn, regardless of the size and shape. But it is, it is not a. It's not a finishing course.

[Bryn Tucker]

Right.

[Andy Stumpf]

It's not even the beginning of a. Of anything other than a selection course. That's the most accurate way that I can describe it. So I did not have the best day of buds was the day you put it in your rearview mirror and you're like, as a class, which was a really shitty idea for the army to do, was to send us all to Fort Benning and punish us with five push ups at a time. We're all looking around each other.

[Tyler]

5.

[Bryn Tucker]

Okay, yeah, we've talked about this on the podcast before as well. Like, airborne school is so weird. It's the pinnacle of some people's career and it's just a speed bump. And others like, can I just get through this?

[Tyler]

They give it to everybody. As in like a reenlistment incentive. So you're there. There's people from all pipelines. Like mine was the standard little infantry dude, 19 years old. That was the next phase after basic training. And then you had every soft unit or pipeline imaginable there. And then you had officers and then just regular people that signed up for another three years and wanted airborne school.

[Andy Stumpf]

How many actual days do you think should be allotted for airborne school?

[Bryn Tucker]

Three to four? I say it's three weeks now. I would give it two weeks. I would give it two weeks. But this.

[Andy Stumpf]

Dare you, sir.

[Bryn Tucker]

This.

[Andy Stumpf]

How dare you.

[Bryn Tucker]

This is only five days of training. Only five. What are you doing?

[Andy Stumpf]

Your time.

[Bryn Tucker]

The second week is jump week.

[Andy Stumpf]

Oh no. I think it could be done in three days total with the jumps.

[Tyler]

Yeah. Day one, you land. You land in the gravel rocks.

[Bryn Tucker]

Day two, I don't think you're wrong.

[Andy Stumpf]

Day one you land in the gravel rocks and are exiting an aircraft in flight.

[Tyler]

That's how for bad weather at the.

[Andy Stumpf]

End of day one you are getting out on your first jump. Yeah.

[Tyler]

I mean day two and three work through lunch if you need to.

[Andy Stumpf]

Day two, you knock out the other four if you can. Three is an optional weather day. It.

[Bryn Tucker]

They really do complicate it. They really do complicate it.

[Andy Stumpf]

The swing landing trainer I still have fucking nightmares about. I think the person using that is just trying to hit you. They're just trying to drop you when your pendulum out and just hit your head.

[Tyler]

Is that the towers?

[Andy Stumpf]

No, that's the 30 foot tower. The 34 foot tower, whatever the mathematical number is.

[Tyler]

You got to go back to bar.

[Andy Stumpf]

This little edge and you swing and at some point in time they let go of the rope.

[Bryn Tucker]

Vaguely remember.

[Andy Stumpf]

And then you hit the ground. It's to practice your real plf when you're actually pending.

[Bryn Tucker]

I know at the end of the day you're right. I want to hurt this guy. Just jump out of there. You don't have to practice falling like it's. The parachute's gonna open. You need. You need a training iteration of basically just hey, pull, pull on these risers.

[Tyler]

The biggest thing that makes sense to me was the run at a 9 minute 10 minute pace. I would remember running like what is the point? We're actually probably hurting our themselves trying to jog at a 10 minute pace.

[Andy Stumpf]

I had forgotten about that.

[Tyler]

It was called the airborne shuffle.

[Bryn Tucker]

Yeah. There's so much about airborne school that is. Is. Is like. Is legacy because I don't think, I don't think it's changed.

[Andy Stumpf]

And can you dangerous insertion method. Oh, I mean free fall is actually more dangerous if you look at it. I think it's more complex and it can be far more dangerous. But as far as getting like a real one.

[Bryn Tucker]

When you put a thousand shoots in.

[Andy Stumpf]

The air and you do it. What was the com that limit? 600ft reserve optional.

[Bryn Tucker]

That's right.

[Tyler]

There's no better way to deploy 2,000 retards though.

[Bryn Tucker]

Yeah, but we had this Conversation on last recorded where someone was like, hey, do we even need static line? Which I say we still do for that same reason. There's no other way. And 72 hours anywhere in the world, you can get 2,000 or more people on the ground. It's a necessary evil. But it is.

[Tyler]

Is it really a 20% acceptance rate for casualties? Like 80.

[Andy Stumpf]

I think with the combat, when they go down low enough and they give you the optional reserve. I think it is at 20%.

[Tyler]

Yeah. You start, you start playing with 80%.

[Bryn Tucker]

I don't get too far off on a rabbit hole here, but it's, but it's the sas. His first mission was an airborne mission where they jumped into Africa and they were going to go hit a. They were going to go hit a, an airfield.

[Andy Stumpf]

Correct me if I'm wrong though, the people who did that had no additional training in airborne operations.

[Bryn Tucker]

Right? No, they. They did.

[Andy Stumpf]

Damn it. That doesn't make my point.

[Bryn Tucker]

Okay, they will.

[Andy Stumpf]

This is.

[Bryn Tucker]

Oh gosh. The book is called Rogue Heroes.

[Andy Stumpf]

There's also a series called Rose Rogue Heroes. That is fantastic.

[Bryn Tucker]

And they, they would, they would stand on the back of a truck that was moving and that's how they, they'd practice their PLFs. But anyway, it was. They wanted the mission to go so bad. It was bad weather, high winds and like we're doing it anyway. And they lost almost everybody. Some actually died on the jump. But is this World War II? Yeah. To injury. Almost. Almost no one even made it to the rally point. It was just. And it was such a disaster. Sterling actually thought that they were going to disband his force that he fought so hard to get. And the irony was they cared so little about the SAS at the time. They didn't even care. He came back, he was like, oh, you know, I'm sorry, don't disband us. Like disband you. I'm paraphrasing, but it's not far from the truth. We don't care enough to disband you. Keep going. Yeah. That's the beginning of the sas, of course. Look what they turned into. But yeah, real world static line jumping as dangerous as can be.

[Andy Stumpf]

I actually don't know of a military evolution that would be more dangerous than air insertion via doing a static line jump. I, I personally think is safer than free fall because you have more control and you're lower to the ground. But yeah, find another way.

[Bryn Tucker]

There's. We keep on going on this road. It's just interesting military history. To me. The Iraq War almost was an airborne operation. There were two plans on the table. One was mechanized and one was airborne. And they said, hey, we can get this done in 72 hours. Just what do they call that, you know, just a shock and all, you know, operation of just. It'll be the largest airborne operation ever. And so those two planning methods went in. An airborne operation, a mechanized. And of course they ended up doing mechanized because they thought it was a lower, a lower risk. But it really was. You know, both plans were pitched and it could have been either one.

[Andy Stumpf]

Wow.

[Bryn Tucker]

And I'm really glad I ended up being mechanized. That was the right call. But how cool that have been. At the end of the day I say cool like, you know, there were historically cool.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah, there were some jumps. I know they jumped into an airfield up north which they jumped in.

[Bryn Tucker]

That's the, that's the comment. They jumped into an airfield up north that was, that was already secured by an oda and yeah, that's the one.

[Andy Stumpf]

You want to jump into.

[Tyler]

You get your don't want to go.

[Andy Stumpf]

Jump into the one that's occupied by enemy.

[Tyler]

They're going to be like this, man, hey, where's the office?

[Andy Stumpf]

Where's the one that's pretty much held by US forces? Because we're gonna go there.

[Bryn Tucker]

That's true, that's true. That's. Yeah, you get the same color mustard state on, on those wings, whether it's secured or not secured.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Bryn Tucker]

But it's a, it's a very different story. But back, back to you, Andy. Don't, don't try to, don't try to keep this off of you for as long as possible. We have, there's no, there's no time limit of this. But don't make us go, Sean.

[Andy Stumpf]

Drives are too big.

[Bryn Tucker]

Don't make us go Sean or I in four hours on this. We don't want to.

[Andy Stumpf]

I don't think anybody does the.

[Bryn Tucker]

What, what, what was your first team that you showed up to? What Was your first SEAL team?

[Andy Stumpf]

SEAL Team 5, Coronado, California. For people who don't know, odd number teams are on the west coast, even are on the east coast. Pre 9 11. The teams used to specialize geographically and I don't know all of the specifics. I remember Team four did counter drug operations like pseudo semi real world. I think there was more along the lines of border protection type stuff. But we would hear about that. SEAL Team 3 focused on the Middle east and they were doing some go platz or oil rig and a few non permissive boardings kind of in Air quotes as well. If you look at it through the rear view mirror of what was to come shortly after. They were essentially permissive. I mean, they weren't stopping the ship, but they weren't getting into gunfights on the ships either. Which. That would be a horrible, horrible place to get in a gunfight, by the way. Team five was a cold weather southwest Asia, so Korea mostly is what we focused on. And we'd go up to Kodiak, Alaska, do cold weather training.

[Bryn Tucker]

I hate it already.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah, it was. I think it was Plan 5511 or something like that that was if the north was going to invade the south, we were going to surge over there and likely get our dicks kicked in. Is the north just. I mean, I think the actual plan was for essentially to retreat as fast as possible to the southern port of Korea in the hopes that you could get there and defend yourself while the. The rest of the world, like, rushed there to help you out.

[Bryn Tucker]

Sounds about right. Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

I mean, they were trying to get to the south end of the peninsula, so, yeah, SEAL Team 5 on the west Coast. I was born in California, so I was kind of just, you know, I was 400 miles south of where I grew up, so it's cool.

[Bryn Tucker]

I didn't know any better this time, you know, the. Where did you. I believe the. The SEAL teams, like all the different SEAL teams come in and brief you guys. You know what, what the SEAL teams do I ever.

[Andy Stumpf]

Got that brief?

[Bryn Tucker]

Got that brief? No.

[Andy Stumpf]

When do they do that?

[Bryn Tucker]

I just. I just saw a video of that, of someone kind of making fun of it.

[Tyler]

Oh.

[Bryn Tucker]

In fact, actually it was Marcus Lutrell. Marcus Trail was talking about how, you know, each SEAL team would come in and basically give their.

[Andy Stumpf]

Where.

[Bryn Tucker]

Give. Give their brief. And he said, like in the pipeline.

[Andy Stumpf]

So in second phase, you fill out this bullshit document called the dream sheet.

[Bryn Tucker]

You talk about that too.

[Andy Stumpf]

I put down 2, 4 and 8.

[Bryn Tucker]

So. And then Marcus goes to Hawaii, I believe, and he talks about the. I don't want to say recruiting. The pitch. The pitch that he got from them. And they basically just drew a big dick on the whiteboard with like two guys riding it. And he's like, that's sdv.

[Andy Stumpf]

I don't remember ever getting briefed. You'd filled out the dream sheet. In second phase, like I said, I put 2, 4 and 8 on mine because I was from the West Coast. I figured, hey, let's go check out the east Coast. I had never really been. I learned after filling that out about Something called the needs of the Navy, which means if they need me to go somewhere else, my dream sheet is used as toilet paper for somebody. So I went to Team 5, and the way that they did it, we were out on San Clemente Island. We were almost done with training. And the instructor staff is relatively diverse. And what they did is they had the instructor that was from that team. They made these little pods like, hey, go over instructor whoever. And that person was like, hey, this is where you're going. And this was my experience there. But there was never really a brief because, yeah, it's the needs of the Navy. Unless I guess you're fortunate enough that the needs of the Navy aligns with your personal dream sheet, because if it doesn't align with it, it's more of a coincidence. More of a coincidence. I certainly don't remember being briefed. What.

[Bryn Tucker]

What year is this? When you get to team five?

[Andy Stumpf]

It would have been, see graduated putts in 97, jump school, probably early 1998.

[Bryn Tucker]

Okay, so you're. Which is crazy, because it's crazy me looking back, right? Oh, yeah, it's 98. It's. It's been as far as. As you've been alive and known. It's been 80s and 90s. We've had a couple skirmishes, but, like, you don't really think we're going to real war.

[Andy Stumpf]

There was one person that I remember specifically so in the SEAL teams, Seal Team 1 and Seal Team 2 were commissioned around Vietnam. They served in Vietnam, and those are the only teams that served in Vietnam, even though I've met several people who told me they served at Seal Team 3 in Vietnam. And I said, of course. Tell me more.

[Tyler]

I'm fascinated about this.

[Andy Stumpf]

You'd be shocked. And three and probably four got commissioned in the 80s. So there was Vietnam, Panama, Grenada. And There was actually four or five SEALs sniper support attached in Mogadishu.

[Bryn Tucker]

Okay.

[Andy Stumpf]

And not with the.

[Bryn Tucker]

From. From the white side, or.

[Andy Stumpf]

I'm pretty sure they were. God, I don't want to misspeak. I think that they were from development group. I think there's also an incredible chance that they were denied support from a distance. Actually, I take that back. I know one of them. They were not from development group.

[Bryn Tucker]

Okay.

[Andy Stumpf]

They were just sniper support. So. And most Mogadishu, for people who don't recognize it, largely considered to be Blackhawk down, which was more of a Delta operation with Ranger support. So these guys were supporting from a distance. I remember, though, I saw a guy in 98 with a bronze Star with a V. That motherfucker was walking on water. There was no other combat. I mean, Panama, Grenada, you know, Panama was the combat swimmer. Operation Grenada. Four dudes lost their. They drown, which is not a great look for a maritime special operations force. But they pushed it jumping and shouldn't have jumped into the weather and water conditions that they did. Water's dangerous as shit. It will kill you. It doesn't care about you. But there really was no combat experience.

[Bryn Tucker]

Can you go a little bit more into that? Because I know about that. I know they jumped in and they forced. Did they intentionally jump into the water? Were they just.

[Andy Stumpf]

It was supposed to be a water drop. And again, I have no direct tie to this. They were pushing a Zodiac out and they were following it out. I actually don't even know if it was static line or free fall. But they very high sea states, high wind states. I'm pretty sure they did it either at dusk or at night. Got separated from the Zodiac itself and they drown. I mean, we're not talking about superhuman people. Everybody has their limits. And truly the water is the most vicious environment. It just will just rip you under.

[Bryn Tucker]

Did we ever recover their bodies? Do you know that much?

[Andy Stumpf]

Answer.

[Bryn Tucker]

I don't even know there was a Zod involved.

[Andy Stumpf]

I don't think so. Well, it wouldn't make sense. You're never going to do. I wish it was like the movie Navy seals where you halo into a Draeger operation to an over the beach to telemarketer headset. Like full urban environment via submarine extract. You're never going to do a water drop unless you either have a support vessel or you're pushing something out yourself. So there definitely was a Zode.

[Bryn Tucker]

Okay.

[Andy Stumpf]

Involved in there somewhere. I don't think they recover the bodies, man.

[Bryn Tucker]

Yeah, yeah. I hate that story and it sucks.

[Andy Stumpf]

But you know, almost every lesson in the SEAL community is tied directly to blood. Sucks that the military writ large is like that.

[Bryn Tucker]

That's right. That's military.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah. I mean, shockingly enough, we paid a lot of attention to Sea state and wins.

[Bryn Tucker]

Right.

[Andy Stumpf]

It's just not worth the risk.

[Bryn Tucker]

And for.

[Andy Stumpf]

But that was it. That was combat. That was. That was the combat. There was no. There was a Vietnam guy serving actually take that back. But at that point, I mean, he was. He had opened a tattoo parlor and was throwing down ink on. He was awesome. Like this all old salty dude that zero people ever were going to tell what to do. And so he was just like finishing up his tour, throwing ink on. He was awesome. Yeah, but I mean, that was the combat experience of the community that I went into.

[Bryn Tucker]

We tell stories.

[Andy Stumpf]

If you were sitting in this tattoo chair.

[Bryn Tucker]

Okay, yeah, yeah, there's a reason. Get a tattoo. Okay, I'm gonna get a tattoo for that.

[Andy Stumpf]

But that was it. I mean, I remember that guy walking across the Seal Team 5 grinder. He was in his khakis. I looked up, I'm like, holy, that dude has a V on whatever that red thing is, because I didn't know what it was.

[Bryn Tucker]

I guess the, the blessing getting and Getting there in 98 is you get. You know that. Of course, as we all know, September 11, 2001, it's coming. You don't know it's coming, but it's coming. And you, at least as a new guy, you have three years, you said it takes about five years, I would say. Yeah, but that also depends a little bit on. On the amount of. On on the Green Beret side. That's all. But there's. There's so much parallels to that. What certain schools you can get into, if you had a J set or whatever is three to five. So when September 11th happens, at least you're like, you're not an absolute new guy. That's a danger to you and your teammates. Like you have a few years under your belt to at least be dangerous to the enemy as well.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah, Ish. I mean, I remember my first loadout gear list to Afghanistan. It said dive mask on it. I mean, we just evolved slowly. Actually, what sucks even more is I think I took it. I think I took the dive mask with me. I did not on subsequent trips, but I'm thankful for the pre 911 time because that is what the military looks like in non war environments. And I watched a generation of people come in about 10 years after I had been in. And this is my words, not theirs, but it seemed as if a lot of them were signing up to play Call of Duty and maybe they caught the tail end of that. But eventually it went actually back to more of what I recognized, pre 9 11. And I appreciated that I at least had that optic because it was less jarring. And I got to go to schools. I was able to do two pre 911 platoons where you do a 12 month to 18 month workup and then you deploy overseas. The first time I left was to Japan and it's basically Jsets. We went to Thailand, we went to Australia, went to the Philippines, worked with the Thai seals, the Philippine seals. I don't remember who we worked with. It Wasn't the SAS or SBS in Australia mostly did some JTAC stuff.

[Bryn Tucker]

Was it their commandos?

[Andy Stumpf]

I don't even remember. I think we were more using their facilities than anything. It wasn't a lot of direct commingling. And then the second time I went to Guam and again in the workups you're going to schools like you said, you can do some professional development. You're getting an idea of kind of I guess what it's going to be like. But if I'm being totally honest, we were using legacy tactics and we were training for legacy tactics. I mean we'd go out to the Nyland, the desert training facility out in Nyland, California, which is near the Chocolate Mountains and heavy river and stream crossing. Teaching guys how, like how are we laying out the rope? We're going to swim across in this backpack. So it's going to pop off and make sure you got the jungle boots with the little ports in them so the water comes out of it. And the pounds of camouflage fucking face paint that I applied and never once ever used. And now I actually look at it as a missed opportunity. I wish I had like fully Steven Seagalled up one day. Yeah. But it was all Vietnam based tactics because the community had not been pressed since Vietnam.

[Bryn Tucker]

You just made me think of something I've never thought of. I've. The amount of time I've put face paint on in training.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah. How many for real?

[Bryn Tucker]

I've never even thought about it. I don't even think I had my face paint makeup kit and bag.

[Tyler]

You all never painted your faces? That's it.

[Bryn Tucker]

I've never paid.

[Andy Stumpf]

Not for real faces.

[Bryn Tucker]

I tried. We. The only time we almost did, but the, the package didn't come in time. We were gonna do a Halloween hit in Iraq and we were gonna paint our faces black and white like skulls.

[Andy Stumpf]

I fully support that. Yeah, but see, that was comical. Not tactical.

[Bryn Tucker]

Exactly. That's right. And, and the, the makeup didn't come in in time. That's the only time I even thought about painting. We used to stand and I was on a recce.

[Andy Stumpf]

We used to stand in the mirror and then look at each other and be like, oh dude, that looks so bad. I really like how you put a little bit of gray under that high spot to just. And you're asking me like, oh dude, I noticed that you forked it and came in like, how did you do that, teach? I look back, all it ever did was go directly in my eyes. I never. The hours, fucking hours of painting my face In a mirror.

[Bryn Tucker]

Yeah, that's. I love that. I love that aspect of it. Yeah. Never thought about that until now.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Bryn Tucker]

So that's got me thinking, like going to like some sort of like clown school makeup class. Like you could have really, you could have really cashed in on a, on a face painting school.

[Andy Stumpf]

Here's a better question. Why did they make us do it in the first place?

[Tyler]

Oh, they do it Vietnam, probably.

[Andy Stumpf]

But if you get in the water, the shit comes off. If you sweat, you know the deal, it's in your eyes.

[Bryn Tucker]

Yeah, I know. And now we're talking about realistically and I'm trying to think of, you know.

[Andy Stumpf]

Why they probably did, though. And I'm sure there is limited night vision technology. If you have night vision technology, the camo paint doesn't really work. So I don't know it. I can never get that time back. Neither can you.

[Bryn Tucker]

No, no. And I'm. And the good news is that you have great skin. It didn't have any long lasting effects.

[Andy Stumpf]

Maybe there's. I don't know, there might have been hidden moisturizer in there. Maybe some spf.

[Bryn Tucker]

Keep you young.

[Andy Stumpf]

God. Yeah.

[Bryn Tucker]

The. When. Where were you when 9, 11 happened? And then what was the. Several parts. Just follow along. We get it all. Like, where were you on the teams? Were you guys like, get it on. We're going. And then how long did it actually take you to get into the fight? Because I, I kind of believe. I know it was SF heavy at the beginning of the war, so. So how did that, how'd that all come about on, on the SEAL teams? We were at Seal Team 5.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yep. I was still at Seal Team 5. I was living in an apartment complex near an IKEA in San Diego called Archstone Apartments. And I woke up and turned the TV on just briefly before the second plane impacted. So people were still talking about it through the guise of a private pilot. Just had a really shitty day as if, like it was aviation accidents.

[Bryn Tucker]

Yep.

[Andy Stumpf]

And then the second plane went in, saw that one go in live immediately. That shifted from aviation accident to, okay, this is something completely different in my mind. I was thinking I probably would be on a rotator flight within 45 minutes to an hour and absolutely nothing happened in a relatively quick period of time after that. I actually screened for the East Coast Command not long after that and then started selection in 2002. So the first time I actually went overseas, the Karzai detail was just getting wrapped up in October of 2002. This was post the ambush attempt. And they needed to basically rip back the squadron that was there. So they finished up selection early for the guys going to two of the squadrons and we went over there and augmented. So the first time I ever set foot in Afghanistan was late 2002. But it was purely from a PSD or personal security detail perspective. We were there for about a month. It was nothing to write home about. Interesting to see the country for sure. Definitely early on I remember riding around in very thin skinned vehicles.

[Bryn Tucker]

So you're talking about a squadron. So I'm assuming that it took you a little bit of time to get over there between Green Team and getting training. Took you a little bit of time to get over because you're with a different unit at this point.

[Andy Stumpf]

We finished. So I started selection in I think January. I think we moved there in January. It might have actually started in Feb. We were at High Risk SEER in Washington and they basically said if you're going to these two squadrons, this is the last portion of training that you're going to be doing and you're going to go augment the guys over there on the security detail.

[Bryn Tucker]

Do you know how long it took for Seal Team 5 to get in the fight? Did you end up beating them, beating them there then? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

The special operations community is very nimble, but they're still huge and it's a bureaucratic nightmare associated with that. From my understanding, Green Berets was a triple nickel. It was another one in the fives.

[Bryn Tucker]

Yeah, 574 and 555.

[Andy Stumpf]

So they were over there early. I saw conventional SEAL units when we went back. So we went from 2002 in Afghanistan to the initial invasion of Iraq in 2003 in Biap we were. I forget what we were doing. We were driving around on four wheelers for whatever reason, probably no military purpose whatsoever.

[Bryn Tucker]

Because you could.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah, if I'm being honest, I don't know what the fuck we were doing. But I remember running into guys I'm pretty sure from Team five, so they were there in Iraq earlier on. But there was also a lot more time to plan for that one. I think the pieces and the amount of pieces brought to table to bear were a lot larger. But yes, to answer long winded answer to your short question, yes, I did from an accidental velocity perspective end up over there before most of the guys I knew at conventional teams were there.

[Bryn Tucker]

There's a lot of things I want to get into like post military. So I'm not going to drag out the, the military part. And we can edit this out if you don't want to talk about it, but the. The night you got hurt.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yep.

[Bryn Tucker]

Mind talking about that? I call it a work surgery.

[Andy Stumpf]

Marksmanship award. It's my favorite. Yeah. I've talked about it openly and honestly. I know. You know, you and I were talking on the phone. I was actually with your guys right. When I got. When I got injured.

[Bryn Tucker]

And ask that selfishly, because I want to hear it.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Bryn Tucker]

Because we ain't gonna talk. We didn't get time to really talk about it in detail.

[Andy Stumpf]

So I. It had to have been. So I got shot February 5, 2005. So just over 20 years ago. Yes. Okay. Checking the math on that, I forgot what day it was. So it had to have been 2004. And I don't remember why this happened, but they split Iraq and Afghanistan between the two JSOC commands. Iraq was. What's the correct fucking vernacular for your old command?

[Bryn Tucker]

Cag.

[Andy Stumpf]

Can I call it super Top Secret Delta Force?

[Bryn Tucker]

Yes.

[Andy Stumpf]

Okay.

[Bryn Tucker]

Or we. Protocol mfdf.

[Andy Stumpf]

Fuck.

[Tyler]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

Okay. Actually, you never know, right? Because the name. It's just the name changes. And I want to be sensitive to all of our listeners.

[Bryn Tucker]

Appreciate that.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah. Cag. So the CAG guys. And actually when we were there in 2003 for the initial invasion, they surged another squadron forward. We left, and then our next rotations were over to Afghanistan. So CAG was focusing on Iraq. Development Group is focusing on Afghanistan. And I can see pros and cons to that a little bit. The biggest con is you're going to get really geographically specialized in one area and that's not going to work really well if you need to. Plus up beyond the size of your organic unit, which is what we needed.

[Bryn Tucker]

To do during the surge. Totally.

[Andy Stumpf]

So. And I don't know whose idea it was that we started doing cross training trips and then cross deployments, I guess it would be. But in 2004, it would have been probably Q3. Q4 of 2004, they're like, hey, you6 guys are going to go with a squadron. And I believe a squadron sent six guys up. So we would go down, we'd hop on the teeny weeny flights, and we'd head down to Bragg and we'd stay for a couple weeks at a time and we'd come back and you got. I think you guys would do the same. A couple weeks at a time and come back. So I think we did. And Again, this is 20 years in the rearview mirror. So I'm not trying to. I'm Painting with a broom here. A little bit, to the best of my recollection, we did a couple months of that, a full workup with. I think specifically we were with 2 troop. People always ask me like, oh, how were the guys? They were fucking fantastic. I know they were people like, well, what was the difference between their team room and your team room? Like, I don't know. They like OD green and we like navy blue. It was at an operator level. They were the same people. It's the same people who want to do the same type of thing. Deviations in height and weight. Some of your guys liked wearing overalls more than I do. I don't know what that's about, but they were absolutely fantastic. They accepted us with open arms. I'd like to think that my squad had done the same thing to those guys. So we go overseas, super busy. We were busy every night. That night I feel like we were targeting a kidnapping cell. I don't think they had kidnapped anybody. I believe that there was enough intelligence that they were going to. So we had to locate them first. I'll talk broadly about it. And sometimes you need devices to locate other devices, if you will. And sometimes those devices give you false readings. So we were meandering about, okay, perusing the town. We were perusing the town and somebody came out of another building and we pursued them in there. And I remember there was a shotgun breach, which is not the quietest as much as you people watch in the movies. It's pretty fucking loud. So we were perusing again and I remember I was walking point at the time for the element, and the guy said, hey, this is going to be the building. Like, okay, cool. So I set a ladder up because there's walls everywhere. And one thing I distinctly remember, it was essentially an alleyway. There were lights on in the compound that were not on when we passed them the first time because it was an. When we were doing our window shopping, if you will.

[Bryn Tucker]

Window shop. That's a good term for it. Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

We had passed. We had gone down this alley and we had worked our way back because that's where the electronics led us. It took a little bit of time. We broke off getting people into the right places so you can contain a target, get ready to take it down. I'm going to say I was on that ladder for 5 to 10 minutes. And it was maybe 3x the distance from me to that back wall. And it was a very traditional looking house, very American in nature, where it was like a garage jutting out and Then a window and a door, it'd be like. And there was a car. Instead of the garage though, there was a really big blacked out window. And I mean, I never saw a fucking curtain. And I was looking up and like I was through my nods, looking at stuff. And then underneath, through my nods, yeah, 10 minutes, I never saw shit. Like, okay, hey, we're gonna go. So I go over the ladder. I was the first person into the courtyard. And I remember my head thinking, should I go up to the door by myself? Like, no, that's not a good idea. Right, we should not go up to the door by ourselves. Because I was going to be security for the breach and a couple other guys came over the ladder. And I basically decided I was going to go right to where, if there was the door of the window and where it jutted back out, the first place I was going to move to is the corner of that wall where it jutted out. But I didn't want to turn my back to the window without looking at it. So I'm like on my gun. People think it's actually difficult to look through your optics with night vision on. So most of the time you're actually underneath it, kind of just walking but prepared, not knowing what was there. And the second I turned my head to look in that darked out window, round started cracking out. And from what I was told, because I never saw the guy, fucking AK came up and just started ripping first or second round out, hit me in the side of the hip, spun me. I pushed off with my foot and ended up sliding under the vehicle in the courtyard, which is a really shitty spot to be when a dude like 15ft away is fully just Somali full auto. You're hearing it like, impact the vehicle above me. I have a shotgun for breaching. The bungee wraps itself around metal underneath the vehicle. So I'm like trying to get out, laying on top of my gun, staring.

[Bryn Tucker]

At muzzle flash like, what do I do? Well, what can I do?

[Andy Stumpf]

Well, what I did was let my buddy know that I was hit and he came over and drugged me around a corner. And that's the end of my war story. That was people like. And then I was knee deep in grenade pins and 16 link. I'm like, yeah, I got drug around a corner. And that was kind of it for my night.

[Bryn Tucker]

Do you, looking back, do you feel if all you guys had your face painted, they wouldn't have seen you?

[Andy Stumpf]

That I actually think would have been the difference. I think it would have shortened the GWA. By 10 years.

[Bryn Tucker]

Let's bring that full circle now.

[Andy Stumpf]

You know, people ask me, you know, what do you think you did wrong? What do you think you could have done differently? And I don't know your experience. I've watched people on incredible runs at, like, gaming tables in Vegas. But if you're out there long enough, like, if you're playing craps, you're going to throw a seven at some point. I mean, I guess I could have turned my back to the window, which would not have been tactically sound. I just think that was my night.

[Bryn Tucker]

I say it all the time. It's a dangerous game, no matter how you play it. And it's funny, I use the same analogy. And at some point, you're going to roll snake eyes.

[Andy Stumpf]

You do. I mean, eight guys got hurt that night. There was an internal gunfight. People got hurt there. Two more guys in the courtyard got shot. I mean, it was a blue on blue breaching incident. We fucked up some guys in the hallway that were right. I mean, we're talking full C6 strip on a metal door. They ate that thing from feet away. Yeah, I mean, they were the black. I mean, like, little birds were coming in. I got put in the back of a Bradley.

[Bryn Tucker]

This is a mass CAS event for sure. Yeah. For your size element.

[Andy Stumpf]

I mean, like.

[Bryn Tucker]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

A third of the way through that. They drug me around a different corner on the outside. And I'm like, sitting there with my rifle like, hey, guys, can I be helpful in any way? There's no fucking cool war story about it. I didn't like, crawl to the window and just like, no, it's like I got drug out of a courtyard and the people who are way more fucked up than me, I mean, they're landing little birds in the streets and plucking them off. I got a poor God, I got put in the back of a Bradley with this poor army medic who whips out a 14 gauge, hits it on my arm and then goes, shit, I forgot to prep the bag. And pulls it out. I'm like, you're fucking done. You are done for the night because you just threw a soda straw in my arm. Which, by the way, I was very impressed. Impressed with. Normally I don't like looking at them, like, just like, hey, it's an 18 gauge, right? Or 20. Guy whiffs out, literally just a pen like this. He's like, which does not feel good.

[Bryn Tucker]

And I'm not even sure it's needed. No, no.

[Andy Stumpf]

And I'm like, oh, he felt so bad about it too. I'm like, dude, I'm going to live to the green zone. Like, let's just enjoy this ride together. He felt so bad about it, like, but you're done. You're done.

[Bryn Tucker]

The medical work's over. We're just going to get to know each other.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah. This it for like getting shot at, right?

[Bryn Tucker]

Okay.

[Andy Stumpf]

Just drive this thing to the Green zone.

[Tyler]

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[Bryn Tucker]

Revenge is an act of passion.

[Andy Stumpf]

Vengeance is an act of justice. Injuries are revenged. Crimes are avenged.

[Bryn Tucker]

Almost a century ago, big pharmaceutical companies.

[Andy Stumpf]

Re engineered medical school curriculum and faculty.

[Bryn Tucker]

With one goal, putting profit before progress. Anyone pushing back against the medical matrix.

[Andy Stumpf]

They carefully crafted was threatened, silenced, censored, financially ruined or worse. They are the problem.

[Bryn Tucker]

We are the solution.

[Andy Stumpf]

You are clear to engage.

[Bryn Tucker]

Initials Mike Juliet Alpha. You are clear to engage with weapons. You are clear to engage with weapons.

[Andy Stumpf]

Roger. Look up that route.

[Bryn Tucker]

See how far away easy is.

[Tyler]

JV team for life.

[Bryn Tucker]

What did the, what that injury have for you as far as long lasting effects?

[Andy Stumpf]

Still dealing with it really. So my main complaint by the time I got to the Green Zone was my ankle. I thought my ankle. It actually felt like they had taken me out of the Bradley, run over my ankle with the Bradley and then put me back into the Bradley. So my main complaint when I was sitting in the hospital room room was my ankle. So. And the staff was awesome. I mean they like swarm, right?

[Bryn Tucker]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

And we don't. We didn't look anything like traditional. I hadn't cut my hair in two and a half years. Right. I'll leave it at that. There's other programs generally Associated with traveling like that. So I'm like, oh, I'm supposed to remember some things that I can't remember. And they, like, they're awesome. They're cutting my pants off. They cut my. They cut my shoe off. They get me into an X ray machine. I think they might have even, like, cat scan the thing. And then they're looking at me like, hey, dude, your ankle is fine. I'm like, fuck you, it's fine. Well, it was the round. The best I can make of it. Is that the first round or the round that hit me? It. There was rebar in the windows. It hit it on the way out, so it was coming apart as it hit me. So it kind of spackled. And I don't know if that was good or bad. I don't know if it would have been better for it to go through and exit. You know what I mean? It could have also been catastrophic damage that way, too. So whatever happened, it interacted with my sciatic nerve, which immediately I was not able to use my leg from the mech point of injury all the way down. Don't get me wrong, Getting shot was not a massage. I would not optionally do that again. The nerve pain was way worse. And that stuck with me for about a year and a half to almost two years. And then I still have, like, issues with my left leg. Like, my left ankle is a lot more susceptible to rolling. I've just learned how to manage and.

[Bryn Tucker]

Work around it to live with it. Yeah. Did. It.

[Andy Stumpf]

Did.

[Bryn Tucker]

I'm assuming it affected your team time.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah, yeah. For whatever reason, they did not think I was up to staying in country, so I got ejected to Germany. I was like, hey, guys, but what about me? I'll be better.

[Bryn Tucker]

It's just a scratch.

[Tyler]

God.

[Andy Stumpf]

So Germany and then Germany home, and then that was actually my reason for leaving that command. And when I went to become a buzz instructor was after that, essentially to give me some time to rehab. I mean, I didn't know. I didn't know what it looked like for me. I didn't know if I was going to get to a point and be able to go back to a team or I was going to get to a point. And the military and I came to an agreement that my usefulness had come to its natural end.

[Bryn Tucker]

Yeah. How to. How'd you deal with that? You feel like you had plenty of time to drink a lot to accept that or.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah, I was at a command that I didn't even know existed when I joined doing this stuff. That I didn't even know was possible with people who were way better than me at absolutely every aspect of it, which is just absolutely awe inspiring and inspirational every single day. And then one day and you're doing well, like you're performing, you know, they didn't randomly pick six guys to go with your squad.

[Bryn Tucker]

That's right. Yep.

[Andy Stumpf]

So you're doing well. We're, I mean, fuck, we were sundown to sun up every day that we were over there. Awesome. And then you're flat on your back and you don't have a choice in it at all. And then doctors are telling you, yeah, we don't know how your recovery is going to be. I'm like, motherfucker, I didn't go to medical school. And I could have told you I didn't know how my recovery is going to be. Can you at least give me an education? Guess. And none of them ever could. And I mean in hindsight now that was just my own frustration. But it was really rough to be completely. I would equate it to you're. You're in an F1 car at maximum speed and then throw the clutch in and jam it into reverse. If they even, those cars even have reverse and the entire engine and transmission comes out from underneath you and you're like, well, but am I ever going to race again? It was tough, man. You know, and not the military medicine at that time. It was not the navy medicine, I should say. I can't speak for a greater military. They were not used to dealing with injuries coming from overseas, Especially at the hospital that I went to. I was legitimately asked by an E4 Corpsman if my gunshot wound was self inflicted on an intake form. I am not joking. I can't fucking make that up.

[Tyler]

That doesn't sound like something.

[Andy Stumpf]

I presented to the ER with a resting heart rate of like 150, profusely sweating and headache and ended up being a medication interaction. The guy checking me in, he goes, well, you know, what is the injury? And I said, gunshot wound. And he put his pencil down and looked at me and said, self inflicted. Fuck. So not his fault. They're just not used to seeing it. What I got was an opportunity to explore the big pharma space, which I did with copious amounts of alcohol in a pity party for about a year.

[Bryn Tucker]

What could go wrong?

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah, until I pulled my head out of my ass and put myself back on a trajectory, which honestly started with just exercise and stopping drinking and slowly getting myself off the meds and slowly worked Myself back, but it was. There was a physical aspect of that, but the emotional and mental aspect was worse for sure.

[Bryn Tucker]

It seems like such a obvious thing to say, but we as men, we seem to not deal with it very well and do the same thing. And the saying is. Or the guy I heard speak at a conference said, this guy's like, I don't drink. He's like, it's not. I'm just not a drinker. But I know this. I have friends that drink. And those friends have gone through really bad times and they've started drinking to deal with that. And I've never seen a friend, known a friend, or know of anyone that went through tough times in their life and said, you know what? Things got tough and I started drinking and I started drinking a lot. And then you know what? The more I started drinking, the better things got said. No one ever.

[Andy Stumpf]

It doesn't mean it's not possible.

[Tyler]

It just hasn't been done yet.

[Bryn Tucker]

It has not been done yet. I don't. And it seems so.

[Andy Stumpf]

It doesn't prove anything.

[Bryn Tucker]

And it only makes matters worse yet. That's. That's what we do. And I don't know why, and I don't know how to change that mentality. And I'm not saying like, after a hard day, you can't go have a few drinks to blow it off, but once it becomes that, that, that crutch in your life, it is. It's bad. Times are just going to get worse. That's what we do.

[Andy Stumpf]

Well, it's made a little bit easier. At least in the SEAL community that I came into. You would never find it in doctrine that they supported, supported or promoted alcohol, but you would find it in practice almost everywhere. Hey, this is your first time in a helicopter. Case of beer.

[Bryn Tucker]

Case of beer.

[Andy Stumpf]

Oh, you just missed the A zone on an E type silhouette six pack. You know what I mean? So we're measuring firsts and punishments in alcohol, and then they celebrate with alcohol. Celebrate with alcohol. They'd be like, hey, Friday, brief. Nobody get a dui. Also, the kegger is going to start at noon and the new guys better be the last people here. Yeah, I drove to work. I don't know how you like. What are you trying to tell. And it's not their fault. And I mean, I'd be curious how the culture was in the army. It was a drinking heavy culture, same as that.

[Bryn Tucker]

Did you guys. Did you, did you yard in?

[Andy Stumpf]

Yes.

[Bryn Tucker]

Was that, was that going on there? That's something we don't do. But I've heard about that from.

[Tyler]

What's that mean?

[Bryn Tucker]

Tell them about yarded. In. Or first of all, did you yard in and yard out?

[Andy Stumpf]

No.

[Bryn Tucker]

Okay.

[Andy Stumpf]

I think I was supposed to yard out. I had a tax appointment that day.

[Bryn Tucker]

Explain what that is.

[Andy Stumpf]

So when you're gonna get your patch, your squadron patch, they get a literal yard of beer. Now, they fill the bottom with hard alcohol of your choice. I'm not gonna force anything on. You get to chill.

[Bryn Tucker]

They're gentlemen. They're gentlemen.

[Andy Stumpf]

And then fill it up with beer. And you give a toast to the squadron, and then once it touches your lip, it can't leave your lip until the yard is gone.

[Tyler]

Three feet of beer.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yes. With. I'm gonna generously say six ounces of hard alcohol, conservatively. And they'll say, well, it kills the bubbles. I'm like, I don't. I am not a scientist, but I don't think that's how that works. So you go from sober to annihilated in, like, 30 minutes, and you're supposed to do that on the way out. I have seen somebody do it in under a minute. Just. It was. I've never seen anything like it.

[Bryn Tucker]

I'm sure it probably is true. I've heard stories of guys throwing up, but they wouldn't know. You're abiding by rules.

[Andy Stumpf]

No, if it touches your lips, you throw up into the yard in it. And you finish.

[Bryn Tucker]

And you finish it.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah. Get some.

[Tyler]

That seems to me like some guys were more fearful of that than probably any of the training that they went through. Like, knowing they had to do that at the end. Like, I don't want to do that, man.

[Andy Stumpf]

The fear is real. Now you. I mean, you're standing next to. We did this inside of a guy's house, in his kitchen. I know for a fact there was a garbage can right next to me. There's a 30% chance they might have, like, visqueen the floor like a murder scene. Just knowing how gnarly it's gonna be that. But, yeah, hey, we don't. We don't support a promoted drinking culture.

[Bryn Tucker]

We don't promote it.

[Tyler]

What. What got you in the mindset to get off the booze and start training again? Was it you or is it family?

[Andy Stumpf]

I actually distinctly remember we were still in Virginia beach at the time, and I was on about 15 different meds, and they interact in different ways. One of them was a central nervous system suppressant. My wife. My ex wife at the time was driving a Honda Odyssey because we had kids. At this point. And I think it could take 20 gallons of gas. And gas was like $1.50 a gallon. This is really easy math. And she was asking me, hey, how much do you think it's going to be if we fill up the tank? And I couldn't figure it out. I'm literally sitting there knowing There was maybe 10 gallons and maybe $1.50 a gallon and I couldn't fucking figure it out.

[Bryn Tucker]

The smoke coming from your ears and.

[Andy Stumpf]

Just that realization of I can't do basic human things, I can't do basic math. Nobody's forcing me to like. And. And then the danger was I was on some of the meds for long enough that you can't just rug pull that and get off of it. You have to titrate it off. Like I was on an anti seizure medicine for children that had a tertiary effect of neuropathic pain control. So it reduced your. Obviously the right way to push it. If I had stopped taking it, my propensity to have seizures would have gone through the roof, even though I'm not predisposed to it. So that one took me over a year to get off of. But it was. I remember that moment. I could take you to that gas station and point to you where we were today. Just that realization of, like, what the fuck am I doing right now? Like, I have got to change this.

[Bryn Tucker]

Yeah. And the sad part about it is if you didn't do that and push for it, I don't know how long the doctors would allow you to stay on that medicine.

[Andy Stumpf]

Probably as long as I wanted them to.

[Bryn Tucker]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

Probably until I said I'm going to need to get medically retired. And then the medication likely would have continued afterwards.

[Bryn Tucker]

And you essentially, you know, were proactive enough to say, hey, it's over. Wean yourself off of it.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yep.

[Bryn Tucker]

And it was, I'm assuming, the right call with. With no, no bad, you know, side effects to it. Or, or there was besides just the withdrawal type. Side.

[Andy Stumpf]

There were the withdrawal.

[Bryn Tucker]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

You know, difficulty sleeping, sweating, getting. It's funny, like, oh, my leg hurts, I should take that pill. And you ask yourself, does my leg actually hurt? Or am I telling myself my leg hurts? Yeah. Am I just used to taking that pill? And so. And I tried to do it smartly. There was some of them. And my sister was studying to become a nurse practitioner at the time. She's actually the person who identified the medication interaction. So I worked with her. And like, like I'm sure one of the boxes was Motrin like, okay, I can back off on the Motrin. I think I'm going to be okay. The other ones more rapid and the, you know, like the neuropathic pain control and that was one of the longest ones, but other than the initial, no. And I actually started feeling much more clear minded almost immediately.

[Bryn Tucker]

Yeah, that's, yeah, that's, that's definitely a problem that, that we have. Just, and I'm not, I'm not anti science, I'm not anti medicine. But the, the, there has to be, it can't be the first and only solution. Again, there has to be an end state to it. And like, you're right. They would have let you be on that as long as you wanted to. And that's gotta stop.

[Andy Stumpf]

I've heard that it has gotten better. I've heard that people who are coming back from overseas with overseas more ballistic type injuries. I mean the system is just more used to dealing with it. I've heard that it's gotten better, which is awesome. It wasn't spectacular for me, it was whatever it was what it was.

[Bryn Tucker]

I got shot in 14. I can tell you it's a, it's, it's very, it's very much as far.

[Andy Stumpf]

As the same little enemy marksmanship award.

[Bryn Tucker]

Where'd you get it in the arm?

[Andy Stumpf]

Sucks.

[Bryn Tucker]

Well, what was the, what'd you do after, what was your first job? You know what, you military? Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

I was working for CrossFit while still in the military on the weekends teaching their strength and conditioning protocol. That is the methodology that I used to rehab myself. Come to find out, the headquarters for CrossFit is about eight blocks from where my parents were living in the time in Santa Cruz. So there was kind of a tie in there. I met a guy who was working for the organization. So I was already doing moonlighting on the weekends. So I had a very easy transition out of the military from knowing what I was at least going to do when I got out as a starting point.

[Bryn Tucker]

Okay.

[Andy Stumpf]

And so I started working for them just on the weekends and eventually worked up toward, I mean at the end of it, by the time I got out, I was flying airplanes for the founder. So I was doing aviation stuff in addition to business stuff in addition to teaching the courses. So I had a job lined up when I got out. So that part for me wasn't as difficult. I quit that job about a year and a half after I got out. And then that's where things got a little bit more interesting. Trying to figure out what the hell I was going to do in life.

[Bryn Tucker]

And you're a big free fall guy. Were or still?

[Andy Stumpf]

I am a gravity enthusiast. I don't know if I'm a big free fall guy.

[Bryn Tucker]

How many jumps you got?

[Andy Stumpf]

8,500 ish.

[Bryn Tucker]

Gosh, you're a big free fall guy, gravity enthusiast. That's a lot. And do you still actively do that?

[Andy Stumpf]

I don't BASE jump anymore. Skydiving. I definitely enjoy skydiving.

[Bryn Tucker]

Talk about, talk about rolling the dice enough, you'll get snake eyes.

[Andy Stumpf]

I tell people it can be done as safely as possible, but never safely. There's risk. There's inherent risk in that it is a wood chipper. I've lost some very good friends to that activity. But again, almost all of those friends, and I would say this to them, if they were sitting here, it was due to bad decisions or their enthusiasm outstripping their capabilities.

[Bryn Tucker]

The. When did, did the. Did the podcast come first or your relationship with. With Black Rifle come first?

[Andy Stumpf]

Podcast came way early.

[Bryn Tucker]

So what made you get into that space and what year did you start?

[Andy Stumpf]

Rogan. Piece of.

[Bryn Tucker]

We hear that a lot.

[Andy Stumpf]

17. He's actually fantastic. 20. No, 20. 15. Okay. So I was. I stopped working for CrossFit and I went just cannonball into the pool into professional skydiving and base jumping. And in 2015, I did a high altitude wingsuit jump to try to fundraise for the Navy SEAL Foundation.

[Bryn Tucker]

Okay, how high?

[Andy Stumpf]

36,500Ft.

[Bryn Tucker]

Nice.

[Andy Stumpf]

The exit was not nice. I didn't nail the exit. No, no. It was trash.

[Bryn Tucker]

But why?

[Andy Stumpf]

Because that plane was going. I don't think the pilot actually had his foot on the throttles, but I feel like he did because we're at like maximum altitude and ceiling for this tricked out caravan single engine turbine. Me and the O2 tech in the back. The door comes up. I feel like he was going about 1500 miles an hour, which is not possible, but that's what it felt like. And I'm wearing the largest at the time commercial wingsuit. So big wingsuit plus high velocity plus side door exit equals me on the Internet looking like an asshole. But I sorted that shit out.

[Tyler]

You got time?

[Bryn Tucker]

36,000Ft. You got time?

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah, I had time. 18.23 miles or something like that.

[Bryn Tucker]

Well, lucky to blow out a wing or something. That have been.

[Andy Stumpf]

It was not great. Focus on the tail end of the flow. Not to begin.

[Bryn Tucker]

It all worked itself. Let's talk about that.

[Andy Stumpf]

So in that though, that's when I first really started working with brands and sponsorships and Endorsements. Black Rifle was still years later, though. In the course of doing that, I was on a podcast for the first time, and it was a CrossFit centric podcast. And there was a man on there named Tate Fletcher who owns Caveman Coffee. He was a UFC fighter. He was like, hey, I want to introduce you to some friends of mine and you should do their podcast. And I said, okay. It was Brian Callen and Brendan Schaub who have the fighter and the kid podcast. So I went and did that one and about a week or two. And Tate has been good friends with Joe for a long time. He was on a show with Joe, and I don't know how I came up, but Tate said to him, hey, you should have Andy on. And Joe was like, sure, absolutely. So Tate was the one who actually was on the show with me the first time. It was me, Joe, and Tate and did the first episode.

[Bryn Tucker]

And I'm asking a silly question because I don't know. I don't listen to podcasts a whole lot. Was he big at the time?

[Tyler]

He had to have been. If Brendan Chauvin.

[Bryn Tucker]

That's a silly question. If he was, I think, yes.

[Andy Stumpf]

I would say yes. I had never listened to a podcast. And then I went on Joe's show. Okay, let me tell you, I might, if I could go back in time, change how I phrased a few things. Things came up, like, you're telling us things came up like. Like, what should we do with people in Gitmo? And my answer was shoot them all in the face. I didn't realize the reach of Joe's podcast. So. Not that my. For clarity. Not that my stance on that has changed. I might have phrased it slightly differently.

[Bryn Tucker]

Discharge ammunition in their upper body region.

[Andy Stumpf]

Well, I mean, obviously let them out first so they die as a Freeman, but. But I think it was huge. To answer your question, there weren't as many podcasts then. And I would say in comparison to the podcasts that were out, he had to have been in the top percentile for sure.

[Bryn Tucker]

Okay.

[Andy Stumpf]

And the reason I did it, again, it was all back towards fundraising, which it did. It drastically helped. I mean, we raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for the Seal Foundation.

[Tyler]

Wow.

[Andy Stumpf]

I sent Joe a half face blades knife as a thank you. I got his mailing address, which is like a nondescript warehouse in la because the dude gets so much mail, it probably fills up this room per day. It's obviously not getting delivered to his house. Two months later, I get a text. It's like, hey, Andy, this is Joe. I really appreciate this knife. I'm going to carry this when I run. And we just. I was like, holy shit. Hey, it's pretty cool that you actually got it, because I basically sent that off into the ether. And then we just ended up staying in touch. And I went on his show again a second time. Probably, I don't know, 12 months after that. And after we had finished the second time, we were done recording, we were kind of just hanging out. He said, you should start a podcast. And I said, that sounds like a horrible idea, and I'm not going to take your advice until you actually can demonstrate that you know what you're talking about. It's actually what I said to him. I was like, maybe if you were good at this, I would actually take your advice.

[Bryn Tucker]

I was fucking with him.

[Andy Stumpf]

I was working with 511 tactical at the time as one of my brand sponsors, and they actually bought me the first podcast kit because I told one of the guys that I was working with about his comment a week later. He said, well, why don't we start this and let's just see where it goes? So it wasn't my idea. My introduction to Black Rifle came years later. I met Evan at Shot show, which is the single worst evolution on Earth, and nobody should ever go because you're gonna get sick. And I think that was probably a year or two, maybe a year after the podcast started. But I randomly met Evan at the top of the 511 booth. And I was just like, hey, dude, what's going on? He's like, hey, I'm Evan. I'm like, hey, what's up? I'm Andy.

[Bryn Tucker]

That's how it started. Yeah, that's how it started. But I'm going out to Salt Lake City next week. I'm gonna try to swing there, say hi to him.

[Andy Stumpf]

And people, they. I don't. It's interesting. People think that I work for Black Rifle. I do not. Some of my closest friends, like, Evan is one of my closest friends. JT is awesome. Logan did the 777 where we went around the way. He was my roommate. Like, fucking fantastic people. I have an advertising contract for the podcast, and then I pay them money to use their branding on my coffee shop. I am paying for the ability. I own a Black Rifle coffee shop in Kalispell, Montana, which I am paying for the operating agreement, and then I have an advertising contract. Do I wear a lot of Black Rifle stuff? Yes, I do. I also fucking dress myself at night off of what the first t shirt is on the top of the pile and I do my own laundry and I wear the same shit over and over again. So I basically wear the same four shirts. So I get how it can be confusing for people. But I'm not a spokesman for Black Rifle. I am not an employee of Black Rifle. I have an advertising deal and I own one of their coffee shops.

[Bryn Tucker]

So you work for him.

[Andy Stumpf]

Sure. Let me just tell you, there's a whole community of people out there that absolutely believe that.

[Tyler]

And what I say, I kind of.

[Andy Stumpf]

What I say to them is this. Believe whatever you want to. Yeah, I don't care.

[Bryn Tucker]

I'll. You. I'll. You're. The podcast thing would. Was the right call. I've watched several, several of your episodes. It's. You're funny, you're very articulate, man, you're witty. I wish I was as my mind worked as fast as yours does. Here's the key. You're fun to be around. You're fun to watch.

[Andy Stumpf]

What you're gonna say before you say it, just let it fly now. There's consequences to this approach. I have said some wildly, spectacularly dumb shit. I will at least go back and I apologize for it later. Like I make mistakes and that's. I think I have done just over 1500 hours of content at this point. Not everything I say is going to be perfect. I do the best I can. I give people my opinion and I always let people know. I only speak for myself. This is the experience I had. I don't speak for the community. You're asking me what I think I'm going to answer if you don't like that. I don't know what to tell you. I can't. I can't make everybody happy on every topic, nor actually do I want to.

[Tyler]

I respect the fact that you can speak to a camera for a long period of time.

[Andy Stumpf]

It's weird, isn't it?

[Tyler]

I think if Brent or me was like, it's on three, two, one. Yeah, it's like I don't know what to say.

[Bryn Tucker]

So much easier.

[Andy Stumpf]

That could be good content though too. Get it set it up right here. Just. And just put up five minutes and you just making eye contact with it, just staring at it.

[Bryn Tucker]

Do you have a favorite episode?

[Andy Stumpf]

The ones I have done with my dad are pretty fucking awesome. He is, first off, it's a double edged sword. He is a fucking nightmare because I have to deal with his geriatric ass and I have started telling him an open company that I'm looking for a Home to put him in because he gets feedback on the podcast. People are like, you should have your own merchandise. And then I start getting ideas, texts from my dad. Hey, do you think you should make a T shirt with just my beard on it? Then he'll go to the coffee shop and start telling our employees that they should pitch those ideas to me as if they were their own. He wanders through the coffee shop. He goes downstairs into the management area. Doesn't know shit about coffee. Completely prevents my employees from doing their job. Will monopolize hours of their time. Mouth breathes like nobody I've ever heard on the podcast. It's like, it's in.

[Bryn Tucker]

He's just like, you need a Drew. You need a Drew.

[Andy Stumpf]

I can hear it without Drew. And I'm sitting there like, I don't know if there's a technological solution to scrub this from the audio track, but what a fucking time capsule to be able to sit and talk with somebody about. And, you know, he had a really contentious relationship with his father. And I was just young enough that I remember his. My grandfather, his father, and some good things and some bad things, and to be able to talk through, like, the history of our family, but on a medium that lasts forever, it's really cool. So those have been some of my favorite. I'm fascinated by people and the stuff that makes them tick. I mean, to myself, I am resoundingly boring. I do the stuff that I do. To some people, the hobbies that I have or the interests that I have are unique. My own children, I am the most boring person they've ever met in their entire life. They give zero fucks about what I used to do, and I'm pretty sure about what I'm doing now. Unless they need something, usually monetary in nature. And then I'm like, just. My phone is blowing up, like, oh, I haven't heard from you in forever. Is your checking account low?

[Tyler]

Oh, they're adults.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah, 2118. So we'll use the term adults loosely, all three of them.

[Bryn Tucker]

I'm not gonna ask you to name a name. I think it'd be inappropriate. But the have. Do you have a. An episode that was, like, your worst. And whether it be like, they just didn't talk well is like, you didn't do your research. Maybe you shouldn't have had them on. You ever had a bad episode? Like, you know, I wouldn't have done that one again.

[Andy Stumpf]

I've never had an episode that I didn't air. And I have had some people that have come on that I think may have had a casual or loose relationship with the truth. And there's two schools of thought on this. One is that you should challenge them directly on it, but oftentimes I'm not an expert in that particular subject matter to be able to do so. So I go with the other one. I try to get them to talk more because if they're going to trip themselves up because the Internet is going to actually answer that question for me. So instead of me trying to talk over that person or try to prove a point, what I generally do is try to just get them to talk more and more because they will lay their trap for themselves. There have been some people who have come on that have never done a podcast before, so you have to work through nerves. I don't blame anybody for that at all because it can be a nerve or a stress inducing thing. There are some people who come on who just aren't great speakers or maybe some introverted people, but you can work your way around that. I don't think I have a least favorite guest. Even the people if I land at this place of I'm not so sure this person's telling the truth. I'm like, I'm gonna fuck with you now.

[Bryn Tucker]

Yeah.

[Tyler]

Are you still friends with Brendan Schab?

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Tyler]

He had some choice words to say.

[Andy Stumpf]

About us, the good or bad.

[Tyler]

Kind of like, what did you guys do? We made fun of his friend who was his friend.

[Bryn Tucker]

Who do we make fun of?

[Tyler]

Tim Kennedy.

[Andy Stumpf]

Oh, well, has he done his research?

[Tyler]

No, it was on Twitter.

[Bryn Tucker]

The, you know, the other thing. We had you as a subject on the live.

[Andy Stumpf]

And how'd that go for you guys?

[Bryn Tucker]

Great.

[Tyler]

Very well.

[Bryn Tucker]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

Like I said, I was in the chats. You guys ignore me, both of you. You. I was trying to do a super chat. I don't know, maybe my stolen credit card didn't go through.

[Bryn Tucker]

But this is. This is the problem with social media. There's a lot of people who know us by shorts. And you will not know exactly what we were talking about. You will not get the context of the conversation or our rebuttal or anything about that. And most time I'll get in the comment section every now and again I want to say I'll fight it out with them, but I'll. I'll. I'll explain to them. I was like, no, that's actually not. That's actually not the truth. Go back and look what we actually said in context. And when people only know you by shorts, they don't really know you sometimes.

[Andy Stumpf]

I'll get into your guys comment sections and fight it out. Every once in a while I'm like, no, that's not right. Like that's not even remotely correct and I'll at least throw something in there and then you got to stop.

[Bryn Tucker]

Yeah. And you know, and I've made fun about the, the January 6th denier and that happened with you a little bit with Ashley Babbitt. Nothing you said was wrong, but if they played a clip of it, they didn't see the whole thing, which is actually why we did a live segment on it. I felt the need really to kind of, I won't say vindicate you, but to try to get like, hey, that's not actually what he said. Well, that is what he said. But look at all the other things he said. And if you looked at the whole, the whole conversation, you wouldn't be mad at him because what you're, what you're arguing about right now, he actually said he just didn't see it in the clip that you saw.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah, that was, that was an interesting. My underlying message is that you have to be really careful with the choices that you make. That and I actually said in that video, this isn't about blame, this isn't about fault. And I will stand behind. And that particular woman, the loss of life, it sucks. She was from California and traveled out to Washington D.C. to be a part of that event. And I have no issue with any of the decisions that she made. It's not about that. She chose to participate at the, I believe it was at the National Mall and then it moved to the Capitol. She chose to go inside. She found herself at the front leading edge of what was going on in there and chose to climb through a broken out window. I wish that that woman did not get shot. I don't think it is her fault that she was killed. My whole point was if you look at this from. Let's shift topics and look at this from an aviation perspective. And now I'm going to call it an error chain. If you break any one of the chains, the outcome is different. That was my point. If you are somebody who wants to look for something and what other people say, you're always going to find it. That doesn't mean that that's what that person was trying to say.

[Bryn Tucker]

So you actually said this about you wish they would have investigated him.

[Andy Stumpf]

Come to find out they did. They went through two investigations. He actually didn't get pardoned.

[Bryn Tucker]

Really? Yes. But I think what people took from that is this is if you say she's wrong, there's an assumption that says then you think the police officer is right.

[Andy Stumpf]

How about they're both wrong?

[Bryn Tucker]

Exactly. And I don't buy that they're both wrong. They're absolutely both wrong. But that ends up being just this very polarizing. It's polarizing we live in.

[Andy Stumpf]

It's polarizing if you're looking for it to be. And absolutely there was something. I've thought a lot about this and I'm curious about your guys thoughts because as your show grows and anybody who puts content on the Internet, you have to ask yourself this question. Somebody in your comment section essentially said Jameson Travels who made a video about it and he went pretty hard in the paint. It was interesting he did, which he doesn't do on a lot of his other videos. And maybe he thinks I'm an absolute idiot, which would only mean he knows me well. But the comment was. It seemed as if Jameson was more upset that Andy didn't understand his audience than the comment he made himself. Now I'm paraphrasing that and it might be slightly wrong. And I was thinking about that and I've thought about that a lot because I have never once created content specifically for an audience, a targeted group. When people ask me questions, I will answer and I don't frame my answer through the lens of what is my audience going to think of this. Because if I do that I'm going to start changing how I answer the question. I don't know what my audience is. I don't know what they all believe and maybe I'm wrong in this thought process. But I think audience capture and only doing things that you think your audience will like or only saying things that your audience will agree with. I'm not going to say it's right or wrong. That's not the path I want to go down. And I'm curious because you guys host a popular show. Do you think about it from hey, how's the audience going to respond to this? Or do you talk about stuff that is meaningful to you? Because those are two very different things.

[Tyler]

Yeah, I think better. I've never worried about anything.

[Bryn Tucker]

I would go back to both. We've had. I won't. We'll dance around it. Let's talk about Dan Crenshaw for a second. So we did think a little bit like hey, how, how is our audience? Because there's a lot of Dan Crenshaw like haters out there. You know, how are they going to perceive him coming.

[Andy Stumpf]

His official name is the one eyed pirate hooker. No, I actually call him that to his face because I put him through training. So.

[Bryn Tucker]

So no, we, we think, think. But at the end of the day it's, it's in our decision matrix. But it, it's not what, it's not what drives the final decision. You know, we're just, I would just say we're aware. We're aware of it. Yeah. And because we're aware of it, I would say we kind of come up with a plan to say if we're aware of it, we're not gonna shy away from it. But how do we do it? Right a lot.

[Tyler]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

Because by right do you mean fairly?

[Bryn Tucker]

Yes, always fairly. Yeah, we won't if you're doing it fairly.

[Andy Stumpf]

I think you're avoiding audience capture. To me, when I hear audience capture, you're moving left and right of your center to land at a place that you know that your audience wants to hear. I think if you're fair and you land at a place. Well, first off, how the fuck are you ever going to appease everybody?

[Tyler]

Yeah, right. That's a dangerous game.

[Andy Stumpf]

Good luck making more than 50% of people.

[Bryn Tucker]

You'll appease no one.

[Andy Stumpf]

Exactly. So even if, because I truly don't know the audience, I always though try to be explicit about what I do and don't know where I am coming from and I will give my opinion, but I try to do it fairly. I don't target individuals. I've never done a video where I called somebody out. I'll talk about situations. So I think you can. As long as your guiding principle is that fairness. I think where it lands is where it lands. I think when it gets dangerous is when you say to yourself, this is where I need to land and I have to work my way back and.

[Bryn Tucker]

How do I get there?

[Tyler]

Well, that. And then you'll create an audience that will try and tell you what you're going to say and what you can't say. And you'll have angry people saying, hell, it's my show.

[Andy Stumpf]

Can you imagine that you got into it because maybe it was just fun for you to do or enriching to create stuff. And then the next thing you know you're only creating what other people tell you to do do. That sounds horrible.

[Bryn Tucker]

Maybe it's just us. We don't have a lot.

[Tyler]

You gotta keep the sponsors on their toes too.

[Bryn Tucker]

Do, do you have a follower that is either in your comments or in your DMs that just hates you and gets drunk at night and Just spews hate at you. Is that just us?

[Andy Stumpf]

I like people who have my personal email that do that that I'm friends with. I get emails. Emails from some crazy people and I. And I send them over to the spam folder. Eventually, I'm not gonna lie, sometimes I go looking in that spam folder just to see what crazy's up to. And they're up to some crazy.

[Bryn Tucker]

Yeah, we got Tugboat.

[Tyler]

He would say, I don't know who he is.

[Andy Stumpf]

Is that the actual name?

[Tyler]

Tugboat? On Instagram, he was. He sent pictures. He was part of Operation Red Wings. And he does not like it when anybody talks negatively about it or criticizes it.

[Bryn Tucker]

It.

[Tyler]

But he only messages us at like 4am when he's Hammer drunk.

[Andy Stumpf]

What aspect of the operation does he take issue with, really?

[Tyler]

Just smearing the name of the people there. That's what he thought we did when we had. What was his name? The Elder Seal.

[Andy Stumpf]

The Elder Seal. Eric Fuck is an elder Seal?

[Tyler]

He's older than you.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah, I just was not aware that somebody had the Nomiker of elder Seal.

[Bryn Tucker]

We're not calling him the Bullfrog, where he's just a.

[Andy Stumpf]

The Bullfrog is the. Currently serving the longest. Yeah, you know, I don't know, Eric.

[Bryn Tucker]

Give me bonus points for knowing the bullfrog terminology.

[Andy Stumpf]

Bullfrog is awesome.

[Bryn Tucker]

I'm looking for it. There's. There's no reason I should know that.

[Andy Stumpf]

There's no reason anybody should know that. It's like the guy has been in for like 30 years. Do they actively seek that out?

[Bryn Tucker]

And the bullfrog knows who he is or. Or it's kind of one of those things.

[Andy Stumpf]

I think you have to. Because you're so close to death from old age, you just assume that it's you. No, I mean, I don't know. Deming. I'm aware of a lot of the things that he has said. My request from him would be to show the receipts with the claims. That's the only thing I haven't seen from him is the act. You know, this is what he'll say. This is what people in the community think of this person. Like, please show me the receipt on that. This is what happened. Please show me the receipt on that. I'm completely open to having my mind change. And I will be the first person to talk to people about the underbelly of the seal community because I think it's essential to. To maintain your integrity. But if you don't have receipts, I think you have to be really Careful about what you say.

[Bryn Tucker]

I think that's another thing that's. That'll parallel in our worlds is we've, you know, we get. We get a lot of. A lot more credit than we deserve of calling out people. And they will. They will listen. They will list a litany of names.

[Tyler]

All they do is tear down veterans.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah, you guys are just here.

[Bryn Tucker]

And there's only two people that we've actually done that about, but they'll go down a long list of names that include Marcus, Sutrell, Jocko, Chris, Kyle, whoever else they can throw at that. Because we've had people on the show that have brought that up, and this is the gray area. So our show gets credit for calling them out. But it's a guest that did that.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah.

[Bryn Tucker]

And we're not going to. I don't feel the need that we're going to go edit out someone else's words, but end of the day, what someone else says on your podcast, if you air it, you still kind of have ownership of that. And I don't. I don't even know what the question is. It just is. It just is what it is. And whether that's fair or not, I don't know.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah, that's a tough one, right? I mean, how much responsibility do you have when somebody is making claims like that? So I had a guy on who found himself on the other side of the military justice system. His feelings for how he got there and the people responsible for that having were very deep. And he started using names of people who were still on active duty. And it is the only episode that I've gone back and the only thing I did was bleep out the actual name because I knew that that person would never have the ability to defend themselves or use the platform in the same way that that person is. I didn't have the ability to really ask him for receipts in that situation because it was an individual instance that happened with him. My. Like, I would host Eric on the show. I don't think he would ever want to do it, but if he did, the offer is open, but he's not getting out of that room without showing demonstrable proof. I mean, and that's fair. If he wants to say those things, be prepared to have your beliefs questioned and show me the receipts.

[Bryn Tucker]

Now. I also want to make it clear and make it. We had the opportunity. We didn't give pushback to what he said.

[Andy Stumpf]

You guys are anti Seal. We understand the podcast, and there's a lot of things.

[Bryn Tucker]

There's A lot of things he said, said that, that I don't necessarily disagree with. Yeah, I wouldn't have worded it, you know, that way, but in the day, that's, I mean, that's, it's, that's, that's his opinion. He words it the way he wants. And we're not going to edit it out just because he said it in a way that I don't agree with it.

[Andy Stumpf]

What I tell people at the beginning of my shows, especially if they've never done one or they're uncomfortable about a topic, I say, listen, I am responsible for what comes out of my mouth, you are responsible for what comes out of yours, and we go from there.

[Bryn Tucker]

Don't you think that's a half truth though, of sorts when it comes to. This is now a business for you? Yeah, I guess.

[Andy Stumpf]

Well, so here's the thing. If something comes out of their mouth that I don't agree with, it is on me to challenge that. And so that's where that ownership comes back onto my side.

[Bryn Tucker]

Yeah, I agree. And if it gets to a point where it's so egregious, then like other people have had to do. And in our space, if you miss that opportunity, the right thing to do is you have to go out and do a. You have to go out and do a. A retraction or rebuttal and just eat some crow.

[Andy Stumpf]

You know what.

[Bryn Tucker]

Which I'm. Which we're not. We're not above we. Dude. We've had to do it. We've had to do it before.

[Andy Stumpf]

It's the easiest thing in the world to do.

[Bryn Tucker]

I say we not to. Ironically enough, I made some false accusations of what I thought was true with FRCC and Black Rifle.

[Tyler]

Oh, yeah.

[Bryn Tucker]

Back in the day. Yeah. And after talking to JT and that's how me and JT's friendship started.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yep.

[Bryn Tucker]

I actually went back on FRCC and said he. I got some things wrong.

[Tyler]

Yeah, they donated to the Democratic Party.

[Bryn Tucker]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

No, that's Black rifle.

[Bryn Tucker]

It, it. It happened on a live when I said you could see the American flag from a telescope and someone googled on. On it real quick in real time. No, you can't.

[Tyler]

And then paid to have it on there.

[Bryn Tucker]

Right. And instead of me trying to defend.

[Andy Stumpf]

Did you tell them their telescope sucks because if you have the right one, it's totally possible.

[Bryn Tucker]

So we've, we've had to say that's. We were, we were wrong before and we're not above that. We're. We're human.

[Andy Stumpf]

If you can admit when you're wrong. There's no issue with integrity. It's the people that can't. I've had to go on and make video and actually that's not even the right word. I haven't had to go on and make videos like that. I have chosen to. When I have either found myself over the front of my skis, whether from my own doing or information changing and you know what? The response almost always is cool, thanks for having integrity. It's not that fucking hard.

[Bryn Tucker]

It's not. Owning your mistakes isn't. Isn't that hard.

[Tyler]

I mean, there's a difference between getting something factually wrong based off the information you had and then lying.

[Bryn Tucker]

Yeah, well, that's.

[Andy Stumpf]

Well, yeah, there's a really big difference between those two.

[Tyler]

Yeah, I saw Brent's eyes.

[Bryn Tucker]

Yeah, there's a lot of things going through my mind right now. But we, and here's. We've tried to cover some things on, on a live, where you want to, you want to cover it while it's hot. But the problem with covering something while it's hot is even though the information that you believe you have is true comes out to be like, we're not Fox News, so we don't, we don't do something every night or reh. You know, there's three or four shows in a row, you know, that cover the same topic on Fox News. It's, it's a week later before we get, you know, in front of a microphone. And it may not even be a topic anymore. But, but what you said lives on the Internet. And so it's doing things real time and trying to cover current event stories is tough.

[Andy Stumpf]

Well, I think the metric or measurement from people who try to be first and have breaking news, if you pull out that tape measure, your distance marker is distance from the truth, it might be breaking information. The validity of that information is very likely going to change. Yeah, I mean, how often did you, I mean, think about it like single source intel get fucked? You know what I mean? Like, no, I need more than that. And why? Because a lot of people have died off single source intelligence. Can we get back up on sigint? Can we, can we aggregate this out and get more information? Can we. Do we have nobody that I'm aware of, nobody has a gun to their head making content? Maybe perhaps in other countries. I think that might be happening slightly off screen. I'm not sure. I don't know of anybody in our space who makes content that has a gun to their head. The rush to be first is self imposed. There is risk to that.

[Bryn Tucker]

Yeah, a lot of truth to that. What's next for you?

[Andy Stumpf]

I just started flying helicopters, so I'll probably die covered in aviation gasoline. Honestly, I try to keep my life pretty simple. I have a three block radius that I travel in in Kalispell. I have the coffee shop. The podcast studio is a block and a half away. The jiu jitsu gym where my wife is a coach at is a block and a half away. And I kind of just try to stay in my triangle, man.

[Tyler]

You know what's weird? You Google Andy Stump. The second thing is Andy Stump's wife.

[Andy Stumpf]

I don't even know what to think of that.

[Tyler]

I just thought that was really hot. I was like, oh, it's just a.

[Bryn Tucker]

Fun fact for you.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah, she's fucking badass. She's way more badass than me.

[Bryn Tucker]

And the third thing is Andy Sumpstog.

[Andy Stumpf]

He is also, at 10 months old, more badass than me. There are people stopping us walking through airports. Can I take a picture of your dog? Yeah, go ahead.

[Bryn Tucker]

Oh, it's for my dog.

[Andy Stumpf]

Oh. Trust me. I don't get recognized. And I absolutely love it. It's how I would prefer to always be. We just traveled with him to Vicksburg, Mississippi. We're on the road for the last four days. That dog had 20 selfies. Oh, yeah, he just people. Most of them are from People. He's a mini dachshund. So people who own that dog, they're like, oh, I missed mine. I saw him an hour ago. Can I take a picture?

[Bryn Tucker]

You're a weirdo.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yeah. I try to keep my world small. I try to keep it simple.

[Bryn Tucker]

Do you feel like you're, you know, do you feel like your life is overly busy, complicated, or you feel like you've done a good job keeping things fairly simple and within. Within your grasp?

[Andy Stumpf]

I would say it floats.

[Bryn Tucker]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

And some of that is just based off the things I like to do. Like, I live in northwestern Montana. I love hunting. There's basically 60 days where you get to hunt. So you're going to lose your mind in September and October. You're still going to need to do all the other business stuff and then somehow try to slam a hobby in there for as much time as possible. Other than that, I do my best to guard against my calendar. I don't mind traveling, but I love where I live.

[Bryn Tucker]

How long do you think you can podcast for?

[Andy Stumpf]

That's a good question. I don't know. I guess it would be I will stop when it stops becoming enriching for me. I love sitting down with people who are passionate about something. And for me, because people ask me this all the time, how do you decide who you're going to have on the show? And I schedule it all myself. And there's a reason crazy people have my email address because I put it on the Internet. Because people ask me questions for Friday episodes and they need a mechanism to do so. But if it's interesting, if somebody reaches out and I think that they have something interesting to talk about 100%, like, let's, let's do it. So if it stops being enjoyable or enriching, I find a lot of inspiration talking with other people about how they were able to achieve awesome things. And that might just be recovery from crippling addiction. Like if you're not inspired listening to somebody talking about pulling themselves out of the absolute gutter of addiction, I don't know what to tell you. So if it ever gets to that point, or if it ever gets to the point where it feels just like a rote job, I'll shut it down.

[Bryn Tucker]

How long you been doing it now?

[Andy Stumpf]

Seven years. Seven plus years.

[Tyler]

We're almost two years in, but it.

[Bryn Tucker]

Feels like seven.

[Andy Stumpf]

People, you know, people, hey, what do you think? Do you think I should go to buds and I just tell them, life's easier if you just quit now?

[Bryn Tucker]

That's such a. That's such a generic question too.

[Andy Stumpf]

You have no idea how many parents have asked me, do you think my son could make it through buds? And I wish actually they would have let us bet on the students for clarity. They didn't. This is a hypothetical situation, people. But if they had allowed it, the instructor staff would be unanimously broken.

[Bryn Tucker]

Because you can't really.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yes. You can't tell. I mean, I would imagine my 6 foot 155 pound self at 18 rolling into training. If you would have let instructors bet on me, they'd be like, oh yeah, that little shit. I'm gonna put 100 on him not being here at the end of training.

[Bryn Tucker]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

And then the D1 athletes, a guy who looks like he's chiseled out of marble, they're like, yep, that's the guy. And he's gone three days in. You just can't tell. You don't know what's going on between people's ears, man.

[Bryn Tucker]

Yeah, well, last thing that we ask everyone is end it with a funny story.

[Andy Stumpf]

Like what kind of funny? Like shitting yourself funny or funny enough.

[Bryn Tucker]

That is, if we did, like, a poll on the subjects of the last funny story. Poop related would be top. All right, but whatever you got.

[Andy Stumpf]

I actually do have one along those lines. My wife fucked me on this one. So December of 2021. What year is it? 2523. I get a intestinal blockage. I've never had surgery in my life. Never even had stitches. And I'm with my wife. We're in Utah. She's teaching a jiu jitsu seminar. I was recording a podcast. About an hour into it, I'm like, huh, that feels weird. But it just. It was not weird like I hadn't felt before, but weird like maybe the chicken and waffles I had for breakfast is not agreeing with me. We finish the podcast, we go out, and I throw my gi on because I'm like, fuck it, whatever. My stomach hurts really bad, but I should probably roll for 90 minutes because that makes total sense. I go out there and roll for 90 minutes like a total idiot. Cannot sit in a chair upright after that. My wife's looking over at me like, hey, are you okay in court? I'm like, fucking fine. Never been better in my life. I just always sweat when I'm sitting here doing nothing. So we're driving home. We were going to drive from Utah to Montana, which we were going to do in a day. We did not get there in a day. She wanted to get some In N Out burgers, which we don't have in Montana for reasons I don't know. And so we stop at In N Out. I at that point, I'm no longer able to drive. So she says, hey, let's go to the. Not a pharmacy, like Walgreens. I'll get you some like, like, anti bloating medication. Because I'm like, it's fine. I have an upset stomach. She goes in. By the time she comes out, I'm in the passenger seat with my head down in the footwell and my feet up on the top of the headrest because I'm like, maybe I can fart my way out of this.

[Tyler]

I'm having a baby.

[Andy Stumpf]

She comes and opens the door and looks at me, is like, what in the actual are you doing? I'm like, it's science. Like, leave me alone. She. She crushes her burger. She's like, what do you want to do? I was like, start driving home. If it gets worse, we can always go to a hospital in Salt Lake City. She immediately drives to a hospital. We get in the hospital within five minutes of checking in. I'm laying on the emergency room floor, mostly because it was a cool tile floor and I was sweating my ass off. We get taken back, CAT scan, intestinal blockage. Overnight there they have me drink this medicine that is for essentially old people that haven't shit in two weeks. And so it contracts everything. And you can feel it starting to contract, like your entire intestinal pathway. But I had a blockage. And so it was. I was wearing a set of Fjallraven pants and a T shirt, and I sweat through those. I was at a fucking 10 out of 10 on pain. They're hitting me with Dilaudid. My wife's just sitting there like, I've never seen him like this. She's finally chasing the nurse. So they finally take me in, put me under. I'm just signed. I'm like. The doctor comes in, he's like, what do you want to do? I'm like, I don't care. Cut it out of me. I think those were my exact words, actually. Okay.

[Bryn Tucker]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

So I'm signing waivers. They tried to do it laparoscopically, so the three little holes in a robot wasn't able to do that. So he cuts me all the way open from below my belly button to the base of my sternum, essentially. I come out of anesthesia. I'm like, that was weird, because the last thing I remember is the guy saying, hey, I'm gonna give you something for the pain. And then I'm like, huh, what's up? What'd you guys do in the hospital for like three days? I've never been in a place that wants you to fart so badly. I'm not joking. It was like, if you can fart, it means you're. You know, that you're intestinal system is working. Well, the next step is you have to be able to shit before you can have regular food. So I, you know, achieve both of those. Not that big of a deal, but it's fine. Yeah. So then we got to figure out how the fuck we're going to drive home. So we drive home, start, we go from. Where were we? American. American Fork, Utah. That's the hospital. We make it to Pocatello, Idaho. I had not had any real food in five days. So I order a fucking barbecue chicken pizza because I'm an idiot. Which did not agree well with my. I got one slice in and it was up all night. I'm like, maybe we're going back to the hospital. I'm not sure. Maybe I gave myself another blockage. It took us two more days to get home. And on the third day we're driving. And every 30 minutes I'm like, you probably should find somewhere to pull over because it's about to get real. Most of the time we found rest stops, restaurants, whatever it was. We were in a stretch right before the 15 as it terminates and heads west. I was like, leah, we need to pull over. She pulls over. There is like, we're coming off the road. There's a bunch of old construction, plenty of things. A lesson in cover and concealment for people. None of it was cover, but it was all great concealment, big old stuff. But instead she pulls around in front of it and parks. And I'm like, not in a physical state to argue with her. Like, no, this isn't great. On the other side of the car is a fucking four way intersection. And I'm like, I don't even care. I just got out of the car and shit all over the place as cars are driving by. And I'm trying to explain to my wife, I'm like, why did you park here? She's like, oh, you could have just walked over to the cones. I didn't know what you meant. So, yeah, that was relatively embarrassing and that was relatively recent.

[Bryn Tucker]

Yeah.

[Andy Stumpf]

And it was.

[Bryn Tucker]

Do they know what caused the blockage?

[Andy Stumpf]

Bad luck.

[Bryn Tucker]

Bad luck.

[Tyler]

I know. It's so funny. What'll put a warrior face down. And an emergency room floor isn't getting shot, it's gas.

[Bryn Tucker]

10 out of 10.

[Andy Stumpf]

10 out of 10 for about four hours. I mean, I was sweating when they finally. So I got. They started giving me ketamine in the icu. I was in a post surgical recovery wing before that. So they're limited what they can give you because of the ratio of nurses in the icu. It's one to one. And they're like, what would you like? I'm like, I don't know, but make this stop. As soon as the pain stopped, I passed out because it was just. I mean, I was just. Oh, I was the worst. Yeah, legit. 10 out of 10.

[Tyler]

Did you have any surgery or stitches when you got injured?

[Andy Stumpf]

Put some curlex on it, said you're good. Whoa. That was it.

[Bryn Tucker]

He, in fact, was not good.

[Andy Stumpf]

Yes, yes.