#156 Chris Fettes - A SEAL Team 6 Sniper’s Worst Nightmare

Chris Fettis, welcome to the show, man. Thank you for having me.
It's an honor to have you here. It's an honor to be here, really.
I've been waiting a long time for this, man. A really long time.
And we got a lot to cover. I think it's going to be a really heavy episode, and I think it's going to impact thousands, if not millions, of lives.
And so I'm really excited about this. And, you know, we had a conversation on the phone about an operation you were on, and sounds like it was maybe, probably, definitely one of the most significant events of your life.
And that really impacted me as well, the way you described it. And actually, I was hoping you wouldn't get pissed at me, but I brought it up in the Jordan Peterson podcast because it was very real, very heavy, and I pray for you a lot.
But anyways, it's going to be a fantastic interview. And once again, man, I'm honored to have you here.
Thank you. I'm not pissed at at all i'm grateful and i i need to go catch up and i didn't catch that but now i need

to go all good all good i thought maybe uh somebody would hear it be like he's talking

about chris but um yeah but everybody starts with an introduction chris fetus you're a former navy

seal and member of seal team six officially known as naval special warfare development group nswdg

Thank you. Chris Fettis, you're a former Navy SEAL and member of SEAL Team 6,

officially known as Naval Special Warfare Development Group, NSWDG.

You were deployed around the world to fight America's enemies and defend freedom.

On your last mission, you were involved in a hostage rescue mission that changed your life forever.

You were credited with a 900-yard sniper shot on an enemy in a mountainous region of Somalia. Incredible.
You were a contractor for the Sensitive Activities Division of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency for six years. You were responsible for assessing, planning, and executing sensitive capabilities to support special operation forces operations globally.
Post-military, you became the founder and CEO of Be Free Ice Cream, where the meaning came from a discovery that true personal freedom comes only from the clarification of one's mind to realize happiness is a choice. Incredible.
And most importantly, you are a father to two sons and a husband. And I hope we talk a lot about fatherhood too.
I'd love to. So I got a Patreon account.
Those are our top supporters of the Sean Ryan Show. A lot of them have been here since the very beginning when i was doing this in my attic and um and uh one of the things i do uh is i give them the opportunity to ask each guest a question and man you had some really really good questions come up.
So I picked two of them. First one is from a fellow SOF guy.
And his name's Paul. So after almost 30 years on active duty, 20 years in SOF, I honestly don't know how I'll handle working in a civilian workforce.
Can you tell us three things that surprised you,

maybe that you simply did not expect about your transition back into the world

and how you handled those things?

Absolutely.

One thing that surprised me was

how much about myself I did not even know or understand,

like to the core, with my identity as a Special Forces guy, a SEAL, and how much effort it was going to take for me to learn that. That's one.
When did you realize that you didn't really know who you were? I think that I realized it, you know, that's hard to put a finger on because it was almost like a collective knowing all of a sudden, but it only came the day that I was almost at rock bottom, that I was at rock bottom, that I realized, holy shit, I can just make a decision right now, right?

And just the collective memory

of the first couple of years of being out,

just like knowing that I wasn't what I was supposed to be,

right, and that I was not even close to figuring that out.

Like it just felt like it was getting worse over time. And it was.
So there wasn't really a pinpoint moment, but there was things I was doing. There was, you know, in my marriage and with my kids and the addictions that I had just, you know, compounded on each other.
It has a compounding effect that I think that once you sense that you've lost your purpose of what you were, you can feel those a lot more now because there's not some outlet for it at work anymore. And that's when it got bad.
So I'd say in the first year or two, the first two years, because I was focused on my new job and what I was doing. And I was really confused about that, to be honest with you, too.
I learned pretty quickly that that job, and it wasn't that job specifically I have anything against. It was just that I knew I wasn't doing what I was supposed to be doing.
And that's a really shitty feeling. And trying to go, I just feel lost.
So what am I supposed to be doing? You know what I think, man? After interviewing, I don't know how many of us types, but having gone through it myself and talking to gents like you, I think what happens is you change as a human. And it's almost like you're under a fucking spell when you're in a unit like that.
I mean, I know you probably don't want to talk about this, but I'm going to, but the hate that comes from the community, I mean, that's not, when you're out, you know, that's not like normal, you know, to have those type of feelings. And it's just a glimpse into like how how dark it can be in the community and and when you and then and then when you're in it with the with the you know with the depression and the anxiety and then like just all this shit you know what i mean and and when you come out if you make it out unfortunately we have to say it like that because so many of our friends are killing themselves.
It's like this transition to morph back into yourself, who you truly are, what you're supposed to be. And I think for the guys that do make it back and find their way back to themselves

of what they were before they went in, it's a stronger,

I don't even want to say hardened, because if you find yourself, a lot of that falls away,

that hardness. And that's what I think it is.
That morphing back into yourself, I think what I've learned is that the consequences of doing that are going to make people mad and angry because you now, it's almost seen as a false betrayal in my opinion. Like you're betraying the code.
And I've moved past this so I don't dwell on it too much anymore but it used to bother me a lot because I really think that that dark, dark side of this brotherhood, which is a

beautiful thing, but also has this, is connected to the veteran suicide problem.

Because I, maybe we'll get into this, but I remember the thoughts, the very specific

thoughts that I was having in my moment, right?

And going, it's very, it's a lot simpler than I think that we really think. The actual specific thoughts that are going through our head at that moment.
And whatever the buildup was to get to that moment, it's different for everybody. We have different addictions.
We have different coping mechanisms for what we feel. But what I know is that for most of us, there's no betrayal going on.
Most of us who are doing our lives, especially the guys that figure this out and turn and make a decision, the right path, right? And don't give up.

Or doing it respectfully, not disrespectfully.

The programming we get in the code is that once you're done living your life by that code,

you can't, I couldn't conceive that any SEAL or guys in a unit could then go out in the world and live their life by any other code but that. And then we sort of connect it to integrity or whatever the words might be.
But that code has to be that way for it to work. But it's like a little bubble of a reality in this whole world of infinite reality and the paths you can go on and the things you can do.
And that little bubble of reality is also part of the whole overarching story. So how do you tell if you want to? And then there's the judgment of that in the first place.
Well, why does it have to tell? I know why. I've done a lot of work to figure out why I need to do anything.
And not enough time to explain to every single person still within that code on why. And it might be a waste of time because they won't understand.
Some of them might, but that's what it is in my opinion and I think about the solutions towards that and it's really solutions are more conceptual to me it's just finding some way which is happening actually so I'm very grateful where no change happens until a leader can validate that the change is acceptable. So some guy, some captain, whatever, until they decide, hey, I've got to do my fit reps, I've got to become an admiral someday, and go, this is a big problem, this veteran suicide thing, that for sure, this code and this place is part of that story, of what gets to that.
So what can we do that's not going to, they're so afraid of doing anything because they're so afraid that it's going to sap bandwidth from the mission, or, or the operator. But I think that the hate stuff actually uses more manpower and bandwidth than the solution, which would just be, in my mind, we figure out some really hard problems at that place.
That's a damn good point. I've not thought of that, the bandwidth thing.
We figure out scheduling and things. Scheduling in some things or just even infusing some level of acceptability for what guys are going to do when they're done? And maybe even some kind of rule set besides just

it being this free floating sort of non-acceptance thing like that if you do or say anything

that anybody knows about, like what are we supposed to do? Go to some ranch and live?

Yeah, the quiet professional thing is what they attach it to, but you're a quiet professional

and also to do, go to some ranch and live. Yeah, the quiet professional thing is what they attach it to, but you're a quiet professional there.
You have to be, right? When I'm now in my life, I'm not that doing that anymore. I have other things to do, you know? And it's not a disrespect thing.
It's just, it doesn't apply anymore, right, respectfully. Not, I promise you, no guy you talk to, their intention is to go, like, fuck them, and I'm going to go do this because of that.
Like, they're not, they're just trying their best. They're just doing their best.
It's a fight for survival then. But those experiences, yes, sir, those experiences are very, they're profound experiences to each person.
Like, the special part of special forces, to me, is our little hearts inside of each one of our guys,

each one of the individuality of the guy next to you.

We always say that.

The capabilities, the cool stuff, the night vision goggles,

the guns, the support, the money, all the stuff is cool.

And I don't want to make anybody mad, but the special part of Special Forces is the guys. The individual person, right? Like, not the call sign part.
Once we light cigarettes on a quiet target, we start calling each other by our names part, you know? And we know a little bit about the closest guys anyways, where they grew up from, what their childhood was like. And they're all similar stories.
You know, the thing they, I know that they've studied with psychologists at different units, and they've been doing this for a while, probably, I mean, at least since I was there over a decade ago, 20 years too. I think that they started to, were're trying to figure out what is that thing? What's the thread that's in common between us guys that causes us to get through those selections without quitting, right? And just keep driving through all the suffering and have that, it's not just this, oh, it's mental fortitude, you know, is that we all experience

some sort of adverse childhood thing.

Some trauma, some hardship, some thing, right?

That instead of some people would go become drug addicts

or, you know, some level of coping for that,

whatever was missing, you know, and I could go through a whole list of that stuff, instead decided to just go do shit and never quit. And my opinion about that is it has a little connection to validation as well.
Because our reputation is that's all it is. We just need constant validation from each other in order for our reputation to be good.
We fall outside of that. That's the most stressful thing.
That's even more stressful if you ever get labeled that it's worse than if I'm getting shot at by a PKM. That guy, yeah.
And you have little moments where you fuck something up, and for a little while you might be that guy, and you're like, that's the worst feeling ever. I've got to get out of this at any cost.
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It's all related to that and then that's a long answer to that question but when you get out you don't have that there anymore. Where do you get the validation from? You've got to figure out how to self-validate.
You've got to go clear all of the reasons why you needed that in the first place. You have to reinvent.

Yeah.

That's what you have to do.

You have to reinvent.

For me, going back to myself, like you said,

was all the way back to my seven-year-old self before things start to happen,

before you start to realize that it's hard or traumatic

or whatever the memories that you know,

each one of us knows are in there

that have been causing us all of this stress

through our lives.

That's a good answer.

One more.

Stephen Casey.

What advice do you have for exiting military members

whose skill set slash area of military service diverges widely from their passion and which may take time to develop? Suggestions on what to do if your skill set is way outside of your passion. Yeah.
Do the skill set. You got to do what's available to you and you got to have a job.
You got to work. But I experienced this.
Start making moves towards the thing that you're passionate about. You got to stop wasting time.
And so some people are going to get angry about this, but I didn't have time anymore to watch four hours of a football game and memorize all the statistics about some player and what college they went to. So that when we're all gathered around for fantasy football, you're like, man, that guy really knows his shit.
One day I realized he knows his shit and it's a waste of time for me

because I got to be making ice cream flavors

and giving it to people to taste it

and tell me what they think.

And that was the moves I was making in the background,

you know, going to ice cream school at Penn State

before I ever started my job.

I didn't know why. I didn't even, I think my wife was probably pissed.
You're going to spend how much to go to this cream school at Penn State before I ever started my job. I didn't know why.

I didn't even,

I think my wife was probably pissed.

You're going to spend how much

to go to this fucking school?

And you haven't even started your job yet.

So, but I'm glad I did.

But my point is,

start making moves towards the thing

you're passionate about.

Yeah.

And if you don't know what that is,

you know,

instead of wasting time going out drinking or like whatever the things what that is, you know, instead of wasting time

going out drinking or whatever the things

are that you know you're wasting time,

you just know what they

are. A lot of times

they're related to your addictions, you know?

And

start figuring out what you

like to really do.

It could be very simple.

Yeah, that's, I mean,

I don't know what the fuck I like

to Start figuring out what you like to really do. It could be very simple.
Yeah, that's, I mean, I don't know what the fuck I like to do. You know, I did all kinds of shit.
I sure as hell didn't think I was going to like sitting down talking to people for six hours because I don't like talking to people outside of the show anyways. I'm just a, I'm an introvert.
And, you know, but I mean, I think you just got to,

one, one, you got to close that fucking door.

That's what I think.

You have to close that door because you are leaving a community

that doesn't want you to leave and that you're passionate about.

Like nobody in SOF, probably even in the military,

especially in combat arms, is not passionate about their, what they're doing and the people that they're with and when that's over you have to shut that door and tune that out, it's done you're never going back, it's not going to happen and if you're like me and I'm sure you and a lot of the other gents that have been in here, I mean, that's all you had time for, man, is to pour your heart and soul into your unit, into warfighting, into building that camaraderie and culture and just being a fucking warrior. And so you don't know what you like to do because that's been 100% of your dedication and mindset and everything goes into that.
And so when you get out, you got to try everything, man. I mean, you just have to keep bouncing around until you feel good.
And then when you feel good, you're probably on to something. That's right.
And it becomes, when you find something and it becomes your new, most important thing in life other than your family, that's it. So dive in.
Yeah, it doesn't matter how much you have to do it. You know, you got it.
Because there's people I've heard've heard go oh man i like to make these duck collar things and but then i started selling them and i didn't like it anymore because i had to do work and i'm like do you really love it though yeah you know get through a couple years until you can get somebody to help make those things will you love it it then? And think in the future,

there's going to be a day where I'm not running this ice cream machine all day.

And once you get there, it's like worth it.

It's only, to me, it's a couple years.

It could commit to a couple, two, three years or something.

Did you have deep and meaningful conversations with teammates on deployments ever? With guys you knew? Yeah. Like some in-depth ones? You remember some details about some of your teammates? Yeah.
And then just remember, wasn't there always a guy playing a guitar around the fire?

Yeah.

Or there was one guy, I had an EOD guy, that as soon as we got back from the mission,

we'd do team family movie time, we'd go watch Band of Brothers together,

I'd get some ice cream, but he would always be in his hooch with a beat maker

making little beats, you know?

Yeah.

And that's what they love doing. So then when they get out, go what do I do wasn't there something you did good point some people maybe not maybe we were playing video games every waking moment between or whatever but there was probably something you know whatever it was you know went on long runs or even after a long mission you guys were like you're still going on miles of a run you love running you know, whatever it was.
You know, went on long runs or even after a long mission, you guys were like, you're still going on miles of a run? You love running, you know? Maybe you designed some shoes or something, you know, for that. I don't know.
But that's my point is start making moves towards that. Figuring it out, what you like doing.
And then imagining yourself because as long as time, you can't, your ego with that team connection is like, I can't imagine, I did all this stuff. You know? I can't imagine sitting in a little ice cream truck going, hey, you know, ding, ding, ding, ding.
But start to, you know, until you can imagine yourself doing that. You know? Great advice, man.
Well, let's get into the interview. First, one last thing.
Everybody gets a gift, even you, Chris. I guess we're going to be competitors in the sweets business.
Yeah. I'm going to put these in some ice cream and see what happens.
Hell yeah, do it. Do it.
Vigilance League gummy bears, legal in all 50 states, made in the USA. You're not going to get any weird feelings if you have any.
So I'm very curious on how you got these made. And they're really good.
I've had them before. Oh, thank you.
I'll tell you offline. But Chris, I want to get into your story and let's do, I know we have a lot of rabbit holes to go down and I want to hit every one of them.
So, but let's start at childhood. Where did you grow up? So I was born in Austin, Texas.

My real father was Mexican.

My mother is half Japanese and half Irish Caucasian.

Oh, shit.

I'm a quarter Japanese, too.

Yeah.

Right now, man.

Cool.

I didn't know that.

Yeah.

Cool.

I used to be embarrassed about it a little bit, trying to fit into school. And I looked a lot more Asian when I was a kid than I think I do now.
Now I'm very proud of it. Very, very proud of it.
My grandmother immigrated here. My grandfather met her while he was on tour for Vietnam, and he was in Okinawa.
And they've been the core of the whole family, right? And we moved around a lot. So my real father was an abusive alcoholic, physically abusive alcoholic to my mother.
Did you see any of that? So what I realized is with children and even pertaining to some of the stuff that's going on with children these days is that you remember everything. It's imprinted, right? Up to a certain age.
I don't think I remember much from three or four, maybe. But I didn't think I remember much from four or five.
And then I realized one day that I do. So I've got imprints in my memory of my real father, his face, and for sure his energy and what it felt like to me that I've only been able to get to actually recently, like in the last decade of my life.
But because you block them, right? If it doesn't feel good, so, you know, memories of violence, of him beating my mom, and, you know, she was working three jobs to support us. She was a seamstress for a long time.
And just remembering the faces of just different women that were not my mom coming over. Damn.
I remember that shit. So when we are going about the environment we create for our kids and whatever all these parents are doing is like, I think there might be a little

bit of an assumption that like, oh, they're just not going to remember all of this because they're kids, you know, but it's all in there. So that, you know, realizing that that was my real father,

and then in the future seeing some of those things coming out in me,

was a big kind of awakening moment, right?

To realize.

What age did he leave?

So, my mom finally divorced him.

You know, I try to talk to her about it.

I think it's a traumatizing thing for her as well, obviously.

And my grandfather's a really strong man.

He passed away a couple years ago in my mom's home.

I was there during his hospice.

He was an orphan himself, so he experienced a really tough childhood. Him and his brother were orphans.
Their parents abandoned them. And then they grew up with, you know, a couple different foster parents.
But they both became very successful. They both, you know, he spent a long career in the Army.
He retired as a colonel, did two tours of Vietnam. and then when he got out, he worked his way up through a company called Airframe that manufactured and sold airplane parts and components to Japanese companies, and he became fluent in Japanese.
So when that was all going on with my mom, I believe that there was some influence from him to go,

I need you to leave this guy, right?

And almost, I don't know if there was ever an ultimatum,

but she finally made the right decision

and divorced him.

How old were you?

I'm not quite sure.

I think I was about five, almost six years old, maybe. Shit, so you do have memories back to that young.
Yes, absolutely. And they're very specific little memories, you know, like what's your first memory, you know what I mean? That's hard for people to think right in the moment, but if you sit down, you meditate maybe, you think about it, you can go back like, oh, yeah.
And, you know, there's a memory I had from when I was probably five years old or four years old that I slipped on like a slippery concrete, bonked my head, and I must have gotten knocked out because the next thing I saw was my mom's face. I remember that, you know.
And there's another memory before that where I was getting like, I was in an ant pile i might have been four years old during this time and i got covered in fire ants and i was screaming and you know my mom grabbed me and threw me in a bathtub to drown all the ants and you know those get imprinted because they're sensational memories you know um outside of your every day as a kid. But I also have those memories about my father and him, the way he grabbed me to talk to me, to like, you know, I just have memories of him sitting next to me.
You know, he had a thick mustache. And the energy that I remember was not good.
You know, that biological connection between a father and son, I felt I don't think was there, right? Because when you're drowned in your addictions, when you're, you know, when you're that, it's blocking you, you know? And then I saw this in Afghanistan, you know, with different, I kind of correlate it together because I go, how, and it even relates to the story, is how some fathers don't have that for some reason, whatever it is, whether it's the ideology that they're practicing, you know, where we know in that, and then some of that terrorist culture, some of that Taliban, you know, and different types of those, you know, extremist cultures, like what I witnessed was, and from talking and eating with Afghans is that the wife and the son or any children are servants to the men, and that's their role. Not like here in a healthy father-son relationship where you go, they're not my servants.
I respect them. They're people with choices.
And I've made a decision to try my best to create the best environment for them. And even that's not going to be perfect.
There's going to be some resentment about something, you know. But you just try your best.
And so I think that goes missing in today's society sometimes to go to realize, like, you do what I say because I told you so. Or any level past that.
But do you have siblings? Yeah, I have two sisters. One's my half sister from my stepfather, who the next part of my childhood is that my mother met him and remarried and thank God, because he's a good man.
And I didn't know that growing up. We were at ends.
I said and did things and did things like, you're not my father when I got angry as a teenager. And I go back to that now and, like, I want to apologize.
I have apologized for that because everything that he did, he's a very quiet guy, very stoic. He grew up on a farm, also with a very difficult childhood, but at least was able to make a decision.
How do you take, I have so much more respect for stepfathers that actually take on or adopt someone's kids that aren't theirs for the woman that they love. Because that's a hard thing to do, to be a father without that biological connection.

To teach them how to ride a bike, to teach them.

So I didn't realize until I became really out of the SEAL teams that I received all

of that, even if it seemed like I wasn't listening.

Because I was a little shit.

I was a rebellious little shit. But I'm so grateful because it all went in there.
Yeah, man, that's, I don't think much about that, but I mean, actually I do. My little, my little brother has a, a, a stepson and and he's a fucking amazing dad.
And I see him doing all that stuff. That's his biological son, and I commend him all the time.
Man, you are changing that kid's life for the better. And, like, I don't know if I could ever rise to that occasion.

That's what I'm going to do, especially when they're pushing back on it all,

when it doesn't seem like they're getting it, you know?

He can definitely be a challenge.

But I want to go back.

What about your other sister?

Is she biological?

Yes.

100%?

Yeah, my biological sister, Courtney, she was an amazing person and one of the most kind souls. And, you know, one memory I have is my mother being pregnant with her.
So I must have been. We're only a couple years apart.
So two, three years old. I remember something about her getting hurt while she was pregnant with her and then asking, I asked my mother these questions later in childhood.
She'll start to ask, you know, she told me, you started to ask these questions, you know, because I didn't know my stepfather was not my father for a while until you get to seven, eight, whatever age, maybe before that, and start to go, hey, you know, is that, you know, you start asking questions because I remember somebody else, you know, but yeah, he, my real father kicked her down the stairs one day in an argument while she was pregnant with my sister, and she fell down a flight of stairs, like went down a flight of stairs in front of the apartment. And so, and I think about my mother, like if I could just go back as myself now to that and fucking, you know, my future self just go grab that motherfucker, you know? Because what happens when trauma turns us into something that we aren't really any of us ever are to start with when we're children? Now you go so far, you know, you still can always come back.
It's never too late, in my opinion.

It doesn't matter how far it goes,

the deepest, darkest serial killers, pedophiles,

all these fucking people going on can still make a choice.

But in this life, whatever boundaries and lines you cross,

you still have to live with and deal with the consequences of what you did.

And I felt like he ever got to do that, you know? Maybe part of the consequence of it was the suffering that people like that have every day, you know? The self-hate, the just the muck is part of it. Because they're not happy, you know? Some of these politicians, some of these people, they're not.
You can just see it. You can just see the bags in their eyes.
You know? You, like, look at this George Soros dude, and you're, like, just committed to evil. Right? And some of them it shows.
You know? It doesn't look like a healthy 80-year-old, whatever he is, dude. Looks like a demon.
Mm a demon. And then there's others that appear or look healthy, and that's the most sinister of them, right? But my point about my dad is that, you know, some of my family on that side, he actually died early somehow in 2009, and my mom found out about it.
And I asked him questions, you know, how did he die? You know, I still don't, not very clear. I think it was some medical issue with his leg or something like some weird thing.
But my side of the family, the Mexican side of the family tried to contact me after. And I just, because of that, what I just said, I just didn't have any interest.
And my real father was my father, right? So it would have been a disservice in my mind to go explore that. And I just didn't have the intuition or the need to go explore that.
And my Japanese side of the family, my grandparents and my father, I had everything I needed.

And so the energy of them contacting me

just didn't feel right.

My intuition was kicking off.

There's some reason behind this,

whether it's money or something.

They've heard about me.

I've been a SEAL for a while.

And so I just pushed it.

I just didn't do it. Do you believe in generational trauma? Yes, absolutely.
Because I don't think that it's as genetically predisposed as we might think it is. Addictive traits and things like that, maybe a little bit.
What I think is that generational trauma is because the traumatized, you have kids, now you're responsible for the environment you create for them. And if you haven't healed that shit and you haven't returned to what you really are, you're real, you know, the soul that's inside of all of us when we're children.
And back to the fucking George Soros thing. You're like, he was just a five-year-old kid once.
And no matter what his environment was, he was just playing, just doing his job as a kid, wholesome, innocent. Whatever the environments were to then make him what he is now, he hasn't made a decision to change that for his own kids, right? And I guarantee you now, they're all fucked up too.
So that's a choice that any one person can make, but you can't see through the veil of that conflict and trauma and bullshit. I call it bullshit.
It's just the easiest way for me to explain it, is stuff. And it's just piled on top of us over time to where that soul right here and here is just covered in bullshit.
And you can't, how do you see through? It's like being stuck in mud or quicksand. And the decision is, it's like a shovel.
You've got to do work every day to get it down, at least to where you can see something, you know? It doesn't have to be perfect. What kind of work? I know what you're talking about, but a lot of people aren't going to know what you're talking about.
So what kind of work are you talking about? To find a way, and there's different ways of experience. Plant medicines for sure work for me.
There's other ways. Native Americans do sweat lodges, you know.
Ancient people did different things. Rites of passages to becoming a man, you know, but the point being some way for you to just stop and realize I feel like I'm full of shit, right? And for me, when I got out of the military, it was like I couldn't figure it out.
When I talked to my wife, you know, when I was fucking things up constantly, it was like, I just crying with her. Like, I just feel this creature inside of me, right? Just this like little dark creature.
And, you know, that's just how I visualized it. But one, identifying that and then going, what, what caused this? Because I, I think that every one of us in the world, from the very healthy of us all the way to the bent over fentanyl addict in San Diego, the memory, the very specific memory of what somebody did to you or what happened to you, whether it was a collective over time or a very specific thing or a whole bunch of very specific things, but you know what it is.
And you just, you don't want to admit to yourself that it's that that started it, whatever the trauma is, whatever the things, you know what I mean? And it's different for everybody, But going then to that thing and spending time looking at it, we don't want to, but just fucking something to put your head in place to then not just look at it, but go all around it and go figure out, yeah, that memory, that's it. You know, for me, for example, there

was one and like sexual stuff's embarrassing for everybody to talk about. That's why it's one of the most sinister addictions in my opinion, compared to like, you can say all day long, like I'm a drug addict.
I'm like an alcoholic. I beat my wife.
I do this really hard for people, but it's also ironic because there's so much sexuality bullshit going on right now. it's all focused on that all the time of constantly having to prove or portray or explain your sexuality and even now go on to the extent of just displaying it openly in an effort to make it feel normal because your subconscious, your ego,

is like you know already it's inappropriate,

you know, some of these things you see.

Like I can't, and I have no judgment against anybody's sexualities.

But from California, I can't take my kids

to San Francisco during Gay Pride Month

because, and it's not because of the sexualities,

it's because of all the traumatic sexual shit they're going to see, you know, out in public. And it's just not okay, but it's also not going like anything against your sexuality.
It's just, you know, but for me, just as a, because it's hard to talk about, I'm going to use it as an example. One of my earliest traumas was, you know, my mom was working a lot.
My dad, so that's part of the childhood story. My dad was in the Air Force.
So then when she remarried, I became a military kid. So I'll go back to that.
We moved around a lot and that became another kind of trauma. Super cool, but also a little bit of a trauma.
A big trauma.

But back to that thing,

I had a good childhood after my mom got married.

I really feel overall like, man, I had a great childhood,

but there was these little things because they were just doing their best.

He was working, she was working,

and I had freedom around the neighborhood.

We lived in Japan at the time.

Got stationed there. Super cool.
We lived there for four years. But I had free floating rain around the whole neighborhood as a six-year-old, right? So I was friends with his other six-year-old.
And there was a specific few days where we ended up in his house down the road, but he had older siblings, 12, 13, 14, whose parents were also gone all the time. And they were watching porn in the living room.
So now I go here, I'm a six-year-old and they, you know how, you know, I see it with kids now, they influence each other. They go, hey, they think it's a good idea to take the six-year-old and go like, look at this.
And you're like, and I'm sitting there looking at this scene that I remember the very, this is what I'm saying with, you know what it is. I remember the very specific things that I was watching in that scene, not knowing what the fuck they were to go.
I don't know what it is, but it's fascinating in some way. It's like this, like something I've, you know, and then all of a sudden you're a six-year-old kid.

Trauma, right, affects the rest of the path of your life

with this sexual bullshit, right, that you saw too soon.

Because you don't even need to be thinking about it

until your body matures into that,

which was the original purpose for sex in the first place

is to reproduce and like, you know, yeah, it feels good. Whatever we figure that out, that's an intimacy thing, but not as a six-year-old.
You're supposed to be playing, you know? You're supposed to be looking at bugs and coloring, you know? So in one of my plant medicine experiences, I was able to go back to this very closely

and like almost float around it like a spirit

and go, holy shit, I'm looking at my face.

I'm going around, I'm looking at my reaction to it

and crying for myself to go, what?

Like, you know, just want to pull him out of there

and fucking stop it, right? So, but it went on for a couple of different days we were in there and that became a porn addiction for later. And I'm not embarrassed to say really because I know how many fucking people in America are addicted to porn.
If you watch it every day or even every week, you've got some sort of, some level of addiction. There's a spectrum for different addictions.
And now when I think about it, I go, fuck, one of the worst things we could have ever done as a society. And it just gradually happened, just like everything else does, just like AI, just all the things, the internet, we create it, we can't figure out or agree to how to use it the right way or how to kind of regulate it so it's healthy, right?

And then it just explodes into this infinite realm

of deviant, dark shit.

We all know what's in there.

We can be embarrassed to say like,

oh, I can see what's in there.

And you go like, wow, are you watching?

You know, right?

Because if you look at any of those fucking videos

and like any of them,

there's millions of views, you know. More than the Sean Ryan show.
So I know. It's a collective, it is global at this point.
You can just go in there and click, yeah, I'm 18. Some 10-year-old can do that.
How soon do they get these things now? They have them when they're children. I know everybody's not going in there and being responsible to block that stuff.
Promise you, they're looking at it and creating these little traumas that they don't even realize. And now we have exploded into this generation, these generations of sexually addicted people.
And dude, some of the most brave people I've ever seen doing some shit are like ex-porn stars. There's this one guy, I don't remember his name, but he's now an advocate against it and how toxic and terrible it is.
No kidding. I don't know about that.
He's a big Christian. I can't remember his name right now, but he was a very famous porn star.
And now imagine the, that's all recorded.

It's all in there.

You can always go back to that.

So talk about, you know, you do clear some shit.

You do heal.

You do find a way to move forward.

And, but it's recorded.

It's still, it's, talk about like your past

coming back to haunt you.

It's every day for that guy,

but he still is telling the truth.

And God, that must be, it would be so interesting to talk to him. I'll find him.
He goes, yeah, he's a big Christian. His family looks amazing and healthy.
He's made a decision, you know? But my point back to that is that was one of my traumas, and I always knew it was there and what it was. I just always avoided that it was connected to anything that I was doing, habits-wise or addictions-wise.
And then we go into a culture like the teams, and we don't encourage addictions, but it's like, hey, man, it's okay. Like, we're all, it's a safe environment sometimes, you know? I would say we encourage addictions.
Yeah. I think that comes, look, maybe things have changed.
I remember being shamed. For not drinking.
Because I don't want to drink. I remember being told, if you don't drink, we're not going to trust you.
I remember being handed sleeping pills and Adderall and opiates and all the shit.

You know what I mean?

I think that addiction is very much encouraged within the teams.

It's just under the radar.

Yeah, it's a secret code thing.

And, you know, they'll blast you for those addictions.

And they'll punish you for those addictions.

Yeah, and then you get a DUI and you're like, fuck, Kevin Alvarez.

And then they'll go and do the exact same fucking thing. Yeah, so it's a toxic loop.
Part of the thing you asked me earlier is what's the solution? I'm like, how do you change culture? Shaming and guilting is not going to change it, so if you have a command or somebody that's like, zero-tolerance shit doesn't work. It's just some level of acceptability for the guys that do want to fit in, desperately want to fit in.
They have to. They don't want to participate, you know? Have you thought about how the culture changes? A lot, yeah.
it definitely changes with the ebbs and flow of like operation tempo and combat, I think. It feels like it's getting, it gets more toxic when you're not busy.
You know, because in between all that shit, you've got camaraderie, you guys are out having to trust each other every night, you know? So I talked about

this the other day with my kids' baseball team. We just merged two travel baseball teams from two teams, and we had this, like, separation of parents and kids going, like, we're better, they're better, we should play, they should.
And finally, I was like, God damn it. We're all on the same team.
We're all trying our best. And it's that concept of acceptability and just stopping with the bullshit so much.
We're supposed to be focusing on a mission and we do all this bullshit stuff. The fitting in part and the reputation part is really really really hard and and hard thing to change but i think that it's happening naturally because you can't deny how good it works to optimize guys and they're starting to do it you know there's like this program called virginia um human performance where they actually can now go do this once a year.
And it's a whole collection of modalities and providers and things to sort of set you back on the path of health and optimization, which doesn't include alcohol and cheating on your wife and fucking porn and whatever the fuck else you do. Get off all that shit for four weeks, you go back, you're optimized.

And then you integrate that.

I'm like, that's a good one.

That's within the teams?

Yeah.

Oh, that's great to hear.

So they are making steps.

Yeah, but I can imagine how hard it was

for them to accept that guys are going to go

spend four weeks to do this.

And then teammates not judge them and go,

well, he's going to go ride horses in Montana for fucking five days instead of go to Shaw's for the 25th time. He doesn't know the drills.
He can just go to the kill house all day for a week and do those. So I think it's starting to happen, where the acceptability part of it is happening.
So you're like, you're not shaming the guys that are drinking or doing those things but they're being more okay with you not participating to go hey we just jumped all day it's stressful as fuck you want to release all that stress but you go out drinking all night you're gonna feel like shit the next morning and then just compounds over the trip and then you're like oh when i get home i'll fucking fix you know i'll catch up when i get home but you never do because you get home gotta be in the kill house all day you're breaching never catches up until you're done with your career and your testosterone is zero and you're just addictions have destroyed your body you know so i'm happy to see that that's starting to happen. Man, that's great to hear.
When did that get implemented? I think it's been pretty recent, like the last few years. I just got into it.
It's been eight years. I've always been meaning to go, and I've just been on my path of self-discovery.
Nice. So I finally got in.
I'm doing it right now, actually. Oh, really? Yeah.
Good for you. My second week, I had to, you know, get my food and my workouts for this couple of days while I'm here.
Right on, man. It's awesome.
Right on. Yeah, I feel like it has to be attraction rather than promotion.
Yeah. You can't be shoving it down people's throat.

You just have to get solid guys

that the rest look up to

to just be the example

without promoting it.

Just be.

People start following suit.

Absolutely.

They see people they look up to being optimized. They're Like, fuck, I got to do that too.
Yeah. Back to your childhood.
Yeah, so my father was in the Air Force, and we started moving around every two to four years. That was awesome, lots of cool different experiences, but then I developed this problem with validation.
One, because my stepfather, doing the best he could, but it's not the same as, it's not quite the same. He's doing the best he could, but he's also a very stoic guy, right? So maybe part of the trauma was I resented.
Like boys, boys especially, I got two boys. I don't know, I have experience with daughters, so I can't speak to it much.
But aside from nurturing for mom, they need validation from dad every day, right? So there's a bucket to fill every day. And it doesn't mean like, oh, I got to be at the baseball games, every single one of them in the bucket.
That's not what does it. It's not time around where, you know,

because if I could be at those things

and I could just be doing this,

and as he does something,

and he looks over to see if I saw it and I miss it,

the bucket goes down.

Your dad's not really there.

But now what's happening is that I'm paying attention, right? And maybe between stuff, I do some work shit or whatever, I make my ice cream posts. But they do something, and for that split second, they look over, and you're like, it's just a signal, you know? I saw, you know? And their bucket fills all the way up for that day.
It just took that split second. So if I'm consistent with that, I can feel it in them that they're okay week to week.
You know? And when I start to be unbalanced because of my own addictions, because of my habits or whatever comes back during stress, then that's the sign. You know.
Time to balance myself back because I just fucking missed this week. And he's acting up now.
He's talking back. He's not listening to mom, you know.
And I can just, you just can see how it works. So the decision to get out of the Navy was right for me.
And it was because of them, which I can get to that after the childhood.

But fuck, I'm so grateful to myself just five, six, you know, eight years ago

to one, make the decision to get out,

but then working towards understanding that

for the next few years, you know,

I'm so thankful that I decided to do that. How was...
This is interesting because I moved around a lot as a kid too. Every two to three years.
I can't even count how many different places I lived in. But you consider that trauma.
Yeah, because... I never thought about the constant validation because you have to reestablish yourself every time you go to a new school.
That's right. So I show up and I got so tired of them.
I'm the new kid. You go into the classroom.
I remember all those memories of, you know, the new kid's spitballs come flying your way, you know, or the teacher goes, welcome, Chris Fettis, whatever, and they're like, ha, ha, ha, make fun of your name, whatever, all the little things kids do. You know what I mean? It's not bullying.
It's just kids. But when you do that over and over again, and then you do whatever you got to do to fit in.
Mom, can you buy me these clothes? Can I do my hair this way? You know what I mean? Can I do this? Can I do that? You make some friends. And then, boom, you got to go.
You cry. You leave your friends.
You work so hard to fit in with. Get to the next school.
New kid again. Same thing.
So now I think back, like, dude, how many times did I change and conform myself to go fit into? And it was so different every time it was Japan to South Carolina, to South Carolina. And then when you show up, they're going to make fun of what you look like because of where you just came from.
They're not used to seeing it. They're not unaccustomed.
And then, you know, you've got to change that to be more normal, right? So, you know, in South Carolina, I got made fun of a lot for the Asian shit. Like, you know, I just remember memories of kids like, you know, hoi, hoi, hoi.
And it's so funny now, I wish I could go back to some of those people and go, where are you at now? What are you doing, man? That's fucking crazy, man. I got the exact same shit.
They called me a chink all the time. I'm like, I'm fucking Japanese.
Fuck off. Yeah, yeah.
These words. Like, thanks.
Thank you for that. Yeah.
You know, and doing that, then it was, you know, North Carolina, and then it was we got to California. And then by the time we got to California, Monterey, beautiful place.
I loved it there because my grandparents were there. You know, my father found a way to get stationed there as a recruiter and just kept extending it because my mom just, we were happy there, you know.
He didn't want to do that, but sacrifice. So he was teaching me a lesson about sacrifice without even teaching me anything.
He just did it, you know. I was like, I knew he loved being an F-16 mechanic, but he was doing this recruiting job so we could stay there and visit.
I was always at my grandparents' house in Pebble Beach, the best memories. But then I was also in this school with different crowds of people and gangs and different stuff going on.
And same thing, trying to fit in with somebody. Now you're a teenager and it gets even harsher trying to fit in.
So I made some friends. Got one of those friends I still keep in touch with.
Filipino guy, good friend of mine. We don't talk too often, but he's off living his life,

but I think about him a lot.

And yeah, then I sort of started to attach

where I'm from to there.

So when people say where you're from,

I don't have time to explain all that other stuff.

I go, I went to high school there.

I graduated there.

I'm from Monterey, California. And it was my favorite memory, my favorite place.
Right. So, you know, my dad used to have tickets for recruits to go watch Giants games in San Francisco and they never took them up on it.
So we were always going to watch games. So that's how I became a Giants fan.
Those games were awesome. I love going and eating popcorn and ice cream and watching baseball games.
But I realized later, after my whole career was over, that the original reason

9-11 happened, so my parents moved one more time after that. It was their last station before they

retired, and they ended up back to North Carolina. So I stayed when they moved.
I tried to live out

I'll ask to raves. I was like trying to fit in, you know.
I had a girlfriend that was really bad, cheating on me all the time. So I was learning that lesson too, that like that's normal in a relationship.
And just a pretty toxic lifestyle with no purpose. And so, you know, my grandparents sensed that in me and my grandmother really cried for me one day and was like, you're not good here.
And I was getting sick all the time, and she was taking care of me. So she said, you should go back home for a couple of years.
And I was like, okay. So I went back to North Carolina for a couple of years, felt better because I was living at home again, you know? And then 9-11 happened when I was about 19.
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hillsdale.edu slash srs. So I was randomly working, at a bank as a teller

and bouncing around different jobs,

watching this thing on TV while I was working.

People coming in just distraught, going, like,

what the hell is happening?

That's where I was at.

I remember thinking,

I don't know why I feel this, but I want to go join the military. Because now I know.
There was no way for me to have any more validation. I wasn't in school anymore.
I was like just doing random things. And I was like, man, when we were teenagers, I remember this group of friends.
We were always talking about Navy SEALs. I didn't know what it was.
Never saw Navy SEALs, the movie, never read a book. I just went, I remember we talked about that one time.
So I'm going to go to the office. So I ended up moving back to California first just to go explore, you know, just to move out again, you know, same thing.
I was living with some friends. Um, and I started training, just running and doing pushups and all the things.
Then I started to read like, what did it, what I need to do to get in? Um, that book Warrior Leap came out and that's the one thing I read. And so I just went for it.
I went to the office. Hey, I want to be a SEAL.
They laughed at me. Like, you need to pick a job too, you know? It's like, cool, whatever, that one, you know? They're like, you sure? That's what you're going to be doing.
And, dude, every selection so far has been that.

You sure?

You're not going to make it.

You want to start a business?

It's going to be hard.

I don't think you know what you're getting into.

And it just happens over and over again.

I actually enjoy it now.

So, hey, I'm going to have an actual ice cream brand in stores someday.

I love those reactions. So, I get SEAL contract.
I go to Bud's, get through. Now I'm in the SEAL teams and then realize later after my career, holy shit, I didn't go to serve my country.
It developed into that for sure. Now for sure, you know, I served my country, I served the guys next to me.
Service of others is part of my purpose. But I realized that the truth was I did that for validation.
I wanted to go be part of something that I knew was like the most, the highest level of validation if you can get through. And it was like this, there was always this concept, like this conceptual dream to go, if I make it, I made it.
Now I'm in this world of validation. I'm accepted for good.
I don't have to keep doing it over and over again. Well, that's not true.
You do have to keep doing it. Keep seeking.
Yeah, but it worked. I found my place in the SEAL teams.

I kind of figured out what I was good at.

I'm grateful that, and I don't mean this in any kind of arrogance or ego way,

but I was never the best guy, but I was able to make it through every hard course,

every selection, SEAL Team 6 selection, all that stuff on the first try.

Damn. So I'm proud of that.
and um

yeah

and

and

and

and

and

and

and

and

and

and

and

and

and

and

and

and

and

and

and

and

and

and

and

and

and

and

and

and

and

and

and

and

and

and

and

and

and

and

and

and

and

and

and

and

and

and

and

and

and and and and and and and able to make it through every hard course, every selection, SEAL Team 6 selection, all that stuff on the first try. Damn.
So I'm proud of that. And now I know I originally did it, but now I can also, you know, appreciate all of my experiences and even the bad ones.
I'm not coping with them anymore and like trying to forget them. I actually can remember more about them now after having found a way to just clear all that bullshit, you know, off.

Before we go into your career as an operator, I want to rewind.

And he had said something.

You'd said something about when you found out that your stepdad wasn't your real dad.

How did you, you know, what was that conversation like? I think it was, I don't really remember what age, but I just, I think it was like six or seven, just having that conversation with my mom and her sort of breaking it to us. Like, this is not your real father, right?

And this is not, you know, my younger sister was born then.

She's your half-sister.

And having to explain that truth must have been really hard for her.

But, you know, if you ever talk to your kids

when they're younger too, they kind of like,

it's hard to go too in-depth

because they just kind of listen and go, yeah, yeah, you know. It's hard to go, how do you really feel about it though? You know, like, I don't know, you know, can I go play? And it was kind of like that, I think.
So it develops over time into more of an understanding of what was going on, you know. And knowing now that my mom just tried her, was just trying her best.
She was just doing her best. So any resentments I had afterwards, like, oh, you know, I got accepted into some colleges.
I couldn't go. We didn't have enough money.
You know, the validation thing. Oh, my dad wasn't my real dad, but I didn't get enough, like, validation from a father that I needed.
All those resentments went away once I realized myself again and that they were just doing the best they could, and they were good parents. You know, it's a dilemma that I have not explored on the show before, and so I'm very curious, and I think there's a lot of good pieces of advice that could come out of this for kids and stepdads.
You know, and so, I mean, it sounds like you regret, you know, all the times that you kind of threw that in your dad's face.

Absolutely.

About not being your biological dad.

I mean, what do you have to say to kids?

Because, I mean, divorce is higher than ever now.

Divorce is higher.

Especially in our own community.

Yeah.

It's so common.

So traumatic.

So hard.

What do you have to say to kids that are in that situation, that use that?

I think that the best thing I can say is just it's hard,

but if you even sense that your parents are doing the right thing,

so you want to go do this thing, you want to go to this party,

and your dad's like,

Thank you. If you even sense that your parents are doing the right thing,

so like you want to go do this thing,

you want to go to this party and your dad's like,

no, there's danger there, and he tries to stop you and get mad.

You know?

If you, I want, I wish that they could just kind of sit down and go,

are my parents good people?

If they're good people, that's all it takes.

Now it's like you're going to go through hardships, you're going to fight, you're going to battle. But at least know that they're just doing their best with what they have.
Right? Because there's always, even with healthy families, you know, oh, you know, my sister was always the favorite of the family. She could do no wrong, you know? And just realizing that, like, that might not be true.

It's just you have a defense mechanism, and it might be true. There's some parents that seem healthy and some families that seem healthy, and even some in my own family that I've recognized, my in-laws' family and my family, that you could still,

you could be seemingly a good father and go, hey, if I am making my two sons or either one of them and not the other, especially, compete or like they have to prove something, they have to earn my love, that's not, that's going to turn into something, right? Especially if you're not telling them that they have it or they, you know, I'm trying my best to tell mine what I've realized is like, you know, we're struggling with baseball things, you know, hey, be aggressive, you know? And then I have my other son who's overly aggressive and I'm like relax a little and it's awesome they're so good both of them but I gotta tell them in between because I get amped up I can't tell them don't be a pussy but I'm like here's how you're aggressive you can use dark thoughts sometimes you can pretend and I to that where I'm like, how do I get him to be aggressive? Like pretend like the dog, he's got a French bulldog that sleeps on him. Pretend somebody is going to like take him.
And the only way to save him is for you to like throw the pitch as hard as you can. Just go for it and not care.
And now he is, he's like throwing faster. Now let that go because those are dark thoughts, but that's what you're supposed to use that part of your ego for, for good, right, to help, to protect, you know.
But being careful to go as often as possible, no matter what we do, my love for you is infinite and it's already there. Like you already get that just from being you're born into it you know it's like nepotism for love not money you're born into not yet but the love is just it's just there i love you it's infinite you don't have to ever earn that shit you know you, you're everything I need you to be.
Whether you become a janitor or a major league baseball player, it's there. I feel like that's working a little bit.
Good. So that would be my advice to those kids.
You know, and if you don't feel that that's true from your parents, maybe don't be afraid to ask them, hey, Ted, do you love me already, you know? Or do I got to do this shit? Do I got to become a lawyer and a doctor like my brother? Or do I got to become an athlete, a tennis player, whatever, to get that love, you know? So. Makes a lot of sense.
What about, and I know, you know, the roles are kind of reversed, but, you know, how would your dad react when you would say those things? My dad, when I apologized and I went through this, you know, this was after my first Ibogaine experience. That just worked for me, to open up my heart to go look at all this stuff, right? Meditation now works for me.
There's other ways. Therapy works for people, you know, different things.
But when I went and had that conversation with him, it was the first time he ever cried really hard. First time he ever

cried that I remember, you know, and it was over the phone. So I could even, I couldn't even tell

he was crying, but I could hear in his voice, like he said, you know, I appreciate that son.

And it was in his voice. So I know, I know it was the right thing to do to make him understand that.
How would he react when you would say that? I mean, as a kid. How would he react? He's a kid, yeah.
Oh. How could he have reacted? I think if I asked him as a kid, he would have answered me and said, I think he would have said yes.
He would have said, I'm talking about my stepfather father. That's what I'm talking about, too.
What I'm asking is how would your stepdad react when you would throw it in his face that he wasn't your biological father? Oh, when I threw it in his face, I think that it was super anger. It was very, those were bad fights, you know, like trying his best not to get physical with me and, you know, really anger, you know.

And understandably, because he was trying his best and here I am entitled to it.

Going like, if he wasn't there, who knows what the fuck would have happened to me, you know, where I'd be.

they say addictive personalities but I don't

Thank you. Going like, if he wasn't there, who knows what the fuck would have happened to me, you know, where I'd be.

They say addictive personalities, but I don't think there's addictive personalities.

I think it's based on your environment and what you, the amount or like the level of bullshit you have to cope with.

So that it becomes your default, it becomes your default in the future for when you have problems or stress, you go to an addiction.

Well, Chris, let's take a break.

And then when we come back, we'll get into your military career. I know everybody out there has to be just as frustrated as I am when it comes to the BS and the rhetoric that the mainstream media continuously tries to force feed us.
And I also know how frustrating it can be to try to find some type of a reliable news source. It's getting really hard to find the truth and what's going on in the country and in the world.
And so one thing we've done here at Sean Ryan Show is we are developing our newsletter. And the first contributor to the newsletter that we have is a woman, former CIA targeter.
Some of you may know her as Sarah Adams, call sign super bad. She's made two different appearances here on the Sean Ryan Show.
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All right, Chris, we're back from the break. We're getting into your military career.
9-11 just happened, and you went to the recruiter. Going to Bud's.
Yep, I went to the recruiter. You know, those guys, I don't know if they ever take anybody seriously, but for sure it was rough going through there.
You know, hey, they're trying to convince me otherwise. but so I took a, you know, back then it was like, if you make it through Buds, you get $2,000.
So, you know, and I was broke, so I was like, yes. You know, that was another motivation for it.
I want that $2,000. Then I would have had $4,000 in my bank account because I did.

Because after I finished, there was a guy who got orders to the East Coast

that really wanted to be with his brother on the West Coast,

and he traded me.

And I was like, is it worth $2,000?

And he was like, yeah.

And yeah, we swapped orders.

Nice.

Yeah.

So yeah, I went to boot camp in Virginia Beach. So the other side of, you know, the base from Dev Group.
And did some training. We were waking up early in the morning doing some of that training, you know, with the guys that were going to go to the program.
Then I get over to Bud's, I check in,

and it's just game time from there.

So my mental state really was just,

I knew I wasn't going to quit anything

because I needed that acceptance and that validation so bad

that I would, you know, die for it, right?

So that's strong.

Who were you? This is, it's just strange because we have a lot of similarities. And that's the only reason I made it through was validation from my dad and from my dad.
But who were you seeking validation from? From my imagination of somebody important. It's your ego.
Yeah, absolutely. It's 100% ego.
Yeah, absolutely. Okay.
Yeah. And, you know, maybe some of my authentic self that I just didn't understand yet then too, because I was lacking that, right? I didn't understand that at the time.
I just knew for some reason, I know I'm not going to quit. I don't know how I know.
I just know. I didn't read into what was coming up each day.
I didn't know. I wanted to, I prefer just minimizing the anxiety about some hard thing I have to do even now,, you know, and just do as much preparation as I can for it.
Right. But not anticipate it so much like, man, that 50 meter underwater swims coming up in five weeks.
Now I got five weeks of stress and anxiety to think about. Right.
I know it's sometime coming. So I'm just going to just going to practice it when we're supposed to be.
So that's kind of how I operated in BUDS. And it did me pretty well.
All those hard things, they're scary. Standing with your back to the pool, hearing guys getting yelled at to get in, get in! Do that underwater flip and just start cruising across hoping you get back to the side.
The 50 meter? Yeah, that was one of the scarier ones, right? Did you know any of the evolutions before you went in? Yeah, because as we started to go through our in-docs and preparing for first phase, guys are talking. What were you worried about? You read The Warrior Elite, too.
Yeah, yeah. Which is a pretty descriptive book.
Yeah, I read that, but I wasn't going back to it each day. Gotcha.
I just didn't have anything. So, yeah, I just remember going through it.
I had to stay in the barracks for the first two or three weeks before first phase actually started, and they moved you into the main side to where the Bud students live. And it was all surrounded by the guys who quit.
So they're all going out every night. They're all talking about it.
And they're playing that whole game of like, hey, welcome to the barracks, new guy. And you're like, but these guys all quit.
What are they making me scared and nervous about the shit they quit for? So that actually fueled me a little bit. That's like, that's how I knew I was coming, you know?

And I was like, well, I'm just not going to quit.

So, yeah, then we got moved over, got into my class.

Yeah, honestly, I remember it,

it was a good memory up until third phase.

In third phase, I struggled because I had this little fuck upup, and it almost caused me to fail out. What was it? You know when you're doing the push-ups or the pull-ups to go into the chow hall to eat? You got to do 50 push-ups.
You got to do a bunch of pull-ups with weight and those rubber magazines. Well, one of the days, I was the last dude.
And to be honest with you, so I didn't have any magazines in the pouches.

So I was light.

Nice.

So I go, man, do I go stop somebody?

And I don't want to, honestly, I didn't want to go.

Oh, shit, it was an accident.

Yeah, I didn't want to go feel the embarrassment and get yelled at for breaking away to go, hey, guys, because that was the last day everybody ran inside. Now it's just three instructors waiting for me to do my damn strict pull-ups.
And I didn't want in that moment to go, hey, guys, I need some magazines. And then them all break out to, what the fuck, and just send me to the ocean and all the shit you're going to have to do for anything.
So I just went, fuck, I'm just going to get up there and do them and hope they don't, you know?

And so I went up, and instructor,

I don't know exactly who he was, is like,

Fetis, stop.

And I'm like, stop hanging.

Fuck.

How many magazines you got in your pouch?

And then in that moment, I made the wrong decision.

Instead of saying, I have none, I was like, I got six.

You know? Oh, shit. And he was like, get off the bars.
And I'm the wrong decision. Instead of saying, I have none, I was like, I got six.
He was like, get off the bars. I'm like, fuck.
Show me. I show them they're not there.
He's like, you motherfucker, you're fucked. It turned into a nightmare for a couple weeks while I was the dude.
Carrying the giant trident in the huge helmet thing. And sleeping, and sleeping on the beach, you know, and you're already smoked.
And so I started to fuck up other things because I was smoked, you know. There was another guy that was with me, but he ended up getting, you know, dropped.
He just, because he just, he wasn't going to quit, but he just could not perform close to good enough. So they eventually, like, yeah, we just got to let him go.
Stop fucking with him. So I had all that fear, like, fuck, I'm going to be, I'm there now, you know.
Until every day, the extra shit I had to do, I was like, I just remember how low energy, like, dude, I had nothing, you know, on some of those days. And so we had big things to do on some of those days that I that I had that going on like uh this monster mash kind of thing around the island remember where you like do the oak horse rep around the island go to a shooting range shoot I was like so smoked I didn't remember brief.
I was probably doing this during the brief.

And they were like, hey, when you get to the range, pick a number.

That's the lane you shoot in.

So when I got there, I was like, fuck, I don't know which lane I'm supposed to shoot in.

So I go, okay, God, please let me pick the right one.

I just lay down and start shooting.

Ends up being somebody else's lane.

So he had double shots on his target.

So we get through the whole thing.

I finish it. I get a decent time for how

smoked I was. And then we go back through the brief and they were going through the shots.
And now we're sitting in class and they're like, Hey, something weird happened. And I'm like, I know it's me, you know? And they're like, Mechling, why did you shoot six shots on your thing instead of three.
And it was like, what?

I didn't.

And I'm why did you shoot six shots on your thing instead of three?

And he was like, what?

I didn't.

And I'm like, that was me.

And they're like, what the fuck?

You can't get it together, dude.

And I'm like, dude, I'm just not going to make it.

So I tried my best to keep plugging away.

I think what happened was they finally let me out of that to rest up with the other guys a little bit and kind of give me the talk like, hey, you need to show us something this next week because we're keeping you because we talk to everybody. And there was only like 13 guys from my original Hell Week finishing they were in that class still and we had like 45 dudes they all rolled into our class part of the reason I do what I do is for my family I want to leave them a better country than the one I was born into I also want to make sure they're taken care of financially and that's why I make it a priority to help protect the money I've worked so hard to earn and save.
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But they talked to, I think, specifically the 13 guys.

Said, hey, what do you guys think about this guy?

And they were all my bros.

And we all went through a week together, you know?

And they looked out for me.

Nice.

So they came through, and they were like,

you got to keep this guy. So they kept me, and then I out for me.
Nice. So they came through and they're like, you got to keep this guy.

So they kept me and then I finished.

Damn.

It was hard.

It was a rough time.

How'd it feel when you graduated?

I felt pretty guilty.

I didn't know if I belonged there.

I felt a little bit of imposter syndrome,

but one of the instructors,

who I honestly didn't think liked me very much anyways,

was like, hey, I just want to say this. Everybody that finished this shit deserves to be here.
And so that kind of cleared it for me, you know, because I had some guys for sure in that class who were like, hey, this fucking guy doesn't deserve to be here, you know, that rolled in or whatever. But all 13 of those guys that I originally started with didn't think that, so that's all I needed.
That's cool, man.

We started calling ourselves the purebloods after that.

Nice.

So we still have that. The guy I ended up working my contracting job for was one of those 13 guys that started his business after his enlistments as a SEAL, and we were at Team 10 together,

so I ended up working for him as a contractor.

He's still running that and very successful. Where did you head to after that? as a SEAL, and we were at Team 10 together, so I ended up working for him as a contractor.
Nice.

He's still running that and very successful.

Where did you head to after that?

What team?

I went to Team 10 after switching orders

and getting my couple of grand.

And I don't know why I wanted to be on the East Coast.

I just did.

You know, I had, I was just over bouncing around California. I had some inkling that Deb Root was a thing.
I didn't know much about it. But selection was in my mind.
If this selection is going to be anything harder than Bud's, I want to make it as... I just struggled through this fucking third phase.
I want to make it as comfortable as possible and not have to be, like, living in a barracks and stuff, you know? And so I was like, maybe I'll get a house I can afford soon, you know? You were thinking that right out of Bud's? Yeah, I knew I wanted a family. Wow.
You were thinking about a family going into the SEAL teams? Yeah, and I didn't know when or it wasn't like a very specific thing. It was just like, I know I want to have a family for sure.
You know, and so it just seemed like the East Coast environment was better suited for that. So I was just thinking in the future.
Gotcha. And that worked out.
It was the right decision for sure. So, you know, with all the stuff that happened in between, it still worked out, you know, we're really happy.
We've got everything we need to be happy. I've got my business there now.
Yeah. You know, so it's, it was the right decision.
And then it actually, it did make a selection for Deb Group great, you know.

It was a couple minutes, well, 30 minutes.

I had to commute across town, but I was there, and I saw how hard it was for those guys from

the West Coast to, you know, be living in barracks just, you know, for that time.

It's so hard going through that.

Wow.

You were really looking ahead.

I wasn't looking that far ahead.

I still am.

But so you go to Team 10.

What year is this, roughly?

I got to Team 10 in 2000, the end of 2005.

And then we started that.

I had a whole full workup.

There was a lot of challenges there. So you showed up pretty much right after Red Wings.
Correct. Those guys were on their way back from that.
When I was at the team doing new guy stuff, waiting. And, yeah.
And my first platoon and my first deployment was one of the most intense and profound deployments I ever had with a really great, you know, two platoons of guys and what I believe to be the best SEAL leader and operator that I ever was anywhere around. some of the things that he was and did, specifically for me too, he might have saved my career.
I got in trouble right off the bat. Doing too much.
Trying to get validation by acting up. And he must have seen something the way he described it to me.
He was like, hey, I'm pulling you out of this jail cell, right? And you owe the man, but there's something you got that that's what I want you to do and not this shit. What did you do? One of the first trips we went on was diving in.
First, we had a jump trip in Destin, Florida, and I got arrested right off the bat in a bar fight for just nothing except for guys looking at us from across the bar. That night, that football player from the Cowboys, Jason Witten, it was his birthday and he was celebrating with people the same night.
And so we were drinking with them and having fun. and then it ended up in this bar fight thing where one of my buddies looked out for me.
I was going to get sucker punched. He ended up going to jail.
So now, and he was a new guy, all the new guys are now in trouble right on the first trip because of me. So Platoon Chief, he's the guy I'm talking about, best SEAL I've ever known.
I was like, you guys are now in the spotlight. So, you better do the training and not even a single, guys do anything else, you're fucked.
So, we were like, okay. And I did the wrong thing.
They asked me, like, hey, how'd this happen? I didn't take the blame for it. I didn't say, hey, it all started because of my fault.
It was like, oh, hey, we got into a bar fight, and then, you know, my buddy came across and knocked this guy out that was going to sucker punch me. So it just, it wasn't, it was not the right level of accountability.
It wasn't enough accountability. It wasn't the right accountability for that, right off the bat.
So I had problems already. So we go to the next place, Key West.
We're diving. I'm out at the bar with another new guy.
That guy ended up quitting after this because the hazing and the shit we had to deal with just got so bad. He quit.
Yeah, he turned in the bird. Holy shit don't think i've ever even heard of that and then i went through captain's mask by myself you know first thing you know as a new guy and so we're there in a bar fight i'm hanging out with him we're getting we get a fight about some girls and we decide to run and try to get to the water and swim around to the barracks.
And, dude, cops were chasing us around Key West for, like, over an hour, jumping fences and, you know, trying to block us on streets. And it was, like, a full-blown chase and locking down of Key West, Florida.
So one cop, like one of those fences that sticks up with the sharp wire, like jabbed it into his leg trying to catch me flying over a fence. Eventually, we got rolled up, and I'm in jail.
So it was terrible.

So I'm sitting there like, oh my God, I'm done.

This is done.

I just did too much. I was just acting out too much.
Glad I changed that, especially for selection for Team Six, which was a lot smoother. so I wish that would change to

meditate so I wish that would change to meditate optimize your performance breathe you know what I mean optimize be the best operator you can possibly be. Right? So

platoon chief comes in.

He's like, hey, that's what I was talking about.

Hey, I'm going to get you out of here.

We know these guys,

but you're going to have a hard workup.

We got a long workup still.

We still got-

Is this in jail?

Yeah, he's talking to me in jail.

While you're in the cell?

Yeah.

Incredible.

Yeah, he comes into my cell,

and he has this talk with me, come to Jesus. And he's like, anybody else would be losing their burden right now, right? This is not, this is unheard of to get in trouble like this this fast.
He's like, but we know the police chief, and they've had this, and he's like, this is the worst one they've had for a while.

And some grown-ass men for the next foreseen future

and other teams, too, are not going to be able to go out after work.

And they're not going to be happy with you

because they're going to know why.

You're the guy who caused that.

So for what I understand, like a year,

guys couldn't go out in Key West after work.

So needless to say, my platoon hated me.

Yeah.

So it was the opposite effect.

What that happened for me, though, was that I kicked in.

I had to go to fucking Captus Mass.

It was terrible.

It was embarrassing.

The other guy quit, turned in his bird. And then like like, all right, new guy.
You better show us something this next 13 months. So we go to Land Warfare.
We start going on trips. I'm getting rolled up in the middle of the night, taped up.
And having to figure my way out of it, get back, try to sleep at all, usually not, and then going to do work all day, right? But what that did for me was it kicked me into gear, kicked me into something like, dude, I got to perform. I got to do twice as much as anybody else.
And so I did. I started waking up early.
I just wouldn't go to sleep.

Getting stuff ready.

Helping everybody in every department out with anything I could.

Doing the training.

Just fucking everything I could think of, you know.

And, you know, that 13 months went by.

Over time, guys started to trust me again. I would go out with them and stuff, but I wasn't messing around, you know.
They started to accept me back into the circle. How long did that take? It was about 13 months.
It took 13 months? Yeah, just all the trips you go on through workups. That's a long fucking time.
It was a long time. It was a long time to be hating your guts.
Yeah. It was a long time to be trying my best to do twice as much effort, you know, than other guys.
But that's not to say that I outperformed anybody. We had some really good dudes.
Like other new guys I was with were just amazing guys. Still best friends with a couple of them.
So we go on deployment, and that's where I really make up for it. What do you think that they saw in you? I don't know.
My wife's told me this before. I have a way of connecting with people.

Sometimes I don't even realize it.

And maybe those guys felt how important they were to me,

or at least their validation.

Well, for me, it was the validation I needed from them, right?

And maybe they felt something. I don't know.
You never asked them. No, I don't think I ever, I never asked them.
Yeah, I never asked them. Maybe something I need to go do.
But, you know, we went on deployment and I really, I was a JTAC and we had a lot of really hairy operations. A couple of times we Winchestered an AC-130 and lots of different.
Winchester means out of ammunition for the civilians listening, and could you describe what a JTAC is? Joint Terminal Air Control, so you're're essentially we don't have Air Force guys and CCTs

combat controllers in the

teams, right? So

we are the JTACs organically.

So on missions

we control the aircraft, right?

To include the

surveillance, like everything they can see

with their pods.

And then

you gotta know all of the weapons you got in every stack and how to order those guys in an efficient way so that when something goes south, you can get guns down on bad guys as quickly as possible so that we can either get out of there or continue the mission. So that became my specialty during that time.
I ended up going to sniper school after that. But for that deployment, you know, I was like a roof team guy, like our version of a recce team for the first quarter of the deployment and then got switched on to be the JTAC and I just I feel like I had this talent for it that they trusted because I stayed that and I got a lot of experience doing it um and I and I enjoyed it you know might have been like one of those communication things.
Like, I enjoy communication now.

So, I got a Bronze Star for a couple, like I,

it was for really the collective operating as a JTAC that I got that for.

My first Bronze Star.

So the guys used to make fun of me. The gun case that I had been issued, whoever had it before me in the teams was named Billy.
So it was on there. And, you know, you don't get to know a new guy's name so quickly, so everybody assumed that that was my name for a while.
And there's still some guys out there that still just know me as Braunstar Billy. So it was kind of a joke that actually Nick Check started, who ended up, you know, he was on that deployment, and then often the navigator in our Humvee in the front seat while I was the JTAC in the back seat.
And then, fast forward in the future, we ended up at DevGrew together in different teams. But during that time, he's the guy who nicknamed me that.
So we came back from that deployment. I came back as Bronze Star Billy, and I kind of recovered my reputation and was validated for the indefinite future.
And it was like really one of the best feelings I ever had in the teams. Nice.
You know, and some really hard things happened on that deployment too. We lost Jason Lewis in an IED.
I was the JTAG for that. I performed the medevac.
That actually ties into a story that I meant to talk about with this helo pilot. Dude, just one of the most incredible heroes of anything I've experienced in my operating that night.
You didn't tell us where you deployed to. Yeah, so this was Baghdad and all around.
We were almost exclusively operating in Sadr City, really hairy, nightly operations every night, sometimes six nights a week. And then occasionally we'd go out to other areas like Bakaba or Alamara for operations, but we were pretty focused on that during that deployment.
What kind of operations? Counter-terrorist operations, just going out after... DAs, sniper war.
All DAs, all DAs. So my first deployment was just purely DAs every night.
We had the luxury of being able to utilize the 160th Hilo Squadron with some of the dev group guys that were down the street for Task Force 17, they kind of opened it up to the teams because there was just so many bad guys in the networks and so much to do. I think that they kind of trusted the teams, the East Coast teams at that time to conduct DAs using their assets and stuff for that deployment.
So it was like a special deployment for us. Yeah.
Let's talk about your... Let's just talk about what it was like for you on your first kinetic operation.
Kinetic being a JTAC or kinetic shooting? Just any kinetic. Whichever came first.
Yeah, so the very first night was kinetic. We went out on our first op after turning over.
and at that point, I was in the back of a Humvee. I'm going to salter.
And we go out for a guy. And I end up switching into the driver's seat after the op.
So the op was pretty quiet, but there's always shooting on the way in and the way out, just both for the bad guys to sort of recce where we're at. So they would, you know, shoot up in the air just to kind of like identify where we're at in the town, right, to each other.
So that was an experience like, oh, shoot, you know, they're not shooting at us, but they are, you know, they're shooting. It's the first time sort of hearing it.
So, yeah, and that target was pretty quiet, but on the way out, we for sure caught some shots off of roof towards the Humvees and stuff, and we're like, oh, shit, you know. And then, on our way in, we're driving really fast.
And on those infills, there's a couple IEDs going off that just miss. And I'm like, oh shit.
So now every time we're driving, I'm looking at trash. I'm looking at everything.
I'm like, man, any of this shit can explode at any time. You're just kind of sitting in there going like, let's fucking get there.
Hopefully we we don't blow up and it's just a really strange feeling as a new guy on my first you know you know when we land that plane to get on deployment you come off that airplane that air is just so pungent filled with just smoke and whatever the smells are and the the humidity of it the heat of it and you you're like, wow, I'm in a whole different world right now. And so that only took two, three missions to just kind of get used to that.
Kind of a little bit of a shock to go, all right, we're in it. Because when you're going through training and all that, you're just visualizing it.
You're just imagining it. And then you get there and you're in it.
And you're like, wow, okay, I'm in it. There's nothing else to do.
Just try to focus on what you're doing, you know. So it was only a matter of time before we got hit by an ID.
I think collectively we had a little bit of an ego as a team, like, oh, hey, these motherfuckers keep missing. They can't get us.
A little bit of arrogance going on, you know. And that got shut down real quick when we caught a flat tire on the way back one night.
And, you know, instead of you can go back and forth with the men in the arena stuff and armchair quarterbacking, but we, instead of pulling off, holding security and trying to fix that thing, we just rolled with it, but we were so slow. We're rolling so slow.
So the vehicle in front of me made a turn, right turn onto one of the main streets to get back to, uh, you know, the little sort of highway going back, you know, out of Solder City. And an EFP blew up, an explosively formed penetrator, copper plate, which they had started using recently.
It sort of blasts this shape charge towards you, so it's not like a blast from underneath like a traditional IED, but it forms these, the copper breaks up and it's so hot, they turn into little plasma bullets, and it just melts through everything like Swiss cheese, you know, even vehicle armor and people. So they caught that.

Four guys in the back of the Humvee got killed,

including Jason Lewis, was a SEAL.

Ended up naming Camp Lewis after him.

Combat cameraman and, sorry, three guys. Combat cameraman and a TSE guy, technical surveillance guy.

And then one turp was back there, but he survived everything. So the turret gunner, his gun got completely sheared off the barrel.
and a chunk of the barrel, I think, went essentially either a piece of plasma or that chunk went through Jason Lewis's chest. And so one of my first experiences doing this medevac was assessing what was going on, and that was hard seeing those guys.
So Bobby, the combat cameraman was still alive essentially but he was bent over because his face was just splayed open with blood coming out and him trying to breathe so we eventually got the medevac he he didn't make it on the 20 or 25 minute ride ride back to the medics on our medevac.

So he was the first to go on the first load

because the driver of that vehicle got a piece of that plasma

lodged into his leg like right onto a nerve, and I think that it cauterized the nerve. So his leg actually survived for a while after that.
But he badass just continued to drive. He didn't swap out.
He said, fuck it, I'm driving, right? So we get off the X. I'm dropping, you know, 40 Mike Mikes and 105s on bad guys shooting at us from rooftops on our way out.
And I start working a medevac. We've got two Apaches overhead.
We get to this little Marine outpost in the middle of Sauder City that just like, dude, I can't even imagine their experience daily.

Just getting rockets and just all kinds of shit at them.

And they're just hunkered down,

holding this, manning this post, right?

And we get inside of that.

And my platoon chief's calling out what's going on.

Got Nick Checkup up in my vehicle, us to get there with the downed vehicle sort of hobbling. And we get in there.
Everybody gets out. We get the guys laid out.
I'm getting a medevac ready. It lands, gets those guys, and I'm looking.
I see, you know, I can see Jason Lewis there, and I can see the dirt on the other side of his chest, right? Just this big hole. And I'm just trying my best to get a nine line going.

Like, hey, we've got two that are done and one guy still alive critical, right?

So he's the priority

and the second bird gets the other two guys.

Now, the incredible thing

is we still got one guy fucked up with that thing lodged in his in his leg and i'm like we're so nervous like if it moves and he bleeds out of the artery you know so trying to keep him stable and then we got to wait for the birds right and we're taking fire we're shooting we got fucking rpgs people are seeing and so there's a fight going on while we're doing this medevac so these two apaches come over and i just remember thinking fuck i don't know if this is doable or anything but i start calling hey guys we got one guy who needs to get out of here before this thing he might you might save his leg and his life right you guys, and I just remember my platoon chief

was like super into helicopters.

So he always said like, hey, study them.

You know, they might have capabilities

you don't think of often.

So I said, hey, what are the chances you guys

can get the co-pilot out on the wing to clip in

and get him inside in the seat and medevac him

to buy out right now? And they were yeah an apache and they're like oh shit hey we could do that so i'm like all right cool we're we're gonna try to call out shit if we see anything you know like one of y'all one of you guys you know do a tight circle so you can fucking put guns on anybody while

the other one's landing, right?

And we got an AC-132 and let's do this.

So start getting it ready and they go, hey, we need a second to go call this and get,

you know, an approval.

So he's like, okay, cool.

I'm waiting.

He goes off.

A few seconds later, comes back on the horn. He's like, they're saying we can't.
They're saying we can't do it. And I'm like, fuck, okay, okay.
So a few more seconds goes by. He comes back on the horn, calls me.
Hey, fuck it, we're going to do it. I was like, okay, all right, let's do it.
So we do it. The first attempt goes bad because somebody calls out an RPG.
So they come down, RPG, and they peel off. I'm like, fuck, all right, it was a false alarm.
Somebody thought there was an RPG because there had been some flying around. So cool, come back around.
They come back around. They get down.
They do it. They get him in there, and they fly him back.
Holy shit. And they save his leg and his life.
So they fucking land, open the hatch, the co-pilot gets out, this dude climbs in there with some shit stuck in his leg? And then he clips in and sits on the wing. And he sat on the wing? Yeah.
Do you have any pictures of this, video, anything? No, and actually, you probably should go back and look. I don't even know if there's a step there, like a little bird or anything.
I think he just sat on the fucking wing. Whoa.
Yeah, and so I wish I kept in touch with these guys. I didn't, if they're out there.
But what happened was he got reprimanded after that for disobeying the order, right, and subordination. So now we're like, hey, they call us.
We go through the rest of the next couple nights because the next night we got to stay there and we got to get all these trucks back. So we leave.
We're going to leave the next day. Snipers are making sure our route is clear.
So we're doing watches, making sure nobody's putting down IEDs. There was actually a couple guys.

I can't remember if they got shot or not.

We're engaged, but we get back safe.

You know, we're, you can imagine during watch,

we're all down there.

We just lost all these guys.

It was one of the more difficult moments.

Looking at each other's faces,

trying to figure out what we're supposed to be doing, how we're supposed to be feeling, and really just like sitting there, you know, waiting. So snipers are doing Overwatch, gets quiet, we get out of there, and the next night we get home.
Go into the talk and find out these guys are getting reprimanded. So we're like, God damn it, dude, that sucks.
I think some of our leadership probably did some work on that. I'm not sure.
But what ended up happening was somebody on their end of their chain of command said, what the fuck? These guys are heroes, right? And these big awards, you got a silver star for it. Nice.
So in these big awards, you end up getting a silver star from what I understand. And these big awards, you got a silver star for it.
Nice.

So in these big awards, you end up getting a silver star from what I understand.

These big awards, like, those are the moments that those happen in.

But if it goes wrong, then it's like, well, you fucked up, you know?

But it takes certain people to make that decision in those moments.

And that's where those things happen, I think. So, I believe you end up getting a silver star.
One, something tells me that you're going to hear from those guys after this. And two, riding on the wing of an Apache out of battle, that's got to be like riding a fucking unicorn with wings out of battle.
Yeah, that's pretty bad. What? Yeah.
But, wow. How did, I'm curious, how did you deal with the loss? How did the team deal with the loss? Very hard.
Very hard. You know, I got this huge tattoo on my back that ended up becoming like the emblem, sort of the symbol of our platoon, of our troop.
And a bunch of, a couple, some of the other guys, one of the platoon commanders, even guys on the next rotation after that deployment, you know, getting that in his memory. And so that symbol's still there.
Everyone knows what year and what operation it came from and who it was for. So there is some legacy there on that.
And I'm happy about that. But it was tough for a few years.
It still is tough for a couple of the guys that I know were a lot closer to him than I was as a new guy. I was too busy focusing on getting myself out of trouble to sort of get close to guys.
I was just... Yeah.
So I didn't have as deep of a connection with him as some of the guys did. Still affected me, especially seeing him there like that.
And, you know, he was a mentor. He was a great guy to all.
He was one of the guys that was really great with all the new guys. And his kids are grown now.
I see them around, you know. Really? Yeah.
I see his wife around.

I know his wife.

Do you interact with him?

Yeah, yeah.

Not the kids as much, but for sure his wife.

I see her around.

I'm still in that community there with my business and everything.

So, yeah.

That was the first deployment geez that's heavy yeah wow how long was it after the how long was it after that operation that you guys went back out yeah like a couple of couple nights they gave us a night off hey you guys need to take night off? Of course, we're all doing heavy drinking, you know, shenanigans around the camp. One of the new guys I'm friends with still thought it would be a good idea to do these, like, baked bean mortars on the officers' doors because they thought we could get away with it in that moment, and we did.

So they set up these little poles,

and we had these fucking endless baked beans.

I don't know why they kept coming,

but, like, dude, we couldn't eat enough baked beans

and turn them and sort of get them on the,

duct tape them to the poles

and then get, you know, from the campfire

like a little torch

and just create pressure behind the can to the point and then get from the campfire like a little torch and just

create pressure behind the can

to the point that they exploded

and then blasted onto

the little hooch doors

of the head shed.

What the fuck?

Yeah, so the next day

like, alright guys, you're not gonna get away

with this shit anymore. We had to spray those doors off, but there was just baked beans blasted on everybody's fucking doors.
Let them get it out. Wow, nice.
Yeah, so I think the next night after the baked beans were out again. Damn.
Anything else significant on that deployment that you want to talk about? Yeah, the last mission on that deployment, I was doing a turnover with some Team 2 guys. One guy ended up being in, their JTAC ended up being in Silver and my team at Devere with me.
And it was a hairy night. We were just walking our way into Target and there was this tree line, this big, thick tree line.
And it was supposed to be sort of an easier target. Easier target's going to be pretty easy.
Of course it wasn't. So we go, and they had a sniper nest somewhere around those trees.
And we're just walking. We can't see anything.
I'm talking. I can't see anything in the trees.
trees out you know because we got to get we gotta go through those trees to get to the target right on the other side where the town was so we're out in the open and all of a sudden a crack right a crack and we're like what was that everyone kind of takes a knee and someone comes on the radio and is like hey i don't remember his call sign or like ben just got shot in the chest um but actually i think it wasn't the first shot there was a couple shots and then like a pause and then another shot and that's when we came over because we had all gotten down after the first couple so he had gotten down and wherever it wherever it was coming from, we're facing it, his plates are here, and a shot comes in and goes at this angle over top of the plates as he's laying down, and goes out the back. So he's shot in the chest.
And one of my best friends now, the best man at his wedding, was the guy next to him. He was a corpsman,man and he starts reporting immediately like, fuck, we got to get a medevac now.
So we start, and then we just start getting lit up from the trees from all over, like multiple spots. And it's just like, dude.
And so now we're on the ground, like my head sideways, because I can just, you know, when the rounds are going off, you can hear gunfire, but with some experience, you know if they're close to you or not and whether you need to get down or not. And they're snapping over our heads.
You can hear that snap, and so you know they're hitting, right? Now they're hitting the ground. You're like, fuck, now it's really hairy.
It's hitting the ground all around everybody between our steps. And so we're on the ground and they're like get some fires down so i'm like i can pop that thing up and i'm like hey we're already ready i'm already preset on those because i just felt weird about that tree line and they're like i'm like hey the fastest way to do this is you you see where we're at with the strobes? Can you confirm that? Yes.
All right.

Now, I got a laser.

Hey, they're coming from all over there.

They're like, yeah, we're already on it. We're ready to shoot.

We're ready to shoot.

I'm like, all right, just confirm.

Confirm the bad guys by sparkling them right now,

so that's where they flash that IR light.

I'm like, all right, you're on the right spot.

Cleared hot.

And the AC-130 just starts dropping. Just smoking these guys.
And we're like, all right, as soon as they start landing, we're bounding back. So now the teams start bounding their guys back.
And then the same time I got Medivet Helos coming in from the other direction I'm talking to. And that corpsman is now running off to the side of the firefight where we're all sort of bounding back, right, in front of the tree line, just directly back.
So I'm feeding off of my, he actually was the RXO at the time. Great, awesome guy.
And he's like, he knows I'm talking, so he's like, I can't pay attention to the gunshots. And I'm just going off of him.
He's like, we're up. And I follow him.
We're up. We run.
He's like, when he goes down, I go down and I'm dropping, dropping, dropping. Now we got the Apaches involved.
They're like, Hey, there's more, there's more nests over here to the North that we can see. Those guys are moving around now.
They're, they're like setting up and they're moving. We can fire on them right now, rockets.
And I'm like, cool, sparkle, clear, hot, right? And I'm just controlling, trying to visualize the best I can in this whole situation, and it's clean. We smoked all those guys.
Wow. And we finally get back.
There's, like, this ditch, and then we kind of get back in the ditch. Now we're calling the exfil at the same time as the medevac the medevac comes during that firefight and they don't know what's going on they start flying right through or all this shit's coming down and so that was one moment where i was like hey everyone abort everybody stop we stop all fires for a few seconds like oh you guys need to turn just take out 90 just take a 30 degree right turn so they

do and then they fly out of it and over to the guy's buzzsaw buzzsaw is that chem light where we're spinning it around right and they land perfectly on that they get on those two are gone to the hospital and now we're back at the ditch calling for exfil and we get out of there everybody's fine after that. He ends up being fine.
He had some complications with his chest for a few years, but he healed up pretty good I think. And he's still kicking around Virginia Beach.
Good deal. I haven't seen him in some years, but I know we're still friends.
Yeah. So that was the last one.
We get back to the Hooches, and I talk to their JTAC,

guy who ends up being later

one of my teammates in the team.

I go, all right,

that's the turnover, bro.

Holy shit,

that's a hell of a turnover up.

Wow.

Yeah, yeah.

Had you...

Had you shot anybody?

Had you killed anybody with a rifle or what?

I did one on the roof team for a teammate of mine.

He was climbing up, and these guys woke up,

started pointing their guns around.

I had to shoot that guy.

Was that your first kill?

Yeah.

Yeah, that was actually it wasn't a kill. Actually, that was a hard time for me.
Besides the JTAC ones, that guy ended up, like, just, he ended up being paralyzed, and then later, he did, I believe he died later, like, some time later. Like, I don't know when, you know?.
Like I don't even know if it was during that deployment. I was kind of using one of our translators to kind of update me.
But he found some way to find out, like this guy wasn't dead. So we ended up fucking taking him with us after that because he was still breathing.
So we dropped him at the buy- hospital and I think they essentially recovered him. So it was just a guy on target that woke up and started pointing towards one of our roof team guys.
That guy ended up passing away in the future. He went to Denver also and he passed away from a brain tumor, unfortunately, which I've got my opinions about that stuff, too, on how so many young guys are developing brain tumors after that.

and I think it's just talking with EOD guys

and understanding

the levels of radiation

out of those jammers

that we were sitting next to

for all those hours all the time in order to block those signals was just just vibrating through our brains, right? And the ones that I trust the most believe that it has something to do with it. So I hope that you know, somebody can look into a little more these days

because there shouldn't be 30 and 40-year-old dudes

popping brain tumors suddenly and passing away.

Another guy in my team that happened to,

within a year of finding out when he was clear,

before that passed away.

So, damn.

It hurts a lot to think about those guys with brain tumors yeah yeah that and that stuff scares the hell out of me yeah yeah it was like was the juice ever worth the squeeze for how many preventative stuff. And I think about it now with the active

shooters, you know, things and the hesitancy to prepare or prevent, especially when it comes

to money. We're like, you've got to spend how much on, you know, a couple of guards or, you know,

some ballistic capability, you know, or something, just whatever. Training, for sure training.
Active shooter training, all these good things, all these guys out are doing these companies. But there's hesitancy to fund it because if you prevent something, there's no evidence that you prevented it.
Just nothing happens. So it's just a hard thing to prove to people.

So it's a similar thing.

It's like did those jammers, how many IEDs did they actually stop?

We don't know because if it was a preventative measure that worked,

then just nothing happened.

And then trying our best to prove that it did work,

but there's so many of these brain tumors

from guys that he was a turret gunner,

and the antenna was right there.

The rest of us inside might have been

a little bit more protected,

but that thing is like,

if you can see the diagrams for the frequencies

and radiation these things put out, it's fucking not good to sit next to for hours. I did not.
Every night. I have not heard that one, but it makes a hell of a lot of sense.
Damn. Well, Chris, where I was going with this is I just want to ask you the difference, you know.
I want to ask you the difference of what it feels like to kill via communication with an Apache or C-130 or whatever versus pulling the trigger. It's completely different in my opinion's um it's not the same as doing it up close and personal but all you know the times that i did do it and i got a lot more at that group than i than i did in my in the team um I didn't think about that so much

and so when guys talk about this question, I understand when they say, I didn't think much about it, because we intentionally are desensitized to it. We're more attuned with the actual identification of the target and who it is.
Is it a man you know male is he armed is not armed whatever then taking the life itself because to be honest with you the taking it's the life itself thing is another it falls it aligns again with that validation thing it did for me anyways where it was like i didn't think too much about it because if i was the guy that got the kill that night it was like felt good it's like your buddies are like cool this guy we can trust this guy to do his job you know and not be affected by it too much and the same sort of theme comes out of it the more guys that i study and the more guys that i think about and and look at you know i think about about these things now that I have the space to do it. That's now where it kind of comes back to go.
Those moments I can now go back to just the same way I did with my childhood memories. And now go sort of analyze it and just try my best to see the truth in every one of those moments, you know, for what it was.

And then with no other goal than just understanding it the best that I could for me.

Do you remember all of them?

Some of them were a blur,

especially if it was during like a firefight.

But the ones that were close up, you i've got some sniper ones um i think about them sometimes um but you know in war you know they're trying to kill you and you're trying to kill them and so i think less about it than I do with the last mission that I did and who I killed.

That's the one that i think about the ones with men were men were fighters you know there may or may not be some mutual respect as fighters for sure these ones that are going on like these hamasas guys in Palestine and Israel, like man, the whole world is on fire about Israel right now because of the collateral damages and like how do you fight a war? How would you fight a war if the bad guys, just say it was in your neighborhood or community in the future or something, some war. They're there to kill you.

And instead of fighting from what we do in the military,

an outpost, a planning center, or whatever, you go there,

you put your uniform on, you go fight.

Put your uniform on so we can tell the difference between the good guys and the bad guys and civilians.

And you assume that the good guys or the bad guys, they have some level of moral compass, right? That we don't train to kill anybody other than the bad guy that we're after. Collateral damage is just, it's a hellish thing, and it's part of war.
But now pretend that the enemy, or even pretend that you are the one doing it, that you go, I'm going to take advantage of the moral compass of those guys. And I'm just going to go, I'm going to shoot the rockets and missiles from my backyard and then go inside where my family is.
And then go, we're good. Fuck them because they have morals and they're not to kill me here, because I got my wife and my kids and my family.
And then it just, you can even escalate it to go, now I can even go do atrocities now. We can go do an attack in their territory and go door-to-door like they did, raping and pillaging and just the horrific things that everybody wants to deny actually happened.
Take the hostages, all this stuff, and then bring them back over. And we're good again because we built all these tunnels under the hospital and the hospital's functioning.
That's fine. We want that to be that way because it's a deterrence for us.
It's a capability. And then now when you know your enemy or who you see as your enemy is now attacking you and killing you and having all this collateral damage.
You're choosing the battleground there. And it's such a hard problem to think about.

And I hope there's some better solution,

some thing that they can figure out,

but we're not there experiencing that shit.

And they're having to make decisions

on some of these high-level Hamas guys

that are intentionally using civilians as cover,

as a capability, a deterrence capability on purpose, right?

And then it's just a terrible way to fight war, you know?

And the extremists, Al-Qaeda does it.

Terrorists tend to do it, you know?

It's not even, in my opinion, guerrilla warfare, really. It's kind of a newer concept, maybe.
I'm not even sure if that happened in Vietnam or not. I need to read more, but it's happening right now.
We've faced it, too, and we try our best, and then we change our ROEs to the point where now we're in danger because as the war evolved, we lost the ability to the point where it became, hey, you guys aren't even going to do any shooting until somebody's already shooting at you. And you're like, that means some of us can get killed before we even engage.
That's a hard problem to have, especially that's happened you know now there's families out there like they couldn't engage those guys because they weren't allowed to until they were getting shot at so just hard things to think about outside of more than just pro-Palestine, you know, Israel, and, you know, the things that we attach to sensationalism. We see it on the screen, you know, and some of those people that are attaching to those causes, I think, is more related to their own validation.
Like, they might be lacking something in their own life that goes further than just this thing, and then every time something happens, people in their environment are now attached to these protests and these things, and everybody wants to feel like they are part of something important. So they go demonstrate, they go do it without even really understanding what it's about

or what they're doing.

They just go, yeah, and validation from all the other people

that are doing it in their environment.

So it's like whatever's the most accessible thing

in your environment to attach to as a cause,

it doesn't matter if it's bad or toxic or terrible or evil or good,

you go do it, I think, for some of the same reasons that I'm talking about with this lack of purpose and validation that we all need. Yeah, that's a good point.
You know, with the Israel stuff, it's extremely complicated, you know,

but there are, I don't know if you know this,

but I have some friends that were there,

and they, one of which I'm pretty sure we both know probably very well,

but they were actually going to flood those tunnels. Did you know about this? Not yet, no.
They were going to pump some massive ship pump. They were going to, not shit, ship, like S-H-I-P.
Ship pump would suck. Yeah, that would have been better.
But they were going to flood all those tunnels and drown those Hamas guys. That would be more of a...
They wouldn't do it. They wouldn't do it.
Why wouldn't they do it? I don't know. Because it's at least...
To know that they're at least mindful, I think and truly believe that the Israelis are doing their best to think of ways to target the bad guys without the collateral damage, and sometimes they have to make hard decisions. But at least that is more direct towards the enemy than going through whatever's on top that they're fighting under, the hospital or the school

or the house or whatever, you know?

I mean, do you know how many of those bad guys

that would have drowned out?

I can imagine it must be like an ant farm down there.

Would have been perfect targeting.

Yeah.

And they didn't do it.

And sometimes that makes me wonder, you know,

like, why wouldn't you do that?

Sometimes it's such a simple plan, too.

Yeah, like what gets in between the decision,

and this is where it gets difficult and more

when social opinions and the energy of the social environment

affects leaders' decision-making on what they do or not.

We've seen it every time.

Yeah.

Vietnam and, you know.

Touchy, touchy, touchy subject in a complicated war,

as if any war is not complicated.

But so you come back to the States. Come back to the States.
You just remind me with the shit tunnel thing, though, if I can interject a quick story that's actually more on the lighter side. I saved somebody's life on that deployment in a way that you wouldn't think.
You'll know, too. We're coming back from one of those targets.
This like later on in the deployment too and this is one of my buddies he's got like sensitive skin you know he gets like rashes easy or whatever I don't know and we're walking back from a target in Iraq and out there the open, I don't know if you ever experienced this, but those ditches sort of carved out that go from the shithole of every house in the whole town, they all go out somewhere, out into the open. To the main ship.
And then they collect into a big pool, right? And we were walking through one of these collections, and there's different ones, and we're just navigating our way through. But you don't know because over time, like at night, especially on night vision goggles, they collect, they crust over, and they just look like regular dirt.
So at this point, quiet target, we're walking out to the helos. A lot of distance between each guy because you know they're just spaced out so the guys in front of them would have never known that this happened but i'm the guy behind him so i i was there he just he just steps into one of these pools of just shit quicksand and then like goes oh oh shoot and then no big deal but then it's like he's in it and it's now rapidly going you know oh it's no big deal now i can get out but then as i approach i can hear his breathing is so loud like and it's like like water coming up you know and he's starting to freak out now because he can't get out.
And I'm going, oh, shit. This is kind of serious.
So I fucking run up there. I'm like, hey, you all right, dude? And he's like, I'm good.
And I'm like, fuck, are you sinking? He's like, yeah. So I grab my helo lanyard, and I kind of just go.
And I'm like, grab it. you know, and I'm pulling him through this sludge, you know, this nasty, and it's just black all the way down.
Oh, man. It's shit.
Nice. And I get him crawled out, and I'm like, oh, my God, that sucks, dude.
He's like, oh, thank you. I thought I was going underneath that shit.
Oh, my God. Yeah, and we get up.
He's got now this long walk, and I'm like, all right, I'm going to stay closer to you, but get behind me because you smell, you know? So we patrol back. He's got to get on the helo ride all the way back.
It's a long ride. And he's just had this full body, nasty skin rash for some weeks after that.
But then it was funny because... Did your nickname him Hepatitis? Yeah, he did.
Did you really? Holy shit. Something like that.
So I ended up in the team with him at Dev Group 2. Nice.
We're still friends, but it was funny because we'll joke with our wives and stuff like, hey, you saved his life one time, you know? I'm like, I did save somebody's life. Oh, man.
Yeah, so fast forward to the, you know, after that deployment. Did you do another deployment? Yeah, I did an augment.
I was an augment JTAC for Dev Group. That was a great deployment.
A lot of operations happened, a lot of JTAC work. And the guy that I was with was such a great guy, such a legend of a dude, in my opinion, that he was like, you know know, you should come over, should screen.
So I didn't have any intention then to do it, but we got back and then I screened. So between that screening, it's about a year process or whatever you screen, you know, you get then either yes or no to go to the actual selection, you know, a year or so later or whatever your timing is.
And then between that, I had a deployment. Second one was to Europe, and I was doing training exercises for different types of units, partner forces all over Africa to include a lead vehicle-type security detail for the Secret Service for Obama's visit to Ghana when he became president.
So that was actually pretty cool. Really? Yeah.
He was bouncing around different places doing speeches and talks. And coincidentally, and I didn't meet my wife, we were dating.
We weren't married yet. Years later, one of our family members, one of her cousins' husband, is a retired Secret Service guy, was on that detail.
And we realized that we were working together there. And I'm like, how do I recognize you at the Christmas, the family Christmas? That's your wife's brother? My wife's cousin's husband, so my cousin-in-law.
And I ended up staying with him for a while when I was doing my contracting work. I had to stay up in D.C.
for a little while, so they housed me. But it was just funny because I was at this Christmas party for my wife who wasn't my wife yet, or just just girlfriend and boyfriend, and go, how do I recognize you? Dude, a couple years ago, I was on a security detail that you guys, you SEALs came along, and he was the guy in charge of, you know, organizing, like, their convoy, you know? So it was just a crazy coincidence.
But that was a good time on that deployment. It was kind of the highlight of that deployment.
I just didn't, you know, we were training. Yeah.
You know, one thing cool that happened was, I've Googled this since then because I wasn't sure, was Obama a smoker? And it's all over the internet. He was.
He self-admitted, you know, like, I had to get rid of that addiction, you know, for stress. But because it was kind of a shock to see that when we were in the hotel, we were in the same hotel as these guys, we're hanging out.
He's coming down with his detail, going out to the balcony, like, every five minutes to smoke. You know, like, he was a chain smoker.
No shit. Yeah.
I didn't know that. I didn't know that.
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Expressvpn.com slash srs. So you met your wife at Team 10? Yeah, I came back from that first deployment.
I met her right after that.

How'd you guys meet?

Through a mutual friend that just randomly invited me out.

I was living in my own condo by myself and invited me out to dinner.

I think it was sort of a little bit of a matchmaking kind of thing,

but I showed up not ready.

I didn't shave.

I didn't get to rest up, nothing.

Didn't really know she was going to be there.

I was like, hey, she goes to the restroom. I said, Hey, you didn't tell me this beautiful woman was going to be here.
And he was like, well, she said the same thing about you when you went to the restroom. So probably should exchange numbers.
So we did and started dating and she became my soulmate. She was already that, but she became my wife.
What, what was, uh? What was it about her? Just, I don't know. The energy about her.
She's just like a clean soul. She's just so pure and wholesome and just amazing.
I don't know. She just, I just knew.
I don't know. So you together for the for the duration of your career yeah yeah you know and just like anyone have gone through a lot of hard times a lot of things everything and that's strength when they don't just like when we don't quit we don't give up and they don't on us and they see something you know just the same way I think I think that, like, you asked me what the guys felt.
Maybe my platoon, she was like, dude, you just sometimes feel something about somebody. And she did that and she held, she stuck with that for a really long time.
A really long time. And I'm grateful.
I'm so, you know, I'm so grateful because here we are, you know. How long have you guys been married? Going on, 13 years.
Nice. Congrats.
Congratulations. Thank you.
Not too many people make it out of the teams without a divorce. It's hard, you know, it's hard.
And it's just like anything else. Takes a lot of work.

Don't give up.

Don't quit.

Did you have kids when you were in the teams,

or did you wait until after?

We had our kids right as I was a new guy at Dev Group when we had our first.

No kidding.

Yeah.

So they lived through some of the two. Yeah.
That's, they're the reason I got out. Yeah.
So how long did you guys date before he got married? About three-ish years. How'd you propose to her? I took her to this spot in Pebble Beach, just off my grandfather's house.
You could walk over to Spanish Bay on Pebble Beach where he retired.

And she loves doing fun things.

You know, she's all about that.

So, hey, we got to get up early one morning, like 6 a.m.

But she's not a morning person.

So she's like, ugh.

Like, we have to because we got to go see the whales.

The whales migrate through. We can see their spouts, and it's like it's awesome, right? And that was my only excuse to go over there.
So it had to be in the morning because that was the only time I knew that you can catch them, you know? So I convince her. We go over there, and it's like around like 7 or 8 a.m.
I propose to her at my little spot just overlooking. It's called the Neverending Sea or the Endless Sea.
Where waves kind of crash from all different directions into one spot. And it's just a crazy spot that tourists can kind of go of go look at and stuff and a little ways down from that there's this little quiet old bench that I should just go sit at you know growing up so took her there and that's where I did it she said yes so nice yeah it's good Well, we haven't got to it yet,

but I'm sure you and your wife have been through a whole slew of...

downward spirals and all the things that come with being in the teams.

But you made it.

And so I want to ask you, what do you think the secret to a successful marriage is? Yeah, just collectively, I think about the whole story and it's just keep, it's so hard. Even now, when we get disconnected, we have understanding each other's love language, for sure.
And then if it's not the same one, just learning how to be okay with doing things for the person towards what they need. For her, it's like acts of service.
So the more chores I do, the more getting the kids where they need to be, all that stuff, she loves that, you know? For me, it's like affection and connection and intimacy, you know? So we go through times where it's so busy, and you're like, man, we're so busy, it's so chaotic, and we don't put any effort towards giving them what they need. We start to blame each other.
We go, oh, I don't feel, I feel disconnected. And then it's, well, I feel disconnected because you haven't been doing these things.
And you're like, all right, well, we got to reset that and then try our best to sustain it over time. But there's always going to be times where it gets off balance.
You just got to, just like your soul, you got to bring it back. You know, you start doing, start getting stressed out because it's what I want.
It's what I'm asking for. I want the business, you know.
I want my kids to thrive. They're busy.
They're not sitting around. They're always busy.
And that's stress. So you want that, but that means you've got to put in work in between that with each other also as much as you can.
And especially when you start to feel that. You know when it's going on.
It's like, oh, I'm starting to feel like resentment or anger,

even just a little bit.

You're like, hey.

And being able to talk straightforward about it,

like here's why I feel this.

And it's, you know, trying your best not to just like blame the other person.

We definitely figured out nighttime's not the best time to do that.

You're tired, you know, you just want to go to sleep. You're exhausted.
The morning is a lot better for that. Great advice.
Well, Chris, we'll take a break. When we come back, we'll get into your time at Dev Group.
All right. Perfect.
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That's patreon.com slash vigilance elite. All right, Chris, we're back from the break.

Just met your wife and got your backstory with her, at least how you guys met. And so now we're moving into your journey over to development group.
Right, so come back from that deployment. It's time to go right into selection prep.
So right around that time, the human performance sort of aspect of sort of concept started to come about. So I was lucky enough to get into some programming where we could get prepared for the selection and then sort of be rested for a week or so

and then peaking a couple weeks into the selection. So I'm grateful for that because the guys that did that with me from Team 10, we all did pretty well through the physical test and all the first week-type physical stuff, performance-wise.
overall selection for me was

it was a much smoother

ride than Bud's was, especially because of that stuff that happened, but, you know, same thing, lucky enough, I got through. It was really hard.
Honestly, difficult in totally different ways than Bud's. You know, the physical part is there.
You're doing some crazy things.

I mean, there was one day we did this.

You run seven miles at a seven-minute pace, you know,

with one of the cadre to the Mississippi River,

swim across that motherfucker with logs and just current crazy

with a swim buddy.

Wow.

And get across, having drifted down like a mile or so, run back up, do it again on the way back. And, you know, I think they stopped doing it after that.
I got one of the last ones. It's one of those legacy stories.
Sounds like an accident waiting to happen. Yeah, it's not very safe.
They've got safety boats and things too, but it was as safe as they could make it. Just like swimming around the island in shark territory.
Yeah. You know? Yeah.
Just got to find the balance with hard enough things, you know? Yeah. And somebody not getting eaten alive by a great white shark.
Yeah. So then seven miles back.
So that was probably the hardest day for me. That's when I started, I was so depleted that day, my legs started cramping, and I got to a point where guys in my team were carrying me back to the house because I couldn't even stand up.
They were so cramped. It was super painful.
A couple of the cadre were having fun with me. They were carrying me, firing me carrying me, you know what I mean? It was a good time.
So, um, you know, the hardest part of that selection being the first six weeks of assault, all CQB based stuff is really intense and very, very detail oriented, you know, with the goal of figuring out, you know, pliability and trainability.

Here's the rule set for this day

with all of the stressors

and then the next day it all changes

and you still, no matter what,

only have a chance or two to make the same mistake.

And if you make the same mistake

over consecutive days,

that Friday that they're doing their assessments, you're out. And if the mistake's too bad on any given day, you're out.
So high stress, but I really, I did enjoy that. I made some really good friends during that time that we all change through the team.
and that lifestyle and the intensity of those, that mission set and the time commitment it takes. You know, a lot of guys that I've interviewed from a lot of your guys that I've interviewed say that Green Team is harder than Buds,

was tougher than Buds. Would you agree with that statement?

It's harder in totally different ways. They're both really hard.
And I also don't want to take away from, you know, how hard Buds is, you know, that people have gone through. It's a really profound experience.
But I say it is harder only because there's such a smaller spectrum of mistakes before you can get out, right? So you're always within that tiny little sliver of a mistake spectrum before you're out, you're done, you know? And so with all the stressors involved and your life and everything going on, it's like really hard to stay inside of that. It's like there's a tiny ball moving back and forth.
You're like, whoa, it's like a level. It feels like it's a level.
And if it gets where the bubble gets outside, you're out. There's no other chance.
So the mistake spectrum, I think, in Buds is a little more lenient because you don't know anything yet. You just got to not quit.
It's really hard physically. But even third phase, when we're learning our skills, I had a hard time.
So it's not to take anything away from that. It's just that level is very fine with selection and green team.
It has to be that way. Yeah, but I'm grateful I got through.
What's the retention like in training? I think it's comparatively a little higher retention for that because you start with less guys,

so we started with around 60 guys or so,

and you finish with 20-something.

No shit, it's that much.

You lose that many dudes.

Yeah, yeah, for sure.

And it's also hard because you're competing with other SEALs

that are experienced.

What are the phases?

There's no phased numbers, it's you know assault is all CQB that's the first part bread and butter is that so if bread and butter for like the Delta guys is a land warfare navigation stuff and all the stressors that go with that that's ours and then a couple locations for that, Mississippi being one. And middle of the summer, that shit's hard.
Sleeping with brown recluses in the barracks. Trying not to get bit by spiders.
I had my roommate, and it was like a sleepwalker. So that was a little stressor for me too because you wake up in the middle of the night sometimes with full-blown sentences, you know, and one night he woke up in the middle of the night and he must have been thinking about spiders and he was like, ah, there's a spider, there's a spider.
And he's like eyes closed but sitting straight up and he ended up going to a Red Squadron. And then I woke up startled like, where the fuck is it? Where the fuck is it? And only to like fucking, now he's just sitting there quiet to realize that he's not even awake.
I go, motherfucker. Go back to sleep.
You know, every spider trap in that house was full of, it's just legs everywhere. Oh, damn.
They were full of brown recluse spiders. There's a, you know, I hope they fix that problem.
Damn. I don't know how many people have been bit, but, so anyways.
You lose the majority of the guys in the site? In that first six weeks. That's like the kind of hell week per se of selection.
Is there any diving? No diving. No diving, not at least when I was there.
You kind of do that with your team. But then we have our land warfare, which is a lot of helo-based work, getting used to all different types of helos and all the etiquette and procedures that go with getting all of that stuff to a lot finer detail than ever before, really.
All kinds of scenarios with those things on different types of terrain and buildings and different things. And jumping after that, that's probably the first or second most challenging, in my opinion, because it's just so dangerous.
There's so much focus, you know, all the way from getting your shit on, knowing the plan, getting on, and it's just one after the other, after the other, after the other, after the other, and trying to stay on point all day with that not make not just small mistakes but you know how jumping goes major man i don't know i've not done i've not done anything like that i've yeah i've jumped out of planes but not to the extent that you have so yeah like can you go into a little more detail on why that's so challenging?

It's just, you know,

I ended up being a tandem bundle guy later,

so I became an air subject matter expert

also on top of my recce sniper specialty,

which is my primary.

But the detail of the gear, everything from your handles to your malfunction procedures, you've got to memorize what to do in every little thing that could go wrong with a parachute. It could mean the difference between life and death in those moments.
And so it's just, it's at night. the jumps are, you know, know most of them or at least a good majority of them are on night vision goggles and so I hadn't experienced that much before not at all I haven't done any night vision jumps over that a lot harder when you can't see the other guys you know until the very end you know and we're jumping through sometimes it's like, dude, I don't even know if I'm in the right place.

And then right before you land, you kind of see, oh, there they are,

or you're in it, you know, and do your best to land together.

So are you navigating up there?

Yeah, you're navigating.

You've got your attack board, you know.

What's it look like?

Just a little plastic, hard plastic plate

that goes into the Velcro and ties in,

and then a flat part that goes out.

It's like a little breakfast table.

And it's got a compass and whatever device,

whether it's a GPS or we use our phone devices

or whatever tablets on there, and chemlight. And that's it.
You're driving with this thing and using your eyes too and all of your senses. And it just takes a lot of focus for a really long amount of time.
So it's just pretty draining. And when you're doing it over and over and over again every day, starting from before the sun comes up to the sun goes down.
It's taxing, but also you get so good at it. So by the time we get out of that, you're just really good at it, just from all the repetition of it.
And jumping like that on real-world missions, it's so difficult already. You've got environmentals, you've got wind, you've got weather.
Everybody's skill set has to be at least to a baseline level in order to trust that we're going to succeed on the mission if somebody's not going to fly off and this shit still happens. How much air time is it? Dude, I don't know.
It's got to be a lot of hours. Hours and hours.
I don't mean all together. I mean, when you jump out and you're navigating into a target, what's the longest one you've been on in the air? From out of the plane to landing? I mean, we've done some really high ones in training, but real world, typically, it's going to be just a few minutes.
How high? 15,000 feet, you know, something like that.

And there's some other higher capabilities,

but that's a different sort of capability.

So you jumped in on a real-world op?

I did.

So you go through all that,

and then the story of that op was pretty... It's kind of funny how I ended up being there.

I wasn't supposed to be there, but it was the last thing. And, you know, so I had the opportunity to do a tandem jump into a hostage rescue.
So it was pretty epic, you know, but it also changed my life. Yeah.
Well, we'll get there. We'll get there.
So you made it through Green Team first time. Yep, correct.
I had a rough time in assault for a little while, but I pulled it together. It's kind of that.
It's part of it. Hey, no matter how good you are, if you're the top or bottom guy, there's going to be stressors that they put on there just to see what happens, see how you react.
And if you snowball, you're not going to make it. If you can bring yourself back enough, then that's what they want.
And then the adaptability piece to be able to change to different tactics that we come up with based on things that happen. And that can be very immediate.
We come back from a deployment or even during the deployment, we go, man, this is happening. What do we do? Change it.
You don't have to wait for some approval. And then if we write it into Doctrine, that trickles down into the teams and becomes Doctrine.
So that's the glorious and cool part of development group, in my opinion.

How do you know what squadron you're going to?

Is it a dream sheet coming out of Bud's?

It's a draft, like a true draft, a list of names with performance evaluations on it.

And then each team gets an order of the draft based off of the previous year, just like in sports. And there's also, you know, some influences on who knows the guy, you know, he might be sort of a known, at least, you know, reputation wise by other guys, maybe even guys that preceded him, you know, from their previous team.
Like that's what happened with me. I ended up in a team where I had a bunch of guys from Team 10.
It was awesome. Right on.
Do people know what round they got picked? I think you can find that out later. I don't ever remember caring much about that.
I was just happy enough to finish and get know, to finish and get on a good team. But, I mean, I think you can go dig and find into that, but it's kind of like, you know, I don't know if it's unnecessary, but it's like, you know, it just wasn't something I thought about.
I mean, I think you can probably. You can go, if you know anybody that was cadre or you go back to it, like, hey, where did I rank? It's not hard to see those rankings.
Is it true that they put a list of names or a photo of every guy that's screening up and they do a yes, no, yes, no? Yeah. Yeah, there's like a picture.
And then you kind of vote. Okay.
You can put a vote in, you know, once you, you know, or an operator vetted into the team, you know, you do that every year as well. What do you think about that? I don't know.
I think that there's certain things there that need to be the way that they are because they work.

And then there's other things that I've obviously learned through my life

that I hope change or continue to change,

and that's more culture-related.

But those kind of things,

I think that's why change what works.

And if I didn't know a guy or anything about him,

you don't have to vote. You don't have to say good or bad.
Just go move on to the next guy, you know? Do they want an explanation for why somebody would say yes or no? Yeah, I think that that's invited. If you've got an explanation about something, you should put it in there.
Okay. And there's been some occasions where that was a little detrimental in the future to not do that.
And, you know, not necessarily guys that slip through their cracks per se, but a little couple, you know, some red flags that should have been at least talked about, you know, to work on with, you know, things that you can develop in a guy. You know, you don't have to be legends when we come through selection.
You have some space to develop just like the G League and the NBA or whatever it's called. I think that's legit.
You reach a baseline in selection that's enough to get you through and then of course you have guys that are well beyond that. And that's where you go, you know? Where did you go? I think I was somewhere, I've always been in the middle.
I mean squadron-wise, excuse me. Silver.
Silver. Yeah.
What was it like checking into Silver? Silver was new, right?

It was newer. Yeah, it was only, got commissioned only a few years before I got there.

Yeah, so it was great.

I knew a lot of guys in there because they were my mentors and peers from Team 10.

And, you know, it felt very welcoming. The personality of that team was the right team for me, I felt.
Were they, I mean, describe... Well, let me go back for just a second.
What's it like graduating Green Team? It's awesome. I mean, it's like it's just such a release of energy of energy you know and some of the later things that you do are sort of gentleman courses you start you know you're learning some cool things you're doing some surveillance stuff and you know a little bit more of the trips are a little bit more fun and not so taxing um so you get you know a little bit of a phase to kind of get ready to go check in and do all your things.
Cause that can be intense. You got so much stuff to do, got all kinds of gear to get, you got all the fucking, and you got to start and you get in and you start running immediately.
So, and it's fast, you know, you get there and it's getting the kill house and it's fast. You're like, holy shit, you know, and it must feel like what an athlete feels like going to a pro team, you know, that has a little bit of development to do and it's like it happens quick because you've got to keep up.
Yeah. And it's fast.
Were they welcoming? Yeah, definitely.

Different kind of vibe than going to the teams where it's like,

okay, new guy, you know, like, yeah, you're a new guy, but it's a little like, I don't know how to explain it,

but they're just a little bit more maturity about it.

Like less of a thing being a new guy over there?

Yeah, a little bit.

Like you already know.

And get them up to speed. Yes, you kind of already know bit.
Like you already know. And get him up to speed.

Yes, you kind of already know,

but it's just more important to get him up to speed.

Cool.

Yeah, to get him integrated and functioning in the team immediately.

So the goal is not to humiliate you?

No, I didn't experience it.

I think that part of it is just non-existent, in my opinion, there.

There's no time for that.

That's cool. That's cool.
So what did you, I know you're a sniper. When did that? You're on the recce team, correct? Yeah, so typically you've got to spend a couple rotations as an assaulter before the record team selects you in, is the way that I experienced it.

So after my first deployment with them, I was interested in that, and I had some really good, experienced snipers that were cool with it.

So they brought me in, and that became my my specialty let's talk about let's talk about your first deployment with uh with silver how long were you there before the deployment um it's a lot quicker rotation so it's probably about eight months from what i remember so it's a little bit bit a blur, but it was about eight months. You know, I won't get too much into the details of the cycle, but it's like a lot quicker than what we used to call ProDev and SIDX, all the pre-deployment stuff.
It's only really like four-month increments, so it's a year instead of 18 months. It's not nearly as long, and wherever you fall into that timing.
So, yep, and then deployment was Afghanistan. How was the deployment? It was good.
It was a good, steady pace of operations. By that time, we started to have to use some of the trained-up partner forces a little bit more.
You know, that whole thing started with, you know, like the ERU in Iraq, you know, training them, but not necessarily having to bring them on operations to gradually over time, the whole Afghanistan war evolution was like, all right, we're going to start turning this over to them to fight for their own country. And you guys got to start taking these guys.
So we ended up having to work a few of them in and, you know, just navigate around that whole problem of bringing guys that aren't at your level trying to teach them or whatever. Oh, shit, you guys were running around.
I did not know that that was happening over there. Yeah, we would put them in different orders of patrol, and, you know, over the years, this is not my first deployment, but maybe by, like, my third, you know, we're going like, hey, all right, certain targets, they're going to go try to do it.
Gotcha. But that was just such a messy thing, you know, because your operations are so precise and you're now like, it's like, you know, we're, let's say we're on a high level, not high level, but we're on a grown-up, an adult basketball team, and now they're like, hey, you've got to actually try to win the championship, but you've got to bring these kids, your kids, and try to figure out, you know.
You're like, all right, guys, we've got two kids. How do we win this championship? But maybe that's a bad analogy, but it just got frustrating over time as the war evolved to go, guys, this is like art to do.
It makes you less official.

I get it.

Yeah.

I get it.

One.

And there's more danger involved with it. And they don't understand when shit happens, who's to blame when bad shit happens.
And you're like, dude, we're trying our best to follow these rules and play by these. Guys start to get frustrated over time and go like, man, this is bullshit.
and, you know, the ROEs over time got so restricted, you know, because of the political climate around the war that they were like, hey, it's win hearts and minds time and officers actually, you know, pretending to believe all of that. Even over there? And convince us.
Yeah, everybody, I think, experienced that. I didn't know that.
Yeah. So over time, it just became that.
You know, I knew quite a few guys that got out because they were like, I just don't want to operate like that. And then other guys, you stay more positive.
You know, you just do the best you can. And I want to say that from that second deployment or so for me around 2012, every deployment after that was partner force.
You got to bring them. You got to, you know, and it's not easy to operate like that.
Not because we didn't want to. We want to, you know, do our best.
But you're like, God, it's hard to do your job when you got to bring these other guys that are just not even close and also kind of sort of report on it to go, hey, we want to make ourselves look good to everybody that's looking at us and so we go, hey, how are the guys doing? They're great. They're close to being SEALs.
Fuck. They're not close.
They don't even use their night vision goggles because they're uncomfortable. They don't understand.
And just drilling with them and spending all this time, it distracts you from training yourself. Yeah, it helps to go be a cadre in selection.
You're actually going to become better probably from instructing other, you know, high-level guys. But now you go down levels and you're going to lose.
You're losing something from just sort of bringing your level down to go train these guys on basics that we're actually going to go operate with on targets. It's like being on a fucking Ducati and then going back to training wheels on a...
I don't mean it in an ego, arrogant kind of way, but yeah, it feels like that. It's like, man, gotta go teach them how to ride a bicycle when we're on Ducatis.
It doesn't make sense to me.

We just talked about your green team and how rigorous it was

and how, like, you know, the level.

You described it like a level.

The bubble gets out and you're gone.

And then you deploy and you got these guys that,

I mean, they probably wouldn't even be SEALs.

Yeah, and it's tough to go back and think about that, too,

and not hold resentment for how the whole thing with Afghanistan evolved,

and then we saw what happened with everything,

and the whole exfil of Afghanistan shit show,

and then just going like, man, how long were their intentions

to restrict how we operate in order to get this done,

and then just going like, man, how long were their intentions to restrict how we operate in order to get this done and then not feel like the force was misused and this and that. You don't have time to think about it when you're doing it.
You're like, there's a mission and we do the mission. It's my job.
I didn't really have time to think about any of that until I was done. And then now I go back and think about it and just try my best not to hold anger and resentment for it.
But when I see some of these stories, especially with the exfil and guys like, you know, you had on here, Andrew. I'm like, fuck, dude.
You've got so many guys coming on here, shows like this and other awesome shows, just didn't want to just tell the truth and things. It was like, as a society, I'm like, fuck, we moved so far away from being okay with the truth, right? To a point that like everything just feels like there's bullshit piled on top of it.
And we just want to see just the baseline of truth so we can make decisions on how to do things better, you know, and get better. You know, man, that happened, but next war, can we learn from it this time? It didn't work in Vietnam, didn't work in other wars, didn't work in Iraq, didn't work in Afghanistan.
Are we going to do it again where we have some conflict that we don't just, when you commit to war, you know, or yes, war is hell. And so if they're committing to it with this willy-nilly kind of, we're going to go to war, you know, but we're pretty quickly not going to finish the job and it's going to turn into something else, you driven by societal pressure and politics and everything.
It's like, dude, once that happens, now you just start thinking about all the lives of 2,000 or so guys and the situations and thinking back to buddies you lost and things that happened and the way that they ex-filled to go, fuck, man, did they really?

And then they stand up sometimes and go, we love our military. And do you really think about it in depth or is it just a game? And if war is not a game, so if you commit to it, like, fuck, let's just finish the job as quickly as possible to minimize now death on both sides for an extended amount of time in the future, right? But that's what people don't understand too.
And they go, ah, ceasefire and this and that and no war. And you're like, well, there's a reason for war.
Why do you think that was? Why what was? Why do you think that war went the way it did? I mean, it was fucking balls to the wall at the beginning. Yeah.
And then you saw the ROE start changing, and then it got to the point where it's like, why are we even here? You're chopping these guys' legs out, and you're essentially a sense you are 100% giving the enemy an advantage by slapping these ROEs on us now you're playing around yeah you're like hey here's an advantage we're gonna show up and see how it goes do you have any theories I don't know yeah've got different theories, but it's almost just overarching in the words. The country as a whole, when we have attachments to, we have so many distracting attachments from the truth and reality and things, everything from just pressure in your, in your, in like a normal average person's life, just the pressure, right, to go to school, work, you know, and I've got a family, you got whatever, all your responsibilities, it gets stressful, you know, you might feel shitty, you might be coping with shit, we were talking about trauma, you've got your things and you feel it's fucking hard.
And then now we've got so many other distractions on top of that. The attachment to celebrity is a thing that is a thing for me.
So now we have celebrities with opinions. And it sounds like an excuse or something small, but I think it's actually having a way bigger effect than any of us want to admit where we go, this celebrity doesn't like the war, and they start to speak out again.
Now the societal pressure, the buildup of social opinion now starts to affect high-level leaders and politicians to now go, hey, we're killing them good. We're getting this war, we're getting this job done effectively, but it's too effective.
So's still do it, but die it down a little bit. Take it easier on the bad guys.
We're talking about fucking war. What do you mean, take it easier on the bad guys? How? Well, this is how.
We're going to start making the ROEs stricter to the point of absurdity, actually, over time, to where now it's like, okay, now the mission is to just win hearts and minds. And you're like, oh my God, how do we, now we got to pretend to believe in that and do our jobs at the same time and mitigate risk.
Guys still get killed because of the mitigating of the risk. And it watered down and war fighters you know if you if that's your role if you do that if you're a warrior just fucking doesn't work that way well you know and it's hard to say and hard for people to understand that like the best way for war is as quickly and as efficiently as possible with the intention of minimizing collateral damage.
Yeah. It's a very specific ancient thing, you know, that you want to fucking draw it out and then now everybody perceives that we lost.
I'm like, we didn't fucking lose, man. I don't, like, yeah, maybe we, you can, the perspective could be that we lost, but I don't, dude, I saw what we were, like, did more enemy get killed than good guys? A lot more, I think.
So I don't know what the metric is for that, but however disillusioned we might get, I refuse to believe that we lost any fucking war. We just, we did it to our, we do it to ourselves with, it's just how we extend it, you know? I don't know, man.
I got some, a little bit different opinion on that than you, but. Yeah, that's okay.
I just, I mean, I guess you can't really... It's from a warfighter's perspective.
Yeah. It's sort of an overarching force, you know? I'm really scared what's coming, you know? I mean, because we had a handle on it.
In my opinion, I don't think we can say that we won that war. I think, yes.
No, I don't think we won the war. We definitely killed more bad guys than they did of us.
But, you know, the thing is, I mean, fuck, man. We left everything there.
There's something that being that it's worse off now than we ever started. That's kind of what I'm getting at.
The fact that it's... Sorry, go ahead.
The fact that it's worse off... It is worse off now than when we entered.
And the fact that now there are 21 different terrorist organizations all convoluted together. It's like growing, yeah.
You know, and coming up through our fucking southern border that we're funding, we are funding.

I mean, that is a, that's pretty devastating.

I mean, they have definitely strengthened

in a very short amount of time,

and we're going to fucking feel it here.

We are going to feel it in this country.

You know, we're being forced. Because we didn't finish the job.
Yeah, yeah. And we're being forced to, I don't know how to explain that.
It's like we're being forced to just be okay with, we're being forced to live our lives on a four-year cycle because it's all election-based, two- and four-year cycles. So every decision I see being made for some of these things is based off of whatever effect government and politicians thinks they're going to have within the next two to four years and nothing beyond that.
I'd like than that with just my fucking ice cream. And the consequences are just piling up rapidly.
And there's just more and more and more and more bullshit piling up so that we can win something in two or four years. that that pile of bullshit is going to take decades to fix, even if we could at least reach a level of enough bullshit being cleared away to actually agree to talk about any of it.
You can't even discuss at this point. Like an argument between two people.
What are are we arguing about? We got to at least agree to the thing we're arguing about. It needs to be fixed.
And a little bit of the truth behind it, whatever the topic is, before we can even get close to making a decision on how to get better, you know, while satisfying both of our needs. We just, we're so far from that.
And it just, in the meantime, all the danger and all the shit just keeps stacking up. And then we're going to see it with some attack or some bullshit, and everyone's going to be all surprised.
We already saw it. We saw it in Israel.
We saw it at that Russian mall. We've seen it happen here before.
You know, they came out with a report. Do you know who Sarah Adams is by chance? Yeah.
Yeah. CIA target her.
Say again? She's against Scari Media. Yes, that's her.
Yeah. Yeah, a lot of stuff she talked about.
There's this book that came out. It's almost more like a report.
I wish Scott Mann told me about it in his interview that we just released. So anybody listening, they can go back to get that.
But they are predicting, Al-Qaeda, terrorist networks are predicting, they're saying that the casualties that we will feel will be 50,000 to 60,000.

50,000 to 60,000 casualties when they decide to make their move in our home front.

It's a large scale.

And we all sound like kooks and conspiracy theorists until it happens,

and then it's like, well, prevention, there's a lot of shit being prevented.

It's not kooks and conspiracy theorists.

We are funding Taliban.

Yeah, you've proven it.

We've got a lot of shit being prevented. It's not kooks and conspiracy theorists.

We are funding Taliban.

Yeah, you've proven it.

We proved it on the show.

9-11 was a $500,000 budget. The government already came out after we broke the news right here in this fucking room that

they accidentally, accidentally sent $239 million to the fucking Taliban. But we know it's more like close to a billion a year, you know, that's going through these NGOs and being funneled back to the...
And we know that they're producing passports. I've talked about this a million times, but we know they're producing passports, send them into South Central America.
They're funneling up through the southern border. It all circles back to the same truth.
It doesn't matter. The more and more people you have that are experts with some real-world experience in these things, like actual part of their life, whether it's their job or whatever they do, coming on to stuff like this with the courage to talk about it.
And people still, you know, some people want to go, that's not the truth. That screen with the CNN and Fox, that stuff, that's the truth.
And, you know, the movie I saw, it says based on a true story. Why didn't they make that about that if it's true? You're like, I witnessed this in my life.
I go, the stuff you're talking about being true is like a movie based on a true story. That's not even close to the truth.
That's exaggerated for entertainment. Dude, that's why now, finally, the good thing is they're starting to realize how stupid it is and go on like the Washington Post or something I saw the other day.

Shows like the Sean Ryan show are now people are turning to those for their information, you know, instead of mainstream media.

And you're like, thank God they're waking up to it.

But, you know, it's like right at the last minute before this election.

Yeah, yeah.

But, well, Chris, let's move into your final op.

Are you ready?

Yeah, yeah, I'm ready.

I know this is heavy for you.

Thank you.

So, it started actually kind of a cool story.

Wasn't supposed to be there.

So I made a decision to get out.

When I was in the middle of my previous deployment in Somalia,

I was a team leader at this outstation.

And we were pretty remote out there.

We're doing some cool shit.

We stayed up in this mountain for 22 days.

That's where the 900-yard shot happened on a big ambush.

Oh, yeah.

Tell that.

We got to hear that one.

Sorry.

We got to hear that one first.

It was outside of our normal operation deck, but these ISIS Somalia slash Al-Shabaab

Thank you. normal operation deck, but these ISIS Somalia slash Al-Shabaab terrorists had gone up into this little oasis of a village up in the mountain.
It was like, it was nice. It had a waterfall, date trees.
Is it really green? You know, just in the middle of a desert with nothing else. And so, you know, some people have been living in this village for decades and this place since has become sort of a safe haven for bad guys to go almost like, it's like a vacation spot or something because it's nice up there.
So these guys decided to just go take it over. So they go up and essentially kill all the villagers and move them out of there and just essentially take over this spot.
I'm like, cool, it's ours now. We're going to relax here.
And it was such a profound sort of wrongdoing that we got approved to go up there and clear them out. So we go through, we go up there.
It was a long planning process to get it all. I mean, we were getting like Humvees from Dermo and repurposing them and getting them ready and going up there and training, you know, for a long time.
And we went up there and, you know, we've had partner force vehicles in front of us. And, you know, we anticipated an ambush and then there was this big ambush.
To get up there was on these like really tight switchbacks. So they're taking a lot of time.
And so, you know, IEDs were placed up there and, you know, one of the partner force trucks got blown up and flipped over um so we've got now our team corpsmen and medics and stuff over there working on those guys and we're stuck on this switchback just getting lit up from rpgs and pkm and ak from somewhere and some of them are like where are these coming from so we but we you know But we had some turret guns. We had some .40 Mike Mike guns up on the Humvees that were just super powerful weapons.
So we were able to suppress that pretty comfortably. But while that was all going on, we're still getting all these pop shots on the trucks from somewhere.
And the guy's like, where is this from? So I'm like, fuck, I hop out of my, we're stuck. We're not moving right now.
So I, the guys are just staying inside because you can see them landing around us. So I, I, and there's this big mount, there's this big, um, like ridge off to my left side and we're driving up around the switchbacks so i go man i go and i just happen to always carry my 300 wind mag and i used to get made fun of for carrying it up in the mountains because it's just huge so i had other buddies of mine like god damn it that fucking thinks he's bonking me in the helmet and shit and i'm like well walk away from me somewhere you know you know i'm carrying this'm carrying this thing.
And actually, there was another op where I used it and, you know, we killed some bad guys that were launching mortars on us. You know? Four of them.
And I'm like, I'm the guy who got to go do that because I had the long gun, you know? So it was always worth it to me hucking that thing around. This is my favorite gun, 300 Win Mag.
And so I pulled that thing out of the back of the truck. I get it kind of set up.
I had a big pouch full of rounds, and I go get under the hood of the thing, and I got a turret gunner up there, another guy that passed away from a brain tumor after I got out. and so but at that time he was

uh that passed away from a brain tumor after I got out. And so, but at that time, he was up there on the turret, and we had suppressed a fire.
There wasn't much going on anymore, except for these guys shooting pop shots, and I thought it might be from up there, 900 yards up on this ledge. So I get out and go, hey, dude, Zach, can you spot me? You know, I'm going to shoot, I'm going to look up there.
So I look up there, I go, there's six guys up there. I can see their little heads, and they're like shooting AKs over at us.
Not very effective, though. It's still landing around us, but it's 900 yards away, our AKs, you know.
And I'm like, all right, dude, I'm going to shooting back. So I start loading rounds and I'm like, if I miss over the top, it's just a little, just little, you know, heads.
And so I'm like, and they're going to snap over and those guys, they're going to go off. Right.
I'm like, that's fine. Maybe that'll work.
But instead I start like, I'm going to take my first shot and intentionally kind of miss a little bit low so I can mark it on the rocks. And by the way that wind, the wind was blowing towards them, that they might not have heard that, you know.
So that's what I did. And then I would kind of zero it in and then shoot at one of them.
And then they'd all duck back and I'd be like, you know, hey, did I get them, you know? And he's like, no, I don't think so. So I kind of was like, all right, well, that's suppressed.
They're good. But then every time they came back and started shooting more.
So I just keep doing my best. And then eventually he's like, you got that, dude.
You got that, dude. And I don't like the language sometimes out of ego to go like the pink, you know, mist or whatever.
But that was the sort of, he thought he saw that. He's like, okay, well, fuck, I'm looking.
Are they coming back? He's like, no, they're not coming back this time. So they stopped.
So I didn't know. We didn't know, really.
So I put the gun away. We start to get everybody kind of wrapped up.
Those guys survived in that truck, so the IED was in this plastic jug and it went low order. So it didn't explode all the way.
So we get back in. We move into the camp.
We take it over, take over some buildings, make it our jock, and then we spend the next 22 days doing little operations, like sniper ops up there, trying to get the bad guys.

We were having mortar fights and stuff like that.

And then eventually get enough of them to where, hey,

now we're going to introduce those villagers back up into there.

And so we start doing that.

That was an awesome time.

They were, like, so happy.

They kind of started moving back in,

and then the partner force kind of took over that spot for the next few years,

I think. I heard that eventually it got taken back over, but I'm not sure about that.
So we did some good for a short amount of time at least. Nice.
And we came back down there, and that was that deployment. So the way that that was confirmed was that you can capture with your ISR some of their chatter on radios, andios and they're chattering about hey there's a sniper when we're in the firefight shooting at us later on that night we're listening to Terps like hey I've been listening and they're talking about going up there and getting what's his name that sniper shot you know like so we're watching them they go up there and they get this guy and they drag him him down, and that's kind of a confirmation.
Damn. And so I had a really awesome platoon chief then was like, dude, I'm going to write this up.
It's pretty cool, so I'm going to write it up. So he did that, and that's how I got that one.
Fucking A, man. That's cool.

Yeah, it was one of the cooler experiences.

So, yeah, where were we before that story?

We're moving into your last stop.

Yeah, so we move in.

I'm at that, in between those missions at that outstation,

and my kids are three and four, my two boys, and I'm having a hard time getting them to FaceTime with me because my wife says, hey, Braddock, my older son, he's starting to understand what's going on. Like, you're not here, and you want to talk to him, but he's mad, and he doesn't want to talk to you until you're back.
Oh, man. And so...
How's that feel? Dude, it broke my heart. And I couldn't get him on unless he was crying.
So we tried a couple times. I'm like, dude, I don't...
He's so mad and he was crying. You know, I don't want to talk to you until you're here.
You know, like with me. Oh, man.
So, yeah, that broke my heart, and I realized what I was going to be missing, you know, because I was only 14, I was only 12, 13 years in with the intention to go all the way to 20, which meant I was going to be working my way all the way up through the team, you know. And by that time, it was my turn to be a team leader,

which is really kind of a, not the pinnacle,

but a really big milestone as an operator, in my opinion, to get to.

And I always wanted to get to that.

So I stopped telling her, hey, just don't get him on there, you know,

and I'm going to get out.

And she's like, you're going to get out? I'm like, yeah, fuck it, I'm going to get out. So I kind of started thinking about that decision.
I wasn't too serious about it. I still had a few more weeks left at the outstation.
And then I started doing some research in my off time about fatherhood. And then it became pretty apparent to me, and I don't even know where I got this from, but it just seemed like I was reading it over and over again, that as a father to sons, the most important time to imprint those validation things that we're talking about, and dad being there, essentially, is between the ages of 8 and 12.
So I was like, all right, I can get out and I can make that still, you know? So that was really my deciding factor. And then I kind of got closer to that decision, started to announce the team like, hey guys, I'm getting out.
And it was like, I know it's bad timing. I'm supposed to be a team leader right when we get back.
And we had some great leadership then. And then our master chief was like, hey, dude, there's never a good time.
So, you know, we're going to take care of you. And, you know, he got me into the Nyko clinic and stuff, sort of organized.
And then we came back from deployment. That next three months over the summer was my terminal leave so we got back I started my terminal leave I started turning my things in I don't know what oh I did one more trip just to stay current just in case and it was a jump trip because I was a jump guy and one thing about being a jump guy I was never great at it I I ended up going to the tandem bundle school because when my first son was being born,

we were short that qual, and I was so,

like the whole validation thing was like,

man, they're going on deployment,

and there's an opportunity to jump in this course.

It was the hardest course outside of any selection.

For me, it was anyways,

because my son was supposed to be due at any point

during that three weeks, and it's intense.

So I was fucking shit up.

Thank you. selection for me it was anyways because my son was supposed to be due at any point during that three weeks and it's intense so I was fucking shit up I was distracted I was thinking about my son being born and I had this instructor there was a legend of a dude you know and I was in the green course so it was the delta course and I was the only dev group guy and you know the whole thing from him was like you're going to be the best dude in this course.
And I was like, okay. And then I was the worst guy in the course.
But that's where I made some really lifelong Delta buddy, Delta friends. One guy specifically.
He really pushed me through that course. And I'm eternally grateful for it because I got through and I probably shouldn't have, you know.
They were really patient with me. And, you know, since then, after that, I practiced a lot and got good at it, you know.
So then I started to enjoy it, right, a little bit at least. So we fast forward now to this.
I go on the trip. I go do my TAMs, my bundles, stay current, you know, my last hoorah with the team.
And we get right back from that trip. I start turning all my shit in except for all my stuff we're going to do, you know, because now we're on standby.
We're on our, we're responsible for the hostage rescues if anything comes about. So I leave those.
I just take them home instead of my locker. I'm going to turn everything in except for my primary guns and my night vision, my favorite night vision goggles out of all the ones that we get.
And that was it. And I was like, cool.
Just in the team room doing emails and wrapping my shit up, trying to get a resume together. I had a job opportunity, so I was going to go for that.
Just in contracting with my buddy's company I mentioned earlier, and just chilling now. And one day I'm in there, they spin up, and I'm like, fuck, of course, you know.
The day I decided to get out, you know, and I missed the hostage rescue, you know. So I'm in there, but because of some different circumstances, you know, there was no clue that there was going to be anything.
And we had guys doing some different kind of cool training stuff they had to get done. A lot of the recce guys and planners for, you know, when we have that, we're typically the guys that plan, you know, routes and jumps and different things like that, right? So I had a platoon chief that, you know, like not everybody liked, but I had some kind of connection with him.
I thought he was a really intelligent dude. I think his intelligence was underrated.
And so I was like, hey, I'm going to head out and go for a run around my neighborhood. I'm kind of also depressed because I don't get to go do this thing.
He's like, okay. So I go running, get done running, get back to my house, look at my phone.
There's a bunch of texts from him. I'm like, oh, shit.
So I call him, hey, what's going on? He's like, hey, we've got some guys in different places trying to get back, but we could really use some planning help if you want to help plan this thing. I was like, yeah.
And then just kind of joking around, you know, I'm like, hey, if I plan, do I get to go? I'm on term to leave. Of course I don't get to go, you know? But he goes, hey, yeah, hold on a second.
So he puts the phone down for a second, a couple minutes, comes back. He's like, yeah, you can go.
I'm like, holy shit. All right, how long do I have to get there? You got all your shit ready? Yeah.
You probably better get here in like 45 minutes, you know, if you're going to make this bird. So I'm like, oh, shit.
So that's how much time I had to throw all my shit in the truck and tell my wife, hey, I'm going to go do this thing. Are you okay with it? She's like, holy shit, we got through all of this.
Yeah, I'm not going to stop you from doing this one thing, but it's kind of the whole Team America thing, like, just don't die. So I'm like, okay, well, try my best and love you.
you know so I'm like okay and well you know um try my best and love you you know and squeeze the boys and go and so now that's how I ended up on the mission so we fly over there and you can find this in the news and shit um there was a hiccup with the staff for Obama informing him that we were in the air ready to jump when we got there. And so we got pushed 24 hours because he was asleep in Martha's Vineyard, from what I understand.
I don't know the details of that. I know there's a bunch of shit that I probably have no fucking clue how it works, you know.

And we come down, we push to the next night, and then we go.

So I'm up there.

I got a tandem medic on me.

And I'm the point man for the op, you know.

And I've got three other guys, too.

I'm usually a team of four.

And up in the point anyways. So everything goes well, we jump, great landing, we get on this target, it's four, this is the news two, two professors that were kidnapped from the University of Kabul days before.
One was Australian, one was American.

Kevin King and Timothy Weeks.

And found out that they're here, right?

Probably being moved around different compounds on their way to

across the border in Pakistan.

And, you know, the network of dudes that do, you know, the most deviant shit with the Taliban, it's those guys, right? Suicide bombers, you know, just all the worst shit you can think of that happened, you know, chopping off heads and whatever other kind of shit. I think that honestly actually was more in Iraq, but I don't know.
So it's those guys, right? And so we're expecting a hard fight, maybe. And we all know if you have any experience with these guys in Afghanistan, with all the suicide bombs, the house-borne IEDs, all the shit we go really deliberate with when we go to these compounds.
We're looking for i mean it's slow cqb we're looking and we're looking at every threshold for wires for different you know there's even started using you know motion sensors and you know you know light sensor like um photosensitive bulbs you know and pillows and shit like that to just blow. There's so many ops where that happens.
It's high tension and we're expecting this shit and we get down and they're at a compound. Got a long walk in.
Everything goes well. Then we get get to, you know, we see some movement around, some guys that seem to have RPGs, motorcycles moving around.
And then what I believe was going on based off of what happened was that that was just normal shit going on because we were able to get all the way up to the target, sneaking up and get up on top and get ready without anybody knowing anything, right? But there were a couple of noises, you know, that we made. The way that I go back to thinking about what actually happened on this op has a lot to do with, you know, Kevin King never spoke much about it after.
Maybe he's super traumatized by it. Maybe he's living his life, whatever.
But Timothy Weeks did speak up on it a bunch and a bunch of different interviews and news outlets. And, you know, I was in my contracting work after this op and eventually they were cut a deal to be turned over and traded and with the release of an asakani which is you know the leader and a couple of other guys and once that happened pretty quickly it went around even in the news like a little write-up that he had of like what he what he thought happened on those different ops.
Because there was a couple attempts, a couple of failed attempts. And I pieced it together over time, what I thought really happened, right? And so different ROEs for a hostage rescue, totally different.
And every operator really understands pretty in depth what those are.

You have to.

You really talk about it.

Because the mission is the hostages.

And on a hostage rescue, it's so hard to talk about,

especially with people that don't understand war and those things,

because one of only a couple things is going to happen.

They're going to kill the hostages.

If they're not going to happen.

They're going to kill the hostages if they know that you're there,

which has happened. And that's a really hard thing for operators to deal with after.

And

or you're going to rescue the hostages and kill all the bad guys. Great.
You know? Or the good guys might accidentally kill the hostage while they're doing the operation. That's happened before, too.
That's hard. So as an operator, you go through your decision-making matrix to go, you know, like you're like hey my decision making has to be very precise here right and this is where even more so than any other time or like there's no room for the soul i think in those and that's a sacrifice that warriors have to make in my opinion to do what they do sometimes and that's where the detachment from that is so hard afterwards to come back to.
Because you've just moments of detachment from that for so long over time. You know? And in history, some have been able to figure that, to stay attached and connected to that soul while they're doing it.
But that just wasn't the case for where I was at, right?

And what the guys around me were at

and why it's so hard right now, guys coming out.

So we get up.

I'm the first guy to touch the target.

I climb up, sneak up to the roof, my spot spot, my job is to protect the assaulters, right, and see what they can't see. So we have another team coming around on the other side, a little delayed because they went a different way.
We weren't sure if we had been compromised at all yet.

My opinion is we still weren't.

So they climb up, they get set, they get ready,

and in the meantime I'm looking over down here

and there's five people sleeping in the courtyard.

But we knew that.

And on the way trying to figure out who they are, what they are, making sure none of them are the hostages, right? And there's a lot that goes into that identification, you know? Hair color, skin color, you know? What do they look like? Is there any chance that they're, they used to dress them up like in burkas, you know, so that we'd think that they were women, right? So there wasn't any of that. They're all males.
And through a process of that, you know, getting to 100% clarity that, like, none of them are the hostages. But at the same time, you know, going, hey, the ROE, the intel is saying that who these guys are and what networks they're part of, when they know we're here, they might blow up the whole fucking thing in themselves.
They're willing to do that, right? And all of us. And we've experienced that before.
or they're going to fucking spray something from their little sleeping nest. And in my job, yeah, we're on a mission.
The hostages are the most important. But if I hesitate in a decision, dude, I've gone through this so much, and I'm going to try my my best here because I went through a whole process for years of making sure I'm not justifying but justifying and like going back and forth with my ego just trying to understand this thing but also for so many years I was just coping with it with addictions and drinking my face off and just being lost with that new trauma, right? And figuring out the decision I made was the right one because the decision I made was we're going to kill these five males, right? And eliminate any risk to those assaulters because if one gets hit because I hesitated on that decision,

then I know their wives.

I know a bunch of them.

You know, they're all around our community, you know?

And fuck, that's my job, right?

So then I started to eventually separate this into a duty decision and a soul decision right um so when the breach goes off I'm eliminating those five so I did right thinking back now there were some things that happened outside that I, there were some loud noises, some things, some mistakes that I think may have spooked those guys into stomping those hostages down into a tunnel system down below because when, a couple years later when they got turned over, that reading, the thing that he wrote was like, hey, the first time I woke up in the middle of the night to getting kicked down a fucking hidden tunnel and was like knocked out and came back to, and then as soon as I came back to, there was a loud explosion, which is the breach, for one I think. And so it wasn't like hours or days.
It could have been seconds that we missed those guys, right? Maybe. Maybe not.
So the breach goes off. The assaulters come in.
They get into a fight with a couple of guys, eliminate them, and we're waiting to hear that got them, you know, in that room. The beds are still warm, there's still food from whenever before, you know, exercise, bike, whatever, and hey, they're not here.

And that's when essentially like, okay,

we're going to clear this whole village now, which we did,

and we've got other compounds we're looking at to go look at, to go do.

And as I'm doing my job, hopping from roof to roof, covering my eyes, I'm going like this rush of just sort of stress comes over me

because now it's soul time, right?

Because what I didn't know, what I don't, what I think I didn't know,

I still go through this to go, did I know, did I not know?

In that moment that two out of the five males were kids. So in the moment, it doesn't affect me too much.
It's my job. You know, we wrap up that target.
We get back. It's a failed hostage rescue.
The team discusses like we always do. We go, hey, anybody have any issues with everything that went down tonight? Raise your hand.
No. Even the guy who, I told you the platoon chief, was like, man, I'm, I brought it up because I didn't, you know, hey, I don't know.
I think I, you know, I know I did the right thing duty-wise, but something in here is fucking fucking me up right now, right? And, you know, I'm good. He's like, you good? I'm like, I'm good.
But I don't know what to say. What I feel is like, hey, you did the right thing.
With that, you know, when you breach in Afghanistan, it's a blind assault. There's fucking dust.
Like, those guys' clearance was like, you can't even see your hand in front of you. So imagine that, you know, hey, feeling your way into bad guys, you know, and making sure they're not the hostage.
So that was that. The last I ever talked about it it with anybody the craziest thing was those guys got extended for a month to do more operations around this rangers get involved other guys get involved and uh like all right guys i gotta go start my job in a fucking week and get back in time for it.
So I fly back and no shit, like two days later,

I'm up in DC in this office at DITRA with a fucking suit and a tie thinking about these kids and just trying to figure the shit out, but not understanding how. and I'm in this fucking office.

I'm supposed to be getting read-ons and badges and shit and there's this fucking guy who's the boss or whatever, the program manager, and he's fucking eating Twinkies and shit all over his desk. And I'm like, hey, sir, what am I supposed to be? What do I need to do here? And he's like, fucking, what are you talking about? get your ass over to the fucking brief you're supposed to be in and i'm like okay you know fucking dick you know and then i go do my best to figure out what the fuck i'm supposed to be doing in that in that job the first couple of weeks you know just feeling you know, and, you know, over time I got into the swing of it and it was a really, actually a really good experience doing that work.
It's just, you know, as I processed through this and went through this whole phase of just these years of just fucking figuring myself out, Just getting the bullshit, shoveling the bullshit out as much as I could while still adding more, not being able to figure out why I couldn't get it off. And one day I had the Ibogaine experience that cleared, that helped me understand a little bit better and some other things that I did as well and then like

fuck finally I figured out how to start leveling it out to a point where I had enough clarity in my own self to go back to that moment and now look at it instead of fucking hiding from it which I was doing for years and every time I wanted to think about it I would just go fucking get drunk you know and I got to this point just a few years ago.

I'm eight years out now,

and maybe four years ago was rock bottom where this thing, plus the childhood, and all the shit I was doing outside of what I really wanted to be, right, which was just good. I fucking had this friend in my neighborhood take his own life just in the little lake across from my front porch.
And I used to go to that spot just because it made me feel good. I just would like take a paddleboard over there and I'll just kind of lay there where he took his life and go, fuck, I like feel something here.
And then every time I leave this spot, I don't feel anything. And because of that, eventually I started to, just about a year of this seed being planted and growing in my head to where like, man, I can just fucking, I'm a burden on everybody.
I'm yelling at my kids. I'm a horrible husband.
I'm addicted to everything. I can't figure this shit out with these kids.
So, you know, one day I found myself just playing slack side squeeze. You know, the drill when you're fucking dry firing, but with one in the tube.
And then that was the moment. I'm like, what the? I didn't even really realize I was doing it.
I was just thinking. And then I now think back to go, thank God I wasn't drinking a bunch there.
Because I think that in those moments, in that critical moment, which is the veteran suicide, like critical moment that I think about a lot, is a lot simpler than what I think we all think it is because there's very specific thoughts going on in that moment, right? This guy, you know, this couple of guys or my team thinks I'm a shitbag or something.

I had another friend take his own life.

He was at that outstation with me.

He got sent home because he became a really bad alcoholic.

He was a great operator before.

Then he turned into this and he started getting bounced around teams.

They got it to where he could survive through it and he got to retire, and then right after he retired, he took his own life. And for him, it was a little different.
It was like, dude, that whole bullshit of, like, if a guy's not performing for whatever the reason is in that moment, when you guys start to, when we start to jump on it

and be like, that's a fucking dude's a shit bag,

and you just betray him after everything,

all the good he was in those hard moments,

like that's the shit guys are thinking about, right?

So there's a much better way to do that shit,

and I even participated in some of it

with a different guy we got rid of.

It's like, we're hard motherfuckers

Thank you. out right so there's a much better way to do that shit and i even participated in some of it with a different guy we got rid of it's like we're hard motherfuckers but we don't have to play that game when it gets to that we can get rid of a dude for not performing or put him somewhere where he can get a little bit better right take a break or whatever it is without going oh he's gonna gonna and fucking jump on that and be like shit you know? Because once that label happens, that's a betrayal.

And fast forward to later, that critical moment, those little memories, like those are what they're thinking about, what we're thinking about, what I think. So that was a rock bottom moment.
The only thing that made me fucking stop in that fucking moment and paddleboard back to my house was it was at nighttime. I knew my family was eating dinner, and I started thinking about my son, and the whole reason why I got out was for them.
And that brought me back a little bit to go like, fuck, even if I'm a shit father, like they still believe there's something in me, that thing that some people can feel or see like my wife did. She was still doing it in that moment, even though it wasn't me.
She knew. They fucking know.

There's something more, right?

And there's a chance to get back to that before they give up.

I went back.

And a couple days later, the wife of my friend that took his life there just randomly called me.

And she was like, how you doing? And I was like, fuck, that's not good. And she goes, oh shit, let me come over and talk to you.
And I was like, yeah, that'd be awesome. Because I knew what she had gone through with her husband's taking his life.
And now that was a whole process. And she figured something out because she was not she was something better after that after some years and so she's the one who introduced me into the the medicine so I went I was like dude I'll do anything I don't care what it is I'll go and I'm yeah I was scared but I was like willing to do, to try anything.
And so I went that we can go through that whole, it was a whole nother discussion, but it just completely opened up my heart to seeing through all this bullshit that was on top to go, fuck, you can just make a choice. So I made a choice and pretty quickly I was able to get rid of all that bullshit, just shoveling it out to where it was pretty much empty.
And now I was just in full clarity to now go back to that night and go, fuck, why did that happen? How did that happen? So then I was able to go pick it apart and go, hey, I did what I think is the right thing in duty, right? Because I know how the universe works. If I didn't do that, we would have all gotten blown up or somebody would have gotten shot and now I'd be dealing with that, right? We're not here.
But also saying maybe that wouldn't have happened because if that's a little bit of a justification for it, then fine. But you know how the universe works, you know? And so now going to separate duty completely from it to go, for my soul, it was not the right answer.
So I know that, right? And so now what I do is I've spent so much time now instead of forgetting about those kids, thinking about them and trying to place myself in their childhood reality where it doesn't matter what your environment is, if you're the children of a terrorist and your role is a servant to the father, or maybe you wasn't in that, I don't fucking know. But your job is to just play and learn and absorb everything.
So it makes me, it forces me to attach it to what's happening with children now

and all the fucking bullshit of that.

And just trying to, I want to just shake some people up to go,

look, your own stuff, right, that you're now,

you want people to think you're a good person, right?

We all do, most of us. Some people have gotten to a point where they don't give a fuck.
I want you to think I'm a good person so bad that I'll seek validation. I'll do virtue signaling to show you how good I am, which now I'll use my children to show you.
Look, especially the sexuality thing. It's so dangerously evil underneath it all, but I don't also want to shame and guilt those kind of parents that are doing that, right? Because they might not fucking even, when you're not clear, you're not even aware of your own behavior sometimes, right? So they don't even fucking know they think it's the right thing to go, look, we let them, you know, I don't want to get into it too much, but like a boy, maybe he wants to be a girl and we kind of push that a little bit or vice versa because we need to show that we're good, inclusive, diversive people.
And the truth of what I know is the truth of what I know is if I teach my kids kindness, that shit's all included in kindness. You know, inclusion, there are all these things, right? It's all underneath kindness, but you also teach them boundaries to protect themselves.
And with children, they don't have boundaries. They don't know what that means.
So they're going to absorb and sponge and take everything because guess what? They just want your validation. So you might be like, hey, children, what do you

think about this or that topic in front of another adult? And like, they're going to say what you want them to because they want, their goal is your validation and nurturing for mom. And they're going to do whatever they need to do to get that, no matter how wrong or evil or anything it might be, right?

So I just go through. to get that, no matter how wrong or evil or anything it might be.

Right? So I just go through all of that over time. It's always connected to these kids to the point where I don't want to forget them.
And I don't know how best to explain this, but I actually find myself thinking about it so much that it's like a little, it's like a,

it's some form of love for them, you know?

And what is their, dude, this is the hardest thing.

I believe that this is an experience.

And just like if you're religious, I'm not even religious, but I see all these themes through every every religious text that i've ever read i try to read all of them um um this is a body right that contains a soul and death is just a transition into the next experience whatever it might be but that's the thing we're always fussing about and arguing about like, uh, you know, what, what, uh, what is reincarnation? What is all, you know, and literally fighting wars with each other about our different beliefs about, about something we can't know here yet, you know? And, um, so I find myself thinking about where they're at,

you know, same thing,

same way I think about my grandfather.

Before he passed away,

some of the last words he said to me,

I was able to sit by him next to the bed and talk.

I was like, dude, I want,

grandpa, I want to say things,

but I don't know how.

He's like, you can say whatever you want, you know? And I was like, well, here, I want to say things, but I don't know how. He's like, you can say whatever you want, you know.

And I was like, well, here's what I want to say.

You've been such a mentor to me.

Everything I've done, you've given me the validation.

You've been so proud of me.

You know, he was so proud that I made it to SEAL Team 6.

And I wanted to do this ice cream thing next so he could see. It didn't happen in time, but the thing I wanted to say, I was like, whatever you're feeling, you're like, I can imagine that you must be going through your whole life as an experience.
And even to include things you might not have resolved with some of your sons, because there were some tensions, there's some things going on, you know, family things that always exist. And I was like, but what I think is that deep down inside you, to the core of your soul, what you really are is just little boy Jack, seven-year-old.
That's what I visualize as the most authentic, the most real version of me that I ever was before anything happened to me, before any of those traumas, those conflicts, those things. And so going into myself was like a hostage rescue to grab that little boy and bring him back through all that fucking bullshit.

So those kids now I think about,

and I don't want to forget them.

Damn, Chris.

You know, when we spoke the first time,

you had mentioned dreams.

Can you talk about those dreams?

Yeah.

So for a long time, like I said, like coping,

we talk about PTSD, you know, in the teens and soft. I don't like to use that word because just like other words, in society, we attach too much stigma to those words.
So it's like PTSD is like this thing no one wants to have. Because we know that if you're labeled with it or attached to it, no matter how anonymous they make the reporting system of it or whatever you do with a psychologist or whatever, you're not going to, I'm not going to because I want to be operational.
That's my mission. So I like to call it coping instead.
We all cope with it in different ways that we, in our culture, we make, just like in society, we make certain things socially acceptable. Anything but, you know, encourage each other to change our lifestyles, do something healthy, you know, because it doesn't fit in the culture.
And that's the thing why culture is such a powerful thing. So my coping with it was I was trying my best to forget it, and then I was having these fucking nonstop nightmares.
It was tough for my wife because it'd be like I'd be stuck in the dream and making these strange noises because I knew I was in a dream and I was trying to get out of it because I didn't want to look at that. These kids, and the hardest part is I know the image of what it looked like.
Even one of them kind of got up a little bit and there's bullets through them and then kind of laid back down. And this shit tormented me in the dreams that every time he got up, it was like my younger, for some reason, my younger son's face.
So then I developed this fucking belief that if anything traumatic happens to either one of them through their lives, it's because of me. And I was like, that's the message I was getting.
And then I was like doing, I was like essentially shooting my own. And I think the reason it was him is because he's a little bit more of the adventurous.
Like he's, he just, he just goes for it. It's actually awesome now.
He probably has fear, but he doesn't care about the fear. My older son is more analytical, thinks things out a little bit more, and there's going to be good things and bad things for both of those traits, but I love both of them equally as much.
But for some reason, it was him because he's probably more likely to get into danger faster.

Like, I don't even want to say this

because I don't want them to become SEALs,

but he'll be the one if, you know, I think.

So after the abogaine, those went away.

And so did the migraines. Do you think those kids have ever tried to make contact with you? Talking about the ones here? No, they're all, like...
you talking about on the operation? Yeah.

No, I, those, they're, I can't, oh, I see what you're saying, sorry.

No, I haven't.

That's a good point.

I might need to pay more attention.

You think you're opened up enough for that?

Maybe, you know, one thing I think about is, sorry, I misunderstood that for a second. I haven't gotten to a lot of the other war stuff much.
And I don't know, sometimes I go, oh, it just didn't affect me much. I don't think so.
I think that there's a psychological toll on everything that happens, every little thing. If you choose, if you're a guy that chooses to go, hey, I'm good, didn't bother me much, and you hold it and you don't talk about it and you go on your, you know, it's like, be with my grandfather, I wish he told me more, but he just doesn't talk about it.
You're like, okay, that's just how grandpa is. That's okay, you know? But then there's us guys that want to, I want to want them to feel something.
They want to. My kids, my boys, I think they want to.
So I decide now to go to it instead of the effects that that shit's having on me when I try to forget it. But, you know, as far as the, you know, I meditate a lot.

I've gone through some really intense meditation training, and I've got some more to do.

Some teachers.

Get a lot of visions out of those when you get far enough and deep enough.

And I might not have been paying attention to what you just asked. So maybe the next time I do that, or even some plant medicine ceremony or something, that maybe I'll lay that down as an intention to go, hey, if there for me to receive from them.
Um, I'm open Did you know gay Bacardi no I think so it was a team 10 no I didn't know but I've told this before but I'm gonna tell you because I know that motherfucker contacts me all the time.

And I'll tell you one example.

That's his flag up there.

But, um... The Red Wing flag.

He, uh, well, that was Josh Harris' flag, but Gabe was Josh's best friend.

And, uh, Gabe cared about three things.

Thank you. Well, that was Josh Harris's flag, but Gabe was Josh's best friend.
And Gabe cared about three things. He became a really bad heroin addict.
And when he knew things were getting super dicey, he would give me that flag, those rounds, and I told you where those came from,

and his grandpa's firefighter helmet,

because that's just the only three things he fucking cared about.

And he passed away several years ago, but I've had a lot of encounters with him. And I'll tell you, the last one that I had was...
You know, I've never told anybody this, or I have not said this on the show, but those rounds are from the Red Wings birds that went down. Well, I'm honored for you to tell me.
A ranger that was on the recovery op at the crash site gave those rounds to him and said that those were the only things that didn't burn up in the crash site. So he snapped off around for every guy that died on that op and brought him home, and he just had him in a little fucking shave kit.
And he would give him to me if he thought he was going to check out. I'll probably give him to a museum or something when I feel the time's right.
But before he died, he would come over to my house all the time and tell me that he was going to start a Wounded Warriors hockey team sponsored by the NHL, completely junked out And we, you've seen what that looks like. And a lot of people listening have seen what that looks like.
It's not a fucking pretty sight. And, uh, you know, I, I, I dedicated a several years of my life to, to getting, trying to make him better and had some successes,

but ultimately it didn't work out, obviously. But he would tell me, yeah, the Florida Panthers NHL team, they're going to sponsor me.
And I'd be like, okay, Gabe, I hope you're right, man.

And when they found him, when he died, the Florida Panthers NHL team decided they were going to sponsor him. And so they went to his house to tell him that they were going to fund his team and be the sponsor.
And he was, he'd overdosed and was on the floor. Fast forward, they still stood the team up.
They still funded the team, his name's on all the jerseys. And I got one of the first jerseys ever made.
And they won the fucking national championships the very first year. And then I told you I went to Vienna, and I did that Masood interview.
Yeah. And we were the first ones to report that, and I got super fucking paranoid for protection, and And I got a little too far in front of my skis and started hiring personal protection for my family and fucking Taliban's called me out on X several times because we're fucking with our funding.
And we came home from that Vienna trip, and I had that jersey framed. It's the first thing you see when you walk in the door right next to the American flag.
Huge, probably weighs 30 pounds. It's been hanging there ever since I got this studio, which has been about three years now.
And we got back, and that frame was, it had fallen off the wall and it was on the ground. It should have broke because of how heavy it is.
Not a crack in the glass, not a frame still, nothing, perfect condition. And we walk in, this is the day after we got back from Vienna.
And I'm like, nobody here could have taken it because the whole team went to Vienna with me, except my assistant. And she wouldn't have done it.
But I asked her, I said, Dave, did you, what's this? And I was like, I liked that when I came in. Nobody else was here, like I said.
And so, like, all day that was in my mind as I'm here working. And then the team left.
And then everybody in the buildings left. And I was the last car in the parking lot.
And I'm pacing around. And I just thought, because, like I said, Gabe had made contact several times before.
and I'm the last car in the parking lot and I'm pacing around and I just thought, because like I said, Gabe had made contact several times before and I'm pacing around and I'm like, fuck, man. What are you trying to tell me, man? And do I need to fucking move? Do I need to hire more protection? What do I need to do? What are you telling me? And I go home, and I tell my wife, Katie, I'm like, man, the weirdest fucking thing.
Like, that frame's been up there. It's been on the wall for three years.
I've never taken it off. And then I come home from Vienna.
I'm super

paranoid.

And the frame's down. And I feel like Gabe's

trying to tell me something.

And Katie goes,

the hockey jersey?

And I'm like,

yeah. And she goes, Sean,

the Florida Panthers just won the fucking Stanley Cup. And I was like, what? She's like, the Florida Panthers just won the Stanley Cup.
And I was like, holy shit. And then I looked at my watch, and the date was June 28th.
Yeah, the date. June 28th is the anniversary to Red Wings, which was a massive part of Gabe's life because those were his guys.
That was his platoon. Red Wings.
And I just fucking lost it. But that's too many coincidences to be anything else.
And then I thought, that fucker isn't trying to warn me anything. He's just going, no, you fucking idiot.
I'm not trying to warn you of anything. You're not that damn important.
The fucking Panthers won the Stanley Cup on June 28th, and I just want your attention. But there's signs, man.
There's always signs of your bad attention. There's also a lot of not coincidences.
You've had enough experts on here that do things. To believe there's not something, dude, over time, it's just, it's in every text, every Bible.
We're more than this, what's in front of us. And signals and messages, you know, can get through from here to there, to wherever we exist, you know, outside of or inside of what this is, you know.
So really my opinion is that it's like a low, it's, I don't want to offend anybody, but it's a low intelligence. It's of low intelligence for me, for somebody, I think, like an atheist or something,

or somebody that just doesn't believe there's anything else but this. Because there's just

too much evidence. Like, the evidence is you.
It's got to be harder to not believe than it

is to believe. I think so.
But the only reason I'm kind of bringing this up right now, man, is for me, I think life is all about love and forgiveness. And those kids' souls are somewhere.
and I could see it all over you that you want to know that you've been forgiven. And you love those kids.
And I mean, you can see that you're so genuine about it.

Maybe they will make contact.

Maybe they're trying to.

I think they are me.

Maybe that's the sign that you need to know that they're good with it.

But thanks for sharing that.

Well, thank you for that.

You want to take a break? Yeah, that'd be good. Thank you for that.

You want to take a break? Yeah, that'd be good.

Let's take a review. We read every review that comes through and we really appreciate

the support. Thank you.
Let's get back to the show. All right, Chris, we're back from

the break. We're going to lighten it up a little bit, but I do, man, thank you for

toughing it out with that. And just from our discussion downstairs, I'm glad that was therapeutic for you.
Yeah, I appreciate it. I'm grateful for the moment.
But let's move into, we covered a little bit of kind of what it was like getting out, I think, at the very beginning, actually. But I did want to, you know, ask about, I mean,

when did you tell your wife about that stuff?

I don't, you know, it's kind of a blur.

I don't think I really talked, still haven't talked much. She knows that that was one of the things really, you know, it's kind of a blur.
I don't think I really talked, still haven't talked much.

She knows that that was one of the things

really, you know, affecting me.

But we never really got into the deep details of it.

But I think it might have been a couple of years after.

It took years.

I think it was a couple of years.

Yeah, I think it was a couple of years.

Can I ask how she received it? I think she received it the best she could, you know. She's really good about receiving those things, but I know that, you know, people, it's sometimes, you know, they're thinking about how do I react to it, you know, and you're like, you don't have to react to it, you know? But I think that she took it and really deeply cares about me, you know? And I can feel that, and I can also know she doesn't have to say anything, you know? I can feel how much she cares when I tell her those things, even in silence, you know, you can see it in her eyes.
So, I think she just worried, you know. She wanted, her goal and intention was she wanted me back, you know, or she wanted all of me, maybe even, you know, feeling like she hadn't ever had all of me, you know, a full presence of me and who I am, you know, minus all that bullshit.

And so it was a really glorious moment

to finally reach that person that I wanted to become.

For her, for myself, you know, for everything,

for the business, you know, that wasn't gonna work

until I became the person that I needed to become, to deserve to walk through those doors. Do you think your kids will watch this? Yeah.
I think they'll watch it. And one, I'm grateful for more than just you calling me up to come on the show.
I mean, it's also, to me, it feels like this opportunity from God, certain moments in your life that you get. And for me, as I think into the future, is I can imagine them when I'm older, you know, if I get there, looking back to this and going, man, this is a marker for how I feel right now, you know, while this

stuff is all still fresh and I'm still, you know, a little young and they're, you know,

to, to, they're still young, you know, they're still boys.

And so it's, uh, technology is cool in some ways like that, you know, so now they have

it.

I mean, it's, do you think you'll watch it with them? Yeah. Yeah.
You know? So now they have it. I mean, it's, do you think you'll watch it with them? Yeah.
Yeah. Have they ever heard any of this? No.
What do you think their reaction will be? I don't know. I think that I'm clear enough and honest with them enough about as much as I possibly can that I can go, hey, you guys don't, you don't have to react to this, but you can tell me how you feel, you know, and I know that that's going to evolve and change as they grow.
So now it'll be interesting for me to see how it evolves with them. I love these, man.
It's like a legacy piece, you know. Your family will watch this for generations.
Yeah. It's really cool.
And it's, I don't know, it's just, I think for a lot of the guys that come in here that do a life story like that, and they get vulnerable and deep and open doors that don't rarely get opened. I mean, I just, I'm thankful to be able to do it.
And I just, man, it's just, it's important, man. It's, I always wonder what it's like, you know, to watch something like this as a family when it's about you.
What was it like for you to get home? Because you decided to leave because of your sons. Yeah.
And your wife. And so how did that reintegration go? It was hard.
It took me some time doing that job and trying to figure out why not only did I not feel better, but increasingly worse over time. And so once I finally figured out that that is correlated to understanding your purpose.

And sometimes when I say finding your purpose,

a lot of people I think they don't know,

what does that mean, your purpose?

And you might not figure it out until you just start doing shit,

until you start being like,

dude, I don't like what I'm doing right now.

So how do I get out of this?

How do I start making moves

towards something that I know that I like?

And then the more you do it,

Thank you. Being like, dude, I don't like what I'm doing right now.
So how do I get out of this? How do I start making moves towards something that I know that I like? And then the more you do it, you know, it starts to build and grow. And then you can kind of start figuring out like, well, my purpose isn't to make ice cream.
You know, it's not your job or where you live. Because guys will get out and go, I'm just going to move to some beautiful ranch in Montana and everything's going to be fine.
And you're like, no. Once you have something, it's not just what you're going to do.
If I make ice cream, that's just my medium. Part of my purpose is to, to serve others.
Once I figured out how to serve myself so that I can be more available to serve others, it's not a narcissistic or selfish thing. It's a, it's a generous thing in that, in that way to serve others.
You know, I did it, something inclined me to go do that in the military. And I didn't even know why, you know? So it wasn't just for validation.
It was because part of my purpose is to serve, right? So now I just get to feed people ice cream and watch them smile, and there's no toxicity. There's no ulterior motives, no agenda or anything behind it.
It's just fucking ice cream. I want to make you feel good, you know, for a short amount of time, you know, or your purpose might be to create.
Dude, the paintings, the, you know, I've got a creative mind too, so part of my purpose is to create, you know. A mother's purpose is to create, you know, and just those kinds of words.
It's so hard with words because so much behind everything. We try to just, I just try to find the best combination of words to describe to, you know, what you feel, which is everything.
If what we are and what we feel is every grain of sand on earth, right, even under the ocean, then words is like a sprinkle of sand in your hand,

and you're trying to use those to tell everybody about all of the sand. So it's hard.
Some people are really good at it with their vocabulary. Their vocabulary is better than others.
So you just try your best, but that's what I'm saying with purpose. It's more aligned with not your fucking title, your, you know, I am a mother with ADHD that, you know, is a teacher and all this stack of, and my sexuality is this, this, this.
I'm not saying anything about sexuality. They're fine.
I'm saying that that's not what you are. You know, that's just one tiny little aspect of part of what you are.

So the purpose thing is it's a more

literal thing.

What do you do and why?

What do you want to do?

I want to paint. Maybe your purpose is to

create. Go do some and see if you love it.

And make

some move towards that.

Maybe it's to teach.

And if you're a teacher and you love,

have you ever seen a teacher that loves being a teacher,

no matter how stressful it is?

You ever had one of those teachers and you're like,

that was a good one, I remember.

She cared.

I could feel that she cared about us all.

And that shit's stressful because there's other teachers that hate it.

And they might be convincing themselves that that's their purpose.

My purpose is to teach, and they force it, force it, force it,

but why are you so miserable doing it?

It might not be, you know,

and then you're afraid to let that go,

you know, and move into something else

that might be more aligned with your purpose.

So it's that.

I think a big hurdle for a lot of people too,

not just guys getting out, is limitations.

And, you know, I don't believe there are limitations anymore. I used to think there were limitations.
And then I realized when you do find your passion, there's literally no fucking limitations. The only limitations there are are the limitations that you put on yourself.
And what I notice is that most people look for the limitations as an excuse to not excel and succeed not even realizing that they're fucking doing it you might have to do some shit in the meantime that's not a limitation that's just what you gotta do you gotta have some money gotta put food table. You do those things, and you just fucking get through it.
But if you can commit a couple years, you know, it's worth it. Yeah, yeah.
You know, and usually we go pretty in-depth on the transition, but it got so heavy there. I think we need to pull out of the darkness.
But I do want to ask you another thing. And I know you already said it, and I feel the same way.
But, you know, with everything that you've been through and everything you've experienced and everything that you thought the SEAL teams was going to be, you've been through the transition. We've both lost, I've lost more people than I can count to suicide, way more to suicide than I have in combat.
And, you know, with everything that you know now, and your sons are going to look at your career eventually, if they haven't already. And they're going to probably want to do something like that to impress you.
Would you want your kids, your sons, in the SEAL teams? I don't want them, and I've told them this, and my wife. Because there were so many close calls.
And it's just, now I'm a father. Now I know there's danger.
I'm okay with danger. This brings me back, too, to so many, every time somebody was lost, I go back now to those memories where I wasn't really paying close enough attention to the fathers,

now that I'm a father, or in the mothers too,

of how overwhelming that feels when that happens to them. It's like the toad, but worse, more overwhelming than the toad.

If you've ever experienced 5MEO DMT, I think that losing a child as a parent might be more overwhelming than the toad. You know? If you've ever experienced 5-M-E-O-D-M-T, I think that losing a child as a parent might be more overwhelming than that.
Or equally. Fuck.
Now I think about their faces and I missed some of that, you know, in those moments, but now I think back and go, fuck, that was, it's no small thing. And so I don't want to feel that.
But, but if they are going to go, I got to support them so that now the support is at least they're going to be as safe as possible because they have that validation, have that support, you know, where I'm not. I don't want them thinking about tension with dad

or their validation for anything if they're going to do that.

I want them to optimize and just make the smartest decisions possible

and hopefully a little luck in there from God too.

You got into some,

sounds like you got into some interesting contract work.

Yeah, I did. It was interesting.
I didn't enjoy it much, but it was interesting. What's the extraterrestrial stuff? I'm dying here.
I didn't work on anything with extraterrestrials, but you've got access to lots of programs and different email systems and different things, and for sure there was a time where some traffic went around

with... and different email systems and different things.
And for sure, there was a time where some traffic went around. Regarding, they've talked about this plenty too, and it's out there, you can look this right up, that there's a task force.
There's a task force responsible for collecting the data around all the UFOs that pilots are seeing. You have pilot buddies.
I got a lot of them. There's an air base there, Oceania.
Lots of F-18 friends. They see this shit all the time.
Do they really? Yeah. What are they seeing? Anything in particular? Yeah, the same little...
The Tic Tac thing? Shiny shape that zips around in these different experiences with their pods or just with their eyes. And it seems to be that same shape over and over again as people have seen it off of ships, off of naval ships, in their pods and out of their windows.
And it's not, you don't, it's now it's at the point where there's no, it's no longer like, hey, you know, don't speak up about anything because you're going to feel, you know, we're going to embarrass you. It's like, oh, you saw something, you know, like, no, now it's been enough that they're like, yeah, I saw a couple

today. Oh, shit.

Yeah, saw one last week.

You know, and just trying to

keep, you know,

record them snapshots or whatever and

enter it into this, you know, into the database

of

evidence of

UAPs. So,

you know, they're having hearings about it, congressional

hearings and different talks about it, and like,

it's just true at this point. There's no conspiracy theory around it.
There's things going on, including, and that's just one of them. What do you think it is? You think about this stuff? I do, and it's tough to talk about because when I say I think into the future, I also go into the far future and the far past and go all the way into physics.
And I've read a couple of Stephen Hawking's books and things and different folks like that and astrophysicists. I just love watching that stuff.
And I love all of the ancient aliens and everything. That's the stuff I watch if I do watch something.
And it's just too apparent that one physics and all of these researchers and scientists are telling us that time is not linear out there. It's based on gravity.
So if time is not linear, then in different places, the past, present, and future could all be existing at the same time. Or, you know, and in spirituality, I think that a lot of monks, a lot of people that practice meditation,

spirituality, believe that too.

Which means your childhood and being an old man

is happening already, right now.

You just only can experience this moment and this time.

But five seconds from now, if I move this bottle,

that's the future.

And if I make that decision right now, then I can see the future. It's going to move, right? Nothing's going to change that.
Maybe some, you know, boom. That moment exists at the same time as I was just saying, that in five seconds, that's going to move.
So I do think about it, and if that's the case,

I also think about technology and AI.

We're battling about how to use it, what to use it,

and I think that it's inevitable that we're already starting to integrate AI consciousness into our consciousness

in different ways, whether it's a chip or whether it's going to start with your iPhone. It's just now implanted.
You don't have to do anything. You just go, you know, and do shit.
And it'll evolve from there and to the point where now we can access artificial intelligence in combination with our own intelligence. And maybe that becomes the next species of humans.
Because it's going to evolve. We've already had several species of humans.

It just makes sense, based off of the evidence that already exists,

that we're going to evolve into another type of human.

We're going to, unless we destroy ourselves.

You know, so just like if you ask me if I believe in aliens or extraterrestrials

or any wording or language around that, to me, it's unintelligent to think otherwise because I can only base it off of my own experience so far, which is being alive. So there's no belief that I can have.
There's no evidence to prove otherwise that there is life because I'm alive.

I've never experienced nothing.

You know, so when Stephen Hawking is like, you know, he's a genius with what he was doing with physics and theories.

But he's not an idiot, but sometimes I'm like, he's also kind of an idiot because he was an atheist.

So how do you do all that and then believe once we die here, there's just nothing? A lot of those guys believe that. Yeah.
It doesn't make sense based off of the evidence. I don't think so either.
With the AI thing, I just interviewed, do you know who Andrew Huberman is? Yeah. By chance, I just interviewed him two days ago.
Oh, that's awesome.

And I asked him if he knew anything.

Super cool guy.

And like, way cool.

And no, I was asking him about Neuralink.

I was like, do you know?

Because he's a neuroscientist.

And I was like, do you know anything about Neuralink?

And so do you know that this,

do you know that's going to help blind people see?

That's incredible. So here's how there's, I'm going to totally fuck this up and I apologize.
We're layman's trying to explain this. Basically, yeah.
Here's how I describe it. But, so basically, whatever.
They implant something to your eye and it goes a chip, and then the chip goes to your brain or something. And so basically it's a, what did he call it? He said it's, oh, it's a digital, it gives a digital signal to the chip, and then the chip turns it into an electrical signal that goes to the brain.
And people are starting to be able to see, like, shapes and different shades of gray. Yeah.
And that it will eventually be just like what me and you are sitting here looking at. Yeah.
And it got into this discussion, and I was like, I said, he started going on and that it would be, it will soon be possible that you can, you can kind of like stimulate different sections of the brain when it comes to touch and all these, all the senses. And so I asked him, I said, so are you telling me that it's possible to project 100% false reality into somebody's brain and them not even realizing if we can experience touch, vision, taste, everything, emotion, you know, through those fucking chips.

I mean.

There's like layers of matrixes.

That could mean that we're in a simulation.

Right now.

Right now.

And that simulation is a simulation.

That's right.

You don't know.

It's never ending.

But to not be able to speculate about it because of people who want to be ignorant about it and shut it down with conspiracy theory or whatever is like, now we don't even get a chance to have fun and even talk about it. To not believe in it, to be honest with you, is boring.
Yeah. Like, how fucking boring? So, but, you know, people ask, you think there's aliens, you know? And stigma attached to that word, too, because of Hollywood has fucked it up.
But everything we've created in Hollywood is based off of something we saw here. A dragon is a lizard and a bird.
And I go into it and think, dude, we're just accustomed to everything. You become accustomed to everything.
So an octopus looks like crazy, but we're just accustomed to it. it's been here ever since i was born and i learned what it is you know or giraffe has this fucking if i saw that if we didn't know what that was and we weren't accustomed to it and we saw it on saturn we'd be like fuck there's these creatures with these necks that reach up so they can eat shit that's high up, you know, and they have spots like fucking alien.
And why is it so out of reach? Like we're so fixated on what it might look like. And like just like humans, once you realize in yourself that it doesn't fucking matter what I look like, you have so much more freedom in your life.
And now you can be done with all the costume shit all the time, you know? And yeah, have a little personal style or whatever. But it's like, same thing with aliens.
It's like, I don't give a fuck what they look like. I just want to know if it's what it feels and, you know, how it communicates.
And it's like, it's level of awareness and consciousness, you know? It's more interesting to me than just shutting it down or arguing about what it would look like. What do you think it is? How deep do you think into this stuff? Pretty deep.
And I enjoy my medicine ceremonies too. Now I'm at the point now where they're just fun, beautiful.
I have some intentions for it. The trauma, dark shit, I've gone through all that.
It's usually not that anymore. I've gone through so many repetitions of that.
Now it's like, hey, my intention now is just feel gratitude and have a good experience. And it always is that.
And then at the

same time, then I go, hey, I want to receive some signals to help me understand what consciousness might be like, you know, elsewhere. Because what I always get in those is that we're all connected in consciousness.
And then we might all be from the same source of consciousness, whatever that is, if it's God to me, if God then, and not even in a religious way, it's just, you know, there is something more than what's in front of us.

And whatever it is, including vacuums of nothingness, you know, or whatever we were before the Big Bang Theory is also part of it.

You know, any of those periods of nothingness or voids is also part of God. So it's everything.
God is everything. So God, love, different words for that, joy, pure joy are here, are up here in the spectrum of consciousness.
And suffering, evil, dark, you know, shit, Satan,

is down here in the bottom part of the spectrum.

And that's infinite.

And everything in between is where we all choose to exist.

And it's just an infinite circle of consciousness

with those things being on the outer spectrum of it. Do you think we have a collective consciousness? Yeah.
Or is it specific to the individual? It's collective. And we're all just little branches of the same consciousness of God, in my opinion.
And that evolves over time, my understanding of it. So hard to explain with words.

I really want to improve my vocabulary. Do you think that, do you think UFOs, extraterrestrials, could be some kind of a projection of a collective consciousness? Yeah, I mean.
Maybe a spiritual entity. spiritual entities

that's hard to explain because it's just the different variations of spirituality, vice, science that people want to separate, right? But in a lot of ways, it's very similar language around the same concepts, right? And if it's inevitable that I believe that we're going to integrate and become another species of humans right then inevitably we're going to figure out how to harness gravity and maybe we've already done that because out there where you can harness gravity and we learn that time is not linear, now we can sort of bounce around and probe ourselves. So maybe we're probing ourselves with these little things.
That's an interesting perspective I've not thought of. Yeah, and maybe we've found now we can expand.
That's what Elon Musk is doing. He's an explorer.
His purpose is to explore. So, in the meantime, he's down here being Batman.
Thank God we've got a guy like that, you know, that's not fucking an evil billionaire, you know, like Soros. He's like the arch enemy of Batman, Musk.
God, I hope we get more of them. But his purpose, I think, is to explore.
He's doing it. He saw the fucking thing landing the chopsticks the other day.
Fucking amazing. As we evolve, we're going to reach places

outside our solar system eventually,

and we're going to find something,

and then we're going to meet them

and find out that their consciousness

is from the same source as our consciousness,

but we just look different,

and then we're going to become accustomed to each other,

and then the next thing you know,

it's going to be a fucking Star Wars bar.

Why isn't everybody freaking out about each other? Because they are accustomed to each other, and then the next thing you know, it's going to be a fucking Star Wars bar. Why isn't everybody freaking out about each other?

Because they are accustomed to each other.

Yeah.

You know, I don't know.

I love thinking about this shit.

It's, you know, I mean,

we could go on all day about this,

and it'll turn into a whole other episode.

But let's get to ice cream. Where did the passion for ice cream come from? That came from childhood.
So we went through all that, but from the point that my stepfather came about, I had a great childhood still. I still perceive that I had a wonderful childhood.
My mom, she's heaven of a mom. She did everything.
They did everything they could. She provided everything got a, you know, I was always in the kitchen with my grandmother and my mom.

So I cook a lot.

You know, I have the creative mind and I, you know, I love to like make wontons and

different stuff when friends come over and it's been great for the cafe.

So now the ice cream cafe is more than that now.

Now it's a legitimate bakery.

I've got two chefs.

They're wonderful.

They're just, they're my heroes with this. And we're going to go so far with this, and they're going to reach all their dreams, too.
Pastry chef and chef couple, and they're awesome. They're a couple? Yeah, they're a couple.
No kidding. Yeah, they met in culinary school.
Damn, that's cool. When I was selling ice cream out of my garage, struggling to make brownies and shit because I'm not good at baking.

They had just moved here recently from up north

to get out of the kind of hustle and bustle of that stuff.

Started working down here at some restaurants, and they hit me up.

They saw my earlier Instagram and said,

hey, are you looking, you need some help with baked goods?

I was like, absolutely.

And once I started sourcing it from them, I started realizing,

holy shit, she can do anything. And she can.
She can. It's so, so it's just, it's just, it's amazing.
So now fast forward everything that goes in the ice cream. Plus now we've got the bakery part of it with all the pastries.
We've got a, it's a bakery, a creamery where we, I do all the formulas. He does all the spinning and flavoring and coffee shop, coffee house with some really good baristas.
And it's been working working out really well nice um but it all started back in childhood when i was just cooking you know playing around and ice cream was just my favorite my favorite thing so fascinated with ice cream became fascinated with how it's made um you know fast forward on only one or two of my deployments i took a machine and messed with making ice cream out there, but I didn't know how to formulate or anything. So it was kind of a mess, but it was fun.
I honestly, my creative outlet, I sort of suppressed a little bit out of, you know, that need for validation going, this isn't cool, man. This is going to be, you know, they're going to perceive this as, you know, weird or strange.
So I kind of like just wasn't creative for all those years.

You know, I just kind of like hid it away, you know.

So once I got out, I had that job, but a year, not a year, but as soon as I decided to get out,

I started looking into how do I learn how to make formulas for ice cream?

Because I know there's something with that that I want to do.

So I started making moves before I was even ever out, right? When I was at that outstation making that decision, you know, there's this 150 year old ice cream school at Penn State that's been there. That's pretty renowned for like Ben and Jerry's, I think went there a couple other big, big company founders to learn how to make ice cream.
And so I went there, signed up for it. My wife's like, you're going to spend this much money on what? I'm like, I'm going to go to college.
So it's a short course. It's a food sciences course there.
You get full semester credits for this thing. You go around the dairies.
You formulate ice cream. You do tests.
You got to do it on paper just like sniper school. And pass the test.
You got to pass. You don't just get through.
And also learning the business side of things. They've got all kinds of cool keynote speakers and people coming in from big companies and small shops.
And it's for everybody from the beginner to somebody that's building a fucking ice cream factory. So great experience.
And then I went right into my job and kind of forgot about it for a while. So as I evolved through that, that transition and sort of self-transformation, I started to feel good enough to go, man, I can visualize myself doing something with ice cream.
So, and then COVID happened. That's where I really started making ice cream in the kitchen.
I kind of converted our kids' baby playroom into a night little ice cream lab. I started testing out samples, created my chocolate flavor that my wife loves, and it's still that formula.
And eventually, COVID cleared up. I had time then to get on YouTube, start learning how to make a business plan.
And it was a joke at first, you know, but you'd laugh at it

if I showed you my, hey, Chris's idea and all the things I went through,

you know, with the whole branding of it and the naming and everything.

Do you still have it?

Yeah, I still have it.

Nice.

Definitely.

I've shown it to a couple people, and I'm like, see, I told you to laugh, you know.

Can we put it up on screen?

Yeah, you could.

Let's do it. Send us a picture.
We'll put it up. Yeah, I'll send you and can we put it up on screen yeah you could let's do it send us a picture we'll put it up yeah i'll send you i'll pull it up um it's funny it just looks like a little cheesy powerpoint and hey you know now it's a thing i can pitch to any bank to anywhere you know and it's it's nice um it's a full model for the next three five ten years that that you know is modular we can pull things out of it and go, hey, what's the next shop look like? What's the warehouse for pints to go in a store look like when it's time for that? I'm going to need some logistics for when it's time to start getting ice cream into a store and stuff like that.
So right now we're just focused on the headquarters and getting everything we can possibly do out of there.

And then, you know, sometime after next summer,

we'll probably start looking at the next location.

Nice.

And you brought some.

Yeah, I brought some.

I'm always ready for ice cream.

See, hopefully they're softened up a little bit,

but we'll see.

If not, we'll...

All right.

Dark Matter. It's my wife's favorite chocolate of all time.
Might need to wait a little bit. It's pretty hard.
All right. All right.
Oh, sorry. Let's switch.
This one I wanted to try. See, it's all in the salt.
I'll do that one. All right.

Then I got a little fun flavor.

My chef came up with everything, everything bagel cream cheese

with crunchy croissant pieces.

That was yours.

It's pretty hard.

Holy shit.

That one's probably the best seller.

One of the best sellers.

Dude.

Tim, you gotta try this shit.

This is amazing.

You want some?

Yeah.

All right.

And Tim, you got to tell me what you think about this.

Everything bagel flavor.

I mean, it's really weird, but it's really good.

Tim, you can't block the cameras.

This is going on. This is going on.
What is that? Everything bagel? Yeah, it was like we were messing around with it one day. We were like, hey, let's try some savory things.
And, you know, dude, I did a hot ribeye steak with this, and I put a scoop right on the hot ribeye and it just like melted into it like a butter and it was delicious

but it's also just good

to

it's kind of like a

I don't know how to explain

you won't crush this

you know

for movie time

on the couch

but

you can eat a scoop of it

after dinner

and it's delicious

let me try it

let me try that

you put this on a steak

yeah

I mean

it's kind of like

it's kind of like butter

it's dairy

but just

now that you have

I don't know. You put this on a steak? Yeah.
I mean, it's kind of like butter.

It's dairy.

But just now that you have everything bagel croissant with cream cheese flavor,

with scallion cream cheese flavor in your mind, now try this. Dang, that is right on the money.

Oh, my gosh.

Whoa. Yeah.
Dude, it tastes just like it. Like, identical.
It's interesting, right? I love it. What else you got? Dark matter here.
This is my wife's crack. When I'll be at the shop working, she'll always make me bring her home a scoop of this.
It's Dutch cocoa. Dutch processed dark chocolate ice cream with dark chocolate chips that we grind up.
How many flavors do you guys have? I think that doing the drops that we were doing before we had the cafe, we probably got a couple hundred. But it's gotten now to a point where, dude, when I first started making it, I was like, man, what flavors am I going to do? I don't know.
It was strawberry season, so I got some strawberries from the farms right down the road, and that was my first ice cream just hey I announce it on Instagram I hype it up I make it you know however many I thought I could sell like 50 pints and schedule pickups through DMs and that's how I was doing it for like a year or so and people were coming to my house to pick it up and it got pretty popular um i figured out i was pretty good with the social media part of it it was just fun for me and that's kind of how the story developed fast forward to the chefs coming on board they i started outsourcing it so it got easier and i would go pick up the baked goods from her chop it up throw in the flavors, come up with flavors just based off of how I felt and moods.

And it started to flow.

And then fast forward a year and a half or so, I said, hey, guys, I want to get this more serious.

Let's move this into a commercial kitchen.

So we did.

And we struggled through finding the right one.

We had to move in and out of one.

That was hard.

And then we found one that worked really well for another year or so. And then I intended on us, we'd meet up a couple times a week, make up to 150, 200 pints of ice cream, drop it.
Sometimes they'd sell out, sometimes they wouldn't. So we'd put some of them in freezers in different locations.
And we had multiple pickup locations to cover different towns. And so it kind of grew, and we started having a business.
And I found a better software system for organizing those. I didn't have to use a spreadsheet for pickups all the time.
It just kind of did it for me. And people were picking up ice cream.
I love these stories, man. So you literally started this out of your garage now.
Yeah. I've seen pictures of your place.
It looks beautiful. Thank you.
It looks like the nicest ice cream store I've ever seen in my entire life. But it's not even a joke.
I'm being serious. We'll put overlay photos up right now while we're talking.
Yeah. But I love these stories, man.
I just love organically grown business. It's just pure entrepreneurship, creativity, and you've developed something out of thin air.
It's amazing. But what do you think your hang hangups are going to be?

You know, costs right now, you start doing business,

so I thought we were going to be doing this for a couple more years,

and then an opportunity for this space popped up,

and I just knew it was the right spot.

Everything about it was right.

I could afford it, and the area that it's in is not typical there. And this landlord, he gave me a chance.
So he gave me a chance. My best friend in Chicago helped me.
He's a business guy. That's huge because he's in the logistics business.
Nice. Knowing the long-term goal, he was like, hey, he committed to he committed to jumping in and that's not easy to do.
You know, he's already busy as fuck. So our families are friends.
We're tight. He's my best friend.
We, um, built this thing last year and it was hard. Um, a lot of things, a lot of delays happened, a lot of struggles, got through it, opened the doors, and it was like before I opened the doors, it was just nightmares of like total failure and everything I've committed up to that.
All of our money, our home equity, you know, to make this beautiful shop that I had in my mind for years. You dumped everything into it.
Yeah. That's awesome.
Yeah, and so then we opened the doors, and it just hit right from day one. And I was on my knees at home just thanking God.
You know, hey, it's working. And then it kept working.
And the cold months slow down certain days, Monday, Wednesday. That's typical for everybody.
But now we're going to start having some lunch menu items. The chef is just a genius back there.

He just, I don't even, we don't have to meet about things to make.

They just, and that was the beauty of working with them too

for two whole years is like the trust and everything

was already there for that part of it, you know.

But they came along, they had to trust me to get this thing open.

I had to trust them that they were going to, you know, be committed to the dream, which is going to lead to more dreams for them, you know. And, you know, them knowing my full intentions is to help them to that through me.
And it's just, it's working out. There's hard things, you know, going on.
The hardest struggle is probably the culture of it all. You know, assuring that the customer experience when I'm not there is similar to when I'm there.
And, you know, you can't get anybody to care about as much as you, but for sure they do. You know, but now it's everybody else.
My manager, you know, does. And now it's the teenagers and they're awesome.
They're all kicking ass. Nice.
And it's just keeping all of us aligned into that culture and brand of what it needs to feel like for us and for the customers. And so that's the challenge I learned immediately.
And then, of course, costs are expensive when you get going and you've got to find ways really quickly to bring those down. Yeah that's what we're doing um but i think we'll you know get those things fixed pretty quickly and we still got more things to add i still got to get merch online i got a lot of cool ideas for that coming t-shirts hats all kinds of cool shit nice shipping the ice cream you know so we'll get back into these drops where we go hype up special flavor, like once a month, limited supplies,

sells out, sells out, we're not making that flavor again,

and start shipping it at least regionally,

probably East Coast at first.

This was a good test to get this here.

Don't forget to put Tennessee on that list.

Where are you guys going to be in, I mean, what do you see this developing into? Do you think you'll franchise or are you going to keep it? I don't know about franchising, but for sure, I'm already looking at the next location for we know we need to get the data for a full spring and summer. That's the best months for ice cream stuff.
But the stuff the chefs are doing for the cold months with pastries and our coffee is great too you know so we didn't just add those things to make more money like you know i really got the right people in and we're we're doing our best at all of those things at the same time and it seems to be working i think customers especially locally do we have such a good local following of people that have been buying it since day one you know and also now regulars and people just coming in and our community in that southern Virginia Beach area it's just been god it's like the best that's awesome so I think within five years we'll have multiple stores is my plan and we'll be ready to start looking at you at building a warehouse in a continuous freezer system or something to start getting some pints and a couple other ideas I have into a store. Distribution? Yeah, like a Publix.
Start locally. Pitch it in.
My partner will probably activate for that because he's a logistics guy. and then we'll start figuring out how to get ice cream in stores.

That's the goal, and that's the longer tenure sort of goal.

Well, there's going to be potentially millions of people listening to this or watching.

Is there anything you want to throw out into the world that you might need

to help accelerate your business or anything at all?

I'm just curious.

You never know who's listening, man.

Yeah.

You never know.

You know, I've met some cool people,

but I'm just,

the thing about ice cream too,

that people always say is like,

hey, there's so much ice cream around.

How are you going to,

there's so much doubt,

so much doubt, you know,

how are you going to make money in ice cream?

There's so much,

there's so many brands.

I'm like, that's with anything that you do in a business. You can't, I had to not think about that and go, no one can do it the way you're going to do it.
You know, you got your style. There's so many coffee shops.
They're all going to be a little different. Limitations, dude.
Yeah. Don't create limitations.
Just try to break through those. And so, um, you know, I've met, met some really cool people already, but my opinion, like I respect everybody's ice cream.
So anybody that wants to give me any advice from any of those companies or any of those, you know, CEOs and owners about stuff to, based off of what I just said, like, hey, here's something they learned or something, that would be super valuable. But also, you know, like I said, we are going to start, we're going to become a brand of ice cream, right? So I'm going to need some distribution and some logistics for that.
So it'd probably be good to start talking to some of those people soon. Right on, man.
Well, I mean, I got to hand it to you, dude. You're creative.
You you're branding you're creative

your

page

like

it's

just

everything

your

marketing

it's

all

top

notch

the

ice

cream

is a

level

above

all

of

that

so

at least

stuff

that I've

tasted

so

I mean

I think

you're going

to be

very

successful

and I

hope

you are

you already

are

but

Thank you. You already are.
But... Now it's off to that.
Well, Chris, winding up the show here, but I know you had a specific ending that you wanted to end with. Yeah, it's a little gift.
A little gift of mine. It's very simple.
There's so much bullshit going on. And having to figure out, each one of us, how do you do it? How do you...
Day to day, there's so much, you know, so many boundaries being broken from, you know,

it's the battle, the never-ending ancient battle between good and evil going on right now.

You can feel it.

This election's coming up.

It's like, dude, the information, so in my job,

there's a lot of, I didn't like it because it was all based

on military deception, information operations. I know how that shit works, you know.
It's an operation. And it's working against people.
So, you know, it's a machine. You hate this guy.
You hate Trump, right? Can you really explain why? Can anyone really explain why? They're to say things that they've been getting fed for years and years and years? And you say shit through the screens. So often we know from research that people will start to believe that, right? And vice versa, same thing.
It's not an operation, I think, in defense of it, but you start finding, you know, a good guy start doing the same kind of thing. Like, hey, here's some information about, you know, the Harris campaign or whatever.
And it's like, dude, just outside of all the bullshit, really it is the battle between good and evil. So you know what's good and you know what's evil.
and you might be sort of attached to like one little topic, one thing, you know, abortion or the transgender issue or like the border, like whatever it is. But dude, if you, if we can just see past, that stuff's all important.
But right now it's all underneath a grander importance of good and evil going on. And it's happened over and over again over time, right? Some of the same patterns.
So my opinion is that understanding and misunderstanding is at a max right now. And if people change their minds to the good side, the right thing to do is not go,

ha, I told you so.

You know what I mean?

Ha, fucking all that time.

And shame and guilt.

It's like, just let that shit go and welcome.

Welcome to the good side.

The side of good.

Forgiven for the side of evil.

Depending on what you did, too, you got to deal with the consequences of certain shit and certain actions. But welcome to the good guy side.
It's okay that you change your mind, you know? Yeah. But the only way to change people's mind is not this fucking constant, it's just not going to work, right? So this is something I learned in meditation training.
It's called a tall line exercise. It'll probably take three minutes, three, four, five minutes.
It's a meditation.

And it's my

way

of sort of proving

what might work for

changing your mind as a little

gift. Because I know

you're into that a little bit, a little meditation stuff.

Bringing the nervous system down,

which is the goal of my shop.

Part of the brand. Come inside.
Don't care who you are. Don't care what you did right now.
Fucking bring your nervous system down. Get some sweets.
Get some ice cream. Get some good shit.
Bring it down. Enjoy yourself.
Chill. Right? And then when you're ready, you go back out into the bullshit of the world.
Like, that's the brand of the cafe. That's cool, man.

So I'm just going to talk you through it.

Just close your eyes and breathe.

That's all you got to do.

Just focus on breathing.

Breath in, breath out.

And as you're breathing,

just imagine the perfect beach for yourself.

It could be one that you've been to before.

Maybe you haven't.

Whatever it is, it's the perfect day on this beach.

The temperature of the air is perfect.

You start walking down towards the water.

For my beach, it's a dune. I come down through the cattails.

I'm feeling those cattails between my fingers walking down the sand feel the the grains of the sand between my toes start making my way into the water the water is the perfect temperature as As I continue down into the water,

I'm breathing.

I get waist deep.

And when I start to get stomach deep,

I stop there and breathe.

And as I feel the ebbs and flow of the waves against my body

and the ocean supporting my weight, I look out into the distance.

It's a beautiful sky. It's a beautiful horizon.
I notice where the color of the water meets the color of the sky and I just breathe.

Oh. I'm going to slowly turn towards the beach.

And I'm looking at a beach.

And there's somebody there.

This is somebody that you love.

Somebody that you really love.

It could be yourself.

It could be your mother, your son,

just somebody you really love deeply.

For me, it's myself, my seven-year-old self,

and I'm just there playing, just watching myself play.

As I take the next few breaths,

Let's do this. I'm just there playing, just watching myself play.
As I take the next few breaths,

when I inhale,

I'm going to inhale all of the stuff,

all of the suffering, all of the bad experiences,

any trauma, any ignorance.

And I'm just going to breathe it in in the form of black smoke through the air into my lungs. I'm going to sacrifice myself for just a moment to absorb all of this dark smoke.
And then as I exhale, I'm going to breathe it out through my fingertips,

out all of my pores, and into the ocean.

Mother Earth is just there to absorb all that shit from us.

I'm just going to turn back towards the horizon.

I'm just going to breathe a couple of breaths.

Look at the horizon. I'm just going to breathe a couple of breaths.
Look at the horizon again. And I'm going to turn back to the beach again.
This time, there's somebody there that you despise. You might even hate them.
Maybe they hate you. Somebody right now in your life that you despise and that despises you.
Same thing. Every breath in, you're going to breathe in, in the form of black smoke, all of the ignorance out of them, all of what you know has caused all of that ignorance,

all of the trauma back to their own childhood,

all of the things, all of the bullshit

that they just can't understand how to cut through right now.

And they're taking it out on everybody else around them

and themselves.

You're just going to breathe all that shit in.

You're just gonna breathe it out into the ocean.

So you know this is the only way that you have any chance of changing anybody's mind.

They feel some validation for why they ended up that way somehow,

whether it's your energy,

whatever you communicate with this person or not,

it's a choice they have to make.

And when you're ready, turn back to the horizon.

And you're going to look at the beautiful horizon again.

Now you slowly turn back to the beach. Now every person, every person on the planet, every creature, every animal is there on the beach.
And you're going to do the same thing. Breathe all that black smoke out of everybody, through yourself, out into the ocean.
Now when you're ready,

you can start making your way back into the beach.

There's nobody there. Now when you're ready,

you can start making your way back into the beach.

There's nobody there now.

It's just you and your perfect beach.

You feel the water lower as you walk out.

You feel the warm sun hit you.

Start to warm your body immediately.

Make your way back up the sand.

Back up the dune.

And now you're walking off into your life.

Back into a normal day. And when you're ready, you can open your eyes and come out that's it nice it's so hard to do when we're doing this every day all the time but that's not to say that you can't have boundaries, right? But the more that I think that, the easier it is to deal with the bullshit, people's bullshit, and hope that more people can change their mind and not feel some kind of shame and guilt about it and not change their mind just because they've been doing it for so long.
Like, man, I voted for them. I did this.
I can't. I'm gonna look dumb, you know? It's okay, just change your mind.
All right, so. That was awesome.
Thank you. And, damn, Chris.
That was a hell of an interview, man. Been through a lot and- Yeah I had a good time.
That's good. And I just got to, like, to see you pull through all that, I mean, that's a miracle, man.
And I just want to say it was an honor to interview you and keep an eye out for those signals.

Yes, sir. Yep.
I'm grateful. Thank you.
Thank you for the moments to be able to be here.

Thank you, brother. I wish you the best of luck.

Thank you.

God bless.

God bless you. but also I'm excited to be on your podcast, man.
It's an honor. Spike Lee, entrepreneur, filmmaker, Academy Award winner.

Nixon.

Now you see, I got you.

But also how sports brings life, passion, music, all of this together.

The Jim Jackson Show, part of the Rich Eisen Podcast Network.

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