408: "Borderline". Lessons from The "Border". Chasing and Catching Dreams. With Vincent "Rocco" Vargas

>Join Jocko Underground< https://www.jockounderground.com/subscribe Vincent "Rocco" Vargas was born and raised in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles, California. Vargas enlisted in the United States Army https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Army (2003–2015) and went on to serve 3 combat deployments with the 2nd Ranger Battalion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2nd_Ranger_Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/75th_Ranger_Regiment. Vargas also served as an infantry Drill Sergeant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drill_Sergeant. He then left active duty and entered the reserves with the rank of Sergeant First Class https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergeant_First_Class. After leaving active duty, Vargas worked in special operations as a medic with the Arizona Department of Corrections https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arizona_Department_of_Corrections and then the U. S. Border Patrol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U. S._Border_Patrol but left in 2013 to pursue his career as an entertainer. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Jocko Willink?

  This is Jocko Podcast number 408 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening Echo. Good evening. I dropped my ghillie blanket and started heading toward the road right after they passed my location. My partner motioned on the radio that he had pulled out on the road and was pulling up behind the vehicle. Once I got to the road, I saw them put their vehicle in reverse and ram my partner's vehicle. Now it was game on and we knew we were in for a fight with kids. Just then, and unbelievably, they put their Jeep into drive and sped directly for me. When they

• 0:41Jocko Willink?

  were about 100 yards away, I lifted my rifle and started to pie off to the right to make sure that if I had to engage, I would not be shooting through the vehicle and accidentally hit my partner. I did not want to engage juveniles, but they were speeding up and I thought I might have to. I also knew that if I shot the driver, I then had to find a place where I could jump to safety and not get run over. As I was taking my weapon off safe and getting ready to engage, the driver and the passenger both jumped out of the Jeep and tumbled from the vehicle while it was still in motion. Thank God. My partner was

• 1:20Jocko Willink?

  able to grab the female and I was able to snatch the male. We called for backups and the cavalry came.

• 1:32Jocko Willink?

  So, that right there is an excerpt from a new book that is out called Borderline: Defending the Home Front, written by Vincent Rocco Vargas. A book that I had the honor of publishing and writing the foreword to. Vince was a Border Patrol agent. He was a member of Borstar, which is the part of Border Patrol Special Operations. It's their search and rescue unit. And he served at the Border Patrol Special Operations Group.

• 2:09Jocko Willink?

  And also as a medic on the BORTAC team and before any of that, he was a Ranger by God and the US Army, the 75th Ranger Regiment where he fought in both Iraq and Afghanistan. He's a father with seven kids and now he's also a writer, an actor, a producer, a musician, a business owner, and it's an honor to have him with us here tonight to talk about his experiences and lessons learned. Rocco. Hello. What's up, man? Pretty epic run you've been on in life. Yeah, yeah, I keep hearing that.

• 2:49Jocko Willink?

  It's it's kind of crazy. Like as I started, you know, I I read, well, I've known you for, I don't know how many years, but maybe six or seven years, something like that. Seven years at least, yeah. So I've known you and like, oh, cool Ranger, oh, cool. Uh, oh, Border Patrol for a little bit, you know, you just, you just, you know, hear little things. But man, when I got done wrapping this up and I started to kind of assemble in my head, your life, like the the pathway of your life, it's been, it's been a wild ride, man. It's been a wild ride. Yeah. And it's impressive, man. It's impressive. Everything you've done and what you've been up to. It's it's badass, man. So and now you're going to be a bestselling author, which is pretty cool, too. Shooting for it.

• 3:34Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you gotta gotta check that one off the list, right? Um, let's, let's just jump into this. Start, I guess, start from the beginning

• 3:45Jocko Willink?

  of your life. And you you say here in the book, uh, my father, this is like literally the beginning of the book. My father, Carlos Vargas, was a former Marine. He came from nothing, living in the Bronx and then moved to Echo Park in Los Angeles when he was 14. My father made some of what he would call knucklehead choices that ultimately resulted in him joining the military.

• 4:08Jocko Willink?

  Uh, he turned his life around from a street kid to a jarhead, eventually translating what he learned in the service into a career in the Los Angeles Fire Department. His work ethic and fierce love for his family intimidated, but also inspired me. I had much to live up to and failure was never an option.

• 4:28Jocko Willink?

  So your dad, your dad's Puerto Rican, right?

• 4:31Speaker 01

  He is.

• 4:31Jocko Willink?

  Is that right? So he's like an old school Bronx Puerto Rican.

• 4:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's a, yeah, yeah, he's seriously tough dude, tough dude. He actually, when he moved to LA, what I'll explain that, cause I didn't want to explain too much about like back. I don't know, I wasn't sure, I wanted the book to be like a virtual book, so I was trying to skim it over life. But my father moved to LA at a young age of 14 because they were kind of, one, going, running away from the abusive father he had. He was kind of a, my grandfather was a drunk, kind of abusive man. As my grandmother would try and get away, they keep going further, further west, eventually they end up in LA. And he's in the streets of Echo Park and, you know, his friends were Mexican kids. Cause there was no Puerto Ricans at the time in LA, right? There was a very, there were very few, it was them, right? His whole family.

• 5:17Speaker 01

  And he got involved in kind of the gang world and, and the gangs back then, it wasn't gang banging. It was more like territorial, you know, if they got in fights, it was with, you know, belts or, or pipes. And one day he was going to go kind of visit, go on the wrong side of the tracks kind of thing. And, you know, they, they tried, they almost got jumped and he pulled out a pipe and he hit a couple dudes with it. He dropped the pipe and ran, the cops came, he got arrested and he had a choice to join the Marines or go to jail.

• 5:42Jocko Willink?

  What year was, what year was, was he in the Marine Corps?

• 5:45Speaker 01

  It was just the ending of the Vietnam era. So he joined, he said in basic training, they made the announcement that the Vietnam war is over. So he received the Vietnam campaign for joining at the time, but he never went to Vietnam. There's a conversation we just had the other day, he goes, yeah, Vinny, yeah, Vinny, I just, I just missed it. I was like, damn dad, I get, I know how, I guess I would know how he feels, he feels, you know, he wanted to see it, so. Yeah, that was my dad's era.

• 6:10Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you always gotta be thankful, cause you never know.

• 6:12Speaker 01

  You never know.

• 6:13Jocko Willink?

  Like, he might have shipped off and that's that.

• 6:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:16Jocko Willink?

  No, no Vinny.

• 6:17Speaker 01

  A couple.

• 6:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, I remember a couple of calls and he was like, Vinny, can I go to Iraq with you? You, you, you think I can get on a plane? I'm like, what are you talking about, dude? Yeah, he's just, uh, he was always in for the fight, but just a good dad.

• 6:28Jocko Willink?

  And then your mom, your mom's Mexican, right?

• 6:30Speaker 01

  She is, yeah, she is. She's from, she was born in Conoteo, Texas, which is like a small corner of El Paso, right before you get into New Mexico for Anthony, New Mexico. And, uh, where she was, you know, where she was born in, in, in that little city, it's like everyone kind of stays there. It's almost seems like the world has passed it up twenty, twenty years. You know, where, when my grandmother passed away, um, the cousins all dug the hole. And when, when we buried her, we carried her from, from the, from the place of the church to the final resting place, the grave site, you know, we lowered her into the, to the hole. And then I was the first one to dig the, dig the dirt and put it back.

• 7:12Speaker 01

  And the family sits there watching the grandkids fill the hole. And it's this kind of old school tradition thing that like you don't see anymore. I remember hearing the, the sand fall to her, like it's a tin casket. And I was just like, Jesus, this is fucking crazy. And so, yeah, man, we, we, we, we, we covered her up with dirt into a final resting spot next to my grandfather, my uncle, who were buried in the same spot. So, yeah, it's just kind of this old school area. Uh, and then at eighteen, she decided to move to LA and try and do something different, get out of the kind of the, the monotony of the, of the city of what, what everyone kind of went to a cannery or they picked fruit or, you know, it's the same kind of, kind of the Mexican kind of thing.

• 7:48Jocko Willink?

  And, and so then your dad ends up in the fire department?

• 7:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, he, he became an LA City firefighter. It was, he was a construction worker for a little while. Uh, it was a heavy rain season and he went to go file for unemployment. And then he saw the sign that said, you know, hiring LA City firefighters. And my dad was like, well, let's do it. And so my mom and him stayed up, uh, stayed up late studying for the test. And, you know, she helped him study for every single test and he got through it. And he had all these gang tattoos, right? So he had a couple, covered a couple of them and, and they called him Tattoo. That was like his whole nickname, cause back then it wasn't a lot of people with tattoos, you know what I mean? So they called him Tattoo and yeah, he made it through and, and I remember the change in our life. I remember going from this, we had a two bedroom house in, in this small area in, in LA, kind of like Reseda area. And then, uh, I remember we bought this house that was like in a Kind of like an urban area that you it look we look like we we moved up, right?

• 8:36Speaker 01

  We moved up in the world and we we now me when I we had a three bedroom house, right? And my brother and we shared room before it was four kids in one room. It was two bunk beds, you know what I mean? The boys bunk bed, the girls bunk bed. Now it was like me and my brother, we shared a room and eventually my dad remodeled the house and we all had our own room. And it's actually the same house I stayed in the whole time I was filming mines was in my room.

• 8:58Jocko Willink?

  Damn, yeah, I my, uh, we were having our fourth kid and so we needed another room. So I took my son's house, which or my son's room, which was a converted garage. Like we I converted the garage into a room for him because we had the two girls living in one room. My wife and I had a room and then we had this other kid, my son. We're like, all right, we need a room for him. So we made that the garage into a room. And then we have a daughter, another daughter coming. So I just cut that room in half. So it was like two prison, two prison cells. Like it was my son could touch both sides. Like when he would lay down, he could touch both sides if he put his hands out. So, hey, man, you got to kind of do what you got to do.

• 9:38Speaker 01

  You got to get through it.

• 9:38Jocko Willink?

  So you you remember the days when your dad was working construction?

• 9:41Speaker 01

  I remember the change of lifestyles. I remember, you know, we had this small little house and I remember just little glimpses of it. And then I remember the the kind of the move up.

• 9:51Jocko Willink?

  You're like big time.

• 9:52Speaker 01

  I felt it. I felt the difference. Now, I mean, I remember the struggle from that point on until my parents started to manage money better or just kind of figure it out, I guess. But I remember, yeah, man, I remember the whole change.

• 10:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you're going to be digging out of like debt too, right? Like you you buy a house like you're in debt. You you're you just you've spent all your money, every last dollar. And it takes like a couple of years to recover from that.

• 10:14Speaker 01

  I remember in high school when I noticed like, oh, we're doing all right. As if I remember, I remember the changes like, oh, I can tell my parents are doing good. You know what I mean? They're both worked, right? My mother was a she worked as a like a secretary for the L Unified School District, you know? So so it was one of those things where they both parents worked, they were doing their thing. We played sports and we kind of were on autopilot at a certain age. And I could I remember like, oh, man, the parents are doing pretty good with money right now.

• 10:39Jocko Willink?

  And were you attracted to trouble at all?

• 10:42Speaker 01

  No, man, I saw a lot of it. I was, I was always a fighter. I was always willing to fight, but I honestly stayed so involved in sport. My dad had me so involved in sports, there was no excuse for anything. I didn't have time. I played year-round sports, no matter what. I remember telling my dad like at 12, I'm like, Dad, I'm done. I wanna play sports. He goes, well, then you're gonna come home, you're gonna, you're gonna clean this, you're gonna do this. You know, I'm like, fuck that list of shit, I'm going back to sports. And so, you know, my brother got, got involved in some, some, some kind of the street stuff, the street life. When you grew up in LA in the 90s, it was, you were either involved in gangs or you were in some kind of sports. And I took the athlete route and I had a lot of like old-timer dudes in my world that were just like, keep doing it. You know what I mean? I felt like I had the blessing of a couple of people that were big gang members in the area,

• 11:25Speaker 01

  just like, keep doing it, man, we're proud of you. And I'm like, oh shit, well, keep staying out of trouble, stay out of the bullshit and, and keep playing sports.

• 11:31Jocko Willink?

  And how good were you at sports?

• 11:33Speaker 01

  It's good enough. I wasn't great. Like, I didn't get, you know, I was bad at education, right? I was bad at reading. So, I was gonna go as far as that can take me, you know? Um, I went to junior college to play baseball because it was the only opportunity I had because I didn't take the, I, I, I failed the PSATs. I'm telling you, I probably got my name right. It was probably the only thing I got, you know what I mean? So, once I failed that one, I was like, well, there's no fucking point in wasting money on the actual SATs. So, let's just go to junior college. And junior college had an opportunity where if you did really want junior college, you can get, go to pro anyways. So, I was like, was it a good chance? Let's just try and figure that out. I got in trouble a little bit and, um, I ended up finding myself going to northern, to, uh, Northern California, to Chico, to play some summer ball out there with some friends.

• 12:17Speaker 01

  And that got me a full ride to Kentucky, to a school in Kentucky called Breshe University. And, uh, I became academically ineligible there and just joined the military.

• 12:28Speaker 01

  You know, yeah, yeah, I did some, tried to enter Ben Pro, I tried all kinds of weird stuff and, yeah, the military called me.

• 12:34Jocko Willink?

  So, so, hold on. So, you, you get to college, you're playing ball in college?

• 12:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:37Jocko Willink?

  So, you got freaking skills?

• 12:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:39Jocko Willink?

  And yet you just academically ineligible, you're just not going to classes?

• 12:44Speaker 01

  I couldn't read, man. I graduated high school with like a fifth grade reading level. I was dyslexic, but we never, it was no one ever told us that. You know what I mean? My mom hired like a, a reading coach for a while and just couldn't get, couldn't figure it out.

• 12:56Jocko Willink?

  Reading coach was like, hey ma'am, your son's dumb, I'm sorry.

• 13:01Speaker 01

  I would not be able to focus long enough to get it done. It was high school time where like, if you were good at sports and you showed up every day, you'd get a C. You know what I mean? And so like, I was good at sport. My sister was my twin sister, I have a twin sister, right? We're in the same class together. I just sat there and read baseball books or tried to like, do whatever I could to kill the time. She did everything. She got a B, I got a C. And she's like, what the fuck? Yeah, I was just good enough, you know? They mentioned your name, you're like, oh Vince had, you know, this three hits and two stolen bases in the mornings, you know, so like.

• 13:29Jocko Willink?

  You're the man.

• 13:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was good enough to, people knew that.

• 13:34Jocko Willink?

  So then, how long was it before you get, well, uh, you're in college, when did, when was September 11th?

• 13:40Speaker 01

  I was in junior, I was in junior college at Glendale Community College at the time. And I was waking up to get ready for class and my mom said, I heard her kind of a screech of like, Vinny, like scared screech? And I was like, so I came out of my room, I was like, what's up ma? And I, she's watching TV just frozen and the first plane already hit and it's live and I see the second plane hit and I was like, what's that? Like what happened? And my head was like, it was just a, a plane accident, right? And we're just watching, she goes, I think we're being attacked. And I was like, what? It was like the first thought, like we, it's when you really didn't know what the fuck was going on. And the first thought was like, someone's attacking us? I'm like, I'm confused as fuck. My dad's LA City firefighter, right? So he's already at work and uh, he's like, Vinny,

• 14:23Speaker 01

  I don't know if you should go, go to school. I said, uh, but I think I had like a baseball game or something. I was like, I was like, I'm, I'm gonna go to school. You know what I mean? And I think when I got to school, I saw everyone else's kind of expressions about it and thoughts. And that's when I really just started seeing how like heavy that was. And that's when I was like, Fuck dude, am I gonna have to join the military? And that's what I thought. I thought we were all gonna have to just join. Um, but the dream of like baseball is like, we'll keep doing this. We'll see what happens. We'll see what happens. And I remember it was like the second day, the day after, America was like super like patriotic and like nice, you know, you're in LA and people are like usually not nice about driving. Everyone's like, oh yeah, you can cut in. Who gives a fuck? You know, we're all Americans, you know?

• 15:05Speaker 01

  And I was down in Ventura Boulevard and we used to just go there to hang out and um, it was like a makeshift fucking parade. Like people with with flags and honking their horns and everyone's like patriotic and all of a sudden fucking like Oprah's there interviewing people and all this. Like it was crazy and I was like, I remember me and my buddy were dumbass college kids. We spray painted our bodies red, white and blue and we're just like, I felt it, man. I felt like the, I felt every, the energy of like everyone kind of coming together. It was like a really beautiful, beautiful moment. And I've never been this like gung ho patriotic person. It wasn't something like my dad, he's military. We love America. I never thought anything more than that. And that was probably the first time I was like, damn, this is heavy. It was heavy, man. I remember, I'll never forget that day. It's just like,

• 15:51Speaker 01

  fuck, should I join? And uh, I didn't yet, not yet.

• 15:55Jocko Willink?

  So you, so now you get at going to this college in Kentucky?

• 15:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:59Jocko Willink?

  And there you don't, you don't, your grades aren't good, I guess?

• 16:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:04Jocko Willink?

  How long are you going there for?

• 16:06Speaker 01

  For a year, but I failed out of ceramics is what got me, dude.

• 16:09Jocko Willink?

  What is ceramics? Is that like making clay pots and stuff?

• 16:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I kept the-

• 16:17Jocko Willink?

  Everything I said about you being awesome-

• 16:24Speaker 01

  You're gonna lose all respect soon, don't worry. Yeah, dude, fucking, I kept the transcript because I'm like, fuck, it's gonna be a story one day, I'm sure, but you know, every other grade was like a C, a C, a C. So I was like doing good enough and then I, I didn't drop out of, I didn't drop the class in time. And so I was trying to drop the class in time. I overslept one day. I missed the drop deadline. Boom, that affects your grade. Didn't even need the fucking class, right? It was just like an extra class. But it put me under 2.0, which made me ineligible and lose my full ride. Yeah, dude. Yeah. So I got a job at Texas Roadhouse and I was like, well, fuck, what's next? And then I had, I had a baby, dude. I forgot. I had my baby the same, like around the same time and I was like, Fuck, what the fuck am I gonna do now?

• 17:07Jocko Willink?

  Who's paying for the baby?

• 17:09Speaker 01

  The baby's mom, my ex, who who eventually became my ex-wife, but the baby's mom. Uh, she was doing everything. I was asking my mom, like, can you just drop off some diapers? Can you get him some?

• 17:19Jocko Willink?

  Where was she? Was she in LA or Kentucky?

• 17:20Speaker 01

  L L A, yeah. Yeah, so my mom would like drop off some, some, some money. Yeah, and dude. I was raised by cool parents. Didn't say cool parents, like, I was raised knowing I wanted to be a parent, right? Like, it was a cool environment, man. We had four of us, right? Kids and and we'd play, we'd be competitive with each other. So I never had a doubt in my mind I wanted to be a dad, but like, the way it happened was not unexpected so much, but like, of when you're twenty-one years old, you're like, shit, dog, now what? You know, I got no money for me, you know, I'm putting myself in it. I I didn't need the money for college, but I still took out a loan just so I could pay for beers, like dumb shit like that. Yeah, and so then I knew, um, I tried to figure out what was next.

• 18:01Speaker 01

  Um, I I I applied for some like opportunities to go try for some independent pro teams. Those never panned out because I was just a, I was a just a party animal kid. Uh, I got an opportunity to play, it was professional in Germany for like the, I think it was a Rock for Rockman Richmond Roosters or something. But they said I couldn't take my daughter at the time, and so I didn't want that, like, that didn't feel right. Uh, I was at Buffalo Wild Wings sitting next to a Navy vet who, who would tell me stories about the military. And we were watching, uh, the news and it was that time where that Marine was putting the flag over Saddam's statue. And they pulled it down. They were interviewing his family, man, and his family was like,

• 18:43Speaker 01

  crying and all happy and proud of him, dude. And I was like, fuck, I don't think my family's ever looked at me like that, you know what I mean? I've just always been like a, just kind of the, I've always felt like, my mom is always like, ah, Vinny, don't get in trouble. Ah, Vinny, don't get hurt. Oh, Vinny, you know what I mean? I've always been like, like the the fear of my mom is like, I'm gonna fuck something up, you know what I mean? Because I was just a mischievous dude. And, uh, that's when, that's when I kind of knew. I was like, alright, everything's fucking not going the right way. My brother said, he gave me, he's like, ma- maybe you should join the military, help dad, maybe. So I went to the recruiting office and, um, I went to the Marines first because I thought my dad would be proud if I joined the Marines. And he was like, fuck, no, don't join the Marines. I was like, I don't, I think it was his way. He knew the war was happening. He was scared for me. He's like, don't join the Marines, dude.

• 19:29Speaker 01

  And my mom was like, don't join the Navy. I think she had a family member or a cousin or something that joined the Navy and and was sexually molested, raped or whatever. And so she was like, don't do that. And I was like, I'm not gonna let that happen. I'm gonna fight. But either way, I remember, so those two were out for me. And I even went to the Navy to be like, I would do Navy SEALs. But do they even have contracts? Guys like, no, you can be underwater welder and we can put in your contract. And I was like, nah, that don't sound cool at all. Fuck that. So.

• 19:57Jocko Willink?

  That's a good move. You didn't want to listen to that. He was lying to you.

• 20:01Speaker 01

  Um, so then I was actually waiting for my ride to pick me up and the Army recruiter. Say, what are you doing here? I was like, I was just thinking about joining the military. So come to my office.

• 20:10Jocko Willink?

  God, you look like a steak to him. He sees like a lost 21 year old kid, bro. He's like, yo, what are you doing here, my friend?

• 20:19Speaker 01

  In decent shape, just sitting there, no ride. He's like, he fucking got you, bro. Pulled me right in. He said, you know, we got a $20,000 bonus. I was like, oh.

• 20:27Jocko Willink?

  Bro.

• 20:28Speaker 01

  Fucking, I'm down. I was like, what's the hardest thing you have? He said, Army Ranger or Special Forces? And like Special Force is the only thing I ever heard, right? I knew Army Ranger. I don't know much about any of these. I just knew Special Forces sounded really dope. And I was like, well, I'd love to do that. So I took the tests and I got a 108 GT score, which put me two points below what was mandatory for SF. And they didn't have a two point waiver at the time. Later they did when I was in basic training. I'm like, fuck, dog. But, um, so I said, yeah, I'll do Army Ranger. And so they found me an option 40 contract and, uh, I had no idea what I was getting into. I just knew like Ranger, cool. And I watched Black Hawk Down. I was like, fuck, yeah, this is rad. Let's, let's check this out, you know? Then I watched Band of Brothers and I was like, dude, I gotta go. I'm ready, man. So I got excited about it.

• 21:13Jocko Willink?

  How long was it before between signing the dotted line and shipping out?

• 21:17Speaker 01

  Six months. So I got two credit cards, maxed them out just because it's just a dumbass. Like, I'm gonna die in Iraq anyway. Let's just do this. And I started drinking like a mother, buying everyone drinks at the fucking bars and shit. Went home to see my, my daughter. Um, and, uh, yeah, man, just waited for that ship out date.

• 21:33Jocko Willink?

  And how was, uh, boot camp and all that?

• 21:35Speaker 01

  It was cool. Um, never in my life did anything like that. Never expected it. Uh, my dad was pretty tough dude. And so none of it intimidated me. They couldn't put their hands on me. So I was like, I don't give a fuck dude. Like this is whatever. I was kind of older, 23 years old. So I'm kind of babysitting a lot of these fucking young knuckleheads. And I had to do like, quit fucking getting me in trouble, dude. You know what I mean? Like, there was a lot of-

• 21:55Jocko Willink?

  Teaching them how to max out their credit cards.

• 21:59Speaker 01

  There was a lot of threatening going on in the barracks between several of us older dudes and the young ones. And, uh, yeah, it was like a group of older dudes. Like one was a, you know, there was an older dude who was like fucking 32 or something like that. And he was a, he was a firefighter, David Cahill. And I remember the drill sergeant was like, he's like, why'd you join? He goes, cause he was from New York and he's like, cause those motherfuckers killed some of my fucking friends. And he goes, what the fuck it took you so long? And I was like, damn. And we were all like, this motherfucker is rowdy dude. And he, she, he had comments about all of us that were older. You know what I mean? Like what the fuck took you so long? You know? And, uh, it was an experience, man. It wasn't as hard as I imagined. I actually learned a lot about myself. Didn't know I, I'd be able to run as well as I did. I never was like this distance runner anyways. And it turned into like, oh, I could run pretty good. I got in really good shape.

• 22:44Speaker 01

  I started filling out like, like bigger. I didn't realize like I would be gaining weight and basic training, essentially kind of filling out some muscles. Um, and then I found out that everyone had a Ranger contract. The whole fuck platoon had a Ranger contract. I was like, oh, fuck. I thought it was just like one. And I got it. You know, like, no, it's all of us. And so I started learning, asking those guys questions and they were telling me like, yeah, dude, you gotta go through this, then you gotta go to airborne, you gotta go to RIP and they're gonna try and make you quit. I'm like, oh, fuck, no way. Well, fuck, let's do it, you know? And, you know, got there airborne and that was, that was just airborne. It's not, not that challenging.

• 23:14Jocko Willink?

  Airborne.

• 23:15Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's not to jump out of a plane, but like, at the same time, like, well, if this was gonna get to Rangers, fine. Uh, and then RIP was cool, man. RIP was a fucking kick in the nuts, but all in all, like, I just kept looking for like, what's gonna fucking make me quit? I don't know. And I didn't want to quit cause like I have a daughter and like I want to see her. I want to see her proud of me and I want, I think of her watching me cross some kind of s- stage and her being real proud of her dad, receiving an award or whatever it was. It was just in my vision I had, I carried with me everywhere. And then my dad, I couldn't say I quit cause I feel like my dad would be like, the fuck? Like, you know what I mean? Like, you know? And so like, those are the two people that really motivated me to like to keep going and, and it just continued throughout my career was those, those two. And my kids, you know, my kids multiplied.

• 23:59Jocko Willink?

  And how long is RIP? RIP's not that long, right?

• 24:01Speaker 01

  I think it's three weeks. I think it's only three weeks. And the biggest part of RIP was called Coal Range. And it's like they take you out into the field, you do some land navigation, and then when you're, when you're, if you pass land navigation at night, they just fuck you up until you fucking try and make you quit. And um, it's just over and over and over. And then that's usually where you lose the most people. You get your PT test, you got a five mile run, and then you got like just all the smoke sessions in between. But Coal Range is where you lose a lot of people. And they do the whole thing where like pays to be a winner, you know, and you run a mile and they fucking, they fuck you up. And then if you don't, you're not first, well, then you fucking keep going. And I mean, this lasts all night. And uh, that's when people quit. And then, you know, you have a poncho and you're cold as fuck. And people are like afraid to cuddle. So you're like, all right, dude, fuck you. I'll cuddle up, you know? And so people just quit. And that's where you, you lose a lot of guys from that.

• 24:44Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. It's weird. I always, when I figured this out, when I learned this, that in, well, to go to Ranger Regiment and be a Ranger at Ranger Regiment, you don't have to go to Ranger School. A lot of people don't know that.

• 24:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know.

• 24:56Jocko Willink?

  You have to go through RIP, which is three weeks long. So you're like, well, at this point, you were 23, but some kids in Rangers, they're like 18 years old.

• 25:03Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 25:03Jocko Willink?

  At Ranger Battalion.

• 25:05Speaker 01

  Yeah. I had a lot of dudes, man. I had a lot of dudes who showed up and they're 18 year old knuckleheads, but they were willing to fucking endure that suck fest. We're like, cool, they're, they're, they're one of us now. I think that's the cool thing about Ranger Regiment too, is that we, we get to raise our, our privates. We get to raise those soldiers and we raise them exactly how we want them. And the same thing, I showed up as a 23 year old, I was still treated like nobody. And they train you to be the type of Ranger that you want, they want you to be. Shoot where I shoot, go where I go, do what I do, you know, and don't fucking question it, or else you get fucked up.

• 25:35Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 25:35Speaker 01

  And that's what we, we raised dudes to do that. And that's what, what makes Ranger Regiment what it is.

• 25:39Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And Rangers, like, most people don't stay in Ranger for a long time, because it's a tough, like Spartan life.

• 25:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's hard to find dudes who've done the full four and been successful. I'm gonna say it's hard. I said, it's, those guys, you, you give a little bit more of a tilt of the cap to like, oh, fuck, yeah, the dude did his four and he got his Ranger tab and he became a team leader.

• 25:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 25:59Speaker 01

  Because there's a lot of dudes that do two, and they get kicked out for drinking reasons, for uh, RFS, we're released for standards, right? We have a certain standards you have to meet. And so there's guys that get kicked out in one year, two years, three, it doesn't matter, because it's a fucking challenging lifestyle. It's a challenging lifestyle for families. A lot of guys have drinking issues and fight, you know, it, whatever it is, it's not easy to, to run that pace and still try and be a normal person outside of that with a marriage or, or a relationship. As well as trying to manage your drinking, because it's kind of the culture as well in our little, in our little world. So we fight, we, we fucking, we drink and.

• 26:29Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 26:29Speaker 01

  It's madness, dude.

• 26:30Jocko Willink?

  I met a dude one time and he had been at like Ranger Regiment for like nineteen years or something. And this is when I was younger, but this dude looked like he had nothing else. Like he was literally in the, I was, I was on an army base and he was in the, the like PX or whatever. And he's wearing like Ranger panties, a Ranger T-shirt and like running shoes and like high and tight. And he looks like just, there's nothing in his life, except for just Ranger. And I was like, yep, this dude's, this is a hard dude, you know, if you, and I ended up talking to him, he's like, I've been at Ranger Regiment for nineteen years or something crazy like that. And I was like, this dude's, cause you know, in the SEAL teams, like dude, it's a hard job.

• 27:12Jocko Willink?

  And then you get like cool stuff and you hang out and you have a lot of autonomy, right? Rangers, like if you're an eighteen year old, if you're a twenty year old SEAL, you're, you got all kinds of autonomy. You know, you, they're like, just make sure you're in shape. Uh, you know, make sure you show up. They're not like, this is what we're, like i- i- in the, in Rangers, like show up, we're gonna jump at whatever. Six o'clock in the morning, show up at two o'clock in the morning so we can start inspecting.

• 27:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, dude.

• 27:41Jocko Willink?

  Play around.

• 27:41Speaker 01

  No, no, dude.

• 27:42Jocko Willink?

  They don't play around.

• 27:43Speaker 01

  Well, cause we're raising knucklehead kids that don't know shit. So you have to be like very precise with everything, but you'll show up on a Monday and be like, all right, we're gonna go for a five mile run. We're gonna swim across the lake and we're gonna come back and go home. And you're like, what the fuck for? It doesn't matter. We're just training. Yeah, it's just what we do.

• 27:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, respect dude. Rangers don't play around. Um, so you get through all that stuff. I'm gonna jump to the book here real quick. You say, once arriving to my unit, I had learned so much about myself already. I was twenty-three year old private first class and I was becoming a well-rounded professional soldier, more than just a baseball player. Within forty-five days of joining Ranger Battalion, I was preparing to deploy to Afghanistan. While in Afghanistan, I was, if I wasn't on a mission, eating chow or in the gym, I had nothing to do but think. Fast forward a little bit. While, one day while sitting in a squad room in Afghanistan, a few of us started talking about what we wanted to do after we got out of the army. I mentioned the fire department. Everyone had their normal copper firefighter career aspirations.

• 28:39Jocko Willink?

  And no one said anything out of the ordinary until Staff Sergeant Ricardo Barazza, am I saying that right, Barazza? Spoke up and simply said, Border Patrol. He told us they had special operations units and a huge budget for training. It's the closest thing to being an army ranger, but doing it in civilian world, he said with a flourish. So this is on your first deployment. Uh, Staff Sergeant Baraza is the first person that makes you think about Border Patrol. How's that first deployment to Afghanistan?

• 29:10Speaker 01

  I was nervous, man. I didn't know what to fucking expect. I think that's what the fear was like, what the fuck? Uh, what's gonna happen? And what I don't mention in the book is that I just got to battalion when Pat Tillman was killed. So I'm dealing with that as a fucking brand new private and like seeing the chaos of that motherfucker dude. Dude's coming back fucked up from that. The whole backlash from fucking Pat Tillman, he's in my company, the platoon is second platoon, I'm in first platoon. So like, it was so close to us as new guys, we were like, Jesus, fuck dude. And they're like, hey, get your stuff ready, we're going overseas.

• 29:42Jocko Willink?

  What was the, how long did it take for you to start hearing like that that was a fratricide?

• 29:47Speaker 01

  Within five days, showing it to battalion, we're in formation, they're like, hey, we're gonna be guarding the gates. We had our DCUs to go back to meet him. So we're supposed to be the reach brick to meet that, meet that platoon, meet those guys. And when that went down, it was just like, shut it down, we're just, you guys are just pulling security and answering phones. And it was like, we started hearing what happened. And then boom, the news. And then we had, we had a, a formation, we're in the rear D, right, rear detachment. And they talked about like, hey, this is what you're gonna say to anyone that calls. Here's the, you know, we have a thing. And that's when we all started talking like, what the fuck went down, dude? And then that's, you know, I had to pick up, um, you know, Pat Tillman's brother. And we just kind of started escorting dudes around and helping get their stuff.

• 30:32Speaker 01

  And some guys were getting the RFS and just fucking, it was just like, not enough was said because we're just kind of new. We're nobodies. But like, you started hearing everyone else talk and it was like, this is crazy. I don't know what the fuck. And I, I started learning everything from the news. I was like, these dudes ain't talking to me because I'm nobody, you know what I mean? All they would do is fuck us up because we were new and I guess they were angry. And, uh, when they got back, they, we got fucked up even more, it was crazy. It's crazy. And then we get deployed and no one still talks to us because we're privates. Train, train, shut the fuck up, let's go. And you're like, oh, this is fucking nuts, dude.

• 31:05Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and you gotta be thinking like, if this can happen to Pat Tillman.

• 31:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:09Jocko Willink?

  Like, who am I?

• 31:10Speaker 01

  It was crazy.

• 31:11Jocko Willink?

  Vinnie over here getting ready to get.

• 31:14Speaker 01

  Vinnie, nobody.

• 31:15Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, damn.

• 31:16Speaker 01

  Vinnie, big chin. And, uh, yeah, dude, I remember. I remember talking to one of the platoon sergeants and he's like, are you nervous? I'm like, yeah, yes, sir. And he was like, well, don't worry about it, you know, 90% of the time you're just going over there, you know, you might not see combat, you know, 10% of ever, ever engaged with a, he's giving me these numbers and like, okay, this sounds good. And I remember one, one of the first deployments were like, fast roping in and fucking there's, there's like, they're getting fire on the helicopter and you're like, oh, fuck dude. Get him to the fucking odds, dude. I saw dudes crawling, dude. And I was like, oh, everyone's getting shot. And, uh, we roped in and he was just like, no, dude, people are breaking their ankles on the fast rope. And it's just like, yeah, it's like, oh shit, bro. The fast ropes fucking take to do that. But my thought is like, I don't want to go, dude.

• 32:01Speaker 01

  Dude's getting fucking hit. And I'm carrying three Gustaf rounds in the back of me. I'm like, don't hit me, bro. Yeah, man. Yeah.

• 32:11Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And so what was your, what was your mission on that? Like, what was your kind of standard mission set on that first deployment to Afghanistan?

• 32:17Speaker 01

  It was, is the same as kind of the rest of them, but it wasn't as active as, as, so. I'll, I'll, I'll explain it. Like, our job has always been like kind of raids and like, how do you gather that intel is just however we get it. And obviously me being a nobody was just like, hey, there's intel in this area. We're going to go try and, uh, kill or capture this individual. Same kind of thing like T S T targets or whatever the case. Um, and so we go into these missions, but they were, they were not as often as they eventually became because intel got better, but as well as how we gathered the intel. You know, my first deployment 2004, the only thing that you would kind of secure from an objective was like an embitter phone. And that was like rare. If you found one, you're like dope, dude, we got an embitter. By 2005 in Iraq, there was cell phone towers. Everyone, everyone had a cell phone.

• 33:02Speaker 01

  So then the missions came like, dude, as soon as you scrub someone's fucking cell phone, you have like 20 other dudes you need to go hit. You didn't mean, so that, that changed, that the whole optimal change when technology changed for them. It helped us. And so 2004, you know, we were just had a few missions here and there, more, a lot of training going on, a lot of like getting ready for, for the thing. But, you know, just a few missions here and there, but it wasn't like Iraq.

• 33:23Jocko Willink?

  And you guys are doing four month deployments?

• 33:26Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 33:26Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 33:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:28Jocko Willink?

  Any major like lesson learned about that from that deployment where you're like, dude, I'm never doing that again?

• 33:34Speaker 01

  The whole thing was like, there was one mission where we went to a high point. And um, I was using just binoculars. I'm a nobody AG guy for the gust off. I'm like the ABA AG guy, right? So I'm just like, sting out of the fucking way. And I remember just like scanning the objective area and I'm like, hey sir, uh, I think we got dudes on a roof. And he's like, let me see. He had a big ass dip and he's like, let me see. And he goes, shit, yeah, we did. So he calls, I remember he calls on the radio, he calls to the, to the, we had a fister on the ground, but we also had a fister of flying with Spectre Gunship. And they see it. They're like, yeah. And they were like, sir, what do you want us to do? He's like, load a round. So I loaded a fucking round, dude.

• 34:15Speaker 01

  And I'm like, fucking aho, about to goose off this motherfucker's dog. I've already fired like 15 in practice and training. And so I'm like, this is dope and it's gonna be scary. Let's go. I close it. I close it. The ventry closed and I'm just sitting there like, to be fired? Like, what do we do? You know what I'm saying? Right? And he's going on the radio and it's supposed to, they called fire. But the radio communication was fucked. So then by the time it get back to us, it's like, hold fire, hold fire. And the team started pushing in on them. And we didn't find out until after. I was like, sir, what happened? He's like, I don't know. They told us not to fire. Then we have to take it out. And that's even to me, it's like, you're scared. I gotta take this fucking round back out, but right back into my fucking rucksack. And then uh, the cool moment was like, the PL was like, there's people kind of approaching from the back, from the rear. It's like one of the houses woke up and people were kind of, and he's like, give me one. And I just jumped up. I was like, let's go.

• 35:00Speaker 01

  And I started running with him and then we're lazing in and seeing all these people come out and eventually the turp came in and kind of calmed it all down. But I was like, fuck dude, we're really doing this shit, dog. Like, that's like, really in the middle of this like fucking foreign ass country. People don't know who the fuck we are and we're fucking fash, we're fuck, it was just, that was the first like, damn dude, I'm actually doing this shit.

• 35:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. What's crazy to me is like, you've probably been in the army for a year, maybe?

• 35:24Speaker 01

  Maybe.

• 35:24Jocko Willink?

  Maybe.

• 35:25Speaker 01

  Maybe, yeah.

• 35:25Jocko Willink?

  So you like boot camp, airborne school, RIP, some training with the, with your company and then boom, you're on deployment.

• 35:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think I've learned really how to. How to be an AB and AG for the fucking goose off in deployment. Like that was like the moment of really learning because we trained so often. And then same like I was doing a lot of ready ups in deployment, dude, just like with the, you know, nothing going on today, let's go boom, they put X on the wall, we're just ready up, ready up. It's like 90% of my skill sets was built in combat there, not in combat, just training. It was like fucking nuts.

• 35:56Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, check. And did you like the job?

• 35:58Speaker 01

  I did, I did. I think like in the book I said, a lot of thinking. I thought like, well, fuck, if I applied myself, I could have done so many different things. Like, not that I hated what I was doing, but I was ready for it to be done. Like, let me do my four years and go out because I'm like, now I'm motivated to fucking face the world. Like, I could do, I thought I was a baseball player and that's all. I didn't think there was more outside of my life. So when I lost baseball, I was like, I was ready to kind of give up. I'm like, fuck all this. I've been playing baseball since I was four years old. Year round since seven, like, that's all I fucking knew. Like, when people struggle transitioning out of the military, I struggled transitioning out of baseball. So when I found the military. Yeah, dude, it's like, you're professional athletes.

• 36:39Jocko Willink?

  Transitioning out of football for Echo Charles.

• 36:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, dude, because you're like, what the fuck am I? You know, and then when I got to the military, I found like, oh, I'm kind of good at this too. That's when I was like, all right, this is cool, but shit, if I could be good at this, what else can I be good at? So like, yeah, I was sitting in my room thinking like, fuck, what could I have done? What else could I, what could I do? And so that's what like the conversation broads when he said, uh, border patrol, I was like, the fuck is he talking about? Never heard of this. I've heard of him, but I didn't know it was even a thing that anyone would want.

• 37:10Jocko Willink?

  I'm gonna fast forward a little bit in the book. Book, obviously I'm just reading highlights, just get the book, so much details and stories. This is a freaking great book.

• 37:18Jocko Willink?

  On December 16th, 2004, I lost a close friend whom I had spent a significant amount of time with in the pipeline on the way to Ranger Battalion. Devin Pacuero died while participating in a live fire exercise.

• 37:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:37Jocko Willink?

  So this is like another reality check, you know?

• 37:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, I came back from that deployment and um so Devin was with me in basic training and then airborne. Airborne was so like laid back that we thought our PT was not gonna be good enough for Ranger selection for RIP.

• 37:54Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 37:54Speaker 01

  So we were like intentionally fucking around so they would get make us do pushups and we'd be like Ranger Ranger. Like we were pissing people off, but for us was like fuck it, get smoked all day, let's get ready for Ranger, you know? We got to RIP and they gave us a weekend before the PT test on the Monday. And we went out to Columbus like idiots, you know, and we're drinking beers and we're bullshitting. And we're all talking like I was talking to my my baby's mom, he was talking to his girl. And one of our knuckleheads from base training, he goes, I hear him tell a girl, yeah, yeah, we're army Rangers, you know? And I was like, who the fuck is he talking to? And another dude turned around and goes, oh, really? What company? He said, we're Delta Company. He goes, we don't have a Delta Company and boom, the fight broke out, dude.

• 38:37Speaker 01

  And I'm like, I gotta go and boom, trying to pull this dude out of there, but they had my card on on tab. Like all kinds of shit went wrong, so we ran. The fucking, you know, the MPs were fucking chasing, we jumped into the back of a truck and we just laid there like hope to fucking god they don't get us. That Monday morning, we didn't realize this, but Devin's like, dog. And Devin Pogar, right? And he's like, dog, I can't find my ID card. I said, what? And he goes, I think we lost, I think I lost it that on the on the during the fight. I was like, what the fuck, bro? They called him to the front of the formation. And uh, he goes, I lost my, I lost my ID card. He goes, yeah, okay, you're recycled. Boom, they kicked him out of the course. And I was like, fuck me, dude.

• 39:20Speaker 01

  So I didn't know if we were gonna see him ever again, that's my boy, you know what I mean? So I come back from this deployment and I fucking run into him at the chow, I'm like, Devin? He goes, yeah, dude, I fucking made it. I was like, holy shit. He got recycled again because he failed the fucking five mile and then the next one he finally made it. Boom, he's in Ranger Battalion with us, right? He's in Charlie Company. And so we're trying to connect again about like, dude, let's, I'm like, I'm wanting to meet my daughter. She's here now, you know what I mean? I got married, like, let's like, let's, let's have it. He was supposed to come over for dinner, um but you know, I had my live fire, Alpha Company did their live fire. And then his next day was Charlie Company doing their live fire, the next day he was supposed to come over for dinner. So that none of their live fire, they gave us a call, you know, they notified all of us that someone was killed during training. But in the call, they said Figaroa. And I was like Figaro from Charlie Company. I was like, I don't, I don't know who that is. I'll figure it out in the morning.

• 40:05Speaker 01

  I remember they woke me up and I was like, my wife at the time, she's like, hey, they're calling about someone, an incident. And I was like, oh. And I was like, I don't know the Figaro. Okay. And I got to, when I got to, um, when I got to Alpha Company, my buddy, uh, Solomon Kim, he, he comes up to me and is like, bro, did you hear? I was like, yeah, Figaro, I don't know who that was. No, dude, it was Devon. And I was like, no, dude. They said it was Figaro. I was like, no, dude, it was Devon. And fuck, we hugged it out. It was like, what the fuck happened? And so people started to tell us what was going on. And that was the first time, like, as a, as a man, as a grown man, like my emotions, I, I wasn't sure how to handle that. You know what I mean? I was raised obviously by a tough dude. That crying would be weak in his world, you know?

• 40:49Speaker 01

  And as I was getting home from the day and trying to still piece it together, as I was putting the keys into the door, I remember it kind of like shaking and it all kind of overwhelmed me. And, and I just busted out crying like, holy fuck. And I told my wife, like, you know, my friend was supposed to come over for dinner tomorrow. Um, he was the one who was killed. And it was just like a shock to us. Like, Jesus, fuck.

• 41:11Jocko Willink?

  How'd he get killed? What happened?

• 41:14Speaker 01

  So a lot of people got RFS for that, right? They got released for standards for this. Um, you know, we're doing a, it's like a paralleled live shoot. And so you, you go clear and you go clear and you continue, right? There's a big gap between the, the two buildings and sometimes you only use one building. And you have these targets that every time you engage, they were kind of falling over. And so you reset them. And I guess the range safety officer wasn't paying attention or the officer, whoever it was, wasn't paying attention to as they kept resetting them, they kept shifting. And it got to a point where it reset in a spot where when it shot and engaged and went through the wall, through the target, through the wall and hit him in the throat while he's pulling security in the other room.

• 41:52Speaker 01

  And so they, they provided all the medical they possibly could, um, on the, in the van, uh, on the way to the hospital. They said they felt the release of his hands and that's when he died on the way there. Yeah. And that one was a, that was heavy for me. Cause I was like, you know, I've lost friends to gang violence, you know, and, and it's kind of like when you grow up in LA, it's, it's, okay. But that one was like, damn, he didn't die in combat. He died training for it. Like he wanted it and it fucking sucked, man. That one, that one hurt.

• 42:28Jocko Willink?

  So you go through that and but you're still in a workup and that's the thing everybody.

• 42:34Speaker 01

  Six months later we're gone.

• 42:35Jocko Willink?

  You're still doing your job and you go to Iraq, the second one. So what year is this?

• 42:39Speaker 01

  That's 2005 now.

• 42:40Jocko Willink?

  2005 you roll into Iraq. Where were you in Iraq?

• 42:43Speaker 01

  Mosul.

• 42:44Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 42:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, we did the whole Mosul thing. We um, that was one of our most successful deployments as a battalion. You show up there with like the one dude in the middle of the circle that you want to get and then everyone else is kind of like who can lead you to him. That was Mosul 2005 and and we we captured the top dog and it was like kind of a weird how it worked. So the Rangers will go on the mission that day and we're like TST targets, right? It's a time sensitive target missions. Waiting for certain certain intel to drop and boom, we're on it. So all of our kit was right by our by our uh, it's when we first started using strikers. And so all of our kit was by the strikers and we're just sitting there doing our thing, getting ready, hashing it out, getting ready for it. Boom, we get a call, we're gone. Uh, and you could do one mission, you could do six missions a day. It doesn't matter. It was just kind of this crazy, crazy thing.

• 43:28Speaker 01

  But the days were off. We were we were QRF and we're QRF for Delta dudes, right? The CAG dudes. And so it was kind of like we're switching days. And then there was times where like, hey, we had a heavy day last night. Can you guys do do TST today? And then we'll just pick up. Yeah, whatever. And so as we started getting closer and closer to this dude, you know, they're they're wanting the mission. They want the big one, you know what I mean? So I remember one day they gave us a day off, like, hey, you guys are back on QRF. We're gonna, this was good intel. We're probably gonna try and catch this dude. And as we're all kind of trying to get this dude, by chance, one day, we had dudes lay up in a house and we were going to pick them up. As we're going to pick them up, this dude shows up to the house next door. And so boom, we hit the house. I remember we hit the house, boom, going in, I walked right by like, someone snatched this dude already.

• 44:11Speaker 01

  They grabbed him up, you know, put him on his knees and started cuffing him, putting putting the sandbag or the, we we used something different at that one point. And I remember going right past him like, that's a big ass motherfucker. I kept going and room clear, boom. And then you start hearing the radio traffic like, hey, we caught the fat guy. We were like, fuck, oh, we got him. And then phones went off and then more intel gathered. And I mean, that night, I think we did six missions. It was like boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, because just shit started popping off, right? Like everyone was like, I guess they were in panic mode. So they started messing each other and then we were able to pull all that data and boom.

• 44:41Jocko Willink?

  And you're you're a straight up assaulter.

• 44:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm a saw gunner at this time. I'm a saw gunner on a team.

• 44:45Jocko Willink?

  Oh, you're a saw gunner and and just getting after it.

• 44:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, dude. Saw gunner, like, it was the best job in the world, bro. Because like, everybody wants you in the room quick, you know, it's like, team is like, go, I'm like, let's go. And, uh, yeah, man, it was a good time. Mosul was pretty, pretty busy for us. We had a lot of engagements. We had, um, you know, the truck in front of us took an ID. At one point, we had a hand grenade hit and hit a couple of my dudes on first squad. Well, we were kind of like, oh, shit, we ran over there and seen the chaos of that madness. We had one of our little birds on a mission got engaged on and and and the pilot luckily, the copilot helped him pull it back up and got out of there. Like, so we had a lot of like, a little interesting, you know, just combat shit, man, war shit. And it was a, it was a good experience. It was a, there was definitely that.

• 45:29Speaker 01

  I tell people like, that's when I I kind of mended my relationship with God. You know, as I, as I grew up, I was kind of wasn't sure. I I was raised Catholic and then kind of converted to Christianity when I was in Kentucky. And then from there, I was kind of like, ah, man, my life is going to go to shit. So you start blaming God, you know what I mean? Like, I lost my scholarship, you know, I can't read, my kid, all this thing. So I started getting angry with God and then I was there, I was like,

• 45:53Speaker 01

  yo, dude, I want to be in my kids' lives, man. And my wife was pregnant at the time. I was like, I want to see her be born and and I want to be a dad and like, get me out of this, dude. No, I'll fuck whatever. You know what I mean? Like, what I actually, I promised I'd wear a suit to church. I still haven't done this shit, dog. But, um, yeah, man, I

• 46:13Jocko Willink?

  You might want to straighten that out.

• 46:14Speaker 01

  I know, I know. Every time I say that, I get, I got to get my suit in the cleaners.

• 46:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was like the moment where there was enough action happening, enough shit was going down, enough dudes were in their Purple Heart where I was like, man, it's a numbers game now, dude. And, um, I started getting, trying to be right with God and and before every mission, I was kind of have my my peace. We we talked and and we do our mission. And so that was like my favorite deployment because the most experience is just really, we had a lot of action going on at the time.

• 46:46Jocko Willink?

  Um, fast forward a little bit here. You say in April 2005, after returning from a deployment in Iraq, I was preparing to be sent to Ranger School. The day before we left, we played a football game with the platoon, Barazza's team versus mine. Because of my competitive nature, I wanted to win so damn bad, but Barazza, Barazza's competitive nature matched mine. And his team won. After I was walking off pissed, he stopped me. Come here, he said in this deep cocky tone. I hesitated in my frustration. Vargas, come here, he repeated. What's up Sergeant? He snagged a Ranger tab off his cover, handed it to me, and said, come back with your shit,

• 47:29Jocko Willink?

  or don't come back at all. We hugged, and I walked it off, still fuming, but also shocked by the gesture. He cut off his own tab from his cover and gave it to me. This wasn't something I'd ever seen anyone do. It was powerful. I didn't want to let this man down. Just I, like I'd never wanted to let my father down. That's freaking legit.

• 47:53Jocko Willink?

  Like, someone giving you their Ranger tab before you even go to Ranger School?

• 47:57Speaker 01

  That's when they, they used to sew it on. So he had to cut it, rip it off. Just the gesture alone was like, they call it a drive-on tab in Ranger Battalion. And I didn't know about this, never heard of it, you know? It was just, drive-on tab is like, you look at that motherfucker and you remember why you want this so bad, and you fucking come back with it or don't come back at all. And in Ranger Battalion, if you don't pass Ranger School, you're gone anyway. So it's like, get the fuck out of here then, you know? And, um...

• 48:23Jocko Willink?

  So that's actually a thing? A drive-on Ranger tab?

• 48:26Speaker 01

  Drive-on, it's a drive-on.

• 48:27Jocko Willink?

  You give your tab to someone else?

• 48:28Speaker 01

  I don't know if it's necessarily giving it, but I know there's versions of that. And there's sometimes you have one, people sew it into their hat. It's like, they look at it, right? The drive-on tabs, like motivates you to, you want that. It's almost like, I guess someone would do with the Trident or something, I don't know. But I, it wasn't the, it was the first time I've ever heard of it, but by the time I got my Ranger tab, I'd done it to someone as well, because I kind of continued that tradition. But I've heard it's not uncommon for it, but for me, I've never seen that shit. And then for it to be that guy, Barazza for me was like... It was like the leader that when I showed up to Ranger Town, I thought everyone was an athlete. You know what I mean? And then I showed up and I was like, fuck, they're not athletes. They're just dudes that are willing to do the job. Um, and so that kind of was like, man, I thought it was gonna be like fucking badass Rambo dudes and fuck, they could all fight, they could all fucking run, they could all play sports and no, it wasn't the case.

• 49:12Speaker 01

  He was though, he was an athlete. He was a big, bad motherfucker. He was highly respected. And he was the dude that I looked at, I was like, yeah, I want to be like that. That's the dude. And, uh, so for him to, to, to take his own tab off his hat and give it to me. Was pretty special, but I fucking wanted to beat his ass so goddamn bad, dude. And I was fucking mad that he won again.

• 49:34Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's a, and you've got more about, about Barazza in here. So I'm obviously not reading the whole book, but, um, it's freaking legit. And that, that definitely was a powerful section. Ranger School? Any major challenges at Ranger School?

• 49:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, one, but, but, um, for the most part, you know, I was pretty, pretty lucky, you know, um. I was distinguished honor graduate of the fucking school, so I never got really in trouble. Uh, the one time they gave everyone major no's, I was taking a piss and so they missed me. You know what I mean? Like weird circumstances. I showed up to fucking mountains phase, it's my same platoon sergeant from Afghanistan who told me those statistics and he goes, hey, he got, he got R fast for, for some shit. So he's like, hey, Vargas, what the fuck? This guy's a stud, this kid's a stud, you know? So like also everyone's like, hey, tell me about your deployments, man. He said, I'm like, okay, that's cool. So like I, by chance I ran into this different things that kind of like, I guess kind of helped, helped me through the way and just luck and shit, you know?

• 50:30Speaker 01

  I was older, so I, I can manage myself really well. I, I learned to fucking just manage the suck. Uh, mountains phase, I, I fell pretty hard and, uh, I, I severed a, I did a brachial plexus nerve damage. So the arm, the right arm was dead. And so I wasn't gonna say shit. I got through fucking Florida phase and, and you know, I took a swim in the fucking, in the swamp with one armor and struggled for a little bit, had some Ranger buddies help me out, you know? But, um, no, man, I got through it. You know, Lord willing and as well as I graduated the same day, the anniversary date to Devon's death. And that was kind of the motivation for just trying to go straight through.

• 51:08Jocko Willink?

  Going to the book, I graduated from Ranger School right on time, December 16th, and I was the distinguished honor graduate. The downside was that I'd severed my nerve, as you just said. Staff Sergeant Barazza was killed in Iraq from wounds he sustained on a mission.

• 51:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:23Jocko Willink?

  He and Sergeant Dale Brim died while clearing a building in Ramadi, Iraq, when they came under enemy fire. We lost two of the most influential and well-respected individuals in our battalion, and I was angry about it. Staff Sergeant Barazza's death hit me hard, perhaps more so because I wasn't there in country with him when it happened. And that's because you're of your shoulder.

• 51:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:48Jocko Willink?

  So you didn't get to go on deployment. I believed he was a better man than me. I would have gladly traded places with him. Would he have died if I had been there? Like most men and women in the military, I had survivor's guilt. If those bullets had hit me instead, maybe Staff Sergeant Barazza would still be alive. When his body was flown home, I was one of the soldiers detailed to work his funeral. That was one of the hardest things I ever had to do, but it was an honor I treasure to this day. Men like Barazza were heroes, and the fact that they were killed solidified my decision

• 52:23Jocko Willink?

  to leave the Army.

• 52:34Speaker 01

  He was a badass, dude. Always mad that I was upset with him, and it was the last conversation we had. I was frustrated, you know? And I never got a chance to tell him how much of an impact he's made in my life, how influential as a leader he was. And I'm no superhero. I don't know if I would, I was even gonna be in the same room as him during that time, but it should've, could've, what has ate me alive? And it...

• 53:08Speaker 01

  He wanted to get out and he wanted to go do other things and so did Dale and I felt like fuck this number of games is starting to hit really close to home and so I wanted to kind of get out as well and so I was ready to leave.

• 53:22Jocko Willink?

  But you still had another deployment to do, right?

• 53:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:26Jocko Willink?

  How's that psychologically when you're on deployment and you don't like

• 53:31Jocko Willink?

  kind of want to be there?

• 53:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, that was hard. That was I, I, my wife asked me before when we first met like you ever smoked cigarettes? I'm like, no, I was like, well, yeah, I smoked five my last deployment because every time there was a mission, I was like, thank God. Because I kept thinking like, it's my last mission. It's, it's no different than Dale and, and, and Rick. How they were waiting to get out and they were going to come home and get out of the military. And I'm sitting here doing the same thing. I was getting out three months after this deployment. So I'm like, get through this fucking deployment and start packing your shit. You know what I mean? And so every mission I was like, motherfucker and I'm a team leader. I'm a team leader and sometimes acting squad leader because we had, our squad leader got injured. And so we're just managing this team and every deployment, every mission, I'm like, fuck dude, like, please. And that's like the worst way.

• 54:15Jocko Willink?

  It's the worst.

• 54:15Speaker 01

  It's the worst because like, I don't want to be like that. I want to be like fucking excited about this shit. But every, every time we went out, I was like nervous and I hated that feeling. And I knew I was like, it's time dude, shut it down because my mind was too wrapped up and dude, the first, the first mission coming back from Rick and Dale's death was five dudes on roof waiting for us and they fucking actually engaged on us, right? And it was just like, and I had fucking two, I think three new guys, 17 years, like 18 years old, so 18, 19 year old dudes. And I'm like, fuck, and I'm telling them like, be ready, be ready, be ready. We're the main, we're the main effort. And they went to go breach the door. The, the, uh, the gate and they started engaging us in, in the, in the alleyway and.

• 54:58Speaker 01

  As much as I was comfortable with it, it was like, oh yeah, they're fighting us. All right, fuck. Boom, aim the guns, let's go. Boom, boom, boom. And our gun team's firing up there. My sawgun is firing up there. And we're just kind of organizing traffic here and trying to see what's going out the back end. And the whole time, like, motherfucker dude. This is like the one thing I don't need, but like, let's figure it out. You know what I mean? And, you know, we were able to engage on some dudes. We were able to take out that building. We dropped some bombs on it, this and that. Then you come back, I'm like, fuck, give me that cigarette. Boom, smoke cigarette out my cough. You know what I mean? But I'm like, it was just like, I needed something that I can just say like, all right, that's out of the way. You know what I mean? And when that deployment fucking ended, I knew I was like, fuck this.

• 55:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 55:37Speaker 01

  I'm getting the fuck out of it.

• 55:38Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I never had that experience, but I was always worried about guys that were nervous. Guys that were like scared because then all of a sudden, sometimes that affects the way they act. And in my opinion, if you're more aggressive, you're going to have better chance of survival. And you're going to help the team more. Like if you're scared, you're nervous, it's gonna, you're gonna hesitate, you're not gonna want to do something. And it can really fuck things up bad if you're that guy. And like I said, luckily for me, like I never had to feel like that. But I can't, honestly, if I try and think about that, what that must be like, to be like, I don't want to be doing this. Cause it's one thing to be like, oh, I don't want to be cold or I don't want to be freaking tired. I want to go to sleep and I want to be warm. But it's another thing to be like, I don't want to die.

• 56:23Jocko Willink?

  And I'm going towards a building with bad guys in it that want to kill me. That's gotta be, that's gotta be rough on the freaking psyche.

• 56:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, dude. And I'm like, I, I'm all about like doing my job right. And I have these fucking three kids. That I'm like, I'm responsible for. So I couldn't be a fucking bitch about it. I had to like, that was the hardest thing. I was like, these fucks depend on me. You know what I mean? And so like the whole time, like, I don't even think I called home the whole deployment. Cause then like my grandfather died, my uncle died. And I was like, let's just get through this shit. Like let's focus here, let's get done. And once I was done, I was like, I'm out.

• 57:02Jocko Willink?

  So you get out, um, you say two options in your head firefight or border patrol. You applied for thirty jobs.

• 57:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:10Jocko Willink?

  And those were just random jobs, like just anything.

• 57:12Speaker 01

  Anything. I was like an indeed, or I think at the time with some other, but like, yeah, just like, yeah, that works, that works, that works.

• 57:18Jocko Willink?

  You, uh, look like, it looks like you're gonna get picked up for Tucson Fire Department.

• 57:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:22Jocko Willink?

  Which would have been, you know, obviously a big badass fire department, awesome. And right as you're thinking you're gonna get picked up, they go on a hiring freeze.

• 57:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:30Jocko Willink?

  And meanwhile, you got, how many kids you got now? Two kids?

• 57:32Speaker 01

  I had three at the time.

• 57:34Jocko Willink?

  So three kids, you got bills to pay.

• 57:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, dude.

• 57:36Jocko Willink?

  I mean, hey, everybody, just if you don't know, if you just get out of the army after, what was it, four year stint?

• 57:41Speaker 01

  Four years.

• 57:41Jocko Willink?

  If you get out of the army after four years, you don't get anything.

• 57:43Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 57:44Jocko Willink?

  You, there's no retirement. I guess you can still go to the VA if you wanna wait for a long time to get like your, your broken arm looked at or something, but you're out, dude. And, and that's gotta be, well, that's why you say in the book, like you just, you were just like, I need a freaking job.

• 57:59Speaker 01

  Yeah. That's why I played, yeah, I was, I was like, dude, I gotta pay these bills. I ended up going to full, to school full time and worked full time just to cover my fucking bills. Because you get comfortable living at, as the E5, jump pay and, and CO pay in the special operations, right? So you got paid pretty decent and then you get it and you're like, oh, fuck, we gotta somehow cover that big gap of money that not a, one job is not gonna cover. Yeah. So I, I got a job at the prison pretty fast and then I was going to school full time to, for firefighting, just to get my, my fire one and two, my EMT and all that shit. Just so I can survive.

• 58:34Jocko Willink?

  You end up eventually at a small department in Coolidge, Arizona, you get hired there. And you say, soon after joining, I was called to fight a fire that occurred on the tour bus of a musician called Kenna.

• 58:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:45Jocko Willink?

  I've never heard of Kenna Echo.

• 58:46Speaker 01

  They were, they're, they're, they're small, but I remember they were on, they're on MTV, cause I went home right away and Googled it. Who the fuck is this dude? You know what I mean?

• 58:53Jocko Willink?

  Uh, you say, I was the lead on the hose, but as I was fighting the fire, I couldn't help but feel disappointment. I had spent the last four years of my life doing some of the crazy stuff imaginable, trying to fill that void by fighting fires wasn't working for me. So you got that off to the first one, huh?

• 59:06Speaker 01

  Bro, it was, see, it was the first one where I was actually there on the hose. The first one we went to the house was just full engulfed and I just watched it. I remember my father coming home smelling like smoke and I'm like, damn, dope, right? You know what I mean? I mean, I used to love when I hugged him and I could smell it. I was like, this is fucking badass, dude, you know? And then the movie Backdraft came out and then you're like, dude, this is fire, bro.

• 59:25Jocko Willink?

  I forgot about that.

• 59:27Speaker 01

  So then you're like, this is dope career. Uh, and so it was the first time I was finally done with all the training and I went into this like this crazy ass little small fire department. I'm a lead on the hose and you know, this thing is fucking engulfed and I'm hitting it and it's hot in there and I'm just spraying and I'm like, yeah, fuck that. This isn't for me. And it wasn't just, wasn't scary, wasn't intimidating, wasn't, it was the first fire call out of like, everything's EMS at this time. So it's the kind of this, the things have shifted in the fire world and I was, my mind wasn't, I wanted excitement. I wanted fear. I wanted, I wanted something more, something more. And I remember getting out of, out of the tour bus.

• 1:00:04Speaker 01

  The fire's done. It was a battery that just leaked and caused a fire, whatever the fuck. Uh, I remember taking off my gear and I actually left it there. I told the chief, it's like, hey, I'm, I'm, I'm done.

• 1:00:13Jocko Willink?

  Damn.

• 1:00:14Speaker 01

  Thank you. And my wife at the time was like, you just wasted two years of schooling for firefighting. I was like, yeah, yeah, but nah, my heart's not in this shit. I'm out.

• 1:00:23Jocko Willink?

  Dude.

• 1:00:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:24Jocko Willink?

  She's like, uh, cool. What's for dinner? Who's paying for groceries?

• 1:00:28Speaker 01

  Well, I was working at the, I was working at the prison still. And so it was like a volunteer thing and I was trying to transition into it.

• 1:00:34Jocko Willink?

  Oh, that was a volunteer firefighter? Oh, okay. Cool.

• 1:00:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. No, no, I didn't. Yeah. The family still had food.

• 1:00:41Jocko Willink?

  Uh, so then you, then now you decide, and I'm fast forwarding, you decide now it's time to go border patrol. Um, you gotta go through the testing process, the application process, the written portion, oral exam, physical exam, background check, lie detector test. How's a lie detector test?

• 1:00:56Speaker 01

  I didn't have to do it.

• 1:00:57Jocko Willink?

  How'd you get around that?

• 1:00:58Speaker 01

  I had a top secret clearance.

• 1:00:59Jocko Willink?

  Oh, nice.

• 1:01:00Speaker 01

  I still held my TS clearance with SCI. And so they were like, hey, we saw you had a little drug history. I'm like, yeah, that's, that was a high school, just kidding. Yeah. Yeah. Because you have the TS clearance, we're just not going to give you the, the, the lie detector. I was like, oh, good. Oh, goodie. Yeah, man. That was the one.

• 1:01:18Jocko Willink?

  I've heard some good stories about that lie detector test. Apparently that thing is good to go. Although I got two stories. One, one of my friends went to the agency and one of them went to the FBI. And the one that went to the agency was a guy that kinda like, You have friends that like lie sometimes.

• 1:01:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:32Jocko Willink?

  And actually it's kind of habitual and they kind of lie a lot, but everyone kind of knows it. So it's all, it's like, dude, it's just like, oh, just, it's just Fred, dude. He just lies. He was one of those guys.

• 1:01:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:40Jocko Willink?

  He would just lie like about random shit. Like he'd say, you know, you'd go out and he'd be like, oh, I got that girl's number. And you, he didn't get any girl's number. He didn't talk to a girl, but he'd be like, yo, so he's always telling you like these lies, but they're just little lies and it's all good. We all get it. And then I had another friend that was like kind of a wild man, but it was like pretty honest dude. And so the liar went to the agency and he's like, he comes back and he's like, uh, I said, did you have to do the lie detector test? And he's like, yeah, I flatlined it. And I was like, what do you mean? He's like, I just flatlined the whole thing. He's like, anything they asked me, it didn't, it didn't affect, it didn't affect me. And so A, that could have been a lie.

• 1:02:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:18Jocko Willink?

  He could have been lying about that, right? So we don't know, but also if you just lie all the time, maybe your heart rate's just fine and your sweat's just fine and it's just no factor. The other dude that did the FBI, he, I was like, oh, did you do the lie detector? He goes, bro, that thing, like he couldn't lie about anything. He said it was going off the rails. Like anytime they asked him anything remotely suspicious, the thing was, he goes, I just had to just come clean on everything. I was like, yeah, cool. So you didn't have to take it. Good for you. Lucky you. Dude, I have another friend that failed like a lie detector test for a police department. And they were like, have you ever been with a prostitute?

• 1:02:56Jocko Willink?

  And he was like, no. And like, but in his mind, he had like gone on a date with a girl and she was like, I'm only going to go with you if you buy me dinner. And he was like, okay. And he bought her dinner.

• 1:03:05Speaker 01

  Yeah. That's what happens. People overthink everything and they start digging into stuff like, well, is that considered that? Yeah. The patrol lie detector is, is known for being hard. I've known some really, really good dudes. He's like, one kid told me, he goes, yeah, dude, I stole uh, uh, some, some candy from my mom when I was like seven. I'm like, you fucking kidding me? They, they pinged you for that one? You know what I mean? Like, I don't know, but like, I think they ask a question and you start digging deep for all this fucking weird shit. And then they're like, yeah.

• 1:03:33Jocko Willink?

  There's a TV show where they put just normal people on lie detector tests. And I can't see how that's good. Like they're asking the husband, the husband and the wife are there. They're both on lie detectors tests.

• 1:03:42Speaker 01

  Oh, Jesus.

• 1:03:43Jocko Willink?

  And they ask the, you know, like the wife will be like, do you ever think about other men? I'm like, what are you doing? This dude doesn't want to know this. This dude does not want to know this. This is a lose lose situation. Who's signing up for this?

• 1:03:55Speaker 01

  It's crazy that they still use the lie detector test when like, you know, it can't be admitted in court, all these things that, you know, like, I guess it's a valid question to answer thing, but like, man, I feel like we lose a lot of really good dudes who are just kind of knuckleheads.

• 1:04:09Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. And it should be like, yeah, like, hey, if you did something stupid, you'd be like, yeah, I did this. It was really stupid. And I guess maybe some of the stupid things that you do might be disqualifying. So maybe you're in a position where you kind of got to lie about them. But yeah, it's, yeah. So anyways, you didn't have to take it. Thank God.

• 1:04:26Speaker 01

  Thank God.

• 1:04:27Jocko Willink?

  Because then you made it to the Border Patrol.

• 1:04:30Jocko Willink?

  And then the whole process takes like two years again, just for people that are listening to this that might be interested in Border Patrol. The whole process took you two years to get in there. Finally, you go to the academy and academy is a really good curriculum. You talk about it in here. The whole thing is in the federal law enforcement training center in Artesia, New Mexico.

• 1:04:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Fletzy.

• 1:04:52Jocko Willink?

  Thirty five hundred acres.

• 1:04:54Speaker 01

  It's massive. Yeah, it's a, it's a good training facility.

• 1:04:56Jocko Willink?

  Is it all, is that just Border Patrol or is it everybody?

• 1:04:58Speaker 01

  No, I think they have, it's pretty much, um, a lot of custom stuff. So you have ICE, you have, I saw some marshals there. You have different, different agencies. You even have some, some, um, federal, uh, native law enforcement training there. But for the most part, you got Border Patrol.

• 1:05:13Jocko Willink?

  Got it, got it. And while you're out there, you, you gotta learn all kinds of stuff like, I mean, it's crazy. You got a list of stuff in here, radios and radiation detection and freight train tracks and fraudulent, fraudulent documentation, processing, detention, physical techniques, uh, defensive tactics, less than lethal training, just it's firearms, obviously, tactics, communications, critical thinking, risk management, interdictions, active threat, and you talk about all this stuff in here. I'm just going through it. Tactical light, low light operations, basic ATV familiarization, Spanish language training. Uh, and then you go on to say that like, the places, the way that they train you guys is very

• 1:05:56Jocko Willink?

  hands on, dynamic, uh, lots of scenario based training. It's, and again, you got a huge section in here about this stuff, but, You got this part that says, "I remember my first day in basic training when the drill sergeant yelled to me, 'Tuck that chin in.' That was all it took. I was no longer a gray man." For those of you who aren't watching on YouTube, we could say that you've been well endowed in the chin department.

• 1:06:21Jocko Willink?

  "Once a drill sergeant calls you out, you're forever target. Additionally, I had two full sleeves of random tattoos that I've been hiding, which was very common for special operations community. I knew they would discover once we put on our PT gear. Also, whether I liked it or not, I just look like a former military guy. When we were directly told to raise our hands if we had prior military background, I raised my hand as instructed, as I did not want to risk an integrity violation. When one of the training cadre asked me about my military service, I did not volunteer much, just that I was an infantryman in the army. Sure enough, my worst fears were realized. The cadre pulled me out to the front of the formation, divided us into two different sections. There were sixty trainees in total, making thirty trainees in each section. Suddenly, I was in charge of twenty-nine new friends."

• 1:07:04Jocko Willink?

  So, this is like your academy experience, you get put in charge, of course.

• 1:07:09Speaker 01

  You don't want to be in, like, you want to show up to these things and just be a gray man, and it's like, they ask who's military, and then you're like, "Fuck, okay." And then, what'd you do? What'd you do? Like, one guy was a cook. They was like, "All right, you cook, you're gonna go take over that, and then you go over here." And, uh, yeah dudes, now I'm in charge of all these fucking dudes, and I'm scared as fuck for my own self. I'm like, "I gotta worry about these fucking dudes?"

• 1:07:28Jocko Willink?

  How long was the school in total?

• 1:07:30Speaker 01

  Uh, I think I spent six months total, and that included my, I did the Spanish portion. I don't speak fluent Spanish at all. So, I had to do that too. But it was pretty long. It was pretty long.

• 1:07:40Speaker 01

  Paramilitary environment, you know what I mean? They did the whole thing. It talks about in the book how they do their version of a shark attack, which for the average civilian is probably pretty intimidating, trying to get us to, you're like, "Oh, fuck." But, uh, I was a drill sergeant already at the time, right? I've been a drill sergeant, so like-

• 1:07:55Jocko Willink?

  Oh, because you were in the Army Reserves, drill sergeant.

• 1:07:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, and so I watched the whole thing, and I was like, "That was pretty cool." But, uh, yeah, it's paramilitary environment and crazy amount of training. PT was tough. The cadre there was pretty, it was a solid, solid crew, and the instructors were great at instructing. So, you were there almost like college. It was almost like, like a law enforcement college. You'd show up, you'd do your PT, and then you go to your classes, and you'd study and learn. You have tests and so on and so forth. And so, the crazy part about it was like, weekends, like, you're off. And so, you're like, "Oh, what do you do?" It was like, "Well, you just drink, really?" And so, it kind of turned into this- Like you either study or you drink and you know you either fall into one or the other and you know sometimes I fell into both and it was just a fucking mess and I barely got out of that motherfucker alive dude. So, yeah, it was cool. I like there was one of the cool parts about it is is some of the scenario based training. They would hire,

• 1:08:41Speaker 01

  you know, some real authentic like Hispanics, right? Like these are, they spoke fluent Spanish. They portrayed as like an illegal immigrant. And they would make it challenging to just interview, right? To ask them questions. You pull them over and they'd be, they'd either fucking run on you or they would talk shit to you and you'd have to try and manage the scenario. You do, you you'd have to investigate the scenario and ask people, you know, and so it was pretty cool. It was a, I did, you know, I was a psyoper for a while too and and the the training for that was very similar where they had a full like city and it wasn't no different there at Fletzey. They had a full like kind of the environment was real and it made it, it made it good. It made it more realistic.

• 1:09:20Jocko Willink?

  You didn't speak Spanish growing up?

• 1:09:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, no.

• 1:09:22Jocko Willink?

  And so you get thrown in, what is it? A three month course to learn it?

• 1:09:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:26Jocko Willink?

  Dude, I went to college and I had to take a language and I took Spanish and I had a SEAL buddy who was Mexican. And we were in, so he grew up speaking Spanish and I got an A in the class because it was like reading and like the grammar and I was an English major, so like the grammar and and he got like a B, right?

• 1:09:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:45Jocko Willink?

  Maybe even, no, he didn't get a C, but you know, he would be so mad, you know, because he could speak Spanish, but like I can't understand one single word that like a Mexican person says to me. Like even when I was getting an A in the class, like right in the class, if I went to a Mexican restaurant and ordered some food, like, and they, if I ordered something in Spanish, and I'm sure they're messing with me too, like gringo shows up and trying to throw some Espanol at us. I'm like, yo, all right, bro. You got me. You got me.

• 1:10:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm, I order food really well until they ask a question. Then you're like, yeah, just bean and cheese burrito, please. That's all. Thank you. Sorry. Like, like I try and like put up a front that I got this and then as soon as they ask some question like, you know, flour or corn in Spanish, I'm like, shit, I can't remember that one.

• 1:10:32Jocko Willink?

  You know Vic, Victor?

• 1:10:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:35Jocko Willink?

  Like he, uh, well, he worked construction and like had a construction company.

• 1:10:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, Vic.

• 1:10:40Jocko Willink?

  And he, he, he's, you know, a Mexican dude and he didn't speak Spanish and he like went full bore studying and training because he said when he would go on to a construction site and like want to talk to the Mexican dudes and have to speak English to him, he said, he just felt like just total disrespect. They just look at him like, bro, what is wrong with you?

• 1:11:01Speaker 01

  My whole life is that, dude. I talk about a part in the book where it says like, you know, in some friends, some friend groups, I'm the beaner, the white friend groups, right? And then to my Mexican friends, I'm the white guy, you know what I mean? And you're like, fuck, I don't fit in anywhere, dude. You know what I mean? Like I don't, I'm the coconut to them and the other guys, I'm the beaner. And it's just this crazy world of like, it was no different being in the border patrol. You know, they see your last name, they're like, vargas, que posso? And I'm like, I don't fucking know, bro. Okay, like I, I learned enough to work. But the crazy part was like the military, the Ranger of Town sent me to go do Pashto. So I did nine months of Pashto.

• 1:11:31Jocko Willink?

  Damn.

• 1:11:31Speaker 01

  I did six months in the concurrent training for the next three, right? And so I could actually hold my own in Pashto when I was in Afghanistan because you used it so fucking much. And I talked to someone about that, like some intellectual person, they said, I believe it's, the language is used to different sides of your brain. So, so that's why Spanish just never, I don't fucking know Spanish still. My parents spoke Spanish to each other. I can, yeah, I just was, I was around it my whole life. I still can't grasp it as well as others, right? My wife, she can understand Spanish, but it's Puerto Rican Spanish is slightly different, right? It's like super fast as fuck, right? So I'm like, I don't fucking know shit.

• 1:12:02Jocko Willink?

  Way more attitude.

• 1:12:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, a lot more, yeah, a lot more anger.

• 1:12:07Jocko Willink?

  Hostility, son, hostility.

• 1:12:10Speaker 01

  We go to Puerto Rico, people speak to me in Spanish and I'm like, hey, what the fuck? I don't know shit, dude. But the Spanish became, you know, you, you know enough to work the job, you know enough to interview, you know enough. But you, you, if you don't have fluent Spanish, it, it can be challenging at times because, you know, there's conversations you really need to understand is happening. You know what I mean? The discussions that go on between people and, and, uh, yeah, it made the job challenging, man.

• 1:12:31Jocko Willink?

  Did your parents, uh, purposely not, not teach you Spanish?

• 1:12:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's kind of common for like, you know, you're the, the first generation, second generation to, to try and, trying to assimilate to, to people, you know?

• 1:12:42Jocko Willink?

  I had a buddy in the SEAL teams and. He, his dad, his dad kinda barely spoke English.

• 1:12:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:48Jocko Willink?

  And his dad would not speak Spanish to him.

• 1:12:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:51Jocko Willink?

  Because he wanted his son to speak English.

• 1:12:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's the same.

• 1:12:54Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:54Speaker 01

  My mom and dad were trying to teach my brother both and he became a late speaker. And it scared them. They're like, well, fuck, maybe that's too much. Let's just keep English and then we'll teach him Spanish. And eventually they go from speaking Spanish to each other to by the time I'm sixteen, I don't even hear them speak Spanish until they're speaking to someone else. Our household became like an American, just, just English. You know what I mean? So, uh, yeah, man, I still to this day wish I spoke Spanish and me and my wife have Duolingo and shit. You know, we're trying, bro, but like, it's just tough, man.

• 1:13:21Jocko Willink?

  Wait, does she speak Spanish?

• 1:13:22Speaker 01

  No, she doesn't. She speaks Spanish to her mom. She can't, but she doesn't have the confidence to speak in a conversation to a random stranger.

• 1:13:28Jocko Willink?

  Right, right. Um, all right, fast forward through a bunch of stuff here. And again, get the book for all, all the good details and information here, but, uh, just before I left the Academy Border Patrol Agent Robert Rosas. Roses?

• 1:13:42Speaker 01

  Roses.

• 1:13:42Jocko Willink?

  Rosas was murdered on July twenty-third, two thousand nine while performing his duties in a remote border area near Campo, California. Agent Rosas was responding to suspicious activity in a notorious, in an area notorious for alien and drug smuggling when he was shot and killed by unidentified assailants, assailants. This was the first line of duty death I'd experienced in my Border Patrol career. And I hadn't even started as an agent yet. It remains one of the most vivid memories of my time at the Academy. It was a rude awakening to the potential hazards of the job. Reading the information of the agent's murder was chilling. He was shot and killed with his own service pistol.

• 1:14:25Jocko Willink?

  I imagined the struggle and fight that happened and eventually led to his murder and it frustrated me. I hated hearing about it, but inspired me to take my training even more seriously and challenge myself to be the best prepared agent ever to take to the field to defend our nation's borders.

• 1:14:45Jocko Willink?

  He got like a rude awakenings in both, you know, with Pat Tillman and and Agent Rosas here getting killed like that's

• 1:14:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, when we heard about the details, we were like, fuck, and you you haven't I haven't done the job yet. I'm just practicing the job, you know, and and then to hear that it gets even more intimidating than like, well, why is he alone? Well, like, well, because he had to be because there's so fucking few of us on the border. You know what I mean? And he just went to go cover his area and go check a bug that went off and and when he did that, he got pretty much like ambushed. And whether he was killed with a service pistol or not, I still don't know the full details of those rumors that were told, but like, it's just fucking terrifying to to it's so opposite of what you do in the military of like having a group of dudes with you. You know what I mean? Everyone's got guns and ready for the fight. Now you're just alone and the

• 1:15:37Speaker 01

  the approach for a border patrol agent is not aggressive by nature. It's it's more of a passive kind of interdiction. Most people come across or don't have the intentions to fight. They have the intention to come across illegally so they can pursue whether it may be work or whatnot. And so we don't go to a known area or sensor that goes off with our guns drawn and walk in slowly. Even if it's late at night, you don't do that because that's that's not the posture. It's it's it would be it would be almost too intimidating. Like, what are you doing that for? Like, they would look at you like, what's wrong with you, dude? It's just probably illegals. You know what I mean? Just stop and say, hey, you know, so you come out with it, you get your pistol and you get your your flashlight and you're just kind of like looking around. And then you're confirming if it if it's real. Like, oh, yeah, I do got I got footsteps and then you call for backup.

• 1:16:23Speaker 01

  You know, that's what that's kind of the process. And so I imagine he was going out there doing that and before he gave me a call for backup, you know, got jumped.

• 1:16:34Jocko Willink?

  So that's how you graduate. That's what happens. You end up getting stationed at Eagle Pass North Station in the Del Rio Sector. Does like different AOs have different reputations?

• 1:16:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 1:16:45Jocko Willink?

  So is Eagle Pass like a hot AO?

• 1:16:48Speaker 01

  No, at the time it wasn't. At the time it was considered to be very mild. It was just known for like fast traffic. I mean, because from where the border is to the street, the main highway and some areas, it would take 10 minutes. It would take like no time. They get boots on ground, boom, boom, gone. You know what I mean? And then there's other areas that if they pass that street. And continue moving forward, most of the objective that that area was to get past the checkpoint and then get picked up. And so that would be probably more like a seven, eight mile walk. And then if they decided missed that, they can even keep going charge to San Antonio, which is impossible, but they all think it's fucking close as fuck, right? And so it's like 20 miles of walking and then like, fuck, I'm not in San Antonio yet. Like, no, bro, you gotta fuck another, you know, 50 miles.

• 1:17:25Speaker 01

  So it's really interesting, the traffic there, but it wasn't, it was like you'd have, I don't know, a good day, you'd catch 10 to 15. You're like, damn, that's a good, we're busy. This is what we say, like, that's busy. Now, like, Del Rio sector is the busiest sector in the nation, and it's not uncommon for it, what, the other day, I think they had 9,000 come over in a day? Yeah. Yeah. So it's, times have changed. And again,

• 1:17:50Jocko Willink?

  That's horrifying.

• 1:17:51Speaker 01

  Policies have changed. And just real quick to get into that was that the policy at the time, Obama was the president, in my area was called Operation Streamlining. So anyone who entered illegally into America went to jail immediately for, whether it was six days, 30 days, for their first time, right? The second time would be close to a year. And then so on, so it'd keep gaining, gaining time, right? And so it was, it was a way to deter and prevent people from just like thinking they could just come across and just get dropped off, right? Because before then, people would come across, you'd process them, and then you'd just drop them back off into Mexico or deport them back to their country of origin. So in this time, it was like, nah, now you're going to jail. Fuck you, kind of thing, right? And

• 1:18:33Speaker 01

  that made people like, well, don't go there. Well, let's just go towards Arizona, because Arizona, you're just taking a trip back and forth. They'll just drop you off and you, you have three attempts in Arizona before they even give a shit.

• 1:18:43Jocko Willink?

  Oh, so it was different depending on where you crossed?

• 1:18:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, every sector kind of has a different policy, each state too as well. So it just depends on where that is. And our area at the time, I believe it was from Big Ben all the way down to Laredo, was all streamlined, Operation Streamlined. So like, no matter what, you came across, you get, you get put into prison, to jail. And then Arizona, you'd have guys that entered three, four, five, six times, and there was no jail time. It was just expedited removal.

• 1:19:11Jocko Willink?

  So you'd basically, if you're in that situation, you just keep going until you make it across?

• 1:19:15Speaker 01

  Right, exactly. Well, and that, yeah, that scenario is like, well, why cross here? Go over there. And so then you'd see a massive influx in that, that direction. It's just their communications, like, top notch. It's like, it's crazy to say, but that's really what it was. As soon as they know, like, hey, don't come here, you're gonna go to jail. Okay, where else?

• 1:19:32Jocko Willink?

  Check. Uh, back to the book here. Once you arrive at your duty station, you must complete two years of training before you can be considered a journeyman. A journeyman is a level of competency one can reach and the Border Patrol recognizes journeyman status by considering that person for a permanent position. Until you reach journeyman status, you can be released from the agency for anything that doesn't represent them in a good light. In those two years, you go through several levels of field training, which is basically what most people would call OJT, on the job training. You're also simultaneously participating in computer-based training and testing to ensure you are still proficient in all the subjects you learned at the academy. So this is the situation that you're in right now, uh, at this point in the book. You're not even a full-time employee when you make it through the academy?

• 1:20:14Speaker 01

  You're a full-time, but you're not considered a permanent position. So meaning, you can get fired. It's, it's the two years of them just saying, let's just see how he does. You know what I mean? If you turn out to be a complete terror, they could just release you. You know, and so our job is as soon as you become a permanent position, now you know like this job is legit. Now you're a permanent federal position. You can apply for any federal position at that point, loudly over. So this, this is what you want. This is status you want, but you gotta get there and you can't just be a complete shithead.

• 1:20:40Jocko Willink?

  Sure. Uh, fast forward a little bit. I had been working the line for less than a week when things heated up. The line refers to the term of holding the line, a common title for the border boundary and what the job of a Border Patrol agent entails. While our FTO was driving us back to the station to wrap up our day, we saw a group of what looked like to be runners straight from the sign you see on the San Diego border highways. This is a familiar sign seen with borders on the border indicating the potential of border crossers, a big yellow diamond shaped sign with silhouettes depicting a family of three. Three individuals flashed past us and hopped the short fence to try and get away. My heart was pounding. I was confused yet excited. A huge deluge of thoughts and

• 1:21:24Jocko Willink?

  emotions went through my mind. Here we go, I said to myself. I had just landed the job I had been fighting for so long to attain. I'd been training for months and now for the first time in my new career, I was about to apprehend a group of people crossing the border illegally. The adrenaline screamed through my veins. We jumped out of the vehicle and gave chase. We easily hopped the short fence that the runners had crossed. I teamed up with another agent and went one way, and my other two partners, who were both trainees, went another. Bad luck, I picked the wrong way. However, the other team approached the runners with so much energy that the three individuals gave up quickly. As I walked up to support my fellow agents, I noticed that the three people apprehended were a forty-year-old male, forty-year-old female, and a female child around eight years old.

• 1:22:10Jocko Willink?

  I don't know why, but this moment hit me like a ton of bricks. For some reason or another, I looked at the adult female and thought of my grandmother. And I looked at the little girl and thought of my mother. As I stood there over the three illegals and helped with the field interview, the moment came and became bittersweet for me. I am half Mexican and half Puerto Rican. My grandmother on my mother's side was born in Chihuahua, Mexico, and crossed the border illegally when she was eighteen years old. The story that was told to me, and I believe to be true, was that her sister, Francesca, was born in the United States and thus an American citizen, had died at a young age due to an illness. As far as my mother can remember, my grandmother's name was Francesca as well.

• 1:22:55Jocko Willink?

  To make a long story short, my grandmother stole the identity of her sister in order to become an American citizen. My mother was raised in a small town near El Paso and the Mexican border. I think you can, I think that you can now understand how, knowing this story about my heritage, I have always been conflicted regarding illegal immigration and border security. I'm extremely proud to be an American of Mexican descent, and I will continue to uphold the same values and beliefs that my grandmother had in her desire to become an American. But there I was, a third-generation Mexican-American whose grandmother crossed into the United States illegally, who was about to apprehend some individuals doing essentially the same thing for the same reason, to have a chance at a better life.

• 1:23:40Jocko Willink?

  The feeling was surreal, and my entire time as a Border Patrol agent, I wrestled with doing my duty and my empathy for the people we apprehended.

• 1:23:53Jocko Willink?

  It's a huge part of the kind of underlying theme of the book, you know, that you've got going on in your head.

• 1:23:59Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, I've just, I don't know, I'm empathetic, man. I get it. I get why people would want to come to America. This place is fucking dope. You know what I mean? It's dope. The opportunities you can get, the hard, how hard you work and the opportunities you can present for yourself. So like in that first apprehension, I'm just like, fuck, this is crazy. Cause I know my grandmother came here illegally, you know what I mean? And I know she stole the identity of her sister just so she can be here in America. And I don't, it's not lost on me how important that was for her. You know what I mean? And how important it was for her, her kids to be American citizens and for them to have the same opportunities. And that for me was like, she wanted it so bad, she would steal the identity of her sister.

• 1:24:43Speaker 01

  And she was so patriotic about it. Like her kids joined the military. My uncle served, my, my, my grandfather served, like they were a patriotic family. And for them to have so much love and respect for the United States of America, like who was I to turn my back on that same dream? And to not want to continue to uphold that. But damn, that shit's wild to see it.

• 1:25:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I think you do a great job here. You break this down a little bit further in the book. You say, consider border security in the context of your own personal home. Here are a few questions to frame the discussion. Do you care who enters your personal home? Why? What actions or investments do you make to ensure you can control who and what enters your personal home? Do you believe that you have the right to determine who enters and stays in your personal home? When someone comes to your home, where do you expect them to go? What do you expect them to do? And it's commonly accepted and in most states codified into law that if someone attempts to enter your home without your permission, you have, do you have a right to see them as a threat and prevent their entry? So these are like questions that

• 1:25:51Speaker 01

  Pertains to the border as well.

• 1:25:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, pertains to the border.

• 1:25:53Speaker 01

  Yeah. You gotta see it that way, right? You gotta see this situation as this is our home and we should have the right to know who exactly is coming into our home and how long we want them to stay. And how we determine who's allowed to come into our home, you know? And if someone is forcing their way into our home, how do we deem that a threat? And how do you handle that threat? And it's this interesting thing where when you have this conversation with most people, like it's an emotionally investing in conversation. It completely, it's so divisive. People are either one way or the other because they feel like they have to be. They feel like they have to be because I feel most people are forced to feel one or

• 1:26:36Speaker 01

  the other extreme because those are the agendas that are being pushed. Those are the ideas that are publicly announced. Their lack of information of the subject doesn't matter. It's just the fact that they have to choose one side or the other, right? And when you start to really understand this, it's not so cut and dry. You have Homeland Security, which is established after nine 11. You have immigration, which has always been part of our country. And you can't be the one guy that says, close the border. That's not fair. Like, close the border, no one can come in. Well, that's not America, right? Our countries, we have dignity, right? That's not America. So you can't say that. And then you can't the other way and say, well, well, open the border and let everyone in. Well, then you don't have a fucking country. This country that we're all so fruitful in, we're all so, the opportunities we've all presented ourselves, we can't say that either.

• 1:27:21Speaker 01

  So there's a mental space here, but both of these have to be met. You have to have a strong immigration policy that allows people to enter our country, that allows it to continue to be this country of immigrants and, and they have to thrive and, and bring value to this country. But in that same immigration side, they have to also want the future of America to be fruitful, right? They can't sit here and say, I want to take everything America has, but then I want to leave. Like, no, you have to invest into this country because you want this opportunity for your kids too. You have to maintain this. And then the other side of security is like, no, but we also have to know who the fuck is coming in here? And who we can say no to because of the fact of of our own risk, our own safety of our families and our kids. And so finding the balance of that, but you can't shut it off so much that we don't even allow good people to come and prosper.

• 1:28:05Speaker 01

  Because this is what America stands on. And so the conversation is actually more in the middle than we think. I think what we're doing is fighting both arguments like, open the border, close the border, like, whoa, there's more there. It's actually both, you know? We need to open the border to the right, right people. And we have to see who's coming in. And we also have to close the borders to the people that don't, that don't deserve to be here. And so it's this middle answer that we're all going to agree on, right? Everyone said, you, do you want to secure the border? Everyone's going to say, yes. Okay, but what you see is security and what you see is security, what I see is security, it could be starkly different. And so we have to find out what that answer is instead of just speaking in just a surface level communication. And that's why I wrote the book is like, well, first I believe we need to understand what the career field of border patrol is and what it entails. For you to start really understanding and breaking down the seven layer cake of information.

• 1:28:50Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, there's so much in so much knowledge that's not common knowledge.

• 1:28:55Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:28:55Jocko Willink?

  And yet everyone has their opinion.

• 1:28:58Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:28:58Jocko Willink?

  You know what I mean? I just saw one the other day, a meme, Echo Charles.

• 1:29:02Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:29:03Jocko Willink?

  It was like, well, I'm done being an expert on Ukraine, Russia war. I've now moved on to being an expert into the Israeli Gaza war.

• 1:29:10Speaker 01

  So true.

• 1:29:11Jocko Willink?

  Palestinian war. It's like, then everyone's an expert about it now. Cause it's been in the news and they went and read two articles and now they know everything. And then it's the same, you know, that's what I found as I read the book. I was like, there's a lot of things that people don't know about. There's a lot of things going on that need to be considered. You know, and the other question like with your, with your house, like, how many guests can you have in your house? Like at a certain point, you're like, hey, man, the party's over. Like, I can't, no one else, we're out of like, the septic tank won't hold anymore activity, you know? So you gotta consider that as well.

• 1:29:39Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:29:40Jocko Willink?

  And, you know, and, and the resources of people that want to come here and bust their ass and work.

• 1:29:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:29:45Jocko Willink?

  And we, we need those people.

• 1:29:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:29:47Jocko Willink?

  Um, so if you shut down the border completely and there's no one coming in, we're, we're gonna be, we're, we're gonna have people that. We're gonna need people to do jobs that they're not there.

• 1:30:00Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:30:00Jocko Willink?

  We don't have the people to do the job. So a lot to consider, man. That's for sure.

• 1:30:06Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward a little bit. Law and immigration enforcement agencies operate in the United States to ensure that legal immigration and trade are facilitated. Illegal immigration is prevented and mitigated at the border and immigration enforcement takes place inside the United States. These agencies include Customs and Border Protection, which is the Border Patrol, Air and Marine Office of Field Operations, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which is ICE.

• 1:30:32Speaker 01

  I don't think people can, they don't know how to differentiate it, right? So they'll call us border control and you're like, okay, that's the lack of knowledge, right? They call it border control. They see guys in blue uniforms and think that's border patrol. Some guy hits me and he goes, they fucking harassed me at the POE. I'm like, border patrol doesn't work the POE, right? Not, they don't. There might be some extreme circumstance, but that's customs. Okay. So don't blame the border patrol for that, right? That's, that's ignorant, right? Then they're like, well, why are they housing them this way? Well, like, well, we don't house them. We, we actually have a small facility for very few because we don't expect a thousand people to come into. So who houses most, most of the time that you'll see the pictures and everyone's arguing, it's not border patrol, it's ICE. Right? And like, so people don't know the difference between each of these organizations. So they blame it all on the border patrol because they have the scope on them, right?

• 1:31:16Speaker 01

  For some reason, like the news will focus on the easy target, right? But like, the best target you have is the border patrol. Like they are the valuable tool and asset on the border. They stop more drugs and they, they, they help more people on the border than any other organization. It's the best humanitarian mission that's happening currently. It's also the best apprehension of drugs and drug interdiction across the nation. But they get the shitty end of the argument all the time. They get blamed for it. And so it's the weirdest, it's the weirdest thing.

• 1:31:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, like the highest visibility, I guess, and, and even the name, right?

• 1:31:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:31:46Jocko Willink?

  When you think of like, oh, there's someone across the border, that's border patrol.

• 1:31:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:31:49Jocko Willink?

  You don't think like, what is it, Immigration and Customs Enforcement? Like everyone kind of knows ICE, but I don't know if they.

• 1:31:56Speaker 01

  They don't know ICE does.

• 1:31:56Jocko Willink?

  It's just easier to just say border patrol.

• 1:31:59Speaker 01

  Right, right. That's all it is.

• 1:32:01Jocko Willink?

  Then you go on here to talk about the, just some of the basics of like the concept of citizenship. And what's the difference between birth and naturalization and right of soil?

• 1:32:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:32:13Jocko Willink?

  And like, you know, that explains it.

• 1:32:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, that whole part is, my goal is to explain to people.

• 1:32:19Jocko Willink?

  For sure.

• 1:32:20Speaker 01

  How to become a citizen or how people even become citizens through birth. And it was just like, I felt like. This book is like, there's a lot of layers to this book intentionally because my goal is like, if this, someone picks this book to read my story of border patrol, they'll learn the career. But they'll also now learn how the fuck immigration even i- is a thing in, in America. And they'll also learn a little bit of the history, like they're gonna learn a lot from the book because like, I feel like if you're gonna pick it up, you might as well learn as much as fucking possibly can. And that's a big one. People don't know how to become a citizen or how like, why is, if, if a Mexican pregnant woman comes across and she gives birth to that baby, that baby is considered a U- U- US citizen, right? There's arguments to that, right? But that's what it is in policy in place. That's what it is.

• 1:32:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, the, the way you've woven in knowledge to the stories, like this is what a book should be. A book should be like, I'm getting cool stories, I'm following a thread of like the arc of a good story. And I know you're a writer anyway, so that's probably did it. But then it's also, you're getting information. So this is like even a, even like a, someone like you that didn't want to read growing up. Like you would be interested in this because there's a cool story to it, but then you're getting the information as well. So you talk through all that stuff, legal immigration, how that process works, illegal immigration, which, you know, there's two different types of that, right? You got people that are coming across, running across the border, down here in Tijuana, and then you've got people that come here on a tourist visa and they never leave.

• 1:33:39Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:33:40Jocko Willink?

  Right?

• 1:33:42Jocko Willink?

  The term immigrant applies to anyone who intends to abandon residency in their native country and permanently immigrate to the United States. You've got like, teaching the normal person what these things are. So at least we can raise our level of discussion a little bit and have a little bit more of a, of a whatever, intelligent conversation about it and consider more than what you've heard in like three talking points on mainstream media.

• 1:34:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:34:07Jocko Willink?

  Which is gonna leave you with like, just some, basically an extreme idea.

• 1:34:12Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:34:12Jocko Willink?

  Of one way or the other.

• 1:34:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:34:14Jocko Willink?

  Close the border or open the border.

• 1:34:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:34:16Jocko Willink?

  That's like the two options.

• 1:34:16Speaker 01

  It's the crazy thing, like what I get in most interviews is, so how would you fix it? And it's like, There's not a one answer to this. This is like layers of shit that we really have to focus on. That's not one thing because like that's the simplest question you can ask me. Because that's how much the lack of information is about border patrol immigration and the policies and everything else. Is that, well, what's the answer? Well, it's it's more than just an answer. There's not a one plus one equals two answer. It's not how this works, right? This is like a recipe of a cake and you either fuck this up or fix it. You know what I mean? And like a little too much of anything can fuck things up on a massive scale. This is this is being having intelligent conversations about it, but also educating other countries on how our immigration works. Right? Explain to them like this is how it actually works.

• 1:34:59Speaker 01

  And also let's remember, most of these people are probably being manipulated by smuggling smuggling, you know, operations. Right? That's a thing. That's a very big thing. So how about we teach them what the right thing is, right? We don't have counter operations on education. We should, right? How about why are they fleeing that country? How can us as a diplomatic approach to like? How do we help that country be better, be more successful, right? A lot of things we can do instead of like close or open the border. That's that's like such a minute thing. It's like, it's so surface level. The wall, the building a bigger wall does help in some areas because it helps funnel traffic in specific ways. It's just like it's any kind of like tactical operation, right? But the problem is like, there is no one answer. There's nothing that's going to be like this fixes it.

• 1:35:42Speaker 01

  No, because then you had to talk about who's here in the country illegally, right? Who who's had kids here that are illegally and those kids are now here in the country and those kids are now 15 years old and have no idea that they're illegal. There's a lot of levels to this that no one wants to address. They just want to do the close border, open the border. And that's why like part of this whole book, the intention of it is like, if this is just a start to educating people, I think there's a lot more conversation need to be had, but a lot more books need to be written about this concept. And this is just one, here's the border patrol side of it.

• 1:36:10Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:12Jocko Willink?

  So so this time you're working at Eagle Pass and that's pretty much like your mission day to day is you're going out and looking for people that are crossing.

• 1:36:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:36:21Jocko Willink?

  And going through the the procedures to.

• 1:36:28Jocko Willink?

  Process them once they've been caught.

• 1:36:31Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:36:31Jocko Willink?

  Um, you go into a big section here about Border Patrol culture. And, uh, pretty cool. And culture is such a huge part of any organization that you're going to be in. And I thought that this was cool because you're given an idea of what it's like.

• 1:36:48Jocko Willink?

  You start off with one is none and two is one, which is the reverse of what I learned in the military, which is two is one and one is none. You say one is none first, but hey, it's all good. Border Patrol is going to do a little bit differently.

• 1:36:58Speaker 01

  Yeah. One is none and two is one.

• 1:37:00Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:01Speaker 01

  Yeah. And it's a reason it's because of batteries. Really, it's like the first thing is like, if you have one flashlight, you're fucked because in the middle of a 20 mile walk, and like the thing shuts off, you're like, okay, now what?

• 1:37:11Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Uh, you talk about the terrain being that lends to the culture inside the Border Patrol, because the trains you gotta deal with it all the time.

• 1:37:19Jocko Willink?

  The community who lives in the, on the border, you've got like, you say this, it's not uncommon for an oil rigger or a politician to become a part-time drug smuggler. The corruption is potentially everywhere, right? That's like wildness.

• 1:37:34Speaker 01

  Oh, it's crazy.

• 1:37:35Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And you, I forget if I called it out or not, but you break down like financially, what someone's going to be making in whatever career they're in, and then how much they're going to make if they do a little bit of smuggling on the side.

• 1:37:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:37:46Jocko Willink?

  You know, and it's like, some people look at that and they go, you know what?

• 1:37:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:37:49Jocko Willink?

  I would like a new car over the next few months.

• 1:37:51Speaker 01

  I think the average that come on a border and a border town was somewhere around for like the average person somewhere around 25, 35 K. That's not, that's not a lot, man. You know what I mean? Even the law enforcement, some of those border, those border town law enforcement officers are making 35 to 45, 65 maybe. Border stations come out the gates swinging at 65. You know what I mean? So we make a good amount of money compared to, comparable to any kind of border, border like a job, but like you're surrounded by, you're surrounded. Uh, you'll go to a bar and at night and here's your border trains on one corner. There's definitely drug smugglers, you know, hanging out in another corner. And you know, you got the oil riggers over here. It's like the craziest thing and like, it's like, all right, uh, well, we're just going to hang out for that drink and then tomorrow we'll be back at it again. You know what I mean? Like this cat and mouse game of it all, but you know who's fucking shady as fuck.

• 1:38:35Speaker 01

  You, it's like part of your job to understand that, but where else are you going to hang out? You live on the border, dude. You gotta go to the same, you gotta have drinks with your boys. You gotta go to dinner. And so you're just intermingled with this wild world of it, man.

• 1:38:46Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:48Jocko Willink?

  Uh, cut and sign.

• 1:38:49Speaker 01

  Cut and sign.

• 1:38:50Jocko Willink?

  You guys do a lot of tracking.

• 1:38:52Speaker 01

  That's mainly our job. That's why Bor-Tec and Borstar or Bor-Tec specifically when Borstar agents attached to them, uh, get called on a lot of like trafficking, uh, uh, excuse me, tracking calls, a lot of escape convict kind of calls because our job day in and day out is tracking. That's what it is. So we're cutting sign all day long. As soon as you see footprints, you get tracking. You start, you start walking it and that's how we catch people. Like that's the job and their job is to try and, you know, screw that up, right? Whether they wear things on their feet or whatever the case is, but yeah, we cut sign day in and day out. That's the job of a border trade is tracking.

• 1:39:25Jocko Willink?

  How good did you get at it?

• 1:39:27Speaker 01

  Good, but not great. I had dudes who could fucking almost do a full sprint and catch sign on concrete and you're like, shut the fuck up. And then boom, oh shit, you found it again. It's like, it's crazy. Like the guys who've been doing it for 15 years can do a slow jog and, and, and see everything.

• 1:39:41Jocko Willink?

  Bro, I was.

• 1:39:42Speaker 02

  Wait, wait, real quick. What is it? Cut sign?

• 1:39:44Speaker 01

  Cut sign. Yeah. It's what we call it. It's called cutting sign and, uh, sign is the imprint of a foot right on the ground. So, uh, we're looking for sign. And so we do a lot of cutting, which means is we're in our vehicle and we're driving really slow with a flash at an angle or just looking at the ground and we're cutting, we're making a, a, a, just, it's like, they call it a cut. I don't know.

• 1:40:02Speaker 02

  Oblique lighting?

• 1:40:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, just kind of walk, just, so in every border, there's the wall or a border, right? The border itself. And then there's usually some kind of dirt path and that dirt path is dragged daily, multiple times a day. And that's to clean it, to get a clean slate and then to turn around and start driving and see if your footprints are on it.

• 1:40:20Speaker 02

  Like a golf course kind of a scenario?

• 1:40:21Speaker 01

  Kind of.

• 1:40:22Speaker 02

  With the sand over it.

• 1:40:23Speaker 01

  Exactly. And so once you see the footprints, it's like, boom, it's on it. So that's cutting sign for us. We just look for the sign of footprints. Then you'll be like, oh shit, I got a group of five, six, depending on the different patterns of the shoes. And then the way you, you talk to your boy up ahead, you go, hey, I got sign of five. I've got a, a running W. I got a shock, like Nike shock. Yeah. You got all the different designs you give them and then they're looking for that same sign up ahead and hopefully five miles away or whatever. And then you're like, boom, now you just jumped them five miles closer and said, that's it. That's how it goes.

• 1:40:51Jocko Willink?

  Okay. All right.

• 1:40:52Speaker 01

  It's dope.

• 1:40:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Uh, hunting and like shooting elk and tracking elk. Like I've been out tracking elk and I was with my buddy, John Dudley and our guide and like, dude, I'm not kidding. We would be no sign for like 20 yards and all of a sudden. Like Dudley would like on it, got, got one and there would be, I'm not kidding, through like the bushes, like through, there would be one, one speck of blood that is literally smaller than a pinhead. Smaller than a pinhead. It's unbelievable. Echo's looking at me like, that doesn't make sense. I'm telling you, you're on a trail.

• 1:41:33Jocko Willink?

  And you can kind of like the direction, you're like, you can tell which way the thing is moving, right? You can tell that the elk, you found, you know, you found a sign here and then you find sign somewhere else. So you got like a direction that they're likely heading in. And then all of a sudden like, got one and you'd be the tiniest, tiniest speck of blood. It is impressive. And then like, guides will be, oh, here's like, you can tell he's limping or you can tell he's tired or you can tell this. So yeah, it's pretty badass how good guys can get.

• 1:42:02Speaker 01

  You can do it for 20 miles and when you catch someone at 20 miles, you're like, fuck, yeah. Cause you're like, hope I'm not following some old ass shit, dog. You know what I mean? Yeah, there's guys that can tell you like, hey, they walked backwards. This is good traffic. You're like, how the fuck, what were they healed day? Oh, you know, toe dig or a heel this or that. And then you can see when people were carpet, right? It's just like, oh, this is good sign. They're wearing carpet. And you're like, how? Like, well, just the imprint's slightly different. Like, these motherfuckers are good.

• 1:42:24Jocko Willink?

  Carpet on their feet to like.

• 1:42:25Speaker 01

  Oh, they do all kinds of different stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Carpet's a very common one. You know, the, the smuggling organizations, they, they, they, they offer them like, hey, we can give you carpet for 20 more dollars. And so they outline their feet, they wear the carpet and it's hard to see that imprint.

• 1:42:39Jocko Willink?

  Damn. Uh, you talk about the duty bag, tricky bag, which is where you carry all your gear. You talk about carrying a slingshot.

• 1:42:46Speaker 01

  It's not common. I did it. It's not common. Yeah.

• 1:42:48Jocko Willink?

  No, I was talking about you carried a slingshot.

• 1:42:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Um, one of the missions in Mosul with Sergeant Baraz, uh, we were, we were on an alley and the sniper's trying to take out the lights as we go. And he kind of did a kind of a curve where the sniper couldn't hit the light and it was, it was the older nods, right? So it whited out our nods pretty good. So we're like, fuck, we gotta fucking do something. I threw a rock by chance and fucking hit it. And we were like laughing, like, fuck, yeah, right? Yeah, exactly. Like one good strike and we still, um, we went back to the, to the room. We were kind of AR and the whole thing. And we were thinking about things that we can do. Cause we also had dogs that would approach us at night and kind of compromise us. And so the guys started talking about bringing BB guns or pellet guns. And I thought about a slingshot because I've had one since like when I was a kid. So they fuck it off. So I brought one with me in the border patrol, dude. And yeah, man, I fucking used that a couple of times.

• 1:43:34Jocko Willink?

  Buddy system, you talk about that, obviously landmarks, you know, just how you guys are navigating. Everyone knows the landmarks in the area. Uh, group, group is the term that you all use for the group of people that are uh, coming in. GPS, GPS is just part of your, part of your gig.

• 1:43:53Jocko Willink?

  And then people just being patriotic people that are, they're part of the border patrol. It's like the one big, biggest bond everyone has.

• 1:43:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, man, they know the mission. The mission is to protect America, right? And, and I think that's, look at, most of the border patrol is Hispanics, right? And that's the crazy part too, cause it's like, people think, oh, why would you turn your back on people? Like, no, it's not that. They're protecting their country. They believe in America, right? And it is genuinely probably the most patriotic law enforcement in America. Just their job day in a doubt is to protect our soil.

• 1:44:22Jocko Willink?

  Going back to the book here, to emphasize the sheer variety of what you can encounter on any given day, working as a border patrol agent is breathtaking. It can, it can include, it can include routine patrol operations, tracking and hunting smugglers, capturing and processing large groups of undocumented persons, participating in car chases to apprehend fleeing suspects and much more. The point is that while holding the line might sound like something static, every day is dynamic. You got all kinds of stuff going on. Just, just freaking mayhem all the time.

• 1:44:58Jocko Willink?

  A little more specificity here. The border patrol's main job is to apprehend persons who cross our borders illegally, while ICE is responsible for everything else that happens to that person once he or she is allowed to stay in the United States or is deported to their country of origin. ICE houses these illegal immigrants in holding facilities, sometimes for months on end, as immigration judges have overwhelming caseloads. In the majority of cases, those holding facilities are jails. Immigration judges are typically backed up for about six months or more. During this time of holding, the apprehended persons will receive food, medical treatment and housing while they await their hearing. Depending on the area of illegal crossing, the immigration judge can make a determination of deportation or a longer jail sentence.

• 1:45:41Jocko Willink?

  Sometimes during this process, a judge can allow entry into the country if the court can find evidence of the need for political asylum due to a country of origin hardships.

• 1:45:51Jocko Willink?

  And I mean, right now, like in San Diego, they put, they put people in hotel rooms. And they're doing that, where is that, New York, right?

• 1:45:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:45:59Jocko Willink?

  New York.

• 1:46:00Speaker 01

  It's, it's.

• 1:46:00Jocko Willink?

  It's gone crazy.

• 1:46:01Speaker 01

  It's crazy. I, we, you know, we're not.

• 1:46:05Speaker 01

  This is a, we don't have anything in our repertoire as a country to house this many individuals. That's even like remotely like humane, right? Like for the average dude back in the day when I was in, you know, um, just a regular dude, 20, 30, 40 years old coming across, they put them, they used to put them in private prisons. And the private prison, the crazy part about that is the private prison with guys who are in there for real shit, real prison shit. You know what I mean? And so, you know, you got the, they call them the paisas in the prison, their label is paisas, right? Which is like a, a Mexican national, but anyone from any demographic down South America, they'd house with paisas. And then anyone from America who was like a Mexican who was, who was, who was in prison would be, you know, or Sorenio or Norteño, right?

• 1:46:48Speaker 01

  So they're different, but the paisas ran the prisons pretty, pretty strong because there's vast numbers of them could like overwhelm any, any. So they weren't a prison gang, but they had to kind of come together in the prisons. And all of those dudes are there for either smuggling or, or illegal entry. It was wild, dude. And that's when I was working at the prison, I saw that before I even joined the border patrol. I was like, this is fucking crazy. What, what's up with all these Mexican dudes? You know what I mean? And you learn why they're in there. And yeah, they're just waiting for immigration judges to make a determination on their case.

• 1:47:15Jocko Willink?

  And, and like where you're talking about, uh, 9,000 a day, just at Eagle Pass right now? Like, that's insane.

• 1:47:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's not every day, but just recently it was. That's what happened. Yeah, no. So they have, yeah, in Eagle Pass recently, they, they built a processing center. So part of the border patrol job, right? Someone comes in illegally, whether it's illegally, just because they wanted to work and got caught, or seeking asylum illegally, they still entered illegally, right? They still had to be put through the process. And what we do is we, we process them and in the processing, we roll their fingerprints. We identify the country of origin, we identify their, their, what their identification is, right? So we have this data on them. And then from there, like, okay, the package is done. They're either seeking asylum or they're a family unit or whatever the case is, that's what the packet will be done for, like the legal documentation. Then it's like, we put them back into housing until ICE picks them up. ICE will pick them up and then take them wherever ICE does. It's none of our business. I don't even fucking know what it is.

• 1:48:06Speaker 01

  But what's happening, I know is that ICE is giving them an NTAs, notice to appear, right? And that is, that means here's your time to come back and talk to an immigration judge about your case and he'll make a determination on it. But until then, you're in America. We found an address that you claimed is family or friends and they're gonna be bringing you in or whatever and so go. What happened recently is like these, these, these government organizations, these non-government organizations, these nonprofits have been giving them money, phones and plane tickets to go wherever they need to and just kind of go and exist into America and until their immigration process or they don't or they never show up again. There's a good percentage that don't ever show up again and that's just been proven.

• 1:48:47Speaker 01

  And so that's what's happening now. We have no system in place for this massive influx. Why? I don't know. That's above my pay grade.

• 1:48:55Jocko Willink?

  Well, because it'd be freaking hard and it would take like a massive amount of effort to get. Can you imagine trying to process this many people? Like that's.

• 1:49:03Speaker 01

  It's so the process center alone in Eagle Pass is, I forget what they call it. Either way, it processes about 1,500 people a day. It can at max capacity can process 1,500 people a day and it has about five contracting companies that are working that together. There's some for the kids, some for just security, some for food, right? Whatever it is, there's just a lot of personnel working that location. And I think there's multiple here in San Diego. I'll look into that, but that one costs us 24 million a day.

• 1:49:39Jocko Willink?

  That's one.

• 1:49:41Speaker 01

  One. It's a day. It's gotta be. It's a day or a month, but I'm almost positive it's a day.

• 1:49:47Jocko Willink?

  It's something crazy.

• 1:49:47Speaker 01

  It's something to the point where I was like, I'm sorry, what?

• 1:49:50Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:51Speaker 01

  And so then I started trying to do the math like, well, what if we just deported them? Right? It was just, I don't understand. I don't understand what's going on, man.

• 1:50:00Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. One thing is we talk about like all these different, all these different approaches that you'd have to take to get this under some kind of control. Like one of them is you gotta let people know that this isn't a good move for you.

• 1:50:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:50:11Jocko Willink?

  You know what I mean? Because the whole idea of, of people that wanna come here hearing that like, hey, now's the time.

• 1:50:19Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:50:20Jocko Willink?

  You know, now's the time. Like it's a go. Hey, uh. Echo Charles here in San Diego. Used to be really, really hard to get a concealed carry permit.

• 1:50:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:50:30Jocko Willink?

  In San Diego County, like it was damn near impossible. And there was some kind of a, uh, uh, legal thing that happened and it wasn't even like a legal call. It was like, just the pressure turned and all of a sudden it got really easy. And now, now like a lot of people have concealed carry because you can just go and get it pretty relatively easy compared to what it used to be.

• 1:50:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:50:54Jocko Willink?

  Well, when it was really hard, people wouldn't even try. They wouldn't even try because it wasn't going to happen. And as soon as it got easy, everyone's just like, oh, cool. It's easy now. I'm going down there to the sheriff's and going to get my concealed carry. No factor. So I think that kind of thing has happened with America right now where people are like, like in other countries. Oh yeah. If you go to America right now, you can get through and you can get in and you can get it.

• 1:51:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:51:21Jocko Willink?

  You can get in. Now's the time and just that right there. And then you see it on the news, like if, if I was a foreign national, I wanted to come to America and I'm watching the news and I'd be like, wait a second. Run across there. If I get caught, they're going to put me in a hotel and give me a phone and give me a notice to appear. Wait, hey, am I, am I translating this correctly? You're telling me you're going to let me go in America and ask me to come back six months later to a court? That's what, that's what's going to happen? Cool. I'm in, I'm going. Now's the time to go.

• 1:51:51Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:51:52Jocko Willink?

  And now it's totally overwhelming.

• 1:51:53Speaker 01

  It's the weirdest thing because. So what was really weird was during Title 42. Title 42 was an executive order that was implemented during the COVID time, right? Because they were like, well, let's just shut the border down so then people can't bring more COVID into America. So we're going to implement this, this executive order that, that Mexico at the time was in agreeance. Like we could just send them right back to Mexico. And at some point. It stopped. At some point, we started letting them in. Like, late, when it's, when it, I think it was like only like four months ago, it transitioned back to, to, to Title VIII, right? To the 1523, whatever, 1525 or something.

• 1:52:29Jocko Willink?

  And what does that one say?

• 1:52:29Speaker 01

  1320, 1325. That is, if you enter into, uh, America outside of a port of entry, you know, you're here illegally, and you will be pressing charges or whatnot, right? So it's whatever, whatever it is. So right now, they're coming across, they're getting charged with 1325, that's what it is.

• 1:52:44Jocko Willink?

  But does that mean they have to get put in prison here?

• 1:52:46Speaker 01

  No, it's just, that's, that's the problem. There's no...

• 1:52:49Jocko Willink?

  Cause there's not enough prisons.

• 1:52:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's no, so all we're doing is processing them the way we do. If you have a history of record, of, of negative record, right? Some kind of background history, uh, sex offender, whatever, they'll send them back to the country. That's, that's gonna happen. If you don't have anything on record, well, you're gonna be welcomed in for, for notice to, uh, NTA, and the process will go as such. The problem is, that is because everyone is claiming political asylum. So the same thing, the conversation goes, claim political asylum. And it's up to them to determine if it is or not. And that's gonna take a long fucking time. And so they know the loophole, right?

• 1:53:21Jocko Willink?

  And I guess there's like, uh, people that give them the scripts of this is what you have to say.

• 1:53:26Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 1:53:26Jocko Willink?

  It's like, here's the script. I am claiming political asylum, I'm a blah, blah, blah, blah. And they have a little script to say, and they say it, and it's like, okay. You know, it's not the determination of either ICE or the Border Patrol to say, yeah, well, that sounds like, nope, you're not allowed. You, you get told, yep, nope.

• 1:53:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's not the Border Patrol's job to investigate that. It's like, okay, that's what you say, here's the asylum package.

• 1:53:44Jocko Willink?

  I'll put you in this pile over here.

• 1:53:45Speaker 01

  Boom. Yeah, and that's what happens.

• 1:53:49Jocko Willink?

  This is jacked.

• 1:53:49Speaker 01

  It's wild, dude. It's a wild, wild time.

• 1:53:54Jocko Willink?

  Then you have three groups that you talk about in here, that they get processed as Mexican, other than Mexican, and exotic. Right? So Mexican, obviously someone's Mexican. Um, other than Mexican, obviously that's someone that's not Mexican, but then that's like El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala. But then you get to this exotic category, considers anyone from places like Asia, the Middle East, and Europe. So now we have, like... People that are coming in and when you start coming in here from these further away places. Well, now there's more things to be concerned about.

• 1:54:26Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 1:54:26Jocko Willink?

  Cause why the hell are you coming here all the way from the Middle East?

• 1:54:28Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:54:29Jocko Willink?

  What's up, bro?

• 1:54:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, and using the Mexican border to do it, right?

• 1:54:33Jocko Willink?

  So we, and how are you making that happen?

• 1:54:35Speaker 01

  Right, there's a lot of money that gets involved to do that.

• 1:54:39Jocko Willink?

  How much does it cost to smuggle someone across the border?

• 1:54:41Speaker 01

  It just depends on what the organization is managing it. I mean, it could be $5,000, it could be $10,000, it just depends. It all depends, it just kind of fluctuates. Like right now, they're doing something like they're giving them a wristband. It's kind of like three tries. You know, you got three tries to make it, you know, the first try, second try, third try.

• 1:54:57Jocko Willink?

  Oh, you're saying the smugglers have that?

• 1:54:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like a hierarchy of like attempts, like you got three attempts with this amount of money.

• 1:55:02Jocko Willink?

  Like getting your Starbucks card punched, like first try, like, oh, you're back again, cool, punch it. You get three tries?

• 1:55:07Speaker 01

  It's a weird, I don't know the exact number on how much it costs, but they're spending a lot more money than they ever have just to save for that now.

• 1:55:18Speaker 01

  The caveat to that that I'll say is it is extremely expensive to do it the legal way as well. Hiring a lawyer who does immigration, right? Who helps you process your paperwork the right way and the time it takes is a long time. And I think that's, it's not an excuse, but it is a reason why people say, you know what? Why wait as long as it's gonna take me, I can just do this now. And that's, that's something that needs to be addressed on our side as well. Of a kind of a streamlined approach for people that are deserving of that streamlined approach. But that's the big reason. I've seen a friend of mine whose wife was from the UK. It took her 12 years to get a citizenship from the UK, female.

• 1:55:53Jocko Willink?

  Where did he live, where did they live?

• 1:55:54Speaker 01

  In South Carolina.

• 1:55:56Jocko Willink?

  My wife is a Brit and it was like every meeting that she had when we were in San Diego would like take months to schedule and then we moved to Virginia and she had like a meeting like two weeks later.

• 1:56:05Speaker 01

  No way.

• 1:56:06Jocko Willink?

  Because they're just overwhelmed here.

• 1:56:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:56:08Jocko Willink?

  And in Virginia, there's no one coming across the border like to Virginia, right? So it's, it was just a lot easier once you got there.

• 1:56:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:56:15Jocko Willink?

  But uh.

• 1:56:16Speaker 01

  How much did it cost you guys?

• 1:56:17Jocko Willink?

  I don't remember, it wasn't crazy. I mean, because, I mean, I was whatever, an O1 at the time.

• 1:56:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:56:23Jocko Willink?

  But it wasn't some crazy amount of money. I think it was like in the hundreds of dollars. Like we didn't get a lawyer.

• 1:56:28Speaker 01

  You just processed.

• 1:56:29Jocko Willink?

  I mean, she was my wife, so maybe that makes it, we were in the military.

• 1:56:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:56:32Jocko Willink?

  So maybe that makes it easier, but it wasn't, I don't remember the expense being any sort of barrier at all. So it was probably like a hundred bucks.

• 1:56:40Speaker 01

  Couple hundred bucks, yeah.

• 1:56:41Jocko Willink?

  You know, I mean, we got married at the courthouse for 50 bucks. So you know, that's how we're rolling back in the day.

• 1:56:48Jocko Willink?

  Cool. Here you say, "While Border Patrol agents face many dangers when apprehending undocumented immigrants, those dangers increase in intensity when it comes to tracking, finding, and arresting drug smugglers. Border Patrol agents must sort undocumented immigrants from drug smugglers. This is one of the most important things we do because drug smugglers are often armed, and if cornered, they might try and take out Border Patrol agents when we try and apprehend them." So this is a whole nother gig.

• 1:57:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's the part of, uh, it's probably the most exciting thing you do as a regular Border Patrol agent, is apprehending dope, but it's also the one that carries probably the most threat level, right? Um, people who transport dope for, for a good amount of reason, right? They have, they carry, they carry firearms, or they know that they're gonna go to jail for a long time. So, someone puts up a fight, it's gonna be those guys. Uh, and so you know when there's dope, it's like, "Oh shit, you're, you're in for a potential fight." Um, there's very little, uh, very little times that you see an actual engagement on the border, and there's a reason for that, right? Because as much as there's a threat, um, they would be hard pressed to pull that trigger because the repercussions of causing any kind of violence on the border, they still have to face the cartel. The cartel keeps a balance, as crazy as that is.

• 1:57:59Speaker 01

  They will keep a balance because as we secure our borders the best we possibly can, they're still getting enough across, you know what I mean? This is just the name of the game. Uh, and so when their side, uh, decides to engage on one of us, and maybe injures one of us, or creates enough buzz that it's a national news, the influx of agents that we bring just to protect, I mean, every special operations unit in the Border Patrol gets activated, our MRTs, everybody, and then now that border is shut the fuck down.

• 1:58:26Jocko Willink?

  Oh yeah.

• 1:58:27Speaker 01

  So then you fucked with money from the cartel, and they're like, "Well, fuck you." Right, and so, they don't fuck with us, they fuck with the people who stirred the pot. And so, it is not uncommon for them to show a sign of like, "Well, don't worry, we killed them." You know, and you're like, "Jesus, what a fucking game." This is the wildest game ever, right? But, but knowing that, there is guys who go off the hinges, right? There's guys who, who... Who still carry and so it's a fear that we have is someone who's carrying a hundred pound bundle might potentially be willing to fight and so you just know that it's poker factors up there. You're like, okay, this this might get real.

• 1:59:01Jocko Willink?

  What about like fourteen year old boys?

• 1:59:02Speaker 01

  Oh, they do it all time.

• 1:59:03Jocko Willink?

  Cause they're, cause to me, that's like a free.

• 1:59:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, so very.

• 1:59:06Jocko Willink?

  Free hall pass, right?

• 1:59:07Speaker 01

  Right, exactly. It's very common for for them to use fourteen, fifteen, sixteen year old boys to smuggle dope and those guys don't give a shit. They'll run their dope and if they get caught, they get caught and they roll their, they roll their fingers for you. Like, that's, yeah, there's like, they ask, can I get my burrito, my, my drink? They know the process and you're like, this motherfucker, roll their fingers, sits there and waits. They get sent back to Mexico to go do it again. Yeah, that's very common. Texas started a law, though, if they got caught over, I think it was four times and they were at sixteen, we could start charging as adults. So that started changing things because like, obviously, this motherfucker is just smuggling dope. And so there's things that are putting into play to try and mitigate that. But yeah, for the most part, they use them young dudes. I talk about it in there as well, like the juveniles get, get.

• 1:59:50Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that was the opening thing that I read was like, you're, that was a couple of younger, you know, fourteen, fifteen year old kids that you're about to have to take a shot at.

• 1:59:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, that was, that was a, that was an intimidating moment. I was like, this is fucking crazy.

• 2:00:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Uh, you got in here, I mean, you got the freaking crazy story about here. You jump in and save a dude that's drowning in the, in, in the river, in Rio Grande. I mean, and it's kind of crazy. You're like, you're like, hey, I'm a strong swimmer. You're telling your senior guy there. You're like, hey, I'm a good swimmer. I can get him. He's like, it's up to you, man. And boom, you go for it. And then it's kind of, it's kind of weird. I won't read the whole thing, but like, you eventually get washed up or you say, as I got closer, I could see the panic in the man's face. This guy's drowning in the Rio Grande. Each time I saw his head drop below water, I was worried that he wouldn't come back up. The current was pushing us down river as much as I was gaining on his location. I was about four feet from him when we both washed up in a shallow part

• 2:00:48Jocko Willink?

  of the river. He stood up with the water now just above his knees and I could see he was grateful to be alive. I stood up, not sure what to do next. It was an awkward moment with me being in my boxers and a green undershirt with his, with a shirt cuff around my wrist. Cause you'd ripped off your shirt and ripped it. We were in the middle of the river and it was shallow all the way to the Mexican side. I looked at him and he looked at me almost as if we both didn't know what the next move was. I knew there was nothing I could do, so I started turning back to the American side. He gave me a sheepish look and then headed back to Mexico. I swam back to the US side of the river and was met by a group of agents who had been watching the entire event. Some thought I was the biggest idiot for risking my life. Some commended me on the attempt. I was just grateful I didn't watch that man die without trying to rescue him.

• 2:01:33Speaker 01

  Yeah. When I was in the academy, man, um, we had this crazy fucking swim instructor. He was a board tackler back when board tack was going down to Columbia doing some fucking dope ass shit, right? This dude is like old school, post traumatic stress, fucking psycho ass motherfucker, right? And he'd be like, he like, come here, get over here. And he was like a fucking intense, like scary dude, right? I was like, this dude's wild, bro. He showed us this video. He's like, watch. And as we're like, we're, we're, we're watching these two guys drown. He attempted to come across and they started to drown. And one jumped in to try and save the other and then they both started to drown. And then they're doing this thing where they're pulling each other under because they're panicking. And I'm watching and anytime we, any of us start like, we're trying to look away, he'd say like, watch, keep watching. You know, and he's like, wants like, pay attention, motherfucker. Like, he wanted us to feel the gravity of this fucking shit.

• 2:02:18Speaker 01

  And I felt it, dude. I watched those two drown and I was like, Jesus, fuck. A lot of people who come across the Rio Grande River don't understand the dangers of it. A lot of them don't know how to fucking swim. They weren't raised with a swimming pool, you know what I mean? It wasn't common and they'd still make the attempt to come across no matter what. Some of them have things like floaties or whatever the case and some don't. Some think it's shallow and when they take one step, boom, they're sucked under, right? They're fucking pulled under. And so in that moment, man, I told my, I was like, I don't, I've always known like, I don't, I'm willing to fucking risk my life to save people. You know what I mean? Even if it's an illegal, I, I, I just, my heart couldn't sit there and just watch. And so when I saw this shit happening, I was like, get the fuck out of here. Like this is my first like 30 days on the job, dog. You know what I mean? And I told the, I told my seniors, like, I, I, dude, I, I gotta go, dude.

• 2:03:03Speaker 01

  So when I ripped my shirt off so fast, the cuff came fucking, so I had my fucking little green cuff. It was a tattoo. It was a tattoo thing. I had to wear long sleeves. So I had this green cuff, my fucking underwear, um, my, my shirt. And I just jumped in this bitch and I handed him my gun, like, dude, hold this. And, uh, yeah, we both got washed up and we just looked at each other and I was like, this, what the? Fuck, dog. Didn't even get to rescue the dude, you know what I mean? Like, we just stood there. But, uh, the rumors from that for the next few years was like, "Bro, I can't believe you jumped in to save a doper. I can't believe you did this." It just turned into this rumor mill of like shit. And it was funny, but I had to tell them all like, "No, man, we both got washed up on flat." And they're like, "It was the weirdest moment ever, dude." And I just saw one of the supervisors. She goes, "I remember that. I should've let you fucking drown." Cause it was just like, she was like, "You dumbass new guy."

• 2:03:48Speaker 01

  But I, I felt I, I did, I did the right thing. Um, you know, it just turned out the way it was.

• 2:03:54Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 2:03:57Jocko Willink?

  Going back to the book here. "Gotaways" is a term we use when we track a group as long as we can and the trail ends at a point where we assume they have been loaded into a truck or a vehicle. We determine this by tracking the footprints to a road, at which point the sign ceases without crossing the road. This is a sign that the group is loaded and we would then report the group as "gotaways."

• 2:04:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, often. It happens often.

• 2:04:20Jocko Willink?

  That's pretty normal.

• 2:04:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, man, as, as shitty as that sounds, even at top performance, you're gonna find, you're gonna have gotaways. You're gonna be, "Hey, I got a sign at three at the bar." Boom, boom, boom, we track and we see the same sign go up to the top and then right there at the road, like, "Fuck, they were picked up." At a location where like, no cameras there, nothing. It's, it's, it's common.

• 2:04:38Jocko Willink?

  Frustrating.

• 2:04:39Speaker 01

  Fuck, yeah, it's frustrating, cause you don't know who the fuck that was. That for me is like, the tactical mind of mine, who the fuck was that? Who was that? Was it the next dude who's gonna do some kind of terrorist, you know, act on America? Was it the next dude carrying some fucking biological fucking warfare? I don't fucking know, dude. And that frustrates the fuck out of me.

• 2:04:59Jocko Willink?

  Speaking of Spanish, you got this in here. I walked over to this guy and asked him as calmly as I could, "¿Cómo me llamo?" He didn't reply. I was using the motivation "ask, tell, make" method that I learned in the military. I got a little louder. "¿Cómo me llamo?" Again, nothing. The man had just a confused look on his face. Now I was getting pissed. The dude was stonewalling me. I have one job to do and it's to ask the guy what his name was. "¿Cómo me llamo?" I screamed as loud as I could. My partner ran over and asked, "Bro, what the fuck are you doing? He doesn't know your name." It was only then that I realized I was asking him, "What's my name?"

• 2:05:40Jocko Willink?

  You can imagine the good nature abuse I got from my fellow agents. Even today, I still get calls about this.

• 2:05:45Speaker 01

  Fuck dude.

• 2:05:45Jocko Willink?

  That was pretty.

• 2:05:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, shit was embarrassing as fuck, dude.

• 2:05:50Jocko Willink?

  Screaming.

• 2:05:51Speaker 01

  The dude kept trying to look for my name tag too. He kept looking, he's like trying to figure it out.

• 2:05:57Speaker 01

  Fuck dude.

• 2:05:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, dude, they always, you know, people would, you know, they, they would teach us in Iraq, like how to say all these different things. And you'll get down and show me your hands and all this stuff and like 95% of the time, people were just like, they have no idea that you're even trying to speak their language because you're just a big white dude. Or at least me, I'm a big white dude like saying whatever. Shufnayadak and they're, they think I'm saying something in English that they don't know. Even though I'm supposed to be saying like, show me your hands and they're just looking at you like.

• 2:06:24Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:06:25Jocko Willink?

  It took me, it didn't take me very long to figure out that I was not a linguist. And this wasn't, you know, we're going to figure this out another way.

• 2:06:35Jocko Willink?

  For Border Patrol agents, dope is the name of the game. Catching dope was like a stalking, it's like stalking a prize deer and taking a hero shot once you're close enough to do so. Trouble was at that time, everyone in my unit had had their photo taken with Sees dope, but me. Anytime I was involved in a dope bust, I was always part of a group effort and I never really had that feeling that I was instrumental in the outcome. That might not make complete sense to all of you reading this, but for me, that photo was a rite of passage.

• 2:07:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:07:04Jocko Willink?

  And this is the story that I actually started the podcast with. That's where that was your first big drug bust that you actually felt like, yo, this is, this is mine.

• 2:07:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:07:14Jocko Willink?

  And you got that picture that they've always put in the news, right? They always put that in the news.

• 2:07:19Speaker 01

  They do, but we have a ton of them. We just don't post them and stuff. But yeah, it's something that, you know, the, you get commended by your but, you know, your brothers and sisters who work with you. They're like, hey, good job on that one, you know, like, an 800 pound bust is pretty cool for us. Like it's a significant one, you know? And so, yeah, we chase that. It's kind of.

• 2:07:35Jocko Willink?

  Those dudes, those kids, they had pot, right?

• 2:07:38Speaker 01

  But yeah.

• 2:07:39Jocko Willink?

  And how do you feel about that now? Like?

• 2:07:40Speaker 01

  Now it's weird, right? Yeah. It's the weirdest fucking thing. Yeah. I, it's one like, I'm not removed from that. And you know, I sit there and be like, well, that's fucking weird as shit now. Like, like they're just carrying a, you know, a thousand pounds of fucking weed. It's just weed.

• 2:07:53Jocko Willink?

  Do they do that now and like there's no, you don't get in trouble for smuggling weed across the border?

• 2:07:57Speaker 01

  No, you still do. You still, I just, I don't know the rules of it completely, but you're still not a lot of transport dope that way. It's still illegal.

• 2:08:04Jocko Willink?

  It's weird that you can go down to the store like down the street from where we are right now and just buy pop. You know, when someone's getting rolled up coming across the border like.

• 2:08:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:08:11Jocko Willink?

  Has the whole world gone crazy?

• 2:08:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's fucking weird, right? And the other, the other part is like, I know that drug smuggling has slowed down a lot for, for marijuana. But you know, obviously the influx of meth and, and fentanyl and all those other shit, cocaine still, yeah.

• 2:08:29Jocko Willink?

  Um, fast forward a little bit here. You say, I want to highlight the death of Brian Terry in the line of duty. I have to tell a story in a way that sheds light on the true nature of events. What follows the story? I've been able to compile over almost seven years of research during my career. Agent Terry's death occurred during Operation Huckleberry, which was intended to disrupt local RIP crews. RIP crew is a term used for a group that steals drugs from other and other contraband. These groups have been popping up more recently over the years in an effort to steal the dope loads that come across the borders or goods from unsuspecting illegal immigrant groups. These small pocket gangs have found the vulnerabilities in the uninhabited deserts along the border.

• 2:09:12Jocko Willink?

  And so basically this group that he's working with gets an intel report about a certain area.

• 2:09:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:09:18Jocko Willink?

  Where there was a lot of these RIP crews had, had a high possibility of working. He says the original, or you say the original plan was to have an interdiction team and full early warning teams on both sides of this valley, north and south of the X, and for the operation to last a month. After two weeks of long days and longer nights, the teams became exhausted. They thought it was best to cut some manpower to give the teams more adequate work to rest ratios.

• 2:09:47Jocko Willink?

  And I'm gonna fast forward a little bit. The unfortunate thing about this decision to reduce manpower, because that's what they ended up doing, like, hey, this is, you know, guys are getting tired.

• 2:09:54Speaker 01

  It's just smoking everybody.

• 2:09:55Jocko Willink?

  Um, is that it proved to be a costly and the most devastating way. On December 15th, 2010, a RIP crew had approached the designated objective location that BORTAC was focused on. This is exactly the situation this operation was developed for. As the, as the four RIP crew criminals advanced closer to BORTAC, BORTAC was able to determine that the RIP crew was heavily armed. The BORTAC team identified themselves and engaged with less than lethal force. It is important to understand that up until this point, the BORTAC SOP or ROE was to initiate with less than lethal force and escalate to force if necessary. As the BORTAC team engaged, the RIP crews returned fire. From what I was told, it didn't take

• 2:10:40Jocko Willink?

  long for BORTAC to transition to lethal force and initial, after the initial engagement. But in the chaos of the volley of fire, Brian Terry was hit. Agent Terry was struck in the pelvis by a round fired by one of the suspects armored in AK-47. He was flown to the hospital where he succumbed early the next morning. Brian Terry's loss was the first line of duty death in BORTAC history. Agent Terry was a US Marine Corps veteran and had served with the US Border Patrol for three and a half years. He had previously served as a police, police officer in Lincoln Park, Michigan. He left behind his parents, one brother, two sisters, five nieces, and one nephew. I need to relate these stories in order to make the dangers of guarding America's borders real for you by telling

• 2:11:22Jocko Willink?

  you about a person, not a statistic. It's important to show how the Border Patrol has had to evolve and come up with better SOPs to enable agents to do their job proactively, even aggressively when needed, without putting themselves at extreme risk. A final reason and an intensely personal one to tell Brian Terry's story is to explain how his death influenced my career trajectory, leading me to apply for BORSTAR and eventually serve alongside BORTAC. These were major career decisions that were hugely influenced by the death of a single agent.

• 2:12:01Jocko Willink?

  So this is the introduction here of BORTAC and BORSTAR.

• 2:12:09Jocko Willink?

  What do you got?

• 2:12:09Speaker 01

  The special operations of the Border Patrol has evolved into this fucking incredible fighting force and protective force, but as well as medical force. I was on the fence of whether I wanted to go BORTAC when I first joined because I did the Ranger thing and part of me was like, you know, losing my friends. I've always questioned like, man, what if I was a medic? What if I was a medic? I could have, I could have helped. You know, for some reason, I was always in the back of my head. My father was an EMT. I've always, I did EMT when I got out of high school. When I was left the Border Patrol, went back to EMT again. And so I kind of always had this medical foundation. And thinking like that, I just felt like, well, maybe I'll just be a good medic. Maybe I'll give you

• 2:12:50Speaker 01

  a good shooting medic for the, for the tactical teams. At the time, BORTAC and BORSTAR weren't really fully integrated. It was kind of, it was kind of still in the air. There was a lot of animosity between both groups. The Brian Terry incident is just an example. They didn't have a medic on hand with them. It wasn't their SOP, right? For them, it was like, oh, just wait and we'll call you when we need you kind of concept. And even if a medic was there, just to be straight, it was one of those shots that was, it wasn't, you could, he was gonna, he was gonna die from the, from the incident anyways. But it always made me like, why the fuck not have a medic, you know? And so when, when I read that, I was activated. I was a drill sergeant. I got, I got activated for the military for a year. And I read about it and I started calling my friends about it. I'm like, dude, what the fuck? Where's the medic? And I kept asking that. And they were

• 2:13:35Speaker 01

  like, they didn't have a medic assigned to him. It just wasn't a thing. And so that was like, well, fuck that. I want to be a medic. I'm going to BORSTAR. I'm going to be, I'm going to be the best fucking shooting, shooting medic I could possibly be. And that's really what pushed me to become a BORSTAR agent was that maybe I can implement things or help trust.

• 2:13:55Speaker 01

  I'd help BORTAC hopefully trust their medics to be to be on on target with them. And it was weird to me that BORTAC didn't didn't think like we did in the military. Like military had years and years of proving why we do what we do. Why not fucking take their train, they put a medic on.

• 2:14:10Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's like crazy.

• 2:14:11Speaker 01

  It's weird as fuck. And then you know what they do? They'd be like, hey, we're gonna teach them just blood, you know, stop the bleeding shit. And so, yeah, but all these BORTACers don't wanna be medics. Like, it's like, okay, cool. I did the course. Now, you know, I have my med pack, but like, no one really gives a fuck about medical until you fucking need medical. And so, when I was going through BORSTAR selection, I remember a guy, so just by through a cousin of mine, told a friend, and then they got to him and goes, hey, uh, you're a ranger? And I was like, I was, sir. Like, we can use you. It's like, I know, sir. Like, I'm trying, you know? I gotta get through this fucking selection. He's like, alright, um, keep going. I'm like, I'm going, you know? And so I knew that they already knew that there was a ranger going through BORSTAR.

• 2:14:54Speaker 01

  And I knew that there was a potential future in really helping, hopefully, bridge that gap.

• 2:14:59Jocko Willink?

  And just so everybody knows, so BORTAC, and we have friends that are on BORTAC, but BORTAC, like, what's the, what's the mission of BORTAC? They're, they're like, they're assaulters. They're gonna hit targets. They're gonna do warrants.

• 2:15:11Speaker 01

  They're the SWAT team of the Border Patrol. And we, you know, I was attached to them as a medic, but what they did was, any kind of, so if the US Marshals had a warrant, you know, they don't have the manpower, we, we would be the manpower, right? The BORTAC would take that mission. Uh, any kind of like escaped convicts that had a potential of heading towards any border, BORTAC would get activated for that. Um, when they're just sitting there looking for new missions, it's usually to disrupt, uh, drug trafficking organizations. And so we gather intel and do operations to disrupt. And so they're just the, the, the tactical fighting force of the border. They're, they're, they have sniper qualification guys. They have dog teams, bite teams. They have everything you could fucking think of that a special operation tier one element would have. And they are the tier one element of the Border Patrol.

• 2:15:54Jocko Willink?

  And then BOR Star is

• 2:15:56Speaker 01

  BOR Star is

• 2:15:57Jocko Willink?

  Trauma, Search and Rescue.

• 2:15:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, Search, Trauma and Rescue. Essentially, what a BOR Star agent is, is a civilian version of a pararescue jumper. We do long line rescues, we do swift water rescues, we do, we're a shooter, we're proficient in shooting. Not as much as a BOR TAC or would be, but we, we do care, our, we do care for our shooting proficiencies as well. Uh, we do medical interventions. Uh, we're all EMTs. Sometimes, uh, we're EMT with, uh, with the capability of, uh, innovation, right? So airways, because we're usually two hours from definitive care. And so we have a high level of medical proficiency as well as we have osteo medics, paramedics, and so on and so forth. And so we are the kind of the best medical practitioners on the border you can think of. Uh, if there's a car accident, surveillance, doesn't matter, we engage, we, we work.

• 2:16:43Speaker 01

  If, uh, we're out there and we hear there's a group that got scattered and we're nervous about the heat, potentially, um, them dying because of the heat exposure, we're out there doing search and rescue. If we get a 911 call of a, of an illegal immigrant that gets lost, we're the ones who, who do the triangulate that location and we go find him. Uh, there, there's a long list of what we do. I've, in the book, I talk about swift water rescues. You know, I've, I've done it all as a medic and eventually, you know, that's what we do. So there's BOR TAC is your tactical team, BOR Star is your medical team. Originally, BOR Star was, it was implemented to help for the issues that you see with illegal immigration as well as agents in the field. And then they slowly kind of came together and created like a really strong, um, tactical team with a medic attached.

• 2:17:25Speaker 01

  Like now medics are attached with them and that is the SOP and it'll continue to stay that way.

• 2:17:29Jocko Willink?

  As it should be. I don't want to detour this too bad, but it's sort of a detour in your life. You, you mentioned it real quickly. So you were activated as a reservist to go be a drill sergeant in the army during this whole thing.

• 2:17:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:17:41Jocko Willink?

  For a year.

• 2:17:42Speaker 01

  For a year.

• 2:17:42Jocko Willink?

  Where were you, uh, drill sergeant?

• 2:17:44Speaker 01

  Fort Sill.

• 2:17:45Jocko Willink?

  And this was boot camp?

• 2:17:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, I pushed fucking, uh, I pushed five cycles in one year. Uh, one of those cycles, the first cycle was called WTC Warrior Transition Center. It was people who got out of the military and wanted to come back and finish. And so they did like a, uh, like a dumbed down version of basic training. A lot of them like thirty, forty year old dudes were just like, I just need my five years and I get my retirement. You know what I mean? So I do be their drill sergeant and some of those guys are still my friends to this day now. They're like, hey, you're my drill sergeant. I'm like, oh, fuck. But, uh, yeah, then I pushed troops for, for, it was, uh, first of the four fifteenth.

• 2:18:14Jocko Willink?

  And those are normal recruits that come in?

• 2:18:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:18:17Jocko Willink?

  Like you, you, if someone joins the army, you can go to Fort Sill and that's where you're going through boot camp.

• 2:18:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:18:22Jocko Willink?

  It's not all in benny?

• 2:18:23Speaker 01

  No, no, benny is all infantry.

• 2:18:25Jocko Willink?

  Got it.

• 2:18:25Speaker 01

  Bening is all, now it's not all infantry. There's other MOSs, but it's specific to infantry.

• 2:18:29Jocko Willink?

  Got it.

• 2:18:30Speaker 01

  Fort Sill is, is mixed MOSs and sometimes you're gonna get, like I had every MOS you can think of besides infantry. No, it was, I don't, I don't think I had a combat arms person. I think I had all, you know, forty two hours or whatever, just men and women. It was like fully integrated. It was fucking nuts.

• 2:18:43Jocko Willink?

  Oh, it's integrated?

• 2:18:44Speaker 01

  Yes, it was.

• 2:18:45Jocko Willink?

  Men and women together in boot camp?

• 2:18:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, dude.

• 2:18:47Jocko Willink?

  How was that?

• 2:18:48Speaker 01

  It was tough. We had a lot of cameras in every different a- area because these dudes, they just, they're stupid fucking kids. You know what I mean? They're all, yeah.

• 2:18:54Jocko Willink?

  It's just mayhem.

• 2:18:54Speaker 01

  It's fucking nuts. My whole platoon at one time was all women and it was like, you had to have a female drill sergeant with you at all times because just, just to protect yourself from, from just shit. You know what I mean? Yeah, dude, it was, it was crazy. It was cool though. I actually really loved being a drill sergeant.

• 2:19:07Jocko Willink?

  How long was a cycle? How long was a boot camp?

• 2:19:09Speaker 01

  Hmm, what was it? Was it, was it eight weeks or nine weeks, I think it was? Cause it's not OSIT, right? OSIT was like the full, um, basic training and AIT. It wasn't that, it was just, they're just basic training, boom, and they shoot off to the AIT. And so I believe it was nine weeks or eight weeks.

• 2:19:24Jocko Willink?

  Did you just like, it seems like in that situation, you just see everything. People breaking down, people freaking out, people trying to kill themselves, people trying to like, just mayhem.

• 2:19:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, I had, I had a kid in another company while I was there doing CQ, jump off the second floor and, uh, take his own life. We had a bus of soldiers who who rolled over because the drill sergeant at the time of driving was just reckless and rolled it over and just hurt permanently hurt several kids. Uh, you had some really good kids who went out there and did good shit, right? It was just everything. It was it was cool because being a father, this was being a dad, right? You're showing these young knuckleheads. I taught a kid how to shave and he never had a dad. I had a girl who when she graduated, she said, Joe, I look up to you like you were like a dad to me. I'm like, fuck, what a crazy experience. So it was a beautiful experience, but it's so like compartmentalized in my world. It's like, cool, get back to work. You know what I mean?

• 2:20:14Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's wild. It's it's just a wild. Like I said, you barely mentioned in the book. It's literally like one line or maybe two sentences in the book. Like by this time I was, you know, in Fort Sill and I was working as a drill sergeant. I was like, damn, that's a whole. That's a whole thing, man, being a drill sergeant. Like I, I always have an interest in people that worked at Bud's, like Bud's instructors, because I never did it. And I never really even paid attention to it, dude. Like honestly, like my, I, I went through it and like that was it. It was done with Bud's and I just was in the teams. I never really thought about it again, but. Then I, when I got out and I started like paying attention and talking to my buddies that worked it like it's, you learn a lot about human beings.

• 2:20:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:20:52Jocko Willink?

  And what's going through their little heads.

• 2:20:54Speaker 01

  Yeah. So like, when I sat and wrote this book, I was like, all right, is this gonna be my life story?

• 2:21:02Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:21:02Speaker 01

  No, this is just one part because I have, I, I want to write that story. I want to write my leadership book and a lot of it is focused on being an SDO and Ranger down and a drill sergeant and the the dichotomy, to use one of the words that that you've made fucking massive. Is like, what an interesting difference between those two, but as well as the values that both of them I learned from. And so I definitely want to write my leadership book eventually, but like I decided to compartmentalize my life so that I have more stories to tell, but I give them, give them more credit when, you know, give them more time.

• 2:21:31Jocko Willink?

  That's what's funny is as you read this book, it's like one lot. Actually, I don't, I think you have like no lines about Ranger School. It's just like, on this day I graduated. I'm like, dude, you know, like Ranger School is a big deal, man. That's one of the hardest schools in the US military. That's a thing that people, you know, wear with a badge of honor is having a Ranger tab.

• 2:21:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:21:51Jocko Willink?

  And like, you're like a graduate on this date, you know? Oh, and by the way, one of your deployments to. To Iraq is like you just said it was your best deployment. It's highly kinetic guys got wounded. In the, in the book you don't, you just say, I got back from a deployment.

• 2:22:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:22:05Jocko Willink?

  You don't even talk about it. So you got a lot of material left in you, bro.

• 2:22:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. The intention was to give the, all the folks I can to the border patrol.

• 2:22:10Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:22:11Speaker 01

  And, and also to hopefully not like, look how cool I am.

• 2:22:14Jocko Willink?

  Well, that's another cool thing is honestly, like even though I'm into like hearing about Ranger School and whatever, and your deployments. This book is about Border Patrol and there's a whole, this is a, this is worthy of its own book.

• 2:22:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:22:28Jocko Willink?

  You know what I mean? Like, I'm glad it's like this. Let's face it. There's a lot of books about, I mean, we've covered hundreds of books on this podcast. Going back to freaking, you know, eighteen hundreds. Um, and you know, all from a soldier's perspective, I don't, I've never, I don't, is there another book? That's first person account of Border Patrol?

• 2:22:49Speaker 01

  Not like this. There's a few like independent people who just, you know, self-publishing stuff, but like there's nothing like this.

• 2:22:53Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So this, this is really nailing an area that people just don't know much about. So.

• 2:22:57Speaker 01

  Especially the special operations. The first time really.

• 2:22:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:23:00Speaker 01

  Really highlighting that.

• 2:23:01Jocko Willink?

  You say this, "My mind was made up. It was clear to me that medics need to be part of potentially, all potentially dangerous missions that Border Patrol and agents undertook, or Border Patrol agents undertook. I wanted to be part of that solution and help rectify the situation. I knew that BORTAC agents and BORSTAR agents didn't, often didn't always appreciate each other. I also knew there would be a bridge. There, there would need to be a bridge to bring the two together. All the evidence and experience that I had suggested that BORTAC agents were reluctant to fully embrace BORSTAR agents as important players in the tactical world of BORTAC. I also knew they were absolutely incorrect.

• 2:23:44Jocko Willink?

  I thought that I could provide that bridge by taking my experience of being an Army Ranger infantryman with a wealth of knowledge of combat operations and tactics and transitioning that skillset into becoming a trusted tactical medic in the Border Patrol. That was my new mission. But first, I had to apply for BORSTAR and pass their rigorous selection process.

• 2:24:07Jocko Willink?

  The seven of us headed to the selection site in San Diego, California. We were going to a small island called Coronado. Most might be familiar with this place, some more than others. As it is the location of Naval Special Warfare Command where Navy SEALs go through their training. We moved into the same barracks as the SEAL candidates going through BUDs. Looking back on that aspect of our training years later, it's a bit of a blur. What I do remember was getting on a bus and heading to a place called Gloria de Bay. Once there, we checked our gear and waited for everyone to get there. It was the calm before the storm. I remember getting our number identifier. That was a participant number based on alphabetic sequence. My number was 83.

• 2:24:49Jocko Willink?

  Once we received our numbers, they took us back to the SEAL barracks and all hell broke loose. The cadre was dumping our gear, looking for contraband. They found so much stuff that I couldn't help but believe they planted it just to make us pay. This cadre was worse than a new Army Drill Sergeant who had just graduated from the academy. They smoked us for hours and hours as if they didn't give a damn that we had a PT test the next day. Once the smoke job was done, they gave us so many impossible tasks that I knew we were in for a long night. From cleaning the barracks to lining up our gear bags, to delegating fire guards, to assigning bunks. It was meant to kill anytime we were thought we might get for sleep. This was a common thing to do in selections. If you don't introduce real time stressors, you have to create them by taking away common comforts like phones,

• 2:25:32Jocko Willink?

  families, sleep, food, basically all those items we've grown accustomed to having easy access. But of all the stressors, lack of sleep was the crippler that could make the strongest man question everything. It was maybe 0300 we decided to bed down and deal with the consequences in the morning. The room was trashed, the tasks unfinished, and I was making every effort to be a gray man for as long as I could. Getting through this next day meant everything. I needed to get through the PT test, swim, litter carry the next day. After that, it was all about having the intestinal fortitude to keep pushing. I closed my eyes and tried to be ready for what was to come. It didn't take long. At four in the morning, we heard a wake up. The instructor cadre came crashing in with a vengeance. I woke up to what felt like deja vu.

• 2:26:17Jocko Willink?

  I jumped off my bunk to get dressed, but before that I was so disoriented that I grabbed the guy next to me and yelled at him, "What course is this?" He yelled back, "Four star selection." Now it's all making sense. I had been to so many courses in my career, especially ones with rude awakenings into military barracks, that I was confused as to what course I had just time traveled to. I told you that lack of sleep was a stressor and I was living it.

• 2:26:42Jocko Willink?

  You go through, so you know, you go through awesome details in the book of what this selection's like, really tough selection. You have a PT test the next morning, third of the class freaking fails it. Next night, similar thing. They got something called Rescue Randy, which is like litter carrying. Like in SEAL training, you're carrying boats on your head.

• 2:27:02Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:27:02Jocko Willink?

  This, you guys are carrying a litter around with a freaking dummy on it.

• 2:27:07Jocko Willink?

  Funny part of all this, funny in retrospect, not so much while it was happening, was that while we were getting dusted off by our cadre, so was the next BUDs training class. It was one big pissing contest between cadres of opposing forces. I realized how this was a huge disadvantage for our class. The cadre just, wouldn't just copy what the BUDs instructors were doing, they would try and top them, all to make our lives as miserable as possible. I can see that going down.

• 2:27:33Speaker 02

  Oh, it was fucking nuts. I was looking at it like, this is fucked.

• 2:27:39Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward a little bit. I have never been in a situation in my military career that would have made me quit. The hardest thing I had done before joining the military was Hell Week in football. Hell Week was a week-long physical fitness and football simulated exercise that would push most high school kids to the brink of quitting. During Army Basic Training and beyond, I had never let the idea of quitting cross my mind. Even when I, when pushed to my limits, I had always continued to push forward and find a way to power through. That is until day seven of bore star selection. My knee was starting to swell. It was painful to bend and agonizing to run on, but it was still working. As I started to fall out of the morning PT session run on the beach, the cadre started to punish everyone for my lack of ability to keep up.

• 2:28:23Jocko Willink?

  They would yell, say, thank you to 83 and how does 83? How does it feel 83 to know you are the weakest link? Those words on any other day of training would fall upon death, death ears. But on that day, at that moment, it was the excuse that I needed just to stop the pain. Yeah. I was feeling defeated and for the first time in my life, I contemplated quitting. It was an emotionally painful thought. I kept wondering what my kids would think of me. What would my father? How would my father react to me? What would he say? Or would he say that I wasn't tough enough? How would it feel to face everyone back in my unit who up until then believed in me? A cadre instructor named McCardell was in my ear the whole time.

• 2:29:05Jocko Willink?

  He was playing good cop, bad cop and was going all psycho on me. As bad cop, he yelled things like quit 83, you aren't good enough. Go home 83, we don't want you. Then he switched to the nice guy persona and said things like, it's okay 83. You don't want to permanently hurt yourself. It'll ruin your future. The van's there, man, just quit. It's cool. I admit that I was about to quit. My eyes were watering. I was breaking down and the voice in my head said, fuck, I might actually quit. I can't tell you what it was, God or ego, but just as fast as this desire to quit penetrated my brain, the anger followed. Without breaking stride, I turned to McCardell and said, with all due respect, sir, you can

• 2:29:48Jocko Willink?

  keep yelling all you want, but I won't quit. I was able to close the gap and get back with the group and thank God the run ended. Yeah.

• 2:29:57Speaker 01

  I was like

• 2:29:57Jocko Willink?

  You were danger close, bro.

• 2:29:59Speaker 01

  I would, dude, I felt like I was embarrassed, like I've never been in that position, dude, where I was embarrassed because they're all getting fucked up, dude, and I see them getting just, you know, they're in the sand getting fucked up and they're doing, you know, they're making sugar cookies, all those things you can think of. And they're like, catch up to them eighty-three, if you don't catch up, we're gonna keep fucking them up, you know, and you just feel like shit. And I'm like, dude, is, maybe I'm just old, maybe I'm just old, you know, and I'm looking for everything because I'm like, and the one thing I was like, I can't quit and then show up and two days later, my knee's fine. You know, I couldn't, I, I kept thinking like, dude, do I, what ended up happening, I told myself like, let the motherfucking break, like, if the knee fucking gives up, that's the best excuse. Because then I'm like, yeah, I need surgery.

• 2:30:39Jocko Willink?

  Just die.

• 2:30:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, like, just let it fucking fall off. So I just kept going and thank God, man, I need, I needed, I needed that run to end because I was fucking breaking down, dude. Fuck, I felt, man, I've never felt like that.

• 2:30:53Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, uh, it's interesting too, like, I've heard people talk about buds and that there's like, look, there's ten percent of the class, they're not gonna quit, like, you can literally kill them.

• 2:31:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:31:02Jocko Willink?

  And they're just like, whatever, die, kill me then. And then there's like ten percent of the class, they're gonna quit no matter what, like, they're just not there for it, maybe twenty percent, maybe even thirty percent, and then there's like people that are on that border, you know? They're like, they're thinking about it.

• 2:31:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:31:16Jocko Willink?

  And then depending on what happens next, they're making a determination on like what their whole life. Is like, get back in the water, like, I mean, I saw that, you're like, alright, get back in the water, and you see someone just like, that was gonna stay with us, hey, get back in the water, and you see the guy just turn around, walk away.

• 2:31:33Speaker 01

  I, one of my best, one of my best friends, like, they're doing the same thing, cold water treatment, right, like, just cold as fuck, get back in, go in the car, warm up, get back in, about four times, the fourth one, he's like, no, I'm not doing it, I'm not, I'm like, bro, we gotta go, let's go, like, I had to like, if, if, if I didn't, but same way around, if, if something didn't tickle me, like, I would have done, I've been gone, I would have been back to border patrol, but, yeah, dude, there's those weird moments where you watch them just break and you're like, fuck.

• 2:31:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you say in Ranger Indoctrination Program, we ran a hard five miles fast and furious. We knew the route. So when, so I knew when we were getting close to the end, we started to slow down near the finish line. We turned around and went for another mile. So like you had a five mile run and you guys were on the five mile run and you start to slow down at the end. And then you just, nope, we're gonna keep going. And you said, guys were dropping like flies. It was the most effective way to break someone in selection process. I told myself to never get excited or expect any kind of relief in any selection from that day forward. And here we were many years later and I got just excited because you guys were doing this Wheel of Misfortune.

• 2:32:34Speaker 01

  Wheel of Misfortune.

• 2:32:34Jocko Willink?

  I don't know if they got that from SEAL training.

• 2:32:36Speaker 01

  Did you guys do that?

• 2:32:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, we had Wheel of Misfortune and like there's, it's like Wheel of Fortune Echo and like one little tiny sliver. Says easy day on it and all of other ones are just like hellacious exercises. And they actually had a weight on that, like we couldn't, you could not hit easy day like ever for us. But you guys spun it and it says easy day. It lands on easy day.

• 2:33:00Speaker 01

  Day, which you're like, no way. And we're like, and my student was like, yes, like fuck yeah, we gotta fuck. It was the first day we were dry. We never went into the sand and I was like, dude, we're gonna finally have decent dry boots in the morning.

• 2:33:12Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:33:13Speaker 01

  Fuck, no dude.

• 2:33:14Jocko Willink?

  The instructor's like, you want an easy day? I got your easy day. Follow me.

• 2:33:17Speaker 01

  That dude right there.

• 2:33:18Jocko Willink?

  And you said, I knew it was about to get medieval.

• 2:33:21Speaker 01

  That dude right there is Aaron Rodgers. Aaron, no, sorry, Alan Rodgers, not Aaron Rodgers, not the quarterback. But Rodgers was, I, we became friends because I became a cadre instructor later, right?

• 2:33:35Speaker 01

  During that, I looked at him like, who is this fucking dude? What's his background? Cause he was like every special operations dude I've ever seen, like the fucking stud. He did this thing where he'd uncuff his sleeves slowly and he'd take his top off. And when he did that, you're like, fuck, here we go. And when we rolled easy day, he put the, the, the back of his truck down, the, the, the, the tailgate. And he started warming up by doing box jump on the top of that thing. This dude's probably a 250 pound monster. He looked like a, like dude, he looked like a fucking, like a superhero. And he's doing these box jumps and he's saying, under his breath, easy day. Easy day and he's jumping on his truck and the truck going bottoming out, right? You're like, god damn dude and I'm like getting emotional dog like oh fuck we're about to fucking

• 2:34:19Speaker 01

  damn it man, this is the day. I got excited and I fucking forgot my own rule and he fucked us up dude. He fucked us up so bad and I later talked to him about it and I was like, why didn't you join the SEALs or something? Dude goes, I don't know man, I was training for it and I just never did it. And my god, he would have been a scary dude, bro. But it made that selection that much more respectable for me, but also like memorable, like man. It wouldn't have been as great if it wasn't for that dude being there and just completely fucking us up every day.

• 2:34:51Jocko Willink?

  I had a guy, we mustered out for like first phase, got out there for a conditioning run. Called the conditioning run and so it's not timed, it's not a timed run. So conditioning run, you're like, oh, we're gonna get in shape now. But there's this warrant officer and we're like staying in ranks, right? And he comes out, he's smoking a cigarette, like cigarettes in his mouth, just like it's cool, like Marlboro man shit going down. And he comes out and he's like, bring it in gents. So he didn't want to yell at us, right? He's like, gents, I'm 42 years old, I smoke two packs of cigarettes a day. I've been doing that for 23 years. We're gonna go on a run. All I'm asking is that you keep up with me. And I was like, same thing. I was like, oh dude, we're, we're, this is gonna be a fucking disaster dude.

• 2:35:34Jocko Willink?

  This is gonna be a disaster and sure enough it was. Uh, any other big challenges or going through that? That, again, you detail it in the book. Get the book. Get the book, people. But what were, any other thing that you want to highlight?

• 2:35:48Speaker 01

  No, the selection was like so good and I was so happy to, when I graduated, it was like, I don't even have like an Army Ranger tattoo, but I thought like, man, I need a BOR Star tattoo. That's how much, like the age of my age at the time.

• 2:36:01Jocko Willink?

  Were you 31?

• 2:36:02Speaker 01

  I think I was somewhere around there. I don't even know where I was. I think I was like 31, yeah. And I was just like, god, this was, this was tough and I respected it and I was super proud of it. And it felt just as good as graduating from Ranger School to getting through RIP. It was, I highly recommend, like, that is no fucking joke. If you think you're coming out of the military special operation, you're gonna show up and it's gonna be a cakewalk, fuck no. It was tough.

• 2:36:22Jocko Willink?

  Check. Uh, fast forward a little bit. My very first day on the job as BOR Star agent. Was dedicated to finding a group of scattered migrants in the night. Smilo and I, this is one of your partners. Smilo and I were riding together in our new special operations uniforms. It felt just as good as putting on the tan ranger bray or the tambourine ranger battalion. We were pumped because just like combat medics in the US military, we could save lives. We were digging deep into a ranch, cutting and cutting a drag road. We noticed some footprints that looked clean and very recent. We knew from the timeframe that this could be the part of the group that had scattered earlier that night. And this is previous in the book. We parked the truck and proceeded on foot in the direction of travel. What we discovered was that this group of people was asleep during the middle of the day,

• 2:37:07Jocko Willink?

  just trying to get out of the heat. That day, the temperature was in the high 90s. It is completely possible that some of them could have died from heat exhaustion if we hadn't spotted them. We started pulling them out of the bushes and lining them up. And this is what you're doing, man. Now you've got a whole new skill set that you're using out there on the job. And you know, this is what you end up doing.

• 2:37:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, Borstar's job when not doing any kind of rescue is to find where groups have been scattered and try and rescue them before the temperatures get them. And so like what we do is we show up to work. We already have all of our certifications, we're already EMTs, everything else. And we look at all the intel and say a group got scattered at 2:00 in the morning. You already know by 7 o'clock in the morning when the sun's coming up, it's starting to get hot and you've got to start trying to find these people. And so we go try and round them up. And sometimes you're fortunate enough to save them and sometimes, you know, you're unfortunate, you're just a little too late. And that's the sad part about it. Just Del Rio Sector last year, they lost, I think it was 247 illegal migrants who were attempting to come across and got scattered at night and during the day.

• 2:38:13Speaker 01

  You know, the heat exposure or drownings. So that's just a lot of death on the border, man. And that's exactly the border patrol, the Borstar agent's job is to do everything they can to mitigate that.

• 2:38:22Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and you mentioned this earlier, that you also do search and rescue for anybody. Like not just migrants, but anybody that any emergency situation is going down. And then you've got a whole section in here about some of those rescues. You're a huge, there's a situation that you talk about in the book where you rescue like eight people that are...

• 2:38:40Speaker 01

  Swift water rescue.

• 2:38:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's like swift water. So you've got all kinds of stuff going on in here. Again, get the book, get those stories, learn those lessons. And then you finally, you get assigned as a medic with Bor-TAC, right?

• 2:38:58Jocko Willink?

  And this is kind of what your goal was as you stated earlier, I read that little section. But so here you are on BORTAC, I'm going to go to the book here. One day, as we were going through a lengthy pre-mission briefing, when it was my time to talk about the emergency medical plan for operations, I recommended attaching a BORSTAR medic to the team directly on the X, which is a term we use for the objective location. One of the BORTAC agents replied, "It's not safe to have a medic with us just in case there's contact. Contact on the border isn't likely, but it's definitely a possible. It's definitely possible. Contact in the tactical word isn't literal terms such as touch and feel, it's referred to troops in contact." I stood up out of frustration that had been building inside me for the past few months. I asked, "How many guys on the team have combat experience?"

• 2:39:43Jocko Willink?

  The room was quiet. One BORTAC agent raised his hands, raised his hand. "I had more combat experience as a trigger puller than the whole team. I wasn't trying to be a smart ass, but I had to get it through their thick BORTAC brains that I was an asset, not a liability. They all knew my background and I didn't have to explain my point of view any further. They finally supported my recommendation and placed me on the X with the rest of the team."

• 2:40:07Speaker 01

  Yeah. It was very odd for them to hear that a medic wanted to be on the X with them because it wasn't their SOP. They just were raised to think that's odd. And for me, it was like, I wasn't trying to be a dick or anything, but I was like, dude, why the fuck wouldn't you want me on the X? One, because I can shoot. Two, like, I'm your medic, like, put me in the fucking game, dog. And, you know, there's a couple guys who weren't even military. So, they were just BORTACers with no military experience, so they didn't even understand the teamwork between medics and shooters, right? And so, his, that guy who mentioned it, his just disconnect from the, from how it should be, was just how he was raised into the team. And so, he didn't know. And so, eventually, they all started to get more comfortable, like, oh dude, I think this is probably the best way we should be running. And it worked out. Like, Del Rio started using a lot of us. It was me and Smila really helped integrate the Del Rio sector.

• 2:40:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Freaking legit. And it's just cool that you were able to come in and slowly change their minds and let them see a much better way of doing things.

• 2:41:03Jocko Willink?

  You got this section here in 2007, the US Border Patrol joined to join together two units, the Border Patrol Tactical Unit, BOR-TAC, and the Border Patrol Search, Trauma, and Rescue Unit, BORSTAR, to form the US Border Patrol's Special Operations Group headquartered in El Paso, Texas. And then you go into this section here, "By this time in 2013, I was training to try out for BOR-TAC. Unfortunately, it was a rough time in my life. I was going through a difficult divorce, and to add to it, I became the custodial parent for my four kids. Nonetheless, I was able to maintain enough focus to be good at my job and be good at my job enough to still try and find a way to get to SOG."

• 2:41:46Jocko Willink?

  And then you end up, "I spent a better year, better part of two years, running the BORSTAR selection process and training at the mobile response teams across the border." So, you end up being an instructor.

• 2:41:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, I became the BORSTAR, one of the BORSTAR selection instructors. I helped integrate the tactical medicine program into BOR-TAC. I helped, I just helped grow that whole tactical medicine side of it. What, what, what happened was you teach tactical medicine, but you don't understand tactics, you kind of miss a part of it. And so I started teaching a lot of the BORSTAR guys, anyone who came through selection during my time, they were taught tactical medicine and entering clearing rooms, the SOPs what BOR-TAC uses, so that when they did become a BORSTAR agent, BOR-TAC would be more comfortable using them as a medic, because actually they know the SOPs, they understand patrolling, they understand all the things that you should know as a TACMed medic. And so that's what I implemented. I know things have changed slightly since then, but still the TACMed program has continued to grow and continued to integrate.

• 2:42:41Speaker 01

  But yeah, so because I was a custodial father for my four kids, I had to take on a training side of, training role, or else I couldn't do the fucking 24-hour call-out and stuff, because how was I gonna find someone to watch the kids? And so eventually, I just stayed the medic for a while, and eventually, I ended up meeting someone, and, and, and she ended up helping with the kids, and that's when I eventually got attached to BOR-TAC as their medic.

• 2:43:04Jocko Willink?

  Uh, so you ran the selection that you went through, is that the one you're talking about? And how often would that selection go down?

• 2:43:10Speaker 01

  It was once a year. Yeah, once a year. Yeah, so we would, we would.

• 2:43:13Jocko Willink?

  And would you do it in Coronado?

• 2:43:14Speaker 01

  No, we didn't. No, we did. I think they did two classes in Coronado and eventually just funding what, what made sense. We ended up moving it to White Sands, New Mexico.

• 2:43:22Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:43:22Speaker 01

  And so since SOG is in El Paso, White Sands was just a drive. And so we started using that facility as our, as our training location. And so for the next three that I ran, we're all in White Sands.

• 2:43:32Jocko Willink?

  Isn't it weird to be in Coronado getting your ass handed to you?

• 2:43:35Speaker 01

  Bro, I never wanted anything to do with fucking SEALs, homie. And then all of a sudden I'm sitting there watching these kids, dude, getting their ass kicked. And I'm like, oh, and I see, you know, we're all chained up in the beach because we see them getting chained up on the beach and getting hit by waves. And then they go, you guys get in there. And you're like, you fuckers, dude. You know, so now we're getting chained up and fuck it. It was, um, it was cool though, man. It kind of, again, it, it kind of checked the box for me of like, this is a legit selection and I'm proud to have been through it. You know what I mean?

• 2:44:00Jocko Willink?

  Um, you also bring in Matt Larson, who's the guy that kind of, the, the father of, uh,

• 2:44:06Speaker 01

  Combatant, Army Combatant Program.

• 2:44:08Jocko Willink?

  Combatant Program.

• 2:44:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:44:10Jocko Willink?

  I always, like this part of class come out and I'll hear from him, like he'll hit me up or, and I gotta get him on the podcast.

• 2:44:16Speaker 01

  He's my boy, man, and he's a great dude. And he's been a mentor of mine for a long time. He's someone I could bounce ideas off. He's very intelligent, but you know, he, you know, I was a combat instructor in the army and he was the godfather for that, for us. And so when I got to actually become friends with him, it was dope. And so what we did was we created a modern army combatants program for the special operations group. Um, eventually the border patrol and the special operation didn't move forward with the program, but we were able to teach four classes, five classes, no injuries, teach guys how to fucking manage themselves, teach them how to, how, when to use actually like jujitsu and not to use it. You know what I mean? Really focused on, uh, weapons retention is really the focus and like creating distance and then being able to punch out, right?

• 2:44:54Jocko Willink?

  Hey, when you, when, when, uh, the officer got killed and they engaged, they started by engaging with less than lethal.

• 2:45:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:45:02Jocko Willink?

  What were they using?

• 2:45:03Speaker 01

  Uh, I think they had the PLS systems. It was just kind of like a, it's like a pepper ball system, but as well as we have the, the, the, I think it's called the F and three oh four, something like that, which is kind of like a hard, uh, plastic, uh, you know, projectile. Uh, it, it just wasn't in their SOPs to start with, like, it was just, that'd be crazy for them in that point, in that time. It was really fucking farfetched. They were like, why would we need to engage lethally? But what happened in the time is that those rip crews were not just fucking, those were like gang bangers, you know what I mean? That were like trying like, hey, we can make a quick buck by stealing their dope and fucking using it for ourselves to sell. And so those dudes were like, they had no other job but to fucking make sure they got the dope to the fucking group. And so their intentions were definitely, they were worse than any kind of drug smuggler because drug smugglers would just drop it up and run.

• 2:45:47Speaker 01

  These dudes were like, we need this fucking dope. And so it became a fucking, you know, a deadly engagement.

• 2:45:54Jocko Willink?

  So you, you mentioned that you were getting into BORTAC.

• 2:45:58Jocko Willink?

  You say this, "If I was going to jump on a BORTAC team as a medic, I would only be willing to work for Chris Voss." Chris Voss was a dual tabber, BORSTAR and BORTAC. He had extensive background as a combat experienced ranger and many years on the teams. So this is the guy that sort of, you work together.

• 2:46:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:46:15Jocko Willink?

  You meet him.

• 2:46:16Speaker 01

  You know, ranger ranger kind of thing. We met, we became friends. Yeah, we just, dude, we, we, we broed out. Exactly. And we became pretty good buds. I wasn't sure if I wanted to get attached to a tactical team at all because I'm like, I'm just, I want to be a good medic, but I don't know. My, my life was, that was kind of crazy. I talked to Voss, I said, "If I was going to join a team, I'd join a ranger, right? You're the dude I would follow." And he said, "We'd love to have you as a medic." So just to be clear, I never was a, I never became a BORTAC'er. I talked about it on the thing. I never had the time to try out because my life just with the divorce and the kids, it got a little crazy. But the next best thing was what I, what I got is what I wanted. I was attached to one of the number one BORTAC teams in the nation, the SOG, which is our, our tier one element compared to in what you would identify them as a tier one element.

• 2:47:01Speaker 01

  I was their medic. And that was like, for me, like, I fucking got to where I wanted to.

• 2:47:06Jocko Willink?

  Legit. And it's cool. You talk about going to the kill house with these guys for the first time.

• 2:47:10Speaker 01

  Bro.

• 2:47:10Jocko Willink?

  And you're like, yeah, hell yeah.

• 2:47:12Speaker 01

  Dude, I haven't shot live rounds in a fucking, in a, in a training environment in so long. Like it was probably like four years or something like that, three years. And so like, I had no idea what I was going to be able to do. And then, yeah, by chance, the dude in front of me, his, his web went cold. And he got, he had a malfunction. I stepped across, boom, engaged target, boom, kept flowing into the room. And the, the, you know, the ranger, the officer on top was like, later was like, What's your background? I was like, oh, it was a range. Thoughts? And it was cool. It was kind of like the, alright, you're good. You're on the team. You know what I mean? And felt good.

• 2:47:39Jocko Willink?

  That's like the years ago when I went to the concealed, uh, carry school. Did you go to that school?

• 2:47:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:47:43Jocko Willink?

  And like, of course, I just sat there, you know, took the notes or whatever. It's like a two day thing. First day is classroom. Second day, you go to the range.

• 2:47:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:47:50Jocko Willink?

  So I went to the range and the guy comes up to me, like, looks at my charger. What, what's your background? I was like, I was in the team. He's like, check.

• 2:47:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:47:58Jocko Willink?

  Everyone else looks like shocked. I'm bringing a trail in this thing. Um.

• 2:48:06Jocko Willink?

  This is, I'm gonna fast forward a little bit.

• 2:48:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:48:10Jocko Willink?

  We get to New York State here. Two inmates, Richard Matt and David Sweat, both incarcerated for murder, were discovered missing during an early morning bed check in prison. Matt was serving 25 years to life and Sweat was serving life without parole. The two prisoners had dug a tunnel out of the prison with tools obtained from a prison employee. So this is what's going on. There's high alert. There's a bunch of false alarms. And again, this, this story is like, it, this story, I think is what you opened the book with.

• 2:48:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:48:47Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you opened the book with the beginning of this story. And so now you've kind of built this story arc where we gotta like, we're now, we're gonna get some payoff and stuff. And so you guys show up there. They fight, like you mentioned earlier, if there's tracking that needs to be done.

• 2:48:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:49:00Jocko Willink?

  Borax gonna get the call. You're attached to Borax. You're the medic. So you're going on these operations. You guys go up to New York. And this is like what everybody dreams about, right?

• 2:49:08Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:49:09Jocko Willink?

  This is like, dude, this is the, this is the shit.

• 2:49:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, we've been training for so long now. And you're like, oh, man, when do we even get one? You know what I mean? And we just got back from a training mission, uh, that was with, you know, several three letter agencies. And we, we, we showed ourselves to be fucking dope, right? We, we kicked ass in that engagement and we're like, oh, man. And I felt good as a team. I felt like a team. I understood the team. The team understood me. We had our SOPs down. I'm clearing rooms. Second dude, third dude, didn't fucking matter. I'm just, I'm the dude, right? And so it was dope. We got back and I'm, I'm preparing for my daughter's birthday. I haven't been her birthday in fucking forever, right? Cause that's kind of our world is like, you're just gone, gone, gone, gone. And, uh, yeah, dude, I saw the news and I was like, oh shit, maybe they'll call us. Maybe not. It's been a few days. Boom. Get the call from Voss. It's like, hey, back it up. We're going.

• 2:49:53Jocko Willink?

  You guys roll up there and like start running ops, man. Like you guys run out and again, there's details in the book, get the book, but you guys take boats out to like a little island. There's a cabin out there. You guys hit this cabin. Freaking dry hole. What's cool about this up like next day or a couple of days later, you're out in helicopters. You're going to hit another target. This one was like a school, a big school where they, you know, thought these guys were hiding. Also a dry hole. And then, uh,

• 2:50:22Jocko Willink?

  in the book here, you say, it was frustrating at times. It felt like we were on their tail and at others, they seem to be, at other times, they seem to be long gone. We tracked for several more days, looking for signs of where these two inmates might have been. We searched many abandoned structures, but by the end of the week, I felt like we might not catch these guys. We were running long hours and days for almost a week before we were even given a night off. I was bummed because it was a Friday and my daughter's birthday was on Saturday and I was stuck in New York. I asked Chris Ross how he felt about me going home for the weekend to catch my daughter's birthday and then head back on Monday. He was completely comfortable and I got the idea approved. So, you know, you're like, doesn't seem like this shit's going down. I'm gonna catch this guy.

• 2:51:03Speaker 01

  Well, they told me that we were gonna redeploy on Sunday. I was like, look, for some reason, we're not, I'll come back. I just got, like, I want to catch this.

• 2:51:10Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And, you know, like everybody that is in any kind of service, you've missed so many freaking birthdays and here you were, you had everything set up and she's anticipating. It's just like, just like you gotta do what you gotta do. So you decide you're gonna fly home. So I'll go to the book here. I flew home Saturday to enjoy my daughter's birthday. I watched the news and started to set up the bouncy castle when I saw on the report that Richard Matt had, was killed by US Border Patrol agents. I looked at, over at my father and asked him to turn up the volume. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. My team was scheduled to come back a few days after me, but they were called in because of some new intelligence. They

• 2:51:50Jocko Willink?

  had walked in on Matt's final position. And one of the members of my team was able to engage the threat as Matt elevated his shotgun on him. My father asked if I was okay. As tears trickled down my face, I had to explain to him that I was on that mission the night before and I'd come home for the party.

• 2:52:11Jocko Willink?

  You end up getting a phone call. You find out Chris Voss was the person who had made the engagement and I was hurt that I couldn't be there for him. This was the first time in my career that I had chosen my family over work. I was extremely conflicted. I chose to be with my daughter for her birthday and not with my team for the mission. I left them without a designated BOR Star medic and I was at my daughter's party with my heart torn by whether or not it was the right decision. After the party was over and the friends and family left, I was left alone with my thoughts. I have lived a life dedicated to serving a greater purpose. I believed in the mission and the men,

• 2:52:52Jocko Willink?

  even though I knew how much my kids have missed during my life when I was away on missions and how much I had missed theirs. The mission and my path had started to blur. The whole ordeal had left me confused. The last thing my team deserved was a half-invested medic. My priorities had changed and I decided it was best to resign and shift gears in life. It was time to put this chapter behind me and start a new career.

• 2:53:27Speaker 01

  That was a heavy one for me.

• 2:53:28Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's like,

• 2:53:31Jocko Willink?

  that's kind of, I mean, what about like just the logistics side? Of your now however far ranking you are, you have retirement at least somewhere in the future. You know what I'm saying? Like there's

• 2:53:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, I walked away from like everything, everything. Yeah.

• 2:53:51Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's

• 2:53:52Speaker 01

  It was tough. It was, um, it was like I never thought it would happen and then when it happened, I said, I fucking knew this would happen. You know what I mean?

• 2:54:01Jocko Willink?

  Did you have any idea what you'd be doing next? Had you, cause you know, you, you, you end up in a totally different career. Had you

• 2:54:10Speaker 01

  No.

• 2:54:10Jocko Willink?

  broached that at all?

• 2:54:12Speaker 01

  No, it was like, I, I did have a couple of businesses that were doing decent and uh, I didn't know where they were gonna go, but I knew it wasn't what I wanted either. I just knew I, I needed it. I needed something different. I, I needed to do something that would put me more in my kids' lives than it was. And I was just tired of like, I wasn't tired of it, but I just knew I needed to, I needed, they needed me and, and, and that to me is more important than anything.

• 2:54:36Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 2:54:37Speaker 01

  And it wasn't for so long. I never thought, I thought like, well, I'm putting, I'm paying the bills. So that's the most important thing a dad can do. And at that time, they've already gone through one divorce. They were going through now their second divorce that they're seeing, and it's just dad trying to figure it out. And I felt it was, I had to do my duty as a father to just give them more of me. And so it was just, and, and not be a half-assed medic for a team. It just fucking wasn't fair for anyone.

• 2:55:01Jocko Willink?

  How, how many kids did you have at this point?

• 2:55:03Speaker 01

  I had four. That was my original four from my first marriage. And, yeah.

• 2:55:07Jocko Willink?

  And, and look, that's not the end of the book at all. Um, there, there's, the, the, the stories continue. Um, there's a bunch of information you'd go through, like history.

• 2:55:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:55:17Jocko Willink?

  Uh, it's stuff that you really, not, not one, it's interesting, but on number two, if you're gonna have an opinion about this stuff, have an educated opinion. Know not just what the theories are, but like what people that have lived it go through. So from that perspective, uh, it's just a great book and, and you do talk about like thoughts and ideas on how to prove, improve safety and security. It, it really, get the book if, you know, get the book. Um, and, and really, I mean, I think just to give a little bit of the book, an idea of the book, I'm just gonna go to the foreword, written by me. Uh, borderline gives us a look into border security and border patrol through the eyes of a dedicated professional.

• 2:55:59Jocko Willink?

  He not only explains daily border patrol life and culture, but also shares his approach and attitude while on duty. Similar to specialized military schools, the border patrol has a dynamic, challenging, Training curriculum that teaches agents to survey the border lands and then track apprehended processed migrants who have crossed illegally. This requires that agents learn how to care for children, for scared children traveling alone and in the same night, perhaps even at the same time contend with dangerous criminals looking to smuggle, steal, exploit and kill. This dichotomy of being combative while remaining empathetic often puts agents' lives at risk. The harsh environment of the arid desert, the desperation of people seeking a new life and the cruelty

• 2:56:43Jocko Willink?

  of smugglers and criminals make for a grim and bleak environment, one with many moral dilemmas. Vince has seen all aspects of this convoluted chaos. The perspective he gives in this book is insightful and informative and it should be mandatory reading for anyone that wants to understand the border challenge we confront as a country.

• 2:57:09Jocko Willink?

  So that'll give you an overall look. It's part of the foreword that I wrote for the book. So fantastic job on the book, man. It's like I said, it's a great read, not only from a storyline, not only from the what you learned, but just the whole arc of the whole thing is awesome.

• 2:57:25Speaker 01

  I appreciate it.

• 2:57:26Jocko Willink?

  Um, so let's get to you though. You, let's talk about after you leave the border control. So you've got some business. What are the businesses you've got going on?

• 2:57:35Speaker 01

  Uh, I have veteran, uh, that's just, it's just t-shirts, right?

• 2:57:38Jocko Willink?

  No, I'm talking about when you got out. Like, so what's your next move when you get out? Where are you getting a paycheck from?

• 2:57:43Speaker 01

  Oh, we had, uh, I had Article 15 clothing with, with Matt JT, right? We were growing that. We had Led Zeppelin's whiskey, uh, and those were, and then we had a drinking bros podcast. And so those three were kind of paying me. Um, and then slowly I started transitioning into, we, we produced a movie called Range 15. You saw the documentary. You came to the premiere for the documentary.

• 2:58:03Jocko Willink?

  That's where I met you for the first time, right?

• 2:58:05Speaker 01

  That's it. Yep. So you came to the premiere for, for the, it's called Not a War Story. It's a documentary that shows kind of what we did. It was like, you know, six veterans raised enough money to do a film and we used a lot of the community to help film, film that, right? We used them as zombies or whatnot. It was kind of a, kind of a cool, crazy story, you know? And, and I think it was kind of beautiful, but that, doing that film is what inspired me to kind of like, okay. I want to pursue acting. I want to write and I want to act, but how? Dude, does this come out of left field or like? No, man. So I I tell you where it fits into my life. I grew up in LA and it's not uncommon to see an actor. You know, I worked at, you know, I worked at fucking Champ Sports and sold hats to fucking Mark Wahlberg and shit like that.

• 2:58:49Speaker 01

  And so you see actors and all that, the world, you you have friends who their dad's a producer of this or whatever the case. And so it was not uncommon to be in my world. When I was in junior college, for me to kind of get good grades, I did theater classes. So I did like a improv comedy and, you know, like an improv class and and other and other classes. And I knew that I had a natural knack for it. I wasn't embarrassed. I was completely comfortable doing it. And my acting coach at the time, the teacher was like, hey, I think you should look further into pursuing this. I'm like, eh, baseball is more important. You know what I mean? She wasn't like pottery is not your game.

• 2:59:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. And so, you know, uh, as I started doing the YouTube videos with my boys, I was like, damn. Wow. How do I pursue the real thing? Like, I don't want to do YouTube forever. I want to fucking do the real thing. So when we produced the movie, I knew, I I looked at Nick Palmigano, the owner of Ranger Up at the time, and I said, this is what I'm gonna do for the rest of my fucking life. And after we were done filming that, um, I produced a short film about Posthumous Stress and that based off a poem I wrote. And then that introduced me to another actor veteran, uh, that is in Hollywood. And he said, come out and do some improv comedy with us called Dads in Parks, right? And this is YouTube series that we did. And so I helped with that. I helped write a couple of episodes and and we ended up getting another contract with AMC to do more.

• 3:00:09Speaker 01

  And that was so we can be the preview before the preview. So we would do these jokes about films or whatever the case. And while I was in LA filming those, uh, I had a buddy say, hey, my ins is still like auditioning. I was like, well, how the fuck do I do that?

• 3:00:24Jocko Willink?

  And so mine's had it started yet?

• 3:00:26Speaker 01

  No, they just started auditioning for the first pilot.

• 3:00:29Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 3:00:30Speaker 01

  And I was like, well, I feel like I looked the part. I feel like I can hold myself in acting pretty decent. Um, how do I get an audition?

• 3:00:38Jocko Willink?

  You're like, do they have to speak Spanish?

• 3:00:41Speaker 01

  That was a question they asked me. I'm like, yo. So I hit up my buddy, uh, Steve Howie, who was a pretty big actor at the time and, and we became friends just through the Range 15 movie and just, he came out and supported us. And I say, man, I don't know, what's the next step here? But, you know, I have a reel. I have an acting role. I have a resume. I have some headshots. Um, I would love to audition for this mine. He goes, dude, you'd be perfect for it. And, you know, by chance, I know the casting director. Let me send you a headshot and just see if she's interested. Sent my headshot. Boom. We got an email. Audition the next day.

• 3:01:09Jocko Willink?

  Damn.

• 3:01:10Speaker 01

  And we're there for spring break. Me and my wife are like, we're like, we're doing Disneyland. We're doing, you know, we're doing all the, and I was like, uh.

• 3:01:15Jocko Willink?

  Because getting an audition like that.

• 3:01:18Speaker 01

  Like that.

• 3:01:18Jocko Willink?

  Is like crazy, right?

• 3:01:20Speaker 01

  It's almost impossible. It's like, everything lined up right for that even to happen.

• 3:01:24Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, man.

• 3:01:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, it's almost impossible. The, the, why it happened the way it did was they're so deep into their casting and they're about to start filming in like a week and a half. They're still missing two people. It's, everyone's the same dude. They have, they've seen everyone else and I think they were looking for something that was just different. And then I showed up and I showed up like a dumbass. I brought my wife to the fucking audition because I don't know any better. I'm just like, hey babe, let's go check this out, right? And then John Berthold later, he's just like, you brought her to your fucking audition? I was like, I didn't know any better, dog. I just like, sit down, babe. Let me go knock this out, you know? And so we did the first audition. Uh, the casting director, Wendy O'Brien, she gave me a big old hug and a kiss and on the cheek and was like, that was great. And I'm like.

• 3:02:09Jocko Willink?

  What did you have to do in the audition? Did you read lines or something?

• 3:02:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, you read lines, right? They just gave me like one character and it was probably like four different lines, right? And, and I, and I memorized them off book just because of the, of the, what my friend Steve told me. He said, dude, just do it off book. Just memorize it. I'm like, cool. And, and I was terrified because I don't memorize shit very well. So I.

• 3:02:25Jocko Willink?

  Dude, you can barely read.

• 3:02:27Speaker 01

  I can barely read. Yeah, exactly, dude. So I, I, I read it. I, I recorded it. I had my wife check it. It was like, are these the right words? She goes, yes. I'm like, cool. And I, I listened to it all night. So by the morning I was like, ready. And then I had to like yak it too, you know, so.

• 3:02:41Jocko Willink?

  Do you remember the lines right now?

• 3:02:42Speaker 01

  No, but I have the tape. I'll send it to you, dude, if you want to.

• 3:02:45Jocko Willink?

  I'll send it to you. Echo, we'll post that up.

• 3:02:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, dude, so.

• 3:02:48Jocko Willink?

  Put you on, put you on, on trial out here.

• 3:02:51Speaker 01

  It was, it was funny. So then I got done with it. Like I said, she kissed me, kissed me on the cheek, very friendly. And I was like, I don't know if she's just really friendly or she really liked it. I don't know. So we flew home back to El Paso where we're living. That's where I left the board control in El Paso. I was still, still living there. And right before I landed, we already got an email saying they want to see a second, a second run and they want to see two different characters now, the same guy and then a funny one.

• 3:03:16Speaker 01

  I think I had like 700 bucks in my account at the time. I already walked, I walked away from like my, my businesses and it was just me trying to figure it out. Um, I bought that like $400 ticket or something like that. I knew it took a lot out of the account. And we went there. I had my dad drive me. I said, Dad, drive me, you know?

• 3:03:30Jocko Willink?

  I can't afford an Uber.

• 3:03:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, Dad, get your ass over here. So he drove me and he was all excited about it. He's like, Vinny, maybe they have a role for me. I'm like, calm down, dude. Can I get the job first thing? You know, my father's cut man Carlos, right? This well-known cut man in boxing. And so he's just always into everything. And so, uh, he, we get there and I took my dad to the next audition. Then there's Kurt Sutter, Elgin James and Wendy O'Brien in the room. And, uh, they say start. And so I do my first one, uh, with the serious one. And then we do the second one. It's the funny one. I said, they said, do you want to sit down? I was like, yeah, I'll sit down. I don't know any better. So I just sat down and

• 3:04:07Speaker 01

  I do the lines and at that time, I don't know, I blacked out. Like, I don't remember it. I remember coming to and everyone laughing and I'm laughing and I'm like, all right, shook their hands and I left. And, uh, eventually I got the tape and saw what I did. It was like, I fucked up the line, but I added something to it, which I didn't fuck it up. I added more to it for some reason, which is usually you shouldn't do, but whatever the case, it worked enough where like, by the time I got home again, boom, I had the job. And so we flew back to LA and started filming the first pilot.

• 3:04:36Jocko Willink?

  So oddly enough, I mean, this is just weird, the way the world works. Like you're, this is my brother's Elgin's show, you know what I mean? And he had told me like, this is what I'm doing next. He's, he's telling it to me for the first time, you know, and he's like, I'm, I'm making a show and he never, well, you know him. So he never like. Says that anything is gonna be good or big or successful or anything. He just says it matter of fact of like what's going on, you know, like, yeah, it looks like, and it's always, there's always like a almost like an out of like, yeah, I'm working on this show right now. It's have you heard of Sons of Anarchy? Yeah, it's, it's gonna be like, kind of something like that. Like, that was like the information that you

• 3:05:18Speaker 01

  That's funny.

• 3:05:18Jocko Willink?

  He's not like, bro, you landed at this thing. You know, he never says anything like that because he's too like humble to brag. And especially to me, because me and him, we always like understate whatever's going on, like whatever's going on, I'll be like, oh yeah, did this and you know, whatever. So I, I knew about the show as it was coming out, obviously, as it was even get, before it was even getting made. But that's like wild that.

• 3:05:43Speaker 01

  Yo dude, so I'm eating lunch and I don't know any better. I didn't know there's a place to eat. So I grabbed my plate and I just go sit on like a tire. He goes, hey, uh, Rocco, you can go eat inside. And I'm like, oh, okay, cool. And so then we started talking a little, he goes, you're, you're a military, right? He goes, yeah, my, my brother, he's kind of well known in the military. I was like, yeah, cool. Me too, kind of, you know, I was like, so what's his name? Jocko. I was like, shut the fuck up. I was like, shut the fuck up, Jocko? I was like, I fucking know exactly who your brother's like, what? And I was completely blown away by it. But like, I was like, all right. And then I didn't even know the gravity of who he was. You know what I mean? I just knew he was a really cool dude, really nice guy. And he's just there.

• 3:06:26Speaker 01

  And, and I, because I don't know film very well. I'm learning like, oh, he's a co-showrunner.

• 3:06:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you don't really know what that means.

• 3:06:31Speaker 01

  What the fuck is that?

• 3:06:32Jocko Willink?

  Oh, that must be the guy that runs around and gets stuff.

• 3:06:34Speaker 01

  Yeah. And crazy me, again, I brought my wife to one of the days of filming and I just had her sitting there, right? Again, no fucking clue. And he goes, hey, uh, Christie, come sit down. And he puts her in his chair. And I'm like, cool, whatever. And then she's sitting next to fucking Kurt Sutter. She looks and she goes, I was like, I don't fucking know what to do. Like, I'm about to get fired. I feel like you're sitting next to the fucking guy, the main guy here, right? And eventually it was just super cool. And it was, he was one of the dudes who would just welcome me in and we became really close. And still he's one of the guys that, you know, I, I go to for a lot of things. He's just a really good all around guy. And it's just kind of how it's all connected.

• 3:07:10Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's freaking crazy. Um.

• 3:07:13Jocko Willink?

  That runs for five seasons, just ended. Yeah. And, uh, well, again, is it spoiler alert? Nah, enough people seen it by now. Okay, but like, well, there's two, two good stories about spoiler alert. So, did you ever see Little Birds? I didn't yet. I gotta see it. Well, then spoiler alert. So, I guess I don't know. So, Elgin and I are driving to the screening. It's not totally done movie. So, just to catch everyone up, Elgin made a movie called Little Birds. After he got out of prison and he made this movie and he's like, hey, man, my, like, my movie's, it's getting a screening tonight, which means they actually get feedback from an audience before it gets released.

• 3:07:56Jocko Willink?

  To make sure they understood it, to make sure that made sense, make sure. So, that's what I'm going to. So, I go up to LA and I'm at his house, we're chilling and then he's like, we gotta go. So, we get in his car and we're driving down there. And I go, so what's this thing about? And he's like, oh, he, again, like total, like understated. He goes, yeah, it's just about like these girls. He goes, it's kind of about like us, like going up and getting crazy and like, just wild things happening. And I go, cool, he's six, but in this case, it's two girls. And I was like, okay, well, that's a different take. And he goes, and um, he goes, and they, they run away from Nylund, which is again, the weird how everything's so connected, but that's like, desert training for the SEAL teams. He's like, yeah, they run away from there and they end up in LA and they're, and he goes, and shit goes sideways.

• 3:08:40Jocko Willink?

  And I go like, what kind of shit goes sideways? And he goes, uh, you, you'll, you'll see like that. And I was, I was honestly, never been mad at him. And I was like, dude, like, it seemed like a punk move to be like, you'll find out type thing. Like, oh, you'll see. I was kind of like, I didn't say anything, but I was like, bro, uh, I was like, oh, he is Hollywood now. Like, in my mind, like, I had like some, and then sure enough, I get in there and I'm watching it and the movie. Like what the part where you're like, it is, it is, it is, uh, it's shocking, right? Like it goes from, it just takes a turn where you're just like, holy fuck, what is going on? And it's awesome. And I was so happy that he didn't give me a heads up as to what went down.

• 3:09:22Jocko Willink?

  But yeah, so, so that was going on. Um, and then he eventually got into this thing. And yeah. Uh, ends up doing five seasons of this thing. Oh, and so that's the other thing was when the, when the finale was coming for Mayans. And again, this is spoiler alert, kind of, but he's like, yeah, everyone's fucking dying. And I was like, what do you mean? He's like, he said to me, he goes, you know, a lot of these stories about crime and about gangs and stuff. They spin it in a way where everything kind of turns out kind of good, you know, and like people make it and people give blah, blah.

• 3:10:01Jocko Willink?

  And he's like, and that's just not realistic. It's not true. And he knows like, so she's like, it's going to be a realistic ending. And then I was tracking it on Twitter and people were just like, holy shit. Like, oh my God. Yeah.

• 3:10:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, dude. So I was a writer this last season, you know, and I was there in the writing room for all of this, just being able to kind of, one, learn from Elgin, how he does things and, and two, just helping conceptualize, because I was there from the beginning to the end. So I was able to kind of like, oh, this story, I was helping out with a lot of kind of story details. And, uh, when I heard like the plan, I was like, oh my God. And it's like, I'm holding on to this. And like, my wife's like, she's a fan of the show too. So she's like, what is that? I was like, I, I can't even tell you. That's like, that's how fucking wild this is. But like the way Elgin sees the world in writing, uh, was inspiring for me because I would be, if I'm seeing it this way, he'd say, but that's what everyone expects.

• 3:11:00Speaker 01

  See it this way. And it was just, it just made me that much better of a writer in the sense of like, how to construct the story. And it just proved like the way mine was, how many people were hurt, the millions that were hurt. Good. It's like what the purpose was, was if you don't watch a show and you don't have an emotional response to it, it's like, did it really like, was it that good of a show for you? Everyone who was emotionally invested into the show was heartbroken and as it should be.

• 3:11:27Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Then that's the real scenario that you end up with. If you're doing shit, it's gonna catch up with you over time. That's the way things work in the world.

• 3:11:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:11:36Jocko Willink?

  You know, there's no fairy tale endings.

• 3:11:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's friggin dope.

• 3:11:39Jocko Willink?

  So, so you wrote one of those?

• 3:11:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:11:42Jocko Willink?

  And, and then that leads you to be able to write more opportunities to writing?

• 3:11:48Speaker 01

  Hopefully, you know, the, the goal is to continue down the, the road of the Hollywood sign, the Hollywood, Hollywood scene as a writer and an actor. Um, I like writing more than, I like acting, I love that, I think it's fucking dope. But, um, a guy with tattoos on his hands and neck doesn't get too many opportunities to do specific roles that I think would be fun. Uh, so, uh, I'm, I'm, I'm not oblivious to that. Uh, but I can continue to construct my own world and tell the stories that I want to be, be told. And so that's my goal and I knew writing this book would potentially lead to hopefully, I'm hoping, uh, a border patrol series as well and all the beautiful nuances of the things that could happen on the border could be told visually.

• 3:12:30Speaker 01

  That's what my goal would be, but there's a lot of things in my life that I've experienced, I want to turn into stories. Um, and so, you know, with, with everything going on in Hollywood right now, with kind of the hiring, the, the writing strike that finally ended and then the acting strike that's still currently happening right now, I'm hoping to come out on the other end of that, uh, and be able to continue to work in the space. Uh, continue to work with people that I've worked with in relationships like Elgin and so on and so forth. And so, yeah, we're trying. We have a lot of projects out there that are getting looked at now and hopefully something gets picked up. Uh, you know, I've still, I, I got a lot of stories from my life that, that I'm able to turn into little scripts and, and I guess like compartmentalize them as well and, and turn them into something special hopefully and so. Yeah, we're trying to make a run at it, man.

• 3:13:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So you got the writing stuff. And then what else you got going on? You got you got Veteran, right?

• 3:13:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, Veterans.

• 3:13:19Jocko Willink?

  Tell us about Veteran.

• 3:13:20Speaker 01

  Veterans is a company that we started is just kind of a positive outlook on the veteran veteran community that that just I felt like it needed to be done. There's so much negativity. There's so much focus on the negative sides of veterans that the word veteran to me was a better approach to trying to hopefully motivate and inspire veterans to do more, to be more, right, to to that they can do more. And so, you know, when I did that, then I'm like, okay, well, what can I bring on with that? Well, for me in my life, I've kind of gone through a big wellness push, you know, I'm sober for four and a half years now, just under four and a half years now. I've done many different modalities of healing, different therapies and stuff like that. And so I became kind of a guinea pig for for other veterans to just see even men, just to see that we can heal our past, we can heal our past traumas from childhood, as well as military

• 3:14:04Speaker 01

  and law enforcement, and we can we can strive to be better. And in the same aspects of veteran, we created Light the Fuse Wellness. And so it's a kind of a I have accountability group where people can join, and we just kind of hold people accountable, but as well as the mentorship side, excuse me, the wellness side, as we did a men's retreat, and we introduced different modalities of healing. We introduced some stuff that was like plant medicine, non psychedelic, but we also did.

• 3:14:27Jocko Willink?

  What's a plant medicine that's non psychedelic?

• 3:14:29Speaker 01

  Uh, compo. We did a thing called compo. We did.

• 3:14:31Jocko Willink?

  What's that?

• 3:14:32Speaker 01

  Uh, it's it's a it's the venom of a of a frog, you know, of an Amazonian frog.

• 3:14:38Jocko Willink?

  Is this like the toad?

• 3:14:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, the toad, right, right.

• 3:14:40Jocko Willink?

  What Mike Tyson and Joe Rogan were talking about, the toads?

• 3:14:43Speaker 01

  There's different ones. There's different ones. So this one. Yeah, this one you.

• 3:14:47Jocko Willink?

  But it's not psychedelic?

• 3:14:48Speaker 01

  Non psychedelic. Right. This one, this one, for this trip, for this retreat, was we chose to go non psychedelic, but still plant medicine. And so they introduced the the venom to your, I think it's a saliva.

• 3:15:01Jocko Willink?

  So what do you feel when you do it?

• 3:15:02Speaker 01

  Uh, just overwhelming heat, but everyone's experience is slightly different. Everyone's experience is.

• 3:15:06Jocko Willink?

  Overwhelming heat?

• 3:15:07Speaker 01

  It's like, yeah, it's like a very, very heat therapy, kind of, it's almost like a internal sauna. But everyone has a different effect of it, right? And introduced with that, there's, we did.

• 3:15:21Speaker 01

  Two other ones. One was introduced to nose. It was like a tobacco and then one was eye drops into the eyes and three different versions of of plant medicine that was not psychedelic, but they all had some kind of effect and and guys left their feeling clarity, right? They felt they were able to to, I guess, manifest some emotions that they've been harboring for a long time. But also in that same weekend, they did Wim Hof. They learned how to do Wim Hof sessions of breathing, right? They learned things about Matt Larson came out and taught about moral injury. We had a EMD, EMDR counselors there to talk about that and hopefully introduce that.

• 3:16:00Jocko Willink?

  EMDR is like the lights in the heface?

• 3:16:02Speaker 01

  Yep, yep. That helps with the kind of the frontal cortex and processing trauma. We had a long list of different things as well as community, right? We just, the goal is to introduce, I guess, to dip the toe in the water of wellness and for them to kind of continue to pursue it on their own. It's a place where like men can feel like they can be one vulnerable if need be, but to open expression of of some of their own traumas and being a part of a community that that welcomes it as well. And so yoga, breathing, all these different things.

• 3:16:30Jocko Willink?

  How many dudes were there?

• 3:16:31Speaker 01

  That was thirty, thirty participants.

• 3:16:32Jocko Willink?

  And how long is it?

• 3:16:33Speaker 01

  It was three days. And I'm telling you, it was life changing. A guy like my brother, who's a, he's a battalion chief in the fire department in Chandler, he would never be open to any of this stuff. He's kind of stoic. And he left there like, when's the next one? Like, I gotta try it.

• 3:16:47Jocko Willink?

  Where, where do you do it?

• 3:16:48Speaker 01

  We did this one in Dallas. We kind of, we're scheduling one in California here soon. We're scheduling another one in Dallas in April. It's really, just depends if we can find a facility to to host it. You know, I have a long list of the wellness leaders that I've, you know, been introduced to myself going through different programs. And so now I brought them all under my, my little umbrella and I bring them in to teach their portion. It's dope, dude.

• 3:17:11Jocko Willink?

  So you've done one so far?

• 3:17:12Speaker 01

  We've done one so far, but we have a continued, so we have like the, the, it's the... The accountability group, those guys are still in that world too. So as these guys, I can introduce them. So like we have guys going to do ayahuasca, right? We have guys connected to the Heroic Arts Foundation to do ayahuasca. We have guys who are doing sessions with the same healers that did the compo. We have American yogi, ex SF dude who does yoga. He's the one doing breathing and stuff like that. We also, all these guys are still introduced into the same world. So, yeah, we're just kind of bridging that gap for the guys.

• 3:17:47Jocko Willink?

  Okay. And then you also have a podcast.

• 3:17:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, the Vinnie Rock.

• 3:17:51Jocko Willink?

  Vinnie Rock.

• 3:17:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, the Vinnie Rock podcast. Yeah.

• 3:17:54Jocko Willink?

  Vinnie Rock podcast and what's going on with that?

• 3:17:56Speaker 01

  We, I did it for about four years and then Mayans got really, kind of took over and I wasn't able to. So now we just, I bought all the cameras and I have a producer coming in to help us. And so now again, we're just bringing dudes in and interviewing them. A lot of focuses on wellness, a lot of focuses on just successful careers. I hope to inspire, motivate and entertain. So it's just kind of a cool spot to hear me interview people and also have my opinions on it.

• 3:18:20Jocko Willink?

  When you're working at Mayans, when you're on TV, doing these shows, did you know what it was like? Well, I guess you kind of knew from Article 15 of like what was going down and they have to do the same thing over and over and over and over and over again?

• 3:18:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, when you do YouTube, it's not like that. Yeah. When you do YouTube, it's just like turn the camera on and go, you know what I mean? And even if we fucked up, it kind of, we used it. Yeah. Yeah. And acting was crazy. Acting, real Hollywood style acting was like the military in a sense of hurry up and wait, but also like, holy fuck, this man on us. And it's like, you do the scene. If it was a scene of us three, right? You do your takes, you do your takes, you do my takes, you do the wide takes and then you go in and clean up. And you're like, what the fuck? So how many hours? Seven hours for one fucking scene? Like our scene we did when you were, it was just like over and over and over. And you're like, what?

• 3:19:09Jocko Willink?

  The first, I was on Billions and I didn't know any of this, right? I didn't even think you had to actually memorize the words, right? So they sent me a script and I was like, cool, whatever, dude. Like I'm gonna say what I want. Like what up? You know, I'm fucking Jocko, what? And so I get there and I probably only had, I don't know how many lines I had, but it wasn't like a lot. But I'm watching like the scene before me. And I'm like, oh God, they're doing the same thing over and over again. Oh, that means I gotta say the same thing. That means other people gotta respond in the way. And I didn't know that at all. So I'm sitting there trying to memorize the lines, my whatever, seven lines, like. And then we, you know, same thing. We, we have a, a scene in Billions and it's like.

• 3:19:52Jocko Willink?

  I'm on this, the opening, like running scene or whatever, but it took like seven hours.

• 3:19:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 3:19:58Jocko Willink?

  And I was like, dude, this is crazy.

• 3:20:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:20:01Jocko Willink?

  And then I went back again, which I knew what to expect, but yeah, it's weird that you, that actors in those shows, man, you're doing the same thing like 20 times.

• 3:20:11Speaker 01

  It's emotionally exhausting, like not emotionally in the sense of like crying, but it's just like, you have to think and process and, and, and, you know, you have to. Emote whatever emotion they're asking for, and you have to do it over and over and over. And then they say, cut, and you go hang out with your guys and you're talking and bullshit. And then you go right back to, back on target. And, uh, you don't realize how tiring that shit is for your body until you're done with it. And the day's over and you're driving your car and you're like, God, I'm fucking smoked, dude. Like, I didn't do nothing. I sat on like the, the truck bed of a car and said the same lines for like seven hours. I'm smoked. It's so weird.

• 3:20:44Jocko Willink?

  So JD, the, the star of Mayans, right? So that's when I was on Mayans, it was us and, and a few other guys, but he was kind of the main guy. He and I were talking, right? Ezekiel. And as we're, as we're standing there, right? So we, he and I have a lot of FaceTime where they're not filming, but we're just standing there and setting up cameras. We end up just talking a bunch. And so I'm kind of getting his life story and stuff and, uh, great dude, super cool. And, but then he's like, yeah, you know, I was getting in trouble and I think his dad was a marine.

• 3:21:16Speaker 01

  His dad was a marine.

• 3:21:17Jocko Willink?

  Dad was in the marine. And so he had like that going in his life, but then he was kind of getting in trouble, you know, just being a kid. And then he's like, yeah, you know, he says when um, I I was in, I think it was in high school and like I got put into this acting class and like the first time I I like got on stage, man, I knew that like this was for me. And I look back at him, I was like, that's how I felt when I first got a machine gun in my hands. He laughed so hard because it was such a contrast of bullshit, but uh, yeah, he's a freaking good dude.

• 3:21:50Speaker 01

  He's a great dude.

• 3:21:52Jocko Willink?

  It's it's weird though, like when you think of what an actor does, man, they're just doing the same thing over and over again. You gotta be a patient person.

• 3:22:01Speaker 01

  Well, dude, imagine an emotional scene. That's a hard. It's hard because you have thirty people in this room and they're watching you go take after take after take and you have to keep giving it best performance possible. Because for me, every time you have a chance to do a performance, you're like, give it your all. Because you don't know who the fucking, the next casting director is like, we want him for the next movie. You know what I mean? Like, so it's always a tryout. It's always an interview. It's always an audition. You know what I mean? So every scene you get is like, give it, dude, give it everything. Because then the other side of it, which one do they take? We don't know which one they edit in and it might not be your best take and you're like, fuck, you know, whatever that is. So every time you get the chance, you're trying to give it everything and fuck, dude. It's like, this is fucking impossible.

• 3:22:40Jocko Willink?

  And how long? So I've done, like I said, like I did Billions, I did NCIS and I did Mayans. That's four days on set, right? And but how long, like when you when you start filming Mayans?

• 3:22:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's about five months.

• 3:22:55Jocko Willink?

  Is it five months? Are you in? How many scenes are you in? Like, how many dates?

• 3:22:59Speaker 01

  It all depends on the writing. That's the hard part for like, so me, being the family man, like I would fly home every weekend because we don't film on weekends. But I would be there sometimes on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, sometimes be Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, sometimes it'd just be Wednesday, sometimes I'd only have nothing that whole week. It all depends on my character and what, how much is written. But I know for a fact, we're filming for five to six months. So those five to six months is like, is dedicated to Mayans. And for the most part, I was in like almost every episode, every season, that I was there almost one or two days every week.

• 3:23:28Jocko Willink?

  What about for JD? Is he just, he's like five days a week?

• 3:23:31Speaker 01

  No, he's the same. He's the same. He might have more, but for the most part, like if we, it might be a heavy week where it's the cartel focused. Well JD's not any cartel stuff, right? It might be-

• 3:23:41Jocko Willink?

  Oh, and they stack it that way. So they're gonna have all the cartel guys. They're all gonna do a bunch of scenes, all in the same-

• 3:23:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, so like my scenes were with, with this actress, um, named Erica, Erica, and she, um, you know, our scenes were our scenes. And so we'd have two days in a row, just our scenes. And no one else was even working those two days. It was just me, her, and you know, our, our CM Punk.

• 3:24:02Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 3:24:02Speaker 01

  Right? And so we would have two days dedicated just for our stuff. And that would happen often. So if it was like a JD heavy week where he was doing his own stuff, like-

• 3:24:10Jocko Willink?

  Got it. But damn, that must be like-

• 3:24:13Speaker 01

  Dude, five, six months of work. Uh, I'm excited the last day. Actually, I'm not good at saying goodbye. So like even on the last day of filming, I was there from day one all the way to the last one. We said, cut, boom, grab my stuff and start driving home. Like I'm out, dog. I don't, I'm tired. Like six months of this shit. Playing a character, emotionally invested into the character and my character having a lot of emotion. Like you're like, I'm over it, dude. Like I'm tired. I need the break. I need the break. And now like, we don't even have it no more. I'm like, fuck dude, I miss it. I miss it.

• 3:24:41Jocko Willink?

  Alright, so you get done with that. You got Light Defuse, you got, uh, Veteran, Vinnie Rock. You got music too.

• 3:24:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't talk about that often.

• 3:24:50Jocko Willink?

  Hey, this dude over here making music.

• 3:24:53Speaker 01

  Hell yeah. I'm actually going home after this to, to go work on another song. I got a producer coming to town.

• 3:24:58Jocko Willink?

  So what, do you play an instrument?

• 3:25:00Speaker 01

  I don't. I just, I write, I write.

• 3:25:02Jocko Willink?

  You write it and then you sing it.

• 3:25:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:25:05Jocko Willink?

  You got, um, a song called Leftovers. You got a song called Keys. You got a song called Lonely Road. Uh, so you write this, the lyrics, right? And then for Leftovers, for example, so who, who's the dude that's gonna come and make the music? How's that work?

• 3:25:22Speaker 01

  That's my producer. Um, his name is Jay Den. He, he just, he owns Endure. Uh, he's just a really cool dude that we got connected with and, and he develops all the music for it and helps put it into music. You know, I write, I write the concept of the song and sometimes we just co-write and finish it up. But it all comes from something. All the songs mean something, right? I'm not, I, I just write whatever I'm dealing with or something I want, like if I want to write something for my wife. Um, and so he, he comes in and helps me finish it up. So we're a good team.

• 3:25:51Jocko Willink?

  And then is he playing them?

• 3:25:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, he plays all the instruments. Yeah.

• 3:25:54Jocko Willink?

  And then you, you roll in there and throw down the vocal track.

• 3:25:59Speaker 01

  It's embarrassing, dude. I hate that on my bio and people, and music. I'm like, no, dude, don't even mention that. Cause I originally did it for myself. It was like my own, like.

• 3:26:06Jocko Willink?

  Oh, that's why you put it on YouTube?

• 3:26:07Speaker 01

  No, then eventually he was like, it's really good. I'm like, uh, all right, fuck it. I'll put, there's one song on YouTube.

• 3:26:14Jocko Willink?

  Uh, well, they're on. No, there's more than one song on YouTube. I was watching them last night.

• 3:26:18Speaker 01

  Were they on YouTube?

• 3:26:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Yeah. They, they're good, man. They're, I was, I was, it was interesting to me cause there's no, uh, there's a very limited thread of the musical style. It's like one song sounds like this, one song sounds like something else. The other song sounds like something else. And you, you know, your voice is obviously the same through all of them.

• 3:26:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:26:38Jocko Willink?

  But it's pretty interesting that you're able to go this mode and go that mode and go that's other mode. Your voice, again, no offense, you don't have like a ton of range, right? You're doing what you're doing.

• 3:26:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:26:48Jocko Willink?

  And this is coming from someone that has zero range.

• 3:26:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, I stay in my pocket. I stay in my pocket.

• 3:26:52Jocko Willink?

  It's cool that you can take what you do and you can put it in this kind of song and that kind of song. It works out pretty good, man.

• 3:26:57Speaker 01

  You got me sweating, bro. I'm nervous. I'm embarrassed.

• 3:27:01Jocko Willink?

  Um, so you got that going on and what else? What, what am I missing?

• 3:27:06Speaker 01

  I don't even know. The, yeah, I don't know. The book. That's it. I just, I, I like to write, you know, that's. We talked about the book for a couple of hours, didn't we?

• 3:27:16Speaker 01

  No, I, I just like to write, uh, and I just found a lot of like therapy value in the writing and then it's just kind of turned it into a career. And it's been kind of cool.

• 3:27:23Jocko Willink?

  What's your process for writing? I'll ask a Tim Ferriss question.

• 3:27:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. Um, so for writing the book, I, I first established which chapters I want to write or kind of like the, the broad strokes of chapters. And then, and then I'll knock out one chapter at a time and I just write like my heart out to all of it. And then, uh, you know, you'll go, I'll go back and say, this doesn't fit. So I'll save that in the extras file on my computer. And I just keep writing and then I'll read over it and I, I don't really read as much as I do. I, I, I highlight and speak and I hear it and I hear the flow of it. And if it feels like it doesn't flow well, I know there's something in there I need to change. And so I go back and change it, but. I try and write from the heart, man. That's kind of everything. All the songs, even the scripts I write, I try and write something that's near and dear to my heart of some kind of empathy or emotion.

• 3:28:05Jocko Willink?

  And do you write at the same time every day when you're writing a script?

• 3:28:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, I usually, it's either early in the morning before the kids wake up or late at night when they're all asleep. It's kind of like my time to focus.

• 3:28:12Jocko Willink?

  And what's the kid count at this time?

• 3:28:14Speaker 01

  We're at eight. Yeah, we're done. We have eight kids. We're done. We're done.

• 3:28:18Jocko Willink?

  Quitting, huh?

• 3:28:19Speaker 01

  I don't know if that's quitting or trying to be sensible about the whole thing. Jesus.

• 3:28:25Jocko Willink?

  What else? So anything else? Did we miss anything else? I mean, I know I got your music. We know we got Light the Fuse, LTFwellness.com, Got Better. And by the way, everything can be found at

• 3:28:37Jocko Willink?

  on the interweb at VincentRoccoVargas.com. So that's, but did I miss anything else?

• 3:28:44Speaker 01

  No, I don't, I don't, I don't think so.

• 3:28:46Jocko Willink?

  Well, if, if whatever I miss, we'll come back and do it. It'd be, you know, we could do five more podcasts about little things that I would dig into from the book and from your life.

• 3:28:57Jocko Willink?

  Where, so the book is Borderline: Defending the Home Front. And where can people find you? They got Instagram, at Vincent Rocco. And by the way, you spell Rocco wrong. R-O-C-C-O. Not like Jocko J-O-C-K-O.

• 3:29:10Speaker 01

  I know. I felt like it was too close to the way you spell it.

• 3:29:14Jocko Willink?

  Vincent Rocco Vargas, you're on Facebook, Vincent Rocco Vargas, and your YouTube channel. That's where you got, not only can you watch your Vinnie Rock podcast, but you can also listen to the smooth tones and covering music of, what do you call your band?

• 3:29:30Speaker 01

  It's just me. I just call it Rocco Vargas music. I don't know.

• 3:29:32Jocko Willink?

  Rocco Vargas music. It's good stuff, man. It's good stuff. Echo Charles, you got any questions?

• 3:29:38Speaker 02

  Plenty, but I'm gonna keep it kind of simple. So you ever, do you explore AI tools, like for the creative process at all?

• 3:29:48Speaker 01

  No, not as much. I've used AIs to like construct some kind of like, like if you're gonna post a photo and I use the AI to help create that sometimes, but for like the business side of things, but not my personal stuff.

• 3:30:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, cuz like, you know, like songwriting, for example, it's becoming more and more where you can, you know, like if you like writing, right? You can be like, hey, if you know how to talk to the AI, like you know, to do the prompts or whatever, you can be like, okay, you can creatively write your song and then ask the AI to kind of do everything else. And those tools are becoming more and more

• 3:30:22Speaker 01

  I'll have to check that out.

• 3:30:22Speaker 02

  Robust.

• 3:30:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, I I've used AI to help edit a paper, you know what I mean? Like a college paper before, because I'm like, God, I had to clean this up.

• 3:30:29Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. The the tools are getting more and more like there's a lot more. Um, I do find, though, especially if you're like a if you've been a creative person for a long time, you kind of, you really notice the lack of the human element in the creations.

• 3:30:44Speaker 01

  That's what I've heard is the the big difference right now. It's like it's like, I guess a lot of the writing strike was because of AI. And people are using that in script writing and supposedly, but but, yeah, I I tried that out for a script. I wrote a script about like a dad and spanking their kids. Something that I I'm working on is kind of like this short to kind of like, display the change of the things have changed, right? And I went to AI to have them write it too, just to see.

• 3:31:10Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 3:31:10Speaker 01

  And it was close. It it definitely lacked a lot of the like, the empathy and the heart and emotion, but it was fucking close. And I was like, damn, there's some things that they put on that script that was just exactly what mine would have been.

• 3:31:21Speaker 02

  Right.

• 3:31:22Speaker 01

  It's pretty crazy.

• 3:31:22Jocko Willink?

  I've run some tests with like, leadership questions. And and what's interesting for me is since I have so much content out there from books and podcasts and interviews, that it can get a really good assessment of the way that I think, right? And I would ask, I've asked it just like the fundamental leadership questions. And what's interesting, it's kind of like you said, it'll it'll give a really, it'll give a good answer. And not only does it give a good answer, it also always gives like these really good, well crafted caveats. Things like, and we have to remember that all leadership situations are different, so you have to consider that when you are applying these tools. So and it'll do that for everything. Like you ask it for an exercise program, you'll be, you also have to consider that everyone's different biologically.

• 3:32:05Jocko Willink?

  It so it's really good at at covering its ass.

• 3:32:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:32:09Jocko Willink?

  But on top of like, the good answer and the good caveat, it always misses like a critical component where you're like, yep, this isn't, you're not there, bro. You're not there, AI.

• 3:32:20Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 3:32:21Jocko Willink?

  Robot, you're not quite there. You're close, you're in the ballpark.

• 3:32:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. And I'll tell you why, because usually like

• 3:32:28Speaker 02

  You know how you get a real creative person that's like an anomaly?

• 3:32:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:32:32Speaker 02

  Right? Where it's like, you know, these guys who stand out, Elgin James, like there's something about them that's really unique. AI doesn't work like that. AI works the opposite. It's like it aggregates everything. Everything all recorded and analyzed and be like, okay, now to answer your question, given everything that the AI knows and has learned and is gonna continue to learn with all the information out there. So it's the opposite of anomalous, really. It's like, let me, just like how you said, it gives caveats. It's for a reason because it has all the information. Yeah, you know?

• 3:33:02Jocko Willink?

  You know, it'd be interesting is could you come up with a prompt not to go freaking full freaking Lex Friedman, where are you at nerd out on this stuff? But can you give it a prompt?

• 3:33:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:33:11Jocko Willink?

  Where it's like, in a leadership situation, what would you do here? Based on Jocko Willink's principles, narrow down to eliminate obvious answers and give a unique uh scenario for this answer. Like could you prompt it hard enough?

• 3:33:29Speaker 01

  That's where AI does well if you're really good at knowing how to prompt it.

• 3:33:33Speaker 02

  Yeah. And then the more people get good at prompting, the more it can learn for itself. So, and that goes for any kind of computer thing. Like think of CGI, right? We got like all the simple stuff is like figured out. It's like super easy, right? Like mechanical stuff. Even water is actually more complex than like a steel kettlebell. And then you got a machine or something like this, right? Like a refrigerator or something like that.

• 3:33:57Jocko Willink?

  An alien robot.

• 3:33:58Speaker 02

  Alien robots, yeah, they can do good. But when you try to do really like highly specifically evolved stuff, like a human face talking and getting sad and mad and stuff, stuff where like however many years of evolution like tuned us to understand and recognize or whatever, the AI is like fumbling even now. It's really hard.

• 3:34:18Jocko Willink?

  But it's gonna get close.

• 3:34:19Speaker 02

  Of course, it's gonna get closer and closer and closer and closer for sure. Yeah. But that's my whole point where. Now, if you're like, hey, I can't really play many instruments, really. You know, I know a couple guys who can, and you know, whatever. But I can write real good, and that's really my passion. So when I make music, the writing is really what's gonna kind of spearhead my whole creative endeavor. I'm gonna use AI for all the other stuff, because really, I mean, you know, I just need a guy who can play guitar. I don't need freaking Jimi Hendrix over here. I just need a guy who can play guitar, because the writing is the the front-running element, right? So you go, AI, play a guitar in this style, and just the best you can, right? And then you finally tune it with the AI, but the thing you have control over creatively is the writing, and it can kind of build from there, you know?

• 3:35:02Jocko Willink?

  You ever listen to the band The White Stripes?

• 3:35:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:35:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, so I was listening to Jack White talk about The White Stripes, right? And basically, he's saying, listen, you go to a a regular, like a modern studio for music to make an album, if you're a person. And for instance, they take a snare drum, and they like hit the snare drum a hundred times, and they find the one that like, whatever on the computer showed, like the most rounded resonance and all this other stuff. And that's the one that they use for the whole drum track, the perfect drum hit on the snare. And they do that for the cymbal, they do that for the crash, and they do that for the keyboard, and then they do that with a person's voice. And so what you end up with is a thing that is perfect. It's a thing that's perfect.

• 3:35:45Jocko Willink?

  And when you hear it, look, the nor- a normal person, when they hear it, they go, oh, yep, sounds great. That's why I pop Britney Spears, every one of those snares, everything in her voice, everything is perfectly done. And you know what that kind of makes me think of? A cubic zirconia. Do you know what a cubic zirconia is? It's a fake diamond. And you know how they can tell it's fake?

• 3:36:04Speaker 02

  Too perfect.

• 3:36:04Jocko Willink?

  Because it's too perfect. And so there's a certain, for me, I get a feeling when I listen to like really highly-produced music. I'm like, this isn't a human, and this doesn't have any emotion to it. And that sort of was Jack White's point of like, you can, you can feel it, man. Like, even Meg White, she's gonna hit the drum a little different on that verse than the other verse, and it makes a difference. And the way he's playing guitar, and the way he's singing it, and his voice is breaking, it's like all those things are going on, and that's why Led Zeppelin. Sounds like Led Zeppelin or Black Sabbath. You're like, Black Sabbath sounds like Black Sabbath. They cut their first album in one shot in eight hours. By the end of their careers, they were doing like nine months to record an album and like everything had.

• 3:36:48Jocko Willink?

  So, so just things change and you get more away from the raw and more into the highly produced, highly refined. And for me, it loses value. Absolutely.

• 3:36:58Speaker 02

  Right. Especially from an artistic standpoint. And that's my whole point with the AI where sure, it's going to get better and better and better and better, but it's almost like it gets better. But at the same time can never get perfect ever. It's like if I get halfway to you every single step. Like halfway, if I get halfway to you, then another halfway to you, I never really get to you. That's what it seems. That's what it feels like in the creative stuff. Because like I said, like a real talented artist in one way is very individual. When AI works on everything, it's learned from everything else, you know, and then so it's like doing a big insight study to see who's like the most creative.

• 3:37:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, there's also going to be a point where that AI is going to generate things that are its own. And that are going to be unique. And they're doing that with art right now, like, you know, like. Yeah. Remember when everyone was posting pictures, they're freaking cells, AI generated self. Hell yeah. That was just like the ultimate in, uh, hey, yeah, I guess so. Look at the perfect version of me. That's what it is. Decided to get in the game with the AI pictures of myself. In case anyone was wondering what I look like if I was freaking. Fucking Terminator, bro. Two hundred and forty pounds of, you know, blue twisted steel.

• 3:38:11Speaker 02

  Hell yeah. But they're pretty cool though.

• 3:38:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's what I'm saying. There's a uniqueness to them. There's a uniqueness that you're talking about a lack of uniqueness. There's a uniqueness that's for real, that's coming in when you randomly generate. What about freaking artists that throw paint at the freaking wall?

• 3:38:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, but it's still coming from a person.

• 3:38:26Jocko Willink?

  Actually has meaning because.

• 3:38:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, because it's coming from a person. Yeah, yeah, but that's, it is true. So the, the computer generated stuff. It's like, it's cool and it's fun. And okay, so the whole, I'm going to do an AI generated version of myself. Right? The thing that's fun about that is because it's yourself still, you know, and this is the AI's kind of translation. It's fun to see the little translation and then of course the perfect version of yourself. I get that part too. But like I said, it's like a person is imperfect. And so there's a difference between a perfect.

• 3:38:58Jocko Willink?

  I said too, right?

• 3:38:59Speaker 02

  No, you're exactly, exactly right. In fact, you can be technically better, but the per the imperfection is part of a greater perfection. So, so you can't, okay, if I want to be a highly individualized person, it comes with a bunch of imperfections. All of it, like almost on an infinite level where the computer is just trying to replicate those imperfections and you can tell.

• 3:39:21Jocko Willink?

  Guess what? This, I almost cut you off. I had to restrain myself because I really wanted to.

• 3:39:26Speaker 02

  Restrain.

• 3:39:26Jocko Willink?

  But when you were talking about Elgin writing, right?

• 3:39:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:39:30Jocko Willink?

  Elgin, when he's writing, when he's directing the direction of the story, the AI generated solution would be that thing that you're talking about. That kind of like, yep, this is the standard story. We know what's going to happen. We know this is going to move the emotions this way and move the emotions that way. It's going to set up this ending, the blah, blah, blah, blah. And he's like, no, don't do that thing. He has a look on it. That's not a cube. The cubic zirconia, he, no one's watching it.

• 3:39:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:39:56Jocko Willink?

  Or let me rephrase that. Cause there's a thing, man. Plenty of people watch.

• 3:39:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:39:59Jocko Willink?

  Cubic zirconians like, uh, remember those TV shows back in the day that, that, that were like, uh, Hallmark specials. Remember those? Right?

• 3:40:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:40:09Jocko Willink?

  You know what I'm talking about?

• 3:40:10Speaker 02

  My mother in law.

• 3:40:10Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, like moms, moms are watching, but it's like, it's like a story that everybody knows. The whole story.

• 3:40:16Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 3:40:17Jocko Willink?

  And hey, do you ever watch, do you ever get on, on Facebook, on the algorithm, you'll get like, watch these like six minute movies about like, I don't know. They'll be about like, I, I, I watched one of them one time and I was like, okay, I see what this is.

• 3:40:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:40:30Jocko Willink?

  It was like a guy and he's like sweeping up and a guy like dropped something and he, the guy's the janitor, but then he ends up being actually the owner and it's like that kind of thing.

• 3:40:42Speaker 02

  Kids have that. Yeah.

• 3:40:43Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:40:43Speaker 02

  This, anyway, yeah.

• 3:40:44Jocko Willink?

  But that's like, those are just generic. Those are like AI generated stories. Like write a story about a lesson from someone and it's like an AI generated story. And people still watch them. A lot of people watch those, but. There's, there's, there's the lacking element. Like you can go to the club and you can dance to Britney Spears or one of these pop people. But then you go to a white stripe show. You're like, yeah, it's different.

• 3:41:07Speaker 02

  Brother's cubic zirconia things or whatever, they're still shiny. They're super shiny.

• 3:41:12Jocko Willink?

  And people buy them.

• 3:41:12Speaker 02

  Oh yeah, they're shiny. They look, they sparkle on their, they do all that stuff for sure. But if you care, like, you know, you're a creative person, you care about other stuff than how much it shines. Just like you care about music more so than how many albums it sold or how many plays it got on the freaking radio station or the club or whatever. See what I'm saying? And that's what I, anyway, at the end of the day, I think that's gonna be a massive challenge for AI to replicate.

• 3:41:36Jocko Willink?

  Yep. I think it's gonna be interesting. Well, cause it seems like if it takes enough cracks at it, it's gonna figure some shit out.

• 3:41:43Speaker 02

  Well, it's a freaking one of the, I mean, it's probably the best, well, one of the best tools ever created, even for a creative person, cause it's like a little helper. You know, like any like creative, like project, when it, when it has a bunch of people. Some people are better than others. Sometimes you just need somebody to go run and grab that coffee and bring it back. You know, so the AI can kind of take care of a lot of jobs. Meanwhile, if, as long as you have creative control, it's like, hey, it can be a good tool.

• 3:42:09Jocko Willink?

  Yep. Well, we'll see where it goes. Um, so.

• 3:42:14Speaker 02

  That's my only question, by the way. Actually, I have a lot of border patrol, but.

• 3:42:19Jocko Willink?

  We'll do another one.

• 3:42:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, hell yeah.

• 3:42:22Jocko Willink?

  Meanwhile, you can see Rocco's got a lot of stuff going on, some other stuff going on, Jocko Fuel, Jocko Fuel dot com. We got all kinds of stuff going on at Jocko Fuel dot com. We got energy drinks, we got hydrate, we got greens, by the way. Do you, do you take greens? I don't, but I will. Oh yeah, we're gonna hook you up. We'll get you on some greens.

• 3:42:40Speaker 02

  I know why you don't take greens, cause they freaking suck most of the time.

• 3:42:43Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, cause most of the time they taste like crap.

• 3:42:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'd rather eat all the vegetables required than take most greens for real. Not, but not this one for real.

• 3:42:50Jocko Willink?

  Not this one. Uh, the greens are legit, everything's legit. Um, so check it out, Jocko Fuel dot com. Get a subscription to what you take all the time. Like if you take time more all the time, just, just get in there. Also, this stuff's available in stores, Vitamin Shop, GNC, Military Commissaries, Afees, Hanaford, Dash Stores, Wakeford Shoprite, HEB, down in Texas, we're there. And we appreciate our people in Texas. We also appreciate our people up in the, in the Midwest going to Meyer. Killing it by the way. So thanks to all of you. Harris Teeter, Lifetime Fitness Shields, small gyms out there. If you're training jujitsu and you have a jujitsu academy, or you got a CrossFit gym,

• 3:43:35Jocko Willink?

  or you got a powerlifting gym, and you want to sell some of the goods, or you got a bodybuilding gym?

• 3:43:39Speaker 02

  Hell yeah.

• 3:43:40Jocko Willink?

  There you go.

• 3:43:42Speaker 02

  Speaking of which, the pre-workout, this is important to mention, if people don't know, the pre-workout is not like the old school freaking Ephedra, you know, risk your life for the pump kind of pre-workout. It's like, it's good.

• 3:43:54Jocko Willink?

  It's not risk your life for the pump. It's get it, get the pump. Sometimes though, like, let's face it, sometimes you need it. You know, my, my, my daughter, the other day, she'd been training kind of a lot, and she said, you know, look, just because you're training jujitsu doesn't mean you're not lifting. It doesn't mean you're not getting your pull-ups in, but she told me yesterday, she was like, I was tired yesterday. I was like, oh, that's bummer. And she goes, I had to take the pre-workout. I was like, oh. She goes, how'd it work? She was like, freaking awesome. So you can be like that, and you can still get your shit done.

• 3:44:28Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. But it's like a slippery slope in a good way, by the way, where it's like, okay, let me just take this pre-workout when I'm like just kind of tired. Then it's like, oh, damn, that was kind of a solid little boost. And then the day you're not really that tired, but you're like,

• 3:44:42Jocko Willink?

  Is this how people get addicted to crystal methamphetamine?

• 3:44:44Speaker 02

  It, it seems like a similar pathway. Yes, for sure. But at least we're lifting, you know, I mean, you can, and, and at least it's healthy.

• 3:44:51Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I was gonna say, and you won't end up, uh,

• 3:44:54Speaker 02

  Dead.

• 3:44:55Jocko Willink?

  Dead. With no teeth. And sores, open sores on your face.

• 3:44:59Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, right. You know, you took pre-workout before, right?

• 3:45:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's saying, you know, Jack 3D.

• 3:45:04Speaker 02

  Exactly right. Okay, so when pre-workout freaking exploded onto the scene, it was like, bro, wild, wild west. Hey, let's put some meth in there. Freaking Ephedra, they had to ban a bunch of stuff, saying, hey, you can't put that in there anymore because guys are tired.

• 3:45:15Speaker 01

  You want to order the shit that was banned. Like, that shit's good.

• 3:45:18Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that must be the good shit. If it's illegal, it's good.

• 3:45:21Speaker 02

  Bro, I'm telling you, yeah, it's crazy. So like, taking pre-workout still, I think even now, still has kind of that stigma where it's like,

• 3:45:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, I stopped messing with it because I was nervous about it, because of the heart thing. Yeah.

• 3:45:31Speaker 02

  Same exact thing. That's why I stopped. I was like, brother.

• 3:45:34Speaker 01

  If you say you got some good shit, I could use some good shit.

• 3:45:37Jocko Willink?

  Do you like, it's got 200 milligrams of caffeine. So that's two cups of coffee, maybe two and a half cups of coffee. It's not crazy. You know, some of these things, they're freaking out of control.

• 3:45:47Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 3:45:47Jocko Willink?

  Uh, and you gotta be careful, but even for me, like I don't take pre-workout normally. So from, I don't need to take a whole scoop. I can take a half a scoop. And all of a sudden I feel like I'm on cocaine and I've never even done cocaine.

• 3:45:59Speaker 01

  I tell you, it's a hell of a drug.

• 3:46:00Jocko Willink?

  That must be what it feels like. I heard somebody asking Theo Von the other day, like, what's your favorite, what'd he say? What's your favorite? Kind of pot or something like that? And he's like, probably cocaine. Bro, that guy is freaking awesome.

• 3:46:18Speaker 01

  I met him at a UFC event.

• 3:46:20Jocko Willink?

  Freaking hilarious. Uh, okay. Also, originusa.com.

• 3:46:24Speaker 01

  Hey, you guys just picked up a UFC deal.

• 3:46:26Jocko Willink?

  Yes, we did. I like that shit. It's freaking outstanding.

• 3:46:29Speaker 01

  So pumped.

• 3:46:30Jocko Willink?

  So cool to see. Um, if you didn't catch this news, uh, we partnered with the UFC. We partnered with the ultimate fighting championship. That's freaking wild, right?

• 3:46:40Speaker 01

  I watch every single weekend, man. I love it and I'm glad you guys are part of that.

• 3:46:43Jocko Willink?

  And, and, and let me tell you straight up, the Dana White, the team at UFC. They wanted to partner with us. Not, not saying they like, I'm, I'm not trying to make it sound out of balance. But they could partner with anybody, right? They, they get to decide who they partner with. It's not, so the fact that they looked at our company. They love what we're doing. They're patriotic. They support America. I mean, Dana obviously supports American companies and things being made in America. So it was just awesome that it all came together and yeah, super stoked. OriginUSA.com.

• 3:47:21Speaker 01

  I forgot, we used, we use origin shirts for better and for the light, the fuse ones.

• 3:47:24Jocko Willink?

  Hell yeah.

• 3:47:25Speaker 01

  Everything. Yeah.

• 3:47:25Jocko Willink?

  Hell yeah.

• 3:47:26Speaker 01

  For the same reason.

• 3:47:27Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:47:27Speaker 01

  Just got it.

• 3:47:27Jocko Willink?

  Freaking made in America. Uh, Geez, you said you're, you're starting to train Jiu Jitsu again?

• 3:47:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, I just signed up again.

• 3:47:32Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So we need to get you a Gee.

• 3:47:34Speaker 01

  Uh oh.

• 3:47:34Jocko Willink?

  Maybe a couple of Gee's. Are you a no Gee guy?

• 3:47:37Speaker 01

  No, no, no. I'm, I'm, I need to learn the Gee dude. I've done enough no Gee that I'm, I've been hiding from Gee. I need to get in the Gee.

• 3:47:43Jocko Willink?

  It definitely, when you, if you don't do it or if you haven't done it, it's really, really annoying.

• 3:47:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, no.

• 3:47:49Jocko Willink?

  You can see, you train with a wrestler that's never worn a Gee before. Their whole life is frustrating.

• 3:47:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, I needed, I've been avoiding the gi for so long, I need it.

• 3:47:58Jocko Willink?

  Um, so we got everything at Origin, what else is at the OriginUSA.com? Jeans, boots.

• 3:48:03Speaker 02

  Jeans, boots, all day.

• 3:48:04Jocko Willink?

  All day gees, workout gear, the whole nine yards, man, all made a hundred percent in America. Bringing manufacturing back to America. So that's awesome.

• 3:48:11Speaker 01

  The hoodies are nice.

• 3:48:12Jocko Willink?

  The hoodies are deluxe. The hoodies are, the hoodies are deluxe. They're freaking good to go. Right, made right here. What else?

• 3:48:19Speaker 02

  It's true. Choco store, chocolate store called Jocko's store. Discipline equals freedom, good, death core, all this, it's, you know, it has a, what do you, staying power. See what I'm saying?

• 3:48:30Jocko Willink?

  It's for real.

• 3:48:31Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. But yeah, you want to represent discipline equals freedom, that's where you get it. Also, we have the shirt locker. Rock, I don't know if you know about this shirt locker, it's a new shirt every month.

• 3:48:41Speaker 01

  I saw that.

• 3:48:41Speaker 02

  Different designs. Anytime you see like something like discipline equals freedom-y, kind of, but not quite as serious or maybe a little bit more creative, if you will.

• 3:48:50Jocko Willink?

  By the way, not AI generated.

• 3:48:51Speaker 02

  Not AI generated.

• 3:48:52Jocko Willink?

  Because if it was AI generated, we know what it would do.

• 3:48:55Speaker 02

  We would.

• 3:48:55Jocko Willink?

  It's actually interesting, people will like, give, that's a term I use now. Like if someone answers a question or someone makes a statement about me, I'm like, oh, that's an AI generated, like, opinion of me.

• 3:49:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:49:07Jocko Willink?

  Like, it's like AI generated opinions of what to do at the border. Like, oh, this is the talking points that they read and pop, pop, pop, pop, pop. Like, here you go. Here's the, here's the, you know, answer. And then there's a little caveat that says, of course, there are some details in that. So don't get an AI generated t-shirt.

• 3:49:21Speaker 02

  It is not AI generated.

• 3:49:22Jocko Willink?

  Get an Echo Charles generated t-shirt up in this piece.

• 3:49:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'd say it's generated by the community, I would say, the people that are on the path. You know, they all have their own influence on these specific designs every month, by the way.

• 3:49:35Jocko Willink?

  So, there you go.

• 3:49:37Speaker 02

  Boom, that's at Jocko's store. It's called the Shirt Locker, but it's at Jocko's store dot.

• 3:49:40Jocko Willink?

  Now that name, Shirt Locker, S H U R T Locker, that came from the people.

• 3:49:45Speaker 02

  Came from the community, exactly.

• 3:49:47Jocko Willink?

  What do we call this thing? Someone's like Shirt Locker, dude nailed it.

• 3:49:50Speaker 02

  Send it, yeah, exactly.

• 3:49:51Jocko Willink?

  And, yeah, so there you go. Jocko's store dot com, primal beef, primal beef, get yourself some grass fed and. Fruit and grain finished.

• 3:50:00Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 3:50:01Jocko Willink?

  Got that. I had, I had. So normally I'm a ribeye guy. What about you?

• 3:50:05Speaker 02

  Ribeye.

• 3:50:05Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Ribeye 100%, right?

• 3:50:07Speaker 02

  I, I would say, but I did get the New York strip.

• 3:50:10Jocko Willink?

  That's what I had.

• 3:50:10Speaker 02

  Bro, and how's, how's this to, um, and I text Sean Glass as this is happening. So I got the, I got the New York strip. Uh, I had three of them. I only had one left from the, from the primal and then the other two from a different company. I'm not gonna say, but I was like, okay, let me put Sean Glass to the test here. Look, I'm not gonna go tell everyone if he, if he loses or whatever. So I do them. I prepare them literally exact same way, literally the exact same way. And I can already see before I cook them. I'm like, I already see the difference already, but whatever, you know, that's, that's no proof. The proof is afterwards, you understand? Cook them up exactly the same way. By far too.

• 3:50:47Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:50:47Speaker 02

  By far primal beef.

• 3:50:48Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that thing is good. So I normally, look, I'm not like, uh, okay, I'm a snake snob, a steak snob. Like you give me a ribeye, bro. That's what I'm talking about. But you know, had that, had that New York, which normally New York doesn't do it for me.

• 3:51:03Speaker 02

  Yeah. It's kinda like whatever's cool, but.

• 3:51:05Jocko Willink?

  Dude, this New York was money.

• 3:51:08Speaker 02

  Bro, I agree.

• 3:51:09Jocko Willink?

  Money. Tastes good. Uh, so there you go. Primal beef, primalbeef.com. Get yourself some, get yourself some meat. Also check out coloradocraftbeef.com. Those things freaking tasty. So we got options for you. Look, you can't live on mulch alone. Well, maybe you can. You probably can. But you may need to supplement your supplements with steak. So go to primalbeef.com, go to coloradocraftbeef.com. Awesome people making awesome steak for us out here. Subscribe to the podcast. We got jockounderground.com. Uh, check that out. $8.18 a month. If you can't afford it, it's okay. We got you. We want you to be here with us on the underground.

• 3:51:50Jocko Willink?

  So go to jockounderground.com, check out that little alternative podcast that we do. Got a YouTube channel, Jocko Podcast. Is that it?

• 3:52:00Speaker 02

  Yep. Official.

• 3:52:01Jocko Willink?

  Jocko Podcast official.

• 3:52:02Speaker 02

  You know, you're gonna see it.

• 3:52:03Jocko Willink?

  We got, uh, jockofuel.com. They're putting their own spin on things. They're putting a bunch of really cool. They got Danielle Kelly.

• 3:52:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:52:12Jocko Willink?

  Dude, Danielle Kelly. Girl tried to can opener her in one. You know what I'm talking about?

• 3:52:18Speaker 02

  I know what a can opener is.

• 3:52:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, so a girl's trying to can opener Danielle Kelly and Danielle Kelly just like maneuvers and gets the girl's back and chokes her. Salute to Danielle Kelly. Uh, they got stuff with her. Bo Nickel, by the way.

• 3:52:31Speaker 01

  She dope.

• 3:52:32Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, dude.

• 3:52:32Speaker 01

  Dope. Watching, I'm watching his whole college career.

• 3:52:35Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, he's freaking legit and he's, let's just come and take over the, but, but you know, he's Jocko Fuel. Go. And so he's getting after, he's also sponsored by Jocko Podcast, by the way.

• 3:52:46Speaker 02

  Did, I did know that, yeah.

• 3:52:48Jocko Willink?

  Okay, just, just making sure.

• 3:52:50Speaker 02

  No, no, no, I'm in the know.

• 3:52:52Jocko Willink?

  So yeah, check out those YouTube, and Origin USA has the YouTube thing. And don't forget, you got, you got Vinnie Rock.

• 3:52:59Speaker 01

  Hey.

• 3:52:59Jocko Willink?

  YouTube channel. You can check that out. How often are you posting something on there?

• 3:53:02Speaker 01

  Uh, we're trying to go four, four, uh, four times a month, four episodes. We're still, we're still getting in all, all the guests going on. I got a, um, a brain. Uh, went to a brain clinic for TBI and Dr. G, she's going to be on, on the 20th. I'm excited about that. And then Flo Grover, uh, the Medal of Honor recipient.

• 3:53:17Jocko Willink?

  Oh damn, right on.

• 3:53:19Speaker 01

  He's going to be on soon. I'll connect you with him, dude. He, he's, he's just dope, dude. Really good dude.

• 3:53:24Jocko Willink?

  For sure.

• 3:53:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:53:25Jocko Willink?

  Bro, remember I said like when you went into the recruiter? And the recruiter saw you and he's like, sees you like, I'm just waiting for my ride. He's like, you look like a steak. Imagine when dudes like you and me walk into like the TBI clinic. They're like, oh, let me see your background. You're like, oh, I did this, this and this. Like, you look like a steak, bro. They want to get their hands on you and figure out what the hell is going on. What's rattled up in there? Uh, so check out those YouTube things. We've got Psychological Warfare. We've got Flipside Canvas, Dakota Meyer, Speaking of Medal of Honor Recipients. He's got cool stuff to hang on your wall. FlipsideCanvas.com. Check that out. Books. We've got a bunch of books. Number one, of course, Borderline. Defending the Home Front by Vincent Rocco Vargas. Get that.

• 3:54:07Jocko Willink?

  It's coming out on Jocko Press, by the way. It's kind of a new thing that's going down. This is the first book on Jocko Press, different from Jocko Publishing.

• 3:54:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:54:15Speaker 02

  How's it different?

• 3:54:16Jocko Willink?

  It's different because we're in league with.

• 3:54:21Jocko Willink?

  St. Martin's Press. So we're, we're, we're helping them and they're helping us in order to get mass distribution and help on, it's, it's, it's a coordination of efforts. So I have a great relationship with St. Martin's Press and eventually, you know, some of the books and some of the people that I talk to and know, I know that I couldn't deliver what they might need for a book. And this is one of those books. I mean, this book is, everyone should be reading this book. If you live in America, you should be reading this book. If you live overseas, you can still get information from it as well because you actually, you actually have content in there. You have Spanish content in there. Like a whole section about how to actually legally

• 3:55:04Speaker 01

  Become a citizen.

• 3:55:04Jocko Willink?

  Become a citizen. So you've got all kinds of stuff. So that's what Jocko presses. It's sort of a, an imprint of St. Martin's Press. So that's a new thing. We've got a few more books coming out in the near future on that, that I think people are going to be excited about. But this is the first one, dude, number one.

• 3:55:19Speaker 01

  Yeah. I was excited about that. Honored.

• 3:55:21Jocko Willink?

  Let's rock and roll, man. Honor's all mine. So that book, then, you know, I've written a bunch of books. You can get those books. You can check out those books. You know what they are. Check out those Warrior Kid books. I'm just saying, I'm just saying. Ashland Front, We Solve Problems Through Leadership. Go to ashlandfront.com for details if you want to come. Next up is Dallas. I'm leaving for Dallas. That event will be over by the time this comes out, but it's been sold out for months. We crammed in, we reorganized seats, we did everything we could, but it sold out. So if you want to come to one of our events, go to ashlandfront.com, get some details. If you need help inside your organization, we work with companies, we work with the largest companies in the world, and we work

• 3:56:02Jocko Willink?

  with a lot of very small businesses and everything in between. So if you need help inside your organization with leadership, go to ashlandfront.com. We also have an online training academy. Leadership is the most important factor in business, in life, in family. Everything that you're doing is leadership. So learn how to lead if you want to improve every aspect of your life. Go to extremeownership.com. We have a curriculum that has been developed over the past 17 years that will help you learn how to lead in all situations. Also, if you want to help service members, active and retired, you want to help their families, you want to help Gold Star families, check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee. She's got an incredible charity organization.

• 3:56:45Jocko Willink?

  If you want to donate or you want to get involved in that, go to Americas Mighty Warriors dot org. Also check out Heroes and Horses dot org. Micah Fink, my brother, I don't know what he's doing right now, but you know that there is big sky Montana activities happening. Dude, the last time I talked to him, he's like, yeah, I just got, I had to go down to Wyoming and brand 1,200 freaking cows on the ranch. Yeah. I mean, he's just getting after it, dude.

• 3:57:16Speaker 01

  I want to go next time. Let him know.

• 3:57:17Jocko Willink?

  Hey, if you really want to go to his thing.

• 3:57:19Speaker 01

  I would love to.

• 3:57:19Jocko Willink?

  Do you know what his thing is? It's 41 days. They go out into the mountains like

• 3:57:23Speaker 01

  I've heard.

• 3:57:24Jocko Willink?

  Living off of horses.

• 3:57:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, I would love to.

• 3:57:26Jocko Willink?

  I want to do it. I want to do it when I'm like, I want to be older though, because I, it takes 41 days, bro. You know, that's a lot.

• 3:57:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a lot.

• 3:57:34Jocko Willink?

  Forty-one days is not on the calendar right now. But at some point, yeah. So check that out. Heroes and Horses dot org. Also Jimmy May's got that. Beyond the Brotherhood dot org, helping guys transition out of the military. If you want to connect with us on the, on the interwebs, well, you can do that. Vincent Rocco Vargas dot com. Instagram Vincent Rocco Vargas. Facebook Vincent Rocco Vargas. YouTube Vinnie Rock. And Echo, is that Echo Charles? I am at, what am I at? I am at Jocko Willink. Just watch out because the algorithm's there and you know what that algorithm's going to try and do. It's going to try and,

• 3:58:18Jocko Willink?

  it's going to try and crush you. So there you go. Rocco, you got any closing thoughts? Anything else?

• 3:58:25Speaker 01

  No, man. I'm just excited for people to kind of check out this book. I think it's going to be one of the biggest books for military who transitioned out of the military looking for a new career. I think it's going to be good for the retention of the Border Patrol as well as the recruitment for the Border Patrol and just for the average person, wanting to really understand what the Border Patrol career field is. So they have a better foundation of what immigration entails. So.

• 3:58:45Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Well, I'm glad you wrote the book. Thanks for coming on. Thanks for sharing your lessons. Thanks for all the things you're bringing in the world today, you know, the, the, the art, the books, the movies, the music, the podcasts, everything you're bringing in the world. Thank you. And of course, thanks for your service to our great nation in the Army, in the Rangers. Thanks for protecting our freedom overseas and thanks for protecting our borders here at home. And thanks to everybody out there in the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, and a special appreciation today for the Rangers. Living that life, that Spartan life, Rangers lead

• 3:59:28Jocko Willink?

  the way and we salute you all. Also, thanks to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, Secret Service, and all first responders. Thank you all for your service here at home with a distinct salute to our Border Patrol. Thank you for what you all do every day to protect our border and our way of life. And to everyone else out there.

• 3:59:55Jocko Willink?

  You don't really know what you're capable of. You don't know. You don't, you don't know what your limits are. And you know what? You don't always end up on the right path.

• 4:00:09Jocko Willink?

  You don't. Sometimes you have to shift gears. Sometimes you have to change directions. And that takes courage and that takes commitment. It takes courage to walk away from what you know and commitment to succeed in the unknown.

• 4:00:26Jocko Willink?

  But like Rocco, like Vinny, if you work hard, if you push yourself, if you give it everything you got, you can not only chase your dreams, but you can catch them and make them a reality. So if you have something that you want to do, go out there and get after it. And until next time, this is Rocco and Echo and Jocko out.