143: Make the World Better. Even Just a Little Bit. Lessons from "A Vietnam Diary" from Peter Nash Swisher.

0:00:00 - Opening 0:04:24 - "A Vietnam Diary" Peter Nash Swisher. 1:23:30 - Final thoughts and take-aways. 1:35:46 - Support. 2:20:36 - Closing Gratitude. 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 143 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening Echo. Good evening.

• 0:11Jocko Willink?

  War is never what we think it is.

• 0:15Jocko Willink?

  It is butchery stupidity and hate.

• 0:21Jocko Willink?

  It is 90% boredom.

• 0:25Jocko Willink?

  It can be horrible beyond anything you have ever imagined. It can also be ludicrous and absurd and technologically refined.

• 0:40Jocko Willink?

  Tragically, its lessons are always forgotten only to be refought on still another battlefield.

• 0:49Jocko Willink?

  The Vietnam War was our first real media war spanning the globe in outraged unreality, bringing videotaped death and destruction into countless homes, fermenting protests and political justifications.

• 1:09Jocko Willink?

  Affecting the world's generation, it shattered our dreams of abstract morality and in horrible reality, reeducated our youth to a third world of suffering they had never known and had now felt deep within their own countries worldwide.

• 1:30Jocko Willink?

  Vietnam was a symbol of the times.

• 1:34Jocko Willink?

  The best of hopes turned inside out, a fear of no return.

• 1:40Jocko Willink?

  But for me and many others, the Vietnam War was much more.

• 1:47Jocko Willink?

  It was, in a moment, our survival and death.

• 1:54Jocko Willink?

  In primitive sophistication, our destruction and rebirth.

• 2:01Jocko Willink?

  It was, in short, a long imprisoned cry of what we all were not.

• 2:12Jocko Willink?

  This is a diary I kept while I was in Vietnam.

• 2:17Jocko Willink?

  It is, for the most part, unstructured, as many of us were, but all of it is true.

• 2:26Jocko Willink?

  "History," someone once said, "is trying to tell the truth through the most acceptable lie."

• 2:34Jocko Willink?

  But this book is not about history. It only tells the truth as far as one person felt it. A frozen spark of time embracing one American soldier in a Southeast Asian war.

• 2:54Jocko Willink?

  And...

• 2:57Jocko Willink?

  That right there is the introduction of a book. It's a diary. And it's written by a guy by the name of Peter Nash Swisher. A man that was born in Oxford, England. His dad was actually in the Second World War and was killed coming home after the war. And his mom eventually moved to Canada and then remarried to an American. And Peter was adopted by that American father and grew up in Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin, and Louisville, Kentucky.

• 3:37Jocko Willink?

  That's where he grew up, that's where he graduated high school, and then he got his degree in American history in 1966 from Amherst College. And then he got his masters from Stanford in 1967.

• 3:52Jocko Willink?

  And in 1968, he was drafted into the Army. He went to OCS in November that same year.

• 4:01Jocko Willink?

  And by 1969, he was doing his tour in Vietnam.

• 4:10Jocko Willink?

  And he definitely has a gift for writing. And luckily, he left a little bit of that gift to be shared with us in this book of his, which is called A Vietnam Diary. And let's go to the book. He starts off with a little prologue. He's got some quotes in there, and I pulled out one of the quotes from the prologue. It says, "The ultimate explanation of Vietnam must come from those involved there.

• 4:49Jocko Willink?

  An observer, even when blood splatters his clothes, remains outside. The basic experience of Vietnam is to be bound to stay in that war for a year or until wounded or killed. No reporter can impose this shackle on himself. He is like a doctor in an asylum. He can report with compassion and empathy. He can understand a great deal, but the final truth remains with those who must exist in madness or in the combat of their war." And that's actually a quote that he pulled from a guy named Arthur T. Hadley, who is

• 5:34Jocko Willink?

  a war correspondent, and that's very accurate. There's a huge difference between someone that's reporting the war, even though they're there, and you've seen the war reporters that are right next to the infantrymen. Sometimes they're even carrying weapons. But there's a key component, that is that those guys can leave if they want to, and those soldiers cannot. They're there, they're gonna have to do their year, and that's the way it works, and that's a huge difference, psychological, huge difference. And a real difference of reality. And so, the diary starts off November 20th, 1967. He's going through basic training in Fort Dix, New Jersey.

• 6:17Jocko Willink?

  Pulled a little couple, a little section out of that. What's the spirit of the bayonet? To kill. What's the spirit of the bayonet? To kill. Sergeant H, and he refers to everyone here just by the, the first letter of their last name. Sergeant H was our third instructor, another airborne veteran. And one of the two survivors in his Vietnam company who came back alive. Once, when his weapon jammed in combat, he had killed two Vietcong with his bayonet and his rifle bat. But,

• 6:52Jocko Willink?

  sometimes we heard him screaming in his sleep. You see this poncho? You see it? Smell it. It's got the same musty odor of the jungle. Smell the fungus? Smell it.

• 7:05Jocko Willink?

  I wrapped up a lot of bodies in these ponchos, you goddamn stupid trainees. You'll see, you'll all be over there.

• 7:16Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I mean, this is nineteen, nineteen sixty-seven, so you're starting to get trained by guys that are coming back from the war. And they're gonna have a little bit of a different attitude than if they were a peacetime guys, although, this is, you know, the Korean War was shortly before this and World War II, so you have a lot of veterans in the war at this time. When I came in, when I was going through SEAL training, there was not a lot of combat veterans. There was, there were some Vietnam guys for sure, but, you know, I was going through in nineteen ninety-one. So, most of the Vietnam guys were getting towards the end of their career. I mean, the Vietnam War for, for the teams, what is it, seventy-two, maybe the last platoons went over there?

• 7:59Jocko Willink?

  So they were at the end of their twenty-year mark, you know, some of the guys that stuck around for thirty years, yeah, sure. Roger Hayden, yeah, for sure. There's some of those old master chiefs, absolutely. But those weren't your primary instructors. Your primary instructors were guys that had been in for five years and never seen combat. So that all changed now, of course, with the current wars going on.

• 8:20Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book, February 13th, 1969, Orders. It's not very pleasant to get orders overseas. The initial shock honestly scares you a lot. You think, "Maybe I'll die." But later, the endless reams of paperwork show you dying is not that simple. Take your plague, flu, typhus, and cholera shots, for example. One medical sergeant has macked the knife, especially if you're on orders. Then there's RVN training, and M16 rifle qualification, and press orientation, and a multitude of sign-out sheets. Do you have any overdue books at the post library?

• 8:59Jocko Willink?

  You think, "Yes, I do have an overdue book. Will they still send me to Vietnam if I keep it hidden under my laundry bag?"

• 9:08Jocko Willink?

  "June 1st, 1969, the last night. Before the plane leaves from Travis, you are together for the last time, stoic and brave." At least, that's how it is in the movies.

• 9:20Jocko Willink?

  "In reality, you are sick at heart, in the mind, and belly. You talk of the past, pretending, but knowing what each suffers silently."

• 9:32Jocko Willink?

  It isn't very pleasant or romantic at all.

• 9:36Jocko Willink?

  "Why are we such stupid people?" she sobs, tears on sweat, body close.

• 9:43Jocko Willink?

  You love her fiercely. "Your country is another question entirely."

• 9:53Jocko Willink?

  As usual, I am skipping through portions of this book to make it short enough to cover on the podcast. And actually, I don't even know if this book is in publication anymore. I had a PDF file from back in the day, and I don't even know where I got it from. I Googled it, there's some PDF files floating around. But get it, and read the whole thing. "June 3rd, 1969, H-hour. War should be dramatic, like the movies. Sweating and landing in a craft, hitting the beach under fire."

• 10:28Jocko Willink?

  Who'd believe I went to war in a pink-orange Braniff International airplane with a stewardess in purple leotards wishing us a good trip on behalf of the captain and the crew? Going to war for Christ's sake in a pink-orange airplane, I used to think war was somewhat serious. And this is, again, this is, a lot of people don't realize this, they use contract air, they still do that sometimes, and you'll fly over in a civilian plane. July 6, 1969 airborne. Clouding dust betrays a lonely convoy, dirt smothered, embraced in jungle vines and barren hills, sullen crags and silence.

• 11:07Jocko Willink?

  A flash of light below, two more exploding lines, we see toy trucks crawling, clawing, spitting snake-like steel. Too small for life-sized war, too far away for death. So his first visions of combat, he's looking down at it and doesn't really, it's, he's admitting he's like too far away, it's not real for him. That changes. July 17, 1969, my first body. I saw my first body lying west of Playkoo, stretched out on a poncho, waiting to be

• 11:49Jocko Willink?

  airlifted back to the coast. He was gray-white and very dead. Even today I can see his gaping bloody mouth gasping for air. A young kid who couldn't have been more than 20 years old. And I thought, Christ, he's really, really dead. I remembered some James Bond and John Wayne sequels in those TV melodramas where the American love for violence is only make-believe. Where the movie and TV casualties can always get up and go home probably in time for supper.

• 12:34Jocko Willink?

  But this kid would not.

• 12:37Jocko Willink?

  He would make Walter Cronkite's CBS News report as just another figure. Changing 229 American battle deaths reported this week to 230 instead.

• 12:52Jocko Willink?

  And then everyone, including the president, would turn to watch the Monday Night Football game on Channel 5.

• 13:02Jocko Willink?

  And here was my first body.

• 13:06Jocko Willink?

  I should have been trained for this sort of thing a long time ago. Playing cops and robbers, cowboys and Indians, bang, bang, you're dead.

• 13:16Jocko Willink?

  And he was.

• 13:20Jocko Willink?

  He really was.

• 13:26Jocko Willink?

  July 25th, 1969, Remembrance II.

• 13:33Jocko Willink?

  "This is how I was when I saw you last.

• 13:37Jocko Willink?

  I was stagnant, going no place and searching desperately for something I had lost long ago in the barracks.

• 13:46Jocko Willink?

  And so we escaped to the gray New England coast and the Boston fog and a warm downy bed to greet the night.

• 13:55Jocko Willink?

  And I began to live again and laugh.

• 14:00Jocko Willink?

  I love you still for giving me that month. And for giving yourself without promise."

• 14:18Jocko Willink?

  August 11th,

• 14:21Jocko Willink?

  1969, news item.

• 14:25Jocko Willink?

  "It was President Nixon's first visit to Vietnam as president. He insisted on going to Saigon rather than Cam Rong Bay, the huge supply base. Cam Rong Bay doesn't count, he said. That isn't Vietnam." Time Magazine, August 8th, 1969.

• 14:44Jocko Willink?

  Dear Sir,

• 14:47Jocko Willink?

  In light of a Vietcong sapper attack on Camron Hospital, I question the source of those people who believe Camron Bay isn't Vietnam.

• 14:57Jocko Willink?

  I think the ninety-eight men who were casualties and the parents of those who were killed would agree that Camron Bay isn't exactly Disneyland.

• 15:07Jocko Willink?

  You bastard.

• 15:21Jocko Willink?

  September 1st, 1969.

• 15:25Jocko Willink?

  Rodriguez.

• 15:28Jocko Willink?

  Jim Rodriguez was killed last week.

• 15:32Jocko Willink?

  After only twelve days in country, I remember as an upperclassman how we locked his heels together and taught him the OCS version of military discipline.

• 15:44Jocko Willink?

  It was double time, four times around the field, boonie runs, attitude checks, harassment and constant pressure. Physically and mentally, Rodriguez never broke.

• 15:56Jocko Willink?

  A matter of fact, he met our challenge one better and went on to airborne training, training briefly serving later as an airborne instructor.

• 16:06Jocko Willink?

  I wonder how much we really influenced Rodriguez.

• 16:11Jocko Willink?

  We showed him how to play soldier, but no one ever taught him how to play war.

• 16:19Jocko Willink?

  It's hard to play games with dead men.

• 16:26Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, like I said, this, this, this style of writing, this just straightforward style of writing, it's, it's different. It's different. There's something, there's something very guttural about it, there's something very visceral about it, and it seems, I mean, it seems like he's writing this with, when he wrote this, he had no intention whatsoever of ever sharing it with anyone. That's kind of what it seems, especially, you know, he's talking about the, the woman that he loved back home and you can see his attitude, it, it, it goes kind of all over the place sometimes. And so there's, there's, there's a certain level of just reality in this that,

• 17:10Jocko Willink?

  I don't know, it's really, um... It hits in a different way than many of the books, many of the books.

• 17:21Jocko Willink?

  September 10th, 1969, combat engineers. Bronze backs bent to bridges, culverts, picks and timber trestles. Sweat and grime and death by hidden mines and snipers.

• 17:37Jocko Willink?

  Construction, repair.

• 17:40Jocko Willink?

  And when will you fix my air conditioner? Ask headquarters. Again, you know, I know I've talked about the engineers that that worked with us in Ramadi and what the how, how incredibly hard and dangerous that job was. Those guys were heroes like you couldn't even believe what these guys were doing. And this is the just the same exact sentiment there. You know, they call, I just said engineers, he says combat engineers. That's exactly right. It's combat engineers. Hundred percent.

• 18:12Jocko Willink?

  September 11th, 1969, artillery cannon crashes eastward. Magnificent terrible thunder. Bright flash, night bordered. A surging mass explodes in thunder. Pageants of fire again, again, in savage awe, we celebrate the festival

• 18:35Jocko Willink?

  of death.

• 18:39Jocko Willink?

  September 20th, 1969, a heavy load on the way back from Queen Nha yesterday. We stopped our Jeep to help an old man with a heavy load which had fallen by the side of the road. The old man was carrying home the remains of his youngest son who had died during recent fighting along the Cambodian border.

• 19:00Jocko Willink?

  The Saigon government, he said, had provided a free coffin and transportation back to his village, but the truck had lost an axle five kilometers down the road.

• 19:12Jocko Willink?

  This wasn't his first tragedy. He told us that his eldest son had died two years older, earlier in the assault on Wei. But he never saw that son's body since he was a Vietcong.

• 19:29Jocko Willink?

  "He was an old man," he said, "heartbroken and ignorant." "He had lost two sons, drafted to fight on different sides of the war."

• 19:41Jocko Willink?

  "And even now, he didn't really know what they had died for."

• 19:49Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, we hear that about the Civil War in America, that you'd have brothers fighting against brothers. And, I mean, clearly, this happened in Vietnam, but you don't think of a guy that's giving up one son to each side and they're both dead.

• 20:04Jocko Willink?

  "September 24th, 1969, a night."

• 20:09Jocko Willink?

  "The heavens lie beyond us, void, yet filled with substance, light, and form, infinity."

• 20:17Jocko Willink?

  "From nothing, all exists." "As billions age, our world not yet a grain of sand, in mighty awe, the universe endures."

• 20:31Jocko Willink?

  "Mortal." "Weak and woman-born, look beyond the skies some clear and cloven night, by lands and meet the sea." "Embrace the stars, in infinite conceit, deny from nothing all you feel."

• 20:51Jocko Willink?

  "And celebrate the overmind, original primal force, the birth of all that is."

• 21:05Jocko Willink?

  "October 2nd, 1969, the convoy."

• 21:10Jocko Willink?

  "Two hours before the dawn, our convoy groups quietly, efficiently: trailers, tanks, and armored trucks with plated steel, alert." "Roes of limitless, inhuman war machines, assembled in Detroit, from America's great arsenal of doubt." "Giant tinker toys of war, the mission always comes before the welfare of the man."

• 21:35Jocko Willink?

  The all-pervading mission that no one ever knows, the men come second. Rows of tired army ants in dusty olive drab, no longer young, grim and grimy, keep their faith in faded photographs of home, a virgin hope of things to come.

• 21:52Jocko Willink?

  Or some, in beads, an albatross of peace medallions hanging from their tarnished neck. A human cry in muted rage to say, "At war, I am, I am."

• 22:07Jocko Willink?

  The soon-forgotten symbols of a never-caring world. It's time to move. A hundred muffled coughs and snarls of steel and iron trucks, the schedule must be met. We can't be late for war.

• 22:23Jocko Willink?

  The dawn is rising as we rumble past our first awaking village. Here, people move to fold and field, a farmer even now to toil behind his beast and plow the sacred soil his father once endured.

• 22:39Jocko Willink?

  His desecrated tome

• 22:42Jocko Willink?

  of craters, mines, and shells across the ridge and down the dusty roads. But it will pass.

• 22:51Jocko Willink?

  It always has.

• 22:54Jocko Willink?

  The land endures all things.

• 23:00Jocko Willink?

  Very true statement. Very, very true statement.

• 23:06Jocko Willink?

  Especially, you can imagine, so what did I say, 19, is this 1969? Yeah, no, 1969, and he's looking at these farmers, and this war's going on all around them. And guess what they're doing? They're doing what they've been doing for thousands of years. They're plowing those fields, and this war is gonna come and it's gonna go, and they're still gonna be there doing what they do. The soil is going to endure, the land is going to endure.

• 23:31Jocko Willink?

  October 9th, 1969, The Sporting Life. I met a Huey Gunship pilot in Queenon, who had just extended his tour of duty down in the Mekong Delta. Most pilots did the job they had to do, and then went home. But not this one. He actually enjoyed his work. He bragged to a group of us one night that during a dull day, where there was little action in the delta, he kept in practice by shooting at numerous water buffalo in rice paddies, and sniping at frightened farmers.

• 24:03Jocko Willink?

  In one case, he said he played Captain Mouse with an old papasan on a bicycle, weaving frantically down the road. "I scared the hell out of him for a while," he said. "Then I got him good, with a beautiful long burst. 'No chance! Hell, he was in a free-fire zone. Probably VC anyways. All the slopes down there are VC.'"

• 24:27Jocko Willink?

  We looked at him incredulously,

• 24:30Jocko Willink?

  and then left his table, leaving him alone, gloating to himself.

• 24:36Jocko Willink?

  Even at war, he remained a leper within some strange, unwritten code.

• 24:50Jocko Willink?

  October 10th, 1969. Howell Beach, at night.

• 24:59Jocko Willink?

  "I wish you were here right now,

• 25:02Jocko Willink?

  so I could hold you very close, and tell you things there are no words for."

• 25:15Jocko Willink?

  October 14th, 1969. Home One.

• 25:21Jocko Willink?

  "We cling to something close at home: a girl, or shadow on the wall, free sun, a ragged hope so precious in return. If lost, we too are lost. Not finding hate, as soldiers seldom hate, but bitter, stale, in passion, dead. We lose our need to love."

• 25:46Jocko Willink?

  Home too.

• 25:49Jocko Willink?

  I love you as gentle dawn, spread out against the savage sky.

• 25:55Jocko Willink?

  A part of life, so very far away.

• 26:02Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's um, again, important to point out, as I always try to, that

• 26:11Jocko Willink?

  these men that went to war were not just soldiers and not just Marines and not just sailors, not just airmen, but they were they were men with hopes and dreams. They were men in love with that girl back home and they couldn't stop thinking about her.

• 26:34Jocko Willink?

  October 23rd, 1969. May.

• 26:40Jocko Willink?

  I was talking to May today, a pretty Vietnamese girl who works in headquarters to Tatchman as a secretary. May speaks English very well. And often we joke and talk about a lot of trivial things, but today the conversation was more serious. "What would happen?" I asked her, "If the Vietcong and North Vietnamese take over the South one day?" May's face remained impassive.

• 27:06Jocko Willink?

  "I work for the Americans, so they would shoot me. Then they would kill my family."

• 27:17Jocko Willink?

  And that is the reality.

• 27:22Jocko Willink?

  And that's the reality that

• 27:25Jocko Willink?

  you know, when ISIS came into Ramadi, after we had left, about seven years after we had left and after Ramadi had been peaceful for about seven years and ISIS came in and took it over. So one of the first things that they did was they, anyone that they knew had worked with coalition forces at all, they got murdered and their families got murdered. And from what I, the information that I received from my contacts over there was about 500 families were murdered, all of them.

• 27:55Jocko Willink?

  So yeah, when

• 27:59Jocko Willink?

  if you're gonna go into a country and you're gonna work there and you're gonna support some of the people, make sure you stay there until the job is done.

• 28:08Jocko Willink?

  November 2nd, 1969, slopes and dinks.

• 28:14Jocko Willink?

  He was a young buck sergeant from Alabama, proud of his artillery days at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, and proud to defend America from worldwide communist aggression.

• 28:26Jocko Willink?

  The Vietnamese communists, in his eyes, were sub-humans. Anyway, slopes and dinks, who felt no human emotion and therefore who could be eradicated as swiftly as possible without regret.

• 28:41Jocko Willink?

  He saw this enemy, he told me, for the first time during the Tet Offensive of 1969, when, for days and nights on end, his battery kept mowing down human wave enemy assaults by lowering the howitzers to tree trunk level and firing bumblebee canisters which sprayed thousands of anti-personnel darts into the enemy troops.

• 29:03Jocko Willink?

  But still, they kept on coming.

• 29:07Jocko Willink?

  One wave after another.

• 29:11Jocko Willink?

  On the night after the last attack, he went out with a small patrol to survey the damage and found hundreds and thousands of the enemy dead.

• 29:22Jocko Willink?

  But he also found frightened young boys and young men who had died clutching one another in terror, or who had died trying to bandage each other's wounds.

• 29:33Jocko Willink?

  And the young sergeant told me that he knew then that they must also have mothers, sisters, and wives at home just like his men. And that they had been terrified during the battle, just like his men.

• 29:48Jocko Willink?

  And that they bled and felt pain and cried. Just like his men.

• 29:56Jocko Willink?

  And he never called them slopes or dinks. Ever again.

• 30:14Jocko Willink?

  November 21st, 1969, Sydney, Australia. After six months of war, a 10-day miracle. A beautiful, heavenly city on the bay, the frontier spirit with a wry sense of Aussie humour, drinking a schooner of Swan Lager with new friends, invited everywhere, a genuine Australian openness, upfront and honest, the bay and the Opera House, Bondi Beach, riding the waves, the restaurants and nightlife incredibly beautiful, tall Australian girls, disarming and very real.

• 30:49Jocko Willink?

  Not afraid to be themselves, to disagree, outgoing and direct, deep and beautiful, like their city.

• 30:56Jocko Willink?

  Sydney, Australia, the reality of heaven, treating us as people again and true friends, making us feel more at home than home itself. Our last night was spent in a seafood restaurant. Mrs. Murphy, the restaurant older, told us, "If you'd come earlier, boys, we'd have had some fine dates for you tonight." Unfortunately, no wine was sold after 9pm with dinner. An older couple approached our table, "Here, boys, take our bottle. Your fathers really helped us during the last war, and we know how you feel about this one.

• 31:30Jocko Willink?

  God bless you and take care, boys. Take care."

• 31:35Jocko Willink?

  Sydney, Australia. A beautiful, lasting friendship, a love affair with life that, back in Vietnam, had all too soon the unfamiliar face that precious things take on when our heart is left behind.

• 31:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I can't even, I've been to Australia, and it's awesome, and I can't even imagine what it would be like going from the Vietnam War into Australia for 10 days, I believe, and to have the Australian people just be awesome.

• 32:12Jocko Willink?

  So, to the Aussies out there, thanks for the support.

• 32:21Jocko Willink?

  December 19th, 1969, incoming. A dull thud, muffled close, growing fearful, thud. Followed twice, another crash, Christ, body, feet, flailing, hands in sweat, waiting, waiting, crash. God, oh Jesus, crash. Receding thud, waiting, still waiting, not you, thank God. Move your head, not you, move your arm, not this time.

• 32:54Jocko Willink?

  So there you go, that's incoming, that's, that's, that's waiting for, that's when you hear, when you hear it get launched and you know it's coming, that's what it is.

• 33:04Speaker 01

  When he's saying not you, that's like he's checking, dang, is that?

• 33:07Jocko Willink?

  Move your head, nope, not you, move your arm, not this time, we're good.

• 33:14Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 33:18Jocko Willink?

  January 22nd, 1970, dispatch, at 19, 11:45 hours, 10 kilometers northwest of Hoian, a 16-year-old youth from a nearby hamlet entered Phan Queet Hamlet and threw two fragmentation grenades into a group of children and Marines of the USMC Combined Civic Action Platoon 237.

• 33:41Jocko Willink?

  There were four friendly killed in action, Vietnamese children, and 15 wounded in action, 11 Vietnamese children, and four United States Marine Corps.

• 33:51Jocko Willink?

  The youth who threw the grenades escaped.

• 33:58Jocko Willink?

  That's just, I mean, just that snapshot of what you're dealing with, there you are in a civic action platoon out there trying to help out and a 16-year-old kid comes and hucks two grenades and wounds 11 of the little kids you're trying to help and four of your men. That's what your life is.

• 34:26Jocko Willink?

  February 4th, 1970.

• 34:30Jocko Willink?

  "Small and pleading eyes, our combat medic with all his tubes and bottles could never heal that gaping wound, nor still your fearful cry.

• 34:42Jocko Willink?

  Jesus, God, what a petty callous war when armies clash in hate to disembowel a child."

• 35:01Jocko Willink?

  February 15th, 1970, a Green Beret in Na Trang. "One can never generalize about individual divisions, regiments, or any particular unit. It's hard enough generalizing about particular people. But in Na Trang, I did meet a Green Beret who, as one individual, was at least honest about his motivation. I was sharing his battle of Jack Daniels and ice. I joined the Green Berets for excitement, I guess. On one hand, we're living with the yards, raising crops, growing pigs, and hunting Charlie. On the other hand, you kill, and drink, smoke, and whore. Every minute may be your last, you know what I mean?

• 35:44Jocko Willink?

  Man, if I were back in the States doing this sort of thing, I'd either be dead or sitting on death row by now. But over here, we've got a free license, you know what I mean?"

• 35:55Jocko Willink?

  He said he was thinking of settling down after the war, getting into a business trainee program when he got back to the States, or maybe into some branch of law enforcement.

• 36:09Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, war is suited to some people, for sure.

• 36:16Jocko Willink?

  March 1st, 1970, interlude. I saw a movie tonight that made me think of you.

• 36:23Jocko Willink?

  It's bad thinking, you know? Yesterday, I thought of Lee, who was killed last month in One Corps.

• 36:31Jocko Willink?

  The movie was one of the few we saw together last year. How different, seeing it again, alone, sitting in the sand, at war.

• 36:41Jocko Willink?

  It made me think of our own interlude.

• 36:45Jocko Willink?

  Why we could never accept less than we had and would never have again.

• 36:58Jocko Willink?

  I don't know if you want to think about that sentence too much, it's a little bit heavy.

• 37:03Jocko Willink?

  Why we could never accept less than we had and would never have again.

• 37:12Jocko Willink?

  March 4th, Remembrance III.

• 37:16Jocko Willink?

  When you smiled at me, I knew you were different. You had no snide remark from my uniform or unearned, a look of mock pity which seemed to say, "Look, everybody, it's one of them again."

• 37:31Jocko Willink?

  And you didn't approach me with a fashionable overriding concern or preach to me from a preassembled dreadnought of morality.

• 37:39Jocko Willink?

  No, and you didn't stare away from me, or at me, or through me, all you said was hello.

• 37:46Jocko Willink?

  But through that one simple word, I was no longer alone.

• 37:53Jocko Willink?

  Observation. Flower petal. Pushing through the crusted earth, embraces light and dies.

• 38:03Jocko Willink?

  The ugly root endures, but never blooms.

• 38:18Jocko Willink?

  March 14th, 1970, the Provost Marshal. Jeep stealing in Vietnam was a national pastime. The Vietnamese nationals had acquired chain cutters and became very adept at Western auto mechanics, with special emphasis in jump-starting the engines and removing all serial or identification markings with lightning speed. Even the shore-bound navy installations took great delight in their midnight requisitions of army material. And the Green Berets from Na Trang had on one occasion brought in a CH-47 sling helicopter and airlifted away a brand-new vehicle that was apparently impossible to obtain through ordinary supply channels.

• 39:00Jocko Willink?

  Yes. The new Provost Marshal at Camran Bay decided to do something about these thefts and implemented a stern directive from the military police to all personnel who had their vehicles stolen. They would now have to write an extensive report in triplicate to the Provost Marshal explaining the surrounding circumstances and further appear before a Board of Inquiry, remaining liable to possible Article 15 or Cart Marshal proceedings for negligently allowing these thefts to occur. These orders were to take effect by the Provost Marshal's directive on March 11th. That would really take care of the problem, the Provost Marshal promised the General, by the sternest measures and prompt prosecution of any negligent offenders.

• 39:45Jocko Willink?

  On the morning of March 13th, the Provost Marshal was seen walking to work. Someone had stolen his Jeep.

• 39:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I like that. Good little story. There's, that stuff definitely happens. My Seabees. We're quite good at that. So in Task Unit Bruiser, we had CBs, the, the, the construction battalion, they're Navy guys that do construction, but they also have combat skills. So their, their motto is we build, we fight. And they should have another motto that's like, we get things if you need them. So my guys were awesome at that and they were also awesome at everything else they did, but it was nice that when I needed something, they would find a way to acquire it. Thanks there, TU Bruiser, CBs. All right.

• 40:40Jocko Willink?

  March 15th, 1970 graffiti. He's just got a list of graffiti here. Lifer, 986 days in a wake up. Next, before I came into army, and this is all misspelled, before I came into army, I couldn't spell engineer, nah, I won. Here's a good one. The US Army, 184 years of tradition, unhampered by progress. The army's like a rubber. It gives you that false sense of security while you're getting screwed.

• 41:19Jocko Willink?

  It's not a real war yet. We're just 550,000 military advisors. Fighting for peace is like screwing for chastity. Share in the fright with freedom. Go home with a friend. Next, give me your hearts and minds and I'll burn your fucking hut. Next, war is hell, but a year without a woman is a real bitch. Next, how come we can get to the moon, but I can't get home? Next, those personnel with short stacks and low manifold pressure, please taxi closer to the urinal.

• 42:03Jocko Willink?

  Next, Assyrian lives. That's a little shout out to Catch 22, the book. Next, would the last American soldier leaving Vietnam, please turn out the light at the end of the tunnel? I think that's in reference to the fact that the higher ups kept saying that they could see the light at the end of the tunnel. Hey, you know, we're coming, we're getting there. They're starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

• 42:27Jocko Willink?

  March 19th, 1970, Love, L U V. We once had a little puppy called Love. She was the company mascot and dug just about everyone. She was one of those beautiful little creatures who hadn't ever learned to hate or fear. She trusted everyone. Love trusted the Sergeant too, even though the Sergeant wanted her wasted as a damn nuisance. So Love never came home with us. But neither did the Sergeant.

• 43:01Jocko Willink?

  Better halves. Truck convoys and mechanized patrols often wed many men to their vehicles during most of their Vietnam tour.

• 43:11Jocko Willink?

  The names of such better halves included, here, so this is just the names of a bunch of different vehicles. Badlin' Bob, Psychedelic Flower, Old Faithful, Roadrunner, Acid Rock, Hell for Certain, Puzzle Palace, Pusher Man, Grim Reaper, Iron Butterfly, Grass Bender, Artful Dodger, Moratorium, and Malfunction Junction. And, uh, my first deployment to Iraq are, are, you, you might appreciate this, yeah. I think I've said this before, but our vehicles, my first deployment, were named after,

• 43:45Jocko Willink?

  after the movie Kingpin. So.

• 43:50Speaker 01

  Big Earn.

• 43:51Jocko Willink?

  Big Earn was one of them for sure. Yeah, that was all of them. And then Leif, I think it was primarily Leif's idea. He, he wanted to name and did name, they named all the vehicles after G.I. Joe characters like Cobra Commander and stuff like that.

• 44:05Speaker 01

  Cobra Commander.

• 44:06Jocko Willink?

  So, there you go. Get some.

• 44:11Jocko Willink?

  You know, it's, it's one of those things like, like, is that just always gonna happen?

• 44:16Speaker 01

  That's what I was thinking.

• 44:17Jocko Willink?

  In 300 years, if you have a war and there's some kind of vehicle, do you just name them? Whatever kind of cool names you can give them? I think it's because it's a little point of control that you have, even as a, as a frontline guy.

• 44:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:28Jocko Willink?

  Like, that you can do and it's cool.

• 44:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like, kinda.

• 44:31Jocko Willink?

  Gives you a little, gives your war a little character.

• 44:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, like it's a little fun thing you can add, like, you know how. The patches situation or or you know just all that stuff or Seal House BTF you know kind of thing it's like to to kind of deviate from the war

• 44:47Jocko Willink?

  Yeah

• 44:48Speaker 01

  Almost in in your own like little group

• 44:50Jocko Willink?

  Allows us for a little creativity

• 44:52Speaker 01

  Little creativity, yes, yes

• 44:54Jocko Willink?

  It's funny because well, naming vehicles was good and I I remember so they we used to number the vehicles one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, or one, two, three, four, five, six, or whatever, one, two, three, four, five. There's a problem with it though because the the vehicles aren't always where they're supposed to be when you

• 45:11Speaker 01

  Chronologically, right?

• 45:12Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, so you'd go, oh, wait a second. So you'd go out and get in the number third vehicle, which is number three, but you weren't supposed to be in that vehicle. It's number three vehicle is number six in position right now because they got scrambled up while they were maneuvering.

• 45:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:22Jocko Willink?

  So that's why we ended up, I I told the guys, name the vehicles, no numbers. That's what they did. Named them. And they named them after Kingpin.

• 45:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 45:31Jocko Willink?

  I think there might be a picture of, there's there's definitely some pictures of uh of my first deployment in the dichotomy of in the dichotomy of leadership book, but I want to see if you can see any of the vehicle names written on the side.

• 45:46Speaker 01

  Zev was one of the ones that I saw.

• 45:48Jocko Willink?

  Big Zev.

• 45:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, not in the book, but

• 45:51Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 45:51Speaker 01

  One of the pictures they sent me.

• 45:53Jocko Willink?

  That's, yeah, that's from, that's from Ramadi. That was Big Zev. I think that was actually our big giant war pig. I I I was like, there was a, I think it was the Marine Corps had a big six by truck that was, they had War Pig. That was War Pig. I always liked that one. I mean, that's kind of a given that you're gonna have it. Now, there's no names on that vehicle. Check.

• 46:11Speaker 01

  Amen.

• 46:13Jocko Willink?

  Next, March 20th, 1970, the two fronts. The kid was caught caught out in the open by a stray mortar round. They don't make coffee the way they used to, the businessman said. And those kids with long hair, Jesus. The impact cut off his arm, the lower half of his right leg, and blew off half his head, oozing red, black blood into the sand. He was 19 years old and from Ohio. Well, the president must know what he's doing. He has my full support. Where the hell is the waitress? The kid only had two weeks left in Vietnam. Three days before, he'd already framed a copy of his orders home.

• 47:04Jocko Willink?

  April 2nd, 1970, a bond of friendship. It was hot. The ambush had been effective. Out there in the brush, there was little protection from sight or hail of gunfire. The soldier caught sight of his buddy, seriously wounded. "Sir, please, let me get him, please." The officer, well aware of their deep friendship, hesitated and then said, "Go, but it's not worth it. Your friend is probably dead and you may get killed trying."

• 47:36Jocko Willink?

  But the soldier went. Miraculously, he hoisted his friend onto his shoulders and under heavy fire, the two of them stumbled back into the trench.

• 47:47Jocko Willink?

  The officer looked tenderly at the would-be rescuer. "I told you it wouldn't be worth it. Your buddy is dead and you are badly wounded." "I know, sir," the soldier replied, "but you're wrong. It was worth it. Because just before he died, he looked at me and said, 'I knew you'd come.'"

• 48:09Jocko Willink?

  "It didn't matter that day that one man was white and the other black."

• 48:14Jocko Willink?

  Thank you, God, that out of a hellish war, we can still learn the meaning of true brotherhood.

• 48:24Jocko Willink?

  Chaplain Donald J. Robinson from the 101st Airborne Division.

• 48:30Jocko Willink?

  That's where he took that story from.

• 48:35Speaker 01

  When you were kind of jumping back and forth to like, "Oh, coffee isn't made what you used to," is that, was he like comparing?

• 48:42Jocko Willink?

  He had, I should have described it a little bit better. He had one set of the, the stuff that was taking place in the civilian world back in the States, he had in parentheses.

• 48:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:51Jocko Willink?

  So while this kid is getting ripped apart by a mortar round, back in American parentheses, it just says, um, you know, "Oh, hey, where's the waitress?"

• 49:00Speaker 01

  Monday.

• 49:01Jocko Willink?

  And you can imagine how... You know, that's why, you know, I think even during World War Two, during World War Two, the guys were over fighting, but at home, like everyone was focused on the war effort. Yeah. And they were rationing and they were building, I mean, they changed factories to start building planes instead of like civilian cars. They built warplanes and they built bombs and they built ammunition, they built guns. Like the whole country was focused on it. In Vietnam, that wasn't really happening, you know, it wasn't really that same situation. If you got drafted, your whole world freaking went upside down. But if you didn't get drafted, you were going to live your normal life and go work your job and live normal and go to the restaurant and ask where the hell the waitress is. Yeah.

• 49:46Jocko Willink?

  That's similar to what it's like now. I mean, actually that is what it's like now. And I've talked about that a bunch of times, talked about it with Sam Harris, you know, like we, the, the war, the wars that we have right now, there's a vast majority of the population of America. It doesn't affect them at all. It literally doesn't affect them at all. Yeah. Cause it has had no impact on the, the food that you eat, the gas that you use, zero impact. The, even the way you travel, like, okay, you could say, well, you know, we used to be able to, and I don't know how much you traveled before nine 11. I traveled a lot before nine 11 and you, you know, it was a lot easier to travel. It was a lot quicker and there was flights always seemed to be happening. It was just an easier deal. Yeah. But now TSA is dialed in enough when you get used to the program and you, whatever. It's not that big of a deal.

• 50:31Jocko Willink?

  It's not like your freaking life is, it's not a big deal. Yeah. So really the wars that we're going through right now for people that are detached from them. So, I mean, obviously you've got military and you've got the families of the military, sure. But once you step outside, you know, you step one or two degrees away from that, you could be living your life and if you didn't see it on the news, you would never, ever know that there was a war going on. Yeah. And that's. And what from, I think the reason that he wrote that was because that's talking about now from the perspective of like when you're in the war, you're thinking about those people that they're not even, that's not even affecting them. Occasionally they watch the news and go, oh, there was someone else killed. Okay. Can I get, can you pass the mayonnaise?

• 51:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. And even how like, if you're not engaged in it, it's like, you know, just how you say when you, only when you're watching the news, that's when you see it. And even now, like when you watch the news, you're like, oh, wow. You know, that's, that's too bad that that's happening. Literally the moment the news goes off, and I'm not talking about the war stuff. I'm talking about everything on the news really. Cause you know, I don't know, a car accident or something good or whatever.

• 51:28Jocko Willink?

  Well, the news cycle is getting so ridiculous right now. The news cycle is completely ridiculous right now. And, and it's no big surprise that, why people listen to this podcast, why people are listening to all podcasts. Why people are watching YouTube videos that are two and three and four hours long. Why is that? Because they want to have a little bit more depth to what they're hearing. I was on the airplane. I got done, you know, they make you put away your computer. And so I turned on the news because it had streaming cable news. And I turn it on and I mean, I'm going, when do they turn on, when do they make you put away your computer? 20 minutes? I had 20 minutes left. And in that 20 minutes, there was like three or two sections of commercials.

• 52:12Jocko Willink?

  Actually, there might've been three sections of commercials that are all like four minutes long. I was getting so mad. I'm thinking to myself, I'm thinking to myself, bro, I just want to know what's happening. And you gotta show me another commercial about some mattress company or whatever. I mean, just, just, just, just trying to sell me stuff. And then it goes back to the coverage, right? It goes back to the coverage and the coverage is people yelling at each other. There's no conversations happening. It's, it's, it's. And I've done, you know, I've done plenty of news, uh, bits, bytes, whatever it's called. And you, compared to a podcast, it's a joke.

• 52:46Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's like, it's literally nothing.

• 52:48Jocko Willink?

  That's why, that's why, you know, Elon Musk going on to Joe Rogan and talking for three hours. You know, that's a whole different story. That's a whole different thing. And I, you know, I kind of think that's the beginning. That's the, that's sort of. It's the beginning of the end.

• 53:05Speaker 01

  End of some stuff.

• 53:05Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, the end of some stuff and the starting of some other stuff. But that when you, when you just can turn on the news and it's, and it's over that quickly.

• 53:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:14Jocko Willink?

  And it doesn't bring you anything other than literally the headline.

• 53:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:18Jocko Willink?

  It's just the headline.

• 53:20Speaker 01

  Which a lot of times is misleading on purpose.

• 53:22Jocko Willink?

  Which is, yeah, which is, is clickbait often.

• 53:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:25Jocko Willink?

  Right? It's clickbait.

• 53:26Speaker 01

  Is your cellphone killing you? They're not saying that so your cellphone is killing you, but is it?

• 53:31Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. But now I gotta know and I gotta click on that thing.

• 53:34Speaker 01

  Exactly, right.

• 53:35Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, so nowadays, that's even, you could say that's probably even worse because there's so many. And plus, not to mention, back then, if you were gonna watch, you know, my dad was telling me this the other day. That back in the, back in the day, they, they had a, you know, everyone watched, like, he just mentioned, he mentioned Walter Cronkite in this. And like, my dad was like, yeah, everyone watched Walter Cronkite. So everyone had a base, common theme of discussion. So when you went to work on Thursday, everyone had watched the news on Wednesday and everyone saw the same news.

• 54:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:12Jocko Willink?

  And nowadays, so if you wanted to watch TV, you were gonna watch that. I mean, I remember Walter Cronkite. You know, that's, that was, my dad, that's what was on that. You watched Walter Cronkite. That was just, that was just how.

• 54:25Speaker 01

  That was just how.

• 54:26Jocko Willink?

  And now you can go home and never watch the news. So you can be completely, you know, not only, you know, it's one thing to say, hey, the news is over about the war in 30 seconds and I don't think about it anymore. You can just never even watch it. You can just watch Instagram videos of car crashes. Or, or what other dumb stuff do you watch on, on Instagram?

• 54:48Speaker 01

  Drunk Girl Fails.

• 54:49Jocko Willink?

  Drunk Girl Fails. Yeah, let's watch 30, well, I've got, you know, an extra half an hour. I'll watch a half an hour worth of drunk girls fails. And they're, and they're funny and they're entertaining and they. What part of the mind do they stimulate? Cause they must stimulate some part of your brain.

• 55:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:05Jocko Willink?

  Cause they, when you watch car crashes. You know, and now I was gonna throw street fights in there, but when I watch street fights, I'm actually picking them apart, right? I'm actually trying to learn something.

• 55:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:17Jocko Willink?

  And, but you know drunk girls, drunk girl fails? Those you don't learn a lot from.

• 55:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:23Jocko Willink?

  I, I've shown my daughters drunk girl fails, like when they were thirteen, fourteen years old. And be like, oh, this is what alcohol will get you.

• 55:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:32Jocko Willink?

  And, and the other thing, for a while they were showing binge drinking in England.

• 55:38Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 55:38Jocko Willink?

  And, you know, it was, I was actually in the news a little bit. And it would just be, you know, men and women, but I'd show my daughters the women of just girls just completely passed out drunk skirt hanging open. I mean, just puke all over themselves. And I'm like, hey, this is drinking, this is alcohol. This is, this is what your little friends are getting all excited about and think is so cool. This is it.

• 56:04Jocko Willink?

  This is what it gets you. Puke. So.

• 56:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, good, good tool.

• 56:10Jocko Willink?

  So you can totally avoid, you can basically customize your information flow into your brain to whatever you want.

• 56:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:20Jocko Willink?

  And I'll go one step further and tell you that the algorithms that YouTube is putting ahead of you, in front of you. So when you get done watching one YouTube video of a drunk girl fail, what pops up? Nine more drunk girl fails that are ready for you to watch. So they've got an algorithm that's actually gonna just lead you to stupidity.

• 56:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:39Jocko Willink?

  Right? They should put, instead of putting advertisements, they should be like, okay, for every four really dumb YouTube video you watch, you should have to watch at least one quarter of that compiled time into something that's gonna teach you something about being a better human being.

• 56:54Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, you know, I don't know how good of a business model that would be, but you know, it's a good idea kinda in theory, I guess.

• 57:03Jocko Willink?

  You gotta get beyond just thinking about money, Echo Charles.

• 57:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, I dig it, man. I dig it. I'm not saying they shouldn't. I'm just saying that's why they won't. But yeah.

• 57:11Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's like right now, because right now in this, in the, they're trying to put these limits on time. Or I think the social media people are saying, hey, we're gonna help you monitor your time that you spend on social media. So there'll be like a little thing that pops into you. You've spent forty minutes on social media today. Because you're right. You know what they're not gonna say? You reached your limit. You're done. They're not gonna say that. And they're not gonna say, hey, you watched nine stupid videos. Now you're gonna watch three educational ones to make you smarter.

• 57:40Speaker 01

  They're gonna show you the time of your consumption right next to the next video that they, that they made. Formulated on what you like to watch, you know?

• 57:50Jocko Willink?

  Completely irresistible to you.

• 57:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's what they're gonna do.

• 57:54Jocko Willink?

  Thing that you gotta watch. A drunk girl failing. You can see her and she's like standing on the edge of whatever. And you know it's gonna be a good one.

• 58:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Traced in like red with exclamation mark, you know, or point, you know how they do that? Where it's like, oh, it's so exciting. I see what you're doing. Can't fool me. But yeah, so you can be completely, the point there is you can be completely disconnected, especially now. Completely disconnected with the reality of the world.

• 58:22Jocko Willink?

  All right, April 4th, 1970, Colonel S.

• 58:27Jocko Willink?

  Many officers and NCOs in Vietnam know their business. Even though they hate the war, a war not of their own making, they really take care of their men. And don't give a damn about frontline formalities. All they want is to get as many of their men back alive as they can. The men deeply respect these officers and NCOs and justifiably so. So there you go. Little bit, little bit of leadership here. Taking care of your men. Other, back to the book, other officers are little people. With rank and authority and little else. They cannot command respect by their actions, so they must command by their disrespect verbally. And for petty offenses, for haircuts, polished boots and frontline salutes.

• 59:13Jocko Willink?

  Colonel S was one of these men, a little puffy hamster man. Who would not hesitate to lick the general's boots on any occasion. And he had the audacity on numerous occasions to lambast various troops for their sloppy haircuts and uniforms at the base PX. Such troops had just come in from the field or from a long exhausting convoy and had not seen the likes of a shower, much less a barber in a number of weeks. They always looked at the Colonel in total disbelief and then comprehending in a long imprisoned rage for this antiseptic staff toady.

• 59:51Jocko Willink?

  Colonel S's written directives were likewise incomprehensible, unnecessary, wasteful, and in a word unbelievably stupid. Many of us thought that Joseph Heller's Catch 22 was an unreal parody about war until we met Colonel S.

• 1:00:08Jocko Willink?

  One night, some Viet Cong sappers blew up our petroleum storage dump and it was incredible. It was an incredible blaze for three days and nights. Anyway, after the immediate attack, Colonel S jumped out of his Jeep, grabbed his 45 caliber pistol and went chasing after the VC hell bent for musty leather, stumbling over the sand dunes like a long retired prop man in a John Wayne war movie, attempting a futile and embarrassing comeback.

• 1:00:36Jocko Willink?

  We all sort of hoped that the Viet Cong would follow the logical rules of guerrilla warfare and leave one sniper back to cover their escape, waiting for the much beloved staff Colonel to come panting over the hill. But no such luck. Apparently, the VC knew all about the Colonel and wanted to leave him right where he was and who could blame them? So there you go. There's those type of people. They exist now. They're going to exist in the future. If you're one of those people that started listening to podcasts and joined the military, and I know there's a lot of you, get some. That's awesome. Um, when you don't, don't think that every officer you meet is gonna be one of these guys

• 1:01:20Jocko Willink?

  that's takes care of their men and doesn't give a damn about frontline formalities and is deeply respected. That's, that's not a majority.

• 1:01:27Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:01:28Jocko Willink?

  Now, this other knucklehead, the guy that's licking the boots of the general, that's not a majority either. But they exist. They're there. April 9th, 1970, waiting. Waiting is 90% of the game in Vietnam. You keep busy. You do your job 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Occasionally, there's a half day off, a stand down, or 10 days of R and R outside of Vietnam. But the rest of the time, you wait. Seven days a week, 24 hours a day. Until things happen, you wait. And then when it happens, you're right in the middle of it. When you're not working or sleeping, you're still waiting.

• 1:02:11Jocko Willink?

  And time can play some horrible tricks on you. Vietnam may be a one-year tour for most soldiers, but they have actually spent many more years there than they care to talk about. Time in Vietnam slows down almost to a stop every minute of every day. The Vietnamese have lived with this phenomenon for century, but the Western soldier cannot. Your last two weeks in Vietnam, like your first two weeks, are measured in months, and you're especially paranoid about getting hit during these last two weeks, and you wait.

• 1:02:43Jocko Willink?

  Your off-duty time is short-lived and very precious. With a 24-hour day and a seven-day a week, it is the only time you have to blow off your stress and anxiety, your loneliness, fear and frustration. Sometimes you can almost, but only almost, forget the war.

• 1:03:02Jocko Willink?

  During this time, we grew together with our friends. We shared each other's hurt and pain, our love and hate for home and war.

• 1:03:11Jocko Willink?

  We got to know each other in a very deep sense, maybe better than our wives or girlfriends ever would.

• 1:03:18Jocko Willink?

  We talked philosophy and we talked nonsense. We laughed and we cried. We learned to live and grow. We looked back. And we looked ahead.

• 1:03:31Jocko Willink?

  We talked about changes. In us.

• 1:03:35Jocko Willink?

  And in America. We committed ourselves to both. Without these friends, Vietnam would have been much worse than it already was. Our friends made this waiting bearable.

• 1:03:55Jocko Willink?

  April 11th. 1970. Medicine men.

• 1:04:01Jocko Willink?

  Many doctors assigned to the medical corps in Vietnam devote much of their very limited and precious off-time duty. Working with Vietnamese civilians. Most medical assistance from the other side is gratefully appreciated, but there are exceptions. My brother Charles, who was assigned to the 6th convalescent center in Southern 2 Corps, worked with the many Vietnamese civilians in Cam Ron Village and Mai Ka Village, among others. But three weeks after he ended his tour of duty in Vietnam, a small group of Viet Cong sappers blew up his hospital, killing and wounding ninety-eight bedridden patients.

• 1:04:41Jocko Willink?

  Another army doctor working in a small village not far from Cam Ron Bay, successfully saved the life of a young girl, twelve years old, who had both of her hands blown off by a grenade. The little girl's grandmother was also injured in the blast.

• 1:04:57Jocko Willink?

  A short while later, the doctor learned that the young girl's injuries occurred while she and her grandmother had been attempting to booby-trap the doctor's own Jeep with this same grenade, hoping to kill him when he started his engine.

• 1:05:15Jocko Willink?

  A third unarmed American medic spent much of his free time in a similar village, attempting to fight an outbreak of cholera and typhoid. One young Vietnamese boy was too sick to be saved when the medic arrived in the village, but rumors circulated throughout the hamlet that the American medic was responsible for killing the boy with his poisonous medicine. Consequently, the village allowed two Vietcong snipers to ambush and kill the young medic when he drove back into the village a few days later with another shipment of lifesaving drugs. Few medical personnel dared to enter this village after the episode, and half the villagers later died as a result of cholera epidemic.

• 1:06:06Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. This is...

• 1:06:10Jocko Willink?

  You know, I was reading, last night I was actually reading, um, an interview with David Hackworth that, I've read it before, but I was reading it again, and one of the things he said was that...

• 1:06:23Jocko Willink?

  The goal, because we dropped, he was going through the numbers, and I'll, we'll do this, we'll do this interview on the podcast, I'll bring it in, and, but he was saying, he was talking about how much bombs we dropped on Vietnam, so Vietnam's about the size of California, and we dropped more bombs in Vietnam than got dropped in all of Europe during World War II on both sides. So both the Allies and the Axis, all bombs put together during all of World War II, in all that area, there was more dropped into just Vietnam. And what, what someone said was, you know, he's quoting a general that said, "Hey, we're gonna bomb them back into the Stone Age."

• 1:07:07Jocko Willink?

  And what he didn't realize is that they already were in the Stone Age. These people are living, they're farmers, they're, they're working, they're basically in the Stone Age. And so that's, that's, my point is that they're not gonna understand this medical treatment, and if someone comes in and starts manipulating their brains and saying, "Oh, that, that you're, that kid was killed by this poisonous medicine."

• 1:07:33Jocko Willink?

  April 15th, 1970, a short, short story. Once upon a time, there was a politician who, all by himself, blustered and stormed and committed half a million young men to risk their lives in war. Some fat-assed, power-hungry politician, who in all his potato-face ugliness, had the gall to consider himself a statesman and a man of decision. The American sheep went bah, bah, and the young boys died, and Bulb Nose lived happily ever after. Kirkmire, Lee, Catherine, Daly,

• 1:08:17Jocko Willink?

  Rodriguez. Just names. Just figures. April 19th, 1970. Officers and men. American soldiers in Vietnam came from all walks of life, and so did the officers. Most of the officers I worked with in Vietnam, in Saigon, Cam Rong, Na Trang, were citizen soldiers like I was. Graduates of ROTC or OCS. Only Colonel S, Major T, and Captain D were West Point graduates.

• 1:09:00Jocko Willink?

  Colonel S is discussed elsewhere in this book. Captain D didn't like going along with anyone, and Major T was a good officer, well-liked, and much respected. One out of three ain't bad. For six months, my superior officer was Major P, from the 173rd Airborne, and I couldn't have worked for a better man in or out of the Army. He treated us all like human beings, no matter what our rank was, and we were all fiercely loyal in return. Hey, there's a novel idea. That's a novel idea. All these people had asked me, like, "Oh, I'm taking over leadership position. What should I do?" Here's step one: Treat your people like human beings, no matter what their rank are.

• 1:09:42Jocko Willink?

  And look, he says that people were fiercely loyal in return.

• 1:09:48Jocko Willink?

  When Major P left, however, we became expendable to the greater glories of someone else. The army, like any civilian counterpart, has its equal share of the good, the bad, and the ugly.

• 1:10:03Jocko Willink?

  One of my closest friends in Vietnam was none of the above. He was a stevedore officer, a Pentecostal minister's son, and zorba, the Greek. He treated his men as individuals, rankless and unique. They did their job with a minimum of hassle, and they loved him.

• 1:10:23Jocko Willink?

  He was their counselor, their friend, and their equal. When he was about to leave Vietnam, his men gave him a symbolic christening in beer and threw him in the ocean.

• 1:10:35Jocko Willink?

  He told them to treat each other just like you'd want the other dude to treat you.

• 1:10:42Jocko Willink?

  The golden rule in a tub full of beer.

• 1:10:46Jocko Willink?

  An inner light forever branching outward. In Vietnam, when most of us were plodding through the absurd, inhuman procedures of the war, he alone remained a man of substance.

• 1:11:00Jocko Willink?

  So again, it's like, "Treat your people well."

• 1:11:06Jocko Willink?

  April 27, 1970, a highway accident. Yesterday, we saw the results of what happens when a small Lambretta scooter bus filled with 12 Vietnamese civilians hits a Viet Cong mine buried along the side of the main highway.

• 1:11:25Jocko Willink?

  The mine was primarily an anti-personnel device, used, as the military abstractly explains it, "to harass" the civilian population.

• 1:11:37Jocko Willink?

  There were a lot of mangled bodies lying there, until they were policed up, primarily older people, women and children. The elder sons and husbands had already been conscripted to take their chances on the conventional battlefield. In America, a big highway accident or related disaster usually draws a huge, morbid crowd to stare and gawk.

• 1:12:03Jocko Willink?

  Yesterday, in Vietnam, no one seemed to notice.

• 1:12:11Jocko Willink?

  April 30th, 1970, the Koreans. The Koreans fielded in excess of two crack divisions during the Vietnam War. The Rock, that's Republic of Korea, the Rock troops were greatly feared and respected by the Vietcong and North Vietnamese alike. They asked for and gave little quarter to the communists. Once, when one of their troops was ambushed outside a small village in northern Tu Khor, the Koreans hunted the sniper down, brought him back to the village, strung him up on a tree, and skinned him alive.

• 1:12:49Jocko Willink?

  The Koreans' bravery, devotion, and ferocity as a fighting force was legendary in Vietnam. During the Tet Offensive of 1968, every major Allied headquarters and military compound in all of Vietnam was attacked by the communists, except one. The VC and the North Vietnamese gave wide berth to the Koreans. I did not know that, but that's, that's legit. They said, "Uh, yeah, we're not gonna attack the Korean compound. We're gonna leave it alone."

• 1:13:28Jocko Willink?

  So, there is...

• 1:13:31Jocko Willink?

  Uh, that speaks volumes. That speaks volumes. That's why...

• 1:13:40Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you gotta carry a big stick.

• 1:13:44Jocko Willink?

  Gotta carry a big stick. Props to the Koreans. Here's a little poem in memory of a friend killed in action.

• 1:13:53Jocko Willink?

  "Is it weakness for a strong man to be moved by inner touch?

• 1:14:00Jocko Willink?

  Must he spurn a lonely blade of grass and damn the ocean's roar? Or must he look at sentimental beauty as a crutch and choose to play the game of pride by calling life a whore?"

• 1:14:17Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 1:14:19Jocko Willink?

  I have seen the strongest man defend a withered rose. And fall from grace because the people didn't understand.

• 1:14:30Jocko Willink?

  They thought it was his weakness they exploited, I suppose. And killing him in ignorance.

• 1:14:37Jocko Willink?

  They trembled in his hand.

• 1:14:42Jocko Willink?

  May 25th, 1970, Kent State.

• 1:14:46Jocko Willink?

  In the futility and rage over President Nixon's Cambodian invasion. The killing of four student demonstrators at Kent State University by the Ohio National Guard mystified many GIs in Vietnam.

• 1:15:01Jocko Willink?

  We felt this outrage too. But we had a hard time comprehending how the press and the nation could make so much of an issue out of these four student deaths. When we were losing friends and comrades and an average of 250 men killed each and every week.

• 1:15:21Jocko Willink?

  It made us feel as unwilling participants that we were a sub-human species neglected and alone. Forgotten pawns in a confused and godforsaken war.

• 1:15:36Jocko Willink?

  And we were.

• 1:15:39Jocko Willink?

  On both sides of the ocean.

• 1:15:45Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. I mean.

• 1:15:48Jocko Willink?

  Obviously, growing up, you you you actually study. Like when I went to. History class in high school, like we specifically learned about the Kent State massacre, which obviously is horrible. But can you imagine so for the students get killed, the student protesters obviously never should have happened.

• 1:16:09Jocko Willink?

  But can you imagine being in Vietnam and the whole country of America? Is up in arms about these four students being killed. But every week, there's 250 of your friends getting killed.

• 1:16:26Jocko Willink?

  May 26, 1970, the real heroes. The medics and medevac personnel in Vietnam, almost to a man, were beautiful. And very dedicated people, braving the fiercest fire and most harrowing odds to comfort and evacuate the wounded and dying, military and civilian alike, often from both sides, from the heat of battle.

• 1:16:49Jocko Willink?

  In any war, the real heroes are those who try to maintain basic humanity, time and time again risking their own lives so that others might live.

• 1:17:01Jocko Willink?

  In Vietnam, the medics and medevac people were such men.

• 1:17:12Jocko Willink?

  May 28, 1970, anti-war protesters. There were various reactions by Vietnam GIs to the anti-war protesters back home. The bulk of the infantry were high school graduates, who knew that college deferments kept most of the more affluent anti-war protesters out of the draft, and thus, out of the war.

• 1:17:34Jocko Willink?

  To these GIs, Vietnam was viewed in terms of a deep gut reaction, a sort of misery-loves-company affair. "I wish those goddamn protesters could be over here for one week and see what the VC did to my buddy. It changed their goddamn minds real quick."

• 1:17:54Jocko Willink?

  That was, he had that in quotes, that wasn't him, that was him. That was him explaining what the thoughts of the average infantry GI was.

• 1:18:07Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book, some of our contemporaries had chosen jail or Canada and Sweden. We had chosen Vietnam. At least the anti-war protesters could show the world that we were all not supporting the president's actions, even at war.

• 1:18:23Jocko Willink?

  On the other hand, we had to survive this war. Since the VC and the North Vietnamese had designs for killing us and we had designs on them, we were both de facto enemies.

• 1:18:36Jocko Willink?

  Nevertheless, most Vietnam GIs and the anti-war protesters back home had something in common. I love this. This right here is awesome. The frontline troops hated the war. And they hated the safer combat support personnel. The combat support personnel hated the war and they hated the organizational general staff. The staff personnel hated the war and they hated the troops back in Europe and the troops back home. The troops back home hated the war and they hated the placid, non-carrying American civilians. The American civilians supported the war at the time and they hated the anti-war protesters.

• 1:19:19Jocko Willink?

  And the anti-war protesters hated the war and they hated the government. Therefore, the protesters and the soldiers alike had one important thing in common. We both hated the war.

• 1:19:34Jocko Willink?

  That's a crazy thing to think about. That whole thing is just like, it's... You could play those kind of circular games with our political system all day long right now. Ridiculous.

• 1:19:52Jocko Willink?

  This overall feeling perhaps can only be described by a related story. As the American troop withdrawals in Vietnam began, an armored outfit, the 2-1 Cav, pulled into Cam Rong Bay for its long-awaited departure home. Over four years, the 2-1 Cav had performed a combat and combat support role in and around Phan Rang and Phan Chat. They had eaten dust and mud, been shot at, mortared, and booby-trapped throughout their tour. And now they were going home. To honor these brave and gallant men, General D of the Cam Rong Support Command decided to give them a fitting welcome home amid banners, bands, and flags. General D himself was on the reviewing stand.

• 1:20:37Jocko Willink?

  And just as the overly tired men of the 2-1 Cav rumbled by in their tanks and armored personnel carriers, the general proudly saluted them.

• 1:20:47Jocko Willink?

  The first man in the lead tank, not knowing it was a general saluting him, or just not caring, returned the general's snappy salute in the only way possible. He gave him the finger.

• 1:21:05Jocko Willink?

  June 6th, 1970, coming home.

• 1:21:09Jocko Willink?

  Coming home, we had to go through American Customs, sort of like weary tourists back from a year-long overseas jaunt to the enchanted east. Did we have anything to declare? Not much. Most of our prized PX positions, possessions were shipped home. Some having been ripped off by certain civilians, stevedores, but along the coast. So now he is... He's home. June 7th, 1970, Fort Lewis, Washington. A big, monster idiot tube welcomed us back to the world. A third-rate TV comedy in the sweaty lounge with grotesque absurd commercials, screaming and clawing at their dazed viewers with a never-ending "buy me" fervor.

• 1:21:54Jocko Willink?

  "I'm sorry," I said as I turned the monster off. "I'm just not ready for all this yet."

• 1:22:01Jocko Willink?

  "I know what you mean," another voice said. Spending a whole year overseas, fighting to defend all this crap.

• 1:22:10Jocko Willink?

  So there you go. The TV. The TV. The monster clawing at its viewers.

• 1:22:20Jocko Willink?

  "Buy me, buy me." Yeah. May 5th, 1971, a march in San Francisco.

• 1:22:28Jocko Willink?

  There was a huge anti-war protest march in San Francisco this week. Over 700,000 people walked down Geary Street. And in memory of some friends, we found ourselves in front of a long, large contingent of old timers from the Lincoln Brigade and directly behind a large group of businessmen against the war. There were students and veterans, housewives with baby prams, burly stevedores and electricians, grandmothers and grandchildren, policemen and hippies, minorities and majorities, all Americans peacefully asserting their constitutional right of free speech and assembly. After the speeches in Golden Gate Park, one badly crippled veteran in a wheelchair had

• 1:23:10Jocko Willink?

  just enough strength to hurl some hardware one combat medals into the field, a Bronze Star Medal and two Purple Hearts. "Nobody cared about us when they sent us over there," he said. "And nobody cares about us now." And that kind of closes out the, the portion of the book that I wanted to cover, although I do want to actually finish it with what he finishes, or how he finishes the book.

• 1:23:49Jocko Willink?

  And he, and he finishes the book, Peter N. Swisher finishes the book with a, with a quote from someone else. And that's how he finishes the book, so I want to read that. And it says, to close out the book, it's called "Another Time, Another Place." "This morning, January 21st, another picture of war was the worst I have ever seen.

• 1:24:28Jocko Willink?

  It is just east of where the engineers have established a ferry crossing across the river at a point where the river first bends toward the road."

• 1:24:40Jocko Willink?

  Until they were buried, there lay what was left of eight or ten British soldiers. Perhaps one of their mortars was hit as some were burned. And there had been a heavy explosion, but no shell crater was seen nearby.

• 1:25:01Jocko Willink?

  Of two men, only the lower halves remained. Another two were each lacking a head.

• 1:25:10Jocko Willink?

  And another had a leg off at the hip.

• 1:25:15Jocko Willink?

  All had been horribly injured.

• 1:25:21Jocko Willink?

  A Christmas card lay on the ground.

• 1:25:25Jocko Willink?

  Bearing the words in a child's handwriting.

• 1:25:31Jocko Willink?

  "To the best daddy in the world."

• 1:25:38Jocko Willink?

  And those words were written by somebody by the name of Captain George Nash. Royal Artillery, Italy, 1944.

• 1:25:55Jocko Willink?

  And

• 1:25:57Jocko Willink?

  if you put this together, Peter N. Swisher. The N in his name

• 1:26:05Jocko Willink?

  stands for Nash.

• 1:26:08Jocko Willink?

  Because Captain George Nash was Peter Swisher's biological father. Who I talked about in the beginning, who was killed after the war as he came home from Italy.

• 1:26:33Jocko Willink?

  Another place, another time.

• 1:26:40Jocko Willink?

  You know,

• 1:26:44Jocko Willink?

  life in, in many ways,

• 1:26:50Jocko Willink?

  in so many different ways, we, we are not going to understand it. It's incomprehensible. I mean, when you get this Christmas card laying on the ground amongst these savagely wounded soldiers and this Christmas card says, "In Little Kids Writing to the Best Daddy in the World",

• 1:27:13Jocko Willink?

  I don't, I don't, I don't understand that. I don't know

• 1:27:21Jocko Willink?

  why that is, I don't know why the world can be such a horrific place.

• 1:27:28Jocko Willink?

  And how life can be so tragic, but that is the way it is.

• 1:27:35Jocko Willink?

  And some of the things that happen in the world,

• 1:27:40Jocko Willink?

  they just happen and we cannot control them.

• 1:27:47Jocko Willink?

  But at the same time, there are so many things in the world that we do control.

• 1:27:56Jocko Willink?

  And all of us,

• 1:28:00Jocko Willink?

  all of us, we all can somehow, in some way relieve, or we can attenuate some of that tragedy.

• 1:28:13Jocko Willink?

  We don't need to spurn a lonely blade of grass or damn the ocean's roar.

• 1:28:21Jocko Willink?

  We don't need to do that.

• 1:28:25Jocko Willink?

  We can make someone's life a little bit better. We can make ourselves a little bit better. And in doing so, we can make the world, even just a small part of the world, a little bit better.

• 1:28:39Jocko Willink?

  And Peter Swisher, he actually did survive Vietnam. And he went on to become a lawyer and then he became a professor of law at the University of Richmond. And he was married for 37 years and raised a daughter and...

• 1:28:53Jocko Willink?

  And he died June 15th, 2016.

• 1:29:00Jocko Willink?

  Of a cancer.

• 1:29:04Jocko Willink?

  Cancer called multiple myeloma, which if you don't know what that is, that's one of the forms of cancer that's connected to

• 1:29:13Jocko Willink?

  to Agent Orange, which is the chemical that we used in Vietnam to kill the foliage.

• 1:29:21Jocko Willink?

  So, the enemy couldn't hide in it.

• 1:29:28Jocko Willink?

  And that's the cancer that killed Peter Nash Swisher.

• 1:29:35Jocko Willink?

  But

• 1:29:38Jocko Willink?

  but luckily, his voice and his memories live on with us through his writing and through his stories. And I think through these stories.

• 1:29:52Jocko Willink?

  He left the world.

• 1:29:55Jocko Willink?

  A little bit of a better place.

• 1:30:00Jocko Willink?

  And I think that's all I've got for tonight.

• 1:30:06Jocko Willink?

  So, Echo.

• 1:30:11Jocko Willink?

  Maybe you could, uh,

• 1:30:14Jocko Willink?

  let me decompress a little bit and maybe tell us how we can help us.

• 1:30:21Jocko Willink?

  Make the world a better place? Make the world a better place. That sounds like a big deal.

• 1:30:27Jocko Willink?

  Sounds like a big deal, but is it really that big of a deal? I'm not talking about you personally, you gotta individually go out and change the whole world. Right, in a way that everyone can see right now. I had a conversation with, who was I talking to?

• 1:30:42Jocko Willink?

  Someone was asking me, it might have been Pete, it might have been Pete up at Origin, might have been Peter Roberts. It might have been him, but somebody was asking me, you know, about, you know, coming up in the SEAL teams and when I decided to become an officer.

• 1:30:59Jocko Willink?

  And I might have said this before on here, I don't know, but you know, I had a platoon commander that was a prior enlisted guy and he was awesome and we all loved him. And when you're in a SEAL platoon, that's the whole world.

• 1:31:10Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:31:10Jocko Willink?

  That's the whole world as a SEAL platoon. That's the whole world. And we had this awesome officer and this is the time we had a mutiny and all that. And so we got rid of our bad officer and we got this good officer came in and it just made our our lives awesome. Our lives were awesome. And so I said to myself, the back of my mind, subconsciously, kind of remotely conscious, I don't know, but I realized that this guy made our lives awesome. He made our world awesome. And I said to myself, somewhere in the back, little barely formed human brain of mine, I said to myself, you know what? Someday, this guy has made our lives, for us, 16 guys in this SEAL platoon, our lives are awesome now.

• 1:31:54Jocko Willink?

  And someday, I'm gonna try and make life good for 16 guys in a SEAL platoon. That was my goal. And for that world. So, so when I say, hey, make the world a better place, what can you, who can you make the world a better place for? Cause you actually can. You actually can.

• 1:32:12Speaker 01

  Well, yeah.

• 1:32:13Jocko Willink?

  Whether it's some kid down the street, whether it's somebody that needs help out there, whether it's your own kid, how can you make the world a better place? Cause you can't, what can you do to make it a little bit better? Starts, you know what it starts with making yourself a little bit better? Get yourself stable. I'll tell you that. It's like the, like the oxygen mask that dropped down in the aircraft. You gotta get yourself squared away first.

• 1:32:36Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:32:36Jocko Willink?

  Once you got yourself squared away, I had, somebody asked me the other day, like, I'm bored. What should I do? And I was like, oh, if you're bored, that means you got room, you got capacity.

• 1:32:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:32:46Jocko Willink?

  You can go help people.

• 1:32:47Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm. And you know how they say, like, helping others is like the ultimate like reward, you know, people, they say that. I think even before you square yourself away, it's harder to make that connection, I think.

• 1:33:03Jocko Willink?

  Yes, because you're still struggling yourself.

• 1:33:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's kinda like when you plant the seed, it's like the seed gotta grow into a thing above ground first and. Sorta, sorta kinda way, but the more squared away like you get, not only the more capable you are of helping others more effectively, but the more you can make that connection like, oh, this reward is like way better than when I achieved my thing.

• 1:33:30Speaker 01

  That's why a lot of people like if they really love what they do, I'm not saying everybody, but a lot of people, they love what they do, but they're kinda like out of the game. They'll, they'll teach others how to do it. It's just like a natural progression.

• 1:33:41Jocko Willink?

  That is a natural possession. That's true. Look at jujitsu. You become, you become a world champion in jujitsu. That's great. But then eventually a lot of those guys become instructors and they have teams and that's what they wanna do is spread the word.

• 1:33:55Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, and like you, you'd see these guys who had like big, big time careers and stuff. On a high level and they're teaching, you see how happy they are teaching others, like, like Babalu. I don't seem like a random example, but he popped in my, my head. Cause I, I've been to his classroom and he's teaching the kids, adults, everything, man. I'm like, this guy's like really engaged with this.

• 1:34:16Jocko Willink?

  You know, I, I'll tell you right now, my last, and I knew I was, like my last few years in the Navy where I was running the training and I was really teaching all the time. Like that was so good for me. I mean, um, it was so gratifying. That's it. Cause I get to see the light. I get to see people learn. I get to see people. I got to make, make the world good for someone. You know, these, these three guys that figured something out. It's like, yeah, man, you're, you're a leader. And that's, that's good stuff. So, yeah, when I talk about, that sounds so, uh, trite. Make the world a better place. So how could I say that better? Hey, man, fix something helps, just fix something around you.

• 1:34:58Jocko Willink?

  Make your world a better place. That's what I should say. Make your world or make someone else's world. Just make it a little bit better. You have that capability, believe it or not.

• 1:35:07Speaker 01

  And regardless of that, who that someone is, that someone, that someone is you too, by the way, actually you first. Or it could just be you. Because if you make your, it's like if you have a neighborhood, right? And the neighborhood, you know how they, you know how like-

• 1:35:21Jocko Willink?

  You cut your lawn and you clean up your thing and you, that's squaring away, it's helping everyone.

• 1:35:26Speaker 01

  Let's say there's ten houses in a neighborhood, small neighborhood, whatever, ten houses. You cut your lawn, you do your hedges, you paint your house, make sure there's no trash in the yard or whatever. You've improved that whole neighborhood by one tenth. You alone, let alone everybody else, don't even think about anybody else, one tenth, it's a lot. See what I'm saying? So apply that concept. There you go, that's what you do. Boom, there you go. And-

• 1:35:50Jocko Willink?

  I like it.

• 1:35:51Speaker 01

  So, staying on the path, that is-

• 1:35:54Jocko Willink?

  Help us, help us, that's what I said actually. Help us. Can you tell us how to, can you help us, help us?

• 1:36:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:36:02Jocko Willink?

  You see what I'm saying?

• 1:36:03Speaker 01

  Yes, I do. Yeah, yeah. So, yes, be happy to. So, first thing, obviously we're gonna talk about jujitsu, not obviously, but we're gonna talk about jujitsu.

• 1:36:11Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I think it is actually obvious at this point.

• 1:36:13Speaker 01

  Yes, it is.

• 1:36:14Jocko Willink?

  How many people tweet me a day, or message me, that they took their first jujitsu class?

• 1:36:19Speaker 01

  How many?

• 1:36:20Jocko Willink?

  A lot.

• 1:36:22Jocko Willink?

  And you know how for you people means like three?

• 1:36:24Speaker 01

  Sometimes, yeah, sometimes.

• 1:36:26Jocko Willink?

  Where you're like, well, people been asking for whatever.

• 1:36:28Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:36:28Jocko Willink?

  But sometimes that really means three people. No, I'm talking on a daily pe- daily basis, daily basis.

• 1:36:34Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:36:34Jocko Willink?

  I would say,

• 1:36:37Jocko Willink?

  I don't know, I don't know, maybe three to five people a day?

• 1:36:40Speaker 01

  A day daily, that's a lot. That is a lot. Mm-hmm, yeah.

• 1:36:43Jocko Willink?

  Maybe it's over-exaggerated in my head though.

• 1:36:45Speaker 01

  You know what? I don't think so, because every single time I go on Twitter, which is pretty much every day, pretty much, there's at least one person in, you know, the alerts, right, section, right? That I'm like copied in or whatever, and it'll say, got my first jujitsu class, or got beat up in jujitsu class. So, and then this is every single time, like I literally cannot remember-

• 1:37:08Jocko Willink?

  See, so it's a lot. People are getting on the jujitsu train.

• 1:37:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:37:12Jocko Willink?

  For sure.

• 1:37:13Speaker 01

  Yes, so, let's talk about-

• 1:37:15Jocko Willink?

  So it's kind of obvious that we're gonna talk about jujitsu a little bit. You know what else is good? Very few people say- I tried jujitsu. I just don't like it.

• 1:37:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's not for me.

• 1:37:26Jocko Willink?

  That's very, I've actually, I can only think of off the top of my head, one individual out of all those people that like went back and forth with me and it was just like, look, I do not like this. I think this is the guy that I said, look, you need to train until you submit someone.

• 1:37:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:37:41Jocko Willink?

  Then you can stop. If you can submit someone and you're like, okay, I don't like this.

• 1:37:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:37:45Jocko Willink?

  Which is pretty hard to understand.

• 1:37:47Speaker 01

  Then it's truly not for you.

• 1:37:48Jocko Willink?

  Truly not for you. If you actually tap someone out.

• 1:37:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:37:52Jocko Willink?

  Then, yeah, yeah. Then it's not for you. But I bet you even that person, once they got that arm lock.

• 1:37:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:38:02Speaker 01

  This is for me. Yeah, I would, that, that, my money would be on that scenario.

• 1:38:07Jocko Willink?

  So you felt a little bit of claustrophobia, right? In my life, I know you're over it, but could, could, could, could that alone stop someone from wanting to train jujitsu? Cause I had one guy in a SEAL platoon with me that he would get so, cause I'd train with everyone and when I would train with him, he would get so freaked out. Like he would start like, like getting actually mad at me. You know? You know, that.

• 1:38:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:38:33Jocko Willink?

  And of course, what did I do?

• 1:38:36Speaker 01

  Pulled a Jaco.

• 1:38:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I would just side control, just smash, close as I could.

• 1:38:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:38:42Jocko Willink?

  Squeeze, just smash. Trying, you know what though? Trying to help us, trying to make his world a better place by getting him over that thing.

• 1:38:50Speaker 01

  Exposure therapy situation. Yes, though. The answer is yes. I think that because claustrophobia is like, like for real claustrophobia, not just like, oh, I'm uncomfortable or whatever. But like if you have a for real claustrophobia, and it's a spectrum, I get it. Some people have it worse than others. But yeah, if they have it bad enough.

• 1:39:07Jocko Willink?

  Somebody on the hardcore claustrophobia spectrum.

• 1:39:09Speaker 01

  And then they got introduced to it early on.

• 1:39:12Jocko Willink?

  And someone that was like a smasher, right?

• 1:39:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:39:16Jocko Willink?

  Cause you wouldn't feel claustrophobia. I guess you, you wouldn't feel, if you were going with someone that's got like an open butterfly. Slash Lasso Guard.

• 1:39:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, yes.

• 1:39:25Jocko Willink?

  You're not feeling very claustrophobic until you get caught in that triangle. Then all of a sudden you freaking out. But then you tap and you're out. The place where you really feel claustrophobic is cross side or mount.

• 1:39:34Speaker 01

  Or mount, or yeah, so and it's not even necessarily a smasher per se. Cause jujitsu, you can be mounted, just normal mount, not smashing pressure, whatever, just normal mount. Cause it's not like it's, cause claustrophobia is psychological. It's not like a physical thing primary. I mean, there's physical elements for sure. It has to be, but um, if you just feel like you can't get out or you can't breathe or you know, it's like, that's the feeling. But so like, a lot of times, even, even when I was working through mine and you'd be like smashing me all hard. I'd be like, bro, you're wasting your energy. The smashing doesn't do it. When we're rolling and it's quiet, especially when you're like, oh, and when I know you're doing it on purpose. It helps. It helps me because, because it seems like a game, like you're just messing with me now.

• 1:40:17Speaker 01

  So it's like, but if it's serious, if we're just rolling, we're not saying anything. And it's like, now I'm faced with either staying in this position right now forever, cause I can't get out. I can't get out of your side control right now. Like history has proven to me, kind of thing in my brain. So either I, I suck it up indefinitely or I tap out. Both of those to me are death, like to tap out because you're tired or claustrophobia. Like that's worse than tapping out from a submission. So that's why a lot of the times you would claustrophobia me into giving me, giving you my arm or something like that. And then I'd have to tap, but that's how it went, man. So which is.

• 1:40:53Jocko Willink?

  I think you, I think you tapped two times from just straight claustrophobia.

• 1:40:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, because you didn't freaking take the submission I was giving you and that's terrible. And I remember like.

• 1:41:02Jocko Willink?

  I was about to be let down at myself. As you were saying all this, I was kind of disappointed in myself that I didn't identify that, that there was a further torture I could have been doing to you, but it looks like sometimes I did figure it out.

• 1:41:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, so you know.

• 1:41:16Speaker 01

  So I remember here, I remember one time, not to go too deep into this, because I want to tell you a lot about Origin. So there's this one time where I forget if I rolled with you like that day or the day, it was really recently I rolled with you and I was feeling claustrophobia. And, you know, I gave you my arm and then you took it and I was like, yes, like I was happy that you tapped me out and let me out of there. Because it's like, it's really bad when you feel that. So the next day, I see you rolling with Dean and Dean gets you in double snow angel, right? And you guys were rolling hard for a long time. And I'm like, dang, these guys are going hard. I would be, and I'm kind of not empathizing, you know, when you put yourself in the other person's situation. So I'm like, hey, thinking to myself, man, these guys are going hard for

• 1:42:00Speaker 01

  a long time. I would be gassing right now. And then Dean was like, he was kind of getting the better. You got Mount. I'd be like, I'm feeling for Jock right now, because I've been in that scenario where it's like, we're going hard and then I wind up in Mount. I'd be like, man, I'm feeling like breaths in my, just by watching. And then he gets you in double snow angel. I'm like, I was getting like, micro anxiety from the double snow angel that Dean is doing on you. Because that's claustrophobia right there. Like this. And you can't do it. You can't move.

• 1:42:29Jocko Willink?

  What was my reaction?

• 1:42:30Speaker 01

  He just powered through it, bro. Like, you didn't even, I don't think he even tapped you. But he was like that for like, a long time. And I was like, I was like, this guy's a different, another level of savage. And I'm not saying necessarily with the grappling. I mean, that was sort of like, you know, that was a side thing. Just the fact that you can endure what I just witnessed you endure compared to my own shit. Nonetheless, the answer is yes.

• 1:42:54Jocko Willink?

  What happened the next day?

• 1:42:55Speaker 01

  What do you mean?

• 1:42:56Jocko Willink?

  Was there a follow on where I rolled with you again? Or is that the story?

• 1:42:59Speaker 01

  No, no, no. So I was comparing it to what was helping me really get into your shoes is because I was remembering, it could have been that same day that we rolled and I just gave into the claustrophobia. Like, it was like, I had an issue. I was like, in terrible shape. I would go train like, twice a week, maybe, you know, and not, it was just a bad scenario. But nonetheless, yes, the answer is yes. If someone gets into jiu-jitsu and they have a claustrophobic-

• 1:43:26Jocko Willink?

  Pre-existing condition.

• 1:43:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, thing. And then they get in a claustrophobia situation early on, like the first or second day or something. Yeah, I could see how they wouldn't want to go back, but I don't know. But here's the good thing about that. If you do jujitsu and reap the payoffs of jujitsu, and then you get into claustrophobia situation, you're more worried about like, how can I overcome the claustrophobia? More so than, hey, jujitsu produces too much claustrophobia for me. You know what I mean?

• 1:43:54Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:54Speaker 01

  Because you know the benefits and you feel like the payoff of the jujitsu way more than you care about or fear claustrophobia. That's my analysis.

• 1:44:04Jocko Willink?

  Anyway, so speaking of jujitsu.

• 1:44:05Speaker 01

  Jujitsu, yeah, you're gonna need a gi. So you get an origin gi. That's it, straight up. There it is. I answered your question. Because plenty of people, plenty of people still ask me what gi to get.

• 1:44:15Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:15Speaker 01

  Origin gi.

• 1:44:16Jocko Willink?

  Well, you know why? It's because people start at Podcast One.

• 1:44:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, and I dig it.

• 1:44:20Jocko Willink?

  And so they're, well, they get them by podcasts. You know, I was asking people at the camp. I was asking people, what broke you? Like, because people get, meaning they're listening to the podcast. They're like, well, they're talking about jujitsu. And then, oh, well, they're talking about, but then they'll be like, when you were talking on Podcast 23, you were like, there's nothing else like it. And I was like, okay, I gotta try this. So there's certain podcasts that people go, all right, screw it. I'm just gonna do this.

• 1:44:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:44:48Jocko Willink?

  And I think you posted something on social media the other day that said that if you're a white belt, you already have achieved more than 99% of people in the world.

• 1:45:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:45:00Jocko Willink?

  Because how many people, less than 1% of the people in the world do jujitsu for sure.

• 1:45:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:45:05Jocko Willink?

  For sure.

• 1:45:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, fully. And yeah, I reposted, I retweeted it from Joey Sylvester. And I think he even retweeted it from somebody because it's so true. Like, and the reason I reposted it is, of course, for new people, you know, coming in. But that's a good reminder. It was a good reminder for me, because I think it's a good reminder for everybody. Because you know that feeling, like, you know, when people are like, man, I

• 1:45:29Jocko Willink?

  Hey, for everybody in everything, not just jujitsu.

• 1:45:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:45:32Jocko Willink?

  Because there's other stuff that you should be doing that you might not be doing.

• 1:45:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:45:36Jocko Willink?

  Because you're like, oh, well, I don't want to cross the line or I don't want to take the first step.

• 1:45:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:45:40Jocko Willink?

  You know, don't want to take the first step. Taking the first step is always big.

• 1:45:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:45:44Jocko Willink?

  I wrote about that.

• 1:45:45Speaker 01

  But even like taking, so yeah, again, there's two elements to that. Taking the first step, meaning if you're not in jujitsu, then you take that first step to go to jujitsu, right? There's that. And then

• 1:45:56Speaker 01

  To me, it was like when you get your ass kicked, you know, like even even you how you say like sometimes I'll just get my ass kicked someday.

• 1:46:03Jocko Willink?

  For sure.

• 1:46:03Speaker 01

  Like and people, no matter what level they are, they'll be like, oh, man, you know, they'll say, oh, man, I got my ass kicked, but I'm ready, you know, and I'm coming back and I liked it and all this stuff. And then and then they'll ask, when, when do, when do I not feel so awkward or when do I not feel like I don't know what I'm doing? I'm like, well, you it all, you always feel like that. You just feel like that a little bit less every every year, whatever.

• 1:46:24Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:24Speaker 01

  Um, and so and sometimes you can be at a high level and feel like that more often than not still, you know, because it just did depend on your training partners, all that stuff. So that I thought that that was a really good reminder is like being there is like super important.

• 1:46:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:38Speaker 01

  And it's like really beneficial.

• 1:46:39Jocko Willink?

  It is. And also is the to take the first step, if you're out there, let this be the podcast number one forty three that you said, you know what? Man, I've heard enough talk about this. I'm gonna go get some.

• 1:46:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:46:49Jocko Willink?

  Today's the day.

• 1:46:50Speaker 01

  Today's the day.

• 1:46:51Jocko Willink?

  There's plenty of jujitsu schools out there.

• 1:46:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:46:54Jocko Willink?

  And most of them are good.

• 1:46:55Speaker 01

  You know which one makes or not which one, but when this is what makes me like wanna just go train right now is anytime you go into one of your spiel's about how it's a superpower. Absolutely true. That's why.

• 1:47:08Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:08Speaker 01

  I was telling Cole, like when we were we were waiting earlier today, my cousin Cole, he um, how when you start jujitsu, like you could do jujitsu for one year. And right then, at that point, you can you can beat up everyone else who doesn't play, doesn't do jujitsu. Like in a just in a general way, speaking, you know, like that.

• 1:47:27Jocko Willink?

  Roughly speaking.

• 1:47:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, roughly speaking, there are there are exceptions for sure.

• 1:47:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:31Speaker 01

  But you know, like, there's not many things in the world that are like that, you know?

• 1:47:35Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, no, it's it's a superpower.

• 1:47:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. So if every time I listen to you say that kind of thing and do your little explanation, um, that's like, yeah, man, that's true, because it kind of re- puts it into.

• 1:47:46Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, when people bring their kids in here, I tell them, I was telling this family this the other day. I said, I said, I I truly believe that jujitsu is the best thing you can give your kid, including love.

• 1:48:00Jocko Willink?

  They'll figure that part out. I go with the jujitsu. So yeah, I think it's very important.

• 1:48:06Speaker 01

  Alright.

• 1:48:07Jocko Willink?

  So you can get your gees from originmaine.com.

• 1:48:09Speaker 01

  Originmaine.com.

• 1:48:10Jocko Willink?

  Made in Maine. That's why it's originmaine.com. And they're made there. And they're made specifically for jujitsu. The weave is for jujitsu. The fabric is for jujitsu. The cut is for jujitsu.

• 1:48:26Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:48:27Jocko Willink?

  Made by people that do jujitsu by black belts in jujitsu.

• 1:48:32Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:48:32Jocko Willink?

  Designed by people that train.

• 1:48:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:48:36Jocko Willink?

  People that are black belts. Dedeco.

• 1:48:39Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:48:39Jocko Willink?

  Peter Roberts.

• 1:48:40Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:48:41Jocko Willink?

  In there with scissors, cutting gees.

• 1:48:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, sure, scissors.

• 1:48:47Jocko Willink?

  Well, now it's lasers.

• 1:48:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, I haven't really seen any scissors, but you know, I've seen those little, what do you call them? The little saw things.

• 1:48:53Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:53Speaker 01

  You know.

• 1:48:54Jocko Willink?

  No, but when you make the original patterns, you gotta use scissors, brah.

• 1:48:57Speaker 01

  Bruh, I don't know that kind of stuff. I don't do that kind of stuff. Well, yeah, I know now though. I know now and that's good. So yeah, scissors, uh, saw, all that stuff, all made in America.

• 1:49:04Jocko Willink?

  If you're training no gi, you can get the rash guards.

• 1:49:07Speaker 01

  Rash guards, 100%.

• 1:49:09Jocko Willink?

  And they're also made here in America, which is a big deal.

• 1:49:13Speaker 01

  And if you're doing other exercise outside of jujitsu, you've got joggers, if you're jogging, or if you're just cruising, whatever, and hoodies and you know, shirts and whatnot. Apparel. Apparel. Originmaine.com. All made in America, by the way. Also supplements. Jocko supplements.

• 1:49:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Joint warfare. Now, people have been asking me joint warfare or krill oil.

• 1:49:37Speaker 01

  Good question, by the way.

• 1:49:38Jocko Willink?

  It's a good question. Um, I think Brian, I asked him the same question because I have a hard time answering it. The reason I have a hard time answering is because I do both all the time and I'm not stopping any one of them as an experiment. I'm not doing that. It's not worth it. It's not worth it to me.

• 1:49:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's no logical reason.

• 1:49:53Jocko Willink?

  There's no logical reason for it. But what he said, and I kind of agree with this, it makes sense. If you are doing preventative krill oil. If you're doing heal.

• 1:50:06Jocko Willink?

  Joint warfare.

• 1:50:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, good way to put it.

• 1:50:08Jocko Willink?

  I, I, you know, my recommendation kind of is like do both.

• 1:50:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:50:12Jocko Willink?

  Take them both, but um, that sounds like a good idea. So if you have, if your joints are like just started bothering you or you got the elbows bothering you or your shoulders bothering you. I think shoulders for me is the one that I always notice.

• 1:50:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:50:25Jocko Willink?

  Um, yeah, then if it's hurt, get on, get on some joint warfare.

• 1:50:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, that's a good, and I say both because it's the way I would see it and put it in. This is just kind of the way I see it where it's like an eighty twenty, you know, it's not like, oh, joint warfare is hundred percent for healing up and recovering your joints and then.

• 1:50:44Jocko Willink?

  I actually don't think that at all, but yeah, I just, and the other thing, well, I don't know.

• 1:50:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:50:51Jocko Willink?

  That's what Brian said, I'm putting it out there. I'm not, I would, yeah, I, I'd obviously recommend both, but you know, sometimes that costs a lot of money. And some, some people are like, you know what? I can only afford one. Cool.

• 1:51:02Speaker 01

  I dig it.

• 1:51:02Jocko Willink?

  Take, take krill oil because that's all encompassing health, right?

• 1:51:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:51:08Jocko Willink?

  Whereas joints like, yeah, when your joints start getting jacked up a little bit.

• 1:51:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:51:13Jocko Willink?

  Which by the way, if you're doing jujitsu, you're gonna feel it. You're gonna feel jujitsu. Jujitsu is not a sport that you don't feel.

• 1:51:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:51:21Jocko Willink?

  You, you will feel it.

• 1:51:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:51:22Jocko Willink?

  You feel it.

• 1:51:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's true, but they're both good hundred percent.

• 1:51:26Jocko Willink?

  And then you got um, milk.

• 1:51:28Speaker 01

  Milk.

• 1:51:28Jocko Willink?

  So I'm, I'm, I'm envisioning a world one day, cause I was in a, traveling yesterday, horrible. And man, I got like a chocolate milk, like a regular chocolate milk, which is just awful crap. And it doesn't even taste as good. It doesn't taste.

• 1:51:44Speaker 01

  You got used to the milk, that's what it was.

• 1:51:46Jocko Willink?

  But still, objectively, it does not taste as good. And it's unhealthy.

• 1:51:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:51:52Jocko Willink?

  So, one day, one day. In this world. You'll be able to go to the little shop in the airport, the, the seven eleven, and you'll just be able to walk in, they'll have a little counter for milk. They'll have a little milk situation going on. They will, because how can they not do that? I mean eventually, right? No, I mean eventually you fast forward, I don't know if it's gonna take two years or four years, but eventually so many people are gonna demand it.

• 1:52:18Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:52:19Jocko Willink?

  There's gonna be, oh, yeah. There's gonna be milk restaurants, there's just gonna be different flavors. You're just gonna go in there.

• 1:52:25Speaker 01

  Like little milk bars.

• 1:52:26Jocko Willink?

  The little milk bars, but they won't even have food, they'll just have milk.

• 1:52:29Speaker 01

  Just have milk, yeah, you know how they have tequila bars, right? The only tequila, so it's kinda the same thing.

• 1:52:33Jocko Willink?

  Same thing, but milk.

• 1:52:33Speaker 01

  But different.

• 1:52:34Jocko Willink?

  Milk on tap.

• 1:52:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, that sounds like a good idea, uh, you know, I have that dream too, you know? And, um, until then, yeah, you can get it at originmaine.com. Uh, also discipline too, if you wanna get your mind right. You know that expression, get your mind right?

• 1:52:47Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:48Speaker 01

  Not to say your mind's not right, I'm saying give it even more right.

• 1:52:51Jocko Willink?

  The most fired up I've ever heard a guy tell me about getting his mind right. I was up at Yosemite and this guy, I was coming out from a hike, from a pretty good hike, couple of days out in the bush. And there was a guy, and he was, he was in the middle of the river, like sitting on a rock, just a calm river, not like, you know, he's sitting on a rock. And we stopped there, I think we jumped in, and you know, he saw me and he was all, he immediately, you know, I could tell he was in the game, right?

• 1:53:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:53:19Jocko Willink?

  And he comes over and he was like, I said, hey man, you know, he said, oh man, I listened to your podcast, bro. We were listening to all the, he was with one of his, we were listening to all the way up here. We just drove six hours to get up here, we just listened to whatever it was. Uh, forty-eight and forty-nine, back to back. And I was like, I was like, oh man, that's awesome. I said, what are you doing up here, you climbing, you guys gonna go hiking? He goes, no man, I just came up here to get my mind right. And I was like, yeah, I don't even know what that means.

• 1:53:44Speaker 01

  Get it, get it.

• 1:53:45Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, well, I guess I do know what it means, yeah, I kind of.

• 1:53:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:53:49Jocko Willink?

  Go up there, get your mind right.

• 1:53:50Speaker 01

  Yep, dig it. And if you want supplementation for doing that, discipline, boom, pre-mission, mind, your mind literally will get you right. Yeah. Pre-mission gets your, your brain right, yeah.

• 1:54:02Jocko Willink?

  That's, that's the originmaine.com.

• 1:54:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's where you get it. Also. You want to support yourself. You want to represent Jaco as a store. It's called Jaco Store. So you go to Jacostore.com. So you can represent. Huge time. Huge time represent. A lot of people representing. And this is one of those things. So basically, this is where you can get shirts and hoodies and hats. Rash guards.

• 1:54:24Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Trucker hats, by the way. You don't have to get the flex if you don't want to.

• 1:54:28Speaker 01

  Nope.

• 1:54:29Jocko Willink?

  If you prefer keeping it old school, like we used to do.

• 1:54:35Speaker 01

  Sure. I'm trying. I think I've worn trucker hats before on a regular basis.

• 1:54:40Jocko Willink?

  I never saw you in a hat until like three minutes ago when you put one on momentarily and I looked up and I just got disturbed.

• 1:54:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, it's been literally like, like 15 years before, since I've.

• 1:54:51Jocko Willink?

  And your head doesn't get a beat down by the sun?

• 1:54:53Speaker 01

  Well, I'm very brown.

• 1:54:55Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:55Speaker 01

  And I'm from Kuwait, so I think I'm used to that one.

• 1:54:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:59Speaker 01

  But actually, no, to answer your question, yeah, sometimes if I stay in the sun for a long time.

• 1:55:03Jocko Willink?

  Then you want a hat. You don't put one on.

• 1:55:04Speaker 01

  Maybe.

• 1:55:05Jocko Willink?

  Straw hat.

• 1:55:06Speaker 01

  Sometimes. Coconut, coconut leaf hat?

• 1:55:09Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah, that's what we used to do.

• 1:55:13Speaker 01

  Nonetheless, when you're representing Jaco shirts, when I see people representing in the wild.

• 1:55:17Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:18Speaker 01

  Who made that up in the wild? Was that you said that? Or I think someone else said that.

• 1:55:21Jocko Willink?

  I, I don't know, but I definitely, I think I might have said it because I think the first, no, I did say it because I remember I hadn't seen one in the wild.

• 1:55:28Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:55:29Jocko Willink?

  And that's something, yeah, I'd be like, I never saw a trooper in the wild. And then eventually I did. And now, man, I was in the airport yesterday. I saw like seven people. They weren't wearing shirts, but they were all coming up and being like, hey, what's up? So people were fired up.

• 1:55:43Speaker 01

  In the wild.

• 1:55:44Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:44Speaker 01

  But yeah, good. Go there, get something. Uh, you know, if you want to represent, then represent in the wild. Boom. Discipline equals freedom. It's where it's at. Anyway, yeah, Jacostore.com.

• 1:55:54Jocko Willink?

  I made a new Discipline Equals Freedom shirt.

• 1:55:55Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:55:56Jocko Willink?

  It's, it's a little bit cooler, in my opinion.

• 1:55:59Speaker 01

  Well, you know, it's one of these deals.

• 1:56:00Jocko Willink?

  That might be biased because I sort of.

• 1:56:03Speaker 01

  You had some influence.

• 1:56:03Jocko Willink?

  I influenced that one.

• 1:56:04Speaker 01

  On that one? Yeah. Yeah, it was good. You're a good designer.

• 1:56:07Jocko Willink?

  You, when you, when I told you, hey, make equals smaller.

• 1:56:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:56:13Jocko Willink?

  And I could see in your mind, you were thinking is off balance, off balance.

• 1:56:18Speaker 01

  Physically.

• 1:56:18Jocko Willink?

  Physically, letters. And then I gave you the idea of, hey, no, you put two lines. It's an equal sign. There's layers. And you're like, you got all ex, it was like a done deal in your mind. Nirvana had been achieved with a new t-shirt.

• 1:56:34Speaker 01

  It did click because and I saw why you wanted the equals smaller.

• 1:56:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, because it's not the main thing.

• 1:56:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, discipline is the main thing. Discipline. Nonetheless, anyway, jocko store.com if you want to represent.

• 1:56:49Jocko Willink?

  Freedom's the main thing, too.

• 1:56:50Speaker 01

  Represent, yeah, not the equals. Well, equals is it's it's all equal.

• 1:56:54Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, but it's not the main thing.

• 1:56:56Speaker 01

  Yeah. All right, there you go. So Jocko solved that problem. Not that it was a problem, but you know, he he influenced with his improvement. Yeah.

• 1:57:06Jocko Willink?

  Somebody out there is like, no, I like the equals being bigger. Echo's shirt was better.

• 1:57:10Speaker 01

  Equality, boom.

• 1:57:11Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:12Speaker 01

  They're into equality. They like the discipline. They like the freedom. They like the freedom doesn't as a discipline.

• 1:57:16Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, for them, equality was kind of the deal.

• 1:57:18Speaker 01

  That's the deal, and I dig it.

• 1:57:20Jocko Willink?

  They're gonna have to keep their old school shirt.

• 1:57:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, dig it. Represent, get another way. Yeah, whatever, man. All good. All good. Also, good way to stay on the path. The current path is to subscribe to this podcast if you have not already. That includes YouTube, so that's the video version. So, yeah, if you're on the podcast platforms, apps, whatever, wherever you listen to your podcasts, man, subscribe. Leave a review if you feel like it.

• 1:57:45Jocko Willink?

  And also, don't forget about the Warrior Kid podcast, which we just released seventeen and eighteen.

• 1:57:51Speaker 01

  And eighteen.

• 1:57:52Jocko Willink?

  All at the same time, and I apologize that those took a little while to get out. And my, when I came down from my garage gym this morning, got done with the some, bro, I squatted today and I haven't been able to squat.

• 1:58:08Speaker 01

  Heavy?

• 1:58:08Jocko Willink?

  I not not like, no, not heavy, actually, straight up. Not heavy because I have I had back to back tweak knee or tweak back and then tweak knee. So I I just haven't been able to

• 1:58:23Jocko Willink?

  and today I just went, man, I couldn't believe squatting is hard.

• 1:58:28Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:58:28Jocko Willink?

  Like, if you're not used to it, which I'm not right now, and I and believe me, during the, even when my back was tweaked and my knee was tweaked, I'm still doing pistols. I'm still doing box jumps. I'm still doing burpees and lunges and even little kettlebell like type little, you know, movements. So it's not like my legs are just sitting there atrophying on a couch.

• 1:58:48Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:58:49Jocko Willink?

  No, they're still in the game over here. But man, then I just racked up. You asked me if I went heavy? No, I did two twenty-five. I did like a few sets of two twenty-five and I was like, and I was doing some stuff in between, but still, I couldn't believe it. Yeah, so my point is, if you can squat, squat.

• 1:59:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:59:06Jocko Willink?

  If you can squat, get squat, get it on, because that just makes you stronger, tougher.

• 1:59:11Speaker 01

  You do have that barrier though.

• 1:59:13Jocko Willink?

  Smarter as far as I'm concerned.

• 1:59:15Speaker 01

  Probably.

• 1:59:16Jocko Willink?

  No, I read, actually, now I think about it, I read something about the, the neurotropic release that happens when you squat, your whole body gets better.

• 1:59:24Speaker 01

  Well, that's exercise in gen- resistance exercise in general. Actually, a lot of kind of exercise in general.

• 1:59:29Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, but when you're squatting, you're using like a lot of.

• 1:59:31Speaker 01

  It does more. It's true. It ups your testosterone too.

• 1:59:34Jocko Willink?

  There you go.

• 1:59:35Speaker 01

  Because, and here's why basically, because it's a huge muscle group. That's why.

• 1:59:38Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah, yeah. And it's not just one muscle group, because when you're squatting, you're actually using, I think when you're squatting, you're using so many muscles.

• 1:59:45Speaker 01

  Bunch, yeah.

• 1:59:45Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, all kinds of core stabilizers and stuff like that.

• 1:59:49Speaker 01

  To mention, you, the biggest muscles in your body, and with basically all your big muscles, all of them, not just one big one and then a bunch of small ones. Like, you know, most of your body, that's kind of how it is. You know, you're, you're using your, your shoulders and then your triceps and a little bit of your chest.

• 2:00:03Jocko Willink?

  I went to this hotel the other day and they had Hundos, dumbbells. Yeah, I was pretty stoked. Yeah, I was like, okay.

• 2:00:10Speaker 01

  Alright, respect.

• 2:00:12Jocko Willink?

  Here we go. Yeah, get some. Everyone should have, if you're, if you have a hotel, if you're a hotel owner, get some Hundos in there. Get some Hundos. You don't even have to get, you can get, because normally they stop at fifties. If you get, let's just say, fifties, if you just get a set of seventies and a set of Hundos, we'll be good.

• 2:00:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:00:30Jocko Willink?

  We'll be good worldwide.

• 2:00:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:00:32Jocko Willink?

  The whole world will be happy.

• 2:00:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:00:33Jocko Willink?

  You'll be especially happy, because I know you like them dumbbells. You were saying, we were all fired up the other day talking about dumbbells.

• 2:00:39Speaker 01

  Yeah. I do like dumbbells. Well, because it's a fun exercise. There's more to it than just getting under the bench, for example, and pushing the bench, you know? It's, I mean, there's more, a little bit more to bench than that when you get into it, but dumbbells, like, you gotta, okay, you gotta pick those guys up, one in each hand, and then you gotta balance them on your knees, and then you gotta get them up there into position. That right there is the whole thing. Exactly. And that's not to mention the strength, you gotta have to push them. So you know, when you get kinda good at them and you do them a lot, it it does become kinda fun.

• 2:01:07Jocko Willink?

  Check.

• 2:01:08Speaker 01

  There you go. Boom. Nonetheless, I don't know how we started talking about dumb belts. Well, Jocko was squatting, his legs are sore, all this stuff.

• 2:01:16Jocko Willink?

  Oh yeah, and then Warrior Kid Podcast. How did that lead to it?

• 2:01:19Speaker 01

  I don't know, but you know, every, that's how few you are.

• 2:01:21Jocko Willink?

  Cause when I came home, oh yeah, cause, oh, this is what I was gonna say. My wife was listening to Warrior Kid Podcast this morning when I came down from the, from the gym. And she was all smiles. And she's like, "This story's very good, darling." Cause I tell the little Uncle Jake story, you know? And she starts naming the people. She's like, "Oh, is this this person?" Cause the stories that Uncle Jake tells, there's, they're not, they're not, uh, what's, they're not non-fiction stories, right? Like, but there's the basis. The story comes from somewhere. Yes. Yeah, that's what it is. It's based on a true story.

• 2:01:56Speaker 01

  Well, there's based and then there's inspired by true events. That's like a different level.

• 2:02:00Jocko Willink?

  Well, which one is the less true?

• 2:02:02Speaker 01

  Inspired by true events.

• 2:02:03Jocko Willink?

  So I say they're inspired by.

• 2:02:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:02:05Jocko Willink?

  Inspired by true events, but they're not, they're not based on. Although, the one that just came out, me being out in a rowboat in the middle of a lake and the oars fall through the oar locks, that happened.

• 2:02:16Speaker 01

  That's true.

• 2:02:16Jocko Willink?

  And guess what? I had no life jacket. Is that smart? No. So kids gotta learn about that.

• 2:02:20Speaker 01

  Gotta learn about it.

• 2:02:21Jocko Willink?

  Be prepared.

• 2:02:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, be prepared.

• 2:02:22Jocko Willink?

  Don't, don't take little shortcuts.

• 2:02:24Speaker 01

  Agree.

• 2:02:25Jocko Willink?

  Anyways, that's the Warrior Kid Podcast. You can, you can listen to those. And you talked about YouTube. Yeah, if you're on the YouTube channel, Echo has put, puts out, he puts out videos and they're enhanced, we'll say.

• 2:02:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're enhanced. Also, just the regular video version of the podcast and little excerpts that are not enhanced. They're just chopped up for consumption.

• 2:02:47Jocko Willink?

  I think we should have more of those too, by the way.

• 2:02:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I put one up today. I'll put more. We'll do that every day, I think.

• 2:02:53Jocko Willink?

  Damn.

• 2:02:54Speaker 01

  That'd be good, right? Appropriate. We'll say appropriate.

• 2:02:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you might have to edit them more. The one I think, the one, it was the one you put up today, like 10 minutes or 11 minutes long?

• 2:03:03Speaker 01

  I forget.

• 2:03:03Jocko Willink?

  Too long.

• 2:03:05Speaker 01

  It was how to stay in shape when you travel.

• 2:03:07Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, so it should be like this. How to stay in shape when you travel. Do burpees in your hotel room. Get some.

• 2:03:15Speaker 01

  I think people need more information on that.

• 2:03:18Jocko Willink?

  Also, hey, Warrior Kids, speaking of Warrior Kids, get the, uh, go to IrishOaksRanch.com. We got young Aiden, the Warrior Kid, and he's making soap. He's got his own business.

• 2:03:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:03:28Jocko Willink?

  He's got his own business. I think he just turned thirteen or what, a couple of months ago. And he's got his own business. He's got income, he's got expenses. He's got produ- production, he's got a production line.

• 2:03:42Speaker 01

  And that

• 2:03:42Jocko Willink?

  How legit is that?

• 2:03:43Speaker 01

  Very legit, and it's not like, hey, I dig it, man, when you sell lemonade. We used to sell bananas when I was little, we'd go in the backyard.

• 2:03:49Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:03:50Speaker 01

  Pick some bananas. Yeah, yeah, and we go on the side of the road, we stop every car, it's a small road, it's not the freeway or nothing. We stop every car, we say, hey, we got bananas, one dollar for one banana, which I know is kind of expensive, but one dollar for one banana or five dollars for a banana, a bag of bananas. For, I think there's like, I don't know, eight or 10 bananas in there, so you know, the whole deal.

• 2:04:07Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 2:04:08Speaker 01

  Make some money, I dig it, but let's face it, you can get bananas literally on the side of the road in Hawaii, so they're like, alright, we'll buy them.

• 2:04:16Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, they're just being cool.

• 2:04:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're being cool, but

• 2:04:18Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, my, my little daughter, she'd be out in front of my house selling a piece of rock, selling whatever, you know, she'd just sell it, and people buy it. She cute.

• 2:04:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:04:26Jocko Willink?

  She's cute, and they go, oh, yeah, here you go.

• 2:04:27Speaker 01

  Good mark.

• 2:04:28Jocko Willink?

  She says, would you like to buy a rock?

• 2:04:31Jocko Willink?

  Where'd it come from? Over there in the dirt. Okay, yeah, we'll give you three dollars for it, that young lady, thank you.

• 2:04:36Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 2:04:37Jocko Willink?

  So that's what you pulled with the bananas?

• 2:04:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, more or less, I mean, maybe a little bit more value than a rock, but it's still, yeah, same deal. But you go over here, Irish Oaks Ranch, this soap is like legit soap.

• 2:04:49Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, for sure.

• 2:04:50Speaker 01

  It's not like a novelty soap for looks, it's like real soap that you use, it's legit soap.

• 2:04:56Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, for sure. And it's a kid making it.

• 2:04:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's, that's the impressive part, overall.

• 2:05:02Jocko Willink?

  And he's making it from goat milk, so it's not like he's making, he's pouring like some, he's milking a goat.

• 2:05:07Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:05:08Jocko Willink?

  He's milking his goats to get the milk to make the soap, this is a whole thing.

• 2:05:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's not like he's going on the internet to the makeasoup.com.

• 2:05:15Jocko Willink?

  And then they pour, they send you the ingredients, and then you pour them into a thing, and you got soap, no. He's milking a goat, by the way, he's raising the goat.

• 2:05:23Jocko Willink?

  The goat is, the goat doesn't, the goat doesn't just like, there's not a live, it's not a mechanical goat, it's a living goat that has to be kept alive.

• 2:05:31Speaker 01

  Made in America.

• 2:05:32Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, absolutely made in America, so, yeah.

• 2:05:34Speaker 01

  It goes deep, man, irishoakesranch.com, get some, stay clean.

• 2:05:39Jocko Willink?

  He also got psychological warfare. If you need a little, little get some, you can throw that, well, you get it for your alarm clock. If you need it for your alarm clock, if you need, if you have a little trouble getting up out of the bed in the morning, use it for your alarm clock, but give your significant other, most likely your wife, give her a heads up that there's gonna be a random dude in the bedroom in the morning talking to you.

• 2:05:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:05:59Jocko Willink?

  So it doesn't surprise her and scare her and make her hate you. That's psychological warfare iTunes, Google Play. We're coming out with a second one. We're gonna try, I'm gonna try and get that done by Christmas. Can we get it done by Christmas, you think?

• 2:06:09Speaker 01

  I think so, yeah.

• 2:06:10Jocko Willink?

  Okay, cool. We're doing shopping.

• 2:06:13Speaker 01

  Shopping.

• 2:06:14Jocko Willink?

  Compulsive shopping. Somebody wants smoking, but how many people, we can do it.

• 2:06:19Speaker 01

  Yes, and, yeah, smoking.

• 2:06:21Jocko Willink?

  I'll try smoke. I'll think about smoking. I don't, I've never smoked, so it's a little hard for me to relate to.

• 2:06:26Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:06:27Jocko Willink?

  But I made you just straight up addiction.

• 2:06:30Speaker 01

  Addiction, yeah.

• 2:06:30Jocko Willink?

  What are you addicted to? Cause everybody's addicted to something.

• 2:06:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:06:33Jocko Willink?

  You know, some people are addicted to cocaine, some people are addicted to alcohol, some people are addicted to sugar, some people are addicted to, uh, drama.

• 2:06:42Speaker 01

  That's what I was gonna say, actually, drama, yeah.

• 2:06:44Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, people are addicted to drama, so maybe we'll do one about that. But yeah, that's psychological warfare and you can get it on iTunes and Google Play and all that stuff.

• 2:06:54Speaker 01

  What is psychological warfare?

• 2:06:55Jocko Willink?

  Oh.

• 2:06:56Speaker 01

  I know, everybody knows, alright. Well, if you hit a moment of weakness, boom, listen to psychological warfare and get you past it. That's what it is, boom. Also, speaking of weakness and your workouts, workout weakness, real weakness, physical weakness, whatever. Um, anyway, you get a plateau in your workout, get some new equipment, that's what I did. I got rings. Get it from on it, on it dot com slash Jaco. I got rings and kettlebells. Actually, that was a long time ago, I got the kettlebells, but I'm glad I did. Um, again, the rings, battle ropes, like stuff you can vary it, vary it up and create little challenges for yourself within the workout. I know that's what, kinda what a workout is, but you know when it gets mundane.

• 2:07:31Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 2:07:31Speaker 01

  See what I'm saying? No, actually, I think you do know when it gets mundane, because for you, it is mundane, you just, I think that's part of your challenge. I think that's your challenge. Yeah, yeah, you exercise.

• 2:07:41Jocko Willink?

  Nah, I mix up my workouts a lot more than you think I do.

• 2:07:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:07:44Jocko Willink?

  You know, sometimes I do squats and then sometimes I do front squats.

• 2:07:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, there you go, you heard it here first, folks. Anyway, like I said, on it dot com slash Jaco.

• 2:07:55Jocko Willink?

  And then you get some tea. A lot of people been asking where to get the cans, the ready to drink, RTD, that's a thing that you start learning when you like get into this kind of thing.

• 2:08:07Speaker 01

  What, like the, the industry?

• 2:08:08Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:08:09Speaker 01

  Terminology.

• 2:08:10Jocko Willink?

  It's RTD, ready to drink.

• 2:08:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:08:12Jocko Willink?

  So if you want Jocka White Tea in a can, this is another thing, one day in the world, it's gonna be like, hey, I'm driving, I got a long drive. I'm gonna stop at this 7-Eleven here, I'm gonna go in there and they're gonna have Jocka, instead of having to get a horrible, chemical filled, crappy, sugar, psycho drink, I'm gonna get something that is literally good for me.

• 2:08:35Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:08:36Jocko Willink?

  Jocka White Tea. And then, that's what's gonna happen, but until then, it's on Amazon, it's on Amazon Prime, why is that? Because freaking, it weighs a lot, so to save money for you on the shipping, you can get the Amazon Prime and it just comes to your house and it's awesome. And the obvious benefit and everyone, you know, knows already is that once you drink Jocka White Tea, you can deadlift a minimum of 8,000 pounds, including Jordan Peterson, who overcame his plateau of 7,000 pounds.

• 2:09:07Speaker 01

  Yep, that's good.

• 2:09:08Jocko Willink?

  Got himself right up there to 8,000 pounds. Got some books too.

• 2:09:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, books, Way to Worry Kid, okay, Mark's Mission, Mark's Mission is the second one.

• 2:09:16Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 2:09:16Speaker 01

  So Way to Worry Kid, and then Way to Worry Kid, Mark's Mission. I told you I read this to my daughter every night, right?

• 2:09:23Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 2:09:23Speaker 01

  Now, well, every, here's the thing, when I said I read it every night, it's like pretty much every night, see what I'm saying? We do other quizzes and stuff, so it's something, but now, she's in kindergarten now, and now there's a thing where they require, um, they don't require, but yeah, they recommend, yeah, uh, per night. So I did, I just do one chapter a night, boom, boom, boom, and she got so into, she's into this second one a lot, a lot more. Because, I mean, not that she wasn't, because the first one is kind of the ethos now, because I read it more than once to her, so maybe that has a lot to do with it.

• 2:09:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you might go back, yeah, she's into the new one because it's new.

• 2:09:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:09:56Jocko Willink?

  At some point, you're gonna go back to the original one and she's gonna start.

• 2:09:59Speaker 01

  Maybe.

• 2:10:00Jocko Willink?

  Even like me, when I read, like I was reading About Face the other night for the forty seven thousandth time.

• 2:10:05Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 2:10:06Jocko Willink?

  And you're like, you just get more stuff out of it.

• 2:10:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:10:08Jocko Willink?

  And I think those books, those Warrior Kid books, that's what's gonna happen. Like, when she turns six, she's gonna read it again. When she turns seven, she's gonna go like, oh yeah, I'm gonna get Discipline Equals Freedom. Like, she doesn't know what that means right now.

• 2:10:20Speaker 01

  Right, yeah.

• 2:10:21Jocko Willink?

  But when she's eight, she's gonna figure that out.

• 2:10:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. Nathan James.

• 2:10:25Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:10:26Speaker 01

  This makes it extra funny, cuz I know who Nathan James is. You know what I'm saying? Like, I know the thing. So that makes it, makes it extra funny, where she really, like, anytime he comes up, cuz you know how it kinda each chapter goes back and forth. One is like him at camp and what happened, then the other one is like him starting business and one then back to camp and doing this. So it's like that, right?

• 2:10:43Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:10:43Speaker 01

  So every time we go back to Nathan James, she perks up, like, what's up, Nick? And so we're at the part where, uh, you know how, um, he's doing recon, right? Finding out.

• 2:10:51Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, finding out about Nathan James.

• 2:10:53Speaker 01

  Yeah. And she's finding out that part, and then like, she's really, cuz we tell her that, we used to tell her that all the time. Not everybody has a TV in their room. Not everybody has, like, all this X, Y, Z, good stuff or whatever. So she really, like, it was like, she was familiar with the concept, so she really just attached to it.

• 2:11:08Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:11:09Speaker 01

  But yeah, for some reason, I don't know, because I make my voice like how you make your voice, all when I make Nathan James' voice, I think that's part of it, too.

• 2:11:16Jocko Willink?

  Do I do Nathan James in the audio?

• 2:11:17Speaker 01

  No, but, no, no, no, I, no. No, when you, you know how you make your voice when you imitate somebody, some dork, or whatever, you know?

• 2:11:25Jocko Willink?

  But Nathan James isn't a dork.

• 2:11:27Speaker 01

  No, I know, but I make my voice like Nathan James, cuz I try to make him sound annoying, cuz he's annoying.

• 2:11:32Jocko Willink?

  Oh, got it.

• 2:11:33Speaker 01

  See what I'm saying? But yeah, anyway, it's a very dope way the word.

• 2:11:37Jocko Willink?

  Love the real Nathan James on the podcast.

• 2:11:39Speaker 01

  I know, bruh. Can't wait.

• 2:11:40Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:11:41Speaker 01

  Fired up.

• 2:11:42Jocko Willink?

  He was down here, but, um, I was like, hey, are we gonna do this? And he was just busy, and he goes, let's wait until I get this thing taken care of, and then we'll do it. And I said, cool.

• 2:11:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:11:53Jocko Willink?

  So we're gonna do it.

• 2:11:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:11:55Jocko Willink?

  The real Nathan James.

• 2:11:56Speaker 01

  Also, Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual, best kinda manual there is, by the way. A field manual, that's my opinion. This is how to, you know how you have a basic structure slash backbone of just how to be?

• 2:12:08Jocko Willink?

  You know what, you know what word you're looking for?

• 2:12:10Speaker 01

  What?

• 2:12:10Jocko Willink?

  Operating system.

• 2:12:12Speaker 01

  Operating system.

• 2:12:12Jocko Willink?

  There you go.

• 2:12:13Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:12:13Jocko Willink?

  There's your operating system.

• 2:12:14Speaker 01

  Perfect word, actually. Um, that's your, uh, so it's like, boom, you read it, cool, I got a general thing, but you can kinda have it referred to every once in a while.

• 2:12:23Jocko Willink?

  It's pretty cool to get feedback on that book.

• 2:12:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:12:26Jocko Willink?

  And have people. That get completely on the path from that book. And then more important, they stay on the path from that book. Is it possible that a book has that much of an impact? The answer is yes.

• 2:12:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:12:42Jocko Willink?

  And it seems weird to say that. I mean, it does. It seems weird for me to say that, but there's, that is 100% true.

• 2:12:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:12:48Jocko Willink?

  It's 100% true.

• 2:12:49Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I'll tell you what, I mean, do you, do you read it?

• 2:12:53Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:12:53Speaker 01

  I mean, I know you, yes. So, I mean, so I was gonna say, it may not make sense for you, but it will make a perfect sense to you. Where, you know, like, there's a lot of good books out there. Total, like, good books. And they're, you know, but you read them and they're kind of long and they have the, you know, they're real laid out very well. And there's like, they go into detail, which is good. That's kind of what a good book kind of does.

• 2:13:12Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 2:13:13Speaker 01

  This one kind of violates that rule in a way because it's super basic. But that's why, in my opinion, like, when I go back to it, I can just go back to it and boom, it's all like in there. I don't have to read like 10 or 20 or 30 pages.

• 2:13:24Jocko Willink?

  There's nothing to decipher.

• 2:13:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know? So it's like, bam.

• 2:13:28Jocko Willink?

  Fundamental principles are just raw in your face.

• 2:13:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:13:31Jocko Willink?

  Good reminder. And then you got Extreme Ownership for Combat Leadership Principles That You Can Use in Your Business and Life, written by me and my brother Leif Babin. And we have a follow-up to that book coming out. It's called The Dichotomy of Leadership. You need to, if you want to get first edition, which, which you do. Hey, somebody at camp gave me a first edition of Ernie Pyle's book,

• 2:14:00Jocko Willink?

  Brave Men, first edition. Yeah. How awesome is that? So that feeling, that, that, that feeling right there of like, I got the first edition of this book.

• 2:14:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:14:12Jocko Willink?

  Brave Men. That's the one where he's talking about the rumbling coming and the noises building. And he just doesn't know what it is. And he looks up in the sky and he's like, it was the heavies.

• 2:14:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:14:21Jocko Willink?

  Probably one of my favorite quotes.

• 2:14:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:14:25Jocko Willink?

  And I have the first edition of that book now. Legit. Dichotomy of Leadership. Of course, what's the publisher doing? Cutting corners. Hey, we can get away. Oh, yeah, they're being conservative. Of course, they're gonna do that. They're gonna do that because that's just what they do. That's what their gamble is. They make their little predictions and that's what they get. That's what they're doing. They'd rather, they'd rather, they'd rather actually underestimate, have a little demand for the book and have a little spike and a little buzz about that. So they would rather there be less first edition or rather have more people walking around with the fourth edition. Right. That's all lame.

• 2:15:07Jocko Willink?

  So anyways, yeah, Dichotomy of Leadership coming out September 25th. If you want to get on that thing, you can preorder it. Wherever you preorder books, you can preorder it. And then got a leadership consulting company called Echelon Front where we solve problems through leadership. What kind of problems? All of them. Because every problem that you have inside your organization is a leadership problem. I'm here to tell you straight up factually. No matter what the problem is, it's a leadership problem. And I know that might hurt because guess who the leader is? You're the leader. Or your subordinate leaders. They're not doing what they're supposed to do. You need to get them on board with the program. You're not making the bottom line. Guess what? Guess what kind of problem that is?

• 2:15:52Jocko Willink?

  It's not a money problem. It's a leadership problem. Production's not meeting its quota. Is that a production problem? It's a leadership problem. So no matter what problems you're having in your organization, they get solved through leadership. It's me, it's Leif, it's JP, Dave, Flynn, and Mike. And if you want us to come and work with your company, don't call a speaking agency. Just go to echelonfront.com and we will show up and crush.

• 2:16:24Jocko Willink?

  Muster006. Might be sold out by the time this gets released, but if you want to come, we talk leadership intensely and granularly for two days. It's in San Francisco, October 17th and 18th. You can register for that at extremeownership.com.

• 2:16:43Jocko Willink?

  Same with the roll call. Yeah, I think we're done talking about the roll call.

• 2:16:49Speaker 01

  Let me ask you this.

• 2:16:50Jocko Willink?

  The roll call is, when this podcast comes out, I don't think there'll be any more seats. So.

• 2:16:53Speaker 01

  For the muster and the roll, this is the first roll call, so I don't know. But for the muster, what percentage of, let's say, your typical group of people that come or whatever, what's the percentage of, appeal wise, what's the percentage of just, so there's information, perfect, you know, good guidance, and then there's just to hang. Like, let's, you know, like.

• 2:17:16Jocko Willink?

  Well, I mean, if you look at the days, the days, we go from eight in the morning until four o'clock in the afternoon, and on the first day, and, and then the second day, we go eight in the morning until three o'clock in the afternoon, or maybe two thirty. And to answer your question, we start, we muster with everyone at four forty-five in the morning. So we, that whole time, the, and then when we get done at five, we hang out until nine or ten, that night. And then the next day, same thing, four forty-five in the morning, and then we go to jujitsu at night. And so, yeah, I mean, we're there the whole time.

• 2:17:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:17:54Jocko Willink?

  You will one hundred percent hang out.

• 2:17:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's what I mean. Like, you're like, yeah.

• 2:17:58Jocko Willink?

  If that's your question, the percentage of you hanging out and is one hundred percent.

• 2:18:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's part of the appeal, right? Because you say, yeah, we muster at four forty-five, but you, one could think from the outside, hey, that's a workout, but here's the thing, yeah, it's a workout, but it's kind of fun, you know, Jake is talking trash. And, you know, afterwards, we kind of, you know, and it's kind of a hang until it starts at eight. And then, you know, the, the breaks that you take or whatever, it's like, oh, yeah, you're kind of hanging.

• 2:18:26Jocko Willink?

  Takes a break.

• 2:18:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, you guys are.

• 2:18:27Jocko Willink?

  We don't take breaks. We just answer questions, we talk to people, we take pictures, sign books, whatever.

• 2:18:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, and that kind of happens throughout.

• 2:18:37Jocko Willink?

  The whole time.

• 2:18:37Speaker 01

  And then after it sort of wraps, it's like, oh, they go hang some more.

• 2:18:40Jocko Willink?

  I painted the whole team into a cornrow.

• 2:18:42Speaker 01

  Yep, we totally did.

• 2:18:43Jocko Willink?

  Because at the beginning, I was like, look, there are not going to be any green room, we're not going backstage. We're going to be out there the whole time. So guess what we do? There's no green room, there's no backstage, we're out there the whole time. It's like two twenty-hour days is what it is.

• 2:18:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:18:57Jocko Willink?

  Because four hours will get some sleep.

• 2:18:58Speaker 01

  You're like, yeah, oh, yeah, you don't want a green room? Okay, now you can't have a green room. You're done.

• 2:19:02Jocko Willink?

  That's how it goes down. On top of that, like I said, roll call, we're pretty much done with number one. You can check and see if there's any openings, but it's probably not looking great right now. Maybe we can open up a couple more seats. Anyways, for that as well, register at extremeownership.com. And now, of course, we have EF Overwatch. We're connecting Spec Ops and Combat Aviation leaders to companies that need leaders. People are asking, you know, what about guys from conventional forces, which the reason we started with Combat Aviation and Spec Ops, because that's where we came from. And so that's where we have community ties.

• 2:19:44Jocko Willink?

  Now that we actually have, we actually have some people coming on the team right now from conventional forces that we work alongside, awesome leaders. And so we're looking at how we're going to open this up to the rest of the military and get everyone else engaged. Because guess what? We work the civilian sector all the time. I just said, problems get solved by leadership. Civilian companies, guess what they need? They need leaders. And the military has them. So that's what we're working. If you want to enroll in that from either side, from either a person that wants a job or a person that's looking for leaders, go to EFOverwatch.com. And until we do see you at one of these events, or see you in the airport, or see you on the jujitsu mat, or see you wherever, if you want to interact, or give

• 2:20:28Jocko Willink?

  us answers, or give us questions, you can do that on the interwebs. We are on Twitter, we're on the Instagram, and we're also on Facebook. Echo is at Echo Charles, and I am at Jocko Willink. And finally, to those of you who like Peter Nash Swisher, who served in the military, or you are serving in the military at this time, thank you for your service. And for those that protect us here at home, and the police, and law enforcement, and correctional officers, and firefighters, and Border Patrol, and paramedics, and all other first responders, thank you for what

• 2:21:10Jocko Willink?

  you do day in and day out. And to everyone else making your way through the world, working, and grinding, and building, and creating, that's awesome. And keep doing those things.

• 2:21:26Jocko Willink?

  And do those things with some intent, some good intent, the intent to make yourself better.

• 2:21:37Jocko Willink?

  And when you've got yourself on a good path, then show someone else the path, help them off that slippery slope.

• 2:21:47Jocko Willink?

  Help them.

• 2:21:49Jocko Willink?

  Because in another time, in another place, it could be you that needs help.

• 2:21:56Jocko Willink?

  So, take the world, or that little part of the world that you can, take it into your trembling hand, and help.

• 2:22:08Jocko Willink?

  Help yourself become better, help others become better, and in doing so, help this strange and often hostile world that we live in, make it just a little bit better by getting out there and getting after it.

• 2:22:30Jocko Willink?

  And until next time, this is Echo and Jaco, out.