279: Don't Stay in The Same Place. The Art of Exploration w/ Levison Wood, Former British Army Officer

0:00:00 - Opening 0:06:07 - Levison Wood 2:46:49 - How to stay on THE PATH 3:07:04 - 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 279 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening Echo. Good evening.

• 0:11Jocko Willink?

  Helicopter blades slashed through the hot sky. The roar of engines deafening as the pilot twisted and turned on our final approach. Crammed into the back with my men, I tried to keep my balance by tensing my legs and focusing my gaze on the machine gun in the helicopter's door. My kit was heavy on my shoulders and sweat poured into my eyes from under the rim of my helmet. My palms were wet as they gripped the rifle. I pulled it closer to my chest and prepared myself for what was to come.

• 0:43Jocko Willink?

  The airman behind the machine gun turned to me. His face was covered by a scarf and the dark visor of his helmet, but I knew what it meant when he held up his index finger. I turned and shouted to my men, "One minute."

• 0:59Jocko Willink?

  "One minute to landing and whatever was waiting, there for us." Looking into the eyes of my young soldiers, I saw steely resolve, the hardness of the paratrooper flying into battle.

• 1:15Jocko Willink?

  I was closest to the rear door, which was now winching fully open. There was no doubt in my mind that I had to be the first one down the ramp. I had waited years for this moment and now was my time. I'd practiced it over and over again on grass fields, in mock-up structures and on the real things during exercises all over the world, but this was different. For the first time in my life, I was flying into war.

• 1:45Jocko Willink?

  Our mission was a simple one, to kill or capture a Taliban bomb maker. A bomb maker called Haji Mohammed, infamous for making the improvised bombs that were responsible for the deaths of dozens of British and Allied soldiers.

• 2:04Jocko Willink?

  We'd spent a week poring over maps and aerial photographs of the village in which he was thought to live. My platoon, number eight platoon, on attachment to a company of the third battalion of the parachute regiment, was given the honor of landing first, right in Haji Mohammed's back garden. And it was our task to surround his house. It was a dangerous mission, but as the seconds counted down and I looked out the rear of the door of the helicopter towards the dusty plains below, I felt a tremendous sensation of both trepidation and sheer excitement. It was a lot of responsibility to shoulder, but I

• 2:43Jocko Willink?

  wanted to carry it. The helicopter got closer to the ground, whipping the Afghan dust into the air until it was a thick cloud around us. "Ten seconds," shouted the airman, holding tightly to a rope. The door was now fully open. The ramp hit the floor with a clunk, and a shudder went through the airframe as the wheels touched down. Everyone wobbled, but kept their feet. They knew how important it was to stay upright and get off the heli quickly. The Taliban had spies everywhere, scouts that reported the movement of helicopters. Every second that we delayed deplaning was a second for the enemy to train their weapons and kill those on the ramp.

• 3:28Jocko Willink?

  "Go, go, go," the airman shouted, myself and my men picking up the call so that it rippled through the aircraft. And then we were running, gritting our teeth as though that would stop the bullets that may await us. My feet touched down on the Afghan soil, and I breathed in the dirt as I ran through the cloud that the helicopter's blades stirred up all around us. My rifle was up at eye level, and I looked over my sights, ready to snapshoot anyone that posed a threat to my men. My soldiers followed me. I felt like a giant, leading them from a metal beast into the jaws of death.

• 4:05Jocko Willink?

  Except that when the helicopter lifted away and the dust settled, we were quite alone.

• 4:12Jocko Willink?

  Nobody home. Shit.

• 4:16Jocko Willink?

  I put some of my men into defensive positions and took others with me to search the house. This was still a dangerous time as the Taliban were not above booby trapping their own homes.

• 4:28Jocko Willink?

  Other than a few sacks of opium, the drug of choice in those parts, we found nothing. I walked back outside and was shrugging off the disappointment of another quiet mission when a whip-like sound echoed across the fields, followed immediately by a crack.

• 4:46Jocko Willink?

  It wasn't the noise you hear in the films. It was altogether more visceral and unnerving. Incoming, shouted my platoon sergeant. I shouted at the men to jump into a nearby ditch and return fire. They looked at me, unbelieving. It was like being on an exercise on Salisbury Plain, except the noises were not the dull simulators we'd been accustomed to.

• 5:10Jocko Willink?

  These were real and violent.

• 5:13Jocko Willink?

  Somebody was shooting with the evident intention of killing us.

• 5:19Jocko Willink?

  Three hundred meters away, I saw the enemy moving in a line of trees. I took aim and fired.

• 5:27Jocko Willink?

  It was the start of a very long day.

• 5:36Jocko Willink?

  And that right there is an excerpt from a book called The Art of Exploration by a former British Army officer named Levison Wood, who served and led combat operations in Afghanistan, but who seemed to have found an equivalent level of excitement and danger as a writer, photographer, filmmaker, and explorer.

• 6:04Jocko Willink?

  And we're lucky enough to have him on the show tonight to share some of his experiences with us. Levison, thanks for coming on, man.

• 6:14Speaker 01

  Thanks for having me.

• 6:16Jocko Willink?

  That's a good way to start this thing off.

• 6:18Speaker 01

  Brings back some memories, eh?

• 6:21Jocko Willink?

  Friggin', good, good way to kick it off. Um, before we jump into your, your career in the army, let's, let's start at the beginning. Let's start about, let's talk about your child's childhood and, and you grew up in England.

• 6:36Speaker 01

  Sure, yeah.

• 6:38Jocko Willink?

  Stoke-on-Trent.

• 6:39Speaker 01

  That's it. Not many people have heard of it.

• 6:42Jocko Willink?

  And that's, that's where you actually grew up?

• 6:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I, I was born and raised in a small village, um, just outside of Stoke-on-Trent, right in the middle of England, sort of halfway between Manchester and Birmingham. Kind of place that not many people sort of travel to, they just travel past it. Um, and I think it was, it was for that reason that I was always from a very young age curious about the outside world. I was very keen to get away from Stoke-on-Trent. Um, it, it will always be home, but, but yeah, from a, from a very early age, I was always excited by the prospect of, of traveling out into the big wide world. It was something that not many members of my family had done. Um, but I always knew that there was, there was more to life than the provincial sort of suburbs of, of my hometown and, and that's what inspired me.

• 7:27Jocko Willink?

  And Stoke-on-Trent, that's a city where you're in, I guess it was prior to the pits shutting down, you were in the pits or there's a, a giant pottery factory, right? Isn't it famous for making pottery?

• 7:40Speaker 01

  Stoke-on-Trent is, is the heart of the British ceramic industry. It has been for, for centuries. And sadly, you know, a lot of those, um, those industries, the mines and the pottery industry died a, a bit of a death through the mid 20th century. So there was a lot of unemployment. There was a lot of poverty in Stoke-on-Trent in, in the eighties when I grew up. And, um, and so there weren't that many opportunities. Not many people had the opportunity to sort of travel very much, but I was very fortunate to be, to be grown up in a, in a family of teachers. Both my parents were teachers. They encouraged this spirit of curiosity and, um, you know, encouraged me to, to read a lot. So I read as a youngster all about history, geography, travels, all those stories of exploration of, um, of those very hairy men in, in the 19th century that went to

• 8:24Speaker 01

  the polls, you know, Livingston and Shackleton and Scott and, uh, You know, those are my heroes. So it was growing up, my dad read me a lot of books about exploration, Lawrence of Arabia, people like that. So I think from about the age of seven or eight, I was determined to somehow follow in their footsteps, which wasn't exactly a very realistic sort of thing to go to my careers officer and say, I want to be an explorer. But that's exactly what I did. And he sort of laughed at me and said, okay, well, let's see.

• 8:52Jocko Willink?

  Well, I'm kind of thinking you must have been even in a worse position than me. So when I was a little kid, you know, I liked rock and roll music. And so when I started playing guitar and thinking, okay, I'm going to write some riffs, but it didn't take me very long to figure out that, hey, all the, you know, if Jimmy Page already wrote that riff and Tony Iommi already wrote those riffs. So what am I going to do? How am I going to write better riffs than those guys? So you had to be even in a worse position because

• 9:18Speaker 01

  The world's been explored.

• 9:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, actually you can make up new riffs. That's possible. But you know, the most of the known world, it's been explored.

• 9:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 9:26Jocko Willink?

  So you're, you're in a worse spot than I was in.

• 9:29Speaker 01

  Well, my, you know, I grew up with those stories, but I was also encouraged by stories of my grandfather. My granddad was a soldier in, in the British Army. He served in India and Burma in the Far East, fighting against the Japanese. And he told me these stories, which felt, whilst it was still a long time ago, actually to hear them firsthand, somebody who'd been to the jungles of India, who'd been to the mountains of, of East Asia, that was like mind blowing for me as a kid who'd never really travelled beyond the confines of the United Kingdom. So that's what I wanted to do. I wanted to go and see, not necessarily go with my pith helmet and sort of khaki shorts and with a big Union flag,

• 10:10Speaker 01

  but, but at the very least to go and see with my own eyes, the kind of places that very few people had, had travelled to within my own so, social circle, really. So it started pretty humbly and just going off backpacking and, and, you know, doing what a lot of youngsters do and, and travel around the world on a, on a tight budget. And that was what I was determined to do from a, from a very young age.

• 10:32Jocko Willink?

  Now, what was your relationship with your grandfather? How long was, is he still alive today?

• 10:36Speaker 01

  No, he's not. So he passed away when I was about 18. So, you know, but, but growing up, it was, like I say, it was those, those really exciting stories and pretty gruesome stories sometimes.

• 10:47Jocko Willink?

  Like if you were in Burma fighting the Japanese, good lord.

• 10:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, and he was not only that, he was on pretty much one of the first ships into Japan. He was part of the occupying force in Japan. He was based in Hiroshima after they dropped the A-bomb. So some of his stories were just like, you know, crazy.

• 11:05Jocko Willink?

  And what about your dad? Did your dad, um, wasn't your dad in the army as well?

• 11:10Speaker 01

  So my dad was in the, he was a reservist. So, you know, throughout the seventies and eighties, um, you know, his period, it was, it was the Cold War. So he, you know, he, he likes to tell me he was off fighting the Russians in Germany, you know, it, it, it really, you know, realistically, he was, he was out there, um, a lot of digging trenches on the plains of, of Germany, but obviously no, no actual fighting. But, um, but yeah, he, he always encouraged me to, to take an interest in the military. Um, and, um, it was things like, you know, he was a cadet instructor and so on. So I remember growing up, you know, he'd, he'd sometimes bring, bring his rifles back home and things like that. And, and as a kid, he'd, he'd give me a, a uniform. And if I was, if I was a good, good kid, he'd, uh, give me an extra stripe. And if I was naughty, he'd, he'd rip one off my arm. So that's kind of, that was how I grew up. Yeah.

• 11:56Jocko Willink?

  And when you, um, were you, you're saying that you're reading all the time? Does that mean you were a good student?

• 12:02Speaker 01

  I was, I think I, I, I was always curious and, and that helps. I think that's a good start.

• 12:06Jocko Willink?

  You might be the first person on the podcast that was a good student. Have you ever had any good students on here? Everyone's, everyone's just bad students, myself included. So, so you were reading and you're doing pretty good in school. Your parents were, so both my parents were teachers as well.

• 12:20Speaker 01

  Sure. Yeah.

• 12:21Jocko Willink?

  And one was history, one was English. And, and people go, oh, that's why. And I was like, no, no, I didn't do it. We, I didn't do any homework.

• 12:31Speaker 01

  Were they teaching in your school?

• 12:32Jocko Willink?

  No, they weren't. Was your dad teaching or your parents?

• 12:34Speaker 01

  No, no, no. So that, yeah, I think that helped. I don't think I would have liked having my teachers as, my parents as my own teachers.

• 12:40Jocko Willink?

  But they, they got you on the reading path. And it must be, it must be something born, like you just must have been more naturally curious than me. I was like throwing rocks at my friends.

• 12:51Speaker 01

  No, I did that as well.

• 12:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I think I was definitely a bit of a rebel and I got into lots of trouble as a kid. I think I was just naturally inclined to be curious about history particularly. And that, it was reading about, you know, the ancient Greeks, Alexander the Great, the Roman Empire, the Vikings. It was those sort of exciting, quite masculine, manly stories that really inspired me to take an interest. And I did from an early age. And of course, it's those sort of things that you read and then develop. I mean, one of the first books that my dad read to me was a children's version of The Odyssey. And I thought, you know, one day I'd love to go off on a ship and explore the world, you know, I mean, hopefully not

• 13:33Speaker 01

  lose all my men in the process. But, you know, but yeah, I definitely thank those early years for what I'm doing now.

• 13:44Jocko Willink?

  So, the weird thing about, or one of the big differences about England and America is the schooling system and kind of the way you test to get into certain levels. And my wife's a Brit, so I have some idea of it. But, so you went to, what, Painsley, is that right? Painsley Catholic School? That's where you went to school?

• 14:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, so it was a non-fee paying, it was just an ordinary state school. But it was, you know, it was a Catholic school. The Catholic schools were sometimes, you know, considered better in some ways. It had a real bent towards science. That wasn't my bag at all. But, but good teachers. And it was one of those schools that you can flourish in with the right attitude, but also you can get in a lot of trouble if you don't have the right attitude. And I sort of did both.

• 14:33Jocko Willink?

  And what sports were you playing?

• 14:35Speaker 01

  So, I wouldn't say I was hugely into sports. I preferred, I was into athletics. I was a good runner as a kid. But I wasn't really known for its team sports. And that kind of frustrated me in some ways because, you know, I knew that I was kind of... Sold on the idea of the army from probably the age of about eleven or twelve, in fact. So I knew that I should probably be doing rugby or something like that, but it wasn't really on offer in my school. So I had to be creative with with what I was doing. So I did a lot of personal fitness, did a lot of running, like I said. And I was interested in boxing from a young age and that that was something I I took up and and that followed me into my army career as well.

• 15:12Jocko Willink?

  So what age did you start boxing at?

• 15:14Speaker 01

  Um, I mean, I was training from probably fifteen, sixteen. Um, when I went to university at eighteen, I was in the university club and then, like I said, did it throughout the army as well.

• 15:24Jocko Willink?

  So I know you you went on like a, this is, I don't know if Americans do this or not. They go like traveling.

• 15:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:32Jocko Willink?

  That's what you all call it, right? My wife did it. Oh, traveling, right? And so and so you did that too. Like in America, you graduate high school, then if you're either going in the military, you're getting a job or you're you're going. There's no traveling mo- there's no traveling thing. Echo, did you go traveling? No, sir. No, we're not going traveling for a year, but it's real normal.

• 15:52Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, it certainly is now. You know, when I when I left school at the age of eighteen in two thousand and one.

• 16:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, I I knew that I wanted to join the army and I was sort of, I really wanted to go to Sandhurst and go in as an officer and done. But because of my background, I wasn't at, you know, one of these posh private schools. I hadn't, you know, necessarily got the sports background, so I knew I needed to do something that would give me a bit of an edge. And it was it was a.

• 16:18Jocko Willink?

  Go drinking in Australia.

• 16:20Speaker 01

  Exactly that. But it it was actually a stroke of a fortune. So when I was a kid, I was I was doing every odd job going. I worked in factories, I worked in shops, I would even flip burgers at McDonald's just to try and get some cash together.

• 16:32Jocko Willink?

  I flip burgers at Wendy's.

• 16:33Speaker 01

  There we go.

• 16:33Jocko Willink?

  There you go.

• 16:34Speaker 01

  It's character building stuff.

• 16:36Jocko Willink?

  The making of great military leadership, flipping burgers, get some.

• 16:39Speaker 01

  Hundred percent. So I was doing all of that to try and earn a bit of bit of cash before going to university. And one of the jobs I was doing was working at a theme park, a place called Alton Towers. And I think, you know, I was basically, I must have been on one of the rides upside down and I lost my wallet. Fell out my pocket and I was a bit upset because I had my entire week's earnings of about five pounds in there.

• 17:00Speaker 01

  So I was quite surprised a couple of days later when the wallet was returned in the post. And not only was the the five pounds still in there, but there was also a note from the person who had found the wallet. And it was actually signed off. There was, there was a note saying, don't be such a, you know, I won't say the word. Don't be such an asshole for for losing your wallet. Keep, keep better sort of care of your belongings. It was signed off by a certain lieutenant.

• 17:24Jocko Willink?

  Damn.

• 17:24Speaker 01

  In the, in the Royal Artillery. And I thought, oh, that's a nice, nice guy. Obviously not everyone who would return a wallet. And so I, you know, I did the right thing and and wrote a thank you letter back.

• 17:35Jocko Willink?

  I think my note would have said, your lesson is costing you five pounds. That's mine.

• 17:40Speaker 01

  So I said, but because I was already interested in a career in the army, I said, have you got any hints or tips on how to get into Sandhurst? And by return of post came back a six page essay with all of these really great tips. It was like, you know, go away and learn how to, you know, read a map and use a compass. This is how many press ups you need to do to pass the fitness test. All this really useful advice. But the last sentence is something I'll never forget, but it said, above all, travel. Dot, dot, dot, because at the end of the day, you'll have some great stories in the bar and the mess. So I took that to heart. So I decided based on that letter, which was all the serendipitous result of me losing my wallet, that I was going to go away and do what we call in England a gap year, which is exactly what you say, go drinking in Australia.

• 18:26Speaker 01

  So my, my, I told my dad and he said, what on earth is a gap year? This wasn't particularly popular, you know, at that time. And I said, I'm going to go find myself on the beaches of Thailand. And he said, well, if you do that, you can go get yourself a bloody job. So that's when I had to go and start earning more cash and, and, but eventually I did. I went away backpacking. And at the age of 18, you know, to to literally just disappear off. And the first place I went traveling was actually in South Africa, which is pretty, pretty dodgy, you know, in that time. I went to Zimbabwe, which at the age of 18, it was the first time I'd had a gun pulled on me by a taxi driver who tried to rob me. So it was all really quite. You know, sort of, it teaches you a lot about independence.

• 19:06Jocko Willink?

  So what did you learn about how to handle getting a gun pulled on you by the taxi driver?

• 19:10Speaker 01

  Well.

• 19:10Jocko Willink?

  You can't just throw that out there and think we're just gonna let it ride.

• 19:13Speaker 01

  So, so I've been in.

• 19:14Jocko Willink?

  So you're in Zimbabwe.

• 19:15Speaker 01

  So I'm in Zimbabwe. I was traveling. I'd met this random Dutch dude who was much older than me. I was, I was 18. This guy must have been 29, 30. And he was backpacking as well and we were on the same, same route and we got off the train at a place called Bulawayo. And we, we, we sort of got into a taxi and asked the, the price to whatever the, the next bus station. And he said it was going to be $40. Zimbabwe has dollars. So $40 is equivalent of about two US dollars. And we were like, yeah, no problem. So we put our bags in the, in the trunk of the car off. We went and it was like two minutes around the corner. We thought, okay. We got out and he said, okay, $40. We got the Zimbabwe dollars out and he said, no, no, no, US dollars, 40 US dollars. And we thought he was joking.

• 19:58Speaker 01

  And laughed at him. He said, no, no, put his hand in his jacket, pulls out a pistol and said 40 US dollars. And we were like, oh shit. Okay. Well, I don't have 40 US dollars. I'm on a budget of about $2 a day, right? So we said, okay, we'll pay, but let us get our bags out. And it was quite a busy, crowded sort of car park. So we got, got our bags out of the boot and this guy, this Dutch guy, who's quite a, you know, quite a hefty fella. He said, okay, come over here and the, the taxi driver, he put his pistol in, in, in the car. He got out. So he was unarmed at the time. And this guy just sort of, as he got his, as he got his bag on his back, just head butted this taxi driver, right? And then looked at me and said, fucking run. So I ran and we escaped. But this guy, then we jumped in another taxi and said, drive.

• 20:41Speaker 01

  So, but the, the original guy was then chasing us through the streets of, of Bulawayo. So I had my first, not only my first sort of gun pulled on me, but my first car chase at the age of 18, which is all pretty wild. But it was those early travels that, that sort of encouraged me to sort of, yeah, be careful, be independent minded and, and start to think about looking after myself.

• 21:01Jocko Willink?

  What are the chances that you made it back? Through the first year of travels.

• 21:05Speaker 01

  Um, well, well, after that experience, it was all fairly tame, I have to say, but you know, getting, getting drunk in Australia. But it was, no, it was great. And, and, and it was probably that first year of travel really that motivated me to, to wanna do more. Because, you know, apart from that, that one sort of moment, it was, it was usual backpacking stuff. But throughout my time at university, I went to more and more challenging and interesting places. I went to, um, in my second year at university, I was studying history. And, um, my particular interest was the history of travel writing. So I looked at Marco Polo and his travels. I was reading about the hippie trail of the nineteen sixties, the great pilgrimages, all the big overland journeys. So I tried to make all my, my, my studies around that.

• 21:48Speaker 01

  So in the, my summer leave, I would try and go to the places that I'd been studying around. So after one particular module, bear in mind, this was in two thousand and one, just after nine eleven had happened. So there's a real focus on the Middle East and, and that was a place that, that I was fascinated by because of its, the, the history, but also what was going on in, in the news at the time. Um, so me and a, me and a buddy decided one summer that we were gonna go and travel around the Middle East. This was in, in two thousand and three. So it was the second, second year at university. Um, the Iraq war was happening and, um, we said, okay, we're gonna go to Egypt and just have a look around. Then we went to Israel. And then when we were in Israel, there was, um, a bomb went off in, in Jerusalem, caused the borders to shut.

• 22:29Speaker 01

  So what we'd planned to do was take a, take a boat from the, the coast, from Haifa to Greece and then go backpacking through Europe. That was all now not on the cards. Um, my parents thought we, thought me and my mate Alex were actually on holiday in Greece at the time anyway. So they had no idea where we, where we actually were. The only border that was open was to the east, to Jordan. So we went to Jordan and then we were in Jordan, another bomb went off, which meant that we were stuck in Jordan. The only border then was open was actually further east, which was to Iraq. So we took a taxi from the capital of Jordan, Oman, all the way to Baghdad at a cost of twenty dollars. This is, I was twenty one at the time or twenty. And, um, I was met by a, a national guardsman on the border who said, do you want to buy a gun? He said, you're gonna need it where you're going.

• 23:13Jocko Willink?

  This is two thousand and three?

• 23:14Speaker 01

  This is two thousand and three. And, um, we got to Baghdad because it was the only route that was open.

• 23:19Jocko Willink?

  When in two thousand and three?

• 23:20Speaker 01

  August.

• 23:21Jocko Willink?

  So the wars, it's on.

• 23:23Speaker 01

  It's on. Yeah. Combat operations are just finished, more or less, but the, you know, it's before the main insurgency had begun, but yeah, stuff was definitely exploding around us at the time.

• 23:34Jocko Willink?

  And what part of this idea sounded smart to you?

• 23:39Speaker 01

  Well, we didn't have another option. We couldn't afford to fly home from Israel because we had no money. And we thought it would just be a bit, a bit of an exciting adventure. And so we, we made it to Baghdad, but then we stayed in the Hotel Palestine, which was the, in the green zone.

• 23:53Jocko Willink?

  Oh, I know where that is. That's freaking crazy.

• 23:56Speaker 01

  But we couldn't afford a night there because it was a hundred bucks, which is a lot of money when you're a student. And so we thought, okay, this was just after somebody had just shot the top of the hotel because they thought there was an Iraqi insurgent. It was actually a camera crew. Um, so we thought if we can sneak up the, the fire escape up, up the ladders, then we can just sleep amongst the rubble on the roof. So we did that. We got onto the roof and then there happened to be a UK, a British film crew filming a, a news piece on the roof. And they said, you know, what are you idiots doing here? And we explained that we were sort of backpacking through the Middle East and this guy's, I'll never forget his name, Martin Geisler, who's a, an ITN correspondent, said, look, um, you must be the first tourist in Iraq. Tell you what, if, if we can do a news piece about you, we'll pay for your room. So we ended up staying for a week

• 24:39Speaker 01

  because we couldn't get, we couldn't get out of Iraq at this point. And eventually we managed to escape by hitching a ride with some former SAS mercenary, security guys who were doing the, doing the route up to Tukret, which was before Saddam Hussein had been captured. So we were actually in, in Tukret before Saddam, whilst he was still down his little hole. So eventually, long story short, we, we got out to Turkey and then eventually did find it, find our way back to Europe.

• 25:03Jocko Willink?

  Major amount of survivor bias on this whole thing. So anyone that's listening, you're, you have to overcome this survivor bias. I'm going to recommend not particularly following this extreme level of let's just go for it. What are you carrying in your backpack?

• 25:21Speaker 01

  Uh, as little as possible, you know, a shemag, just so we could kind of blend in. We, we had to go to the local market to, um, to buy your sort of traditional.

• 25:29Jocko Willink?

  How many liters is your backpack?

• 25:30Speaker 01

  Uh, just, just a day sack. So we're talking twenty five liters.

• 25:34Jocko Willink?

  You've got a twenty five liter backpack?

• 25:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:36Jocko Willink?

  That's it?

• 25:37Speaker 01

  That's it. And we even put that, you know, those sort of, um, plastic big bags, the sort of check, check ones that people go to the market in.

• 25:44Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 25:45Speaker 01

  Just so it didn't, just so we didn't stand out. And we bought those, you know, shiny, shiny shirts and black shoes that they, they wear in the Middle East so that we, um, um, you know, I'm quite sort of fairly dark skinned, so we could blend in. And, and it worked and we were just sort of walking around the markets of Baghdad and, you know, it was, it was fine.

• 26:03Jocko Willink?

  Do not try this at home. Do not try this.

• 26:05Speaker 01

  Well, I didn't tell my parents till about six months later.

• 26:08Jocko Willink?

  So then you finally, so then you finally get out. How'd you get back? You just hitched a ride with some, some.

• 26:12Speaker 01

  We hitched a ride.

• 26:13Jocko Willink?

  Contractors?

• 26:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, ride up to the, um, Turkish border and then hitched all the way home to the UK.

• 26:19Jocko Willink?

  How hard is it to hitchhike these days?

• 26:21Speaker 01

  Um, I actually, I was, I hitchhiked last week, actually, in the States.

• 26:26Jocko Willink?

  And you got picked up pretty easily?

• 26:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's fine. Um, it depends where you are, but I, you know, I, I used to love it because it was a great way of, of meeting interesting people. And, um, in fact, when I.

• 26:36Jocko Willink?

  It's also a good, great way to get kidnapped.

• 26:39Speaker 01

  It can happen, it can happen, but I, I think what, what my trips had taught me was you've got to have a bit of faith in human nature.

• 26:45Jocko Willink?

  You know, you have way more faith in human nature than I do. I'm, I've done too many of these podcasts to be jumping into vehicles with random people. It's weird too, because when I was a kid, and I don't know, I guess I'm 10 years older than you, maybe. Yeah, something around 10 or 12. But when I was a kid, hitchhiking was very normal.

• 27:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:02Jocko Willink?

  You'd see it all the time. People, you know, you go getting on the highway, there'd be people hitchhiking. It was no big deal.

• 27:06Speaker 01

  If I missed the school bus, we'd hitchhike to school and things like that. Yeah.

• 27:09Jocko Willink?

  But nowadays?

• 27:10Speaker 01

  People, people are more scared.

• 27:11Jocko Willink?

  It's way more scared. And I guess that's part of that is just there's more, news is more prevalent. Well, like when someone gets kidnapped and freaking raped and murdered.

• 27:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:19Jocko Willink?

  You, you know about it. Whereas in 1978, it was just no factor. No, that, in your mind, that didn't happen to people. You trusted human nature.

• 27:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:30Jocko Willink?

  And all this is taking place while you're going to college, University of Nottingham.

• 27:33Speaker 01

  That's right. Yeah. So I was studying history. Every summer we'd go off and do some crazy adventure and um. But it all kind of built up really to when I graduated in the summer of two thousand and four. Um. So I was still desperate to join the army, but I'd got the travel bug at this stage. So I wanted to sort of do something even even bigger and better. And because I've been studying about these overland journeys, I decided I should really do a bit, do a really big one. And um. So I I I thought I'd why not actually hitchhike all the way to India, following the ancient Silk Road and following the footsteps of sort of Marco Polo. So so I did. I I hitchhiked from, I put my thumb up at Nottingham Service Station, uh.

• 28:14Speaker 01

  And five months later, somehow made it to to Goa in India. And and that was a that was a wild journey because it went through all of Europe, through Russia, and through the Caucasus. I was in Chechnya. Uh. I went through Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan over the, you know, over the Khyber Pass and then uh. And and all of that, you know, I I was fascinated by the stories of, you know, Victorian exploration, the great game, particularly in Central Asia. Afghanistan was was very much on my radar then because um, you know, the British Army had had just sort of made deployments in Kabul. It hadn't. Things hadn't really kicked off in the south yet at this stage, but so it was probably a fairly, you know, safe as it gets in Afghanistan to go traveling there.

• 28:57Speaker 01

  Um. But that was a journey I really, really wanted to do. And and so, yeah, off I went. And um. Again, very similar thing. I just went with a small day sack. Um. I had no money. I had I had total of five hundred pounds in my bank account. That was the all that was left from my student loan. And I thought, I'll see how far I can get. And it took five months. So I was.

• 29:18Jocko Willink?

  What are you eating?

• 29:19Speaker 01

  Well, a lot.

• 29:20Jocko Willink?

  Five hundred pounds feeds me for like a day and a half.

• 29:23Speaker 01

  It does. It does me now.

• 29:24Jocko Willink?

  What the hell are you eating?

• 29:26Speaker 01

  So not very much. I was pretty skinny. Um. So, yeah, I was I was just, I kind of. Maybe I was a bit reckless, but I was just really putting my faith in in human nature. So on, you know, I hitchhiked the whole way. Usually whoever I was hitchhiking with, you know, I was 21, right? So people look in and when you tell them what you're doing, they they think you're either mad or they feel sorry for you. And off the back of that, I got invited into people's homes. You know, I met lots of girls that way. And but but people would look after you and and often they would stuff $10 into your pocket on the way out or fill your fill your bag with with with apples or whatever it might be. So I think I actually came back with more than I started with.

• 30:06Jocko Willink?

  OK, so I'm starting to think I'm starting to feel like maybe things are different in life for you and me.

• 30:13Jocko Willink?

  I'm just saying, maybe you're a sweet looking guy and I'm not. The last time somebody tried to slip me $10 was never.

• 30:21Jocko Willink?

  You think I get invited into people's homes? That doesn't happen. So you're you're living a charmed life. I'm over here. I feel like the world might have been against me this whole time. If I put my thumb out, as you did, there's no one's gonna pick me up. Zero. The percentage of people that pick me up is zero.

• 30:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, it wouldn't happen these days for me, I don't think. I think it was definitely a thing when you're younger, it's it's far more likely to to happen. I don't think I would.

• 30:48Jocko Willink?

  How many pairs of pants are you bringing with you?

• 30:50Speaker 01

  I went fully light scales. I I had.

• 30:54Speaker 01

  I had, yeah, one pair of one pair of pants, you know, a couple of shirts. That's it, really. And it was it was great, the freedom, the liber, you know, the liberation of it all. It was it was it was brilliant. I was just sleeping at the side of the road. I had one poncho. Sorry, I had a bivvy bag.

• 31:10Jocko Willink?

  A ground pad?

• 31:11Speaker 01

  Didn't even have a ground pad now. And I was just, you know, if I if if if somebody didn't invite me into their home, I would I would just sleep on it. I mean, in Russia, I remember sleeping in the middle of this roundabout because it was a busy city. There was nowhere to stay. I couldn't speak a word of the language. So I just found this roundabout in the center of some really gray industrial area. I was like, that'll do. So and it was quite cold. And so I had gone into this roundabout and I saw some. What do you call it, topaulin, like plastic sheeting. I was like, perfect, this is gonna keep me dry because it was about to rain. Gone under this topaulin and then I heard some rustling. I thought, oh shit, there's some rats in there. And I sort of looked underneath. There was actually two other like homeless people sleeping under this this blanket. So I had to move on from there.

• 31:53Speaker 01

  But yeah, it was it was sort of experiences like that that I, you know, I look back and think, what on earth was I doing? But at the time, it was, it felt like, yeah, it was it was a it was a big grand adventure.

• 32:04Jocko Willink?

  So, so again, what did you eat?

• 32:07Speaker 01

  Um, whatever I can get my hands on. I was usually, I was, you know, one meal a day. I I tried to budget, so I had, you know, three dollars or whatever per day to to spend on food. But in Iran, I remember I ran out of money in Iran. And the, I mean, literally, I had, I think I had five dollars left and I knew I needed to pay for a visa at the Afghan border. So not only was I had no money in Iran, but I was going into Afghanistan completely penniless. I had like one traveler's check, but you can't train, change any sort of Western traveler's checks in Iran because there was a big embargo on all that stuff. So I remember staying, I I went to this uh small hotel in the middle of the desert and explained to this.

• 32:49Speaker 01

  The Iranians are lovely people and they're they're very, very hospitable and everyone else had looked after me, but in this particular place.

• 32:55Jocko Willink?

  What about the Russians that let you sleep in the free?

• 32:59Jocko Willink?

  What about them? That restored my faith in Russians because I'm like, the Russians didn't help you. Come on.

• 33:03Speaker 01

  No, they did. Honestly, I was, I was like, I mean, it was, it was tougher in Russia than than a lot of places.

• 33:07Jocko Willink?

  Thank you.

• 33:08Speaker 01

  Um, yeah, it was, it was definitely, you know, going across the border into Georgia was was great because there was a stark difference there.

• 33:16Jocko Willink?

  So you, so you roll into to where in Iran?

• 33:19Speaker 01

  So I'm in a place called Mashhad, which is a big holy city on the, near the Afghan border, nowhere to stay. And I found this this one hotel, it's like a motel thing, and I explained to this guy, I said, look, can I have a room? I've got five dollars, but I really need three dollars to get the Afghan stamp because it was that much a cost. He said, look, you can stay for free on my office floor. And I said, have you got any food? He said, no, there's no food. But I noticed there was a wedding sort of party happening. He said, just go and help yourself to the leftovers. So, you know, there's always a way, there's always a way. But yeah, I ended up in Afghanistan. Literally no money. And but I knew I'd been told that the Afghans were pretty hospitable. And and they were. I managed to sort of hitchhike across the whole country through Herat. I went through the central

• 34:02Speaker 01

  mountains through Chadcharan, Bamian, and and ended up in Kabul. Where I was finally able to cash that traveler's cheque.

• 34:08Jocko Willink?

  How are you overcoming the language barrier?

• 34:11Speaker 01

  By

• 34:12Jocko Willink?

  Hand signals?

• 34:13Speaker 01

  Hand signals, I mean, I had a pretty good beard at that stage. So the places that I was traveling to were ethnically Tajik. And because I was I'd got a pretty good tan and a beard, everyone thought I was a Pashtun. So they all they all sort of kept a distance because they thought I was a Taliban.

• 34:27Speaker 01

  But as a result, they were quite, you know, they they kind of looked after me and yeah, it was fine.

• 34:33Jocko Willink?

  And then where did that trip end?

• 34:35Speaker 01

  Uh, that ended in India. So made it through Afghanistan, all the way through Pakistan, and then finally made it to the beach in Goa, where I sort of shaved the beard off and finally had a beer and celebrated still being alive.

• 34:50Jocko Willink?

  Once again, I'm I'm over here. Look, I got four kids. And my opinion is don't try this at home. I'm glad you did it. I'm glad you're telling me about it.

• 34:59Speaker 01

  I'm I'm not encouraging people to necessarily do the same.

• 35:02Jocko Willink?

  No, actually, you wrote an entire book telling people to do this stuff. So I'm going to disagree with you there.

• 35:07Speaker 01

  It comes with it comes with a disclaimer.

• 35:11Jocko Willink?

  All right, um, speaking of the book, I'm gonna go back to the book here for a second because at some point, um.

• 35:19Jocko Willink?

  Well, before I jump into that. You you you you get into Sandhurst. So what's the deal with Sandhurst? Sandhurst is not like West Point where you go there and you go to college for four years.

• 35:29Speaker 01

  No, Sandhurst is 12 months, pretty much. Um, that's 44 weeks spread over a year. You it tends to be mainly graduates, so people who've finished university. But there is, you know, it is open to people who haven't necessarily been to university. And you spend 12 months there and then you commission into whichever regiment or corps that you that you choose to join.

• 35:52Jocko Willink?

  And how hard is it to get into Sandhurst?

• 35:54Speaker 01

  Tough, yeah, very tough. I started my application process, I think I was seventeen when I went into the careers office with my dad. You then do the, what was then known as the regimental, sorry, the R C B. Basically, the selection into Sandhurst, you have to go to a place called Westbury, where you do all these sort of command tasks, lots of interviews,

• 36:17Speaker 01

  mental arithmetic, all this sort of stuff where you're tested for your aptitude and your personality. A lot of it's about leadership. It's showing, not necessarily having experience in leadership, but the potential to develop your leadership.

• 36:29Jocko Willink?

  Is there any other ways to get your commission? Besides going, like in America, you can go to West Point or the Naval Academy or whatever, or you can go to ROTC, which is, you go to college while you're taking classes about whatever branch you're going into, or you can do officer candidate school. So there's, or you can be a prior enlisted guy and you can get commissioned. How does it work in England?

• 36:51Speaker 01

  So all officers have to go to Sandhurst, even if you've done, I was in O T C whilst at university, so I did three years there.

• 36:57Jocko Willink?

  Is it a different school for the army versus the navy?

• 37:00Speaker 01

  Yes, so there's three. So Sandhurst is for the army, then you've got one down in Portsmouth for the navy, and then you've got Cranwell, which is for the Royal Air Force.

• 37:11Jocko Willink?

  But you're gonna go, if you're gonna get a commission, that's what you're doing.

• 37:14Speaker 01

  I want, yeah, exactly. You've got to go to Sandhurst. And so for me, it was quite daunting. I'd heard about it. My dad had encouraged me. He didn't get into Sandhurst.

• 37:23Speaker 01

  He wanted to, to join as a reservist back in the, back in the seventies, didn't work out for him. So I felt like I was, and my grandfather was, you know, he was an enlisted private soldier, so there was no history of officership within my family, although I think there were five generations of soldiers previously, so we'd all served in one way or another. So to go to Sandhurst was a real privilege, but also a big challenge because there was, it was quite a daunting prospect, you know, I was from a pretty normal background and then suddenly I was in the same platoon as Prince Harry. So I was, you know, surrounded by a totally different type of people that I hadn't necessarily met before. Lots of people who'd been big in sports, who'd gone to very prestigious universities.

• 38:05Speaker 01

  But I could say it's about leadership and demonstrating the potential to be an officer.

• 38:12Jocko Willink?

  Now let's jump into the book.

• 38:16Jocko Willink?

  I passed the Army's commissioning board, which meant I could join as an officer and command men, something I found both exciting and daunting. A young officer's training takes place at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, and when I arrived there aged 23, I still wasn't sure where I wanted to end up. After visiting as many units as they want, to see where they might fit in, officer cadets can select two regiments to have interviews within their final term. So before you go to Sandhurst, you go and meet with various units to see which ones you like?

• 38:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:50Jocko Willink?

  How freaking cool is that?

• 38:51Speaker 01

  You do these sort of familiarization visits, and they can be as formal or informal as the regiment chooses. So, you know, a lot of the cavalry units, which are known to attract quite posh, well-to-do officers, they just go on a drinking binge for a weekend. Other units, you know, the engineers or the artillery do slightly more, you know, craft-focused exercises. The paras, I didn't, I wasn't, I didn't look into the paras at this stage, so I'd gone to visit my local unit, the Stafford's, I'd looked at the Gurkhas, and I went to look at the intelligence corps. So you go, you basically go and have a look around, see if it's the right fit for you, and it's a two-way thing, they might not like you and say, don't come back.

• 39:31Jocko Willink?

  So now you show up at Sandhurst, back to the book. Sandhurst was hard work, and the late nights, ironing my uniforms, the parades and long academic essays were only part of it. There was a lot of running, marching, and being shouted at, along with field exercises, rifle ranges, and blowing things up, as well as learning the more subtle arts of officership, fancy dinners, the intricacies of letter writing, and knowing the de Bret's Guide to Etiquette inside and out. It was an interesting and varied education. The de Bret's Guide to Etiquette.

• 40:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, I didn't even know what this was until I went to Sandhurst.

• 40:05Jocko Willink?

  I don't know what it is right now.

• 40:06Speaker 01

  So it's basically a manual of how to behave like a proper gentleman.

• 40:11Jocko Willink?

  Give us one example.

• 40:13Speaker 01

  Well, it's, you know, it's, I mean, the basics of, you know, if you're going to a seven course meal, it's like which, which knife and fork do you start with first?

• 40:20Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 40:20Speaker 01

  Um, it's how to write, you know, if you're writing a letter to a, a member of the royal family, how do you address them?

• 40:26Jocko Willink?

  So at, when I, I went to officer candidate school and this is only 13 weeks long. So you, but you do get etiquette training. I believe the only thing I remember, this is a weird thing to remember. Echo Charles, take notes. This could be important. Cause I, it surprised me. If you get a piece of food in your mouth that you didn't want in there, the proper way to get it out of your mouth is to put it back on the fork and put it down. So in other words, if you, if you're eating a piece of chicken and there's a bone in there, you don't pull it out with your, with your hand. You, you put it back on the fork and you put it down. Now I think it's a lot more subtle to, you know, put the hand up by the face, grab that thing.

• 41:08Jocko Willink?

  You're like, no one's ever gonna know what I just did as opposed to spitting the food back on the fork. Right? That's kinda, but hey, that's the tradition.

• 41:15Speaker 01

  They're, they're the rules.

• 41:16Speaker 02

  But that's so in regards to that, uh, what if, so it has to be something like, like a bone, like hey,

• 41:25Jocko Willink?

  A piece of gristle. You're eating a steak and there's a piece of gristle that ain't going down.

• 41:29Speaker 02

  It's not, yeah.

• 41:29Jocko Willink?

  What are we gonna do? Put the fork back next to your mouth. This is alleged. Look, I'm not, I'm not even following this protocol because I think that's a lot nastier. I'll clandestine move. You won't know what happened, but that gristle's coming into my hand. It's going to be somewhere on the ground.

• 41:44Speaker 02

  Makes sense, but what if, and this might go outside of the scope of even what you're talking about. What if you eat some chicken that's like dry or like, well, you know, some new food, like a escargot or something like this. And you're like, oh, first time.

• 41:56Speaker 01

  You just don't like it.

• 41:57Speaker 02

  I don't like this at all. Do you spit the whole escargot on the fork or?

• 42:03Jocko Willink?

  We have to go.

• 42:03Speaker 01

  We'll have to consult the DeBress guy.

• 42:06Jocko Willink?

  That's a good DeBress guy for, I don't know what to do. I think you're in a tough spot.

• 42:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:10Jocko Willink?

  I had that happen. I was, I don't like seafood and I was with, I was in Sierra Leone. And I was, there was stuff going on down there and I was with my commanding officer. And there was, like I said, there was things going on. We were trying to figure things out. So we get invited and I was like his little sidekick guy. I was a prior enlisted guy, but I was, had been commissioned as an officer and he was just. Really taking care of me and showing me the ropes. And so he gets invited to go see the charge da affairs, which is the number two underneath the ambassador in a country, unless there's no ambassador, in which case they're, they're the, the lead. And in this particular case, there was no ambassador. So this individual was the lead. So we roll

• 42:54Jocko Willink?

  up and this is in Sierra Leone. There's a freaking war going on there. The Ecamog versus all that craziness is happening in Liberia. It's just, it's just mayhem down in Africa. So we roll up to this like really nice house and every, there's servants and the whole nine yards. And the first thing they put in front of me is some kind of crazy like Sashimi? Like, no, it's, it's like octopus, shrimp and like raw fish, all in one thing. Hell yeah. And I'm trying to do what I remembered from, you know, adequate, which is you eat whatever, you know, they're putting something in front of you. They, they went the distance. And so I'm, I, I was just, I sucked it up, bro. I did it for the good of the mission. Got me done.

• 43:38Jocko Willink?

  All right. A little detour there. Back to the book. I also took up boxing. Everyone had to be part of a sports club at Sandhurst and I wasn't into rugby or rowing. Boxing seemed like a decent choice. Initially, I hated the 4:30 AM starts, but as fitness started to, as the fitness started to impact on me and I felt myself improving, I came to relish the early morning alarm calls. Plus there was the added carrot of the annual fight night in which the most dedicated committed boxers were chosen to fight, watched by the whole academy, as well as a string of generals, politicians and VIP guests. I was incredibly proud to be chosen as one of those fighters. And on nine November, 2005, I stood in the

• 44:18Jocko Willink?

  ring, surrounded by over a thousand people face to face with officer candidate Mortimer. I won the fight by knocking my opponent to the ground, but I'm not retelling this story to discuss the win. I had a huge, I had a huge respect for my opponent and the opportunity that came next arose simply from having stood in the arena. After the fight, all the boxers were invited to the sergeant's mess, a club of sorts where many of our training instructors live. This was a huge honor because it was because this particular mess was usually out of bounds and the sergeants themselves were only seen in their context in their context as authoritarian figures, all muscles, tattoos and shaved heads. The fact that we privileged few were allowed into

• 45:00Jocko Willink?

  their private domain was viewed with absolute envy by the other cadets. The sergeants crowded round the fighters and congratulated us all on our performance, victors and defeated alike. As I finished my second pint of beer, I found another one thrust into my hand. Looking up, I saw that it was Captain Truitt, the Sandhurst representative of the parachute regiment. Congratulations, Wood. Which regiment are you joining? He said sternly. I hesitated momentarily before replying. I'm not sure, sir. I was looking at the Staffords or the Int Corp, Intel. Sawed that, he said. You should join the paras. My look of surprise must have been quite apparent. The paras were the most fearsome soldiers in the British Army. I'm not good enough to get in the

• 45:45Jocko Willink?

  paras, I thought. You need to be a muscle bound machine to get in, surely. It wasn't even on my radar. Sit down, the captain barked. I sat on one of the little stools by the bar, beer still in hand. First two rounds of interviews have already been done, he told me. We had over a hundred applicants and now we're down to 20. I don't do this very often and I won't ask you twice, but do you want to interview? I sobered up pretty quickly. My entire future rested in the balance and all sorts of thoughts crossed my mind. What about the Staffords? They seem like a nice enough bunch. And the Intelligence Corp, they did some interesting spy related work. It could be a good start to my career, which would allow me to travel too. When it came to the paras, there were a lot of unknowns. As a regiment, they are shrouded in mystery and are considered to be one of the countries, if not

• 46:28Jocko Willink?

  the world's most elite military units. I didn't know what to expect and I didn't think I was capable of joining their ranks. The temptation was to play it safe and stick with a more achievable goal. I knew what I was getting into with the Staffords. If I agreed to an interview with the paras, I would automatically have to turn down one of the other options since you can only interview with two regiments and the paras had the toughest selection of all, just piquing the Intelligence Corps. If I turned down the Staffords and failed the board for the others, I ran the risk of not getting any of my choices. I could end up being a blanket stacker in Logistics Corps for the rest of my career. The captain was staring at me.

• 47:09Jocko Willink?

  I'd like to interview, sir, I told him, expecting that it would take place in the coming weeks. Nope. Captain Truitt launched into a formal interview right there at the bar grilling me about my own motivations, experiences, education and skills. Another fifteen, after another fifteen minutes, he stood up, shook my hand and told me to report to his office at 6 a.m. the next morning. And that's what I did, hangover and all. I was fast-tracked to the final eight and then at the last interview with a panel headed by some of the most senior figures in the British Army, I was offered a place in the parachute regiment. That's how I got into the paras.

• 47:48Jocko Willink?

  Freaking epic story.

• 47:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, it's in hindsight, it's those little moments, isn't it, that can change your entire, the course of your life? And it was that drunken moment in a bar that, you know, boxing is what got me in. And that's probably, if I hadn't have joined the paras, there's no way I would have been able to do half the stuff I've done since then, let alone have the confidence to go and spend, you know, ten years exploring the world. So I'm glad I took it up and I'm glad I took the risk.

• 48:21Jocko Willink?

  And you made that decision in the split, you, you literally hadn't thought about the paras at all.

• 48:25Speaker 01

  I hadn't even been on my radar.

• 48:28Jocko Willink?

  And you thought maybe you weren't quite capable of doing it? Is that what kept it off your radar?

• 48:34Speaker 01

  I think until that point, you know, I mentioned there, the Staffordshire Regiment, which was my local regiment, and the Intelligence Corps, which was, was very difficult to get into, more from an intellectual capability. So I felt that in having the, the Inc. Corps, that was gonna, you know, that was quite a big risk. The Stafford's was slightly more guaranteed in, in many respects. So the paras, you know, like I say, I, you know, I'm not, I'm not the sort of biggest muscle-bound guy in the world and, and looking around at some of the other guys that had been in the paras, there, there's quite a, there's quite an aggressive mentality to get in there. And, and like I said, there was a hundred applicants for only six places in the end. So no, it hadn't been on my radar, but I think the boxing, which had encouraged me to just have a bit more confidence.

• 49:18Speaker 01

  Confidence is what did it for me. So that and then the probably the drinks I'd had for the in the bar at the time.

• 49:26Jocko Willink?

  If you'd have said no, he'd have handed you another shot. He got you to say yes. Do you keep in touch with this guy?

• 49:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:31Jocko Willink?

  This guy freaking changed your life.

• 49:33Speaker 01

  He did. Yeah. He actually, he, he sent me a message on LinkedIn the other day, which was quite a coincidence because I've not heard from him for, for quite a number of years. And I mentioned that he was going to go in my book and he said, why? I said, well, actually, so you, it was, it was you that I can thank for all of, all of what's happened.

• 49:48Jocko Willink?

  And then what about the guy that found your wallet? Nicest guy ever.

• 49:51Speaker 01

  I've tried to track him down. I can't find him anywhere. One day I'll, I'll, I'll send him a nice letter back.

• 49:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's just a good reminder to people, to everybody, you know, you have the opportunity to like completely change people's lives and, and just by doing something cool and nice and freaking those, those guys. I mean, first of all, giving you your wallet back and your money. That's kind of crazy. But then just giving you all a six page essay on how to move forward and, and, and you know what's, look, not everyone's going to take you up on your advice, right?

• 50:23Speaker 01

  Cool.

• 50:23Jocko Willink?

  You give people advice all the time and you might get sick of doing it and you think, well, it's not worth it, but you've changed one person's life and you're a perfect example of that, of, of your world changing because these momentary decisions and momentary mentorship from people. It's unbelievable. It's awesome.

• 50:45Jocko Willink?

  Let's get to the paras a little bit. Going back to the book. To join the parachute regiment, candidates must undergo a tough selection process called pre parachute selection run by Pegasus Company, which is usually referred to as Pico.

• 50:58Speaker 01

  P company. Yep.

• 51:00Jocko Willink?

  Based at the infantry training center in Catterick, North Yorkshire. After 21 weeks of training, candidates are put through eight tests to designed to test their resilience and determination, including a 20 mile endurance march laden with a 16 kilogram pack and a rifle in under four hours and 10 minutes. An intimidating assault course, which is what you guys call obstacle courses. And maybe we do call them assault courses too. Let's go with assault. Sounds way cooler. 17 meters above the ground. Called the Trainazium.

• 51:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:35Jocko Willink?

  And 60 seconds of milling. Milling arguably the flagship event of parachute selection is a boxing match between candidates of similar size and strength in which determination and aggression are awarded and dodging and blocking lose points. In short, it amounts to being punched hard in the head for a minute straight while trying to hit the other guy as much and as hard as possible. If either combatant sheds blood or is knocked to the floor, the clock is paused, blood wiped off, and the bout resumes. It is forbidden to aim at any part of the opponent's body besides the head. And the winner is the most aggressive candidate.

• 52:15Jocko Willink?

  Milling is designed specifically to replicate, quote, "the conditions of stress and personal qualities required in a combat situation and test, quote, "determination and raw fighting spirit of the candidates." It is this raw spirit of controlled aggression that sets paras apart from the rest of the army.

• 52:39Jocko Willink?

  Good times.

• 52:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:40Jocko Willink?

  I had to go to YouTube on that one. Let's watch some milling.

• 52:42Speaker 01

  It's pretty cool, isn't it?

• 52:44Jocko Willink?

  It's freaking legit. Just go as hard as you can for 60 seconds.

• 52:49Speaker 01

  Pure, unadulterated aggression, punching straight to the head. You can't back off. You can't turn away. If you turn away, that's you. You've, you've, you've screwed your entire career. It's all based on that one moment, especially as an officer. If you show any weakness, if you, if you cower away, you will, you won't get in the regiment. So you could have spent months doing all the other training. You could have passed all the interviews, done the tests. I know the guys that spent six months who were perfectly capable of doing everything else, and then they were just a bit weak on the milling. That was them done.

• 53:17Jocko Willink?

  Do they actually fail?

• 53:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:18Jocko Willink?

  And you're not in it?

• 53:19Speaker 01

  And then you're not in it. Then you'll get sent somewhere else.

• 53:21Jocko Willink?

  Did you have to like? Rearrange your brain from your boxing training to not, you know, parry and slip.

• 53:30Speaker 01

  It's very different, yeah, yeah.

• 53:32Jocko Willink?

  Cause I would think your instinct would be, you'd be slipping, you know, and moving and head movement and everything that you've learned to be a good boxer, you have to throw it out the window.

• 53:40Speaker 01

  And there's no training for milling. The, the, the only event that you do, you don't practice this at all. The first time most of the blokes actually mill is, is on their test. So you, you know, you're given your gloves and you're, you're told the rules and you just go in. I mean, it's a great spectator sport.

• 53:56Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, this is definitely, this would be on pay-per-view for sure. It's, it's everything like that the UFC wants, right? Just punch each other as much as you possibly freaking can. How often do you guys get knocked out?

• 54:07Speaker 01

  A lot. Yeah. Like it's every other one. There's, there's guys going down. I mean, it's, it's pretty full on. I mean, and especially as the officers, cause you're in with the, the enlisted guys as well. So there's probably, let's say 90 enlisted guys and like I say, six officers and they always with the officers. I, I mentioned in there that you're usually put up against a person of your own size and weight. Officers, that's not true. They put you up against the biggest guys out there. So I was up against this, this huge guy. And it's all, you take your tops off. It's all done sort of, you know, so you can really get the full, the full experience. And I was up against this huge guy and I was absolutely terrified. Probably because I'd, I'd already had my boxing match, you know, at Sandhurst and which I'd won. So I was quite proud of my sort of undefeated one, one win.

• 54:52Speaker 01

  And then to go milling where you're surrounded by not only your future brother officers, but also, you know, dozens of men that you will go on to command. They're all watching you. All their eyes are on you. So you, you know, you've got to put on a bit of a, an act, a brave face of course, but you don't want to lose. And thankfully I did win and it was only afterwards. I mean, I, I was, I got a lucky punch in and knocked the guy out, but it was only, it was only afterwards that he came up to me. He was much taller than me, much bigger than me. And he was like, good fight. So he said, I'll, I'll be honest. I was, I was terrified. I was like, are you serious? Like I'm literally half your size.

• 55:26Jocko Willink?

  Oh, cause you were the Sanders champion.

• 55:28Speaker 01

  Well, no, he just said, you're, you're a parachute regiments officer. I was never going to win against that. And I think that it's the, it's mindset, isn't it? It's mentality. And so he was bizarrely, it was nothing to do with physical presence. It was, it was far more against, you know, it's just the, what's going on in your mind. And for him, it was to be up against an officer was, was, was a big thing.

• 55:47Jocko Willink?

  Damn, they play that game in the SEALs. You give the young E-dogs a shot at the title against an officer, that officer better hang on. Cause he's gonna bring it. The other cool thing is, I was watching the videos, it's like, uh, basically the ring is formed from the crowd.

• 56:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:03Jocko Willink?

  And it's small.

• 56:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:04Jocko Willink?

  What is it? It's probably, it looks like it's like eight feet by eight feet.

• 56:07Speaker 01

  You don't move your feet, you're just stay, just take a punch.

• 56:11Jocko Willink?

  Good times.

• 56:12Speaker 02

  How much did you weigh?

• 56:14Speaker 01

  Um, I was probably eighty, seventy-five kilo, eighty kilograms. Yeah. Yeah.

• 56:21Jocko Willink?

  What, are you challenging him?

• 56:24Speaker 01

  I'll leave now.

• 56:28Jocko Willink?

  Uh, going back to the book, nothing worth having comes easy. And we will need to work hard to achieve things that we want most out of life. Whether this is learning a new skill or advancement in our professional careers, we need to be prepared to stay the course and keep working toward our goals. No matter which obstacles appear along the way. When I was on my way into the parachute regiment, I bust up to Katerick for my pre-parachute selection. At that point, I had no idea what the next twenty or so weeks would look like for me. All I knew was that they would be the most stressful, demanding, challenging of my life so far. But I had a goal in mind. I was determined to earn that purple beret at the end. The recognition of my achievement and my initiation into one of the world's elite fighting regiments.

• 57:12Jocko Willink?

  That level of drive is absolutely crucial. We can't give our all to anything if we're not motivated by the end result. And if we're not giving our all, we've no chance of sticking things through when the going gets tough. Over the first few weeks of selection, it was pretty clear that a lot of people didn't have what it took. Some couldn't handle the rigors of training and fell behind. Others decided that enough was enough and dropped out of their own accord midway through. I had my own moment when I thought my time on selection was up. I came down with a shin injury that sent me back behind the rest of my cohort for a few days. Unable to join in the rigorous drills and knowing that when I was back in action, things would be exponentially tougher for the time I'd missed. I'd wondered, I wondered if this was worth it.

• 57:57Jocko Willink?

  I started thinking about what my life would be like if I failed selection. Probably not all that bad. I could probably go and reapply to one of the army's other more sedate regiments. Then what? Have a fairly average military career? Perhaps go on some, go to some interesting places and do some interesting things.

• 58:15Jocko Willink?

  But nothing grabbed me about it. Even more so when I considered a life and career outside the Army. Having just passed out of Sandhurst, I couldn't for a moment contemplate the prospect of a civilian life. All I wanted was that maroon beret. It kept appearing in front of me every time I closed my eyes. In a way, it would have taken some motivation to present myself to one of the officers running selection and tell them that I wanted to drop out, that I couldn't do it. But I had no desire to do anything besides recover, get back to training and persevere through the rest of selection. So that's what I did. I pushed myself harder than I'd previously thought possible, quickly making up the ground I'd lost on the rest of the cadets. I remember my fear of heights being pushed to the background

• 58:59Jocko Willink?

  when I tackled the transanium. My 60 seconds of milling passed in such a blur, I can't remember them all. Besides, an overwhelming need not to hurt the person I was paired with, but to prove to him and everyone looking on that I wasn't one for backing down whatever the circumstances. Perhaps I'm fortunate that I was born with this amount of grit and determination. It's not always a positive. I've been told many times that I'm as stubborn as a mule. But up there in the cold, wet, windy cataract, these inner reserves of drive, vision, grit and resilience pulled me through and I got the beret I'd been dreaming about. It's hard to think how different my life would have been without it.

• 59:42Jocko Willink?

  One of the reasons I wanted to read that little section was there's a point where you're doing a little bit of rationalization. Like, oh, you know, if I don't make it, you know, like it might not be that bad, you know, and I don't have to put up with this. And I hear people rationalize and stuff all day long. As a matter of fact, there's a TV show, Echo Charles. It's called Lost and they basically take these people out in the middle of nowhere, you're by yourself. I think it's called Lost. No, it's called Alone. Sorry. It's called Alone. And they go out and they put these people. And my little daughter, who's 10 at the time, she got really into it. And we would watch it. And so you can quit at any time. You can key up your radio and send out a transponder and they come and get you. But.

• 1:00:24Jocko Willink?

  You'd be listening to the people and you'd hear them start to rationalize, you know? And so I taught my daughter, I say, you know what they're doing right there? She'd be like, oh, he's rationalizing.

• 1:00:35Jocko Willink?

  Cause you know, the guy says, you know, I like being out here and I love the nature, but you know, I really miss my family and I realize that my family's more and I'd look at my little daughter and go, what's he doing right now?

• 1:00:45Speaker 01

  Rationalizing, he's about to quit.

• 1:00:47Jocko Willink?

  So I like the fact that you started going a little bit down that path of rationalization. And then you said, you know what? No, doesn't work.

• 1:00:55Speaker 01

  I think, you know, we're all sort of prone to it to varying degrees. And when, when, when things get really tough, you know, those little

• 1:01:05Speaker 01

  elements of doubt do have a tendency to creep in and you just have to fight them. You have to sort of try and look at your situation objectively and realize what you're doing. And that rationalization thankfully is, is, is outrightly sort of castigated in the parachute regiment. And you're reminded, stop rationalizing. And the instructors, it might sound like they're shouting at you, but what they're doing is just reminding you not to give up. So thankfully it's stamped out pretty quickly, but a lot of it's on your own shoulders. You know, nobody wants you to quit, you know, the, the, the unit needs officers, it needs soldiers. They don't want people to leave. They're not telling you to quit, they're telling you to, to not quit, but so it's down to you.

• 1:01:45Jocko Willink?

  And people do this with every freaking thing in everyday life all day long. Like that last rep or that donut that you're like, you know, I did workout hard yesterday. I did work out hard and it's actually, it's really good to reward yourself, right? It's good to reward yourself. It's good to have a positive feedback loop. And I did work out hard yesterday. And yeah, I want to be, I don't want to be in a grind all the time. You gotta enjoy life, right? Discipline equals freedom. How about the freedom part? Here's the freedom part. You can rationalize anything. You can literally rationalize anything. If you're, if you're not freaking careful, you will rationalize stuff that's not good for you. So. You you you get done with this training, is milling like the last final thing?

• 1:02:26Speaker 01

  Um.

• 1:02:26Jocko Willink?

  Close to the end?

• 1:02:27Speaker 01

  It's close to the end, I think, but the most important um event of all is something called the log race. And basically, the there's a big telegraph pole, I can't remember how much it weighs, but it's bloody heavy. And there's like eight, eight people on each log and usually one or two officers on each log. And it's a race, so you've got four logs or however many.

• 1:02:46Jocko Willink?

  How many days does it take?

• 1:02:47Speaker 01

  Uh, no, no, it's just it's one event on on, I think it's the second to last day or the or the final day. And it's basically you are you're sent off, it's it's about, I think it's three miles or something like that. Um, and it's a race between the the different groups, but you've got to stay on the log. If you come off the log as an officer, that will stay with you for the rest of your career. I know generals that that who, you know, in the seventies are still reminded by their fellow officers that they came off the log in nineteen seventy five. It happens, so you you're made aware of this, so you you start. A couple of officers did come off the log, I stayed on it. Um, there was only two people left on the log and this thing is bloody heavy.

• 1:03:22Jocko Willink?

  There's only two people left?

• 1:03:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, and so you're pretty much dragging this this log up hills.

• 1:03:26Jocko Willink?

  So when you say off the log, what do you mean, like you?

• 1:03:28Speaker 01

  As in you fall off and people people just fall off and and they just pass out. I mean, it's it's it's really heavy, you start with eight, you've got to do two, you know, like I say, two and a half or three miles on an off-road course, it's it's up these, you know, through through rivers and all this sort of stuff. And uh, usually by the end of it, there's only like top couple of people left.

• 1:03:47Jocko Willink?

  Oh, really?

• 1:03:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:49Jocko Willink?

  But the other people still graduate?

• 1:03:50Speaker 01

  Uh, they do, but if you fail two events on P company out of the twenty or so events, then you're off the course. So when I was, I was later an instructor on P company, usually with the soldiers at least, with the recruits, there's only about a ten or eleven percent pass rate.

• 1:04:06Speaker 01

  So we'd start off with a platoon of ninety or a hundred recruits and we'd pass out ten or fifteen. So that's that's how tough it is.

• 1:04:13Jocko Willink?

  Damn.

• 1:04:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:14Jocko Willink?

  And how long is the whole training, twenty one weeks?

• 1:04:16Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah, yeah.

• 1:04:17Jocko Willink?

  So if we're on a log. And we're going and I I've passed every event, but I, you know, don't carry the log. I've go to the side or whatever.

• 1:04:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:30Jocko Willink?

  I can still be a para.

• 1:04:31Speaker 01

  Only if you don't come off one of the other events. So if you fail, let's say the assault course of the train asium, which is the aerial assault course, where you've got to sort of jump across the high nets and things like that, then you'll be off the course. So you can, you can get all the way to the end of the, the, you know, the, the course. And if you come off, if you fail two of these events, that's you off, then you'll get sent to another regiment.

• 1:04:50Jocko Willink?

  Is there a time limit on the log? Cause I can imagine if there's only two of you left, like it's gonna take some time.

• 1:04:55Speaker 01

  It takes, it takes a while. Yeah. It's staying on is most important and not just giving up.

• 1:05:00Jocko Willink?

  In the SEAL training, you carry a log, you spend a lot of time with a log, but you also spend a lot of time with a boat, like these little boats that used to be made out of rubberized canvas. So they were really heavy. They're a lot lighter now than they were.

• 1:05:17Jocko Willink?

  But what's interesting, so when I went through, you know, you're carrying the boat on your head a lot. And this is sort of what I thought you were saying, you carry the boat on your head a lot. And, you know, if we're all in a boat crew and there's eight of us in the boat crew, it's possible to sort of like shrink your head down a little bit and release your posture a little bit and not have your head carrying any weight, which means that everyone else is carrying the weight. So when I went through, it was like a sort of, um, like it was happening and you'd see someone doing it and be like, you'd hear people yelling like in another boat, get your freaking hand under the boat, man. Well, they, they didn't have this, but they have it now. They have, you can actually, you get written up.

• 1:05:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:57Jocko Willink?

  For what they call duck boat. So they'd be like, Charles, you're ducking boat and you can get like a demerit.

• 1:06:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:04Jocko Willink?

  They didn't actually call it, they didn't have a name for it when I went through, but now they have a freaking name for it because it's like a. It's like you're coming off your log, bro. Like, you're not with the team and that's not cool.

• 1:06:17Speaker 01

  Well, we have the same thing. I mean, because we have, there's a stretcher race. So the same sort of thing where you're carrying a stretcher for five miles, that one. And so you can get through to the, certainly as an officer, it's more apparent, but if you can get through to the whole course, even if you stayed on all of the events, you can get what's called a stand-up fail, which is basically you're still standing up, but you failed on your attitude or personality. So you can still get booted off if they don't like you.

• 1:06:39Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's as it should be, right? Because there's some, there's some non-quantifiable leadership qualities that some people have or don't have. And if someone, you've got someone that's looking out for themselves and just, you know, trying to step on everyone's back to get to the top. We don't want that guy on the team.

• 1:06:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:55Jocko Willink?

  So you get done with that and now you show up, you show up at the regiment.

• 1:07:01Speaker 01

  More or less, you've still got to do the infantry battle school. So there's three months in Brecon in Wales where you then go and do, no apologies, that was first P Company and then, yeah, that was to the unit. Yeah. So I joined the unit in 2006, just as they, my three power getting back from Afghanistan on the first tour. So it was a pretty, that was a pretty punchy tour as well.

• 1:07:27Jocko Willink?

  And so you're just new meat at this point.

• 1:07:29Speaker 01

  New meat, straight in charge of 30 more veterans and that was quite a daunting challenge. Yeah.

• 1:07:34Jocko Willink?

  What was your, what was your, what lessons did you learn from that?

• 1:07:39Speaker 01

  Well, I'll never forget the day I was, I took over my platoon, I met the guys and, you know, you sort of taught at Sandhurst that you're going to have this sort of General Montgomery moment where you're sort of, you know, standing on a Land Rover, sort of addressing your soldiers as they're all on parade. Doesn't really work like that. I sort of walked into the barracks and they were all in bed. I was like, uh, can I speak to the guys? So they all came together and there was a corporal, Corporal Crabtree, Chris Crabtree, big guy. And I said, sir, can I tell you a joke? And he said, yeah, go on then. He said, how many Sangin veterans does it take to change a light bulb? I was like, I don't know. He says, of course you don't know, sir, because you weren't fucking there. Thanks.

• 1:08:17Jocko Willink?

  Welcome aboard.

• 1:08:18Speaker 01

  Welcome aboard. But it was, no, it was daunting, but you know, I felt prepared, you know, Sandhurst, the infantry battle school, P Company, it prepares you, it gives you that confidence, you know, milling, boxing, all that stuff. So whilst it was like quite something, I'd already, I'd hitchhiked through Afghanistan, you know, a couple of, a couple of years before. So I think when, when some of the guys started learning some of my stories, they had a slightly more respect for me than they probably could have had. But it was still a big challenge, you know, you've got to prove to them, they're not gonna, they don't, they're not just gonna follow you until they know you're not, you know, not a dick, basically. Yeah.

• 1:08:51Jocko Willink?

  How long is it your, what's the training like now? The guys come home, I'm sure they stand down for a little while and then it's, hey, we gotta get ready to go back.

• 1:08:59Speaker 01

  So the, I think the turnaround was about 14 months before the next deployment. So there was a little bit of downtime, there was, there was plenty of opportunity for the guys to get some rest and do things like adventure training. And I mean, there's, there's a story in the book where as a junior officer, the commanding officer said, look.

• 1:09:18Jocko Willink?

  Is this the kayak? What is it kayak polo? Go ahead, go ahead, tell us.

• 1:09:22Speaker 01

  So basically the CO said, look, all the, all the new officers, so the six guys that we'd all just come out straight out of Sandhurst, you guys pick a sport each and, and then get all the guys to go and do something fun. So I said, okay, well, looking at sports and all my colleagues had pretty much chosen what they were, their, their sort of chosen sports were. So somebody did soccer, football, somebody else did, you know, ran the rugby team. My only sport, of course, at that time was boxing, but Three Parrot already had a very well-established boxing team. So there's no way I could go and join that. So I was sort of scrambling around and thought, okay, well, I'll just do kayaking. It sounds like fun, you know, I'd done a bit when I was a kid, so I'll do that. So I went to sort of, you know,

• 1:10:06Speaker 01

  Asked for volunteers, I got six or seven very unwilling volunteers from the soldiers because they'd rather be on leave, but they'd all been told they had to join one of these clubs as well. Now, that's when things started getting competitive because the paras being the paras, the commanding officer sort of then threw into the ring, he said, look, you've all got to apply for whichever sport it is, apply for a competition and you've got to win it because you're paras.

• 1:10:27Jocko Willink?

  So you were just thinking, oh, I'll put together a kayak.

• 1:10:30Speaker 01

  It was meant to be fun.

• 1:10:31Jocko Willink?

  And we'll go out in the river and we'll have some fun and it'll be all good. You can probably travel. So you're always trying to find some scam to travel.

• 1:10:37Speaker 01

  Exactly, yeah.

• 1:10:38Jocko Willink?

  But then he says, hey, I want competition.

• 1:10:40Speaker 01

  So, and I was based in a place called Colchester in Essex. Now, there's no, there's no sort of particular venue to go and learn kayaking in Colchester apart from the local canal system. Now, this was winter, so I basically managed to get hold of a bunch of these boats and we were out paddling in the frozen, you know, dirty waters of Essex canals. Now, there's like shopping trolleys floating around in the water. There was like, you know, the homeless guys sort of taking a leak off the bridge as we were going under it. I mean, it was that kind of, it was pretty grim. And so the guys were not particularly inspired by this, by this whole project. And, and I was trying to find a suitable competition to enter and the main kayaking

• 1:11:19Speaker 01

  competition in the UK is, is basically a race, it's a hundred mile race along the Thames from a place called Henley to Westminster. It's called the Devizers to Westminster Race. But that wasn't until May, which was, we were meant to be back in the training cycle by then. So the only other thing I could think of or find was over the Easter weekend, which was the Army Canoe Polo Championships, which was in a swimming pool, a pool in a town called Aldershot, which is the home of the paras. And so I applied for this, this competition. They were like, yeah, we don't normally get paras applying, but fine, turn up. So after we'd, you know, we'd done like several weeks training, the guys were just about competent in staying in the boats without falling out, but no, you know, by all means, none of them could do a proper rescuer role at this stage.

• 1:12:04Speaker 01

  So we turned up on, on Easter weekend and the guys were all really annoyed because it was Easter weekend, they wanted to be at home with their families. And we found the swimming pool attendant, the guy who's running the competition, he said, oh, you're, didn't expect you to turn up. And we'd got in our boats, he said, right, get in the pool. And we're like, where's all the other teams? There was supposed to be like six other teams entering. He said, well, it's Easter, obviously nobody's bothered, you're the only people here. So we said, well, what does that mean? He said, well, you've got the gold medal. So out of all the teams that in the paras to do all these sports, we were the only ones to actually win our competition. Obviously, we didn't need to tell anyone that nobody else had turned up. We'd won by default, but it goes to show, you know, if you if you uh you've got to be in it to win it, so to speak.

• 1:12:46Jocko Willink?

  Now, you guys are go, do you know that you're preparing to go to Afghanistan?

• 1:12:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, we knew, we knew that. So in the deployment was in the spring of 2008.

• 1:12:55Speaker 01

  Especially off the back of the first tour that they'd been involved with the paras were the first of the whole British Army to to go into southern Afghanistan into Helmand. And it was like I said, it was a it was a very kinetic tour. There was there's a lot of stories coming out of it. So there's there's a lot of things to live up to. So, yeah, so we deployed to to Helmand and Kandahar and we were on something called the Regional Command Group South. So we were basically the rapid response unit to go and fly in in helicopters to wherever they needed us. And it was a pretty varied role. It was it was interesting because we weren't in one of the forward operating bases like two para who were stuck in in in one of these fobs for the whole six months. We were bouncing around all over the place, which meant that we would, you know, one day we'd be doing

• 1:13:40Speaker 01

  a raid on a Taliban commander. Another day, we'd be helping the local police builder police station. Another time, we'd be going out clearing the opium, you know. So it was it was a really interesting varied role. But it did mean that we all had to get our heads into this, you know, 360 degree battle space, hybrid warfare, no two days were the same. And so it was it was quite a complicated environment in which to operate.

• 1:14:01Jocko Willink?

  Well, who did you turn over with? Did you get a turnover from somebody when you showed up there?

• 1:14:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, we did. I think it was the Royal Marines who were in there before us. But the the role itself of RC South was pretty undefined. So it was pretty much whatever the brigade commander said we'd go do. So it might be the first job that we did was in a place called Maywand, and we had to go and clear this this this town of of any Taliban Taliban elements. I'd read about Maywand from my my days doing history, and this was a place that the British Army had been in in 1842. And it turns out we were stationed in the same fort as the British Army 150 years previously. So that was pretty, you know, interesting from from somebody who'd studied the region.

• 1:14:46Jocko Willink?

  You go into some of your, um, some of the operations in here and some of the leadership really lessons that you learned, which are great lessons. I'm going to the book here. "Once on operations in Zabul Province in southern Afghanistan, my platoon was given the mission to search a village for a known terrorist recruiter. For the most part, this involved being invited by friendly women for tea, scanning their kitchens and gardens with metal detectors, and then being cursed and told the house belonged to an absent uncle as we dug up and removed caches of weapon. After walking around all day, we were low on water and needed to get back to the helicopter pickup point, which was five miles away across the desert. As we were leaving the village, I noticed a group of men huddled under, huddled

• 1:15:29Jocko Willink?

  around under the shade of a mulberry tree. They looked shifty and stared at us as we walked past. One of them wore a white turban and had coal around his eyes, looking like a Taliban leader. I got the translator to say hello and ask their names, which he duly noted. I reported the names by radio to our intelligence cell, and they said they were all clear. So we left the men and trekked back across the desert to where my boss was waiting. By now, the whole platoon was exhausted and thirsty. We had not had time to eat all day, and the temperature was over 50 degrees Celsius, which is like 120 degrees Fahrenheit. One of the soldiers was beginning to wobble, and I expected it might be heat exhaustion.

• 1:16:14Jocko Willink?

  Then to make matters worse, my boss came over. Lev, you know that group of men in the village? Yes. Well, the one in the white turban? The intel now says they want him in for questioning. What the hell? I reported his name on the radio and they said he was clear. I know, they screwed up. So what now? Well, we've got two hours before your helicopter comes. Go and get him." I shook my head. I had two hours and it was 10 miles, a 16 kilometer round trip. In the paras, we have a well-known physical stamina test known as the 10 miler, which is a punishing speed march while carrying kit. They can be hard work at home in the rain, but out here in the desert, low on water, I knew it might be deadly.

• 1:16:57Jocko Willink?

  I looked at my men and could tell that half of them weren't up to it. They were exhausted, but orders were orders. I figured that I could do the job with 10 or 12 men, so half of the men could stay behind. I knew that in order to do so, I had to get them to buy into the vision and feel ownership. So instead of barking out an order, I gathered my section commanders around. I told them the situation and asked them what they thought were the best options. A lesson I learned early on is that even if you already know the answer, ask the question. It makes people feel valued and part of the team and decision-making process. It doesn't matter who gets the credit for the decision. And when you take your own ego out of the equation, it's amazing what happens.

• 1:17:41Jocko Willink?

  "Sir, I have an idea," said the youngest corporal. "Why don't we leave half the men behind and take some of their water? I'm sure we can do the job with 10 or 12 men." "Men, that's a great idea," I said, patting him on the back. He grinned from ear to ear, and I made him the point, man. "I need 12 volunteers to come with me," I said. "The rest of you can stay here." The men looked at each other. They knew it would be one of the hardest tabs of their life and that it would be dangerous because the Taliban now knew our strength and would have time to prepare and attack as they saw us walking back across the desert. Private Foster, one of the new soldiers, put his hand up. "I'll come, sir. I need the exercise," he joked. Sylvester was next, then another and another. Because we had a strong team bonded with trust, I had no shortage of volunteers.

• 1:18:24Jocko Willink?

  Even some of the men who I knew stood no chance of making it started to put their hands up because they felt ashamed, but I already had enough. We redistributed the water, gritted our teeth and marched back across the desert to the village where we found the man in the white turban, arrested him and marched all the way back again, being chased by an angry mob of Afghans. It was a hard slog, but one of the most determined team efforts I'd seen in my career. To top it off, we later found out that the man in the white turban was at the top of the regional most-wanted list. That victory and a shared hardship cemented the bonds of the platoon even stronger. There was nothing that my men didn't think they could accomplish.

• 1:19:07Jocko Willink?

  Legit, I get it. Often I'll get asked, you know, how can I get my team to buy into the plan? And I always say, let them come up with the plan.

• 1:19:15Speaker 01

  Simple, isn't it?

• 1:19:16Jocko Willink?

  Let them come up with a plan. That's what you do. And that's something, you know, you say you learned it. Where do you think you picked that up? Was it something that you saw the instructors doing at Sandhurst? Is it what your sergeant, the way your sergeants ran thing, ran things?

• 1:19:30Speaker 01

  I'll give you the honest answer. I was actually, I watched, there's a series called Sharp. I don't know if you've ever seen it. It was about, um,

• 1:19:37Jocko Willink?

  I don't think so.

• 1:19:38Speaker 01

  It was, uh, it was basically, basically about the, um, the war, um, the peninsula war in, in the 19th century. Um, but it's, uh, yeah, Sean Bean in it. It was basically a military drama series and, um, it's often referred to in military circles because it's, it's, um, it's a, it was a fun war in the sense that it was, it was in a-

• 1:19:58Jocko Willink?

  What's the name of this program?

• 1:19:59Speaker 01

  It's called Sharp. Yeah. Richard Sharp.

• 1:20:01Jocko Willink?

  As in S H A R P?

• 1:20:03Speaker 01

  P E, yeah.

• 1:20:04Jocko Willink?

  Sharp. So in America, we'd say Sharp. What you're saying here right now sounds like shop, but it's all good. I'm married to a Brit. I kind of understood it.

• 1:20:11Speaker 01

  So, so Sharp is a military officer. He's a, he's a commander in, in, um, the rifles and, and basically, um, often cited as, as a sort of, uh, figurehead in, in, in leadership. But I remember watching that as a kid and thinking, ah, he does exactly the same.

• 1:20:25Jocko Willink?

  When did the series come out?

• 1:20:27Speaker 01

  Oh, it was back in the nineties. Yes. It was an old series, but I grew up watching Sharp. So I think that was probably where I first saw that, that style of leadership. But again, of course, it was drilled into us at Sandhurst and in training to, to, you know, bring your team into the plan. You know, if you, if you've got a vision, that's great, but you've got to get people to buy into it. And I think empowering people, letting them take ownership of those ideas is, is the best way of doing that.

• 1:20:50Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I totally, totally agree. Um, yeah, a lot of times, even if you think you have the answer and you ask the team what they think, they're going to come up with a better answer than you had in the first place.

• 1:21:01Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:21:02Jocko Willink?

  So it's like, why not just ask them?

• 1:21:04Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I think ego is often the downfall of a lot of leaders in, in some ways because it's when you, when you sort of, uh, when you think that, oh, because I'm the leader, I have to have the answer. That's when things go wrong, especially in the military context.

• 1:21:16Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. A hundred percent, a hundred percent. That's a, that's a killer. Um, leadership is the most important thing on the battlefield. Also pays to be lucky sometimes.

• 1:21:30Jocko Willink?

  Another little section, back to the book. One day we were setting up a temporary encampment on the outskirts of a lush valley. I got the call from my commanding officer that a vehicle had been blown up a couple miles away, and I was to take my platoon out on a rescue mission. Our armored cars had special tracks, they could go over any kind of terrain. We drove them across the desert and up to the top of an escarpment where the location of the explosion had been reported. As we got closer, I looked through the front windscreen and could see the remains of a Land Rover blown to smithereens. I was expecting the worst, as there should have been four soldiers inside. I called the team medic and told him to get ready to treat any

• 1:22:11Jocko Willink?

  surviving casualties. We stopped short by 50 meters in case there were any other bombs nearby, and when I got out of my vehicle, to my absolute surprise and joy, I saw that all the men were fine. When the landmine had exploded, it had sent a shockwave through the car, sending everyone in it flying out onto the ground. They were all alive and seemingly unharmed. I asked them if they were okay, and apart from being dizzy and shaken, they nodded and walked over to where I was standing. There was space in one of our three vehicles, so I put the men in the back of the car at the front, telling the lead vehicle that we should reverse back out of the danger area because we might be in a minefield. It seemed like a sensible option, so that's what we did, making sure that we stayed exactly in our own tracks until we were

• 1:22:56Jocko Willink?

  well clear of the flat plateau. At that point, my three vehicles needed to turn around so that we didn't get stuck in a bottleneck between two large cliffs, so the front vehicle did a three-point turn and pushed around the other two, so that it was now facing forward again in the lead. We all did the same and drove off down a track back towards the encampment, and by now I was in vehicle number two, where the commander should always be.

• 1:23:21Jocko Willink?

  Then, just as we left the scraggy boulder field, there was an enormous explosion. And I felt the shockwaves hit my own car. After a second of deafness and ringing in my ears, I looked through my windscreen to see a massive cloud of dust. As it cleared, I realized what had happened. The point vehicle had driven over another mine. And to make matters worse, it was the same four soldiers who had been in the first explosion. I shouted down the radio, telling everyone to stop exactly where they were, whilst I considered the situation. I could see bodies lying in the dirt next to the car, which had the front end ripped off of it. Now I knew I had to show some real leadership. And there was only one thing for it. The metal detectors were in the car at the back,

• 1:24:04Jocko Willink?

  and it would take them a good 10 minutes to clear the path between the cars, let alone get to the front where we might have heavy casualties. I got out of the car, pulled out my bayonet, and began to crawl forward, stabbing the sand in front of me to check for mines. Luckily, the car in front wasn't too far, and I was able to cover the distance quickly. I reached the car, and to my relief, found that yet again, by some miracle, everyone was alive. And what's more, uninjured. One of the soldiers stood up, dusted himself off, and looked at me stabbing around in the dirt. "What are you doing, sir?" he laughed. "You won't find any Taliban down there." It was a lucky day, made even luckier as I was filling out the daily report back at camp when I found out that my team and the remaining vehicle had been tasked with denying the half-blown-up cars.

• 1:24:49Jocko Willink?

  That meant going back to the site and blowing them up properly with explosives, so the Taliban couldn't make use of them in the future. It was a simple task, and I was told that I should remain behind with the other platoon commanders so that we could receive our orders for the next day. As the team were driving back, they too hit a landmine. And the empty commander's seat, where I normally would have been sitting, was completely destroyed by the explosion. You can't be a leader unless you're willing to put your team ahead of yourself when circumstances call for it. This requires moral courage and integrity, the building blocks not only of great leadership, but of a fulfilled, purposeful life.

• 1:25:33Jocko Willink?

  Just out there digging for mines.

• 1:25:36Speaker 01

  It was a lucky day, a very lucky day.

• 1:25:38Jocko Willink?

  And no one got in your seat, no one got in your vehicle commander's seat?

• 1:25:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:25:43Speaker 01

  I was, uh, yeah, I look back now and thank my lucky stars that, um, yeah, that was a very lucky day.

• 1:25:50Jocko Willink?

  What was the op tempo? So like, how often were you guys running out, going out on missions?

• 1:25:55Speaker 01

  Well, because of the nature of the job, we were, like I said, doing different things. So we'd, we'd go out and clear a valley one day. We might be out for a week, then we'd come back to Kandahar. We were based in Kandahar Air Base alongside the Canadians for the most part. Um, most of the Brits were either in Bastion or in, um, you know, one of the FOBs. So it was quite, I mean, Kandahar Air Base, you know, had a Timmy Horton's coffee, it had a Pizza Hut, it had a Burger King. I mean, it was a bizarre sort of experience. So you're, you're, you're out there getting blown up one minute and then you're in, you're in with the, with the rems as we always, we like to call them. Another, and it's such a bizarre thing to get your head around. Um, but we weren't in there for long. We'd stay for a few days. We'd regroup.

• 1:26:35Speaker 01

  We'd, we'd clean ourselves up and then we'd get back out there. And we did some really fascinating, you know, operations. We did, uh, according to, um, the news report at least, we did one of the biggest airborne assaults of the entire, of the entire war. We, we flew, um, to into Zabul with, um, I can't remember how many Chinooks, it was like 10 Chinooks with Apache support to do a full battalion level assault and, um, stuff like that. When you've got, um, when you've got Rider of the Valkyries blaring out of the speakers, it, it, it sort of, it was pretty, um, you know, it was pretty energizing to, to say the least. Um, equally, you know, we'd be out there helping rebuild a school or paint a, paint a police station the next. So it was, it was quite, it, it was,

• 1:27:17Speaker 01

  it was challenging on different levels. It wasn't that we were getting in as many fights because actually the guys in the FOBs were getting attacked every day. They went and mortared every day. Um, we'd often go for, for a week without firing shots in anger. So it, it wasn't necessarily the, the, the intensity of the fighting, certainly for my tour, it was more of the, the variety and the scale of what we were trying to achieve.

• 1:27:39Jocko Willink?

  How long was the deployment in total?

• 1:27:41Speaker 01

  Normally they're six months. I needed four months because um I was at the end of my tour as a platoon commander. So my replacement was sort of brought in and then I I had to move on to another job. So that's when I went to be a uh an infantry uh at the recruitment center. I was then a a directing staff sort of recruiting. And uh training recruits back where I'd done my training before.

• 1:28:04Jocko Willink?

  And uh that's a historical um deployment for for the paras down there. I I know I was I was doing just some reading about it. Um you had a Corporal Brian Budd who was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross. Sounds like he just, you know, led a flanking maneuver against en- enemy Taliban fighters. Well, ended up be being killed, but you know, was able to suppress enough fire that the rest of his team could maneuver. There's another guy named um Corporal Mark Wright awarded the uh the the George Cross. Um pretty, I mean, d- as you read the story, it's like uh unbelievable story, heartbreaking story, but they're in a minefield, there's guys wounded.

• 1:28:46Jocko Willink?

  Um he's, as he's trying to get his guys out of this minefield, like he's singing happy birthday to one of his friends that's, you know, in a really bad way and he he ends up dying of wounds, but I mean, just a just a incredible um bravery and and upholding that tradition of the paras, you know, to to this day. Awesome stuff. Um.

• 1:29:11Jocko Willink?

  When you get back, I I know you mentioned in the book that you were you were

• 1:29:17Jocko Willink?

  considering um going to selection for for the special special forces. And then and then.

• 1:29:25Speaker 01

  Well, that was the that was the natural progression. Like I say, aft- after the tour, um it's it's considered the the next step is is most of the officers then go to back to Katrik to then train the next uh bows of recruits. I mean, it wasn't my first choice. I didn't really wanna go and be in the wind and the rain training recruits. I would I would have loved to have have spent more time in Afghanistan, but um but that's that's the way it goes, you know, in in the army. So I was up in Katrik. I I'd say that my morale was sort of flagging a little bit because I I was actually, I wouldn't say. I necessarily enjoyed Afghanistan. Well, I did. I lied. I did quite enjoy some of it. Um, but, but that's why I joined the army. And so I was there. I thought, okay, well,

• 1:30:07Speaker 01

  you know, go for special forces selection. That, that will be the next thing. So, um, passed all the initial tests and it was meant, I was meant to be going on the full selection in January two thousand and nine, and I was at my peak fitness. I was good to go. And then I, I made the, the, the error of, um, of going to see my girlfriend in Mexico, um, who had a ranch. And, um, in, in a bout of silliness, I, I decided to get on a horse and do some rodeo on her ranch. The horse threw me over a six foot wall and I broke my leg a week before I was meant to be on selection. So, um, I had to sort of limp in back to the barracks and obviously I was told I couldn't do selection.

• 1:30:49Speaker 01

  Um, needless to say, and what was worse was all of the jobs for the next deployment, which was going to be happening in a few more months, had already been taken. So it was, it was a crux point in my career. And I was like, well, okay, do I stay and then do a job that I don't enjoy for, for two years? Or, or do I look at this as an opportunity? And, um, it was a, it was a quite, it was a pretty depressing time because I, I, you know, I was desperate to get back out there and, and do what I loved the most. But, but equally, I didn't really fancy spending two years doing a desk job. That wasn't why I joined the military at all. So I, I rang up my, I sort of-

• 1:31:25Jocko Willink?

  They don't, they don't tell you about those desk jobs when you join the military. That's not even a thing, right?

• 1:31:29Speaker 01

  No, exactly.

• 1:31:30Jocko Willink?

  There's no recruiting poster that shows an officer sitting at a desk making a PowerPoint slide.

• 1:31:34Speaker 01

  Exactly. Yeah. Excel is not what I signed up for. So I, after sort of really, you know, going through some heart wrenching decision making, I thought, you know what? I think now's the time to, to do something else. And, and actually in hindsight, it was because I left Hungary. It was because I left still hankering for a bit of adventure and, um,

• 1:31:57Speaker 01

  I didn't feel as though I'd done everything I wanted to do in on that side of things that I probably it gave me the impetus to do what came next. So I left and by a by a sort of by a twist of luck, I suppose, when I because you have to usually give 12 months notice when you leave the military. But when I rang up the army personnel, somebody hadn't filled out the paperwork properly. So I meant that I could actually leave in four months. And my boss at the time said, look, just take the time off, get yourself together. So I was on full pay and off I went. So as soon as my leg was fixed, that was me on to whatever came next. I didn't really have a plan other than

• 1:32:33Jocko Willink?

  We're getting used to that.

• 1:32:35Speaker 01

  Other than thinking, actually, now is probably the time I can go back to that schoolboy dream of somehow becoming an explorer.

• 1:32:43Jocko Willink?

  At what point did you climb Mira Peak?

• 1:32:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, so that was in that was again, that was just before I broke my leg. It was in October that year. So I was again, a bit of downtime. I was given the opportunity to do what, you know, is affectionately, you know, is adventure training in the army, which usually involves doing some hill walking in Wales. I wanted to do something a bit more exciting. So I decided to organize a proper mountaineering expedition to the Nepal Himalayas. So I got together a bunch of the junior NCOs at Catrick, who were, you know, my training staff and said, let's go and climb a mountain. None of them had climbed a mountain before. But being paras, they all sort of said, this sounds like fun. It's three weeks off work, so off we go.

• 1:33:25Speaker 01

  And that was my introduction to proper civilian style leadership in many ways, because it was, you know, we were not in uniform. We were doing, learning a new skill in a new environment. So off we went and we went to climb Mira Peak, which is not a technical mountain, but it's six and a half thousand meters, which is, what's that? That's like

• 1:33:47Jocko Willink?

  I think it's about 21,247 feet.

• 1:33:50Speaker 01

  Spot on. Good guess. So it's it's a pretty high mountain and the air is thin up there and, you know, you can suffer from altitude sickness. So off we went, it's a three week expedition. And it was, it was actually pretty demanding, especially for some of the guys who'd never been to that altitude before. And I'd been backpacking in Nepal and I'd done that sort of thing, but I'd never, never ever been to that sort of height. So it was, it was a really interesting lesson in, in motivating soldiers who, soldiers love to complain at the best of times, especially when this is their vacation time. So it was all fun and games until we got to sort of 5,000 meters, 15,000 feet, and that's when things get really tough and cold.

• 1:34:31Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you, you break it down really well. I'll go to the book here. "After more than 10 days of hard trekking, we finally reached the snow line where the temperatures plummeted to minus 27 degrees. And with gale-force winds making the setup of camp a dreadful prospect, at least three of the others and I were suffering severe headaches, dehydration and very cold feet as we tried unsuccessfully to sleep at 5,000 meters. On the summit day, we greet, we were greeted with clear conditions. But two of the local Sherpas decided to remain with the tents in camp rather than ascend to the top. I led the way with Jordy?"

• 1:35:07Speaker 01

  Jordy, yeah.

• 1:35:08Jocko Willink?

  "I led the way with Jordy and our mountain guide Jason. We plodded through the thick snow, tied together in case a crevasse opened up. It was punishing slow going and every step was hard-earned with short, gasping breaths. The summit came into view, a few hundred meters ahead, but there was no time to celebrate. As we stopped for a short break, one of the soldiers approached me complaining that he couldn't feel his feet anymore. His boots had been on the tight side, and as a result, his toes were right up against the edge of the boot. As we'd been trained, I ordered him to remove his boots and socks and I placed his bare toe inside my jacket, right up in my armpit, where it would be able to warm up to body temperature naturally. As we waited, I saw another soldier shifting about. He told me his feet too were numb. And so after a

• 1:35:53Jocko Willink?

  while, I offered the same service to him, but before long, my feet were also getting so cold, they were excruciating. We needed to move. So once we'd taken a rest, we pushed on another hundred meters to a crag. By then, just before the final push to the summit, disaster struck. A howling wind flared up the valley, followed immediately by a white blanket of cloud. I knew instantly that even if it was short-lived, they would add time on to our exposure, which might mean the difference between someone keeping or losing their toes to frostbite."

• 1:36:24Jocko Willink?

  We had trekked for days and planned for months. No one wanted to give up. "Boss," one of the soldiers shouted, "we can make it. It's not far to go. Two hundred meters more." I looked up into the murky abyss of frozen air and then back at the faces of the two shivering soldiers. I was torn. From the looks around me, it was clear the overwhelming urge of the group was to continue. These were all paratroopers, men proud of their own hardiness and expecting it above all from me, their leader. But I knew that if I decided to continue, I was putting all our safety in danger and the fault would be mine alone for any consequences. "We turn back," I shouted, "now."

• 1:37:06Jocko Willink?

  I hauled the youngest of the crew to his feet and pointed down the slope, back to where the camp, back to the camp where the Sherpas waited for us. The most headstrong of the soldiers muttered and shook his head. I didn't say anything or blame him. I was just as disappointed as he was. We all knew that our chance of conquering the mountain was gone, at least for this expedition. Months of anticipation and weeks of physical training had gone to waste. As we got back to the tents and packed up the camp, we were all silent. It wasn't until hours later, when we descended beyond the snow line and to a sheltered gully where the sun had warmed up the rocks, that one of the senior soldiers approached me. "You made the right call there, boss. Otherwise, we might have died, or at the very least, we'd be, we'd all be missing a few toes."

• 1:37:50Jocko Willink?

  As we carried on down the trail, the disappointment that we felt at not achieving our aim seemed to dissipate, and we were glad to have come down unscathed, having lived to fight another day. I had not wanted to make the decision to turn back. It felt like failure and I was worried about the impact it would have on my soldiers' estimation of me. But as I discovered afterwards, even those who had wanted to continue at the time had a lot of respect for the decision in hindsight. Moreover, that defeat instilled a wonderful attitude in those eight soldiers. After the expected banter and complaining that all sagers, soldiers are good at, every single one of them said that the trip was one of the highlights of their military career.

• 1:38:32Jocko Willink?

  What's more, many of them later became serious climbers and mountaineers and went back to summit Merre Peak. If I had made the popular decision that day, rather than the right one, it could have been a very different story.

• 1:38:50Jocko Willink?

  Just another, and look, I usually say this in the beginning of these things, I'm obviously reading only like tiny sections of the book. You gotta get the book. There's all kinds of lessons learned throughout this book about leadership, about discovery, about exploration, just it's full of them. So get the book. But that's a, that's a good highlight, a good lesson learned, and this is now. And so that's sort of your intro to, well, maybe I can do, maybe I can do something like this in the civilian world.

• 1:39:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was. And so when I left, when I managed to get out of the, out of the army, like I said, I broke my leg. I was disappointed at not being able to do special forces selection. But I was still hungry. And that was the, that was the key ingredient, because I was desperate to do something that I felt was, was worthwhile. Most, most of my fellow officers who were, who left the military at the sort of rank of captain or junior major, they were sort of at the process of getting married, settling down and wanting something slightly more stable.

• 1:39:49Jocko Willink?

  You were just getting warmed up.

• 1:39:50Speaker 01

  And I was just getting warmed up. So a lot of them went to work in London in finance or consultancy, something with a bit of cash. At that stage, I wasn't motivated by, by cash at all. I just wanted to go and have adventures and improve things to myself.

• 1:40:04Jocko Willink?

  You almost said fun. You said I wanted to go have adventures.

• 1:40:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, some of it was fun. So I thought there's got to be, there's got to be something in this. And so while I was kind of planning, I wanted to bring together my passions of, of writing of, I sort of had an amateur interest in photography. And of course, travel was kind of at the heart of everything that I did. So I was planning and I was chatting to a friend of mine, Tom Bogkin, who was at that stage, also in the process of, of leaving the military. And we, we came up with this idea of setting up some sort of a travel company, taking people on adventures, expeditions. He saw a few months left to, to, before he left the military. So in the meantime, I volunteered for, for a charity. A friend of mine had set up a charity in Africa, in Malawi. And what they really needed more than anything else was vehicles.

• 1:40:51Speaker 01

  They needed a couple of ambulances. And so she was like, is there any way you can, you know, somehow, while you're sitting around plotting your next trip, why don't you send me some ambulances, raise some money or something like that? So I said, okay. But we're going to do this the fun way. So I, I basically got together a bunch of my friends, told them to take two months leave, whatever they were doing, and we were going to buy the ambulances on eBay and drive them to Malawi. Ten thousand miles away. And that's what we did. I managed to raise probably about fifty grand, not a massive amount of money, but bought a couple of twenty year old Land Cruisers off the internet, painted them white, taught myself basic mechanics, stuck a flashing light on the top and off we went. And we drove all the way through Europe, through

• 1:41:32Speaker 01

  the Middle East, went through Syria, you know, all these crazy places. And two months later, went to, you know, finally delivered these ambulances to, to this little clinic in, in Malawi. And it was such a rewarding experience. I mean, it was a heck of a road trip, but it was, you know, it was for a good cause. And these ambulances are still being used today to save lives. And, and there was something about that, that really, I found really rewarding. And I thought, well, maybe if there's a way of commercializing this, I can turn this into a lifestyle. And, and that's what I did. So when Tom finally did leave the army, we ended up setting up a company called Secret Compass, which basically offered military style expeditions in some of the most remote places in the world to civilian clients, but with a very military ethos. We're going from A to B. It's gonna

• 1:42:16Speaker 01

  be tough. Everyone needs to get stuck in. Everyone needs to wash their own dishes. This is not a package tour. Let's go. So the first trip, the flagship trip we did was horse riding in northern Afghanistan, which in 2011, I think that was, up in a place called the Wakan Corridor, which is completely unaffected by war and the Taliban. But it was, you know, it sold out. I couldn't believe it. So the

• 1:42:37Jocko Willink?

  How many people?

• 1:42:38Speaker 01

  It was only about 12 or so people. So it was small group trips. The next one we did was mountain climbing on the Iraq Iran border up in Kurdistan. And that was pretty special, too. We then went across the Sahara Desert in Sudan with camels. We, we rafted down the Nile in South Sudan, walked across Madagascar, all these sorts of insane trips. But it was so popular, it wasn't long before we started getting the likes of Discovery Channel and National Geographic calling us up, saying, look, we've seen these kind of trips that you can do. Can you take our journalists and our film crews? So that was a bit of a segue into the world of media. And before we knew it, we were taking these highly respected film crews and journalists and directors into Syria, Iraq, wherever

• 1:43:20Speaker 01

  you wanted to go. And we met all sorts of people. I mean, I ended up doing the sort of security for George Clooney at one point. It was, it was wild. But that was how it sort of led on to

• 1:43:29Jocko Willink?

  Is he an actor or something, or a politician?

• 1:43:33Speaker 01

  George Clooney?

• 1:43:33Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I don't know, he's a bit of both, isn't he?

• 1:43:37Jocko Willink?

  Movie guy? Yeah. Jack.

• 1:43:44Jocko Willink?

  At some point, I think it was 2010, you you started writing your first book.

• 1:43:47Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:43:49Jocko Willink?

  And you you write about it in this book, you write about writing your first book. And one of the one of the things you say, you're like talking about the challenge of writing a book. And the quote that I that I liked was, you said, are you really going to feel more inspired tomorrow? Or do you just need to be firm with yourself and get started? It's once again, it's rationalization. Well, I really don't feel like writing today. Maybe I can wait until tomorrow. You so you started writing this book and you go through your methods, you know, with some, you know, about how you lay it out and you're you're very methodical about your writing.

• 1:44:24Jocko Willink?

  How that book, you know, what the publishers just jumped all over that one, huh?

• 1:44:28Speaker 01

  Sadly not. So this was when I was trying to set up a business. I was trying to have fun. I was trying to get over the fact that I'd left the army and wasn't, I hadn't quite achieved what I wanted to do. So I thought, okay, what I'm going to do is going to write about that trip that we discussed before, when I hitchhiked to India, because I thought it was interesting. Whether or not anyone else did was another matter. I I wrote this book, hundred thousand words. Pitched it to agents, publishers, and basically got told to piss off at every every turn. Nobody was interested. They said, you know, nobody cares about your holidays. So it was quite disappointing, but I'd written a hundred thousand words. It was on my laptop. And I thought, okay, maybe this book's not good enough, but it's been a really useful learning curve.

• 1:45:13Speaker 01

  It's it's given me an introduction to writing and the process. And that inspired me to to carry on. And but I knew I needed to do something that was more impressive, something that would get picked up. And and that's how it led on to the sort of the the bigger expeditions later on.

• 1:45:30Jocko Willink?

  So you were thinking, I've got to do cooler stuff if I'm going to write a book about it and people are actually going to be interested in it.

• 1:45:35Speaker 01

  Exactly, yeah.

• 1:45:36Jocko Willink?

  What was the first step towards that? What was the trip that you said, all right, this is this is worth writing about?

• 1:45:41Speaker 01

  So like I said, I was doing all these.

• 1:45:43Jocko Willink?

  Freaking horse riding in Afghanistan.

• 1:45:46Speaker 01

  Well, no, they none of those were big or bold enough. They were all cool trips, but they were too they were still too weak. You know, trips.

• 1:45:52Jocko Willink?

  Oh, you said two weeks.

• 1:45:53Speaker 01

  Two weeks, yeah. These were all like short trips that that paying clients could come on. And whilst it was fun guiding trips for paying clients, it wasn't the kind of stuff that I could write about. But it was it was all it was all leading in the in the direction.

• 1:46:05Jocko Willink?

  Were you guys profitable?

• 1:46:07Speaker 01

  Uh, quite the opposite. So I was I was I was homeless. I spent three years.

• 1:46:12Jocko Willink?

  Bro, you've been homeless since you were like fourteen.

• 1:46:14Speaker 01

  No, but this this was proper homeless. I was I had, uh, I basically, whatever money I'd saved up from the army, I'd invested into this company with my buddy, which meant I didn't have any money for rent. So I was basically staying on friends' floors um for three years. But I also had a rule that I'd learned in India. I'd I'd stayed at a gurdwar at the uh, the the golden temple in India. And this it's part of the Sikh religion to offer hospitality, but only for three days and three nights. After that, you can move on. So I'd adopted this this, I I quite like that because you don't want to like, you know, sort of burn your bridges or or outstay your welcome. So I'd adopted this mentality and I was pretty rigid with it. So for three years, I never spent more than three nights in one place.

• 1:46:56Speaker 01

  So I'd stay with friends and even if they insisted I stay longer, I said, no, I'm gonna I'm gonna move on. So I kind of did this big rotation to all my friends in London. But it did mean that there was a few occasions where there was gaps and I I slept on benches. I'll I'll be honest. I I slept outside and whatever it took and it was it was a pretty tough experience. Cause I, you know, I was kind of living on one or two meals a day maximum, because that's all I could afford, especially in London. It's not cheap. And then, you know, I was surviving by going away on these short expeditions where at least my expenses were paid for.

• 1:47:25Jocko Willink?

  You're stoked to go to Afghanistan and ride a horse so you can get a meal.

• 1:47:28Speaker 01

  Just so I could get fed, yeah, for sure. And then, but whenever I was back in London for like a week or two weeks, I was I was poor. I had no money.

• 1:47:34Jocko Willink?

  What was the op tempo of these trips? How often were you going on those?

• 1:47:38Speaker 01

  A lot, you know, it would be I'd be away for two or three weeks, then back for a couple of weeks, then away for you. So it was basically nine or 10 months of the year I was away.

• 1:47:45Jocko Willink?

  Why wasn't the company profitable? I mean, I would imagine your clientele must have been people with a lot of money. And for them, the difference between, how much would it cost if you wanted, if I wanted to go horseback riding in Afghanistan? What were you gonna charge me?

• 1:47:57Speaker 01

  Well, it's probably about two or three thousand pounds, so five thousand dollars.

• 1:48:00Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:48:00Speaker 01

  So not super money. I mean, we we were aiming at that high end clientele, but at that stage, we just didn't have the contacts. We didn't know the those circles of people. So we were trying to aim at the more mid range budgets, people who were adventurous, who had a bit of cash, but not, we're not talking billionaires here. We're we're talking. You know, people that work in the city. I mean, we had all sorts of people, teachers, I mean, people who just saved up all year to do that one particular trip.

• 1:48:22Jocko Willink?

  What about your buddy Todd?

• 1:48:24Speaker 01

  Tom.

• 1:48:24Jocko Willink?

  Tom, what about him? Where's he living?

• 1:48:26Speaker 01

  Well, he was married, so he he'd sort of, you know, he'd already sort of managed to get himself sorted. So he had he had somewhere to live, unlike me. So we were in slightly different places. But but for but for me, it was like, you know, I was using all of these trips as an opportunity to to learn the craft of writing, to do more photography. So I'd go away and do this horse riding in Afghanistan, take some photographs and I'd try and sell them to, you know, Lonely Planet guidebooks or the newspapers, whatever it might be. So I was trying to build up a skill set.

• 1:48:53Jocko Willink?

  Any bites on that?

• 1:48:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was. It took a while. I mean, I was doing my fair share of weddings and baby photos, but it it was all building up and. But it was on one of these trips. I was out in South Sudan doing a making a film out there.

• 1:49:06Speaker 01

  It was a fishing fishing show about a guy that was fishing for Nile Perch in the middle of a war zone. The only problem was he he was didn't really catch any fish, which doesn't make for a particularly good fishing show. And and when we were back in Dube, which I don't know if you've been to Dube, but it's it's there's nothing there. I mean, it's it the world's newest country at the time, South Sudan. It had about three miles of paved road in the entire country. I mean, even in the city center, it was just like dirt huts. So a pretty rudimentary place. We were out there trying to make a show about fishing, but hadn't not caught any fish. The whole thing was a bit of a disaster. Turns out that George Clooney was in town doing some of his humanitarian work. And he he'd landed. We tried to get him on the show. We thought at least if we got George Clooney in the film, it's it's gonna sell just for the sake that he's in it.

• 1:49:52Speaker 01

  The only problem is that the cameraman who who was supposed to be filming George Clooney, because he was so starstruck, turns out halfway through the interview, he'd forgotten to press record. So that was a disaster as well. But we were out there. We were kind of as a reputation within the film crew, we thought this this whole thing's a complete mess. There's shambles. And we're going to go back to Channel Four, who'd commissioned this thing with our reputation in tatters at this point.

• 1:50:15Jocko Willink?

  So they commissioned your company to film this?

• 1:50:18Speaker 01

  It wasn't my company. I was just a freelance health and safety guy. I was, yeah, part of Secret Compass, but we'd, you know, we'd basically sorted out.

• 1:50:25Jocko Willink?

  You got contracted out.

• 1:50:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:50:27Jocko Willink?

  So so Channel Four is paying someone else to make this show.

• 1:50:30Speaker 01

  To make the show.

• 1:50:31Jocko Willink?

  And you're just a helper.

• 1:50:31Speaker 01

  I was a helper doing all the behind the scenes logistics, safety, keeping people. Fed and water.

• 1:50:36Jocko Willink?

  And you recognize that this isn't going well. This guy hasn't caught a freaking fish yet.

• 1:50:41Speaker 01

  He hasn't got a fish.

• 1:50:42Jocko Willink?

  George Clooney didn't show up.

• 1:50:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. I ended up having to be George Clooney's hand double because they screwed up the first start of the interview. I mean, it was like, it was pretty bad, but that's how I met a guy called Neil. He was the, the second, um, he was the producer director on the show, second cameraman. And he said, look, you know, we could do this ourselves. Why don't you get, why don't we film one of your expeditions? You know, cut the crap, let's go and do something cool. He said, have you got any ideas? And we were in South Sudan on the banks of the Nile and I was sort of looked left and right, saw this whopping great big river. And I said, well, I wonder if anyone's ever walked the length of the River Nile. And he said, well, I'd highly doubt it because it's four and a half thousand miles long and, and full of war zones. So I said, well, let's do it. And so that's where the idea was born.

• 1:51:26Speaker 01

  Um, I decided I wanted to be the first person to walk the entire length of the River Nile. And I thought that's, that's big enough and bold enough to write a book about and get published.

• 1:51:36Jocko Willink?

  So that was the plan.

• 1:51:36Speaker 01

  And that was the plan. That was back in 2012. And it took me about almost two years, certainly 18 months of planning, fundraising, trying to get TV interest, trying to get a publisher, all that sort of stuff. But I was determined that come what may, without, even, even if we don't get the support of TV or, or a book, I'm going to go and do this. And just by committing mentally, I think that's what did it. It was the confidence of then just walking into these meetings saying, screw you, even if you don't give me any money, I'm doing it. And I think people saw that and the, and the sort of the, I guess, the credibility of having been a paratrooper that, that got people bought into this vision. And, and somehow I managed to get a TV commission, a book publishing deal and everything else.

• 1:52:17Speaker 01

  And got the whole thing fully funded. And so off I went, took nine months, walked four, four and a half thousand miles from Rwanda through Tanzania, um, through Uganda, South Sudan, all the way to the Mediterranean and Egypt.

• 1:52:30Jocko Willink?

  And that was a, that was a rough one. I mean, I, I know, um, in reading through this, you had one of the guys that was with you, guy Matt, Matt, Matthew Power.

• 1:52:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, Matthew.

• 1:52:39Jocko Willink?

  Was a journalist and.

• 1:52:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, he, he, he came out to write about me for a, for a magazine. Um, and, and sadly passed away from heat stroke on the way. And that, that was a real kick at the ass because, you know, it, it brought it home that this was real. This wasn't just some, some trip away. Um, you know, stuff, stuff can go wrong and sadly does go wrong sometimes, but, but it really brought it home. It made me really question the validity of this, you know, what, what was, what I was doing right, you know? Um, but, you know, it happened and I thought I've got to carry on to, I've got to finish this. Um, for his legacy as much as anything else to, to make, if, if I give up now, then what was the whole point in any of it?

• 1:53:21Jocko Willink?

  So, so this was, so a TV crew is with you and they're filming?

• 1:53:26Speaker 01

  Not the whole time. No. I mean, the, the journey, I, at the time when I set off, I didn't know how long this would take. I'd anticipated about a year and, and you know, you, you can't afford to pay a, a crew for a 12 months to follow me around. So they came out four or five times for anywhere between three or four days in a week. So they were only on the ground, probably a total of about a month out of the nine months that I was, I was on my own, all with local guides, you know, I was, I always try and have a local person with me as an accompaniment. But places like Sudan, they couldn't even get in because they weren't issuing, issuing journalist visas. So I was on my own for, for like two months in Sudan.

• 1:54:03Jocko Willink?

  Well, how many miles were you doing a day?

• 1:54:05Speaker 01

  Um, so I started doing probably, you know, 10 miles a day in, in places like Rwanda where it's quite hilly. Um, but when I was really into my stride in, in the desert in Sudan, I mean, it was hot, it was sort of August, September time. With, with 120 degrees in the desert, but probably averaging 45 to 50 kilometers, so 30 miles a day.

• 1:54:30Jocko Willink?

  And then this TV show, this is a TV show that eventually?

• 1:54:33Speaker 01

  Eventually, no, it is a show. It's a four-part series, Walking the Nile, which then aired in the UK and in the States and globally, and it was a huge success, far more than I'd ever anticipated. But became a bestseller and yeah, it changed my life. You know, I suddenly wasn't homeless anymore.

• 1:54:54Jocko Willink?

  When, when the, is it like on Netflix? Where do you watch it?

• 1:54:57Speaker 01

  It was on Discovery Channel in the US. It was on Channel Four in the UK, but you know, you can still find it, find it online. Yeah. Still out there.

• 1:55:04Jocko Willink?

  Did you feel like these bastards that filmed it only came on this thing for like three weeks and I was out there for nine months?

• 1:55:10Speaker 01

  Well, we all became friends and actually to this day, like Neil, who was the guy who originally inspired me to do this for TV. We're still, you know, best buddies and we still, you know, I've now set up my own production company. So I make shows for other people and for myself as well. And he's on the team. So, um, so yeah, we, we all became very close. I mean, you tend to when you're in those sorts of circumstances. I mean, we, we were in South Sudan, in the middle of a war zone, you know, it was, uh, I mean, they weren't there at this time. It was just, it was just me, but, um.

• 1:55:38Jocko Willink?

  I was gonna say, cause you become close and then they're like, hey, I'm out. I'm going back to England for two months.

• 1:55:43Speaker 01

  Well, all the exciting, all the exciting things happened when they weren't there. I mean, we were in a place called Bore. This was during the, um, just the, uh, the sort of, uh, there's a big, big civil war happening in South Sudan. It was, um, they'd just got the new country, but there's still a lot of tribal fighting. I turned up in this town called Bore. Uh, the same morning that 60 members of a tribe had been murdered inside a, inside the United Nations Refugee Camp. Um, the, the whole thing was kicking off. I found myself on top of a, you know, this bombed out hotel with the rebels approaching on one side. You know, tracer fire going over heads. There was mortars landing nearby and the only alternative, apart from watching the fireworks display was climbing down the ladder into the river Nile, which was full with crocodiles.

• 1:56:24Speaker 01

  So it was, it was a pretty hairy time and lots of things, you know, like I said, can and do go wrong, but turns out that makes for good TV.

• 1:56:35Jocko Willink?

  Then you, so you get done with that, you, you got a place to live now, you're kind of going in a different direction as far as financially.

• 1:56:45Jocko Willink?

  Uh, but now you gotta start plotting on things like, are you thinking to yourself, all right, I gotta one up myself?

• 1:56:51Speaker 01

  Well, it came pretty quickly, you know, the, the show was successful. Um, I was then asked, you know, literally a couple of months later, where's next? And of course people want bigger and better. I thought, well, I've just walked the entire length of the River Nile. I mean, what's bigger and better than that? So I thought, well, what I'm gonna do is I don't wanna be a one-hit wonder or a sort of flash in the pan. I need to think the long game. So I, I sort of squared it away in my own mind, the kind of journeys that I wanted to do, the kind of places that I wanted to visit. And I wrote down sort of my values, the, the things that I will not move away from. And it was actually going back to my degree, doing my degree at university. I said, I'm gonna, I'm gonna visit places that hold a genuine interest.

• 1:57:34Speaker 01

  Um, because at this stage I was getting all sorts of offers to go and build, you know, sort of log cabins in, in, in the woods in Alaska and do fishing shows and do cooking shows, all of which are great and interesting. But if I was to actually see this as a long-term career, I need to sort of carve my own niche. And so, um, I, I thought by doing journeys, either on foot or certainly at the slowest pace into places that have got a bit of a bad reputation. There's a, there's an interesting way of shining a spotlight on places that really need it. So I thought, why not pick a geographical feature? I, the Himalayas seem the next obvious choice, the biggest mountain range in the world, Mount Everest,

• 1:58:12Speaker 01

  and, and walk the length of that. So I thought I'm gonna start, uh, at the place that, place very close to my heart, Afghanistan, in the Pamir Mountains and walk all the way to the Tibetan Plateau. And that was another journey of two and a half, three thousand miles, and that took about six months as well. So that was the next big journey, which happened 12 months later. And then ever since then, I've been doing one big journey pretty much every year since then.

• 1:58:33Jocko Willink?

  Are you going solo, were you solo when you walked the Nile?

• 1:58:36Speaker 01

  Uh, well, like I said, I always have a, a local guide. They would, they would change over depending on which country I was in. So I was the only one to do the entire.

• 1:58:43Jocko Willink?

  What about the Himalayas solo?

• 1:58:45Speaker 01

  Uh, again.

• 1:58:46Jocko Willink?

  Other than guides.

• 1:58:47Speaker 01

  Local guides, yeah. And the crew would fly out and meet me along the way to, to film what they thought were the, the bankers and then. But it, you know, it's always the way that the most interesting stuff happens when you're on your, either on your own or, or in a very small crew. Cause the moment you've got a car with a, with a crew there. Things are not quite the same. People sort of close a bit and they're not as open. So, uh, a lot of the interesting stuff happens, um, you know, when, when you're unaccompanied, um, which is what happened when I was in Nepal and my car has, I was the one time, is the, the irony of a walking expedition is the one time. Um, that I decided to get in a taxi because I was told I couldn't camp in it, in this particular village and I had to move on to the next. Um, that was when I had a pretty big accident.

• 1:59:26Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Talk, talk us through, you write about it in the book. Talk us through that one.

• 1:59:30Speaker 01

  So it was, um, I'll never forget it. It was the 19th of August, 2015. Um, I was, I was in a town called Musikot. With my local guide Binod and actually my brother who'd flown out to meet me a day before to join me for a week of what was his annual holiday. Um.

• 1:59:49Jocko Willink?

  I know the story, so I can just imagine your brother. Yeah, cool. You want to go on some vacation?

• 1:59:52Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, um, so we're in the mountains and it was just, it was almost nighttime. Uh, it's getting dark and most of the time, you know, I'd, I'd already been walking for three months here. Um, we'd just camp in the villages or stay in locals' houses, whatever, whatever it took. But there was a Maoist insurrection in this part of Nepal. So the communists were, were taking over villages and they didn't take kindly to, to foreigners. Cause you know, they, they just said, and they weren't aggressive. They just said, look, you can't stay here. Go to the town and then you can come back tomorrow and carry on your walk, but you're not, you can't stay in this village because we're having an internal dispute. So we said, fine. So we got a, a local taxi, got in it, drove over the mountain pass. And just as we were going over the crest of the cliff, the brakes failed.

• 2:00:36Speaker 01

  So the car goes careering down this, this, this, this road and unable to slow down, hits the side of the wall and bounces straight off this, this cliff top. And when I say cliff top, it was, uh, it was a huge fall, straight into the forest below, um, about a hundred and fifty meters, which what's that, four hundred and fifty feet to the bottom of the gorge and somehow, you know, again, thank you, my lucky stars.

• 2:01:02Jocko Willink?

  Do you have a seatbelt on?

• 2:01:02Speaker 01

  Uh, there were no seatbelts in this car. I mean, it's a, it's a

• 2:01:05Jocko Willink?

  I guess the airbags weren't popping out either.

• 2:01:07Speaker 01

  No airbags.

• 2:01:08Jocko Willink?

  What kind of car was it?

• 2:01:09Speaker 01

  It was a Mahindra Jeep, so it was a metal frame, thankfully, not some, not some cheap stuff, but it was, yeah, it was a straight off the edge and, and that was me. I thought that this is where I

• 2:01:19Jocko Willink?

  How long, how long were you no brake rolling down the hill?

• 2:01:22Speaker 01

  Difficult to tell. I think probably 10 seconds. I mean, the driver was trying to bounce it against the wall to, to slow it down, but you can imagine these roads, it's just a dirt track, sheer, sheer sort of rock face on the one hand, and then a drop off, no, no barriers, nothing like that. And it was just a completely pitch of pitch black, middle of the night. Uh, and that was it. I thought it was, I thought it was a goner and, um, it was almost comedic in the, the sense that it, it didn't, it literally flew off the edge and we were airborne for what felt like an eternity. It was probably just a few seconds, but it was the only part of the, uh, the, the roadside where there were no trees because it was forested, this, this bank. Um, but we went off the bit where there was obviously a river running through, so it just kept on going.

• 2:02:06Speaker 01

  And when we finally did hit the deck, it bounced and rolled and probably rolled 10 times all the way to the bottom of the valley. And somehow I stayed in the vehicle, the driver and, and this random other, um, guy that he picked up, a local, had been thrown through the windscreen somewhere up on the mountain. We stayed in the car and yeah, made it all the way to the bottom. At which point I thought I'd lost my arm because I couldn't feel it or see it. Um, I managed to

• 2:02:33Jocko Willink?

  When the car settles.

• 2:02:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, when it finally settles.

• 2:02:36Jocko Willink?

  Are you conscious this whole time?

• 2:02:38Speaker 01

  Conscious, conscious the whole time. Yeah.

• 2:02:40Jocko Willink?

  What do you say to your brother besides, bro, I'm sorry?

• 2:02:43Speaker 01

  Well, it was, I can thank my brother because

• 2:02:48Speaker 01

  When I, when I sort of figured out where I was, I crawled out the car, thought I'd lost my arm. My first instinct was to go find my arm. You know that scene on the beach in Saving Private Ryan where he's looking, holding his arm, looking slightly dazed and confused? That was me in this car. I went, I couldn't find it. Then I realised it was still attached, but I couldn't feel it. It was pointing the wrong way. It was completely, I mean, you can see the scar there.

• 2:03:10Speaker 01

  I had to sort of snap it back into place. That's when the pain started. And I think it was me screaming that woke my brother up. And he was relatively uninjured. I mean, he'd been bashed around, but he hadn't got anything broken. So I couldn't move. I was in such pain. Binod, the guide, he was pretty much unconscious. And Pete, my brother, he, he came over and, you know, he, he's done, he'd done a few trips, but nothing like this, you know, he, he was working in finance, you know, he sort of.

• 2:03:39Jocko Willink?

  He's back in finance now.

• 2:03:41Speaker 01

  Well, no, it's, the interesting thing was Pete rescued us. He went and shouted for help. Luckily, the, the sound of the car crashing had woken up some local villagers a mile away and they'd come to investigate. Probably took about an hour maybe for, for enough locals to come to carry us out. But then they had to carry us a mile through the jungle to the local village.

• 2:04:00Jocko Willink?

  You weren't bleeding?

• 2:04:01Speaker 01

  Uh, I mean, I wasn't bleeding, but.

• 2:04:03Jocko Willink?

  You weren't like bleeding, like you weren't life threatening blood loss?

• 2:04:06Speaker 01

  My arm was just completely mangled. Um, the, the driver sadly was in a very different position. He'd broken everything, his body, his neck, his, you know, he was somewhere up the mountain, so I had to go and find him. We were taken to a very small clinic in the local village. And when I say small, I mean, there's like chickens running around the water. This was basic stuff. But luckily they.

• 2:04:25Jocko Willink?

  Yes, that qualifies as basic. When you roll into the hospital and there's chickens, yep.

• 2:04:29Speaker 01

  They, um, but they had morphine thankfully. So that, that, you know, took away some of the pain. But yeah, my brother, he, he coordinated the rescue. It took three days though, because it was the rainy season. We couldn't get a helicopter in. The roads were all washed away. Um, so it took three days for a helicopter to come. So it was a, it was a trying time, to say the least. And, and I think my brother was possibly regretting his, uh, his holiday destination. But, um, but yeah, he, he was a real trooper throughout the, the whole experience. And, um, yeah. That that really disrupted the trip a little bit, but I had to fly back to the UK for surgery because they couldn't do it in Kathmandu because it was just after the 2015 earthquake, which had screwed all the hospitals.

• 2:05:08Speaker 01

  So I went back to the UK, had surgery, they fixed my arm, but then I couldn't give up. This was my, I'd chosen this. This was my career. I wasn't going to give up. So I, whatever it was, forty five days later, I flew back out to Nepal, went back to the car, still there in the jungle, rusting over and carried on walking for another three months.

• 2:05:28Jocko Willink?

  The TV show came out.

• 2:05:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, they came out. They enjoyed that bit. They liked filming in hospital, getting surgery and all the rest of it.

• 2:05:35Jocko Willink?

  And and then this becomes another TV show. And did you write another book about this?

• 2:05:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, wrote a book, yeah, called Walking the Himalayas. Keep it simple. And and then they, of course, they said, what's next? So I had to come up with another one.

• 2:05:49Jocko Willink?

  You're painting yourself into a corner, man.

• 2:05:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 2:05:52Jocko Willink?

  So what was the next one?

• 2:05:53Speaker 01

  Walking the Americas. So I wanted to do something in Central America. I'd had this girlfriend, this Mexican girlfriend, who, so I knew Mexico quite well. But I was fascinated by the ancient Mayan civilization. I wanted to go to see places like Honduras and Guatemala and in Colombia because I knew that would have a bit of edge. And so I decided to walk from where the Spanish first landed in the Yucatan Peninsula, give it a bit of historical context, all the way to South America, across the Darien Gap, which is probably one of the most remote and fearsome stretches of jungle anywhere in the world. So that was another six months, another 2,000 miles of walking. Again, lots of scrapes there as well.

• 2:06:35Jocko Willink?

  And this is the same thing. TV crews coming out, joining you for four or five days here and there. Wherever they think there's going to be the most mayhem is when they're showing up. You're carrying a freaking backpack with like a water bottle.

• 2:06:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:06:48Jocko Willink?

  And fifty bucks.

• 2:06:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, and off we went and that was a really, that was actually a really enjoyable journey because the guy that came with me, my guide for that one was actually a guy who I'd known for a number of years called Alberto, who was the guy that got me into photography in the first place and he'd lived in Mexico. He'd never walked anywhere in his life, anywhere. And he certainly wasn't a professional guide, he was a studio photographer, he was far more at home sitting on yachts with supermodels. But he had just got divorced and was looking for an adventure. So I said, look mate, come with me, we're gonna go and have some fun. And off we went and we walked for, yeah, for six months through all these random countries. And we went through the ganglands in Honduras, met, you know, the sort of the cartels along the way. We've sort of had meetings with all sorts of gangsters. It was, that was

• 2:07:36Speaker 01

  a wild trip as well.

• 2:07:38Jocko Willink?

  What about a GoPro?

• 2:07:40Speaker 01

  I, so I had this little flip camera. The interesting thing is, actually, you'd think sometimes that it would be tricky to film in these places, but actually having a camera does open up conversations. People are like, ah, hang on, I want my photograph taken, or I want you, I want to tell you my story. And particularly in places that don't get many tourists, because if you go to touristy places, people aren't that, they're not that interested in getting the photos taken or telling you their story. But if you go to Honduras, I mean, there's one story from there, we were in a town called San Pedro Sula, which, other than Ciudad Juarez, I think was the murder capital of the world. This is where the two main cartels, you've got MS-13 and Barrio-18, these two rival

• 2:08:23Speaker 01

  gangs that do pretty bad things to each other, are based, they've got their own, you know, neighborhoods. And we wanted to walk straight through the city, and the only way to do so was to cross between these two ganglands. But of course, the police and the army were like, look, we don't go in there, you can't rely on us for backing. So we asked around and Alberto was sort of doing all the translation and we eventually found this street pastor who said, look, I know the gang leaders are both of these guys, I can probably get you in if you want. I said, okay, well, ask the question. So he got his, he got two phones out actually, and he called the leaders of both gangs and had them on speakerphone next to each other, which is bizarre. Both of these leaders were both in jail, right? Because

• 2:09:03Speaker 01

  they were. And he got them, and he got them both on speakerphone and said, look, I've got these two gringos, I mean, he wasn't, Alberto's a Mexican, but he called us both gringos, said, look, they want to walk through your, through your turf. You know, will you let them? And to my surprise, both these leaders like, yeah, absolutely no problem. You know, as long as you give a fair and honest representation of our story, we want to tell you our story and why we have these gangs. But he said, just give us 24 hours because we're just going to go and clean up the graffiti and pick up the trash from the streets. They wanted to show the best side of their gang wars. And it was the most bizarre experience, but we went through these areas escorted by these kids, 10, 12 year olds.

• 2:09:46Speaker 01

  We're covered in tattoos with pistols down their jeans. And they showed us the Casa Locas, the crazy house where they torture each other. And they said, this is where we killed, you know, this person, this is where we hung. It was like tragic stuff, but in the most surreal setting. And it was a very bizarre experience to go and see that. And we saw a guy shot at the side of the street, you know, just in, just, yeah, from these gang wars. So, and I'm not into voyeurism. I don't go there to sort of glamorize any of this. It's trying to show what, you know, what the struggle is like for a lot of people living in these circumstances. And not shy away from some of those really difficult but compelling stories.

• 2:10:29Jocko Willink?

  Now, did you have a film crew there when you did that section?

• 2:10:32Speaker 01

  They had come out and we had a real struggle with the channel to sort of allow us to go into these places. Because you can imagine the lawyers back home, they're sort of like, oh, this is too sketchy. We're not sure about this.

• 2:10:44Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, plus people with brains back home, they're like, bro.

• 2:10:49Speaker 01

  But, you know, I think a lot of it was down to the fact that we'd found this guy who, he wasn't a cowboy. He was like, I live, I've lived in these, on these neighborhoods all my life.

• 2:11:00Jocko Willink?

  So did the camera crew come through or not?

• 2:11:02Speaker 01

  So they came, yeah, they came.

• 2:11:03Jocko Willink?

  They did. So all that footage, and so what's that show called?

• 2:11:07Speaker 01

  Walking the Americas.

• 2:11:08Jocko Willink?

  Walking the Americas. And how many hours is one of these?

• 2:11:12Speaker 01

  The series. Each one's, I mean, The Nile was four episodes, four hours. Himalayas was five. I think Walking the Americas is five as well. Yeah.

• 2:11:23Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so now you get back from that and you gotta step it up again, right?

• 2:11:27Speaker 01

  Okay, so the next one.

• 2:11:28Jocko Willink?

  Basically, this is what you're getting into.

• 2:11:30Speaker 01

  Going back to my sort of original point of going back to places that I'd studied. My studies at university had mainly been about, you know, the Middle East, about places where the old British Empire had had a legacy, or places in, you know, in the news now, current affairs. And obviously, Russia, Iran were both pretty high up on the agenda. This was back in 2017, Putin sort of just getting re-elected, all this sort of stuff. So I wanted to go and explore that region more. The Caucasus as a historical region is fascinating. So I thought, why not do a journey from Europe into Asia, over the Caucasus Mountains, from Russia into Iran? We called that one Crossing the Wild Frontier. So we started on the Black Sea, finished on the Caspian Sea, and going through places like Chechnya,

• 2:12:12Speaker 01

  Dagestan, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and then finished in Iran. Getting travel permits to go into those places was was actually quite tricky. But, you know, we had to apply to Russia and the first thing they ask on your visa application is, have you or have you ever served in a foreign military? So they dig deep into your background. But thankfully, they, you know, they let me in. The same with Iran. I mean, getting into Iran was a tricky one because initially, they were like, no way. We don't let, you know, especially not from the UK, we're not friends right now.

• 2:12:45Speaker 01

  Eventually, through a contact, I was told that I could meet a person from the Iranian embassy, but not at the embassy. It was just a very mysterious lady who wouldn't give me her name with sunglasses, met me in a cafe in in South Kensington in London and said, what do you want? I said, there's a link to all my shows, go and see for yourself. I gave her a copy of my books and she said, okay, I'll go away and read them. And the next day, it was on the president, you know, the president's or prime minister's desk of Iran and I got approved a visa.

• 2:13:17Speaker 01

  And I think what they liked is the fact that I'm I'm not there to do all this propaganda, but I'm not shying away from the hard stories either. But I'm not, I'm certainly not there to do investigative journalism with an agenda-based sort of approach. I'm there to show what life is like for normal people. And and they let me in. And so I did this amazing trip through places that you you just don't get a fair understanding of, especially places like Chechnya.

• 2:13:43Speaker 01

  And and that was a really, really fascinating journey. Thankfully, nothing went particularly wrong on that one. I just got a really great understanding of what what the region was like.

• 2:13:51Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and I think, you know, a lot of times when people ask me, and I was just asked this, I was getting interviewed the other day. And, you know, people start asking about, well, the war in Iraq, should we have been there and all this? Was it, is it the moral right thing to do? And a lot of times what I try and do in those situations is I try and bring things down to a very granular level of what it was like on the ground. And what I, what I like about what you're, what you're doing is you're going, I guess the word is beneath the politics. I don't know if that's going to sound right, but you're going beneath the political atmosphere to the actual other human beings that are living their lives, that are, you know, trying to earn a living, trying to raise their family, trying to

• 2:14:37Jocko Willink?

  build their future. And there's so much commonality that gets missed. And that's, that's often what I also say about Iraq, you know, it's like I would kick in the door to a building and there'd be, you know, a family in there and they, the dad's trying to build a business of selling whatever dates and the mom's, you know, trying to sow stuff that she can sell in the neighborhood and the kids are wanting to play soccer. And they're just normal people. And yet you can never, you can never see that when you, when it's all screened out by the political viewpoint. So what I, what's is clicking for me now, and I'm starting to understand is that you're going beneath that level

• 2:15:15Jocko Willink?

  in talking to the people on the ground and getting a real look and probably I'm assuming exposing all these commonalities that we have as human beings with other human beings.

• 2:15:27Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I mean, that was never an outright intention. It's just sort of happened throughout these journeys is, is trying to find out what, what does unite us and actually trying to find those human stories. And then actually there's a lot of positivity and what I've found is the sense of hospitality. You know, has been overwhelming throughout and that I've seen that in in some of the places that you wouldn't expect it.

• 2:15:50Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and even even, you know, I started off joke joking in the early part of this, you know, no one would ever invite me in their house. And then as I'm sitting here listening to you talk and I've been to, I mean, obviously, I've been all over the world and been to all kinds of different countries. And it's the same thing when you actually, when you actually get past that get but underneath that political vision that we have of a place. There's, you know, I've had people treat me unbelievably well all over the world. And that's why you have to get, you have to, you have to make those human connections with other people. And you'll realize, oh, yeah, they'll they'll help you out. I mean, like you said, most people, they'll they'll give you some water if you need some water, they'll pull over the side of the road and help you if you need it. That's absolutely. So that's

• 2:16:34Jocko Willink?

  that's a very enlightening.

• 2:16:36Speaker 01

  I'll never forget when I was on the Nile, this was back in 2014, I was in Sudan, and it was, this was a bit with with there's no crew there was it was me with with a local guy called Moes. And it was getting very hot, we couldn't carry enough water just to survive. So we had to go and buy some camels from the local market. Now, I don't know how to keep a camel, you know, keep a camel going. So we thought we'd better employ a couple of Bedouin camel handlers to come with us. So for two months, we trekked across the entire Sahara following the River Nile. There was one bit of the Nile where we had to go sort of slightly into the desert because there was some security issues by the by the Nile. So we were going through these villages and everyone was so hospitable, people were saying, come in, have a, you know, have some of our water. And it was almost, it was so overwhelming, we

• 2:17:21Speaker 01

  were getting slowed down because we needed to reach the Egyptian border before Ramadan because that was the that was the basis for which these two camel handlers said that we'll come with you, but only for 50 days because we're going to get back to our families. So we that was the deadline. That was the hard stop. So off we went and we were getting further and further behind schedule because of the hospitality. Cause people say, ah, come and teach my kids English and this, that and the other. So we, my two camel handlers were on the verge of revolt at this stage. So we're like, we're, we're going, we're going home if you're gonna, you know, mess around doing your silly filming and this, that. So we came to an agreement. We said, okay, what we'll do is day on, day off. We'll, one day we'll go through the villages where we'll meet people and talk and film and this, you know, all that.

• 2:18:04Speaker 01

  And then we'll do another day walking in the desert, avoiding the villages and camping out in the desert. And there, Bill, we can cover more ground. But there was, there was one occasion where we'd, we'd done this, we're in the middle of the desert. About a mile away from the nearest village, we set up our, our camp, made a little fire. And the local villages a mile away must have seen the flickering of the flames in the desert. And it wasn't long before a crowd of men came, came out to investigate. They said, what are you doing? And we said, well, we explained that we were trying to avoid their hospitality in the most polite terms possible. And they said, they were getting really upset by this. I said, no, you must come. And we said, no. And one guy stormed off and he came back half an hour later. He carried his bed on his head and he said, if you're not going to come into my house, my home is coming to you.

• 2:18:47Speaker 01

  And that, I think, really demonstrates the, the incredible hospitality. I can't remember, can't ever imagine that happening back in London if a Sudanese man was sort of passing down the street. But it's, it's moments like that, that really do kind of restore your faith in humankind.

• 2:19:04Jocko Willink?

  But you still have to step it up a little bit. Seems like we're just getting, we're just getting more and more hostile environments. And so now it's like 2017, 2018. The freaking war in Iraq and Syria with ISIS is just.

• 2:19:18Speaker 01

  Flaring up.

• 2:19:18Jocko Willink?

  Flaring up. So of course you're like a moth drawn, drawn to the fire. So that's the next one, right?

• 2:19:26Speaker 01

  So I'd always been fascinated by the Middle East. Like I mentioned before, I, in 2003, I, I was in Iraq.

• 2:19:34Jocko Willink?

  I like the way you kick these stories off with, like, I've always been fascinated with, you know, how sharp a shark's teeth could be. Alright, so you got this fascination with the Middle East.

• 2:19:44Speaker 01

  So I'd been there in two thousand and three, which is when I hitchhiked through Baghdad and all this, you know. So I'd wanted to return to Iraq and wanted to see more of the region ever since. And I'd actually, in fact, after the Nile, I pitched the idea of doing a trip around the Arabian Peninsula to the powers that be within TV. And sadly, they said no, they said, one, it's probably too dangerous and two, they didn't feel as though there was sufficient interest. They said, in fact, the word, the exact words were, that's just the realm of current affairs and news. Nobody, nobody's interested in the Middle East as a destination or as a place to find out more about. And I thought that was just a disappointing answer. So you're on, I'd pitched this, you know, after the Himalayas, I pitched it again, they said no, let's do the Americas.

• 2:20:28Speaker 01

  After that, I pitched it again, they said no again. And that just wound me up. So after the Russia to Iran expedition, I was like, I am doing the Middle East, I want to go to Arabia. Come what may, we're the way out of you. So I've pretty much, you know, got told, no, we're not doing it by, by the TV company, by the TV guys. And I said, well, I'm doing it, which didn't, didn't go down well in TV land in the UK. But I decided that was their problem. So I set up my own production company to facilitate this.

• 2:20:56Jocko Willink?

  When you say TV people, these are.

• 2:20:58Speaker 01

  This is the channel.

• 2:20:58Jocko Willink?

  This is the channel.

• 2:20:59Speaker 01

  This is the channel.

• 2:21:00Jocko Willink?

  And, and you're pitching, is it multiple channels that you're pitching to?

• 2:21:03Speaker 01

  No, this is just, this is just one. I was, it wasn't the BBC, it was, it was Channel Four.

• 2:21:08Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:21:08Speaker 01

  Um, they, but you know, it then got syndicated out to Discovery Channel and whoever else wants to buy it internationally.

• 2:21:16Jocko Willink?

  So you're pitching to the people that have made your other shows, hey, let me do this one. And they're like, look.

• 2:21:22Speaker 01

  No.

• 2:21:22Jocko Willink?

  No, not happening. And you just say, alright, cool, I'm doing it anyways.

• 2:21:25Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I wouldn't say I got sacked, but I kind of, they said, okay, well, you're not working with us if that's the case. So I said, okay, that's fine, I'm gonna go and do it. So I set up my own production company and basically self-financed this expedition with a couple of mates, my friend Dave and Simon, who chipped in and going back to that thing about empowering people and bringing people on the team. I said, look, if we all chip in the same amount of cash, we'll take out the same amount of profit at the end of the day. And they said, okay. And these are guys who'd helped me before on shows doing the health and safety. And I got Neil, my, got my, my mate who's the director to come on board. So we basically just clubbed together and off we went. And actually, it freed up so many things because I was getting more and more frustrated with more and more restrictions and limitations on how things were produced and, and actually.

• 2:22:11Speaker 01

  I felt like my creative sort of, my personal creative spirit was being somewhat suppressed a little bit. So I said, okay, I'm gonna give this a go. What's the worst that can happen? So we decided to go and just do this. And, and the idea was to go and look at the Arabian Peninsula and, and all the countries that, that make that up. Um, in the same way, um, not necessarily walking the whole route this time, because there's a lot of empty, empty stretches of desert where not much goes on, but, but certainly hitchhiking and, and, and traveling with locals. So the plan was to start up on the Turkish border with, with Syria up in Rajava and the Kurdish region and basically walk, travel, hitchhike, whatever, all the way around the entire Gulf and then finish up at Lebanon in the, in

• 2:22:55Speaker 01

  the historic city of Biblos, which is the oldest city in the world. Um, and revisit some of these places I'd been to on my earlier travels, including Baghdad and to create Mosul. Now, of course, this was in the, in the height of the war against ISIS. They still weren't defeated in Syria and Iraq. Um, so it was a pretty big challenge. Um, but doing it very light footprint, it was only, there was only ever three of us traveling at once. We, it meant that we could actually go and achieve something that had never been done before, which is actually travel through all these multiple countries. So going through places like Syria, we were embedded with the, the Kurdish militia. Um, in Iraq, we managed to join a, a group called the Hashid, um, the, the PMF, the Popular Mobilization

• 2:23:37Speaker 01

  Forces, who are sometimes the bad guys, but these are the guys fighting against ISIS on this occasion, but they're also Iranian backed militias. Um, I was embedded with them on the final Haider offensive, which is the final battle against ISIS in Iraq. Um, on the front line, I mean, that was, that was something else. I mean, it was, it was an entire Afghan tour in three days. I mean, it was, it was intense. Um.

• 2:24:01Jocko Willink?

  So now you guys are, now you guys are the camera crew?

• 2:24:05Speaker 01

  We are the camera crew.

• 2:24:06Jocko Willink?

  It's just the three of you?

• 2:24:07Speaker 01

  It's just three of us, yeah.

• 2:24:08Jocko Willink?

  So now you got cameras rolling all the time. And I watched some of your, some of the stuff that's on YouTube.

• 2:24:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:24:12Jocko Willink?

  I watched you rolling up to that offensive and the guys like, all right, lunch break. And there's some, you know, having worked with Iraqi soldiers a bunch. I was like, mm, I know what's going on there. I know what that feels like.

• 2:24:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:24:25Jocko Willink?

  But, but, like, what was, what was the proximity to the fighting there? Were you getting right in it?

• 2:24:30Speaker 01

  Oh, no, right in it, yeah. I mean, it was, it was, it was quite a bizarre experience because we, we managed to hitch a lift to the front line where these sort of, uh, that, you know, the, the Iraqi volunteers, these weren't the Iraqi army. These were literally the guys too old or too young to join the, to join the military. And they were fighting on their home turf. They were fighting their neighbors. So these were mainly sheer militiamen fighters who'd volunteered mainly to come out of retirement to basically go and, you know, kick ISIS off the, off the, off the land. So we were rolling up not, I mean, they had about 12 main battle tanks, but mostly these guys were in flip flops and Toyota pickups, you know, with a, with a 50 car mounted on the, on, on the back and, and driving in a straight line, no tact, no tactics, no strategy, literally taxi to the front line. So we got a taxi to the front line, said, well, drop us off here, hitched a ride on

• 2:25:15Speaker 01

  a tank, just jumped on a tank and just drove. The main, the point vehicle was a bulldozer with this Iraqi dude with a cowboy hat. I mean, it was absolutely crazy.

• 2:25:25Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 2:25:25Speaker 01

  Smoking a cigar as the bullets were pinging off the front of this bulldozer. And it was just a straight line waiting to get ambushed and we got ambushed and, you know, you could see the black flags of ISIS in these villages and we just drive up to them, spread out, bomb the shit out of it and then go in there. And we were in the mix, you know, right on the front line, filming everything and liberating these villages and capturing ISIS. We caught three ISIS commanders. I mean, I've, I've still got, I've still got one of the flags at home, actually, that I took with me. Um, but it was, it was quite, it was, it felt a very important and historical moment. You know, these, when, when the villages were liberated and they caught the, the command, the ISIS fighters, the women would come out, they'd rip their burkas off and they were thanking these Iraqi volunteers for, for rescuing them.

• 2:26:07Speaker 01

  Some of these women hadn't been outside of their own compound for three years. So it was, it was, it was a very powerful thing to, to be witness to.

• 2:26:16Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, we had a, another guest on and covered another book on here. Um, Holly, who, whose book, Only Cry For The Living, and she interviewed a lot of those women and what they went through. So, you know, liberation was the, the understatement of the year for what was happening to the people inside those villages that were, you know, and cities that were, were run by ISIS. Um, did you?

• 2:26:45Jocko Willink?

  What are you, you're not, I know that you don't carry a weapon when you do this stuff. Were you just wearing body armor?

• 2:26:52Speaker 01

  We managed to pick up some body armor from Bill, you know, just bought some from the local shop and off you go. But yeah, going through the sort of the urban fighting in places like Shakhat, I mean, we were in Mosul. This is a week or two after it had been liberated from ISIS. I mean, there was still a lot of clear operations going on. You've obviously got to be careful, but you know, I've been doing this for long enough to know what to do and what not to do. But at the same time, we wanted to, we wanted to see what was going on because nobody was filming this. You know, the only news reports that were coming out were coming out from Baghdad or Bill. Very few people were getting onto the frontline and actually seeing what life is like on both sides, you know. And we, we, we met these ISIS fighters. We got a camera in their face and that was quite rare.

• 2:27:34Speaker 01

  So it was, it was fascinating to see what was going on and to see the, the reality of life. And, and, and these guys, the volunteers who were fighting, they'd been fighting solidly for three years. So you mentioned the lunch break. I mean, literally in the middle of the battle, the, the, the, the truck turned up with, with the chicken sandwiches on, on the back and, and people just stopped. They're like, well, this, the fight's not going anywhere and everyone just sat down and, and, and had their chicken sandwich and then carried on. And it was, it was a kind of bizarre experience, but it was no different than being on, on exercise in Salisbury Plain with the, with the British Army, really.

• 2:28:08Jocko Willink?

  As you, as you wrap up getting, like, how, how did you, how did you decide it's time to move on? Was it when, was it like Mosul was now pretty much done? Was it, what, what, what made you decide, all right, we can, we can move on now?

• 2:28:20Speaker 01

  So on the last day, I mean, we'd been attached with these guys. We'd, we'd seen Mosul. We'd been attached to the, to the, to the, to the frontline fighting units for, for a couple of days. There was one guy, I mean, it kind of, it, it all sunk in. I mean, one, we'd, we'd kind of got enough fighting footage and we didn't want this show to be entirely about the fighting. But, but two, I met this one guy, we'd been told we must meet him. His name was Abu Tassin. Now Abu Tassin, his nickname was the Hawkeye. He was Iraq's most feared sniper. He'd been fighting, you know, he was sixty five years old. He'd fought in every war since nineteen seventy three against the Israelis. He'd fought in Bosnia and Czechia. He'd fought in ninety one in the Gulf against, you know, the Americans.

• 2:29:02Speaker 01

  He'd fought in two thousand and three against the British in Basra. He'd fought in two thousand and seven against you, probably in, in, in Iraq. Um, in Fallujah rather, and, um, and he'd come out of retirement to fight against ISIS.

• 2:29:14Jocko Willink?

  So is he a Shia guy?

• 2:29:15Speaker 01

  He's a Shia guy, yeah. And he was literally Iraq's most feared warrior. I mean, there'd been books written about him. And he was there fighting on his motorbike with his big, you know, six foot sniper rifle. And he ca- he agreed to speak to me. He didn't normally do journalist interviews, particularly not with, with, with Brits, that's for sure. Um, but he agreed to speak to me, sort of soldier to soldier, when I sort of told him I was in the, in the Paris. And he said, well, I've, you know, probably killed some of your friends, as long as you don't mind that. And it was a big decision to go and sit with this guy who had been not my personal enemy, but an enemy against my colleagues and friends. But you kind of have to take that emotion out of it. And ultimately, I was in his country, listening to his story.

• 2:30:01Jocko Willink?

  And by the way, now he was fighting against an enemy of.

• 2:30:03Speaker 01

  Of an en- yeah, so he was.

• 2:30:05Jocko Willink?

  The British and of the Americans and of, and of humanity.

• 2:30:09Speaker 01

  Sure. So we were sat around the campfire and he told me a story. He killed four hundred odd people. Um, he was quite open about the fact that he was against, you know, us, the coalition invading his country. But we were on the right side of history this time around and he, he thought that what he was doing was the right thing, which was to, to rid his land of ISIS, which he was convinced was a creation of the, the, the chaos of, of, of, you know, ten years of war. And I think it was that moment that I thought, okay, enough's enough. I've heard, I've heard the story. We should move on. And it was probably about time, actually, because sadly, seven days later, he was himself killed by ISIS on that same battle. On the last day of the war against ISIS. So there was some sad poetry in that.

• 2:30:52Speaker 01

  But, um, we left, we left that behind and carried on the journey and, and continued around the Gulf and. And like I say, I didn't want this journey to be just about the conflict because that's what we associate so much with with the region. But to then jump out of Iraq and then be in southern Iraq, actually, we were in amongst the marshes around Nassiriyah and Basra. You know, this is the birthplace of civilization, Garden of Eden and so on. And to be in amongst the marsh Arabs, I don't know if you served down there with with these, these, these very traditional tribes who literally, you know, live amongst the marshes in these, in these ancient ways of living in the huts and they're called the mudheef and, you know, fishing and

• 2:31:36Speaker 01

  farming buffalo. I mean, it's like going back to biblical times. And it was that stark contrast, you know, which was to me really, really interesting. And I wanted to give that balance. And then to go from there into Kuwait and then to the to Dubai, where you suddenly got these skyscrapers and Friday boozy brunches. I wanted to show that whole spectrum of what life is like in in this region. And it was some really stark contrast. And to get your head into that and around that was was often quite difficult.

• 2:32:04Jocko Willink?

  I mean, Dubai is just crazy. It's crazy. Like, especially when you talk about that contrast between Mosul, completely destroyed and just a living hell for everyone that's up there. And then you go to Dubai, which is

• 2:32:17Speaker 01

  Just

• 2:32:18Jocko Willink?

  I mean,

• 2:32:19Speaker 01

  Sodom and Gomorrah.

• 2:32:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, the entire city's been built in like 20 years or something like that. And it's just, everything is brand new and to the highest standards of luxury in everything. It's like, you can't get more of a stark contrast.

• 2:32:35Speaker 01

  It was a huge one. I mean, I actually quite enjoyed going and it was a nice break, having been in on this war zone for the

• 2:32:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you probably got confused when you saw like a bed.

• 2:32:45Speaker 01

  But that's what I wanted to show. I wanted to show these, these really stark differences and this traditional way of life, the Bedouin, you know, I studied all about Lawrence of Arabia and the old sort of Arabist explorers, people like Wilfrid Desijer, who crossed the Empty Quarter. And so to then go from there into Oman, which is a beautiful country, you've got these amazing endless sand dunes and very traditional way of life there. And then into Yemen, again, a country that was incredibly difficult to get into, but we somehow managed it. It was, yeah, shown a fair representation.

• 2:33:20Jocko Willink?

  You get done with this trip and then you go back. So how long does it take? When you get done with the trip, how long does it take for the production to have happen? And then what did you do in this particular case? Did you now have to sell what you made?

• 2:33:30Speaker 01

  Well, exactly, yeah. So with this one, you know, I'd got my own team on the case. So we were editing on the go. I mean, we're kind of sending the rushes back and then we got an edit, you know, got an edit suite and we were doing on the go. So I think it ended up being, I think we got back from the trip in February, March, and it was it was on TV sort of two or three months later.

• 2:33:49Jocko Willink?

  Who'd you, did you go back to Channel Four?

• 2:33:51Speaker 01

  They would, no, no, they they wouldn't take it.

• 2:33:53Jocko Willink?

  On principle, they said, we don't want to talk to you.

• 2:33:55Speaker 01

  But we sold it to Discovery Channel in the UK.

• 2:33:58Jocko Willink?

  Oh, you're like, what?

• 2:34:00Speaker 01

  And then it got it got shortlisted for a broadcast award. So, yeah, that was that was a real sense of, not just vindication, but you know, it was it was a very, very good documentary. And for me, it took it back to the the organic, authentic roots of what my journeys ultimately are.

• 2:34:17Jocko Willink?

  And is is that one also like four or five hours, four or five shows?

• 2:34:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, that one's five episodes as well.

• 2:34:24Jocko Willink?

  Were you profitable? Did you make money?

• 2:34:25Speaker 01

  We it washed its face just about. Didn't make that much money on it, but it was worth it just because it set the bar very, very high.

• 2:34:36Jocko Willink?

  So you get done with that one. Well, how do you measure success on those in terms of? I mean, is it view like, hey, a YouTube video gets whatever, a million views? How are you judging success or if it's hitting the people right? Or is it just feedback from people telling you, hey, that was outstanding? I never understood the Middle East like that. Now I do. Thank you. Is it? How are you getting your your gratification?

• 2:35:01Speaker 01

  So for me, the validation, it's not just about ratings because obviously that's a lot to do with the the media landscape and the current politics of what's going on. It's changed enormously just in in the seven or eight years that I've been doing this, you know, in terms of TV wise, you know, it's changed enormously with with the amount of streaming platforms out there, the sheer, you know, Just difference in demographics. So people aren't watching TV live anymore. They're watching on their laptops. They're watching on their mobiles. So and there's so many new new SVODs out there anyway. So it's very difficult to sort of gauge in terms of ratings. A lot of the streaming platforms don't even publish their viewing figures. So I don't think for and that for me was never really as important as just doing what felt authentic

• 2:35:45Speaker 01

  and and true to my own belief really. And if there's a bit of feedback that's good and positive, then great. I mean, I've, you know, of course, when you go to controversial places, you're going to get a bit of flack from different groups, you know, you didn't show my tribe and what we do, or especially if you go to like the whole Israel Palestine question, or if you're traveling in somewhere like Iran, you know, it's difficult. It's difficult to tell everyone's story. You're never going to succeed in that. But for me, it was actually the the slightly indirect feedback when when you get the head of a charity saying, thank you, you know, we've been trying to put our country on the map for the last 20 years and just one of your episodes has doubled our

• 2:36:27Speaker 01

  revenue or something like that. Or you get individuals who call you and say, you inspired me to quit my job in finance and and and you know, go and build a clinic in Nepal, whatever it might be. And as a result, you know, I've I've personally been asked to to be an ambassador for probably hundreds of hundreds of charities. I'm currently ambassador for about 20 or so charities. And it's things like that that make it all worthwhile for me. So I'm not really that bothered about the ratings. Obviously, it's nice to get good feedback and it's nice to keep getting asked to do these journeys, but it's hard now to do bigger and better when I feel as I've kind of done most of the journeys that I've really wanted to. So I'm just trying to think about I've like, how do I diversify or stay true to my true to my sort of core beliefs,

• 2:37:11Speaker 01

  but also still enjoy what I'm doing and still have fun and and and yeah, try and find something that's that's appropriate and and useful.

• 2:37:20Jocko Willink?

  Did the so the next one was walking with the elephants. Is that right? That come after?

• 2:37:25Speaker 01

  That came after, yeah. So eventually they came back. They came back with us sort of saying, oh, can you make another one for us?

• 2:37:31Jocko Willink?

  So you kind of won strategically.

• 2:37:33Speaker 01

  So I won in the end, I guess, in that way. So yeah, they came back and said, we want to we want to do something else. And I've always been fascinated by conservation.

• 2:37:42Jocko Willink?

  Once again, there he goes again. I've always been fascinated by conservation. So I was wondering.

• 2:37:48Speaker 01

  Elephants have always been my thing. When I was 10 years old, I sort of, I'd been begging my parents to take me to Kenya to go and see elephants and they couldn't afford it because there were teachers, but eventually they did when I was, I think I was 14. And it was mind blowing, you know, seeing Africa, the big skies, the savannas, the wildlife. So I'd always wanted to try and incorporate a sort of an element of giving back in all my expeditions. So I always pair with a charity or raise an issue. I'm a high net worth, what do you call it? A high profile supporter for UNICEF. So I do, I do a bit of work with sort of children's charities along the way. But conservation is, is something that I think is really important,

• 2:38:30Speaker 01

  not just for the sake of the animals, but habitat, keeping wilderness areas wild. And so I thought by going back to Africa, particularly Botswana in this case, there's a real opportunity here to, to showcase what's happening in the natural world. And by doing one of my sort of walks through a country, but this time following a herd of elephants on their ancient migration route, there's, there's a new way of telling the story. So I was walking with a herd of elephants for 650 miles across Botswana, all the way to the Okavango Delta.

• 2:39:03Jocko Willink?

  How many elephants?

• 2:39:04Speaker 01

  Well, there's 120,000 in Botswana.

• 2:39:06Jocko Willink?

  How many were you walking with?

• 2:39:07Speaker 01

  I mean, it just depended on the day really, but we were getting pretty close to some pretty big groups.

• 2:39:12Jocko Willink?

  Like 10 or like 100?

• 2:39:13Speaker 01

  No, it could be 30, 50. Yeah, it was probably 50 was the maximum we saw at any one.

• 2:39:17Jocko Willink?

  Did you get to know some of them?

• 2:39:19Speaker 01

  You get to know the, some of their personalities. Yeah. Especially when they're flapping their ears and chasing after you. But I mean, it was, it was a really, really intense experience because you, when you're in an alien environment, on the one hand, that, you know, you're on your, you're on your guard the whole time. You've got to watch out because at any time, not just from the elephants, but you know, a snake might, when you're, when you're sort of out taking a dump, a snake might come and bite you on the ass or whatever it might be. You've got to be really careful. We, we were camping the whole time, staying inside the national parks. We've got a very, we were sort of greeted with them by the Botswana government with, with the utmost respect because they said, look, you know, not only encouraging tourism, but showcasing that Botswana is such a tourism, a conservation success,

• 2:40:02Speaker 01

  actually. And, and so we were able to camp inside these national parks and, and really get to know the wildlife. But I'd say that as human beings coming from Africa, that's what we're designed, we're meant to be. You know, in that natural environment. So it did feel like a very natural journey as well.

• 2:40:19Jocko Willink?

  And that was, that was the last big trip that you took. That brings us up to current date?

• 2:40:23Speaker 01

  Pretty much. That was in the summer of 2019. Last year doesn't count because of COVID.

• 2:40:29Speaker 01

  So, so yeah, that kind of brings us up to date on, on the sort of big journeys, really.

• 2:40:34Jocko Willink?

  So that's probably, probably a pretty good place to stop, other than to say, so what your latest book that's about to come out is the book that I've been referring back to some, somewhat today, the art of exploration. So what, what, what made you decide you had need to get another, because this is like the, what do we, what do we say was your ninth book?

• 2:40:50Speaker 01

  This is my, this is number nine. Um, for the last 12 months, having been somewhat locked, locked up has given me plenty of opportunity to reflect on some of the stories that I didn't put in my other books. And I wanted to sort of, I guess, give some of the lessons that I've learned personally, but not just that, it lessons from other explorers, from other key leaders and, and reflect back on my time in, in the army as well. So it really, it's, it's a bit of a summing up uh, for me of the last sort of 10, 15 years, really of, of, of the lessons that I've learned. And I've tried to put them into relevant themes and make them applicable and, and relevant to people in their daily life. So it's not just me telling, telling my war stories. This is some of the stories hopefully will, will inspire

• 2:41:34Speaker 01

  people to, to, to hopefully, you know, integrate them into their own lives.

• 2:41:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And I don't think I did a great job of what I selected to read in terms of the fact that

• 2:41:43Jocko Willink?

  you, you're, you're, you're kind of giving your philosophy much through, throughout much of the book and you're explaining, you know, what lesson you learned, but you know, here's how I learned the lesson. Then you explain, well, this is what the lesson was, and this is how you can apply it. So it's a, it's a philosophical book as well. Not just like you said, a book, I read stories. I read a lot of stories. I like to read stories, but, and you know, someone I said, here's some of the leadership lessons that you learned. And I pointed out the, the way that you lay those out so that people can, and you, it's not just about leadership though. It's about decision-making. You've got a whole section in there about how you sort of lay out decision-making based on your military education and what you, so there's all kinds of things

• 2:42:23Jocko Willink?

  that you can pull from this book and they're all rooted in what you've been through, which is again, that's what my, all my books are just, hey, this is what I've been through. And here's what I took away from it. So you, you did this exact same thing and, and anybody that's listening, you're gonna, you're gonna pull a lot of lessons out of this book. Um, I scratched the surface. I led, read less than 5% of this book on the air today. So, uh, pick up the book. It's freaking, yeah, I mean, it's just, just chalk. As you would say in England, it's chalk full of lessons learned. Um, where can people find you? I know you got levisonwood.com. What's Levison? It's a family name, right?

• 2:43:05Speaker 01

  It's my, that was my dad's name and his dad's name. Like it's just, I'm the fifth. Yeah. Um, but yeah, no, people can find out more about it on, I've got an Instagram page, uh, levison dot wood. I've got Twitter. Um, and yeah, the new book, um, is coming out in June in the UK. And hopefully it will be out in the US shortly after.

• 2:43:25Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. We need to get the preorder on Amazon, by the way. Like you got about two weeks from today to, to make that happen.

• 2:43:34Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 2:43:34Jocko Willink?

  Uh, Echo, Charles.

• 2:43:36Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:43:37Jocko Willink?

  Any questions from?

• 2:43:38Speaker 02

  Anything else? Uh, remember when you lost your wallet? Remember? Do you think if you didn't lose your wallet, you would not have gone into the military? When you think about it?

• 2:43:51Speaker 01

  I think that, that, you know, the, when I lost my wallet, the inspira, you know, the main lesson that I learned there was kind of told by this young lieutenant who found it was go and travel. And, and perhaps if I hadn't have traveled, if I hadn't have got those expert, early experiences, if I hadn't have had the gun pulled on, on me by the, the guy in the taxi in Zimbabwe, then maybe I wouldn't have enough stories to get me through the interviews that got me into the army. So who knows? I mean, hindsight is obviously a great thing, but, but yeah, I think, you know, take opportunities when, when they come, come along. Um, say thank you to, to people, you know, you never know, be courteous and it's, it's, it's when I, you know, writing back to that guy and just saying, thank you for, for, for handing the wallet back, you know,

• 2:44:34Speaker 01

  got me all those tips in the form of that six-page essay. So it's just little things like that. It's just, it's never passed by an opportunity and never passed by an opportunity to, to be thankful and grateful. And no matter how bad things get, there's always an opportunity in that. And so like when I broke my leg and couldn't get in the special forces, I now look back and join the dots and think, actually it was that, it was that. What I thought was a low point actually was a real opportunity to go and do something different.

• 2:45:01Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah, that's crazy, huh? Because on the surface, you're like, dang, I lost my wallet. Because that sucks.

• 2:45:08Jocko Willink?

  Confirmed.

• 2:45:09Speaker 02

  You lose your wallet. Oh, man, brutal. And then, yeah, man, it opens up this whole thing. It's like, dang, I'm kind of glad I did lose my wallet.

• 2:45:16Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, of course.

• 2:45:16Speaker 01

  And it's having a bit of faith that in every situation now, whenever I'm feeling, oh, you know, damn it, that that's gone really badly. I remind myself of all the times that the bad situations, if you just view them right and have the right attitude, then then you can turn defeat into victory. And I think that's what you've got to remind yourself. So when other things go really badly, I try and just convince myself, even if it's slightly delusional, that this is a great opportunity.

• 2:45:41Jocko Willink?

  Absolutely true, man. Absolutely true. Well, like I said, probably a good place to wrap. We're approaching three hours right now. Uh, thanks for joining us. Absolutely. And and more important, thanks for your service. Thanks for your service to, uh, Great Britain, one of our, maybe our most, maybe our strongest ally. Um, not only for your service, but your your fathers and your grandfathers. I know I watched a video about your grandfather and, man, it was just awesome that that he was out there like you, holding the line against tyranny and evil. And thanks for sharing some of your stories.

• 2:46:21Speaker 01

  Thank you, Father Mion.

• 2:46:22Jocko Willink?

  Like I said, there's 10 books. I always try and prepare. I couldn't read 10 books getting ready for this thing. A ton of great stories and and the lessons that you you share and the experiences allow all of us to learn through your vicariously, through your explorations of the world, which you've made the best of. I don't recommend them, but I'm glad you did them and I'm glad we can take away those lessons, man. It's awesome. Awesome to meet you, man. Thanks for coming on.

• 2:46:56Speaker 01

  Thank you so much. Thank you both.

• 2:46:59Jocko Willink?

  And with that, Levison Wood has left the building. He left the building. He wasn't, he didn't have anything with him. So he may be going, I don't know. He's going somewhere. We don't know where he came in. We don't know where he came from. We don't know where he's going. But he is out there on the continual exploration with a pocket full of like, you know, two paper clips.

• 2:47:29Speaker 02

  And his wallet.

• 2:47:29Jocko Willink?

  A wallet that he found. And we're good. So awesome to have him on here for sure. We were talking about exploration. That's the name of his new book, The Art of Exploration. Echo, seems like exploration topic of the day. Can you recommend some ways we can explore getting better as humans?

• 2:47:53Speaker 02

  For sure.

• 2:47:53Jocko Willink?

  What do you got?

• 2:47:54Speaker 02

  So I think keeping ourselves capable.

• 2:47:59Jocko Willink?

  Good call.

• 2:47:59Speaker 02

  Really, you know, look, we have a path. The path is hard. Not all the time, but it can be hard. That's what I'm saying. Every once in a while, we can deviate from that path, but the best way to deviate from the path is when we explore. If we explore, as long as it's in the right direction, don't slip off the path. Don't go backwards. Keep moving forward. Anyway, so while we're doing that, we are improving ourselves. We are working out. There's certain fundamentals to the path, we'll say.

• 2:48:29Jocko Willink?

  For sure.

• 2:48:29Speaker 02

  Working out, physical improvement, capability, strength.

• 2:48:35Speaker 02

  The more I learn about strength and strength training, resistance training, you know, this kind of stuff, the more benefits start to reveal themselves.

• 2:48:46Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 2:48:47Speaker 02

  Did you know strength training, resistance training is?

• 2:48:51Jocko Willink?

  The best thing for your cognitive capacity as you grow older.

• 2:48:53Speaker 02

  Yes. Yeah.

• 2:48:55Jocko Willink?

  I did.

• 2:48:55Speaker 02

  Did I say that last time?

• 2:48:56Jocko Willink?

  You did. I remembered it. Why?

• 2:48:58Speaker 02

  Because I worked out. And for your immune system. So you either like, I think you hold vitamin D more efficiently, or something with vitamin D where you can, you know, anyway, so stand the path in that way. Anyway, through this path, you might need supplementation.

• 2:49:16Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 2:49:16Speaker 02

  All right, chocolate supplements, only the best kind, by the way.

• 2:49:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you probably need, unless you are just dedicating 24 hours a day for meal prep, and you have, you're out shopping, you're out harvesting your own meat, you're out, you're out in the garden, pulling up carrots, you know, if that's what you're doing, you can probably get away without supplementation. Look, we know that. We want to eat clean, right? If you're eating clean, you don't need it. The chances of that are pretty small.

• 2:49:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:49:48Jocko Willink?

  They're pretty small.

• 2:49:49Speaker 02

  And again, and there's a bigger picture going on as well. And I am a huge advocate of garden. I have a small little miniature garden, not many things in there. We've got some tomatoes in there. Either way, it's not about my garden. It's about efficiency.

• 2:50:03Jocko Willink?

  Apparently it is about your garden.

• 2:50:05Speaker 02

  Little humble brag. Just some tomatoes. Nonetheless, uh, you know, if you, if gardening is your thing, then cool. But for a lot of us, if you dedicate all these hours, daily, weekly, whatever, meal prep or whatever, it might become a little inefficient. So supplementation might be kind of the jam as far as efficiency goes. So good news.

• 2:50:30Jocko Willink?

  Supplementation for you.

• 2:50:31Speaker 02

  Very good news. So what we've got, stuff for your joints, stuff for protein, stuff for cognitive health, stuff for general health, vitamin D3,

• 2:50:42Speaker 02

  joint warfare, super krill oil. We've got some milk, additional protein.

• 2:50:46Jocko Willink?

  Cold war.

• 2:50:47Speaker 02

  Cold war immunity.

• 2:50:48Jocko Willink?

  Immunity.

• 2:50:50Speaker 02

  That humidity.

• 2:50:54Speaker 02

  Sure, all these things on Jaco Fuel.

• 2:50:55Jocko Willink?

  Did you say milk?

• 2:50:57Speaker 02

  Milk, yeah, protein in the form of a dessert.

• 2:51:00Jocko Willink?

  I authorized the next flavor of milk.

• 2:51:05Speaker 02

  What is that one?

• 2:51:06Jocko Willink?

  It's gonna be that banana cream.

• 2:51:08Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 2:51:09Jocko Willink?

  No name yet, no name yet. Look, and it's hard to take banana cream and turn that into something tactical. So if anybody's got some ideas on banana cream, like my, my ears are open.

• 2:51:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:51:20Jocko Willink?

  I'm ready for something cool, you know, about banana cream. Let us know what you got.

• 2:51:25Speaker 02

  That's interesting because that's not like an obvious flavor, but once you say you're like, oh yeah, that's a legitimate flavor. Even though, okay, so the pumpkin spice, in my opinion, this is just my opinion, because.

• 2:51:37Jocko Willink?

  Kind of an obvious flavor?

• 2:51:38Speaker 02

  An obvious flavor, yes, but, and I'm like, not that into it. It's fine if that's my last flavor, why would we do not drink it? No, probably not, but if when it comes to banana, because I don't like pumpkin pie, you know how certain people like really love pumpkin pie? And that's it. No pumpkin pie.

• 2:51:57Jocko Willink?

  I don't actually know anybody like that.

• 2:51:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, I know a couple of people.

• 2:52:00Jocko Willink?

  Really?

• 2:52:00Speaker 02

  Yes. But.

• 2:52:02Jocko Willink?

  Are you sure, bro? Are you exaggerating? You know someone that only eats pumpkin pie and if it's not from pumpkin pie, they won't eat any pie? That's where you're at right now?

• 2:52:10Speaker 02

  Okay, so if I'm not mistaken.

• 2:52:11Jocko Willink?

  Say, I exaggerated a little bit, but you know what I mean. It's fine. Say that.

• 2:52:15Speaker 02

  Exaggerated a little bit, but you know what I'm saying.

• 2:52:18Jocko Willink?

  Because there's not one single person on the planet that only eats just pumpkin pie 100% and the other pies are zero.

• 2:52:24Speaker 02

  Yes, they, yes, they're pilgrims. Pilgrims eat pumpkin pie, that's all. Oh wait, I think they eat apple pie.

• 2:52:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, they do.

• 2:52:30Speaker 02

  Anyway.

• 2:52:31Jocko Willink?

  Alright, so cool.

• 2:52:32Speaker 02

  The point is banana cream pie, that is a legitimate one where it's like, hey, banana cream pie? And then there's like everything else. I'm one of those people. My dad's one of those people.

• 2:52:44Jocko Willink?

  There you go, BC's in the game.

• 2:52:45Speaker 02

  In the game, fully. So banana cream milk.

• 2:52:51Speaker 02

  Like that's, that's, that's good.

• 2:52:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:52:53Speaker 02

  It's a good flavor.

• 2:52:54Jocko Willink?

  Uh, we also got the drinks. I'm drinking one right now. I drink a lot of these drinks, as a matter of fact. Discipline Go in a can, you can get it. You can get it at Wawa if you're on the East Coast. And for a little while, they were, there was a little brake pumping going on. Cause the logistics train, look, logistics wins wars. It took me a little bit of time to get that logistics train straightened out. They said, "Hey, can you pump the brakes a little bit?" Guess what? Logistics train is a moving down the tracks. Roll into Wawa, roll into Wawa, clear out the shelves. They didn't want me saying that for a little while.

• 2:53:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:53:29Jocko Willink?

  I'm back saying it. Go into Wawa, clear out the shelves. Also Vitamin Shoppe. And by the way, all this stuff, all this supplementation. If you wanna subscribe to it, if you wanna get that krill oil showing up once a month, you wanna get that joint warfare showing up once a month. If you wanna go on subscription, shipping is free at originusa.com, at Jaco Fuel.com. Subscribe, get it forever. And you know what we used to say on this podcast? Support the podcast as you support yourself. By the way, you are supporting the podcast when you support yourself with some supplementation.

• 2:54:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, 100%. And energy drinks that are healthy, it's kind of a thing, you know?

• 2:54:15Jocko Willink?

  Well, not really. It's a thing with us.

• 2:54:17Speaker 02

  That's what I'm saying.

• 2:54:18Jocko Willink?

  It's not a thing with anybody else.

• 2:54:19Speaker 02

  I'm saying that actually.

• 2:54:20Jocko Willink?

  There's no one else that said, you know what? Oh, we want our, we want our, our energy drink to be healthy. So we are going to go to the nth degree and pasteurize it. So we don't have to put any chemicals in it.

• 2:54:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:54:31Jocko Willink?

  That's where we went. Who else is with us there? Oh, look around. You know who I see? Nobody.

• 2:54:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:54:36Jocko Willink?

  So it's not a thing. It's a thing for us.

• 2:54:38Speaker 02

  That's what I'm saying it is now. So what, and you're talking even from like a making standpoint where it's like, "Yeah, we're not gonna do that. We're not gonna do that," which is, which is obviously good. But as a human being, I don't, now I don't have to go, "Hey, I need some energy. Hey, I'm gonna pay the price a little bit, but I need that energy right now." So hey, let's pay that price, you know?

• 2:54:58Jocko Willink?

  There's no sacrifice.

• 2:54:58Speaker 02

  No sacrifice, bro. A pound of energy drink. I don't, I don't even need energy right now. I just wanna drink that energy drink. And guess what? I'm gonna be more healthy afterwards. When it comes down to it, I'm gonna be more healthy and I got my energy drink.

• 2:55:13Jocko Willink?

  You done good. You made up for your pumpkin pie statement.

• 2:55:17Speaker 02

  There you go. That's what we're dealing with. Also, at Origin USA, you can get American-made stuff. When I say stuff, I mean jeans. American-made denim, kind of a big deal.

• 2:55:28Jocko Willink?

  It's a real big deal. Cause you're probably thinking, oh, like, you know, I'm supporting America. I got these iconic American jeans. And then you find out that your iconic American jeans are made in China.

• 2:55:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:55:40Jocko Willink?

  Which is bad.

• 2:55:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:55:41Jocko Willink?

  Get your American, get your iconic American jeans made in America.

• 2:55:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:55:47Jocko Willink?

  It's grown in America, sown in America.

• 2:55:51Speaker 02

  You ever ate like a food or something? And it says all natural? Then you find out, wait, it's not all natural though. Like, I guess, it's like they play you.

• 2:56:00Jocko Willink?

  All-natural cheese puffs, right? Come on, bruh.

• 2:56:04Speaker 02

  It's like they play you, you know, where it's like, it's all natural, given the fact that it's not all natural. You see what I'm saying? It's almost like that, where it's like, yeah, these iconic American jeans.

• 2:56:15Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:56:16Speaker 02

  Right? And yeah, maybe they're iconic. So it just depends on what you mean by all. It depends on what you mean by natural. Depends on what you mean by iconic. And it depends on what you mean by American. Bro, you're not playing that game over here. Origin USA, or it's USA is in the name. There's no play on the words, there's nothing like that.

• 2:56:33Jocko Willink?

  There's no trickery.

• 2:56:34Speaker 02

  No, sir.

• 2:56:35Jocko Willink?

  Made in America, without compromise. Jeans, boots, rash guards, t-shirts, what? What else do you want?

• 2:56:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, we got it. Stuff, yeah.

• 2:56:45Jocko Willink?

  The gees. Did I say gees?

• 2:56:47Speaker 02

  I think you said rash guards, but yeah, all good. It's all included. You can say gees three times.

• 2:56:50Jocko Willink?

  We want to be inclusive.

• 2:56:51Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:56:52Jocko Willink?

  Inclusive of the gees. Gee, no gee, we're with you.

• 2:56:55Speaker 02

  Very much so.

• 2:56:56Jocko Willink?

  We support both.

• 2:56:57Speaker 02

  Also, Jaco has a store. It's called Jaco's Store. This is where you can get Discipline Equals Freedom stuff. T-shirts, hats, hoodies, lightweight and heavyweight hoodies. Bunch of cool stuff on there, in my opinion. So yeah, go there, see if you like something, get something. We also have a subscription situation going on with the shirts, additional shirts, additional designs. So recently, one of the many designs that have been released. So people have been calling me, personally, calling me, phone call, not text, phone call. Hey, uh, is that design still available? Uh, are you gonna sell that design? It seemed like people really liked the design. It's true.

• 2:57:42Speaker 02

  The answer is maybe, but to avoid having to call me or whatever, just jump on that, jump on that. It's called the shirt locker.

• 2:57:50Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:57:51Speaker 02

  Get a new design every month.

• 2:57:52Jocko Willink?

  That reminds me of the muster. So we have the muster. They always sell out. And three weeks out from the muster. Like someone I know will send me an email, hey, I realized I didn't sign up for the muster. You know, I, it looks like it's sold out, but you know, I just need three seats.

• 2:58:10Speaker 02

  Three.

• 2:58:10Jocko Willink?

  And, and I'm like, hey, um, I, I wish I could, I wish I could help you. This is an actual limitation. Like the fire marshal says, this is how many people can be in there and we have it fold, filled.

• 2:58:27Jocko Willink?

  Don't put yourself in that situation.

• 2:58:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:58:30Jocko Willink?

  Don't put yourself in that situation.

• 2:58:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's true.

• 2:58:34Jocko Willink?

  Maintain control.

• 2:58:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:58:37Jocko Willink?

  Invest upfront so you can relax later. That's why you leave a little bit early.

• 2:58:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:58:44Jocko Willink?

  You leave a little bit early, like you're, like I was supposed to meet you here today.

• 2:58:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:58:47Jocko Willink?

  Right? I left a little bit early. Why did I do that? So I wasn't stressing. I was just driving. Oh, there's a, you know, a little old lady crossing the street. She's taking a while. Am I honking? No, I'm just, take your time, ma'am. No problem. There's a construction guy. He's got the little sign flipping, you know, stop. There's road construction going on. Am I mad at that guy?

• 2:59:10Speaker 02

  No.

• 2:59:10Jocko Willink?

  No, I'm not mad at him. I've got plenty of time to get to the gym.

• 2:59:14Speaker 02

  Cause you got on it early.

• 2:59:15Jocko Willink?

  Cause I got on it. I invested early. Now, other people in this situation didn't invest early. I get a text once I'm here that says, yeah, you're gonna be late. Echo Charles is gonna be late.

• 2:59:27Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 2:59:28Jocko Willink?

  Did you, how'd you feel about that?

• 2:59:29Speaker 02

  Uh, well, you know, I was not stressing, but hey, that's just me, I guess.

• 2:59:34Jocko Willink?

  Okay, maybe you need to add some stress in your life then, bro.

• 2:59:38Speaker 02

  Well, in this particular situation, now that you brought it up, I didn't, you did, and that's fine. So, you know, while I was executing my sequence to, uh, come down here and record.

• 2:59:51Jocko Willink?

  Okay, alright.

• 2:59:52Speaker 02

  I got tasked with the last minute thing. And I had to do that. I had to do that thing. So, yeah.

• 2:59:58Jocko Willink?

  Okay. Are you talking about a task that came from me?

• 3:00:00Speaker 02

  Yes, sir.

• 3:00:01Jocko Willink?

  Okay. You talking about a task that came from me at seven o'clock in the morning or such?

• 3:00:05Speaker 02

  Uh, well, you know, my, my sequence, um, is very complex.

• 3:00:09Jocko Willink?

  Your wake up procedure.

• 3:00:12Jocko Willink?

  All right, check.

• 3:00:13Speaker 02

  Either way, get on the shirt. It's called the Shirt Locker, new shirt every month. It's on JacoStore.com. That's where you can get it.

• 3:00:20Jocko Willink?

  Mm hmm.

• 3:00:21Speaker 02

  Go there, get on it early. You won't have to worry about missing any, any designs or anything like that.

• 3:00:26Jocko Willink?

  You can subscribe to this podcast. There's a bunch of different places where it's hosted. We also have Jaco Unraveling, which I've been recording with Daryl Cooper. We're going deep into some crazy subjects. Unraveling history and seeing where, how we got where we're at. We have the Grounded Podcast. We have the Warrior Kid Podcast. We also have the Underground.

• 3:00:49Jocko Willink?

  JacoUnderground.com. We're doing, we're recording a little podcast there. The reason that we're doing that is so that we don't have to have sponsors.

• 3:01:00Jocko Willink?

  Cause why, because we don't want sponsors. Cause then they dictate what we can and can't do, which we don't like. We also don't want to have the platforms themselves be able to dictate what we can and cannot do. Now, look, we, the platforms have been good to us so far. Everyone's been okay with what we're doing. That's fine. What happens when they're not? What happens when they decide they're just going to take and start injecting advertisements onto our podcast? And when I say our, I mean everyone.

• 3:01:29Jocko Willink?

  What do we do then? We don't have control. So we made, we made the Jaco Underground Podcast, JacoUnderground.com. It costs $8.18 a month. Great way to support what we're doing. If you can't, look, if you can't afford it, we're, look, we are a podcast of the people. That's why this podcast is free. That's why this podcast doesn't have advertising other than what we're doing right now, which you could have turned off 48 minutes ago before Echo even started talking.

• 3:01:59Jocko Willink?

  But if you can't afford it, that's cool. Email [email protected]. We'll still hook you up. That's what we're here for. We have a YouTube channel where Echo posts videos. And you can subscribe to that one. Also, Origin USA has a, a, oh, what is it? YouTube channel? Is that what it's called?

• 3:02:17Speaker 02

  Origin USA has a YouTube channel. Yes, technically at the end of the day, but it's like a series. You know, like you'd have a YouTube channel, but it's super general. It's a general thing. But theirs is like a, it's like a series, you know?

• 3:02:29Jocko Willink?

  That's Origin HD. That's a series.

• 3:02:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's what, that's what you're talking about, right?

• 3:02:34Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:02:34Speaker 02

  Cause Origin HD is on the YouTube channel of Origin.

• 3:02:37Jocko Willink?

  Origin USA.

• 3:02:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:02:38Jocko Willink?

  Boom. Okay. Well, and Echo makes a lot of those videos and the ones that are really good are usually the ones I'm the assistant director of.

• 3:02:47Jocko Willink?

  Psychological Warfare.

• 3:02:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's an album, tracks. You know, you need Jaco to help you get past the moment of weakness. You're kind of like a therapist in a way, or what do you call like a life coach? Yeah, it's a life coach. You're a life coach. Cause you know how like-

• 3:03:01Jocko Willink?

  With a baseball bat.

• 3:03:02Speaker 02

  Essentially. No, the life, you know how like the life coach is the, the, what do you call the classic? Where the stereotypical situation is like, hey, I'm about to, you know, I just quit smoking. Then it's like, hey, I feel like, really feel like smoking. It's really like, you know, on my mind. So you call your life coach and they tell you gently like why you shouldn't smoke.

• 3:03:22Jocko Willink?

  You're gonna get cancer.

• 3:03:24Speaker 02

  So far and all this stuff. So Jaco has his own version of that, which is called Psychological Warfare. So it's recorded. What you do is you get it's an album with tracks. Jaco tells you, hey, don't skip that workout. You've come this far. You can do it.

• 3:03:38Jocko Willink?

  Maybe you need to make one of these.

• 3:03:40Speaker 02

  I was very motivated by that. Jaco does it in his way, we'll just say.

• 3:03:45Jocko Willink?

  Also, we got Flipside Canvas, flipsidecanvas.com, Dakota Meyer, making cool stuffs to hang on your wall. We got a bunch of books. Look, all the books I talked about today, uh, by Levison Wood.

• 3:03:56Jocko Willink?

  The latest one that should be available for preorder right now is called The Art of Exploration. That's the one I was reading out of today. We got Final Spin, which is a-

• 3:04:07Jocko Willink?

  Look, it's a novel because it's not specifically true, but it's also not a book. It's like a, it's just a whole different gig. Final Spin, if you want, it's new art form. That's what Echo Charles just whispered in the back. He might have nailed it. You might have nailed it. Sure. Is a new art form of writing. And it's in a book called Final Spin, which is coming out. If you want to get the first edition, better order it now. Leadership Strategy and Tactics, The Code, The Evaluation, The Protocol, Discipline and Freedom Field Manual, Way of the Warrior Kid, One, Two, Three and Four, Mikey and the Dragons, About Face. I wrote the foreword on the new one. And of course, Extreme Ownership and The Dichotomy of Leadership.

• 3:04:50Jocko Willink?

  I have a leadership consultancy called Echelon Front. We solve problems through leadership. You can go to echelonfront.com. If you want me and my team to come and work with your company, that's what we do. We have EF Online, online training, leadership. You can get it anywhere. You can get it on your phone. We're on there all the time. We're doing live Q and As. We've got a bunch of courses to take. It's freaking awesome. We got the muster 2021. We are executing. Last time we didn't execute because I got Miss Rona. This time, so I'm good now. We're, it's happening. Orlando, May 25th and 26th. Phoenix, August 17th and 18th.

• 3:05:34Jocko Willink?

  Las Vegas, October 28th and 29th. Everything that we've done has sold out. Go to extremeownership.com. If you want to come, don't be emailing me six days out saying you need three. I hate you. Sorry, I didn't get to you, but I just need three seats. I can't, I can't help you. Sometimes in the SEAL Teams, I would tell guys like, hey, if this, if you do, if you make this mistake, I can't help you. Right. You want to do something, like, look, you can do some dumb stuff. I got you. If you do something at this level of stupidity, I can't, there's literally nothing I can do. Don't be doing dumb shit. Yes, sir.

• 3:06:13Jocko Willink?

  EF Battlefield.

• 3:06:16Jocko Willink?

  This is learning lessons as, as we walk historical battlefields. Just did recently to Gettysburg, we're planning others in the future. Again, go do, go to echelonfront.com, look for events on there. If you want to come in and meet us, you want to have dinner, you want to walk the battlefield, you want to do Q and A face to face, we look forward to seeing you at those. If you want to help service members, active and retired, their families, Gold Star families, check out Mark Lee's mom. Mama Lee, she has a charity organization helping out all these groups all over the place. If you want to donate or get involved, go to Americas Mighty Warriors.org.

• 3:06:58Jocko Willink?

  And if you want more of my perpetual pronouncements, or you need more of Echo's convoluted conversations, you can find us on the interwebs, on Twitter, Instagram, which Echo only calls the gram, and Facebook, Echo is at Echo Charles, I am at Jocka Willink. And for Levison, check out levisonwood.com. His Twitter is Levison Wood, his Instagram is levison dot wood. And also he's on Facebook at Levison Wood. And thanks once again to Levison for, for joining us. Again, sharing some of the stories with us. You could, you could crack open any one of those stories and find a gem. And, and thanks to Levison for your service.

• 3:07:43Jocko Willink?

  And thanks to your father and your grandfather.

• 3:07:47Jocko Willink?

  And to the fierce island nation of the United Kingdom, thanks for standing beside us for so long in the fight against evil. And thanks to all the servicemen and women and veterans around the world that put on the uniform and shoulder the weight of freedom with your service and sacrifice. And to people here at home in service, police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, Border Patrol, Secret Service, and all the first responders out there, you don't get thanked enough for what you do. So thank you for doing it.

• 3:08:24Jocko Willink?

  And to everybody else out there.

• 3:08:29Jocko Willink?

  You already know what you know.

• 3:08:32Jocko Willink?

  You already know what you know. You been there. You done that. You've seen what you seen.

• 3:08:41Jocko Willink?

  Don't stay in the same spot.

• 3:08:44Jocko Willink?

  Do like Levison Wood does. Literally and metaphorically, go out.

• 3:08:53Jocko Willink?

  Go, go see, go do, go live, go explore. And until next time, this is Echo and Jaco.