310: Relish The Struggle and Keep Reaching For The Stars. With Jose Hernandez

0:00:00 - Opening 0:02:43 - Jose Hernandez 3:29:03 - How to stay on THE PATH. 3:47:36 - Closing Gratitude Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

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

• 0:00Jocko Willink?

  This is Jocko Podcast number 310 with Kerry Helton and me Jocko Willink. Good evening Kerry. Good evening.

• 0:09Jocko Willink?

  I went back to the living room and sat down on the couch.

• 0:13Jocko Willink?

  Newspaper clippings, letters of recognition and photos with important individuals were scattered across my coffee table. The 47 years of my life were summarized in a pile of images and words. My life story stared me in the face. One photograph in particular caught my attention. It was one in which I was holding a single tomato in one hand and a bucket full of tomatoes in the other. I was wearing an old blue t-shirt and a pair of shoes that were ripped. My abuelo, Jose, and my siblings stood beside me. My abuelo posed with his straw hat.

• 0:57Jocko Willink?

  We were all wearing old, dirty clothes. The agricultural field seemed infinite in the background. The color of the shirt I was wearing in the photo was the exact color of the shirt I was wearing as I gazed at the picture at that moment. I had to smile, thinking about how things in life came full circle.

• 1:23Jocko Willink?

  I was now wearing a blue NASA polo shirt and not an old blue t-shirt. It dawned on me that there is no secret formula or magic for making dreams come true. The only way to make a dream come true is to have the passion, the work ethic, and the foundation of a good education to help go from one step to the next while pushing aside the obstacles in life.

• 1:57Jocko Willink?

  And that right there is an excerpt from a book. The book is called Reaching for the Stars. It was written by a gentleman by the name of Jose Hernandez, who has had an incredible voyage that led him from those fields, picking tomatoes as a child out in central California, and doing that to help pay the bills for his family. And that journey took him all the way to man's final frontier, space aboard the space shuttle as an astronaut. And it is an honor to have Jose with us here tonight to share his story with us,

• 2:39Jocko Willink?

  and also share some of the lessons that he learned along the way. It's a great honor. Jose, thank you for joining us.

• 2:47Speaker 01

  Thank you for inviting me. It's a pleasure to be here.

• 2:50Jocko Willink?

  It's a wild story, and I kind of jumped to the end there. The voyage that you've been on the whole way, and the perseverance that you've shown, just an incredible story.

• 3:02Speaker 01

  Yes, I think it just epitomizes the American story, you know, of what's possible here in this great country of ours, of being able to reach the American dream if you're willing to work for it. You know, I always tell folks when I give my talks, I say, "Look, I'm a religious man. I'm a Catholic man, but I also know nothing's gonna fall from the sky for me." Anything I want in this world of ours, you gotta work for it. And my father taught me that at a very young age, and you saw the fact that working with my grandfather in the fields picking tomatoes, I mean, they taught us that work ethic.

• 3:45Speaker 01

  And they said, "Nothing's gonna come for free in this world." And I certainly believed it, and I just developed a great work ethic as a result.

• 3:55Jocko Willink?

  Incredible. Well, you know, if we're gonna go through the story, we might as well go through the story. Again, the book is called Reaching for the Stars.

• 4:05Jocko Willink?

  And as I read the story, look, folks, I can't read them. I'm not gonna read the whole book. That's not what we're here for, but you gotta get the book to get all the details. The level of detail that it gives is incredible. It's a, it's a, there's funny parts in the book. There's sad parts in the book. There's triumphant parts in the book and there's failure in the book. So it covers the full spectrum of, of human emotions. And so if you, if you wanna hear the full story, you gotta get the book. Again, it's called Reaching for the Stars. Um, so I'm gonna jump ahead a little bit. Here we go. I was born August 7th, 1962 in French Camp, California. At that time, my family lived in Stockton, California. That is where the story of my life begins. I grew up surrounded by the love of my family

• 4:48Jocko Willink?

  and the many hardships that come along with being part of a migrant family. My memory begins at the age of five, precisely as I, the time I started school. I remember boarding this bus to school when we were living out in the countryside near the city of Modesto. The school located in the small town of Salida. Am I saying that right? Salida. Salida. Seemed very large and was filled with students who seemed a lot bigger and older than me. The classrooms were decorated and filled with rows of shiny new desks. The desks had built-in compartments that allowed us to store pencils, crayons and papers. I could not believe I was assigned my own beautiful desk. Phrases of gratitude were silently running through my head,

• 5:30Jocko Willink?

  but all I could do was stare at the blackboard because I did not speak the language. I tried to figure out the meaning of what was written down and drawn in colored chalk. I never dared to raise my hand to ask a question, let alone answer one. I also never fully participated in any of the classroom kindergarten activities like singing, storytelling, or playing board games. It came as no surprise that my kindergarten teacher, whom I called la maestra, spoke only English. She was not sure I understood everything that was being taught, much less being said. I remained silent with the hope of being invisible to everyone. So that's what it kicks off. Going into school, no English, zero.

• 6:13Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 6:14Jocko Willink?

  And, and the teachers, they're just teaching in English and that's that.

• 6:18Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 6:18Jocko Willink?

  Deal with it.

• 6:19Speaker 01

  In, in, in those days, there weren't any programs like English as a second language where they put you and they try to uh beef up your English skills. They just threw you in the general population and uh you sank or swam, you know? And then, and that's the way it was. And you know, there's uh proponents that say that's the way it should be. And there's others that say, no, we need an English as a second language uh as a program to help the weaker students. Uh and so, but in that particular case, I had no choice. I was just thrown in there.

• 6:50Jocko Willink?

  What do you think? What's the way to do it? Is it straight immersion? What's your opinion? When I went to college, I took Spanish. I took three semesters of Spanish. And I had a friend that's Mexican that I took Spanish with and he grew up speaking Spanish. I got better grades than him in Spanish class and I couldn't, I, when I got done, I could barely, you know, I'd go to a Mexican restaurant. I couldn't, I was worthless. I was worthless at speaking it. But I, I learned like the rules of grammar, right? But I remember sometimes the teachers, they had the thought, the professors had the thought that you, you, this is immersion.

• 7:27Jocko Willink?

  And so they would, they wouldn't speak to you in any, in any English at all. And I thought to myself, sometimes I, I thought to myself, I really wish I, you would answer this question for me because I don't know, I'm not figuring this out. I don't know. What do you think?

• 7:39Speaker 01

  I think it should be a hybrid uh because I think there's uh students that will do well under an immersion program. And then there's other students that uh really need that extra help uh so that they can uh get to that next level. And I'll tell you, you know, my first experience in kindergarten was um uh was just as you described it there, but it actually occurred in three different places. Because um, you know, my story begins well before I was even born. My parents are from the central state of Michoacan in Mexico. And my father, at the young age of 15, out of economic necessity, was uh comes from a family of 12. He's one of the oldest boys.

• 8:23Speaker 01

  He had to come and work in California as uh in, in, in, in, in what he knew, which was agriculture. And he quickly set up a routine, which was common amongst the folks from Michoacan, which was you would spend two months in Southern California, Ontario-Chino area, picking strawberries. Then two, and then you will move up to Salinas and you pick strawberries and lettuce. And then you will go up to the Stockton-Modesto area for five months. There you start off with the cucumbers, then the cherries, then uh, then you got onions and peaches and uh, you and tomatoes and then you end the harvest with the grape harvest.

• 9:06Speaker 01

  And then he will go back home for three months and cool his heels. Well, when he was nineteen, he met my mother from same hometown. They got married and she was the, at the old ripe age of fourteen, you know, which would have been a crime these days now, right? But uh, but, but they, they got married and luckily my dad incorporated my mom into this nomadic lifestyle. And of course, kids come along during the um, marriage, right? And there's four of us. I'm the youngest of four. And where you were born dictated on what month you were born in. See, I was born in August.

• 9:40Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so you were, you were in America then?

• 9:42Speaker 01

  The last stop, yes, the last stop. I was, and my brother was born in September, then I got a brother and sister born in December and they were born in Mexico. Well, getting back to, now imagine we were living this nomadic lifestyle as a kid and Spanish is the only uh, language I knew how to speak.

• 9:59Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 9:59Speaker 01

  Now imagine the kindergarten. My first kindergarten is going to um, in the Ontario-Chino area. You know, I, they, they, they stick me in there, just as I learn where the bathrooms at, they take me to Salinas and just as I learn where those bathrooms are at, I'm down to my third kindergarten teacher in Stockton. And uh, and so you could imagine it wasn't a very conducive environment to uh, to learn.

• 10:23Jocko Willink?

  And that's, that's eventually why your dad decided to stay up in America, right?

• 10:29Speaker 01

  Yes, yes, as a matter of fact, um, in the second, um, and remind me to, to say something about my teacher at the end, when we blast off and all that, because I always forget to tell that part of the story, which is, which is pretty cool. But, but, but uh, it wasn't until I was in the second grade, in the second grade, we were in our last stop in Stockton. And my dad gets up in the morning about a week, a week before, um, a week before we go to Mexico. He makes the, what we call the gran anuncio, the big announcement. And the big announcement was he would get up and say, kids, we're going to Mexico next week. Talk to your teachers and get three months worth of homework.

• 11:13Speaker 01

  Why three months? Because that's what we stayed over there and my father, my parents didn't put us in school over there because uh, uh, Christmas vacation came along and all that. They said, no, no, no, no, no. You guys are going to self-study. And so my mom would wake us up every morning in my grandma's house. Uh, we would go to the kitchen. They would give us a cup of hot chocolate, piece of French bread. From eight in the morning to 12, all four of us will be doing our homework. You know, the homework was stained of chocolate, but we got it done. And, uh, and, and, and so in the second grade, when he told us to do that, to get the homework, I went to my second grade teacher, Ms. Young. And, uh, man, she was a, you know, second grade, who's your first crush, you know?

• 11:59Speaker 01

  Yeah. Guilty as charged, you know, to me, in my mind, it was me and Ms. Young, you know? And, and, and, and I remember, um, she was tall, young, uh, Asian and black, long black hair. And tall relatively to a second grader, because now I see her, the poor thing is short, but she was tall back then. And, um, and I asked her for, for, for the, for my homework. And she looked at me with this frustrated look and said, you tell your parents I'm going to come home and talk to them. And that's when, uh, Ms. Young came and convinced my parents that we needed to stay in one place. And, uh, and, and that's what sort of changed the whole dynamics, the whole direction of our family.

• 12:43Speaker 01

  And I love to tell the story to educators, because, uh, you know, I tell them, hey, I know you feel like you're not making a difference. Uh, but let me tell you one little thing my teacher did that changed the trajectory of a whole family. And I tell them this nice story about Ms. Young.

• 13:00Jocko Willink?

  And she actually came to your house to meet your parents and tell them that?

• 13:03Speaker 01

  She did, yes. Uh, my mom, uh, when she, when she told me that she was going to come and talk to him that evening. I went running home. I didn't even wait for my siblings because they were in elementary school too. I went running home because I, you know, I felt like Paul Revere, right? Teacher's coming, teacher's coming, you know, with the lamps, you know, and, uh, and, and, and, and I tell my dad and my mom about it, and my mom, of course, like any Latina woman, instead of worrying about, because my dad first, when I told him the teacher was coming, he started taking off his belt because he said, "You must have did something bad." And I, I kind of backtrack and convince him it had to do with our trip to Mexico. And my mom, different priority, she actually said, "We have to sweep and mop and make

• 13:45Speaker 01

  a nice dinner, uh, because, uh, the teacher's coming." And so, yeah, they pulled out all the bells and whistles when the teacher came. I loved when visitors came to our house because, you know, we lived a very humble life. I never, ever went to bed hungry, thanks to my parents' hard work. But I'll tell you, man, we had our fair share of beans and rice and tortillas and salsa. But when visitors came, the protein magically appeared in the form of a nice, thin steak. You know, chicken or a pork chop. And I remember I used to get so happy when my dad would say, "Hey, uh, your uncle's coming or your grandpa's coming." Translation, "We're gonna have meat on the table."

• 14:29Speaker 01

  But, but yeah, see, she actually came and, uh, and she convinced, and she told a beautiful story to my dad to convince him. Because my dad is a very, um, what, what, what, uh, how, how should I put it? A very, uh, proud man. And, um, and I remember after dinner, they went to the lit- small living room and, and, um, and my dad and Ms. Young thanked my mom for the dinner after she brought coffee. And she basically said, "I didn't really come here to, uh, to, to have dinner, but thank you very much. I really came to talk to you about the education process of your four kids."

• 15:13Speaker 01

  And I remember this story because my dad and mom did not speak English at the time. Ms. Young didn't speak Spanish, so I was the official translator since she was my teacher. And, and, and, and when she said that, that she was here to talk about the education process of the four kids, my dad immediately got uncomfortable because I know what's going through my dad's mind. He was saying, "It's not a complaint of one kid, it's a complaint of four kids." You know? And Ms. Young sa- saw how, how uncomfortable he got. And she said, "No, it doesn't, i- i- it's quite the contrary, senor. It has to do with the fact that I've had the privilege of having your four kids in my class. And let me tell you, they all love school, they're good students."

• 15:55Speaker 01

  I said, "But this nomadic lifestyle that you're living, uh, is not helping them." And my dad immediately stops Ms. Young, says, "Hey, hang, wait, wait, wait, wait." Says, "It's, it's true that, that, uh, uh, my wife and I only have a third grade elementary education. We're farm workers. And, um, and while my kids help me in the weekends, in the fields, and seven days a week during the summer, whenever they're school, I said, "They're either in school or they're doing their homework, they're self-studying." I said, "We, we take serious their education."

• 16:34Speaker 01

  And Ms. Young said, "Yes, but you move from to three different towns, three different school districts." You know what my dad's response was? He said, "Yes, we, but we move on a Saturday." Which was true, we finished school on a Friday. Monday, we were in the new town, new school district, and we were in school. So we didn't miss a day of school, he was right about that. And, and then Ms. Young would say, "Yes, but then you go to Mexico for three months." And my dad says, "Yes, but they take your homework." So in my dad's eyes, he was meeting his obligation of giving us an education.

• 17:15Speaker 01

  He didn't realize that moving us around was detrimental to the process, the educational process. And Ms. Young was clearly frustrated. And then I watched her closely and then she kind of smiles, almost as if she got an idea. And, you know, she must have studied psychology because she, she was brilliant at it. The first thing she does is, is, is she caters to my dad's ego.

• 17:40Speaker 01

  She looks at Mr. Hernandez and says, "Mr. Hernandez, your kids tell me that you have many years' experience in agriculture." Said, "Man, I think you can be considered an expert on agriculture issues." "Oh, man, you didn't have to tell that to my dad." My dad starts pulling up his collar. So, "Oh, yeah, I'm not sure I could be considered an expert, but I do know a thing or two about plants. Can I help you?" And man, Miss Young lets out a bigger smile. She took the bait. He took the bait. And, uh, and Miss Young said, "Well, yes, as a matter of fact, you can." She said, "You know, I'm gonna give you a problem, and you can tell me what happens, because I think that's gonna help me,

• 18:25Speaker 01

  but I think it's also gonna help you." And my dad says, "Sure, so what's the problem?" She goes and she says, "Imagine I give you a small tree and a potted plant. I'm gonna give it to you, it's a fruit tree." And my dad says, "Well, thank you." Said, "Now, I want you to find the best ground, fertile ground, dig a hole, and you plant it. And you take good care of it like the expert that you are. You're gonna fertilize it, water it, everything. You take good care of it." My dad says, "I can do that for you, Miss Young?" "Absolutely." Then she looks at him and says, "Three months later, I want you to find another piece of ground equally as good. Dig a hole.

• 19:10Speaker 01

  Transplant that tree there. Keep taking care of it." My dad puzzled look now, says, "Okay." And then Miss Young very quickly says, "And then another three months, what's more? Every three months, I want you to transplant that tree, Mr. Hernandez, but you're gonna take good care of it. It's gonna get all the water, all the fertilizer, all the nutrients it needs, 'cause you're the expert. You're gonna take good care of it." Then she looks straight in the eye to him and says, "Now, you tell me what happens in the long run to that tree." Oh, my dad starts thinking, starts combing his mustache like he likes to when he's very pensive. And says, "Well, Miss Young,

• 19:55Speaker 01

  that's very easy." Says, "The tree's not gonna die."

• 20:01Speaker 01

  But you're gonna stunt its growth.

• 20:05Speaker 01

  Because it's gonna be weak, and if it's a fruit tree, it probably won't even bear fruit. Why? Let me tell you why. A tree needs to be in one place so the roots can grow deep. And the branch, he even raises up his hand, so the branches can grow big and tall. And he's doing this, and you can count the two seconds. Big and tall, and then you can see his face or his breath. He got it. I mean, he got it. It took him two seconds, but he got it, cuz he sheepishly kinda put his hand down. And I gotta give, cuz my dad's very proud, but I gotta give him credit that day. Cuz he, you know, he could have got mad or denial, whatever.

• 20:50Speaker 01

  But he actually just looked at Ms. Young and said, "Is that what you mean?" And Ms. Young said, "That's exactly what I mean. I think my job is done here." And she excused herself, and she went off. And I'll tell you, that year, we still went to Mexico. But on the way back, we used to go by car, and from Stockton to Michoacan is almost a three-day trip. On the way back that year,

• 21:18Speaker 01

  we didn't stop in Ontario-Chino. We kept driving north. We didn't stop in central California, Salinas. We kept driving north, and we went straight to Stockton. From then on, that was our first and only stop. And then our trips back to Mexi-- we still went every year, but our trips to Mexico shrank from three months to three weeks centered around Christmas Vacation. And all of a sudden, our education started to get traction. And why did it happen? Oh, because the visit of one teacher, and this is why I always love telling this story to educators. I say, "You just never know what little seed you're gonna plant that's gonna give fruit," no pun intended, "in terms of helping kids."

• 22:02Speaker 01

  I say, "So whenever you're down and out, think of this story, because I'm sure there's something you've done in your career that's affected a kid. You may not know about it, but I'm sure something that you've done positive has helped a family."

• 22:15Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, no doubt about it. That's an awesome story. I know there's another thing you mentioned in here that had an impact on you. I'm going to the book. It says Star Trek was my favorite show growing up. My brother Chava had a toy model of the USS Enterprise spaceship from the show, which was my favorite toy to borrow and play with for hours and hours. In Stockton, where we spent a majority of the year, while in California, we lived in a small rented three-bedroom house located on the east side of town. It was an old house made of wood with a tile roof. It had a small bathroom, a round dining table, and a living room with old furniture. Although the kitchen was small, it was always stocked with the necessities for making a delicious Mexican meal, tortillas, tomatoes, peppers, and onions.

• 22:58Jocko Willink?

  The cuarto, or bedroom, I shared with Chava and Gil, had only two beds, a desk, and a dresser. Our furniture was rather austere, and most of the pieces were secondhand. The most luxurious item my family owned was the black-and-white television set, and even that was old by normal standards. The street we lived on reflected the humbleness of its residents, my family included, with a few exceptions. My neighbors made a living working either in the fields or the canneries. The canneries processed vegetables and fruits brought directly from the fields. This is where the tomatoes are packaged after being turned into ketchup or paste, and where the fruits are canned to become fruit cocktail.

• 23:41Jocko Willink?

  I came from a world bordered by limitations, primarily financial ones. Fortunately, as a child, I occupied myself with something that did not require any dinero, because it was free. No one knew about my special hobby, because I did not talk about it. Fueled by the scenes of Star Trek, I spent my time looking up at the sky, especially at night. At the time, I did not know exactly what had mesmerized me, but there was something up in the sky that fascinated me. I spent hours in my bedroom, gazing through the window and staring up at the stars. I stared at the stars, thinking, those stars over there are twinkling, and that one over there is not. Those over there look yellow, while those over there look blue. All of them appear to be the same, but they all are so different.

• 24:28Jocko Willink?

  So even from a young age, you were fascinated by what you were seeing up in space?

• 24:33Speaker 01

  Yes, and what really helped was the fact that aside from watching the first run Star Trek series and William Chatner, who by the way recently became a real astronaut, right? He went up into space.

• 24:46Jocko Willink?

  That's right, that's right. He just did.

• 24:48Speaker 01

  Crossed the Carmen line, so he became an astronaut, got his wings. But what really inspired me was, you know, after watching things like Star Trek, Lost in Space and those type of programs, when we used to go out to the fields, it used to be in the early dawn, it was still dark outside. And so we would go out to the fields away from the light pollution, and so you're in pitch dark still, the sun hasn't come up, it still needs 20, 30 minutes for it to come up. I would go outside and you would go up and you let your eyes adapt and you stargaze and you can see the stars so clearly, you know, and even clouds, like the Milky Way,

• 25:32Speaker 01

  those type of things, you can make out, it was so clear. And those are the things that really grabbed my imagination and I said, you know, one day, I'm gonna, I'm gonna be up there.

• 25:45Jocko Willink?

  You have a good section in here, you learned just an awesome lesson from your dad. You say this, "As I grew older, I would..." This is, now you're working, you're working in the fields. "As I grew older, I would learn the manias, or bad habits of the other workers. This included bending the bottom of their metal buckets inward to create less volume and thus appear to fill each bucket even more quickly."

• 26:10Speaker 01

  That's for the cucumbers, yes.

• 26:11Jocko Willink?

  "I would also learn how to swiftly reseat a bucket of Pepinos to make it look more full when it was really not. All tricks of the trade, I told myself. This was how we Hernandez kids spent our weekends and summers. We knew that it was our responsibility to do and there was no way of getting around that. Every morning spent in the fields promised us the same routine of going to and fro, picking fruits or vegetables from the ground as the rays of the hot sun hit our backs. During one Saturday in particular, I fell over accidentally stepping on a yellow overgrown Pepino that was rotten." I remember its rotten stench as I threw down my bucket, standing there thinking, I'm all covered in mud, I stink, I'm tired, and I'm sunburned. My siblings continue working alongside

• 26:54Jocko Willink?

  my parents, but I'm not going to anymore. I want to go home, watch TV, and play. I decided to quit. I went to my father and pulled on his pant leg to tell him, Dad, I'm tired, I want to go home. When he heard what I told him, he leaned down, took hold of both my shoulders, and with a surprised look on his face, asked, What's wrong? Did something happen? Are you okay? Look at me, I'm dirty. I fell in the mud. I want to leave. Plus, I've already made $10 for the day, I cried to him. The day's almost over, he said. Just keep on working. I don't want to. Fine, he said. Take a good look at yourself. You don't want to see, you don't like what you see right now? You don't like working in the fields in the hot sun or getting dirty?

• 27:39Jocko Willink?

  Am I right? Well, if you quit now, you'll be creating a pattern that is easy to conform to. If you don't work hard in school or in life, this will be your future. Is that what you want? No, I answered him. Well then, don't settle for $10. The day is almost over. Get back to work, he ordered, with just the right balance of authority and lo- and his version of tough love. What my father told me that day in the fields changed the trajectory of my life. It turned into the speech that transcended the end of a long day of working in the fields. We would hear it when all four of us sat in the backseat of our ramshackle car. Father would turn around

• 28:21Jocko Willink?

  to look at us before he would turn on the engine, and he would say, So how do you guys feel right now? We, of course, tired, sweaty, covered with mud, and we would answer accordingly. Good, he would say, because you kids have the privilege of living your future right now. Living our future right now? We would ask curiously. Yes, he would say. I'm not going to force you to go to school or get good grades, but if you don't, this is the type of job you'll have for the rest of your life. This is the future that awaits you. So if you want to quit school right now, no problem. I invite you to start coming to work with me every day as of tomorrow. My father's words made me realize that if I continued going to school,

• 29:06Jocko Willink?

  I could do whatever it was I wanted to do in life. If I studied hard, I might one day make enough money so my parents would no longer have to work in the fields. To this day, I believe my father's words changed the course of my destiny, and I am so grateful to him for that.

• 29:28Jocko Willink?

  I sometimes talk about the fact that I think one of the hardest things for kids to do is connect what they're doing right now to their future. They don't understand that how hard they work right now is gonna, gonna put them wherever they end up in the future. And your dad made that connection loud and clear for you all, didn't he?

• 29:47Speaker 01

  Exactly, and he put it very well in saying you have the privilege. Because he said, you know, your neighbors, you know, aren't working in the fields during the summer. They're off goofing off and having fun. Uh, your friends, they're in the neighborhood, they're not doing that, but you are. So see, they don't know what their future is like. So they're happy-go-lucky, carefree, and they don't care dilly squat about going to school. But you know what your future is like. Here it is. You're living it. So you wanna do this the rest of your life? And I said, man, I don't wanna do this. I think I'm gonna, I'm gonna do well in school, cuz I want something better than this. And so, so it was a hard lesson.

• 30:28Jocko Willink?

  I know my, my kid, one of my kids was telling me the other day, we were walking through our town and there was, you know, like a, some, some homeless drug addicts clearly on drugs, clearly just in a totally bad position in life. And they were telling me that when they were little, I would walk by those people and say, that's what drugs do to you. And they remember that. It's the same, the same type of approach your dad took.

• 30:55Speaker 01

  Exactly, exactly.

• 30:58Jocko Willink?

  Left an impression on you.

• 31:02Jocko Willink?

  So now I'm gonna fast forward a little bit. Again, you gotta get the book to get the whole story. I'm skipping giant swaths of the book, but going fast forward a little bit here. Things at school continued to get better. Making friends became easier and speaking English became less of a challenge as time passed. I did not consider myself fluent in the language until the age of 12. On the other hand, mathematics never gave me any problems. I had my routine down and I followed it strictly as a soldier would. Every day after school, I would do my homework, watch TV, and then play outside. The only things that differed from day to day were the questions that invaded my mind. I made it my personal mission to track down the answers to every single query that popped into my thoughts, constantly pursuing knowledge while satisfying my curiosity.

• 31:45Jocko Willink?

  You were into school, huh?

• 31:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know what really helped was my father. You know, in those days, they had the World Book Encyclopedia and they used to have salesmen that would come to your house and they sell them to you. And I remember my dad, they came one day and it was expensive. It wasn't, it's like 300, back then it was like 300 some odd dollars or something. You know, my parents didn't have that kind of money, but they bought the whole A through Z selection.

• 32:17Jocko Willink?

  I'm glad they didn't just get like A through E.

• 32:21Speaker 01

  Exactly. They bought the whole thing and man, whenever I needed to find something out, it's the good old World Book Encyclopedia. I would read it. I would even go to bathroom and take, you know, A with me or B or whatever. You know, thumb through it as you do your business, but, but that, you know, those little things that my father did really, really helped out.

• 32:41Jocko Willink?

  Where do you think your father, obviously he had this incredible grasp on the fact of how important education was. Where did he get that from?

• 32:49Speaker 01

  I think, I think he got it from the fact that he had been working in the fields himself since he was 15. He came, even before then, back at home, he used to work in the fields. And I think he realized, he says, hey, I don't want to put my kids through this. And when he saw, when he came to, to the States, you know, he saw what people that had an education, what kind of jobs they have. And that's what he kinda, you know, wanted us. My mother, you know, both my father and my mother had the... Have they, if they had gotten an education, I think they would have been well-renowned psychologists.

• 33:33Speaker 01

  Cause uh, they were, they were like expert, expert motivators. Uh, my mother, I remember every Friday, we used to um, we used to cash uh, we used to get paid in the field. They still gave you checks, paper checks back then. And um, and so on Friday after work, we would go directly to a gas station, Chevron gas station. It had a little mini mart. My siblings would go inside while my dad gassed up. And uh, they would buy, you know, chips and soda, uh sodas. And um, and, and I would say, hey, get me one too, cause my mom would then drag me like across the street to Bank of America to, to cash the checks. And um, and I remember we were standing there inside the bank.

• 34:19Speaker 01

  It was about four in the afternoon, hot summer day, about over a hundred outside. And you know, you go into a bank, nice and cool, right? And the air conditioning. Uh, and so we're standing there in line and I'm minding my own business, enjoying the uh, the cool, the cool weather there. And uh, and then I, I feel a tug on my shirt and it's my mom. I said, what's up mom? And she points to what obviously is the bank manager. And she says, what do you see there? And it was this dude, uh, you know, very nice tailored suit with a nice tie and dressed very nice. And obviously he was, you know, one of the muckety mucks there in the bank, right? And I said, well, I see a man.

• 35:04Speaker 01

  And she says, no. I said, I see you. I said, look at yourself right now. Of course, I was sweaty, kind of dry cake mud on my Levi's pants. And uh, tired. And says, look at your hands. And then, you know, they're all dirty and everything. I said, this is why you have to, pointing to my head, says, this is why you have to work with this. If you work with this.

• 35:33Speaker 01

  That's how you're gonna dress and this is where you're gonna work. In a place like this, air conditioning inside, in the shade. But if you work with this,

• 35:43Speaker 01

  says your body's gonna break down. You may be able to do it for a few years, but eventually your body's gonna break down. So she would always say, "Ojo, ay." You know, you better do well in school. So they both kinda like bombarded us from different directions. And subtle and not too subtle ways of uh of making sure. And she was the one that was um helped us develop the study habits. Cause as soon as we came home, you know, my parents would always race from the fields back home to make sure they were home before we got home from school. So we wouldn't find an empty house. And um my mom's routine was she would dart to the kitchen.

• 36:24Speaker 01

  She would make her fresh tortillas, uh the beans, rice and salsa. And that was the bait, cause we would come home from school. We would come home from school, we were hungry. And she would sit us down and she would feed us. But then, we couldn't get up. He says, "Crack open your books, show me that you finished your homework. Do your homework and show me you finished." And only until then, we would be allowed to get up and go to uh play outside with our friends. But she was the one that instilled those study habits that, you know, came in handy once you started college. Uh the fact that you had that discipline of saying, "Hey, I gotta take care of this before I can enjoy myself."

• 37:10Jocko Willink?

  Here's another impactful moment. Fast forward a little bit, it was during that particular summer of nineteen sixty-nine when a major event occurred that would make a big difference in my life. Despite the war in Vietnam, the internal conflicts in the US and the hippie movement, it was an important year for humanity. It was a year that left a strong impression on me at the tender age of seven. On the morning of July 20th, 1969, the entire world was glued to the television set, waiting in awe for an historic event to take place. Mankind had managed to do the unthinkable. A person was about to set foot on the moon. Later that night, the first images of Neil Armstrong on the surface of the La Luna

• 37:53Jocko Willink?

  were transmitted into households around the globe when he put his foot on the moon and he uttered the famous line that transcended time. That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind. When I heard these words, I felt indescribably shocked. I was captivated by this man, by this science which left me in awe. Absorbed in the broadcast, I got up abruptly to get closer to the television screen. I had an epiphany. During that exact moment, I discovered what I wanted to be when I grew up, an astronaut. And from that moment on, I was determined that absolutely nothing would get in the way of my dream.

• 38:36Speaker 01

  And thus, the dream was born.

• 38:38Jocko Willink?

  There it is. You remember watching that, huh?

• 38:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. It was such a big event. Uh, you know, I think everybody, uh, would, uh, in, in the, you know, in the whole world, was watching that because it was an amazement because to think that, um, you know, the Apollo rocket and the capsule, you know, which has less computing power than your average cellphone, was able to go and using vacuum tube technology, were able to go to the surface of the moon, send a couple of humans down there and then bring them back home safe and sound. I mean, it was just amazing. It was like, uh, Star Trek going live, you know, for real.

• 39:24Speaker 01

  So I was just amazed and I was, uh, you know, saying, you know, this is, this is what I want to be.

• 39:31Jocko Willink?

  Another, your parents are getting a lot of, a lot of credit today. Here's another little point where they get a ton of credit. The only people I did share this dream with were my parents and to my pleasant surprise, they offered me with words of encouragement. My father sat me down at the same kitchen table where my mother made us do our homework every day and offered me a few words of advice. He said, if I followed his recipe, I could do anything that I wanted to when I grew up because we lived in the United States. He explained to me that my siblings and I had the opportunity to live the American dream. Looking at me very seriously, he said, first, identify what you want to be when you grow up. Second, know how far you are from your goal.

• 40:12Jocko Willink?

  Third, draw yourself a roadmap that gives you all the steps it will take to get there. Fourth, get yourself a good education. Fifth, and finally, apply the same work ethic that you have in your work in the fields to your books and subsequently to your job once you graduate from college. Mix all this together, Jose, and you can be successful at anything you want to do, including becoming an astronaut.

• 40:39Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 40:40Jocko Willink?

  Out of the gate.

• 40:41Speaker 01

  And I took that hook, line and sinker because you know, when, when you're seven and you're 10 years old and your father tells you something, you believe it. So if he told me, follow this recipe and you'll become an astronaut. Man, I took that hook, line and sinker. I said, I'm going to be an astronaut. I really believed that at the time because I said, these are steps I can follow. And I believed my father and this is why I love sharing that recipe because it works. It works. And this is why I, I try to tell people, I said, to reach your full potential, says, follow these five simple ingredients. Later I added a sixth ingredient, which is perseverance, and we'll talk about that

• 41:25Speaker 01

  a little later, but, but I added that sixth ingredient and I said, you guys follow these six ingredients. I said, you know, sky's no longer the limit. Space is because I proved that.

• 41:36Jocko Willink?

  You know what's amazing when you were sitting there saying that when you're a kid and your parents tell you something, you listen to them. I mean, imagine if your dad would have had a different attitude. Imagine if your dad would have said, oh, you'll never be an astronaut or you don't have the chance of doing that.

• 41:49Speaker 01

  I would have never been on.

• 41:50Jocko Willink?

  You never would have done it.

• 41:51Speaker 01

  No, because I would have believed him. I said, you know, this is too monumental for me and where I'm at social economically, you know, it's not for me and I would have believed it. My dad would have told me that, but he didn't.

• 42:04Speaker 02

  It sounded like early on, your dad especially was pretty adamant about you understanding that your future is your choice, you know, and he provided the alternative right up front for you. You experienced it, you know, working in the fields. And then, so I've got to imagine you coming to him with a choice. You've decided, you know, at this point as a young kid, that space is it for you, you know, being an astronaut. So I've got to imagine, you know, he was really open to that and, you know.

• 42:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I'm certain, you know, he didn't believe I could reach it.

• 42:42Speaker 02

  Right.

• 42:42Speaker 01

  You know, obviously, but, but he was so interested in us getting an education that it's like, you know, he said, if that's what motivates him to go to college, finish high school and go to college, so be it. I mean, this is the same thing I tell my kid, my oldest kid. He's a, he's finishing up his PhD in Purdue and aerospace engineering, has two masters and bachelors. And, and, and I told him, you know, when, when I hooded him for his first masters, he was standing there in line, we had never talked about his future in terms of where he wanted to work. And I thought he was, he was done with his first masters, but, you know,

• 43:25Speaker 01

  he said he was going to graduate school and he wanted his PhD. And I said, oh, cool. Great. That's great. And, and, and, and I remember I, as we were standing there in line, I told him, son, why, why Purdue? And he said, Dad, you know, I took a page off of your book. He says, I um, I made a list of all the astronauts that got selected by NASA, where they graduated, and guess which school has graduated the most astronauts? I said, let me guess, Purdue. They said, yes, including Neil Armstrong. And so, so that's when I told him, you know, that's when I told him, I said, son,

• 44:08Speaker 01

  if wanting to be an astronaut motivates you to get your PhD, I said, you go on and be an astronaut, because you know what? Once you get that PhD, there's gonna be a lot of opportunities open up for you. You may not make it to be an astronaut, but I think you will. I said, I think you can make it, but you're gonna have so many other choices in life with two masters and a PhD and bachelors and so, uh, so, yeah, exactly.

• 44:33Jocko Willink?

  Powerful.

• 44:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:36Jocko Willink?

  Um, your family eventually um, moves into a little place and eventually buys a place.

• 44:43Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 44:43Jocko Willink?

  Eventually buys a place. You say here, after a few more years of renting, my parents would buy this house from the landlord. The landlord facilitated a rent to own finance plan that I, as a 12-year-old kid, helped translate and explain to my father. Finally, the family had a place to call home, although our new barrio or neighborhood was far from ideal. It had a slew of problems, just as any other barrio in South and East Stockton did. Since we were in the old, in one of the older, more depressed neighborhood, we witnessed far more crime than other people who lived in the newer part of town. I started to become more, fast forward a little bit, I started to become more social at school and in my barrio. It was at Fremont Middle School, where I met Carlos and his older brother, Alberto. Another person I hung around with in school was my friend Sergio. He lived across the street from me.

• 45:28Jocko Willink?

  The four of us were like brothers. We stuck together through our adolescent years. We were there for each other in good times and in bad times.

• 45:38Jocko Willink?

  Do you guys know what a pocho is? Asked Carlos while we were sitting on the stairs in front of my house. No, Sergio and I answered jointly. A pocho is a Mexican born here in the United States, who is neither a Mexican nor an American, like us, he explained. Carlos and Sergio wore those white t-shirts without sleeves, baggy gray khaki pants, and shiny black Stacy Adams dress shoes that always looked too big for their feet. Their accessories generally consisted of a bandana either neatly folded in their back pocket or worn around their head covering most of their forehead, and a chain that hung from their belt loop. Is it a bad thing to be a pocho? I asked. No, but in case you haven't noticed, they don't seem to like us here in the US or in Mexico.

• 46:22Jocko Willink?

  They will pick on us here or there. That's why we have to stick together. If we don't, we'll be easy targets and they'll get us. Who will get us? The gringos and the Mexicans that have come straight from Mexico. As I said, they don't like us. When we go to Mexico, they tell us that we're too Americanized. Meanwhile, the gringos call us dirty Mexicans. Either way, we can't win. It's like we have no roots and don't belong, don't seem to belong in either place. I'm telling you, that's why we have to stick together. Fast forward a little bit, things around my neighborhood were never easy. Gangs were everywhere. They were, they, and they congregated on a daily basis hoping to define their territories.

• 47:03Jocko Willink?

  Drugs like marijuana were commonly used and sold in our barrio. Drive-by shootings occurred to a lesser extent, but nonetheless kept the neighborhood on edge. Families were dysfunctional, divided, and grew apart due to inattentive parents suffering from alcoholism or other various addictions. The children from these broken homes were quickly recruited to join gangs. So year after year, the membership of these groups multiplied. I admit that it was difficult to escape that environment. Although I managed to steer clear of such activities, I had to somewhat assimilate in order to survive. Soon my appearance and attitude began to change. As I spent more time with Carlos, Alberto and Sergio, I became tougher and tougher.

• 47:47Jocko Willink?

  Or so I thought. I began wearing baggy pants, oversized flannel shirts and shoes that were one size too big. I walked down the streets with an attitude while I was emulating Alberto's gestures. My objective was to conceal the true Jose while trying to look like the rest of my peers. I did not want to be labeled a schoolboy or bookworm so that I could avoid being harassed. However, when I was in class and with my family, I was my true self. I was playful, studious and responsible. But when I was on the streets, I was one of the homeboys, as we pochos would call ourselves. The price of assimilation was steep. Soon I started to deny I knew how to speak Spanish and I began paying less attention to my Mexican roots.

• 48:34Jocko Willink?

  So there's some alternative paths besides the one that you were trying to go down.

• 48:38Speaker 01

  That's right. That's right. You know, these three friends of mine that-

• 48:43Jocko Willink?

  And what age group, what age are you at this point?

• 48:45Speaker 01

  This is junior high.

• 48:47Jocko Willink?

  So we're talking like 12, 13?

• 48:49Speaker 01

  12, 13, 14. Yeah. Yeah. And it's at that point where you kind of, you know, there's some points in your life that marks you that says, hey, you know, I've got to change the way things are in the direction I'm heading. Cause I was doing that with my friends because you had to do that in the neighborhood. But then you went back to school, you went back home and you tried to clean yourself up so that your parents don't see like you're turning into a thug, right? Kind of thing. And then you start thinking about, okay, I'm doing this more and more and more. Am I going in too deep? Kind of thing. And you try to extract

• 49:28Speaker 01

  yourself from it. And you see my buddies, you know, they went into it and you know, they went into it feet first and didn't try to come back. They, you know, they embraced it and got deeper and deeper, then started using drugs. I didn't use drugs. Then they started dealing with drugs. And you know, when I started seeing all these things of how it was changing them, because they were a good two, three months ahead of me in the process of transformation, if you will. And I saw where they were heading. I kind of saw that roadmap. And I said, man, I don't want to be like them. And little by little, I just started pulling away, hanging out less and less with him.

• 50:11Speaker 01

  And to the point that when I got into high school, you know, well, these guys did made the transition to high school. Probably one semester and then they just stopped going. And I kept going to high school, of course. And and so so they were still my homeboys. They were still in the neighborhood and and in a sense, it was great that they were still around because. You know, that was kind of like the protection. That I that I had in the neighborhood, because they knew I was, you know, everybody else knew I was. Associated with them and so no one dared mess with me because then they had to. Respond to these guys and these guys were very good and, you know, they respected the decision I made.

• 50:53Speaker 01

  And it's not like they harassed me and said, oh, we're gonna get you now because you left that they actually said, no, you go do it.

• 51:00Jocko Willink?

  That's a that's pretty awesome for them to be able to say that. Because a lot of times what you find with kids is. They don't want anyone to. Get ahead. They don't want anyone to go further. They'd rather just drag them back down and. And I I see that in every, actually, I see that not just with kids, I see that with with humans, human beings. There's a lot of human beings that when somebody makes a move to try and elevate and try and go further and try and do more. People discourage them instead of encouraging them.

• 51:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, it it's the crabs in the bucket.

• 51:33Jocko Willink?

  Crabs in the buckets.

• 51:34Speaker 01

  You know, one starts coming out, hey, come on down here and you get pulled back down.

• 51:38Jocko Willink?

  So that's a real. It's a real testament to those guys that they actually, instead of trying to drag you back down, they tried to lift you up and help you get out of there.

• 51:50Jocko Willink?

  Was there was there anything that that happened that you saw, well, how did you recognize that the path that they were going down? Was not the right path because, you know, you write it about it in here. Here are these guys. You know, when you're thirteen, fourteen years old, what do you want? Well, you want money, you want girls. You know, you want a cool car, you want to be popular and here with these guys. Well, guess what? They had money. They had, you know.

• 52:15Speaker 01

  They had girls.

• 52:15Jocko Willink?

  They had girls. So they they kind of had. The stuff that a young fourteen, fifteen year old kid wants. How did you realize that the path that they were going down was the wrong path?

• 52:27Speaker 01

  Uh, very easy. We went, we went cruising one day. We, we would cruise around Stribley Park. And then we got shot at. That wakes you up.

• 52:40Speaker 01

  I say, I don't wanna be a statistic. You know, we got shot at. And it's because these guys are dealing and uh, must have been dealing in the wrong area and uh, they got shot at and I was in there, you know, innocent bystander, yet, but I was there. And they were caring, uh, you know, and I said, man, I don't want to do this. This is not how I wanna end up.

• 53:02Jocko Willink?

  And you were able to see that luckily.

• 53:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:05Jocko Willink?

  You know, you tell, you've got another story in here that's uh, an interesting story. It's good, it's just a good life lesson. You found a wallet. With money in it.

• 53:13Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 53:14Jocko Willink?

  Tell us that story real quick.

• 53:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, we, we found a, um, I found a wallet and, um, and I forget how much money. It had a significant, had like about six, seven hundred dollars in it, cash.

• 53:26Jocko Willink?

  Dang.

• 53:26Speaker 01

  And, uh, but it had a, uh, it had a, you know, an ID and everything and I had an address and everything and, um, and I remember I found it. I went home to my dad, you know, and I said, Dad, I found this wallet. He said, what's in it? I said, there's about six hundred bucks in it. My dad looks at it first and, you know, I could see the temptation he had, just as, as I did. And I think more than anything, he just wanted to teach me a lesson and said, you know, um, if there's an owner here, uh, we oughta try and reach out for him. And, and try and do it. And unfortunately, he lived like in Oakland or somewhere, uh, who was visiting

• 54:09Speaker 01

  uh, relatives. So we waited like about a week or two when we had a weekend and then we drove to Oakland. And we found the address and then I gave it to the guy. The guy, it was an older man, you know, probably in his sixties. Uh, and said something about he had sold something, a car or something. I forget what he did. And he said he had lost the whole wallet. He thought he would never see it. He couldn't believe it. And, uh, you know, he gave me a twenty dollar reward or something like that. And I was happy. I said, hey, I did something good and I got twenty bucks out of it. So. And I think he gave my dad another twenty for the gas and stuff.

• 54:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 54:42Speaker 01

  But, yeah.

• 54:42Jocko Willink?

  But teaching that lesson of the, doing the right thing.

• 54:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:46Jocko Willink?

  Doing the right thing, even though it might sting your, sting your finances a little bit. Still the right thing to do. And that's, that's what your dad was wanting you to know.

• 54:55Speaker 02

  And that was at the same age, that was kind of that same same timeframe, fourteen?

• 54:58Speaker 01

  No, that was a little younger, probably a little younger. I was probably about eleven, okay.

• 55:02Speaker 02

  Still, that kind of money, you know, as an eleven year old.

• 55:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:07Jocko Willink?

  That's a lot of money.

• 55:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, man.

• 55:09Jocko Willink?

  That's a lot of money today.

• 55:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 55:10Jocko Willink?

  For me, six hundred bucks.

• 55:13Speaker 01

  Fourteen, I probably would have said, hey, you know, this is a good down payment for my car that I'm gonna get her next year or something, but no, I was too young.

• 55:20Jocko Willink?

  Uh, fast forward a little bit, um, I started my freshman year, freshman year of high school at Franklin High School at East Stockton. At that time Franklin was one of the toughest schools in Stockton with a delicate balance of Caucasian, Latino and African American students. Fast forward, I, I found refuge in something I awkwardly called my best friend. Math. Yes, math made me smile. It was fun. It remained my strongest subject as I maintained good grades throughout the four years in high school. You talk about a guy, uh, Mr. Zendeas?

• 55:52Speaker 01

  Zendeas, Sal, Sal Zendeas.

• 55:55Jocko Willink?

  And he told you, you were, you were kind of talking to him about, you know, your past and your, your history and your ancestors. And he said, I think you can find who you really are in the history of your ancestors' country. I know I did. Jose, don't ever be ashamed of your culture and its traditions. They're what make up your identity. You should be proud of who you are. Do you know why? No, I answered attentively, because you belong to two countries and two cultures. And that's a wonderful thing. Not everyone is as fortunate as you are. So that's an, that's a, um, kind of a reversal on the pocho thing where they're telling you, don't speak Spanish. Like people, like your friends, hey, we, we don't speak Spanish. You were hiding the fact that you spoke Spanish.

• 56:37Speaker 01

  Yes, yes. And, uh, and I'll tell you, shortly after, uh, Sal Zendeas, my teacher said that. You know, I, I think I was in. A junior in high school. And I'm not sure if you talk about the the homecoming float, but but it Go ahead. It falls, it falls very good with this story was when um, when I was a, a, a, a junior in high school, um, you know, I started participating in student government, senior, I became senior, uh, student body president, but junior, uh, I was barely starting. So I was part of the student council. And so I went to the meetings and we were getting ready for homecoming.

• 57:21Speaker 01

  And of course, every class, the, the senior class, the junior class, the sophomore and freshmen have a float, right? And they, they have a homecoming float. And I remember ours, we, we, we, we wanted to build a float and everything. And, um, and they were saying, okay, but we need a, a flatbed and a truck. Uh, does anyone have a flatbed and truck? And no one had one, uh, cause my dad drove a flatbed and a truck. So I knew I had one, right? But I wouldn't say anything because I knew my dad. My dad is not gonna lend it to us in a sense of drop it off somewhere where we can work and use it. And then, uh, he'll go, go pick it up once we're done. He's not like that. He's good. He's, he's

• 58:03Speaker 01

  the type that says, oh, yeah, you guys want, sure, you can use it, but you know, you guys come here so I can keep my eye on my truck and my flatbed. So, so, so you have to come here. And of course, we lived in East Stockton, worst part of Stockton. And we lived in, uh, at the time, it was a, that two bedroom dilapidated rental that we still didn't own yet. And, um, I, actually, we did own it by then. And so we owned it, but it was in the worst part of Stockton. And, um, and, and so I was embarrassed to have my classmates come to my house. Cause I figured, you know, surely they live in better houses than this two bedroom dilapidated, uh, piece of junk that we lived in, right? But that was our home. And so

• 58:47Speaker 01

  I resisted and we had meeting after meeting. And then it became clear that the very last meeting, they were gonna cancel the junior entry for the homecoming float because we didn't have, we didn't have a flatbed or a truck. I finally had to fess up. I said, you know, I have one. And, oh, you do? Great. I said, but there's a catch. And they said, what's that? We gotta build a float in my house, in our front yard there at the flatbeds there. My dad won't let, take it anywhere. "Oh, don't worry, we'll go and..." "What's the address?" So I gave him the address and, you know, and building the float, it's after class. They usually start on the Monday, because of, the thing is on Friday. Um, and, and so we start on Monday and, uh, and so people came.

• 59:33Speaker 01

  And I remember the first dad was kinda like embarrassed, but you know, they all jumped on the truck. They started working on it. Then all of a sudden, my mom starts bringing in burritos, tacos, agua fresca. My dad brings out the boombox and puts music. My brothers and sisters start helping out. And then the next day, word got out, "Hey, there's good food and music." Party, party Jose. So it got bigger. You know, by Thursday, it was like, you know, it was overflowing and, uh, it was great. And, um, and I remember a, a, a guy, a friend of mine, um, comes to me and, um, and he looks at me and he says, "Man, I'm so jealous of you."

• 1:00:15Speaker 01

  And I said, "Jealous of me?" And this is a Caucasian guy, lived in the north side of Stockton, good place, Stockton. He had one of those, uh, you know, what Smokey and the Bandit cars? Oh, Trans Am. Trans Am, with the eagle. Yeah, he had, he had, he, you know, he had barely started driving and he got a new car. And he said he was jealous of me and I said, I said, "Dude, look what you're driving and you're jealous of me?" And he said, "Yeah." I said, "You know, I, um, sure, I have this new car and I live in North Stockton." Says, "But, you know, my parents are divorced. I never seen my dad. My mom's a nurse. She works long hours. I hardly see her. I always come home to an empty house. And to think you come home to this." I said, "This is what I want."

• 1:01:00Speaker 01

  And that's when I realized that, you know, bringing in both parts of my culture to identify who Jose is was the best thing to do. And that's when I stopped being embarrassed.

• 1:01:17Speaker 01

  Of my Mexican heritage. That's when I embraced it. And I said, you know, with lots of pride, yeah, I'm a Mexican American. Cause I'm able to get the best of both cultures to define who Jose is today. And, uh, and so that's, you know, after hearing Mr. Sendejas's, uh, words, you know, I put it to use and I realized I had this, uh, conclusion that said, hey, it's not bad getting the best things of both cultures. Of course, there's people that get the worst things of both cultures and that that's real bad. Uh, you know, I thought that's my buddies down the street, but, but, but, you know, that's, uh, that's another thing.

• 1:01:57Speaker 02

  It's, it's all on what you focus on too, right?

• 1:02:00Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:02:00Speaker 02

  You know, you, you, you focused on those positive aspects, you know, pursued that, took you places.

• 1:02:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:08Jocko Willink?

  You talk about that you did end up being the, like you said, the student body, uh, president, class president. That's pretty cool. You talk about the election in here and stuff like that. Um, fast forward a little bit, you say, one day I heard news, a news brief on the radio that said, Costa Rican Franklin Chang Diaz, the first Latino American astronaut candidate at NASA, makes his dream come true. The news commentator talked in depth about Dr. Chang Diaz's struggles and triumphs in his quest to become an astronaut. Quote Franklin Chang was born in 1950 in San Jose, Costa Rica. He was sent to the United States after finishing his secondary education with only $50 to his name and without knowing a single word of English. He recounted that all he had was a suitcase full of aspirations, end quote.

• 1:02:53Jocko Willink?

  So there you had a little someone to relate to a little bit. You were looking at him that way.

• 1:02:56Speaker 01

  Exactly. Well, I figured he, he was, uh, opening the road for others. I said, you know, once they selected the first Hispanic American astronaut, I said, well, then, you know, that opens the door up for me. And, uh, and, and so, so, yeah, so, so he was someone that really kinda put fuel to my, added fuel to my fire of wanting to become an astronaut. Cause now I said, uh, now I know it's possible. Cause he's living proof then. And I, it resonated so much because, you know, he had brown skin like I have. He spoke with an accent like I did. And, uh, he came from very humble beginnings, just like I did. And I said, well, if he can do it, why can't I?

• 1:03:40Speaker 01

  And so it empowered me.

• 1:03:44Jocko Willink?

  You got into a bunch of different universities, get done with high school, fast forward a little bit, you end up going to the University of the Pacific, which is up in Stockton, had a great engineering program, and it would allow you to be at home.

• 1:03:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, I saved on room and board. And then I was able to work in the fall at the cannery during the night shift. I remember, you know, the first two months of school was always tough because it was August, September, and then as you get more seniority, you go into October, November in the canneries, and then you get laid off. But I remember, you know, it's tough because you go to work at, and the cannery was only a block away, so I would walk to the cannery from my house. And I would walk in this big yellow raincoat because I worked in cleanup from ten at night to six in the morning. And then I would get home, shower, eat something, and then my classes start at eight o'clock at EOP, finish till about two, three,

• 1:04:42Speaker 01

  and then did some homework, and then fell asleep about seven, and about nine thirty, get back up and go back to work.

• 1:04:49Jocko Willink?

  On the grind.

• 1:04:50Speaker 01

  On the grind. But, you know, it was only a short period, like three months kind of thing. On average, it was about three months. But, you know, that helped me. The cannery paid pretty well compared to fieldwork, so they paid very well. So that, along with the fact that I didn't have to pay room and board, allowed me to go to Pacific and, you know, pay the tuition, my part of the tuition, because I got Cal Grant, Pell Grant, and those type of assistance to get, to help pay for the tuition.

• 1:05:22Jocko Willink?

  I got to cover this one section because we talked about it a little bit. You talk about your friends here. Years later, after drifting apart, I would find out that he did, this is Carlos, he did indeed not continue his education. He ended up doing low skilled work and low paying jobs. Drugs robbed his brother Alberto of his future. They found Alberto's lifeless body in his apartment, and an autopsy revealed that he died of a drug overdose, probably a result of heroin or cocaine use. As for my neighbor Sergio, he too did not have an opportunity to make something of himself. One day, years later, as I was getting an award for one of my projects, I received a call from my mother who told me that the neighbor stumbled upon his body, which was hanging from a tree in the park. To my knowledge, no arrests were made in connection with his death.

• 1:06:07Jocko Willink?

  It remains unclear as to whether it was a suicide or a homicide. I truly believe my friends were not the individuals they appeared to be. They were just three little boys who needed role models in their lives to steer them in the right direction. If someone would have made them realize the importance of going to school or infused them with self-confidence, their destinies would have been very different. When I received word of their deaths, I felt impotent, wondering perhaps if I could have done something to help them make the right decisions.

• 1:06:43Jocko Willink?

  You know, when you were talking earlier about Mrs. Young or Miss Young.

• 1:06:48Speaker 01

  Miss Young.

• 1:06:49Jocko Willink?

  And it's not just educators, you know, that have the opportunity to have a huge impact on people's lives, you know, anybody, if you're listening to this right now, you can, you can help so many people that you reach out, talk to them, try and show them, show them the right direction. I mean, it's, you don't have to be in a, in a position of authority to be able to help people and steer them in the right direction. And it's, um.

• 1:07:11Speaker 01

  You know, and, and that was the great differentiator between them and I, you look at my parents, they were involved, you know, they didn't know, I mean, that sure, sure they didn't go to PTA meetings and none of that, but they were involved with, you know, keeping an eye on us, making sure we wouldn't stray and making sure we were doing well in school. Whereas with my friends, you know, one, uh, for, for one of them, the one that lives across the street, uh, he, um, you know, his father was never there. Uh, he would only come, he would come home like a day, two days before the first, why? Cause that was when the welfare check arrived. And he was sweet talk his wife, you know, take like 90% of the money, disappear for

• 1:07:53Speaker 01

  the rest of the month and then give them 10% to fend for the rest of the month for the whole family, which was terrible. And then, uh, on the other side, the two brothers, uh, both the mother and father were alcoholics. And, uh, and so it was non, you know, it was a dysfunctional family on both sides there that, that didn't help them. And, and so you, when you become.

• 1:08:17Speaker 01

  Successful and then you hear what happens to your buddies. You can't, you know, feel, you know, you can't help it but to feel bad because you say, is there anything I could have done to have, uh, uh, helped them along the way so they, they wouldn't have end up the way they have in, you know, ended up in, you know, one OD'd, another one still selling drugs on the street and the other one, uh, uh, parent suicide. And, uh, and you say, you know, you do feel guilty because you say, you know, maybe I could have done something. But, you know, who knows?

• 1:08:55Jocko Willink?

  You know, speaking of people having, so tell us a little bit about, uh, Señora Bello.

• 1:09:00Speaker 01

  Oh, Señora Bejo.

• 1:09:01Jocko Willink?

  Bejo, okay.

• 1:09:02Speaker 01

  Bejo, yeah. She's, uh, she was a tough cookie. Uh, she started off in, um, actually in, in, in, um, junior high. And then when we went to high school, she actually transferred to the high school. So we got a double dose of her.

• 1:09:20Speaker 01

  Which I don't know if it was good or bad, but the, the first dose I got of her was, uh, in junior high and, uh, and she was the one that, uh, basically, remember I told you I started to forget my Spanish and everything? She's the one that sort of turned that around and said, no, you will learn Spanish and you will learn it in a correct manner, you know, and all that stuff. As a matter of fact, I went, I went to Guadalajara. She was a Spanish teacher, so she set up a trip to Mexico and we went to a blind school and got boarded there and, uh, and would, would spend like two weeks during Easter in, in, in Mexico. And, uh, and so she, and she was tough as nails, uh, you know, she was a tough cookie,

• 1:10:04Speaker 01

  tough grader, everything, didn't cut you any slack. And, um, and then in high school. Um, she became biology teacher. So then I went to Mexico Baja California twice with her, again on Easter with the biology kids and we would do uh plant taxonomy and marine biology uh in in Baja and you know, we we would like uh make corners of uh uh different quadrants and we would have to classify every plant in that quadrant. So you get a good uh idea of what kind of vegetation existed in the Baja desert kind of thing. And then we were always sleeping under a tent and stuff like that. So it was it was uh it

• 1:10:49Speaker 01

  was interesting times there. And again, she was very, very tough on us. But but you know, that's what prepared me for college, man, because uh without her toughness, I think I wouldn't have uh had the the mental toughness to get through physics and chemistry and calculus and all those engineering courses.

• 1:11:08Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you ran into her as you were starting university and and one of the things she told you, and this is going back to the book, she said, you're all grown up now, Jose, you're about to turn eighteen and embark on embark on your college career. You know, I was once young in college, just like you. I know the challenges you're gonna face. The only thing I ask of you is not to forget who you are and where you come from. Don't allow anything or anyone to deter you from your schoolwork. She she was staying on you.

• 1:11:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. She was she was a second mother. She was exactly like a second mother. And so she kept an eye on us.

• 1:11:39Jocko Willink?

  Uh, you got a cool story in here. I gotta I gotta read this one because it I was I enjoyed it. Um, you're checking into your first one of these classes. Good morning, class. I'm Professor Andres Rodriguez. I will be teaching you physics. Are there any questions? Dr. Rodriguez was very short man with silvery white hair who always seemed to have an unlit cigar used more like a pacifier in his mouth or his hand. He talked with a very heavy accent because of the cigar. I guessed he was of Cuban descent. Later, I would find out my assumptions to be correct. Will a syllabus be handed out? Asked a female classmate classmate very hesitantly. Syllabus? There's no need for one. The curriculum of this class is going to be something none of you have ever seen before. It's not going to make any sense without me personally guiding you throughout the semester. Let's

• 1:12:23Jocko Willink?

  begin, shall we? I shivered with goosebumps when I heard him speak in what I thought was an unfriendly tone. Looking around the classroom and seeing all the new faces once again brought me back to the same feelings I had when I was in elementary school, when I was trying to figure out what the writing on the chalkboard meant. The only difference now was that the board was plastered with symbols and numbers, not words in a foreign language I did not know. Just 10 minutes into his lecture, I was beginning to think that there was no way I would ever pass this class. The chalkboard was filling up with one physics formula after another. I might as well have been staring at Egyptian hieroglyphics. Professor Rodriguez was talking and writing so quickly that I could barely keep up. I just wrote down everything he wrote down as fast as I could,

• 1:13:03Jocko Willink?

  without understanding any of it. "Any questions?" he asked. No one raised a hand.

• 1:13:12Jocko Willink?

  I took a deep breath, and as I exhaled, I dared to raise my hand. "Professor Rodriguez, I really don't understand anything you just wrote on the board," I told him. Some of my classmates began to laugh, making me feel like an idiot for raising my hands. Professor Rodriguez looked at me, smiled, and asked, "What's your name?" "Jose," I responded. "Well, Jose, the reason why you don't understand anything that I wrote is because it's nonsense. It's nonsense. It's a joke, and if you all look closely, you will see that this was a lesson in disguise." In disguise. Everyone became silent, embarrassed by both their own ignorance and their fear of not speaking up. They all seemed to wish they had found themselves asking for clarification.

• 1:13:58Jocko Willink?

  That's a good trick. You referred back to someone else here, Dr. Jones, who said, "Don't ever be left with any doubts or questions. Better to be ignorant for a moment than for life." If you don't understand something, simply ask.

• 1:14:12Speaker 01

  That's correct.

• 1:14:12Jocko Willink?

  Good lesson learned, right there.

• 1:14:15Speaker 01

  Well, you know, I figured, you know, and Dr. Jones was the director of a program there at UOP, University of Pacific, the Community Involvement Program, which gave scholarships to kids from the local area to attend the university, which is a private university. And, you know, they paid up to like 80% of your tuition. So I remember... You know, we had like a two week orientation before school started. And one of the things, this was a African American tall gentleman, Dr. Jones. And, um, and he would always call us, you know, his kids, you know, from the program. But he would always say, hey, you need to sit in the front of the class. Don't sit in the back. Why get it filtered?

• 1:15:00Speaker 01

  Sit in the front, ask questions, always do, and it says, uh, and then he would say, you know, Jose, um, you know, we're giving you a scholarship, right? I said, yeah, I said, but how much are you paying a year? I said, I have to, still have to come up with about three thousand dollars. He says, okay, get your money's worth. And, and so that's exactly what I thought of when Dr. Rodriguez was doing all this stuff. And I'll sit there in front and writing everything. I don't understand none of this scrap. Don't understand it. And I said, man, I'm paying three grand. I said, I'm gonna ask, I'm, I want my money's worth. So I asked and I said, I don't understand this. And that's when he said, good, I'm glad you don't, cause you shouldn't.

• 1:15:44Speaker 01

  Or I said, I just wanna teach you guys the lessons that because we're gonna go through a tough course here. If you guys have any questions, you ask them. So don't assume, cause it's only gonna get worse, he says. It's gonna get worse if you let it pile on. You need to understand the basics, so ask questions. Then he started with his lesson.

• 1:16:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I didn't go to college until I was older than Navy sent me to college when I was twenty eight years old. And I was, I would sit right in the front row. And if a professor talked about something that I didn't understand, I would immediately raise my hand. I don't understand that, cause I was, I was a grown man, you know, I didn't care what the other kids thought. I just wanted to make sure I understood what they were putting out. But that's something I learned in the SEAL teams. If you're starting to learn a, a tactic or a technique, and you're not getting it, and you try and pretend like you get it, it's gonna catch you and it's gonna bite you.

• 1:16:36Speaker 01

  It's gonna bite you.

• 1:16:37Jocko Willink?

  It's gonna bite you.

• 1:16:38Speaker 01

  That same thing being an astronaut, you say, you can't pretend. You gotta understand, cause you know what, this little button, it could save you or it could kill you.

• 1:16:47Jocko Willink?

  Uh, fast forward a little bit, you end up with a job opportunity. This was not only a job, it was an opportunity. Lawrence Liver Livermore National Laboratory is a premier research facility dedicated to national defense and is funded through the Department of Energy. It was located just 40 miles from my home, allowing me to commute to work while I was making some money too. I could not stop thinking of how I would feel on the first day walking through those doors. So you had this opportunity to get this job at a, at a lab. That's a huge opportunity.

• 1:17:14Speaker 01

  Yes, yes, it was premier national laboratory, R and D and, uh, in defense applications.

• 1:17:21Jocko Willink?

  So, uh, And what year did you do that? Was that, was that, did you start interning there?

• 1:17:25Speaker 01

  Yes, I started interning in 83 and again in 84. And then I got offered a job in 85 career, but I went to my, uh, master's degree and then I got hired in 87 full time.

• 1:17:40Jocko Willink?

  Um, fast forward a little bit in May of 1985, at the age of 22, I found myself dressed in a black and orange graduation gown with my standard issued black cap, ready for college graduation. I could hear my mother's applause as I walked across the stage to receive my diploma because it was the loudest. With my degree in hand, I stopped to show her what I had written on top of my cap before exiting the stage. It read, "Hola mama." It was a symbol of my gratitude for everything she had done for me for my entire life. I remember clearly how everyone turned to look at her as she rose from her seat and how her crystalline eyes, which were holding back tears, met mine as she blew me a kiss.

• 1:18:21Jocko Willink?

  Big day.

• 1:18:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, very big.

• 1:18:25Jocko Willink?

  You say I wasted no time in starting my career at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California.

• 1:18:35Jocko Willink?

  This is where you decide, well, gotta go through the mindset here. I came to the conclusion that for me to flourish and successfully compete in this environment, I needed to obtain a postgraduate degree. This realization coupled with the fact that I could not stop thinking about how I could get into the NASA astronaut program led me to my next big decision in life to attend graduate school. After all, Dr. Franklin Chang Diaz had a doctorate degree and NASA chose him to go into space. So you're checking these boxes. End up going to University of California at Santa Barbara. And this was the first time you got to go to school where all you had to do was go to school.

• 1:19:08Speaker 01

  Exactly. And then the first time away from home, too.

• 1:19:11Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:19:11Speaker 01

  And, uh, and, and so, uh, but yes, it was the first time I, I had a full ride scholarship, even paid for my room and board. And my only job was to go to school.

• 1:19:22Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:22Speaker 01

  Cause every other time when I was an undergraduate, I was in the cannery, working restaurants, uh, work, study, tutoring, doing everything. I was always busy. And, uh, and here, the only thing I had to do was go to school and it was so easy.

• 1:19:37Jocko Willink?

  Luxury.

• 1:19:37Speaker 01

  It was luxury. It was so easy. Cause I said, well, what else do I always felt when I was there felt so guilty. Cause I said, what else do I need to do? I said, no, you're all caught up.

• 1:19:46Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. That's luxury. I, I had that kind of luxury too. So I went to college. And then like I said, the Navy sent me to college. But the Navy, for some reason, it was an old program. I got commissioned as an officer before I went to college. So then I did two years at a SEAL team. Then they sent me to college. So I was an officer. I didn't have, like Johnny Kim, who you know, Johnny Kim, he, when he went to college, he had to do ROTC. And we went to the same college, University of San Antonio. He had to go to ROTC and put on his uniform and do whatever the Navy requirements were.

• 1:20:16Speaker 01

  Do, yeah.

• 1:20:17Jocko Willink?

  Me, I was just, just go to college. That's the exact same as you. Just getting a full pay. I was getting a paycheck. I, my deal was even better than yours, I think. Cause I was getting a full Navy paycheck.

• 1:20:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, yours was better.

• 1:20:28Jocko Willink?

  I was the highest paid college freshman of all time.

• 1:20:31Speaker 01

  It was always.

• 1:20:32Jocko Willink?

  And getting your tuition paid, right? Yeah. And my tuition was fully paid. Yeah. It was ridiculous.

• 1:20:36Speaker 01

  That's great.

• 1:20:36Jocko Willink?

  But for you, going from where you, all your career, you were working at the cannery from 10 o'clock at night till six in the morning. And now you're just there, just focused on school.

• 1:20:47Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:20:48Jocko Willink?

  Luxury.

• 1:20:49Speaker 01

  Exactly. It was.

• 1:20:52Jocko Willink?

  Awesome. Um, you were kinda making a transition to another level. Meanwhile, this happens, going back to the book, Couple Murdered in Stockton.

• 1:21:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:21:04Jocko Willink?

  News article. The article confirmed that the victims were family members from my father's side. Dumbfounded, I immediately called my parents to inform them of the tragedy, but they already knew they were distraught, understandably so. I started thinking, my parents live in a neighborhood similar to the one where my tio and dia were just murdered. How could I allow my own parents to continue living in such a place? So you start feeling like you gotta do something about your parents. Now, this is where you start getting psychological back on your

• 1:21:32Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 1:21:33Jocko Willink?

  Because you knew you could just say, hey, I wanna move you in with me.

• 1:21:36Speaker 01

  Well, they're gonna be resistant.

• 1:21:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:38Speaker 01

  They're gonna be resistant because they're used to the old neighborhood, or used to the, you know, the corner supermarket and those type of stuff. And I knew there was gonna be resistance.

• 1:21:46Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 1:21:46Speaker 01

  But I wanted to get him out of that neighborhood, cuz I said, you know, same thing that happened to my uncles.

• 1:21:50Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 1:21:51Speaker 01

  Could happen to them.

• 1:21:52Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 1:21:52Speaker 01

  And of course, they were resistant, so go ahead.

• 1:21:54Jocko Willink?

  Well, you go ahead. What'd you do? You played a little psychological warfare on him?

• 1:21:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, you know, I had, I had just bought a house myself, cuz I was working at Livermore. So I bought my first, uh, three-bedroom, two-bath house in North Stockton, nice area. And I was living by myself, of course. And, and somehow I wanted to get them to come live with me. And of course, uh, they resisted. They said, no, me, this is our home. This is where we belong. This is, I said, yeah, but look what happened to, uh, Uncle Annette. And said, no, that was not gonna happen to us. And, uh, finally, I said, this, this is what I'm gonna do. I said, I'm gonna, I'm gonna tell mom that I really need, uh, help with the house cleaning.

• 1:22:42Speaker 01

  And, uh, and, and, and also, I'm gonna go to the pharmacy, gonna buy me a few condoms, and kinda just, kinda hide them where she could find them.

• 1:22:55Speaker 01

  And, and I know she was gonna clean, and she's gonna find them. She's probably not gonna say anything to me about them. But I know she's gonna have a conversation with dad. And, and, and the conversation, I figured, I kinda figured, I said, she's gonna say, hey, we have to move over there, make sure our kid doesn't make a mistake. Look what I found, this and that. And they're such good Catholic, you know, parents, old fashioned. So, uh, so, so it worked. It worked to the T. It worked. Uh, next thing I know is they're packing their stuff and they're moving over. So, so yes, I did use a little bit of psychology to get them over there. And we've never talked about it since then. She hasn't mentioned it. I've never mentioned it. And, uh,

• 1:23:41Jocko Willink?

  It just worked.

• 1:23:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's just worked. It just worked.

• 1:23:45Jocko Willink?

  Um, fast forward a little bit, nineteen ninety one, you lost your, your grandfather.

• 1:23:52Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:23:53Jocko Willink?

  Um, and that was, how, I mean, your, your family was close, even though you, even though you spent less and less time in Mexico as you got older, you still, I mean, it was, this was like a hu- this was a huge, huge impact for you, a huge loss.

• 1:24:06Speaker 01

  Yes, because I grew up, um, as a kid, I would spend three months over there in their house with them, growing up with them. You know, my parents were there, my siblings were there, cousins would come over and, uh, but my grandfather and, uh, and grandmother were there. And so, you know, they were like the, the matriarch and patriarch of the family kinda thing. And, and so, uh, it was a big loss when, when, when we lost them.

• 1:24:35Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, cuz then, well, your abuela, then shortly thereafter, you say this, "God must not have wanted to experience such grief for two long months. After my grandfather's death, death, her Alzheimer's rapidly accelerated and robbed her of her last memory. It was not long before she reunited with her soulmate."

• 1:24:53Speaker 01

  That's correct.

• 1:24:55Jocko Willink?

  And then you lost your, your mother's mother as well.

• 1:24:59Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:24:59Jocko Willink?

  And all this happened in a pretty short period of time.

• 1:25:02Speaker 01

  Sure, with period of about three years, I lost all three of them. My, my grandfather on my, uh, mother's side, uh, he passed away of tuberculosis when I was about two or three years. So, he got to know me, I don't remember him, but he got to know who I was. But, uh, but yeah, in the short span of those about three years, we lost all, all three, uh, grandparents.

• 1:25:26Jocko Willink?

  Now, as this is happening, you're, you're still at, working at this lab. And while that's going on, December eighth, nineteen ninety one. The Soviet Union falls apart.

• 1:25:38Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:25:39Jocko Willink?

  Which is has effects, I mean, global effects, obviously. This was a superpower. This was, you know, the fall of communism. And you say this in the book, "It was not long after the fall of the Soviet Union that the expensive Star Wars defense programs, such as our own X-ray laser program, came up on the Congressional Budget's chopping block."

• 1:26:01Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:26:02Jocko Willink?

  So, you were working, you were working on things that were used for defense?

• 1:26:08Speaker 01

  Yes, the project I had worked, when I got hired as a career employee, because I had worked at the lab already, but when I got hired as a career employee, they gave me a choice of about three projects. They had, they had a life extension program where they extended the life of a nuclear warheads. And so you worked on, on, on how to evaluate them and certify them so they can stay longer on the shelf. And we call them good and good operating order. That was one project. The other one was working in the National Ignition Facility, NIF, where it's nuclear fusion, 192 X-ray beams creating nuclear fusion to create energy, which was pretty interesting.

• 1:26:54Speaker 01

  But the third one was developing an X-ray laser. This is a nuclear pumped X-ray laser where you have a nuclear event and you have a beam of focused X-rays that would, it would be deployed up in space that would, that would be pointed to any oncoming Soviet missiles in the event of a first strike by the Russians. When those missiles go exothermic up in space, you detonate this device, you have high-energy X-ray particles that take out the electronics package and then they float off harmlessly. And so, so out of all these three, three projects, that's the one that interested me because we had to put it up in space.

• 1:27:37Speaker 01

  So I figured, you know, I gotta learn how to put hardware up in space. I think NASA would be interested in this.

• 1:27:43Jocko Willink?

  Not to mention working on a nuclear X-ray laser.

• 1:27:46Speaker 01

  Exactly, exactly. And, and we would, we would do our testing in Nevada Test Site. This is when underground nuclear testing was allowed. And, you know, Whenever they did any nuclear event, um, you know, the labs, uh, they would give you real estate. You, they would have about thirty experiments in a nuclear event. So they had a whole team that just dedicated to preparing for a nuclear event. And then they say, okay, this is your real estate and you would go down there and put your package. In our case, it's the, the X-ray itself, right next to the bomb. And then a bunch of diagnostics, uh, fiber optics, so that when it happens, we're able to measure the flux, how strong

• 1:28:27Speaker 01

  those X-rays are and how, you know, the density of it and all that. So we can basically measure its performance. And that's what we were doing. And, uh, and so to me, it was great. It was, uh, and it, and, you know, they would throw money at it. So money was never an issue in terms of, I need this, I need that. And we would, uh, so it was fun times until the, uh, Soviet Union collapsed and then, uh, justification for grandiose projects and justifiedly so, uh, went away. And so that's why they canceled it.

• 1:28:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. You know, uh, you, you described this well, when you're talking about how much money you were able to utilize. You say, I credit the advances in defense shield projects such as our own X-ray laser as leading to the downfall of the former Soviet Union. In short, Reagan's strategy, that's Ronald Reagan, Reagan's strategy worked. My own conclusion leads me to believe that in effort to keep up with the Joneses, the Soviet Union dedicated the bulk of its budget to similar programs while paying less attention to their economy and internal infrastructure. As a result, the USSR created the perfect social and economic storm that led to unrest and its eventual downfall.

• 1:29:34Speaker 01

  That's correct.

• 1:29:35Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward a little bit. One question started to linger in my mind was how could we utilize to our advantage, the insight gathered from the work on the X-ray laser? My boss and mentor Clint Logan could not have agreed more. Clint decided that mammography was the best way to match both our skills and the tools we had developed. That's a big leap. We had, we also had personal motives for improving mammography. The wife of our leader in the X-ray laser program had been diagnosed with breast cancer and I had just lost a young friend to the disease. On many occasions, I served as an interpreter for my 28-year-old friend and her husband as she underwent treatment for her cancer. I was astonished to learn that eventually one in eight women in the United States acquires this horrible disease.

• 1:30:22Jocko Willink?

  So you guys figured out that some of the technology that you had used or you had invented could actually be used in a positive way for helping detect breast cancer?

• 1:30:33Speaker 01

  That's correct. The area I was in charge of for the X-ray laser was evaluating the man-made materials called aerogels that were used as pads for the X-ray laser. And the way I evaluated them was I would X-ray them and create images to see how homogeneous this man-made material was.

• 1:30:57Jocko Willink?

  Got it.

• 1:30:58Speaker 01

  So that you can match it. Because you had to put about eight of these type of bricks on both sides. And you got to match the interfaces, else they lose energy as it transfers from one interface to the other. And the way I did it was I did X-ray imaging, but then I also started to fool around with how X-rays interact with matter. And I started writing some code called Monte Carlo 3D code analysis that models how the X-rays react with matter. Because some X-rays go through, some get completely absorbed, and some collide with material

• 1:31:40Speaker 01

  and create lower-energy X-rays, and that's scatter, which is noise in the image. And so I modeled all that. And when the project got canceled, this was like a neat little tool. And so Clint, my boss, and I felt like we had an answer, but we didn't know what the question was. And then when, all of a sudden, we got sensitized to breast cancer. And we said, I wonder if we can redesign the mammography machines that create these images? Because they use film, and they develop the film, and then the doctors look at it at a light table. Well, we created a electronic...

• 1:32:24Speaker 01

  Detector and we designed the X-ray tube to be more optimal for human tissue diagnosis. And and we were able to create the what's called the first full field. Digital mammography system for earlier detection of cancer earlier because we demonstrated that our images. Had much more information content than the film screen images and then we opened up a whole new area of study. Called computer aided diagnosis where we were able to basically point out. Possible early precursors to breast cancer which are micro calcification, stellate. And circumscribed lesions asymmetric glandular distortion, all those type of things that.

• 1:33:08Speaker 01

  Will catch the eye of a radiologist and say, hey, maybe we should look here and and so we put it in a smart expert system so that the. You not only acquired the images, but then you would put in a super sensitive mode and then. Outline the areas where the radiologists should focus on and check out and see if it it's worth. Going in for a biopsy or doing something else to the patient. So we were pretty proud. I always tell people. You know, when when they ask me, what's your proudest professional moment? A lot of people expect me to say, oh, you know, I flew. On space shuttle discovery and went up into space international space station and all that kind of stuff. I was a flight engineer.

• 1:33:49Speaker 01

  But that's not it. It's it's the fact that, you know, this device that we created at Lawrence Livermore lab, which was a nuclear defense lab. Yet we repurposed that technology for something, you know, that could work here. For for for the civilians was developing an X-ray mammography system that. Detects cancer at earlier stages. Everybody knows that if you detect cancer at an earlier stage, the greater probability of the patient. To be saved occurs and so. I'm convinced that this device has saved hundreds of thousands, if not millions of lives since its inception back in ninety seven ninety eight.

• 1:34:32Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's, I mean, that's awesome. We could just end there, I guess, right? We could just end there, but the story goes on a little bit. It does. In early 1992, when I was 29 years old, I called the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, NASA, to ask about the requirements to become an astronaut. I was hoping to make myself, make, I was hoping to make what was a far-fetched dream for many, a reality for myself. Here were the requirements. Career in a technical field or medicine, check. Five years' experience, check. Highly desirable graduate degree, check. Nothing prevented me from applying since I met all their basic requirements. Hence, I decided to contact NASA.

• 1:35:13Jocko Willink?

  Much to my surprise, the main operator put me in contact with Astronaut Selection Office. As part of the first step in the application process, the Astronaut Selection Office sent me a 12-page application. I promptly filled it out and mailed it back to NASA.

• 1:35:28Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward a little bit. I finally received a letter in the mail four months after having received the acknowledgement of my application. It read, "Thank you for your interest in NASA. At the moment, there are many qualified applicants applying for astronaut positions with NASA. Unfortunately, we cannot invite you to an interview for this selection cycle. We encourage you to continue applying for future selection cycles." So denied.

• 1:35:55Jocko Willink?

  The first of many. Yeah, you got denied.

• 1:35:59Jocko Willink?

  I've, I, well, a chunk here, I gotta bring, I gotta bring Adela into the story. Yes, my wife. Your wife.

• 1:36:06Jocko Willink?

  And you go through a really cool story about how you met, how you got together. It's in the book, it's great. Fast forward a little bit past that, it's Adela and I dated for more than two years before we decided to get married. We were not in any rush to tie the knot, even though we knew we were meant to be together. Six months after we got engaged, we exchanged vows in a traditional Catholic ceremony in Lodi, California, at St. Anne's Catholic Church. On the way to pick up Adela, the limousine got lost and Constru arrived 45 minutes late to the wedding. Talk about a nervous groom. I was starting to fear she'd changed her mind.

• 1:36:42Speaker 01

  True story.

• 1:36:44Jocko Willink?

  You were sweating it, huh?

• 1:36:45Speaker 01

  All sweating bullets.

• 1:36:46Jocko Willink?

  Maybe she's bailing on you.

• 1:36:47Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:36:50Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward a little bit, another year passed. So, once again, I filled out the 12-page application and waited for an answer. Then, after four months of waiting to hear whether or not I had been accepted, I received another rejection letter with the words to the effect of, "Don't call us, we'll call you."

• 1:37:05Jocko Willink?

  This process of applying and being rejected repeated itself every year while I continued to working at the laboratory. Whenever I received a rejection letter from NASA, I would remind myself that there is more than just one star and one goal in life. I had no other choice but to move forward with my life. Adelita's positive influence helped me develop a healthy balance between work and family. Thus, I could safely avoid being consumed with the notion of trying to become an astronaut. She helped me cope with NASA's rejections while encouraging me to sustain my dream. I still wanted to become an astronaut, but I also wanted to live and enjoy my life

• 1:37:40Jocko Willink?

  on my way to becoming one. A little year, a little over a year and a half into our marriage, Adela announced that she was pregnant with our first child. We experienced our first pregnancy with all the excitement of first-time parents and all the nerves too. The reason I wanted to highlight that part, obviously, having a baby, that's awesome. But also, you're gonna pursue this dream, you're getting rejected from this dream. But you know, you, you use this term here, that there's more than one star and more than one goal in life. So, even though you had this goal of becoming an astronaut, you couldn't make that the be-all, end-all.

• 1:38:15Speaker 01

  I couldn't let it consume me. You know, I, I used it as a motivator, as a driving force, but I didn't want it to consume my life. You know, I wanted to enjoy life and I, and I wanted to, uh, to say, "Look, it's okay if you don't reach your goal." Uh, because as long as you give it your best. You know, it's like my father would always say, say, you know, shoot, shoot for the stars, you know, but you know, the worst that can happen is you're gonna be on top of the world, you know, and, uh, and so that's, that's, that's, that's, that's what I, I was doing. I said, you know, it, the, the fact that I was driven to become an astronaut and was sort of navigating

• 1:39:00Speaker 01

  my career in sort, in, in that sort of way, you know, had, it had my career on an upward trajectory. So it wasn't like they were competing priorities.

• 1:39:12Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, well, it's like your son.

• 1:39:13Speaker 01

  They complement.

• 1:39:13Jocko Willink?

  It's like your son, he wants to be an astronaut, great. Even if he doesn't get it, he's got his dang PhD and a couple masters degree, he's got the, all these doors open.

• 1:39:21Speaker 01

  Exactly, exactly.

• 1:39:23Jocko Willink?

  But that's an important thing for people to remember. Like, you know, it's great to have that big goal, but even if you don't make that goal, look at where you got to.

• 1:39:29Speaker 01

  Exactly. And, and sometimes you are the one that changes that.

• 1:39:34Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 1:39:34Speaker 01

  And all goes, not the fact that you can't get there. Sometimes the fact that you prepare yourself a certain way opens up the doors to other opportunities that you weren't even aware of, but all of a sudden, hey, I can do this now. Go ahead and do it. If that's, if that's what you wanna do, go ahead and do it. It's okay to change midway as long as you're going up.

• 1:39:57Jocko Willink?

  Uh, fast forward a little bit. During Adela's pregnancy with our second child, I was traveling extensively to the former Soviet Union for Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the US Department of Energy. As luck would have it, I would found out while I was still in Siberia that Adela had gone into labor and given birth to our baby girl.

• 1:40:18Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 1:40:20Jocko Willink?

  We'll fast forward a little bit. During one of my trips to Russia, I came to an important conclusion. Nothing in life happens or is accomplished purely by chance. Goals and dreams are realized through planning, perseverance, and hard work. As I was leaning my head against the window of the state-owned car that was taking us to our hotel, I thought of how my childhood dream had evolved with my graduation from college and my work at one of the most prestigious laboratories in the United States and the world. It was because I worked tirelessly that I could see my transform, transformative effect that my dream had on shaping each outcome in my life. I also focused on bettering my physical strength and health because astronauts are susceptible to rigorous training and medical exams before blasting off into space.

• 1:41:05Jocko Willink?

  I ran a marathon almost every year I applied to NASA with the exception of the year that I was finally selected to become a member of the astronaut class. Little did I know at the time I began this routine that it would mean I would end up running 11 marathons. Additionally, I took up flying lessons at the Tracy Municipal Airport and obtained my SCUBA certification through the laboratory's SCUBA diving club. These were skills I suspected and later confirmed were indispensable to have for an astronaut. I learned many things during the time I spent enhancing my skill sets, but above all, I learned that patience really is a virtue. It is simply the best tool to have in one's toolbox when learning something new. So you're doing everything you can, learning to fly, learning to scuba dive, getting in

• 1:41:49Jocko Willink?

  awesome shape, running marathons.

• 1:41:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I have to, you know, I gotta give more, more credit to my wife, Adelita, because I remember, you know, once, once the, I got rejected the sixth time and I had, I had gotten the rejection letter and I even scrunched it up and kinda, I was in the bathroom shaving when I got it and opened it and I threw it in the garbage can and I missed the can.

• 1:42:21Jocko Willink?

  Ooh.

• 1:42:22Speaker 01

  And fell on the floor and, you know, I was, I was so pissed off.

• 1:42:25Jocko Willink?

  Rage.

• 1:42:26Speaker 01

  I didn't even pick it up, I didn't even pick it up. I said, heck with it, you know. And my wife, I guess, was cleaning up that day and she saw the piece of paper. Had it landed in the garbage can, she wouldn't have picked it up and opened it, but it was on the floor, so she's, oh, what's this? And she sees that it's another rejection letter and she sees it's scrunched up, so she's putting two and two, she's a pretty bright girl, so, so she's, she knows I'm giving up. And, and, and so she goes and she shows me the, the letter, she says, what's this? I said, you know, you know, they keep saying that over 12,000 people apply for only 10, 12 positions. I said, and man, they've rejected me, this is the sixth time they've rejected me. I said, I think I'm gonna give up.

• 1:43:10Speaker 01

  I said, this, enough's enough. I said, look, I got my graduate degree, I'm working at the lab and all that. And she says, so you're gonna settle for that? That, what you're gonna settle for?

• 1:43:21Jocko Willink?

  Got you.

• 1:43:22Speaker 01

  And she not only said that, but then she said, you're gonna settle for that and you're a quitter. That's what got me when she said I'm a quitter. I said, no, I'm not a quitter. I said, look, you're giving up. And, and she, and she looked at me and she says, you know, you better think about this, uh, because I know you, she says. If you give up, you're always gonna wonder what if, what if I had put on that, put in that seventh, eighth or ninth application? And that's gonna gnaw you from the inside and you're gonna grow to be a bitter old man. And I don't want to be married to a bitter old man. So you better think about this.

• 1:44:04Speaker 01

  And that's when she got me thinking. I said, you know, she's, she's right. And so what I did, what I did was, that's when I started doing the things that you just mentioned there. What I did was I, I, um, I, I sat down and I asked myself a fundamental question. I said, what do these guys have? That are getting selected that I don't have?

• 1:44:30Speaker 01

  And that's when I, uh, noticed that, well, they have the same education. They're about the same age, similar experience. But then I took a deeper dive. And that's when I found out that they were all pilots. So that's when I invested in my sauce. I'm gonna become a pilot. And then another year I found out that they were all scuba diver rated. So man, I would drive from Stockton to Monterey, California. Every weekend I got basic, I got advanced, I got scuba rescue, master certified. I wanna make sure that's a new, I knew how to scuba dive. So I got those under my belt and then the opportunity, you know, came full circle. You said I was in Siberia.

• 1:45:14Speaker 01

  The opportunity came full circle, uh, to work with the Russians. Remember before I was working against the Russians, protect us against the Russians. Now that the Soviet Union broke up, they were asking for help to take control of their nuclear stockpile, the newly formed Russian Federation. And, uh, and no one wanted to go and help the Russians, cause from the labs, cause it was tough duty. You know, you had to travel five, six times a year, three weeks at a time.

• 1:45:40Jocko Willink?

  To Siberia.

• 1:45:41Speaker 01

  To Siberia of all places. You know, you think, you take that 13 hour trip to Moscow. From New York, this is after taking a five hour trip to uh to from from San Francisco to New York, then you take that thirteen hour to Moscow, you think you're there, you still got another six and a half hour flight into Siberia, you know, talk about being in the middle of nowhere and and um no one wanted to do it, but man, I raised my hand, I told my boss, put me in coach, I'll go, I said, um, and I said, but there's one only one condition I put, he said, what's that? He said, well, um, I wanted one on one Russian language instructor, because I want to learn Russian, because if I'm going to be doing

• 1:46:25Speaker 01

  this for a long time, I think I should know the language, he said, yeah, we got a continuing education project, knock yourself out. So I so I did that, and I didn't do it because I wanted to get to know Siberia in the middle of winter, but I did it because I had read in the newspaper that the US and Russia were going to start working in the space program together. And so I kind of put two and two together, and I said, hey, we're going to be working with the Russians up in space. So this is my differentiator, this is what's going to differentiate me from the 10,000 other at 12,000 other applicants, is that how many are going to be able to say they go to Russia, they work with the Russians, they

• 1:47:04Speaker 01

  speak Russian, you know, those type of things. And so that's what when finally things got going and and all all thanks to, you know, Adelita's prodding of me and and, you know, and and and getting to my pride and saying, hey, don't be a quitter kind of thing.

• 1:47:23Jocko Willink?

  Meanwhile, it's not only is she working psychological warfare on you, she's a little more after, this is back to the book, a little more after our second child, Karina, joined our family, my wife and I found out we'd be once again bring a life into the world. And then halfway through my drive, fast forward halfway through my drive to the hospital, I received a call from my mother telling me to slow down and drive carefully as the new baby and its mother were doing fine.

• 1:47:48Speaker 01

  Missed it's missed another birth.

• 1:47:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:54Speaker 01

  Believe me, I never hear the end of it, especially from the kids.

• 1:47:58Jocko Willink?

  My family and I began to prepare to move to Washington. So you got a job offer up in Washington.

• 1:48:04Speaker 01

  It's the same job from the lab, but working at DOE headquarters, Department of Energy headquarters.

• 1:48:10Jocko Willink?

  I started thinking about the years NASA denied my admission into their training program. 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997.

• 1:48:24Jocko Willink?

  Right before we left for Washington to start my two-year assignment, NASA finally called, offering me the invitation I've been waiting for my entire life. The person on the phone informed me that out of more than 4,000 applicants, only 300 were selected for a closer look at their applications. Out of those 300 candidates, only 100 were selected to continue on to the final round of the selection process, and I was one of them.

• 1:48:49Jocko Willink?

  We, the finalists, were placed in a conference room where the astronaut selection manager, Dwayne Ross, explained what we would be doing during our week-long stay. He informed us that we were the third group of 20 candidates and that two more groups would be visiting the Johnson Space Center in the coming weeks. The purpose of our extensive exams was to help determine whether we met the medical requirements for a flight assignment. Of the 100 finalists interviewed, only 10 to 18 would be selected to become astronauts.

• 1:49:20Jocko Willink?

  So this time you made it a little closer.

• 1:49:22Speaker 01

  A little closer.

• 1:49:23Jocko Willink?

  A little closer, down to the final 100.

• 1:49:25Speaker 01

  Exactly, from the thousands to 100.

• 1:49:28Jocko Willink?

  And they're doing medical exams. Are you doing any testing, like physical testing?

• 1:49:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, yes, they do everything from, uh, from physical testing to psychological testing, aptitude testing. And then, uh, and then they culminate everything with a hour-long interview with the whole selection committee.

• 1:49:46Jocko Willink?

  This, I was thinking, this has to be the most highly screened job in the world.

• 1:49:51Speaker 01

  It's one of them.

• 1:49:51Jocko Willink?

  I can't imagine there's, I mean, I guess maybe the President of the United States, although that's questionable.

• 1:49:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, because they get elected.

• 1:49:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, they're getting elected. Yeah, I can't imagine a more highly screened job than being an astronaut. I mean, just the course, and again, there's a lot of good details you put in the book about this by the book. You talk about some of the stories of the other 19 individuals were truly amazing. Some were military test pilots, other were helicopter pilots, still others were medical doctors, while the rest were engineers and scientists.

• 1:50:28Jocko Willink?

  Eventually, Dwayne Ross called and gave me the news. Jose, thank you for your interest in our program. Unfortunately, you are not selected in this interview cycle. We encourage you to continue applying as we will be selecting future classes.

• 1:50:41Jocko Willink?

  But wait, there's more. Dwayne Ross continued the phone conversation and said, Jose, if you're interested, we would like to offer you a position as an engineer here at NASA Johnson Space Center. However, this does not guarantee that you will be interviewed, let alone selected during the next selection cycle. If you are interested in applying to become an astronaut, we suggest you get more operations experience, and we believe you can gain this type of experience and knowledge here at NASA. So they gave you a job offer, which I was surprised when I read this, because you didn't take it.

• 1:51:09Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:51:10Jocko Willink?

  Explain why you didn't take it.

• 1:51:11Speaker 01

  I did not take it because I had just arrived to Washington DC on my change of station assignment from Lawrence Livermore Lab. The lab had spent about $25,000 moving my family and I. We had a house rented and everything, a lease signed with, and the job was paying for it, but I was working at DOE Headquarters down in downtown Washington DC. And I had a commitment for two years, and I couldn't in good conscience, you know, after being there a couple of months, say, well, you know, I changed my mind. Thanks for spending that 25K. I'm going to Houston now. I didn't want to burn any bridges, or

• 1:51:53Speaker 01

  I, well, not that it was burning bridges, but more than it wasn't the right thing to do. You know, I had made a commitment, and I wanted to fulfill it. So I gave Dwayne Ross a call, and I told him that I respectfully have to decline the offer, but I gave him my story. I told him, this is why I feel I cannot do it. And he understood. You know, I figured I'm never going to hear from him again, because I turned him down. But lo and behold, following, you know, a couple of years, they call again.

• 1:52:27Jocko Willink?

  1992, once again renewed my application. By now, I felt I could fill it out with my eyes closed. For the second time, I was one of the hundred, last hundred finalists. Just like the time before, these lucky 100 were invited in groups of 20 to spend a week, go through a series of medical and psychological exams, interviews, and tours the various training facilities. When NASA decides to let the 100 individuals know whether they've been selected or not, the calls to all 100 people occur within the span of a few hours. It was rumored that if a candidate picked up the phone and the Johnson Space Center Director, who was George Abbey at the time, was on the other end, it would be good news. However, if it was the astronaut selection manager, Dwayne Ross, or any other interview panel member, one

• 1:53:11Jocko Willink?

  could almost guarantee it would be a "thanks, but try again" type of call. True to the rumor, when I received the call from Dwayne, it was to tell me that I had been seriously considered, but it was not my year. He then went on to suggest that, again, I consider an engineering position at Johnson Space Center.

• 1:53:31Jocko Willink?

  So then you go and talk to your wife, Adelita. Say, "May I talk to you for a moment?" She said, "Of course, something wrong?" He said, "I want to talk to you about something really important. I have thought about the whole situation with NASA a lot, but before we finalize our decision, I want to confirm something with you. We are getting ready to head back to California, and I'm probably going to get a promotion and a nice raise when I report back to work at the laboratory. That said, I think it is best job, I think it's best for me to turn down the job offer with NASA," because they offered you another job.

• 1:53:58Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:53:59Jocko Willink?

  "Houston is hot and muggy anyways, we'll have less money to spend," and Adelita interrupted me. "Honey, if moving to Houston and working for NASA as an engineer is what it will take to, for you to make your dream come true, then we'll move to Houston in a heartbeat." Boom.

• 1:54:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:54:14Jocko Willink?

  And that was the deal.

• 1:54:15Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:54:16Jocko Willink?

  So now you, now you accept the job at NASA as an engineer.

• 1:54:22Speaker 01

  As an engineer.

• 1:54:23Jocko Willink?

  Not as an astronaut.

• 1:54:24Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:54:24Jocko Willink?

  It's still really cool.

• 1:54:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm, I'm in engineering and low man on the totem pole.

• 1:54:32Jocko Willink?

  On January 21st, 2003, we welcomed our fifth child, second baby boy into the world. A few days earlier, on January 16th, 2003, at 9:39 a.m., the Space Shuttle Columbia took off for its scheduled mission with seven astronauts onboard. Columbia was scheduled to land back on Earth on February 1st, 2003, at 7:15 a.m. The orbital maneuvering system engines were turned on for a de-orbit burn. This burn allows the atmosphere to capture the Space Shuttle Columbia and thus begin its re-entry to Earth. Within minutes, the temperature sensor on the left wing's brakes began to show an increase in temperature.

• 1:55:15Jocko Willink?

  It was the first serious indication that something was wrong. At 7:59 a.m., the last words from the Space Shuttle Columbia were transmitted. "Understood, uh, but..." Three minutes later, Columbia broke apart, raining a field of debris across the northwest parts of Texas and Louisiana.

• 1:55:43Jocko Willink?

  You use a term in here.

• 1:55:48Jocko Willink?

  It's normalization of deviation. And I started thinking about that term and what it means and how it obviously impacted this horrible incident with losing the Space Shuttle Columbia. But it seems like something that we, a mistake that we, something that we can do in our own lives, this normalization of deviation. Can you talk about that a little bit? What caused the accident and what, how that idea of normalization of deviation played into it?

• 1:56:17Speaker 01

  Sure. Well, but by that time, I had been there for three years at NASA and I worked myself up to branch chief of the Materials and Processes branch. And this is the engineering's... Branch that does the failure analysis and finds out root causes of failures of materials. And so when the space shuttle disintegrated up in northwest Texas, Louisiana, you know, my group was one of the first groups that were out there picking up the pieces. We were the ones that put the hangar in Florida and outlined the shuttle

• 1:56:58Speaker 01

  and brought every piece and forensic evidence and put it all together and did the testing in terms of the materials to find out where the breach occurred. And once we were pretty certain that that's where the breach occurred, which is on the left wing leading edge, which is a reinforced carbon, carbon substrate, hard substrate. We went to Southwest Research in San Antonio and we built a full-size wing of the shuttle. And then we looked at the image analysis and saw pieces of foam that fell from the tank insulation, that big orange tank, center tank, that fell and hit the left wing leading edge.

• 1:57:40Speaker 01

  We found out, we calculated the speed, the size of it, and we replicated that experiment at Southwest Research through a air gun, fired that, those pieces of foam to the wing leading edge and recreated basically the cracks that occurred. Because that's the material that helps on re-entry. You're up to about 2,700 degrees. And, you know, the aluminum structure inside, it's aluminum melts at about 900 degrees or so. So if there's a crack in there, it's gonna get in there and it's gonna affect the structural integrity of the wing and that's what caused it to snap and create that catastrophic failure.

• 1:58:25Speaker 01

  And pieces all over northwest Texas occurred. And so during all this time, you know, the president had the Columbia Accident Investigation Board, or Board formed.

• 1:58:44Speaker 01

  And since I was the the branch chief, I gave a lot of briefings of the findings. You know, there's a whole teams, hundreds of hundreds of people that contributed, certainly not me, myself, but I I was one of the spokespeople in terms of telling the science part of it. The results of how we what we measured and all that. And and and so I got a lot of face time with a lot of people at NASA. And they ended up, you know, they started looking at me and trusting me and all that that that that, you know, we came up with the with the story of how what was the root cause of the failure, which is, of course, the piece of foam that I did. And but shortly thereafter, the following year, they have a selection.

• 1:59:29Speaker 01

  A selection of astronauts, and I'm again, one of the finalists. And this time, when I sit down across this eighteen people that are there. You know, I know more than half of them through this Accident Investigation Board. Franklin Chang Diaz is sitting there. He's one of the guys, so it's kind of like I come home to family now. Before it was a complete set of strangers. And now everybody knew me, I knew them, and I think my work spoke for itself. And and I think that's what finally did it. But unfortunately, you know, we had to lose a space shuttle for that to occur. I mean, then it's kind of like a bittersweet moment for me.

• 2:00:10Jocko Willink?

  With the normalization of deviation. Explain that that term. It's like where something goes a little bit wrong and you go, you know what? It's it's not that big of a deal. It's like a normalization of of of issues.

• 2:00:23Speaker 01

  Yes, what happened was, in in in that sense, we've had debris fall off the tank in the past.

• 2:00:33Speaker 01

  And our engineers would cry wolf. They would say, hey, something happened here and we don't know what's going to happen on reentry. And, you know, they would do that three or four times. And you did see pieces, but it didn't hit anything. And so everybody.

• 2:00:51Jocko Willink?

  So, so wait, so they weren't really crying wolf. They were actually saying this could cause a problem, but nothing ever bad happened.

• 2:00:58Speaker 01

  Exactly. It's nothing ever bad happened, but, but, but the fact is, the fact is that when they cried wolf, when it really did happen, because they had normalized that occurrence, then the powers to be didn't put enough weight behind it to say, let's stop and let's go out, do an EVA and let's inspect the wing leading edge where it hit. Cause that's, that should have been the proper response. All right. And, uh, and that didn't happen. And so that's why I call it normalization of deviation.

• 2:01:34Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it seems like, uh, well, the way I thought about that after reading it was thinking about just us as human beings in our lives. And we make a little mistake, but we get away with it.

• 2:01:43Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:01:43Jocko Willink?

  And then you make, or you go, you do something that you know you shouldn't do, but you get away with it. You don't, you know, you go and eat a donut. Well, you know, it's just one donut. Then you look up in a month and you've had a bunch of donuts and all of a sudden you got a problem.

• 2:01:56Speaker 01

  And you got five pounds on you.

• 2:01:58Jocko Willink?

  Right. So we gotta be careful of that, that idea. Um, what a travesty that was.

• 2:02:06Jocko Willink?

  To get to that point you were just talking about in the fall of two thousand and three, the selection process for the next wave of hopeful astronauts opened. Once again, I turned my updated application. The fact that I worked for NASA did not guarantee my acceptance and they made sure I understood that when I accepted the job at NASA in two thousand and one.

• 2:02:25Jocko Willink?

  Working at, this is, this is a beautiful point. Although I was anxious for the selection process to begin, I can honestly say I was content and at peace with where I was in life. If I was not selected to travel into space, I would accept that since I was happy working with NASA. Working at NASA made me realize that space flight involves tens of thousands of people and that every single person is as important to the success of the mission as the seven crew members aboard the space shuttle.

• 2:02:53Jocko Willink?

  So you realized that and that was a

• 2:02:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, I worked in the trenches with everybody and so I had the opportunity to appreciate what um with the dedication of everybody because you know when I went to work there you know I took a 10% pay cut from Lawrence Livermore Lab because I made too much money at the lab so so uh you know that that was one part of my hesitation of accepting the job that my wife convinced me and said hey don't worry about it we'll we'll make it happen and and so so so so so from that perspective you know that's the the the the uh point I'm getting at is that the people that work there can make more money elsewhere

• 2:03:37Speaker 01

  but they love their job and they're doing everything possible and it only took me uh you know when I when I was part of the whole process of the accident investigation and I saw the dedication of everybody and then uh and previous to that when we were preparing for launches I saw the dedication of the people during their normal activities and so a lot of people always told me when I got selected in two thousand and four they said are you crazy I said the space shuttle just disintegrated uh last year and you just got selected aren't you afraid and I said no I said because I know these people I know they're you know it's tens of thousands that we depend on but I know they're here because they wanna be here

• 2:04:22Speaker 01

  you know they're gonna dot their i's and cross their t's because these are dedicated folks I mean I had firsthand working with them in the trenches uh and I know their dedication so I was a peace of mind when I jumped into my space shuttle I was I was more than confident things were gonna turn out good

• 2:04:43Jocko Willink?

  Uh.

• 2:04:46Jocko Willink?

  When going going fast forward a little bit, when the whole interview process ended, I along with ninety-nine other aspiring individuals had nothing to do but wait. About four months later, I received a telephone call while working in my office. Frankly, I was prepared for the response that I knew all too well. However, this particular call did not come from the center director or the astronaut selection manager, Dwayne Ross. It came from a senior manager, Colonel Bob Cabana, who is in charge of the Flight Crew Operations Directorate. And who was an astronaut himself. I knew that if the center director was calling, it was sure to be good news. When somebody on the recommendation board like Bob was calling, I really did not know what to think. I was puzzled.

• 2:05:31Jocko Willink?

  He started the conversation with the usual salutations and then went on to ask if I thought I was replaceable as head of the Materials and Process Branch. My response was genuine when I told him that I thought everyone was replaceable. And that all along, I had taken upon myself the responsibility to mentor and train folks to be ready to take my place. "Good," he said. "How would you like to come work for the astronaut office?" I quickly realized I had been accepted. My whole body went numb the second I heard the good news. I did not know how I was going to be able to hold the telephone without dropping it. A nervous laugh escaped my lips, but no words came out as I listened to Bob continue speaking. "Now, Jose, you cannot tell anybody beyond your immediate family about this

• 2:06:15Jocko Willink?

  because it will be announced at a press conference on May sixth at NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC." Warned the voice at the other end of the line. I agreed, said goodbye and hung up. I did not tell anyone anything. I still had four hours before I could go home from work and I could not think of anything else but telling my beautiful wife, Adalita. She had to be the first to hear the good news, followed by my kids and then my parents. The ten-minute drive home seemed to last an eternity. "Adalita, Adalita, guess what? Our opportunity has come. Finally, I got accepted. I'm going to be an astronaut."

• 2:06:47Jocko Willink?

  There it is.

• 2:06:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:06:50Jocko Willink?

  How many, so how many total times did you apply?

• 2:06:52Speaker 01

  Uh, it was the 12th time.

• 2:06:54Jocko Willink?

  The 12th time?

• 2:06:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:06:56Jocko Willink?

  11 straight years of rejection.

• 2:06:58Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 2:06:59Jocko Willink?

  And the 12th time, there you are.

• 2:07:00Speaker 01

  12 times is the charm.

• 2:07:04Jocko Willink?

  Uh, NASA press conference took place. I still had to keep the big news a secret from almost everyone. At 11 a.m., my fellow astronauts and I were brought face to face with the press. We were all nervous and careful of our every step as we walked single file line, just like my siblings and I had when we entered their house after coming home from school. When the cameras and microphones were directed at us, I remember thinking to myself, I'm an astronaut, not a famous movie star. My palms were sweaty and there was nothing I could do about it. We were introduced one by one: Satcher, Cassidy, Arnold, Dutton, and Hernandez. And Cassidy's a SEAL. And he was in your group, huh?

• 2:07:38Speaker 01

  Yes, he was. My classmate, good friend of mine.

• 2:07:41Jocko Willink?

  Oh, that's awesome.

• 2:07:45Jocko Willink?

  Our first big training assignment involved traveling to the Naval Air Station in Pensacola, Florida. Once there, we spent six weeks going to ground school, being taught water survival techniques, learning how to co-pilot the T-34 airplanes. Ground school involved not only learning the basic principles of flight, but also putting those principles to work in high-fidelity flight simulators. Probably the most interesting activity during the six-week training program was the one where we went on submersible device that simulated the fuselage of a helicopter. This device is affectionately known as the Helodunker. So you, when you get picked up, when you get picked up for the program, you're still not an astronaut. You have to make it through. How long is that training program?

• 2:08:27Speaker 01

  Two years. It's astronaut candidate program. It's two years. You go through a lot of academics. Uh, you go through the, learning the systems of the space shuttle. 18, you know, a typical airline has about... Eight or nine subsystems, an airline plane, the space shuttle has eighteen. And you have to learn each one of them. Uh, you have written tests on each one of them. Then you got a single system trainer, so you master each one of them. Then you got multi-system trainers where they start cross pollinating the systems and how one system affects the other. And then you've got the high fidelity motion based simulator.

• 2:09:09Speaker 01

  Where then a pickup crew of four of you are in the cockpit and they throw everything but the kitchen sink at you. And you've got us, uh, you know, it's either an ascent run. Or is it an orbit operations or it's a landing, but they'll fail things for you and you gotta figure it out. And you gotta pass all that every Friday, there's a test. Uh, it's like being in finals week for two continuous years. I mean, pretty intense, but I mean, I'm sure it's similar to like for SEAL training as well that that you have to go through all these things, but it's not only, you know, it's academic, mental, physical. Uh, the whole combination of things where they really stress you and, uh, and you know, that's how they figure out you've got the right stuff.

• 2:09:52Speaker 01

  If you're able to survive that, then, uh, then you move on, you get your wings and now you're eligible for a flight assignment.

• 2:09:59Jocko Willink?

  How many people that get selected to enter the pipeline, the two-year pipeline? How many people don't make it?

• 2:10:07Speaker 01

  You know, it's very rare that a person doesn't make it because they've been filtered.

• 2:10:12Jocko Willink?

  So filtered.

• 2:10:12Speaker 01

  They've been filtered, uh, you know, the book says four thousand. That was when it first began, but when I was in, uh, and at my 12th try, we were up to 12,000. Uh, this past time selection run, they were up to 18,000 applicants. So they filter it pretty well, uh, including the psychologists that filter everything that, you know, when they, uh, when they select you, you know, that, that they have a high probability, 99.9% that you're gonna make it because you've been filtered, you've been tested, aptitude testing, psychological testing, uh, stress testing, so they have a feeling that you're gonna make it, so, but you still gotta do it.

• 2:10:49Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, no, that's the, the impression that I got when reading this, also talking to Johnny Kim and is that if you get selected, they've already, they've already figured out. Cause the thing that's interesting to me is you talk about, you're putting these failure, failure situations over and over again.

• 2:11:06Jocko Willink?

  And you know, there's people that panic in those situations. There's people that lose their cool in those situations. There's people that don't know how to handle themselves. That's why I think it's interesting, like just because you became a pilot. Well, if you panic, if you become a pilot, you learn to get control of your emotions and not panic. And same thing with scuba diving.

• 2:11:22Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:11:22Jocko Willink?

  If you panic while you're scuba diving, if something goes wrong, you're gonna have some real problems. So those are things that they're looking at your application going, well, he's a pilot. So we know he's at least gonna be able to detach from his emotions though. Oh, he's a scuba diver. So when things get intense.

• 2:11:36Speaker 01

  It's not claustrophobic.

• 2:11:37Jocko Willink?

  Not claustrophobic. So there's, they have all these things in line so that you can, you have a very high percentage chance. Obviously you could have some kind of a medical anomaly or something, but that is the, I, I do, I'm, I'm curious. I'm sure people will give me feedback if there's a more highly screened job than astronaut. And I know you just gave some props to SEAL training. I could tell you, uh, there's all kinds of knuckle draggers in SEAL. I'm, I'm probably case, case in point, you know, exhibit A. Uh, that, that, what we go through is more about just being wet, cold and miserable. But, um, so huh.

• 2:12:17Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward a little bit. Once our two years of training and testing were over, we held a small graduation ceremony at Space Center Houston. Kent Rommel, the chief of the astronaut office, said a few words before presenting each of us with a silver pin with the astronaut logo on it. This is a symbol used for astronauts who have yet to travel into space. A gold pin symbolizes that an astronaut has already flown on a mission. So you get the new guy symbol.

• 2:12:40Speaker 01

  Exactly. But it's an important symbol because you're now eligible, you're in the pool of eligible astronauts. When they select a new crew, you could be one selected. Whereas before you were just an ASCAN astronaut candidate. You couldn't be selected to train for a real mission. Now you, you're eligible to get assigned.

• 2:13:03Jocko Willink?

  And meanwhile, you talk about that you have. So, once you, once you become an astronaut and you're not an ass can anymore.

• 2:13:10Speaker 01

  I'm using that.

• 2:13:11Jocko Willink?

  That's a good one. Once you're not an ass can anymore, you're an actual astronaut. Then you spend 20% of your time sort of focused on training and simulations and getting ready to fly a mission. 80% of your time is work.

• 2:13:23Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:13:24Jocko Willink?

  And your job was a Cape Crusader.

• 2:13:27Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 2:13:27Jocko Willink?

  Tell us about the Cape Crusader.

• 2:13:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, we call them C squared, uh, cause the Cape Crusader to C's. C squared, um, it was great. I was a great job. Um, you know, two weeks before launch, you and, uh, three other buddies, a group of four astronauts. You know, you fly over from Houston to Florida where the bird's at, the shuttle, and you start prepping the vehicle for launch. So you start prepping the inside and doing testing with ground control and everything. So you get everything ready for the mission. And then, um, and then, uh, the day of the launch, then, uh, if you're the lead, uh, C squared,

• 2:14:10Speaker 01

  then you get the number seven on, you know, how you see all those white tech, quote technicians? The number seven's always the astronaut. There's always, there's always an astronaut there. Cause he's the one that buckles the, their fellow astronauts into, uh, the cockpit of every, uh, every mission. And unfortunately, your face is the last one they see before they go up into space. Yeah. And so, so, uh, and I did that a couple of times. Um, you know, I, for, for like, uh, for like two years I participated as a C squared, but during the last part of those two years I got, I was the lead, uh, C squared. Cause that's how it usually happens is the lead guy, first you're the new guy.

• 2:14:52Speaker 01

  And then, uh, you're the middle guy, then, uh, you're the expert. And then you get assigned, so you move out and then so the middle guy becomes the expert. And so that's kind of like a five fold first in, first out kind of thing. Uh, you become an expert by lieu of your experience, but then you get assigned to a mission. And so that's what happened to me. I participated in about seven launches during those two years. And the last two, I was the lead C squared. And, uh, it's great because you go there two weeks before. You're you're in crew quarters, so you you spend time with the astronauts. You know, they arrive about a week before the launch. So you spend time with them before they're gonna go off to their mission. You're you're debriefing them on the status of the bird and how things are going and all that kind of thing, any questions they have.

• 2:15:36Speaker 01

  And then the day of the launch, you know, you go out there with them and you're out there strapping them in and getting them ready. And then it's pretty neat because you're also part of the rescue crew. So you're in the closest, the absolute closest part you can be to watch the launch.

• 2:15:54Jocko Willink?

  Oh dang.

• 2:15:54Speaker 01

  I mean, you feel.

• 2:15:55Jocko Willink?

  So where where physically, where are you?

• 2:15:57Speaker 01

  You could feel one of the bunkers, you could feel the heat. You could feel the heat of the exhaust, you know, because it's so close. I mean, it's dangerously close.

• 2:16:05Jocko Willink?

  So you're sitting there in a bunker.

• 2:16:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:16:06Jocko Willink?

  With a with a bulletproof glass of some kind.

• 2:16:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 2:16:10Jocko Willink?

  You can watch. How how far away you think you are from it?

• 2:16:13Speaker 01

  Ah, let's see, I would say about a mile, mile and a half, maybe.

• 2:16:16Jocko Willink?

  And you can still feel the heat of the glass?

• 2:16:18Speaker 01

  You can feel you can feel the heat and but it's just amazing. I mean, that launch that you go out, I mean, it's it's it's it's it's crazy when you see it take off. And you can't believe that big, heavy piece of metal is gonna take off. And, you know, there it goes.

• 2:16:34Jocko Willink?

  I was going through Navy boot camp. So this is September sometime, I think it was either September and October of nineteen ninety, and I'm in Orlando, Florida, going to boot camp. And I'm standing at Parade Rest out on the out on the grinder. And there was a space shuttle launching. We sat, you know, sat there and watched this thing go up into space.

• 2:16:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. It's quite an image, isn't it? Even from that distance.

• 2:16:55Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, very cool.

• 2:16:58Jocko Willink?

  Meanwhile, going back to look, my wife, Adalita, had just opened up a restaurant in Houston, down the street from the Johnson Space Center, on the corner of Saturn and Gemini in the Clear Lake area. So she's just getting after it, going and opening up a restaurant.

• 2:17:15Speaker 01

  She always had a dream of opening up a restaurant. You know, she grew up in the same socioeconomic conditions I did. Her parents are from Mexico and she was born over there because she was born in November.

• 2:17:26Jocko Willink?

  Okay, there you go.

• 2:17:27Speaker 01

  Else she would have been born here, but she was born over there. And so she came up with the same upbringing I did. And and so her dream was always to own and operate a restaurant.

• 2:17:40Speaker 01

  And so, uh, once I got situated, I got selected. I, I was jogging one day and I found this place that was for rent and I took her. I said, "How about here? It's only a couple of blocks from the restaurant." So, we opened it. It's called, it was called, uh, Tierra Luna Grill. Uh, and Tierra Luna means, uh, Earth, Moon. But my buddies, uh, astronaut buddies didn't call it Earth, Moon, because Tierra is also dirt. So, they call it Dirt Moon Grill. So, let's go Dirt Moon Grill to eat. And so, that, that would be the hangout for the astronauts to eat. But I remember the very first time I, um, I went out there as a C squared. Uh, Adelita had just opened up the restaurant.

• 2:18:22Speaker 01

  And so, imagine this, you know, we get up at three in the morning. Um, and so, I go and prep the vehicle. Uh, and then I go and, and, and astronauts arrive about six o'clock. So, so we, we then tuck them in, into, into the, into the space shuttle. You know, close the hatch, secure everything, do our leak checks, everything works out. We go out to the muster area for the rescue area. And, um, and we see them blast off. And that was my first, that was the first shuttle I seen in person launch, and I was that close. And so, it takes off. It takes off and, uh, this is about nine thirty now. So, as soon as it takes off, there's nothing for us to do. So, what do we do?

• 2:19:06Speaker 01

  We hop on the, uh, uh, uh, on the, uh, T thirty-eight jet. Uh, that's right there, uh, uh, that we had flew, flown in from, uh, Houston. And we go back to Houston, Ellington Field. And Ellington Field's about six miles from Johnson Space Center. So, and it's still midday. I said, "Well, I'm not gonna go home now." I said, "I, I could go back to the office." So, I'm driving to the office, but on the way is Adelita's restaurant. I said, "I wanna go get some lunch."

• 2:19:33Jocko Willink?

  Get some dirt moon.

• 2:19:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, guys, go to Dirt Moon Grill and get some lunch. And plus, I wanna tell Adelita. The whole exciting, uh, what I saw. Oh, cause that was your first one. First one, yeah. So I'm over there so excited and, you know, cause I flew on the T thirty eight over the Gulf, over the pond, landed, so there I am telling Adelita, you know, how I flew the T thirty eight jet, we're back, uh, how I saw the space shuttle, you know, to think that they, the space shuttle, I was on the space shuttle at three, four, five in the morning and now it's up in space and my buddies are up in space. And she's kinda like, what, looking at her watch and it's kinda, so she wasn't even paying attention to me. She's like, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, exactly. It's kinda like the teacher from Charlie Brown, right?

• 2:20:19Speaker 01

  And, uh, and, and so I, I, I kinda, I say, hey, what's wrong? And she's, oh, nothing. I said, well, yeah, maybe you can help me. I said, sure, sure. What, what can I do? I said, do you have about an hour, hour and a half to spare? I said, yeah, I probably can. I'm not, no one's expecting me back in the office. And yeah, I got, I got an hour and a half spare. I said, well, my dishwasher didn't show up today. I said, would you mind, you know, this is the busy time, the busy time's coming, it's close to lunch. Would you mind washing the dishes for me for just about an hour and a half, just till the rush goes over? And I'm still in my blue front suit. Get some. Yeah. So I put on an apron and I, I, you know, roll up my sleeves and there I am, you know,

• 2:21:00Speaker 01

  spraying beans and rice off the plates and cause it's a Mexican restaurant, you know, and all this stuff. And she walks in and, and I said, you know, I tell her, I can't believe it. It's at three in the morning, I was in the most sophisticated piece of machinery that humans could ever had made. And then I was flying a T thirty eight jet across the pond, the Gulf of Mexico, landed it here. And what am I doing right now? I'm washing fricking beans off a plate.

• 2:21:36Speaker 01

  And she just looked at me, said, but you're doing a damn good job.

• 2:21:41Jocko Willink?

  The most overqualified dishwasher of all time, probably the only, probably the only dishwasher ever to take a T38 jet to work.

• 2:21:49Speaker 01

  Exactly. And so, so that's, you know, it humbles.

• 2:21:53Jocko Willink?

  Gotta say humble.

• 2:21:53Speaker 01

  The family humbles you, the family, yeah. And I'll tell you the other story that you, you, I didn't tell you also, that has to do with the blue suit too. Is, um, which, which one was it? My, my fourth daughter, my fourth daughter, I mean, the fourth in line, third daughter, the youngest daughter of them all. I remember when I got selected as an astronaut, well, they give you that blue flight suit, right? And because it has your Velcro name tag here and everything, the NASA meatball logo and all, American flag and all that kind of stuff. It looks pretty cool. So they give it to you. So I bring it home, you know, the first day they gave it to me. So, you know, I want to try it on, make sure it's the right size they gave me and all that. So I put it on.

• 2:22:36Speaker 01

  My wife has a full dress mirror in the bedroom, right? So there I am, I'm putting it on, you know, it has zippers galore everywhere, right? Zippers here, zippers here, zippers here, zippers here, zippers on the legs and zippers down the pant legs and all that stuff. So I'm playing with them, getting to know and then, you know, posing, kind of doing my best, you know, hero shots kind of thing, you know? Hey, I'll be truthful, I was kind of, you know, I was, you know, flexing kind of thing, you know, all that kind of stuff. And then my, my five-year-old daughter walks into the bedroom, the door's open. And, and, and, and she's kind of like, you know, look, she was younger, she was four years old, because I remember she, she still had her little, you know, kind of the, the Maggie.

• 2:23:19Jocko Willink?

  Passifier.

• 2:23:19Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, and she's looking at me like this.

• 2:23:24Speaker 01

  And tilting her head one way, tilting her head the other way. And I said, oh, she's gonna see me in my blue flight suit. She heard, you know, because we've been talking that I became an astronaut and this and that. She's gonna go and she's gonna hug me and say, hey, papi, I'm so happy you're an astronaut and all that. That's what the reaction I think she's gonna happen when, as she sees me. I didn't get embarrassed that she saw me posing, because yeah, she's little. If it was my wife, I would have been a little embarrassed, but she was a little kid. So I, so, you know, I said, hey, me, how you doing? And she's still turning her head. And then in between the pacifier and everything, you know, she points at me and she says, "You look like Papa Smurf."

• 2:24:08Speaker 01

  So from then on, it became whenever I want to look for my suit, I say, "Where's the Smurf suit?" Because when it's in the laundry or something, I say, "Where's my Smurf suit? I need my Smurf suit." And so.

• 2:24:19Jocko Willink?

  Gotta stay humble. The family will keep you humble.

• 2:24:21Speaker 01

  The family humbles you. Exactly.

• 2:24:24Jocko Willink?

  Uh, you going forward a little bit, "You say everything seemed to be going according to how I ideally imagined it would when I was a kid working in the ruts and groves of the fields. Though my life seemed in order, there was a certain sense of emptiness. There was no reason for me to feel this way since I had everything I'd ever wished for. Out of nowhere, I heard my mother's voice saying, "What is the purpose of having goals in life, working hard for them and achieving them if you cannot share them with others?" Even though I was sharing this moment with my family and friends, I was still not completely enjoying the moment or myself. This was particularly true after coming to Stockton to speak at a school. I felt the excitement my visit generated when I shared my experiences with the elementary

• 2:25:05Jocko Willink?

  school children, but then when I returned to Houston for training, it felt as if I had never visited Stockton. Something was missing, something that would give, that would, that could give continuity to my visits. During this time, my friends and colleagues had called or emailed me to tell me what a positive impact my selection as an astronaut had made in the Stockton community. That was when the idea hit me. Why not start a foundation that capitalizes on my role as an astronaut and allows me to inspire kids to do well in school? So therefore, um, Angel Picon, am I saying that right? And Patty Tovar, two of my great friends, friends helped me start the legal framework

• 2:25:49Jocko Willink?

  for establishing a nonprofit organization called the Jose Hernandez, Reaching for the Stars Foundation. Angel and Patty put together a board and helped me define the foundation's mission, which is to inspire kids to dream the impossible and to emphasize that through education. Anything is possible.

• 2:26:07Jocko Willink?

  And you say, I do not believe in just pointing out a problem and expecting the government to solve it on its own. I would like to think that this is the responsibility of every person in the United States and that the private sector and foundations such as mine should take some ownership for resolving this issue. And that issue is getting more kids into specifically STEM.

• 2:26:28Speaker 01

  STEM, science, technology, engineering, and math fields, yes.

• 2:26:33Jocko Willink?

  So you got that foundation started. We'll talk a little bit about that at the end.

• 2:26:36Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 2:26:39Jocko Willink?

  "You asked to see me, sir," I said as soon as I walked into Mr. Steve Lindsey's office. Mr. Lindsey was an active astronaut and the chief of the astronaut office. He was a very intelligent and slender all-American Air Force man whose gray-haired head stored a half-century's experience and knowledge. "Yes, Jose, please, have a seat," he told me politely. "I've called to inform you that you have been selected to form part of the crew of the upcoming STS-128 mission. In about 15 months, you will be at the International Space Station. We will announce the names of the rest of the crew members at our all-hands meeting."

• 2:27:21Jocko Willink?

  This was something that I had longed for and wished for my entire life. It was the preamble to my dream come true. My dream had been actualized. I found myself one step closer, a significant step closer, to flying into space. I thought, finally, my time has come.

• 2:27:42Jocko Willink?

  The big day.

• 2:27:43Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:27:44Jocko Willink?

  You got told it was a go. Fast forward a little bit. Here we go. As the launch date approached, it became harder to sleep. I tossed and turned for hours until I was finally able to sleep soundly. Part of the reason I was not able to sleep was because I kept thinking about what could possibly go wrong during the mission. What if something fails? What will happen to my family? How will my wife, kids, and parents handle it? Those thoughts disrupted my tranquility. Luckily, though, as the date approached, there was no time left to worry about anything but the mission. Our crew began adapting to a new schedule, going to bed at 8:00 a.m. and waking up at 4:00 p.m. We were forced to shift our sleep cycle because those were the hours we would be working on the International Space Station.

• 2:28:27Jocko Willink?

  The closer we got to launch date, the more lucid our mission objectives became. Our first objective was to transport a new crew member, Nicole Stott, to the ISS and then return home with another astronaut, Tim Copra, who had already spent more than two months in space. Second, we had to conduct three spacewalks to replace one of the station's ammonia-filled tanks. Last, we had to make an Italian, take an Italian-built portable laboratory called the multi-purpose logistics module, affectionately called Leonardo. We also needed to bring back to Earth about a ton of equipment and waste no longer needed aboard the ISS. With all that said, we had only 13 days to complete our three mission objectives. So you've got a schedule heading up there. A heavy schedule.

• 2:29:11Jocko Willink?

  They're not playing around. They're going to get their money's worth out of you. Exactly.

• 2:29:17Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward a little bit, and I'm going again. Look, you've got to get the book. If you want to get the details of what's going on, and it's, it's really fascinating to hear, you know, what you're thinking about as this progresses and all the things that you're working on, the things that you do as a team. Look, I'm skipping over a bunch of stuff. The what you do as a team to kind of come together as a team, the seven-person group that you're going to be working together, all this really incredible stuff. Again, I'm not doing an audiobook here. Buy the book if you want to know what happens. Yeah, there's a lot, lot you're skipping. Oh, yeah, of course.

• 2:29:54Jocko Willink?

  So I am skipping to this part here. "We arrived at the launch pad and entered the elevator to go up the 192-foot level where we had access to the shuttle's hatch. A walkway allowed us to approach the white room that was next to the hatch. It was in this white room where we put on the last of our gear before entering the shuttle and getting strapped in by the closeout crew. One by one, we were called in to take our seats. Fast forward, members of the closeout crew exited the shuttle. The hatch was shut and closed. It was then that the closeout crew performed a cabin leak check and then disassembled the white room to clear the launch pad. During the last hour before launch, I sat strapped to my seat on the flight deck.

• 2:30:37Jocko Willink?

  A million different thoughts rushed through my mind."

• 2:30:43Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward a little bit, suddenly I heard the countdown reach the nine-minute hold.

• 2:30:49Jocko Willink?

  That is when the final systems checked are conducted by the launch control center. It was almost time. "Make your final adjustments and prepare for takeoff," we heard. "Cabin revision complete, manuals ready." Seconds before launch, the bottom of the launch pad was sprayed with water in an effort to cushion the noise and vibration as a result of the power dissipated by both the three main, the three shuttle main engines and the two solid rocket boosters. Everything was going to plan.

• 2:31:18Jocko Willink?

  Until Pete Niko Nikolenko, the launch director, informed us that the weather conditions were unfavorable. Fifty minutes later, our mission was aborted due to local thunderstorms in the Florida skies.

• 2:31:31Speaker 01

  Ugh, so close, so close.

• 2:31:35Jocko Willink?

  Ouch. A few hours later, a new date and time was announced for the Discovery launch, Wednesday, August 26, 2009. This was a 48-hour slip. The mission management team, who had set the new launch date, obviously did not share our optimism about the weather improving within 24 hours. As we woke up on Wednesday, we found out that it was not going to happen then either. We discovered a defective fuel control valve, which is being replaced at the moment. We pushed back the launch date again for 11:59 on Friday, August 28, 2009. NASA informed us. That reminds me of, you know, when you're on an airplane at the, on the tarmac, and

• 2:32:17Jocko Willink?

  first it gets delayed, and then it gets delayed again, and then all of a sudden they go, hey, we found a maintenance problem. Next thing you know, flight gets canceled.

• 2:32:23Speaker 01

  Or deboarding.

• 2:32:24Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And that was a legitimate, there was a chance that you wouldn't, if this got rolled a little bit more, there would be no launch at all.

• 2:32:31Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 2:32:32Jocko Willink?

  So this, the whole thing is in jeopardy.

• 2:32:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:32:35Speaker 02

  But was that faulty fuel valve, would that have been a problem?

• 2:32:39Speaker 01

  Well, that's, that's, um, you know, the thing that we don't know, you know, we're kind of lucky the weather was bad.

• 2:32:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:32:47Speaker 01

  Because, uh, you don't know if that faulty fuel valve would have acted up during that launch.

• 2:32:53Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:32:53Speaker 01

  Uh, and, uh, and once we shut things off and then started back up, we got that indication, and we replaced it. So, you know, it, it could have been that the weather saved us.

• 2:33:03Speaker 02

  Could have been.

• 2:33:05Speaker 01

  You just never know.

• 2:33:07Jocko Willink?

  Luckily, on Friday, we once again found ourselves sitting inside Discovery, ready for takeoff. With only two and a half hours to go, I knew it was only a matter of time before a button was pushed and we would be well on our way into space. The NASA team in Houston was confident that the third time was indeed a charm. Suddenly, in the blink of an eye, the countdown clock was set into motion after having reached the nine-minute hold. We could hear the countdown: nine minutes, five seconds, four, three, two. We closed our helmet visors as we heard the three main engines light up. Shortly thereafter, we felt the gentle vibrations of the engines. About two seconds later, as the countdown reached zero, the noise level increased in a magnitude and the vibrations grew more

• 2:33:52Jocko Willink?

  violent. The two solid motors attached to the side of the external tanks had ignited. Just as I thought the whole shuttle was going to shake apart or fall to one side, I felt a lot of pressure on my back. I heard zero: takeoff. Through the corner of my eye, I could see the tower staying behind as we lifted off. We were on our way. Immediately, the muscle memory of our training simulations took over. I quickly focused on my job as mission specialist two, which was to execute the role of a flight engineer. I began reading off the predetermined milestones to our commander and pilot while monitoring the screens and gauges in the front and above me to ensure none of them would deviate from their expected readings. The most dynamic parts of our mission were blastoff and the

• 2:34:33Jocko Willink?

  subsequent eight-and-a-half-minute flight into space. During the latter, we went from resting on the launch pad to orbiting our planet at more than 17,500 miles an hour at an altitude of some 280 miles. Two and a half minutes into our launch, the two solid rocket boosters separated and fell to the ocean about 200 miles northeast of the Kennedy Space Center. After the initial two and a half minutes, the next six minutes became quieter and the ride became a lot smoother. When we reached eight minutes and 30 seconds into the flight, we had reached the main engine cutoff. This basically meant that we had reached our top speed of 1,000 or 17,500 miles an hour and it turned off our main engines.

• 2:35:15Jocko Willink?

  The next step was for us to monitor the separation of the external tank which was feeding our three main engines. The external tank typically ends up so high that it does not survive reentry into the atmosphere and thus disintegrates into pieces before falling harmlessly back into the ocean. The shuttle usually possesses enough energy to continue upward and when appropriate begins orbiting the planet. Soon after this happened to us, we approached, we reached a microgravity environment and began floating in space high above the earth. Our mission was well on its way.

• 2:35:50Speaker 01

  When that thing starts to rumble. How's that feel? Where that thing starts to go? You know, I'll be honest with you, Jaco, is that, you know, if there was any piece of fear during this whole process of being an astronaut, I would have to say it's probably the first three seconds of when you reach zero and you feel the three engines light up and then you feel the two solid rocket motors turn on, come to life. All of a sudden, things are vibrating and, you know, this is the type of stuff that can't be simulated here on earth.

• 2:36:33Speaker 01

  And so you don't know what to expect and, yeah, at that moment, you, you, you know, the first thing I said is, Jose, what did you get yourself into? Yeah. But then shortly after that, as the book indicates, you know, muscle memory takes over. And, you know, we've done a bunch of simulated motion-based ascent runs as a crew and, and so I focus onto my task at hand. You know, I had the best seat in the house because I'm sitting a little aft of the two pilots, the commander and the pilot, Kevin Ford, and my commander CJ Sturckow.

• 2:37:11Speaker 01

  Great marine pilot and and and Kevin Ford is an air force pilot. And I'm sitting a little behind them in the middle, so I get the panoramic view. But, you know, of course, I have to hawk all the ten screens of both pilots so that if anything goes off nominal, I peel off with the person that owns the system. And me as the flight engineer, you know, I'm the one that's basically quarterbacking what the problem is, diagnosing what we need to be doing and between the pilot and I, we solve or try to minimize its effect while the other pilot flies the nominal portion of the mission. And so, so, but nothing happened.

• 2:37:53Speaker 01

  It was the best simul- I always tell my commander, this was the best simulation run ever because nothing happened. Everything occurred as it was supposed to occur, unlike our simulations where they throw the kitchen sink at us. And so, but man, you know, words can't describe those eight and a half minutes of powered flight because, you know, you start off like the greatest Disneyland ride ever. And and then as you, as you move up to two and a half minutes when the solid rocket boosters pop off, it becomes smooth, smoother ride, more quiet ride. But you start accelerating more and you start feeling the pressure against your chest.

• 2:38:36Speaker 01

  So you end up feeling about up to, it goes almost up to three Gs of force right on your chest and that's, three Gs is about, what is it? Three people that weigh exactly like you on top of you. That's how three Gs feel. So at at the mark of eight and a half minutes, you're ready for this to be over. You're ready for main engine cutoff, MECO. And and because when that happens, you stop accelerating so that 500 pound gorilla disappears. And now you're kind of loosey goosey in your seat, but you got your seatbelt on. But now you're in a microgravity environment orbiting Earth. Once every ninety minutes on a continuous basis.

• 2:39:17Jocko Willink?

  Seventeen thousand miles an hour?

• 2:39:20Speaker 01

  Seventeen thousand five hundred miles an hour.

• 2:39:22Jocko Willink?

  God.

• 2:39:22Speaker 01

  You're traveling. But because now you're not accelerating, you don't feel the G forces. So now you're, it's kind of like being on a plane going five hundred miles an hour. You don't feel that. Uh, you only feel the takeoff kind of thing. Uh, and, and so, yeah, so, you know, it's, it's, it's crazy because, you know, when you look out the window and you see the US, you go off and do something for twenty minutes and now you're flying over China or Australia or over Europe kind of thing. It's, it's, uh, it's the craziest, uh, feeling I've ever had is I said, wow, this is a, this is a good way to travel.

• 2:39:56Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's, as you're describing that, both in writing and then you talking, you're sitting on a freaking bomb, on a bomb. That's what you're sitting on. All that stuff just wants to explode and it's just control.

• 2:40:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, it's, it's a controlled detonation. That's what it is.

• 2:40:14Jocko Willink?

  You're on the top of that.

• 2:40:15Speaker 01

  You're on the top of that puppy.

• 2:40:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:40:21Jocko Willink?

  Once you get into space, you go into this, this schedule of all this stuff that you, that you've got to do. And you, you, you detail it in the book. It's, it's a great read. One thing, you, you had a little case of nausea while you're up there. A little bit of like seasickness.

• 2:40:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, they call it SAS, uh, space adaptation sickness. So it makes you feel a little nauseated. Uh, you know, one of my crew members lost their cookies. You know, I, I didn't, uh, I actually lost them on the way back, which is a one G readaptation. Uh, but, but, but, uh, on the way up, uh, one of my crewmates did, uh, get, get sick to the point they, you know, they, they had to throw up. But, uh, but it goes away, you know, after a day or so, that feeling, it's kind of like. Being in the back of a bus and going up a mountain curves and all that, you kind of feel a little carsick, nauseated, but then it goes away.

• 2:41:12Jocko Willink?

  But then it goes away.

• 2:41:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:41:13Jocko Willink?

  Um, fast forward a little bit, day three, we're about a hundred and eighty-three meters away from the International Space Station. Our shuttle began the three hundred and sixty-degree rotation for the purpose of being photographed using high-resolution photography and video by the space station crew. They take pictures from the space, from the space station of the space shuttle just to make sure there's no damage on liftoff. But that's gotta be pretty weird to be up in space and you're a hundred and eighty-three yards away from this other big chunk of metal.

• 2:41:41Speaker 01

  Traveling at seventeen thousand five hundred miles.

• 2:41:44Jocko Willink?

  Seventeen thousand five hundred miles.

• 2:41:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. But that was one of the new, um, procedures as a result of the Columbia accident that we put is that, uh, we would, you know, before we dock to the station, we would reach a certain distance, stop, do a holding pattern there, and then we would do a maneuver where, where we would show our belly to them. And as we're showing our belly, they're filming everything, of course, uh, downlinking it to the, uh, engineers down on the ground, uh, looking at that leading, uh, wing edge and any other type of things, uh, that other damage that could have occurred to your TPS system, which is your thermal protection system, which is the underbelly and the wing leading edge of the, of the shuttle

• 2:42:27Speaker 01

  that, that we, uh, we investigate, inspect.

• 2:42:33Jocko Willink?

  The, the docking, you call it a collision in here. It's like, it says, uh, a collision or soft dock. That's gotta be crazy, too. You're aiming the space shuttle at that thing and you're gonna like connect.

• 2:42:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're gonna connect. And I'll tell you, um, it was even kind of crazy, a li- a little bit more crazy for us than normal because, um, you know, nothing real big happened in terms of malfunctions during our mission, except this one thing. And, um, the shuttle has, um, built-in jets to maneuver in space, including the OMS engine, orbital maneuvering system. Those are the big engines that we fire to slow down so that we can get back into the atmosphere. But we don't use those for docking. We have built-in jets that are on the nose, the tail, and, uh, near the wings of the, um, of the shuttle, and they fire to maneuver in space.

• 2:43:26Speaker 01

  And um, and we have two types. We have the regular called RCS jets, reaction control system jets. And then we've got the Verniers, which are the fine tuning jets. They're kind of like the small ones. They're one tenth the thrust of the big ones. And so when as you're as you're docking to the station, you use the rough ones, the RCS. And then as you get in, you switch to the fine ones. So you could do the fine tuning, so that you can dock. Because the uh, the pilot, the both pilots have are at the controls. I'm at the uh, station as flight engineer giving them uh, and they're using um, they

• 2:44:08Speaker 01

  have a target. So they have a um, a camera system. So they're looking at at the camera, one's looking outside. And then I'm looking at the screens, giving them speed, uh, I giving them a distance, uh, and and then also whether they're in plane or out of plane in terms of I give them numbers to indicate that if if it's all zeros, it means they're coming in plane. And then if it's a different number, I give them so that they can provide some type of correction. And they're doing all that. But as I mentioned, as you get closer, you switch over to the fine jets, which move you very little. But our fine jets fail.

• 2:44:47Speaker 01

  So there's no Vernier jet. So we got the big hunking uh, rough, you know, coarse jets that we can do. So now our our our commander CJ Sturkau, the good Marine he is, um, you know, when you when you move a Vernier jet, you know, you move very little. But when you move, when you do the regular RCS jets, it goes like that, right? And so what he has to do is, he's looking at the at the approaching speed. He's looking at the at this. But now he has to time his firing, so that when he fires it.

• 2:45:30Speaker 01

  As it goes, it hits at the middle. And, uh, and we practiced that during, uh, during, cause we practice everything. So we practiced, so we've done that before. But the fact is that, you know, that was probably one of the, uh, uh, pucker moments we had in saying, gee, now we, we get this right, cause if not, you, you, you could damage the docking mechanism. You could get stuck or, uh, or you could just bounce off kinda thing. And so, but, but he did well. I mean, like the good marine pilot that he is.

• 2:46:01Jocko Willink?

  Semper Fi.

• 2:46:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:46:03Jocko Willink?

  Uh, you get docked, um, sleeping up there. That sounds like it's a strange experience. You gotta like tie yourself into a sleeping bag, basically.

• 2:46:11Speaker 01

  Exactly. You, what happens is you gotta tie, tie the four corners of your sleeping bag to structure. And then you gotta slide in and you zip yourself up. The, uh, the, the sleeping bags have holes so you can stick your hands out. And the weirdest thing is you don't need a pillow.

• 2:46:29Jocko Willink?

  Hmm.

• 2:46:30Speaker 01

  Cause your, your, your head doesn't bob.

• 2:46:33Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 2:46:34Speaker 01

  There's no weight.

• 2:46:34Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:46:36Speaker 01

  Your hands, whatever position your hands are, that's how you're sleeping. You know, I got these cool Frankenstein pictures of my crewmates.

• 2:46:44Speaker 01

  Like that, cause that's the way you sleep. I mean, whatever position you're in, you're gonna sleep in that position. But I'll tell you, it was the weirdest feeling going to sleep the first and second night. But after that, I said, you know, this is the best sleep you can ever, you know, no Tempur-Pedic mattress, nothing mattress Mac and Houston can sell with respect to his mattresses. Uh, this is the best sleeping you can get, cause you got no pressure points. You have no pressure points.

• 2:47:14Jocko Willink?

  What's the, what's the, how many hours would you get to sleep for?

• 2:47:16Speaker 01

  You get to sleep, uh, it was on the average about six hours and 10 minutes. Somewhere in there. That's what my, uh, my sleep thing said, about six hours, 10 minutes.

• 2:47:27Jocko Willink?

  Um, day eight. You got this in here. The eight day of the mission was very special one for me. Jose, the interview is set up and ready. You have four minutes and 30 seconds to do it, I was told. I was delighted to hear Carlos, a famous Mexican reporter who had been following my story for some time. Truth be told, I was terrified at the thought of knowing that millions of people in Latin America were going to see my interview. It was only after I returned and conversed with him that I found out he felt the same way. This was a historic interview as it was the first live interview from space conducted in Spanish. The minutes went by so quickly that I felt my time was up just as I was getting started. We, we talked about the view of Mexico from space, including the attractive coast of the state of Quintana Roo

• 2:48:11Jocko Willink?

  and the Yucatan Peninsula. We also spoke about my inability to detect borders that divide Earth into countries. There are no borders from what I can see up here. Our world leaders should see how beautiful and precious our world looks from this perspective, I said to the reporter. One world from up there, huh?

• 2:48:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, um, interesting story there, Jaco, with respect to what happened after that. You know, I, I, I basically said, you know, the, the most beautiful thing, there was two things that, two takeaways. The first one had to do with what you just mentioned is that I was able to see Canada, the US and Mexico. But what struck me in awe, and it's so beautiful, is that we couldn't, I couldn't differentiate where Canada ended, the US began, or where the US ended and Mexico began. And, and this aha moment, I said, man, I had to go out of this world to come to this conclusion that down there, we're all just one.

• 2:49:16Speaker 01

  Because borders are human-made concepts designed to separate us. And how sad, because from my perspective, we're just one down there. And it'd be great to have our world leaders give, to give them this opportunity, because I'll assure you, our world would be much better. Now, The thing that, what the news got out of all this, when I came home, and you can look up the New York Times and the LA Times, came up with the headlines saying, "Mexican American astronaut wants to open borders."

• 2:49:58Speaker 01

  That's what they got out of this, my story. I say, "Good grief."

• 2:50:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:50:05Speaker 01

  But, yeah, everything has to be politicized.

• 2:50:07Jocko Willink?

  They have to, they want to get people to click on those headlines.

• 2:50:09Speaker 01

  Exactly. And, uh, and, and which I found it so sad because I said, "Yeah, I wasn't even talking about that. I was just talking about the concept that we're just one down there." You know, and, uh, but somehow from there, they got the fact that I wanted to remove all borders and get, let everybody come into the US. What can I say?

• 2:50:29Jocko Willink?

  That's the, uh, that's the media for you.

• 2:50:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:50:32Jocko Willink?

  Um, so again, I'm gonna, I'm gonna skip forward. You gotta read the book to get some of these details about the flight. Day fourteen, on this day, we made our final preparations to begin the de-orbit procedures. This included closing our payload bay doors and once again, putting on the orange LES suits for the entry phase of our flight. Observing the beauty of the earth from space was something I have not been able to put into words, well, not in a way where I have felt I was able to truly do justice to this spectacular view. I felt goosebumps knowing that few people have had the privilege of looking at our planet from my perspective. I marvelled at the blueness of the oceans, the whiteness of the clouds. At one point, I was able to make out the lights of some cities.

• 2:51:16Jocko Willink?

  I can see San Francisco, Mexico City, and Houston. I managed to steal a few more moments for myself while I, while the rest of the crew worked. Without anyone noticing, I made my way over to a corner and pulled out the crucifix that Adelita gave me and said a prayer. "Let us, Lord, see your love in the world. Forgive us for our wrongdoings. Give us faith to trust in your goodness. Forgive our ignorance and weakness. Give us the power to continue trusting wholeheartedly and show us what we can do for peace on earth. Amen."

• 2:52:00Jocko Willink?

  And you guys end up spending an extra time up in space, an extra day?

• 2:52:04Speaker 01

  The weather was not cooperating in Florida and flight rules are that if it's uh if it's more than a couple of rotations around the earth and you still can't land, you postpone it for 24 hours. And if it's still bad weather, you go to your second preferred landing site.

• 2:52:24Jocko Willink?

  And so you got your second preferred landing site, which was California?

• 2:52:28Speaker 01

  Yes, Edwards Air Force Base, not too far from here.

• 2:52:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah. And which was kinda nice because you were gonna land in California, but also your family wasn't gonna be there.

• 2:52:36Speaker 01

  Yes, yes. My family was waiting for me in um in Florida because they were they wanted to witness the landing in person. And of course, uh, once it got canceled, they didn't have enough time uh to fly and meet us over here at Edwards Air Force Base. But I kinda liked it because, you know, it's California and I'm landing at Edwards Air Force Base. I call it poetic justice because it's uh it's some 80 miles from Chino, Ontario, where I used to pick strawberries. And so here, here I am coming in with a uh, you know, in a NASA space suit, a good old American flag on my shoulder

• 2:53:16Speaker 01

  and coming in as a US NASA astronaut, uh, when, you know, 40 years ago, I was, you know, over there picking strawberries.

• 2:53:29Jocko Willink?

  This landing was no joke too. I mean, you describe it here, "As each minute passed, the distance between our shuttle and Earth lessened. The planet also grew bigger in size before our very eyes, which meant that we were getting closer to home. In my mind, I was counting down the minutes until we were safely on the ground. Our landing point at Edwards Air Force Base in California was a mere dot on our map. As Dis- as Discovery darted across the sky at high speed, I saw on our instruments that we broke Mach 25. At that point, we were traveling at slightly more than 25 times the speed of sound. I could feel the buffeting of the shuttle." With the atmosphere and I noticed an orange glow outside our windows.

• 2:54:10Jocko Willink?

  We were definitely in the atmosphere now. I noticed gravity slowly taking its effect as the weight of my helmet attached to my orange LES became heavier. At about 26,000 feet, we broke through the cloud layer and I had a good view of the ground both below us and in front of us. By now, the shuttle had the characteristics of an airplane. As the aerodynamic surface controls were responding to the commander's input, the shuttle slowed down to normal airplane speeds and behaved more like a glider would since it did not have an active propulsion system during the landing phase of the flight. This, of course, meant we only had one opportunity to land it. Our commander and pilot had practiced these landings hundreds, if not thousands of times in simulators and in actual approaches

• 2:54:52Jocko Willink?

  utilizing one of the two planes that had been modified to be able to fly the shuttle's landing profile. At 400 feet with the gear already armed, our pilot Kevin activated the gear down command. This poised the wheels of the shuttle for contact with the surface of the pavement at Edwards Air Force Base in preparation for landing. The landing strip was ready in no time. Soon thereafter, we were literally racing down the landing strip until the parachute deployed and the pedal brakes slowly brought us to a complete stop.

• 2:55:30Jocko Willink?

  The opening of the shuttle doors reminded me of the times I had to open them to welcome back the returning astronauts. However, this time, I would be welcomed. And indeed, we were welcomed back, I was told by one of my class colleagues as he unbuckled my seat. We patted one another on the back. Once I was able to stand up, I exited the shuttle with a smile on my face. The seven of us crew members were beyond ecstatic. Everything went as planned. Our mission commander began to congratulate us and said, "We did it. We couldn't have asked for a better team." All of us had to spend an extra day on the base before we were able to go home. As I waited for the moment when I could go back to Houston, I could not fathom the irony of my dream going into space, space, both beginning in and concluding in the Golden State.

• 2:56:14Jocko Willink?

  As a boy, I dreamed of becoming an astronaut as I picked crops. As a man, I would exit the shuttle as an astronaut on a landing strip located just a few miles from where I grew up, picking strawberries. It was poetic, really. There was truly this delightful symmetry to my life that helped me realize the importance of remaining humble and remembering where I came from.

• 2:56:44Jocko Willink?

  Epic. And the story goes on here. You go on to talk about retiring from NASA, going into the corporate world as an executive.

• 2:56:55Speaker 01

  Let me tell you a little bit about the retirement part of it. It was a hard decision to go about and deciding, Jaco, because I'll tell you, I remember when we've got back, when we got back from space, shortly thereafter, they announced the retirement of the shuttle fleet. So they were gonna retire the whole space shuttle program. I think they had four or five flights more manifested and then after that, program's over. And, but they had them all assigned, so, because they assigned about four or five crews ahead because they're training already for the next flight or they're gonna get ready to train.

• 2:57:38Speaker 01

  And so I knew, you know, since I just got back, I'm in the back of the line, right? Of the queue, so I knew I wasn't gonna get assigned another mission.

• 2:57:48Speaker 01

  But then, I was one of the prime candidates. What we were gonna be flying is, and we were flying already, was with the Russians, right? Pay the Russians fifty million dollars per seat and we go up on the Soyuz and they'll take you to the station. So, so I was one of the prime candidates because of my background of traveling in Russia for five years and knowing Russian and all that. And I thought, I thought, okay, well, I'm gonna be one of the first ones, I'm down for that, I'll do that. But then you read the fine print and you read the fine print and and what you don't realize is that the training in Russia, it's a three-year training program.

• 2:58:30Speaker 01

  And so eighty percent of the time you're in Russia, and it's not continuous, it's like you go six weeks, you come back one week, you go eight weeks, come back one week, you know, twelve weeks, come back two weeks, kind of thing like that for three years. And and then you go up for six months, continuous, and then when you come back, you go on the road for six months, continuous, divulging everything, all the science you did. So, and all in all, it was a four-year ordeal where you were going to be gone about ninety percent of the time, eighty-five, ninety percent of the time, from home. And I've got five kids. My oldest at that time was fifteen years old, and the youngest was about seven years

• 2:59:14Speaker 01

  old. And so I did the math and I said, you know, all these kids, I'm gonna miss, you know, they're, you know, they're in Boy Scouts, there's softball, baseball, proms, high school graduation, you know, this fifteen-year-old's gonna be a nineteen-year-old already off in college. At least I assume he's gonna go to college, I'm not gonna be around to find out or to guide him. And so so quickly, I think my Hispanic culture kind of kicked in and and and I gave a lot of weight to the family. And I'll tell you, man, it was the hardest decision in my life because, you know, we

• 2:59:55Speaker 01

  just got through reading what it took to get here, to get there, to get assigned and to be part of NASA. And after flying only once, here I am considering chucking it all the way because I could fly again.

• 3:00:12Speaker 01

  But you know, I kinda just thought about it, prayed about it. Uh, I didn't wanna talk to my wife about it cuz I know her answer is, we can do it, we can do it. I didn't want her to convince me. I said, you know, this is, uh, you know, there's, there's a fine line where, you know, you do it for what you wanna do for you. And then that fine line of being more egotistical than, you know, not considering other folks. And, uh, and so, you know, I thought about it, thought about it, and finally I said, you know, I think the best thing for me to do is to just leave.

• 3:00:52Speaker 01

  Give someone else an opportunity who can fly. I mean, I could stay and not fly, but I'm taking up a billet. I said, and that's not fair either. I said, I, it's probably best for me to leave and give someone else. I said, give the Johnnys of the world a chance.

• 3:01:07Jocko Willink?

  Johnny Kim a seat.

• 3:01:08Speaker 01

  Exactly. Give, give the Johnny Kims of the world an opportunity so they can fly. And so it was the hardest decision, uh, that I, I, that I could have, uh, uh, ma- made. But, you know, I look back at it and I look at where all my kids are at in life right now, all college graduates. My youngest, seven-year-old is a freshman in mechanical engineering at UC Merced. Uh, you know, the PhD, my three girls have their bachelors. One of them is finishing her masters in May. And one of them is a big, uh, influencer in, uh, in, in, in, in TikTok.

• 3:01:44Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 3:01:45Speaker 01

  And if you guys really wanna have a laugh, uh, because I come on a lot, she films me a lot. Uh, go at, at the Vanessa Hernandez.

• 3:01:54Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 3:01:55Speaker 01

  And you'll see, you'll see her, you'll see me make a fool of myself. But, you know, anything for my daughter, you know.

• 3:02:02Jocko Willink?

  You're not doing TikTok dances, are you? Or are you?

• 3:02:04Speaker 01

  Oh, you gotta look at it, man. All kinds of stuff, man. I'm telling you, all kinds of. She graduated from.

• 3:02:09Jocko Willink?

  So you truly will do anything for your family?

• 3:02:12Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 3:02:12Jocko Willink?

  TikTok dances?

• 3:02:13Speaker 01

  She graduated from Loyola Marymount and she works for a, uh, vitamin pharmaceutical company, uh, near Loyola Marymount. So she still lives in the LA area. And, uh, but she's been, she's been, you know, doing social media stuff and, uh, she's gonna start her own podcast too. So they already contacted her for her to start, but, but she's been doing good on TikTok. I mean, she. She represents a few companies in TikTok and she's, I think she's banking more on TikTok than she is in her day job, you know? And working a lot less so, but, but yeah, but it's those decisions, you know, that I think, uh, uh, you know, I, I really, uh, you know, I look back at it and I don't regret it because I look at how my kids turned out because I've been here for them

• 3:02:55Speaker 01

  and I continue to be there for them and, uh, and so I think I made the right decision.

• 3:03:00Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, well, that's a definitely a, a difficult decision to make. I know I was in the military and that's the, the decision that military individuals like myself have to make at some point. Are you gonna keep going? Are you gonna keep going on deployment? You, you're talking about missing all those things? I missed all those things. I missed everything, you know? And eventually had to say, uh, I owe, I owe a little something. I, I've done what I can for the country. I owe something to the, the family that I've left behind for months and months and months and months at a time. So that's, I agree, the, that's, you know, people ask me, what's the toughest decision you ever made in the military? And they think I'm gonna say some tactical situation or some mission. It was like, no, deciding to get out was the thing that I fought the most about and it was the hardest decision I had to make.

• 3:03:45Speaker 01

  And then people will tell me, well, didn't you know you'd gone in? Why did you go in the first place? I said, no, that the rules were changed midstream. I mean, they decided to retire the space shuttle fleet. I mean, I, I thought the space shuttle fleet, you know, they told me it was gonna be going on for another 10, 20 years and I would've got another three, four flights under my belt. But when you take that away and they say, hey, the only game in town now is with the Russians for the next 10 years. I figured, you know, I think it's time for me to leave then. If you guys change the rules and I value my family as much as I do, and I think they need me at this point in their life, pre-teenage, teenage years. I mean, that's the most important part of kids growing up stage and, you know, I think it's a job where both parents have to be present.

• 3:04:28Speaker 01

  And, you know, thumbs on, on them to make sure that they, just like my parents were with me, make sure that they're, you know, on the straight and narrow, go ahead and in the right direction.

• 3:04:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 3:04:40Jocko Willink?

  And then you ended up getting a job in the in the corporate world. Um, you end up running for Congress.

• 3:04:46Speaker 01

  Yes, yes. I get, I get, I get, uh, I, I, I get, uh, convinced, well, they convinced me to run for Congress. And it was, uh, it, uh, that's a long story in itself too, but, but it was at the urging of, uh, President Obama. You know, he, he, uh, sought me out not once, not twice, but three times. And when you get sought out the third time and your commander in chief straight out tells you. The first two times, he says you ought to consider it. And the third time he said, he, he told me, and I quote, "I'm gonna make the ask." I said, "Please run for Congress in California."

• 3:05:28Speaker 01

  So when the commander in chief stares at you in the eyes and says, "Run for Congress," what do you do? You salute the flag. And so, so I did, and you know, I gave it my best. We, we were, um, they didn't put me in my district. Cause my district is, I'm a Democrat, so my district is a heavy Democrat. But we already had someone there, uh, that had seniority. So why, why knock off a seniority level Democrat and put a, uh, freshman there? Uh, why not go after a Republican seat? So they sent me next door. At the time, they were plus 11 in registration, uh, and we lost by one and a half points.

• 3:06:11Speaker 01

  So we almost made it, but, but it left a bad taste in my mouth, you know?

• 3:06:15Jocko Willink?

  I can't imagine the taste that it left in your mouth.

• 3:06:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, politics, you know, it's kind of like, you know, I just don't have, you know, I have the stomach for a lot of things. But, but when it's stuff like that, it's kind of like there's no rules and, you know, there's scruple. I mean, it's just like no ethics at all. And I said, you know, that's not me.

• 3:06:37Jocko Willink?

  So one shot was enough at that one?

• 3:06:39Speaker 01

  I think for now, never say never, never say never Jaco, but uh, but, but for now, it's, it's, it's uh, I think I'm doing okay where I'm at right now.

• 3:06:50Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Um, now you know, you do go around, you know, you do speaking events right now and, and you talk about that a little bit here and I want to close out, you know, we've covered some of the book, but I wanted to close out the book with this, this little section where you talk about what you talk about. You say, I share with everyone the magical recipe for success that I applied to my own life. It is a recipe that I learned from my parents and I also share it here with you. One, identify your goal in life. Two, realize and understand how far you are away from that goal. Three, develop a roadmap to get there. Don't skip steps. Four,

• 3:07:29Jocko Willink?

  get yourself a good education consistent with your goal. Five, develop a good work ethic and put your heart into reaching your goal. Six, and this is the one you added, you mentioned earlier, exemplify perseverance. Never give up on your dream and remember that it is the journey, not the destination that is of most importance. Then you continue on, these are not the steps to become an astronaut. These are the steps to harvest your own stars. The recipe works for anyone in any part of the world and trust me, it's infallible. So that's what you go around talking about.

• 3:08:11Speaker 01

  Yes, I'm a motivational speaker and I, I share my story and also that recipe and, and talk, and talk about what, what, you know, what it took to get there. And like a good engineer, I try to, try to um,

• 3:08:28Speaker 01

  Basically capture it in a formula type of environment like the

• 3:08:34Speaker 01

  recipe that you just read off there. I also give a three element strategy that says, hey, to reach your goal, you know, you've got a you've got a, and this I learned afterwards, right? Is, is, is, is you gotta know what the minimum requirements are. Once you define your goal is natural tendency and ninety nine point nine percent of us get this. Right is you ask yourself, uh, what are the requirements to get there? You know, you wanna be a doctor, you know, you gotta go to med, pre-med, medical school and pass the boards. Lawyer, pre-law, law, pass the bar. Astronaut, you know, you gotta go to the STEM field, get graduate degree, uh, four or five years experience and then start applying. So that's the first one. Everybody gets that one, you know, it's, it's, it's know the requirements.

• 3:09:17Speaker 01

  Second one is emulate successful people that you wanna aspire to be like. In other words, you know, ask yourself, what do they have that I don't have? You know, if you wanna be a CEO, study a CEO and study, find out how they got there. You wanna be an astronaut, study an astronaut. I mean, that's what I did after my sixth, uh, failure, remember? I compared myself, I found out they were all pilots. So what did I do? I invested in myself, I became a pilot. Then I found out they were all SCUPA certified. What did I do? I invested in myself and became SCUPA certified. The third stage of that, of that, uh, of, uh, uh, uh, of that strategy

• 3:10:02Speaker 01

  is, is you gotta create a differentiator. In other words, differentiate yourself from, differentiate yourself from the competition. You know, at, at the time, you know, it was from four thousand and went up to twelve thousand, uh, that I had to differentiate myself. So it was no accident that I took that job going to Russia. It was strategic in my career. I say it's gonna help my career, obviously, but it's also gonna help me over here because, you know, I just read that the US And the newly formed Russia signed an agreement to build what was gonna be the International Space Station. So it didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out, even though I am one.

• 3:10:45Jocko Willink?

  No, you are one.

• 3:10:46Speaker 01

  Even though I am one, but it didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out we were gonna be working with the Russians. So my great differentiator is during these next five years in this project, I traveled more than twenty-five times to the Russian Siberian countryside and worked with the Russians. And all this, you know, helped me get the upper hand on the other fourteen, twelve-thousand applicants. Because very few of them could say or claim similar experience than what I had. And at least that got me in the door to get, start getting interviewed. And then the rest, I would just sell myself.

• 3:11:24Jocko Willink?

  Mm-hmm.

• 3:11:25Speaker 01

  So, yeah, so that's the three-element strategy that I add up, up to that.

• 3:11:30Jocko Willink?

  And so that's what, so that's what you're doing now. Now, you got your foundation, the Reaching the Stars Foundation.

• 3:11:36Speaker 01

  Yes, astrojh.org. If you go look at it, astrojh.org, you'll see everything we do in the Central Valley, where we try to motivate kids to get interested in STEM careers, science, technology, engineering, math. We have a summer academy at the University of Pacific, same school I went to, where we have kids from the seventh to twelfth grade in a six-week summer program, where we basically inundate them with STEM concepts, fun STEM concepts that they can take back to their school and, and, and get a head start in their math and science courses they're gonna see the following year.

• 3:12:19Speaker 01

  So we, we basically expose them to those concepts that we know they're good, we know what the core curriculum is. So we expose them to those ideas in a fun, experimental, experiential way. Uh, so that when they go back to school, they say, oh yeah, I've seen this. It's my fact, I know the experiment. So they do very well. And so we, we do that uh for them. And then uh, and then we, we also have a um science blast where we get uh over a thousand kids in the fifth grade. Um to uh, in a one day uh exploratorium type of environment where we have all kinds of hands on. Experiments, we have people from Lawrence Livermore Lab, from Google, from Apple uh come.

• 3:13:00Speaker 01

  And they talk about what their careers are and basically uh, you know, expose them to STEM careers. And why we do that at fifth grade? Because that's the age when I decided I want to be an astronaut. So I figure if it's good enough for me, it's good enough for them. And then uh, whatever monies we have left over, because we, we sort of uh have on a year to year budget. Whatever monies we have left over, we give scholarships to the kids. So.

• 3:13:25Jocko Willink?

  No, that's awesome. I know um. The, you know, that's what America needs. America needs kids that are growing up that wanna learn STEM.

• 3:13:34Speaker 01

  Yes, we need lots of engineers and scientists.

• 3:13:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's, that's the, that's the competition for the future.

• 3:13:40Speaker 01

  The Chinese and, and India are kicking our butts and producing more scientists and engineers than we are.

• 3:13:45Jocko Willink?

  And that's gonna cost us in the long run, big time.

• 3:13:48Speaker 01

  Ten, ten years from now, twenty years from now, it's gonna cost us. If we don't, if we don't rectify the situation.

• 3:13:53Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I know, I'm, I'm, I can find myself sometimes being pretty down on the academia, right? For people that are going into debt and they're, they're borrowing all this money to go to college, but they get a degree that. Doesn't really give them a job, you know, they'll get a degree in something that doesn't, you, you can't go, you don't have a skill set. I mean, engineering is a skill set, something that you learn, something you know how to do. So. The fact that you're doing that, that, that program is leaning kids in the right direction for something that can actually. Provide not only them with a good career, but also provides America with something that we desperately need. And we're desperately gonna need even more in the future.

• 3:14:32Speaker 01

  And on top of all that, you also have a winery, right? Well, well, first of all, you know, all that is just volunteer. You know, I get, I get nothing out of it, right? Except I feel good. But you still have to put it together. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a time sink. Yeah, unpaid time sink. But I'm saying on top of all the time you spend doing that and all the time you spend speaking, you also. But before the winery, I also have a, a engineering consulting business first. Yeah, I have a Tierra Luna Engineering, where I do aerospace consulting. You know, for example, I helped Mexico buy and launch three communication satellites from Boeing Corporation.

• 3:15:14Speaker 01

  That was a 1.2 billion dollar purchase for Mexico. And, and they hired me because the undersecretary of communications was, he, he himself admitted, he says, look, I'm an economist, a politician economist. I know diddly squat about satellites. And here we are spending 1.2 billion dollars. Can you help us? So I worked on a neat project for about four years, helping them launch three communication satellites so they, they can have internet throughout all of Mexico. Any population over 5,000, the government put a dish so they would have connectivity to the outside world, which is, which is pretty neat. So I do that.

• 3:15:56Speaker 01

  Um, you know, I've, I've also helped a university build a CubeSat, small satellite, 10 by 10 by 10 centimeters. And with NASA, we launched it for free for them. And they became the first university in Mexico to have built, designed, and key word, operated their own satellite from space. So we did that for them. I'm helping, I also created an aerospace curriculum for them, working with a three campus university in northern Mexico. And that's Tierra Luna Engineering, where, which by the way, if you go to the dot com store there, tierralunayingineering.com, you can actually get the book.

• 3:16:38Speaker 01

  Reaching for the Stars, you can get the children's book there. And you can buy it on Amazon. And quite frankly, you could probably buy it a little cheaper. But if you buy it through our website, you'll guarantee that I can sign it and dedicate whatever you want me to say on it, I'll dedicate it. And the proceeds go to my foundation. So that's why I wanna make sure and clarify that. You know, I think it's like thirty bucks for the book or something like that. But it's signed by me and we send it off. And so you can do that at TaraLunaEngineering.com. And then as if that wasn't enough, I kinda come full circle. And my wife wanted a Back to the fields. Exactly.

• 3:17:20Speaker 01

  No, my wife wanted a home out in the country. And so about five years ago, you know, when we were well down and established back in Stockton, I started looking for some property, because happy wife, happy life, right? And so I started looking for some property so that we can build a house out in the country, because she wants to live in the country. And I said, yeah, okay, I'm a country boy too. And man, I saw the price and they were expensive. And then I ran into this twenty acre vineyard. And it was income producing. And it was only about twice as much as an empty three acre lot in the country. I said, man, that's a no brainer.

• 3:18:04Speaker 01

  I'm gonna, I'm gonna become a farmer. Back to your roots. Back to my roots, exactly. Back to the fields. And I became a grape farmer. And the reason why I was so into it was because, first of all, I know how to pick grapes, but that's the only thing I know. I don't know, did they squat about, about running a vineyard? But you know who does? My dad. My dad's worked in there all his life. And so I told pops, that's what we call pops, I told pops, hey, if I buy this vineyard, would you teach me how to? Run the vineyard. He say, yeah, son. So these past five years with him, you know, he's eighty-four, strong man, it's good, you know, field work background, he's strong and healthy.

• 3:18:47Speaker 01

  You know, this best five years I spent with him, quality time. He's teaching me, uh, you know, what to fertilize, how to fertilize, uh, when to water. And, you know, he gets up on the tractor and he plows and mows and, uh, all kinds of stuff that he does. Helping me with the, with the vineyard. And, and, and, and we sell all the grapes to a winery that makes, uh, a champ, well sparkling wine, can't call it champagne here in California. Sparkling wine. That's right. And it's, um, it's, it's, it's, it's Corbella. So we sell it to them. But then they make the mistake of one day inviting me to see their processes. And I saw how they. That engineered mind starts going to work. Exactly. I started looking at the process of how they make wine.

• 3:19:32Speaker 01

  And, you know, my favorite phrase is, hey, this ain't rocket science. I can make this. I can make this. Probably more efficiently too. Exactly, exactly. And so, so I started, you know, a couple of years ago, start working with my own formulations and making my own wine. And finally I settled on three concoctions that, that we have. And, uh, and so I started my company, again, everything under Tera Luna. Remember it's Tera Luna Engineering? Remember my wife's restaurant, it was called, uh, Tera Luna Grill. When we came to California and I opened up Tera Luna Engineering, I handed a dollar to my wife. She said, what's this for? I said, I'm buying your naming rights of your now defunct restaurant.

• 3:20:14Speaker 01

  Cause you're over here, you closed it down here. Here's, here's the dollar. I'm gonna call it Tera Luna Engineering. And then after that, I opened, uh, another company called Tera Luna Sellers. That's what the C, C E L L A R S. Sellers dot com, and then, uh, that's where I, I sell my wine now. Uh, this is the first year we came out with it. It's a direct to, uh, consumer. Uh, and hopefully we'll end up being in stores and stuff later on when we have production, but we're right now, we're sort of just getting it out there and getting it known and uh, and we have, you know, we have three varieties, you know, we have a Sauvignon Blanc, which has my grapes. So if you wanna drink wine from my vineyard, uh, you'll see

• 3:20:59Speaker 01

  that the Sauvignon Blanc is the one to go. And then I buy grapes from uh, Lodi, uh, and I make a red Zinfandel, which is also good. And then I buy grapes from uh, from the Napa area and I make a red blend. That's a combination of uh, of Merlot, uh, Tempranillo, Syrah and Petit Syrah. So I call that the red blend. And then I named them after constellations cause the, the, the company's called Terluna Cellars, but like the first one I ever made was with my grapes. So I call it uh, New Star, which is Nova Stella. Okay. Uh, and uh, in, in Latin, Nova Stella. And then uh, and then the uh, Zinfandel, I

• 3:21:44Speaker 01

  call it Stella Z, you know, Z constellation. And then uh, and then the uh, red blend, I call it Stella Roja, which is a red, red star, right? And so uh, so, so, but, but yeah, I, you know, it's, it's a great, uh, it's a great activity. I enjoy it. You know, it's kinda like another challenge that, you know, you start from nothing and you create the labels, you create the formulation and all of a sudden you got this nice bottle and say, you know, I'm the one that created this. This is so cool. And so, so, so it's, it's, it's enjoyable. I, I love doing this. I love doing this. Yeah, that's uh, man, you're just getting warmed up, I guess. I guess so. Yes, yes. And, and then, and then to top it off, you know, my son, my

• 3:22:28Speaker 01

  youngest son, I told you is going to UC Merced, right? Um, he got accepted to University of Pacific and he got accepted to UC Santa Barbara amongst other schools, but the three he liked was UC Santa Barbara, um, uh, University of Pacific and UC Merced. And I was certain he was gonna pick Pacific or Santa Barbara, but he picks UC Merced.

• 3:22:53Speaker 01

  And I told him, why, son? I said, why did you pick? It's fine, I said, you go wherever you want. But I'm curious, why did you pick UC Merced? He said, well, these are the schools that are student centric. In other words, they don't focus too much on research, but focus on the students and success. And so I liked all these three schools. I said, but why at UC Merced? He said, well, the tipping point was in Pacific. Uh, he says, my brother and you are alumni. I said, yeah, that's true. He said, and at UC Santa Barbara, my sister and you are alumni. I said, yeah. So, so, you know, I'm gonna always be known as, you know, the brother, the sister, or the son of.

• 3:23:37Speaker 01

  Saying, I wanna come and form my own, my, my, you know, create my own route. I said, well, I respect that. I said, that's fine. So, the Friday, Saturday, we were supposed to move him in, right? Uh, and this was a few months back when the semester was starting. We were supposed to move him in, the storm and everything. And but the Friday before, one day before, I get a call from the governor's office. And says, uh, you've been appointed as a UC Regent. So now I'm a UC Regent, you know, overseeing the 10 UC campuses. Uh, the National Labs, Lawrence Livermore Lab is falls under my purview also.

• 3:24:21Speaker 01

  So, so, so we go the next day, Saturday. I thought nothing. I said, oh, thank you very much. I appreciate, yes, I accept and all that. So the following day, I go and, uh, with my son and my wife, and there we are moving him in. And as we're moving him in, along comes the chancellor, his assistant, the photographer. He's taking pictures with my son and hi, cuz I'm the new Regent, you know? And, uh, and my son looks up, well, he looks down on me cuz he's taller than me. He looks down on me. He says, I'm never gonna get rid of you, am I? I said, no, you're not. So, so I'm also on the UC Border Regions.

• 3:25:03Jocko Willink?

  Impressive, man, impressive. Um, well, look, we're going on, I think, over three hours right now.

• 3:25:09Speaker 02

  Three and a half.

• 3:25:09Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:25:09Speaker 01

  Oh, wow. That's a, that, time flies, doesn't it?

• 3:25:12Jocko Willink?

  It does, indeed.

• 3:25:13Speaker 01

  Is that, that's probably your typical interview anyway, right?

• 3:25:16Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, around three, something.

• 3:25:18Speaker 01

  Between three or four, yeah.

• 3:25:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, something like that.

• 3:25:19Speaker 01

  Oh, good. I'm glad I had enough material to, to at least meet the, the norms here.

• 3:25:25Jocko Willink?

  You, you met the minimum requirement.

• 3:25:26Speaker 01

  All right, I met the minimum requirement.

• 3:25:29Jocko Willink?

  It's just, it's, it's a fascinating story and it's just unbelievable to hear. Kerry, you got any final questions?

• 3:25:35Speaker 02

  Just an incredible story. Uh, thanks, you know, thanks for sharing all the lessons from, from your dad and from your story. And I mean, it's just incredible, man. Thank you.

• 3:25:42Speaker 01

  Yeah. Oh, the one thing, Ms. Young, remember I told you not to let me forget about Ms. Young?

• 3:25:46Jocko Willink?

  I was just about to remind you of that. Don't worry.

• 3:25:49Speaker 01

  All right. Yes, yeah, good, good. I'm glad, I'm glad you reminded me.

• 3:25:54Jocko Willink?

  No, I'm just kidding. I forgot. I've dropped the ball.

• 3:25:57Speaker 01

  Uh, the, with Ms. Young, you know, one of the things is, um, when you go off on the mission, uh, you get to invite a hundred people, you know, in the VIP section. That's about, you know, about five, six miles from the launch pad. So that's pretty close, too. And for a Hispanic family, it's like, okay, which of my cousins aren't coming, right? Who are so large. But, but, but thank God I had Caucasian crewmates. I didn't have quite a hundred relatives, so I was able to siphon off.

• 3:26:27Jocko Willink?

  Week.

• 3:26:29Speaker 01

  I was able to siphon off a bunch of tickets. And so I had the school district look up Ms. Young and Ms. Bayo. Uh, now I couldn't look up Mr. Sendejas because he passed away in a car accident. Uh, but, but I, I, the three most important teachers and also, uh, Mr. Rodriguez, he also passed away of cancer. So two of, two, two of them were gone. And, um, and, and so I looked them up and I had them invited and flown. Uh, they were sitting next to my parents, both Ms. Bayo and Ms. Young were sitting next to my parents, uh, witnessing in real life there, the launch of the space shuttle and, uh, and the impact that they had on me.

• 3:27:11Speaker 01

  You know, I thought that was, uh, kinda only right thing to do and try to get them out there and have that experience with us.

• 3:27:19Jocko Willink?

  Man.

• 3:27:21Jocko Willink?

  Outstanding, outstanding. Well, um, you know, again, thank you so much. Thank you so much for joining us. Um, thanks for sharing your story. Thanks for sharing your experiences. Thanks for sharing your lessons learned, unbelievable lessons learned. And, and thanks for what you've done for mankind to, you know, not only in the medical field and then in the final frontier of space. And then on top of that, what you're continuing to do right now with your foundations, um, trying to get out there and get kids pointed in the right direction. You know, we talked about what happens when kids get pointed in the wrong direction. We know how that turns out. It's horrible. And to see someone like you that were able to overcome those boundaries and overcome the ultimate boundaries and make

• 3:28:04Jocko Willink?

  it to where you've made it. Um, just so much to learn. And I just want to say thanks for coming on and thanks for sharing. We appreciate it.

• 3:28:10Speaker 01

  Well, thank you very much. And I noticed you have a Twitter too, right? And so I want to invite people to, uh, to, to, uh, get into my Twitter, which is astro underscore Jose. So if you guys come and follow me and, uh,

• 3:28:23Jocko Willink?

  And you're on Instagram as well.

• 3:28:24Speaker 01

  Uh, yes.

• 3:28:24Jocko Willink?

  At, at astro underscore Jose on Twitter at, uh, astro underscore Jose. And then once again, the foundation is astrojh.org.

• 3:28:35Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 3:28:35Jocko Willink?

  And then tierra Luna Engineering.

• 3:28:38Speaker 01

  Tierra Luna Sellers.

• 3:28:41Jocko Willink?

  That's where we can find you.

• 3:28:42Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 3:28:42Jocko Willink?

  We can, we can either launch satellites or we can have a glass of wine. You got us covered.

• 3:28:47Speaker 01

  And if you drink enough wine, it's probably both.

• 3:28:49Jocko Willink?

  Thanks, Jose. Appreciate it.

• 3:28:52Speaker 01

  Thank you, Jaco. It was great being here and, uh, thank you for the time and, uh, and you were, yeah, you were very generous with your time and I'm glad we were able to, uh, go over my story and I hope folks enjoy it. And like I said, if they want to get some more, buy the book and, uh, and read it. Uh, I think it goes well with a glass of wine myself.

• 3:29:12Jocko Willink?

  You got us covered. Thanks, Jose.

• 3:29:15Speaker 01

  All right. Thank you.

• 3:29:17Jocko Willink?

  And with that, Jose Hernandez has left the building. Man, very cool, unbelievable story.

• 3:29:25Speaker 02

  Everything full circle with that guy. Everything. Amazing, man. Just incredible story.

• 3:29:30Jocko Willink?

  Uh, obviously, he set a high bar on a long journey. I always come out of these things thinking to myself, well, I better raise the game. I better raise the bar. I better do a little bit better. I think that's what we, I think that's what we all need to do. K-Dog, what do you got? How can we raise the game? What do we need to do? What do you got for us?

• 3:29:52Speaker 02

  So we're, we're raising the game on a strategic level and a tactical level, right? All times. Strategic level, tactical level. Getting it, right?

• 3:30:01Jocko Willink?

  Check this out.

• 3:30:02Speaker 02

  So I'm gonna start tactical though, and that's Jaco Fuel for me. RTD Go in a can. Need that hitter, tactical solution, right? But it doesn't stop there. It, it serves the, the greater goal too, right? The more strategic goal, which is staying on the path, staying healthy, not polluting my body with sugar and freaking

• 3:30:24Jocko Willink?

  Chemicals.

• 3:30:25Speaker 02

  Chemicals, preservatives, additives, right? So we're doing both here with the, uh, the Jaco Fuel or, uh, Jaco Go RTD cans.

• 3:30:34Jocko Willink?

  Check.

• 3:30:35Speaker 02

  Getting after it.

• 3:30:35Jocko Willink?

  K-Dog, right? Rock and roll. You spent all night thinking of that, didn't you?

• 3:30:39Speaker 02

  Nah, bro. I just cracked this go about 20 minutes ago and it, it came to me when we were talking to, to Jose, man. You know, he was always, he was always moving, making little tactical moves that were serving that greater vision. Um, and even, you know, even when it came to, when he was talking about retiring, you know? That strategic vision was still, you know, taking care of the family. He had achieved that, that highest goal and now the, the vision was to take care of his family, make sure they were good to go. And it's just rock and roll, man.

• 3:31:11Jocko Willink?

  It's thinking strategic at all times and you're right. And I, I sort of talked about this with that idea of the, of the deviation.

• 3:31:18Speaker 02

  Right.

• 3:31:19Jocko Willink?

  And the acceptance of deviation and how one minute you're like, hey, you know what? It's just one donut and you just start to accept it. You start to accept it. You start to accept it. Don't accept it. Don't accept it. You gotta stay on the freaking path. You can't accept these deviations from the path. You gotta, and if you deviate, look, if you deviate, get back on it. So that's where we're at. Yeah. Get, you know, get, get something that's good for you. You can drink something that's literally good for you. You, you don't have to drink something that's poison for your body, which seems cra- it seems crazy that in this day and age, we have to tell people, hey, you don't have to poison yourself. But people, the, the companies that make this stuff have figured out,

• 3:31:59Jocko Willink?

  oh, we can get people addicted to sugar. We got them addicted to the rush that they're gonna get. And that fake dopamine hit that they're gonna get, and it's all lies, and it's literally bad for you. You might as well just go, and just, just hit up the local freaking drug dealer, and get some of that meth going. That's where you're at. That's what you're doing to your body. That's what you're doing to your mind. Don't do it. Instead, get something that's literally good for you.

• 3:32:27Speaker 02

  Hundred percent. And, and I've got, I've got friends who, who are addicted, addicted to energy drinks, and, and thus addicted to everything that comes along with that energy drink. And it is, but it can lead to catastrophic failure, right? We, we don't want to do that. So Jack, I'll go RTD. We also have Joint Warfare, uh, Super Krill Oil, uh, Discipline Powder. We've also got the new pre-workout. Got that in the sniper flavor.

• 3:32:54Jocko Willink?

  JP and L just, just straight, just do, just drooling the dry. What do they call it?

• 3:32:59Speaker 02

  Dry, dry scooping.

• 3:33:00Jocko Willink?

  Dry, he's dry scooping that. And now I've seen other people just dry.

• 3:33:04Speaker 02

  Chasing it with a sour apple sniper.

• 3:33:08Jocko Willink?

  So legit. Um, so yeah, get, get that stuff, the Joint Warfare, the Super Krill. It's, that's how you're gonna, I had a SEAL buddy of mine call me the other day. He goes, hey, bro, I gotta ask you a question. He's my age. I went through bugs with this, as a matter of fact. And he, he was like, uh, are you sore every day? Or is that what's going on? I go, hey, man, you got the, I go, you got Joint Warfare? He goes, yeah. I go, you got Super Krill? He goes, yeah. And I go, and you're sore? And he goes, yeah. And I go, well, quit complaining.

• 3:33:35Jocko Willink?

  I goes, that's as good as you're gonna get. Like you're, I'd say you're getting a little older, but you don't want to go off that stuff.

• 3:33:41Speaker 02

  Molk. Gotta get that milk. If, if you're still sore, bro, if that's that muscle soreness, that DOMS, get on that milk train.

• 3:33:49Jocko Willink?

  Get on the milk train. So we got, we got, uh, By the way, speaking of milk, I just gotta mention this. Yeah. It's hot milk season. Ooh. Cause it's winter time, even here in California, look, even here in California. It gets a little, look, it's a little cold, a little cool in the morning time, right? So you gotta, and this is the key point, is you gotta warm the milk first. Don't put milk in milk and then warm it up. You gotta warm the milk, then put the milk in. I'll do an instructional video as we approach the Christmas season. I've never done hot milk. Oh, bro. What? It's like hot chocolate, but it's good for you. Dang. So, yeah. Stand by for that instructional video. You're good to go. Yeah.

• 3:34:32Jocko Willink?

  Uh, yep. So get yourself some milk, whatever flavors you want. Vitamin, vitamin D three. There, you should a hundred percent be on that for your life. Same thing with Cold War. Oh, oh, it's, it's winter time. There's germs around? Cool. Just crush them with Cold War. We're fighting back on this side. Back on this side all day long. Uh, look, you can get this stuff at Vitamin Shop. You can get all of it at Vitamin Shop. You can get the drinks at Wawa. Go hit a Wawa. Just, just clear the shelves. You can also get it from jockofuel.com. And if you subscribe to any of these things, which is a good call on multiple fronts. First of all, it's a good call on the health front, cause now you don't wake up sore and broken cause you missed joint warfare.

• 3:35:16Jocko Willink?

  You don't go to bed with a, with a craving in your stomach, cause you didn't have any milk left. Don't let that happen. Just subscribe. And that's one front, health front. Other front is financial front. If you subscribe to something, we're paying the shipping, homes. We're here for you. Get that free freight. Get that free freight going on. So there you go. Uh, another thing that we've got is, well, we got Origin Maine, Origin USA, OriginUSA.com. We're making stuff. Did you see my post the other day? We're making stuff. We're making jeans. We're making boots. We're making gees for la juje too. We're making sweatshirts, hats, just what you need. That's what you need. Rash guards,

• 3:35:59Jocko Willink?

  what you need, we're making it. We got a safety toe boot now. We got work, heavy duty work pants. Just what you need and it's all made in America.

• 3:36:08Speaker 02

  And it's not just made. This is the thing. I'm, I'm big on this right now. The, the made in America thing. Not, not just made in America, but what Origin is doing right now in America. Bringing manufacturing back to not just Maine now, but North Carolina too. Where, where Origin is in North Carolina is 30 minutes from where I grew up. That's huge, man. To know that down the road, there are kids in my hometown right now that can go get a job at Origin. Are you freaking kidding me? I'm fired up, man.

• 3:36:40Jocko Willink?

  Not kidding you. Not just made in the USA, originated. Cause the material originated in America. The workers originated. This is American made. And it's how we're gonna win the economic war. So there you go. Check it out. OriginUSA.com. Get some stuff.

• 3:37:00Speaker 02

  Get some stuff.

• 3:37:01Jocko Willink?

  Oh wait, it's Christmas time. Get some stuff for Christmas. Hey, what if you could get a gift for your friend, family member, whatever, you could get them a gift and you could give America a gift of support. What if you made their future better because you bought something that was American made? I'm just saying, the option's there. You don't have to buy something from a communist. You don't have to do that.

• 3:37:24Speaker 02

  You can. You can.

• 3:37:26Jocko Willink?

  You can. But you don't have to.

• 3:37:29Speaker 02

  Jack, Jack called me out in Austin, straight up, saw my jeans, wasn't wearing.

• 3:37:33Jocko Willink?

  Oh dang.

• 3:37:34Speaker 02

  What, he was like, he was like, hey, you know, we got a company that makes those in America. I was like, oh, it, it burned me up, right? So I got full benefit from that Black Friday deal at Origin. Tell you what, Delta 68's inbound.

• 3:37:49Jocko Willink?

  Jack, alright, so there you go. OriginUSA.com, go get some.

• 3:37:53Speaker 02

  Uh, we also have our own store, JacoStore.com. Uh, we've got the Discipline Equals Freedom shirts on there, rash guards, t-shirts, uh, hats, beanies. Uh, it is officially hoodie season. I think we can all agree.

• 3:38:06Jocko Willink?

  When you're going hot mulk, you're in hoodie season 100%.

• 3:38:09Speaker 02

  Hoodie season, squat season, that's what we're doing. Uh, we've got hoodies there, we've got women's gear. Uh, we've got, uh, Warrior Kid Soap made by Aiden out there getting after it, Irish Oaks Farms. Um, Jaco Soap out here staying clean. Uh, we've also got the Shirt Locker. Uh, my brother Echo Charles making-

• 3:38:28Jocko Willink?

  Who?

• 3:38:29Speaker 02

  My brother Echo Charles, the big dog.

• 3:38:31Jocko Willink?

  Is that the other guy that's here sometimes?

• 3:38:34Speaker 02

  Echo Charles is making a new shirt every month and they are certified legit shirts.

• 3:38:40Jocko Willink?

  Certified legit.

• 3:38:41Speaker 02

  We, we were just at the Jaco Live, saw, you know, troopers out there with the Warpath shirt on with the Jaco riding the tank. I mean, just all of, all of these awesome shirts. Get on the Shirt Locker. Again, subscription situation there. Um, so subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, wherever you're listening to. Um, leave reviews, man. They are hilarious and Jaco reads them and they're awesome.

• 3:39:06Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, sometimes, sometimes they're just cool, you know, good, but sometimes they're funny. I haven't done a, I haven't done a, a review in a while. I'm a reading one of us. I need to get back on that train. Also, we have the Jaco Unraveling that I do with my friend Daryl Cooper, DC. We have the Grounded Podcast, which we haven't recorded in a long time. Is that thing dead? What are we doing? You know, we need to get it undead.

• 3:39:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:39:25Jocko Willink?

  Look, we all are doing jiu-jitsu. We talk about jiu-jitsu. I just need to hit record more often.

• 3:39:29Speaker 02

  Jiu-jitsu shirt now, JacoStore.com?

• 3:39:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, we got jiu-jitsu t-shirts on JacoStore.com. So we'll get back to that Grounded Podcast. We have the Warrior Kid Podcast for the Warrior Kids out there. We also have JacoUnderground.com. As you know, look, there's situations where we-

• 3:39:44Jocko Willink?

  We have been banned in certain scenarios. We don't like that at all. I probably got banned today, possibly because I told people to get off their phones, get off, fight the algorithm. Fight the algorithm. How happy do you think the algorithm controllers are when they hear that? I bet you that thing gets beat down and

• 3:40:00Speaker 02

  Freaking alarms going off.

• 3:40:01Jocko Willink?

  Unmonetized. Yeah, they have like freaking alerts going off and in brain control, mind control, brainwash central. They're like, hey, we got a rebel here. We need to put down.

• 3:40:11Speaker 02

  Pack.

• 3:40:11Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. They're fighting, fight against the algorithm. So look, we don't know what's gonna happen. We, we push against the algorithm hard enough. Algorithm's gonna push back. They'll push us right off. But guess what? We'll be okay. We'll be standing by at jockounderground.com where we have, we have a little oasis set up. It costs $8.18 a month, but if you can't afford it, that's okay. Email [email protected]. And, and we do a podcast, we do a separate podcast on there, kind of like as a thank you. It's a thank you. Q and A, answer a bunch of Q and A, talk about some other subjects that are tangential to what we talk about on Jocko Podcast. But most important, it just is a contingency in case

• 3:40:53Jocko Willink?

  something goes haywire and we have to abandon the major platforms. It's okay. We'll be at jockounderground.com.

• 3:41:01Speaker 02

  You can also find us on YouTube, Jocko Podcast YouTube channel. Subscribe there. Got some great videos up of the podcast where you can see what Jocko and Echo and I and our guests look like.

• 3:41:15Jocko Willink?

  K-Dawg put himself in the mix. Hey, okay, so, so look, when Echo, can you explain that? When I talk about being the AD and kind of coming through at the critical moments and, and see what Echo's done, the good tactical move, he's made it seem like that's funny. Ha ha. He was like, he went with that to make it seem like, yeah, Jocko is just kidding because he doesn't want, he doesn't want to say

• 3:41:39Speaker 02

  The truth.

• 3:41:40Jocko Willink?

  Which is, as you know, at the critical junctures, at the critical junctures. There's usually a little bit of like, you know, that that little connective tissue, right? Hey, look, Echo brings, he brings the major bulk of the of the muscle mass to the scenario. But that Achilles tendon.

• 3:41:58Speaker 02

  You gotta have.

• 3:41:59Jocko Willink?

  Gotta get it. So the assistant director, myself, let's face it, sometimes I gotta come in with the big win. You've seen it.

• 3:42:08Speaker 02

  I've, I've seen it, but I will also say, I will also say that Echo Charles is open minded in these scenarios. Straight up.

• 3:42:16Jocko Willink?

  Luckily, he's humble enough and he knows, he doesn't push back when that, when the, when, when big, when the assistant director comes in and makes a suggestion, Echo Charles is humble enough to say, yeah, Jaco's right again.

• 3:42:35Speaker 02

  Open minded, open minded for sure. But we, so we're, we've got those videos up on our YouTube channel. Origin also has an amazing YouTube channel where they show you what it's like to bring manufacturing back to America. Check them out on YouTube as well. We've also got Psychological Warfare, which is an album with tracks of Jaco helping you out of moments of weakness. Highly recommended there. That's the fundamentals. You want to get reps in on the fundamentals, go hit Psychological Warfare up.

• 3:43:05Jocko Willink?

  I owe another one of those albums, by the way. I know, I know.

• 3:43:08Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 3:43:09Jocko Willink?

  I gotta prioritize and execute that. If you want something cool to hang on your wall, don't worry, Dakota Meyer's got you covered. Cool stuff to hang on your wall, which is all you need to say. Comes from Dakota Meyer and it's cool stuff to hang on your wire wall. Check out flipsidecanvas.com. Order something for yourself. Made in America, by the way, also. Got some books. Final Spin. I can't say too much about it, but let's, let's face it. If you haven't read Final Spin, you want to, you probably need to.

• 3:43:42Speaker 02

  Go get that.

• 3:43:43Jocko Willink?

  Go get that. There you go. There's your advice. Leadership Strategy and Tactics Field Manual, The Code, The Evaluation, The Protocols, Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual, Way of the Warrior Kid, one, two, three, and four. That's what I'm trying to do. Kids are out there, they need those books. They need to be on the path. They need to get steered straight. Unlike Carlos and Alberto and Sergio that you heard about on this podcast today.

• 3:44:08Jocko Willink?

  Get the kids on the path. Way of the Warrior Kid, one, two, three, four. There's Christmas. There's a life-changing Christmas. Is that a bold statement? No, it's not, actually. Life-changing Christmas. Get Way of the Warrior Kid, one, two, three, and four, for all the kids that you know. Make an investment. Every kid that you know, get them all four of those books.

• 3:44:34Jocko Willink?

  Change their life. Get them on the path. If you've got little kids, get them Mike and the Dragons. Best little kids books ever. Extreme Ownership, Dichotomy of Leadership,

• 3:44:47Jocko Willink?

  that I wrote with my brother Leif Babin. Don't forget about About Face by Colonel David Hackworth. I wrote the foreword on the new edition. We have a leadership consultancy. It's called Echelon Front. We solve problems through leadership, no matter what's going on. Leadership is the solution. Leadership is the solution. Go to echelonfront.com for details there. You can also come to one of our live events. We have the muster, we have field training exercises, we have EF Battlefield. We have, the next muster is in Dallas, Texas, March 24th and 25th, if you want to come and get some of that. We also have an online training program called Extreme Ownership Academy. Leadership is not something you just learn and you're good. It's not like that.

• 3:45:31Jocko Willink?

  It's something that you have to train in constantly. It's something that you have to work on constantly. It's something that you improve on all the time. It's a perishable skill, by the way.

• 3:45:42Jocko Willink?

  So that's why we created the Extreme Ownership Academy. Go to extremeownership.com. I'm on there three times a week, two times a week, four times a week, answering questions. You want to talk to me? If you're like, oh, I'd really like to meet Chaco, just go on there.

• 3:45:55Speaker 02

  That's, that's the other thing about this leadership skill, is that it helps to have a guiding, you know, a guiding hand, a mentor, you know, somebody who knows what they're talking about, helping you along the path. You guys do that three times a week. You and Leif, you know, on a live event, you know, JP, Dave, the Echelon Front instructors, guiding you through this stuff. I mean, it's a no-brainer.

• 3:46:21Jocko Willink?

  Yep, that's it. Go to extremeownership.com. Come and hang out. Come and learn.

• 3:46:28Jocko Willink?

  And if you want to help service members, active and retired, you want to help their families, Gold Star families, check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee. She's got a charity organization doing all kinds of awesome stuff for veterans. If you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to AmericasMightyWarriors.org. And if you want, well, if you want more of my, um, what is it, marathon mumbling? Which is what I seem to do. If you want more of Kerry's inquisitive inquiries, well, then you can go on the interwebs, on Twitter, on Instagram, and on Facebook. Kerry's at Kerry underscore Hilton. I am at Jocko Willink. And also,

• 3:47:12Jocko Willink?

  don't forget that at Astro underscore Jose is where you can reach Jose Hernandez. And also, he has the Reaching for the Stars Foundation, Astro J H dot org. So you can check that out as well. And then, as you, as you heard him say, he's got Tierra Luna and Tierra Luna Sellers, tierralunacellers.com, Tierra Luna Engineering, was it Engineering? Engineering, I believe. Tierra Luna Engineering dot com. If you want to get some help getting into space, or you want to drink some wine,

• 3:47:48Jocko Willink?

  Jose's got you covered, which is awesome. And for all those men and women out there, right now, in the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, thank you for keeping us safe here on Earth. And also, thanks to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, Border Patrol, Secret Service, and all first responders. Thanks for keeping us safe here at home. And to everyone else out there.

• 3:48:20Jocko Willink?

  Remember, remember Jose Hernandez, his family give us an incredible example of what hard work and persistence, 12 years of persistence, by the way, persistence can do for us. And he gave us a simple plan to follow. Identify your goal, identify where you are in relation to that goal, map out a way to get there, educate yourself thoroughly around that goal, put in the work. People don't want to hear about that step, but put in the work, working at a cannery from 10 o'clock at night till 6 o'clock in the morning, then going to class at 9:00 in the morning,

• 3:49:03Jocko Willink?

  getting two and a half hours of sleep when you get to home from school, going back to the cannery. That's putting in work. That's putting in work. And finally, never give up. Persistence, persistence, persistence, persistence, persistence. 12 rejection letters. I guess it was 11 rejection

• 3:49:21Speaker 02

  letters. Got it on the 12.

• 3:49:22Jocko Willink?

  11 rejection letters, 11 years of rejection. And what am I doing? What can I do? How can I get better? Where can I improve? And on top of all that, listen, it's the journey, it's the process, it's the track, it's the voyage that are the most important part. And if, if you go on that path, even if you don't make it to the end of the path, if you go on that path, look at how much further you are along in life. Look about how much better you have improved as a human being. So relish the struggle and even relish when you come up short, which you will,

• 3:49:57Jocko Willink?

  that's part of it. Keep reaching, keep scratching, and no matter what, keep getting after it. And until next time, this is Kerry and Jaco, out.