Inside SEAL Team 6's Botched Raid into North Korea | Dave Philipps & Matthew Cole | Ep. 370

Today we are joined by David Philipps and Matt Cole the authors of ther NY Times article about SEAL Team 6's botched raid into North Korea. This conversation delves into a significant SEAL Team Six mission that aimed to plant a listening device in North Korea, exploring the political context, operational planning, execution challenges, and the aftermath of the mission. The discussion highlights the complexities of intelligence operations, the risks involved, and the implications for U. S.-North Korea relations, as well as the cultural dynamics within the SEAL community. check out the article here: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/05/us/navy-seal-north-korea-trump-2019.html check out their books here: https://a.co/d/4Qkg3by https://a.co/d/blStowf Today's sponsors PIA VPN ⬇️ https://piavpn.com/TeamHouse For 83% off plus 4 months free! CovePure ⬇️ use link https://covepure.com/team For $200 off! For ad free video and audio and access to live streams and Eyes On Geopolitics... JOIN OUR PATREON! https://www.patreon.com/c/TheTeamHouse To help support the show and for all bonus content including: -live shows and asking guest questions -ad free audio and video -early access to shows -Access to ALL bonus segments with our guests Subscribe to our Patreon! ⬇️ https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse Support the show here:⬇️ https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse ___________________________________________________ Subscribe to the new EYES ON podcast here:⬇️ https://www.youtube.com/@EyesOnGeopoliticsPod/featured __________________________________ Jack Murphy's new book "We Defy: The Lost Chapters of Special Forces History" ⬇️ https://www.amazon.com/We-Defy-Chapters-Special-History-ebook/dp/B0DCGC1N1N/ —————————————————————— Or make a one time donation at: ⬇️ https://ko-fi.com/theteamhouse Social Media: ⬇️ The Team House Instagram: https://instagram.com/the.team.house?utm_medium=copy_link The Team House Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheTeamHousePod Jack’s Instagram: https://instagram.com/jackmcmurph?utm_medium=copy_link Jack’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/jackmurphyrgr?s=21 Dave’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/dave_parke?s=21 Team House Discord: ⬇️ https://discord.gg/wHFHYM6 SubReddit: ⬇️ https://www.reddit.com/r/TheTeamHouse/ Jack Murphy's memoir "Murphy's Law" can be found here:⬇️ https://www.amazon.com/Murphys-Law-Journey-Investigative-Journalist/dp/1501191241 The Team Room Reading Room (Amazon Affiliate links):⬇️ https://jackmurphywrites.com/the-team-room-reading-room/ Intro music by https://www.youtube.com/user/RemixSample "Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio" 00:00 Introduction to the SEAL Team Six Mission 02:54 Political Background and Context of the Operation 05:48 The Concept and Planning of the Operation 08:58 Execution of the Mission and Initial Challenges 12:02 The Mission Unfolds: Complications and Abort 14:56 Aftermath and North Korean Response 17:56 Legal and Political Implications of the Operation 20:51 Reflections on SEAL Team Culture and Accountability Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss.

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

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• 1:27Speaker 03

  The Team House with your hosts, Jack Murphy and David Park.

• 1:39Jack Murphy?

  Hey folks, welcome to the Team House podcast. I'm Jack Murphy here today with two guests, Matthew Cole and Dave Phillips. They collaborated on an article in the New York Times called "How a Top Secret SEAL Team 6 Mission Into North Korea Fell Apart." Dave Phillips is a reporter at the New York Times. He's the author of "Alpha." We've interviewed him on the show before. You guys can go find that. And Matthew Cole is the author of "Code Over Country." We've also had him on the show to talk about his book. So I hope you guys will go back and take a look at those. Um, so the, the story that they published in the Times is, um, one of the biggest special operation stories we've seen in some time, I think, detailing a SEAL Team Six clandestine

• 2:22Jack Murphy?

  operation into North Korea and how it kind of went sideways. Um, so a little bit of preamble before we'll jump into it, um, some of the background, North Korea, as I understand it, really is sort of an intelligence black hole. Um, I've had in the past SEALs tell me that they can't do ops because they have North Koreans out there literally raking the beaches every morning. Uh, so like there, there's just no way that you're gonna clandestinely infiltrate the area. I've had CIA people tell me that when the Chinese send their diplomats and so forth abroad, they always have to travel in pairs to make it harder for the agency to recruit them as a source. With the North Koreans, apparently they have to travel in trios. They

• 3:03Jack Murphy?

  have to travel as a three to make it like literally impossible to recruit these guys as CIA sources. Um, so I just say this to kind of give a little bit, a thumbnail sketch of how difficult it has been for the United States government to penetrate North Korea from an intelligence perspective. Um, so Matthew, Dave, um, thank you for joining us today. Um, let's start off a little bit talking about, um, the further political background with President Trump during the first Trump administration and the nuclear talks that he had going on at that time that sort of formed the overall premise of why this operation came about.

• 3:43Speaker 05

  Dave, you wanna, you wanna take it first?

• 3:44Speaker 06

  So, yeah, let, let me take you back to the teens. So this was when President Trump had first taken office and Kim Jong-un was also a fairly new and unknown leader of North Korea. And, um, it didn't start out well. Uh, uh, the relationship between the two swung between like fawning letters of friendship and like outright threats of nuclear war, where they were both saying that they could annihilate each other. And, and famously, uh, President Trump was, was bragging that his big red Nuclear button was much bigger than camps and it was a bad situation. But then President Trump did something that other presidents had never done,

• 4:29Speaker 06

  which was to open one-on-one talks with no free conditions with North Korea. And I think he really thought, and this is of course the Trump that we've come to know quite well, that he could personally make a deal that other people couldn't. And so they were gonna meet and he was just gonna work stuff out. And, and you know, there were some really encouraging signs. The North Koreans, in a sort of a goodwill gesture, stopped all of their nuclear testing and missile testing. They released some remains of POWs that had been held for decades. And the two did start meeting and talking and the two countries started meeting at a pretty high level.

• 5:13Speaker 06

  So that brings you up to 2019, where they still hadn't come to any deal, but they were actively planning summits. They had a summit planned in Vietnam for the February 2019. Things, you couldn't say that they were going well, but they were certainly going better than they had been for years. And there seemed to be at least a possibility of coming to a real breakthrough that could lead to a de-escalation of tensions.

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• 7:44Jack Murphy?

  And so how did or why did in 2018, JSOC sort of pitched this plan to the White House and say, hey, we have this other option that perhaps we can use to give the presidency a leg up in some of these talks?

• 7:59Speaker 06

  Well, I think, honestly, like you said, North Korea had been a black hole for a long time. And so independent of anything that Trump was trying to do with the deal, the intelligence apparatus in the United States had been developing long-term solutions. And one of these solutions finally came to a point where it was ready. It was essentially a listening device, a bug, not something that's new at all in the world of espionage, but something that they had refined in technology. We're not going to say too much about it, but that gave them an opportunity to bug a sensitive place where they could...

• 8:41Speaker 06

  Potentially at least, listening in on very high level conversations between Kim and the leadership of North Korea. And so, so again, we think this all happened independently. But on the one hand, Trump and and his diplomatic efforts are are trying to publicly reach out to Mr. Kim. On the other hand, the intelligence agencies are, you know, very clandestinely developing this program to slip a listening device on the North Korean shores. And eventually, those two things meet in the White House. And President Trump, you know, is probably one of the very few people that understands all the things that are going on. And he

• 9:22Speaker 06

  has a decision to make. Okay, should I let this mission go ahead, knowing that planting this device could give me insight that will be super helpful in these negotiations, while at the same time, it could, you know, potentially cause a crisis that would destroy these negotiations altogether, or worse, right? I mean, really, the worst case scenario here is an escalation towards war. Um, you know, what should I do? And he decided, okay, I have a choice, send in the SEALs to plant a listening device or not. And he decided, personally, to send in the SEALs.

• 10:02Speaker 05

  There's another one point of correction or just nuance, which is, Jack, from your question, JSOC didn't generate the idea of the listening device in North Korea. The intelligence community did. And that was based on the technology and the creation of the the device. And so, at the White House level, the question became, we've got this thing, what do we do with it? And at that point, JSOC says, you know, send me, sir. And then you get further down, you know, beneath JSOC, inside JSOC, the competition and the sort of challenge of, you know, who's going to take it in, how we're going to get it in. And so that's where it unfolds, as Dave described.

• 10:48Jack Murphy?

  And so the, I mean, we'll get into a little bit of the concept of the operation, but you guys also reveal in the article that something sort of similar had been done in 2005, where the SEALs came upon a shore on an island off the coast of North Korea. So there's sort of like a, an idea, a template, that this can be done?

• 11:09Speaker 05

  Yeah, the, the, the wasn't, I mean, I don't know, we know that it's specific, a specific island. We, we know is that there was a, a previous mission done by SEAL Delivery Team One to penetrate North Korea in 2005. And it was successful. They got on land. There was, although we didn't, I think we pulled this part from the story just from editing, not, not reasons, but the commander of that mission got a Silver Star, which, you know, the reasons for remain classified, but got a Silver Star for leading that mission into North Korea.

• 11:48Speaker 05

  And as I understood it, a lot of that mission had to do with using the SEAL Delivery vehicle that was new at the time, was essentially a prototype that they wanted to use to test and, and see if they could get them, get into North Korea and back, which they did. But it was a prototype also of the, of the operation that SEAL Team Six used in 2019 to study what they should do and how they should get in and out.

• 12:22Jack Murphy?

  And so this mission is ultimately given to one of the SDV teams working in conjunction with Red Squadron from Development Group or SEAL Team Six. Why was that decision made?

• 12:37Speaker 06

  Our understanding is that it was first given to SEAL Team Six, or rather they, they ran into it and raised their hand, as, as Matt Cole said, said, "Stand me, sir." And then, of course, they had to connect with, with the unit that really specializes in using minisubs, and, and the premier unit for that is SEAL Delivery Vehicle Team One. And, and SEAL Delivery Vehicle is just a fancy name for a minisub. These things are about the size of a killer whale. They're a wet sub. So you're, you know, the passengers inside are actually using scuba gear. There's no air in there. And, and they're, they're pretty short range and they're pretty slow. So they have to get... Delivered themselves by a larger vehicle, either a submarine or there are some other

• 13:22Speaker 06

  things that can deliver them.

• 13:24Jack Murphy?

  There's a newer, you know, modernized mini-sub that's dry where the seals are actually inside it breathing oxygen. I don't know if that's operational yet or not, but the ones we're talking about in this mission, I mean, the guys are in open water freezing their asses off, frankly.

• 13:41Speaker 06

  Yeah, that's right.

• 13:42Speaker 05

  The version that you're describing, the dry sub is actually the one, the first generation of it is what was used in 2005.

• 13:49Jack Murphy?

  Really?

• 13:49Speaker 05

  To go into North Korea.

• 13:50Jack Murphy?

  Interesting.

• 13:51Speaker 05

  There's a, there's a backstory on all of that, but the, those, those were not available for this operation. And it had to do with the fact that the second generation were made without, there was an error. NSW did not put in its proposal that they, that the dry subs had to attach to a, to a larger sub. And so as a result, they were manufactured without the ability to be brought in by a submarine. And so now that, that problem has been fixed, but for this mission, it meant that they had to go old school and bring in the, the SDVs, which as you describe are, are wet and cold and slow.

• 14:36Speaker 06

  And well, like they've been using these things since Vietnam. Now, obviously they've been updated, but the basic concept and shape of these things is not new at all. This is an old, old technology and, and yeah, and, and a really like risky one.

• 14:55Jack Murphy?

  And next, as these guys start to conduct mission rehearsals, what's the concept of the operation that they come up with, you know, sort of like logistically piece by piece, how we want this to work?

• 15:09Speaker 06

  So it's complex and bold as many Navy SEAL missions are. But basically, a nuclear-powered Ohio-class submarine, which is a really big submarine. These things, this is the longest sub in our fleet. They're about two foot-filled fields long. That's going to sneak into North Korean waters. And carrying it on its back, it has two what they call dry docks, essentially little airlocks that are carrying minisubs. The Navy SEALs are going to go into those minisubs, those SDVs that we talked about. And once they're close to the shore in North Korea, the SDVs are going to leave the nuclear-powered sub

• 15:53Speaker 06

  and go to the shore. Maybe 100 meters offshore, the SEALs are going to come out, swim to shore, and plant the device, the listening device we talked about. And their target is only a couple hundred meters from the beach. So it's supposed to be quick in, quick out, and it's absolutely vital that no one gets sneamed. Now, this sounds pretty simple, right? But it's not, of course. You have to get and sneak a nuclear sub close to North Korea and then sneak minisubs right up to the shore. The SEALs riding those minisubs are crammed into these little vehicles, surrounded by cold water, water that's,

• 16:36Speaker 06

  what we were told is about 40 degrees, you know, which could easily kill you if you were submerged in that without protection. So they have to wear heated suits. They're crammed into the dark. They're breathing off of essentially scuba gear that's hooked to the subs for, you know, at least an hour, maybe a couple hours, as they sneak up to the shore. Now, once you get to the shore, there's all sorts of security apparatus. Remember, North Korea and South Korea have been in open conflict for decades, and they've built up pretty fortified shores with all sorts of obstacles that keep this type of stuff from happening. So you have to get through that, and you have to get on and off of the shore without being seen at all

• 17:20Speaker 06

  or even having your footprint show up on the beach. Because in order for this intelligence stuff to work, no one can know that you planted this listening device. So that's essentially the plan.

• 17:32Jack Murphy?

  And some of the other challenges with this mission.

• 17:37Jack Murphy?

  Special operations has gotten very used to using ISR or drones and having that up for every single mission that they do. That wasn't available in this case because of the nature. It's a denied operation in a denied area. And then communications issues too. I mean, we're also very used to having comms up at all times, you know, real time communications. And it doesn't sound like that was available on this operation either.

• 18:04Speaker 05

  It wasn't. You know, the overall scene for this is something, you know, there were, this was, you know, what they call a no fail mission. But you're really talking about inserting US personnel behind enemy lines in a place that has a total communications blackout with no overhead satellite, right? So even leading up to the mission in the way that they studied the location of where they were coming into to see what the possibilities were, that those were limited because it was still done mostly by satellite, right? They didn't have people on the ground. They don't have anything local on the ground to

• 18:45Speaker 05

  give them, you know, additional intelligence and information about what's going on on the land side of where they inserted. And so you're in this sort of retro, you know, you imagine that there are so many people who sign up, who dream of becoming special operators, SEALs in particular, for a mission just like this. The nation sends them on something that the president has authorized that is meant to, you know, fill a strategic gap in its intelligence collection against an adversary, a nuclear armed adversary. And they're going to be sent, you know, they're going to go in these, a sub to a mini sub,

• 19:27Speaker 05

  and then, you know, go in peeking their head up every now and again above water to see, you know, if they've been, if they're clear and make it to shore, you know, in the middle of the night, plant a device and then get back out the same way, all without the ability to ever speak to a commander or have any

• 19:46Speaker 06

  Kind of warning, for instance, if there was some kind of security element that was approaching them. And so the level of and degree of risk and difficulty here is, you know, in the the realm of special operations about as high as it could it can get. And given, you know, the the 20 years of or so of the GWOT, the post nine 11 global war on terror, totally different from the way in which SEALs, SEAL Team Six, regular SEALs and special operations have been operating anywhere around the world.

• 20:25Jack Murphy?

  And as we get into early 2019, the White House approves this mission. What were there any additional factors that went into President Trump's final decision to give this thing the green light?

• 20:38Speaker 06

  You know, that's a really great question, and I wish I knew the answer. I wish we'd been able to sit down with President Trump or his National Security Advisor, Michael Bolton. Sorry, not Michael Bolton, different man.

• 20:54Jack Murphy?

  John Bolton.

• 20:54Speaker 06

  John Bolton. But that would be great, too.

• 20:59Speaker 06

  And but we didn't. So what Trump thought in the moment when he decided to give this thumbs up is is really a mystery to us. We do know that that he was only weeks away from meeting with with Kim Jong-un in Vietnam. Maybe he hoped that he could learn something for that, or or maybe this was a much long, much longer term deal where they thought, hey, whatever happens in Vietnam, we're going to want to know what the North Koreans are thinking afterwards. So it could be completely independent. We just don't know.

• 21:35Speaker 06

  But yeah, bottom line, I mean, the the bottom line is that the nuclear powered sub was in the water headed towards North Korea when he had the final window to say go, no go. And then you can imagine the the sub sinking beneath the surface and heading in.

• 21:52Jack Murphy?

  Well, let's talk about that now about, you know, beyond the concept of the operation, how the actual operation unfolded.

• 22:01Speaker 06

  Matthew, you want to take?

• 22:03Speaker 05

  Sure, we're going to be a little bit, we're not going to go too far beyond what we've published, but in essence, a contingent of SEAL Team Six got on this sub. They had the two mini subs. They bring themselves, the sub, once it gets the go order from the president, or as it's relayed, the sub goes dark and it gets into North Korean waters. They then, the SEALs get out underwater, they load into the SDVs, they take, as Dave

• 22:42Speaker 05

  said, an hour to two hours from the nuclear sub towards their insertion point in a North Korean bay. And those two mini subs get to their location and stop, but unfortunately, one of the mini subs missed its mark just slightly, and there had to be turned around. And they released the SEALs from the mini sub at that point. They're in, I believe about 150 meters from shore. Water's relatively shallow, it's not super deep.

• 23:26Speaker 05

  Clear water, still evening, no weather issues. The SEALs start to make their way with their breathing equipment, and every few minutes are popping up to a sentry to see what's going on in the bay and make their way towards shore. And they get to shore, they're sort of, I think we had multiple descriptions, but water, standing in water between knee and waist high as they're taking off their diving gear or parts of their gear when they believe that they're spotted, when at least they notice that there's a fishing skiff that's made its way through the bay that they had

• 24:11Speaker 05

  missed and the mini subs had also missed. Its sonar had not picked it up. And at that point, that's sort of your critical moment when the mission essentially falls apart because the, what, in the end, we...

• 24:29Speaker 05

  Realize or what we know is that they were North Korean fishermen, divers who were diving for shellfish in the bay in the middle of the night. But from the perspective of the operators on the shore, that was not at all clear to them. And so what they see are North Koreans in diving suits, speaking hurriedly and excitedly with flashlights. And what they believe, you know, they think the skiff is up over the STVs in the water. And they've got these flashlights and they're shining them around into the water. And then one of the North Koreans dives into the water.

• 25:10Speaker 05

  And so the assumptions running through at least one of the members of SEAL Team Six was that they had been compromised. The mission was compromised. And so when the diver pops back up, the SEAL decides to open fire. And once that first shot is fired, the mission is aborted. And so the rest of the SEALs fire on the North Koreans in the boat. And then they have to make the mission is totally aborted in the sense that there's not even going to attempt to place the listening device. And they make their way to the fishing boat, inspect the boat, find no survivors, but also

• 25:53Speaker 05

  no weapons and no communication gear. These are no evidence that this is North Korean military or militia or any kind of security team. It's just fishermen. And they ditch the bodies. They stab the with one account, which they use their knives to puncture the lungs of the North Koreans so that the bodies would sink. And then they make their way back to the STVs and call in a distress signal to the large sub and make their way out. And so, you know, what should have been a, you know, two hour mission didn't even last

• 26:35Speaker 05

  that long because of how quickly the mission fell apart once they made it to land. So it was, you know, in one sense, I mean, obviously it's incredibly dramatic, but in another way, it was it was over almost as soon as it began.

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• 30:02Jack Murphy?

  A couple other interesting details from the article that I'd just like to tease out a little bit. You mentioned how they were using deniable weapons. So these weren't like American M4s or 416s. It wasn't American ammunition that would have a head stamp on it that, you know, the brass would be an indicator of where it came from. So the weapon systems were deniable. And then you also mentioned the quick reaction force that was off the coast.

• 30:28Speaker 06

  Yeah, it's interesting. The weapons were deniable, but it'd be hard to keep this mission deniable if anything went wrong, right? Because you have a team of about eight Navy SEALs at the shore and presumably, none of them are Korean or seem Korean. And so, and you, as you mentioned, you have a quick reaction force off of the shore. So, so in a nutshell, what happened is these guys went to the shore. They thought they'd been spotted. They killed some people that they thought might be security forces. It turned out they were refreshment and they left. Everyone got off out safe. Phew. But when I was reporting

• 31:11Speaker 06

  this, we had a lot of conversations about how bad this could have gotten because. It wasn't just eight SEALs. There was another quick reaction force of SEALs based on the

• 31:25Speaker 06

  at the nuclear powered stuff that were ready to inflate speedboats and come to shore in case someone was wounded, captured. You know, you can imagine that that quite easily could have happened, that a small firefight on the beach where a SEAL was wounded or captured grows as quick reaction forces come in and maybe more SEALs are wounded and captured. But there was this another part of the of the response plan was there was stealth rotary aircraft that may be some Blackhawks with that are the stealth version or maybe some Ospreys that were ready to bring in even more special operators in case that was needed. So one could imagine that if that happened, you could have a Black Hawk down situation where one of those aircraft

• 32:08Speaker 06

  went down. That has happened in a number of of recent special operations missions. So just imagine if that happened on that night in North Korea. There would be probably some dead service members there. There would probably be some captives. Best case scenario, the shooting stops within a few hours and North Korea then has a bunch of American captives. Worst case scenario is that the shooting continues and spreads across the border as as North Korea thinks of being attacked in response to South Korea. And that could have gotten really bad. Now, fortunately, all we're talking about is a mission where two or maybe three civilians who are out

• 32:52Speaker 06

  trying to catch something to eat got killed. But it could have been much, much worse, like strategically worse.

• 33:00Jack Murphy?

  And I I mean, that's kind of my next question is the North Korean response, which is interesting because apparently it was just silence.

• 33:07Speaker 06

  Yeah. So silence from them, also basically silence from the Americans. President Trump said in when he was questioned about it in the Oval Office during a press conference that it was he didn't know anything about it. This is the first he's hearing about it, which, by the way, our reporting does not support.

• 33:30Speaker 06

  You know, I've been sort of scratching my head about this because we believed through the course of reporting, it was relatively clear to us that the North Koreans did learn about this and so we wouldn't be breaking the news to them. But it wasn't clear to us how the North Koreans were going to respond. And so as far as we can tell, they haven't responded at all. But I was speaking to someone yesterday who's sort of a specialist in this, someone who was a Green Beret and worked for Special Operations Command, Korea for a long time. And he said, you know what?

• 34:08Speaker 06

  These types of missions by South Korea and North Korea have been going on forever. And neither side ever acknowledges either unless civilians figure it out. And he pointed me towards two missions in the 1990s where North Korean minisavs essentially went aground in South Korea and it was chaos and people got killed. It was very serious, more serious than this one. And, you know, in those cases, they were, the missions got too big to deny. But, but he said, you know, as far as we could tell, missions like that had been happening

• 34:49Speaker 06

  somewhat regularly and, and the South kind of knew and the North kind of knew, but they would never, there was no upside for either by calling them out when they happened. And he gave me an example. He had actually, early in his army career, had been in charge of a watchtower on the DMZ and they would actually do little ambushes and patrols within the DMZ. And he's like, look, we were told, even if we saw a North Korean infiltrating, like unless he's actively like aiming at you, don't shoot him. Because like the risk of like an escalation is probably worse than the risk of an infiltration. And, and maybe

• 35:30Speaker 06

  that at like a very sort of small unit level is what's going on at a strategic level with both nations is like, we know, we know they know, we know that they know that we know. So what is the upside of us actually discussing something that, you know, is inherently supposed to be secret?

• 35:49Jack Murphy?

  In the 1960s and 70s, the North Koreans would even send death squads into South Korea. I mean, yeah, wild stuff happened in the past that kind of gets memory hold. Yeah, Matthew.

• 36:01Speaker 05

  We know, I mean, you know, one of the things we do know, and I think we've reported in the story is, is that the Trump White House was working after the mission failed under the assumption that the North Koreans knew part of it was that there was an unexplained and unusual military buildup in the location where the operation had occurred. And just on the sort of basics, right, you're talking about North Korea is not a country outside of, you know, the security forces where people have weapons. And so in a shallow, relatively shallow bay that was well trafficked, I mean, not going to get into the specific location, but it wasn't, you know, some random, totally remote place.

• 36:46Speaker 05

  You had three bodies that that were ultimately going to be found and were going to be found with bullet holes. So even if you can't, you know, trace back the ammunition specifically to the US, the North Koreans were going to be able to figure out that someone had come in by water and killed three of their citizens with a gun. And so there's really only a few options, you know, quite likely, of course, that they made the assumption that it was the South Koreans, that's certainly a possibility, or they, you know, guessed that it was an American provocation. We don't know that. But we do know that they, that the White House assumed that the North Koreans knew. And at least in one case, one of our sources told us that leading up to the Hanoi summit,

• 37:30Speaker 05

  the concern or the question inside the White House was, are the North Koreans going to cancel the summit because of this mission? With no one, of course, saying or signaling either way, but the American side, you know, let's call it the guilty party, if you will, with the knowledge of what they had done and that had gone, it had gone wrong. Concerned that it was going to end this upcoming summit between Kim Jong-un and President Trump. So there certainly was the assumption on the American side that the North Koreans knew some evidence that they may have known. I think the, you know, it still is interesting

• 38:13Speaker 05

  to me. The one, you know, you can't know, of course, what's going to happen until the story publishes, but my thought had been that, you know, our story would lead to the North Koreans going to the UN, for instance, to make some kind of formal complaint about, you know, US violating North Korean sovereignty. That was sort of what I thought might be in line with how they react. And it's been interesting to see that there's been total silence on their part. But of course, you know, we're talking still about a hermit kingdom.

• 38:48Jack Murphy?

  It's, I mean, this gets a little bit into like sort of the international relations theory, but you'll hear some people like I believe Michael Kaufman was one of them talking about how nations will choose to acknowledge or not acknowledge covert operations or intelligence operations directed against them. That there's this fear that, you know, a war will accidentally break out between America and China because we make one false move. But he was pointing out that actually states look at these things a little bit more objectively and will decide whether or not to acknowledge it based on their overall strategic picture. And I think you probably saw that here, like the North Koreans must see something bigger like, we still want to get rice and beans from the Western world. We're not interested in, in, I don't think Kim Jong-un really cares about three dead

• 39:33Jack Murphy?

  fishermen, to tell you the truth.

• 39:35Speaker 06

  Well, and like, what's the upside? You know, if he acknowledges this happened and, you know,

• 39:41Jack Murphy?

  It looks bad on him.

• 39:42Speaker 06

  The authoritarian leader who's saying to your people, only I can protect you from the West who's out to get you and put your faith in me, I'm going to need you to sacrifice quite a bit, but don't worry, I've got your back. And something like this shows that it, that his, his nation isn't as secure as he's been telling people. That's not good, right? And, and making a big stink about it to the, the UN probably isn't going to lead to any like real material gains. So, so maybe, you know, maybe he is just thinking like, you know, like, Why should I bother? What what's in it for me?

• 40:21Jack Murphy?

  That's one of, I think, like, the most, one of the most interesting things about the the aftermath of this story that you guys wrote is that, and I don't mean to make light of of the seriousness of this operation or the consequences that you discussed, that many ways this could have ended in an absolute disaster. But I think it's kind of shocking how low the stakes turned out to be in the end, that there's like no fallout whatsoever on our side or their side.

• 40:50Speaker 06

  Yeah, you know, I was, again, talking to someone who spent a long time in Special Operations Command, Korea yesterday, and he said, you know, I feel like that's one of the benefits that comes out of this failed mission is we've spent so much time, like generations, in this conflict worried about North Korea's response, and this thing happened, and there was no response. And so maybe that tells us something helpful about what North Korea actually is. Maybe we built it up too much in our minds. Now, to me, I felt like that was a very dangerous sense of confidence, like, great, so you feel like you can do this again, like, I'm sleeping so much better now.

• 41:36Speaker 06

  So I think that that bit of knowledge is both potentially helpful and potentially harmful. Like, if somehow this emboldens the United States to be like, hey, check it out, we can mess with North Korea, and they're not going to nuke us, like, that's not necessarily a great thing.

• 41:52Speaker 05

  Right. Well, that's, and it's, and it's because the fallout and the failure was contained, right? I mean, there are scenarios here that we haven't even discussed. But, you know, at the end of the day, besides the the tier one operators who they inserted, you know, there's a nuclear submarine that's sitting in North Korean waters, and

• 42:17Speaker 05

  God forbid there had been some kind of incident or some kind of mishap with the submarine itself, where you have a, you know, I think what they call it is a national capital asset, where there had been a problem with the sub, we'd be talking about this in a completely different way. And, and it's, it's those potential risks and the fallout that are supposed to be, you know, what is, and I, and I don't mean to say that they weren't, they're, they're considered, but have to be weighed against the potential reward of a, you know, uh, you know, and again, I think even with the, with the tap and what we, we do know about it, um, was it was all potential in the sense of this was a black hole, it

• 43:01Speaker 05

  was an opportunity that could have, that might have been able to give them some kind of strategic advantage or insight into what was going on, both in Kim Jong-un's mind and, and thought process, but also just, uh, communications in the country altogether. But they don't know that because the truth is, is that there's no sure thing in any of this. And so the question is, is risk versus reward with an adversary where you don't even have diplomatic relations with. I mean, you know, the thing that I sort of thought through was, you know, if shit had gone, had hit the fan during the mission, how are they picking up the phone to communicate with the North Koreans that, hey, it's us and it's not, we're not invading your country. Uh, it's a small, you know, we're just planting

• 43:46Speaker 05

  a listening device, let them go, as opposed to they believe that the South Koreans have, have decided to invade, or there's some kind of, you know, the, the miscalculations that go into this. And so, um, it turned out to be low stakes, but you know, that's circumstantial and it, and just the way it broke. So.

• 44:05Speaker 06

  Let me just add something to what Matthew said too, like this, uh, Ohio-class nuclear-powered sub that went in there. We don't know exactly how close it got to shore, but we were told that it took, you know, significant risks to come and retrieve this SEAL team once the mission was compromised and came closer than maybe was considered risk-free.

• 44:33Speaker 06

  Now, imagine if that sub had been grounded. There's more than 100 people on that sub. That sub costs more than a billion dollars. Imagine if that sub had been detected and had been attacked by their defensive forces because they have submarine hunting ships and potentially that whole crew had been killed. There's just so many scenarios here that turn out badly. And so what I think what motivated both Matthew and I in telling this story is I don't have faith that that is, that process is fully understood, not just by the general public,

• 45:15Speaker 06

  but even by special operations, that, that there is a good understanding of the risk reward of these types of operations and the, the sort of the track record of these operations. Because very few people, even in, in the SEALs, probably even in Joint Special Operations, knew about this operation. And it's unclear to us what they were ever told afterwards. You know, maybe this thing is, is painted as a win, right? And that lessons learned from it are not being learned. And so I think it's so important when the risks are so severe to have a really clear-eyed understanding of what happened and what could have happened.

• 46:00Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, I mean, you think when a helicopter gets shot down on an operation like, okay, this turned into a real shit show. I can't even imagine what a grounded submarine off the coast of North Korea, like what that would entail. That's beyond what I can imagine right now.

• 46:17Jack Murphy?

  When did the administration inform Congress that this operation took place?

• 46:24Speaker 05

  Well, the administration didn't inform Congress that it took place. It didn't happen until Biden became president and he informed the Gang of Eight that it had occurred. And that's one of the things, one of, in the end, and we walked into this, as Dave said, I think, trying to make public something that requires civilians in particular, but also senior military officials to understand the full scope and potential consequences. We had no idea until sort of the end of the reporting that Congress had never been notified,

• 47:05Speaker 05

  which as far as we understand is a violation of the law. And it's, you know, I mean, the truth is, is that prior to Trump, that that issue alone is a massive scandal. Now, unfortunately, the world we live in, it's really like a Friday in September and has gone sort of, you know, overlooked it. The idea that the president could authorize a mission like this and then can have it fail under these circumstances and then never disclose it to Congress, to me is, I mean, that alone is reason to publish it, but is also reason to, for Congress in particular,

• 47:50Speaker 05

  to be up in arms about what the president is or is not withholding.

• 47:54Speaker 06

  Yeah, you can imagine that like if Obama had done the exact same thing or George W. Bush, Congress would be going nuts right now. But like there, it's such a different Congress, it's such a different Washington, that this idea that like, oh, you didn't follow the rules, I don't even know if that registers with these folks.

• 48:15Jack Murphy?

  Did you guys get any inkling during your research for this about kind of the US Title Code stuff and like the legal authorities under which this operation was conducted? Was it considered military operational preparation of the environment or something else?

• 48:33Speaker 05

  I'm not sure if we know to answer this specifically whether it was OPE. We know it was Title 10 and not Title 50. And so that governed a little bit, you know, and that protected them from, for instance, not disclosing to Congress before the mission happened that it was going to happen. So technically it's a clandestine, not a covert operation. But it was still, you know, as I was saying to Dave throughout our reporting, I thought of myself as being somewhat of an expert in Title 10 versus Title 50 for all the reporting that I've done over the years.

• 49:11Speaker 05

  But the truth is, is Title 10 versus Title 50 is so complicated and fuzzy that I still am not quite clear if it's an intelligence operation conducted by the military under the authorities of the Secretary of Defense, but with the President's say so. I mean, the President had to authorize it, but the didn't require a memo, a finding from the President. But it was for the intelligence community and, and not, you know, a military operation as such. It was confusing.

• 49:50Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, I'm not totally clear on all of this stuff either, but I mean, I have, as I understand it, the combatant commands, the COCOMs have a lot more authority than we commonly think. There's something called like the Human Intelligence Executor. I mean, there's all kinds of different things that they can do that they just choose not to, because as I was told, none of these generals want to get dragged in front of Congress, you know, telling the congressman like, oh, this is the 22 suppressed pistol we use for close in work. Like, they don't want to be that guy. So there, there's some interesting legal lease involved. And I know you guys don't want to, and I won't ask you about sourcing for this article. But is there anything you want to tell us about kind of how you wrote this article

• 50:34Jack Murphy?

  and how it came about and you all put it together?

• 50:37Speaker 05

  There's nothing I want to tell you about that.

• 50:45Speaker 05

  Uh, yeah, I mean, the less said is is always the better here. Uh, the only thing-

• 50:51Speaker 06

  So, so, no, no, no one who's listening thinks we're being coy, like, uh, potentially people speaking to us broke the law, uh, and potentially there's going to be a, an investigation and anything that we can do to protect anyone who spoke to us, uh, is helpful, helpful to all of us as a society.

• 51:14Speaker 05

  The, the only thing I'll say ju- just very generically is that we really tried hard, and I think we were pretty successful at getting a wide variety of sources so that we were not stuck in some kind of, you know, looking through a straw, um, in understanding what was happening. And some of that, you know, is dumb luck, some of it is just circumstance, but we sort of made our way, um, together

• 51:46Speaker 05

  with a pretty broad, uh, assessment and understanding of, of what happened. You know, it was well sourced, I'll just say that. We were very comfortable and feel very confident about our sourcing and, and, uh, you know, from that side of it, I would just say I'm quite proud of it.

• 52:06Speaker 06

  You want to know what the White House's complaint was after we published?

• 52:09Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 52:10Speaker 06

  I mean, first, uh, like, for, for weeks leading up to it, they said, "Don't publish, you know, you're gonna..." XYZ, they had very big, hands up in the air reasons, strategic reasons. But once it published, they're like, "I thought you weren't gonna name the unit." And I was like, "What?" And they said, "SEAL Team Six, Red Squadron," that's very specific, classified. I was like, "Come on, you can look that up on Wikipedia." And they're like, "You said you weren't gonna name the unit." I was like, "No, I didn't. We did make an agreement that we would not name any individuals, uh, who were involved in this mission." Because thought, saw it as, "Look, these are people who are doing their job. Their privacy is very important to their ability to do their job. We weren't, didn't

• 52:51Speaker 06

  see any misconduct, so we weren't gonna call someone out for being, uh, you know, a lawbreaker." But yeah, we were gonna say the unit, 'cause it's important. But that was the thing that the White House wanted to know, that they disapproved of.

• 53:06Jack Murphy?

  I remember when, uh, when Zach and I wrote about the Soleimani assassination, there's this pushback initially to it, but then once Pompeo realized he could use this to make himself look tough, it was all like, yeah, I killed Soleimani. I did that.

• 53:20Speaker 05

  The, the pushback on what they, what their reasoning was a moving goalpost, uh, goal line the whole time.

• 53:27Speaker 06

  Reporting it. We didn't know if Trump was just going to get on the phone with us and be like, yeah, I did it. That would have been a possibility.

• 53:34Speaker 05

  I've been, you know, I, I think the, the most interesting, I, I, you know, I sit from someone like, like the both of you. I mean, I'm not a Washington person and, and so it's somewhat fascinating to me to, to see, you know, Trump has become his own Washington creature and the response afterwards that he knew nothing about it, which we know to be, uh, inaccurate, untrue, um, was really, I thought reflective of someone who just refuses to be associated with anything that gets labeled as a failure. Right? And so, uh, you know, his, his, he, he ran from this because he can't own anything that isn't a massive success. Right? Whereas it had been a success and we've written about it. He would be boasting,

• 54:15Speaker 05

  I imagine. Uh, and certainly we've seen him do things, uh, like, you know, even he, he also has taken a lot of credit for the Soleimani, you know, decision or, or striking, uh, you know, the, the, uh, remember when he leaked out or tweeted the picture of the, um, Iranian ballistic missile test that had gone wrong, um, and sort of revealing how good, uh, American, uh, intelligence satellites were. But to boast, you know, uh, as if he wants to take credit for something, he has no problem, um, declassifying things or talking about it. In this case, it was, I don't know what you're talking about. Right?

• 54:54Speaker 07

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• 55:09Speaker 02

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• 55:51Speaker 05

  Get up.

• 55:53Jack Murphy?

  So, you know, on the tail end of this interview here, I wanted to kind of like return to some of the topics that we spoke to you guys about the last time we had you on the podcast. Matthew, you wrote Code Over Country about some of the war crimes in SEAL Team Six. And Dave, you wrote Alpha about the Eddie Gallagher trial and all of the controversies surrounding that. And both of those books were, at least within NSW, very controversial. And I just want to sort of return to this subject with each of you to ask about what has been the response to these books over the subsequent, you know, say, three, three and a half years since the last time we spoke.

• 56:31Speaker 05

  Who would you, who should go first? You want to go first, Dave?

• 56:34Speaker 06

  Sure. That's a great question. So I wrote a book about the SEAL named Eddie Gallagher, who was was charged with murdering an ISIS captive and turned in by his own platoon. And the platoon had other complaints about him, that he was just like essentially a bad dude and wanted to kill people illegally. It was also a story about how they had a lot of problems getting the Navy SEALs as a culture and as an organization to hold Eddie Gallagher to account. What was the response to that? There were a lot of people who were either Eddie's friends, or at least

• 57:18Speaker 06

  believed in in Eddie's versions of things that just sort of dismissed me as a liar. And there were other people who spent years in the SEALs and had seen other Eddies who really felt like, you know, thankfully, something's coming out. I hope that.

• 57:37Speaker 06

  It helped the SEALs as an organization because again and again, what I have seen, and this is not unique to the SEALs at all, but, but any, any organization that has a high level of self reverence and a low level of transparency is headed for trouble. And that doesn't, doesn't matter if you're a prestigious university, or you're a religious sect, or you're an elite military unit. Like, if you can't really understand what's actually going on in your, your community and look at it critically, that's harmful over the long term. And so I think that there are a lot of people who saw it as, as like a

• 58:16Speaker 06

  useful guardrail. And certainly not everybody, and I'm not surprised about that. But, but personally, I'm happy that it's still there for anyone who wants to pick it up and learn something.

• 58:28Jack Murphy?

  What about like John Q. Public? How, how have they responded to the book over time?

• 58:33Speaker 06

  Uh, generally, really, really well, because it's, I mean, honestly, the easiest thing for the reader, John Q. Public to do, the easiest thing that they can do is not read, right? So we're, we're, you've got to make something accessible. And a murder mystery about Navy SEALs is a good way in to learning about this elite unit that, you know, is very important in, in, in our national, uh, national security policy. And learning about both its strengths and its weaknesses. So I, a lot of people connected with it. I think people who maybe were surprised they were reading a book about SEALs, but learned a lot because it's a story about one SEAL who was charged with murder, but it's also

• 59:18Speaker 06

  a story about how their culture has, has grown since Vietnam. And so there's something there for someone who wants to understand the wider world.

• 59:29Jack Murphy?

  How about you, Matthew?

• 59:31Speaker 05

  Uh, well, you know, I, my book was a little different. Uh, it was about the culture, yes, um, but it was really focused on the, uh, sort of corrupted culture at SEAL Team Six. The SEALs at large, yes, but, but focused mostly on SEAL Team Six. Um, and there's some crossover and, and some causal, uh, uh, relationship between the two. They're not mutually exclusive. The response was quite good. Uh, I mean, I, I have to be honest, I, I get people who reach out from SEAL Team Six, from the SEALs, who will quietly say, "Thank you."

• 1:00:14Speaker 05

  Um, I've had other SEALs who've reached out to tell me about some of the things that were in the book and say, "I was there." Um, I had someone not so long ago do that exact thing and described a scene that I have in my book and told me it was worse than I reported and gave me details that I knew to be true, but didn't have, uh, enough to support putting in the book at the time. Um, and, uh, I have had people complain and tell me, you know, "You're missing, uh, you're missing this," or "You're missing that." Uh, not, uh, errors as much as omissions of things that I, I didn't know, um, although nothing that would have changed how I would have reported or published, to be honest.

• 1:00:55Speaker 05

  Um, you know, I knew going in that, that my book was probably never going to be for the general audience. What I set out with the book was, "Look, this is a group and a community that's been holding on to some really, uh, bad secrets, some pernicious secrets that frankly, um, have, do affect, uh, like a cloud, uh, psychological cloud over everyone who's in on the secret as they go forward in life and their families too." And shining light on that has both, from an accountability standpoint and transparency, but it also has the ability for people to, you know, just talking about things. I mean, I sound like a social worker now or a therapist, but you know, sometimes when

• 1:01:39Speaker 05

  you just talk about things, they get easier. Um, and my notion was, "This book should be public, this, these stories need to be public because in the future, when there's another war, or in the future, when there is a, a problem that occurs with the SEALs or SEAL Team Six..." The public has to be able to go somewhere to read about where it came from, how it started, how we got to where we are today. And

• 1:02:06Speaker 06

  And you know, it's interesting, both Matthew and my books, there's a ton of SEAL history books out there. And there's zero overlap between those books and what we've written. And so it's very easy if like, if you wanted to learn about the SEALs, to learn a completely sanitized like Boy Scout version of it. And, and you know, to your point, Matthew, going into another conflict, that might not like equip you with everything that you need.

• 1:02:36Speaker 05

  No, totally. And, and it's exactly it. And I think that the, you know, again, I mean, I thought of it as like, this book is probably going to be like a cult. If, if, if I could, you know, humor myself, it would be a cult classic. But the reality is, is that on bookshelves, there's just nothing else. And so, you know, the fact that it exists means people will find it and they do. And I hear from them and, you know, I'm grateful. It's, it has sold modestly well. I'm quite happy. And, you know, again, it's, it's, it's probably, I know it's not for the general reader. My wife still struggles to, to, to get through it. But, you know, it's a, it's an important story.

• 1:03:19Speaker 05

  You know, I'll tell you one thing, I, I know someone that I know very well, who every year speaks to a group of, I'm not sure if they're graduating from BUDS, the BUDS process, but they're something, some kind of event that happens annually at Coronado. And they speak before SEAL officers. And for the past three years, that person has gone to the bookstore in Coronado, bought copies of my book and handed them out to the young SEAL officers to go and go, it is cool. And, and, and frankly, that makes me, I couldn't be more proud of, of that, because that's really what it's about.

• 1:04:04Speaker 05

  That's what that transparency and it's what the journalism is for, which is trying to figure out how to fix things that, that went wrong. And, you know, I, I don't overestimate that it had any, it had much effect. But if it can have any, I'm thrilled for it.

• 1:04:22Jack Murphy?

  I'm really glad you brought that up, actually, Matthew, because that's what I was going to say next was that I think these books serve as like a cautionary tale for young men and now women who are considering a career in special operations that these other histories, the unpublished history until now,

• 1:04:41Jack Murphy?

  tells them what to avoid, warns them of what to avoid, what you don't want to, you know, you don't want to end up here, right?

• 1:04:48Speaker 05

  Yeah, you know, I ended up in a conversation with a, someone who teaches ethics at the Naval Academy and who read my book. In fact, they said, normally I wouldn't speak to anyone in the press, but I read your book and I took it to heart and I use, they weren't using anything specific from the book, but the general lessons that, that they thought were portrayed in the book as something that they teach the midshipmen that they have. And again, you know, that to me is like, you know, ideal. You know, I think that the SEALs are, you know, one of the things I'll tell you over the years, the criticism is you're a SEAL hater, you hate SEALs.

• 1:05:31Speaker 05

  You were, you know, you must have been a nerd in, in high school and, you know, you must have been bullied by the jocks and the tough guys who became SEALs and that's why you're doing this. And I, you know, mostly it's, it's so immature that I, I mostly laugh and, and I don't mean to be glib, but it really was like, you know, my sources for that book and for all of their reporting were SEALs. They were really impressive SEALs. They were impressive SEALs who did, you know, multiple decades at SEAL Team Six. These were not, you know, in, in a word that I learned from, from Dave's reporting on Gallagher, they were not turds.

• 1:06:10Speaker 05

  You know, these were the best of the best who had been on the inside and had tried to fix things and were repeatedly shut down. And so, you know, in that sense, uh, you know, I'd tell you that I admire the SEALs. I admired many of the SEALs that I've met and I, you know, surely admire what they do professionally. But that doesn't make them or give them some position that's above criticism or above accountability or transparency.

• 1:06:42Speaker 06

  Yeah, I think that's true. Like, you can't do this work without interacting with a ton of people from SOF. And like, you know, you get to know people who are just awesome people. And maybe that motivates you all, or at least if you have a journalist, like, frame of mind, like, motivates you that much more to be like, but there are problems here, and maybe I can help out, because I like a lot of these guys. And sometimes they're getting a raw deal.

• 1:07:08Jack Murphy?

  So you guys can find Dave Philipps at the New York Times. Matthew Cole has a website, The Cole Report, right, Matthew?

• 1:07:16Speaker 05

  Yep, on Substack.

• 1:07:17Jack Murphy?

  And there's, you know, he publishes NSW stories on there as well. You guys can go and check that out. Is there anything else you guys want to talk about, anything you're working on now, or, you know, where you want to direct people to?

• 1:07:30Speaker 05

  Dude, I'll tell you to read the New York Times.

• 1:07:32Speaker 06

  I always have an existential, like, crisis happen, a big story comes out, and I'm like, oh, my God, what have I got? I've got nothing. I'm washed up. Like, I've got no ideas. So that's, that's where you can find me now, in my closet, crying.

• 1:07:45Speaker 05

  I'm, I'm, you know, it's funny, I, to answer your question, I'll just tell you, I had a source, an old source, who texted me after the North Korea story came out, who was a member of SEAL Team Six, and he was sort of, I hadn't heard from him in a couple of years, and he was complaining that he, he had gotten text messages or emails from, he said, roughly 100 people with my story. And I said, you know, I apologize, I genuinely didn't, and he said, oh, you, you're just kidding, you don't, you're not sorry about it. I said, no, I am, I, you know, I'm not trying, I didn't write this story to have people bother you about your, your former life. And I said to him, I said, you know,

• 1:08:26Speaker 05

  as it happens, I am mostly tried to disengage from covering SEAL stuff, I'm working on another book for an imprint of Simon and Schuster that has nothing to do with the Navy SEALs, has to do with the foreign policy and Jared Kushner under the first Trump administration. So at some point, that book will be out. And I hope, even though it's not a special operations related subject, you might have me on again.

• 1:08:53Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, absolutely. Send me another advanced reader's copy, and I will go through it and make my underlines and vigorous notes in the margins.

• 1:09:03Speaker 05

  Will do.

• 1:09:05Jack Murphy?

  So thank you guys for joining us. Appreciate both of you coming on the show today, joining us on the BroCast here. And for everyone else, we'll see you guys next time.

• 1:09:16Speaker 06

  Thanks, Jack. A pleasure. Thanks.

• 1:09:20Jack Murphy?

  Hey guys, it's Jack. I just want to talk to you for a moment about how you can support the show. If you've been watching it, enjoying it, but you'd like to get a little bit more involved and help us continue to do this, you can check out our Patreon. It is patreon.com/the Team House. And for $5 a month, you can get access to all of these episodes of The Team House ad free. The same goes with our affiliated podcast Eyes On with Andy Milburn, Jason Lyons, McMulroy. That one, you will also get all of those episodes ad free. And you support the channel and the show, and we really appreciate it. The Patreon members are literally what has helped this company, this small business survive, especially during our early years.

• 1:10:06Jack Murphy?

  And you are what continues to help this thing going, even as we navigate the turbulent world of YouTube advertising. So we really appreciate all of you guys. There's going to be a link down in the description to that Patreon page. And there is also going to be a link to our new merch shop. So if you guys want to go and get some Team House merchandise, we got stickers, and we also have patches. And I should mention, if you sign up for Patreon at $10 a month, we will mail you this patch as well. So we really appreciate that. But they're also for sale on the merch shop. And additionally, they got t-shirts up there, water bottles, tote bag, coffee mugs, all that good stuff.

• 1:10:50Speaker 07

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel. People would always think I was lactose intolerant. So I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic, in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood. And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone.

• 1:11:21Speaker 06

  One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.

• 1:11:27Speaker 07

  So join us and hear their stories and more, because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At The Table, the food allergy podcast on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At The Table and start listening on the free iHeart Radio app today.

• 1:11:47Jack Murphy?

  So please go and check them out and support the show. We really appreciate it, guys. Thank you.

• 1:11:54Speaker 07

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At The Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 1:12:09Speaker 01

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic, in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 1:12:20Speaker 07

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone.

• 1:12:25Speaker 06

  One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.

• 1:12:31Speaker 07

  So join us and hear their stories and more, because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At The Table, the food allergy podcast on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At The Table and start listening on the free iHeart Radio app today.

• 1:12:57Speaker 07

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At The Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 1:13:11Speaker 01

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic, in a big way that defined-

• 1:13:20Speaker 02

  A lot of my childhood.

• 1:13:22Speaker 07

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone.

• 1:13:27Speaker 06

  One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.

• 1:13:33Speaker 07

  So join us and hear their stories and more, because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeart Radio app today.

• 1:14:01Speaker 07

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 1:14:16Speaker 02

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic, in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 1:14:27Speaker 07

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone.

• 1:14:32Speaker 06

  One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.

• 1:14:38Speaker 07

  So join us and hear their stories and more, because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeart Radio app today.

• 1:15:05Speaker 07

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 1:15:20Speaker 02

  Always think I was lactose intolerant. So I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic. In a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 1:15:31Speaker 07

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone. One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies. So join us and hear their stories and more. Because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At The Table, the food allergy podcast on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At The Table and start listening on the free iHeart Radio app today.

• 1:16:10Speaker 07

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At The Table, the food allergy podcast. A show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 1:16:24Speaker 02

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant. So I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic. In a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 1:16:35Speaker 07

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone. One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies. So join us and hear their stories and more. Because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At The Table, the food allergy podcast on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At The Table and start listening on the free iHeart Radio app today.

• 1:17:07Speaker 00

  She's been thinking about this sleepover all week, but I think about her food allergies all the time. Fortunately, her doctor prescribed Zolair, omalizumab. It's proven to significantly reduce allergic reactions if a food allergy accident happens.

• 1:17:20Speaker 01

  Zolair 150mg is a prescription medication used to treat food allergy in people 1 year of age and older to reduce allergic reactions due to accidental exposure to one or more foods. While taking Zolair, you should continue to avoid all foods to which you are allergic. Don't use if you are allergic to Zolair. Zolair may cause a severe, life-threatening allergic reaction called anaphylaxis. Tell your doctor if you ever had anaphylaxis. Get help right away if you have trouble breathing or if you have swelling of your throat or tongue. Zolair should not be used for the emergency treatment of allergic reactions, including anaphylaxis. Zolair is for maintenance use to reduce allergic reactions, including anaphylaxis, while avoiding food allergens. Serious side effects such as cancer, fever, muscle aches and rash, parasitic infection, or heart and circulation problems have been reported. Please see zolair.com for full prescribing information. Ask an allergist about Zolair.

• 1:18:03Speaker 01

  This is an advertisement for Zolair paid for by Genentech and Novartis.