Navy Seal To CIA Contractor - Shawn Ryan

Shawn Ryan is a former US Navy SEAL, former contractor for the CIA and a podcaster. The world's special operations are done in the darkness. If Navy SEALs are a spectre then CIA Contractors are their shadows. Shawn spent decades working behind enemy lines all over the world and has some crazy insights into that life, plus how it feels to re-integrate back into normal society. Expect to learn what it's like to train Keanu Reeves for John Wick, why physical abuse from your fellow SEALs might be just what you need, the crazy breadth of tasks CIA contractors are asked to complete, why the establishment elite are losing touch with every day people, Shawn's reflections on sobriety after drinking to deal with his anger and much more... Sponsors: Get 10% discount on your first month from BetterHelp at https://betterhelp.com/modernwisdom (discount automatically applied) Get 10% discount on all Optimal Carnivore’s products at www.amazon.com/optimalcarnivore (use code: WISDOMSAVE10) Extra Stuff: Subscribe to Shawn's YouTube Channel - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkoujZQZatbqy4KGcgjpVxQ Check out Shawn's Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/shawnryan762/ Get my free Reading List of 100 books to read before you die → https://chriswillx.com/books/ To support me on Patreon (thank you): https://www.patreon.com/modernwisdom #navyseal #war #cia - 00:00 Intro 00:41 Why Keanu Reeves was a Great Student 03:57 Agenda-Driven Hollywood 13:48 The Weight of Important Work 20:29 Being Refined by the Military 31:38 Why Shawn Changed his Career 44:44 Strong Rivalries within the CIA 49:02 How the CIA is Different to the Seals 58:15 The Future of Warfare 1:07:39 Advice for Personal Security 1:17:55 How to Deal with Threatening People 1:25:23 Moving into Fatherhood 1:35:23 Impact of Psychedelics on Shawn’s Life 1:47:59 Where to Find Shawn - Get my free Reading List of 100 life-changing books here - https://chriswillx.com/books/ Listen to all episodes on audio: Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2MNqIgw Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2LSimPn - Get in touch in the comments below or head to... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact/

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  It's great that you're getting ready for all these things that might happen, maybe, one day, but you're 150 pounds overweight and you don't even know how to use a defibrillator. They don't like it when you tell them that, but that's the real threat. I'm just gonna jump on my rooftop with all my guns and it's like, how the hell are you even gonna get up there? You know? I mean, I'd like to see you try.

• 0:18Chris Williamson?

  Sean Ryan, welcome to the show.

• 0:21Speaker 00

  Thanks for having me. You got a hell of a show here.

• 0:24Chris Williamson?

  Thank you, man. I appreciate that. Thank you. Navy SEAL, CIA contractor, personal security expert, guy that helped train Keanu Reeves to be John Wick. That, the headlines, those are the big ones?

• 0:38Speaker 00

  That's, that's the big ones.

• 0:40Chris Williamson?

  Yeah?

• 0:41Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 0:42Chris Williamson?

  Good. What's Keanu Reeves like in real life?

• 0:44Speaker 00

  He is very soft spoken. He's a very good listener, very good student. We didn't really trade too many stories or anything. He just came out to train and, and I kept it extremely professional and, but he was, he's a very intelligent guy. He picks things up really quick. He's serious about what he's doing and he's honestly, he's one of the best students or people that I've ever trained. He just really picks up on things.

• 1:13Chris Williamson?

  What makes it for a good student of somebody that wants to learn about protection, weapons, aggression, precision?

• 1:22Speaker 00

  It doesn't take much. It takes a good listener. You can, in that industry, you get a lot of people that come out who have been, they like to say they've been shooting since they were five or they've been hunting since they were, you know, were walking and they always have these stories and it's, this is how I do it. This is how I've always done it. But when you get a guy like Keanu, or a lot of women are like this too, they just, they're like a sponge. They just retain, they listen, they retain the information and all they're worried about is what you're saying.

• 1:58Chris Williamson?

  Doing it right.

• 1:59Speaker 00

  And what you're doing. And that's what makes a good student. It's not with shooting, it's not, you know, you don't need to be an athlete, you don't need to be super intelligent or anything like that. You just need to be able to listen and, and. Be able to retain information and set your ego aside.

• 2:16Chris Williamson?

  I did a firearms and fitness course at Atomic Legion out here in Austin. So they do weapons training. They've got a grandmaster shooter on the books, a guy called Alex Acosta, who's a fucking animal. And we did this firearms and fitness thing. So picking up a sandbag, do two laps, dump the sandbag, take three shots. If you hit the three shots, you get more shots and scores and within this time window and you can extend the time window if you're more accurate and all this sort of stuff. And I had my ass handed to me by like mothers of three, 55 year old mothers of three, because they're able to, I was fitter than them, but their ability to be precise and to be able to control themselves under pressure. And obviously the shooting experience, which being a Brit, I haven't

• 2:58Chris Williamson?

  got tons of. But yeah, it was fascinating to see. And then those videos of Keanu, it's from, what was it, five years ago, six years ago, when those ones went like hyper, hyper viral from Taran?

• 3:07Speaker 00

  It's been a, it's been a while.

• 3:09Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. But the one where he was switching between all of those different weapons, he's got, that is.

• 3:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, that was the first, I think that was the first John Wick.

• 3:17Chris Williamson?

  Oh, okay. So he's been that skilled and then probably got even more skill as he keeps going through.

• 3:22Speaker 00

  Yeah, I can't take credit for teaching him how to shoot. I taught him how to clear a room.

• 3:26Chris Williamson?

  Okay. And what was the, what were the main things that you're trying to get him to be accurate with that?

• 3:32Speaker 00

  I just wanted to help him look realistic when he was entering a room or kicking doors in, you know, because it's a fast paced, very action, you know, movie. And so I wanted to help bring a realistic standpoint. That's what I got asked to do out there. Taran asked me to just teach him how to clear a room. So I said, all right, let's do it.

• 3:54Chris Williamson?

  Cool, man. So I had this, I saw this news article I wanted to have a chat with you about. So this is from Bloomberg. Critics and fans have never disagreed more about movies. When Sony released its film adaptation of the video game Uncharted in February, critics were quick to tear it apart. The Wall Street Journal called it bloodless, heartless, joyless, sexless, and with one exception, charmless. New York Magazine deemed it curiously empty. MovieFreak.com dismissed it as a bona fide disaster, and yet audiences ate it up. The movie, which stars Tom Holland and Mark Wahlberg, opened to a $44.2 million, the box office, and went on to gross 401 million worldwide. It's one of the 10 highest grossing movies of the year. Uncharted also initiated one of the biggest disputes between critics and fans in modern movie history.

• 4:37Chris Williamson?

  Audiences have given higher scores in critics to all 10 of the year's biggest movies. The average audience score for Jurassic World Dominion on Rotten Tomatoes on IMDb is 67. The critics' score is 34, so a difference of 33 points. The Gray Man is the same, Uncharted is the same, disagreeing by more than 30 points. It may seem as though critics typically panned the year's biggest hits, but that's not the case. Sometimes audiences tend to give blockbusters higher scores. It can also be the other way around. The thing that I think is interesting about this is how detached the people in positions of power, whether that be in media, whether that be in legislature, the gap between what

• 5:20Chris Williamson?

  the normal person likes and enjoys and wants and what the critics think that they should want perhaps, or what they believe would be good for the plebeians to actually want, seems to be diverging more and more. What do you think?

• 5:33Speaker 00

  I 100% agree with you on that. I feel like there's an agenda, you know, behind everything that comes out now, and I don't know exactly where that comes from, but it is not from the audience. And I think it's disconnected Hollywood so much that, I mean, it hurt their bank accounts real bad. And you're starting to see more A-list celebrities move in to the podcast world because nobody's watching their movies anymore. They're starting to see them move into Amazon and Netflix series and not Hollywood. You're starting to see them produce their own stuff because nobody's watching.

• 6:16Speaker 00

  Nobody's watching that stuff anymore because it was so agenda-driven.

• 6:19Chris Williamson?

  Well, we saw this with, I think it was the Oscars last year that most of, was it Nomadland, I think, that cleaned up? It might have been the Oscars or the Golden Globes, one of the... Awards ceremonies. And all of the films that were doing well in the box office, you could all, it's almost an inversion. If it does well in the box office, it's probably not going to do well at the awards. And if it does well at the awards, it's probably not going to do well in the box office. I think the last one, someone brought it up that did manage to do both was Dark Knight, Batman. But yeah, when you think about all the Marvel movies, stuff like that, the only one that got rated well was Black Panther. A great movie, but there's an agenda there.

• 6:57Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 6:58Chris Williamson?

  Right? You know, it's a signal to people.

• 7:00Speaker 00

  I, I, part of me, look, I, I do understand the whole diversity thing. But when, when you make it the point of the movie to shove diversity down everybody's throat, it doesn't work. And then you look at a movie like Top Gun that came out, everything was in there, right? It was, there was all the diversity, but that wasn't the point of the movie. The point of the movie was fighter pilots, the USA, you know, it was very, I think it was a very patriotic movie and look what happened. It was, it just smashed everything in its way. And everything that needed to be in there to make everybody happy was in there, you know?

• 7:42Speaker 00

  And, and I think that's, that should be the example.

• 7:46Chris Williamson?

  My friend Douglas has a, an idea about how you can tell when a minority is fully absorbed into a culture. And he says it's when you have to put up with the same amount of shit that everybody else does.

• 7:59Speaker 00

  And that's a great quote.

• 8:01Chris Williamson?

  It's a lovely way to think about it, right? The fact that what you actually want is for people to not care anymore, to not care the fact that you're black or gay or trans or disabled, whatever, right? That is the position that you want to get yourself into. And you know that when there is a degree of just day to day bullshit that you have to put up with, that everybody else does too. And I think that you're right. When diversity is made a point, it almost seems patronizing to the people that it's trying to put at the forefront. It's like, well. You, your position in society isn't sufficiently deserving, or you wouldn't be given this if we didn't make it a big deal. It's like, no, no, no, like you just, if the lead actor is a black man, let's not, how about we don't reference the fact that he's black?

• 8:45Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 8:46Chris Williamson?

  How about he's just the lead guy? And you see this with the James Bond discussion, right? All the time, like, what would it be like to have the first female James Bond, or the first black James Bond, or the first gay James Bond, or whatever?

• 8:57Speaker 00

  Yeah. Why don't you just make a new series?

• 8:59Chris Williamson?

  A new James Bond, whoever's the good James Bond. So, yeah, it's, um, it's an interesting one, man. And I think that the more the elites become out of touch with what normal people want, the more that you're going to see, the less faith normal people are going to have in what they do.

• 9:19Speaker 00

  I think that's why, I think that's why YouTube and, and podcasting is getting so big, because it's the, it's one of the only spaces left that's, I guess, semi-unfiltered, right?

• 9:31Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, unmolested.

• 9:33Speaker 00

  Yeah. So, it's, it's sad to see it go that way, but it's been going that way for a long time. And, um, but hey, it's good for us, right?

• 9:44Chris Williamson?

  One of my friends sent me that news article. He said, "The spiraling lunacy of elites shows up in the most benign places." You know, right, like Rotten Tomatoes is pretty fucking benign as far as it goes. But, yeah, man, it'll be interesting to see what happens. And you, one of the problems you have is with a medium like podcasting, and even Instagram stories to a degree as well. What you got with Instagram stories was a very unfiltered look at people that were super, super high status. So you got to see what Kanye West's dog was called, right? Or like Kim Kardashian's Starbucks order, or whatever. Like, it doesn't matter about what it is. The point being that it gave you a degree of transparency into the lives of people that previously would have been so untouchable. But that kind of...

• 10:28Chris Williamson?

  That transparency means that people need to be more real because our ability to tune in to whether or not someone is bullshitting us has been now filtered and filtered and filtered a lot more tightly. So you see somebody come out and try and give some press conference, or you even watch, you know, a late night show now where you've got the two minute segment to get out what it is that you need to get out and it just feels so strange, almost feels scripted and it might be, you know, all the, you guys have the late night shows, we don't quite have the same thing over here, where they'll come on and say, oh, so are you going to do a squirrel impression? Let me see your squirrel impression. Like, yo, you, you prepped fucking squirrel impressions backstage before you do this. And it just seems so clunky and it doesn't surprise me that people don't have faith.

• 11:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, I a hundred percent agree with you on that. I also, I don't know how to say this lightly, but I feel like the population is just getting dumber. And I think if you look at some of the stuff, because I, I mean, we're both, you know, in the same space, basically. And so I'm always studying social media, what's taken off, what's not taken off and, and looking at, you know, everybody else, what's taken off for them. And when I see, if you go to YouTube trending, you know, or you look at what the explorer tab is going to show you on Instagram or TikTok, it's mindless bullshit. It, it doesn't, there's, it doesn't make any

• 11:54Speaker 00

  sense. And when it comes to podcasts like yours and like mine, I mean, there's some deep discussions that happen and you have to pay attention. And I don't think, I think there's a percentage of the population that cannot comprehend the conversation that

• 12:14Chris Williamson?

  We're starting to have a diverging group there as well. That being said, people want whatever is effective. And I think that The people that are able to pay attention, that are able to have interesting conversations and learn about a point of view that they maybe don't agree with without losing their shit at it, those people will end up being in a much better place in life. So the people that don't have that are going to fall behind. And people model the behavior of people that are successful. So I'm hoping that you will lead from the front, the people that are prepared to accept their own ignorance and say, I don't know, why don't you teach me? I'd love to find out about rotten tomatoes, or whatever, how we're going to engineer

• 12:55Chris Williamson?

  human DNA for spaceflight, or whatever the fuck it is. My friend, the same guy actually that sent me that article's got a theory that he calls the midwitt appeal theorem. By definition, most people are midwits. Therefore, nothing can achieve mass significance without appealing to and allowing itself to be explained by midwits. If that's the bulk of the area under the curve, people that think that they have a degree of smart but don't know just how dumb they are, that means that all of the stuff that takes off is going to appeal to them by definition. And if you're out on the tails, it can make you feel a bit lonely. This is something I had when I was back in the UK a little bit, that I was like, I have all of these interests and I kind of don't really have many people to talk to about them. That kind of sucks. But then you find, oh, hang on, there is a huge community of

• 13:37Chris Williamson?

  people in the world that want just to learn about stuff constantly, the rest of their life, until they're dead. Always learning, always curious. It's awesome. So I was thinking about all of the stuff that you've done throughout your career, SEALs, CIA, personal security. A lot of those things, there is, there seems to be two types of narratives to do with people that go to war. One is that it's one of the most important things that we do, sending these people on the front lines. But then there is also situations like withdrawal from Afghanistan, like lack of success in other areas, especially in the Middle East for America. And there was a question that I thought of, which is, do

• 14:21Chris Williamson?

  you think it's more scary that everything that you do matters, or that nothing that you do matters?

• 14:28Speaker 00

  That's a good question.

• 14:32Speaker 00

  I would rather everything matters. Um, I, I don't know. I don't know what it would be like if nothing mattered. Um, I would think that would be a very unfulfilling way to live. Would you agree?

• 14:44Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 14:45Speaker 00

  Yeah, so.

• 14:48Speaker 00

  E- even right now, I think everything that I do matters.

• 14:53Speaker 00

  So, I, I can't, I don't. For me, I, I wouldn't be happy if I was doing stuff that I didn't think mattered. It would be a very unfulfilling life.

• 15:04Chris Williamson?

  It's a dangerous position to get yourself into. That's where nihilism starts to creep in.

• 15:08Speaker 00

  I mean, what do you? What do you feel good about if nothing you're doing matters? You just, I mean, we see it all the time, you know, people just skating by, but I don't think they really have anything good, you know, to feel about, or they're not really proud of anything and, and, uh,

• 15:27Speaker 00

  I would, that would bother me a lot.

• 15:29Chris Williamson?

  It's a way to escape, though, because there's a pressure associated with having everything that you do matter. Right? And an easy way to escape from that is to say, well, look, nothing does. I don't need to take responsibility for everything. And there's a bunch of ways that people can escape from this, you know, whether it's not believing that free will exists, whether it's believing that humanity is a curse on the earth and is doomed and that we need to limit our ecological impact as much as possible. Whichever route you go down from the philosophical to the ecological, to the scientific, to the transhumanist. All of these are different ways, I think, to make people feel better about the fact that they're scared that nothing that they do matters.

• 16:11Speaker 00

  Yeah, I, you know. I've heard you talk a lot about psychedelics on here, and I've done psychedelics, uh, for treatment, not for fun. And I will say that.

• 16:25Speaker 00

  Before I did that treatment, everything was a huge deal. Even the things that I didn't think were a huge deal. Or, I'm sorry, even things that I thought that were a huge deal. After I did the psychedelic treatment, I realized, you know, not all this shit is as important as I-

• 16:44Chris Williamson?

  So it gave you some perspective?

• 16:45Speaker 00

  It gave me a lot of perspective that I needed.

• 16:48Chris Williamson?

  Would you mind explaining what you did in terms of your course of treatment?

• 16:52Speaker 00

  I did Ibogaine. Have you heard of that?

• 16:55Chris Williamson?

  Yep.

• 16:56Speaker 00

  I did Ibogaine and then I did 5MEO. And I did that about six months ago. When I did it, I haven't drank since. I saw you did a thousand days clean.

• 17:06Chris Williamson?

  I did, yes.

• 17:06Speaker 00

  And I haven't had a drop of alcohol, haven't had a drop of coffee. My anxiety is gone. I struggle with that a lot. My anger issues are gone. And I really struggled with that a lot. Coming out of the military and the agency and just getting back into civilian life. And so, and it helped me become more in the moment, which was my primary reason to go do that was I now have a one-year-old. And I just wanted to be in the moment with him.

• 17:40Chris Williamson?

  Would you class whatever it was that you were feeling like as PTSD? Or is this a, how would you say? A conditioned response to life from being a high-level operator for a long time?

• 17:56Speaker 00

  Both.

• 17:57Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 17:58Speaker 00

  I think both. Head injuries, PTSD.

• 18:02Chris Williamson?

  What head injuries? Where do head injuries come from in your line of work?

• 18:04Speaker 00

  Blown up, falling out of helicopters, stuff like that.

• 18:09Chris Williamson?

  Falling out of helicopters? How high?

• 18:11Speaker 00

  Oh, maybe 10 feet.

• 18:12Chris Williamson?

  Okay.

• 18:12Speaker 00

  You know, not too crazy. Maybe a little higher.

• 18:15Chris Williamson?

  Enough to land on your head and-

• 18:17Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:18Chris Williamson?

  What about, what's blown up mean? When have you been blown up?

• 18:21Speaker 00

  I've been blown up in sniper hides where we've been mortared and you're just getting these concussions. You're blowing doors, you know, when you're in, when you're in a SEAL team, when you enter a room, a lot of times there's a explosive charge that you do to, to breach the door and gives you the element of surprise and lets you in immediately. And so the concussion from that coming back.

• 18:45Chris Williamson?

  That's just the shockwave? Even if you're not blown off your feet, you're still maybe even able to operate within two seconds of that happening?

• 18:51Speaker 00

  Well, a lot of, I mean, you feel it, but you don't realize the long-term damage that it's causing. And so, you know, any, everything from Carl Gustaf rounds, rocket launchers, breaches, explosives, blowing cars up, blowing bridges up, blowing, you name it, we've blown it up. And, and at close distances and, and just a life of that, you know, just taking that impact over and over and over and over and over again. I mean, I think you're only supposed to shoot two or three Carl Gustaf rounds.

• 19:22Chris Williamson?

  What's a Carl Gustaf round?

• 19:23Speaker 00

  It's a huge rocket launcher. It's like, if you think of bazooka, that's what the Carl do's.

• 19:31Chris Williamson?

  And what, what do you use it for?

• 19:32Speaker 00

  You can use it for anti-personnel, guys in caves, you can use it on vehicles, you can use it on all kinds of stuff. They're kind of outdated now. Now they have the Javelin.

• 19:43Chris Williamson?

  Yep.

• 19:44Speaker 00

  But in my day, that was just, just kind of showing up.

• 19:49Chris Williamson?

  Well, I suppose what I've seen of the Javelin, it sort of jumps out of the barrel and then seems to take off. Is that right? Is that how the Javelins work? So I'm going to guess one of the elements that that will be for is to try and protect the operator a little bit more so that you don't have that immediate explosion in the chamber itself.

• 20:08Speaker 00

  Yeah. I've actually, I've never shot a Javelin. So I don't, I can't speak from experience from that. I'm too old for that. But, but the Gustaf is some heavy impact and the breaching charges are heavy impact and getting blown up and hides is heavy impact. And, and anyways, that's where the brain injuries come from.

• 20:29Chris Williamson?

  You joined when you were 18, right?

• 20:30Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 20:31Chris Williamson?

  What?

• 20:33Chris Williamson?

  What was the predisposition that you had there? And what was learned behavior that you got throughout your entire career? I'm trying to work out which bits of you remained? And which bits of you were deprogrammed through two decades of being an operator?

• 20:51Speaker 00

  That's good. I don't.

• 20:52Chris Williamson?

  What about the aggression? Like, was there aggression in there? Was there this shortness? Was there this over reliance or over importance on everything being a big deal? Was that always there?

• 21:05Speaker 00

  No, that was learned. That came. There's a lot of pressure being on a team. And the pressure is, don't let your team down. And so, everything needs to be done. If you're not doing anything, you should be doing something. Make yourself busy. Go, you know, get X, Y, and Z done. And so, and when you do let the team down, you know it. And it's a horrible feeling. And they let you know that, too.

• 21:35Chris Williamson?

  What was some examples of a time when you did something that you felt was letting the team down?

• 21:47Speaker 00

  On my first deployment, I was a booze hound. We weren't, we did not go to war. And I was pretty upset about that. And so, I took to the booze very heavy. But we still needed to train and we still needed to keep sharp. And we needed to be ready in case we needed to relieve a platoon, you know, if they took casualties. And my booze got out of control and the platoon let me know immediately that it was getting out of control. And woke up with a couple of them surrounding my rack where I was sleeping. And.

• 22:27Speaker 00

  In the middle of the night and uh.

• 22:30Chris Williamson?

  And you're half cut at this point.

• 22:32Speaker 00

  Still half what?

• 22:33Chris Williamson?

  Cut.

• 22:33Speaker 00

  Oh no, I was sober here.

• 22:35Chris Williamson?

  Okay, this was a night when you hadn't been out.

• 22:36Speaker 00

  Yep, I was sober here and uh, you know, they tune you up a little bit.

• 22:41Chris Williamson?

  What's that mean?

• 22:43Speaker 00

  Kick your ass around a little bit, but you know, you know, hey, you're fucking up and you need to get your shit together.

• 22:50Chris Williamson?

  Physically?

• 22:51Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 22:52Chris Williamson?

  Wow, so this is an enforcement mechanism that's commonly used?

• 22:57Speaker 00

  Used to be very common. Um, now I don't think it is as common, but um, yeah, it used to be no questions asked. If you're, if you have a problem and it's, it's

• 23:12Speaker 00

  getting in the way of the team, then you're going to be dealt with.

• 23:16Chris Williamson?

  Some full metal jacket shit. That's what it sounds like.

• 23:20Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 23:21Chris Williamson?

  How do you go back to being an effective pairing in a team after a bunch of people have just woken you up in the middle of the night and kicked the shit out of you?

• 23:32Speaker 00

  Well, you, you know, it's not, like I said, it's not uncommon, you know, it's, it's, it was very common and so you never really, I mean, as much as is a disappointment, uh, as you are, there's no time for, there's no time to dwell. There's not really any time for grudges and everybody gets out of line eventually, you know, so I wasn't the first one that happened to, I wasn't the last one that hap- happened to. And um, so you can't take it personal. You just need to be, and they do that in training too, you know, I mean, you're broad. Like I said, or like you said, I joined when I was 18 and so this all starts day one.

• 24:14Chris Williamson?

  Yep.

• 24:14Speaker 00

  You know, in buds and you're letting, you're letting the team down because even though it's not technically, you know, a SEAL team, you're still, you're training with a handful of guys and if the instructors call you out and they're like, all right, we're going to run that four miles again because Sean didn't want to put out. He wanted to half ass it. Then you have your entire class that fucking hates your guts because they're going to run that four miles again or. You know, whatever evolution it is, we're gonna run the O course again. We're gonna get back in that cold water again until somebody quits because so and so was cheating.

• 24:52Chris Williamson?

  Wow, so they'll do.

• 24:54Speaker 00

  They will single you out in front of everybody. And so by the time you get to the team, you're used to that.

• 24:59Chris Williamson?

  Yes.

• 25:00Speaker 00

  And and they do it, even if if you're in BUDs, you may be the fastest swimmer. And

• 25:07Speaker 00

  if they see that you're not helping somebody out, helping the team out, but you finish first, they're gonna pull you out and make everybody do the swim again. Except you, because you didn't help anybody.

• 25:18Chris Williamson?

  So you're going to be sat on the sidelines, which makes you look like even more of a dick.

• 25:22Speaker 00

  While everybody else is suffering.

• 25:26Chris Williamson?

  Did they do that during BUDs where

• 25:30Chris Williamson?

  they would put everybody in the water until someone quits?

• 25:34Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 25:35Chris Williamson?

  That seems like such a brutal practice.

• 25:37Speaker 00

  It is. It is. I don't think that that's actually the the that's what they tell you, but everything in BUDs is

• 25:48Speaker 00

  it's very structured. It's they don't have time to because if nobody quits.

• 25:54Chris Williamson?

  You're gonna waste a full a full day of this and you're not gonna test people on whatever else they need to. Yeah, that's a good point.

• 26:00Speaker 00

  Somebody will always quit, but then when you get, you know, farther into BUDs, especially like the third day of Hell Week, it starts getting harder for guys to quit because you're already zoned out and you've gone through seventy five percent of the quitters already.

• 26:12Chris Williamson?

  Yes.

• 26:12Speaker 00

  And so when there's only, you know, twenty five guys left in the class out of two hundred and fifty, those are your they aren't going anywhere.

• 26:21Chris Williamson?

  A lot more bound together as well, I suppose. You know, one person leaving from two fifty versus one person leaving from twenty five.

• 26:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 26:27Chris Williamson?

  Is gonna there's more pressure on them. Yeah, that's so what else? What else changed from you, you at eighteen to you several decades later?

• 26:39Speaker 00

  Attention to detail changed a lot. I think I was not attention to detail before I went in. Now I'm very attention to detail because getting tuned up, missing minor mistakes or or not even necessarily half assing things, but just missing small things or or you forget something, but.

• 27:00Chris Williamson?

  And the stakes are incredibly high.

• 27:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 27:04Speaker 00

  A lot has changed. A lot has changed. My temper has changed. My-

• 27:08Chris Williamson?

  How so?

• 27:10Speaker 00

  Uh, before the psychedelics, I would get very, I would say I was angry more than I was happy. You know, um, experienced a lot of loss, you, a lot of trauma in a, in a job like that. And, um, makes you angry, makes you angry.

• 27:30Speaker 00

  To see people take this country for granted, you know, after all the sacrifices that you've seen, that you've made, that friends died, you know?

• 27:38Chris Williamson?

  What's an example of that? Why you got angry about people taking the country for granted?

• 27:45Speaker 00

  Self entitlement is a big one. You know, you see a lot of people, you, right now, we see everybody getting college tuition, you know, paid for with the new administration, which on one hand, I think that's great. You know, because we're finally, somebody's pumping money back into our own country instead of sending it all to Ukraine and everywhere else in the world. But, um, on the other hand, you know, there's got, that was an incentive, you know, for guys to join the military. Hey, you join the military, we'll pay into the GI bill, we'll take care of your college. Well, now that's not worth shit because college is free. So how does that make you feel?

• 28:22Chris Williamson?

  Is that what's actually happening now? I thought that it was a $10,000-

• 28:26Speaker 00

  I think it's different. I'm not, I'm not too familiar with the, with the bill.

• 28:31Chris Williamson?

  Got you.

• 28:32Speaker 00

  You know, they're coming out with so many of them, I can't keep up anymore, but, um, but I know, I've seen a lot of people that I know. I saw one guy post on his Twitter, you know, that his tuition was his legs. And it makes him sick that they're gonna pay everybody else's and-

• 28:50Chris Williamson?

  This is somebody that's got double prosthetics now?

• 28:52Speaker 00

  Yep. Yep.

• 28:55Speaker 00

  So anyways, you know, and then they complain more, "Well, you need to pay for this. You need to pay for this. I'm entitled to this. I'm entitled to this." And you come home and that's, that's, that's what you see, because that's what's in the, in the media, you know, and it, it can build, for me, it builds resentment. Uh, a lot of guys, I think, can, can overlook it. I'm still working on that. Psychedelics have helped a lot.

• 29:20Chris Williamson?

  I think, uh, if you've made huge amounts of sacrifices, whether that be physical, psychological, social, familial, inevitably, you're going to feel the delta between how difficult life has been for you and the things that you've had to go through, and the supposed victimhood of other people. I, it makes complete sense that that would be the sort of thing that would get you angry.

• 29:44Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 29:46Chris Williamson?

  And the psychedelics have had a, a significant impact on that?

• 29:49Speaker 00

  Major impact. Major. It doesn't matter, you know, and that's what it taught me, is that you can't control it and it doesn't matter. It really doesn't.

• 29:58Chris Williamson?

  I mean, you're a smart guy, though. You've learned about Stoicism and the dichotomy of control and, you know, you can't control the things you can't control, so focus on the things that you can. Is there a limit logically, rationally, that you can get to? Like, you can read as many Ryan Holiday books as you want about Stoicism, but it seems like you, you, this was a problem you couldn't think your way through. You actually needed something to kind of take you an extra step.

• 30:24Speaker 00

  I was led, and all of it get to me. I was led to people kneeling for the flag, you know. We come, go over there.

• 30:30Chris Williamson?

  Was that a big trigger for you?

• 30:31Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah. That was a major trigger for me. Watching people kneel for the National Anthem. Uh, was, was, it was huge for me. I mean, I, I can't count how many funerals that I've gone to where, you know, guys have died for this country. And then you come home and you got athletes making sixty million dollars a year, you know, what do they have to complain about?

• 30:56Speaker 00

  Kneeling for the National Anthem. I mean, it's, it's sickening, you know, and it bothers a lot of us. Um, I may be a little more vocal about it.

• 31:08Chris Williamson?

  Well, I'm gonna guess most veterans don't have the same sort of platform as well, you know?

• 31:13Speaker 00

  Yeah, they don't. But those are some of the things, you know, that you, you come home and, and, and you see that stuff. You know, you see all of it, you see rioting in the streets, you see.

• 31:28Chris Williamson?

  Well, the lawlessness that you guys were trying to.

• 31:31Speaker 00

  Keep out of here, and now it's right here within.

• 31:34Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, the call's coming from inside the house.

• 31:36Speaker 00

  So, yeah.

• 31:38Chris Williamson?

  Okay, so SEALs, you get through that, you only do a few years in the SEALs, is that right?

• 31:42Speaker 00

  Six years.

• 31:43Chris Williamson?

  Six years, yeah. Then you decide to pivot from the SEALs to the CIA. What led to that decision?

• 31:51Speaker 00

  Actually, I pivoted to a real estate agent after that. And that did not, that went over like a fart in church. But I just didn't have the communication skills. And I was coming right out of Iraq at that time.

• 32:06Chris Williamson?

  What was the reason for leaving to go do real estate? Money?

• 32:10Speaker 00

  The reason I left the SEAL team, the big reason is I saw. I looked at all the older guys that had been around for a long time and I started realizing none of these guys are married. Most of these guys don't even know their kids. Most of them come home to a black lab every night or some type of a dog, pet, you know, and, and I could see how lonely that would be. And so I decided I don't want to spend my entire career here because I want to have a family. And at least I thought I did.

• 32:47Chris Williamson?

  You're 24 at this age?

• 32:49Speaker 00

  Twenty-four.

• 32:50Chris Williamson?

  There's a lot of self-awareness going on there.

• 32:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, I mean, you grow up real fast, you know, in the SEAL teams. That's, you know, kind of what I was talking about earlier. And so I saw that and that was a major factor. Another thing was I started seeing politics come into the SEAL teams and I didn't like that.

• 33:08Chris Williamson?

  How so?

• 33:10Speaker 00

  It was.

• 33:17Speaker 00

  It was...

• 33:23Speaker 00

  When I went to, my first combat deployment was right after Red Wings happened.

• 33:27Chris Williamson?

  What was Red Wings for the people that don't know?

• 33:29Speaker 00

  Red Wings was the Marcus Luttrell op, Lone Survivor, have you seen that movie?

• 33:33Chris Williamson?

  Yep.

• 33:34Speaker 00

  That was Red Wings. Came in, relieved them, and whoever was up higher, you know, was pulling off missions. Literally just saying, "You're not doing that, you're not doing that." They actually ended the entire Afghanistan deployment for all SEALs early. That was my deployment, so I volunteered to go to Iraq. And I, that was just such a disappointment at the time because you train hard, you know, to go and do that job. And when you show up and you don't do the job that you've been training for very much, and it's happening everywhere around you, that is infuriating.

• 34:17Speaker 00

  And, and, so that, that was, that was a factor. That had to do with politics.

• 34:25Speaker 00

  But the major thing was the family stuff. I just, I saw it, and I didn't want to, I didn't want to end up with a, be 45 years old coming home to a black lab and that's it.

• 34:36Chris Williamson?

  I had this idea I thought about a little while ago. The place that I grew up in the UK was fantastic, mom and dad were amazing. But it was, not a lot of people were like me necessarily, and not a lot of people were living the sort of life longer term that I felt was right. I didn't really know that it was wrong, but I just felt like there was something off. And I was thinking about, a lot of the time, I'll hear from people who don't have role models around them, and that's why they resonate with stuff that they consume online, because they finally get a community of admirable people that they can look up to that maybe they don't feel like they've got in their local environment. But what I realized is that... A negative role model, an example of someone that you don't want to be like, is just as useful as someone that you do.

• 35:21Chris Williamson?

  Because you can get a long way in life by just avoiding disaster and catastrophe. In fact, you can maybe even say that avoiding it is more important than getting things right. Like, not getting something wrong is a bigger deal than trying to get something right. Because the getting something wrong will make you absolutely miserable. Whereas the getting something right, you still can, you can still fuck up. So I think being around guys who maybe didn't have that foresight. Because I'm gonna guess, let's say that someone's 45. They, the SEALs haven't been around long enough for them to have had another 20 years of predecessors before them, for them to be able to see the trajectory that they would maybe be on, right?

• 35:59Speaker 00

  Well, also, they weren't coming out of, they, we went through a long time period where there was no war. You know, from Vietnam, a couple of things in between there, like Somalia, you know, Iran, Panama, when we pulled Noriega out, stuff like that. But nothing like ongoing, like Vietnam. So until, from Vietnam to September 11, 2001, you know, there wasn't a whole lot going on. There was a lot.

• 36:26Chris Williamson?

  Chill.

• 36:27Speaker 00

  Yeah. And so you saw this massive transformation of what a SEAL, you know, kind of, I wouldn't say looks like, but it was just very different, you know, when September 11th happened. Because then you start seeing the trauma, then it gets very real. You know, prior to that, it was, you know, train hard, play hard, let's have a good time, let's drink some booze. There's not really anything going on in the world. Now, the shit's real, you know, and, and, you know what I'm saying?

• 36:59Chris Williamson?

  So why would you think that the CIA wouldn't give you the same 45-year-old Sean with a black lab?

• 37:11Speaker 00

  Well, so I did. But I got out and I became a real estate agent. I couldn't stand it. I hated it. Then I got, I, I thought, well, I miss the camaraderie. So I got into a fire academy. I was gonna be a firefighter. And then I realized, well, I didn't realize, they basically told me that you're not gonna get a job for two years after this. It's the same in the UK. And, and I started looking around and, and I realized if you don't have a grandpa or a dad or a mom or whoever who was in the fire service, you're not getting in. That's, it's pretty tight knit and it seems to be very close family ties in that service.

• 37:57Speaker 00

  And, you know, I was 24 and, and I had a house and I was like, I got,

• 38:04Speaker 00

  I can't sit around here for two years hoping that somebody hires me. So I had a friend who reached out and one of my resume and he was just like, hey, you know, it's contracting. I was like, absolutely not. I'm not doing contracting. What's contracting mean? That was, so when I was at CIA, was this, I was a contractor. What does that mean? It means that you're not working, you're not an employee. They can kind of wash their hands of you. And. So you're the most dispensable people on the team? Yeah, I mean, the, the majority of the agency is contractors. But it's easy to wash your hands of them. So it makes sense, right?

• 38:45Speaker 00

  But, um, but really for somebody like the audience, there's not really much of a difference. You know, it's kind of just paperwork. But, but anyways, he's, he said,

• 38:59Speaker 00

  I can't tell you who it is for, you know, but just give me your resume. And I trusted him. He was, he was a guy that was in my platoon. We did a couple deployments together. And he's like, it's not like these other guys. Cause I'd seen, there's all kinds of different contractors. There's state department contractors. There's CIA contractors. There's DEA contractors. There's FBI contractors. And there's all these different companies, you know? And, and, um, we would see a lot of the contractors in Baghdad when I got to Iraq. And you hear a lot of rumors and, and it just wasn't an outfit that I wanted to really be around.

• 39:37Speaker 00

  Think a lot of it sounded like a lot of the lesser known companies were kind of careless. What they weren't as professional and they they were. This was early on in the war, so they were trying to figure out what kind of resume they were looking for and everything. And I just, I was like, I'm not doing that. You got, you got everybody from SEALs to the guy that was guarding the Bank of America. Building, you know, just the local bank and it, so you can see the gaps there. He assured me it wasn't like that, but he said it was classified. I can't tell you, so I pitched him my resume. Probably didn't hear anything for about six months and then I got a call that was, or an email that was, hey, fill all this paperwork out.

• 40:22Speaker 00

  Here's 50 pages of a security clearance and be here with this equipment for a tryout. What was the equipment? It was just kind of holster, what kind of clothes, you know, what the, what the weather is going to be like, stuff like that. You know, bring a belt, bring gun holster, bring equipment to operate in, you know, if you have it. So I put all that in there and went down and said goodbye to the fire academy and, and wound up making it.

• 40:55Speaker 00

  So that's the select CIA selection? I mean, what is that? Well, it's, it depends what job you're going for. For mine, it was a very intense shooting package.

• 41:09Speaker 00

  A lot tougher than the shooting packages I was doing in the SEAL teams. And the difference between the, I think the major difference between trying out for a slot like that at the agency and, and trying out for BUDs is BUDs, they know you don't know shit when you show up, you know? And they know even when you get done with BUDs and you show up to the SEAL team, they know you still don't know shit. You know, and they're there to train you and heckle you and, you know, give you a hard time and, and just develop you, help you develop into the best operator that you can be. When you show up for an agency tryout, they're expecting you to have all these skills wired tight. You know, so there is no, let me help you with that.

• 41:52Speaker 00

  There's perform this task to the best of your ability and we're going to watch. Can you give us an example of the sort of tasks that were in there? Um, yeah, like.

• 42:06Speaker 00

  Shooting, you know, they would, you just, everybody show up on the 25 yard line. Okay, there's your target. I want you to hit as fast as you can on the buzzer. Boom, and they have standards, but you don't know what the standard is. So you're just going to the best of your ability.

• 42:22Chris Williamson?

  So spread and speed and stuff like that.

• 42:24Speaker 00

  Yep, all of that. And it's, it's the kind of, it will be the kind of shooting drill that you're just not going to pass if you, you're not going to pass it if you don't know what you're doing.

• 42:34Chris Williamson?

  You've been dicking about fighting fires and chopping stuff and practicing saving kittens out of trees and going home to your house. Are you out of practice at this stage?

• 42:44Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 42:46Chris Williamson?

  How the fuck did you pass then?

• 42:47Speaker 00

  I just did, you know, I just, I guess I just, I was still young, you know, and, and I like shooting, you know, so I just lucked out. And I think that, I think they wanted me, you know, because they, there's a reason they don't tell you the exact standard. It gives them a little leeway. If they don't like you, you're out.

• 43:11Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And no one can say, hang on a second, he got in, but I didn't, even though blah, blah, yeah.

• 43:17Speaker 00

  Yeah. As you get in, the, the standards become clearer because you do have to go through every two years. Or I think it's every two years.

• 43:25Chris Williamson?

  Like psychometric evaluation.

• 43:26Speaker 00

  Yep, make sure you're still sharp.

• 43:28Chris Williamson?

  Yep.

• 43:29Speaker 00

  And, um, but it's a lot, it's, it's, it's a lot more cut down. You know, it's, it's, you don't have to display all of your skills every single time. Once you're in, but that initial one, it's how do you drive? How do you work as a team? How do you shoot? How do you clear this room? Here's a problem. We want you to solve it. There's a hostage in there. You need to go in and get them and meet us at this restaurant at whatever time, you know? And so. They're watching all of your problem solving skills. They're watching how you work as a team. They're watching how you lead. They're watching, you know, your tactics. How did you enter the room? How did you treat the hostage? Once you secured the hostage?

• 44:13Speaker 00

  You know, what was your evac route? Why did you choose that route? Did you notice the guy on the corner that was taking pictures of your car? And got this license plate right here? You know, and all that kind of stuff is happening. They're all, we call them FTXs, Field Training Exercises. But you're just constantly being evaluated the entire time. And, and if you don't measure up, then you're gone. There's no remediation. There's no, let's work on this.

• 44:38Chris Williamson?

  Roll it back.

• 44:38Speaker 00

  There's, you don't meet the criteria, you're out. And that's it.

• 44:44Chris Williamson?

  Going into the CIA, I'm going to guess that their feeder profile must be multiple different organizations, probably people from Green Berets, Marines, SEALs, maybe like NSA, maybe intelligence operators or whatever, perhaps not so much for what you were doing. But I can imagine if someone happened to be an unbelievable translator or something, or had great communication skills, but they knew could shoot a bit, maybe they might try and put those in. My point being that it must be strange going from an environment where everybody's been trained differently, different cultures, different backgrounds, different understanding of what it means to clear a room, to communicate, to maybe even different call signs, different signals, all this stuff.

• 45:26Chris Williamson?

  What, how do you get a melting pot of these people coming from such diverse backgrounds to function at all together?

• 45:34Speaker 00

  That's a great question.

• 45:37Speaker 00

  And it is like that. It's, so the program that I went in, you had to have six years. So I just barely made the requirement. You had to have six years of special operations experience. And so you, they're taking.

• 45:52Speaker 00

  Delta guys, SEALs, Green Berets, Rangers and Marsoc guys with some Air Force PJs and CCT guys. So everybody, you know, we all have the same knowledge, but it's just minor differences. The thing that really got in the way at the beginning was the, uh, what's the word I'm looking for? The rivalry between branches. You know, the SEAL, there's always like friendly rivalry and unfriendly rivalry. You know, we're better than them at this and did it. A lot of egos, right? A lot of A personalities. And, um, so trying to figure out what the best way to do things with.

• 46:33Speaker 00

  If I'm a SEAL and you're a Marsoc Marine, who's.

• 46:40Chris Williamson?

  Who's right.

• 46:40Speaker 00

  Whose style are we going with?

• 46:41Chris Williamson?

  What's the biggest difference that you noticed? Who was trained most differently or who came in with the different, the most, uh, diverging opinions when it comes to ways to operate?

• 46:54Speaker 00

  I don't think there was a specific outfit that was like that. It was more the individuals, you know, than, and there were guys that couldn't.

• 47:05Speaker 00

  There's guys that couldn't let it go, you know, like.

• 47:10Speaker 00

  Like SEALs, it's like, you gotta be able to let some of the things that you learned to go and learn new things. When, once you're in, you know, it is, it's a fucking team again and you have to blend in and you have to function. And it's, a lot of times it's the real young guys. Because their egos are going crazy and then you got the real older guy, the older guys, you know, some of these guys coming in there are 50. I've been working with a 65 year old. He was the baddest 65 year old man I've ever met, but. He's stuck in his ways, you know, he's done the same thing over and over and over again and, and has not changed. And so to change somebody like that, it's hard.

• 47:52Speaker 00

  And then you got the younger guys like me, you know, who did six years and they think, hey, I'm, I'm the fucking best at what I do. I just, I'm a fucking SEAL and nobody gives a shit if you're a SEAL. They want to know that you can do the job and that you can work as a team. And, uh. But the majority of guys, you know, it.

• 48:17Speaker 00

  They like to share, you know, their experiences and and and they like to hear your experiences because they're learning, they're they're becoming more well rounded. And so, once you're in, it it, a lot of that kind of shit goes away.

• 48:32Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, because you're not a team at the start, right? There's still a degree of competition between you, there's no bonding, there's no reason to do that. And I suppose as well, if there was two different groups that felt like they both had skill sets, like, I would imagine that if it comes to demolition or water stuff, most people would think, oh, it might be worth listening to the SEAL. But then if there's someone that's doing shooting, then perhaps there's multiple different groups that have different styles, whatever it might be. Okay, so you you get through and then what's the biggest change in terms of the the culture? CIA SEALs to CIA?

• 49:09Speaker 00

  Totally different. Completely cultured, totally different. The hazing, that kind of stuff, is a hundred percent no go. There's no hazing, there's no tuning people up for fucking up, there's, you're working with women, you're working with nerds, you know, you're you're working with a whole slew of different people. And the SEAL teams, you're with sixteen guys and everybody's a meat eater, everybody wants to go to war, everybody's hardened, everybody's in shape. You move over to the CIA and in in the outfit that I was in under the agency, all those aspects are still there, you know, with my immediate team. But then you're dealing with, you're dealing with spies, you're dealing with

• 49:52Chris Williamson?

  Intelligence people.

• 49:53Speaker 00

  Foreign intelligence people, you're, you gotta wear a suit sometimes, you gotta wear what you're wearing in the SEAL team sometimes. One, one day you might be meeting the president of Afghanistan, or, you know, high end diplomat from another country, and the next day you're humping the mountains, you know, in Afghanistan with an M4. I mean, you just, the the the job is so broad when you get over there.

• 50:20Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 50:21Speaker 00

  And with the agency.

• 50:24Chris Williamson?

  How much does that feel like? Did it ever feel like it was a nerfed version of the world to you? Like, it was the, all of the sharp edges had been removed and you were having to be domesticated now, you gotta wear the suit, you gotta say please and thank you, you gotta smile? Or did you enjoy the transition into a more professional environment?

• 50:46Speaker 00

  I liked both, you know, there were times when I missed. Being a hammer. When you're with sixteen guys for two years straight, or six years, or you know, however you're with your team. There's a lot of trust there, and you don't have to watch what you're saying, you don't have to watch your mouth, you don't have to worry about. Any of that stuff, you know, and when you move over to the agency, you you have to watch your mouth, you can't be. Cause someone will write you up for the same thing.

• 51:12Speaker 00

  Talking about the girl you want to take home at the bar at the end of the night there, you can't, you know, you just got to be a lot more tight lipped. And um, that.

• 51:23Speaker 00

  Took some time for me to get used to. A little bit of adaptation. Yeah, but um.

• 51:29Speaker 00

  But I also liked it because it was a more sophisticated outfit and. And the job was constantly changing, for example, when I was in Iraq, it was. Sniper op after sniper op after sniper op after sniper op, when I went to the CIA. It was all these different things, and you know what I mean, it was, it was.

• 51:51Speaker 00

  Spying, it was meeting people, it was. Getting dirty, it was going out and and gun trucks and humping mountains and it was everything.

• 52:04Speaker 00

  From the, from the teams, not all of it, but a lot of it with all this other stuff, and you just never know what the next day is going to bring, it was. Really challenging and a lot of job satisfaction, I learned a ton. I was gonna say, is that the most fun that you had during your career? Yeah, I think so, I liked both of them.

• 52:25Speaker 00

  But the agency was just. Little bit different, it was, it was.

• 52:33Speaker 00

  I mean, it's the agency, you know, you're, you're, you're flying under the radar, you're, you might be one of three people in a country. I mean, it's just really, you're out there doing it on your own and and and with the SEAL teams. You know, you've got. Air assets, you have drones, you have AC one thirty gunships, you have Apache helicopters, you have um.

• 52:56Speaker 00

  Military units that are ready to come get you out if you get into trouble with the agency. Sometimes you have that. A lot of times you don't. A lot of times it's you and the few other guys that you're with and or women.

• 53:08Chris Williamson?

  How does that feel to be one of only three people perhaps in a country doing some clandestine operation? Knowing that you're a contractor that the agency could wash their hands of?

• 53:22Speaker 00

  For me, I never really realized the magnitude of it until it was over.

• 53:26Chris Williamson?

  Probably for the best.

• 53:27Speaker 00

  So, yeah, you're just so busy and embedded in what you're doing and how important it is and running all these different aspects of what's going on there. You're only one of, you know, a few people. And it's not always like that, but you don't have time to think about that kind of stuff. It's just you're in the moment all the time, you know, boom, boom, boom, getting things together, getting the next mission ready. And it's, it's really cool. I love it. I did love that aspect of it.

• 54:06Chris Williamson?

  Is that by design? Is the agency continuing to move you quickly with momentum so that you don't get the opportunity perhaps to, to sit back and think, fuck, this is, this may be something that I should be scared about. This is maybe something that I should be concerned about.

• 54:21Speaker 00

  Um, not necessarily because you get a choice, you know, sometimes you get a choice. Sometimes.

• 54:28Chris Williamson?

  What do you mean?

• 54:29Speaker 00

  Well, for example, I won't get a choice on what country I'm going to. They'll brief me, hey, you're going here and you go to that country and then when you meet with the leadership of that country, then they may disperse you somewhere else. You know what I mean? So there are guys in this outfit that they like to be at headquarters, where everybody's at, they have bars, they have women, men, parties, great food, awesome gym, you know, all the amenities. You sleep in an air-conditioned room, you have your own room, queen size, king size.

• 55:05Chris Williamson?

  That's what they like to do.

• 55:06Speaker 00

  Yeah. I would always volunteer to go to the harder spots where it was, hey, you know, you can stay here, but we have this other place, you know, and you're going to be living on the side of a mountain or, you know, or something like that. And there's only going to be five of you. You're gonna be really busy and it's a really dangerous area. And when I hear that, my hands like, I'll do that one. Because I liked it. I liked the job. What I didn't like is being around headquarters because it's it's political. You have to worry about your say. You have to worry about how you dress. You have to worry about who you're talking to. You have to, you know, it's it's more about the political bullshit, not offending people

• 55:51Speaker 00

  than it is about getting the job done. And all I gave a shit about was working. I don't care about the parties. I don't care about the women. I don't care about the gym amenities. I just wanted to work and you can make a gym anywhere.

• 56:05Chris Williamson?

  It's nice to think that there is a role there for different types of people. It seems to me like the SEALs, in reflection, it seems like the SEALs actually select for a very narrow band of capacities, temperament. Whereas the CIA here, it seems like you you can have some sledgehammers and then you can have some scalpels and then you can have some button pushers.

• 56:34Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 56:35Chris Williamson?

  And they all work together.

• 56:37Speaker 00

  Exactly. It's you see a lot more of the impact that you're making too, because, you know, in the SEAL teams, you might get a directive from the agency or from higher up. It's go do this, but you have no real, you don't know what the guy you're going after was involved in. Or with the agency, you get a bigger picture of what's going on in in in the entire space.

• 57:05Chris Williamson?

  So you understand the context of why you're doing what you're doing. I mean, how? It it seems like you were pretty patriotic before going to the CIA. But obviously, you're being given this much broader view now of how what you're doing contributes to wider goals for America or freedom or whatever it is that you're working toward. Was that, how did that feel? Did that, did that push that patriotism, that sense of purpose, that sense of sort of belonging and meaning that you had in work?

• 57:39Speaker 00

  Absolutely. You're, you're previous to so much more information that when you see it, all the pieces come together, you're like, oh, this is why we're doing this. This is what this guy does. This is what he's gonna lead us to. You know, all these, all these things. And, and with the teams, it's, this is what we're doing, doesn't matter why, go do it.

• 58:03Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 58:03Speaker 00

  You know? And, um, and so to have like that broader spectrum, but just bigger picture, it helps in, in with what you're doing.

• 58:15Chris Williamson?

  What do you think the future of warfare looks like?

• 58:23Speaker 00

  I don't think we're gonna see a lot of ground wars anymore.

• 58:27Chris Williamson?

  What's that mean?

• 58:28Speaker 00

  I think it's gonna be a lot of, like what China's doing now. I think it's gonna be a lot of Cold War, I guess is what you would call it, where it's not in your face kicking doors down, it's not invading necessarily. I mean, I know that's happening in Russia, Ukraine right now, but if major superpowers start fighting, I don't think it's gonna be a lot of ground, I don't think it's gonna be a lot of Marines, I don't think it's gonna be a lot of special operations, I think it's gonna be a lot of computer stuff, hacking, propaganda, stuff like that.

• 59:12Chris Williamson?

  So you go from...

• 59:14Speaker 00

  Or, you know, the...

• 59:16Chris Williamson?

  Nukes.

• 59:17Speaker 00

  Yep. Then there's the other option.

• 59:19Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, this...

• 59:20Speaker 00

  But, I mean, now it seems like all these superpowers are starting to come to a head and I, that looks very, very different than...

• 59:30Speaker 00

  Taliban, Al Qaeda, Al Shabab, you know, things like that.

• 59:35Chris Williamson?

  You concerned at the moment about the state of global geopolitical peace and stuff?

• 59:41Speaker 00

  Yeah, who isn't? Yeah, I definitely.

• 59:43Chris Williamson?

  You're a specialist, right? You understand this to a greater degree than me, who's like, "The headlines look good this week," or "The headlines look bad this week."

• 59:51Speaker 00

  Yeah. Well, let's look at China. Are you familiar with some of the stuff that's going on?

• 59:56Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, give everybody a little overview of what they need to understand about what you think's important.

• 1:00:01Speaker 00

  Well, I mean, China's doing exactly what they should be doing, you know, for their goal. I mean, the fentanyl crisis that's happening with the cartels, that's all coming from China. China's teaching, they're bringing chemists in, they're teaching these cartels how to cook.

• 1:00:19Speaker 00

  The world's most potent fentanyl, they actually already have the next drug that's worse than fentanyl. They're teaching them how to do that, but China is sending in... No, I don't.

• 1:00:29Chris Williamson?

  Okay, but there's something out there which is more lethal, more addictive.

• 1:00:32Speaker 00

  It's already being introduced. And, um, you know, and so that's eating us. I mean, look at, you know, I just walked around Austin, there's all kinds of homeless out there shooting drugs. You know, it's in every city, it's everywhere. And that's coming from China. You know, then you look at the green, you know, the green initiative. We're seeing, this is what's gonna happen, you know, is, and I'm not necessarily anti-green. You know, I'm all about what's best for the planet, but, you know, we keep talking about, "Oh, we're gonna be energy independent with green energy." No, we're not. We're not gonna be energy independent, because China is going to supply all of our energy equipment.

• 1:01:16Speaker 00

  And so, they're gonna be able to do exactly what Russia's gonna do to Germany this winter. They're gonna flip the switch, and they're gonna say goodbye to gasoline, and they're fucked. And that's what's gonna happen to us if we have China produce all of our solar panels, all of our lithium batteries, all of our um, um, wind, you know, equipment. All they have to do is flip the switch and let's be honest, I mean, how many products have we had come in from China that last? Not very many, you know? The quality control over there, they don't give a shit about that stuff. And so they're gonna control our energy, whether we like it or not, cuz we're not making that stuff. They're buying up our farmland, they're paying off our politicians.

• 1:01:58Speaker 00

  I did an interview on that, on how many of the, and it's not one side, you know? That's, that's another thing that is a little concerning is everybody, they're dividing us.

• 1:02:08Chris Williamson?

  Bipartisan clandestine work.

• 1:02:10Speaker 00

  They're, they're dividing us and they're doing a damn good job. A lot of this shit that you're saying on social media, it's a bots, you know? And, and it's, it's designed to split this country apart and they're, it's working.

• 1:02:21Chris Williamson?

  I learned that the second biggest Facebook page before the BLM movement started was begun in the Internet Research Agency in Russia. That was where it was founded and they were organizing rallies around the US with real people turning up to them, but it was being organized from the IRA.

• 1:02:40Speaker 00

  It's crazy, right? When you think about it.

• 1:02:42Chris Williamson?

  Wild.

• 1:02:42Speaker 00

  And so that, to me, is the new warfare. And it's, and, like I said, they're doing exactly what they should be doing for their goals. We are not, we're worried about, you know, woke bullshit or whatever you wanna call it.

• 1:02:59Chris Williamson?

  Well, there's a question here, uh, there's a really important question, I think, to be asked when you look at the long-termism future of whether or not a democracy is compatible with long-term effectiveness of a country. I don't like the idea of living under an authoritarian regime, but if you say, look, you can either have a f- freedom with a loss or you can have varying degrees of authoritarianism with a win. You go, there, there literally might be a position where you get to where by allowing everybody to have a say and by giving people the opportunity to, uh, get on their...

• 1:03:44Chris Williamson?

  Step and start shouting about whatever the particular current grievance is. That might be the thing which means that the authoritarian regime ends up winning. And you go, okay, so if that's if that's the situation, how do you push back against that? Because there's no one, no one's going to accept

• 1:04:02Chris Williamson?

  a decrease in their civil liberties, simply because there's someone else that's using a different set of rules on the other side of the world. But I do think it's not outside the realm of imagination that it literally could be that a CCP style authoritarian regime is simply more effective. You go, okay, well, you get to go down swinging, but you go down.

• 1:04:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:04:27Speaker 00

  I hope that doesn't happen.

• 1:04:29Chris Williamson?

  Me too.

• 1:04:29Speaker 00

  Sometimes I sometimes I wonder if they both lead to the same place. I mean, was it Stalin that said capitalism will eventually eat itself? I can't remember if that was him.

• 1:04:40Chris Williamson?

  Maybe.

• 1:04:41Speaker 00

  But and if you if you look at some of the stuff that's going on, you know, like Amazon or Walmart or Facebook, you know,

• 1:04:53Speaker 00

  they've grown so big and we are capitalists, right here in the US. Well, they've just obliterated small business, you know, nobody's. When's the last time you went to a Best Buy?

• 1:05:08Speaker 00

  You know, or it's destroying business. And so basically, I'm wondering if that's going to become an authoritarian, you know, government.

• 1:05:18Chris Williamson?

  Oh, because you've condensed power into the hands of so few, simply because of market dynamics. Yeah, maybe. I mean, the free market was a lot more free before the internet because you weren't able to leverage as well. You know, it didn't matter that you had the biggest store in. Bastrop because Austin was 20 miles away and you it would take too long to build up new customer bases and the brand didn't mean anything to anybody or whatever or definitely from state to state. But yeah, when you have the unlimited scalability that's afforded by the internet, it does condense power into the hands of very few. And that's an interesting

• 1:05:56Chris Williamson?

  point that if you run capitalism forward for long enough with a sufficiently scalable technology where the costs of increasing leverage is sufficiently low, you do end up with an oligopoly because all of the power ends up just continuing. You just compete away, compete away, compete away. And then the man, don't get me, I fucking love Amazon. I have Amazon Prime. I buy stuff off there all the time, you know?

• 1:06:22Speaker 00

  It's just too convenient, right?

• 1:06:23Chris Williamson?

  But that's that's precisely why it happens. The reason that it happens is because the economies of scale afford them the ability to be able to do this. Yeah, that's.

• 1:06:34Speaker 00

  It's interesting to think about, right?

• 1:06:36Chris Williamson?

  It is. Yeah. I wonder whether

• 1:06:41Chris Williamson?

  I wonder whether longer term, there is going to be a pushback against that. I just, I think that people have become so accustomed, and this is me speaking to myself with convenience, that the anchoring bias pulling somebody out of a situation in which they've got all of that convenience and saying, actually, maybe you should wait five days for your groceries to arrive, but you'll be supporting local business. I don't want to wait five days for my groceries to arrive. I want them tomorrow. Like, I know I can get them tomorrow. So why would I go to a less efficient purchasing?

• 1:07:14Speaker 00

  The only way I think people would do that is if the quality is better.

• 1:07:17Chris Williamson?

  Yes.

• 1:07:18Speaker 00

  You know, so like, a lot of people do do that with, you know, they'll go to a farmer's market and get real organic, you know, or they'll go to a farmer like we do and we'll get real, not that the other beef's fake, but I know where it's coming from and I like the cuts and that you know what I'm getting at.

• 1:07:37Chris Williamson?

  Yep.

• 1:07:37Speaker 00

  But.

• 1:07:40Chris Williamson?

  You moved into personal security after you left the CIA. This is something that a lot of people take very seriously here in America. What do you think most people get wrong when they're thinking about their personal security setup?

• 1:07:57Speaker 00

  It'll never happen to me. That's the biggest thing that they get wrong. They don't prep their weapon the right way. They don't train with it enough because they don't take it seriously because they haven't seen it happen.

• 1:08:12Speaker 00

  I think that's the biggest thing. Another thing that I see, or when you get into the industry a little bit deeper and you have the, the people that make that a lifestyle is

• 1:08:26Speaker 00

  they get more than they need. And, and they buy all this equipment and they don't learn how to use it because it's complicated. You know, I've, when I used to teach um, people personal protection and stuff, they would, these guys would show up, you know, with lasers, with scopes, with all these things and they don't even know, they, they can't even cite them in. You know, and, um, and those are the ones that are coming out that are asking for help. A lot of people just put these together and they just blow money and they, they really don't know how to use them. And, uh, I think that's a mistake too.

• 1:09:01Chris Williamson?

  People are replacing.

• 1:09:03Speaker 00

  Cause you're asking about actual like products, right?

• 1:09:06Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:06Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:09:07Chris Williamson?

  But also in terms of mindset.

• 1:09:09Speaker 00

  Mindset is a major one. That's the biggest one. That's the biggest mistake.

• 1:09:14Chris Williamson?

  They don't believe that it's going to happen to them.

• 1:09:16Speaker 00

  They don't believe that it's going to happen or which the people that come usually do, but.

• 1:09:22Chris Williamson?

  Well, they know that it's going to, right? Like, oh, you mean in terms of training? Sorry, I was thinking in terms of a, a, an assailant or, you know, some bad guy that's going to try and do something to you. You, there is, there is an asymmetry in that interaction because that person's already made the decision that they're going to rob your house or trying to attack you in the street.

• 1:09:44Chris Williamson?

  They know that it's going to happen.

• 1:09:46Speaker 00

  There's so many mindset things that people paint these, they paint these scenarios in their head and that's how it's going to go down. And it's not going to go down like that. You know, and you see that. Not just in personal protection, but all the way to, a lot of people think things are gonna happen here, you know, and they think that it's gonna be, one day, it's gonna be alright, we gotta, uh, you know, we gotta fight for the country. That's not how these things happen. It's a slow rollout, and it gets very confusing, and-

• 1:10:16Chris Williamson?

  You mean like a civilian militia that's gonna push back against whatever regime-

• 1:10:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, whatever, or if we get invaded by China, or whatever happens, you know?

• 1:10:24Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:24Speaker 00

  And, um, call it the zombie apocalypse, but you get these guys and they think that one day that the zombie apocalypse is gonna happen, we're gonna get invaded, and, and it's gonna be, you need to eliminate everything that wears this, or looks like that, or it's not how it goes down. How it goes down is very slow and it's confusing, and you really have to pay attention to target identification, because the whole world just doesn't flip, you know, at once. Another thing that I see a lot, or, you know, people don't, they wanna get real big into shooting, and they wanna prep for the end of the world, or whatever,

• 1:11:04Speaker 00

  and they, they put so much emphasis on that, but they're physical, they're 150 pounds overweight. More people die of a heart attack every year than anything else, and they don't have an AED, and they're 150 pounds overweight, you know, an AED defibrillator. And it's like, that's great that you're, you know, getting ready for all these things that might happen, maybe, one day, but you're 150 pounds overweight, and you don't even know how to use a defibrillator, you know, and they don't like it when you tell them that, but that's the real threat, that's the most imminent threat, you know, to that person. They don't like it when you tell them that, or you get somebody that's, a lot of overweight stuff here, but you get,

• 1:11:48Speaker 00

  "I'm just gonna jump on my rooftop, and, uh, with all my guns," and it's like, "How the hell are you even gonna get up there?" You know?

• 1:11:54Chris Williamson?

  (laughing)

• 1:11:55Speaker 00

  But, um, I, I mean, I'd like to see you try, but a lot of that, a lot of that kinda stuff, in, in painting the scenarios where if I, if somebody attacks me in a parking lot, this is how it's gonna go down. That's not how it's gonna go down. It's, it's, before you-

• 1:12:16Speaker 00

  Engage somebody, I mean, there's so many

• 1:12:20Speaker 00

  processes that have to go through your head. Who's standing behind that person? Are you gonna shoot them? Can you actually shoot this person? You know, are they doing to you what you think they're doing to you? Like, it takes time to process that kind of stuff.

• 1:12:33Chris Williamson?

  That's why you said target identification is so important.

• 1:12:37Speaker 00

  You have to process all these things that are happening and within seconds. And

• 1:12:44Speaker 00

  most people, it'll be done and gone before they even realize what the hell happened. So

• 1:12:52Speaker 00

  does that make sense?

• 1:12:52Chris Williamson?

  Absolutely, yeah. What about, um, when it comes to people's homes? What are the things that you wish more people knew about personal protection in the home, around the home?

• 1:13:06Speaker 00

  Just I mean, basic stuff, you know, um, a dog. Like, to protect your house, a dog is the number one deterrent for anything. For any, any FBI statistics pointed that for years and years and years.

• 1:13:20Chris Williamson?

  Is that right?

• 1:13:21Speaker 00

  Yep. A dog is the number one deterrent. But, um, I think the biggest thing with, with home security nowadays is the internet. You know, people are posting, you can map your whole house out. You know, if you follow certain people on Instagram, especially some of these influencers, if you pay attention, you can map their whole damn house out.

• 1:13:44Chris Williamson?

  Is that taking videos and behind them is the window that's latched in the kitchen to vent the fumes out or whatever? Yeah, okay.

• 1:13:52Speaker 00

  Or they post where they live and then you can look it up on Realtor.com and there's the whole layout.

• 1:13:57Chris Williamson?

  There was a video, uh, that I saw recently about a gang in the UK who was using social media to steal from influencers' houses. There's this girl that was on a reality show a few years ago called Molly May and, uh, she had hundreds of thousands of dollars of jewelry stolen from her house because she'd put it on Instagram, obviously, as you do, because that's her job. And, uh, yeah, a whole host of stuff was taken out of her house. Then you, when she was out of the house, because of when her Instagram story grew up.

• 1:14:28Speaker 00

  Look at me, I'm in Cancun, Mexico.

• 1:14:30Chris Williamson?

  Oh, that means no one's in your house.

• 1:14:31Speaker 00

  How long are you down there? You know, so.

• 1:14:35Speaker 00

  You know, and they got, you're right. They got 200,000, a million, 2 million people following them and they're posting, hey, I'm in Cancun.

• 1:14:42Chris Williamson?

  There's a few thieves in there that would love to have that nice Rolex.

• 1:14:45Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 1:14:47Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. Okay. So.

• 1:14:48Speaker 00

  I think those are the biggest mistakes that people make. You know, they take home security so uh uh seriously. And then it's these stupid little mistakes. Hey, I'm out of town. And nobody's watching the house or or you know, like right now, I'm in Austin, my wife and kid are at home. I'm not telling anybody.

• 1:15:07Chris Williamson?

  Yep.

• 1:15:07Speaker 00

  On social media that I'm in Austin until I get home and then I'll and then I'll tell them.

• 1:15:12Chris Williamson?

  Yep. Yeah, very smart. So Tim Ferriss wrote this article called 13 Reasons Not To Get Famous. It's a very interesting problem to have that almost no one is going to encounter. What what happens when you overshoot fame? You get too much exposure, but Tim's had a billion podcast plays, more probably, one of the OGs of this world. And he was talking about how after a little while, he had to never post holiday photos until after he got back. Because people would ring the hotel that he was staying in, all of the hotels in the area that he was staying in and ask if Tim Ferriss was there, then they would turn up. There was a guy that camped out front of his house for a week. Because he was adamant that Tim was sending him secret messages in his podcast, saying that he wanted to be with him.

• 1:15:56Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 1:15:57Chris Williamson?

  So this guy found out where Tim lived. Um, all sorts of stuff that he has to do now to kind of future proof himself. And again, this is a problem that very few people would have, but it's it's also kind of not what you're seeing is a person who has an unbelievable net that they are attracting potential uh bad actors in from. Well, everybody has that. It's just varying degrees. And what you're basically doing, if you have a smaller audience of people that follow you, but you continue to do the same things, is you're just rolling the dice. They're saying, look, well, I'm not Tim Ferriss, therefore I have nothing to worry about. You know, if you've got a private social media with 500 people on there and almost all of them are your friends, I think

• 1:16:37Chris Williamson?

  you can probably feel a little bit more secure that that's not the case. But if it's a public social media, yeah, I mean, that makes complete sense. And for Tim, you know, he was how seriously he takes personal security. Rogan as well, man, like he that guy does not fuck about with his security and.

• 1:16:55Chris Williamson?

  What you're seeing there are examples of people that are kind of existing at the close to the upper echelon of normal people, right? It's before you get to presidents and sports stars and CEOs of companies and stuff like that.

• 1:17:07Speaker 00

  It could be, it could be anybody, though. You know, I mean, we're talking about famous people and, you know, I'm sure you deal with some of that as well. But it doesn't necessarily have to be famous people. It could be.

• 1:17:22Speaker 00

  Let's say you live in a town of 6,000 people and you're the only heart surgeon in town. You're wealthier than 95% you know of that town and your kid goes to school and you do only have 50 people following you. Everybody knows you're the wealthiest person in town. So the minute you go to Florida to go to the beach, guess what? Everybody in town knows that you're gone and they're gonna go right over there if they want, you know? And so it could happen on any scale.

• 1:17:56Chris Williamson?

  How do you advise people to deal with threatening others in public? You're on a bus or you're on a tube. I'm seeing increasing videos of these appear on the internet of someone that's just being belligerent somewhere in public. And if you're in an enclosed space where you can't get away right now, or maybe you can, maybe it's a sports game or whatever, like, have you got advice for people on how to deal with that?

• 1:18:19Speaker 00

  I mean, yeah, the thing that I tell them to do is avoid it at all costs. I think a lot of these confrontations happen and it's unnecessary. It's two egos going at it. And like, for example, it just happened to me yesterday. You know, we're sitting, I was sitting in the park, I stayed at the JW Marriott and there's a park across the street and homeless guy asked me for something. I was like, sorry, man, I don't have anything. And he got irate with me, charged me, was telling me I needed to stand up and da, da, da, da, da. And I was just like, hey, man, just, you gotta be careful, you know? You

• 1:19:01Speaker 00

  really need to be careful with people that don't have anything to lose when you have something to lose. And so the first thing I would say is just get the hell out of there. If there's any possibility of you being able to exit that situation.

• 1:19:17Chris Williamson?

  To get off at the next tube stop, get off the next bus stop.

• 1:19:22Speaker 00

  Let it go. You know, I think a lot of people can't just let it go. Um, but if you're in imminent danger, then, I mean, you have no, really no choice but to confront it, in my mind. And so, I would advise, especially today, you know, crime's on the rise, there's rioting, not right now, but it happens a lot more than it used to. And, I mean, carry a gun. Gun's gonna give you that confidence, especially if you know how to use it, you know? And, and

• 1:19:54Speaker 00

  all kinds of different scenarios. I mean, my wife was a realtor in Boca Raton, Florida, showing really high-end houses. And it took one time where she got in an uncomfortable scenario with somebody that wanted to come look at the house. She didn't have a gun. That never happened again. You know, and so, I would, I, I, I'm a huge gun advocate. I really think that if, if you have the means to get one, you have the time to learn how to use it, then you should be carrying one. It's just different times today.

• 1:20:30Chris Williamson?

  Do you hope for a time when that's not the case?

• 1:20:33Speaker 00

  Absolutely.

• 1:20:34Chris Williamson?

  So I, what I see among some people, especially the sort of uber preppers or the doomer optimists, as they're, some of them are now called, there is a little bit of a degree of glee at the potential conflict that's coming.

• 1:20:53Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:20:55Chris Williamson?

  It's almost like they want it to happen.

• 1:20:57Speaker 00

  Well, those are the people I was talking about earlier that are preparing for the zombie apocalypse that are gonna jump on their rooftop. And those people are living in a fantasy land. They've not been to war. They never will be. I think that they feel a void in their life because they never went to war. And so they're, they're like hoping for

• 1:21:18Speaker 00

  some kind of crazy opportunity to

• 1:21:20Chris Williamson?

  Show all of the hours that they've spent at the range or whatever it is. Yeah, there is a, that's an element, a very unique one that I've noticed since I've been in America, that there are, there is a contingent of people that I think uh, relish the opportunity of a

• 1:21:38Chris Williamson?

  Ballistic conflict happening.

• 1:21:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:21:41Chris Williamson?

  Regularly.

• 1:21:43Chris Williamson?

  And the opportunity for them to put. For them to justify their preparation, their money, their time, their sense of belonging or

• 1:21:59Chris Williamson?

  righteousness about what they've been preaching and telling their friends about for so long. And that, yeah, like, I want to show that all of the work that I've put in was worthwhile.

• 1:22:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:22:11Chris Williamson?

  He's saying, what you're saying is that you want to shoot somebody, somebody that's a bad guy, maybe, or somebody that deserved it. But if you want to.

• 1:22:21Chris Williamson?

  That your threshold for when you are actually going to pull your weapon out to use it is going to be lower than other people's. And that means that you're potentially going to escalate a situation sooner than it needed to be. And that's what I get concerned about. That's one of the things that I get worried about that.

• 1:22:40Chris Williamson?

  You know, there's a contingent of people out there that

• 1:22:44Chris Williamson?

  very small contingent, I'm sure that most people are doing their personal protection for the right reasons. But they're doing it because they want to prove something.

• 1:22:53Speaker 00

  I mean, Chris, it's a valid concern. To be a hundred percent honest, that's part of the reason why I left that business model is I was teaching that kind of stuff and I was teaching very advanced stuff as well. And it got to the point where I was like, man, the last thing I need is

• 1:23:14Speaker 00

  somebody walking into a school wearing my brand, you know, across their chest. And I started, I really started thinking about like,

• 1:23:23Speaker 00

  what am I willing to teach somebody? You know, why, why in the fuck do you need to know how to take an entire building down? You don't need to fucking know that. You might want to know that, but you don't need to know that. And, and.

• 1:23:39Speaker 00

  So I brought my courses all down to just basic fundamental stuff.

• 1:23:43Chris Williamson?

  Think about it this way, I've never thought about this before, but that's so interesting. Think about the fact that you restrict the government mandates that there are certain types of weapons that aren't allowed, right? You can't have a rocket launcher, I'm gonna guess. You can't have certain types of automatic firing weapons. You can't have maybe even particular bullet sizes and grains and stuff like that, right? There are certain things that you're not allowed to have. Claymores, shit, I'm gonna guess. But no one's stepping in, as far as I'm aware, to restrict the type of tactical knowledge that someone's allowed to know. You know, if you've got some retired guy from the SEALs and the

• 1:24:23Chris Williamson?

  agency, you have the cognitive equivalent of an arsenal of things that civilians should not potentially have access to, because in the wrong hands, they're unbelievably dangerous. And like, why is it that you can't have a thousand grenades in your garage? Well, it's because nobody really should need that, I would hope, and also that it's just dangerous and lots of things can go wrong. But if you know the equivalent of a thousand grenades in a garage, and you can give that to somebody, that's something that nobody's talking about, that's something that no one's mandating for.

• 1:25:01Speaker 00

  Yeah. It's gone through my head several times, you know, and I'm glad that it's up to the professional, you know, that's teaching what they're willing to give up and what they're not willing to give up, but, you know, some of them may regret that one day, what they gave up.

• 1:25:24Chris Williamson?

  You mentioned earlier on that you've been through a good bit of grief. A lot of people, the first grief that they're going to feel will be, you know, parents passing, perhaps, or dogs or friends when they're younger. What have you learned about the process of grief and dealing with that?

• 1:25:45Speaker 00

  Everything passes. It's gonna hurt. There's no way to get around it. I think a lot of people feel a lot of guilt. You know, you might, everybody grieves different, and...

• 1:26:06Speaker 00

  You have to know that it's gonna pass. And when it does pass, you have to be okay, you know, that it has passed. Because I, uh, a lot of people will feel guilty that they don't have more emotion, uh, about whoever that was close to them that just passed, or has passed. But you have to think about what that person would want for you. Do you think that your best friend, when he dies, you know, do you think he's gonna want you moping around for the rest of your life, feeling sorry for yourself and complaining that your best friend just fucking died? Or do you think he wants you to live your life to the fullest?

• 1:26:49Speaker 00

  And if he's a good friend, then he doesn't want you moping around forever. He wants you to live your life to the fullest because he can't anymore. You know, and, and especially with, um, you know, some of the losses that veterans stake, veterans, is, you know, you guys were fighting for something over there, you know, we all were. We were fighting for freedom and, and, and so you need to come home and honor the sacrifice that that person made and live your life to the fullest and, and know that they're smiling down on you, you know, when you're doing it.

• 1:27:26Chris Williamson?

  That's a beautiful tribute, right? That the reason for you being there is for the freedom for you to come home and do what you wanted to do. But if a byproduct of you being over there and someone giving their life for that is you coming home and no longer being free because you're trapped by emotions. Yeah, it's an interesting way to frame it. Jaco said exactly the same thing about, um, the guilt that comes from no longer feeling the strength of grief. That it's almost like you, it feels like a betrayal maybe of the person that's passed. Like, I, I should still feel terrible about this. And if I don't, that's like a betrayal to their memory.

• 1:28:05Speaker 00

  Yeah. Have you lost anyone?

• 1:28:07Chris Williamson?

  No. So that's, this is why I'm lapping my way through this, right? Like, I'm observing, I'm watching this happen in other people's eyes. But I can completely see the dynamic and absolutely see the dynamic. I mean, that's so ruthless, right? Because you end up becoming the architect of your own. Misery.

• 1:28:24Speaker 00

  Yeah. It's it's guilt, man. It's a it's a real thing. But grieve, grieve until you're until you feel it going away and then and then be happy that it's that it's going away. Everything everything is gonna be okay, you know. You always have to remember that.

• 1:28:48Speaker 00

  Everybody dies.

• 1:28:50Chris Williamson?

  What has the transition been like for you now as a father, like stepping into that role? You know, you've been someone that for the best part of 20 years was a varying-sized hammer, hammering things. And now you like you can't do the the hammering thing with a crying child or with a late night or an early morning, although you might be familiar with that. Like, what's that transition like? Has it softened you? Are you finding yourself becoming the cuddly teddy bear that you never were or something?

• 1:29:21Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah. I love being a dad. I think it happened at the perfect time. Sometimes I like to say I wish it would have happened sooner, but I don't think I would have been ready.

• 1:29:31Chris Williamson?

  How old are you?

• 1:29:31Speaker 00

  For I am turning 40 in about a month. So but I love it. It's it's changed everything. You know, it's watching my wife develop into a perfect mom is awesome. And just every day, my son is doing something new. And, you know, the other day, just climbed the stairs for the first time. And it's just to see him

• 1:30:05Speaker 00

  make all these different little achievements and just just watching him stand up for the first time or it's just awesome, you know, and then that that's a piece of you. And

• 1:30:17Speaker 00

  and it also makes you scared, you know. What's he gonna be like? What's he gonna get into? What kind of problems is he gonna have? You want to protect him from everything. And you can't, you know, you can't protect him from everything. But I'm still learning. I'm I'm very new at this. So but I just I love being a dad.

• 1:30:37Chris Williamson?

  You've had people that you were responsible for previously, right? The other members of your teams that you were responsible for. But now it's a very different type of responsibility.

• 1:30:47Speaker 00

  Oh, it's totally different. Even knowing that

• 1:30:52Speaker 00

  Even knowing and saying, you see the parents that freak out all the time. My kid's sick, they're going to the emergency room. I'm never gonna be that guy, right? My kid just got sick and I thought he couldn't breathe.

• 1:31:05Chris Williamson?

  Walk it off, pussy.

• 1:31:06Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 1:31:08Speaker 00

  You might think you're gonna be like that, but I'm not. I'm not like that. I'm like, oh shit, am I that, am I the dad that's being paranoid or am I that? But it's just, I find myself erring on the side of caution a lot more than I'm used to.

• 1:31:23Chris Williamson?

  Yes, very interesting. The stakes have been raised now.

• 1:31:26Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:31:28Chris Williamson?

  Fascinating. Well, I mean, you think about all of the time, I'm sure you've spent, even before you started doing your own stuff in terms of coaching, that you would have spent a lot of time teaching people things. Guys, specifically.

• 1:31:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:31:42Chris Williamson?

  Now you've got one.

• 1:31:44Speaker 00

  I can't wait. He's not at that, he's not at that age yet where I can start doing that, but I, I think about it all the time. What am I gonna teach him? You know, what life lessons?

• 1:31:55Chris Williamson?

  Yep.

• 1:31:55Speaker 00

  You know, am I gonna, what kind of wisdom am I gonna impart on him? And, and, and it's, it's always fun to think about.

• 1:32:03Chris Williamson?

  I can't wait, man. I'm not a father yet, not as far as I know at least. And I can't wait to be a dad as well. Like, I, I look forward to being able to take all of the things that I've spent time, you know, accruing for myself that I really value and then distilling them down into a bunch of little creatures to try and help them to get past the things that I felt held me back, to expedite them towards success, to make them feel happier and more fulfilled and more present and more loved and more, all of that. I can't wait. Like, there's something, one of my friends said this to me before. He said that he's now engaged, I think, and then it'll be marriage and then family, I think, is kind of the trajectory for him.

• 1:32:47Chris Williamson?

  So he's like locked in on a set of train tracks now. And he was very successful with his business throughout his twenties and his early thirties. He's like, you know what it is, man? I realized that basically all I did, running my business and all the self-development and learning in books and stuff that I read, all I was doing was just preparing myself to be a good dad. It's like, fuck, that's cool.

• 1:33:07Speaker 00

  That is cool.

• 1:33:08Chris Williamson?

  So cool.

• 1:33:09Speaker 00

  What, do you think that's coming in the near future for you?

• 1:33:12Chris Williamson?

  Uh, we'll see, we'll see. I, I, I'm at the stage right now where life is so good and so fun. Uh, like this, this genuinely is the golden years. I texted this to a friend earlier on. He's like, how's everything going? I was like, dude, this is the golden age for me. Like, I'm just having so much fun over here. I'm doing exactly what I've wanted to do for a very long time. I get to, we're gonna go cold in sauna after this. Then I'm gonna go and play pickleball and then I'm gonna go nail six hours of work when I get in. Like, that's the life that I wanna live. I wanna contribute to a project I care about and have a positive impact on people's lives. I wanna leave the world better than I came in and I wanna have some fun along the way. Like, that's, that's it for me. So,

• 1:33:55Chris Williamson?

  the difference in the person I am now versus the person that I was certainly 10 years ago, certainly five years ago, and probably even two years ago. There is a bit of me that thinks I'll have to reach a, an upper bound, like, I don't think, the growth's gonna have to slow down at least at some point, or else I'm gonna be like fucking Thanos or some shit. It's just every single period that I look back on is so much more development than it was before. Uh, and with that in mind, I'm, maybe similar to yourself, like, I'm quite glad that I haven't had kids so far. Reason being that I know my capacity as a father now is twice that of it three years ago and a hundred times that of it 10 years ago.

• 1:34:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:34:34Chris Williamson?

  So, there is a strong

• 1:34:41Chris Williamson?

  justification, I think, for guys that are maybe still, uh, man childs at age 30, which I definitely was. Uh, to be like, look, man, like, just if, if you're, if you're on the right tracks, like, maybe just pump the brakes a tiny little bit and get yourself to the stage where, because think about the difference that you're going to be able to have with that child's upbringing, with how much more you're gonna be able to enjoy it as well, because you're gonna be able to understand your emotions. Three times, five times as much, you're going to be able to not be as caught up. I mean, you know, think about even the difference that you've had over the last six months since doing the psychedelics. You know, like, and this is your son's about one year old, right?

• 1:35:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:35:19Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. So you've seen both sides of fatherhood. Pre and post psychedelics. I mean, how different is that?

• 1:35:26Speaker 00

  Very different.

• 1:35:28Speaker 00

  I am a huge fan of psychedelics now, that the treatment.

• 1:35:32Chris Williamson?

  Was that your first ever experience, the Iboga?

• 1:35:35Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:35:36Chris Williamson?

  Shit, the bird. You really went.

• 1:35:37Speaker 00

  I went all out the first time. But, um, but the, the, the benefits from that are just, I mean, there's just so many, you know? I mean, I didn't even go down there with any intention of not drinking anymore. And I just didn't want it. And it was, people ask me how I do it. You know, how did you quit drinking? It was nothing. It was, I don't crave it. It's, it wasn't a hard thing for me to do. It would have been hard had I not done psychedelics, but when I did the psychedelics, I just, I didn't

• 1:36:11Speaker 00

  have any cravings. I didn't, I'm not making a state, you know? I'm not like, look at me, I'm booze free. I just don't want it.

• 1:36:19Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. It's so easy. Thing in the world. Yeah. I mean, that's the stage. I, I never drank regularly as a club promoter for a long time, and that meant I was around parties and stuff. I'd drink maybe once every fortnight ish, but it would be like a, it would be a full send, but it would be like a fun party or we'd do whatever. We'd be going to a different city or something.

• 1:36:38Chris Williamson?

  And then I took a break for six months and came back for six months and it came back for like four, started drinking again. I really don't enjoy this that much anymore. So I had another break for six months, loved it. Started drinking again for two. I was like, I'm just going to do a thousand days. I want to see if I can do three years ish. And, uh, one of the most addictive things that I've done is sobriety. Uh, and it's so strange. One of the problems that you have is that as soon as you say the word sobriety, it, alcohol's the only drug where if you don't do it, people assume you have a problem. So. It it it sounds like you're recovering. You go, no, I it's the same as being sober from heroin. It's the same as being sober from spending too much time on my phone. As far as I see it, sobriety is a productivity tool for me.

• 1:37:22Chris Williamson?

  But it's also like an emotional enhancement tool. It's connection, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

• 1:37:27Chris Williamson?

  And I just realized that for me, I much prefer life generally when I'm not drinking.

• 1:37:32Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:37:33Chris Williamson?

  Now, I would happily microdose psilocybin. I would happily Carver, right? Which is like this root drink that you can have. And it's the most mild thing in the world. Like, I'd be happy to take that. Or I'd be happy to take like a low dose of an edible. I'm such a pussy with edibles as well. My point being, there are other ways for you to get a little bit loopy. Or like nicotine gum lozenges and stuff like that. Like, if you want to get a little bit of a buzz on or change your state, there are things to do. Cold plunge, breath work, like, there are things that you do. And for me, I just realized that alcohol really didn't agree with me all that much. I just, I don't, not a massive fan of the effects of it. I don't, if you actually look at it as a profile of the experience that you get,

• 1:38:18Chris Williamson?

  I don't think it's actually that fun. There are significantly more fun things to do with substances or with experiences that have fewer detrimental effects, both acutely the next day and the next couple of days after that, and then long term in terms of your health. And they're going to make you feel good, genuinely good during the experience. And I, I understand why people get hooked on alcohol. I understand it's an incredibly addictive drug. But for me, it just, it wasn't that enjoyable. It was just the thing that was available.

• 1:38:46Speaker 00

  It was fun for me, but you know what? So many positive things happened after I quit drinking. And it's only been six months, but I mean.

• 1:38:55Chris Williamson?

  So you just, you went from drinking pretty regularly to Iboga, gone.

• 1:38:58Speaker 00

  Gone.

• 1:38:59Chris Williamson?

  Wow.

• 1:38:59Speaker 00

  Drinking a bottle a night, you know, bottle of wine. I used to drink a lot more.

• 1:39:05Chris Williamson?

  Bottle of liquor.

• 1:39:06Speaker 00

  Yeah, a lot more. But I toned it down. It was a bottle of wine a night. I don't really think it was a problem as a good wind down. But man, I'll tell you, to the benefits, I mean, I don't know about you, but.

• 1:39:21Speaker 00

  I mean, my business just went from doing this to I quit drinking and it was, you know, my podcast just went crazy. And um, and I know that I'm developing into the person that I'm supposed to be.

• 1:39:39Chris Williamson?

  Forty years old.

• 1:39:40Speaker 00

  A lot faster.

• 1:39:41Chris Williamson?

  Thirty nine years old.

• 1:39:41Speaker 00

  You know?

• 1:39:42Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:42Speaker 00

  Because that shit gets in the way. It changes everything.

• 1:39:44Chris Williamson?

  One hundred percent, one hundred percent.

• 1:39:46Speaker 00

  Are you still not drinking?

• 1:39:47Chris Williamson?

  Um, I I drink when I'm away now. So I used to have a rule where the best way that I had for introducing alcohol was if I was ever going on holiday or doing a road trip somewhere else, I would allow myself to have a bit. I was doing Fourth of July Nashville two thousand nineteen, watching a quarter of a million people and country music with a half hour orchestral accompanied fireworks displays. Like, I'm not not having a beer here, right? I'm raising a beer. Um.

• 1:40:16Chris Williamson?

  But I wasn't doing it at home. I've now got myself to the stage where I came out to Austin and it's very social out here and everyone likes to drink and and go and watch live music and stuff. I've now got to the stage where Austin is also within the bucket of like a place that I don't drink in. So I'm starting to build that up over time. But dude, it's it's so strange for me thinking about sobriety now because it's been such a huge part of my life for six years. And when I talk about it, the increase in mental sharpness, the improvements in my sleep, the improvements in my mood, the consistency that you build habits at, right? The extra time, the extra money, the extra energy you have, all of that stuff.

• 1:40:57Chris Williamson?

  And that's not, I I'm not saying that you need to stop doing something that you find that is fun, like drinking or socializing or whatever, to replace it with spending the night doing your tax returns or whatever. My point is that I realized that I could supplement going out and and drinking or the hangover that that time would have filled up as well with something else that I genuinely enjoy, like going to play pickleball or going for a hike or getting another training session in at the gym or learning a new sport or whatever, right?

• 1:41:28Chris Williamson?

  Getting rid of alcohol opened up all of those opportunities to me. And when I did it at the time, it was the it was the single most impactful lifestyle change I made. All the breath work, all the meditation, all the everything, probably after the podcast, was the single biggest impact that it's had, just because it opened up all of that time and consistency and energy.

• 1:41:46Speaker 00

  What do you think the hardest thing about putting the bottle down was for you?

• 1:41:52Chris Williamson?

  Frankly, it wasn't very hard.

• 1:41:54Speaker 00

  Wasn't?

• 1:41:54Chris Williamson?

  No, no, I had no dependency on it at all. It was it was a complete lifestyle choice. The only slight thing that I came up against was a little bit of social pressure. And I think that for most people, I call it elective sobriety. The closest word that I've been able to find for people that aren't doing it to

• 1:42:13Chris Williamson?

  get away from a dependency, but to do it as a productivity strategy.

• 1:42:17Chris Williamson?

  The most difficult thing that they're going to encounter is peer pressure from friends. Because in a drinking environment that tends to be social, there is like an accepted routine that everyone goes through where the people that are drinking try to encourage the people that aren't drinking to drink. And there was a that's one of the challenges you come up against. But even for me there, man, like, it was so easy because I was the club promoter. I was one of the lead guys of this big company. So we had a good bit of status, especially within the nightlife world. So even for that, my pushback, as soon as I was firm twice, like, everyone listened. Because then I had enough status for people to kind of just stop pushing. But I understand that if you have friends who are more inclined toward drinking,

• 1:43:02Chris Williamson?

  there's a whole host of reasons as to why your friends start to encourage you. I mean, they they might start to feel a little bit of distaste at the fact that you're doing something that maybe they wish that they could do. There's also an element, I think, that when you go out drinking with other people, they know that you're making a sacrifice, both now and tomorrow, and in terms of your health, and in terms of money, and in terms of time, to be with them. And if you stop doing that, it kind of creates a them and us scenario. The tribalism kicks in and there is a distance that's created between the two of you. And I'm sure you'll have heard about the psychological experiments. So they'll bring people into a room, they'll toss a coin, heads go left, tails go right. And they'll say to the tails people of the far side, what do you think about the heads people? Like, they're so stupid, aren't they? Like, we're much more, we're much smarter than them.

• 1:43:46Chris Williamson?

  My point being that any opportunity for people to be tribal and they'll do it. And as soon as you start to create an other out of yourself, that'll happen. But the bottom line is like,

• 1:43:57Chris Williamson?

  If your friends only want to have you around when you're destroying your health along with them, then they're not really your friends. And if you find out that you can only bear to be around your friends when you're drunk, then you definitely need better friends.

• 1:44:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's that was the hardest thing for me was.

• 1:44:12Speaker 00

  What do you do with all these friends now? Because before it was, I just drank with them. And now, most people that drink that much, they don't have any other hobbies.

• 1:44:23Chris Williamson?

  Well, do you have friends or do you have drinking partners?

• 1:44:24Speaker 00

  Exactly, exactly. I had a lot of drinking partners. But, um, so that was interesting. You know, and there's still, there's still people, some of them are my best friends that I'm, um, you know, would talk every night sometimes and.

• 1:44:43Speaker 00

  I wonder, you know, the next time we get together, what's that going to look like now that I'm not drinking? Because our whole relationship was built.

• 1:44:52Chris Williamson?

  Predicated on drinking, consuming alcohol together. Yeah, man, I mean, one of the best things I think about this is that the.

• 1:45:01Chris Williamson?

  Preconceived ideas about the ages that people can make like significant lifestyle changes at, becoming a father at thirty eight or thirty nine, getting sober and getting control of your emotions through psychedelics at thirty nine. All of these things, you know, moving from the UK to the US at thirty three. It's nice. I like the idea of breaking role models, especially around age. Age is something that you don't really even think about until you're probably like in your early thirties and you go, actually, hang in a second, workouts are taking longer and I get tired on a night time and I got to wake up to go to the bathroom if I drink too much water on an evening, like just stuff, stuff happens. And then you

• 1:45:41Chris Williamson?

  realize, well, hang in a second. The preconceived ideas I had around age are coming for everybody. Not everybody is going to deal with the grief of a friend being blown up in war. Not everybody's going to deal with fatherhood even, right? Not everybody becomes a father, but everybody gets older. Everybody does. And, uh, yeah, the more that I think about it, the more that breaking. Stereotypes around what you should be doing at a particular age. And then also trying to reinforce the things that you should be doing at a particular age. You should have control of your emotions. You should be able to have a disagreement with somebody without you getting invested and agitated.

• 1:46:26Chris Williamson?

  You should be able to control the substances that go into your body. You should be in charge of that. I did 500 days without caffeine for the same reason, just because I wanted to make sure that it was me that was in control of them. And I was like, yeah, I am.

• 1:46:41Speaker 00

  Have you done psychedelics?

• 1:46:42Chris Williamson?

  Not therapeutically.

• 1:46:44Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:46:46Chris Williamson?

  I've done maybe between five and 10 psilocybin trips of varying degrees. But I know that I should do, and I know that it would be probably something that would be very good for me. There is a degree of trepidation, I think, just because I've spent so much time speaking to people about them. And I know how much of a big lifestyle change it is and you go, what the fuck's on the other side of this? There's almost a bit, there's almost a part of you that thinks, well, if I don't know what's coming and I don't know the changes that might happen, that would almost maybe be a little bit easier. But I know that this could be something that could upend a lot of things and life's pretty good.

• 1:47:27Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, it's, I think that'll change. I think I'll end up doing some therapeutic stuff at some point. But there's also still a lot of low hanging fruit, I think, to pick up without having to assist it pharmacologically.

• 1:47:41Chris Williamson?

  And yeah, I'm so fascinated by the human mind and human nature, mine and everybody else's and how everybody interrelates and stuff. Sober, right? So at the moment, the world's a sufficiently colorful place without me needing to add anything else in just yet.

• 1:47:57Speaker 00

  Good.

• 1:47:59Chris Williamson?

  Sean Ryan, ladies and gentlemen, dudes, I appreciate the fuck out of you. Where should people go if they want to check out what it is that you're doing now?

• 1:48:05Speaker 00

  Just Google Sean Ryan Show, everything will come up.

• 1:48:10Speaker 02

  Thanks, man.

• 1:48:11Speaker 00

  Thank you. I really appreciate the opportunity. Thank you. And you're crushing it.

• 1:48:15Speaker 02

  I appreciate that. Mr. President, my company foreme of the explosion on our rig on October 2nd. Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all heap the blame on me.

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  What would happen if I stopped drilling? You stop, you freeze in there, that's what.

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  Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17. Not a minute without parent.