516: The Fat Electrician & Veteran With a Sign Talk Military Service, Life, and Putting Out Word.

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

• 0:00Jocko Willink?

  This is Jocko Podcast number 516 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening Echo. Good evening.

• 0:07Jocko Willink?

  You may notice that things have changed since you left. Family may have grown older, friends may have moved, and familiar places may look unfamiliar. That's as it should be. After all, you've changed too. Civilian life with its own duties and pleasures now offers the chance for a new beginning, built on the foundation of your service and sacrifice.

• 0:31Jocko Willink?

  And that right there is an excerpt from a military pamphlet that was issued by the War Department and the Navy Department in August of 1945. And the pamphlet is called Going Back to Civilian Life.

• 0:46Jocko Willink?

  And it's a very, when you look through the entire manual, it's actually a very positive spin on coming home from an absolutely brutal war. And that paragraph right there is about all they have to say about what the transition is going to be like from like a mental perspective, a psychological perspective. Because the rest of the pamphlet is just, you know, talking about your military records and your taxes and your family allowances and allotments and wearing your uniform and when you can and when you can't and how to, how to get good insurance and the change of beneficiaries and getting a government job and other just kind of like mundane administrative information that you probably didn't care much about when you were coming home from Iwo Jima.

• 1:26Jocko Willink?

  But the rest of it was up to you. And again, if you think about 1945 for the soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines of the greatest generation, they took advantage of every opportunity. And they did adjust well and they built America into what it is today. And it's not to say that veterans didn't struggle then as they sometimes struggle now, but there are a great many examples of service members who come home from war or come home from their standard military service, doing whatever their country asked them to do, who then carry on successfully with their next mission in the civilian sector. And we've got two of those men here tonight, Zach Bell,

• 2:07Jocko Willink?

  also known as Veteran With A Sign, who joined us before in the past, episode 426, where we talked about his time in the Marine Corps, serving in Afghanistan, his post-service life, leading up to becoming a veteran advocate through his social media and podcast. And also joining us is Nick, the Fat Electrician.

• 2:29Jocko Willink?

  Another veteran who served as a medic in the National Guard, who then became an electrician at some point along the way, apparently was fat, or at least heading in that direction, uh, before finding an outlet for his sense of humor and his interest in military history, making educational and entertaining videos on his YouTube channel, The Fat Electrician. So gentlemen, thanks for joining us.

• 2:54Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 2:55Jocko Willink?

  Thanks for coming out.

• 2:56Speaker 01

  Good to be here.

• 2:56Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, this is a, how did Fat Electrician thing come about?

• 3:00Speaker 01

  Man, I was a-

• 3:01Jocko Willink?

  Let's get on that one.

• 3:02Speaker 01

  I was an electrician and just had my first kid. He was about three months old and I was at the gym bench pressing and completely ruptured my pack and tore it off. So like whole muscle sucked into your chest and uh, couldn't work as an electrician with one arm. So I was sitting at home doing DoorDash in a sling, trying to make money. Got a new kid I just had. Wife isn't back to work yet and uh, she kept sending me these links through text messages for this little kids dancing app called TikTok and I refused to download the app because I thought it was for little kids. So I just kept clicking them and watching them through like Safari or the internet browser on my phone or whatever. And after 500, I was like, oh fuck it, I'll download the app.

• 3:44Speaker 01

  So I downloaded it and sitting at home doom scrolling on these shorts when they first came out and then for some reason I decided to, you know, make a video of my own and I named the, my, my username was The Fat Electrician as a joke to my wife. Like I'm, I can't work out. I'm not at work. I'm sitting at home doing nothing all day. I'm going to get fat. So that's what I went with for the name as a joke to her. And then I made a TikTok and I think the first one I ever made got 12 million views in about three days.

• 4:11Jocko Willink?

  Damn.

• 4:11Speaker 01

  And then it just kept going.

• 4:14Jocko Willink?

  You, it's like you struck uh, oil, like you were digging in your backyard and all of a sudden like black stuff started coming out. You're like, wait a second.

• 4:20Speaker 01

  I know.

• 4:20Jocko Willink?

  Maybe I should keep digging.

• 4:21Speaker 01

  Timer starts. I've got 45 seconds till the DOD's here. It's gonna be awful.

• 4:28Jocko Willink?

  Well, let, let's get into that. Zach, obviously last time you were on here, we talked about your past and what you went through and how you ended up what you're doing.

• 4:35Speaker 01

  Yes, sir.

• 4:36Jocko Willink?

  And if people want to hear that, go back and listen to 426. But before we get into what you guys are doing right now, let's get a little bit more background on that, on, on you, Nick, where you came from. So where we, where'd you grow up?

• 4:46Speaker 01

  Uh, California and Iowa. So I was born in uh, Chico, California. I grew up there till I was about 12 years old. So parents, uh, parents didn't really have their shit together. They were young when I was born.

• 4:57Jocko Willink?

  How young?

• 4:58Speaker 01

  Uh, I think my mom was eighteen. I think my dad was twenty one. And they, they weren't really ready for it. And, uh, whole childhood was, uh, you know, moving from one town to the next. I think I went to like thirteen different elementary schools. So like I was always, always the new kid. Uh, they had, you know, drug problems, some other problems. And then right around the time I was twelve, two younger sisters, um, I think she would have been seven and three at the time. They decided to get their shit together and the only way they could do that was to go somewhere where they didn't know how to get drugs. So when I was twelve years old, I got on a Greyhound bus with a backpack full of clothes and a Goosebumps backpack with my PlayStation two in it.

• 5:40Speaker 01

  And had a three day bus ride to Charles City, Iowa, and then lived in my grandma's basement for a year.

• 5:47Jocko Willink?

  So your grandma was out there?

• 5:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:49Jocko Willink?

  Did you ship out there before your parents rolled out there?

• 5:52Speaker 01

  Uh, so me, my mom and my two sisters all went together on a Greyhound bus. So super fun to do that as a twelve year old on a three day bus ride. Get to see a lot of the world inside of a bus, let me tell you. Um, so yeah, and then my dad probably came three weeks, a month and a half.

• 6:09Jocko Willink?

  Did you ever talk to your dad and mom and figure out like, what was the wake up call? At what point did they go, hold on a second? We gotta, we gotta fix this shit?

• 6:16Speaker 01

  I mean, it's just one of those things. Like they always knew they were doing a bad job. And then, you know, I think seeing the kids start to grow up and, you know, it sucks for me being the new kid all the time. And it's like, okay, well, not that I was already too broken to repair, but like we've got two more chances. We can make it better for those two also. And then, you know, I think it, I think it got to the point where, you know, extended family was gonna try to get involved and, you know, have us go live with them. So just decided to get their shit together. It's been great ever since.

• 6:44Jocko Willink?

  What time of year was it when you got to Iowa?

• 6:46Speaker 01

  Ah, I don't remember exactly. I tell you, it's a lot fucking colder than California.

• 6:50Jocko Willink?

  I was gonna say, especially if it was Chico in the summertime.

• 6:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:53Jocko Willink?

  It was like you went from blistering hot and it, or if it was the wintertime, you went to just buck ass cold.

• 6:58Speaker 01

  I think there was, I think there was snow on the ground. It had to have been winter. Cause I mean, and I live in, I live in northern Iowa. I'm like thirty miles from the Minnesota border.

• 7:06Jocko Willink?

  Oh dang.

• 7:06Speaker 01

  And like that upper tip of Iowa is, I mean, you'll have wind chills and stuff, negative thirty to negative sixty in the winter. So it was crazy.

• 7:15Jocko Willink?

  Didn't you not see snow echo Charles until like you moved to San Diego or something?

• 7:21Speaker 02

  Well, I saw it one time and then like years and years and years after I moved to San Diego, yeah.

• 7:26Jocko Willink?

  Once you got to San Diego, when's the first time you went and like ran around in the snow?

• 7:30Speaker 02

  In the snow? Um, well, on the big island in Hawaii, if you go to Mauna Kea, sometimes there's snow.

• 7:35Jocko Willink?

  Hmm.

• 7:35Speaker 02

  So I saw snow, walked in it. That was it. And then the first time was, I don't know, maybe like eight years ago, maybe?

• 7:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Cause I was, you know, we were friends when you saw snow for the first time. You can't be pretty excited about that.

• 7:49Speaker 02

  It is a very magical experience for sure.

• 7:51Jocko Willink?

  Probably more excited than Nick was when he showed up at a twelve year old.

• 7:55Speaker 01

  He shows up to my house for the first time. I, I, my house is on a river and he's like blown away and infatuated that the river is frozen in January. He doesn't get it.

• 8:06Speaker 03

  It's too cold. If moving water is like, we're done for a little bit. I, I, my people aren't made for that. Like I come from the Mississippi. Like I need to be near warmth.

• 8:14Jocko Willink?

  Dude, the real cold, I was up in Montana, I think it was two years ago and it was negative, like negative forty-five. Like my diesel engine gelled up, you know, it was freaking gnarly and you couldn't do anything. Except for if you're in Montana, that's just life. If you're in like Minnesota, that's just life. That's just the way it is.

• 8:35Speaker 01

  You gotta plug your diesel truck in, have the warmer so the fuel doesn't gel up. That's normal stuff, man.

• 8:41Jocko Willink?

  So what was it like growing, so you know, small town there up in the middle of Iowa?

• 8:45Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah. So Charles City, Iowa, I think at the time it was like seven to eight thousand people. So I mean, I went from being a new kid and, you know, pretty big cities all over the place, you know, like graduating classes were, you know, so big, you never even met everybody in your class. And I think the graduating class that I had in high school was like a hundred and fifty kids. So like you, you know, everybody and then, I don't know, I was probably not the new kid for the first time in my life around fourteen years old. So.

• 9:11Jocko Willink?

  And you, what sports did you do?

• 9:13Speaker 01

  Uh, I did football for like the first year and then I just got into jujitsu with the local MMA team and just was doing that the whole time.

• 9:21Jocko Willink?

  Straight to jujitsu, even in Iowa and wrestling, was wrestling at your school big?

• 9:27Speaker 01

  Wrestling is big at every school in Iowa, except I was fourteen and that's a, unless you're an athletic freak, which I am not, it is way too late. You go in at fourteen years old to wrestle this other kid that's also competing for the JV slots, got nine hundred matches. You're like, ah, I'm good. To wrestle before you can walk. They're crazy.

• 9:51Jocko Willink?

  It's epic out there, isn't it?

• 9:53Speaker 01

  It's insane.

• 9:55Jocko Willink?

  So you did, and football you just did for a year?

• 9:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, I did football for a year, just, yeah, not my thing.

• 10:01Jocko Willink?

  And how'd you find jujitsu?

• 10:02Speaker 01

  Uh, I was working at a pizza place called Pizza Ranch and one of the like shift managers who was, I don't know, a couple of years older than me, maybe, could, did a MMA at like an abandoned school in the next town over. They had MMA events every month or whatever and he would go fight there. So.

• 10:20Jocko Willink?

  So you need kind of neat, in what timeframe is this?

• 10:23Speaker 01

  This would have been like twenty, two thousand eight to two thousand twelve.

• 10:27Jocko Willink?

  Cause there's a certain, if you go back a little further than that, you gotta put air quotes around MMA matches in Iowa. Because it's just like, and even out here, like remember some of those old matches we'd go to that you'd go, bro, this is not.

• 10:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:40Jocko Willink?

  Regulated it anyway. And these people have very limited training.

• 10:44Speaker 01

  Oh, no, it was very much that. It was very much that.

• 10:47Jocko Willink?

  Pro matches. Pro matches, air quotes, you're going, dude, I sincerely hope no one dies. Because this is not, this is not okay.

• 10:56Speaker 01

  They at least had, they at least had like the local volunteer ambulance people showing up.

• 11:01Jocko Willink?

  So you got that going.

• 11:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:03Jocko Willink?

  That's another thing that's really weird. Like I used to get these young MMA fighters, I wanna fight, I wanna fight. And you go to an amateur MMA fight. And sort of like that kid that had nine hundred matches when he's fourteen years old trying. The same thing happens with MMA where, hey, oh, this guy's O and O. But he, you know, is a junior college wrestler that is a Golden Gloves boxer. Like, and you got some kid that, you know, is, has been doing jujitsu for eight months. He's like, dude, I want to fight MMA. It's like, bro, you don't know what that first match is going to be like. It could be that kid.

• 11:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:34Jocko Willink?

  That's just going to annihilate you. And I had some people that were on the annihilation side of that, too. You know, like Taylor, remember Taylor?

• 11:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:41Jocko Willink?

  Bro, he, you know, he was like a junior college All-American and he just murdered people, you know, but he had his O and O record. So, then he had a one and O record. He's getting somebody else that has a one and one record. It's like just pure annihilation. And so you're training jujitsu. Did you kind of get the jujitsu bug right out of the gate?

• 12:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, I loved it. I mean, I was a like fat chubby kid until then. So then started working out and stuff with that, too. And then, you know, didn't have a high quality training in the area. So I was, you know, taking all the money. I was making it my minimum wage job for gas money to drive down to Waterloo, the only town with a jujitsu gym that was, you know, ninety miles away, go train there, drive up to Mason City where they had a bigger MMA team. So did that all through high school.

• 12:28Jocko Willink?

  Well, did you start getting any kind of like goals of fighting MMA or using that for a career type?

• 12:35Speaker 01

  Uh, I mean, it was always one of those things that I wanted to do, but it was also just like, man, I hate competing. I did a bunch of jujitsu tournaments and stuff and I think MMA would be better, but I loathe doing jujitsu tournaments.

• 12:48Jocko Willink?

  What makes you loathe it?

• 12:49Speaker 01

  I just, if I, I just want to show up and do it. And I hate the, all right, well, we got to be here at eight in the morning to weigh in. And then, you know, you're younger and you're in the middleweight to heavyweight weight category. So you're not going to compete till four in the afternoon. So it's like you're stuck at an airport on a layover for six hours before you got to try to like turn it on to compete. And it's just not fun to me at all.

• 13:12Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, they're getting somewhat better at it now. Like jujitsu tournaments are a little bit better now. Part of it is because they have computer, whatever, apps that kind of set the whole thing up. So the cool thing now is they'll tell you, oh, you know, men's adult. Two hundred pounds is competing at this time and they're fairly accurate as opposed to, I remember showing up at five o'clock in the morning to weigh in and literally not getting my first match until eight o'clock at night.

• 13:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:41Jocko Willink?

  It was just a complete disaster.

• 13:43Speaker 01

  It's just like this is, I'm still working. I got a normal life. This has turned into a whole weekend thing and I spent money to be here. It's eh.

• 13:50Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And what are you going to win? Like a four dollar plastic medal?

• 13:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. It's pretty sick.

• 13:55Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 13:57Speaker 01

  Pretty sick. Was your name spelled wrong or something? No, they're not engraving it custom for you.

• 14:03Jocko Willink?

  What else were you into when you were growing up?

• 14:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, that was it, man. I was always, uh, I liked business, liked history. So, I mean, history class, business class. So, I mean, I was always working. I think all through high school, I was working thirty four hours a week because that was the most you were legally allowed to work before they had to offer you benefits. So, I mean, I was working, doing jujitsu, going to school. That was about it.

• 14:26Jocko Willink?

  What was your plan as you're looking to the future when you're seventeen years old or whatever? Your junior year, did you have a plan?

• 14:32Speaker 01

  No idea. Had no idea at all. So, that's kind of why I just did the, always originally wanted to go into the Navy and then, um, had a high school girlfriend that I loved and she didn't want me to go away and do the active duty thing. So, I did Army National Guard instead because it was one weekend a month and, uh, two weeks in the summer. Never had a single Saturday, Sunday drill ever, but whatever. So, did that, stayed, ended up.

• 15:01Jocko Willink?

  What'd you want to do in the Navy? Did you have like a specific goal?

• 15:04Speaker 01

  Uh, I actually wanted to be SWIC.

• 15:06Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 15:07Speaker 01

  So, I thought that sounded cool.

• 15:08Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. You even, I'm surprised people even knew about that back then.

• 15:12Speaker 01

  I was, uh, I was pretty big on, you know, Googling it and looking into it and stuff. But you gotta remember, this is also twenty, twenty twelve. So, I mean, it's not like the nineteen nineties where it was like. Well, it's a seal. Never heard, you know, so there's some information out there if you can find it. I was young, knew how to use the internet. So I thought Swick sounded cool.

• 15:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I mean, it's a cool job if you like boats, like it's what you're gonna be doing, driving freaking boats. So it's if you like boats and some people are really into boats. I mean, obviously, like you go out to Lake Havasu or something. That that's a whole thing out there. It's a whole culture of driving boats. So if you wanna get free gas money. Swick's a pretty good, pretty damn good job, you know? So you go to the National Guard. Did you, did you pick an MOS out of the gate?

• 15:56Speaker 01

  Uh, so when you go there, you go, you go to Meps and then they, you know, they get your GT score and they're like, they pretty much told me it. I don't remember what the score was, but I could do borderline anything I wanted. But with National Guard, it's like, yeah, you can do that job. You qualify to get and we'll do it for you. But the nearest drilling location, a unit that has, you know, military intelligence or whatever I thought I wanted, knowing nothing is eight hours away. And you gotta drive there every month. And I was like, all right, well, what's, what's close? And they're like, well, there's infantry and combat arms and artillery 45 minutes from your house. And I was like, okay, cool. What do they want? They're like, you'd be infantry, mortars, or a medic. And I was like, all right, I'll be a medic.

• 16:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, right on.

• 16:36Speaker 01

  So that's what I picked.

• 16:37Jocko Willink?

  Did you have any interest in being a medic or is it just like it seemed like a transferable skill?

• 16:41Speaker 01

  It's one of those things where you're just like, yeah, that sounds cool to do. I'll go do that. And then, uh, then that kind of changed the plan to, you know, I'm gonna go off, be a, be a combat medic and then I'll come back and do like nursing.

• 16:52Jocko Willink?

  How old, how old were you when you signed up for the National Guard?

• 16:54Speaker 01

  Seventeen. I was in my senior year still.

• 16:57Jocko Willink?

  So you could sign up for combat medic. How long did it take before you could leave for boot camp?

• 17:01Speaker 01

  Uh, so I signed up, had to finish my senior year, but the National Guard has a program. It's not ROTC. It's, there's some acronym for it, but it's basically like you start drilling right away. And they have a whole drill weekend for recruits that haven't been to basic yet. And it's like, go there. Some, you show up to basic knowing how to march. You know, all the rank, you know, all the stuff they make you yell and recite and do everything.

• 17:24Jocko Willink?

  So you're ahead of the powder kerving boot camp?

• 17:26Speaker 01

  Yes. A National Guard, at least in the army, I don't know about everybody, everywhere else, but they have like the highest percentage of honor graduates. Cause you show up already having done, you know, a hundred hours of. Instruction and all this other stuff.

• 17:38Jocko Willink?

  For free.

• 17:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:40Jocko Willink?

  It's for free, right?

• 17:41Speaker 01

  Hey, they paid me to go.

• 17:42Jocko Willink?

  Oh, did they pay you?

• 17:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, they paid you to go. They paid you the same rate for whatever your rank was for the, I think National Guard splits it up into two eight-hour periods in a day for a MUA and that's what, but they paid you. So it was cool.

• 17:54Jocko Willink?

  So how's boot camp? You pretty much crush it?

• 17:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, I walked in. I got honor graduate and I mean, it was just, you know, I walked in knowing how to march. I actually cared and tried to whatever. And other people can't understand left face, right face for six weeks. I'm doing pushups because of it, but it was fine.

• 18:14Jocko Willink?

  Did you get any of that sort of like, hey, maybe I want to do this for a living? Like for real?

• 18:20Speaker 01

  Uh.

• 18:20Jocko Willink?

  Like I want to stay in? I want to go active duty? Anything like that?

• 18:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, I definitely thought about it. But again, you know, the whole reason I didn't was girlfriend didn't want to, didn't want to live that life. So made that decision, chose her and it worked out so far.

• 18:35Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 18:36Speaker 01

  Mother of my kids and happily married. So.

• 18:38Jocko Willink?

  So you made a good call.

• 18:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't regret it.

• 18:42Jocko Willink?

  So, so you get done with boot camp and then do you go directly to your advanced training?

• 18:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:47Jocko Willink?

  Being a medic? How long is the medic school?

• 18:49Speaker 01

  The medic school is like, it's one of the longest MOSs in the army. I want to say it's close to six months and they split it up into two, two categories. You have like a civilian side and then the whiskey side because it's sixty-eight whiskey is the MOS. So the civilian side is you have to get your EMTB civilian certification and I think six, six or eight weeks. And I mean, this EMTB book is this thick and you go through it and it's like 12 hours a day. And it's like this chapter, next day we're testing on it. If you fail, you're retaking it. If you fail the retake, you're recycling. So it had like, I don't know, thirty to forty percent people getting kicked out, rage, just failing the written tests. Like it wasn't physically hard, but it was just,

• 19:32Speaker 01

  you have to do this. So get through the civilian side, then you get over to the whiskey side where you can do the actual, like combat medicine that the army allows you to do that civilians won't. So you leave with an EMTB certification and you go work at the fire department or whatever.

• 19:46Jocko Willink?

  And what year is this?

• 19:48Speaker 01

  This would have been 2012, 2013.

• 19:50Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so you're looking at the wars. Are you thinking like, I'm definitely going to get called up? Did you think that way? Cause hey, in two thousand and six, I was in Ramadi and when I got there, it was National Guard on the ground. They'd been there for fourteen months and like taking massive casualties and they were awesome.

• 20:07Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 20:08Jocko Willink?

  It was not probably what most National Guard dudes thought they were going to be doing when they joined the National Guard.

• 20:14Speaker 01

  No, my recruiter and my unit were very upfront with us. So we're one thirty-third out of Waterloo, out of the thirty-fourth infantry, which is, I think it's the most deployed National Guard unit in American history. And I mean, those guys have deployed everywhere. And while I was at A I T, my unit was in Afghanistan on deployment. So like I was told right out of the gate, like, hey, we deploy every four years because they deployed every four years through all of G W O T. So I mean, I was under the impression I was going to Afghanistan for the first three years I was in. So you have like the train up period and we're training up like we were going to Afghanistan and then a year out, they're like, well, everything's winding down. Now you guys are going to go to Egypt. And then six months later, they're like, ah, we're not going to Egypt.

• 20:58Speaker 01

  You're just going to go train in Alaska. It's like, okay, whatever.

• 21:02Jocko Willink?

  So you had, at least you had this medical background and then what you said you were going to become a, do something in the medical field?

• 21:09Speaker 01

  Yeah. So then I figured I'd do something in medical field. So I came back home, got through all the training, was drilling, doing National Guard stuff and then started going to college, got the associates and science you need to get into nursing school. And then I went into nursing school.

• 21:24Jocko Willink?

  And how'd that work out?

• 21:25Speaker 01

  Not great. Not my thing. Let me tell you.

• 21:29Jocko Willink?

  What didn't you like about it?

• 21:31Speaker 01

  I can tell you the moment I knew it wasn't going to work out. It was about fifteen minutes into the first day.

• 21:36Jocko Willink?

  Damn, okay. You went deep.

• 21:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, super, super deep. Got the threshold, yeah. It, and I'm not ragging on nurses. It's a very hard job. They're incredible people. They're super compassionate. It just wasn't my thing.

• 21:49Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you should, well, you should say they're super compassionate and you're not.

• 21:53Speaker 01

  Also true. The, the nursing teacher who was, you know, nursing is the hardest job on the planet, yada, yada, yada. Fine. She plays this YouTube video. It's like animated thing. It's still on YouTube, talking about how incredible nurses are. It's like, okay, that's a good point. That's a good point. And then they're like, most people don't realize this, but more nurses get hurt on the job than active duty military, cops, firefighters and construction workers combined. And I was like,

• 22:19Speaker 01

  Okay, not that we need to make this a competition, but there's a difference between straining your back, helping an old lady out of bed and getting blown up or falling off a skyscraper, landing on some rebar like, so it was just very much, I don't know, I couldn't handle the gossip, didn't have the compassionate side, I guess.

• 22:37Jocko Willink?

  My, uh, my sister, my younger sister is graduating from nursing school in December. She's gonna be a nurse, but you know, she's, and you, you probably like, oh, thinking, wait, how old is your younger sister? Cause Jocko, you're 54. So, yeah, she's like 50 something. But she's made up her mind that that's gonna be her career, but she's a perfect person for it, for it because she is like ultra compassionate and hardworking and like she is gonna be a great nurse and I would be probably in the running for being the worst nurse, you know, ever, probably right behind you, I guess.

• 23:15Speaker 01

  That's, that's where I was like, apparently you can't talk to the patients the way you talk to the army guys. Okay, fine. Well, I guess.

• 23:25Jocko Willink?

  So were you, you were enrolled in nursing school?

• 23:28Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 23:28Jocko Willink?

  In 15 minutes, you figure out that this is not your jam. What do you do then?

• 23:32Speaker 01

  Uh, you know, well, there's still, that's like the hindsight. I should have known that. So I mean, it's still like, okay, maybe this is just, you know, it's like the army, it's like anything else. There's, there's the BS you gotta walk through where it's like, this is what's supposed to happen versus what actually happens. So I'm still push through it for I think, uh, two semesters trying to like, and then eventually I get to the point where I'm doing clinicals and stuff and I'm like, oh, I, uh, clinicals at first for me were really good.

• 23:57Jocko Willink?

  Cause what are you doing during a clinical?

• 23:59Speaker 01

  You literally just show up and like, you get, here's the nurse that works here. She's, she's got five patients. There's five students. You're each gonna take a patient over for her and she's just gonna supervise you handling her patients.

• 24:12Jocko Willink?

  So you're basically like practicing?

• 24:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:15Jocko Willink?

  While being supervised?

• 24:17Speaker 01

  Hundred percent.

• 24:18Jocko Willink?

  Looking at patients.

• 24:19Speaker 01

  With one patient instead of five.

• 24:20Jocko Willink?

  Got it.

• 24:21Speaker 01

  Get overwhelmed, you know, um, and clinicals at first went great for me because it, when you first start out, the clinicals are usually just in, um, like old folk homes. And so they would always give me the old war veteran that, you know, he's in there, he's eighty years old and I would just sit down and be like, okay, you need your diaper changed or food, nothing, cool. And all the other students would just like go sit down and work on homework and then check on him every forty five minutes. But like I was in there for eight hours, just talking with some dude that was, you know, a Cav Scout in Vietnam.

• 24:52Jocko Willink?

  Enzo.

• 24:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. So like, and that's like part of why I love doing the military history stuff. So just got to go and talk with so many of these old war veterans in these retirement homes. And then, you know, you get to the next, you know, nursing too, or whatever the next class was. And then you start going into like hospitals and it's like, I didn't care for those clinicals at all. And I was like, I'm gonna go do something else.

• 25:14Jocko Willink?

  And what was the something, something else? Is this where you picked up the electrician path?

• 25:18Speaker 01

  I had no idea what I was gonna do. Like I joined the army to pay for college, didn't need college, apparently don't like it. And I was like, ah shit, what a, and I was on social media and Mike Rowe, Dirty Jobs posted a meme that it was, I forget the exact stat, but it was like eighty-five percent of all licensed electricians are set to retire in the next ten years and their average pay is this. And I was like, okay, cool. I'll do that. And then I called every electrical contractor in my town that day, asked for a job, had a job by the next day.

• 25:48Jocko Willink?

  Damn.

• 25:49Speaker 01

  And was starting my apprenticeship to be a journeyman electrician.

• 25:53Jocko Willink?

  And how long, how long does that take?

• 25:55Speaker 01

  Uh, depends on where you're at. It's either a four or five year program. Uh, the, where I was at at the time is it was a five year program.

• 26:03Jocko Willink?

  How deep did you go in that?

• 26:04Speaker 01

  I finished, I'm a journeyman electrician, still have the license and everything.

• 26:07Jocko Willink?

  Got it done. And then, so, so you become an electrician, you're working, are you getting like a lot of overtime? Are you working your ass off once you become an electrician or when you're working to become a journeyman?

• 26:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, so you, you can always tell them note overtime, but like when you're the young guy, don't have kids yet. And so, you know, you're working sixty, eighty hours a week, depending on the time of year and how busy it is. And the company that I worked for, we did a mostly industrial. So like we had. You know, there's 15 factories in the town I live in, and this company has the contract to like nine of them. So it was very much a, and they're running around the clock. So it was always a situation of like, hey, this electrical panel blew up or melted down, or they've got some emergencies. So like you're on call. You're showing up at whatever time, whenever something breaks to fix it. And then you've got, you know, your new projects you're installing during normal hours.

• 26:57Jocko Willink?

  Did you like it?

• 26:58Speaker 01

  I loved it.

• 26:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 27:00Speaker 01

  I mean, it's just the, the construction industry is so much like the military. It's insane. I mean, you show up to a construction site. They've got the whiteboard with all the rules and all the stuff, the same thing like a military range does. You can.

• 27:14Jocko Willink?

  Here's the timeline that we're trying to make. Here's the mission that we're trying to get accomplished. Here's the restraints that we've got to maintain. Here's the overall regulations we gotta follow. Go.

• 27:23Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 27:25Jocko Willink?

  I've always thought that being, so I, I took electricity in high school, so I, I like knew how to wire houses and stuff. And I also work construction, so I knew, I know how to like do plumbing and whatnot too. But I've always found that the thing that sucks about electrical is when you get done with a job and something doesn't work, it's really hard to figure out where it is. And that sucks. The thing that sucks about plumbing is when you get done with a job and something doesn't work, you see exactly where the problem is and it's spraying all over the place and it's, and that sucks too. So it's like, which one do you want to do? Do you want to do the one that's like unknown to try and figure out or the one that's real easy to figure out where it is, but it's like you're, you're, it's a shit sandwich.

• 28:06Speaker 01

  Dude, I love the, you know, cause I was, so I was a service truck guy. So I was one of the, I was like one of the top electricians at my company that they would call with like issues. So I was always getting pulled off the job to go solve the mysteries that nobody can figure out. Some of the shit I've seen that people have done. Like I've shown up to somebody's house.

• 28:25Speaker 01

  My switches electrocute me.

• 28:28Speaker 01

  What? I'm not shitting you. I show I show up to this house and I'm like flipping the switch. I was like, it's plastic. I'm not getting shocked. Like, what are you guys talking about there? Like, I don't know. Sometimes it just shocks me. And I get up and I'm like looking at light fixtures and plugging stuff in and out. And then I touch the light fixture. The light fixture shocks the dog shit out of me. What is happening? So they had tied the the hot wire in with the ground. For this new room they built. And then the ground feeding that whole room wasn't grounded at the panel. So they were electrifying all the metal boxes and anything touching metal in that entire room. So if you walked by and brushed the light switch, the the two screws on the cover plate would shock

• 29:12Speaker 01

  the shit out of you. Like, all kinds of stuff like that. But I love the problem solving of it.

• 29:17Jocko Willink?

  I had a I bought a house and it was built in nineteen forty eight. And, bro, I went into the attic. Like, once I bought it and started trying to figure out what I had to fix on it.

• 29:25Speaker 01

  You got up there with a knob and tube wire.

• 29:27Jocko Willink?

  Totally insane that this place was still standing. There was just open wire, like, electrical taped in nineteen fifty two, peeled off everywhere, insulation sitting right by it. It is. It was a I couldn't believe that this house was still standing. And then I had another house that had aluminum wire.

• 29:48Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 29:48Jocko Willink?

  From the seventies, I guess, out of the seventies. And so it it shrinks and like, everything is open and missing and just a disaster.

• 29:58Speaker 01

  Some of the some of the houses and stuff you run into, it's like, I'm shocked there's not more house fires. But the other thing is like, I'm shocked at how complex the electrical systems and stuff are and how much thought goes into keeping the average person safe that has no idea what electricity is. Like, it's just a magical plug in that powers shit to you. But it's like, there's so much that could go wrong. And there's so many safety measures that you don't even see protecting you.

• 30:24Jocko Willink?

  And I hate to say this, but it's it's also gone very much the ro route of cars. Like, back when I was a kid, and you'd open up the hood of a car, you're like, okay, there's the carburetor, there's the spark plugs, you know, there's the distributor. Like, you could see and identify what was happening. And you could listen to it and be like, oh, this could be the problem over here. Nowadays, you open up a car hood and it's like, yeah, I'm going into the the the Ford dealer. Like, I have no idea what this shit does.

• 30:59Speaker 01

  So I like, I was in that generation that had to make that switch. So all the electricians that taught me how to be electricians. They got started in the sixties and seventies and they were wild in hindsight to work with. I mean, I had a, I had a journeyman. That would walk up, I like, I have a little pin that tells me if something's got electricity in it, if it's on or off. I got a meter where I can see how many volts it is. This dude would walk up to hot panels and shit and just be, he'd lick his pinky and his thumb and he'd touch his pinky to hot bus bar, electrified bus bar, and then touch it to the case to shock his hand. But it just went through his hand and he could tell you how much voltage it was by how much it shocked it. And that was just a normal fucking thing for him to do.

• 31:42Speaker 01

  And then like, I'm, I'm learning from this guy, but I'm also having to deal with all these new light fixtures and light switches where it's like, to install it, I gotta download an app on my phone and then figure it out. And then I gotta teach the customer how to run this app so they can dim their fucking lights. It sucked.

• 31:56Jocko Willink?

  That's what I was just about to complain about. Yeah. Cause I'm that guy now and I have like an app on my phone. Where it's like, oh, you wanna dim the lights? There's no dimmer switch. No, oh, get into the app, which is, your app needs to be updated and then you're downloading this thing. It's just, it's a total, it's a different world. And the electrical panel is also now through what looks like some kind of a computer server of some kind of echo charles. Like, you look at it, you're like, all right, cool. You know, you, you, the electrician job has got to have stepped up in the last five years. As far as what you need to know.

• 32:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, for sure. I mean, it's gotten a lot more complicated. And the other thing with like the electrical field is it, saying you're an electrician is like saying you're in the military. It's not, and a lot of people don't realize that, like, it doesn't give you a good grip on what this guy knows or does on a day to day basis. Cause you can be a journeyman electrician and all you've done for 30 years is dig ditches and lay pipes in it and pull wire to traffic lights, which nothing wrong with that, but that's all you know. You don't know how to wire a house. You don't know how to install a giant animatronic robot arm to palletize shit. Or you could be dealing with a guy that quite literally has to frequently correct the electrical engineers on how to build a factory. Like, you just have no idea.

• 33:11Jocko Willink?

  It's a broad spectrum.

• 33:12Speaker 01

  It's humongous. It's everything with electricity.

• 33:15Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 33:16Speaker 01

  Shockingly enough. Shocking.

• 33:18Jocko Willink?

  So then I guess, did your life start to turn a little bit when you hurt your pack?

• 33:25Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. I mean.

• 33:26Jocko Willink?

  Is that, so you told that quick story about you blew out your pack total?

• 33:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:31Jocko Willink?

  Total pack tear?

• 33:32Speaker 01

  Yep. Total, total pack rupture. I had a, I had just become a journeyman electrician. So like I was pumped because every year you finish a year of the program, you get a big raise and that jump from being an apprentice to a journeyman was like a, it was like a $10 an hour raise. Like it was what I've been working for for five years. Didn't get a single full paycheck in before I got hurt. My son's three months old. It fucking sucked.

• 33:55Jocko Willink?

  Were you just bench, you were benching?

• 33:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, just bench.

• 33:57Jocko Willink?

  Were you maxing or was it like a weird moment?

• 34:00Speaker 01

  It was like the third rep and I was doing 375, like nothing I hadn't done before all the time. And it just went.

• 34:10Jocko Willink?

  No warning?

• 34:11Speaker 01

  Nothing.

• 34:12Jocko Willink?

  Was it a hard rep?

• 34:14Speaker 01

  No.

• 34:15Jocko Willink?

  God, this is scary. I find this scary. Echo Charles, is this scary?

• 34:19Speaker 02

  At 375, you kind of.

• 34:21Jocko Willink?

  You're in the game.

• 34:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, you gotta know about that.

• 34:22Jocko Willink?

  Things can happen.

• 34:23Speaker 02

  Things will be happening.

• 34:24Jocko Willink?

  Things will be happening. So it's gone.

• 34:28Speaker 01

  Yep. So I mean, that tore and like, you know.

• 34:30Jocko Willink?

  Lucky, did you drop the weight? Like what happened?

• 34:34Speaker 01

  Weight drops.

• 34:34Jocko Willink?

  That side just freaking gives out.

• 34:36Speaker 01

  That goes. And then I had, you know, I had a spotter with me standing there, but he knows that, he knows that this wasn't heavyweight for me. He was just there for more of like a check the box and then so.

• 34:47Jocko Willink?

  Out of nowhere.

• 34:48Speaker 01

  Yep. He gets it off me and like just drive home from the gym pissed and like I could tell immediately like this muscle isn't here. You know, I walk into the doctor and, uh, you know, my mom worked at the hospital. So she got me in to see an orthopedic surgeon and he's like, yeah, it's torn. He's like, do you want to like mess with the MRI and stuff? I was like, no, just fix it. So I go in, get it fixed and like that.

• 35:12Jocko Willink?

  Do they fix it immediately or you got surgery like two, three days later?

• 35:15Speaker 01

  Two, three days later. I mean, it's not like any emergency thing. It's, it was, I got really lucky. It's hard to find a place, a doctor that will do that surgery, actually, at least in rural Iowa where I live. Cause I've torn both. The second time I tore one, like I that guy had retired and I had to call around all over the state to find somebody. Usually they're like, oh, we we treat it conservatively. And I go, that sounds like that sounds like you're not gonna fucking fix it. They're like, yeah, well, we can give you rehab. I go, that's not gonna reattach the tendon to the bone. Like, I'm thirty.

• 35:47Jocko Willink?

  I think kind of like the way car mechanics and electricians, I think like doctors are gonna have to adjust to the new attitude of humans, which is like, in the old days, you're still able to lift your arm too. You're good. You know, you don't need, we don't care about your pec. We don't care about your bicep. We don't care about, oh, you lost some strength in your hands because your freaking spine is jacked up, but you're still, you can still do the dishes. You're good to go. Like, we're not like that anymore.

• 36:14Speaker 03

  Get in there and do the dishes.

• 36:15Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, we're like, no, you you you get me back to like, as close to full capacity as you can get me. Well, you know, there's risk. Yeah, I know there's risk. Let's let's fucking do this.

• 36:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. So it's hard. It was hard to find a doctor that second time. But, uh, so I mean, luckily, haven't, you know, gone through a whole lot in my life. I guess that was probably the shittiest chapter of my life. It just felt like a complete shitbag. You know, I'm out here lifting weights at the gym. I got a three month old son. Wife's not back to work yet.

• 36:42Jocko Willink?

  What number kid was that?

• 36:43Speaker 01

  My first.

• 36:43Jocko Willink?

  Oh, damn.

• 36:44Speaker 01

  So like, you know, I got a three year old baby that I can't even pick up because I'm in a sling. Like, it just felt like an absolute bag of ass. It's my fault going out here trying to be Mr. Tough Guy, lifting a lot of weight. And then I was doing DoorDash in a sling, trying to make whatever money I could. I got like, I don't know, like 200 bucks from workman's workman's comp or something. And, uh,

• 37:05Jocko Willink?

  And you got, do you, did you own a house? Do you have like a mortgage and shit?

• 37:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, I had a house, had a mortgage. So I mean, it was, it was not good. It was not a good time.

• 37:15Jocko Willink?

  And at some point, your wife sent in you TikTok videos.

• 37:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:19Jocko Willink?

  What was the first freaking TikTok one that you made that got 12 million views?

• 37:23Speaker 01

  Man, I just, I was scrolling through these TikToks. I was like, man, I think I could be funny. And then I made a, I made a three minute video about why Aldi is the best grocery store. And it was just like a comedy bit. And 12 million views, 100,000 followers on TikTok overnight.

• 37:40Jocko Willink?

  Uh, and then what was next? You're like, okay, like I said earlier, like, okay, I got oil. I'm gonna keep digging.

• 37:46Speaker 01

  I was like, okay, well, the whole vibe of the video was this, uh, this business model is crazy and it's awesome. And I explained that from like my perspective and then next video I did was why the Marine Corps is the craziest branch of the military and people loved it. And then the comments were like, now do army infantry, then now do mortar men, now do CBs now. And then I started doing these three, three minute short videos on why every military job is crazy. And then it progressed into 15 minute videos and now I'm doing, you know, 45 minute to hour and a half stories on war heroes.

• 38:17Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah. No, they're great. I've, I've watched a bunch of your videos. They're great. They're like, they're kind of the perfect YouTube video. They're long enough, they're short enough to watch like in a, you know, a rapid period of time. You don't have to like get in the proper chair to watch them, you know, you don't have to like get your neck warmer out or anything like that. You can just watch them. They're fast moving. Like I was like watching you talk and I'm like, oh, he's, it almost seemed like you're editing even little moments out. So it's just like, so they come at you really quick. You got your, you know, you're funny. So it's, so you know, you get like a smile out of it. But they're also, you're just telling epic badass stories of dudes that are doing epic badass shit.

• 39:01Jocko Willink?

  So most grown ass men want to hear that stuff.

• 39:06Speaker 01

  Right.

• 39:07Jocko Willink?

  And you do it in between 20 and 30 or maybe 40 minutes. Boom. You got your little dose of badassery with some laughs and smiles. And you're a little smarter. That's a freaking awesome model.

• 39:19Speaker 01

  Yeah. I like it a lot. It's a, people seem to like it. I think the, I think the reason it works so well for me is because I didn't like, I never deployed, never got to go do that. So like, I still have the, uh, I don't know what it's like, so I just in my head, I just assume it's incredible and really hard. So it's like, I'm still looking up to those guys with like the uh, like a kid looking up to his dad. So everybody's awesome to me.

• 39:43Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 39:43Speaker 01

  So then we, you know, I'm doing a video on a CB telling you how awesome the CBs are. I have somebody, hundreds of emails and comments of like, hey, I'm forty five years old. My dad was a CB in World War Two, and I had no idea how awesome my dad was. And now we watch your videos together and it brought us closer together. And I understand my dad a lot more. And it's really cool. It's like, that's fucking awesome.

• 40:07Jocko Willink?

  That is awesome. And yeah, I, you know, I had a lot of that too, where I've had people say, oh, my dad was in Vietnam and we sat down. He never talked to me about it before. And we watched this video. We had this Vietnam guy, or you covered this book and we, you know, he's now, we go out for dinner every Wednesday and he tells me like another story of what month, you know, we're in. He tells me about what they did that month. So yeah, that's, it's pretty cool to have the, help people make that connection.

• 40:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:31Jocko Willink?

  And, you know, for me, I mean, I didn't do anything crazy in combat, but uh, I still look at like, you know, all the guys that I get to read books about. It's like, I still look at them. How'd you say you look at them? Uh,

• 40:45Speaker 01

  Like a kid looking up to dad.

• 40:47Jocko Willink?

  Exactly. I mean, I just did a podcast with a couple like SEALs from Vietnam. And it's literally, these guys are actually why I joined the SEAL teams. It was like SEALs in Vietnam is why I joined the SEAL teams. And here I am sitting here talking to SEALs from Vietnam that were in kind of one of the most iconic SEAL platoons from the West Coast, Charlie Platoon, SEAL Team One, nineteen sixty eight. And I'm sitting here talking to them. And it's like, it's hard for me to act like a grown man, you know what I mean? When my inner twelve year old just wants to like, ask him a bunch of questions about their stoner sixty three, you know what I mean? It's, it's awesome.

• 41:25Speaker 01

  Like we were, so, cause like, one thing that was interesting to me, and it makes complete sense in hindsight, but one thing that was interesting to me is like, I've read so much of the history of like, the broader scope of what was going on. I'll talk to a veteran that was there. And I know more about the big picture of what happened than he does. He just has his first person perspective. He like, I got drafted, I went there, I did a job, I came home. So like, we'll talk about stuff. I was like, holy shit, you were at that battle when this, this, he's like, how do you know all this? I was like, that's kind of a big deal, dude. Like, and we were talking with um, Uh, Mr. Graves, a World War II veteran, the flamethrower in Iwo Jima. And just like hearing him being like, oh yeah, I was there when they raised the flag and just, yeah,

• 42:06Speaker 01

  we found an old drainage pipe and slapped it up there and raised it. It was like, this is insane. And he's just talking about it nonchalant, like the most iconic picture of all time.

• 42:15Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's weird for me like when, because when I started this podcast, it was mostly just books because I didn't know anybody and no one knew what a podcast was or anything like that. So it was me just taking these old, and for me, the big focus was the, the frontline, like first person accounts, you know, who was there? And let me read your book and what you wrote about being there. And sometimes, you know, I would usually add some of the bigger picture context to it. But a lot of times like we, we learned the bigger picture context in school. You know, you learn about these major battles and whatnot, but to hear a dude or read about a dude that was on the ground, you know, picking lice out of his friend's jacket.

• 43:00Jocko Willink?

  So he would return the favor. And by the way, you don't, you can't get all the lice. They're always going to be there and they're just going to gnaw on your skin for the next four months. And that's what we're doing. It's like, that's, that's, it gives you a different perspective than just, oh, you know, it was cold and so everyone wore coats for the entire time they were deployed on whatever front. And it's like, oh yeah, there's something called lice. You remember those things? Yeah, they were everywhere and everyone's infested with them and they would chew through their freaking skin. Like it just gives you a different perspective when you hear that from the people that were there.

• 43:32Speaker 01

  Well, I think it, I think that's why like content like mine and yours works were a little different, but the same type gist. I think histories, there's a lot of people that just like, I don't like history. It's boring to me. And it's because at school always starts big picture and slowly zooms in and you've lost everybody's attention. Just being like in 1945, the Germans, blah, blah, blah. And they were here and this division of 23,000 dudes moved to here. You lose everybody. But if you start with like, Here's this guy that had really shitty childhood. It winds up being the guy that, you know, Jake McNasty paints his face. He has this iconic picture. He jumps out of a plane with his 13 renegades that they call the filthy 13 and he jumps into this battle. This battle's a big deal because boom,

• 44:15Speaker 01

  boom, boom, boom, boom. Okay. Now like you've taught somebody history that they otherwise never would have understood because they didn't have the attention span, but because now it's part of an actual hero story. They learn it and retain it.

• 44:27Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. You, you get to understand and relate to, and this is something I said, like one of the earliest podcasts that we did, you know, I don't even remember what book it was, but I'm like reminding people that these guys are not characters in a book. They're a person. Like this is a person. I think it was like baton death march, you know, these guys, just everyone's dying, everyone's dying. Just, and it was like broken down. The way this guy broke it down was basically anyone that just did not have a deep intrinsic desire to live would just die. Like if you just said, I can't take an, if I can't, I can't walk right now. I just need to rest. You're, you're dead. You're going to die. You're just going to get left on the side and dead. And to, to convey to people like McNasty, right? Like this is a dude.

• 45:12Jocko Willink?

  And how does a dude end up like that? Well, let, let me tell you a little bit where he came from it. And how's he end up with 13 other dudes that are also kind of like that? Well, they took a bunch of freaking knuckle draggers that really aren't fit for much else in the world. But we're going to put them all in a group and we're going to let them go get after it. Hmm. What about, what about when he gets thrown in jail a couple of times? Don't worry about that. That's the guy we're looking for.

• 45:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. It's just, it's a human frag grenade. We're going to throw at the enemy. It'll be their problem soon enough is pretty much the strategy.

• 45:41Jocko Willink?

  Hey, we could either have this guy back on our base, causing problems or throw him over a, a, a, behind enemy lines and let him cause some freaking chaos over there.

• 45:51Speaker 01

  The chain of command is sitting in their office. Like, what do we do with this guy? Well, option A, we kick him out of the military and he's running around free with all our wives back home. Or we put up with this shit for another 45 days and throw his ass out of a plane at the Germans.

• 46:05Jocko Willink?

  So freaking good to go.

• 46:08Jocko Willink?

  So as you're looking at a you're on tech, you start with Tik Tok?

• 46:12Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 46:12Jocko Willink?

  And then what comes after Tik Tok?

• 46:13Speaker 01

  Tik Tok, I immediately knew that Tik Tok was a fad. There wasn't any money in it. And you know, I've been, you know, history and business.

• 46:21Jocko Willink?

  What year is this?

• 46:21Speaker 01

  This is twenty twenty twenty one. This is like the ass end of COVID for at least where I was at up in Iowa. So like COVID was like pretty much over at this point.

• 46:31Jocko Willink?

  Got it.

• 46:32Speaker 01

  And, um, you know, I just studied business my whole life, knew what businesses worked and I knew there wasn't money in Tik Tok. So I immediately started doing everything I could to push that audience over to YouTube. And originally I was just uploading way before YouTube shorts even existed, just my vertical Tik Tok videos. I'd just scrub the watermark and upload them and I got a decent sized following there. And then eventually switched over to normal YouTube format and just started uploading and kept going.

• 46:59Jocko Willink?

  And then what about being an electrician?

• 47:01Speaker 01

  Uh, I still did it for like two years. Um, you know, I was I've I still to this day am fully ready to wake up and find out I got canceled and it's all gone and I'm going back to work and uh, I won't be upset about it. I'll just it is what it was a fun ride while I had it. So I still worked. I want to say a year and a half to two years while I was making more money on YouTube. And I was just doing that at night, grinding it out. And, uh, finally my boss told me he needed me to work over a weekend, like 12 hour shifts over a weekend. And weekend is when I made all my videos. I told him I can't. And he said, uh, you're gonna have to decide if you want to be a YouTube guy or an electrician guy. And I said, all right, I'm gonna go with whichever one pays me more.

• 47:47Speaker 01

  And he said, I'm assume that's me. And I go, you're wrong. And he's like, all right, I'll see you on Monday. And then a couple of months after that, I was just like, I'd gotta, you know, I started flying down to Texas doing podcasts with these guys. I was like, I'm getting too busy.

• 48:02Jocko Willink?

  And so that's the the unsubscribe podcast? And how'd you link up with those guys originally? Were you part of the unsubscribe podcast out of the great Zach?

• 48:09Speaker 01

  No, I'm just friends with all of them. I've known them for over five, almost six years and like.

• 48:15Speaker 03

  It's it's a big creator hub down in San Antonio. So like what's something we always talk about is like if you look at the span of time we've known each other. It's really not that long, but from sunup to sundown, we're with each other the entire time doing something, eating something. You know, like our rooms here, they're joining like we're always like interacting like it's it's just because you're we're maximizing that time we all have together. And when I had met Nick, they had brought him, I think it was like a few episodes after they brought you down is before you became a host. Um, he was an electrician then and he was like, I'm still doing this. And I was like, for real? And he's like, Yeah, I gotta be back Monday. I remember you saying that it like burned in my mind. And I was like,

• 48:58Speaker 03

  Damn dude, like while his videos are getting a million, a million, a million views, a million views. And by that time, people had started sending me stuff like, uh, a lot of his marine stuff. Cause they'd be like, this guy really knows what he's doing. I was like, matter of fact, We've been hanging out. So like,

• 49:12Jocko Willink?

  So that's how you guys met originally?

• 49:14Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 49:15Jocko Willink?

  Was through unsubscribed podcasts? And who's the original unsubscribed podcast dude?

• 49:22Speaker 03

  So originally, uh, it started with three buddies, uh, Eli Cuevas, Eli Double Tap, uh, Batty Streams and Donut Operator. Were the three original hosts.

• 49:31Jocko Willink?

  I remember Donut Operator, uh, because I remember seeing that name and going, that's pretty good. You know what I mean? And he was a cop and I was like, oh, that's, that's, that, that's one, that one's going to stick. You know, that's a pretty good name to, to throw it out there. And then, so you guys, so you're part of that now? You're a part of unsubscribed?

• 49:51Speaker 03

  I'm a host now.

• 49:53Jocko Willink?

  And so where do you guys film that thing?

• 49:55Speaker 03

  Uh, we got a studio down in San Antonio.

• 49:57Jocko Willink?

  So do you have to travel down to San Antonio?

• 49:58Speaker 03

  Yep. I travel, I travel down there about once a month and then we film, you know, three or four podcasts over the span of two or three days. And then Those are our podcasts for the month and I head back home.

• 50:07Jocko Willink?

  And what's, what is the nature of those podcasts for someone that's listening compared to just the straight up fat electrician podcast?

• 50:15Speaker 03

  Oh, it's completely different. Uh, so fat electrician is, uh, you know, it's never me talking about myself. It's never me telling any of my stories or anything I got going on. Fat electrician is, this is a video on.

• 50:27Speaker 01

  This dude, it's today, we're talking about this guy. Here's his childhood. Here's how he got in the military. Here's the crazy things that happened. Here's the crazy things happened after the military. Here's how he passed away. The end. See you next week. And unsubscribe podcast is literally me hanging out with two to three of my buddies and potentially flying out somebody else that we think would be cool to hang out and drink beer with. And just shooting the shit for three hours straight.

• 50:53Jocko Willink?

  Do you go into those with any kind of list of topics you're going to cover or you just roll with it?

• 50:57Speaker 01

  It's a guess by guess basis. We have such a broad range, you know, if we're bringing out some other YouTuber that we just think is a funny guy. Like, we're just gonna drink beer and have fun. Or, you know, it swings the other direction. Totally. We had, um, we had Jim Capers come on. You know, I mean, that dude's a military legend. So, I mean, I went through, I read his book. I watched all the documentaries on him. And my thing is I like, I like finding the funny, crazy stuff that like humanizes these bigger than life figures. So like, you know, everybody else that brings Jim on is wanting to talk about a knife kill or all the crazy war hero stuff, but it's like also like,

• 51:36Speaker 01

  Jim, I understand that you were on a mission in Vietnam and you captured a 23 foot python mid mission and brought it back as a pet. Like, I want to hear that story. Like, they were coming back from a recon mission and just happened upon this 200 pound snake. He's like, yeah, so we took our poncho covers and wrapped its head up and then we were carrying it through the jungle, headed back to our fob. We got to a river and we couldn't get it across this river because it was so heavy. So we left it. And then we got back up there and the helicopter pilot didn't believe us. So we took a chopper down and landed it on some shallow part of the river and took this snake up to our base and dug a pit and kept it as a pet. We called it Gomer. Like,

• 52:15Jocko Willink?

  Freaking nom, dude. These guys had way, these guys knew how to like get it on and have way better. And plus Vietnam was just a better AO than like either Afghanistan or Iraq as far as just having some normal shit going down, you know? And the, the SEALs, the East Coast SEAL SEAL Team Two in Vietnam, they brought home. They they caught a monkey and they brought it back to America and they had it on the quarter deck and it was really like an angry monkey that would like they had it on a leash or some shit. But when I got to SEAL Team Two, one of those old Vietnam guys like, hey, we had a monkey. His name was Jocko. So they had a freaking monkey on the quarter deck of SEAL Team Two that they brought back from Vietnam. His name was Jocko. And I was like, yeah, that's what I'm talking about.

• 53:00Speaker 01

  Do you know about, do you know about Sergeant Reckless?

• 53:02Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 53:02Speaker 01

  The Marine Corps warhorse?

• 53:04Jocko Willink?

  What about him?

• 53:04Speaker 01

  Oh, God, it's they did the same thing. They had to smuggle her back. So the the Marines were up and they were fighting in Korea. And this point, you know, it was, they were basically fighting on the 38th parallel. And the Korean map is just, it's just hills. It was just you're either running up a hill or you're running down a hill. So the Marines were up on these hills just trying to hold the line for negotiations. And these Marines, it was called the Iron Triangle, and all the hills were named after Nevada cities Reno, Carson, Las Vegas. And these Marines were holding this Iron Triangle. And the North Koreans wanted to punch through their position because that was the most direct route to Seoul. So the North Koreans wanted to take over Seoul because it would be highly beneficial for their negotiating power. So

• 53:49Speaker 01

  they were throwing everything they had at these Marines. These hills were so steep, the only thing they could get up there for, you know, bigger than small arms was recoilless rifles. But these big recoilless rifle rounds are like 30 pounds. And so they're having to lug them up these hills. And when, you know, the commies start rushing down, there's just meat wall after meat wall. There's too many of them. So they get permission to go into town and buy a horse, or a donkey, or whatever. So they go into a racetrack, they buy this Mongolian mare, short, stocky little horse. And they bring her back and they put her through hoof camp instead of boot camp. They, you know, they're blowing up grenades and shit so she doesn't get scared anymore and covering her with flak jackets and. North Koreans and Chinese end up attacking and they're attacking for like four days straight

• 54:33Speaker 01

  and all day and all night this horse is just lugging rounds up. They said she spanned like it was like something crazy like a hundred miles and carried a couple tons of ammunition uphill under gunfire. Completely saved the Marines during this battle multiple times and then they go to take her back and they're like, no, we're not taking her back. We're not taking this horse back with her. So the Marines link up with the Navy, they smuggle her to Japan and then they link up with some independent shipping company that agrees to ship her back to California on boat. And they link back up with her on the boat and the Marine like chain of command is mad that they got her this far. So they have the Department of Agriculture come in and they're like, we're gonna, we're gonna destroy her because she could have diseases or whatever.

• 55:18Speaker 01

  And the Marines are like, no, you're not. Ain't happening. Not happening. So an altercation between the Department of Agriculture and these Marines goes down and they're like, well, we can take a blood sample and then we'll get the lab results back in a couple of days and if she's clean, you can let her go. But in the meantime, just leave her here, go, go to your Marine Corps homecoming ball, whatever, whatever, we'll take care of her. And they're like, no. They had a full security detail with her the entire time. Soon as the Department of Agriculture leaves, they smuggle her off the ship out of the like port and they smuggle her into a high-rise building in, I want to say it was like San Francisco or San Diego. They get her up to like the 17th floor where the Marine Corps ball is and there's pictures of Sergeant Reckless at the Marine Corps ball, like eating the flowers and eating cake and

• 56:02Speaker 01

  shit. She would walk up, she, she was actually a sergeant and they made all of the lower enlisted treat her as though she was a sergeant. So like if Sergeant Reckless walked up and like, like that was in order to share your food with her or to give her a drink. So like they would literally mix drinks directly into her mouth. And then, yeah, she ended up retiring on Camp Pendleton.

• 56:26Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 56:26Speaker 01

  And she had a, always had a lower enlisted farm kid that was her handler. And she was the one in charge and nobody was allowed to ride her. So the running joke, the running joke was literally the kid in charge of taking care of Sergeant Reckless was the most in shape marine in the Marine Corps. Because only way they could exercise her was to run beside her for 10 miles a day. So, yeah, just smuggling animals back, having a good time.

• 56:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, we really screwed up the military with all these rules, man. Cause it was, dude, it was like, we couldn't bring home anything, you know? Like the whole idea of bringing home war trophies, which, you know, when you think war trophies, maybe you're thinking something, you know, crazy, but like to bring home a enemy AK-47.

• 57:12Speaker 01

  Right.

• 57:13Jocko Willink?

  Why can you not do that? That's freaking totally ridiculous. I have, I have a friend that got in like major trouble because he took the blame for someone that brought home an AK-47. It's like, bro, what do you think? That's like going to, yeah, it's like going to McDonald's and saying you stole like one of those plastic straws.

• 57:30Speaker 01

  It's common loot.

• 57:31Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 57:31Speaker 01

  It's the issue.

• 57:32Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, we should be, we should have been shipping home for just freaking cruise boxes filled with AK-47s to hang up at your command or in your living room or whatever, you know, like, let's go.

• 57:45Speaker 01

  It's not like World War II where shipping back trophy skulls or nothing like that. I could kind of understand a little bit.

• 57:50Jocko Willink?

  I don't know.

• 57:51Speaker 01

  It's also kind of cool.

• 57:54Speaker 03

  That's not a cool thing at all.

• 57:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:57Speaker 03

  Uh, gross.

• 57:58Speaker 01

  Those pictures of all the wives back home with the skulls of her husband's enemies didn't go hard as fuck.

• 58:04Speaker 03

  I'm still upset about my nunchucks. So that's.

• 58:07Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 58:08Jocko Willink?

  What's up with your nunchucks?

• 58:09Speaker 03

  My first deployment, we came across, we came across a, this kid and he was like running around and it's in Afghanistan. They don't have electricity in most places. And he had a set of nunchucks.

• 58:20Jocko Willink?

  Hell, yeah.

• 58:20Speaker 03

  And he wouldn't stop hitting people with this. So I, I snatched him.

• 58:23Jocko Willink?

  Mm hmm.

• 58:24Speaker 03

  And I was, to this day, I don't know how this, this young man in Afghanistan fi- found out about nunchucks. But we were leaving and we had to go through Manus and, um. A bunch of MPs were like going through my stuff and they like pulled out my nunchucks and he's like, what are these? And I was like, they're nunchucks, dude. They're mine. I'm taking them home. And he's like, no, you're not. And I was like, I'm taking them home. He's like, this is a weapon. And they had like a big burn pit. And we had to put all the stuff like over the side and he was, the way he was looking at him, I was like, oh, he's about to take them home. So I walked over and I tossed him into the thing and he was just like, I was like, dude, you're not taking them from me. Like, cause it was just like a really cool thing.

• 59:00Jocko Willink?

  And they wonder why brothers get PTSD, bro. You would, your whole life would have been complete if you had a set of freaking Afghan nunchucks in your damn living room.

• 59:09Speaker 03

  That's what I, that's what I'm saying. Like I watched Bloodsport as a child. I watched all of those martial arts movies. How did that culture find that kid in the middle of a poppy field in Afghanistan? Like none of his friends, his friends must have thought he was insane. Like what is he doing? He's tying two sticks together? Like, I really wanted them. They took them. Stupid MPs.

• 59:27Jocko Willink?

  So how did you guys end up? Cause you guys have another podcast.

• 59:31Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 59:31Jocko Willink?

  Which is called the Underwhelming Podcast.

• 59:33Speaker 03

  Yes, sir.

• 59:34Jocko Willink?

  And how do you, what triggered that thing into existence?

• 59:37Speaker 03

  Well, I wanted to spend more time with Nick. So I had to start a business with him. Um, but no, it's just, it just, it just kind of really happened naturally. Like I, I got invited. So I got invited on the show, like literally a month after I did this last year. And, um, and like I said, we're, we're like always hanging out, like almost every other month, we're, we're doing stuff together. And, um, they, the unsubscribe guys had started their subscription, uh, company called Pepperbox where it's, it's Patreon, but like it's literally made by them and they're the owners and stuff. And so there's been like this expansion of like content in the unsubscribe universe, right? Wouldn't you say is probably the best way to describe it?

• 1:00:17Speaker 03

  And so like, you know, other shows have been made on there, like Donut has a cooking show. Brandon has like a gun specific show, you know, and Nick has another show is.

• 1:00:25Jocko Willink?

  Wait, who has a cooking show?

• 1:00:26Speaker 03

  Uh, Donut Operator.

• 1:00:27Jocko Willink?

  Really?

• 1:00:28Speaker 03

  It's called Let Him Cook.

• 1:00:29Jocko Willink?

  What is he teaching how to cook? This is a general thing?

• 1:00:31Speaker 03

  Cody's like really good at cooking and like it was something that's been passed on from his family. He's a, from a group in the south. Like he, like literally, uh, North Alabama is where he grew up and stuff. And so like, it's just like, The coolest version of guys hanging out like I went on there and made smash burgers and like he just makes stuff.

• 1:00:49Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:00:49Speaker 03

  And um, so like we just started talking. He's like, do you want to start a podcast? And I was like, yeah, I think that would be fun. Like, let's do kind of like on an old dad, new dad.

• 1:00:59Speaker 01

  Different like unsubscribe is very much like.

• 1:01:02Speaker 03

  Smoke pit.

• 1:01:03Speaker 01

  Unsubscribe, smoke pit, hanging out with your buddies in the garage talk. And then underwhelming is like, he's a dad with more experience. I'm a new dad. We're talking about more like family oriented stuff and like, hey, how did you manage this? What was the mistakes you made when this issue was going on when you're five year old, you know? Yeah.

• 1:01:21Speaker 03

  And so it's just, it's just something that happened naturally. Cause like, from the time that I came here a year ago to now, my life has significantly changed.

• 1:01:30Speaker 01

  Right on.

• 1:01:31Speaker 03

  In a way that.

• 1:01:31Speaker 01

  In a good way.

• 1:01:32Speaker 03

  In a good way, in a good way. No, like, like I can't anticipate it. Uh, uh, like, like I was saying, it's just, it's, it blows my mind that I remember when you came on Joe Rogan.

• 1:01:41Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:01:42Speaker 03

  And I was like, this dude's fucking awesome. So like, now I can text you. Like, it's just like this weird timeline.

• 1:01:48Speaker 01

  It's okay. I read his book in high school.

• 1:01:50Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:01:51Speaker 01

  Sitting across the table from him. It's not weird.

• 1:01:54Speaker 03

  It is. There's a, there's a lot of that. Like, you know, you're like looking up to heroes. I'm like, this is so cool.

• 1:02:00Speaker 03

  Um, but like, the, so like the last year, the beginning part was kind of weird. So like I, I kind of in January, I had this like mindset of like, I want to lock in and like do this push to kind of like continue to do what I'm doing with Veteran with a Sign to kind of like, continue to be a force for good, a change agent, stuff like that. And um, I, uh, I found myself in like really uncomfortable moments. And, uh, cause I did a bunch of podcasts. I did here and did unsubscribe and then out of nowhere, the, um, the VFW started talking about me.

• 1:02:35Speaker 01

  And that was. That about that was like, you talked about one of the veteran assistance.

• 1:02:42Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:02:42Speaker 01

  Like organizations and you promoted them as doing a good job for you.

• 1:02:47Speaker 03

  So I did so I'll go as quickly as I can through, but the long and short of it is there are organizations that veterans can pay to help them with their benefits, right? And there are companies that take like back pay and stuff like that. That's not what I'm talking about. This organization that I work with is called RE Medical, R E E Medical. And what you do is you go talk to them and then they give you like an outline of how they can help you with getting supporting medical evidence for your claims. That's why most claims are kicked back. Now, it is not free to use. It is free to talk to them and then they tell you how much their services are. The same way, you know, TurboTax does. It is free to do your taxes online or you can pay TurboTax or CPA. Right? And it is, I believe it's every, everyone should have the right to choose and I've told them this and I've told everyone this.

• 1:03:32Speaker 03

  I don't like that they exist at all, but I do like that people have the option to choose and I think.

• 1:03:37Jocko Willink?

  Well, just so like, I'm captioning this right. So just for people that aren't veterans, like when you get, when you get out of the military, you can get some form of compensation for generally speaking, it's, it's service related injuries.

• 1:03:52Speaker 03

  Yes, sir.

• 1:03:53Jocko Willink?

  So that is, seems like it should be pretty straightforward. Hey, I lost my left pinky, you know, uh, in a, in a range accident. And okay, yep, yeah, you lost your left pinky. That sucks. We're going to give you whatever percentage of your pay for the rest of your life.

• 1:04:09Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:04:09Jocko Willink?

  And you go, okay, that makes sense. Cool. That's, it seems like it should be like that, but it ain't like that.

• 1:04:14Speaker 03

  It's not like that.

• 1:04:14Jocko Willink?

  It's way complicated. It's like, well, what, how exactly did you lose your pinky and how long, what length of pinky did you lose? And are you left-handed or right-handed? And are you going to be in an occupied, like there's all these things that you have to go through. And so it ends up being a very complicated process, much like, you know, you brought up taxes, like for me to do my taxes.

• 1:04:34Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:04:35Jocko Willink?

  Is not possible. I'm, I'm going to go ahead and say that. Like I believe, you know, you can make anything happen. You know what I mean? If you believe it, you can achieve it. I'm going to tell you right now, I could not do my taxes.

• 1:04:44Speaker 03

  That's smart.

• 1:04:45Jocko Willink?

  It's, it's impossible for me to do my taxes. There are so many things, or I could try, but I would get like arrested because I would miss something. And so, you know, I have a, a guy that I've been working with for a long time that does not just my taxes, but he does the taxes for like 80 different people, 80 different families. And so he's really good at it and he works with people that have multiple businesses and have lots of weird tax stuff going on. So he does that. And he does it for me too, because he knows how the system works. And by the way, he gets updated when there's a regulatory change or a new tax law comes in. He understands it, he dives into it, he researches it, he goes through it and he makes it work for me and figures out the best way to a- address the situation.

• 1:05:30Jocko Willink?

  That's a really, that's a full-time job.

• 1:05:32Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:05:33Jocko Willink?

  About a bunch of stuff I, a- any more than I would go to a freaking, you know, a, a factory and start trying to wire a factory up. Like, no, I wouldn't know how to do that. So it's the same thing when you're trying to figure out what the government, what the VA owes you. It's a really complicated process. I know it shouldn't be, just like doing your taxes shouldn't be, but it is.

• 1:05:54Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:05:55Jocko Willink?

  And so a lot of veterans, they have trouble getting what they're supposed to get. And it's problematic. And so what's happened over the past, I don't know how long, but these various companies have sprung up. Some of them are charities, some of them are companies. And they sprung up to help veterans do a good job with their VA claim. And so this, one of these companies that did, that does that, and what's, what are they called?

• 1:06:23Speaker 03

  Uh, Re-Medical.

• 1:06:24Jocko Willink?

  So.

• 1:06:25Speaker 03

  Romeo Echo Echo Medical.

• 1:06:27Jocko Willink?

  And so you're, how did you get involved with them? And then h- h- how did the, the VFW? Why is it VFW?

• 1:06:34Speaker 03

  Okay, I can say all of it, right?

• 1:06:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:36Speaker 03

  Okay. Um, I just, he's involved, I just wanna, wanna co-sign for my boy, but, um, we have the same, um, management agency.

• 1:06:44Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:06:45Speaker 03

  And what they do is they help to facilitate bringing on sponsors for like his YouTube channel, or they'll be like, Zach, would you talk about this? You know, will I be involved with, you know, X organization that are doing these things? And they had, one of the creators at the agency was working with the VFW as a part of this bill that they're trying to push. I don't know where it's at now. I've heard it gets knocked down everywhere. Thank God. But basically what they're trying to do underneath the guise of protecting veterans from fraud and not being taken advantage of, they're trying to put forward a bill, what is it called? The, is it the Guard, Guard Act?

• 1:07:16Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I think it's the Guard Act.

• 1:07:17Speaker 03

  The Guard Act. And so basically what they wanna do is to make all of these for-profit companies illegal and, and to restrict only a certain amount of nonprofits to help veterans with their benefits moving forward. Or state or federal agencies, like basically them, the Legion and the DAV. So they wanna monopolize a market. And I don't like that. And they came forward and they were, they worked with this one creator. He doesn't care if I name it, but I'm not going to. They, they'd worked with him. He had talked about it. And then they wanted to expand to like other talent. So they came to myself. They came to the fat electrician Nick and they came to uh angry cops, uh Rich, our friend of ours as well, very good friend.

• 1:07:57Speaker 03

  And we all talked about it behind the scenes and I lean a lot on Nick because as you've seen from his videos. He's never, he's almost never wrong. I haven't come across a time where he's wrong. There's one time where he's wrong and I won the argument, but that's it. And that will carry me through a decade. I can't talk about it.

• 1:08:13Jocko Willink?

  Fair enough. Classified information. If you're gonna be wrong, Nick, it might as well be something you can't talk about. You're even right about what you were wrong about. I like that.

• 1:08:22Speaker 03

  He always wins. Um, but no, um, and we, I just, I know too much from like working with veterans since 2011 and everything else. I don't need the government to protect me. I don't need them to remove choice. I don't need them to do freedom. I need them to worry about things like what's in our food, uh, the never ending wars, supporting veterans, stuff like that. Let me have the right to choose. I don't need the government to start regulating freedom and choice because it's a very slippery slope that I don't want to be a part of. And I don't know anyone that the VFW in particular has helped with their claims. I've just never heard that from doing this for a long time. And so I didn't support that. There's another act that's called like the choice act. And basically what they do is

• 1:09:05Speaker 03

  I'm not crazy about this either because it just feels like something else to just have the government involved and I don't like that. But the idea is that they would create some type of credentialing process to where if you're a for-profit entity, you go through this credentialing process and you get a stamp that says, hey, you can use them. Right? Um, and uh, I just, I'd made like an ad and I was like, hey, talk to this organization. And it was like a month went by because I had done this and unsub and then I opened up Twitter one day and there's this guy. You know, doing like the worst version of me and he's an older veteran. I'm gonna try to be kind and I wasn't thrilled.

• 1:09:39Speaker 01

  He was dressed like you.

• 1:09:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:09:41Speaker 01

  He had the same OD green shirt, holding up a sign over his head, doing the veteran with a sign thing.

• 1:09:47Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:09:47Speaker 01

  Basically shitting on you.

• 1:09:49Speaker 03

  He was shitting on me, lying about me. Um, and I can't remember the exact tweet, but it was something to the effect of veteran with the signs lying. It's like on Twitter, I don't actually, it's not veteran with signs, it's just Zach because it's just me. Cause at the time I'd started it, I was like doing op-eds and stuff for like different publications to include, you know, Fox News, Washington, not Washington Post and the New York Times. And so like, I was like, holy shit, this is bad. Like, and the first person I called was, was Nick. And then I was like, what do we do? And he's like, don't do anything. And I was like, but I have tweets saved. I have things I want to say. And he's like, don't do anything. We're going to figure this out. And then I call Rich and then the same thing. So we start like trying to figure out what to happen.

• 1:10:29Speaker 03

  And it was, um, really like the immediate, the immediate response from like people that know me or people who had heard about me was like, this isn't right. Stop lying about Zach, whatever. Cause their thing was saying that I was working with a claim shark company, which is.

• 1:10:42Speaker 01

  They were calling you a predator.

• 1:10:44Speaker 03

  A predator.

• 1:10:45Speaker 01

  You were accepting money to take advantage of veterans using a predatory company.

• 1:10:50Speaker 03

  All because I did not accept their campaign is the long and short of it, which it was not an insignificant amount of money.

• 1:10:55Speaker 01

  Also worth mentioning, the whole reason I turned it down immediately without even looking into it, just because it was red flags for me. I'm sorry, an organization wants to pay a YouTuber called the fat electrician to push legislation. No. I'm out. I don't know what, I don't know what you got going on. This is either a stupid plan or something bad. That there's no other options. You're, you're trying to hire the fat electrician to force legislation through it? No. Get out of here.

• 1:11:21Jocko Willink?

  Something is strange.

• 1:11:22Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah. And like, I even tried to like DM them and stuff and be like, We should talk about this. We should figure this out. And they were like, no, no, no. And they just kept doubling down. And then um, we just kept moving with it. And then finally, like, we developed a plan. And basically, the idea was that uh, Rich, Rich is famous for like doing breakdowns of like military stuff that's like happening currently. And then like, he was gonna like, take it all up. And we were just gonna gather the evidence and have like, one conclusive video of like, exactly what happened. And then Nick's like, I've got some stuff to say too. So like, and then

• 1:11:57Speaker 01

  This is what people would call a poor strategy, was trying to get in a pissing match on the internet with a group of guys that just have pissing matches on the internet.

• 1:12:07Speaker 03

  Who have blind, dangerous, dangerously blind loyalty to each other. Like, it's kind of like, shoot that guy, bang. Why did we shoot that guy? I mean, I don't care. Like, you know, it's, it's a lot like that. Um. And uh, cause like, my, my concern was, you know, most internet content creators, they don't last longer than four, five.

• 1:12:29Speaker 01

  Three, yeah, three to five.

• 1:12:31Speaker 03

  So I'm already in like, rarefied air to begin with. And then it continues to become like, something different after that. So I was like, what if, my only concern was like, what if people believe them? And then I can't recover from this? Like, what if my reputation, you know, the work I've done, everything else, wasn't enough to really counteract the motherfucking VFW saying that I'm a predator? And um, I was overwhelmed. It was like, a rough twenty-four, forty-eight hours. And then we, they put together the video and we just dog walked the VFW up and down the internet. Like, it, it felt great. I'm not gonna lie to you.

• 1:13:08Speaker 01

  I mean, after the video came out, there was, they got ahold of you pretty quick. Cause there was people dropping their membership to the VFW.

• 1:13:15Jocko Willink?

  And then what did the VFW say to you when they got ahold of you?

• 1:13:17Speaker 03

  Um, I'll, I'll say this. Uh, the president guy called me and he's like, he's like, hey, hey, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I don't, I can't remember his name, but like, he talked to me and he's like, hey, you know, it's important that we all work together. Like, he's in New York. He's like, I'm a, I'm a veteran, you're a veteran. I go, I know you're the president of the VFW. Like, some of the stuff we could cut out of this conversation. And um, I thought he was gonna be much more of like, hey, this is a leadership thing. I should have squashed this. Negative. His, his like, first thing that he said to me was like, yeah, that angry cops and the fat electrician guy are pretty mean, huh? They, and I was like, they just described what you did. And he's like,

• 1:13:52Jocko Willink?

  Fair.

• 1:13:53Speaker 03

  But his like initial response was like, we're the problem, not them. Because it became very apparent to me that the VFW does not like that they are not taken as seriously as they believe that they should be taken in the modern era. They believe themselves to be leaders and elder statesmen and all of this stuff that just isn't based in reality.

• 1:14:17Speaker 03

  And so he was like on a tour, visiting the boys in Korea or something that have like two VFWs. And I'm like, listen, I'm not going to tell you how to spend your time, sir. Kind of sound like a vacation. I'm not going to tell you how to spend your time, but what about the VFWs in Philly, San Diego, Nashville, Iowa? Do they not get this type of attention? Oh, they're not in Asia in like really cool places.

• 1:14:38Speaker 01

  Well, the other part like I feel like we should point out is like it, we keep saying the VFW, but like there was a lot of like chapter leaders and like ground level VFW members that came out and were like, hey, I don't like what I don't know how to explain the corporate, yeah, the national corporate entity.

• 1:14:54Jocko Willink?

  I've been to VFWs that are freaking kick ass, like great people, you know, uh, there's some chapters down here in San Diego that I've hung out with and they're fantastic, like they're great. And, you know, I doubt they knew any of this stuff was going on. I mean, I didn't know any of this stuff was going on, so.

• 1:15:10Speaker 03

  They started pushing out like talking points to them and like.

• 1:15:13Jocko Willink?

  So has this thing come to like any kind of a resolution? Have you guys, like when they called you were like, hey, man, like let's, if you want to be on the same team, let's talk about how we can do this or is it, is it just still negative?

• 1:15:26Speaker 03

  Where we left it with the previous president was, we talked on like, um, a Monday. And he was like, I'm traveling back Wednesday and then let's set up a time for me, um, Nick and Rich to all sit down and talk. And I was like, I'll do that. I'll do that. Like I want, I honestly want them to succeed.

• 1:15:45Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, of course.

• 1:15:47Speaker 03

  He no longer was in that position by Friday of that week. Like his term ended, I don't know if it ended early or whatever. I will say it's highly unusual to make plans because you know, you know, Rich is a cop in Buffalo. Nick's got a family. I've got, we, we were all like, okay, we're all going to DC Thursday to get there Friday. Like we had made plans. I don't know why he would say that to me and then none of it move forward with.

• 1:16:10Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's very strange.

• 1:16:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, I don't know if he left early or if it's just the end of his term, but like it feels like, oh yeah, by the way, I won't have this job Friday. Would have come up if he if he if I felt like he was intentionally trying to do it and like they continue to just kind of. Hmm, what's the right word? They continue to resent.

• 1:16:30Jocko Willink?

  Hmm.

• 1:16:30Speaker 03

  Um, I think just like newer veterans in general because like they feel like we're not giving them their due, but like honestly, they're the ones. Who did a lot of the work that put myself and everyone, I believe this room in a position to succeed. Um, I wanted to work with them, but like what I always say to people is like, I have the ability. To reach out and interact with hundreds of thousands to millions of people in any given moment in my life. That's what they did to me. They straight up lied about me.

• 1:16:54Jocko Willink?

  Hmm.

• 1:16:55Speaker 03

  What do they do to other people? How do they interact with the other people don't have that?

• 1:16:58Speaker 01

  Well, I think they thought they could do to the that to you and they realized they couldn't get away with it and then dropped it.

• 1:17:04Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:17:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's such a strange time that someone. You know, and this is not just this case, but it happens pretty regularly where you can just put something out there into the ethernet, you know, you watch the politicians.

• 1:17:16Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 1:17:16Jocko Willink?

  The politicians are, it's insane to watch them just just openly lie. Just blatantly openly lie as if it's nothing about whatever. And that's now just part of the ethernet and depending on which algorithm you're living in. That lie becomes the truth and that's what's happening right now.

• 1:17:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's a certain governors doing a lot of that on podcasts right now, apparently.

• 1:17:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's crazy to watch like these things are.

• 1:17:44Speaker 01

  Is it bad? I don't know which one you're talking about specifically.

• 1:17:47Speaker 03

  That's actually a worse.

• 1:17:49Jocko Willink?

  That's even worse, right?

• 1:17:50Speaker 03

  So many of them, yeah.

• 1:17:51Jocko Willink?

  Openly lying and it's the, I forget which you'll probably remember this neck like, uh, who is it? Goebbels that said, if you lie enough, it becomes the truth. It's like that, that is a real thing and it's just lie, lie, lie, lie. And it is interesting to like this, the approach that you guys took with this dude. Because sometimes it's like if you, when you rebut something or someone rebuts something, it just adds more fuel to the fire. As opposed to like, oh yeah, that happened three years ago. Like this is, yeah, was just a bunch of bullshit. Oh, okay, cool. Because there's the, the news cycle is so fast and filled with so much stuff that

• 1:18:32Jocko Willink?

  if you wait, like you said, 24, 48 hours, you were really, you know, really hating life. And then like, well, 72 hours, you're like, oh yeah, what are we doing this afternoon? Oh yeah, that's right. Somebody said something to me about, you know, three days ago and it doesn't matter anymore because uh, it just fades into the past. And the other thing that I think you pointed out, which I think is really important is like, it's, that's not part of your character. And eventually, as a person, you build up enough like repetitions of who you are. Where when someone just jumps out of nowhere and, you know, calls out some random thing about you.

• 1:19:12Jocko Willink?

  When you've been doing repetitions and repetitions of helping people of, of helping charities, of helping veterans for year upon year, upon year, upon year. But now all of a sudden, all of that was just like, that was just a front because I was really over here just trying to get this paycheck.

• 1:19:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:19:29Jocko Willink?

  And it's like, mm, it just doesn't add up. And so I think the, the long-term consistency of a person, generally speaking, will win when someone comes out with some, you know, trash bullshit about them.

• 1:19:46Speaker 03

  Yeah. It was, it was crazy. Um, because like, I, I knew we were going to get through it. I was just, I didn't know what type of damage I was going to take.

• 1:19:54Speaker 01

  Well, that's, that's the only reason that we even bothered to acknowledge it was because, I mean, the, the default setting for all of our friend group is, you know, somebody comes out saying crazy stuff, ignore them, it'll go away. Like people know it's not true. The issue with this one was like, This isn't, you know, nobody coming out of the woodwork with an allegation. This is

• 1:20:14Jocko Willink?

  That's true.

• 1:20:14Speaker 01

  This is the VFW. This is one of the oldest veteran organizations on the planet that exclusively deals with a big overlap in our audience. And like, that's actual, okay, we do have to correct this, cause.

• 1:20:27Jocko Willink?

  Well, yeah, that's crazy. Like I said, hopefully the VFW, you know, I've know a lot of great people in the VFW. Hopefully they kind of come to their senses and realize that, you know, we're, we should, we're supposed to be their people, right?

• 1:20:39Speaker 01

  Again, I don't even, we keep saying VFW and like, it's not even, it wasn't like, we had so many like chapter leaders and VFW members that were reaching out being like, hey, this is bullshit they're doing to you. We don't like what the international is doing. And so, I mean, I think it was very much like

• 1:20:54Speaker 03

  Their DC office.

• 1:20:54Speaker 01

  A couple of dudes at a very, very high level, just mad that they didn't have enough political power at the top of the hill that were more worried about their own, you know, leverage points than the actual mission. And like, all the people at the ground level and like mid-level were very much like, this is stupid. We don't support this. So the VFW, we keep saying is the issue, but it wasn't. I think it was a couple of high leaders that maybe shouldn't have been there.

• 1:21:18Speaker 03

  Just the headshed. It's the headshed. They had no idea what's going on in the ground.

• 1:21:22Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:22Speaker 03

  And like, it's, I can still think of like, when I opened up my phone and I saw it and I was just like, my wife's gonna be so pissed at me. Like, like, cause I was just like, I can't believe I'm in this place. Like I've, like I said, like you said, like I have worked with veterans. I have worked with nonprofits. Uh, Mark Green, who was my congressman, was my state representative. I worked with him in Tennessee to help pass, you know, a few hundred thousand dollars a year to support veterans organizations at the state level. Like I've done all of these things and like, there's a moment where I'm like, is this, is this what's gonna wipe all that away? Um, and so it just really like, changed everything in the sense of like, it gave me a, a new sense of feeling of support because the unsubscribe community in general, they came forth.

• 1:22:06Speaker 03

  They're when they lock in these when these boys lock in.

• 1:22:09Speaker 01

  They're aggressive.

• 1:22:10Speaker 03

  They're aggressive. Um, his, his wife made a meme. That's probably the most perfect meme ever. Um, have you, you seen, uh, two towers, right? Lord of the Rings?

• 1:22:20Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 1:22:20Speaker 03

  You haven't seen Lord of the Rings?

• 1:22:21Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:22:22Speaker 03

  Are you being serious?

• 1:22:22Jocko Willink?

  I'm sorry, but no.

• 1:22:24Speaker 01

  Echo?

• 1:22:24Speaker 03

  Echo, can you, can you explain? You've seen two towers, right? No. You haven't seen?

• 1:22:28Jocko Willink?

  I'm over two.

• 1:22:29Speaker 01

  That's a, that's a hell of a Venn diagram. Seen Snow? Seen Lord of the Rings? Nope.

• 1:22:37Speaker 03

  No, it's fine, but there's.

• 1:22:38Jocko Willink?

  So this whole freaking metaphor is gone out the window.

• 1:22:41Speaker 03

  Well, there's this point where Aragon and a few people are down at the bottom and they're waiting on Gandalf to reinforce them with the Rohirrim.

• 1:22:47Speaker 01

  They're, they're in a, they're, they're in a fort and they're completely surrounded by a million dudes.

• 1:22:52Jocko Willink?

  Yes, I understand.

• 1:22:53Speaker 01

  And like it, the end is coming and the reinforcements show up at the top of the hill with the sunlight to their back. Right as the sunlight peeks over and they cavalry charge in.

• 1:23:03Jocko Willink?

  Nice.

• 1:23:03Speaker 01

  And save the day is pretty much.

• 1:23:05Jocko Willink?

  And that was the unsubscribed crew.

• 1:23:08Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah. Hannah made a meme and it was just an ocean of people with memes and tweets and comments. Just really just putting the VFW back in their place. So it was, it was, it was like overwhelming support. And to this day I still get messages about it and stuff and it just like, um, it's, I don't know. It gave me hope in a way I didn't anticipate in, in the very best way. Cause like you said, like, if you say something enough times, it can become true. And like, no one really researches stuff anymore. You know, they're like an inch deep in a mile wide type of stuff. And so it just changed everything. And, uh, I'm just been an exciting year and like me and Nick hung out enough. I was like, yeah, I can do a podcast. I'll go here. You go there and we'll, we'll figure it out. And it's, you know, it's under, he's like, what do you want to call it? And I was like, I don't know, underwhelming.

• 1:23:53Speaker 03

  He's like, why? And I was like, just set the bar low and we'll just achieve it. Yeah.

• 1:23:58Jocko Willink?

  It's, it's funny that the, the meme things, I remember a few years ago, I saw like a, a meme of a hat. And it was like a VFW type hat and it said like meme, you know, veteran of the meme wars, right? And the first time I saw it, I was like, ah, that's, that's like pretty funny, pretty awesome, pretty cool, but. There is reality behind the idea of meme wars and information, uh, you know, to take Alex Jones's, you know, the name of his organization of Infowars. Like, that is a real thing, and that is what is, is happening.

• 1:24:39Jocko Willink?

  And these are like, what you guys just described, this sort of micro meme war of, you know, sort of a social media war between, you know, you and the VFW. It's like a really small scale thing where, you know, you had the backup, the reinforcements, the whatever tower of whatever you said.

• 1:24:59Speaker 03

  The Rohirrim.

• 1:24:59Jocko Willink?

  Right. You had that, right?

• 1:25:01Speaker 03

  I had the real, I had the real F Riders of Rohan.

• 1:25:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and you're able to overcome what, you know, the enemy in this case. And what people got to remember is that that's happening on a real scale, in a real way, with, with just straight up, call it what it is, meme wars. Like memes that do well, people that, and, and I mentioned this earlier, what algorithm are you living in? Because, and you, you know, we were talking about this a little bit last night, but the, if you're living in an algorithm and what you're being, whatever you're being fed, you begin to believe that. And never mind begin, you end up believing that this algorithm that you see all day, every day, is real, and that that is the way the world is.

• 1:25:48Jocko Willink?

  And it's just what you've been fed through information warfare. It's very disturbing.

• 1:25:54Speaker 01

  It, well, it's, I always explain it like, you know, back in World War II in Korea and stuff, you could, the government could censor, like, we're not putting this out. We can hide this, that, like, those days are gone. Everybody has a smartphone and a camera phone. So now, the only way to have control of the narrative is to oversaturate the market with so much bullshit that nobody knows what's true. And then, that's where memes, you think it's a stupid picture on the internet, but a picture is worth a thousand words.

• 1:26:21Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:26:21Speaker 01

  And if I can create a meme that conveys a thousand-word message and makes you go, "Ha!" or, "Yeah!"

• 1:26:28Speaker 01

  It's immediate.

• 1:26:29Speaker 03

  Then you share it. This is how I feel. This is a reflection of me and my opinion. Boom, you share and then that person shares.

• 1:26:34Speaker 01

  Look at the current presidential races, like memes played a humongous role in the last presidential election. You've still got the official White House and Department of Homeland Security and all kinds of, they're posting memes.

• 1:26:45Jocko Willink?

  Posting memes straight up.

• 1:26:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:26:47Jocko Willink?

  The President of the United States is dropping memes.

• 1:26:50Speaker 01

  It's, it's like.

• 1:26:51Speaker 03

  It's kinda crazy.

• 1:26:52Speaker 01

  It's like, human communication went up and up and up and up and up and language got more and more articulate, more and more articulate. And it peaked and now it's like, okay, everybody understands the articulate part. Now we're gonna dumb it back down to hieroglyphs. Because they can articulate a thousand words in one image.

• 1:27:07Jocko Willink?

  And that being said, it's like, um, you know, I think we talked about this a little bit last night as well, when we were having dinner. But, you know, you've heard the whole thing that Jordan Peterson would talk about of the podcast being like a bigger revolution than the Gutenbergime, you know, printing press, because now not only does it just completely like, uh, uh, goes anywhere in this press of one button. I mean, at least when you had the printing press, you had to like buy paper and ink. And even if you were writing books.

• 1:27:34Speaker 01

  Sit there, put the dyes in the right way.

• 1:27:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, fifteen, twenty years ago, if you were gonna, if you wrote a book, it was like you had to get a publisher. There's all kinds of, it cost a bunch of money. Now you can, then, then you know, you could vlog for whatever blog for a while. And that was like, you could write and it was kinda cheap to get that out there and that worked for a while. And the barrier to entry was lower and lower. And then with podcasts, well, bro, there's like, you don't even know, you don't need to know how to write or read to, to do a podcast. But you have to put in at least a little bit of time to talk the words or listen to the words. But you get into the meme zone, now it's like, I'm gonna give you a message that you are going to absorb in one second, one look.

• 1:28:19Jocko Willink?

  And so if you nail, and we know it, like, how often do you look at a meme? Cause I got kids that are twenty-five, sixteen through twenty-five. So, look, we're freaking knee deep in memes, right?

• 1:28:31Speaker 03

  You're all over it.

• 1:28:32Jocko Willink?

  And.

• 1:28:32Speaker 03

  Meme deep, yeah.

• 1:28:33Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, we're meme deep. And yet, it's like, you know that there's a meme when it's good. It might as well be a freaking incredible, you know, piece of poetry because it just lands and the whole family gets the meme. Like the whole family knows what it means, understands what the, what the indication is, understand what's about, understand the, like the, the humor in it or the sorrow in it or the frustration that they all understand all these things from a picture and seven words. That is next level. And there's a certain level of art to,

• 1:29:07Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:29:08Jocko Willink?

  I mean, a high level of art to making really good memes. And the other interesting thing is we have this, uh, this, this system now that percolates the winning memes to the top. But at no point is it required for that meme or for that seven second video to be true. It just has to bring out emotions.

• 1:29:33Speaker 01

  Was it Da Vinci said that simplicity is the ultimate complication?

• 1:29:38Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:29:39Speaker 01

  That's exactly what it is.

• 1:29:40Jocko Willink?

  Or Mark Twain said, hey, I wanted to write you a long letter or I wanted to write you a short letter, but I didn't have time because it takes more time to like make your words more concise and more direct. But it's, but the scariest part of this is it doesn't need to be true. And so you can get a meme that has just complete misinformation in it. And that's probably, what, what, what's the word? They use disinformation. They use misinformation.

• 1:30:06Speaker 01

  Fucking lying?

• 1:30:07Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Shit that ain't true, right? It's like shit. This shit ain't true. And yet it perpetuates whatever, you know, algorithm that I'm living in. It perpetuates that. It makes, deepens my strength. And I talked about this after Charlie Kirk got killed. It's like, bro, it at least from the outside and I'm, look, I'm not, I'm not deep in day to day researching on what happened there. But it certainly appears from the outside that you had a dude. That was kinda normal, like, you know, normal family, normal job, like going to normal college. And in a relatively short period of time, he went from that person who could have had a totally

• 1:30:50Jocko Willink?

  normal, great, uh, positive, productive life to a person that murdered another human being in front of millions of people and, you know, changed, hit the course of his life, his family's life, Charlie Kirk's life, Charlie Kirk's family's destroyed. Like, it's, it's crazy that that took place. At least again, and I don't know if you guys have more information about this, but it certainly seems like that guy went from a relatively normal human to this twisted person.

• 1:31:23Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:31:24Jocko Willink?

  Right? Is that kinda what happened?

• 1:31:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, in a short period of time. I mean, that's probably the best way to describe without knowing details that they'll probably never share. But like regardless of your political opinions, he was put in a place by the things that he was ingesting. It made him convinced that this was the only solution to this problem. So he had been radicalized by, um, the misinformation or disinformation. I think misinformation is supposed to be a straight up lie, disinformation's like obscuring. Obscuring with like, kind of like seventy-five percent true, twenty, like they kind, what is it called where they give you, uh, what did cops, the thing with the tree, um, Oh, fruit of the poisonous tree? Yeah, I think that's kind of the whole thing of like, What's the deal with that?

• 1:32:06Speaker 03

  Um, it's a thing cops always say, but basically like you follow a thing, but it's, it's like a bad lead. And so then you have fruit of the poison tree, like all your stuff that comes after it. Is that the best way to describe it? And, um, you know, this person, and again, I don't know everything, but just from what I gathered and all the stuff, it just seems like there's so much stuff that's thrown at you now. You have to have deliberate and intentional mechanisms, mechanisms within you to be like, I need to stop, like, cause that's, that the internet is built off of reaction. It's built off of what? Like, that's the whole thing. So you have to be like,

• 1:32:42Jocko Willink?

  I I I love freedom. I don't know if I actually support this, but if the government came out with legislation tomorrow and they were like, you know what? Every Tuesday, we're just gonna shut off all social medias for 24 hours. It probably wouldn't be a bad thing for society.

• 1:32:56Speaker 03

  Touch Grass Tuesday. Sounds good to me. Touch Grass Tuesday. Cause I use the internet now just for goofs with my friends. Like we just, I'm I'm trying to bring it back old school, like back when it was just silly, silly good time stuff, you know, not a lot to it. You know, I think that's one cure, but I like Touch Grass Tuesday. Yeah, we're gonna make a shirt.

• 1:33:15Jocko Willink?

  I tell people like, you know, when when when someone creates a meme or a comment or a post, their goal is to make the readers of that or the viewers of that emotional because if I see something and it freaking pisses me off so bad, I freaking retweet it to you guys. Like I want everyone to say, well, check this bullshit. Or if it's something that I strongly support, hell yeah, I repost it. Hell yeah, everybody. But either way, it's like, that is absolutely traveling. And the weird thing is too, is, you know, sometimes I'll see these super passionate freaking posts, you know, about something. And I'm like, it's weird.

• 1:33:57Jocko Willink?

  Imagine your world where when something you see something that like you don't agree with strongly or whatever, and your reaction is like, you know what? I can't believe this is happening. I'm gonna go write a tweet and post it. Like, that's what we're doing?

• 1:34:13Speaker 03

  No. Yeah.

• 1:34:15Jocko Willink?

  No. What is that?

• 1:34:16Speaker 03

  It's because there's actually like, I don't, I don't know. I I think you you get what you need in life. And if you look for things with intention, they'll come to you. Like one of the best stories out there right now, in my opinion, online, everyone should check him out, is Ethan Bernard.

• 1:34:31Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:31Speaker 03

  Ethan Bernard, he came to the San Antonio show.

• 1:34:33Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:34Speaker 03

  He's awesome. There are a few people in my life that have a vigor, a vigor and like enthusiasm for working hard and he is doing it. That boy is about it, about it. And I love him. Like, that's the stuff where it's like.

• 1:34:47Jocko Willink?

  What, like 170 pounds?

• 1:34:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, he lost a Backstreet Boy. Yeah, a full blown, a full blown pop star. And he's still digging in. He was telling, he's a, he's up training in Philly now, right? He's out there. It's so great. Like, those are the things that we need more of. Someone who's like,

• 1:35:03Speaker 01

  I can change this. It's not too late. Watch me do it. And he's doing it.

• 1:35:08Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, there's, there is so much positive out there. And that's a good example. Like Ethan has gone and grown very rapidly, like in popularity because he's doing something super positive. But negative shit spreads so much more, so much faster. Like I, I, I bet if he freaking blew out his knee and was in the hospital, it'd be like, you know.

• 1:35:30Speaker 01

  I knew he was faking it. Yeah.

• 1:35:32Jocko Willink?

  Uh, yeah, uh, you know, Jocko fuel injures freaking Ethan Bernard by pushing him too hard in uncontrolled circumstances. That would be a bigger story than, hey, he reached his goal. Like, it's gonna be great when he reaches his goal and we get done with that training. Like he's, like, our goal is that he gets good habits. That's the goal. Like, I don't care if he loses five pounds or 50 pounds or 150 pounds while he's up in Philly, but hey, can you recognize like, I want him to know what it feels like to not want to do something, do the something that he doesn't want to do and realize how good that feels. Cause like, if you can get that, to me, that's always, you know, to this day, I know

• 1:36:17Jocko Willink?

  that if I get out of bed, I'm gonna feel better later. I know if I get my workout in, I'm gonna feel better later. I know if I do the work on the project I'm supposed to be working on, I know that I don't want to do it right now, but I know that when I do it, I know that I'll feel better. And that's like a great fuel to have, but you kind of have to learn that. And I don't think he learned it, you know, early in his life.

• 1:36:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think like, I don't know, as a, doing content creation as a job for like three years now, I think I, most political pundits and like people whose whole job is to piss people off is like the lowest tier, easiest level of entry for being a content creator. Like the whole vibe, you get paid for making people feel something, but making people feel anger is the easiest thing in the world to make somebody feel. You know what I mean? It's much harder to inspire somebody, make them feel happy, make them, you know. Entertain them positively. Yeah. Right. Like, that's so much more impressive to me than somebody walking away pissed off. Like, that's so, I could, I think I'm pretty good at like inspiring people, you know, with the stories that I tell, but it would be so much easier.

• 1:37:21Speaker 01

  I could piss off so many more people so much faster. I don't need 45 minutes to piss somebody off. Like.

• 1:37:27Speaker 03

  I could do that easy.

• 1:37:28Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, well, when I was a kid, there was magazines like the National Enquirer. And it is just gossip, like negative stories about celebrities. And who doesn't love seeing some celebrity with all their money in their plane? And oh, how you like that now? Now you got rolled up for DUI, you miserable piece of shit. I knew, you know what I mean? Like people just, there's, there's some sick little twisted part of our ego that just loves to see people that are doing well, get crushed, or people that aren't doing well, get crushed. Like we just freaking, it's, that's like you said, it's so easy because that's such a natural instinct that we have. Like, oh, burn it down.

• 1:38:08Jocko Willink?

  And I always tell people, it's like so much harder to build something than it is to burn something down and destroy something. And then that's why it's like, well, if I have got to do something, I'll just burn, just set fire to stuff. And it's a good way to make things happen. And I don't think things are gonna, it's gonna get real weird right now because the AI is upon us. And you know, I was on Twitter the other day and people were posting like little, uh, little clips of me doing stuff. It's not me, but it's me doing stuff. And I sent one to Echo, I was like, bro, this shit's getting pretty good. And Echo immediately sent back, that guy's teeth are straight. He has no gap between his front two teeth.

• 1:38:50Jocko Willink?

  And I was like, okay, so AI Jocko does not have a gap between his front two teeth.

• 1:38:54Speaker 03

  Hurtful, but.

• 1:38:56Jocko Willink?

  Hurtful, but helpful.

• 1:38:58Speaker 01

  You put that out, it's gonna be patched by tomorrow.

• 1:39:00Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's the thing. It will be. Yeah, you're right.

• 1:39:02Speaker 03

  It's fixed now. Um, well, and it's, it's just weird because like, it used to be like AI was like really clunky, like I, there's the video of like Will Smith eating spaghetti in like 2024. Will Smith eating spaghetti in 2025. And it's just like, what is it? Uncanny valley? It's, it's pretty, it's pretty close. It's pretty close, some of it.

• 1:39:22Jocko Willink?

  Oh, it's gonna get.

• 1:39:23Speaker 03

  Especially someone like you, like you have so much stuff. You have so much stuff in the ether, like your memes of Jocko working out, throwing batteries in the ocean.

• 1:39:31Jocko Willink?

  Have you seen this, Echo Charles?

• 1:39:33Speaker 03

  It's, it's, it's just the most like, what type of workout would Jocko do? He would carry two car batteries to the beach, throw them in and then run back home at four thirty-five. Four thirty-four, excuse me.

• 1:39:44Speaker 01

  I've never heard anybody compare the AI thing to the uncanny valley. That's an interesting.

• 1:39:50Jocko Willink?

  I thought the AI thing was the uncanny valley.

• 1:39:52Speaker 03

  It's as it enters humanism, right?

• 1:39:54Speaker 01

  The, the uncanny valley, or at least what I was under the impression of is the uncanny valley is like, predates AI forever. It's the uncanny valley is like, when you can look at something that looks like a human, but you can tell for some reason, you don't know why, but I can tell in its eyes or something, that's not a person. So like the theory was always like, the, the theory, like the cryptology or whatever theory, or the Bigfoot people, whatever that's called, researcher.

• 1:40:24Speaker 01

  No, it's like cryptozoology or some shit like that where they study shit that's not real.

• 1:40:31Speaker 01

  The, the theory was like, oh, there must have been some type of predator or something somewhere in human evolution that looked similar to humans and tried to trick them. And that's why humans all have this ability to identify humanoid looking creatures that aren't actually human and aren't friendly. So like if that were true and then it comes back to be in handy again to help differentiate AI to where people can again, just be able to be like, that's not true. I can just sense it.

• 1:40:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:58Speaker 01

  Never heard anybody compare it to that.

• 1:40:59Jocko Willink?

  The shit is getting good, though.

• 1:41:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, the, the, well, I don't wanna contend with the crypto zoo people, but isn't like facial recognition is like one of the most valuable assets that people have, cuz it's like.

• 1:41:11Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:41:12Speaker 02

  I can tell your intentions by your face. So it's a collection of systems is really what it is.

• 1:41:16Jocko Willink?

  You don't mean facial recognition, you mean like, uh, reading someone's face? Not just like, I know that that's Nick, but like, I know that Nick's pissed, or I know that Nick doesn't care.

• 1:41:26Speaker 02

  Exactly right. Exactly right. Like what your face, your face, don't even talk. Your face is telling me a lot, you know? So that ability is so fine tuned with people. So, and again, it's a collection of things. So it's not just, oh, his eyes are squinting, therefore this. No, no, it's the eyes squinting with this, with this, you know, all this stuff. So the uncanny valley just doesn't get all of those systems in correct order is essentially what it is. Like the eyes don't squint enough. I can tell it's, that's fake, you know? And that uneasy, and even as people, we can't really say like, oh, the wrinkle in his cheek there wasn't enough for me to be, you know? We don't know that. It's too, it's too, uh, fine tuned, you know?

• 1:42:07Speaker 02

  So the, uh, so the computers, they just, they just send it. The resolution's not high enough. And the people we can tell, we can't tell what we can tell, but we can still tell. So it feels weird. It feels uncanny.

• 1:42:20Jocko Willink?

  I'm just freaking pissed at the AI people because they freaking just, what they did to my wife. Because my wife would like, send me a meme or whatever, like a video. And it would be like, oh my gosh, this is amazing. And it'd be like a, a baby cow that like, walks over and like, jumps in the

• 1:42:42Speaker 02

  The security camera footage of it or whatever.

• 1:42:44Jocko Willink?

  And it's like a baby cow walks over and like, you know, licks the face of the little baby who then like, jumps on it and rides away.

• 1:42:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:42:51Jocko Willink?

  And maybe not that fantastic, but my wife probably sent me three or four of these videos where she was like, oh my God, you know, like her. She's the sweetest person, just like her, her benevolent hope in humanity was like back, you know? And then I'd be like, mm, that's just AI. And she'd just be so freaking disappointed that like that little cow with the little bell around its neck with the little kid riding it like, no, it's not real, hon, I'm sorry. It's terrible.

• 1:43:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:43:19Jocko Willink?

  It's a terrible thing.

• 1:43:20Speaker 02

  But that's what it's gonna become after a while, where the internet, if you see an internet video, it's on like by default. Not trustworthy. That's always gonna be. So it's like you gotta authen- and then these little companies are gonna pop up authenticator companies, you know?

• 1:43:33Speaker 03

  Tired of not trusting your videos online. Go to authenticator.com.

• 1:43:37Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. But that'll be the standard. Everything will be fake.

• 1:43:40Speaker 03

  It's a circle, right? There's a thing that happens, there's a solution, there's a thing that happens, there's a solution.

• 1:43:44Jocko Willink?

  I posted a picture. I was gonna post a picture on Instagram of the sunset. And in this, I took a picture of the sunset. And there was like refraction or reflection or something weird where the sun was here and then up above it, there was like a little, like another sun.

• 1:43:58Speaker 03

  Artifact.

• 1:43:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, like an artifact. And I was like, oh, that sucks. And it kind of made the picture not look as cool. And I did something either with Instagram or with my Apple Photos to like, get rid of it. And it offered it to me. It was like, you know, hey, do you want to get rid of this thing? And I was like, cool. And I posted it on Instagram. And the shit got labeled AI image. And I took it down. And I was like, dude, that's kind of crazy.

• 1:44:25Speaker 02

  That's good.

• 1:44:25Jocko Willink?

  You know, it was a little tiny adjustment. And it was like, this image has been altered by AI.

• 1:44:31Speaker 03

  Oh, man, the fitness model industry is gonna be pissed. This ass is fatter from AI.

• 1:44:40Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. God, those, those, uh, that's gonna be crazy, isn't it? Cause, and I was like, you see some of those people do a picture of like, what they really look like? They'll admit like, hey, this is what I really look like. And this is what I look like in the picture. But, you know, as disturbing as that shit got for like, girls in the eighties and nineties, when the magazine covers were, you know, unachievable physiques, other than like, just completely starve yourself and be anorexic and bulimic and the whole nine yards. What a terrible, terrible. And now they're just getting that all day in these freaking apps all day.

• 1:45:19Speaker 03

  Every day. There's a few creators who like, do stuff to like, break down like, fitness people. Which I think is actually good, especially as someone who has daughters where the world's being thrown at them to be like, do this, change this about you. You look good, but you could look great. You know, like, I don't like that stuff. And because like, I'll see some of these people and like, the tall, the telltale sign is like, you look behind them and like, that staircase probably shouldn't do like this all of a sudden. It's like zipped, pinched, enhanced. And I'm just like, come on, man. Do better. And but you buy their fitness package and you can look like them too. It's just the same thing over and over again.

• 1:45:54Jocko Willink?

  AI is about to get more wild, huh?

• 1:45:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, I, I think TouchGrass Tuesday is the best solution.

• 1:46:01Speaker 01

  It's definitely moving faster than the government. They are a bunch of dinosaurs that don't know what's going on.

• 1:46:07Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, well, that's gonna be, that could be very problematic, you know, like them trying to operate in the system of how long it takes for them to make changes and implement things. And this system is moving so rapidly that you, you just can't, you can't behave like that.

• 1:46:22Speaker 01

  The, the system itself doesn't move fast enough to keep up. You're correct. But the other problem is the people in charge of that system on average are what 60 years old? I mean,

• 1:46:32Speaker 03

  That's a youngin'.

• 1:46:33Speaker 01

  We all saw the, the video of Mark Zuckerberg getting called before Congress and some 70 year old congressman being like, can the Facebook app access my wifi? Yeah, that's how the internet work. Like you don't have the prerequisite knowledge to understand anything. You know what I mean? Like you don't know two plus two and we're trying to explain it physics to you. Like it's impossible.

• 1:46:55Speaker 03

  Mr. Zuckerberg, how do ads work?

• 1:46:58Jocko Willink?

  God.

• 1:47:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:47:00Speaker 03

  Dude, that's the worst. Yeah.

• 1:47:02Speaker 01

  You're Jocko. You don't have this problem.

• 1:47:06Jocko Willink?

  I don't know.

• 1:47:06Speaker 01

  The worst problem, the worst, you were, I just like, I don't know, every, I've only been doing the YouTube thing for three years. So it's always like, oh, what do you, like, I'll meet new people somewhere or something. Oh, what do you do for work? I'm a YouTuber. And I, I just say I make videos on the internet and you know, I'll be, there'll be some dinner with like doctors or whatever, you know, like, successful people and they'll say that and it's like 90% of the time their face is just like, gives me this look like,

• 1:47:33Jocko Willink?

  Loser.

• 1:47:34Speaker 01

  This guy's, this guy's married to a doctor and sits at home in his underwear, making video games shit online all day. And it, I don't know, it's, it's like my pet peeve and it was, it was impossible to get a mortgage for a house being a YouTuber.

• 1:47:49Jocko Willink?

  Really?

• 1:47:49Speaker 01

  Oh dude, it's so bad. Try going to the bank and be like, I make, I make fart jokes on the internet and that's how I make my money. They're like, we'd rather you had a W two from McDonald's, like a hundred percent. So like, But I was making enough money that they finally like it was a local bank and they like brought me in to the the loan committee of just old bank people and they're like, so what do you do? I was like, I make videos on the internet and the one lady on the committee did my pet peeve and she's like, hmm, what does your wife do? And I don't know why I let it fly this time, but I just go, me.

• 1:48:28Jocko Willink?

  Did you get the loan?

• 1:48:29Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. The other two guys on the committee were laughing their ass off.

• 1:48:34Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I guess, uh, it is a weird, I guess it is a weird job to have. And I've, cause I've always done like a bunch of different things. Like, once I retired from the Navy, I was doing a bunch of different things. So I was, my, my answer, like, random person asked me, it's like, oh, I retired from the military. That's my answer. And that usually kind of, usually diffuses the rest of the conversation. And I don't really, you know, have to go into like, well, yeah. Cause even

• 1:48:57Speaker 03

  Do the business voice.

• 1:48:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's like even like, you know, what do you do? Cause I don't really, cause how, what, what do I do? But like, I'm a writer. Like, I'm not, like, I'm not gonna say that. Uh, well, you know,

• 1:49:09Speaker 01

  The worst, the worst is like, I'll be like, I make videos on the internet. Oh, are you an influencer? Like, as much as I hate that title, yeah, it fits, unfortunately.

• 1:49:19Speaker 03

  Yes, I am.

• 1:49:20Speaker 01

  Yes, I am.

• 1:49:21Speaker 03

  I just tell people I'm Jocko now. That's, that's what I do. They're gonna do, oh, I'm Jocko. And I just exit the conversation. That's a job. Yeah. Oh, he's a Jocko. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

• 1:49:32Jocko Willink?

  Right on. All right. Well, does that get us up to speed? We got the underwhelming podcast. We got the, the, the unsubscribe podcast. We got the fat electrician YouTube channel. That's what we got going on. What did we miss anything?

• 1:49:45Speaker 01

  I don't think so.

• 1:49:46Speaker 03

  I don't think so, no.

• 1:49:48Speaker 01

  Drag you onto the underwhelming podcast next.

• 1:49:50Jocko Willink?

  Looking forward to it, man. Freaking awesome. And people can find you. So Zach, veteranwithasign.com, Instagram and Facebook, you're at veteranwithaside, Twitter X, you're at Zachary Bell.

• 1:50:01Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:50:01Jocko Willink?

  And Nick, thefatelectrician.com, Instagram and YouTube is at the underscore fat underscore electrician. And then Twitter X your fat underscore electrician and your Facebook is the fat electrician official.

• 1:50:18Speaker 01

  Yes, sir.

• 1:50:19Jocko Willink?

  Um, and like I said, your podcasts are the fat electrician podcast, underwhelming podcast and unsubscribe.

• 1:50:25Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:50:25Speaker 03

  Yes, sir.

• 1:50:26Jocko Willink?

  Echo, you got any questions?

• 1:50:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, back to your peck there. What about it? Your second one, how'd you do that benching? Uh, first one was bench pressing and uh, the second one was just a freak accident doing jujitsu, just like caught myself in a roll. But I think like it shouldn't have tore. So what I think happened, cause it was about a year and a half after the first one. I think the first one got damaged, having all like this one blew. So I think this one took some damage with it also. And then I think a year or two of just like, I was overcompensating everything on my right side. Cause this one was still getting back to normal. So I think this one just got overworked and then it blew eventually too. So I think this one's a freak accident.

• 1:51:07Speaker 03

  Who were you rolling with when it happened?

• 1:51:09Jocko Willink?

  I don't know Zach, who was it? Go ahead.

• 1:51:12Speaker 03

  I think it might've been me. Worst, the worst 10 minutes of my life. And when he stood up in his arm mood with extra slack, my first thought was, ah, that sucks. My second thought was, thank God. Just pushing fire, just like, uh.

• 1:51:30Jocko Willink?

  I, I had a neck problem and my, my arm like went kinda like not fully limp, but like way crazy pain. And like way weak and I was, I was training jujitsu at the time with a dude. And I like, had to just summon the whatever uh, uh, ring of power from this movie you're talking. I had to like, I had to like summon that ring of power to like submit this dude and like say like, hey, thanks man, good roll. And like walk off the mat and like crawl into a corner, hide and like die inside.

• 1:52:05Speaker 01

  You just gotta get through the cool guy explosion, walk away and then I can cry.

• 1:52:09Jocko Willink?

  I freaking, I did it. And I was like, bro, I'm so screwed right now. Cause my arm was just all like shitty and crazy pain. Yeah. So you gotta just suck it up sometimes like for that last, did you finish the round?

• 1:52:20Speaker 01

  Huh? Did you finish the round? It was like right at the end.

• 1:52:24Speaker 02

  And how's it now back?

• 1:52:26Speaker 01

  I mean, I just, uh, I don't know. I just kinda like made a deal with myself. I never bench more than two twenty five. So I mean, I would just sit there and rep out two twenty five, but.

• 1:52:34Speaker 02

  You said you were doing like three seventy five.

• 1:52:36Speaker 01

  I was doing three seventy five the first time I tore it.

• 1:52:38Speaker 02

  And even that, what's your best bench?

• 1:52:40Speaker 01

  Huh? It was four plates on each side. So.

• 1:52:42Speaker 02

  That's your best one?

• 1:52:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:52:43Speaker 02

  Well, three seventy five, you're kinda in the red zone for injury. And how old were you?

• 1:52:48Speaker 01

  Uh, twenty seven.

• 1:52:51Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:52:51Speaker 01

  And I was like, we're good there.

• 1:52:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think you're right.

• 1:52:54Speaker 01

  It was a third rep though. And like I've been able to do it five. I mean, it wasn't even to the point where we were doing like shaky stuff.

• 1:53:00Speaker 02

  Right, right.

• 1:53:00Speaker 01

  But I mean, it was literally, and it just went.

• 1:53:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, you're right. You're in, you're not in the red zone in, in that way, right? So we're not worried about it. Twenty seven years old, third rep. Like, yeah, you're not worried, really worried about it.

• 1:53:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:53:15Speaker 02

  Like this was a routine thing. Explosive style?

• 1:53:18Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I think that was part of my problem because I, like, at the time, I was like, okay, well, for, you know, force times acceleration.

• 1:53:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:53:26Speaker 01

  You know, so I was like, if I can do it faster, I can do more because there's more power. So.

• 1:53:31Speaker 02

  Well, Cake Nuts did the exact same thing with less weight. Cake, my friend Cake, oh, yeah, he was a SEAL back in the day. So he, uh, yeah, he just entered a, a contest, right? Bench contest. And he was like, hey, I didn't know that your muscles could just like, tear off the bone from your own like strength. So it's like your muscles are too strong for your body to hold it on. He's like, I didn't know that was a thing. I was like, bro, it actually is a thing. And there's a thing, there's a, it's called a Golgi tendon organ. There are these little things that like attach to your bones and muscle and stuff. That basically it's like a little regulator. That's like, hey, there, there's too much force being generated. So we kinda shut down your muscle a little bit.

• 1:54:08Speaker 01

  Sorry, but this is like, this is like the. The thing that gets overwritten when you hear the stories about like the mom lifted the car off her baby.

• 1:54:16Speaker 02

  Exactly, right. Oh, yeah. And actually, training, especially with the explosive style, but any kind of like strength, like, you know, power training starts to override those. It sure it improves the structure of your body as well, but it overs one of the the results is overriding those those gold tendon organs.

• 1:54:33Jocko Willink?

  So you just overrode those and overrode them and overrode them and then finally it's just like, yep.

• 1:54:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, like you get.

• 1:54:39Speaker 01

  I don't need it. I'll push through it. Oh, shit. That was actually an important part.

• 1:54:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:54:43Speaker 01

  Oh, boy.

• 1:54:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, man. So it works. It's hard.

• 1:54:48Jocko Willink?

  Well, right on. Any closing thoughts, Nick? Any closing thoughts?

• 1:54:52Speaker 01

  It's a good time.

• 1:54:52Jocko Willink?

  Right on. Zach, anything?

• 1:54:54Speaker 03

  Um, uh, stay you're worth fighting for.

• 1:54:57Jocko Willink?

  Right on. Right on. Good message. Uh, well, gentlemen, thanks for thanks for coming out. Thanks for joining us. Thanks for sharing the lessons learned. Thanks for sharing some freaking good stories. Thanks for your service to the country and uh, thanks for what you're continuing to do right now to make people a little smarter, a little bit happier and a little bit better. Appreciate it.

• 1:55:15Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 1:55:16Jocko Willink?

  And with that, Zach and Nick have left the building, getting after it, bench pressing.

• 1:55:25Speaker 02

  Yep. Yes, sir. Hell, yeah.

• 1:55:28Jocko Willink?

  I mean, what do you say?

• 1:55:29Speaker 02

  Three seventy-five, third rep.

• 1:55:31Jocko Willink?

  Mm hmm. Three seventy-five, twenty-seven years old.

• 1:55:34Speaker 02

  Twenty-seven years.

• 1:55:34Jocko Willink?

  In the zone.

• 1:55:35Speaker 02

  Strong.

• 1:55:35Jocko Willink?

  You know, that's even at even at twenty-seven, when you're throwing around, what what do you think you enter like just yellow zone regardless of regardless of age?

• 1:55:48Speaker 02

  I mean, that's it. I mean, depends on how many reps he was going for, but any for anywhere from one to three reps is is kind of yellow zone.

• 1:55:57Jocko Willink?

  So wait a second. You're saying when you're working with a weight that you can handle for one to three z reps, you're in the yellow zone?

• 1:56:05Speaker 02

  You know what though, at that age, I don't think so, to be honest with you. I, I think that.

• 1:56:09Jocko Willink?

  Remember what you felt like at twenty seven? Bro, like whatever.

• 1:56:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:56:13Jocko Willink?

  Whatever at me.

• 1:56:14Speaker 02

  Whatever, yeah.

• 1:56:14Jocko Willink?

  I don't care.

• 1:56:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, you're just gonna, you're gonna fail with the weight before you start tearing stuff off, you know?

• 1:56:20Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:21Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah, he, he said that he was, um, he thinks he injured it on that first one, kind of a thing. So it was like a, maybe like a partial going on.

• 1:56:29Jocko Willink?

  Hmm. No, injured the other one.

• 1:56:31Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:56:31Jocko Willink?

  So the first one, it sounded like it was just out of nowhere.

• 1:56:34Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, yeah. You're right. You're right. You're right.

• 1:56:36Jocko Willink?

  Out of left field, just.

• 1:56:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, it can happen for sure. Like, you know, like when you're running and you get a hamstring pull.

• 1:56:43Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Have you ever heard about Achilles, people that tear their Achilles? And that seems to happen out of nowhere.

• 1:56:48Speaker 02

  Scotty Lewis tore his Achilles.

• 1:56:50Jocko Willink?

  Really? Squatty? The legend?

• 1:56:51Speaker 02

  The legend of Squatty Lewis. Yeah. Sorry. Well, it wasn't while he was walking. That was when he was doing something, but it was one of those ones. It's not like he was like on the starting line of some intense sprint up a hill or something like this, or you know how you play basketball, sometimes you pivot wrong or I don't know. I think he was like something like, kind of like you wouldn't think. But yeah, it happens. That's a long recovery right there.

• 1:57:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:14Speaker 02

  But he's back.

• 1:57:15Jocko Willink?

  Well, hey, try not to tear these things. Maybe, maybe take some joint work for it. Take some super grill, take some time war. That's what we're doing. Check out jockofuel.com. We get protein. So good. I'm having one right now as a matter of fact. Little bit of thirty grams of milk, ready to drink, chocolate flavor, tasty. That's what we're doing. Jocko Fuel, you get it at jockofuel.com. You can get it at a bunch of different stores, including a bunch of different stores. So check it out. We make the best. We make the cleanest. We make the tastiest. And the most efficacious. I was gonna say effective, but I decided to step it up. My, my goat kicked in.

• 1:57:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:57:55Jocko Willink?

  And I was like, no, we're not just gonna be effective. We're gonna be efficacious.

• 1:57:58Speaker 02

  Efficacious.

• 1:57:59Jocko Willink?

  So that's what we're doing. Check out that, whatever you need. We got you covered hydration. I'm having the hydration too, which is freaking, as we like to say, GTG. That's what we're doing. So check out, check out jockofuel.com also. Check out originusa.com. We got American made clothing. We're talking a lot about American history, right? World War II, World War I. We won those wars with our manufacturing capability. We could out manufacture these other countries and we gave that away. Seventies, eighties, nineties, gave away that manufacturing capability, blew it. We're bringing it back. Originusa.com,

• 1:58:38Jocko Willink?

  not communist, not originusa.comunist. No, it's originusa.com. It's not communist, it's communist free. Jeans, boots, gies. As a matter of fact, Nick was just asking me about like, we had these work pants that we made for a while and Gardner loved them too. I might have to talk to Pete, we might have to bring those things back into the mix. They got like extra pockets on them, they're super heavy duty. They're, they're, they're awesome. They're awesome. You know, so we'll see. But we got jeans, we got hoodies, t-shirts, we got everything that you need. Got that. Did you get the bonded fleece hoodie?

• 1:59:18Speaker 02

  No, I did not.

• 1:59:20Jocko Willink?

  This thing is a technical piece of gear. It's a technical piece of gear. Wind, no factor. Rain, no factor. Warmth or cold, no factor. We just got you covered. Check out originusa.com, we got you covered. Head to toe, head to toe. Beanie?

• 1:59:35Speaker 02

  Socks, everything.

• 1:59:36Jocko Willink?

  Socks, boots.

• 1:59:37Speaker 02

  Everyone between.

• 1:59:38Jocko Willink?

  Everyone between. We got you covered.

• 1:59:40Speaker 02

  All right, all right. Also, Choco Store, choco store.com. This is more apparel, uh, Discipline Equals Freedom shirts. Got some hoodies on there. It's almost hoodie season, it kinda is hoodie season for some of us, some people.

• 1:59:53Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, definitely. Especially by the time this comes out. It's way deep in the hoodie season.

• 1:59:57Speaker 02

  True. Got some hoodies on there. Uh, Worry Kid stuff on there and kid stuff. So man, if you guys shopping still for Christmas at this time, like, oh, you want to get your kid a cool little shirt that he wants to represent. My boy wore his Discipline Equals Freedom. He had a, a baseball scrimmage yesterday.

• 2:00:15Jocko Willink?

  What position is he playing?

• 2:00:17Speaker 02

  He plays outfield. And yeah.

• 2:00:21Jocko Willink?

  Bro, I brought my kid. How old is he?

• 2:00:23Speaker 02

  Nine.

• 2:00:24Jocko Willink?

  I brought my, my son was a little bit younger, but I brought him to like, he wanted to play baseball. He's like, oh, you know, baseball, that's what we're doing.

• 2:00:30Speaker 02

  Hell, yeah, of course.

• 2:00:31Jocko Willink?

  I take him out there, bro. He's like picking dandelions in center field.

• 2:00:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's how.

• 2:00:36Jocko Willink?

  Not giving a shit about this. Once he realized how boring it was for him.

• 2:00:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:00:40Jocko Willink?

  You know?

• 2:00:41Speaker 02

  I can dig it.

• 2:00:41Jocko Willink?

  They're like, hey, but the thing and the stuff. And he's just out there just not caring about any of it. He, he needless to say, he didn't have a long baseball career. And part of that was on me. And I've briefed you on this before, you know, kind of the way I manipulated the scenario was, oh, you want to play baseball? Cool. Don't give him any training.

• 2:01:00Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 2:01:01Jocko Willink?

  Have him go down there. He's not good at it because he hasn't trained at all. So it's like, this kind of sucks.

• 2:01:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:01:07Jocko Willink?

  Meanwhile, oh, like, uh, well, how was jujitsu? Well, I choked three people. That's pretty fun. Seems like fun. Seems like I'm kind of good at that.

• 2:01:13Speaker 02

  And you're into it, too.

• 2:01:14Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Well, it happened to be that event, too.

• 2:01:16Speaker 02

  I see.

• 2:01:17Jocko Willink?

  So that's what we're doing.

• 2:01:18Speaker 02

  It's okay. Yeah, I dig it. And that would be the case, but I take, I take him up to the park and we hit balls.

• 2:01:23Jocko Willink?

  So you're better, you're better than I was.

• 2:01:24Speaker 02

  So he did, he did good in scrimmage, though. He did better than he did in all other games.

• 2:01:29Jocko Willink?

  Let's just hope he likes jujitsu, too.

• 2:01:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, we got mats at the house, so that's always.

• 2:01:33Jocko Willink?

  Hey, win the game.

• 2:01:34Speaker 02

  Yeah. But nonetheless, yes. So there's some kid stuff on there, too. Um, also the shirt locker, which is a subscription scenario, scenario, new design every month. People seem to like that. So yeah, subscribe on now. And if you want, check it out. Go on jockster.com, click on the top button. There says, check out the shirt locker. Um, just a heads up for the store. Probably from here, moving forward, this is going to have something new in some capacity every month. On top of the shirt locker. Shirt lockers every month. That's for, I'm saying from the store, you know, so whether it be new design or maybe we might release like one design from the shirt locker a few years ago.

• 2:02:11Jocko Willink?

  Got it.

• 2:02:12Speaker 02

  You know, something like this. Anyway, there's an email signup thing if you want. I don't spam, so put your email on there and, uh, in there and I'll give you the heads up on everything.

• 2:02:20Jocko Willink?

  Once a month, you'll be sending an email that there's something new.

• 2:02:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, more, yeah, once a month ish, you know, I'm not saying every single month, but that's, that's the goal, you know? Or something, something good, something relevant. See what I'm saying? It won't be just some nonsense like, hey, just checking it. No, that can't stop. Anyway, it's all on jockster.com.

• 2:02:36Jocko Willink?

  Brett on also, we got some books. We got the book, Things My Brother Used to Say, written by Ryan Mannion. If you want to check that out, great book for your kids, for the neighbors' kids, the whole nine yards. Of course, I've written a bunch of Warrior Kid books and don't forget about leadership books. I've written a bunch of those and so has Dave Burke. He wrote a little something called The Need to Lead. So, check that one out. Echelon Front, we have a leadership consultancy. We solve problems through leadership. Go to echelonfront.com if you want us to

• 2:03:03Jocko Willink?

  meet with you and your organization and get you squared away on leadership, or if you want to come to one of our events, go to echelonfront.com. We also have an online training academy. We're on there live. I'm on there live. So, if you want to join that, you can take courses that are pre-recorded courses that have interactive tests and quizzes and learning. And you can go to extremeownership.com to learn the skill of leadership. So, check that out. Also, if you want to help service members, active and retired, you want to help the families, you want to help Gold Star families, check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee. She's got an amazing charity organization. If you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to AmericasMightyWarriors.org.

• 2:03:46Jocko Willink?

  Also, check out Micah Fink's organization, HeroesandHorses.org. And finally, Jimmy Mays, BeyondTheBrotherhood.org. And if you were in Ramadi with us

• 2:03:57Jocko Willink?

  in 2006, 2007 with the 11 AD, go to RamadiReunion20.com, January 16th and 17th, 2026, down in Texas. We will see you there. If you want to connect with us, once again, for Zach and Nick. We got Zach, VeteranWithASign.com, Instagram and Facebook, @VeteranWithASign, and Twitter, X, @ZacharyBell. And then Nick, you can just find him at TheFatElectrician.com. He's also Instagram and YouTube, @TheFatElectrician, and then Twitter, X, FatElectrician, Facebook, FatElectricianOfficial. And their podcasts that they have collectively are

• 2:04:39Jocko Willink?

  The unsubscribe podcast, the fat electrician podcast and the underwhelming podcast. So check those out. Also check out for us, jocko.com and then on social media. I'm at jocko willink and Echo is at echo charles. Just as you know, don't spend too much time on there. It's a waste. Thanks once again to Nick and Zach for joining us and for sharing their knowledge with America and for your service to America. And thanks to all of our service members who right now, as we're sitting here in an air conditioned room, they're staged around the world standing by to protect freedom and our way of life. And we thank all of you for that. Also, thanks to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers,

• 2:05:24Jocko Willink?

  correctional officers, border patrol, secret service, as well as all other first responders, first responders. Thanks for your service here at home and everyone else out there. You know, keep an open mind. Keep an open mind. When I, when I look at Nick and Zach,

• 2:05:39Jocko Willink?

  I see two, two guys who, you know, walked different paths in life. Some places those paths kind of overlapped a little bit. Some places they didn't, but they both had an open mind as they looked around and looked to, look at the world and see what they could add to it. See what they could bring to the world. What could they do to help make the world a little bit better? Who could they help out? And I think if you open your eyes and you keep an open mind, you too can find a place where you can help someone else. And if you're doing that, then you're winning. And that's all I've got for tonight. Until next time. This is Echo and Jocko out.