224: In An Uncertain World, Stack The Deck In Your Favor. With Darryl Cooper.

0:00:00 - Opening 0:15:25 - Darryl Cooper from Martyr Made. 2:39:34 - Final thoughts and take-aways. 2:40:17 - How to stay on THE PATH. 3:07:26 - Closing Gratitude. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

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

• 0:01Jocko Willink?

  This is Jocko Podcast number 224 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening Echo. Good evening.

• 0:10Jocko Willink?

  There is seldom a Mexican standoff in battle. You either win or lose. And in many fights, a commander reaches a point where he thinks he's lost. He sees only his losses and knows only his own situation, not the enemy's. The carnage surrounding him erodes his confidence. Wellington at Waterloo thought he'd lost. So did Easy Company in the fight on the hill up north under Desiderio. Grant summed up the feeling best at Fort Donelson during the Civil War.

• 0:51Jocko Willink?

  He said, "Either side was ready to give way if the other showed a bold front." Well, we'd certainly shown a bold front, but so had the men from China. Neary appeared again, this time carrying a little unconscious Chinaman. I found out later that after I told him we needed a prisoner, he'd taken it as a personal assignment. He charged up the hill and stormed the top unarmed. Once in the enemy position, he'd smashed this chink on the head with his fist and hot-footed it back to me. Unfortunately, the POW died before we got the skinny.

• 1:32Jocko Willink?

  He kept trying to pull one of the grenades off Neary's belt on the way back and Neary had stomped him, obviously a little too hard. So we got another prisoner, but then, just when we needed him most, our interpreter, Kim, decided to bug out. Speed saw him running down the hill. He stopped him. "I go, I go," said Kim and edged away. Jack didn't know what to do. He was good and ready to waste him. Instead, he leveled his weapon and shot off Kim's hand. This persuasive little tactic worked. And we bandaged up his hand and Kim decided he liked our company after all.

• 2:14Jocko Willink?

  The word from the POW was just what we wanted to hear. Our artillery had clobbered the enemy reinforcing unit and no one on the hill had any fight left in him.

• 2:28Jocko Willink?

  I told Jimmy and the others to round up every gun that could walk, limp, or crawl.

• 2:35Jocko Willink?

  We were going to storm the top.

• 2:41Jocko Willink?

  Twenty bloodied and battered raiders soon crested the hill. Its surface was covered with enemy dead.

• 2:50Jocko Willink?

  The Chinese defenders, who hadn't been killed on position, had chanced running the gauntlet of military shot, which continued to blast the backside of the hill. Judging from the carnage on the reverse slope, few had made it.

• 3:05Jocko Willink?

  But an intact Bren gun crew was still raising hell among our tired band.

• 3:13Jocko Willink?

  There were more casualties until Jimmy and Evans went on the attack.

• 3:19Jocko Willink?

  They killed the crew, but paid the price.

• 3:25Jocko Willink?

  Jimmy lay like a broken reed next to the gun.

• 3:30Jocko Willink?

  He'd taken a shot in the face that ripped through his right eye and lower jaw.

• 3:36Jocko Willink?

  Evans lay nearby staring at Jimmy with wide, lifeless eyes, and a satisfied look on his heavily mustached face.

• 3:49Jocko Willink?

  It was the look of a winner.

• 3:52Jocko Willink?

  He'd probably just said to Jimmy, "We got the son of a bitch", before a burst of enemy fire, most likely the last of the fight, hit him full in the chest and ripped the life out of him.

• 4:08Jocko Willink?

  Neary switched on his radio to report the capture of Hill 400.

• 4:14Jocko Willink?

  Relief was en route. He was told, dispatched by a worried Colonel Sloan, when we went off the air.

• 4:26Jocko Willink?

  "Oh, say can you see?" I thought, as in the dull light of the morning we collected our scattered and broken fighters from the blood-soaked, American-held hill.

• 4:40Jocko Willink?

  The inexhaustible brakeman was kneeling over Jimmy, pumping life into him with a container of albumen.

• 4:52Jocko Willink?

  We had seven killed in action, twenty-nine wounded in action, and one raider, Salazar, was missing.

• 5:02Jocko Willink?

  The only two raiders who were not hit were Lipka and Sovereign, the two gunners. Their machine guns had been out of range of the frags that had depleted our ranks.

• 5:16Jocko Willink?

  It was a strange turnabout. Normally, the gunners ride in the death seat.

• 5:25Jocko Willink?

  We turned the hill over to the relieving wolfhound unit and continued looking for Salazar.

• 5:31Jocko Willink?

  We wouldn't leave the hill without him, and any man who could walk joined in the search. He'd been patched up after he and Smith had knocked out the machine gun, but no one had seen him since he'd returned to the fight.

• 5:45Jocko Willink?

  A faint moan was heard, in a draw, on the steep left-hand side of four hundred.

• 5:54Jocko Willink?

  It was Salazar, more dead than alive.

• 5:58Jocko Willink?

  He'd been blown off the hill by a grenade and somehow, with twenty-nine slugs or shrapnel wounds in his body, that tough Texan hambre was still sucking air.

• 6:11Jocko Willink?

  The doc got some blood into him, and we started down the hill.

• 6:18Jocko Willink?

  We carried all our dead and the wounded who could not make it under their own steam.

• 6:26Jocko Willink?

  Chink, eighty-two-millimeter, and a hundred-and-twenty-millimeter mortar fire continued to smash in around us, but it was ignored by all.

• 6:37Jocko Willink?

  After what we'd been through, it didn't mean a thing.

• 6:45Jocko Willink?

  Colonel Sloan had walked alone to meet us on Hill 400's forward slopes.

• 6:51Jocko Willink?

  He too ignored the incoming as he went from raider to raider, helping, comforting, praising.

• 7:01Jocko Willink?

  Tears streamed from his eyes in that early morning light as he helped us down.

• 7:07Jocko Willink?

  He led us to the aid station, and there I saw seven figures all lined up, each covered with a poncho.

• 7:19Jocko Willink?

  "It's just a nightmare," I thought.

• 7:23Jocko Willink?

  But I didn't believe myself at all.

• 7:29Jocko Willink?

  I went to each body and pulled the sheet back off the face.

• 7:36Jocko Willink?

  One by one, I cradled those men and rocked them in my arms, crying and mumbling and damning God because he had let me down.

• 7:51Jocko Willink?

  Now that curtain had fallen.

• 7:54Jocko Willink?

  The shock of it all came on.

• 7:57Jocko Willink?

  Suddenly I felt empty. Every part of me ached. My mouth was dry as a beach full of sand.

• 8:07Jocko Willink?

  Sloan helped me to my feet.

• 8:11Jocko Willink?

  He was a fine, caring man and a great commander.

• 8:17Jocko Willink?

  A medic came up, looked at my wounds, and hit me with another shred of morphine.

• 8:24Jocko Willink?

  It dulled the pain but not enough. He told me to go lie down in a litter so I could be evacuated.

• 8:34Jocko Willink?

  But I was not about to go anywhere.

• 8:39Jocko Willink?

  The welfare of my men was not a responsibility that could be delegated.

• 8:46Jocko Willink?

  Until everyone had been cared for,

• 8:49Jocko Willink?

  I'd stay right here.

• 9:00Jocko Willink?

  And that right there was an excerpt from the book About Face by Colonel David Hackworth. It's actually the first book that I covered on this podcast and it's the book where so many of the principles that I talk about and that I utilize in leadership and life stem from. Like the fact that the welfare of your men is something that cannot be dedicated. Or the fact

• 9:44Jocko Willink?

  that it was okay. Or at least normal to cry and mumble and curse God in my petty anger. The fact that this kind of uncontrolled emotion didn't make me a lesser man.

• 10:16Jocko Willink?

  And that to lose your men, your comrades, your friends is raw pain. And I learned that from the book About Face. Actually, I should say that it solidified in my brain. And when you read something, if you do it right, if you read it right, you take what you read and you overlay it with what you know and you make that experience and that knowledge from what you read part of your own.

• 11:08Jocko Willink?

  And you know, when I read,

• 11:15Jocko Willink?

  when I read books on this podcast,

• 11:21Jocko Willink?

  sometimes I get, sometimes I get hit with some emotions.

• 11:28Jocko Willink?

  And I've always,

• 11:31Jocko Willink?

  I've always managed, for the most part, to keep it together.

• 11:40Jocko Willink?

  But the emotions that I, that I, that I feel, they're not directly from what is going on in the book. I mean, obviously, that's part of it, but it's not the story from the book. It's the memories that I have.

• 12:04Jocko Willink?

  Because as I read, I remember.

• 12:09Jocko Willink?

  And I find myself there again,

• 12:15Jocko Willink?

  feeling that pain and that loss.

• 12:24Jocko Willink?

  And there's a thread of human emotion that runs from whatever story I'm reading into my own story.

• 12:32Jocko Willink?

  There's a connection.

• 12:37Jocko Willink?

  And if you trace that thread, then you can learn from it. And I learned from it.

• 12:47Jocko Willink?

  That's what happens when you, when you read and you absorb a story correctly. When you connect the thread of history with your own experience and your own knowledge and, and you make that connection. And when you do that, you learn. You learn and you also, you, you begin to understand more.

• 13:12Jocko Willink?

  Now, after

• 13:16Jocko Willink?

  a short time after we started making this podcast,

• 13:22Jocko Willink?

  someone sent me a message on social media.

• 13:27Jocko Willink?

  And at this point, it was pretty easy to respond and actually follow up and take action on, on things that people were saying to me because it wasn't a bunch of them. And somebody just sent me a message on social media. It said,

• 13:40Jocko Willink?

  said, "There's a podcast called Martyr Made. You will like it."

• 13:45Jocko Willink?

  So I,

• 13:48Jocko Willink?

  at some point, pulled out this podcast called Martyr Made and I listened.

• 13:53Jocko Willink?

  And as I listened to that voice,

• 13:57Jocko Willink?

  I heard that voice making these connections, connections between the past and present, connections between the emotions of people from the past and our emotions right now.

• 14:13Jocko Willink?

  A voice that connected the emotions from, from soldiers and citizens and terrorists and patriots and murderers

• 14:24Jocko Willink?

  and martyrs.

• 14:31Jocko Willink?

  The voice connected those things and the, the voice understood,

• 14:39Jocko Willink?

  understood something. And that voice read and spoke and tied those threads together.

• 14:48Jocko Willink?

  And that voice came from someone named Daryl Cooper,

• 14:54Jocko Willink?

  who is the voice and the mind and the emotion behind the podcast Martyr Made.

• 15:04Jocko Willink?

  And I guess through the

• 15:08Jocko Willink?

  benefit of the interwebs, we eventually connected.

• 15:13Jocko Willink?

  And

• 15:16Jocko Willink?

  Darryl just has a very

• 15:22Jocko Willink?

  good handle on wrapping these connections together. And he's here tonight to talk with us about those connections.

• 15:35Jocko Willink?

  The story of, you know, what his life has been and then the thread that connects him and us to the past and the present and the future.

• 15:48Jocko Willink?

  Darryl.

• 15:50Jocko Willink?

  Thanks for coming on, man.

• 15:51Speaker 01

  Thanks for having me.

• 15:55Jocko Willink?

  So.

• 15:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I remember somebody hitting me up and saying, you got to check out this podcast and uh, you're opening for Podcast One, Episode One of Martyr Made. I said, oh, yeah. Here it is. This guy, whoever told me to listen to this was right and you actually put out that podcast. What was it? Early 2015?

• 16:21Speaker 01

  That sounds right.

• 16:22Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 16:23Speaker 01

  I can't remember.

• 16:24Jocko Willink?

  I know it, I know it was before I started my podcast. I know that because I looked at it the other day to try and figure it out.

• 16:34Jocko Willink?

  And then, you know, when I found out, the more I found out about you and kind of your background and your backstory.

• 16:42Jocko Willink?

  It's pretty, it's pretty fascinating in my opinion. Um, let's, let's go into it, man. Let's start, let's start, let's start at the beginning of your life. How did it start? Where'd you come from?

• 16:56Speaker 01

  I came from all over. I was born in Stockton, California.

• 17:01Jocko Willink?

  Stockton 209.

• 17:02Speaker 01

  209, yeah.

• 17:03Jocko Willink?

  Right on.

• 17:04Speaker 01

  But I lived all over the place. Um, I probably went to, I try counting them up every once in a while, but there's kind of gaps in my memory. I, I went to maybe 35, 36, 37 schools, K through 12. So we were moving around all the time. Had a single mother who was taking care of us and you know, we kinda had to scrape and scrounge and you know, live where we could and um, at the end of the day, you know, we always had food on the table, um, we always had, you know, a roof over our heads for the most part. She took care of us, but um, you know, there was some, there were some close shaves there at various times and we had to kinda bounce around wherever we could, so um, I've lived all over California, from the south all the way up to Eureka for a little while. I don't really remember much

• 17:49Speaker 01

  about that, but um, a lot of time in Stockton. I think I went to every school in Stockton at one point in my life. Um, I think I went to eleven different high schools in four years.

• 18:00Jocko Willink?

  So what, like, what's causing you to go from one high school to another high school?

• 18:04Speaker 01

  Just, you know, we were poor. We kinda had to um, move wherever we could find a spot sometimes. Uh, sometimes that meant moving in with relatives, other times that meant um, you know, friends of my mom. Sometimes it meant getting farmed out to various relatives while my mom kinda went on her own little odysseys for a while and had to look after herself and um, so just bouncing around. I lived up in Montana for a little while when I was in high school. I actually ended up graduating while I was up there. Um, and that was a good experience. I kinda, you know, I was one of those kids who, there's a lot of people like this and I think a lot of folks who are comfortably middle-class don't really, uh, don't really even understand this, but you see it down in LA. There's a lot of kids who live in South LA, for example.

• 18:47Speaker 01

  They're maybe twenty minute drive from the beach. They may have seen it once in their life and that's kinda, that's kinda how we were. You know, you get confined to your little neighborhoods, you know, and you get on your bikes and ride around, you know, like latchkey kids, but you, your, your world's very, very small. And so, growing up in kind of uh, you know, a lot of the rougher neighborhoods, places like Stockton and Central Valley, uh, Bakersfield, different places, actually being able to get out and go spend some time in Montana, uh, when I was in high school, it was, it was pretty life-changing for me. I got to, you know, kind of be in a lifestyle and around a kinda people in a high-trust society that I had never been around before, you know? I'd never been in a place where people don't worry

• 19:29Speaker 01

  about locking their car doors or where it's normal on a two-lane, on a two-lane street when people are passing each other to wave to one another. I'd just never seen that before and it kind of opened up. You know, when you come, when you come from a certain world, um, where, uh, social connections are very tenuous, um, social trust is kind of low, uh, to be around a place like that where people are generally looking after each other. It's obviously crime. There's things that happen, but generally people are, are kind of looking after each other. It lets you know that there's a different kind of life out there. So it was very good for me.

• 20:04Jocko Willink?

  What, how'd you get up to Montana? What was the situation that allowed that to happen?

• 20:09Speaker 01

  My grandparents moved up there at one point. I was probably in maybe late middle school when they moved up there. And then at some point in high school, we would visit them for the summer and we would always really enjoy it. They had about thirty acres up there, a little farm. And, uh, then at one point, things were getting pretty hairy at home. And so we, we ended up going up, the, the kids, me and my sister, we ended up going up there and staying for a year, year and a half, before my mom ended up coming as well.

• 20:37Jocko Willink?

  And, and what, your, how many sisters did you have?

• 20:41Speaker 01

  I had three, uh, rather two at the time. Yeah.

• 20:44Jocko Willink?

  So, um, I was, I was up in Montana, uh, it was probably like ten years ago, maybe eight years ago. And it was in the summertime and I was driving out of Bozeman through Big Sky and I was driving back to California. And it was, it was the summertime and I wanted my kids to like sleep on the way, hallway home. So I left at probably seven o'clock at night, but it was the summertime. So it stayed light until about nine. So I did the full drive down the, what is it? The one ninety-one? I did the full drive down the one ninety-one, which is just absolutely like be, it's epically beautiful.

• 21:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:25Jocko Willink?

  Just beyond, it's just epic. And you've, and now my kids are falling asleep. So it's just me, you know, listening to Black Sabbath or something and just, just amazed, right? And then by the time I'm making it to wherever Idaho or something and you start getting into the more open terrain,

• 21:46Jocko Willink?

  uh, it was dark. And then I drove through the night and as the sun started to come up.

• 21:52Jocko Willink?

  I was in San Bernardino. And I remember, you know, there's parts of the, what is it? Parts of the fifteen or the two fifteen through San Bernardino that turn into like a two lane. It's not like a big highway and there's always traffic. And so I, I came from this just absolutely open mountainous, you know, snow covered hills, which there's snow covered hills in the summertime. Pine trees, animals everywhere. And then the next thing you know, I'm in San Bernardino. And, you know, it's just a totally different world, you know? And when you were talking about the different world that you live in, you know, and I grew up in a tiny New England town on a dirt road in the middle of nowhere.

• 22:34Jocko Willink?

  And you kind of think that that's what the world is, but yeah, kids. And I think it's probably less like this now because you can see so much of the world through the internet and through media and through movies. But yeah, it was kind of like that was your world. So that must've been a, a serious eye opener for you to get to, to go from, uh, you know, central California to freaking Montana.

• 23:01Speaker 01

  It was, yeah. And socially, especially socially, um, you know, coming from, uh, middle schools and high schools where, you know, um, on one hand, something like a fight on campus was taken very seriously. There are armed cops on campus, right? Um, coming from a high school that had almost 5,000 kids, a subway and a Pizza Hut, you know, on, on campus. And going to, um, you know, a school up in Montana where my graduating class had about, oh, I think 40 people. And, uh, you know, in a weird way, um, a fight was not as big of a deal up there. There, this, the counselors and teachers would literally tell two of us to take it outside. But there was no threat that this was going to escalate into something.

• 23:45Jocko Willink?

  No one was getting shanked.

• 23:47Speaker 01

  Right. It wasn't even in anybody's, you know, mindset that that was a possibility. And so it was like, it was like going back a few decades, you know, in a, in a way. And, uh, they still call soda pop up there.

• 24:00Jocko Willink?

  Well, there's parts of the country where that's just what, that's just how.

• 24:03Speaker 01

  I still, I just, I can't help it. It's like Buddy Holly, like 1950s to me. But it was, you know, there's a lot of things, um, that, uh, it feels like going back a few decades, which in, in a way is a kind of a sad way to look at it. Because, um, the things that are different up there are really that, um, there are certain. Certain elements of civic society, you know, social trust and things that they take for granted that we don't take for granted in the cities on the coast for the most part anymore. And so to say that it's like going back a few decades. You know, it's kind of admitting that we've lost a little something down here and that, you know, maybe there's something that's gonna be encroaching, you know, on the areas that still have it. You don't like to think of it that way, but it's how it felt.

• 24:43Jocko Willink?

  So when you were going from high school, how many high schools did you say you went to?

• 24:47Speaker 01

  I think 11. A couple of them I went to more than once, so I would change and then come back to another school.

• 24:51Jocko Willink?

  So how did you, who you hanging around with?

• 24:55Speaker 01

  You know, it would depend. So when I would find, at the school in Montana that I was at, I had like a little group of friends that we would hang out with. We'd go, you know, one of them, their parents had a ranch with a bunch of land and we'd go out there and play paintball. It was a great time. And I had a good group of friends up there. A lot of the times when I was at my schools in California, the big ones, you just get lost in. I would not really, I wouldn't hang out with anybody. I would be the kid, you know, in between classes. I've got my nose in a book. And lunch period, I would go throw some shorts and shirts on and go run laps or run stairs in the football stadium or something, just kind of by myself.

• 25:31Jocko Willink?

  Did you play any sports?

• 25:33Speaker 01

  Off and on. And I got to be a pretty decent wrestler by the end. I'd play football when I could, track, cross country, whatever. You know, depends on where I was. It was hard because, you know, it's kind of strange. It's a rule that never really made sense to me. And it still doesn't. But I guess they're trying to prevent like, uh, schools from bringing in ringers and stuff. But if you get into a school, there's like, you have to have been there for a certain period of time before they allow you to participate in sports. And a lot of times, I was changing schools every three months.

• 26:00Jocko Willink?

  You just wouldn't make the window.

• 26:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:03Jocko Willink?

  So you, like, you say you were reading.

• 26:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:08Jocko Willink?

  At what point did you figure out you were gonna start reading books? Cause I don't think I figured that until I was 28. You know, you couldn't get me to read a book. I mean, when I was going through high school, you, that was like a crazy idea to me, just actually voluntarily sit down and read a book.

• 26:26Speaker 01

  It would be tough for me to figure out when that started. It's as long as I can remember, though. When I was five, six, seven years old, I got to the point where if you stuck me in, you know, if I was in a dentist waiting room and he had a, you know, an old issue of good housekeeping, I'm reading the whole thing, you know, as long as I'm in there. I read dictionaries, I read encyclopedia. I would read anything that I could find around. It's kind of, I kind of miss that, actually. Like now with the internet, you never read anything random. You like, you go find something that you want to read about and you click on a link and you go to the next thing. I would just read whatever there happened to be around. I would literally read the dictionary if that was what was there.

• 27:04Speaker 01

  It was a refuge for me, you know, in, you know, in a life where instability was probably the defining feature, you know, when I was growing up.

• 27:16Speaker 01

  Just gave you these, you know, I could, I could be reading a series of books and something I could take with me from this school to the next school to the next school and kind of stay in that world. And yeah, it really was a refuge and it, you know, the books I would read was, that's where I would get a lot of my sort of models for behavior. Everybody does that to a certain degree, you know, they model themselves on their favorite heroes or whatever. But coming from a place where I didn't have a whole lot of role models around, especially not for any period of time, they really took the place, you know, of my real life role models and kind of taught me how to behave in a lot of ways and kind of taught me the virtues and values

• 27:57Speaker 01

  that you should, that I should aspire to because I didn't have a lot of models for those things. In some ways it becomes, you know, you can, you can get pathological about that. You can get to the point where you're so sucked into these fictional worlds that, you know, I have friends, a lot of people, it seems like mostly women, but men too, who they can tell you how many, they can tell you what flavor of birthday cake they had on their seventh birthday and what they got as presents and... I don't remember anything from like ten years ago. And it's just, you know, most of the time throughout, you know, my whole life, and this is still, you know, I have like a little bit of a Dr. Dolittle kind of thing going where, or Mr. Magoo, rather,

• 28:39Speaker 01

  where, uh, you know, I'm, I'm always up in my head, you know, I'm always thinking about whatever book I just read, or, you know, whatever book I'm about to read, and so I'm always kind of up here, and I'm, a lot of times I'm missing things that are going on around me. And so you try to ask me about things that happened last week, or let alone years and years ago. There's whole patches of my childhood that are just totally inaccessible. You know, and not even things where, um, you know, somebody could be like, you know, that time, and they jog your memory, it's just, I was not present at the time. You know, my nose was in a book, or that's what I was thinking of, and so I really kind of, um, you know, kind of, kind of used that as a refuge.

• 29:14Jocko Willink?

  Did you, you, you know, you, you said you had a single mom. What was going on with your, with your father at this point?

• 29:21Speaker 01

  You know, um, so my father was gone, out of the picture permanently by the time I was two. He was, um, my mom was sixteen years old when she became pregnant with me. Um, had me when she was seventeen, um, and my father was a criminal, and a drug addict, and a violent guy, and, um, came from a violent family, you know, and he was in jail for the final time that I ever saw him when I was two years old. I have a couple, like, very, very brief kind of flashes of memories that I'm told for him, but I, I don't remember what he looks like, or anything like that. Um, and, uh, yeah, so he was gone by the time I was two. Right about that point, right before he left, he left my mom with my sister, so she was pregnant when he went to the clink.

• 30:05Speaker 01

  And, um, you know, at that point, my mom's nineteen years old. Two of us so far, two kids. Um, dad's out of the picture, uh, for the last time. You know, she's got a tenth grade education.

• 30:20Jocko Willink?

  Any, did she, were her parents around?

• 30:23Speaker 01

  You know, my, my family's kind of a, it's, um, it's, it's one of those, I think it's a good American story, right?

• 30:31Speaker 01

  There's various strains of immigrants, you know, my great grandmother came from Serbia in like nineteen oh six or something like that. My great grandfather, her husband, came up from Mexico. You know, these two people from these completely opposite lifestyles and sides of the world somehow find each other, but they're both coming from, you know, my great grandfather was a miner. You know, he would, uh, his family would be in California and he's going off to Nevada or Arizona and working in silver mines and stuff. Just breaking his back to provide just enough for his family to get by. It was a hard life. My father's side, you know, uh, my father was a bad guy, a million different ways, but, you know, he, uh, I hear, I hear horror stories about where he came from.

• 31:12Speaker 01

  You know, he was sleeping on a park bench when he was twelve years old because his mom threw him out of, out of the house. His uncle was teaching him how to shoot up when he was thirteen, fourteen years old. You know, this is a, I don't hate the man at all. I never met him afterwards or anything like that, but I have sympathy for somebody like that. There's very, very few people, um, you know, discipline equals freedom and all those kinds of things. Your uncle's teaching you to shoot up when you're thirteen years old, you're climbing out of a pretty goddamn big hole, you know? And so, uh, you, you have like these sort of, these, these, these family lineages that have just fallen into whatever they may have been at one point back in the past, by the time they get up to about my grandparents' generation, it's just chaos, right? It's just no structure, no support system, no, no anything.

• 31:58Speaker 01

  And, um, things had, you know, my, my grandfather, um, who was my mother and her three sisters, which are all four of my aunts. Um, that's, that's all of my mom's siblings. Uh, my grandfather came into the picture after they were all born and he's their stepfather. He's the only grandfather I've ever known, but he was their stepfather and he provided some stability. He was a Navy chief, you know, he was an unreal, uh, unreal bastard at the time. He got to be a big soft teddy bear later on, but he did provide some stability. And that was starting to kind of come together around the time I was born in eighty-one, but. Not really, you know, it was still like in its early stages and so they were around,

• 32:40Speaker 01

  but you know, they didn't have a whole lot of patience for, you know, my mom, the way she was acting out, she was already probably, gosh, in her teenage years when she was having me and, and, and, uh, you know, her and her friends were already drinking and partying. She was probably an alcoholic by that point already. My grandparents didn't have a lot of patience for that kind of stuff. And so they were around sort of if she wanted to shape up, but there wasn't really a support structure for, um, especially if she wasn't like prepared to kind of fully conform. And so she was really out on her own from a very early age, you know, with kids and, and no real, she's 17 years old and she got a kid, you know what I mean? She's by herself.

• 33:20Jocko Willink?

  And then she's 19 years old and she has two kids?

• 33:22Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 33:26Jocko Willink?

  So when you're in school, like are you, what, what, you know, what is, what is, you know, you're talking about how the world looked like, you know, physically kind of and socially on the outside. From your mind, what did you, what did your future look like? Did you see, you know, are you looking at people going, oh, well, I could do this or I could do that. I could go to college or I could go in the military or I could, like, what, what were you thinking about day to day? Did you have any visions like that?

• 33:53Speaker 01

  Not until pretty late. No. I, um, you know, one of the things about, I think a lot, a lot of people, when they look at somebody like you, and whether this is true or not, it's the impression that they get is that Jaco seems like this guy who like turned 18 or whatever, got out of high school and just, I know exactly what I want to do. And now from now, this point on, like for the rest of my life, like I'm going to just focus on becoming that thing. And everybody's like, God, I wish I could have like had something like that when I was whatever age. Most people go through their whole lives and they never, you know, have that level of, uh, of, of vision of what they want to become and then being able to focus on it. And, uh, when you're coming up in a very unstable environment.

• 34:38Speaker 01

  One of the things that happens is your time horizon just gets shrunk down and shrunk down and shrunk down until you know you're really trying to figure out how to get through the next week or the next day or the next you know class or whatever it is and thinking about the future um no I mean I can't remember as a kid like you know maybe maybe I watched Jurassic Park and like I wanna go dig up dinosaur bones or something but as far as like a serious vision for my life no

• 35:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah you know I actually at one of the Jaco live events that I did I I talked about this fact and it's just pure luck right it's pure luck that at some point you know you watched Jurassic Jurassic Park or whatever and I watched Full Metal Jacket or I watched Platoon and at some point uh I watched one of those movies actually is probably Apocalypse Now I think that's the first the first thing when I was you know whatever probably you know eight years old or something

• 35:33Speaker 01

  Apocalypse Now made you wanna be a soldier

• 35:35Jocko Willink?

  Oh yeah

• 35:36Speaker 01

  That's just great Jaco

• 35:37Jocko Willink?

  But you know you see Apocalypse Now and you think okay you know I always you know I was always running around playing war I was always running around playing soldier so I had that in my brain but the I think when I realized oh yeah you know I was thinking about this the other day there was a a friend of the family who had an older son who was a Marine Corps drill instructor and when he came home for leave or something and he had a uh a Chevy like SS right a Chevelle and or he had a badass muscle car and you know he was a Marine Corps drill instructor and I was like okay you know I don't know

• 36:18Jocko Willink?

  how old I was but I wasn't old and it sort of made me realize that this idea of my in my head of running around and being like some kind of commando was a real thing that you could actually do And then, then once I found out about the SEAL teams, cool. But my whole point in telling you all this is that, you know, you hear, uh, you hear like Jordan Peterson will talk about, you know, you gotta, if you have an aim, then you, then you know what you're trying to get after, right? So when I joined the Navy and like wanted to be a SEAL and then I, I wanted to be a good SEAL. That was my aim and you're a hundred percent right. Once that became my aim and once I figured out what I needed to do. And the beautiful thing about it was in the Navy and then in the SEAL teams, they told me this is what you have to do to be good.

• 37:02Jocko Willink?

  To be a good SEAL, you do this. To be a good SEAL, you do that. To be a good SEAL, you do the other thing. So absolutely I was lucky because you know, I was a freaking, you know, crazy kid that was doing all kinds of really stupid, stupid things that just were not good for the world. And luckily I, I signed that dotted line and became, you know, went in the Navy. But so I did have that and that immediately I was like, okay. And even when I was, I think my mom showed me something where I was, you know, like whatever eight years old or something. And it was, what do you want to do when you grow up? And I said, like soldier or marine, like that was good to go, right?

• 37:43Jocko Willink?

  So that was, whenever anybody talked to me about anything else, I was kind of like, yeah, cool. I already know what I'm doing. So that was a real benefit and that put my whole future into context because I saw this thing that I could do. And as I told Johnny Kim the other day, like when I joined the Navy, I felt completely liberated because I knew that I was good to go. For 20 years, you know, or 30 years. I was like, yep, I'm good to go. I've got, I got a job. I got a paycheck. I got a, gonna have friends. It's gonna be cool. I'm gonna have a mission to do like.

• 38:17Speaker 01

  Something to buy into.

• 38:18Jocko Willink?

  It was something to aim at. It was something to buy into. It was part of being part of like the coolest gang ever. So what's not like, what's not to like?

• 38:27Speaker 01

  I think where a lot of people struggle, uh, well, there's probably two parts of it is one, um, is trying to figure out what that thing is. You know, most people, they just, they have things that they're into and they, what I think what most people really long for is something that'll just present itself. You know, there'll be a ray of sunshine shining down on it and they'll, they'll just know this is the thing that I needed to devote all my energy to. And now I can, uh, there's your aim, right? Now I can just devote myself to this thing fully. I think that's why people, you know, get caught up in movements sometimes, right? Whether it's politics, uh, you know, whether it's a jihadist movement or whatever, like whatever it is, it's something that like, here's the answer.

• 39:09Speaker 01

  Do this, here's a clear path to becoming, you know, a better person, quote unquote, according to the following value system. But, you know, how to sort of level up in this, in this mode. And for most people, that doesn't come for most people, you have to kind of start trying things and really start working. And then it'll unfold over time for you. Um, it's not just gonna present itself, you know, as easily. And then the other thing is, um, and this isn't just true of kids that came from difficult backgrounds like I did. It's, it's true of, you know, more and more people, uh, where, you know, people talk about like, uh, class privilege. You know, your parents, uh, most, most of the like way that that applies is not that your parents are gonna leave you a bunch of money. It's that you're growing up in a household where you're watching your dad get shit done.

• 39:53Speaker 01

  You're watching your mom get up in the morning and put herself together and go about her day and put the house together. Go, go to work, whatever it is, and you're just watching people encounter obstacles in their life and assess, execute, you know, what, orient themselves and overcome the obstacle. And, uh, you know, there's, uh, just a growing number of people who, and I certainly was this way, you know? Growing up with a single mom who was having a very difficult time managing her own life in any kind of, uh, You know, just the most basic ways. Um, I never saw anybody just sort of encounter an obstacle at a point where they could see it in the distance. You know, everything was a panic exercise all the time.

• 40:34Speaker 01

  Everything got put off until the last possible moment and now you have to react to it because it's an emergency if you don't. Everything was an emergency all the time. And, um, so you don't, you don't learn how to sort of structure your, uh, your, your, your goals and how to systematically work towards them. And that's something that you have to learn, you know? I, um, I was fortunate enough that, you know, I had a couple of coaches at various times for brief periods, but they made enough of an impact that, you know, things got, um, you know, that I had a different way of looking at things. But even me, like, I didn't start to get that until, um, until I was in the Navy. You know, probably I was 22, 23.

• 41:14Jocko Willink?

  You said you were a good wrestler. How good of a wrestler were you?

• 41:17Speaker 01

  Uh, decent. I mean, I could hold my own. I was a, I had a winning record, um, but I wasn't any, you know?

• 41:24Jocko Willink?

  So you didn't make it to state or anything like that? Or did you?

• 41:27Speaker 01

  Well, I, yeah, I went when I was up in Montana, but those boys up there in Montana, it's not like this in California.

• 41:30Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 41:31Speaker 01

  Up in Montana, these kids all start when they're four or five years old. It's ridiculous. And like down here, if people start seventh or eighth grade, like they've got a huge jump on people because most people start ninth grade down here. It's changing a little bit now.

• 41:44Jocko Willink?

  It's changed a lot. I'm hearing a report that the, yeah, these kids are getting after it.

• 41:49Speaker 01

  I, I mentioned how, you know, one of the things that happens when you're living an unstable life, um, is that your time horizon just shrinks. You know, you're focused on getting through the next, on keeping your emotions together for the next half hour sometimes, let alone like thinking years in advance about what you want to do with your life. And, um, you know, a lot of people kind of stay in that mode where they're just getting through the day. And they're doing that 365 times and then that's a year and then they do it, you know, more and more and then that's a couple of years and now they're adults and they don't even feel like they've made any decisions in their lives. They feel like, you know, obviously, everything that they've done has been a decision, but it's never felt that way. It's always felt like the momentum of their lives is just carrying them forward

• 42:33Speaker 01

  and they're reacting to whatever the, the next thing is that's demanding a reaction, but they didn't plan for that, you know, for that thing. It's just presenting itself upon them at a time when they're not really prepared for it. They haven't gotten themselves and so they're just making a decision in the moment that may or may not, you know, here's actually, I should not tell this story, actually. So, um, one of my first memories, um, how do I want to talk about this? Okay, so one of my first memories, like probably my first memory, um, is just, my, my childhood occurs to me in flashes, just brief little flashes of images that people tell me are real and so I believe them. When, uh, I was

• 43:14Speaker 01

  like two years old, I think, I was laying on a bed with my father. I must have been two or younger because he was out of the picture when I was two and he used to like to cut wedges of green apples and put a little bit of salt on them and eat them. And I was eating these with him and we were watching a TV that was like on one of those stands like up in the corner. So that's one flash. And then there's a couple other flashes like that. And then there's a flash when I'm five years old and I know it because I was in kindergarten at the specific school that I was at and I had just shit my pants. And I don't know what happened before that and I don't know how I reacted to the situation. It's just like the vision starts and I've crapped my pants and then that's all I know

• 43:54Speaker 01

  and like then it fades out, right? And so, when I was in the Navy, down in San Diego, I had a friend who was riding a bike down a hill and he fell and hit his head and so he was in the hospital getting concussion workups and everything for a few days. And he lived with a bunch of other Navy guys down in one of the really nice neighborhoods in Chula Vista, one of those nice, you know, housing developments down there, like two, two doors away, an Admiral lived, right, one of those neighborhoods. And it's a Sunday afternoon and he's supposed to be coming home from the hospital. My other buddy's picking him up and so I'm gonna go there and meet him just to, you know, see how he's doing and everything. So I get to the house and they're not there yet and so I just call him up. The hospital's taken a while and so I said, I got a book in the car, I'll just read the

• 44:39Speaker 01

  book until you guys get here. So I'm doing this for a little while and I'm drinking a twenty ounce coffee, which is a terrible idea because pretty soon I start to get a little, a little rumble, right? And so I call up my friend and I'm like, Richard, any of your doors open or anything like that, like is there a key somewhere, can I, I gotta, I gotta go to the bathroom? And he's like, I'll just piss in the bushes. I'm like, ah, I gotta do the other thing. He's like, um, I don't think so, you can go check. And so I go check and garage door, all the windows, everything is closed and now since I'm up and moving around, it's really starting to become a problem, right? And so we had another friend across the street and so I run across the street and I knock on the door, pound, pound, pound, doorbell, doorbell, and nobody's there and I've run across the street now, so now it's getting worse.

• 45:22Speaker 01

  And I come back and I'm starting to panic. I'm asking myself, can I get in my car and go drive and look for a gas station or something? But I don't know the neighborhood that well and I'm not confident that I can do that. And then now I'm out in the middle of nowhere and I might be out of options and so I'm literally, I go down like three or four houses knocking on the front doors, but nobody answers the door. And I run back to the house and at this point I'm starting to panic and so I go into his backyard just so that I'm protected from full view or something, right? And I'm looking around and I decide I'm gonna have to take crap in his garden, which is not a, it's not the worst thing that ever happened, but you go dig a little hole, take crap in the garden, wipe with some leaves, do what you gotta do. And so I'm going over there and I'm preparing to do this and I make this fateful decision.

• 46:05Speaker 01

  And I, my, my point here is I'm in this like panicking mindset and I'm not planning anything, I'm just acting, I'm just doing whatever, right? And so I look up and they have a backyard, like a balcony deck coming off the master bedroom and I look up there and I say, I bet that door's not locked. And for some reason, I just decide I'm gonna try that. And I go over and I'm climbing up. There's no stairs or anything. So I'm having to like pull myself up and climb up onto this back deck. And as I'm trying to pull myself up, my shoes are real loose. So I kick my shoes off. So I've got just my socks on. And I I'm at this point from this like from the strain of getting up there that like if that thing's locked, I am crapping on my friend's deck. That's just all there is to it. Right?

• 46:48Speaker 01

  And so I get up there and I run to the door and I throw it open. Sure enough, it's open. And I just run into the place and I'm already pulling my pants and underwear down as I run into the master bathroom and literally doing one of those things where you're like diving ass first towards the toilet like to kind of get there. And as I'm diving like that toward the toilet, I can't explain this decision like to this day. I look and I realize he's out of toilet paper. I can't I can't do it here. And so I jump up and pants and underwear down around my ankles. I run out of the bath, run out of his bathroom and out of his bedroom and down the upper hallway. And he has one of those stairways where it kind of, uh, you know, it goes down like halfway and then there's a stopping point of platform and then it goes down at a ninety degree angle.

• 47:32Speaker 01

  And so I'm, I mean, my, I'm just, everything is hanging out. Ass is hanging out and I run and I just jump onto the second deck, turn, jump onto the ground floor, which is like the bottom, right in front of the front door. My socks, because I kicked off my shoes, hit the tile, slide out, I fall down, bang my head and crap everywhere. And I'm literally laying there. This is a true story. And so I'm laying there. And for it at that point, as I'm laying there, I mean, it's going up my back, like I'm laying on my back and it's just, right? And as I'm laying there, I had that vision. Like it just came right to me of when I was five years old and I had crap my pants. And it was almost like this mystical

• 48:17Speaker 01

  like thing that happened where it it seemed like uh, the two incidents were somehow connected, right? Like I had had that happen. And then it just, my life had been like one, you know, this tumbling momentum up to this point that had led me to a place where I'm lying on my friend's, you know, tile floor with my crap running up my back and I'm just laying in it with my head ringing. Trying to figure out like, just, just going over all of the horrible decisions that I had to make to end up in this situation. And all of the off-ramps that I had to avoid it, like, I could have just gone to his garden. I could have just, you know, crapped in the toilet upstairs and solved the toilet paper problem, like, crossed that bridge when I got to it.

• 48:58Speaker 01

  But when you're in this mode where you're just making decisions based on immediate need and whatever. Um, it's funny that like, I didn't mean for this like to fit so tightly, like I just, um, it kind of came into my head when you mentioned it. And, uh, you know, you're just making decisions and then you end up in places that you really can't explain. And if somebody were to say like, you know, well, you did this and you did that wrong and you did this, you're kind of like, yeah, yeah, yeah. But at the time, like, it didn't feel like I was making a decision. I was just, I was just going. And people do that in like their real lives, you know, and, um, oh, the, actually, so the funny part is, uh, the end of that story was,

• 49:38Speaker 01

  I cleaned everything up and, um, like I literally, like, I'm just, my head's ringing. And I walk, I'm waddling over to my friend's bathroom to go clean myself up, just dripping, it's disgusting. And I'm, I'm like 25 years old. I'm not a child, okay? I'm an adult. You're, you're, you're like, this is literally 2006. You're in Ramadi right now and this is what I'm doing. Okay. And like, and, um, and I get in there, I clean myself up and I do my best to clean up the floor. But he's got like the grout tile and you can't quite get all the smell out. And so by the time my friend gets back home with my friend from the hospital, I had a change, I had like gym clothes in my car. I'm just sitting in my car reading my book, like, doopa doopa doo.

• 50:22Speaker 01

  And so we go into the house and my friend smells their shit somewhere. And he blames his dog and he starts shouting at his dog and I'm just watching it happen. Like I didn't say anything. I didn't tell them for years after that. And, uh, but yeah, people do that with their whole lives, right? And so instead of having, you know, uh, just their head bringing and being splattered with their own, with their own shit, you know, they have three kids and an alcohol problem and maybe a record, you know, from something they did when they were seventeen or whatever it is. And they get into this place where like now the enormity of trying to correct course

• 51:03Speaker 01

  is so overwhelming for them because they, not only are they in this hole, they, they have no tools. You know, psychological tools, emotional tools, anything to kind of navigate their way out of this. There's a lot of people like that now. I think that's why podcasts like yours, Jordan Peterson, I mean, it's, uh, they resonate with so many people because they, they, uh, they, they let people know that you can just take control of your life. Like you can just, you can just take control. You can start doing the right things like right now. And you know what the right things are. Maybe you don't know what the right things are in like a grand scale, but you know how to, right? You know how to clean your room, you know? The little things that you don't do every day. You sleep in, stop sleeping in, get up early, get up at four thirty.

• 51:47Speaker 01

  You can do that, you know? And when you get up, go work out. Maybe you don't know, uh, what the long-term path is, but those, there's these little things that you can start to take control of. And no matter how unstable or chaotic your life is, you know, you can start to control this little world that can start to expand once you do gain control of it. And, um, yeah, so I mean, that's one of the reasons I, I really like, uh, it's been twenty years probably since I read About Face, but you know, um, the, the passage that you just read, it made me think about like, one of the things that I really liked out of it was the idea that you can be in, um, a situation that feels extremely chaotic. And so that you don't really have any, anything stable to use as points of reference when you make decisions.

• 52:33Speaker 01

  But you can still carve out like a little zone of control. And you can make decisions like, you know, take, you can take control of that little area and you can, you know, you can be the person that, once you got control of your own life, that maybe just the one person that's closest to you needs you to be. And then the two or three or four people closest to you need you to be. And you can kind of start to, you know, no, no matter what the situation is, no matter how chaotic it feels, you can start to, you know, take control and, and, and, uh, Yeah, and like I said, it took me, well, I said twenty-three, twenty-four earlier, but I'm still shitting up my back when I'm twenty-five, so maybe I'll push that age of adulthood out a little bit past that, but.

• 53:14Jocko Willink?

  Now, you and I have talked about this a little bit, but, you know, one of the things that I think makes you unique is your cognitive capacity. And, and, you know, for lack of a better way of saying it, you're smart, you're a smart person. And, but, when you were in school, like, did, what was the academic life for you like when you were in school?

• 53:42Speaker 01

  I was a C student. I think I graduated with like a two-point-four. I was one of those kids who, you know, I'm smart enough, I'm not a genius, but I'm at that level of smart where, you know, it can be a blessing or a curse. Just like, you know, you've got a high school athlete who has just been so naturally gifted that he, you know, in, in high school, he just never really has to learn work ethic. He just doesn't have to. And then he gets to college and it's like, oh, everybody's a badass here. And then it doesn't work out the same way, because you're not going to develop that like overnight now at this point. You had to spend a lot of time doing that, and that's what everybody else has been doing.

• 54:24Speaker 01

  So, you know, I, when I grew up, you know, my home life was chaos a lot of the times. I mean, really, just chaos. And, and so I would come in and I would ace all of my tests, and I would, you know, write good papers when those were due. I'd win all the spelling bees, win all the math contests and so forth, but I could probably count the number of homework assignments I did on one hand in twelve years. I just didn't do them.

• 54:54Speaker 01

  You know, you could learn some really negative lessons from that. You know, you can learn that you don't really have to work on a day-to-day basis. Because when push comes to shove, at the very, very end, or whatever, when the chips are down, you can just sort of throw something, throw things together and make it work. Which works when you're trying to pass, you know, history in seventh grade. It doesn't work when you have a serious job, a lot of responsibility, and people, you know, who are depending on you. It doesn't work. And so, I feel very fortunate that I went into the Navy. Because it allowed me sort of a space in my late teens and early twenties to learn some lessons that if I had to learn them out in the civilian world, there would have been a lot greater consequences, you know, for my, for my growing pains.

• 55:39Speaker 01

  And, so yeah, academics, I mean, it was, you know, my teachers generally liked me. I kind of, depending on where I was, I could be a little bit of a clown, have some behavior problems, but, you know, for, depending on which parts of my childhood, I could be, I was a pretty angry kid. I could be pretty violent sometimes. You know, there's a lot of violence at home. And I had two little sisters that I was looking after, and kind of trying to provide some kind of stability for. And so, I would do my best at home not to show any emotion, really. Not to show that I was being affected by things that were going on around. But then I would get to school sometimes, and I would take it out on other people.

• 56:19Speaker 01

  And I was never a bully. I got bullied at home, you know, and so I didn't like bullies. But I would be kind of the kid who was waiting for an excuse. And, you know, I went to a lot of, kind of, you know, inner-city ghetto schools where I was the only white kid around, and everybody else is in the same boat I am as far as the stuff they're dealing with at home, you know? And so, you know, you get a bunch of kids who are in middle school or early high school in an environment like that, and there's plenty of excuses to go around if you were looking for them. And, and yet, even despite that, you know, I would get in fights, and I would have some behavior problems, but, you know, my teachers, generally, they, they kind of, is another one of those... You know, a blessing and a curse thing, right?

• 57:04Speaker 01

  Where they let me slide a little bit. My teachers would like me for the most part. But they would let me slide on things they probably shouldn't have let me slide on. Just like they let me slide on never doing my homework. Because they assumed that, they kind of knew that things were kind of crazy back home. And they would make those excuses for me. And, you know, you gotta learn at some point. And this is something I didn't get until I was in the Navy and had some good leadership there. That you're gonna reach a certain point in your life where nobody's gonna care about your excuses anymore. It's just not gonna matter. Like, people will, they might sympathize or something, but that's just, it's not their problem. You're an adult now, which means your problems are your own, you know? And if you're looking around, when you encounter a problem, for who's gonna fix it? Without realizing that like, oh, I'm the guy.

• 57:48Speaker 01

  Like, I'm a grown up now, so I'm actually the one who's supposed to address this problem. Like, other people are supposed to be looking to me.

• 57:55Speaker 01

  You know, that's kind of, that's kind of, I guess, what I would maybe define as an adult, right? Is if you encounter something, rather than having like a dependent mindset, where you're looking around at who's gonna fix this? You realize intuitively, you're the one. You know, and that, that doesn't happen for a lot of people. For a long, long time in their lives, if ever, and it didn't happen for me until my mid twenties. And, you know, again, it's one of those things that maybe you just sort of have some set of experiences or something in you where it just clicks naturally. But, you know, I think for most people, you, you pick that up by watching the adults around you take responsibility for their own lives. And if you're not exposed to that, that it can take a long time, you know?

• 58:37Speaker 01

  And it took some, some, you know, some ass-kickings in the Navy from some of my leaders to kind of bang that into my head. People that I owe a lot to, you know, really owe a lot to. And I was a huge pain in their butts for a long time. But, you know, I owe them a lot, for sure.

• 58:54Jocko Willink?

  You, I guess, maybe your senior year, you took the SATs and got a perfect score on your SATs?

• 59:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. And I had, you know, I was graduating with, like I said, about a 2.4. And nobody really knew who I was or anything. I was just a normal, average goofball. Um, and then I aced my SATs and, um, you know, so I get called in for, uh, like a meeting with the school counselors and everything and they kinda talked to me about living up to my potential and all those kinda things and, um, you know, I just, I wasn't at a place at that point where it was gonna make much of a dent, you know, at that one place. Um, yeah, at that point in my life. Like, I knew I was a smart enough kid, but when you're growing up in a home like that, I think, you know, one of the things that we, what we all struggle with, um, is,

• 59:42Speaker 01

  uh, you know, you grow up with a, with a, with a, a very limited sense of your own, I don't wanna say your own capabilities, cuz you have, it doesn't necessarily, not that you don't think you can do things or accomplish tasks or something, but a very limited sense of your own, um, of your own worth, you know? Um, you, you, uh, every, every kid who comes up in a broken home, um, has this little voice, uh, maybe some people find a way to overcome it, but I think most people, they just learn to live with it and, you know, sort of have, put it in its proper place, that's whispering in the back of your head all the time, that no matter how things look around you, no matter what other people are

• 1:00:25Speaker 01

  telling you, no matter how good your life is going, at the end of the day, you're basically worthless. You know, you come out of the gutter and that's where you belong and, um, it's just, it's something that, uh, you know, when you come from a certain kinda background, it is gonna be in there. It's like, uh, um, you know, the, wh- when a Roman general would, uh, be celebrated in a triumph and they'd be in their chariot on a parade and everybody's cheering for them, they would put, you know, a slave behind him to whisper in his ear that despite all this, you were only mortal, just to remind him of that. It's like a really pathological version of that.

• 1:01:01Jocko Willink?

  All glory is fleeting.

• 1:01:02Speaker 01

  Yes, yeah. And, um...

• 1:01:06Speaker 01

  And so, you know, the idea that, I think about when I have kids, the thing that I wanna get into their heads, and I, and I think about this all the time, how I'm gonna do it. Right?

• 1:01:18Speaker 01

  Is I want them to have in their heads that like, yo, if you wanna be an astronaut, just pick the craziest thing. You wanna be a fighter pilot? You wanna, pick the craziest thing. It is purely a matter of deciding that that's what you're gonna do, and then just focusing on it and step by step by step, just ruthlessly pursuing it. And then you can literally do whatever you want. You can do whatever you want. There's nothing that's closed off to you just kind of by the nature of life. You know, and when you, uh, when nobody kinda teaches you that, and for whatever reason, you don't pick it up in other ways, you know, maybe you, you know, you figure out when you're thirty that like, oh, if I would've started focusing on this when I was fifteen, then, you know, whatever, but like, most people get to the point where, by the time they start to, if, if they come out of that state,

• 1:02:04Speaker 01

  you know, they've got so many obligations, or a couple of kids, whatever it is, that now your life is kind of on a certain track. And, um, you know, that's the thing that I, I would love to get into my kids' heads, that, you know, there are no limits to what you can do if you decide you wanna do it. There's nothing that's just naturally closed off to you because of who you are, or what you are, or anything like that. But, you know, that's something that kids have to learn, or maybe it's the other way, maybe, they, maybe they start out that way and they learn to think of themselves as limited, I don't know, but.

• 1:02:32Jocko Willink?

  I think kids have a hard time, and I always give this advice to parents and to kids when I talk to kids, is, kids have a hard time connecting the fact that what they're doing now will, will impact their future. And the way that you behave right now is gonna impact the way you, the way you end up in life. And I think that's a, a major connection that doesn't get made. And then, the other thing is, When you say to yourself, well, what do you want to be when you grow up? And your answer is, I don't know? That's not a good answer because it doesn't give you anything to aim at, right? But if you say, I do, if the, the follow on for a parent, when you ask your kid, hey, what do you want to be when you grow up? And your kid goes, I don't know.

• 1:03:15Jocko Willink?

  Then what you need to explain to them is, okay, then I want you to have the most amount of options possible. And the way you have the most amount of options possible is to be a good athlete, do good in school, work hard, learn to work good, work ethic, stay, you know, stay out of trouble. If you do that when you're young and you don't know what you want to do, when you get older, you'll have a bunch of different options to pick from. If you don't do that, and you don't do good in school, and you don't take care of yourself, and you don't work hard, and you don't get good work ethic, and you get into trouble, all, a lot of those options are going to close down. That's the way it works. And so you have to explain those things to your kids when they're, and you have to explain it to them over and over and over again, so that they get it. Cause otherwise they don't.

• 1:03:55Jocko Willink?

  And, you know, like I said, for me, I was super lucky because all my craziness, you know, all, all energy going in multiple different directions, and most of them bad. All of a sudden, with the signing of one piece of paper, all of a sudden, they all became focused in the right, in a positive way. And that was very helpful to me and very helpful to you. But yeah, so before we jump in the Navy, so you get a, you get a perfect score on the SATs, which is insane, especially like, I understand there's kids that get perfect scores on the SATs. A lot of them go to, you know, a tutor and study and computer systems, and they do all this stuff, and they take all the classes and they study all these classes all the time.

• 1:04:38Jocko Willink?

  You basically, obviously you have the natural ability and then just reading, which makes me feel very vindicated or, or reinforced, because I always tell little kids, hey, the way you get smarter is by reading, read, read, read, read. That's what you do. It worked for you, apparently.

• 1:04:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, it definitely did. I mean, it, um,

• 1:04:57Jocko Willink?

  Did you get any like pressure like, hey, you need to go to college?

• 1:05:00Speaker 01

  Well, this was pretty, this was pretty late in my senior year by this point. And so I had kind of already decided that I was gonna go to the state university, where some of my friends were going at the time. And I didn't spend much time there. I went there for a year and realized that I didn't know what I wanted to major in. And I planned on going into the Navy afterwards anyway. And my grandfather was in the Navy, retired as a chief. And so I just said, well, I'm not gonna waste any more money here, any more time here. And so I joined the Navy. And it was, yeah, I mean, it was a life-changing decision.

• 1:05:28Jocko Willink?

  Did you join to do any specific job?

• 1:05:31Speaker 01

  Nope. I was at a point where-

• 1:05:33Jocko Willink?

  Undesignated to the fleet?

• 1:05:35Speaker 01

  No, I, you know, I aced my ASVAB. And so, you know, they wanted to make me a nuke, but I couldn't go nuke. I couldn't leave for like eighteen months if I was gonna be nuke. And so they put me in as, you know, doing electronics. I could, you start off in the same school and you could be an E T or a fire control man. And fire control man sounded cooler.

• 1:05:54Jocko Willink?

  Way cooler.

• 1:05:55Speaker 01

  So, and so I went down that road. And I've, I'm very glad I did. I've loved my job ever since, you know, as far as my actual, the actual stuff I work on and everything, I love it.

• 1:06:08Jocko Willink?

  So when you joined the Navy, what was boot camp like? Was it like a positive experience because you were getting structure and a paycheck and all those things?

• 1:06:17Speaker 01

  Especially the structure. And, and kind of like what you were talking about, all of a sudden I had a game that I knew the rules to. You know, that was the, it's kind of the thing when you grow up with instability, is you just don't know what the rules are. You don't know like what actions am I supposed to take that'll actually lead me to a positive place? Because it just seems like no matter what you do, you know, it's, it's not like you take a step forward towards some goal and then another step forward, another step forward. It's you take a step forward, and then the situation changes and you're in a new place. And now you take another step forward and the situation changes and you're in a new place. And so you can very easily get into a play, you can get a, you can get a sort of a learned helplessness in a situation like that,

• 1:07:00Speaker 01

  where you're just kind of focused on trying to provide yourself a little bit of stability, you know, in your personal emotional world a little bit. Maybe, you know, with my sisters at the time. And that's all you're really focused on. You don't, you just don't know the rules. You don't know the rules of the game. And when you get into boot camp, you know, I went in, they, when, when I joined the Navy, because I had some college credits, they said, we can make you an E3. And I said, well, what do I gotta do to do that? He said, you know, go get your transcripts and so forth and da da da. I'm like, I wanna leave like as soon as possible. Like, I don't care about that. Just, I wanna get out of here. And so I left three days after I walk into the, you know, recruiter's office, basically.

• 1:07:35Jocko Willink?

  What year was that?

• 1:07:36Speaker 01

  Two thousand one, January. So, um.

• 1:07:39Jocko Willink?

  Oh, so it's pre-September eleventh?

• 1:07:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:42Jocko Willink?

  And you were able to leave in three days?

• 1:07:44Speaker 01

  I might be exaggerating a little bit, but it was very rapid. I mean, it was, it was really rapid. And, um, so I was on the bus and from the time I got there, I, I love boot camp because it was.

• 1:07:55Jocko Willink?

  Where'd you go to boot camp, San Diego?

• 1:07:56Speaker 01

  No, Great Lakes. They, they didn't have anywhere but Great Lakes by that point. And, uh, it was in January and my, uh, uh, RDC, my drill instructor was this guy who was, he's in, he'd already been in like twenty-five years. He was a Navy diver. He had this, he, he literally looked like Popeye. He was kinda jacked and he had this screwed up, real face, really recruit. And, uh, he was, his name was HTC Brian and he was just such a badass. He, I mean, you, you know, I, I grew up without a father, you know, and I had like an uncle and a grandfather who I would spend time with for periods of my childhood who were good role models for me and like provided some stability and like some idea of what,

• 1:08:38Speaker 01

  you know, a virtuous man looked like and strong man with his, with his life together looked like. But like all of a sudden I had this dude who was like, he was just like a rock, you know, and he was, and the thing that, the thing that boot camp did for me that, uh, I think this is probably the biggest lesson most, most kids who are just unstructured, get out of it. Is when they would do things like, uh, you remember when they would do things like, you know, one, uh, drill instructor would come up and tell you to, you know, make your rack and do all these other things, like you got a half hour to do it and he'll leave. And then another one will come and tell you to do a whole bunch of other stuff. It's gonna take you twenty-nine minutes. And so then you're done with that and you know, the first one comes back and says, why isn't your rack made and da da da da da da da.

• 1:09:19Speaker 01

  He knows that you didn't have time to make your rack. The point is, he's trying to teach you that the answer is not, oh, I couldn't do it because of such and such and so and so. The answer is, Roger that, I'll make my rack right now. That whatever your excuses are, nobody cares. Nobody cares. And for me, that was, uh, it was, it was the most helpful thing about boot camp. And so I went in as an E1, even though they offered me E3, I went in as an E1, but in boot camp, uh, they made me. The, you know, recruit chief petty officer, the RPOC, like, right away. And then, you know, for the, for all of the graduating divisions, I was the honor recruit. And so they made me an E3 anyway, coming out of boot camp.

• 1:10:01Speaker 01

  And, you know, from then, like, once I got into the, the technical school pipeline, you know, I was the class leader all the way through. I aced all my schools and I was just like, you know, on point. It was just, you know, it was nice to know the rules of the game and to know that if I do the following things right, then people are gonna, people that I respect and whose approval I want are gonna be happy with me. And, you know, the, just sort of the incentives and inputs were, you know, it's hard, it's hard to describe when you come from such an unstable environment, how liberating it is to be in a place where, you know, there are known rules to the game and, you know, you

• 1:10:43Speaker 01

  know how to play it. It was, it was very, very good for me, so.

• 1:10:47Jocko Willink?

  You know, it's a good leadership perspective there. You know, I talk all the time about how you gotta like, you know, and, and not only do I talk about this all the time, I do this all the time. If you work for me, you got all kinds of leeway to move around and make things happen and step up and execute things. But occasionally I'll work with a, a boss who has got so much, who's so laissez faire and so hands off that no one actually knows what's happening. And, and the same thing, I'll say, listen, you know, I'm talking to your frontliner, I'm talking to mid-level managers, they don't even know what it is that you want them to do. And so, you know, we'll formulate a plan of, all right, here's the mission, here's what we're trying to get done, here's our goals, here's our priorities. And they put that out. And then I'll go and talk to the, you know, the, the subordinate

• 1:11:30Jocko Willink?

  leadership and they'll be so happy because it's just what you said. They go from not knowing the rules of the game, what are we focused on, what am I supposed to do? And how do I, how do I move through this system right now to like, okay, I got it. You want me to do these things? Thank you for telling me. So, that is something that, as a leader, you have to be careful of. And that's something that, that definitely, you know, you and I had the same experience. Cool, I'm playing a game now and I know the rules. So what was, when you, how long was your, were your fire control school?

• 1:12:02Jocko Willink?

  Explain what that is a little bit.

• 1:12:03Speaker 01

  So, fire control is not being a fireman. Fire control is working on naval weapon systems. And so, I worked on the Aegis weapon system, which is the air defense and ballistic missile defense system we've got on all of our destroyers and cruisers right now.

• 1:12:21Speaker 01

  My school was about a year and a half. And so, you start out in like a basic electronics schools. People, you know, a lot of people on the outside, they don't understand. They're taking people off the street and basically making effective... They don't know what an electron is. They don't know why it is that when you plug something in, the lights come on. I didn't know any of that, right? I knew it was electricity. And they gotta take you and turn you into somebody who can go, you know, take a bunch of test equipment, a bunch of tools, and go figure out what's wrong with a hundred million dollar radar, right?

• 1:12:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:53Speaker 01

  And they do that in a relatively short period of time. I mean, Navy schools, the tech schools, I think people who come out of those schools are... College has gotta be such a cakewalk, you know, for doing that. Like, we were in class for eight hours a day, and then we had a couple hours of mandatory group study sessions every night, and that was five days a week. Every weekend, we had homework that was gonna take four hours both days, you know, or eight hours total, something like that. And we did that for a year and a half. And it was, you know, they pack a lot in. And, you know, if you really like focus on getting an education in there, they will make you like pretty competent in a pretty rapid period of time. And so, that was a year and a half. And then I get put on... I was on a... I was learning about a brand-new system. I went to the first ship that ever had it, right?

• 1:13:37Speaker 01

  This variant of the spy radar, the Aegis spy radar. And so, I get there, and the ship's keel has just been laid, basically, in Pascagoula. And so, I get sent to San Diego to wait for the ship to be built, and it's not gonna be done for another year and a half, two years. And so, I don't see a ship in the Navy until... I've already been in... Yeah, just over three years.

• 1:13:59Jocko Willink?

  So what did you do for that year and a half?

• 1:14:01Speaker 01

  It was pretty awesome, actually. So, um, we didn't have a lot to do. We didn't have, especially for like the first eight, nine months or so, we had very little supervision because we were some of the first people that got there. I think when my little group of, uh, of Aegis techs showed up there, the ship had a XO, a command master chief, one other chief who was out in Pasagula, and then us out here by ourselves. And that's basically how it stayed for a long time. And so we played, uh, the other base teams in softball. We had a lot of those like computerated, uh, you know, little classes that you gotta take on, that teach you nothing because you've never seen a ship. So like all these things you're reading about have to do with seamanship. Don't mean anything to you. But then after I had started to, I had already done all the computerated like tests. I was, I was done with that. There was nothing left for me to do.

• 1:14:45Speaker 01

  And other people start showing up, you know, at this point. And, um, I figured out that, you know, they have like, they used to call like S S E W. And then they had like the, uh, bunch of advanced shooting courses, basically. They had the, uh, simunition one that they did on the pigeon down on Pier 13. I don't know if you've ever seen the, the ship down there that you go on and basically play Counter-Strike on, you know? And, um, I had already done everything. And so I just started asking them, can I go to this one again? Can I go to this one again? I would go to these like eight, nine, 10 weeks in a row, just going to the shooting courses all the time. So it was pretty great.

• 1:15:19Speaker 01

  And yeah, so that was a year and a half. I got to the ship in 2004, just over three years that I'd been in at that point. And, um, yeah, I got to the ship and, you know, my attitude started to change a little bit. I had a little, I had some setbacks when I was on the ship. I just didn't, you know, I, I didn't work very well with, uh, I worked, I worked really well up to that point where, uh, where I could be, where there was a route for me to be the hot shot. You know, in boot camp, that's exactly what happened. In my schools, that's exactly what happened. And when I was at the pre-comm detachment, that's exactly what happened. Like I was the man out there, you know, because it was just a limited group of people and there was a defined,

• 1:16:02Speaker 01

  you know, number of, uh, activities that we were engaging in. And so, um, when I get out to the ship, there's a much larger group of people. There's senior people, you know, I'm an E4, and I'm just another face in the crowd at this point. And, um, a junior sailor, nobody cares, right? But I'm just, uh, you know, I was immature still by this point. I'm, uh, 23, I suppose. And I just start having clashes, especially with the chiefs mess, you know, just having wars with these guys. I was one of those, I was a pain in the ass. I was a huge pain in the ass. I look back on it now and I know some of my chiefs from back then. I'm like, dude, I'm so sorry. Like, I was such a pain.

• 1:16:39Jocko Willink?

  What were you doing? Just objecting? That doesn't make any sense.

• 1:16:42Speaker 01

  Trolling, you know, like, sort of, like, in a way where, um, you know, I never showed up to work drunk. I never showed up to work late. I never had any liberty and so it's nothing like that, right?

• 1:16:54Jocko Willink?

  You were an even worse kind of problem.

• 1:16:55Speaker 01

  I was the worst, I was the worst kind of problem. And it took me a long time to, to figure out why. And the fact that I never had any of those quote unquote more serious discipline problems allowed me to think I was getting picked on, right? By a bunch of people who just didn't like me. Cause I would look at these other people, this is actually what happened that turned me around. I literally had an overnight turnaround. I went to captain's mass three times in one year. I got convicted all three times.

• 1:17:19Jocko Willink?

  For what?

• 1:17:21Speaker 01

  Disrespecting a chief petty officer.

• 1:17:23Jocko Willink?

  You went to captain's mass for disrespecting a chief petty officer?

• 1:17:27Speaker 01

  I was a problem. I was a problem.

• 1:17:29Jocko Willink?

  Give me at least a little bit of example, cause only because in the SEAL teams, I don't know. That I can remember, I don't, I don't remember anyone ever getting sent to captain's mass for disrespecting a chief petty officer. For a couple of reasons, the primary reason is you would just get, you know, catch a beat down, like, that just, it's just not gonna happen. You'd get beat down.

• 1:17:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:17:50Jocko Willink?

  And.

• 1:17:50Speaker 01

  I, I wish somebody could have just kicked my ass. You can't do that in a normal Navy, so.

• 1:17:54Jocko Willink?

  So, so you get cap, give me an example. That is freaking insane.

• 1:17:58Speaker 01

  You know, I don't think any of them were particularly egregious. Here, here's what I would do, right? Is I was actually like an artist at, uh, at figuring out exactly where the lines were. I knew what the rules were. I know where the lines are. And then just taking all my clothes off and tiptoeing along them like, ha, ha, ha. I'm not touching you. I'm not touching you, right? Like, just being a.

• 1:18:19Jocko Willink?

  I'm glad you went to cap's mass. I'm getting pissed off.

• 1:18:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, just being a pain in the ass. And, um, like, here's an example, like, one time. This is a perfect example of the kind of things I would do. After the first Iraqi elections in 2005. You know, the purple fingers and everything. I, I know perfectly well that writing out an all hands email is something that the captain XO and the command master chief are allowed to do. Nobody else is allowed to do. You can't have every E4 writing out all hands emails, right?

• 1:18:54Jocko Willink?

  No, you can't.

• 1:18:55Speaker 01

  And so I write up this long email with pictures of the people with the, you know, the purple fingers and like telling everybody like, you know, look at what we've accomplished. And this is such a great thing that like the US military has helped to make happen and duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, and fire it out to all.

• 1:19:10Jocko Willink?

  So you wait, you wrote a serious email?

• 1:19:12Speaker 01

  Yes, but I would say.

• 1:19:14Jocko Willink?

  But you knew it kind of was.

• 1:19:15Speaker 01

  Well, I would say that I did it because, I did it to be a pain in the ass. But I meant what I said, but I also was like, aha, like I can troll them here and they can't really do anything because I'm celebrating what we've accomplished and like, you know, whatever, that's the kind of thing I would do, right? And once or twice, it's like, okay, yeah, yeah, knock it off. But I was persistent and I would, it got to a point where, and took one, one guy, first class, who I had just banged heads with for a long time before this, I hated him and he hated me. And after this, we got to be great friends, literally like he turned me around a one day.

• 1:19:56Speaker 01

  So the third time I go up, I got 45, 45, 45 days of restriction and extra duty, all three times, right, in one year. And we were on deployment for like five months of that year and we didn't count underway time. So I was locked on the ship for like nine months in one year. And, and because one of them had to do with like, you know, sending out the all hands email for a good portion, I didn't have any computer access or anything. I'm just in jail like on the ship. And. And the last time that it happened.

• 1:20:30Jocko Willink?

  Wait, these were, so what's the last time that what happened?

• 1:20:33Speaker 01

  That I went to Captain's Mansion.

• 1:20:34Jocko Willink?

  What was the last, what was the last offense?

• 1:20:36Speaker 01

  Um, okay, yeah, so this is, yeah, so this is perfect because it, it, it just set everything up perfectly for me to get turned around. Um, and it doesn't sound like that at first. So what happened was at this point, they, they were so tired of my crap that they were definitely like just looking for a reason, right? And, uh, and I knew it and I felt persecuted because of it, right? Even though I'm totally being a pain. Um, and so they, they found something like I was, uh, I didn't, I had done, I was a person, the designated person in the division at the time who was supposed to do our maintenance on our damage control equipment. Which kind of details you to like another division, the damage control division, part-time. And so there was a time where I was supposed to go do maintenance on our fire hoses and after you're done, you put this sealant on them to protect them from the elements, something like that.

• 1:21:21Speaker 01

  And at that particular time, the ship was out and the, of the sealant, and so the guy, the damage control guy who was in charge of everything in that particular time, he told everybody, just don't worry about it this time, go do your maintenance. And so I went and did it. So a month or two later, I get written up for having gun decked this maintenance. Because I said that I did it in accordance with the card, but I didn't use the sealant. You can tell because they're all rusty. And so in that instance, I was able to bring like 15 other people who were all able to vouch for me.

• 1:21:48Jocko Willink?

  And you did that? You did like, you went straight, uh, what's that movie? Uh, you went straight?

• 1:21:57Jocko Willink?

  What's the damn Jack Nicholson movie? A Few Good Men? You went like straight, you brought witnesses in? Did you do that?

• 1:22:04Speaker 01

  I, I had one person who was in my division who knew that I was telling the truth and I was like, I can bring people in like, and they knew that I was right. They, I convinced them at the time that I was right, but there was also like, I was, so this, I was completely innocent this time. Like of this, right? Not innocent, but of this, I was innocent and they still gave me 45, 45, but all three of those times.

• 1:22:26Jocko Willink?

  So 45 days restriction?

• 1:22:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:22:28Jocko Willink?

  And 45 days half pay?

• 1:22:30Speaker 01

  Special duty. No.

• 1:22:31Jocko Willink?

  Oh, special.

• 1:22:32Speaker 01

  They never took any pay and even though I went three times in one year, they never busted me down because they kind of knew that part of it was personal. Part of it was that I had a personal problem with some of these guys, but you know, they're, screw my personal problems. I'm subordinate, like they're chiefs and I'm not, right? So, Roger that.

• 1:22:48Jocko Willink?

  This is like the worst. I'm serious. Like I'm saying, this is like the most annoying.

• 1:22:53Speaker 01

  Oh, the worst.

• 1:22:54Jocko Willink?

  Leadership problem. It's so annoying.

• 1:22:57Speaker 01

  Especially when you have somebody who's smart enough to sort of.

• 1:23:00Jocko Willink?

  Totally. But you know, and, and just, you know, while I'm saying that, like, what I absolutely would have done with you is I would have put you on a fast track. I would have put you in charge of things. Like, I would have, I would have done things. Okay.

• 1:23:09Speaker 01

  So I, uh, I'm up, upstairs in one of our combat system spaces. And at this time, like, I'm really feeling aggrieved, right?

• 1:23:17Jocko Willink?

  So now that you've already been, you've been, you're now you're under sentence.

• 1:23:19Speaker 01

  This is, this is later that day after I've been sentenced. And so I'm really feeling victimized here because I'm actually innocent of this and I'm still in that mindset, right? And I've got my chief up there and my chief at the time, he's a great guy. He's a good chief, but he did not know how to deal with me. Like, he was just, he's too nice and I needed someone to put a boot up my ass and he was not that guy. And, uh, he's a great guy. I know him today and he's just an awesome dude. Uh, and he's one of the people I apologize to on a regular basis. And so I get, I corner him basically, and there's other people in the space and I am just tearing him apart. Like, I do this, I do that. I do all this work in the division.

• 1:23:57Speaker 01

  And what about this person who showed up drunk? He didn't go to captain's mask. What about this person who didn't show up from Liberty and like Miss Ships Movement? He didn't go to captain's mask and you're targeting me for this bullshit? That's where I was at. And from a perspective, I was right. And so I am just laying into him and he doesn't know what to say. And so this first class, who, uh, is my LPO at the time. And I don't like him and he doesn't like me. And it's funny because he, uh, this was, um, this was, uh, he was, he was like a, he was a, he's a very interesting personality. He's like, um,

• 1:24:31Speaker 01

  he's kind of a nerd, but he was like kind of a alpha personality still. He was a sailor. He was a guy who took his job seriously and like, you know, if you just caught him out on the street, he's not some like alpha personality necessarily, but like when he's doing his job, he takes it seriously, right? So he sees me tearing up our chief, his chief too. And he's like, oh God, like I gotta go save him. And so he runs in there and he listens to me talk for another like 30 seconds or so. And then he just turns it around. And he starts lighting into me and I go back and forth with him. The crowd's gathering up at this point. And then he says, are you seriously going to look me in the eye and tell me that you play no role in the, in putting yourself in the position you're in right now? And I was like. Okay, I couldn't say that, right?

• 1:25:13Speaker 01

  And, and he's like, I'll tell you what, like, this isn't, this isn't World War II. We don't shoot deserters, okay? This is a, this is a Navy these days where, uh, you know, if you don't want to be here, I'll take you to the old man, he will sign it, you won't even get a dishonorable discharge. If you want to leave, we'll let you leave. And every day that you're not doing that, you're re-enlisting for 24 hours. Every day you come in and show up for work, you're re-enlisting for 24 hours. Cause you can leave if you want to. Nobody's gonna prosecute you for desertion, whatever, like, you can leave. And so, don't tell me that like, this is such an awful and horrible place to be and everything is just wrong with it or whatever, because every day you're volunteering to come in here. And when, you know, every time I kind of try to tell the story to people, it doesn't hit

• 1:25:58Speaker 01

  them as profoundly as it hit me, but at the time, it just, it made me realize that all of the, the entire mentality that I had carried forward into that point, up to that point on the ship, um, it was just, it was all wrong. It was a completely dependent mindset where I was looking completely outside myself for the cause of all my unhappiness and problems and everything. He just got me to see that it doesn't matter what situation is. Like, the ship was a disciplinary mess. It was a, it was a tough place to like, if that's the environment you're adapting yourself to, it's easy to go awry, right? It was, it was a tough place. It was, our, our captain got escorted off by Marines, like, as soon as we got back from sail around. What happened? So, we were in the Panama Canal, and the captain was an animal.

• 1:26:43Speaker 01

  He, he'd be a guy who like, he was a guy who like, seemed like he read about being a captain in World War II, and now he had his ship, and he's walking through the interior of the ship with a lit stogie in his mouth, and he's just being a captain, right? He was a great guy in a lot of ways, but he's a wild man. And, uh, we were in the Panama Canal coming over to San Diego. And when you park in the Panama Canal, sometimes they tie you off to these big, wide concrete buoys, right, that kind of keep you in place. And so, we were doing that, and one of the Panamanians dipped a line, and it got caught up in our propeller, and it sucked this giant concrete buoy down and destroyed our propeller, and twisted the shaft up, going all the way up into the ship, right? And so, we get stuck in the Panama Canal for several days, as we're like, basically

• 1:27:28Speaker 01

  trying to figure out what to do with ourselves. Everybody's super stressed out, they're, all of the chitters are completely full, because when you're in the Panama Canal, you can't discharge, so they have to bring on porta-potties, those are all full. People are like, you know, leaving bags of crap, like, you know, in closets, so they can go throw them overboard at nighttime. So we're there for like, four or five days. Everybody's super heated. And, uh, when we, uh, when we're going to pull out finally, they tell us, just go limp home, you know, on one propeller, just, just go. And, uh, we go to pull out, and I'm standing watch in combat, and all of a sudden, as we're getting ready to go, um, I hear the captain come over the, the intercom, right, the one MC.

• 1:28:11Speaker 01

  No, like, you know, crew, this is captain, or anything like that, he says, "Master at Arms, this is the captain, get up to the bridge right now." He has the Panamanian pilot arrested and confined. The pilot, the Panama Canal is one of the only places where the captain gives up control of a ship. There's a pilot who's Panamanian down there, who will drive your ship like, um, when you're either docking or leaving dock, right? And so, he has this guy arrested and confined, because he gets into a huge fight with him, drives the ship out himself, hits the pier on the way out, and then has the quartermaster dock through the logs to keep it out. Oh. Yeah, and, uh, the XO at the time, did the right thing, you know, he kept it, he logged it himself, and kept a diary about it, and then when we got back, he reported

• 1:28:56Speaker 01

  it, because, you know, on one hand, it's like, you, there's some people who thought it was disloyal, I'm like, there's a bunch of JOs up there, who their whole careers are screwed, if they're anywhere near this. He saved all of those guys. He had, he did the right thing. And so, uh, yeah, so, it's, it's a chaotic ship. There was a period, like, a couple of years in, where I think a third of the leadership all got, uh, you know, swapped out and booted off the ship for fraternization, all at once we had an external investigation, because everybody was just sleeping with everybody. It was a disciplinary problem. Oh, was there females on board? Yeah. Oh. Yeah. And, uh- And so, but you know, and yet, it was this guy, my LPO at the time, who really somehow, like he, I'm not a type of person, it's easy to shut up.

• 1:29:40Speaker 01

  You know, like especially if I'm like getting going, like whatever, like I'm just, I'm coming, just like I was coming at that chief. And for him to be able to just shut me down like that. Like people who were there were like, they looked at me like, oh, what's he gonna say now? And I just had nothing to say. And I went down to my rack, this now I'm on restriction, this is my first day of restriction. And I literally go down to my rack and I lie down and I can feel something working inside me. And um, I just, I just, I don't, I can't, it's hard to kind of really describe, but I woke up the next day and I was not just a different person, my job, I was a completely different person. It was like I, it was like I matured 10 years overnight. Where all of a sudden I woke up in the morning and I was like, oh, this is my life now. And it didn't feel like that before in the same way.

• 1:30:23Speaker 01

  I could be like, you know, when I was doing well in bootcamp and school and everything, it's like I can be good at this game.

• 1:30:28Jocko Willink?

  I was gonna say, you're playing a game.

• 1:30:29Speaker 01

  Right. But you know, getting to the point of realizing that like, whatever the environment is around me, like, I've got my own responsibility to like, you know, take care of my own circle here. And um, literally the next day, like I just, completely different person. This was late in 2005 and um, around early 2006. So this is just a few months after I get off restriction for the third time this year, and I'm a second class at the time. Uh, because we were pre-con, we got everybody at once at the beginning. And so all of our leadership is changing out all at once. And they gotta find another LPO. And this was just a few months after me coming off my third stint on restriction in less than

• 1:31:11Speaker 01

  12 months, and they made me the LPO because I had turned around that much. And part of it was because we had this one guy on board, he was an older guy who kind of joined the fleet late, he was like a bouncer in Texas, 6'5", 260. Arnry dude, really great guy, but an Arnry dude. And he had kind of enough personal problems with other people in the division. They couldn't make him the LPO, but they knew nobody else in the division could handle him just on a personality level. And so they put me in charge and it was exactly what you said. As soon as I got to a point where I realized that the well-being of these other people is now depending on me, you know, or if I want to go start a fight with a chief, that's going to roll downhill on these other guys. As soon as that happened, I mean, my mindset completely shifted.

• 1:31:55Speaker 01

  It was, it was, it was a revelation. And so the next year, that was 2005. I, I got convicted at Captain's Mass three times. In 2006, I was the destroyer squadron sailor of the year and got a 5-0 eval.

• 1:32:08Jocko Willink?

  Dang.

• 1:32:10Speaker 01

  Yeah. And our division was the hot division on the ship, you know? We had, we gave out.

• 1:32:16Jocko Willink?

  You got a 5-0 eval?

• 1:32:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:32:18Jocko Willink?

  That's insane.

• 1:32:20Speaker 01

  I was, I was on fire, man. Like I just, I, you know, it wasn't just that like I kind of realized like, oh, I can kind of do the right thing now. It was like, it was, it was like this revelation to me. I was eating it up. I was like, holy cow, I can just, I can just go do all the right things. And like, I can take control of this situation. And then, you know, I don't have to wait for other people to sort of tell me it's all right or to tell me what to do or I don't have to, I don't have to be reactive. I can just actually go make things happen and, you know, and it was just a huge revelation. So I was just eating it up. And, um, yeah. And, uh, I, you know, I, I owe that guy a lot, you know? I owe that guy a lot. And he and I, after that, we got along great.

• 1:33:02Speaker 01

  He was, this was before, uh, Don't Ask, Don't Tell got shit canned. And so he was, he was gay. And when we would go in, we got to be like enough friends that when we would go into ports in like Australia and other places and he would want to go off to like a bar somewhere, he couldn't tell anybody else, like I would go with him because he had to have a liberty buddy. He had to have somebody go with him. And so I would go and like.

• 1:33:22Jocko Willink?

  That's, that's a good friend right there, bro. Cause you're pulling into port for the first time and however long and you're, you're going to go to the gay bar with, with the homes.

• 1:33:30Speaker 01

  And I, and I would just hang out and like, yeah, dude's. If you go to a gay bar in Australia, you know, you're, those dudes are pretty aggressive. So you have to like, you know, kind of be ready to just keep cool. But I mean, that's how close I got to this guy, you know, really great friends with that guy. And to this day, like I owe him a lot and I owe a lot to all the people who put up with my crap for as long as they did because they had plenty of excuses to just be like, you know, this guy's not worth the trouble, get the hell out of here. They could have booted my ass out for a million different things, not for, you know, again, not, I didn't punch anybody in the face or anything, but I just, I was not worth the trouble. What they were, the work and everything else they were getting out of me was not anywhere near, you know, the trouble I was giving them.

• 1:34:13Speaker 01

  And it's like you said, in a way, it's the worst kind of trouble to deal with because, you know, what I finally realized was the reason that the guy who showed up drunk doesn't have to necessarily go to Captain's Mass and get hammered the way they were coming after me is after they come to him and say, how dare you, this is wrong, whatever, he puts his head down and he says, Roger that, he submits to the authority of the chain of command. And that was what, it was my entire life was making a show of the fact that I did not respect the chain of command. Like that was my whole goal on the ship was to basically like be a performance artist at, at, at coming up with creative ways to flip off the chain of command, but doing it in ways again where I know where the lines are, I know what the rules are so that once

• 1:34:57Speaker 01

  you hammer me for it, I can say, this isn't fair, even though I'm totally provoking them like a hundred percent and everybody knows it, they know it, but worse, all of the other junior sailors know it. And so they're, if they don't hammer me, I, that undermines the entire authority structure. If they don't come squash me, they have to figure out how to get me to bend the knee. And because as long as I exist like that, like, you know, it could break down the discipline on the whole ship. And I finally understood that, you know, I finally understood why they had to come after me the way they did. And, um, you know, it just, I took ownership for my own situation, you know?

• 1:35:36Speaker 01

  And, but again, I, I took somebody getting in my face and shut me down and, and if he hadn't walked in there that day, I don't, I, I know I wouldn't have learned that lesson. I would have just hammered my chief and walked off like, ha, ha, you know, got him. And that would have been that, I never would have learned that lesson, at least not in that timeframe.

• 1:35:53Jocko Willink?

  So once you were now squared away, it's now 2005, what was you, you're going on to, how many deployments did you do on that ship?

• 1:36:02Speaker 01

  Two, in both of them, we were doing independent deployments, actually, supporting some of your buddies out in the Philippines.

• 1:36:09Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:36:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, we were supporting SWIC and SEAL operations, you know, when they were fighting insurgents down some of the southern islands there.

• 1:36:17Speaker 01

  You know, since then, I work for the DOD now, and I deploy with ships sometimes, and so I've gone on, I don't know, ten or fifteen deployments, at least for good chunks of them, so I've been all over the place at this point, but, um, yeah, that was, so that was oh six, when they put me in charge of the division, and we actually didn't have a chief at the time either, so I was a second class for a while, and I was our acting chief, and, um, there was a chief's mess full of guys that hated my guts, and I had to learn to navigate that, too, and some of those guys, it was personal enough by that point, that like, they didn't really care much that I had kind of turned my attitude around, took some, took some time, but, um, yeah, and, uh...

• 1:36:59Jocko Willink?

  Once you turned your attitude around, and you are now dealing with these chiefs, sometimes you see people slip back, right, like, they, they get some chief that they didn't respect before, but now they try to turn over a new leaf, and when they do, it's like, that guy, that they still just can't put their ego in check enough to stand down. Were you able to stand down?

• 1:37:21Speaker 01

  Um, well, I, I would say, to a degree, right, so, um, I was the acting LCPO, and I was a second class, right, which meant that we didn't have a real chief kind of defending our guys, and, um, a lot of times, my second classes and third classes would get stuck with extra work that no other division wanted to do, and, and so, to a degree, like, the, uh, the, um, like, I became very, very protective of my guys, like, very, very protective, because you gotta remember, like, I'm now in charge of a bunch of people who watched me go to Catherine's Mass three times last year, right, and I gotta navigate that leadership issue. Some of them are older than me, there's two first classes in the division, I'm only a second class, you know, and I have to figure out how to deal with these twenty, twenty-five

• 1:38:06Speaker 01

  people, and it's not like I can walk in one day, and, you know, because I've ironed my uniform properly, come in and be like, now, everybody listen to me, like, that's not gonna work, right, and it's funny, because as I've been doing this latest podcast series on Jim Jones, I've realized something, that in a way, what I did is I started a cult. Not like a personality cult where they worship me or anything, but in a way where I definitely created like a very strong us versus them, us versus the rest of the ship kind of mentality, right? And it bonded everybody together. One of the things I'm most proud of in my whole life is that I would say 80% of the group that was in our division for those couple of years to this day, since 10 years ago, they're all still friends.

• 1:38:50Speaker 01

  Or they're at least like one degree of friends separated from each other. Like if we had a get together today, everybody would be like right there, like they'd just seen each other. Created some very powerful relationships, but it was very much like a, you know, like when I would have somebody get in trouble, one kid got a DUI. Am I going to come up to him after I've been to Captain's Mass three times last year and be like, well, how dare you? This is just unacceptable, mister. That's not going to work, right? And so what I would do is I would say, look, you know, things are pretty good in our division right now, right? I give you guys each of the, each of the work centers. I give you guys a lot of leeway to run your own business and I don't like come over your shoulders all the time. There are a bunch of chiefs on this ship who would love to get on their evaluation that they're the CF, you know, it was our division, that they're our divisional

• 1:39:35Speaker 01

  chief, right? They're, they're circling like vultures. Now I can hold them off as long as you keep behaving, you know, hold off those, those hyenas. But when you misbehave like that, it gives them ammunition to like come after us. And so I would create this thing like they were out to get us. And some of them were, because some of them hated me enough, you know, but then, and after a while, it becomes a little bit of a self fulfilling prophecy. You create that us versus them vibe and, you know, you, you, you can only, only go around thinking that, you know, other people don't like you so long before just you make it true, right?

• 1:40:09Jocko Willink?

  Make it true. I always had to be careful of that because I'd get the whole gang mentality going and it would be us against the world. And, you know, every once in a while, I'd have to pull back the reins a little bit because, you know, you've got 22 year old JP Denell and like somebody says something bad about the task unit and he is ready to murder someone. You know, I have to, I have to pull the reins a little bit, you know, because it gets a little crazy in the, in the dings. So what made you decide? Did you make first class then, pretty quick?

• 1:40:40Speaker 01

  Pretty quick, yeah. Once I had that.

• 1:40:41Jocko Willink?

  Cause you must have aced the freaking test and you had a 5-0 eval.

• 1:40:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, they were only promoting 3, 4, 5% up to first class for my rate at the time. But yeah, I pretty much aced the test and I had a 5-0 eval. So I made it pretty quickly. And then I got, because of the way that the schedule worked out, I was just like a little kink in the schedule. I got to know, I got to pick my orders, my shore duty orders before I had to decide whether I wanted to reenlist, which is a beautiful thing. And so I ended up taking, taking orders up at Port Wenimi, which is where, it's like the engineering place for the Aegis Weapon System. And anytime we would do, you know, major technical or training evolutions, guys from there would come out and, and work with us, the engineers who had been working with this stuff for a long

• 1:41:29Speaker 01

  time. And so they kind of knew who I was and I developed some relationships with them when I was still on the ship. And so when my orders came up, you know, they kind of helped me get out there. And yeah, it was a good experience too, because you get into a place like that where, you know, you think you're pretty good at your job. You think you have an idea of what you're doing. And then you get around people who really know what they're doing and you realize like you're like a little baby, you know? And yeah, it's a great place to live and it's a great place to work. So I've enjoyed that as well. It's taken me all over the world, a lot of freedom in my job, you know, a lot of ability to kind of operate independently. So it was good.

• 1:42:03Jocko Willink?

  And then at what point, at what, so, so this whole time you're still reading a ton, I assume?

• 1:42:09Speaker 01

  Oh, so like in this job, for example, I would say I would, I would be away from home, traveling 70, 80% of the year. Like sometimes I'm going 10, 11 months a year and a lot of that time is out on deployed ships or I'm out in a place like Bahrain or somewhere else where there's not a whole lot going on. And I would bring a suitcase full of my clothes and workout gear and everything and a suitcase full of books. And I would just read, that's all I would do when I was out there by myself.

• 1:42:36Jocko Willink?

  At what point did you start thinking about making a podcast?

• 1:42:40Speaker 01

  Um, when some of my friends told me to, to make one so that I could leave them alone. I, uh, you know, I, um, it, I was, um, hardcore history fan like everybody else, right? And, uh, uh, it takes a long time between hardcore history episodes and you want something else to be there. And this was in the early, earlier days, 2015, there weren't like a hundred thousand.

• 1:43:03Jocko Willink?

  There wasn't a bunch of podcasts then.

• 1:43:05Speaker 01

  And so, um, I happened to be reading a lot about the history of the Israeli Palestinian conflict for the last couple of years. And I'm always talking to my friends about it and they're like, finally, one of them said, why don't you just go start a podcast? You're always complaining about hardcore history taking too long. Just go make one in between those episodes. And so I said, okay, I'll give that a shot. And, um, yeah, so I started working on that one. And, um, that was another one of those, it was, it was another one of those revelations where it's very humbling in a way. Um, I got to the point where I had read maybe six or eight books on the pre 1948 period of the Israeli Palestinian conflict. If you've read six to eight books on a topic, like it's pretty easy to.

• 1:43:45Jocko Willink?

  You're feeling pretty good.

• 1:43:46Speaker 01

  It's pretty easy to think of yourself as an expert, yeah. And so I start making like the first episode and the second episode. And by the time I kind of, you know, I'm outlining them and kind of putting them together. And I'm, uh, by the time I kind of get up to like episode three or four of like how I'm making my outlines. Now I've read like 20 or 30 books and I would look back at like the first episode that I had put together when I had read like six. And I realized I didn't, it was, it was hilariously bad. Like, uh, not just like you missed this little point here, whatever, but that you had, I had no idea what I was talking about. And then when I, you know, I think all the time now about like, it's really easy to get me to pontificate for hours about some topic that I read one book about, you know?

• 1:44:29Speaker 01

  And these are, this is a topic that like I had read six or eight books on at the time. And having to look back and realize that I knew nothing about it, like the most basic kind of.

• 1:44:39Jocko Willink?

  Had you already recorded a po- like number one, you just laid out the notes and been like, okay, here's the direction.

• 1:44:44Speaker 01

  And I'm so glad that I, that I took my time, you know? By the time I got through that entire six episode series, um.

• 1:44:52Speaker 01

  You know, I read close to a hundred books, um, parts of another couple hundred, almost two thousand, uh, you know, academic papers and articles and, um, essays and diaries and things like I just, I read almost everything that I could find on it to a point where I would get a new book and I would read it or a new paper and I would read it and I would be glad if I would get like one more little tidbit out of that. And, um, and so I felt pretty good about that series when it was finished and, um, a lot of people, you know, have enjoyed it, obviously. I'm glad I caught you early when you could still respond to emails.

• 1:45:30Jocko Willink?

  Was that you that sent me that I should listen to you? I don't think it was.

• 1:45:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't remember. I don't think so either.

• 1:45:35Jocko Willink?

  I don't think it was. I think it was somebody else, which is pretty random because, uh, I mean, at that time, I, I know when we started our, uh, this podcast, eighteen, I, I saw this figure, eighteen percent of America was listening to podcasts. So you were before that. So maybe it was fifteen or twelve percent of people. For, so for somebody to have heard your podcast and then my podcast and then connect us on social media, that's pretty freaking impressive.

• 1:46:02Speaker 01

  It was, you know, I never expected anybody to listen to it. Like I didn't, it just never, I'm not an authority on anything. I don't have any credentials, you know, or anything. And I, it just, I, it never occurred to me anybody was gonna, was gonna be listening to it. And, um, it was, um, yeah, it was a lot to handle when people started listening to it and start writing me emails. I've gotten emails from, from Israeli Defense Force active duty guys running patrols in the West Bank who have written me and said that like this made me sympathize with the Palestinians more, right? That's a dude who, that matters. That's a guy who like is gonna be dealing with these people tomorrow on patrol. And I've gotten emails from people, from Arabs, Muslims, all over the Middle East who said, I never,

• 1:46:46Speaker 01

  I never thought about the situation that the Jews were in, in that way before. And I'm like.

• 1:46:52Speaker 01

  It feels like it's a pretty heavy responsibility, but at the same time, like it's, you know, it makes it so that like, you really feel like, okay, I gotta, I gotta make sure that I'm saying things that I mean, and that I'm putting the amount of work in this that it deserves. So, one of the things that I, I do, that my, one of my recent ones, took a long time, the Jim Jones one that I'm doing, because I just, I refuse to put out an episode until I feel like I can at least have a glimpse of what it would be like to put myself in the shoes of the people that I'm talking about. And if I just, if there's people in there that I'm gonna be talking about, who I just don't like, or who I, I just have contempt for in sort of a cartoonish way, which is how I felt about a lot of the people in Jim

• 1:47:37Speaker 01

  Jones's movement for a while. I just don't like these people. They just elicit nothing but negative emotions in me. And I just refuse to make the episode until I could get through that, you know, and try to figure out what are the circumstances that these people could be looking at, that could make the decisions that they're making make sense to them at the time. And, you know, that can be really hard to do. Like, you know, I've been reading a whole lot about Al Qaeda in Iraq and all that stuff now. And I, that's, I mean, that's, I don't know if I'm gonna get through that one, you know? When I read about Zarqawi and some of these guys, where it's just, this is, you know...

• 1:48:15Jocko Willink?

  It's another level of sadism.

• 1:48:17Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I don't, I don't feel like I need to get to a point where I can, you know, where I can empathize with them before I can talk about it. But I do at least want to understand like the social conditions and ideological, you know, parameters that, that structure somebody's thinking in a way that, that, you know, leads them to think that that's a course of action that makes sense, you know?

• 1:48:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and you obviously must be seeing connections between Jim Jones and just the cult mentality.

• 1:48:47Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:48:48Jocko Willink?

  Because that's essentially what, what you're dealing with. And what you said earlier about, you know, when you're young and you don't really know which direction to take, and then all of a sudden, somebody shows up that, you know, like we've been saying the whole time, oh, you all of a sudden know the rules of the game. Well, when somebody shows up and says, "Hey..." I I I got the rules of the game. Here they are, and this is what you need to do to win.

• 1:49:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:49:09Jocko Willink?

  Then it becomes a very easy to kind of sweep people into it.

• 1:49:14Speaker 01

  And they offer, I mean, I think one of the biggest things is they offer people an identity. You know, identity is something that in some ways we're not really comfortable talking about in uh in society these days. We find it to be kind of dangerous. Social identity, the way people time uh the the ways that people tend to um connect themselves with larger groups and and movements. It's something that we look at as pretty dangerous for pretty for pretty reasonable. Um, you know, we have reasons for that, right? We look back at something like World War Two. And we see how, you know, a group of people starting to get really, really serious about who we are and our identity can really go off the rails, right? And that.

• 1:49:53Jocko Willink?

  You say we're uncomfortable talking about that, but I mean.

• 1:49:56Speaker 01

  There's another side.

• 1:49:57Jocko Willink?

  Okay, I was gonna say, because we've got like people whose number one thing in life is their identity with whatever group it is.

• 1:50:03Speaker 01

  Right. And so it's, I would, let's say, maybe not that we're uncomfortable with it, but that it's something that is volatile, you know, and um when we do talk about it, it's usually charged with a lot of emotion one way or the other. And um, and so rather than uh, and it's usually attached to um, you know, ideas of historical grievance and things like that. So we'll say that, you know, a group that has some has some grievance, they, it's okay for them to sort of identify in a in in a group manner, things like that. But rather than just

• 1:50:36Speaker 01

  talking about it as a psychological need that people have. I mean, when you come up uh as a kid like I did, where, you know, you're just, you're just kind of pasting an identity together out of random bits. People that passed through your life, of uh things you see on TV, book you read, you're just kind of pasting something together. It's not like, you know, in a good, strong nuclear family is this little cocoon where you can start to develop, emulate your parents ideally, if there's somebody that you want to emulate and kind of figure out, you know, where uh where there's room for your own individuation and so forth. But you don't have that. Um, you're kind of just pasting something together and you grow up in the idea of like, who am I? Or who are we as a people? I think in one of the early.

• 1:51:18Speaker 01

  Israel Palestine ones when I was kind of talk about how, you know, the Zionists are pulling people from all over, Jews from all over Europe and trying to get them to think of themselves is like, you know, this is a time when like German Jews didn't really like Polish Jews and American Jews kind of looked down on all of them in certain ways. And to pull all these people together and be like, no, no, no, no, no, this is us. Like this is who we are. We're a people. And it takes, it's a mysterious kind of alchemical process, like how that works. And it can come apart really easily. And I mentioned how, what's the difference between, you know, what is it that makes America, you know, where we say, we don't just say this is America. We say we're Americans, right?

• 1:51:59Speaker 01

  And what's the difference between 300 million people who just happen to live near each other in the middle of North America? And this place called America with people who are Americans who can cooperate and trust each other in various ways that allow us to sort of live next door to total strangers without killing each other, which we think of as like, well, why would we kill each other? It's like, well, go try that in most of history. If those people weren't members of your tribe, you're not living next door to them. You know, I have a Palestinian friend who several years ago, we were down in a place in LA having, having lunch or breakfast or something, Sunday morning, beautiful day. And we're, you know, sitting out on the patio and there's just a bunch of people. It's a wonderful little, little meal.

• 1:52:44Speaker 01

  And all of a sudden I catch her just kind of looking around and I'd say, what are you, what's on your mind? What are you thinking about? And she said, this place, she's from the Middle East, right? She says, this place like here, this could never happen in my country. And I just kind of looked around and yeah, sure enough, like over here, you've got at this table, like, you know, two white people, two black people having a meal together. Over here, you've got like two gay dudes having breakfast together. Just all different types of people. They don't know each other. They're not related to each other. And they're just All good. It's all good. It's totally stable and totally normal. And if anybody fell down, people would go to see what was wrong with them.

• 1:53:26Speaker 01

  And, you know, it's not that people don't care about each other in other parts of the world. It's that their, you know, their level of trust for people outside their group and what is defined as us. Is is something that's typically a lot narrower, you know, I'm sure this is a we'll talk about this in in a future time when we get into when you had to talk to the sheiks in Ramadi and stuff, you had to work through you had to work through a whole tribal system that plays no role over here, you know, we just don't have anything like that over here. And when we when we have like little versions of it with like, you know, say like the Italian mafia back in the day or something where there's still this sort of in-group mentality and stuff, that starts to it's hard to keep that together in the United States and a

• 1:54:08Speaker 01

  lot of the institutions we have are kind of designed to break down those sub-loyalties so that, you know, there's this broader national loyalty that we all kind of devote ourselves to, you know, the Hatfields and the McCoys have to figure out how to how to, you know, how to put their differences aside and get on the same landing craft and go storm the beaches in Normandy, you know, they got to figure out how to do that. And we take that kind of stuff for granted because we're so far along that process here, but, you know, you go to a lot of the world and it's not something you can take for granted at all. And I think that how I grew up kind of it it it it pushed me in the direction of being interested in those kind of things, you know, wanting to belong to something,

• 1:54:50Speaker 01

  trying to figure out what makes a community work, or what makes a family work, or what makes a country work as opposed to one that just doesn't work. What's the difference? They're not better people over here than they are over here. They're just they, you know, there's little things, you know, do you trust your neighbors? You know, do you just have, you know, are your concentric circles of concern sort of expanded enough to they, you know, where they get to the point that they include people that maybe you don't know, but that you still consider at least relative to somebody way over there like one of us, you know? And where does that where do those circles of concern end?

• 1:55:34Speaker 01

  You know, do they end at the tribe? Well, you're gonna have a you're gonna have a hell of a time trying to put together like a functioning nation-state if that's the problem, if that's if that's the case, you know, and

• 1:55:44Speaker 01

  You know, if it ends it, a lot of people, it ends it themselves, you know? And I don't think people generally want to be that way, though. I think they want people and something to identify with and to belong to and to kind of hand themselves over to most people. I think most people, they, they long for something to serve and something to give themselves to. But they look around and, you know, they just, again, they're waiting for that beam of sunlight to shine down on it and just, this is the thing. And that's usually never gonna happen. And, but I think that's what people are seeking. You know, I think people want to sacrifice. I think people want to serve something.

• 1:56:25Speaker 01

  And, you know, they spend their lives looking for something and, or maybe not looking hard enough. Maybe that's the wrong way to look at it. They want it, but they don't necessarily go looking for it.

• 1:56:35Jocko Willink?

  And it's a, it's interesting times. It's interesting times because you can kind of get by without being linked into something. And so everyone can kind of get by without being linked into something, but then they have a certain void of being linked into something. And then, you know, it's like when you go to prison. Like when you go to prison, you're gonna join a gang. But, you know, pretty much you're gonna join a gang. That's what's gonna happen if you're gonna survive. Period. Like, that's what's happening. You're gonna, you know, and it's gonna be by race. That's what's gonna happen. And then you'll get out and it's like, it's okay. You know? Like, that's a, that's a really interesting microcosm to look at. But in there, you need to do it to survive. So all of a sudden, you get in there and next thing you know, you're getting bolts tattooed

• 1:57:20Jocko Willink?

  on your neck because you're, you know, you're going A B. That's the way it's gonna be. The, the, the thing is, now all of a sudden, you're part of a group. Well, in the, in the civilian world, you don't have to be a part of anything to survive. So you have some kind of... You have some kind of a void, right? Or I'd say it is possible that people have some kind of a void where they are looking to be a part of something. And that's why, you know, you get, whether it's, you know, ISIS jihadists. And, and by the way, those are people, some of those ISIS jihadists leaving normal, you know, first world countries to go and be part of a death cult.

• 1:58:03Jocko Willink?

  You know, that's why you get Jim Jones, that's why you get these things unfolding because there's some kind of a void that people have where they want to be connected to other people and they can't figure it out. And when the, when they, when that light gets shined down, well, it's a light that's getting shined down by a bad person.

• 1:58:20Speaker 01

  There was an interview I saw, I'll never forget, they were interviewing one of the guys who had gone from Belgium. Perfectly nice life in Belgium to go join ISIS and they asked him why he did it and he said, Belgium is boring. And I think to a lot of people, well, I think to a lot of people, on one hand, that makes no sense to them. But I think on, on the other hand, there's this deep recess where it makes some sense to them. I think people do understand to some degree, it's like when, you know, it's like when, you remember when sometimes, um, you could have lived on a dirt road maybe, so like, I don't know if you had direct neighbors, but like the power would go out, right? And the power would go out and people would walk out like on their front lawns and kind of look at each other and be like, whoa, you almost have this sense of connectedness with your neighbors that you don't have on a normal day.

• 1:59:03Speaker 01

  You know, because everything kind of shuts in, you kind of realize like, whoa, we're just here together, like at this point, I wonder what's gonna happen. And it's kind of cool.

• 1:59:09Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:59:09Speaker 01

  You know, you kind of enjoy it.

• 1:59:10Jocko Willink?

  I've been through plenty of power outlets now, out, out of just now that I'm in California and you're right. Power goes out, people are like, oh, let's walk out, especially I used to live on one street in OB where it was like a, it was a real neighborhood street, you know, a lot of families and all of our kids played together. And then the power went out and it was like, 30 seconds later, everyone's out in the front yard looking around and what's going on? Yeah, absolutely.

• 1:59:35Speaker 01

  And so I think there is something where societies can become so over coded and so structured that, um, people, people think they long for some instability, but you know, that happens in countries where people don't know what instability is.

• 1:59:48Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you know, and when it, when it comes to like being part of a group. And again, for me, going into the SEAL teams was me absolutely trying to become, or wa, or.

• 2:00:04Jocko Willink?

  Trying to become part of a group and then being part of that group and knowing what I had to do to be a better part of that group. And, and you know, going back to your earlier behavior, which I was saying was so, you know, I can picture it. I know it and I, and I did it. You know, I was one of those guys too. You know, I was one of those kids. When I was young, you know, I wanted to kind of test the patience. Of my boss, especially if my boss was a person, you know, whether it was my chief or my LPO or my platoon commander or my, you know, if they weren't quite the, the respected individual, then I would absolutely push buttons.

• 2:00:44Jocko Willink?

  The, the big difference is in the teams, there's a way to deal with it really directly. Like you're going to get tightened up. And you're going to realize that, and the thing that they put on you is like, oh, you, oh, you, eventually it goes from, yeah, even if, let's say no one respects the chief or no one respects the LPO or whatever. Eventually someone's going to say, hey, man, that's the platoon chief. I remember someone saying that to me. No, no, no, wait. I take that back. I said that to someone. I said, I said, that's the platoon LPO. And I said it as if, are you absolutely insane? Like you don't talk back to the SEAL platoon leading petty officer. I don't care.

• 2:01:27Jocko Willink?

  That just, that, that will never happen again. Am I making myself clear? That's E5 mafia scenario right there. That's E5 mafia scenario. So the other thing, and I, I know we're going to wrap up here. You're a straight up, what is it? Autodidact?

• 2:01:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:01:44Jocko Willink?

  Straight up autodidact of the first order. Like,

• 2:01:48Speaker 01

  What is a autodidact?

• 2:01:51Jocko Willink?

  Teacher. Self-taught. Self-taught. You know, what did you, did you go to college at some point?

• 2:01:56Speaker 01

  Nah, I went for a little while and like I said, I didn't know what I wanted to major in. I was going to go into the Navy.

• 2:02:00Jocko Willink?

  Was that post-high school?

• 2:02:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, right after. I went for a year, but I just kind of took some classes, did fine, but didn't know where I was going with it. So moved on.

• 2:02:09Jocko Willink?

  And you, and so you've, you're self-educated. Everything that you talk about, which is vast.

• 2:02:16Speaker 01

  You know, I get, I get emails from people who want to start podcasts all the time. And they say, you know, I want to start a history podcast or this kind of podcast. Is there any like tips you can give me? I know I could never do one like yours, but, and I tell these people like, I'm smart enough, right? I'm smart enough that if you're explaining something to me, I'll be able to understand what you're talking about. I'm not some genius. I just pound away on it every day. Like if I'm not happy with something, like I tell them if the fact that you like my podcast and that you're understanding and getting down with like the concepts that I'm talking about shows you that you can work with these concepts. Everything that I'm talking about, you're capable of talking about. It's just a matter of like putting the work in and getting it done and showing up every day and grinding. And that's how I get my podcast done, you know?

• 2:03:00Speaker 01

  I don't, I don't just whip these things out like out of my genius brain or anything like that, you know? I just pound away on them.

• 2:03:05Jocko Willink?

  Are you a fast reader?

• 2:03:07Speaker 01

  No, not really. I'm like a, I'm like a medium average reader because I, when I'm reading something, I tend to get in character, you know? So I'll kind of read like in the, um, like if I'm reading a novel, I'll literally be doing the voices in my head. But even if I'm reading a, uh, if I'm reading one of your books, like it's your voice at your pace, speaking in my head. And so, um,

• 2:03:28Jocko Willink?

  So it's not exactly a speed read?

• 2:03:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:03:30Jocko Willink?

  I'm the worst. I read books, which I have to do all the time and I'm reading at the pace that I basically talk. Okay, maybe not as bad. I mean, I get it when I read, when I talk, a lot of times I talk slowly and a lot of times I have some pauses, we'll say.

• 2:03:48Speaker 01

  Sure. pauses.

• 2:03:49Jocko Willink?

  pauses. I don't have those pauses when I read, but man, I don't read as fast as I wish I would.

• 2:03:55Speaker 01

  I just read all the time. I probably read for the last, gosh, for the last 20 years, I've probably read six hours a day. I read all the time.

• 2:04:02Jocko Willink?

  You read six hours a day?

• 2:04:04Speaker 01

  I would say probably cumulatively, yeah. Like, I mean, I read if I have, if I'm, if I'm at work waiting for a meeting to start and it's taken 15 minutes and I'm reading my book, getting some time in, um, you know,

• 2:04:15Jocko Willink?

  Are you paper books or are you digital books?

• 2:04:19Speaker 01

  Both, you know, I travel a lot for work and so if I can get it on Kindle, sometimes I will. I prefer paper, but a lot of the stuff that I read is not available digitally. So I just have to order some old ass book, you know, like um that Amazon doesn't sell anymore. It's coming from some other seller or something. When uh, yeah, I've got, I've got a pretty interesting library.

• 2:04:37Jocko Willink?

  How many books do you think you have in your library?

• 2:04:39Speaker 01

  Um, last time I moved, cause this is, that's the worst part is when you gotta move and you got a big stack of books. Um, last time I moved, I gave away about six hundred and I would say I probably have about three or four thousand left. Yeah, and, and when I get more room, I'm gonna have more. Like I just, you know, and I've, I'd say I've read like seventy percent of them and all, you know, some of them I've got for reference. But um, I've got this fantasy where one day when I've got a kid, you know, I'm gonna have this room. It's just gonna be wall to wall books and there's gonna be books kind of that are more adult level. That are gonna be higher up that they can't reach. And when they wanna like, give me that book up there, I'd be like, no, you know, when you're old enough to reach it, you can read it.

• 2:05:20Speaker 01

  And just make it this place so that, you know, there was no kind of, I, I wasn't in any kind of intellectual environment or anything like that when I was a kid. And so to have like one of my kids uh, to be able to go into a room like that and just, it's normal that there's like a room full of books. And you can pick one up and there's so much stuff in it. That's like my fantasy and so um, I get rid of books that I, I think I can probably get again real easily. You know, if I read, I, I don't think I have a copy of Moby Dick. If I wanna get one, I can get it for two dollars on Amazon. I keep the ones that are gonna be kind of a pain to get again. And um, yeah, I, I, I love having them around.

• 2:05:56Speaker 02

  That makes sense though with the six hours a day, especially if you're into reading. Cause like, you know, consider how you bust out your phone. Like anytime there's dead space in your day, most of us are like busting out our phone, checking this, checking that, you know? But if your mind is all automatic, like let me, let me get back to that book or whatever.

• 2:06:15Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:06:16Speaker 02

  Oh yeah, you'd be reading all the time, especially if you're actively like doing that, like that's what you're into, you know? So you, and that's in, so that'll be in addition to the time that you designate to read or habitually kind of read, you know?

• 2:06:28Speaker 01

  A lot of people, they get those time trackers to their phones to see how much time they spend on their phone. And they're spending several hours a day and you know, if instead you're just pulling out your book and getting a couple more pages in it.

• 2:06:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:06:39Speaker 01

  It adds up and I'll read for a few hours in the evening.

• 2:06:41Jocko Willink?

  Do you highlight?

• 2:06:44Speaker 01

  It depends. So I'll, I'll highlight books that I've already read. But if I'm reading it for the first time, then I don't do anything like that. What I'll do, I used to do that. And then I realized I wasn't retaining stuff nearly as well. I was building an external structure, you know, for me to, you know, be able to reference things, but I just wasn't retaining it as well. So the first time I read a book, I'll usually read a section or a chapter. And then I'll stop and I'll just write something up about it. And that'll kind of hammer it into place in my head. And then I'll read the next section and keep doing that. And then when, you know, maybe I'm putting together a podcast episode, I'll go back to books I've already read. And then I'm highlighting and underlining and marking up.

• 2:07:24Jocko Willink?

  How do you organize your books so that you can find them? I mean, when you've got, what'd you say, 3,000 books?

• 2:07:30Speaker 01

  Probably.

• 2:07:30Jocko Willink?

  You almost need to go Dewey Decimal System, right? This is a serious.

• 2:07:34Speaker 01

  It's a.

• 2:07:34Jocko Willink?

  Cause this bothers, like with me, I'll be doing a podcast about World War, whatever, World War I. And I'll be like, oh, there's this one part in this one book and I want to intro with this. And I'll be like, no, I have to go find it. And I don't know how many books I have. I don't have 3,000, but I have enough that they're in multiple locations, double stacked in, and it's just, it drives, I, I gotta figure out the Dewey Decimal System from my house. Cause it gets crazy.

• 2:08:01Speaker 01

  Um, I spend a lot of time around my books. So I kind of know where they're all at. I, you know, sometimes I'll just, when I'm waiting, I'm letting the thoughts do in my head.

• 2:08:13Speaker 01

  I don't want to read anything necessarily to like, put it out. Or, or maybe it's a half formed thought that I'm kind of waiting for it to come together, looking for something to kind of attach it to. I'll just kind of walk around and look at my books and pull one out and flip through it and put it back. So I kind of know where everything is. Just, um, it's like, that, that's my world. The books are like, kind of, ever since I've been a kid, like that's been my world, sort of. So it's like my primary point of reference in a lot of ways.

• 2:08:35Jocko Willink?

  And what about, um, like just diving around on the internet? How, how do you discriminate when you Google search, you know, whatever? How, do you have any good methodology for saying, cause I, like, I'll be, I'll be, I'll go down the rabbit hole. You know, and I guess some people, I mean, I guess everyone goes down the rabbit hole sometimes on the internet. But I go deep on the internet and. It's hard to discriminate like, okay, should I click this link or not? Do you have any advice?

• 2:09:07Speaker 01

  No, I'm not good at it. I have to, um, I have to be very, very, I have to be a fascist when it comes to controlling my internet usage, because I don't, to me, it's like, uh, you know, it's not like, I don't, I'm not like addicted to it or anything, but I don't, I don't know how to like, structure my usage. Once I get in there and I start clicking things, there's always another one to click, and I just, I will end up where, oh, it's been three hours that I've been on my phone today. So I, like, until recently, I didn't have a, uh, I didn't have a smartphone. I just had a normal flip phone, just until recently. Uh, like, literally, like, a couple of weeks ago. And it was just because I just don't want that, I just didn't want it in my life. I don't want it anywhere near me. I just, um, you know, it, it's, yeah, I don't want to get on that cliche

• 2:09:50Speaker 01

  topic, but like, when you see a family sitting at a table and everyone's on their phones, I just can't deal with it.

• 2:09:56Speaker 01

  I, I grew up in a house with no dining room table, you know, where everybody just kind of did their own thing, and like, so just, when people aren't paying attention to each other and aren't being there together with one another, it just, it turns me off. And, and I find, man, I'll tell you one thing, there is nothing that makes me, that, that deteriorates my, my mind, like, my ability to recall and structure thoughts and sit still and contemplate something more than if I spend a bunch of time on the internet, especially on the phone. Like, if I, um, like, I had a smartphone back in the day, and I would fart around on it sometimes, so, you know, maybe I'm reading articles or whatever, but just something about the way that the information is coming at me, I would put the thing down, and for the rest of the day, I would be much harder to like, sit down and actually read a book for like, a long period of time.

• 2:10:42Speaker 01

  I got rid of that thing, a week or two later, I could just sit down again, read for three, four hours at a time, like I was a kid again. And, um, yeah, there's something about them that, again, it might be a discipline thing, just have to figure out how to structure it the right way, but I, I don't, no, I don't have any tips.

• 2:10:56Jocko Willink?

  When I went to college, I was an English major and there was times on the weekends where and one semester I took five English classes and it was um really dumb and I should have never done it because I would spend you know like eight to 10 hours reading on Saturday and then eight to 10 hours reading on Sunday. I actually hurt my eyes for a while. It was it was crazy, but I did not did not like it. I did not like it. Like re- sitting down and reading from for six hours for me and then sometimes I still have to do it because uh because of the because of the podcast. You know, it's like, okay, we're doing a podcast. It's on this book. We're doing it in, you know, four days. And you know, there's almost never been a point with this podcast where it's like, oh, don't worry, we don't have

• 2:11:40Jocko Willink?

  a podcast. Do you know, you and and Dan Carlin, who are like, oh, I'll put out a podcast whenever I'm damn well ready. That's, you know, a luxury that I don't have. I'm putting this thing out. And so some I've had to read books, you know, read really long books for me and and you know, it's a to you know, two 10 hour days and I just I'm not happy. And it is what it is because you know, you kind of owe it.

• 2:12:08Speaker 01

  Sometimes it's work and um I I kind of benefit a little bit because of the way I structure my reading. Um I usually I don't just pick a book that sounds cool on a topic and pick it up and read it. Usually um I'll study a particular topic, right? And I'll start diving really deep into it. And um the books that I read are sort of hanging ornaments on that tree and adding little pieces to that puzzle. And then as I'm doing that on that topic, um I'll start to have questions that are outside that topic, right? I start reading a lot about Jim Jones and People's Temple. And um then you want to know more about the 1960s and like that, you know, the movements that this are coming this is coming out of. And so I'm starting to, you know, accrue all these questions that are

• 2:12:51Speaker 01

  kind of tangential to the topic at hand and I'm putting them there. And once I've kind of, you know, pretty soon I get to the point where now I'm getting impatient to go over to this other topic and move on to that. Or maybe there's several topics. And so I'll wrap this up and then I'll go over there and I'm already excited about this and moving into that area. And I've already got questions that now these books are answering. And so it's like a path that I'm following, you know, it's not sort of just random, you know, random.

• 2:13:15Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, the arc of the current episodes of Martyr Made.

• 2:13:21Jocko Willink?

  The arc, so it's about Jim Jones, but man, you are going deep and solid. Like I, I, I've explained, I was explaining it to like my family. Specifically, I was saying, explaining to my, my mom and dad over, I guess it was over Christmas or something. But anyways, I was like, I was like explaining what the podcast was, what it was about. And the path that you took and when you're talking about the Black Panthers, I mean, you know, when you go from Jim Jones and then that thread ties into the Black Panthers, it's pretty crazy. And you know, what's his name Reverend Devine? Yeah, Reverend, the whole thing on Reverend Devine.

• 2:14:05Jocko Willink?

  I, I mean, it's, it's, it's epic. It's an epic tale. And each one of them is just this thread that just gets pulled and pulled and pulled. And I, I mean, I'm tracking you. I'm tracking you. I'm like, oh, I see where this is going. Okay. Oh, we're going to open that door. Is he going to open that door? There's this wide open, wide open. And that's the thing that I think is cool. And I think that's what, you know, when I first started listening to Martyr Made, I, you know, since I read so much, what I realized is I realized exactly what you were doing. I realized I was like, oh, okay. Every single one of those little footnotes, every single, because let's say I'm reading about a battle. Right? Hey, you know what I opened up with today? What I opened up today, I opened up with about face, which I've read a million times. And I actually, I actually talked about Easy Company

• 2:14:51Jocko Willink?

  um, under the command of, of Desiderio, right? And the first time I read this was probably 15 years ago. I don't know how long, it was a long time ago, but

• 2:15:03Jocko Willink?

  what I do is I pull the thread, because that's all it says. It just says, uh, so did Easy Company under Desiderio in the fight up on the hill up north. That's what it says. Well, who's, who is that? Well, that's a thread that when I did, when I was reading this section, I was like, I don't know pulling that. Well, it turns out, you know, army captain, it turns out Medal of Honor recipient. Turns out you can find out exactly what's going on in that battle. So when you start pulling these threads out, it starts to turn into a different level of knowledge. And that's what I, so even when, when I had listened to your first series of martyr made, I realized exactly what you're doing. I said, oh, every single time he comes across a little, a little hanging piece of information that's not closed, he's going to pull on that thread until it gets, until he

• 2:15:48Jocko Willink?

  figures out where it leads to, where it comes from, what, what the situation is behind that. And that's, that's what, you know, that's what really impressed me with what, with, with your podcast. And that's why, you know, you and I are about to record some podcasts of our own, kind of going off on a, on a tangent. It's, it's an idea that I had for a while, which was,

• 2:16:10Jocko Willink?

  well, it was this. I talked about it on this podcast where I talked about the fact that, and I was, I was complaining about the school system and the educational system in America. And my biggest complaint about the educational system in America, well, there's a bunch of different ones, but my biggest one is that when you learn, you don't, you don't get taught the context and the, listen, everything that you learn is tied together. Everything, every single thing you learn about anything in human history is connected. There's a thread that ties it all together. There's a thread that you can trace back. And we never learned that thread. And I don't care if you're talking about learning mathematics or straight sciences

• 2:16:50Jocko Willink?

  or philosophy or English literature, they're all connected. They're all connected. And if you can connect those threads, for me, that's how I learn, right? When I want to learn something, I just don't want to learn the facts because that's just memorization. I want to, I want to actually understand what's behind them. And that's where I think our educational system sometimes falls short. And then you transpose that onto our current news media, which our current news media, what do they do? There's no context or understanding. It's a two dimensional picture of what's happening today. And people don't understand the thread that connects all these things, how they tie together. And that's why.

• 2:17:34Jocko Willink?

  You know, when I had this crazy idea of like, hey, wait a second. If I want to talk about things that are going on and I want to pull the thread on some of these things, I should get see if Darryl Cooper can come down and give me a hand with it. So, uh, I guess, is that an announcement? Yeah, we're, we're gonna make another few pod, we're gonna make a podcast, we're gonna make a podcast. We're gonna call it The Thread. We're gonna pull the thread on some things. And, well, it'll be out. I think it'll be out. Yeah, it'll be out. When, when you're listening to this podcast, you'll be able to listen to another podcast called The Thread.

• 2:18:08Jocko Willink?

  What else, Darryl? What did we miss?

• 2:18:11Speaker 01

  Um, I think maybe the last thing I would, I would talk about is, um,

• 2:18:19Speaker 01

  has to do with what you were just saying. What's, the thing that schools leave out is they teach kids facts and they don't turn it into a story for them. Right? And that's something that, um, I, I think.

• 2:18:31Speaker 01

  We talked earlier about people, uh, having purpose or goals or direction in their life.

• 2:18:37Speaker 01

  Another way of saying that is that they're inhabiting a story. Right? There's something in the future that you're heading towards. That means that you've got a beginning, a middle and, and, you know, things like, you're living in a story and a lot of people are not living in any kind of a story. A lot of people ask me why I named my podcast Martyr Made. My friend Daniele Bilelli, who has helped me out a lot with it, he, uh, he's got the thickest Italian accent anybody's ever heard and he cannot pronounce it for the life of him. So whenever he talks about it on his podcast, people always have to write him and ask him what it is. He tried to ask me early on, you need to change the name of this podcast. But I named it that for, um, a reason, right? So, um, I mentioned earlier at the beginning, you asked me, um, how many sisters I had and I had two at the time. I have one now.

• 2:19:21Speaker 01

  And, um, uh, my, I had a sister in 2009, early 2009 that committed suicide. Me and my other sister, my oldest sister, two years younger than me, um, she and I are, you know, we, we made it out. Right? We came out of a pretty dark and difficult situation. We made it out. She was, uh, up for homecoming queen her senior year and I was there at the, uh, football game watching her and, um,

• 2:19:50Speaker 01

  You know, it was, it was a really incredible moment, just knowing everything that she had been through and come out of to see that like that was going on. She was a good water polo player, she was popular at school, you know, she went on to college and doing very well. My youngest sister, you know, she didn't make it out, she struggled. She always struggled a little bit more, had things, handled things a little bit more difficult, had a little bit more difficult time. And, and we lost her in two thousand nine. And I had mentioned that my family, when my mom was first having me and my sisters, was not really a family that was together, she didn't have a lot of support.

• 2:20:34Speaker 01

  This is something that took time to kind of build up. And people, individual branches of the family, you know, this aunt and uncle, that aunt and uncle, would start to get their act together, this one got their act together, but we were never really like together as a family. And my mom as well, she got her act together. For the last twenty years, she's, she's, I'm very, very, I couldn't be more proud of her. She's been through a lot, a lot more than I have, and she suffered more than I have, for sure. And, you know, she's doing very, very well now. She, you know, manages a Kroger grocery store and she's very into it. She'll like go to war for like Kroger grocery stores and how they're better than, you know, Albertsons or whatever. And I'm very, very proud of her.

• 2:21:16Speaker 01

  And so, but we hadn't gotten to a point where all the different threads of the family had found their way back together again, right? People kind of gotten their individual acts together, but it was just like long-term kind of animosities and little bickerings that had accumulated over the years when people, you know, were not, were not sort of living, living their, their best lives, say, that had accumulated. And my sister passed in two thousand nine. And my family came together. It was the first family reunion I think I could ever really remember, right? It was my sister's funeral, everybody came together for that. And.

• 2:21:57Speaker 01

  At that time, it was as if, like, that event, it was like, everybody just kind of looked at each other and realized that, like, whatever has happened in the past, like, none of that matters. Like, we all, you know, we're a family, we need to look out for each other, we all love each other, and we need to be a family again. And you think about, like, what is the difference between a martyr and a murder victim? Right? It's just the story you're telling about it, right? A martyr and just a person who dies. It's just you tell one story about one, another story about another. What's the difference between, you know, it occurred to me that if, if

• 2:22:40Speaker 01

  my sister's death led to kind of the rebirth of my family, you know, and it really has done that. It's, it's, it's, everybody now, they're just happy, grandkids are all playing together, and it's just a beautiful thing. That if that could come out of that, then, you know, her death could be turned into a sacrifice. You know, where something good could come out of something that really just by itself is just a horrible thing. You know, my sister struggled her whole life, she never really had anybody who, you know, was kind of putting her first in the way that, you know, like, when, when, when the kids would get farmed out to different relatives and stuff, I would go somewhere, and my other sister, Lindsay, would go somewhere.

• 2:23:23Speaker 01

  And it was kind of rewarding to have us around, you know, we would do well in school, and just like, whatever it was, it was some, it was a little bit rewarding. My youngest sister, she was just, she was harder, she had a temper, she was just kind of like a more wild personality. It was kind of just more of a, more of an ordeal than a, you know, in less rewarding. And so there'd be times where we'd get farmed out because things at home were starting to collapse, you know, really badly. And Lindsay and I would go to one aunt or another aunt, we'd get split up, and Jessica, my youngest, would stay with my mom. And those were some pretty dark times, there's a reason we were getting farmed out during those periods. And so she was always more attached to my mom, and Lindsay and I, the two oldest, we were always kind of, we didn't intend this, you know?

• 2:24:08Speaker 01

  It just kind of happened for whatever reason. We kind of bonded more, and we're closer to each other than either of us were to Jessica. We didn't exclude her or anything like that, it just kind of naturally, we were kind of closer. And, uh, and she always knew that and felt it, you know, that she, she, that Lindsay and I were closer to each other than we were to her. That when we would get farmed out to different, uh, relatives, like, you know, people were like happy to take me and Lindsay and they would have taken Jessica if it was like, look, she has to go somewhere. But, you know, if she didn't wanna come, you know, because she was attached to my mom, nobody was gonna really like push for it or anything.

• 2:24:50Speaker 01

  Um, and so she grew up her whole life, kind of always being kind of on the outside and always being kind of thought of, uh, just not ever being anybody's first priority. You know, it's just something that a kid needs, at least for, for some period, you know? And, um, and she struggled with that and, uh, you know, I got out and I went into the Navy and I'm just happy to be out of the house and doing my thing in the Navy and Lindsay's in college and doing well. And we kinda know that Jessica's still struggling back home a little bit. She's back home, she's with my mom. My mom's totally cleaned up by this point and she's trying to get my sister, you know, help her, help her get herself together.

• 2:25:33Speaker 01

  Um, but, you know, she's struggling, she has a hard time, she's, uh, she gets pregnant with my nephew and inexplicably the doc, she, she has a bunch of back pain. While she's pregnant with my nephew, the doctor puts her on OxyContin. My nephew comes out, Jones and at birth. Um, and she didn't, she, she was never able to kick that, right? And it kinda degenerated in the common way where she's hooked on that and she starts becoming, you know, difficult to deal with for people who love her. My mom wants to help her, but she doesn't know if like, you know, at a certain point are you enabling? You know, at a certain point do you have to put your foot down? You know, she's stealing out of my purse to do things when she's at my grandparents' house, you know, she's trying to raid their medicine cabinet.

• 2:26:17Speaker 01

  And so she's got friends that are telling her, uh, you know, and other people in her own, her own mind, you know, just telling her like, look, at a certain point you have to give some tough love and. And it makes sense, you know, that is what you have to do, right? At a certain point, you are enabling. And uh, she did that one time when my sister came to the house. My nephew was staying with my mom by this point. And uh, my sister came to the house one time in the winter. This is in Montana, it's a cold winter. And uh, she wanted to stay there and my mom had like, been preparing herself before. She knew that like, when the moment came, she wasn't gonna have the strength to say no, right? So she had been kind of coaching herself up, like, when it comes, you just have to, here's what you have to say.

• 2:27:02Speaker 01

  Here's the script, you know, unless you're willing to do this, this and this, then no, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh. Just you have to go stay with your friends or whatever it is. And so, she shows up and uh, she wants to stay with my mom. And my mom tells her, you know, can't have you do it, the last several times, you've been lying, this and that. And she didn't have anywhere else to go that night. And so she went to the rescue mission there in town. And uh, she took some pills and she died there, alone. And it's just the most abjectly awful story, you know? I was, I was in the Navy, I kinda knew something was going wrong, but, you know, I didn't...

• 2:27:41Speaker 01

  You're just, you're, you're living your own life. And to say that like, you know, uh, when I look back on it, cause I feel tremendous amount of guilt, obviously. Thinking to myself now in the aftermath that, um, you know, I should've just dropped everything. And just said, you're coming to stay with me and focus on this a hundred percent, right? Just cause what else matters when this is the end? But you don't think that that's the end, you're just kind of, you know, um, you hear that she's struggling, but she's not struggling that bad, right? And when I would call her, it would, it would seem okay. So I just kind of, it was out of sight, out of mind. I was living my own life and wasn't focusing on it. And nobody was focusing on it, and that was the point, nobody was, other than my mom. And uh, and it's just an awful story.

• 2:28:25Speaker 01

  It's a, it's a girl who was never put first, who um, came out of like, a very difficult set of circumstances. And, you know, one out of three, she just didn't make it out. And yet, that horrible story, uh, that ended in such a tragic way, it saved my family. You know, and it brought my whole extended family that, um, you know, when uh...

• 2:28:54Speaker 01

  You know, when I say like, it wasn't just that like, people had gotten in arguments with each other and this got them to put it aside. It was that whole, the whole thread that had brought my family together. My great grandmother coming from Serbia when she was seven years old. My great grandfather coming out of Mexico, just, and then, and it just degenerates and breaks down. And by the time it gets to like, the generation before me, it's just this typical, like, American, broken, down family scenario. Right? That had just fallen apart. It was just, it had fallen apart. And that, and that, when we all came together for her funeral, that it was as if, every, like, everything was redeemed by, by, you know, during that period.

• 2:29:38Speaker 01

  It was like, everything that had been bad and broken was suddenly repaired. And something that, it wasn't like a, no, repaired's not the right way to say it. Because it wasn't like there was this, there was this family there that had gotten broken up and now it got fixed. It didn't exist before. So it's something that was born out of that tragedy. And I realized that, um, you know, if I could, this doesn't clear up all the negative feelings, obviously. But if I could see it in that way, um, that her death could become a sacrifice. You know, something that she was the one who, um, who gave her life. Whether it was, you know, obviously she wasn't thinking of it this way, but she gave her life so that our family could, could be born out of that.

• 2:30:23Speaker 01

  And, um, and that the stories we tell ourselves about the things we do and the lives we're living, um, you know, very often are the things that, uh, those are, those are really what define us, you know? And I think a lot of people aren't living any story. And, um, they're very vulnerable to people who come along and say, "I got a story for you." You know, "I got something for you right here." Maybe it's Jim Jones, maybe it's a jihadi, maybe it's, you know, some racial group, whatever it is. "I got a story for you," you know, that puts you right in the middle and takes you seriously. Uh, and makes you important in a way that you've never been to anybody before. Makes them very vulnerable to those things.

• 2:31:07Speaker 01

  And I think that, something I hope we can do with the thread. Is, uh, is, is, tell some of these stories, you know, in a way that, um, kind of, you and I have both been around the world a lot. Being around the world, um, it teaches you that whatever's going on that's wrong around here, there's a whole lot of good. There's a whole lot of good, you know, around here, in this country, in our society, in the people around us, and there's an opportunity, uh, and that, and that, when people don't feel that way, and they look around here at their families, or their communities, or their country, and they don't feel good about it, that that's just a story too, you know,

• 2:31:52Speaker 01

  and that you can, there are better stories out there to tell, that can frame your own life and, you know, your community's life, and your country's life, in ways that, um, you know, are, are a lot more fulfilling, and I would say a lot truer, than some of the ones that, you know, tend to, tend to be undermining. So that's something I hope we can do.

• 2:32:26Jocko Willink?

  Well, um, if that's the goal, then I'm sure we can.

• 2:32:43Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:32:44Speaker 01

  It's very humbling, you know, because I, um, my sister was a good girl. She was a sweet girl. And, um, you know, I, I feel no sense of pride in the fact that, you know, I came out of rough circumstances and managed to like, make it out, and now I'm, you know, securely in the middle class, or whatever, however you want to frame it. I feel no sense of pride in that, because I know people who were better than me, and who were stronger than me, and who had better hearts than I do, um, who didn't make it. And that if...

• 2:33:20Speaker 01

  There were a couple of times, growing up, or in my early adulthood, when if I had zigged, instead of zagging, or even when I, where I just, I got purely lucky, you know, where I, you know, early twenties, I get into a big fight out in town, and the cops decide that it's, they're just gonna let me roll out, you know? Whereas if, uh, you know, if I was, if I had maybe a darker color skin, that instead, they'd be pulling my ass in and throwing me in jail. And then I'm not going into the Navy. And then I'm not, just a whole train of things starts to happen, you know? Um, where I just got, I'm very, very, very lucky. I know people who are way better, way smarter, way stronger than I am, who ended up going completely off the rails.

• 2:34:03Speaker 01

  And it deserve, has nothing to do with it, you know? Did they deserve it? Well, they made decisions. Yeah, sure. I made decisions. Um, but a lot of it just came down to pure luck, you know? And, um, it makes me, um, it makes me very, well, it's humbling. It's humbling, and it makes me, uh, I try to, as much as I know that, um, you know, you can get into a toxic mindset, self-limiting kind of toxic mindset, by, um, feeling like a victim. Um, and so I, you know, I don't support that kind of thing. But I, it does make me very, uh, I try to open up my heart to people who find themselves in difficult circumstances. Because I know that it is an act of God.

• 2:34:48Speaker 01

  It is a, you know, but by the grace of God, that that's where I could have been. You know, and, um, I, I attribute none of it to, you know, my own, and again, you have to make choices, but, um, very easily could have gone a different way with the same exact choices that I've made.

• 2:35:06Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, there's a, there's always gonna be some level of luck involved, for sure. And there's also like, little, tiny, miniscule decisions that you make, for whatever reason that you make them. And sometimes those... Have a trajectory that lasts the rest of your life and it could be good, sure. Like when I decided to join the Navy, because let's face it, that's a, it seems like a really, really big decision. And I guess it is, but at the same time, you know, there's a split second in time. Where you go, you know what, I'm gonna do this, but that there's a split second where it's a coin toss. And you go, you know what, I'm gonna do this. I had, I had friends that were right alongside with me. Oh yeah, I'm gonna go in, and they didn't go in. And, and things did not work out well for them at all.

• 2:35:52Jocko Willink?

  And so when you look at like all these little decisions and, and just like you said, I mean, what, you know, how many people's lives have been ruined by, you know, the one DUI that they got? Which they crashed and they hid and they this, that, the other thing. How many people's lives have been ruined by whatever, whatever momentary decision that they made? That just, just, it went wrong. And you know, you saw that in combat all the time, you know? I've said many times, there's, there's times where I made bad decisions and, and like got home and said to myself, well, got away with that. I never should have got away with that. I can't believe I got away with that. I got so lucky. And there's other times we make the right decisions and, and things still go wrong.

• 2:36:33Jocko Willink?

  And so there's absolutely um, some level of luck in there and what you have to do as a human being is recognize that. And then every chance you get to lean that thing in the right direction, you gotta take it. And as soon as, the sooner you recognize that in your life, the better off you're gonna be, because the sooner you recognize, alright, this could be the bad decision that I make. This could be it. You know, I, I used to um, occasionally, if I had a SEAL who was working for me, that was like, I could see where he's heading. And you know what, you know what brief I'd give to him? I'd give him this brief right here. Hey, this is what I want you to do. I don't want you to do dumb shit.

• 2:37:17Jocko Willink?

  I don't, I don't want you to do anything that's stupid. Do you understand what's the words that are coming out of my mouth? And that's kind of what they needed to hear. Look, I don't want you to do anything that's stupid. Do you understand what I'm saying? And that kind of thing because if you put that as a broad overarching when you're 21 years old, if you say, look, I'm gonna, I'm just gonna try not to do anything that's stupid. That's actually some really solid advice to go off of. And if I, I wish I would have had somebody, there's a lot of, lot of decisions that I made that I look back now where I, they could have gone bad. And when I look back at them, if somebody would have just said, don't do anything, hey, don't do dumb shit. Somebody would have told me that, it would have helped me out a lot. It would have helped me out a lot to, and, and again, I was just,

• 2:38:02Jocko Willink?

  um, I got lucky along the way. And the time that I did something stupid, I didn't crash the car. The time I did something else stupid, I didn't, you know, fall into this crevasse that I thought, oh, it'd be cool, I'll jump over this thing, or whatever the case may be. You make dumb decisions. If someone's saying to you, hey, don't do dumb shit, it's actually really, really good advice. Because at the end of the day, there's that, that sometimes it's a coin toss. And do yourself a favor and don't flip that coin if you don't have to.

• 2:38:37Jocko Willink?

  And then to what you're saying, when you look at somebody, when, whenever I see somebody like that's, that I can see they've ended up in a bad situation. It's like, I know that there were some coin tosses in there that, that, that, that came up bad. I know it. That's what happens. And the difference between, you know, me and that person that's strung out on meth, you know, sitting in this corner, um, you know, covered in their own piss. There's some coin tosses in there. And so minimize those freaking coin tosses. And then, yeah, you got to, look, there's some luck involved, make your freaking luck too. You gotta make your freaking luck. Cause you can't rely on that coin coming up the

• 2:39:21Jocko Willink?

  way you want it to. So get up, take control of what you know, what you've been saying, take control, take ownership of what's going on. Everything that you can control, control it. Don't let it go. Don't leave it up to chance. You cannot afford to do that. You cannot afford to do that. The coin tosses don't always go your way.

• 2:39:46Jocko Willink?

  With that,

• 2:39:48Jocko Willink?

  probably a, uh, pretty good place to stop, you know, Daryl, thanks for, um, thanks for your service. Thanks for coming on. Thanks for putting out great, amazing information for people. And, um, thanks for joining forces me to knock out some podcasts later.

• 2:40:10Speaker 01

  Thanks for having me on. It's been, uh, having to sit next to Echo with those guns is inspiring me to go to the gym today. So I was feeling a little lazy, but, uh,

• 2:40:19Jocko Willink?

  Echo.

• 2:40:20Speaker 02

  Yes, sir.

• 2:40:21Jocko Willink?

  We want to take control over what we can take control of.

• 2:40:24Speaker 02

  Make our own luck, or.

• 2:40:26Jocko Willink?

  We want to manufacture luck. I think I said that to Leif Babin the other day. Oh, no. You know what I told Leif Babin? I can manufacture time.

• 2:40:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't, I don't, I don't follow.

• 2:40:38Jocko Willink?

  We were talking about something like, do we have time for this? Do we have time for that? And I was like, I can manufacture time. I will make, literally make time.

• 2:40:46Speaker 02

  How can we ever have time if we don't?

• 2:40:49Jocko Willink?

  Make time.

• 2:40:49Speaker 02

  Or take time. Whichever. The matrix.

• 2:40:54Jocko Willink?

  We want to control, we can control. What can we do? How can you help us?

• 2:40:58Speaker 02

  There are many ways, right? Fitness, physical, mind and body fitness.

• 2:41:06Jocko Willink?

  Good way to, good way to get that coin to kind of fall the way you want it to.

• 2:41:11Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. Manufacture some, some odds. You can manufacture odds.

• 2:41:14Jocko Willink?

  Manufacture some luck.

• 2:41:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. So anyway, also capability, big time capability. Reading, as it turns out, increases your capability big time. So does jujitsu, by the way. But I think we already knew that. So while we're doing our jujitsu, we're going to get a gi, at least one, in my opinion. And we're going to get that from Origin. Factually the best gi in the world. That's why we're getting them from Origin.

• 2:41:40Jocko Willink?

  You also might want to support the entire economy of this country by buying something that's made in America.

• 2:41:48Speaker 02

  Literally now.

• 2:41:49Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, especially right now. You might want to support the economy. You might want to support jobs coming back to this country.

• 2:42:02Jocko Willink?

  rebuilding an industry that was all but dead, but it ain't dead anymore.

• 2:42:07Speaker 02

  No, it's not.

• 2:42:08Speaker 01

  I just bought two of those face masks. You guys are manufacturing a black and a white.

• 2:42:11Jocko Willink?

  Legit. Yeah. Yeah. That was a pivot.

• 2:42:14Speaker 01

  Never be too careful. Doing your duty as an American.

• 2:42:17Jocko Willink?

  A little pivot.

• 2:42:18Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. Yeah. And that it's like, that was good when like I was watching that video. Or there, I think there's more than one, right? About the about the face masks and stuff that what Pete's doing. So it's interesting to see like, you know, under these kind of, for lack of a better term, extreme circumstances, what people and groups of people in companies are doing, you know? And you can kind of tell a lot about, I mean, a lot. I mean, what does that even mean? But you can tell some things about some people and groups of people by what they do under certain circumstances. I think generally speaking, that's true, right?

• 2:42:51Jocko Willink?

  Okay, here's a little background. So we have a company. It's called Origin. We make clothes. There is a virus going around America right now.

• 2:42:58Speaker 01

  Oh, wait, what?

• 2:42:59Jocko Willink?

  Called the coronavirus. Uh, right now it is March 25th, 2020. So this virus hit. Uh, at first, I had a couple of friends text me and say like, hey, you should make masks to protect people from this. And I was like, oh, and I talked to Pete, my partner at Origin, and said, hey, man, what do you think about making masks? And he kind of looked at it and said, well, I guess we could. What's the real, you know, what's the real demand going to be? Blah, blah, blah. And then a couple of days later, a few days later, uh, the government starts saying, look, masks don't help. They don't help. And I'm like, oh, okay. Well, hey, don't worry about that. Masks don't help. And I don't want to be the guy that's trying to sell something that doesn't work, right?

• 2:43:43Jocko Willink?

  So, you know, so we kind of abandoned the idea. And this all takes place in like a very short period of time. All this, because you guys tracking this news story, it's been changing on an hourly basis. So then you fast forward two or three days and they're saying, not only should you wear a mask, but you need to wear a mask.

• 2:44:02Speaker 02

  You better be.

• 2:44:02Jocko Willink?

  And and also we've got people in healthcare and whatever that absolutely need these masks. And there's no masks in America, like or where there's a massive shortage. So now I go back to Pete and say, Pete, bro, it looks like these masks are needed. And he kind of percolated on it and.

• 2:44:20Jocko Willink?

  My mind was stuck in like, okay, we gotta make a surgical mask like what you see a surgeon wear, right? Pete, he said, wait a second. And he said, oh, let's make, um, he took our rash guard material. Cause this is the other thing. The CDC was saying, if you don't have a surgical mask, just take a T-shirt or take a piece of bandana. That's what they were saying. And so we said, okay, wait a second, we can really help here. But then Pete came up with the idea of making a mask from our rash guard material, kinda like, I guess the word is a buff. Have you ever heard this before? Okay. So it's basically like a neck, uh, gator. That's another thing it's gets called. I don't know what to call it, but most people call it a buff.

• 2:45:05Jocko Willink?

  And anyways, we put a little pocket in there so you could put a filter. If you can get one, if not, you can still just use the mask and it does help. And the CDC actually has numbers out like how much it helps. If you just put a T-shirt, it helps, you know, 20%. If you put a bandana in a T-shirt, it helps 40%. Like they calculate this stuff. So anyways, that's what's happening. We, we started making these masks. People been buying them like crazy, cause well, you know, we, we're getting orders from hospitals. We're getting orders from nurses. We're getting orders from doctors, like that's, and then we're getting orders from normal citizens as well. But, uh, so that's what's happening.

• 2:45:46Jocko Willink?

  And the reason I'm, I'm not really, I haven't really been promoting it is because it's, we're, we're sold out. Like we're making them as fast as we possibly can. And, and I mean, Pete's make, I think he's made 4,000 of them today. They're all already sold. So we're gonna make them as fast as we can. We're gonna make as many as we can, but we're trying to get them to the right people. And that's what's happening with that.

• 2:46:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, and those masks kind of important too when you think of the big picture because I mean the initial thought where it's like wear masks people be like well you know I'll just sort of you know like I won't I'll be careful with where I breathe or whatever or my immune system whatever but the mask is kind of a two way street where that protects you but it protects others as well.

• 2:46:32Jocko Willink?

  And that's something they said from the get go.

• 2:46:34Speaker 02

  I know.

• 2:46:34Jocko Willink?

  From the get go they said.

• 2:46:35Speaker 02

  But naturally, we don't think that though.

• 2:46:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, here's where here's where I was kind of like, man, I should have thought through this more. From the get go, they said, you know, masks don't help, but it will help to prevent spreading it. If you have it, you should wear it. And I'm like, wait a second. You're telling me that this will help someone not give it to me, but if I put it on, it won't help me at all? Are you crazy? Hold on a second. That doesn't make any sense. So I should have known that from the beginning, but I didn't I didn't suss it out correctly.

• 2:47:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, and but and that kind of goes goes with it where it's like, yeah, it doesn't help me at all. So it's more like that's like a secondary thought, you know, but I think like I said, big picture situation where collectively, hey, man, we're all.

• 2:47:13Jocko Willink?

  The more help you give everyone together.

• 2:47:15Speaker 02

  Everybody, yeah. And then so that not that's not to mention, okay, what are all these secondary effects like economy, people going back to work, all this stuff. And were you part of that problem? Were are you part of the problem spreading this whole thing?

• 2:47:27Jocko Willink?

  Part of helping us out.

• 2:47:28Speaker 02

  Exactly right. If you're part of helping it out, okay, here comes the economy way quicker. Here comes people going back to work, you know, all the secondary stuff. But all you weren't all you were just like you strong young guy who has a strong immune system. You didn't care about any of this other stuff. See what I'm saying? So it's like, man, you got to wear that mask or and not even necessarily where the mask specifically. I'm not saying that. I'm saying be part of the solution in this because kind of.

• 2:47:52Jocko Willink?

  Being part of the solution is that being that's part of being an American.

• 2:47:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:47:56Jocko Willink?

  And by the way, another thing, like I just got this as we're coming in here. Pete put together a face mask, like a face shield with.

• 2:48:07Jocko Willink?

  What's a clear plastic like printer paper? What is it? Lamination paper or something like that? He, he put together a mask with that.

• 2:48:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, I saw that.

• 2:48:15Jocko Willink?

  A mask.

• 2:48:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:48:16Jocko Willink?

  Well.

• 2:48:16Speaker 02

  It looks like a welding.

• 2:48:17Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you kind of see it and you go, oh, that's kind of cool, whatever. Guess what? He's got, he just got an order like off, based off of him stapling this thing together. Uh, the state of Maine, just, I think it was the state of some, some, some big governmental organization just ordered a thousand of them. A thousand of these things. Like that's where they're at.

• 2:48:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:48:36Jocko Willink?

  They need protection. And so it's been very, uh, it's been, it's been awesome, man. Very humbling to have a little role in trying to help us get through this and shout out to Pete, to the Origin crew up there, to all the, all the folks in the factory that are actually turning and burning and working two shifts. We might even have to go to three to make as many of these things as we can to get them out to America to help us get through this crisis situation.

• 2:49:11Speaker 02

  The idea of some nurse or healthcare worker out there wearing one of those things that you guys made, like that's gotta feel good.

• 2:49:16Jocko Willink?

  It's awesome. Yeah. And like, I mean, Pete had them manual, the, the girls were making them like that Monday morning and filled up a box and got them to Boston Children's Hospital, like that, you know, ASAP. Cause that's where they're at and they're reusable. Like you can put them in the washing machine. You can't put a surgical mask or uh, uh, whatever, a $2 surgical mask in the washing machine, it'll be destroyed. You can put these things in the washing machine all day long. What up now?

• 2:49:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, and far be it from me to be the superficial twink on this one, but it looks kind of dope too.

• 2:49:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, it does. Like I, I run on the beach a lot. It's windy on my beach a lot of the time.

• 2:49:56Jocko Willink?

  You're just posting up in the Origin mask?

• 2:49:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'll wear that thing even after.

• 2:49:59Jocko Willink?

  Did you order a blacked out one?

• 2:50:00Speaker 01

  I got, I got a black one and a white one for me and my fiance. Yeah.

• 2:50:09Jocko Willink?

  So it's been, it's been cool. Obviously it's and it's, and by the way, we're not the only company that's doing this. There's a bunch of companies that have pivoted to helping out, you know, and they're doing more advanced things. They have the, the technology to make help with the ventilators and help with some of the other, but we're getting, that's what we're doing. That's what America's doing right now, which is awesome to see. In the meantime, we do still have. Rash guards.

• 2:50:33Speaker 02

  It's true.

• 2:50:34Jocko Willink?

  The best geez in the world, as you said.

• 2:50:36Speaker 02

  Factually.

• 2:50:37Jocko Willink?

  Jeans.

• 2:50:38Speaker 02

  American made denim.

• 2:50:39Jocko Willink?

  American made denim. And that's what's perfect. That's what's, that's what's awesome. Had we, had we let everything go. Had Pete not rebuilt this, had Pete not maintained this loom. And maintain, more important than the loom is the people, right? The stitchers. The folks that actually have the capability to build things in America. If we don't keep them, who's gonna do this for us? That's the backbone of America, right there. That's the backbone of America. Is the folks on the front lines that have the skills to get this done. God bless them all. Send a little, send a little blessing up to Farmington, Maine. To our people.

• 2:51:26Speaker 02

  Also supplements, by the way.

• 2:51:27Jocko Willink?

  We're at war. I'm not done. We're at war.

• 2:51:31Speaker 02

  Right, so, right, so the mask, that's QRF, right?

• 2:51:35Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, quick reaction force inbound.

• 2:51:38Speaker 02

  Sure, yes. Outside the QRF scenario, there are, like you said, American denim jeans. Also supplements, keep your body physically in the game, joint warfare.

• 2:51:50Speaker 02

  Krill oil, Cold War.

• 2:51:51Jocko Willink?

  Cold War.

• 2:51:52Speaker 02

  Or we're boosting the immune system, the front lines, as it were. See what I'm saying, Daryl?

• 2:51:57Speaker 01

  How did nobody take that name yet? That's perfect.

• 2:52:00Jocko Willink?

  I am always amazed. And sometimes you, you get an idea and you go, man. That happened with Way of the Warrior Kid. Like, I had that idea and I said, how can no one have thought of this? Oh my gosh, I'm so lucky. And I just wrote it and put it out there. Cold War? Cold War, uh, probably a year and a half ago. I was like, hey, man, talked to B. Little. I said, hey, man, I am on the planes all the time. I'm shaking a bunch of people's hands. All, I'll line up and shake a thousand people's hands. What's the germ transfer that's happening right there? Come on.

• 2:52:37Speaker 02

  It's major, for sure.

• 2:52:38Jocko Willink?

  Come on, as my friend Theo Von would say. So, yeah, so, uh, Brian put together that formula for Cold War. And, yeah, it's, and of course.

• 2:52:51Jocko Willink?

  You know, we put it out, said, hey, if you guys need some help, someone's like, what are you doing? This won't stop coronavirus. I'm like, bro.

• 2:52:59Speaker 02

  No.

• 2:52:59Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 2:53:00Speaker 02

  You are not slinging the cure to coronavirus.

• 2:53:02Jocko Willink?

  I'm not slinging the cure to coronavirus. Now, now, that being said, Dakota Meyer, he's slinging the cure.

• 2:53:09Speaker 02

  The cure, alright.

• 2:53:10Jocko Willink?

  Did you see what he posted?

• 2:53:12Speaker 02

  The.

• 2:53:13Jocko Willink?

  He posted some Jaco Discipline Go, DAK Savage flavor, and he's like, hey, it's me Dakota Meyer. I haven't got coronavirus yet. Why? Cause I drink Discipline Go. End of story. Next question.

• 2:53:27Speaker 02

  See, I was thinking that too. Let's face it, as a joke, so you know, the uh, uh, killer soap, right? Activated charcoal, whatever. So I'm using killer soap. I'm taking Cold War, Joint Warfare, Super Creole Oil, Discipline every single day with, you know, occasional milk scenarios. I don't think I've had the coronavirus. If I have, I'm asymptomatic.

• 2:53:49Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:53:50Speaker 02

  Coincidence?

• 2:53:50Jocko Willink?

  You powered through that.

• 2:53:51Speaker 02

  Coincidence?

• 2:53:52Jocko Willink?

  Or Jaco Fuel.

• 2:53:53Speaker 02

  I'm just saying, I'm just saying, but you know, obviously I'm not gonna make that claim, uh, you know, go as far as Dakota Meyer is good on that situation, but nonetheless, those are the facts of the case. Unless, like I said.

• 2:54:05Jocko Willink?

  The facts of the case.

• 2:54:06Speaker 02

  Yes. I mentioned milk. That is what we had. This dessert in the form of a protein, many flavors, you know, at this point, it's like, just choose your flavor already.

• 2:54:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, pretty much.

• 2:54:14Speaker 02

  I mean, with very few exceptions, at this point.

• 2:54:17Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you're good to go.

• 2:54:19Speaker 02

  So yeah, check that one out.

• 2:54:20Jocko Willink?

  If you're a Warrior Kid, you can get some Warrior Kid milk.

• 2:54:22Speaker 02

  Yep, same deal.

• 2:54:23Jocko Willink?

  Cause your kids are home from school, by the way, right now.

• 2:54:25Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:54:26Jocko Willink?

  They're not allowed to go to school. And you could say, oh, Johnny, you want some, you want some, uh, high fructose corn syrup in your milk? Which will literally kill you?

• 2:54:39Speaker 02

  Your milk, sure.

• 2:54:40Jocko Willink?

  Or do you want something with protein in it? That's gonna make you stronger, smarter, better?

• 2:54:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, and that's.

• 2:54:46Jocko Willink?

  Put you on the path.

• 2:54:46Speaker 02

  And that actually is a real thing nowadays, even more than than before, cause you know how like you eat when you're bored? You want a little treat? You want a little, you know, you're not, you're not hungry, you just wanna one of those little, you know, little something, bro. Working milk all day.

• 2:55:02Speaker 02

  Problem solved.

• 2:55:03Jocko Willink?

  I'll tell you what's good. You have milk bars too, don't you?

• 2:55:05Speaker 02

  Yes, I do. Well, I'm running very low because I have a little thief freaking kids. Yeah, those are good men. Those are real good. Yeah, I have to say no now already. It's just too much, dude.

• 2:55:19Jocko Willink?

  It's a miracle. It's kind of a miracle to eat something that's that good and that good for you. That's kind of a miracle.

• 2:55:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:55:27Jocko Willink?

  And, and we couldn't get anybody to make them. We had to, we bought the piece, we bought the, we bought the factory line. We're making them ourselves. By the way, can't do it quick enough. Dang.

• 2:55:40Speaker 01

  I saw someone post on Twitter that you, you posted something about the mass or somebody did. Maybe it was the origin account and somebody posted that the coronavirus is quarantining itself in the rest of our bodies to avoid contracting Jaco.

• 2:55:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's a few funny ones that are.

• 2:55:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I'm not talking any smack about it. You know why? Because that's like this curse, right?

• 2:56:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's like the classic.

• 2:56:04Jocko Willink?

  Smack about it, you're gonna get it. It's gonna put you down hard. And I do the big cover up.

• 2:56:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:56:10Jocko Willink?

  We like be, yeah.

• 2:56:11Speaker 01

  Everything fine.

• 2:56:12Jocko Willink?

  Everything's fine. Posting pictures from like a workout I did six months ago.

• 2:56:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, that's true. Also Jaco IT, by the way, speaking of workouts.

• 2:56:21Jocko Willink?

  And you can get all this stuff at the vitamin shop right now if you want to.

• 2:56:25Speaker 02

  If you're going out. So actually, can you? You probably can't right now.

• 2:56:29Jocko Willink?

  Oh, I have no idea, but, but vitamin shop I think is open and also all these products are available on amazon.com. Just kind of FYI.

• 2:56:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, and origin main.com. That's the main spot. Let's face it. Also Jaco's store and it's called Jaco store. You go to Jaco store.com and this is where you can get more rash guards, American made, by the way, hundred percent. We also have T-shirts, discipline equals freedom, good, stand by to get something, you know, all these things that are representative.

• 2:57:05Jocko Willink?

  Def, just straight def core.

• 2:57:07Speaker 02

  Def core to the core, by the way. Yeah. You need, you know, the things that are representative of the path that we are all on, by the way, we're on it. Straight up on it.

• 2:57:17Jocko Willink?

  At some point, I'm gonna see graffiti with the little Def Corr flags.

• 2:57:21Speaker 02

  Oh, little tags?

• 2:57:22Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:57:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:57:23Jocko Willink?

  That was, do you remember this? Somebody posted a picture of graffiti in some city? And all it said was like, at Joe Rogan, at Jordan B Peterson, at Jaco Willie. That was legit.

• 2:57:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, my daughter does the, the flag with the X. She grabs my weightlifting chalk, you know, in the little bag, you have the chunks, she'll grab it and she'll put it on the ground.

• 2:57:48Jocko Willink?

  You leave your chalk all assembled into a block?

• 2:57:50Speaker 02

  Uh, I try to, yes, in the bags.

• 2:57:53Jocko Willink?

  Very interesting.

• 2:57:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, you grab the, when it dissipates after, it's like being used up, then it collects this powder on the bottom, which is, you know, what you're talking about, right?

• 2:58:03Jocko Willink?

  That's no, I put the block in there and then break it into small pieces.

• 2:58:06Speaker 02

  Yeah. No, I found where you grab the whole block and go like bar soap style. Yeah, that's good.

• 2:58:11Speaker 01

  I'm just imagining Echo's entire trunk full of weightlifting chalks.

• 2:58:16Speaker 02

  Yeah. Oh, yeah. With the kids. Yeah, that's, that's what it takes, man. That's what it takes. Nonetheless, yes, JacoStore.com, that's where you can get this stuff. Stay on the path. Represent while you're on it, too, by the way.

• 2:58:26Jocko Willink?

  Also, uh, subscribe to this podcast.

• 2:58:31Jocko Willink?

  We also have another podcast now called The Thread. We also have another podcast called Grounded. We also have another podcast called The Warrior Kid Podcast. We also have, Daryl has a podcast called Martyr Made, which I talked about a bunch. Just go, just go listen to it. Listen to the opener and then just, well, stand by, cause you'll be, you'll be sucked in. Don't, you talked about Killer Soap.

• 2:58:54Speaker 02

  Yes, sir.

• 2:58:56Jocko Willink?

  You can get that from IrishOaksRanch.com. We got a young kid, a warrior kid, making that from goat milk.

• 2:59:02Speaker 02

  Man, quality to men, quality.

• 2:59:04Jocko Willink?

  That soap is the best soap ever.

• 2:59:06Speaker 01

  Best goats.

• 2:59:07Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, the best goats, for sure. The strongest goats.

• 2:59:10Speaker 02

  It's black.

• 2:59:11Jocko Willink?

  The cleanest goats. And yeah, it's, have you ever seen black soap before?

• 2:59:16Speaker 01

  No.

• 2:59:16Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, so it's, it's kind of a psychological thing. You get, the, the bar is black, is black, cause it's got activated charcoal, which Echo could tell you all about what that does.

• 2:59:26Speaker 02

  I'll tell you later.

• 2:59:27Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I'll tell you later. So it's got activate, so it's black. But then you wa, you, you wash with it and you, it still allows you to steak.

• 2:59:39Jocko Willink?

  Steak clean took on a whole new meaning right now. It was washing their hands everywhere.

• 2:59:43Speaker 02

  Oh yeah, big time. Plus it has like little, what do you call it, exfoliant?

• 2:59:47Jocko Willink?

  It's not quite, it's not quite.

• 2:59:48Speaker 02

  That's what I'm saying. Yeah, it's not like abrasive, but you can almost feel it. Like if you're not paying attention, you might not even feel it that much, but.

• 2:59:55Jocko Willink?

  It's got the feeling, it's got a feeling. Here's what's cool. A normal bar of soap, right? You pick it up, it's slippery, right? This thing's not, this thing's not.

• 3:00:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 3:00:08Speaker 01

  You gotta start selling this to prisons.

• 3:00:09Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's a good idea. That's a good idea.

• 3:00:13Speaker 02

  You might have something there, Daryl Cooper, for sure. But yes, IrishOaksRanch.com. Soon, if not right now, we're gonna have it on JockleStore.com. So hey, man, just go out there, look for it, get some, boom. Also, we do have a YouTube channel for the video version of this podcast. A lot of people watching podcasts now, rather than just listening to them, they watching them, put them on the smart TV.

• 3:00:36Jocko Willink?

  You've been kinda Johnny on the spot lately too, getting those YouTube ones up as soon as possible.

• 3:00:40Speaker 02

  It's a collective effort, yeah, between you, me, Cole, the kid, you know, we're trying to, you know, trying to make it happen.

• 3:00:47Jocko Willink?

  It's been, it's been nice.

• 3:00:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, agree. And, you know, the accessibility.

• 3:00:51Jocko Willink?

  People wanna see what Daryl Cooper looks like.

• 3:00:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know, handsome guy, you know, he's been working out, got a pump right beforehand, respect, you know. Actually, you look different than I thought you looked.

• 3:01:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:01:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:01:04Jocko Willink?

  Did you ever visual, never saw him before?

• 3:01:07Speaker 02

  I saw like, um.

• 3:01:10Speaker 01

  That one stupid ass picture you used of me in the mask when I came on the podcast with Daniele.

• 3:01:15Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 3:01:15Speaker 01

  You used one from my website, wearing that mask. It's the only, you go through the comments on YouTube and it's like, great podcast, great podcast. Look at that dumb ass mask he's wearing. Good comment, good comment.

• 3:01:26Jocko Willink?

  I must say, I agree with those comments a hundred percent. I was like, well, this is the only picture I got of this dude. I guess we're going with it.

• 3:01:32Speaker 02

  There you go, yeah.

• 3:01:33Jocko Willink?

  What is that from?

• 3:01:34Speaker 01

  I was going to a costume party.

• 3:01:36Jocko Willink?

  Who goes to costume parties?

• 3:01:37Speaker 01

  I don't, I don't have a lot of pictures of myself.

• 3:01:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, and the one you do have is you in a straight up costume. So yeah, so when you

• 3:01:44Jocko Willink?

  Wait, aren't you wearing like a tuxedo or something too? Is it like?

• 3:01:47Speaker 01

  I was in a white suit with this mask on like this, I don't know, like the Eyes Wide Shut kinda thing.

• 3:01:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, okay.

• 3:01:54Jocko Willink?

  Very disturbing.

• 3:01:55Speaker 02

  I remember that, yes. So now that you're kinda mentioning that, I kinda remembered what my expectation, it wasn't very like concrete, but it was just kind of a, you know, what do you call it? Ambiguous expectation and I'm thinking more along the lines of like a Criss Angel scenario. See what I'm saying? You know Criss Angel, right?

• 3:02:11Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. He does magical tricks.

• 3:02:13Speaker 02

  Yes. But nonetheless, you know, relatively normal.

• 3:02:17Speaker 01

  I can do pretty if I need to.

• 3:02:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, I believe you. I believe it. Nonetheless, you see what it looks like YouTube channel. Boom. A lot of other stuff on there. Excerpts, whatnot. A lot of value.

• 3:02:27Jocko Willink?

  Oh, really?

• 3:02:28Speaker 02

  As far as YouTube goes.

• 3:02:29Jocko Willink?

  Okay. You gotta admit, I, on the Grounded Podcast, whatever flippant attack comment I made about you and your videos was pretty funny.

• 3:02:38Speaker 02

  Wait.

• 3:02:39Jocko Willink?

  And I forget what it was, but it was pretty good. We were talking about things blowing up or whatever and I was like, oh, that's like Echo's video or something. Oh, no, no, no. We were talking about affliction t-shirts. With, with tanks and explosions and fire and I was like, yeah, kinda like Echo's videos.

• 3:02:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, you guys were really happy with yourselves.

• 3:02:57Jocko Willink?

  Going back to it, going back to the well for that one. Going back to the well for that one all day long. Uh, Psychological Warfare, you can get that on iTunes, I, whatever, it's me, it's a little psychological hitter for you, uh, help you get through those moments of weakness. Flipside Canvas, Dakota Meyer, making some cool looking stuff for you. Bunch of books, Leadership Strategy and Tactics Field Manual, The Warrior Kid Series. How's your, how's your nephew like the Warrior Kid Series?

• 3:03:24Speaker 01

  My, every little niece and nephew that I have loves it.

• 3:03:27Jocko Willink?

  That is awesome.

• 3:03:28Speaker 01

  Including a bunch of my friends as well. Like, I didn't have to, when, um, every time I've wanted to give them a copy of the books, they've already got them. Yeah, yeah, Jaco's a superhero, man.

• 3:03:38Jocko Willink?

  I think, that's not Jaco, man. That's Uncle Jake right there. Everyone likes Uncle Jake. Uh, Mikey and the Dragons 2. If you think, if you're like, ah, I'd like to get the Warrior Kid Series, but my kid's only four, cool, Mikey and the Dragons.

• 3:03:50Speaker 02

  I'll do it.

• 3:03:51Jocko Willink?

  And then Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual. Get yourself that and then the, the first two books, well, I guess the first, the leadership books. Extreme Ownership and the Dichotomy Leadership, which I wrote with my brother Leif Babin. We got Ashland Front Leadership Consultancy. We solve problems through leadership. Go to ashlandfront.com right now. In the lockdown, we're starting to spin up, or I should say, we are, we are pouring more resources into our online training. So I've been doing a lot of online, live Q and As, which is really cool. And I was a little, you get a little bit worried because you know, you want everything to be of the highest quality.

• 3:04:34Jocko Willink?

  And then, look, sometimes connections aren't there, right?

• 3:04:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, fully.

• 3:04:39Jocko Willink?

  And we got a new system and man, it's like, it's like I'm talking to people. You know what I mean? It's like I'm in the room with people. It's pretty, it's pretty damn good. So, uh, go to EF Online if you want to check that out. EFOnline.com. muster Orlando canceled muster in Phoenix, Arizona, September 16th and 17th. Dallas, Texas, December 3rd and 4th. Go to ExtremeOwnership.com if you want to come to those. Hey, listen, Phoenix canceled and the way we, what we did with Phoenix, we gave people the option to cancel it or go to immediately just enroll in either Phoenix, Arizona, or Dallas, Texas.

• 3:05:18Speaker 02

  You said Phoenix canceled Orlando.

• 3:05:20Jocko Willink?

  Oh, sorry. Orlando's canceled. Orlando's, did I say that like just now?

• 3:05:26Speaker 02

  I thought, I thought Phoenix was canceled too, but for this one, you have the, you see what I'm saying? But yeah, so Orlando's canceled.

• 3:05:31Jocko Willink?

  Orlando is canceled, but what we did is we allowed people just to transfer their ticket to Phoenix and then transfer their, or Dallas. So like, we're already at bigger numbers. So everything always sells out. There's only be two instead of three. That's, you know, another, it's going to sell out quick. So check that out. ExtremeOwnership.com and, and then we have EF Overwatch and EF Legion. And here's, here's just a real straightforward message. Right? There's a lot of people losing their jobs right now and there's a lot of people getting hired right now. And there's just a massive transition in the job market. If you are a veteran.

• 3:06:14Jocko Willink?

  If you are a veteran, if you served, go to EFLegion.com and enroll yourself. So that way, if your job changes, we will, you can be looked at and people can find you and pull you in and rehire you for a new job. They're looking for military people. We know you have the discipline. We know you have the wherewithal to get stuff done. We know you are trainable. So if you're a vet, go to EFLegion.com and get your information in there. And then companies, we got a bunch of companies that are looking, that's where they're, if you're a company and you want to find good people and you need them right now, go to EFLegion.com and get yourself some, some experienced leaders. And if you

• 3:06:58Jocko Willink?

  want to check out more of us, more, if you want to hear from more from Daryl Cooper, he's got, like I said, his podcast, Martyr Made. He's on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, @MartyrMade. He's going to be on a podcast with me called The Thread. And on top of that, if you hadn't had enough of my grating, slow-paced voice, or you haven't heard enough of Echo's high-pitched meanderings, then you can still find us on the interwebs, on Twitter, on Instagram, and on y'old Facebook.

• 3:07:37Jocko Willink?

  Echo is at Echo Charles and I am at Jocko Willink. And thanks again, Daryl, for coming on. Thank you. Much appreciated. Thanks for the effort that you put into your podcast. And thanks for sharing your story here. And hopefully, we can continue to get after it, sharing people's stories and helping people see stories in the right light.

• 3:08:01Jocko Willink?

  And to everyone else out there that's in uniform right now, holding the line.

• 3:08:06Jocko Willink?

  Around the world, right now, holding the line. Thank you for what you're doing out there in uniform and to police and firefighters and law enforcement and paramedics and EMTs and dispatchers and correctional officers and Border Patrol and Secret Service. Thanks for holding the line here at home. And on top of that, right now, to all the doctors and nurses and all the medical personnel that are on the front lines here at home every day, taking risks to fight illness. Thank you for taking care of us when we need it most and to everyone else out there. The world is an uncertain place.

• 3:08:50Jocko Willink?

  And sometimes, the trajectory of your life comes down to a little bit of chance. And what I'm saying is, don't take that chance very often and stack the deck in your favor. And the way that you do that is by going out there, taking control and getting after it. And until next time, this is Daryl Cooper and Echo and Jaco. Out.