356: We Can Determine What Manner of Men We Will Be. With Ed Thelander

Ed Thelander is a retired Navy SEAL, small businessman, volunteer firefighter, reserve deputy sheriff, loving father, and devoted husband. He has never sought political office before but is answering the call to serve his country once more. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

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

• 0:00Jocko Willink?

  This is Jocko Podcast number 356 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening Echo. Good evening. Gettysburg was a great battle. Its action, its tension, its hazards, its consequences. In it were involved questions of gravest import, the decision of which makes history, interests, social, political, moral, personal. Of gravest import for ourselves, for others, for our country, for man everywhere. For the present time and for the future for which also we hold a trust.

• 0:44Jocko Willink?

  The pressing question before us was whether we had a country.

• 0:50Jocko Willink?

  Whether we were a people or only a populace. Whether we were a mere chance partnership only, holding only by human will, or a nation constituted in the purpose and calling of divine providence, bound together for the noblest ends of living by ties of mutual interest and honor. Bonds both of love and law.

• 1:18Jocko Willink?

  All the great ruling sentiments which have their vital source in this idea. Patriotism, loyalty, self devotion for the sake of others. Nay, what we consider the supreme of earthly blessings, largest scope for individual life, endowments, powers, genius, character. These were the prize for which we wrestled in that terrible arena. More than this. Involved here too were the widest human interests. We fought for the worth of manhood, for law and liberty,

• 1:57Jocko Willink?

  which mean freedom for every man to make the most of himself with goodwill of all others, without oppression or depression.

• 2:09Jocko Willink?

  We had a deep inward vision of this at the time, though unspoken and perhaps unclear, but no man, even now, can realize in thought or recognize in fact, all the reach of good coming forth out of that struggle and that victory for the country and for mankind.

• 2:33Jocko Willink?

  And that right there is a quote from a speech by Colonel Joshua Chamberlain. And he was at a banquet to honor the 16th Maine Infantry and the 5th Maine Light Artillery Battery. And it was the 16th Maine who, on July 1st, 1863, they were ordered to hold a position at Chambersburg Pike, but this element of men was eventually overrun. And as they were being overrun, they took down their flag, their regimental flag, and they ripped it to shreds so that it wouldn't be captured by the Confederates.

• 3:19Jocko Willink?

  And of their sacrifice, of their 275 men, 11 were killed, 62 were wounded, 159 were taken prisoner. But because they did that, because they held the line as long as they did, it allowed 16,000 other Union troops to retreat and regroup around Gettysburg.

• 3:39Jocko Willink?

  And of course, it was the next day, July 2nd, when the 20th Maine, under the charge of Joshua Chamberlain, was able to hold the Union's left flank on Little Round Top with a bayonet charge that stopped the Confederate Army's best chance for victory in that battle. And essentially, at that point, turned the, or at least started to turn the tide of the war.

• 4:06Jocko Willink?

  And it's no surprise, in my humble opinion, that these soldiers from Maine accounted themselves so well. They're from a state that has harsh winters, rugged terrain, and a culture of hard work and self-reliance. And today, we have someone with us that has become a Mainer after retiring from the SEAL Teams and is now looking to serve his country and his state again. His name is Ed Thelander, and he's here with us tonight to share some of his experiences and lessons learned. Ed, thanks for joining us, man.

• 4:46Speaker 01

  Hey, uh, thank you very much for having me on. Uh, this is awesome. It was awesome to get out here. You know, I went out to Coronado last night, uh, and watched some, you know, some tadpoles playing on the, on the O course. And, uh, it hasn't changed much, you know, uh, it's, uh, that's one thing I miss from, you know, jumping over to the east coast was seeing these young frog, you know, men wannabes, uh, just get after it and, and try and figure out, you know, how to negotiate their obstacles on their own time after training and, uh, yeah, and, yeah, watching them run back and forth to Chow. You know, you run six miles a day just to go eat in boots. Um, that's not counted workout,

• 5:29Speaker 01

  that's just to go eat. And watching that was pretty cool. Um, so, yeah, it's, it's great to be back out on, on the west coast, check it out for a little while, and, uh, be popping back over to the east coasta tonight.

• 5:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, the O course is all fenced off now. You can't just walk out there and do it. Now, I mean, back in the day, a civilian could basically walk out there and just run the O course. And now it's all fenced off, uh, which is a bummer, cause, you know, it's kinda cool that you could just roll out there and run that thing.

• 5:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:59Jocko Willink?

  That's a pretty brutal O course. Um, and we'll get into that. Before we get there, before we talk about your buds, your team's experience and all that, let's start at the beginning. Let's start where you came from, where you grew up, what was going on? You're from, uh, originally from Michigan, is that right?

• 6:12Speaker 01

  Yep, Romeo, Michigan.

• 6:13Jocko Willink?

  So, so what was going on growing up?

• 6:16Speaker 01

  So, yeah, uh, born in Marquette. My dad, uh, was going to school up there. Uh, you know, my dad did six years in the Navy and then...

• 6:25Jocko Willink?

  What'd he do in the Navy?

• 6:26Speaker 01

  He was a missile tech, uh, you know, subs. He wanted, he was trying to talk me into go be in a nuke.

• 6:31Jocko Willink?

  Dang, that's a hard conversation.

• 6:35Speaker 01

  He's telling me, yeah, you get steak and lobster, you know, and you don't even have to get up to get a drink, you know, because people. Yeah, that's because you can't get up to get a drink because it's so crowded.

• 6:47Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 6:48Speaker 01

  And then you run out of fresh milk on, you know, the fifth day and, uh, you know, they never turn the lights off or, uh, in the hallways, you know, it's, uh, or I'm sorry, in, in birthing. In birthing, they never turn them on except once a week to clean and, and then they go in there and pull up all the deck plates and get food out.

• 7:06Jocko Willink?

  Did you ever do sub offs when you, when you were in?

• 7:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I was at SDV.

• 7:10Jocko Willink?

  Oh, gosh.

• 7:11Speaker 01

  So, I mean, which is just funny.

• 7:12Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 7:12Speaker 01

  You know, team guys with nothing to do because we're kind of all ready for whatever we're going to go do. And we've got nothing to do except make jokes and, and, uh, cause trouble.

• 7:20Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 7:21Speaker 01

  You know, we were on the Dallas and, uh, we're the first ones, you know, getting ready to eat because we're ready to go do our little gig.

• 7:28Jocko Willink?

  Uh huh.

• 7:28Speaker 01

  And, uh, there's this little S turn and so we all line up and there's this pipe that sits right about head height, right about here. Uh, and we all lined up. So you had to hit it. Um, but all, all the, the sub guys, now they just, you know, shifted their head around it. It was every diver and team guy that whacked right into that thing.

• 7:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that submarine life is, is a different kind of life.

• 7:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:56Jocko Willink?

  Respect to the guys that do it. I mean, it's, I could, I, I would, I think the longest I was ever on a submarine for was like maybe a week and a half or something like that. We were on, we went on to go do some, to go get inserted somewhere and bad weather came and they wouldn't launch us. So we were just stuck there.

• 8:13Speaker 01

  Right.

• 8:14Jocko Willink?

  That was my first experience with hot racking.

• 8:16Speaker 01

  Right.

• 8:17Jocko Willink?

  You know, you know what that is, Echo?

• 8:19Speaker 01

  No.

• 8:19Jocko Willink?

  Hot racking, it means when you share a bed with someone. So like you're, you're working one shift. When you get done, I, when you go to work, I get in your bed. So we share a bed.

• 8:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 8:31Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 8:32Speaker 01

  Take turns.

• 8:32Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, take turns.

• 8:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:34Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's.

• 8:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, you can have two to three guys.

• 8:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 8:37Speaker 01

  Damn. Not cool. So, so when, when you get on with the SDV, you know, uh, the SDV is a little wet submarine for folks that don't know. And they put this, basically this garage on the back of a submarine. And it is, it's wildly awesome, uh, cause you, that whole thing is dedicated for moving, you know, uh, uh, two or six guys from point A to point B. This big giant garage door opens up, the SDV goes out, you know, 10, 12, 20 hours later, that thing comes back. Um, it's, it's pretty wild, but we bring a bunch of folks on there to help us out and get everything ready. So they clear out a rack of torpedoes and, uh, that becomes your bed, where your beds, you know,

• 9:19Speaker 01

  it's just, so I gave up my bed to one of my guys, uh, because I was getting off and he was gonna stay on and work the comms problem. And I'm, you know, decent sized guy. I can't turn in, under that torpedo rack, cause the next torpedo above you, and I, I actually have to squish my shoulders in tight. Uh, and, uh, and they, in the, uh, torpedo, uh, area, they do not turn the lights off.

• 9:47Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that thing's just always on.

• 9:48Speaker 01

  Uh, everywhere else, they kinda cycle daylight, um, in the work, other working areas, except the torpedo area. So you're just in there, you know, they do put up a curtain. It means nothing, you're shoulder to shoulder, head to head with, with, you know, whatever it is, 20 other dudes.

• 10:04Jocko Willink?

  And your dad's trying to convince you that this is the way to go.

• 10:07Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 10:07Jocko Willink?

  Go be a, so was he a submariner?

• 10:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, he did, uh,

• 10:11Jocko Willink?

  And he was a nuke?

• 10:12Speaker 01

  No, he was a torpedo man. He was trying to talk, we ended up being a nuke.

• 10:16Jocko Willink?

  Oh.

• 10:16Speaker 01

  And, uh,

• 10:17Jocko Willink?

  Those nuke guys, they work hard, man. It is no joke. That job is a tough, grueling, in the freaking nuclear engine room, or whatever, I don't know what you call it. The reactor room, right? God.

• 10:31Speaker 01

  So, so to work out on a submarine, you gotta put your dosometer on, cause you gotta walk past the nuclear reactor. And then they've got, it's, they're all quiet workouts. They did have a square block of, uh, dumbbells, you know?

• 10:43Jocko Willink?

  Hmm.

• 10:43Speaker 01

  Uh, uh, which is, you know, they, they all wear tennis shoes, so you don't make noise, you know, so you don't get, no, no, can hear you from above. And then it's, you know, it's elliptical, not a treadmill. Uh, so, you know, you don't want to pound any of the feet. It's, yeah, you can do pull-ups on something and you got those dumbbells in an elliptical.

• 11:02Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it is not an ideal life for a guy that has a more of a propensity to be a SEAL.

• 11:08Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 11:10Jocko Willink?

  All right. So your dad, so what did your dad do after he got out of the Navy?

• 11:13Speaker 01

  So, uh, yeah, he went, uh, went to college up in northern Michigan, uh, Michigan Tech in, so driven. In three years, working two jobs, he got his bachelor's and his master's. Uh, and, uh, you know, with, with three boys and then moving down to, uh, southern Michigan, teacher, electronics teacher. So.

• 11:36Jocko Willink?

  What, in high school or in college?

• 11:38Speaker 01

  High, high school electronics teacher. Yeah. And it was legit. Uh, I, we were, he would do all this after school work and, and weekend work with his kids, you know, his students. And we'd be in there climbing in and around all the electronic gear and he'd have us making circuit boards. It, what I remember to be a ridiculously young age, a good, ridiculous, you know, uh, uh, I mean, like five years old burning circuit boards. Um, you know, it, it, we made stuff, flashing lights, whatever. Um, but it was all fun and games. And then all of a sudden we can do some wild stuff, you know? We were always forced to figure things out.

• 12:16Jocko Willink?

  I took electricity in high school with a teacher. I don't, I, his, we all, everyone called him Scotty. But that's where I learned how to like wire houses, you know?

• 12:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:25Jocko Willink?

  And it, to this day, like, I mean, at one of my houses, I, this is when I was still in the teams, like took a weekend, redid, put in an electrical sub panel, redid all the wiring in my kitchen cause it was all jacked up and like such a great skill to have.

• 12:40Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. And it's, yeah, it's all stuck with me, you know? I, I figure stuff out. We never had a new TV, ever. We fixed all those old tube TVs, you know, and, and changed the channel with the pliers, you know?

• 12:56Speaker 01

  Yeah. We fixed our cars, you know, from fixing our bicycles when we were young, young. And then we got motorcycles, you know, little, you know, YZ sixties. Uh, and we tore those down to nothing and put them all back together again. First truck, you know, that, that was given to me to use. Uh, you start that thing up at a cloud of smoke and then we tore the whole thing down. Uh, you know, in high school on the weekends, uh, cause they had a, a lift and all that stuff.

• 13:23Jocko Willink?

  So, did you go to school where your dad taught?

• 13:25Speaker 01

  No, no. Um, he, he was like, like the, the big high school north or south of us, you know, 2,000 plus kids. We were like the.

• 13:37Speaker 01

  The smallest of the big schools, you know, so 32 mile center of town was paved. 33 mile road was dirt. So we lived close to the dirt road.

• 13:48Jocko Willink?

  It's a what, when, when you were in school, are you into school? Are you getting good grades?

• 13:52Speaker 01

  Getting decent grades, you know, uh, into the sports, you know, uh, football, wrestling, and then track, kind of dropped track off at the end. And just concentrated on football and wrestling, uh, you know, like school, but not crazy into it. You know, like the math, um, you know, decent grades. I was a B-ish student, you know? Uh, nothing, not definitely not way into it.

• 14:17Jocko Willink?

  Were you thinking you were going to go to college? Or what was your dad steering you towards? Or your mom steering you towards?

• 14:21Speaker 01

  So I was getting steered towards the Navy College, Navy College, Navy College, you know, uh, my dad really, you know, went up to Ferris State University, Division two school. It was a college, first year I was there, it became a university, whatever that.

• 14:35Jocko Willink?

  Wait, that's where, that's, so you did end up going to college?

• 14:38Speaker 01

  One year of college. Yep. Uh, and.

• 14:40Jocko Willink?

  And you said you got a scholarship?

• 14:42Speaker 01

  No, no, no, no. Um, no, just, uh, my dad went up there to interest me, get me on the wrestling team. Wanted me to, you know, do that, you know, uh, good team.

• 14:50Jocko Willink?

  So you're a good wrestler?

• 14:52Speaker 01

  Decent.

• 14:52Jocko Willink?

  How'd you do in high school, state wrestling?

• 14:54Speaker 01

  Did not make the states, messed up my knee, uh, in, uh, ended up having surgery on it.

• 15:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, I just had like two thirds of my knuckles taken out.

• 15:04Jocko Willink?

  When you're like 17?

• 15:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. So, so I had that surgery and in two weeks I went to wrestling camp.

• 15:16Jocko Willink?

  So was that your senior year?

• 15:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, that was my senior year.

• 15:20Jocko Willink?

  And then you healed up enough that you could go up and you walked onto this wrestling team at Ferris State University?

• 15:25Speaker 01

  Yep. And I was a red shirt, you know, I did not compete, but I stuck it all the way out. I mean, I started, we started out with like 90 kids and then there was like 17 left, you know, at the end. But I, I was a good weight for my coach.

• 15:38Jocko Willink?

  What weight were you?

• 15:38Speaker 01

  Uh, 163, 165, whatever it was in college.

• 15:42Jocko Willink?

  So you're just scrapping with the.

• 15:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, our coach was, was, you know, number one in the nation, you know, who I, when I came out here to San Diego, his big rival, um, Butler was, you know, they were number one, number two. I mean, my coach in college was number two, Butler was number one, uh, and, uh, It was cool because I was working out under Butler at the time. I would go work out at San Diego Community College and wrestle there, you know, where Dean actually ended up going. We had the same coach. A couple of years difference.

• 16:18Jocko Willink?

  That's wild.

• 16:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 16:20Jocko Willink?

  So you say you only went to, you only went to college for a year?

• 16:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, halfway through, and I was on a plastics engineering program. There wasn't room for everybody to do all, all the plastic classes. So I was on a waiting list. So I was taking my English, my math. I took a 300 level metallurgy class as a freshman and I got out of there halfway through the year. I said, yep, I'm going to go do the option. You know, finish this year out strong and then I'm going to go be a SEAL.

• 16:50Jocko Willink?

  How'd you hear about the teams? Did your dad tell you about them?

• 16:52Speaker 01

  No, Adam, I guess you say, Adam Blake, good dude, in high school, he was reading Men with Green Faces, like the only book about SEAL teams at the time. And I go, hey, what's that about? He goes, oh, that's the SEAL teams, you know, blah, blah, blah. I go, oh, that's cool. He was trying to talk me into joining the Marine Corps with him, which he eventually ended up doing. But I said, hey, how come you don't want to go do that? Oh, that's crazy. You know, that's so hard. It's not really possible. Check. And then so that put it in my head. That's what I want to do. And I'll go do the college and then, you know, can't quit anything, never allowed to quit anything as a child, you know. So

• 17:33Speaker 01

  I finished the year out strong and I signed up for the late entry. I worked out a little bit in the summer, did a couple of triathlons, you know, because I didn't know anything about what I was really getting. There were no books about it. There was nothing really. No prep courses.

• 17:49Jocko Willink?

  What did recruiters say to you?

• 17:51Speaker 01

  Come on in. Yep. Sounds great. Looks like you're going to make a great SEAL.

• 17:55Jocko Willink?

  Great SEAL.

• 17:55Speaker 01

  He tells everybody else.

• 17:57Jocko Willink?

  Right, right.

• 17:59Speaker 01

  So, you know, took the ASFAB and all that happy stuff and, and, you know, smoked that, qualified to be a nuke, qualified to do whatever. And

• 18:08Jocko Willink?

  Was your dad like, see, son?

• 18:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:10Jocko Willink?

  You could be a nuke.

• 18:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're still trying, you know.

• 18:12Jocko Willink?

  What'd your dad say once you told him you were going to try and go on the teams?

• 18:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, cool. But at the same time, hey, you really want to look into, you know, being a nuke.

• 18:22Speaker 01

  You know, being on subs is cool, you know, the whole steak and lobster thing and, you know, you don't have to get up to get a drink and, you know, they're all a bunch of good dudes. But, uh, yeah, I don't belong in a submarine.

• 18:34Speaker 01

  I get on the sub to get off the sub to go do something.

• 18:38Jocko Willink?

  And then, so did they have dive fair? Were you dive fair?

• 18:41Speaker 01

  I was a dive fair.

• 18:42Jocko Willink?

  That's what I was too.

• 18:43Speaker 01

  So, yeah, you get a guarantee to take a tryout in boot camp. And then whether you pass that test or not, uh, you are in the Navy for six years.

• 18:56Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 18:57Speaker 01

  It's a great recruiting tool.

• 18:58Jocko Willink?

  It is a great recruiting tool and it's the SEAL teams is a great recruiting tool.

• 19:03Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 19:03Jocko Willink?

  Cause it, if, you know, they say that the, the attrition rate is like 80% people quit or whatever, something like that, right? But if you start taking all the people that came in the Navy to try and go to the SEAL teams. I mean, there's, most people don't even make it, you know, two butts. Or at least a bunch of people don't make it two butts. So they're getting, the Navy's getting a lot of, a lot of people.

• 19:29Speaker 01

  Well, just, you know, Blue Angels. I mean, that's on all the commercials.

• 19:32Jocko Willink?

  That's true too.

• 19:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:33Jocko Willink?

  Who gets to do that?

• 19:34Speaker 01

  There's seven of them or something like that.

• 19:37Speaker 01

  You know, and it's cool to be on the Blue Angels changing tires, uh, but, but, uh, that's not what they're advertising.

• 19:44Jocko Willink?

  All right. So you join the Navy. You have no, how's boot camp? You're no factor. You a wrestler?

• 19:49Speaker 01

  Yeah. Boot camp was just something to go through. It was pretty wild to see.

• 19:54Jocko Willink?

  Did you go to Orlando or Chicago?

• 19:55Speaker 01

  Yeah. Oh, that's where all the dive fairs went at the time.

• 19:57Jocko Willink?

  Okay. Yeah, that's where I went to. So I guess that makes sense.

• 20:00Speaker 01

  It's wild seeing all these folks come from, you know, that, that boot camp was a factor. Like a wow factor. Either the teamwork part of it, you know, uh, people getting authority as a recruit that like, yeah, you never have to, you should never have authority. And then, and, and seeing people stressed out about the simplest of things. Um, and that was wild to, to see those differences in people that, that, uh,

• 20:29Speaker 01

  wow, you know, so, so, yeah, boot camp off the books, you know, boot camp, Navy boot camp is different. It's, it's a lot about isolation and staying on a ship. You're only allowed off the ship one time, you know, for like recruit weekend or something like that. Uh, you have, you know. That's what the Navy's about. You're stuck on a boat.

• 20:50Jocko Willink?

  And the Navy's about like blue collar industrial work. That's what most of the Navy is.

• 20:56Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 20:57Jocko Willink?

  And that's why Navy boot camp is a lot about attention to detail.

• 21:01Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 21:01Jocko Willink?

  You know, following directions to a T, you know, checking what you checking your work. Cause you know, if you're working on an aircraft or you're working on a engine or you're working on a parachute, like all these jobs, they're industrial jobs.

• 21:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:14Jocko Willink?

  And you gotta be squared away at that thing, you know, as opposed to the army or the Marine Corps. A lot of those are field jobs. You gotta be doing something in the field. I mean, of course the Marine Corps has aircraft mechanics and everything else too. And so does the army, but that the Navy is vast majority of it is industrial work. People that know how to work on engines, people that know how to work on electronic equipment. That's what it is.

• 21:35Speaker 01

  Right.

• 21:36Jocko Willink?

  So that's what the Navy boot camp is geared to. I think it's it's come a long way now. If you go watch like a Navy boot camp video. They have a simulator in Chicago, like a ship simulator that fills with water.

• 21:48Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 21:49Jocko Willink?

  Fight fires and so I think they did do a good job. It looks like they've done a good job at making it more. A little bit more combat related, or at least like Navy war fighting to at least get you that mentality. Cause you should have that mentality if you're in the Navy. So I think they've done a good job moving in that direction, but essentially it's a bunch of industrial work that you're learning how to do.

• 22:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, thick, thin, thin, thick.

• 22:12Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah. That's the T-shirt, the way you fold the T-shirt. This is the echo Charles. So when you fold a T-shirt for Navy boot camp standards. There's like a certain way to fold it and it ends up looking like there's a thin layer. Then the thick layer, then there's a thin layer, a thin layer, and then another thick layer in there. You gotta learn this and you do it. Like following orders, attention to detail.

• 22:32Speaker 01

  Attention to detail. Before you get to play with the nuclear reactor, we want to make sure you can fold a T-shirt. Wait, what's thick and what's thin?

• 22:39Jocko Willink?

  It's the folds. You know, there's other material under there. So the first fold is thick, the next two folds are thin and then there's another thick one. It's just the way it it's just a it's it's this funny thing that, you know, I mean, that was 1988. I don't know if they still have it, but. I know Leif Babbin still folds his shirts like in a Navy manner.

• 23:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:01Jocko Willink?

  I was like, bro, he went to Naval Academy one day. I saw his stuff folded. I was like, damn, what's going on over here?

• 23:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:07Jocko Willink?

  Stuck.

• 23:07Speaker 01

  It is a little attention to detail things, but you know, some of these folks couldn't, there was this brilliant, you know, young man, kid, and he wigged out in the end, started crying.

• 23:20Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah. You definitely see some people wig out. I mean, there's no doubt about that.

• 23:24Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 23:24Jocko Willink?

  No doubt about that.

• 23:26Speaker 01

  I mean, I understand some other things, you know, and I like, I wouldn't have wigged out for that, but I get to, you know, Sierra School and, you know, I didn't see anybody wig out in the teams, but I saw him wig out in Sierra School. But not Navy boot camp. They yell at you. You know, that's an expectation, should be. You know, but, but some people just aren't used to that in their life, you know, and wow.

• 23:47Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. I think also people get the impression that this is what the whole Navy is going to be like for the rest of my career. People are going to be yelling and screaming and, and you think, yeah, I can't take this and leave or, you know.

• 23:57Speaker 01

  No, they just want to make sure you can stand up to a little bit of stress because eventually something might get stressful.

• 24:01Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, for sure. So you get down, so do you go straight to BUDS after that? What'd you go to, A school?

• 24:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, corpsman A. So remember MAPS, right? Your military and processing. Yeah. Put a fifth choice down because I put, I only wanted to be a SEAL. You know, our source ratings, you had to pick a source rating because if washed out, you would go to the Navy and do that. So I put down, you know, three choices and an alternate. Well, I still didn't pick corpsman yet. So I said, why don't you just put down a fifth alternate?

• 24:33Speaker 01

  And so I got the fifth alternate corps school.

• 24:35Jocko Willink?

  But it was easy to Navy.

• 24:36Speaker 01

  Yeah. Last easy class. It was only eight weeks. Next class shifted like 14 weeks. And, you know, trudged through that and off to what should have been BUDS, but they messed my orders, my orders up and sent me to Balboa. You know, because they were like, we're not a, my class, 163, didn't start till whatever it was, April, whatever. So they weren't going to get me there till like a week before. You know, but you still had pre-training. And they didn't care. They needed somebody to go work, you know, somebody at the hospital was saying, hey, we need some bodies.

• 25:10Jocko Willink?

  Damn.

• 25:10Speaker 01

  So, so they sent me there. And, you know, I was working for a really good senior chief. And I said, hey, you know, uh, this is what I got going on. I don't think it's quite right. And, you know, I'm just a new kid in the Navy. And I'm still like, hey, this isn't right. Um, can we check it out? And so I, what I would do is I would go run down to RTC from Balboa. And I found, you know, uh, senior chief Billy Hill and, and Goward. And I said, hey, uh, you know, senior chiefs, can I get a little help here? Because I don't think this is right. And they go, yeah, that's not right. Go get your swim in, we'll fix it. And so they fixed my orders, but it took a couple of weeks. So then I, I got to Bud's and a week and a half later, I classed up and started.

• 25:49Jocko Willink?

  Damn. And you were classed 163?

• 25:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:53Jocko Willink?

  And you classed up a week and a half after you got there?

• 25:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:56Jocko Willink?

  You said? That's a, that's a little bit of a quick start.

• 26:01Speaker 01

  Yeah. Because I didn't know anything, you know, I'm seeing everybody there, they're like, got their, you know, that rope around their belt, you know, and say, hey, what's that about? Oh yeah, we're doing underwater knot tying tomorrow.

• 26:11Jocko Willink?

  Jack.

• 26:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:13Jocko Willink?

  Uh, were you a good swimmer?

• 26:15Speaker 01

  I was a decent swimmer, you know, um, you know, I, I sink like a rock. I basically, you know, beat the water into submission. Everybody who's ever been, tried to be a real swimmer, you cannot beat the water into submission and go faster, you know, uh, it, it.

• 26:29Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. You sound like, you sound like my kind of swimmer.

• 26:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:31Jocko Willink?

  It's me against, it's me fighting the water.

• 26:34Speaker 01

  Yeah. Uh, somewhat vertical through the water plane. Yeah. I sink like a stone.

• 26:39Jocko Willink?

  But you were comfortable like knot tying when it did come down for knot tying and all that stuff?

• 26:43Speaker 01

  I dove as a kid, you know, but, but, you know, knot tying, okay, how do you tie that? You know, those series of knots, you know, I didn't know. And, you know, that's what we're doing tomorrow. Okay. How do you tie those knots?

• 26:55Jocko Willink?

  How was hell week for you in your class?

• 26:58Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah, uh, you know, summer hell weeks, you know, just. They're warmer, um, you know, uh, uh, these, these other guys that are thinner are, they are gonna suffer before I was, cause I was, I'm, you know, the mesomorph, you know, I'm naturally heavier guy. Um, so basically they kept that boat on your head longer and, you know, my neck will tell you about that today still. Yeah. Uh, uh, yeah, you know, um, remember in all the wild things about, about hell week, you know, you know, what was your worst, you know, thing in hell week? Tuesday.

• 27:39Speaker 01

  Tu- so, uh, I was, uh, uh, Ryan Zinke, what was, uh, um, our first phase officer. And at, at chow times, eat four times a day, at chow time, uh, he would go around and make sure no one fell asleep. And if you nodded off, you're gonna get a jalapeno. You know, so Ed being from Michigan and, you know, roast beef and mashed potatoes, you know, peppers like the ultimate spice and used sparingly. My mom's, you know, French Canadian, it's, it's a lot more bland food. I've never had a jalapeno in my life. And your lips are

• 28:16Speaker 01

  blistered, you know, uh, uh, so Ed eats the jalapeno check. Uh, and I threw up, you know, it's a one mile run with a boat on your head. I threw up for a mile and a little bit, cause we ran all the way to the oak course and we did the oak course with our boat. And I threw up all the way through that oak course, hauling the boat around, and then I've got no fuel in the tank. Uh, that was a long, long day. Yeah. I remember that, you know, and then remember the other things about, you know, hallucin- hallucinating, you know, you know, lion's lobe, you know, uh, you know, getting mad at my paddle. I

• 28:57Speaker 01

  remember it though. My paddle's not, you know, you know, making us go, I'm crying hard, you know, that this paddle should make me go faster, you know, uh, Yeah, remembering paddle prayers, you know.

• 29:12Jocko Willink?

  What's paddle prayers?

• 29:14Speaker 01

  So they would put us together around in a circle.

• 29:17Jocko Willink?

  Oh, so we had paddle above the other guy's head?

• 29:20Speaker 01

  You got your paddle. You got your paddle, so you're like this, and when you fall asleep, you try and catch yourself and you whack the dude.

• 29:29Speaker 01

  Is that in the program?

• 29:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, I was a really motivated young, you know, a number one bowline man, you know, the guy, the guy that jumps out on the rock portage and enters the boat. I wanted to be that guy.

• 29:45Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 29:46Speaker 01

  You know.

• 29:46Jocko Willink?

  That's the spot, man.

• 29:47Speaker 01

  That's the spot.

• 29:48Jocko Willink?

  Get in there. Let's do this.

• 29:50Speaker 01

  And when that boat's upside down on your head, that's the spot too, because you're taking some serious weight.

• 29:55Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's a dangerous evolution in big waves, man.

• 29:58Speaker 01

  And it's fun, you know, we didn't have helmets.

• 30:00Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 30:01Speaker 01

  You know, we had cape hocks, you know, big giant, you know, horribly uncomfortable life jackets. Uh, and, uh, wow, now they got helmets, you know, dude, I, I noticed they took the stump jump completely out now.

• 30:14Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 30:15Speaker 01

  They reduced the stumps first, and now the stumps are all gone and they're tires.

• 30:20Jocko Willink?

  Tires, yeah.

• 30:21Speaker 01

  And that's kind of, because that's a mental thing, you know, um, everybody knew the right stump to jump on. It's just that all the fear of falling.

• 30:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 30:31Speaker 01

  And I don't remember anybody falling. I, you know, I don't know that somebody fell and they hit their head.

• 30:35Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, Echo, this is on the, on the obstacle course. One of the first, well, I guess it was the, actually the second obstacle, you go across that dip bar thing.

• 30:43Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 30:44Jocko Willink?

  And then you hop off and there'd be telephone poles caught off at various heights in the ground like stumps.

• 30:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:51Jocko Willink?

  And you would have to jump from stump to stump to stump, and they'd kind of increase in heights. And the last one was a little, was depending on which route, if you took the right route, which everybody knew, the last one was the tallest one, had to jump a little bit further for it. And then you could jump, you'd jump up onto this, uh, grab this wall, this low wall, which was probably like 10, 10 feet tall or something like that.

• 31:12Speaker 01

  From the stump.

• 31:13Jocko Willink?

  From the stump. But it did take.

• 31:16Speaker 01

  It did take like, uh, what's commitment, right commitment to, to jump from stump to stump.

• 31:23Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 31:23Speaker 01

  And it got you used to committing.

• 31:25Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 31:26Speaker 01

  And now it's just tires like you see on a football field, you know, you run the tires.

• 31:29Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah, you're right about that psychological part.

• 31:32Speaker 01

  Right, right. There's a fear of falling. It's just like, you know, if you focus on the, the stump that you might fall on, you're not looking at the stump that you want.

• 31:39Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 31:39Speaker 01

  You know, like, if you're, are you skiers?

• 31:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 31:42Speaker 01

  You know, um, if you ski with a helmet on, uh, and then you take your helmet off, there you see, you ski slower. Especially if you ski in the trees. I mean, you're skiing in the trees and if you're looking for the gaps, you're good to go. If you're looking for the trees that you don't want to hit, you're going to find that tree.

• 32:01Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 32:02Speaker 01

  You know, and it's same kind of thing. It's, it's, it's a, it's a psychological thing, you know, to, to get you moving forward.

• 32:08Jocko Willink?

  Yep. And they got helmets now too, that they wear all the time, which is weird too, cause like even during Hell Week, they wear helmets.

• 32:16Speaker 01

  Really?

• 32:17Jocko Willink?

  Which is to me, the agony of that boat grinding on your head was like a huge part of, of what sucked.

• 32:24Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Yeah. Guys lost some, because you're, you're getting, you know, your head, getting some serious sunburn. You don't have a whole bunch of hair.

• 32:32Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 32:33Speaker 01

  Uh, it, it's, yeah, your, your head's getting blistered. It, it's a psychological part of it, man, that, that, uh, yeah, I don't know if I'd want to wear a helmet or not, actually. It'd keep you a little warm, you know, I don't know.

• 32:45Jocko Willink?

  Any other, so once you got done with Hell Week, you're in the rest of the buds, was there any other major challenges for you there?

• 32:51Speaker 01

  Um, eating dry out at the island.

• 32:53Jocko Willink?

  What'd you say, eating dry?

• 32:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, so, you know, at, at, at least one meal a day, you had to either do the pull-ups,

• 33:00Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 33:00Speaker 01

  the Frog Hill Run or the rope climb.

• 33:03Jocko Willink?

  What, did you suck at something?

• 33:04Speaker 01

  Pull-ups.

• 33:05Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 33:06Speaker 01

  I could not, yeah, gravity, you know, rope climb's fine, cause you use your legs technique, um, but man, I ate wet a lot on a pull-up day. It was funny because for whatever reason, I never did pull ups growing up and yeah, that was the island was second phase for me.

• 33:25Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 33:25Speaker 01

  That switched eventually. Yeah, we're back to it, I guess. So yeah, eventually, I mean, I became a pull up freak, you know, as a big guy, you know, I think even after my shoulder surgeries, I did, you know, 26 pull ups like six months later. It's like it's a personal challenge. But yeah, so, so pull ups was one, you know, running, not a great runner, you know, swimming, but you know, you're swimming, you know, uh, yeah.

• 33:56Speaker 01

  Not a top performer by any means, but just kept going forward, you know, and you know, just all you had to do is perform, you know, pass, you know, perform, you know, knot tying.

• 34:13Speaker 01

  Normally no factor. We did it in a dive tower.

• 34:17Jocko Willink?

  How deep?

• 34:19Speaker 01

  Well, the ropes stay same depth, uh, 10 feet. The zincy took me down to 50 feet.

• 34:28Speaker 01

  And we just hung out there and looked at each other and till he was, you know, tired. And then we came up to the top and there is a set, you know, it's all set what you're supposed to be doing. And I was like, okay, yeah, you're ready to go? Yeah, ready to go, you know? Then we went down and then we came back up, you know, and bam, next knot. Then we're back down again and back up and down. So I failed that.

• 35:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:03Jocko Willink?

  You know, that's one thing that's interesting. What I remember about some of the breath holding stuff, like 50 meter underwater swim, you're going to buzz, you're like, ah, it's no big deal. I could do that. But and not tying, it's like it's nine feet, go down there, tie knot. But you're in in buds because of everything that's going on, you're constantly like beat down. So you almost always have a cough, you kind of have a cold, you kind of have like you cause you're always like that, you're always tired, like like a four mile time run. Four mile timed run. First phase was thirty two minutes, four mile timed run. You look at that on paper on the outside, you're like, whoa, what's that? That's a freaking, you know, I could do that, no problem. Then you get in there, you have boots on, you got pants on, you're running in the soft sand.

• 35:45Jocko Willink?

  And the run is not four miles, it's like four point two miles, four point four miles, four point five miles.

• 35:51Speaker 01

  Right.

• 35:52Jocko Willink?

  And then and and what'd you do the night before? The night before that morning, four o'clock in the morning, four mile time run? You did, you know, a thousand eight count bodybuilders or you did buddy carries up and down the burn. So everything is harder than it than you think it's gonna be in buds. It's not what's on paper. It's what what actually happens is harder.

• 36:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, you didn't get to eat, but you had to run to Chow and you had to go through the line and touch the hamburger that you want to eat. Um, but there was no time to actually eat it. You know, you wasted time running all the way, but you that's what you must go there to do that. But there's no time to actually sit down and eat. And then you run and you go do the evolution because you have to be at the evolution on time.

• 36:34Jocko Willink?

  Did you get rolled for anything?

• 36:36Speaker 01

  No, no.

• 36:37Jocko Willink?

  First time, every time.

• 36:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, uh, um, well, I mean, I failed that, but but my lungs were messed up from, uh, from hell week. You not tying was right after hell week.

• 36:46Jocko Willink?

  That's that's like, that's the kind of thing that makes it hard is like you get done with hell week, you're jacked up, man. And now you gotta go do these knots underwater and you're like, you can barely even hold your breath for ten seconds. It sucks.

• 36:57Speaker 01

  And then you get taken down to the bottom.

• 37:00Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. You know, and fifty feet, going down to fifty feet is no joke. I mean, that's a that's a legit, that's a legit swim, uh, subsurface swim. That takes a that takes a decent amount of time just to get down to fifty feet.

• 37:13Speaker 01

  Right.

• 37:13Jocko Willink?

  And now you gotta do your little happy time knot with a smiling.

• 37:17Speaker 01

  The tower?

• 37:17Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, the tower was fifty.

• 37:18Speaker 01

  We went to the bottom and sat.

• 37:20Jocko Willink?

  Did you see it's gone now, the tower?

• 37:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, I drove around there just checking everything out.

• 37:26Jocko Willink?

  And so what are you, are you like a semen apprentice at this point, or just an E3?

• 37:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, just there, happy to be there.

• 37:33Jocko Willink?

  Check.

• 37:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, knowledge of the Navy, knowledge of what I'm, you know, other than I'm signing up, I'm, you know, I'm gonna get to shoot, blow things up, skydive, scuba dive, serve my country.

• 37:45Jocko Willink?

  Hell, yeah.

• 37:46Speaker 01

  You know, uh.

• 37:47Jocko Willink?

  Let's rock and roll.

• 37:47Speaker 01

  Let's, hey, cool. It, you know, they're like, um,

• 37:54Speaker 01

  pool comp.

• 37:54Jocko Willink?

  Uh huh.

• 37:55Speaker 01

  You know, that was another one where, you know, and I had, um, one of the mean instructors.

• 38:01Jocko Willink?

  Uh huh.

• 38:02Speaker 01

  Uh, and.

• 38:03Jocko Willink?

  Was he a senior chief at the time?

• 38:05Speaker 01

  Yes, he was.

• 38:06Jocko Willink?

  I know exactly who you're talking about.

• 38:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, uh, uh, hey, great respect, you know, um, but he ripped my mask off at the beginning, you know, so basically you got your, your, you got these old scuba tanks on with, flexible hoses that you can tie knots into, not modern gear, they're actually soft hollow hoses. So you can tie knots into them to cut the air off. Uh, and, uh, you know, he takes my mask off and leave, but leaves it on my head. And I said, okay, I'm not gonna put it back on, I'm just gonna keep, he's just swim back and forth and you get to the end, you turn around, and while they're doing that, they're just coming in on you and wrecking your gear. And you have to do everything procedurally correct.

• 38:50Speaker 01

  And I did everything procedurally correct, but since my mask was accessible, I should have put it on. Fail.

• 39:01Jocko Willink?

  There you go.

• 39:03Speaker 01

  So I had to do that again, uh, and I got even harder instructor, uh, which considered harder, but fair in my mind, you know, uh, a super dude, but he, uh, um, yeah, I got put through the wringer again, but, but, you know, I put my mask on when it was available. And, uh.

• 39:20Jocko Willink?

  Lesson learned.

• 39:21Speaker 01

  Lesson learned. Yeah, it was a whole bunch of learning because I didn't do any of the, you know, well, they didn't teach you that pre-hand because that was, that was third phase for me, you know, I've been there, you know. You know, back into shape again. Uh, it, it takes like a year is what they say to recover from hell week. You look at some of those cats. Um, and I remember, you know, I was a class corpsman, you know, sending dudes to the hospital with encephalitis, you know, their hands are just, you know, big giant puff balls and their feet, you know, uh, it's uh, and we didn't get any sleep in hell week. You're supposed, they're scheduled to sleep, you know, uh, but we did not get that.

• 40:00Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I think the scheduled sleep might be a couple hours total, something like that.

• 40:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's two blocks of it and you're supposed to get dry first.

• 40:08Jocko Willink?

  That, that, that one I know my class got because they, you know, they tell you some story like, hey, the, the, the, the skipper said, we're being too hard on you guys. We're, we have to stand down for eight hours. You guys go get dry and you guys can go to bed and we'll wake you up tomorrow. And I mean, you know, it's bullshit, but you still, you put on dry clothes and then you go and you actually get in your bed and this is probably, probably Tuesday and, and then, you know, a half an hour later, they come in and they get you up and hit the surf and.

• 40:40Speaker 01

  Right.

• 40:41Jocko Willink?

  But, but guys quit because it's, it's a smart move to get people to quit.

• 40:44Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 40:45Jocko Willink?

  Cause they go into the comfort zone.

• 40:46Speaker 01

  Right.

• 40:47Jocko Willink?

  And then they bring you back out, you know, you gotta watch out for that comfort zone, bro. That thing will grab a hold of you.

• 40:52Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 40:52Jocko Willink?

  That's like when you're doing a long ruck march.

• 40:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 40:55Jocko Willink?

  If you stop, you gotta stop for like five minutes, eight minutes, 10 minutes at the most, then you gotta get your ass up and start walking again because you start going into that 15 minute break, 20 minute break, your body gets cold and you're screwed getting back up. But, uh, yeah, so I, we slept that point and you know, you fall, sometimes you're just falling asleep. I mean, there's nothing you can do about it. You're just gonna fall asleep.

• 41:19Speaker 01

  Yeah. The, uh, so they got us into dry clothes and we had a kid in our class that, um, quit on Tuesday, you know, whatever 20 class or whatever, you know, years before came back. And, uh, so he had knowledge up to Tuesday.

• 41:39Speaker 01

  And so we, you know, he knew something about that. So we got dry, but then they put us on the grinder and on the pavement where we worked out and, you know, we started doing flutter kicks and instructors up there doing our flutter kicks. He brought the class leader up there and headed the class leader started leading us and then the instructors walked away. And we're on our backs, we're in dry clothes. That's the standard. Class leader would not let us go to sleep. It's like, you know, he's trying to go around making us say our social security numbers or birthdays,

• 42:18Speaker 01

  you know, trying to keep everybody awake. And it's like, I go, and I'm, I am a kid, you know, I go, you're doing the job for them. And so then they, at the end, because they're, you know, in that first phase corner office, just giggling, I imagine, you know, and then they let us, you know, said, I

• 42:45Jocko Willink?

  They're trying to figure out how to make that officer quit.

• 42:48Speaker 01

  Yeah. They weren't going to make that guy quit. That guy's a hoss. He doing the underwater swim, you gotta swim, you gotta swim tied up. And you gotta do a flip into the water and then you swim 25 meters, flip, and then turn around and come back without a mask on. So he did it flutter kicking.

• 43:11Jocko Willink?

  Damn.

• 43:12Speaker 01

  Yeah. No, no, no, this is not, not the tied up one, the one you just the the 100 meter tied up one, you know, but, but you have a mask on, I think, on that one. But the other one, you didn't have a mask. He's flutter kicking it and he swam off course, finally got back on course, made it there and back. It hard, hard, hard as stone. Yeah. College football player, you know, but yeah, so they put us, put us to bed and

• 43:44Speaker 01

  Somebody had a watch hidden. You're not allowed to have a watch. You have no concept of time or day or anything. And you're always trying to figure out what day it is a little bit, you know, you know, trying to remember what meal you count from meal to meal, basically. And yeah, so 22 minutes. That's what we got for hell week of sleep.

• 44:04Jocko Willink?

  It's not a lot of sleep.

• 44:05Speaker 01

  No, legit.

• 44:09Jocko Willink?

  So you graduate from BUDs and what did you want to go? Where'd you end up going? Team three? You went to team three, right?

• 44:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, I went to team three. So you get the dream sheet and you know, I put like all I wanted to go to Maine because I love the snow and it was like, yeah, no, you can't do that. That's stupid because you can't. You gotta go to a team first. You know, we have four billets up there in Maine. That's how I eventually got up there. But I put team, I want to do cold weather. I want to put team two. You know, I put team four. I don't remember what else I put.

• 44:42Jocko Willink?

  But you put all the east coast teams?

• 44:43Speaker 01

  I think so.

• 44:44Jocko Willink?

  And the Navy said?

• 44:45Speaker 01

  West coast SEAL Team Three.

• 44:50Speaker 01

  And you know, I had a great time there. You know, first platoon, you know, Mark Crampton, Bob Edwards, you know, folks that you remember, you know, Miss Mark.

• 45:01Jocko Willink?

  Mark is friggin awesome, man.

• 45:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, dude. Crazy. You know, we can talk about that. Just the whole, we gotta watch out. Mark, you know, say it, you know, committed suicide and completely unexpected.

• 45:14Jocko Willink?

  Totally.

• 45:15Speaker 01

  I mean, that dude was solid as stone.

• 45:17Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, just an awesome guy.

• 45:19Speaker 01

  Mentor to so many people. I mean, mentor, but wow.

• 45:24Jocko Willink?

  A smile on his face, every single time I interacted with him, which was sometimes on a daily basis, but I mean, for his whole career, he just always had a good attitude about everything.

• 45:36Speaker 01

  Right.

• 45:37Jocko Willink?

  About everything that was going on. And yeah, so it's totally unexpected. No, he retired. He's been retired. He'd been retired for quite a few years. Maybe, what do you think? Five years? Seven years? Something like that?

• 45:50Speaker 01

  Something like that, yeah. I mean, he kept on just moving on up and doing good things for the teams and everybody around him. I mean, always a self motivated, self improvement guy, always looking for that next thing to make him and everybody around him better.

• 46:05Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and helping, not just the teams, and he would like help kids that were wrestling, had like a wrestling club. He's just doing everything.

• 46:11Speaker 01

  Right, yeah. No, but yeah, that was, that was a, that was a great platoon, you know, Westpac, you know, did, uh,

• 46:21Jocko Willink?

  So where'd you deploy to? The PI or did you go, where'd you go?

• 46:24Speaker 01

  PI. PI, Penotoubo hit, you know, just after we left and we came back, I came back with Foxtrot platoon. And, you know, the ashes everywhere.

• 46:37Jocko Willink?

  So you weren't in the PI when Penotoubo hit?

• 46:39Speaker 01

  No, no, I was not.

• 46:41Jocko Willink?

  You came, how was the workup and everything, your first platoon, being a new guy?

• 46:45Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. I was a corpsman, taking the hits, you know. We had a good bunch of new guys, you know, yeah, Gino Bam Bam, Big Ghost Man, Dave Casper, lost him to cancer recently. I don't know if you remember, these guys were still around there at the time. Yeah, just a good, yeah, but legit, you know, we, you make a mistake as a new guy back then, you know, you're gonna pay for it. I really didn't get too much grief. I mean, one day out at Nyland, you know, with the old Nyland, you know, with the Tree of Woe, and they were,

• 47:27Speaker 01

  they were, you know, tuning some folks up. I was on watch, you know, it was untouchable.

• 47:33Speaker 01

  Dave, the Ghost Man Casper, they were going after him, and they chased him. He got up on top of the mill vans and the RSUs that were over by the fence. And that's, there's a gap big enough to drive a semi tractor trailer and unload it. He jumped over that barbed wire and made it out into the desert and spent the night out there.

• 47:54Jocko Willink?

  Freedom.

• 47:55Speaker 01

  Freedom.

• 47:59Jocko Willink?

  Right on. And then, so what did you do on deployment back then? Uh, you know, I, I

• 48:03Speaker 01

  Bunch of training, you know, a fed, uh, you know.

• 48:06Jocko Willink?

  Did you go to any cool countries?

• 48:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, uh, I, I had a blast in, you know, South Korea. Um, you know, we went to Japan, did some sub ops there. We did, uh, uh, shoot, where else did we go? Um, I mean, there wasn't a whole bunch of travel, you know, um, golf kicked off. We, we deployed early, you know, I did not, we didn't do.

• 48:26Jocko Willink?

  Did you backfill someone that went to the Gulf or something?

• 48:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Uh, SEAL Team Five.

• 48:30Jocko Willink?

  Worst job ever in the team. Say, we just need you to backfill for the guys that are going to war. You're like, no.

• 48:35Speaker 01

  So, yeah, I missed out, uh, you know, significant parts of the workup, you know, as a new guy too. And, you know, and as a corpsman,

• 48:44Speaker 01

  back then, we didn't have the training that they got now.

• 48:46Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 48:47Speaker 01

  You know, and I could have got some more of that, you know, uh, but, I mean, the first stitches I ever, ever did, other than on a, uh, you know, a, a fruit,

• 48:59Speaker 01

  was my own knee. We were workup out on an island and they had, uh, a pistol course we were running. There was a pipe you had to crawl through that had bullet holes in it. And, uh, you know, dug on my knee and, you know, I, I never even used lidocaine because I wasn't, I taught that in corps school, you know, and I hadn't been through, uh, um, the EMT course where you got all that yet at this point in the workup. And so, a whole platoon watching me because I'm the doc in the platoon.

• 49:31Jocko Willink?

  Mm hmm.

• 49:32Speaker 01

  And, uh, which again was just crazy wrong, you know, from what they get. A platoon guy now had more training, a regular platoon guy now had more than, than what I had then.

• 49:41Jocko Willink?

  They're so squared away now.

• 49:42Speaker 01

  And, uh, you know, I never tied a knot on a human, you know, a stitch. And so, everybody's watching me. And, uh, you know, figured it out. Yeah. Herc, Herc, Herc, uh, Doc, uh, yeah, Doc Herc was, you know, supervising me. And, uh, I figured it out, you know, uh, cleaned it, cleaned it out myself. Uh, and that was, you know, but, um, they, you know, we came back second platoon, we were like getting ready to get, uh, Corzina Kinos out, you know, 92 timeframe, 91, 92. And that was.

• 50:20Speaker 01

  That was a fun little, you know, jump into the deployment. We jumped into doing that. And you done the quick ducks where you're in recoveries where you're driving right into the back of a 47?

• 50:33Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 50:34Speaker 01

  We were doing it in the back of 53s.

• 50:36Jocko Willink?

  Well, that's wild.

• 50:37Speaker 01

  Tail rotor.

• 50:38Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, how's that work? That's gotta be sketchy.

• 50:40Speaker 01

  Especially when you're by yourself, but I, you know.

• 50:44Jocko Willink?

  Were they like, hey, you got this. You drive it in there. We'll wait.

• 50:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, so, so, so, you know, everybody goes out and no big deal, you know, but there, it's a, it's fully inflated just about, or it was, and drive, take everybody on shore and then recover back onto the same helo by yourself. It's 240 knot rotor wash from a 53.

• 51:09Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, so Echo, just to explain what you're talking about. So a CH 53 is a big giant helicopter, but you ever seen the helicopters that have two big rotors on top, right? That's what we would normally do this on. Well, that's called a 47. Or a 46 is a little small, but a 47 is big. But the 53 has a tail rotor like a normal helicopter. So when you drive in the back, you're coming close to this thing for sure.

• 51:37Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, no, you, you come in, you're coming in at a 45. And you've got to make sure your, your engine's on tilt. You're coming in at a 45 to avoid the tail rotor. Because it's legit. Again, that rotor wash can flip that boat. I put anything extra in it, into the bow of the boat. And I would lean forward and I'm holding on to the tiller, leaning forward into the boat. You punch through that and it's a wall. When you get through it, there's dead space. So, so you, you've got to, you've got to make a right hand turn. And gun it one more time until you're, and you're in, and you're inside the helicopter. It's like, by yourself, it's pretty wild to do. And as a new guy, and it was my second platoon without a workup.

• 52:19Speaker 01

  So that was, that was pretty wild. And that whole, so those were Air Force Spec Ops guys. You know, that was their big thing. And it was, yeah, we did exercises with those guys too, in the Philippines. You know, the.

• 52:36Speaker 01

  The C-130 that they had, um, they got shot by, you know, NPA or some farmer that didn't like flying, serving their yak or whatever. Uh, and so it, it took a round through and through the plane. We never knew. They, they landed it, patched it. It's their exercise. And that thing was back up in the air. When, when, when an air force bird, you know, breaks, um, and it's in a nice place like Hawaii, you're there for a couple of days. We never knew it even got hit. Yeah. You know, and this is training again, I'm at, you know, it's a, um, yeah, that was, that was pretty wild. Now, is this, didn't you fall somehow like a? Oh, yeah. What was that all about?

• 53:22Speaker 01

  Ouch. Just, um, so I, I always went off to, um, Joshua Tree, um, or I had a while to go climbing on the weekends, you know, uh, Lou Langlis, you know, taught, we were all in a, um, Andy Rios, Lou, um, who else was in the barracks, um, you know, go off climbing on the weekends, you know, we, we were still in the barracks in the teams at that time. Um, and so, you know, off camping. And I was a pretty decent climber right off the bat. You know, my uncle up in Canada would take me climbing, uh, once in a while as a kid and, uh, rarely, but, um, I just liked it. And, uh, I went up there. No one,

• 54:06Speaker 01

  no one could go climbing with me. So, uh, cool. I just go find somebody when I get up there. So I had the soloist, you know, it's a self-belay device. You tie off to the bottom and as you progress, you keep putting, um, pro in and it's a camming unit. Um, and I did like a five eight and I funny, I remember the names of the climbs. Uh, Mike's books. It's on Intersection Rock right there in, uh, in Joshua Tree. And then, uh, I just hung dog this. I got to the top, set up a, a top rope, um, making it safer. Uh, and I do just did like a, Mike's books like a five eight and then the next one was like a five 11, um, which is above my, what I could do. I was a 10C ish climber. Um, so I just kinda cheated my way up on that literally, you know, cause you can.

• 54:51Speaker 01

  You can hang on your pro. Hang on your whatever. Yeah, well, you just pull on your rope a little bit because I'm self pulling top rope again. Oh, okay. Um, get to the top and, and, uh, you know, there, there's a, a lady that wants to go climbing with me. I'm like, check.

• 55:08Speaker 01

  And it's all downhill from there. Yeah. So I throw my rope down and, uh, I go do the down climb and I look up and there's my rope. It's caught in a crack. All right. I gotta hurry up. I got the four pieces of pro that I set that top rope up with. And I climb up there, get to the rope, put it back through the belay device. And when you're, when you're using that soloist, if you're off track, um, it drags. So I'm, I'm in this bowl and there's a, uh, there's an overhang. So I've got to reach out and around. Um, and I was doing it and it's actually a pretty easy climb. It's like a five, seven.

• 55:49Speaker 01

  Um, but I didn't feel comfortable with it and I had no idea what was really up above me. It was really, it was dumb. Uh, uh, and so I said, nope, not going to do it. So I jumped back into that bowl, but I took up the slack. And that one piece of pro that I set in kept my feet from planting. Um, but it popped that pro and I slipped out of there backwards and I, uh, you know, I'm 40 feet up. And I, I come against the vertical face. I palm the rock, broke my left wrist, um, tucked into a good PLF.

• 56:27Speaker 01

  And I landed in this sandstone wash and it folded me like a book, separated both my shoulders, um, chipped my ankle. And whatever else, um, that was a train wreck. Um, and there was a class, uh, for guides just, uh,

• 56:45Speaker 01

  A hundred feet away and they got me the rest of the way down. I didn't have far to go. And I called, you know, and the ranger said, hey, you know, we've had a lot of people fall from there. They either land here in the sand. Cause if I would, if I would have pushed off a little bit further, I would have landed in the sand. Bobby wouldn't have been happy either. Um, and he said, yeah, they usually live, they land over here. Or they land where you do and they don't. Uh, just by chance, I landed right in the middle of the wash. I was tucked into a tight PLF parachute landing fall. Um, you know, just not a recent graduate of, uh, cause this is my, this is before my first platoon.

• 57:22Jocko Willink?

  Oh, okay.

• 57:23Speaker 01

  I was not going to not deploy. Um, so I didn't want to go to 29 Palms and get stuck out there. I called Gino up. Gino came pick me up and I was another team guy and, uh, you know, I said, yeah, just drop me off in Balboa. I'll get it, you know? And they, you know, did a couple, you know, basically you get into going to Balboa on a Saturday night. What do you got? A whole bunch of colds, a whole bunch of, you know, that's what they have for an option to get their kids taken care of. And, uh, and go up to the nurse.

• 57:54Jocko Willink?

  I thought you were going to say, when I've had to go Balboa on like a Saturday, depending on what time, it's like Saturday at two o'clock in the morning. It's like drunk sailors that are fucking got in fights, beat up. It's like such a disaster.

• 58:06Speaker 01

  No, this, this is, this is early, uh, or late evening.

• 58:09Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So you're all right. They haven't gotten drunk enough to get, end up in the hospital yet.

• 58:13Speaker 01

  Yeah. Uh, but, but I'm there and, uh, the triage nurse, you know, says, uh, hey, I'm Ed, you know, I'm, uh, uh, you know, I, I fell and I hurt my, you know, got, I'm banged up. Whatever I said, it was fill out this clipboard and come back to us. And my neck is jacked up. I can't turn, you know, and I sit down and I start to think about filling it up and I'm looking, you know, I'm looking like this. You know, I can't turn my head and I go, I just stand back up and I said, ma'am, um, I fell 40 feet in a rock fall and my neck hurts. Sir, please don't move. And they strapped me into a backboard, went, you know, x-rayed my neck, you know, what else hurts, you know?

• 58:55Speaker 01

  This is 10 hours after the fall. Everything hurts. Um, and they x-rayed me. They didn't find anything, you know, they didn't x-ray everything. There was more things that hurt than, than my wrist and my, my ankle, you know, um, but, uh, yeah, um, later on I found out, so. I went climbing two weeks later with my, this is three weeks before deployment. But I had no strength in my left wrist. I didn't know why. And my little brother wanted to go pre-deployment leave. We went up to Canada, went climbing. You know, um, young kid, drive, but I deployed in, in, I think a total of three weeks. I got acupuncture like the next day because I could not raise my arms above my head.

• 59:39Speaker 01

  You know, but I got acupuncture, stuck a needle in my shin from an acupuncture student in Coronado.

• 59:44Jocko Willink?

  So that's good.

• 59:45Speaker 01

  It worked. She was, you know, uh, yeah, stuck a needle in my hand and my shin and uh, all of a sudden I could raise my hands above my head. And, you know, we went on deployment and I had to do, we had to do a PRT.

• 1:00:02Speaker 01

  And I'll tell you on camera here, I cheated. I did not do the pull-ups. I kind of cycled around, but I did the run, probably the slowest I ever ran, three miles at that point in my life. But I was able to pass everything and, um, yeah, like, so wrestling tournament, the fleet comes into town. And, um, carrier group, so they, all kinds of activities so they don't go out in town and cause trouble. You know, and, uh, so I'm wrestling in this tournament. And I, I re-agitated the break in my wrist in the first match. And then in the finals, I re-separated my shoulder and, uh, I, yeah, I bowed out at that time, happily took second.

• 1:00:47Speaker 01

  So I kept re-separating my shoulders like every three months. One left, one on the right one, left, one on the right one. You know, uh, just a young kid, keep moving forward and, uh, I was the corpsman, but I didn't really know a whole bunch. You know, so, yeah, keep moving forward.

• 1:01:02Jocko Willink?

  Keep going.

• 1:01:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:03Jocko Willink?

  So what'd you get, do when you got done with that second platoon at Team Three?

• 1:01:07Speaker 01

  So, uh, second, so in between, uh, those platoons, I screened for, for dev group.

• 1:01:14Jocko Willink?

  Oh, okay.

• 1:01:15Speaker 01

  And, uh, uh, yeah, they said, we don't want you as a corpsman. Can you cross rate? I said, yes, because I didn't want to be a corpsman.

• 1:01:26Speaker 01

  I could have stayed, you know, with more training and all that, okay, but, but I just wanted to be a, you know, archer, team guy. You had to cover your own evolutions back then. And I never did because I always found somebody else to cover them. You had to work at it though. And I said, I should not have to work to have someone else cover my platoon evolutions. That's just the way it used to be from moons ago. And so I screamed positive. I jumped right into

• 1:01:52Speaker 01

  Foxtrot platoon, did that, the end of their workup really, and then jumped right onto the deployment and came back from that. And young kid, you know, we never did a CQB workup. I made the mistakes I made and then it's a, you know, so I didn't make it through. And then where do you want to go? And, you know, SEAL Team Four, just because the reputation and I wanted to get to the East Coast. You know, so I think I put, you know, two and four and they said they didn't give me whatever I wanted. And I said, let's go forward, you know, South America. And so I went and did that. And then you, so you show up at Team Four, just back into platoon life?

• 1:02:35Speaker 01

  Yep. Hey, can you deploy in two weeks? Check. Have your, are you a six gunner? I am now.

• 1:02:43Speaker 01

  So that's your, you're in your third platoon and you get assigned as a pig gunner? Yep. Well, I mean, dude, as a corpsman, I wanted to carry the pig, the medical gear and everything else, you know, again, happy new guy. But so, so yeah, you know, I can work the pig. And so I went out and bought myself some, you know, 200 round pouches and figured out, made some gear up and off to deployment I went. And yeah, they said, can you be the diver? Yeah, I could be the diver. You know, I was diving since I was a kid, you know, my dive, I think I qualified when I was 15 or 16, very comfortable in the water.

• 1:03:28Speaker 01

  And, uh, yeah, so, so we, I got dengue fever, bad deal.

• 1:03:34Jocko Willink?

  So what's the deal with that?

• 1:03:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, um, you know, uh, get bit by a mosquito and, uh, you know, I got up to a hundred and six point five temperature. Bad deal, uh, not at that point though. So we were in Panama and I got, I didn't know what I had. I was just trashed, you know, um, just hot spikes, um, colds, I mean, can't walking outside, just go put a piece of mail in the mailbox, you know, outside the barracks and I'm freezing and it's ninety-eight degrees. Um, and then, you know, go back inside in the air conditioning and I'm just all of a sudden, you know, just up and down and up and down. But then I got better.

• 1:04:13Speaker 01

  So, there's a trip to Colombia. Can I get on there? Yeah, throw them on the bird. When we landed in Bratton Kia, um, and they literally kicked our pallet off at the end of the runway because it was a very hot area. Um, it just hit again. You know, I got better for like a couple of days and, um, we go, uh, can't trace a skeener or something, uh, the town we were in. And my fever got up to a hundred and six point five and, uh, you know, the other new guy, Corman, I wasn't a Corman anymore, but it's like, you feel good? I think I'll get better in a little bit, you know, but yeah, I was iced in.

• 1:04:57Speaker 01

  Luckily, we were there with the SBU guys and, uh, um, they brought an air conditioner, you know, we put an air conditioner in the building we're in. We're talking one dirt road town. You know, that tees into the river and, uh, yeah, that was, uh,

• 1:05:11Jocko Willink?

  Does dengue fever stick with you for the rest of your life? Like, uh,

• 1:05:15Speaker 01

  Not, not, you don't get this, um, if you get it again, it's supposed to be really, really bad. Uh, but no, it's not like malaria. Um, but man, it takes forever to recover. So on that treble month-long trip.

• 1:05:29Jocko Willink?

  So this is why I don't like freaking travel, bro. I'll stay right here. Well, I don't like leaving America. My wife's always like, hey, let's go to this place. I'm like, no, well, how about, you want to go somewhere?

• 1:05:40Speaker 01

  Panama.

• 1:05:40Jocko Willink?

  How about freaking Northern California? How about, you know, how about we go to Temecula? How's that sound?

• 1:05:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:46Jocko Willink?

  She wants to go to some foreign place. Bro, I did all that.

• 1:05:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I didn't get dangy fever and I don't want to get it. No, I mean, bad deal. No, from, from, from SEAL Team Four, I have no somebody that's had everything, like leishmaniasis.

• 1:06:02Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, so back in the day, in, in the nineties, well, even before that, the teams were geographically oriented. So SEAL Team One was Southeast Asia. SEAL Team Two was Europe. SEAL Team Three was supposed to be Southwest Asia. SEAL Team Four was South America. And SEAL Team Four, you know, had, had done the stuff in Panama, had lost guys in Panama, had, you know, the, the combat experience really, of the, of the era. Um, so I can imagine that probably played into your mindset of wanting to go to Team Four. And, and Spanish speakers were going to Team Four.

• 1:06:38Speaker 01

  Right. And, and I mean, there were still, you know, um, all the snow cap ops that they were legit doing, you know, uh, whether it was just, you know, uh, sitting on a mountaintop with a radio or getting involved with the DA. I mean, that was happening. Um, and, and this was one of those gigs where we were going in to train in these folks. And then we were going to go in as a radio relay. Um, so at the end, we were going in as a radio relay. And we walked an insane amount and, um, and I'm the sixty gunner and I'm weak as snot from, from dangy fever. And, uh, um, sun up to sundown, we did ridiculous.

• 1:07:21Speaker 01

  So it's not, it was not through the jungle. It was through, um, the edges of open fields that had all these,

• 1:07:27Speaker 01

  lava rocks, you know, softball sized, a little bigger, smaller. To get into Colombia at that timeframe, the Marines controlled the mill group. So to get access to the country, you had to go through the Marines. Marines were trying to build the Riverine Assault Teams, the RAT Teams. So you had to take a Marine Fighting Force with you. You know, an O1, you know, a Staff Sergeant and, you know, a Corporal. So we tagged on and yeah, two stayed back.

• 1:08:00Jocko Willink?

  And what, you had your platoon?

• 1:08:01Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:08:02Jocko Willink?

  Or did you have a squad or how many guys did you have?

• 1:08:04Speaker 01

  This was a squad.

• 1:08:05Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:08:05Speaker 01

  But then we had all the SBU guys and we were, so we were training, the SBU guys was training their folks up. We were training our folks up and, you know, we were in the middle of 30 dudes. You know, plus on this hike. And we never saw anything, you know, we went in, dry hole and back out. This Marine Lieutenant read a book, we're SEALs, don't wear socks. And that dude's feet was haz wrapped, just trash. Yeah, bad, bad, bad deal. Yeah.

• 1:08:48Jocko Willink?

  How far of a hump was it?

• 1:08:50Speaker 01

  Ridiculous. It was, it was, it was like 20 clicks. We walked from sun, before sundown, we did two hours in the daylight through the night and then came up two hours after. And we never stopped. We got there, dry hole, turn around, go. But it was open field, you know?

• 1:09:08Jocko Willink?

  The foot thing, like, you gotta condition your feet for that, like, a lot. And then there is some advantages to it because socks hold water. And if you're like working in the jungle, you can get used to it and you can be a good thing. But if you roll out for your first time, no socks on a 20 click hump.

• 1:09:25Speaker 01

  But team guys were doing that because they weren't walking anywhere.

• 1:09:28Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's another thing.

• 1:09:30Speaker 01

  Literally, I mean, swimming up the edge of the, the stream or the river. You know, 50 tops yards, if not 50 feet, doing the hit and back in the water again. There was reason for it. This was known to be a long walk.

• 1:09:49Jocko Willink?

  It's gonna be a problem.

• 1:09:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, his feet were not serviceable.

• 1:09:55Jocko Willink?

  So you're you're down there. How many platoons do you do you end up doing at Team Four?

• 1:09:59Speaker 01

  Uh, three.

• 1:10:01Jocko Willink?

  And one of one of these platoons, you meet your wife, right?

• 1:10:04Speaker 01

  Uh, in between, actually.

• 1:10:06Jocko Willink?

  Okay, well, how'd that go down?

• 1:10:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, uh, EOD's, uh, Explosive Ordnance Disposal Guy, married to a, uh, Spanish lady. Liliana was up in Virginia Beach, uh, learning English.

• 1:10:19Jocko Willink?

  No kidding?

• 1:10:19Speaker 01

  And, uh, yeah, so, so I was trying to learn Spanish, you know, took a couple of little, you know, classes on it, but, uh, um, so I, you know, yeah, it was perfect.

• 1:10:31Jocko Willink?

  Well, how did she get to be come to Virginia Beach to learn Spanish?

• 1:10:35Speaker 01

  She knew, funny, she knew, uh, another team guy's wife, um, and was gonna stay with them. Ended up staying with Cheese, uh, Brancizio, and, uh, and his wife. And then, however, uh, uh, the EOD guy and his wife introduced us.

• 1:10:55Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and she's from where?

• 1:10:56Speaker 01

  Venezuela.

• 1:10:57Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:10:58Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:10:59Jocko Willink?

  So she's got an interesting viewpoint on the way things go down from a governmental perspective?

• 1:11:04Speaker 01

  Yes, she does.

• 1:11:05Jocko Willink?

  You see what happened to her?

• 1:11:07Speaker 01

  No, she sees it's coming here, man. She sees it's coming here and, uh, um, yeah, we'll get into it later, I'm sure, but definitely the big push to do this thing that we're doing now.

• 1:11:17Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's gotta be crazy. Um, so you end up, so you end up getting married to her?

• 1:11:21Speaker 01

  Yep, uh, uh, yeah, we got married and, uh, you know, I was always trying to not get married because I liked exactly what I do because I was always in a platoon, you know, and, uh, um, and at this point, you know, um, still happy to be in a platoon. Our first, you know, first six months of marriage was all, you know, I was on a platoon. I was on deployment, uh, get back from that and...

• 1:11:48Speaker 01

  At that point, we still had training. At the teams. At the teams. And so Team Four, it used to just be rotate out, do a stint in training and then back. I mean, it was really a crazy quick handover. Team Four, you know, this is just before we started putting it to the groups. And Team Four said, no, you're in training for 18 months. Which is right, I didn't have to like it, you know. So I was in training and MAR Ops. I was like, you know, and diving. I was like, not what I want, but I made, what I ended up doing with it is training it into,

• 1:12:29Speaker 01

  you know, even though we had turnover, which was, you know, minimal turnover in platoons back then too. So we had a lot of folks could just do things, you know, you could do Ops right at the beginning of platoon workup. It wasn't going to be perfect, but they'd figure it out. So I took MAR Ops and basically we ended up doing some down pilots with it and other things. We, you know, it was any five and they just needed somebody in there they could, you know, because there wasn't any live fire in it, although I did end up putting it in there. With Pat, the guy running the diving portion. You know, we were doing some sniper shots with diving our gear and doing some pretty complicated.

• 1:13:14Speaker 01

  You know, we'd get the Coast Guard involved or the auxiliary, which really is your personal boat. You know, a bunch of older dudes that just want to do good with their personal boat. And doing indigenous, you know, we had a blast doing down to North Carolina and doing a live fire shot, you know, in town, you know, two E5s. You had to bring us a chief onboard to certify the shot was good and safe and all that stuff. But we were just, you know. Yeah, it's awesome. It was good, you know, made, you know, Admiral Winters got involved with it. He was the captain, the team captain at the time and he loved it and he loved the brief because I was always doing these curveballs and they're just not, not straight on.

• 1:13:56Speaker 01

  You get to have a happy, successful training mission, you know, there's always a curveball and I.

• 1:14:02Speaker 01

  He wanted, you know, I briefed it that way and we did it that way and he actually had his brother who's a, I think, Navy pilot, you know, a 14 pilot at the time, I think. Be the down pilot for us one time, you know, we're doing a bunch of stuff out in town. Um, instead of just around the base and, you know, turning rectangles and triangles out in the ocean. We actually were doing ops. We went out to Ches Light, you know, over the horizon, launched off the whole piece, uh, PCs. And over the horizon, over the beach into Back Bay and all of 75 nautical miles.

• 1:14:43Speaker 01

  And actually did a pilot recovery in the intercoastal waterways on a piece of property that I was gonna buy. And then later on a property that I bought, um, had him do reconnaissance on it, um, and, uh, just tried to, you know, um. It wasn't gonna be regular old mar ops.

• 1:15:01Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's what it takes is guys that are gonna take the training and just step it up to the next level. It's always what's awesome about the team.

• 1:15:07Speaker 01

  And the next folks took it even higher than that from me. And that's the idea, you know, always better, better, better. Uh, without getting too many crazy drift into it.

• 1:15:17Jocko Willink?

  Then you end up, you end up going to DLI, right?

• 1:15:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Uh, my shoulders were getting really bad. Um, you know, I literally couldn't move, you know, like refrigerator magnets around anymore. And, uh, so I went out there and rehabbed, you know, that was the idea. Rehab's right there on the base.

• 1:15:33Jocko Willink?

  Did you have to get surgery?

• 1:15:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I, I, I didn't get, yeah, they wouldn't do it. Um, I wanted to do it right off that deployment. And, um, they wouldn't do it. They wanted me to do rehab first. And I got orders DLI for the basic and the intermediate. And I went out there with, this is 97 ish, uh, eight, something like that. Um, and, uh, um.

• 1:15:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, taking her out there without fast computers and these, you know, phones you can talk to to translate for you. I mean, DLI is six and a half hours of Spanish a day, every day, um, and four hours of homework a night. Uh, and, uh, legit. I mean, I can, I can speak. And definitely with, you know, my mother-in-law living in her house at some various points and father-in-law, I mean, I got it down. And

• 1:16:24Jocko Willink?

  Would your wife speak Spanish to you all, all the time when you got home from DLI?

• 1:16:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, so she spoke better English, uh, when we met than I spoke Spanish. So our natural language together was English. Um, it was kind of like the go-to when my brain got tired. But, but, uh, yeah, for the most part, I could say, hey, how do you say this? You know, uh, instead of, you know, um, looking it up in the dictionary and figuring out how to, because you couldn't, right now, you just talk to your phone and it'll tell you. So, so that was, and that was cool. It takes you about four months to get it to click where you can actually go out and, and see, you know, um, yeah, Monterey and everything else out there. Um, but man, that, that was a great experience. And it was just us, no kids, you know, us and a dog.

• 1:17:11Jocko Willink?

  When you're speak, when you're speaking Spanish now, do you think in Spanish?

• 1:17:13Speaker 01

  I can, yeah, yeah. I don't, I don't speak it as much as I used to. I am, we're, right now, my mother-in-law's living with us, so it's, it's back in the game again. Uh, because it

• 1:17:24Jocko Willink?

  Does she speak any English?

• 1:17:25Speaker 01

  She does. It's just, it's never clicked with her, you know? Um, she's older and, uh, she's always taking the, the classes. I mean, genuine effort. It's just not clicking, you know? Um, but she can, and she can get along. But she wants her brain to rest, you know? If, if you go, when you go to a foreign country a, and you are trying to speak in their language, uh, to whatever degree you can, it's tiring. Um, and, uh, I mean, I've, I can speak, you know, to the cabo, to the corporal, and I can speak to the, you know, uh, Secretary of State, uh, in Spanish, you know, and a half, you know? So it's varying degrees of Spanish, you know? Uh, what's the, what do you say? Ministerio de Justicia

• 1:18:10Speaker 01

  y Gobierno. It's like the Secretary of State and Secretary of, uh, Justice, uh, all wrapped into one dude. And, you know, as a chief, um, you get to talk to these folks and you're talking about how to develop, you know, ranges in Panama or wherever. But man, at the end of the day, your brain is tired. Uh, cause all the colloquialisms for the different countries. Um, they all come into play. You say one thing in one country that that means something else in another, another country. And you can get yourself in trouble. You know, but, but it's a whole different animal. Once you get to speak. Uh, but uh.

• 1:18:47Jocko Willink?

  So the total time at DLI was, how, what was the total time at DLI learning Spanish?

• 1:18:51Speaker 01

  Uh, 10 months. Yeah, I graduated the, the basic class early to, cause the intermediate class was, was gonna overlap. And so I jumped into that. And then, uh, um, again, it's just us two and, and a dog and a cat eventually. Uh, and, uh, yeah, um, drove back across the country. Um, and, uh, said, hey, my shoulders are trashed. So we cut on, uh, cut on both shoulders, seven weeks apart. Um, just as soon as I gained enough function with, uh, my left hand, um, you know, they did the right one or whichever one it was. Um, and I've had it tuned up since. I had another one done a few years ago.

• 1:19:34Speaker 01

  Um, yeah, it's a, it's an ongoing problem.

• 1:19:38Jocko Willink?

  And we're, and then obviously you go back to team four after you get done with.

• 1:19:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, I went back to team four, um, and, uh, yeah, I went into, uh.

• 1:19:47Jocko Willink?

  And you're a chief now?

• 1:19:48Speaker 01

  No, uh, no, um.

• 1:19:51Jocko Willink?

  First class maybe?

• 1:19:52Speaker 01

  First class.

• 1:19:53Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:19:53Speaker 01

  No, second class. I was not.

• 1:19:55Jocko Willink?

  Not a rate grabber.

• 1:19:56Speaker 01

  I was not a, I, I was happy where I was. I mean, I, it was, uh, um, happy with the leadership, you know, and, uh, uh, not always completely happy, but, uh, I always say it, um, yeah, you know, you really shouldn't be, if you're happy with what's going on, hey, uh, and it's working, you're a team. Um, be happy with it. Uh, but when you finally decide at the end that you're not happy with it, it's kinda too late.

• 1:20:22Jocko Willink?

  So you're an E5 and now you go back to this team four.

• 1:20:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:20:27Jocko Willink?

  And then jumping into another platoon. You shoulders healed, healed up enough?

• 1:20:31Speaker 01

  Um. So I was in Echo Platoon, knowing that I was gonna get the surgery. They were a CD counter drug platoon, you know, doing stuff mostly in the Caribbean. And the Mass Chief said, "Yeah, hey, we broke you, we'll fix you." And it was just with the idea, "Hey, you know, head squared away, he'll do the paperwork, whatever, stick in the background." I got the surgeries done, you get a month convalescent leave, and I, you know, I literally, because I did the surgeries without any anesthesia, just the nerve block, off the table, and went to the team, you know, to give them whatever paperwork, check them, I was just,

• 1:21:13Speaker 01

  you know, I was excited that the chief said that, and I never took leave. I just wanted to get signed up to start my physical therapy. I did physical therapy twice a day at work. Our medical's right in the middle of the compound, and I'd get a full session, and then I would get like a partial session. And then I brought my wife in, they taught her how to do all the exercises. I built a pulley at home, you know, to pull my arm up and down. I built a finger board so you can climb the wall with your fingers. And, I mean, six months, you know, I did the PRT.

• 1:21:53Speaker 01

  And legit, though, you know, they cut, so they did a fully open, they did rock blazes, the same week, same doctor, and they did his, they scoped his. But mine were pretty much kinda collarbones were tent stakes and, you know, kinda big pieces of cauliflower, so you wanted to get his big hands in there and trim them down. They remove your deltoid. And I'm awake, and they have a Makita drill. Check.

• 1:22:23Speaker 01

  And they drill two holes at 90 degrees to each other and then lasso that thing and tie your deltoid back down. Um, so, so it's because they want to get in there and see it all. And six months later, uh, PRT with, with, uh, you know, uh, a very stern mass chief there that's very strict on pull-ups. Um, I, uh, yeah, 26 pull-ups, 105 push-ups, the whole swim, everything.

• 1:22:50Jocko Willink?

  So you were pretty much good to go, six months later?

• 1:22:53Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, I was tuned up and ready to go. Uh, and, uh, yeah, I ended the platoon, you know, I, I even built, uh, uh, before the, all the cool Conex box workout boxes. I, uh, went over to SDV and got them to weld some stuff up, weld a bench that would collapse up and fit in one of those, uh, ISU 90s.

• 1:23:13Jocko Willink?

  Nice.

• 1:23:13Speaker 01

  You know, built a pull-up part to go across the, uh, the doors when you open it. Uh, and, uh,

• 1:23:19Jocko Willink?

  You should have patented that stuff.

• 1:23:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, buddy. Hey, you know, team guys are pretty innovative, you know?

• 1:23:24Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:23:24Speaker 01

  Uh, Dane, a guy in my suckle platoon, you know, he kinda in- invented, uh, the, the Camelback, you know?

• 1:23:32Jocko Willink?

  What did he use, like an IV bag or something?

• 1:23:34Speaker 01

  He used, uh, a, uh, two-quart collapsible canteen and an IV, uh, tube, you know, and had it on his back. Uh, but hey, you know, you can, it's cool to come up with the idea. There's innovation, you know, in- inventive is an innovation. You gotta get it to market.

• 1:23:50Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, well, there's, yeah, there's execution too.

• 1:23:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:52Jocko Willink?

  You gotta be able to actually do it.

• 1:23:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:54Jocko Willink?

  Actually make it happen.

• 1:23:54Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:23:55Jocko Willink?

  I always, you know, um, this sounds so obvious now, but I was a radioman, right?

• 1:24:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:24:02Jocko Willink?

  And so when I'm carrying the radio, I'd have my little flashlights and do regular double A flashlights, little double A flashlights.

• 1:24:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:24:08Jocko Willink?

  You put the red lens over them, you tape them all up, so you'd be like, like a little pin, like a little pinhole of light.

• 1:24:13Speaker 01

  Right, right, right, right.

• 1:24:14Jocko Willink?

  But still, you gotta worry about the batteries. I mean, you're, do, go like on a four-day recon, you, your batteries are gonna, so it's a pain. And I remember looking at the pilots with their lip lights, just the little LEDs.

• 1:24:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:24:27Jocko Willink?

  I'm thinking, wow, I wonder what that thing is. And then by the time the war started, someone made those little just LED click flashlights.

• 1:24:35Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:24:35Jocko Willink?

  I was like, oh, that's the smartest thing ever.

• 1:24:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:24:38Jocko Willink?

  And I had two ideas in my freaking head and they didn't.

• 1:24:44Jocko Willink?

  Connect together to say, hey, man, it's real obvious. Here's a cool little flashlight you could use and, and make it into like something everybody could carry.

• 1:24:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, until, until somebody comes up with a limpet backpack. Team guys were swimming with this bomb with magnets on their, in their hands. You know, I've seen the drawings of that. You know, Rico, um, he, uh, uh, and I think you know who I'm talking about. You know, he, uh, uh, invented the limpet backpack. Simple idea, you know, uh, this thing's a backpack that with a metal plate in it that you stuck this limpet explosive mine on it. You would swim with it on your back.

• 1:25:24Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it seems so obvious.

• 1:25:25Speaker 01

  So obvious because somebody invented it.

• 1:25:27Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Uh, the chest seal, the Asherman chest seal, this team guy.

• 1:25:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:25:31Jocko Willink?

  Rick Asherman, yeah, made this thing that everybody carries now. And it seems kind of obvious, but you know, it's.

• 1:25:38Speaker 01

  Everybody was happy with a glove.

• 1:25:39Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:40Speaker 01

  You know.

• 1:25:40Jocko Willink?

  Or your ID card.

• 1:25:41Speaker 01

  Your ID card.

• 1:25:42Jocko Willink?

  Pull your ID card.

• 1:25:43Speaker 01

  That's what I always taught as an EMT.

• 1:25:44Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, what a brilliant thing.

• 1:25:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:25:48Jocko Willink?

  Not everybody comes up, well, sometimes you come up with a great idea. So you'd say you made your ISU 90, you're, you're out there, you're ready to work out of a box.

• 1:25:56Speaker 01

  Yep. And, uh, you know, back with a platoon again, you know, tuned up and, uh.

• 1:26:01Jocko Willink?

  And you guys are doing counter drug. What was that deployment like?

• 1:26:05Speaker 01

  So was it just a bunch of little deployments? Uh, um, they had the CD money, you know, and then you named everything you bought was a counter drug stapler, you know, a car.

• 1:26:16Speaker 01

  You know, it's a different pot of money.

• 1:26:17Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 1:26:18Speaker 01

  And you're going down and.

• 1:26:19Jocko Willink?

  You doing the recons? What are you doing?

• 1:26:21Speaker 01

  No, we're, we're just working with the locals. Uh, it is, it's really fit for an internal defense, really just getting them tuned up and, and huge, some huge exercises. Uh, like we would island hop for some of them. And, uh, you know, do you know the Navy, uh, the Army has more commissioned ships than the Navy. Uh, which is pretty wild. The, our Army's a big machine, you know.

• 1:26:44Jocko Willink?

  Is it still like that?

• 1:26:47Speaker 01

  I don't know. Someone said it's not, uh, and I no desire to confirm it or not, but it's just a wild stat. They have more helicopters than the air force.

• 1:26:54Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 1:26:55Speaker 01

  I mean, they're a monster.

• 1:26:56Jocko Willink?

  They're a monster.

• 1:26:56Speaker 01

  They're huge, uh, the big green machine. So we would island hop, um.

• 1:27:02Speaker 01

  On their LSU 2000, just a big giant landing craft. And we'd get off there and go stay in a hotel and go teach, you know, and then another year we went to Belize and they had us staying in the middle of a soccer field with countries, you know, and a line of outhouses, not as nice. Belize, the islands, you know, vacation land inland, different animal. And that was wild, you know, there were some countries that did not want to be there. They just wanted the gear and they weren't there because they were told and, you know, that was like a hurricane disaster, giant exercise where, you know, terrorists take

• 1:27:46Speaker 01

  over that local school while, you know, everything's going on and huge monster exercise. My first, my first bout with killer bees, you know. Have you ever done, seen a swarm of killer bees?

• 1:28:01Jocko Willink?

  I think I've, no, actually, no, I've, I've driven, remember in San Diego for a while, Echo Charles, there was like bees, like, I've driven through some swarms of bees, you know, and I don't know if it was quite the murder wasp or whatever those things were, but no, I've not dealt with actual legit killer bees, no.

• 1:28:20Speaker 01

  Cloud just coming across and, yeah, one guy just screamed, get in the vehicle or lay down flat. And this cloud came over the entire field and then just went away. It was the craziest thing.

• 1:28:33Jocko Willink?

  Did anyone get attacked?

• 1:28:35Speaker 01

  No one got hit significant that I remember. It was just the weirdest thing, but that happened.

• 1:28:40Jocko Willink?

  So they weren't really living up to their rep?

• 1:28:42Speaker 01

  No, we were in, we were in Colombia once and, and actually doing, you know, kind of something, you know, going in, you know, and.

• 1:28:56Speaker 01

  The locals sat down on a hive, an underground, you know, ground hive, and jumped up and ran and left all their guns. And I don't, you know, literally, I mean, it was horrible. It was a cloud again. And, uh, um, and we're in a bad spot, actually. You can't be without your gun. Uh, and, uh, so I've got- Unless you're getting attacked by bees, then you said, hell.

• 1:29:23Speaker 01

  But it's also where these guys live. Yeah. You know, I mean, it's just, um, yeah, just outside of Cartagena. Um, we're, you know, they, they take the, the mothership down that's, you know, it's a sandbagged, big giant ferry, uh, and they take it down and in and then go in and, uh, um, it's bad guy land. Don't drop a gun. But they did. Uh, and so I've got my beekeeper's hat that I, you know, when you want to relax in the jungle, um, you throw that beekeeper's hat on. It's your turn to relax. It's so nice. Yeah. Uh, don't like breathing the air back in on me, but hey, I'll take it. You know, and I've got my gloves and I got the, you know, um, the tips cut off of, uh, um,

• 1:30:04Speaker 01

  index finger and thumb and, and middle finger. And so Ed's gonna go get their guns. And I, I've got my hands clenched, hiding those little exposures. As soon as I reached out to grab one of the rifles, um, I got whack, whack, whack, whack. It was a crate. They are, they are just honed in. And we smoked the area too, to kind of try and calm them down. The idea was, I don't know how much it worked, but, uh, yeah, legit. Not cool.

• 1:30:35Speaker 01

  So what happens you get done with that platoon? So, um, I gotta fix my air, you know, uh, and I'm going, I'm going back to green team. And, uh, yeah, a lot going on in the household at that time. Um, I was building a house. Uh, I had drafting in like a half a semester in ninth grade. So I drew the complete plans to a house. Um, and, uh, Yeah, um, not a great plan. Uh, the, the house plan was great. The green team plan, not so much? Not, not at the same time. We know her dad was sick in the house. So we had our, our first child, um, you know, was, was being born all at the same time.

• 1:31:17Speaker 01

  And, uh, you know, we're, we're out at, at Shaw's doing a CQB and, um, you know, everybody's taking a nap and I'm talking to the plumber who's trying to put a bathroom in the closet, you know, literally, you know, uh, you know. The city held us up back because, you know, um, the city employees disagreed with the guy with PhD in dirt and said the septic field had to be this. And so it held everything back. Uh, and I'm doing this. I got a hundred and ten days leave that I took to do this thing and I'm doing it in, in blocks, you know, I'm relinquishing, um, you know, what I'm doing, uh, at Silting Four and, um,

• 1:31:59Speaker 01

  it, it just, you know, set a trip up, do the trip, take some, take two weeks of leave, uh, and just knocking it out. Uh, cause I'm talking, I'm digging the foundation. Um, you know, uh, you know, I've cut trees down, milled the trees. I built the cabinets. I built from scratch, the stairwell, you know, all, all the cabinets, all the window trim on the second, first and second floor. Um, it cost a hundred and eighty ish thousand to build it and, uh, it appraised for seven twenty. Uh, sold it the next year when I'm up in, uh, um, or several years later. Um, so I refinanced it. Uh, when I moved to Maine, cause I didn't want to have two home loans and, uh,

• 1:32:42Speaker 01

  yeah, so I did the refi for seven twenty, sold it the next year for six, ten. Uh, put it on the market that day and sold in a, in a day, half a day. Um, so I did very well with the house. But smashing everything together, green team and the sun, you know, Tommy being born and, and, um, yeah. I went home to see him, be actually heard his birth over the phone and then flew, uh, into, uh, you know, make sure everything's all good. I was supposed to try and be there, uh, but on the plane, you know, pre nine eleven. Uh, yeah, not a great plan.

• 1:33:20Speaker 01

  But it worked out.

• 1:33:21Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So where'd you go after that?

• 1:33:23Speaker 01

  Uh, SDV two.

• 1:33:24Jocko Willink?

  Did you want to go to SDV?

• 1:33:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. We were told we were going to be the snipers for all group two. And, uh, and, uh, yeah, you said you heard that too. Got to tell all the group two first.

• 1:33:39Jocko Willink?

  All kinds of interesting things.

• 1:33:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. Uh, you know, SDV is awesome. Went to the SDV school, uh, um, which everybody there gets qualified to, uh, to drive that and, uh, uh, even though the plan was to be in the back just to get out of it and go do something and come back. But, uh, need to go to the school, learn, learn all of that.

• 1:34:01Speaker 01

  I did a platoon there, you know, the war kicked off. And, uh, we ended up, no one from the east coast was going, you know, uh, uh, and we deployed with team two. And I think they sent a squad, you know, uh, at, at four, they sent a squad to Afghanistan. And, uh, no one was going, um, and we went to Kosovo and we were doing reconnaissance there. Um, that, that was, some of it was a little sketchy. We're getting to use some cameras and do some things. We were looking for some specific people. You know, some of it was walking around town, plainclothed, uh, which, you know, we really hadn't had anything at, at that point to just be

• 1:34:41Speaker 01

  a team guy, you know, in a foreign country, you know, uh, that was easy enough and really just.

• 1:34:47Jocko Willink?

  Were, were you at SDV when, when September 11th happened?

• 1:34:51Speaker 01

  Yes. Uh, 600 yard line, getting out of the van at sniper school.

• 1:34:57Speaker 01

  And that.

• 1:34:57Jocko Willink?

  You, you were going through sniper school?

• 1:35:00Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:35:01Jocko Willink?

  So when you heard that SDV was going to be a sniper's for everybody, you said, oh, if I go there, I can go to sniper school?

• 1:35:07Speaker 01

  Like I said, you will go to sniper school, um, right away and.

• 1:35:11Jocko Willink?

  That's cool.

• 1:35:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, it was, I mean, sniper school, I won't say it was easy, uh, cause it's not, uh, it's very difficult, but our workups at team four were basically a lot of it was, especially the, the basic warfare part, um, was mini sniper school. Really good marksmen's really getting after it, you know, the month of, uh, of field craft, you know, uh, and then another month of land warfare, and then you get it all over again, back, going back into the jungle. Um, that, that field craft that you needed sniper school was all there. All, all the math was there for the shooting. You know, it was all taught to us over and over and over and over again. So, um, yeah. I missed Honor Man by half a point.

• 1:35:53Jocko Willink?

  For sniper school?

• 1:35:54Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:35:56Jocko Willink?

  That's a bummer.

• 1:35:59Speaker 01

  Yep, uh, and, uh, you know, it was, uh, yeah, a little bit of love hate relationship there because I was always trying to get, um, the guys on the reconnaissance side more reconnaissance work and, and not STV support stuff, you know, um, so then I became the LPO for all of it, you know, the whole task unit and I had to shift and be nice to everybody. You know, when you're, you, you, you fight for your squad, you fight for your opportunity.

• 1:36:31Jocko Willink?

  So you were like a recce squad, squad?

• 1:36:33Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:36:33Jocko Willink?

  You were the LPO, the recce squad at first?

• 1:36:35Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:36:35Jocko Willink?

  And then you became the LPO of everything?

• 1:36:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, the whole task unit and, uh, that was a good shift too.

• 1:36:41Jocko Willink?

  Did you guys go on deployment somewhere?

• 1:36:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, we went to Spain, uh, and from Spain, we went to Kosovo, uh, you know, for whatever it was, a couple of months, uh, just doing reconnaissance.

• 1:36:51Jocko Willink?

  So this is post September 11th?

• 1:36:53Speaker 01

  Post September 11th.

• 1:36:54Jocko Willink?

  So you're freaking

• 1:36:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:36:56Jocko Willink?

  Chomping at the bit?

• 1:36:57Speaker 01

  Like, I went back to a team to, you know, go help out where help was needed and, uh, that should have been, uh, where the war was, uh, and, uh, it was not happening, it wasn't happening for the East Coast for a while, the onesies, twosies. Um, and then, uh, then, then, uh, a buddy of mine was running the sniper school, uh, uh, solid stone. Um, he said, yep, you come here and we will send you over as soon as an opportunity, you know? Uh, so I went, went, um, you know, be the scout course manager and eventually the sniper course manager.

• 1:37:32Jocko Willink?

  Oh, right on.

• 1:37:33Speaker 01

  Managed the compound. Uh, and yeah, first opportunity, you know, deployed, uh, to Afghanistan, took my whole, you know, crazy sniper suite with me and, uh,

• 1:37:43Jocko Willink?

  Thirty-seven weapons.

• 1:37:46Speaker 01

  Hey, it's, you know, yeah, you're, you're, you're Mark 11, you're Mark 12, you're, you know, you're, you're 10 inch upper, you're, you're 16 inch upper, your 300 windbag, your 50 cal sniper rifle, you know, yeah, your freaking, your Mark 23, uh, yeah, name something else.

• 1:38:02Jocko Willink?

  And what'd you, what, who'd you attach to when you got over there?

• 1:38:05Speaker 01

  SEAL Team 2 and the Siege of Sotaf.

• 1:38:07Jocko Willink?

  Right on.

• 1:38:07Speaker 01

  You know, and I would just try and get out on everything I could get out on, uh, you know, I ended up. And I'm doing a lot of briefing too, you know, it wasn't as, you know, cool as what I, you know, was expecting, but uh.

• 1:38:18Jocko Willink?

  You should have stayed in E5 is what you were thinking?

• 1:38:20Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, yeah, uh, it was, uh, you know, um, but you know, I, I learned a ton, uh, and, uh, you know, it was a happy to get out there and support and be part of it and, uh, it's, it's a wildlife experience, you know, um, but, uh, yeah, I came back from that and, uh, finished up at, at, at Sniper's, I'll tell you what, teaching folks and, and, you know, working with the cadre, that, that's a wild, wild experience too, because our Sniper's School is, is legit.

• 1:38:54Jocko Willink?

  Our Sniper's School is awesome.

• 1:38:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, uh, and then.

• 1:38:56Jocko Willink?

  And our Snipers are awesome.

• 1:38:58Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, no, uh, you know, Brian Sargent came on board, you know, uh, shortly after I got back, uh, and took over the, uh, Sniper's School and, uh, that was awesome. We just take it, took it to crazy levels. Um, we were getting some 100% graduation rates, which had never been done before. Usually lose 10% per the major graded evolutions and we were.

• 1:39:21Jocko Willink?

  How'd you guys get it to 100%?

• 1:39:23Speaker 01

  We learned how to teach better and, uh, we, we made sure the cadre was on the students, uh, you know, but we learned how to talk, you know, uh, you know, don't think I'm being soft.

• 1:39:34Jocko Willink?

  I, listen, I'm gonna tell you right now, Brian Sargent's one of my, you know, longest friends in the teams.

• 1:39:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:39:41Jocko Willink?

  And I know for a fact, he was not being soft on shit. He's not soft on anything. He's not soft on himself and he's not soft on anybody else. So if he's saying somebody did it, they did it 100%.

• 1:39:52Speaker 01

  And, and, uh, yeah, learning, learning how to talk to people right, you know, assigning the right instructor, the right students, and we had the one-eyed sniper, you know, uh.

• 1:40:01Jocko Willink?

  Adam Brown?

• 1:40:02Speaker 01

  Adam Brown got, got shot in his dominant eye. And what does this team guy decide to do when he gets shot in his dominant shooting eye? I'm gonna go to sniper school. Let's see if they're trying to get his eye healed, you know. And so we'd teach him how to shoot left-handed. Hydro was became his, you know, who's a freak of a human, fighting brain cancer right now. But freak of a human and a crazy instructor. And taught the dude to shoot iron sights, left-handed and smoked it. But he cleaned the, um, the shooting test, you know, with the scoped rifles, both of them, I believe. That's awesome.

• 1:40:45Speaker 01

  You know, you're talking out to a thousand yards, um, just pinging on steel. Uh, it's incredible to watch and, and you know, snaps and movers out to 800 yards. Um, with a 300 Win Mag at the time. It was incredible, you know, but, but Patch, you know, Hydro found what, what he needed to say, how he needed to say it to him. You know, um, and Hydro's always, um, someone that's on top of the students too. You know, he was not gonna leave them and go have a sidebar with a couple of instructors, figure out what they're gonna do tonight. Yeah. Um, you know, and, and the instructors, you know, a lot of them really wanted to, you know, it's not as hard as it was when I was in. And I go, yeah, dude, it's harder. Um, you're just instructing better.

• 1:41:28Speaker 01

  And, uh, so we, we made up the, uh, um, this test, uh, that wasn't graded, but we, we were under the training command, you get three strikes. And we don't think that's right for sniper school. Cause you can't have a third, third strike in a sniper shot. And so we had, you know, a guy that made it, you know, his third, third time every time. We made up an exercise, basically brief the students in the morning, hey, pull your rifles out. This is what you're doing. We're gonna put you in a, an urban hide. And the base was awesome. The base worked with us so incredible on everything. I had a 20-foot bullet trap made on a trailer, six and a half foot tall.

• 1:42:13Speaker 01

  Um, I made two of them, um, that you could back together, get a 40-foot runner. So I would drive around the base and made all the SDVs worked out, SDZ, SDZ's worked out. Um, where, uh,

• 1:42:28Speaker 01

  They would shoot a blank. I would back the trailer up to where that blank was shot. And I would go stand next to the target and load a live round. And I would stand there with my binos, three, two, one, execute. And so we had to have trust that student would not hit the windowsill, not hit the fence of the tree that he was weak. This was short shots, 100, 150 yards. I mean sniper easy shots, but not when you're under pressure. And not whatever you did the night before, the day before.

• 1:43:02Speaker 01

  But we wanted to be able to tell, you know, parent command, say, hey, yeah, he did. And he passed everything, but let's, let's, you know, let's take a second look at it. He's not safe enough to do this evolution. And so I don't know where that went. We did it when I was there. I don't know where it went to after that.

• 1:43:18Jocko Willink?

  Where are you standing with your binos as this shot's going?

• 1:43:20Speaker 01

  Right next to the target.

• 1:43:21Jocko Willink?

  Like, like two feet away from the target?

• 1:43:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:43:24Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's a high level of trust right there.

• 1:43:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, I did it all day.

• 1:43:29Speaker 01

  They're my students.

• 1:43:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and our snipers are freaking awesome, man.

• 1:43:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, and you're not, I mean, so these guys are already qualified on the weapons at this point. They've got some stocks to do, and you know, they got like 50 cal week to do. They're really qualified on the weapon. This is whether the question was,

• 1:43:46Speaker 01

  can that guy, when we want him to do it, make the shot first time every time? You know, because that's what you want for our snipers. But they were my students. And so I had to have the confidence in them that they would do it. And I did. And it was, yeah, I don't know, sniper schools, you know, morphed throughout the years. It's all kind of just about the same. Everybody tries to take it up to another notch and make it better. You're always fighting with the parent command that wants more snipers through. And, you know, but we're always doing it without lowering the standard.

• 1:44:22Jocko Willink?

  I mean, obviously, I had 13 snipers when I was a task unit commander. And like, what a blessing from God to have 13 snipers in the Battle of Ramadi. I mean, you just can't, you just can't ask for anything else. So, and the performance was epic, you know, the way the guys shot. I mean, I had guys take shots at, at enemy fighters, holding children.

• 1:44:48Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:44:49Jocko Willink?

  You know, like, and, and using children as human shields.

• 1:44:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:44:54Jocko Willink?

  And those kind of shots, shots through windows, through vehicle windows and just hitting the driver. And no one else in the vehicle, like, just awesome, unbelievable professionalism from the snipers. It was just outstanding. And, you know, I always, when you start, when you look at the schools that we run, it's what you talked about earlier. You know, when you run MAROPs, you're like, hey, how can I take this next level? How can we do a little bit better? How can I get more people more squared away? When you look at SEAL breachers, like, the breaching schools, just awesome. The sniper school is awesome. Just, anything that you take a SEAL and you put them, you let us run a course. It's just gonna get good. We're just gonna get better. It's just constantly trying to improve. And that's such a benefit for our community. It's one of the best things about our community.

• 1:45:38Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, the idea that, um, the peer pressure, that you're not gonna let the standard drop. And that you are gonna provide something that they've never had before. And it, I mean, your reputation in the teams is all you have. I don't care what you did yesterday. You do something stupid today, everybody's gonna remember you for that. You know, and if you slack off and you get, you know, you make an easy training for, you know, jungle warfare. You're gonna get called on it. I mean, those trainings that we got, all of them, they've all been taken up another notch. And, uh, you know, the biggest challenge as a leader is to make sure they don't, you know, get out of the lane too much.

• 1:46:23Speaker 01

  That instructor drift.

• 1:46:24Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, making stuff a little bit too crazy. Kinda happen from time to time, you know?

• 1:46:31Jocko Willink?

  So you wrap up your time at sniper school. What's next?

• 1:46:35Speaker 01

  Um, then I'm off to, uh, off to Maine. Ah, you finally get, you finally get that goal. Well, I hadn't had shore duty in, you know, what became 21 years a little bit. Um, and so, uh, and I'm, I'm kind of broken at this point too, you know, uh, ton of weight gain, you know, couldn't figure that out. Like how much weight gained? I was up to 275 ish. Oh dang, what's that? Does that ish mean 283 or? Could be, you know, uh, it, I just couldn't figure it out. My, my gut quit working, the anthrax vaccine, you know, um, that was a series of six shots. And all of a sudden, like I can have one beer.

• 1:47:20Speaker 01

  Um, and I really didn't figure it out. We all went, we all went on the, the Atkins, the fatkins diet, I call it, you know? Um, and, uh, when we went to Kosovo and, uh, on that deployment. So I wasn't having any, uh, gluten, you know? And when we got back, we went to. And what, what affected the, did the Atkins diet have on you? Did you shred off a bunch of fat? We got crazy strong, um, and, uh, I didn't know what was going on at the time. So, and that was for several months. Did you lose fat though? On the Atkins diet? Atkins diet, probably. I just noticed we got really strong. Okay. Um, I mean, no real notice of, of losing crazy amounts of weight.

• 1:48:05Speaker 01

  Cause that's the purpose of that. I mean, that guy Atkins made that diet for people to lose weight. I lost fat, we grant, you know, we're eating meat and fat. Uh, not to say that we followed it very strictly as far as, I mean, the whole percentages and all that, um, like, um, for the keto diet, I'm, I'm like a keto kook and I'm rigid, uh, but definitely no bread, you know, no gluten, no beer, no nothing, no pasta. We go to Germany, um. And did you feel, so you feel good too? Feel good. Okay. Um, and then we go to Germany, the, you know, decompressed debrief. And how comes the hefeweizen?

• 1:48:44Speaker 01

  Out for some pasta and beers and bubbling in Germany and I didn't even make another restaurant. I just started going, heaving and it basically shuts my gut down. And it was years, we didn't, you know, I wouldn't got my gut checked out. Yeah, yeah, a little ulcer in there, you know. Yeah, still, I don't know, you know, couldn't figure it out. And I just kept throwing up all the damn time and gaining weight and I'm eating healthy. You know, I'm not drinking, I'm working out like a nut and I'm just puffing up, the joints are getting, you know, head's getting foggy.

• 1:49:21Jocko Willink?

  But at this point, you're eating, uh, normal food.

• 1:49:25Speaker 01

  Normal, regular, healthy, American diet, you know, meat and potatoes, salad, you know, pasta. Uh, you know, and just couldn't, but it's all healthy, a ton of fruit.

• 1:49:37Jocko Willink?

  And what are you walking around at right now, weight wise?

• 1:49:40Speaker 01

  Right now, 205.

• 1:49:41Jocko Willink?

  So you went, you were 70 pounds heavier than this.

• 1:49:44Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, plus, yeah.

• 1:49:46Jocko Willink?

  And this is when you get orders to go up to Maine?

• 1:49:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, yep, yep, I was, I was gonna stay warm.

• 1:49:51Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you were.

• 1:49:52Speaker 01

  There was extra layers. Uh, still, I mean, it's still strong, but the swelling started, you know, um, with the joints and everything like that, you know. I mean, I'm dumbbell pressing 145s. I mean, I was still freaky strong. Then that's, that's picking up off the ground, sitting back and then sitting back up again and sitting back in a rack, legit, you know, press.

• 1:50:16Jocko Willink?

  That's funny because I always dropped those, whatever. If we're over 120, they're getting dropped. I don't know. Maybe that's just me.

• 1:50:23Speaker 01

  Respect to the dumbbells.

• 1:50:24Jocko Willink?

  Okay, cool.

• 1:50:27Speaker 01

  And no, um, it wasn't till, I don't know, maybe, so, so we're talking 99, we got the anthrax vaccines. And they cut mine off at the fifth shot, they never gave me the sixth. They just stopped doing it because it was causing a lot of problems for a lot of people. Apparently it was a lawsuit too. A lot of aviators had to stop flying. But what it did to me.

• 1:50:50Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I don't know. I got it. No, no factor. I never noticed it.

• 1:50:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, so people are different, you know, and, uh,

• 1:50:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it definitely something there that caused something different for me.

• 1:51:03Speaker 01

  I think I got it when I went into boot camp though in 1990.

• 1:51:06Jocko Willink?

  Was it, is that possible?

• 1:51:08Speaker 01

  I don't think it was getting pushed then.

• 1:51:09Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:51:10Speaker 01

  It wasn't the same one that they were giving the farmers, you know.

• 1:51:13Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:51:13Speaker 01

  Dairy farmers used to get, or still get the anthrax vaccine, but not, apparently not this one.

• 1:51:18Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:51:19Speaker 01

  Uh, and, uh, once I figured it out, doc just said, hey, why don't you cut gluten out? Um, and this is 2012 timeframe. So I'm, I'm walking around gaining weight and getting sore, you know, crazy headaches. Uh, cut gluten out, bam, instantly lose 25 pounds.

• 1:51:39Jocko Willink?

  No kidding.

• 1:51:39Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, uh, kept on, you know, losing a little bit and then I'm, now I'm a keto kook. Uh, I mean, I'm strict, like there are, there's no, there's no pizza night, nothing. I don't substitute.

• 1:51:51Jocko Willink?

  Not even just ordering an, uh, extra meat pizza and just scraping the cheese, pepperoni and sausage off into a bowl and eating that? Cause I'm known to do that right there.

• 1:52:01Speaker 01

  Hey, that's all keto and that's good to go.

• 1:52:03Jocko Willink?

  I know, it's good to go.

• 1:52:04Speaker 01

  Yeah. I do the meat pizzas. Yeah. And, uh, you know, with, with a side of guac or something, you know?

• 1:52:11Jocko Willink?

  Let's do this.

• 1:52:12Speaker 01

  Butter in my coffee when I'm traveling instead of MCT oil. Figuring out your diet's huge.

• 1:52:16Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:16Speaker 01

  Um, you've got to figure out something, you know, I never stopped working out. Even though some things got, you know, caused me crazy headaches, I find something else to do. You know, find, you know, the, the blood flow restriction stuff, um, and some sort of suspension trainer. Um, that, that will fire you up, you know, you use less.

• 1:52:35Jocko Willink?

  The blood flow restriction training, that's the cat, was it Katsu, right?

• 1:52:38Speaker 01

  Katsu.

• 1:52:38Jocko Willink?

  Katsu, K A T S U U, right?

• 1:52:41Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 1:52:42Jocko Willink?

  It's like a little system. You put it on, it's like a really strong, uh, uh, what is that called? Blood pressure.

• 1:52:51Speaker 01

  Right, right, right, right.

• 1:52:52Jocko Willink?

  Cuff, narrow.

• 1:52:52Speaker 01

  That squeezes hard and cuts the blood flow off to your limb. The idea is you cut it by 80%.

• 1:52:59Jocko Willink?

  And then you work it.

• 1:53:00Speaker 01

  Right. And then you work out with, with 20% of the weight. So you're taking a load off your body, but you're still getting a hard, a mentally hard and physically hard workout. So, so you're not causing all that stress and damage and you're getting a legit workout. I mean, the thing I do is 30 minutes. I'll do some other stuff too, like with, with the Katsu bands, you know, you can do the rower for 20 minutes. Legit. You're hurting. Yeah. You, you mentally have to fight to finish. Especially your arms, cause you can, arms, you gotta what? You can cut the blood flow off, you know, your brachial arteries are easier to get to than your femoral's. Femoral's, you literally can't cut it off with a solid, real tourniquet.

• 1:53:44Speaker 01

  But you know, there's some training to go along with that, of course, you know, I mean, just don't go ahead and start, you know, cutting the blood flow off. You all know what you're doing. And my workout partner's awesome, Pat. Legit. I was his client first, you know, as, you know, taking care of my neck, taking care of my hip, you know, shoulder rehabs, hip and knee rehabs, and became my workout partner. And so I've got a pro that, that brought me into it, the blood flow restriction stuff. And there's crazy Doppler systems that, a lot of it was pre amputee. This one system, can't remember the name of it right now, but it's, it's four grand, you know, but it actually has a Doppler, tells you what your blood flow is. Oh, God.

• 1:54:27Speaker 01

  You know, he was thinking of bringing something on board for clients. But you have to, you really have to know that it's okay, cause the pain you're gonna feel in your arms, legit. And you question it, but if you have this Doppler, it says, oh, it's okay. You know, if you, if you do your capillary refill, you get three seconds, you know, then, then you're okay, you know? And you just gotta know you're not, it hurts, but you're not harming yourself. Yeah. Any workouts that cause questioning are good.

• 1:55:02Jocko Willink?

  Like that 20 to 20 rep squat workout that causes questioning of life and like whether you want to be, you know, I've been doing that workout where I'm literally questioning if I even want to be strong, if I even want to be a man. I'm just like, well, maybe I could just hang, hang up on everything, just call it good. I'm just going to become a whatever, some, you know, uh, take on a different course, a different path in my life.

• 1:55:24Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:55:25Jocko Willink?

  So workouts like that are good.

• 1:55:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, no. Yeah. I mean, you've got to do something. That's, that's like the greatest thing about, you have to have some little piece of adversity, you know, uh, and I don't care in Maine, you gotta go get the mail and you gotta, you know, and it's really cold outside.

• 1:55:39Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:40Speaker 01

  And, and you know, we got chickens or we had chickens. I'd like to get them again because kids got to get the eggs. You can come into the house when you get off the bus or you can go get the eggs and come in the house. But if you come in the house, you're still going to get the eggs and you gotta put your boots back on. And in the morning before you get on the bus, you gotta go change out, make sure the water's, um, you know, not frozen or and replace it.

• 1:56:05Jocko Willink?

  A little responsibility for them.

• 1:56:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. But it's a piece of adversity that's, you know, easy, easy to overcome. You gotta have something in your life that, that, uh, you know, makes you make decisions and, uh.

• 1:56:18Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So, so, so going back, you get this billet up to Maine, which for people don't know, probably wouldn't, why would you know this? There's a SERE School, Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape School up in Maine. And it's where the whole Navy.

• 1:56:32Speaker 01

  Is it just Navy?

• 1:56:33Jocko Willink?

  And Marine Corps. And then you get a couple, you know, uh, foreign nationals in there once in a while. But they come like, for instance, air crew, if you're a pilot or you're air crew, you gotta go up to this school and learn how to survive, how to evade, how to resist interrogation and how to escape. Uh, I know I went, when I went to SEAL Team One, when I was a new guy, the first thing they did was send you to SERE School. Great. I went to the one that's out here on the, on the west coast and very, very good training, very thorough training, uh, very cool training. But you ended up being an instructor up there at that school.

• 1:57:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:57:10Jocko Willink?

  And you show up there. What's cool about this school, kind of like being a BUDS instructor, which I was never a BUDS instructor, but you get a, you get a glimpse into human psychology.

• 1:57:19Speaker 01

  Oh, man.

• 1:57:19Jocko Willink?

  That, that, you know, I was talking to Andy Stumpf the other day. He was like debriefing me on, you know, he was a second phase dive and dive instructor at Bud's. And he, he could just know when he's doing pool comp on something, he had all these different, you know, he could just watch the way a person's moving their body and know exactly what they're gonna do. Oh, he's getting ready to bowl. Oh, he's good. He's gonna pass out. Oh, this guy's panicking. He, you just see it over and over again. And so same thing at Sears School. You're gonna watch people from a detached perspective, because you're an instructor. You're not all freaked out or engaged in it.

• 1:57:53Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:57:53Jocko Willink?

  And you get to see how they respond and you get to learn how to, well, the interrogation piece is huge as far as human interaction.

• 1:58:00Speaker 01

  Oh, wow. Everything. So we conduct training to 50 below zero. And just the idea of that for some, and we, we modify it. You, I mean, you don't just do the same thing.

• 1:58:12Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 1:58:12Speaker 01

  The instructor's huge responsibility. And you've got folks that have been cubicle warriors. They're pilots. They signed on to be a pilot or an air crew with, you know, a coachy seat on an airplane.

• 1:58:25Jocko Willink?

  They definitely like that.

• 1:58:26Speaker 01

  And, you know, you get some, you got some marine recon to go through, you know, used to get SEALs go through, still do.

• 1:58:34Speaker 01

  Like we've talked about, they got their own course now.

• 1:58:38Speaker 01

  And they're doing some things that are legit. You know, you're making a snow cave and that's where you're staying tonight. And you watch people. And this one, he was, you know, going through to be a C2 pilot. And he did not want to stay outside that night. And he was trying to sleep because you have these Adirondack shelters, which is actually gonna be colder and you're cramped in with all these other people. But there's, it's off the ground and there's no insulation under the floor. So you're just, you're gonna freeze. You make a snow cave and you're gonna be happy as happy gonna be. Your body's gonna warm it up. You just have to have the confidence to do that. And watching somebody try and slow roll it and I go, hey,

• 1:59:23Speaker 01

  tonight, you're sleeping here. Whether you get this done in the daytime or you get it done at night. You'll be happier. I'm doing you a favor. And but watching their, their minds work, watching people try and attach themselves to people so they can get through. You know, like, because there were still, still team guys going through. And, you know, people want to attach themselves to that team guy because they're going to drag them through. But if you can't do what that team guy's going to do, especially when you go on two man invasion.

• 1:59:58Speaker 01

  You know, it's, uh, yeah, it's, it's wild to see. And when they are in the captivity portion, you know, watching what happens.

• 2:00:09Speaker 01

  You know, either diamond people out and you don't need, if people really get into the problem and they really, I mean, there's a little made up language. You know, it's got like a hundred fifty words and they don't come out of character at all.

• 2:00:23Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:00:23Speaker 01

  The first time you see some of these people, because they hide them, they come into the back of the building. The students never see them in the classroom portion. And the first time they see them, they're in character and, uh, yeah, it's, it's.

• 2:00:35Jocko Willink?

  Were you guys doing the Eastern Bloc thing still?

• 2:00:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, man, they couldn't get away from it. You know, it's a vehicle, uh, but I was like.

• 2:00:44Jocko Willink?

  I was telling you this before.

• 2:00:45Speaker 01

  Wars going on right now.

• 2:00:46Jocko Willink?

  I was telling you, I mean, uh, the first, when I went to Sierra School and you get, you have to turn, if you don't get captured by a certain time, you gotta turn yourself in. They put me in the back of a truck, they pull us out, they put me against the wall. And this guy's like, they asked me a question and you know me, I'm freaking nineteen years old, you know, just got out of BUDs. And I'm just like, you know, what's this dude's gonna do to me? And I gave him some wise ass answer.

• 2:01:09Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:01:10Jocko Willink?

  He slapped me, he slapped me as hard as, as hard as he could. I mean, look, I've been punched, I've been slapped many times, but I've been punched in the face. This was as hard, you know, this was an open handed slap.

• 2:01:19Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:01:20Jocko Willink?

  And he did it like three or four more times. And I was like, okay, I guess I'm gonna have to freaking chill out a little bit because my bro right here is gonna be ready to get it on.

• 2:01:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, basically if you're getting some extra treatment, then, um, then you're not doing it right. Something, you know, because it's not about being tough.

• 2:01:39Jocko Willink?

  As well, from my case, I was, what I was not doing right was I was not being humble and respectful and treating the thing as, as if it was real. I was just like, whatever. Okay. Okay, a hundred percent, I'm in.

• 2:01:53Speaker 01

  There's, you know, the, the, the tough Marine mentality, you know, which is good to have, but you gotta know when to say, hey, um, that's not going to work in this situation. And, uh, using those tools and techniques, you know, to, um, be polite, you know, and, uh.

• 2:02:08Jocko Willink?

  Give me a rundown of interrogation techniques that you like.

• 2:02:11Speaker 01

  I like the nice guy interrogator. I said I wouldn't go do the hard side, you know. Basically, I taught the camping part first, you know, and then I went and did that deployment. We talked about, you know, I've never been away from, we get into that later, but I like the simple, soft sell approach, just talking to folks. And it's really the way you order questions, you know, that read technique where you really give somebody a reason why they did something they did wrong, kind of give them a way out, but leading them to admit to something they did wrong. It's, that soft sell is magic. It's really just

• 2:02:52Speaker 01

  a conversation. Cause I'd be like the first person that they've seen that's nice to them after they've, you know.

• 2:02:59Jocko Willink?

  Been slapped around and all of a sudden you're being cool, like, hey, I understand.

• 2:03:03Speaker 01

  I understand, you understand why, you know, you've been isolated and kept away from everybody. You heard probably the coughing, you know, so we have to keep you away from everybody and we had to take away all your stuff and, you know, make sure you're all clean and good. And, you know, and there's purposely a camera with a red light on it that they can see and they're admitting to different things. And it's, it's, it's really, it's wild to see. It's, it's way beyond what a lot of the instructors think it is. It's, it's how to get through roadblocks, how to talk yourself out of a ticket, it's how to, you know, it's, it's everyday instances. It's a job interview. It's, it's really sitting

• 2:03:46Speaker 01

  across the table right now and thinking slowly, you know, sometimes if I ask a question, I might swallow, take a drink of water so I could think for a half a second and, and come up with that, you know, better, politer answer. It's keeping that military bearing and not, you know, being, starting a fight, you know, that's, helps you out a crazy amount.

• 2:04:08Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, we've had some POWs on here.

• 2:04:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:04:11Jocko Willink?

  Mainly from, actually, I think all of them, all the POWs have from the Vietnam War. And it's incredible to hear their stories and what they went through.

• 2:04:19Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:04:19Jocko Willink?

  And they came back and put, injected their lessons learned into the SERE schools.

• 2:04:25Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 2:04:26Jocko Willink?

  And so that was awesome to get those lessons learned and just different breaking points, you know, how long someone can take it and, you know, everyone's gonna eventually break, but. You know, how much, you know, how long are you going to go? And even when they break, they give bad information or useless information and pretty heroic stuff there. Did you say you went on a deployment while you were at SERE school?

• 2:04:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, um, so originally I was going to go out the door with SEAL Team Two, um, and do my reenlistment there with them, uh, and get, you know, get it all happy and tax-free. And, um, and, uh, that got denied because I needed there at the school. You know, there's only a couple of SEALs there, um, and it really, you know, there's some Marines there too, but then the rest are all aircrew and pilots that that's not what they do for a living. So, um, and then later on, you know, I kind of made a little bit of better stink about it, a little better sales pitch to go, and I was going to go on deployment with SEAL Team Eight to Iraq. And it was all worked out. I was even going to stay there longer.

• 2:05:30Speaker 01

  I was going to really do some things SERE-related there, you know? Maybe not, but I was going to be in a task unit and I was bringing my snare.

• 2:05:39Jocko Willink?

  Well, I mean, we were capturing a lot of guys through, throughout the war and having, you know, at, at a point, we kind of transferred to having our SEAL, our own, well, not our own SEALs, but other SEALs do interrogations and do intel gathering. They were freaking great, man. They were awesome. So it was really good to have guys that were able to do that kind of stuff.

• 2:05:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it's, uh, and I probably wouldn't have been doing that, but actually working it out, you know, um, the pitch from our side of, of recovery. Um, but really I was just going to be working with a task unit and I was going to be an extra gun and, uh, work wherever, you know, um, working it out with, with the Command Master Chief.

• 2:06:18Jocko Willink?

  Have gun, will travel.

• 2:06:20Speaker 01

  Yep, and, uh, all worked out, ready to go. So I'll get, I'm on my way down to Virginia Beach and the civilian ops guy says, hey, we have this requirement in Columbia, you know, the, the agency guys got wrapped up down there and they're trying to get them out. Um, and we need a Spanish speaker. Okay, uh, so I was on my way down there, um, and they, they got, um, released.

• 2:06:53Speaker 01

  But I was already on my way down, so I went to go work with the Fronte Risa and was attached to Det South and stayed down there for four months. And that was pretty wild because I hadn't been to Panama since it closed. And went into the Darien, you know, just checking, you know, some things out and you see an entire boatload of Gateway computers going, making its way into the Darien. You can't miss those boxes, you know, the white and black boxes. And then you see a whole, you know, Cayuga, you know, dugout canoe load of empty El Panama, you know, beer

• 2:07:37Speaker 01

  coming back out. A lot goes on in the Darien Gap, you know, where it's really a national forest. You can't go in there. There's no vehicle traffic in there unless you're, you know, a narco terrorist. And so, yeah, there's definitely a ton that goes down there, a whole bunch of, I'll leave it at different things that get funneled through. And it was, it was really neat to see and be part of that and try and get the Fronte Risa online to, you know, help us out and keep things from coming north. So.

• 2:08:08Jocko Willink?

  And that ends up being your last deployment in the teams?

• 2:08:11Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then back up to, you know, back up to finish my time out at SER school. Ton to learn though, watching the different interaction with, you know, the Chinese that were down there, you know, getting their fingers into everything, you know. Yeah, you know, yeah, I'll leave it at that. There's definitely some, some work that needs to be done there.

• 2:08:38Jocko Willink?

  You see, then next up is retirement. And what do you plan to do when you retire? When, so this is now 2009, you're going to retire? Or you retire?

• 2:08:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. Chris, New Year's year 2009. Start the new year unemployed was the plan. Going to go Whittlewood in Maine. And I had, you know, nest egg settled up. I didn't need to work for a few years if I didn't need, want to, you know. And that never happened. You know, the calls started coming and I started doing some training back with the teams.

• 2:09:08Jocko Willink?

  Just contracting?

• 2:09:09Speaker 01

  Yeah. Working the Sid X's, work some different training pieces, ended up doing some, some research, test, development stuff. And then.

• 2:09:20Speaker 01

  Then ended up going to Yemen, um, uh, not with the teams, uh, contractor there and, you know, administrative, the security guy. Um, and that was pretty wild because that's, that's the, you know, AQAP, you know, uh, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, hot, hot spot. We were right in the hot spot of the hot spot. So really learning how to use my words because we didn't have a gun and you've got, you got to run around blowing up our wells. Um, and uh, it's, uh, the stories are pretty weird, uh, because they're that dumb. Everybody's got to understand they're all stoned. Everybody in, in Yemen, uh, chews cotton, you know,

• 2:10:03Speaker 01

  which is a hallucinogenic amphetamine, amphetamine. And they're all, you know, in the city, they start chewing it, you know, about four o'clock in the desert. They chew it earlier in the desert. Um, it's got a whole bunch of, uh, um, different fertilizers in it and it's, it's, it winds them up a little bit more. And so you try, you know, we don't want to get a, um, doing everything at the same time, all the time. You're leaving the gate, you know, um, but you try and get things done in the morning because they're wound up in the afternoon. And so that's different. And we've got three different facilities we're checking out. Um, trying to keep the oil flowing is the job. Your inner security is the tribe and

• 2:10:47Speaker 01

  the outer security and all the outposts are the Yemeni army and they hate each other. The Yemeni, Yemeni army has a drinking problem. They make their own hooch along with a cotton. Um, and, uh, the state department contract for pilots, pilot training, you will not chew cotton while flying. So that kind of sets the base of it that actually has to be written in a contract of, um, and you literally.

• 2:11:19Speaker 01

  We had millions of dollars of oil production slowed or stopped because they didn't get their tea and crackers and literally because the driver guards want their tea and crackers. Well, their cousin hijacked the truck that has the tea and crackers in it and took it back to the town, Behan, and, uh, um, well, tell your cousin to let it go and, uh, and eventually just let hem and ha on it for a while because it, the sharing agreement gets pushed to the right, um, and they're not really losing money, it's just delaying it, uh, and so you eventually resolve it, hey, well, we'll go ahead and give you money to buy your own

• 2:12:00Speaker 01

  tea and crackers and we'll get, you know, things going again. Eventually they say, okay, and then eventually they come around and say, yep, um, we're happy getting the raise and now we want our tea and crackers again. It's, uh, but you get run down in the desert by a guy who just got, his brother got drone in the desert because he's running around with Al Qaeda and, uh, his brother wants payback or his dad, uh, through his brother wants payback for, for his son. He wants his back pay because he used to work for the army, um, but he now he worked for Al Qaeda when he got, you know, got the drone strike, uh, and, and he wants back pay and medical benefits from the company because he used

• 2:12:43Speaker 01

  to work for the company also, but he was blowing up the pipeline, uh, and the wells, you know, one day he got it below the restrictor, the cutoff, uh, and so it wouldn't stop, you know, normally it'll just cut itself off, the, the, the fire. Um, so you gotta bring wild oil in at like four or five million a day. Damn. Um, yeah, uh, there's a bill, uh, and this guy runs you down in the desert and there were a couple of shots over your head, um, to, uh, it's kind of chest bump, you know, um, not really intended to shoot at you, but shoot at you pretty close, uh, and they

• 2:13:24Speaker 01

  outnumber us and they've got better firepower, uh, so you stop and you talk it out, you know, and, uh, you know, hey, we'll work on this and, you know, I make a fake glance in the air, they look like I'm looking for the drone, um, and, uh, my security guy is like their cousin. You know, but he's sworn to take care of me and it's legit. Uh, and there's two guys with belt fed, you know, RPKs and, and, uh,

• 2:13:54Speaker 01

  yeah, it, it's, you learn to use your words. Uh, it's serious school help with that and I'm doing it through an interpreter too. You know, um, Hilo pilot, uh, Hilo pilot has a stroke, um, that works for the oil company. Uh, cause they're spilorin', spilorin' up to 11,000 feet to get out of, uh, um, the range of the fire. Cause I'm there during the Arab Spring. And, um, and the guy has a stroke. Um, that later that day in the chow hall and they come finding me, you know, hey, Mr. Ed. Um, you know, uh, he just had a stroke. All right, let's load him up and, uh, you know, get one of our vehicles. He didn't work for us. He works for a separate company, um, that's not taking care of him like, I mean,

• 2:14:38Speaker 01

  those people are taking care of me and we're taking care of everybody. Um, and so load him up, take him to the hospital. Uh, I didn't go, um, you know, just provided what he needed. And then, uh, next day, uh, Mr. Ed, they're not letting us into the hospital. You know, it's for this free medical care, but you gotta bring your sheets and your food every day. And go out in town and get the medicine that they're prescribing for you and bring it back. Well, that day, um, President Sala got blown up, you know, and, uh, one of the sheikhs got blown up in that mosque was in that same hospital. So that tribe took over the hospital and they've got it sandbagged in.

• 2:15:21Speaker 01

  They've got, you know, literally, um, RPGs walking through the hallways, um, you know, good times, good times. Uh, and you know, I'm, I'm this 200 and, uh, probably 65 pound, uh, white guy, you know, blond haired guy at this time, you know? And then, yeah, load, get me this tur, this interpreter, um, and, uh, we're, we're going to the hospital. I said, hey, here's what you're gonna say. You're gonna say it how I say it. You gotta tell them that you're very happy that they're there. You're very sorry about their shake, you know, getting blown up and we've got a guy in there too.

• 2:16:03Speaker 01

  You guys are taking care of your guy. We want to take care of our guy. Please continue to make the hospital secure, but we'd like to go in there so we could take care of our guy also. Could you please let us in? And it worked. They were getting shut down, you know, and would not be allowed in. So we go in there and it's a trade. There you've got all these over pressure blast folks that are just smoked. And then this guy's in there with, you know, had a stroke, you know, grown man in diaper and not getting taken care of. And so we get them all set. They run out in town to go get the medicine and I stayed there with him. And they come back and they call me up and said, they're not letting us in again. Well, what'd you do? Well, we just want in, start all over again.

• 2:16:46Speaker 01

  You're happy they're there. They're making the hospital secure. You're not really happy, but you're telling them they're happy. You got your guy. We got our guy. We want to take care of our guy like you're taking care of your guy. And up they, you know, then they come back in and it's, yeah, the ability to find something. The common piece, your guys hurt and our guys hurt. We're happy you're here, you know? You're going through a checkpoint, you know? Man, I'm happy you guys here. Have you guys seen anything? Is everything good? You know, is anything we need to be aware of? You know, because, you know, you're not happy they're there, but you're, you gotta explain that, you know? Get that, find something that's in common that may or may not be.

• 2:17:28Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, build a little quick relationship with these people.

• 2:17:30Speaker 01

  A little rapport. Ton of that.

• 2:17:34Jocko Willink?

  So how many, so how long did you do that contracting stuff for?

• 2:17:39Speaker 01

  It's just kind of continual since I retired. You know, I really started working again for Brian, Sergeant, you know, and he'd get me set up on all kinds of, you know, name of companies, but it was fantastic, you know? Everything from going to the Olympics to the World Cup, living out in town with the athletes and, you know, as team guys, you're just not a monkey. You're setting everything up, squaring everything away, way beyond what security guy does and making sure everything flows smoothly, picking up, you know, gaps without dropping security. And security is a civilian, especially executive stuff is you really have to have a really...

• 2:18:21Speaker 01

  You know, easy but hard mentality at the same time. I'm trying to look like somebody that you don't want to bother and you're gonna go, you know, bother the other watch company, you know, because that one's not worth hitting. And at the same time, you know, they might want you sitting at the table with them when you'd rather not, because that's not your job. But it is to them. So you gotta make a bunch of assessments and, you know, yeah, do some stuff you wouldn't normally do, but you do the assessment and, you know, it's really interesting, super, super flexible. And you have to be super personable, be able to talk with, you know, heads of state that these, you know, top,

• 2:19:07Speaker 01

  I mean, I've been to F1 races in the absolute most, without naming the company, as good as it gets. You're talking to some wild people and, you know, they want to talk to you because you're the, you're the seal, you know, and they're proud to have you with them and they're showing you off. I got a job to do still. But it's, so it's a wild mix. And if you are the grunty guy, because I was with, you know, a rock band and who's really good people, are super, you know, yeah, just, just, that was super enjoyable,

• 2:19:47Speaker 01

  but we got some, we're always augmented overseas by somebody else. And the folks that are

• 2:19:56Speaker 01

  augmenting us, they just have this militant look about them, you know, including having sleeves rolled up and like, you know, even, you know, cargo panty thing, you know, pants and stuff. And that's not the look we want, folks. In a lot of ways, to do overseas, you know, I'm making sure the law enforcement that's there is

• 2:20:22Speaker 01

  That they, they, and I don't know them very well, so it's, you know, cause I'm, we're jumping into a lot of things, but I'm making sure they, they feel right, you know, uh, that, they're not nervous themselves, you know, if you're there a long time, I'm making sure the driver is the same feel today as he had yesterday and the day before, you know, so, so that, you know, he wasn't threatened and told to make a left-hand turn, you know, when he's supposed to be going straight and, uh, it's a ton of that. I've talked to the clients a lot, you know, and to, they need to build rapport and, uh, and be kind to their security personnel and their drivers and things, so that, uh, you know, they love them, you know, they're family, because you're asking them to take, you know, when I, when

• 2:21:06Speaker 01

  I'm, it, it's, the deal is, I'm gonna stick my neck out for these people and risk, this father's gonna risk his life for these folks, and so are those folks, so you better treat them kind and like family, you know, uh, and I know a lot of these folks, they use us as a, you know, uh, they're a bit of a prop, you know, hey, let's get going, you know, or, or interject here and there, and, and it's, it's, there's some, you know, some of these guys are skilled sales folks, and they're doing some acting, and, you know, you take it on it, yeah, uh, but, he knows that I know also, you know, so, okay, it's, uh, again, it's a wild ride, and if you're not flexible, uh, and you don't have a mentality that can roll with it a little bit, um, yeah, you're not gonna be very successful at it.

• 2:21:50Speaker 01

  And I've had some wild clients that I really enjoyed that part, I like taking care of folks, uh, and I'm, I'm, yeah, admittedly, I'll say I'm pretty damn good at it, uh, cause they keep calling me back, you know, and, and, and Brian keeps feeding stuff, and I haven't done it in a while, I started doing a lot of RD, you know, RDT and E research, test and development with the teams, and some other fun things, so, yeah, you know, became a firefighter, you know, a volunteer firefighter, and all, or was rather than all, until we moved from there, and then I became a, uh, reserve deputy sheriff in, in Lincoln County.

• 2:22:25Jocko Willink?

  So you're, so you're doing some contracting, you're doing some firefighting, you're doing some reserve sheriff activity. At what point do you get roped in to the political arena?

• 2:22:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm doing all that. I bought an excavator, you know, I'm grading driveways and digging foundations for folks, I'm doing some diving for folks. I mean, I've got all these things going on. I'm getting my, I got my private pilot license, I'm about to start getting my commercial license. And yeah, it's, you know, 14 ish months ago, people have been asking a lot for us to get involved, for me to get involved in the politics, because things are going sideways. And I kept saying, nope, nope, nope. And things got to the head. And they asked again, again, I said, no. And I tell the story over and over, my wife said, yes, you will. Her, she's been from, and she was, yes, yes, yes, you will. We

• 2:23:24Speaker 01

  talked about it, and her being from Venezuela and seeing that, you know, that, that leadership gap in Venezuela, you know, caused it to spiral down. People don't realize, Venezuela, we used to get 17% of our oil from Venezuela, more than any other country. I mean, they were, they were a wealthy country. And now they are, you know, again, just like the hospital in Yemen, you had to go out in town and get medicine and provide your sheets and provide your food in hospital. There's no medicine out in town now, either. You had to go to Colombia. Her family's a big part of it's originally from Colombia. Well, they escaped the narco state and went to Venezuela, and now they're fleeing back to

• 2:24:07Speaker 01

  the narco state. They had to go to Colombia to get medicine for her uncle who was in the hospital. And yeah, hey, we've got kids, you know, we've got two in college and one in high school.

• 2:24:20Speaker 01

  And there were we're doing it. We sat down as a family and we talked about it. We had to make sure everybody was was good to go with it. And, you know, to varying degrees to, you know, um, what does my 15 year old know about it? You know, he gets it to a large degree, you know, he was, since he was, you know, that tall, you know, uh, um, he was, dad, this is made in China in it. That's not right. You know, uh, so he gets a lot of things and he gets this too, to a degree. Um, my older sons helped me write stuff, you know, he helped me write that pledge, you know, may take an ownership for the condition of our country. Uh, cause I have not participated, you know, in this of always serve, but never this.

• 2:25:01Speaker 01

  He helped me write that. He helped me write my first speech. No one can write for me. Uh, it all comes from the heart. I free flow just about everything, uh, because it's from the heart. It's legit. Uh, you know, this is not what I would normally do, you know? I say it over and over again, too, you know, I grade my church driveway, you know, I show up there when nobody's there. You know, and I grade it. It's a, it's a steep dirt hill and, uh, um, make it all pretty again, load my tractor up and I go away before anybody comes back. And now I'm doing a selfie while I'm doing it. That is not who I am. It is now.

• 2:25:39Jocko Willink?

  Was there a straw that broke the camel's back as far as making you say, yeah, I'll do it? Or was the straw just your wife saying, you better do this?

• 2:25:47Speaker 01

  It's all the crazy divisiveness, you know? And in Sear School, you know, we actually taught, um, how not to get indoctrinated and not how not to allow these divisions happen while you're a captive, you know, in, in the Korean War, there were 14 Americans that were taught in captivity that America's bad. And they did not, we have these captors convince them to stay in North Korea. That's insane. That's happening here in America. How many ways are they trying to divide people? Whether you're vaccinated and unvaccinated, you're taught you're bad and evil if you're not vaccinated. And you're, you know, uh, you are taught, you know, uh, we're deny the election or you think there we need an election integrity to take a look at the election.

• 2:26:32Speaker 01

  You know, uh, then you're a traitor to the country. Uh, you, you, hey, let's just take a look at it. Make sure the other people that think it was stolen, um, understand it. You know, I'll take that's that that's an okay stance to have. All this division in the country is insane. It's not comfortable. Um, you know, uh, I've complained about it. And, uh, it's the only thing I could do to make it right. So we're stepping up and we're definitely stepping up as a family. My wife is a huge part of the campaign. Uh, I mean, driving force, uh, and, uh, couldn't do it, you know, wouldn't want to do it, uh, without family buy-in. But, uh, yeah, um, it's a legit push, you know, I was gonna go get my commercial pilot's license. I was gonna do one more thing that was gonna be

• 2:27:17Speaker 01

  fun. I enjoy flying. It's on hold for a little bit.

• 2:27:20Jocko Willink?

  What's been the biggest surprise about entering the, the political arena?

• 2:27:25Speaker 01

  Confirming all that divisiveness. Um, you know, cause I, I walk up and I will talk to anybody. I go to these fairs, these, uh, um, um, all the farm fairs and all that, uh, um, agricultural fairs. And I, I walk, I give my spiel, you know, I always start with a Nate, you know, a retired Navy SEAL, cause no one wants to talk to a politician. And I am definitely not that. Uh, so I said, hey, I'm at the land, a retired Navy SEAL, running for US Congress. Uh, you have time for me to tell you about the campaign? Great. I did 21 years in the Navy, all of it in the SEAL teams. I'm a volunteer firefighter. I'm a reserve deputy sheriff, uh, and never wanted to run for office. I'm running because I was asked to. And, uh, the guy goes, oh, hey, that, that, that sounds great. Um, who's

• 2:28:09Speaker 01

  the president of the United States? You know, you don't have to like it, but Joe Biden's the president of the United States. And, uh, you know, he asked me, you know, was the election stolen again? And, uh, I go, hey, we need to work on election integrity so everybody's comfortable with the results of the election. You know, whatever happened, everybody denies that the election, you know, Hillary Clinton, uh, you know, is still denying that her, uh, election was legitimate. You know, the hanging Chads in Florida, all that stuff. Uh, we gotta have something. That man called me a traitor.

• 2:28:45Speaker 01

  Volunteer firefighter, reserve deputy sheriff, 21 years in the SEAL teams. I want to get, check the election integrity so everybody's comfortable and I'm a traitor. Not cool. Uh, that, so a, a lot of that, uh, you know, uh, building the campaigns, pretty wild. Uh, you know, we're, we're definitely money visits Maine, it doesn't stay there. So we don't get it. You know, the donations are, don't flow in, although we're working our tail off. We're out raising, you know, somebody's been in, uh, DC for 14 years. Uh, had been in politics for 30 plus years and we're out raising her three to one in human money. But she gets 91% from PACs and, you know, so she's got smoking us in.

• 2:29:28Speaker 01

  You know, and, and mostly out of state, uh, uh, that's, that's a wild thing, you know? Cause you can look at all that stuff in the FEC website. Uh, that was a second quarter file.

• 2:29:38Jocko Willink?

  That's gotta be, uh, like just so crazy to think if you live in Maine, which obviously I got companies up in Maine.

• 2:29:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:29:46Jocko Willink?

  But, and I don't live there, but if you live in Maine and you think that the people that are trying to get someone elected, don't live in Maine and have no interest in Maine, but they wanna, wanna change what people are gonna vote for. That's kinda crazy, right?

• 2:30:01Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I don't know the right answer to fix that, you know? Uh, and that was actually started by a Republican, you know, uh, the super PAC thing, which is, you know, they can do unlimited expenditures in your name. It's, no, definitely not right. And I, you know, I'm definitely the weirdo. I'm gonna probably go a lot, um, learning about who I am also. Cause I've never put full thought into all these ideas that, that conservatives have. And now I have to, cause it comes out of my mouth and, uh, and it's on film or recorded forever. And so, you know, and it's also, you really have to think about, you know, just like when I was in the platoon and I became the, the recy guy, you know, squad.

• 2:30:46Speaker 01

  And now I'm the task unit, you know, over the whole task unit. Those are all my folks now, you know? Uh, so now I'm, I'm representing all of district one and I will. Uh, represent District One. So I gotta think about, you know, what, what's gonna be right for everybody? And, uh, you know, I'll admit to fault. I'm not, you know, that's how we fix things. That's how we fix things in the teams and military. If you can't say, hey, um, let's, let's look at the result of that and, uh, oh, that might've not been the right thing. You're gonna keep going down there. Politicians never do that. They never admit to, to wrong.

• 2:31:26Speaker 01

  Uh, I'm, I'm not that guy. I am not polished. Uh, but I've never run for office. You'll notice I um and hmm, you know, and, uh, hey, check, uh, but I'm honest, uh, and I'll keep my integrity, you know, I'll keep what my, you know, my beliefs and, uh, learning a lot about, you know, um, me i- i- is, is part of it, um, because you really have to think, um, your decisions are gonna weigh in, you know, uh, and make, affect lives.

• 2:32:00Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's crazy with the politicians, the, um, number one to come out and say, hey, this is, this is the right answer. About whatever. You can say about anything, anything. Like, hey, this is the right answer. This is what we need to do. And then it doesn't work out as good as they thought it would, or maybe it's even bad or whatever. But instead of saying, hey, you know what? That is what I thought we should do. It turns out there were some other factors that were involved and here's some adjustments we need to make. Instead, they just ride that parachute into the ground, right? Like, hey, this is the plan I came up with. We're sticking with it. And even when you come up with something, you know, I've been in leadership positions for a long time now. I mean, I guess for at least 25 years or something like that. I've been in leadership positions.

• 2:32:43Jocko Willink?

  And to, to, to say, hey, this is a hundred percent right. Everyone else should be quiet is such a bad move. Because the chances that you're so smart or that I'm so smart, that I'm gonna figure out the best way to conduct this operation. I'm gonna figure out the best solution to this business problem we're having, or I, I, I'm gonna come up with the, the problem solving move over here. The chances that I am just so smart that I figured it all out. No one else can figure it out, but I figured it all out. And by the way, when I figured out, I calculate all the variables in the future.

• 2:33:19Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:33:19Jocko Willink?

  That's what I'm, I'm so smart that I figure out all the future variables and I get, I'm gonna get all those right as well. That's how smart I am. So why would you make statements that you're 100% right about anything? It's a dumb move. And then when you're not, which is okay.

• 2:33:34Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:33:35Jocko Willink?

  Why would you not say, hey, you know what? Here's what I thought was gonna happen. Here's the plan we went with because of that's what I thought. And that was the consensus. And then it was wrong. And here's the adjustments we're gonna make. No big deal.

• 2:33:46Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:33:46Jocko Willink?

  No big deal. I've worked for bosses, and I know you've worked for bosses, that pretended like or thought that they had the 100% solution. And, and then they won't back down from their decision, even when it's wrong. And you, they think their respect is gonna go down. That people respect them less if they say, hey, I was wrong. But it's absolutely the opposite is true. When I say, hey, I screwed this up. People go, oh, okay, at least Jock was humble enough to admit that he was wrong. And he's gonna make some adjustments now. Nothing wrong with that. We haven't, politicians have not learned that lesson yet.

• 2:34:19Speaker 01

  Right. It's, it's the fear of the soundbite. Uh, the, the fear that, you know, well, you should step down because you made that bad decision. No, I, uh, that was a wrong decision. I admit it's wrong. We're gonna move forward. And, uh, you know, I'll, I'll, I'll make mistakes. And, uh, I'll admit it and we'll figure something out to, to find what's better. But that's not happening right now.

• 2:34:44Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 2:34:45Speaker 01

  Uh, it's not happening and it's got to, you know? If anybody thinks it was okay to mask kids up, um, that are, you know, born when this thing started. And, uh, they've never seen a human face except their parents for two plus years. That's insane. Yeah. That, hey, uh, uh, you know, the development, you know, been slowed down in, in all our children. And, uh, was that really worth it? You know, was that worth, uh, shutting down businesses? You know, uh, uh, you know, we, we got, uh, folks that, that their businesses were shut down and they sold out and they're never gonna open them back up again. And, uh, was that really worth it? You know, while saying that everybody can go to work in the big box stores

• 2:35:29Speaker 01

  and, and you're actually having more people in the big box stores? Is that right? You know, um, instead of spreading it out to all the other stores while keeping them, because that's, that's a human, that's, that's that individual's decision.

• 2:35:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And you go, look, sometimes you're in a, you're in a scenario. You don't know what's gonna happen. Like, hey, there's a bunch of people dying in Italy. Well, okay, well, we're gonna lock some stuff down here. Okay, well, okay, got it.

• 2:35:56Jocko Willink?

  And then like a few weeks go by and then a month goes by and you say, hey, it seems like in other areas of the world, this isn't that bad and and all of a sudden you can't you you no one says, hey, we need to adjust our thought process right now.

• 2:36:11Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:36:11Jocko Willink?

  We made some rash decisions early on because we didn't know what was going on. And you know, if if you're my boss and you make a rash decision because you don't know what's going on and I don't know what's going on, I go, okay, well, hey, man, I'm good. Let's let's give it a try because no one knows what's happening. Let's err on the side of safety.

• 2:36:29Jocko Willink?

  But then when you start seeing, you know, other information come in and you say, wait a second, this doesn't seem like it's as bad. And we had people just holding the line on stuff that didn't make any sense. I mean, there's some kind of a there's something in California going on right now where the Indian casinos stayed open. And the other casinos are mad. I I I don't know if I know enough about it to talk about because I I saw an advertisement or read an advertisement about it. But the the other casinos are mad that they were open. And that they were able to make money. They said they profited when when the other casinos shut down. And I'm like thinking to myself,

• 2:37:10Jocko Willink?

  hey, if I was in charge of a casino and there was a bunch of casinos that were open and everything was okay, that seems like an indicator to me that maybe it's okay. Like when we had the Super Bowl in Los Angeles, California, and there was 90,000 people in the

• 2:37:25Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:37:26Jocko Willink?

  in the arena. And it and it was no super spreader. There wasn't a bunch of people. And yet they went back to masks again. It was like, it's like, you can't make this up.

• 2:37:36Speaker 01

  Right. Uh, the the roller coaster of, you know, this is you you must do this. And then you see the politician doing that, you know, doing exactly what they said, don't do.

• 2:37:49Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:37:49Speaker 01

  Um, it's like, hey, uh, you know, it's, uh,

• 2:37:53Jocko Willink?

  It's very disturbing.

• 2:37:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:37:56Jocko Willink?

  It's very disturbing. And and, you know, again, I have the, well, I live in California. Echo Charles lives in California where we were like ground zero for the politicians saying one thing and doing something completely different.

• 2:38:09Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:38:10Jocko Willink?

  Which you can, you know, Americans will only stand for that stuff for so long. And it's actually longer than I thought in many cases. It was it was sometimes like, hey, man, like, You know, we, we had a revolution against England.

• 2:38:31Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:38:31Jocko Willink?

  Like, because they raised the taxes two cents on our bushels of tea. And we're like, alright, you know what, that's enough. We're done, you know?

• 2:38:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:38:40Jocko Willink?

  And, and so, there's only so much Americans can take. I think they definitely got pushed to the limit of that. They took more than I thought, you know? Especially as time dragged on. But, uh, but what's, what's really disturbing is just the decis- the decis- the fight- divisiveness that you mentioned already. Where it's like, well, it doesn't seem like in retrospect, that putting masks on little kids was a good idea. For two years.

• 2:39:08Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:39:08Jocko Willink?

  And, and instead of people going, yeah, that, that definitely seems like it was a bad idea and we should try and learn from that in the future. Instead, they're like, no.

• 2:39:15Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:39:16Jocko Willink?

  No. You're like, hey, man, what reality are you in?

• 2:39:21Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:39:22Jocko Willink?

  What reality are you in?

• 2:39:23Speaker 01

  Well, watching them, you know, from afar, dump sand in, you know, the skate parks out here in California. And, you know, put two by fours across basketball hoops and, and, uh,

• 2:39:36Speaker 01

  I was, uh, up in, in Baxter's State Park. You know, it's a 13 mile ski uphill to get where you can stay and sleep for, uh, take a break. And then it's another three miles up, much steeper terrain to where you're gonna start to do actual, you know, um, ice climbing and, and all that. So we made it 16 miles in uphill. There's nobody in the park, you know, it, it's, uh, that's the cool thing about Baxter is, in the winter, is you cannot drive in there. Uh, you've got, you've got very limited people and they only allow so many people in there. We're away from everybody. Park ranger comes up, very sad. You have to go home now.

• 2:40:21Speaker 01

  We just made it here.

• 2:40:24Speaker 01

  There's nobody, there's nobody within, you know, 50 miles from us. Um, I mean, you know, uh, uh, and so we had to, you know, ski out of, uh, uh, you know, back down the hill of the mountain and, uh, that was so insanely disturbing. And it came down from the Secretary of State, I believe is what they said. Uh, and, uh, that was so, we, we were isolated. We were away from everybody.

• 2:40:54Jocko Willink?

  You know, a, a lot of this has to do with the ecosystem that, uh, that he, and really the digital ecosystem that a human being lives within.

• 2:41:04Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:41:05Jocko Willink?

  Because I, I know people that were in the ecosystem of, you know, COVID was the most heinous disease that ever came to the world. And these are, these are people that are friends that I know are normal, like logical people. But their, their digital ecosystem, the, the word inside there, the truth inside that digitally ecosystem was just so closed loop.

• 2:41:34Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:41:35Jocko Willink?

  That there was no other perspectives coming in whatsoever. And it is, it was very, it was very disturbing to see, to see people that their world was so closed loop that they couldn't comprehend another viewpoint at all. And part of that ecosystem was to protect itself from outside thought. And so anybody that offered some other perspective was immediately attacked.

• 2:42:08Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:42:08Jocko Willink?

  It wasn't a car, you couldn't have a conversation with someone in that other ecosystem. You couldn't have a conversation with them about it because they would, they would, uh, go on the attack. And they would utilize the truths in air quotes, the

• 2:42:25Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:42:25Jocko Willink?

  The supposed truths from inside their ecosystem, which they truly believed.

• 2:42:31Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:42:31Jocko Willink?

  That, that they were true. And it was, it was, it was honestly, it was, it was very sad to see. It was very sad to see people going through that. And, you know, I, I would try and address it a little bit with people, you know, um, maybe mention to them something from the, from outside their closed loop. And they would go on the attack and go super defensive and it wasn't worth it. You know, I want to maintain a relationship with a person that I've known for 10 years or 12 years or 20 years. You know, they're your friend and I'm not, I don't want to fight with them over this thing. It's like, okay, if you want to continue to live, like literally quarantine yourself inside your house. And we, and we, you know, we met at an outdoor place to say hi.

• 2:43:14Jocko Willink?

  And just mentioning that, you know, well, hey, just so you know, like I'm training jujitsu. Right. And I've been training jujitsu with my friends and, and all the time. And like, none of us are sick and everyone's okay. And, and, and just to see the look of horror in their eyes, almost as if, you know, I was one of the worst human beings ever. It was really sad. It was sad to see, but again, I think a lot of it has to do with, you know, you got to open up your perspective. You know, you got to open up your perspective and you got to, got to listen to more than one, more than one ecosystem of information. Otherwise you're not seeing everything and look, you can go far to the other side of the spectrum as well. Right.

• 2:43:57Jocko Willink?

  And, and you can get just as wrapped up in that ecosystem where you don't listen to anybody else. So it's, it's a very strange time and I think, you know, um, I always find that people run into a problem with their ego, right? Same thing that we just talked about. If I'm a politician, my ego won't allow me to say I was wrong. My ego won't allow me to say, hey, I don't know what to do, but this is what I think we should do. Let's try this. My ego says, no, you know, everything. I know everything. I, I'm, I'm not going to make any mistakes. Well, the same thing happens when it comes to processing information. You get your root idea that you believe. Right. And you don't want to admit, hey, you know what? I was actually wrong about that. That was actually, that wasn't a good idea or you know what? That's what I thought.

• 2:44:43Jocko Willink?

  A month ago and clearly there's new information that I should process and pay attention to. And people just unfortunately aren't thinking that way anymore. And it's like this weird tribalism that that takes hold that's it's crazy to see.

• 2:44:57Speaker 01

  It's gonna be Rwanda dude, uh, you know, you have to know somebody to actually know that they're different than you.

• 2:45:02Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:45:03Speaker 01

  And, uh, that didn't go very well. You know, I mean, they had to know each other.

• 2:45:08Jocko Willink?

  What's going on with the lobster man up in Maine?

• 2:45:11Speaker 01

  Dude, I'll tell you what.

• 2:45:12Jocko Willink?

  Just because I, look, this is such a huge deal in Maine. What is this a $2 billion industry in Maine?

• 2:45:20Speaker 01

  $2 billion, yeah.

• 2:45:22Jocko Willink?

  $2 billion industry. This is, you know, when you think of Maine, you think lobster, right? Of course, hey, I hope you think Origin USA. I hope you think about making jeans, right? A hundred percent. I hope you're thinking about boots. I hope you're thinking about the best jujitsu geese in the world. Uh, you're gonna think about that stuff too. But before that, I have to admit, you're thinking about lobster because Maine is the, is the, is the, the epicenter of lobster. It's the, it's life in Maine.

• 2:45:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:45:52Jocko Willink?

  And so what is going on?

• 2:45:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, no one, no one wants a Massachusetts or a Canadian lobster.

• 2:45:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I've never seen an advertisement for fresh, fresh Massachusetts lobster, right? No, they want Maine lobster. No offense to Massachusetts, no offense to Canada, but you want Maine lobster.

• 2:46:08Speaker 01

  So they're coming up with all these ideas, uh, you know, the right whale up there. Um, which is not even in the Maine waters. They haven't seen it, um, and it's, they had an entanglement, uh.

• 2:46:19Jocko Willink?

  Hold on, I'm just gonna clarify this. So it's called the right whale. This is, this is a breed of whale.

• 2:46:24Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:46:24Jocko Willink?

  Called the right whale.

• 2:46:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, it writes itself, uh, when it dies, um, it writes itself in the water and, uh, uh, it floats. So, you know, if there are a whole bunch of dead right whales, they're gonna all be floating. You know, they actually, you know, history, um, they used to, um, chunk it up, you know, and bring it on the ship in pieces because it would be just floating there. Uh, and, uh, that, that's the other part of the, one of the parts of, hey, it doesn't make sense what you guys are talking about.

• 2:46:54Speaker 01

  They're coming up with all these ideas to, you know, save the right whale, but they're looking at the lobsterman and lobsterman not the problem. You know, everything from the size of the pectoral fin and they don't have a notch in it where, you know, the humpback whale has a notch and a huge pectoral fin that would get caught in a horizontal rope. All these things they want to do don't need to be done. It's ship strikes that kills them and it's, it's Canadian snow crab gear that, that does it. The Maine lobstermen have done all these things to take care of it and get it out of the way.

• 2:47:27Jocko Willink?

  And some of the things that they do, for instance, is they put like breakaways in the lines, right? So if I was a right whale and I got caught up in a Maine lobsterman's line.

• 2:47:39Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:47:39Jocko Willink?

  It's designed to break.

• 2:47:41Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:47:42Jocko Willink?

  And I get out and I'm fine.

• 2:47:43Speaker 01

  And you're good.

• 2:47:44Jocko Willink?

  And they've already done that.

• 2:47:45Speaker 01

  They've already done that. Well, all the ropes are all identified. So if it does get caught in a Maine lobsterman gear, it's identified as Maine lobster gear. And they put several breaks in it. It's, it's all been done and taken care of and it really was, hasn't been a problem ever. But the, the National Marine Fisheries Services, they made a decision that if a whale dies in Canada, we take credit for it, half credit for it. So one died there and we're getting blamed and we're going to shut down our industry and no one made, they're under NOAA, right?

• 2:48:26Jocko Willink?

  Explain what NOAA is.

• 2:48:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:48:28Jocko Willink?

  NOAA.

• 2:48:29Speaker 01

  Yep. National Oceanographic Atmospheric Administration. And, you know, it's everything from mapping and weather in the ocean and they have subcategories and one is National Marine Fisheries Services. And they came up with this study, you know, and there's cryptic deaths. So if they get one death, they assume there's three more, even though these things are going to float. And they stopped, they had, they had crews that were detanglement crews, but they disbanded them all because they're now entanglements. They had, you know, observers out there, but they don't have any observers anymore because.

• 2:49:14Speaker 01

  They're not there. Still, they're trying to get them to modify things in a manner that will shut the industry down.

• 2:49:21Jocko Willink?

  So, give me an example of what they, what the NOAA, the NOAA, what do they want to modify? For the lobstermen?

• 2:49:28Speaker 01

  They want to, they're really trying to get them to bite in and weigh in on the decisions that are going to harm them. So, closures of, you know, the prime areas.

• 2:49:40Jocko Willink?

  So, prime areas of where you drop lobster pots?

• 2:49:45Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:49:45Jocko Willink?

  And catch lobsters, they want to shut them down?

• 2:49:47Speaker 01

  They want to shut them down. They want to try ropeless gear, which is, you know, in the short, remote control, a buoy pops up from the trap and you've got 10 to 20 traps strung out and you're going to count that this, you know, you're dropping it in, no one's going to know where the traps are. Because they, you know, you might drop them in six knots of current, in a string. And they're going to drop 150 feet, you know, even further.

• 2:50:14Jocko Willink?

  And how much does a lobster trap with some kind of a radio activated?

• 2:50:20Speaker 01

  Or a son, must be sonar activated?

• 2:50:23Jocko Willink?

  Get the buoy to pop up?

• 2:50:24Speaker 01

  Yep. It's going to, you know, whatever they end up doing, it's, they're about four grand. A regular lobster buoy, 10 bucks. So, who's going to be able to do that? You know, it's going to be big giant, you know, you know, big box store, Walmart, you know, China, taking over our lobster industry. Can't happen. Because regular mom and pop can't do that. You know, absorb that cost. You know, it's, we were looking at getting another seafood processing plant built in Maine instead of shipping it up to Canada. And that's, you know, just like the oil industry, they're not going to build, you know, another

• 2:51:07Speaker 01

  refinery because they can't have a guarantee that, you know, the oil industry is going to be around. You know, just so they're not building that seafood processing plant. There's a whole other, you know, slew of jobs in the construction and run into that that are gone. It's.

• 2:51:26Speaker 01

  It's gonna have a crazy ripple effect across Maine. When you, people come there, you know, you know, to go to Red's Eats and stand an hour and a half in a line to go eat, you know, a lobster roll.

• 2:51:40Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, this is, like I said, I mean, when you think of Maine, you, you think of lobster, 100%.

• 2:51:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:51:46Jocko Willink?

  So to shut this down would be insane. So what, what will you be able to do when you're elected?

• 2:51:53Speaker 01

  Well, one, you know, the voice has to come out loud, you know, uh, we're gonna look at, uh, you know, cutting funding, uh, you know, for, for the piece that's, that's causing the problem. Uh, they got a job to do, I got it. Uh, but if they're, they're looking at it, and if they're looking at the lobstermen and they're not looking at where they need to look, um, then they're killing right whales by, by, you know, accusing the lobstermen of, of being the culprit. You know, you've got to, once you focus in on one thing, you're not looking to take care of the problem. You know, the, uh, it's ship strikes, uh, and a lot of pleasure class and folks trying to get too close to the whales. Uh, but it's, it's, it's not the Maine lobstermen.

• 2:52:36Speaker 01

  It's, uh, snow crab, uh, traps way up in Canada. And, you know, we get accounted for, like I said earlier, uh, uh, death there. Um, that's insane. And that's, that's America doing it. That's NOAA, that's National Marine Fisheries Services doing that.

• 2:52:54Jocko Willink?

  Why, why is this happening? Okay, so if I'm, let's say, let's say I'm, let's say I'm, I love animals, which I do. Let's say I love whales, which I guess I kinda love whales. I mean whales are

• 2:53:05Speaker 01

  They're cool.

• 2:53:05Jocko Willink?

  Whales are cool animals. I mean, I can, I can see them from my house and it's awesome. You know, I look out and we can see them spraying and we see, they, they come, they come pretty close to the lineup sometimes surfing. It's pretty awesome.

• 2:53:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:53:17Jocko Willink?

  Um, so let's say I, I do. Whales are awesome. I wanna protect whales. And then I start going, oh, well, maybe these lobster traps could kill them and that seems bad. And then I start doing the research and I see that they can break out of the lines if they get tangled because we put this into place. I see that they're counting, what'd you say, mystery deaths?

• 2:53:37Speaker 01

  Cryptic. They call it cryptic death. So if there's, they find one dead, they say there's three more.

• 2:53:42Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so now I say I've got, I'm, I'm multiplying. When I start pulling, running the numbers on this, it doesn't make any sense to, to do that because this whale floats, so why would we say that it's dead? So as I start looking at this, I start saying, oh, this doesn't seem like it's a problem. Let's focus on, you know, some other issue because apparently the, because it is apparent that the lobster traps and the lobster men are not the problem. So, why are they not making this connection? Why are they continuing to go down this path, which there's evidence, clear evidence that this isn't a problem?

• 2:54:19Speaker 01

  Well, because you can't have windmills where you're lobstering. And they want to put windmills in those areas. And, hey, if they make sense, cool. Uh, right now, they do not make sense. And you don't make up a lie, you know, even if it's right, the windmills, but you make up a lie to make it happen, that's wrong.

• 2:54:38Jocko Willink?

  Wait, wait, wait. You're saying that the reason that they want to do this is to, because they can put windmills out there?

• 2:54:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, can I say that a hundred percent? Because, um, but that's where they want to put them, you know?

• 2:54:48Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so you're saying there is a plan to put windmills?

• 2:54:52Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:54:52Jocko Willink?

  Out in that section of the ocean?

• 2:54:54Speaker 01

  And, and, uh, um, it's the, uh, they want to do it on the sea mounts, the mountains in the sea, because that's where all the sea life goes. Uh, because you put the shortest chain, uh, on those. These are three to one ratio chains, um, nine foot lengths, you know, and fifty fathoms, you know, uh, I think it's fifty fathoms, you know, three hundred feet. Uh, um, and, uh, that's going to rake and destroy the bottom and they're, you know, um, and then they're going to run horizontal lines, um, you know?

• 2:55:26Jocko Willink?

  To get the power back?

• 2:55:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, to get it, well, to string these things together. Uh, and, uh, you know, that'll catch a right whale, uh, because they get caught in their mouth. And all, all the pictures that they keep showing of the right whale with entanglements, um, you know, it's, uh, it's never been our lobster gear. It's, uh, it's bigger braided line, uh, and not the problem. You know, it's, uh, yeah, you gotta really look at it. None of it makes sense, you know? None of it makes sense and no one's going back and saying, hey, let's reassess this. You know, uh, it should have never gotten to this point. They're looking to start to shut things down next month. You know, hey, we're going to do a lawsuit. Yeah, well.

• 2:56:12Speaker 01

  It's getting shut down. Who who's doing a lawsuit? Uh, they're they're saying that the state's going to, um, uh, the the lobsterman did one, uh, uh, and and took it to court. And it's, um, it's, uh, uh, all the cryptic, uh, deaths a- and the, you know, we were us taking credit for half of theirs. They want a 90% reduction in, uh, um, in deaths. Yet, windmills, you know, the new vineyard wind farm, uh, down in, uh, in Mass, they get to do, uh, 20 takes. It's level B harassment, which is. Wait, what's 20 takes? What does that mean? Taking by by level B harassment.

• 2:56:53Speaker 01

  You you you can harass them, and if they it it gets taken, uh, you had permission to harass it. So you can you can stop them from breathing, you know, by by not allowing them to come to surface. Uh, you can, uh, stop them from mating. You can stop them from sheltering. You can, uh, disrupt their, uh, migratory path. So you can do all that to the whales? The the the windmills can. Cause they're they're gonna do some blasting. They've got to do some sonic testing. Um, just a vibration of the, you know, what what is a windmill itself gonna do? Uh, a- and if you multiply that times all the windmills up and down the the coast, that's more right whales than are alive as they count them.

• 2:57:39Speaker 01

  You know, so again, it doesn't make sense. It's not about the lobsterman, you know? Uh, take a look at it. Uh, and everybody jump on board, you know, uh, cause you know, they're, you know, it's so frustrating. It and and you can look at me as crazy you want, cause it's that crazy. It doesn't make sense, and it's moving forward.

• 2:58:04Speaker 01

  Crazy. That's why we're running. Yeah. You know, because there's so much that, that, you know, we've just got to, and I don't know what I'm gonna do. You know, I, I'm, I know I'm gonna butt heads in my own party too. Um, because I'm, I'm that guy. Uh, if it doesn't make sense, it doesn't make sense, you know, and it's about the country. You know, uh, it's, it's never about your platoon. You're gonna fight for your platoon, your task unit, your team. But in the end, you don't do anything. That competitiveness in a platoon and task unit, it, it never supersedes your, your task, uh, uh, in the country. You know, I love the competitiveness in a platoon. You know, it's, it's awesome because you're all fighting. You all be, want to be the, you know, when, when the building's burning, um, you want to be, you know,

• 2:58:49Speaker 01

  the squad that gets called to go in and, and you don't, you know, firemen don't want the fire. Uh, but they're all, all the men are competing so that they can be the guy on the team that goes in and helps. Right? Um, but you never let that competitiveness, you know, it's, it's like taking, you know, politicians are like taking the firing pins out of, uh, uh, you know, the rifles so, so that they, they, they look better than the other guy, you know? Uh, you know, it's, it's like a, a, a sales team, you know, um, you know, cutting the cord to the copy machine before the other sales team gets to print out their, their briefs. You know, it's, um, that's the competitiveness going on in, in politics. It's, um, I've got six years is what the, what the family agreed to.

• 2:59:34Speaker 01

  It is to do this for six years and I believe in term limits. You know, I will definitely self impose because I got an awesome life I want to get back to. And, um, that's what you, you've got an objective in it. When you, when you transfer to one command to the next, you know, you've got a limited time there. And you're going to take that piece of string and you're going to pass it off as a rappel line and then pass it off as a howzer line. And, you know, you're gonna have an objective at the end of that time that you're gonna be successful, you're gonna have made America better. And that's not happening. It's a whole bunch of politicking and a whole bunch of saber rattling to get the next, you

• 3:00:14Speaker 01

  know, election, you know, spun up, funded and everything else. Yeah, finding that common ground and getting it done. If they weren't so worried about getting their next, you know, seat in Congress, the next term set up, they probably wouldn't be spending money and sprinkling it all over the place, you know, making people happy with a little bit of money here, a little bit of money there. Hey, you know, this party's trying to do that to you and that party's trying to do this to you, you know, when that's not true. You know, definitely these hot button topics, you look at the mailers that come in, you know, where they're teaching hate, you know, and...

• 3:00:59Jocko Willink?

  These are like mailers for different candidates up in Maine?

• 3:01:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, in Maine, everywhere. You know, we, you know, the, uh, we can broach the subject because it's, you get demonized, you know, abortion, you know, one side thinks it's a baby, the other side thinks a woman's right. And basically, that topic is, either side thinks the other person's completely evil. And that's not the case. Each side was taught something different, you know, Republican women don't want to take away women's rights. They're strong Republican women and they're strong, they believe in women's rights, but they also believe it's a baby, you know, and on the other side, they were taught something

• 3:01:47Speaker 01

  different. And people are trying to make laws right now, they're saying they want to, but it's not legal to make a law federally about it because it just got, he has to go back through the Supreme Court. And both sides are saying, the other side's gonna do something evil to your side. Well, no, you actually can't, so why are you campaigning on it? You know, and that's, I get...

• 3:02:16Speaker 01

  You will, this conversation is older, over, done. When I say, you know, my stance on it, and I'm pro-life, but I will not legislate on it. I'll vote no either way it comes to me. You know, it's, I mean, us saying this on air right now is crazy questionable because there's some people that will just shut down. Shut down, both sides. You know, because the people think I should take my position and use it to what they want, you know? But it's not constitutional.

• 3:02:50Jocko Willink?

  So your statement pisses everyone off?

• 3:02:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:02:53Jocko Willink?

  So you got that going for you?

• 3:02:54Speaker 01

  So I got that going for me. But you know what? I'm honest about it. And it's not constitutional. It belongs to the state. That's how the country gets along, is we have all these little countries that unified and became a federal republic. And, you know, there's different laws in Massachusetts, in California, and Maine, and the people vote on them, the representatives, you know, represent them, and that's how we get along. Otherwise, we would tear ourselves apart a long time ago. You know, and, you know, we're not going back to the 60s, you know, segregation, we're not. You know, I get so much gets thrown at me. And I'm just, I'm just gonna be honest, you know?

• 3:03:38Speaker 01

  It's, that hate, and I mean it's hate. They're accusing one side or the other of, you know, taking away women's rights. The other side just thinks it's a baby. Everybody knows it's life. It's just when it's become human life. And we go so far left and right of it, you know? There's only three countries in the world that have late-term abortion. You know, China, North Korea, and America. And again, I don't care where anybody stands on it. I don't hate anybody for their thought on it.

• 3:04:17Speaker 01

  I know that people have been taught different about it, you know, so I have no idea if we should be going down this route. Honestly, uh, cause it, it's crazy. Um, uh, I've been doing my lobster boat swims. Did I tell you about those?

• 3:04:34Jocko Willink?

  No, tell me about your lobster boat swims.

• 3:04:36Speaker 01

  My lobster boat swims. So I'm swimming, um, you know, they have the lobster, they had a rally, a concert on the water. All the lobstermen's come around and, uh, sixty degree water. And I got my campaign material in a, in a dry bag and I'm swimming boat to boat, skinning it. And I'm, hey, I'm Ed Thelander, retired Navy SEAL, running for US Congress. You mind if I come on board, tell you about the campaign? I hit fifty boats one day, like three and a half, four hours in the water. I did it five times. I'm swimming with the sharks and, uh, uh, in Harpswell, the Great White's are out and tearing seals apart, not this one.

• 3:05:16Speaker 01

  And, uh, you know, I'm, I'm campaigning boat to boat again and, uh, you know, it's just neat getting a lot of love. And, uh, yeah, hit, hit the, uh, news guy, uh, he's on the float and, uh, I won't say what channel. I really want to, but, uh, you go, hey, I'm Ed, you know, uh, and, uh, yeah, I know who you are. Uh, hey, great, I said, you know, uh, it'd be great to get on camera. No, I won't cover you. You know, that, that's a crazy wild thing too, you know, it's never been done, never has that been done before. And, uh, um, pretty disappointing, you know, that's, yeah, that's another crazy disappointing thing is, uh,

• 3:06:00Speaker 01

  that, that slant on it is, is pretty tough.

• 3:06:03Jocko Willink?

  Well, that's a good way for people to keep their intellectual media's, uh, loop closed.

• 3:06:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:06:10Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I'm just not going to put you on.

• 3:06:12Speaker 01

  Right.

• 3:06:12Jocko Willink?

  That's that. Not going to let anyone form their opinions about you because they're not going to know who you are. craziness.

• 3:06:17Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 3:06:18Jocko Willink?

  craziness. Um, so, I mean, it seems like that gets us to present day. We caught up right now?

• 3:06:24Speaker 01

  Pretty caught up. Yeah. Yeah, we're, uh, running hard, you know, we're, uh, it's, uh, you know, I hit three, four events in a day, you know? I mean, I hit three event, four events, uh, before I had my debate the other day. You know, just because I got to get the name out there and we're, you know, uh, we're everywhere all the time. Uh, you know, wife included, you know, a kid or two once in a while. And, uh, just driving hard, you know, and seeing, uh, you know, what, what comes up.

• 3:06:52Jocko Willink?

  And you're down to the wire right now, huh?

• 3:06:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, we're down to the wire. Uh, got another forum or debate on Wednesday. It's a forum, I guess. They haven't given us the format yet. Uh, so that's coming, you know, there's a, uh, a third party candidate that just jumped in September 9th. Kind of can't figure that out yet. He's a write-in candidate that activates ranked choice voting. Um, so yeah, just vote. Ed Delander right across all three slots. Um, he's the love party. Love over violent empire.

• 3:07:24Jocko Willink?

  Well, I did say I love whales. Maybe I'm part of his, his thing.

• 3:07:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's ranked choice voting. It's another crazy thing.

• 3:07:32Jocko Willink?

  Rank choice voting. So you can put them in order of rank? And like the top person gets three points or whatever?

• 3:07:38Speaker 01

  So if, if, uh, if I don't win by fifty, uh, one percent, you know, over fifty percent, uh, then it goes by rank choice. So, you know, you choose one, two and three, or you can just do one across for, for one candidate and, and kind of, you're ballots, you know, uh, doesn't give any points to the other people.

• 3:08:00Jocko Willink?

  How are the polls right now?

• 3:08:02Speaker 01

  The polls, uh, you know, it's the legit poll we have, uh, is that we're outraising or three to one in Maine individual people, human donations.

• 3:08:12Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 3:08:13Speaker 01

  Uh, the other one is generic, uh, and it doesn't really take into account me because I'm, I'm still very unknown. Even though we've been doing it for 14 months, it's amazing, you know, there's, you know, uh, districts, you know, three. A million people, Maine, smaller being it, there's six hundred eighty plus thousand. You know, can't reach all those folks. Um, so we're out there, we're in the places that, that Republicans don't dare to tread because, you know, they're coming on board. Um, you know, our first max donor was a far-left Democrat and Democrats signing up, uh, um, to, to help us out, to donate.

• 3:08:48Jocko Willink?

  Why do you think that is? Why do you think Democrats are signing up to help you out as a Republican?

• 3:08:53Speaker 01

  Because people are tired of what's going on. Uh, they, they want to see change. There's, you know, tired and scared for the winter. You know, Maine is, uh, uh.

• 3:09:02Jocko Willink?

  God, the fuel prices is gonna be crazy.

• 3:09:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, sixty percent of people in Maine heat with oil. And it's over double, almost triple what it was, uh, last year. Uh, and, and going up, you know? Um, that's gonna, people are really gonna choose between heat and heat. Um, and, and they were making that choice, uh, before, you know? Uh, it's, it's gonna be a very tough winter. Um, people don't want to be dependent on the government, but it's kind of being forced on them right now. And that's wrong. We want, the Republicans, we want folks to be successful on the road. We help out, um, but man, it's, uh, it's opportunity and freedom, you know, uh, and responsibility and, uh, people want that.

• 3:09:47Speaker 01

  Maine is, you know, very independent. Uh, it, it's, uh, a ton of the voters, most of, of large in the state are independent. Um, and, uh, they just want to be left alone and, and, uh, you know, nobody wants to pay taxes, but they do and, and they want to work. Yeah, get people working again is what they want too. Uh, a lot of things have been shut down and, uh, yeah, hard to find workers. You're experiencing that, you know, um, working on that. Founding some folks that, uh, been signing up for, uh, some training by Echelon Front and a couple of folks going to the musters, uh, as I'm, you know, going to the, uh, um, these job fairs, you know, talking to the, the, not only the students that, that are

• 3:10:32Speaker 01

  going to some of these high school, uh, job fairs, but the employers too, you know? Uh, um, and I, I mentioned earlier, uh, uh, the camper was rolling, but, uh, yeah, the, uh, the Republican National Committee, um, the executive director, uh, issues, uh, the field manual. For discipline equals freedom to everybody that comes on board, uh, pretty wild. Yeah, it's, uh, but yeah, people are tired, people are scared and, uh, you know, what's in power right now is influencing that, you know, whatever side you're on, uh, it's, uh, it's, it's time to make them change. If you want change, because you can't keep doing

• 3:11:13Speaker 01

  the same thing, if things aren't going right, you gotta vote it in. And, uh, yeah, you know, I do reach across the aisle, you know, and, uh, you know, I'm, you're, you're typical Republican, uh, conservative, you know, doesn't have purple hair. I talk to them, get ton of love off of everybody, you know, uh, tattoos up to the eyeballs. I don't, you know, I'm happy to talk to anybody, you know, um, you know, cannabis, you know, uh, folks, uh, medically, you know, so on board with it, recreationally, it's legal in Maine, let's tax it and, and move forward and, and protect the, the, it's, it's, you know, those folks are still buying stuff, uh, and, uh, you know, Republicans aren't normally about that.

• 3:11:56Speaker 01

  Now, I'm stepping on the, over the line, telling everybody right now, I am, uh, and that's not, you know, the Republican standard. Uh, I'm willing to say, hey, you know, uh, yeah, I wasn't, I've never tried it, you know, uh, um, you know, I'm not a heavy drinker, not never tried any of that, uh, but medically, I know it's helped so many people. Um, and, uh, you know, prescribing an 11-year-old Adderall, not a good plan. Uh, you know, there's other alternatives out there, not addictive, that, that can keep them focusing straight. And, uh, we gotta be so much smarter about that.

• 3:12:32Jocko Willink?

  So you, so you have different viewpoints from the standard and you got an open mind thinking about what makes sense to you and not what the party line is?

• 3:12:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, uh, it's, it's

• 3:12:42Jocko Willink?

  That's very scary, Ed.

• 3:12:45Speaker 01

  It's the way I've really lived my life. It's how I got where I'm at, you know? It's how I've got along, you know, from, from childhood to now. And that's what America needs. They need somebody that's gonna problem solve and get along and, and say, "Hey, you know, um, I made a mistake there. Uh, let's move forward." You know, and, uh, you can't, you can't not, you know, the Oodle Loop. You know, uh, anybody want to explain that? Observe, or orient yourself, decide and act, and then back to the beginning. Don't just keep moving forward, you know, small incremental decisions, you know, uh, and, uh,

• 3:13:25Speaker 01

  yeah, but if you don't admit you've, even two to two percent or a hundred percent got it wrong, uh, you're never gonna improve and, you know, do what we did in the SEAL teams and, and make such an awesome machine. Our debriefs in the SEAL teams are brutal. Brutal. Uh, and, uh, they don't do that, you know, uh, well, I'm gonna do that. You know, uh, I'm concerned to be at my own party, you know, and, uh, uh, that, that I'm gonna get along on a lot of things. We'll see, you know, um, you know, and everything I say, um, I'm willing to, yeah, check it out and see where, where it really is. Um, and I've tucked on subjects that, that, uh, in this podcast that meh, you know, uh,

• 3:14:10Speaker 01

  people are gonna say, you know, crazy wackadoodle dude. Hey, you know what? I'm still willing to look at it and, uh, make a decision, uh, maybe say I was wrong, you know, and, and move forward. Can't do it otherwise.

• 3:14:23Jocko Willink?

  Well, it's a refreshing attitude to hear. Where, where can people, if people want to support you?

• 3:14:28Speaker 01

  TheLanderForCongress.com. It's T-H-E-L-A-N-D-E-R for Congress.com, four spelled out.

• 3:14:36Jocko Willink?

  And, and if people want to see you, uh, after you get done grading the church parking lot or driveway, that's on Instagram?

• 3:14:43Speaker 01

  Yep, Facebook, uh, yeah, uh,

• 3:14:47Jocko Willink?

  TheLanderForCongress at Instagram, Twitter, you're Ed for Maine.

• 3:14:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:14:52Jocko Willink?

  Uh, Facebook is at TheLanderForCongress, and you have a YouTube channel as well?

• 3:14:56Speaker 01

  Yes, we do.

• 3:14:57Jocko Willink?

  Ed TheLander.

• 3:15:00Jocko Willink?

  Echo, what do you got for questions?

• 3:15:02Speaker 02

  I have none.

• 3:15:02Jocko Willink?

  No questions?

• 3:15:03Speaker 02

  Actually, you know, I'm not.

• 3:15:05Jocko Willink?

  Send it dude.

• 3:15:06Speaker 02

  So you, uh.

• 3:15:07Jocko Willink?

  Come on dude, he needs practice. He's got a debate coming up.

• 3:15:10Speaker 02

  So you're gluten free then?

• 3:15:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm a gluten free keto kook.

• 3:15:13Speaker 02

  Wait, do you have celiac? Because you were having like celiac symptoms.

• 3:15:17Speaker 01

  So I got tested for celiac, uh, and no, um, not celiacs.

• 3:15:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, just gluten intolerance.

• 3:15:24Speaker 01

  Just gluten intolerance and now I'm a keto kook and, uh.

• 3:15:27Jocko Willink?

  When did you get on the keto program?

• 3:15:29Speaker 01

  Right about four years ago now.

• 3:15:31Jocko Willink?

  And you love it?

• 3:15:32Speaker 01

  Love it.

• 3:15:33Jocko Willink?

  Feel great.

• 3:15:33Speaker 01

  Feeling great. I mean, everything's clear. Brain's clear. Joints are better, you know.

• 3:15:38Jocko Willink?

  How long did it take you to lose 70 pounds?

• 3:15:42Speaker 01

  Um, well, first 25 was, uh, when I went gluten free, another 50 ish, um, was when I went keto. And that was, yeah, within a year and a half, easy, uh, year. I mean, I just, it just came right off.

• 3:15:57Jocko Willink?

  And now you stay at 205?

• 3:15:59Speaker 01

  I can go down if I want to, um, easy. Um, I just don't want to buy any more suits.

• 3:16:07Speaker 02

  Yes, sir.

• 3:16:10Jocko Willink?

  Right on.

• 3:16:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, I got a couple of pictures in my suit, uh, the, the, the white collared shirt I got. Yeah, that looks like your dad's shirt.

• 3:16:21Jocko Willink?

  Right on. Ed, any closing thoughts before we shut it down?

• 3:16:24Speaker 01

  No, hey, um, hey, thanks for having me on. It's awesome. It's awesome to be able to get the word out, you know, and, uh, hey, find that common ground. Let's move forward and, uh, let's make, you know, uh, the best of, of, of our friendships and, uh, yeah, we will make things right. Thank you.

• 3:16:39Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I appreciate you coming on. Obviously. Thanks for coming out. Uh, thanks for your service to the country, to the teams. Thank you for jumping into this mayhem that you're jumping into now. And, uh, I wish you luck in the political arena. Uh, just the fact that you can come on here and, and explain that you have different viewpoints than maybe one side or the other side and you agree with some and you agree, disagree with others. That's an open mind. And for me, I think that's what it's going to take to get our country moving in the right direction. So thanks for what you're doing, bro. And thanks for coming on.

• 3:17:12Speaker 01

  Hey, thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you.

• 3:17:15Jocko Willink?

  And with that, Ed D'Landr has left the building. Echo Charles.

• 3:17:21Speaker 02

  Yes, sir.

• 3:17:22Jocko Willink?

  Are you happy you're not running for political office right now?

• 3:17:25Speaker 02

  Yes, currently, I am currently happy that I'm not currently running.

• 3:17:27Jocko Willink?

  You kind of had a look on your face during portions of that recording that you were kind of happy that you weren't running for.

• 3:17:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, we were talking beforehand and, you know, when you get into that arena, this is what I gathered, when you get into that arena, the curtain kind of gets pulled back and you see kind of how things work. And then you, so essentially you have a problem in there where it's like, hey, we need to change this. How are we going to change that? Well, you know, this system is set up to allow this, not necessarily for this, but it kind of allows for this. Well, okay, we'll change that then. Oh, whoa, but that system has to be voted on by the people who are benefiting from that system that allows this. And it's like, oh, man, so, okay, what do you got to do then? Then you got to do this, and you got to, and it's like this big, like, unraveling of a thing.

• 3:18:14Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:18:14Speaker 02

  With like so many unintended consequence, and it's like, man, it goes deep. And then that's, that's on top of like the obvious stuff. I was like, wow, man, I'm glad you're running and not me right now.

• 3:18:25Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Well, good on him. I'm glad we could get him out here because, you know, he's, he's making an effort. He's, and he's got a little, he's got like a pledge about taking ownership of what's going on, which is sort of, you know, taking ownership and actively participating in what's happening with the country. I can't make that claim, you know? I'm attacking it from a different angle, which for me, the angle is trying to bring manufacturing back to America, trying to grow businesses, trying to improve our economy through that methodology. But as far as jumping into the arena like him, you know, respect. So, good on him.

• 3:19:09Speaker 02

  I wonder what, because you know how like taking responsibility for a mistake, it kind of seems real obvious from the outside, or maybe because just because you talk about all the time, so now it's obvious to me. But I wonder if there's like some weird mechanism in the political world behind the curtain that. Kinda like doesn't allow for that, you know, like the obvious, not an obvious one, but the one that just hit me like right away was, let's say I say something dumb, or I say something about something that, or make a decision that's wrong or whatever, and I say, well, I'm not, like, I made a, I made a mistake, you know, or whatever. Is it because everyone will attack them like in the media, you know how media outlets have different sides?

• 3:19:47Speaker 02

  Where they'll attack them and then be like, hey, uh, freaking Jaco finally, uh,

• 3:19:55Jocko Willink?

  Admits he was wrong.

• 3:19:56Speaker 02

  No, no, no, they'll say it way worse than that. They'll say, finally confirms he's inadequate for this decision-making type or something like this, you know?

• 3:20:05Jocko Willink?

  I think it may have something to do with, do you remember at the muster? That we just went to, there was a woman that asked it basically, you know, uh, is it okay to say I'm sorry?

• 3:20:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 3:20:15Jocko Willink?

  And, you know, like, of course, it's okay to say, you know, when you make a mistake, you say sorry, apologize for whatever mistake you made. But there's people, like, there's a whole leadership theory that you never apologize.

• 3:20:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, I've heard that.

• 3:20:28Jocko Willink?

  And, you know, so I think the thing that we're talking about on the political side, I think there's something out there.

• 3:20:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:20:35Jocko Willink?

  That's very similar, never admit that you're, hey, never admit that you're wrong.

• 3:20:39Speaker 02

  Right.

• 3:20:39Jocko Willink?

  Never apologize to, you know, the opponent.

• 3:20:42Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 3:20:42Jocko Willink?

  And, you know, like, to me, it's the same thing. You're just, if you make a mistake, apologize. Hey, this is a mistake. Here's, here's what I thought was gonna happen. Here's what actually happened. This is, I was wrong about this. Here's what I plan to adjust for next time. And I learned a good lesson that I can confirm will not happen again if I can prevent it at all.

• 3:21:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:21:04Jocko Willink?

  So, yeah, I think it's just that. I think it's just, and the other thing is nowadays, I mean, I guess it's not even that, just nowadays, what is it? Goebbels said that if you repeat a lie enough, it becomes the truth.

• 3:21:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 3:21:18Jocko Willink?

  And so I think a lot of people are just like, yeah, you know, I didn't say that.

• 3:21:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:21:22Jocko Willink?

  No, I did not say that. You know, oh, um, you know, Jaco, it's a, you, do you, do you still, do you still, uh, confirm the, what you said last week about the blah, blah, blah? And I go, I did not say that it was taken out of context. Even though I did say it.

• 3:21:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:21:41Jocko Willink?

  You know, but you said, no, I didn't say that it was taken out of context. In fact, that reporter has been known to take things out, you know, you just go in there. In fact, my opponent has worked with that reporter in the past, that that's why they asked that question, because they're actually, you know, nefarious in their activities. So that's what everybody does. Everyone just denies, makes counter accusations, tells the lie enough time that it becomes the truth. And I think that's the standard operating procedure. And I think most people don't have time to pull the thread on it. I mean, some of the presidential debates last year were just ridiculous, like, they're just, they're just making accusations and then not even defending,

• 3:22:24Jocko Willink?

  but just making a counter accusation and just, you know, you said that blah, blah, you said that the economy would do this. I never said that. You're like, what are you gonna do? Go look up the quote? No. So it just becomes two people just shouting at each other. Uh, it's, it's horrible. The political thing is horrible right now. Uh, props to these guys that are, these, these guys that are stepping up and doing something about it. Good on you. Um, and that's where Ed's at, so. Good luck, Ed. And I think he's gonna have a rough time. He's got, he's got, he's, the problem is not a conformist.

• 3:23:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:23:00Jocko Willink?

  You know, he's not conforming to one side or the other side.

• 3:23:02Speaker 02

  Right.

• 3:23:03Jocko Willink?

  He's got one view over here, but he's got another view. He's got one conservative view, one liberal view.

• 3:23:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, do you think, cause you know, when you watch it on TV, that's like.

• 3:23:11Jocko Willink?

  So you know what happens? He gets shredded by both. That's what happens. Sorry for cutting you off.

• 3:23:15Speaker 02

  But only on, cause I don't know, I don't, I don't know everybody.

• 3:23:18Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:23:19Speaker 02

  But I, it feels like.

• 3:23:23Speaker 02

  You know that I don't know. Yeah, yes. But I feel like when you're kinda like an honest person who's like, oh, wait, like. I know I'm supposed to think this because I'm in this party, but like, man, I'm still, I'm still kind of like pumping the brakes a little bit before I go hard on it because I want to find out more. And oh, I'm sorry, I made that mistake. And hey, this is what I'm going to do. Like, this is how we're going to fix this mistake. You know, like, you would think that your everyday American person would be like, hey, I think I like that guy. I think I, I think I'd really, I don't know him that much, but.

• 3:23:53Jocko Willink?

  You're, you're probably correct. And that the extreme people on either side were attack. Right. But it's the normal people like, dude, cut, cut him some slack, you know, he said something he didn't mean and he adjusted it.

• 3:24:04Speaker 02

  And then, but then they, at the same time, they watch the news, who's like, kind of like, if you use the cliche word fear mongering, but it's like they'll fear monger, you know, they'll be like, hey, wait, this guy freaking is already making mistakes. Or something like that, you know, like they'll put it in your head that this guy is unreliable because he made a mistake and he even admitted the thing like, it's like, he flagrantly made him, you know, it's like that kind of stuff. When it's like, bro, you framed that as like this kind of scary, bad thing, when really, most of us kind of think that's good. If you did, if this media, whoever, the news, whatever. If they didn't say shit, bro, we would have liked that guy. In fact, we would have need that, we need that kind of attitude, actually, you know? So it's like, man, we're all kind of getting washed up in the cyclone, you know?

• 3:24:48Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. At some point, someone's going to break through that has like a common sense attitude.

• 3:24:54Speaker 02

  That's what I felt too.

• 3:24:55Jocko Willink?

  That's like, hey, you know, that's actually not true. No, you know, I said that, but I made a mistake and here's, here's, here's a more, here's a more holistic look at that issue. So, and boom, you know, but, but again, if that, if the out, if the media outlet is against that person, they're only going to soundbite the negative thing all day.

• 3:25:15Speaker 02

  That's not to mention, you know how they say, and I don't know, because obviously I'm not in politics at all. But they do say, I've heard people are saying that if you go, let's say, you know, like, um, like Tulsi, you know, had this happened to her, she'll go in the, I don't know, Democratic Party, whatever. She'll go in and she'll start doing stuff that's like against, quote unquote, against the party, then they'll get drummed out by the party itself. And if they're playing that freaking like kill them. Game or whatever like they'll drum a person out who's like being all honest and stuff.

• 3:25:47Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, well, Tulsi is a great example. You know, she got crucified.

• 3:25:52Speaker 02

  Bro, so it's like this hard ass game to like to improve genuinely, you know? Holy cow.

• 3:25:59Jocko Willink?

  Freaking.

• 3:26:01Speaker 02

  I don't know. It feels like, yeah, I felt it though. Like, I think you're right. I think like slowly by slowly. People are gonna be like, wait, how about let's actually like do the right thing?

• 3:26:10Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:26:10Speaker 02

  How about like, let's just try it, you know, a little bit.

• 3:26:13Jocko Willink?

  You know, some people are crazy too. There's like crazy people. There's, there's people that their, their political beliefs are a religion. And they're fanatical religious people, fanatical political people, which to me is, is if you're that focused. If you get emotionally upset about political things.

• 3:26:34Jocko Willink?

  Then I think you, you should, you, you got issues, right? You know, you know what I'm saying? Yeah. There's people that get emotionally and look, I can understand, you know, you get mad about something or. There's something that bothers you. That's, you know, that's, they shouldn't do it like that, right? But if I'm going crazy about it.

• 3:26:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:26:52Jocko Willink?

  Like even you heard me talking about California, right? California has done so much dumb stuff in the last two years and I'd be like, are you kidding me right now? But I didn't freak out. I didn't get on. That's another thing. If you're on social media and that's like a place where you're spending your time.

• 3:27:11Speaker 02

  Flipping out on.

• 3:27:12Jocko Willink?

  Flipping out on people. What was it? I think I was on that podcast with Chris Williamson. And he asked me something about, what was it? Like, how do you, you know? I think it was, it was basically either how do you handle negative comments or something like this? And I was like, bro, I mean, my recommendation is you don't spend a bunch of time being concerned about bots. Bro, they're bots. So. I think when you're politically outraged about something. Cause, cause here's the other thing you gotta remember. Okay. If you're a lobster man and you're about to have your, you're about to have your, your entire ability to provide for your family. I can understand getting outraged about that.

• 3:27:56Jocko Willink?

  I can understand being like, oh, you know what? I'm going to protest because they're about to take my livelihood away from me. But there's a lot of things that people get emotional about that actually really aren't going to have an impact on their life.

• 3:28:09Speaker 02

  Or it's like a hypothetical thing or whatever. Yeah. Also too, like, um, and then I don't necessarily see people getting outraged about it, but, but being like couldn't really concerned about it. You know, on a personal level is, um, the one that does make sense to me is like the taxes and stuff where like, when you know you're going to get less of your paycheck, that makes sense to me.

• 3:28:31Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:28:32Speaker 02

  You know?

• 3:28:32Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:28:34Jocko Willink?

  If you want to get even more frustrated about that, once you realize that the government is taking a bunch of your money.

• 3:28:42Jocko Willink?

  And then you see what they're doing with it and you, and you say to yourself, wait a second, right? Hey, if you were building awesome bridges, you know, and the streets were clean, like look at California. If you're like, hey, you know what? I pay a lot of tax in California, but look, look at Main Street, you know, Los Angeles, this beautiful place, but you're not saying that. You're literally, it's disgusting, right? It's disgusting. And then they do other crazy things. So you could start to get a little spun up about that, but you know what you do then? You leave the state, which is what a lot of people have done. How many people are leaving California? A lot.

• 3:29:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, that should be an indicator.

• 3:29:18Jocko Willink?

  And you could look at the federal taxes the same way. You're like, hey, but look, I want to pay for the security, pay for the military, right? That's cool to pay for some infrastructure. I'm good with that. But then when you start pulling the thread on those things, we should do a podcast where we just read through some of those expenditures. It's insane. It's totally insane what the government spends money on. You can't make it up. If I tried to make up things right now for dumb stuff for the government to spend money on, I couldn't come close to the dumb stuff that they actually spend money on. The government spends money on the dumbest things. And and yet, what are you gonna do?

• 3:29:58Jocko Willink?

  Well, you do your best to vote for people that wanna tax less and that wanna have a smaller government. Because they did the bigger the government doesn't become more efficient, doesn't solve more problems. Like when you're gonna, when you're doing an operation, you're going to, I had this conversation with Leif. Leif was like, kind of in the learning mode. And you're taking down buildings. And you think, hey, I'll just put everyone in the building. But you can put so many in the built people in the building that they're kind of in the way. Now you gotta like hire someone, you gotta advance or promote someone to be in charge of the other group while they're in the building. And that means those two people gotta communicate, so you gotta put someone in charge. Do you see what I'm saying? All of a sudden, you got a bureaucracy in a, in a, in a kill house. We don't want that.

• 3:30:44Jocko Willink?

  That's like the big government problem. You know, a big assault force, look, you need an assault force. You need to have enough people to handle the rooms and handle security. Cool, I get it. But you can't just double that. And say, okay, now it's gonna be more efficient. It might not be more efficient. And if you triple it, you may have some real issues. Now, now you have a problem. And now the problem is the assault force itself. You have a chance of creating a blue on blue, because there's so many freaking assaulters going in. So the same thing happens with the government. I mean, here's, they just, well, this bill coming where there's eighty seven thousand more IRS agents.

• 3:31:23Jocko Willink?

  I think it doubles the size of the IRS. That's too many assaulters in the room. You see what I'm saying? Like, there's too many, hey, if the tax code, they don't even know really what the tax code is. You know, I hire someone. I can't figure out what my taxes are. I can't even come close to figuring out what my taxes are. I have to hire someone who's got multiple people working for him that goes through and figures all that out. Cause that's how complicated it is. So I have to pay someone who also pays other people to figure out what I need to pay the government. Why, it makes sense that if the government is gonna bill me for something, they just give me a bill and I pay it. You know, I don't go into a restaurant.

• 3:32:06Jocko Willink?

  Order dinner and I say, hey, uh, you know, how much do I owe you? And they say, well, figure it out.

• 3:32:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, here's a scale. You better weigh that rice.

• 3:32:17Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you know, here's the cost of rice right now. And by the way, if you don't, if you don't come up with the right number, we're going to have you arrested when you leave this, the restaurant. Because you didn't pay the money that you owed us. Well, I don't know how much I owe you. Well, you better figure it out.

• 3:32:33Jocko Willink?

  That's crazy.

• 3:32:34Speaker 02

  What if you overpay the government, like your taxes and you like, let's say you overpaid your taxes and.

• 3:32:40Jocko Willink?

  It rolls forward. It rolls forward.

• 3:32:42Speaker 02

  Do they do that automatically though? Or do you have to like, say, hey, I overpaid and then they do it?

• 3:32:46Jocko Willink?

  Uh, I'm not sure, but I know that my accountant, shout out Brandon, good to go, freaking awesome guy. Sometimes he tell, he sends me a list like this is what you overpaid and how this has got rolled up. But I don't know if he didn't do that, would they just be taking that money? Probably.

• 3:33:03Speaker 02

  I wonder, yeah. So that would kind of make it like officially unfair.

• 3:33:10Jocko Willink?

  Bro, it's officially unfair as it is. Right?

• 3:33:14Speaker 02

  I think you're.

• 3:33:15Jocko Willink?

  It's officially unfair as it is. You are going to charge me. You want me to pay you money, but you won't tell me how much because I gotta figure that out. And if I get it wrong, you're gonna come arrest me. How's that work? How did you know I was wrong? Well, why don't you just tell me what that number was?

• 3:33:31Jocko Willink?

  Right? I gotta pay this other dude and his team to figure out how much money I owe you. And if I don't pay you the correct amount, you're going to arrest me, but you won't tell me what that number was? That's some crazy talk. You wouldn't think that that made any sense whatsoever. And yet that's how it works. And now we gotta hire 87,000 more people, 87,000. By the way, when you hire 87,000 people at the government, you, will you get government federal jobs like that? That's a lifetime of pay. That's, that's retirement pay. That's health insurance for the rest of all these people's lives. It's health insurance for their families. It's a crazy deal. It's not like you hired a number, a small number of people and they're going to do some extra work. And when they're done with that extra work, they're going to move on and find another job.

• 3:34:14Jocko Willink?

  No, this is a, you're, you're hiring someone for their life. That's what a federal job is. So these aren't like small budgetary additions. These are, these are a total change. A paradigm shift in the size of this tax collecting organization.

• 3:34:35Jocko Willink?

  And that's the best you can do. Everything is digital now and the best you can do is hire eighty seven thousand more people to help us figure this out. Are you kidding me right now? So you wanna, you wanna talk about stuff that can get you crazy? That's one of them, but, but nonetheless. I'm talking about it right now with you. I've never talked about this with you and I'm, I don't, I know when I go home, I'm not gonna be like fuming about it, right?

• 3:34:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:34:58Jocko Willink?

  There's issues that people get spun up about and, and by the way, what I just talked about, that's a pretty serious issue. They're taking money that you worked for, they're taking it from you and they're spending on things that don't make any sense. That's, that if there's one thing that could piss you off, that's definitely in the top seven.

• 3:35:14Speaker 02

  I agree, yeah.

• 3:35:14Jocko Willink?

  You know what I'm saying?

• 3:35:15Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 3:35:15Jocko Willink?

  I mean, would you be mad if I went in, got into your car, took your wallet out, took your money and left? Would you be mad? What if I only took fifty percent of your money? Would you be mad?

• 3:35:25Speaker 02

  I would be mad, yes.

• 3:35:26Jocko Willink?

  And what if I bought you dinner? With your money, but I also kinda bought me dinner too.

• 3:35:32Jocko Willink?

  So, so people taking your money is definitely one of the top things that can be annoying to you and can piss you off.

• 3:35:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:35:39Jocko Willink?

  The government does that all the time. So if there's, but that's the top seven. Definitely in the top seven of things that can piss you off, people stealing from you. Hey, look. It's only, it's not stealing up to a certain point. Cause when I, when, when the government takes money and they spend it on things that, you know, help. Hey, okay, we're gonna have a good military, we're gonna have good infrastructure, we're gonna have some reserve. You know, fuel in case something goes, hey, I'm, I'm in support of those things. Cool, I got it. But that hits a limit. The government doesn't need fifty one percent of my money to do that. Doesn't. But they're taking it. They're spending on some other shit. Some, some shit that I don't, you know, that is not right.

• 3:36:25Jocko Willink?

  So that's where we end up.

• 3:36:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, anyways, you guys are talking about the O course, how you can't just go in there anymore? You think you could do the O course, uh, right now?

• 3:36:35Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, a hundred percent.

• 3:36:37Speaker 02

  Would you get a good, what do you, what do you guys time it or something like this?

• 3:36:40Jocko Willink?

  It's definitely timed. No, I probably wouldn't get a great score because there's some technique that I'd be rusty on.

• 3:36:46Speaker 02

  Is there a minimum you gotta make or something? Can you fail the O course?

• 3:36:49Jocko Willink?

  You can definitely fail the O course.

• 3:36:50Speaker 02

  Would you fail the work?

• 3:36:51Jocko Willink?

  No, I would pass.

• 3:36:52Speaker 02

  You'd pass it? Would I pass it?

• 3:36:54Jocko Willink?

  I would need to teach it to you for two days and then you'd pass it. Yeah, if you're, if you're athletic, like you, if you can do pull ups, push ups, dips and you can run, you're gonna be okay. It's, I'll tell you what, that O course is awesome. When you get done with that thing, you're smoked.

• 3:37:10Speaker 02

  Oh, it's hard. It's like, oh, yeah. How long does it take? Give roughly?

• 3:37:15Jocko Willink?

  Seven minutes.

• 3:37:16Speaker 02

  Oh damn.

• 3:37:17Jocko Willink?

  Seven minutes of putting out. Seven minutes of putting out hard. Like, you know, uh, you know, the, the taste in your mouth, you know what I'm saying? Like the, the, I just put out real hard. What is it? Like a copper taste in your mouth? You know what I'm saying? You get that hundred percent. Even if you're kinda chilling, like let's say, let's say you and I went out there weekend, you know, we're in teams and we just go out there. We're still gonna feel it. A little bit. But when you go hard because you're trying to pass because you're in buds, bro, you feel like shit. It's big time.

• 3:37:50Speaker 02

  I always liked the expression putting out. I don't think I ever heard that telling, talking around you guys or whatever.

• 3:37:58Jocko Willink?

  Well, speaking of putting out, you got it. You gotta fuel.

• 3:38:01Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 3:38:01Jocko Willink?

  The output.

• 3:38:02Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 3:38:02Jocko Willink?

  I'm not gonna, gonna recommend you do that with some clean fuel. The cleanest fuel. Jaco fuel.

• 3:38:09Speaker 02

  It's true. Physical, mental, integrity. Like, these are all important things. So when you fuel that.

• 3:38:17Jocko Willink?

  You fuel your integrity? How'd you throw that one in there? I got physical, I got mental, you just tossed integrity.

• 3:38:24Jocko Willink?

  Like you got a kid and they're not, your kid's lying in school. Give him some Jaco fuel, tighten up his integrity.

• 3:38:30Speaker 02

  Tells the truth. It's true. No, when you're putting out is what I'm saying.

• 3:38:34Jocko Willink?

  I'm gonna make a new supplement called integrity.

• 3:38:36Speaker 02

  Maybe you should.

• 3:38:37Jocko Willink?

  Let's do it.

• 3:38:38Speaker 02

  All right. There you go. Book it. Put it on the, the books or whatever the expression is you guys use. Anyway, yes. When you fuel that output, when you're putting out all that stuff, you want the supplements with integrity. You know what integrity mean? Supplements, that's something. Okay. Energy, for example, energy drink. I'm explaining to you like you don't know, even though I do know that you do know. Energy drink usually has sugar, calf, uh, uh, preservatives, you know, poison.

• 3:39:05Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 3:39:07Speaker 02

  Jocko Fuel does not have that.

• 3:39:08Jocko Willink?

  Clean.

• 3:39:08Speaker 02

  Only healthy stuff, clean stuff. Yeah. Integrity, that's what I mean. Exactly what I'm talking about. Same thing with the malt, protein shakes, protein mix, and RTD, no sugar. Sweetened with fruit, not even like sucrose or fructose or actual monk fruit.

• 3:39:25Jocko Willink?

  Monk fruit. So good.

• 3:39:27Speaker 02

  So good.

• 3:39:28Jocko Willink?

  Uh, yeah. So check, actually, on the way down, you heard keto. What, how did Ed describe himself keto?

• 3:39:35Speaker 02

  Keto kook.

• 3:39:36Jocko Willink?

  Keto kook. I said, hey, man, you want one of these drinks? He goes, oh, I can. It's, uh, I'm a keto kook. And I was like, we're good.

• 3:39:43Speaker 02

  Yep, good to go.

• 3:39:44Jocko Willink?

  He said, there's no sugar in there? I said, no, there's no sugar. It's sweetened with monk fruit.

• 3:39:47Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 3:39:48Jocko Willink?

  And he's like, oh, cool. Crack one open.

• 3:39:49Speaker 02

  Keto kook, get it after.

• 3:39:50Jocko Willink?

  Keto kook, getting after, uh, keto kook approved.

• 3:39:53Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 3:39:54Jocko Willink?

  Actually, it says, what does it say? It says something on the can about keto. Keto friendly, maybe? Anyways.

• 3:40:02Jocko Willink?

  So there you go.

• 3:40:03Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 3:40:03Jocko Willink?

  Get yourself some Jocko Fuel, jockofuel.com. Go to Wawa. Go clear the shelves at Wawa. That's what you gotta do. Clear the shelves at Wawa. Just go, go in there, buy them all. That'll, that will help the campaign to grow. Cause people look at Wawa and they say, oh, it's doing really well in Wawa. Cool. So if you want to help, if you want to help the campaign of growth, go to Wawa, clear the shelves. Vitamin Shoppe. Pink Mist is at the Vitamin Shoppe. Pink Mist has kind of been a big hit. Have you noticed that across the board?

• 3:40:32Speaker 02

  I, I had one today and it's, it's good. It's one of those like, if you go to, like, it's, it's, it's kind of, what do you call it? When it's safe, you know? So you can't go wrong. You can't go wrong with that one.

• 3:40:43Jocko Willink?

  Oh, well, that's how you feel. A lot of people, a lot of people feel that's the one.

• 3:40:47Speaker 02

  Oh, no, that's not the one.

• 3:40:48Jocko Willink?

  That's the top of the list. That's because you like that mango.

• 3:40:50Speaker 02

  Mango's the one by far, in my opinion. But I'm with it. I'm with the whole gig.

• 3:40:54Jocko Willink?

  Jocko Fuel.com, originusa.com. Okay, so Ed from Maine. One of the problems up in Maine is gotta grow the economy. So if you want to help grow the economy in Maine, go to originusa.com. And you're gonna find blue jeans that were made in America, that are made in America. G, uh, boots that, that are made in America. Jiu Jitsu Gis that are made in America. We also have another factory down in North Carolina as well. So, American made is what we're doing at originusa.com. Go and get yourself some American made gear and help America. Help manufacturing in America. That's what we're

• 3:41:39Jocko Willink?

  doing. We appreciate you helping us to do it and you doing it too. Boom.

• 3:41:45Speaker 02

  It's true. Also Jaco's store. It's called Jaco's store where you can get your Discipline Equals Freedom shirts and hats and hoodies and stuff. Also, we have the Shirt Locker, which is a subscription shirt every month. Cool designs. No more days where you don't know what shirt to wear. You got one.

• 3:42:03Jocko Willink?

  Don't you normally say it's a subscription situation?

• 3:42:06Speaker 02

  It is a subscription situation, 100%. Whether I say it or not. It's true. Jaco's store.com. That's where you get the stuff. Check it out. If you want something, get something.

• 3:42:14Jocko Willink?

  Jaco Underground.com. Go check that out. We're putting out podcasts on that and it's also a little, uh, safe zone.

• 3:42:22Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 3:42:23Jocko Willink?

  What is it? Safe space. That's what it is. We're safe in there. They can't take it away from us.

• 3:42:28Speaker 02

  That's true.

• 3:42:29Jocko Willink?

  It's kind of not the typical term, safe space.

• 3:42:32Speaker 02

  No.

• 3:42:32Jocko Willink?

  It's an atypical term. But I know that freedom of speech is safe inside Jaco Underground.com. Go check that out. YouTube. Check out that. You want to see some awesome videos that I have, uh, assistantly directed, assistant directed. YouTube, Psychological Warfare, Flipside Canvas, bunch of books. You know what they are. I've written a bunch of books. Echelon Front Leadership Consulting Company. We solve problems through leadership. Go to echelonfront.com for details. Just got done with the muster down in Atlanta. It was an awesome event and you know what? It was sold out and everything we do sells out. So if you want to come to one of our events live, go to echelonfront.com and check out the

• 3:43:15Jocko Willink?

  events. We also have the online training academy. So if you want to learn these principles and you want to train these principles for your business and for your life, go to extremeownership.com. And if you want to help service members, active and retired, you want to help gold star families, check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee, she's got a charity organization. If you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to Americas Mighty Warriors.org. And also check out Micah Fink and Heroes and Horses, taking vets into the field where they can get lost and there they will become found.

• 3:43:56Jocko Willink?

  Once again, thanks to Ed Thelander for coming on the show and to follow him, or check out what he's got going on, Thelander for Congress.com. The Instagram is Thelander for Congress. The Twitter is Ed for Maine. Facebook at Thelander for Congress and YouTube at Thelander. And if you want to hang out with me and Echo online in the, in the zone, right? In the interwebs, we're on there too. Echo's @EchoCharles. I'm at @JockoWilling. Just, just be careful because the algorithm's there and it's not, it's not for your friend.

• 3:44:38Jocko Willink?

  It's pretending to be your friend. It's going, hey, look at this. Like it's saying that to you. Hey, look at this. Going to show you something. And it's something you want to see. Well, it's something that your most base form wants to see. You don't want to see it. You want to be disciplined. You want to carry on with your life. You want to go execute on awesomeness. But instead, the algorithms got you like an octopus. I think we need an octopus algorithm t-shirt. Bunch of different things trying to tie you up. So there you go. Thanks once again to Ed for coming out, sharing your lessons, and thanks for your service to the teams and

• 3:45:18Jocko Willink?

  your continued service to America. And speaking of service, I want to say thanks to all of our military, active duty and retired, every branch, every rank out there. Thank you for protecting our freedom and our way of life. And thanks to our police and law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol, secret service, all first responders. Thank you for protecting us here at home.

• 3:45:44Jocko Willink?

  And everyone else out there, since we were talking about Maine, I'm going to go ahead and close with some more of the great Joshua Chamberlain. Quote, "We can hold our spirits and our bodies so pure and high, we may cherish such thoughts and such ideals and dream such dreams to lofty purpose, that we can determine and know what manner of men we will be."

• 3:46:19Jocko Willink?

  And that's right. End quote. "We can determine what manner of men we will be."

• 3:46:27Jocko Willink?

  And we become that man by taking action. So, in the parlance of our time, get out there and get after it. And until next time, this is Echo and Jaco, out.