221: The Unimaginable Path of Jonny Kim. SEAL Combat Medic, Doctor, Astronaut

0:00:00 - Opening. The Letter 0:07:22 - Jonny Kim. Combat Medic. 3:44:39 - NASA. 4:09:17 - Final thoughts and take-aways. 4:19:56 - How to stay on THE PATH. 4:38:31 - Closing Gratitude Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

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

• 0:00Jocko Willink?

  This is Jocko Podcast number 221 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening.

• 0:09Jocko Willink?

  June 15th, 2010.

• 0:14Jocko Willink?

  Members of the selection committee. It is with absolute conviction that I give my strongest possible personal recommendation to Jonathan Y. Kim's selection for medical school.

• 0:30Jocko Willink?

  There is no one more qualified to make this recommendation than me. As Jonathan was under my direct supervision as a US Navy SEAL Combat Medic while I commanded SEAL Team 3 Tasking a Bruiser during the Battle of Ramadi, Operation Iraqi Freedom, from April until October 2006.

• 0:52Jocko Willink?

  During this time, the city of Ramadi was the epicenter of the insurgency and a place filled with fear, violence, casualties, and death.

• 1:04Jocko Willink?

  In that brutal and unforgiving environment, Jonathan's undaunted courage, tenacious devotion to duty, and superb skills as a combat medic were tested and proven over and over again.

• 1:23Jocko Willink?

  On one particular occasion, he and a small element of other SEAL Combat Advisors were leading a patrol of Iraqi soldiers through an enemy-controlled sector of Ramadi.

• 1:34Jocko Willink?

  The patrol was ferociously ambushed, leaving an Iraqi soldier severely wounded and lying helpless in the street.

• 1:44Jocko Willink?

  Jonathan and another SEAL who had taken refuge from the enemy gunfire behind a concrete wall, left their safe position and stormed forward into the hail of enemy bullets.

• 1:57Jocko Willink?

  They then dragged the wounded soldier under intense enemy fire back to a secure position where Jonathan immediately began performing combat trauma care on the Iraqi soldier.

• 2:10Jocko Willink?

  Another Iraqi soldier was then wounded by enemy fire. And Jonathan provided medical care to him as well, eventually organizing the casualty evacuation for the wounded men. For his actions that day, Jonathan was awarded the Silver Star Medal in recognition of his bold courage under enemy fire. That level of heroism and bravery was not an isolated incident. On another occasion, Jonathan exposed himself to enemy sniper fire in order to attend to one of his SEAL platoon mates who had been severely wounded by an enemy sniper round that had struck the SEAL in the face.

• 2:54Jocko Willink?

  Exposing himself to the enemy sniper fire that had just wounded his fellow SEAL and with blatant disregard for his own personal safety, Jonathan moved to the fallen SEAL, stabilized the patient, and organized the evacuation. For this action, he was awarded the Bronze Star Medal with Combat Distinguishing Device. Jonathan's bold courage, calm decisiveness, and intrinsic desire to provide care to the wounded even under the most intense urban combat imaginable continued for our entire deployment.

• 3:33Jocko Willink?

  Even as combat fatigue set in on many of the men as they saw their teammates, friends, and brothers in arms wounded or killed time and time again, Jonathan never faltered. I know that the horrors of combat have shown Jonathan more stress and chaos than most will ever see. I also know that he handled that stress and chaos with a calmness of heart and a steadiness of mind that any man would admire.

• 4:10Jocko Willink?

  As further evidence of this, after his deployment to Ramadi with tasking a bruiser, Jonathan was recognized for his stellar performance when he was selected as United States Special Operations Command Medic of the Year for 2006. Jonathan has now applied his strong work ethic and sharp intellect to college where he is performing with equal distinction, having earned a 3.98 grade point average. His remarkable aptitude for math and science is reflected in his standing on the mortar board honor society, the dean's list, and first honors role.

• 4:53Jocko Willink?

  Additionally, his dedication to service is represented in the many hours he has spent as a volunteer at both Sharp Memorial Hospital and Balboa Naval Hospital. This academic prowess, willingness to serve, selflessness in duty, and personal will to accomplish the mission even in the most severe combat situations are qualities so unique that I cannot fathom a more exemplary candidate for medical school. I am completely confident he will excel both in school and in the field and will make not only Harvard proud, but also provide the finest and most compassionate medical

• 5:36Jocko Willink?

  care to every patient blessed enough to come under his charge. I would be more than happy to answer any questions about Jonathan Kim and his unlimited potential. Sincerely, John G. Willink, Commander, Naval Special Warfare Group One Training Detachment.

• 6:06Jocko Willink?

  And that right there was a letter of recommendation I wrote for Jonathan Kim, otherwise known as Jonny Kim, for his acceptance into Harvard Medical School.

• 6:25Jocko Willink?

  And this was after I wrote him a letter of recommendation to be commissioned as an officer in the Navy. And after I sat on his board for the commissioning program.

• 6:36Jocko Willink?

  But before I wrote him a recommendation for acceptance into NASA to become an astronaut.

• 6:43Jocko Willink?

  And Johnny was accepted into the officer program. He was accepted into college. He was accepted into Harvard. And he was accepted into NASA to become an astronaut. And it was easy to write those letters of recommendation. Because the person that Johnny was and is simply an outstanding individual in every way. And it was an honor to work with him in tasking the Bruiser.

• 7:10Jocko Willink?

  And it's an honor to have Jonny Kim here with us tonight to talk about his life and his lessons learned. And he's a humble guy, so I already know he's gonna be mad at me for opening up

• 7:22Jocko Willink?

  with that grandiose letter of recommendation from all those years ago. But I will say Johnny, you brought it on yourself by achieving so much. So Johnny, welcome and uh, thanks for coming on, man. It's, it's pretty bizarre to be sitting here with you right now after all these years.

• 7:40Speaker 01

  It is. Thank you for having me here. It's an honor to be here and uh, thank you for the kind and generous and also undeserving words. I mean, listening to that story, it seems a world away, but at the same time, it seems like it just happened.

• 7:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's the way, I think that's the way life is. And I think that's the way military, for me, my military career is in chunks. And you know, I spent a chunk of time at SEAL Team One as a new guy. Then I spent a chunk of time at SEAL Team Two as a young Ensign. Then I spent a chunk of time in college, then a chunk of time here. And those, those chunks can be years long, but sometimes they just seem like they went by in 15 minutes. So, um, man, your story, which you're really just in the middle of right now, I guess. Let's, let's just go back to the beginning and, and go through, you know, growing up and how, what that was like. And we'll get through the teams. We'll get all the way up to sitting at this table, which like you said earlier, is

• 8:42Jocko Willink?

  very strange for you and me to be in this position. And I don't think either one of us ever thought we would be sitting doing what we're doing right now.

• 8:49Speaker 01

  No, never. Let's do it.

• 8:51Jocko Willink?

  Right on, man. So where were you born?

• 8:54Speaker 01

  Los Angeles, California.

• 8:56Jocko Willink?

  And, and what was the, what was the scenario you grew up in?

• 9:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, so

• 9:02Speaker 01

  first generation Korean American, my parents immigrated to the States in the early eighties, a couple of years before I was born. I was born in 84. And and growing up for me was

• 9:18Speaker 01

  there were some hard times growing up. I mean, I have always kept my growth, my childhood, close to the chest. Even some of my closest friends, I've never told how I grew up. And it wasn't out of shame or anything, but I think it was a little bit, I think it's always been private for me. And it's been a part of my identity. And and for a lot of the same reasons why I wanted to be a SEAL, that creed we swore to, to to never really to do the things we do and not seek recognition for it. I've never, in that same vein, I never wanted to tell my story. But, um,

• 10:04Speaker 01

  My dad was a hard worker. He was uneducated.

• 10:11Speaker 01

  I think he, I don't know if he finished high school. But he grew up in a poor rural area in South Korea. And my mother was from a middle or well-to-do class family in South Korea. My fa- her father, my grandfather, was a professor at Seoul University. And so they came over here and my dad worked for what he didn't have for education. He more than made up for with just pure grit and work ethic. And like a lot of Korean-Americans, especially in Los Angeles,

• 10:51Speaker 01

  he owned a liquor store in downtown Los Angeles, near South Central. And, you know, I think a lot of what I've become, a lot of the decisions I've made in my life started with my father. And growing up, my father had, he had a lot of demons.

• 11:22Speaker 01

  Like a lot of people, and I think he did the best he could to live within those, to live with those demons. But a lot of times, he didn't have the mental strength to really not let those demons get a hold of him. And so much of what I've learned in my life has been what not to do by example of my father. And growing up, I mean, it seems,

• 11:59Speaker 01

  it just seems like a different life to me now. Because I've had different experiences, so many humbling experiences. When I think about where I came from, it seems like a big accident. This seems like an accident to be sitting here with you talking about this. Everything I've done is an accident. Being a SEAL was an accident. Going to medical school, being a physician, being an astronaut, those were all accidents, not part of the plan at all.

• 12:29Speaker 01

  All I wanted to do as a kid growing up was protect my family. Protect really my mother and my brother from my father. Who was very abusive.

• 12:41Speaker 01

  And like a lot of families suffered from alcoholism. Some pretty bad alcoholism.

• 12:50Jocko Willink?

  So when you were, when you were experienced that growing up, at what age did you recognize that this was not normal?

• 13:01Speaker 01

  It's hard, hard to put a number on when I knew it was not normal. But I remember at a very young age, having that feeling to protect

• 13:12Speaker 01

  my brother, my younger brother from, from it. You know, when the fights were going on or when the abuse is going on to try and shield him from it. Or, and I have a very distinct memory of actually trying to protect my mother one time. And, and it didn't, it didn't go well. And my mother also telling me to never do that again.

• 13:35Speaker 01

  Um, cause out of love, you know, she didn't want to see me get hurt. So.

• 13:41Jocko Willink?

  And then at what age? I mean, at, at some age, did you get to a point where you could step in and defend your mom?

• 13:50Speaker 01

  You know,

• 13:53Speaker 01

  yeah, I'm sorry to talk about such heavy things.

• 13:57Speaker 01

  Beginning, beginning of a podcast, but you know, you, you wanted to, wanted to know how it all started off.

• 14:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, you know, that's why when I think about my life growing up, I was, I was different. I was, I was scared. I was a scared little boy, scared of the world, scared of relationships, scared of talking to people, going to school, of having my own opinions, of speaking up or fighting for what I believed is right. I was so scared. I was definitely scared of my father.

• 14:31Speaker 01

  And.

• 14:36Speaker 01

  You know, it was just living on, living on eggshells to make sure, um, to pray, you know, I prayed every night, hoping that things would get better, or that, um, my, that my father would see the light and, you know, all those experiences, while they were terrible at the time, I wouldn't take, I wouldn't trade any of that for anything. I would never want to trade that. Cause everything that happened helped form me into the person I am today.

• 15:19Speaker 01

  And we'll talk about it, the teams helped channel that into good.

• 15:28Jocko Willink?

  So what point did you hear about the teams?

• 15:34Speaker 01

  So I was 16 years old and I would say being lost was probably a good description of how I felt up until that time. And I was, you know, I was doing like a martial arts thing with my buddies and I was mostly just doing, cause a couple of my buddies, Ryan Kalms and Keith Blum were big into martial arts and I wanted just to hang out. And my buddy Keith told me with passion I've never seen before about the SEAL teams, about a Navy SEAL. And this is 1999 or 2000. This is like, no one knew what a SEAL, this is

• 16:15Speaker 01

  pre 9/11. I had never heard what a SEAL was. And he told me with this passion about that quiet professional, that warrior that does these hard things that no one else wants to do and never seeks recognition for those actions. And there was something about that, about that creed that drew me in a way I've never felt before. It called for me. And, you know, so I went home and went on my 56K modem and read everything I could about what it was a SEAL is. And I read a book that was pretty formative for me. It was The Men With Green Faces by Gene Wentz.

• 16:57Speaker 01

  And my decision was made, like, this is what I'm gonna do. And a week after discovering what it was, I told my mom, I'm gonna be, I'm going to be a Navy SEAL.

• 17:10Jocko Willink?

  And she had no idea what it was? You had to explain it to her, I assume?

• 17:13Speaker 01

  I mean, she just, she didn't know what it was. She just knew he was being a warrior, some type of soldier, an operator. And it was the last thing she wanted to hear from me.

• 17:26Jocko Willink?

  Did you get drawn to it? I mean, imagine, like, you, you know, you're saying that your whole life you felt scared and you felt weak and scared of your dad. Did you think, hey, if I do this, it's gonna, it's gonna allow me, give me the capability to protect people, including my mom?

• 17:44Speaker 01

  Absolutely. That is completely on point. You know, when people ask me why I wanted to be a SEAL, it's so easy to come up with the superficial reasons, like, yeah, I wanted to get paid to blow up stuff and jump out of planes and serve my country and shoot guns. But those are all fake superficial reasons. I didn't, those are absolute pluses, but that is not why I wanted to be a team guy. I wanted to be a team guy for what you said. I wanted to transform my life. I wanted to learn the skills, to develop the strength, to become a different person, to find my identity, be someone that could protect the people that I loved that couldn't protect themselves.

• 18:27Speaker 01

  And now that I have more awareness of human psychology and the experiences in our environment and how it shapes us into the people we become and the decisions we make, I realize that it was completely born out of my situation with my father and wanting to protect my brother and my mother and that extending to really all people. I thought, this goes to show how little we know when we are young.

• 19:02Speaker 01

  I thought that being a SEAL would solve all of my life's problems. And it gave clarity and focus to so many, but it probably created just as many more.

• 19:19Speaker 01

  But it gave me tools to deal with those problems. But just, it was a pretty naive thought. And I even said it to my mother. I said, being a SEAL will solve all of life's problems.

• 19:33Jocko Willink?

  Were you, so you're in high school. Are you, are you doing sports or anything like that?

• 19:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I was a big swimmer. I played water polo. And after I found out what it was to be a team guy, I did all my research and I, what's this, Stu Smith, who I recently learned is in the world of kind of like making fitness Navy SEAL guidelines and workout plans. I found his book, which is maybe like the first, like first edition or second, it might be a later edition now. And like did all those workouts and then, you know, did it twice through and just tried to push myself every day after school doing, you know, I was in, I went to Santa Monica High School, so the beach was three blocks away. So always doing swims and runs and a lot of calisthenics, a lot of pushups.

• 20:26Jocko Willink?

  Was your, what about school? Were you paying attention in school? Were you academically focused?

• 20:31Speaker 01

  I was. I didn't, I was, I felt like I was going through the motions of school and I, I did pretty well. And I always got straight A's. I did pretty well. But I knew college was not for me. Like I didn't, I was lost. I didn't know what I wanted to do after high school, but I knew it wasn't college. And so when I heard about the teams, that calling, so this is what I'm gonna do. And it was, it's to date, it is the strongest calling I've had.

• 21:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, there's uh, I have conversations with people a lot and man, that idea that you should go to college right after you get done with high school. I don't know if that's the best idea for everyone. I mean, for some people it works. I get it, but what your classic example, I'm a classic example. I mean, when I ended up going to college later, hey, this is fine. You know, you're you're disciplined, you're focused, you can get stuff done. But yeah, coming out of high school, I would have been just, you know.

• 21:34Speaker 01

  The focus is not there. Yeah, you're not there for the right reasons. I think everything you can do in life should be for the right reasons. And going to school after high school because that's what your parents told you to do and that's like the next default. It may work for some people. I don't think it's necessarily the right decision for a lot of people. Like, like you said, we're both prime examples of that. I think we both went to undergrad in our later years of life. I was like 26 or 27 when I went to undergrad.

• 22:01Jocko Willink?

  Were you worried about when you went in the Navy that you weren't going to be around your mom, you weren't going to be around your little brother? Were you worried about them with your dad?

• 22:10Speaker 01

  I would have been, but my father actually passed away before I joined the Navy. So I didn't have I didn't have that worry.

• 22:19Jocko Willink?

  What age was that? Like, how old were you?

• 22:22Speaker 01

  I just turned 18. So it was uh

• 22:25Jocko Willink?

  So it was close?

• 22:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's close. February 21st, 2002.

• 22:31Jocko Willink?

  And was that, I mean, that had to be a weird feeling of this guy that had been abusive to you, your brother, your mom. And but he's still your dad. I mean, how did you, how did you? How'd you wash out those feelings?

• 22:49Speaker 01

  Oh, it's it's a complex question.

• 22:54Speaker 01

  And just, you know, I

• 22:57Speaker 01

  I want to be clear, like I have no ill feelings against my father and I have forgiven him of the years of abuse that he gave. And when I grew a little bit older and I understood where he came from, he also came from a pretty terrible home situation. And I think his demons, he just didn't have the tools or the aptitude, the mental strength to deal with those demons. And like a lot of people, they pass those on, right? The sins of our father pass on to us and I don't fault him. And with the abuse, most of it was directed at my mother, you know, verbal and the physical abuse.

• 23:41Speaker 01

  I mean, it was not as direct with us. I mean, certainly there was, you know, the belts to the feet and I remember I'm always kind of being scared to go to sleep sometimes because, you know, I think, I, it, there were times where being woken up with a cold glass of water to the face was what would happen, you know, or being woken up and being asked which of my possessions I had to choose what he would break in front of me. And I understand a lot of that was just to hurt my mother and he did a good job of doing that. And so he saw that hurting his children was the best way to actually hurt his mother.

• 24:25Speaker 01

  Cause my mother was a very strong, was and is a very strong woman. And so physically or verbally abusing her to a point was like, well, just bring it. It's not, but hurt my children, it's going to crush me, you know? When my father died, it, I feel like it was the day I was reborn into someone else. And I would probably have to backtrack and tell you the context of why I feel that way.

• 24:57Speaker 01

  Towards the later years of high school, my, uh, my mother had had enough of the life she had been experiencing and she would have left my father long ago, but it was really us, my, my, myself, my, my brother Jeff, um, that she couldn't leave behind to my father and there's no way my father would have left her, let her leave with us. That was not going to happen. So, but there was a time where she just couldn't be in the same household. So for months at a time, um, she had worked it where that she would actually sleep at

• 25:38Speaker 01

  a friend's house or go away. So at nighttime when my father came back, you know, the food, like my mother would prepare dinner and food, but she would be somewhere else. And this arrangement was going on and I think my father, uh, obviously not very happy with the situation. Thought it would go back to normal because there had been periods of time where my mother would leave for a little bit, but always came back because like a lot of abusive relationship, it's hard, it's hard to leave that, right? And especially when the abuser promises they'll change and may change temporarily, but then goes back to their ways. It's a classic story. But this time was a little bit different and I think my father knew that this time was

• 26:21Speaker 01

  different and was getting frustrated and I think seeing that there were little options left and I think maybe felt cornered and I think cornered animals can be dangerous. Can be very dangerous. Um, not that I think he was cornered, but I think he felt that way. So on this particular day, um, I think it was February 21st, 2002, um, I was home with my mother and it was during the day and my father came home and he was supposed to be at work. So I think it was a little, little surprising. Um, and I remember when

• 27:04Speaker 01

  he came home, yeah, I could smell the whiskey on his breath. So I knew he was, knew he was very intoxicated. Um, and it was just.

• 27:17Speaker 01

  I could feel something was different this time. There was a tension. And I knew I had to stick around. And uh. My mother was surprised and scared to see him there. And they went in the kitchen and I stuck close by on the couch in the living room.

• 27:40Speaker 01

  And. I remember. My father came up to me. And some of the last words he said to me was, I'm sorry. Jonathan. And he pepper sprayed my face.

• 27:55Speaker 01

  And then all I hear in the kitchen is my mother screaming for help and saying, he's got a gun. So I then. You know, fight or flight, do you do what you need to do to protect the people you love? So I got up and I did my best to. To to fight him. And get that gun.

• 28:24Speaker 01

  And fought as hard as I could as as. Strong as I guess a hundred and forty pound year old kid could do at the time.

• 28:34Speaker 01

  But I I lost that fight. I still have a scar. Right around here um from when my father was. He was able to get a hold of a dumbbell nearby and smash my head in with it and uh. I think um they kind of turned. The fight and he was able to get his gun out of his pocket.

• 28:58Speaker 01

  He shot it in the air and.

• 29:01Speaker 01

  It was.

• 29:05Speaker 01

  You know, that was the first time in my life that I faced. A life or death situation and. As you and I know, there were many more to come later, but for different reasons.

• 29:17Speaker 01

  But this was my first taste of it. And I don't know how, maybe by the grace of God, or something that I said. You know, I remember clearly pleading with him that we loved him and that he didn't have to do this. And that it wasn't, I clearly remember saying that it's not too late.

• 29:41Speaker 01

  Like this, you have, you have the power to decide right now. It's not too late.

• 29:47Speaker 01

  And

• 29:50Speaker 01

  I think maybe clarity or grace. In a moment of clarity that my father found, he decided not to shoot us, not to kill us. And I told him to go run, just run. And he did, he went.

• 30:06Speaker 01

  He left the back door and that was the last time I saw my father.

• 30:13Speaker 01

  You know, after that, in the hysteria of that, my mother was on the phone and called 911 and screaming for help. And so eventually, you know, ambulances came and police came and I got, you know, I got my head stapled at the hospital. I came back and the police were there, write a report. And I came back into my room and I noticed that things had shifted. I have a closet that has access to the attic and I noticed that there were, furniture was moved in such a way to gain access to the attic.

• 30:51Speaker 01

  And I told the police that I think my father's still in the house and he's in the attic.

• 30:57Speaker 01

  So they, they did what they're trained to do. They sectioned out the area. And confronted my father and

• 31:08Speaker 01

  one thing led to another. I wasn't there.

• 31:12Speaker 01

  But shots were fired and my father was killed.

• 31:18Speaker 01

  And I remember that day so vividly. It was, I don't mean to sound callous, but in, in a lot of ways, it liberated me. It liberated, certainly liberated my mother. It was one of the hardest and most sad days for her. But it liberated her and it liberated myself and my brother. And it taught me, it became the benchmark for me to do so many more things in my life. Cause I don't think I was meant to be a SEAL.

• 31:59Speaker 01

  I don't think I was born to do any of the things that I've had the opportunity to do. But it's because of those experiences. Being able to stand up to a person, to a figure who I feared more than anyone. And to be able to do something that I never thought I could be possible doing, standing up to someone, especially someone who was threatening to kill you and the person you loved most. It was empowering. It, it, it taught, it liberated me. It taught me, I'm not the scared little boy I thought I was.

• 32:38Speaker 01

  I can do these things that I'll, I can be a part of something bigger than myself.

• 32:47Speaker 01

  And, you know, I remember having so much foolish, naive pride at the time. I was naturally being 18 and just so angry with the world, just having so much hate to my heart. I think a lot of, I had a lot of hate in my heart as a kid.

• 33:09Speaker 01

  When I see my child, Christian, who is full of happiness and carefree and is like me in so many ways. I see him and I realize that is the person I would have become and I want to protect that. But. With the life, the cards I'd been given, I just had a lot of hate in my heart and I refused to cry because I thought that was a form of weakness to cry for my father who had passed.

• 33:38Speaker 01

  And I never, you know, didn't cry at his funeral or anything. And I remember that, that day, on that day when my father died, we went to the police department. And I'd already known what had happened and I remember going in and there were three cops to the side and you could, I could, I knew then and I also know just now of how warriors talk. And the guy talking was motioning with his hands and he was recounting the story that led to my father's death. And, you know, using his motions of how he entered and he saw us come in and my brother

• 34:20Speaker 01

  was weeping and very naturally inconsolable and I was there and I think we made brief eye contact and I think, I thank him for that because I think he had the clarity and the respect to kind of stop what he was doing and realize that he was probably recounting a war story of someone he had killed and this family was just walking through. I haven't thought about that in a long time, but just telling the story made me remember that. And the police, the detective I talked to, he said, "Son, I'm sorry to tell you, but your father is dead." And this is one-on-one in a room and I was just emotionless, just stone-faced and he said,

• 35:11Speaker 01

  "I take it that this is not bad news? Is this good?" And I said, "It's, I'm just relieved, sir." And he said, "I understand, son."

• 35:31Speaker 01

  And

• 35:36Speaker 01

  It's it's just a day for so many reasons that that helped me be reborn into the person I wanted to become, that I've always wanted to become my entire life. And I knew from there that maybe, just maybe, I had what it took to be a SEAL.

• 36:00Jocko Willink?

  Is there anything that you can think of? Cause like that, that's obviously just a harrowing story, but at some point

• 36:11Jocko Willink?

  you, or maybe it was some point along the way, or maybe it was multiple points along the way, but it's like you turned, instead of turning towards the darkness, right? Instead of becoming a person that's abusive, instead of, you know, hating, like you said, you had hatred in your heart, which could have turned you in just a completely, you know, a totally different direction in your life.

• 36:35Jocko Willink?

  Is there anything that you can think of that made you look up and say, you know, and this is for me right now, you know, this is my first time hearing this stuff and, um, you know, I

• 36:48Jocko Willink?

  when you, when you, when you, um, applied to become an officer and the, uh, become a PA, I think that's what you were originally applying for? Were you becoming, trying to become a PA?

• 36:57Speaker 01

  For me, it was always being a physician.

• 36:59Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so you were applying for the medical thing and I remember I'm sitting on your medical board and, or your officer board and I'm with, it's me as a SEAL and two, like one regular officer and then like a doctor officer. And I, I remember, um, I said something along the lines of, cause we, you know me, I kind of say whatever I want, but I said something along the lines of like, hey, I don't like hospitals, I don't like doctors, I don't like nurses, I don't like any of that stuff. I have no idea why you would ever want to do this. I don't know why you want to go be in a hospital all day. And I said, but if I had to have someone.

• 37:38Jocko Willink?

  Taking care of my kids, I would want it to be you. Because I knew you had this, just, um, you, that you were a very compassionate person, that you really cared about other people. I mean, I, I saw that from day one with you. And, and now I'm, I'll say, now it's so obvious. Well, part of it's obvious. Part of it's obvious that you can go with these experiences that you went through. I mean, we see it every day that people go in two directions with those, you know, when horrible things like that happen. They can follow in those footsteps of, of evil, for lack of a better word. Or they can recognize that it's evil and they can go in the other direction, which is what you did.

• 38:19Jocko Willink?

  And I'm just wondering, is there, can you, are there any pieces that you can put together that you can say to yourself, "Well, one of the things that you saw was this, and this made you think, you know what?

• 38:33Jocko Willink?

  My, the way my father acted was wrong, and I'm not going to be that way."

• 38:41Speaker 01

  It's a good question.

• 38:45Speaker 01

  I don't think I have an answer for you. I think that's a question that a lot of people would love answered, especially with so much abuse and dysfunction in society, in America, all over the world. We would love to know what it is that allows people to sublimate their bad experiences, to channel it for a good cause.

• 39:16Speaker 01

  And I'm not here to tell you I was never on the path to darkness. I am by no means a saint. Or have always done good things. I have done things that I am not proud of. I've sinned. I sin every day.

• 39:38Speaker 01

  I try and keep that light there as a guiding path for good all the time. And one of the reasons why I wanted to be a doctor was not because I was in love with medicine. I mean, I do like medicine, but it's to serve to a cause greater than myself. That leaves a positive mark in this world. It's the same reason why I wanted to be an astronaut.

• 40:06Speaker 01

  I think being a SEAL was maybe a little bit more selfish for the reasons we talked about because I wanted to be a part of, I wanted to find my identity. I don't know, I think my, I think my mother had a large part into it. She's one of the strongest women I know. And seeing that strength and that selflessness and that sacrifice. She sacrificed her dreams. She could have been someone. She's a smart woman.

• 40:37Speaker 01

  She's a beautiful woman.

• 40:40Speaker 01

  She didn't have to be with my father. But I, after having two boys and loving her children so much that she would sacrifice her dreams, her potential to protect us.

• 40:57Speaker 01

  I think that had significant effect on me. So if there's anyone to credit, it would be my mother.

• 41:09Speaker 01

  I don't, I don't know if that, I don't know if I have the answer though.

• 41:15Jocko Willink?

  Well, certainly seeing an example and you know, I, I've been talking about this lately. When you, sometimes it's not easy to see something if there's not a contrast against it, but for you to see the contrast of someone that's bad. You know, your dad doing bad things, abusing weaker people. I mean, this is just, you know, they're just, that's just bad. And you might not have noticed how bad that was if it weren't. contrasted so drastically against your mom who is making the ultimate sacrifice with her life and standing up for you and taking that abuse and staying in that situation because she

• 41:58Jocko Willink?

  wanted to take care of you kids and I think when you see that sometimes it makes things just more obvious it's something that you may not have seen otherwise if your mom was you know if your mom was just as abusive or she had her own problems or she was doing things that were wrong you may have just thought that's the way the world is and that's the way you're going yeah but to be able to see oh it doesn't have to be like this and there's there's good in people's hearts is that that could be for a kid the difference

• 42:34Speaker 01

  yeah I mean all good points and it's so weird to be saying to be recounting this story I've never said this story publicly and you said yourself you've never heard this story well if you ask most guys from Charlie Batton they have they have not heard that actually I think if you ask all but one maybe one person they have not heard this story and it's just something I kept close to my chest because

• 43:08Speaker 01

  everyone has their story I don't think my story is any more important than anyone else's and we talked a little bit before this podcast but I'm I'm a little at unease and still am about being on a podcast like this because it's so I don't say I don't want to say it's contrary to my beliefs but it just requires being extra thoughtful and I think that creed we all swore to

• 43:40Speaker 01

  To not advertise and promote the nature of our work and never seek recognition for that. And I take that creed to heart.

• 43:52Speaker 01

  So it's weird for me to be recounting this story publicly. And if it was up to me, I'd keep it close to the chest for all my days. But as I've grown older, I've come to realize that there is value for other people. I'm not the only person in this situation. And frankly, there are people in way worse situations than I am, than I was in, who are still in it. For them to know that you can be born with bad cards. You may, you don't need to have it all, but you have a choice and the power to craft your own destiny, your own path.

• 44:38Speaker 01

  And for that reason, I think it's, I think it is less important that I keep stuff like this close to my chest. And, and that's why I'm, I'm sharing it with you.

• 44:51Jocko Willink?

  Well, that's, that's, that's one of the very reasons why this podcast even exists is for people to learn what other people go through, that they're not alone, that things could be worse for them, they could get better. I mean, that's so exactly what you said is the exact reason why sharing that story is, is absolutely important because people can, people can learn from it. People can, people can get over their own things that they're facing because they know that someone else did it. I mean, how powerful is it? You know, you hear the story all the time about the first guy, you know, Bannister broke the four mile timed or the, the four minute mile. No one thought it was possible. Once he did it, all kinds of people did it.

• 45:32Jocko Willink?

  So just knowing that someone like you can go from this horrible place and do what you've done, yeah, that's a, that's huge.

• 45:42Jocko Willink?

  Did these events as they unfolded, impact your decision to join the Navy? And at what point did you go down to the recruiter and sign up?

• 45:52Speaker 01

  So I was, so when my father died, it was a few months before graduating high school. And I was already depped in, I had a ship date. So I had already gone and signed the paperwork. I mean, not the, not the final dotted line that makes you in the Navy. And you know, you raise your right hand and do the enlisted oath.

• 46:11Speaker 01

  But my mind was set. I mean, my mind was set a week after Keith Blum told me what a Navy SEAL was back when I was 16. I mean, it was clear like, I'm going to do this and no one is going to be able to convince me otherwise. And I talked to people and people will ask me too, like, I think I want to be a SEAL. And I don't know if this is a litmus test, but I always try and convince people to not do it. And I feel like if I can convince someone to not do it, I just perhaps have saved them and the money a lot of time and money. Because if I can convince you to not be a SEAL, then you probably will convince yourself at the first sign of suffering.

• 46:50Speaker 01

  So, but I was not convincible. You could not convince me to do anything. And the conversation, this is crazy, you're, I'm pulling up memories I have not thought of in years. Just the conversations I had crafted that I was planning to talk, to tell my father. Cause I could not tell my father I was joining the Navy. No way. He would have, you know, he may have quite literally killed me. I think that would have been very upsetting to him. Cause he had a clear path for me and it was to be, it was to be a doctor at Harvard Medical School. And I promise you, that is not why I went to Harvard Medical School.

• 47:34Speaker 01

  But it was to do that. And for me, I was like, there's no way I'm going to do that. I'm not going to live your dream. I don't want to be a doctor. I don't want to go, I don't want to go to an Ivy League school. I want to be in the trenches. I want to enlist. I want to be the E1, working my way up, learning from everyone else, learning the ropes and roughing it.

• 47:54Speaker 01

  Being in the trenches with boys, that's all I wanted to do. And I crafted how I would tell my father I was actually going to join the academy. And I was thinking, I had this plan to go to the exchange and like buy an officer's uniform. So when I would come home, I would like show up in an officer's uniform just to like maintain this perception to my father that I was in the academy. And these were like the ropes, the extent that I had planned because I was so afraid to tell my father. And fortunately, I didn't have to do any of that because my father died. It sounds callous, but fortunately, I did not have to go through that deceit.

• 48:36Speaker 01

  Because my father passed away. And I don't mean to paint my father in a bad light, really. I, I love my father. I do. I couldn't, I could not have said that. I was unable to say those words for a very long time.

• 48:54Speaker 01

  Would I do? Love my father and I understand he was human and fell to sin and his demons. He just didn't have the clarity and the tools to deal with that. And I forgive him for that. So I don't mean to paint my father in a bad light. And as I said before, I would not trade those experiences for anything because they were formative. And everything I am today started with those, with that darkness.

• 49:28Jocko Willink?

  When you were talking about going into, um, whatever, going into the recruiter and all that. And I'm imagining when I did it, when I, I remember being, because you were talking about feeling liberated before, when your dad died. Um, I know that when I joined the Navy, man, I felt like so awesome. Like I felt like I didn't need anybody else. I was a hundred, like you had, no one had any control over me anymore. I just kind of at that moment, when I signed that dotted line, I now was in control of my fate, even though most people would look at the opposite. Oh, you're in the Navy now and you're going to

• 50:08Jocko Willink?

  have to follow orders and wear uniforms and all this stuff. To me, it was complete and utter freedom. That's what it felt like.

• 50:20Jocko Willink?

  Now, so you graduated high school. So did you graduate, you're 18 years old or you're 17 years old?

• 50:25Speaker 01

  I was 18 when I graduated high school.

• 50:27Jocko Willink?

  And you go to Navy boot camp?

• 50:29Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 50:30Jocko Willink?

  How was that?

• 50:37Speaker 01

  I'm still in the Navy. I'm an active duty lieutenant, so I will maintain my level of respect and deference to the ways of the Navy, but Navy boot camp is

• 50:52Speaker 01

  just wasn't as hard, as trying as I thought it would. I think when you have the idea that you're going to be a SEAL, you prepare yourself for a different standard. So when you go to boot camp, you show up, it's a little, it's just a little different.

• 51:05Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Well, the focus is on like attention to detail.

• 51:10Jocko Willink?

  It's more of a pain, the way I look at it, more of a pain. Like you're like, oh, this is a pain. Cause you have to make your bed and you have to fold your underwear a certain way. You have to do all these things that more than their physical pain, they're just a pain, just a pain.

• 51:25Speaker 01

  There's a rhyme and reason for why they do things and I think it works. You know what? I smile, chuckle and I smile when I think about Navy boot camp because that's where it all started. I mean, I loved it. I, like you said, you felt free. I felt free. I felt I had no one. Like, you know, when my dad died, I just felt this weight on my shoulders just released. Like I had never felt before. And for the first time, I didn't have to worry about my brother or my mother. So, and I just wanted to get away.

• 52:00Speaker 01

  I, the teams, the military, it was my ticket to escape the childhood I was born into. This idea of Jonathan that people had knew as a scared little boy, I needed a reset button. And the military was my reset button. Now I'm going to start anew with people I don't know. Who have no idea where I came from of my background. And I am going to go through the ranks on my own merit and hard work and learn how to be led and lead others.

• 52:35Speaker 01

  And it was the best decision I have ever made. And.

• 52:45Speaker 01

  Every time I say that, I think of my wife because I think marrying my wife was the best decision I made, but it's it's a little different. You understand what I mean by it was the best decision for me in my growth and development to join the military. And it's not like that for everybody. I'm not trying to sound like a recruiter. Join the military. It's not for everyone, but it was for me.

• 53:04Jocko Willink?

  I would tell you that, and well, this is true for my wife for sure. If I wasn't, if I didn't join the Navy, if I didn't go in the teams, my my wife, A, probably wouldn't have married me because I wouldn't have been the human that I am. And to this day, if like, the reason that we're happily married is rooted in the fact that I was in the daves. Whether she likes it or not, she knows it's true. Like, you're, you have that always. And it's always, it always is a part of you. So, um, you, it sounded like you were pretty well-prepared for BUDs in terms of you played water polo, you were a good swimmer, you were working out on the beach in Santa Monica. It sounds like physically you were, you were

• 53:49Jocko Willink?

  pretty good to go.

• 53:50Speaker 01

  I would say in most aspects, I think I over, I put an over-reliance on calisthenics and body, just body weight exercises. I mean, I could crush the PS, whatever they're calling it now, the PST, you know, the time run and swim and pull-ups and all that stuff. I could, I could crush that. But you put weight on me, you put a log on me, you put a boat on me.

• 54:14Jocko Willink?

  How much did you weigh going to BUDs?

• 54:15Speaker 01

  I was 140, 45 pounds. I'm 180, 185 now. I'm a lot stronger now than I was back then. But I'm also a lot slower. Like, I probably couldn't run as fast as back then. But I didn't understand strength the way I do now. I didn't incorporate barbells into my routine. It was all body weight stuff. So it was definitely an over-reliance on the body weight exercises, calisthenics, running, swimming. And if I could redo it, I would have eaten a lot more calories.

• 54:49Jocko Willink?

  During BUDs or before BUDs?

• 54:50Speaker 01

  Before BUDs.

• 54:51Jocko Willink?

  Just to be bigger and stronger?

• 54:52Speaker 01

  Just to be bigger and stronger and, and I would have squatted.

• 54:54Jocko Willink?

  And warmer.

• 54:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, I would have squatted a lot. And just, like, just the same, you know, shoulder presses, bench press, squatting, deadlifts. I would, I did none of that before preparing for BUDs. And so.

• 55:09Speaker 01

  I feel I was prepared, but I wasn't prepared in that respect.

• 55:13Jocko Willink?

  Then, um, was there anything that gave you like a real problems in BUDS? Like, did you, did you make it through one class? Did you get rolled back at all?

• 55:20Speaker 01

  No, I was lucky enough to make it through with two, four, seven in one shot.

• 55:25Jocko Willink?

  You started with two, four, seven, and then you graduated with two, four, seven. Did you fail anything?

• 55:32Speaker 01

  No.

• 55:34Jocko Willink?

  Oh, because you were comfortable in the water from water polo.

• 55:37Speaker 01

  So you, for dive face?

• 55:39Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 55:39Speaker 01

  I thought dive face was, was a great, um, I was very comfortable being thrown around in the water. Because you're right, I mean, just from playing water polo, you're used to being like, people are watching drown you, you're getting the ball. So being thrashed around in pool comp wasn't a big deal. I mean, everyone's capable. The water, you are your own greatest enemy in the water, right? If you just maintain clarity and focus and calm your nerves, everything will be okay. It's when you thrash, you panic, you get air hungry, that plays on you. And that's when you really, people have a hard time, I think, when it comes to water-related activities.

• 56:19Jocko Willink?

  Well, yeah, that's, that's why I immediately went to, and you said, oh, you made it through everything. I immediately was like, oh yeah, you played water polo. Because what's, what is it that trips people up? Okay, you're going to be tired, that can trip some people up, you're going to be cold, they don't want to be cold anymore, so they quit. Like those two things, hey, running and swimming pretty much are, sorry, running, pretty much like, you're going to get put on the grind there and you're going to, your, your times are going to drop and you're going to be, there's not too many people that get dropped for running. It happens for sure. There's not too many people that get dropped for obstacle course. Water, though, that's, that's the separator, right? So if you're comfortable in the water, going to BUDS, man, you have a huge leg up. Because all those little things you just rattled off as if it's no big deal, like, don't panic, don't get air hungry.

• 57:04Jocko Willink?

  Like, that's real easy when you're a water polo player, but for these dudes from Iowa that didn't grow up in the water, you know, unless they grew up on a lake somewhere. I, I mean, there were some guys in my class, there was one guy in particular that was from Iowa. And he was a wrestler, and he was strong, and he was fast, and he was in incredible shape. And the dude sank and he just panicked in the water every single time and he quit.

• 57:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:26Jocko Willink?

  You know, so I think that's a big, um, a big separator.

• 57:30Speaker 01

  But I have so much respect for the folks who didn't have that kind of background of being so comfortable with the water. I don't want to say his name because he's still active and he's over at Dam Neck but

• 57:44Speaker 01

  let's say it's just his first name. My buddy Tyler, who I went through, he was like my sister division in boot camp. And I have so much respect for Tyler for just the way he carries himself and how he's just a very hard man. But he showed up to boot camp and didn't know how to do the side stroke.

• 58:01Jocko Willink?

  That's insane.

• 58:02Speaker 01

  And he learned in the locker room before the PST. And this guy is like one of the most squared away and prepared guys ever. And to this day, I give him like, I'm like, how did you show up and not know how to do the side stroke? But just from sheer willpower, he made it through and like performed very well. We were swim buddies, dive buddies. So he performed very, very well. So I always, I just chuckle. And so I have a lot of respect for people who are not comfortable, but through sheer willpower, will get knocked out. You know that 50 meter swim? If you've played water polo or swim, that's not a big deal to do 50 meter underwater swim.

• 58:44Speaker 01

  It gets uncomfortable, sure. But there are folks who go to the, go to the light, right? They drown, they go unconscious. And I have so much respect for that level of determination. Like, I would rather die than give up. And, you know, and it's just, I don't know. I have to give props to that.

• 59:06Jocko Willink?

  Was there anything that, was there any moments in BUDs where you were like, man, I don't know if this is for me? Or did that not even cross your mind?

• 59:12Speaker 01

  So I want to, I want to be clear. I was not a stellar performer, but I was middle of the pack runner, swimmer, everything. With the longs, the boats. You know, there's a standard to Hellwicke. It's not just, don't quit. You need to perform to a standard. And for me, I just wanted to make it clear, I was giving my heart in everything I did. So that my, I cared more about what my boat crew thought than than my instructors. There was one instructor who I still remember, instructor Megan, who I think just had it out for me.

• 59:52Speaker 01

  You know, just a skinny kid from from Los Angeles and I I cared so, I just wanted to put all I was like, if I just put out, put out, my boat crew will accept me and and I remember a guy in my boat crew, Nick Check, who who passed away during hostage rescue, who gave the ultimate sacrifice. Him and my buddy Steve, another guy there, gave me that reassuring like, hey, you belong here. And that's that that meant so much to me. So a lot of times I don't understand when a person who is in BUDs and is not a performer and everyone else wants him to quit, how they could, how they could like be there.

• 1:00:35Speaker 01

  Cause I care so much about what my brothers think that if they didn't want me there, I would never be there. I would never want to slow anyone else down. I don't know.

• 1:00:49Speaker 01

  To answer your question, you know, there were certainly hard times. I don't think there was ever a time where I wanted, like, I'm gonna quit. But there was definitely times where I wanted the pain to stop. And one particular time I remember was, you know that two hour nap you get in BUDs or in Hell Week? Hell Week, yeah. You're in a nice, warm sleeping bag on a cot and they wake you up. I don't know if they still do this, but they wake you up and they just whisper like, get up and hit the surf. In like the nicest, most compassionate voice and it disarms you, right? Cause it, they have circumvented that fight or flight response, right? You don't have, you don't mount that defense.

• 1:01:32Speaker 01

  You just immediately get woken up very nicely and get sent to the cold water. And that was the closest where I was like, I want this to stop. I want this pain and suffering to stop. But as far as like being like, I want to quit or I'm going to quit, that. Wasn't there for me.

• 1:01:51Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's totally understandable. You always hear that thing that everyone thinks about quitting. And I'm like, I didn't think about quitting at all. I was like, whatever, bring it.

• 1:02:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think there's a difference between wanting to think about quitting and thinking about just wanting it to stop.

• 1:02:06Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, well, this definitely sucks.

• 1:02:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. But you know what? I was, like you said, you felt free. When I showed some buds and I got wet and sandy. I got my buddy Jordan Lewis. I got a picture of when we first got wet and sandy in white shirts. And we're just beaming with smiles and this selfie, just like, I was so happy to be there. So happy to be starting my journey of embracing that suffering and suck.

• 1:02:29Jocko Willink?

  What year is it right now? What year did you go to buds?

• 1:02:32Speaker 01

  So 247 started in early 2000, spring of 2003, spring, summer 2003. So we were in hell week in fall 2003. And then we, you know, graduated buds in 2004.

• 1:02:47Jocko Willink?

  So you know, you're going to war, or at least hoping you are.

• 1:02:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, absolutely. When, you know, people ask me, did you join because of 9/11? And I mean, frankly, I already told you this, but I joined for a very, I think, more selfish reasons. But 9/11 only galvanized me to want to join even more. And if anything, it just, just how naive I was. I was a little bummed out. This is my 18 year old self saying, oh, the war's going to be done by the time I get there. Like, I missed it. I'm 18 years old. This is 2002. And I could not have been any more wrong.

• 1:03:30Speaker 01

  But of course, when, at that time, especially in my development, I, I wanted war, I think. I think it's hard to articulate why, but a lot of people feel this way who train to do something. They want that. And I don't know how, I'm sure we can talk at length about how we each now feel about the experiences we've gone through. And I wouldn't trade for anything, but war is, I don't know, I don't know about you, but it was, it was pretty ugly.

• 1:04:01Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, for sure. You know, um, I had a, I was on a guy named Sam Harris's podcast and he would, he called me out because you know, I, I talk about how like leading men in combat is the best thing in my life. And, and then I also say war is absolute, you know, the most horrible thing in the world. And he goes, how do you, how do you reconcile those two things? And the way I explained it to him, I said, have you ever met someone that has cancer that survives? And when they get through, they say, they say, you know, I'm glad it happened to me because they learned so much. They don't would, would never wish it on anybody. Well, that's, that's pretty much exactly how I feel about war.

• 1:04:39Speaker 01

  I've never heard that analogy, but I think it's on point. I would never trade it for anything. And I would go back in the trenches right now in a split second with my brothers. I would go back in that environment right now. But I would never wish it on my own children. And I hope they never see it.

• 1:05:02Jocko Willink?

  You get done with BUDs and then you, when did you know you were going to be going to eight? Did you go to 18 Delta?

• 1:05:10Speaker 01

  I did. Yeah. So when I talk about accidents, like that was another accident. So you know, the recruiters are.

• 1:05:19Jocko Willink?

  What's the difference between accidents and luck? Cause you keep calling things accidents. Some of it sounds like it might be a little bit more luck. Some of it's luck that you made. Accidents, I don't know.

• 1:05:31Speaker 01

  I think, I think what I'm trying to point out is that there wasn't a plan.

• 1:05:36Jocko Willink?

  Got it.

• 1:05:37Speaker 01

  Not a plan at all. I mean, the plan for me was just, like I told you, all I wanted to be was a SEAL. I had no idea, no aspirations to be a physician, to be an astronaut. I just wanted one goal at a time. That's really important to me, even to this day, that you have one singular goal because you should be all in in what you're doing.

• 1:06:01Speaker 01

  You should be genuine in what you're doing, not have some social climbing, some professional ladder that you're trying to meet these goals and these stepping stones. And why I said accident is because I didn't want to be a corpsman. In fact, I wanted to be an intelligence specialist because it sounded cool.

• 1:06:20Jocko Willink?

  Sounded cool.

• 1:06:22Speaker 01

  Or an operations, like I had no idea what an IS or an OS, which is the rating for those two jobs. I didn't, I just, it sounded cool. But I would have shipped out later and I'm like, I want to ship out as soon as, I want to go away as soon as possible. What's the rate that will get me there the fastest? And they said, son, you gotta be a corpsman. What's a corpsman? Well, you do the stuff, you do the hospital stuff. I don't want to do that.

• 1:06:47Speaker 01

  Like I want to be on the mission. Like if I'm like in the unlikely event I made it through, I don't want to be the medic that doesn't get to do any cool stuff. Come to find out, that's completely not true at all. So that's why I say it's an accident. I didn't plan it that way. And after SQT SEAL qualification training, I got sent to Fort Bragg to learn how to be a combat medic.

• 1:07:12Jocko Willink?

  And then how long was that school?

• 1:07:14Speaker 01

  That was six months. And you know.

• 1:07:17Jocko Willink?

  Whoever told you that this is where someone lied to you? Because whoever told you the fastest way to get to the teams is to be a corpsman was just wrong?

• 1:07:23Speaker 01

  Well, I think for me, I was okay with that because I had already, I just wanted to get the buts. And they're like, you know, the fastest.

• 1:07:31Jocko Willink?

  Oh, I see. The fastest way to get to buds was go corpsman.

• 1:07:34Speaker 01

  Or the fastest way to join the Navy, just to get like, because I'm like, me talking to recruiters, I want to get out of here as soon as possible. What do I need to do? You need to be a corpsman. Okay, I'll be a corpsman, whatever. Figure it out later.

• 1:07:47Jocko Willink?

  When you got to, when you started doing 18 Delta, the, the school, the medic school, did you start, did you find it interesting? Were you kind of like, wow, this is cool?

• 1:07:56Speaker 01

  Oh, absolutely. I, I'm fascinated by anything that's challenging. If it's engineering, space, medicine, anything that challenges you, it's fascinating. Like, so I, I thought it was completely fascinating. I loved, I came to learn that medicine is pretty cool. Like, and I took it seriously, like though I didn't want to be the medic. I understand the gravity of that, that kind of honor that you are entrusted with the lives of your teammates. That's a huge honor and I took it seriously. So, once the decision was made that I'm gonna do that, I was all in. Like, I'm gonna be the best medic I can be. And being at 18 Delta, honestly, those six months were more difficult than any time I had in medical school. Cause it's so much material crammed into six months on how to

• 1:08:40Speaker 01

  be a trauma combat medic. And you learn a lot of skills. I mean, you learn how to do chest tubes, which is a procedure that physicians train years through medical school and residency to learn how to do. And you learn how to do that in six months. Crazy procedures, life-saving procedures. And I have to give props and respect to the Army, cause I think that they train the best medics, really. And I think that their culture surrounding combat medics is on point to maintain that currency. So, I had a great time. At Fort Bragg, it's not the best of places to be stuck in, but I had a great time learning from our Army brothers and sisters.

• 1:09:25Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, the, the, the way that we train our medics and the, the feats that they're able to perform on the battlefield are, are awesome. Keeping guys alive. It's, it's, um, it's amazing. Did, um, so you get done with that, and for some reason, you, you show up at SEAL Team 3, and what was SEAL Team 3 on deployment where you showed up, or what was going on? Cause somehow you ended up going to sniper school, right?

• 1:09:50Speaker 01

  I know.

• 1:09:50Jocko Willink?

  Which is totally ridiculous.

• 1:09:52Speaker 01

  It is.

• 1:09:52Jocko Willink?

  So, for anybody that doesn't know, if you're a new guy in the SEAL Teams, you don't get to go to sniper school. Normally, a guy's going one platoon, maybe even two platoons, maybe even three platoons before a guy gets the, the honor of going to one of the most coveted schools in the SEAL Teams, which is the sniper school. It's a hard school, but it's a quality that everybody wants. Everybody wants to go to that school. And somehow... Accidentally, luckily, whatever you want to call it, you show up to Team Three and you go right to sniper school as a medic, which is another school that everybody wants because it's a great qualms. All of a sudden, you can, you've got an actual, an actual marketable

• 1:10:33Jocko Willink?

  skill as a human being. Besides like, hey, I can walk point and shoot a machine gun. That doesn't go, that doesn't get you anywhere. But hey, I can save people's lives. That's a huge skill. And you're getting two of the best skills that the, that the SEAL Teams has to offer as a new guy.

• 1:10:50Speaker 01

  Undeservedly. Absolutely. You know, I changed, and I also changed my viewpoint of medics because I didn't realize, I was going through SQT, Ty Woods, who I'm sure you know, passed away. He was one of my instructors in SQT and he's a medic. He was a corpsman too. And he was like, dude, don't you know that the medic always has to go on the mission?

• 1:11:12Jocko Willink?

  Medic always gets to go.

• 1:11:12Speaker 01

  Always goes. Like, what are you talking about? You don't want to be the medic. So that changed my perspective on medicine in the teams because I just wanted to be a shooter. Like, you know, and, and no disrespect to the officers of the SEAL Teams, but I wanted to be the one pulling the trigger. I wanted, I wanted to be in the deepest of the trenches. I know you understand where I'm coming from because you were enlisted before you became an officer. And I have no idea how I got to sniper school. I showed up, Team Three was still in deployment and they're like, new guy, go to sniper school. Raj, that I will. And for me, you know, I, I had, you know, I had an awareness of where I stood on the

• 1:11:55Speaker 01

  totem pole. I knew as a new guy, I knew I was smaller stature and I just wanted to prove myself. I was just so hungry to do a good job. And so I knew sniper school is going to be hard, but like, man, I'm, I'm not going, I'll do everything to not fail this and bring this asset to the platoon. And I'm so thankful of whoever it was that allowed me to go to sniper school as a new guy before Team Three showed up from deployment.

• 1:12:21Jocko Willink?

  How'd you do in sniper school?

• 1:12:24Speaker 01

  So it's like three, I don't know how it is now, it's three phases, you know, the first phase is pick, it's like photographic image capture where you basically learn how to use an SLR camera to take facial recognition pictures, basically if you're, you know, SR or special reconnaissance. And that's all geek stuff, like using computers, setting up a network, sending, you know, sending pictures through radio waves. I love that stuff and that was, came naturally to me. The second part was scouting and scouting, you also have to pass the,

• 1:12:57Speaker 01

  you have to get a certain score on the rifle, on the rifle, on the stalking, the stalking and the rifle.

• 1:13:04Speaker 01

  Of course, like, you know, 200 yard Marine Corps test data penalty. We would have to do, which is a pretty hard test. It's all iron sights and I had never shot a gun.

• 1:13:13Jocko Willink?

  I was gonna say, that's why I was asking you this question because, you know, like I already said, most people going to sniper school have at least one deployment, if not two or three, and you know, you shoot thousands and thousands of rounds every workup and deployment. So you're improving your skills, but you were coming right out of buds going to that with very, you know, with no experience.

• 1:13:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, you shoot very minimal, like you don't know, you don't learn how to be a SEAL in buds. You just learn how to suffer. And then you go to SQT and you get a little taste of what it's like to learn some tactics, but you don't really know anything still. And you get to shoot a little bit, but it's not that much. So I didn't have that much and that, like, I didn't grow up in a rural area where I had access to guns and so I didn't shoot, I had very little shooting experience showing up to sniper school. So that was hard and I, and actually, if I remember this correctly, there was a point

• 1:14:02Speaker 01

  where I almost did not make it through because you have to get a certain score on the rifle.

• 1:14:07Speaker 01

  But something clicked. I mean, if you just stick with the points of performance, front sight focus, body positioning, follow through, breathing, like they work, right? And you just, you, you just, I don't know if it's rounds or just perspective, but eventually things clicked for me. And I started to do actually pretty well in the shooting part. And the stalking was also something I struggled with, but once I learned the

• 1:14:40Speaker 01

  He just had to geek it out, just kind of dissect what stalking is. And all stalking is, there's really two phases of it, right? You have dead space, right? So if, what dead space is, is if you know, if you have a known observer, you put a piece of earth between you and the observer, line of sight, that person cannot see you. You could have a parade in that lane of dead space, and you could just walk your merry way. Because stalking was a time devolution, but it was also, you had to get a certain qualification by a certain amount of time. If you had all day, then it'd be a lot easier. And obviously, if you don't have dead space, then you have to, you just have to learn the human physiology.

• 1:15:23Speaker 01

  Like, the human eye is attracted to movement, especially at night. So if you understand that, and just slow your roll, be cautious, be thoughtful at every step you take, every movement, be slow, methodical with your stalking, to get to that shooting position, to take that shot, things become a lot easier. And it took me, so, so that phase was, was hard. And I think I, I actually may have almost failed out, if I remember correctly, but I was able to get through. And the last portion was the actual just shooting portion. And that came much better for me. I think I, I learned those points of performance and sticking with that.

• 1:16:04Speaker 01

  And I loved the math behind shooting at long range. And people think, like, well, how hard is it? You just put a reticle on what you're trying to shoot? I'm like, that's not what a sniper is. You very rarely are shooting by putting your reticle on a target. Like, yeah, sure, if you had the time to dial and click in to your windage and your dope, which is another word for elevation, sure, you put your reticle on that, and if it's perfect... Great, but in the real world, there's changing winds, there's moving targets,

• 1:16:43Speaker 01

  and there are targets of opportunity that are not sighted into your 200 or 300 yards that your scope is at. It might be a target that's 600 yards and you're doped in at 300, or a target that's 100 yards and you're doped in at 300. So you have to learn these math problems, like, well, if there's a left to right wind, I know that, and I have to aim to the person, you know, to the right side of the person's body. Or maybe it's an extreme wind, so I'm gonna be more conservative and aim even further to the left. Or the person is further than I'm doped in, so I'm gonna make sure I'm aiming one or two body lengths higher than the person, right?

• 1:17:21Speaker 01

  It's a math problem and it's an art. So, I loved the geeky side of that. So, I was all about it and I was so happy and so, I felt so privileged to have, to gain that skillset, to bring back to my platoon.

• 1:17:40Jocko Willink?

  So now you get done with that, and that school actually overlapped with the beginning of Task Unit Bruiser and the workup. So, you showed up late as a new guy to our desert training facility out in the Imperial Valley Desert. And I actually remember when you showed up very, very clearly, and there's a backstory that I'm not sure you know about this. So, we're out there at the desert training facility and, you know, some of the more senior guys had hazed the shit out of some of the guys. And I saw what was going on and they were doing, they did some stuff that was like dumb.

• 1:18:23Jocko Willink?

  And so I grabbed, I grabbed the chiefs and I was like, hey guys, I gotta talk to you. So it was the, it was the two platoon chiefs and, and the, the task unit senior enlisted advisor. I was like, hey guys, gotta talk to you. We got outside, I was like, listen, guys, I get it. You guys need to tighten up, this is bullshit, you know, like, look, I get what you're doing, I get that this stuff takes place. It's okay, but if you're gonna be stupid about what you're doing, we're all gonna get in trouble and it's gonna be a problem. So tighten it up and don't let me see this shit anymore. And the guys were like, hey, Roger that. I literally walk inside the compound, or I walk back inside the building and you had showed up

• 1:19:06Jocko Willink?

  while like while I was talking to those guys and you got welcomed to your platoon by getting, you know, assaulted and your head partially shaved like they didn't do a good job. And so I'm standing there and I come walking, walking in and someone's like, "Hey, Kim, go report to the commander." You have no idea who I am, but they they're like pointing at me and you look like you just, I mean, your eyes are freaking giant and you just look like you just walked into into the craziest things you've ever seen. And you come walking and you got a ball cap on. And I'm looking at you and

• 1:19:48Jocko Willink?

  you're standing at a position of attention. I mean, it's just hilarious. And and I'm looking at your hair and I could see that the guys have obviously just roughed you up and partially like shaved chunks out of your hair. And you're like, "Sir, I'm Petty Officer Kim," or "I'm HM3 Kim," or "HM2 Kim," whatever you were. "I'm reporting on board." And I was like, "Hey, bro, nice to meet you, man." Just something really chill like that. But that was pretty funny. That's the backstory. The guys, me just literally tightening them up and tell them not to be idiots. And I walk in and four seconds later, I'm meeting you and it looked like you just got slapped around and your

• 1:20:27Jocko Willink?

  head shaved. That's I have never heard that backstory. It's amazing. Yeah, I got I got welcomed to that too. I think it was a mullet. I think I had a mullet. I was given a mullet. That's right, because you had really long hair too, coming out of sniper school. No one's seen you in a while. See you had long hair. They weren't gonna have none of that. Who is this new guy showing up with long hair? Yeah, not totally asked for it. But, you know, so many emotions when you show up to your platoon. Like a lot of guys, I was just so hungry to be accepted, to be a good job. Like, look, I can put out, I'm an asset. Like, I want

• 1:21:07Jocko Willink?

  to be here because I want to be here. And getting welcomed like that was, I wanted that. It's a different world. I feel like I was fortunate enough to see two sides of the Navy because that is certainly.

• 1:21:24Speaker 01

  Not at all condoning that behavior, but it is what it is. It is what it was. And I've kinda at the cusp where I got to see that side of the teams and I'm sure it still goes on, but it's changed a little bit, right? Um, but-

• 1:21:39Jocko Willink?

  It changed a lot. It was on a glide slope the whole time that I was in. I mean, when I first showed up to the teams, it was, it was dumb and out of control.

• 1:21:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:21:46Jocko Willink?

  And, and what, you know, and just like what you're saying, like there's parts where you go, oh yeah, that made sense. And then there was other people that were just idiots and it was totally out of control and it needed to be tightened up. And, and I saw that glide slope the whole time I was in and, you know, it, it got to a point where, which is what it was kinda like for us. Like, hey idiots, what are you doing? If I'm the commander and I see what you idiots are doing, you're wrong. And don't be stupid and don't do things that you're gonna get in trouble for. I mean, it's just dumb stuff.

• 1:22:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:22:16Jocko Willink?

  Um, so there's, uh, uh, you know, unfortunately it's a hard thing to police. Because in order to police it, you'd have to say, okay, you can do this, but you can't do that. Hey, when I, when I first joined, I was on a ship and we went across the, the damn equator. And it was a, you know, you become a, have you ever heard of this? You become a shellback?

• 1:22:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:22:37Jocko Willink?

  So I did that. It was one of the worst hazing sessions I ever had. It was completely condoned by the entire US Navy.

• 1:22:43Speaker 01

  What's a shellback?

• 1:22:44Jocko Willink?

  Um, someone that has been over the equator. So if you, if you've never crossed the equator, then you, then you're a, then you're a, uh, what's it, a WOG? I think it's a poly WOG or a WOG, they call you a WOG. And then once you go across the tr- the equator and you go through this big ceremony, which is just a big hazing session, then you become a trusty shellback.

• 1:23:06Speaker 01

  Okay, so, okay.

• 1:23:07Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And I, I mean, they did everything that, that would happen in like, you know, they were dunking, they were feeding you crappy foods. They were beating you with like, um, uh, cut off fire hoses. It was legit hazing.

• 1:23:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:20Jocko Willink?

  And of course-

• 1:23:23Jocko Willink?

  Some of that stuff, you go, okay, I get it. It's a tradition. It's a welcome aboard. Like you said, it's a welcome. And of course, there's people that are idiots that take it too far. And that's what you, that's what you end up having to correct for. You have to have, end up having to correct for people that are stupid, people that are sadistic, people that don't have any common sense. And it turns into a problem. So.

• 1:23:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. Everything you said is on point. I think you have to understand the intent behind an action, right? If it's malicious, which sometimes it turns malicious for some people, that's not right. Now, if it's a way to welcome someone aboard, to feel part of, you know, the brotherhood, the sisterhood, like welcome, this is what it's like.

• 1:24:06Speaker 01

  I think the spirit of that is, I understand the spirit of that, but you're right. It, it requires people to be judicious, to have, to exercise good common sense. And unfortunately, that doesn't always happen.

• 1:24:22Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And the blanket thing that happens in, in a big organization like the Navy is they go, okay, look, we, we, we don't know how to, we don't know how to judiciously do this. We don't want to put regulations around it. So we're not doing it anymore. And you know what? That was actually one of the worst things that used to happen if there was a guy that people, that, that a platoon sort of rejected, like an organ rejection, where, you know, you get a, a kidney transplant and your body can reject it. Sometimes that happens in a platoon and, and what would happen, it wouldn't, it'd be the opposite. It'd be like the guy's not getting hazed. He's not getting, you know, razzed by the troops. People aren't making fun of him for this, that, or the other thing. That's when you, that's when you know a guy's a real problem is when he's actually so far outside that spectrum that they go, you know what?

• 1:25:07Jocko Willink?

  We don't even, we don't even want to, we don't even want to do that with this guy because he's not one of us and we don't want him as part of the team.

• 1:25:14Speaker 01

  Wise words. I I've always heard that, um, and I believe it. If if you weren't getting rattled, if you weren't being made fun of, then people didn't like you.

• 1:25:24Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:24Speaker 01

  And that's just the culture. I think it's hard for people outside of that community to understand why we were so hard on each other and why. It it was born out of love. It really is. It's a a lot of those actions and just the way we, um, conducted ourselves and, I mean, some of the people, closest friends, we were just, you know, just dog on each other all the time to this day.

• 1:25:49Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. It's a, it's a, it's a, I guess, weird environment to grow up in, because I'm like you. Like, I joined the Navy when I was, um, eighteen, and that's what you, that's what you, you just go into this environment, and it's just like you're saying. When I got into that environment, I was like, this is so awesome. This is the coolest thing ever. This is the people I want to be around with forever. And yeah, you know what? If you got out of line, you would get tightened up. You would get tightened up. And you know, that's something I I've talked about is like in Task Unit Bruiser. I'm the commander of Task Unit Bruiser. The amount of times that I personally had to tighten up a guy for being late

• 1:26:30Jocko Willink?

  was zero. The amount of times I had to personally tighten up a guy for forgetting his gear was zero. The amount of times I had to tighten someone up for being out of uniform was zero, because the freaking gang took care of that. And the gang was gonna make sure that we were squared away. And and that's what that mentality is kinda like. It's kinda like a gang mentality.

• 1:26:48Speaker 01

  As it should be, in that respect.

• 1:26:51Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah. Um, but that was your welcome aboard.

• 1:26:55Speaker 01

  It was.

• 1:26:56Jocko Willink?

  That was, um, funny. So, and so then all of a sudden, you're you're dropped into the middle of workup, and now you see the, now you see what, now you see what actually being a SEAL is about, is like now. That that first trip. Did it meet your expectations?

• 1:27:14Speaker 01

  It did. Absolutely, and and exceeded my expectations. I had no,

• 1:27:23Speaker 01

  I didn't have a benchmark of what a normal platoon was, and actually, I didn't, I just kinda thought all. Let me, let me back up a bit.

• 1:27:34Speaker 01

  What I've done in the teams is a drop in the bucket compared to what you've done and what a lot of our brothers have done. And I've got friends who've done 10 plus deployments.

• 1:27:44Jocko Willink?

  Take that one step further. You say what you've done in the teams is a drop in the buck compared to me, which is not completely accurate, but even if you accept that fact, what I've done in the teams is a drop in the bucket compared to other guys that were in it in longer time, better time, more extreme situations. So yes, it goes without saying that both of us, look, man, we, I mean, for me, I did what I could do while I was in, you did what you could do while you were in, but goes with, it doesn't go without saying, we're both saying it. What we did in the teams was a fraction, a little miniscule compared to, first of all, the teams as a whole. And second of all, plenty of individuals who

• 1:28:27Jocko Willink?

  are way better, way smarter, did, did 10 times the deployments that you and I did, which is crazy to think about, but that's, that's what happens. So, uh, yes.

• 1:28:38Speaker 01

  In that sense, other services like our Marine Corps brothers and sisters.

• 1:28:42Jocko Willink?

  For sure.

• 1:28:42Speaker 01

  Army soldiers, Air Force. I mean, just dropping the bucket, but in that context, I didn't know what a like a normal platoon was. So I kind of thought all platoons were like Charlie Platoon, a task unit bruiser. And I've come to realize later on that we were maybe a little more aggressive in the average, than the average task unit. Um, but I loved it. And that's, I was finally in the situation that I wanted to do, that I felt a calling to when I was growing up in my adolescent years, that I felt I was born to do. And for the first time, I felt accepted. I never felt accepted growing up, not even.

• 1:29:28Speaker 01

  Sure, I had friends and you know, I went to a Korean church and I had some Korean friends and from my parents, but in a lot of ways, I was always felt in between worlds. And that had an impact on me, like I didn't really feel well accepted by the, by, in a lot of ways, the Korean-American community, because I was, I remember just being teased just because I was like too white. I think, I think one time I had, I had skateboarding shoes when I went to like my Korean church and I just got, made fun of it for it and I was just, you know, so I just, it's kind of funny to think about and, and I think just laugh it off like it's just ridiculous, but when you're a kid and that's your world,

• 1:30:13Speaker 01

  it means a lot. So, I never felt like I was accepted to a group until I was in the teams. And I was, for the first time, I was home. And I loved it.

• 1:30:30Jocko Willink?

  I, um, I, you know, I, I had to go to college in the middle of my SEAL career and I was talking to a professor and my prof, I, I was saying to this professor, well, you know, I just can't, I've just got to finish this course because I, so I can get back to the teams. And, and the, the guy was looking at me like I was completely insane, like I was completely crazy, because the war had started and I'm saying, I just want to get this so I can get out of here, so I can go back to the teams. And he's looking at me like I'm literally, like I'm crazy. And he says like, whoa, whoa, like, don't you like going to school and wouldn't you rather just stay here an extra two semesters and, and you know, just go to classes and learn? And I was like, no. I said, I would leave right

• 1:31:14Jocko Willink?

  now. If the Navy would let me, I would leave right now with no degree. I don't care about this. And he's like, why? It was incomprehensible to him. And I sat there and I looked at him and I said, and it sounds really freaking horrible to say this, I guess if you put it in the, uh, in the view of identity politics, but I look at him and I go, because in the teams, everyone's like me.

• 1:31:37Jocko Willink?

  And I don't mean it that they're like me, that they're, that they're white males. I mean, they're like me and it doesn't matter what background they come from. It doesn't matter if they're Korean or Mexican or black or white. It doesn't matter. They're like me, they're think, they're gonna laugh at the same stupid jokes. They're gonna, they're gonna throw daggers at me that I'm gonna expect to be able to deal with. I'm gonna throw daggers back at them. That's, and if things escalate, they can get out of control and they'll get, we'll go toe to toe. That's what happens in the teams and then we'll shake hands and have a beer. And so that feeling of when you get to a platoon and you're like, oh, thank you, world.

• 1:32:19Jocko Willink?

  Cause now you put me with these other dudes and they're like me. And we can take, we can take on, it's us against the world. And that's a damn good feeling.

• 1:32:29Speaker 01

  It's a brotherhood and it's hard to articulate that feeling that you described. But for all those things you said, yes.

• 1:32:39Jocko Willink?

  So let's talk a little bit more about workup and you know, the desert training. To me, there's no better way to start off a workup than going through that desert training. It's hard. It was August. It was 120 degrees outside. It was brutal. We were thirsty, we were tired and we were getting after it.

• 1:33:05Speaker 01

  There is nothing like it. I think my, I clearly remember that first night and they were like, let's go on a little patrol.

• 1:33:13Jocko Willink?

  Little shakeout patrol.

• 1:33:14Speaker 01

  Shakeout patrol. And this, so guys like, all right, I'll maybe bring a canteen. I'll bring a liter, maybe half of this Camelback or maybe I just won't bring anything. I'll be good. And the shakeout patrol became like an all night patrol of just marching through in this heat. And it's nighttime, but it's still sweltering hot. And I remember folks just running out of water very early on. I think Ryan Job, I don't even know if he brought any water and just suffering through it. But things like that stick with you, that kind of mutual suffering and hardship. I, I'm a firm believer that.

• 1:34:02Speaker 01

  Shared hardship and suffering is one of the best ways to bring people together towards a common goal, to break down barriers, to form a brotherhood, a sisterhood, whatever you want to call it.

• 1:34:17Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and that's, that's, that's what the teams does. And it's, as you, as you mentioned earlier, it's not just what the teams does. Every military unit, when you go through boot camp in the Navy, okay, maybe it's a different kind of hardship, but there's a sleep deprivation, there's a weird food scenario going on, there's tasks that have to be done, there's hammer sessions that take place, like all those things, they're unifying you. And then you go to the next step and you get unified tighter. And then you go to the next, you go to BUDs, you get unified tighter. Then you show up in a SEAL platoon and now you're going through a hard workup and you're going to get unified even tighter. It's awesome. Do you, um,

• 1:34:58Jocko Willink?

  we rolled from there, uh, other, I mean, other aspects of workup, was there anything that you were nervous about going through workup? Cause you were, and, and I was going to say this earlier, you know, you said that you were a gray man going through BUDs, meaning that you weren't great at anything, but you weren't horrible at anything. And that was exactly the same way I was. I wasn't great at anything. I wasn't horrible at anything. I made it through in, in one shot because I wasn't, I guess I wasn't as good as you, but I, cause I failed. I failed a little bit of everything, but not enough of anything to get me rolled. So I might've been on the, the, the, uh, the sadder or weaker side of the, um, gray man. But workup, you, you, you know, as the, as the guy that was running it,

• 1:35:43Jocko Willink?

  the only people that kinda, that showed up on my radar a lot were people that were having problems. And you didn't show up my ra- radar as having problems. You were, pretty much could do everything.

• 1:35:55Speaker 01

  I mean, what I appreciated about the teams was that it was a true meritocracy. You got out of it what you put in. And my original fears of being the medic, of being boxed into just that responsibility, because I wanted to do more. I wanted to be the best asset I could be to my platoon, to my brothers. And I quickly fell under the mentorship of many other people in the platoon. Chris Cow was the primary sniper, navigator, point man. And new guys kind of get matched up to a person. He was the person I got matched up to because I would eventually be groomed to take on his responsibilities.

• 1:36:36Speaker 01

  So, early on, I got tasked with being like the assistant lead nav and point man and sniper, which eventually got to take on these roles more as a primary later in workup and also on deployment. So, that meant, that responsibility meant so much to me. And I wanted to practice and train and wake up early and make sure, just because I didn't want to mess it up. Not for myself, but because I felt I owed, and I did owe, that responsibility of doing a good job to my platoon.

• 1:37:17Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I don't know that there's any greater, people talk about motivation. I don't know that there's any greater motivation is than, I don't want to let my guys down. And whether that's, hey, I don't, look, I know the entire patrol is following me as the point man or as the lead nav. And if I mess this up, I'm taking the whole patrol with me.

• 1:37:37Speaker 01

  To be clear, I messed up plenty of times. And my, and my platoon let me know about it. I messed up plenty of times. But still, just trying that never-ending pursuit to be better. And to accept responsibility for your failures and promise you will do better.

• 1:37:55Jocko Willink?

  That's what the workup is. And, you know, we had a, we had a great workup. We went hard and, in that workup and...

• 1:38:06Jocko Willink?

  Eventually, we completed the workup, we um and we got ready, we got ready to go on deployment. And you guys actually went on leave. I don't know if you remember this. We were going, we were deploying to Baghdad. That was the plan. And we, I had actually gone with a couple of the guys on pre-deployment site survey. And checked out where we were going to be deploying to in Baghdad. We were going to be doing, you know, basic direct action missions, catching bad guys and pretty straightforward in that, in that Baghdad area. Pretty straightforward deployment was what we were heading for. And everyone went on leave and during that leave period,

• 1:38:47Jocko Willink?

  um, I got called in and I actually don't even know if I took leave, but I was at work. And our boss, our commanding officer, you know, called me in and said, hey, uh, you guys aren't going to go to Baghdad anymore. Actually, he asked me like, hey, we're thinking about shifting things around. How would you feel about going to Ramadi? And um, I knew what was going on in Ramadi. We all, um, well, I don't know if we all knew, but I definitely knew what was going on in Ramadi. I knew how bad it was. I knew it was the area where the most enemy was and where the most enemy contact was. And where if we were going to fight, that would be the place to go. And you know, I talked to him and said, yeah, well, we can make those adjustments.

• 1:39:33Jocko Willink?

  And um, by the time you guys came back in off of leave, we were, we were then going to Ramadi.

• 1:39:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, that decision making was, um, I was not aware of that, you know, I was happy being just an E5 shooter. And uh, I do remember that, yeah, coming back from leave, we're going to Ramadi, a place that I hadn't heard.

• 1:39:55Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I was gonna say, did you even know the difference? Were you just like, whatever, going to Iraq, I'm happy?

• 1:40:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I mean, I was what, 21, 22? And when I think about, I was just a kid. Like what I know now, based on what I knew back then, it's just crazy. Um, yeah, to me, I, I don't think that was, I don't think I was aware, as aware. I knew it was a bad place. I don't think, obviously not to the same level as you of what was going on, the SIGACs going on at that time.

• 1:40:28Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it was.

• 1:40:31Jocko Willink?

  I guess I was probably paying more attention to what was going on there. And actually, Ramadi had been really bad for a while, for a pretty good chunk of time.

• 1:40:45Jocko Willink?

  But it wasn't like the SEAL task unit that was there was really getting after it. They didn't look that extraordinary compared to any other task unit that was in Iraq at the time.

• 1:41:00Jocko Willink?

  So, but I, I, I knew it was gonna be pretty gnarly going over there. And, and I also knew that if anyone would be able to do a good job there. I, I knew that we could do a good job there as a task unit, because we had worked really hard. We were firing on all cylinders. As you said, we were, we were an aggressive task unit, for sure. And I, I knew it would be a good environment for us to go into. And one of the things that we were getting ready to leave, and the Commodore, who's a fantastic guy,

• 1:41:43Jocko Willink?

  ended up an admiral, and, and I had worked for him, and I had a great relationship with him. He's a fantastic guy, but he came to debrief, or to brief, all of SEAL Team Three before we went on deployment. And he said something along the lines of, "Listen, no one in this room is gonna shoot their guns on this deployment." Or, he said something, maybe not quite that extremely, something like, "Chances are, there's no one in this room that's gonna shoot their guns on this deployment." And, you know, this is just, things are a little less kinetic. So, we rolled over there, and needless to say, within the first, I would say, 24 hours that the whole, that the whole task unit was there, the base, our little base got attacked,

• 1:42:28Jocko Willink?

  and the entire task unit, including some of the techs, were up on the rooftop returning fire. And a few days later, that Commodore showed up, and I, you know, I gave him a hard time. I said, "Hey, sir, you know, you said no one was gonna shoot their weapons." And I said, "This entire task unit, and most of the techs have actually engaged the enemy this time." So, that was a little welcome aboard.

• 1:42:50Speaker 01

  I remember that night, it was a good welcome. And I remember some of the techs going through like six mags, like the first couple of minutes. I'm like, "Let's slow our roll."

• 1:43:01Speaker 01

  Down, but uh, it was a good, I think it became very clear, the situation we found ourselves in. And I agree, I think we were as prepared as we could have been for that situation.

• 1:43:14Jocko Willink?

  Then what, how long did it take you after being on the ground?

• 1:43:19Jocko Willink?

  What was the first, what was the first op you did?

• 1:43:21Speaker 01

  It was DA.

• 1:43:22Jocko Willink?

  DA, the, the kind of one, this is the one Leif and I joke about, cause Leif was like, Leif was like, "We're not gonna be ready, we're, I wish, roll it, we shouldn't do it." And I, I, you know, we've, him and I have talked about this on the podcast, I think, which was, I was like, "Bro, it's gonna be okay, you got this." And he was like, he was nervous, man, cause it was, it was his first op in Ramadi, there's mayhem going on. And, you know, I just, I just looked at him and said, "Bro, you got this, it's not gonna be that hard." And he was like, "Roger." And, you know, he sucked it up and, and uh, you guys went and executed the op, no big deal, you know, no factor.

• 1:44:02Jocko Willink?

  But it was shortly thereafter that I started looking at um, a different strategy, besides just doing DAs and moving more towards these overwatches. And then we kinda started moving in that direction, didn't take very long. The brigade commander, like, almost out of the gate, asked for our support in areas that were being heavily ID'd, where we could go out and start um, interdicting people that were putting in IDs.

• 1:44:34Jocko Willink?

  What was that like for you, um, from your perspective as a new guy? What was your, just tell people about your job, what, what that was like?

• 1:44:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I,

• 1:44:47Speaker 01

  early on in the deployment, I was, um, we had a lot of snipers. You know, and, and the way the teams works, and I'm sure you've said on previous podcasts, everyone has multiple jobs. We overlap responsibilities in so many ways. We have, you know, half the guys might be breachers. So anyone can put, you know, slap an explosive on the door and, and use the right one, the appropriate one, to get through, to gain access to a building. You know, half, you know, quarter of the guys are snipers. So we cross, um, we were able to fill in each other's roles. And early on, I was the assistant point man and um, navigator. Uh, and one, one of the snipers and of course, the medic.

• 1:45:29Speaker 01

  And at the time, it was Chris leading a lot of those. So it's learning from him how to, as navigator, you're responsible for coming up with a ideal, but safe route to your destination. And you don't realize it at the time because you're E4, E5 at the time, just going through. You think it's normal. But that's so much responsibility to be able to come up with a plan on your own. To review the SIGAX, hey, you know, intersection, I think it was 293. 293. 293, which would have like double-digit SIGAX a day.

• 1:46:13Speaker 01

  And realizing, hey, let's probably go a different way. Or go through this alleyway and reviewing the satellite imagery to see and understanding and trying to go through, do like a dirt dive, which is just basically just planning the route in your head and seeing what kind of obstacles you might see or landmarks. Because GPS wasn't super reliable at the time, especially since we had jammers going on 24/7 so that people couldn't remotely detonate IEDs. We'd try and jam all frequencies. So a lot of times you didn't have GPS. So you needed to know the route cold.

• 1:46:53Speaker 01

  And then as a point man, being able to take, to dismount safely and then guide your platoon to the target on foot. And that also takes careful route planning, careful route study and making sure you get the right target because, I mean, you can have pretty bad consequences when you hit the right, hit the wrong target. And

• 1:47:20Speaker 01

  Of course, you're a shooter, just like everyone, everyone's a shooter. From the lowest enlisted to the OIC is a shooter, is responsible for their lanes, for engaging the enemy, for returning fire, for being a shooter. And once you're on target, if this happens to be an overwatch, we'd set up the night before and set up sniper overwatch positions so that we had good observations of different angles, different lanes that the enemy might try and use to attack us, or worse, attack our brethren, our Army and Marine Corps, brothers and sisters who might be doing a route clearance

• 1:48:04Speaker 01

  or might be doing a patrol. And that's just like one flavor of the many different types of missions that we did. We talked about DA, direct action missions, those were a little more direct. You know, you'd probably just drive up. Doesn't require as much, I guess, you're not trying to be as surreptitious. It's kind of going in loud, you're not fooling anyone, you go in loud, aggressive, hard. And it's just a different flavor of a mission. And those are just kind of an idea of the kinds of things that I did and a lot of our platoon mates did.

• 1:48:41Jocko Willink?

  How'd you like working with Chris?

• 1:48:44Speaker 01

  I learned a lot from Chris. It was, you know, he was a hard teacher, but I learned a lot of important lessons from that. And I feel like I, I've been fortunate to have a lot of teachers and mentors, role models along the way throughout life. Leif is certainly one, high school teachers, you know, medical school, at NASA, my current job, and just trying to take a little bit of what they teach you, those pearls, and incorporate it into your own style, to what works for you. And certainly with Chris, I had a lot of those pearls that I learned

• 1:49:28Speaker 01

  to help me become a better operator and a better leader.

• 1:49:35Jocko Willink?

  Now, as you're doing these missions and, um, you know, it was, there was a lot of, a lot of violence happening, a lot of violence happening. Our Army and Marine Corps brothers were getting wounded, almost wounded or killed almost on a daily basis.

• 1:50:00Jocko Willink?

  The amount of enemy attacks was basically almost 24 hours a day. There were enemy attacks happening inside the city. There were massive IEDs that were just sickening. You know, you could hear them, you'd hear them on base go off. If you were out in town, you could hear them go off and you know that when they went off, there was, there was wounded and mutilated and maimed and killed Americans. I mean, every single time you'd hear one of those, it would, it would make me cringe.

• 1:50:36Jocko Willink?

  As you continued to roll out, you know, day after day, what was your, what was your mindset? You know, I've talked to a lot of combat vets and, and right down to one of the guys that I had on named Dean Ladd, who was a Marine in World War II, who was gut shot, walking to the beach in Tarawa. This is after he did Iwo, I mean, just a, or Guadalcanal. And, you know, I was talking to him about it. He's like, oh, I never thought it would happen to me. That was kind of what cleared his mind.

• 1:51:15Jocko Willink?

  But those guys, I mean, it's a different type of combat where, look, they're going to do this, this assault. And it's going to last two, three, four days before they get to kind of settle in. They had less time to think about it. Without a doubt, they had less time to think about it. They weren't coming back to a base like we were, where you're relatively safe. And then you got to reload and go back again. How did that play out inside 21-year-old Jonny Kim's mind?

• 1:51:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I don't think I've ever been asked that. It's a pretty insightful question.

• 1:51:53Speaker 01

  And I don't think I've asked other people what mental calculus, what things they needed to go through to prepare themselves for these, for these challenges.

• 1:52:08Speaker 01

  I know what I did and what worked for me. I don't, I don't know if it works for other people or if that's what other people did. But, I mean, I have no qualm saying, but when I showed up to Iraq, I was scared. I mean, it's my first deployment and on your first deployment to a war zone, I don't know if other people, but I was in the frame like, oh, as soon as I step off this bird into country, I'm gonna get shot at, which is not at all the case, right? There's varying levels of intensity in the war, right? I mean, there were some bases where you had Taco Bell and Pizza Hut, right?

• 1:52:49Speaker 01

  And then you had like the sticks where Marines were roughing it and sleeping in holes in the ground

• 1:52:57Speaker 01

  that looked like graves. And so they were very, I think, varying experiences. And

• 1:53:06Speaker 01

  you know, for me, I quickly learned, my first big firefight was, I'm sure you remember this, but it was an unfortunate blue on, blue or blue on green incident. And that was a big wake up call to me. And I'm sure we could talk at length about that. A lot of lessons learned from it. But I quickly learned that the mental

• 1:53:39Speaker 01

  preparation I needed to do for myself was to assume I was going to die. That I was already dead. And I was there to fulfill my role in the platoon as a shooter. And that was liberating for me. It was hard to get in that frame of mind, but once you got in that frame of mind, for me, it was easier to stay in that frame of mind. Kind of like how when I was cold in Bud's, I wanted to stay cold. So there were guys who would take a warm shower if you had the opportunity to. But for me, I wanted to stay uncomfortable because being comfortable,

• 1:54:22Speaker 01

  being uncomfortable is an important trait. And once I was able to

• 1:54:31Speaker 01

  reconcile that I wasn't going to come home, that I was going to die, it freed me to be able to do my job without the human emotion that can be very disabling of which is fear.

• 1:54:47Speaker 01

  And I think it made me more

• 1:54:50Speaker 01

  clear of mind and focused. And I think it made me a better operator. But I don't know if that works for everyone. And I don't think that is also a very healthy way, healthy state of mind to stay in for long periods of time. I think you need to learn how to decompress and learn how to switch things on and off and have space in your brain, compartmentalized spaces where you can put very bad emotions or very disabling emotions away so that you can do your job at hand.

• 1:55:28Speaker 01

  That's what seemed to work for me.

• 1:55:31Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I think that's a a common attitude. I know that is 100% what my attitude was, was, okay, you know, this is what I'm going to do and I'm going to keep doing it. And

• 1:55:46Jocko Willink?

  there's a chance I'm going to die and that's the way it is. And if it happens, then it happens. But I think what makes it feel

• 1:55:56Jocko Willink?

  liberating slash good is that

• 1:56:00Jocko Willink?

  Any concern, like, let's face it, you can do everything right, you can, you can plan the perfect route, you can manipulate your weapon perfectly, you can maneuver through the streets perfectly, you can still get killed. Whether you can get shot, whether you get blown up, like, it can happen. And if, if, if you're worried about things that you can't control, then you're wasting energy, and you're not providing the correct support to the rest of your guys, because you're freaked out about what's gonna happen to you. And that's why I, I think that's pretty common, actually, is, okay, look, here's the risk, and now I'm gonna put that in a box over here, I'm not gonna worry about it anymore, because it doesn't do me or my team any good. Um, now, this is where I think the, um, well, from a leadership

• 1:56:44Jocko Willink?

  perspective, and then from a medic slash corpsman perspective, the most absolute anxiety that I had, the sick, twisting gut that I would have, wouldn't be at all from me getting blown up, or me getting shot, or me getting killed, or anything happened to me. It was 100% because of you guys. And, and it was impossible to not, it was impossible for me to not think that if you guys were rolling out an op, or Delta was rolling out an op, or whoever was rolling out, that there wasn't a chance. Look, it's, if it's not happening tonight,

• 1:57:28Jocko Willink?

  it's gonna happen tomorrow. If it doesn't happen tomorrow night, it'll happen in two weeks. I know one of these nights, the call's gonna come on the radio, and I know what the call's gonna be. I know what the call's gonna be. And there's, it was like, and again, I don't wanna sound fatalistic about this, because I didn't think about it in a way, I didn't think about it like, hey, throw caution to the wind, this is gonna happen anyways. It wasn't like that at all. It was like, reality. The reality was...

• 1:58:00Jocko Willink?

  You know, the reality was, I'm talking to the brigade commander every day. I'm talking to Italian commanders every day. I know what's going on out there. In some cases, I'm, I'm tracking it, you know, by the hour.

• 1:58:14Jocko Willink?

  And so that, in my gut, was the hardest, was, was the most, was the hardest thing that I had to deal with, was just, man, just being worried about you guys. That was it. And I am, I can only imagine for you, as a medic, same thing. Like, you know, hey, you can't trade bullets with bad guys every single day. You can't walk down these streets every single day and get away with it for the whole time. It's just not very likely.

• 1:58:53Speaker 01

  The only thing stronger than fear for self, for us, was fear of letting your platoon mate down, or fear of getting your friends killed. That, to me, is the greatest fear of all. And I agree with you, when, if you accept that you may die, you may die, you may not come home, your friends may not come home, it's not being complacent about it, it's not being, okay, well, it's out of my hands, I'm not, no, you're gonna do your best. You will not get complacent. You will remain hard to kill.

• 1:59:38Speaker 01

  You will be effective in your job.

• 1:59:41Speaker 01

  But you understand the risks of the work you have ahead of you, and you, you accept those risks. So you are free to be effective in your job.

• 2:00:06Jocko Willink?

  So, I, I would say that everybody...

• 2:00:21Jocko Willink?

  I would say that we all kinda knew that the day would come.

• 2:00:29Jocko Willink?

  And like you said, I mean, it wasn't fatalistic, it wasn't complacency. It was the realistic assessment of where we were at. And I think everybody knew that the day would come. And maybe if someone says they didn't, it was only because they were, you know, able to convince themselves that to, you know, to keep a positive attitude.

• 2:00:59Jocko Willink?

  And the day did come.

• 2:01:05Jocko Willink?

  And we'd had a couple of guys get wounded.

• 2:01:10Jocko Willink?

  You know, Cowie was wounded bad.

• 2:01:14Speaker 01

  A lot of close calls.

• 2:01:17Jocko Willink?

  Innumerable, countless close calls.

• 2:01:22Jocko Willink?

  Which in a way kinda make you feel like, maybe we can pull this off.

• 2:01:31Jocko Willink?

  But in the end, it's war.

• 2:01:41Jocko Willink?

  So...

• 2:01:45Jocko Willink?

  What did that do to you? August 2nd, 2006?

• 2:02:04Speaker 01

  It's hard to articulate in words what that day did.

• 2:02:10Speaker 01

  I talked a little bit in the beginning of how my father has shaped my actions to become a SEAL. Well, I'd say the events that unfolded on August 2nd, 2006 and days afterwards, where we lost.

• 2:02:28Speaker 01

  Much better warriors than I. Much braver and selfless. That those were much more formative in shaping what I do and will do for the rest of my life.

• 2:02:47Speaker 01

  And we lost, the actions of that day, we lost two really good men.

• 2:02:58Speaker 01

  I don't even know where to start.

• 2:03:02Speaker 01

  You know,

• 2:03:04Speaker 01

  one of my good friends, one of our good friends, Ryan Jobe, was hit in the face.

• 2:03:12Speaker 01

  God, I learned a lot that day.

• 2:03:18Speaker 01

  I think we all, I think we all did.

• 2:03:22Speaker 01

  And a piece of us stayed there that day, died with us. You know, Ryan was was hit in the face.

• 2:03:35Speaker 01

  And I remember going,

• 2:03:40Speaker 01

  single cracks are usually not good. The crack, you know, in the crack, when I say crack, I mean, when you are on the giving end of a rifle, you, it's a much different sound than being on the receiving end of a rifle that, of a bullet that's supersonic. It makes a very distinctive crack.

• 2:04:05Speaker 01

  And when you hear that, and it's a single one, it generally is not good. And I remember that radio call coming out from Leif saying that Ryan had been hit and that I was needed. I remember going on the roof and seeing Ryan lying down in a pool of his blood. And

• 2:04:32Speaker 01

  there's these images in my head that just have so much human compassion in a crazy, chaotic time. And I remember Leif and Chris at his side, and Leif was holding his hat, holding his hand and just saying, just hang on, brother, we just hang on, man. And I did the best I could to stabilize Ryan, but Ryan's, Ryan's a trooper. I mean, he's, he was the best of us.

• 2:05:01Speaker 01

  Even then, not concerned about his own welfare, making sure that we were safe, we were being safe, we were being safe and staying low.

• 2:05:11Speaker 01

  And we had, Mark was there laying down some good covering fire to get Ryan out of that position and I

• 2:05:21Speaker 01

  We called on our brothers from the Army

• 2:05:27Speaker 01

  to bring us the armor we needed to get out of there and I'm very grateful for that. So I accompanied Ryan out of there and there's not much you can do as a medic in that type of situation. I'm not keeping Ryan alive. I'm keeping his airway open, stopping the bleeding and that's it. He's keeping himself alive. And the definitive care he needed was a surgeon. He needed to get to an operating table stat.

• 2:05:58Speaker 01

  And

• 2:06:01Speaker 01

  we talk about things to learn from that day, failures. I had one of my biggest failures from that day and it pains me to this day because Ryan didn't see it that way.

• 2:06:14Speaker 01

  We stopped off at one of the aid stations, I think at Cott Falcon along the way, which just to paint this room, it was a concrete

• 2:06:26Speaker 01

  20 feet by 20 feet room with no electricity, no running water, definitely not a place to get definitive care. And

• 2:06:37Speaker 01

  it was being manned by an 04 Army Physician's Assistant.

• 2:06:47Speaker 01

  Who I think had the best of intentions but had other clouding human emotions that resulted in poor judgment.

• 2:07:00Speaker 01

  One being ego.

• 2:07:04Speaker 01

  Which is perhaps the biggest poison of all in anything we do. And just to give you an idea of this, I mean, it was a war zone down there. I mean, just a few days prior to that. We had been mortared in that area and a few army soldiers were hit by this mortar.

• 2:07:24Speaker 01

  Bad. And we were pretty close in our in Cop Falcon. And I went over to try and help. And some of these guys were pretty hypovolemic, which is a word for saying they were low on blood volume because they were losing it. And I was trying to get IV access on one of these guys and I had a hard time doing it. Eventually was able to get a jug, a stick in the neck.

• 2:07:52Speaker 01

  But this, the guy who was manning it, the SO4.

• 2:07:58Speaker 01

  Was, you know, just giving me a hard time about it, which it's fine. I think we give each other a hard time. We make fun of each other, but I think, I mean, I took it hard myself because I like, man, I really wanted to help these guys and I was failing and giving, getting this line in, getting an IV line in. And I was naive and just, just, I think insecure. I was professionally embarrassed that I could not get this line in. And so I know a little intimidated by this guy. So I had that painting of this situation with this relationship with this person. And coming in, I knew that coming into this aid station at Cop Falcon was only going to hurt Ryan. And I was yelling at the army guys.

• 2:08:43Speaker 01

  And I mean, E1, you know, E2 drivers were just doing what they were told. I'm like, we need to go to Camp Ramadi right now to get to an OR. And they were telling me we need to stop off of this aid. We have orders to stop off of this aid station. And Ryan's on this cot and I mean, there's no way to give definitive care. You can't even be sterile in this area. I mean, it's just a concrete room with no electricity. And he was trying to give a nasal, an NPA, nasal pharyngeal airway to Ryan, which is a little remember the trumpet nose you put in, keeps an airway secure.

• 2:09:23Speaker 01

  But you never ever give an NPA.

• 2:09:28Speaker 01

  To folks listening to this who have any kind of medical background, you would never give an MPA to someone with suspected facial, with suspected maxillary fractures, which is what Ryan certainly had, after being shot through the left cheek, right, around the left orbit. And I was, top of my lungs, arguing with this guy. This is not what he needed, like, you should not do that. We needed to get to Camp Ramadi. And there was a certain power differential, right? I mean, I was E5, 21, 22-year-old kid, and I had this O4, who was telling me how things should be done. And Ryan's there, um, hearing all of this.

• 2:10:12Speaker 01

  And I, like a lot of Army regulations, I'm not trying to give any disrespect to the Army, but the two drivers who drove me there were like, "You need to clear and safe your weapon." And, you know, if you remember, there's always a barrel outside of every building to clear and safe it. And I understand, because there's a lot of accidental discharges that happen in the military, but for team guys, I think that's, like, clearing your, having to point your weapon in a barrel to clear and safe it is not really, you don't need to do that. We can just clear and safe in the safe direction, right? Just be responsible, have accountability for muscle awareness and what you're doing.

• 2:10:56Speaker 01

  So I was like, and I was trying to fight this fight with this, with this PA. And, um, the other Army soldiers were trying to like, "You need to clear, you need to go outside right now and clear this weapon." So frustrated, I left, cleared my weapon, I came back, and the PA had inserted the MPA into Ryan. And Ryan was coughing up blood, and bad. And I saw the look on this PA's face, that he, I think he recognized that this was outside his scope of abilities, and that he was in over his head and may have hurt Ryan. And from there, my request to get to Camp Ramadi

• 2:11:39Speaker 01

  was immediately fulfilled. And we got back and unloaded Ryan, and got Ryan to Camp Ramadi to the appropriate level of care, to awaiting surgeons and doctors. To take care of Ryan. But to me, that's one of my biggest failures because I let Ryan down. And what pains me is that in the years afterwards, he always thanked me that I stood up for him.

• 2:12:07Speaker 01

  And Ryan, I don't know why you're thanking me. I failed you.

• 2:12:16Speaker 01

  I could have done something more. I could have.

• 2:12:21Speaker 01

  Could have stood up for my friend a little bit more. I could have.

• 2:12:28Speaker 01

  I don't know what I could have done, but I could have done something that he, Ryan deserved better. And who knows what this did? I mean, Ryan was blind, as you know, afterwards, but he says I was the last person he saw. He wishes I was a little prettier.

• 2:12:50Speaker 01

  Ryan likely became blind secondary to infection, swelling, trauma.

• 2:12:58Speaker 01

  But maybe that was the final straw that made him blind and eventually led to him getting all those surgeries, which eventually took his life. As you know, he had multiple surgeries and one of his surgeries, he was unfortunately taken from us.

• 2:13:16Speaker 01

  I don't know. But I made a promise after that, that regardless of my rank, of where I stood, or of what kind of power differential I was, if I saw something wrong like that, and I knew someone would get hurt, that I would stand up and speak and not let something like that ever happen again.

• 2:13:41Speaker 01

  We see.

• 2:13:45Speaker 01

  Things happen all the time that we know aren't right. You know, a lot of, you sometimes, you just know, deep down, that that's not right. And you choose your battles. I think it's important to choose what battles you stand up for. But there are some battles that you should never, ever stand down from. And I swore I would never make that mistake again. And it find it very relevant today. I mean, we accept the risks of our occupation for the greater good, of what it does for society, our country, our species. And it's relevant in space exploration in NASA, at what I've been honored and privileged to take it part of.

• 2:14:29Speaker 01

  And we accept the risks of what we are trying to do for the general good, of what it brings back to humanity. But I think having that experience to know it's worth cashing in that currency, that reputation you've built up to speak up when something is up, when something's messed up. It's one of the... I feel like we could talk about that day for the rest of the... I think we could talk about August 2nd for the rest of the day. About all the other things. And that's just the first chapter of what happened that day.

• 2:15:10Speaker 01

  As you know, we lost Mark Lee on that day. Those... A lot of what I do today, I made a promise to, not just those two, not just to Mark and Ryan, but I could, I could list a long list of names of people we've lost since then.

• 2:15:35Speaker 01

  That we, that the void created by those warriors that would certainly have done good for this world, that I owe it, that we owe it to them to be a positive mark in this world. And that can take many forms. For me, that was why I wanted to be a physician. It didn't really matter that it was medicine and it was just natural for me because that's what I was involved in, to take that level of service to a higher calling. But taking like, trying to become an astronaut is completely consistent with my promise to leave a positive

• 2:16:20Speaker 01

  impact in this world. And that's how I honor the brothers we lost. And I will never stop until the day I die, trying to fill in that void because it's a void that can never be filled in.

• 2:16:56Jocko Willink?

  I was, um, walking out of the Tactical Operations Center on our little base on that day. And I remember I, I, I walked out and, um, I looked over to my right, walked out the door and I looked over to my right, um, and I saw you.

• 2:17:40Jocko Willink?

  And

• 2:17:45Jocko Willink?

  you were on your knees.

• 2:17:49Jocko Willink?

  You were fairly covered in blood.

• 2:17:54Jocko Willink?

  And you were, uh,

• 2:17:58Jocko Willink?

  washing the blood.

• 2:18:07Jocko Willink?

  Washing the blood out of Ryan's helmet.

• 2:18:14Jocko Willink?

  And

• 2:18:31Jocko Willink?

  and I realized, um,

• 2:18:38Jocko Willink?

  that this was gonna take a very personal toll on everybody.

• 2:18:47Jocko Willink?

  And

• 2:18:57Jocko Willink?

  and

• 2:19:02Jocko Willink?

  I didn't know what to say. There was no training.

• 2:19:11Jocko Willink?

  No one had been killed in Iraq before.

• 2:19:16Jocko Willink?

  For SEALs.

• 2:19:19Jocko Willink?

  We never talked about, we never talked about, we talked about, hey, if a guy gets wounded, if a guy gets killed, here's what we're gonna do in the next six minutes. Here's how we're gonna get a guy extracted. Here's the casualty evacuation. Here's the protocol that we're gonna go through. Here's the medical procedures we're gonna do to try and save his life. These are all the things we're gonna do in the 15 minutes.

• 2:19:43Jocko Willink?

  From when someone gets hurt.

• 2:19:49Jocko Willink?

  And I had been in the SEAL teams for

• 2:19:53Jocko Willink?

  16 years at that point, 15 years.

• 2:19:59Jocko Willink?

  And not one time ever

• 2:20:03Jocko Willink?

  in any training scenario

• 2:20:08Jocko Willink?

  did we ever talk about, okay, now what do we do?

• 2:20:14Jocko Willink?

  Now, there's a little protocol around, hey, here's the casualty, the casualty officer that's gonna go, here's the protocol that we follow for notification of the family. All that stuff, all the mechanics of it existed. And we, we did what we were supposed to do. We followed that protocol. But the protocol for how do I look at a 21-year-old kid that's cleaning the blood out of one of his friend's helmets?

• 2:20:46Jocko Willink?

  There's no protocol for that.

• 2:20:51Jocko Willink?

  And what, I mean, what I had to do was because I was still the guy in charge.

• 2:21:01Jocko Willink?

  And I had to try and figure out what to do. There was no one to ask. No one to ask. There's, there's no, there's no person to say, hey, what do, what do I do now?

• 2:21:17Jocko Willink?

  And

• 2:21:21Jocko Willink?

  you know what, what I defaulted to, which I actually told you guys in the clear, three days later, two days later, when I finally could assemble a sentence,

• 2:21:35Jocko Willink?

  was go back to work, was that this is what we came to do. We still have a mission. We still have soldiers and Marines that are out there risking their lives that we absolutely provide safety and security for. We can deliver those guys home to their families.

• 2:22:00Jocko Willink?

  And that's, that's what we need to do.

• 2:22:04Jocko Willink?

  And that's, you know, that's what we did.

• 2:22:17Speaker 01

  Sometimes words,

• 2:22:21Speaker 01

  there are no right words for situations like that.

• 2:22:27Speaker 01

  But I think

• 2:22:29Speaker 01

  just being there

• 2:22:32Speaker 01

  with the people you love at your side is the most important thing to be doing. To go back out and work and do the job you came there to do, that you signed up to do. And it's not for...

• 2:22:50Speaker 01

  I don't mean to be

• 2:22:56Speaker 01

  disrespectful with these words, but it's not for country or service. It's for the person sitting next to you, for standing next to you, for your brother and your sister. You do it because you love that person. Because,

• 2:23:13Speaker 01

  at least to me and in my experience, the folks who joined to be SEALs who did it because they wanted to serve their country, that was the greatest reason they were there. There wasn't a bigger intrinsic reason, like doing it for the person next to you, for the brotherhood,

• 2:23:33Speaker 01

  for yourself. They didn't seem to make it through.

• 2:23:43Speaker 01

  I'm not sure if I would die for my country, but I would and I will die for my brother and sister,

• 2:23:55Speaker 01

  without a doubt.

• 2:24:05Speaker 01

  And that's just a taste

• 2:24:08Speaker 01

  of war. We lost two people that day. There are platoons, companies, who have lost half, most of their unit. You think of, you see the numbers from World War II or from Vietnam.

• 2:24:25Speaker 01

  It's astounding. We, and I am not trying to belittle the sacrifices our service members have done in this war. I'm just trying to put it in context that we had a whole generation of people, we asked them to continue fighting despite the heavy losses and casualties they suffered on a daily basis that trumped any number we had in the post 9/11 wars. And they did it.

• 2:25:06Speaker 01

  So, being there with your brothers and sisters and continuing that fight, that is the best remedy for a situation like that.

• 2:25:32Jocko Willink?

  And, um, obviously, the other, you know, I mean, it's real obvious, I guess, when you look back. But, again, this is something that, um, a lot of times, we weren't prepared for in the modern SEAL teams. You know, when I, when I was raising the SEAL teams in the 90s, we were preparing for one mission. If we were lucky, we'd do one mission. And that mindset kind of got into our heads where you're, you know, you just didn't think about how, how you would continue on. And yet, I mean, we stood down for like, two days? And then it was like, okay, get your gear back on. And it's time to go.

• 2:26:19Speaker 01

  Even in that same day, after Ryan was hit, we said, get your stuff on, get your gear back on, reload, get back out there. And...

• 2:26:35Speaker 01

  I mean, it, it,

• 2:26:39Speaker 01

  it pains me to this day that I wasn't there for that assault. Cause I was with Ryan. And I'm glad that I was by Ryan's side.

• 2:26:51Speaker 01

  But I meant I wasn't there for Mark.

• 2:26:57Speaker 01

  When he was shot and killed.

• 2:27:03Speaker 01

  The next time I saw him was in the morgue.

• 2:27:06Speaker 01

  Giving hit, giving a final kiss to his forehead.

• 2:27:13Speaker 01

  I didn't mean to interrupt.

• 2:27:16Jocko Willink?

  Well, yeah, you're, you're exactly right. And, and so Ryan wounded and, I mean severely wounded.

• 2:27:29Jocko Willink?

  And then, yeah, you're right. It wasn't even a day. It was a matter of an hour, maybe before Leif called me up and said, hey, this is what's going on?

• 2:27:43Jocko Willink?

  And then, yeah, once Mark was gone.

• 2:27:48Jocko Willink?

  Then it was a couple of days.

• 2:27:51Jocko Willink?

  And then, okay.

• 2:27:54Jocko Willink?

  A- a- and again, the, the, the, the strange thing, or

• 2:28:01Jocko Willink?

  I guess the thing to contemplate a little bit deeper is, you know, if you're going on to Guadalcanal. Like you're gonna fight and you're not gonna have time to think about what just happened. Whereas, hey, the way it was for us, it was like, okay, well, now you're gonna stand down for two days. You're gonna think about everything. You're gonna, you're gonna package up your, your bro's gear and send it home.

• 2:28:29Jocko Willink?

  That's what's gonna happen. You're gonna, you're gonna be thinking about that. And then, you're gonna get in the same vehicles, you're gonna roll out. And.

• 2:28:47Jocko Willink?

  And that's what, as you said, that's what you do for your brothers. That's what you do.

• 2:28:54Jocko Willink?

  You keep doing your job.

• 2:28:58Jocko Willink?

  You know, I was thinking about that too, when you were talking about shooting.

• 2:29:02Jocko Willink?

  And you were talking about, look, you, you know what you do? You know how you get through that part of the course? You follow the procedures, you do your job, you check your body position, you front sight focus. How do you complete the stocks? You, you figure out where the dead space is, you follow the protocol, that's what you do. That's, that's what you do, that's how you move forward. You do what you're supposed to do.

• 2:29:31Jocko Willink?

  And of course, it wasn't over either.

• 2:29:35Jocko Willink?

  Because, because then, you know,

• 2:29:39Jocko Willink?

  in September,

• 2:29:41Jocko Willink?

  we lost Mikey as well.

• 2:29:51Jocko Willink?

  So close to

• 2:29:54Jocko Willink?

  being home, going home.

• 2:29:58Jocko Willink?

  And a million different excuses that you could make

• 2:30:06Jocko Willink?

  to not go out and do your job.

• 2:30:20Jocko Willink?

  And it was a heavy, I mean, obviously, coming home from that deployment

• 2:30:27Jocko Willink?

  was

• 2:30:32Jocko Willink?

  I mean, first of all, there was no, you know, they do the, they do the decompression stops now? Where you stop somewhere and you hang out for a few days and you kind of decompress. We didn't do that. We got on a plane and we, we, you know, flew home and woke up and we were back in San Diego.

• 2:30:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're right. We didn't have time to decompress. We didn't have the long boat ride over the Atlantic to

• 2:31:07Speaker 01

  decompress with your buddies around cards or around a drink and just talk. That's what you do, right? After an op, you just hang out with your but with your bros and just you don't know you're decompressing, but that's what you're doing.

• 2:31:25Jocko Willink?

  That's what you're doing.

• 2:31:27Speaker 01

  And to be thrust back into civilization, normal, modern civilization, that is a hard transition and it is surreal and it can mess people up.

• 2:31:40Jocko Willink?

  When did you come home? Do you remember?

• 2:31:43Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I came home in October. Most folks came home early October or late September.

• 2:31:51Speaker 01

  I came home because I was I was reenlisting. And if you remember the rules to reenlist, you need to be for tax free purposes, you need to be in country on the first day of the month. So I stayed an extra two or three weeks more after the rest of my platoon and gone home.

• 2:32:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's funny. I remember I remember wanting to like just get especially when all your bros are already home, just want wanting to get home. I think Tony was still there with me. Yeah, Tony was still there. We were roughing together. And I think we still got another op or two out of it with I think Team Five had had was coming to relieve us.

• 2:32:33Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Did you were you on the last plane home with us?

• 2:32:38Speaker 01

  I was, I think, on one of the last planes home. Because I remember.

• 2:32:46Speaker 01

  Well, I remember meeting Marcus because he was in the platoon relieving us. And yeah, I think I was in I think I won the last plans home.

• 2:32:57Jocko Willink?

  And then at this point, it was weird when we got home because like the guys back on the strand had been like reading our after actions reports, knowing what we were doing. They'd gone to our guys' funerals, visited our wounded guys in the hospital. And I remember when we got home, this was the decompression plan.

• 2:33:24Jocko Willink?

  They had new guys.

• 2:33:28Jocko Willink?

  Um, swim pairs of new guys. So if, for instance, when we went to the bar, they had a, they had a new guy to drive you home and a new guy to drive your car home.

• 2:33:42Jocko Willink?

  That was the decompression plan. I remember thinking to myself, well, okay, at least somebody thought of something. And that's what, that's what it was. It was all right. You know, we'll take care of you guys. We know you got some steam to blow off. And that's what we did. I don't know if that was a good plan. It doesn't really seem bad.

• 2:34:03Speaker 01

  I think the spirit of trying to do.

• 2:34:05Jocko Willink?

  The spirit was good. The spirit was good.

• 2:34:08Speaker 01

  Execution was maybe a little.

• 2:34:10Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, just maybe there's something we could have used more than a new guy to drive you. I remember I was getting in a car and I mean, where?

• 2:34:21Jocko Willink?

  Look.

• 2:34:23Jocko Willink?

  There's, when you, when, when, when I'll just speak from my own personal, when I came home from that deployment, like, you, you weren't holding a lot back, you know? It was like, no, you're dumb. No, don't do that. Hey, we're not doing that. It was like, we were, I was definitely at that point of just calling things how they were. And that was like, you had to, I had to readapt to say, okay, you know what? I can't just, just do that all the time.

• 2:34:55Speaker 01

  Absolutely. I, I feel like we can talk a long time about re-acclimating back to society and how to do that effectively. And I think personally, that that transition is so difficult that it is also the reason why a lot of people have trouble readjusting back to society. Because you put that switch on for so long, you just don't know exactly how to turn it back off. And I remember very clearly when I came back, it was very raw. Everything was raw. And I was a lot more direct. And I think the hate and anger in my heart

• 2:35:40Speaker 01

  had just swelled up.

• 2:35:44Speaker 01

  And I, it, it took me years to readjust, re-acclimate, get a better understanding of what I had been through and what I was feeling to be a productive member of society because you can't talk that way. You, you may be able to get away talking like that to a platoon of SEALs for the rest of your career, but you're going to be very, you're in for a surprise, for a shock when you go back to the real world and you realize that people don't respond in that fashion when you talk to them. Because, I mean, that's just not how most of society, most of humans interact.

• 2:36:27Speaker 01

  They don't interact on that type of level of intensity and rawness. So that was huge, huge learning for me. And I'm very thankful that I had the years that in going to college or working in a different line of work to really understand that a different human side, a what, a different meaning of what it meant to be a human.

• 2:36:54Jocko Willink?

  I was, uh, I, I remember I had conversations with Leif and Seth because Leif and Seth, the two platoon commanders, you know, we were getting asked questions. We were getting the people that were saying, "Well, should you guys been going out in the day?" Or, "Should you guys been working with..." Like, we were getting all those questions. And I had a legitimate sit-down with both those guys and I was like, "Listen, we cannot be emotional about this. We cannot respond." It came after we went to a meeting where it was an Officer Detailer meeting. And we were, you know, sort of plotting out what the, what an officer career should look like, blah, blah, blah. And somehow this, so the three of us were in there with a bunch of other officers,

• 2:37:37Jocko Willink?

  like all lieutenants, all, you know, lieutenants, maybe some O4s in there. And one of the other guys that I knew, who's a good guy, and he, I, he didn't mean anything by it. But, but... He said something along the lines of, you know, when we were saying, well, it'd be good to do this job or that job or whatever. And the conversation was going. And he said something along the lines of, well, not everyone's going to be as lucky as you guys were. Cause I think, you know, he was just trying to say it'd be good for guys to be able to get another shit. And he goes, not everyone's going to be as lucky as you guys were. And, and I get what he was saying. But like, I had to, I had to, you know, just detach a little bit because let's face it. I mean, this was within weeks of coming home.

• 2:38:22Jocko Willink?

  And you're thinking, the last thing in the world you think you are is lucky that you just buried your freaking guys. And, and I, but you know, we all maintained, but you know, after that, I, I talked to Leif and Seth, who as you know, Leif and Seth are not exactly the most, uh, you know, they're not real great at hiding their emotions, right? They're both freaking passionate, emotional guys. And I was like, guys, we cannot, you, if we talk about this deployment from emotional perspective all the time, we're, we're not going to be able to communicate properly what we learned. And so we have to take a step back. Don't get emotional, don't get in arguments about this stuff.

• 2:39:04Jocko Willink?

  Just stay attached and, and communicate what happened.

• 2:39:11Speaker 01

  Human psychology is everything. Learning how to be in control of your emotions, your body language. How you craft your words is probably the most important thing you can do as a leader and as a follower. And it took me many years to learn this. And I'm just kind of smiling as you're talking about this. I did not learn as a 22 year old kid coming back from deployment. I did not learn how to detach myself, how to be emotionless.

• 2:39:48Speaker 01

  Because while human emotion is what makes us human and is some of the best aspects of what make us human, it is also the biggest hindrance to getting stuff done, to completing the mission. Ego is a part of it. Narcissism is a part of it. Those are human emotions, but they're walls. And when you bring emotion to the table. You are mounting defenses that make it hard to get to the core of your argument of what your vision is. And I've got countless stories where I failed in that endeavor.

• 2:40:27Speaker 01

  But have learned through experience and through just watching other people, observing, making mistakes, being in the SEAL teams, of learning to fine tune that emotional and social intelligence. To know the human psychology of the person you're talking to. Of how to disarm their defenses if they are emotional. Or disagree with you because people have common. I firmly believe that all people want good things. We just disagree on how to get from point A to point B and that's where we mount our defenses and lose sight of the big picture.

• 2:41:10Speaker 01

  But if you can take a step back, remove your ego and emotion from the picture and find common ground. That's where you can influence and share your vision to complete your objective and that's. That's applicable in everything we do. That's applicable in combat, it's applicable in business and medicine. And in what I do as an astronaut at NASA is trying to share that vision, trying to get that buy-in. And it all starts with understanding the human condition. And I've got a funny story that I always remember.

• 2:41:52Speaker 01

  And I'm embarrassed about it and I wish if I ever meet this person again, I would like to say. I would like to apologize. There are a lot of people I would like to apologize and this is one of them. I was home, this is at post deployment and I was playing one of the many Call of Duty video games. And this is my brother's girlfriend. And she saw me playing this video game and I was just getting into it and she says. I don't understand war, it's such a waste of life. And there was something inside of me that just.

• 2:42:27Speaker 01

  I'm embarrassed to say, but I snapped. And I had.

• 2:42:37Speaker 01

  I was stern, I wasn't like, I wasn't unprofessional in cussing her out, but I was like, "That, like, you don't know what you're talking about, how dare you say..." like, I think having a pretty...

• 2:42:52Speaker 01

  Not a responsible way of responding back to that. It was born out of emotion because I was hurt, because I took that as an attack against friends that I had just recently lost. And this young woman, who had no maliciousness behind her comment, and was absolutely surprised with my reaction and was apologetic. But I could have been more effective, just slowing down, removing, actually using the intrinsic emotion I was having as a tell, right? Because if you can be a little more

• 2:43:35Speaker 01

  control and understanding of your own emotions, it can tell you, it can give you hints as to what is going on and how to properly respond and craft your words to get your message across. I could have, with my body language, with my tone, I could have said something different to let her know how I understand the spirit of her comment, but how that comes across to veterans, and how she can be better informed in the future, to be more careful with her words, and not have snapped back at her. And to this day, I told my brother, and he's like, "No, it's not, it's not a big deal at all." She probably wouldn't even

• 2:44:19Speaker 01

  remember it, but I still to this day feel bad. And that's just one of many examples where I let human emotion, my own human emotion, get in the way. And I can...

• 2:44:31Speaker 01

  For me, my childhood was a phase of learning. The teams were a phase of learning, but post-teams, there was a lot of learning how to be a human that made me suitable to be a candidate at, for our space exploration program. And there's no way I would be in the situation to have the honor and privilege I do now if it wasn't for all of those experiences.

• 2:44:59Jocko Willink?

  You get home from that deployment and this, again, it's the same, the same idea is, guess what you're gonna do now? You're gonna go in another platoon, you're gonna do another workup, you're gonna go on deployment again. Was there, you just, that, just how? And you were just gonna execute that?

• 2:45:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think

• 2:45:22Speaker 01

  it's a bit different the second time you go around.

• 2:45:26Speaker 01

  You know, I, I think I already said it earlier, but there's a special name for what I, for SEALs like me, because I only did two, two tours, two deployments, which for people who don't know, in the grand scheme of things, it's nothing compared to the experience of a lot of SEALs, a lot of soldiers, Marines who have done multiple tours. And, but the first one, we had, agreed, we had a lot of heavy sustained combat experience. And being able to do, to take those experiences forward, this time not as a new guy, having new SEALs in our platoon and being able to mentor them was

• 2:46:08Speaker 01

  a privilege and an honor. So it was, I remember feeling drastically different the second time through and still, of course, learning every single day, but also knowing that you serve as a role model in everything you do and say and act to, believe it or not, younger people, because I felt I was pretty young, but even more junior and younger SEALs.

• 2:46:34Speaker 01

  And

• 2:46:36Speaker 01

  The second platoon, the workup, going through that again and deploying again. And while the second time around, it was a little different, there was this, there was a stint under Seth where we had some pretty sustained combat.

• 2:46:56Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, well, the funny thing was when Seth was considering what he was going to do next. And, you know, he was gonna go to school, maybe get out, all these, all these different options that he had in his head. And, you know, I talked to him and I was like, hey, man. First of all, if you don't, if you don't take over this task unit, someone else is. And the only person that should take it over should be someone with experience, someone that will take care of these guys that deserve to have someone to take care of them.

• 2:47:29Jocko Willink?

  And, you know, he's listening to me and finally he just stands up and starts walking out. I'm like, where are you going? He was like, I'm going to talk to the XO. And I was like, what are you gonna tell him? I said, I'm gonna tell him that I'm taking over this task unit. And I was like, Roger that. But one of the other things, now, as you guys were going through workup, and you know, there's all kinds of, this is, this, the, there's all the political things going on, there's all the little backstabbing and all this craps, you know, just normal kind of political crap that goes on. And you don't want it to go on to the teams, but it does. And so that stuff's going on and Seth's, you know, Seth's, uh, he, he's, he was real prone to getting frustrated by that stuff. You know, he'd freak out about something.

• 2:48:14Jocko Willink?

  And so finally, you know, one day he's, oh, this, oh, I can't believe they're doing it and whatever. And I said, bro, just calm down, go on deployment, nothing's going on, go over there, work out for six months, you know, get strong and then come home and then chill out, you know, go to shore duty, whatever. So he's like, fine, you know, and so he goes on deployment, just like you all did, with the attitude of like, okay, cool, you know, nothing's going on, we're gonna go to a place with a good gym, we'll train some Iraqi soldiers and we will, you know, get big. And then sure enough, as fate would have it, you guys roll in and, uh, pretty quickly after you guys roll in.

• 2:48:56Jocko Willink?

  The, and I don't know if you know this side of the story, but the conventional, some of the conventional commanders that were there when Task Unit Bruiser was there, found out that some of the guys from Task Unit Bruiser were back in country, and put out a very specific request for forces that spelled out exactly who they wanted. And that's, that's why you guys ended up getting the call for supporting the efforts inside of Solder City, which was a freaking disaster at the time.

• 2:49:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was not aware of that. It was, and we found ourselves in a, in a situation where we had the opportunity, the privilege to have an impact

• 2:49:46Speaker 01

  on operations and support our brothers and sisters in the Army.

• 2:49:52Speaker 01

  And I remember also Mike Sorelli being there, and I went to BUDS with Mike. And it was an honor to serve under his leadership. I admired Mike long ago from BUDS, being an 18-year-old kid. And obviously, you know Mike, and he was a former Roper, former, um, Marine Force Recon, Staff Sergeant, so, you know, we, in BUDS, we were enamored with his experience, but also his ability to talk respectfully and speak the language to the other officers

• 2:50:36Speaker 01

  and the instructors, but also speak to the level of the lowest enlisted. And that's a skill that's hard to learn, and definitely, I was unaware at the time, but also making observations and taking unconscious notes to incorporate in my own quest to learn how to share my vision, and how to be a follower, and how to be a leader later on in my life.

• 2:51:07Jocko Willink?

  What do you remember about that first op into Solder City? Was good times, huh?

• 2:51:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, I would, I would, I would make a disclaimer. So I, I served as one of the point men and navigators. And I have to confess that I did not have a good.

• 2:51:32Speaker 01

  I, I did not perform well, especially on that, on that first op and it was.

• 2:51:41Speaker 01

  You know, I, I take accountability for that and I, it's not that I ever had a talk with Seth or anything, but I don't, I've never actually had this conversation with anyone, but I know I. That first op, I felt like I failed in a lot of ways. This is the first time I'm actually publicly talking about it.

• 2:51:59Speaker 01

  It was a new area. We had made this force combined from operators from different platoons and different teams. We had never, never worked together and, and in theory you should be, that shouldn't be a problem, right? Cause we had the same standard operating procedures. Everyone knows how to do an IAD, how to peel left, peel right, center peel, you know, respond, move and cover and move. Everyone knows the basics, but that did throw a little bit of a wrench, just working with operators that you hadn't yet worked with. And I know for me.

• 2:52:38Speaker 01

  That it was another, I should have known better, especially having been through oh six Ramadi. That the mental preparation required, and I think I talked to you, but for me, that preparation was getting in the mindset that I would not come home.

• 2:52:57Speaker 01

  And for that first op in Solder City, I was, I don't, I was not there yet. And I was the navigator and led us in. Actually that was, we were inserted by.

• 2:53:12Speaker 01

  The army, some local armor in the area and.

• 2:53:17Speaker 01

  We were trying to get to our target site and we got compromised. There were lookouts there. And

• 2:53:27Speaker 01

  I missed my opportunity to engage those lookouts. And we eventually got, we got attacked from the rooftops. There were RPGs. There was sustained automatic fire. And we had to call in for, you know, QRF for help to get out of that area. So it was a welcome back into the fray of things. And I,

• 2:53:55Speaker 01

  if I talked to other people, I don't, I don't know. I don't think they would probably call me on, say, you did a bad job on that. But I think personally, I feel I've carried that

• 2:54:06Speaker 01

  with me and just promising like, look, getting, getting locked on and getting back on track. So that's specifically the first op.

• 2:54:15Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. The reason I specifically asked you about the first op is because after the first op, which I know was a, was, was not a good operation because Seth called me and was like horrified at the way the whole thing went down. He of course said he totally screwed it up and he needed to reset and Mike Sorelli says the same exact thing, you know, he made mistakes and he, he, they didn't do the right. So it's like everybody,

• 2:54:46Jocko Willink?

  everybody that I know personally was all like, they felt awful about that first operation. And it was only by the grace of God that it wasn't like a mass casualty scenario.

• 2:55:03Speaker 01

  I mean, it's funny. I have not, I've never had this conversation with Mike or Seth, anyone else. It's kind of funny you saying these things like we all are saying the same things and trying to take accountability for how that went.

• 2:55:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was eye opening. I mean, they brought it. The enemy brought it.

• 2:55:27Speaker 01

  And we were in for a rude awakening. But in a lot of ways, it helped us for the future ops because we had good, successful ops that made an impact later on. It's just that first one was.

• 2:55:45Speaker 01

  Look, I don't know. You're right. There were RPGs that were really close.

• 2:55:51Speaker 01

  And by the grace of God, we had our army brothers there to support us, really. So I can't give enough props to, to guys, to, to our brothers like that.

• 2:56:09Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's one of those, um, uh, you know, and I'm sure Mike and I will go into a bigger debrief at some point on this from his perspective. I wish, I wish Seth, I wish it would have hit record, you know, uh, whenever he called me years ago on a, on a secure line to kind of debrief me. But what I think is awesome, and definitely get this from Mike and, which is like, you guys could have walked out of that, um, walked off that operation, you know, completed that mission and gone into freaking hiding. Like just been like, this is not going to work. This is, we're, we're not ready for this, all those things.

• 2:56:50Jocko Willink?

  But I think it's a great example of, okay, stand down for 72 hours. We gotta do some rehearsals. We gotta do some drills. We gotta get our shit together.

• 2:57:01Jocko Willink?

  And then we'll do this properly. And so often people take a hit, you know, they, they make a mistake. And their attitude is, oh no, I'm not capable doing this. See, I'm, I'm wrong. I'm, I'm a disaster. Instead of, instead of assessing it going, okay, here's the mistake that got made. Here's the mistakes that got made. Here's the things we need to change. Here's the rehearsals we need to do. Here's the planning we need to put into place. You do an assessment and like you just said, you learn from your mistakes and you make adjustments. I mean, it's the same thing with the blue on blue we had arriving in Ramadi. It's like, okay. Look, we got away with that one relatively light.

• 2:57:39Jocko Willink?

  Relatively light. I mean, we, we, hey, an Iraqi soldier was killed. That was awful. A couple Iraqi soldiers were wounded. We had one guy get fragged in the face, but compared to what could have happened, we got off light. And same thing, we didn't say, well, there's two things we didn't do. We didn't say, well, that wasn't our fault. And that, you know, it was like, no, this is my fault. And here's what we're gonna do to fix it. And that's the same attitude that, that you guys had at, um, that first operation at Sotter City, which was, okay, we made mistakes. They're our fault. We're gonna fix them. And we're gonna go back and get after it.

• 2:58:19Speaker 01

  Direct parallels with that Blue on Blue incident we had compared to the first op we had in Sotter City. And I remember, and it was a four man element with some Iraqis, you know, I don't want to say names. But I was with that forward recon element and just the Swiss cheese model, Murphy's Law.

• 2:58:44Speaker 01

  It went bad quick. And like you said, someone got shot in the face and Iraqi died and someone was fragged and I played a role in that. That was the first firefight I got in. And it was one of the worst ones. And now that I have, have had a little bit more experience, I kind of understand that when you're receiving sustained 50 cal fire in multiple automatic weapons fire, you're probably not fighting the enemy you think you're fighting. And that was because we were fighting Marines and a whole company of Iraqis who were pinning us down. And it's amazing that we didn't lose anyone on that.

• 2:59:29Speaker 01

  And I, by the grace

• 2:59:36Speaker 01

  I threw a couple frags immediately. That was one of my first reactions and thankfully I did not cook those frags. For those who don't know, cooking a frag means you pull the, you pull the ring and there's a little bit of,

• 2:59:53Speaker 01

  was it time fuse? Is that what you call it? Time fuse?

• 2:59:55Jocko Willink?

  It's a delayed fuse.

• 2:59:56Speaker 01

  Delayed fuse, time like five.

• 2:59:57Jocko Willink?

  It's gonna give you five seconds.

• 2:59:57Speaker 01

  Five seconds.

• 2:59:58Jocko Willink?

  Allegedly.

• 2:59:59Speaker 01

  Yeah. And you hold it, release and cook it, you know, count one, one thousand, two, one thousand, three. The idea is that when you throw it, there's not enough time for the person you're throwing at to pick it up and throw it back at you. Right? Thankfully, I did not cook those grenades and I talked to some of the Marine Anglico that was on the ground there and they said, "My frag just rolled by him." And thankfully, he had enough time to get out of the way. And that's, that's me. That's on me.

• 3:00:29Speaker 01

  And I remember distinctly after that event, you came in, we were in the platoon hut and he asked us like, you were going around like, "Whose fault is this?" And like, I think Jeremy raised his hands like, "It's my fault." And I was like, "No, it's not your fault." And like various people like, "No, it's my fault." And you're like, "No, it's my fault."

• 3:00:51Speaker 01

  And you went on to talk about why and you assumed responsibility. And I didn't know it at the time, being just a young kid, watching all this, taking it all in, but it had a formative impact on me of assuming command and responsibility. When you are the leader, because the buck stops with you.

• 3:01:15Speaker 01

  And just taking unconscious notes about that interaction. But I, that had a huge, I had a huge formative, that was a very formative experience for me. It parallels exactly what we were just talking about with that first op in Solder City. I would love to talk to Mike about it one day, the next time I see him.

• 3:01:38Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, we'll get you guys both in here. We'll do a full, full debrief. So that, that, those operations in Solder City though, um, man, after that. So just a couple of things. Solder City had been a total disaster for years. So that was 2008. It had been a disaster since 2003. The enemy was in control of that area the entire time. The army finally said they're going to do something about it. The army started building a wall.

• 3:02:09Jocko Willink?

  The enemy ferociously attacked. It was devastating. And you guys rolled in there after the first op, obviously things went bad and, and, um, and then you guys got in your rhythm, you figured out, you corrected your mistakes. And you guys, uh, started executing these missions in support of the army and started killing a lot of bad guys. And I, I want to say it was about six weeks. After about six weeks, the enemy surrendered. For all practical purposes, the people that were leading the insurgents inside that area said, okay, yeah, yeah, we're done. We're done. So a problem that had been a problem for five years

• 3:02:55Jocko Willink?

  was over in about six weeks. And

• 3:03:00Jocko Willink?

  again, um, I'm breezing through that because you guys did some harrowing missions in there and took a lot of risk to go in there and make that happen. But it was, my point is that it was risky, yes, uh, but very effective in, in subduing a previously just savage enemy that did not care.

• 3:03:24Speaker 01

  I don't know of too many things in this life that are

• 3:03:28Speaker 01

  good things that are without risk. And that goes to every facet of life, of business, of combat, of space exploration, all good things have a lot of risk and a lot of hard work to get there. And certainly combat operations there were no different.

• 3:03:50Jocko Willink?

  Now, at what point did you start thinking about, you know, going to become a doctor? That was in Ramadi. So, when you did your initial application, it was between deployments, is that right?

• 3:04:07Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 3:04:08Jocko Willink?

  So, the story that I mentioned earlier of me being like, "I don't know why you don't want to be a doctor. It's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Being a team guy is the best thing in the world. Why would you trade in an M60 for a scalpel?" So, we actually had that conversation in between.

• 3:04:24Speaker 01

  We did. I remember it very well. "John, I don't know why you want to do this, but I will support you." You know, and you had my back. "I would never want to do this. But good on you for wanting to do this, and I'll support you in every way." And that letter you read at the start of this brought back some memories. Very powerful words and like undeserving kind words. Yeah, I had not heard that in many years.

• 3:04:55Jocko Willink?

  When did you find out you got picked up? Was that before deployment?

• 3:04:58Speaker 01

  That was during, I think during deployment. So, I decided I was going to go into State 21. For those who don't know, that's the enlisted-to-officer commissioning program so that I could go to medical school. And I knew I wanted to do it after, coming out of Ramadi. But I thought it was poor form and really... I couldn't bear to leave my platoon after, especially after one deployment? What is that? I already feel bad enough that I've only done two deployments. And I am aware that I am a representative of the SEAL teams in what I do now,

• 3:05:40Speaker 01

  which unfortunately, I say unfortunately because I don't appreciate the...

• 3:05:50Speaker 01

  The spotlight, I was of what I have to do as an astronaut, but I am a representative of the teams. And to me, that's kind of crazy. Like, I do not deserve to be a representative of the teams. I'm a two-pump jump. You want me to be representative of the teams? And I do it with honor and seriousness, and I will do, I will never do anything to disgrace the teams. I hold and covet that honor more than anything. And I will defend it at all costs. But I, just talking, just being here, it's just like, people will see it and see me as

• 3:06:30Speaker 01

  a representative, and it's a little, it's humbling in many ways, and it's, I take it seriously. So I wanted to at least get two deployments in, because I feel like that's like the least respectable amount of work you should do as a team guy, is at least two deployments. So yeah, the decision was made, like, all right, I'll put in this pack, I'll time this package in so that I'm getting a decision, yes or no, as I'm coming off of the second deployment. And that's what happened, I found out. Either maybe just before we left, or maybe during deployment, that I was accepted into the program.

• 3:07:04Jocko Willink?

  And so, you come home from that deployment, you had, you guys had a little bit of time to decompress during that deployment, because the solder city fighting was in the beginning of the deployment, relatively close. You guys got done, and, and then it was, you know, kind of what I said earlier, it was, hey, back to some outstations. Relatively mellow compared to either A, Ramadi, or B, solder city.

• 3:07:31Speaker 01

  And, I mean, not to dismiss what the work we did and the work that other people did, but if, the combat operations intensity was night and day difference. I mean, we were working at an outpost in Rupa and doing a lot of long-range reconnaissance missions on side-by-sides, which are basically high-powered tactical go-karts, going hundreds of miles and just traversing the desert in these, getting paid to do it.

• 3:07:58Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 3:07:59Speaker 01

  But it was definitely different, because I...

• 3:08:03Speaker 01

  I fired my rifle almost every single operation in Ramadi. I can probably count on one hand, like the times I didn't, like when there was a mission where I didn't fire.

• 3:08:17Speaker 01

  All same with in Slaughter City, every, I don't think there was a single operation we did where I didn't fire my rifle.

• 3:08:25Speaker 01

  Um, but in Rupa afterwards, I didn't, I don't think I fired it once, except on the range to like make sure it said it did. So it was just, just a different contrast, you know, people have different experiences based on where they are.

• 3:08:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And there's, there's different missions. There's, there's different things that people have to do. And I say this, uh, you know, I'll have guys come up to me and say, you know, I was in the, I was in the Marine Corps from, you know, 1994 to 1998 and I never did anything and I feel guilty. And I'm like, hey, you did what the country needed you to do. You did what America needed you to do. That's what you did. And so you get assigned different missions in any unit. And you do what you're assigned to do and you do it to the best of your ability. And, you know, in this case, it's a little bit of a nice little decompression. Riding around the desert in ATVs with relatively low threat, you know, and then you come home from that deployment. And now, now it's time to go to college. How old are you at this point?

• 3:09:21Speaker 01

  Let's see. So this is 2008. So doing a public math here. So.

• 3:09:30Jocko Willink?

  Didn't mean to put you on the spot there, rocket scientist.

• 3:09:35Speaker 01

  I was, uh, 24.

• 3:09:37Jocko Willink?

  So you're 24 years old. Yeah. I went to college and you went to the University of San Diego.

• 3:09:41Speaker 01

  I did.

• 3:09:42Jocko Willink?

  I went to the University of San Diego. I was a 28 year old. No, I was a 30 year old, completely military institutionalized grown man with no like ability to fit in with civilians. Showed up to college and so it was awesome. Uh,

• 3:10:04Jocko Willink?

  and, and what, what'd you major in?

• 3:10:06Speaker 01

  Math.

• 3:10:06Jocko Willink?

  And did you know at this point, you want to kick ass, get great grades and get into a really good medical school?

• 3:10:13Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 3:10:15Speaker 01

  That was the plan to, I, I, so the program I was accepted to, the semen animal program, was specifically to go to medicine. So, and the Navy does, they take a huge gamble because they're accepting you for this program, putting a lot of money in you, and you're not even accepted to college, or to college or medical school. So they're, they're hoping that you will do well enough in college to be accepted to medical school. And if it was the same as you, you only have three years to do an undergraduate degree. So you get squash, a four-year degree in three years. And for me, I also had to get the prerequisites to go to medical school. So that was, you know, full-time status, working summer school, working winter, um, doing winter classes.

• 3:10:58Jocko Willink?

  Did you have to go to ROTC?

• 3:10:59Speaker 01

  I did. And I also gave up parking tickets to pay for tuition.

• 3:11:03Jocko Willink?

  You're one of those guys.

• 3:11:06Speaker 01

  How did you not?

• 3:11:07Jocko Willink?

  The world finally loses respect for Jonny Kim in some way.

• 3:11:11Speaker 01

  You know what? I, um, it was a humbling job. I think it was good for my soul. So ROTC can be hard for former enlisted. Because you really, you, you might be a battle-hardened veteran. No one care, and people care, but you have to suck in, take that humble pill, and realize that you are just another midshipman with the other 18, 19-year-old kids. And for some people, it's hard to do that, right? Because you have to suck in your pride, take that humble pill, and just follow, and do these things that are, I don't want to say dumb, but kind of.

• 3:11:51Jocko Willink?

  Well, they're aimed at young, inexperienced, untrained officer candidates that have no, that have no experience in the military. That's who they're aimed at.

• 3:12:01Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 3:12:02Jocko Willink?

  They're not aimed at guys that have been in teams on two combat deployments, responsible for all kinds of stuff. They're not aimed at you. And so when they hit you, they sting. If you let them.

• 3:12:16Speaker 01

  But in that respect, it is an opportunity to exercise humility and to be able to suck in your pride because that goes, that is in the same spirit of when someone says or does something to you that gets you emotional and you having the mental fortitude to step back, put your own emotions aside to get, to communicate to the person to find common ground. In the same way, that's how I saw that opportunity to suck in my, to, to get that hu, practice that humility. And I didn't, I wasn't always good at it, you know, because sometimes you're fed up like mustering at zero 500 when the muster is really at like zero 700. You're like, why am I here for

• 3:12:59Speaker 01

  two hours? Because, you know, maybe the squall later put 15 minutes of grace time before like the company commander before the fake, you know, like rotse leader or whatever. And then eventually works out that you're like two hours before, you're there standing there two hours of detention before you need to be there, you know, like, like little things like that. And for some, especially I saw some former enlisted having a really hard time keeping their thoughts to themself.

• 3:13:27Jocko Willink?

  Team guys are even worse.

• 3:13:29Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 3:13:33Speaker 01

  So it is an exercise in humility and giving parking tickets was the same way because the stay 21 was very generous, but it only gives 10,000 of tuition, but it gives you time. You're, I'm not trying to dismiss the benefits of the programs. I'm very grateful for that. But I had to make up an extra $20,000 and the University of San Diego was kind enough to offer me a job. Hey, you give out parking tickets for eight hours a week and we will cover the rest. So I gave out parking tickets and some may see that like, oh, wow, you went from doing these combat operations to giving combat, to giving parking tickets. Like, well, for me, it was an exercise in humility

• 3:14:14Speaker 01

  and just there's, you should never think you're too good to do a job. And I think you should be like that in everything you do. Be a forever new guy is what I try to emulate. And I don't mean as in you shouldn't step up to the role and be a leader and delegate appropriately, but never think that you are above taking out the trash. Or that you're above not respecting the secretary or the lowest junior enlisted. Right? I mean, that's, I was there, you were there, we were both E ones. You're the bottom of the bottom of the food chain, mopping floors, taking out the trash. And I remember what Tony, Tony Frady said to me when I first showed up, he's like,

• 3:14:58Speaker 01

  never think you're too good to take out the trash. And I take that to heart, like to this day, never too good to do those jobs. Because the moment you start to think you're better than anyone else, you have, you have poisoned yourself. You were on the dark path. So giving out parking tickets was, I'm thankful I got to give out parking tickets to really nice cars. Were you married yet? I got married in, during. While you were in college? While I was in college and I had my first child. My wife and I had our first child during University of San Diego.

• 3:15:39Speaker 01

  Then when, when do you start applying for med school? So I applied between second and third year of the University of San Diego in the summertime. Did you think you'd, where'd you apply, everywhere? I applied, yeah, every, I think I applied to like 10, 15 schools. I applied to some really nice schools and, you know, I told you earlier that all my father wanted me to do was go to Harvard Medical School. And that's not the reason, at least like, at least I tell myself that's not the reason why I did it. Maybe it is, maybe some psychologist listening to this is like, oh, that's totally why you went there. But for, and for me, it was.

• 3:16:22Speaker 01

  I had, it was very impactful having friends, Ryan, Mike, Mark, JT. I could go on of the people who have sacrificed and were much braver than I could ever be. And that does a couple of things to you. It humbles you for life. I think if you remember that, right? Knowing that no matter what you do in this lifetime, it will never be enough. And not that it's a comparison, but that pursuit is important. But it made me want to fill in that void, to make up for the good they would have done. And that's how a lot of us honor our friends. It's certainly how I honor my friends. And for

• 3:17:05Speaker 01

  me, that's being as impactful as possible to this world. It doesn't matter what that is. It could be in the form of serving as a team guy, or serving as a physician, or what my path is taking me to now is serving as an astronaut. I wanted to be impactful. And to me, going to Harvard was giving me a better, a bigger platform to be impactful. It wasn't the name, it wasn't the brand, it wasn't the education. You'd be fooling yourself to think that going to Harvard is going to make you a better doctor. That's not true at all. You would be just as good of a doctor anywhere you go to in this country.

• 3:17:43Speaker 01

  But it was having a platform to be able to affect positive change. That's why I wanted to go to an institution like John Hopkins or Harvard, really. And for me, that transition, the years of University of San Diego and the early years of medical school were the hardest. Sometimes, it's hard, it's weird to say, but some of the hardest years of my life. Because it was different. I couldn't grind through it by just hitting harder.

• 3:18:16Jocko Willink?

  Wait, this is going from University of San Diego to Harvard?

• 3:18:19Speaker 01

  Or just going from the teams.

• 3:18:21Jocko Willink?

  Just going, okay.

• 3:18:22Speaker 01

  That transition, it was some of the hardest years of my life. Because it's not like you could just push through like you can in some of the things you do in BUDs or in the teams. And BUDs is a challenge, but as you and I know, training is nothing compared to war. And you think training is hard? You think Hell Week is hard? It's hard, right? Until you get hit in the face. In a real combat operation and then you realize, oh, I've reset my benchmark for what is hard or what is painful or what is suffering and even having that benchmark going into transitioning to civilian life, it was hard for me. I was trying to fit in four year

• 3:19:03Speaker 01

  degree in three years, trying to do really well because I knew I had to get good grades to be considered for a school like Harvard. I had my first child, I was working part time, but probably the worst of it was I was not right in the head with my decompression with post-war. I took a lot of that anger and hatred in my heart and I still had it there and I lost a little bit of who I was and it took years for me to regain that and

• 3:19:40Speaker 01

  it was only through the grace of time, of sometimes prayer, of friends, of mentors, of making mistakes that I was able to find that light and get a little bit back of who I was and learn through the process.

• 3:20:02Jocko Willink?

  What did it look like when it, how did that, how did that anger and hatred manifest itself when you're at the University of San Diego on a sunny day and you're, you know, in the library and you gotta turn in a paper?

• 3:20:16Speaker 01

  So I, I've never even, I haven't really talked about this, but for me, I felt I had a huge obligation to, to work as hard as I could to do the things I wanted to do because I owed it to Mark and Mikey and Ryan.

• 3:20:43Speaker 01

  It didn't manifest itself in the libraries of University of San Diego. It manifested itself in my relationships with the people I loved. And not that I was, I became my father and was abusive or verbally abusive to the people, but I took my anger out in less than healthy ways. I am sad and embarrassed to admit, but I'd get, the littlest things would tick me off and I would find myself punching a wall or breaking something. And I think about that now and I understand the frame of mind I was in and the kind of

• 3:21:25Speaker 01

  hurt I was in post-war and I just didn't have the healthiest way to deal with that. And now that years have gone by and I've talked into our own platoon mates who have gone through their own battles, their demons post-war, I realize I wasn't the only one. But a lot of it I had to deal with on my own or through the patience of my wife, who has been my biggest supporter through all of this.

• 3:21:56Speaker 01

  It took years for me to learn to be human again, to let go of that anger, to sublimate all those experiences, all that, those raw emotions into good. And when I think about some of my behavior at the university, not that I was out of, completely out of line or anything, I mean, I was, I was a good student, I did well. If you talk to people who I was in class with, I mean, I was not controversial in any ways, but you know, when I had strong opinions, I was respectful and I voiced them.

• 3:22:38Speaker 01

  And one of the biggest, it's hard for me to say it.

• 3:22:47Speaker 01

  I still to this day have a hard time saying it just because I it's it's just a word that's not it's very foreign to someone who was a SEAL. But learning to lower my defenses and be vulnerable was the light, one of the biggest lights for me, learning to be more of a human, and that happened in medical school.

• 3:23:14Speaker 01

  It was

• 3:23:18Speaker 01

  I remember this, I had an experience in medical school where we do these talks about our experiences in the hospital. And we were we were talking about like the something called the hidden curriculum, I can't even tell you what that is now, but it was we were talking, I mean, I was to say it was a touchy feely kind of conversation was, I mean, that's basically kind of what it was. And I was, I hated these talks. I hated talking about it, about my feelings to my classmates. And I think a lot of it was just pride because I was like, I've been through so much more than

• 3:23:57Speaker 01

  dealing with the expectations of our supervisors in this medical school and this hidden curriculum and the the and the difficulties of dealing with sick and dying patients. Like I've been through worse. Like I don't want to talk about my feelings. And it made for a very rough

• 3:24:17Speaker 01

  person to be around. And I don't think I wore my emotions on my face and I just didn't participate in those discussions. And I had two caring physicians, professors at the time, pull me into their office and like, look, it's very visible that you don't enjoy these conversations. And you pull out your computer and you're hard to talk to and you detach yourself. And like, what's what's going on? Like, this is a serious problem. And I took that to heart and I examined, reexamined where I was coming from. And I realized that I just, I didn't want to be vulnerable. I didn't want to talk about my feelings this way.

• 3:24:59Speaker 01

  Cause there was a lot of other things, a lot, a lot of other baggage I had, I had still.

• 3:25:05Speaker 01

  But having that conversation and that guidance to open up really helped me become a better human in many ways, which then led to being a better follower, being a better leader. So those are one of many experiences in that phase of life that helped me be a better candidate for, for NASA and, and for, for other opportunities that have come.

• 3:25:35Jocko Willink?

  I'm trying to overlay my own experiences, you know, kind of parallel to yours and just thinking about things. And I, I, again, I always say I got very, very lucky. One of the things that I got incredibly lucky with was when we got home from Ramadi, two things happened. Number one, I, I had a wife and three kids, all at the optimum age. As far as I can, can tell, the optimum age to connect with in the, they're, they're young enough that they're looking at you like you're a superhero. They're old enough that they're not babies.

• 3:26:21Jocko Willink?

  And I can see in their eyes like they're people. I guess that's the, that's the big point. Like they were old enough, they were in that age group, you know, three, four, five, six years old where they're looking at me, I'm looking at a little person, right? So I have that going on and plus my wife, of course. So I'm coming home to that. And then at the same time, I take over the training and where I'm around team guys. Not only am I around team guys, but all these little emotions that you have, well, you went through workup when I was running training with Seth. Like, I was allowed to express my emotions about the teams and doing a good job and cover

• 3:27:05Jocko Willink?

  move and you better, hey, leader, you better step up and take charge and hey, you better get out. Like, not only was I allowed to do that, it was beneficial for the guys that were going through the training because they got to see that I really cared about this and I didn't want anything to happen to them. And like that, so I got to like, let those emotions out enough. And then at the same time, in my whole life, I was like, oh, I was looking at a little human being and going, wait a second, I can't, this isn't, this isn't the place to be emotional or be angry. This kid's looking at me like I'm a superhero and like I should be calm. And that's what I'm gonna be. So kind of a cool, very lucky situation that on the one

• 3:27:49Jocko Willink?

  hand, I got to express and be around team guys and be raw as raw could be with team guys. And at the same time, learn that, oh, by the way, you know, it's not normal. To, it always freaked out Leif and Seth that I would go home and I never would swear in front of my kids. And like, obviously in front of a SEAL dude, I would just go off. And I'd come home and just be, I don't want to say I'd be a different person, but I'd kind of be a different person, you know, I'd kind of learned to, alright, this is okay over here, it's not okay over there. You look at a, you look at a five-year-old girl or a, you know, a four-year-old boy, and you go, you know what, this kid's counting on me to

• 3:28:31Jocko Willink?

  make some halfway decent decisions. And I think, I think that made me very quickly figure out what I needed to do to, to move forward. And whereas for you, I'm sitting there drawing that parallel course, you're getting taken from that team guy environment.

• 3:28:54Jocko Willink?

  To this non teen guy environment to the nth degree. And boom, here you go. You gotta box all that stuff up and figure out what to do with it real quick. And, and there's no real good outlet and the outlet becomes, you know, the wall, the freaking plate, the whatever. That anger needs an outlet and when you let it out, it's not in the best place. And it takes you a little while to figure out, okay, I see what's going on here.

• 3:29:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:29:23Speaker 01

  What you described took me years to learn. And it is probably one of the most important traits of being a leader. Is having one, the emotional and social intelligence of knowing your audience. Knowing who you're talking to and being dynamic enough that you can switch and craft your language. Your body language, your tone of voice, everything you do to suit the person you're talking to.

• 3:30:01Speaker 01

  You can, the way I would talk to a platoon of seals would be very different.

• 3:30:09Speaker 01

  Than the way I would talk to a 60 year old COPD patient. And COPD is like a lung disease from common folks who smoke. Who is in the hospital for the nth time, who wants to quit smoking and is frustrated and needs some guidance. That patient is a different population and being able to have the clarity and intelligence to know that and to switch your language appropriately. Is so important to yield results. And that goes for everything. I mean, you just, that's why blanket leadership.

• 3:30:50Speaker 01

  Tenants don't work, guiding principles work, but you need to form it to your own style to achieve the results. And I think a lot of it starts with awareness, with mindfulness of your own emotions, of the emotions, the body language that others are telling you, because it gives you hints as to what they're feeling. And if you know what they're feeling, you understand where they're coming from, that perspective, you can disarm people by finding common ground and achieving results. Because most of the time, all people want good things. They just disagree on how to achieve that.

• 3:31:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, this, um, you're gonna, I'm gonna give you a copy of this new book I wrote, and you're gonna be like, oh, cool. I'm glad we talked about everything that's in that book today. It's so, so much of this stuff is exactly what I talk about. One of the things I talk about there in there is, you know, modulating, you know, how you have to modulate your leadership principles and how, you know, you can't use the same tool with one person, the same way you use that same tool with a different person, the same way you use it with someone else. You have to understand who you're dealing with and figure out how much of that specific tool to apply, if you can even use that tool, because different people respond differently to different things.

• 3:32:15Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And you know what I wish, I'm gonna admit, I have not read any of your books, but I've learned from watching you, from watching Lee, from watching other leaders, you know, Scott, who is my next OIC, and mentors along the road, and making mistakes, all these tried and true lessons. I've been fortunate to make those mistakes and learn from them. And, you know,

• 3:32:44Speaker 01

  I wish I had a book like that to teach me, but maybe it wouldn't have been effective. Maybe it requires a little bit of suffering through those mistakes to really hit home.

• 3:32:53Jocko Willink?

  There's, there's certain things that you can learn from a book. There are certain things you can't. One thing that's nice is you, for people that give me feedback on these books, Leif, give Leif feedback on these books is if they have a little bit of context, man, you look at them and you go, everybody, every single person that reads one of these books goes, I wish I would have this book. And you know what I respond with? I wish I had it too. I wish I didn't have to learn these lessons the hard way. But sometimes, sometimes that's the way you're going to learn them.

• 3:33:21Speaker 01

  But sometimes, I mean, it's not like anything we've talked about today is super novel that people haven't heard.

• 3:33:28Speaker 01

  You need, there's a right time and a right place to hear the lessons and advice. And sometimes I'm, I'm certain a lot of the lessons I follow and principle, guiding principles I live by every day. Serving with humility, remembering the sacrifices of others, respecting everyone, not taking things for granted. Those were said to me as a kid. I just wasn't in the right frame of mind to receive those lessons. So I firmly believe that people need to be ready to be mentored and to be taught.

• 3:34:02Jocko Willink?

  Well, that's the, uh, that's what humility is all about, right? And that one of the things that I talk about is the one person that you can't turn into a, a good leader is the one that's not humble. Because they're not listening to what you say and they're not accepting any guidance. And so you're not going to be able to get them to move in the right direction. They're just going to continue to suck as a leader.

• 3:34:27Jocko Willink?

  So you get into Harvard and you know, I know, I, I read that letter that I wrote, I know Leif wrote you letters. I mean, we all did everything we could to, to support you getting in. You got into Harvard, but then the Navy wasn't going to let you go. What happened?

• 3:34:46Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 3:34:49Speaker 01

  I haven't thought about this in a long Cause this is why you owe me a six pack. More than that.

• 3:34:57Speaker 01

  So when the instruction for the semen to animal program I was in was written, it didn't take into context the various programs that would be there to support medical school. And I can throw out a bunch of fancy language, but basically there were three avenues to go to medical school through the military. There was UCIS, the Uniformed Services of, oh, health sciences. Yes. Yes. The military medical school. There was two routes to go to a civilian medical school. And one was basically a scholarship where they'd pay for school. And another one was they'd keep you active duty as an enlisted person, but you would have

• 3:35:41Speaker 01

  to pay your own tuition. Me having already been in the Navy for 10 years, wanted to stay in the Navy for many reasons. One, I had already had a scholarship to Harvard as well as generous financial aid that paid 100% of my tuition. So I didn't need the scholarship to pay for school. What I did need was the TRICARE benefits and the salary to support my growing family. Into the Navy, it's, it's essentially the same cost, right? So my program, the semen animal program, did not take into consideration the program where you stay enlisted.

• 3:36:22Speaker 01

  And it wasn't because it wasn't a good route, it just wasn't considered because the time of the instruction was written, that enlisted program wasn't written. And I wanted to apply to that enlisted program, but was being told by my, you know, my superiors at the ROTC unit that I couldn't do it because of the instruction. And that's, I'm a, I am not, I do not, I am not a believer in circumventing the chain of command. And in this case, I let my, he was a lieutenant, like proctor, let him know, like, I'd like

• 3:37:07Speaker 01

  to see if I can pursue this avenue in a parallel path and try and get approval for this. And the response I got was, well, good luck.

• 3:37:18Speaker 01

  And that's when I reached out to you and told you the situation and you asked a civic officer,

• 3:37:29Speaker 01

  who I still actually keep in touch with, because I remember,

• 3:37:34Speaker 01

  he did not know who I was, but the very fact that we were both from the same brotherhood, from teams, that he went out of his way and he was working, I think in BUPR or some Personnel Command that had access to these types, to the people that can make these types of decisions. And he was able to secure, or at least share this story of what I was going through to the right people. And once those right people heard the situation, it was like, well, that's easy, of course. It just wasn't, it wasn't considered because it's a clerical thing, not because it's not, like, shouldn't be allowed. So, once the right people heard the story, they're like, yeah, absolutely, we'll support you. And it wouldn't have been made possible if it wasn't for the support of the teams.

• 3:38:15Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that was awesome. And my role was just knowing who to call. And, you know, I had, you know, no power, but the people that, people that you know, and the relationships that you build over time is like, hey, guys, here's what's going on. And the guys that are in powerful positions, or in the right position, in the right spot, with the right pull, can make things happen. And they do it for the right reasons. Like, just like you said, it wasn't because it wasn't the right thing. It was absolutely the right thing to do. It's like, hey, we got an opportunity for a guy to go to Harvard Medical School and be able to support his family while he's doing that? Who, who could possibly think that's not a freaking awesome idea? And that's all it needed. It just needed a little light shed on it.

• 3:38:59Speaker 01

  I'll always be indebted and grateful for the actions of those to go out on a limb and support me. And I think, like you said, it goes to show, when you are in a position to be able to help someone, and it's for the right reasons, and it's done responsibly, you should do that. It's the right human thing to do, is to help others on their path.

• 3:39:23Jocko Willink?

  Now, when you said going from US, going from the teams to USD, and then from USD to medical school,

• 3:39:31Jocko Willink?

  You said that was a hard transition too, going to medical school. Was that, am I catching that right? Did I hear that right?

• 3:39:36Speaker 01

  It was not as hard of a transition as the teams to just civilian life in general. I would say that that, and that was like the transitions, the teams to non-teams. Cause you said it yourself, but I joined the Navy at 18 years old. I was completely indoctrinated into the military. And you like to think, there's bubbles everywhere, right? We all, everyone lives in a bubble to a certain extent. And in the military, we like to pride ourselves in a plethora of wide-ranging experiences. But if you think, and we like to compare ourselves to maybe civilians or people who are not, don't have those opportunities to get those types of overseas experiences.

• 3:40:20Speaker 01

  But if you think for a second that you may not be in a bubble yourself just because you're in the military, you're wrong. I was in that bubble. And I quickly discovered that I was indoctrinated. And yes, I went to a very liberal arts college. And I may not have agreed with everything that was discussed, but you know what? Learning to respectfully voice my opinion and listen to others voice their opinions is so important to being a productive member of society. So I am so thankful that I was able to step outside of my bubble into the civilian world and see how operations are done on that side.

• 3:41:02Speaker 01

  And I, it just helped me be a more rounded person, a more rounded human being. And I'm so thankful. It's just that it was very painful.

• 3:41:14Speaker 01

  Because I was not ready for that transition. And I don't, I think a lot of veterans are not ready as well. And I think that's why it's, a lot of times it's hard for veterans to transition from the military into civilian life.

• 3:41:27Jocko Willink?

  How hard was Harvard Medical School for you?

• 3:41:31Speaker 01

  It was, it was hard. It was.

• 3:41:34Jocko Willink?

  What does a day look like? What was it? Either a day or a week? Like, what does that look like going to Harvard Medical School?

• 3:41:40Speaker 01

  I mean, for me, it was juggling the demand of a growing family. You know, my had my first child, my second child was born during medical school, my third child was born during internship. So you didn't get much sleep. And you just learn to optimize your day. Like, you can't make more hours in a day. And this is when I learned that becoming a morning person was a better way to optimize my day. So, and I I am not a genius by any means. I consider myself very average physically, mentally. It's just that I feel that I can stick with the goals and have deferred gratification to help support me for my goals. That's it.

• 3:42:24Speaker 01

  Work, working hard is all I know I can do to make up for any advantages, natural or otherwise, that I don't have. So I do feel that I had to study more than the average student at Harvard Medical School, and there were some smart folks there. And on top of having personal responsibilities to being a father and a husband, those were challenging. So I learned that, hey, I need to wake up super early, study in my most optimum time, workout. And that's, it was just learning these changes to optimize my life.

• 3:43:01Jocko Willink?

  How early would you wake up?

• 3:43:04Speaker 01

  In medical school, I was waking up around 3:30.

• 3:43:09Jocko Willink?

  And then what, you maintained your workouts all the time?

• 3:43:12Speaker 01

  No.

• 3:43:13Jocko Willink?

  At what point, at what, was that kind of one of the early things to go? Did you hang on to it as long as you could?

• 3:43:18Speaker 01

  It, it lost, I lost it my first year and I

• 3:43:23Speaker 01

  I like, you know, in your twenties, you can eat junk food, you can get away with all these things, you can work off any bad diet you have. As you get to your later twenties and your thirties, like, you can't do that. You have to eat well. And I was gaining, I was overweight in first year of med school, and there came a point like, I can't do this to myself. Like, this, maintaining my health is for my sanity, for my health, and I owe it. Like, I don't care if I'm super busy. I should be able to find a half hour, an hour in. So I would say towards my second and third, I mean, it was just that first year, I lost sight of that. And then after

• 3:44:02Speaker 01

  that, bought a treadmill, bought weights in my little basement, so I had no reason not to work out. So then I was waking up super early, getting my workout in first thing in the morning, and then just trying to crush as much studying as I could in the morning hours. Because I knew, once I came home from school, there's no work getting done for hours, because my son and my wife, I mean, they, I need to be there for them. And a lot of times, it wasn't. I was not the best husband and father during those years.

• 3:44:36Jocko Willink?

  And that's because you got an exam in two days, or you got a paper due, and it just, that's, you're just, you just don't, you can't do it.

• 3:44:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was not, I don't think, able to do that very well. I tried, but I, I think I could have done better.

• 3:44:52Jocko Willink?

  At what point did you decide maybe going into space would be a good idea?

• 3:44:58Speaker 01

  So, we talk about accidents, and we call it whatever we want. I had no plan, I had no plan to do any of these things. Like, we talked about, I had no plan to be a doctor. It's just something that came out of deployment of Ramadi, of seeing the compassion and the good that physicians and nurses were doing to our brothers and sisters who are wounded in combat. And I wanted to be able to do that type of good as well. And that's why I got directed to medicine. Space was never on the horizon. And we talked a little bit about where I came from. That scared little boy, I grew up under my father's shadow. I never thought I could have been a SEAL, or a doctor, or an astronaut. There's, there's no way.

• 3:45:43Speaker 01

  It was a different life and I was a different person.

• 3:45:48Speaker 01

  And the first time I heard about NASA and this opportunity, I don't, I don't have a great story for it. It's just I heard about being an astronaut. It's like, oh, that's kind of interesting. We wonder like, other than space exploration, like what you do and learning about the impact that astronauts can have on our next generation and what Apollo did for our country. I mean, in the 60s, we were able to land a human on the moon with that technology.

• 3:46:23Speaker 01

  Despite a growing race with Russia and all of the politics going on during that era, Kennedy's assassination, we were able to complete that and that secured American preeminence in science and technology for decades to come. I certainly believe that. And the benefits we got from that are, you can't count that. And learning a little bit more about that and how astronauts have had the opportunity to represent humanity for good and bring together countries in a way that

• 3:47:05Speaker 01

  politics and alliances cannot do. When you talk to some of the Apollo astronauts who landed on the moon and they did their international travel, the comment, the feedback they would get from people would be, "We did it." "We did it together." It wasn't "You Americans did it." It was "We did it." And that was powerful that countries could come together and see that as a human accomplishment. So there's something about space that takes away those borders. Because when you're up there, you don't see these distinct borders between countries. You just see a lot of blue and a lot of land. And you see how fragile the planet is.

• 3:47:51Speaker 01

  So once I learned a little bit about that type of impact and that you can have a huge impact on the next generation of explorers, of scientists, of people who want to be a better version of themselves. Maybe I could reach out to those kids, just like me, who are scared, tired, who don't think they can amount to anything, who don't think they're worth anything. If I could reach out to them and let them know that, hey, it doesn't matter where you're from, with the right attitude, with the right hard work, if you get up every time you fail, you can amount to something and you can do positive work.

• 3:48:36Speaker 01

  You can leave a good impact, a positive mark for our world. That meant a lot to me. And that's when I put my name in the hat and wanted to be an astronaut because it was completely consistent with my goals that I promised Mikey, Mark, Ryan, long list of our brothers who are not here with us today, that I would, for the rest of my life, do something to impact positive good in our world.

• 3:49:11Jocko Willink?

  Is it, um, was, is there a recruiter that comes around? I mean, where did you, did you pick up a brochure in class? Where did you, you must have had the idea, you must have been watching, you know, a movie or something and gone, wow, that, where'd it come from?

• 3:49:29Speaker 01

  You know, so I was, I, through just random circumstances, got in, met a astronaut, a former astronaut named Scott Perdensonsky, who was, is also a physician and served with the shuttle during the shuttle era and had a lot of great missions and a huge impact. And listened to him talk passionately about our space program, that kind of gave me the idea. And then, just like in the teams, I just researched what it meant to be, what the requirements were and realized I actually, like my math degree was consistent with that. Getting a medical degree, having operational experience, working in close teams,

• 3:50:09Speaker 01

  making hard decisions with limited data, under constrained times. Those were all consistent with the traits and experiences that NASA was looking for. Through, so through an accident or whatever you want to call it, I was able to have, to have this privilege and honor to serve our astronaut corps.

• 3:50:32Jocko Willink?

  What's that screening process? How many interviews did you go through before, before they gave you the yet, the up check?

• 3:50:39Speaker 01

  So there are, I can't go into, into great detail of, of this just because of the sensitivity around applications. And actually, right now, coincidentally NASA is looking for the next class of astronauts.

• 3:50:57Jocko Willink?

  I know. I saw that on your Instagram.

• 3:50:58Speaker 01

  Oh, till, till the end of March, which.

• 3:51:01Jocko Willink?

  Jonny Kim's out recruiting for NASA.

• 3:51:06Jocko Willink?

  So they keep it a little bit, they keep it a little bit, um, I don't want to say secret, but they keep it somewhat a little bit of a mystery?

• 3:51:13Speaker 01

  I don't say that they, there's just some finer details about the process that are not generally, um, public knowledge. I mean, I think, I think you'd probably find it on Google. There are, I went through a couple of interviews. There's a process where you're screened based on your paper application. And they reach out to references, letters of recommendation, and then they invite you for an interview. And you're there for three, four days, going through an interview, doing these tests, medical tests, and also like team-based tests where you're working with people that you haven't worked before and seeing how you solve a problem. And they're observing how you react.

• 3:51:52Jocko Willink?

  All right, listen, bro. I know this stuff might be sensitive and everything, but you gotta give me at least one cool thing that they, I want to know that they put you in like an escape room. I want to know that you had to like, they were, they were had, they were shooting paintball at you while you were doing math problems. Come on, give me some.

• 3:52:08Speaker 01

  No, you know.

• 3:52:10Jocko Willink?

  Indulge my fantasy a little bit.

• 3:52:13Speaker 01

  Nothing like that. The, um, it was fun. Really, really fun. You do things that you have never done before. There were some obstacles, like you'd be like, hey, you get a piece of paper and you're with your, your group and you're like, hey, you need to get to from point A to point B, but you can't touch the grass in between you and point A and point B. And you might have like a barrel or a piece of wood or some string or something. You need to devise a way to utilize the resources you have and work effectively in a team to like accomplish your mission. And that's like just one example of some of the team-based things. And that's publicly out there.

• 3:52:54Jocko Willink?

  Now, what, what I like about that, what's interesting, so I talk about this in my latest book, the, sometimes people feel like when they, when they're trying to show leadership, what they need to do is like step up and tell everyone what to do. And it's interesting to me because I know what you're like and I know that, I know that you wouldn't necessarily be the guy who goes, all right, everyone, listen up. This is how we're going to get the barrel, you know, you'd be like, okay, let's, but let's figure, hey, anyone got a good idea? What do you think of this? What do you think of that? And I just think it's a good, I think you're like living proof because sometimes I get pushed back of, well, if you don't step up, no one's going to notice you. If you don't start barking orders, no one's going to listen to you.

• 3:53:36Jocko Willink?

  And I have to tell people over and over again, that's not true. I mean, how many times did you hear me yell at, Leif or Seth or anyone in Task Unit Bruiser?

• 3:53:47Speaker 01

  I don't remember a single time. And that's not something I would, you praise in public, but criticize in public is, is not, I cannot think of a situation where that is a good idea to humiliate or belittle a subordinate. That is, that is not in gender trust. That is a very immature thing to do. And that's what we talk about, like letting your emotion take control, your ego, take control of your actions. It's not something I've ever seen.

• 3:54:19Jocko Willink?

  And, and people look at me. And they judge a book by the cover. And they think, oh, Jocko, man, can you imagine? He must have just been crazy and yellow. It's like, no, no, doesn't work. And that's what I like about like, even just this little tidbit you're giving us is to convince people to say, listen, if you want to be in charge, that doesn't mean you bark orders. Actually, someone that's good will start off by listening to what other people have to say, taking other opinions. Let's formulate a good plan together. And those things are so important, and it's your proof. And I, and I'm only imagining that when you were given a task, there was a couple of people in the group that like, all right, guys, listen to me. And I bet the, the judges,

• 3:55:02Jocko Willink?

  for lack of a better word, wrote down, okay, Bill over here, he really likes to bark orders and tell everyone what to do. And that's not going to go over well, being part of a team.

• 3:55:11Speaker 01

  Absolutely. I mean, being a good leader is being a good follower first. And we talked about having that emotional, human, social intelligence of what to do and when to do it and how you do it. And that's so important, how you craft that language and that tone of voice. I mean, I think there is no template to leadership and people need to find their own way of executing that. For me, I listen. I sit back and I'm a big believer in quality over quantity of what you say. In my experience, the less you say,

• 3:55:52Speaker 01

  but the more thoughtful it is, the more people listen. The more you speak, and oftentimes when you speak a lot, it's less thoughtful, the less people listen.

• 3:56:06Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:56:06Speaker 01

  And I try and exercise that in everything I do, especially at NASA.

• 3:56:13Speaker 01

  And learning to, it's very applicable in a SEAL platoon. Learning to gain currency. When I mean my currency, you can call it reputation, whatever you want.

• 3:56:24Jocko Willink?

  Leadership capital.

• 3:56:26Speaker 01

  Capital. Gaining this capital, this currency by at least what I've seen to be effective for others and myself is shutting up and doing a good job and not complaining. But speaking up when it is appropriate respectfully and thoughtfully. You gain that currency so that hopefully one day when you do need to bark orders because of time sensitivity or just the situation calls for it, you can cash in that currency. You've gained enough and that the people around you, your teammates would be like, Roger that, I'm gonna follow. Because you have gained my trust.

• 3:57:13Speaker 01

  So there's a time for everything and at least for me, I found that barking orders to especially to people you don't know is probably very poor form.

• 3:57:23Jocko Willink?

  It doesn't work very well. And yeah, the quote I have in that book over and over again is the less you talk, the more people listen.

• 3:57:34Speaker 01

  I, in my experience, I found that to be true.

• 3:57:37Jocko Willink?

  So, okay, so you get selected, all right, and you do all kinds of cool tests.

• 3:57:45Speaker 01

  Did they?

• 3:57:46Jocko Willink?

  We can't even talk about them. Echo Charles.

• 3:57:48Speaker 02

  No, no, you know, you know that soundproof room that they put you like on Armageddon? You watch that movie?

• 3:57:53Speaker 01

  I have. Is that the one where they blow up the meteor?

• 3:57:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, they drill. Yeah, so remember they put them in that soundproof room and they give them a bunch of questions and they're like, hey, don't go crazy or whatever.

• 3:58:04Speaker 01

  I don't remember this part, but keep going.

• 3:58:07Speaker 02

  I was wondering if you did that.

• 3:58:10Speaker 01

  Not that I remember. We, there were some long, I mean, a lot of interviews, a lot of tests and I mean, you're running on and I really can't get into the details. But taking like these personality and the psychology tests.

• 3:58:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think that's what they're trying to depict there. See if they could like keep it together out there or whatever, right?

• 3:58:32Speaker 01

  Yep. But it's not.

• 3:58:38Speaker 01

  Like I, I think you can learn a lot about someone. I think you learn the most about someone when you squeeze them, right? Because in an eight to five office job, you can put on a mask and be whoever you want to be for that period of time. You can fool a lot of people. But when people are squeezed, when you strip away that comfort and they're tired and hungry and cold and suffering, that armor just gets melted away. And you start to see true core characteristics. And that's why we do Hell Week in Bud, right? You want to strip away all that armor and see what is left of that person.

• 3:59:17Speaker 01

  If that is someone you want by your side, when you are in your darkest days because you're getting, you're in the heat of battle and you're getting fired upon, you want that person that you know is not going to quit. Now,

• 3:59:34Speaker 01

  I'm not saying the cheapest and easiest way to find candidates is throw a ruck on them and say, "March in this direction and I won't tell you and stop when I tell you." I think you would get certainly a type of profile of person to not quit and to pursue on even not knowing when they'll ever stop. But that, we need to be a little bit more thoughtful of who we're trying to represent our species, our country for space exploration. You don't want, otherwise we just have a, like a, like a core of soldiers and operators.

• 4:00:13Speaker 01

  But that's, we want people who have that dynamic leadership, who understand human emotion, who can speak to a class from a fifth graders, third graders, kindergartners, and share that passion of reading or space exploration and why it's important to study the sciences. But at the, or at the same time, talk to a group of engineers and explain to them, "Hey, Respectfully, why you need a window in your vehicle? Because to land appropriately? Or explaining to management why you need to do these certain training activities, even though they're really expensive or there may be risks involved? Like, we need to maintain our currency in jets?

• 4:00:58Speaker 01

  Because it's an operational environment where we have to make realtime decisions that have real risks? So that we can stay sharp and learn to exercise that operational decision-making during stressful times? So, you need someone who can fill all these roles in? And push when the going gets tough? And the core tries to use various tests to make sure we're selecting for the right people that can do all those things.

• 4:01:30Jocko Willink?

  So, uh, once you get selected, um, and then it's time to start the training? And, well, give me, give us like an overview of the training? What's the pipeline start off with? What's like the hardest parts? And then where does it, where does it feel like you kind of level off and you're feeling good about it?

• 4:01:48Speaker 01

  You know, every day is different. It's, um, I explain it like being in grad school with just a more physical component to it. I mean, there's certain checks and boxes you need to do, like you need to get to a certain proficiency in speaking Russian and learning to fly the jet. If you're a pilot flying front seat, I'm not a formal military pilot, so I had to learn how to be a, um, uh, to be an appropriate crew member, an effective crew member, we are, um, serving with a pilot and learning to fly the jet appropriately and work together to complete that mission. You're learning engineering about the suit, the space suit you're in, or the International

• 4:02:31Speaker 01

  Space Station, learning all the different components, the heating, the cooling, the electrical components, um, how it recycles water, how it recycles urine, um, then learning how to operate in the space suit. We have this huge pool that has a one-to-one scale of the space station in Houston. And learning, because we don't have in a way to emulate zero gravity on Earth, obviously. But we have- Buoyancy and we can make neutral buoyancy to emulate what it's like to be in a zero or microgravity environment and how it feels to work in a pressurized suit to move along and replace batteries and work drills on the space station.

• 4:03:14Speaker 01

  And I can, you learn geology, we go on trips to learn about various aspects of rock formations, how they form, why they form, what's important, because this is all relevant. If we go to Mars, we go to the moon, we may not be able to bring the subject matter experts. We don't need to be the subject matter experts, but we need to know and understand, we need to have a foundation so that we can go out, make effective use of the time we have to get the rocks that subject matter experts at home do think is useful, so that we can learn more about the moon, about the Mars, and bring that knowledge back to Earth to benefit humanity. So every day is different.

• 4:03:52Jocko Willink?

  Does everybody on the team, well, do you get assigned to like a platoon or a team or are you assigned to a certain group of people that you're gonna go on a mission together?

• 4:04:05Speaker 01

  Eventually you do in your career. When you first show up, you're what's called an ASCAN astronaut candidate. So you go through and you almost do everything together.

• 4:04:16Jocko Willink?

  Did you graduate already from ASCAN school?

• 4:04:21Speaker 01

  I did, yes.

• 4:04:22Jocko Willink?

  And that was the, that was the big graduation that took place in?

• 4:04:24Speaker 01

  January.

• 4:04:25Jocko Willink?

  January?

• 4:04:26Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 4:04:27Jocko Willink?

  You, so once that, when you're going through that school, is that the initial like, okay, you're learning Russian, okay, now you're learning about the space suit, okay, now you're working in a weightless environment?

• 4:04:37Speaker 01

  Yep, you're learning, it's kinda like SQT. You're learning the basics of what it's like to be an effective astronaut. But that training never goes away, like, just like being a SEAL, you don't stop shooting just because you made it through SQT. It's just the beginning of your, of your learning, of your professional development, and you're maintaining all of that. So you continue all of those activities, maintain speaking your Russian, practicing in the space suit, flying in a jet, you know, weekly, and then supporting ongoing missions. So if you're not assigned, which I am not assigned. There's a pool of astronauts that are always supporting ongoing missions because that's a priority is supporting ongoing missions. And right now, we have astronauts

• 4:05:22Speaker 01

  that have manned the International Space Station for 20 years continuously. There are people, adults, where we have been orbiting a manned presence in the space station longer than people have been alive. And we are looking to go back to the moon in 2024 with our eyes set for deeper exploration to Mars and beyond. But it starts off with getting back to the moon and setting and deploying a sustained presence. So our jobs right now, if you're not assigned to support those ongoing missions in various capacities. And later down the road, if you are assigned,

• 4:06:05Speaker 01

  then you are, depending on the mission, you are working more closely with the other people assigned to that mission. And that might be like a pro, that might be like a workup. Like, you find out you're assigned to a mission, maybe a year or two years before, and you're working closely with that crew, instead of a platoon, it's a crew. And then you go on a mission. And now typically, missions are kind of like deployments. They're about six, seven months. Sometimes they're longer, sometimes they're shorter.

• 4:06:33Jocko Willink?

  And an example of a mission would be going to the space station?

• 4:06:36Speaker 01

  Yes, that is, right now, that is the only mission that we have is supporting our space station.

• 4:06:43Jocko Willink?

  Until 2023, and then they're going to assign someone that's going to go to the moon, our team, crew?

• 4:06:47Speaker 01

  Absolutely. We're under a program that we have called Artemis. We will send the first woman and the next man back to the moon and have our sights set with boots on the ground on the moon by 2024. And that, that hasn't been assigned yet.

• 4:07:05Jocko Willink?

  And you said sustained presence on the moon?

• 4:07:08Speaker 01

  Sustained. While getting to the moon by 2024 at this current time is not, we are not planning on having sustained presence in 2024. By 2028, we are planning on having a sustained presence on the moon. So having a lunar outpost and learning what it's like to live on a planetary, learning what it's like, like having challenges and struggles because the space station is 250 miles away. It's a four hour trip. If something bad happens on the space station, It's reassuring knowing that there is a vehicle, a Soyuz vehicle, which is a Russian

• 4:07:47Speaker 01

  vehicle, waiting there to take our crew members back to Earth if needed. The moon is longer, it's four-ish days to get back. Mars, that's even longer, we're talking about months. So it's prudent that we learn as much as we can about what it's like to live on a different planetary body like the moon before we try and get to Mars. And that's what having a sustained presence on the moon is all about.

• 4:08:18Jocko Willink?

  The, um, when, when do you think you'll get assigned to a crew? Is it even knowable?

• 4:08:29Speaker 01

  No.

• 4:08:30Jocko Willink?

  And it doesn't really even matter because you're just gonna keep doing your job?

• 4:08:34Speaker 01

  Exactly. It, it's irrelevant. I, I still have and hope that I will continue to have this attitude where I'm just happy to be where I am. I have an immense opportunity that so many deserving people don't have to work at NASA, to be in the astronaut corps, that if I never, if I never flew, it would still be an honor to serve. And who knows, something medical can, can come up, an injury can come up where I may be ineligible for spaceflight. It's not time wasted, that's not, I, I would still be very, feel very privileged and it'd be a huge honor to support ongoing missions.

• 4:09:18Speaker 01

  So to me, I have, I don't know when I'll be assigned and I don't care. I will be happy with whatever I have the honor of doing and I will fulfill any role to the best of my ability.

• 4:09:30Jocko Willink?

  Future is bright. Well, listen, Johnny, we've actually been going at it for a little over four hours right now.

• 4:09:41Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 4:09:42Jocko Willink?

  I know. We went through your whole life, which is not bad in four hours. What, I know people are gonna wanna contact you, talk to you, you know, get in touch with you. I know that you're on social media now, big time.

• 4:09:58Speaker 01

  Unfortunately. I say my words carefully, but, uh...

• 4:10:05Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, the, um, well, it's pretty awesome that in this day and age, you know, uh, people can connect with you and, you know, I, I was very reluctant to start the social media thing. Um, it was actually, uh, well, quite frankly, mostly Jenna Lee, Leif's wife, who was like, "Hey idiot, you need to get on social media so you can connect with people." And, and sure enough, I can't even, I can't even begin to tell you the amount of incredible conversations, feedback, suggestions, information, questions that have, that has come through social media. So even though I know you're probably not super comfortable with it,

• 4:10:48Jocko Willink?

  I, I, I bet you'll find that, man, it's a great way to communicate with other people, to, to share things with other people, to share daily life, to explain things to people, to help people out. I mean, I, I, I think you're gonna, you're gonna end up using it for a positive tool, which, look, it can be negative all day long and you can sit on there and you can find people that just wanna, wanna just belittle other people and make fun of things and tear the world down. It's actually not that hard to avoid those people. And it's really easy to find people that are, are looking to learn, share, grow, help. The, the, the social media is filled with that stuff as well.

• 4:11:32Speaker 01

  Well said. I have, I had zero internet presence and I have intentionally not have had any social media accounts before NASA. And even for the first year and a half at being in NASA, just because I have such a visceral feeling with social media. Not because, I'm not trying to blame the platform because I think we all as humans should take accountability for our actions and how we use our tools. But narcissism is perhaps one of the biggest poisons in our society. And narcissism breeds narcissism. And a lot of times the way I've seen social media used as a platform to promote that.

• 4:12:14Speaker 01

  And when children see that self-promotion, that self-idolization, they, and then wanna be YouTube stars, and I'm not saying that that's...

• 4:12:27Speaker 01

  I'm not saying that's a bad thing. I think people should pursue their dreams, but I think it requires some self-reflection and thoughtfulness as a society of what we value. And when you have narcissism as a valued trait, you are by definition putting yourself above others. And I think that is not sustainable for a growing and evolving society. And that's why I find service very sustainable. Because by definition, you are putting others before yourself. One of my greatest, one of my favorite quotes is from Dr. Martin Luther King.

• 4:13:09Speaker 01

  And it's something along the lines of, "Everyone is capable of greatness. Not fame, but greatness, because greatness is determined by service." And I think sometimes people think the definition of success is that everyone in the world knows their name. And I think they're missing the point when that is the goal they're trying to seek. And I sometimes see social media used in that. But I agree with you that when used responsibly, respectfully, tactfully, thoughtfully, it can be a platform for good.

• 4:13:50Speaker 01

  And what made me change my mind about actually having a social media, and I'm not very active, I try to make a post a week. A buddy of mine from the team said, "You know, look, you have an opportunity that most people in this world will never have. And people just want to share in some of what you do and learn about it. And if you are using it responsibly, not for self-promotion, but to promote others and to share some of the cool science and inspire kids, adults, then you owe it to do that." And that was said to me still about a year before I opened up an application,

• 4:14:34Speaker 01

  opened up a platform, but it always stuck with me.

• 4:14:39Speaker 01

  And I guess that's why I have been more okay with having that because I feel that it can be a force for good when used responsibly.

• 4:14:53Jocko Willink?

  Well, with the longest social media preamble ever, Jonny Kim is at Jonny Kim USA.

• 4:15:04Jocko Willink?

  Echo, you got any questions?

• 4:15:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, so how do I become an astronaut? Hypothetically, of course, I mean, you you mentioned the application process like what? Can you just roll into NASA and be like, hey, I want to work here? Give me a application or what?

• 4:15:17Speaker 01

  Thank you for asking, Echo Charles. I'm happy to share that.

• 4:15:22Speaker 01

  If you Google NASA astronaut applications, you will find a plethora of links that describe our requirements in great detail. And just off the top of my head, you need a college degree, an undergraduate degree in a STEM field, as well as a master's degree in a STEM field. That's a science, technology, engineering, mathematics. Medicine does count. Biosciences counts. Nurse, like some degrees like nursing degree, or maybe like a physical education degree don't count.

• 4:15:55Speaker 01

  You can find more details online and you need a couple of years of work experience. And then you meet most of the requirements there. You can find out on NASA.gov and applications are open right now.

• 4:16:08Speaker 02

  Also, I noticed your shirt. Is that like a special, you know, I mean, can I get a shirt like that?

• 4:16:13Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 4:16:14Speaker 02

  Kind of exclusive.

• 4:16:15Speaker 01

  No, not at all. The NASA, the most recognized NASA meat, we call it the meatball logo. Is owned by NASA, but we license it out for free for anyone. So you can just go on Google, shop at your favorite store and find a NASA shirt.

• 4:16:30Jocko Willink?

  Well, if they license it out for free, there may be Jocko Podcast NASA shirts coming at you.

• 4:16:35Speaker 02

  Jonny Kim edition.

• 4:16:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, Jonny Kim a dish.

• 4:16:39Jocko Willink?

  Right on.

• 4:16:40Speaker 02

  Thanks, Jonny Kim.

• 4:16:41Jocko Willink?

  Johnny, I know we've been going at it for a while, but just any other closing thoughts from you?

• 4:16:50Speaker 01

  I'd just like to say thank you to everyone that's had the grace and the patience to tolerate my mistakes along my path and care enough to want me to be a better human being.

• 4:17:06Speaker 01

  To thank my mom for being my first hero and teaching me what it means to be strong.

• 4:17:16Speaker 01

  And most importantly, I don't think words can ever give the recognition or explain, articulate the appreciation I have, but a big thank you to my wife and my kids for supporting me, for being selfless, so that I could pursue my dreams and for loving me.

• 4:17:48Jocko Willink?

  Awesome, man. Awesome. I know this was kind of a long time coming from the beginning. You had to wait till you graduated from astronaut school, which people thought I was kidding when I said, "He's got to graduate from astronaut school." Some people took it as me saying, "I'm not gonna have some guy that's not even graduated from astronaut school on the podcast. He needs to graduate first." And I had to go back and explain, "No, I'm just saying, you know, he's under the protocols of NASA."

• 4:18:23Speaker 01

  And I think it worked out, just so that I can speak more intelligently about the things that we do at NASA. And also, like, the last thing you want to do when you show up, as in, "You guys somewhere," is talk about, like, you're an expert at something, right? I mean, that's just completely inconsistent with our ethos.

• 4:18:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Well, I'm glad that we waited. I'm so glad that you were able to come on. And I know this is the first interview that you've done, and you probably have a ton more. I appreciate you, you holding out, because it took us a little time to get this coordinated. It's an honor for me to have you on here. So, thanks for coming on, and more important, you know, obviously, thank you for everything that you did for me, for, for tasking a bruiser, everything you did for the teams.

• 4:19:11Jocko Willink?

  Everything that you have done and are continuing to do for the Navy, for NASA, and for our great nation. It's an honor to know you and thanks for coming on, man.

• 4:19:26Speaker 01

  You're welcome. And the same goes back to you. So, thank you for teaching us what it means to be a warrior, to be a follower, a leader, to be humble.

• 4:19:39Speaker 01

  And for caring and loving the men you served with long after we've served together. It's a relationship I have always been appreciative of, and I know that at any time I could call you and ask you for help, just like I can call any number of our teammates, and they would drop everything to be there.

• 4:20:03Jocko Willink?

  Yes, indeed, brother. That's it. That's what it is. Thanks for coming on, man.

• 4:20:12Jocko Willink?

  And with that, Jonny Kim has left the building.

• 4:20:21Jocko Willink?

  Not much to say after that one. Pretty awesome.

• 4:20:24Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 4:20:25Jocko Willink?

  And, you know, a lot of times people, they make little comments about Jonny Kim on social media.

• 4:20:34Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 4:20:34Jocko Willink?

  Even though he's not on social media, but they make comments about him. And what they say is something along the lines of Navy SEAL, Harvard doctor, astronaut.

• 4:20:49Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 4:20:50Jocko Willink?

  I'm a loser, you know? Everyone feels bad because they haven't done as much as Jonny Kim.

• 4:20:56Speaker 01

  A bunch of underachievers.

• 4:20:57Jocko Willink?

  A bunch of underachievers. Now, look, we may not be able to become a SEAL, or a doctor, or an astronaut, right? Those are some good goals, maybe a little bit lofty for, for an everyday jack like myself. That being said, maybe we could make some goals. Maybe we could try to become a little bit better in our lives. I think that's a, I think that's a solid thing to do. Do you agree?

• 4:21:32Speaker 01

  I agree. Just like Jonny Kim said on the Warrior Kid Podcast, because he was a guest on there as well.

• 4:21:39Speaker 02

  Giant leaps are done with small steps.

• 4:21:43Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, which is a fitting quote, you know, you got the whole

• 4:21:47Jocko Willink?

  small step for man. Giant leap for mankind.

• 4:21:51Speaker 02

  There you go.

• 4:21:51Jocko Willink?

  Right?

• 4:21:52Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 4:21:52Jocko Willink?

  So Johnny has confirmed that. Now, what I would like to say, I think that there are some kind of small steps that we can take in life.

• 4:22:03Jocko Willink?

  To to sort of start moving in the right direction.

• 4:22:06Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 4:22:06Jocko Willink?

  In a powerful direction.

• 4:22:08Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 4:22:08Jocko Willink?

  What do you think?

• 4:22:09Speaker 02

  Well, I think among many things, we want to stay fit. We want to stay capable and strong. Fit, strong, capable.

• 4:22:18Jocko Willink?

  Agree.

• 4:22:19Speaker 02

  That's that's a good benchmark.

• 4:22:21Jocko Willink?

  Do we want to have mental clarity?

• 4:22:22Speaker 02

  Mental clarity, yes.

• 4:22:23Jocko Willink?

  Okay, good. Any suggestions on

• 4:22:26Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 4:22:26Jocko Willink?

  those arenas?

• 4:22:27Speaker 02

  So let's start with jujitsu. We do jujitsu.

• 4:22:29Jocko Willink?

  Yes, we do.

• 4:22:31Speaker 02

  Yes, sir. We can't not do jujitsu. It's hard not to do jujitsu.

• 4:22:36Jocko Willink?

  Look, you can not do jujitsu, but you're much better off in every spectrum of your life. If you do do jujitsu.

• 4:22:44Speaker 02

  Yes, sir.

• 4:22:45Jocko Willink?

  So let's do jujitsu.

• 4:22:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, so well, you guys see in the game, right? You're doing gi, you're doing no gi, great. Both best. When you're doing gi, you get an origin gi. That's the kind of gi you get. No one asks me that anymore. And I'm glad that means that means like we know.

• 4:22:59Jocko Willink?

  The word's out.

• 4:23:00Speaker 02

  The word is out. So we're going to maintain that word. Origin gees.

• 4:23:04Jocko Willink?

  Factually.

• 4:23:05Speaker 02

  Factually, the best gees happen to be made in America.

• 4:23:08Jocko Willink?

  You know, some people have thrown that as being kind of like one of your words that you use.

• 4:23:12Speaker 02

  What?

• 4:23:12Jocko Willink?

  Factually.

• 4:23:15Speaker 02

  Cool.

• 4:23:15Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. I mean, and I'm gonna say factually, you do use that word.

• 4:23:20Speaker 02

  That is factually true. Uh, we have, well, nonetheless, yes. Originmain.com is where you can get your gi. For the jujitsu. You don't do no gi, there's rash guards on there as well.

• 4:23:32Jocko Willink?

  For also for the jujitsu.

• 4:23:34Speaker 02

  Also for the jujitsu, or other things, you know, also if you're not doing jujitsu, you're taking a break, you know, or you're doing some social distancing or something like this, you know, whatever the case may be. No worries, we've got some other stuff on there to wear is.

• 4:23:50Jocko Willink?

  Garment wise.

• 4:23:51Speaker 02

  Garment wise, yes.

• 4:23:52Jocko Willink?

  Body covering items.

• 4:23:54Speaker 02

  Sure, yeah, as it were, uh, jeans, to be more specific. So two, two, uh, what, uh, models, do you call them models?

• 4:24:05Jocko Willink?

  I think so, yeah, I think models, yeah.

• 4:24:07Speaker 02

  Sure, the regular, we'll call them regular.

• 4:24:10Jocko Willink?

  They're called the factory jeans.

• 4:24:11Speaker 02

  Factory jeans.

• 4:24:12Jocko Willink?

  And I guess you would truly classify them as medium weight. Okay. They're kind of like normal, they're normal.

• 4:24:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:24:19Jocko Willink?

  Just normal jeans.

• 4:24:20Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 4:24:20Jocko Willink?

  Those are called the factory jeans. People have been asking me what the difference, because the other model is called, the other model is simply called Delta sixty eight.

• 4:24:29Jocko Willink?

  So the Delta sixty eight jeans, which are named in honor of my forefathers in Vietnam that fought in the Mekong Delta. And at some point said, you know what, our normal fatigues aren't strong enough for combat. And they went to good old fashioned blue jeans. And so in their honor, we have a little something called the Delta sixty eight jeans. And so they're a little lighter weight because they're for the jungle, by the way.

• 4:25:02Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 4:25:03Jocko Willink?

  But they are flexible, because we didn't just, we didn't go to all old school.

• 4:25:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:25:08Jocko Willink?

  Because in honor of team guys, guess what, team guys adapt and adjust and make things better. So we took the original blue jeans, kept the spirit, kept the strength, kept the good components, but made them better. You've got a little something called flexibility.

• 4:25:26Speaker 02

  Good.

• 4:25:27Jocko Willink?

  So there's your Delta sixty eight jeans. Oh, sorry. There's your Delta sixty eight jeans.

• 4:25:35Speaker 02

  Very flexible, adaptable, all that stuff, functional.

• 4:25:39Jocko Willink?

  Mm hmm. For sure.

• 4:25:40Speaker 02

  Really?

• 4:25:40Jocko Willink?

  Yes, hundred percent. You don't need to add another word to that.

• 4:25:43Speaker 02

  Nope, but I will add the word comfort, not in application to Delta sixty eight jeans. These are the joggers, the sweat suits and other leisure or activewear.

• 4:25:54Jocko Willink?

  Bro, we're not selling any leisure wear, period. End of story. Stop.

• 4:25:57Speaker 02

  Okay, okay, okay. I dig it. But when I'm exercising my leisure or engaging in my leisure activities, I'm gonna have the joggers on, or maybe when I'm jogging. Whichever. You see what I'm saying? It's leisure and active is what I'm saying.

• 4:26:14Speaker 02

  Anyway.

• 4:26:14Jocko Willink?

  You do you.

• 4:26:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. See, you do understand. See, that's what I like about you. One of the many things. Anyway. Yes, origin main dot com. That's where you can get all these cool things. Also, supplements. Keep you in the game. Joint warfare for your joints, krill oil for your joints, super krill oil is what it's called. Milk, additional protein in the form of a dessert, multiple flavors.

• 4:26:37Speaker 02

  They are multiple.

• 4:26:38Jocko Willink?

  There are multiple flavors and they all taste like dessert, straight up.

• 4:26:41Speaker 02

  Straight up dessert. Yes. Also, discipline. Discipline, the pre-mission

• 4:26:51Speaker 02

  drink.

• 4:26:52Jocko Willink?

  I'll make this sound. Listen to this. Discipline can come in many forms. Because you can get it in a powder, you can get it in a can, and you can get it as a fill.

• 4:27:02Speaker 02

  Nonetheless, discipline is good for your brain and your body. How about that? That's good. That's simple.

• 4:27:08Jocko Willink?

  And if you like beverages, if you like to drink things, you'll like these. They will taste, they will satisfy your taste with a one hundred percent accuracy and fulfillment. You'll be stoked. So it's not like you're going, I gotta choke this down. No. You'll be, I drink Jaco Palmer, this one, all day long, tasty. Taste good.

• 4:27:32Speaker 02

  With you.

• 4:27:33Jocko Willink?

  It tastes like you went to the best restaurant you know that serves the best Arnold Palmers. You ordered one up. This is what they brought you. Only it made you smarter.

• 4:27:42Jocko Willink?

  And more physically capable.

• 4:27:44Speaker 02

  Is Arnold Palmer alcoholic beverage?

• 4:27:46Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 4:27:46Speaker 02

  The OG? No, it's not.

• 4:27:48Jocko Willink?

  It's half, it's half iced tea, half lemonade. The Jaco Palmer is half iced tea, half lemonade and half discipline.

• 4:28:01Speaker 02

  There you go. Also in addition, we got Warrior Kid Malt, additional protein in the form of dessert engineered toward the kids. And also Jaco White Tea.

• 4:28:16Speaker 02

  Certified organic, light tasting.

• 4:28:18Jocko Willink?

  Which is cool, but more important certified 8,000 pound deadlift, 100% guaranteed, which is nice. You can get any and all of these nutritional products. At the vitamin shop. In your local vicinity.

• 4:28:31Speaker 02

  That's in addition to originmean.com. If you want to run to the store real quick and grab it, boom, vitamin shop all day.

• 4:28:38Jocko Willink?

  Yep. Yes, that's affirmative.

• 4:28:40Speaker 02

  Also. Jaco's store, we have a store and it's called Jaco Store.

• 4:28:48Speaker 02

  JacoStore.com to be more specific. Anyway, this is where you can get your t-shirts. Discipline equals freedom. Good. Get after it. Stand by to get a lot of shirts on there.

• 4:29:01Jocko Willink?

  A lot of shirts that maybe when you put it on, maybe there's a little, a little. Little mindset shift in your brain. And you look at it and you go, I'm not going to let this t-shirt down.

• 4:29:13Speaker 02

  Bro, that's confirmed. So JP texts me with a, with a picture and. A text message and he, he goes, um. He goes, hey, I gotta admit, this is like for real. He's like, if I like Slack or whatever, like I don't, I can't like mentally allow myself to wear the shirt. He's like, I can't because it's like I'm betraying the shirt. You see what I'm saying? So if you're on the path, boom, you, you wear the shirt. That's how. But if you slip off the bat, you're not worthy, you know, worthy, worthy.

• 4:29:43Jocko Willink?

  So if your whole wardrobe is just proper shirts.

• 4:29:48Speaker 02

  No choice.

• 4:29:49Jocko Willink?

  You're good.

• 4:29:49Speaker 02

  You just gotta stay on the path. Yeah. A hundred percent. So yeah, there's hoodies on there and hats on there too. So dang, like no matter where you go, if you're on the path, boom, you're worthy. So yeah, man, stay worthy, represent if you want. JacoStore.com.

• 4:30:03Jocko Willink?

  Don't forget to subscribe to the podcast. And someone was, someone was talking about this podcast and explaining it to someone else. And they were trying to explain the level of success of this podcast. Cause I was just standing there. Someone was trying to explain to someone that I was cool, right? It was one of those awkward situations.

• 4:30:25Speaker 02

  Under, I mean, what was the circumstance?

• 4:30:26Jocko Willink?

  Just the circumstance, don't really want to go into, but it was just, it was just a situation where someone was trying to explain to someone else that I was cool. I'm not doing it. I'm just kind of standing there.

• 4:30:35Speaker 02

  Sure witnessing.

• 4:30:36Jocko Willink?

  And then the statement was, this podcast has 17,000 reviews. Or some number, maybe that's the number, but whatever. I didn't even know that this was a thing to like be excited about.

• 4:30:49Speaker 02

  Oh, like counting the reviews?

• 4:30:50Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 4:30:50Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 4:30:50Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, but anyways, it seems like we're in some kind of competition with everyone else.

• 4:30:55Speaker 02

  Okay. All right.

• 4:30:56Jocko Willink?

  And we like to win. So if you're feeling like you want to provide

• 4:31:03Jocko Willink?

  support in victory for this team, jump on there and leave a review. It's especially good. Now I read the reviews, which is a lot of reviews to read 17,000 reviews. They're not super long. It's not like a book.

• 4:31:14Speaker 02

  Right.

• 4:31:15Jocko Willink?

  But they do make you smile sometimes because people put, they put layers into the reviews themselves.

• 4:31:20Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 4:31:21Jocko Willink?

  They can make a brother laugh.

• 4:31:24Speaker 02

  Yes, they can.

• 4:31:25Jocko Willink?

  In fact, if you want to, you can just kind of go and peruse some of the other reviews and get, get a smile.

• 4:31:30Speaker 02

  Right.

• 4:31:31Jocko Willink?

  See if you catch the layers, see if you catch the connections.

• 4:31:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:31:35Jocko Willink?

  Little game. We could have a board game.

• 4:31:37Speaker 02

  What?

• 4:31:38Jocko Willink?

  Find the layers.

• 4:31:39Speaker 02

  All right.

• 4:31:40Jocko Willink?

  Make the connections. You know?

• 4:31:42Speaker 02

  Cool.

• 4:31:43Jocko Willink?

  These are not, this is not the only podcast that we have.

• 4:31:46Speaker 02

  It's true.

• 4:31:47Jocko Willink?

  We also have the grounded podcast. Which is about life, kind of through the lens of the jujitsu. We have the warrior kid podcast, which we have a new one up. Which is outstanding. We have also speaking of warrior kids, we have warrior kid soap from irishoaksranch.com. Young Aiden making soap and right now he's making something called killer scope, killer soap. And there's one thing, one mission for that soap. And that is to help you.

• 4:32:22Jocko Willink?

  Stay clean.

• 4:32:24Speaker 02

  Great. Actually, my son, he's three, by the way, he likes the killer soap. It's black. To say it's not abrasive, but it has the little like slight scrubbing quality in there.

• 4:32:35Jocko Willink?

  Little slight scrubbing.

• 4:32:36Speaker 02

  Something. Would it be, would it be considered exfoliating?

• 4:32:39Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 4:32:40Speaker 02

  I don't, I don't know the criteria.

• 4:32:41Jocko Willink?

  I don't think so, but it does. I know what you're talking about.

• 4:32:44Speaker 02

  It has a little something in there. Yeah.

• 4:32:46Jocko Willink?

  A little.

• 4:32:46Speaker 02

  Not much.

• 4:32:47Jocko Willink?

  Yep, just a little bit. Makes you feel cleaner 100%.

• 4:32:50Speaker 02

  There you go. Yeah. Plus it's black, by the way. Did I mention that?

• 4:32:54Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 4:32:54Speaker 02

  It looks kinda dope.

• 4:32:56Jocko Willink?

  The fact that you use something that is black.

• 4:32:59Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 4:33:00Jocko Willink?

  That you would think, oh, this is gonna make everything dirty, but it actually makes you clean is, is like you're working with a handheld miracle.

• 4:33:09Jocko Willink?

  It's a modern medical miracle.

• 4:33:11Speaker 02

  Hey man, it's that activated charcoal.

• 4:33:12Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 4:33:13Speaker 02

  I, I seen a, I don't know what it was like an Instagram video or something like this where activated charcoal, they're using it like in something to brush their teeth. So I was like, hey, I don't know about all that, but apparently, you know.

• 4:33:26Jocko Willink?

  Well, we used to use it to prevent us from being killed by chemical, biological and radiological weapons.

• 4:33:31Speaker 02

  Alright.

• 4:33:32Jocko Willink?

  Activated charcoal. So why not wash your body with it?

• 4:33:35Speaker 02

  There you go. Seems like a good idea to me. So it seems to work. Also, we do have a YouTube channel. For the video version of this podcast, we wanna see what Jonny Kim looks like.

• 4:33:47Speaker 02

  See how young he looks, you know? Just watch YouTube video of it. I think that YouTube is starting to become kind of like a more popular way of watching the podcast, or how should I say, uh, what do you call, listening to it or whatever.

• 4:34:02Jocko Willink?

  Well, if you're on YouTube, then you are in fact watching it.

• 4:34:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:34:04Jocko Willink?

  I guess maybe you could be like have it on the, in the background.

• 4:34:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, like in the big screen or you know, you know, smart TVs nowadays, that's, that's the jam nowadays. You can have it on that, whatever. And last, we do have YouTube channel, official, verified, all that stuff. So that's how you can tell it's a real one, cuz there's, you know, people will cut, they'll chop up little chunks and they'll put it on their YouTube channels every once in a while.

• 4:34:25Jocko Willink?

  Hmm.

• 4:34:25Speaker 02

  But that's how you know you got the correct one, the Daco Podcast YouTube channel, cuz there's excerpts on there as well.

• 4:34:31Jocko Willink?

  Enhanced excerpts with fire and smoke and explosions.

• 4:34:34Speaker 02

  Every once in a while, yeah.

• 4:34:35Jocko Willink?

  Because what is, what good is a, what good is a, uh, uh? You know, the spoken word, if nothing's blowing up.

• 4:34:43Speaker 02

  I know, that's true. That's what I feel sometimes. It's true.

• 4:34:46Jocko Willink?

  I didn't know if you were gonna make it through today. I thought for a moment you were gonna make it through today without bringing in some random sci fi movie episode. The one time you spoke up, you went straight to just Armageddon movie.

• 4:34:58Speaker 02

  Bro, I was about to bust out Interstellar, Armageddon, uh, Deep Impact. Like, there's a bunch of them.

• 4:35:03Jocko Willink?

  I was super nervous coming to this podcast because of that. I'm like, this could be hard. I don't know if he's gonna be able to contain himself. This could just turn into a sci fi movie discussion.

• 4:35:13Speaker 02

  And he mentioned Mars, where that's the next mish. So, bro, Mars, what are we doing up there?

• 4:35:19Jocko Willink?

  We all applaud you for containing your emotions and not turning this into a sci fi movie discussion.

• 4:35:28Speaker 02

  But I think, I think there's a lot of questions that, you know, we, we all want answered. Unless, maybe next time. Anyway.

• 4:35:34Jocko Willink?

  We also have psychological warfare, which is a little psychological

• 4:35:44Jocko Willink?

  that will help you get over a moment of weakness. You can get that from any MP3 platform. We have Flipside Canvas, which is run by Dakota Meyer. So you can have a visual representation of the path. Flipsidecanvas.com. We got some books. Bunch of books, actually. It's kind of ridiculous. Jonny Kim just walked out of here with every book. He's super fired up. So what books did you walk out of here with? Leadership Strategy and Tactics Field Manual, Way of the Warrior Kid 1, 2, and 3, Mikey and the Dragons, Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual, and then Extreme Ownership and the Dichotomy in Leadership. There's a bunch of books. Check them out.

• 4:36:22Jocko Willink?

  We have Echelon Front, which is my leadership consultancy is what we do is solve problems through leadership. If you need help with your team in any category, go to echelonfront.com for details. We have EF Online, which is leadership training, virtual, through the interwebs, interactive.

• 4:36:44Jocko Willink?

  Go to efonline.com to check that out. We have the muster 2020. This is our leadership seminar, gathering, event. The first one is in Orlando, May 7th and 8th. That one, stand by. We got a little scenario unfolding in the nation. And so we're seeing where that one ends up right now. We are not planning, well, we are on, we are observing and assessing whether that one's going to go down. But if that one doesn't go down, Phoenix, Arizona, September 16th and 17th, Dallas, Texas, December 3rd and 4th. Check out extremeownership.com for details. Every single event that we have done has sold out. So if you want to come, register early and especially if this gets compressed into less musters in the same year, it's going to be close.

• 4:37:30Jocko Willink?

  And also, we have EF Overwatch and EF Legion taking leaders from the front lines, from executive positions in the military and putting them into the civilian sector. Go to efoverwatch.com or EFlegion.com.

• 4:37:48Jocko Willink?

  If you find yourself with a deep desire to hear more from us because you haven't heard enough for some reason, four and a half hours wasn't enough of Jonny Kim, of Echo Charles, of me, well, you can communicate with us virtually through the interwebs. Johnny, once again, Jonny Kim USA and Echo and I are also there. We are on Twitter and we're on Instagram and we are on the filish bush. That goes at Echo Charles and I have at Jocko Willink. And thanks once again to Jonny Kim for coming on. Thanks for NASA for letting him come out and do this. And thanks to him for being such a humble guy and setting such a great example.

• 4:38:34Jocko Willink?

  Such a great example for everyone to listen to. What he's overcome, what he's done, what he's doing. And what he has done, not only in his personal life, but what he has done in the service of his country. And in the service of his friends and his brothers. And the same goes to the rest of our service men and women out there on sea, air, land, and in space. Preserving freedom. And protecting our way of life in this world and beyond. And to police and law enforcements and firefighters and paramedics and EMTs and dispatchers and

• 4:39:17Jocko Willink?

  correctional officers and border patrol and secret service. Thanks to what you all do every day as well. And the sacrifices you make to protect us here at home. And to everyone else out there. There are so many things that you can do. So many things that you can do and as Jonny Kim proves. You can be humble and you can be helpful as you do those things. And in fact, the more humble you are. The more helpful you are. The better you will do. And that being said, humility is no guarantee for success.

• 4:40:02Jocko Willink?

  Because while yes, you have to be humble, you still have to set some serious goals. And you have to work harder than you think is possible. And no matter where you came from. And no matter what's ahead of you. And no matter what happens. Keep getting after it. And until next time. This is Echo and Jaco. Out.