156: How NOT to Lead. Fall in Line or Face The Supreme Measure. Monitor Your Hope. "The Gulag Archipelago", by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

0:00:00 – Opening: The Gulag Achipelago-Aleksandr Soltzhenitsyn (Unabridged) Get Your Copies> https://amzn.to/2EDF7r3 1:33:58 – Support: How to stay on THE PATH. 1:22:55 – Final thoughts and take-aways. 1:56:11 – 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 156 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening.

• 0:10Jocko Willink?

  Resistance. Why didn't you resist? Today, those who have continued to live on in comfort scolded those who suffered. Yes, resistance should have begun right there at the moment of the arrest itself.

• 0:30Jocko Willink?

  But it did not begin. During a daylight arrest, there is always that brief and unique moment when they are leading you either inconspicuously on the basis of a cowardly deal you have made, or else quite openly their pistols unholstered through a crowd of hundreds of just such doomed innocents as yourself. You aren't gagged. You really can and you really ought to cry out, to cry out you are being arrested. That villains in disguise are trapping people, that arrests are being made on the strength of false denunciations, that millions are being subjected to silent reprisals. If many such outcries had been heard all over the city in the course of a day, would

• 1:15Jocko Willink?

  not our fellow citizens perhaps have begun to bristle? And would arrests perhaps no longer have been so easy?

• 1:28Jocko Willink?

  Instead, not one sound comes from your parched lips. And that passing crowd naively believes that you and your executioners are friends out for a stroll.

• 1:46Jocko Willink?

  I myself often had the chance to cry out.

• 1:53Jocko Willink?

  So, why did I keep silent? Why, in my last minute out in the open, did I not attempt to enlighten the hoodwinked crowd?

• 2:05Jocko Willink?

  Why did I keep silent? Every man always has a dozen glib little reasons why he is right not to sacrifice himself. Some still have hopes of a favorable outcome to their case and are afraid to ruin their chances by outcry.

• 2:28Jocko Willink?

  So they keep silent.

• 2:33Jocko Willink?

  And that right there is part of the opening of book one, part one of the book, The Gulag Archipelago by Sol Schneidzen. And I discussed it on the last podcast with Jordan Peterson, but I didn't dig into the actual text very much because, well, I had Jordan Peterson on here and I would rather just talk with him and allow him to talk rather than read and delve into the text itself. But the text is really good and I wanted to take today to go through at least, well, to go through today, part one of The Gulag Archipelago.

• 3:18Jocko Willink?

  And the version that I'm going through is not the abridged version, but the full unabridged version. So if you end up looking for some of these passages in the abridged version, you might not find them. And I'm only going to go through part one today. And maybe over time, we'll go through all seven parts that are in three different volumes. Massive volumes, by the way, this one is 600 pages long.

• 3:49Jocko Willink?

  Part two, volume two, it looks like about another 600 pages. And then volume three looks to be, I don't know, maybe four or 500 pages. So I think we're talking maybe 1,500 to 2,000 pages, but it's a, it's a great read. And like I said, in the future, if you get these, we'll go, we'll, I will, I'll say this. In the future, yes, we will go through all the books. So if you want to get them now and read them, then eventually you'll be able to roll through them with us. And

• 4:24Jocko Willink?

  It's, as I said, I mean, this, this, this book is a very powerful book. But I said this when I was talking to Jordan, it's written and you could hear from even the opening there. It's, it's almost a conversation. It's a very conversational writing that Solchenitzen does. And so it's, it's pretty easy to read because it's not, it's just very conversational. It sounds like somebody's telling you a story is basically what it's like. He's asking you questions, rhetorical questions. He's interacting with you, the reader. So it's a pretty fun read. It's not fun in the fact that you're reading about people being trapped, tortured, murdered in a gulag. But he does it in a, in a lighthearted way, if that's possible. Is that possible? I don't know if it's possible, but he seems to pull it off.

• 5:08Jocko Willink?

  I mean, you can even see just, just what I just read. Um, you know, you can see he's, he's having a conversation with you about it. You know, he's having a conversation. So that's what it's like. Let's go back to the book and I'm going to pick up in a section where he's kind of explaining. And I, and I talked about this with Jordan. And by the way, yeah, so if you haven't listened to 155 with Jordan Peterson, where we, we discussed some of this, some of the ideas in this book, we don't, we don't delve into the book too much. And I'm actually going to cover those parts. There's two little sections that we covered. I'm going to cover them again today and kind of go in a little bit more. But if you haven't listened to 155, listen to 155 and then, then come back and listen to this, this one.

• 5:48Jocko Willink?

  This section of the book, Solchenitzen is talking about the fact that he's a war hero, for all practical purposes, and he's about to get rolled up and arrested by his brigade commander. And here he's talking about his brigade commander and the situation that he's now going into. 10 days before, I had led my own reconnaissance battery, almost intact, out of the fire pocket in which the 12 heavy guns of his artillery battalion, battalion had been left. And now he had to renounce me because of a piece of paper with a seal on it. I knew instantly I had been arrested because of my correspondence with a school friend

• 6:32Jocko Willink?

  and understood from what direction to expect danger. So he's been a fire pocket. If you don't know what that means, it means he was surrounded by the enemy. And he was able to lead his troops out of there, almost intact, which means they took some casualties, maybe lost some guys, but he was able to lead his men out of there. And yet he wrote a letter. And he mentions earlier like what he says in the letter, basically says that the leadership, like Stalin's making some mistakes. And guess what? They screened those letters, they read what he wrote, and they arrest him.

• 7:08Jocko Willink?

  So.

• 7:11Jocko Willink?

  War is hell. And he talks a little bit about that here. For three weeks, the war had been going on inside Germany. And all of us knew very well that if the girls were German, they could be raped and then shot. This was almost a combat distinction. Had they been Polish girls, or our own displaced Russian girls, they could have been chased naked around the garden and slapped on the behind, and amusement, no more.

• 7:43Jocko Willink?

  By the way, that's just a little,

• 7:46Jocko Willink?

  a little shot

• 7:50Jocko Willink?

  of what that war between the Russians and the Germans was, the Russians and Germany, we talked about it in Stalingrad, but, and we talked a little bit about what happened with civilians. There's a little taste of what happens to civilians in those situations. It's a nightmare.

• 8:06Jocko Willink?

  Going on. The history, this is chapter two, the history of our sewage disposal system. And this is where he expands and explains sort of his view of the prisons as a whole. Back to the book. It is well known that any organ withers away if it is not used. Therefore, if we know that the Soviet security organ, or organs, and they christen themselves with this vile word, praised and exalted above all living things, have not died off even to the extent of one single tentacle, but instead have grown new ones and strengthened their muscles, it is easy to deduce that they have had constant exercise.

• 8:51Jocko Willink?

  Through the sewer pipes, the flow pulsed. Sometimes the pressure was higher than it had been projected, sometimes lower, but the prison sewers were never empty. The blood, the sweat, and the urine into which we were pulped, pulsed through them continuously.

• 9:15Jocko Willink?

  And he uses this, this term, which I guess the, the Soviets actually called the prison system organs. And how the blood of the organs was these people. And this is something that I talked a little bit about with Jordan. Back to the book, and even though Lenin, at the end of 1917, in order to establish strictly revolutionary order, demanded merciless suppression of attempts at anarchy on the part of drunkards, hooligans, counter revolutionaries, and other persons. So that's how it starts off. It starts off with that, we're going after, these are the people that need to be rounded up. The people that need to be rounded up are drunkards, hooligans, counter revolutionaries, and other persons. That's where it starts.

• 9:59Jocko Willink?

  And then it continues and it goes on. And he writes an essay, Lenin writes an essay called How to Organize, How to Organize the Competition. And he proclaimed, this again, this is Lenin proclaimed, the common united purpose of purging the Russian land of all kinds of harmful insects. And the term insects, and under the term insects, he included not only all class enemies, but also workers malingering at their work. For example, the typesetters of the Petrograd Party printing shops. So you can see, you can see this is starting to expand already.

• 10:42Jocko Willink?

  It starts off just, hey, it's hooligans and drunkards and counter revolutioners. Now all of a sudden, it's getting towards workers that are being lazy. You're being a little bit lazy, guess what? You need to be, you need to be arrested, and you're one of these insects. And then this is how this grows, and he goes through this massive list of the people that need to, that become insects. And he describes them as insects. So this included local self governing bodies in the provinces, they were insects. And people in the cooperative movements, they were insects. As were anyone that owned their own home was an insect.

• 11:21Jocko Willink?

  There were not a few insects among the teachers, in the gymnastians, and the church parish councils were made up almost exclusively of insects. All priests were insects. And all those Tolstoyans who, when they undertook to serve the Soviet government, for example, on the railroads, refused to sign the required oath to defend the Soviet government with gun in hand, thereby showed themselves to be insects too.

• 11:51Jocko Willink?

  The railroads were particularly important, for there were indeed many insects hidden beneath the railroad. And telegraphers, they were insects. And, he just goes on and on. Um, all Russian Executive Committee of the Union of Railroad Workers and other trade unions were also often filled with insects hostile to the working class. So this paragraph just goes on and on. And basically, what it ends up as, everyone's an insect. That's how it ends up.

• 12:29Jocko Willink?

  Everyone's an insect. And therefore, everyone must be arrested eventually.

• 12:37Jocko Willink?

  Here's, here's another expansion. Here, this is a decree from the Council of People's Commissars, signed by Lenin on July 22, 1918. Those guilty of selling, or buying up, or keeping for sale in the way of business food products, which have been placed under the monopoly of the republic.

• 12:59Jocko Willink?

  They deserve imprisonment for a term of not less than 10 years, combined with the most severe forced labor and confiscation of all their property.

• 13:13Jocko Willink?

  So if you operate on any kind of black market whatsoever, 10 years confiscation of everything you own.

• 13:21Jocko Willink?

  That's where we're at right now.

• 13:27Jocko Willink?

  1921 began with the Cheka Order Number 10 dated January 8th to intensify the repression of the bourgeoisie. Now, when the civil war had ended, repression was not to be reduced but intensified. So the civil war is over, the revolution is over, and you think, okay, the revolution is over, we can back off a little bit. No, no, now we're gonna go harder. In that same year, the practice of arresting students began. The arrests of members of all non-Bolshevik parties were expanded and systematized. Not one citizen of the former Russian state who had ever joined a party other than the Bolshevik party could avoid his fate.

• 14:12Jocko Willink?

  Men of religion were an inevitable part of every annual catch, and their silver locks gleamed in every cell and in every prisoner transport en route to the Solvetsky Islands, and those are prisons. Monks and nuns, whose black habits had been a distinctive feature of old Russian life, were intensively rounded up, on every hand placed under arrest and sent into exile. As Tanya Kotovich wrote, "You can pray freely, but just so God alone can hear."

• 14:57Jocko Willink?

  So you're allowed to pray, but only God can hear it, meaning don't let anyone else hear it. And by the way, because she wrote that, she got a 10-year sentence for that. All persons convicted of religious activity received tenors, which is the 10-year sentence. So you can see how this just gets completely out of control.

• 15:22Jocko Willink?

  And one thing about this book is it's it's not really chronological. So it goes through whole like this first chapters, it goes through from like the revolution all the way through after the war. So and then you and then you go through. It's not chronological, it just kind of jumps around a little bit. So you have to, you kind of have to just pay attention the whole time to what timeframe he's talking about. Luckily, he gives a lot of dates on when things are happening. For instance, here, back to the book, this therapy continued full speed from 1927 on and immediately exposed to the proletariat, all the causes of our economic failures and shortages. Okay, let's pay attention to this.

• 16:05Jocko Willink?

  All the causes of our economic failures and shortages. So obviously Russia is going through all kinds of problems at this time. And here's what caused them. There was wrecking and wrecking is their term for basically a saboteur, someone that's causing the problems is a wrecker. There was wrecking in the people's commissariat of railroads. That was why it was hard to get aboard the train and why there were interruptions in supplies. There were, there was wrecking in the Moscow electric power system and interruptions in power. There was wrecking in the oil industry, hence the shortage of kerosene. There was wreckage in textile, hence nothing for a working man to wear. Where the, in the coal industry, there was colossal wrecking, hence no heat.

• 16:50Jocko Willink?

  In the metallurgy, in the metallurgy, defense, machinery, shipbuilding, chemical, mining, gold and platinum industries. In irrigation, everywhere there were these pus-filled boils of wrecking. Enemies with slide rules were on all sides. So they're, they have problems in the country. And it's the, what the party is saying, hey, this is because we've got these, these wreckers, these saboteurs everywhere. Enemies with slide rules. The GPU puffed and panted in its efforts to grab off and drag off all the wreckers.

• 17:29Jocko Willink?

  In the capitals and in the providence provinces, the GPU collegiums and the proletarian courts kept hard at work sifting through the viscous sewage. And every day, the workers gasped to learn, and sometimes they didn't learn from the papers of new vile deeds. So you had the, the, the state press putting out, oh, this is what's happening. These are the wreckers. Every industry, every factory and every handicraft, our tell had to find wreckers in its ranks. And no sooner had they begun to look than they found them.

• 18:10Jocko Willink?

  Continues on, when not long afterward, the new people's commissar of the railroads ordered that average loads should be increased and even doubled and then tripled. And for this discovery, received order of Lenin, along with other, others of our leaders. The malicious engineers who protested became known as, known as limiters. They raised the outcry that this was too much and would result in the breakdowns of the rolling stock. And they were rightly shot for their lack of faith in the possibilities of socialist transport. So that right there sums up a lot.

• 18:51Jocko Willink?

  Because you're in this situation and there's somebody at the top that's saying, oh, we, we, we need to transport more stuff on the railroads. Cool, just load them up more. And the actual engineers are saying they can't handle that much weight. Hey, they can't handle that much weight. It's going to ruin the trains. It's going to break the trains. And what do they do? Shoot them. Shoot them in the back. Shoot them in the back of the head.

• 19:18Jocko Willink?

  Because, and they called them limiters. They gave them a name. You're a limiter. You just don't want to make this happen. That's your problem.

• 19:29Jocko Willink?

  And there's a, there's a

• 19:32Jocko Willink?

  great passage that I read in a book that I'm gonna read right now. And this book that I'm gonna pull a real quick passage from. It's a book called Basic Economics, written by

• 19:46Jocko Willink?

  a famous, a very famous economist, I should say, named Thomas Sowell. And

• 19:55Jocko Willink?

  he's just talking about,

• 19:58Jocko Willink?

  he's talking about how they tried to regulate prices in the Soviet Union. In other words, we're gonna set the prices

• 20:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:06Jocko Willink?

  on everything. And he's, and it says this, so this is from, this is the role of prices is the name of the chapter in Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell. The significant, the significance of free market prices in the allocation of resources can be seen more clearly by looking at situations where prices are not allowed to perform this function. During the era of the government-directed economy of the Soviet Union, for example, prices were not set by supply and demand, but by central planners who sent resources to their various uses by direct commands, supplemented by prices that the planners raised or lowered as they saw fit.

• 20:50Jocko Willink?

  And now he goes into this part where he takes these two Soviet economists and they described a situation in which their government raised the price it would pay for mole skins, leading hunters to sell more of them. And here's that description, and this is these two Soviet economists, Shmulev and Popov, who described the situation where the government raised the prices to pay for mole skins. Here we go. State purchases increased. And now, all the distribution centers are filled with these pelts. Industry is unable to use them all. And they often rot in warehouses before they can be processed. The Ministry of Light Industry has already requested

• 21:35Jocko Willink?

  go skakamen.

• 21:38Jocko Willink?

  The Ministry of Light Industry has already requested twice to lower purchasing prices, but the question has not been decided yet.

• 21:48Jocko Willink?

  And this is not surprising. Its members are too busy to decide. They have no time. Besides setting the prices on these pelts, they have to keep track of another 24 million prices.

• 22:06Jocko Willink?

  So that's what happens. And that's what's going on. You've got somebody trying to essentially, it's the opposite of decentralized command. So you've got, you've got people trying to figure out what a pelt, what this moleskin pelt should cost. And what happens is when they, when the government raises the price, they'll pay for it. What do all the people do? They go and gather more of these pelts. And now there's an overstock of them and they try and get them to lower the prices. So people won't stop, will stop turning them in, but they can't do it quick enough because they got 24 million other prices that they gotta set for the government. So that in a nutshell is why all these problems are one of the major reasons why all these problems are occurring. And whenever somebody tries to resist what commands are being given, they're getting shot.

• 22:51Speaker 01

  Limiter.

• 22:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And this is one I talked about a little bit with Jordan. In September 1930, the famine organizers were tried with a great hue and cry. They were the ones, there they are.

• 23:05Jocko Willink?

  There were 48 wreckers in the food industry.

• 23:11Jocko Willink?

  Stalin carried out the first such effort in connection with the trial of the famine organizers. And how could it not succeed when everyone was starving in boutness Russia and everyone was always looking about and asking, where did all our dear bread get to? Therefore, before the court verdict, the workers and employees wrathfully voted for the death penalty for the scoundrels on trial. It was the newspaper march of millions.

• 23:39Jocko Willink?

  And the roar rose outside the windows of the courtroom, death, death, death. So for these types of reasons, for this centralized command doesn't work. Not to mention, we, you know, what they did, took the farms away from the people that actually knew how to farm. There's complete famine and they're blaming it on the 48 people that were saboteurs inside the agriculture industry. Completely insane.

• 24:15Jocko Willink?

  And this one I read with Jordan, I'm gonna read it again. In Russian, in Russian, a kulak is a miserly dishonest rural trader who grows rich not by his own labor, but through someone else's, through usury and operating as a middleman. In every locality, even before the revolution, such kulaks could be numbered on one's fingers. And the revolution totally destroyed their basis of activity. Subsequently, after 1917, by a transfer of meaning, the name kulak began to be applied to all those who in any way hired workers, even if it was only when they were temporarily short of working hands in their own families.

• 24:56Jocko Willink?

  So a kulak started off as someone that was trying to, you know, rip people off. But then they just started applying it to everyone, anyone that hired someone was a kulak and it has a derogatory tone to it.

• 25:11Jocko Willink?

  Continuing on, but the inflation of this scathing term kulak proceeded relentlessly. And by 1930, all strong peasants in general were being, were being so-called. All peasants, strong in management, strong in work, or even strong merely in convictions. The term kulak was used to smash the strength of the peasantry.

• 25:33Jocko Willink?

  Beyond this, in every village, there were people who in one way or another had personally gotten in the way of the local activists. This was the perfect time to settle accounts with them of jealousy, envy, and insult. A new word was needed for all those victims as a class, and it was born. By this time, it had no social or economic content whatsoever, but had a marvelous sound. Pot kulakchnik. A person aiding the kulaks. In other words, I consider you an accomplice of the enemy. Now, what's interesting about this, and I had a bunch of people point this out. This is when we take words, powerful words, and we start to throw them at people and we use them universally.

• 26:17Jocko Willink?

  That's gonna cause a problem. And you can see it all the time right now in social media and in the... Yeah, I guess you see it primarily in social media from like far-left extremists and far-right extremists. To the far-right, anybody that's to the left of them is like a communist. To the far-left, anybody that's to the right of them is a racist or a Nazi. And they throw those words around, and those words, you shouldn't use those words. It's like using kulak. Like, that's not... The person that hires someone isn't a kulak, right? Like, that just doesn't work.

• 26:56Jocko Willink?

  So we escalate these terms, and that's not a healthy thing to do. I mean, I think it was when... Yeah, I mean, when Jordan Peterson gets compared to Adolf Hitler, right? They compare Jordan Peterson to Adolf Hitler. Come on. Okay, maybe you don't like some of Jordan Peterson's ideas. Okay, that's cool. Don't call him Adolf Hitler.

• 27:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:27Jocko Willink?

  Like, that's just not realistic.

• 27:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's not helpful to, you know, or people don't like his ideas or whatever, like for a specific reason, you know? Rather than identify the reason, they just like package them up and put a ugly bow tie on it. And be like, yeah, I I hate you kind of thing.

• 27:46Jocko Willink?

  And the right, you know, if you think about during McCarthyism, right? It was, hey, anti-American, you're anti-American, you're a communist. It was like, they were flagging people like that. So both sides can do this. In this case, it's in this case, it's the

• 28:04Jocko Willink?

  it's the communists be escalating these terms. We've seen the right do it, we see the left do it, not a smart thing to do. Don't throw those terms out where they don't belong.

• 28:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:20Jocko Willink?

  Talked about this a little bit with Jordan, there was a wave. And he talks about wave, he talked about waves of people that would flow into the prisons. And there's all these different ways, he talks about dozens and dozens of different waves. There was a wave for snipping ears, the nighttime snipping of individual ears of grain in the field. A totally new type of agriculture activity, a new type of harvesting. The wave of those caught doing this was not small. It included many tens of thousands of peasants, many of them not even adults, but boys, girls and small children whose elders had sent them out at night to snip because they had no hope of receiving anything from the collective farm for their daytime labor.

• 29:01Jocko Willink?

  Labor for this bitter and not very productive occupation and extreme of poverty to which the peasants had not been driven even in serfdom. The courts handed out a full measure, ten years for what ranked as an especially dangerous theft of socialist property. That again, that's why I say this book is kind of like to read, right? And he's, he's, he's kind of funny, right? An especially dangerous theft of socialist property, he's talking about taking a one ear of of grain.

• 29:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, is he saying that like on his own kind of thing? Or is is that what what the people would say?

• 29:39Jocko Willink?

  That's what the authorities, like you stole communist pop, socialist property, you stole it and you must be destroyed. You need ten years because you took a little piece of grain.

• 29:52Speaker 01

  Yes, like these, like if you get a, I don't know, jaywalking ticket or something, hey, you committed a crime, you're a criminal. You know, kind of thing.

• 29:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 29:59Speaker 01

  And just call someone a criminal.

• 30:01Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 30:01Speaker 01

  Usually has more, even though technically, you know, they're not kind of wrong, you know?

• 30:07Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I got rolled up in Vegas.

• 30:10Speaker 01

  Sure, yeah.

• 30:11Jocko Willink?

  I got rolled up in Vegas.

• 30:12Speaker 01

  Criminal.

• 30:12Jocko Willink?

  I was with Sarge.

• 30:14Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 30:15Jocko Willink?

  We were crossing one of the big streets in Vegas. And I had to grab something or I dropped something or I was tying my shoe or doing something and the, the walking light went red.

• 30:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:26Jocko Willink?

  But the cars weren't going yet. And Sarge had already walked across. So I just kind of jogged across, like, you know, before and the car started moving.

• 30:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:35Jocko Willink?

  Squad car, lights. Then 10 seconds later, four squad cars. I don't know if they thought I was somebody else.

• 30:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:44Jocko Willink?

  So I'm there, you know, on, on, on the curb, face down.

• 30:48Speaker 01

  No, you were, you're face down.

• 30:50Jocko Willink?

  Sarge is videoing it.

• 30:54Jocko Willink?

  He's just laughing at me. Yes, I was a criminal.

• 30:57Speaker 01

  Wait, so you, but what then? Did, what'd they do? Did you get arrested?

• 31:01Jocko Willink?

  No, they gave me a ticket.

• 31:02Speaker 01

  Ticket.

• 31:02Jocko Willink?

  They gave me a ticket for jaywalking.

• 31:04Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, I guess criminal, right? What's a criminal?

• 31:08Jocko Willink?

  And they probably thought, they probably thought, oh, we're gonna roll up this drunk idiot guy. I'm totally, I was up there for the UFC, you know, I was up there with a fighter, I don't, we were probably going to a, you know, cut weight or something with a fighter.

• 31:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:20Jocko Willink?

  And then I am getting rolled up.

• 31:21Speaker 01

  Rolled up, Brad, Jocko rolled up for jaywalking, holy cow.

• 31:25Jocko Willink?

  They must have thought I was somebody else.

• 31:27Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, I mean, you're kind of big, you know, and it's like, hey, this guy looks like he could be a travel or something.

• 31:33Jocko Willink?

  Jaywalker.

• 31:33Speaker 01

  Jaywalking, I know, obviously a criminal. But the, I guess when you think about a criminal, right, criminal, what's, what's, what is that? Is that like a, someone who commits crimes, period?

• 31:43Jocko Willink?

  In this case, what they'd say is, oh, you were blocking the transportation of socialist property. Therefore, you, that's a crime against the state, you're getting 10 years. That's the same, that's exactly what we're talking about.

• 31:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:54Jocko Willink?

  That's exactly what we're talking about.

• 31:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like when people throw around.

• 31:57Jocko Willink?

  10 years for jaywalking, getting 10 years for going out and clipping a single grain of, of, a single, uh, ear of corn or grain.

• 32:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:05Jocko Willink?

  Getting 10 years for that and you're, you're 12 years old or whatever.

• 32:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:09Jocko Willink?

  Crime against the state.

• 32:12Speaker 01

  It's like when people throw around the word treason, you know, you know, like when, when people get into political debates. They'll throw around, oh, that's treason.

• 32:18Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's, that's, you're right. There's people throw that word around when it shouldn't be thrown around.

• 32:22Speaker 01

  Be careful.

• 32:23Jocko Willink?

  When you, when you commit treason, that's death penalty.

• 32:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a big deal, man.

• 32:27Jocko Willink?

  So people say, uh, oh, what, what's a good example of that's treason?

• 32:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:34Jocko Willink?

  Treason's a big deal. You shouldn't throw that word around unless you're thinking somebody needs the death penalty.

• 32:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:39Jocko Willink?

  So yes, a good example.

• 32:43Jocko Willink?

  Check. Back to the book. Paradoxically enough, every act of the all penetrating eternally wakeful organs over a span of many years was based solely on one article of the hundred and forty articles of the non-general division of the criminal, criminal code of nineteen twenty-six. So this is where all this crap came from. They wrote this criminal code of nineteen twenty-six. And the, including the great, powerful, abundant, highly ramified, multi-form, wide-sweeping Article fifty-eight, which summed up the world not so much through the exact terms and of its sections as in their extended dialectical interpretation.

• 33:25Jocko Willink?

  In all truth, there is no step, thought, action, or lack of action under the heavens which could not be punished by the heavy hand of Article fifty-eight. The article itself could not be worded in such broad terms, but it proved possible to interpret it this broadly. Article fifty-eight was not in that division of the code dealing with the political crimes, and nowhere was it categorized as political. No, it was included with crimes against public order and organized gangsterism in a division of crimes against the state. And then he goes through all these various sections of Article fifty-eight, which had fourteen sections.

• 34:08Jocko Willink?

  In section one, we learn that any action, and according to Article six of the criminal code, any absence of action directed toward the weakening of state power was considered to be counter-revolutionary. Broadly interpreted, this turned out to include the refusal of a prisoner in camp to work when in the state, when in a state of starvation and exhaustion. That was a weakening of state power, and it was punished by execution.

• 34:34Jocko Willink?

  Because if you're in prison and you're starving, but you're not doing the work you're supposed to do, you're doing something that's hurting the state, so you need to die.

• 34:43Jocko Willink?

  This is, you can't, I was having trouble and I think even Jordan, like we were trying to get, explain that this is like a sick comedy.

• 34:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:53Jocko Willink?

  Like you can't, we kept saying back and forth to each other. We're like, you can't make this up. You can't make this up. Like you can't make that up. And this is real.

• 35:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, this sick comedy, that's an interesting yet kind of accurate way of putting it, you know? It's like, you know how, I can't think of an example, but you know how someone will like, he'll say, I don't know, cable, actually, you know what it was? It was like some cable commercial, they do this in a funny way, a comedy way. They'll say, hey, um, don't get cable. Cause if, and then it'll say like, what does he say? So something like, yeah, if you don't listen to your parents, you don't do your homework. If you don't do your homework, you don't get a good job. If you don't get a good job, you know, and it's this whole thing.

• 35:35Jocko Willink?

  You end up in a crack house.

• 35:36Speaker 01

  Yeah. So don't end up in a crack house, you know, kind of thing. And they related to this thing. And it's like, I see what you did there, you know, and each one, but it's like, you're just being funny. Like obviously that's not that, you know? But they're just drawing all these parallels to everything. So this one, they must be the same, you know, kind of thing, you know? Like, yeah, if you get, if you cancel cable, I forget how it goes, but.

• 35:57Jocko Willink?

  Well, to your point, this is that kind of, this sounds like you're just being that crazy.

• 36:02Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 36:02Jocko Willink?

  But this is real.

• 36:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:05Jocko Willink?

  When our soldiers were sentenced to only 10 years for allowing themselves to be taken prisoner, action injurious to the Soviet military might, this was humanitarian to the point of being illegal. According to the Stalinist code, they all should have been shot upon their return home. So they're saying, you know what? The people that were allowed, the Soviet soldiers that allowed themselves to be captured, they only got 10 years, which is actually kind of illegal because they should have been shot.

• 36:36Jocko Willink?

  Via Article 19 of the Criminal Code, via intent. In other words, no treason had taken place, but the interrogator envisioned an intention to betray, and that was enough to justify a full term. The same as actual. So if I just think you had the intent, that's good enough. You're getting 10 years. Section 3 was assisting in any way or by any means of foreign state at war. This section made it possible to condemn any citizen who had been in occupied territory, whether he had nailed on the heel of a German soldier's shoe or sold him a bunch of radishes. You get your tenor right there. There's these two things, PSH, which is suspicion of espionage, and then NSH,

• 37:20Jocko Willink?

  which is unproven espionage. You can charge someone with unproven espionage. What does that even mean? Hey, we're just, you know, you're guilty for unproven, it's like you're guilty of unproven murder. What does that mean? Well, it's not proven, but that's what you're guilty of, and that's why you're gonna die.

• 37:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, or maybe it's the kind like, you know, here, they'll say like, hey, he's a, he's an alleged, you know, before you were proven in the Court of Alkine, maybe you're in that window, you know?

• 37:47Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 37:48Speaker 01

  No, I don't think so either, actually.

• 37:49Jocko Willink?

  This is unproven espionage, and you're gonna go to prison for 10 years for it. Section 8 covered terror. Terror was construed in a very broad sense, not simply a matter of putting bombs on their governor's carriages, but, for example, smashing the face of a personal enemy if he was an activist in the party or the police. That was terror.

• 38:08Jocko Willink?

  And then he starts talking about Section 10, which is propaganda or agitation containing an appeal for the overflow subverting or weakening of the Soviet power, and equally the dissemination or preparation or possession of literary materials of similar content. So if you're running propaganda, you can get trouble. But here we go. The term preparation of literary materials covered every letter, note, or private diary, even when only the original document existed. So anything that you write down is subject.

• 38:46Jocko Willink?

  Well, that's why he went to prison for a letter.

• 38:49Speaker 01

  Right.

• 38:50Jocko Willink?

  The real law underlying this, the arrest all those years was the assignment of quotas. The norm set the planned allocations. Every city, every district, every military unit was assigned a specific quota of arrest to be carried out by a stipulated time.

• 39:10Jocko Willink?

  That's like when cops get the, the quota for the speeding ticket.

• 39:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:14Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. That's when you get the ticket for, for going, you know. Thirty-eight in a thirty-five.

• 39:21Speaker 01

  Is that true, though?

• 39:23Jocko Willink?

  Sometimes it is.

• 39:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I don't know. I thought, I mean, I, I thought it was true, but I have no idea. Like, is that just a myth? You know how like people, they, they're just mad because they got a ticket, you know?

• 39:32Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, like all these.

• 39:35Speaker 01

  But it's not even real, you know, like that's not even a real thing.

• 39:38Jocko Willink?

  Hmm.

• 39:38Speaker 01

  I have no idea.

• 39:39Jocko Willink?

  It could be a myth that I just believe.

• 39:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, because you probably got that ticket when you're going thirty-eight in the thirty-five. And me neither. That's why I'm questioning it.

• 39:48Jocko Willink?

  I did get pulled over a few months ago, but.

• 39:51Speaker 01

  Why, bro? You tinted windows?

• 39:53Jocko Willink?

  No, I was going, uh, too fast in this area.

• 39:56Speaker 01

  Oh, straight up speeding.

• 39:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 39:57Speaker 01

  But you got off. They gave you a break.

• 39:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 40:00Speaker 01

  Because they, they recognize you.

• 40:01Jocko Willink?

  No. Little.

• 40:03Speaker 01

  They recognize you. That's what I think.

• 40:06Jocko Willink?

  Uh.

• 40:09Jocko Willink?

  Check. Back to the book. Piles of victims, hills of victims. Here's some other people got arrested. An electrician had a high tension line break in his sector. Fifty-eight, seven. That's the article. Twenty years.

• 40:25Jocko Willink?

  A plumber turned off the loudspeaker in his room every time the endless letters to Stalin were being read. His next door neighbor denounced him. Where, uh, where is that neighbor today? He got SOE, socially dangerous element, eight years.

• 40:43Jocko Willink?

  By the end of summer 1941, becoming bigger in the autumn, the wave of the encircled was surging in. Again, the waves, talking about waves of prisoners that are showing up. The waves of the encircled were surging in. These were the defenders of their native land. The very same warriors whom the cities had seen sent off to the front with bouquets and bands a few months before, who had then sustained the heaviest tank assaults of the Germans and in the general chaos, and through no fault of their own, had spent a certain time as isolated units, not in enemy imprisonment, not at all, but in temporary encirclement, and later had broken out.

• 41:26Jocko Willink?

  You understand what that means? That means they're surrounded by the enemy. They didn't get captured by the enemy. They get surrounded for a little while, and then they break out and they get back to friendly lines. And instead, back to the book, and instead of being given a brotherly embrace on their return, such as every other army in the world would have given them, instead of being given a chance to rest up, to visit their families, and then return to their units, they were held on suspicion, disarmed, deprived of rights, and taken away in groups to identification points and screening centers, where officers of the special branches started interrogating them, distrusting not only their every word, but their very identity.

• 42:11Jocko Willink?

  Traitors of the motherland under 58-1B. But at first, until the standard penalty was finally determined, they got less than 10 years.

• 42:31Jocko Willink?

  You can't imagine that people would go along, you can't imagine that people go along with this, right? The level of fear that you have to have as a nation and as a people to go along with that right there. Our frontline troops were surrounded by the enemy. They managed to escape and get back, and now we're gonna put them on trial and put them in prison.

• 42:58Jocko Willink?

  It's insanity.

• 43:03Jocko Willink?

  Next chapter talks about interrogation.

• 43:07Jocko Willink?

  Going to the book, "If the intellectuals in the plays of Chekhov, who spent all their time guessing what would happen in 20, 30, or 40 years, had been told that in 40 years interrogation by torture would be practiced in Russia, that prisoners would have their skulls squeezed with iron rings, that a human being would be lowered into an acid bath, that they would be trussed up naked to be bitten by ants and bedbugs, that a ramrod heated over a primus stove would be thrust up their anal canal, the secret brand, that a man's genitals would be slowly crushed beneath the toe of a jackboot, and that, in the luckiest possible circumstances, prisoners would be tortured by being kept from sleeping for a week, by thirst, and by being beaten to a bloody pulp."

• 43:50Jocko Willink?

  Not one of Chekhov's plays would have gotten to its end, because all the heroes would have gone off to insane asylums. "If the intellectuals in the plays of Chekhov, who spent all their time guessing what would happen in 20, 30, or 40 years, had been told that in 40 years interrogation by torture would be practiced in Russia, that prisoners would have their skulls squeezed within iron rings, that a human being would be lowered into an acid bath, that they would be trussed up naked to be bitten by ants and bedbugs, that a ramrod heated over a primus stove would be thrust up their anal canal, that a man's genitals would be slowly crushed beneath the toe of a jackboot, and that, in the luckiest possible circumstances,

• 44:35Jocko Willink?

  prisoners would be tortured by being kept from sleeping for a week, by thirst, and by being beaten into a bloody pulp." Not one of Chekhov's plays would have gotten to its end, because all the heroes would have gone off to insane asylums.

• 45:00Jocko Willink?

  Horrible. So they had these, you know, they're doing these savage interrogations and torture. Continuing on, the time allotted for investigation was not used to unravel the crime. In 95 cases out of 100, to exhaust, wear down, weaken, and render helpless the defendant so that he would want to end it at any cost.

• 45:26Jocko Willink?

  Then he talks about some of the methods that were used. I mean, he talked about some of the torture, and these were just some of the kind of the, the basic, the, the baseline abuse that you're gonna get. You're gonna get kept from sleep. You're gonna get persuasion. They'd say, "Look, you're gonna get prison term no matter what happens. But if you resist, you'll croak right here in prison. You'll lose your health. But if you go to camp, you'll have fresh air and sunlight, so why not sign this paper right now?"

• 45:56Jocko Willink?

  They do that. They do, they do psychological contrast. You know, good cop, bad cop, humiliation, extreme confusion, intimidation. They tell them, "We've got hard labor camps. Now, if you confess, you go to an easy camp. But if you're stubborn, you'll get 25 years in handcuffs in the mines."

• 46:19Jocko Willink?

  They'd lie, of course. They'd play on the affections for those one loved.

• 46:28Jocko Willink?

  "We'll arrest your daughter and lock her in a cell with syphilitics."

• 46:36Jocko Willink?

  That's that one that they always throw, right? They're gonna break, "Oh, they can't break you? Cool. Guess what they're gonna do to your daughter? Guess what they're gonna do to your wife? Guess what they're gonna do to your son?"

• 46:52Jocko Willink?

  Now.

• 46:56Jocko Willink?

  He has a great paragraph and I talked about this a little bit with Jordan. But it's reflecting on his behavior and this is when he starts talking and again, I

• 47:11Jocko Willink?

  skip through a lot of the interrogation. Um, you have to read the book. You have to read the whole book and to really jump into that. I hit the, the high wave tops of it. And this section, he's talking about the guards, right? The people that they call, he called them blue caps. These are people that were the guards, people that were processing you through the gulags. And you know, much like, much like Jordan kind of talks about seeing himself as the bad guy, right? The perpetrator as opposed to always seeing like, oh, everyone thinks I wouldn't do that. I'd be one of these victims.

• 47:49Jocko Willink?

  He, uh, Solchnitzon sees himself in a way, he reflects on the way he behaved actually as an officer, as a privileged officer in the Russian army. And this is, this is such a great little section about leadership because it tells you what not to do as a leader. So here we go. And this is a great start off to this. It starts off here, back to the book. Pride grows in the human heart like lard on a pig.

• 48:28Jocko Willink?

  I tossed out orders to my subordinates that I would not allow them to question convinced that no orders could be wiser. Let's check number one right there. These are things not to do as a leader. I throw out orders to my subordinates without letting him question him convinced in his own mind that, hey, my orders are the best words. Completely wrong.

• 48:49Jocko Willink?

  Next, even at the front where one might've thought death made equals of us all. My power soon convinced me that I was a superior human being.

• 48:58Jocko Willink?

  Wrong. You're not better than your troops. Next, seated there, I heard them out as they stood at attention. I interrupted them. I issued commands. I addressed fathers and grandfathers with the familiar downgrading form of address while they of course addressed me formally.

• 49:18Jocko Willink?

  I sent them out to repair wire under shell fire so that my superiors would not reproach me.

• 49:26Jocko Willink?

  I ate my officer's ration of butter with rolls without giving a thought as to why I had a right to do it and why the rank and file soldiers did not. So, hey, we're out there in the field. You're gonna eat whatever shoe leather and I'm over here eating my butter with rolls. I, of course, had a personal servant assigned to me in polite terms, an orderly, whom I badgered one way or another and ordered to look after my person and prepare my meal separately from the soldiers. I forced my soldiers to put their backs into it and dig me a special dugout at every new bivouac and to haul the heaviest beams to support it so that I would be as comfortable and as safe as possible.

• 50:11Jocko Willink?

  And wait a minute, yes, my battery always had a guardhouse too, meaning a little prison cell. What kind of guardhouse could there be in the woods? It was a pit, of course, although it had a roof on it.

• 50:28Jocko Willink?

  He talks about imprisoning some, uh, Vishkov was imprisoned there for losing his horse and Popkov for maltreating his carbine.

• 50:38Jocko Willink?

  Yes, just a moment, I can remember more. They sewed me a map case out of a German hide, not human, but from a car seat. But I didn't have a strap for it and I was unhappy about that. Then all of a sudden, they saw some partisan commissar from the local district party committee, wearing just the right kind of strap, and they took it away from him. We are the army. We have seniority.

• 51:02Jocko Willink?

  Finally, I coveted that scarlet box and I remember how they took it away and got it for me.

• 51:10Jocko Willink?

  That's what shoulder boards do to a human being.

• 51:16Jocko Willink?

  So, when you get rank, when you put on those shoulder boards, keep your ego in check.

• 51:27Jocko Willink?

  Don't, don't act like that.

• 51:31Jocko Willink?

  And believe me, I mean, I saw plenty of people act like that in the military and they were hated by their troops.

• 51:44Jocko Willink?

  Continuing on. So let the reader who expects this book to be a political expose slam its cover shut right now. If it were only all so simple. If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being and who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart? So if you're not careful, you got that evil in you. During the life of any heart, this line keeps changing place.

• 52:26Jocko Willink?

  Sometimes it's squeezed one way by exuberant evil and sometimes it shifts to allow enough space for good to flourish. One and the same human being is at various ages and under various circumstances, a totally different human being. At times he is close to being a devil, at times to sainthood, but his name doesn't change. And to that name, we ascribe the whole lot, good and evil. And that's a line that you hear Jordan Peterson read that line a lot or say that line a lot. The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.

• 53:04Jocko Willink?

  So we all got a little piece of darkness in our hearts that you need to watch out for. Continuing on a little bit on that theme, the trouble lies in the way these classic evil doers are pictured. They recognize themselves as evil doers and they know their souls are black and they reason, I cannot live unless I do evil. So I'll set my father against my brother. I'll drink the victim's sufferings until I'm drunk with them. But no, that's not the way it is. To do evil, a human being must first of all, believe that what he is doing is good or else that it's a well-considered act in conformity with natural law.

• 53:46Jocko Willink?

  Fortunately, it is in the nature of the human being to speak, to seek a justification for his actions. Ideology.

• 53:56Jocko Willink?

  Ideology, that is what gives evil doing its long sought justification and gives the evil doer the necessary steadfastness and determination. That is the social theory which helps to make his act seem good instead of bad in his own eyes and others' eyes, so that he won't hear reproaches and curses, but will receive praise and honors.

• 54:21Jocko Willink?

  That was how agents of the Inquisition fortified their wills by invoking Christianity, the conquerors of foreign lands by extolling the grandeur of the motherland, the colonizers by civilization, the Nazis by race, the Jacobians, early and late by equality, brotherhood, and the happiness of future generations. Thanks to ideology, the 20th century was fated to experience evil doing on a scale calculated in the millions.

• 54:52Jocko Willink?

  This cannot be denied, nor passed over, nor suppressed. How then do we dare insist that evildoers do not exist? And who was it that destroyed these millions? Without evildoers, there would have been no archipelago.

• 55:09Jocko Willink?

  So this is, again, something that we see a lot today, when people get on, and we see it in the past, obviously, he gave all the examples right there. I mean, the Inquisition, we haven't covered that on the podcast yet, but we probably need to. Because that was a damn nightmare. Yeah. And it was a nightmare with people that were saying, hey, this is for the good of Christianity. Yeah. And you can go right on down the list. When people make, when people do evil, they have this ideological, oftentimes have this ideological backing behind them. Yeah. They're doing it for this great cause. And he gets here, and I got a book in the, in the queue that's probably going to get

• 55:54Jocko Willink?

  done, which we're going to approach this thing right here. Evidently, evil doing also has a threshold magnitude.

• 56:02Jocko Willink?

  Yes, a human being hesitates and bobs back and forth between good and evil all his life. He slips, falls back, clambers up, repents. Things begin to darken again. But just so long as the threshold of evil doing is not crossed, the possibility of returning remains. And he himself is still within reach of our hope. But when through the density of evil actions, the result either of their own extreme degree of absoluteness of his power, he suddenly crosses that threshold, he has left humanity behind and without perhaps the possibility of return. So there's some situations where people just go, they're not coming back. They're

• 56:45Jocko Willink?

  just gonna do evil. That's the way it's gonna be. And I have a book in the queue right now that we're probably gonna do that will explore that departure from being able to return. Continuing on, "The only soldier in the world who cannot surrender is the soldier of the world's one and only Red Army." That's what it says in our military statutes. You cannot surrender. No surrender. There is war, there is death, but there is no surrender. What a discovery. What it means is, go and

• 57:26Jocko Willink?

  die. We will go on living. And if you lose your legs, yet manage to return from captivity on crutches, we will convict you. And he mentions the Leningrader Ivanov, commander of a machine gun platoon in the Finnish war, who lost both legs and was imprisoned. Incidentally, it is very naive to say what for.

• 57:55Jocko Willink?

  In other words, what for? Why are they going to prison? At no time have governments been moralist. They never imprisoned people and executed them for having done something. They imprisoned and executed them to keep them from doing something. They imprisoned all those POWs, of course, not for treason to the motherland. Because it was absolutely clear even to a fool that only the Vlasov men could be accused of treason. Which is a group, we'll talk about them a little bit, but there was a general named Vlasov that actually became a leader of Russian soldiers fighting against Russia alongside the Nazis. So he's saying, yeah, those guys were traitors against, but the normal POWs, the normal soldiers, they weren't traitors. Back to the book, they were imprisoned, all of them,

• 58:40Jocko Willink?

  to keep them from telling their fellow villagers about Europe.

• 58:46Jocko Willink?

  What the eye doesn't see, the heart doesn't grieve for. So just because these people had seen what it was like, you gotta go to prison. You know too much.

• 58:58Jocko Willink?

  You could have acquired a very harmful spirit through living freely among Europeans. And if you had not been afraid to escape and continue to fight, it meant you were a determined person and thus doubly dangerous in the motherland. Think about that. Because you had the courage to fight on and escape and get back, that means you're a courageous person and you're even more of a threat because you know how they live.

• 59:24Jocko Willink?

  Totally backwards. Now, like I said, this guy Vlasov,

• 59:31Jocko Willink?

  he, he was surrounded and wanted to retreat and got told no and they, his army was basically a lot, most of it was wiped out. And then he was kind of wandering and escaped somewhat and they joined up where they were captured, joined up with some other troops, that other Russian troops that were now pissed off, right? That they didn't, they, what, you, we, you wouldn't allow us to surrender, you wouldn't allow us to break out, you wouldn't just allow us to leave? So they're pissed at Stalin. And so then they turned and these Vlasov guys ended up fighting and I'm sure we'll do a book on these guys at some point, but.

• 1:00:15Jocko Willink?

  You know, he became, he became the leader, Andrei Vlasov. And they fought and they fought hard because they know, they knew that they had no, they weren't going to live if they were captured. And in fact, um, Solshnitsyn says, when we captured them, we shot them in, as soon as the first intelligible Russian word came from their mouths. Just, just straight up. That's what we're doing. Oh, you speak Russian? Cool. That means you're Vlasov man. You're done.

• 1:00:51Jocko Willink?

  The term Vlasovite in our country has the same force as the word sewage. We feel we are dirtying our mouths merely by pronouncing it. And therefore no one dears, dares utter a sentence with Vlasovite in its subject. But that is no way to write history. Now, a quarter century later, when most of them had perished in camps and those who have survived are living out their lives in the far north. I would like to issue a reminder through these pages that this was a phenomenon totally unheard of in all the whole history of the world, that several hundred thousand young men aged 20 to 30 took up arms against their fatherland as allies of its most evil enemy.

• 1:01:37Jocko Willink?

  Right? Seeing this never happened. Hundreds of thousands of, there was hundreds of thousands of these Vlasov troops. Hundreds of thousands of, how do you get hundreds of thousands of men who are in the military? Like, okay, we get a traitor, we get five traitors. Hundreds of thousands. And he says, back to the book, perhaps there is something to ponder here. Who was more to blame, those youths or the gray fatherland? One cannot explain this treason biologically. It had to have had a social cause because as the old proverb said, well-fed horses don't rampage.

• 1:02:20Jocko Willink?

  Then picture yourself a field in which starved, neglected, crazed horses are rampaging back and forth.

• 1:02:35Jocko Willink?

  Continuing on.

• 1:02:38Jocko Willink?

  There is a simple truth which one can learn only through suffering. In war, not victories are blessed, but defeats. Governments need victories and the people need defeats. Victory gives rise to the desire for more victories. But after defeat, it is freedom that men desire and usually attain. A people needs defeat just as an individual needs suffering and misfortune. They compel the deepening of the inner life and generate a spiritual upsurge.

• 1:03:15Jocko Willink?

  That's an interesting concept. That's what Joe Rogan talking about. You need to have some struggle, right? You need to have something to get after. And Solzhenitsyn saying, people in a country need that same thing. They need that struggle. They want that struggle.

• 1:03:42Jocko Willink?

  And this is, again, this is one we spent a little bit of time on with Jordan. And this is when, when one of Solzhenitsyn's friends in the prison,

• 1:03:55Jocko Willink?

  Valentin, said they were expecting amnesty. They were expecting to be set free. And here we go back to the book. As we dried ourselves off, Valentin said to me reassuringly, intimately, "Well, all right, we are still young. We are going to live a long time yet. The main thing is not to make a misstep now. We are going to a camp and will not say one word to anything so they won't plaster new terms on us. We'll work honestly and keep our mouths shut." And he really believed in his program. That naive little kernel of grain of caught between Stalin's millstones. He really had his hopes set on it. And he's talking about amnesty. One wanted to agree with him to serve out the term cozily and then expunge from one's head what one had lived through.

• 1:04:41Jocko Willink?

  "But I had begun to sense a truth inside myself. If in order to live, it is necessary not to live, then what's it all for? Then what is it all for?" And of course, Jordan and I got in a big, long discussion about playing the game. And yeah, I mean, I think we

• 1:05:01Jocko Willink?

  Both agreed that there's times where you have to play the game a little bit.

• 1:05:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:06Jocko Willink?

  And if you don't, well, you'll end up in a worse position. So.

• 1:05:15Jocko Willink?

  We started talking a little bit about these kangaroo courts that went on.

• 1:05:22Jocko Willink?

  And here's one of the judges makes the statement, we are not guided by laws, but by our revolutionary conscience. So what does that mean? That means we just make up whatever the hell we want to make up.

• 1:05:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, whatever we're gonna make up, that's what we're gonna do.

• 1:05:40Jocko Willink?

  And in, in this book, book, part one of volume one, he spends a lot of time talking about these multiple cases. He goes through, basically it's like court dramas and he spells them out pretty good. And there's like dialogue back and forth between the accuser and, and the defendants and, you know, the uproar from the crowd. And it's, it's like, it's like multiple court dramas. One of them,

• 1:06:08Jocko Willink?

  the Moscow church trial, April 26th to May 7th, 1922, there were 17 defendants, including archpriests and laymen accused of disseminating the patriarch's proclamation. The charge was more important than the question of surrendering or not surrendering church valuables. And the presiding judge says, do you consider the state's law obligatory or not? And the patriarch says, yes, I recognize them to the extent that they do not contradict, contradict the rules of piety. Comrade Beck, the presiding judge was astounded, which in the last analysis is more important to you? The laws of the church or the point of view of the Soviet government?

• 1:06:55Jocko Willink?

  Again, this is all spelled out.

• 1:06:59Jocko Willink?

  But it ends up, May 7th, the sentence was pronounced of the 17 defendants. 11 were to be shot.

• 1:07:13Jocko Willink?

  Another massive show trial against the engineers. That were again, this goes back to the idea that they were considered wreckers. And they had these massive show trials and here were some of the results of the show trials where they where they sentenced these guys to massive prison terms or sentenced him to death. Thus it was attained with eight horse traction, all the goals of the trial. One, all the shortages in the country, including famine, cold, lack of clothing, chaos and obvious stupidities were all blamed on the engineer wreckers. Two, the people were terrified by the threat of imminent intervention from abroad and were therefore prepared for new sacrifices. Three, leftist circles in the West were warned

• 1:07:57Jocko Willink?

  of the intrigues of their governments. And four, the solidarity of the engineers was destroyed. All the intelligentsia was given a good scare and left divided within itself. Every one of these show trials, well, if it wasn't for the fact that people were being imprisoned or executed after the show trials, it would be, a lot of them, they seem like kangaroo courts, they seem comical when you read them. Next chapter called "The Supreme Measure",

• 1:08:37Jocko Willink?

  which is about capital punishment. Capital punishment has an up and down history in Russia. In the 20 central provinces of Russia in a period of 16 months from June 1918 to October 1919, more than 6,000 persons were shot, which is to say more than 1,000 per month. The revolution had hastened to rename everything so that everything would seem new. Thus, the death penalty was rechristened as "The Supreme Measure", no longer a punishment, but a means of social defense.

• 1:09:22Jocko Willink?

  So they're executing. A lot of people, of course, they're calling it the supreme measure and they, they, they, they refer to as social defense. Like we're just, hey, we're just defending ourselves, right? Back to the book and what kind of evildoers were these condemned men's? Where did so many plotters and troublemakers come from? Among them, for example, were six collective farmers who were guilty of the following crime. After they had finished mowing the collective farm along with their own hands, they had gone back and mowed a second time along the hummocks to get a little hay for their own cows. The all Russian Central Executive Committee refused to pardon all six of these peasants and

• 1:10:04Jocko Willink?

  sentence and the sentence of execution was carried out. Even if Stalin had killed no others, I believe he deserved to be drawn and quartered just for the lies, lives of those six peasants.

• 1:10:22Jocko Willink?

  So there you go. You already harvested all the grain you can. And then you go out, you do another run to get a little bit of hay for your own cows and they kill you.

• 1:10:40Jocko Willink?

  During those two years of 1937 and 1938, a half million political prisoners had been shot throughout the Soviet Union and 480,000 habitual thieves in addition. So we're talking execution on just a mass scale. That's two years. A million just rattled off.

• 1:11:03Jocko Willink?

  I mean, a million.

• 1:11:10Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book and almost always a person obediently allows himself to be killed.

• 1:11:17Jocko Willink?

  Why is it that the death penalty has such a hypnotic effect? Those pardoned recall hardly anyone in their cell who offered any resistance.

• 1:11:30Jocko Willink?

  Does hope lend strength or does it weaken a man?

• 1:11:39Jocko Willink?

  That's a good question, isn't it? Does hope lend strength or does it weaken a man?

• 1:11:46Speaker 01

  You had a talk that I witnessed recently. And you mentioned, this is something you just sort of mentioned for the first time that I heard where you were talking about hell week. When you said that they'd say, hey, you know, you don't get much sleep, right? And they say, okay, now we're gonna give you guys a break, you know, six hours sleep.

• 1:12:07Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, no, they'd say something like, hey, look, your hell week has been extra hard and we went too hard on you by accident. And the water was colder than normal.

• 1:12:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:15Jocko Willink?

  So what we're gonna do is we're gonna give you guys, we don't normally do this, but we're gonna give you guys an eight hour recovery period.

• 1:12:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:22Jocko Willink?

  So go put on warm clothes, you know, you're gonna go in the barracks, you're not gonna go in the tents, you're gonna go in your barracks. Put on, put on your dry clothes and get in your beds and you guys will wake you up in eight hours.

• 1:12:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:35Jocko Willink?

  But we need to do a little training pause right now.

• 1:12:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, and then.

• 1:12:39Jocko Willink?

  And then they put you, and then they do it, and then they put you in there and you get all dry and then they put you on your bed.

• 1:12:46Jocko Willink?

  And then 20 minutes later, they come in with machine guns and they wake you up and say, go get this surf again. And they do, and that's one of the things that gets a lot of people to quit.

• 1:12:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:54Jocko Willink?

  Gets a lot of people to quit.

• 1:12:55Speaker 01

  Right, so that's kind of the point where, yeah, the hope can jam you up.

• 1:13:01Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:13:01Speaker 01

  Where that hope, you know, like, oh, I can't believe, and then when it's taken away from you real quick or something like that.

• 1:13:06Jocko Willink?

  Well, yeah, this is a great question because think if, okay, if you're in a situation where you could live or die, right?

• 1:13:17Jocko Willink?

  There's times where, hey, if I'm gonna die, it makes me stronger, like, hey, I'm gonna go out hard.

• 1:13:22Speaker 01

  Whatever, yeah, exactly right.

• 1:13:23Jocko Willink?

  But also, like, if I can hope I can live, then that can make you like, I can fucking fight a little bit longer. If I have a hope of survival.

• 1:13:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:31Jocko Willink?

  So does hope lend strength or does it weaken a man? And there's different cases where it does different things to you.

• 1:13:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, it depends on what kind of strength too. I feel like. Yeah, I don't know. Hope of what too?

• 1:13:44Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:45Speaker 01

  Like, hope of life is different. Life and death, because like, you know, death, that's the end of everything. That's like, you know, but like.

• 1:13:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, but think about this situation. You're good. This is talking about death. Like, you're gonna be executed. So let me ask you this. So you're gonna be executed. But there's, if there's a little bit of hope that, oh, maybe the sentence will get overturned. Or maybe I'll get pushed down the road, or maybe they'll do an amnesty and I'll get out. That's hope, right?

• 1:14:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:08Jocko Willink?

  So that might weaken you.

• 1:14:10Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:14:11Jocko Willink?

  Because if you're like, look, I'm getting executed and I don't care.

• 1:14:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:15Jocko Willink?

  And you know what? When that guard comes in here?

• 1:14:16Speaker 01

  It's hard.

• 1:14:17Jocko Willink?

  Get some of my buddies and we're gonna get after it.

• 1:14:18Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:14:19Jocko Willink?

  Right? So that's gonna make you stronger. So hope might not necessarily be a good thing. I mean, you know, if you ever encountered someone that had no hope, they can be very scary individuals. Because they don't care if they live or die.

• 1:14:33Speaker 01

  Nothing to lose.

• 1:14:33Jocko Willink?

  Nothing to lose. Yes, nothing to lose. Nothing to lose. You ever see a sports game where it can go like, like a team gets a good lead? And then they just start taking risks and they start dominating, right?

• 1:14:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:47Jocko Willink?

  I mean, it can happen where they start getting cocky, right? But like, you can see a sports game where it happens in fights. It happens in MMA fights. That I start getting the upper hand. It happens in jujitsu. I start getting the upper hand. I take a little bit more risk. But the risk, as long as the risks pay off, that now all of a sudden, and you're, if you and I are rolling, I take a little risk. I go for the takedown.

• 1:15:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:15:09Jocko Willink?

  Right? I'm feeling cocky. Go for the takedown.

• 1:15:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:15:11Jocko Willink?

  I get the takedown, right? Now all of a sudden, your, your, your hope goes down.

• 1:15:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:15:17Jocko Willink?

  Right? And mine's going up.

• 1:15:18Speaker 01

  Even more and more, yeah.

• 1:15:20Jocko Willink?

  But if you're really tired and the round's almost over and you already lost, and now you're just like, well, I got no hope. I'm just gonna try for an armlock. You might get it.

• 1:15:31Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, that's what I was gonna say too. It's like, man, it's on both sides. So it just depends. Both. Really, the answer is both. Because like, look, MMA analogy, good one, in my opinion too, where let's say I'm down. As a football team, as a whatever, you start throwing hail Marys, doing that kind of stuff, you know, it's like, you have kind of less hope. We're gonna lose anyway. Nothing to lose situation. So it does give you strength in that way. But at the same time, if you're way ahead, yeah, I can take my risk. I'll put my second string guys in there. Give them some reps, whatever. Because if, you know, if the, if the risk doesn't pay off or whatever, we're still ahead. So we, you know, man, I don't know. Yeah, it just depends.

• 1:16:07Jocko Willink?

  You know what? I think the thing is here, you gotta pay attention as a human. To what the hope is doing to you, right? This is a good lesson learned to what is the hope doing? Cause it happens in your life too, right?

• 1:16:19Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:16:19Jocko Willink?

  Like, maybe you're like at a job and you're like, oh, I might get that promotion. So I'm just gonna stick it out, right? I'm just gonna stick it out a little bit longer.

• 1:16:26Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:16:27Jocko Willink?

  And then, but whereas if you're like, hey, you're not getting promoted. You'd be like, alright, you know what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna get my resume together. I'm gonna get my act together and I put that work. If you have hope, it makes you a little weaker.

• 1:16:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So you gotta pay attention to it.

• 1:16:39Speaker 01

  But it could make you stronger though. You'd be like, oh, I might get the promotion.

• 1:16:42Jocko Willink?

  So I'm gonna do.

• 1:16:43Speaker 01

  So I'm gonna work hard, is what I'm saying?

• 1:16:45Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. You gotta pay attention to what hope is doing to you. That's what you gotta do.

• 1:16:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, huh, that's crazy.

• 1:16:49Jocko Willink?

  Hope isn't always good. It's not bad. It's not good. You gotta figure out, you gotta monitor your hope.

• 1:16:55Speaker 01

  Don't get your hopes up. You know, like that kinda situation, like, bro, you gotta monitor that hope right there.

• 1:17:01Jocko Willink?

  Monitor your hope. There you go. That continues on, here we go. If the condemned men in every cell had ganged up on the executioners as they came in and choked them, Wouldn't this have ended executioners sooner than the appeals to the All Russian Central Executive Committee?

• 1:17:18Jocko Willink?

  When one is already on the edge of the grave, why not resist? But wasn't everything foredoomed anyway from the moment of arrest? Yet all the arrested crawled along the path of hope on their knees as if their legs had been amputated.

• 1:17:41Jocko Willink?

  Monitor your hope.

• 1:17:43Speaker 01

  Monitor the hope.

• 1:17:44Jocko Willink?

  He describes sort of death row in one of the prisons. There were four death cells in this prison in the same corridor as the juvenile cells and the hospital cells. The death cells had two doors, the customary wooden door with a peephole and door made of iron grating. Each door had two locks and one jailer had the block supervisor. Each had a key. One jailer and the block supervisor each had a key to a different one. So the doors could only be opened by the two together. Cell forty-three was on the other side of a wall of the interrogator's office. And at night, while the condemned men were waiting to be executed,

• 1:18:28Jocko Willink?

  their ears were tormented by the screams of prisoners being tortured.

• 1:18:44Jocko Willink?

  Talks about the idea of hunger strikes, which they did some hunger strikes along the way.

• 1:18:55Jocko Willink?

  From our experience of the past and our literature of the past, we have derived a naive faith in the power of a hunger strike. But the hunger strike is purely a moral weapon. It presupposes that the jailer has not entirely lost his conscience. Or that the jailer is afraid of public opinion. Only in such circumstances can it be effective. So yeah, the Soviet prison, they didn't care.

• 1:19:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:27Jocko Willink?

  Say whatever you want. We control the press.

• 1:19:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:30Jocko Willink?

  Oh, and by the way, you think I'm gonna feel guilty that you're starving? No, I'm not. Not at all. Oh, and by the way, if I do feel like I want to make you live, guess what they did? Forced artificial feeding. This method was adapted without any question from the experience with wild animals in captivity. Artificial feeding has much in common with rape.

• 1:19:52Jocko Willink?

  And that's what it really is. Four big men hurl themselves on one week being and deprive it of its one interdiction. They only need to do it once and what happens to it next is not important. The element of rape in here's in the violation of the victim's will. It's not going to be the way you want it, but the way I want it. Lie down and submit. They pry open the mouth with a flat disc, then broaden the crack between the jaw and insert a tube. Swallow it.

• 1:20:30Jocko Willink?

  And if you don't swallow it, they shove it down farther anyway, and then pour liquefied food right down the esophagus. And then they massage the stomach to prevent the prisoner from resorting to vomiting. The sensation is one of being morally defiled.

• 1:20:58Jocko Willink?

  And

• 1:21:00Jocko Willink?

  this is

• 1:21:03Jocko Willink?

  it's the it's the closing of this part of the book.

• 1:21:11Jocko Willink?

  We no longer know the answer to the question, is the soul of a person in the new type prison, in the special purpose prison purified? Or does it perish once and for all?

• 1:21:28Jocko Willink?

  If the first thing you see each and every morning is the eyes of your cellmate who has gone insane. How then shall you save yourself? During the coming day?

• 1:21:52Jocko Willink?

  And like I said, that's I'll take that as a as a spot to close out that

• 1:22:00Jocko Willink?

  part one of of this book about the Gulag.

• 1:22:06Jocko Willink?

  And I think that

• 1:22:10Jocko Willink?

  is a

• 1:22:12Jocko Willink?

  question that we can ask ourselves a lot.

• 1:22:20Jocko Willink?

  In our current world. But how can we save ourselves every day when you look around at the world?

• 1:22:32Jocko Willink?

  When it looks sometimes like the world is going insane, when people are going crazy.

• 1:22:40Jocko Willink?

  You have to kind of work to save yourself every day. You have to pull yourself back into sanity and back onto the path and not allow yourself to become a prisoner of your own personal Gulag.

• 1:23:03Jocko Willink?

  And these gulags, these Soviet gulags.

• 1:23:09Jocko Willink?

  If you want to build your own personal gulag in your life, you do it the same way that the Soviets did it. You do it with lies.

• 1:23:25Jocko Willink?

  Lies on top of lies.

• 1:23:30Jocko Willink?

  And the Soviets lied on top of lies to build these gulags. And in your life, if you lie to yourself, if you allow that to happen and you put lies on top of lies, you will build yourself your own personal gulag.

• 1:23:52Jocko Willink?

  So, don't allow it.

• 1:23:58Jocko Willink?

  Don't lie to yourself.

• 1:24:03Jocko Willink?

  And instead, keep yourself out of that prison.

• 1:24:10Jocko Willink?

  And keep yourself free by telling yourself the truth.

• 1:24:22Jocko Willink?

  And I think that's all I've got

• 1:24:28Jocko Willink?

  for tonight. And I know Echo, you've got some ways that we can kind of help keep ourselves free by staying on the path.

• 1:24:36Speaker 01

  Sure, on top of telling the truth.

• 1:24:37Jocko Willink?

  On top of telling the truth, which is Yeah.

• 1:24:41Speaker 01

  Kind of the key, right? The key element.

• 1:24:44Jocko Willink?

  It's a key element for sure.

• 1:24:46Speaker 01

  Still kind of tripping on the hope thing, you know, if that gives you strength or or takes it from you, right? That's how you put it? Or that's how you put it, right? It takes it from you.

• 1:24:57Jocko Willink?

  I was I was talking to Dakota

• 1:25:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:25:01Jocko Willink?

  The other night. And we were talking about after the big event, you know, where he lost his team and all that. And we, we just talked a little bit more detail about if you remember in the book, a few days later, he goes on another operation that's just as crazy. Or maybe not just as crazy, but it's like, it's really bad.

• 1:25:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:25:27Jocko Willink?

  And he was doing some definitely some, some crazy things and putting, what's the military term that we say? He was going above and beyond the call of duty and putting himself at great risk.

• 1:25:45Jocko Willink?

  And I, I said to him, you know, we were, we were kind of like laughing, you know, Dakota is so good to go and so awesome. And we were just like laughing and I was like, bro, you didn't, I mean, at that point, I'm like, you just, you know, you lost your whole team. I go, you didn't care if you lived or died. He goes, not, not at all.

• 1:26:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:26:03Jocko Willink?

  And so in that situation, like he had no hope at that moment in time.

• 1:26:08Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:26:09Jocko Willink?

  And guess what he did? Whatever he had to do.

• 1:26:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:26:11Jocko Willink?

  He's like, oh, I gotta go save the, I gotta go run across open field where there's machine gun fire coming. Cool. I'll go. Oh, wait, I need to do it again. I'll go again. Oh, I need to do it again. I'll go again.

• 1:26:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:26:22Jocko Willink?

  Cause he didn't have hope and the fact that he didn't have hope gave him strength at that moment.

• 1:26:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:26:29Jocko Willink?

  You know, at that moment, but if you talk to him now, it's reversed. He's got his kids, got his little daughters.

• 1:26:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:26:35Jocko Willink?

  You know what I mean?

• 1:26:36Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 1:26:36Jocko Willink?

  He's got like hope for the future.

• 1:26:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:26:39Jocko Willink?

  And that's what makes him strong right now. So it keeps him strong.

• 1:26:43Speaker 01

  Yes. I mean, what's the formula, right? And I mean, it's.

• 1:26:46Jocko Willink?

  The formula is monitor your hope. That's the formula.

• 1:26:50Speaker 01

  It is. And it depends on who you are, right? Cause like consider yourself, let's say all hope is lost, you know, I gotta, you know, go across, do all these crazy things above and beyond. I could be, if I have a different attitude, I could be like, why, like, why fight it kind of thing? Let death impending doom, you know, just kind of take its course kind of thing, right? I mean, could.

• 1:27:10Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Complete disregard for his own safety. That's the, that's the phrase I was looking for.

• 1:27:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:27:15Jocko Willink?

  Complete disregard for his own safety.

• 1:27:17Speaker 01

  Yeah. But that's like a specific like approach, you know, that's like a different attitude. You know, like some people, they'll be like, oh, I'm gonna, you know, like I'm, I'm doomed anyway. So why fight it? And then the other guy's like, I'm doomed. So I'm gonna just start swinging for the fences.

• 1:27:31Jocko Willink?

  Check this out. You could also be like, I hope I can make it out of here. So what I'm gonna do is I'm just gonna hide right here and not do anything.

• 1:27:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:27:38Jocko Willink?

  Right? So that's the same.

• 1:27:40Speaker 01

  It's like the reverse.

• 1:27:41Jocko Willink?

  It's the reverse.

• 1:27:42Speaker 01

  So it's like, and then.

• 1:27:43Jocko Willink?

  If, if you're in a bad situation and you're like, well, I, I hope I can make it. I've, I've got hope that I can live through this situation. So I'm just gonna get down. I'm just gonna hide. I'm gonna get behind this little, you know, rock outcropping and hope this goes away.

• 1:27:58Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:27:59Jocko Willink?

  Hope they don't see me. Hope, you know, hope, hope, hope.

• 1:28:01Speaker 01

  Yeah. And that's the example, the hope.

• 1:28:03Jocko Willink?

  And guess what happens when you do that? The enemy maneuvers on you and you get killed. Whereas if you go like, you know what? I'm going out. I have no hope. I'm going to attack.

• 1:28:14Speaker 01

  But.

• 1:28:15Jocko Willink?

  By the way, the enemy who's hoping they can take you and hoping that you're going to stay there, when you, when you do something that they didn't hope for, that's going to smack them in the face.

• 1:28:24Speaker 01

  Yeah. But like if, but then on the, on the reverse side of that, right? So you have a different attitude, even though you have hope, right? If all is lost, you think, but I have this little shred of hope. So I'm just gonna go throw a hail Mary. That's hope.

• 1:28:39Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:39Speaker 01

  Really? Rather than just like cowering in the corner and dying or whatever.

• 1:28:43Jocko Willink?

  But you wouldn't be throwing a hail Mary. Unless that was the only way, like that was your only hope.

• 1:28:50Speaker 01

  Shred of hope.

• 1:28:51Jocko Willink?

  That was your only hope, right?

• 1:28:52Speaker 01

  If you, that's what I'm saying. Like if you have two different approaches, you know?

• 1:28:56Jocko Willink?

  Monitor your hope.

• 1:28:57Speaker 01

  At the end of the day.

• 1:28:58Jocko Willink?

  You gotta monitor your hope. You gotta make sure that what, cause there's, you gotta be careful too. Cause sometimes, you know, if you have no hope, right? If you are, well, I have no hope. So I'm just gonna, cause you could do that, right? Let's say you're in a bad situation, a combat situation. Hey, I got no hope. So I'm just gonna lay here and like, I guess that's what you were saying.

• 1:29:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:29:16Jocko Willink?

  Oh yeah. I got no hope. So I'm just gonna lay here.

• 1:29:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:29:18Jocko Willink?

  Instead of, hey, I got no hope. So I'm just gonna go out in a blaze of glory. Let's get some.

• 1:29:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:29:24Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:25Speaker 01

  It just depends on your approach. Yeah.

• 1:29:27Jocko Willink?

  So if you monitor it, you go, wait a second, I have no hope. Okay. I'm gonna at least go out hard. I'm gonna go get some. At a minimum.

• 1:29:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:29:38Jocko Willink?

  Right? Gonna take some people with me, bad guys.

• 1:29:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:29:43Jocko Willink?

  Save some of my good guys. If I can do that.

• 1:29:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's good.

• 1:29:47Jocko Willink?

  As opposed to, hey, there's no hope. We're doomed.

• 1:29:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:29:52Jocko Willink?

  Monitor your hope.

• 1:29:53Speaker 01

  Remember that, uh, remember Shawshank Redemption?

• 1:29:55Jocko Willink?

  Yes, I have seen that movie.

• 1:29:57Speaker 01

  Remember he said that where he was like, hey, the guy read Morgan Freeman. He's saying, hey, don't be careful with that hope thing. It'll drive you insane or something like that. Like if you hope you'll get out or you hope you're gonna get pardoned or whatever his situation was. So it's like, yeah, if you hope you'll get pardoned and you hold on to that hope, but you get let down, it'll create, you know, it'll drive you insane. And if you don't have hope in that, that's what he's implying. If you don't have hope, you just basically accept your imprisonment. So you can focus on or concentrate on living prison life, you know? The way it needs to be lived, so to speak.

• 1:30:33Jocko Willink?

  Do the best you can there.

• 1:30:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, like, don't have these hopes of the outside, cause it'll make you crazy.

• 1:30:39Jocko Willink?

  That could be decent advice in a situation like that.

• 1:30:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, one of those deals, monitor your hope is what he was saying.

• 1:30:45Jocko Willink?

  That's what he was saying. Yeah, he was saying, monitor your hope. Because, right, if you have no hope, you could be like, well, I'm just gonna, just gonna kill myself.

• 1:30:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly, right, yeah. You gotta monitor that one.

• 1:30:55Jocko Willink?

  No, you gotta monitor it in the prison. And you gotta make sure that you're not putting yourself in a personal prison.

• 1:31:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:31:04Jocko Willink?

  Which, uh, which that, to me, this idea,

• 1:31:10Jocko Willink?

  if you think about the bad situations in your life, most of them are predicated on you lying to yourself about something.

• 1:31:18Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, your everyday ones for sure. Yeah.

• 1:31:23Jocko Willink?

  Right?

• 1:31:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's weird, every time you like, you say something like that, I always try to think of some rebuttal. You know, it's weird, I feel myself doing that, but yeah, no, you're right. Yeah, I think so.

• 1:31:33Jocko Willink?

  That you just tell these little lies.

• 1:31:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:31:36Jocko Willink?

  Lies on top of lies.

• 1:31:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:31:38Jocko Willink?

  And, and what's, what I think, what happens with lies on top of lies is they become easier and easier to believe.

• 1:31:45Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:31:46Jocko Willink?

  Like, once you believe one of your own lies, then you believe three, then you believe 10, then you believe 100.

• 1:31:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know what the feeling is? The feeling is you lie to yourself, right? And, or you could, a lot of times lying to yourself isn't like, hey, I'm tall when you're not tall. It's not that. It's like, it's more of a not admitting certain things. That's more what it is, you know, like, when you saw how you could say, you say, Take a good, hard look at yourself in the mirror, right? And then don't lie to yourself, right? So it's usually when you lie to yourself in the mirror, it's like, oh, I won't admit that. I won't, I won't admit that to myself, that I need this, or I should get rid of this, or whatever. That's how the lie comes, you know? It's lie by omission, I think.

• 1:32:24Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, but then the more you do it.

• 1:32:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, but then you, and then you live to see another day. Oh, it's a miracle, so it must kind of be true. It must not be that big of a deal, my whatever. You know, my donuts that I eat every morning for breakfast must not be, I'm still here.

• 1:32:38Jocko Willink?

  Those are lies.

• 1:32:39Speaker 01

  You see what I'm saying? Yeah. So it is, so, and no one's bringing it up, no one's bringing it up to me, kind of thing. So it's like, it's not really, it's not like pulling at me that much. So it gets easier and easier to kind of, it's almost like sweeping it under the rug, kind of thing, you know? Meanwhile, it's festering and festering. Oh, she go to the doctor, cholesterol's all high, whatever. See what I'm saying? That's how it'll jam you up.

• 1:33:03Jocko Willink?

  Don't lie to yourself.

• 1:33:04Speaker 01

  You know what else is a prison? Being on bottom, stuck in your side control. In jujitsu, it's a prison. So, and here's the weird thing, when you, when you said that, I, I did think of this, where if I have, and it's, I don't even know if I'd call it hope, like, if I want to be out, like, if I want to escape, not that I want to do the escape or, or take escape type actions, it's just, I don't want to be there. I'll like it way less, like, I won't, I won't be able to deal with it as much as if I say, okay, I'm here, it's like accepting that I'm inside control, you know? And I have to take action here.

• 1:33:48Speaker 01

  My hope is here, not outside there, see what I'm saying?

• 1:33:50Jocko Willink?

  You, you have to accept the situation that you're in.

• 1:33:53Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:33:53Jocko Willink?

  Can't lie to yourself.

• 1:33:54Speaker 01

  Can't lie to yourself, little person. Anyway, I think that's what Morgan Freeman was talking about, by the way. Nonetheless, speaking of side control, that's jujitsu. Speaking of jujitsu, you're gonna need a gi, if you're doing jujitsu.

• 1:34:06Jocko Willink?

  Indeed.

• 1:34:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, we're on the path, we're talking about the path right now, right? Support yourself in this way by saying, on the path, starting jujitsu if you haven't already. A lot of people starting jujitsu, a lot more people.

• 1:34:16Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:17Speaker 01

  Starting jujitsu.

• 1:34:18Jocko Willink?

  It's getting popular.

• 1:34:19Speaker 01

  Very popular, and for a good reason too, I mean, shoot. So, when you get a gi, and a rash guard, get an origin gi, no question.

• 1:34:30Speaker 01

  Oh, you don't agree with me.

• 1:34:31Jocko Willink?

  I agree with you a hundred percent.

• 1:34:33Speaker 01

  That's what I thought. Anyway, go to originmaine.com.

• 1:34:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, originmaine.com. It's, I guess the look that I was giving you is sort of the fact that we just glossing over the fact that these gees are made a hundred percent in America.

• 1:34:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:34:49Jocko Willink?

  You don't even talk about that.

• 1:34:51Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, maybe I should talk about that.

• 1:34:53Jocko Willink?

  Well, last time you did, you talked about the looms and all that stuff. Today, you're just like, hey, the best geese, which I guess that's cool.

• 1:34:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, they are.

• 1:34:59Jocko Willink?

  They are.

• 1:35:00Speaker 01

  All is true for sure. Hundred percent. Yeah, and you know what? I'm just about to say this, but I remembered that I do talk about this all the time on air and off air, that it is cool. It kind of like how Pete guys, how they brought back like the actual making of the gi, for example.

• 1:35:18Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:19Speaker 01

  Like, that's a thing now. It's like, cool now.

• 1:35:21Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:21Speaker 01

  No one cared about how your gi was stitched and like, no one cared about that stuff. Even if they knew the pearl competition.

• 1:35:28Jocko Willink?

  Last time I was there, I was, I got the like legit

• 1:35:33Jocko Willink?

  explanation of things from Pete, because Pete and I were just like, it's 10 o'clock at night. We've been working for eight days straight and we're just in there getting, and I'm asking him pointed questions about stuff.

• 1:35:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:35:45Jocko Willink?

  About how this thing gets, you know what I mean?

• 1:35:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:35:48Jocko Willink?

  Because I want to understand it.

• 1:35:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:35:51Jocko Willink?

  There's a lot of, those guys had to learn a lot of stuff. Bro, you can't even, it's, I think it's been five years, six years, the amount of information that had to be learned.

• 1:36:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:36:01Jocko Willink?

  From no, from no, from nothing.

• 1:36:03Speaker 01

  From not knowing.

• 1:36:04Jocko Willink?

  From trial and error.

• 1:36:06Speaker 01

  It's funny, you ask Pete that kind of stuff, like, you can't exhaust Pete. When you start asking, he'll be like, oh, yeah, you see the twinkle in his eye. Yeah. He wants to explain it. He's all, oh, I was concerned, I was boring, you guys with it. No, man. Stay off to that for sure. But yeah. Origin Gi, hundred percent. Origin Rascard, hundred percent. Supplements too, by the way.

• 1:36:24Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:25Speaker 01

  And I wasn't not, I wouldn't call myself anti-supplement. I'm not gonna say that. But I wasn't into supplements that much before. Now I am, because you know, when you come across the one that actually works, that's the thing, you know, plenty of people there are plenty of supplements. It's, they sort of rely, maybe not a hundred percent. Maybe a hundred percent, but they rely on the placebo effect. So when you have supplements. Like these that actually work, you become a supplement person.

• 1:36:55Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, so if you want them, got joint warfare for your joints, obviously krill oil for your life. Including your joints, including your just overall health, discipline for when you got to get that workout and there's discipline drink and there's discipline go pills.

• 1:37:12Speaker 01

  Go, yeah.

• 1:37:13Jocko Willink?

  Go and then it was milk. You hit some kind of milk scenario going on?

• 1:37:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, technically it was warrior kid milk. So last night we go to. Okay, there's this light show, Christmas lights show, right?

• 1:37:31Speaker 01

  You know, you know, certain neighborhoods they'll have, I guess this one is like super famous.

• 1:37:35Jocko Willink?

  Oh, like shoot tracers?

• 1:37:36Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:37:37Jocko Willink?

  And a loom grenade?

• 1:37:38Speaker 01

  No, no, no, it's called the, I think Bellardo, I think it's called Bellardo Light Show. It's like, you know, Christmas lights, this house, they do it for a thing. It has a whole show. People, anyway, so we go and you know, my wife, she's, she likes the Christmas spirit. Get all cozy, right? It's kind of colder now. California cold. I dig it.

• 1:37:57Jocko Willink?

  No, no offense, Michigan, no offense, Iowa, no offense, Maine.

• 1:38:01Speaker 01

  Canada, yeah, no offense, but California cold. Well, so you can see your breath, that's something.

• 1:38:06Jocko Willink?

  You're talking forty, forty-nine degrees, fifty-four.

• 1:38:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, anyway, so.

• 1:38:12Jocko Willink?

  By the way, in, in like Michigan or Minnesota, it's fifty-four below. In Montana, it's fifty-four below zero. So anyways, continue.

• 1:38:24Speaker 01

  A little bit different, sure, but still.

• 1:38:27Jocko Willink?

  But for the Charles family, we're a little chilly over here.

• 1:38:30Speaker 01

  According to my wife, it warranted maybe a hot chocolate scenario. So look, this is where we need to drive. It's kind of close to my house. We drive around. We look at all the nice lights. We'll drink our hot chocolate in the car. We'll bring the kids. It'll be fun. We can get out. So everyone busting out their hot chocolate. Of course, what, what do you think my hot chocolate was?

• 1:38:46Jocko Willink?

  Oh, I know what it was.

• 1:38:47Speaker 01

  That's the warrior kid. Milk, hot chocolate. I even put some whipped cream on that.

• 1:38:51Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:38:51Speaker 01

  It was nice. Actually, it was surprisingly nice. It's not even a surprise, bro. Well, I was, this is why. Usually I drink the regular milk under different circumstances. It's like boom, milkshake, boom. You know, but you get the kid, consider this, consider where I was. I had two, two kids and one wife. All with regular hot chocolate. May or may not have had marshmallows in it. Either way, regular hot chocolate. And me, I'm with, okay, I'm gonna stick with the protein warrior kid.

• 1:39:20Jocko Willink?

  So you didn't get, your kids didn't have?

• 1:39:22Speaker 01

  Negative, me.

• 1:39:23Jocko Willink?

  That's, that's messed up.

• 1:39:25Speaker 01

  Here's the thing.

• 1:39:25Jocko Willink?

  Do that to your kids.

• 1:39:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, I was, I was gonna, but we're kinda in a hurry. So, and I made the, like, the game time live. It was already made. I'm not gonna be like, hey, you know. Either way, actually, that's a good point next time, hundred percent. Nonetheless, I heat it up, tastes the same.

• 1:39:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:42Speaker 01

  Literally tastes the same.

• 1:39:43Jocko Willink?

  Freaking awesome.

• 1:39:44Speaker 01

  Same as regular hot chocolate.

• 1:39:46Jocko Willink?

  So anyways, that's warrior kid milk. You got strawberry and chocolate. And then for, I, I, I had a guy at the gym, um, the other day. And he was, he's like, I'm drinking some milk right now. And I was like, oh, cool. I was like, anybody had it in a, like one of those metal water bo, like a water bottle looking thing. And I go, what did you mix it with? And he's like, water. And I go, bro. You gotta, you gotta get milk in there.

• 1:40:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:40:05Jocko Willink?

  And he goes, really? And I go, yeah. I go almond milk, coconut milk. What other kind of milks are there? Almond milk, coconut milk. I said, I said, just get some acid or whole milk, just milk or skim milk, whatever. I saw him yesterday. He said, bro. You weren't even kidding. And I'm like, he was, no, I'm drinking it all the time. And I go, yeah, I know. And he, he was actually telling me he liked it. Just as is water, which I can't, I can't, I'm not gonna make that claim because I don't believe it. Right? I'm not saying like, hey, if you drink with water, it's gonna be great. If you drink with water, it's okay. It's like, like I, like I said before, drink with water, it's like a ham sandwich. Like, it's not, if you drink it with milk, it's like prime rib.

• 1:40:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:40:45Jocko Willink?

  It's like a ribeye.

• 1:40:47Speaker 01

  Sure. I know what he was doing. I know. I know his exact scenario and I wasn't even there. I don't even know what you're talking about. He's used to like drinking protein drink shakes in the shaker, you know, after they live, mix them with, just throw it in with water, whatever. That's what he's used to.

• 1:41:02Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah. So he's used to. Put the tube, open it with a, open your mouth with a disc and then jam a tube down your esophagus to get your protein. You don't need to do that with milk. There's no forced feeding.

• 1:41:12Speaker 01

  But that's what I'm saying. So now he mixed it, same deal, same routine, but now we got the milk tastes better. Cool. Puts it in. Oh yeah, you're right. So I was thinking, hey, where's Jaco? Let me find him, you know, kind of thing. And you're like, bro, you're not even on the, you are on the milk train fully, but man, you could be up here in first class. See what I'm saying? Rather than in the caboose or whatever.

• 1:41:33Jocko Willink?

  Man.

• 1:41:34Speaker 01

  Either way, yes, get on it. Get all the stuff origin main.com. Also, we have a store. We have a store. Jaco store.com. This is where you can get more rash guards for jujitsu approved, by the way. Hundred percent approved. This is more, you know, representing the path directly. We're in those rash guards. Anyway, some good rash guards on there.

• 1:41:58Jocko Willink?

  T-shirts on there, hats, beanies, uh, hoodies, legit hoodies. And yeah, go to Jaco store.com.

• 1:42:06Speaker 01

  Yep. Also Jaco White Tea, which yes, he's a, funny enough, my wife is.

• 1:42:14Jocko Willink?

  She's on.

• 1:42:14Speaker 01

  Is there a Jaco White Tea train? There's not, but if there was, she would be the engineer of that one. And she'll, she'll even say, uh, I'm about to get after it right before she gets.

• 1:42:25Jocko Willink?

  I guess this is why you can't create viral marketing, right? You can't be like, hey, let's come up with a viral, uh, thing for, uh, Jaco White Tea. Hey, get on the Jaco White Tea train. Like that doesn't work.

• 1:42:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, I guess, no.

• 1:42:39Jocko Willink?

  Whereas milk chain, hundred percent.

• 1:42:41Speaker 01

  Well, the milk chain started, just formulated itself.

• 1:42:44Jocko Willink?

  That's what I mean.

• 1:42:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're right.

• 1:42:46Jocko Willink?

  It just, it pre-existed in some unknown universe. And then when it arrived here, it was like chew chew, get on.

• 1:42:55Jocko Willink?

  Oh Chuck.

• 1:42:57Speaker 01

  Anyway, Jaco White Tea. Yes, deadlift 8,000 pounds, whatever. I've been deadlifting 8,000 pounds for a long time already. So that is less exciting than it's gonna be for the, you know, the people who just start just saying, but yeah, sure.

• 1:43:10Jocko Willink?

  Somebody asked me, you could deadlift 1600 pounds if you, if you drink two cans.

• 1:43:14Speaker 01

  Well, now you just, yeah.

• 1:43:16Jocko Willink?

  I hate to say this, but uh, no, it doesn't work.

• 1:43:19Speaker 01

  It doesn't work that way. Yeah.

• 1:43:20Jocko Willink?

  No, no.

• 1:43:21Speaker 01

  Exactly. Exactly. Right. Nonetheless, in cans and in, what do you call it? Dry tea?

• 1:43:27Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 1:43:27Speaker 01

  I just prefer the cans personally, but the dry tea is good too, for sure.

• 1:43:32Jocko Willink?

  Available on Amazon and at the Jaco store, right?

• 1:43:35Speaker 01

  Yes, sir.

• 1:43:35Jocko Willink?

  Dot com.

• 1:43:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:43:36Jocko Willink?

  Cool.

• 1:43:37Speaker 01

  Kind of everywhere. Just go online. Jaco White Tea, boom, right in your mailbox. Also, subscribe to the podcast if you haven't already on Google.

• 1:43:45Jocko Willink?

  Whatever.

• 1:43:46Speaker 01

  Play.

• 1:43:46Jocko Willink?

  Wherever you get podcasts.

• 1:43:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:43:48Jocko Willink?

  Hey, check out the Warrior Kid Podcast. If you've got kids, or even if you don't have kids, if you know kids, get in the Warrior Kid Podcast. I have a couple more episodes coming out this week of the Warrior Kid Podcast. So you can get some of that. Also, you can get that Warrior Kid Soap from Irish Oaks Ranch, made by an actual warrior kid named Aiden, who makes it with goat milk. So if you want to get some soap, so you can follow his motto, which is stay clean. And then YouTube, subscribe to YouTube if you want to see what Echo Charles looks like.

• 1:44:22Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:44:23Jocko Willink?

  If you want to see what a guest looks like, if you want to see the look on Echo's face when I say something that he doesn't agree with. Or if you want to see the look on my face when he says something.

• 1:44:41Jocko Willink?

  That was one of the funniest outtakes was you talking and then you, but you were just showing my face.

• 1:44:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:44:46Jocko Willink?

  Just like so bored and annoyed and just.

• 1:44:50Speaker 01

  There's a few of those. There's one where I was talking about justifying, like not doing squats as much anymore or whatever. And you're just like this.

• 1:44:59Jocko Willink?

  I thought the funny thing was when you were talking about some kind of alien thing and you just showed my face and I'm just looking at you like. Like, please get the hint that my face right now means stop.

• 1:45:10Speaker 01

  But you were actually really nice about that.

• 1:45:13Jocko Willink?

  I'm generally nice.

• 1:45:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's true.

• 1:45:15Jocko Willink?

  I'm a pretty nice person.

• 1:45:17Speaker 01

  Well.

• 1:45:17Jocko Willink?

  Sometimes you take advantage of that with stories that impinge on my whole situation.

• 1:45:22Speaker 01

  Anyway, Psychological Warfare, which that's what that is, by the way. When you're just looking at me, not yawning, nothing like that, just looking like it's psychological. It's psychological communication. Anyway, the real psychological warfare is an album with tracks of Jaco on each track telling you how to overcome your moments of weakness that may, may creep into your whole scenario in life when you're on the path.

• 1:45:47Jocko Willink?

  You can get that on iTunes, Google Play, MP3 platforms or whatever. You know what? I said we were gonna get Psychological Warfare 2 out by Christmas. Not gonna happen. Little delay. If you still have some requests of an area of weakness and you want us to make a psychological warfare tracks that you can crush and destroy that weakness, then just let us know via, you know, the usual means.

• 1:46:13Speaker 01

  Yes. Yeah, online. Cool. Yeah, all your excuses are lies, by the way. That's the working title. Also, vary up your workout. I was gonna do a video today, a workout video.

• 1:46:26Jocko Willink?

  Of yourself?

• 1:46:27Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:46:27Jocko Willink?

  Cool.

• 1:46:28Speaker 01

  And I was gonna do a kettlebell, typical kettlebell scenario. And I was just gonna start doing curls with it, but, but I decided against it because it's kind of disrespectful to the whole kettlebell scenario.

• 1:46:40Jocko Willink?

  I just got a good idea. You should do a workout video where you just have a barbell, a kettlebell, a dumbbell, a sandbag and everything. You just do curls.

• 1:46:52Speaker 01

  That was essentially the idea, but it's kind of disrespectful. Anyway, my point there being what it reminded me of it is that the curl, it was gonna be like. Really good like produced video. Not necessarily with a good camera, nothing like that, but just like, I'm just gonna frame it good. And it was gonna be using the Onnit kettlebell, the Cyclops, whatever. Nonetheless, decided against it because it's gonna be kinda disrespectful because that's not what kettlebells for, obviously. But if you do get kettlebells.

• 1:47:21Jocko Willink?

  Even if it's funny, it's still disrespectful?

• 1:47:23Speaker 01

  That's what it felt like at the time, but no, you're probably right. At the time, I was thinking, yeah.

• 1:47:28Jocko Willink?

  You'll be alright.

• 1:47:28Speaker 01

  Yes. Anyway, my point is, even though it's a little bit beside the point, it reminded me of it. The point is, my new point is, when you wanna vary up your workout, curls or otherwise. Some people, they don't even do curls. I used to do curls. You say do curls too. Don't act like you don't.

• 1:47:43Jocko Willink?

  No, I do.

• 1:47:43Speaker 01

  There you go. Boom. Get your stuff from onnit.com slash Jaco, by the way. Kettlebells, rings, these are things that not only do I do pretty much every workout, pretty much. But this is, these are ones that I strongly recommend to incorporate. Rings, and there's a lot of stuff you can do on rings, by the way. Pushups, pullups, and the planks, or whatever.

• 1:48:08Speaker 01

  Dips, yeah. I don't do them as much, but the planks for sure.

• 1:48:11Jocko Willink?

  You don't do dips?

• 1:48:13Speaker 01

  Not on the rings, no.

• 1:48:14Jocko Willink?

  Why?

• 1:48:16Speaker 01

  I don't know, I just don't.

• 1:48:17Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:48:17Speaker 01

  Just do them on the bar. Nonetheless.

• 1:48:19Jocko Willink?

  Good job.

• 1:48:20Speaker 01

  These are, dang, bro. That was a lot of heat right there for, for no dips on the rings. Anyway, get them at Onnit. Good stuff on there. Vary up the workout. Incorporate new things in the workout.

• 1:48:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, man, it's good.

• 1:48:35Jocko Willink?

  Mikey and the Dragons is out. It is in stock, fully.

• 1:48:42Jocko Willink?

  I'm sorry that it took a little late. Everyone should have gotten it by, should get it by Christmas. If you ordered it reasonably before Christmas, you should have it because we, we made it, we did it. Everyone that ordered it, we got it Amazon fulfilled. So, appreciate everyone that ordered it. It is now fully in stock. We should not run out again.

• 1:49:00Speaker 01

  Well, if it's, if you have Amazon Prime, that's like. Two days, right?

• 1:49:05Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, I don't know. I don't know when.

• 1:49:07Speaker 01

  Shipping, shipping, where you are.

• 1:49:07Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I don't know when the cutoff time is for Amazon to get it shipped in time, but yeah. Um, those are in the distribution centers around the country with Amazon Prime right now. So if you haven't gotten Mikey and the Dragons for every kid that you know, then you can get it done right now. We got a lot of copies ready to roll. So get it for your kids, get it for your neighbors' kids, get it for your library, whatever. You can also get the Way of the Warrior Kid books, Way of the Warrior Kid and Mark's Mission. If you want your kids or kids you know to actually have a good life. This is a great way to start them off actually having a good life.

• 1:49:43Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:49:44Jocko Willink?

  Another, this is a holiday gift, if there ever one was one. Discipline equals freedom field man. I need to post that video, actually. I'll post that video, repost.

• 1:49:53Speaker 01

  Oh, right, for the book. Yeah, yeah.

• 1:49:55Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, get that video posted. Uh, but yeah, because that's a good gift to give anyone that needs to be on the person or whatnot. If you want to get the audio version of that, it's not on Audible. It's on iTunes, Amazon Music, Google Play, et cetera. Extreme Ownership, of course, Dichotomy of Leadership. Possibly better than Extreme Ownership.

• 1:50:17Jocko Willink?

  I've gotten like four, last four people I talked to, I was like, oh, possibly. And they're like, no, it's definitely better. And that's kind of weird, right?

• 1:50:26Speaker 01

  Yes, yeah.

• 1:50:27Jocko Willink?

  Is that?

• 1:50:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, here's why it's kind of.

• 1:50:29Jocko Willink?

  Is my ego flare up? You know what I mean?

• 1:50:31Speaker 01

  Maybe, but I don't really get that from what you just said right now. I, I, here's my hypothesis. The people who are saying that dichotomy leadership is better than extreme ownership, better than extreme ownership are people who read Extreme Ownership. And then we're like, yeah, you know, hell, yeah, I'm an extreme ownership. And then they go in and they're like, okay, it's like, you know, like, I made the analogy of the guy on Major League, right? The pitcher? He had all this power, but he didn't have any control. Dichotomy of Leadership comes in, gives them that control that they wish that they had.

• 1:51:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, they didn't even know they didn't have it.

• 1:51:05Speaker 01

  They didn't know they didn't have it. They thought Extreme Ownership was their whole thing.

• 1:51:08Jocko Willink?

  A SEAL buddy of mine came over to my house the other day. And he brought twenty copies of Extreme Ownership. His wife wanted to give, he's giving them to her team in the company. And he goes, yeah, you know, I'm giving, you know, my wife really wants to give them. And she's read it. She loves it. And then he goes, but she's kind of a bull in a china shop.

• 1:51:34Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:51:35Jocko Willink?

  And I was like, okay, cool. So guess what I did? I was like, hey, let me give a little something for your wife's Christmas present. Give her a little Christmas present. We have a little something called dichotomy of leadership. Cause that's the situation you're talking about.

• 1:51:47Speaker 01

  You know what though?

• 1:51:48Jocko Willink?

  It's the perfect situation. Like you think, oh, I'm gonna go take ownership. And it's like, well, or even like, everyone's gonna read this book. It's like, okay. Dichotomy of leadership. Let's make sure we're balanced.

• 1:51:59Speaker 01

  Yeah. Actually though, you know what? You know what I just thought of right now? I gotta, I gotta take it back. Maybe, maybe not. Maybe I'm right. Maybe I'm not with that whole analogy. But you know what though? What's more important? Power or about or, or, or what do you call accuracy or whatever? Right? Cause it's kind of the same thing. Extreme ownership is like, oh, here's what you do. Full speed. This is what you do. And then the dichotomy is kind of the control element. What's more important? Control or speed? See what I'm saying? Control or power? Arguably control.

• 1:52:27Jocko Willink?

  They're both important.

• 1:52:28Speaker 01

  I think so too. Yeah. At the end of the day, that's, I think that's the scenario though.

• 1:52:31Jocko Willink?

  Well, you, you won't have, you won't have anything to balance if you don't understand the fundamental principles of combat leadership.

• 1:52:37Speaker 01

  That's true too.

• 1:52:40Jocko Willink?

  That's the way it's gotta be. And, uh, yeah. So get those books. Good Christmas presents.

• 1:52:50Jocko Willink?

  I'm the worst gift giver.

• 1:52:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're not very good.

• 1:52:53Jocko Willink?

  Let me, let me take that back. If I get you a gift, which is not likely.

• 1:52:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:52:57Jocko Willink?

  It'll be great, but it's a slim chance you're getting one.

• 1:53:02Jocko Willink?

  How many gifts have you gotten from me?

• 1:53:03Speaker 01

  Two.

• 1:53:04Jocko Willink?

  What did I give you?

• 1:53:05Speaker 01

  Well, one actually attacking, I don't think was from you. You gave me a copy of. The Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual Signed. Like on your own, like it wasn't like, hey, give me, you were like, hey, you know, like hey, bro. Here is for you, bro.

• 1:53:20Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:53:21Speaker 01

  That was cool.

• 1:53:21Jocko Willink?

  What else?

• 1:53:22Speaker 01

  Nice.

• 1:53:23Jocko Willink?

  That's cool, because I've written six books. I've given you one. There you go. You're batting about average. Twenty percent of the time.

• 1:53:29Speaker 01

  You gave my daughter one.

• 1:53:30Jocko Willink?

  That's your daughter.

• 1:53:31Speaker 01

  Two. Yes, exactly. Right. Not me. Way different. No, you gave me something. I think it was like a shirt or something that I found out like later that day that it wasn't from you.

• 1:53:39Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, no.

• 1:53:40Speaker 01

  You're just a message.

• 1:53:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, this was given to you.

• 1:53:42Speaker 01

  So, yeah, one gift. Yeah, thanks for that, by the way.

• 1:53:46Jocko Willink?

  Check. Also, we got Echelon Front. That's my leadership consultancy. And what we do is go into companies and solve problems through leadership. Go to echelonfront.com if you want to work with me and my team. Which is Leif Babin, JP Denell, Dave Burke, Flynn Cochran, Mike Sorelli, and Mike Byma. Also, we got the muster coming up. It is live for registration right now. Chicago, Denver, and Sydney, Australia. Go to extremeownership.com right now if you want to come. They've all sold out. This one is going to, actually, we, we opened registration. It's already, like, these are going to sell out a lot faster.

• 1:54:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:54:27Jocko Willink?

  For whatever reason.

• 1:54:28Speaker 01

  Yeah. Interesting how you're, we're going to Australia.

• 1:54:33Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:33Speaker 01

  Like, because a lot of people were saying, you know, you just, for some reason, I didn't think.

• 1:54:37Jocko Willink?

  When I went to Brisbane, Australia, and I did a book signing in Brisbane, Australia, and I announced it on like a Wednesday or a Thursday, and that, the book signing was on Friday, and I showed up and there was hundreds and hundreds of people there. Yeah, I was super stoked about that. And it showed that there was a lot of people that were supporting. And of course, we got EF Overwatch, which is us connecting proven leaders from Spec Ops and Combat Aviation communities with companies in the civilian sector that need experienced leaders to step up and lead inside their organizations. So go to EF Overwatch and fill out the information there, either as a talent seeker or a career seeker. We're waiting to link you guys up. You know, speaking of events.

• 1:55:21Jocko Willink?

  We are doing a live event. We are doing a live event, New York City, January 9th. Details to be announced, but if you want to come, it's in a theater.

• 1:55:33Jocko Willink?

  And we're gonna record a podcast live in the theater. And then we're gonna do Q and A live, I think. Or maybe I'll assemble questions from the group. Yeah, like the old school.

• 1:55:45Speaker 01

  Old school half, half.

• 1:55:46Jocko Willink?

  Old school half and half. Uh, that's what we're gonna do, something like that. Anyways, calendar yourself, uh, January 9th, New York City. If you're in that area or you wanna come hang out, come and get some. We will see you there. And if you wanna link up with us, virtually, we are pretty readily available on the interwebs, on Twitter, on Instagram, and on Facebook. Kiboh. Echo is at Echo Charles and I am at Jocko Willink. And thanks to all the military personnel out there that are providing us with this way of life. And you can see how bad life can get.

• 1:56:30Jocko Willink?

  When you read a book like The Gulag Archipelago. Also, thanks to police and law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, correctional officers, Border Patrol, and all first responders for protecting this way of life that we have here at home. And to everyone else out there, just remember that this nightmare of the Gulags started when people kept quiet on a large scale. And on a small scale. Don't let that happen on a large scale and don't let it happen to you. Resist.

• 1:57:12Jocko Willink?

  That whole opening chapter about not resisting, don't let that happen. Resist, resist the weakness, resist the lies, resist the things in your life that will turn you into a prisoner and into a slave. And you do that by going out there every day. And getting after it. And until next time, this is Echo and Jaco. Out.