564: Overcoming Fear, Making Movies, and the Way of the Warrior Kid. With McG.

>Join Jocko Underground Full Episodes< https://app.redcircle.com/shows/64a89f88-a245-4098-8d8d-496325ec4f74/exclusive-content Director, producer, and filmmaker McG joins Jocko Willink and Echo Charles to share his extraordinary journey from the Southern California punk rock scene to directing some of Hollywood's biggest films. McG discusses working with Sugar Ray, Korn, and other legendary bands, breaking into Hollywood with Charlie's Angels, and the crippling anxiety that nearly destroyed his career when he couldn't board a plane to direct Superman. He explains how exposure therapy, discipline, and persistence helped him reclaim his life. The conversation explores personal tragedy, overcoming fear, leadership, filmmaking, the realities of Hollywood, and the making of Way of the Warrior Kid, starring Chris Pratt. A discussion about creativity, courage, resilience, and refusing to let fear dictate your future. 00:00:00 - Introduction: McG 00:01:39 - Growing Up in Newport Beach and Discovering Rock & Roll 00:05:47 - Battling Severe Anxiety and Panic Attacks 00:09:40 - Sugar Ray, Korn, and Breaking Into Music Videos 00:14:53 - Directing Charlie's Angels and Breaking Into Hollywood 00:19:03 - Losing Superman and Overcoming Fear 00:38:12 - Tragedy, Mental Health, and Finding Hope 00:59:00 - Personal Loss, Hollywood, and Lessons in Leadership 01:47:00 - Making Way of the Warrior Kid with Chris Pratt 02:35:16 - Bringing the Story to Life and Final Reflections 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 564 with Echo Charles and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo.

• 0:04Speaker 01

  Good evening.

• 0:06Jocko Willink?

  I did the videos in a complete do it yourself culture. We just did it. We ran from the law. I didn't know that you could have a producer who could help you procure a location and get insurance and a camera package. It was very raw and where the honesty and visual style, the aesthetic came from. I come from the rock and roll world where people throw TVs out of high rise hotel windows and drive motorcycles into pools.

• 0:40Jocko Willink?

  And those right there are some quotes from Joseph McG McGinty Nickel, a music writer, a video maker, a film and TV producer, a director, a dad, a husband, and one seriously passionate, energetic and unstoppable friend who I was lucky enough to work with in turning The Way of the Warrior Kid from books into an amazing movie. And his life has been wild. He's overcome some serious challenges, muscled through rough failures and achieved some incredible success along the way.

• 1:22Jocko Willink?

  And it's an honor to have McG with us here tonight to share some of his experiences and lessons learned. McG.

• 1:30Speaker 01

  Delighted to be here, boys. So happy to see you guys. Just instant smile. Anybody wants their world to improve, just say hello to Jocko, say hello to Echo and do your thing. And that doggone Rana, that might be my favorite person on the planet earth. So watch out now, she's coming hard.

• 1:45Jocko Willink?

  Nothing but smiles and.

• 1:46Speaker 01

  Oh, the best, the best, the best.

• 1:48Jocko Willink?

  All right. So let's get a little bit of your background. So you're born in Kalamazoo, Michigan. How, how long did you live there for?

• 1:54Speaker 01

  I was born in Kalamazoo, Michigan. My whole, my whole family's from Pennsylvania, but my dad had a PhD in microbiology and got a job for the Upjohn Company. And Upjohn at that time was based in Kalamazoo and I was born in that window. So I was there for two or three years and then his company sent him out to California. And that was the beginning of that chapter because my dad loved Road and Track Magazine. And it was in Newport Beach, California. So he lands in LA and he goes, I'm going to go see the headquarters for Road and Track Magazine, drives down to Newport Beach and it hits him like a lightning bolt. This is it. This is where I want to stay. Upjohn drags him back. So we go back there for another two years. So that's ages, maybe four, five, six ish. But then we ultimately land back in Newport.

• 2:35Speaker 01

  So I identify almost completely as a kid from Newport Beach, California, which was a very, very interesting place at the time, kind of very surf culture, very, very laid back. It was before sort of the Real Housewives culture and it was an awesome, idealized sort of a place to grow up. My dad was a football coach. Sports was everything to me growing up, but I grew up in a house filled with music and filled with film, older brother, older sister. So people go, when did you turn on the music? When did you turn on the film? I'm like, I don't know what you're talking about. My sister's listening to disco records. My brother's listening to Black Sabbath. My dad's listening to jazz and we're always going to see, be it The Sound of Music or Taxi Driver when I'm too young.

• 3:15Speaker 01

  And that was just the vibe and everybody was a surfer and my best friend growing up at the time was Mark McGrath, the Sugar A guy. And we were both, you know, for lack of a more delicate way of putting it, kind of chicken shits when it came to surf. We were both tiny and we were hanging out with the dudes that were bigger, like the strapping guys that would be on the water polo team and, you know, be the lifeguards. And we'd always just kind of, you know, chicken out when the waves were pumping and all the boys would want to go out. And that's even how I got my nickname McFlea because I would go paddling out and, you know, just not ever interested in taking off on a wave. But if I got caught inside, there'd be a set and I'd get pitched. And when I was getting pitched, getting air, the whole lineup would go McFlea. And I get pitched. So we found our way to the local record store and sold our souls to rock and roll.

• 4:00Speaker 01

  And that was the era of punk rock too. So we were really, you know, early eighties, late seventies. We really went all in and that was that.

• 4:07Jocko Willink?

  And you're, you're buying records or going to see shows?

• 4:10Speaker 01

  All the time. There was a place called The Cuckoo's Nest, very, very famous venue in Costa Mesa that we were a little bit too young to get into, but it changed its name to The Concert Factory. And we used to ride two buses and pack our pockets with food sticks. You remember those horrible food sticks and fruit rolls? And just try to get someone to buy us tickets so we could wiggle in and we'd see, you know, all kinds of shows and it would affect us tremendously. And we had that dream. That dream was always rock and roll and film and the arts, but it didn't seem like something you could choose. And I was on an academic path and was pre-med at school and I studied psychology and I studied comparative culture. But when it became time to sort of get around to go into med school, I finally took a deep breath and went, this is not my dream.

• 4:53Speaker 01

  This is my dad's dream and my dream is rock and roll. And I looked what this guy, Rick Rubin did in NYU dorm room where he's like, here's a white Jewish guy who's plugged into hip hop culture and he knows LL Cool J, knows the guys in Run DMC. He's going to NYU and he goes, I'm going to bring this to the world. And at that time I had Mark as my friend. He wasn't the greatest singer, but he was super handsome. So I'm like, let's make a video. Then I had, was buddies with this incredibly charismatic girl in Anaheim, Gwen Stefani. And then I knew these guys who unfortunately were pretty strung out at the time, the guys in Sublime, the three guys in Sublime, Bradley and Eric, you know, and Bud. And there was one black kid in Irvine. I used to skateboard with him. It was Zach de La Rocha. He's a singer of Rage and you know, the offspring guys were in Huntington and it just felt

• 5:38Speaker 01

  like, wow, if I can bring this to the world, maybe we could have something to talk about. So I made a video.

• 5:43Jocko Willink?

  This is when you're, this is when you're in college, when you're going through.

• 5:46Speaker 01

  Yes, right when I'm finishing college.

• 5:48Jocko Willink?

  Now the part of the story is, is that you were, you got into where USC or something like that?

• 5:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, but that's a whole chapter of this podcast.

• 5:55Jocko Willink?

  But, but you didn't end up going there?

• 5:57Speaker 01

  No, I.

• 5:58Jocko Willink?

  And the reason you didn't go there is kind of an important reason.

• 6:01Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, I mean, it's sort of the defining characteristic of my life. You know what I mean? It's just like, I've always had, you know, a good sense of who I was. I was very small. I graduated high school, orange Afro, neck gear, braces, five, two, 90 pounds, just, you know, but I was cool with everybody. I was cool with the big surfers. I was cool with the jocks. I was cool with sort of the goth rock and rollers because I was like this jester that was unthreatening. So everybody didn't mind if McG palled around. And right when I was around 15, I started having really, really meaningful anxiety attacks. And not like fun ones like, whoa, that was gnarly Jocko. What was that? Ones that I felt like I was going to die. I ended up in the hospital a couple of times.

• 6:46Speaker 01

  I thought I was having heart, I didn't know what was going on. And the sense of dread and the downward spiral you have when you experience that is so overwhelming. Like literally you can hit and punch and slap yourself in the face as hard as you can. You cannot feel it. That's how hard and I would imagine you would know, you know, feelings of that level of pump, you know, given some of the experiences you've had in your life. But it was really overwhelming and what happens is, and it doesn't happen to everybody, but it happened to me. You have an anxiety attack on a freeway, you stop getting on freeways. You have one on an elevator, you stop getting on elevators. You have one on an airplane, you stop getting on an airplane and your world starts to get really, really small. And it's.

• 7:23Jocko Willink?

  And did these start like, what, do you have any idea what triggers these things or what, what, where it came from?

• 7:29Speaker 01

  I'm of the opinion it's chemical because it's not like, hey, man, like I grew up very Catholic and it's not like, hey, I got fingered by the priest and that fucked me up. You know, it's just like that, that, that wasn't, I don't have an inciting incident. My dad, who I love very much, but he was rough. You know, I had a rough dad of that era. My dad got married at 18, children, you know, 11 months later than my brother, than me, you know, so kids marrying kids, having kids and, you know, his parents were alcoholics. And, you know, my dad had asthma, so he'd like, he'd be in the hospital with an asthma attack and his dad would be on the road and his mom was drunk and passed out on the floor. So he had some anger issues and some unresolved stuff, but I, I don't blame any of that. I just think it's something that came upon me and I'll, I'll get to the point of what

• 8:13Speaker 01

  I think is what I like to call secondary gains where, yeah, I have this problem that embarrassed me, it was horrible, but because of that, what made me able to hear music the way I hear music, to deploy, you know, my thoughts and efforts into that console that's right out this building and make a record, to shoot with a camera and tell a story and do the thing. And even more particularly, like if you and I went down to the Coliseum right now and spoke at a hundred thousand person game, my blood pressure wouldn't even go up. My heart rate wouldn't change. So all these weird secondary gains, cause I had this wastebasket of where all my proper fear went. But what happened was. I got into USC, I was gonna go and my anxiety condition was so severe at that time

• 8:57Speaker 01

  that it had to shut down my safe zone to about five mile radius around my house in Newport. So I couldn't make it 35, 40 minutes up the freeway just to get to USC.

• 9:06Jocko Willink?

  And how'd you, how'd you interact with your friends? Like your friends knew that you're like, hey, guys, I can't go to this thing?

• 9:11Speaker 01

  It was really gnarly because, you know, my, my friends, we were all rock and rollers.

• 9:15Jocko Willink?

  I mean, what if Gwen Stefani wanted to go on a date with you outside the radius like?

• 9:18Speaker 01

  Wasn't gonna happen.

• 9:22Speaker 01

  It wasn't gonna happen for two reasons. One, I couldn't go outside the radius and two, three, that wasn't good looking enough to me. Nobody wants to make out with a dude with braces that are gonna cut your lip, you know? And you can't battle past the neck here, so that's impossible too. But, um, yeah, I, I couldn't get up there and I ended up going to UCI, which University of California Irvine, which is closer. And, um, you know, just to make a long story short, I made a video with the Sugar Ray guys and I hid it on green cassette tapes. And I put it in pizza boxes and I had the pizzas delivered to all the heads of the record labels throughout America. And the guy who was running Atlantic Records at the time in New York, Valazoli, and it was, you know, Ahmet Ertegun and legendary people, they opened it, put it in, 30 seconds later, they say the most beautiful words you can hear when you're a kid.

• 10:05Speaker 01

  Sign those guys. So they send the first class tickets to the thing and I never had the nerve to cop to it. It was so emasculating. I was so embarrassed.

• 10:13Jocko Willink?

  Did you have these breakdowns in front of people?

• 10:15Speaker 01

  I would excuse myself if it would happen and I'd do everything I could to bury it and I didn't put myself in position.

• 10:20Jocko Willink?

  Who knew about it?

• 10:22Speaker 01

  Everybody kinda knew about it, but they were kind enough not to rub it in my face. So the guys kinda knew like, well, McG's not gonna go to New York to sign the record deal. Here, I put together a record deal. I'm six months out of college. I'm about to get a million dollar record deal with the guys in Sugar Ray. And all the guys in the band spend the night at my house. Um, the tickets are on the counter. We have the first flight out of LAX. We have to get up at five o'clock in the morning, drive to the airport and go. And at two o'clock in the morning, I climb out the window of my own apartment where everybody's staying. I leave the keys to my Volkswagen Rabbit and I say, you guys go, I'm, I'm a little sick. And they kinda knew and they were cool and they went and they had this incredible moment and they signed a record deal, which was great.

• 11:03Speaker 01

  And humiliating for me, but it didn't impede them from getting a record deal. So I wrote the songs with them and produced the record and made the videos and did the whole thing and the beat kept going. You know what I mean? So it wasn't until I got Superman, cause I did the first two Charlie's Angels movies here in LA, which is impossible, as you know, like you always gotta go over the world and make movies.

• 11:24Jocko Willink?

  Prior to that, so, so you do, you do the, uh, the Sugar Ray stuff, right? So now this is, but that video, uh, what was it? Caboose?

• 11:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:32Jocko Willink?

  The first video, right? And people start seeing this video. How did you all of a sudden become like the video making guy, the music video making guy?

• 11:40Speaker 01

  Well, two things happened. Uh, Korn moved down from Bakersfield. Okay. So I got in the Korn camp, day one, when they were nothing and I was chasing them around while they were.

• 11:48Jocko Willink?

  I saw Korn in New York in a place like a little bit bigger than the room we're sitting in right now.

• 11:53Speaker 01

  Wild.

• 11:53Jocko Willink?

  Like way before Bozak, John Bozak, who did the, the drawings for Warrior Kid. I would, I was in New York for some reason, went to see him. He's like, hey, we're going to see this band Korn tonight. I was like, okay, never heard of them, but let's go. And I was going, oh my God, these guys are unreal. The back parts, the whole nine yards. They had the whole, the whole thing was going on. And that was before the album came out. It was crazy.

• 12:12Speaker 01

  Right.

• 12:13Jocko Willink?

  So when you heard Korn, did you recognize immediately like this is a different? I was explaining to Ben earlier, like, here's music, like occasionally this happens, very rarely, here's music, here's Korn. Like they're just outside new, new genre.

• 12:27Speaker 01

  But that was so exciting to you and to me because Korn was taking hip hop sounds, like 808 kick drums. Like the drummer would have a trigger right here where he'd hit it with the stick and it would do the boom. You know, like you'd hear in a hip hop song and they had those funky seven string guitars that had all the dissonant sounds. And they were dead end kids from Bakersfield that just had nothing to lose and had a do it yourself culture again. And just thought anywhere but here. And they moved to Huntington. They started to do it. We made the record. A brilliant producer named Ross Robinson made it and I was chasing them around with a video camera and, you know, we did the video to, uh, to Blind.

• 13:03Jocko Willink?

  Blind.

• 13:04Speaker 01

  And the video to Blind, we probably made for five or $7,000 tops. I had to borrow a thousand dollars from my buddy who had a pickup truck to get the dolly to come down. We did it at the rehearsal space in Garden Grove and to this day, it's one of the biggest rock and roll videos of all time. And you guys being San Diego guys, Mason comes out for the Padres to Blind to this day, 30 years later, they do the light show and everybody goes crazy. And if you see that Woodstock.

• 13:28Jocko Willink?

  I was gonna say Woodstock 99, that is all time.

• 13:31Speaker 01

  That you can't go harder than that. You just can't go. So to be on the periphery of that experience is one of the great privileges and highlights in my life. And I still talk to those guys and they're the coolest.

• 13:41Jocko Willink?

  So you do, you do Blind, you do Chutes and Ladders, you do, you're doing these videos. Who, and then who else came in? Cypress Hill comes in the game. Sublime.

• 13:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, and Sublime, right? I, I knew Bradley well before he died. Sadly, he was in San Francisco, Bad Batch of Aaron went going around and that just bit him. And it's terrible. I lost my brother to a, a drug overdose. We'll probably talk about that, which is why I stayed really clean for a long time. You know, because I was with all the rock and rollers going really hard and I was always kind of the manager guy and I, I couldn't really go to the faraway gigs. Cause my, you know, agoraphobic problem and it just resulted in my being the driver responsible one, not drinking and not doing all the drugs. Well, they were just blowing their brains out going bananas. And, um, yeah, I just never really, never really went down that track, you know? So yeah, a wild pinball of, of sorts, but yeah, Cypress Hill came into it and.

• 14:32Jocko Willink?

  Offspring, Biohazard, by the way, East Coast hardcore. I gotta represent over here.

• 14:35Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And I put Jaws in that Biohazard video, the guy with the metal teeth, Richard, uh, why am I forgetting his last name? Who's no longer with us, rest his soul, but Jaws is awesome in the Bond pictures. And we just had so much fun making those videos and that led me to get, um, you know, the Charlie's Angels movies, which as I said, was a miracle.

• 14:53Jocko Willink?

  So what's that phone call like?

• 14:55Speaker 01

  Well.

• 14:55Jocko Willink?

  Is it Drew, did Drew Barrymore call you up?

• 14:57Speaker 01

  No.

• 14:58Jocko Willink?

  Who called you up?

• 14:58Speaker 01

  It was, it was, I met Drew Barrymore as a function of the rock and roll world. She's a rock and roller. And she was running around with a guitar player in Courtney Love's band Hole, a guy named Eric Erlinson. So we would all go out in Hollywood and, um, I met Drew through Eric Erlinson and Drew goes, I have the rights to Charlie's Angels. And every legitimate director in town had passed on it. And I go, I'll do it. And she goes, I want it to be like your videos, colorful and jubilant and exciting and, and explosive and fill the theater with oxygen. I said, yes. Uh, so, and then of course I go to pitch it to Sony and everybody at Sony is on pitch and it's just like, no, no way. No, we hate this guy. What kind of guy calls himself McG? Get out of here. You know what I mean?

• 15:38Speaker 01

  And, um, it was Quentin Tarantino who saved me. Cause I was making videos and commercials for Quentin, his company, A Band Apart. So between Drew going, this guy's gonna do it. And they still said no. Then Amy Pascal was the head of Sony called Quentin and Quentin goes, I don't know. I think this guy can do it. And they begrudgingly let me do it. And I was nearly fired off that thing 10 times because it was so weird and experimental and colorful. And, you know, the girls were on Hong Kong wire work, doing the matrix things, dipping around. And they didn't know whether to shit or go blind and they came down to fire me 10 times, but I'm like, it's gonna work out in the end. And the music, that was sort of the beginning of the mixtape as soundtrack for movie. And, um, yeah, it landed well and it was the biggest opening for a first time director in history.

• 16:22Speaker 01

  So I wrote that.

• 16:24Jocko Willink?

  Did you, did you real, had you had in mind that you wanted to make movies like that?

• 16:29Speaker 01

  Oh, absolutely.

• 16:30Jocko Willink?

  The goal always.

• 16:30Speaker 01

  And something I'm about to trick you into doing with me is I'm gonna do a show on that era of music videos. Because there were only about five guys and a couple of girls that were getting the songs at that time. And the people were the, well, the way it would work is like Aerosmith would send you a song on a Wednesday. You'd have to turn in your idea Thursday, the next day, and then you gotta shoot it Saturday and Sunday because they're on tour and they're only here Saturday and Sunday. You know, so it was really, really fast and they'd send it to David Fincher, Michael Bay, Spike Jones, McG, Francis Lawrence. Uh, you know, Michelle Gondry, you know, and the difference between all of us as we would make, you know, the Echo Charles music video was so severe, like who you signed up for would affect the brand of your band to such a degree.

• 17:14Speaker 01

  But the point I'm making is we were all trying to get our first movie. So we'd all go get, and we were like frenemies. Cause we were competitive of like, oh, you got the new thing and I, I wanted to get that. I wrote on that, but you got it. And it was cool. It was friendly competition, but we would all then go try to get this movie, that movie, the other movie. And, um, yeah, Bay came out swinging with Bad Boys and, you know, Spike Jones has now won the Academy Award. David Fincher blew it wide open with Seven and then Fight Club and all of it. So it just, uh, then I had Charlie's Angels and Brett Ratner had, uh, Rush Hour. So we all kinda made our mark, but we all came from this same group of forcing yourself to come up with stories very rapidly and then execute upon them, which was good for developing.

• 17:57Jocko Willink?

  It was good training for you to be ready.

• 17:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:59Jocko Willink?

  And then would you, would you, you, you make this movie, as you're making it, I read the thing, you got paid like 350 grand for this.

• 18:06Speaker 01

  Which would have been minimum wage if you would have spread out how many hours I worked on it. Less than minimum.

• 18:10Jocko Willink?

  Like, so, so it's far from like, you haven't financially made it at this point. You're just.

• 18:14Speaker 01

  And my dad's looking at me sideways because I come from that culture of like, when are you gonna get a job? You know, and it wasn't until Hollywood Boulevard shut down, there's 10,000 people. I'm with three of the most beautiful women in the world. You know, this kid who got no chick action at all. And, um, the Hollywood Boulevard's closed down with bleachers on each side and I rolled up in a vintage Camaro and jumped out and, you know, did a Michael Jackson splits and moonwalked the fuck out of there.

• 18:40Speaker 01

  Can I say, can I say that on this?

• 18:42Jocko Willink?

  You sure can.

• 18:42Speaker 01

  All right.

• 18:43Jocko Willink?

  So it comes out, it, it's huge.

• 18:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, it worked well.

• 18:46Jocko Willink?

  The biggest, the biggest.

• 18:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, the biggest first time.

• 18:48Jocko Willink?

  First time.

• 18:49Speaker 01

  First time director, biggest opening in history.

• 18:52Jocko Willink?

  That's gotta feel good.

• 18:53Speaker 01

  That felt really good and, and that gets me to the, you know, sad, but kind of inspirational part of the, the conclusion. I then get trusted with Superman. Okay. So Warner Brothers is like, hey, we want you to do Superman. And J.J. Abrams is writing it, which is hysterical because he's gone on to be the biggest thing of all time, but he's writing it for me and we've been buddies ever since. And they go, and we've had real good luck with The Matrix in Australia and we want to shoot Superman in Australia. And of course my heart sinks, but I never had the nerve, Jocko, to preemptively go, hey, I got a problem. I can't accept this job. I was too stubborn and I was too proud and I just thought I'm going to will myself to get over this. And of course I was unable to and I was unsuccessful, but I'm.

• 19:36Jocko Willink?

  So, so, so you get signed to do Superman. How long is that? How long are you sitting there going, okay, you know, cool, we're going to shoot in LA. Cool, I'm good to go. And then they say, actually you, you gotta go to Australia.

• 19:49Speaker 01

  They were always saying you gotta go.

• 19:50Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so out of the gate.

• 19:51Speaker 01

  I was trying to work them into LA.

• 19:52Jocko Willink?

  You said to yourself, you know what, it's freaking Superman. I will just grit my teeth, get sedated.

• 19:58Speaker 01

  And get it done, yeah.

• 19:58Jocko Willink?

  Just whatever.

• 19:59Speaker 01

  I looked into getting sedated. It proved to be too difficult with an anesthesiologist. I'll get into that. And to tell you what kind of friend I have, who is indeed a doctor, I had, I'll get to that punchline about the Australia thing, when I finally, you know, slayed that dragon. But, um, I'm doing Superman. It's a six eighth month prep and the time finally comes, okay, we gotta go.

• 20:19Jocko Willink?

  And they're just, you know, again, most people don't understand the Hollywood thing. Obviously didn't understand it before, but like there's putting all kinds of money, 10, 15 million dollars into the, the site locations. People gotta go visit those things. They're doing storyboards. They're figuring all this stuff out, costs millions of dollars. They're renting, they're renting studios to have offices. It's a whole thing.

• 20:41Speaker 01

  You bet.

• 20:42Jocko Willink?

  Dumping money into McG's.

• 20:44Speaker 01

  10 or 15 million dollars in.

• 20:47Speaker 01

  They say, we'll buy you the whole first class cabin. Cause I, I tried, there were two guys running the studio at the time. I tried to say, hey, I got a real problem. You know, I don't think I can get on that flight and I have this bombastic personality and they literally, Jocko, they'd be like, oh, come on, you're McG, man. We'll, we'll figure it out.

• 21:02Jocko Willink?

  No, it's, it's hard to under, it's very, very difficult to understand.

• 21:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm like, I, but I'm not, and they're like, don't worry about it. Cut to the, the Warner's G550 is fueled and turning, you know, the APU is turning on the tarmac. There's one guy standing at attention, you know, to welcome me, the jet stairs are down. There's one name on the manifest, McG. I go and I'm trying to will myself that far and I can't get on the plane.

• 21:27Jocko Willink?

  How far did you make it?

• 21:28Speaker 01

  How do you mean?

• 21:29Jocko Willink?

  Did you make it to the stairs? Did you get?

• 21:31Speaker 01

  No, I, I got out of the car and I couldn't do it. So I was in between the car and the stairs.

• 21:36Jocko Willink?

  And you just go back to the car?

• 21:37Speaker 01

  And I went back to the car and people didn't, I didn't tell anybody like, hey, I'm not going, I'm, I just left because I was too humiliated and it was truly a low point of my human life.

• 21:46Speaker 01

  Six hours later, I'm fired.

• 21:49Jocko Willink?

  New York Times, uh, uh, New York, I think it was the New York Times had the, the headline, Superman can't fly.

• 21:55Speaker 01

  Yes. They love their irony, you know what I mean? And it was the lowest point of my life. I was scared, I was alone. I say to Ari Emanuel, the biggest agent in the world's life, he came over to my house, gave me a hug. He goes, hey, man, we're going to get through this. That was big. I get a letter from Warner Brothers, we reserve the right to sue you. You've incurred so many damages, this, that, the other. I finally limp into UCLA. I see two women that specialize in this sort of thing. Remind you, mind you, I'm not taking any drugs. Taking drugs is also part of my control thing. So I don't deserve credit of like, I'm so spiritually strong. I didn't, I didn't like acquiescing control to be at booze or be at coke or be at pot or be it like, you know, meth or just anything everybody was partying and doing. I didn't like the idea that I couldn't just go and be sober.

• 22:40Speaker 01

  You know what I mean? I had to ride that train and see what it was. The, uh, you know, psychiatrist started helping me with my diet of all things, things I could do with my diet, but more importantly, the behavioral therapist just started talking about, I don't want to know anything about your mommy issues, your daddy issues, your girl, I don't care. What are you afraid of? Echo, say snakes.

• 23:01Jocko Willink?

  Snakes.

• 23:02Speaker 01

  We're going to the snake pit, come on. You're like, but my dad, I don't care about your dad. My knee hurt. I don't care about your knee. We're going to the snake, you go, I can't go to the snake pit. How close can you go? I can go 10 feet. Great, go 10 feet, stand there and eat it. Eat it for 10 feet. Tomorrow, can you go nine? I don't know, not next day, eight, seven, go back to nine, freaked out, had a bad day, went backwards. Exposure therapy, exposure therapy, exposure therapy. I rented a, a G4 from a rich guy in Santa Barbara and I slept on the plane. I just got used to acclimating to the fuselage and the idea of being locked in there and doing the thing, until finally one day we started taxiing and we would taxi around Van Nuys and they thought we were crazy.

• 23:46Speaker 01

  And we're taxiing around Van Nuys and the day finally came after many failed efforts where I looked at the pilot and he looked back at me and I gave the smallest nod and he pushed off on the throttle and we went and we flew from Van Nuys to, uh, Oxnard, seven miles in a plane built to go around the world. But it gave me confidence to try again the next day.

• 24:07Jocko Willink?

  Did you fly back or did you drive back?

• 24:09Speaker 01

  We, we flew back.

• 24:10Jocko Willink?

  Oh, nice.

• 24:10Speaker 01

  So I, the flood, I just started going, going, going and getting better and better. And, uh, until one day I left Los Angeles heading east and I returned from the west. I'd gone around the world, you know, with the corresponding stops for gas and everything. And then I finally thumped my chest and said, I'm ready to go back and talk to the Warner's guys who were kind enough. They didn't sue me, we figured it out. And I got the movie, We Are Marshall, that I did with McConaughey, that was about a plane crash. Cause I just wanted to slay that dragon, man. I'm proud and I didn't want to give in to being such a punk, you know? I wanted to overcome this. I didn't want it to deny my life. I was so embarrassed that this is who I was because I like to lead and I like to lead

• 24:55Speaker 01

  by example and I like to be strong and I'd like to believe I'm not a coward, but I felt like I was a coward. And I think this is also a huge reason why I didn't get married till later in life. I didn't feel that I was worthy. I didn't feel that I was worthy of marrying a woman or certainly bringing children into life till I had a grip on this fundamental flaw in my life. And, and you know, it's something you talk about in the movie, you know, it's okay to be afraid. You gotta be more brave than you are afraid. And the biggest thing, and you and I weren't pals at that time, but the biggest thing I deployed, I hear you talking about all the time, which is just so essential to me. Motivation is great. Motivation is great. When you're motivated to work out, man, let's go bang it out, Echo, let's get it done. And you know, I don't like doing legs, let's get legs today.

• 25:39Speaker 01

  You know, you're motivated, but infinitely more valuable is discipline because then you do it anyway, in the absence of motivation. And that's really in a nutshell, what it took for me to never stop moving forward, even the, I have a headache, I get sick. And by the way, this is a terrible, terrible disorder because you feel so bad, it gives you a migraine, you throw up, you, you know, it just, it's, it's impossible to rationalize, which is the genesis of irrational fear. You can't just go, what's up dude? Come on, suck it up. Me and Jocko are with you, let's roll. If you fall down, we'll lift you up, let's go. It doesn't work that way. It's a totally different compartment of the brain. And, um, you really need to learn how to sit with it and understand you're not going to go crazy.

• 26:23Speaker 01

  You can't induce your own heart attack. You can't stop breathing. If you say, hey, Echo, stop breathing, at some point Echo is going to take a breath. You can't do it to yourself. So it's very painful and very difficult, but I've worked very diligently. And even to this day, people say like, you know, I'm sitting here talking to you, I just got off a plane from New York four hours ago. They go, that's so cool, you're over it. But I feel like it's if you talk to somebody who used to weigh 600 pounds and now is as fit as you guys, you go, I'm doing great. I'm eating right, I'm working out, this is where I want to, but like, I know if I get caught slipping, I'll go back to my 600 pound life. You know what I mean? So I need to stay in the pocket, stay focused. And it's a lot of these undercurrents that attracted me so powerfully to Warrior Kid

• 27:08Speaker 01

  because I could have saved a lot of time and heartache if I could have had that kind of training much earlier. I, I didn't let it, but I didn't do anything about it for 15 years and it really baked into my life and really hurt my life. So the wasted time is the tragedy. You know, having lows to, you know, finally come back and have some highs, that's, that's cool, but like, you know, don't waste time doing it. If you got a problem, go attack the problem, see some people that can help you.

• 27:35Jocko Willink?

  You know that exposure therapy thing? So when I, when I wrote the original Warrior Kid book, the water was a metaphor for Rana, who wanted to be in the school play, but she was afraid to sing in front of anyone. So she, she, she couldn't even do the rehearsal or what's it called? The tryout?

• 27:51Speaker 01

  Right.

• 27:52Jocko Willink?

  The audition. She, she was like, I want to do it, I'm scared to do the audition. So one day, put her in a room and she's, she might've been, whatever, what, like seven, eight, nine, something like that.

• 28:02Speaker 01

  Right in there.

• 28:02Jocko Willink?

  Put her in a room, I said, I shut the door and I said, sit in here by yourself and sing. I said, I'm going to be outside in the hallway. So she did it. She learns there's nothing to be afraid of. The next day, I'm going to be in the hallway, but I'm going to open the door, crack. You sing. And you know, we went from there, then it was.

• 28:18Speaker 01

  Precisely.

• 28:19Jocko Willink?

  My wife and I, you know, in the hallway, then my wife and I in the doorway, and then my wife and I in the room, and then the, the siblings in the room, and then the neighbors are coming over and that's what we did. And I didn't know this was a technique. I just did, I just did that like instinctively. That's, that's what we're doing, you know? That's what we're, and the, the military does it well too, because you know, the first thing you do is go over like an obstacle course and you're going over like a 10 foot wall with a rope. And then the next thing you know, you're going over the cargo net, which is, you know, 30 feet, then you go to the slide for life, which is 50 feet. And then you're rappelling out of a, off of a 80 foot wall. And then you're rappelling out of a helicopter and then you're jumping static line at 2,500 feet and then you're doing free fall. Like they, you learn how to, okay, there's a little bit of fear here, I gotta get over that thing. I just gotta get over it. I, I know what that feels like, okay.

• 29:01Jocko Willink?

  And then you build up the capability to just overcome that fear. But it wasn't until I had Jordan Peterson, who's a clinical psychologist on the podcast and he was, he was explaining exposure therapy and I was like, oh, I actually did that with.

• 29:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, you guys are doing it your way ahead of us.

• 29:15Jocko Willink?

  Yep, that's, and that's what, that's what you had to do to get through this. Do you feel like? Was there any other major components of life where this impacted you? Or was it just so manifested in flying on airplanes?

• 29:29Speaker 01

  Well, that's the funny thing is it was very secular in the way that it was manifest. And it, like I say, the secondary gains are such that all these other things that people would have, you know, singing in front of people, I could sing in front of the Hollywood Bowl right now. And me and you could do our, you know, Metallica impressions. And, you know, we did, I'd feel great about it. And, you know, so it was, it was very secular, but it's funny because people would be like, hey, man, you're afraid of flying. The, I, the, the net result is the same. So this is kind of like semantics, who cares? But I was never afraid of flying. I'm afraid of being in positions that are bad places to have an anxiety episode.

• 30:06Jocko Willink?

  Oh.

• 30:06Speaker 01

  And that would be a stuck elevator, a gridlock on a freeway, certainly a airplane at 42,000 feet above Antarctica, certainly a submarine, certainly a small boat on the way to Hawaii. Certainly, you know, so it wasn't like flying, because some people are actually afraid of flying, like this thing's going down, man. That's was never me. But I was afraid to get on a plane because you're locked in a plane. When you leave LAX to go to JFK, that's it, man. You're in a sealed tube.

• 30:33Jocko Willink?

  And you think that in, I'm saying, a person that has these thinks that the anxiety attack can kill them. Like, oh, yeah, you think that you're gonna have a heart attack, you're gonna die.

• 30:41Speaker 01

  Jocko, the notion that the worst thing that can happen is you die is perversely comforting. That's how dark it is. That you think, well, the worst thing you have is I die. And you're like, I don't want to die, but, oh, because it, it's such a downward spiral of dread. I don't know any other word for it, but it's, it's totally disproportionate. And one of these days, they're gonna figure out what's lighting up in your brain, what the dopamine, oxytocin, I wouldn't know what, something's going on, it's out of balance. But again, I try to focus on the positive that I know, you know, music videos. I used to listen to songs, like I'd listen to like a Boston record, you know what I mean? And, you know, I'd listen to More Than a Feeling and the, the visual component of More Than a Feeling

• 31:26Speaker 01

  is playing out in my head. You know, it's kind of like this thing, synesthesia.

• 31:29Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 31:30Speaker 01

  You know what I mean? And there's no doubt that's a function of the same chemical balance in my brain that's killing me with this anxiety condition, but it's helping me go, I just know how to run 128, you know, strip SSL console to get the sound I want to get, to mix the hip hop sounds with the rock and roll sounds, to write the song, to borrow a little bit from this old song, to put it all together, to use the tools I have with this artist and do it. Same thing with the cameras. You know what I mean? I studied, like I said, I studied psychology and comparative culture, which are their own assets in Hollywood, as you know, but I didn't study camera technique or balancing, you know, the white balance or, you know, the fundamental dynamics of different lenses and what it means.

• 32:11Speaker 01

  I learned that as I went, but I'm convinced that my chemical stasis has this horrible application, but a great many positive applications. And that helped me be less embarrassed because as a man, Jocko, and I've never been as tough as you. And, but I grew up in a tough place and I, you know, I was very athletic and, you know, I just sort of was around it, but the idea that I would have this predicament was so embarrassing. It's impossible to overstate the embarrassment because it wasn't my brand. I wasn't known as like, you know, like McJesus puss, fuck Mc, and I don't mean that in a derogatory way, I'm just reaching for words, you know what I mean? But like, everybody, I was kind of in with the boys and I was in the pit, you know,

• 32:56Speaker 01

  listening to Wasted Youth and the Circle Jerks, kind of mixing it up and not really afraid to take an elbow and get a knot on my forehead. You know, I, I wasn't a tough guy, but I wasn't a muffin, you know what I mean? And everybody had a hard time, like, why does this guy who's one of the boys and ready to do it, have this thing that's just, you associate particularly back then. It was before now when people were a little bit more tolerant of mental health issues. It was a pre PTSD world. It was a pre sensitivity world. We're, we're similar in age, you know what I mean? And you remember when we were kids, it wasn't like that.

• 33:28Jocko Willink?

  It wasn't a thing.

• 33:30Speaker 01

  Yeah. It was, you know, that was it. I mean, again, I apologize to the wonderful ladies in the audience, but for lack of a more delicate way of putting it, it's like, don't be such a fucking pussy.

• 33:39Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 33:39Speaker 01

  That's just the way it went down, you know? And I really hated being on the receiving end of that. And it really motivated me to one day get over it, but it seemed impossible. It seemed impossible. And I'll tell you what, what makes it so hard and your listeners who have this condition is it's sadly very common, is here's what happens. Your heart starts racing and pounding out of your chest. You can't control your breathing and you've lived your whole life. If you want to raise your right arm, Echo, you raise your right arm, lower right arm, lower right arm. But when you're like, stop heart beating out of chest, there's, I'm not, there is no impetus. Back to snakes, it's not like I'm afraid of snakes and the snake python flew in here. I'm just, it's washing over me and I don't know why.

• 34:24Speaker 01

  And I can't control my breathing and I can't control my heart. And to the logical person, it makes you feel like I'm not in control. And that results in the problem.

• 34:34Jocko Willink?

  My buddy Dakota Meyer, who's a Marine Corps Medal of Honor recipient, uh, like went over and over again into direct enemy fire to save, to try and save some of those guys, lost his whole team, like it's a crazy story. And he was having, like, this is, you know, 10 years later, he was having anxiety attacks. And I, again, I, I appreciate you explaining this because I'm like, what? Dakota, what do you mean? Like, just, you know, just, what are you, what are you talking about? You, you've been in like the worst, most dangerous situations of any human imaginable. And yet, you know, you're in the grocery store and you're telling me that you're, he's like, I'm having panic attacks, what are you talking about? Stop having them. And he's like, no, it doesn't work like that.

• 35:19Jocko Willink?

  It doesn't work like that. Yeah, there's got to be some kind of a, some kind of chemical scenario going on.

• 35:24Speaker 01

  I, I really think so. I'm hoping when they get the maps of the brain better, AI maybe as an assistant, I don't know. But I'm convinced of that because I don't have the like, oh, every time I wouldn't eat my dinner, I was beaten by my father. And then I'd have an anxiety attack. And then every time I wouldn't eat my dinner, I was beaten by my father, then I'd have an, you go, dude, there, here's what's going on. And those things can't happen, but not this. And it very, very conspicuously corresponded, Jocko, to puberty. Like, dude, I, I was flying all over the place. I was afraid of nothing. I was the thing right around 15. It, you know, I'd wake up in the middle of the night and they were just, they were so rough. And like I said, you know, I could slap myself in the face as hard as you could. I couldn't feel it.

• 36:05Jocko Willink?

  That's because you were trying to get it to stop.

• 36:07Speaker 01

  Trying to get anything to bounce you out of that experience. You know what I mean? And it's just, that breaks my heart to hear that some of the guys, you know, which I gotta believe is sort of like a classic PTSD trigger for the event, but I wouldn't know. I mean, the mind is a very, very mysterious, crazy thing. I don't proclaim to understand how it works. I can only talk about my story, but when I do talk about my story, a lot of people relate to it. And it is ironic that in, in lot, a lot of other applications of life, you know me, we were on set every day from four in the morning till seven. Like, I'm just not a lilting flower, you know, like I just, it's not my game. So you wouldn't, it's like your boy.

• 36:46Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 36:46Speaker 01

  You know what I mean? Is this courageous guy saved everybody, went into incoming fire, what could possibly be more dangerous? And then something goes wrong in a grocery store and he's more afraid in that environment than he is in the war theater.

• 36:59Jocko Willink?

  Totally crazy. That's so, it's so bizarre how the human mind works and like, this is especially applicable, going back to kids where, oh yeah, you, you look at your kid, you're like, oh, just don't worry about that. You know, the kid comes home with whatever problem they have, you know, which is to them, it's their whole, this is what, this is one of the things that I connected. One of the reasons that I wrote Warrior Kid was I had forgotten that when you're a kid or a person, a grown adult, your world is your world. That's where you live. You have no, you're like a fish in a tank. There's no other water that you can get in there. So when there's drops of chlorine in that tank that you live in, you don't know that you could just leave that tank. People get so trapped in their own mind when your kid's getting bullied at school. Oh, they're calling me whatever, plate face is the term I use in, in Warrior Kid. Oh, the kids call me plate face.

• 37:44Jocko Willink?

  It's like, oh, who cares? Who cares about that? You know, just whatever, sticks and stones, break your bones, carry on. But you cannot break people out of their own minds. They've got to figure out a way to resolve it.

• 37:54Speaker 01

  But how can we help them? And Jocko, I, I don't know if it's appropriate to bring this up on the air, but I'll just take a stab at it and you be the judge. Um, I'm not sure if you're aware, this is a terrible, terrible story I'm about to share with you. In our movie. There is a young girl who is up against the bus when the bus has crashed. Okay, you know this, she's the daughter of Chad Low. Mary, our producer, your buddy, my buddy, terribly close to the mother. She took her own life and the parents are trying to be very courageous about it and share their story with others. And it's a cruel irony that I believe the exchange in the film is, I can't make it.

• 38:35Speaker 01

  I'm afraid and Jude's character says, but you're more brave than you are afraid. And the idea that that happened and the degree to which you as a parent, me as a parent, you think if you just could have gotten to tomorrow, you know, just whatever that bully moment was, the party you weren't invited. Whatever, who knows what went into anything, or if you're properly depressed or anxious, the wheel of life is going to turn, that fish tank you speak of is going to change. You're going to be swimming in different waters and you too wrote a song called Caught in a Moment about Michael Hutchins. And how sad they were that, you know, he ended up killing himself and just this idea, it's just a moment. And if you could just, tomorrow might even be a good day, not even less bad.

• 39:17Speaker 01

  It might, the sun might come out and you find a reason to find joy and you begin to come up from that darkest of places. But I think it's very difficult to reach people when they're in that moment, but just the degree to which that hit home, and I know your heart is broken, my heart is broken. And the degree to which we are with that family is immeasurable, but just, um, you're right, it's hard to reach people when they're living in their own life. Um, and you want to just tell them it's okay, keep, you know, don't stop chopping, just keep digging. What, what, what's your advice for that? I mean, your, your community looks to you to make sense of those moments. I do.

• 39:51Jocko Willink?

  It's all those things. I mean, I think one of the things when people understand what we're talking about, like what you and I are literally talking about right now, that you get caught, people get caught, we get caught as human beings. Where I've always described as like a storm cloud that's around your head, like gee, you could have just the most horrendous dark thunder clouds completely encompassing your brain, right? And I'm sitting over here, I'm 10 feet away, those thunder clouds are only four feet big, right?

• 40:18Speaker 01

  Right.

• 40:19Jocko Willink?

  No matter which direction you see, all you see is darkness, all you see is lightning, all you see is rain, all you see is thunder. And trying to explain to people that, hey, like those thunder clouds, you'll be able to move through those, you will get through those, you, you will see the light again, it will happen. But like you said, you've got to take that one more step today, you've got to get through today. It's going to be rough and listen, that's the way life is, you know, life is, life is hard, life is a bitch, man. Life, life knocks you down. It's devastating and you gotta push through that and get through that next day. Cause at the, when you get through those clouds, there's going to be light, there's going to be good. But it is a gut check to get through and that's the test, that's the test that people face.

• 40:55Speaker 01

  I hear you. Would you recommend as someone who knows so much about this issue, preparing yourself prior to the moment, so you have that core and that strength that you can rely upon. So you're ready, you know, should things go terribly?

• 41:09Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. I mean, as much as you possibly can, you know, you, you've got to try that, but let's face it. You and I have known people that are so strong and so badass.

• 41:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:21Jocko Willink?

  I mean, there's a freaking suicide epidemic from military veterans and from my own community, the special operations. There's a suicide epidemic.

• 41:31Speaker 01

  That breaks my heart here.

• 41:32Jocko Willink?

  As well as people can, you know, prepare themselves and what, what better preparation can you do? Like you, you're the toughest, most badass human being out there. And yet you go to the grocery store and something doesn't go your way, or whatever the case may be. And all of a sudden you're, you're in a thunder cloud and you don't see a solution to it. So, I mean, I think it's all kinds of things, it's building good relationships with people. It's talking about it. One of the, one of the things that I have found and I kind of discovered this unintentionally. So I would end up being the guy that does the speech at the memorial service. You know, that's just the way it is.

• 42:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:10Jocko Willink?

  And I realized after doing three, four, five of these things, six of these things, that what I was forcing myself to do, I mean, this is like, you get, you, you find out that your friend dies and or your, your teammate, your brother dies and you go, okay. 12 hours later, you're like, okay, there, there memorial service is coming. Hey, Jocko, you're going to speak. Okay, cool. I'm going to now sit down and I am going to just expunge my soul into a piece of paper, cry and break my own heart and stab it and crush it. But all those things are coming out on the paper, right?

• 42:47Jocko Willink?

  And that is a way for you to detach from it and see it and, and feel it and accept it and relish in it, right? It's like you getting on a plane, it's like you're gonna, I'm going to go sleep in the cabin with all these emotions and all this, all these sad feelings that I'm going to go sleep in the cabin with, I'm going to get in there, I'm going to go to the next, the, the, the snake pit, right? I'm going in there in my own head, going in there and I'm going to write about this stuff. And then two days later, I'm going to stand up in front of everyone, I'm going to say these, these words. And that to me, and then, you know, when we, when I got out of the military and you started doing the podcast and now I'm like talking about this stuff. I'm talking about this, you know, it's, speaking about Dakota Meyer, like when Dakota Meyer,

• 43:26Jocko Willink?

  I was sitting there talking to him on our podcast and like everything that he's talking about, I'm thinking about Mike Monsoir, who's my guy, Medal of Honor recipient. That's what I'm thinking about. Okay. I'm thinking about what he's going through, I'm thinking, you know, Dakota lived and Dakota's carried on with life and he's married, he's got kids, like he's got all these good things to him. And in my mind, I'm thinking like, yeah, Mike Monsoir didn't get that chance.

• 43:43Speaker 01

  Right.

• 43:44Jocko Willink?

  Like it's heartbreaking, but talking through it, I believe is how you start to get those clouds to dissipate a little bit. So I think writing about things, I think talking about things, I think those are the most powerful things. And, and, and you know, one more additional story on that.

• 44:03Jocko Willink?

  My, my best friend Seth was killed in a parachute accident. Seth was like, uh, he was like part of my family. I mean, this freaking mooching bastard was over at my house for dinner, you know, six days a week, he's over there. And you know, he's, he's, he's with my kids. If, if there was good waves and I was at work, he would come and pull my son out of school and take him surfing, you know? He was, he was, he was in it, right? And so when he dies, you know, in a parachute accident, and I mean, it's just, it's just absolutely freaking terrible. And he's been through so much in combat, been through so much in war and lived through it without a scratch. And now he dies in a parachute accident. And my son, who was, you know, I would like to say he was like an uncle, but he was more like a brother because, you know,

• 44:47Jocko Willink?

  Seth related to this young.

• 44:50Speaker 01

  Was it Thor?

• 44:51Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it was Thor.

• 44:52Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 44:53Jocko Willink?

  And so, you know, Seth and Thor, we all time, we went surfing at four o'clock in the morning, five o'clock in the morning, driving up the coast, going to Mal, like that's what we did. And so after Seth died, maybe three months goes by. And, uh, Thor's, you know, he's, uh, 14, something like this, and he's a tough kid. I mean,

• 45:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:14Jocko Willink?

  I, I was tough on him as a kid. And he's a tough kid and he comes home, doesn't complain about it. He doesn't complain, he knows not to complain, he's not complaining about anything. He doesn't, he's not complaining about the food, he's not complaining about the weather, he's not complaining about anything, he's not complaining. He does, you're not getting anywhere in the Willing family with complaints.

• 45:30Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 45:30Jocko Willink?

  Comes home to me after about three or four months and he goes, you know, dad,

• 45:36Jocko Willink?

  I'm sitting in class and I'm trying to concentrate. And I just keep thinking about Seth.

• 45:45Jocko Willink?

  And I feel sad about it.

• 45:48Jocko Willink?

  And I thought about it, I said, and this was when I made that first connection, I said, well, here's what I want you to do. I want you to go and I want you to write a letter to Seth's mom.

• 45:58Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 45:58Jocko Willink?

  And I want you to explain what you loved about him, what you cared about him, what you did that was fun, what you're never going to forget. And just go do that. And he did it. And he never like, never, never had an issue with it again.

• 46:16Speaker 01

  That's so beautiful and cathartic. And I think you're right. I think that's a real thing. And, you know, I'm no psychiatrist, but it's clear that that's a step in the right direction as opposed to pushing it down, not letting it out. But you talk about the epidemic in your community, I would imagine a lot of guys don't have a lot of outlets.

• 46:32Jocko Willink?

  Oh, no.

• 46:33Speaker 01

  You know, and don't have the wisdom to generate their own personal outlet, like a letter or, you know, whatever it may be. But I just think it's, maybe it's the responsibility of us to reach out to everybody and check in and provide a little bit of an outlet where somebody can let a little air out of that thing and decompress. So tonight's not the night where they make a bad decision.

• 46:53Jocko Willink?

  And you're a hundred percent right because like, like for me and most, my, all my friends, we don't bring work home with us, you know, that's, that's a taboo to say, you know, oh, I had a tough day at work. I'm going to go home and complain to my wife about whatever, or, you know, bring, bring the sorrow from my work to my house. Like we're not doing that. So I'm not going to sit there and tell my wife, hey, here's the bad things that happened to me at work today. Here's, here's what I'm feeling. No, that, this is hard, you know, I, one time my, my, my, one of my daughters said, you know, the, the wifi in my room is not, is not a strong signal, you know? Can we move the, what's the thing called echo that puts the wifi in your house?

• 47:32Speaker 01

  The router.

• 47:33Jocko Willink?

  The router. Can we, can we get that? And I thought to myself, dude, I am, I have succeeded. You know, if my daughter is living in a place where like her complaint is that there's three bars instead of four bars in her room. That's what I always try and keep like, you don't want, it's, it's the bubble that you're putting around your family is what's, it's for real. You want to, you want to protect them from this stuff. So dragging in the misery of war and all this stuff, I'm not bringing that into my house. So most guys, that's their attitude. They don't want to bring the misery of the world into their house.

• 48:05Speaker 01

  I see.

• 48:05Jocko Willink?

  And so they don't have that outlet valve with their family. So you're right, the more that we can do it for our friends, to people that we know, we give them a little place to off gas some of that pressure. So it has somewhere to go. Cause if it doesn't go anywhere, man, it implodes. We've seen that too many times.

• 48:22Speaker 01

  That is extremely well put. And it's very difficult to not think of, and you and I have talked about this and you don't have the bandwidth for it, but I'm just telling you, I feel like you should generate a school or a school system. I just think there is a moment of crisis right now that is so in need and you and I tried to do in the movie. You know what I mean? Without being finger wagging and just irrefutable good advice, irrefutable good, do your homework. Eat well, exercise, be respectful. These aren't red, blue issues. These are irrefutably solid issues that not only will make a better world, you will indeed feel better about yourself and you'll all the while be arming yourself

• 49:03Speaker 01

  for the inevitable thunder clouds that are coming for you. You can't go, I want to go from zero to eighty seven. And I don't want any shitty things to happen to me in my life. That is impossible. There's going to be some terrible, terrible things that happen to you. So you gotta be prepared for them. And I just look at what's going on right now and the grave lack of grit and the degree to which things are kind of flying off the rails and how there just needs to be a calibration. And I know you as a human being. You're a warrior, you're tough, you, you know, you, you got strong arms, you're a judo practitioner, like one of the first times we met, you put me in a, you know, you know, rear naked choke.

• 49:40Jocko Willink?

  Well deserved.

• 49:41Speaker 01

  Well deserved. I had it coming. And um, you know what I mean? And it's just sort of like this idea of a system to raise children to be ready for the world, not just for their outward expression, but for their interior experience as well. And I'm not aware of a school system right now that is not too far to one side of the other or doing it in a balanced capacity. And I just think that, that there should be a balance. It's like, it's like a balanced nutrition. There should be a balanced regimen that takes care of some of these, of these things that is cognizant of the importance of physicality, cognizant of nutrition, cognizant of, of, of service. And it's just not there. And

• 50:25Speaker 01

  the, the degree to which you balance it, because you know, there's a lot of people that worry about like, oh, toxic masculinity and we gotta look out for women and the underserved. I know world for a fact, that's not your boy, Jocko Willink. Jocko has a heart of gold. Jocko has an artist spirit. Jocko is a writer. And Jocko knows a whole hell of a lot about machine guns. They can all be true. And it's just sort of, I think that that's interesting and you're a little bit of a unicorn in that regard. And you know, because there's military slant schools, there's like hardcore left leaning schools. What about balance? Jocko Willink balance, you talk about it, you know, what'd you say, episode five sixty three or where are we? You know what I mean? You've been doing it a long time. Doesn't mean you're not competitive. It doesn't mean that you don't have the fire in your belly, but it's healthy.

• 51:10Speaker 01

  There's grit there, there's drive and there's a desire to leave it better than you found it. It's extremely rare. And it seems hard to fabricate and there's a whole lot of crazy out there. I almost just wish there were just a system of being that we could harness and put out to the world.

• 51:26Jocko Willink?

  Well, we do have the Warrior Kid books. We have the Warrior Kid movie.

• 51:29Speaker 01

  I got it.

• 51:30Jocko Willink?

  Ever since the first Warrior Kid book came out, people have been asking for like, are you gonna do Warrior Kid school? So maybe that's something we do. And it is, you know, just to circle back, that's one of the pivotal moments, not to spoil or alert the movie, but you know, Uncle Jake is, has these, he's got some pressure built up.

• 51:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:48Jocko Willink?

  And one of the pivotal moments is when Mark says, why don't you tell me what happened?

• 51:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:54Jocko Willink?

  And that is exactly what we're talking about. You know, it's exactly what we're talking about because when you, when you let some pressure out, when you explain to people what's going on, when you write about it, when you talk about it, it is a way to help you formulate a plan to get through it. And that's one of the key components of the movie.

• 52:08Speaker 01

  I'm so proud that that, that moment landed and to you the credit, you know, we were working on it in pre-production the whole time, but that, that moment really sticks and it's true. And it's also something that naturally at the top of the film, he's not ready to give it away. Nope, nope. He's got everything out here. He's giving it to Heisman. He's got it in an arm's length and only through hard work and trust did he finally feel comfortable enough to share with Mark what he was going through at one of the most painful physical positions imaginable, the, the gravesite of your friend. So I don't know. I mean, to you, the credit, I wouldn't know about that world. I, I have nothing but respect for those who are willing to, to take up arms and protect what they believe in.

• 52:50Speaker 01

  And um, hopefully we got that more right than wrong with the movie because it's just, it's, it's probably the most proud I've ever been to be a part of a film that matters so much. And I look around the world in the spirit of what we're talking about. And I never want to be like a finger wagon, you need to just lead by example, lead by example. Again, the things that, that constitute the growth in the film are irrefutable and good for you.

• 53:20Speaker 01

  You know what I mean?

• 53:20Jocko Willink?

  And so going back now, facing your fears.

• 53:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:25Jocko Willink?

  You, you get through it. You go, who'd you go back to Warner Brothers?

• 53:28Speaker 01

  Went back to Warner Brothers, we are martial, which is about a football team that crashes in a plane and everybody dies.

• 53:33Jocko Willink?

  And you knew you were gonna film, you filmed it on location.

• 53:36Speaker 01

  Not only did you film it on location, the approach to the airport, the bald spot is still on the mountain. And I knew when I first landed there, I immediately walked from the airplane back to the mountain that was on approach. It was a terribly stormy night. They couldn't, it was back when they didn't have great tech to see through the clouds and what have you. And they stuffed it into the mountain and that was it. Giant bald spot. I sat up there, I reflected, thought about what I was doing and a woman tapped me on the shoulder. And I turned around and she's holding a Letterman jacket of her boy she lost in the flames. And she said, tell the movie honestly, don't hide the pain. The pain defines our town. The pain is who we are and how we rose from the ashes.

• 54:21Speaker 01

  And they put the football team back together. They put the community back together. I got chills thinking about it right now. I didn't know she was there. I thought it went up there by myself. But like, they were so excited about the movie to have a chance to share their story that, you know, they came, they knew, I don't know, they knew we were coming and then somebody walked up there and that's what that was. And it was almost impossible how poetic and, and beautiful that was. And we really tried our hardest and you know, you're buddies of McConaughey and you know, I think McConaughey will be the first to tell you the same thing to this day. So, yeah.

• 54:50Jocko Willink?

  Did you know McConaughey before that?

• 54:52Speaker 01

  No, not really. I mean, you know, just kind of in Hollywood, you see people and you shake hands like, you know, an agent party or some gathering, but you don't really know anybody until you get in the trenches and you, and you grind, you know what I mean? And you know, it's a grind. I mean, there aren't a lot of jobs that have a steward of the state standing by with a stopwatch. Okay, tools down, stop. You're all gonna die on the road home. Like, do you need a hotel room? Are you all right? Cause it's so expensive every day that they, you know, they, they just have us working twenty two hours and then you're ninety minutes from home. And you go to sleep on the freeway and you T-bone the guy next to you. And yeah, it's a grind and that'll build great, great, strong relationships. And I think you experienced that firsthand. I mean, I gotta report to everybody.

• 55:33Speaker 01

  It's not Jocko's responsibility to be at the movie from what's called call, you know, like, hey, we're gonna start at six tomorrow. And then rap is usually twelve hours plus however long lunch took from the last person through the lunch line. It's thirty more minutes. So like, you can pretty much bet if you have a seven o'clock call, you're gonna rap around eight. Then there's a ton of stuff to do after rap, you know? I like to be there every bit of forty five minutes. I've done an hour early before call, get my act together with the DP, the ADs, everybody. Make sure we're tight because it's every day is four hundred, five hundred thousand dollars. You do the thing. And Jocko Willink, for every single day of photography, except if you had to go like give a speech somewhere. You were there at call, you were there at rap, you were, you had a positive attitude, you were the best partner. And I mean,

• 56:19Speaker 01

  I felt good about it because I really like to prep, but people would kid me like, you know, here's this guy with Echelon giving motivational speeches and getting everybody fired up. Who's standing with his, you know, very formidable arms in this position right behind me, nose breath on the back of my neck staring at the monitor. And like, I knew I had to bring my A game or I was gonna disappoint my, my new friend. And one of the most important things to me was to come through for you. I remember going down to San Diego to the gym, you know, I ducked into victory and you weren't that good with Hollywood. You were just like, I don't know, Hollywood seems to let down and not be with it. And me and Ben just kind of kept banging the drum to kind of get the confidence and Pratt came in and we built our community, brick by brick and very, very honestly. And your being there every day really set the tone.

• 57:05Speaker 01

  Cause you just radiate leadership and lead by example. And that's exactly what a film set needs. Listen, without the violence, a film set has a great many similarities to a military procedure, as you might imagine. The, the logistics of feeding, the resting, the how you gotta do to, to be, you know, positioned to be your very best, the whole nine yards.

• 57:23Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 57:23Speaker 01

  And it just, you didn't have to do it, you did it. People out there that listen to your podcasts, you know, like, you don't get out of here and get in a Bentley. And you know, go put your feet and you know, you like to kick out the jams. You'll go rock and roll with Metallica and do your thing. But like, you're all about the word and that's refreshing.

• 57:43Jocko Willink?

  You get done with We Are Marshall, um, that, you know, great movie, great movie, great emotion.

• 57:49Speaker 01

  That one worked out well.

• 57:50Jocko Willink?

  And after that comes out, is this when your brother dies?

• 57:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's another one that's just rough. It's just, my brother had a very strange relationship with cocaine. He, um, you know, he was a smart guy. He was getting a PhD in classical music. And he was always my friend and, um, you know, we, we never really had like, oh, I'm not talking to my brother Nick. They, they called him Nick, short for nickel. Um, so he was just Nick and he was a very good surfer and he was friends with all the guys and popular and better looking and, you know, all this stuff. And, um, he always had a strange relationship with cocaine where he would just get like, a huge amount of it and do it for a couple of days and just kind of like, you know, lock himself in a room type thing, then not do it for like a month. Not like the people, you know, you're from San Diego, did partying down there and, you know, doing what they do.

• 58:40Speaker 01

  Not really that kind of thing. And the whole time, I remember even when I was a kid, first of all, I remember being, call it 11 or 12 and he was 14, 15. And that's what also turned me off to it because my brother and I were, you know, hitting each other in football pads and we were doing the whole thing and playing sports and racing each other. Then he started drifting into doing too many drugs and it bummed me out to lose my friend. You know what I mean? So that was my first, like, I don't really love the drug thing. You know, but anyway, so he had this problem and I knew about it. My older sister didn't really know about it. My parents sure as all didn't know about it. And I know enough about math to know you can't do that for a human life. So you do that for 25 years.

• 59:16Speaker 01

  Cut to, I remember, um, I'm dating a beautiful woman at the time. I'm about to go on this terribly deep pocketed guy, Ron Burkle's private jet to go from LA to New York to go to what's called the up fronts for, you know, I've got like five TV shows going on the air, you know, Terminator is going to come, you know, just, I, I, I'm really in a really good moment. My phone rings. And it's my nephew, my sister's oldest kid, and he's hyperventilating, he's hysterical and he says, Nick's dead.

• 59:48Speaker 01

  So what do you do? You know, your world goes into slow motion. I pull the bags out of the car. I'm on my way to Van Nuys to get on, it's like a, seven sixty seven, like it's not, not a Gulf Stream. It's like a, anyway, Burkle balls hard. And I'm in a daze and I'm driving down to Newport, about an hour from LA down to Newport. My brother's in Newport. I get there, it's the most macabre scene you could ever imagine. The cops are all there, but there's no sound, but the lights are gone. So there's this eerie red and blue light going. Then you see what I never knew was a corner van, which is decidedly underscript, just a white van. And I did the math. I'm like, that's the corner van because my brother's dead body is inside.

• 1:00:27Speaker 01

  And I go inside and my brother's body was still there for whatever police reasons, you know, they hadn't moved yet. And he was in the garage dead. There's a big giant pile of cocaine on the washer and dryer. And, um, yeah, it was just one of the most horrible experiences of my life. And furthermore, maybe this is something you can speak out as a leader of men. I also couldn't go into, my thing about what I need is how, I was so worried about my parents knowing that it was going to put them in the grave. My sister, everybody else, I went immediately into, I gotta, I gotta, I gotta handle this because, you know, my understanding in the world of psychology, there is no more antithetical, difficult thing to endure than burying a child.

• 1:01:12Jocko Willink?

  I can't imagine, can't imagine.

• 1:01:14Speaker 01

  Well, you're in that business, you know what I mean? Where you, you've had to deal with a lot of parents who've had to bury children that were your boys and your, you know, partners and deepest of friends and, you know, brothers in arms. Um, and my understanding is that it makes sense, you know, I haven't done it, but if you reflect on your children or I reflect on that, it, it, it's impossible.

• 1:01:34Jocko Willink?

  Impossible.

• 1:01:34Speaker 01

  It's impossible. And I don't think that hole ever fills. I think you figure out a way to keep living your life, but you don't like, fill the hole and overcome it. It's just a new thing. Anyway, that was unbelievably brutal. Um, I don't wish that on anybody. And the worst part of it about is certainly what it did to my parents. Because I knew, I, I was not one bit surprised. I was as heartbroken as a human being can be, but I wasn't like, oh, Echo, I can't believe it, man. Zero, I can't believe it. I'm like, my brother's doing that. You're gonna, and he had like a major coronary episode as, as, how could you not? He was probably 41 at the time.

• 1:02:14Speaker 01

  And that's just what happened. You can't keep going to that spot and not have something go wrong. And that's what happened. And, um, yeah, it was just a, a, a true, true low point and just the, the difficulty and the sadness of trying to bring my parents out of that hole, a hole they never recovered from and rightfully so. And they did well. You do the best you can and you keep going, but boy, uh, I, I don't wish that on anybody. And I look around at us as parents. That is just not something anybody should have to go through.

• 1:02:45Jocko Willink?

  And they didn't really know about his, you know, about his drug use.

• 1:02:48Speaker 01

  They had no idea, but I knew everything because I was in the rock and roll world and he was, you know, a tertiary part of the rock and roll world. And there were all the guys that were partying and doing the thing and you, everybody, you know, drug addict, you go into a bar with a guy who's looking for cocaine, he finds the other people with cocaine, you know what I mean? Or whatever the drugs are looking for. They all have a unspoken rhythm where they can all find what the score is. And, um, yeah, so I knew it and I was heartbroken and I helped him many times. I put him in rehab twice. There's a lot of guilt of could I have done more? But I think, and I'm sure you've had plenty of people who worked the program on your show and do the thing. You gotta be ready to buy into that program. It's not going to work if you got one foot in and one foot out. It seems to me, you would know a lot more about it.

• 1:03:31Jocko Willink?

  Oh, no, no, it's definitely not going to work. And, and, you know, I, I had a friend who was a very, very, very wealthy guy, you know, pretty much unlimited resources and his son was a, you know, was a junkie.

• 1:03:41Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:03:42Jocko Willink?

  And he said to me, he said, you know, hey, I, I'd kind of just gotten to know him a little bit, met him through some business stuff. And he said, he pulled me aside and said, hey, you know, I, I would really love for you to come talk to my son. My son's like addicted to heroin. He's been in and out of rehab, blah, blah, blah, blah. I said, yeah, of course, you know, no problem. You know, he was, lived in the Midwest. And I said, yeah, you know, I'll get out there, you know, let's set something up and, you know, three weeks later, the, the kid OD'd and died in a, in a park. And talking to the guy afterward, he told me that he had done everything that he could possibly do.

• 1:04:15Jocko Willink?

  Except for, like tough love, cut him off, you're done. Like that's the only, he did, you know, millions of, he said literally millions of dollars worth of rehab and psychoanalysis and all this stuff. The one thing he didn't do is say, uh, hey, you're done. You're not, when you're doing drugs, you cannot, no more money from me. No, no more staying at my house. You, you go live on the street. That's what, that's what, that's what you're going to get. And he never did that because I mean, I can, and I, you know, me, I wasn't like, I can't believe you didn't do that. No, I, I, I can't imagine a parent, I can't imagine what it takes for a parent to get to the point where they go, you know what? You go live in the street, go sleep and possibly OD tonight, or turn tricks or do whatever the hell you gotta do, but I'm not giving you any more money. Like it's very difficult.

• 1:05:00Speaker 01

  Difficult as a parent.

• 1:05:00Jocko Willink?

  To understand what that would take. So that, that idea of like, what else could you do is a very,

• 1:05:07Jocko Willink?

  as you said, unless someone wants to make that change themselves, it's very, very difficult.

• 1:05:14Speaker 01

  I would have fantasies, Jocko, of like, you know, God, my brother just could have gone to Wyoming and worked on a farm up at four in the morning, shovel shit, feed the chickens, break your back in the sun. Eat a square meal, go to bed, wake up and do it again, be away from the environment, away from the influences. I mean, that's kind of I, ideal and hard to do, but sometimes I beat up on myself that I think that could have been something, you know, and I don't mean for two weeks, six weeks. Every bit of a year, if not five years, don't come off that mountain, change your life and re-rack your worldview. And just, you know, you, you're not around it on the farm. You wake up at four in the morning and discipline equals freedom.

• 1:05:56Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it doesn't work like that.

• 1:05:57Speaker 01

  I know.

• 1:05:58Jocko Willink?

  You know, I, I have another friend that in the seventies took his cousin and like, like abducted him and put him in the cellar to, and like handcuffed him to like a pole. It to, to get him to stop. And then like, once he was, once he'd gone through withdrawals, right? He'd gone through the withdrawals and then said, okay, we're just slowly, like slowly reintroduce him to the world and like, had him a hundred percent clean and sober and kept tight control over him. And the minute that he said, you know, okay, you know, obviously you're good to go. You have all, I can't believe, thank you so much, the whole nine yards. Done.

• 1:06:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:35Jocko Willink?

  They just, it, it, people gotta want to make it happen. They really do.

• 1:06:39Speaker 01

  I know. And then, uh, you know, it gets into also just as a parent, like, you know, you know, from your kids, I got my three kids. I mean, am I going to go three for three? Are my, all three of my kids going to navigate all those challenges today? Now you got social media. Again, the jury's in that it's bad for you. Our movie talks a lot about that in a roundabout way. Um, on and on. It's a dangerous world, but I mean, what can we do but keep trying? Here comes AI. Can't wait to get into AI with you and what that's all about. I'm sure you've had incredible guests that are so insightful about that. But, um, yeah, it's a wild world.

• 1:07:11Jocko Willink?

  Terminator Salvation. How'd you get that gig?

• 1:07:14Speaker 01

  I went and begged Jim Cameron to give it to me. I was lucky enough to get Christian Bale to want to be a part of it. Chris Nolan's brother Jonathan, who goes by Jonah Nolan, wrote it for us. You know, that was during a writer's strike, so it kind of disrupted the, the writing flow and our flow. I think we got a lot right with that movie, but a couple of things wrong. Like, it's not, we thought, Christian Bale, this is on the heels of Batman. He's the most credible guy in the world. You know, Jonah Nolan, brother of Chris Nolan, Sam Rockwell, or Sam Rockwell, Sam Worthington, Sam Rockwell's in Charlie's Angels, won the Academy Award. Sam Worthington from Avatar, you know, some, again, it's this Jim Cameron triangle. We really tried to put the pieces together, respect the hardcore, and it did really well. Movie made like, you know, three hundred seventy, four hundred million dollars,

• 1:07:59Speaker 01

  which back then was a whole lot of money. So there's no shame in it, but I wanted it to break the world. And it was, it was fine. You know what I mean? Which was extremely painful for me because I wanted to get it right so desperately. And I feel like we just missed by an inch. I mean, people don't be like, that sucked dude. What's wrong with you?

• 1:08:17Jocko Willink?

  When you look at it, was it like the way you put it together?

• 1:08:20Speaker 01

  No, I think it's the way we finished it. I mean, I think everybody really dug the way, you know, Bryce Dallas Howard's in it. She's got so much credibility. Sam Worthington, equal credibility. Hello, Avatar. And it's just, movie making is extremely difficult. Nobody sets out to make a bad movie. Look at your favorite filmmakers. You don't like all the movies the same. Do you like every Tarantino movie as much as your favorite Tarantino movie? So it is what it is, and that was still a net super positive. It was awesome and I liked the movie a lot. And it was a thrill to be a part of that lineage. And now look at the world we're living in. Where you got, you know, I forget which robot company it was that has their robots now jumping into the cauldron.

• 1:08:59Speaker 01

  Did you see that this week? You know, as they're moving on to the 2.0 of the robot, they're getting rid of their old robots by have programming them to on their own, jump into the molten metal, like the end of Terminator two. It's wild. The world's so wild.

• 1:09:12Jocko Willink?

  Echo Charles, so Echo is the resident Terminator expert.

• 1:09:17Speaker 01

  What's up Echo? How did I, Echo? How did I miss?

• 1:09:20Speaker 02

  No, that's what I wanted, because, you know, like, especially when you're thinking of it kind of from scratch. It's hard to be like, oh, that was done wrong. But when, when Terminator Salvation came out, after I watched it, I was like, yeah, that, I mean, I don't get, what part do you think you missed on?

• 1:09:38Speaker 01

  I think the ending, we, we had a very, very dark ending that the studio just wasn't down with going for. Where he was gonna wake up and be the bad guy after the heart exchange and kill everyone, go to black. And it would have been like, oxygen out of theater, bummer, you know, but maybe talked about for eternity. You know what I mean? Of just like, it really was a dupe. And, you know, it, which is sort of like that old movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers. You see the person who you think is your friend. Then they turn to you and do the like mouth open point thing. And you're like, you realize you lost them to the dark side.

• 1:10:11Speaker 02

  And that, that seems like a thing, right? In Hollywood, sometimes where that dark ending could have been, in some people's opinion, would have been better, but just wouldn't have, wouldn't have floated.

• 1:10:23Speaker 01

  I think people just get nervous. You've got so many hundreds of millions of dollars in play. They're scared to just go, can we do the dark thing? And, you know, potentially shit the bed. That's pretty high stakes. So it's hard to tell them, you know, that they're being ridiculous. And also you test the movie. You remember testing our movie? And it's just, you know, you, you listen to what the people want and there really is something to be said by that. Like, if the three of us want to make a movie, great. You and I'll put some chips together. We'll make our movie and nobody can tell us what to do. But if we're gonna go take a hundred million dollars from, you know, David Ellison or somebody else like that, I think it is arrogant and ridiculous to act like we're only gonna do what we want to do. We don't care. When you pay for your movie, you can do whatever you want to do. And nowadays, you really can do that. You can raise enough movie to make a first rate film

• 1:11:07Speaker 01

  and have no compromises. Distribution's a little tough, but not as tough as it used to be with YouTube and what. Look at you. Look at how self-made you are. Did some giant media conglomerate come down and pull you out of San Diego and give you?

• 1:11:20Jocko Willink?

  Well, they definitely tried.

• 1:11:21Speaker 01

  I know, but you did it on your own and you're better for it. Same thing with Chaco Fuel, same thing with Origin, same thing with, you know, what you're doing with the Warrior Kid rollout. So, I don't know. It's all, it's all give and take in that regard.

• 1:11:32Speaker 02

  So.

• 1:11:33Speaker 01

  In what way did that movie let you down and what way did it thrill you?

• 1:11:36Speaker 02

  It did not let me down. I mean, aside from my personal, like, if it was more gory, you know, kind of a thing. But that was just me. But to me, that wasn't something that you could write down on paper and say, that's what's wrong with the movie.

• 1:11:50Speaker 01

  Because I don't think it was grossly wrong. I don't think anybody looks and go, that sucked, man. What the hell?

• 1:11:54Speaker 02

  Right. It was freaking amazing. Like, to me, that was such a good, especially when it came out, that was such a good, like, portrayal of the future that we kind of imagined. Especially when you go back to Terminator, the first one, and they just had little flashes of it and stuff, which was well done for the, for 1984. But now this is the updated shit. See what I'm saying? And everything, all that updated technology film, you know, all these techniques and stuff, the way it presented the future to me was spot on. Even just, even down to the color grade.

• 1:12:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, the way the color looked was very, you know, drained and monochromatic and just sort of tried to create this oppressive, dirty, difficult, post-apocalyptic world. But I'll, I'll ask you guys, it's hard to make a sequel. Like, I really dug the first Charlie's Angels. The second one wasn't as good. It's just hard. What's a better sequel in the history of film? There's probably three or five tops. I mean, maybe Godfather two, but Godfather one's just as good. Maybe Aliens, which was Jim Cameron, whereas Ridley Scott was the first, maybe. People might go, no, Alien. You know, it's, it's, it's a shortlist. So it's like, I came in, I was the fourth Terminator movie. It's hard to go, now we're gonna take it up

• 1:13:05Speaker 01

  several levels. It's just extremely, I mean, I liked Rocky two very much, but can you say you liked it better than Rocky? I don't know, man. That's really tough. But Terminator two was even better than Terminator one. That's the one where you go, dude, you know what I mean?

• 1:13:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, but as far as like your concern, as far as how the, at the end of the day, when the movie was, was delivered, what do you, is there even anything that you were like, mm, I think that could have been done, like concrete?

• 1:13:31Speaker 01

  For me, it's singularly focused on the ending and the prospect of having, it didn't work out ending, which would have been haunting and depressing, but maybe super badass. And maybe would have resulted in a cult classic. And maybe would have just been the demise of the film having any commercial success. Because everybody made their chips on that movie, which was good, but we thought we were gonna break it wide open. We thought we had, you know, Transformers level juggernaut. And we did well, but we didn't, we didn't break the bank.

• 1:13:58Speaker 02

  So that movie, the little additional little tidbit of trivia that Jocko kinda knows about, we've talked about it on a podcast. Terminator Salvation has the best trailer.

• 1:14:09Speaker 01

  That trailer is badass.

• 1:14:10Speaker 02

  How it landed on me and what inspired my whole thing.

• 1:14:13Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:14:14Speaker 02

  Terminator Salvation.

• 1:14:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:15Speaker 02

  The day the whole world went away.

• 1:14:16Speaker 01

  I'm gonna come over this table and just start grappling with you right now, damn it.

• 1:14:21Speaker 02

  So, you know, from a, from a huge fan, hey, well done.

• 1:14:24Speaker 01

  That is very kind of you to say, my friend. That's very kind. I gotta let everybody know that, you know, Echo really gave all in Warrior Kid because he had to, he was grappling and he was doing his thing. We're sweating, we're in a tight little set. And, you know, he's in the background of every shot. So it wasn't like, hey, man, the cameras are off you. You can chill. We were constantly grinding. And you killed it, man. You did the best.

• 1:14:46Jocko Willink?

  Well, that's where the quote comes from because at some point during the day, you're, you're a great leader. And, you know, it was a long day. It was one of those long days. And, you know, the people that are extras, which, were you an extra? Was that pretty much?

• 1:14:59Speaker 01

  Say background actor.

• 1:15:00Jocko Willink?

  Background actor, like Echo Charles, they're out there, you know, they're just doing the same thing over and over. He's getting thrown, he's doing the thing. He's getting thrown, he's doing the thing. He's getting thrown, he's doing the thing. He's getting, over and over and over. That's what everyone's doing. And like randomly, randomly, as we're, you know, the camera stops or something, we're filming something, and we cut. And you go, you go, hey, guys in the cage. This is, it's Echo and, who was it? Echo and Ryan. Hey, guys in the cage. You guys kind of look over, he goes, thank you so much for providing excellence and legitimacy to this scene. And thank you. Boom. All right. We, we went back to it and I noted, I saw, I looked over at Echo and he gave me the nod, like, there you go. Excellence and legitimacy to the scene was brought by Echo Charles.

• 1:15:44Speaker 01

  It was, it was. That's stone cold truth.

• 1:15:50Jocko Willink?

  What's it like? So you, you mean, you set your expectations so high for Terminator Salvation that anything less than atomic blockbuster wasn't good enough?

• 1:16:01Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 1:16:01Jocko Willink?

  That's pretty much where you are.

• 1:16:02Speaker 01

  Of course. But that's the risk you take. If you and I go, hey, man, we're gonna go do Star Wars, anything other than Star Wars juggernaut, change the world is a disappointment. You're gonna take those kicks. But I'm, dude, maybe I should have been more afraid of taking the kicks, but that's one thing, I'm not afraid of taking kicks. And I just kind of feel like if you're gonna go through hell, don't come out empty handed. Learn a lesson, deploy it and try again. I mean, not everything is gonna work out. And that's one thing that I've never had trouble with. Even to the point of, you know, some people thinking I'm, because look, I, I don't have a rich uncle in Hollywood. So for me to abandon going to med school to say, I'm gonna start a record label, seemed insane.

• 1:16:41Speaker 01

  For me to say, the first movie I'm gonna do is be a movie of the magnitude and the size and the complexity of a Charlie's Angels movie with Cameron Diaz and Drew Barrymore, Lucy Liu, Bill Murray, Sam Rockwell, you know, as the first time ever. And people go, God, man, were you nervous that first day? And I say, not one bit. I was so ready. I just, I'd shot enough film and music videos and commercials. I knew exactly what I wanted to do. I feel like, I felt like the world was ready for the thing I was gonna do and nobody else is doing it yet. And I just couldn't have gotten after it harder. And just felt great. Back to the, it's weird. Most people have anxiety and I'm worried about the, mean nothing. I couldn't get there fast enough. I knew exactly what to do. The guy who was shooting the movie, Russell Carpenter,

• 1:17:24Speaker 01

  just won the Academy Award for Titanic. You know what I mean? And I was like, Russell, I want an eight millimeter on the ground right here. We're gonna roll a 48 frames. We're ready to go. I want to shoot it at a 16. I really want that depth of field. And it's just like, everybody knew, you know, like, I knew what I wanted and I just, it, it became, it was very, very natural for it.

• 1:17:46Jocko Willink?

  Well, shooting it, cause you, we didn't really talk about it, but you're doing like high end advertisements for Coke and like stuff like that. That's kind of transition from you were doing videos, your videos were, your music videos were doing so well that people in the advertisement world said, hey dude, we could use you to do something here.

• 1:18:00Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, at that time there was, the gap was floundering. Okay. And there was a guy named Mickey Drexler who was running the gap, my understanding. And he was like, we need a new idea. So we all got together and there were several people, but the idea was pitched as led by me and a couple of other guys and girls. Of, you know, let's get good looking, healthy, no makeup, boys and girls in khaki pants on a white psyche. A white psyche means that stage that has no beginning and no ending. It's just kind of white. You just saw it on our stage over here. And they're going to dance, you know, we'll do one that's hip hop, we'll do one that's country, we'll do one that's soul.

• 1:18:38Speaker 01

  And that really reinvigorated the gap. So that was a big win for us and we won all the awards that year. So that helped, but it didn't help enough. To say that Sony would be like, yeah, get that guy to do Charlie's Angels. It really took Drew and it took Quentin. And it was still begrudging. And then all the way through it, those guys, you know, literally came down to fire me a couple of times and only Drew, cause she was so powerful.

• 1:19:02Jocko Willink?

  What were you getting fired for? Over budget, over time?

• 1:19:03Speaker 01

  It was too cool. No, no, not over budget, not over time. Why is it so colorful? Why is everybody singing and dancing? Is this a drama? Am I laughing? What the, what, how come when Cameron kicks somebody, she flies through the air and does three kicks in the air before landing? The final one. And I'm like, cause it's going to be bitchin'. It's going to be original. People will feel respected. It's going to make you feel a way you've never felt before. That's the answer. And they would go, and they just barely not fire me. And they go back to the mothership, you know, and then we tested it and uh, it, it worked and it worked. And the guy who was the head of physical production, tough dude, big dude, 350 pound dude.

• 1:19:43Speaker 01

  You know, came from like the I A T C, you know, docs culture of like his dad was a big guy in Hollywood. The guy's name was Gary Martin. I had to go down and see him. The head of the studio sent me down there and Gary's like, I don't want you to make this movie. I don't think this is a movie for a first time guy. And if you go one minute overtime on any given day, I'm going to come down there and I'm going to yank you by the back of the neck off that set and I'm going to unplug the generator. You know what I mean? I said, yes, sir. And I thought he meant it and I never, I shot, it was a 100 day film, which is long. And I shot for a hundred days without doing one minute of overtime. And I wanted to do a lot of overtime, but I never did. And you know, I finally went back and I reported to Gary, I did the whole movie. There was no overtime. He goes, oh, that was just bullshit. I just wanted.

• 1:20:28Speaker 01

  And we became great friends after that, but like I took him at his word and, and just really, you know, had to be focused and that much more ready for the whole thing. So that was it. And then the TV thing, guys weren't making TV shows who had good luck in features. But my agent is Ari Emanuel, who you know, is a very famous guy nowadays and done extremely well and has a lot of fabled stories about fights and you know, things he had to do to, to land where he ultimately landed. But he goes, you're going to make a TV show. I go, no, I'm a feature guy. He goes, no, you're going to make a TV show. And I met a really smart guy from Providence, Rhode Island named Josh Schwartz, who was going to USC and he had the idea for something about Orange County and we came up with the OC together.

• 1:21:12Speaker 01

  Because I was that dude, the Seth Cohen character. I mean, Josh is like, hey, I'm a Jewish guy from Providence, Rhode Island, going to uh, USC with all the strapping water polo dudes and you know, no shirt jacked, six, five, two 50 of just rippling muscle. And I go, I was that guy, you know, like chickening out on the beach while all those very dudes were going surfing when it was pumping with like a south at the point. Or the wedge was grinding or anything. And I'm like, I'm not going out. So that was what we bonded upon for the point of entry. And we had the OC, which was also very culturally significant. For the years that it ran. And then we had the show Supernatural, which is the most successful science fiction television show in the history of American television.

• 1:21:54Jocko Willink?

  Ran for how long? How long?

• 1:21:55Speaker 01

  15 years.

• 1:21:56Jocko Willink?

  And what was, so what were, so what did you have to do with that?

• 1:21:59Speaker 01

  I created the show with the corresponding showrunners. So it was just funny because every time you have a showrunner as a kid, they, you need like a big, strong person in the community to go, I will be the guarantor to make this show is great. And you forget how young I was. I did Charlie's Angels at 29 years old. Agoraphobic, 29 years old, not the best backstop, you know, you could think of. But I was the guy that had to take, you know, Eric Kripke was the guy who created Supernatural. Josh Schwartz was the OC guy. They're only about 18 months younger than me, but I was regarded as like the heavy that knew the ropes in Hollywood. They would make sure these kids, you know, didn't screw it up. So it was kind of funny and like the lunatics were running the asylum, but it worked very well.

• 1:22:41Speaker 01

  Because again, it's also the arts. I want to talk about you and how somebody that has the clarity of thought and has the proficiency that you've clearly demonstrated in a military capacity has maintained your artistic soul. I don't know if your audience knows the degree to which you are an artist. And you are a writer, you are a proper through and through writer, your verbal acuity, your word command. And then you show up and you act. Jocko, I don't want to hear about it from anybody. You're great in the movie. I'm not winding you up. This is editorial. No notes. You're, we'll tell that story, but you're great in the movie. You, you know, I know it wasn't a stretch. You weren't playing, you know, the elephant man.

• 1:23:20Speaker 01

  But like, but still dude, it was really, really clean and really authentic and exactly what we needed at that moment. Hey, new guy, get over here. Like it just, it was so authentic. It's just, I've been that kid at that class and you just filled that role. But how do you maintain your artistic side while living in a tough world?

• 1:23:43Jocko Willink?

  I think that's just very natural, I think. And, and there's a, there's a

• 1:23:46Speaker 01

  For you, not for many.

• 1:23:48Jocko Willink?

  There's a whole thing. So, so

• 1:23:51Jocko Willink?

  military, what you see on the outside of the military, right? There's a great book. It's called the Psychology of Military Incompetence. It's a great book. It's written by a guy that was in World War II, was a British guy. He was wounded in World War II. You know, fought hard, was wounded, got done with the war, went and became a psychologist. And he wrote this book called the Psychology of Military Incompetence. And what he figures out in this book is that, well, the way the military looks from the outside is like, okay, everyone's wearing the same uniform, everyone respects the rank. If I'm in charge and I give an order, everyone's going to have to listen to me. And when people that have an authoritarian mind, which by the way, is a closed mind, which by the way, is not a creative mind.

• 1:24:32Jocko Willink?

  When people see that from the outside, many of those people with that authoritarian closed mind, they get attracted to it. Cause they think, oh, if I can put the rank on my collar, I will be the guy's in charge and finally everyone will have to listen to me. That's what's going to happen. And that's exactly what I want. So the military attracts people like that. Those people, generally speaking, they perform very well in what we call a garrison environment. Meaning in the rear, meaning on the parade field, meaning inspecting the barracks, meaning doing uniform inspections. All the cheesy, what they call chicken shit. They call that, in the military, they call that stuff chicken shit. In that world, these authoritarian, closed minded people, they do very, very well.

• 1:25:16Speaker 01

  I see.

• 1:25:17Jocko Willink?

  Where they don't do well is in combat. Because in combat, the enemy gets a vote. The timeline doesn't matter anymore. The people that listen to you and obeyed you without question, when you told them, hey, McG, I want your, I want, I want you here at zero 900 in this uniform. You do it. Of course you're going to do it. But when I say, McG, I want you to charge that machine gun nest and you might die. There's a whole nother McG I might get back on, hey, I'm not charging that machine gun nest. So I have to actually learn how to interact with other human beings.

• 1:25:49Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:25:49Jocko Willink?

  So what you end up with, the military has a stereotype, stereotype of the leadership being what you see in a, in full metal, the first 45 minutes of Full Metal Jacket. I'm going to yell and scream and that's what leadership is like. That does not work in actual combat.

• 1:26:03Speaker 01

  I see.

• 1:26:04Jocko Willink?

  And so what you really, what they really, the people that do well in combat are people that have a creative mind, people that are

• 1:26:10Speaker 01

  Interesting.

• 1:26:11Jocko Willink?

  People that can, can envision things in a different manner, people that listen, people that pay attention. Those are the people that do well in combat. And so the military is filled with people like that. Military is filled with people that are highly creative. And sometimes the people that are highly creative, they have a hard time during peacetime. Because there's no war going on. And so when they get told, you know, be at this time, this, this uniform, they go, dude, what the hell are you talking, why are we doing that? It's a waste of time. I want to go freaking Metallica's playing tonight. You know, I'm going to go see them. Let me get the day off. They don't, they don't fit well sometimes in the garrison situations. Now I'll tell you, I

• 1:26:49Jocko Willink?

  did well in both. Like I, I knew that in order to, in order to get where you need to be, you gotta be good in garrison. You gotta be able to play that game. And I played that game well. And the political thing and the, the way that you interact, the way you communicate, the way that you communicate with the troops is different than the way you communicate with the commanding officer, which is different than the way you communicate with the admirals and the generals. And because of, I'm very lucky in my career path. I was an enlisted guy, was with the troops. I was one of the boys. And then I got elevated to an officer position and all of a sudden I could still knew how to speak their language.

• 1:27:18Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:27:18Jocko Willink?

  And eventually was the admiral's aide. And so now I was communicating with the, I was sitting in rooms with the four star, literally the four star and the, the secretary of defense. I'm in the, I'm in the meeting. I hear how these guys are talking. And I'm going, okay, I understand how these people are talking. So I learned how to speak these different languages. And that's, you know, was very beneficial in, in my career. Not so much for my career myself, but when it came time for me to get something for the boys, I knew how to tell the bosses. I knew how to talk to them. And so I could take care of my platoon. I could take care of my task unit very well, because I could build good relationships up the chain of command. And every, to get to the question that you had, when you look at a target.

• 1:28:00Jocko Willink?

  It is an exercise in creativity.

• 1:28:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:28:03Jocko Willink?

  That's what it is. When you write a concept of operations, it is an exercise in creativity. When you write someone's evaluation so they can get promoted, it's an exercise in creativity. You're, you're, that's why I studied English. By the way, I went to college. I had been in the Navy for, I guess 10, 10 years. I had been in the Navy for 10 years before I went to college. When I went to college, I said, I'm going to study English. Why the hell are you going to study English? Because I had already learned that the most important skill that you can have as an officer is being able to write well, being able to read well, being able to speak well. So I'm going to study English. So I can take this thing and I can do it at a higher level. So I can take care of my guys more.

• 1:28:45Jocko Willink?

  So everything that you do in the military, if you frame it correctly, is absolutely an exercise in creativity. So that's the main part of the answer. The other part of the answer is I love music. I love movies. I love rock and roll. Like that's just, I mean, I played, I had, I had freaking band practice last night. We ripped for, you know, an hour and a half. We ripped for an hour and a half. We played four songs. You know what I mean? Every song is like a complete, you know, a journey into wherever. And we're never going to play those songs again. That's what's happening. So I think that's just something that's always been in me, you know, always.

• 1:29:22Speaker 01

  But you're rare, you're rare. Jocko, what is your solution to the Arab Israeli conflict? And in particular, the war right now with Iran.

• 1:29:33Jocko Willink?

  The war with Iran?

• 1:29:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:29:34Jocko Willink?

  Or the Arab Israeli conflict?

• 1:29:35Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, it's a war with Iran. Let's, let's, let's narrow it down.

• 1:29:40Jocko Willink?

  My solution from the current.

• 1:29:41Speaker 01

  You've inherited what it is today on, what do I say, October 10th?

• 1:29:45Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 1:29:45Speaker 01

  You've inherited it and now you're, you've got the ball and you're in the White House. How do you move forward?

• 1:29:51Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Well, first of all.

• 1:29:52Speaker 01

  I say this because you can't speak the way you just spoke and not have all of us excited about you being the Secretary of Defense. Or maybe you got to run for governor of California. But how, how would you manage the war with Iran right here, right now?

• 1:30:05Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So I think it's, first of all, there, I would, I would initiate the whole process by getting probably like six days worth of briefings.

• 1:30:18Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 1:30:18Jocko Willink?

  Of things that we don't know, right?

• 1:30:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:30:21Jocko Willink?

  There's all these things that we don't know.

• 1:30:23Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:30:23Jocko Willink?

  That are, that are shaping the decisions that are getting made. There are things that we don't know that we can't know because you're going to burn sources.

• 1:30:30Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:30:30Jocko Willink?

  There's information that gets gathered. So there's a lot of that that gets missed by the American.

• 1:30:34Speaker 01

  So you'd collect the data.

• 1:30:35Jocko Willink?

  You'd collect the data.

• 1:30:35Speaker 01

  You'd understand the score.

• 1:30:37Jocko Willink?

  And, and then what, you know, one of the things that, so it, it appears to be sort of a modern day siege warfare. Meaning, you know, in the old days, you got the bad guys in the castle. Well, you don't attack the castle. You just surround the castle and they're going to run out of food and water. And that's, that appears to me like what will end up happening in Iran. We'll kind of do siege warfare on them. Eventually they're not going to have the money. They're not going to have the food. They're not going to, they're not going to have the infrastructure anymore. And they're just going to kind of not be able to do anything. I mean, it seems like that's kind of getting to a point where they're at right now.

• 1:31:12Speaker 01

  Seems that way.

• 1:31:13Jocko Willink?

  So that's that, you know, to unfortunately,

• 1:31:19Jocko Willink?

  we gave them a little bit of leverage, right? And I don't like to give other people leverage. I don't like an outcome that I'm going into to be based on what McG is going to do. I want it to be based on what I'm going to do, right?

• 1:31:30Speaker 01

  Very, very fairly.

• 1:31:31Jocko Willink?

  I'm going to do this and what McG does, he can do this, he can do that, but that's not the predictor of the outcome that I'm looking for. I'm only going to tell you, and I'm only going to rely on what I am going to do.

• 1:31:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:31:42Jocko Willink?

  What you do, you can fight, you can struggle. It doesn't, it doesn't really matter to me. Here's what I'm doing. That's what I'm going to do. When I'm done with it, I'm done. There's, you have almost no say in the outcome. So that's, I like to set things up like that. And that's the way I would kind of operate.

• 1:31:56Speaker 01

  Where are you on the deployment of the Lincoln?

• 1:32:03Speaker 01

  As one who would know.

• 1:32:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So I, I did, I was in the SEAL teams, but I did three shipboard deployments. And I have a friend that's a Hollywood guy that, you know, wrote me a, sent me a text. And he said, I can't believe what's going on in the Abraham, on the Abraham Lincoln. And I said, yeah, I, I can't believe that people are surprised by it. And he was kind of like, what, what, what do you mean? Listen, when you're on a ship, ships, they're not, they're not cruise ships.

• 1:32:32Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:32:33Jocko Willink?

  They are freaking warships. And when you're on a warship, you know, the, when you look at the hierarchy of what the hierarchy of importance of where the focus of taking care of the warship goes, the, the crew is not at the top of that list. The aircraft are at the top of the list. The bombs are at the top of the list. The, the communications gear is at the top of the list. All those things are what the crew is there to serve. So if you can either get, you know, gas for the planes or a crab and lobster for the troops, the planes are going to get the gas. That's the way it works. I mean, I did, I did shipboard, I did shipboard deployments where we ate chicken patties three meals a day for weeks.

• 1:33:15Jocko Willink?

  You know, cause it, hey, with it, with, until that supply ship shows up with some carrots and some lettuce and some apples. Hey, we're down to chicken patties. That's what we're getting. That's what we're eating. Chicken patties for breakfast, you might have chicken patties with muffins. For lunch, you might have a chicken patties with bread. For dinner, you might have chicken patties on a bun.

• 1:33:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:33:33Jocko Willink?

  You see, that's what you're getting.

• 1:33:34Speaker 01

  I understand completely.

• 1:33:35Jocko Willink?

  Uh, you see pictures of, of, of the, of the bathrooms on a, on a ship? They look gross. They are gross, bro. Like there's 5,000 people on an aircraft carrier. There, there's a bunch of people using those heads. It's like, that's, that's, they look like shit. They're, they're nasty. And you go in there, you do your best to clean them. But you know, this thing's been on, I, I forget how old the Abraham Lincoln is. But when they go and refurbish the Abraham Lincoln, when it goes into dry dock, they refurbish the mechanisms, the warfighting mechanisms on that. And then they clean up the toilets a little bit. That's the way it is. So, uh, conditions on a warship for the crew are not good.

• 1:34:13Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:34:14Jocko Willink?

  They're not good. That's normal. And the supply officers, they're doing the best they can to get a new supply ship to come in. Let's get some steak. We could, we might be able to get, I mean, can you imagine trying to get 5,000 steaks? Like it's, it's hard. They do it. They do it.

• 1:34:27Speaker 01

  I don't know how the logistics on that works.

• 1:34:29Jocko Willink?

  They do it. But they can't do it all the time, especially in a warfighting capacity. So when I looked at it, you know, uh, it's, it's hard and it was a long deployment, you know, that sucks. By the way, all Navy deployments used to be nine months long.

• 1:34:44Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:34:44Jocko Willink?

  Then they became six months. The army, the army deploys for a year. And by the way, the army also gets extended to 14 months, 16 months. I mean, I have friends that deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan for 14 months, 15 months, like that's, and that's army. That's our army. Occasionally like a guy in joint special operations, somebody like, there might be a SEAL that deploys with an army in an army capacity that goes for a year. But most of the time the army and the Marine Corps do six month deployments. So the Abraham Lincoln was gone for a long time. That sucks, man. It sucks for the families. They're back home. They're, they're looking at that calendar for, for, for five months and 29 days. They're looking at that calendar going, dad's going to be home or mom's going to be home on this day. And then they get, uh, actually it's not that day. Actually it's another month, another month. Yeah, that sucks.

• 1:35:27Jocko Willink?

  That sucks. It's, it's, it's very hard on the family. But these are, these are warfighters. These sailors are out there. That's what they do. That's their job. That's what they do.

• 1:35:34Speaker 01

  I understand.

• 1:35:35Jocko Willink?

  So do we want our sailors, soldiers, sailors, airmen and marine to have the best living capacity we absolutely can? Of course we want that. Are they going to have it when there's a theater war going on? Nope. They're not going to have it. You know, my first trip to Iraq, we were eating MREs. Like that's what you're eating. And then eventually they set some stuff up and you can get, they hire some locals and they start bringing in some freaking lamb or whatever. Like you start to get home cooked food.

• 1:36:03Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:36:03Jocko Willink?

  You know, but it takes time. So that's, you know, the Abraham Lincoln, they just got back. I'm so, so glad that they're back and, and they, they fulfilled their mission and got after it. And did they get the best food? Nope. Uh, did they get, do you have, is it comfortable living on a ship? Nope. It sucks living on a ship. It sucks. If you're, if you're thinking about joining the Navy, it's a freaking hard life being on a Navy ship. It's not, it's, the Navy ship is not there to take care of the crew. The Navy ship is there to send, to send

• 1:36:35Speaker 01

  The munitions.

• 1:36:36Jocko Willink?

  Men and munitions into harms way. And that's what it does. So that's, you know, that's what the, that's what's going on with the Abraham Lincoln.

• 1:36:42Speaker 01

  This is so much more interesting than McG. Last question. Who is the greatest MMA fighter of all time?

• 1:36:51Jocko Willink?

  I got a couple there. So you know who Fedor Amelian Echo is?

• 1:36:55Speaker 01

  How dare you?

• 1:36:55Jocko Willink?

  Okay, I'm just, just, just checking, just checking.

• 1:36:57Speaker 01

  Should I jump over this table and tackle Echo?

• 1:36:59Jocko Willink?

  You know, Fedor, his name is always, always there.

• 1:37:04Speaker 01

  He had an incredible run.

• 1:37:06Jocko Willink?

  He had an incredible run. You know, Sakuraba.

• 1:37:10Speaker 01

  No GSP.

• 1:37:11Jocko Willink?

  Uh, GSP is great. You know, I guess we have to determine what we're talking about here. If you want to talk about their linear kind of.

• 1:37:18Speaker 01

  I'm not mad at Fedor. I think that's an incredible choice. What about Habib?

• 1:37:22Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, I like Habib. Um, obviously clearly a dominant, I'm a grappler. He was a very dominant grappler. You know, did he have?

• 1:37:34Speaker 01

  What, the striking?

• 1:37:35Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, the striking, but did he, did he, did he have, he didn't really have like, like a, like a Larry Bird, Magic Johnson. He didn't have a Magic Johnson. You know what I mean? He didn't have someone that was kinda there to, to push him to the next level.

• 1:37:46Speaker 01

  We were hoping it was gonna be Connor, but it didn't pan out.

• 1:37:49Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's, you know, this goes back to the, to the age old striking versus grappling, right? Striking versus grappling, that, that, that's, that's kind of a, that's kind of a moot point. Like grappling is going to beat striking when, when you have some purists. Now, I'm not saying that Connor was a pure striker, cause he's certainly not. And I'm not saying that, that Habib was a, a pure grappler, cause he's not. But they were so prominent in those two categories that it really did become a striking versus grappler scenario. And you had someone that was that much better at grappling and it's gonna go the way it's gonna go.

• 1:38:29Speaker 01

  I understand. If you practice Brazilian Jiu Jitsu as a normal human being, what benefits will you see in your life?

• 1:38:37Jocko Willink?

  You'll see benefits in all aspects of your life.

• 1:38:40Speaker 01

  I figured.

• 1:38:41Jocko Willink?

  Yep. Um, first of all, you're, you're, first of all, you're gonna get a workout.

• 1:38:44Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:38:45Jocko Willink?

  Right? You are going to get cardio workout, you're gonna get strength workout. You're gonna get mobility workout, cause you're gonna use some muscles that you haven't, you don't really even know are there, but you're moving in some weird ways. You are going to be cognitively challenged. Because you've gotta learn and you've gotta, you've gotta learn things. And you've gotta look at them with a creative, from a creative viewpoint. And that's actually a very interesting point. So my daughter Rana, my, my, my daughter Rana did Jiu Jitsu as a kid, stopped doing Jiu Jitsu, wrestled. And then got back into Jiu Jitsu. And we first, when she first got back into Jiu Jitsu, this goes into the, the creative mindset, right? I was a little worried that when she got back into Jiu Jitsu, wrestling is much more linear in its thought, right?

• 1:39:30Jocko Willink?

  It's just, it's just, there's not as much to do. You have, there's more rules, more rules, there's more constraints. You can't be as creative in wrestling. Not that wrestling is not creative, but it's less creative than Jiu Jitsu. And I wasn't sure if Rana was going to have that creative, open mind that is required to become great at Jiu Jitsu. It's required. You can become a great wrestler with a closed mind. You don't have to be a creative person. And no, no slack to wrestling. Wrestling is probably the best martial art to have. A basin.

• 1:40:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:40:04Jocko Willink?

  For sure.

• 1:40:05Speaker 01

  Prior to jumping.

• 1:40:05Jocko Willink?

  I am, I am an absolute, I am, I'm a massive fan of wrestling. But you can be a closed minded, authoritarian minded person and you can be a champion. A world beater, a gold, a gold medal Olympic champion in wrestling.

• 1:40:21Jocko Willink?

  You can't really get there in Jiu Jitsu. You have to have some kind of creative spark that allows you to, to, to assess things and change things and modify things. You have to have that for Jiu Jitsu. And so with Rana, I was a little worried. And then I remember I was watching her, uh, one day and she was doing some stuff and I hope, there it is.

• 1:40:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:40:42Jocko Willink?

  She's gonna be good to go. Because she has that creativity and she has the ability to have an open mind and try new things. And so, um, when you look at the strikers versus grapplers, now listen, if you go, well, what about Chuck Liddell? He's a striker? No, Chuck Liddell was a freaking D, uh, he was a, he was a D2 wrestler. Like he was a, he was a badass wrestler.

• 1:41:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:41:03Jocko Willink?

  And you could, there's a bunch of people like that, that were, that, they had a great wrestling background. And then they just, you know, became good strikers and they, they used the striking. But, uh, I would say, you, you know Kazushi Sakuraba?

• 1:41:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:41:16Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. I mean, Sakuraba, talk about, I mean, just a, just a, just a, uh, an incredible story. You know, that he wrote with his career and the way, the way he was just, he was just iconic.

• 1:41:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:41:30Jocko Willink?

  So I think both those guys, um,

• 1:41:36Jocko Willink?

  yeah, there's so many great fighters. You know, then you get into the UFC roster, right?

• 1:41:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:41:39Jocko Willink?

  And the UFC roster is just phenomenal. And, and, and what's great, I mean, I was very lucky that I had a, a, a, a very close. I, I was intertwined in that whole, in the, in the great years of the early UFC. I was totally intertwined in the whole thing. So, uh, so many great fighters that, you know, yeah, GSP, I mean, I was, I was, I was backstage, you know, I was cornering someone, I think it was cornering Dean Lister. But, you know, so everyone's cutting weight together and watching GSP cut weight. And I'm looking at him going, that, that's why this guy is a champion. You could see though, just the way he was cutting weight, his professionalism, his behavior, his attitude. It was, there was no doubt when he was in the room, you're like, oh, that guy's, that guy must be the champion. Because look at the way he's acting. Just, just a total professional. Yeah, GSP phenomenal.

• 1:42:23Jocko Willink?

  Um, uh, there's so many great fighters in the UFC and the UFC is really, it really is an incredible rise. You know, it's an incredible sport. And I, and I think that, you know, Warrior Kid is going to help out.

• 1:42:36Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:42:36Jocko Willink?

  The whole, we're, we're about to have a generation of, of kids that start training Jiu Jitsu. And, and that's what, the movie comes out November 25th, the next day is Thanksgiving. So that's the, November 27th, there's gonna be lines at the Jiu Jitsu academies. So they can sign up. And here's the difference, you know, people, people make the karate kid comparison, right? The big difference is when a kid goes to see Warrior Kid and then they roll down to the neighborhood Jiu Jitsu Academy. There's a 97% chance that that academy that they roll into is totally legit and awesome. And there's a awesome Jiu Jitsu instructor there that has experience. That's a square to a guy. When Karate Kid came out and the kid rolled down to the local karate studio, they, they were going in there, it was not cool.

• 1:43:20Jocko Willink?

  Like karate in that day and age was not real. It was not real. It was fake. It was, you know, it was just, it was bullshit. And so now when they see the movie and they see what's, and by the way, Muay Thai's in the movie as well. Um, wrestling in the sequel, by the way, but, but Muay Thai's in the movie. So people are gonna see what they saw in the movie. And they're gonna go to a Jiu Jitsu Academy or a mixed martial arts academy and they're gonna learn what they saw in the movie. Cause you didn't learn, you didn't go to the local karate studio and learn the crane kick, the crane, you didn't go and learn that. You didn't learn wax, you, you didn't learn what they showed in the movie.

• 1:43:56Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:43:57Jocko Willink?

  What we show in the movie is real Jiu Jitsu.

• 1:44:00Speaker 01

  Particularly the principles of leverage and what.

• 1:44:02Jocko Willink?

  And you're gonna learn it. And that's why kids are gonna go, oh, it's gonna be, it's gonna create a generation or two.

• 1:44:08Speaker 01

  How did you like working with Chris Pratt?

• 1:44:10Jocko Willink?

  That was great. Yeah, it was great. You know?

• 1:44:13Speaker 01

  What do you think of him as a performer and as a human being?

• 1:44:16Jocko Willink?

  So, so the first time I met Chris, we were, um, we were going, so my buddy Jack Carr wrote the Terminalist series. And, you know, I was in SEAL Teams with Jack Carr, we're buddies and he knows I'm a UFC guy and they were going to watch UFC in Vegas. And he goes, hey, we're, we're gonna watch UFC in Vegas. We're, we're taking the jet from LA. You wanna come up? Do the, do it.

• 1:44:36Speaker 01

  Do the thing.

• 1:44:36Jocko Willink?

  Yep. And I'm like, yep, cool. And he goes, hey, who's gonna be, this guy's gonna be here. Chris Pratt's gonna be there. And I thought to myself, um, oh, you know, here we go. Here's the, here's the big movie Hollywood guy. And what I thought of Hollywood guys was, uh, Team America World Police, right? That's what I thought Hollywood people were. Cause I didn't know any of them. I never met any of them. I thought it was like, they thought they were, you know, Matt Damon and stuff. And I thought that's just Hollywood were just these shallow, fake, whatever people. And I go, I gotta go meet this guy. And he's probably gonna be some shallow, fake, you know, arrogant asshole. And I roll up and dude, he's just awesome. Like out of the gate. He's funny. He's self deprecating. He's, he's not, he's not like,

• 1:45:19Jocko Willink?

  he's the center of gravity in the room, not because he wants to be, but just cause he is. And when he's not, he doesn't care. Like he's just totally cool, totally nice, totally good to go. And I was proven completely wrong about my, about my, uh, what I thought I was gonna be meeting. And so I thought he was awesome. And then, yeah, you know, we, we ended up with the whole business relationship, the Jocko Fuel stuff, the origin stuff. Like we ended up doing all this stuff. And then the movie comes around and again, now, you know, now we're, like you said, I mean, we're on set with the guys for, for months, right? You know, 13 hour days, 14 hour days. It's freaking either too hot or too cold, whatever. The sun's too bright or it's too dark, whatever the thing is. And, um, Yeah, I mean, he's just an awesome guy. He's just an absolutely

• 1:46:01Speaker 01

  I agree completely.

• 1:46:02Jocko Willink?

  Awesome guy, an awesome, nice guy. He cares. He's always looking to do the right thing. He treats people. He treats everyone just respectfully. Uh, he's nice. He's funny as hell.

• 1:46:15Speaker 01

  He is.

• 1:46:16Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, he's just, he's just an awesome guy. He, and the other thing I realized is, and I think this is Ben, our, our, our buddy Ben Everard. You know, he's like, that's why he's Chris Pratt.

• 1:46:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:46:28Jocko Willink?

  You know, you're like, cause you go, you know, uh, yeah, what, what sort of luck did this guy to get? What kind of luck did this person have to get famous? And certainly he was lucky.

• 1:46:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, cause he has an incredible story too, like the abject poverty, the Washington years, the Hawaii years. Like, I mean, nobody gave it to him.

• 1:46:45Jocko Willink?

  But

• 1:46:46Speaker 01

  He had to go get it.

• 1:46:46Jocko Willink?

  He got, you know, there's a reason that he got pulled from being a waiter to like go and be in, be in a movie.

• 1:46:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:46:54Jocko Willink?

  And there's a reason that from that movie, he got this and he got that. He got another thing because he is a dynamic, funny, charismatic, magnetic person.

• 1:47:03Speaker 01

  Yes, he is.

• 1:47:04Jocko Willink?

  And so, yeah.

• 1:47:05Speaker 01

  We're lucky to have him. I thought he did a great job.

• 1:47:06Jocko Willink?

  Oh yeah, he did a great job. He did such a great job and he took it so seriously.

• 1:47:10Speaker 01

  I'm gonna freak out when I see Jude, cause he's probably six, 10.

• 1:47:13Jocko Willink?

  We saw him the other day.

• 1:47:14Speaker 01

  I haven't seen him in a couple of months.

• 1:47:15Jocko Willink?

  10, but he's definitely, he's definitely grown up.

• 1:47:17Speaker 01

  He's grown up.

• 1:47:18Jocko Willink?

  Definitely, he definitely couldn't play the role right now.

• 1:47:20Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:47:21Jocko Willink?

  You know, he looks

• 1:47:21Speaker 01

  He's on the far side of it.

• 1:47:22Jocko Willink?

  He's too, he looks too old to play the role right now. And I guess he could, but he, it wouldn't be the same. I mean, I was looking at pictures of him. When, when we filmed, he's like, uh, Bozak posted the other day of the picture with him on my shoulders.

• 1:47:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:47:35Jocko Willink?

  And it looks like, yeah, it looks, it looks appropriate. If I put him on my shoulders right now.

• 1:47:41Jocko Willink?

  It would look weird.

• 1:47:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a great example.

• 1:47:43Jocko Willink?

  So, uh, yeah, no, he, he was great. Linda.

• 1:47:47Speaker 01

  How about her? And then she blew up in that other thing since we did that. Yeah, and she's incredible. She's just, we got lucky with that. It doesn't always go like that.

• 1:47:54Jocko Willink?

  I know.

• 1:47:55Speaker 01

  We really got lightning in a bottle with our team.

• 1:47:56Jocko Willink?

  There's a scene that they film and, uh, man, she's so good and she's crying, you know, in the scene. And she's not over crying, but she's like, I'm watching my girl, what like?

• 1:48:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, she's, she's a beast.

• 1:48:10Jocko Willink?

  Like whatever she pulls, like, uh, you know, from whatever, however that happens, you're like, damn, okay. That is, that is impressive. And her and Chris work so good together.

• 1:48:19Speaker 01

  I thought they were perfect.

• 1:48:20Jocko Willink?

  They were just amazing as brother and sister.

• 1:48:23Speaker 01

  I loved it.

• 1:48:24Jocko Willink?

  Freaking awesome. Um, okay. You done interviewing me?

• 1:48:27Speaker 01

  Uh, you're more interesting than me. Your audience knows that. By the way, that's what I always fantasize about. It's like, I wanna know about Jocko. You know what I mean? I wanna know about Jocko. I wanna know about what it was like the first day you went into, you know, your, beginning of your service career. I wanna know how you define bravery. I wanna know what you're impressed with. I wanna know what you wanna change about. But I guess we'll do that on a second episode.

• 1:48:48Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, we could do that on our second episode.

• 1:48:50Speaker 01

  But, but you know, man, you know me, I, you know, I'm, I, I just, I, I, I'm very interested in people who make a difference. I'm interested in people who go for it. I like people who take chances and I like people that move the needle. You're one of them. And, and I just, I think that that's interesting. So I wanna make sure that your people aren't, oh, this episode with this McG character, I wanna know about Jocko. I wanna hear Jocko and echo nickel and dime.

• 1:49:12Jocko Willink?

  People have heard enough about me.

• 1:49:13Speaker 01

  The way they do it. No, we can never get enough.

• 1:49:14Jocko Willink?

  Of, of like, there's so many hundreds of hours of me talking. It's like, kinda ridiculous if you think about it. You know, it's kind of

• 1:49:21Speaker 01

  That's what we're here for.

• 1:49:23Jocko Willink?

  And some people, and there's a lot of people, not some, there's some people that they, they will, they almost, there's definitely people that know my books better than me.

• 1:49:30Speaker 01

  Oh, I, I'm not surprised to hear that.

• 1:49:32Jocko Willink?

  Like, just like, I'm sure, you know, there's people that know some of your movies better than you.

• 1:49:35Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:49:35Jocko Willink?

  Some of your shows better than you for sure.

• 1:49:36Speaker 01

  Oh, for sure.

• 1:49:37Jocko Willink?

  There's people that know my books and they're like, hey, well, you know, on page, whatever, and you know, so and so. And I'm like, bro, I can barely even remember that story.

• 1:49:43Speaker 01

  Somebody asked about like, season seven, episode 12 of Supernatural. I'm like, dude, you know what I mean? I need to go back to the source material and freshen up. No doubt, no doubt.

• 1:49:54Jocko Willink?

  So, so, so you got, you got Supernatural running in the background the whole time.

• 1:49:59Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:49:59Jocko Willink?

  You got OC running in the background. You got, uh, you got, uh, Wonder Vision Sound and Music, right? That, you made that right after Charlie's Angels?

• 1:50:05Speaker 01

  I did.

• 1:50:06Jocko Willink?

  And that gives you like a vehicle to make things happen pretty much? Is that, is that the way that works?

• 1:50:10Speaker 01

  That's correct. And now the big thing I wanna do, you and I have been talking about is this, it really just, the green light is the thing in our business. Who gets to say yes to that movie? Yes, to that TV show? Yes, to that podcast or podcast? You can actually do it yourself in a great many ways, which is exciting. But I'm trying to, you know, now raise a fund so I can be more specific. If you and I wanna just go make a movie, we did it and had a lot to do with Warrior Kid. Because people don't, may I tell the story of how Warrior Kid happened? Guy named Jocko Willink, he's got a book, trepidatious about Hollywood, not sure. Young go-getter named Ben Everard goes down and goes, hey, I wanna make the book into a movie. Jocko's like, I'm not so sure.

• 1:50:47Jocko Willink?

  By the way, based on the fact that he walked into his kid's room one morning and his kids were doing pushups and he's like, what are you guys doing? And they hold up to look and say, we're, we wanna be Warrior Kids.

• 1:50:55Speaker 01

  How cool is that?

• 1:50:56Jocko Willink?

  Freaking awesome.

• 1:50:56Speaker 01

  Unbelievable. All right. So slowly we earn enough trust with, with Jocko Willink that he goes, all right, let's take a whack at this thing. We go to a guy named Will Staples, who's a great writer and, you know, has military connections. So I think he inspired some confidence in somebody.

• 1:51:09Jocko Willink?

  As I said to him, his dad was a helo pilot in Vietnam.

• 1:51:12Speaker 01

  Helo pilot in Vietnam.

• 1:51:13Jocko Willink?

  Cause you know, we're shopping around and I, after we hire him, he goes, yeah, my, my dad was a helo pilot in Vietnam. I go, dude, why'd you tell me that? You were hired, it would have been, we would have shut the door on everybody else. You're hired. Let's go. He's a freaking Huey pilot in Vietnam? You're in.

• 1:51:25Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, um, you know, then we go, look, Will, you normally get a million dollars. We'll, you know, give you $250,000. Jocko has the courage to write a check for $250,000 to take a shot. And then we say, hey, but if we make the movie, we'll give you $2 million. You know, we, we do a good, smart thing like that. That happens. All of a sudden we got a draft. Your relationship with Pratt is thickening with Origin, with Jocko fuel, with the whole thing. Plus your dislike minds, the whole thing with terminalists. It's all sort of coalescing beautifully. I come down to San Diego. I'm coming from a pure place. I did my best.

• 1:51:59Jocko Willink?

  By the way, so, so by the time, so Pratt was on, he was in, he was in and then it was like, okay, now we need a director. And, and the, I don't know if, if I told you this, but the, I didn't wanna give Pratt a script. Because like we were becoming friends.

• 1:52:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:52:17Jocko Willink?

  And all of a sudden it's like, hey, we've been friends for like, you know, six months. I got a script to pitch you. It's just like, that's not something I wanted to do, right? But my team had told his team, you know, well, Jocko's working on this movie. And they're like, oh, what's the movie? And well, it's a kid book movie, blah, blah, blah. They, he, my team sends his team a script. And when his team read the script, they were like, oh shit.

• 1:52:38Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:52:39Jocko Willink?

  And they gave it to Pratt and Pratt, Pratt, you know, he's, he's knelt down by his bed to like flip through the first few pages, read the whole thing. And called, called Julian and said, we're making this thing.

• 1:52:48Speaker 01

  He tells that story all the time. It's exactly, and he didn't stop. Usually you read a couple of pages, stop, you eat a sandwich, you come back, you finish the script. He read the whole thing. But what, what happened with that was we were free. It's not like, oh, you sold the rights to Netflix or Warner Brothers and you were on the hook to develop with all their notes. You've done this whole thing with the courage to be independent. Like you've done everything in your life. Look at, you know, Jocko, you know, look at the podcast, look at everything you've built, Victory MMA, on and on. All right. So we get to that place where we finally, you know, and then I, I tricked you into letting me come on board and direct it. We got a big movie star, A-list movie star. Okay. We got a director, we got a budget, we got a schedule.

• 1:53:27Jocko Willink?

  Well, you, you, you, you and Ben drove down to Victory MMA.

• 1:53:32Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 1:53:33Jocko Willink?

  You came into the podcast studio as a matter of fact.

• 1:53:35Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 1:53:36Jocko Willink?

  And you sat down and you just like pitched to me why you should be making this movie, which was kinda cra- which was kinda crazy to me from a couple of different perspectives. First of all, I was super naive. And by the way, when I, when I paid for the, for the screenplay, in me, in my mind, it was like a guarantee, like, oh yeah, well, since we're making this movie. Naively, I didn't understand that 99.999% of screenplays never get turned into a movie.

• 1:54:01Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:54:01Jocko Willink?

  So I was writing a check that I thought was just like money in the bank, right? And same thing when I'm meeting you, like, well, of course, you know, of course, McG, this massive Hollywood producer, director icon. Of course he wants to make Warrior Kid. But you came down humble and, you know, explained to me that you were the kid. You're like, I'm this kid.

• 1:54:21Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:54:21Jocko Willink?

  This is me. This is what I went through. Because the kid in the book, you know, kid in the movie, he's scared of water, he's scared of these things. That was you. You pitched me the thing. I was like, this is, this is a freaking solid fit right here, boys.

• 1:54:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:54:33Jocko Willink?

  This is solid.

• 1:54:34Speaker 01

  That's what happens. And then we go, well, how do we wanna make this movie? Cause we could have maybe set it up at Paramount or Universal. But then you gotta get all the notes and you may never get made and you sit on the thing. We go to the top guy in, in the world of selling movies, Glenn Bazner at a place called Film Nation. He's gonna go over to, uh, Cannes at the time. He could've gone to Toronto, could've gone to Berlin, but it was the time of the year where it was the Cannes Film Festival, which is kinda the granddaddy of them all. We think we need $35 million to make the movie.

• 1:55:02Jocko Willink?

  And, and just so everyone knows, what you do is you sell the overseas rights. You take that $35 million that you sold the overseas rights, you put that in your, in your pocket to make the movie. You spend that money to make the movie. And then once you've made the movie for $35 million, you sell it to, you sell the American rights for whatever, and that's all your money.

• 1:55:20Speaker 01

  And you take the ups.

• 1:55:21Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:21Speaker 01

  But that's risky.

• 1:55:22Jocko Willink?

  Risky.

• 1:55:22Speaker 01

  But Chris was willing to take the risk and who makes the most money. You know, he's a big A-list movie star with, you know, Jurassic World and with, you know, Guardians of the Galaxy and Garfield and he's Luigi. Yeah, forget it. He's out of here. Okay. He's one of the biggest guys out there. Okay. He's gonna take the risk and make it for no money in exchange for the ups, cause he believes in the project. I'm gonna take a risk and make it for no money, cause I believe in the ups. Our guy goes over to France. He's, and we need $35 million. He goes, it's going great. We're gonna get the $35 million. We're gonna make our movie. And then we'll see if we get lucky and sell the domestic and actually make some money and make a difference and blah, blah, blah. Then I go out to lunch with my old friend, David Ellison. You know what I mean? To, I remember I met him when he was first landed in town. Everybody's like, oh, you know, watch out, this could be a nepo kid.

• 1:56:05Speaker 01

  I go, no, this kid is smart. He's going all the way. And now look at him today, for goodness sakes. You know, he's going all the way. And, and he goes, hey, I want that movie. I go, David, the movie's gonna cost you a lot of money. I won't embarrass anybody and say how much money. But he shakes, puts his hand across his head and goes, okay. And then we make it via Skydance and ultimately Apple, who have been really good partners. I think the materials are looking good. I should ask you. You know what I mean? And it's a wonderful way for a movie to come together as opposed to if you and I go, let's make the Echo Charles movie and I set it up at Netflix. Those are my friends. God bless Netflix, biggest company in the world.

• 1:56:43Speaker 01

  But then you're on the bench of development and they go, we think Echo is so decidedly male. We want a female to write the movie and we want that point of view. And then you're on this development train and you have no authority, which is why you've played it so well with be it Origin, be it, you know, Jocko Fuel, be it, you know, the Warrior Kid rollout. You've controlled your own universe and you're, you know, people talk about these kids as creators. Here's Jocko Willink as the trailblazer getting it done with like, have you ever sold any of your IP or anything that you've created? You kept it all in-house and you build it big, brick by brick. And then the greatest thing is it results in a more true, honest connection with your audience because they know you're not bullshitting around and trust is everything.

• 1:57:27Speaker 01

  People trust you, Jocko. People trust you. They go, oh, if that's good enough for Jocko, it's good enough for me because I know he's all about deed. There's word and there is deed and your deed backs up your word every time. And it just results in therefore I can believe in the boot coming, coming out of Origin. Wasn't the story you told me that you needed a gi that was made in America? And you're like, I couldn't find one. There was a guy with a mill in Maine or something. What is it?

• 1:57:52Jocko Willink?

  Well, he was making, Pete Roberts was up in Maine and he's the one that was like, I, I, I want to make gees in America. But he lives in Farmington, Maine, right? Population 42 or whatever.

• 1:58:02Speaker 01

  And 38 of that are cows.

• 1:58:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And, and so, but he, he did it, man. He freaking cut down trees and built a timber frame factory in the, in his, in his yard, right? And buys these old abandoned looms, buys the last, went into a 500,000 square foot abandoned factory. Where all the machines, all the machines had been shipped overseas, except for one. And it was sitting there, rusted and disrepair and him and his father-in-law and his buddies pulled that thing out, brought it back to the factory, found a guy that knew how to work on it, got that thing running. And, and yes, that's how it started. Now, look up a few years later, he's, he's making gees, but he's not selling a lot of them because he's in Farmington, Maine. And he just, and so I had been telling people, hey, if you need a gi,

• 1:58:49Jocko Willink?

  buy it from Origin, American made, American made. And finally, I was actually on a Facebook Live. And I was, somebody asked me, hey, where should, what, what Jiu-Jitsu gi should I get? And I said, yep, get an American, get an American made gi, get a one from Origin, Origin, Maine. And I said, and by the way, if anyone can get in touch with that guy, Pete Robertson, been reaching out to him for like a few months now, tell him I want to talk to him. And there was a woman on that car, Sarah Armstrong, who she's a CFO at a big business and she had all these connections. And she found Pete Robertson, called him and said, hey, listen, this guy Jocko has a podcast. He wants to talk to you. And Pete's like, what's a podcast? Cause he's in Farmington, Maine, like, they don't even, yeah. They're like, internet is like wires, you know what I mean? And, uh,

• 1:59:32Speaker 01

  Dial up.

• 1:59:32Jocko Willink?

  But we got on the phone together and we had like a four hour call and we, I flew to Maine. We had steak and a handshake and we partnered up and we went from eight employees making about a hundred pieces of clothing a week to approaching 500 employees making 20,000 pieces of clothing a week. So it's a total game changer. So it's awesome. And it's all American made. And this is such a big deal. You know, you were mentioned before we hit record today, you know, I did a little thing about making boots in America.

• 2:00:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:00:05Jocko Willink?

  And a lot of these boot companies, what they do is they, they do the full assembly overseas and then they bring it back and they put in like the last whatever, the last stitch. And now it's, now it's made in America. It's not true. We make everything a hundred percent America and everything that we make it from is made in America. We just launched the, uh, the sneakers today and it's been so hard for the team to find the islets in Connecticut and the soles in Massachusetts. Viper, God bless them. They brought their sole machine. I forget where they brought it from, but they brought it back to America for us.

• 2:00:35Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 2:00:36Jocko Willink?

  Yep. So people are in the game, people, and people realize, you know, COVID, one of the benefits of COVID, people realized how bad it was to have a supply chain based on foreign countries.

• 2:00:44Speaker 01

  Indeed.

• 2:00:45Jocko Willink?

  And so now people realize, oh, we need to get that stuff back here. So for me, even when I wrote the Warrior Kid book, and there's a couple of good stories. When I wrote the Warrior Kid book, um, I kept all the rights and then, you know, they offer you money. They can offer you money for the rights. And when you're looking at it, you go, well, I guess, you know, yeah, you want to, but I kept them all. And, and then actually this is another good one is when the first offer came in from Skydance. And you know, they, they gave me the number and it says, the thing says, you know, for this, this much money for, for all intellectual property. And I said to my lawyer, I said, well, what does he mean by all intellectual property?

• 2:01:25Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:01:26Jocko Willink?

  And he goes, oh, he means all. And I go, yeah, they can pound sand. And you know, we, we, we started to get after it. But that's, we were able to really do well. And, and again, you know, there's a crazy, I heard years ago, years ago, um,

• 2:01:42Jocko Willink?

  that George Lucas made all his money from Star Wars off of the action figures.

• 2:01:45Speaker 01

  Wow. I'm not surprised to hear that.

• 2:01:46Jocko Willink?

  And I, when I was do, when I, when I was doing the contract for Warrior Kid book, I kept all those, because they, they try and buy all those.

• 2:01:56Speaker 01

  Oh, they try to get it all.

• 2:01:57Jocko Willink?

  They try and get it all from you. And luckily my agent, Jen Joel, props, she's, um, by the way, this is classified information, but my publisher, Mark Resnick, my editor at St. Martin's Press, you know, he goes to war with my agent, uh, Jen Joel, and he, he, he calls her Viper.

• 2:02:18Jocko Willink?

  And, uh, yeah, he calls her Viper and I just sent a book, I sent my latest book to him the other day. And, uh, he says, he says, um, you know, hey, you might want to send this to, to the Viper as well. I go, she's already got it. She's, she's, she's going to be calling you probably in about 15 minutes.

• 2:02:35Speaker 01

  There's going to be another Viper battle.

• 2:02:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you're going down. Yeah. Um, but, but so thanks to her, you know, I, in those negotiations, I kept all those, I kept everything. And so, you know, that's always been my goal is to keep as much as I possibly could.

• 2:02:50Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's, it's a great business modeling. People are inspired by the way you did it.

• 2:02:53Jocko Willink?

  And what's really good about it, and this is where I was going with this, is that I didn't know this. Again, I was real naive, Hollywood stuff, but they make movies based on books where not one single character from the book makes it to the movie. Not a character.

• 2:03:08Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 2:03:10Jocko Willink?

  And here we are, the characters are in the books, the feel of the, is the same. There are lines from the book that are in the movie. It's, it's, it's, it's phenomenal. It's phenomenal. And so thankful to you and to Apple and Skydance because we really, I mean, we really had a lot. They gave us a lot of free rein.

• 2:03:28Speaker 01

  Well, that's because we never preemptively sold it. We got to the one inch line going, we're good and we're ready to make it on our own. We had all the leverage in the world because we didn't preemptively sell it to them, which was all based on you when you threw down and wrote a check for 250 grand, which is a big number. Yeah. So that you, you, you blaze your own trail, which is something that inspires.

• 2:03:49Jocko Willink?

  You said, we, we were doing like one of our first meetings, when, when we, when we knew we were doing it, we all came up to Chris's place and we were sitting down and you were like, Jocko owns this thing. That's the most gangster thing that's ever happened in Hollywood. I, I actually captured that quote. I told Echo later, I go, hey, I just want to let you know, this is the most gangster thing that ever happened in Hollywood.

• 2:04:08Speaker 01

  It's true.

• 2:04:11Speaker 01

  It's true.

• 2:04:13Jocko Willink?

  So first day on set, um, I roll up and I have no idea. I have no idea. I have no idea what's happening. I have no idea that there's a hierarchy.

• 2:04:25Jocko Willink?

  The hierarchy in Hollywood is as strict, if not stricter than the, than the hierarchy in the military.

• 2:04:34Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's all unioned out. Like you can't touch certain things or there's a complaint.

• 2:04:38Jocko Willink?

  But who's who in the zoo and the call sheet and the thing, and this person get this chair and stay out of that. And so, so I roll up.

• 2:04:47Jocko Willink?

  And I roll up, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm a nug, man. In my mind, I'm always kind of a new guy. I'm always kind of a nug. I'm always kind of like, you know, hey, man, I don't really deserve to be here. I'm going to do my best. I'm staying humble. And I roll up and I'm like, there's a chair, you know? And the chair says Jocko Willink, producer. And I'm like, and there's another chair that says McG and there's a chair that says Chris Pratt. I was like, wait a second, those two guys got a chair. I get, but why do I have a chair? It's kind of freaky. It was kind of freaky to see that.

• 2:05:16Speaker 01

  You're the Rosetta Stone. You got it going. We'd have it no other way.

• 2:05:20Jocko Willink?

  And the very first things that we filmed were in a, uh, what a circus? What do they call that? A circus? Circus?

• 2:05:26Speaker 01

  Or a fair.

• 2:05:27Jocko Willink?

  A fair. That's right. A fair.

• 2:05:28Speaker 01

  Which I got to interject, it's the toughest scene in the movie. And like, you can't always control the manner in which the movie is scheduled. You got to do it when you can get the location. You got to do it when you can get the fairs out of town. You can get stuff. You gotta do the, and the toughest scene in the movie between Chris and Jude is day one. There's no like, let's vibe it out. Let's get used to knowing each other. This is like, you know, the kid breaks and he's got to embrace, you know, Uncle Jake, cause he misses his dad. And I mean, day one, zero ramp up. Ready? Be amazing.

• 2:05:59Jocko Willink?

  Yep. Yep.

• 2:06:00Speaker 01

  Dude, you remember that? That was wild.

• 2:06:02Jocko Willink?

  Totally. And that, and that scene, I remember watching it and I mean, you know, we got the, we got the little headphones on. So, so it's very interesting for people that don't know, when they're making a movie, there's like a, there's, you, you're watching the screens that show all the different cameras.

• 2:06:14Speaker 01

  Yeah. You have monitors reflect what the camera's seeing.

• 2:06:17Jocko Willink?

  That's, what, what is your spot called? So Video Village is where everyone else is where, where everyone is watching.

• 2:06:22Speaker 01

  Video Village is where what's meant to be everyone who's important, producers, for example. Um, but not the director's village. The director's village is the script supervisor and the director only, lest the director invites someone in.

• 2:06:38Jocko Willink?

  Right. So that's happening and we get these little headsets on where you can hear because everyone's mic'd up and so you can hear the dialogue very clearly and you can see you're looking at the thing and I'm with you and I don't know if I just willed myself in there in the beginning and you were just like, I guess Jocko's gonna stand here over my right because I stood over your, over your right shoulder. I stood there over your right shoulder for the entire film.

• 2:07:00Speaker 01

  The entire film, but, but I loved it that way and I would have it no other way because I wanted to be so authentic and with my chest cavity just ripped open. And if there was ever, first of all, I wanted to be the beneficiary of your expertise. And I always talk about, I know what I want out of the movie. So I therefore want to know what you want out of the movie. So I could go, and you know me, I'm, I'm not shy to articulate, hey, I think it would be really emotional if he pretends like he doesn't care. And then when this is invoked, it reminds him of his past and now he confesses, he cares very much. For example, and then if you go, hey, man, that's not right. It should be precisely to the contrary. Then we can talk about it. You're such a fair person and I'm not shy and my vision was clear. So I had no reason to hide from it. And

• 2:07:42Speaker 01

  a lot of people would look at me like I was nuts. And, and also, I mean, dude, you're the kind of guy who goes around the world and you're one of the premier motivational speakers in the world and you give TED Talks and you do all these sexy things. So I think a lot of guys would be uptight about a guy like that with that level of expertise, standing, looking over and second guessing everything, but I didn't care. Not only did I not care, I welcomed it. I go, I want to be the beneficiary of Jocko's expertise. And I wanted you to smell it. If you were like, hey, man, that's not what I was going for in the book. But what I think this moment is here with what's going on with Mark is the following. And then you and I had such a good vibe that we would just talk it out and go, let's land in the right spot.

• 2:08:21Jocko Willink?

  And we landed in the right spot. And it was not one single time that I walk away going, nah, he's got it wrong. Nope. I never walked away. Every time. And there was times where I walked away, yep, McG was right. I was wrong. I, I, yep, he sees something I didn't see. Oh no, that definitely happened. I remember the, one of the first times I said, I said something to you? Well, first of all, I want to say, shooting that scene in the thing, I remember watching that thing and they do it 13 times, right?

• 2:08:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:08:46Jocko Willink?

  And I got choked up 13 times in a row. And I'm like, this is going to be epic. If we're on set day one and I'm a grown ass man and I already know the material, I wrote the material and I am getting choked up watching this 13 times in a row, we, this is going to impact some people.

• 2:09:04Speaker 01

  Well, that's a testament to, you know, Pratt brought it, Jude brought it, you brought it. And we created an environment where I think they felt safe to go for it, particularly early on, because everybody could get sort of on their back foot and a little trepidatious, a little like, I'm not there yet. And everybody just leaned in. I, I love, that scene gets me every time.

• 2:09:22Jocko Willink?

  Yep. And by the way, you also, I was over your right shoulder, over your left shoulder, half the time was McConaughey.

• 2:09:28Speaker 01

  Oh, Jesus. Yeah. McConaughey's kids in the movie Levi, and to his credit, McConaughey didn't flex at all and was living in like the tiniest little trailer that you give a kid like that who hasn't done much yet. And McConaughey never said a word. He didn't want to like throw his elbows out to like create a better environment for Levi, who's a gem of a young man. You know what I mean? And, and I know McConaughey, you know, 10 years because we are Marshall and we went through a lot together and we're, we're buddies, but he just was way back in the cut, did nothing, you know, to get in way of the vibe. I think he was a gentleman to you. He was a gentleman to all the, you know, the PAs and the lowly people that are running around at four in the morning.

• 2:10:06Jocko Willink?

  Such a nice person.

• 2:10:06Speaker 01

  And, and you know, he's good. The only thing I deal with him is he's not a big fan of deodorant. So you gotta get, you get a lot of essence. There's a lot of essence, you know, and he's not shy about hugging. So you hug McConaughey and you're going to be wearing McConaughey for a little while. But that's part of the charm. And then you gotta deal with the little whistle tooth and the whole thing and then.

• 2:10:23Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, he is a hundred percent like, like what you think he's gonna be like and what you hope he's gonna be like.

• 2:10:29Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. He's the best dude. He's just one of us. You know, he's cool.

• 2:10:34Jocko Willink?

  You're spending like, it's, it's 10 hours, it's 12 hours, you know?

• 2:10:37Speaker 01

  All day, every day.

• 2:10:38Jocko Willink?

  In a tent, you know? And I remember when he goes, he says, uh, he goes, you know, I just told my boy, you know, when you give that line, you gotta give it from your heart. You gotta give it from your soul. You gotta give it from your feet. And I, I remember just thinking, yes, that line's gotta come from your feet, man.

• 2:10:57Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, how courageous is he? Cause he was just like the good looking shirtless guy, you know, making movies like that. He goes, I want to be an actor. I want to be legit. And he threw it all away. And when he did Dallas Buyers Club and won the Academy Award, it blew everybody's mind. And the rest is history. Now the guy might be governor of Texas. Who knows what he's gonna do next? Wrote a great book. It's just, I knew the commonalities between Jocko Willink and Matthew McConaughey were going to be extraordinary. And you guys have just begun your path, say the least.

• 2:11:22Jocko Willink?

  And you were mentioned earlier that this is like a military operation and, and you understated, it's like you got timeline, you got logistics, you got planning and preparation, you got location, storyboards, budgets, you got budget constraints, you gotta figure out contingencies. And then on top of all that stuff, you got the real human stuff. You got egos, you got personalities, you got all those things that are coming into play, which I've been dealing with my whole life. You know, that's, you know, a lot of times people don't think about that. The, the, the dynamic in the military is like, yeah, you outrank me, but what is the ego dynamic? Because that's what really comes into play. This primal order of things and the way things are going to be. So, and you do have like danger, like there's, there's explosions going on. There's things catching on fire. There's people falling out of stuff. There's people getting hit with things like there's, so all these

• 2:12:07Jocko Willink?

  dynamics are, are playing into it. And really to watch your leadership was, was awesome for me because boy, was I thankful that you are who you are. Because it would have taken me,

• 2:12:23Jocko Willink?

  it would have taken me a period of time to recognize, oh, this, this guy is a bad person, a bad leader. He's abusive. He's bullying. He's got a big, it would have taken me a little bit of time to go, and then, then it would have been three weeks in and now I gotta start. But like day one, I'm like telling you like, hey, why are you, why are you doing that? And you'd be like, oh, I'm doing it because this, oh, okay. Well, that makes sense. So, but to watch you interact with everybody, lead everybody, be gracious to everybody, be gracious to everybody while you're still pushing them. Because it's hot, it's cold, it's wet, it's tired, everyone's miserable. We need better food, we need worse food, like everything's going on. And so you gotta be accommodating, but at the same time, we got a mission, we gotta get the mission done. And that's an exact parallel

• 2:13:04Jocko Willink?

  of what it's like being in the military. And one thing that, again, after a few weeks, you know, you and me and Pratt are sitting there and we're, we're talking and you, you guys are both like, hey, just so you know, it's not always like this.

• 2:13:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:13:21Jocko Willink?

  And I'm like, what do you mean? And apparently, you know, I had this incredible experience with all these awesome people that I hang out with and where, you know, you're going home every day. I remember just driving home or sitting there, God, that was just such a freaking cool day. It's not always like that.

• 2:13:35Speaker 01

  Not always like that. It can, it, it can be difficult. But I mean, again, I think that's a, just a function of the team we put together. You know what I mean? Cause you know, Pratt's number one on the call sheet and it, it sort of starts at the top and you're there backing it up as the genesis stone and the guy who wrote all the material. And then, you know, I wanted to get it right. And we had a good, hardworking, crazy DP and Shane, you know, we just, we just had the right team. And I think that that just sort of created a vibe and it really is a family community, which, which is, and you know what's so cool? And you and I are such rock and rollers, man. It's like, I think about, think about one of your favorite songs, you know what I mean? Just, you know, think, smells like teen spirit, you know, smells like teen spirit doesn't exist in the morning. And then that night it does. They cut smells like teen spirit and for, and the rest

• 2:14:18Speaker 01

  of your life, that song, you know, it's their way to heaven. Take, take your pick. Doesn't matter. You know, let it be, you know? And the movie, every day you show up and what you're about to do, clearly by definition, has not been done yet. And if you create that feeling where Jocko's gonna, you know, schlep it down to San Diego and reflect on the day. And you're like, wow, that worked out really well. And now there's a piece of, I don't know if it's too bold to call it art, but let's call it art, in the world that wasn't there in the morning. And we got the team together. We positioned the cameras just so, and you wrote the material and the actors performed it in a compelling way. And now it's in the world. I think that's super cool. To me, to me, that's the coolest part of the whole thing of the arts. It's like when you write a book, the book wasn't

• 2:15:00Speaker 01

  there, now the book's there. Warrior kid's in the world now, you know? And I just think that's a terribly exciting thing that, that really fills my bucket.

• 2:15:08Jocko Willink?

  Echo was, Echo was telling me the other day, he was just like, he was reading the book again to his kid or something. And, and he was like, he's like, I'm sitting there reading this thing and, and I'm thinking, Jocko just made this shit up. He just made this shit up. He's like, it's, all these characters just made that shit up. Ben was reminding me, we were filming in San Diego and it was a scene between Jude and Levi, a bullying scene.

• 2:15:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:15:30Jocko Willink?

  And like, they weren't quite getting it.

• 2:15:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:15:33Jocko Willink?

  And you're, you're like, you get me and McConaughey to like, get in each other's faces, get the intensity up, show these guys what it's supposed to look like. They're like, it's so wild. Here I am, like Jocko, a knuckle dragger, military dude, and I'm like, acting in a scene with the Academy Award winner, McConaughey.

• 2:15:51Speaker 01

  But, but it was, wasn't it natural? And it felt great. And by the way, you set, you set that example for the boys and they went, because I wanted to get that authenticity and the greed, which your adrenaline, your blood is up. You know what I mean? And I knew you would get it. And I know McConaughey would get it. He's one of us. You know what I mean? So like, it was just by any means necessary, get the point across and illuminate for the actors so they can be positioned to be their very best. And then it was reflected in the following takes by the boys.

• 2:16:17Jocko Willink?

  So good.

• 2:16:18Speaker 01

  Cause they were a little bit like, really? Do you want me to go that hard? And then you and McConaughey got in there and blew it up and everybody got jacked. And then we did it. Super cool.

• 2:16:27Jocko Willink?

  So good. Um, one day, we're filming, again, this was in San Diego, we're filming in this cycle, we're, we're getting set up to film. And this is probably pretty deep into filming. So now I've been looking over your shoulder for a while.

• 2:16:38Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:16:38Jocko Willink?

  And we're about to shoot and all of a sudden your phone rings, your iPhone rings, you pick it up, you look at it and it says David Ellison. And you go, uh, you go, hey, I gotta get this. And you just announce, we're in an ice cream shop and you announce, hey, I gotta take a call. Jocko's got it.

• 2:16:54Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:16:55Jocko Willink?

  So with no hesitation, you know, you're talking about, uh, when you, when you went on to Charlie's Angels, you just walked in, I got this. I literally like, oh, I got this. I cool. I took one step forward, sat my ass in your chair in front of the video, put the things on. And I looked at Cliff and I'm like, Cliff, on you when you're ready, which is what you did.

• 2:17:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:17:13Jocko Willink?

  I said, Cliff, on you. And he looked at me and said, we're ready, sir. On you. He says, and you sit there. So I sat there and I directed the scene.

• 2:17:20Speaker 01

  I remember it well.

• 2:17:21Jocko Willink?

  And, um, I start, I remember I said, Cliff, can I talk to my actor? I was using that. I went right into it. I went right in. I said, Cliff, can I talk to my actor? He goes, yep. He goes, the sound doesn't matter. Cause sometimes you can talk to him, but sometimes you can't depending on what's going on the other. I go, Cliff, can I talk to my actor? He goes, yep, you can talk to him. So Jude comes out and I said, all right, Jude, look down here.

• 2:17:42Jocko Willink?

  You just saw your reflection. You kinda like it. You're looking pretty. So I start talking him through it and um, uh, yeah, we did, we did like three or four takes and you come rolling back in and you stood over my shoulder.

• 2:17:57Speaker 01

  Damn right I did.

• 2:17:58Jocko Willink?

  And it was freaking awesome. And I got done with all that and the behind the scenes, the BTS guy from Apple. He comes up to me afterwards and he goes, he goes, hey, bro, I got that whole thing.

• 2:18:08Speaker 01

  That's great.

• 2:18:09Jocko Willink?

  Super, super cool.

• 2:18:10Speaker 01

  But I think that's a reflection and a microcosm of just the way we approach the, the work. You know what I mean? There was a tremendous amount of trust and I, first of all, I knew you had the acumen and the skillset and the ability to do it. And you know, I, I just had an extraordinary circumstance where I had to go talk to the big bopper. And you know, I knew, I, it wasn't like, well, I guess maybe I, you remember that Jocko's got it. You know what I mean? And everybody just felt my degree of commitment and confidence, this is going to go great. And it went particularly great. It was really, I, I love moments like that. It was well earned and it went great. And that's it, man. By the way, you, when the time is right, you got to throw down in that space. You, as, as part of the expansion of, of what you do and will continue to do in your life.

• 2:18:56Speaker 01

  You're just a natural in that space. You're very, very natural in front of the camera, but your natural gifts as a, duh. You could never hold an audience to the degree that you hold an audience with this format. If you weren't a fundamentally great storyteller. And we all trip out and we'd get excited when you know, your feeds come over the social media airwaves. Each one more compelling than the last. That's not easily done. I'm not winding you up. You've earned it and your numbers reflect it. But it's just super cool. And not everybody has that. In Hollywood, they call it lit from within. You know what I mean? And not many people have it. And when you have it.

• 2:19:30Jocko Willink?

  You say lit from within.

• 2:19:31Speaker 01

  Lit from within. Means your radiance comes from here. And it radiates out and the camera and the microphones grab it. You're lit from within. It's a cool thing to have. You know what I mean? And you can try to have it, but it's hard to fabricate.

• 2:19:43Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. I've been talking and I've actually just wrote, I wrote, I just got done writing a book, which I just mentioned earlier, but um, it won't come out for another year. But one of the things I talk about is there's a, a general or a military guy named T E Lawrence, Lawrence of Arabia.

• 2:19:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, of course.

• 2:20:00Jocko Willink?

  So this guy wrote about, you know, military leadership and stuff. And, and he says that nine tenths of what you learn as a military leader, you can learn in the classroom, you can learn in the academy, you can learn, you know, on the battlefield, training exercises. But there's one tenth that you can't teach someone.

• 2:20:16Jocko Willink?

  They gotta have it, right? And in, in my opinion, after really thinking about it, it's this ability to connect with people at an animal level.

• 2:20:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:20:30Jocko Willink?

  At, at an emotional animal level. And as a military leader, look, you can give it and give, give the brief with all the facts of the, of the case in it, right? You can give that. But if you don't have that emotional animalistic connection, you're not going to be the real tribal leader. And you know, how many actors have gone to the right school? Learned how to say the lines, done all the background, done the stuff. But when they get in front of the camera, this is why I'm hearing you, I'm hearing this term for the first time. Which is probably going to make it in my book because I only just turned in the draft, but lit from within. That's what it is. Like this person has the it, it, right? And by the way, it exists in sports as well because the person is what, uh, has, what do they call it? Um, intangibles.

• 2:21:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:21:13Jocko Willink?

  They say, hey, we're taking this guy in the draft because he has intent. They can't even explain it. But they know that when we're down by two points and we got this much yardage to cover, like they know that this is the guy that wants the ball and they're going to give it to him.

• 2:21:23Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:21:24Jocko Willink?

  So there's this dynamic and I think that that, all those are cases of being able to tap into the animalistic instinct that we have. If you're an athlete, you gotta like get into that emotional vibe, which is not overboard. By the way, if it goes, if it's too much, if it's, if a person is lit, a person is lit from within too much. Kurt Cobain.

• 2:21:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:21:43Jocko Willink?

  Right? That's, they, they, they literally just, they consume themselves. If a leader is too, too much emotion, they're an emotional leader, they're no good. You can't have them around. Like they, they literally do crazy things, right? So there's gotta be, it's gotta be the right amount that gets put in there. If it's too much, it's, it's too much. But to have none of it is not going to get there. So I think, and that's what, same thing with uh, musicians, right? If I go to Guitar Center and I put up a sign that says, hey, I need a guitarist, needs to be able to play Zeppelin Sabbath, Rush, and Tool.

• 2:22:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:22:21Jocko Willink?

  Like complexes you can get. I'm going to have a dozen people call me that can actually play all those songs. And they work as, you know, carpenters and plumbers and waiters because they haven't, they haven't made it yet.

• 2:22:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:22:38Jocko Willink?

  And they don't have that thing lit from within that allows them to spark and make the, make some emotional connection with the world. Because let's face it, was Kurt Cobain a master guitarist?

• 2:22:53Speaker 01

  No.

• 2:22:53Jocko Willink?

  Absolutely not. Did he connect emotionally with so many, of course.

• 2:22:57Speaker 01

  Beyond.

• 2:22:58Jocko Willink?

  And so that's, that's what it is. And, and that's why also I say, um, you know, we know what elements are in a living cell. Like we know what's in an amoeba. We know all the little components in there. We know the little atoms that are in there. But we can't make one come to life.

• 2:23:15Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:23:16Jocko Willink?

  We can't make one come to life. And that's, you know, when you were, mentioned AI earlier, I think that might be the gap.

• 2:23:22Speaker 01

  I hope so.

• 2:23:23Jocko Willink?

  Because AI can look at other things and take those ideas and, you know, mix them together, but can they really give it that spark? That it needs to, to really create something new.

• 2:23:34Speaker 01

  I, I certainly hope that's our salvation. I think we're about to find out.

• 2:23:38Jocko Willink?

  Like, could, could AI in whatever, what, what year did corn start? 1992?

• 2:23:44Speaker 01

  92 and 93.

• 2:23:46Jocko Willink?

  So could AI, it, with no further information in 1990, create corn?

• 2:23:53Speaker 01

  I think not.

• 2:23:54Jocko Willink?

  I think not. I think not. I don't think that they could have had what it took, that's, that thing for Jonathan Davis to be like howling and screaming and crying.

• 2:24:07Speaker 01

  Bagpipes.

• 2:24:08Jocko Willink?

  And playing bagpipes. Like, this is not happening. AI is not going to come up with it. There's no pre-existing conditions.

• 2:24:14Speaker 01

  It was new.

• 2:24:15Jocko Willink?

  That deliver.

• 2:24:15Speaker 01

  You can't just scrape that which has come before and come up with that. There needs to be the spark.

• 2:24:20Jocko Willink?

  Yep. There's something that's going to be missing.

• 2:24:23Speaker 01

  Before I lose you, I need you to explain one thing to me.

• 2:24:25Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 2:24:26Speaker 01

  Um, how does it work with enlisted? And officers, if you're enlisted and you've been in and you've paid your dues and people come to respect you a great deal. And then some guy gets out of, you know, the academy or what it might be and comes in and has a senior rank to you, but he's nowhere near the experience level, nowhere near the spark you speak of, the hu- human communication. Can that not create discord in the ranks?

• 2:24:56Jocko Willink?

  It, it absolutely can. It usually doesn't.

• 2:24:59Speaker 01

  How is that possible?

• 2:25:01Jocko Willink?

  Because.

• 2:25:01Speaker 01

  Because I just feel like if, if you're, you've paid the dues and you're about it and you understand the culture and you've been in and you understand the rhythms of be at the barracks, be at the battlefield, be at the plane, be at the sub. Just how then this new jack comes in that went to school. So he enters at a higher level, but he's done nothing. She has done nothing to deserve it. I'm puzzled by that dynamic.

• 2:25:25Jocko Willink?

  And, and they portray this in the movies all the time, right? This is a trope.

• 2:25:27Speaker 01

  I'm asking, yeah, yeah.

• 2:25:30Jocko Willink?

  If the officer is humble, he's not going to have a problem. He's going to look at his platoon chief or his platoon sergeant and say, hey, hey, hey, chief. Here's the mission we got. How do you think we should do it?

• 2:25:45Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:25:46Jocko Willink?

  And if the platoon chief doesn't have an ego, he'll say, hey, boss, thanks for asking. Let me talk to the boys. We'll put a plan together and present it to you.

• 2:25:55Speaker 01

  Perfect.

• 2:25:55Jocko Willink?

  And, and you're in such, in such a good spot. That's most of the time what happens. Now you take a big ego on either one of those two characters. And that guy says, hey, I'm in charge. We're doing this mission tonight. Here's how we're going to do it. If that's the officer, the chief already says, wait, wait a second. Why isn't this guy even asking?

• 2:26:10Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:26:11Jocko Willink?

  Or if the chief's like, well, you're damn right. I'm going to come up with a plan. I should be in charge anyways. You're going to have problems. But if people are humble, they keep their egos in check. It's, it's usually not an issue. And by the way, this is not the only world that this happens in.

• 2:26:24Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:26:24Jocko Willink?

  If you go to a construction site, that project manager that's overall in charge of that project graduated from college four years ago. This is his third project. And meanwhile, there's a guy pouring concrete that's been pouring concrete or the foreman of the job's been doing this shit for 28 years.

• 2:26:39Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:26:39Jocko Willink?

  And they have to have that same relationship.

• 2:26:41Speaker 01

  That's exactly the same scenario.

• 2:26:43Jocko Willink?

  And it works, right? I mean, you're, you're directing your, who'd you say was your, your camera guy on your first movie?

• 2:26:49Speaker 01

  Uh, Russell Carpenter, who won the Academy Award for Titanic.

• 2:26:52Jocko Willink?

  You roll in, freaking new guy.

• 2:26:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:26:54Jocko Willink?

  29 years old and you're going to tell this guy who just got an Academy Award.

• 2:26:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:27:00Jocko Willink?

  And you know, like, no, did you treat him with respect?

• 2:27:02Speaker 01

  I did.

• 2:27:02Jocko Willink?

  Did you listen to what he had to say?

• 2:27:03Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 2:27:04Jocko Willink?

  Did he listen to what you have to say?

• 2:27:05Speaker 01

  He did.

• 2:27:05Jocko Willink?

  That, there you go. So it's not a problem.

• 2:27:07Speaker 01

  So well put. There's Jocko Willink, everybody. He makes, everything makes sense. We need more of this in the world.

• 2:27:13Jocko Willink?

  Uh, we, I do have to bring this up because it was so freaking awesome. So we have a scene in the movie where there's music. And it's, it's, it's, it's them playing a video game on guitar, right? Is this too much of a spoiler? You tell me.

• 2:27:28Speaker 01

  No, it's fine.

• 2:27:29Jocko Willink?

  Okay. Well, you know, McG puts out the word, hey, what song, you know, what song are we going with? What song do you want to use? And we, we sat down and uh, you and I had, I think, one commonality on the list, maybe two, but one of them was Black Sabbath Paranoid.

• 2:27:42Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 2:27:43Jocko Willink?

  And you know, I said, I said, hey, man, I don't know, you know, how much well you know me, like Black Sabbath is my favorite band of all time. They're, they're, they're like my band, right? It's Black Sabbath and then everyone else. And Paranoid would be freaking sick. And you're like, oh, I've done, like you were like, no more questions. Like it was already on your list. It's on my list. It's Black Sabbath to me. Like that's what we're doing. Cool. So you put out the word and I don't know how the, how the things work. And you're putting out the word to your team. All right, go secure the rights to use Paranoid in the, in the movie. And so, yep, cool. They come back like, hey, it's too expensive. Um, you know, it's just too expensive. We can't afford it with the budget. We're already this close on budget. We can't afford the thing. And so I am friends with Jack Osborne.

• 2:28:28Speaker 01

  Yep. I remember this moment like it was yesterday, dude.

• 2:28:32Jocko Willink?

  This was, this was one of the coolest things that's ever happened. And I text Jack Osborne and I say, hey, bro, here's where we're at. We're on set right now. Like this song is going to have a, the most prominent song in the movie will be this song.

• 2:28:49Jocko Willink?

  It's gonna be paranoid. I said, I want to introduce the next generation of kids to Black Sabbath. Greatest fan of all time. It's too much money. And he was like, hold on. And you know, he talks to his mom Sharon, who's like, you know, she's the boss.

• 2:29:04Speaker 01

  She's the boss.

• 2:29:05Jocko Willink?

  And you know, he gets back, he's like, we're handling it. And we handled it now. So, so as that's happening. We gotta film the scene. And you know. People are telling you like the, the, the leadership, the Apple people, they're saying, hey, you know, you need to film these other songs. And you're like, no, we're doing paranoid. We're doing paranoid. We're doing paranoid. That's what we're doing. And with no deal secured, only the word of Jack Osborne and Sharon Osborne. That will, will figure it out. You just committed and you kind of screwed them because like there was no choice. Once we filmed that shit. It's like, that's what was happening. So that was kind of a, an epic day.

• 2:29:48Jocko Willink?

  Thanks to Jack and Sharon Osborne and Ozzy, of course, God rest his soul.

• 2:29:51Speaker 01

  Indeed. I mean, just you, you gotta do it for, for I O M. You gotta do it for geezer. You gotta do it for, you gotta do it for the whole team. And when you, I didn't know you knew Jack and then you called Jack to see if he could give us a deal. We still paid a reasonable amount of money. But it was a massive discount that made it real. And that's all I needed to go bananas and light myself on fire. Go, we're doing it. It's paranoid. And I mean, I hear that riff and I want to just run through a fucking wall. You and I would listen to that on 12 and my trailer and go crazy. And then the only thing that took me even higher with, with, with admiration and respect for your musical taste and pedigree. You go, you know, there's this other song I like.

• 2:30:34Speaker 01

  And I'm like, okay, what? You're like, there's this band Kias and they got this song, Green Machine. And I went, ah, and then like we played it and I'm like, you know, what, you know, cause it's the riff at the top and then the, and I started playing the drums and losing my marbles like that. And I'm like, man, I'm with the right guy. I am with the right guy to make this movie. And then we went out and you know, and then Pratt leaned in, remember I told Jude to go crazy and smash the globe? And they're like, no, it's not gonna have continuity. I'm like, smash the globe, man. Let's go. You know what I mean? It's just that whole scene kicked out. And then of course it liberates Jake because he needed to have fun to get out of his own mind.

• 2:31:12Speaker 01

  To illuminate what's going on in the hand. You know what I mean? And I think it's such a nice little moment that he finally exhaled and was willing to have fun with the kid. Rocking out, doing his thing and getting out of his own mind. And then strangely, that's when wow, I can open the bottle cap. Which has been so difficult for me.

• 2:31:31Jocko Willink?

  And the testing of the movie. So talk to us a little bit like,

• 2:31:35Speaker 01

  Usually goes poorly, Jocko. That's another one where you're gonna, you know, a cold shower is coming your way on your second and third movies. Because we tested and the first time we tested, it went incredibly well. Okay. And we learned a couple of things. We slapped the movie around. We tickled the movie a little bit. Then we test the second time and you'll remember the big boppers there from Skydance, Don Granger and Dana Goldberg, who are, you know. Now Dana runs the new combined company. I don't know if you read that. She's the biggest of bosses. And I remember coming out, we tested so well, you can't test any higher, basically. We test so well. And I come out, I still have a couple of, and Don Granger,

• 2:32:14Speaker 01

  and he took us to the bar and like, like bought shots for like the cast and crew and everybody goes, you get to a certain number. Pencils down. Stop thinking. You can't go and he, it's over. Lock the picture.

• 2:32:27Jocko Willink?

  We jumped on a call to get like the debrief. And he, he gets on, he goes, Jocko. And I'm like, yeah. And he goes. You'll never see this again. You'll never see these numbers again.

• 2:32:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:32:40Jocko Willink?

  He goes, I've been doing this for 30, whatever decades. He goes, you'll never see these numbers again. It's not going to get, but this is as good as it gets. Congratulations. This is a winner. And so I was,

• 2:32:53Speaker 01

  We gotta talk about that. We gotta talk. I mean, I know we gotta go, but just like, I'm sorry to steal all your time. But just the, um.

• 2:33:03Speaker 01

  The, the degree to which I feel in my heart, the world can use a movie like this right now. I, I, I'm, I'm a news guy. I like to watch the news. I like to be informed, you know, and the news is so difficult with such great regularity. And this movie is such an honest reflection of the human condition. And it fills your spirit at the end. You might just shed a tear. There's a few giggles along the way. It's a great story and I'm just so happy to give this world. I just can't thank you enough for creating this material. To give to this world, but most particularly at this moment in time. And I just think that I can't think of a movie that makes you feel this way.

• 2:33:46Speaker 01

  Like, oh yeah, there was this one a month ago and there was this one last summer and we did this, this, this, this, this. And I'm just so thankful that we're putting this forward into the world because it doesn't, it, it, it doesn't have, as I like to state, that finger wagging like, well, you better do it this way or you're gonna burn in hell. You know, there's no repercussion. It's just irrefutable. Good life systems. Tell me how you got to that level of clarity. And how do you feel about your movie?

• 2:34:16Jocko Willink?

  Well, one, one thing is when I was.

• 2:34:21Jocko Willink?

  The Warrior Kid series, these are the books that when someone asked me, oh, how are those books? I'll be like, those books are awesome. I won't say that about the books, you know, extreme ownership. Oh, that's an awesome book. I don't say that. And the reason I, I don't say it about those things because I'm not like an arrogant person. But when people ask me about Warrior Kid, I always feel like, I go, oh, those books are awesome. Cause I, when I was writing it, I felt like I was a 10 year old. Like it's not me that wrote it. It was like, it was like the kid that wrote it.

• 2:34:45Speaker 01

  But you also wrote them as a reaction to Diary of a Wimpy Kid. With the greatest respect to Diary of a Wimpy Kid, which is a great series and a lot of great things. You went, hey, what about a book from this perspective?

• 2:34:54Jocko Willink?

  There is actually a book that I read that I went to go, I was book shopping for my son. And I was looking for like a book and I finally am thinking this sucks, this sucks. I'm in a bookstore, a literal bookstore. This sucks, this sucks. Finally I pull it and it's a pirate book. And I go, okay, cool. Pirate book. I start flipping through the pirate book. The, the wimpiest, weakest, most pathetic pirates I'd ever seen. And I'm like, I'm not gonna give my kid this book where the pirates are soft. No world should the pirates be soft. And so that's when I said, I'm gonna just write my own book. But writing that book, you know, where I immediately like, oh, here's the story. Here's the story. It was just, it was in my head immediately. And then I felt like a 10 year old kid when I was writing it. And the only times I didn't feel like a 10 year old kid, I would like be looking over my shoulder going.

• 2:35:40Jocko Willink?

  I can't believe I'm writing this right now. Like this is such an obvious book to write, you know? Like I hope no one's just gonna see this and just, just steal it from me. Because like you said, it was just resounding truth.

• 2:35:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:35:52Jocko Willink?

  That was, uh, you know, when I was, when I was studying English, a lot of these, um. Like poets and whatnot, they would create these sort of myths about themselves that, you know. This was just one, I, I just wrote this. It just, it just flowed out of me like, you know, and then they'd find drafts later and realize that these people had to write and rewrite. But that's, that it is kind of how I felt when I was writing this. It was just kind of like so there. And, and I knew that, um, it would be such a good message for people.

• 2:36:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, it is.

• 2:36:23Jocko Willink?

  And the amount of letters, messages, videos and, and in-person. Events that I've had with kids and parents that have come up to me with the kid, you know, shaking my hand, looking me in the eye. Thanking me for writing the book. And then, you know, eyes up to the mom who's crying because the kid's not getting bullied anymore. The kid's now, you know, gotten an A in math class. The dad's looking at me saying, thank you. He's, he's engaged in, you know, what, in his, in his soccer team now. Like the, the life changes that it has brought to these thousands and thousands of kids. So powerful. And the fact that we now have a medium where it's a much easier medium, right?

• 2:37:06Jocko Willink?

  It's a movie. It's as, it's as easy as it gets. There's no lift at all. There's no lift at all for a kid or a parent to watch the movie. By the way, the parents are gonna learn a lot too. I, I get that all the time from, from parents that said, hey, man, thanks for writing that kid's book.

• 2:37:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, for me.

• 2:37:18Jocko Willink?

  For me. That is one of the first things I did. I, I read a, I read a letter that I got, uh, on one of the podcasts. I'll have to find it and put it up. But I read a letter from this guy, you know, 37 years old. My life was a disaster. I was drinking. I was out of shape. I was, you know, miserable at work. I read your book. I started waking up. I cleaned up my diet. I stopped drinking. I started putting, putting in work while I was at work. It's been whatever nine months now. I've lost 17 pounds. I've just got promoted. I'm healthy. I met a girl. We're dating. I want to thank you for writing this book. And he wrote, and by the way, the book was Way of the Warrior Kid. And this was like a, like a grown man. So.

• 2:37:57Speaker 01

  That's fantastic.

• 2:37:58Jocko Willink?

  Very lucky. And I'm so thankful that that message, you know, got distilled into the movie in its purest form. And elevated, by the way, it's elevated. And you know. Will Staples and Ben, you know, who, who luckily Ben, you know, Ben's like, hey, we needed someone to write the screenplay. And I said, cool. I'll write it. Of course. I'm here. You know, this is me. I wrote the book. I'll write screenplay. And you know, he was like, we need someone that knows how to write a screenplay. You don't know how to write a screenplay. And I was like, well, you know, thinking to myself, well, I'll figure it out. But I also am not an idiot to think.

• 2:38:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:38:35Jocko Willink?

  Here's a guy that's telling me you're not ready to do this because you don't know what you're doing. Of course. I don't know what I'm doing. Cool. We find Will and you know, we elevated the book to.

• 2:38:46Jocko Willink?

  Strengthen, you know, Uncle Jake's character is now this real character. In the book, he's a superhero.

• 2:38:52Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 2:38:52Jocko Willink?

  A flawless superhero.

• 2:38:53Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 2:38:54Jocko Willink?

  Um, in the movie, he's a man.

• 2:38:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:38:56Jocko Willink?

  He's a man. Uh, a little bit older, so we have like more, a little bit more for, for, for Mark Jude's character to chew on and be involved with. And so just the whole elevation of the thing and.

• 2:39:10Speaker 01

  You know what I was surprised with too? That was a pleasant surprise that if you, back to, you brought up testing. The degree to which women respond to this film. I, were you, I guess you weren't shocked? I wasn't shocked. I was pleasantly surprised.

• 2:39:23Jocko Willink?

  Big giant reason, that's about six foot two and his name is Chris Pratt.

• 2:39:26Speaker 01

  That's true. That's true. You know, and Linda's a great point of entry.

• 2:39:30Jocko Willink?

  Oh my God, she's absolutely incredible.

• 2:39:32Speaker 01

  And, but just.

• 2:39:33Jocko Willink?

  Boy, she nails it. But gosh, the looks, there's like, even in the trailer, you know, I'm a parent, I got four kids. Even in the trailer, when, when she says Uncle Jake's coming to visit and he kind of looks down and the camera goes back to her and you see that look that only a mother could have. I don't want to give it away, but I can see. How can you be saying that it's your Uncle Jake? What, what do you mean? You're weird. Like the, the anguish, that micro anguish that she shows, like she just absolutely freaking nails it.

• 2:40:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, she nails it.

• 2:40:04Jocko Willink?

  Absolutely nails it.

• 2:40:05Speaker 01

  And that dinner scene is all time.

• 2:40:06Jocko Willink?

  Oh my God.

• 2:40:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, so.

• 2:40:08Jocko Willink?

  All time. Um, so the movie's going to come out November 25th. What are you, what are you, what are you hoping for?

• 2:40:14Speaker 01

  I'm hoping for big time resonance around the world. You know, I want to have fun celebrating the movie with you and the team. You know, I look forward to seeing Pratt. I'm being a freak when I see Jude, cause I know he's grown, the whole nine yards. You know, Linda and sharing it with the world, rolling it out. Cause I'm just so proud of this film and I'm so thankful to be a part of it. And I just think, as I said, it's, it's a film for the world at this given moment. There's a great deal of agita, there's a great deal of concern. We're concerned with a world that experiences a great deal of conflict. A lot of people regard AI as the greatest threat in our lifetimes. We'll see what becomes of that. And this is a decidedly human, decidedly analog, decidedly heart laden experience

• 2:40:56Speaker 01

  that you don't get a lot of, and it's entertaining and it's fun. And I think, again, without being preachy, I think it has an extraordinary message of just deploy these techniques and watch your world get better.

• 2:41:10Jocko Willink?

  I think that's what we're doing. Um, does that get us up to speed?

• 2:41:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, dude, you don't want to hear any more of my bullshit.

• 2:41:18Jocko Willink?

  Uh, where can people find you? The interweb? Wonderland, Wonderland Sound and Vision dot com.

• 2:41:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, and.

• 2:41:23Jocko Willink?

  You can find all your work there.

• 2:41:24Speaker 01

  But I'm, I'm, I'm, I keep a low profile, but I'm on the gram every now and then.

• 2:41:28Jocko Willink?

  McG Film.

• 2:41:28Speaker 01

  At McG Film, you know?

• 2:41:30Jocko Willink?

  And by the way, for those of you that have been wondering for the past, uh, two and a half hours where McG comes from, your middle name is.

• 2:41:36Speaker 01

  McGinty.

• 2:41:37Jocko Willink?

  McGinty, your mom.

• 2:41:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, I gotta tell the story. I mean, it's just, my name is Joseph McGinty Nickel. I'm born in Kalamazoo, Michigan. We don't have a lot of dough, so there's an Uncle Joe in the house and a Grandpa Joe. And my mother's mother takes one look at me in the crib and goes, call him McG. Short for McGinty, which is my mother's maiden name and my middle name. So I've been apologizing and taking crap for it ever since. And you know, people either think I'm like a hip hop shamrock shake at McDonald's, or they think it's some rap thing. In fact, I got hired a couple of times to make hip hop videos where they thought I was a black dude. And the guy goes, who's McG? I raised my hand. He goes, you're not black.

• 2:42:16Speaker 01

  And I go, should I split? He goes, no, let's just do it. And it's just like the squarest, middle America, Kalamazoo, Michigan parents gave me McG. And I can show you pictures of me in second grade. It says, McG. Like there's, it's, I, I wouldn't know who you were speaking to. Hey Joe, let's go get a sandwich. I, I've only ever in, you know, who calls me something other than McG? And he calls me McGinty. And he shortened it to Ginty. You can guess. Who would say it like?

• 2:42:44Jocko Willink?

  McConaughey, I don't know. I was gonna say McConaughey.

• 2:42:46Speaker 01

  He says, Ginty, Ginty. You know, it's not, what are you gonna do? It's McConaughey. You just let it slide. But I, I've never, there's not one person in the world who calls me Joseph. But still, even all these years later, McG is such a ridiculous name that seems something like hip hop self prescribed thing. Like I'm hard and I'm like a rapper, but it's not, it's from my, it's too late to change now. So it's gotta lean in.

• 2:43:10Jocko Willink?

  Well, I have the similar Jocko, right?

• 2:43:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, where'd Jocko come from?

• 2:43:13Jocko Willink?

  Um, very, I only learned this latest part of the story like two years ago. I was always told that, so my dad's nickname is John O.

• 2:43:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:43:24Jocko Willink?

  Because he's named after his uncle, John Oglethorpe, who is a B17 bombardier, shot down in World War Two.

• 2:43:33Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 2:43:34Jocko Willink?

  Five people, five of the crew were killed, five of them were captured. He was one of the five captured.

• 2:43:38Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 2:43:38Jocko Willink?

  Um, that's who my dad's named after. So, but his nickname his whole life was John O, cause John Oglethorpe. So John O, and then what I was told early, that I believe my whole life was that my dad was a real like sports fanatic.

• 2:43:54Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:43:54Jocko Willink?

  And he put Sports Illustrated, uh, covers all over my room when he found out I was going to be a boy. And he said, yep, he's going to be a jock, he's going to be a Jocko, right? So that's my, or my mom said, Jocko, Jocko. Okay. And that's where the nickname.

• 2:44:06Speaker 01

  As a little bit of jock and John O and it came together and you get Jocko.

• 2:44:09Jocko Willink?

  That's where we're at. But then I later found out that my dad, my dad was a pilot. Uh, not a military pilot, a civilian pilot. And he used to fly out of this small airport up in New York state. And there was a guy there named Jac, I think his last name was Whitling. And this guy, Jac Whitling, was part of the OSS in World War Two, who became both the Green Berets and the CIA. Like they, this is, this guy was like ground zero for special operations. And he came back and he married someone from like the Heinz, one of the, one of the debutantes from the Heinz family. And he just, he was, so he was this super rich, super dynamic guy that would, had his own airplane at the airport and would fly in and fly out.

• 2:44:54Jocko Willink?

  And, and my dad just looked at this guy like he was just this really, really cool guy. And the guy's name was Jac. And so that's where my dad actually got the, and my dad only told me this like two or three years ago. And I looked up, you can find the guy on Wikipedia. He's in there. He's like Jac, whatever his last name is Whitling. And he was this guy. And that's, that's, so I'm actually named after this former, or this OSS precursor CIA precursor Green Beret guy. That's where my, my dad got that name from. But I never was called anything else in my life.

• 2:45:22Speaker 01

  Me neither. Not one second of anything else.

• 2:45:24Jocko Willink?

  And when I went to college, so I was a 28 year old man when I went to college. And when I go into college and they had their roster, the, in, in University of San Diego, where I went to college, those professors were the only people that ever called me John. I didn't correct them because I wasn't like, you can actually call me Jocko. No, he's like, John, yep, here. Those are the only people that ever called me John. And other than that, yeah, it's just Jocko.

• 2:45:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:45:48Jocko Willink?

  Which is less ridiculous than McG.

• 2:45:50Speaker 01

  McG is beyond ridiculous.

• 2:45:52Jocko Willink?

  But it is pretty, you know, you know, if, if, if, if you gave yourself the name Jocko, it'd be kind of ridiculous. You know what I mean?

• 2:45:59Speaker 01

  But more ridiculous to give yourself the name McG.

• 2:46:01Jocko Willink?

  McG would top the list.

• 2:46:02Speaker 01

  Would be unreal. And a lot of people think I did it.

• 2:46:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:46:05Speaker 01

  But what am I going to do now? Turn my back on my family and my, I gotta lean in.

• 2:46:08Jocko Willink?

  No, you gotta lean in.

• 2:46:11Jocko Willink?

  That's the way it is. Uh, McG Film Twitter. Do you ever go on Twitter X?

• 2:46:15Speaker 01

  Not so, not so often.

• 2:46:17Jocko Willink?

  Uh, McG, McG, McG's Wonderland, I guess is that. Um, Echo Charles, before we close out, do you have any questions?

• 2:46:24Speaker 02

  I have many, many, many, many question, but in the sake of, uh, brevity, we'll say, we'll keep them up.

• 2:46:30Speaker 01

  How, how great is Echo? Echo's a big hit in the community.

• 2:46:35Jocko Willink?

  They come for Jocko, they stay for Echo. Believe me, he will tell you, that, that comment's been made before. Maybe six times, but it's the most powerful comment in Echo's world.

• 2:46:45Speaker 02

  Hey, we're here.

• 2:46:45Jocko Willink?

  They came for Jocko, they stay for Echo.

• 2:46:47Speaker 02

  Okay. All right. Uh, so the exposure therapy scenario, how long did that take from day one of that process to the point where you're like, hey, I have a handle on this stuff?

• 2:46:58Speaker 01

  It took six months to sort of sit in at all. And then it never ends. Like it's still to this day. I still seek things that, that, you know, would invoke that feeling in that beginning of that rise.

• 2:47:11Speaker 02

  To train it.

• 2:47:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's misappropriated adrenaline.

• 2:47:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:47:14Speaker 01

  You know what I mean? But then the thought process makes it very, very dreadful. You know what I mean? But all it is, is the rise of the adrenaline and then your mind prescribing it in the wrong way. You know, but, um, it, it, and I thought when I began, it's not going to work. I looked at the therapist like, it's not going to work. It's not going to work. And they said, great, it's not going to work. Just shut up and try. Just try. And zero, sometimes I'd be like, oh, a bad day. I don't care about your bad day. I don't care about anything. All we're going to do is focus on this thing. I, I can't go all the way to the plane. How far can you go? Well, then that's how far we're going to go today. And tomorrow we're going to try to go a little bit. That was it. It was shocking how simple it was.

• 2:47:52Jocko Willink?

  So six months?

• 2:47:54Speaker 01

  To, to really start to buy into the program.

• 2:47:57Jocko Willink?

  Six months before, before you could get on the plane?

• 2:48:01Speaker 01

  It probably took me four months. After three or four months, I, I, I was a rich dude in Santa Barbara. He had a G four and I chartered it off of him. It was housed at Van Nuys. And I go, he's thinking, I'm going to go fly around and do the thing that guys do. I go, I'm knowing one day I'd like to fly, but I, right now, I literally just need to go out there and just pay, just get acclimate and just get used to it. So that took about three months and I probably spent a month on it. Then a couple more weeks taxiing, then I finally took off, you know?

• 2:48:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, I have a, not too bad, but claustrophobia. And it's you explaining it was like, bro, that's exactly what it is. Cause you know, like up here, you know, the front of your brain, like intellectually, you know, like I'm gonna be completely okay.

• 2:48:45Speaker 01

  But doesn't feel that way.

• 2:48:47Speaker 02

  Literally out of control, like literally.

• 2:48:49Speaker 01

  What would be a bad claustrophobic scenario? Stuck in an elevator?

• 2:48:52Speaker 02

  No, no, no.

• 2:48:53Speaker 01

  What about, so like, like, um, if you were lying on the grass, uh, and the track and field meet, and you fell asleep in the sun on your back, somebody took that giant high jump mat and six guys came across and laid it on top of you. And you were stuck like.

• 2:49:09Speaker 02

  If I, if I, you're good. If I was, had my hands up.

• 2:49:13Speaker 01

  Yes, yes.

• 2:49:14Jocko Willink?

  Well, just so we're all clear here.

• 2:49:16Speaker 01

  You would, you would maybe feel feelings of panic.

• 2:49:19Jocko Willink?

  Gee, I used to get him to tap out in jujitsu when I would get control, side control on top of him. And just immobilize him, he would tap. No, no chokehold, no arm lock.

• 2:49:33Speaker 01

  Because of the claustrophobia.

• 2:49:34Jocko Willink?

  He couldn't move and he would just freaking tap out.

• 2:49:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, let me out of this hole.

• 2:49:38Speaker 02

  Yeah. So, well, and this is why that one is it that one, that's when it really dawned on me that this is completely, like not even just psychological, it's like contextual. Cause one time, and once he found that out, he would try to do it all the time.

• 2:49:54Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:49:55Speaker 02

  But when I want to help my friend. He did it like, you could tell he was out of like, haha, I got you even in a more advanced psychological warfare way. And I was like, I dig it. But anytime I'd like, kind of get the hint with his vibe, you know, you can kind of, when you roll with somebody, you can tell their vibe or whatever.

• 2:50:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:50:12Speaker 02

  When I would get the vibe that he's trying to do that, it just simply wouldn't work.

• 2:50:16Speaker 01

  He was going for side control.

• 2:50:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. And to hold it. And one time he would, he put his, like, we're up again, like by the wall kind of, like the walls are padded.

• 2:50:22Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:50:23Speaker 02

  He puts his feet up on the wall so it gets more heavy. That's what he was doing. And he's like doing that. And I'm like, oh, he's trying to do it right now. And then it completely went away. Like it didn't affect me at all. Yeah, exactly right. The only times is here's when it really, I shouldn't even tell you this, but the reason, when it really used to get me, is when we get into like a real scramble. And I'd be like, nah, he's not beating me in this. When you, when you win a scramble, basically you're trying to do, and you wind up in a good position. That's when you win a scramble. So we're going down a scramble and refusing to lose the scramble. And I'm, you know, I'm, I'm defending and I'm freaking trying to do my thing or whatever. And then if, if I'm starting to get a little bit tired, real tired sometimes, and then he'll win the scramble inside control.

• 2:51:07Speaker 02

  And, cause when you win a scramble, we're both kind of expending energy, right?

• 2:51:10Speaker 01

  Yep, of course.

• 2:51:11Speaker 02

  So when you win the scramble, you want to stay in that position. So I'm like gassing in a bad position. And he's not going anywhere. He's not giving up that. So I know psychologically, like, there's no logical reason for me to get out of this position and I'm breathing hard. See what I'm saying? So it's not like I can just panic and get out. I don't have the energy to do it. So I'm like, I'm like, I feel like I'm gonna die. Even though I know I'm not gonna die, I feel like I'm gonna die and then I'll tap. And that's pretty much the only times I will, I would, unless I was like, good conditioning like really helps.

• 2:51:46Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:51:46Speaker 02

  Um, but I never went through any kind of like that. I, I just figured the more I roll with him or just roll in general.

• 2:51:52Speaker 01

  Did you have an inciting incident? You ever get locked in a box as a kid? You ever have a guy, you know, sit on you and tie you up for too long?

• 2:51:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, I remember when we were young, like we'd wrestle and then we'd have like a blanket and you like roll the guy up.

• 2:52:04Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:52:05Speaker 02

  You'd like hold him down.

• 2:52:06Speaker 01

  I remember we used to roll the guys up in the wrestling mats.

• 2:52:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:52:09Speaker 01

  You know what I mean?

• 2:52:10Jocko Willink?

  I got rolled up.

• 2:52:10Speaker 02

  Did you wrestle?

• 2:52:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, but not very well. My brother did.

• 2:52:13Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:52:13Speaker 01

  Again, so as part of the like pursuing all that, but again, yeah, yeah. But I remember we did that, you know? And we kind of did it for fun and kind of did it for torch, like you do when you're a kid. But like, I could see a couple of guys went sideways with that one, because that one's gnarly. That's a bind. You know what I mean?

• 2:52:29Jocko Willink?

  Dude, Hickson, Gracie, Hickson Gracie, he had that feeling. And what he did, you know who Hickson Gracie is? He's like the, the, the, the most legendary fighter of the entire Gracie family, right? So Hickson had that issue, claustrophobia. And he had his brothers roll him up in a carpet.

• 2:52:48Speaker 02

  Like this.

• 2:52:49Jocko Willink?

  With his hands up over his head, over and over again, until he got control.

• 2:52:55Speaker 01

  Wow, there's your exposure.

• 2:52:57Jocko Willink?

  That's like, but that's like, that's the not, hey, do what you can today. No, that's like, yeah, you're going parachuting today. That's what's happening.

• 2:53:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, but that's called, there's, that's called flooding.

• 2:53:10Jocko Willink?

  Oh, okay.

• 2:53:11Speaker 01

  That is, it's called, and guess what happens? It works.

• 2:53:14Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 2:53:15Speaker 01

  Flooding, that flood, go zero to a hundred flood.

• 2:53:17Jocko Willink?

  Zero to a hundred.

• 2:53:18Speaker 01

  You know what I mean? And you think you're gonna die and you go through the whole thing and then you come out the other end and go, I didn't die. I didn't die. I'm still breathing. Like you think like, I'm gonna, if you do that, you roll me up in the carpet, I will stop breathing. My heart will, I will die. No, you won't. You can't, you can't. So that's, it's hard to understand when you're in it. You know what I'm talking about, but you do have the truth on your side.

• 2:53:37Speaker 02

  That's how Deadpool was made, by the way. If you watch Deadpool one.

• 2:53:41Jocko Willink?

  How did he mean?

• 2:53:41Speaker 02

  Like they flooded him.

• 2:53:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:53:43Speaker 02

  With like physical and psychological pain to the point of death, and then they'd stop. And they did it for so long that he had no choice but to become Deadpool.

• 2:53:52Jocko Willink?

  There you go.

• 2:53:53Speaker 02

  True story. How'd you get roped into punked?

• 2:53:57Speaker 02

  That was a great episode, by the way.

• 2:53:59Speaker 01

  Ashton and those guys asked me to do it and, um, it, it seemed like a good idea, but in retrospect now, that, that's a, that was a gnarly setup. You know, I have a meeting with Katie Holmes where she thinks she's just meeting a director about talking about a movie. And a pretty girl comes out and goes, okay babe, bye. You know, and I give the girl a kiss and we say goodbye, no big deal. And, um, I, you know, just play along and I keep meeting with Katie Holmes. Then a new girl comes home that's not the girl from the beginning goes, hi babe, I'm so glad you're home and all. So Katie Holmes, they got too tight, realized like, I just saw you kiss some other girl and act like, and I kind of go to, you know what I mean?

• 2:54:37Speaker 01

  That do the thing. And then I leave and then the girl asked Katie Holmes, was he just with another girl? Cause we're kind of, you know, it's my fiance. By the way, fiance, not boyfriend. It's my fiance. I need to know. So Katie Holmes has to make a decision right there. Am I gonna lie on behalf of some guy I've known for 90 seconds? And she does this, you would like, I'm just here for a meeting. I'm not doing the thing and do the thing. And then of course they do the worst thing of all time. My fiance is there talking to Katie Holmes going, is there another girl or not? And the girl that from the original walkout with the kiss returns to the scene, forgot her sweater. And goes, hi babe, I need to do this. So instead of get my fiance getting mad at me, which she does plenty, she takes it out on Katie Holmes.

• 2:55:21Speaker 01

  How could you lie to me, woman to woman and not tell me that there was another? And it's Katie Holmes, I, I gotta go. I, this is unbelievable. I gotta get out of here. And it's, it's gnarly. And you see Demi Moore like coaching me up with the earwig, you know, telling me how to play. It was dark side.

• 2:55:35Jocko Willink?

  At least she can take some blame.

• 2:55:37Speaker 01

  Like I can lay it off on Demi. I can lay it on Demi.

• 2:55:41Jocko Willink?

  Do not take ownership of that. It's too cold.

• 2:55:43Speaker 01

  It's too gnarly still gold. You know?

• 2:55:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, a lot of those episodes, they're fun to watch, but you're right. Like after a while you're like, cause you never know, when you squeeze somebody in public like that, or, or, or like in the wild, you know, when they're not ready for it, you never know. You're like, bro, you know, like, like what if you, you traumatize somebody? You know, you kind of go down that thought process, but it was, that was, that was a fun show.

• 2:56:06Jocko Willink?

  I remember those pranks can get wild.

• 2:56:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:56:09Jocko Willink?

  There's a, there's a prankster on, um, like YouTube.

• 2:56:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:56:12Jocko Willink?

  He's this guy that goes into the hood.

• 2:56:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:56:14Jocko Willink?

  And he just says wild shit to people. Yeah, but he'll say like, um, he'll say, hey, boy, you want to get checked?

• 2:56:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:56:23Jocko Willink?

  And people are like, what, like, what, what are you talking about? And they get in his face, he's had guns pulled on him and stuff, right? And eventually he'll say like, no, I got a check. I want to give you a check for, or he'll be like, you want to get smoked? And then he'll give him a cigarette, you know, but he really pushes the envelope.

• 2:56:38Speaker 01

  That's a dangerous life.

• 2:56:39Jocko Willink?

  Dangerous life.

• 2:56:40Speaker 01

  Wild. You don't know how that's gonna go.

• 2:56:43Jocko Willink?

  Yep, definitely. Uh, any other questions?

• 2:56:46Speaker 02

  Uh, not for today, maybe next.

• 2:56:47Speaker 01

  I love it, man. I'm, I'm so glad we're in the slot too, getting ready to, for the release of the movie. Uh, I'll be back. And again, I'm, I'm glad that you did that bit with Mary and I, I'll never make another movie without trying to figure out a way to get you into it. And you, you can't escape.

• 2:57:01Jocko Willink?

  Hey, he brings excellence and legitimacy to everything.

• 2:57:04Speaker 01

  And legitimacy. Um, all right. So you boys gonna hang around for tonight?

• 2:57:08Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, we're gonna hang around for tonight. Any other closing thoughts?

• 2:57:11Speaker 01

  No, I'm just humbled and honored to be a part of it. It's been, you know, the single greatest movie experience of my life. It's, uh, because it's more than just a movie. You know, it's a movie that I think we can be proud of and I, I'm so happy to put it into the world and see what kind of life it takes. Now it's going to live forever.

• 2:57:26Jocko Willink?

  Well, thank you. Uh, thank you so much, man, for.

• 2:57:29Speaker 01

  Thank you. And we'll do it again for goodness sakes.

• 2:57:31Jocko Willink?

  My deepest gratitude for, for directing and I don't, I don't, I don't think people always understand what directing means. Guiding, shepherding, making this thing happen with your soul, with your passion, staying true to the story. And, um, I think this really is going to help millions of kids and parents and people around the world. And it would not be what it is without you, McG.

• 2:57:55Speaker 01

  Well, it wouldn't be without you. So right back at you. And I mean, what a great team. We got Echo, we got Ben, we got the great Chris Pratt, we got it done. And, uh, now it's just about time to give it to the world. Let's have a ball.

• 2:58:06Jocko Willink?

  Let's go.

• 2:58:06Speaker 01

  All right, let's go.

• 2:58:09Jocko Willink?

  And with that, McG has left the building.

• 2:58:15Jocko Willink?

  Warrior Kid is coming.

• 2:58:16Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 2:58:17Jocko Willink?

  Uh, we all need to get better mentally, physically, lots of different ways. And you know what that means? Means we gotta get after it. Running, sprinting, jujitsu, swimming, surfing, lifting.

• 2:58:33Jocko Willink?

  Pretty hyped about that, McG, weren't you? You like that?

• 2:58:36Speaker 02

  I do like that, yes. Hey, that's my people, you know, part of my whole thing. Culture.

• 2:58:42Jocko Willink?

  I didn't, I didn't know that the whole reason behind Echo Charles's video life was, um, Terminator Four Salvation.

• 2:58:52Speaker 02

  Terminator Four Salvation, the, the trailer. And we, we spoke about that on one of the episodes. By the way, it was like, there's like,

• 2:59:01Speaker 02

  maybe two or three trailers that are like.

• 2:59:03Jocko Willink?

  What are the other two?

• 2:59:04Speaker 02

  I, I can't even recall, to be honest.

• 2:59:06Jocko Willink?

  So the only one that really matters.

• 2:59:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:59:09Jocko Willink?

  Apparently.

• 2:59:10Speaker 02

  Oh, sorry. I know the other two.

• 2:59:11Jocko Willink?

  What are they?

• 2:59:12Speaker 02

  Pirates of, Pirates of the Caribbean. Two of them.

• 2:59:16Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:59:16Speaker 02

  The one, I think it's on Stranger Tides, I think. Pirates Four, Part Four. And then the Pirates, uh, Dead Men Tell No Tales.

• 2:59:25Jocko Willink?

  My kids freaking love Pirates of the Caribbean.

• 2:59:27Speaker 02

  True. Yeah, I understand.

• 2:59:28Jocko Willink?

  They're all about it.

• 2:59:28Speaker 02

  Filmed on Kauai, by the way.

• 2:59:30Jocko Willink?

  So there you go. Good to go. GTG. Is this, is your dad in it?

• 2:59:34Speaker 02

  My, no, no, no. That was after my dad's career.

• 2:59:37Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:59:37Speaker 02

  And it's after he retired.

• 2:59:39Jocko Willink?

  DC, keeping it real.

• 2:59:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:59:41Jocko Willink?

  Um, hey, look, Warrior Kid's coming. We got lots of things to think about. We got, we also have Warrior Kid Nutrition available. So we, we know that we have Jocko Fuel, right? I just got done drinking Pumpkin Spice Malt, by the way. It was very delicious. And I had it in the afternoon. It's the afternoon, you know, evening, still, still tastes good. But we have Warrior Kid Nutrition as well. We got protein, we got vitamin, we got sleep, we got Focus gummies, right? We got creatine gummies coming too, by the way. All kinds of good stuff for you and your kids. Check out JacoFuel.com. And you can get the protein that you need. You can get the energy drink, which I drank, uh, my second one right now, today. Get hydration, super krill, whatever you need. Go to JacoFuel.com and get it. Or go to your local store, whatever that store may be.

• 3:00:25Jocko Willink?

  Supermarket, grocery store, uh, supplement store, they'll have Jocko Fuel there. And if they don't have Jocko Fuel, ask them for it and they will get Jocko Fuel. So JacoFuel.com. Check it out. Also, OriginUSA.com. When you see the movie Way of the Warrior Kid, you're gonna see some Origin Geez, for sure. And some Origin Rashcards.

• 3:00:45Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 3:00:46Jocko Willink?

  Uh, you're gonna see them. And you're gonna see them big time. And you're gonna want one. And when you're gonna want one, you're gonna, oh, that seems cool. But you know, I don't wanna buy some cheap, you know, Chinese communist made, whatever. And you don't have to. Buy the real deal. OriginUSA.com. Get American made, not just Geez, but boots, jeans, t-shirts, sneakers have just been released.

• 3:01:09Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 3:01:10Jocko Willink?

  So if you need some American made goodness, go to OriginUSA.com and get some.

• 3:01:17Speaker 02

  It's true. Don't forget about Jocko Store, where you can represent on this path that we're all on. Discipline equals freedom. Good. Stand by to get some. Some people may or may not be wearing it this time. Um, and also the short locker, if you want some more creative designs. That's a subscription scenario, by the way.

• 3:01:35Speaker 02

  Um, anyway, yeah, it's all in Jocko Store. Uh, that's where you can get your merch. So yes, JacoStore.com.

• 3:01:41Jocko Willink?

  That's where you can get it. What if you like something when you're there?

• 3:01:44Speaker 02

  Just get something, bro.

• 3:01:46Jocko Willink?

  Check, uh, books. Check out Warrior Kid's series. Check out Mikey and the Dragons. Check out Put Your Legs On by Rob Jones. Check out Need to Lead by Dave Burke. Check out the other books that I've written. And go see Way of the Warrior Kid on November 25th, streaming on Apple. Global release day. Echelonfront.com, we teach leadership. You can use leadership to solve all the problems that you have with your team or your organization or at home. Echelonfront.com for our services. We also have online leadership training, ExtremeOwnership.com. This is our online training academy. So you can learn the skills of leadership to apply to every aspect of your life.

• 3:02:27Jocko Willink?

  So check that as well. And if you wanna help service members, active and retired, you wanna help their families, Gold Star families, check out Mark Lee's Mom Mama Lee. Now, Mark Lee is the name of the lead character in the Way of the Warrior Kid series. So tribute to him. And his mom, Mama Lee, has got an amazing charity organization. If you wanna donate or you wanna get involved, go to AmericasMightyWarriors.org. You can also check out HeroesandHorses.org, and then Jimmy May's organization, BeyondTheBrotherhood.org. If you wanna connect with McG, you can check out WonderlandSoundandVision.com. He's also on Instagram, at McGFilm. And then for us, check out Jaco.com.

• 3:03:13Jocko Willink?

  And we are on social media, but not very much. I'm at Jocko Willink, Echo's at Echo Charles. Just watch out for the algorithm, cuz it's not healthy. It's not good for you, as McG pointed out. Social media's not good for you. Don't be on there. Thanks once again to McG for joining us here tonight, for entertaining us over the years, and for helping bring Way of the Warrior Kid to the world on the big screen. Thanks to the warriors of our military that are out there right now stationed around the world, defending freedom, defending our way of life, defending our ability to pursue our dreams back here in this blessed country, America. We thank you for your service and sacrifice.

• 3:03:54Jocko Willink?

  Also, thanks to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, Border Patrol, Secret Service, as well as all other first responders. Thank you for your sacrifice to keep us safe and defend us here at home. And to everyone else out there,

• 3:04:09Jocko Willink?

  some great lessons from McG. Um, and you know, really, such a clear and obvious one, why do we even have to talk about it? You gotta face your fears. That's what it is. The thing that you're afraid of, you gotta go do it. And life is short, and you don't make any progress if you don't face your fears. Instead, you'll end up in the fetal position, curled up on your couch, hiding your eyes from the world. Don't let that happen. Do the thing. Make it happen. Throw that TV through the window.

• 3:04:45Jocko Willink?

  Ride that motorcycle into the pool. Bring some rock and roll, bring some passion, bring some art, bring some life to the world.

• 3:04:54Jocko Willink?

  And that's all we've got for tonight. And until next time, this is Echo and Jocko out.