title #2482 - Andy Stumpf

description Andy Stumpf is a retired Navy SEAL, entrepreneur, record-holding wingsuiter, and host of “Cleared Hot” and “Change Agents.” His new book, “Drownproof: Eight Life Lessons to Keep Your Head Above Water,” is available now.https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250379610/drownproofwww.youtube.com/@ClearedHotPodcastwww.youtube.com/@thisisironcladwww.andystumpf.com



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pubDate Tue, 14 Apr 2026 17:00:00 GMT

author Joe Rogan

duration 9579000

transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:01] Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out! The Joe Rogan Experience. Trained by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day!

Speaker 2:
[00:12] Being a pacifist is the way. Avoid violence at all costs. You know what I mean, Joe?

Speaker 3:
[00:16] Look at you, dog, you're a fucking author.

Speaker 2:
[00:18] Take it easy, I'm not an author until tomorrow, technically.

Speaker 3:
[00:22] No, you're an author once it's written. I can read it, which makes you an author. I have a book in my hand, which makes you an author.

Speaker 2:
[00:29] I tell you what, man, you had more of a hand in that book than you would think. Really? Before we started, I had you sign one of the copies, because I'm going to keep it for myself. The people's names who associated themselves with that, who took a chance on me and supporting me, they have just as much as hands as the monkey who may or may not have been sitting in front of the computer writing out the words very slowly.

Speaker 3:
[00:53] Isn't that the case with everything in life though? I mean, it's really who you know, and like the people that you associate with and what you learn from them and their examples with everything. And then there's no individuals that are responsible entirely for their own life.

Speaker 2:
[01:09] There are individuals though that would tell you that they are.

Speaker 3:
[01:13] Yeah, but those are the people that I don't hang out with.

Speaker 2:
[01:17] Yeah, I can't suffer being in the presence of somebody who thinks that they had every idea and every right decision was theirs. Because I look at my own life, one, I can't compete with that because my life is defined by its mistakes and idiotic things I've done. But two, I just, I don't get it. I'm a product of the people who I was raised by, the people I was around, the people still in my life. I mean.

Speaker 3:
[01:37] 100%. We all are. If you don't think that, you're delusional. You cannot have an exceptional person that's surrounded by dipshits. They just won't, eventually they'll give in to dipshittery. It's contagious. Negative people.

Speaker 2:
[01:55] You really got me thinking, though, if that is possible. I'm trying to think of an example.

Speaker 3:
[01:57] Yeah, I probably shouldn't have said it's impossible. It could be possible, but it's very highly unlikely. And also, they didn't achieve their full potential, if that's the case. They would have been even better if they had been surrounded by exceptional people.

Speaker 2:
[02:10] Improbable, at best.

Speaker 3:
[02:11] Yeah, at best. Yeah, I've never seen an example of it. Again, maybe one exists that I don't know about. But as far as all the exceptional people that I know, they all associate with other exceptional people.

Speaker 2:
[02:23] You know quite a few exceptional people. You have an interesting job that has a Venn diagram that is incredibly unique in the people you've been able to sit down with.

Speaker 3:
[02:31] It's pretty fucking weird.

Speaker 2:
[02:33] Did you ever think?

Speaker 1:
[02:34] No.

Speaker 2:
[02:34] First off, by the way, I try to point as many people as possible to JRE Number 1, because I think it's a masterpiece.

Speaker 3:
[02:39] It's a good thing to see.

Speaker 1:
[02:41] Oh my God.

Speaker 3:
[02:41] Because it's terrible.

Speaker 2:
[02:42] I'm like, wait for the snowflakes. And they go, what the fuck are you talking about? I'm like, just wait. It's amazing. Could you have ever thought, though, at JRE 1, where I feel like that was you on a laptop video? Yeah, 100%.

Speaker 3:
[02:57] Yeah, 100%.

Speaker 2:
[02:58] And to where you are now, where you were sitting down and talking to some of the most influential people on the face of planet Earth?

Speaker 3:
[03:04] No. I mean, I think if I planned it out like that, it would have never worked, you know?

Speaker 2:
[03:08] You would have tried too hard, maybe?

Speaker 1:
[03:10] I don't know what I would have done.

Speaker 3:
[03:12] I mean, I probably would have been more careful, which would have made it less fun, which would have made it less attractive. You know, I think the two things that I've done that are really important is not pay attention to much online talk about me and just follow my interests and my instincts. Like, I booked the whole thing entirely on instinct. I look at like all the different suggestions that come in and all the different requests to be on the show, and I go, no, how's that?

Speaker 2:
[03:45] Purely on self-interest?

Speaker 1:
[03:46] A hundred percent.

Speaker 2:
[03:47] I think that's the way. What do you get per day? Like ballpark people trying to get on your show?

Speaker 3:
[03:53] I don't even know because I have a really good guy that filters out a lot of them.

Speaker 2:
[03:56] I bet it's got to be in the hundreds.

Speaker 3:
[03:58] Yeah. I'm sure. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[04:00] But he filters out a lot of them and it gets down to, he knows me really well and so he sends me, like some physicist is working on some new things, some quantum thing, this, that, the other thing, like there's a new person that's doing this and there's new research on that and then there's that kind of shit.

Speaker 3:
[04:21] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[04:21] I think the difference between you and me is, I appreciate the fact you can hold a conversation with those people. I would be sitting there listening to them with the scroll wheel. Yeah. Do you have words that are smaller that could explain that?

Speaker 3:
[04:35] Well, some of them I have to really prepare for. If I have a Brian Cox on or something like that, I'll really prepare.

Speaker 1:
[04:42] Or, there's been a few people over time, where I knew they were coming on like three months out, so I've read a couple of their books, I watched a few of their lectures. But then there's other ones like I could just hang out with them. Like Evan Haver comes on, we just shoot the shit.

Speaker 2:
[05:01] Angry small French painter, fucking Green Berets.

Speaker 3:
[05:07] He's the best, I love that dude.

Speaker 2:
[05:08] I was with him at the Montana Grand Opening, Montana Knife Company Grand Opening with their new HQ. We've been on the road a bit, I think like two days ago. He's one of my favorite people. Absolutely, he's so wee, but he's one of my favorite people.

Speaker 1:
[05:20] He's an awesome human, a very unusual human being.

Speaker 3:
[05:24] He's one of the ones that's suffering from that stupid fucking alpha gal bite. He's got that tick. He got bit by that tick that makes you allergic to red meat.

Speaker 2:
[05:33] Is it all red meat or processed red meat?

Speaker 3:
[05:35] It's animal meat. It's mammal meat. That's the thing. You could eat some fish. Some people can eat fish. Some people can eat chicken. He's broken it down to only eating eggs right now. That's how bad it is. He's getting all of his protein from eggs, which is a great source of protein, no doubt.

Speaker 2:
[05:52] But that's exhaustingly boring, though.

Speaker 1:
[05:55] Just go to dinner with him. It's crazy.

Speaker 3:
[05:57] The guy has to eat vegetables and eggs. That's all he can eat.

Speaker 2:
[06:00] I would just mock him incessantly to his face.

Speaker 3:
[06:02] I know you would.

Speaker 2:
[06:05] Do you guys have a larger salad?

Speaker 3:
[06:07] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[06:08] I would mock him that way because I care for him so deeply. He is truly one of my closest friends. He's an awesome dude.

Speaker 3:
[06:15] Yeah. He's been battling this for a couple years now. He got clear of it. He was eating meat again and he was fine, and he thought it was over. Then it came back. He came back with a vengeance. It's a weird fucking disease because let's find out. Put this into perplexity. As far as the documented cases of this Alpha Gal syndrome, when did it first start occurring in the United States? Because I had never even heard about it until Evan. When he told me about it, I was like, what? You got to allergic to red meat.

Speaker 2:
[06:55] And how can a tick bite cause it? I mean, Lyme disease is another one. Like, how does it do that? A bite from a tick just jacks up the human body.

Speaker 3:
[07:02] Well, apparently Lyme disease has existed. There's been forms of Lyme disease throughout history. But there's real solid evidence that Lyme disease, which is named Lyme disease because of Lyme, Connecticut, is related to Plum Island, where they were doing bioweapons research on ticks.

Speaker 2:
[07:21] It's historically good idea.

Speaker 3:
[07:22] It's right there. It's like literally right there. And then the prevalence of Lyme disease on the East Coast is fucking outrageous. It's outrageous how many ticks carry this fucking thing. I know so many people that have Lyme disease.

Speaker 2:
[07:36] And that's a lifelong one too, right? Like you're not getting off that train if you can manage the system?

Speaker 3:
[07:40] You can cure it. You can cure it. People have cured it. And they've particularly cured it if they get on antibiotics very quickly. So one of the weird things about Lyme disease is that the bite has like a little target around it. It's weird. It's like it almost looks like a bullseye because the infection as it grows, there's a red circle around the bite and if that's and but that goes away within a few days. But if that's recognized, you bring it to a doctor, they get you on antibiotics, you can actually get off of it, depending on the severity of your case, obviously. So here it is. Alpha-gal syndromes appeared to have first emerged in the US in the late 1980s, but was not recognized as a distinct tick-related meat allergy until the early 2000s. So in 89, clinicians in Georgia collected about 10 cases of delayed allergic reactions to mammalian meat, mammalian, mammalian, mammalian meat and linked them to prior tick bites. These observations were not widely recognized at the time. Allergy was first formally identified as originating from tick bites in the US by Thomas Platts Mills in the early 2000s. The reports note this discovery process beginning around 2002 and becoming clear by 2007. So in the medical literature, it's first described in 2009 when published work documented patients with delayed reactions to red meat and linked them to IgE against alpha-gal. Interesting. So it seems like it's in the 80s but really started being recognized in the 2000s.

Speaker 2:
[09:11] Explain. I mean, he has definitely, he's slender down.

Speaker 3:
[09:15] This episode is brought to you by Sketchers. Today, life is all about convenience. And do you know what the ultimate convenience is? Hands-free Sketchers slip ins. They're so easy. You've probably seen the ads. You just step in and they're on with no bending down. Well, they work just as advertised. You tie the laces once and you never have to tie them again. It's the perfect fit. Just step in and go. It's a life hack for putting on your footwear. And not only are Sketchers slip ins convenient, they're also very comfortable. At Sketchers, comfort is at technology. They take comfort that seriously. Plus, they're stylish and they come in so many colors and sizes. You can get slip ins in casual and dress footwear, sandals, sneakers, high performance running footwear and more. Plus, how about this for convenience? They're even machine washable. Pop them in the washing machine and they come out looking like new. So if you like convenience and so much more, you've got to try Sketchers slip ins.

Speaker 2:
[10:16] You'll wish your shoes were this easy.

Speaker 3:
[10:19] Check out sketchers.com for the biggest selection in the world plus all the hard to find styles. That's only at sketchers.com. This episode is brought to you by LifeLock. It's tax season and by now, I know we're all a bit tired of numbers. But here's an important one for you to hear. $16 billion. That's how much money in refunds the IRS flagged for possible identity fraud. Here's another. One in four honest, hardworking, tax-paying Americans have been a victim of identity theft. But it's not all grim news. LifeLock monitors millions of data points per second for your personal information and alerts you to threats you could easily miss on your own. If your identity is stolen, LifeLock's U.S.-based restoration specialists will fix it, backed by another good number, the million-dollar protection package. In fact, restoration is guaranteed or your money back. Don't face identity theft and financial losses alone. There's strength in numbers with LifeLock identity theft protection for tax season and beyond. Visit lifelock.com/jre and save up to 40% your first year. That's 40% off at lifelock.com/jre. Terms apply. Yeah, I think he lost 10 pounds.

Speaker 2:
[11:51] I'm pretty sure he was wearing his wife's pants at the MKC. They were very tight, very tight, unacceptably tight. But that could be a benefit. If you're the same size as your wife and you have just one wardrobe, I'm here for it.

Speaker 1:
[12:02] That's nice.

Speaker 2:
[12:03] Yeah, yeah, it's efficiency.

Speaker 3:
[12:04] Some of their shoes, though, are really hard to walk around in.

Speaker 2:
[12:07] I mean, you got to commit.

Speaker 1:
[12:08] Yeah, I would imagine.

Speaker 2:
[12:10] I mean, yeah.

Speaker 3:
[12:10] When I go places with my wife, I'm like, what are you doing?

Speaker 1:
[12:13] You can't walk.

Speaker 3:
[12:14] This is a crazy thing you're doing.

Speaker 2:
[12:16] It's not for walking.

Speaker 3:
[12:17] For fashion.

Speaker 2:
[12:17] It's for what my daughter would call the steeze, which I think means style.

Speaker 1:
[12:21] I didn't know that.

Speaker 2:
[12:22] I didn't know. I'm actually not sure that I'm using it correctly. She just teaches me words and I throw them out at random times. But I think steeze means style, I think.

Speaker 1:
[12:30] Yeah, steeze.

Speaker 3:
[12:31] Okay. Did you know about that one, Jamie?

Speaker 1:
[12:34] The steeze?

Speaker 2:
[12:34] I probably heard it.

Speaker 3:
[12:36] I have never heard it until this moment. At least I don't believe so.

Speaker 1:
[12:39] The steeze.

Speaker 2:
[12:40] Feel free to use it however you want to.

Speaker 3:
[12:42] Yeah, chicks wear stuff that they're so vulnerable in. You can only take steps that are less than 24 inches wide because you've got a dress that's clinging to your knees, which is very odd. It's tight all around here, so you've got these short steps. And then the bottoms of your shoes are slippery, and then your heels are elevated, and then the heel has a point to it, so it gets stuck in the grass.

Speaker 2:
[13:07] Just waiting to snap at the most inopportune moment.

Speaker 3:
[13:09] It's the dumbest shit of all time, and they're fucking crazy expensive. The whole thing makes no sense. Like, what are they doing?

Speaker 2:
[13:15] They're trying to look good for us, Joe.

Speaker 3:
[13:16] But they look good already. That's what they don't understand. I think they're looking good for themselves. I think they look good without that shit.

Speaker 2:
[13:23] I would agree.

Speaker 3:
[13:24] Yeah, a hot chick in flip flops, no one's going, God, I wish she was wearing some shoes that you couldn't walk around in.

Speaker 2:
[13:30] She might even be more approachable if she was in flip flops because you'd be like, she's like maybe more down to earth.

Speaker 3:
[13:36] Maybe that's what they're going for. They're going for not approachable. Trying to keep the fucking...

Speaker 2:
[13:41] Doesn't that defeat the overall end up like long end around purpose?

Speaker 3:
[13:45] No, you're trying to get dudes that are, you know, willing to take a chance.

Speaker 2:
[13:51] On what?

Speaker 3:
[13:52] On a gal that's unapproachable. Like, you have enough confidence in yourself that you'll step up to an unapproachable gal.

Speaker 2:
[13:59] Nope, not me. Hard pass.

Speaker 3:
[14:02] Hard pass.

Speaker 2:
[14:03] Too much work. I'm willing to do some things that people think are odd, but yeah, I'm hard. That's a hard pass.

Speaker 3:
[14:08] Yeah, I know. But also, it's like, you're in line. There's a lot of other dudes approaching that too.

Speaker 2:
[14:14] Probably.

Speaker 1:
[14:14] So now, then it's like you're in an audition process.

Speaker 2:
[14:18] Fuck all of that.

Speaker 1:
[14:19] Boring.

Speaker 2:
[14:21] Life is way too short for all that.

Speaker 3:
[14:23] It's great for people who don't have anything else to do, if that's all you want to do.

Speaker 2:
[14:28] Nope.

Speaker 3:
[14:29] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[14:29] I'm not interested in that either.

Speaker 2:
[14:31] There's way too much other exciting shit out there.

Speaker 3:
[14:34] But yeah, if you and your wife wore all the same clothes, that would be an issue.

Speaker 2:
[14:38] A good issue or bad? I mean, if you're limited on time, we're going to go on a trip. Let's just bring a pair of pants.

Speaker 3:
[14:42] We'll switch.

Speaker 1:
[14:44] I wonder what people did in the caveman days.

Speaker 2:
[14:47] I don't think they were wearing much.

Speaker 3:
[14:48] Right. But you were wearing some kind of animal skins. It's basically a one-size-fits-all tarp that you throw over yourself. Yeah. Loin cloth to keep your dick from getting caught in thorns. And then a tarp. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[15:04] Cutting edge at the time.

Speaker 3:
[15:05] I was reading a story about these guys that were exceptional marathon runners in Africa. And one of the things that they did is this insane fucking rites of passage where they would circumcise them with this. I don't remember the process, but it was a particularly brutal process.

Speaker 2:
[15:23] They sliced the tip of their dick off.

Speaker 3:
[15:25] And then they would make them literally crawl through thorns.

Speaker 2:
[15:30] What?

Speaker 3:
[15:30] Yeah. Like the whole idea was just like make you as hard as humanly possible. And these guys, they were pointing to this one tribe as developing exceptional marathon runners because these guys had such high pain tolerance and such like willingness to go through horrific ordeals. What is it? Here it is. Initiation. Okay. So, it says he had to crawl mostly naked through a tunnel of African stinging nettles. Then he was beaten on the bony parts of his ankle. Then his knuckles were squeezed together. And then the formic acid from the stinging nettle was wiped onto his genitals. But that was all just a warm up. Early one morning, he was circumcised with a sharp stick. That's what it is. A stick. Stick! During this whole process, the crawling, the beatings and the cuttings, I'll try to say that guy's name.

Speaker 2:
[16:23] No.

Speaker 3:
[16:25] Kip go guy?

Speaker 2:
[16:26] Kip go gi?

Speaker 3:
[16:27] Kip go guy? Kip go gi? Was obliged, sounds like a Korean dish, was obliged to be absolutely stoical, unflinching. He could not make a sound. Indeed, in some of the versions of the ceremony, the mud is caked on the face and then mud is allowed to drive, a crack appears in the mud, your cheek may twitch, your forehead may crinkle. You get labeled a kebitet, a coward. You get, you label a coward if your cheek crinkles and stigmatized by the whole community. Manners say that this is enormous social pressure placed on your ability to endure pain and is actually great training for a sport like running, where pushing through pain is so fundamental to success. Circumcisions, he says, teaches kids to withstand pressure and tolerate pain. Manners says he thinks his distinct advantage conferred on athletic kids who grew up in a pain embracing society, as opposed to Western pain avoiding one. Interesting. Where is this at? In Kenya? Is it Kenyan tribe? Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[17:33] I mean, I'm going to be honest with you, Joe. If that's what they did to your people, I would run pretty goddamn fast too, because I would want to get the hell out of there.

Speaker 3:
[17:42] Yeah. The thing is that, but I just think you're joking obviously, but imagine if that's the norm, if that's your baseline, you're like accustomed to that. That's the worst thing that you go through and you have to do a completely stoic.

Speaker 2:
[17:56] At a young age.

Speaker 3:
[17:57] At a young age. You would develop some insane tolerance to discomfort, which-

Speaker 2:
[18:02] I don't know if one time is enough though. I mean, like what they're describing is horrendous, but true tolerance and resilience and ability to work through that stuff, I don't think it's a singular event.

Speaker 3:
[18:11] Right.

Speaker 2:
[18:11] Not that marathon running is an easy endeavor by any stretch. So they're continuing to do that. I mean, I get what they're doing, that rite of passage, but holy hell, I mean, that's pretty gnarly.

Speaker 3:
[18:22] That's a thing that you will see from ex-fighters and even ex-military guys, what they endured when they were young was so brutal that as they get older, they avoid any discomfort at all. They get fat and they just want to drink and be lazy. And you're like, how did you go from being that fucking beast till this slob? And, you know, they still in their mind, they're still a beast, you know, because I did this and I was a world champion and like, big fucking belly.

Speaker 2:
[18:50] Yeah, they can't see their dick when they're naked anymore. I don't have any stats on how common that is.

Speaker 3:
[18:57] It's because they stopped doing it.

Speaker 2:
[18:59] Correct.

Speaker 3:
[18:59] Right.

Speaker 2:
[19:00] I mean, laziness affects everybody, right? Everybody thinks that you come from the special operations world and you're defined by discipline for the rest of your life. No, you're still a human being at the end of the day behind the curtain. And, you know, gravity wants to keep guys like that on the couch just as much as everybody else. But I think you realize the utility of not allowing that to happen. Some people do. Some people do. I mean, that's true of every occupation in life.

Speaker 3:
[19:21] Sure.

Speaker 2:
[19:21] You know, maybe it's a little bit more uncommon for people to see those that came from that, one of those occupations. But yeah, they're out there.

Speaker 3:
[19:29] Yeah, I think that's probably in everything in the medical world. I'm sure there's guys that like really paid attention in college and then they're kind of half-assing it as doctors.

Speaker 2:
[19:38] Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 3:
[19:39] Yeah, it's like the difficulty of the grind. Sometimes you get through it and then you just go, I don't want to ever fucking do that again. Like, I know guys who were former Navy SEALs will not get in a fucking ice bath.

Speaker 2:
[19:52] Yeah, I'm one of those. Hi, nice to meet you. Why would I consensually do that? No, no. And I also wish that they could make a sauna that was just room temperature but had all the health benefits.

Speaker 3:
[20:05] I see sauna doesn't bother me at all.

Speaker 2:
[20:07] I can tolerate that one way more than exceptionally cold water, which I understand the health benefit. I'm willing to pass on that particular health benefit. It's emotional for me. I just don't want to do that anymore.

Speaker 3:
[20:19] I get it. I get it. But when I get to the cold plunge, the bitch in me is so loud. But when I get to the sauna, there's no bitch. It's like, just get in. It's like, I know it's going to suck about 20 minutes in. It'll suck for the last five minutes. It's really going to suck. But the first 10 is easy.

Speaker 2:
[20:37] I just high-five my inner bitch at the cold plunge and turn around. Why don't you take a laugh at that thing? I'm done with it.

Speaker 3:
[20:45] I almost don't do it every day. Every day, I almost don't do it.

Speaker 2:
[20:48] Yeah, it's harder emotionally than it is physically.

Speaker 3:
[20:52] It's weird, because after a minute, it's not that bad. After one minute, it's like you just kind of develop like sort of a relaxation and you're cool. Yeah, it's fine. Especially if you do it a lot. But the first 10, 15 seconds, you're just like, what am I doing?

Speaker 1:
[21:08] You just want to get out. You just want to quit.

Speaker 3:
[21:11] Like get me the fuck out of this 34 degree water with ice up to my neck. Fuck this. This is so stupid. I don't have to do that.

Speaker 2:
[21:20] Yeah, you feel like you're having a heart attack.

Speaker 1:
[21:21] But then you just chill.

Speaker 3:
[21:23] And then when you get out, you're like, oh, you feel so good. It's so worth it.

Speaker 1:
[21:28] Or don't do it.

Speaker 2:
[21:30] Just leave it empty. Use it to store tennis balls or something other than ice cold water.

Speaker 3:
[21:36] This episode is brought to you by Armra. Every week, there's some new wellness hack that people swear by. And after a while, you start thinking, why do we think we can just outsmart our bodies? That's why Armra Colostrum caught my attention. It's something the body already recognizes and has hundreds of these specialized nutrients for gut stuff, immunity, metabolism, et cetera. I first noticed it working around training, especially workout recovery. Most stuff falls off, but I am still taking this. If you want to try, Armra is offering my listeners 30% off plus two free gifts. Go to armra.com/rogan. Apparently, there is real data that is harder for women. It is harder for women to tolerate extreme cold weather, cold temperatures and water apparently.

Speaker 2:
[22:22] Interesting.

Speaker 3:
[22:23] Yeah, they even recommend like women's cold plunges be slightly warmer than men's.

Speaker 2:
[22:28] Hmm.

Speaker 3:
[22:29] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[22:30] I don't know.

Speaker 2:
[22:31] Yeah, I wonder what that would be.

Speaker 1:
[22:33] I don't know.

Speaker 3:
[22:33] Something about their physiology that it might actually be detrimental to do 34 degrees. Let's see if we can find any data on that. You know who's a great, what's her name? Suzanne Soberg. She's the one who created the Soberg Principle. She's one Huberman cites all the time. But I think there's something to do. Maybe it's less muscle mass. Your body has a more difficult time heating itself up and creating a thermal barrier.

Speaker 2:
[23:02] Huberman is an example of a guy that I deeply respect, but struggled to understand what he's saying.

Speaker 3:
[23:07] Here it is. Is this Suzanne's? Did you put this in Perplexity? Our wonderful AI sponsor, Perplexity. Specific considerations for women. Women tend to vasoconstrict faster and have larger drops in core temperature. Aha, especially those in, I don't know what that is, luteal phase.

Speaker 2:
[23:26] Yeah, their cycle.

Speaker 3:
[23:28] The cycle, oh. When progesterone is higher, so extreme cold could be more stressful. Very cold plunges near ice, 35 to 45 degrees and cause big sympathetic and cortisol spikes that may disrupt menstrual regularity and thyroid function if overused. Oh, interesting. Animal and limited human data suggest cold can influence reproductive hormones and cycles women with heavy cramps, endometriosis, fibroids and or on HRT contraception should be cautious and talk with a clinician first. I'm like finding a fucking clinician that understands cold plunges though.

Speaker 2:
[24:10] And there's a picture of me in the lower right. It's probably what I look like when I get my toe in. I just don't like it, man.

Speaker 1:
[24:17] Don't do it.

Speaker 2:
[24:17] You don't hydrophobic, I think is the correct term.

Speaker 1:
[24:19] You suffer enough.

Speaker 3:
[24:21] You suffer enough. So this book, the title is Drownproof. You were saying before we got started, how many Navy SEALs wind up drowning and that it's actually kind of shocking.

Speaker 2:
[24:35] It would be for a community that is supposed to have their roots in a maritime environment. I mean, the SEAL community draws its origins from the UDTs and the Scouts and Raiders and honestly up until 9-11, it was one foot in the water and one foot on land. Like every operation would start in the water and then you could go onto the land, but you'd probably go back into the water and almost all of the training we did, 9-11 was based around water. I think, let's see, Jamie, you could look this up, two SEALs recently drowned on a shipboarding. A real world shipboarding. One guy, it seems like, in the climb, peeled off the ladder and went into the water and somebody saw him and went in with him because of the concept of being a swim buddy, never to be seen again.

Speaker 3:
[25:20] Did they know what happened to them? Like, how?

Speaker 2:
[25:23] I mean, it's, yeah, 2024 in the Arabian Sea.

Speaker 3:
[25:29] Oh, wait, so he fell off a ship.

Speaker 2:
[25:30] So they were approaching a vessel. I mean, there's a couple ways that you can get on a boat. You can come from a boat and you can climb up, or you can go from a helicopter and fast rope down, or they could land, depending on how big the boat is. So they were coming up alongside. It's called an underway, or VBSS, Visit Board Search and Seizure, is the technical military term for it. And on the climb up the ladder, the guy fell off the ladder. And another one went in with him as his swim buddy. If they immediately, and there was, and maybe still is an ongoing investigation. From my understanding, they saw their head maybe one time up and then they were gone. Their bodies were never recovered. So that would seem to be that they were wearing negatively buoyant equipment. So they were drug down and they probably were not able to activate their life jackets in time, which is super unfortunate. But the water doesn't give a shit who you are and how much of a badass you are. I think it's one of the most gnarly environments on earth.

Speaker 1:
[26:25] It really is. Every time I go in the ocean and I swim in the ocean, there's this feeling like, I think I can make it to shore but I might not be able to.

Speaker 3:
[26:36] Like if you jump off of a boat and you've got like a couple of hundred yards to shore, as you start swimming, you start swimming like I'm fine, I'm fine. Oh boy, my heart is going pretty fast here. I'm breathing pretty heavy.

Speaker 1:
[26:50] That's a long way.

Speaker 3:
[26:52] I'm moving very slowly. Like what if I can't do this?

Speaker 2:
[26:56] These are real positive thoughts to have when swimming here, Joe.

Speaker 3:
[26:59] Yeah, not good, not good. Yeah, this only happened to me a few times, but my friend Greg actually had to save a woman. He was on vacation. He saw a woman getting caught in the tide and she's getting pulled out.

Speaker 2:
[27:11] Like a riptide? Those things will pull people out never to be seen again. I live up in Northwestern Montana and a lot of the Flathead Lake, the largest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi is right where I live, and Glacier National Park, tons of snowfall, and so it's glacially fed rivers that feed into Flathead National Forest, or not in Flathead National Forest, the Flathead Lake. And boating is a huge summertime activity, and people travel from all over the world to come to Montana to see GNP, Glacier National Park, and every year people are drowning in these rivers. And I don't know, it's dangerous, but it can be avoided, but it seems as if they just do not have enough respect for even medium moving water. They have no exposure to it. They're not used to being in that water, and they don't look at it and realize, like, that'll kill me. So incredibly fast. And every year people are going into that thing and dying. Every year.

Speaker 1:
[28:07] Well, it makes sense also that it's so fucking cold.

Speaker 3:
[28:11] That water is, you got glacier streams.

Speaker 2:
[28:14] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[28:15] It's like, Remy rescued a lady from that.

Speaker 3:
[28:18] You know, Remy Moore?

Speaker 2:
[28:18] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[28:19] Yeah. Remy actually saw a boat that had capsized and saw, like, gear floating by and saw a woman that was struggling. And I believe her partner died.

Speaker 1:
[28:30] Now, I'm sure a partner died.

Speaker 3:
[28:32] And he jumped in freezing cold river and rescued her.

Speaker 1:
[28:35] And he was like, there's a bunch of moments during there was like, I am not going to make and I'm going to die trying to save this lady.

Speaker 2:
[28:41] Which happens when people get close to that point. They're going to, in your best attempt to save them, they will try to use you as a life raft. Climb all over you and the next thing you know, two people are gone instead of one. Yeah, the water will eat your lunch, man. It's wild. But you think we spend so much time training in the water that it wouldn't happen. I mean, there's diving accidents. There are deaths in training.

Speaker 3:
[29:06] How often does that occur? Deaths in training?

Speaker 2:
[29:08] Oh, probably about every five years. And it sucks. And what I'm about to say, people won't understand, but I also think it's essential. I don't want it to happen, but I think it probably is essential that it does every once in a while.

Speaker 3:
[29:25] Because the training has to be so difficult that you get to the brink.

Speaker 2:
[29:29] You have to train people for the job that they're going to be asked to do. And the training standards need to be a directly downstream reflection of what the career is going to be. And I don't have the vocabulary to describe how bad I feel for the families. And I'm not trying to minimize anybody's death. But you will lose more people in the real world execution of the job if you don't make training that difficult than you will by making it that dangerous, knowing that it's going to be that dangerous and that people will die that will have a positive impact on people surviving the actual job itself.

Speaker 1:
[30:04] That completely makes sense. That's just the realities of life.

Speaker 3:
[30:09] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[30:10] Some jobs are very unique and some jobs have very unique requirements and you have to train for that. Or it's going to either come for you on the front end of that or the tail end of that. That's the balance of which one of those you're going to focus on.

Speaker 3:
[30:21] Which is why the lowering of standards is so fucking dangerous. And when it's talked about like the lowering of standards to make it fair for some applicants, like there's no fair in that job.

Speaker 2:
[30:35] I've never seen a bullet change trajectory because it noticed what you had between your legs and wanted to go be more fair and equitable to somebody else. It doesn't matter in those moments.

Speaker 1:
[30:47] Nor does the ocean give a fuck in that whole period.

Speaker 2:
[30:51] No, I don't believe it does.

Speaker 3:
[30:54] It's so weird when we try to apply these workplace equity considerations to something that's... I can't think of a job that requires more of you than war. This is literal life or death and taking life. There's no job that requires more of you. You would just automatically assume the standards, especially for special operations guys, have to be the most stringent possible. You have to weed out all the bitches. You can't have any bitch in you at all. There's got to be none. No quit, no nothing. And there's only one way to do that. You have to make a bunch of people quit.

Speaker 2:
[31:36] A lot of the times, the people who are bottom lining the policy changes don't have a direct impact in the training pipeline themselves or the execution of the job.

Speaker 3:
[31:43] Which is crazy.

Speaker 2:
[31:44] Yeah, the military is a bureaucratic system. Even in the special operations world, isn't it like the JSOC level? People would be... It never really makes the movie the amount of paperwork that you end up doing. You go on a trip and you have to collect your receipts and do your travel claim and all this other BS. It's all just shit blowing up and you throw a grenade and it's a fireball the size of a 55-gallon drum of gasoline. Yeah, and then there's two days sitting in front of a computer typing out all of your administrative stuff because of all the bureaucratic restraints that are still involved in all of that.

Speaker 1:
[32:14] That doesn't seem smart.

Speaker 2:
[32:16] It's just the way the military system works.

Speaker 3:
[32:18] Now, is that to somehow or another mitigate potential actions that should not have been done because you have to be so documented? Everything has to be so laid out?

Speaker 2:
[32:30] I mean, there's a lot of even like the equipment that you wear. Oftentimes, well, almost all of it is going to be serialized. So you were issued that equipment. You're responsible for it. There's paperwork that goes for being issued that if you lose it, which does happen. And it's not going to be career ending. Like if you went out for a week in a row and you're like, hey, I lost my night vision goggles again, I'm going to need another set of those. You might have a problem. But shit happens and people lose gear. But you know, night vision, weapons, ordinance, ammunition, like a lot of that stuff is serialized. And so it's just the bureaucratic way that even at that level, you still have to keep track of all of that stuff.

Speaker 1:
[33:03] Do you think they should hire somebody else to do that?

Speaker 2:
[33:06] They do. But oftentimes you are in small units, very isolated by yourself. And so you still have to maintain like even in the middle of nowhere, you're still going to have to maintain the paperwork aspect of all the stuff that you take with you.

Speaker 1:
[33:17] God, that's kind of crazy.

Speaker 3:
[33:18] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[33:19] That seems like an unnecessary distraction to an already very insanely difficult job.

Speaker 2:
[33:24] I mean, I'm not saying we do the paperwork well. I mean, come on, Joe. There's a reason why the DOD has never passed an audit, but I mean-

Speaker 3:
[33:32] Ever. I know. The Pentagon, like how many years in a row has the Pentagon failed their audits?

Speaker 2:
[33:39] Like 700.

Speaker 3:
[33:42] It really is kind of bonkers.

Speaker 2:
[33:44] I believe the Marine Corps is the only branch of the military that has ever actually done a legitimate audit and passed.

Speaker 1:
[33:49] Really?

Speaker 2:
[33:50] Those guys are tightened up, man. Those guys, God, I love Marines.

Speaker 3:
[33:54] Shout out to the Marines.

Speaker 2:
[33:55] They are the best, man.

Speaker 1:
[33:56] Wow.

Speaker 3:
[33:57] They're the only guys who passed the audits.

Speaker 1:
[33:59] That's crazy.

Speaker 2:
[34:00] Yeah. Yeah. The rest of us are just out there like, I think I got it with me.

Speaker 3:
[34:06] But the problem with that is once you don't pass audits and there's a history of you not only not passing audits but not being punished for not passing audits, that opens up the door. No, the Pentagon has never passed, never passed a full, clean department-wide financial audit as of the latest audits. Defense Department is the only one of 24 major federal agencies that has never passed a full financial audit.

Speaker 1:
[34:35] Hell, yeah.

Speaker 3:
[34:37] So it's only been going on since 2018. So no big deal, guys. It's only eight years.

Speaker 2:
[34:42] Yeah, that's only a few trillion dollars.

Speaker 1:
[34:44] Whatever, whatever.

Speaker 3:
[34:46] It's fake money anyway. They just make it. That's pretty crazy.

Speaker 2:
[34:50] Well, the budget is interesting in the military. So they go off a fiscal year from October 1st. And...

Speaker 3:
[34:57] Look at this. Hold up. Look at this statistic. The Pentagon's own audit materials have pointed to a target of around 2028, financial year, to finally achieve a clean department-wide audit, contingent on fixing long-standing accounting and systems problems. Imagine if, like, the IRS calls you up and says, Andy, you didn't pass your audit. I think I can get it in 2028.

Speaker 2:
[35:21] I'm on a lower trajectory towards this target you want to be at. You want me like this? I'm like this.

Speaker 3:
[35:26] I can get there in about two years. Okay, that's reasonable.

Speaker 2:
[35:31] Let's just take all your money between now and then.

Speaker 1:
[35:34] No, we don't need to do that.

Speaker 2:
[35:35] Let's give you a bigger budget to work with. I wonder if that answer takes into account what's going on currently in the world, because I feel like we're running through some inventory that might have to be tabulated.

Speaker 3:
[35:44] Seems like there's probably a lot of ordinance that's been...

Speaker 2:
[35:49] A lot of it does sit around for a while, so there is an argument to expending it. I am not in any way, shape, or form.

Speaker 3:
[35:53] It could go bad. It's like tomatoes. You gotta eat them.

Speaker 2:
[35:56] Not exactly like tomatoes. I suppose a grenade is slightly tomato shaped, but a JDM looks nothing like a tomato. What do they do?

Speaker 3:
[36:08] I don't know if this has ever happened. What do they do if, whether it's missiles or any weapons, have been sitting around too long? Is there an expiration date?

Speaker 2:
[36:20] There probably is. I mean, I've been there when we have literally burned like rifle ammunition, large stockpiles of rifle ammunition. Really? Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[36:29] Because if it's sitting around too long, there comes the possibility that it's no longer effective?

Speaker 2:
[36:35] Man, this is a while ago. I think it was more that once we got issued it, we were expected to expend it all, so we were not allowed to take it back to base with us.

Speaker 3:
[36:43] That's hilarious. That's even dumber.

Speaker 2:
[36:46] You want some funny stories? Talk to Evan sometime. I bet you he's had this experience. There's a weapon called the Carl Gustav that if you shoot too many of these things, it's in the manual, it'll start separating the lining in your lungs from your body, because it is just this massive projectile, and you'll go out and do these training evolutions, and they'll say, yeah, here we are, the Carl G. Do not stand behind this bad boy when it goes off.

Speaker 3:
[37:13] So how many can you shoot before it separates the linings of your lungs?

Speaker 2:
[37:17] I believe the warning is somewhere around six.

Speaker 1:
[37:21] Jesus Christ.

Speaker 2:
[37:22] Oh, Joe, you'll go out to training evolutions, and there'll be five guys, and there's a pallet of ammunition, and they'll say, you're not leaving here until all these are shot.

Speaker 1:
[37:29] Oh my God.

Speaker 2:
[37:30] And you're cracking off Carl G's until you have a nosebleed. Or you'll go out, they have like law rockets, or, you know, when I first went through his M60 ammo, they're like, yeah, but you guys, the training's not over until you guys shoot all this. But like, yeah, but we totally did everything we're supposed to and we can't, we understand that. But just go ahead and lay down on the line and shoot these thousands of rounds of ammunition at whatever you want to, because it's been issued to you, so now you need to go expend it.

Speaker 3:
[37:56] This episode is brought to you by Uber Eats. Big news, Aldi is available now on Uber Eats. And you get 20% off your first grocery order with code NEWALDI26. So whether your fridge is empty and you're too tired to shop, or you just ran out of essential ingredients in the middle of a meal prep, don't worry. Fill your fridge in just a few taps and get 20% off your first Aldi order on Uber Eats. For orders over $60, you can save up to $20. Ends April 30th. Terms apply. See app for details. This episode is brought to you by SimpliSafe. Have you ever looked into getting a security system? A lot of these companies can leave you feeling trapped, which is the last thing you want when it comes to your safety. They lock you in to these absurdly long contracts, and you have to take time out of your day to wait for a technician. As a long time supporter of this show, SimpliSafe is nothing like that. SimpliSafe gives you the flexibility to choose what type of system you want and when to set it up, with no long term contracts or hidden fees. It ships to your door and you can easily install it. No technicians or drilling required. And I'm not just talking about a porch camera here. You can get the whole shebang, sensors, cameras, inside and out, and 24-7 professional monitoring. They earn your business by actually working. SimpliSafe has even been called America's Best Customer Service by Newsweek. It's clear why over 5 million people continue to use SimpliSafe every day. Everyone deserves to have peace of mind. SimpliSafe is offering an exclusive discount to my listeners. Right now, you can get 50% off your new system by visiting simplisafe.com/rogan. That's half off at simplisafe.com/rogan. There's no safe like SimpliSafe. Can you show me one of those things going off, Jamie? Carl G's. I want to see what it looks like.

Speaker 2:
[40:04] I'm trying to tuck my wife into naming our next dub, Carl G.

Speaker 3:
[40:08] I shot a 50 caliber once and I was like a Barrett.

Speaker 2:
[40:11] Yeah, I was like, how'd that feel?

Speaker 3:
[40:13] Boom! Like your whole body just goes boom. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[40:17] So this is a two man evolution here. Look at the size of that bad boy. Close it, lock it. He's checking the back blast. This guy's like, fuck, I'm about to lose my teeth.

Speaker 3:
[40:31] Here we go. Oh, did you shoot it?

Speaker 2:
[40:33] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[40:34] I didn't see it.

Speaker 2:
[40:35] It's supposed to be essentially recoilless. It doesn't feel.

Speaker 3:
[40:37] Well, why didn't they show it?

Speaker 2:
[40:38] They did.

Speaker 3:
[40:39] Show it again?

Speaker 2:
[40:41] That's the back blast right there.

Speaker 3:
[40:42] Oh.

Speaker 1:
[40:43] Yeah. So he doesn't even move.

Speaker 2:
[40:45] Oh, when he was pulling the trigger, that wasn't loaded. That was a fake shot of him showing how you pull the trigger.

Speaker 3:
[40:50] Oh, OK. We'll see if there's more video. I just want a better shot of it actually going off in his arms.

Speaker 1:
[40:58] Let me see what it looks like.

Speaker 2:
[40:59] Ready for fire.

Speaker 3:
[41:00] Here we go.

Speaker 1:
[41:02] Back blaster, you're clear.

Speaker 3:
[41:03] He looks fucking nervous. Look at him breathing.

Speaker 1:
[41:05] Firing, firing, firing.

Speaker 3:
[41:13] Oh, my goodness.

Speaker 2:
[41:14] Oh, yeah. Airburst. You can set these suckers. You can twist the warhead to set a delay on the thing. You can have an airburst, like if they're trying to play hide and seek with you on a wall.

Speaker 3:
[41:23] See, this is the argument for those little robot dogs, because you put one on one of them little robot dogs and have that thing shoot it, and that way you don't have to lose the lining of your lungs.

Speaker 2:
[41:31] I don't know if a robot dog could handle that thing.

Speaker 3:
[41:34] Really? What about one of them big robot dogs?

Speaker 2:
[41:38] I don't know if the answer is just make it bigger.

Speaker 3:
[41:40] Probably.

Speaker 2:
[41:40] I'm sure there's a size of robot dog that could handle that.

Speaker 3:
[41:42] I mean, you would imagine.

Speaker 2:
[41:44] But then you would need a friendly other robot dog to reload it for him.

Speaker 3:
[41:48] Right. But that would be possible. That would totally be possible. Or the robot dog has like arms in the back that can do it.

Speaker 2:
[41:55] That was a training round. Nice little rifle, barely.

Speaker 3:
[41:59] That's crazy. That's cool. See what a great shot. Imagine standing there taking that shot though.

Speaker 2:
[42:04] Fuck all that. As a dude loading around into it.

Speaker 3:
[42:10] Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[42:11] Good Lord. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[42:14] No, next time you're sitting down with Evan, ask him like, hey, did you ever guys at the end of Training Evolutions ever have extra ordinance and ammunition that you had to dispose of?

Speaker 3:
[42:23] That's crazy. They just make you blow it up.

Speaker 1:
[42:26] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[42:26] His answer will be yes, and he'll just start laughing.

Speaker 3:
[42:29] So if you have to do it outside of shooting, how do you do it?

Speaker 2:
[42:33] You can blow stuff in place, like you can make a large pile of stuff and layer it.

Speaker 3:
[42:37] Launch something at it? Or do you light it on fire?

Speaker 2:
[42:41] You can actually light ammunition on fire. It'll go off and if outside of-

Speaker 3:
[42:44] In what direction?

Speaker 2:
[42:45] Well, outside of it being compressed in the chamber of a gun, which if you think of like an AR platform rifle, when the round is in the magazine, it's pushed forward by the bolt and it's being held by all sides except for down the barrel. So all of the pressure is pointed in that direction, which is what propels the bullet down the barrel. If you remove that, it just explodes in place. I'm not saying it's safe to stand around and have a beer while you're watching, like from me to you. We would be on the other side of a room, but it sounds like popcorn going off. Then for other stuff, you can layer explosive charges on top of it and probably get all of it to go.

Speaker 3:
[43:20] God, it seems insanely wasteful. It seems like you should be able to say, we achieved what we needed to achieve in our training. Here is our excess ordinance that we could use in the future.

Speaker 2:
[43:32] Yeah, you just haven't spent enough time around the military.

Speaker 3:
[43:35] Well that's been explained to me about budgets, that if you do not meet your budget, you get in trouble because then they can't ask for the same amount of money next year.

Speaker 2:
[43:45] So I heard that every year when I was in, and September was a fantastic month to be in the military because the budget year is October 1 to October 1. So September, the bean counters really start taking a look at what they have left. And they'd say, I was a supply rep for a short period of time, meaning I was a little cog in the wheel of supplying stuff to the guys. They're like, you need to spend $100,000 in the next three hours on shoes. Which let me tell you, REI is happy to take your money. rei.com will run that card. And you always would hear this, if we don't spend it, we're going to lose it. But I never actually saw that tested. I don't know if you actually would get in trouble. They just always assumed that you would. So you ran that sucker down to bankrupt. And then October 1st, you're good to go.

Speaker 3:
[44:33] Wow. So here's a good question in terms of like shoes. When your missions involve a bunch of different types of terrain, do they favor a lighter weight shoe that's more of an all-purpose shoe? Because I couldn't imagine you would be wearing like a crispy mountain boot with high leather. Sometimes.

Speaker 2:
[44:57] So it depends.

Speaker 3:
[44:57] So you vary.

Speaker 2:
[44:58] You got to have a wardrobe, Joe.

Speaker 3:
[44:59] Right.

Speaker 2:
[45:00] Being good at your job is second only to looking good while doing your job. So trust me, I've sent people back to hell. Your top and bottom aren't matching. We're not doing this. Go change.

Speaker 1:
[45:10] Really?

Speaker 2:
[45:11] Yeah. You have to look the part. It's equal to your professionalism and tactical ability.

Speaker 1:
[45:16] Interesting.

Speaker 2:
[45:17] Yeah. Maybe perhaps I was a little bit picky on that, but I don't want to clash on the battlefield. You need to look good. It sounds like you can't have everybody looking awesome and then you look like shit. Go change your outfit out. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[45:29] You have orange boots on, dude. What are you doing?

Speaker 2:
[45:30] Yeah. The boots, you take a Pelican case or a box, you have a tool for every job. So if you're going to go up in the mountains, if you're going to go like Northeastern Afghanistan, you're going to wear a different type of shoe for sure. If you're in Iraq in an urban environment, you're going to wear probably the lightest weight, like the Africa who makes them, but like the Speedcross shoes. Those things are, you might get two months out of those, so you bring a couple pair. You're going to bring some footwear that if you needed to go into the water, like not swim around in the water, but pass through water or-

Speaker 3:
[46:04] Those like Solomons, is that what the Speedcross is?

Speaker 2:
[46:06] Yeah, the Solomons Speedcross. Yeah. The soles on those things, they don't last very long, but again, when you get 100 grand to buy shoes for three hours, you can buy extras for people. So you kind of have a- It's just like all the rest of the gear, you have cold weather gear, you have desert gear. And the coldest I've ever been is actually in the desert because of the super high, high and then the super- that swing was way colder than like in mountainous terrain.

Speaker 3:
[46:28] It's like the moon.

Speaker 2:
[46:29] Yeah. But I mean, so when you lay out your stuff, like before every deployment you get ready to go on, you're laying your stuff out, you probably have two tables like this with all like desert, woodland, cold weather, layering system, shoes, different load-bearing equipment, different back and then you just lay it all up, put it into a bag and then you're doing the best you can. Then you're just packing for what comes up in front of you.

Speaker 3:
[46:53] And you're just ordering stuff from REI for real?

Speaker 2:
[46:55] Sometimes. Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[46:56] Wow.

Speaker 2:
[46:57] So not everybody, not everywhere. The conventional teams are very limited in their ability to do that. At a JSOC level, you have a little bit more room and flexibility to source from outside vendors.

Speaker 3:
[47:06] So you would go for the best possible tool for the job?

Speaker 2:
[47:09] 100% of the time. Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[47:11] Instead of just get military issue?

Speaker 2:
[47:14] Correct. Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[47:16] I got the dumbest question for you about Afghanistan.

Speaker 2:
[47:19] Tell me more.

Speaker 1:
[47:20] This is the dumbest question.

Speaker 3:
[47:23] Have you heard of the story of the Kandahar giant?

Speaker 2:
[47:29] Are we talking about an actual giant?

Speaker 1:
[47:31] Uh-huh.

Speaker 2:
[47:32] No. How did you hear the story about a Kandahar giant?

Speaker 3:
[47:36] There's a crazy thing called the Internet.

Speaker 1:
[47:39] How did you have that?

Speaker 2:
[47:42] I may spend less time on the Internet than you guys.

Speaker 3:
[47:44] And if you have a good algorithm, and by good I mean retarded, you get...

Speaker 2:
[47:51] Oh my.

Speaker 1:
[47:52] This is an official representation, obviously not an actual picture.

Speaker 3:
[47:55] So there was a story that... What is the guy's name that was on Jesse Michael's podcast recently?

Speaker 1:
[48:02] I don't remember. I'll check.

Speaker 3:
[48:05] So, supposedly, there was a giant that engaged US troops in Kandahar, Afghanistan, and in a very remote area, and this guy was shot and killed and medevaced out of there or, you know, helicoptered out of there. And they're a 12-foot giant, Tim Alberino.

Speaker 2:
[48:29] And was he telling this story as if he was there or he heard this?

Speaker 3:
[48:33] There's never a guy who was there to tell these stories. There's apparently one guy who has his face covered up in one of these videos that I watched. He's like one of the blurry, like, you know, a witness to a mob scene.

Speaker 2:
[48:45] That's how you know they're legit.

Speaker 3:
[48:46] 100%. Thank you. I think the same way. That's why I send it to all my friends. But he was telling the story from people that he talked to that were there.

Speaker 2:
[48:56] See, and here's the thing. I want stories like that to be true.

Speaker 3:
[48:59] Me too.

Speaker 2:
[49:00] I still am just waiting. Same thing with the aliens. God, I so deeply wanted to be true. I just need somebody to hold up an actual piece of evidence and say, this is what I'm talking about. Instead of, I saw, I know somebody who was read into, I had a buddy who got engaged by a giant or they, like, okay, where is it?

Speaker 1:
[49:21] Right.

Speaker 2:
[49:22] And until then, I got a real hard time believing that.

Speaker 1:
[49:25] Oh, I'm with you.

Speaker 3:
[49:26] But I also want to believe, which I know clouds my vision.

Speaker 2:
[49:30] I just think it makes you hopeful.

Speaker 3:
[49:32] It gets me to a certain point. And then the point, like, there's a point where my logic kicks in and I'm not willing to go any further. And that's Bigfoot.

Speaker 2:
[49:40] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[49:41] With Bigfoot, I'm like, I know too many guys that are in the woods all the time.

Speaker 2:
[49:46] And let's not forget the game cameras they often leave behind.

Speaker 1:
[49:48] That's right.

Speaker 2:
[49:49] Like millions of game cameras.

Speaker 1:
[49:50] That's right.

Speaker 3:
[49:51] At this point, like I could have bought it in the 1960s.

Speaker 1:
[49:55] Like maybe, who knows? Before drones, before satellites, before this, before that.

Speaker 3:
[50:00] And, you know, there's good arguments that you wouldn't find the body because like you and I have hunted in the mountains many, many times. I've never seen a mountain lion skeleton. Have you?

Speaker 2:
[50:12] No.

Speaker 3:
[50:13] No.

Speaker 2:
[50:13] No.

Speaker 1:
[50:13] I don't know anybody who has.

Speaker 3:
[50:14] I've seen mountain lions. I've never seen a mountain lion skeleton. I've never seen a bear skeleton. I'm sure people have found them. Yeah. But I haven't. And we know there's a shit ton of mountain lions and a shit ton of bears. So if there was a very small population of primates, it's not inconceivable that you wouldn't find their body. Especially if they were in some way advanced to the point where they were burying their dead, which is, you know, it's not outside the realm of possibility if they have a language of like, who knows what these things are. But no, I just, that doesn't, I think it used to be real. And I think there's real evidence of that.

Speaker 2:
[50:51] I want it to be.

Speaker 3:
[50:52] No, there's real evidence. There's a thing called Gigantopithecus. It was a eight foot plus tall bipedal hominid that existed in Asia. And it's in the orangutan family. And there's like recreations of what it looks like standing next to a human. It's huge. But that just makes sense. I mean, there used to be giant woolly mammoths. There used to be giant sloths. The idea of a giant primate is not inconceivable. It's like size is all relative anyway. Our idea of what's big compared to a fucking giraffe or this, it's all, it doesn't, you know, if you have enough resources and there's enough food for these things, they live in a lush tropical environment or a lush wilderness environment. It's not impossible to think that's something we get way bigger than a gorilla. But for that thing to exist today. So that's what it used to look like. So I think that is probably what all these ancient myths are based on. That's probably what used to exist. So it was bipedal, which is also interesting. And that's based on its jaw structure.

Speaker 2:
[51:57] Here's a question for you that you, the species burying themselves, these are intrusive thoughts that I have and can't get out of my head. Why don't we bury people vertically to save space?

Speaker 1:
[52:07] That's a good question.

Speaker 2:
[52:08] Wouldn't you get more square footage?

Speaker 1:
[52:09] Not more.

Speaker 3:
[52:10] It would be harder to make a six-foot-tall hole for a tall person.

Speaker 2:
[52:14] I feel like they make oil drills. I mean, I'm not saying that would be...

Speaker 3:
[52:17] They do now. But back in the day, it would be easier to... If someone's laid down, just roll them over into the hole. But because a six-foot-deep hole that's like six feet long...

Speaker 2:
[52:27] Joe, I'm not saying it's easy. I'm just saying...

Speaker 3:
[52:30] In today's world, yeah.

Speaker 2:
[52:31] Good idea. I think we can evolve.

Speaker 3:
[52:33] Well, here's even weirder. You have to embalm people before you cremate them.

Speaker 2:
[52:40] Why?

Speaker 3:
[52:41] Exactly. My friend Joey Diaz says it's a racket because he knew a guy who ran a funeral home.

Speaker 2:
[52:46] The big embalming market?

Speaker 3:
[52:47] Well, it's all a racket. The whole funeral home thing is a racket. They know, like, your family member dies. You have to bury your family member. You're in grief. And then they try to sell you on some fucking fancy coffin. They sell you on this and sell you on that. But the embalming is...

Speaker 1:
[53:02] it's mandatory.

Speaker 2:
[53:03] I did not know that.

Speaker 3:
[53:04] At least for some places. Because I know that some people are trying to do what they call natural burials. I don't know what the regulations are on. Like, let's find that out.

Speaker 1:
[53:14] There are upright...

Speaker 2:
[53:15] they call it upright burials.

Speaker 1:
[53:17] It is a thing.

Speaker 3:
[53:18] They do exist.

Speaker 2:
[53:18] In the US., though? Or is this some, like, Nordic country? There's a cemetery that does it already.

Speaker 1:
[53:22] I was trying to look up more information on it. Probably a bunch of cheapies who don't want to...

Speaker 3:
[53:26] One thing already that I can give up space...

Speaker 2:
[53:28] Most of them have fences, so, like, maximum square footage utilization.

Speaker 1:
[53:31] Right. That makes sense.

Speaker 2:
[53:34] The gravity is an issue a little bit.

Speaker 1:
[53:35] Keeping it in the...

Speaker 3:
[53:36] I don't know.

Speaker 1:
[53:37] Gravity is an issue.

Speaker 2:
[53:38] Gravity is not going to be an issue. First off, once you're in that coffin, nothing good is happening.

Speaker 3:
[53:41] Right.

Speaker 2:
[53:42] Vertically, her horse.

Speaker 3:
[53:43] How does that make sense? What kind of gravity is just drop them in the hole?

Speaker 2:
[53:48] I think the family often...

Speaker 3:
[53:49] Be like this. Like, slide it down in that hole.

Speaker 2:
[53:53] I think they're saying the family doesn't like the idea that they're going to be compressed into a small amount in the bottom of the coffin.

Speaker 1:
[53:58] Like a science issue, I think. Well, they're fucking dead. You know, you know the most gnarly way they bury people or the most gnarly funeral.

Speaker 2:
[54:06] Well, they're still alive?

Speaker 3:
[54:07] No. Well, they're dead.

Speaker 2:
[54:08] Well, I'm saying that would be the most gnarly.

Speaker 3:
[54:10] Right. The most gnarly post-mortem is the Tibetan sky funeral. Do you know how they do that?

Speaker 2:
[54:15] No.

Speaker 3:
[54:17] Vultures. They literally break the body up, chop it up into chunks, and the vultures know it and so they prepare. So the vultures are all hanging around waiting. Well, it is a tradition in Tibet with least certain people to get rid of their bodies that way. And the idea is that, look, the person's dead. This is a more natural way, you know, and they'll cycle back into the ecosystem the way it's supposed to be with all animals. We're the only animal that opts out of, like, rejoining with all biological life. Because it's supposed to be a biological body that deteriorates underground, that feeds the soil, that feeds, you know, whatever animals feast on its bones, and then becomes all part of this big, beautiful cycle. And we're like, we've got some chemicals laying around we'd like to fill the veins up with to make them completely poison so that they never deteriorate, or they just slowly turn into gelatinous sludge.

Speaker 2:
[55:18] By state, it looks like.

Speaker 3:
[55:19] Okay. So it says, Burial, why is that word weird to me right now? Burial is regulated by state by state, city, county zoning, there's no federal rule that specifies body position, horizontal versus vertical. What are the laws in terms of embalming? Green or natural burial, simple shroud, no vault, minimal disturbance is legal in all 50 states, but only in locations that comply with state and local rules. Green or natural burial. Distance from water sources would be a big reason for that.

Speaker 1:
[55:56] Interesting.

Speaker 3:
[55:57] You don't want people to rot. But what about cows? Cows can rot. A dead coyote just rots.

Speaker 1:
[56:05] We don't want to eat people or drink them either.

Speaker 3:
[56:09] I guess. I was watching this documentary about this family, where the kid, his dad, was a serial killer.

Speaker 1:
[56:18] The dad would throw people in a well.

Speaker 3:
[56:21] And he had to help him when he was young. His dad would kill people and then throw them down the well. First time he did it, he said, I think he was a young boy when his dad first took him to get rid of a body and throw it down a well.

Speaker 2:
[56:36] Not all bonding experiences are created equal.

Speaker 1:
[56:39] How many people have died drinking well water that was polluted by a dead body?

Speaker 2:
[56:43] Hopefully not that many.

Speaker 3:
[56:44] That's fine, Jamie. No, I'm just, that's disgusting.

Speaker 2:
[56:47] Have you thought through your end of life? Do you have, have you told people?

Speaker 3:
[56:52] I would like to not be embalmed. I would like to just be buried in the ground and be absorbed naturally like everything else.

Speaker 2:
[56:57] Do you have that written down anywhere though?

Speaker 1:
[56:59] No. I don't care.

Speaker 3:
[57:00] Once I'm gone, figure it out.

Speaker 1:
[57:02] I don't give a fuck.

Speaker 2:
[57:03] Well, there's an argument to help figuring it out for those left behind so it makes it easier.

Speaker 1:
[57:08] I don't want to make things easier.

Speaker 3:
[57:09] When I'm gone, I want it to be complicated as fuck. I want them to be arguing over my will.

Speaker 2:
[57:17] Well, I only ask because we had to think through this stuff because you do like a review of your will every time.

Speaker 1:
[57:22] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[57:23] And, you know, final requests, I guess it would be. So you had to think through that.

Speaker 3:
[57:26] Jamie, stop scrolling. So for direct cremation, no public viewing, cremation within a few days, body kept refrigerated, embalming is generally unnecessary and not legally required in most states. But the thing is, it's most of the time, it's done, according to my friend Joey, whose friend, at least it was in the past, whose friend ran a funeral home. The guy was telling him what a fucking scam it all is. It's just, you're just charging people for all this stuff.

Speaker 2:
[57:55] It probably, it's just like anything else.

Speaker 3:
[57:56] Here it is, many funeral homes require embalming for presentation and public health reasons. If you want a public viewing or an open casket before cremation.

Speaker 1:
[58:08] Oh, who does that?

Speaker 3:
[58:11] Some jurisdictions or airlines may require embalming for long-distance or international transport. Or if there's a long delay before cremation, well, that makes sense. Because if you don't embalm it, you're going to stink up the whole fucking plane. US logic, I mean, I'm sure you've smelled dead bodies before, but the first time I ever smelled a dead body, I was a little kid, and someone died in our apartment building. It was crazy. You'd walk down the hallway, and the fucking smell that was, it was me and my cousins and my sister, we were walking down the hallway, we were like, what is that? We were probably like six. It was this insane smell. And it turned out this lady who was just living by herself died. And so she was just rotting in this apartment building.

Speaker 2:
[58:54] You think you still recognize it to this day? It's very unique.

Speaker 3:
[58:58] Is it humans' very unique smell as opposed to a regular animal?

Speaker 2:
[59:02] Well, the mechanism of death can change, I guess, a little bit.

Speaker 3:
[59:06] Sure.

Speaker 2:
[59:07] But in general, yeah, a couple days later, they all kind of smell the same.

Speaker 3:
[59:12] I've heard humans are uniquely gross in the way we smell.

Speaker 2:
[59:16] Yeah. Yeah, it's not awesome. Not awesome to be around it.

Speaker 3:
[59:20] This episode is brought to you by BetterHelp. A lot of people hit stretches where money gets tight. And it's not just the bills. It's the constant pressure, the mental load, the second guessing of every decision. And honestly, one of the biggest difference makers isn't some perfect budget. It's having a solid support system when things feel heavy. And if that support system includes therapy, even better. Because while it can't solve your money problems, it can change your relationship with finances. It can help you manage the stress, anxiety, and maybe even any shame you feel around money. A good place to find a quality therapist is BetterHelp. Plus, they do a lot of the work for you. Literally, all you need to do is answer a few questions, and BetterHelp will match you with a fully qualified therapist online. They have an industry leading match fulfillment rate, which is a fancy way of saying that they typically get it right the first time. But even if they don't, it's super simple to switch to another therapist. When life feels overwhelming, therapy can help. Sign up and get 10% off at betterhelp.com/jre. That's betterhelp.com/jre. So this embalming thing, so is that not the case? Is it where funeral homes request embalming before they cremate you? Also, here's another scam, according to my friend. When you think you get your family member ashes, you get a bunch of shit. You get a bunch of ashes. You get ashes from some fucking guy you don't even know. They don't care. They just shove a bunch of ashes into an urn. You're like, it's grandma.

Speaker 2:
[61:14] She's here with us forever.

Speaker 3:
[61:16] But it's not really.

Speaker 1:
[61:17] It's like some...

Speaker 2:
[61:17] I hope that one's not true. That's gnarly. Yeah, it's like the epitome of laziness.

Speaker 1:
[61:22] I'm pretty sure it's true. Just the question as though if the requirement was coming from funeral homes instead of law in the court system.

Speaker 3:
[61:28] Most of the time, yes, the requirement to embalm before viewing or before cremation is coming from funeral homes or cemetery policy. Right. So they're trying to make more money. So this is what Joey was telling me about. Yeah. So it's not a federal requirement. FTC says embalming may be necessary if you choose certain arrangements like a public viewing. But the necessity is based on the funeral home standards, not a blanket legal mandate. So most people probably don't know that. So the funeral home will tell you, oh, we have to embalm them first.

Speaker 2:
[62:00] And you're in a pretty susceptible and malleable mind space.

Speaker 1:
[62:03] Exactly.

Speaker 2:
[62:03] That time, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[62:04] They're just really used to it. They're really used to it. They must get so accustomed to just, they don't give a fuck. There's bodies there every day.

Speaker 3:
[62:15] People are always dying. It's an opportunity to make more money, which is rough.

Speaker 2:
[62:20] Yeah. You would like to think that humanity wouldn't be like that. But yet, here we are.

Speaker 3:
[62:23] Yeah. Find out if, well, the other thing is like, you remember that Sam Kinison bit?

Speaker 1:
[62:30] I don't know if you ever saw it.

Speaker 2:
[62:31] I know who Sam Kinison is. I'm not very familiar with his bits.

Speaker 3:
[62:34] One of the greatest of all time. But he had this bit about homosexual necrophiliacs who were caught spending, paying a bunch of money to be alone with the freshest male corpse. It was an actual true story that he read in the news. But his whole thing was like, imagine you're on the slab. You're like, well, I'm dead now. I'm going to be with Jesus. And hey, hey, what? And he would be like rocking back and forth on his stomach. What is this? It feels like some guy's got his dick in my ass. You mean life keeps fucking you in the ass even after you're dead? It never ends. It never ends.

Speaker 2:
[63:10] Oh, oh, you comedians are a unique bunch. Let's, you know, I'm glad it's got to do it. I'm glad there's somebody out there who can weave a story like that together and have a meaningful message at the end of it.

Speaker 3:
[63:23] But there are there have been cases of people getting like hot girls that are freshly dead and fucking them and getting caught.

Speaker 2:
[63:30] Yeah, because humans are horrible. The vast I try to tell myself that the vast majority of humans are trying to do the best that they can. But I never forget that there are people out there who are like that.

Speaker 3:
[63:42] Sure. Yeah, there's people out there that are gross. They're just evil. I was reading about this guy who is an oncologist who got arrested because he was giving people chemotherapy that didn't really have cancer. Because chemotherapy is uniquely profitable for doctors. Yeah, it's very profitable. So he was telling people that they had cancer and they did not. And he was giving them chemotherapy, which I have a friend who died recently. And he went through the first round of chemotherapy, went into remission, and the chemotherapy was so bad that when the cancer came back, he decided to just die.

Speaker 2:
[64:17] That's how my mom died. She had survived cervical cancer. It metastasized into her lungs 10 years later, got on the chemo, which I don't know what is in that stuff, but they, you know, the platinum treatment, whatever it may be, and had the realization that she was either going to die from cancer or she was going to die from the chemotherapy. And she chose hospice just because the ride on the chemotherapy was so horrible that she couldn't take it anymore.

Speaker 1:
[64:44] My friend said that the pain of brushing his teeth was so intense, like the sores in his mouth from the chemo, and that once cancer went into remission, then it came back. And by the way, this cancer came very quickly after vaccination. It was one of those where, you know, you can get into that all day long.

Speaker 3:
[65:07] If you want to really get into a deep conspiracy theory that's got some real facts to it, but there's something called SV40. And they found SV40 in some of the mRNA vaccines. SV40 is simian virus 40. And it's a virus that was contracted, that people got because they used kidney cells from monkeys in order to cultivate these vaccines.

Speaker 1:
[65:34] This is like known about for a long time. And in certain batches, they've tested positive for SV40, which is like some just legacy material that they have that they make vaccines out of. And he was one of the lucky ones.

Speaker 2:
[65:51] It sucks, man.

Speaker 1:
[65:52] Yeah, he was a young dude. You know, he was in his 40s, early 40s.

Speaker 3:
[65:56] Fit, young guy.

Speaker 1:
[65:58] And cancer came on like a fucking tidal wave.

Speaker 2:
[66:01] Just a freight train? Moat him down? How much time did he have between diagnosis and death?

Speaker 1:
[66:05] I got him connected with Gary Brekka. And Gary Brekka helped him quite a bit.

Speaker 3:
[66:11] And that's how he originally got through it.

Speaker 1:
[66:14] And it got over it.

Speaker 3:
[66:17] He was okay again. And you know, went into remission. He said, he's feeling pretty good.

Speaker 1:
[66:21] And then, man, it wasn't more than a year and a half, two years later. It came back with a vengeance. And he was dead just six months later.

Speaker 2:
[66:35] Does it change how you view life, your own life, when that happens close to you?

Speaker 3:
[66:38] It's just shocking that healthy, fit people get something like that.

Speaker 1:
[66:44] And it happens so quickly.

Speaker 3:
[66:46] You know, this is, like I said, my suspicions is it's connected to the vaccine. And I don't think that everybody who thought that mRNA vaccine is going to die of cancer. I think it's a contamination issue. That some of the batches had it and some of the batches didn't. But and then some people react very differently to whatever, whatever is in it.

Speaker 1:
[67:10] But with him, man, it got him.

Speaker 3:
[67:12] And it's not uncommon. There's a shitload of ignored cases of what they're calling turbo cancer that people have gotten after the mRNA vaccine. It's barely a conspiracy theory. It's more likely an ignored, inconvenient fact that these pharmaceutical drug companies are trying to ignore.

Speaker 2:
[67:34] Do you think they were trying, going upstream from that, the pharmaceutical companies or people that were pushing to try to find what perhaps they thought would be the fix to the solution? Do you think that they were doing the best that they could and just their enthusiasm outstripped their capabilities, or they pushed stuff a little bit too early, or was it as deep of a conspiracy that people think and that behind the scenes they're trying to reduce overall global population?

Speaker 3:
[67:58] I don't go that way. I don't go to the reduce overall global population, but I do understand why people would think that because there are, there have been a bunch of people that are supposedly philanthropists, Bill Gates, that have talked about reducing overall population being a goal and that goal could be, like Bill Gates has actually quoted saying that, that goal could be achieved through vaccines, like, what the fuck does that mean? Reducing global population through vaccines? How? Well, one way is the, what is it, DDP or DTP vaccine? Diphtheria, something, and percussus. So they were caught in Africa. One of the vaccines that they were using on women in Africa turned out, it's tetanus, right? Diphtheria, tetanus, and percussus had HCG in it, which is an endocrine disruptor. I don't know what's the exact specific description of it. But what it's essentially doing was rendering these women infertile. And so they were supposedly vaccinating them for tetanus and these other diseases. But really what it was doing was they were making these women infertile, and they were experimenting on them, and they were doing this in Africa. They like to experiment in places where not a lot of people are watching, and there's not a lot of infrastructure and not a lot of internet connection, and they can get away with trying stuff on people. So this concept of reducing population through vaccination, there's some real world examples of people doing that.

Speaker 1:
[69:44] But why? I don't know.

Speaker 3:
[69:46] I don't think that. I think if you find out about how much money was generated during the vaccine pandemic, during the COVID pandemic, that is the most likely scenario. They were just trying to make an enormous amount of money.

Speaker 2:
[69:59] Do you remember that you and I did the first podcast after the lockdown in LA?

Speaker 1:
[70:04] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[70:06] Then I drove with my wife down to San Diego, and I don't think she had been, because we got to San Diego in about 17 minutes. There's no one on the road. I remember saying to her, if we come back, which we will, don't expect this. It was like a ghost town, but we were in LA the day that it locked down. I remember texting you like, um, are we good? You're like, yeah, YouTube says we're essential. Let's roll.

Speaker 3:
[70:32] We're essential. That was what was crazy. There was essential businesses. They were allowed to stay open. Restaurants weren't one of them fucking insanely enough, but fast food places were. So there was certain places that were as essential and media was essential. So we were allowed to, although we did get ratted out. The health department came to our LA studio and they made us put a bag of masks on the wall when you go in. And also a note that shows all the precautions that you have to take place, like stand six feet apart. And then people were also complaining that this table is not six feet wide. And so we weren't observing the proper social distancing. So I said, okay, well, why don't we just do this and you do that and we'll do a podcast.

Speaker 2:
[71:14] Oh yeah, we're six feet.

Speaker 3:
[71:15] Now we're six feet. Now we're good. And then it turns out that that was all made up. It was all horseshit. You know, it's the Who song. We won't get fooled again.

Speaker 2:
[71:26] You know, I want to believe that they were trying to do the best.

Speaker 1:
[71:29] I don't believe that.

Speaker 2:
[71:30] I said, I want to believe.

Speaker 1:
[71:31] Yeah, I know.

Speaker 3:
[71:31] I don't even want to believe that.

Speaker 2:
[71:33] But then what do we do about it?

Speaker 3:
[71:35] We never listen again.

Speaker 2:
[71:37] What if they're right the next time?

Speaker 3:
[71:38] I don't think they will be. I don't think they're ever right with that kind of stuff, especially something that's not killing everybody as they said it was. They were just gaslighting us all over television. The people were dropping like flies. And especially egregiously disgusting is gaslighting us about children dying from it. And there's a lot of really fucking shitty human beings that were posting about this on Twitter. And I don't know if they're being paid to do it or if they're just ideologically captured. But there was a lot of people on Twitter talking about children dying from COVID. That's a fucking dirty lie. There was a very small amount of kids that died during the pandemic. And those kids, all of them had something wrong with them already. All of them had comorbidities, which is like also a giant percentage of all the people that died, period. It's like, what is the number? It's like 75% of them, something like that, had four plus comorbidities. Four comorbidities is crazy. It's like, you're already. This means four things that are already killing you. You know?

Speaker 2:
[72:47] Yeah. Do you think we learned anything during that time period?

Speaker 3:
[72:50] Yeah. I think we learned that the pharmaceutical drug company has a lock on the media that is very disturbing. Like the media did not report at all vaccine injuries. They didn't report on it at all. It was never discussed. People were dropping dead. They were ignoring it and gaslighting. And then we also found out the amount of money that these pharmaceutical drug companies pay to these corporations, whether it's Fox or NBC or CBS or whoever it is, in advertising. It's a huge part of their budget is advertising money. And the way Cali Means explained it to me, he goes, it's not so that people find out about the drugs. It's so that these news stations don't criticize the pharmaceutical drug companies.

Speaker 2:
[73:38] Well, if they control the ad inventory and then the checkbook behind that, exactly. Do you ever do pharmaceutical type reads for your show?

Speaker 3:
[73:48] No. No, I say no to them.

Speaker 2:
[73:49] I only say yes to Dick Pills.

Speaker 3:
[73:52] Dick Pills, I'll say yes to.

Speaker 2:
[73:53] Like, get hard, stay hard.

Speaker 3:
[73:56] Yeah, yeah, I'm down with that. Well, see, I'm not anti-pharmaceutical drug company, but the problem with corporations is they have an obligation to their shareholders to make the most amount of money possible. And it's not the people that are making these things, it's the people that are making them, these doctors and engineers and scientists, all these wizards that are coming up with all these life-saving medications.

Speaker 1:
[74:17] Then you get the money people.

Speaker 3:
[74:19] And the money people are the ones that fuck everything up. Because the money people say, you know what, we could charge $1,000 a pill for this stuff. You know, there's certain medications that literally cost $1,000 a pill. You know, and they just try to make the most amount of money possible and prescribe it to the most amount of people possible. And then you get monsters, like this cancer doctor that I was telling you, that was giving chemotherapy to people that don't fucking have cancer.

Speaker 2:
[74:45] So how do we break that system, though?

Speaker 3:
[74:47] Hammers. Take that guy in a room. Take that guy in a room. Just keep him alive. Slowly break him down with a hammer. Start with his toes.

Speaker 2:
[74:55] But I feel like it's deeply entrenched.

Speaker 3:
[74:56] Work your way up to his hips.

Speaker 2:
[74:57] I feel like it's so deeply entrenched in our political system, as part of it as well, too. That the money transfer, how do you break that and detach that?

Speaker 3:
[75:08] This episode is brought to you by Visible. Let's be honest. Wireless can feel like a world of traps, expensive bills, tacked on fees and promises that just don't hold up. You start to feel stuck. Don't fall for the trap. Escape to Visible, the ultimate wireless hack. Get unlimited data and hotspot powered by Verizon. One line for just $25 a month, taxes and fees included. Get great coverage and a reliable connection with Visible. Plus, for a limited time, new members can get the Visible plan for just $20 a month for one year, using code FRESHSTART. Refresh your wireless with Visible. Switch today at visible.com. Terms apply. Limited time offers. Subject to change. See visible.com for plan, features, and network management details. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace. People always ask me what my website is powered by, and the answer is Squarespace. Their design tools are unmatched. You don't have to be a tech wizard to build something that actually looks professional and fits your brand. They've even got an AI-powered website builder that lets you put together a fully custom site in just a few steps. Try it for yourself. Head to squarespace.com/rogan for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, just use the offer code ROGAN to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. AI God. AI God has to come alive and take over the system.

Speaker 2:
[76:45] Now we're really getting into terrain. I don't understand. I know what the word AI means. I don't know.

Speaker 3:
[76:50] AI God. The one that created that Jesus meme that Trump just posted. That's AI God.

Speaker 2:
[76:55] Joe, I told you he explained it. He was a doctor.

Speaker 3:
[76:59] That's what they call them. That's what AI God calls Jesus. Jesus is a doctor.

Speaker 2:
[77:03] The mental gymnastics involved in some of these people who are so ideologically captured is shocking to me.

Speaker 3:
[77:12] It's weird. It's weird because there's no way there should be this kind of money in politics. There's no way it'd be good for anybody if the people with all the money are controlling most of the things that happen. It doesn't make any sense because they're all sick anyway. They just want more. If you're worth $200 billion and you're still trying to make more money, that's what you're trying to do with your time? Well, you're sick. There's something wrong with you.

Speaker 1:
[77:33] There's like, what are you doing with that money?

Speaker 3:
[77:35] How is it possible that you could spend all that money?

Speaker 2:
[77:37] Isn't the answer for some people or the dollar figure that they're shooting for just more though?

Speaker 3:
[77:42] Always. You know Brian Callan. Brian Callan has a friend who's worth $3 billion and he feels poor because his friend is worth $80 billion. Imagine that. Imagine feeling insecure.

Speaker 2:
[77:57] You have $3,000 million and you feel poor.

Speaker 3:
[78:01] You feel poor.

Speaker 2:
[78:01] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[78:02] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[78:03] Because he's eating ramen at night. Let me just tell you.

Speaker 3:
[78:04] Yeah, it bothers him.

Speaker 2:
[78:05] Yeah, mac and cheese and ramen out of the microwave.

Speaker 3:
[78:07] I feel poor when I'm around Elon, jokingly.

Speaker 2:
[78:11] But also everybody on earth probably does.

Speaker 3:
[78:13] Right. But it's jokingly feel poor. Like I don't really feel bad for myself or insecure about the fact that he's got what does he got?

Speaker 2:
[78:22] He's getting close to a trillion.

Speaker 3:
[78:24] It's like worth 800 billion on paper.

Speaker 2:
[78:27] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[78:27] Until California taxes get a hold of them.

Speaker 1:
[78:29] They'd like to suck all that dry and give it to the homeless people.

Speaker 2:
[78:33] Well, they're doing good. Their program would work if we gave them a little bit more money.

Speaker 1:
[78:36] That's all they need.

Speaker 3:
[78:37] They just need that wealth tax. If they could just siphon off some money from the billionaires. That's the real problem is they don't have enough money.

Speaker 2:
[78:43] Are you glad you left?

Speaker 1:
[78:44] Fuck yeah.

Speaker 3:
[78:46] Fuck yeah.

Speaker 2:
[78:46] You've been here what? Six years. Six years. I've been in Montana for nine.

Speaker 1:
[78:50] Nine.

Speaker 2:
[78:51] I can't think of a reason that I'm going to leave. Yeah. I really can't. It is amazing.

Speaker 1:
[78:56] Well, Montana's got so much going on for it.

Speaker 3:
[78:59] First of all, there's less people, which is relaxing. You feel better.

Speaker 2:
[79:03] 1.1 million people in the state.

Speaker 3:
[79:05] That's all of Austin.

Speaker 2:
[79:07] That's probably a subdivision in Austin.

Speaker 3:
[79:09] Well, Austin is a million and then the surrounding area is another million.

Speaker 2:
[79:14] We just had a net decrease in population in Montana last year.

Speaker 3:
[79:17] Yeah, because all those fucking people that came over because of Yellowstone, they went through a couple of winters.

Speaker 2:
[79:21] And COVID, they're like, yeah, this sucks. We're out. Or that remote work job was like, hey, time to come back to the old office.

Speaker 3:
[79:28] Also, you try driving an electric car when it's fucking 30 below zero outside. That bitch is, oh, it says you got 200 miles. Guess what? You got 30.

Speaker 2:
[79:38] There is one cyber truck where I live. It's not mine.

Speaker 3:
[79:43] I bet it's a rich guy.

Speaker 2:
[79:45] He owns a Thai food restaurant.

Speaker 3:
[79:46] There you go.

Speaker 2:
[79:47] I mean, I don't know what level of wealth is associated with it.

Speaker 1:
[79:50] Probably got some money.

Speaker 2:
[79:51] Yeah. Honestly, it might be money laundering is what he specializes in.

Speaker 1:
[79:54] It's hard to say.

Speaker 2:
[79:55] Might have a nail salon or two under his umbrella as well.

Speaker 3:
[79:57] They're great when it's warm out. But the battery life significantly.

Speaker 1:
[80:02] Do you remember?

Speaker 3:
[80:02] I think it was Chicago or Detroit. There was a few years back, there was a giant blizzard that hit, and people with electric cars, their cars died on the highway. I do remember this.

Speaker 2:
[80:14] And they were really.

Speaker 3:
[80:15] Yeah. Really fucked. Because, look, if you have full tank of gas and you're idling, just idling on the highway, it'll last a pretty long time, especially if it's diesel.

Speaker 2:
[80:25] Oh, you'll get 24 hours out of it.

Speaker 3:
[80:26] 100%. Yeah. So you'll survive. If you have a fucking electric car and you get stuck on the highway and it's just bumper to bumper forever, and that thing is the only thing keeping you warm, you better pray that someone lets you in their car.

Speaker 2:
[80:40] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[80:40] Because you're going to die out there. You'll freeze to death in your own fucking car.

Speaker 2:
[80:45] I like the concept of them.

Speaker 3:
[80:47] I drove one today. It's a time machine. I have a Tesla Model S.

Speaker 2:
[80:53] Don't you have a highly modified one? Oh, yeah. I was going to say, my model S on the outside.

Speaker 3:
[80:58] Yeah. Well, the speed is the same as the standard one. The speed is exactly the same because they don't do anything to the engine because it already has 1,100 horsepower.

Speaker 2:
[81:06] Do they like widen yours?

Speaker 3:
[81:08] Yes. The track has widened. It's got a much more robust suspension set up. It's got carbon fiber fenders. There's a company called Unplugged Performance, and they take it, and it just handles phenomenally, and the brakes are way better. So it does that. But the thing about it is the speed that's just insane. When you merge onto a highway, it's a time machine. You just hit the gas like, and it's no sound. It's like, you know, it's, and all of a sudden, you're going 90 miles an hour, like that. It's nuts.

Speaker 2:
[81:40] We're into different things, Joe. I'm going to stick with my F-150.

Speaker 3:
[81:43] I like those too. I have one of those. I have a Raptor. I have a Hennessey Raptor.

Speaker 2:
[81:47] I don't have that model. Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[81:51] I like a Raptor, but I like one with a thousand horsepower.

Speaker 2:
[81:53] First off, who doesn't? I just don't like the price tag associated with a thousand horsepower one.

Speaker 3:
[82:00] It's a little pricey, but I was on the phone the other day because it's got the speakerphone thing. I'm on the phone with my friend Tommy, and I'm driving. He goes, yo, what the fuck are you driving?

Speaker 2:
[82:09] A dinosaur.

Speaker 3:
[82:10] You could hear the... And the supercharger whine. It's awesome. But I get it. It's not for everybody, but if you drive one, just the ability of those things, just the insane capability, the ability to go zero to 60 in under two seconds is just nuts for a four-door Sinan.

Speaker 2:
[82:32] You know how to drive though. Some people probably are better off not getting into a car that can do that.

Speaker 3:
[82:39] Well, that's what's weird, right? So like if you want, like say if you want to get a concealed carry license, you have to go to a range and you have to demonstrate that you know how to use a gun correctly.

Speaker 2:
[82:51] Are you talking about here in Texas?

Speaker 3:
[82:52] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[82:53] Because Montana is a constitutional carry state.

Speaker 3:
[82:55] Well, it's constitutional carry here as well, it's still concealed carry, you get reciprocity. So if you have concealed carry, you get reciprocity in Florida, Nevada. So if you get a concealed carry license in Texas, you can go to places where maybe they don't even have constitutional carry, but they recognize Texas concealed carry laws.

Speaker 2:
[83:14] Because of the additional training per se?

Speaker 3:
[83:17] Yes, exactly. But the point is like, you have to show that you know how to use it. You can go by a Corvette and you don't have to show anything, which is crazy.

Speaker 2:
[83:27] Well, you have to show a likelihood that you're able to pay for it.

Speaker 3:
[83:30] That's it. So you can get like a Corvette ZR1, which is also 1100 horsepower, and fucking bonkers, a bonkers, fast, insanely engineered car. You don't have to show that you know how to drive at all. You just have a driver's license. So you could drive around.

Speaker 2:
[83:46] Right into the nearest telephone pole.

Speaker 3:
[83:49] Sideways.

Speaker 1:
[83:51] I mean, there's plenty of videos of that.

Speaker 3:
[83:54] My friend, Whitney, sent me a video of a street takeover in Los Angeles this Saturday night, where they took over some street, and gunshots, and people just, they stopped. They cut off the entire street, so no one can go anywhere. People surround these cars, and the cars drive around in circles, and then someone started shooting at people.

Speaker 2:
[84:14] Awesome. What a classic pairing.

Speaker 3:
[84:16] Yeah. Good times. It's good to have rules.

Speaker 2:
[84:19] Yeah. Yeah, they're not doing that in Montana.

Speaker 3:
[84:21] Exactly. Exactly. You have to have an enormous amount of people in order for things to get that chaotic with a very small percentage of humans.

Speaker 2:
[84:30] Were there cops there for that, or they just didn't want to get in the mix?

Speaker 3:
[84:33] They didn't show up until after. You know, the cops showed up when, you know, people start shooting.

Speaker 2:
[84:40] Yeah, that's generally when they're going to respond to that.

Speaker 3:
[84:42] And they're getting security cameras. But the thing is, in Los Angeles, they don't fucking put you in jail for anything. They let you write out. There's no cash bail. They're letting people out for all kinds of crimes. I was listening to a podcast where a guy was a former gang member, and he was saying he's leaving Los Angeles because they're letting 70,000 people out of prison. It's like, it's going to get too dangerous.

Speaker 2:
[85:03] So it was too dangerous for the gang member. There's the answers to some tests right there. Maybe pay attention.

Speaker 3:
[85:09] Yeah, you got to wonder, like, what are they trying to do with California where everything seems to go in the wrong direction? Like, if you look at the vaccine thing, do you think they're really trying to lower population? Is that what they're trying to do? Like, kill off a percent? What are they trying to do with California? Are they really trying to destroy the state? Because if I was trying to destroy a state, that's how I would do it. I'd let everybody out of jail. I'd regulate the fuck out of everything so nothing could get done. You know, you can't buy these in California. Why? These are Alps? Yeah, because they're flavored. This is wintergreen. Shout out to Tucker Carlson. This is his brand. I like these. These are very delicious. By the way, I show these to Daniel Cormier. He goes, where did you get those? And I go, in Texas, you could buy them. He goes, you know you can't buy them in California? And he goes, I get them and I bring them around all these dads. They're like, I'm a dealer.

Speaker 2:
[86:01] They're like, where'd you get that?

Speaker 3:
[86:02] Because they won't let you have flavored nicotine pouches. It's illegal in California.

Speaker 2:
[86:08] It's for your safety.

Speaker 3:
[86:09] They're trying to turn you into just a little baby that needs everything from the government. Everything, everything.

Speaker 2:
[86:17] We were at that launch party. Somehow I got an invitation to be there. So we go to Tennessee. Tucker stands on a chair and talks about Alp. You know how?

Speaker 3:
[86:24] Stood on a chair?

Speaker 2:
[86:25] Yeah, because it was just like, it was in Dave Ramsey's barn. And again, like I'm so far not in the social circle of this. And so we listen.

Speaker 3:
[86:32] I think he should have sat on someone's shoulders. That would have been even better.

Speaker 2:
[86:35] He's pretty big. So you would have needed somebody who like has squatted once or twice in their life. So we listened to him talk and they had a little like on the other room is a huge fireplace is just this like a charcuterie table about this size. So I'm getting some cheese and then I turn around and I'm like, hello Mel Gibson and I just fucking went and sat in the corner. I was so uncomfortable in that environment.

Speaker 3:
[86:57] Because Mel was there?

Speaker 2:
[86:58] Mel, there was a lot of people there. I just, you know, you sat down and talk with him. You exist in a different orbit than I do. I exist in an orbit of 1.1 million total people that I don't see every day.

Speaker 3:
[87:08] In the state?

Speaker 2:
[87:09] In the state. So like I interact with the people I want to. I was not prepared to have a cheese stick and turn around and see the dude from Lethal Weapons standing there. Like, hi, I got to get out of here.

Speaker 3:
[87:19] By the way, if you talk to him, he is one of the most normal, easy to talk to movie stars you will ever meet. He has no heirs about him. He's very easy to talk to.

Speaker 2:
[87:29] I just don't do good in social situations like that, where like everybody was relatively recognizable. I just go sit in the corner and I hang out with my wife and we eat charcuterie.

Speaker 3:
[87:38] I get it. I get it.

Speaker 1:
[87:40] I don't like those things either, believe it or not.

Speaker 2:
[87:45] Do you remember the event you did at Performance Archery in San Diego? Oh yeah. I watched you trying to make your way to the bathroom, and it took you about 30 minutes to go 20 feet. I don't know how you deal with that. One, I know you well enough outside of that, like you're a genuinely nice person. You will give people the time, because you're appreciative of the fact that they want to meet you. I totally get that. But also, sometimes you have to piss. I don't know how any of those people, or maybe you don't operate in a sense in air quotes of normalcy.

Speaker 3:
[88:25] It's not normal, but the way I think of it is like, they just like me. It's way better than if they hated me. Way better than if you go into the bathroom and everybody wants to kick your ass. I'm going to the bathroom, they just want to say hi. And for them, it's a very unique moment. So I try to reset every time I see a new person. I try to treat them as if it's like this is for them. It's a unique experience. They get to meet and never believe that I am unique. Don't believe the hype and don't think you are special, but always appreciate the fact that someone else does. So take the time to say hi. The UFCs are hard because I can't. Sometimes I'm going through the crowd and I have to, sometimes I leave my commentary seat and then I have to take a piss. Then I have to run back and then everybody's trying to get a picture while you're, like you're literally going through a crowd of people.

Speaker 2:
[89:24] You're talking about in between balance.

Speaker 3:
[89:25] Yeah, yeah. So I high five people, but they're like, I can't, I can't, I can't. I can't stop because if I stop, then they'll all swarm and I can't do that. I have to keep moving. So that bothers me that I have to say I can't stop. Even when I'm leaving the venue, they're like, I can't, I can't. I have to keep moving. I'm sorry. I appreciate you, but I can't stop because if I stop, I'll never get out of here.

Speaker 2:
[89:48] I've been to one of those and we were at UFC 300.

Speaker 3:
[89:52] That was a good one.

Speaker 2:
[89:54] Your seat was good. You had a good seat. I watched the fight from the back of a projection onto one of the things up in one of the-

Speaker 3:
[90:01] Well, you didn't get tickets for me.

Speaker 2:
[90:03] I'm never going to ask you for tickets, by the way.

Speaker 3:
[90:05] Well, just fucking let me know when you want to go.

Speaker 2:
[90:07] Well, no, actually, I don't want to go because I missed listening to you guys talk. I didn't realize- So we were sitting there and I heard Gaethje get flatlined before we saw it. Like, holy cow, you want to talk about not let the punch but the reaction to that?

Speaker 3:
[90:25] Right.

Speaker 2:
[90:26] Oh my god.

Speaker 3:
[90:27] Insane.

Speaker 2:
[90:28] But there were so many people and we were there with Jaco and Origen and there had some people that were down there low but we ended up, Lee and I ended up watching from the back. So we got to see it but we both said the same thing. It's way better on the couch or I want a pair of headsets like this so I can-

Speaker 3:
[90:43] Yes.

Speaker 2:
[90:43] Because now, let me be honest, before I started training Jiu Jitsu, I was like, you fucking stand them up right now. Those guys are just-

Speaker 3:
[90:52] Well now, as a Jiu Jitsu black belt, aren't you embarrassed by your old self?

Speaker 2:
[90:57] You don't let that guy earn that position. You don't ever get them off the cage and you never get them off the ground.

Speaker 3:
[91:03] I'm with you. I've been preaching that from the beginning of the fucking sport.

Speaker 2:
[91:07] I would have been the dude with the redneck guzzler Queers Light half covered in it like, I'm standing up. Because now I'm like, no, no, no.

Speaker 3:
[91:16] Never.

Speaker 2:
[91:16] Especially when they're sweaty. If that guy is dominating him, you stay right there.

Speaker 3:
[91:21] Exactly. It's so hard to get someone to the ground and it's so hard to hold them down if they're good.

Speaker 2:
[91:26] The experience though from-

Speaker 3:
[91:27] Not good.

Speaker 2:
[91:28] I am going to say this. I would rather pay for the Paramount than listen, or for the pay-per-view than the current Paramount experience. Sorry, Dana, but the commercials suck.

Speaker 3:
[91:36] Yeah, I'm not a fan of commercials. That's why I like YouTube Premium.

Speaker 1:
[91:40] I don't want commercials.

Speaker 2:
[91:41] Yeah. I'll pay for the pay-per-view.

Speaker 3:
[91:43] They should offer Paramount Premium where you get no commercials. You should get a different experience for the UFC.

Speaker 2:
[91:50] There's been some streaming issues as well, too. I know. Well, it could also be...

Speaker 3:
[91:56] Montana Internet.

Speaker 2:
[91:57] Listen, we have electricity. We have running water. I've actually seen solar panels up in Montana. They don't work great for nine months out of the year.

Speaker 3:
[92:05] You get the Starlink?

Speaker 2:
[92:06] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[92:07] That's the shit.

Speaker 2:
[92:07] I was actually one of the first people to get it in Montana, and it works fantastic.

Speaker 3:
[92:12] I have the little one that's like a book.

Speaker 2:
[92:13] Yeah. It's amazing.

Speaker 3:
[92:14] It's fucking great. I took it to Utah. We were streaming stuff while we were in the cabins. It was awesome.

Speaker 2:
[92:23] It's kind of life changing. Oh, it's great. And then sometimes I need to...

Speaker 3:
[92:25] FaceTime with people.

Speaker 2:
[92:27] But then other times, like, I'm going to leave that in the truck, because otherwise maybe I'm just going to enjoy where I'm at. That's true.

Speaker 3:
[92:31] But the thing about elk hunting is you're so tired by the end of the day that you're not going to sit there looking at your phone anyway. But it's nice to be able to FaceTime home and say hi to people.

Speaker 2:
[92:42] For sure.

Speaker 3:
[92:43] But I do like the fact that when you're out there in the woods, it doesn't work at all.

Speaker 2:
[92:48] Yeah. Yeah, that is... God, I hate hunting sometimes. Like last year.

Speaker 3:
[92:54] Did you strike out last year?

Speaker 2:
[92:55] Oh, no. Even worse. Wounded an elk.

Speaker 3:
[92:58] Oh, no.

Speaker 2:
[92:59] I think I texted you.

Speaker 3:
[93:00] Oh, yeah. It's with a rifle, too.

Speaker 2:
[93:01] Well, I tell people that I am the Navy Seal Sniper with the most confirmed misses. Because I can just smash that trigger back, close your eyes, hold your breath, let it gray out a little bit, and then really just jerk it.

Speaker 1:
[93:13] Oh, that's the worst feeling when you know you could have done it so much better if you just had taken a little bit more time.

Speaker 2:
[93:18] It would have been hard for me to do it worse, Joe, if I'm being honest. People are like, how could you possibly miss? Because I'm an idiot sometimes, and I'm just, God, as I was pulling on the trigger, I was watching it just drift back towards the beginning of the guts. And instead of just stopping, just gave it a little bit more and then never saw the thing, looked for it for two and a half days. Is there a worse feeling in the world than wounding an animal?

Speaker 1:
[93:44] No.

Speaker 3:
[93:46] And it's also, like, a miss like that, you have to wait a year to get another chance. You have a whole nother year to sit about and think about that miss before you get back to hunting again.

Speaker 2:
[93:59] This year I think I might be able to go back to archery, because although they call jiu-jitsu the gentle art, I get banged up sometimes.

Speaker 1:
[94:06] Oh, bro.

Speaker 2:
[94:07] I was rifle hunting that year. I was training with a 15-year-old young man at the end of a day of training with some savage black belts. Totally, you know, how when you say when you first start, like, hey, you need to relax. Well, I also found that you can relax too much. I was laying on my side, let him work on an armbar, got a hold of my arm. I was going to work on an escape. And as my arm was coming up over my head, I heard my shoulder cavitate. It was like, and of course on my drawing arm for my bow. And we were a couple of months away from hunting season. Felt it go, partial terror of the pack, completely black and blue. It was the gentle art.

Speaker 3:
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Speaker 1:
[96:48] There's nothing gentle about Jiu Jitsu.

Speaker 3:
[96:50] It's ridiculous to call it that. I don't know what psychopath called it the gentle art. I've been hurt more times. Everybody I know that's done Jiu Jitsu, as long as I have, has either artificial discs in their back and neck or has had multiple knee surgeries. That's me. I've had three. Or has had torn shoulders where they had to get reconstructed or blown out elbows.

Speaker 2:
[97:12] Do you still train?

Speaker 1:
[97:13] No.

Speaker 3:
[97:14] I haven't in a while.

Speaker 1:
[97:15] I want to, though.

Speaker 2:
[97:16] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[97:16] I did a little bit of training about a year ago with Gabe Tuttle, and I was getting back into it, but I still struggle with this one knee. I have one knee that keeps fucking up on me, man.

Speaker 2:
[97:26] For you, it would be very hard to find the appropriate training partner.

Speaker 3:
[97:29] Yes.

Speaker 2:
[97:30] Like, you're never going to a group class again and getting in there at open mat. People would come for your head because they're assholes.

Speaker 3:
[97:35] Yeah, but I always did. That's what I always did. I never, I always trained. I didn't just like only train with like one guy that like stuck with all the time. I always went to classes. Yeah. Because I think that's the only way to really be good. I don't think there's a real way to train with one person that's like taking it easy on you and really achieve a high level. I think you have to go in there with people that are gonna tap you. And you have to go in there with people that are trying to tap you, you know? And, you know, if you're good and if you're strong, you could avoid a lot of shit.

Speaker 1:
[98:11] But, you know, you get in there with some fucking 25 year old wrestler who weighs 210 pounds and is built like a superhero.

Speaker 3:
[98:19] It's rough.

Speaker 2:
[98:19] Who moves at a speed that your joints and ligaments can't move at.

Speaker 3:
[98:23] I can't keep up. You're on my back. I can't keep up with this. And if I do keep up, I'm going to blow something out.

Speaker 2:
[98:29] Since I founded it 41, I don't think we should teach it to anybody under 30. Because it deeply offends me when children come out of the children's class and they've been training like six times longer than I am. Like, what? Like their movement patterns were developed on the mat. I'm like, we're using the same alphabet. We are not putting together the same words.

Speaker 3:
[98:49] Well, I knew that from striking because I knew that from kicking. I was like, I started martial arts before my body had matured and my body matured becoming very flexible and very fast. And so as I got thicker, I maintained that speed and everything. But I was like, I don't know if you could ever get as good as I got if you didn't start when I started. I don't know if it's possible. And I didn't start jujitsu till I was 30. And when I started doing jujitsu, I remember thinking, God, I wish I did this when I was a kid. Yep, because I see some kids where they're fucking scrambles and their transitions like built into their neurons, where they're just like, everything is so fast and so kinetic and they're just moving and flowing like fuck.

Speaker 2:
[99:32] I could have started in like 97, but the few people who were doing it were so enthusiastic it just nauseated me like it's like veganism.

Speaker 3:
[99:43] Yeah, like they make you want to eat meat.

Speaker 2:
[99:45] Come roll with us. I'm like, I don't know what you guys are doing. It's very questionably gay at best from the outside. I don't like how much you like it because you like it that much. I'm out. And then I look back, I'm like, oh, I started in 96.

Speaker 3:
[100:00] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[100:01] Not me.

Speaker 3:
[100:03] I guess I thought, yeah, it was 95 or 96. It was right after UFC 2 came out on video. So UFC 2 was, 93 was the UFC. I found out about UFC in like, I didn't find out about it in 93. I found out about it a year later. And it wasn't available. UFC 1 was not available on VHS. I had to get UFC 2. And I found out about it from somebody at the kickboxing gym that I was going to. He was like, you got to see this.

Speaker 1:
[100:30] And I was like, what is this? I was like, oh my God, they did it.

Speaker 3:
[100:34] Because there was always this thing when I was a martial artist when I was young. Like, what's better? Judo, karate, and no one knew. And then there was like the Jean-Claude Van Damme kumite movies where you meet and all the styles come together and you find out what's best. When I first saw UFC 2, I was like, oh my God, they did it. And then I was like, oh my God, I don't know that. This one guy is killing everybody.

Speaker 2:
[100:57] There's a lot of people that were saying that in those single digit ones.

Speaker 3:
[101:00] Oh my God.

Speaker 2:
[101:01] So then what number of UFC did you first commentate at?

Speaker 3:
[101:04] UFC 12.

Speaker 2:
[101:05] Damn, dude. That's a pretty quick. Well, they probably were doing less frequently as well, but that's a pretty quick flash to bang.

Speaker 3:
[101:10] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[101:10] Seeing it on a VHS.

Speaker 3:
[101:11] That was 97. So by 97, I guess I was 30. Yeah. I guess I was 30, somewhere around there. So that was the first UFC that I was already training at that time. I was training at Carlson Gracie's with Vitor Belfort. That was Vitor Belfort was there. Marilla Bustamante was there. Like, it was amazing. Just stumbled upon that place. I actually went to Hickson's first, but I was so ignorant. I thought Carlson Gracie, Hickson Gracie. I thought it was the same. And Hickson was further away and Carlson's was closer. I was like, oh, I found a closer Gracie Jiu Jitsu. I'll go here. And then it was also at the time where Extreme Fighting was out, which was John Peretti, who was one of the commentators for the early UFC, was now doing this. And it was really good. Like Mario Sperry was fighting, Igor Zinoviev. And these guys, a lot of these guys were from Carlson Gracie. So I saw the Carlson Gracie, the two Bulldog logos, which is fucking dope. And then I found out that it was on Hawthorne Street in LA, which is like really close to the comedy store. I was like, oh, this is perfect. Because I was living in North Hollywood. I would just drive there. It was much closer. It was much closer. But I just I got there at literally the perfect time because it was right before Vitor was making his UFC debut, which was UFC 12, which I commentated at. So I was literally training at the same school as Vitor. So I knew what to expect. I'm like, these guys don't know what the fuck this guy's doing. Like this is this because everybody thought he was just a jiu-jitsu guy. Yeah. And meanwhile, he had lightning hands. And you know, it was a slimmer Vitor. He was only like 200 pounds back then, just moved like a fucking panther. And I got to see this sport just sort of emerging, where really it was becoming something completely different. Like at first, it was just a bunch of people that didn't know anything. And you know, there was or they didn't know anything about mixed martial arts. They either know judo or they know karate. And then there was hoists and hoists is just tapping everybody. And everybody's like, oh, my God, jiu-jitsu is the way. And then when I went to Carlson's, I was like, jiu-jitsu is kind of the way. But look at this guy, like you got to take that guy to the ground. And that guy's hands are like a fucking professional boxers. This is crazy.

Speaker 2:
[103:27] Yeah. Jiu-jitsu is awesome. It's not complete.

Speaker 3:
[103:31] No.

Speaker 2:
[103:31] You can have a nice black belt and end up in an ambulance if you can't get through a striking range.

Speaker 3:
[103:36] Well, not only that, there's a lot of guys that were really reliant upon the Gi back then, unfortunately, because this is all you got to realize. This is all before Abu Dhabi. Right. So this is before Abu Dhabi Combat Club came out, which was an amazing organization that paid real money to grapplers to compete. But made them compete without a Gi, which was like for a lot of guys, they didn't know what to do. They're so used to grabbing sleeves and grabbing collars and grabbing pants. And the one guy who had figured it out was my eventual instructor, Jean-Jacques Machado, because Jean-Jacques was born with essentially one hand. His left hand is just a thumb. He just has a thumb. He had a birth defect. And because of that, his game was all over hooks and under hooks, and gable grips, which was he wasn't relying on collars and all this other stuff. So his game was very different. He just dominated in Abu Dhabi. And that opened up the door to Eddie Bravo. So Eddie Bravo, he learned a lot of his techniques from Jean-Jacques as well. And a lot of his style was based around Jean-Jacques principles, which is don't rely on the gi, because you don't always have the gi. It's a good tool to use if you have it. If you're fighting a guy who's got a winter coat on, it's awesome. The last thing you want to do is fight a judo guy if you're wearing a winter coat.

Speaker 2:
[104:53] So not optimal for how your head's going to feel when it hits the concrete?

Speaker 3:
[104:58] You ain't going to be able to do shit to stop that.

Speaker 2:
[105:02] I asked you early on, I think we had linked up when I was... It was actually right at the beginning of COVID, I was a white belt. And I asked you how you train and manage grip stuff. And you gave me a piece of advice that I still utilize. And you said, whether you have a gi on or don't have a gi on, just focus on taking no gi grips. Sounds like a son of a bitch.

Speaker 3:
[105:19] Yeah, that's what I always did. The only gi technique that I really love is the clock choke. When you get a deep grip on the collar and you funnel that left arm underneath and spin, oh my God, that's instant death. That clock choke is so nasty.

Speaker 2:
[105:37] I prefer the cross collar.

Speaker 3:
[105:38] That's great too.

Speaker 2:
[105:39] It's available for more areas.

Speaker 3:
[105:41] Oh, for sure.

Speaker 2:
[105:41] Just pop that head right off.

Speaker 3:
[105:43] Cross collar is nasty. There's a lot of great, great gi techniques that are super effective if someone's wearing clothes. I mean, you'd be amazed at how durable t-shirts are. You know, you could really choke the fuck out of someone with a t-shirt on.

Speaker 2:
[106:00] So, Henner has a video where he'll get the first hand in. He's got him in clothes guard. He reaches over and he grabs the bottom of the shirt, pulls it all the way up and then wraps that around.

Speaker 3:
[106:10] Oh yeah.

Speaker 2:
[106:11] It's got to feel like a garrotte.

Speaker 3:
[106:12] Yeah. Yeah. Horrible. Especially if they're wearing a strong shirt, like a flannel shirt or something like that, something to really grab. Yeah. Yeah. But that was John Jock's style. His style was use no-gee grips even with the gi. So for me, it made me concentrate more on defense because you couldn't pull out of things as easily. Yeah. But I never felt lost going into no-gee. So I would go back and forth all the time. So, you know, I got my black belt from Eddie first, but I got my black belt from John Jock right after that because I was training at both places. That was also a beautiful thing about Eddie being John Jock's student and them having a very close relationship. It never felt like you were a traitor, that you left schools, because I never really left schools. I trained at both places. I always trained at John Jock's, and I always trained at Eddie's.

Speaker 2:
[107:03] You weren't a Crayonche?

Speaker 3:
[107:05] Yeah. Is that what they call it?

Speaker 2:
[107:06] Yeah, I think so.

Speaker 3:
[107:06] Yeah. So that was very nice that they had that amazing relationship where there was no static at all. It was like I would go to see John Jock. I'd go train there a couple days a week. I'd train at Eddie's a couple days a week. It was awesome.

Speaker 2:
[107:19] Yeah, if I had a time machine, and if my younger self would listen to me, which I don't think I would, I would say two things. One, buy Bitcoin, obviously. Two, maybe get into JOSEPH a little bit earlier.

Speaker 3:
[107:31] But I think what you did was pretty impressive because you got through it very quickly. Like I remember you first started training, and you got a black belt in what, four years, five years?

Speaker 2:
[107:43] Five and a half.

Speaker 3:
[107:43] That's amazing. That's quick.

Speaker 2:
[107:46] Well, I think it depends on how you view the time. So I think the standard 10-year window is usually somebody trains about an hour a day or two hours a day, twice a week. I had the ability where I was living, I could train 10 times a week for as long as I want to. So the math is still math at the end of the day.

Speaker 3:
[108:03] Right. But that's still very hard on the body at 40 years old. It's very hard on the body.

Speaker 2:
[108:08] Vitamin I, also known as ibuprofen, comes into the training model.

Speaker 1:
[108:12] That shit is terrible for you.

Speaker 2:
[108:13] Yeah, but it makes you feel better.

Speaker 1:
[108:15] It's so bad for you though.

Speaker 3:
[108:17] It's so bad for your gut.

Speaker 2:
[108:18] I will say this, one thing about my previous job is it teaches you how to learn. It rewards your ability to be coachable. Be coachable. People ask me, how can you be a good student? Just in general, I'm like, listen, how about this? Do what your instructor says and nothing more.

Speaker 3:
[108:36] Right.

Speaker 2:
[108:36] If they say, put your hand here, and you ask them, do you mean always put it there, and they say, yes, just put your hand there.

Speaker 3:
[108:41] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[108:42] If you want to, and the internet is an amazing thing, right? And there's a bunch of ability to go out and look for techniques and stuff. But I can't think of anything more disrespectful to a coach to be told them something, and then you are offering them something that you saw on Instagram while they're trying to teach you. Like, that's how that relationship is going to end up breaking. If you really want to accelerate your learning, and honor your coach, actually, focus on what they are trying to tell you to do. Do only that and no more until you have that mastered, and then you can move on top of that.

Speaker 3:
[109:09] Absolutely.

Speaker 1:
[109:10] That's great advice.

Speaker 3:
[109:11] Yeah, you have to just listen. You have to listen and never question. And then, unless you have a bad coach, then just get a good coach. That's the solution to that.

Speaker 2:
[109:21] Which in this era, you have choices. The era that you were starting in, there weren't as many choices.

Speaker 3:
[109:25] Right. Yeah. Well, I realized that when I went to John Jock's place that there's levels in teaching. And obviously Hickson's school was very high level, and Carlson's was too, but Carlson's went under pretty quickly. They weren't around that long. But then when I went to John Jock's, I was like, okay, this is a completely different level. Like John Jock is so detail oriented. I was also very lucky that I started doing Taekwondo when I was a child, so that I always listened. And the traditional martial arts environment, there's no room for questioning. They don't allow any questions. And I was also very lucky that the school that I started at was one of the best schools in the world. I just got lucky. I found this J. Hun Taekwondo, J. Hun Kim Taekwondo Institute in Boston, just happened to have multiple national champions, like really elite competitors. And so, I never questioned. I always did, and I never did anything half-assed. I always did it exactly. That's how you develop the right technique.

Speaker 2:
[110:28] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[110:28] You have to.

Speaker 2:
[110:29] Well, it's how you accelerate learning too. I mean, because again, people ask me about my old job, like, well, how do you guys do all this stuff that you do? Well, you learn it a piece at a time, and honestly, it's the mastery of fundamentals. Even at that, I think what I determined the most when my coach gave me my black belt was that I don't know a goddamn thing. I don't know anything about Jiu-Jitsu, and I can't keep up with all the flashy, sporty stuff, but the better fundamentals get, the better you can tolerate a lot of that stuff. It's just the mastery of the fundamentals is just so essential.

Speaker 3:
[110:59] Well, some of the elite guys of all time never did any of the flashy stuff, like Hickson. Hickson was just the fundamentals honed to a razor sharp edge. You don't see Hickson doing some stuff, you're like, oh, I've never seen that before. It's all triangles, arm bars, or a naked choke, and just done to perfection. Done in a way that black belts can't stop it.

Speaker 2:
[111:22] No, I've heard stories of him lining black belts up, telling them what he is going to catch them with, and then having like 10 of them watch him catch everybody before them with the same thing, and them having absolutely no ability to stop it. That's what I'm talking about.

Speaker 3:
[111:36] Yeah. Well, that's Gordon Ryan too. Gordon Ryan, one of the things that Gordon did, I was there when he did it, one of the times he did it. He did it multiple times. He would write down on a piece of paper how he was going to submit his opponent, and sealed it in an envelope, and before the match started, he would walk over to the commentators and say, open this when it's over. And then, you know, you would see him catch somebody in a triangle, and then he would open up the envelope and show the triangle. And he had multiple opportunities to catch someone in different things. He's like, no, no, no.

Speaker 2:
[112:07] See, I could do that too, but it would be what I'm going to get caught with. Here's the most likely thing that I'm going to mess up and get caught with.

Speaker 3:
[112:14] Well, that's the thing about starting when you're 40 versus starting when you're 12 or whatever it is. It's like you're only going to be able to get to a certain height, you know?

Speaker 2:
[112:24] Well, also, I recognize that I'm an aggressive hobbyist. I have competed twice only because my wife was coaching at tournaments. I was like, well, I'll go spend time with you. So here we are. I think once when I was a white belt and once when I was a purple belt, like that's it. I don't care about the competition. Shockingly enough, I'm not looking to have a violent confrontation with anyone ever. Totally have filled my cup up with that one. Probably has spilled over a little bit from time to time. I just do it because I really like the community. I like the fact you can't master it, so you can keep your brain young with your body young, or young as young as possible. Yeah, it's just fun.

Speaker 3:
[113:01] It's really fun. It's so addictive, which to me was the problem with injuries was that I would always find, I would go, I'll work around it, and I'd just go in with injuries, and then they get aggravated to the point where, you know, I remember one time my fingers were getting numb because my neck was so fucked up that my fingers were numb, and then I'm like, okay, I got to do something.

Speaker 2:
[113:22] Was this from you head and arm choking people?

Speaker 3:
[113:24] It was a lot of that. Yep.

Speaker 2:
[113:26] I remember you telling me your affinities, like you're really going to just drive your head.

Speaker 3:
[113:29] You got to use your neck. And also not tapping, not tapping to certain neck cranks and different things that fuck your neck up.

Speaker 2:
[113:37] Neck cranks are very real.

Speaker 3:
[113:38] Yeah. I also didn't work my neck enough back then. I didn't have an iron neck at that machine.

Speaker 2:
[113:44] Do you still use that thing?

Speaker 3:
[113:45] Oh yeah. I fucking love that thing.

Speaker 2:
[113:47] Is it forward and back and turn or all those things?

Speaker 3:
[113:49] So it's a halo. You sit it on your chest and you pump it up, like the Reebok pump. And then the chin strap, you tighten that bitch down. And you can adjust the tension that's required to spin it. And it has this giant bungee cord on it. And so the bungee cord is like 50 pounds of resistance. And you back up with the bungee cord till it's like fully taught. And then you go like this. I swear by that thing. All right. It keeps your neck strong as fuck. And I don't have any neck problems anymore. And I had a lot of fucking neck problems. So the thing that saved me though was Regenekine, which is like this PRP, platelet rich plasma to the next level. This treatment that a lot of guys were having to go to Germany to get. In the early days, they would go like, I remember Kobe Bryant went to Germany.

Speaker 1:
[114:37] I think Peyton Manning went.

Speaker 3:
[114:38] A bunch of guys had to go to Germany to get this treatment. And it's like, they take your blood and through some process, I forget exactly how they do it, it makes this fluid that is like this radically inflammation fighting fluid. And they injected it into my neck and it cured my bulging discs. And all my numbness went away and I got to start training again once I got back. But again, I didn't have a fucking iron neck back then. If I had that machine back then, I think I could have avoided a lot of the problems.

Speaker 2:
[115:11] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[115:11] Like a lot of the problems that people have with lower backs, I firmly believe it's a lack of building tissue and strength and mobility around your lower back. And I do a lot of lower back exercises too. I do a lot of rotation exercises and a lot of like reverse hypers. Like that machine.

Speaker 2:
[115:30] That machine's awesome.

Speaker 3:
[115:31] Oh, that's the idea that today, that fucking keeps your back so strong and healthy and it decompresses at the same time that it strengthens. And you know, some of the guys just go into the class. They just, that's their workout. Their only workout is training. And those guys are always hurt. They're always getting hurt. I think strength training and mobility training is essential if you want to have longevity in jujitsu.

Speaker 1:
[115:54] I really think that.

Speaker 2:
[115:55] I would agree.

Speaker 3:
[115:56] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[115:56] Yeah. For the first couple of years, it was a workout in and of itself. And I finally have started. I think I'm done with barbells just because I've never seen a linear object equally loaded in real life outside of a gym.

Speaker 3:
[116:07] So there's some things with barbells though, like Olympic style stuff, like cleans that are very beneficial to you can searchers though. Searchers are only available with a barbell.

Speaker 1:
[116:19] I think searchers are very, very important.

Speaker 3:
[116:22] I think that's a big one.

Speaker 2:
[116:25] I'm willing to Jefferson squats.

Speaker 3:
[116:28] There's a bunch of different things. But searchers in particular are really good for grappling. Because you've got that barbell that you're holding inside the crook of your elbow.

Speaker 2:
[116:37] Couldn't you use a sandbag?

Speaker 3:
[116:39] You could. Yeah, you definitely could. Yeah. I love goblet squats.

Speaker 2:
[116:44] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[116:45] Goblet squats are phenomenal for that.

Speaker 2:
[116:46] They'll tear you up for sure.

Speaker 3:
[116:47] Especially on a slant board. When you're holding like a 90-pound kettlebell and you're doing those deep squats where it's knees over toes on a slant board, your whole core is just so activated when you hurt. I mean, that's phenomenal for just strength and stability. But I agree. I think kettlebells are the best. I think it's the best also because there's so many different things you can do with them in terms of, there's rotational exercises I do where I pick it down on this side and I swing and clean it and I press it on that side. Let it swing down. I do those things where you lie on your back with your butt, with your legs up in the air and you do those twists where you take the kettlebell and clean it each side.

Speaker 2:
[117:32] You can absolutely demolish yourself with a single kettlebell.

Speaker 3:
[117:35] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[117:36] Which is kind of awesome, especially where I live too, traveling with the truck. Okay.

Speaker 3:
[117:40] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[117:40] Put one of these bad boys in there.

Speaker 3:
[117:41] 100 percent.

Speaker 2:
[117:42] All the excuses are gone.

Speaker 3:
[117:43] I had a bowling bag that I would carry a 50-pound kettlebell with me on the road. I just put it in a bowling bag because it fits in a bowling ball bag.

Speaker 1:
[117:50] All right.

Speaker 2:
[117:51] People are going to look at you a little awkwardly, but I'm here for it.

Speaker 3:
[117:53] But if you have a 50-pound weight limit, if you check in luggage, like there you go. Whatever works for you.

Speaker 1:
[118:03] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[118:03] I appreciate the enthusiasm for working out on the road.

Speaker 3:
[118:06] Well, back then, the thing was you'd never find them in a gym, and now they're in most gyms.

Speaker 2:
[118:11] It's tough not to find them down at gym. Yeah. Hotel gyms is like, why do you have a 1.5 kilo kettlebell? Is this for children? What the? The little micro ones?

Speaker 3:
[118:22] Some people like to pretend they're working out.

Speaker 2:
[118:24] Sometimes that's me. Just go through the motions. Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[118:28] They're good for wrists, too. Wrist curls. You take a kettlebell and you reverse it, or you have it this way, and you do these. Put your forearms on a bench, and you hold the handle in your hands, and you just let your wrists curl, because it puts you in this weird angle. It really strengthens your forearms and your wrists. There's so many things you could do with those things. Things that aren't sexy, like Turkish get-ups, phenomenal for you. So good for stability and core, just overall body control.

Speaker 2:
[118:59] Yeah, I need it now. Croaching towards 50, still enjoying jujitsu.

Speaker 3:
[119:04] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[119:05] Yeah, you need a little bit.

Speaker 3:
[119:06] Do you definitely need something? Are you taking any peptides or any of that stuff?

Speaker 2:
[119:11] I played around the peptides. Finally, two years ago, I got my endocrine system checked, got my Hormuz checked. Oh, man. It was a nice little gauge that had red zone, yellow, green. Upon first looking at this chart, I assumed that my life was going to end in about 36 hours.

Speaker 3:
[119:31] What was your number?

Speaker 2:
[119:33] Oh, fuck. Two something. Oh, Jesus. I had never had it checked.

Speaker 1:
[119:37] That's crazy.

Speaker 2:
[119:38] I didn't feel awesome. But I also, there are people who played around with an immense amount of performance-enhancing materials in my previous job, which live your life however you want to, just understand maybe the long-term tale and the consequences of the choice you want to make. I wanted to avoid that for as long as possible because as you know, once you go on that train, it's a lifelong journey.

Speaker 1:
[119:59] Yeah. Once I finally saw that piece of paper, I'm like, oh boy.

Speaker 2:
[120:04] I bet you could attribute that to the volume of your training. That's also part of the problem, is if you're training 10 times a week, you're probably in a constant state of overtraining.

Speaker 1:
[120:16] Oh, for sure.

Speaker 2:
[120:17] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[120:17] Yeah, probably for the vast majority of my life, that's been the state that I operated in. If I'm being honest, I mean, the answer was always just more. Like, if you want to get better, do more. Right. You want to be stronger, go harder. Go harder and do more. Like, okay. It took me abut... So, I've been... I started taking TRT about two years ago. I am just now finally slowly dialing it in to where I feel a difference, recovery is better. But also, I mean, I try to set realistic expectations for who I am and what I'm trying to do. Like, I'm just... I want to have the healthiest lifespan that I can.

Speaker 2:
[120:47] Yes.

Speaker 1:
[120:48] I'd rather live to 80 and be doing awesome stuff to 80 than live to 90 and spend the last 10 years eating jello in a nursing home.

Speaker 2:
[120:54] Right.

Speaker 1:
[120:55] So, that's what I'm going for.

Speaker 2:
[120:56] You could do... As long as you're smart with your training and you don't get catastrophic injuries, you could be very physically fit deep into your 60s and 70s.

Speaker 1:
[121:07] That's the goal. This is nuts. And that's... I mean, I don't know. Nobody knows how much time we have and how long your lap is going to be. My goal is just to fill it up with awesome experiences between here and whenever that is.

Speaker 2:
[121:19] Here, here, to stay on that fucking flying squirrel suit, will you?

Speaker 1:
[121:23] You know, Cam just said the same thing to me. And if enough people keep saying that, I'll put that thing back on just to piss you guys off.

Speaker 2:
[121:29] But it's kind of amazing that you're still here. That you've done that so many times. I mean, you broke the world record at one point in time.

Speaker 1:
[121:37] I did, yes. My egg... That was...

Speaker 2:
[121:39] How many miles was that that you flew?

Speaker 1:
[121:41] It's like 18.2, something like that.

Speaker 2:
[121:43] With a flying squirrel suit.

Speaker 1:
[121:45] To me, it was very reasonable. You know, the things that I do that I think are reasonable, often times in my life, people will pull me aside and be like, hey man, what the fuck?

Speaker 2:
[121:52] Yeah, that doesn't seem at all reasonable.

Speaker 1:
[121:55] Well, you're only seeing that one video. I had been skydiving for like 16 years at that point, you know? And, you know, something like when I would go over to... I remember I'd go over to Switzerland and I would do a flight in the wingsuit and get... You know, you're playing tag with your shadow on a steep cliff, and I would send it to you, and one day you were like, I just had to throw my phone across the room watching this because it was giving you anxiety. So then I'm like, clearly I'm sending you more of these videos for sure, right? Because now I got to hooking.

Speaker 2:
[122:23] I threw my phone into a couch. I was like, fuck this.

Speaker 4:
[122:26] What are you doing, Andy?

Speaker 1:
[122:27] But that was like one of many jumps, and this like the months of training leading up to that. I'm not going to sit here and say it's safe. I do think you can do it as safely as possible, and I don't have a higher risk threshold than other people do. I spend an immense amount of time at everything that I do, looking at the risk and trying to manage it, to analyze it, mitigate it as much as possible, and then you look at what's left. To me, that activity provided me enough enrichment in my life that it was worth it. I haven't put the suit on in five or six years, but I swear to God, if I get one more person telling me not to do it, I'm going to go back and just start sending you videos again.

Speaker 2:
[123:05] All right, well, I promise I won't be that guy that tells you that, I promise.

Speaker 1:
[123:10] But honestly, at this point, again, talking about risk, it's not worth it. I don't live in a place where I can stay, because your currency in that suit comes from the skydiving world, where you can jump it multiple times a day. In the base jumping world, there's no altimeter. You're just camera one, camera two, at about $1.20. Face first. So yeah, if you misjudge a tree or a cliff.

Speaker 2:
[123:30] It's probably fun as fuck, though, while it's happening.

Speaker 1:
[123:33] I don't know how to describe what it feels like doing 120 miles an hour, face first, a few feet off the ground. Probably like this. What is it in the Olympics? Skeleton?

Speaker 2:
[123:45] How close to get off the ground? What's the closest?

Speaker 1:
[123:48] Probably not intentionally. The closest was probably somewhere right around the three foot range.

Speaker 2:
[123:53] 120 miles an hour. So three foot is like one, two, like that.

Speaker 1:
[123:58] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[123:59] Jesus, dude.

Speaker 1:
[124:00] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[124:00] That's insane.

Speaker 1:
[124:02] You don't do that for very long. And if you do like some of those jumps in Switzerland, like you would hike for hours. And there's this one jump. It's actually one of the ones I sent you from. You just, it's insane. You're just looking out into like this picture storybook of like where the Kabul giant or whatever he was would live. Like you just-

Speaker 2:
[124:23] Kandahar.

Speaker 1:
[124:23] Kandahar. Whichever one.

Speaker 2:
[124:24] I think it's real.

Speaker 1:
[124:25] I hope it is real. I deeply, it's such a deep part of me hopes that it's real. But you're looking out at that as you're zipping up your ridiculous nylon suit and checking to make sure everything is there. And then you just rock forward. And at some point you rock to a place where you can't go back the other direction. And you send it in the first few seconds because you have no airspeed. The suit doesn't fly. So you're just falling and then it takes off. And it's just these right hand turns and right hand turns. And there are small sections where the angle is correct and you can kind of connect with the train and then get away from it and connect. The people who are able to survive it are not the ones that are flying three feet off the ground all the time. Very, very short periods of time on jumps that they have practiced many, many times and they slowly, incrementally work their way down there. Because again, a mistake in that environment is you're going to impact an object head first at 120.

Speaker 2:
[125:15] I remember the video that scared me the most was a bridge where the guy was trying to fly through, you know, the video.

Speaker 1:
[125:22] Yeah, I do.

Speaker 2:
[125:24] Is this Andy? Oh yeah. Look at this.

Speaker 1:
[125:26] Oh, I love this little grass field over here. I think my head turns to the right because there was two dudes up here. I was looking at them.

Speaker 2:
[125:31] God, that is beautiful.

Speaker 1:
[125:32] Oh, I'm telling you, it's insane. This is the field of joy.

Speaker 2:
[125:35] Wow.

Speaker 1:
[125:36] That's the shadow in the lower right. But that's probably, I don't know, that's probably 10 feet off.

Speaker 2:
[125:41] God, that is fucking pretty. Yeah. That has got to be nuts. I mean, there's not a ride at Disneyland that can fuck with this.

Speaker 1:
[125:50] Oh, absolutely not.

Speaker 3:
[125:52] Wow.

Speaker 2:
[125:54] Have you ever done one of those ones where you strap a jet pack?

Speaker 1:
[125:58] No, but I like where your head's at.

Speaker 3:
[126:00] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[126:01] I know exactly what you're talking about.

Speaker 2:
[126:03] Remember there was a guy that was like getting in trouble because they kept finding this guy flying a wingsuit? He was flying a jet pack wingsuit and they were trying to like locate the guy who was doing it.

Speaker 3:
[126:15] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2:
[126:16] He was getting, like they were looking for him because they kept spotting him. Where was that, Jamie?

Speaker 3:
[126:21] Do you remember?

Speaker 2:
[126:22] We talked about it on the show once.

Speaker 1:
[126:24] I feel like this is like a combination of stories.

Speaker 2:
[126:26] No, no, no.

Speaker 1:
[126:27] Secret jet pack man?

Speaker 2:
[126:28] Yeah, some guy had a jet pack and he was flying around where he wasn't supposed to be.

Speaker 1:
[126:33] Yeah, so these guys are in Dubai. Unfortunately...

Speaker 2:
[126:35] Wow, that's nuts.

Speaker 3:
[126:37] I found a guy, this is just a video. I thought it might have been him, but it's not.

Speaker 2:
[126:39] But that one's nuts. So that's an actual wingsuit, like a plane wing.

Speaker 1:
[126:44] And they got to the place where they could take this off from standing on the ground, Joe. Unfortunately, one of the innovators in that ended up dying. There is an altitude in airspeed where if you have an issue, you're not going to be able to deploy your parachute to save you. And he had an issue at that altitude. But yeah, who would have ever...

Speaker 2:
[127:01] That guy is up there with a plane. Show me that again, please.

Speaker 1:
[127:05] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[127:05] That is insane.

Speaker 1:
[127:07] Would you ever do that?

Speaker 2:
[127:10] I don't want to say would I. I mean, there's a time and a place where I would do a lot of things.

Speaker 1:
[127:17] Because I would 100% would do that.

Speaker 2:
[127:19] I bet you would. Now, does that guy have an engine on that thing?

Speaker 1:
[127:23] Yeah, there's a little microjet engine. You can see him.

Speaker 2:
[127:26] How much fuel?

Speaker 1:
[127:27] That's a good question. Like I said, they had gotten to a place where they could stand. So that wing is kind of conforms around their skydiving parachute. I think there's four little jet engines. They got to a place where they were standing, cracking those things off and going vertical and then transition to flight. Yes. And then I think landing them too.

Speaker 2:
[127:48] Landing them with the engine somehow? Did they rotate?

Speaker 1:
[127:52] I mean, they are wearing a parachute. You know what? I might be misspeaking on that. But I know that they were taking off from a no airspeed standing there and just...

Speaker 2:
[128:01] That's nuts.

Speaker 1:
[128:02] Well, that's also, like I said, how one of the innovators died. It was in that phase, like a low altitude, low airspeed phase where nothing's really going to...

Speaker 2:
[128:10] I remember I did morning... What is this?

Speaker 1:
[128:13] Oh yeah, these are the jet pack racers.

Speaker 2:
[128:15] Oh yeah, that's crazy. I've seen that too.

Speaker 3:
[128:18] This is real by the way, right? Is it? Because it kind of looks fake.

Speaker 1:
[128:20] No, those are real, for sure. They actually have... There's a league, Jamie, of guys who race these things.

Speaker 3:
[128:25] How do we get them?

Speaker 1:
[128:26] But that's a good question. Yeah. Add to cart on Amazon for sure.

Speaker 2:
[128:30] How fast do you think these guys are going with these things? Whoa. And they can just land? Oh, that's wild.

Speaker 3:
[128:36] You could just fly to work.

Speaker 2:
[128:36] Bro, you have to have some fucking shoulder strength to do that.

Speaker 1:
[128:40] I mean, I love how they're trying to show like this has, oh, like incredible military application. Like, let's take it easy. Okay?

Speaker 3:
[128:46] It's got to be quiet, right?

Speaker 2:
[128:47] Just, yeah. Super quiet. Is there some support for your shoulders in there? It's not like you're doing a constant dip.

Speaker 1:
[128:56] I don't, well, I think that the jet pack, so on his backpack, I believe that's putting some thrust out, too. The hands are as well. So it's the combination of the three.

Speaker 2:
[129:05] Because, like, how long can you hold a dip position?

Speaker 1:
[129:08] I don't know. Yeah, so here's the league. Look at these crates. Yeah, the backpack itself. Oh, getting fancy.

Speaker 2:
[129:15] Oh, that's crazy.

Speaker 3:
[129:16] But the ground's pushing back up on you on that situation, you know? Bummer. If you're doing a dip, you're fighting gravity.

Speaker 2:
[129:21] Yeah, that's true. That's true.

Speaker 3:
[129:24] It still wouldn't be that easy.

Speaker 1:
[129:26] I feel like the backpack is doing the majority of it, like the Iron Man little hand things. I feel like that's just the stabilization.

Speaker 3:
[129:31] It doesn't seem that heavy.

Speaker 2:
[129:33] Oh, so the backpack is doing the most of it, and the other thing is just steering you a little.

Speaker 3:
[129:36] Yeah, you've got to just move this arm around pretty easy. I think so.

Speaker 1:
[129:39] I have exactly zero seconds in one of these things, so this is me talking out of my ass.

Speaker 2:
[129:43] If there was enough lives, if you had multiple lives, I would do a lot of different things.

Speaker 3:
[129:49] Oh, that looks so fun.

Speaker 1:
[129:50] It does. Jamie, what could you put...

Speaker 3:
[129:53] Look at this guy's going up the mountain. Where's the parachute? You can't...

Speaker 1:
[129:56] Oh, no, there is no parachute.

Speaker 3:
[129:57] Sucking the box in.

Speaker 2:
[129:58] Oh, so there's no parachute.

Speaker 3:
[129:59] That's why you want to stay five feet off the ground. Look at this.

Speaker 1:
[130:02] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[130:02] This dude's just flying to the top of this fucking cliff with that thing. Oh, that's bonkers.

Speaker 3:
[130:07] For sure, this is like to save people or something.

Speaker 2:
[130:09] No, it's for fun.

Speaker 1:
[130:11] I agree with Joe more on that one.

Speaker 2:
[130:12] What do you think, like, how much time do you get in one of those two? Run out of fuel.

Speaker 3:
[130:17] I don't know.

Speaker 1:
[130:18] Time enough to fill a motivational video like this. To me, I'd be like...

Speaker 2:
[130:23] Gravity Industries. This is the company.

Speaker 1:
[130:26] I would be reverse engineering, like, where is this in my Amazon cart? How do I possibly make enough money to have these sent to my house immediately?

Speaker 2:
[130:32] What do you think one of those costs?

Speaker 1:
[130:34] My guess would be six figures.

Speaker 2:
[130:37] So professional.

Speaker 3:
[130:39] Shop.

Speaker 2:
[130:39] Entertainment.

Speaker 4:
[130:40] Yes, Jamie.

Speaker 2:
[130:41] Click on that, bitch. Let's go. Suit up. Suit me up, motherfucker.

Speaker 4:
[130:46] Hold on.

Speaker 1:
[130:46] Where can I get my credit card?

Speaker 2:
[130:47] Let's guess. Let's guess. Ah, god. 50 grand? 100 grand?

Speaker 1:
[130:54] I'm going to say six figures. They fooled us. You sons of bitches.

Speaker 2:
[130:59] Clothes? You can only buy clothes?

Speaker 3:
[131:00] You can't buy the thing on the website.

Speaker 2:
[131:02] Why can't you buy the fucking thing? Well, how much does the thing cost? Somebody must be able to buy it.

Speaker 1:
[131:08] 2,400 pounds for an experience.

Speaker 2:
[131:11] So that's just to fly it?

Speaker 1:
[131:12] A thousand horsepower, a 1050 horsepower gravity jet suit.

Speaker 2:
[131:16] Whoa. So it's the same horsepower as a ZR1 Corvette. And it's on your back. Look at this.

Speaker 1:
[131:24] Yeah. First off, take that safety line off. Let's let people live in the real world.

Speaker 2:
[131:28] That guy needs a safety line. Look at his neck. Like, yeah, let's search the price. So you think six figures. I would probably say that's probably accurate, especially when I saw it as a thousand horsepower.

Speaker 1:
[131:39] Here's a better question. Are you willing to spend six figures to acquire one of those? I'm going to go in the hard yes category for myself. I'm not saying I got six figures laying around. I'm saying I will start a new career in the. Oh no, that's not a good face.

Speaker 3:
[131:55] It's not. It is in the six figures.

Speaker 2:
[131:59] Six?

Speaker 3:
[131:59] It's not the low. It's not the edge of the figures. Yeah, roughly. That'd get one.

Speaker 1:
[132:04] Six hundred thousand dollars?

Speaker 3:
[132:05] It says 440.

Speaker 2:
[132:06] Whoa.

Speaker 1:
[132:07] Is that in US dollars?

Speaker 3:
[132:08] It's like, yeah, yes. Depending on configuration and stuff, too.

Speaker 2:
[132:13] Okay, what if you get it, like, maxed?

Speaker 3:
[132:15] Well, it's not giving me options. I just kind of searched around.

Speaker 1:
[132:18] I think we're just going to get closer to the seven figure number if we do that.

Speaker 3:
[132:21] They probably don't advertise how much it costs.

Speaker 2:
[132:23] Does it say how long you can stay in the air in that thing?

Speaker 3:
[132:26] How long does it take?

Speaker 2:
[132:29] Let's guess. I want to say 30 minutes.

Speaker 1:
[132:31] I was going to guess under 10.

Speaker 3:
[132:33] Wow.

Speaker 2:
[132:34] Well, I remember when I saw, I went to a radio station once and they had a guy who... What is it?

Speaker 3:
[132:40] One minute. One to four minutes.

Speaker 2:
[132:42] One to four, that's it? So what are they doing when they're flying up to that mountain?

Speaker 3:
[132:45] Five to ten if you are doing it carefully.

Speaker 2:
[132:49] Well, how the fuck do they get all the way to the mountain? How do they get down?

Speaker 3:
[132:52] We only saw five seconds.

Speaker 2:
[132:53] Is there a gallon of gas up there at the top of that fucking mountain?

Speaker 1:
[132:56] I'm way less enthusiastic about this purchase now.

Speaker 2:
[132:59] Yeah, that sucks. Yeah, 450 grand for a minute.

Speaker 1:
[133:03] But what makes me enthusiastic is that they're going to innovate and evolve this.

Speaker 2:
[133:06] Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[133:06] One day.

Speaker 2:
[133:07] It'll be nuclear powered.

Speaker 1:
[133:08] Let's not get crazy.

Speaker 2:
[133:10] It'll be cold fusion. It'll be an Iron Man machine.

Speaker 1:
[133:13] I mean, I feel like we could do better things with that technology before the jet suit, but I'm totally in on the jet suit.

Speaker 2:
[133:20] Get an Iron Man suit. Like, that's Iron Man, right? The hands, that's how you fly.

Speaker 1:
[133:25] I mean, that's kind of what they look like. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[133:28] Like, it would come out of its feet, and it would come out of its hands. I did a radio station once in Denver, and they had a guy who did a jet pack thing in a parking lot. It was like a morning radio back in the day. And this guy, I think it could only last for 30 seconds. And this guy, he had two knee braces on because he had blown out both of his ACLs, just landing and destroying his knees. But it was crazy to watch. It was crazy to watch. This guy took off and he flew around, but it was only for a few seconds. I think it's like a 30 second deal. After 30 seconds, it runs out of juice.

Speaker 4:
[134:01] Tax Act knows filing taxes can be confusing. So we have live experts on hand who can help answer any questions you may have. Questions like, can I claim my SUV is my home office if I answer work emails in my car? Our experts have the answers to those questions and many others. Let's get them over with.

Speaker 1:
[134:31] I'm glad there are people like that out there. I appreciate their enthusiasm.

Speaker 2:
[134:35] There's always going to be, right? Yeah. There's always going to be someone.

Speaker 3:
[134:37] Very brief description of what it has in there.

Speaker 2:
[134:41] A lot of jazz.

Speaker 1:
[134:42] Honestly, it is like what you're talking about. So the hands like the Iron Man position. So the back has a majority of the thrust.

Speaker 3:
[134:48] Right.

Speaker 1:
[134:49] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[134:49] I bet it heats your ass up something fierce.

Speaker 1:
[134:51] Yeah. Up to 56 miles per hour.

Speaker 3:
[134:55] I wonder how much faster you go with jet fuel.

Speaker 2:
[134:57] Well, what does it normally use?

Speaker 3:
[134:59] It says diesel or jet fuel.

Speaker 2:
[135:01] Diesel or jet fuel. That's weird.

Speaker 1:
[135:03] They're not that far off.

Speaker 3:
[135:04] Or kerosene.

Speaker 2:
[135:05] But isn't that weird that one engine can burn those different types of fuel? That seems unusual.

Speaker 3:
[135:09] That's probably the configuration part where...

Speaker 2:
[135:11] Oh, I see. Right. If you want a top of the line one, you get jet fuel.

Speaker 3:
[135:15] Plaid version. Yeah. All right.

Speaker 1:
[135:18] I'll get one of those.

Speaker 3:
[135:19] I'll take one. Let's try it.

Speaker 2:
[135:21] Yeah. But is there legitimate military applications for something like that?

Speaker 1:
[135:25] I can't really think of one.

Speaker 2:
[135:26] That's because it showed guys in fatigues that landed on an aircraft carrier.

Speaker 1:
[135:31] I could show you videos of guys in fatigues that end up banging each other. So it doesn't necessarily mean that...

Speaker 2:
[135:40] Is there a military application for that?

Speaker 1:
[135:43] Let's just say... That would be far fringe. I'm just saying the fatigues doesn't necessarily the qualifier of it being good utilization for the military.

Speaker 2:
[135:53] So we only briefly touched on this Kandahar giant story, but were you ever in Kandahar?

Speaker 1:
[135:58] Yeah, I was down in the south of Afghanistan.

Speaker 2:
[136:00] How remote is it?

Speaker 1:
[136:04] I mean, there's a large city there, town city. I don't know the difference between the two. It's relatively built up as far as southern Afghanistan. It's going to be, you know, you have the Kabul up north, Kandahar is a little bit down south. Kabul in the north, you're going to start looking at the exterior range of the Hindu Kush. Kandahar still has some topography, but you're looking at more of like a high desert terrain.

Speaker 2:
[136:24] And so there's caves and things along those lines? This is the idea that this thing lived in a cave.

Speaker 1:
[136:30] Yeah. I mean, so yeah, it's, it's, there is topography that is there for sure. It possible? I don't know.

Speaker 2:
[136:39] Well, the reason why people entertain this idea of giants at all is all a lot of it's biblical. It's like stories from the Bible. And then also stories from ancient civilizations that talked about red haired giants, which is the weird thing about this thing had red hair. Like the Native Americans had tales of red haired giants that they fought off. Like, there's a lot of people that believe that all these stories from antiquity about giants are all referring to an actual different race of humans. You know, like we are one race of humans, the homo sapiens survived. But then there's also races of humans that didn't survive, like the Hobbit people from the island of Flores, that they found out there was a branch of the human species that was like three feet tall, covered in hair, little tiny heads. Weird, but had tools and had weapons.

Speaker 1:
[137:32] I think some of that stuff's real. I think sometimes though the stories, they're intentionally nesting a greater message through the vehicle of that story. So, whether it's like accurate or not, it's more about the story that they are telling. And I'm not saying like the Kandahar giant has some story associated with it, but some of the older, like the symbolizations and the stories that they tell, I think it's just a vehicle that they can nest something in there to create deeper thought, if that makes sense. It's what I see you guys doing is comedians. I've talked about this recently. It is interesting to me and I never paid attention to it, but I know he's a good friend of yours, Dave Chappelle. I watched his last special. The ability for comedians to nest inside of your set, pretty impactful and powerful, like societal conversations and ideas, and get people to laugh about it. But even when they're done laughing about it, they're going to be thinking about it when they're driving home. It's just the vehicle to get people thinking about stuff.

Speaker 2:
[138:35] Well, in terms of comedy, I agree, and Dave is one of the best of all time, if not the best at doing that. But what kind of nesting would you, you're talking about giants.

Speaker 1:
[138:47] It depends on the morals and ethos of that society. If they want to be a warrior society, you have to have something that you're constantly fighting or protecting yourself against. Whether that's real or you are nesting the morality of your society in that story, both could achieve the same end state.

Speaker 2:
[139:02] If there really was a giant and they really did kill this thing and then brought it back secretly, like, what would be the purpose of that? Why wouldn't they? That's where I go. Like, what would be the purpose of hiding the fact that this thing existed? I don't see why the government would hide the discovery of a giant. Like, what military reason, what national security reason would you have for hiding the fact that this thing existed?

Speaker 1:
[139:31] At some level of objective skepticism and criticism or looking into these stories, you get to that point of, like, who's benefiting from this and why? Why would anybody actually go out of their way to put this much effort into obscure something like that?

Speaker 2:
[139:45] Yeah. That's how I feel about giants. But when it comes to UFOs, it makes more sense to me. Because then you have something that's insanely advanced, much more advanced than us. And so, I had this guy Hal put off on my show. He's a physicist, very brilliant guy. And he's been around forever. And during, was it George W or Herbert Walker? One of the Bushes. They brought him and a team of specialists in. And they said, we are contemplating disclosure. And that we have not just, not just acquired crashed vehicles that are of non-human origin, but also we have biological remains of these creatures. We want you to write down pros and cons of the impact of these things. And put a numerical value, put a numerical value in terms of impact on government, impact on religion, impact on all these different things. And universally, all of them came out with more cons than pros. The numbers didn't line up and they made a decision to not disclose. This is according to this Hal Putoff guy.

Speaker 1:
[141:03] I could see that be in the case.

Speaker 2:
[141:04] I could see that be in the case too, if it was true. The UFO thing, there's just too many stories for me to openly dismiss all of them. Even though I've had no experiences, there's too many stories. There's too many, there's too much weirdness to it.

Speaker 1:
[141:18] How about it, just given the size of the known universe and the fact it keeps expanding, what is the mathematical odds that we are completely the only thing out there?

Speaker 2:
[141:25] Exactly. So this is like sort of the same argument that people used to use for Bigfoot. Like the wilderness is so vast, the Pacific Northwest is so dense, there could be something out there that we haven't documented. Well, the problem is now we kind of have, and now we kind of know that with all these camera traps and all these different things, very, very, very, very unlikely that any of these stories are true. But when you get to the universe, it's like, come on. It's way more likely that we're not alone than we are alone. If we are alone, that's kind of insane. I mean, it's kind of incredible. If this is the only place where intelligent life is formed, I think if that's the case, we're missing something. We're missing something about the nature of consciousness. We're missing something about what consciousness actually is. What is our actual role in the universe? It might be more complex than we initially believe.

Speaker 1:
[142:24] I think disclosure that we aren't alone would have a net benefit to society globally. We spend a lot of time pecking back and forth at each other and fighting each other. If you got sat down and be like, listen, we have a global issue now that everybody is impacted by this. As much of the biggest swing and dick you think you are on this planet, guess what? You're nothing in comparison to this. I think it would have a net calming effect. Maybe not instantaneously, but overall, I think that that would be the net effect of it.

Speaker 2:
[142:58] Perhaps. The real problem is, like all things, someone's going to take advantage of it.

Speaker 1:
[143:03] But I think that if so, let's just say it is real, I think that's already happening. Like the US, if that's real, the US is not the only country that has agreed not to disclose because it is to their benefit not to do so. Like these things, Russia has a crash program. I'm sure China does as well, too. And I'm sure that everybody to include the US is trying to reverse engineer these things for our benefit as fast as humanly possible.

Speaker 2:
[143:27] Yeah. I think if it is true, that is the case. And that's the Bob Lazar story. There's a great documentary that's out now called S4 that's about Bob Lazar. I had him on again for the second time. I don't want to believe him. I want to think he's a bullshit artist, but I believe him. There's something about one guy who's a clearly brilliant guy who's been telling the same story since 1988. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[143:55] And like you said, a volume of other stories. Some of them I think you can completely write off, but other ones pretty tough from pretty credible people who aren't making claims like, hey, I sat down and had a beer with this thing, but like I was in an aircraft that has a certain performance envelope and we understand the performance envelope of what humans are able to fly at this point. And yeah, this thing did things that I don't understand. Sometimes the videos get, I mean, I was talking with, you know, Bill Thompson, you just had him on.

Speaker 2:
[144:24] Sure. Love that dude.

Speaker 1:
[144:26] He is like, he's one of my favorite people. You got to be cautious how deep of a question you ask him.

Speaker 2:
[144:33] Right.

Speaker 1:
[144:34] Because he has national defense level autism at times. DEF CON 5. You're like, Bill, what's your favorite color? He's like, oh, what is color? Like, no, that's not what I meant. But we were having this conversation and his background is fascinating. What's even more fascinating is what he's done with his background and what he built with Spartan Forge with that. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[144:56] And his ethics.

Speaker 1:
[144:58] Correct. But he was talking about some of the videos. He understands technological things and he can look at stuff and be like, that's the parallax of two moving objects and how a lens works. Not many people understand those things. To include myself many times when I'm talking with Mr. Bill. But, I mean, he, God, he's a national treasure.

Speaker 2:
[145:16] He really is.

Speaker 1:
[145:16] He is.

Speaker 2:
[145:17] That was one of the ones where I dipped into the comments on YouTube because I just wanted to know how people were going to react to him.

Speaker 1:
[145:24] Yeah. What did they say?

Speaker 2:
[145:25] Loved him. Loved him. A universal praise for how brilliant he is. And I'm like, there's only one way they're going to respond. I'm like, if you don't like this guy, like you're listening to the wrong show.

Speaker 1:
[145:37] Have you seen what he's done with the app he created, SpartanForge?

Speaker 2:
[145:40] It's incredible. It's an amazing app.

Speaker 1:
[145:42] It's 20 plus years of targeting and intelligence gathering packaged into something that's consumer facing, that if you're into hunting, holy shit. I know.

Speaker 2:
[145:51] And what kind of a super genius is going to get involved in a hunting app like that?

Speaker 1:
[145:56] Captain America of autism. I love you, Bill, but let's be honest.

Speaker 2:
[146:03] He's brilliant on another level. I remember the first conversation I had with him. I was like, oh, okay. There's people that you talk to. I was like, whenever someone says, oh, Joe, you're so smart, I'm like, settle down. No, no, no. I'm smart compared to you. I'm smart compared to some people, you know? But I know real smart people.

Speaker 1:
[146:25] Yeah, there is a stark difference.

Speaker 2:
[146:27] A giant leap, a chasm, a fucking, an ocean to cross before you reach levels like Bill or Elon or some of these people that's just like the amount of processing power they have. Yeah. You know, I have a Honda Civic brain and these motherfuckers have a Corvette ZR1.

Speaker 1:
[146:49] I usually go with I have an IQ that you can find on a thermostat. I'm not saying it's like the winter, but maybe it's a little bit close to a hot summer day. Now, what he is, I wish I had the ability to build stuff like that. Like I use that app to hunt, but most of the time I use it when I'm flying my helicopter around. Because it is like the terrain analysis, the ability to look at stuff, the lidar, the way that you can look through foliage. Again, I'm deeply appreciative that people like that exist.

Speaker 2:
[147:15] Again, with the ethics that he has, he will not sell your fucking email. He's been offered a lot of money to sell all the... That's the thing that companies do. You sign up for something, you use your email, that your email goes on the list. I'm sure if you ever opened up one of your email accounts and look through the filters, like all the spam and promotional shit. It's like years and years of garbage.

Speaker 1:
[147:38] In addition to the email stuff, I know Bill has become a very good friend. He's been offered money to do a lot of things. And his morality has stayed true throughout. Which, and again, those things are his to talk about if he ever wants to. But as somebody who knows him and appreciates that, I wish there were more people like that.

Speaker 2:
[147:57] Yes, it's just very difficult to become a guy like that. It's a long road to be that guy. I think, because of what's going on in Iran, it would be good to talk to you about this, because you're a guy who kind of understands things in terms of geopolitics more than the average person.

Speaker 1:
[148:14] Listen, I can find Iran on a map, okay? That doesn't mean I understand geopolitics.

Speaker 2:
[148:18] I know, I know, you're very, you're humble, but...

Speaker 1:
[148:21] Well, my operational experience was at a low, meaning on like, they said there's strategic war, operational war, but that's air I never was in the room for. I didn't breathe that air. I wasn't invited, rightfully so, to planning meetings, where they were talking about the defense policy of the United States, or going into a country. I was down like, hey, we found this dude, we know where he's at, we can't figure out how to go get him, why don't you guys go give it a little look-see. That was the level that I operated at.

Speaker 2:
[148:50] Yeah. Well, one of the things that was discussed was sending a bunch of operators in to go retrieve depleted uranium. Yeah. Do you think they tried that?

Speaker 1:
[149:03] As a part of the rescue?

Speaker 2:
[149:04] Yeah. There seems to be a lot of ships, a lot of crafts.

Speaker 1:
[149:10] Well, okay. So yes, but okay, so we can unpack this one a little bit. So this is back to the F-15 weapon systems officer that ejected. That was a C-STAR or combat search and rescue operation where they surged forward a lot of stuff.

Speaker 2:
[149:25] And then the operation or the ghost murmur?

Speaker 1:
[149:28] Stop it right now. You stop it right now, Joe.

Speaker 2:
[149:30] You don't know what that is?

Speaker 1:
[149:31] I know. I know.

Speaker 2:
[149:32] Do you believe in that?

Speaker 1:
[149:33] Joe, I want it to be true.

Speaker 3:
[149:36] Right. Me too.

Speaker 1:
[149:36] I want them to be able to identify somebody from a heartbeat.

Speaker 2:
[149:40] From 40 miles away.

Speaker 1:
[149:41] From 40 miles away. If that technology existed, and we're not using that to help our own populace find people that are lost in the woods, we're a bunch of fucking assholes.

Speaker 2:
[149:49] Right.

Speaker 1:
[149:50] So like, let's not maybe tell people what we're doing, but you could have a specialist and a search and rescue helicopter to maybe use that and be like, oh, we saw them in a field when you didn't actually see, right? So because that doesn't happen, I think the it's plausible. I don't it's possible. I don't know if it's plausible.

Speaker 2:
[150:05] That's how we felt. Me and Jamie were both on.

Speaker 1:
[150:09] So but then you can go old school, which is sending in monkeys with machine guns. Like what I used to do with a PJ or multiple PJs, para rescue jumpers, because those are the guys. This is the way I describe PJs. If you want to put a hole in something, JSOC guys are great at it. If you want to plug a hole, PJs are the guys that you want on top of you, just stopping hydraulic fluid. They're medical, just absolute badasses. Nothing but immense respect for them. So the two cargo aircraft came in, they pulled the little birds out. I believe that there was four. That you could only fit probably, man, even if they were super light on fuel, probably three guys on each pod. So six guys per helicopter, 24 guys. Some of those are going to have to be PJs. I don't know if that's enough to go into a hardened facility in the daytime also, which is not when you would do that for retrieving depleted uranium. Because by the way, to do that, you're going to be in full protective equipment, very likely, which you're going to be moving incredibly slow. I just, I know it was, I know that geographically, it was proximal to one of the locations that they thought that that was what was going on. I think it probably was a rescue of the weapon systems officer, is my guess. And then, you know, they're like, well, we can't get the aircraft because they got stuck in the sand. Like, okay. The little birds don't have the fuel storage and ability to get across where they needed to go. So they had to bring in other aircraft and you don't want to leave that stuff.

Speaker 2:
[151:32] Right, so you got to detonate it.

Speaker 1:
[151:33] Yeah, they bip it or blow it in place.

Speaker 2:
[151:35] How many aircrafts did they lose?

Speaker 1:
[151:38] So what has been, I think, disclosed was the four MH6s, which are the little birds that carry the people, the two aircraft that brought those in. I think there was some version of a C-130. And I think that was it as far as that operation. There might have been a Predator or a Reaper drone that was shot down. I think some A-10s were damaged. And then of course the F-15 that was ejected from. Wow. It's a lot. It's a lot of stuff. It is a lot of stuff, but the military asks people to do exceptional things. And it helps you if you know that they are going to send everything that they have to come and get you if something goes wrong. It has to mean something to be issued a flag on your chest, in my opinion, at least. And as far as those operations go, there's basically two where you are going to absorb as the people responding in immense amount of risk. One of them is going to be a hostage rescue, which I was a part of. We talked about that on a previous episode, the Jessica Lynch rescue. The number of people we thought we might encounter was a way bigger number than the number of people that we could get there in the helicopters. But you go anyway because of the chance of rescuing somebody. Combat search and rescue, kind of the same thing. Maybe they're not. It's not a hostage situation, but it could be building towards that. I mean, maybe you don't have time to go at night, which is when you have all the tactical and technological advantage, right? The night vision goggles.

Speaker 2:
[152:54] Right.

Speaker 1:
[152:55] It's like, hey, we got to go now in the daytime. We're going to level the technological playing field, and you guys are going to go full back dive and get back. That's very high risk. Those are about the two times that you are going to accept that level of risk. And you go when you go.

Speaker 2:
[153:08] Well, that's what I wanted to ask you. So the official story seems to track.

Speaker 1:
[153:13] It is more plausible to me than any of the other stories that I have heard. I would like to think that the ghost murmur, whatever it is. But then it's like, okay, I mean, walk in the dog on that one. Did this guy have to sit down and, you know, get an EKG and have his heart wave, you know, HRV on file somewhere? Because how would you not pick up somebody else's heart rate? How would you not pick up other animals or mammals that have, like, you know what I mean? So I want to believe, I think we'll probably get there. I don't think we're there yet.

Speaker 2:
[153:44] Was that an official story?

Speaker 1:
[153:46] No, that's a Twitter story.

Speaker 2:
[153:48] Are you sure?

Speaker 1:
[153:49] Well, I first saw it on Twitter, so.

Speaker 2:
[153:50] I did too. But, well, someone sent it to me. I didn't actually actively seek it out. Somebody sent it to me and I was like, wait, what? And then me and Jamie threw it around for a while.

Speaker 1:
[154:01] The Internet is the best worst thing ever.

Speaker 3:
[154:03] It was getting spread around by New York Post and then the same article was getting repeated everywhere. New York Post. Have it on the screen.

Speaker 2:
[154:13] Interesting.

Speaker 1:
[154:13] Ghost Murmur. I mean, I would imagine, I bet you Lockheed Martin does have a program called Ghost Murmur.

Speaker 2:
[154:18] Long-range quantum magnetometry.

Speaker 3:
[154:22] But I'm looking at articles so.

Speaker 2:
[154:24] Diamond-based sensors.

Speaker 3:
[154:25] I think Iran was saying that we tried to do the snatching of the uranium.

Speaker 1:
[154:33] Yeah, those are the little birds.

Speaker 3:
[154:34] They spoiled us. So, it's like who knows what side of the story to believe. All right.

Speaker 2:
[154:38] That is part of the problem. And you got your Fox News narrative and your MSNBC narrative and who fucking knows.

Speaker 1:
[154:48] Yeah, separating the bullshit in the modern era is more like an art form than a science.

Speaker 2:
[154:56] Yeah. It's very confusing and it's very disconcerting to just have no... And then also, they can't tell you certain things. Like, why would the general public know about things that could affect negatively national security? Like, why? Why would they tell you? They can't tell you. Which is also part of the problem with they're allowed to lie. They're allowed to use propaganda and misinformation on the American people in the interest of national security. So, that's like...

Speaker 1:
[155:27] It would just be better. I would appreciate it more. They're like, listen, this is what we can tell you. And then this beyond this is a matter of national security. So, as much as you want to know, we can't tell you. I'd prefer that over a BS story that gets... It's like a really sticky idea that then gets totally out of control. And then, you know, people have a three-piece tin foil tuxedo one walking down Main Street.

Speaker 2:
[155:46] But it's just super weird that there might be something like Ghost Murmur. There might be something called quantum magnetometry with diamond sensors.

Speaker 1:
[155:57] I bet that's real. I bet it works out. I mean, they're probably testing it on mice. You know what I mean? I bet the concept is valid.

Speaker 2:
[156:03] Well, you got your jackpot. President Trump told The Post the CIA's secret new Ghost Murmur tool was very important to rescuing a downed airman inside Iran. As leading physicists and engineers debate how the futuristic technology said to detect heartbeats, a great business might work.

Speaker 3:
[156:22] So I guess The Post didn't make it up. They were told by Trump. Wow.

Speaker 1:
[156:27] I don't know if everything he says is accurate. Just to throw that out there, so.

Speaker 2:
[156:33] Hey, who knows?

Speaker 1:
[156:35] Gets a little loose and fast sometimes with the details in reality.

Speaker 2:
[156:40] It's just crazy that that kind of technology is even being contemplated, that there might be a future where that exists.

Speaker 1:
[156:48] Oh, that makes total sense to me.

Speaker 2:
[156:49] Where they can find you based on your heart rate. Well, they now know that they can use Wi-Fi in order to see 3D objects in motion in a house.

Speaker 1:
[157:00] Yeah, they can map. Yeah. I mean, again, I think Evan and I had an argument one time about radar and sonar, and we were both calling each other idiots, and we both found out that we were wrong once we looked it up on the internet. So we'll say some version of that, God, we were both 100% committed that we were correct and we were both wrong, which is classic. But yeah, like in this room, the things that are emanating, there's an ability for them to map that and determine, maybe not who you are, but I bet you it gets to that point and where you are. You want to talk about a tactically beneficial piece of information from somebody like my old job? Thank you very much. I'll take that all day.

Speaker 2:
[157:37] As long as it stays out of the hands of the enemy.

Speaker 1:
[157:40] Yeah. But then they'll eventually get it, and then you'll evolve and your tactics will change, and that's the game, man.

Speaker 2:
[157:45] It's just it gets to a point with technology where it's like, what is not possible 100 years from now? That's what's weird. We are in one of the strangest times ever in human history in terms of these quantum computers that can solve mathematical, like Mark Andreessen explained it to me, and I'm going to paraphrase it, I'll probably fuck it up, but he said that a quantum computer can solve an equation in a matter of minutes, that if you converted the entire universe, every atom in the universe into a supercomputer, the universe would die of heat death before it could solve this problem, and a quantum computer on earth can solve it in a matter of minutes.

Speaker 1:
[158:30] I don't even understand, I mean, honestly, like I understand every word that you just used, but I don't understand what that means, and what it is capable of.

Speaker 2:
[158:39] Well, they think that it might be evidence of somehow or another evidence of multiple dimensions of a multiverse, and that not only is this quantum computer operating in this universe, but in an infinite number of other universes simultaneously.

Speaker 1:
[159:00] I like the Dr. Strange movies. I'm in.

Speaker 2:
[159:02] Oh, the multiverse.

Speaker 1:
[159:05] I mean, to me, that might as well be a scientific documentary, because that's my reference for the multiverse.

Speaker 2:
[159:10] Right. I guess we shouldn't even talk about it, because we don't know what we're saying.

Speaker 1:
[159:15] It's never stopped me before.

Speaker 2:
[159:16] But it's one of those things where quantum computers are real. It's an actual real thing now. Google, specifically Hermut Nevin, who leads Google Quantum AIs, recently used language that strongly suggests their new quantum chip speed could be understood as borrowing computational power from other universes. But this is an interpretive, speculative way of talking about quantum mechanics, not an experimentally established fact or a standard claim. The claim comes from December 2024, a blog post about Google's Willow quantum chip. Nevin wrote that the chip solved a task in minutes that would take a classical supercomputer about 10 to the 25th power years. Far longer than the age of the universe.

Speaker 1:
[160:05] Again, I understand every word you just used, but I don't understand what that means.

Speaker 2:
[160:09] Stop scrolling. Grow back up. He then said, This lends credence to the notion that quantum computation occurs in many parallel universes, and that this aligns with the idea that we live in a multiverse, explicitly referencing David Deutsch's many worlds argument for quantum computing. Yeah, right. We're too dumb to have this conversation. That's why we need to get Bill on speakerphone. Bill? Bill, explain this.

Speaker 1:
[160:33] Problem is, he'd be like, and then...

Speaker 2:
[160:36] And then the show would be five hours long.

Speaker 1:
[160:38] Well, and then I would also understand the words that he was using, but not in the combination and sequence that he would use them.

Speaker 2:
[160:44] Exactly. Exactly.

Speaker 1:
[160:45] I'm just appreciative that he exists.

Speaker 2:
[160:48] Yeah, I'm appreciative that there's people like that out there. Your book, Drownproof, I assume this is in normal language for a normal person like you and I could read and understand.

Speaker 1:
[160:57] Well, considering that I wrote it, we did not use a lot of multi-syllable words. A lot of ands and ths are in there.

Speaker 2:
[161:04] Well, I'm sure it's awesome. Look, you got Jaco, Jack Carr and me giving you blurbs on the cover, so it's got to be good.

Speaker 1:
[161:12] So at some point, it doesn't have to be now, but I essentially wrote in the inscription, and I mean this from the bottom of my heart, my life would not look the way it does had you and I not randomly met through Tate Fletcher. Like my post-military life would look completely different and I have no ability to like pay you back for how gracious you've been with like your time and your platform.

Speaker 2:
[161:35] So all that's a two way street because your presence on my show has enriched my show. It's made the show better for sure.

Speaker 1:
[161:43] Well, my promise is that I will do the best I can to be a positive impact on the world around me. I think that's the best way that I can try to pay you back. And honestly, it's the reason why I wrote that first place, so that's all I can do.

Speaker 2:
[161:55] It's my pleasure and I try to do the exact same thing. And shout out to my boy Tate Flesher. I haven't seen that guy in forever.

Speaker 1:
[162:01] He's the best.

Speaker 2:
[162:02] I love him. All right, I love you too. Thank you very much. And thanks for being here. And Drownproof, did you read the audiobook?

Speaker 1:
[162:08] I did.

Speaker 2:
[162:09] Yes, I love it.

Speaker 1:
[162:11] After that experience, let me tell you, voice actors, I struggle with it enough as the person who wrote the words. I can't even fathom what it would be like going in there blind and like, well, let's just figure this out as we go.

Speaker 2:
[162:22] Yeah, it's a tough gig. Yeah, there's a reason why they...

Speaker 1:
[162:25] Yeah, Jocko wrote and read the forward.

Speaker 2:
[162:28] Nice.

Speaker 1:
[162:29] That was amazing.

Speaker 2:
[162:30] Beautiful.

Speaker 1:
[162:30] All right.

Speaker 2:
[162:31] That's it. Go get it, folks. It's out now. All right. Bye, everybody.