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Speaker 1: back on the show Alex Hollings Marine Corps veteran full
Speaker 1: time writer for the site. And the cool thing, man,
Speaker 1: is now that we're back to being, you know, two
Speaker 1: shows a week for free, everybody is going to get
Speaker 1: to hear this. You know, it's been weird like picking
Speaker 1: and choose what I'm giving to members and what I'm not.
Speaker 1: So now we have like some back stuff I'll be
Speaker 1: able to shoot out to you guys in the future.
Speaker 1: And yet both shows each week are for all of
Speaker 1: you members non members. But of course we asked that
Speaker 1: you guys um subscribe, subscribe to the site and become
Speaker 1: team room members because for one, man, I feel like
Speaker 1: you more than any other writer is just pumping out
Speaker 1: like awesome content on a daily basis and it's just
Speaker 1: great to see. I appreciate it, man, And honestly, I'm
Speaker 1: as excited as anybody about you know, the podcast being
Speaker 1: free both shows, if only just because when I go running,
Speaker 1: I take you with me and it's easier to pull
Speaker 1: you up in my Apple podcasts then it sometimes is
Speaker 1: to go through the op wrep appen things like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I've gotten a lot of great feedback on Twitter
Speaker 1: about it too, But thank you. You know, I appreciate
Speaker 1: you bringing me back on here. No, of course, man anytime. UM. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've been hearing a lot of the echoing the same
Speaker 1: thing that you just said. Um. Jack has been making
Speaker 1: a ton of media appearances lately, UM talking about the
Speaker 1: Niger situation, as I know you've been seeing UM. So
Speaker 1: that's why you know he hasn't been here. He's doing
Speaker 1: like his TV thing which I can't talk about, but
Speaker 1: it's been like ages since Jack has been on the
Speaker 1: podcast and then he's gonna do his honeymoon and all that.
Speaker 1: So he's like a very busy man. But I've you know,
Speaker 1: you guys have probably been seeing Derek Cannon. Both are
Speaker 1: like they're like each one or two appearances away from
Speaker 1: being too famous to return my calls anymore. They're all
Speaker 1: over the place lately, Yeah, which is cool to see.
Speaker 1: And you know what I was gonna say, um before
Speaker 1: we get to some emails and then get into everything,
Speaker 1: was that this past week of shows was absolutely awesome.
Speaker 1: Like I don't always say that, but if you guys
Speaker 1: haven't checked out everything, I mean now not only are
Speaker 1: we doing these two shows a week, but Brandon is
Speaker 1: doing the Power of Thought podcast each week. So we
Speaker 1: had um Jerry Yelling World War two captain who flew
Speaker 1: the last combat mission over Japan on with Brandon. If
Speaker 1: you haven't checked that out in the Power of Thought.
Speaker 1: That was awesome. Um Sehawan Lake in studio last week,
Speaker 1: and then Jason Delgado in studio with me, and we
Speaker 1: had Jeff Gonzalezan who is just all around expert marksman,
Speaker 1: Navy seal and shooting instructors. So it was just a
Speaker 1: really good week of show. So I'm hyped for another
Speaker 1: good week of shows. I have some like great guests
Speaker 1: book for Power of Thought coming up, and uh yeah,
Speaker 1: just a lot of great stuff. And I see that
Speaker 1: you've been putting out like a lot of really great articles.
Speaker 1: We're gonna get to. I was just looking at that
Speaker 1: Chinese propaganda game where you clapped the loudest for the
Speaker 1: President of China. I was like, that's what I'm telling you, man.
Speaker 1: They have made propaganda an exact science over in China.
Speaker 1: It's incredible internal and external. Does that sounds like an
Speaker 1: exciting game though, I mean there's you know, it's funny,
Speaker 1: like I did this library at the top of the
Speaker 1: show for the World of Warships, like based on World
Speaker 1: War Two. Now that sounds like an exciting game. Clapping
Speaker 1: for the president's China, I don't know, not that appealing
Speaker 1: to me. It's actually it's even worse. You're not even happening.
Speaker 1: You're tapping on a pair of disembodied hands to make
Speaker 1: them clap. And I mean this it's doing gang busters.
Speaker 1: It's it had four hundred million downloads in four days.
Speaker 1: Mandatory that you downloaded it if you're in China, like
Speaker 1: I can't. It's got to be something like that. Can
Speaker 1: you imagine how what the response would be if there
Speaker 1: was a new game spanning the United States where you
Speaker 1: would listen to snippets of Donald Trump's State of the
Speaker 1: Union speech and clap for him and have to compete
Speaker 1: with others to see who could clap harder and faster.
Speaker 1: I can't even wrap my head around it, especially like
Speaker 1: in China. It's not presidency is a popular political figure,
Speaker 1: don't get me wrong, but he's not universally beloved beloved.
Speaker 1: I couldn't tell you why why this game is such
Speaker 1: a hit, but it speaks directly to the way China
Speaker 1: is looking for new and ingenious ways to kind of
Speaker 1: influence its own populus and externally as well, especially in
Speaker 1: movies and stuff. But you know, we tend to think
Speaker 1: of foreign influence campaigns with Russia and stuff, but we
Speaker 1: don't always think about how these countries are working to
Speaker 1: influence their own populations as well. And it's a it's
Speaker 1: an ongoing thing, you know, as you can see where
Speaker 1: this app Yeah, I feel like you would see the
Speaker 1: same type of thing for Kim John Moon. That wouldn't
Speaker 1: surprise me. Yeah, I would be less surprised to see well,
Speaker 1: maybe I'd be less surprised. I'd be more surprised that
Speaker 1: everyone had smartphones in North Korea, but I would be
Speaker 1: less surprised to see people giving that kind of just
Speaker 1: like blind support to a political leader. But you know,
Speaker 1: I mean the propaganda machine in China is strong. Jackie Chan,
Speaker 1: I know that in America we tend to think of
Speaker 1: him as like this action movie star, and I mean
Speaker 1: I grew up with Rumble in the Bronx just like
Speaker 1: everybody else. Jackie Chan is he's a government employee. Now,
Speaker 1: you know, he's he's been accused time and time again
Speaker 1: in the Chinese domestic market of making propaganda films, especially
Speaker 1: directed at India. You know, you know, that's neither here
Speaker 1: nor there. Uh, they're always looking for new and crown
Speaker 1: in creative ways to engage, you know, the youth in
Speaker 1: China and try to sell them on this idea of
Speaker 1: you know, Chinese socialism is what President Z calls it.
Speaker 1: That really is what it is. It's propaganda. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: was gonna say, I think that's why people, um, we're
Speaker 1: confused to see him on that wist of like highest
Speaker 1: paid Hollywood actors. Everybody was kind of scratching their heads
Speaker 1: and what is Jackie Chan made that was this huge
Speaker 1: hit recently? But I guess that explains it, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's been busy. Well, the Chinese market. You have to
Speaker 1: bear in mind, it's the second biggest movie market in
Speaker 1: the world now, you know, And that's the reason why
Speaker 1: so many of our movies now are You'll see a
Speaker 1: movie like the most facent Transformers, which was pretty panned
Speaker 1: here in the United States but still did just tons
Speaker 1: of business overseas. Most of that's in the Chinese market,
Speaker 1: you know. And uh, the Chinese government controls what gets
Speaker 1: released within their markets. And that's why you'll never see
Speaker 1: a big budget movie Paint China and even a remote
Speaker 1: totally negative light anymore, because the Chinese government will literally
Speaker 1: borrow it from being released in their country, and that
Speaker 1: will cost a studio, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars.
Speaker 1: So as I mean, the most recent Mission and Impossible
Speaker 1: movie had a short scene where you could see a
Speaker 1: clothes lines on the top of some of the skyscrapers
Speaker 1: in China, and they threatened to borrow the movie from
Speaker 1: release in China because of that. And that's not because
Speaker 1: there aren't clothes lines up there. It's because the Chinese
Speaker 1: government wasn't willing to allow the American public or Chinese
Speaker 1: audiences to see the fact that in their skyscrapers they
Speaker 1: still don't necessarily have the capability to support a dryer
Speaker 1: in the penthouse. It's crazy. So um, like I said,
Speaker 1: we have some emails to get to and I was
Speaker 1: just on the topic of of recent shows and Gene
Speaker 1: for It's worth as always, had a comment on a
Speaker 1: recent show, so I figured we get to one of
Speaker 1: Jean's voice memos. And by the way, you guys could
Speaker 1: always send voice memos you're selves or um or emails
Speaker 1: to soft Rep dot Radio at soft rerep dot com.
Speaker 1: But we always love hearing from Gene, so here is
Speaker 1: the first one from Gene Farnsworth. Greetings by soft Rep shipmates,
Speaker 1: Gene party Worth their USN retired, really enjoyed listening new
Speaker 1: episode two nine three Today Brian Chief Glenn Dottery to
Speaker 1: life via Stories is not only an honor to him,
Speaker 1: let's the rest of us know what kind of people
Speaker 1: we missed working with during our time and active duty,
Speaker 1: and that I haven't seen many of since I retired.
Speaker 1: I'm really excited to hear about the Foundation Bugs company
Speaker 1: and what they're doing. I will definitely going to Boves
Speaker 1: to get some collagen. See how that works out healing
Speaker 1: up twenty three years of knee and back Gabbage and
Speaker 1: Curdwall on active duty, and the last thirty plus years
Speaker 1: of mountain bike and a running So I wait to
Speaker 1: get my hand on Bob's challeging once again. You guys
Speaker 1: continue to do amazing work on the site and on
Speaker 1: the cast. Uh Episode three hundred is just around the corner. Man,
Speaker 1: oh man, oh man, that is fucking awesome. Now you
Speaker 1: continue to have fair winds and following seas made a
Speaker 1: good Lord, bless the ground that you walk on, gane Out.
Speaker 1: I always love hearing from Gene and he is right.
Speaker 1: Episode three hundred it's coming up next month. That's crazy, man. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know, and I've been here for just about all
Speaker 1: of them. So yeah, I'm excited. I'll have to do
Speaker 1: something special for episode three hundred, but I have not
Speaker 1: figured out what that is yet. Yeah. I actually I
Speaker 1: just crossed over my one year mark with soft Wrap
Speaker 1: over this past weekend. Quick time flies man. Yeah, that's true. Man,
Speaker 1: that's that's awesome. Congrats to you. Thanks, you know what, well,
Speaker 1: congrats to me absolutely for for landing this job, because honestly,
Speaker 1: it is an absolute pleasure working with all the people
Speaker 1: in soft Wapping and Hurricane. You know, I'm still a
Speaker 1: year into the job. I'm still just like excited to
Speaker 1: be here. You know what that means. It's a good job. Yeah,
Speaker 1: yet you haven't really met many of the people face
Speaker 1: to face. No, I really haven't. Mean I live out
Speaker 1: here in the woods of Georgia. You know. Every time
Speaker 1: there's something exciting going on in New York City, I
Speaker 1: just you know, like all your pictures on Facebook and
Speaker 1: pretend I'm there, but I stay inside my cave. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well you're gonna be a shot show though, right, I'm hoping. So,
Speaker 1: I'm hoping. So I've got a baby do here and
Speaker 1: just about a month, So it all kind of depends
Speaker 1: on how willing my wife is to let me go
Speaker 1: to Las Vegas while she stays home with the munchkin.
Speaker 1: You know, understandable. And also you don't want to miss
Speaker 1: out on that experience. Like shot Show is a yearly thing.
Speaker 1: It's not like you you won't get to do it
Speaker 1: another time. Yeah. Yeah, we'll see how it hapends out,
Speaker 1: you know, because the baby should be a few months
Speaker 1: old by then, and I would love to see it,
Speaker 1: you know, especially I'd love to meet some of the
Speaker 1: other writers I talked to every day, you know, face
Speaker 1: to face. But I'd love to meet some of the readers.
Speaker 1: You know. You start to recognize names in the comments section,
Speaker 1: you know, and you start to recognize, you know, names
Speaker 1: when they tweet at your message me on Facebook. And
Speaker 1: it would be great to get to interact with those
Speaker 1: people that are the reason I get to do my job.
Speaker 1: You know. I've met many of the readers, um, but
Speaker 1: you know, what's crazy. I really see how much that
Speaker 1: the podcast and the company is expanding when I run
Speaker 1: into people at the most random of places, which I
Speaker 1: could tell you, Um, I didn't even mention this in
Speaker 1: the writer's room, but it's just it's happened more and
Speaker 1: more often. I was getting a haircut the other day
Speaker 1: and some dude is like giving me several looks and
Speaker 1: I'm like, I don't know what's up here, and he's like, hey,
Speaker 1: are you Ian from Soft Rep Radio? So like crazy
Speaker 1: in New York City. And then there's been times I've
Speaker 1: walked out of the studio I'm on the phone with someone,
Speaker 1: Like most recently, I was on the phone with my
Speaker 1: dad and someone heard my voice across the street and
Speaker 1: he's like, hey, you're Ian from Soft Rep Radio. Right,
Speaker 1: So it's great. You have a distinctive voice, man, you
Speaker 1: really do. Yeah. I feel like people hear the voice
Speaker 1: first and they know me before they see me. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it's great meeting the people. But more than anything, like
Speaker 1: it's it's crazy to think how big this thing is.
Speaker 1: Because Jack has said it before. He's like, I'm just
Speaker 1: you know, at my house or at a Starbucks, like
Speaker 1: typing up these articles, and I don't think of all
Speaker 1: these people until I see it face to face that
Speaker 1: are like reading this stuff that I'm just you know,
Speaker 1: putting out. It's like, you have to read me. At
Speaker 1: the Ritz Carlton in Atlanta two weeks ago, I was
Speaker 1: there for a for an event and was wearing a
Speaker 1: soft Rap T shirt and I walked in in the
Speaker 1: concierge at the Ritz was like, you're from soft Rep
Speaker 1: and I was like, well, yeah, you know, I'm Alex
Speaker 1: how Longs. And he was like, oh, you look a
Speaker 1: lot younger on in your picture on the website. It
Speaker 1: was like, yeah, because I was a lot younger in
Speaker 1: that picture. I feel like you look the same, dude.
Speaker 1: I'm aging like Mickey Rourke over here. Man, I'm aging
Speaker 1: like bad leather dude. That's that's crazy though. Well we
Speaker 1: will get to that because that was from the event
Speaker 1: with the behind thank you for your service, right, that's correct. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I met with the director, with Miles Teller who stars
Speaker 1: in it, and with Adam Schuman, who's the guy that
Speaker 1: it's based on. And to be honest that he's the
Speaker 1: guy was the most interested in meetings. So it was
Speaker 1: a great time. Yeah. Well, We'll definitely get into that
Speaker 1: because I'm excited to hear about it. Um. Just a
Speaker 1: couple more emails will get to here. UM. I I
Speaker 1: of course like this one and you'll see why this
Speaker 1: is from Greg. Hey. First of all, you guys fucking rock.
Speaker 1: I love the podcast, I love the website, and your
Speaker 1: news articles are outstanding. I think Ian deserves more credit,
Speaker 1: especially during the opening of the podcast. He's the one
Speaker 1: voice that's there every podcast. The podcast opener says, now
Speaker 1: here your host Brandon Webb and Jack Murphy, Ian isn't mentioned.
Speaker 1: I think he should be, damn it. Sometimes Brandon and
Speaker 1: Jack aren't even there, like today, and Ian really does
Speaker 1: an outstanding job on the podcast, first class all the way.
Speaker 1: Thanks for everything you guys do. Um. And then he
Speaker 1: mentioned something not I in fact and not write this email. Um.
Speaker 1: He also did mention something about the app for Android
Speaker 1: could use some tweaking. I think we're you know, slowly
Speaker 1: updating everything is you know, we have a lot of
Speaker 1: things on our plate. But Chris, our web guy, does
Speaker 1: an awesome job. Yeah, and then he says keep up
Speaker 1: the good work. Yeah, thank you man. So the reason
Speaker 1: I read that other than you know, like complimenting me
Speaker 1: is that I am, in fact going to update all
Speaker 1: the imaging of this podcast now that we have the
Speaker 1: two shows a week free. Um, I have a lot
Speaker 1: of ideas in mind that I don't want to give away.
Speaker 1: But I think next month you'll be hearing like totally
Speaker 1: new imaging and I'm changing, sir. There's gonna be a
Speaker 1: big change. Basically, I'll put it that way, that we're
Speaker 1: gonna announce on the next show. You might be able
Speaker 1: to kind of guess what it is from things that
Speaker 1: I've said, but yeah, Brandon will be here with me
Speaker 1: and we're gonna announce something. So like that. We had
Speaker 1: one big announcement, which was the two shows a week free,
Speaker 1: and we're gonna have a second big announcement on the
Speaker 1: Friday show. This is exciting, man. I don't even know
Speaker 1: what the next I wasn't sure if you would know
Speaker 1: or not. I know, I don't think so. I mean,
Speaker 1: I've I've gotten some of the good gouge from for
Speaker 1: those of you who aren't in the know, Soft Reps
Speaker 1: leadership had a whole bunch of important meetings here over
Speaker 1: the past few weeks. And uh, and you know what,
Speaker 1: just like with any company. What happens after those meetings
Speaker 1: of all the the headshed as they send out you know,
Speaker 1: email blasts and you talk to your manager and things
Speaker 1: so that you find out some of the information that
Speaker 1: that was exchanged during those meetings and the changes that
Speaker 1: are happening, you know, they trickled down to you though,
Speaker 1: you know. So I've heard all about the stuff that
Speaker 1: pertains directly to me, but over on the radio side
Speaker 1: of the house, and you know, SOFTWREP TV and stuff,
Speaker 1: I don't always hear about it until the same time
Speaker 1: the readers do, you know. So it's exciting yet. And
Speaker 1: and the thing about working for like a smaller startup
Speaker 1: company even though we're getting very big, is you know,
Speaker 1: when I worked for Serious x M, You're just one
Speaker 1: cog in that whole machine. It's just the way it is.
Speaker 1: It's a large, publicly traded corporation. Um when you're down
Speaker 1: here in like a boardroom of a dozen to twenty
Speaker 1: guys who were work here full time that are here
Speaker 1: for this meeting, Like I throughout the suggestion based on
Speaker 1: other things that I've seen that you know, I think
Speaker 1: we should scale back the pay model for the podcast
Speaker 1: and go to the what we're doing now, and they're like,
Speaker 1: that works, let's do it. It's cool that I could
Speaker 1: just like throw out a suggestion like that and it
Speaker 1: changes everything, which, by the way, it's just how I've
Speaker 1: wanted to do it all along. But you know, we
Speaker 1: experiment with some things and some things work better than others.
Speaker 1: That's but you know, just having your voice heard by
Speaker 1: like the CEO and the CEO of the company when
Speaker 1: you throw out a suggestion is really cool and like
Speaker 1: makes you realize how valued you are to the place
Speaker 1: that you work at. You know, I can speak to
Speaker 1: that directly because Brandon Webb is one of those people
Speaker 1: that I've never met in person, you know, but one
Speaker 1: of the first time I ever spoke to Brandon was
Speaker 1: actually only a few months after I started working for
Speaker 1: the site. I uh, you know, for those of you
Speaker 1: that that have been reading my work consistently, you probably
Speaker 1: already know, uh you know, I'm big into m M A.
Speaker 1: And you know, I took a shot to the right
Speaker 1: eye and I went blind in my right eye because
Speaker 1: of some retina damage for a little wild about that,
Speaker 1: because I heard him that I wasn't sure if you
Speaker 1: were publicly talking about it. Because I kind of overheard
Speaker 1: about it, and I was like, all right, I'm not
Speaker 1: going to bring this up, but that, yeah, that's crazy. Man.
Speaker 1: I didn't want to, you know, say that I overheard that,
Speaker 1: but it was in all honesty, like because I still
Speaker 1: have some trouble with it, but you know, it comes
Speaker 1: and goes a bit, which is neither here nor there.
Speaker 1: But it was more terrifying than it was anything else.
Speaker 1: It wasn't necessarily debilitating. I had just never come to
Speaker 1: terms with the idea of actually losing my sight before.
Speaker 1: It was really scary. And I got an email from Brandon, which,
Speaker 1: to be honest with you, I almost didn't even open
Speaker 1: because I assumed there's no way Brandon webs sending me
Speaker 1: an email. You know, I would work for software for
Speaker 1: maybe three months at that point, and uh, and it was.
Speaker 1: It was a personal email from Brandon telling me that
Speaker 1: he had a friend who was an eye surgeon and
Speaker 1: that if needed be, he would fly me directly to
Speaker 1: his friend to make sure I got taken care of.
Speaker 1: And uh, that's huge, man. I mean, how many companies
Speaker 1: can you say you work for where you get an
Speaker 1: email from the CEO? Uh, you know who lives ten
Speaker 1: states away telling you that he'll fly you personally to
Speaker 1: go get surgery if you needed to make sure that
Speaker 1: you can regain your vision. You know, right then and there,
Speaker 1: I knew that this is a company I want to
Speaker 1: be involved with. And I realized that a lot of
Speaker 1: times I sound like a company man because I'm always like,
Speaker 1: I love this company. But it's because of stuff like that.
Speaker 1: You know, you treat your employees well and they become
Speaker 1: good brand ambassadors. Oh dude, if you're gonna say what
Speaker 1: you just said, you ever see the what's his name again?
Speaker 1: The guy who now owns the l A Clippers. But oh,
Speaker 1: Steve Bomber, I have four words for you. I love
Speaker 1: this company. Yes, I had to play that. So on
Speaker 1: that note, though, any any update with uh, with what's
Speaker 1: going on with your vision, because that's a pretty concerning thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, I uh, it was the look of the draw.
Speaker 1: What it turned out to be was a unique combination
Speaker 1: of I have apparently a pre existing condition that makes
Speaker 1: me prom to retinal deformation, which is basically, you know,
Speaker 1: the retina on the back of the inside of your eye.
Speaker 1: Mine will malform and then create either a blind spot
Speaker 1: or just total blindness. Uh. And it's not always the same,
Speaker 1: and it doesn't always la last for the same amount
Speaker 1: of time. But it turns out it's exacerbated by certain medications.
Speaker 1: It's also exacerbated by having my face smashed in. Uh.
Speaker 1: And so when I when I was boxing that day
Speaker 1: and I took a couple of old, you know, real
Speaker 1: good shots, my my retina deformed and stayed deformed for months.
Speaker 1: So that that's why, you know, there's some pictures on
Speaker 1: my Facebook page of me wearing an eye patch. It's
Speaker 1: not that the eye patch was protecting my eye, but
Speaker 1: it was making it so I was able to read,
Speaker 1: you know. And Uh. But since then, the vision's mostly
Speaker 1: come back, but it's still prone to deaf formation. So
Speaker 1: anytime that you know, I get real stressed out in
Speaker 1: my blood pressure rises, I start to form a blind
Speaker 1: spot right in the center of my vision, which is
Speaker 1: just the worst case scenario. But for the most part,
Speaker 1: I bounced back. You know. It comes and goes, but
Speaker 1: I've gotten used to dealing with it. I even can
Speaker 1: shooper very well lefty now if need be, But for
Speaker 1: the most part, I try to stick to right hand
Speaker 1: to shooting. Damn man, we'll keep us updated. That's because,
Speaker 1: like I said, I heard about it, it wasn't the
Speaker 1: type of thing I was gonna ask you about. Well,
Speaker 1: I appreciate it, man. You know, one thing that it's
Speaker 1: done for me is instead of training like I had been,
Speaker 1: you know, I had been working with with this awesome
Speaker 1: trainer that he had multiple black belts in a couple
Speaker 1: of different Filipino disciplines, and that's something that I was
Speaker 1: unfamiliar with. So I was getting some great training with him.
Speaker 1: But since then, I've started working with with some local
Speaker 1: teenagers that are just looking to learn self defense, and
Speaker 1: I'm training them instead, you know. So I'm getting hit
Speaker 1: in the face a whole lot less and uh, and
Speaker 1: I'm still getting to kind of participate in the culture,
Speaker 1: you know. And uh, I haven't taught anyone since my
Speaker 1: MCMAP days in the Marine Corps, you know. So it's
Speaker 1: it's been a lot of fun to kind of shift
Speaker 1: you know, shift lanes a little bit. It's not as
Speaker 1: much fun to coach as it is to fight, but
Speaker 1: it's still fun, you know. Yeah, And we'll get to
Speaker 1: the fitness stuff in a little bit, because I know
Speaker 1: that you've been writing about that um, but one more
Speaker 1: email here and I thought this was a good one
Speaker 1: from here in Hey, guys, love the show. You guys
Speaker 1: have been a great source of education regarding soft in
Speaker 1: the military as a whole. I'm nineteen and about to
Speaker 1: leave for boot I eventually want to go to A
Speaker 1: and S for the seventy five or SF. I know
Speaker 1: what the conflicts the Middle East dying down, with the
Speaker 1: iraqis really stepping up against its ISIS problem, as well
Speaker 1: as Rocca recently getting liberated. In the coming years, I
Speaker 1: don't see us being as active in the Middle East?
Speaker 1: Or am I wrong? Fast forward three or four years.
Speaker 1: What do you see the seventy five and SF doing
Speaker 1: is their primary roles? Thank you guys again for all
Speaker 1: of your hard work. And that's from Kieran. Well, I'll say,
Speaker 1: first and foremost the best guy to ask that question
Speaker 1: would be Jack Murphy. But but well, I don't know
Speaker 1: when the hell of that man is gonna be back
Speaker 1: because he's been like he's super busy. I'm you know,
Speaker 1: I did see him at his wedding, but other than that,
Speaker 1: I missed him on the podcast. I know all you
Speaker 1: guys do as well, But you know the story breaking
Speaker 1: in Nigeria this over these past few weeks and stuff
Speaker 1: like that as a clear example though that US especially
Speaker 1: is not going to see a significant reduction in op
Speaker 1: tempo in the coming years. I know that ISIS is
Speaker 1: effectively being routed out of Iraca in Syria and throughout
Speaker 1: most of Iraq, but that doesn't necessarily mean that stability
Speaker 1: is automatically going to result. You know, there's there's still
Speaker 1: going to be conflict in that region, and there's definitely
Speaker 1: going to continue to be conflict throughout the world. You know,
Speaker 1: the global war on terror. We tend to think of
Speaker 1: it as a war in the desert, but it genuinely
Speaker 1: is a global war on terror. You know, people people
Speaker 1: talk about Africa now like as though it's this new thing.
Speaker 1: I deployed to Africa in two thousand ten. You know,
Speaker 1: we've been in Africa for a long time, and we'll
Speaker 1: stay in Africa for a long time. To come. Anywhere
Speaker 1: that there's poverty, there's the opportunity for influence, right and
Speaker 1: in Africa, there's a lot of nations that are struggling
Speaker 1: economically and they're willing to take support and just about
Speaker 1: any form that it comes in, whether that comes from
Speaker 1: you know, West friendly or United States or US allied nations,
Speaker 1: or if it comes from terror groups that are willing
Speaker 1: to come in and raise the standard of living for
Speaker 1: the people that live there. Uh. You know, it's an
Speaker 1: ongoing battle that we're seeing the start of. You know,
Speaker 1: Africa is going to become an increasing area of emphasis
Speaker 1: and you know in the years to come, but we're
Speaker 1: not going to see a reduction in the operational tempo
Speaker 1: for our special Operations forces anytime soon. Conventional forces, maybe
Speaker 1: we might see a little bit of a downturn in
Speaker 1: those rotations, but you know, special forces guy's green berets
Speaker 1: and advisory roles, things like that. We're only gonna see
Speaker 1: more and more and more of that as the years
Speaker 1: go on. I really think, what was your experience like
Speaker 1: in Africa? You know it was it was It was
Speaker 1: a good time. It was a good time. It was rough.
Speaker 1: For the first week, I'd say, I was part of
Speaker 1: the advanced party that was supposed to prepare an area
Speaker 1: for for a thousand marine force that was going to
Speaker 1: show up a week later. And in that first week,
Speaker 1: everything that could go wrong did go wrong. You know,
Speaker 1: air drops were missed, our convoy that was supposed to
Speaker 1: resupply us got into an accident and never came. We
Speaker 1: ended up without food or water for you know, three days,
Speaker 1: which at the time was awful, but in retrospect is
Speaker 1: the story that you think you're gonna get when you
Speaker 1: when you enlist in the Marine Corps, you know. But
Speaker 1: it was a good opportunity for me to really get
Speaker 1: to experience the difference between a military's culture and the
Speaker 1: government that rules it. I was in Mozambique for the
Speaker 1: most part, and the people that were serving in the
Speaker 1: military and Mozambique really didn't I want to be there.
Speaker 1: It was just the only avenue for them in a
Speaker 1: lot of ways. And Mozambique is illegal to get a loan,
Speaker 1: for instance, to buy a car or a house unless
Speaker 1: you work for the government. So serving in the military
Speaker 1: is like your direct route to a sustainable lifestyle, you know,
Speaker 1: if you're not connected. And uh. It was a really
Speaker 1: good learning experience for me, both in terms of what
Speaker 1: I can handle, you know and uh, and in terms of,
Speaker 1: you know, what the world's like out there. I was
Speaker 1: at a ceremony where they sacrifice to go, you know,
Speaker 1: ten minutes before I was meeting the u s Ambassador
Speaker 1: to Mozambique inside like a gold plated you know room.
Speaker 1: It was. It was surreal in a lot of ways,
Speaker 1: but it really hit home for me the idea that
Speaker 1: a lot of these people are living in desperation, and
Speaker 1: when you're desperate, it doesn't really matter if it's a
Speaker 1: bad guy offering you a hand. What you need is
Speaker 1: that hand. And because of that, we're gonna see groups
Speaker 1: like ICES and BOC OVERAM continue to expand their influence
Speaker 1: in Africa, and we're gonna see US Special Operations troops
Speaker 1: especially there uh to to advise, to help, to assist,
Speaker 1: and probably to fight, you know, as as their spears
Speaker 1: of influence grow. So keep the emails coming the soft
Speaker 1: Rep dot Radio at soft rep dot com. That that
Speaker 1: sounds like a crazy timeline of what you experience there. Um,
Speaker 1: I want to hear about you sitting down with the
Speaker 1: writer and director of Thank You for Your Service. But
Speaker 1: before we get to that, I want to tell you
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Speaker 1: kind of shave like a couple of times a week.
Speaker 1: But my beard grows back like ridiculously quick, um, which
Speaker 1: is kind of like how Brandon Webb is, but he
Speaker 1: never really shaves, He just keeps it, uh he maintains. Yeah,
Speaker 1: exactly that I just end up shaving like a couple
Speaker 1: of times a week. It's, you know, just being lazy.
Speaker 1: But I was gonna say, even if you're like Alex
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Speaker 1: shave the neck, you know, at least I did when
Speaker 1: I had my beard. Well not an operator but just
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Speaker 1: with that. I saw the pictures that you got to
Speaker 1: sit down with Miles Teller and Jason Hall, the writer
Speaker 1: and director of Thank You for Your Service, And the
Speaker 1: thing that I laughed at, of course, where was that
Speaker 1: they were all wearing college shirts. And someone in the
Speaker 1: SOFTWAUP writers group was like, Oh, you couldn't wear a
Speaker 1: college shirt. You were in your softwign T shirt, and
Speaker 1: you were like, Hey, they're lucky at wore pants. Seriously, man,
Speaker 1: I didn't get a job as an internet writer to
Speaker 1: wear pants. And I'm in pajamas right now. So what
Speaker 1: was that whole experience like? Because I know for you,
Speaker 1: you know, as you've talked about before, you're in Georgia,
Speaker 1: so you're not, you know, entrenched in this whole like
Speaker 1: Hollywood director scene like some of us. Yeah, so I'm wondering,
Speaker 1: like what the whole experience was like because this was
Speaker 1: probably like a first of this type of opportunity for you, right,
Speaker 1: you know, it really was, And I have to give
Speaker 1: them a lot of credit the way it all came
Speaker 1: about was. I went to a critic screening of Thank
Speaker 1: You for Your Service here a few months ago, and
Speaker 1: I and you know, and I've been interacting with the
Speaker 1: studio throughout because they really wanted to get a sense
Speaker 1: of how I felt about the movie, to their credit,
Speaker 1: you know. And so after I saw the movie, I
Speaker 1: went home and I thought about it for a while,
Speaker 1: and they emailed me to ask me what I thought
Speaker 1: of it, and I didn't respond, and I waited like
Speaker 1: a day before I finally sent them, like a pretty
Speaker 1: long and thoughtful response about how I felt that it
Speaker 1: was an important story to tell, but I had some
Speaker 1: concerns about the way that it that I felt that
Speaker 1: depicted veterans, and uh, I honestly expected their response to be, well,
Speaker 1: then forget you, We'll just go with a different critic
Speaker 1: that'll that'll just sing our praises, and instead they didn't. Uh.
Speaker 1: The studio got back to me and they said, we'd
Speaker 1: really like you to have a chance to talk to
Speaker 1: the people who made this movie to see if that
Speaker 1: they can, you know, address your concerns. And uh, you know,
Speaker 1: they didn't put me into the press junket where I
Speaker 1: was gonna sit with each of them for thirty seconds
Speaker 1: to ask a few quick questions. They they actual scheduled,
Speaker 1: they scheduled an entire separate interview where I got to
Speaker 1: sit down with with Miles Teller, who stars in the movie.
Speaker 1: You know, Jason Hall, who he wrote, uh this movie
Speaker 1: as well as American Sniper. He wrote the screenplay for that,
Speaker 1: but this was his directorial debut. And with with Adam Schuman,
Speaker 1: who's you know, the guy that the story was really
Speaker 1: based on. And uh, you know, so I got to
Speaker 1: I got a chance to go meet with them in
Speaker 1: the Ritz Carlton, even though I was not dressed for that,
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, and and sit across the table
Speaker 1: from him and genuinely ask them, you know, all right,
Speaker 1: so here are my concerns. What's your response? And uh,
Speaker 1: and I have to say they had good, good responses,
Speaker 1: you know. My my my concern with this movie. And
Speaker 1: for those who haven't seen the trailer, thank you for
Speaker 1: your service. As a movie about three soldiers who come
Speaker 1: back from a deployment in Afghanistan and are really struggling
Speaker 1: with post traumatic stress disorder, you know. And I don't
Speaker 1: want to give too much away, Uh, you know, I
Speaker 1: don't want I want to stay away from spoilers, but
Speaker 1: suicide plays a recurring role in this movie, and that's
Speaker 1: something that's really really important to me. I've I've lost
Speaker 1: three marines that I served with to suicide over the years.
Speaker 1: One of them I lost while he was under my
Speaker 1: direct command. And uh, it's a real tough subject for me,
Speaker 1: you know. So so this movie was important to me,
Speaker 1: and I really wanted to know that they got it right,
Speaker 1: you know. And so when I sat down with him
Speaker 1: and I talked to them, you know, I told that
Speaker 1: that and uh, and then I want this movie to
Speaker 1: be to be well received. But I was concerned that
Speaker 1: all of the veterans that showed in the movie were
Speaker 1: either struggling or didn't care that others were struggling, you know.
Speaker 1: And and I felt that that's that's not really fair
Speaker 1: to the veteran community because we're really supportive of one another.
Speaker 1: We do tend to eat our own if someone gets,
Speaker 1: you know, a little bit of success, but when someone struggling,
Speaker 1: we tend to to band together and help them out.
Speaker 1: And uh, I gotta give Jason Hall a lot of credit.
Speaker 1: He could have taken offense to my line of questioning
Speaker 1: and instead was like, you know, it was an intentional
Speaker 1: decision basically because Adam Schuman, you know, the real sergeant
Speaker 1: that this is based on, really did feel that isolated.
Speaker 1: He really did feel as though there wasn't help that
Speaker 1: was forthcoming, and they needed to find a way to
Speaker 1: convey that on the screen. And to be honest with you,
Speaker 1: that's the best response he could have given me. You know,
Speaker 1: it really did just you know, assuage some of my
Speaker 1: concerns because I'm always is worried about people perceiving veterans
Speaker 1: as like, you know, a John Rambo style. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm about to fly off the handle at any moment,
Speaker 1: when in reality, veterans really aren't like that by and large.
Speaker 1: But but in the case of this movie, I get it.
Speaker 1: You know, it makes sense and uh and and it's
Speaker 1: an important story, it really is. So overall, did did
Speaker 1: you like it? Minus? You know, your concern which seems
Speaker 1: like it was alleviated by their response of their intentions.
Speaker 1: You know, it's it's it's a solid movie. It's not
Speaker 1: the best movie I've ever seen. I don't wanna to
Speaker 1: make it seems seem as though it's you know, it's
Speaker 1: the best movie out there. But it's a good movie,
Speaker 1: but it's a tough one to watch, you know. I've
Speaker 1: been to this was my only time interviewing you know,
Speaker 1: Hollywood types, but I've been to a number of critics
Speaker 1: screenings before, and usually, you know, go into a critic screening,
Speaker 1: it is weird because you go to the movies by
Speaker 1: yourself in the middle of the day, you know, and
Speaker 1: you're surrounded by other adults that are there by themselves
Speaker 1: watching this movie in the middle of the day. So
Speaker 1: when the movie end, you know, it's not that weird
Speaker 1: for some conversation to break out, you know, just kind
Speaker 1: of like get a feel for what the other people thought.
Speaker 1: And I couldn't do it, man, I I got up
Speaker 1: as soon as the credits started rolling. I was getting
Speaker 1: the hell out of there because I was upset. You know.
Speaker 1: It's it's really hard to watch a struggle that you've
Speaker 1: seen firsthand, uh depicted on screen, you know. And they
Speaker 1: did a really good job of showing that struggle on
Speaker 1: some level, because I mean, a good movie is supposed
Speaker 1: to make you feel something, and it obviously did make
Speaker 1: you feel something. It's funny you say that. I wrote
Speaker 1: my review for the movie just a little bit before
Speaker 1: we came on the air. And that's exactly what I said.
Speaker 1: You know, Jason Hall set out to you know, elicit
Speaker 1: an emotional response in his audience, and this movie will
Speaker 1: do it. Man, And uh for the people out there
Speaker 1: who have never had to go sit in a v
Speaker 1: A for six hours, you know, or have never struggled
Speaker 1: to try to find a way to get help, I
Speaker 1: think that this movie is going to shine a light
Speaker 1: on that, you know, very real struggle that a lot
Speaker 1: of veterans are experiencing that a lot of people are
Speaker 1: ignorant to not because they don't care, but just because
Speaker 1: why would you ever walk into a v A waiting
Speaker 1: room unless you needed to? You know, I don't say
Speaker 1: I appreciate the fact that you know, you met these
Speaker 1: guys and and from what you're saying, they were a
Speaker 1: couple of great dudes, and you're still not, um gonna
Speaker 1: go out there and say it was the greatest movie
Speaker 1: I ever saw, just based off that, like it shows
Speaker 1: that you you're you have that journalistic integrity well you know,
Speaker 1: and to be honest, I I was struggling with the
Speaker 1: idea of asking them tough questions about its depiction of veterans,
Speaker 1: and I'm glad that I chose to do it because
Speaker 1: they gave me such good answers. But you know, at
Speaker 1: the end of the day, this very well could be
Speaker 1: somebody's favorite movie out there. It just it wasn't mine.
Speaker 1: You know. It was a very well put together movie.
Speaker 1: The acting was really solid for the most part, but
Speaker 1: you know, there were a couple of little things here
Speaker 1: and there that just kinda that they could suck you
Speaker 1: out of the movie a little bit. Uh maybe just
Speaker 1: maybe just because I'm a veteran. I don't know, but
Speaker 1: I would argue that it is a really good movie.
Speaker 1: But more than that, it's a really important movie. You know,
Speaker 1: Like I'm gonna give it three and a half out
Speaker 1: of five stars, which for me is is is a
Speaker 1: pretty pretty solid score. Uh. But more more important than
Speaker 1: the quality of the filmmaking or whether or not he
Speaker 1: used Dutch angles appropriately, uh, which to be honest, I
Speaker 1: don't think he used any Uh. What really matters is
Speaker 1: that this story needs to get out there. And uh,
Speaker 1: Derek Gannon actually was the guy who kind of planted
Speaker 1: the seed of that idea in my head. He's another
Speaker 1: writer on Soft rep who's done some amazing work, especially
Speaker 1: with Africa recently. But we were talking about a different movie, uh,
Speaker 1: twelve Strong. I think it's what it's called. It's about
Speaker 1: the first Green Berets that crossed into Afghanistan. And you know,
Speaker 1: there's there's a lot of drama right now about how
Speaker 1: involved the real guys who did it were in the
Speaker 1: filmmaking process. And Derek told me he's like, part of
Speaker 1: me kind of just wants this movie to get made
Speaker 1: because the story deserves to be told, even if they
Speaker 1: don't quite get it right. Yeah, And and there's a
Speaker 1: lot of truth to that. And I feel that same
Speaker 1: way about Thank You for Your Service. Not everything about
Speaker 1: the movie rang true for me. Maybe it would for others,
Speaker 1: you know, but it's more important to me that that story,
Speaker 1: that idea of the struggle gets told and gets told
Speaker 1: in a way that's creative enough that it really does
Speaker 1: pull that emotion out of you. I I give Jason Hall,
Speaker 1: the director of the movie, more credit for yanking that
Speaker 1: emotion out of me than I do for you know,
Speaker 1: getting the tidbits right about military service or the way
Speaker 1: that you would interact with one another, and you know,
Speaker 1: things like that you know, do you worry I will
Speaker 1: say it's well worth watching. Okay, do you worry it
Speaker 1: all that the whole veteran movie thing is getting overexposed,
Speaker 1: or or that that's just getting deluded by all these
Speaker 1: movies coming now, because you know, you got American Sniper
Speaker 1: and Lone Survivor and then movies like this, which are
Speaker 1: different types of movies, but it's it's a lot of
Speaker 1: them at once. I even think about, you know, like
Speaker 1: for this audience, the amount of books that come out.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm staring at the books in the office,
Speaker 1: whether it's Chris Bernto's book or um, you know, the
Speaker 1: many books that Brandon's put out, or even the fiction
Speaker 1: books like Brad Thor who does the military fiction books.
Speaker 1: For this audience, I already know that you guys can't
Speaker 1: get enough of it, and which is great, But I'm
Speaker 1: thinking for a general audience, do you think like the
Speaker 1: veteran movie and the veteran book is becoming too deluded
Speaker 1: because there's just too much out there. And I'm thinking
Speaker 1: about this, like I said, from an objective standpoint, not
Speaker 1: from you guys who are necessarily like the die hards
Speaker 1: who want to read every single book that comes out
Speaker 1: because I I realized that the people who listen to
Speaker 1: the show are not necessarily the mainstream audience who wants
Speaker 1: to see the occasional veteran story. You know. When I
Speaker 1: went I went to grad school for communications with an
Speaker 1: emphasis on marketing and advertising, and market saturation is one
Speaker 1: of the things that you always have to worry about,
Speaker 1: whether you're pushing out a new brand or you're pushing
Speaker 1: out a new marketing campaign for an old brand. You know,
Speaker 1: and the military has rapidly become a brand of sorts,
Speaker 1: you know, especially when it comes to books and movies.
Speaker 1: I'm not as concerned about the market getting saturated with
Speaker 1: it quite yet, because most of the military movies have
Speaker 1: not been a big budget movies, you know, a lot
Speaker 1: of them have been independent or close to it. Uh.
Speaker 1: But my concern is more about the facets of the
Speaker 1: veteran community that are always highlighted in a lot of
Speaker 1: these movies. You know, Thank You for Your Service is
Speaker 1: an important film because it talks about that struggle, but
Speaker 1: it's you know, I also reviewed Megan Leavy you know
Speaker 1: a few months back. Uh, similarly, that movie It's not
Speaker 1: it's not a war movie. You know, it's a it's
Speaker 1: a movie about the struggle of a war fighter after
Speaker 1: they come home, and I do think that that story
Speaker 1: is important, But I worry sometimes when the only depictions
Speaker 1: of the military that the general public gets is either
Speaker 1: American sniper or thank you for your Service. Where we're
Speaker 1: showing either our war fighters out there just you know,
Speaker 1: doing you know, accomplishing heroic feats, uh, and then coming
Speaker 1: home and just being a complete mess as a result
Speaker 1: of the of that heroism. And I think the reality
Speaker 1: of the veteran experience for most kind of lies somewhere
Speaker 1: in between. You know, Uh, for everyone, Chris Kyle you
Speaker 1: have out there, You've got ninety nine you know, soldiers, sailors,
Speaker 1: marines that are that are doing a much less dramatic
Speaker 1: and sexy job, you know, but still come home and
Speaker 1: still face struggles. But those struggles are often not the
Speaker 1: same as you'll find and thank you for your service
Speaker 1: where you know, in one scene, one of the soldiers
Speaker 1: who's I'm trying to remember his name, it's tough to pronounce.
Speaker 1: It's like a EDI or something like that. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: his wife burns dinner and uh, and he has kind
Speaker 1: of a PTSD flashback to one of his friends burning
Speaker 1: a lot i've and loses his mind and smashes up
Speaker 1: the house and his wife has to you know, she's pregnant,
Speaker 1: has to lock herself into the bathroom and call nine
Speaker 1: one one. And that, in my opinion, isn't veterans either,
Speaker 1: you know. And I worry that your general public is
Speaker 1: going to start to see every veteran as Chris Kyle,
Speaker 1: or or a guy who's done some of the same
Speaker 1: things that Chris Kyle did but might be set off
Speaker 1: by the smell of burning toast. Uh, when a lot
Speaker 1: of veterans are really well adjusted guys. You know, branded
Speaker 1: webs a great example of a dude who got out
Speaker 1: and started uh, you know, a huge company, h leveraging
Speaker 1: his veteran experience. I you know, I'd like to see
Speaker 1: more depictions of veterans as regular dudes. I know that
Speaker 1: might not necessarily make the sexiest movie, but but I
Speaker 1: worry about the perception that people like my daughter will
Speaker 1: grow up with when the only exposure they'll have to
Speaker 1: my military service is through movies like that. You know, well,
Speaker 1: you know what I would for your daughter. It'll be
Speaker 1: different because you're gonna have so many veteran friends that
Speaker 1: you'll probably meet, I would think, Um, but but I
Speaker 1: agree with that you're saying, because I think there's so
Speaker 1: many people in the country. Um. You know, I have
Speaker 1: plenty of veteran friends, even before this podcast, but especially
Speaker 1: through this podcast that you know, I know that they
Speaker 1: are regular dudes. But of course there's like the guy
Speaker 1: who lives I don't know where, but who doesn't have
Speaker 1: one veteran friend. And you're right there only perspective on
Speaker 1: what the veteran experiences is what Hollywood puts out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and like I said with with thank you for your service,
Speaker 1: veteran suicide is obviously a very real and legitimate concern.
Speaker 1: You know. I know that the statistic isn't technically twenty
Speaker 1: two veterans a day. It's like twenty one and change.
Speaker 1: But to me, that's that's semantics. The truth of the
Speaker 1: matter is veterans are killing themselves. The thing is is
Speaker 1: that depression, at least in my experience, U doesn't usually
Speaker 1: manifest itself in violent ways. You know, I think that
Speaker 1: your average depressed or PTSD stricken veterans experience is more
Speaker 1: quiet drinking in a basement than it is punching through
Speaker 1: walls and doors and scaring your family. And so it's
Speaker 1: good that we're we're shifting towards the idea that veterans
Speaker 1: are struggling and do deserve help. But I think it's
Speaker 1: just as important that we focus on the fact that
Speaker 1: those struggles are not necessarily a reason to not hire them.
Speaker 1: You know, it's not a reason to be worried about
Speaker 1: one dating your daughter. But they may have struggles, but
Speaker 1: just be aware that usually they manifest themselves in more
Speaker 1: benign ways, I guess true. And and what you're saying
Speaker 1: also reminds me that I got to see Big Bountain Heroes,
Speaker 1: the documentary that we did and we're putting out soon. Um,
Speaker 1: you know that Nick k. Hill helped film and that
Speaker 1: stars Brandon Webb and we A Jenkins and Nick Betts
Speaker 1: and all those guys, and it it is exactly what
Speaker 1: you're looking for in a veteran film of just showing,
Speaker 1: you know, the whole idea of the tagline being thrills
Speaker 1: before pills, and these these guys going out and doing
Speaker 1: regular guy things skiing and snowboarding, these alps in Europe
Speaker 1: that are just beautiful and enjoying their time and and
Speaker 1: saying like, hey, this is how we're getting a stress
Speaker 1: out rather than going to the v A and and
Speaker 1: taking these pills that could be deadly. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: the the opioid epidemic in this country is for real.
Speaker 1: And I can speak from personal experience. On my way
Speaker 1: out of the Marine Corps, I had six surgeries in
Speaker 1: two years, man, you know, and throughout that time, you know,
Speaker 1: I had a steady and refillable prescription to vike it
Speaker 1: in and then percocet and then whatever else because you know,
Speaker 1: maybe this one was upsetting my stomach, so instead of
Speaker 1: pulling me off of it, we would just switch to
Speaker 1: a different one, you know. And on top of that,
Speaker 1: lots of anti anxiety meds, you know, Zanax and valium,
Speaker 1: and they were they were eager to give me whatever
Speaker 1: I felt like I needed to get through the day.
Speaker 1: And I and I can understand and appreciate it, but
Speaker 1: it ended up being, uh, it ended up causing some
Speaker 1: some trouble for me. I'm fortunate that I always had
Speaker 1: a really good support structure. My wife is an incredible woman,
Speaker 1: you know. And uh, when it came to the point
Speaker 1: that I was drinking too much and I was taking
Speaker 1: these pills. Uh, not necessarily because I was hurting, but
Speaker 1: because I was trying to make sure I didn't start hurting,
Speaker 1: you know. And I I didn't even really need her
Speaker 1: to tell me I needed to stop. I just needed
Speaker 1: her to give me that look a couple of times,
Speaker 1: you know, that concerned you know, you know, the worried
Speaker 1: wife look, and uh, and it made me go, oh shit,
Speaker 1: you know, I really instead of just doing this on autopilot,
Speaker 1: I should start playing an active role in deciding how
Speaker 1: I self medicate, you know. And I'm not going to
Speaker 1: tell you that I no longer self medicate. I drank
Speaker 1: like an active duty moraine, which is too much. Uh.
Speaker 1: But uh, I try my best to to keep my
Speaker 1: eyes on the horizon now, you know. And A but
Speaker 1: I can see how easy it would be to have
Speaker 1: lost sight of it. And a lot of people do
Speaker 1: most of that stuff. Say again, how did you get
Speaker 1: off most of that stuff? You know? To be honest,
Speaker 1: it's easy. It was easy for me in a in
Speaker 1: a couple of ways. I'm like the same thing with
Speaker 1: my fitness game and stuff like that. I'm I'm all
Speaker 1: about self discipline, except like at midnight, right around midnight
Speaker 1: is when my discipline goes out the window. And I
Speaker 1: just started like powering the cookies down and washing it
Speaker 1: down with vodka. And and it does help that we
Speaker 1: have a job that we could work on our own schedule,
Speaker 1: Like there's no you have to be up at six
Speaker 1: am with this job, absolutely, you know. And uh, but
Speaker 1: for me, what it really came down to was, at
Speaker 1: first I stopped with the pain killers, but uh, I
Speaker 1: realized that I needed to stick with the antidepressants. To
Speaker 1: be honest with you, I've I've come on and off
Speaker 1: of them over the years, but you know, just the
Speaker 1: combination of losing friends and then lots of surgeries and
Speaker 1: I was medically retired from the Marine Corps, so it
Speaker 1: wasn't really my choice, and I struggled with that for
Speaker 1: a while. I'm just I'm better, I'm more level as
Speaker 1: long as I stay on some of these medications. But
Speaker 1: for the most part now I try to avoid the
Speaker 1: strong painkillers if at all possible, you know, I'm I'll
Speaker 1: just keep loading up on motoring and laying on the
Speaker 1: couch until my knee works again if if I can. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I think the fact that you're physically active it
Speaker 1: plays a huge role in in you recuperating from certain things,
Speaker 1: which we should get to your old man fitness calm,
Speaker 1: which I'm wondering, like, is is the title like a
Speaker 1: little bit tongue in cheek because from what I know,
Speaker 1: I don't know your exact age. But aren't you along
Speaker 1: with me like one of the younger guys at the site. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm not that old man. I'm only thirty two, but
Speaker 1: we're like the two youngest guys at the site. Probably
Speaker 1: I mean other than Nick when I say old man fitness,
Speaker 1: though I don't necessarily mean how old I am in years.
Speaker 1: It's more a concern of mileage and also post post
Speaker 1: service fitness, I guess, but it is just kind of
Speaker 1: But I think old man fitness, I think of you know,
Speaker 1: maybe a guy like Jane Fordsworth. You're just swiped a voicemail, like,
Speaker 1: I know, he's an older dude. You know what, the
Speaker 1: I bet you that guy could kick my ass. So
Speaker 1: you know, it's good that I I need to focus
Speaker 1: my workouts in a way that that allows for you know,
Speaker 1: I've got a lot of the same injuries that an
Speaker 1: older guy would have. You know, I had I had
Speaker 1: two surgeries on one d one on the other, two
Speaker 1: surgeries on one of my ankles. I've got a metal
Speaker 1: screen on that replaced a portion of my abdominal wall.
Speaker 1: I've got a couple of slip discs in my back,
Speaker 1: you know, I've got I've got, you know, the laundry
Speaker 1: list of injuries that you'd find in your average, you know,
Speaker 1: fifty year old. I just got there sooner, you know.
Speaker 1: And uh, I doesn't help. Again, I'm saying the blindness
Speaker 1: thing doesn't help, and all that as well, I mean,
Speaker 1: you you know, but because of that, I stopped working
Speaker 1: out for a little while, you know, and I gettined
Speaker 1: a bunch of weight, and I felt real bad about myself.
Speaker 1: And uh, and I realized that just because I can't
Speaker 1: work out the way I used to doesn't necessarily mean
Speaker 1: that I can't out. You know. I used to work
Speaker 1: out like it was a fight. I wanted. I wanted
Speaker 1: to go win a fight against the weights, you know.
Speaker 1: And and now I have to work together with the
Speaker 1: you know, I've got a just my form and certain
Speaker 1: lifts to make sure I don't aggravate back injuries. I
Speaker 1: have to, you know, shift the way I do squats
Speaker 1: to make sure that I don't mess with my knees,
Speaker 1: you know, things like that, and uh, but it was
Speaker 1: at all really started because of the common marketing trope
Speaker 1: that you see all over the internet with here's how
Speaker 1: to lose all your extra weight in ten days, or
Speaker 1: this magic pill will get you that six pack that
Speaker 1: you wanted. You know, this new workout plan is the
Speaker 1: only one that can help you achieve your goals, and
Speaker 1: it's just not true. Man, your average person's goals are
Speaker 1: not to look like the fitness model on the cover
Speaker 1: of Bodybuilding, you know magazine. Your average person's fitness goals
Speaker 1: or to make sure that the stomach doesn't stick out
Speaker 1: further than their chest. You know, it's to make sure
Speaker 1: that they could win a fight if they had to,
Speaker 1: you know, Or to make sure that they could walk
Speaker 1: three miles to a gas station if they needed to
Speaker 1: if their car ran out of ask. You know, those
Speaker 1: are realistic fitness goals that a lot of us might
Speaker 1: not be in a position to achieve, but that should
Speaker 1: be what we're striving for. And you know, once you
Speaker 1: get there, if you want to make you know, higher,
Speaker 1: more difficult goals, maybe you want to compete in a
Speaker 1: five k or run a whole marathon. But but you
Speaker 1: have to approach it in a realistic fashion. You're not
Speaker 1: gonna lose forty pounds in a week, you know, no
Speaker 1: matter how crash the diet is. And when you do
Speaker 1: a crash diet like that, you often end up gaining
Speaker 1: the weight right back as soon as you're off of it,
Speaker 1: because you didn't adjust your lifestyle at all. You just
Speaker 1: stopped eating for a week, you know. So what I
Speaker 1: really wanted to try to do is start shining a
Speaker 1: light on regular person fitness. You know. The idea that
Speaker 1: you can lose weight just by burning more calories than
Speaker 1: you take in, you know, is it is something that's
Speaker 1: lost to a lot of people because we think that
Speaker 1: you need nutral system or weight watchers or slim fast
Speaker 1: you know, when in reality, just be mindful of of
Speaker 1: what calories you drin. For instance, you know, we drink
Speaker 1: tons and tons of calories all the day, Lord knows
Speaker 1: I do, usually in the form of potato based booze.
Speaker 1: But you know, but like my most recent article was
Speaker 1: about cheating in the gym, you know, because when you
Speaker 1: when you've been working out for as long as I have,
Speaker 1: you've played every role. You've been that young, new guy
Speaker 1: who thinks you know everything and you want to impart
Speaker 1: wisdom on other strangers. You know, you've been that big
Speaker 1: guy that people ask for advice, and then you've also
Speaker 1: been that old guy that people try to correct you
Speaker 1: when you're rocking your hips a bit when you're doing curls,
Speaker 1: and the reality of it is, I'm all about cheating, man.
Speaker 1: And like if I if I'm aiming for ten reps
Speaker 1: on this lift and I'm failing at seven as I
Speaker 1: should be on my last set, you know, I'll rock
Speaker 1: my hips a little bit and get to get that
Speaker 1: curl up because that's better than not doing it. If
Speaker 1: you're competing, that's not that's not true. When you're doing squats,
Speaker 1: you need to make sure you maintain good forms so
Speaker 1: you don't get hurt. But there are times when it's
Speaker 1: okay to cheat a little bit. You know, just like
Speaker 1: with the diet, give yourself a slice of cake every
Speaker 1: once in a while, otherwise you're gonna say, funk it
Speaker 1: need a whole cake events when you're when you're working out,
Speaker 1: give yourself an allowance to screw up a little bit
Speaker 1: here and there to help get yourself stronger. You know,
Speaker 1: very true, man. You know it's funny. I was looking
Speaker 1: at the comments from our subscribers on the articles, and
Speaker 1: I was I was actually surprised to see a pretty
Speaker 1: considerable amount of female readers who were digging these articles.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm really glad to see it too, because
Speaker 1: one of the biggest myths in the fitness industry is
Speaker 1: that women shouldn't lift weights. Uh. You know that women
Speaker 1: worry about getting bulky and muscular. You know that angular
Speaker 1: look that men aspire for. You know, women tend to
Speaker 1: want to avoid. But it's just not the case man.
Speaker 1: Lifting weights as a woman can really help improve your
Speaker 1: overall fitness. It's not gonna make you look manly. It
Speaker 1: takes a whole lot of work and a whole lot
Speaker 1: of testosterone to become a big guy, you know. Uh.
Speaker 1: And women might put in a whole lot of work,
Speaker 1: but genetically, hormonally, they're not going to be as prone
Speaker 1: to muscle development as a man would be. So if
Speaker 1: you and I sit here and work out the same
Speaker 1: amount of time, me and a woman, but she's not
Speaker 1: gonna bench for us three fifty pounds, uh, Like I am.
Speaker 1: When when all of a sudden and done. It's gonna
Speaker 1: take more for her to get there. Instead, what lifting
Speaker 1: weights will do for a woman is it will improve
Speaker 1: her overall fitness. It will make her physically stronger, it
Speaker 1: might improve in durance depending on how you lift, and
Speaker 1: it'll make you overall healthier. You know. But but our
Speaker 1: our aesthetic concerns or what always stopped us. You know,
Speaker 1: women don't want to get bulky, men want to get bulkier,
Speaker 1: you know, so we tend to have men will avoid
Speaker 1: cardio and women will avoid the weights. And we all
Speaker 1: need to be doing all of it. You know. If
Speaker 1: you go to uh the gym I go to. I
Speaker 1: go to a UFC gym, which I love. It's like seven.
Speaker 1: I will tell you, Alex, there are a ton of
Speaker 1: like hot chicks lifting weights constantly that fit like that.
Speaker 1: I G fitness model type. I love it. I'm yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm telling you I've got a lot of good friends that, uh,
Speaker 1: that are big in the fitness world. I used to
Speaker 1: work as a personal trainer for a little while, you know,
Speaker 1: thirty pounds ago, and uh, I've got a lot of
Speaker 1: friends that stuck with it, you know, and now, especially
Speaker 1: female marines who do figure competitions and stuff. And uh,
Speaker 1: I'm telling you, man, when when these girls are prepping
Speaker 1: for for a competition and they're posting pictures up on Facebook,
Speaker 1: no one's thinking, oh, that girl's got too many muscles. No,
Speaker 1: you know, everything you're saying is true. The thing that
Speaker 1: I think is always like the telltale thing is if
Speaker 1: a woman has like what you would describe as those
Speaker 1: pumpkin debts, then she's probably on some type of year.
Speaker 1: That's fair. That's fair. And when it comes to working
Speaker 1: on dirty you know, it's I'll say this, I am
Speaker 1: not gonna criticize anybody for using steroids. Lord knows, if
Speaker 1: I had ever had an opportunity when I was younger,
Speaker 1: I probably would have jumped at it, just because I
Speaker 1: was always an athlete and they weren't testing you for
Speaker 1: steroids when you played football for the Marine Corps and stuff.
Speaker 1: Probably would have might a much better player. But uh,
Speaker 1: you know, on the long term, on the long timeline,
Speaker 1: you want to avoid you know, the gear and the
Speaker 1: reason is in my opinion, and I learned this from
Speaker 1: a master sargeant a long time ago. He's a master
Speaker 1: guns now. He was like, if you start taking steroids
Speaker 1: in high school. Uh, you're gonna bottom out in college.
Speaker 1: And if you start taking them in college, you're gonna
Speaker 1: bottom out after college. Whenever you start taking steroids is
Speaker 1: when you start the end of your fitness career, you know,
Speaker 1: because eventually you're gonna have to cycle off of them.
Speaker 1: You know, you might not be able to afford to
Speaker 1: cycle back on. It's gonna be a lot harder to
Speaker 1: maintain the gains that you got, you know, when you
Speaker 1: were working out dirty. Uh. You know, aside from the
Speaker 1: there's a litany of medical problems that could follow, but
Speaker 1: there's a lot of them that won't you know, if
Speaker 1: you if you pay enough for the stuff. Uh, it's
Speaker 1: usually pretty safe. But but what you're basically doing is
Speaker 1: you're admitting that you're done after this. In my opinion,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm sure that there are listeners out there
Speaker 1: who might be all about the juice and and will disagree,
Speaker 1: but I I genuinely think that when you decide to
Speaker 1: resort to that, it means that you think you're on
Speaker 1: the tail end of your fitness career, you know, and
Speaker 1: it's becoming more though. You know, it's there's a lot
Speaker 1: of guys who are starting to like pick up steroids
Speaker 1: immediately when they start going to the gym, which is
Speaker 1: not a good move. But I do think a lot
Speaker 1: of it is because the instagram man. Dude, I'm telling well,
Speaker 1: the modern idea of what the male body is supposed
Speaker 1: to look like. I mean, if go back and watch
Speaker 1: that first X Men movie that came out in like
Speaker 1: two thousand, you know, and look at Hugh Jackman running
Speaker 1: around the X Mansion with a shirt off, and he
Speaker 1: just looks like a dude. He looks like your dad,
Speaker 1: you know, He's like just like a regular guy with
Speaker 1: a hairy chest and a dumb hair cut. And then
Speaker 1: you fast forward sixteen years the dudes in his like
Speaker 1: mid to late forties now and he is cock diesel. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, he's zero percent body fat, probably weighs two
Speaker 1: hundred and thirty pounds of straight muscle. And that's that's
Speaker 1: how we've shifted the idea of what the male form
Speaker 1: is supposed to look like. And just the last twenty
Speaker 1: years or so, you know, And so when you're a
Speaker 1: young guy, I can see. I mean, and I was
Speaker 1: a young guy, I had every supplement that you could
Speaker 1: imagine that you could buy at the g n C
Speaker 1: on Base I had in my locker, you know, and
Speaker 1: some of them I felt like work. Some of them
Speaker 1: didn't work. But it was important to me that I
Speaker 1: had that six pack and well. And once I started
Speaker 1: fighting and I was cutting weight, it became even more
Speaker 1: important to me that I was losing weight. But the
Speaker 1: idea that we have that men have to have, you know,
Speaker 1: three percent body fed or less. Uh, and they need
Speaker 1: to be able to bench press four hundred pounds just
Speaker 1: to look like a dude. You know, it's it's gonna
Speaker 1: increase the need for for people or the desire i'd
Speaker 1: say for people don't want to do steroids. But I'm
Speaker 1: telling you guys out there. I was asked the other
Speaker 1: day by this dude who mows my lawn, and he
Speaker 1: was like, man, you know, you're a real big guy.
Speaker 1: How did you get that big? And Uh, if those
Speaker 1: of you who saw my old man fitness articles you
Speaker 1: saw when I was twenty two, I wait a hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty five pounds, you know, and I wait two
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty five pounds. Now, granted some of that
Speaker 1: is potato chips, but uh, you know, when he's like
Speaker 1: you you must work out all the time. And I
Speaker 1: was like, it's not so much that I work out
Speaker 1: all day, it's that I work out every day and
Speaker 1: I have for ten years. You know. I I definitely
Speaker 1: took time off obviously. I've taken months off here and
Speaker 1: there for injury or just because I was in the slump.
Speaker 1: You know, we all we all fall off sometimes, but
Speaker 1: more or less consistently. I've been at it since, you know,
Speaker 1: two thousand and six, when I first enlisted. And that's
Speaker 1: what it really takes to be a big guy on
Speaker 1: the day to day basis without doing steroids and stuff.
Speaker 1: Is commitment, you know, And this this job makes it
Speaker 1: so that, you know, you could you could get those
Speaker 1: workouts in which I love and and like our copy
Speaker 1: editor Christian, who's also a former marine, I know he's
Speaker 1: always working out and and yeah, it gives you the
Speaker 1: freedom and the less excuses to not get it in
Speaker 1: that day. I would say a dozen, that doesn't you know.
Speaker 1: I write four articles a day, which means I am
Speaker 1: at my desk, you know, but twelve fourteen hours a
Speaker 1: day easily, but I get to dictate when those twelves
Speaker 1: and fourteen hours live. I Uh, like my older brother
Speaker 1: you know who's uh works in the racing industry. He
Speaker 1: works out a lot as well. He played U division
Speaker 1: to college football, used to be a kickboxer and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, and he's still he's still at it, and
Speaker 1: he's thirty five, and he's working out hard. And but
Speaker 1: he and I both complained to each other all the
Speaker 1: time about not having time to get our workouts in.
Speaker 1: But that's not really the case. Even if you're a
Speaker 1: real busy person, you know, and and I'm a real
Speaker 1: busy person, as is he. If you treat your workouts
Speaker 1: like a commitment that you made to someone else, it's
Speaker 1: a lot easier to fit them in. You know. When Ian,
Speaker 1: when you called me and you're like, hey, man, you
Speaker 1: know we want to have you on the show, I
Speaker 1: was like, great, what time? He said one o'clock, And
Speaker 1: I was like, okay, So at one o'clock I'm committed.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm not gonna do something else during that
Speaker 1: window of time. It's it's a it's a commitment that
Speaker 1: I've made the same way. When you and I get
Speaker 1: off the phone, I'm gonna head down to my basement
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna work out for an hour because I
Speaker 1: made a commitment to do that as well. And if
Speaker 1: I don't think of it as a thing I'm doing
Speaker 1: for me. But if I think of it instead as
Speaker 1: a requirement I need to fulfill, it's a lot easier
Speaker 1: not to skip it, you know what I mean. That's
Speaker 1: why a lot of people get personal trainers to more
Speaker 1: than anything, is that they they have to make that commitment. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, it's it gives you, like this social responsibility
Speaker 1: to maintain. Honestly, that's a great thing about social media.
Speaker 1: I know everybody likes to pick on the people who
Speaker 1: post jim selfies. I'm a fan of Jim selfies. Man,
Speaker 1: if taken a selfie at the gym when you go
Speaker 1: is enough to make you feel good about having gone,
Speaker 1: do it, man, post that gym selfie, throw on Instagram
Speaker 1: filter on it to make you look bigger or skinnier
Speaker 1: or leaner, or whatever it is that you want to do,
Speaker 1: so that you can feel good about what you did
Speaker 1: and come back and do it again tomorrow. You know,
Speaker 1: make sure you actually got a workout in and that
Speaker 1: you're not just doing a photo section. Yeah, that's fair
Speaker 1: And the big reason why I've got a weight bench
Speaker 1: in my basement. There's a gym right down the street
Speaker 1: I used to work out at all the time. I'm
Speaker 1: not a social lifter. I'm an angry, quiet, blasting music lifter.
Speaker 1: I'm furious at the weights. I'm trying to get through
Speaker 1: this workout because I'm mad at it and I'm mad
Speaker 1: at me for hurting. And when it's all said it done,
Speaker 1: you know, it's a cathartic experience. I feel better, you know.
Speaker 1: I go and late on the floor for a while
Speaker 1: and feel accomplished. So I like to work out by myself.
Speaker 1: But yeah, if you want to take some time to
Speaker 1: pop a quick selfie public quick selfie, man. But yeah,
Speaker 1: if you go to the gym to have a conversation
Speaker 1: by the bench and then take turns to taking selfies,
Speaker 1: we're not friends, you know, Like fair enough man, Um, Well,
Speaker 1: you're also working on an upcoming story on c i
Speaker 1: A Archives, and I wanted to hear all about that.
Speaker 1: Oh man, the CIA is an awesome They've got an
Speaker 1: awesome website. You know. I spend so much time on
Speaker 1: government websites that are dry because they have to be
Speaker 1: you know, uh dry, tough to navigate. Sometimes it's as
Speaker 1: though that they don't expect an audience to actually come
Speaker 1: to the website. They've prepared them all for an auditor
Speaker 1: to come in and check out to make sure that
Speaker 1: they hit the wickets. The CIA, on the other hand,
Speaker 1: has a really fun website, especially if you go digging
Speaker 1: through their Freedom of Information request archives. Everything that someone
Speaker 1: has requested through a full they leave posted in this database.
Speaker 1: And you can find stuff about flying saucers. You can
Speaker 1: find stuff about kgb uh, you know, influenced campaigns. You
Speaker 1: can find magazines that, for some reason they felt as
Speaker 1: though they needed to save and classify. A couple of
Speaker 1: months back, I found an entire study that they did
Speaker 1: about EESP where the doctor who actually conducted the study
Speaker 1: concluded at the end of it that she believed that
Speaker 1: psychic powers were legitimate and could be weaponized. You know,
Speaker 1: there's crazy stuff in there. Uh, and the story that
Speaker 1: you're talking about. I recently found a declassified which means
Speaker 1: it was once classified list of jokes about the Soviet
Speaker 1: Union that the CIA had prepared one of its deputy
Speaker 1: directors on I. I don't know the story behind it,
Speaker 1: because all you get is, uh, you know, here's a
Speaker 1: declassified document that you can see the scanned PDF of
Speaker 1: the jokes aren't very good, um, but it's about two
Speaker 1: pages of jokes that somebody had to sit there and write.
Speaker 1: I guess that the deputy director of the CIA would
Speaker 1: have some good jokes to crack at, you know, public
Speaker 1: functions or during speeches or some of them are are
Speaker 1: a little they're not off color, but they they insinuate
Speaker 1: wanting to assassinate Soviet leaders. So I don't know if
Speaker 1: they would have been used in mixed company. But it's
Speaker 1: that you can find the weirdest stuff on there. Man.
Speaker 1: It's great interesting, all right. And then also I saw
Speaker 1: that we got a tweet when you said you were
Speaker 1: coming on um on the topic of declassified stuff. Um,
Speaker 1: I guess, just really quick your feelings on the JFK
Speaker 1: files being declassified and coming out there, which my dad
Speaker 1: is a huge history buff for the JFK assassination stuff,
Speaker 1: and he clarified to me that this was going to
Speaker 1: come out anyway. Of course, Trump could have stopped it,
Speaker 1: but this wasn't you know, a Trump idea, As it's
Speaker 1: kind of being put out there. As you're a correct
Speaker 1: it was established that this was the year that all
Speaker 1: the information would be released decades ago. But you're right,
Speaker 1: Donald Trump feasibly could have made the decision to UH
Speaker 1: to bar its release. And he did say on Twitter
Speaker 1: when he talked about it, he was like, you know,
Speaker 1: appending a review of more information or something along those lines.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna let it be released. Honestly, I'll tell you
Speaker 1: one thing. Those documents will be released and will show
Speaker 1: nothing the conspiracy theorists will be excited about, because if
Speaker 1: they would, they wouldn't be released. You know, It's it's
Speaker 1: as simple as that the government is not going to
Speaker 1: set a time frame to declassify the fact that the
Speaker 1: CIA assassinated JFK. They could also knock out certain parts still, right, well, absolutely,
Speaker 1: they could absolutely redact him just like that got released.
Speaker 1: Know they were still certain stuff blacked out. You know
Speaker 1: when I when I was working at I and I,
Speaker 1: which is Inspector Instructor Training, I was training reservists for
Speaker 1: twenty marines and we would have audits, you know, where
Speaker 1: the headquarters Marine Corps would send marines in to look
Speaker 1: at everything that we did and make sure that we
Speaker 1: were doing things right. And you know, I was really
Speaker 1: good at audits because I had this understanding that they're
Speaker 1: only going to dig into what you present to them
Speaker 1: to dig into. You know. So if they're gonna come
Speaker 1: and they're gonna dig, they're gonna look through twenty of
Speaker 1: our files on this because they want to make sure
Speaker 1: we're doing this right. I'm gonna make sure that we've
Speaker 1: got twenty perfect files, you know, and I'm gonna make
Speaker 1: sure that I've got good answers for any questions that
Speaker 1: they have. The CIA is not dumber than me, you know,
Speaker 1: They're they're not going to They're going to present us
Speaker 1: with the information that we need to be presented when
Speaker 1: we need to be presented it. But they're not going
Speaker 1: to hand us a smoking gun and say not that
Speaker 1: the CIA was involved with the JFK assassination. Want to
Speaker 1: clarify that, but there if they were, they wouldn't go, oh,
Speaker 1: well by, it should be cool for us to let
Speaker 1: everybody know. That's not how it works. Yeah, you know. So,
Speaker 1: So I really do think that the release of these
Speaker 1: documents it would be a real interesting newsday because there's
Speaker 1: gonna be a couple of fun teadbits that we can
Speaker 1: pull out, especially for history buffs. But I don't think
Speaker 1: that there's gonna be any big revelations. I don't think
Speaker 1: that anybody will be shocked by what we find. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that seems to be the same consensus my dad had,
Speaker 1: and he has read so many books on the GfK assassination.
Speaker 1: It's one of his favorite topics. You know, it's always
Speaker 1: been fascinated by it and you know lived through it.
Speaker 1: So I understand why it's like people of our generation
Speaker 1: being fascinated by the events and nine eleven and you're
Speaker 1: just like people wanted to see those twenty eight pages
Speaker 1: of Saudi Arabia which I referenced earlier. UM I wanted
Speaker 1: to mention, of course, the Remembrance Rumble is coming up
Speaker 1: for Veterans Day and Remembrance Day in the UK, so
Speaker 1: if you're in the UK, you could buy tickets to that.
Speaker 1: UM and Software will be in attendance. It will be
Speaker 1: US off once again versus UK s OFFF But for
Speaker 1: those of you in the US, particularly by me in
Speaker 1: New York, emmatl Looney's to ten West fifty Street from
Speaker 1: one to four pm. My friend Andrew Wilkow is gonna
Speaker 1: be doing his Freedom Ride. They're gonna be collecting money
Speaker 1: for different charities including the Red Circle Foundation, UM Horses
Speaker 1: for Heroes out of Santa Fe, New Mexico, which Rick Iyanucci,
Speaker 1: former Green Beret runs. I'm a huge fan of that guy,
Speaker 1: a really nice guy. We gotta get him on soon. Um.
Speaker 1: So yeah, that'll be from one to four on Veterans Day,
Speaker 1: which is a Saturday, to ten West fifty Street. They're
Speaker 1: gonna be doing that whole freedom ride um of motorcycles
Speaker 1: across fifty Street. So I'm really excited. I'll be there.
Speaker 1: I'll see a bunch of you guys. I'm sure it's
Speaker 1: gonna get packed out. Um, if you can make the
Speaker 1: trip out to New York City for it, be there,
Speaker 1: or if you're in the UK, be there for the
Speaker 1: remembrance rumble, um, anything else that you want to promote out.
Speaker 1: I know that you always have your Instagram and stuff,
Speaker 1: and and since we were talking about lifting, you always
Speaker 1: keep up to date with all that on there. Oh yeah, well,
Speaker 1: by all means, please follow me on Twitter. You know
Speaker 1: I'm at Alex Hollings fifty two on Twitter. That's probably
Speaker 1: where I I interact with readers the most. You can
Speaker 1: find me on Facebook at facebook dot com slash Alex
Speaker 1: Hollings writer, and you can find me on Instagram and
Speaker 1: archetype fifty two, which you know, just just google that
Speaker 1: you'll find it, and you're not gonna find anything like
Speaker 1: like Ian says, it's not all that interesting to follow
Speaker 1: me on Instagram unless you're into, you know, jim selfies
Speaker 1: are pictures of cups of coffee, because those are pretty
Speaker 1: much the only two things I do. I think it's
Speaker 1: instrut interesting. I think it's interesting. Man, I like it.
Speaker 1: I appreciate it. I'm gonna tell you're pretty good on
Speaker 1: social media. You're like sometimes I log into Twitter just
Speaker 1: to see what it is that you're sharing. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: I mean I just have the soft Rep Radio Instagram.
Speaker 1: I don't even use my own at the moment, but um, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I try to do my best. I think the difference
Speaker 1: between the soft Rep Instagram and Twitter and the SOFTWAREP
Speaker 1: Radio is that because I'm running those, it's like a
Speaker 1: lot of what's going on here in New York and
Speaker 1: and we have like more of this big personality. I
Speaker 1: think that people can see the office and who's coming
Speaker 1: through here and what everybody is up to on a
Speaker 1: regular basis, especially because of the fact that I'm in
Speaker 1: New York. Brandon and Jacker in New York, and so
Speaker 1: is Jason Delgado, so we just have like a big
Speaker 1: presence here. Yeah. New York City is the beating heart
Speaker 1: of Softwrep. Absolutely. You know. It's cool for me, man,
Speaker 1: because I've never been to the studio, so I get
Speaker 1: to see it, you know, yeah, exactly, and everybody gets
Speaker 1: to see who's coming through at all times. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: I enjoyed. So yeah, as always, follow us on Twitter
Speaker 1: and Instagram at Softwrep Radio. Of course, got to tell
Speaker 1: you guys that as a reminder for those of you
Speaker 1: who are listening, for a limited time you can receive
Speaker 1: a fifty percent off membership to soft Rep TV, our
Speaker 1: channel that offers the most exclusive shows, documentaries and interviews
Speaker 1: covering the most exciting military content today. Softwarep TVs premier
Speaker 1: show Training Sell follows former special Operations forces as they
Speaker 1: participate in the most advanced training in the country, everything
Speaker 1: from shooting schools, defensive driving, jungle and winter warfare, climbing,
Speaker 1: and much more. Again, you can watch this content by
Speaker 1: subscribing the Softwrep TV at soft Rep tv dot us
Speaker 1: and take advantage of a limited time offer of fifty
Speaker 1: percent off your membership, so that's only four nine a month.
Speaker 1: So with that, you know you can become a team
Speaker 1: room member for less than ten bucks a month, become
Speaker 1: a softwarep TV subscriber for less than five bucks a month. Um,
Speaker 1: we're really making all this great content affordable and as
Speaker 1: well as now the podcast being free. So leave a
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Speaker 1: haven't got a chance to check out the soft Rep
Speaker 1: Crate Club, you're definitely gonna want to do that asap.
Speaker 1: It's a subscription to get a box of badass tack,
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Speaker 1: Here's the kicker. All of the gear is handpicked and
Speaker 1: tested by former special ops guys, so you know you're
Speaker 1: getting quality gear that's gonna work when you needed to.
Speaker 1: Creates we've set in the past have included gear like
Speaker 1: custom knives, multi tools, fire starters, E d C, med kits,
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Speaker 1: gear with your subscription, you're also supporting a veteran owned
Speaker 1: and run company. Plus, our Crate Club subscribers are invited
Speaker 1: to our annual club party. We had that in Vegas
Speaker 1: this year. We're gonna have it again in January. As
Speaker 1: Brandon also mentioned on the last podcast in New York City,
Speaker 1: Jim West is also going to be doing a soft
Speaker 1: rep Crate Club exclusive UH fighting class at Emmatoloneys, which
Speaker 1: is pretty damn cool. I mean, there's no one who
Speaker 1: knowss awesome. I'm so us I'm not going to be
Speaker 1: there for that. Yeah, there's no one in the world
Speaker 1: who knows like the art of bar fighting quite like
Speaker 1: Jim West of the most feared man in the world.
Speaker 1: I love Jim. To subscribe and start getting your gear,
Speaker 1: visit create Club dot us. We also have gift options available.
Speaker 1: That's Create Club dot Us. Last thing I'm gonna mention here.
Speaker 1: Have you ever wondered what it might be like tow
Speaker 1: captain some of the greatest warships of World War Two?
Speaker 1: If you're a part of this audience, you probably have,
Speaker 1: so you should check out World of Warships, the free
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Speaker 1: to begin your naval adventure. Make sure to enter the
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Speaker 1: seventeen when you download to get a ton of bonus
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Speaker 1: I think you guys are really going to dig that.
Speaker 1: Check it out Command Warships. Uh And I think that
Speaker 1: that's it. Man. This has been a great show. It's
Speaker 1: been a blast. Thanks for having me absolutely. Thanks aut
Speaker 1: Nuco listening to see Ladia a part of Hurricanes Up
Speaker 1: the Difficult, then immediately the impossible by acquainting Telly. Shows
Speaker 1: are recorded at our studio in Chelsea, New York City.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to our producer and co host Ian Scott.
Speaker 1: Follow the show on Twitter at self Rip Ladia eight