Speaker 1: Ah beaute force. If it doesn't work, you're just not
Speaker 1: using enough. You're listening to Software Radio Special Operations, military
Speaker 1: news and straight talk with the guys and the community.
Speaker 1: Software Radio on Time on Target. Ian scott O here
Speaker 1: with Alex Hollings. Before we get into anything, I want
Speaker 1: to let you know about Pelican. Really excited to have
Speaker 1: them on board. Uh. They have hard sided cores that
Speaker 1: are all made in the USA. Most competitors, including Jetty,
Speaker 1: make most of their stuff overseas. They have an actual
Speaker 1: lifetime warranty, a wide variety of sizes and colors which
Speaker 1: actually have ten different sizes and eleven colors, so huge,
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Speaker 1: a trusted brand since ninety six. They're seventy court cooler
Speaker 1: can hold ice up to nine days. That's pretty awesome
Speaker 1: because I feel like you go to a barbecue or
Speaker 1: something and uh, you know, by the end of the
Speaker 1: night the ice is all melted. I mean nine days,
Speaker 1: that's a long amount of time. Well's looking about these
Speaker 1: things in terms of how long I could be drunk
Speaker 1: in the woods. So they're light other cores WAGH thirty
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Speaker 1: under the lid that should come in handy ergonomic handles
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Speaker 1: Coupon code is soft rep s O F R E P.
Speaker 1: If you're listening to the show, I'm pretty sure you're
Speaker 1: familiar without to spell it. Pelican Cooors dot com promo
Speaker 1: code soft rep. Such a variety of stuff to choose from.
Speaker 1: I know, Alex, you were raving about them as I
Speaker 1: was telling you. They're on board it all this month,
Speaker 1: man o, man, do I have some experience with Pelican
Speaker 1: cases when I was out in Africa. You know a
Speaker 1: CEC for I don't know if they call it something
Speaker 1: different in other branches, but it's effectively you know, a
Speaker 1: field expedient command center that we put up over this
Speaker 1: We can put it up in just a few hours.
Speaker 1: It's a huge building full of TVs and communications equipment
Speaker 1: and everything that we brought with us on deployments. We
Speaker 1: brought with us in Pelican cases. You know, it's tough
Speaker 1: to find something that can hold up to the kind
Speaker 1: of damage. Honestly, just that a bunch of eighteen year
Speaker 1: olds carrying boxes out of a truck will will you know,
Speaker 1: subject your equipment to And I mean as a result,
Speaker 1: I ended up using Pelican stuff too for my wallet
Speaker 1: for my phone when I was in country. You know,
Speaker 1: you don't want to get that stuff all wet. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm a big fan of Pelican. I didn't know they
Speaker 1: were a sponsor. That's even better. Well, yeah, this is
Speaker 1: the first show that they're sponsoring, and we're really excited
Speaker 1: to have them on board. Uh with that, you know,
Speaker 1: I want to get into everything. I feel like this
Speaker 1: audience knows Alex really well. But you know, there's new
Speaker 1: people tuning into each episode. So former Rene writer for
Speaker 1: the News Rep dot com and the newest thing since
Speaker 1: you've last been on is now the editor of Fighter Sweep,
Speaker 1: which was our site that was sort of abandoned for
Speaker 1: a while, and now you're you know, relaunching it and
Speaker 1: it's getting a huge traction. Yeah, man, I'm I'm excited.
Speaker 1: You know, I found my way to fighters Sweep in
Speaker 1: an indirect path. You know. The previous editors of Fighter
Speaker 1: Sweep have all been military aviators, and I'm not I'm
Speaker 1: notably not a pilot running the site. But the way
Speaker 1: I found my way to it was by way of
Speaker 1: foreign policy analysis, you know. Uh, A big part of
Speaker 1: foreign policy analysis is having a strong understanding of the
Speaker 1: military capabilities of friendly and adversarial nations, you know. And Uh,
Speaker 1: over the years, I've done a lot of work on
Speaker 1: Russian military assets and Chinese, particularly their air assets. Uh.
Speaker 1: And just you know, over time, you know, I've written
Speaker 1: about Chinese and Russian military air forces for you know,
Speaker 1: for News Rep obviously, I've done it for Popular Mechanics
Speaker 1: a couple of times. Uh. And so when we're came
Speaker 1: around that they wanted to bring fighters Sweep back, you know,
Speaker 1: I I immediately emailed Nick Kaufman and was like, you know,
Speaker 1: I know you're probably looking for an outside editor, but
Speaker 1: I would be happy to jump in with some written
Speaker 1: content here. And you know, just through conversation, he liked
Speaker 1: the ideas that I had for the site, the directions
Speaker 1: I wanted to go. I wanted to really emphasize bringing
Speaker 1: in expert analysis for military aviators, but I also wanted
Speaker 1: to include a bit of foreign policy analysis as as
Speaker 1: it pertains to these types of aircraft. A great example
Speaker 1: being China's J twenty Russia's TO fifty seven. These are
Speaker 1: both fifth generation fighter jets. The theoretically, you are supposed
Speaker 1: to be direct competitions for the best things that we've
Speaker 1: got in the air right now here in the States.
Speaker 1: We're in a really interesting time when it comes to
Speaker 1: military aviation. And I feel like I got a winning
Speaker 1: lottery ticket by getting to jump on board. Just as
Speaker 1: all these big stories are breaking. You know, we've got
Speaker 1: the F thirty five entering into combat operations in Israel
Speaker 1: and with the Marine Corps this past year. You know,
Speaker 1: we got the J twenty entering into production. Theoretically by
Speaker 1: the end of this year. Uh, it's gonna be a
Speaker 1: big couple of years for military aviation. The news is
Speaker 1: going to be dominated by a lot of this new
Speaker 1: technology and the years to come. And I'm pumped about
Speaker 1: getting to position Fighter sweep in a way that it
Speaker 1: becomes a source you can cite for reliable analysis about
Speaker 1: not just what these planes can do, but how these
Speaker 1: planes capabilities really do change the way we interact as nations.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm excited you're You're kind of like Brandon
Speaker 1: in that sense, and that I mean Brandon technically is
Speaker 1: a pilot, but he wasn't a pilot in the military
Speaker 1: and was just a aviation enthusiast. I think people see
Speaker 1: his pictures online before they get to know him, they
Speaker 1: assume he was like a Navy pilot, especially with the
Speaker 1: plane with the blue angel colors and all that. But
Speaker 1: you know, I know, just as a friend of Brandon's,
Speaker 1: even though he was a sniper, he's a guy who
Speaker 1: rarely is at the shooting range. It's just something that
Speaker 1: he did. It was a part of his life for
Speaker 1: so long. But he's flying every week, at the very
Speaker 1: least once a week. I gotta tell you, man, it
Speaker 1: is really hard not to fall in love with these
Speaker 1: jets when you're around them. You know, Uh, you go
Speaker 1: to a just go to an air show, let alone,
Speaker 1: you know, being a uniform and being on base, but
Speaker 1: go to an air show and walk around some of
Speaker 1: these aircraft. This scale of them is one thing I
Speaker 1: think a lot of people would be surprised about. You know,
Speaker 1: you walk around enough twenty two. It's not like walking
Speaker 1: around a Toyota camera. You know, it's it's incredible. And
Speaker 1: so when you get to see what these planes in person,
Speaker 1: or if you get to see what they can do
Speaker 1: in the skies, it's hard not to just be taken aback,
Speaker 1: you know, like how the United States, the world in
Speaker 1: general has kind of fallen by the wayside in terms
Speaker 1: of incredible advancements in the past few decades. We're not
Speaker 1: building bases on the Moon like we were promised for
Speaker 1: you know, We're we're not flying around in hovercrafts like
Speaker 1: we hope we would be by now. But the one
Speaker 1: place you can really find technology fulfilling the promises of
Speaker 1: previous generations, it's a military aviation. You know, there's if
Speaker 1: you look at a comparison video of a harrier versts
Speaker 1: is enough thirty five landing on a carrier, for instance,
Speaker 1: you can see just how far we've come in a
Speaker 1: very short amount of time. You know, the thirty five
Speaker 1: it lands like it's on rails. You know, it moves
Speaker 1: like robotically. Down the harrier is like wrestling a bear.
Speaker 1: You're trying to land that thing without dying, is the goal.
Speaker 1: You know. So when you see things like that, it's
Speaker 1: hard not to just be like, it's hard for your
Speaker 1: interest not to be piqued, even if you're not an aviator.
Speaker 1: You know, I started out analyzing, you know, I worked
Speaker 1: my way to aircraft by way of First it was
Speaker 1: you know, naval equipment. Then eventually it became things like tanks.
Speaker 1: Air assets kinda ended up being the last element of it,
Speaker 1: but it was the element that I fell in love with.
Speaker 1: Very cool, man, is it? By the way, this is
Speaker 1: a little bit off subject, but but sort of on
Speaker 1: the subject. Is it weird to you that I've slept
Speaker 1: over the hangar that Brandon has in California? I mean,
Speaker 1: I was like, what I'm gonna say, the the planes
Speaker 1: were awesome to see. I loved it. All that quote
Speaker 1: was cool. But that I I turned down getting in
Speaker 1: Brandon's plane. I'm just very scared of getting in one
Speaker 1: of those little planes. I'm not gonna lie, guys, I
Speaker 1: gotta tell you from my perspective, and this is this
Speaker 1: is something I've had to come to terms with as
Speaker 1: a dad in the past year. From my perspective, it's
Speaker 1: always about if I were to die right now, how
Speaker 1: cool would the story be? Honestly, Diane in a small
Speaker 1: plane flown by an avcal is a pretty good story. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I trust Brandon completely, and it's I shouldn't even say
Speaker 1: fear I'm just because I would get in it. I
Speaker 1: just know I wouldn't enjoy it, just like if someone
Speaker 1: convinces me enough to go on a roller coaster. I've
Speaker 1: gotten on, but for the most part, the whole time,
Speaker 1: like when is this gonna end? I hate this? I'm
Speaker 1: not I'm not someone who's like screaming. I'm just inside
Speaker 1: being like, ah, when is this gonna be over? I
Speaker 1: feel like I have the same experience in one of
Speaker 1: those no, I could totally appreciate in a past life.
Speaker 1: Back before I was a writer, I worked in the
Speaker 1: racing industry, and uh, A big part of racing is
Speaker 1: what they call him hot laps. You know. Hot laps
Speaker 1: are are usually something that you give is kind of
Speaker 1: an incentive or like a hook up for a buddy
Speaker 1: years and what it is is like, let's say you
Speaker 1: have a big race at Roaded Lana, for instance. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna plug back because my brother runs Road Atlanta. So
Speaker 1: let's say you have a big race at road Atlanta.
Speaker 1: During a break between races, you'll see lap cars going
Speaker 1: out there. You'll see every once in all a corvettera
Speaker 1: ferrari hitting the track and doing a lap or two.
Speaker 1: Often that's a hot lap. It's a professional driver with
Speaker 1: someone in the passenger seat that knows somebody or is
Speaker 1: a company hook up or something, and you're giving them
Speaker 1: an experience on the race track. Usually hot labs are
Speaker 1: pretty docile. They feel crazy to a guy who hasn't
Speaker 1: done a hundred miles an hour, you know, approaching a
Speaker 1: ninety degree turn before. But if you've driven a race
Speaker 1: car before, hot laps are usually pretty safe, pretty calm.
Speaker 1: Unless you're a guy who has driven race cars and
Speaker 1: your brother or some other asshole you know as the
Speaker 1: driver for the hot lab. Those are usually the times
Speaker 1: that you feel like your life is really in jeopardy.
Speaker 1: I'm very familiar with that sense of foreboding, like I
Speaker 1: don't think I want to get in this car, but
Speaker 1: you've done it. You're saying, oh, absolutely, I've done hot laps,
Speaker 1: and I've driven hot laps and written in hot laps,
Speaker 1: and lord knows this what every kind of cool car
Speaker 1: on the market, but every once in a while. But
Speaker 1: my brother is a fantastic driver. He was the racer
Speaker 1: for a while. He became a racing instructor for years
Speaker 1: before he got into the executive side of racing. But
Speaker 1: something about my brother putting me in a car always
Speaker 1: makes him want to try to kill me. I've never
Speaker 1: I've never been to like a NASCAR race, and I've
Speaker 1: always wanted to. I don't I'm not like a NASCAR enthusiast,
Speaker 1: but whenever I just see NASCAR and TV, I'm like,
Speaker 1: this looks like a great time. I'll be honestly, I
Speaker 1: actually wasn't a NASCAR guy, so I worked The racing
Speaker 1: team I worked for was an open wheel Formula Dodge team,
Speaker 1: which is it's like an indiecr but smaller the pound
Speaker 1: for pound about as fast as a Dodge Viper. So
Speaker 1: skip Barber Racing as a whole series, or used to
Speaker 1: have a whole series for these cars. It's really competitive racing,
Speaker 1: but the cost of entrance isn't quite as high as
Speaker 1: yourself into a million and a half hour car. You know.
Speaker 1: Uh so at these race tracks you see everything from
Speaker 1: open wheel to road course to the occasional bush North
Speaker 1: type NASCAR race. I'm not a big fan of oival
Speaker 1: track NASCAR races. It's it's boring to me, I know,
Speaker 1: that's it looks like a party more than anything. That's
Speaker 1: all racing is man when you go to you know,
Speaker 1: for instance, I went to Petite Lamans. I covered it
Speaker 1: for news rapping for the load out room this past year.
Speaker 1: And Petite Lamans is an endurance race where they have
Speaker 1: three classes of cars racing simultaneously on the same track.
Speaker 1: So you've got prototype cars that are like airplanes without
Speaker 1: wings all the way down to get class cars that
Speaker 1: are like the Porsche you buy at the dealership, and
Speaker 1: they're all racing at the same time on crowded streets.
Speaker 1: It's intense, it's terrifying, it's exciting, but it's also like
Speaker 1: twelve hours long, so everybody who's there to watch the
Speaker 1: race is pretty much just tailgating for twelve hours straight.
Speaker 1: It's like it's like going to a rich guy would stock.
Speaker 1: It's it's pretty awesome. You can't eat it now. It
Speaker 1: looks like it will be a lot of fun. So
Speaker 1: back with a fighter sleep, I was actually wondering why,
Speaker 1: while you were in the Marines, did you have any
Speaker 1: interest in the aviation field. Did you want to do
Speaker 1: something in that field possibly? You know. I wrote about
Speaker 1: this in an op ed the other day about why
Speaker 1: recruiting is down when I joined. My story of joining
Speaker 1: the Marines is different than a lot of folks because
Speaker 1: I was older. I was twenty one. I had already
Speaker 1: been turned down by the Marine Corps before because an
Speaker 1: old ankle injury from football. But then in two thousand six,
Speaker 1: we had this big recruiting push, you know, we really
Speaker 1: needed to get more guys into the fight. So I
Speaker 1: went back to the recruiter. My wife was in the
Speaker 1: hospital at the time and we didn't have health insurance.
Speaker 1: She was my girlfriend. We didn't have health insurance. So
Speaker 1: I went into my local recruiter and I was like, hey, man,
Speaker 1: so you guys give health insurance for you know, for
Speaker 1: the service member and the spouse, right, And he was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: of course. And I said, so when I signed the papers,
Speaker 1: when does the health insurance start? And he was like, well,
Speaker 1: the health insurance would start when you leave for boot camp,
Speaker 1: and I was like, fantastic, when can I go? And uh,
Speaker 1: so I signed, I, I got married, signed the papers,
Speaker 1: left on Sunday. I signed the papers on Wednesday, left
Speaker 1: on Sunday. So I didn't pick my job. I told
Speaker 1: him I take any job I could get, which anyone
Speaker 1: who's listening to this podcast and has served knows what
Speaker 1: a terrible fucking idea that is. It was. It was
Speaker 1: a real bad call. It worked out for me in
Speaker 1: the long run, but also I ended up at a
Speaker 1: desk for like the first year that I was in
Speaker 1: the Marine Corps until I was able to kind of
Speaker 1: finagle my way out by volunteering for every kind of
Speaker 1: extra course I could find. And uh but throughout you know,
Speaker 1: my first duty station was twenty nine palms and out
Speaker 1: at Camp Wilson, which Marines are familiar with. It's where
Speaker 1: Mohabi Vipers located. It's where we trained for deployments to Iraq. Uh.
Speaker 1: There's an airstrip out at Camp Wilson that you'd see
Speaker 1: Marine Corps harriers landing at pretty regularly and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: You cannot be driving through Camp Wilson, which is just
Speaker 1: a desert waste land and watch harriers come flying over
Speaker 1: you and land vertically without falling in love. You know,
Speaker 1: my wife worked at Camp Wilson for a while. We
Speaker 1: would just hang out near the fence and watch, you know,
Speaker 1: the planes come in. Then when I when I changed
Speaker 1: duty stations, I went out to Massachusetts and the closest
Speaker 1: large base was Handsome Air Force Space. So we spent
Speaker 1: a lot of time on Handsome Air Force Space again,
Speaker 1: just watching aircraft come and go, talking to pilots, getting
Speaker 1: a sense of what life in the Air Force is like,
Speaker 1: which at that point I really didn't know. Spoilers it's better,
Speaker 1: but it I just, by happenstance, ended up being surrounded
Speaker 1: by aircraft throughout most of my Marine Corps career. Never
Speaker 1: gotten the seat of any of them or anything like that.
Speaker 1: I just got to be awe inspired by them, you know.
Speaker 1: So now working with fighters, we've been getting to interact
Speaker 1: with these pilots directly and really get their perspectives on things. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's really been a dream come true. So you've been
Speaker 1: interviewing actual pilots since you've gotten the job. Absolutely, I've
Speaker 1: been interviewing some guys. I've been talking to some guys.
Speaker 1: I've got something actually that Brandon is helping me put
Speaker 1: together possibly here next month that will be really really exciting.
Speaker 1: I'll be doing some work hopefully here with some aggressive squadrons. Uh.
Speaker 1: For those who aren't familiar, aggressor aircraft are effectively now
Speaker 1: often contractor companies that operate own and operate their own
Speaker 1: fleets of fighters that they engage our fighters against. That
Speaker 1: things like the Naval Weapons School top On School, so
Speaker 1: that we can get experience competing against aircraft that aren't
Speaker 1: our F sixteens, our F fifteen is our fenty two. Uh.
Speaker 1: These aggressor squadrons are operating often dated platforms, but so
Speaker 1: were most of the nations we'll be flying against. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know a guy in Hawaii actually just crashed and
Speaker 1: got hurt pretty badly. He was a civilian contractor. I
Speaker 1: believe he was retired Air Force who was flying an
Speaker 1: aggressive fighter. It eludes me not right now which what
Speaker 1: what airplane he was in, but it's it's becoming more
Speaker 1: and more prominent where you're seeing civilians, effectively often retired military,
Speaker 1: flying civilian owned fighters against our fighters in training. And
Speaker 1: I think it's a story that not a lot of
Speaker 1: people know about. So I'm really hoping I'll be able
Speaker 1: to get get in the hangar with some of these guys,
Speaker 1: maybe even get some seat time and some of these
Speaker 1: planes and really tell people what it's like to be
Speaker 1: an addressor pilot whose job is to fight the best
Speaker 1: of the best that we've got in the U. S. Military.
Speaker 1: You know, I think it's how cool a job is that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I feel like for each of these, like high
Speaker 1: risk job, there's a certain mentality that comes with it.
Speaker 1: And and interviewing guys who do different high risk things,
Speaker 1: I see that, you know, when we interview e O
Speaker 1: D s on here, I think there's a certain attitude
Speaker 1: they have or that snipers have, and I'm sure that
Speaker 1: that pilots do. I would I agree, you know. And uh,
Speaker 1: my experiences in the military are are a lot different
Speaker 1: than a lot of like a guy like a sniper
Speaker 1: for instance, or or a fighter pilot. But unfortunately, or fortunately,
Speaker 1: one of the longer duties I had in the Marine
Speaker 1: Corps was funeral on our duty. You know. I I
Speaker 1: was a sergeant on funeral on our for close to
Speaker 1: four years. Lord knows, I did probably a thousand funerals. Uh.
Speaker 1: And the one thing I could tell you throughout is
Speaker 1: that you'll there's you'll find that people whose jobs require
Speaker 1: looking death in the eye, I guess on a fairly
Speaker 1: regular basis, you'll find that even their family members approach
Speaker 1: it in a different way. You know. Uh, It's like
Speaker 1: it's this understanding that it could happen at any time.
Speaker 1: It really forces you to face your own mortality in
Speaker 1: a way that I think a lot of folks don't
Speaker 1: engage with. I think most of us pretend we're never
Speaker 1: gonna die. You know, it's interesting you said it because
Speaker 1: did you listen to the interview I did with Christian Bustler,
Speaker 1: who you know worked on military funerals and that you know,
Speaker 1: bury these guys and grape the flag over them. He
Speaker 1: wrote the book No Tougher Duty, No Greater Honor. I
Speaker 1: mean we went pretty in depth with that. I have
Speaker 1: the book, but I only listened to about twenty minutes
Speaker 1: of Excep's how much Cardio I did that day? Got
Speaker 1: you all right? I was like, when you said twenty minutes,
Speaker 1: I was like, I hope we I didn't bore you
Speaker 1: or something. You're like, I right have done with this.
Speaker 1: I thought it was an interesting Um. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: just an interesting perspective from a guy that you don't
Speaker 1: often here and having to deal with death that up
Speaker 1: close and personal, and how seriously he took the job.
Speaker 1: So you know, it led to a lot of personal
Speaker 1: growth for me. The first couple of funerals that you work,
Speaker 1: and I want to point out a large number of
Speaker 1: the funerals that I worked for were for men or
Speaker 1: women that led long fulfilled lives. They passed away and
Speaker 1: their eighties or nineties sometimes and they earned their rights
Speaker 1: to a funeral honor service through their service earlier in
Speaker 1: their life. A number of the funerals I worked, however,
Speaker 1: we're not you know, many of them were for people
Speaker 1: who are lost in combat. I'd argue more were for suicidence. Uh.
Speaker 1: And it it forces you to either you either adopt
Speaker 1: one or the other perspective in order to survive funeral duty.
Speaker 1: In my opinion, you either empathize with everyone or you
Speaker 1: can't empathize with anyone, you know, And I think I
Speaker 1: bounced back and forth between the two extremes a bit
Speaker 1: over the years that I did it. But the first
Speaker 1: few funerals that you work, when you start to see
Speaker 1: parallels between the departed life and your own. When you
Speaker 1: see your wife's face in their face, or you see
Speaker 1: your own kids and their kids, it gets really really
Speaker 1: hard to carry out your duty the way you're supposed to,
Speaker 1: you know, so you've got to kind of distance yourself
Speaker 1: from it a little bit. So I would say early on,
Speaker 1: I think that I probably insulated myself. I tried really
Speaker 1: hard not to let the people's experiences affect me, even
Speaker 1: though when you're the senior marine and a funeral duty,
Speaker 1: you might maintain a relationship with the next of kin
Speaker 1: for months or years. You know. I'm friends with some
Speaker 1: of them on Facebook still, because it's your responsibility to
Speaker 1: kind of help them get through this process. You know.
Speaker 1: Some of them are better prepared than others, some of
Speaker 1: them are are more willing to accept help than others. Uh.
Speaker 1: But through that engage, you can't help but grow, you know.
Speaker 1: And uh, it changed the way that I saw death.
Speaker 1: That changed the way that I saw life, And it
Speaker 1: definitely changed the way that I saw service, you know.
Speaker 1: I Uh. I used to always say my job is
Speaker 1: to bury heroes. You know, that's it's a that's a
Speaker 1: rough gig. But the harder job is being those heroes,
Speaker 1: you know, and it gives you. It gives you some
Speaker 1: great perspective. It's interesting. We got into this because I
Speaker 1: know that another topic that you wanted to discuss that
Speaker 1: connects with this is that you've been writing about the
Speaker 1: v A bowling on suicide prevention. This is absolutely outrageous
Speaker 1: to me. For in case you haven't seen the article
Speaker 1: or any of the other headlines around the internet about it. Effectively,
Speaker 1: you know, the v A has suffered a changeover in
Speaker 1: leadership rapidly multiple times in the past year or two
Speaker 1: under President Trump that have been almost as many Secretaries
Speaker 1: of Veterans Affairs as there were under Obama and W.
Speaker 1: Bush's administrations combined. How many have there been so far?
Speaker 1: Do you know? I want to say there's been five.
Speaker 1: I've got it open somewhere around here. Although to be fair,
Speaker 1: that's kind of a misleading number because one of them
Speaker 1: was a previously acting Secretary Veterans Affairs who then was appointed, uh,
Speaker 1: the official Secretary Veterans Affairs. To be honest with you,
Speaker 1: that's neither here nor there. That's the excuse the v
Speaker 1: A has provided for effectively freezing their suicide prevention efforts
Speaker 1: over the past almost two years, which is absolutely outrageous
Speaker 1: to me. Now, I mean, that should be the number
Speaker 1: one thing where we have more guys taking their own
Speaker 1: lives and losing their lives in combat. As a reminder
Speaker 1: that twenty that OFT touted twenty two suicides a day
Speaker 1: figure may not be entirely accurate. It might be closer
Speaker 1: to twenty one and change. But more than twenty veterans
Speaker 1: killed themselves every day, and even worse than that, veterans
Speaker 1: in our age group, you know, the eighteen to thirty
Speaker 1: five year old veterans. UH, they've seen a dramatic increase
Speaker 1: in suicides over the past few years. In two thousand
Speaker 1: fifteen and two thousand sixteen, which were the last years
Speaker 1: that we had real hard data that we can already
Speaker 1: pull from UH, veterans aged eighteen to thirty five saw
Speaker 1: an increase from forty points something out of a hundred
Speaker 1: thousand veterans suicides per year to forty So that's a
Speaker 1: pretty sharp uptick considering the fact that this is something
Speaker 1: we're all cognizant of, you know, UH, in the media
Speaker 1: on Facebook, it's hard to find something related to veterans
Speaker 1: without finding someone talking about veteran suicide, and and but
Speaker 1: the figures are showing that we're not making any progress.
Speaker 1: So then when you find out that the v A
Speaker 1: literally did not produce a single new piece of media
Speaker 1: content throughout the year of two thousand eighteen aimed at
Speaker 1: preventing suicide, despite having more than six million dollars allocated
Speaker 1: to do so. When you look at the fact that
Speaker 1: the number of six million, when you think about it,
Speaker 1: that's a pretty small number. Now, it's important to note
Speaker 1: that that six million dollars was year marked specifically for
Speaker 1: radio and television advertising directed at suicide prevention. We're not
Speaker 1: talking about their overall d A budget. We're not talking
Speaker 1: about the vas overall budget. We're talking about earmarks specifically
Speaker 1: for suicide prevention on television and radio. They didn't use it.
Speaker 1: They just left it on the table, you know. Uh.
Speaker 1: In two thousand sixteen, the v A posted three and
Speaker 1: thirty nine pieces of content on social media aimed at
Speaker 1: suicide prevention. The next year, it dropped to explain that
Speaker 1: to me, as suicide's going up, they're trying less to
Speaker 1: prevent it. And the reason that they've provided is that
Speaker 1: they've had a revolving door of leadership, you know, uh,
Speaker 1: to be fair, in two thousand eighteen, the suet the
Speaker 1: National Director of Suicide Prevention was gapped for three months.
Speaker 1: That role, you know, it's an important role in this fight.
Speaker 1: When you're changing secretaries of the v A repeatedly, you know,
Speaker 1: it makes it tough to have a unified vision for
Speaker 1: the organization. However, I call bullshit on any of those excuses.
Speaker 1: You've got people who have been working for the VA
Speaker 1: for years. You know, You've got people who have been
Speaker 1: in these position for years. They know what the responsibilities are,
Speaker 1: they know what the situation is, and they literally just
Speaker 1: dropped the ball. And you know what I mean. Part
Speaker 1: of me says like, hmm, I wonder how effective these
Speaker 1: radio and TV ads even are in suicide prevention. But
Speaker 1: on the other hand, I mean, I would think that
Speaker 1: a veteran who happens to be hearing it, who might
Speaker 1: be thinking of, you know, doing such a thing, might
Speaker 1: hear it and it might make them feel hey, I'm
Speaker 1: not forgotten about. There's there's others out there like me.
Speaker 1: I mean, I would think that it would have to
Speaker 1: have some positive effect. Now I'm personal backstory for me.
Speaker 1: I've had three marines that worked with me out on
Speaker 1: twenty one Palms commits suicide. You know, that's a lot.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm one guy. I know four people who
Speaker 1: have killed themselves. You know that's that's a really high number.
Speaker 1: You know. I was very closely involved in two of them.
Speaker 1: I helped find the body of one of them. Uh,
Speaker 1: this is a subject that's near and dear to my heart.
Speaker 1: I don't want to say his name, but the first
Speaker 1: time one of my marines killed himself, I was a
Speaker 1: lance corporal who had just been put in charge of
Speaker 1: his own shop. Uh. Two weeks later, one of my
Speaker 1: guys hung himself. It was really difficult on all the
Speaker 1: Marines that were with us. It was difficult on me
Speaker 1: as a leader. I can't imagine how difficult it was
Speaker 1: for his family. I engaged with them a bit, but
Speaker 1: they really weren't interested in talking to any Marines at
Speaker 1: the time. At the time. Back then, we're talking two
Speaker 1: thousand six, maybe two thousand seven. At the time, suicide
Speaker 1: prevention was already part of our training syllabus. But the
Speaker 1: military is really good at power pointing things to death,
Speaker 1: and I'd argue most of our suicide prevention training really
Speaker 1: just taught those with suicidal ideations how not to red
Speaker 1: flag yourself. Uh. You know, we we put up a
Speaker 1: power point and we said look for these four things.
Speaker 1: So if you're the type of guy who's thinking about
Speaker 1: killing yourself, what you really learned from that course was
Speaker 1: make sure my platoon sergeant doesn't see me exhibiting any
Speaker 1: these four symptoms. You know. I one of the other
Speaker 1: suicides happened post service, UH talked to the guy that night.
Speaker 1: I didn't realize where he was. I here a lot
Speaker 1: of guilt, uh, surrounding those two, in particular, specifically because
Speaker 1: I dealt with the people the day that had happened.
Speaker 1: I even at one point tried to engage with one
Speaker 1: of them because I was worried about it. Uh. And he,
Speaker 1: you know, he was really good at and I guess
Speaker 1: selling me on the idea that he was on the
Speaker 1: up and up, you know. But ultimately, you know, you
Speaker 1: can play the what F game all you want, but
Speaker 1: it's hard for me not to play the what F
Speaker 1: game at three o'clock in the morning, you know, drinking
Speaker 1: in my basement. I guess if people at the v
Speaker 1: A are willing to let suicide prevention go by the wayside,
Speaker 1: just because they don't have a manager looking over their shoulder.
Speaker 1: It really makes me wonder if they have any real
Speaker 1: sense at all of how a suicide reverberates throughout the
Speaker 1: military community, throughout the veteran community, not just for the
Speaker 1: person who passed away, not just for their loved ones. Statistically,
Speaker 1: when one suicide happens within a unit or a veterans group,
Speaker 1: the likelihood that other veterans or service members within that
Speaker 1: group will commit suicide goes up. When you see someone
Speaker 1: commit suicide, it doesn't scare you away from it. By
Speaker 1: and large, it encourages you to pursue that same outcome.
Speaker 1: Suicides are real serious issue. It's not just an issue
Speaker 1: because of decency and ethics. It's an issue for military
Speaker 1: readiness active duties. Suicides will not just affect the section
Speaker 1: the shop, the fire team that loses a marine or
Speaker 1: a soldier and airman, a sailor. It affects the entire unit.
Speaker 1: It affects the entire command. It affects your combat capability.
Speaker 1: We're not engaging with this issue, and you know we're
Speaker 1: videotaping ourselves doing push ups on Facebook. That's great. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm glad that people are trying to raise awareness,
Speaker 1: but at this point, I'd argue, we're aware, it's time
Speaker 1: to do something about it, and the v A should
Speaker 1: be at the forefront of doing something about this, and
Speaker 1: instead they spent the last two years just sitting on
Speaker 1: their hands. Uh. And now they want to blame Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: I'm not a Donald Trump fan, but honestly, you made
Speaker 1: the sandwich, you need to eat it. Yeah. And as
Speaker 1: you're talking about this, just thinking about effective ads they
Speaker 1: could be doing. I mean, I've interviewed you know, I'm
Speaker 1: just talking that's from my own experience. Plenty of guys
Speaker 1: who have had the issue of struggling with suicidal thoughts.
Speaker 1: You know. I think of Mike Schlitz, who lost both
Speaker 1: his arms in combat, and I'm trying to think of
Speaker 1: it's one of his legs. I mean, he's Anybody who's
Speaker 1: seeing Mike Schlitz knows that he's heavily burned. Um and
Speaker 1: he wrote an article I believe a ranger up about
Speaker 1: you know, having suicidal thoughts. And now he's become such
Speaker 1: an inspirational guy, you know, running and working out all
Speaker 1: the time, and when you see him, he's constantly in
Speaker 1: a great mood and it lifts you up. And I
Speaker 1: think someone like that doing an ad for the military
Speaker 1: would be really useful, you know. And to bring it
Speaker 1: back to uh, to our own stable George Hand a
Speaker 1: few years ago, George Hand, if you're not familiar with him,
Speaker 1: he's a I mean, we're talking about a legendary delta operator. Uh.
Speaker 1: He wrote a piece about his own suicidal ideations a
Speaker 1: few years ago that hit me home, like really hit
Speaker 1: home for me in a way that's hard to articulate.
Speaker 1: But when a guy like George Hand, who is I mean,
Speaker 1: he's a g I. Joe guy. You know, he was
Speaker 1: built for this. You know, he's a war fighter through
Speaker 1: and through, one of the few, like one of the
Speaker 1: last bastions of a previous era of warrior. I would
Speaker 1: argue and for George to open himself up like that
Speaker 1: and be vulnerable to the world, and say, even this guy,
Speaker 1: even George Hand, who is the guy you'd call if
Speaker 1: your daughter was in trouble? George Hand? Literally, you know,
Speaker 1: if George Hand is the guy that you'd call when
Speaker 1: you're in the worst kind of trouble you can imagine,
Speaker 1: And he's struggled with suicide. It's not a it's not
Speaker 1: a strength. George is strong, strongest guy I've ever met.
Speaker 1: It's not a question of strength. You know, a lot
Speaker 1: of times when it comes to things like suicide, we're
Speaker 1: talking about long term depression or anxiety issues or combined. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: but suicidal ideations themselves tend to be rather short lived. Often. Uh,
Speaker 1: intervention that day can often be enough to get you
Speaker 1: over the hump. You know, I think it would be
Speaker 1: hard for a lot of service members to argue that
Speaker 1: they've never considered it. You know. Uh, the s g
Speaker 1: l I, the Service Member Group Life Insurance Policy is
Speaker 1: it's a four thousand dollar life insurance policy you get
Speaker 1: through the military while you're serving, right, and then you
Speaker 1: get a death gratuity which is ten thousand dollars unless
Speaker 1: you die in country. At that point it's a hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty. These numbers may have changed since I got out,
Speaker 1: but that's this is what they were during my time
Speaker 1: in Your s g l I still pays out if
Speaker 1: you kill yourself. You know a lot of people argue
Speaker 1: that it doesn't. I know firsthand that it does. Is Uh.
Speaker 1: I know people have thought about it as a way
Speaker 1: to get their family out of a jam. Uh. I
Speaker 1: know people have seen suicide as a tool. And the
Speaker 1: reason why I think that this is more prevalent in
Speaker 1: the military is because you can't fill out one of
Speaker 1: those s g l I forms. You can't hop on
Speaker 1: a deployment without thinking about your own mortality. Right, you
Speaker 1: have to think about the fact that you might not
Speaker 1: come back, you know, and what what happened to your
Speaker 1: family if you didn't. For some guys, uh and girls,
Speaker 1: when you join the military, you join the military because
Speaker 1: you don't think that your your life back home has
Speaker 1: much left to offer you, or you have much left
Speaker 1: to offer them anymore. Right, So you're already a little
Speaker 1: detached often, right, you're already running away from something to
Speaker 1: a certain extent. Uh. Then you then you miss home.
Speaker 1: Then you start to think about your family members back
Speaker 1: there and what they're going through. And then, like in
Speaker 1: the case of one of my friends that passed away,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe maybe your mom's losing her house. Maybe
Speaker 1: as a result of losing her house, she's also losing
Speaker 1: custody of your sister, you know. And when you start
Speaker 1: looking at those things and you start weighing that against
Speaker 1: your existential depression that's going untreated because you're afraid you'll
Speaker 1: being undeployable, so you won't go to medical and talk
Speaker 1: about it. Right, So here you are, on the one hand,
Speaker 1: just miserable and you don't really feel like there's much
Speaker 1: reason for you to go on. And on the other hand,
Speaker 1: there's a half a million dollars you could hand your mom.
Speaker 1: All you gotta do is kill yourself. If you're already
Speaker 1: leaning towards killing yourself, that's a great incentive. Now, I'm
Speaker 1: not arguing that we need to do away with the
Speaker 1: STLI paying out for suicide. I'm not arguing anything. All
Speaker 1: I'm saying is that we really need to look at
Speaker 1: suicide realistically. It's not just somebody writing breakup poetry because
Speaker 1: they're upset about losing their friend. And combat suicide is
Speaker 1: just as prevalent among people who didn't deploy as it
Speaker 1: is among veterans who did. It's not just about PTSD.
Speaker 1: It's really about this cultural issue that compounds owns on
Speaker 1: service members and veterans that we're not engaging in any
Speaker 1: real reasonable way. We're engaging with awareness campaigns after awareness
Speaker 1: campaign after awareness campaign. It's important that we raise awareness
Speaker 1: but it's important at some point that we engage with
Speaker 1: the problem. Yeah, well, well said. I mean, if you
Speaker 1: listen back to the interview that we did with Carl Monger,
Speaker 1: who runs Gallant for you, I think we need more
Speaker 1: people like that. I mean, uh, there's you know, I
Speaker 1: know that there's all these different veterans charities out there,
Speaker 1: but I think Carl's is different in that this really
Speaker 1: means something to him. The fact that he gives out
Speaker 1: his personal number and says, like, if you're having those
Speaker 1: thoughts and you need someone to talk to, call me,
Speaker 1: and so I know he takes those issues really seriously.
Speaker 1: And I think we need more people out there like that,
Speaker 1: because you need some of these guys just need someone
Speaker 1: to talk to, and that might that might prevent this
Speaker 1: that's becoming more and more prevalent and veteran circles. And
Speaker 1: I love it. You know. Uh, I'll shout out to
Speaker 1: Western Scott. He works for We Are the Mighty. He's
Speaker 1: a great guy. I've known Weston Scott way back when
Speaker 1: I was on active duty. I ran this, you know,
Speaker 1: this dumb blog website that had a little bit of traction,
Speaker 1: and I interviewed Weston at the time. He was a
Speaker 1: former marine. He was an already guy who went on
Speaker 1: to be a tactical adviser on movies. He was he
Speaker 1: had a show on G four for a while. We
Speaker 1: still talk here and there, you know, and uh, not
Speaker 1: long ago. I was up late working one o'clock in
Speaker 1: the morning. Is not weird for me to still be writing,
Speaker 1: you know. And I got a message from Weston on
Speaker 1: Facebook and he was like, hey, man, you are right,
Speaker 1: And I was like, yeah, what's up? You know what
Speaker 1: would what prompted this? You know? And he was like,
Speaker 1: every once in a while when I see other Marines
Speaker 1: still up at when I am on a Tuesday, you know,
Speaker 1: I just shoot him a message to make sure they're
Speaker 1: not drinking alone in their basement. For you, you're probably
Speaker 1: just like writing, right, I mean, but yeah, if I
Speaker 1: was just at work. But our job, it's just it's
Speaker 1: so funny how it's no uh, it's just get shipped
Speaker 1: done whenever you can get shipped done, because it's it's funny. Man.
Speaker 1: I Like, I totally different subject. But I do have
Speaker 1: friends who, um, you know, if it's a Saturday or Sunday,
Speaker 1: they're like, why, you know, why are you working? It's
Speaker 1: you know, maybe I want to do something on a
Speaker 1: Monday or something, and you know, it's kind of cool.
Speaker 1: You do get to make your own schedule. But anyway,
Speaker 1: just I assume for you if your own schedules a
Speaker 1: double edged sort, because I don't think I've got a
Speaker 1: whole day off in three years, I don't know, at
Speaker 1: least for me, I do. I'm lucky for that, but
Speaker 1: I do all the time. But you know, I get
Speaker 1: the opportunity to put my work up on news, rep
Speaker 1: Fight or sweep, and you know when Scott over the
Speaker 1: load out room occasionally lets me, you know, jump in
Speaker 1: over there. I'm lucky as a writer that I get
Speaker 1: to spread my work out to so many people. But
Speaker 1: if if you give me a chance to set my
Speaker 1: own schedule, it just means I'm gonna work twelve hours
Speaker 1: a day, seven days a week. Yeah, you you personally
Speaker 1: give yourself more work though, I mean, you put you
Speaker 1: put out a book, but independently, and and I don't
Speaker 1: I don't know, to be honest, how well the book
Speaker 1: is done. Because for the most part, if you independently
Speaker 1: publish a book, it's more of a labor of love.
Speaker 1: You're not you know, most people independently publish a book.
Speaker 1: They're not getting a million dollar advanced or anything. You know.
Speaker 1: It just you wanted to put a book out. My
Speaker 1: book did fantastically well for like a week. That's how
Speaker 1: it always is. I am. I'm over the moon with
Speaker 1: it with how successful it was, because I really expected
Speaker 1: very little and instead, I think I peaked at like
Speaker 1: number eight in my category on Amazon for a few days,
Speaker 1: which was fantastic, you know, especially because it's it was.
Speaker 1: The book is called The Perception Wars. It's about how
Speaker 1: foreign influence campaigns can affect us here in the States,
Speaker 1: and how our foreign influence campaigns can affect others. It's
Speaker 1: another subject that's near and dear to my heart because
Speaker 1: I think it speaks directly to how we live nowadays,
Speaker 1: you know. And so I was not only was I
Speaker 1: stoked to see it gets so much traction, but I
Speaker 1: was really excited to see readers on news rep uh
Speaker 1: you know, comment I can being like, oh, I read
Speaker 1: about this in your book. You know. It's like, as
Speaker 1: a writer, and I've always wanted to be a writer,
Speaker 1: there are a few things that can make your heart
Speaker 1: skip a beat more than someone saying I read this
Speaker 1: other thing you wrote and this other place. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: why I assume if you're up at one am or
Speaker 1: three am, you're right, because it's like you also have
Speaker 1: a daughter. For those who don't know that, you know
Speaker 1: it was a baby, soho. And and that's the other
Speaker 1: best part of this job, man, is that yes, I
Speaker 1: do maybe work NonStop all the time, but I'd argue
Speaker 1: act at half of that time my daughters on the
Speaker 1: floor next to me. You know, I could take a
Speaker 1: break any time I want. This job is it's a
Speaker 1: winning lottery ticket. It's the best job in the world,
Speaker 1: you know. So So, just kind of wrapping up the
Speaker 1: subject we were talking about, though, I'm just wandering from
Speaker 1: your perspective. That money that's allocated to stop veteran and
Speaker 1: millet the active duty military suicides. What what do you
Speaker 1: think should be done with that? Like, what would you
Speaker 1: personally do? I know it's TV and radio ads, Like, well,
Speaker 1: what do you think would be effective? Well, first off,
Speaker 1: you touched on something earlier that I think is really important.
Speaker 1: The v A does not currently have any model or
Speaker 1: system in place to gauge the efficacy of their initiatives,
Speaker 1: so they try things Let's say they spent that full
Speaker 1: six million dollars. I think it was six point two
Speaker 1: six point two million dollars. Let's say they spent all
Speaker 1: of it. They don't have any procedure years currently to
Speaker 1: judge whether or not it was successful at all. So
Speaker 1: if this year they you know, they mounted six one
Speaker 1: million dollar commercials starring Troy Aikman and Will Smith telling
Speaker 1: you that suicide is bad, they really wouldn't have any
Speaker 1: way of knowing whether or not that worked anyway. So
Speaker 1: next year they might do more of the same to
Speaker 1: no avail. They need, first and foremost to establish a
Speaker 1: system that creates some kind of quantitative basis to gauge
Speaker 1: the advocacy of these of these efforts. I know that's
Speaker 1: really difficult. This is a qualitative issue. It's hard to
Speaker 1: take it. It's hard to give hard numbers to things
Speaker 1: like suicidal ideations. So I would think, though, if you
Speaker 1: do um, you know, like a market research thing, the
Speaker 1: same way they do for everything else, get you know,
Speaker 1: a hundred veterans in a room or something, you know,
Speaker 1: how effective do you think this add is? Does this
Speaker 1: speak to you? I think that's worth doing. But it's
Speaker 1: important to note that. Uh. When you do that that
Speaker 1: kind of market research, Uh, you're relying on self reported information,
Speaker 1: and self reported information becomes increasingly less reliable the more
Speaker 1: sensitive the information is. Uh. It's the reason why, like
Speaker 1: the statistics we have about alcohol consumption in the United
Speaker 1: States don't coalesce with the statistics we have about alcohol sales. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because when you go to the doctor, he asks how
Speaker 1: often you drink? And I say socially because I drink
Speaker 1: every day, but I talk to people every day, So
Speaker 1: as far as I'm concerned, that's social. Yeah. You know.
Speaker 1: It's funny when they asked me and they're like, how
Speaker 1: often do you drink? And I'm like never. I think
Speaker 1: they think I'm lying, but I really don't. I'm sure
Speaker 1: they think you're lying because they're like nothing, never, I
Speaker 1: thought I haven't added, you know, I'm not. And it's funny.
Speaker 1: And then the other thing is people assume I'm like
Speaker 1: an alcoholic or something. I just haven't had a drink since. Uh,
Speaker 1: I think I think March I just haven't. I respect that, man,
Speaker 1: I respect the hell out of that. But but you know,
Speaker 1: when you go to the doctor and the doctor asks
Speaker 1: if you smoke, you know, if you're the type of
Speaker 1: person who quit six months ago but still smokes a
Speaker 1: cigarette every once in a while, you say no, or
Speaker 1: even if you smoke weed, right, I mean, because if
Speaker 1: you're someone who smokes like a blunt that has tobacco
Speaker 1: and it, you know, it's still the same ship. I actually,
Speaker 1: I've got a whole different tirade. I could go on
Speaker 1: about that because I've got a buddy. He's a Vietnam
Speaker 1: veteran who recently went in to have uh, you know something,
Speaker 1: They're trying to see if he's got cancer. And the
Speaker 1: doctor asked him, He's like, do you smoke? And he said, no,
Speaker 1: but I do smoke pot it rounce in a while. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh which here in Georgia is a big no no,
Speaker 1: you know, because in New York, no one gives you
Speaker 1: s Yeah. Yeah here here down in Georgia, that's still
Speaker 1: close to being a communist. Uh So, he's since then
Speaker 1: just been inundated by calls from the hospital and other
Speaker 1: narcotics treatment facilities asking him if he wants to, you know,
Speaker 1: if he wants help kicking his pot habit, and he's like,
Speaker 1: I have a smoked weed. In a couple of months,
Speaker 1: just do sometimes. You know. That's so I know we're
Speaker 1: we're both going like so a D D here, But
Speaker 1: that's this is so weird to me, how much different
Speaker 1: state by state the attitudes are towards these things. Because
Speaker 1: like in New York, I could walk outside the studio
Speaker 1: and you can smell weed, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: no one really cares, including the police. It's just not
Speaker 1: like a non issue here. And it almost reminds me
Speaker 1: of this, you know, different subject. But I saw. I
Speaker 1: don't know if you. I just follow Kristen Beck's Instagram
Speaker 1: and Twitter and everything, and I know, um, Kristen Beck
Speaker 1: went through like the facial feminization surgery and everything and
Speaker 1: wrote a post about how you know now that Kristen
Speaker 1: Buck looks more like a female. Um wrote, you know,
Speaker 1: I didn't get anyone harassing me or Bible thumping with
Speaker 1: me or saying all this crap, And like, to me,
Speaker 1: that's kind of foreign because like in the streets of
Speaker 1: New York, if you're a transgender, like no one really
Speaker 1: gives a ship, No one really. It's it's like a
Speaker 1: totally different culture here. Like if Kristen Beck walked around
Speaker 1: the streets of New York and no one would look
Speaker 1: twice at her, or however you want to label Kristen Beck.
Speaker 1: My perspective of New York is different than years obviously,
Speaker 1: because you're there every day and I live in the
Speaker 1: woods and hate the city. But uh, in my opinion,
Speaker 1: in New York, the reason why no one would engage
Speaker 1: with her isn't because people don't have those prejudices. It's
Speaker 1: because you're insulated by an overabundance of people. In New York.
Speaker 1: You tend not to talk to your neighbors, even though
Speaker 1: your bathroom wall like you can hear them showering through it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but you know, I have to say, man, you would
Speaker 1: get more dirty looks on the streets in New York
Speaker 1: City wearing and make America great again hat than being
Speaker 1: I don't doubt that one bit. But I think that
Speaker 1: you'd find like here in Georgia, where you'd expect racism
Speaker 1: and sexism and prejudice against the LGBTQ community. I found
Speaker 1: overwhelmingly people don't give a ship. Yeah, you know, you like,
Speaker 1: Rednecks may have beliefs about what they want their daughter
Speaker 1: to do, you know, but by and large, they don't
Speaker 1: really give a shit about what you do, because they
Speaker 1: tend to fall into the old school conservative category of
Speaker 1: stay out of my living room, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: don't bother me. I think that I think that this
Speaker 1: kind of speaks to that rural versus urban break that
Speaker 1: we have where we think we're so culturally different. The
Speaker 1: truth is is that we're represented very differently. You know.
Speaker 1: I moved to Georgia from Bromston, so it was it
Speaker 1: was a dramatic change. And when I came down here,
Speaker 1: I was expecting to live in an episode of Moonshiners,
Speaker 1: you know. And I was expecting, you know, because my
Speaker 1: best friends a Dominican guy, you know, like I had
Speaker 1: all these concerns that I was going to be that
Speaker 1: I was gonna have to worry about, you know, my
Speaker 1: daughter being raised to think creationism was was true vice
Speaker 1: evolution and you know, and things like that. When once
Speaker 1: you get here, there are those elements. Absolutely, in my opinion,
Speaker 1: though at least in my experience, that a vocal minority
Speaker 1: that ends up skewing our perspective of the South. You know,
Speaker 1: there are lots of very bright, very educated, intellectual folks
Speaker 1: with a Southern drawing. Yeah, for sure, I agree. When
Speaker 1: I like when I went to South Dakota, I didn't
Speaker 1: feel and anybody was all that different. The biggest difference
Speaker 1: is just people being way more polite, way more um uh,
Speaker 1: way more trusting. I mean, it was the first time
Speaker 1: in my life that I got gass and I was
Speaker 1: told I couldn't pay in advance. They were gosh totally.
Speaker 1: But I think it's important to note that because of that,
Speaker 1: because you'll find much more of that positive element than
Speaker 1: you'd expect in places that you think would be, you know,
Speaker 1: a very prejudiced. I think that you would find more
Speaker 1: prejudice in a place where you don't expect it. It's
Speaker 1: just better hidden, you know, And I think hidden prejudice,
Speaker 1: in my opinion, is the much more dangerous kind. I'm
Speaker 1: much more concerned about you making a hiring decision inside
Speaker 1: your head based on your own secret prejudices than I
Speaker 1: am about whether or not you'll give Kristen back a
Speaker 1: snide remark on the subway. Honestly, that Snyde remark, it
Speaker 1: means you're worthless. If if you're the type of dude
Speaker 1: who wants to pick a fight with somebody just over
Speaker 1: what they're wearing, you're an idiots back. You know, I
Speaker 1: think you'd be stupid to pick Kristen back in the
Speaker 1: first place. You know, But I think that those outspoken
Speaker 1: prejudices are the ones were the most worried about, and
Speaker 1: in the real world, they're the ones that end up
Speaker 1: having the least effect on how we live. It's those
Speaker 1: ones in New York City that you know you can't
Speaker 1: get away without loud that I worry about. So back
Speaker 1: to how we got here. As I said, we're both
Speaker 1: super a D D. But I always remember how we
Speaker 1: got here. Uh. So you're the radio guy, how that
Speaker 1: money I should be allocated? And you were saying that
Speaker 1: it's you know, it might not be effective. So first off,
Speaker 1: we need a way to determine its efficacy. The second
Speaker 1: thing that I would really love to see is a
Speaker 1: big effort towards destigmatizing uh, seeking help. I'd also like
Speaker 1: to see a push away from medication as your sole
Speaker 1: source of help. Now, I said it on this podcast before,
Speaker 1: I've taken any type of pressents for years. Uh for me,
Speaker 1: I've gone on and off. I've gone on them, I've
Speaker 1: gone off them every so often. I just get this
Speaker 1: idea in my head that I don't think I need
Speaker 1: this anymore. I'll hop off for a while and then
Speaker 1: I'll be like, oh, you know what, I was a
Speaker 1: better version of myself when when I was on it. Uh.
Speaker 1: Most recently, I started taking them again when my wife
Speaker 1: got pregnant because I didn't want my baggage to be
Speaker 1: my daughter's problem. You know. I can. I tend to
Speaker 1: isolate myself when I'm in a bad place, and that's
Speaker 1: that's a bad place for dad to be. That's not
Speaker 1: a good father, you know. Uh. So I got back
Speaker 1: on the bandwagon, uh for the sake of my daughter.
Speaker 1: But I'm still not a sure that it's not the
Speaker 1: placebo effect. I guess, And the problem is, statistically, looking
Speaker 1: at antidepressants, it's really hard to know that you're not
Speaker 1: just going on the placebo effect. Uh. In blind studies,
Speaker 1: antidepressants fair only slightly better than placebo in terms of
Speaker 1: helping long term depression, in part because we don't really
Speaker 1: understand how antidepressants work. So when you look at the
Speaker 1: real studies, the real data, it says your best chance
Speaker 1: at combating long term depression, your best chance at combating
Speaker 1: suicidal ideations, is a mix of medication and treatment. Therapy.
Speaker 1: Therapy alone is not as effective as therapy without medication.
Speaker 1: Medication without therapy is only slightly better than placebo. You
Speaker 1: put them together and you have a pretty effective solution
Speaker 1: for depression. Solution is probably an unfair word, but at
Speaker 1: least method of treatment. The v A doesn't lean on
Speaker 1: that concept at all, because it would need to staff
Speaker 1: counselors and it would need to make it somewhat feasible
Speaker 1: for you to get an appointment, which right now, as
Speaker 1: most people who attend to who go to the VA
Speaker 1: for medical treatment can tell you, you you need to set
Speaker 1: your appointments, you know, three months or more ahead, and
Speaker 1: then when you get there, you're gonna sit in the
Speaker 1: waiting room for six hours before anyone sees you. If
Speaker 1: you have a job, it makes it really tough to do,
Speaker 1: you know. And if you make an appointment and then
Speaker 1: leave or don't attend it, the v A will punish you.
Speaker 1: I had the v A set me an appointment for
Speaker 1: my knees, which was the condition the Marine Corps retired
Speaker 1: me for I had a bunch of surgeries on my
Speaker 1: knees when I wasn't able to make the appointment because
Speaker 1: they set the appointment with a past tense date with
Speaker 1: a clinical error. They sent me another letter saying that
Speaker 1: they have they've decided that my knees must have resolved
Speaker 1: themselves because I didn't seek treatment, so they took away
Speaker 1: my disability. Uh, and then I needed to either file
Speaker 1: an appeal, which takes on average two to three years,
Speaker 1: or start an entirely new claim, which takes on average
Speaker 1: two or three years to get my disability payments from
Speaker 1: my knees back. So the v A first makes it
Speaker 1: too difficult for you to seek treatment and then punishes
Speaker 1: you if you don't take it when they demand you
Speaker 1: take it. It makes most veterans not very apt to
Speaker 1: go seek treatment with the v A, you know, if
Speaker 1: you can avoid it bottle, you know. So let's say
Speaker 1: you do go. Let's say you make your appointment for
Speaker 1: three months because you're really really upset right now. Let's
Speaker 1: say today I'm on the edge, you know, today I'm
Speaker 1: standing at the edge of my apartment building, and I go, no,
Speaker 1: you know what, I'm gonna get help. I call the
Speaker 1: v A and I'm make an appointment so that I
Speaker 1: can go speak to a counselor. They set the appointment
Speaker 1: for three months in the future. Let's just say I
Speaker 1: make it to and then, in the case of one
Speaker 1: guy that's past year, if they canceled that appointment and
Speaker 1: then a series of other ones until he let himself
Speaker 1: on fire in the v A parking lot to commit suicide.
Speaker 1: But let's just say they give me that three month appointment, right,
Speaker 1: So now I've waited three months since I was at
Speaker 1: what I felt like was my lowest point that day.
Speaker 1: They will prescribe me an antidepressant and send me on
Speaker 1: my way. Assuming Now, an important part that you need
Speaker 1: to consider with depression is that it tends to make
Speaker 1: you inactive. People who are really clinically depressed don't have
Speaker 1: a whole lot of initiative, you know. Uh, So they
Speaker 1: give you this prescription and you need to go fill it. Right,
Speaker 1: For a person who's suffering really, really hard bad clinical depression,
Speaker 1: going and hanging out at CBS for an hour waiting
Speaker 1: for your meds couldn't be a real challenge. But let's
Speaker 1: say you do that. You take your first pill that day,
Speaker 1: and it's going to be a minimum afford or six
Speaker 1: weeks before that medication has any actual effect on you.
Speaker 1: Assuming it has any effect on you at all, assuming
Speaker 1: you're part of those people who score slightly better than
Speaker 1: we'll see taking that medication during that four to six
Speaker 1: weeks span. Because it's such a gradual change, it's really
Speaker 1: difficult for you to assess if the medication is helping
Speaker 1: or if I'm just getting over it. Maybe I was
Speaker 1: just in a real bad spot, you know what, I'm
Speaker 1: bouncing back. So five weeks in you're like, I don't
Speaker 1: think I really need this ship and you stopped taking it.
Speaker 1: If you stop taking any to Presson's cold turkey, that
Speaker 1: can throw you in a spiral. Let's say let's say
Speaker 1: though you haven't been taking it for that long, you
Speaker 1: cycle off properly. You just stopped taking it. Three months later,
Speaker 1: you find yourself in that same bad place and you
Speaker 1: don't know what to do. You call the same phone number,
Speaker 1: you start the same song and dance over again. You
Speaker 1: never get any better. Eventually, one of those cycles could
Speaker 1: be the one where you reach a point that's low
Speaker 1: enough where you're like, this has happened to me so
Speaker 1: many times. I'm never bouncing back from this. I'm just done.
Speaker 1: You know, suicide is not I think people mistake suicide
Speaker 1: for a big dramatic act. I think more often than not,
Speaker 1: suicide is seen as an act of mercy. In your head,
Speaker 1: you're you can't it anymore, is what you think? It hurts,
Speaker 1: you know, So suicide, even though it's a physical act,
Speaker 1: feels easier than hurting more, you know. So what we
Speaker 1: need the VA needs to do, because the VA should
Speaker 1: be at the forefront of this, is we need to
Speaker 1: get rid of the stigma associated with seeking treatment, but
Speaker 1: we also need to provide actual treatment. You know. Until
Speaker 1: our solution isn't just throwing you a bottle of pills
Speaker 1: and telling you we'll see you in six months, We're
Speaker 1: not actually going to see any change in my opinion
Speaker 1: and the veteran suicide rate. You know, we've been we've
Speaker 1: been throwing pills at best for years, you know, and
Speaker 1: it hasn't done anything since. If anything, all we've really
Speaker 1: done is managed to get a whole bunch of people
Speaker 1: addicted to opioids, which will then make you even more
Speaker 1: prone to suicide. It's interesting you mentioned that because next week,
Speaker 1: coming on the podcast, I'm really excited at Peter Gidrey. Um,
Speaker 1: there's this documentary I've talked about on the podcast on
Speaker 1: Netflix called The Leaf of Faith about CREATUM, which I
Speaker 1: don't know if you're familiar with UM. Yeah, so it's
Speaker 1: it's a natural substance that a lot of people are
Speaker 1: taking and they're saying it helps UM, it helps get
Speaker 1: people off opioids. And Peter Guidry was in the documentary.
Speaker 1: He's a veteran who runs a veterans group UM out
Speaker 1: of Vegas. They do all sorts of cool stuff with UM.
Speaker 1: They're they're very like active with doing athletic type of stuff.
Speaker 1: But he's a huge advocate of creative and he says
Speaker 1: that creative has helped him from aggressively acting out due
Speaker 1: to post traumatic stress and that type of thing. His
Speaker 1: wife is a veteran as well. So it was just
Speaker 1: one of those things whereas I said to Jack, like,
Speaker 1: whenever I'm doing doing something else in my life, uh,
Speaker 1: something will come across the mind sometimes of like how
Speaker 1: can I use this on the podcast, And right when
Speaker 1: I was watching that documentary having nothing to do with
Speaker 1: the podcast, when I saw Peter Gidri, It's like, I
Speaker 1: gotta get this guy on. So I'm really excited I
Speaker 1: have him coming on next week UM because we've had
Speaker 1: guys on the podcast like a New York Times writer
Speaker 1: who too talked about a study that ecstasy is helping
Speaker 1: post traumatic stress is created that m A has proven
Speaker 1: to be pretty six and this is I'm a square,
Speaker 1: you know. I like, I was probably the most anti
Speaker 1: weed guy he probably could ever meet. Late into my twenties.
Speaker 1: It wasn't until my mother Invaw was diagnosed with cancer
Speaker 1: that and she started smoking weed to eat that I
Speaker 1: was like, I guess this. This didn't You're not a crackhead,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, You're just a lady smoking weed. Us.
Speaker 1: I think it's you know, there there is that stereotype
Speaker 1: of like the lazy guy sits at his house and
Speaker 1: does absolutely nothing all day, and then there's the people
Speaker 1: who are super motivated and and they happen to smoke.
Speaker 1: It really does. Yeah, I mean it just you can't.
Speaker 1: You can't put everything everyone in a box. I think.
Speaker 1: I mean, personally, I don't think I'd be able to
Speaker 1: function that well on it. Other people they seem to
Speaker 1: do fine. So it's to me, I've I have officially
Speaker 1: retired my judge pants, you know what I mean? Like
Speaker 1: whatever it is, like I drink too much, I'll readily
Speaker 1: admit that I drink you. But you know, whatever it
Speaker 1: is that you do that gets you through your day,
Speaker 1: if you're fulfilling your family obligations, if you're being a
Speaker 1: good parent, if you got kids, if you're doing your job. Uh,
Speaker 1: you're getting through your life. I don't I don't care
Speaker 1: what kind of porn you watch. I don't care if
Speaker 1: you smoke a bull on your couch. It's not my business. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, as long as it's not you know, I
Speaker 1: I don't think you could truly be like a functioning
Speaker 1: heroin addict, you know, and some people, Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: there are there's guys on Wall Street. Yeah, there's guys
Speaker 1: on Wall Street who we know are like, you know, millionaires,
Speaker 1: sniff and coke every day. But is that a healthy
Speaker 1: way to live your life? Now? See, that's where you're
Speaker 1: gonna get me, because yeah, I agree, I don't think
Speaker 1: anybody should be a heroin addict. But honestly, I don't
Speaker 1: give a ship if you're living your life in a
Speaker 1: healthy way. Honestly, Now, you couldn't make you know. Macro
Speaker 1: arguments about the cost to our overall health system, our
Speaker 1: medical system because of people who, for instance, eat too
Speaker 1: much and are morbidly obese, and then we have to
Speaker 1: pay for their medical caraman they don't have insurance. But
Speaker 1: if we want to make that argument, we gotta outlaw
Speaker 1: McDonald's the same way we gotta outlaw everything else I do.
Speaker 1: I am not one of those libertarians who say let's
Speaker 1: just legalize all drugs. I think that's that's foolish. However, Uh,
Speaker 1: I really am a strong proponent and kind of what
Speaker 1: what I call classic classic conservatism. You know, I like,
Speaker 1: I don't care who you marry. I don't care what
Speaker 1: you drink. I don't care what kind of porn you watch,
Speaker 1: and as long as you're not hurting anyone else or
Speaker 1: the country. For the most part, I really don't much
Speaker 1: care about what you're doing in your house now, seeing
Speaker 1: things like heroin and stuff, I can make really strong
Speaker 1: arguments about how that hurts the country. You individually doesn't,
Speaker 1: but as a whole it certainly does. Uh. And that's
Speaker 1: the reason that's that tight rope walk of freedom right
Speaker 1: that we always have to make. We're always balancing between
Speaker 1: fascism on one side and anarchy on the other. Right,
Speaker 1: We've always got to find this balance and a problem
Speaker 1: we have in politics is this belief that one argument
Speaker 1: can just be universally correct while the other one is
Speaker 1: universally wrong. The fact of the matter is that that
Speaker 1: this is experiment in democracy that we call America is
Speaker 1: based on a tight rope walk. It's not based on
Speaker 1: putting all of our chickens in one basket. It's based
Speaker 1: on this constant debate, in this constant argument, and drug
Speaker 1: being one of them. You know, I I honestly at
Speaker 1: this point I'm all in favor of legalizing marijuana. But
Speaker 1: you're not going to catch me being in favor of
Speaker 1: legalizing morphine or heroin because of the same drug. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, I am interested in in in Peter Gudri
Speaker 1: coming on, And I think the interesting thing true is
Speaker 1: that when I mentioned Creatum to Jack and when I
Speaker 1: mentioned creative to you, you guys were like, I'm not
Speaker 1: familiar with it, which tells me that a lot of
Speaker 1: the country is not familiar with it. But here's the
Speaker 1: crazy Driving around um, just Long Island, I don't see
Speaker 1: it as much in the city. I have seen gas
Speaker 1: stations that say, you know, we sell CBD oil and
Speaker 1: we sell creative because it is legal right now. I
Speaker 1: think it's I think it's legal in almost every state.
Speaker 1: I believe cd D oil is even legal here in Georgia. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I mean it doesn't get you high or anything.
Speaker 1: So I think I'll say I've I've taken CBD oil
Speaker 1: in a couple of different ways because you know, again
Speaker 1: background on me. On my way out of the Marine Corps,
Speaker 1: I had five surgeries in two years. Uh, two on
Speaker 1: my ankle, three on my knees, and one on my abdomen.
Speaker 1: H multiple reads from different situations. Uh. But when I
Speaker 1: was getting out, I had, you know, I throughout those surgeries.
Speaker 1: On my last surgery, I actually got on terminal leave
Speaker 1: from medical hold. But you know I had like a
Speaker 1: near limitless prescription to not just one opioid, but multiple.
Speaker 1: You know. I'd go to my my orthopedic surgeon that
Speaker 1: did two of my three knee surgeries, and he'd give me,
Speaker 1: you know, a bottleful of oxycount. And then I go
Speaker 1: to the surgeon that that did my stomach and he'd
Speaker 1: give me another bottleful of percoset. And unless I told him,
Speaker 1: oh no, man, I don't need this, they were happy
Speaker 1: to give it to me. Not because their drug dealers
Speaker 1: trying to get me addicted. But because they know that
Speaker 1: I'm the type of guy who probably won't tell you
Speaker 1: if I'm hurting, and I am hurting because I've got
Speaker 1: stitches all over me, you know, and so they would
Speaker 1: they would happily give me these prescriptions. Then, when my
Speaker 1: healthcare transitioned over to the v A, those prescriptions just
Speaker 1: kind of stayed. You know, I was able to. I
Speaker 1: could go in and be like, hey, man, you know
Speaker 1: I've got metal bolts and screws and pins and wire
Speaker 1: and every joint below my waist. I'm hurting right now.
Speaker 1: I slipped three discs in my back. I'm hurting right now.
Speaker 1: Can you give me something? And they were always happy
Speaker 1: to do so. I'm sure it's tougher now to get
Speaker 1: them than it was when I got out back in
Speaker 1: a two tho nine ish. Uh no, not to but
Speaker 1: uh I'm sure it's gotten tougher. But I would have
Speaker 1: been very easy for me. I'd argue to fall into
Speaker 1: opioid addiction during that period of time because I saw
Speaker 1: I saw the telltale signs of it already. I I
Speaker 1: started out taking the pills when my parts hurt, right
Speaker 1: like something hurts. I took a pill. Then I started
Speaker 1: taking it to make sure things didn't start hurting. Right, So,
Speaker 1: you know, I've got a whole bunch of you know,
Speaker 1: healing surgery wounds. I get up in the morning, I
Speaker 1: pop a pill right away, even though the one from
Speaker 1: last night that I took before bed hasn't totally worn off,
Speaker 1: because otherwise I know by ten am it's gonna hurt
Speaker 1: real bad. Right, So you take it pre emptively, No
Speaker 1: big deal. Right, Then you start taking them preemptively without
Speaker 1: being sure it's gonna hurt by ten i am, you know,
Speaker 1: and before you know what, you're just taking him. You know,
Speaker 1: it's just a part of your day. You know. My
Speaker 1: daily regiment for a long time was get up in
Speaker 1: the morning, pop a couple of pills, take my vitamin,
Speaker 1: you know, pound a protein shake, go to physical therapy,
Speaker 1: come back home and popping another couple of pills, you know,
Speaker 1: like go about my day. Uh. It came to the
Speaker 1: point where I sat down with my wife and I said,
Speaker 1: I don't think I should keep taking these pills. You know,
Speaker 1: Addiction runs in my family. My father struggled with alcohol
Speaker 1: dependency his whole life, along with a litany of other
Speaker 1: drugs when he was younger. I was like, I I've
Speaker 1: got enough vice in my life without adding to it. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know. Unfortunately, I had a really strong support system.
Speaker 1: You know, my wife, we've been married, We've been together
Speaker 1: now for fourteen years, which is crazy for a guy
Speaker 1: who's thirty three. You know, I've got, you know, my
Speaker 1: mom and my big brother to rely on when times
Speaker 1: get tough. A lot of guys don't have that support structure.
Speaker 1: I was able to walk away from these pills is
Speaker 1: before they became a problem for me because I saw
Speaker 1: the writing on the wall. If I were by myself,
Speaker 1: I don't think I would have seen it. Yeah. You know,
Speaker 1: you don't become addicted to opioids because you're a drug addict.
Speaker 1: A lot of times you become addicted to opioids because
Speaker 1: you're addicted to being able to walk. Yeah, you know. Uh,
Speaker 1: And then when you try to get off of them,
Speaker 1: you can't really get off of them. No doctor's gonna
Speaker 1: give them to you anymore. You turn the harder drugs
Speaker 1: leads to depression. You end up killing yourself two years
Speaker 1: down the road. And it started with pain management, you know.
Speaker 1: So I'm wondering then when we because I mentioned the
Speaker 1: CBD oil thing, has they had any Has it helped
Speaker 1: you at all? That's tough, man, because I've only tried
Speaker 1: it a couple of times, and I'm like, you know,
Speaker 1: like I said, I'm a square, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: So I think I was probably paranoid, you know, like,
Speaker 1: what's this gonna do to me? It does anything? Here's
Speaker 1: the thing next to this office. I remember, actually the
Speaker 1: last time you were here. I'm a big fan of
Speaker 1: ass evils, and I remember you being like, what the
Speaker 1: fund is? Its evil? But but they're they're kind of
Speaker 1: big here. I mean, for those who don't know, it's
Speaker 1: um like different fruits and granola and ship for those
Speaker 1: who aren't sure, he's in New York City, lots of
Speaker 1: weird shit is big. There's big other places, dude, because
Speaker 1: I've been in Florida, but um recently, and you see
Speaker 1: I think it's it's it's Florida your argument for normal, Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's that's a good point. But anyway, so Juice Generation,
Speaker 1: which is right next year, which I love. They sell
Speaker 1: an asci evil that as CBD oil, and I tried
Speaker 1: it just because I was like, why not, And I
Speaker 1: don't think I felt anything at all. But I also
Speaker 1: I don't know. I'm not in pain, so you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know if that's why. The one thing I'll say,
Speaker 1: I'm not entirely sure I've gotten so so there isn't
Speaker 1: any cartilage in either of my knees, right, so it
Speaker 1: just feels like peanut butter with gravel, and at all
Speaker 1: the time, I'm just used to that, right, So I
Speaker 1: can't tell you for sure, you know, I I was
Speaker 1: somebody's bait pen with CBD oil in it that I tried.
Speaker 1: I can't tell you for sure that helped with pain.
Speaker 1: I honestly do think it helped with social anxiety, which
Speaker 1: you might not realize because I talked so much. An
Speaker 1: incredibly uncomfortable in social situation. I do not like crowds, uh,
Speaker 1: I hate bars, for instance. But when I tried it,
Speaker 1: I I felt as though I was a little bit
Speaker 1: more comfortable because it was a social situation. I felt
Speaker 1: a little more comfortable after. I didn't feel high, but
Speaker 1: I felt a little bit less panicky. And I don't
Speaker 1: think I'm supposed to get high off of it. So
Speaker 1: I have heard people you have heard of people using
Speaker 1: CBD for things like anxiety and depression. My my experience
Speaker 1: with it, I suppose is uh. I wouldn't call it evidence,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, because it's just my own
Speaker 1: one time experience. And yeah, and also support that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're a guy who's big on um, you know, talking
Speaker 1: about supplements and all that, and and from my experience,
Speaker 1: I think you'll agree there's very few supplements where you
Speaker 1: could like guarantee be like this is having a huge
Speaker 1: effect on me. Like there's stuff that that I take,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, you know, maybe a factor may not
Speaker 1: the only actually the only supplement for me, and it
Speaker 1: would be a whole different subject that I've ever taken
Speaker 1: that I am like, And I could point to the
Speaker 1: physical reasons and all that that stand by, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: this has an absolute impact on me. Is z m A,
Speaker 1: which I don't know if you're familiar with, which are
Speaker 1: just a zinc magnesium ass for tate. I think z
Speaker 1: m A is amazing, But like every other supplement I've taken,
Speaker 1: from like multi vitamins to the only way I've ever
Speaker 1: been able to see if they had any impact on
Speaker 1: me is from doing blood work and seeing like my
Speaker 1: my vitamin D levels rise, but but personally I'm not
Speaker 1: able to be like, wow, this had a huge impact
Speaker 1: on me. Well, the supplements that are there's a similar
Speaker 1: supplement space, a similar problem that intidepressants do, and that
Speaker 1: the change is so gradual it's very difficult to attribute
Speaker 1: it to anyone variable. Right, So let's say you change
Speaker 1: your protein supplement that you take. Now, I don't the
Speaker 1: word supplement is the correct It's the correct word because
Speaker 1: you're supplementing your diet. But people tend to think of
Speaker 1: supplements as either herbal remedies or advanced science some kind
Speaker 1: of eagle steroid. All real legitimate supplements are neither. Uh.
Speaker 1: They're backed by science and they are not a steroid
Speaker 1: of any sort. Right, protein being one of them. The
Speaker 1: idea that your body builds muscle mass using the elements
Speaker 1: protein breaks down to you know, amino acids, uh, as
Speaker 1: well as you know things like a dnazine, triposphates that
Speaker 1: you use for fuel that you can get from creatine
Speaker 1: for instance, and things like that. These supplements are they
Speaker 1: exist in your diet as is, they exist in your
Speaker 1: body as is. You're just adding more in the hopes
Speaker 1: that you're gonna that you're gonna benefit yourself. It's not
Speaker 1: a guarantee. For instance, your body. The rule of thumb
Speaker 1: is your body is only gonna metabolize like let's say,
Speaker 1: flordy grams of protein in a sitting. That's the rule
Speaker 1: of thumb. We call it that because it's not true
Speaker 1: for you. I can almost guarantee it. Nor is it
Speaker 1: for me or the next person. The truth is your
Speaker 1: body is gonna metabolize protein at a different rate than
Speaker 1: mine is. There's a million variables at play too that
Speaker 1: that dictate that my wife's body is gonna metabolize protein
Speaker 1: slightly differently than I do, at a different rate. She
Speaker 1: may get more out of a protein shape than I do.
Speaker 1: If we drink the same protein shake, the rest of
Speaker 1: it's gonna get passed through was waste. You're gonna shoot
Speaker 1: it out right. So it's really difficult when you're taking
Speaker 1: a suite of let's say six supplements, and you're eating
Speaker 1: different kinds of foods than I am. As we just discussed,
Speaker 1: you're eating ship that I don't even know what it is.
Speaker 1: If you're going to juice bars and your meals are liquids,
Speaker 1: I on the other hand, I go to the grocery
Speaker 1: store and I buy a piece of meat and a vegetable,
Speaker 1: and I put it on for most of the most
Speaker 1: part to be I mean, I'm not I'm not someone
Speaker 1: in a liquid diet for those wonder, and actually for me,
Speaker 1: a big reason that I'm into all that is just um,
Speaker 1: getting enough amount of vegetables in. For example, I like
Speaker 1: to have like a green drink. But but it's not
Speaker 1: a cleansing thing. It's just about like I'm getting kale
Speaker 1: and and uh, you know, being consciously involved in what
Speaker 1: you put on. Absolutely yeah. But because of that, you
Speaker 1: and I, like let's say you and I were on
Speaker 1: the exact same suite of supplements, we were on the
Speaker 1: exact same workout regiment none the US. We would have
Speaker 1: very different diets, we would have very different sleep schedules,
Speaker 1: we would have very different stressors in our lives. All
Speaker 1: of these things compound to produce a different result. We're
Speaker 1: biologically different from the get go. I don't think that
Speaker 1: you'd argue that you and I have a different build
Speaker 1: to start with, right, Some people are more prone to
Speaker 1: adding muscle mass than others. Other people who are more
Speaker 1: prone to staying lean than others. Yeah, I'm in camp
Speaker 1: number two. Absolutely. I started in camp number two and
Speaker 1: now I'm just trying to stave off the diabetes. But
Speaker 1: you know, when you you take all of these variables,
Speaker 1: and so many of them are immeasurable, like you're saying,
Speaker 1: without blood work, without someone paying close observational attention to
Speaker 1: how you spend your time, so many of these variables
Speaker 1: are non quantifiable. They're just they're just mysteries out there
Speaker 1: in the ether. So when I go on your body
Speaker 1: space account, I don't know if you've got one that
Speaker 1: used to be a thing. Yeah, I use my fitness
Speaker 1: Pal for my running. So when you go on that
Speaker 1: account and you see this guy who is yoked, you know,
Speaker 1: and you're like, I want to get on that guy's program.
Speaker 1: What's he doing? And you look at his suite of supplements,
Speaker 1: you assume those are what led to his physique, yea,
Speaker 1: and not the four hours a day that he's spending,
Speaker 1: not steroids he didn't include. You know, I know a
Speaker 1: guy who's a fitness model who did some modeling for
Speaker 1: I don't know if I should say for hydroxy cut
Speaker 1: years ago, and I asked him about it at the time.
Speaker 1: I was like, do you have a problem with the
Speaker 1: fact that they're using your body to pretend hydroxy cut
Speaker 1: can do that? And he was like, no, because if
Speaker 1: you think you can look like this without steroids, you're
Speaker 1: an idiot. Wait, dude, you've seen Bigger, Faster, Stronger, right
Speaker 1: that document That's the exact same thing in that documentary.
Speaker 1: He yes, that, And I think that guy lost his
Speaker 1: contract because of saying that. I don't doubt it. That's why.
Speaker 1: That's why I was reluctant to mention. But although Bigger, Stronger,
Speaker 1: Faster did point out a lot of important misconceptions that
Speaker 1: we do have about steroids is associated with him. It's
Speaker 1: funny that we mentioned this because going full circle here,
Speaker 1: the guy who did Um, Bigger, Faster, Stronger, Mark Bell
Speaker 1: is the same guy who did A Leaf of Faith,
Speaker 1: the creative documentary. Yeah, so it's his documentary. It's yeah.
Speaker 1: I think that's his fourth or fifth. I've seen all
Speaker 1: of his documentaries. Um, so that's what made me want
Speaker 1: to get Peter Gidrey on and and back to what
Speaker 1: I was saying, like, I've been seeing more and more
Speaker 1: gas stations selling Creatum and then when I went to
Speaker 1: Florida earlier this month. You see these things called CABA bars,
Speaker 1: which is create them in like a t and you
Speaker 1: go to a bar and drink it. And they are
Speaker 1: all over the place in South Florida. You cannot get
Speaker 1: away from it. Caba boards called k v A things
Speaker 1: with k or se um and they are everywhere. It
Speaker 1: is like the big things. So consider this is an
Speaker 1: important thing for me to point out here as as
Speaker 1: while we're talking about supplements. Yeah, there is no FDA
Speaker 1: oversight on things like this. Well here's the thing. So
Speaker 1: he talks about it in the documentary. There's politicians who wanna,
Speaker 1: you know, who basically want to ban it and get
Speaker 1: the FDA involved. But I think right now it is
Speaker 1: under that applement. But the weird thing about creatum is
Speaker 1: it is not sold in like a vitamin shop. It's
Speaker 1: sold where like people buy vape and that type of that,
Speaker 1: and that's the concern of some people in the documentary,
Speaker 1: So you got to see it. So my point though,
Speaker 1: is um South Florida is like the rehab capital of
Speaker 1: the world, all right, So that's why I think it's
Speaker 1: so big there. It's people getting off opioids and looking
Speaker 1: for alternatives and that's why you see these cobba bars everything.
Speaker 1: But if it's if it's getting huge in Florida, I
Speaker 1: think it's gonna be huge in other states really soon.
Speaker 1: So I'd like to be ahead of the curve. Get
Speaker 1: this vet on to talk about the benefits of creatum
Speaker 1: and his experience, uh and you know, and and have
Speaker 1: other people do their own research and maybe it'll help
Speaker 1: some people. I don't think it'll hurt anybody based on
Speaker 1: what I've seen. Um. You know, the documentary may be skewed,
Speaker 1: but I I don't see any negative impact really. I mean,
Speaker 1: they're the one suicide that they talk about, and there's
Speaker 1: apparently been a small handful. Uh. It seems like it
Speaker 1: could have been many factors, and you know, it's it's
Speaker 1: just it's much like um. When I was younger, I
Speaker 1: was put on accutane for ACTI, right, And before you
Speaker 1: start taking acutane they have to tell you about the
Speaker 1: side effects. And it's all because I think because of
Speaker 1: one big lawsuit if someone killing themselves who was on accutane.
Speaker 1: But is there really a link to suicide? And accutane
Speaker 1: doesn't seem like there really is, you know, so I
Speaker 1: think it's in that same camp. Well, you make a
Speaker 1: great point about the importance of doing your own research
Speaker 1: and understanding that just because something has a bias doesn't
Speaker 1: mean there's nothing of value to be gained from it,
Speaker 1: provided you acknowledge the bias. Right. So you know, people
Speaker 1: often will say, you know, c ann is for liberals,
Speaker 1: Fox News is for conservatives. I'd argue, all the more
Speaker 1: reason to watch them both. Uh, you know when you
Speaker 1: watch Fox News, when you watch a documentary, that that
Speaker 1: is obviously selling you something, maybe not selling you a product,
Speaker 1: but is. But as it's a persuasive essay, right, it's
Speaker 1: important to look at the points that they bring up
Speaker 1: in this persuasive essay objectively. Try to delineate between where
Speaker 1: you're getting subjective information and when you're getting objective information,
Speaker 1: because every good persuasive essay has both, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean, and weigh them, weigh them equally. So, for instance,
Speaker 1: when you're watching this documentary about creedom, you may you
Speaker 1: because you're a pretty savvy guy, you work in this industry,
Speaker 1: you realize pretty shortly after starting watching it, I gather Okay,
Speaker 1: so there's they have an angle. You know, they believe
Speaker 1: something and they want to tell me why they believe
Speaker 1: in it. Right. That's the point of a lot of
Speaker 1: documentaries is I have a belief and I'm trying to
Speaker 1: convey it to you. But you need to be able
Speaker 1: to differentiate between those beliefs and the objective facts. So
Speaker 1: if this documentary with you being able to delineate between
Speaker 1: the two, it piqued your interest, It's a good reason
Speaker 1: to do that third party research, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: do a little bit of reading into it. It may
Speaker 1: well be the right thing for you. It might not
Speaker 1: be the right thing for everybody. It may be the
Speaker 1: right thing for everybody. But don't trust a single source
Speaker 1: about anything, right, But don't dismiss something just because of
Speaker 1: the source. Exactly. Agree, And I thought to be fair
Speaker 1: if people watch it, I think Mark Bell is pretty
Speaker 1: objective about it. I mean, he has a bigger, stronger,
Speaker 1: faster I thought was a very well done documentary, exactly.
Speaker 1: And I feel the same way about prescription thugs in
Speaker 1: this documentary. I mean, obviously he has his message. I
Speaker 1: think that it is a pro creative documentary, but he
Speaker 1: interviews a lot of people on the anti side, and
Speaker 1: I didn't find most of them very and that's all
Speaker 1: I ask, you know, Like for Morgan Spurlock is a
Speaker 1: great example of the other end of that spectrum in
Speaker 1: my opinion. You know, when you do some reading into uh,
Speaker 1: what was the McDonald's documentary Supersize Me? Riddled with errors,
Speaker 1: utter bullshit. It is a factually inaccurate documentary and just
Speaker 1: what every which way you can comby, but it was
Speaker 1: a very marketable documentary. Morgan Spurlock wasn't trying to convince
Speaker 1: you of his perspective. He was trying to sell you
Speaker 1: a movie, you know, he and he has since done
Speaker 1: it with television, chosen further documentaries, and so honest, I
Speaker 1: don't trust a single thing that guy says. You know,
Speaker 1: he may well have some important points, but because at
Speaker 1: this point he has proven himself to be an unreliable
Speaker 1: source to me, he gets filed in with Michael Moore.
Speaker 1: You know, uh, I know for a fact that what
Speaker 1: you're gonna tell me is colored with bullshit. So I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna try. You know, I don't expect you to
Speaker 1: come at me with no bias whatsoever. Even an objective journalism,
Speaker 1: there are inherent biases that we work hard to try
Speaker 1: to get rid of. But that's the importance of a
Speaker 1: good editorial team, because you don't always see your biases.
Speaker 1: You know, you need to have a guy go hey, man,
Speaker 1: you know you're kind of you're Kurt. You're touching the
Speaker 1: line here a little bit and telling the reader what
Speaker 1: to think. Even I've been doing this for a while now,
Speaker 1: you know, but every once in a while, I'll either
Speaker 1: get an email or a note from one of the editors,
Speaker 1: or I'll read one of my own pieces myself, and
Speaker 1: I'll be like, you know what, I think I should
Speaker 1: have feathered off of that a little bit, because right
Speaker 1: there it kind of seems as that I'm trying to
Speaker 1: lead the lead the reader to a inclusion and that's
Speaker 1: not my job. You know, That's not what I'm here
Speaker 1: to do. I think every journalist who's worth the damn
Speaker 1: is worried about that. I think more and more that
Speaker 1: are fewer and fewer journalists that are worth the damn. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know. So I was gonna actually mentioned this at
Speaker 1: the beginning of the show, but uh, you know, wrapping
Speaker 1: things up here, we just got so caught up in
Speaker 1: conversation that every time I come on, man, we just yeah,
Speaker 1: this is my fault, not your No, it's great. I
Speaker 1: love it. I write down a few notes and then
Speaker 1: we end up going all over the place. But I
Speaker 1: actually think this is a really important show. I mean
Speaker 1: the mean point of of what we got into. And
Speaker 1: I thought it would have been a shorter discussion, but
Speaker 1: we ended up going really long, and it was the
Speaker 1: suicide prevention stuff, and I think that that's a really
Speaker 1: valuable thing people are gonna learn. But what I was
Speaker 1: going to mention was that Jack is not here because
Speaker 1: he's I guess I'm kind of sick. It seems like
Speaker 1: he might be getting over the flu. So that well,
Speaker 1: what I heard was that George Sorrow's page Jack not
Speaker 1: to come. That's the street. That's what I heard on Twitter. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but hopefully you'll be back next episode. I was like, dude,
Speaker 1: don't get me sick, please, So I don't mind doing
Speaker 1: the show by myself. But that's why he didn't sound
Speaker 1: like he was doing well. Yeah, so that that's why
Speaker 1: he used away. But I we have plenty of awesome
Speaker 1: guests lined up for the next few weeks, so that's great. Um,
Speaker 1: but yeah, wrapping things up here, what are you working
Speaker 1: on currently at both sides. Well on fighting or sleep
Speaker 1: dot Com, You're gonna find all kinds of really good
Speaker 1: contact coming up that's really delving into what it's like
Speaker 1: to be not just a fighter pilot, but it's like
Speaker 1: to be a pilot. And this actually leads to something
Speaker 1: I'd like to get out there while I'm here. I
Speaker 1: am on the hunt for World War two bomber crewmen. Uh.
Speaker 1: I've got a book project that I'm working on. I'm
Speaker 1: working on it through Hurricane. I want to tell the
Speaker 1: stories of guys who actually flew in bomber cruise in
Speaker 1: World War Two in a way that doesn't just recount
Speaker 1: the missions or you know, their accomplishments, but in a
Speaker 1: way that's engaging, uh, for someone who's not necessarily interested
Speaker 1: in military aviation. These are human story, you know, And
Speaker 1: we're rapidly losing our World War Two veterans. Right My
Speaker 1: daughter when she's my age, isn't going to have a
Speaker 1: World War Two veteran to ask what was it? Like?
Speaker 1: I don't need, you know, She'll have plenty of sources
Speaker 1: to find out what day, what mission was flown, on,
Speaker 1: how many bombs were draft where she won't have any
Speaker 1: real sources to speak to directly and say what was
Speaker 1: going through your head, what were you thinking about? Who
Speaker 1: did you miss? You know, make these stories real in
Speaker 1: a way that's not just about a war, but it's
Speaker 1: about people. I'm looking for people with stories to tell
Speaker 1: so that I can put them together in this book.
Speaker 1: I would love for you to reach out. It'll be
Speaker 1: working through Fighter Sweep and through News Rep as well
Speaker 1: as in a new book. So please, by all means,
Speaker 1: reach out to me on Twitter Alex Helen fifty two,
Speaker 1: reach out to me on Facebook, uh Facebook dot com,
Speaker 1: Slash Alex Holns writer, or by email Alex at the
Speaker 1: News Rep dot com if you know somebody. If you
Speaker 1: are somebody, let me know. But you'll be getting more
Speaker 1: stories like that on Fight or Sweep here in the
Speaker 1: near future, as well as just more analysis into how
Speaker 1: these stories are developing and how it pertains to our
Speaker 1: national security apparatus. You know, Hypersonic missiles, for instance, may
Speaker 1: not be fighter jets, but they deal directly with our
Speaker 1: aircraft carrier operations. Without aircraft carriers, we don't really have
Speaker 1: a reliable means for Navy aviation to go out there
Speaker 1: and put put bombs out of targets. Uh, we need
Speaker 1: to be worried about China, we need to be worried
Speaker 1: about Russia, we need to be worried about our own
Speaker 1: defense spending, and fighter Sweep is gonna be giving you
Speaker 1: a lot of analysis about that over on the news
Speaker 1: web side here in the next couple of days. Go on,
Speaker 1: I beg you read my articles about our recruitment issues.
Speaker 1: Read my article about v I suicide prevention issues. I
Speaker 1: also put an op ed in today about contemporary politics
Speaker 1: here in America and how we've just kind of accepted
Speaker 1: that we don't need the truth anymore. We just want
Speaker 1: whoever is the best salesman at their brand of bullshit
Speaker 1: that's on the left and the right. Uh So it
Speaker 1: might make you real mad. If it pisses you all,
Speaker 1: let me know on Twitter. I'd be happy to hear
Speaker 1: from people. Yeah, these are important stories, man. I mean,
Speaker 1: looking back on the show, I think we've had two
Speaker 1: World War Two veterans, and I think both of them,
Speaker 1: I think both of them are no longer with us.
Speaker 1: So I really value every time we get to speak
Speaker 1: to those guys. Same with every time I've gotten a
Speaker 1: meet in person a holocoust survivor. I've probably met a
Speaker 1: good I probably met about eight or so Holocaust survivors
Speaker 1: in my life. And and as you've said, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: like when your daughter is our age, they're not going
Speaker 1: to be around anymore. I've met, you know, quite a
Speaker 1: few of them, man, And it's it's an honor. You know.
Speaker 1: My mom's aunt was an Holocaust survivor, and you know,
Speaker 1: to get to hear those stories. Yeah, and a decade
Speaker 1: decade down the line, two decades down the line, they're
Speaker 1: all gonna be gone, you know. And this is a
Speaker 1: particular import to me because you know, talking about funeral honors, duties. Earlier.
Speaker 1: I was working a memorial surface years ago. I think
Speaker 1: I was like a lance No, I must have been
Speaker 1: a corporal at the time. Uh. And I met this
Speaker 1: guy who had a big purple scar on his cheekbone,
Speaker 1: on his right cheekbone. Uh. He was a former marine.
Speaker 1: I knew that right at he introduced himself as such. Uh.
Speaker 1: And I tried. You know, when you see when you
Speaker 1: meet somebody with a big birthmark on their face, the
Speaker 1: last thing you do is mention it, like Austin power
Speaker 1: shouting mole. Right. So you know, I didn't engage with
Speaker 1: it and him Finally he was like, you can ask
Speaker 1: me about it. You can ask me about the scar. Uh.
Speaker 1: He was in the Chosen Reservoir. He was one of
Speaker 1: the marines. His rifle froze to his face while he
Speaker 1: was fighting at the Chosen Reservoir, you know, one of
Speaker 1: the the frozen, Chosen, the chosen a few. You know,
Speaker 1: we're talking about a real war hero, a story I've
Speaker 1: heard a million times, a story every marine knows. But
Speaker 1: to meet a guy, to look a guy in the face,
Speaker 1: to hear his story, to hear about coming back to
Speaker 1: his wife after made that story no longer a kick
Speaker 1: ass story about marines in the fight to me anymore.
Speaker 1: It made it a human story about a guy who
Speaker 1: was fighting for something. You know. Uh. For me, as
Speaker 1: a young corporal, that was incredibly important to hear. You know,
Speaker 1: I think that it's just as important for later generations
Speaker 1: to be able to go back and pick up a
Speaker 1: book and read those firsthand accoud from guys who aren't
Speaker 1: talking about the foreign policy implications of bombing Japan. They
Speaker 1: weren't talking about the access powers versus the Allied powers.
Speaker 1: They're talking about John fighting in this war and them
Speaker 1: getting home you know, uh, we need to connect with
Speaker 1: that because we need to remember what war really is,
Speaker 1: especially in today's day and age, where every time you
Speaker 1: see something on the news, people immediately shout, we got
Speaker 1: to send troops over there, and then once we send
Speaker 1: troops over there, we shout, we gotta get them home.
Speaker 1: We're happy, We're happy to throw our countries into wars
Speaker 1: as long as we're not the ones fighting them. I
Speaker 1: want to make sure people remember what it's like to
Speaker 1: be the ones fighting those wars. To be I think
Speaker 1: I think less so I think I think more and
Speaker 1: more people are are more cautious about US going into
Speaker 1: foreign conflicts, and and it's part of whether you like
Speaker 1: and we're not why Trump got elected in terms of
Speaker 1: him being a little bit more critical of that. I'm
Speaker 1: reluctant to agree with you. I hope you're right. But
Speaker 1: the rhetoric that I see on social media. You know,
Speaker 1: it's like with North Korea last year, where especially on
Speaker 1: the conservative side, you saw it repeatedly like we just
Speaker 1: need to invade, we need to get rid of Kim,
Speaker 1: Kim needs to be assassinated. You know, a lot of
Speaker 1: rhetoric based on the idea of us using military force
Speaker 1: to change the way things are operating in North Korea,
Speaker 1: when from an objective standpoint, we know full well that's
Speaker 1: a no win situation. Even if we can go in
Speaker 1: and totally dominate the North Korean military, which unfortunately, despite
Speaker 1: our technological advantages, we likely couldn't based on just their
Speaker 1: artillery's capability to destroy Soul, South Korea. Even if we
Speaker 1: were able to roll through them, we would then be
Speaker 1: faced with another occupational quagmire of keeping US troops overseas
Speaker 1: fighting insurgent forces for years, for decades to come. We
Speaker 1: don't think like this, though, We go this guy is
Speaker 1: a bad guy. We gotta get rid of them. You know. Uh,
Speaker 1: We can't think about our national security apparatus in terms
Speaker 1: of US fighting bad guys. It's got to be in
Speaker 1: terms of America's self interest to sustain our well be
Speaker 1: looking towards the future. And as selfish as that may sound,
Speaker 1: it's pragmatic and realistic. It's the truth of foreign policy.
Speaker 1: Even though in the media we really like to pretend
Speaker 1: it's all about ethics and morals, it's not, you know, uh,
Speaker 1: wrapping things up here, be sure to check out create club.
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Speaker 1: are offering here at Hurricane Media. I guess that's about it, man.
Speaker 1: I mean, as we're recording this, people will have heard
Speaker 1: it already. But what is tonight is tonight the state
Speaker 1: of the Union. I believe I think I've seen people
Speaker 1: tweet about it, so I know Trump is giving it,
Speaker 1: think it should be tonight, So I thought it was
Speaker 1: j don't quote me on that, man, I don't know
Speaker 1: what they today is State of the Union. I'm probably wrong.
Speaker 1: Um it says I guess the news that he is
Speaker 1: giving a State of your Union. Yeah, January address about
Speaker 1: the shutdown on the wall. That's what it is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: January is going to do a State of the Union
Speaker 1: despite any shutdown. And this is why it's at least
Speaker 1: in New York. I see trending boycott Trump prime time
Speaker 1: because these people on the left don't want them to
Speaker 1: even air Trump even though he's the president. Well, the
Speaker 1: argument is that Barack Obama tried to make an immigration
Speaker 1: speech in prime time that wasn't broadcast because they said
Speaker 1: that it was two partisan. Got it. However, I mean, look,
Speaker 1: here's the government is shut down. That's a problem. Well,
Speaker 1: you work together as a problem. Do. People who have
Speaker 1: listening this podcasts have said, I've been critical of Trump
Speaker 1: or I praised Trump, but you know, I'm gonna be honest,
Speaker 1: like as much as he loves to tout it where
Speaker 1: he's like I'm a ratings bonanza or what he really is.
Speaker 1: I mean, if Trump is on TV, people fucking watch
Speaker 1: and then this is what these news stations care about.
Speaker 1: They want viewers no matter what's going on, and they
Speaker 1: are obsessed with Trump. It's all Trump all the time.
Speaker 1: I personally don't even watch the news, but I just
Speaker 1: know that you know that this is what they cover.
Speaker 1: And Trump is a ratings machine the way that he
Speaker 1: loves to tout. It's true. Here's my genuine analysis of
Speaker 1: the argument against televising Donald Trump. The studios intentionally waited
Speaker 1: a bit. They hesitated to say that they were going
Speaker 1: to televise it on purpose because then it became a
Speaker 1: trending topic. Then there became boycott Trumps. All the conservatives
Speaker 1: were saying, you have to give him an opportunity to
Speaker 1: speak his mind. Now, we give a ship. If they
Speaker 1: had just said, yeah, man, we'll put you on TV,
Speaker 1: it would have gotten maybe a third the audience that
Speaker 1: it will now because it's a controversy. Uh you know,
Speaker 1: it's the exact same thing as Uh there's a show
Speaker 1: on Netflix called what is It with the National or
Speaker 1: the Patriot Act where they buy Saudi Arabia's request removed
Speaker 1: an episode that was critical of Saudi Arabia of course
Speaker 1: they did, because now it's free on YouTube and everyone's
Speaker 1: gonna go watch the Patriot Act. It's trending now. It
Speaker 1: was an excellent marketing strategy. It's all about ratings. It's
Speaker 1: got nothing to do with policy, all right. All I
Speaker 1: gotta say is Alex Hollings, huge loser, failed writer. I'll
Speaker 1: take huge losers. But i'd like to say, and no
Speaker 1: one can see the video, but I'm doing the thing
Speaker 1: I don't do like a great Trump impression, but I
Speaker 1: do always have to do the thing where he puts
Speaker 1: like the the A O K and both. It always
Speaker 1: has every single speech that it's the exact same. It's
Speaker 1: the hand yesture that sells. We all know exactly what
Speaker 1: he's gonna say. Yeah, but you're just gonna tune in
Speaker 1: so that the Democrats can be mad that he lied
Speaker 1: and the Republicans can be proud of him for lying.
Speaker 1: To tune in. But I'm sure I'll see like highlights
Speaker 1: on Twitter. That's all I care about the next morning.
Speaker 1: And um, you know, everybody fighting over whatever he said,
Speaker 1: and oh my god, I'm so outraged. If you're not
Speaker 1: willing to to hear the other side of the argument,
Speaker 1: then how can you argue that you're willing to compromise, Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I get. I just don't watch any news anymore. To
Speaker 1: be honest, I go on Twitter, I see what people
Speaker 1: are talking about. I read a few articles here and there.
Speaker 1: But I'm not gonna lie to you guys. Man, I
Speaker 1: just I don't. I don't. I don't care enough anymore.
Speaker 1: I know enough to like talk about what's going on,
Speaker 1: But I'm not one of these people who's like tuned
Speaker 1: into seven news cycle. It's all the same ship over
Speaker 1: and over again. It's like, that's actually the big thing
Speaker 1: that's changed in my life since taking this job is
Speaker 1: that when I worked at Serious XM, I mean, we
Speaker 1: had Fox News seven, and I would also see the
Speaker 1: other channels on in the studio, and it was like
Speaker 1: all this news all the time, and I barely watched
Speaker 1: it at home. Now that I'm home and I'm here, like,
Speaker 1: I don't watch any of it. I really don't televisions.
Speaker 1: I feel that I'm just as informed as uh I
Speaker 1: need to be. I mean, I've talked about it on
Speaker 1: the show before, but like it's way more split screen
Speaker 1: debate than anything that informing you on policy. I feel
Speaker 1: fine just reading you know, you guys, reading the sources
Speaker 1: that I want, and then seeing what you know as
Speaker 1: as stupid, maybe what's trending on Twitter, what are people
Speaker 1: saying about it, reading some articles from different perspectives on it,
Speaker 1: and and then I, you know, I see what You'll
Speaker 1: end up with. That approach a much better rounded idea
Speaker 1: of what's going on, i'd argue than just watching television
Speaker 1: news anyway. You know. But I'll say this as my
Speaker 1: as my parting shot, because I know that I was
Speaker 1: pretty critical of Trump here at the end here as
Speaker 1: a conservative leading guy, which I have, I would argue,
Speaker 1: the last thing you want is Donald Trump up there
Speaker 1: arguing in favor of something that you want. He's not
Speaker 1: good and arguing in favor of things. Every time he does,
Speaker 1: he creates an incredible controversy. He provides the left with
Speaker 1: a dozen new talking points that make him look bad.
Speaker 1: The last thing as a Republican, if you're if you're
Speaker 1: a Trump supporter, which it's pretty clear that I'm not
Speaker 1: an Adam and Trump supporter. If you are a Trump
Speaker 1: supporter and you appreciate the things that he's trying to accomplish,
Speaker 1: you should by now appreciate that he's not the best
Speaker 1: salesman for it. Yeah, to the contrary of that, though,
Speaker 1: I actually watched um Ben ship Euro debating some people
Speaker 1: on CNN recently. I am a huge Ben Shapiro fan.
Speaker 1: By the way, I watched. Don't always agree with him,
Speaker 1: but I like I watched this on YouTube. By the way,
Speaker 1: if anybody's gonna think I'm lying about not watching seven
Speaker 1: news Cycle like I didn't, I didn't actually see it
Speaker 1: on CNN. I saw the YouTube. But um, he said
Speaker 1: to um, what's his name? Man? The guy who's my age?
Speaker 1: But he looks like he's Brian Stelter. Dude, Brian Stelter
Speaker 1: is our age, and he looks like he's like a
Speaker 1: fifty year old man. Um, but yeah, look him up, dude,
Speaker 1: I think he's thirty three years old. It's insane. I
Speaker 1: would never think that he's that young. I mean, dude,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna lie Brian Stealt. They're not looking good
Speaker 1: for his age. Someone's gonna give me ship I'm sure.
Speaker 1: But anyway, so, um Ben Shapiro is on there debating
Speaker 1: her debating Sorry him and some woman I was That's
Speaker 1: why I'm saying her on CNN and what he said
Speaker 1: it was true, I think, and that he's like the
Speaker 1: mainstream media needs to stop picking a fight with Trump
Speaker 1: because it's a fight they're gonna lose every time. If
Speaker 1: it's the media versus him, just reporting what's going on,
Speaker 1: you could fact check things he's saying. But if it's
Speaker 1: like this coverage of what a terrible person he is
Speaker 1: and and how bad he is, like it's just a
Speaker 1: fight that you know that he is winning every time,
Speaker 1: and it's actually getting people on board with Trump when
Speaker 1: he makes it seem like the news media is against
Speaker 1: him and unfair to him. I think, you know, just
Speaker 1: reporting on what's going on, and if he's lying about something,
Speaker 1: you need to report it. But there are times you
Speaker 1: watch the news and it just seems like it's a
Speaker 1: seven you know, Trump bash and the Boy who Cried Wolf.
Speaker 1: You know, there there have been legitimate things that Donald
Speaker 1: Trump has done that I have found to be a
Speaker 1: really poor decision. There's also been things he's done. For instance,
Speaker 1: his pushed for space defense. Whether you think the Space
Speaker 1: Force is or isn't the most economically efficient means of
Speaker 1: space defense, we need space defense and he's made it
Speaker 1: something we talk about, Uh, he's not always wrong, but
Speaker 1: when you paint it as though he's always wrong when
Speaker 1: he is, the teeth are out of your argument. Jack
Speaker 1: wrote an article on this on the News Up and
Speaker 1: Jack has been extremely critical of Trump and he wrote
Speaker 1: about how, um yeah, and at the same time, you know,
Speaker 1: I think he's a critical of every everyone. I don't
Speaker 1: want anybody to think, yeah, this is Jack, you know,
Speaker 1: picking a fight with just Trump. He was extremely critical
Speaker 1: of Obama. So I'm not it's not a bias thing.
Speaker 1: He's He's just a speaking truth to power, is what
Speaker 1: it is exactly. So, but I'm just saying he's not
Speaker 1: He's not a guy who sugarcoats for Trump does. But
Speaker 1: he wrote an article he talked about it in the
Speaker 1: last episode, UM about how the media was saying, when
Speaker 1: is Trump going to visit the troops? This is an
Speaker 1: outrage And when he didn't visit the troops, there was
Speaker 1: an outrage over that, you know, So it really is
Speaker 1: true that, like it's just the media is looking for
Speaker 1: anything to bash Trump and it and I think Trump
Speaker 1: wins in that fight every time. Is this is this
Speaker 1: is where I'm this is insider baseball that I could
Speaker 1: go on for another whole podcast on so because a
Speaker 1: lot of the reason why you see so much Trump
Speaker 1: in the press, especially anti Trump in the press, it's
Speaker 1: not because the media wants necessarily to only post or
Speaker 1: write anti Trump articles. It's because those are the traffic drivers.
Speaker 1: You know, the media is ultimately a business. It's a
Speaker 1: number of businesses Fox CNN. The reason why when Donald
Speaker 1: Trump does or says something really stupid, Fox doesn't run
Speaker 1: that as their headline. But will Onceton wrote a handline
Speaker 1: about a criminal who is an illegal immigrant is because
Speaker 1: they're selling space. They're selling real estate on their website
Speaker 1: to their audience. The reason why when Donald Trump says
Speaker 1: something that's good, or some senior officials says no, this
Speaker 1: is a really good idea, they don't run that as
Speaker 1: their headline either. They run something about how Donald Trump
Speaker 1: said something done last week for the same reason they're
Speaker 1: selling real estate to their audience. They're not that interested
Speaker 1: in informing you. What they're really interested in is getting
Speaker 1: you to glance at the advertisement on the side of
Speaker 1: the website. You know. And as long as uh, anti
Speaker 1: Donald Trump articles get just as many hate shares as
Speaker 1: they do support shares, as long as Donald Trump supporters
Speaker 1: hate read these articles for the sake of I'm enting
Speaker 1: on them at the bottom. That's currency in a digital market.
Speaker 1: When you hate click on an article, that's currency you're
Speaker 1: paying them to write more like it. Yep, absolutely setting
Speaker 1: with Donald Trump. Yeah, I've mentioned this before, I think
Speaker 1: on this podcast. I've definitely mentioned it on the Power
Speaker 1: of Thought podcast. When I got my degree in radio,
Speaker 1: UM probably actually definitely the best professor I had was
Speaker 1: this guy named John Mullen. He's the guy who um
Speaker 1: one of the people behind making Hot ninety seven in
Speaker 1: New York rap station, which you know, it's the most
Speaker 1: successful rap station of all time and it really started
Speaker 1: the whole trend of making a lot of dance stations
Speaker 1: in major markets into rap stations. And he, as he
Speaker 1: said himself, he's like an older white guy. He's like,
Speaker 1: I'm not I don't really listen to hip hop. I
Speaker 1: just knew there was a market for it and I
Speaker 1: had to fill it. So anyway, he would always say,
Speaker 1: radio is essentially selling people to advertisers. Like, you want
Speaker 1: to be creative, you want to do all this other stuff,
Speaker 1: but essentially if you're not, you know, selling people to
Speaker 1: advertise here as you're dead and UM. You know, even
Speaker 1: with this podcast like, it's about striking a balance. Do
Speaker 1: I want all of you guys listening to UM to
Speaker 1: be honest, go to Pelican Coolers dot com right now
Speaker 1: and use the soft rep coupon code. Yeah, it would
Speaker 1: be great for us. It grows the podcast, But it's
Speaker 1: all about striking the balance. I also want to make
Speaker 1: sure that we're reporting on real news stories and having
Speaker 1: guys on like you talking about these serious issues like
Speaker 1: veteran suicide. At the same point, I want, you know,
Speaker 1: this to be a successful podcast. If I'm talking, if
Speaker 1: we're talking to five people, then then then this is
Speaker 1: going away and I will not have a job. You know,
Speaker 1: and what you're what you're providing right there is transparency.
Speaker 1: Like do I, as a guy who doesn't work for
Speaker 1: this podcast but works for the company that that also
Speaker 1: owns it, do I want you to go to Pelican
Speaker 1: and by I do. The reason being when these advertisers
Speaker 1: come and give us money for website, real estate or
Speaker 1: time on the podcast, that are enabling us to keep
Speaker 1: getting our messages out there to an audience. But I
Speaker 1: won't lie to you. I have adopted over the years,
Speaker 1: a one for me, one for hu mentality. A lot
Speaker 1: of times I'll write an article that I'll go, well,
Speaker 1: this one will be a strong traffic driver, I know that.
Speaker 1: But then I'll write another article that, in my opinion,
Speaker 1: is very important. It's an in depth analysis into something
Speaker 1: like a way that your perception is being shaped by
Speaker 1: popular culture. China's investment in Hollywood is a great example.
Speaker 1: Those articles don't tend to do very well. You know,
Speaker 1: people don't really want to read two thousand words about
Speaker 1: how they're being fucked with. You know, it's a hard day.
Speaker 1: It's you're already having a hard day. Why make it
Speaker 1: harder by reading some hard truths about how even in
Speaker 1: the Captain America Civil War they were selling you Chinese
Speaker 1: phones throughout. It's a really hard conversation to have. I
Speaker 1: write those articles because if two thousand people read that article,
Speaker 1: that's important. Some of the other ones I'm aim in
Speaker 1: for sixty you know what I mean. But every once
Speaker 1: in a while, I write those two thousand reader articles
Speaker 1: because I find that they're important. But I can't unless
Speaker 1: I have that sixty thou reader article. Unless Pelican is
Speaker 1: willing to buy real estate on the website. So that's
Speaker 1: not just true for us, it's true for all media news.
Speaker 1: If you're upset about not seeing enough of a certain
Speaker 1: type of content, the reason why you're not seeing it
Speaker 1: is because people aren't clicking on it. The way you
Speaker 1: can change that is by clicking on that content when
Speaker 1: you see it, share of that content when you see it,
Speaker 1: if you think better. In suicide is an important story,
Speaker 1: you may notice it's not getting a lot of coverage
Speaker 1: in CNN or Writers or Fox this week because it's
Speaker 1: not an election year. Politicians don't really care. Therefore, the
Speaker 1: media doesn't really care. Nobody much gives a ship that
Speaker 1: veterans are killing themselves except for veterans and people who
Speaker 1: know them. You know, I wish I could find I
Speaker 1: I don't know what the podcast is that Jack said it.
Speaker 1: It was really old, um, and I really don't remember
Speaker 1: which podcast was. But Jack went on such a great
Speaker 1: rant that I'll always remember where He was like, I'll
Speaker 1: figure out which it was. But he was like, don't
Speaker 1: tell me that. You guys don't want to read this
Speaker 1: stuff because this is what you click on. It SAMs
Speaker 1: like if I write an article about, you know, China,
Speaker 1: something as you were saying, and privacies can certens. He's like,
Speaker 1: it will get a fraction of the hits. As if
Speaker 1: I write an article about a guy at the mall
Speaker 1: stolen valor dressing up as an army ranger. He's like,
Speaker 1: this is what you guys don't tell me. It's not
Speaker 1: excuse to post a picture of a girl in a bikini.
Speaker 1: It'll be our best traffic driver day. The problem is
Speaker 1: is that that's not very often newsworthy. You know. The
Speaker 1: thing is is that we all have this line in
Speaker 1: our heads between what we'll actually do and what we
Speaker 1: see ourselves doing. We'll tell the doctor we only drink socially.
Speaker 1: We tell our friends that we just read this very
Speaker 1: interesting article on National geographic put in truth. We watched
Speaker 1: a YouTube video. You know, Uh, people vote with their clicks.
Speaker 1: If you want to see more of a certain type
Speaker 1: of content, you know, give it a few minutes, share
Speaker 1: it with your friends, Encourage people to click on it,
Speaker 1: because as long as you click on garbage, garbage is
Speaker 1: what they're gonna give you. You know, we as writers
Speaker 1: don't want to write garbage. You know. That's my favorite
Speaker 1: part about working for News Rep is that I have
Speaker 1: never once that's not sure. One time I had the
Speaker 1: need to come back and say I'm not going to
Speaker 1: run the story. It was not bet that it was
Speaker 1: a good call, you know. But one time. In three
Speaker 1: years with this company, I've published more than two thousand
Speaker 1: pieces of content with news Rep. Out of those, one
Speaker 1: time I had an editor come back and say, listen,
Speaker 1: we're scrapping this. I've certainly gotten notes, you know, to
Speaker 1: change things, but only one time that I get a
Speaker 1: hard no. The reason being that news Rep never has
Speaker 1: given me a narrative to sell news Rep soft repent.
Speaker 1: Pro prior to being a news rep has always been
Speaker 1: give us the truth, the best you can find it,
Speaker 1: you know. Unfortunately for us, we've had subscribers, we've had
Speaker 1: a strong reader base that wants that. But when you
Speaker 1: see CNN, when you see Fox News, these have much
Speaker 1: broader audiences, much larger audiences. Stop the people who are
Speaker 1: listening to this podcast we're preaching to the choir. They're
Speaker 1: already clicking on the articles that are given them hard
Speaker 1: news about Afghanistan when the rest of the world doesn't
Speaker 1: give a ship that we're still at war there. You know,
Speaker 1: they're already clicking on our articles. Great example being I
Speaker 1: had a senator read one of my pieces about Arctic
Speaker 1: defense before sent coom last year. That article only did
Speaker 1: like a thousand views, you know, because people don't actually
Speaker 1: give a shit about Arctic defense. But it does really matter, right,
Speaker 1: So even I had a thousand readers click on it
Speaker 1: on SOFTWAUP. I bet you have CNN ran it, they
Speaker 1: get the same thousand because people aren't interested. You know,
Speaker 1: when you see something that's important, make it important to
Speaker 1: you and your friends. It sounds small, but every little
Speaker 1: bit counts, you know, on a web page like fighters Sleep.
Speaker 1: For instance, if I notice a dozen views on an article,
Speaker 1: some of my articles might get twenty thousand views, but
Speaker 1: I noticed when I get a dozen over ten minutes,
Speaker 1: because I'm keeping track all the time, and I go,
Speaker 1: that's awesome, that's trending. That means that in some small
Speaker 1: little group, some small sect of people, this story is
Speaker 1: resonating in an important way. That's what we're trying to
Speaker 1: do ultimately. So when you see something a headline that
Speaker 1: seems important, don't scroll by and go oh that's good,
Speaker 1: click on it, share it with your friends. That's how
Speaker 1: you change how shitty media has become Yeah, I have
Speaker 1: a friend I went to college with who worked in
Speaker 1: you know, major media and Queens New York. Uh. He
Speaker 1: he recently quit doing that and is now working in
Speaker 1: real estate, and it's strictly for financial reasons. He he
Speaker 1: was like, you know, this is my passion, this is
Speaker 1: what I love, this is what I went to college
Speaker 1: to do. But he's like, it's just not paying the bills.
Speaker 1: I have to leave it. And he wrote a whole
Speaker 1: explanation for you know, why print media is dying in
Speaker 1: some ways, and he talked about, you know, one week,
Speaker 1: for example, all the important articles that were being covered
Speaker 1: by the publication he worked for, of kidnappings and serious
Speaker 1: election stuff. And he's like, what article drove the most traffic?
Speaker 1: He was like, it was a throwaway piece on where
Speaker 1: Nicki Minaj bays or whigs in New York. He was like,
Speaker 1: it was a piece that was done at the very
Speaker 1: last minute to sell some advertisers, and that drove the
Speaker 1: most traffics. So once again, it's like, don't don't tell
Speaker 1: me that this is a piece no one gives a
Speaker 1: shit about. People are clicking on it. This is one
Speaker 1: the most people give a shit about exactly, you know,
Speaker 1: and again we're not. It's important that we say this.
Speaker 1: I get escapism. Yeah, you know what I mean. When
Speaker 1: I clock out, I don't want to go read more
Speaker 1: like a hard hitting news about how shitty life is.
Speaker 1: You know. I I can't turn it off, so I'm
Speaker 1: always there. But I understand that when you've got fifteen
Speaker 1: minutes to scroll through your Facebook feed in between bringing
Speaker 1: your kids to soccer, making dinner, doing your full time
Speaker 1: job cleaning the house would have taken the garbage out
Speaker 1: and all the rest of the stuff you've got to
Speaker 1: failure day with, You've only got ten minutes for news.
Speaker 1: You know you're gonna get it and the most digestible way.
Speaker 1: And the last thing you want is another reason to
Speaker 1: be depressed during or anxious. Right. I get it, I
Speaker 1: really do. But if you want things to get better,
Speaker 1: you've got to take responsibility for it yourself. The media
Speaker 1: isn't going to change as long as they're buying gold
Speaker 1: plated ferraris on their Nicki Munah stories. You know. Like
Speaker 1: it's just like I wrote in my in my article
Speaker 1: about China's investments in Hollywood the other day, the reason
Speaker 1: why America is refusing to engage with this persuasion, and
Speaker 1: like objective is that it's coming disguised as big bags
Speaker 1: of money. You know, we like things to be simple,
Speaker 1: and we lots of money. You know. Until we're willing
Speaker 1: to own that, the media is not going to get better.
Speaker 1: We've got to own it ourselves. Us as consumers have
Speaker 1: got to demand more. Again, we're preaching to the choir
Speaker 1: because soft reps, news reps, Fighter Sleeps readers are the
Speaker 1: guys that are looking for informed guys and informed analysis.
Speaker 1: We need that notion to grow. We needed to and
Speaker 1: we need the mainstream media to embrace that same concept
Speaker 1: that it's not just about selling traffic, it's also about
Speaker 1: doing this doing a service to the population. Right now,
Speaker 1: we're just selling traffic on the mainstream side. They're not
Speaker 1: trying to do a service. We've got to get back
Speaker 1: to that, but they won't unless we demand it. While
Speaker 1: said man uh well, once again, go to the news
Speaker 1: rep dot com. Check out Alex's pieces Fighter Sleep dot
Speaker 1: com at fight or Sleep on Twitter, on Instagram, Alex
Speaker 1: is on Twitter at Alex Hong's fifty two at Archetype
Speaker 1: fifty two on Instagram. And I guess that's about it,
Speaker 1: and then I always love speak with you because this
Speaker 1: is one of those shows that I thought would be
Speaker 1: a quick, forty five minutes show. We went about an
Speaker 1: hour over that, and uh, you know, I have like
Speaker 1: a few notes to hit in front of me, and
Speaker 1: we ended up going all over the place. And I
Speaker 1: love it. Man. It's always a great Yeah, it's always
Speaker 1: a blast coming on. Man. I really appreciate you having me.
Speaker 1: I did want to make one more announcement about all
Speaker 1: those domains I just heard from my boss. Starting very soon,
Speaker 1: It's not gonna be done news rep dot com anymore.
Speaker 1: It'll just be news rep dot com, which is awesome.
Speaker 1: I like that way better. I think it will really
Speaker 1: streamline things so pretty soon you'll be able to just
Speaker 1: type in news rep. Awesome. All right, cool man, I'll
Speaker 1: talk to you soon out. Thanks for having me. Used
Speaker 1: them listening to self Rep Radio. New episodes up every
Speaker 1: Wednesday and Friday. Follow the show on Instagram and Twitter
Speaker 1: at self Rep Radio or