Speaker 1: Ah beat 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: on time, on target. It doesn't sound the same when
Speaker 1: I say alchemy in can say it, but I can't
Speaker 1: say what the fun. But here we are another podcast episode.
Speaker 1: We have Alex Hollings lined up as a guest, UH,
Speaker 1: you know, a long time writer for Newsrap and also
Speaker 1: he's writing at the load out room, doing a little
Speaker 1: bit of both. UM starting off with some sad news,
Speaker 1: actually following up on our previous podcast with Greg Walker,
Speaker 1: where we got into the history of the UM Green
Speaker 1: Beret UH Dave Bayes, who UM defected and became a
Speaker 1: Sandinista communist down in Central America during the eighties. UM.
Speaker 1: That was a bulk of that interview, but we also
Speaker 1: talked to Greg quite a bit about UM mental health
Speaker 1: care and UM the suicide crisis that we have amongst
Speaker 1: many of our soldiers. And I got some sad news
Speaker 1: the other day from a previous guest on the podcast
Speaker 1: named Lee Tuttle, who is a Army wife. We had
Speaker 1: her on to talk about UM some of the poor
Speaker 1: health conditions in on post housing. UM, so you can
Speaker 1: go back and listen to that episode. It's an important episode. UM.
Speaker 1: Her and Crystal to UM an Army wife and a
Speaker 1: Marine wife, and they came on and talked about, UM,
Speaker 1: just the problems with black mold and the unresponsiveness of
Speaker 1: the U. S. Military as well as the UM the
Speaker 1: private contractors that that the housing has been outsourced too.
Speaker 1: But anyway, Lee, uh, you know, tweeted out that she
Speaker 1: knew this soldier who committed suicide. I heard about it
Speaker 1: the other day. UM. His name was Robert Bobby Barrios,
Speaker 1: who's thirty two years old. He's a Green Beret for
Speaker 1: and he's in the Army for twelve years. Just committed
Speaker 1: suicide the other day. UM. And James Porta, who's a
Speaker 1: journalist with Newsweek, a former marine himself, he tweeted this
Speaker 1: out and UM, I'm just gonna read this is the
Speaker 1: veteran crisis line that you can call if you know
Speaker 1: your friend is having some problems or you're having some issues.
Speaker 1: The numbers one to seven three press one for the
Speaker 1: National Suicide Prevention Hotline. I just wanted to bring that up,
Speaker 1: following up on you know, our interview with Greg Walker
Speaker 1: where we talked a lot about this stuff. And you know,
Speaker 1: this just happened the other day. He committed suicide on
Speaker 1: May And you know, this is a real problem. It's
Speaker 1: amongst us every day. UM. I don't have the solution,
Speaker 1: you know, right that I can hand anybody, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't think anyone does. But you know, Greg brought
Speaker 1: up some some good points about, you know what, how
Speaker 1: the military can do a better job. So there's that. Um.
Speaker 1: The other thing I wanted to bring up. Another previous
Speaker 1: guest of the podcast and and friend of the podcast
Speaker 1: is Dale Comstock, who's a former Delta Force operator. Uh.
Speaker 1: The last time we had him on was actually talk
Speaker 1: about this crazy mercenary gig that was going down in
Speaker 1: aid And and and Yemen that Dale was a part of.
Speaker 1: And um BuzzFeed did a big investigative story about it,
Speaker 1: and we had Dale on, uh like a couple of
Speaker 1: days after it was published it to talk about it.
Speaker 1: And Dale is a very interesting guy. I mean actually
Speaker 1: a friend of Dale's um who worked with him as
Speaker 1: a paramilitary contractor. He described Dale to me as a
Speaker 1: real life g I Joe, which is not not far
Speaker 1: off the mark, not far off the mark. But a
Speaker 1: little bit of sad news is that Um Dale he
Speaker 1: lives in Indonesia and his fiance is having like some
Speaker 1: serious health issues. UM that I guess it exceeds what
Speaker 1: their national health care system can provide for. So Dale
Speaker 1: actually has a go fund me campaign up that you
Speaker 1: can go and find and take a look at. Um
Speaker 1: there it is, thanks for bringing that up. Dennis Tiara's
Speaker 1: life support is the name of the go fund me. UM.
Speaker 1: If you go take a look at that. They're trying
Speaker 1: to raise two dollars there at about seven thousand dollars
Speaker 1: now and it sounds like, UM, I read this a
Speaker 1: couple of days ago, but I can't remember exactly. It's
Speaker 1: kidney failure, kidney failure resulting and high blood doing so
Speaker 1: like his fiancee is like going through some pretty serious ships.
Speaker 1: So you know, like we threw up the go fund
Speaker 1: me for UM. Rob Trevino another former Delta member, former
Speaker 1: operator who had a stroke, and you guys were awesome
Speaker 1: and like raised a ton of money for UH. For Rob.
Speaker 1: Um he was at a time when when he needed it. UM.
Speaker 1: So if you guys want to go check that out,
Speaker 1: and maybe you know even if you just throw a
Speaker 1: Dale and his old lady, you know, ten or twenty
Speaker 1: bucks or whatever it is, every little bit will make
Speaker 1: a difference. And I haven't talked to Dale about this
Speaker 1: or what's going on with him, you know. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe I'll reach out and just ask how he's doing
Speaker 1: in but um, before I do that, I just wanted to,
Speaker 1: you know, throw this out there because you know, we
Speaker 1: have the opportunity to maybe help him in a substantial
Speaker 1: way and well to help his fiance more specifically. And
Speaker 1: we'll we'll definitely link this when we uh, when I
Speaker 1: post the show, Uh, you know, we'll have the link
Speaker 1: for the go fund me there. So if you just
Speaker 1: go to soft Rep, you can just find today the
Speaker 1: show we record today, click the link and it'll take
Speaker 1: you right to it. So if you need to know
Speaker 1: exactly where it is. Yea, And I talked to uh,
Speaker 1: our friend, another friend of the podcast, Jim West, talked
Speaker 1: to him yesterday. Um, he had his shoulder surgery and
Speaker 1: he's back home. Uh. Maybe to say he's feeling good
Speaker 1: would be a bit of an overstatement, but he's fine,
Speaker 1: he's getting better, he's gonna do some do his rehab
Speaker 1: and he'll be good to go. I don't think uh,
Speaker 1: I don't think you feel good after a solder shoulder
Speaker 1: surgery like it you just like what do you do?
Speaker 1: You just sit in. It was like he'll he'll tell
Speaker 1: us all about it when we get him back on.
Speaker 1: But I believe even it was like a total rotor
Speaker 1: cuff reconstruction. It doesn't sound ideal. Another friend of mine
Speaker 1: who I won't mention his name, I've been trying to
Speaker 1: twist his arm and get him to come on here
Speaker 1: for a while, and I'll probably succeed eventually, although I
Speaker 1: won't twist his arm because you'll not literally you'll understand
Speaker 1: after this story. Uh, he wrecked his motorcycle, broke both
Speaker 1: his arms, and um, they opened him up. He said
Speaker 1: he was he was under anesthesia. They they operated on
Speaker 1: him for like five hours, putting both of his shoulders,
Speaker 1: like totally fucked. Now is that like a full upper
Speaker 1: body cast or is that? Like I don't I don't
Speaker 1: know what kind of cast he's in right now. He's
Speaker 1: but he's with friends recovering. He's gonna be okay. But
Speaker 1: it was it's an ordeal, you know, I mean, you
Speaker 1: think of everyday life like brushing your teeth if you
Speaker 1: if you got you know, I'm right handed. If you
Speaker 1: break your right hand, you gotta use your left. And
Speaker 1: you're now you're using to hands. Like what do you
Speaker 1: do now? You just kind of Jim Jim brought that
Speaker 1: up on the phone with me yesterday. He's like, you're
Speaker 1: in a totally different world now. He's like, imagine you
Speaker 1: can't wipe your ass exactly. I remember in college I
Speaker 1: had um hand surgery. I got sliced. I sliced my
Speaker 1: my tenant and I right my right hand which is
Speaker 1: my dominant hand, and you know, they put me in
Speaker 1: this cast and it completely changes the way, like you
Speaker 1: don't realize the every day using a fork. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: then I had finals during college. I can't write, so
Speaker 1: I had to go down to like the like the
Speaker 1: special needs and I had to vocalize my essay, which
Speaker 1: is impossible, Like good luck trying to formulate thoughts out loud,
Speaker 1: having a person writing down your notes. And then you
Speaker 1: kind of look at it and like, all right, well
Speaker 1: here's what I want to say. Yeah, so you kind
Speaker 1: of just bring them like a five and like, hey,
Speaker 1: make it sound as good as possible. I mean, that
Speaker 1: was my theory. I think I ended up passing in class,
Speaker 1: so it worked out in the long run. But I
Speaker 1: could only imagine both hands broken. We are a tool
Speaker 1: using species, so very much so. So Yeah, well, I
Speaker 1: kind of took you guys around the world a little
Speaker 1: bit on on some sad news here to start it off.
Speaker 1: But you know, important to mention these things, um other
Speaker 1: news items. What else do we got going on? I
Speaker 1: was I was actually um throwing shade yesterday on Hawaii
Speaker 1: Chinese telecom company. UM. And you know, I know some
Speaker 1: of our our conservative listeners get upset when I when
Speaker 1: I criticize President Trump, but um, one thing his administration
Speaker 1: has done that I really support. And I'm really glad
Speaker 1: that the Trump administration has begun standing up our government,
Speaker 1: you know, under his direction, has begun standing up to
Speaker 1: the Chinese government. And you know, we're not taking it
Speaker 1: like a little bit the way we have been, you
Speaker 1: know for the last like two decades. Um. There are
Speaker 1: some you know, Hawaii is basically this Chinese telecom company.
Speaker 1: The Trump administration is saying like, hey, these systems that
Speaker 1: they produce cannot be put into US government telecom infrastructure.
Speaker 1: And they're also making some moves to have Hawaii, you know,
Speaker 1: blacklisted entirely and basically kicked out of the United States.
Speaker 1: And because yeah, because they want to like build and
Speaker 1: essentially own the entire five G infrastructure and the capabilities
Speaker 1: they would have to spy on all of us in
Speaker 1: real time become you know, essentially unlimited. And this is
Speaker 1: a country and a company. Uh, you have to understand
Speaker 1: that this company is not like a private company sort
Speaker 1: of like ours are. They are um quasi state actors. Uh.
Speaker 1: Any kind of private company quote unquote in China nominally
Speaker 1: works for the Chinese Communist Party. A big company like
Speaker 1: Hawai will have a sell of Chinese Communist Party members
Speaker 1: inside the company. So you can't like regard them as
Speaker 1: being the same as like a T and T or
Speaker 1: Cisco or Um or other privatized telecom companies. Like you
Speaker 1: just can't see them in the same way. And this
Speaker 1: is a country, the PRC that is essentially not essentially
Speaker 1: it is it's building a database of every person in America.
Speaker 1: They're studying us intently. So we can't, like I said earlier,
Speaker 1: I mean the colloquial term taking it like a bit
Speaker 1: like we can't we can't do it. We can't let
Speaker 1: it happen. So I'm glad that the Trump administration is
Speaker 1: standing up to them. Haway filed a lawsuit. Um well,
Speaker 1: they the first. Their first lawsuit they filed in response
Speaker 1: to all of this was they were saying that America
Speaker 1: is violating their constitutional rights to invade our privacy. It's like, listen,
Speaker 1: red China, you can funk off with this ship, Like
Speaker 1: you don't have constitutional rights here. Uh you know, here's
Speaker 1: the here's the thing about constitutional rights. Like I saw
Speaker 1: all these stories in the press about how Julian Osange's
Speaker 1: constitutional freedoms are being violated. It's like, hey, pal, this
Speaker 1: guy isn't an American citizen. He's not in America. He
Speaker 1: doesn't have There's no such thing as constitutional rights for him.
Speaker 1: Those are for US Americans. And a lot of Americans
Speaker 1: realized this because they go outside of the country, they
Speaker 1: get into trouble and they're like, well, what my my, my,
Speaker 1: my my human rights, my my constitutional freedoms, buddy, you
Speaker 1: don't have any constitutional freedoms when you're in India, when
Speaker 1: you're in Turkey, when you're in China. The kid in
Speaker 1: North Korea, the college kid he like, I forgot what
Speaker 1: he did. He did something stupid and got arrested and
Speaker 1: they just threw them away and they were like, we're
Speaker 1: not giving him back my constitution. And he was like,
Speaker 1: what about freedom? Like that don't happen over here, freedom, bro,
Speaker 1: No one gives a ship. We're gonna murder you and
Speaker 1: harvest your fucking organs. So no one gives a shit
Speaker 1: about that. Um. And then this next one that Hawai filed,
Speaker 1: they're they're complaining it wasn't that we were just violating
Speaker 1: their human rights. They said this ban on our on
Speaker 1: our technologies deprives global human rights. That that the entire
Speaker 1: world is being deprived of human rights because America won't
Speaker 1: let us have access to their technologies. That one makes sense.
Speaker 1: That one I follow and China. See. The thing about
Speaker 1: the Chinese is they've studied our culture intently and they
Speaker 1: understand like where the levers are, They like know what
Speaker 1: buttons to push, so like you'll hear them sometimes pull
Speaker 1: the race card on us, which is incredible because it's
Speaker 1: like China, the Han Chinese, I've got to be the
Speaker 1: largest ethnic group worldwide. I mean there's like a billion
Speaker 1: of these people like you are not an oppressed ethnic minority.
Speaker 1: You're the vast majority. Stop pretending like your black people
Speaker 1: in nine fifties America like that is not who you are.
Speaker 1: You're not that population. Sorry, now get the funk out.
Speaker 1: You're calling the shots. Stop stop trying to act like
Speaker 1: we're holding you back. So yeah, I'm happy to see
Speaker 1: the Trump administration standing up to Hawaii and to the
Speaker 1: Chinese government. It's good to see. And we'll we'll see
Speaker 1: where all this goes. I mean, because this is just
Speaker 1: what I'm talking about here is just like one little
Speaker 1: sliver of a much larger global cultural political battle. And
Speaker 1: that's what we talked about with Fred Galvin when we
Speaker 1: had him on just like what four episodes ago we
Speaker 1: got we got kind of in depth with that with him.
Speaker 1: So those are some of the things I wanted to
Speaker 1: bring up. Did you find anything, Dennis? I the only
Speaker 1: thing I wanted to bring up, And it's not funny,
Speaker 1: but it just shows how petty President Trump can be.
Speaker 1: He was in Japan yesterday our Wednesday, should I say,
Speaker 1: and he was visiting uh the seventh Fleet in good
Speaker 1: luck with my Japanese pronunciations, but Yokosuka might be close
Speaker 1: where where is that Okinawa, Japan. That's as specific as
Speaker 1: they got, and I didn't I didn't go any deeper.
Speaker 1: But he was visiting the seventh Fleet there and the
Speaker 1: U S. S. McCain, which, obviously, if you're listening to
Speaker 1: the show, I'm sure you're familiar with Trump and McCain's
Speaker 1: political differences, was one of the ships in the fleet,
Speaker 1: and allegedly Trump, whether he made them do it or not,
Speaker 1: the ship itself was quote unquote out of sight for
Speaker 1: President Trump, which and there were rumors, nothing confirmed, no
Speaker 1: pictures or anything of the sort, but that there were
Speaker 1: banners hung over the name McCain on the U. S. S. McCain,
Speaker 1: which I mean, how petty. As as I told you
Speaker 1: off air, John McCain died last year or two years ago, whatever,
Speaker 1: it was, like, let it go, man, it's over. You
Speaker 1: don't have to, no need to to dance on his
Speaker 1: grave like you're the president? Can you can you act
Speaker 1: like it once in a while. It makes me wonder though,
Speaker 1: if if that's really something that Trump asked to be done,
Speaker 1: or if that was just something like, let's get ahead
Speaker 1: of it. The thing you have to understand about, like
Speaker 1: military officers is like they are like they're just as
Speaker 1: George W. Bush described the Pentagon as a bunch of
Speaker 1: nervous nellies at one point. And so there's these little
Speaker 1: like enclaves of like we call them in the military,
Speaker 1: chokey boys around every general and every admiral, and they
Speaker 1: like go everywhere there they as they describe it, their
Speaker 1: general is going to go and make sure everything looks
Speaker 1: kosher for him, so that when he shows up, Like
Speaker 1: if that general has a pet peeve with like hoodie
Speaker 1: sweatshirts like you're wearing right now, they'll come in and
Speaker 1: be like, hey, you you need to take that off
Speaker 1: right now, like no red Eminem's in the right green
Speaker 1: room exactly, so that when their general shows up, everything
Speaker 1: looks as upping up right. Um. So I would not
Speaker 1: be surprised at all. Naval officers were like President Trump's coming,
Speaker 1: we got we gotta hide, we gotta hide, get the
Speaker 1: McCain at and we have to hide our entire fucking
Speaker 1: ship from the president. They called David Copperfield, he does
Speaker 1: one of those and stuff. Yeah, I would not be surprised,
Speaker 1: uh to find out that the Navy did that preemptively
Speaker 1: because because obviously Trump claimed that he had no idea,
Speaker 1: but he said it was like a well mannered He's like,
Speaker 1: that was a good idea. So he said that. I
Speaker 1: want to get the exact I don't want to miss
Speaker 1: quote him. I was not informed about anything having to
Speaker 1: do with the Navy ship USS John S McCain during
Speaker 1: my recent visit to Japan. Nevertheless, Flutis and I loved
Speaker 1: being with our our great military men and women with
Speaker 1: a spectacular job. They do backhanded insults and pumping America.
Speaker 1: That's what Trump does best. And I'm not even a
Speaker 1: Trump pater. I don't know what I like, but that's
Speaker 1: every time he tweets. It's just it's high comedy, which
Speaker 1: you would want from a stand up comic, but not
Speaker 1: from the president of the United States. I feel some
Speaker 1: people like it though. Some people like the like the drama.
Speaker 1: Seven thousand liked it on on Twitter, so so yes,
Speaker 1: people do like it. I think that that's good for me.
Speaker 1: I mean, introduction wise, Alex is going to talk. I
Speaker 1: told him what you wanted to discuss before he comes on,
Speaker 1: and he he was already he was messaging me already
Speaker 1: going he goes as I said, Alex calmed down please,
Speaker 1: And this is our first Like, I haven't formally talked
Speaker 1: to him yet, so we have just gotten to know
Speaker 1: each other in the past week and he's I can
Speaker 1: already tell that I'm going to be a huge fan
Speaker 1: of his and so I'm excited to have him on. No,
Speaker 1: he's a great guy. Um, yeah, let's go ahead and
Speaker 1: dial them up. And uh uh, there's a couple of
Speaker 1: things I'd like to talk about him, and a couple
Speaker 1: of things we're gonna have to hold for next time.
Speaker 1: But well, I'll discuss that, you know when, when we
Speaker 1: get them on. Well, before we get to him, I
Speaker 1: want to let me get an ad out of the
Speaker 1: way because Alex doesn't want to hear it and I
Speaker 1: don't want him to have to listen. But the show
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Speaker 1: essential gear and killer apparel that you can buy separately
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Speaker 1: items they're gonna sell out quickly. So if I were
Speaker 1: you and get there now, start buying. For example, We've
Speaker 1: got a few more cry Precision Ballistic soft farmer inserts.
Speaker 1: Not a lot left, so seriously hop on that. We
Speaker 1: also have fishing spears, but again they're selling that quickly,
Speaker 1: get on them now. Other items like the Gerber multitool,
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Speaker 1: gear you're going to love on air. Drop without further ado,
Speaker 1: here's Alex. Here we are. We're on with Alex Hollings.
Speaker 1: Maybe your fourth or fifth appearance on the podcast. Maybe
Speaker 1: I'm not really sure. I kind of lost count. I
Speaker 1: think you know, four sounds about right. I think I've
Speaker 1: probably been here four times. Yeah, thanks, so so thanks
Speaker 1: for coming on today. So again, Alex is a former
Speaker 1: marine and also longtime writer on News Rap and most
Speaker 1: of your work is on the load out Room, now, right,
Speaker 1: that's correct? Yeah. I recently switched over from being the
Speaker 1: senior staff writer over at News Rep to now the
Speaker 1: managing editor at the load out Room, which is a
Speaker 1: lot less writing and a lot more managing, you know.
Speaker 1: So I'm still doing a lot of writing, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm writing for some for some other outlets. I still
Speaker 1: write for News Rep here there. I can find my
Speaker 1: stuff on Popular Mechanics as well. But yeah, I've I've
Speaker 1: switched over to the dark side, like you Jack, where
Speaker 1: Now I spend half of my day answering emails and
Speaker 1: taking phone calls instead of writing content. And uh, it's
Speaker 1: a weird switch. You know, it's not for real until
Speaker 1: you spend more time dealing with drama than you do writing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I try my best, man, and I really do try
Speaker 1: my best to avoid it every time I get like
Speaker 1: an angry email. That's the biggest change from going to
Speaker 1: the load out room is that with news Wrap, everything's
Speaker 1: time sensitive, right, I mean, the news cycle never ends.
Speaker 1: Gear reviews are not as hot and pertinent. You know,
Speaker 1: I don't have to rush to get this pocket Knife
Speaker 1: review out or the world's gonna end. So when someone
Speaker 1: gives me a really angry email, I just like, yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, I'll talk to you tomorrow. Okay. You know,
Speaker 1: it's a it's a it's a nice change of pace.
Speaker 1: He really is. My stress levels have gone down significantly.
Speaker 1: I can only imagine like running the podcast and the website,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, and doing your own writing.
Speaker 1: I can only imagine doing that with a constant drumbeat
Speaker 1: of the twenty four hour news cycle. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: emotionally taxing in a way that I think people outside
Speaker 1: the media probably don't realize, in a way that I
Speaker 1: didn't really realize until I stepped away from it a
Speaker 1: bit and came to find out that the world's not
Speaker 1: going to burn down if I don't get my take
Speaker 1: on what's happening out to Twitter right away. Yeah, Like,
Speaker 1: there are times where I've wondered, like am I a
Speaker 1: website editor or like a crisis manager? Like what am
Speaker 1: I really doing here? Absolutely? Man and really, I mean,
Speaker 1: in any field, it doesn't matter what you're doing if
Speaker 1: you're managing people. You know, some people have you know,
Speaker 1: some people have tough times, some people suck, you know, Like,
Speaker 1: it's just it's part of the it's part of the job.
Speaker 1: I'm really fortunate that all the contributors I've been dealing
Speaker 1: with over at the load out Room have all been great.
Speaker 1: You know, Scott Whitner ran the load out Room before me.
Speaker 1: And he did an incredible job. I wasn't taking over
Speaker 1: a website that was on fire or not working properly.
Speaker 1: You know, I got to step into all oiled machines.
Speaker 1: So he really set me up for success. So it's
Speaker 1: been a blast, it really has. But uh it's also
Speaker 1: been a lot of work. You know, I haven't written
Speaker 1: gear reviews and so long, Like I wrote, I wrote
Speaker 1: a little bit for the load out Room when we
Speaker 1: first started that website, and before that, I did gear
Speaker 1: reviews for another website. It was fun for a while,
Speaker 1: you know. I definitely got some vendors like up in
Speaker 1: arms with me. I will say that's one of the
Speaker 1: weird things about running a website like the load out
Speaker 1: Room is that you have to maintain these kind of
Speaker 1: at arms distance relationships with these vendors who they want
Speaker 1: to be your best friend until you have criticism about
Speaker 1: some of their gear, and then they start really sweet
Speaker 1: and get kind of more and more aggressive in hopes
Speaker 1: of getting a good review out of you. You know,
Speaker 1: and and you do need to manage those relationships to
Speaker 1: a certain extent. But the important thing is getting you know,
Speaker 1: the truth to the reader. Uh. So you know, it's
Speaker 1: always it's an interesting balance. Whereas as a hard news writer,
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter whose feelings I hurt. You know, my
Speaker 1: job is just to get the hard news out there.
Speaker 1: But I didn't give a ship when I did it.
Speaker 1: This is my this is my like introduction to being
Speaker 1: a rabble rouser. I guess because I had sources, shall
Speaker 1: we say, just in the R and D field, um,
Speaker 1: you know, in the military. And uh, I was writing
Speaker 1: stuff about sniper systems, about machine guns that you know
Speaker 1: that didn't work, that we're breaking all the time, that
Speaker 1: were substandard, and like manufacturers were going ape ship and uh,
Speaker 1: I realized that's important work. But that's that's integral work,
Speaker 1: you know, Like I really I realized though that like
Speaker 1: part of the reason why you see, like like there
Speaker 1: were manufacturers. There's a company that makes helmets, and and
Speaker 1: one of their engineers told me a bunch of stuff
Speaker 1: and it wasn't off the record, so I reported it,
Speaker 1: and they like, oh my God, sent these like ranting emails,
Speaker 1: like furious, like our board of directors isn't comfortable with
Speaker 1: this story. I'm like, well then why do you tell me?
Speaker 1: And uh, but but I mean I realized that like
Speaker 1: a lot of these vendors and a lot of these
Speaker 1: companies that are used to being treated with kid gloves
Speaker 1: like they're the story, Like nobody really writes like those
Speaker 1: kinds of like expose is, like when was the last
Speaker 1: time you saw like a gun review, Like, hey, your
Speaker 1: gun fucking sucks. Blast. Time I saw one was a
Speaker 1: while ago now, And it was actually the sig P
Speaker 1: three twenty, which has been adopted by I think the
Speaker 1: entire d O D at this point, but the army
Speaker 1: initially and a lot of law enforcement, was that the
Speaker 1: one that was having that drop safety issue exactly. You know,
Speaker 1: if you dropped it on its dovetail, it would fire around,
Speaker 1: you know, which is absolutely an unacceptable thing when we're
Speaker 1: talking about a combat pistol or a law enforcement pistol,
Speaker 1: where you know, if you're using your side arm, you're
Speaker 1: already in kind of a tight spot, at least in
Speaker 1: the conventional forces, which my experiences were. You know, a
Speaker 1: lot of junior Marines weren't even issued side arms, you know,
Speaker 1: and if you were issued one, it was secondary to
Speaker 1: your primary weapons system, right, is more useful than a
Speaker 1: side arm for an in entry soldier, absolutely, you know,
Speaker 1: So when you're talking about a side arm that you're
Speaker 1: going to use in a combat environment, you have to
Speaker 1: assume that it's in a tough situation, which very feasibly
Speaker 1: could include grappling with an opponent. You know, firearm retention
Speaker 1: is one of the most important things that they teach
Speaker 1: you in the Marine Corps when they issue you a sidearm, right,
Speaker 1: because the last thing you honest for someone to take
Speaker 1: it from you and use it on you. That's the
Speaker 1: reason why when you carry pepper spray, you need to
Speaker 1: be pepper spray to qualify, because the assumption is if
Speaker 1: someone gets this from you, they're going to use it
Speaker 1: on you. And so if you have a weapon that
Speaker 1: if it falls out of your hand or is knocked
Speaker 1: out of your hand, it's gonna go off. That is
Speaker 1: absolutely unacceptable. Now SIG has, of course since then, uh
Speaker 1: you know, repaired their their weapon and they've offered to
Speaker 1: let you send your civilian P three twenties and to
Speaker 1: be repaired in the same way at no charge. But
Speaker 1: when it happened, it was a huge, huge deal because
Speaker 1: it was such an uncommon thing and a lot of
Speaker 1: outlets didn't pick it up. It was like individual you know,
Speaker 1: independent bloggers who first started running the story and then
Speaker 1: it got picked up later. You weren't seeing gear review
Speaker 1: websites say yeah, man, when we threw this pistol on
Speaker 1: the ground, it went off because most gear review websites
Speaker 1: aren't allowed to take this brand new pistol from him
Speaker 1: and throw it on the ground, you know. So, Uh,
Speaker 1: you're absolutely right. Those are the types of things that uh,
Speaker 1: these guys are used to being dealt with with kids gloves.
Speaker 1: Unfortunate that all the gear reviews I've been doing so far,
Speaker 1: I've all been for kind of simpler things, you know,
Speaker 1: this pocket knife. I'm I make my own knives, so
Speaker 1: I tend to be kind of a nitpicker when it
Speaker 1: comes to knives. But at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: it does pay to remind some people that a knife
Speaker 1: is ultimately just a sharp piece of metal, you know.
Speaker 1: And when you're that guy on the internet who says
Speaker 1: it's not worth carrying something unless it costs a thousand
Speaker 1: dollars or it's all junk, unless it's the thing that
Speaker 1: I have, it pays to remember every once in a
Speaker 1: while that, like, you know, a pocket knife is a
Speaker 1: pocket knife. It's a tool for a specific use and
Speaker 1: if you're gonna use it as a makeshift Phillips had
Speaker 1: screwdriver because it's just in your pocket and you don't
Speaker 1: have a screwdriver to screw in your license plate. That's
Speaker 1: a different kind of pocket knife than the thousand dollar
Speaker 1: one this guy thinks is all you need to field
Speaker 1: clean a buck. I got like, uh, this is like
Speaker 1: advice from the streets. I guess that could be a
Speaker 1: whole segment right there. But I had this guy tell
Speaker 1: me one time. He's like, why are you going to
Speaker 1: carry a thousand dollar knife? He's like, if you have
Speaker 1: to dab somebody up, you're like gonna throw that thing
Speaker 1: into the sewers and walk away. Like you don't want
Speaker 1: to be caught with that thing after you have the
Speaker 1: ship out of somebody. Absolutely, you know, especially you want
Speaker 1: to care. I love it. My favorite thing that I
Speaker 1: find online all the time are sincere seeming gear reviews
Speaker 1: of ridiculous dragon knives that you know that are like,
Speaker 1: you know, just in case you ever end up fighting
Speaker 1: Conan the Barbarian, this this piece of hardware, It's really
Speaker 1: gonna do it for you. I like simple and functional gear.
Speaker 1: I like stuff that my wife isn't gonna yell at
Speaker 1: me for buying, you know, And that's the approach I've
Speaker 1: tried to take to the load out room. We definitely
Speaker 1: have some contributors, uh you know that that are big
Speaker 1: gear collectors, you know what I mean. They don't mind
Speaker 1: spending a thousand dollars on just optics for the rifle
Speaker 1: because this is their life and it's their passion and
Speaker 1: I respect and admire that. For my purposes, that's not feasible, right,
Speaker 1: So what I want to tell you is what can
Speaker 1: you actually use that isn't going to cost you more
Speaker 1: than your car? You know? And sometimes it's tough, you know,
Speaker 1: but it's it's a unique challenge compared to what I've
Speaker 1: been dealing before with over at news rep and stuff
Speaker 1: like that. So I've been having a good time with it. Cool, No,
Speaker 1: I'm glad man. Uh there's another like, had I known,
Speaker 1: you know, we kind of booked you at the last minute,
Speaker 1: but had we had I put some more thought into
Speaker 1: this beforehand, I would have prepped and we could have
Speaker 1: done our epic uh you know, superhero episode that we're
Speaker 1: still going to have to do sometime. But I have
Speaker 1: to go back because I remember I wanted to talk
Speaker 1: to you about the Batman Versus Superman movie, but I
Speaker 1: gotta go back and watch it again and take some notes. Actually,
Speaker 1: I'll do it too, because I you and I have
Speaker 1: talked about this before. In grad school. I actually wrote
Speaker 1: a thesis paper about how Batman and Superman and the
Speaker 1: way we we see them in our cultural lexicon reflects
Speaker 1: how we see ourselves as a nation, and one of
Speaker 1: these days we'll have to talk about it. But honestly,
Speaker 1: me and you're probably one of the only guys that
Speaker 1: I feel like I need to brush up a bit
Speaker 1: to talk comic bookshop. So so I'm yeah, we'll have
Speaker 1: to plan ahead for that one, so I could do
Speaker 1: some some advanced reading. Yeah, yeah, that that movie specifically
Speaker 1: has a lot of stuff in it about regarding exactly that,
Speaker 1: because Batman and Superman each represents something different, you know,
Speaker 1: one one is presented as like a living God or
Speaker 1: a living Jesus, and the other is like the the antithesis.
Speaker 1: He's like the the atheist model. Um that the world
Speaker 1: is is harsh and cruel, you know, you know, and
Speaker 1: we have a bad habit in America of discrediting our
Speaker 1: popular culture as silly, you know. I mean, popular culture
Speaker 1: has always been a hugely important part of what culture is.
Speaker 1: You know, we look back at like Greek mythology. Greek
Speaker 1: mythology was pop culture at the time. You know. Now
Speaker 1: through the lens of time, we look back at these
Speaker 1: as epic tales, but at the time it was popular culture.
Speaker 1: You know, we are, at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: a product of the culture that we consume because it's
Speaker 1: the only way we understand the world a little bit
Speaker 1: further away than our line of site, right, yeah, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I'm glad you brought that up, because you know, foreign
Speaker 1: cultures they have these things like, um, like in Europe
Speaker 1: there's like knights and shining armor in uh, in Asia
Speaker 1: you have like these uh what is that genre Wuxia
Speaker 1: where it's like shaolin monks and you have samurai's and
Speaker 1: ninja's and all this kind of stuff. But in America
Speaker 1: are the our our version of that as superheroes, absolutely,
Speaker 1: you know, and when you think about it, even a
Speaker 1: lot of those cultures have been informed by pop culture
Speaker 1: interpretations of their own culture. You know. Uh, the Mafia
Speaker 1: is a contemporary American example where prior to the Godfather,
Speaker 1: the mafia didn't operate very much like they did in
Speaker 1: the movies like the Godfather movies. Yeah, or dressed like it.
Speaker 1: But people watching those movies who were involved in organized
Speaker 1: crime really liked the romanticized version of the mafia that
Speaker 1: they were being depicted as and adopted it. You know,
Speaker 1: I think this is about law enforcement all the time.
Speaker 1: You know, you're silly, You're crazy if you think that
Speaker 1: Americans who grow up in America consuming American pop culture
Speaker 1: and then go on to become law enforcement officers, if
Speaker 1: their idea of what it is to be a cop
Speaker 1: hasn't been informed by the twenty past years of watching
Speaker 1: cop drama, TV shows and movies, that's why they talk
Speaker 1: the same way they do with movies. It's not because
Speaker 1: you're trained to talk like a police officer in a movie.
Speaker 1: It's because that's how you grew up believing police officers talk.
Speaker 1: Pop culture really does shape the world around us. But
Speaker 1: when it's silly things, you know, like superheroes or upos
Speaker 1: like we were talking about, you know, offline before, When
Speaker 1: you're when it's things that we like to discredit as sally,
Speaker 1: it's really easy to say that it doesn't actually matter
Speaker 1: Kim Kardashian doesn't actually matter, and in truth it really does.
Speaker 1: You know. It's like it's it's what's creating the boundaries
Speaker 1: of our understanding of how we live. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think, like especially our sense of morality is like
Speaker 1: very superficial because it's crafted by these like video games
Speaker 1: and movies where it's like very clear cut good and evil,
Speaker 1: like it's black and white, like the our our social
Speaker 1: narratives like don't leave any room in between, like we
Speaker 1: don't like those in between sorts of areas um or
Speaker 1: absolutely right, man, I saw a meme today on my
Speaker 1: Facebook news speed that really pissed me off. That was basically,
Speaker 1: you know, an American saying, you know, we spy on people,
Speaker 1: and then Russia saying, well, we spy on people too,
Speaker 1: and Americans being angry. That's such an elementary school boiling
Speaker 1: down of geopolitics when good and bad are a matter
Speaker 1: of perspective. You know, it's really difficult for some people,
Speaker 1: when exploring foreign policy to understand that from the standpoint
Speaker 1: of a Russian soldier, we are the bad guys. Objectively
Speaker 1: to him, we are the bad guys. He's not necessarily
Speaker 1: a bad guy. You might work for a regime that
Speaker 1: that doesn't have goals that are, like, you know, in
Speaker 1: fitting with our own right. And he has a hell
Speaker 1: of a lot more in common with the American with
Speaker 1: a American soldier than he does with his own politicians.
Speaker 1: As absolutely you know. Now in order to fight that war,
Speaker 1: you still need to fight that soldier, absolutely, you know.
Speaker 1: But this is the reason why most of the times
Speaker 1: when you talk to guys who have seen a lot
Speaker 1: of real heavy combat experience, guys like you Jack, you
Speaker 1: tend not to say that you hated the people that
Speaker 1: you were fighting. It's much more that you were doing
Speaker 1: your job. You were accomplishing objectives. Very rarely was it
Speaker 1: like a deep seated, you know, loathing for your opponent.
Speaker 1: What it is is it's getting the job done for
Speaker 1: your country instead for the guys that you're fighting alongside.
Speaker 1: And that's also why we dehumanize the enemy and we
Speaker 1: call him crowds and aji and things like that. You
Speaker 1: have to statistically speaking, in most first engagements, guys have
Speaker 1: a lot of trouble actually shooting at the enemy. Usually
Speaker 1: you shoot in the direction of the enemy, but you
Speaker 1: don't shoot directly at the enemy until you have no
Speaker 1: choice for that reason, for the same reason why it's hard.
Speaker 1: You know, I spent a long time as a martial
Speaker 1: arts instructor. One of the hardest things for me to
Speaker 1: get someone to do is actually punch someone in the face.
Speaker 1: I know it sounds crazy, but like, you have this
Speaker 1: natural instinct because we grow up in a civilized society,
Speaker 1: in a culture where we tell you never to hurt others,
Speaker 1: you know, every day of your life, as you as
Speaker 1: you age, as you mature. It depends. It depends on
Speaker 1: the person. Though, to Alex, like, I remember, I mean
Speaker 1: I've you know, training with Jim West. I mean he
Speaker 1: actually said, he's like, I thought you'd be a bit
Speaker 1: more like reserved. He's like, actually, seems like you really
Speaker 1: want to punch somebody in the face. And but then
Speaker 1: he also we did a training video one time and
Speaker 1: he brought in this um, this young woman um because
Speaker 1: it was like a woman's self defense segment. So like
Speaker 1: the thing was like she had to hit me and
Speaker 1: defend against me, right, and she was like super, she
Speaker 1: did not want to hit me at all. Maybe it's
Speaker 1: because I'm such a nice guy, but well it's partially
Speaker 1: because you're a nice guy. It's also partially because she
Speaker 1: doesn't know you, and she doesn't she's not scared, like
Speaker 1: the adrenaline is not flowing. I got into training people
Speaker 1: because my brother had an employee who's a young woman
Speaker 1: who got raped at a party and uh, and she
Speaker 1: was having a lot of trouble with her self confidence
Speaker 1: just in general, feeling as though she could leave her house,
Speaker 1: you know. And uh, my brother asked me if I
Speaker 1: would just you know, work with her a little bit
Speaker 1: on self defense techniques and showing her some of the
Speaker 1: things that I knew, not really with the intent necessarily
Speaker 1: of her fending off a future rapists, so much as
Speaker 1: trying to give her a sense of empowerment where she
Speaker 1: could feel like she's a capable person who really could
Speaker 1: defend herself or get away or do something if she
Speaker 1: needed to. And uh, that was and that was the
Speaker 1: hardest part for her too. I mean, this is someone
Speaker 1: who's already been victimized. You think that they'd have a
Speaker 1: lot of rage inside them, but it's still really hard
Speaker 1: to turn off that switch for a lot of people.
Speaker 1: Some people are natural warriors, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: But for for a lot of people, it's hard to
Speaker 1: turn off those safety switches and start swinging for the fences,
Speaker 1: you know. And so if it's that hard for people
Speaker 1: to throw a punch in a controlled setting, just imagine
Speaker 1: how hard it is for those of you who haven't
Speaker 1: served in the military, or maybe you did but didn't
Speaker 1: see combat. Just imagine how hard it must be to
Speaker 1: pull the trigger that first time when in your head
Speaker 1: you can't help but wonder if maybe you don't need to. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, you're hitting upon like some social dynamics that
Speaker 1: play into our national politics and and how we regard
Speaker 1: things like gun control. So the people who are more
Speaker 1: shall we say educated, sophisticated urban nights, I mean they
Speaker 1: they you know, well dressed men and women, They speak
Speaker 1: a certain language, and they have this idea of, like
Speaker 1: everyone should have their guns taken away so we can
Speaker 1: keep everyone safe, where as there's other cultures and other
Speaker 1: parts of America where it's like, look like, there are
Speaker 1: bad people in the world, and you know, we have
Speaker 1: to accept that and acknowledge that reality. I guess it's
Speaker 1: it's sort of like the idea of like we need
Speaker 1: to protect everybody versus we need to understand we live
Speaker 1: in a violent world and adapt to that, you know,
Speaker 1: And and I think it's fair to say, despite the
Speaker 1: fact that I'm clearly a pretty big two way guy,
Speaker 1: that there's truth to both sides of the argument, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean, there's there's good intentions to both
Speaker 1: sides of the argument. But what it ultimately comes down
Speaker 1: to is the rules that make perfect sense in Manhattan
Speaker 1: don't make perfect sense in Montana, you know well. And
Speaker 1: even beyond that, I mean, even if you are in Manhattan,
Speaker 1: I mean, like, we can't keep pretending these things don't happen,
Speaker 1: like these gun free zones, Like it doesn't. It just
Speaker 1: doesn't work. And it's yeah, it's born out of the
Speaker 1: idealism of being protected, right like I I you know,
Speaker 1: it's an old trope. But I had a buddy I
Speaker 1: was in the Marine Corps with. He was corporal when
Speaker 1: I got out, but he had never bought a car before, right,
Speaker 1: And so he asked me if I would come with him.
Speaker 1: I think he was a lance corporal at the time,
Speaker 1: to go try to buy a car. No, he was
Speaker 1: he idential identified already at the time we're talking two
Speaker 1: he already politically identified as a socialist, which I thought
Speaker 1: wasn't in keeping with serving in the Marine Corps. We
Speaker 1: debated this a lot of times, but honestly, he was
Speaker 1: a good marine. He was a good marine. Who's just
Speaker 1: his politics didn't vibe with mine. But he's a good guy.
Speaker 1: But over time I came to learn as we went
Speaker 1: to go buy his first car and they wouldn't give
Speaker 1: him alone because he had never had credit. So he
Speaker 1: called his dad to ask his dad to co sign,
Speaker 1: and his dad was like, well, how much is the car?
Speaker 1: And he said, oh, it's ten thousand dollars And his
Speaker 1: dad said, just let me talk to him. I'll pay
Speaker 1: for it. And I found out his dad was a
Speaker 1: fiercely conservative, very well off lawyer in New York City
Speaker 1: who and it was because of that. I really do
Speaker 1: think that his son grew up in a safe and
Speaker 1: comfortable enough environment to adopt this idea that the government
Speaker 1: can solve all of our poems, that socialism can do it.
Speaker 1: You know, I don't think like Alexandria Okario Cortes Ocasio Cortes.
Speaker 1: I don't think that she's a bad person. I think
Speaker 1: that she's naive. Yeah, you know, uh, And it's this
Speaker 1: naivety comes from how safe this country is, what like
Speaker 1: they're in an overwhelmingly safe nation but statistically not for everyone.
Speaker 1: And that plays into again, I mean so many other things, like, um,
Speaker 1: why we're susceptible to Russian disinformation operations, It's because we're
Speaker 1: so fucking naive in this country. It's unbelievably naive. Not
Speaker 1: just naive, but aggressively naive. Like we're not only naive,
Speaker 1: but we defend it and argue that we aren't. You know,
Speaker 1: we're all the best informed person ever, right, And like
Speaker 1: in my portly formed stance on this that I developed
Speaker 1: because I saw three memes that I really thought were funny,
Speaker 1: I will defend it to the last breath with capital
Speaker 1: letters on Facebook. And it's absolutely just like you were
Speaker 1: saying before. We want everything to fall neatly into a
Speaker 1: black or white category, a good or bad category, and
Speaker 1: everything about the world we live in is gray. You know.
Speaker 1: Operations are inherently evil. Killing people is bad, right, It's
Speaker 1: still a necessity, it is a reality of this world.
Speaker 1: Same with espionage. So when we say we spy on people,
Speaker 1: so does Russia, So we should give Russia a pass.
Speaker 1: You're missing the point. The point is that there's a
Speaker 1: finite amount of space. There's a finite amount of resources,
Speaker 1: and if only one family gets to eat today, it's
Speaker 1: going to be mine, you know. And that's literally the
Speaker 1: struggle that the world is playing geo poetically at all times,
Speaker 1: right because on a long enough timeline, everything does run out.
Speaker 1: And we're not just talking about like things that you
Speaker 1: can hold in your hand, but we're talking about diplomatic
Speaker 1: and economic influence things like that. Uh, having being the
Speaker 1: sole economic superpower in the country is mutually elusive to
Speaker 1: China also being an economic superpower. That's the reason why
Speaker 1: we have tensions with them, aside from the fact that
Speaker 1: they're kind of bad guys, you know, objectively from our standpoint,
Speaker 1: not from there, yea. And it's a it's a sidebar,
Speaker 1: I guess to some extent, but I mean there there's
Speaker 1: there is something to be said that, like here in
Speaker 1: New York you have it's the you see these people,
Speaker 1: you meet, these people, they're they're the epitome of the
Speaker 1: limousine liberal or the champagne socialist that like their entire
Speaker 1: lives are waking up in the morning and cashing in
Speaker 1: like they have trust funds. They wake up, they cash
Speaker 1: in every day. They're cashing in, and they have no
Speaker 1: idea what it's like for normal Americans, um to uh
Speaker 1: have to worry about how they're going to pay their bills,
Speaker 1: and to them, resources seem so plentiful that why wouldn't
Speaker 1: there be enough to go around? Look how much I have,
Speaker 1: right exactly, And then they want to like turn around
Speaker 1: and scold the rest of us on our values and
Speaker 1: talk about like, oh, you're you're you have white privilege
Speaker 1: or male privilege or whatever the it is. It's like, motherfuck,
Speaker 1: are you the most privileged person in the world. How
Speaker 1: are you talking to me about privilege? I have I
Speaker 1: get into this argument fairly because people make I would
Speaker 1: argue probably some wrong assumptions about me because I'm a
Speaker 1: writer and I have a master's degree, and I you know,
Speaker 1: I write for Popular Mechanics about technology. I grew up
Speaker 1: in a trailer park. Man, you know, I are you
Speaker 1: and I talked about this before. My next door neighbor
Speaker 1: until I moved recently, was a welder named Grizzly who
Speaker 1: builds hot rods in a shack. You know, I live
Speaker 1: out in the middle of the woods. Because I I
Speaker 1: may have gone to school for a long time and
Speaker 1: I may write for a living, but I get along
Speaker 1: better with blue collar guys that kind of have a
Speaker 1: smaller worldview. Their concern is their lives, not making sure
Speaker 1: that legislation gets passed to adjust how people are living
Speaker 1: in Utah, or like some sort of like hyper morality
Speaker 1: world word policing other people exactly. You know, you'll you'll
Speaker 1: find espect. I was surprised when I moved to Georgia
Speaker 1: from Boston. I thought I was going to move into
Speaker 1: the moonshiners, which to an extent, you know what kind
Speaker 1: of is. Uh. But these guys aren't worried about what
Speaker 1: you're doing. You know, even when you see that guy
Speaker 1: with a Confederate flag on his truck, he the Confederate
Speaker 1: flags for him, not for you. You know, he doesn't
Speaker 1: care about you and your political beliefs. He expects you
Speaker 1: to have different political beliefs, and he expects you not
Speaker 1: to talk about him with him, you know. Uh. The
Speaker 1: idea that we all need to be involved with what
Speaker 1: everybody's doing is just blows my mind. I don't want
Speaker 1: to be in your fucking underwear draw Like, that's not
Speaker 1: a place I want to be see And to me,
Speaker 1: that's what classic conservatism was supposed to be, you know.
Speaker 1: I thought that it was supposed to be leave me alone.
Speaker 1: You know. I grew up in a conservative household, and
Speaker 1: the idea always was that the government, the less ideal
Speaker 1: with the government, the better. I'd rather not talk to him,
Speaker 1: I'd rather not deal with him. I got to go
Speaker 1: to the d m V every once in a while,
Speaker 1: you know. And uh, I do think to a certain extent,
Speaker 1: we've lost that a bit because both parties are primarily
Speaker 1: concerned with victory, not necessarily with adhering to their ideals anymore.
Speaker 1: Maybe that's just my stance, but more and more it
Speaker 1: seems like both parties are happy to have bigger, more government,
Speaker 1: more government, bigger government, provided it's within the realms of
Speaker 1: their specific interests. I mean, there is no small government
Speaker 1: party that that. What if that did exist, it's been
Speaker 1: dead for decades now, I agree, you know. And all
Speaker 1: I want is a mountain to call my own and
Speaker 1: enoughfense to put around it, you know. But for now
Speaker 1: I live in an HL way, though, which is the
Speaker 1: polar opposite, which might be why I've got pretty strong
Speaker 1: opinions about this. I do not like living in an
Speaker 1: H way I walk out into my front yard, I
Speaker 1: can see into three people's homes. Libertarian trash. You know,
Speaker 1: it's awful. You just want to have a compound in
Speaker 1: the mountains so you can be a white supremacist and
Speaker 1: uh and have five wives. Right. I'll be honest. I've
Speaker 1: got one wife, and as you know, I'm exhausted. I
Speaker 1: don't think I couldn't. I couldn't pull off five. In fact,
Speaker 1: of my best friends of Dominican guy uh would make
Speaker 1: it tough for me to pull off the white supremacist thing.
Speaker 1: But I'll sell them on it slowly. I guess. Have
Speaker 1: have you ever been to a country where they practice polygamy? Uh?
Speaker 1: You know, I'm I guess I'm not sure. I've been
Speaker 1: to a lot of different countries, but for the most part,
Speaker 1: if I was there for work, I was out in
Speaker 1: the middle of nowhere and only interacting with local military.
Speaker 1: And if I was there personally, I was in touristy
Speaker 1: places where they wouldn't tell you anyway. When uh, when
Speaker 1: I was in Iraq, I mean, it's an Islamic culture,
Speaker 1: but the reality for people is so in Islam you
Speaker 1: can have multiple wives, but the thing is you have
Speaker 1: to accommodate them all in the same lifestyle. You can't
Speaker 1: have one that's like living like a balla ass life
Speaker 1: style and the others like living like trash. Like you
Speaker 1: have to imagine, it's a lot like that. In Turkey,
Speaker 1: you have to Yeah, you have to support them at
Speaker 1: the same level. So because most Iraqis are poor, they
Speaker 1: can't afford to have two wives, Like, it's just not feasible.
Speaker 1: When I was in a Senegal um, I did meet
Speaker 1: people who had more the bole wives, and the stories
Speaker 1: were fucking insane, just like totally insane drama because all
Speaker 1: the wives are competing with one another for attention and
Speaker 1: resources from the husband, and it just turns into like
Speaker 1: a total disaster. At least that's what that's what it
Speaker 1: sounded like to may Well. I mean, just imagine, like,
Speaker 1: just imagine the logistics, even if your wife was cool
Speaker 1: with it, of bringing another wife that you saw as
Speaker 1: a peer, the way that you do see your wife
Speaker 1: into the household, and all of a sudden, there's three
Speaker 1: votes you know what you're gonna have for dinner tonight.
Speaker 1: We write about what we're gonna have for dinner every
Speaker 1: day because I don't care. She doesn't care. Well, we
Speaker 1: have to figure it out. The situation that was described
Speaker 1: to me like that. So this one guy was telling
Speaker 1: me about it. He was saying, how each wife has
Speaker 1: their own house, so he will spend like two days
Speaker 1: with one wife two days with the other wife. Do
Speaker 1: you have to own the house, because then I wouldn't
Speaker 1: even rate one. I think so, um, and and and
Speaker 1: so and so. One of the things I was hearing
Speaker 1: about like these arrangements is that what will happen is
Speaker 1: a husband will go to visit the wife and she
Speaker 1: will actually drug his food, so so he passes out
Speaker 1: and is sick and whatever. So she gets him for
Speaker 1: a whole additional day taking care of him because he's sick.
Speaker 1: And now she's depriving the husband of another wife. So
Speaker 1: she's fucking furious, and like yeah, it's it's like, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, like a soap opera on steroids. You know
Speaker 1: this This really gets down to the my fundamental belief
Speaker 1: about me, unkind, which is I don't like any of it.
Speaker 1: Oh dude, you would love. I read this book, Thomas
Speaker 1: the GotY. I wrote this book called The Conspiracy against
Speaker 1: the Human Race, and I just read it was in
Speaker 1: London the other day. And uh, the book is essentially
Speaker 1: it's a it's a treatise on existential nihilism. And the
Speaker 1: guy's thesis is that human conscious this was a mistake
Speaker 1: that we never should have happened. We never should have
Speaker 1: become self aware, and that we did is this huge
Speaker 1: cosmic joke, this fucking mistake that we think we're something special,
Speaker 1: and uh, and when we're not. And and basically, I mean, honestly,
Speaker 1: I mean, we started off this podcast, uh talking about
Speaker 1: the dangers of suicide and mental health. But if you
Speaker 1: read this book, it's essentially making the case for suicide.
Speaker 1: It's saying your life is completely fucking pointless. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: there's another concept, Like we're getting into the weeds with
Speaker 1: this now, but there's another concept that's similar that basically
Speaker 1: contends that you your consciousness is actually an illusion. It's
Speaker 1: a manifestation of your brain to justify the way that
Speaker 1: you're that you live, that we that we are simulations
Speaker 1: of a human being. Well, well, the idea that it's
Speaker 1: your consciousness is an illusion. This is kind of different
Speaker 1: than that brain in the jar, but similar. But their
Speaker 1: idea basically is that the human brain is it's just
Speaker 1: a calculator. It's a very powerful calculator. And everything that
Speaker 1: has led up to right now is has informed already
Speaker 1: what I'm going to say and why I'm going to
Speaker 1: say it. So I'm not actually choosing my words or
Speaker 1: my points right now so much as they're a byproduct
Speaker 1: of the summation of my experiences to this point. Right. So,
Speaker 1: so even though in my head, you know, I tell
Speaker 1: myself that I'm choosing my words or that I'm gonna
Speaker 1: pick a ham sandwich for lunch today, the truth of
Speaker 1: the matter is is that it's actually just you know,
Speaker 1: the sum of an equation of you know, it's a
Speaker 1: math problem, right that the human brain and the human
Speaker 1: consciousness is systems on top of systems exactly, and our
Speaker 1: idea that we're making decisions is actually just a way
Speaker 1: that we fool ourselves into being okay with our existence
Speaker 1: because that consciousness, like you're saying, it was a mistake,
Speaker 1: it's a byproduct that we don't actually need to survive. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I agree with um. The first half of the book maybe,
Speaker 1: Um that human consciousness is that if you go digging
Speaker 1: into these systems, there's really nothing there, Like they're there
Speaker 1: you're not going to find a soul, You're not going
Speaker 1: to find God. Um, it's a biological construct. Um. But
Speaker 1: I disagree with the other thesis that consciousness is a mistake.
Speaker 1: I mean, that seems like an incredible, incredibly arrogant thing
Speaker 1: to say. It's like how people say that, like the
Speaker 1: like the the argument made in the Matrix that mankind
Speaker 1: is a disease or a virus, that we live in
Speaker 1: these cities and we have these technologies and we we
Speaker 1: have broken the equilibrium of the natural world, And I
Speaker 1: think that's bullshit. There's no reason to believe, as I
Speaker 1: was saying earlier, we're a tool using species. Were quite
Speaker 1: clearly designed to be a tool using species. With our hands,
Speaker 1: where our eyes are located, the size of our brains,
Speaker 1: the fact that we walk up right, we're obviously designed
Speaker 1: to use technology. And these technologies and these civilizations we
Speaker 1: build are like a natural outgrowth of our evolution, and
Speaker 1: I do think they're natural. So I think that to
Speaker 1: say consciousness is a mistake, or that that that human
Speaker 1: beings are some sort of a mistake, I think that's bullshit. Well,
Speaker 1: I think that it's important to note that when we're
Speaker 1: talking about how evil human beings are for the world
Speaker 1: and stuff like that. Again, it gets back to that
Speaker 1: idea of good or bad when we when we watch
Speaker 1: chimpanzees use sticks, you know, they spit on the stick
Speaker 1: and then stick the stick into a termite nest, pull
Speaker 1: the stick back out, covering and termites and eat them. Eventually,
Speaker 1: a group of chimpanzees will eat all of the termites
Speaker 1: in that nest and eliminate that termite nest. We don't
Speaker 1: see that as a plague on the termite species. We
Speaker 1: see that as chimpanzees is a part of the natural
Speaker 1: order using the tools at their disposal to survive. Yes,
Speaker 1: the humans are doing it's a cultural thing because we
Speaker 1: kill people and then we feel guilty about it, so
Speaker 1: then we create a narrative to backstop it. We we
Speaker 1: like put that person in heaven or or the dehumanization
Speaker 1: or whatever that we're talking about before there you'll find,
Speaker 1: like now in the United States, you'll find a mix
Speaker 1: of both. You'll find a lot of people do that
Speaker 1: and a lot of people hold the United States to
Speaker 1: an impossible standard because we're supposed to be the good guy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you say, well, I mean that gets into like how
Speaker 1: ridiculous and illegitimate. Uh. You know, war becomes over a
Speaker 1: given period of time that you have to create more
Speaker 1: and more stories to legitimize it the deeper you get
Speaker 1: into it. You nailed it in a story you did
Speaker 1: for News rep not that long ago, where you're talking
Speaker 1: about the drums of war are beating for Iran. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's absolutely true because you know, we live in a democracy.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a representative government, you know, it's a republic.
Speaker 1: But ultimately, if the public does not support a war effort,
Speaker 1: that war effort is not going to be successful. You know,
Speaker 1: we saw it in Vietnam. We've seen it to a
Speaker 1: large extent. I would argue in the modern global War
Speaker 1: on Terror, where we're we're always balancing our idea of
Speaker 1: what this war is supposed to be in a pop
Speaker 1: culture concept versus what war genuinely has to be in
Speaker 1: order to win, you know, and what we're seeing. We
Speaker 1: saw it with North Korea last year, we're seeing it
Speaker 1: with Iran now. Uh, we have to convince the general
Speaker 1: public that they're bad guys for the general public to
Speaker 1: accept that we're going to go there. It's the reason
Speaker 1: why you know, in the first Persian Gulf War and
Speaker 1: incubator babies exactly, they incubated babies being killed, which was
Speaker 1: actually you know, a PR firm was hired to sell
Speaker 1: the American people this idea, and it really did and
Speaker 1: it was successful. It led to us having a very
Speaker 1: successful campaign in Iraq. I'm not necessarily, I'm not. And
Speaker 1: this is where it gets dangerous though, you know, saying
Speaker 1: the same way. It gets dangerous when I talk about
Speaker 1: meddling in the two thousand and sixteen presidential election. It's
Speaker 1: important that we realized that just because I'm saying that
Speaker 1: the reasons we went into a war, uh, the reasons
Speaker 1: we told the American people we went into a war,
Speaker 1: those may not have been factually accurate. You may have
Speaker 1: been lied to. That's not the same thing as saying
Speaker 1: that we shouldn't have been involved in the first place.
Speaker 1: It's not the same thing as saying that we should
Speaker 1: have been involved. You need to look at these things
Speaker 1: from more of a macro perspective. Well, yeah, I think
Speaker 1: like Iraq specifically a two thousand and three invasion. I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: we so the government on WM or I'm sorry, the
Speaker 1: government sold us on w M d S and Iraq
Speaker 1: and all that. But I mean the real reason was
Speaker 1: the whole concept of Serania that we were going to
Speaker 1: redraw the map of the Middle East, you know. And
Speaker 1: this is exactly what I mean. The American people, by
Speaker 1: and large, that's a that's a foreign concept to them.
Speaker 1: It's a foreign concept that exactly. You know. However, if
Speaker 1: you were all the way informed, if you really knew
Speaker 1: what was going on, your honest appraisal might be that
Speaker 1: they were making the right call. It also might be
Speaker 1: that they were making the wrong call. But being critical
Speaker 1: of the process is not the same of being critical
Speaker 1: of the entire outcome or of the entire objective, you know.
Speaker 1: And that's what that's the challenge we always face in
Speaker 1: the media, where you could write a story that's critical
Speaker 1: is something Donald Trump says, uh, and it immediately gets
Speaker 1: you painted in a corner as being an anti Trump journalist,
Speaker 1: or go ahead and finish out this is like Or
Speaker 1: you could, you know, conversely, write a story that says,
Speaker 1: you know, Don Trump is right, orbital defense is a
Speaker 1: serious concern for our country, and it will immediately get
Speaker 1: you painted as a Trump pumper, and any points you
Speaker 1: made in either case become moot i um. I think
Speaker 1: the one of the points I was trying to get
Speaker 1: to there with how we make up. We have to
Speaker 1: increasingly make up more and more stories to legitimize what
Speaker 1: we're doing, uh, specifically thinking about the war on Terror,
Speaker 1: and especially how veterans make up. We have these like
Speaker 1: stories about Spartans and temple our nights and like all
Speaker 1: this asinine, ridiculous stuff that we tell ourselves because we're
Speaker 1: not the Spartans. By the way, you know, our arrows
Speaker 1: will blot out the sun. The Taliban's arrows are not
Speaker 1: blotting out the fucking sun. All right, I'm just throwing
Speaker 1: that out there discuss. And also it's also important to
Speaker 1: note that the Spartans were not the Spartans that you
Speaker 1: think the Spartans were. Not you, but you know what
Speaker 1: I mean, Like, yeah, the Spartans that we like to
Speaker 1: drop parallels between ourselves and the Spartans. Honestly, you know,
Speaker 1: depending on who you were looking at the Battle of
Speaker 1: Three the Battle of Thermopoly, Uh, to some people, the
Speaker 1: Persians were the good guys. People were living better under
Speaker 1: the Persian Empire than many people were living, you know,
Speaker 1: especially the slaves of the spartans that they had captured
Speaker 1: in war and stuff like that. You know, we like
Speaker 1: to look back at the three, you know, at the
Speaker 1: Monopoly as these idealistic heroes. They were just dudes just
Speaker 1: like us, which means some of them were assholes with
Speaker 1: you know, with the storytelling. Um, there's that interesting documentary.
Speaker 1: I know I brought it up before that Robert Curtis
Speaker 1: documentary hyper normalization, and uh that that term he came
Speaker 1: across it was it was just to describe the Soviet
Speaker 1: Union and its twilight years. You know, everyone knew the
Speaker 1: Soviet Union was going to collapse by or I shouldn't
Speaker 1: say everyone, but like a lot of economists came to
Speaker 1: that realization in the late nineties seventies because it's communism,
Speaker 1: Like the math just doesn't add up like that, it
Speaker 1: doesn't work, can't sustain this. But and then I and
Speaker 1: then you get into the nighte teen eighties, and by
Speaker 1: that point it was really clear to the public and
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union that this isn't gonna work right, Like,
Speaker 1: this isn't gonna shake out. But by that point you
Speaker 1: had had the Soviet Union for so long and so
Speaker 1: many people have been so indoctrinated. They didn't know what
Speaker 1: would come next. It's like everyone knows the system has failed,
Speaker 1: but they can't even conceptualize a different system. And we've
Speaker 1: been in the global War on terror for so long
Speaker 1: that I feel that we are kind of in that mindset,
Speaker 1: like we cannot imagine a world where we just don't
Speaker 1: have troops deployed all around the world putting out fires.
Speaker 1: You know, you're touching on something that's really really important,
Speaker 1: especially when it comes to talking about places like Iran,
Speaker 1: North Korea, China, Russia, these nations that were still embroiled
Speaker 1: and what is effectively a staring contest, right Yeah, And
Speaker 1: like we I will say, you know, I've been to
Speaker 1: I don't know, twenty five different countries. I do think
Speaker 1: by and large, people are the same everywhere you go.
Speaker 1: That what's different are the systems that they live in.
Speaker 1: And it's harder to change a system than it is
Speaker 1: to change a person's mind. You know, in North Korea,
Speaker 1: people are starting to understand to a certain extent that
Speaker 1: not the whole world doesn't work like this. But but
Speaker 1: just like you're saying, the concept of how we live
Speaker 1: is so foreign to them that it's hard for them
Speaker 1: to wrap their heads around the same way. The concept
Speaker 1: of how they live is so foreign to us that
Speaker 1: we're like, why don't they just stand up? Why doesn't
Speaker 1: why the North Koreans rise up against Kim Jong Will?
Speaker 1: I mean, you think you put some thought into this.
Speaker 1: I mean, and I know you you'll know what I'm
Speaker 1: talking about here, But the human race is splitting into
Speaker 1: like multiple species, like it's already been happening. And like,
Speaker 1: if you think so, you're you're a father. I have
Speaker 1: a daughter. Um. I have a bachelor's degree. Her mother
Speaker 1: has a master's degree. We live in New York. Um,
Speaker 1: she goes to school. I have taken her to Europe
Speaker 1: a bunch of times. My my ex wife has taken
Speaker 1: her to Italy, to Paris, to the Mall Dives. I mean,
Speaker 1: this kid, at eight years old is like more traveled
Speaker 1: than than I am in probably in some ways. Um,
Speaker 1: she has all of these opportunities open to her. Now,
Speaker 1: take one of those kids that I came across an
Speaker 1: Afghanistan when I was deployed over there. His dad is
Speaker 1: essentially a dirt farmer. I don't say that to be derogatory.
Speaker 1: I mean it's just like being real like, it's a
Speaker 1: rough life. His wife, the kid's mom, is would be
Speaker 1: considered a slave essentially by us. That's how we would
Speaker 1: look at it, that she's essentially a slave. Uh. This
Speaker 1: kid leaves in a fucking hut. Um, maybe they have
Speaker 1: a couple goats or something like that. If that's they're
Speaker 1: doing well. If they're doing well, this kid has probably
Speaker 1: never been more than thirty minutes from his house. That's
Speaker 1: the scope of the world. That is his world that
Speaker 1: he lives in. And I'm not saying he's necessarily an
Speaker 1: unhappy child, because you can have a very happy childhood
Speaker 1: in a third world country. Um, it doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: you're just unhappy and miserable and you're starving to death,
Speaker 1: although a lot of them are malnourished and dehydrated and
Speaker 1: they don't have good health care. But he could be
Speaker 1: a happy kid maybe. And your your scope of happy
Speaker 1: is developed by your experience, right, you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: So he very well could be a happy kid, because
Speaker 1: he doesn't he doesn't know what. Um. Now, if you
Speaker 1: take my kid and this kid I'm describing the Afghanistan,
Speaker 1: they are like from a two separate species, and I'm
Speaker 1: i don't mean to make like a racist argument. I'm
Speaker 1: not trying to say that these people in Afghanistan are subhuman.
Speaker 1: That's not that's not my point. Your daughter and the
Speaker 1: kid you're talking about could ethnically be identical, the differences
Speaker 1: would still be huge, huge, Yeah, you know, I mean
Speaker 1: it's it's absolutely and you'll see it to a lesser extent.
Speaker 1: Even right here in the United States. You know, there
Speaker 1: are some places here in Georgia where people don't have
Speaker 1: running water in their houses. You know, I was in uh.
Speaker 1: I was in New Orleans not all that long ago.
Speaker 1: Large swaths of New Orleans are still just absolutely destroyed
Speaker 1: from Hurricane Katrina. It's hard, it's mind boggling to think
Speaker 1: because it's been so long. And you know, right after
Speaker 1: an earthquake in Haiti, we sent a billion dollars to
Speaker 1: rappers to buy new boats about Haiti. I guess you know,
Speaker 1: we're really good at raising a billion dollars to fix
Speaker 1: the Notre Dame Cathedral immediately, We're not very good at
Speaker 1: following through and helping the impoverished survive, you know, So
Speaker 1: when you think about just how destitute some people are,
Speaker 1: you know, when I was born, my at the time,
Speaker 1: there was four of us. We had another brother later,
Speaker 1: but there's four of us in a nineteen ft camping
Speaker 1: trailer with no running water in Our electricity came from
Speaker 1: an extension cord that we ran through a window of
Speaker 1: the trailer to the farm that whose property had let
Speaker 1: us park our trailer on. You know, my parents worked
Speaker 1: their asses off to put themselves in a position that
Speaker 1: by the time I graduated high school, I managed to
Speaker 1: go to college for a year before I dropped out
Speaker 1: like an idiot. But my parents worked really hard to
Speaker 1: put me in a position where now my daughter is
Speaker 1: in a position to lead a life kind of similar
Speaker 1: to your daughters. I had never redden on an airplane
Speaker 1: until I joined the Marine Corps. You know, uh like it.
Speaker 1: It took, it's going to take now three generations of
Speaker 1: rather upwardly mobile Americans. You know, my my dad was
Speaker 1: a real break guy. You know my mom. My mom
Speaker 1: actually graduated with her bachelor's the same week that I
Speaker 1: graduated with mine. But she was always very bright and
Speaker 1: she was very motivated. So my parents worked their asses
Speaker 1: off to put me in a position to be able
Speaker 1: to serve my country to pay for my college. You
Speaker 1: know and work my ass off to put my daughter
Speaker 1: in position where now she thinks having a big screen
Speaker 1: TV is absolutely normal. Yeah, yeah, no, I remember. Um.
Speaker 1: It's actually in the last chapter in my book where
Speaker 1: the end of the book it kind of closes with
Speaker 1: you know, um last summer when I finished right in
Speaker 1: the book and I really was I was at a
Speaker 1: in a square in Sardinia, this beautiful sea in front
Speaker 1: of me, the beautiful ocean, these turquoise waters, and I'm
Speaker 1: sitting there drinking a mohito, typing on my laptop, finishing
Speaker 1: writing my book, and my daughters they're playing in the
Speaker 1: ocean with kids from London, in France and Johannesburg. And
Speaker 1: I was like looking at this, and it's like dawned
Speaker 1: on me. I was like, this kid is already like
Speaker 1: in a totally different place than I was when I
Speaker 1: was her age. It's like cultural ghatica. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: because if you think about it, if under the best
Speaker 1: of circumstances, which like, for the sake of argument, let's
Speaker 1: say my family has been in we were three generations
Speaker 1: from you know, no running water and a trailer to
Speaker 1: like I live in a in a very a nice home,
Speaker 1: that I have a separate wing of it for me
Speaker 1: to work in. Me. It's not from one of those
Speaker 1: families that dynamited their way down into a valley and
Speaker 1: never left, no, believe it or not. My dad was
Speaker 1: just my dad was a schemer, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: He always had another great business venture that just kind
Speaker 1: of He was a baker for a long time that
Speaker 1: didn't pan out. Eventually he got into running nursing homes. Uh,
Speaker 1: but it was you know, it took him a while,
Speaker 1: basically because he had to get his bachelor's degree, you know,
Speaker 1: in order to get a good job. Uh. But the
Speaker 1: truth of the matter is, under the best of circumstances,
Speaker 1: it took three full generations to put my family in
Speaker 1: a position where my daughter does not think flying in
Speaker 1: an airplane is weird, right, Uh. And that's under the
Speaker 1: best of conditions and the wealthiest nation on the planet.
Speaker 1: So if you were to say, how many generations is
Speaker 1: my daughter away from the little kids that I saw
Speaker 1: getting into a fist fight in Mozambique, Africa over my
Speaker 1: gatorade powder out of my m r E. You know,
Speaker 1: generationally speaking, I mean, when we're talking about are almost
Speaker 1: a different species in a weird way, you really could say,
Speaker 1: because even under the best of circumstances, let's say things
Speaker 1: changed overnight for for that family and Mozambique, there's still
Speaker 1: six ten generations away from having the understanding and the
Speaker 1: scope of the world that my daughter is going to
Speaker 1: grow up with, just through the advantages she has of
Speaker 1: being an American child in my house. It's uh, you know,
Speaker 1: like we were saying earlier, the human mind is systems
Speaker 1: overlaid on top of systems. And I've been I've mentioned
Speaker 1: this before that when I was in Iraq and there's
Speaker 1: this like huge pothole filled with this putrid black water,
Speaker 1: and as we drive by, I look over and I
Speaker 1: see these two kids who are like five or six
Speaker 1: years old playing in the water. Yeah, now, what do
Speaker 1: you think the systems are in their head as they're
Speaker 1: growing up compared to say, your kid, Alex. And again,
Speaker 1: this isn't like a racist argument. I'm trying to make
Speaker 1: what you genuinely, these children actually do know a great
Speaker 1: deal more than our kids about surveying, about survival, yeah,
Speaker 1: hell yeah. And they're they're probably and there there's things
Speaker 1: they're gonna be better at, like improvising Uh, there's thing.
Speaker 1: They're gonna be probably more entrepreneurial in a lot of
Speaker 1: ways because they're gonna probably have a higher tolerance for
Speaker 1: physical pain. Yeah, because they have to to survive. Um.
Speaker 1: But and if you if you took one of those
Speaker 1: kids out of that situation and brought them to America,
Speaker 1: they'd be fine. They'd be they would end up like
Speaker 1: any other American kid. Um. Even if you took like
Speaker 1: one of these asshole Taliban guys out of Afghanistan and
Speaker 1: brought him to New York, he wouldn't be Taliban anymore.
Speaker 1: It's not that those guys aren't like Al Qaeda dudes.
Speaker 1: For the most part, they're not like hardcore like radical
Speaker 1: Islamist nutcases. Like if you took the most of them
Speaker 1: out of that situation and PLoP them down into a
Speaker 1: different situation, they wouldn't be like guerilla fighters, like like
Speaker 1: hillbillies with huge beers running around shooting villagers and ship.
Speaker 1: You're toldly right, you know. And but and this this
Speaker 1: gets to what we were talking about before with that
Speaker 1: good guys versus bad guys thing. The reality of the
Speaker 1: matter is is that everyone is doing the best they
Speaker 1: can in their circumstances, right, that doesn't just but because
Speaker 1: I'm able to look at that guy in the Taliban
Speaker 1: and and acknowledge that in his head, among his peer group,
Speaker 1: like in his family, he's not a bad guy. That
Speaker 1: doesn't mean that he's my friend or ally, it doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that we need to get along. But it's important
Speaker 1: that we acknowledge these things because you cannot. You can't
Speaker 1: strategize against motive unless you actually understand motive, right, And
Speaker 1: if you want to attribute just evil, you want to
Speaker 1: just say that their motives are just nefarious. Uh, what
Speaker 1: you end up doing is setting yourself up for failure
Speaker 1: because you're not accurately depicting their motives, so you're not
Speaker 1: able to For instance, this is why America is so
Speaker 1: bad with narrative campaigns, because we're so unable to accept
Speaker 1: the idea that their motives might genuinely be good. You know,
Speaker 1: they're just not in keeping with our own. And there's
Speaker 1: only enough room for one of us here. Because we're
Speaker 1: not able to accept that culturally, it sets us back strategically. Well,
Speaker 1: those those people who are like intelligent and sophisticated and
Speaker 1: and you know they went to like Ivy League, schools.
Speaker 1: They also have a real problem, um when they think
Speaker 1: that every stranger is just a friend they haven't met yet,
Speaker 1: and they you know what's funny about that, though, is
Speaker 1: that they feel that way when it comes to interpersonal actions.
Speaker 1: But they're also the same people sitting around a table
Speaker 1: talking about how we have to bring down per patient
Speaker 1: meal at the hotel two under three dollars, you know,
Speaker 1: because those people aren't people. Yeah, I've heard, I've heard
Speaker 1: some surreal things over the years, and you know, even
Speaker 1: even really nice guys, you know, like Jimmy Carter. I mean,
Speaker 1: by the time he was coming out of office, he
Speaker 1: realized the world wasn't the place he thought it was,
Speaker 1: Like there's some snakes in the grass and and and
Speaker 1: that's then that's really what it comes down to, you know.
Speaker 1: I because I'm not inherently opposed to social programs, for instance,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't think that you could grow up
Speaker 1: as poor as I was and think that nobody needs
Speaker 1: help sincerely, right, Yeah, yeah, But there the trade off
Speaker 1: is that there's always gonna be people who gained the system,
Speaker 1: there's always gonna be people who are using it wrong reasons,
Speaker 1: and trying to balance that That's the reason why I
Speaker 1: really do think that the best thing for the country
Speaker 1: is healthy debate and discourse, not ultimate victory for one
Speaker 1: party or the other. Like I have a problem with
Speaker 1: this whole like universal basic income thing because like I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't have a problem with some social programs to
Speaker 1: like help people who are like seriously struggling, you know,
Speaker 1: like single mom with three kids, she needs some help. Like,
Speaker 1: I get it, But like, do I want to be
Speaker 1: like handing over tax dollars to like some fucking kid
Speaker 1: who just wants to play video games all day and
Speaker 1: doesn't feel you should have to get a job like
Speaker 1: now now. Absolutely, and to a certain extent, ideas like
Speaker 1: universal basic income to me just sounds like manufacture or inflation,
Speaker 1: you know, written off money. Yeah, they'll have to we're
Speaker 1: gonna do. We're not gonna worry about how the health
Speaker 1: care system is broken in six different ways. Just give
Speaker 1: you more money to give it, you know. We're not
Speaker 1: going to worry about how food is to you know,
Speaker 1: the the agricultural system. We're giving farmers money to farm
Speaker 1: food that they throw away. We're not gonna worry about
Speaker 1: how that's broken. We're just gonna give them more money
Speaker 1: to grow it, to throw it away. We're not trying
Speaker 1: to fix systems. We're trying to put bandages on systems,
Speaker 1: you know. And again it's just like we were saying earlier,
Speaker 1: it's easier to change people than it is to change systems.
Speaker 1: This is the way things work, all right. So, uh,
Speaker 1: we've given like the grand unified field theory of everything. Uh,
Speaker 1: this is a weird one. Before I but before we
Speaker 1: totally uh go off for another hour on this, I
Speaker 1: did want to bring you back to you know, one
Speaker 1: of your hobby horses is UFOs and I know you've
Speaker 1: written a lot about that, and there's all there's a
Speaker 1: new just over the last couple of days, a new
Speaker 1: slew of articles about you know, about this subject and
Speaker 1: the Department of Defense, and I wanted to get have
Speaker 1: you get into that since I know it's something you
Speaker 1: keep a close eye on. Yeah, and you know the
Speaker 1: thing for those who may not be savvy, uh, just
Speaker 1: at least broke about a number of Navy pilots, the
Speaker 1: most prominent one being a guy named Lieutenant Graves, who
Speaker 1: are reporting that through thousand fourteen two fifteen, they had
Speaker 1: frequent encounters with unusual aircraft in the sky, you know,
Speaker 1: and these aircraft are qualified as unusual through you know,
Speaker 1: person visual naked eye observations, through uh, you know, equipment
Speaker 1: observations like radar. Their behavior in general, you know, captured
Speaker 1: on flear cameras and captured in those personal statements. These
Speaker 1: things are weird, you know. But you said they actually
Speaker 1: had eyes on some of them, eyes on some in fact,
Speaker 1: and one of them there were two F eighteen super
Speaker 1: hornets f A teen super Hornets flying within a hundred
Speaker 1: feet of another and what they described as a sphere
Speaker 1: encased in in in a transparent cube crossed between them,
Speaker 1: which when you're flying a wing tip to wing tip
Speaker 1: at seven miles per hour in a fighter jet, that
Speaker 1: is not a significant distance, right, So crossing between these
Speaker 1: two aircraft, if a Russian fighter were to do it,
Speaker 1: if it were that did that, we would call that
Speaker 1: an unsafe and unprofessional encounter. Yeah, absolutely, you know. So
Speaker 1: so you know, these Navy pilots. This is actually what
Speaker 1: led to the Navy now establishing new reporting procedures for
Speaker 1: what they call you A p sightings unidentified aerial phenomenon sightings.
Speaker 1: The reason why they call them you a e is
Speaker 1: largely because the you know, UFO unidentified flying object gets
Speaker 1: scoffed at, right, people automatically assume alien when you hear UFO.
Speaker 1: The truth, of course, is that it's just something you
Speaker 1: don't know what it is. These were to f A
Speaker 1: teen pilots and they described this thing as a sphere
Speaker 1: encased in a transparent cube. Yes, and now this is
Speaker 1: I mean, this dovetails right into the Nimics incident, which
Speaker 1: up until recently I would call probably the most prominent
Speaker 1: incident in contemporary history, where Commander Fraiverer, who was another
Speaker 1: super Hornet pilot, and his wingman were scrambled more than
Speaker 1: once and of four days and to the four off
Speaker 1: the coast of California to try to intercept contacts that
Speaker 1: this Carrier strike group kept getting. The Nimic Strike Group
Speaker 1: kept getting radar feeds or reads of things popping up
Speaker 1: and around thirty thousand feet, dropping down to five thousand
Speaker 1: feet uh, coming to very close to the carrier strike group,
Speaker 1: and then zooming away at hypersonic velocities. And they thought
Speaker 1: what they were getting must have been equipment misreadings, because
Speaker 1: things don't work that way, right, you know, So they
Speaker 1: scrambled fighters multiple times over four days. They captured flear
Speaker 1: fige of these. Perhaps they saw them with their naked eye. Uh,
Speaker 1: some of the craziest stuff, you know. So if you're
Speaker 1: a fighter pilot, not all that different to if you're
Speaker 1: an infantry man. Uh, you're gonna establish Okay, so this
Speaker 1: is where we're going to link up again if we
Speaker 1: get separated and something goes wrong. Right, I can't remember
Speaker 1: the exact term for it when you're a fighter pilot,
Speaker 1: but they established one about sixty kilometers away from where
Speaker 1: they were headed to intercept. When they got there, Uh,
Speaker 1: those strange tic tac shaped thing, they called it the
Speaker 1: tik tak thing that they got there if they tried
Speaker 1: to bank around to get a closer look at it,
Speaker 1: and it immediately booked it back to where they said
Speaker 1: they would meet up sixty KOs away, Uh, which would
Speaker 1: infer either you know, a really crazy situation you know, uh,
Speaker 1: or that it was able to eavesdrop on communications. You know.
Speaker 1: And so when you hear about like this, we'll do
Speaker 1: want to think aliens, right, And yeah, you know I'm
Speaker 1: a big I'm a big fan of Ockham's razor. Right, Like,
Speaker 1: so the theory that requires the fewest assumptions is probably
Speaker 1: what them raised or on a fine tic tac that
Speaker 1: can read your thoughts, or or a sphere in case
Speaker 1: in a transparent cube like I'm trying to wrap my
Speaker 1: mind around that. Absolutely, you know, so so what you
Speaker 1: would normally my my almost always, my first idea when
Speaker 1: I hear about a UFO sighting is that it was
Speaker 1: either a misidentified military aircraft just because military aircraft right
Speaker 1: strange ways to the aircraft were normal we're using, Or
Speaker 1: it's a function I'm sorry, broke up a bit there.
Speaker 1: Or it could be a radar malfunction, or it could
Speaker 1: be some sort of natural phenomena that we don't quite understand,
Speaker 1: or in those really rare situations where it is something
Speaker 1: that people never seen before, I'm still more apt to
Speaker 1: believe that it's a technology demonstrator for a new drone
Speaker 1: or aircraft. I mean, Lord knows, Lockeed Martin has already
Speaker 1: insinuated that there are SR seventy two tech demonstrators capable
Speaker 1: of hypersonic speeds. These are triangular shaped aircraft, which I'm
Speaker 1: sure on who's you know, fall casually would know that
Speaker 1: there's always reports of prime shaped aircraft traveling at in
Speaker 1: speeds that people tend to attribute to UFOs that could
Speaker 1: very easily be hypersonic programs. We've been doing hypersonic stuff
Speaker 1: since two thousand four. You know, It's it's not at
Speaker 1: all outside the realm of possibility. But so then when
Speaker 1: it's military pilots reporting these, you have to go all right,
Speaker 1: So the only way that this is a government program
Speaker 1: is if someone in the government thought that it would
Speaker 1: be a good idea to see how super hornets would
Speaker 1: react to trying to intercept this, which is that's not
Speaker 1: a common practice. That's a idea very dangerous, you know,
Speaker 1: and especially you know, in these most recent sightings where
Speaker 1: you're talking about what would be considered an unsafe and
Speaker 1: unprofessional encounter, you're talking about uh, flying in between two
Speaker 1: aircraft that are flying in a close formation at high
Speaker 1: at a high rate of speed. That is not something
Speaker 1: that you would do with an experimental drone program to
Speaker 1: test the limits of your drone because you're putting American
Speaker 1: lives at risk, you know. So it makes you go, Okay,
Speaker 1: so what the hell is this? Right? Is it a
Speaker 1: natural phenomenon that we just don't understand yet? Is it
Speaker 1: a foreign military technology that's capable or in our airspace
Speaker 1: and we can do a little about it, you know,
Speaker 1: whatever it is, we need to get a hate on
Speaker 1: what's going on so that we can know if we
Speaker 1: need to defend ourselves and if we do, how to
Speaker 1: defend our instant, especially if it's foreign military technology. I'm
Speaker 1: never You'll never catch me. Yeah, man, this one's aliens.
Speaker 1: You know. Uh, It's it's possible. I I still think
Speaker 1: that it's the least likely possibility. But sometimes when you
Speaker 1: hear reports like this, when you watch the footage from
Speaker 1: command Or Favor's flear camera on the nose of the
Speaker 1: super Hornet, it's hard to look at that and go, oh,
Speaker 1: you know what that thing is. That must be a
Speaker 1: you know, a good Year blimp that somebody mistaked in
Speaker 1: the distance. Yeah. I mean, even when we're talking about
Speaker 1: these incidents we've been talking about here, even if we
Speaker 1: say maybe it's a you know, some foreign country has
Speaker 1: some technology, you know, we're not aware of, like these
Speaker 1: technologies that it would take to build the things that
Speaker 1: you're talking about. That's like several generations ahead of what
Speaker 1: anybody has. And I don't believe for a moment that
Speaker 1: the Russians built that. Um, they're they're so far behind.
Speaker 1: I mean the Russians come to us for technology, the Chinese, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the Chinese technology. Um, so they're using our stuff at best. Um,
Speaker 1: what other country in the world is developing compartmentalized, multi
Speaker 1: billion or even trillion dollar aerospace programs. Now, there was
Speaker 1: there was a UFO siting in northern California last fall
Speaker 1: that the Air National Guards scrambled fIF teens to try
Speaker 1: to intercept. They weren't able to get visual on whatever
Speaker 1: it was that that provided radar returns because whatever it
Speaker 1: was zoomed out of there. It seemed to be a
Speaker 1: stealth platform that was giving intermittent radar returns. When in
Speaker 1: the case of things like that, I'm inclined to think
Speaker 1: that it's a commercial defense contractor testing new platforms. Right,
Speaker 1: But then when you've got trained military aviators, we're not
Speaker 1: talking about Assessina pilot who got his license sixty years ago.
Speaker 1: We're talking about super Hornet fighter pilots. Now, I've got
Speaker 1: a buddy who's an F thirty five pilot used to
Speaker 1: be an F sixteen pilot, and he was talking about
Speaker 1: how like the the travel The route that you take
Speaker 1: to being a fighter pilot is a long and difficult
Speaker 1: one where a lot of people get weeded out. Right,
Speaker 1: You're not always weeded out out of aviation. But you
Speaker 1: may not be a fighter. You may be a C
Speaker 1: one thirty pilot. You know, that's what you're better suited for.
Speaker 1: We're we're talking about guys who have excellent decision making skills,
Speaker 1: that are very confident in their ability to observe their
Speaker 1: environment because their life depends on it, you know, and
Speaker 1: are the best trained aviators into the world. America's mill
Speaker 1: Terry aviators have on average three times the stick time
Speaker 1: the Chinese Russian pilots have. These guys are combat aviators,
Speaker 1: you know. They they're used to taking fire and looking
Speaker 1: for enemy aircraft. So when these guys report a spearing
Speaker 1: case in a cube flying in between them, I'm not
Speaker 1: inclined to regard, you know, what they're saying. I don't
Speaker 1: know what to call it. I think that's the reason why.
Speaker 1: It's when it's backed up by instrument readings and so
Speaker 1: on exactly, you know. And that's really where I where
Speaker 1: I get particularly interested in this stuff, because I do
Speaker 1: think that a lot of UFO sightings are easily dismissed.
Speaker 1: You know, I would I'm you know, I'm not a
Speaker 1: UFO guy, alex Um. I do have an interest in
Speaker 1: classified aerospace programs, uh, you know, being you know, the
Speaker 1: kind of work that I do. Of course, I think
Speaker 1: that stuff's fascinating. I do have kind of a passing
Speaker 1: interest in these like natural phenomenas like you know, ball lightning, lightning.
Speaker 1: There's some other stuff like high atmosphere effects that um
Speaker 1: we did, didn't eat, we didn't even have on capture
Speaker 1: on film until like the nineteen nineties, are called like
Speaker 1: red dwarves. Um. It's basically like, um, it looks sort
Speaker 1: of like heat lightning, but it's red, and it goes
Speaker 1: up into our upper atmosphere, so it's like satellites will
Speaker 1: catch them. Um, it's like this just a giant red
Speaker 1: flash in our upper atmosphere and it's and you know,
Speaker 1: and there's other crazy things we just recently started getting.
Speaker 1: I think they called phantom organa. But uh, you know,
Speaker 1: optical illusions that can make it look like a city
Speaker 1: isn't the or it can make it look like ships
Speaker 1: are flying in the sky as opposed to on the water.
Speaker 1: But and I I important for us. So remember that
Speaker 1: our eyes aren't What you see is not really actually
Speaker 1: an accurate representation of real life. Right, It's what the
Speaker 1: best your brain could do as fast as it can. Right.
Speaker 1: It's like Plato putting the wooden stick into the water
Speaker 1: and you can see underwater it looks like the stick
Speaker 1: is bending, but obviously you know it isn't you know. Hence,
Speaker 1: an optical illusion per option is not necessarily reality, absolutely
Speaker 1: just and you know, and obviously I witness testimony is
Speaker 1: inherently flawed. But there comes a point you can longer
Speaker 1: disregard these because you think they're silly, you know. And
Speaker 1: at that point you need to at least seriously that
Speaker 1: are what is in our airspace? And how do you
Speaker 1: go about countering it if we needed to? And but
Speaker 1: I think that's what's one thing that's really interesting to
Speaker 1: come with this, Like Louis Elisondo, who was the head
Speaker 1: of a TIP, the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification program that
Speaker 1: was running in the Pentagon. It was funded between two
Speaker 1: thousand seven and two thousand twelve, but continued to run,
Speaker 1: and it probably continues to run now under the auspices
Speaker 1: of a different name. But they they were the Pentagon's
Speaker 1: arm of investigating military reports of unusual sightings, along with
Speaker 1: like a bunch of other stuff that I think was
Speaker 1: a little crazy and probably why they got defunded. But
Speaker 1: the biggest thing that people aren't talking about coming from
Speaker 1: this is that the revelation that the Pentagon was funding
Speaker 1: that program, the recent announcements that the Navy is establishing
Speaker 1: procedures to try to explore these sightings, is a a
Speaker 1: good argument in favor of the fact that the government
Speaker 1: does not know what these things are, is not involved
Speaker 1: in some far reaching, broad alien conspiracy. Roswell probably did
Speaker 1: not in life that we locked in a room studied.
Speaker 1: I think that what we're seeing is, you know, everybody's
Speaker 1: always talking about disclosure. They want the government to disclose
Speaker 1: what they know. I think what we're seeing here is
Speaker 1: that the government really does not know very much, you know.
Speaker 1: There they want to understand what the hell this stuff is,
Speaker 1: what they're seeing. But to this point, I don't think
Speaker 1: that we've got any little green men locked in any rooms.
Speaker 1: I don't think that we're reverse engineering UFOs, because if
Speaker 1: we were, we wouldn't find programs. And you know, I
Speaker 1: mean the other side of this is, yes, that I
Speaker 1: don't personally believe that there have ever been extraterrestrials visiting
Speaker 1: Earth unless you get down and like, you know that
Speaker 1: this whole theory that like maybe alien bacteria seated the
Speaker 1: Earth from a meteorite. You know that there's that maybe
Speaker 1: something like that could have happened. But um, I don't
Speaker 1: believe in little green men. But these encounters who are
Speaker 1: describing there's an implied intelligence behind whatever these constructs are,
Speaker 1: you know, and it makes perfect sense to me. Like
Speaker 1: let's say these are extraterrestrial in origin. It is exactly
Speaker 1: what we would do. This is what we do. We
Speaker 1: send Mars rovers you know. Curiosity is that we could muster,
Speaker 1: but we could manage a hypersonic speed sphere surrounded by
Speaker 1: bulk cube. We would have gone with that instead, you know. Uh,
Speaker 1: that's exactly what we would do to explore things like this.
Speaker 1: I do think that if aliens are visiting Earth, and
Speaker 1: if abduction stories are real and things like that, uh,
Speaker 1: it's again our ego that assumes uh a lot about
Speaker 1: their interest in us. I think it's much more akin
Speaker 1: to if it is real at all, which I'm not
Speaker 1: really sold on, it's a lot more like when we
Speaker 1: fly over you know, the African savannah and a helicopter
Speaker 1: and try and come down and tag it and then
Speaker 1: fly away. We don't meet with the rhinos elders to
Speaker 1: request permission to study them. We fly over, we zap
Speaker 1: them and tag them and leave. Yeah. But I mean,
Speaker 1: if you have a civilization that has technology so advanced
Speaker 1: they can do, you know, faster than light travel. They
Speaker 1: don't need to abduct human beings and probe our anuses, like,
Speaker 1: like their technology is way beyond that, Like they can
Speaker 1: probably scan you from atmosphere and get all the readings
Speaker 1: they need. Absolutely, although the question would be why bother
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, why bother study us at all? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I suppose or yeah, you could argue any life studying
Speaker 1: and that may well be there, you know, and if
Speaker 1: it is automated being uh, if you are capable of
Speaker 1: setting faster than resources are probably not a concern, right,
Speaker 1: So sending it here isn't a big I'm still just
Speaker 1: again it's one of those things where you know, there's
Speaker 1: there's kind of a crazy crackpot theory about Roswell that
Speaker 1: said that Stalin actually smuggled Joseph ngala Uh out of
Speaker 1: Nazi Germany hired him to right to create like weird
Speaker 1: you know, manipulated older and that they put in what
Speaker 1: was effectively a Nazi bell uh so that they could
Speaker 1: fly out to America and crash it and try to
Speaker 1: put America into a frenzy, which would you know, weaken
Speaker 1: our position I suppose, uh, you know, on the global stage.
Speaker 1: It sounds like such a ludicrous concept. But whenever I
Speaker 1: bring it up, especially when I'm talking to other guys
Speaker 1: that that believe in in alien visitation and stuff, When
Speaker 1: I bring that up and they tell me it's ridiculous,
Speaker 1: I always have to counter with what sounds more ridiculous.
Speaker 1: You know that Stalin hired a guy that we know
Speaker 1: did medical experiments to load some weird looking kids into
Speaker 1: a drone and crashion into roswell, which is outlandish. Or
Speaker 1: that some species managed to master fast and light travel
Speaker 1: came here over what could pretend to be thousands of
Speaker 1: light years just to crash on a guy's farm in Nevada.
Speaker 1: I'm thinking both of those are ridiculous, But um I
Speaker 1: wanted I agree you you do have my caught my
Speaker 1: interest with these with these um incidents, which are you know,
Speaker 1: recorded by the Navy and seemed quite credible, and we're
Speaker 1: kind of like throwing the bullshit card at extraterrestrials. We're
Speaker 1: calling the bulls. We're throwing the bullshit card at you know,
Speaker 1: Russia and China that that that it couldn't have been them.
Speaker 1: We're kind of throwing the bulls. The hard question then
Speaker 1: what hard question is? So then what we think it is? Yeah,
Speaker 1: what the funk is? I have no idea. That's and
Speaker 1: that's honestly, that's the reason why I'm I really like
Speaker 1: the fact that the Navy and the Pentagon all gaging
Speaker 1: with this, although you don't doubt that to a certain extent,
Speaker 1: there's always in some level of engagement. But uh, there's
Speaker 1: there's no feasible explanation for what these people are reporting, right,
Speaker 1: which leads you to either say the reports are erroneous.
Speaker 1: You know, these guys were not seeing what they claimed
Speaker 1: they saw, and the technical readings have been faked, which
Speaker 1: I don't think is possible or at least very unlikely.
Speaker 1: The other thing is that there's something going on that
Speaker 1: we don't understand. It could be man made, it could
Speaker 1: be something else. The only possible explanations at this point
Speaker 1: are either the military is openly and directly lying to
Speaker 1: us with first hand accounts and tech effects and stuff
Speaker 1: that they don't need to release but have opted to,
Speaker 1: and if they are, what's the motive and the intent,
Speaker 1: or the other side of it is is that we
Speaker 1: really don't know what stuff is we did happen, in
Speaker 1: which case we have some really hard questions to you.
Speaker 1: Neither of those are really will help you sleep at night.
Speaker 1: You have to wonder, like is there an office in
Speaker 1: like sub basement five of the Pentagon on and you know,
Speaker 1: it's like three guys working for some like compartmentalized program
Speaker 1: and like maybe they have some working theory finally of
Speaker 1: what this phenomena is. And there is like looking at
Speaker 1: each other like yeah, okay, this is what it is.
Speaker 1: But we kind of got to keep this ship under
Speaker 1: wraps right now, Like you can't tell people this. You know,
Speaker 1: that was the behind Tom Delongs to the Stars Academy,
Speaker 1: this whole thing that's going on, if anybody's not savvy
Speaker 1: to it. Tom DeLong, who used to be like the
Speaker 1: I think the guitar player for Blank Win eighty two,
Speaker 1: uh obsessed with aliens and UFOs. So we established this
Speaker 1: To the Star's Academy, which is a company that has
Speaker 1: now hired a lot of legitimate heavyweight you know, heavy hitters.
Speaker 1: You know Louis Elzando who used to run a tip
Speaker 1: works from him. Uh, there's a deputy a former deputy
Speaker 1: director of the CIA on his staff, a number of
Speaker 1: State Department and CIA officials on his staff. And uh,
Speaker 1: early on they were really advertising this concept that these
Speaker 1: people that they had recruited, these four more officials that
Speaker 1: they had recruited, knew more than they were allowed to
Speaker 1: tell us. And the idea behind To the Stars was
Speaker 1: to try to force disclosure from the government of these things.
Speaker 1: As To the Stars has developed, now there's going to
Speaker 1: be a new show in the History Channel with them,
Speaker 1: it seems increasingly like they don't actually have any information
Speaker 1: that they're trying to release or give anyone. What the
Speaker 1: funk with the CIA even know about it, like they
Speaker 1: do strategic intelligence like exactly. You know. So I really
Speaker 1: think that To the Stars Academy is ultimately maybe a
Speaker 1: group of government officials who saw bits and pieces of
Speaker 1: interesting things along trying to you know, and and you know,
Speaker 1: maybe there really is some really interesting evidence that the
Speaker 1: government has gathered that is still classified. That seems absolutely
Speaker 1: possible to me. But I don't think explanations. I don't
Speaker 1: think that the government knows what this is. If they
Speaker 1: did know what it was, we wouldn't throw money at it,
Speaker 1: you know. And if we did, maybe we would throw
Speaker 1: money at it just for the sake of a disinformation campaign.
Speaker 1: But even that just seems silly to me. It would
Speaker 1: be for them to maintain the storyline that they did
Speaker 1: all through these which is, Uh, if you believe in UFOs,
Speaker 1: you're only one step away from being a Holocaust denier, right. Uh.
Speaker 1: The idea that all these their inner links of leaving one,
Speaker 1: you're crazy and it it makes sense for the military
Speaker 1: to perpetuate like UFO conspiracies in the sense that it's
Speaker 1: a good cover for you know, classified programs, because if
Speaker 1: someone sees no one has traded on that, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: someone sees a flying triangle like oh yeah, man, UFOs.
Speaker 1: When I was a kid, you know, we had these
Speaker 1: ideas of like the fighter is what we called it
Speaker 1: before the United States acknowledged the F one seventeen was
Speaker 1: an national aircraft. Right, that's a triangle in the sky.
Speaker 1: We've been doing this for a long time. You know.
Speaker 1: The best thing that you can do is convince people
Speaker 1: that we've got a hangerful of aliens out of area
Speaker 1: fifty one, because then people are looking for UFOs instead
Speaker 1: of whatever. We were testing. The YouTube, the SR the
Speaker 1: F one seventeen, all these plant forms got tested out there,
Speaker 1: but we weren't reporting on that, so that we weren't
Speaker 1: providing open source intel to the entire world instead, or
Speaker 1: you know, we were out there looking for bright lights
Speaker 1: that we could attribute to ET. But it's a great campaign.
Speaker 1: But for the for the Navy to have pilots um
Speaker 1: you know, concoct these stories as as disinformation that they
Speaker 1: just fea it doesn't make sense, like who who, Who's
Speaker 1: the disinformation waged at, directed at? And to what ends
Speaker 1: like and to what ends? That's always the important thing
Speaker 1: to consider is to add to what end like justice
Speaker 1: motive used the situation get introduced? Doubt I don't. I
Speaker 1: just can't see that all messaging comes with motive. Anytime,
Speaker 1: anytime someone with a significant reach send something out there
Speaker 1: in the world, even if you're a news outlet, whatever
Speaker 1: you are, all messaging has a motive. Motive isn't inherently nefarious,
Speaker 1: but there's always a motive present, So what would be
Speaker 1: the motive there? You know, it's also I think it's
Speaker 1: fair to ask what's the motive in and telling us
Speaker 1: anything at all about this and knowing our military to
Speaker 1: I mean, can you imagine like some guy in a
Speaker 1: black French coat going to a fighter squadron, like, here's
Speaker 1: what you're gonna do, boys, They're gonna make up a
Speaker 1: story of a flying cube and the pilots are gonna
Speaker 1: look at him like he has a syphilitic dick growing
Speaker 1: out of his forehead and get the funk out of here. Pal. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but by the time that dude in the blacks suit
Speaker 1: left the room, he would have already been on dudes
Speaker 1: Facebook Live. Their phones were out and they were recording
Speaker 1: the whole time. You know, Like a couple of months ago,
Speaker 1: the Marine Corps built a fake Chinese Change J twenty,
Speaker 1: you know, their their fifth generation fighter that's not all
Speaker 1: that good. Uh, They built a fake one and it
Speaker 1: was parked for just like maybe five minutes outside of
Speaker 1: Hangar in Georgia. Here in Georgia, I want to say
Speaker 1: this was maybe months ago. They were outside five minutes.
Speaker 1: I got pictures from three different people of this J
Speaker 1: twenty because people were like, there's a Chinese fifth generation
Speaker 1: fighter jet parked in Georgia right now, sending me pictures
Speaker 1: of this the gate, which is a great outlet if
Speaker 1: you're a military c ation guy. They beat me to
Speaker 1: the punch they had. They had a piece up about
Speaker 1: it maybe fifteen minutes before I did. It took thirty
Speaker 1: minutes the world to find out that the Marine Corps
Speaker 1: has built a BOC J twin because they pulled it
Speaker 1: out of a hangar and parked it there for five minutes.
Speaker 1: Did they ever figure out why they built it? Yeah?
Speaker 1: What the Marine Corps was using it for was basically
Speaker 1: for ptical targeting systems, so that they would have something
Speaker 1: that's an approximation of the targeting systems against At least
Speaker 1: that's the story they provided. You're totally feasible it's an
Speaker 1: operational aircraft. I think that it's just something you can
Speaker 1: park on the tarmac so that you can fly over
Speaker 1: it and see how could you shoot it? Uh. But
Speaker 1: if you can't keep a J twenty a secret, you
Speaker 1: are not going to keep Roswell a secret. You're not
Speaker 1: like if if you were telling these pilots to give
Speaker 1: us this information as a part of a dis info campaign,
Speaker 1: it's not. It's the same argument of why you couldn't
Speaker 1: fake the moon landing. You can't take that many people
Speaker 1: and expect them to never tell the truth, you know,
Speaker 1: especially when they have searched to gain telling the truth
Speaker 1: in this situation, Commander Favor, you know, the guy from
Speaker 1: the two thousand four NMTS incident, or to come out
Speaker 1: now the government told me to say that to you.
Speaker 1: That dude would have an immediate multimillion dollar bookill. You know,
Speaker 1: if he could prove that the government was using him
Speaker 1: to cover up something to farious by using UFOs, you know,
Speaker 1: he's gonna get a Time original movie about made about
Speaker 1: the very least he's gonna do well, you know. So,
Speaker 1: I I just I can't accept the idea that these
Speaker 1: guys faking it. I don't think it's bullshit, which begs
Speaker 1: the question, if not bullshit, what is it? Yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't know. That's a that's a that boggles the mind.
Speaker 1: It's one of those things where like I don't dispute
Speaker 1: that's something. There's some sort of phenomenon taking place. You know,
Speaker 1: I don't doubt that, but it doesn't make sense. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like I keep going, I don't think it's aliens. I
Speaker 1: don't think it's a natural phenomenon. I don't think it's drones.
Speaker 1: I don't think it's main aircraft. I don't think it's tchinye.
Speaker 1: And I don't it's Russian. I don't think it's American.
Speaker 1: I'm a lot of things that I could think it is.
Speaker 1: So that means either I'm wrong about one of those,
Speaker 1: or just like we were talking about, how you know,
Speaker 1: in Iran or North Korea they can't grasp the concept
Speaker 1: life outside of their own systems. Maybe we can't grasp
Speaker 1: the concept or so locked into our concepts of aircraft
Speaker 1: there that we're not seeing, you know, the forests of
Speaker 1: the trees. I I don't know. I honestly have no idea,
Speaker 1: but I'm glad that we're talking about it. You know
Speaker 1: that if any of the pilots offered any thoughts on
Speaker 1: what they think they encountered up there, command or favor
Speaker 1: from the NIM it's incident is now it's been a
Speaker 1: few years, you know since uh because actually Fighter Sweep
Speaker 1: believe it or Not, which is another website owned by
Speaker 1: the same parent company. Fighter Sweep actually broke the nim
Speaker 1: Its incident years ago. Uh, it got very little attention
Speaker 1: for that. Yeah, yeah, I got very little attention for it.
Speaker 1: But it was actually the first outlet with unconfirmed be
Speaker 1: The pilots that were that spoke to the writer didn't
Speaker 1: want to provide their names. They didn't want their names published,
Speaker 1: but the fighters Suit was the first outlet to talk
Speaker 1: about the name It's incident. But Commander Faber has since
Speaker 1: now he he says, just like Louis Elazando, they're careful
Speaker 1: about how they choose their words, but they're like, I
Speaker 1: don't think it was from Earth. I'm not saying I
Speaker 1: believe an alien, but I believe and I don't know
Speaker 1: what I believe in, but I don't think it was
Speaker 1: from Earth. And I think that that's what we're talking
Speaker 1: about them coming to the same conclusion that you and
Speaker 1: I are, which is, you know, I went through this
Speaker 1: list of things it feasibly could be. It doesn't seem
Speaker 1: to be any of those things. So what could it be?
Speaker 1: It doesn't seem to be something from our neck of
Speaker 1: the woods. If I mean, if if anything, okay, if
Speaker 1: it did come, if it is not of Earth. You know,
Speaker 1: we have these ideas about how we would colonize mar
Speaker 1: like other planets, and probably the way we would do
Speaker 1: it is send a bunch of robots over there first
Speaker 1: and like scope the place out, and they would like
Speaker 1: start building, you know, they would at least start building
Speaker 1: the buildings and things like that. For us, maybe, if
Speaker 1: if we were good enough, we would send everything over
Speaker 1: to start terraforming the planet um and build an atmosphere
Speaker 1: there so that by the time human beings show up,
Speaker 1: you know, you have a little colony that's ready to go. Well,
Speaker 1: it depends on how many layers of tintinfoil you want
Speaker 1: me to add to my hat. But there is a
Speaker 1: large contingent of UFO researchers who do believe that that's
Speaker 1: exactly what's going on. They contend that they would be
Speaker 1: probing just to see what's here, what could be done,
Speaker 1: you know. Well, even even further, they think that the
Speaker 1: reason why so many abduction stories involve sexual tests, like
Speaker 1: removing women's eggs, making manage jaculate, you know, things like that. Would,
Speaker 1: they argue, is that the grays, which are like you know,
Speaker 1: the pop culture aliens. Uh, they argue that they aren't
Speaker 1: able to live on our planet and are trying to
Speaker 1: create hybrids that could better survive on our planet. Uh.
Speaker 1: Now again, this is what I mean about. How many
Speaker 1: laders of tinfoil do you want to add? This is
Speaker 1: how every conspiracy eventually ties to one another, And it
Speaker 1: sounds a sense dan Wright Freudian, I gotta exected by aliens.
Speaker 1: They made me ejaculate, you know exactly. Lord knows it
Speaker 1: wasn't a weird dream. You know, I'm not crazy, and
Speaker 1: you know, but but this is exactly what I mean
Speaker 1: is that, Uh, you know, any subject, no matter how
Speaker 1: seriously you want to take it, you can eventually bring
Speaker 1: back the crackpot stuff. But it's especially easy when you're
Speaker 1: talking about you. So you and I, You and I
Speaker 1: are talking about like legitimate reports from from military aviators
Speaker 1: that are backed up, you know, with with technical information,
Speaker 1: and we are always just one degree of Kevin Bacon
Speaker 1: away from you know, the Grays are are fucking us
Speaker 1: so that they can live here better. And that's why
Speaker 1: it's so easy to dismiss this subject, because we know
Speaker 1: so at all that it's so easy to get so
Speaker 1: weird with it. I mean, if it's if it's accurate,
Speaker 1: and there are pilots and they're seeing these craft and
Speaker 1: they're seeing a sphere encased in a transparent cube. My opinion,
Speaker 1: I mean, I've kind of laid out, but I don't
Speaker 1: think that's something like that would be US. I don't
Speaker 1: think it would be any foreign country. I would have
Speaker 1: to say that, like by process of elimination, that that
Speaker 1: that must be some sort of a drone that was
Speaker 1: sent here to basically to scope us out and just
Speaker 1: see what the hell is going on here? Yes see,
Speaker 1: And this is my problem because to me, logically, that's
Speaker 1: the only thing that I can really attribute it to.
Speaker 1: But I have trouble stomaching saying that's what I think
Speaker 1: it is. You know, like I have a lot and
Speaker 1: like i've you know, I've studied this. I actually wrote
Speaker 1: once for news rep about this. This all started because
Speaker 1: Stanton Friedman, who just passed away last week. UH. He's
Speaker 1: he's a renowned UFO researcher. He was a part of
Speaker 1: legitimate government research efforts for a long time UH and
Speaker 1: was a devoted skeptic, and through his efforts with the
Speaker 1: government to investigate some of these reports convinced himself not
Speaker 1: to be a skeptic. But he always took a very
Speaker 1: hard lined approach to UFOs, which is why a lot
Speaker 1: of people don't know his name. Uh he's not a
Speaker 1: Georgio Souculos who's gonna jell up his hair and say
Speaker 1: it's aliens, you know. Uh, He's a he's a legitimate,
Speaker 1: hard nosed researcher. So he's not all that famous because
Speaker 1: he's reluctant to say things that are crazy. All right,
Speaker 1: or was excuse me? He just passed away. But I
Speaker 1: had the opportunity. I was in a Talented and Gifted
Speaker 1: class for my writing when I was in like fifth grade,
Speaker 1: and uh, we had to choose what we were going
Speaker 1: to write our reports about. I just chose you flying
Speaker 1: saucers and UFOs because I thought they were cool. And
Speaker 1: I called him, and he took my call to us
Speaker 1: and me a bunch of stuff, and it was a
Speaker 1: really really nice guy. I'm like, I was like an
Speaker 1: eleven year old. He didn't need to talk to me,
Speaker 1: you know, And uh, it sent me. I would say skating,
Speaker 1: you know, like for years to come. But the truth
Speaker 1: of the matter is that this is something that we've
Speaker 1: been talking about, uh, through artwork since we started making artwork.
Speaker 1: You know. That's not to say that whatever people were
Speaker 1: drawing in cave paintings are the same things that we're
Speaker 1: spotting in the skies now. But what it is to
Speaker 1: say is that we've always wondered about the weird ship
Speaker 1: we see in the sky, you know, and uh, now
Speaker 1: we may be better suited than ever to actually understand
Speaker 1: what it is, but there's a solid possibility that we're
Speaker 1: still not there. You know, it might be you know, uh,
Speaker 1: sufficiently advanced technology is indiscernible from magic, right, Uh, it
Speaker 1: may well be if you're right, you know, if if
Speaker 1: the logical explanation is that this is a drone from
Speaker 1: something else. Uh, it might seem so impossible, just because
Speaker 1: if your civilization started evolving a million years before ours,
Speaker 1: your technology would be indiscernible from magic to us. You know.
Speaker 1: I just I have trouble. It's the same way. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm happy to read about and discuss ghosts, but I
Speaker 1: don't know that I believe in God, even let alone ghosts. Uh.
Speaker 1: It's because it's a it's a worthwhile exploration of how
Speaker 1: we perceive the world around us, even if it turns
Speaker 1: out to be bullshit, you know, in this case, I
Speaker 1: don't think it's bullshit though, I mean these these uh,
Speaker 1: these reports, I mean, this footage isn't bullshit if you
Speaker 1: ask me, I don't know what it is though. I mean,
Speaker 1: if it's not from Earth, I mean, that is like
Speaker 1: the biggest paradigm shifting discovery and human history by far.
Speaker 1: And that's the reason why we're never going to conclude
Speaker 1: that it's not from Earth until we have no choice
Speaker 1: but but to conclude that, you know, and movies and stuff,
Speaker 1: it always seems like the aliens arrive and we all go, oh, ship,
Speaker 1: there's aliens. Now. Uh. In real life, the aliens would
Speaker 1: arrive and half the world would immediately believe that it
Speaker 1: was the United States doing something crazy, or this is
Speaker 1: part of Russia's strategy, or it's the New World Order
Speaker 1: and the Illuminati and these are hot Grahams. I mean,
Speaker 1: if we if we are to speculate about you know, civilization,
Speaker 1: that you entered their process of evolution a million years
Speaker 1: prior to us, I mean, we we also have to
Speaker 1: think about, you know, maybe that civilization exists only as
Speaker 1: artificial intelligence today, like maybe they did give up, you know,
Speaker 1: they have moved into a new stage of life forms
Speaker 1: or whatever the funk. I don't know, it seems absolutely feasible,
Speaker 1: you know, like if you just but again, you know,
Speaker 1: we're limited by our by our ideas of what life
Speaker 1: is to you know what I mean. But I guess
Speaker 1: that's what it really comes down to, is that it's
Speaker 1: kind of like, you know, because I know, you've written
Speaker 1: a lot of fiction. Right before you sit down to
Speaker 1: write a novel, literally anything could happen in that novel,
Speaker 1: and that's what stops a lot of fiction writers from starting.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, right, because you have a million ideas, but
Speaker 1: none of them really seemed to go together all that well,
Speaker 1: you know, so you just kind of like you, I
Speaker 1: don't know what to do, someone to do nothing. That's
Speaker 1: where we're at with UFOs is that we know so
Speaker 1: little about what the all this is, uh that some
Speaker 1: people just go, uh, it doesn't make any sense. You know.
Speaker 1: There's a thing this is a little unrelated. Phantom time
Speaker 1: theory is the idea that uh, during Charlemagne's reign, uh,
Speaker 1: he and the Church had control over so much of
Speaker 1: the Western literate population that they actually invented about a
Speaker 1: hundred and eighty years of history that painted them in
Speaker 1: a in a better place. Uh. And because all we
Speaker 1: can really do for history at that of that era
Speaker 1: is trust. If we get six different sources that all,
Speaker 1: you know, say the same thing happened, we assume it
Speaker 1: just happened. You know. But if of all the literate
Speaker 1: people in the world are your employee, you can have
Speaker 1: them write anything that you want. Again, this is one
Speaker 1: of those things that doesn't necessarily I'm not necessarily saying
Speaker 1: I believe it's true. It's an interesting idea, but when
Speaker 1: I talked to my wife about it, she just goes, no,
Speaker 1: you can't invent time. Time just stays steady. I don't
Speaker 1: want to wrap my head around this. I'm turning it off.
Speaker 1: It's a conversations you won't know. It's like one of
Speaker 1: the like if somebody like pol Pot or you know,
Speaker 1: even if the Chinese government is successful in some of
Speaker 1: their endeavors and what amounts to social engineering and human engineering.
Speaker 1: I mean, it seems totally possible. It wasn't like George
Speaker 1: Orwell wrote about that kind of stuff. Like, you know,
Speaker 1: if you control the past, you know, if you control
Speaker 1: the present. You can rewrite the past and control the future.
Speaker 1: You know, Attil of the Hunt wasn't that great a
Speaker 1: military leader. He was effective, but he didn't become a
Speaker 1: legend until almost two generations after he was defeated. And
Speaker 1: it was the family of the general that defeated him
Speaker 1: that made him a legend. Up their accomplishments, exactly. They
Speaker 1: were a prominent family, and they made themselves all the
Speaker 1: more prominent by by painting this image of Attil of
Speaker 1: the Hunt as the most incredible military leader of that generation,
Speaker 1: defeated by our grandfather, you know. And so when you
Speaker 1: think about the power that that had, you know, when
Speaker 1: you think about the fact that here in America, parents
Speaker 1: still tell their kids that carrots are good for their eyes,
Speaker 1: when that's all just a product of a World War
Speaker 1: two era UK propaganda campaign, and there's no basis behind
Speaker 1: the idea that parents will help your night vision at
Speaker 1: all other than if you have a B twelve deficiency
Speaker 1: you'll have trouble seeing. But we still believe it's true
Speaker 1: because that's how heavily culture informs the way we see
Speaker 1: the world. You know. Damn dude, Well, this is some
Speaker 1: crazy ship that we usually don't get into on the podcast.
Speaker 1: I know, this podcast, like it's usually military stuff and
Speaker 1: then you guys let me on and I really drug
Speaker 1: you down into the gutter here. No, No, I mean
Speaker 1: I agree with you that, Like I'm glad that there
Speaker 1: and I'm actually I would definitely welcome any kind of
Speaker 1: like serious scientific scrutiny on the on this you know,
Speaker 1: UFO phenomenon to try to figure out, you know, what
Speaker 1: the funk it really is, and you know, and you know,
Speaker 1: maybe it'll end up keeping our fighter pilots out of
Speaker 1: trouble too. Um, it sounds like some dangerous scenarios that
Speaker 1: are happening up there. I mean, I guess you know
Speaker 1: what I mean, This is the problem I have is
Speaker 1: that are they dangerous scenarios? Is you know, and is
Speaker 1: this real? You know? Are they optical illusions? Is that
Speaker 1: nothing more than light tricks of light? Who knows? Man?
Speaker 1: And then but but like you said, I'm glad that
Speaker 1: people are looking into it because if it does pose
Speaker 1: a threat, if it really does pose a threat to
Speaker 1: America sovereignty, or we can get crazy with it and
Speaker 1: say global sovereignty, that's a that's a legitimate concern that
Speaker 1: might sound out landish right up until it's on your doorstep,
Speaker 1: you know. And there was a certain there was a
Speaker 1: time when we would have thought that terrorists hijacking commercial
Speaker 1: airplanes and flying them into the World Trade Center was
Speaker 1: an outlandish and impossible thing. You know, there's a reason
Speaker 1: why the Oklahoma City bombing was able to happen because
Speaker 1: the cameras on the outside weren't actually hooked up to anything.
Speaker 1: They had saved a bunch of money in building construction
Speaker 1: because they didn't want the building to look scary, and
Speaker 1: that's why so many children died in the blast, because
Speaker 1: it seemed absolutely impossible that an American man would park
Speaker 1: a U hall full of explosives out front and walk away.
Speaker 1: You know, we can't afford to ignore threats, even if
Speaker 1: they seem impossible. And I'm not saying that I believe
Speaker 1: that Martians are here, and I'm not saying that I
Speaker 1: believe that UFOs are a threat, but I am saying
Speaker 1: that if they are, we owe it to ourselves to
Speaker 1: take a look. You know, if they are, I mean,
Speaker 1: I just hope that they you know, make me ejaculate,
Speaker 1: don't do any of that other crazy stuff to me.
Speaker 1: We'll tell you what if they do come here, We're
Speaker 1: not going to be dealing with like an interstellar army
Speaker 1: like the movies always say, it'll be the fucking organ man.
Speaker 1: It'll be you know, like if they're capable of getting here,
Speaker 1: they're not gonna need to come down here and fight
Speaker 1: us with space rifles. Yeah, it'll be like fan us.
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly. Fingers were all dead. Yeah, So so I
Speaker 1: hope for the best. Let's just hope that they're here
Speaker 1: to tag and release. My friend, my friend was telling
Speaker 1: me he's a he's a rocket scientist, and he, uh,
Speaker 1: he was. You remember a few years ago where the
Speaker 1: astronomers found a star and they were wondering if it
Speaker 1: was really a Acen sphere that that was like a
Speaker 1: period because it was like it was pulsing at an
Speaker 1: irregular rate consistently, right, something like that. And my friend
Speaker 1: was tell me, he's like, dude, if they really discovered
Speaker 1: a Dyson sphere, He's like, just get down on your
Speaker 1: knees and worship your new ruler because it's it's game over.
Speaker 1: Uh in a Dicen sphere for like people who don't
Speaker 1: know like what it would be like an artificial construct
Speaker 1: um built around a sun, like you wouldn't encapsulate an
Speaker 1: entire star, and then you would and you would build
Speaker 1: your civilization problem like somewhere inside that sphere for you
Speaker 1: start trek the Next Generation fans, there's one episode where
Speaker 1: Scotty from the original series was trapped h in a
Speaker 1: shuttlecraft that got sucked into the gravitational pull from a
Speaker 1: Dicen sphere. Uh. And as silly as all that sounds,
Speaker 1: it does give you a fun way to look at
Speaker 1: the scope of what a Dycen sphere would have to be.
Speaker 1: It would have to be literally, uh, something built physically
Speaker 1: that would be about the size of Earth's orbit. You know.
Speaker 1: That's but so if if a civilization were capable of that,
Speaker 1: they're capable of anything. Yeah, yeah, you're done. It's game over, man. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The the idea that we would be fighting them with
Speaker 1: fighter jets like we are an independence day is an
Speaker 1: absolutely ludicrous proposition. We already know how to kill everyone
Speaker 1: on Earth with our technology. You know, Like, if you
Speaker 1: think that they're gonna come here with something that won't
Speaker 1: work as well as nuclear weapons, you know, it's it's again,
Speaker 1: it's you know, not American human ego, right, we're we're
Speaker 1: big brained monkeys, but we think that we're much more
Speaker 1: special than that. Yeah, we like to anthropomorphosize, you know,
Speaker 1: these sorts of threats as well, you know. Um So,
Speaker 1: anyway to wrap things up, did you go and see
Speaker 1: Endgame yet? I did? I actually will just between I
Speaker 1: may have seen it a little bit illegally, you know
Speaker 1: how it is, being a parent, But uh, yeah, I
Speaker 1: honestly I loved it. It wasn't I guess it wasn't
Speaker 1: the story that I expected, and that's why I loved it.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I loved it. What do you think I
Speaker 1: liked it and saw it last week or no, I
Speaker 1: saw it on over the weekend, and no, I liked it.
Speaker 1: I thought it was pretty good. Um, time travel plots
Speaker 1: are always kind of difficult to maneuver. I think my
Speaker 1: favorite it's still the X Men Days of the Future past.
Speaker 1: I like that a little bit better as far as
Speaker 1: like the time travel aspect. But game was good. End
Speaker 1: Game was good. I did not, like, you know, spoilers
Speaker 1: for anybody who hasn't seen that game. I didn't like
Speaker 1: caps conclusion didn't. I didn't, you know, in a weird way,
Speaker 1: it made me sadder than any of the rest of it.
Speaker 1: But that was why I didn't like it, because it
Speaker 1: begged a lot of like really weird, hard questions, like
Speaker 1: how how did he manage to maintain a relationship with
Speaker 1: his wife without telling her about nine eleven, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean, or like trying in any way. It
Speaker 1: would have been really hard for him to be Captain
Speaker 1: America living through all the disasters that fell America without
Speaker 1: ever getting into of it all. But other than that,
Speaker 1: I thought I did like that he got a good store,
Speaker 1: a good ending. But you know what I mean, I
Speaker 1: got the impression that like he was just like going
Speaker 1: off grid, like he was just gonna live with his
Speaker 1: old lady, you know, and the with a white picket
Speaker 1: fence and like never read the newspaper and like, which, honestly, man,
Speaker 1: that sounds good. I wouldn't mind doing that myself. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there were all kinds of like little potholes and stuff
Speaker 1: like that, Like how come when you get the Infinity
Speaker 1: Gauntlet or whatever the funk it is, like how you
Speaker 1: can wish whatever you want. It's like the ultimate god weapon,
Speaker 1: but you can bring half the world's population back to life.
Speaker 1: But then there are these other people you can't bring
Speaker 1: back to life, like how the fund does that work? Well,
Speaker 1: you know, the same way the Red Skull, you know,
Speaker 1: and and the First Avenger. The Red Skull grabbed one
Speaker 1: of the Infinity Stones and was immediately sucked off to
Speaker 1: dormy or or whatever to just be like a sad
Speaker 1: old man that takes people to watch them kill their daughters.
Speaker 1: But then which infers that these Infinity Stones have some
Speaker 1: level of intelligence or autonomy, but then they don't have
Speaker 1: any say and whether or not thanos Usism to destroy
Speaker 1: the universe, you know. It's uh, it's true. There's definitely
Speaker 1: some plot holes. But I try my best when I'm
Speaker 1: watching movies like that, I try my best to talk
Speaker 1: myself out of plot holes, because how do you make
Speaker 1: twenty two movies without creating a lot of them? You know? Uh,
Speaker 1: And I like liking things, you know, so I tried
Speaker 1: my best to be like I just ignore that and
Speaker 1: keep going. Yeah, yeah, I know there are some parts
Speaker 1: that didn't really make sense, but I guess they were
Speaker 1: kind of pointing up on, you know, the the idea
Speaker 1: that time isn't necessarily a place, so like there are
Speaker 1: all these theories about traveling laterally through time rather than
Speaker 1: back and forth. So it's like you're actually going to
Speaker 1: another dimension essentially, um, but where it's like a parallel timeline,
Speaker 1: you're not really literally going back into your past. Like
Speaker 1: that's that's actually not possible. Yeah, which I think is
Speaker 1: one of my favorite theories for time travel in general.
Speaker 1: But I think what I liked about that too is
Speaker 1: that they did incorporate a lot of like scientific theory,
Speaker 1: but it was also an absolutely almost ludicrous idea, you know,
Speaker 1: which is a lot more like the comic books, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. Like it bridged the gap between
Speaker 1: the movie world and the comic book world for me
Speaker 1: in a way that that I could accept. Admittedly, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna need to watch it again a little more sober
Speaker 1: to come up with some like with like a real
Speaker 1: legitimate review. Yeah. Now, I thought it was a good
Speaker 1: way to like wrap up this series because, you know,
Speaker 1: throwing the time travel stuff in them, it allowed them
Speaker 1: to like revisit all of these different moments um throughout
Speaker 1: the whole like Avengers Timeline and all the Marvel Universe
Speaker 1: movies and stuff like that and kind of like wrap
Speaker 1: it all up, um and like and also like they
Speaker 1: revisited some past scenes with a different spin on them
Speaker 1: and things like that. It was it was kind of
Speaker 1: cool how they did that. Yeah, and I liked Robert
Speaker 1: Downey Junior's departure, you know, I really, honestly though, I
Speaker 1: expected him to live through the end, just because, uh,
Speaker 1: he makes so much money in these movies. I figured
Speaker 1: he'd want to stick around and keep doing it for
Speaker 1: as long as he could. Yeah, I don't know if
Speaker 1: I don't know if that was his decision or the studios.
Speaker 1: I think Captain America was that the actor's name. I
Speaker 1: think he was done. He was seven, So, I mean,
Speaker 1: can you imagine having to keep your body fat that
Speaker 1: low for this long? I would hate it. You know,
Speaker 1: what's his face? Hem's worth? I'm sure I was wearing
Speaker 1: a body suit though. Yeah. Well, honestly, I think he's
Speaker 1: one of the few guys from the original like Avengers Crew.
Speaker 1: I think that will probably. I think we're going to
Speaker 1: get a thor four because thor one and two weren't
Speaker 1: all that good. Ragnarok was fucking awesome. It was great.
Speaker 1: He's gonna end up with the because the last the
Speaker 1: last we see of him, he's with the Guardians of
Speaker 1: the Gay So it's gonna be like the the as
Speaker 1: Guardians of the Galaxies, and that's his new role. He's
Speaker 1: gonna be like the the fat, funny guy on the ship,
Speaker 1: which is which is awesome. And the as Guardians of
Speaker 1: the Galaxy really was a comic book for a while.
Speaker 1: It was different. I think it is again now? Is
Speaker 1: it again now? So maybe you guys are right about that.
Speaker 1: Um I actually, uh, I've seen Hemsworth in person. He's
Speaker 1: actually a really small guy, like really yeah. In the
Speaker 1: movies he looks fucking jacked, and I'm sure, I'm sure
Speaker 1: he's in really good shape, you know, and and that
Speaker 1: when he does the films and stuff. But like he's
Speaker 1: just like a short, skinny guy. Yeah. That's always because
Speaker 1: I'm I'm a guy. I like the lift weights. I
Speaker 1: don't really like Cardio, you know. But that's always the
Speaker 1: thing that's bummed me out when I've met like guys
Speaker 1: in movies and TV shows, is you know, I'm six ft,
Speaker 1: I'm about two forty. I'm a pretty big dude, and
Speaker 1: they're always tiny, you know. And I want these guys
Speaker 1: that are heroes on TV to be big. This guy
Speaker 1: is a fraction of your size, Alex. I mean he
Speaker 1: was he was like half of my size and I'm
Speaker 1: not a big guy by any mean. Wow, Like that's crazy.
Speaker 1: Like I had the opposite experience meeting pro football players,
Speaker 1: Like when I met Wes Welker, he used to play
Speaker 1: for the Patriots. When I met him, I expected him
Speaker 1: to be a tiny little man because on TV he is,
Speaker 1: because pro football players are just gigantic. And when I
Speaker 1: met up, he was like my size. I mean I
Speaker 1: was heavier than him, but he was just a few
Speaker 1: inches shorter than me and yoked, and I was like
Speaker 1: West Welker could kick my ass. And he looks like
Speaker 1: a child on TV. I met um uh Randy Kator
Speaker 1: and Ken Shamrock one time, and like they're both big dudes.
Speaker 1: Like Ken Shamrock is short, but he's wide, like he's built.
Speaker 1: He's a big guy. Actually, I met Randy Cotour last year.
Speaker 1: There's I just posted a picture on Instagram a few
Speaker 1: days ago with me and Randy Cotour and he's about
Speaker 1: my size and like I said, I'm six ft forty,
Speaker 1: I'm a pretty big dude. Yeah, so he's a big dude. Yeah,
Speaker 1: for sure. The scariest ones are basketball players because like
Speaker 1: you watch it on TV and the shortest guys are
Speaker 1: six ft. So when you when you see like like
Speaker 1: Michael Jordan's is six six, and you know he's little average,
Speaker 1: he's an average basketball player, and then all a sudden
Speaker 1: you seem in person at six six and you're like,
Speaker 1: big man, cool shoulders, Like where's the rest of your head? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like I I saw Dwayne Johnson. I didn't meet him.
Speaker 1: I saw him in a crowd once from like maybe
Speaker 1: fifty yards away, but I was able to see him
Speaker 1: in the crowd easily because the bottom of his neck
Speaker 1: was higher than everyone else's head. Yeah, he's He's a
Speaker 1: fucking huge dude, isn't he. He's a giant. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think he's like six ft five, which isn't that crazy,
Speaker 1: But if you're six ft five, but you also look
Speaker 1: at that big you know, because it's harder to put
Speaker 1: muscle on a longer frame, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: And he looks huge at six five, it's because he's
Speaker 1: actually like a garbage truck walking around. The giant giant man,
Speaker 1: you know. But then you know, you hear about guys
Speaker 1: like Tom Cruise or I just watched Baywatch Unrated, you know,
Speaker 1: the Dwayne Johnson movie that bay watches in and in
Speaker 1: a lot of scenes, zac Efron is like talking directly
Speaker 1: to Dwyne Johnson's face, almost like they're similarly tall. And
Speaker 1: so I had to look it up because my wife
Speaker 1: thinks zach Affron's hot, so I hate him, of course.
Speaker 1: Uh dudes, five ft seven, he's literally a full foot
Speaker 1: shorter than Dwaint shots he's standing on top of a
Speaker 1: box when he talks to Dwayne. Yeah, like Tom Cruise
Speaker 1: has spent his entire career, right, yeah, yeah, he must
Speaker 1: be wearing like corrective shoes to get him. That was
Speaker 1: the thing with Pacino. They got um that new Scorsese
Speaker 1: film coming out, like what's called The Irishman or something
Speaker 1: like that. Oh really, now i'm the trailer. I think
Speaker 1: it's got out on Netflix in October. I want to
Speaker 1: say it's like Scorsese Pacino. Um DeNiro is the guy, didn't.
Speaker 1: They had a shot of them, like a still from
Speaker 1: from the set, and de Niro is in like platforms
Speaker 1: that would make any woman in the seventies blosh, like
Speaker 1: like like eight inch platforms just huge, and you're like
Speaker 1: all right, I guess. I mean, if you're gonna make
Speaker 1: him look six to when you're five six, like, how
Speaker 1: would either you stand on a box or you wear shoes?
Speaker 1: But it's movie is called The Irishman. You got DeNiro
Speaker 1: and Pacina. It's what the fun? Can I get some
Speaker 1: representation in Hollywood place? It's it's a it's a famous mobster. Oh,
Speaker 1: it's the Jimmy Hoffa story. Um, it's the guy that
Speaker 1: kills Jimmy Hoffa, whoever he is. And it's about that. Um,
Speaker 1: And well, I'm not I'm not surprised at all. Man.
Speaker 1: I mean, Mark Wahlberg up from what I heard, is
Speaker 1: only like five steven or five eight as well. You know,
Speaker 1: because when you when you have like Mark Wallberg has
Speaker 1: got kind of like a stocky, tough guy build. That
Speaker 1: stocky tough guy build doesn't really usually come in six
Speaker 1: ft tall packages, you know. But when you know you're
Speaker 1: playing opposite you know, an actress who's five ft eleven
Speaker 1: and is wearing heels or calves look right on camera,
Speaker 1: you gotta put Mark Wahlberg in some fucking platform shoes, man,
Speaker 1: you know, otherwise hirtle's sturan's gonna make them look tiny.
Speaker 1: All right, man, I think we've probably gone for like
Speaker 1: two hours, and uh we have like gone around the
Speaker 1: world like several times like this is, uh, this is
Speaker 1: the weirdest podcast I've done. This is the weirdest podcast
Speaker 1: any of us have ever done. And uh, this is like, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, it's like one of those weird like Joe
Speaker 1: Rogan podcasts where they're smoking, very very similar, except that
Speaker 1: all I've had to drink is a cup of coffee today,
Speaker 1: So I mean, I I don't even here drinking Walmart
Speaker 1: Clear American Wild Cherry sparkling water. So you know, I'm
Speaker 1: getting wild hopped up on goofball. All is over there,
Speaker 1: Alex exactly, exactly. Well, we'll do this again sometime with
Speaker 1: with more alcohol and than Yeah, we'll do the Batman
Speaker 1: Superman episode. I'm sure there's some there are some listeners
Speaker 1: that will probably get a kick out of it. There's
Speaker 1: probably a lot would be like Jack, you need to
Speaker 1: just stick to what you're good at and stop sucking around. Um,
Speaker 1: but we'll do that. We'll get to that at some point. Uh.
Speaker 1: Anyone got any final thoughts to throw out before we
Speaker 1: wrap this thing up? Well, throwing all my plugs here
Speaker 1: if if you were interested in my unique brand of rambling,
Speaker 1: you can find it on Facebook at Alex Hollings Writer
Speaker 1: on Twitter at Alex Hollings fifty two. You can also
Speaker 1: go to my website Alex Hollings dot com and of
Speaker 1: course check out the load out room every day. We've
Speaker 1: got new gear reviews going up, lots of video content
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, and we're really happy to have
Speaker 1: you guys there. If you want to chime in the
Speaker 1: comments down below, I'm always keeping tabs, so come pay
Speaker 1: us a visit right on, man, thanks for coming on
Speaker 1: the show. Uh, we will do it again soon. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna have to, like I said, take my notes, get
Speaker 1: out the yellow legal pad. Um. But we'll do like
Speaker 1: the epic Superhero episode, one of these things. That'd be
Speaker 1: a blast. I would love it absolutely um. In the meantime,
Speaker 1: let's see, I got a few things I'm working on
Speaker 1: for the website, but really the only thing I have
Speaker 1: to plug is is the same as usual in my book.
Speaker 1: So Murphy's Law is out there if you guys want
Speaker 1: to go and check it out. The audio book is
Speaker 1: out Kindle e book. However you guys want it, you
Speaker 1: can obtain it and leave a review, and we have
Speaker 1: a review good, better and different. Please, I can't. I
Speaker 1: can't recommend it enough, honestly, guys, I read a lot
Speaker 1: of bad veteran writing. Uh. And then you know, especially
Speaker 1: because you know, a lot of times guys will release
Speaker 1: books and I'm like, well, I really want to hear
Speaker 1: his story, and you can tell this person is not
Speaker 1: a storyteller, you know, Uh, the story might still be good.
Speaker 1: What's great about Jack's book is that Jack's stories are incredible,
Speaker 1: and Jack is also a storyteller. It's really it's hard
Speaker 1: to put the book down. I can't recommend it. I
Speaker 1: will say, there's no ghostwriter on the book, like, I
Speaker 1: wrote the whole fucking thing myself. So that's probably part
Speaker 1: of the reason. Like, um, like Remy Adel when we
Speaker 1: had him on the other day, he said the same thing.
Speaker 1: I respect him for that because he's like, yeah, I know,
Speaker 1: ghost writer, I wrote this book myself, you know. And
Speaker 1: it's true because when when you hire a ghostwriter, a
Speaker 1: lot of times a lot of the edge is lost
Speaker 1: because the ghostwriter doesn't know the experiences that you have.
Speaker 1: A lot of times they're not even military, you know.
Speaker 1: And they're they're working with notes and your books. Awesome. Man,
Speaker 1: I'm honestly, like I'm not saying this because you're my friend,
Speaker 1: Like genuinely I'm having a blast reading it. I appreciate that, man,
Speaker 1: Thank you so everybody going by it. But then when
Speaker 1: you're done, also by my book. You can find it
Speaker 1: on Amazon. It's called The Perception Worst. But you know
Speaker 1: by bye, Jack's first by them together. It's Amazon. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can get get who deal. It's come in two
Speaker 1: days exactly. But hey, thanks a lot for having me on, guys.
Speaker 1: I really appreciate it. All right, Thanks Alex, to talk
Speaker 1: to you soon. I have a good guys. I mean,
Speaker 1: at this point wrapping it up, it's just doing the
Speaker 1: reads and getting out of here. How do you follow that?
Speaker 1: You don't you father that we went from existential nihilism
Speaker 1: to evolutionary biology to UFOs extraterrestrials Dycen spears. Even if
Speaker 1: in an endgame, even if you wanted to recap it,
Speaker 1: you couldn't. Yeah, you wouldn't do with justice? You really
Speaker 1: just I mean, if if you're a fan of this podcast,
Speaker 1: if you just started here, that's a weird thing to do.
Speaker 1: I think You guys have had more than enough entertainment,
Speaker 1: so I literally have nothing to say outside of the
Speaker 1: reds unless you have something okay with that, HM, be
Speaker 1: sure to check out Create Club. It's a club before men,
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Speaker 1: is softwarep radio dot com where you can see all
Speaker 1: our full archive of shows. As always, keep up with
Speaker 1: us at soft rep Radio as well. With that literally
Speaker 1: there's nothing else need to be said. We can. I
Speaker 1: do want to apologize in advance. Um, he cut out,
Speaker 1: Alex cut out a little bit throughout the duration, like
Speaker 1: about halfway through. That is unavoidable editwise, So previous shows
Speaker 1: that I've worked on, they'll chirt me. Hey, what you
Speaker 1: know what happened here? That's unavoidable. That is just part
Speaker 1: of radio magic. So please do not think that I'm
Speaker 1: doing a poor job. Outside of that. Do you want
Speaker 1: to reveal who will be here Tuesday? Oh? Yeah, good call. Um.
Speaker 1: So I've been trying to get this gentleman on for
Speaker 1: a little while. Um, and we had some schedule in
Speaker 1: conflicts and things like that we had to work out,
Speaker 1: but we will have. Our next episode will have the
Speaker 1: author Ben Blum on uh. And Ben wrote a book
Speaker 1: called Ranger Games. So if you guys want to get
Speaker 1: a little head of the power curve, you go ahead
Speaker 1: and get his book on Amazon right now with Murphy's
Speaker 1: Mphy the Perception Wars, get the bundle deal. Um. I
Speaker 1: read his book, Ranger Games. It's very good. It's um.
Speaker 1: What the what the book is about is the author's
Speaker 1: cousin was one of uh several rangers Army rangers who
Speaker 1: robbed a bank in Tacoma, UM a while back, and
Speaker 1: Ben's book breaks down it breaks down a lot of
Speaker 1: things that it's not so much like who done it
Speaker 1: because it's pretty clear, you know who did it, who
Speaker 1: did it? Um well, and law enforcement figured it out
Speaker 1: pretty quick, so that that part of it goes down
Speaker 1: fairly quickly. Although he does examine what happened the day
Speaker 1: of the bank robbery and how it all went down.
Speaker 1: But the book primarily it's about four pages and it
Speaker 1: really explores the question of why, like why did these
Speaker 1: guys who are elite soldiers commit this crime? Um? And
Speaker 1: we will get into it and I will definitely we
Speaker 1: will have a very interesting conversation with Ben about his
Speaker 1: book and about you know, his family and his process
Speaker 1: of going through writing this book and and all the
Speaker 1: ins and outs of it. So I'm very excited to
Speaker 1: talk to him. All right With that, thank you guys
Speaker 1: for listening. Be sure to leave reviews, subscribe to the channel.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you already aren't, you should be. Alex
Speaker 1: was incredible that this I'm mentally dreamed. There was so
Speaker 1: much I know, I just I just wish we had
Speaker 1: like more source citations to inject into it because we
Speaker 1: we like, went all over the place and so many things. Uh.
Speaker 1: But with that, thank you guys for listening as always,
Speaker 1: and be sure to tune in Tuesday for awesome you've
Speaker 1: been listening to self red Radio. New episodes up every
Speaker 1: Wednesday and Friday. Follow the show on Instagram and Twitter
Speaker 1: at self red Radio.