Shawn Ryan Show - #35 Dr. John Delony - America's Mental Health Crisis

Episode Date: September 19, 2022

Dr. John Delony is a bestselling author, mental health expert and host of The Dr. John Delony Show. He has two PhDs and over two decades of experience in counseling, crisis response and higher education. Dr. Delony and Shawn dissect what they believe is causing the mental health crisis here in America. OUR SPONSORS: https://bullionmax.com/srs https://www.mudwtr.com/shawn (USE CODE SHAWN) https://www.goodranchers.com/shawn https://www.manscaped.com/ (USE CODE SHAWN) Vigilance Elite/Shawn Ryan Links: Website - https://www.shawnryanshow.com Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/VigilanceElite TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@shawnryanshow Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/shawnryan762 Dr. John Delony Links: Book - https://amzn.to/3UosBQa Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/johndelony YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/JohnDelony     Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Visit us online at WoodhouseHundayofomaha.com. Hey, how's everybody doing? Got an important episode coming up. Got Dr. John Delani. We're going to talk all about the mental health crisis that's going on here in the US. What's causing it? Maybe a little bit about what might fix it. And what we can do is parents to make sure

that this doesn't continue. Anyways, hope you all enjoy the episode. Please head over to iTunes, leave us a review and Spotify too. Love you all. Again, this is a very important episode. I hope you all get a lot out of it. Enjoy the show.

See you soon, cheers. One last thing, just one last thing. If you want to get ahead of this thing, there's one thing everybody can do that's real simple. Just be a nice person. good into this world and I promise eventually it's gonna come back to you Anyways, love you all be kind That's it go cards cheers Gards, cheers.

I'll say this, the first thing that comes to mind is I had no idea how many people in this world live in fear all the time. All the time. Tonight, the sheriff here revealing the worsening toll at least 59 now dead. What's your opinion on? Why is this happening? The mass shooting in Buffalo, at least 10 people were killed. We took some kids who had just grown up and never handled weapons,

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These messages were released on social media and he felt just absolutely humiliated. And he couldn't face that humiliation, his score that was awaiting him the next day. It's a child. You know, this is what everyone on TikTok, you know what I mean? And he doesn't know what's happening. It was pretty much watching that trash all day long. When high schoolers get phones that disrupt their sleep subsequently, they go on to have higher rates of depression.

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kit and get control fast. Bollyonmax.com slash SRS. A lot of you have heard me talk about my psychedelic journey this year and all the benefits that came from doing it. One being I haven't drank in seven months, I haven't had any caffeine in seven months, my anxiety has gone, my anger has gone, a whole list of benefits came from that. And that led me down this journey of researching benefits of mushrooms and fungi in general. And in my research I found this company called Mudwater. Mudwater is a coffee alternative with four adept ogenic mushrooms and herbs. With a fraction of the caffeine as a cup of coffee, you get energy without anxiety, jitters, or the crash of coffee. What I really like

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in Use Code Sean for 15% off. That's mudwater.com slash Sean use code Sean for 15% off. John Deloney, welcome to the show, man. Thanks, Sean. I appreciate you coming. No, I appreciate your hospitality. This setup is a beautiful set, man. It's awesome.

Thank you. So, I've been watching your stuff and you get some really amazing content on your channel, some deep, deep, deep stuff that people are open up and about and and you handle that amazing. I appreciate that. But so your psychologist who work over at Ramsey Solutions, you're an author, you just came out of the new book. And so I want you here to talk about the mental health crisis that's going on in the

country. It's all over the news, and I just got some stats and stuff. But crimes up, suicides up, addictions up. The 2020 divorce rate went through the roof I just saw an ABC this morning that depression is up 135% since 2013 prescriptions are up both for or not just prescriptions but prescriptions and just addiction street addictions up. I just saw that

65 million people, that's one in five people in the US are on SSRIs. And I don't know about you, but me personally, I just see, I've seen a lot of change in donout in public since 2020. I feel like when I go out, everybody's anxiety is through the roof, it seems like everybody's just trying to avoid each other and nobody's really helping each other these days. It seems everybody's just

avoiding each other, get out of my way. They're only worried about themselves. And it also seems like the past 20, 30 years there's been a major decline in just overall happiness. Yeah. And so I like to talk to you about all that kind of stuff. Let's do it, man. But first, everybody gets a present. Sorry, I'm fresh out of boxes. But you know, like we were talking about this off air,, I have a pathological addiction to this, man.

And I got some a few months ago and I was sober, 60 days off gummy candies. No, dude. Oh, man, man. I hammered this bag. It's so good. These are so good, man. Thank you.

You're welcome. Thank you. But I kind of want to hold them the whole time. Go ahead. No, whatever you want to do, man. But usually I ask, I give Patreon a question. I don't want to hold them the whole the whole time go ahead. No, whatever you want to do man, but Usually I ask I give patreon a question. I had patreon. They're my top supporters That's the read they're the reason I'm sitting here. They're the reason you're sitting here and I always give them a

question to ask but I've worked in most of their questions into the actual episode that I'm gonna to go through. And so I have a personal question for you because it doesn't fit the interview. So watch in your channel and kind of research in your little bit about all those topics. And you take phone calls on your channel and people are opening know about all kinds of things that most people don't open up to in public, especially on a YouTube channel. People cheating on their significant others, sexless marriages, a lot of stuff that most people keep in the closet.

And so when I was watching that, it reminded me of a lot of the things that I deal with in my personal business. And when I was watching it, I was like, man, this guy probably gets emails, email after email after email of, I don't want to tread lightly here, but, you know, sob stories, victimization, you know, they want help, they want you to talk to them,

and it's an assumption, but I'm assuming you don't have time to reach everyone. And because the content that we put out on this show, especially when I'm interviewing the veteran operator or war fighter types, and they're opening up about personal experiences that they deal with, we get thousands of emails. And all those emails get read, but they don't get answered.

And it would be impossible for me to answer all those emails and still have a functioning family and business. But it does create a lot of guilt that I can't reach all those people. And so how do you deal with that is a psychologist. So one bit of housekeeping in the mental health hierarchy, there's psychiatrists which are medical doctors and then psychologists and then there's the rest of us.

So I'm actually a trained counselor. Right. Just a psychologist would be like, what, it's a good thing. So, circle back, ask me again. Okay, so, I got a chain. So, I have come, I have a bad habit of running in and trying to help people with things of them and inviting me into help. And I've also had a bad habit of treating people like car engines over the years, like,

oh, you have, you're broken and I can fix you. And what I've come to find out that over time, most people need someone to listen to them. And so often that email firing off, they've just taken their first step into saying something not loud or putting something on paper. And just the fact that I was there to receive that, that they felt safe enough, they actually trust some stranger with a show or a podcast,

enough to reach out, that starts a ball roll down the hill for them. And so if somebody says, can you please help me? That's a different conversation, right? enough to reach out, that starts a ball rolling down the hill for them. And so if somebody says, can you please help me? That's a different conversation, right? But on the whole, yeah, we get to that. I mean, we get so many emails in their beautiful stories, their sob stories, their victims, whatever the story is, often it's somebody saying it out loud for the first time, or putting it on paper,

getting out of their body, out of their head, on some of the first time. So I say that is a good thing, right? When it comes to the other stuff, it's like that old, it's the old airline thing, man. I gotta make sure I'm well, if I'm gonna help anybody else, right? If I'm gonna be a good dad,

I'm gonna be a good husband, I'm gonna be a good community member, I'm gonna be a good, like, helping somebody, who's suicidal, all right, whatever the thing is. And so, I know I can't go help everybody, do everything. And so not responding to some of these things or sending them to other people is a part of me making, it's like me lifting weights, it's a part of me staying whole

so that I can go do the hard work. And my ego for a long time was built on how many people I could respond to. And the diminishing returns would come back pretty fast, pretty hard. Yeah, I couldn't. So the greatest thank you to people is to, it took me a long time. Data, heirs? Yeah, and it also took, it took me, I have some major trust issues, man.

My dad was a homicide detective in a swag. I grew up thinking like there's something behind the thing, right? Or not thinking, knowing there's something behind the thing. I've trust issues always have, and it took me being married a long time before I decided I chose to trust my wife enough that she says, hey, they're getting more of your attention than we are.

And I know enough to know that untathers me from everything, and then I'll spiral out, right? So they get first fruits so that I can go be of service to other people. Does that make sense? But yeah, it took me a long time because I attached my ego to how people I could help. And which meant I was bringing my rinses and hammers

and screw drivers to other people's problems that they didn't even ask me to, right? And suddenly I was tinkering away on engines that I didn't really know what I was doing. I can relate to that. But yeah, well, thank you. Because I need, I struggle with that a lot. I struggle with that a lot. Every time I open the email box and I see all of them, and they're heavy, you know, suicide,

all kinds of stuff. And the only ones I will get directly involved in, 100% of the time, is someone tells me they're hurt in kids, or kids are being hurt, child abuse, and older abuse, right? Or if somebody says, I think I'm out. Well, I would love to ask you about that then, seriously.

How do you, when somebody does that, and I haven't had the kids thing yet, but I thought I had a lot of people contemplating suicide. How do you respond to that, you know? If it's in my immediate circle, if it's somebody, if somebody I'm talking to in person, one of the big misconceptions about suicide, someone's thinking about hurting themselves is,

if I ask them, I don't wanna put that thought in their head, I don't wanna give them the idea. Dude, if you're thinking about killing yourself, somebody asking you about it is like letting the pressure valve off, right? It's not, there's not somebody who's struggling and you're like, are you gonna kill yourself? I'm like, I never thought of that, man, not.

It's not how that works. And so if it's somebody I want the phone with, if it's somebody in my immediate circle, or somebody I work with, or a friend of mine, I'll, before any other question, I will say, are you thinking about killing yourself? Are you thinking about hurting yourself? I go directly into that conversation,

and we're gonna reverse engineer anything after that, but I need to know where you are. You got a plan, you got a gun, I've even been practicing this thing, have you thought this through, or are you thinking about hurting yourself, right? And we're gonna gauge that response from there. If it's somebody who's emailing me often, I will let them know.

I'm calling 911 in your area. And I'm gonna pass this off to your local authorities. Cause I can't be everywhere, right? Yeah. And I also know that the local authorities can't always, but I'm gonna do what I can, right? And sometimes people are lobbing grenades at me, right? And they do the same thing to you.

Either grenades or lifelines, whatever you wanna call it, but I can't deal with all that, right? But I'm gonna call local authorities, I'm gonna call local police. Every community has a local hotline, so if someone says, you know, from Louisville, Kentucky, I'm gonna call Louisville, Kentucky, and say I just got this email. Since it's gonna hurt themselves,

it's a local vet in the area, you may be gonna check them out. And then I'm gonna pass that on to the people who know what they're doing in that area. Okay. Yeah, it's just good to bounce things off of people and I feel like our inboxes are probably very common. Yeah, yes.

A lot of similarities. But moving on, I kind of broke up what I think is going on in the country, why there's a mental health decline and anything that you think of, what we're having, these conversations, please chime in, because I'm just going off what I hear on the media. But I've kind of broken it up into a couple of different categories. One being social media, one being the division of the country, slash politics, definitely plays a role in it, I think.

COVID, when 2020 happened all the way up until now, a lot of things started happening at home, a lot of stuff happening in the schools. And if that played a major effect, and what's going on, the media seems to be very toxic nowadays. And then addiction. You know, the fentanyl crisis is going on. People are being prescribed. I mean, it seems like that's just the quick fix.

It's madness. You know, just take this, take this, take this. So I'd like to hit each of these. Love them. You have any in particular you want to start with? Man, it's a big braided mess. so we can go anywhere we want to go. Let's start with social media. You always hear everybody, I spend too much time on the phone.

I'm glued to my phone all day. People are comparing themselves to the, the, the, the, the, everybody. Extremely good looking influencers that are are out there like Sean Ryan ever yeah and and everything looks money happiness I Personally think everything on social media's bullshit fake but But a lot of people think the shit's real. Yeah, So let's dive in there. Let's go into social media. I, earlier on when you were rattling off some of the statistics,

so many of those things go back to 2013, 2012, 2014. So there's a growing body of evidence that says, we can't tease apart the exact mechanism by which social media is hurting us. What we can do is say, up until 2010, 2011, 2012, people were plugging along, and then all of a sudden, there's a swan dive of mental health, and that's when these things came online in a mass way, right?

They were fumbling around for the decade or two before that, but this is when everybody started walking around with a smartphone. Everybody was on these services and things like that. I tend to take a broader view, step back, 30,000 feet and look at the whole situation and what I know is our bodies, our human, like the machine that we walk around it,

is co-regulated. You and I sit here long enough and our breathing will start to sink up a little bit. We will become, like our bodies are designed for that. We're designed to be in tribes of groups of people towards a common purpose. That's what we do. And in short order, we outsourced all interactions to these boxes, to these platforms, to a very unnatural state of being for ourselves.

You could not talk to somebody without being in the room with them, right? From all human history until right now. And then think how many conversations we have with the people in our head, but we never utter words, and our bodies are paying a price. And so the way I like to make it, to distill it all down into simple language. I can text my wife all day long. I love you, I love you, I love you. I'm giving her frontal lobe data. I'm not giving her body the sense that she is safe and loved.

70, 80, 90% of communications nonverbal. We've stripped all that out and we've just said, when will you be where, I'll be there. That's a one part of your brain process is that data. The other part of the body is like, we're not connected, we're not connected, we're not connected.

And when your body finds itself alone, lonely, by yourself, or think about it, when you're, as a seal, you land, and you turn left, and you start running down a mile, and you turn back and realize, your team went right, you're probably not gonna make it out, right? Or you're going to have to do some, right? 10,000 years ago, you wake up in the morning and your tribe has left you.

You're probably going to die of exposure. You're going to eat and buy something or you're going to run out of water. So our bodies are designed to be in connection and if it's out of connection, it will sound the alarm. And that's what anxiety is. That's what OCD, those those are alarm systems going off. And now we've created an entire industry to shut the alarms off, to quiet the alarms.

That's like, man, if your house is on fire and your smoke alarm's going off, if you get a lighter and climb up and pull the batteries out, you start the alarm, man, congratulations. Your house is still on fire, right? And so I think in overnight, we have changed the way we interact and our bodies are rattling at the seams. And so then you throw in all of the photos

and the, you know, you and I were going to school and we were kids, so one would say like, you suck. Two weeks later, I could edge that off. Now I got on my phone, I can just read it over and over and over or I can see 14 people who thumbs up it and 10 of them are trolls, I don't even know, but it starts to feel like the whole world's it, right? And these machines are curating what they give me, right? And they're based off that slot machine technology where I'm going to hold what he said, I'm going to hold what he's I'll give it to you now. I'll hold it, I'll

hold it, I'll give it to you now. And so it's just hack the system, man. And so I really care less about the individual mechanics. I'll leave that to my academic colleagues to this or this. What I know is, it's killing us and I've got to be intentional about making other paths in my life. Right. What about, I mean, there's just so much that goes into social media that I think is toxic and that they...

It's insanity. Yeah. It's insanity. Here's how insane it is. I do this for a living. I had no social media before I took this current job. No. So I didn't have social media until 2020.

Right? You haven't had anything since 2020. No, and then I got on it. And then about six or seven or eight months in, I was in my closet, in my bedroom, when my kids were banging around outside, scrolling Instagram. Oh wow. I've taught about it.

I know the neuroscience about it. I've met with professionals all over the country from Harvard to little faith-based university, like I've been everywhere, I know the neuroscience about it. I've met with professionals all over the country from Harvard to little faith-based universe, like I've been everywhere. I know. And I remember looking up and I started laughing. I was like, hey, got me. Like, here I am hiding from my family because this little box was making me feel better about who I am than they were. Because you know what I don't know how to do? I don't know how to parent a six-year-old girl. That's what I got. I'm learning as I go. I got a 12-year-old girl. That's what I got I'm learning as I go I got a 12 year old son and I got a lot of built-in stuff here and he's facing a different world than I fate, right?

so But man that's what he just keeps telling me you're doing great. You're doing great. You're doing great You know what I mean? And so it's yeah, I got me too and that's when I realized this They're good. They're good. Yeah. I mean on the contrary though, you can be not great. You know, it's not always reinforced and that you're great. I mean, you got the, the, the, the smear campaigns. I mean, I went through my own smear campaign. Did they got what they do? And it's a long story. And, uh, yeah, I don't want to go into it, but it was a couple of years ago. And there was a tip with another person that I'd collaborated with and

he'd started this big social media campaign. And I mean, and the only reason I'm bringing that up is because that affected me. And I'm up at the time, mid-30s, late-30s, seal, former seal, former CIA guy, seeing it all, I thought in this stupid ass social media campaign that lasted for about six months is ruined in my day. And I felt like the walls were closing in on me. You know, it did. It brought a lot of stress.

And it's those little pirate boats though, right? Yeah. It's not a big ship coming because you're, we know how to handle that. We know how to handle a frontal assault. It's those 14 single engine boats that are coming in just fill in the bottom of the hull up with bullets and then taking off.

Right, and so solely, they can take over the whole ship into the few boats, man. And it's hard to see it coming. Well, I guess where I'm going is I think this is creating a lot of, I mean, I can handle it. You know, it was stressful, but I can handle it. But, you know, a 14 year old girl who exposed herself to somebody online and confidence. And now that photo has gone viral.

And then that young girl kills herself because she's humiliated. And in social media day, people are like, yeah, just get off your phone. It's not that easy. You know, I mean, my business, for example, is run off social media. Mine is too, right? And that's the paradox I find myself in

is it pays my bills, right? And I have to be honest about it's doing good. It's connecting people, it's a GPA, it's pointing people to the right place. And it's encouraging people. Here's a way to walk through life. Here's some stories, here's some different people who are lighthouses in a world of smoke.

When I go home with my family, I can do something a little bit different. Here's a way to have a different conversation. I've had that thought before. I'm gonna go take that thought and with the five guys I meet with once a week that we have breakfast with and just talk crap. I'm gonna bring this thought up there.

So it's taking this stuff out of the imaginary world and putting it into the real world. There has to be some sort of balance there. And I think we're figuring out as we go, I also think, and I didn't realize this is a controversial statement. I grew up around guns, grew up around, right? Like I said, my dad was a homicide guy in a swaka. And they were so everywhere that I understood at a tiny age the respect you have for them

and the tools and the like, they're getting never occurred to me to play with, right? Because I was so ingrained in taught. I've passed that along to my 12 year old son and the lesser extent to my six year old daughter, right? They're gonna know what this is and I'm not ever gonna leave it out cause there he's 12. In that same way, I'm an adult

and I know how the social media works and I know that there's neuroscientists teamed up with AI, teamed up with people trying to make money, which that's their job. Good for them. It's my job as a parent to protect the mind of my 12 year old and my six year old. And so I'm not going to give them a, I'm not going to hand them a loaded gun and say, make good choices because they're 12. Not going to hand them a cell phone that you, make good choices, cause they're 12. Right? Yeah.

I'm not gonna hand them a cell phone that you don't understand the predatory nature of this thing. Your development, you don't understand the people are gonna, you think that guy actually doesn't like you. That guy doesn't even know you. He's not even this country and he's gonna bomb you, right? Or he's gonna take snapshots of you and use them later.

Or that girl who you are so in love with at 16, you're not. And I remember there, I was there. I remember it. But you're gonna say things in black and white and it's gonna be recorded or you're gonna take pictures of things and it's gonna be forever. My job's to make sure that you don't do that. And so as parents, we have to reinvest ourselves

in our kids' lives. And it's hard. My son and I have had some hard conversations, some weeping conversations, some dad, you're making me the weird kid conversations. Yeah. It's tough, it's real tough. What, so how do, what is a, I mean,

you gotta be worried about, you gotta a six-year-old daughter, 12-year-old son. What is that, what does an example of a conversation look like when your kid, when your son comes home and all his friends have Instagram and he wants to be on there. I don't know if he's on there. No, he's not so I'll say about a real life conversation we had man He missed a couple of birthday parties and for an 11 and 12 year old. That's that's your world, right? That's that's the disco right? That's that's the yeah

And he didn't he didn't and I asked him like why didn't you go to birthday parties man? That's the disco, right? That's the, yeah. And he didn't, and I asked him, like, why don't you go to the birthday party, man? He said, he didn't get invited. Well, my first thought is like, well, I'm gonna go fight that 12 year old, he didn't invite you. That's my first thought, right? I'm gonna protect my kid.

And then I thought, oh no, is it the weird kid? Is he not wearing deodorant or something? Comes to find I didn't know, because they're just texting each other or they're DMing each other. In fifth grade, he was the only kid without phone. In fifth grade. Fifth grade.

Without a cell phone to the internet, man. And so I'm, these, again, we're putting ten year olds in an adult world, man. And there's a reason why we say, you got to be this old to drive and this old to buy beer and this old to buy lottery tickets, this old to buy guns. I can't put that at ten year old in that world, right? And that's what we're doing. And so he said, and he was right, he said, Dad, you've taken away my ability to communicate with my friends and you even had a phone on the wall that had that curly cord that could

y'all could call each other. And he looked at me and said, I got nothing. And I said, that's actually fair. That's actually honest and that's true and that's fair. So as your dad, I said that's actually fair. That's actually honest and that's true and that's fair. So as your dad, I gotta figure another avenue. And I ended up reaching out to some parents saying, hey, I'm chose to take this phone away from my kid. I feel like I have a birthday party, let me know.

And they're like, great. And it's been, it was me reaching out to parents and dude, it was awkward and it was weird because it's also me judging them too. Like y'all give your kids phones, I don't, can you know, can you let me know? You do, they've been amazing, they've been awesome. And now, when kids come to our house, every one of them hands a phone to my wife. I don't, can you know, can you let me know? Do they've been amazing? They've been awesome.

And now, when kids come to our house, every one of them hands a phone to my wife, and they relish that time without it. They head off into the woods, we live on some acres. They head off into the woods, and they're catching frogs, and creeks, and they're creating all kinds of tree forts, and throwing, making swords, and spears. What I think 12 and 13 and 14 year old boys

should be doing out in the woods, right? But they turn they turn their phones in and they don't think twice about it And so there's some of that I will also say this I knew it was bad and I knew there was challenges I finally said bring me up and tell me a TikTok video everybody's watching Mike tell me what it is and he named it bro, it was I've you and I have talked offline, I've spent my career in the sewer with people.

I've seen stuff, I've had to go through crazy things, cleaned up or gnarly messes, had to do IT investigations. You know what you see when you go through some of those. I got bitten there. This was a video that, quote unquote, everyone's watching, millions of views. And it was a super provocative, quote unquote, everyone's watching. Millions of views. And it was a super provocative, 13 year old girl dancing and to the point that I told my wife,

get that trash off. And it's not because I'm a prude, it's because that's a child man. If this is what everyone on TikTok, you know what I mean? And he doesn't know what's happening to his brain by watching that trash all day long. That sweet girl who's getting parents are getting paid off, the whole thing is just insane to me, right?

And so, the end of the day, I can't control that, but I can control what goes into my son's mind. And that's on me. And if I get to be, he gets to be 18 or whatever, and he grabs a phone, and he leaves my house, and he says, screw you, Dad, I'll live with that. You know what I mean?

I'll make that trade right now. Last question on social media. I mean, because we have a lot of crossover, I think, and what we do, being a personality over at Ramsey. Yeah. How do you manage your social media and your family? I mean, how do you manage yourself on there? Do you manage your own account?

Yeah, I've got somebody who helps me do stuff, but yeah, I'll post my own. One of my rules is you can't, nobody can post something that hadn't come out of my mouth. So I don't want some content writer speaking on my behalf. I don't like that. I use Instagram and they pull, I don't even know how to log into the Facebook account and stuff, so it's all automated and they're syned on that way.

The rules I have for myself are number one, I've got my social meet on a separate phone. Okay, and so it's a work tool and I think of it as like a table saw. I don't carry that with me into a restaurant. It's a work tool that I use for work for engaging with people. And so it's number one, it's on a separate device. So then I'm not just sitting there doing this all day. I have to think about taking it with me.

And then I got, you know, if I'm gonna go get my old change or something, I'm gonna be sitting somewhere for an hour. I probably should take a book, man. Take a book and read it. But I also might do this and get some work done. So that's number one. Number two, I'm not great, man. Like I'm really not great.

I find myself staring at that stupid thing sometimes or trying to just to log back in. And so my wife and I have had some direct conversations and this sounds lame, but I give her permission, please call this out. Because she says, I can see, I know something's coming two weeks down the road when I see you just start to do this. Because usually I start to do this when it works hard, when I'm stressed out, when I'm worried about money, when I'm

trying to figure this out, this just becomes, right, it just becomes a way to make, to feel better for a second. And she says, this is usually a, like a weather map or a weather report of something coming down the road. So I'm going to put that thing down and I want you to go for a walk with the kids. I want you to go lift ways down the gym. I want you to do something to head off wherever we're all headed because wherever you go, we all go with you, man. That's been a gift.

Interesting. I've had to outsource it. Right. And I wish I could say I was tougher and I just took it a. It's part of my job, but I think outsource it. That's awesome. I've abandoned my account. Yeah, I just I can't do it. You know, I don't it's hard to trust somebody to run your account because I mean Old friends old colleagues send an appropriate shit sometimes. I don't

You know somebody seeing that. And unfortunately, I personally get annoyed because Instagrams become a communication platform. I just, I like it as a work tool. Yes. And but so many people reach out, hey, do you wanna come on this podcast? Hey, they just wanna have a text conversation

over Instagram and And so I'm It's just an ongoing battle, you know, but um, well, let's move into Division in the country Yeah, you have to help me with this. I don't know what you're talking about. You'd let me spell it out for you No, what a mess, dude. What I'm absolutely mess. Yeah, you know, and I don't wanna go into why we're divided or anything like that, but we are divided. And I think media ties them with this section as well, so we could just throw it in there if you want,

but I mean, it's just, it's divided, friends, it's divided in families, I've seen it in my family, I deal with it in my family, I deal with it in my family, I have, I mean, I know people who have had kids who are turning two years old and the grandparents haven't even come to see the kid yet because of a difference in political opinions. You know, and I see it everywhere. I see great what I would have considered very strong families just obliterated, you know, and how do what's going on? Why can't people?

I mean, I remember when I was growing up, election day, was a good day. Teachers came to school wearing American flag ties. Oh, dude. You know, that pens, everybody was patriotic. We're going to vote. It was a big thing. Yeah.

You know, and now, damn, man, I mean, you can't bring anything up without somebody, without triggering somebody's anger. And how do we skate around this? I base. I think we, I think a group of us, let me back all the way up. So psychologically speaking, we are wired to Identify the tribe we talked about that earlier right yeah and

one of the greatest One of the our brains are our prediction machines and there's threat detection scanners. That's what they do all day long Yeah, I think this is gonna happen. I you know, I know where we're headed here And is that gonna hurt me? Is that gonna hurt me? Is we're headed here and is that gonna hurt me? Is that gonna hurt me? Is that gonna hurt me? Right? And that's what someone in your situation who's seen a lot of potential threats,

your brain's got a lot of GPS pins in it. And so it's always like, oh, that guy, that guy, and you, like a hard thing for a seal coming home is, that's just a dude in the mall, right? Like that's not a, right? Like he's walking at me the backpack and your brain goes, here we go. And it's like, nope, I gotta, I gotta relearn, right?

What we did in short order, man, is we bought into, not bought into, we went to a place that gave us a wisdom on what's going on in the world, right? And slowly that turned into a way to make money and sell ads. Yeah. And like regardless of anybody says, and slowly that turned into a way to make money and sell ads. And like regardless of anybody says MSNBC, Fox News CNN, they have one job as to sell ads. That's their job.

Yeah. Period. The best way they can get you to sell ads is to get your attention. And the best way to get your attention is to convince that brain that they've got something that's going to keep you alive. And the best way that get your attention is to convince that brain that they've got something that's going to keep you alive. And the best way that they can get you to think that this someone's going to hurt you is to give you a them. And if you go back all through history, all the way back, when a country wants to take over somebody else,

they start with dehumanizing language, they start with us and them, and then they builds and builds and builds until you have no there's no nothing else I can do Except go to war and we've done that here. Yeah, and it has been not a common purpose. It's been At least it's not them and at least it's not them and all of a sudden man I wake up and it's been 10 years and the machines learn what I like and what stories interest me and then it's become this I'm just yelling at myself in a trash can and so I yell it out of here and it hear it in this ear And I'm like no way and I yell it and it comes back in this year and it's just the same noise the same noise the same noise And then my friendships circle start to contract. Yeah, but it used to while as a kid man my dad and I had different different ideas on stuff and he encouraged the mechanics of thinking through things.

A, because he believed what he believed was true. And so if I believe what's true, what fear do I have? You go explore in somewhere else because I know where you're going to end up, right? And I'm bothering me. And it was the exercise that was important. Now, families are split up because you have crossed, you were an enemy now. And we've, at some point, either it's gonna happen

and we're gonna have to figure it out out of ash, right? Or we're gonna have to have a collective, everybody, we gotta stop, like stop. You know what I mean? It's kinda like when you're in a, I used to be an old hardcore kid, like go to old punk show and then the pit gets heavier and then it gets heavier.

And then all of a sudden people are throwing fists and the singer would stop, it stopped the band, it's like, everybody stop, like, that's not what we're here. And everyone's like, oh, yeah, okay, cool. And then we get back, like, at some point, a group of people on both sides are all, three-hundreds have to say enough. We've got to stop going after each other.

There's bigger issues of play here. Yeah. And I don't honestly know a way around that. What I've had, again, I can't control that. So I always go back to what can I control as a cornerstone of mental health, right? What can I control? I've turned it off.

I've turned it off. Turned what off? The news? Yeah. I simply don't. If I have to, like, you know, there's some big news story of the other day about the raid, not, I've turned it off. Turned what off? The news? Yeah. I simply don't. If I have to, like, you know, there's some big news story of the other day about the raid, not, I,

like, my wife will come by and she'll just beg, something happened today, probably I'm checking on it. And so that's once every three months, I'll pull it up and I went to Fox News and I went to MSNBC and I thought, probably somewhere in the middle, and then I went on about my day. And because it's not giving me any data, it's trying to capture my attention,

like a tractor being, right? And what I can control is how I treat people in my community, how I communicate with my kids, how I get involved in my kids' local schools, how I give the charities in my, what I can do in my local area, that's what I can do. I think that's what's unmooring about

federal election national elections Is it's you realize at the end of the day like I get one ping pong ball toss Yeah, when that goal fish like I just get one throw and it feels powerless, right? And I think people get angsty and I want to do I want to do I want to do and man. We just unspool Yeah, I mean, you know, it's just, I feel like free thinking is gone for the most part. Everybody's trying to indoctrinate their kids. They're trying to indoctrinate everybody they know. It's a control thing. And if at least I think it's a control thing where it's, you know, you don't think like me, so I'm gonna make you think like me.

And, you know, there's a lot of that. And, and, and like I said, I deal with it within my family, well, with friends. Everywhere I go, I deal with it. And I've tried all these different methods. Like, all right, we just won't talk about politics, but then you have, you have the one asshole, you know, they just, they just keep going.

And it's like, can we just talk about something else, but they just keep at it, because you don't think how they think. And so how do you deal with that when somebody just keeps pushing? And you can't, let's just, you can't get away. What, I can't own that. And so, I've put up, so we started a few years ago,

right before COVID. No, I think maybe it was right during COVID. Like, I sent a letter to my family, right? That said, here's what we will not talk about over the holidays. I'm gonna talk about COVID, I'm gonna talk about politics, we're gonna talk about Trump, we're gonna talk about Biden, we're gonna talk about any of that. Yeah. And I'm just putting about over the holidays. I'm not talking about COVID, I'm not talking about politics, we're not talking about Trump, we're not talking about Biden, we're not talking about any of that.

Yeah. And I'm just putting it out there. And so that gave us a touch point and I got a very, like my family's respectful and they're cool. And but as you mentioned, inevitably you end up, nowadays you can talk about, man, you got a lot of potholes in this street

and now all of a sudden we're talking about, you know, China and the conspiracy, right? So we can just get off. And so that one email gave all of a sudden we're talking about China and the conspiracy right so we can just get off. And so that one email gave all of us a touchstone and different people through flags across that week. Like hey, we're not going to talk about this. And it literally just stopped it. If somebody continues, they are choosing to not be a part of this.

I'm not going to fight you. I'm not. Like I keep my fights for just a few things. If you want to opt out of hanging out with me and my buddies, if you want to opt out of going to the show, if you want to opt out of Christmas time with me and my family, it's cool man, you're growing up, you're allowed to do that. But my job is to uphold the boundaries that I've put up there. And I'm not gonna have this, this, I'm not gonna have my community dissolved because you're an idiot, right?

And so you opt it out. And in that, they suck it. Dude, I can't control that, you're grown up. And at some point, that loneliness, either combust, right? You go bananas, or you find your way back in and say, dude, I'm sorry. And the other thing I got as this,

I got some grace for, it occurred to me a few months ago. This is just a few, I'm just thinking through this. You've heard that old saying, you don't make good decisions when you're under threat, and you don't make good decisions when you're scared, and you don't make good, that's the importance of training, so that when your default setting is calm and distance and make good choices.

And I wanna be graceful, cause I lost some friendships. I mean, I got some big divides across the family. It became a mess, right? And I circle back and remember 2020, I call multiple friends of mine. They're doctors here, research professor here, like neuro path over here, are only a pathic doctor over here, like NeuroPath over here,

or a homeopathic doctor over here, like, you know, make their own granola and whatever over here. Everybody had different takes on in 2020. Like, as we talk about COVID-19, everybody had different take, everybody had different severity. But the prevailing wisdom was we're all gonna die. And if you didn't have the prevailing wisdom, we're all gonna die, it's that they're trying to kill us.

And if you didn't have, they're trying to kill us, it's, they're trying to control us. One of those three narratives made its way into every single heart in the United States of America, probably globally, but I'll just talk about here. And when, I think I'm gonna die literally, or I think somebody's anously trying to control me. That sets off every alarm I got.

I'm gonna come out swinging or I'm gonna come out and go run or I'm gonna freeze, right? The fight flight freeze, I'm gonna shut down. And if I look across the country, that's what happened and what I realized I did was, like you've been in these very few people have been in situations that somebody pulls a gun and it's about to be on, right? Or if I had to draw a weapon

or a been in situation where there's bodies, whatever. It's only those who've been there that actually know how they're gonna respond. Everybody else is like, no, they watch a lot of John Wick and they're like, no, if that happened to me, I would, you don't know. You don't know until you've been in that room. So I think it's unfair to judge somebody

on like that first moment, right? When I used to work crisis stuff, I'd show up on scenes in the first time somebody sees a dead body, the first time somebody sees somebody's insides on the ass side and they go out in the front yard and throw up or they step back, I'm not gonna judge that first impulse. That's the first time you've seen that. We're gonna have a conversation about it.

This may not be the job for you. Similarly, I've had to circle back and say, I've held people accountable for decisions they made when they were in full fight or flight. And maybe it's worth me reaching back out of an olive branch saying, Hey, now there's some smoke cleared on some of this stuff. The dust is starting to settle and I'm sorry. And I'm going to try there. I'm going to start there.

And if they come back and they're like, yeah, you're up to now. But I think I'm gonna loop back and start to have some of those conversations. Cause I'm holding people accountable for decisions and things they said, posts they posted, text message they sent, whatever, during a time when they were under duress too. Yeah.

I don't know. It seems like some like in control. It makes a lot of sense. It may not work, but I don't know. It seems like a, it seems like some like control. It makes a lot of something. It may not work, but yeah. Well, what kind of, I mean, what it, this was actually a question that somebody from my Patreon had is for somebody that wants to stay informed, but knows how toxic the media, politics, the division is, how can they stay informed? Because I do think it's important to stay informed. Absolutely, you know, the art of pivoting point

and the country's either gonna go one way or the other. No. And so a lot of people wanna stay more informed than I think they did in the past. So, one of the couple of my rules, I don't read headlines, did in the past. So one of the couple of my rules, I don't read headlines, I read the article. Okay. A lot of times it'll say,

so and so, the article is, I mean, the headline is designed to give me the stop in a sea of bright colored lights to say what about me? And so if I wanna know something, I'm gonna read the article, and I'm gonna get it from multiple sources, and here want to know something, I'm going to read the article, and I'm going to get it from multiple sources. And here's the important part.

I'm going to stop. We have this idea. You've probably, I imagine you've done this too. I do this all the time. I have imaginary conversations with people that I'm never going to have in real life. Oh, yeah. Right?

Like, dude, I saw that, dude. I'm going to tell this dude, right? And our body's spin up as though it's actually happening. Yeah. As though they're actually here, and we were actually in a confrontation, even though it's actually happening. Yeah, right? As though they're actually here and we were actually in a confrontation, even though it's not happening at all, right? Our body likes the cortisol, our body likes the adrenaline

or our body likes to ramp up, especially if you're an addict like I am, you may still be a cortisol adrenaline junky too, maybe not, but I like it. I like feeling that, I call that internal pump, right? It's time to go and I'm in the shower. I'm like at my most vulnerable, I've got like's time to go and I'm in the shower. Dude. I'm like at my most vulnerable.

I've got like a lufa and I'm like, I'll tell that to you, right? That's the leaf, the least tough thing in the world, right? We think ruminating. We think thinking about things over and over. We think worry is helpful because we think it's productive thinking. I'm working out a scenario ahead of time.

Worry solves nothing. Rumination solves nothing. And I think it's a broader concern that more data is an antidote to anxiety. If I just go get one more cup of coffee, I need to just talk to one more guy. I'm gonna go make one more phone call before I jump in and start this job. I need to get one more thing here. I need to watch one more YouTube clip. I'm gonna go make one more phone call before I jump in and start this job. I need to get one more thing here.

I need to watch one more YouTube clip. Go do it, right? How many times have I sat there scrolling the entire length of a workout, trying to find the perfect workout? All right, just do just shut up and go. Yeah. Do I buy a clock or do I buy it?

Get something and get somebody who can coach you, right? And we'll figure it out later. I'm the worst with guitars that way, dude. Like I can sit there like, I don't know if I want this guitar. A, I'm not that good. B, it's not like I'm a professional, so it doesn't really matter.

Like it's always that I'm trying to get more data as a way to make myself feel better. So I say that, all that to say, once you've read the article, you know what you need to know. Sitting there scrolling for hours and going down the rabbit holes, which those things are designed to do, right? They're just like water parks. They want to get you down that thing so they can take you way to other side of the park,

man. I'm going to read the article. I'm going to know what I need to know. I'm going to have my opinion on it. I'm going to go get a counter opinion. I'm going to go about my day, right? I'm like a swim in it. That's to me is the challenge.

Here's the other one. If I've, I have a core philosophy is have a guy. Like one thing I never worry about is banking because my, one of my best friends on planet is one of the banking commissioners on state of Texas. If I have a question about banking or finance, I call him. I also sit by Dave Ramsey every week.

So if I have a question about like, wealth building, I got a guy. Does Dave know something about that? Occasionally. Right, geez. Jeez. And so, and Dave, like on the show, he's like, you know, still the truck, get out of debt. He unpacked bond rates for me one day,

and I'm a pretty smart guy, and my head almost exploded. Like, he's a savant, right? I got a guy, I know. I have a friend who's the CEO or associate CEO of an HVAC company. You know what I never have to worry about? An air conditioning question.

If I have a question, I call him and say, hey, what's the latest thing I should get? Because I gotta replace my air conditioner. I don't Google it, I don't go to Yale, I got a guy. And so similarly, if I have a question about Blackwater, I have a question about Blackwater, I have a friend in my local community named Sean that I can ask about.

You know what I mean? I can Google it and find all kinds of garbage. And call somebody you actually knows. And so what I have to do then is not outsource all of my insights and knowledge and relationships to the computer. I gotta go be with actual people. You look for a resident expert on the job.

Real humans who've got wisdom, who have actually done the work themselves, who have walked with other people who know the academic knowledge too. There's that's a other weird thing that's happened now. If someone's like, no, I actually did the study. He's like, oh, figures idiot. Now it's like a virtue to no less.

All right. And so we're just in this weird environment where I'm almost sitting down with wise people, right? You and I just in this weird environment where I'm almost sitting down with wise people. You and I had lunch together months ago. I'm almost sitting down with somebody and being like, I know as we was talking, but I trust him. And now we can have different conversations, right?

And that to me is a much better way to get news than walking into a Vegas casino, right? And just all the lights and sounds. Yeah, I find a lot of people, this is a little off topic, but I'm just gonna go and myself included. But, you know, I used to, when this channel started, I used to do a lot of gun reviews and shit like that.

And, whatever, it's a review, it's just my opinion. But, what I find people do, and I started noticing that back then, and now carries over into everything. Global warming, climate change, politics, like whatever, whether they're science, it seems like nowadays you can look for information, like I'll give you an example. Maybe I did a gun review on that gold plated desert eagle behind you and I said, this gun's horrible, it sucks. I think it's a piece of shit.

Well, and there's 50 other reviews like that. People will go and they will research everything they can do to confirm why they need to buy that gold-plated desert eagle. They might see 50 negative reviews, but they're going to keep looking for the one reason. Because that's the one they want. The justifies why they want that. And I think that's carrying over into everything now. It's carrying over into science. I mean, I could, I just, the reason I brought up global warming climate changes

because the interview I did before you was about, oh, the climate science had something to do with that. And so here's what I was researching it. I can find science that says, it basically proves it wrong. And I can find science that says, basically proves it wrong, and I can find science that basically proves it's happening. And I mean, I'm, do you know what I'm getting at?

People are just there and they will justify their beliefs, justify that purchase, they want, they will research, research, research, go through the internet just to justify why they need that thing or why their belief is right and not wrong. And, um, many ways. No, I think the politicalization of science has become a mess.

Yeah. And it's, it has, there are some nefarious scientists. There's no question about that. Here is a great lesson I learned. I've spent 20 years working in higher ed. I was a professor and I was demone research, but also was a dean of students working with people when the wheels had fallen off their lives. It was a fascinating, I jumped to a media company to the Ramsey Solutions, right, in 2020.

And here's what was an awesome moment for me. It was a big, like, neon sign of clarity. When Kings College, I think it was Kings College when COVID first kicked off. And Kings, I think it was Kings College at London. I may be wrong there, but one university group put on the table, we think 15, I'm making the numbers up, but 15 million people gone die. The media picked that up, politicians picked that up and took off. This is nothing. They're making it up or we're all going to be dead, right? We are 15 to 20. Well, now 20 is the new number, right? And we are 50 now,

listen, it's off to the races. And the bigger the number or the bigger the red font or the scarier the breaking news story could be, the more they got our attention. In the academic world, when they laid that down, the whole goal of a scientist is to be less wrong. You reject the null. I proved to you that I wasn't wrong, right? Or I found out I wasn't wrong. You reject the null. I proved to you that I wasn't wrong, right? Or I found out I wasn't wrong.

So when they laid that down, every science group in the world that had a lab or some sort of interest or some sort of skill set on that said, game on. It's a game to be less wrong. And then within two or three weeks, they were like, oh cool, not only 10, we revised the models down and data's coming in. And then it's revised here and it's revised here. The only two groups that don't have a revision mechanism are medium politicians who can't come back and say, hey, we reported this on Monday. We got some new data.

Here's the thing on Friday. Because then it's like, ooh, change your mind. You're not stable. And I'm thinking, why do you read a book? It's to learn something new, right? Why do you get an ops report? So I can learn something new and then you get there and you're like, ops report missed this one

and you relay that back. So now they've got a bigger picture, but we've created a world in media where there is no, there is no hell or something new button. We should all celebrate when we find out, oh man, we've been doing this for five years. We were way off. We need to start doing this now. We should all celebrate when we find out, oh man, we've been doing this for five years. We were way off. We need to start doing this now. We should all cheer. Instead, we turn that into the next election cycle as to why you should hate them. And why they're

stupid, right? Instead of saying, to thank God 15 million people aren't going to die, it's only going to be this number. Awesome. Can we get it? It's a, it's, it's, everybody's using the same words, but they're just flying past each other. Yeah, and there are Scientists now who have social media has like I can make a lot more money Posting I can make a lot more money to in public speaking than I can at my professor job. I can make way more money Right in a book than I can write an article that nobody's gonna read. And so it has changed the incentive structure for thoughtful people. I'm gonna trust you.

It's a mess. Yeah. Back in the 70s, 60s, 70s, if you did something, if you did something for business, if you did something for like a company, you were a charlatan. How dare you. Real money.

How dare you take money from business? Our job is to create bricks of knowledge and put them up there. They can come by those bricks on their own. That's not our job. So much so that it was devotion reality, right? Now you end up with these studies and you do nothing, right? So the interplay is good, but it's relatively new that scientists are in it, Or the incentive structure shifted. That makes a lot of sense. Let's take a quick break. Cool.

When we come back, we'll get into the implications of what COVID-19 has done to the mental health of the population. You got it. You know, guys, the older I get, the more obsessed I get with the maintenance of my own lawn. But it's a big job. So I started paying somebody to do it, and I would love when they would put these little designs in my lawn. But one thing I started noticing is I started missing all the little nooks and crannies. And that's an equipment issue. Then I found man-scaped.

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And I want to know what you think the applications are going to be, you know, from all this on everybody. I mean, it's affected adults, kids, masks, people are scared, shitless, they're going to die from it. People think it's a hoax. I mean, it's affected everybody in different ways. I guess it just matters how you think, you know, and what you're, you don't want to be at that.

Yeah, yeah. So I consider myself an optimist and a stark realist. Okay. Hope is a big thing for me. Like if you just not a light at the end of the tunnel, I'm not going to walk in that tunnel, right? Yeah. And I think I think what happened over the last couple of years is a hundred year play out. And you think this is going to affect us a century? At least. Here's why. Not COVID, not the COVID is. We had a generation of adults who went crazy

and we pulled the pillars on, we pulled the pillars on the bedrock of how this thing sits on. We pulled the pillar on education. If you go to that school, those teachers are trying to kill you. Or if you don't go to school, right? So we pulled the pillar on education. We stopped worship services across the country. We pulled the thread on the binding principles that people get up every day. That's the reason they operate in

the world to uphold their religious faith, to live into it, and we stopped it. Stop. Can't do that. We pulled the pen on government. Everybody talks crap about government, everybody. But at the end of the day, I thought everybody behind closed doors had my best interest. I no longer believe that. And whether it's true or not, it doesn't matter.

It's the fact that I don't believe that. It's the fact that we told a group of kids that doctor is giving you bad advice. I'm a plumber. I know more than that doctor does, I Google it. Or I watch a YouTube video. That guy's trying to kill you. We're also like masks or no masks, right?

You need to take either a method or you need to, okay, what the doctor was saying, you have a group of parents, a group of adults, a group of media supervisors who went to war against the medicalists. So you're talking about medicine, education, government, religion, in three years, we pulled the pen on all of it. Yeah.

And now I got a six year old daughter who's trying to navigate a world that, I don't think we fully understand what we've done. We turned it into ash. Now we've given her reason to doubt things. And so these kids are swinging off. It's like jumping out of a plane. I think my first jump out of a plane the day,

they've talked some of us into, do my first skydiving thing. And I'm terrified of heights, man. You did that voluntarily. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, it was wild. I hate jumping out of lines. Can't stand it. I knew the moment I hit the ground, I'm gonna do that for it was wild. I hate jumping. You hate it. I can't stand it

I knew the moment I hit the ground. I'm gonna do that for us in my life. I loved every second of it really Yeah, yeah, it was awesome. I get it for you It was awesome scares the shit out of me every single time. I have no idea why you would want to jump out of a perfectly good airplane well It was taking us up to 14,000. We got to 2,500. I was like, I can't believe we're gonna jump in. The guys are like, we got a long way to go. I was like, no.

But yeah, anyway, I loved it. I didn't know I was telling you. I was like telling you that. Oh, it's like jumping out and then like, hey, I didn't pack this shoot and I don't know how solid it is. I'm not jumping. Like, that guy on my back said I packed this and I've

invested interest in both of his landing safely. All right, let's jump right and that's what we've done with our kids and literally they're gonna have we're gonna have to as a culture build that back. My daughter lost some critical developmental moments like what? and critical developmental moments. Like what? Like how to read facial features, how to be uncomfortable, how to have rejection, like these critical things that happen

when you're four, five, and six, just go on, go on, go on. Damn, I didn't even think about that. Facial expressions. Yeah, just so she's gonna not, you don't think she can read body language. She can't, I mean, she's gonna have to learn, right? And kids are incredibly resilient, right?

So I don't wanna oversell that, but I do think down the road. I see it with her, I see it with my son, I see it with their friends, it's a different environment. And you put that on top of this stuff, outsourcing communication to the electronic world. And yeah, I think we spawn the top on that one.

Why do you think it's gonna take 100 years? Because I think you gotta cycle out, right? Now, I mean, you look at folks who go through major collective traumas together, they're great grandkids, right? You've seen some of those studies or heard about them that trauma gets passed all on and on and so I think there's a collective trauma here. And here's the other thing, they saw adults

and this is a big one. So I've been on people who have asked me like my thoughts on masks, no masks, saw all that kind of stuff. I've got my opinion on that stuff. More importantly, our kids are parents go crazy. And children absorb tension. They absorb chaos and they make it their fault.

Because the adults in the world are their entire world. And so if dad is angry, I need to fix me to bridge this gap. Very few kids understand, dad's crazy. Or dad's having a bad day. They think, dad's mad and I need to fix this gap. Very few kids understand, dad's crazy, our dads haven't a bad day. They think, dad's mad and I need to fix this. And so we have children who have become responsible for the emotional regulation of the adults in their world and they cannot carry that weight

and it will spin out and all different. So it's gonna take a group of people and a collective effort to say, and unfortunately usually, if you look at throughout history, it's a calamity. It's some big challenge that a group has to arise together to meet, which I think we will. So I'm optimistic long term. There's going to have to be some things that people put aside their anxieties, put aside their drama, put aside their, I'm key to, I'm vegan. I'm going to put that crap down because we got bigger problems to solve. It's going to take that sort

of collective coming together. My dream is that we would have the willpower just to do it. I'm not super optimistic about it. I think we're gonna have to have a challenge or we're gonna have to rise and meet it. The light in the tunnel's dim for that, huh? Yeah, so you think that basically, I mean,

the will, it's gonna be my daughter's kids. For my daughter's green kids, I mean, basically, I mean, the... It's gonna be my daughter's kids. For my daughter's green kids, they're gonna have to figure something out. You think all of us are gonna have to die before this starts to reset. Oh, we're gonna have to go to our kids and say, I'm sorry. I went bananas and I'm turning the TV off.

And here's the other thing, we're talking about early back getting off social media, talking earlier about getting off the news. And somebody sat down with's the other thing we're talking about early back in off social media talking earlier about getting off the news and Somebody said now with me the other day and they said I'm I'm and it's a it's somebody I'm close to and they said enough I got changed my life. I don't sleep anymore my this my this my this it was it was a hard conversation But it was them being vulnerable to being open. Here's where I'm at a dude a right around my age and Told them I'm gonna I can tell you some things. It's the hours of 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. that wind most people down.

Because I'm going to say to get off the phone, and I'm going to tell you to go for, lift weights, I'm going to say to go for a walk, I'm going to tell you to change what you eat. That's all fine. But when you do all those things at eight o'clock, you're gonna be staring at your wife. And you're not gonna know how to talk. You're gonna feel a little bit weird. It's gonna feel a little bit awkward until you all learn some new skills on how to communicate together

on how to have sex instead of watching Netflix again, on how to do some of these things that we've just lost over time. And most people fall apart there. And so I just go back to this. I go back to scroll on, I go back to Netflix. It's like, hey, I'll just start the next episode for you, bro. Like, you didn't have to move. I'll just start the next one.

And by the way, that series is over. I know you don't like this one. I'll go ahead and just start it for you. I only had to move, right? And the groceries will just come. So we've created this world we're insulated from some of it. So it's gonna take people saying, I'm gonna engage that two hours of awkwardness until I learn a new set

of skills, and I can practice these skills. And are you in it? I'm in it. I'm in it. And I'm going to go to my kids and say, hey, I acted crazy the last two or three years. And I'm sorry. I was scared. I was nervous.

I was whatever. I'm in this together. Now I'm going to have to go kick a soccer ball. Right? I went and bought me my son, Bone Arrow's, so that I've got things I can do that I love and bring me peace, it's meditative for me, and I have some time with him, and we're outside, so I can hit all these buckets at the same time, and that's an hour I'm not spending on social media, I'm not sitting on a couch watching TV.

For the first 16, 17 years of my marriage, we had no recliners in the house. It's my wife's like, if there's a recliner here, you will sit down. And if you sit down, you'll turn the TV on, turn the TV on, I've lost you. So that's how radical we got in my house. And now we've created a world where sitting down feels weird.

You know what I mean? We're gonna go move. But it's gonna take a group of people facing discomfort and heading into it. Then yeah, man, I'll be all about that, man. If we wanna do that, I know we can. I know we can, no question.

Man, are there that many families out there that don't communicate that just sit there on the phone? We don't do that. Me and my wife have great communication. No, it's that two inches apart and two thousand miles away from each other. Man, that's that's that common. I sit right here on the couch and I'm scrolling ESPN sports and she's scrolling Pinterest and we are in different planets right next to each other and it's our bodies are screaming at us man like not connected not connected not connected and we call this together time and it's it's it's it's

we're recon families and it's a wrecking families. And it's kids, I mean, you can go to a set of restaurants now. Oh, I see it. I'm just buried on the screens, man. Well, I don't wanna deal with my discomfort. You got a little kid, right? I don't wanna deal with the discomfort of our unruly child in a restaurant.

It's embarrassing, it's annoying. They knock a water glass over there. I don't like this food. That's just part of being a parent. I can make all that go away because he had a phone. Yeah, right. And that's generation old man. Because you have a kid that doesn't know how to,

what decorum looks like, doesn't know what respect and dignity he looks like, doesn't know how to control their body for an hour. And all of those things ripple through a society, it ripple through a community. And so it's a group of restaurants saying, no phones welcome. Like they did when they said no smoking in here. And I was like, oh, we're going to shut you down.

They didn't. People are quick smoking in there because they want to go eat in the restaurant. There are no phones allowed in this restaurant. This is going to take something like that. It's going to take a group of parents at a school saying, we're not going to, everyone, if we all agree, no kids on phones, we're going gonna everyone if we all agree no kids don't phones by in cool we're gonna do that and it's gonna take stuff like that man the whole distrust thing you were talking about too I mean just thinking about being a little kid

and you got your parents think think one way you got to school that thinks the other way you got your friends to think this way Everybody like I was saying the sciences Seems to be manipulated on both sides and In what the hell I mean where where are kids gonna? I thought my teachers were the smartest people in the world, right? Here's what beyond the smarts I thought my teachers loved me and cared about me. Yeah, I thought my Minister of Church loved and cared about me. I thought my teachers loved me and cared about me. Yeah, I thought my Ministers Church love and cared about me. I thought I'm trying to even go back and I was the earliest memories I have I thought that

Ronald Reagan and George age and I thought Bill Clinton. I thought they loved me and wanted the best for me. Good I don't think that's a clue. I thought my doctor knew everything. And if he said to do it, we just did it. Because the doctor said, you don't have that anymore. And it's less about, like again, I hope you hear him saying, it's less about, I disagree with your advice. It's more, there's a pinhole in the air of the institution. And I heard it put best the other day. I mean, everybody from Jordan Peterson to Esther Perrell,

I mean, these are people all over the aisle saying, we have some common stories that bind civilizations together and we pull the thread and all of them all the same time. And so we're gonna have to decide, I'm gonna build better things They're gonna make these dysfunctional things obsolete. That's a better harder road to hoe than it is to just go burn everything the ground Right, one of them and you can correct me if I'm wrong because I'm getting out of my lane here on what I don't know

one of them feels very much like the greatest generation that's going for World War II, and we're gonna channel this into a collective purpose here, defeating evil, and now we're gonna have a collective purpose here. And of course, psychologists, we can pick this apart, but they came home and built, versus what you experienced in overseas, which is, we're just gonna keep burning.

Oh, you build up a little, we're gonna burn it down. You're gonna build up a little, we're just gonna burn it down. And one of those, right, one of these, you end up over time with some functioning societies and some institutions that help everybody move forward. Yes, they got cracks, yes, they got to, we got to work on them.

It needs to always be critics. Oh, that's important. But it's better than nothing. It's better than scorched earth. And so, yeah, absence of group of people getting together saying, let's start building. Let's start doing some right. Let's start creating.

Man, yeah, it's gonna be tough. It's gonna be a long century. Do you think other and other applications from COVID that you think are gonna... I think that general, again, like, I, what if the next one's bad? Yeah. Right?

What if the Sean Ryan disease ripples through? You know, he's gonna put on a mask. Nobody's gonna stay at home. Nobody's gonna not work, right? And so we cried wolf too much and too loudly on both sides of the earth. We, everyone's yelling. And so now, the next thing, yeah, they can be tough.

They can be tough. Yeah. What do you think, man? Like, what are you experiencing? With, like, as a young dad, as a, like you've seen a lot of the world, you've experienced a lot, you get the emails from all over the country.

I think the biggest thing that I've taken from the, the, also this, the first thing that comes to mind is I had no idea how many people in this world live in fear all the time. And that became the veil got lifted when COVID happened. And my son wasn't born, you know, he's 11 months old. But I saw, I just saw fear everywhere. Fear that you're right, you're going to be taken away. Fear that you're right, you're gonna be taken away. Fear that you're gonna catch the virus.

Fear everywhere, you know? And I just, I don't live in fear. I never have. You know, I don't live in fear and I don't want my son to grow up living in fear. How do you balance? to grow up living in fear. How do you balance? So some would say, I don't live in fear,

but I still put on an oven mitt before I grab my cast iron skillet off the stove, right? I'm not scared of the skillet, it's on fire. It's hot, so I'm gonna take precautions because I'm not dumb. Right? I don't live in fear of my gun, but I don't load it till I'm getting out of the car to go hunt and I keep it on state.

Right? So I take precaution. How do you balance not living fear with rational smart? Well, I feel like it got wiped, right? I don't live in fear, which, like, I'm just gonna act insane, or I'm scared of everything, and I'm not gonna hold my breath for the rest of my life, right?

There's gotta be a balance there. Yeah, I mean, for me personally, I guess we all live in fear to a certain extent, right? We, I mean, I have a fear that I'm gonna be out with my family, and there's gonna be an act of shit that happens there you know what I mean. So what do I do? I figure out the solution. All right, I'm not going to let that control me and not go anywhere for the rest of my life. I'm going to

learn how to handle a weapon to be able to protect my family if that were to happen and then I'm going to go about my day. There you go. And for me, there was the same with COVID. And at the beginning, I took it extremely, I was the guy out there with the light saw can't hit my packages. And then we got more information. And then we got more information, right? And then I formulated, and because the science was

manipulated on every front, everywhere you look at the media, everything, I just educated the best, educated myself the best that I could and then formulated my own decisions, you know, and to be able to move about my day back to normal. I look at the problem, I figure out the best solution for me, and then I move about my day. So you did it on a microscope and I was talking about me to go on a microscope. Here's discomfort, I'm gonna stare it down, and I'm gonna walk right through the middle of it. Yeah. So that, just something as simple as I can get on about my day.

All right, but what do I have to do to get on about my day? I've got to learn this. I've got to learn how to do these things. I've got to educate myself. I'm going to have to educate myself in the right way. I'm going to, right? So I am going to do these things so that I can go through discomfort.

And I think that's the path forward. People like, how do I heal from anxiety? You got to turn fake, walk into anxiety. That's the thing. And the more you run from it, the tighter that thing spins. Right? It's facing that discomfort and head into the middle of it. Right.

But that's at least the first thing that comes in my mind. You know, what I think about COVID is all the fear that was wrapped around it. And I tend to think COVID was an accelerant. I think that fear has been brewing for a long time. And I think like you said, I pulled the veil off and just dumped gasoline on existing coals and it just, yeah. Wow.

Let's move into addiction. Okay. So I don't know why, you know, but addiction is on the rise. It's getting worse with all the fentanyl coming up through the southern border and it's getting laced with everything. But on top of that, you have addiction from, I mean, it seems like there was a period of time where doctors were just... Tick-tacks, man.

Yeah, yeah. Here's some benzos, here's some oxy, here's some painkillers, here's some SSRIs, here's... And... What is addiction? In suicide, too. Why is addiction... What's happened? Why is it right now just going through the numbers aren't saying?

So I think it was in 2019, this is a naive I was as a college professor. I was a college administrator in 2019. A study came out in jam with a journal of American Medical Association. And it was such a stark, like, whoa, I didn't know that, and I thought, this is gonna be the one. This is gonna be the study that everybody starts ringing the bell on, right? This is our generation's butnic.

For the third year in a row, the average lifespan of a US citizen had gone down, right? And you may have heard this term you may have heard this term. So that's when I teen is pre-COVID had gone down and they said it was not because of murder or whatever the media was cranked enough, right? They called them diseases of despair. And it was organ disease failures, addiction, suicide, and organ disease being like liver disease and heart attacks.

And so I heard one prominent doctor that I have high respect for called said we are lonelying ourselves to death. Really? I heard another guy say we are distracting ourselves to death. And ultimately we've created a world ourselves to death. And ultimately, we've created a world at the, and I would go back to the pace, the speed of things. I would go back to, we talked about earlier, the lack of tribe, the lack of relationships that have all overnight been outsourced into a different mode of communication. The, the work has taken on an identity. You have to work as to solve all of our existential crisis now.

We used to learn about these things, hard issues at home and our religious institutions, even at school a little bit. Now, workplaces teach you about dress and decorum and diversity and all these things you should be having in conversations in your culture and your community. Now the workplace is responsible for this and you got to take care of all my health care and you got to take care of all my mental health care and my spiritual care now and now you

got to make me feel comfortable. Work so we have all these things happening at the same time and so if you go back to the analogy like of the alarms going off mental illness, man, it's an alarm system, our bodies are pretty attuned machines, they're incredible. They'll let you know that something's not right. And I can address the fire, and that's hard, and you gotta get water, it's gonna get everything wet,

it's gonna turn everything into a mess, and you gotta be clean up after it's over, it's gonna be hard, but it puts a fire on your house survives. Or I can climb up there and what addiction is, it's like climbing up on your smoke detector and taking a pillow and just duct tape in it around it. You can be addicted to work 90 hours a week or 120 hours a week and we'll give you a million dollars. That's an addiction. You can be addicted to sex pornography, you can be addicted to earning more money, right?

You can be addicted to 50 million different things, and now you got the doctors just handing out pills, man. And so it's a collective, and then I look at the same thing with hours watched on Netflix. I look at, that is, that's a long tail suicide. I'm not pulling the trigger, but I'm cashing out of my life. It's the lives of quiet desperation.

And you look at the tail, man, it just slowly fades. And that used to just be the American male, and now it's everybody. I'm just out of the life that I've created for myself. What do you mean that used to just be the American male? That was this civilization and its discontent, right? It's this homogenization of taking men and saying, you know what, actually here's what this looks like.

Tuck your shirt in and wear a press cackle, go to this job and come home, and you see the things starting to rattle. Um, and then you create all these distractions over time. You can get a bigger house, you can get more land, you can get to this, all of those are ways to absorb energy of somebody being forced into a system that they were not designed to live in, right? And then you throw women into the workforce and then it's like, you know what, you need to take all of your instincts, all of your, the things that might have made you whole, you know, it's really going to make you whole,

more money, more power, more prestige, more accomplishment, get on that trip. And so now we've just created an entire ecosystem that's madness, right? I'll also say this, this isn't talked about a lot. This might even be my next book. If you lay, you remember going back earlier, there's a part of our brain that is just scanning the system 24, 7, 365. Are you safe? Are you safe? Are you safe? Part of safety is, do you got a community? Do you got a gang? Do you have people that you can call it to am? Part of safety is, are you an abusive situation? Is somebody hurting you? Are you

an abusive work toxic work environment? What are that? The third one is autonomy. Do you get to choose what happens to you tomorrow? All right? There's a natural built-in who's control, are you driving or somebody else driving your life? And we don't talk about this a lot, but we have the most insanely indebted society, voluntarily indebted. Debt forever was a, it was a, it was a slavery tactic. It was a way to capture people and control their movements. And now we do it for a shiny car and a shiny t-shirt, right?

And so there's a part of our brain that is screaming, we're not okay, you don't get to decide what you do tomorrow. Twitter motor company does. Or Bank of America decides what you do we're not okay. You don't get to decide what you do tomorrow. Twitter, motor company does. Or Bank of America decides what you do tomorrow, not you. So you're an abusive situation at work, keep showing up, dude, cause you have no other options, cause you owe $100,000 in student loans

and in credit cards and your stupid truck payment, right? And we've created this world and said, I need to have all these things and our brains are screaming at us We're not okay. We're not okay. We're not okay And it can't we can't live you've been in a building where the the fire alarm's going off It's just so loud right and the blinking lights are so loud Eventually you either have to get out of the building

You someone's got to go clip the wires and cut that thing off or You just have to put on some headphones and veg out and that's that's the opioid crisis. That is fentanyl, that is I'm just out. I can't I'm stuck here, I'm out. I'm just gonna go through my life and I'm gonna be done. Yeah. And that's where we are. And so it's a re-engagement of purpose. There's a reason, dude, to get out of military in their 30 years out. As soon as they get back in a gang, they're all talking about 30-year-old stories. There's a reason high school football guys who are 40 that run into each other, they just go back to tell

new high school stories. Because for most of us, that was the last time we were part of something bigger than ourselves. It was the last time we were part of a team that had a purpose towards a goal. And as a society, we do not have that. We have said, it's you versus me, technically, you and me are like, we're competitors, right? Like, like, uh, there's a, we're not in a common gang. Now, now those of us who do this for a living, no, no, there's a, we're not in a common gang. Now, those of us who do this for a living, no, no, it's not, dude, it's infinite, right? We're not enemies at all. In fact, we're all supporting one another and trying to make sure people are well, right?

So, but it can feel that way. We have to have people in our lives towards a common mission. And honestly, when people start making sure that they're safe and they've got a gang and they have autonomy in their lives my bot Dave calls it peace right I call it just value and worth I'm worth just going to bed at night without meds I'm worth getting up and having coffee because I want to not because I have to

I'm worth rambunctious reckless sex with my with my spouse and I'm just wheels off because we're so safe in this relationship and get weird, right? Whatever the thing is, I'm worth loving my kids so much that I'm going to treat teach him how to treat his body by treating my body, right? I'm going to model that, right? So we have this sense of worth and it's this I'm going to model that. Right? So we have this sense of worth and it's this and in my job, in my day job, watching people come in and they've paid off $200,000, they've paid off their house. They simply walk different man. Like because it's for the first time, it's like, oh, I'm on chain. I'm on shackled. And I've got peace in my life. And by the way, to do this, we had to work on our marriage. We had to figure out a new way to talk. We had to become

a team and a unit. And we had to get some other people in our lives to walk with us. And by the way, to do this, we had to work on our marriage, we had to figure out a new way to talk, we had to become a team and a unit, and we had to get some other people in our lives to walk with us. And now, suddenly this whole thing, now we've got a new journey that we're healing towards. That makes sense. And so it's all of it, but I think it's people saying, you know what, I'm worth more than sitting on my couch. Like, I'm worth more than a life of quiet desperation. What does that look like? And some people, some of the language in the faith communities have been churches are dying. They're not.

Cross fits the new church. Like listen to podcasts and get into podcast communities the new church, Facebook groups, the new church, yoga communities, people are gonna find ways to get together and to have a common sense of purpose and mission. Can it be something bigger than abs? Can we do something bigger than that? You know what I mean? Yeah. Can we do something more bigger that's more collective, uniting front towards a comic good? And that's just honestly, I'm gonna go revise my answer. There is life at the tunnel. Maybe it's not a hundred year thing. What's gonna take young dads like me and you

to say, we're gonna do better. Get it up. You know, off the topic of addiction, but something that I'm noticing too is, and I'm guilty of it, I don't think that people know, I don't think they do things. We're always worried about what everybody else wants, you know, and like the five-year-old might get a, he might want a red fire truck, but he wants the red fire truck to post on Instagram to show all his friends That he's got the red fire truck and as soon as that's over he doesn't give a shit about it

And I see that happen with adults and With everything from cars to private jets to watches to and I see all these people and they're buying All this shit that they don't even appreciate. I don't think they even want it. They just want it because everybody else wants it, or they think everybody else wants it. And what's that old fight club line? It's a... But working a job that we hate to buy things that we don't need to impress people we don't even like. Yes, yes, yes. I feel like that has had gas thrown on it as well.

Yeah, it's peacock feathers, right? It's... I used to have my peacock feathers that I would show my old tribe, and I could show the planet, right? And there's so many coming in, yeah, it's just an arms race. So how do you get people to turn inward and figure out what they want?

It's, man, this is a word, talk about a word that's just been beat to death. For me and my wife, it was solving for freedom. And not solving for freedom and some obnoxious like esoteric way. What is a way we can build a life for ourselves and model for our kids and our community that we can have the most peace? Let's work really hard. And what I mean by really hard is, I was the dean of students of a law school, a great law school, right, at a great salary, and I drove a $3,200, 1992 F-150. It was a piece of junk. It was hilarious. But my truck was a depreciating asset. So

I bought them at the bottom of, I bought it at the bottom of its depreciation so it would lose none of my money and That's how I got to it from work when I wasn't riding my bike to work. And so I decided well, we've got This issue we got this issue gas prices it. I'll try my bike. Let me get healthy. I'm gonna do it So I started looking for ways. Where's ways we can unhook from? I'm gonna get healthy, I'm gonna do it. Right, so I started looking for ways, where's ways we can unhook from the tether, right? Let's just don't have a TV in the house for a season.

That sounds okay. Well now we're gonna have to go for walks together. And now we're gonna have to talk, because that's boring, right? So all these things downstream, people wanna go to TV or Instagram to learn how to talk, just go for a walk, right? So it's unhooking, How can we owe nobody any money? Yeah, I'm, how can I, and what I found is, contrary to what I expected, when I bought suits at Marshall's

for half price, or I got them at the half price rack at the sale, A, nobody ever said to me, they may have talked by my back, it never stopped me from getting the job that I wanted, right? Yeah. Driving my truck was turned hilarious, it never stopped me from getting the job that I wanted, right? Yeah. Um, driving my truck was turned hilarious. It was funny, everyone gave me a hard time about it, but in a good nature kind of way. And then you started quietly watching people sell their, turn their leases back in and buy a car with cash.

Yeah. Cause when people say, why do you drive that crappy car? I don't know anybody money. And it was that simple like, ah, right. So I'm going to begin to solve for freedom in a way that, how can I move through the world, right? That's why I went and got another graduate degree. All my education was in working at universities, right?

My master's degree, my PhD, was in education. I thought, if this system shifts a little bit, I'm going to mess. Well, I worked at a university that gave me a free class every semester, so I thought I'll get another degree in counseling. So I have some options to get right. So it's just living in life of freedom. By the way, I was going to read these books anyway, so why not? Like you're a great example. I've got this set of skills, and I think maybe the greatest skill you have is the skill of how to learn a new skill. And so, like, man, I'm gonna create this thing, well, then I'm gonna have to learn how to do photography.

I'm gonna have to learn how to set up cameras, I'm gonna have to learn how to, and you did it, right? And so, a podcasting goes the way tomorrow, like the medium just dissolves. You've got so many new skills. You know what I mean? You've got communication skills. You'd be a great therapist, so,

I'm gonna continue to solve for freedom, which means I'm going to live a life of discomfort. I'm always going to be pushing towards something. I'm learning how to hunt my own food. I'm going to learn how, not because I think it's coming down. It's a good skill to know how to do. We've got big gardens. It's solving for freedom in the truest sense of that word. Interesting.

Yeah. And really, I guess if I'm just processing this as I've talking, solving for freedom is really solving for peace. What's the least amount of, like, drama? I'm going to know my neighbors. Yeah. I mean, I'm going to, I'm going to do these things that are going to give me peace throughout my day.

If I have a hard conversation I need to have, I'm just going to have it now. I'm not going to think about it for four weeks. Let's have it right now. Let's move into some of this active shooter stuff. That's definitely on the rise. And what's your opinion on why is this happening? Guns have been around forever. Way before me or you came around.

There were an abundance when I was growing up. We didn't have this problem when I was growing up. Why is this happening so much more frequently now? Is it because lack of human interaction and kids are desensitized? I'll just run through some of the things that have over time made me go, huh, fascinating.

I heard an honor shame researcher who studied honor shame cultures that are different than the culture exists in now made a compelling case for fist fights in school used to serve as pressure release valve on a system. When somebody shoves another kid, you remember like back in high school, everyone got there and ran and watch was going to happen. And you heard another shoves another kid, you remember like back in high school, everyone got there and ran to watch what was going to happen. And you heard another kid, hit another

kid, it was visceral. You felt it was real. And I don't want none of that. Or occasionally people like, I want a lot of that. And right, and those kids went to Jiu Jitsu, whatever. But there was a collective visceral, like a releasing of that valve. Right as I graduated high school, getting a fight at school across the country, you go to jail, they'll rest you, take you out. So my son, the idea of getting in a fight in school is insane, it's madness. It's a trip to the jail.

Here's a very different opinion. Now, I'm not saying fighting in school is good. I'm saying that we did a good thing, and over time, we allowed this pressure valve to build up and build up and build up and build up. And then the pervasive sense, another study, and I think this was out of the FBI. They took some kids who had just grown up

and never handled weapons, but grew up on first-person shooter games, and they were deadly. They were incredible. Because their heart rates didn't change, they didn't have the trigger impulse, they just were able to through their targets. And so it may be that we've got a generation of kids that are skilled in, like that's a picture in their head

that wasn't in my head. I was playing Mario Kart, right? Or Donkey Kong, right? And a third one may be, they were everywhere, but there wasn't this, like, now I'm getting on a limb here, but I just have to imagine there's a romance to media violence that didn't exist when you and I were in it.

And the stories you hear from active shooters that the first time they pull a trigger and it hits somebody, there's a, oh, this is real, right? This is a very real situation that I was in a fantasy, I was in my head, I was in a, this isn't a movie, this is, I'm saying, it shows the detachment from reality. And then, you can't help that and throw into a box and so they're not realizing what they're doing

until they're right. I think very few. I think very few. There's, I've come to believe I've just seen with people. I don't, I don't, I think there's less evil than we think there is. I think there's people who end up on divergent paths. And yeah.

But again, it could be the mental health crisis and end of this, end of this, end of this. And I've got an outlet for this and I've got all these media outlets putting just gas on it and putting gas on it. And here we are. I don't know. I know here we are.

That's what I'm thinking. What I do believe is this. I think it was Thoreau or Emerson, one of the greats, I'm gonna butcher the quote here, but I pity the young adult who never fired a weapon as a kid because he never understood the extent of a man's rage. There's something about sitting with a kid

and teaching them firearm training. When you watch them pull a trigger the first time and it ripples through their body, that respect is instantaneous. Do you think that they respect that? The kids I've been around, it's a whoa, right? And so it's before there's a bravado to it, it's before there's a yeah, it's before any of that. It is, this is a powerful tool. In it rattles through a kit,

I remind him with with comic regularity about the dangers of, I don't have to tell my kid, my son, he knows, he's seen it, right? He's helped me clean a deer, he sees it, he's felt it, and I still remind him and I still have guns and say, I still have all the safeguards at my house, but I think that training kids seem as defensive driving, right? If we train kids, this is what happens here.

It sounds counterintuitive. You know, you tell me, train every kid, yeah, I do, because I think it elevates a respect for it. People don't play with stuff that they respect. There becomes a safety element to it. Again, you divorce them from reality, and then someone finally turns 18 or 21 and they go get that gun and they go take that gun. They got all this anger and rage and now it's out on the street.

I don't know. Yeah. I've made proof to be wrong with how I'm raising my son, but it's a deep topic. You know, I don't think anybody is. What do I think? What's happening? I think it's a, I think it's, I think kids are desensitized. Okay. Nowadays it goes back to your loneliness thing. But desensitized from I think watching all the John Wick movie like,

from their desensitized from the video games, I think they're desensitized from the, from, I mean, I, I'm'm not I don't watch much TV, but Walking Dead, right, you know, I'm all about shooting some zombies but When we're watching that and I see you know, I see a guy pick up a bat with spikes in it and beat a kid to death in the head Yeah, you know, and that's just that's that's acceptable. It's entertainment. That's TV. Yes, and we're worried about We're we're over here worried about offended people Right, I don't want to get into it

But you know what I'm you know what I'm getting it. We're worried about this But over here we have a kid getting his face beat in and it looks very real. I've seen that, you know, it happens and it looks very real. And they're seeing it over and over all the time, video games, movies. It's a detachment from reality, right? Yeah.

And I think there's, and then in the social media, and the loneliness, and you don't interact with people, you don't go through a checkout aisle anymore, you don't, all of that. I noticed things changing in the military when we started moving towards drones. Is it the attachment from the violence, right? Well, you have a detachment. There's a,

there's that personal attachment is gone. You know, before we would go in an operation, we would go and we would meet the pilots that are going to cover our ass while we're taking down the target on the ground. And there's a personal connection there. Well, as drones came in, you don't have that personal connection. You're talking to somebody who's in the desert in Nevada, who's controlling a drone that's flying over Afghanistan. They don't know. They don't really give a shit about you, because there's no personal connection. I think that a lot of this stuff is happening because there's lack of personal connections.

I think that between the violence that's seen everywhere and how graphic it is nowadays and the lack of human interaction is desensitizing kids and they don't value life the same that we used to. So, can we agree that, not me and you, but I think collectively, I'm asking just this out loud. If we could agree that, because what I tend to do is I hear that and I want to say these kids have a character issues or they got moral issues. It sounds to me like it's less character moral issues and there's a set of skills that

we as the adults in their world have not imparted on them. And if we can go back and I go back, it's just such... We've all the parents. But as if, yeah, parents, I mean, lack of personal connection within the family because you got to dinner, you got to lunch, you go to the mall and you see parents

glued to the phone all the time. You know, just like you're saying it two inches apart. And here's a thing though, my six year old daughter, if I'm in there scrolling on my phone, she says, hey dad, look at this picture. And the picture's like of, I don't know, dragons and wolves. I don't know what it is. It's some world she lives in.

Sometimes I don't know what she's talking about. I don't wanna look at it. I'm trying to look at something on Instagram. And I'll scroll and go, yeah, that's cool, honey. That looks nice. And she'll say, that look, I'm going to look at, I'll go, I'm scary, and I'll go back here. She doesn't have the verbal skill set, the cognitive capacity to say, hey, man, I'm growing up quick. I'm more important than that. What she thinks in her little six-year-old body is That screen is more beautiful and more important than me

Something about me is less than that and I need to fix that because dad Dad's supposed to love his daughter and he loves that more than me. It must be wrong me Right in parents. It's it goes back to us. I've got to teach my son the skill of this is real life This is what real life looks like and we could get is esoteric is Commercial farming like taking death out of our lives on a daily basis I put that's in the chapter in this book like we distance ourselves from death so much We outsource funerals we outsource our food we outsource anything. It's uncomfortable

And we create this bubble around us. And I love comfort, man. I like the weather chairs. I like air conditioning. I like comfort. But I got a head back in the discomfort back into reality, right? The world doesn't care what I feel my truth is. This is how truth is, right? And yeah, I think you're right. I think the kids get so separate from reality and consequence and truth that, man, I'm angry. I'm just so enraged and this is how I can solve this problem or this will stop the hurt, right? Yeah. And man, then you're off to the races. I think some of the cyberbull bullying and shit plays a part.

Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, it doesn't stop. It doesn't stop. And then there's just the pile on effect, man. Yeah. I mean, that's absurd. These kids are going on. That's right. Nowadays. And again, they're kids. Yeah. And we don't let them buy cases of beer and we don't let them drive and we don't let them fill the blank, like giving these stupid boxes and say, make good choices, man. I just, they gave my granddad, he passed away a few years ago,

he was an amazing man, World War II vet, he was an awesome guy. When he was a little kid, they gave him cigarettes because it kept kids calm. They gave him cigarettes? Yeah, it was like, I gave him a cigarette. Calm down.

And now we know that's insane. I'm confident that that's how we'll look back and be like, you'll just gave children these portals to, yeah, we did, that's what you do. I'm confident of that. I hope you're right. I mean, it starts with us. It starts with us.

Yeah, well, I mean, you're doing it. That's it. Yeah, we'll see, man, it's tough. It's tough. It's hard to women time to let us. Yeah, well, I mean, you're doing it. That's it. Yeah, we'll see, man, it's tough. It's tough. It's hard swimming up to that stream. What about suicide, man? You do a lot of vets. What about it?

What are you here? What are you seeing? I see a lot of my friends dying because of suicide. Yeah. Because they're unhappy. And now I see that spilling out into the masses. And that's our killing themselves for very different reasons. What do you think there? I think there's a couple of reasons. I think one is the inability to reinvent yourself. I think is a big thing, but it's not really discussed a lot. I think a lot of people...

It's definitely a lot of past trauma, but also especially for people that came from kind of my sector of the military and the special operations world. I mean, you're... There's nowhere else to go. You're at the, you're at the tip of the spear. You are the best of the best. And then when you leave, none of those skills. You just, you just dance selling insurance, man. Yeah. Yeah. You literally are. I became a real estate agent on the field. There you go. Filled miserably. Yeah. But I think it takes, and even not even in just that sector, but there's a feeling you get being in war and combat when you're engaging, being engaged, and you're not ever going to feel that again, you know, and I'm not I'm not saying necessarily it's a good feeling, but it's a did it to you. Yeah, can I can I get beneath that? Yeah

Going back to an original conversation we're having earlier I have to imagine Something is cheesy as the connections I have still to this day, I'm in my 40s now. To the kids that I played high school football, Super 5A, high school in Texas. If I saw one of the, if I heard the name of one of those guys, I'd be like, yeah, maybe give them a buzz,

something to call, right? Guys, I've be like, yeah, maybe give them a buzz, something to call. Guys, I've talked to 20 years. I still feel a sense. I can't imagine the exponential difference of camaraderie and connection. So I can imagine being in a room or being down a hall on the bolts or flying, but it feels like beneath that,

there's a level of trust. I'll never forget my buddy as a seal. I asked him to just had a thought. Do you love the guys you were on like on mission with? Not romantic. You want to date them but you love them and you said something to the effective. It was a unfathomable, connective love. It was a deep, unique love that was that I know for a fact he will die for me. And that is something that is hard to replicate in a suburb, you know, four years later. And I wonder, unplugging people from that level of camaraderie. Absolutely. Is that it ultimately,

because then that's a set of skills, then I've got to teach men and women, you got to go make friends. And I know it's going to be awkward and they're going to be different friends and you've ever experienced, but that ends up being number one. Instead of all this other,

you know what I mean, you got to go plug into a community. It's going to be weird, it's going to be awkward, and it it's gonna, like it is for everybody. I'm trying to get at what are some tactical things people can do, and I always come back to, man, it's gotta be lonely, getting out and coming back, and then also, and I'm just living in a suburb

with a nice house and a nice suburban. I think I should be happy, but I'm missing that hill die for me. I think that goes back to reinventing yourself though too. Because, just rebuilding your community also, right? Yes, because, you know, these guys, myself included, you know, we're proud of what we did. We were the pinnacle of, I mean, it's going

to the All Star game and being picked for it, you know, and then you come home and guys can't, this is something I struggled with. All the other shit is pretty well known. Survivors guilt, stuff, right? And the camaraderie, missing being part of that, yes. I think where guys really struggle and it's not getting enough light is reinventing themselves. Being in the box that up, yeah, I was a seal and I worked at CIA and that doesn't define who the fuck I am. I box that shit up and I put it away.

Yeah, I'm proud of it. I did it. It was awesome. I love to experience it again. It's not who I am. But this is what I do now. You know, and we had this conversation downstairs. I'm not a fucking operator anymore. Now, now I'm a YouTuber. That's it, my son.

I was talking to me the other day and I was like, we were just talking trash. And I was like, dude, I was the dean of students at a billion dollar university and he goes, Dad, you're a YouTuber. And I was like, oh man, it hurt, right? Yeah, it's fun. It's also true.

It's what I do. There's a lot that goes into this. Yeah. And now I have a successful channel, but I reinvented myself. I based my fears. I learned new shit. I learned how to run all these cameras.

I learned how to video edit. I learned how to photo edit. I learned how to read algorithms. I'd all that kind of shit. I reinvented and I invested my time and now I have this. You know, I was able to reinvent myself and I think I was able to reinvent myself

into other communities and learn how to communicate with people that aren't type A's. And so we've got a culture that tells us just be confident, I think it's nonsense. I think confidence comes from accomplishment. Accomplishment comes from taking another step after another step after another step. And you've regained confidence because you took a step and I learned a new thing and I'd open this door then I got to learn these things. Right, so now, I don't know, it feels like there's just this rebalancing of, I'm confident again.

Right, and I think that's the story of life. Because I'm confident in my marriage right now and then something's gonna happen or I'm gonna get old or one of our parents is gonna pass away and then that confidence is gonna get wobbly again and here we are back learning again. It's gonna get back up, gonna get back up, gonna get back up.

Yeah, that to me feels like the arc of life, right. It's kind of get back up, kind of get back up, kind of get back up. Yeah. That to me feels like the arc of life, right? It's a great way to put it. Yeah. Hmm. That's incredible, man. That, the, there's a suicide researcher out of Florida State. Last name's Joyner and he gave me the,

the, not me personally, but he put out a framework for suicide that has proven true over my career. And I, we talked offline, I've done too many funerals, I've been in too many houses, I've cleaned up too many suicide scenes. The heartbreaking suicide scenes, the cleanup were the ones that it was a teenager or a young professional or a veteran who took so much time to carefully set up their scene so there'd be the least impact on the people they loved. Damn.

And they couldn't, they, there was something there that didn't allow them to realize, if I love them that, that this much, that I don't want my brains all over this place. Like I love them so much I'm gonna wrap myself up in three shower curtains and this and this and this. They love me too. Couldn't see it. And Joyner provides this framework that is, do you have the means? Have you practiced? Do you know how to do this? Do you know what you're doing? I think the framework is you have opportunity, right? Do you have a gun?

Do you have the pills? Do you have a thing? Can you get over that hump? Can you actually do this? Every cell in the human body is designed for one thing. That's to get to tomorrow. Can you override that system? And I think that's what makes military folks particularly lethal is they've practiced

overriding their innate systems. They go into challenges right instead of our natural inclination to move. And the third one was just like a lead weight in my chest was perceived burdensomeness. I think that's the three of it. But I know the burdensome one is accurate because it weighed on me for a long time. It's people who start to think not that I don't want to hurt anymore than I'm frustrating, people would be better off if I wasn't here.

And that felt like something I could speak into on the outside, speaking in. Like, the other stuff may be true, you are not a burden. The world isn't going to be better off with you, not here. That means we're going to have better off with you, not here. That means we're going to have to walk through discomfort together to get you on the other side

of confidence, of skills, of reinventing yourself, of getting a new community, but you're not a burden. Like we got to work through that one. And over and over. I just want this hurt to stop. And I'm tired of being a disappointment. I'm tired of not being in my parents' house. I was going to be I'm tired of letting my wife down. I'm tired of being a disappointment. I'm tired of not being in my parents' side. I was going to be, I'm tired of letting my wife down.

I'm tired of drinking again and drinking again. And I would just be better if I wasn't here. And that tends to be the message. If I can point on that, you're not a burden, you're not a burden, you're not a burden. And then I think we're going to do it. I think we're in an oxygen tank. We talked about right through beginning about hope.

Like end of time sells. It just does, man. Yeah. And I mean, if you, the climate's gonna kill us in 25 years, the Republicans' sins are gonna kill us in 25 years. China's gonna kill us in 14 years, the Republicans, kids are going to kill us in 25 years, China is going to kill us in 14 years, Russia is going to kill it. The only news that makes its way through our ecosystem is ends here.

Yeah. Why does anybody want to be a part of that, man? That's a damn good question. I don't want to be a part, right? And so either we got to call it, right? Yeah, like time's up, everybody. I don't think to be put, right? And so either we got to call it, yeah, like times up everybody. I don't think that's true. We have to say, let's do something different, right?

Let's change an narrative a little bit. And there was something unifying about, you know what, let's just go to the moon. Let's go there, right? Let's do some things this way. Let's stop evil here. Let's unite over some things. Let's unify over some things over a common shared purpose. Other than they're gonna kill us, this is gonna kill us, that's gonna kill us, we're all gonna evil here. Let's unite over some things. Let's let's unify some things over a common shared purpose other than they're gonna kill us

This gonna kill us that's gonna kill us we're all gonna die I don't be a part of that man, and I get the impulse to just be like, do you know how? You know me? Yeah, I know exactly what you mean Well to kind of wrap things up actually first. Do you think? There's anything else that's contributing to the decline of mental health that's going on right now? I think if there's one chief failure of the mental health community, and of which I'm a part of, so I think one of the things that we have not done a good job of is over the last 150 years, but especially on the last 25, last 20, is we've

convinced people that if you get your thoughts in the right order, then you'll be mentally well. You'll be healthy. You've got to get your thoughts in the right order, and that's the exercise. And that is part of it. But we have completely discounted the importance of doing action, behavior change, just doing things differently. And so I can think about thinking about things all day long. The research is super clear about the benefits of exercise. On your cognitive awareness on your mental health, there's some really good stuff on eating well. There's some really good stuff about going to be with friends even though you don't want to.

I just want to go to bed. I got a rule in my house because I'm an introvert and I tend to just kind of huddle up a little bit. If somebody invites me to go watch the fights and my first thought is, they just wanna go to bed, I have to go. I, I, it's a non-negotiable you gotta go. Because I know I've never gone to watch the fights

to the group of guys and come home. Sad that I went. It's always good that I went. Even though I stay up too late and I eatin' back at Doritos that I shouldn't have been, the camaraderie and the role. We don't even have to to look at each other we can all just sit and face the TV this way or I wouldn't even have to communicate but we're all doing a thing together so I think we have to stop discounting the importance of

our feelings are important There's their their signals that our body gives us, and they often lie to us. And so I got to feel that stuff cool. I don't feel like working out, doesn't get a vote. I'm going to exercise. I don't, I feel like eating a cheeseburger.

Cool. I'm gonna go eat this salmon that I've gotten the car. Right? I don't feel like hanging out with my friends. I gotta go hang out with my friends. If we could create a series of things that I'm gonna go do, and be conscious of our thoughts, I think that's the path forward.

And we tend to bifurcate, I'm just gonna grind it and kill it and go crush it. Well, good, that's a recipe for, you're gonna bring yourself out. You're gonna start hating everybody. And then I'm the worst thing that ever happened to me, I'm the worst thing I ever did. I'm just a bottle of feelings,

and that's all over me, and that's not true either. And so I think we've got a, we've just sat down, and I almost wonder what therapy would look like if we did it on a treadmill instead of on a couch, right? Like it, that probably makes for a better mean than a reality, but there's something about, let's start acting, let's start changing the way we talk, let's start changing the way we talk to ourselves. Dude, if you're

like me, I talked to myself in a way, dude, that if I heard somebody talk like that to the woman at the register at a grocery market, I'd go to jail. I wouldn't let you get to talk to her that way. And dude, I talked to myself, you suck, you're the worst freaking dad. I do that to myself all the time. And it just becomes the stew that fires off the course on adrenaline. I do this to myself all the time. And it just becomes the stew that fires off the cords on adrenaline and now we're off to the race. So it's, I gotta start doing stuff different man. And I think then you'll start to see the turn be made.

And man, again, our man is pretty optimistic. I think we gotta, we gotta hoot of a century ahead of us. Yeah. But also, man, it just takes a couple of dads, like you and me and people listen to this. What? Because a lot of people already down that road. What?

For people that are going down that road, you know, whether they're in the beginning of depression or in the thick of it, what are, how do people get ahead of it? I think a lot of people wait two damn long before they start to seek any type of advice or help or anything. What, when did they start? Every single faith tradition that I've known and think about worldwide, historical and otherwise,

has some aspect of something we call confession. And we've made confession about saying all the bad things you've done. It's more the act of sitting down and looking at somebody and saying, I'm not okay. And I think it's the great David Kessler, the grief researcher who says grief demands a witness. There's gotta be something that I can sit down and look at somebody and say, hey, I'm not doing all right. That's step one into healing, saying it out loud, writing it. People call my show and I was new to this whole thing

and they were calling in so often. And none of these calls made the air, I don't think, but they would, they'd end up editing them out. They'd call me and tell me, hey, I just cheated on my wife. I don't know how do I have this conversation with her. I hit my kid a little too hard, what I'd do now. I'd fill in the blank. My first question to them was like, dude, why are you calling me?

To a person, every answer was, dude, I got nobody to talk to. I got nobody to talk to. I got nobody. And so it's creating a context, creating a world so that, if I get to that moment, I can reach out and call somebody. Now, you and I live, we just talk, we live 15 minutes apart, right? Out in the woods out here.

We live 15 minutes apart, nice community. It would be insane for you to pick up the phone and just be like, hey man, you don't know me that well, you've got it. But if you come over and help me site in a couple of rifles for a deer season and my kids are playing with your kid and your wife and my wife become friends and you go hunting with me and then you come help me mo my now we're creating a context by which I'm gonna feel okay, saying, hey, tell me about this, man, because I'm not seeing this right.

Yeah. So I'm saying, and we tend to jump into this without building this. It's like trying to do the CrossFit games without doing any pull-ups before, and you can't do that, man. Yeah. So, I don't know, it's kind of reliant.

What do you think about, like, first signs? Should it be, I'm not happy, so maybe you should start looking at talking to somebody or to me, it's to me rage and anger tend to be that's first sign. When you find yourself saying if they would just, I don't care who they is and I don't care what just is, you say that word when you've distilled the world down into a them and an action, that's probably you. Okay. When you find yourself, somebody cuts you off in traffic and you're overcome with rage,

right? Somebody cuts me off and I start down a path, man, my brain, it's just automatic. That guy sucks, he's just a drug addict, he's trying to kill everybody. Over time, I can do the work. And when people say, do the work, it's changing my default settings so that that guy cuts me off.

And I take a big deep breath and I exhale. And I whisper a quick prayer and say, man, I hope you make it to see your wife at the hospital before she goes. I get to pick the story that I'm putting into that car about why that guy just cut me off. Yeah. When I found myself watching the news

and the other day, man, I was driving to work. It was about two weeks ago. It's driving to work. I had a bunch of stuff I had to take. I had wardrobe changes. I got a guitar I was taking. I was taking all kind of stuff. Dude, I left one important thing in my house,

about 20 minutes away from my home, and I just started screaming in the car. Rage screaming, dude. It was at myself, like you idiot again. Then I started laughing because I know. And I called Justin, who's a coach for me. He's somebody that I talk to that he's a counselor role in my life. He's yelling at myself in the car again. It was like, it's it right. But that was the trigger for me. Like I knew, I wanna yell at this high school referee

at my kid's little league game. That is not a problem with him. That's a problem with me. It's a freaking little league game. Why am I so mad? Every time I see Joe Biden's face, I want to, that's me. That's on me, right? He doesn't have the power to enrage me that way. I'm not going to give that up. So what is it about my world that I, right? So it's taking ownership of how I feel and rage and

disconnection is off. That's the other one is people usually do this. They go at you or they run. they disengage. And if my wife comes home and I feel myself just want to turn or I just head into the bathroom or men are notorious about wife comes home and I'm just going to go spend an hour in the bathroom, right? I'm just going to close the door and turn the fan on and just hang out for a while.

That's just disengaging, right? What is it about her? My two kids come in and they're a lot,'re loud. I'm just gonna get away like those are signs It's it down somewhere that you love somebody trust or professional and just say I'm I'm finding myself Disengaging from life. I'm finding myself wanting to swing and hit everything which means I'm activated And I shouldn't be activated by my life. All right, those are a couple of ways just to know. Yeah. And there is no like, you know, a Dave show,

that people come to do their debt free screen. I don't think there's such thing as an anxiety free screen. Like, I'm not anxious, right? As soon as you do that, you're gonna walk out in Parkland and it's gonna say, hey, mom's got cancer, right? If the goal isn't to not have anxiety or to not ever have seasons of depression, not to be sad, the goal is can I create a firm foundation so that when those things calm, I can weather that storm.

I got to thrive, I got to gang, I got to get a community of people I can call that can bring me food that can be with my wife and I take my kid to the ER, whatever I got to do, I got people with me, right? It's not to live a non-happy life. I think happy is like cocaine and cotton candy man. It's just wispy, right? Happiness comes in glimpses, it comes in moments. It's not the end goal. That's great advice.

Do you think the mental health, the stigma to go get help? I personally feel like that's starting to go away. And it's becoming more accepted too. Yeah. And again, it's a double-edged sword. It's become so grateful that people can say the words, I'm not okay, right? If you talk to some old World War II vets, I've heard I would have done anything to tell somebody what I was going through, right? And I didn't have, it didn't exist. Like the words in my mouth weren't even formed, right? There was this such thing as depression.

There was just go to work and just go to work. And I would have done it, like I've seen some of those videos that they're just weeping like, man, I would love to have told somebody what I actually did or what I saw and what I experienced. So I think there's beauty in that. My fear is that we were pathologizing normal life. The number of people who came into my office

and said, hey, I've got depression. My dad just walked out of my mom. And I said, hey, it's not depression, you're sad. And you're supposed to. I do, right. You sell somebody, get shot and kill. That's supposed to be hard to digest. Like if you are able to just digest that

and go to the supermarket, why should you go talk to it? Right, so we've pathologized any sort of uncomfortable feeling and made it a diagnostic and made it a crisis and made it someone you got to go talk to a professional about. And so it's a double edged sword. I love that people are talking about it. People are going to get the help they need.

Going to say, hey, I'm not okay. I think it's coming on the mental health community to not throw medicine at somebody. Medicine's important, man. I've had to take medicine for a season. It's not discounting that. It's not the solution to every problem right out of the gate all the time.

It's asking somebody, or being honest with somebody, saying, yeah, your mom died. It's called grief. And you're going to be in a black hole for a season. And that's right, in good, you need to have a community with you, right? You need to get up and you need to make sure you've got purpose in the day.

You've got to do some of these things. You're not broke, man. You're supposed to be sad. It's living into some of those things, right? Your wife cheats on you. You're supposed to be sad. It's living into some of those things, right? Your wife cheats on you. You're supposed to be devastated, man, because you went all in on this, right? It's supposed to hurt and be hard.

And now let's excavate the scene and let's rebuild something new together, or let's call it whatever the thing is, but let's don't pathologize life. Right, yeah. But yes, I am grateful that people, especially in the circles I run in, tough guys who are strong, who have seen stuff and done stuff,

are now able to say out, they've got permission to say I'm not okay. And I think that's incredible. Yeah, I do too. I didn't even think about the other side of that though. I'm glad you're talking about that. It can be disempowering too. Yeah. Well, John, I know you got some,

you're a busy guy. Not good. But I just wanna say thank you, link in your book below in the description. And before you do go, what are you got coming up? Oh man, we're running and gunning. Yeah. They just got the show and about to hit the fall.

So it's the live event season. So we'll be out on the road doing a lot of live events and doing all kind of wild stuff, man. Nice. Wall link everything below in the description. And hey, thanks for feeding my addiction, man. Hey, my foot, there's plenty more that I came from. So, he's become with some insulin.

I don't know how you did it. He's like the best gummy bears. And I'm a connoisseur. They're so good. I'm so good at thank you. Yeah, you're welcome. Thank you. Thank you for our hospitality, brother. I'm a connoisseur. They're so good. So good, thank you. Yeah, you're welcome, thank you. Thank you, Ross and Tally, really grateful. My pleasure, best of luck here.

Thank you, Ross. Thank you. Cheers. It's time to get away in a new Hyundai vehicle during the Hyundai Getaway sales event at Woodhouse Hyundai. The Hyundai lineup of sedans and SUVs has the capability you need and technology and features you want, like the all-new 2023 Hyundai Powseh and Hyundai Tucson. This holiday season gets into a vehicle that will give you confidence with Hyundai owner assurance America's best 10-year 100,000-mile warranty.

Visit us online at woodhousehundayofomaha.com The Bullwork podcast focuses on political analysis and reporting without partisan loyalties. Real sense of day jubu sprinkled on our PTSD. So things are going well, I guess. Every Monday through Friday, Charlie Sykes speaks with guests about the latest stories from Inside Washington and around the world. You document in a very compelling way.

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