The Sevan Podcast - #626 - Roger Sparks

Episode Date: October 11, 2022

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Obviously. Bam, we're live. Jump in anytime. Okay. Yeah. Do what you got to do. Any questions, any thoughts? Roger.

How you doing, sir? You're not just words on a sheet of paper. Actually, I'm lying. I listened to the audio book. You're not just coming from my iPhone. You're a real man. Yeah. Crazy.

That's Caleb down below. Caleb, Roger, Roger, Caleb. Nice to meet you, Roger. Caleb we can we change Roger's name to awesome you want me to go back and change it here don't take Caleb's job from him he loses his job so quick what if

you do it better than him holy cow holy cow hey have you ever done do you only have you only been doing podcasts um like that are like the uh the i don't know what to call them the war guy podcasts like the guys like the guys in the dark rooms with the cigars and the uh things are kind of slowly branching out for me. I've been asked to do a couple, uh, speaking engagements that are just, uh, completely non-military involved, but, uh, for the podcast, for the most part, yeah, it's mostly the preparatory soft courses or, uh, things like that. I just, my package, uh, Gabby Reese and Laird Hamilton just submitted a, uh, that package that I sent to you, that media package to, uh, Joe Rogan.

So, yeah, we'll see what happens there, but mostly it's just, uh, you know, just kind of like lower echelon military. There's been a lot of really cool, uh, uh, support from the soft community. You know, they've reached out to me, you know, and that's, who's that? What's the, what's the, what's that? What's the soft community? Uh, the special operation forces, like the, the tier one military guys. Uh, yeah, there's quite a bit of, uh, quite a bit of podcasts that come from that genre. And some of them are cool because there's kind of like the, uh, the subversive just, uh, vetted guys kind of have like their own stuff. And that's, that's always kind of affirming to be asked to speak uh you know within those circles you know totally affirming i was i

was i just watched your talk i know exactly what you mean it would be like if a filmmaker was invited to speak at a filmmaker's conference it's like yeah they're not judging you for not being the silent professional they're not like he's braggadocio they're not like he's a poser which is always the fear of any guy like you putting putting your head up with a story right yeah exactly and i mean no despite uh how vetted or you know experiential you are it uh you know guys are always like why is he writing a book and it's like man damn guys have you been that guy have you been that guy was there a point in your life you're like fuck the guys you come back and talk yeah you know i mean it's it's definitely like a closed circle thing but uh i think the thing that's really odd about my story is is uh i didn't ask to to write a book i didn't ask to, you know, get tattooed in Afghanistan, you know, all these odd

things that have just kind of landed in my lap and wiggled. I, you know, that's, you know, it's taken me a lifetime to sit and think about these things, but I do think living with risk and courage, I do think that those things create, you know, they're the catalyst for synchronicity, you know, and, you know, the book thing just landed in my lap, you know, in this very odd way, you know, just a friend was having a book written. And as I was retiring, you know, the publishing company that was helping assist in this friend's book was like, you have, we have to write a book about you because they were resourcing me. I was this guy's mentor. Uh, but, uh, it's, it's all just, what book was that? Who was that?

Um, there's a book, uh, it's called never quit and it's on a buddy of mine. Jimmy settles, uh, is in my story that PJ, they got shot in the head. Uh, that's, that's Jimmy settle. So he. So he had a book written. He just happened to have a dear friend of his was a bestselling author here in Anchorage. And Jimmy got back and it was that quintessential story where he got divorced. He started numbing himself with drugs. And he was literally like living in a van down by the river. And, you know, through that process, everyone, all of us were trying to reach out and help Jimmy out. And one of Jimmy's friends was like, let's write a book about your life and try to elevate and just kind of put a spotlight on you.

And, you know, that led to one thing. But but during the process of that book, Don Reardon, this ghostwriter was he was like, Raj, everything you say is so densely packed. And it's so interesting that I absolutely believe that we have to write a book about you. And so think about it this way. I mean, I'm at the point of retiring from a career in special operations and it all just kind of like unfolded and I needed that perspective. And that's where the book kind of came from. It was just completely synchronistic. I didn't try to go and reach out to different publishing houses or I hadn't even been writing anything. or I hadn't even been writing anything. I'd written in a journal just of my own process. You know, I've always been extremely artistic my whole life, but I hadn't really succinctly said, well, I'm going to write a book.

It just fell into place. And the whole book process was really just me tattooing people and this ghostwriter coming in and just hitting record with his iPhone and saying, just tell us a story, Raj. And as I'm tattooing, I'm just telling him stories,

you know? Um, this is, you guys are staring at one weird dude. Uh, he, um, I think he's born in the same year as me,

1972. I was born in 73. 73. 73 oh so he's a young man uh he did um the the youth was wild we'll hopefully we'll go into that the youth was i don't know what was more wild the youth or the um the adulthood but uh he in in the most superficial sense, he became a ranger. Then he got out for a second, and then he went back to square one and did pararescue. For those of you who don't know, it's completely batshit crazy shit. And there are some, this book tells stories of being inserted into areas where there's crazy, crazy dangers in combat and fighting. It's basically shit that movies are made out of. The helicopter goes in, he has to get out. There's a malfunction when he gets out and he's left there for three hours.

And when he finally gets rescued, he has to fill a helicopter up with so many dead bodies that he's on top of them. And it's nuts. It's absolutely nuts. And then as you look more and more into him, he's not even um what are you are you like a you're like some weird samurai that got misplaced like you were born in the wrong era or something he didn't even did he write that book that book is written so when you talk it's so uh your juxtaposition of words you're so unique no one like i could take your voice away and hear a line from your book and I still be like, oh, that's Roger Sparks. I can't say that about a

lot of authors. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. I think my whole life I've been kind of like this in this juxtaposition of dichotomy, you know, you know, I, you know, I grew up in a very, you know, surreal environment and I was the second born. I've got an older sister who's a badass and she took after my father. Still alive. She's still alive. Yeah. She's still alive. And in fact, we get to I'm going to go visit her here in a couple of weeks. But you have to ask that about anyone Roger mentions. That's how wild his life is. So-and-so. Oh, are they alive? Yeah, she's doing well, but she's definitely been a wild child. I guess just a little bit of background. I grew up, and I'm going to purposely try to not go down too many rabbit

holes. So if you want me to go down anything, just please let me know. Brother, I got so many notes and videos and I listened to your book and I don't know whether to go with you on the spiritual side of things or the war side of things. The war side of things is the fun candy and the little boy in me and the spiritual is just what my life's all about. So it's a let go. You go. Yes. I mean, you know, I grew up my father. I've definitely I was born into this odd gray area of living.

And what state, what city? I grew up in Dallas, Texas, and my father was basically a, like a break leg or he was, he was involved in an outlaw biker community that assisted in, you know, the movement and sale of a lot of illegal narcotics and stuff. And my father was kind of like the pit bull of this organization. And, you know, I did grow up around a lot of illicit drug use. I grew up, you know, definitely always kind of trying to understand, you know, what is going on here? You know, what's going on with, you know, you know, this whole war on drugs. And then here it is, my parents have this,

this, you know, whole kind of enterprise they're involved in. And it was very kind of surreal in the coming of age sense, you know. I remember my sister, she used to, you know, I mean, there were bags of marijuana. I mean, marijuana is a pretty harmless, you know, I mean, there were bags of marijuana. I mean, marijuana is a pretty harmless, you know, drug, you know. But at the time, this is like Nancy Reagan, D.A.R.E. Yeah. Oh, I remember it was hardcore. Let's go to jail. Yeah. This is your brain on drugs kind of stuff.

And then I'm growing up around these guys and these are very. This is the gang right here. Right, Roger? He was an enforcer for these guys. Yeah. Yeah. And, and, uh, what does that mean? You don't pay your money and your dad and Roger's dad shows up at your door. Yeah. Yeah. You know, there's, there's a very strict code that a lot of outlaw biker gangs, uh, inhibit. And, uh, it's, you know, you would think that, you know, and, and I don't know exactly what it's like now, you know, but at the time, these guys were very loving. Like there was a very strong sense of code. Most of the guys that helped raise me were Vietnam combat veterans. And just living in this this environment where guys are obviously operating outside of the the the. You know, like they did not, they were very disenfranchised with what America was

and the politics and all of that, but they wanted to honor each other. And, you know, it was just, you know, growing up in that sense was very kind of bewildering to then go to school and kind of have other kids talk about their family lives. And I mean, there were, you know, kilos of cocaine throughout the house. There's marijuana, you know, everywhere. I mean, I remember my dad smoked grass, like, like they were cigarettes,

you know, and, uh, and you had smut magazines on your coffee table next to your mom's art books. Yeah. Like everywhere. I love that. Yeah. You guys have those pens where you turn them upside down. I might have one here. Someone sent me. You turn upside down and the girl's clothes fall off. The bar itself was like nothing but just very graphic, you know, smut pictures, but like laminated over with like shellac or something. But done in a beautiful, like artistic way. And that's the stuff as like a seven-year-old I'm sitting here staring at, you know, drinking my Coke, you know. Yeah. But, you know, so kind of growing up in that environment, riding dirt bikes. I mean, it was a normal thing to ride the dirt bikes. Always with helmets and pads, right? Always

with helmets and pads. Oh my gosh, man. I was, I was kind of, uh, in this moment. Uh, I mean, we would ride dirt bikes constantly and this is, you know, early eighties, you know, and just riding a CR 80 to the mall to go steal Motley Crue tapes. You know, that was kind of a pastime of ours, you know? Uh, but, uh, I mean, I've crashed dirt bikes so many times. I remember there was a time where I crashed my, my, my dirt bike, destroyed the motorcycle and I couldn't walk. And I was about three or four miles from the house. I remember crawling back on my hands and knees. Wow. And, uh, I mean, I'd fractured my hip, had a couple of long bone fractures and that was just the world. I mean, uh, say again. So did that prepare you for all the bear crawls during end up? Yeah, exactly. I think that, uh, just, you know, living life on my own terms, it was more than free range. It was, you know, we would play tag under active boat docks in the lakes, you know, like under the boats, you know, and I don't think anything could have prepared me more, not only physically, but, you know, metaphysically, you know, all of the subcontext that makes us up who we are

for special operations. I mean, it just it groomed me for that environment. The one thing that I had no taste for and I still absolutely do not is kind of like false leadership. You know, you know, you can see it, you know, in the political system that we have now where it's obvious the people that are elected are not in charge. You know, it's just these faces for these different corporations. And I've always felt that in, you know, to bring that back is like to sense that in the military, you know, it was always difficult. And honestly, you know, special operations are the biker gangs of the military. You know, like they are these very elite, very gritty, real aspects of projecting violence for our country. And it's kind of like that George Orwell quote, you know, like rough men stand ready in the night to project violence on those that would do them harm, you know, and, you know, I've never even thought about it till speaking to you guys about it right now. I think that the biker gangs of the military

are special operations without a doubt. You know, there's not a lot of political correctness. There's, it's just all, it's, you know, it's, it's all rubber meeting the road. It's not the pompous military. It's not what you want them to be. They're the guys that you call when when you really want shit to happen. You know, if you want that guy to go there in the middle of the night to do those things, those are your guys. And, you know, I mean, I had a really difficult childhood with my physical health. Just to be clear to another surprising thing, your dad wasn't abusive. No, that's what that's what really is a very violent man. Yeah, I mean, he was in the pain.

He was in the pain game. Yeah. Yeah. And he was very quick to violence. But I mean, he grew up in the penal system, you know, in County jails and in prison systems and, uh, violence is the, the love language. Um, I mean, a lot of the, the more surreal things that inhibit my subconscious or my, you know, my dad was an alcoholic, you know, and, uh, you know, just like a lot of people that compartmentalize violence. What was his drink? Uh, you know, he would drink Coors like it was water, you you know my dad too did your dad ever get into the generic beer it was just a yellow can and it said beer on it no no remember those Coors was his flavor man you know uh and this is at a time they didn't even

have Coors Light then you remember in the tops you just ripped it off and threw it on the ground exactly I mean this is at a time where I could ride my bike my banana seat sears montgomery bike to the gas station and buy him cigarettes and beer you know and on the way home you know you crack when you're like why is dad dad like this stuff so much you drink one and 30 minutes later you're like wow that feels kind of cool you know but uh just a total different time and era you know but uh roger what's your earliest memory of violence? Do you have one? I've seen some violence. Yeah, I mean, I wrote about it in the book, you know. You know, I've always viewed violence as this emotion, you know, it's like I think in the book I refer to it as a wet blanket.

like a, I think in the book, I refer to it as a wet blanket. And I just remember feeling overwhelmed by seeing my father project violence. You know, there were other times as a kid, you know, I grew up, you know, riding bicycles and dirt bikes was freedom to me. You know, like we didn't have the internet. Hell, we didn't even have, you know, cable TV at the time. You know, I mean, this is. You were lucky if the newspaper made it to your house. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, it was just Lord of the flies, you know, and I was outside next to a freeway overpass one time and I was just, this is like eight o'clock, nine o'clock at night. Hell, it might've even been like 10 PM. I don't even remember, but I was like eight or nine years old and I was riding next to this freeway and, uh, I was underneath this overpass and I heard a loud crash and explosion almost. And I turned around and

less than 50 feet to a hundred feet from me, there was a T-bone intersection where a car was kind of getting off the freeway. And then there was like a group of kids that were kind of like stopped waiting for this car to go by. But this this car directly T-boned them. And the group of kids, the group of kids in the car. And I rode over to the accident and you could smell the alcohol from the wreck. wreck. But, you know, when violent vehicle accidents happen like that, you just smell like hot metal and oil and, you know, like radiator fluid. And you can also smell alcohol. I remember opening the car door and the guy kind of slumped out. And I was just like eight to 10 years old, but I helped kind of pull this guy out of the car. I was afraid the cars were going to

catch fire. And you can feel the heat because I guess the engine casing, you know, they had cracked and all the heat from that mechanical, you know, combustion of the engine was coming out. And I was afraid the cars were going to catch fire. And I pulled him out and he was still alive. And he kind of crawled over away from the wreckage onto the side of this curb but he was obliterated drunk and this is just some stranger i had no idea who it was and um inside the other vehicle were all these teenagers and they were all dead from what i could see you know like they were you could smell blood man were they mangled yeah they were really twisted in the wreckage and both of the vehicles were kind of turned into one kind of heap of just hot metal. And, and, uh, I remember, you know, trying to access them. And I was just,

again, I'm just like an eight or 10 year old kid. I don't know what's going on. I don't know if the other vehicles are going to come off the freeway and hit us. And there's not a lot of traffic at this time. There's no stoplights. And we're in kind of like a rural area of where I lived. I mean, I lived in a small town called Watauga, Texas. And there were dirt roads that led to the freeway system. You know what I'm saying? And this was a paved road, but there was no traffic. And I just remember, you know, I mean, that is not man fighting man, but that violence, that mortality, you know, that that view of that mortality was really intense. First dead body, first dead body you ever saw. Yeah, without a doubt.

And just to smell the hot metal and to smell the blood and just there were people moaning, but the wounds were obviously like like non-survivable, you know. And I remember I rode my bike home. No one ever came. No one ever came, man. You know, like I'm just sitting out here and you left before even the ambulance and the police came. I don't have cell phones. There's no call box. There's no anything.

I don't have cell phones. There's no call box. There's no anything. I mean, this is like 1979 or, you know, maybe 1980. I have no idea. And I remember I was just disturbed by the fact that that guy lived and the other people had died. And it was just like this weird sense of like, what the fuck, man? And I remember I wrote. You knew whose fault it was. Even then as a kid, you're like, fuck, this guy's fault. Oh, 100 percent, man. 100 percent. You know, and that guy was just sitting there. And I remember riding my bike home and I got home and I told my mom and dad and I was like, I saw a wreck out there and I think there's people dead. And my mom was like, are you OK? And I was like, yeah. She was like, OK, well, we love you, honey.

You know, it's like good night, you know. And I mean, it was my entire childhood was kind of strange like that to where it wasn't. There was no abuse. There was always support and love. If I wanted to talk or ask about anything. They were they were more than willing to engage me in an honest way. And all of the men that I was around, these somewhat violent outcasts from society men, you know, all these guys were Vietnam veterans. And I mean, he's got one of my dad's best friends would break out in hives, like in this, where he wore his flak jacket in Vietnam.

I guess he was sprayed with the foliant, but he would break out in red hives on his body and uh he would have somewhat like psychotic breaker episodes where he'd go into the the bathroom and you know kind of have these fits of rage but your house like you yeah at my house and talking to his demons yeah and and uh these guys, I knew that they would literally, uh, kill people for me. Like I,

I knew that these men loved me more than they loved themselves. That's bad to get sprayed by stuff that removes leaves from trees. That's not good. Yeah. They've gone on to find out, you know, that, you know,

obviously agent orange and things like that sprayed on people, you know, you know, all this late stage, even if you're in the, not getting actively sprayed on, that affects everything about your lymphatic system, your endocrine system. A large portion of Vietnam veterans that were in areas of the country where this stuff was sprayed, they all developed type 2 diabetes, very odd cancers. you know they all developed type 2 diabetes you know very odd cancers um you know in large part you know the the larger context of where these men were disenfranchised was being drafted to a war that made absolutely no sense and they had to survive that by doing

very dark and odd things uh you know just to survive that for themselves but then what's real after that you know the brotherhood of the guys to your left and right that's you know and and coming home to a very you know odd civilian world where people are calling you baby killer and you just tried to survive your experiences does any war make sense to you you said they went to fight a war that didn't make sense. I'm wondering. Yeah, I mean, I mean, sure. You know, it's like you can look at, you know, it seems like World War One was an absolute shit show of politics. But, you know, World War Two seemed very real. You know, I mean, like like there may be even a little late to the game. Maybe even we were a little late to the game. Yeah. Yeah is that a truth is a truth until it's organized you know and and uh you know projecting violence to solve

problems is always a horrible thing but human beings i mean we're we're basically upright monkeys you know and we just replace rocks long ago, you know, and, you know, I think that wars are just, however, you know, the reasons and the politics behind them convoluted to the point that there's no truth. You know, it's like you never understand what you need to believe. And so the only truth that really exists in war are men trying to survive it, period. When you see technology surpassed man do you mean that all of us can go to the storm by a cigarette lighter and burn down our city if we wanted to but none of us could start a fire if we were left upon our own accord

i mean that is that an example that's a way of thinking about it uh but uh then technology's left us way in the dust yeah i mean i guess a good example of that is just with predators and Reapers, right? Like when you can fire a missile system from a flying video game and kill 20 or 30 civilians, you know, or just kill human beings, you know, uh, you know, there's, there's moral injury to that. There's, there's, there's things that are going on that, you know, we have not evolved to try to process that psychologically. And so you just don't, you know. The killing of human beings, we're not evolved to process that. No, no, no. We are evolved to project violence like one-on-one with another person.

But I mean to process the effect afterwards. Correct. I think that violence has been a part of human nature since the beginning of evolution and time, right? There's no normal people who kill other people, maybe. I don't know. That's a pretty interesting statement. It's tough. That's a pretty interesting. It's tough. It's tough. You know, I just, you know, we are we are human animals. And because of that, sex and violence are a part of our reality, you know, and unfortunately, you know, it's like when we have, you know, you know, we used to, you know, we evolved from tribes, you know, where you have 30 people and then now we have cities and countries, states, you know, and so we have to it's very obsolete.

You know, the things that we're fighting for, you know, even, you know, when you think about Afghanistan, that we're fighting for our freedom. You know, things are very convoluted in that sense. You know, the people that you're fighting are uneducated, you know, third world country people are who you're fighting. You know, you're fighting those organizations that have projected violence on us as a country that operate as a threat to our country. And on the flip side of that, there are people who live day to day to really survive and are thankful for fucking everything. I'm not defending them at all and in the country that's attacking them is 50 of the people who get upset if their favorite flavor of soda pop isn't at their local 7-eleven as they fucking go down there in their fucking three-wheel uh electric chair because they've lost the ability to walk yeah right i mean it's

kind of a trip they're the retards they appreciate life we're the smart guys we fucking go out of our way to destroy our lives correct yeah and i mean that just shows how powerful our country is i think i was i was talking to a friend about this you know it's like you know we look at uh levels of obesity or just of of you know just all these problems that we create within our culture of western america right? It just shows how powerful our country is. You know, it just shows absolutely that we can have access to the point of ignorance. You know, when you go to these third world countries and you see, you know, just the rates of, you know, sexual abuse and all these, these horrible, you know, humanity problems, you know, just,

you know, like truly, you know, brutal societies that operate under very brutal, you know, strict guidelines, you know. More monkey than man when it comes to sex and violence. Yeah. And it's because, you know, it's like, you know, it's kind of like that Maslow's hierarchy of needs and, and they have the ability, they don't have the ability to create their own problems. You know, if they did have, you know, you know, McDonald's and fast food and shitty choices and, and all those things, they would become us. But it's like, you know, none of us have the answers, but I think that, uh, when I see a lot of the problems in the third world countries, you can see that there's there's a beauty in the primalness of the way that they're living. And the difficulty of, you know, looking at, you know, the problems that we create here in this country or, you know, that we are dealing with from racial injustice to gender inequity,

all these different things. Like it shows how powerful our country is, you know, that you can, you know, go on these fad diets, you know, and all these different things. It's like, shit, you know, you go to third world countries, people are not obese, you know, and it's because they're living hand to mouth. They, they have struggled. They live with significant struggle just to absolutely maintain a sense of daily living. And the luxury of worrying about COVID. It's a luxury to worry about COVID. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and how come no one in Haiti died from COVID? Oh, because they don't eat snicker bars and soda pop.

Yeah, exactly. I mean, when you're like, oh, you know, it's like COVID is going after, you know, obese people. it's like COVID is going after, you know, obese people. And it's like, well, I mean, we've just accepted, you know, that obesity is, you know, acceptable. And, and again, it's just, it's a secondary response of just how powerful our country is that people can be obese and lazy, like other countries that is not afforded that and we can and we can deny ourselves that it's the leading correlate of death and we can we can make up stories like type 2 diabetes when in actuality it's your obesity but we displace it by one or two or three levels calling it heart disease we call it cancer we call it all this other shit yeah and i think it really kind of goes back to you know like the big lie of our generation is

that comfort is success. Like comfort is not success. Huge theme in all of Roger's interviews, his book, his life, huge theme. Yeah. I mean, comfort is a giant lie. And I think that, you know, throughout my life, you know, not that I grew up in third world circumstances, but to understand like where I'm coming from, I never, we never had life insurance or we never had, you know, like health insurance. You know, I never, I never spoke to any school counselor about going to college. My only way out was either to get involved in my father's, you know, work and his friend's work or, join the military and just get the fuck out of town. Can you pull up that, can you pull up that chart again, uh, Caleb, that, that list of things

at a young age, um, this is an important story. It's told in a lot, um, at a young age, Roger, uh, hurt his knee. Um, there was a tumor in it and going through the process of healing that in the process he had to go through, he basically skipped from physiological needs. He never, he, to self actualization. He had the, he realized at a very young age that I don't think most people will realize the entire time they're here in the United States that there's no one coming to save him. they're here in the United States, that there's no one coming to save him. Yeah. I mean, it was very, just deep in my bones. So basically I forget the exact age I was at, but it was right before puberty, you know, maybe 12 years old or maybe 11 years old. I started having really horrible knee pain and this was debilitating pain. And I mean, I'm this kid that, I mean, I would break my arm or collarbone and, uh, you

know, my, I would go home and tell my dad about it. He just pour beer on it and laugh at me, you know, not because he didn't love me. Like he really did that. Like told to join out of his mouth. He goes, you're good boy. Go play in the yard. So like I would crash a dirt bike and I would have road rash all over my arm, just an active bloody arm, you know, with like a quarter of the skin off of it, just embedded with gravel. And, uh, my buddy and his, or my dad and his buddies would be out front working on their motorcycles and, uh, you know, just hanging out, listening to Steppenwolf. And I would just come limping back to him and kind of like, you know, kind of, kind of sobbing a little bit from the pain and uh they would just get a bottle of wild turkey or something or a beer and just pour

over it and like you'll be okay but but he was literally cleaning it because of the alcohol not being insensitive like spitting beer in my face like let me see it you had that on hand more than yeah picking the gravel out of it you know but with hard alcohol to try to like get the funky monkey out of there uh but and i mean it was out of love you know i mean it wasn't i didn't see any of that as as uh you know no spiteful but uh resources it's the resources he had exactly and he was buzzed uh but i mean mean, it was a loving environment. But, you know, I'm growing up from that atmosphere to where, you know, you're very durable, I guess, to use a sense of a word. And I remember it took a lot of courage for me to tell my father that my knee hurt and that I felt something was really wrong. And again, we didn't have health insurance.

And my dad took me to a family practitioner. And the family practitioner kind of did a once over on my knee. And this uh, I remember I just, I felt so dejected and I felt like I'd let my father down. And so for the next year and a half, I just kind of harbored that. And he just said that. Cause I'm assuming your dad, you're six, nine, right? Yeah. Now I'm six, nine, but I was always tall and lanky, you know, like that whole puberty, pre-puberty and puberty. I just shot up like a Norman Rockwell painting. And how tall was your dad? My dad was only like six foot two or three. My mom was long and lanky. My mom was like Cher. My mom looks just like Cher. She still does. And she's-

What is your mom? What ethnicity is your mom? I think that we're all American mutts, but I think a lot of, uh, you know, her last name is Shidel. So there's obviously some Jewish blood in there. Uh, but again, so I guess this is a funny thing. I'm just thinking about that dichotomy. I think the, the, the bulk of my lineage comes from German and Jews. So I think the dichotomy comes from those two, you know but uh um you know you went to the doctor and and he said growing pains and you're like well fuck i guess i'm a pussy yeah did you know he was wrong when he said that were you like dude this fucking guy's wrong but you know it's like you know again these these these people in authority when they say things to us they matter you know and it does

affect us and i was like well fuck man i guess i'm just a total puss. And I renewed, I remember that gave me a renewed sense of like, fuck it, man, like, just work through the pain. And again, like, when I would go to school, like I would walk to school, you know, I mean, we didn't live, you know, elementary school, we live directly across the street from it. But you know, like junior high and high school, like that's a, it was a pull, you know, it was over three miles from our house. And so walking or riding my bike was just the norm. And, uh, at the time, again, I was still racing dirt bikes and racing BMX. And so like, there was this odd, there's something odd about skateboarding BMX or, um, you know, like freestyle BMX. Like there's something very physical about that but you're not

like you're not trying to be a jock or an athlete like you're just trying to do this weird metaphysical sport and so after school i mean we would just the religion was to race bikes and uh i was still involved in empty fields like local empty fields that someone yeah yeah like we build our own jumps and shit and we weren't just little jumping over curves. Like we were jumping like huge shit. I mean, if you watch like BMX guys doing like, you know, huge jumps and stuff, like that's what we were doing. What did you have? Do you remember your bike?

Did you have a Mongoose? Oh, man. I remember everything about it. Yeah. What bike did you have as a kid? What was your first good bike? Like your first good BMX bike? Did you have like a Kermale something? Yeah, yeah. yeah yeah hell yeah so and i was so into this stuff man i mean

because i grew up with my father and his friends cherishing their their motorcycles and these are custom custom motorcycles you know i mean everything is hand built like they would build the the gas tanks out of a sheet of metal you know know? And, uh, but so being around that, you know, I just had cheapo bullshit bikes, but as I started racing BMX, I realized that there's a heart and soul to the thing that you're using as a reflection. And so, um, so, uh, with my, uh, Is that your mom? Wow. Yeah, that's my mom. So she, you can tell us that's a, it's a grainy pick.

I'm sorry, but she's so beautiful. She looks just like Cher. But I'm like a really ugly male version of my mom. Is that her bike? No, that's my dad's. Yeah, I'm guessing. I mean, you can see there's like a 70s V-Dub Beetle right there. That's the home that I grew up in right there.

Yeah, we had the Beetle too. We had had the 69 beetle, my parents' first car with the, with the, with the rack on top, that steel rack on top. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, but, uh, I mean a very loving childhood, but you know, I put that picture, I think that's an Instagram photo of my, my mother and my, my father's motorcycle, but those are the things my dad cherished. And so just to sense how much love my dad had both for my mother and the motorcycle, I put that into the bikes that I was racing. And holy shit, man. I mean, I built this bike. It was a free agent, but I remember I saved all of my money, man. We'd go and steal, like, again, this is peering into my childhood, go and steal like again this this is peering into my childhood but uh we would go to the local creeks and these are swampy ass like water moccasin infested creeks that we'd go into

and we would catch crawdads i mean the size of lobsters and uh we would also catch water moccasins and we would catch these things and we would trade them to the kids that had a little more money than us for stretchy hulks and money oh yeah stretch armstrong holy hell yeah i did the crawdad stuff too i mean you find old traps down there and you use someone's old trap and yeah but we would go down there and literally swim into water moccasin nests and we we didn't have those in california we didn't have the water moccasin yeah we would swim out there with a big stick and you would swim out there and you one guy would beat the water moccasin yeah we would swim out there with a big stick and you would swim out there and you one guy would beat the the water moccasin nest and so all these snakes would come slithering out and you would swim like hell to the shore where your buddy's waiting with buckets

and sticks you know with the the you know force you could pin them down and you know put them in buckets and stuff and anyway we would uh we would capture these things then we would trade them uh to all the kids in the neighborhood for money or toys and stuff. And this was like a daily occurrence, you know, and some of these snakes that we would capture. I mean, these things were legendary, man. These things were fucking big. And but I had saved my money and I also was pretty resourceful in cutting grass and just doing all these things. Like I w I was the kid in the neighborhood that would go steal someone's lawnmower and then drag it to a, you know, a neighborhood away from us and cut lawns and then go stash the lawnmower in a

ditch later to use, you know, I'm, I'm that, that kid, you know, if I needed gas, I would just hop into someone's backyard and steal gas, you know? Do you remember wearing your tennis shoes until like they were literally falling apart as a kid and you're like, I just like the soul fell off like yeah yeah i guess it's time and then no way if the front's like flapping like this and shit yeah totally man you know and i remember i was in junior high what were our parents thinking i think it was just uh i'm i'm very thankful for my my upbringing i mean it absolutely has made me who I was.

And I don't think that it was out of neglect. I know that my mom and dad enjoyed themselves dramatically. But there's something about, you know, whatever that is, what do they call it? Like not bulldoze parenting or helicopter parenting, but like the way parents are so involved in their kids now that it really inhibits them, you know? And, and, uh, I mean, I'm guilty of that too. I mean, I've raised two boys and, and it's difficult, uh, because, and I think about this very often right now, my, my, my youngest son, uh, his name is Oz. Uh, he's got cerebral palsy and is nonverbal. He also has type one diabetes and being nonverbal with special needs has type one diabetes and being nonverbal with special needs and type one diabetes. Like I'm very involved in his life and, and, uh, I try not to inhibit him,

but, but I do, you know, and I don't, I don't mean to, you know, yeah, there's my two sons right there. That's Orion. He's, he's a machine gunner in the Marine Corps. Wow. There to the left. This picture was taken probably about four years ago. Wow. Your son's already, your son's already tall. Yeah. And they're both my clones, you know, uh, Oz, my youngest, he's a beast now he's turned into such a super athlete, you know, uh, not nonverbal cerebral palsy and you're training with them daily every day man i mean we work out uh that's our love language we work out at least twice a day give me an example of

something you guys do do you like do you guys take turns pushing sleds or yeah yeah so uh like he goes you go he goes you go yeah yeah so a lot of uh you know uh you know you know two round exercises that we'll do for sets and then switch over. I live in Alaska and it's cool that it is, you know, this podcast is interesting. I had to kind of wake up a little bit earlier. Today was the first day it's really below freezing. I was, today was the first day I came in my office and it was cold, but I didn't want to tell you that because the cold for me is 64 and I knew you were in Alaska. Yeah. I mean, we keep the inside of our house in the low fifties, you know, just because in the winter it gets really cold. I mean,

it could be, you know, 20 below. And so, yeah, you know, basic exercises we do is we, there's a field behind our house and, uh, we go out there with sleds and weighted sandbags and stuff and do very brutal, you know, primitive style workouts, you know, from, you know, warm up, dragging a sled that has half your body weight, you know, just get kind of juicy for about 15 or 20 minutes and then do, you know, we have sandbags that range from 40 pounds to 120 pounds and we do bear crawl drags with them, uh, bent over rows or. How you communicate with him? If he's nonverbal, he understands you. Oh yeah. No. So he's not, you know, so he's, you know, he's not deaf.

He's fully cognitive of everything that you're saying to him. Uh, but, uh, he just, you know, he, him and I, I definitely, I feel we're very connected and we can get into that more. I mean, but when he was four months old, I did CPR on him for about 20 minutes. I, that story's nuts. Why didn't you give up? Is it 20? You know, I mean, you know, you've got kids, you know, it is. It's like, it's that, it's that quintessential mother lifting the car up off, off of her infant child. You know,

it's like the story already started in your, one of my babies was born not breathing and he was gray yeah and i heard the story start up in my head you're the father of a stillborn baby tears pouring down my face my wife looks at me was in the living room of our house and she looks at me she goes what's wrong i go nothing i'm just happy and the midwives were like like don't say shit to your wife yet we're all huddled around right vagina where the baby just came out yeah and and they started the baby back up they put the fucking mask on with the turkey baster and they jump started the kid and color came to him and fucking he was uh um breastfeeding but 20 minutes dude of

cpr and your four-year-old did you hear some crazy stories start up in your head? Yeah, so to kind of paint the picture even better, he wasn't four years old. He was four months old. Oh, four months. Sorry, sorry. Yeah, and so to make this story even more surreal, I was a pararescueman that I just completed training.

And that's about four years of some of the most intense training in the military. And I know everybody says that with SEAL everything, but it's, it is an extremely high attrition rate. And I was a ranger. It wasn't like this was your first rodeo. Yeah. And so I guess to correct you on that, I wasn't a ranger. I was a reconnaissance Marine.

Sorry. Sorry. And it's just all semantics. I mean, you know, always correct me. Yeah, I know it. I haven't written a thousand times. I'm just a jackass and excited. I'm a Berkeley boy. I'm a Berkeley boy. But, yeah, I mean, I was definitely not a naive or new to special operations. I mean, I felt like I'd been metaphysically involved in being some type of commando or special operations troop for 12 years.

I had done that in the Marine Corps. And so at this time that we're discussing, I was paralyzed below the waist from a parachuting malfunction that had happened. And just like my knee, I thought it was just kind of an injury. And then a year after that parachuting injury, uh, I further injured my back, which led to, you know, below the waistline paralysis for about three months. And that was the lowest time of my life. And, and, uh, but again, I felt like I'd been bred for this. I only knew to try to overcome the injury. And I had an experimental spinal surgery basically the day that we found my son. So I had the surgery. I came back home. And again, I'm still paralyzed below the waist. We're moving into a new home. So there's boxes and shit everywhere. I'm like laying on a futon. I literally say moving. You can't do shit because you're paralyzed from the waist down. You're high on Oxycontin because from your surgery from the day before you're just laid out. Yeah. And it's, it's so tough sometimes to get into the story

because there's so much to unpack. You know, there's so many things going on, but we were moving into base housing. And, uh, so I was moving there because I knew after the surgery, I was going to need to convalesce and need help. And so my mother and father were there helping my wife and our two sons unpack this house as well as get me situated after the surgery. There's a lot to unpack with this, you know, and, and, and you're a man who's so used to doing everything yourself and being independent. And now you're left completely, man, that must've been, I tell you, I tell you, you know, one of the most spiritual things that can happen to you in life is to have whatever it is that is

your strength taken away from you. And, and, you know, my vitality was my love language. You know, I could run five minute miles. I could do 30 pull-ups. I could, you know, you know, I was just this unstoppable human at the apex of my, of my, my physical ability. And you're massive and you're massive. Yeah. And so this horrible injury happened to me. And, um, I mean, there's all these things to unpack with it. But at the time that we're of this, this horrific event that happenedcue that, that I've, you know, trained and, and, and struggled through to be at this point in my life where I just graduated pararescue training, which is about a four-year process. And I just got stationed at the team that I'm going to be at. And now I'm paralyzed. And so I had so I had this surgery, uh, we're at this base housing. It's

just like shitty base housing. And, uh, uh, Oh, bye babe. My wife's going to school or she, my wife's a teacher at school. She was just saying bye. Take your jacket with you. It's going to be a cold one. Uh, and so, you know, we're all all my entire family is kind of at my side, understanding how traumatic this moment already is. And my father went to go wake up my son, Oz, who was four months old at the time. And we were, you know, if anybody's moved, you know, it's just, it's boxes and shit. You know, we have a newborn. And so he's kind of like on this makeshift bed on the ground.

But my father went to go wake him up from a nap and he was completely blue, no breathing, no pulse. And so he ran, my father picks up my, my son, Oz, who's four months old and he runs him down to me. Oz, who's four months old, and he runs them down to me. I literally have been home from this surgery, this experimental spinal surgery from the hospital. I've been home for maybe three hours, maybe four hours max. I'm still dazed with narcotics from the IV, let alone the oxy that I'm eating. I remember my father just handing him to me and he's like, Raj, something's wrong with him. He's not right. And I look at him

and he was completely blue. And I sat up with my arms and my, my, my core muscles. I sat up and he handed them to me and he was such a small baby. He was a preemie when he was born. So he was extremely small. I mean, he kind of fit in the crook of my hand from just my palm to my, my, my upper arm or my, my lower arm there. And I immediately started doing CPR on him. And I had just come from the most intense, you know, medical training that I think that you can go through. You know, I'd gone through, you know, you know, two years of the most advanced traumatic medical training that, that in, you know, the military has as far as pararescue trauma training. And so I just went into just robot mode and I started doing CPR on him. And some of the more difficult moments of remembering that I couldn't stand. I couldn't stand up. And my older son at the time, Orion, was just sitting there staring at me, watching me as tears were running down my face.

And I'm doing CPR on my my younger son. After about 15 to 20 minutes, he started having agonal respirations. And that's just kind of like that death rattle that, but as you experienced, you know what I mean? It's like children have an amazing will to live, you know, and physiologically they're primed to survive. Are you crying at this point? Oh man. I mean, it's uncontrollable you know like like as you're doing the cpr tears are pouring yeah i mean it's it's so you're you are experiencing

the emotions but you understand the gravity of the situation where's your wife is she just right next to you oh man this is so traumatic you know because she this is before cell phones man you know and she ran out of the house and we're we don't have a landline we just moved into this fucking house man and so she runs she knocked the front screen door off the house she ran out so fast screaming as she's fucking running my baby's dying i need to call an ambulance yeah we don't know anybody in this fucking neighborhood man this is base housing shitville you know and uh you know when the babies when the baby started doing that that rattling thing um do you recall your first thought were you like i'm just did some hope

seep in did some hope seep in yeah yeah of course you know but but uh uh at the time, you're trained after you get respirations back to stimulate, stimulate, stimulate, because you want the baby to get him stimulated to start crying. And, uh, when he started to do that, you know, he started, you know, but it was, I know, I mean, most of any layman knows, you know, the brain without oxygen for five minutes, you're getting brain damage. Yeah. What were the odds of your dad waking up the baby? I was like, no, you're not supposed to wake up a four month old baby ever. If they're sleeping, you take that time to get some shit done. Yeah. Amazing that he went in there and woke him up.

Yeah. Amazing. Yeah. And it's, it's, it's a difficult time because I think my father had laid him down, you know, and it's, it's, you know, I don't want to stir up any bad juju, but I think that he had laid him down, but what had happened is he had rolled over and asphyxiated you know like positional asphyxia you know so you know you when horrible things is this oz yeah this is all oz my son you know and and uh so you know he and i you know uh you know this story gets even more

surreal if i'll tell you like to make it a little more lighthearted for the viewers. So the paramedics come and there's obviously this very life threatening situation that had just happened, you know, and paramedics come into the house and they're sitting there fucking looking at me. Like, why are you sitting down?

Like, why are you sitting down? How come you haven't run the baby out to us? And they're just trying to process what the fuck's going on. You know, and I'm still trying to process everything sitting here talking to you in the audience, you know, so they take the baby and I give him kind of like a paramedic rundown. I'm like, you know, I'm a paramedic. I've done CPR for 20 minutes. We had agonal respirations at 15 minutes. All he needs is blow by oxygen, get him to the

emergency room, go, you know? And it's like, so they take them. My wife hops in the ambulance very quickly and they leave. And here I am. And I think my mother went as well. And my son, Orion went with him. So now it's just me and my father left at the house and uh what makes the story really surreal so my father we get in my wheelchair i get in my car and at this time i was really into hot rods man i had a 66 plymouth belvedere that was super charged and uh just super fucking badass fucking car man ivedere that was super charged and just super fucking badass fucking car, man. I mean, this, I was. And loud and loud.

Yeah. I mean, one of the things that I grew up around also was, and this is something that I think that we should get into. My father worked for a guy named Big Mike. Everybody was big or little. My father was Big Raj. I was Little Raj. Big Mike was the guy that everybody worked for. And was he a Mongol also? Yeah. So he was kind of like an echelon above everything. He was kind of like at the point, he would always wear like gold nugget jewelry. I think he still does, but just a giant bear of a

man. And he was the guy that he had, had such a powerful physical presence. It was, I was in awe of him as a young man. And my best friend growing up was little Mike, big Mike's son. And so the only reason I had a dirt bike was because little Mike had a dirt bike. And so when they would buy little Mike, an 80 CC dirt bike, little Raj gets one too. And so, yeah. an 80cc dirt bike, Little Rod gets one too. Oh, that's cool. Yeah. And so I grew up in one of Big Mike's passions was NHRA drag racing, like top fuel alcohol and top fuel nitrous funny cars. And if anyone's been around those things, I mean, especially, I mean, imagine what being around that was like as a young man I mean that is so sexual and primal to grow up around drag racing of that caliber I mean you know we talk about toxic masculine culture and shit and I just laugh about that you know I mean

you know I grew up around cocaine outlaw bikers and drag racing, you know, at its most caustic, acidic state that you could ever be in, you know, and I thought it was beautiful. I approve. Yeah. And I just, you know, I was thinking about that the other day, you know, with Instagram, there's a couple people I follow on Instagram that it's all about really the shamanistic power sex drive of drag racing. And I follow this stuff. I mean, just remember like flame burnouts, man. And like a top, I mean, there's something so primal and beautiful, uh, about drag racing and to grow up around that as a kid, I think that affected everything about my persona, but that, and that, so that whenever you showed me that, that had that picture of that, that 66 Plymouth, you know, I was just like, anyway, so, you know, to get back to the story

of doing CPR on my, my young son. So, uh, my father helps me get into the vehicle. We drive the 66 Plymouth to this emergency room, which is nearby. And this is Fort Walton beach, Florida. And to make this story even more surreal, uh, at the time, remember when Britney Spears shaved her head and had this existential crisis? Yes. Yes. That was happening in the emergency room that they took my infant son, Oz into. She was,

she was in there. She was on a TV. She was shaved head in that emergency room at that moment. Oh shit. Wow. Yeah, man. So it's just like the Forrest Gump story begins or continues or whatever you

want. So, uh, again, like I'm this elite level, highly trained, uh, special operations medic, you know, pararescuement.

And now I'm in a wheelchair and I come wheeling in with my father trying to find my infant son and my family. And I go in there and Britney Spears in that fucking circus is over in like curtain number one. And we're in curtain number three. And I remember they were in the trauma, but trying to get an intraosseous like a bone needle into my son's knee. And they're doing like all of these invasive treatments to him. They're trying, they're poking his spine, trying to get cerebral spinal fluid to, you know, because medicine's all a thing of liability now, right?

Other than like saving someone's life on the side of the road, all medicine is based out of liability. So you do diagnostics from top to bottom to figure out in the eye chart, what is going on? What is, why did, why did this infant, you know, have this asphyxia you know occurrence and it was obviously positional asphyxia to me but now the emergency room is doing all these invasive treatments and my son's screaming which is good i want him to scream but they're doing like alien autopsy shit on his ass to do something that is completely non-emergent non non-irrelative, you know, and you know that. Yeah. And it's just like they're trying and there's a lot of harm that can be done with this. And so, of course, that's the whole fucking medical industry. You just oh, my God, man,

it's a fucking shit show. And and I'm so I was so protective as a father. I wheelchair my way in between them. I'm like, fucking stop. stop and of course they call security and they're pulling me off of them and but i was scared that they were going to do a bone uh intraosseous bone uh infusion to his because they couldn't get an iv i mean he's four fucking months old and these are it's an emergency room it's not a needle nail icu yeah and and uh you got no veins on there yeah and so like if you put bone needles into uh infants bones you can ruin the growth plate of their their leg right at that tibial plateau is a growth plate and if you puncture that you can he'll have one and that's where they're putting the io anyway yeah but again that was just a protective mechanism. But my rehabilitation of my back was done in the neonatal ICU unit of a hospital. And I'd torn a bunch of deep sutures in my back and the aggressive way that I did CPR on my son and try to assist him.

son and try to assist him i tore these deep sutures in in my lumbar spine um and thankfully the did you know that that happened or you were too when it happened i was too fucked up and i didn't even care did you stop the the needle going into the bone yeah i stopped him from doing that but it was such a commotion there was so much shit going on again because the britney thing it's just there's too much stuff going on did you take him home that night no no fuck no no so we uh they flew him in a helicopter to uh no one wants to be separated from their kids for those you don't have kids you do not want to be separated from your kid ever correct and so my wife flew with him and then i had to drive again in a fucking car, like a couple hours to the, the, the level one trauma facility for him. But, um,

Hey, did you take your Oxycontin with you when you left the house and jumped into Plymouth with your dad? Yeah. Come on, man. You know, you know, I mean, I was, I mean, I think I might've still been in a fucking hospital gown, you know what I mean? Who knows, you know, what a fucking crazy gown you know i mean who knows you know what a fucking crazy life you've lived yeah how many pediatric your life is chaos with with um your your baseline in some of your situations is chaos and then the chaos begins after that yeah it's fucking nuts and this is something i think that's worth bringing up to the listeners that that and again this is just all

perspective i didn't know these things at the time you you know. But, you know, it's like whenever we experience like mortal trauma, you know, when you when your life is threatened or you're experiencing death around you or whatever that whatever, however you want to interpret that, you know, whether you're sexually abused or you're beaten to the point of near death or someone stabs you, shoots you, pulls a gun on you, you're in a car wreck, whatever that is, whatever mortal exposure that you're exposed to, it's like your heart records that. And it's like it's never recorded. Your what records it? Your heart records it?

Your heart, mind, body, soul records that. You know, like your subconscious, you're imprinting shit into your DNA when that happens, when it's life and death. But when that experience subsides, it stops recording. Like as soon as you say something- I heard you say something. Let me insert this in here, Roger, real quick. I know I'm just an interrupting master.

You said in one of your interviews, the only, and I'm paraphrasing the only time you're the the most sincere you ever are exists when you're in mortal combat and i thought holy shit you can look into your wife and tell her you love her for 100 hours and think you're being the most sincere you are but it's probably not as sincere as being hand-to-hand combat for your life yeah yeah and so so sorry so go on that's what you're saying right that's the hard drives on it's recording you're in the most sincere state you could possibly be in yeah and so everything is is is alive that's going as it's ever going to be right as a lie yeah and uh

so when you think about those moments so say you know i I'm doing CPR on my infant son. That shit is being recorded on the subconscious of my brain. It's just, it's, it's doing that. And when, after the paramedics take him away and I get to my son and I have those moments to reflect, that's all stops. Like all of the, all of that shit just stops at that moment. And, really is interesting is that moment is connected to when the last time that took place. So let's just say like at the beginning of this interview where I talked about, you know, the first time that I was exposed to violent death, you know, like that car wreck as a young kid that I rode my bike up to and saw that injustice of the drunkard that was alive in the whole car of three high school kids are dead. Now, those two moments are paired together now.

It doesn't make any sense, but those moments are paired together immediately. And it's like that hard drive recording of that initial insult is paired with that second one. How do you know this? What perspective do you have? You could see it inside of you? I just feel it. And my whole point of this is I obviously did recover as a pararescueman. It took me two years to recover physically from that paralysis injury.

And you went back to work. Yeah, I went back to work. And it's a long story. You know, I mean, it's a whole book. It's in the book. It's all in the Warriors Creed. It's so amazing. I did recover from that injury and I became a pair, you know, I went back into active duty pararescue stuff and I experienced a lot of very surreal, horrific combat. And what's very difficult and where I became where I came to these insights that I'm sharing with the audience is after these surreal combat experiences. these horrific combat experiences that I did live through, I would have these moments where I was reliving them in a dream, but when I would get to them and I'd roll them over,

it would be my son Oz that I was looking at. Holy shit. And so, again, like, that's that subconscious, you know, connects all of those moments, you know, however many moments those are, it just connects them all and turns them into a jumbled, like, knot of fucking shit. And that's our subconscious needing to unpack these things and uh uh i'll stop the way i see that roger do you know the way i see it what you just said is that is that we're all just mirrors here oh yeah without a doubt without a doubt like yeah Roger's not different than Sevan, is not different than Caleb.

Someone just gave us a name. We're playing this fucking wild game of trying to keep Sevan Matosian together as I navigate to my grave. You're trying to keep Roger together. But really, at the end of the day, me and you are just mirrors each other, just mirroring each other. Man, I would even take it further than that, man. I really feel that when you're listening to my voice, you're just listening to yourself.

Talk to yourself. Yeah. You know, it gets really heavy. And I've always been very into Eastern mysticism, Eastern metaphysics. And I think a lot of that, you know, I mean, shit growing up with Star Wars, you know, growing up with Star Wars and trying to like, what's the force? I remember, I mean, I'm an older guy, man. I went to the Star Wars, the original Star Wars movie, you know, at the movie theater, you know, I remember just, it had such a huge impact on me

and just trying to understand like what that is, trying to bend spoons and shit with my mind. You know, I was that kid, you know, trying to figure that out. And when I had these difficult, you know, you know, physical, you know, adversity of my knee growing up, I mean, we never even completed, you know, talking about my knee, but, uh, later on my knee, that pain in my knee, I had gotten a job at a hospital as a candy striper. Like I would go and feed the geriatric ward. Uh, you know, I'd go feed all the patients. There is one of the first jobs I ever had. How old were you when you did that? Uh, 13 or 14, you know, now listen, people, this is a 13 year old boy around old people, giving them their life. Does anyone, does anyone object to every 13 and 14 year old having to spend three months of

his life um feeding old people i propose it as a as a national bill the cycle of all covid pandemic money throw it all away just let people die to get it and let's start a program where 13 and 14 year old boys have to serve three months feeding old people yeah i mean it was that's not a crazy idea. Yeah. And I got that. What's crazy about that, Seven, is I was driving my parents' car and I got busted by a cop. And so I had to go. At 13 or 14 to your hospital job to feed old people you're driving your parents' car.

Yeah, and so, well, this is how i got the job this is what i was doing at the time i was going to take my my girlfriend and friends at the time to go to the mall instead of riding my dirt bike we were going to ride the car and i was driving the car there and uh i had a learner's i don't even know what i don't think i had anything but the cop was like you have to go to teen court he gave me a he gave me a uh a ticket and i had to go to teen court did you drive the car home from there yeah yeah yeah and so from teen court fucking texas i love it i mean this is like you know not 80s man you know what i'm saying i mean this is you know dirt roads and shit and uh the uh i had to go to teen court and the teen court basically issued me public service to go work in the hospital. And so I had so many hours I had to go fill at the hospital.

And I did such a good job at the local hospital. Everyone in the staff there was like, we want to hire you for this candy striper position. And so I got a job. You even cared. You did your job there good. You cared. You cared about the old people. You even cared. You did your job. They're good. You cared. You cared about the old people. You know, it was just, it was a lesson in humanity for sure. You know? And, uh, anyway, so they started, they started paying me this job and, uh, it was trippy, man. You know, you'd go and feed, you know, basically people dying of dementia in the

hospital. And there were many times that I would walk in there and you, I would be the first person to find people dead. And I remember just sitting with them and just kind of, and like, maybe I'd spent time with them earlier that day. And then I'm sitting with them and I would just think about like, what is life and death? You know, I'd really think about that shit, you know? But so at this time i have this job part of my my duties were to stock the the doctors the doctors uh uh fridge like their refrigerators and i was walking in there and i was stocking their refrigerator with with yogurts and shit like that and uh this one doctor, I'll never forget him. His name was Dr. Molly. He was like, Roger, why are you limping? And I'm like, I don't I don't I don't think I'm limping. And he's like, let's look at your knee. And he looked at my knee and he was like, you have a tumor in your knee. And it was the size. I mean, I remember there was a mass on the side of my knee and I couldn't walk normal. Like I couldn't straighten my leg out all the way. It was kind of like bent like this and I couldn't close it all the way up.

It would kind of stop, you know, short of like collapsing my knee up. And he's like, you have a tumor in your knee. How long has this been like this? And I was like, it's been hurting for like a year and a half or whatever, you know? Did you give him the diagnosis the other doctor gave you? Were you like, hey, it's just groin pains?

Yeah, well, he was, this doctor was like a whole other level. In fact, he was an oncologist. He was a tumor specialist. He was like, you have a tumor in your fucking knee, man. He's like, I need to talk to your parents. What's your home phone number? And anyway, so from there, I end up having surgery. I remember laying on the surgery table.

And this is all within a week or two. I went from, well, this is my life to now I'm going to have surgery. And this is a life altering surgery. Everything that he would say was very grave. He was like, 50-50, this is benign or cancerous. 50-50, you're going to wake up without a lower leg. He's like, the one thing I'll tell you by 100% is you're never going to walk normal again. And I'm just like, I mean, I'm fucking 13, man. You know, I'm just like, yeah. And I was just like, OK, fuck it, man. Like whatever. I remember laying there as they were doing the IV on my arm.

And this is as a young man having this knee surgery. I was like, whatever happens, if I wake up without a lower leg, I'm going to be the best Paralympic athlete in the world. Wow. Wow. I'm like, fuck it, man. Whatever life gives me, I'm going to make this the best I possibly can. And obviously, I woke up with my knee. And I'm sorry, I woke up with my lower leg.

And I was really upset with the level of post rehabilitative care. Like this is in the early 80s. And like, oh, just do like a quadricep fucking static hold. Do three sets of 30 seconds or some shit like that. And I was like, fuck that, man. I mean, I would I was rehabilitating every day at the time. This is before the Internet, but they would give me like this little sheet of paper that had all these exercises in this fucked up Xerox copy. I mean, you could barely tell what the exercises were through this fucked up copy. Military hospitals still do that.

Yeah, and it's just like the quality of the print was so shitty because it was a copy of a copy of a copy. And nobody cared. Nobody gave a fuck. No one cared. And I think i wrote about it in the book but i remember i went after that surgery i went home and i got a piece of poster board why i just want to say one thing why do we have to share the planet with you people who don't care why why why i want to use 10 times as many styrofoam cups myself and just get rid of the thousands of you. Why do you guys get to fly on airplanes and burn fuel?

You guys, fuck off, you guys who don't care. Fuck off. I seriously mean it. I love you to death, but just go fuck off. Just go in a room and close the door. And until you fucking get your shit together and fucking can care, you're handing a piece of paper to a fucking boy and i know it's happening all over the world and he can't even fucking read it you're you're a fucking cog take fucking control of your fucking life and do something better don't please all of you are listening

today the next time you walk by a piece of trash can you just pick it up and throw it away it's so easy yeah and i think that really i think it's right next to the trash can and you're walking with your fucking kids with you be a fucking example yeah yeah i think there's a couple things that come to mind when you speak there is uh thank you it uh i don't mean to derail your story i'm curious you got out of the hospital and you lived to really you know bring your point home i really think the problem is tenderness has to come from pain. Like someone else has to experience something horrific to identify with someone who's gone through something horrific, you know, and it's, that's, that's very important, you know, and it's just, you know, I think Sade said that, you know, the, the R&B singer, you know, shot a song that one of her lyrics is, uh, tenderness comes from pain.

And, uh, I think that's very, very true. You know, I think that, uh, we have to, to identify with something. We have to have felt that ourselves. And that's where that even goes in a mystical sense to what you were talking about before of, I'm really just you talking to yourself. Yes. You know, like, but, you know, like having experienced, you know, these things, you know, that, Hey man, it's, it's life doesn't give a fuck about you. You know, like it really doesn't, it makes you want to care for things that cannot champion themselves. You know, like when I, when I've done CPR on my son, Oz, the bulk of my pararescue career, not even the bulk, the entirety of my pararescue career, I was trying to save my son. When I was flying in the combat.

God, people were lucky that you showed up. God, people were so lucky. With bullet holes ripping through the cabin, watching tracers rip through the floor of a helicopter, I don't give a fuck. Because me flying into that, that firefight or me. Oh, that's a subconscious hard drive. You're going to save your son. Exactly. Yeah. And it's like that I am trying to save my son period. Or even like there's instances as a pararescuement up here in Alaska that, that I've, you know, I've, I've jumped into, you know, plane crashes or people in need on the ground with subzero.

I mean, we're talking like 60 below temperatures. And, you know, we have to fly below the minimum altitude for the parachute deployment. So let's say if you have to fly like at a thousand feet above the ground for a parachute deployment, I'm okay going to 800, you know what I mean? Because again, I mean, my whole life has kind of bred me for this. Like there's not right or wrong. There's just making something better or worse. Like I don't give a fuck about morality. I don't give a fuck about what the regulations say. And that really got me in a lot of trouble as a pararescueman, you know, even as a reconnaissance Marine, you know, from my upbringing of like not giving a fuck about the law, not giving a fuck about what you tell me or what society tells me is right or wrong. You know, like I know that the truth is in the gray area no matter what. And, you know, that really served me well as a special operations guy is like, I don't give a fuck, man.

Like if if you're telling me that I can't jump out of the airplane, if that if we have to be a thousand feet above the ground, I know the parachute is going to work if we go to 800 feet. Hell, nobody's coming to get me if my parachute doesn't open anyway. Like there's not. Yeah, it's just like there's not more PJs coming. I mean, the, the, the likelihood that something's going to go wrong with our level of training and expertise is very minimal, but I'm not here for, I'm not here for me to be comfortable. Like the reason that I'm even in that situation is to save someone else's life. Like I'm not I'm not here because we're in this comfortable fucking world. The only reason that I'm there is because someone is dying or is dead.

And, you know, there's multiple people that are going to die unless I do what I need to do. connection to the trauma that I've experienced my entire life served me in very key pinnacle moments within my career as a pararescueman. That, um, you've been married 28 years. Yes. Yeah. Crazy. Um, uh, what do you attribute the success to that fuck man um i mean i'm married i married my prom queen you know i mean i married uh the woman that i went to prom with hell i went to junior high with my wife you know when i talk about wataga the shitty town that we grew up in she knows everything about it when i talk about my father and the group that he was involved with she knows you know because she were her parents bummed as shit that she married the kid of the outlaw biker i don't i don't know man that's a great question man i have

a very close relationship with with her parents you know uh you know, you know, I love I love her mother and father like I love my mother and father, you know. But at the time, I think that everybody in that town knew who my father was and what he was involved in. And I mean, you got to understand, like in in the 70s and 80s, like all that shit was going on with my father and his friends and big Mike, little Mike, all this shit that was going on. And, uh, the cops never stopped by the house. You know what I'm saying? Like, yeah, there was an instance. I don't know if I wrote about it in the book. Uh, but, uh, my sister, who's a fucking badass, my sister is, is a badass. My sister, who's a fucking badass. My sister is is a badass.

I mean, think of. I mean, man. You know, I absolutely love and idolize my sister in so many ways, like she was such a badass in high school that all the tough kids, you know, like if they were going to like pick on you or beat your ass, they'd be like, hey, are you Tracy's little brother? And I would be like, yeah. And they'd just be like, fuck, man. And they would just walk away from me. You know, like my sister was quick to violence like my father was. You know, I remember seeing my sister, you know, just pick up bricks and beat down like the toughest kid in the school, like the bully, and just stand over him and taunt him, you know.

And I just absolutely love my sister. What's her name, Roger? Tracy. Tracy. Yeah, Tracy. She's been very destructive her whole life, and I don't want to go down too much of a rabbit hole with her, but despite her being destructive with substance abuse and picking horrible partners that are abusive, I've never worried about her.

She's just such a powerful soul. My whole point of bringing all that up is everyone knew my family and who we were. is everyone knew my family and who we were. But I remember when we first started going out, I think that, you know, my wife's parents, Jennifer's parents, they were wild too. You know, they weren't necessarily hippies, but, you know, they smoked grass and enjoyed themselves and had a good time.

But they were much more kind of like traditional Texans where my father, you know, my mom and dad grew up in Michigan. And my dad spent the bulk of his early adulthood in the prison system, you know, for manslaughter and stuff. And so when we moved there, my dad was an outsider. You know, my dad was a Yankee. You know, my dad was kind of like a long haired, you know, hippie Yankee guy. But so he was always much, very much so of an outsider.

But, yeah, we went to prom together. You know, it really sealed the deal for my wife and I is I was I joined the Marine Corps directly out of high school as a way to get out of the situation I was in. out of the situation I was in. All of my friends that I went to high school and junior high with, within two to four years of graduating high school, were all in the prison system for production and distribution of methamphetamines. All of them. All of them. One of my dear friends here on the 101 corridor in california his dad was heavily heavily heavily heavily involved with the hell's angels and taking meth up and down the western seaboard here and he escaped he became a seal he became yeah exactly he went to dev grew yeah very yes very it's very interesting yeah and he did it to escape that the raids from the fbi all that

shit he's like enough of this shit i'm out of here yeah yeah and it's like you just see yourself like well if i stay in this context i'm going to go into this tribe that i've grown up around yeah and and uh what it's just so interesting because that environment is so very similar to special operations whether it's the seals marine reconnaissance pararescue yeah army rangers green berets it's it's a tribe within a tribe within a tribe and and uh did you ever do any cross-disciplinary stuff as in like like we're basically when you were pararescue you would do like a six-month stint with the seals or when you were you would go to Delta force when you were with Marine recon or. Yeah. I have a very unique perspective with that. You know what I

mean? Because I was a reconnaissance Marine. I started out in the infantry in the Marine Corps. At the time you had to do two years in the infantry before you could even try out to Marine reconnaissance. And so they wanted like seasoned more uh you know because young marines are that classic cliche young dumbass fucking marines you know and so they want you to get that out of your system before you even try out for special operations and stuff and as a young even as a young uh uh infantryman a young grunt in the Marine Corps, I was selected to go train with the French Foreign Legion. Wow. Yeah. And I think, oh, that's right. And that's in the book. That's right. Yeah. And that was right. That's a great part. Yes. Fuck, man. That was so severe, bro. Like that

was the most intense training that I think I've ever just how brutal it was. You know, not the hazing of the pararescue, more just the training. Yeah, correct. Yeah. And there's a great distinction. You talk about that in the book for anyone who wants to, you got to read this book, warriors creed. There's some great, it's great. Yeah. The, uh, the, the, the, the Legionnaire training was just brutal. You know, like they didn't, you know, there's a term that's used within the military of hazing. Right. Like so you can't train someone to laugh, to laugh, laugh at them and kind of use them as the brunt of a joke and like physically humiliate them. Like you cannot. That's against, you know, the regulations of the traditional military. Special operations, whether it's SEALs, Rangers, Green Berets, reconnaissance Marines, pararescue, combat control,

those environments are so severe that they realize that they do need to physically torture you. They need to fucking humiliate you and torture you to expose your own version of how you view your mortality and that's it's a very difficult tight rope to walk because the military is so political but what i really love about special operations they don't give a fuck like the guys those cadre that are in those roles as instructors, they realize like they don't want you to go to their tribe and not be the right person. So they're like, fuck the rules, man. Like I'm going to fucking torture you. You know, I'm going to do shit to you that you can't fucking imagine because I want you to survive combat.

Because I want to make sure you're the right person that's going to survive things that seem unsurvivable, period. And so you have to make people exceed their own resolve and their intent. A big part of – Can I just draw this distinction? Combat scars you. Let's use your – it turns on the hard drive. At any point in the training, should your hard drive turn on the hard drive yeah at any point should in the training should your hard drive turn on yeah i think that it should it should touch it you know

i mean but even just training to do those jobs you know like uh you know think about doing a halo drop with 80 pounds of equipment and it's 60 below and there's you know there's maybe you're talking about saving someone in Alaska. By the way, these stories are in the book too. Saving people all over fucking God knows where. Man, it's just, and so just training in that environment is you're exposing yourself to a very high level of life and death, of mortality. You become so inoculated to it. And I think that's a big part of training that has to be done. Like

you have to inoculate people to life and death. You know, I think the real difficulty. God, can that be done? So it's a fine line. And so, you know, we're always looking at, and I know that, you know, your background with, you know, human physiology and training with the CrossFit stuff and just all of your passionate pursuits, as well as probably I'm guessing a lot of the listeners, you know, like, we always try to figure out how to train better and more smartly. And what's difficult, and there needs to be a distinction made, there is a difference between

health and performance. Those are two completely different fucking things. And I always use the analogy of a major league pitcher. Let's go ahead and take someone who's throwing at the highest levels of pitching in major league baseball. They can throw a hundred mile per hour fastball. And that is fucking impressive. If you ever, ever stood next to someone that's done that or stood next to the catcher that catches that ball, you're like, God damn. Like, that's fucking amazing. Yeah, I haven't. But I feel you.

Yeah. Now, if you take a leading like sports physiologist to go in, like, look at that guy's shoulder. That pitcher's shoulder is so imbalanced. Like, there's no balance to his shoulder structure that's performance it's just like fuck health let's make this thing throw a hundred mile per hour a ball faster than is healthy that's kind of not if it's when it breaks yeah yeah and so that is performance and so when we look at high levels of elite level commandos within the military, you are trained to an extremely high performance level. Unfortunately, that performance level is detrimental to the health of the individual.

I mean, any professional sport. I mean, when you start looking at, you know, CrossFit as a professional athlete, that's difficult to maintain. You know, a lot of the guys that do it, they're not, you know, six feet tall like me. You know, there are guys, there are exceptions, obviously, you know, but most of those guys that are able to do that as a career are very compact, durable humans. You know, the guys that can maintain that level of performance are much less prone to the injuries that can happen to them, you know. And obviously, there's ways you can train durability. But my whole point is within elite level,

special operations, it's about performance. And we've started changing the dichotomy of this, changing the, I'm sorry, not the dichotomy, changing the paradigm of this is with these HPO initiatives. So later on in my career, we started developing programs, human performance optimization. And the only way that we got the military to buy off on this is to try to get more mileage out of guys like myself. You know, they just look at it as like, well, you're going to, you're not going to get out because you're mentally or physically broken. If we have sports physiologists, strength trainers,

massage therapists and psychs that live in these squadrons, live in these units to help people, you know, and we sold it basically with trying to get more mileage out of guys. But my whole point when you brought up the whole thing with the military and combat injures people, it does. You know, and there's this whole thing called a moral injury. So for instance, as pararescuemen, we were looking at why do guys mostly get out for PTSD? guys mostly get out for PTSD. What is it about pararescuemen? I mean, just think of the amount of money that's invested in us to train a Navy SEAL. Let's say that SEAL or pararescuemen has over 20 years of service in him. That is an invaluable asset. You can't just replace that

shit. To have that tenureship, that wisdom, and that- Institutional knowledge, the institutional knowledge. You can't replace that shit. You don't want to get rid of those guys. What we found when we started looking at this from a very smart perspective is we don't want to lose someone of that caliber, but we were losing guys because they were rough handling human remains. So, you know, if you rough handle, you know, mutilated human beings, that causes this moral injury to someone that you can't fix. And so the way that we look at it just like if you're training sports physiology well you inoculate yourself to that right like you do super sets you do fucking workouts that

fuck you up worse than the training can do right like you inoculate that that that physiological response to either endurance or strength you know stimulus and so uh we we looked at that within human performance of psychology and we're like well how about we train guys in training with cadavers we we mutilate fucking cadavers and we have wow drag the inside so when you look at that you look at that you're like well you are going to increase performance but you're going to you're basically going to produce fucking psychos like psychotic motherfuckers that there's certain things that you need to be fucked up from and one of those is dealing with mutilated human beings yeah like that needs to fuck you up because if that does not affect you you know in a metaphysical

way you're a fucking psychotic, you're Jeffrey fucking Dahmer. You know what I'm saying? Like that you need that needs to be taboo. But so what's difficult is we had to skirt around that, you know, in the way that the way that I explain this, I'm often asked to speak to large groups of people about these specific things that we're talking about now. speak to large groups of people about these specific things that we're talking about now. And, and, uh, so that never happened. There's no, there's no, the military is not training with mutilated cadavers. You know, you know, we do, we do in ways, uh, we, we do training that's called, you know, there's live tissue training and there's cold tissue training and cold tissue is dealing with deceased, you know, mammals, you know. But again, you have to train in the worst experiences of your life.

You will only fall back onto the training that you experience. Right. We always fall to our level of training. We never rise in those moments. Like you can rise as a human being, but it's kind of like if you were in a UFC fight, right? Like if, if you're at a high level, you know, MMA fight, or you're, you're, you're wrestling someone that has a high level of Brazilian jujitsu training and you are not trained, it doesn't matter how much of a badass you are. You're going to get fucked up because they're more highly trained than you. It's just period, period. And so you have to train people to a specific level. And there's a lot of techniques. I mean, obviously, the scope of your audience and podcast is not in to peel the onion of all the ways that this is done,

but it's very done very similar to way elite level i was looking into you in your podcast and i and i noticed that you had interviewed hunter and uh mcintyre yeah yeah and so i know hunter mcintyre from uh the the crossfit or not the crossfit games but the go ruck games right and i and i am a cadre within go ruck and and that guy's a stud man you know i mean he's an absolute i mean people should study that motherfucker. You know, there's some interesting things about that human being. I agree. But so take his intuition and his insight into how he trains and apply that to

the metaphysics of combat. Because when even at high levels, the highest levels of athleticism with obstacle course racing and the physical test that he involves himself in, think about how arduous training for combat is at the highest levels. you know, training for combat is at the highest levels. We train and are concerned with just the same amount of intensity that he is when he prepares for an event. And we have been groomed and selected for our entire lives to be that person at that moment. Just like Hunter McIntyre at an obstacle course race. He is the right person at that right moment for that fucking event. The men and women involved in special operations, especially as the assaulters, as the pipe hitters

that are the brake legs, the guys that are going in to kill motherfuckers in the middle of the night, they are selected and trained just as well as Hunter is for an obstacle course race, doing what we're doing. And so if you just use your imagination, you know, we train every fucking way possible to survive that and make that fight as unfair as possible to the people that we're going into either kill or protect. And as a pararescue, my job is to, you know know attempt to save guys in that environment so we will be in the stack of assaulters and we're there to if one of our guys gets shot we're going to save their fucking life if we shoot somebody that we want to save and then interrogate later i'll save that guy's life

when things go horribly fucking wrong just take it and like the the the geronimo mission of attempting to kill or capture if someone had been logged we all know that story that helicopter crashed going into that compound there have to be pjs right fucking there to you know either remove the bodies of the teammates or the seals or whoever the fuck is there, we have to be there immediately. And so the job of a pararescuement is to be prepared at that moment and be right there on that fucking X when that happens. That's what our job is. And it's, it's a very odd, it's a different job than being an assaulter, you know,

and I do have years of my fucking life as the reconnaissance Marine. And that's, that's the highest levels, you know, you know, and I do have years of my fucking life as a reconnaissance Marine. And that's that's the highest levels. You know, you know, when people think of SEALs, it's all the same fucking thing. But projecting violence is one thing at the tip of the spear, trying to attempt to project violence on a professional level is one thing. is one thing. But as a pararescueman trying to salvage that and be able to project that or to interact in that lethal environment, it's fucking crazy, man. And so it's like there's, I do believe that the universe, God, the world, whatever you want to call it, it speaks in dichotomy. You know, like whatever is masculine becomes feminine, whatever is violent becomes peaceful, you know. And, you know, having experienced in my eyes what I would consider, you know, the most violent combat that's capable by man, you know, hand to hand fighting in the mountains of Afghanistan, you know, having men begging for their lives and dying in my arms,

you know, attempting to martyr myself and my teammates so they can't recover our bodies. You know, these things, you know, it's like, it's led me to this really crazy life of attempting to articulate those things and exploring, you know, the softer side of myself, you know, the, the, the beautiful side of that, you know, I mean, since my retirement, I've gotten into, uh, psychedelics as a tool. I saw the video. I saw the video just prior to the show. Yeah. And I'm sorry if I sent that to you late, but it was funny. It was plenty of time. Yeah. I mean, uh, one of the inexplicable things about my particular story that I try to articulate as clearly as possible within that my book is, again, I think that living with with courage, again, living with, you know, risk like we all live with risk. Did you want to play that or is this?

I was just showing a clip. Go on. We always live with risk. We all live with risk. Did you want to play that or is this? No, he's just showing a clip. Go on. We always live with risk. We all live with risk. Yeah, I mean, so with living with risk and embracing that risk with courage, I truly believe that that creates this very, very odd force of what we attempt to call grace or synchronicity or serendipity. After experiencing surreal combat, the most violent combat that I've experienced in my 25 years of being within special operations, within two to four hours of landing the helicopter and kind of coming back to ourselves, there was a knock on our door. And this is in the middle of Afghanistan. And it was basically three gentlemen. There was one guy by the name of Casey Neistat, who is one of the most successful YouTuber vloggersgers in the history of the word i think he even helped like invent the term vlogging this guy casey neistat at the time he was just a kind

of a quirky filmmaker uh one of the other gentlemen was named a tattooer an artist by the name of scott campbell there was another gentleman named dav Kuhn, but these three men showed up at our compound and we're in a secret compound. Is this in Bagram? Yeah, this is in Bagram, Afghanistan. 2010. Yeah, 2010. Right. I mean, we're talking four hours of within four hours of. You know, blood, shit, feces, men begging for their lives. Within four hours of us landing to our compound after eight days of experiencing this combat,

these men show up and they want to make a documentary style movie about tattooing special operations guys right after combat i i've deployed a dozen times in the military and i cannot possibly i've never even heard anyone with a story that fucking weird man like that is so i know there has to be a component of you that must have been like, hey, fuck off, guys. And then the other side. There was. I mean, but I was so beside myself with grief and horror. And I'm sorry to the listening audience if I'm – there's not enough backstory to what I'm saying. But just read the fucking book. Yeah, read the book.

No, it's cool. Don't worry. Read the book. This is good. There's plenty. There's plenty. There's plenty. And I'm sorry if I'm – I trying to I'm trying to articulate the story, you know, succinctly.

But again, I've been deployed over 12 times. But the combat that we just experienced shortly before meeting these men. I was beside myself with grief and horror. I mean, to understand the level of combat is one of the men that I was with that I was a mentor to was shot in the head. And we had sewed the round. It didn't pierce his skull. It just stuck in his forehead. Like the round had come up, went through his helmet and stuck in his forehead. And the combat was so severe that we basically sewed the actual lead spalding and casing of the round into his forehead.

So he could continue to save lives that week. Fucking nuts. This is, this is flying into combat where it's fucking surreal, you know, and, and, uh,

this is flying. Hey dude, I know you got shot in the head. We're just going to sew it shut and we'll deal with it when we get back and what's that dude say when you say that to him well i mean he's like what send me home again at the time so i was i was the the nco i was like the enlisted guy in charge of a group of pararescuemen in alaska and we were tasked to go support the rangers the seals and a group of 101st airborne guys that were going to raid insurgent training camps on the border of pakistan and afghanistan like on the border high up in the mountains and over 7 000 feet you had

to take the armor out of your helicopters to get there to fly safely there yeah and so you know to everything about this is so lunatic fucking fringe you know and and uh there's everything that that i could say or attempt to describe it's just it's so hard to unpack you know because the intensity was as high as it gets and and uh on the first mission that we flew, uh, my buddy, Jimmy was shot through the bottom of the helicopter. Now we're going to get men that one is dead and one is dying. No one else is coming to get them. They're going to die in the next 30 minutes. Well, one of them's dead. The other guy's going to die in 30 minutes. Yeah. And this is just one of the missions i mean we flew dozens of missions that week that were similar to this and so to understand how severe this stuff is is you know

this is flying into an active firefight on the side of a mountain where you know you have a guy missing his fucking arm dragging his dead buddy to you and you're hoisting down into that. It, you know, and we were doing missions similar to that three or four a day for eight days. You know, we would fly in and tracer rounds would just come through the helicopter ripping through and it looked like chemlights ripping through the bottom of the helicopter. And that isn't going to stop you from what you're doing. Like you're still going to go in there, you know, and you're still going to attempt to salvage and save those lives. Do you ever get used to that? The first one must be like, holy shit, I can't believe that didn't hit us. Do you ever get used to the helicopter getting hit?

Again, man, you know, it's like, you know, you train so highly for those moments, but I think it's a timeless thing that when you're exposed to high levels of mortality of life and death, that it's just a really weird, magical environment that you're in, right? Because for instance, you know, like if you got shot in the helmet and it just kind of blew out the side of your helmet or your MVGs were shot off your head, or a bullet goes through the helicopter, when you would go and land the helicopter after that mission and you realize you're just like, holy fuck, you know, like. My night vision goggles were shot off my face.

Yeah, and it takes you a little bit to where like guys will run their hands. Like I know that this is just for me personally, but I've seen it in other men. You would run your hand across bullet holes in the aircraft and just touch it, just fucking touch it to try to physically connect with the psychological thing that just happened. Or if, you know, as a PJ, like we flew in and we hoisted down and got guys that were ripped in half or guys that were killed, shot in the throat, gargling and begging for their lives to you. And you transfer them to a higher level of care. And this all happens within the span of an

hour or 30 minutes. And then you're back and then you land and then you land and it's like, you want a Coke or a fucking Pepsi. You know, it's like you, you, you're so far past who you were 30 minutes ago. Roger, when you were dealing with people who were on life or death, did you ever hear shit come out of your mouth that you couldn't even believe? Like you're standing over someone, a strange man that you're trying to save his life and you tell him you love him? Oh, yeah. Or just shit coming out of your mouth. You just show up in full glory that you're even kind of a witness to.

It's a really mixed bag. It's a really mixed bag you know And I mean I think that The moments that you're discussing Like I have a very deep reverence For those moments that I've experienced That with in my life But I feel That I'm haunted by trying

To articulate that to the rest of the world You know like I really Or it might be Like hey you fucking asshole You have to stay alive i fucking came here for you like yeah i mean it's it's a mixed bag because it's it's bestiality meets fucking god the greatest love you could have for a human so i mean you could be crazy cursing at him and fucking punching him in the face you could be i mean guys that have been mortally wounded that, you know, like their chest

is ripped in half. I've gone berserk going on them by punching them in the face or screaming at them to holding them and crying, holding them. You know, I mean, every emotion that you can experience, you experience very condensed within three second intervals, you know. Just massive amounts of coping. Well, yeah. And at the time you realize that it's not the moment to cope. It's, it's, you have to, again, there's not right or wrong, right. There's, there's not, there's not right or wrong that I was taught from my fucking birth, you know, that, that, uh, these men that were violent outlaw, you know,

These men that were violent outlaws, that I could respect them more than some fucking politician that probably fucks kids on the weekends. I mean, it's just like right and wrong is in the gray area. And it's like, all I give a fuck is about making it better or worse. There's not right or wrong. It's like, are you trying to kill me? Well, I'm going to fucking kill you. Are you trying to kill the people I'm trying to save? I'm going to kill you. Even if I have to bash your head in with a fucking rock or, you know, it's like there's just better or worse. And when men are dying, like I've had men, you know, it's like there's that thing of whole there's there's no atheist in a foxhole kind of thing.

Wow. And, you know i grew up about as atheist as you can fucking get and i've had moments where i've looked into christianity but i think that uh when you really see behind the curtain when you really see the horrific aftermath of projecting violence with modern weapons what the fuck that does to people and attempting to salvage that life. I mean, that's as close to God as you can get, you know, to risk your life or attempt to martyr yourself and then attempt to save others in those circumstances. That's as close to God or the universal truth as you're ever going to get. And I think that mankind has always struggled with that, you know, from, you know, one of the difficulties I had was with just coming to grips with my own

grief after my experiences. One of the things that was very beautiful to me was, um, what's the grief, what's the grief, not being able to save people or people or the people you hurt? Uh, you mentioned it earlier. You didn't mention it, but you alluded to it. There's two types of people in the world in a loose fashion. There's people that blame themselves for things and there's people that blame others or outside circumstances for things. And most of the people within special operations, people who are high functioning, like I'm sure yourself, high functioning people will blame themselves. Yes. Period.

And that is the thing that makes you good. That is the thing that makes you have an extremely high level of performance. We're talking about performance and health. That makes you have an extremely high level of performance. But at the limits of our humanity and our mortality, that's what's going to break you. You know, like the fact that I know I should save someone in any traumatic circumstance as a pararescueman, like I'm trained and inoculated to train people who are ripped in half. And when I can't do that, I blame myself for that. Now I can consciously understand that if someone's missing the back of

their fucking head, even if there is the best, I could get them within 10 seconds to the best surgical team in the world. Like that's a non-survivable wound. But when someone's in your, you're holding someone in your fucking lap and they're begging for their lives and they die with that type of injury you inherit the responsibility of that death i don't care who the fuck you are you and a wide receiver just wants you to throw the ball and the best wide receiver in the world will take complete responsibility for catching it he will never blame the quarterback yeah yeah i know that's a much less suit it's a much more superficial less but but for it's it's like yeah i know that's a much less it's a much more superficial less but but

for it's it's like yeah that's that's that's the way that guy went to the nfl every pass is fucking catchable you just put it in there i will get it throw it to me yeah and it's like that's and like if you see someone wounded even if maybe you get there and they're dead you're you want to fucking bring them back to life yeah and i mean again i've got this this psychological you'll take the opportunity you're up for trying to save my son as well so it's like how great man how great is it so you know you that's what breaks it so it's like i can't save that person i can do cpr on my son but i can't save him from an anoxic brain injury. You know what I'm saying? So, and that's what they, I was talking to a psych about this stuff and they were like,

he just laughed at me. You know, he was like, everything that you're saying is what makes you good, but that's what also breaks you. That's what's going to break you and to not be forgiving with yourself. You know, and long ago, man, like back when I had that, that difficult knee surgery as a young, young man, I told myself that I wanted to use not only that injury in all these circumstances that are going to happen into my life. Like I want to use the military. I want to use my upbringing to grow mentally, physically, and spiritually. Period.

And I felt like when, like when I asked, I had to ask my father and, uh, and big Mike for, uh, permission to go in the military. Like if they would access access these guys are like you know like they hate the fucking government right you know and i'm asking i want to go join the military as a career and they didn't like fuck no you shouldn't do that you know and i kind of did that somewhat against their will and but i told myself i'm like i know i'm doing the right thing because I'm good.

The military is not going to use me. Fuck them. Like, I'm going to use them. I'm going to use this situation, this medium to develop mentally, physically and spiritually. And that was my intention the whole fucking time, whether as a reconnaissance Marine, as a grunt, as a pararescueman, and then even as, you know, like a special operations career combat veteran. Like, how do I use that to grow mentally and physically and spiritually? You know, and it's the biggest thing about it all is we have to let our experiences change us, period. You know, like you have to let the things that you're you're assuming again we were talking about like you know you blame yourself or you blame others well if we're blaming ourselves for everything that happens to us in our lives we have to at some point hopefully those experiences

are going to change us and you know when those experiences become so overwhelming, we have to we have to be gentle with ourselves and we have to allow that perspective to change us. I have so many of my friends that have experiences similar to myself. Career and special operations, multiple combat deployments, these things, and they don't let those experiences change them. deployments these things and they don't let those experiences change them like their paradigm of who they are and what they want out of their life is restricted and they try to stay in that same mode or model like it's like once you get into special operations give me an example of that give me an example of this roger so you do yeah yeah you're you let's just take the the freshest guy you've gone through training you're on your first deployment in Bagram and you go out and you see some shit.

Yeah. Yeah. So when you come back, what, what would that, what would that change look like? Or what would the pushback that you see the guys doing and not accepting the change?

Um, yeah, there's, there's a lot of layers to this that I really would love to get into. Cause again, I feel very respond. I feel, you know know my new

lease on life like me surviving these experiences like I have to be able to articulate them in an intelligible way you know I feel like that's the the cost of it right of seeing these things wow and a lot of guys go the opposite way that's interesting that's where you know it's like PTSD and drinking right yeah or I believe even strongly in PTSD and, you know, tricyclic antidepressants. Guys that get strung out on Prozac and Zoloft, you know, you're just numbing symptoms, man. You know, and I think the best thing to do is to feel that fucking shit. Like whatever it is you're trying to repress, like fully inhibit that and feel that whether it's your shortcomings or your grief or you're blaming yourself. You need to feel all of that shit because on the other side of that is joy and love and acceptance,

you know, and so, for instance, you know, like a guy, this is this is a very real story. This is a very dear friend of mine experienced this. And he we were doing something, but we were in vehicles. He was in a vehicle and we were going to do but we were in vehicles. He was in a vehicle, and we were going to do like a direct action hit. So we have basically tier one level Delta guys with this, like combined armed group guys with this, and we're going to go do this direct action hit. This is when you're a Marine? No, no, this is as a pararescuement.

And so we're driving in a convoy to go do a direct action hit on a compound by vehicle and the vehicle in front of us hits an ied and there's multiple fatalities in that the vehicle that my friend is in like he's riding in the vehicle where other men die because an IED went off in the fucking vehicle. These situations are so severe. We don't give a fuck. We don't stop for that vehicle. We continue driving to the target and we go do whatever we were going to do because mission had priority. We still go and execute the mission. Other guys are called in to go deal with the fucking vehicle that got blown up. And anyway, we get back to our compound the next morning and we're talking to, I'm talking to my

buddy. And there's something that happens when you're around life and death. Like you will make to salvage your mental construct. You will be very rough on life and death. Like you'll be like, fuck that guy. Like, I mean, even if like you and I are best friends and you die in the vehicle, you'll be like, man, fuck that guy. I never liked him anyway. Like you do things to try to psychologically overcome feeling those feelings because you have to continue doing like, like the next night, we're going to go do a mission again, similar to the one that he was just in, you know? Right. Right. You're making sense. you're making perfect sense it's coping it's survival now it's become like his own personal survival yeah it's a very gritty coping mechanism but it's it's

timeless like the guys in world war one were doing the same fucking thing but they were making fun of the guys that died in the vehicle and my buddy was in the vehicle with him so he has four say whatever the fuck he wants right but what's interesting is is as a year went down the road and we were uh we were car sharing together so like we both live in a specific town in alaska and we were going in to do our job as pararescuemen like we were on alert together or something and he was like raj he's like uh and by this time i i you know i i had openly become suicidal to where i wanted to like and i know this this is there's so much to unpack with the things that i'm saying but it was very aware everyone around me was very aware that i had broken psychologically with grief like i even at work i would take a knee and just like start crying uncontrollably and i would stop and just get up and i'd be like oh i'm fine you know this is this is on deployment no no this is back

in alaska like back in alaska oh okay we do on average one rescue a week. And you would become, can you tell me what year this is? Man, I'm fucking horrible. Okay. Did you talk about being suicidal in your book? I don't remember that. It must have been 2011 or 12. Okay. I really wrestled with horrific, overwhelming grief.

And when, I mean. Did you ever think of how you would kill yourself? Did you get that close to suicide? Oh yeah. Yeah. I mean, it was, I was going to murder suicide, my family, you know, and so that sounds so severe, you know, because what people have to understand is, is when you project violence at the most elite level of the military right like uh life and death is such a commodity like it's so tangible to me on a daily basis like my life and my death are dealing with people that are dying i'm with that weekly on the most surreal platform you can pop like jumping into a plane crash where the plane has crashed into a glacial lake of ice

and whereas like if i'm working at a cash register and i drop if i work at 7-eleven and i drop some pennies on the ground someone a four-year-old kid will see them as super valuable and run over and pick them up i've dropped a thousand pennies on the ground and they've rolled under the counter because i work at 7-eleven it was literally like that like for someone like me who's been so protected in california one dead body on the street and I would fucking scream and run in the other direction for you. They were just, they were starting to become like pennies. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, like, it's just to understand the backup. Sorry, I'm trying to put like a, for those of us to understand this, some sort of metaphor, allegory for it. I i enjoy it you know and uh these things are

difficult but again that intention was to grow mentally physically and spiritually so if i have put myself here in this situation and i have absorbed these life experiences that are so overwhelming with grief then i need to offer with 11 dead bodies in it and you oh yeah yeah. I mean, like we haven't even really gotten into that, but, but, but I mean, I'm just trying to give people a visual of like some of the crazy, crazy.

Yeah. I mean, I mean, fuck man. I mean, you know, like being overrun by the enemy and having five guys die in my arms, beg for their lives,

hand to hand fighting. And then a helicopter comes in three hours later, for their lives. Hand-to-hand fighting. And then a helicopter comes in three hours later. We're getting shot at the whole time. We run out of ammunition. The dead insurgents are mixed in with the men I'm trying to save. Like literally next to each other. Yeah. Bodies on bodies.

It's so fucked up. And to get people in the back of the helicopter like you fly out the living first um and this is the middle of the night below freezing above 7 000 feet on the side of a mountain in afghanistan to load the dead bodies and as i'm loading the dead bodies underneath the helicopter that's hovering just 10 feet above me you know and as you lift those bodies to get them into the aircraft, the blood, the feces, and the piss is just coming all down on you. You get them in there. You all managed to get in the helicopter and we're the last ones in. And there's no place to even

sit in the helicopter, but on the dead bodies of the men that begged for their lives in my arms. Just an hour earlier. Yeah. I mean, we're talking, you know, I mean, and you're so full of rage, hate and love, lust, sex, violence. It's everything is so peripheral to you. You know, it's every emotion you've ever had at the highest level you can have every three seconds. And to experience those things and live through them. it's every emotion you've ever had at the highest level you can have every three seconds. And, and, uh, to experience those things and live through them. I mean, and I mean, just to take it even a step further, I mean, we went and landed.

So 10 minutes of flying and we're back at a SADA bad, uh, which is a forward operating base. And you don't like those bodies in the back of the helicopter, those dismembered mutilated bodies. You don't put those like in a body bag. What you do is you carry them over and you throw them in a fucking conics box with the bodies of all the other fucking guys. The bottom of that helicopter is covered in blood and gore. You're covered in blood,

brain, feces, cum, piss, everything that you can imagine. And, uh, we, we basically put those bodies in a connoisseur box fly out go get more ammunition and sit and wait to get called within the next 30 minutes to

go fly out again and it's from one of these missions that you come back that casey and the other two dudes are there to talk after eight days of what i'm explaining to you after eight days of that within four hours of us landing at our main base these guys knock on the fucking door and they want to make a documentary about tattooing us that is inexplicable so surreal that that's you know what i'm saying like like in i think that as human beings we create create religion to make sense of this fucking shit, right? Like, that's so unexplainable. And so you have to be like, well, God is creating this sign.

This is this burning fucking bush. This is this virgin fucking birth. You know, this is this fucking thing that is this spectacle that i'm forced to try to contemplate with i was at a party three nights ago and there's a guy there and this is why i confuse you and he was a ranger and then he was a pararescue guy okay yeah it's very often that that pararescuement or prior other special operations, like they've been in special operations in some other capacity, then they come to pararescue at least a quarter, maybe even more closer to half, you know, maybe a... Oh, I had no idea.

Yeah. And it's because most people don't even know about pararescue until they see the result of projecting violence. Like say if you're a young marine infantryman and you're in the helmand province and you're a fucking badass you're a fucking machine gunner and you're my son orion that's what my son orion is doing now and you you don't even think that you're going to get fucking hurt or killed. That's why war is waged by the young, right? Like, you have no sense of your mortality. You're just like, fuck it. I'm going to go murder motherfuckers and listen to, like, Metallica.

You know, that's all that fucking matters. It's G-strings. It's oiled up biceps. You know, it's just masculinity in its most beautiful expression. I am fucking immortal. I am Diomedes. I am Achilles. And fuck you.

And again, that goes back to me saying our species is we are violent fucking animals with a high level of consciousness. But I don't want to go down too many rabbit holes. So, but the first time that you experienced projecting violence and you realize you just killed some fucking kids, maybe a couple of women. And then your buddy got shot in the face and his, his whole fucking face was turned inside out and you carried him for two miles while he was choking on his own fucking blood and brains. When that fucking happens, guess who they call? They call pararescuemen because nobody else is going to come into the middle of an active firefight.

And we come barreling into the middle of that fucking shit, grab him, give you a fucking Red Bull or something, give you a fucking hug and look into your fucking eyes, and then grab your fucking buddy. Like, we got him. And then after that experience, you're like, who the fuck were those guys? You know, we're in our probably rip it. Yeah. Yeah. And they're like, that was just some kind of shaman that fucking interacted with me. And so a lot of the the prior service special operations guys have immense combat experience that get into pararescue. And then again, what we're talking about, that subconscious connection, they want to save their fucking buddies now.

They never they didn't even know what the fuck was going on when they were a young infantryman. But now they're like, I want to be able to do that for other people. I want to save him. I want to give a rip it to that motherfucker when he needs it. he when he needs a red bull i want to give that red bull to him and so then they go through all through training again they become pararescuemen and that happens it at least a quarter of the the force of pararescue is prior special operations guys similar to myself and he said he he he was in bogram in 2010 and i said oh i'm having roger sparks on my show do you know who that is and he said yeah i know who it is and i go and he starts laughing and i go what's up and he goes i can't remember if he said he relieved you or you relieved him but i think he said he

relieved you and he gets out of the hell and he's a big man and he gets out of the helicopter he's like oh fuck there's someone here who's bigger than me. This is a big guy. He's like six, four. And he never he said the first thing he remembers, like, oh, shit, they got a bigger guy than me. He's just being silly, man. Oh, I know this. I know he's a total great guy. Yeah.

But of course, he knew you were his name is Josh Webster. He said you probably don't know who he is. But yeah, I mean, it's such a small community, man. I mean, to understand like there's less than 300 pararescuemen active duty at any time, you know, so it's a, such a small force. And, and, uh, how many in Alaska, how many stationed in Alaska? Like 20 or 30, maybe. Okay. Wow. And the only reason that those numbers are so high is because the, the mission rate for civilian rescues that we get called to do in Alaska are so high, like on average like whatever it is like 52 or 57 rescues a year

and that's annual since the inception of rescue forces up in alaska and so we're allowed to do civilian rescues because the state is so vast i mean other, you know, guys that do halo jumps or they're, they're military parachutists. They have no concept of how active Alaska pararescuemen are. Uh, you know, I've got, you know, thousands and thousands of, of halo drops, but I've also have, you know, like, like dozens of operational jumps, like to where you're jumping, You're doing the job to assist other people. What's a halo drop? You fly over and let something out of the helicopter? It's a loose term for military parachutes that

like a skydiving parachute in the military. It's not a static line that you click it into the... As you jump out, the parachute deploys. You jump out and you fly where you want to go and then you deploy your parachute. Some of those guys just rotating our aor too uh but yeah i mean so it's like the the the the level of expertise up here it's definitely on a different on a different uh plane of existence you know i mean using those those skills to to regularly jump into plane crashes

in the remote wilds of alaska so alaska is so vast it's like taking off from dallas and jumping into montana and there's nobody in between and and that's a regular occurrence to the guys out here just save a human being out in the fucking middle of nowhere yeah that was mauled by a fucking bear or you know they were just you know there's more small planes in alaska than there are cars and so it's a normal thing for a family to have to get in a a cub uh yeah this is the that's the state troopers there troopers conduct yeah but just troopers though yeah it's just the state true that's any indication it's pretty intense. Oh, it's crazy, man.

It's crazy. So the advent of satellite communications has changed everything as well. Because if you're having a heart attack in some remote village, you can get on your sat phone and we'll come flying in. We'll jump. We'll parachute into your location. Now, you don't always have to parachute in. A lot of times we'll use p in. We'll jump. We'll parachute into your location. Now, you don't always have to you don't always have to parachute in. A lot of times we'll use pave hawk helicopters.

But often the state's so vast, if there's risk of death without you using a jump platform because it's so much faster to get there. You know, the C-130s and the C-17s can fly twice as fast as a helicopter to get to a location. So, but it takes the helicopters to get us out, you know. But there's an army of people that run search and rescue up here in Alaska that's second to none. I mean, it's like the Indy 500 of search and rescue. Roger. It's absolutely the finest pilots in the world from both the fixed wing to the rotary wing. And it's just because it's out of necessity. You know, it's like it is,

there's so much necessity to doing it up here that you get really, really fucking good at it. And the whole reason I came up here as an Alaska pararescueman was because of that. You want to do it the best. Yeah. When I recovered from my paralysis injury, I told myself, I want to go do this job to the absolute.

I want to squeeze every ounce out of this job. And that's where, you know, the Alaska pararescue unit, the 212th pararescue unit is is the best in the world, bar none. Roger, I've heard you say it a couple of times about hand-to-hand combat. I don't remember reading about it in the book, to be honest with you. Yeah. to be honest with you yeah i uh there there are some incredible details in the book from everything from you know from the the para rescues in uh alaska and the wolves and all that crazy shit and then of course um uh the uh bulldog bite crazy details but are you telling me that there

was a moment down there when you're basically the ambulance you're basically the paramedic or ambulance for the military and you're down there trying to save dudes lives. And another dude came up on you and you had to fight him to the death. Specifically, seasoned combat troops, whether they're infantry guys or the highest levels of commando units in the military, they know who pararescuemen are. to assist people during this bulldog bite event that I'm discussing, they could not have done that operation without us assisting them. Like no one else can come in there and do the things that we were doing. And that's not just pararescuemen, that's combat search and rescue. You know, CSAR is a term used for pararescuemen that are paired with air crews that are specifically trained to fly into troops in contact and basically dictate that battle space and get those people out of there as soon as possible. I mean, so, you know, us being there, it was already understood that this was a very severe operation that required things to be constantly performed in the gray area. But to answer your question specifically about the hand-to-hand combat, there's so much to unpack, man. It's like I want to tell you the story from the beginning, you know,

and that's what was so difficult about the book. You know, there's so many things about my childhood. There's so many things about the details of my life. There's so many things about all of it, from doing CPR on my son to recovering from the paralysis injury to recovering from all these other list of horrible injuries that I put in that book. It's like a glazed donut, man. Like I have to glaze over shit just to keep the book at like three or four. I fully get it. I fully get it.

I fully get it. I fully get it. But to answer your question specifically about the hand-to-hand combat, as we inserted into this, and I try not to get – I try not to go – you're doing an excellent job of keeping me on task, and I'm trying to regulate myself to the questions that you're asking because it's so easy to go down rabbit holes. I'm the master of ADD and going going all over all the listeners know that like in two seconds we could be talking about your kids again so i did i did a podcast last week uh i did a podcast last week where i felt like i did a horrible job for them because i just went down the rabbit hole and sometimes i

can get talking where an interviewer just wants to let me go because some of the things that I'm speaking about, there's reverence to them, you know, like people dying in your arms or life and death. I mean, like, I know you don't want to interrupt me if I'm talking about doing CPR on my four month old son, you know what I'm saying? And it's difficult. And so I'm trying my best to stay. You're doing great. And I'm super comfortable interrupting people. it's like the biggest criticism of my podcast wow you're an asshole i'm like i know uh but uh yeah the hand to hand fighting in bulldog bite well you have to understand when we flew into that specifically for

the mission uh that i was awarded the silver star for, like you have to understand that these men are so out of their minds with panic and rage and disbelief that are on the radio calling us into that situation. And as we're flying into that, you can hear men on the radios voice changing. You can hear machine gun fire and explosions over their transmissions to us. And they're literally only five or 10 miles from us. And when we take off, we're going to be there in like 15 minutes. And that has to be that way, because if you get shot in the chest with a.50 cal, if you are still alive, you're probably going to die in 30 minutes. And if I don't come and pick you up and physically put you in a helicopter and fly you to a surgical team, and you're basically having your chest cavity ripped open and everything being, you know, ligated and sutured and surgical intervention, if that does not happen within the next 30 minutes,

you're going to fucking die. And so all of these things are in place for this operation. And again, we were there for eight days. And this particular mission that I mentioned, this hand-to-hand fighting, there was a desperation and a horror that was coming through that was very palpable over the radio. And these are seasoned combat infantry troops that are doing this. I mean, I mean, and these guys at this point, if their lives, I mean, you could probably shoot their mother in front of them and they wouldn't blink an eye, you know, and these guys, I could tell they were beside themselves with horror.

And as we were flying into that, we knew that we had to do something. And that's not just me as a pararescueman, it's the entire air crew. The pilot that flew that was a guy named Marcus Maris. And I mean, the balls, the resolve and the purity of intention to go fly into that and hold a fucking hover as rpgs are detonating within 20 feet of the helicopter or you know machine gun rounds are just punching through you know the windshield of the helo or ripping through the cabin that takes fucking nuts man and that takes more than like like masculine nerve like that is you know that is shamanistic resolve and intention for your fellow fucking man almost suicidal right like go ahead yeah and then you have to realize like when someone's begging for

their lives like there's not right or wrong like right or wrong is mitigate the threat come in you know the rule of rescue is don't make the situation worse period well making the situation worse would be getting the pave hawk shot down on top of you as all you and your buddies are dying right and that's what's a very peculiar thing about the mission of bulldog bite uh of the one that i'm particularly talking about is we knowingly went into and with our debt the only way that we mitigated that threat was through audacity if we had not gone in and done what we had done everyone in that platoon would have been killed period and and you you 49 guys were rescued out of there right over the over that week uh there were 11 guys that were killed in action that's that's us that's u.s troops killed in action and 49 were uh traumatically injured that we rescued yeah amazing uh and that's i think we

had at the end and you're saying a parares. Wasn't there all 49 of those dudes would have perished. Yeah. Oh yeah. Without a doubt. Without even fucking thinking about it. Uh, cause these aren't guys that, that lost their fingers or their hands or broke their leg.

These are guys shot through the hips, you know, by crew serve weapons. These are guys missing their lower legs. Cause they were hitting the lower leg with a 50 cal around and it just took it off these are guys on the side of a mountain in below freezing conditions fighting for their fucking lives you know and uh um it was audacity and but i i want to get your question you know I mean, just specifically, I just, but I think, I believe I need to give context to the situation.

You're on point. Some of these statements, you know. Yep. What was the helicopter's name again? Marcus what? The pilot is Marcus Maris. Yeah. Okay.

And what was funny. Is he still alive? Is he still alive? Yeah. I talked to him two nights ago. I'm very close friends with him. In fact, he's coming with us to do an ayahuasca experience in Peru early next year. Wow.

Again, I do believe strongly in the power of psychedelics to specifically for combat veterans. But for anybody that's experienced trauma, I mean, I'm a huge advocate for that. Uh, but, uh, uh, uh, uh, man, again, but the context of these things is the, the, the, the, the environment was so surreal already up to this point. Um, yeah, there's Marcus Maris right there. And what's so difficult, what's interesting too. So this is an interesting story. This guy is a bad-ass man. Uh, the shorter guy here to the looker's right. That is Captain Marcus Maris. He, uh, I think he got a flying cross for flying bulldog bite. I think that's what that picture's from. Yeah. Um, he's a prior reconnaissance Marine. Oh, wow. He was a force reconnaissance Marine and wanted to get into rescue. And at the

time they didn't have officers involved in pararescue. So he started flying helicopters for rescue. And he and I were talking about this. And this is the stuff that only comes with a life of perspective. He was like, Roger, you know, he's like, if it wasn't, I mean, both of us are reconnaissance Marines at that moment, sharing that together. And there's such a kindred brotherhood amongst whether it's SEAL versus SEAL versus recon and recon guy, ranger, ranger, like we know where we're coming from. And I trust him with my life, with my son's life, with these men's life on the ground. And I think both of us being there together, there was just this kindred understanding of suffering and humanity that there was just communication going on without speaking it. And it's again, I mentioned that a quarter of the force is is prior special operations, and that's a great example. But so, you know, we're flying into the situation.

I wanted I wanted to digress on this because I think you'll think this is funny as shit. And it's not in the book, I don't think. But it's very funny. But, you know, you give yourself code words and stuff like we all have brevity codes. So if you want to talk to Roger, you're not like, hey, Roger, get on the fucking, you know, I'm talking to you. We're coming in in 15 minutes with the helicopter. What Marcus did, Marcus is a real funny motherfucker. Early in the deployment, he we develop funny nicknames for each other. Remember that show American american gladiator yes

yeah so like there's like anvil uh we made up funny american gladiator nicknames for each other right right and so he was cyclone and i was anvil okay and so it's just these funny stupid fucking nicknames you know and you can just say certain things on the radio because, and I don't want to give away like military secrets or stuff, but this is very sophisticated combat. And at the highest levels of like tier one, yeah, there you go. The highest levels of like tier one combat, we have an immense ability to use technological data when we're fighting combat. And so the reason for these funny nicknames is like we're literally as we're flying the helicopter into that, we're listening to the insurgents use cellular communications on these little Nokia phones. We're listening to them communicate to each other.

Sometimes we will use radio communications and let them hear what we're saying, but it's so sophisticated that we're listening to what they say and it's being basically interpreted from Afghani Pashtuni to English as we're flying the helicopter into the site. Wow. Wow. And we have grid coordinates where that cellular communication is coming from in reference to us, if that makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. As we're flying in, even in our radio sets, it's saying like, uh, position one, 500 meters north of you is saying, martyr yourself for the helicopter, martyr yourself for the helicopter, you know? And so you're looking 500 meters north of you for a guy with an rpg you

know yeah and that's all happening as we're flying in and so as we're flying into this this and this is very this isn't flat terrain this is very steep so we have to hoist in and out of this you're not landing the helicopter anywhere i mean this is all this is almost to the point to where you need ropes to to navigate the terrain. And that's what they call fifth class terrain. Like if you need ropes to safely move, it's called fifth class terrain. But this is very mountainous, arduous environment. And so basically, every time that we would try to do that, we would just try to hoist into wherever we thought was relatively alongside the coalition forces. But if somebody's in a firefight in this mountainous terrain, it's very hard to see stuff. So as we're flying in, you just see chaos.

You see tracer fires ripping through our aircraft, the terrain beneath you. And we're flying and you come into a circle, you're going a hundred miles an hour in the helicopter and you just come around. And as soon as we come around in a circle and I'll just point my finger where we want to go. And we started hoisting down into that firefight. As soon as we got into a hover,

we're hoisting 40 feet below onto the ground. And as we were doing that rounds were impacting the hoist cable. By hoisting mean you're 40 feet off the ground and you jump were doing that uh rounds were were impacting the hoist cable by hoisting mean you're 40 feet off the ground and you jump out of the helicopter on a string well we're being lowered on a metal cable like okay you're a rescue man at a time and to understand how intense what was happening to us right there is the steel cable which is a quarter inch in diameter was shot six times just Just us, you know, yeah, just us trying to come in. How do you know that afterwards there's a review of the cable and you can see where it's been hit six times? Yeah. So at the time you don't, right? And so then as the,

you know, after we landed back in, you know, our main base, like, of course they're doing routine maintenance on the helicopters as soon as possible. I mean, they're fixing shit with duct tape and stuff. Yeah, you see that cable right there. That cable itself was shot like six times. And what's funny and cool about this video right here, this is video from Casey Neistat. Basically, two days after these events that I'm talking about. And we had to go and test because they replaced the cable in the helicopter.

And I was like, why don't you guys come out and just fly around with us for a second. And I'll hoist you just so you kind of can fly around in a pave hawk in a combat zone. And I think, I think, I think, uh,

literally, uh, cyclone is flying that helicopter right there and you get you got to understand like us doing that with civilians is completely against the rules oh yeah i i suspected you get zero fucks like we literally don't fucking care i mean because right you know we had just come from this fucking meat grinder i mean i think i was still covered in blood and brains like i didn't shower for like a month after that you know because i was just i was too fucked up mentally you know but uh we flew into that situation uh and we hoisted 40 feet from the

helicopter to the ground and as soon as my foot touched the ground from that hoist and rpg detonated 20 feet away and knocked myself and another pair of rescue men to the ground. Were you still, were you attached to the hoist? Yeah, we're attached, but I mean, it's, you know, I can get all into the details of that and we can go down some deep fucking rabbit holes of every little nuance. But what you have to understand is, is we were immediately pinned down by overwhelming machine gun fire from three crew served machine gun positions and uh multiple rpgs were detonating you know well within you know 50 feet of us 20 the first one hit 20 feet away but the entire time we're on the ground just overwhelming machine gun fire

pinning us down you know uh how did they not kill you you know i i have no idea you know it's like even on the hoist i was like i'm gonna fucking die like i have who is on the hoist with you can you tell me his name yeah his name is koa bailey is he still alive yeah he's still alive he's a very dear friend of mine he's still in the military wow uh you gotta understand i i was at the in the twilight of my career when this happened and he was just beginning this was his first deployment um but uh yeah he's a wonderful soul man he's he's a very very beautiful human being man and then the copter leaves you guys get dropped there's the explosion all immediately shit's going wrong and the helicopter

has to fucking does it drop the cable on top of you he cuts the line and leaves no no so they they basically uh drug it away from us because they kept it on the ground again this is where i didn't want to go down the rabbit hole you're making me go down the rabbit hole sorry sorry but uh I mean, they kept they hovered above us for 30 seconds to a minute. The amount of fire that was ripping through that aircraft and RPGs that were being shot at absolutely overwhelming. The machine gunners on the left and right of the Pave Hawk opened up and expended like all of their ammunition right there just trying to cover us because they don't know after that rpg blast if i'm injured or killed or if i was shot injured or killed on that 40 feet hoist down and so the pilot's just holding that shit with immeasurable courage man i mean for his me, for COA, for the effort of us there. You know, I mean, it's just,

and it's such a convoluting emotion because when he was, as those machine gun casings were firing down, you know, you realize that that 50 cal off of both sides of the aircraft are killing people that are trying to actively kill you. And that is a very strange emotion to absorb in the moment of surviving life and death, you know. But as the helicopter left and the situation became more dire. If you can possibly imagine that, sorry, I'm burping.

I'm burping too. It just, it became more and more desperate. The desperation of having, you know, just attempting to survive every three seconds is very overwhelming. And at some point you really have outer body experience. You know, you have that time dilation where it speeds up and slows down. The things that you're seeing, feeling and hearing are very distorted. It's surreal. And that's what I mean by surreal. But in the midst of this moment, when we made contact with the friendly position with other coalition men on the ground. An RPG had detonated the position as I'm running to them up the side of this very steep hill, an RPG detonated where we were running to and it knocked me back down the hill.

And this is nighttime? The sun is just setting. Okay. to and it knocked me and this is this is nighttime the sun is just setting okay and uh it knocked me back down the hill and then as i came back up those men were mutilated you know from the rpg blast you know and and uh what was very concerning was they were out of ammunition and so when you all you you hear things and you feel things, but your cognitive brain is very turned off, you know, like you're just kind of on an autopilot, you know, it'd be a temp, like trying to do a crossword puzzle, but someone hits you in the side of the head with a bat. Like you, you're trying to do things, but you're operating from

a very primordial brain. Like you're not cognitively, you have no fine motor, you know, like everything is very, very gross motor. And, and, uh, uh, what was very difficult is I found out that they had no ammunition. And so we were being overwhelmingly fired upon from multiple locations. You would hear stuff sporadically going off around you, you know, and you're in the middle of it. And to realize that that was all enemy fire was a very sinking despair. Remember, I used that term, the wet blanket, like that wet blanket really came over us. And it was like, all right, we're going to fucking die. You know, like we're going to fucking die right here and

that's okay. And it's, it's, it was just like immediately like, okay, fuck it. You know, it's like, let's make this situation better. And I talked to one of the men that was there and he was, uh, uh, panicked, you know, and I And I only bring this up because you can be the most experienced warrior, the most lethal, most experienced warrior. And at some point, something will incite panic in you. It doesn't matter how much you fucking train. And I've been haunted by these experiences. And no one has the right to judge anyone that is in that state.

And this man was in panic. He was in a panic mode. And he knew where the casualties were. And I'm just trying to understand because usually what will happen as situations escalate in combat is you'll collect the wounded and dead in a specific location. we call that a a ccp a combat collect casualty it's like a collection point for casualties actually collection point and it's just it just it just it's gonna happen whether a fucking school is bombed a mass shooting anything like people will just bring injured and dead people together standard mass health practice yeah and it's it's a standard thing. And I was asking him where that was, and he knew.

He's like, it's over the hill. Don't go, you'll get killed. And this guy had been shot through the face, and his teeth were knocked out, and his cheek was ripped open. To understand how out of it he was, he was asking me for a smoke. And we use different signals uh like nor nordo signals where i have different colored smokes like if i want something from the air and i can't communicate it i can throw a smoke that's a signal that means i want you to do the

specific thing at this specific location because of this specific smoke location but in real combat it's just a fucking mess. Like all of those signals are mixed because you have people trying to mark positions with yellow 40 mic mic rounds. It's just a giant shit show, like nothing. And that's the fog of war, like literally, like you can't communicate with people to your right and left. You only hear people screaming or rifle fire, you know,

or machine gun fire or explosions. When explosions happen, everything stops. All things stop when big booms happen. And this is a long story that I was just trying, you're asking me very specifically, and it's not a naive question, but the hand-to-hand fighting thing. So you have to understand that the unit that we're coming to service here, they're out of ammunition. I mean, and at most, an infantryman is going to carry eight mags. That's a lot of fucking ammo. And that eight mags is going to probably be shot within 30 minutes. And we're well within the 30-minute to an hour shot within 30 minutes. Like, I mean, and this is, we're well within the 30 minute to an hour window at this point.

And what you have to understand is, combat is a measure of, and again, I'm going down a rabbit hole and I don't know if you want me to go down this, but I think it's just insightful for people to understand. Combat is not like you think. It's not like on Call of Duty.

It's not like on a movie, you know, it's, it's, it's a really odd thing. And it has to do with intimidation. And so that's where if you have crew serve machine guns, you don't, you can kill people with crew serve machine guns. Sure. But what crew serve machine guns do is it stops people from moving. So if someone starts shooting at you with a crew serve machine gun, they're not necessarily killing you, but they're pinning you down like you can't move. You go behind a rock and then it's just dirt, rock and gravel and ricochets are happening all around you. And you're just laying as flat to the earth as possible. Now, those are volleys

of machine guns that are doing that so there's there's a sustainability of that but there's also a dance to it like they'll fire and then another machine gun will fire as well now while they're doing that enemy like infantry will assault on a position and you try to get people into like an ambush so like if you're here the enemy is going to try to pin you down here. So like there's machine guns shooting at you from the top of the screen and pinning you down here while guys from over at this side

start trying to creep in on this way, then these guys are going to kill you. But you try to get people in like a right angle. That's how you kill people in combat. And that's just the basic flanking maneuver. The Afghanis, I mean, from the Taliban till Al-Qaeda, they are fucking beautiful in these maneuvers. They are fucking lightning fast. They're Usain Bolt wearing fucking rags and no fucking shoes. And they will do this to you very, very quickly. That is the whole purpose of them with those crew serve machine guns. They were trying to keep you from moving.

And there's going to be about five or 10 guys from the side rush around. And they're the ones that are going to fucking murder you. That's the way ground combat truly works. And I'm sorry about going down the long rabbit hole. Dude, it's fucking great. It's great. It's great. People think, oh, I have an M4.

They have this sexy M4. Yeah, sure. You can kill motherfuckers with an M4, but there's no intimidation to it. So if you're shooting at somebody with a suppressed M4 in a high desert environment, you're not going to intimidate them at all. You know, and so much of fighting is intimidation. And what we rely on for CSAR is supporting fire, whether that's artillery or helicopters. At the moment, we had Apache helicopters that were assisting us by providing chain gun fire, like they're machine guns off of an Apache attack helicopter and hellfire missiles. The difficulty with that is an Apache helicopter shoots everything off the front of the helicopter. And so they have to fly away from you. They fly 10 miles away and then fly right at you to affect.

You can see this machine gun at the bottom of that. And then there's all these missiles on the sides of those. Those are Hellfire. That's a Hellfire rocket pods there. those those are hellfire that's a hellfire rocket pods there and so this apache is an incredibly effective helicopter for ground combat guys but the problem is is when it flies 10 miles away it's not intimidating so when our helicopters our helicopters have if you can pull up a pave hawk helicopter with a cow on it our helicopters the guns shoot off the sides of the helicopter and so the way that those pave hawks help us is they just circle over our heads the whole time very close like very very fucking close right over our heads and that's a circular pattern that they're flying so the enemy knows if they shoot at us, this fucking 50 Cal is going to fuck them up.

Meaning they'll give up their position and this guy can get you if you're shooting at us. And I instantly say to the helicopter, you know, 12 o'clock, 300 meters, then they know immediately, you know, north of my position, 300 meters away. Just start hosing that fucking thing down with machine gun fire. So now effectively what that's doing is that is keeping them from moving, if that makes sense. So now it's like, so that's the difference. So like our helicopters, what you have to understand ran out of fuel and ammunition again, because it was so high, we were carrying limited fuel just to get to that altitude we were carrying like 10 minutes bingo fuel like you have 10 minutes on station to

get me and another pj in there if you can't do that in that time we're going to run out of gas and the helicopter is going to crash out of the sky so it's like you get us in there as fast as you fucking can provide support and then leave and so everything is like an indie fucking pit crew tire change like the timeliness of everything is very fucking intense we pass that corridor our supporting helicopters the ones that shoot off the side ran out of of ammunition and fuel because we can only bring so much up to that altitude because it was so high. The higher you go, the less dense the air is. And so it's like the aircraft performs worse and worse and worse, the higher and heavier it gets. And so, again, we're at the lunatic fringe of what's possible in this situation. And they left us there. And Maris, Marcus Maris, left us there knowing that we're going to fight through life and fucking death on this thing. And he trusted in me and I trusted in him that even if I'm fucking dead, he's going to come back and get my body. And I trusted him with, again, I trust him with everything.

he's going to come back and get my body. And I trusted him with, like, again, I trust him with everything. But during that situation, so the tactics changed and we had to rely on the Apache helicopters. The Apache helicopters are much more effective in a lethal perspective. But what happens is they fly away from us. And when you fly away from us, the insurgents think they can do whatever the fuck they want, because even though that helicopter is going to come back but if the helicopter is not there they're not intimidated by it they have a window to do something yeah yeah exactly so it's all timing and windows and so and again i might be going way too down a rabbit hole i mean we're just talking about tactics and shit but um i mean me personally as a very seasoned ground combatant, I was of the thinking of there's no way that they can fucking sustain this level of fire.

Like the amount of machine gun fire that's taking place, they're going full cyclic on us and trying to take our helicopters down. Like they're going to run out of ammunition as well. Like you can only carry, I don't care how strong, out of ammunition as well like you can only carry i don't care how strong and these insurgents are absolutely uh superhuman and the things they can carry in the mountains you know like a machine gun is heavy and the ammo is even heavier like to think about a dishka or a pk and machine gun in that terrain with a thousand or two thousand rounds of ammunition that's 50 fucking pounds of dead weight and they can only carry and sustain so much of this attack and i was just of my thinking i'm

like they're gonna run out of ammunition and then that's gonna allow me to access these casualties so these things yeah uh if you can go back over to the side view you had a picture there yeah you see this right you look at how big that fucking thing is. Yeah, yeah. Even the tripod's heavy. Yeah, those motherfuckers will run with that at a sprint. They're like Usain Bolt with that fucking thing. Crazy.

And the ammo is heavier than the machine gun. I mean, think about firing that weapon for 30 minutes to an hour, how much ammunition that takes. And so my thinking was that they were going to run out of ammunition. There's no way they can sustain that. But to understand where we were at, we were basically our intention of fighting them where we were. Those were insurgent training camps on the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan. Those were insurgent training camps on the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan.

So imagine Ranger School for the Al-Qaeda, Ranger School for the Taliban. That's where we were. And so they had crazy. Yeah, they had a lot of munitions, you know. Right. We were there to destroy these insurgent training camps. But it's basically their bases. um but uh it's basically their bases yeah yeah so um we called in it's a hive once again it's a hive you were attacking the hive yeah and and uh we called in again man there's here's something i want to get to if you could remind me as we continue speaking but uh Here's something I want to get to, if you could remind me as we continue speaking. The details have never mattered, only the emotion.

I want to get to that in a little bit, but I'll keep going on the story. But the details have never mattered, it's only the emotion. That's where I kind of get upset, is I'm kind of talking about the details. In Zen meditation, there's a very famous quote that's, the finger pointing at the moon is not the moon. So many of us get so wrapped up at the finger and not the moon. The moon is what's important, not the finger. And that's my problem with with modern day religions and spirituality is we get so hung up on the fucking finger and not the moon.

Think of that like in CrossFit, right? Like like CrossFit, people get so into the details of it versus the intention of it. Like you're trying to make durable, tough motherfuckers, you know, not spritzy, sexy little things. The details do matter, but that's not what we're doing. Like the intention is the moon, not the finger. Right. And maybe that's a bad analogy, but I'm just trying to relate it. You know, Lao Tzu said that too. I'm pointing at the moon and you're staring at my finger.

Yeah, that's a very famous Zen koan. The point of religion and spirituality is the finger pointing at the moon is the whole thing. By the way, we're surrounded in a society that's stuck staring at the moon. Yeah, correct. It's like they want to talk about the sports watch that's judging your fucking cows and your fucking heart rate and not your effort and your intention as a human doing the work. Or how about this? Let's say I were to tell you that climate change is completely wrong, that climate science is complete bullshit and you've been tricked.

And instead of being like, oh, can you explain that to me you say seven you're a fucking asshole well now you're staring at the finger i'm fucking you're at the fucking moon yeah just emotionally react yeah i'm just i'm just showing you the moon i don't don't i know you don't want to look at it so you're attacking me i get it i get it yeah totally totally we can use that analogy to covet or whatever the fuck you know know? Right. Okay. But yeah, let's get back. I want to try to round this out so we can move on. But at some point- Do you not want to talk about it?

Is there a part of you that's like, fuck you, I'm not talking about it. Okay. It just seems mechanical is all, you know? Okay. But it's fine. Do you know how many people have- It just sounds un-fucking-believable that you're in this fucking situation that's complete fucking like you said the fog of war complete chaos and then all of a sudden you're face to face with the

dude who wants to kill you it's like i just can't imagine looking in the eyes of someone who wants to kill me and being like oh shit here we go that's a timeless thing you know most people who experience combat they never physically connect with the people that are trying to kill them. You know, I mean, the thing about firearms is it reduces distance, right? Like, so distance becomes a relative because if you're standing 100 feet away from me, you can still shoot me in the face. one's five feet away from you you get very focused on them because animalistically we have evolved to deal with threats that are within you know hand arms reach yeah again we're just hairless fucking apes and so we bash each other in the head with rocks technology fucks up the fact that you know you can shoot me from 100 meters away and it's still going to kill me so it's like distance becomes irrelative to mortality you know this book talks about it a lot too where it says like the further away you are from the person you're killing the less likely you are to like experience any sort of like mental trauma

yeah that's where i was talking about technology surpassed humanity you know to have to physically beat someone to death is different than shooting them right you know if you shoot a drone strike it's like nothing yeah but if you have to know if you shoot a drone strike it's like nothing yeah but if you have to do that with a fucking claw hammer it's a different thing you know it's a much more brutal uh uh contextual thing to do that uh but uh especially since we're just mirrors of each other you basically killed yourself yeah man but that's that's later on right that's that's later on in reflection and That's that's later on in reflection. And that's why. That's why, you know, projecting violence. And this is again, I'm digressing. I apologize. But if you want to solve problems with violence, you inherit grief. me on it, put it on a fucking billboard, whatever you, if you're solving problems with violence, you inherit grief. And unfortunately with our country, if the young men that do that,

they inherit grief and they come back and it just fucking breaks them, you know? And I don't care who says what, man, if you've killed somebody or you've had someone begging for their life, enemy or fucking, or your best buddy, like you inherit grief from that. I don't care what you say to me, you know, and you're going to be a little more tender because of that experience. You know, if anybody's in need, you're going to be a little more fucking amenable to that need. And that's the gift of the grief. But in this situation, you know, where we're talking about our payfuck helicopters left the apaches came in i think we call it we we had four hellfires impact well within like 100 150 meters of us you know wow um and again the difficulty is the

helicopter has to fly 10 miles away and we're in a valley we're in a steep fucking mountainous afghan valley so they have to come in and out of that valley to do anything with their weapon systems you know and uh they would fire their missiles and and i really i had no intention of living like when you have a hellfire missile fired at you from like eight miles away from an apache and it's coming right at you. And you're calling them, you're telling them to do it. Yeah. Yeah. And, and, uh, now these guys are fucking, these guys are pipe hitting motherfuckers, man. Like they, they know their job, they know their weapon system, they know their helicopter and the optics involved in an Apache is so,

so on point. Like they're seeing if you're, they're not looking at like thermal, like a hot, you know, like they're not looking at like, you know, just blurbs on a screen. They can, are you wearing a helmet or not? That's what they're looking at. If you're not wearing a helmet, you're an insurgent. I'm going to fucking kill you. And so they were having a hard time because the enemy was so mixed within us as coalition forces. They were having a hard time releasing their weapons because they knew that they were going to kill or mutilate the dead of the coalition forces.

And so and, you know, we you can call in, you know, a term. I mean, some people are probably familiar with it, like danger close. Like I knowingly inherit the responsibility of you calling these weapons in on us you know like i know that it might kill or harm us so just do it like because we're out of ammunition that's where we were and and uh they fired four uh hellfires and those things came at us man and uh there's moments that i've experienced in my life. Uh, I'm sure you guys are familiar with the movie blade runner. Um, remember the cyborg at the end where he's who's, who's the, the, I was talking to walk-ins was a Christopher walk-ins. No, not Christopher walk-in that the

tough cyborg, the real bad-ass cyborg. And he has this quote and he's dying at the end because now these cyborgs, if no one's ever seen the movie Blade Runner, man, like fuck off. You guys need to see the movie. And so basically it's these cyborgs that have become self-conscious that they're dying. And they have this lifespan of just like five years, but they're made for combat. And again, that talks to what we were talking about earlier with the performance versus health right and so this this combat model realizes he's going to die and and uh harrison ford is this cop guy that can find and kill these

cyborgs that are trying to be immortal long story short this cyborg's dying at the end and he has this quote he's like the things i've seen with my eyes the things these eyes have seen and he starts to use some weird beautiful metaphoric thing where he's yeah right there man isn't that walking isn't that isn't that christopher walking no that's rudger howard brother oh yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah and it's such a beautiful scene. What's really interesting, he didn't have any scripted dialogue. He just came up with that. I know I'm going down a rabbit hole, but I love that movie.

But he's talking at the end of it, and he's talking about the things, and he realizes that his system's dying. Like, he's dying before the camera right now, and it's this cyborg that's that's experienced horrific futuristic combat and he talks about the things he's seen with his eyes and he goes into this beautiful quote of uh i've seen the the quasars of novas of indoor and shit you know he's just talking about these ethereal things that he's seen in space and i i definitely feel like like rudger howard at the end of, of fucking Blade Runner,

because seeing those hellfires come in at us was one of the most surreal things I've ever seen. And they were, they were ballistic. So they were flying faster than the speed of sound. And you can, but we, as it got closer, you could hear the servos of the rear control mechanisms on the, the, the missile itself controlling it would fire and you would hear like you'd hear like those old 80s things you know from like the van oh yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah you would hear that sound as it was coming at you and it would go right over

our shoulder like above right where we were and impact and defilate like on the other side of a small hill of where we were. And it would be deafening. And I've described this to other people that I've told the story to that those impacts were so powerful that it altered my DNA. The concussion, percussion, the force of that was life altering, to say the least, you know, and each time that would happen, all of the machine gun fire would stop. And it would stop for about 30 seconds to a minute, because I think everybody either it hit the assholes that were firing the machine guns at us, or everybody was just like, like, they're just like, I mean mean there's there's fucking cerebral spinal fluid running out of your fucking ears after that and and uh we did that there were four hellfires that impacted there and then at some point uh we became even more desperate due to the situation and we called in a 2,000-pound bomb.

And now that 2,000-pound bomb was not going to be guided because basically the Apaches ran out of fuel and ammunition as well. And that's a term that we use in the military, like they're whiskey or they're going bingo. Bingo is usually fuel, but you can go, you say I'm going bingo on ammo or whatever, I'm black on ammo. But they ran out of missiles and munitions as well. And they left us. And this is all in a very tight timeline. Like we'd maybe been on the ground, maybe 30 minutes when all of this had

taken place. The F-18 checked in with us, F-18 fighter checked in and it dropped a 10,000 pound or 2,000 pound bomb. And that again, we had to call in danger close. And it was just one of those things that we had no even thought that we would live through every three seconds before up to that moment. And we were just wanting to kill as many insurgents as possible with us. And that's all we had. And we called that in danger close. The pilot gave us his ominous dominus. I think he even said, you know, you know, God be with you or something like that when he dropped it.

But he dropped that thing just on the other side of this hill. And I've got satellite imagery of all this stuff. But they dropped that bomb. And when it detonated, I. Something in me at some point had just gone so animalistic that when that impact hit, I ran over the knoll that we were at and ran to the casualties because again subconsciously i'm trying to save my son and i sprint up over this hill and immediately when i did that i ran where's koa at this time is he with you he's right with me the entire time and he his job is to establish communications but we're in the mountains. And at the time, we were using satellite communications,

very advanced satellite communication network. But in the terrain, it was non-feasible. The directions that we had to satellites were obscured by the mountains themselves. And so he was trying, with everything with everything he could to communicate and there's a lot of ways you can do you can try to daisy chain radio networks to talk to other radio networks but we didn't have line of sight with our helicopters uh and they were so battle damaged that they were getting repaired and fixed and fueled to come back and get us hunter mcintyre just chimed in he says you're a total fraud hunter he knows where you live buddy you better watch out

but uh yeah yeah i saw hunter man at the the go yes yeah my god man i mean my hat's off to that guy he's a fucking beast okay uh sorry i to, I had to throw that in there. So you guys are right. The, the 2000 pound bomb goes off and, uh, you're running towards where the, where you're assuming the casualties. Face to face with a surgeon that was, you know, wrapped up into all of that and basically tripped in, in, in cartwheel to over him. And, uh, because I was running at full force right over this thing,

and I literally thought that we had 30 seconds before the machine gun fire was going to kick up. And I mean, at this time, there was dirt and rocks and shit still falling down from the explosion that had just happened. I mean, man, nothing prepared me. You know, no training, no upbringing or anything. If you drop a 2000 pound bomb on a stadium, the stadium's gone. Like it blows up.

No, I mean, you know, I mean, like, blows up a football field. It's like, I mean, if I was to throw a hand grenade, you know, out in an open field, it's very, uh, it's not impressive. It just kind of goes pop, you know, but if you throw that thing in a room, everybody's dead in the fucking room. Right,

right. Okay. But you know, like even machine guns, like machine guns, like, like a M4, like your classic,

like military M4. It's not impressive at all to shoot. It's just the 22, you know, it's just, you know, I mean, lethality has nothing to do with impressing, you know, it's not a Hollywood fucking, you know, it's just, I mean, lethality has nothing to do with impressing. It's not a Hollywood fucking, it's just a massive,

the thing that's very impressive about it is the percussive explosion. But that weapon dropped, I don't know, maybe 500 meters. I don't even know. I'd have to look at it. But it was on the other side of a hill from where it detonated to where we were. don't know, maybe 500 meters. I don't even know. I'd have to look at it, you know, but it made it, but it was on the other side of a hill from where it detonated to where we were. But my whole point is when we made, when I made it to the location of the casualties, and again, this is in hindsight, some of those hellfires had impacted the casualty site,

the missiles that we called in, because the insurgents had gone to that casualty location and were killing the dead and wounded at that site. And this is just from where we were calling them in, I mean, less than 100 meters, you know, from that. And when I got there, I mean, absolutely surreal, just the bodies and the difficult situation that was there. I mean, think of the forces it would take to blow armor off of somebody. You know, think of the force that it would take to blow, you know, generically issued body armor off of a human body. Those are the forces that we're talking about. And there were people that were still alive, you know, from that. And, and, uh, I mean, these are guys with their arms and legs turned around backwards or, you know,

you know, plate size holes, like dinner plate size holes in their chest, you know, just trying to breathe, you know? And, uh, I came up to them and they were conscious enough to just reach out towards me, you know, and, uh, I, I cover all this stuff in the book, but, uh, you know, it took me, cause at this point I was just kind of surviving the surreal circumstances from moment to moment, but, um, that, that it took me, you know, a weird amount of time, like 30 seconds of me just staring at the first casualty that I saw to snap out of it. And I didn't know what to do. Like, I didn't know how to treat that guy, you know, guys, you know, legs turned around backwards, armor ripped off of him. And he's breathing in short gasping breaths with,

I can see his lungs breathing. You know, I mean, in the book you talk about like even the lollipops, you give a guy a lollipop, he dies. You pull the lollipop basically out of his mouth and save it so you can give it to the next guy.

So, I mean, yeah, I mean, as far as the hand to hand fighting, you know, there were enemy insurgent dead mixed in with the living and wounded and dead uh at the site that i went to to start treating guys um at this point the sun

started going down uh to where we had no illumination like the moon hadn't come up yet it was very dark and i was crawling up and down this trench, just trying to drag everyone together. And so Koa had some wherewithal. He knew that I was getting into things emotionally, like like like one of the men had died. The first casualty died and I was punching him in the face, trying to get him to snap out of it, which, you know, it's just again, it turns into caveman shit, you know. snap out of it which you know it's just again it turns into caveman shit you know uh but uh and he was telling me to drag everyone down to him which you know gravity works you know you can't it's impossible for one man to drag another 200 pound man with combat equipment up the side of a steep slope you drag everybody down to where there's kind of like a covered location and and

that's where Koa was. Koa was still fighting to get radio communication. He was in and out of communication. And that's his job. My job was to collect, consolidate, and start treating the wounded with everything that I had. And his job is to call in Apaches. And he's a forward air controller.

He calls in, coordinates those assets to kill people that are trying to kill us. And so. And to rescue you, right? And rescue you. Yeah. Yeah, correct. And but, you know, we were there for three hours over that time frame. A bunch of surreal stuff happened.

One of the most surreal. There's a picture, it might be really hard to find, but it's a picture that a very beautiful artist by the name of Invader Girl is her Instagram, but her name's Sarah. She's definitely a muse in art, but she painted a beautiful painting. I think it's on my Instagram somewhere, but it's a picture of a machine gunner with his face caved in with purple art. It's an oil painting. And she painted that for me. One of the more surreal moments that I'm trying to get to was, yeah, that's it right there. I mean, this is how beautiful and articulate art

can be. She painted that for me and she had no idea. But there's this situation that happened in this circumstance that I'm discussing right now. The whole explanation is on my Instagram if people want to read it. But I didn't paint that, she did. But there was an instance where more and more men were dying in my arms and I was in rage with horror and grief. And, and, uh, there was a machine gunner that was on the side of this Hill and he was still behind like the two 40 machine gun laying there. And every once in a while he'd be like, Hey doc. And they all call you doc. They don't realize that all PJs are fucking docs or whatever, you know, but that's what you call guys in the infantry that are helping you as doc he's like hey doc

there's some guys moving around right over here they're about 50 meters away and the whole time like he doesn't even have ammunition like we're out of fucking ammo and uh the whole time he's talking to me we're getting shot at the whole time and we're in this like real little slit trench that we're kind of crawling up and down. And I've managed to get all the casualties kind of piled up just below where this guy was, but there was a couple casualties up above him. And so I went back up there. And one of the men had just died, my arms in it really affected me. And I set him down, and I needed help. And so I was, I crawled down to where this machine gunner was and I put my hands on him and I kneed him as hard as he could, like in the side of the ribs. And he was behind his

machine gun and he didn't move. And again, this guy's no more than like 10, 15 feet away from me like the whole time. And I rolled him over and by now the moon had risen the moon was up and it was a full fucking moon man and i rolled him over and his whole face was caved in but he but he could still talk i don't know what had happened is what i'm saying it's like like i never remember an rpg detonating obviously that was an rpg that detonated directly like within five feet of, and it pushed a rock, or the percussion caved his face in. Yeah, yeah. And that was one of the most horrific, beautiful things that I've ever seen in my life, and it was just as if God was looking at me. And I remember at that point, I went so animalistic that I just stood up and grabbed him by his heels and drug him on his face down to where

the other guys were so at that point he had died he had died well like telling you to help this guy and help this guy yeah yeah I mean I was completely unaware of that RPG impact crazy um there's more surreal moments that that uh I can get into one of the survivors was a guy named Carl Bilby he was the guy that I mentioned in the book he was eviscer the survivors was a guy named Carl Bilby. He was the guy that I mentioned in the book, but he was eviscerated. He was the guy that was shot through the hips that was eviscerated. And he later discussed with me and again, through Go Ruck, through the community of Go Ruck,

we held an event to honor these events that I'm discussing. And a lot of the survivors of what I'm discussing came to the event to help run it. Not only the pilot, Marcus Maris, he came to tell stories through these events. And these are like really physically arduous events. So the listeners that don't understand like go-ruck events, like they'll run 12 to 48 hours long. And the purpose is to get people to exceed their physical limitations and touch their emotional context of who they are and to build teamwork and all this shit you know did you guys win that did you guys win that battle or did you leave and it was unfinished i mean fuck i mean it's like winning and losing right it's like what the fuck's that even mean right

i guess i mean did all of them die or no there was i mean i think there was a report of up to 250 insurgents killed but again it's like numbers it's like it's the finger and not the moon you know it's like right um but um i lost my thread there oh so you know carl after so a lot of these survivors came to this GORUCK event in honor of Bulldog Bite. And what's interesting, like I was very intimidated and physically scared to meet them because the last time I met them, you know, I was dragging them up and down the side of a cliff or hoist them into a helicopter or something like that. And so I was very intimidated to meet them because I was, you know, I'm always trying to validate my emotions from the event, if that makes sense. So like if someone's raped, like they're forever lost in validating the emotional trauma of that. And so the emotional trauma of what I experienced there in combat, like it's always like so fucking surreal.

It's like looking again into God's eyes or the universe's eyes. And you're always attempting to validate those experiences and the severity of living through them. And so meeting these guys was horribly challenging, you know, emotionally. A lot of the guys didn't show up because I'm sure they were feeling the same thing. But I was just trying to honor the moment being a go-route cadre and doing, having the ability to connect with some of the survivors of this thing and honoring it with one of these events. And what was really powerful for me is, you know, everybody there not only confirmed everything that I'm saying but they they were like

no there wasn't like it's like when you inserted we saw five rpgs detonate within you know 20 feet of you you know throughout that 30 minutes you were trying to get to us and i only remember one but again i don't even remember the the the rpg that killed, that machine gunner that was 10 feet from me. Right. Right. And a lot of that, you know, you have these, you have auditory occlusion, but you have this time space thing. Like he said, she said, this thing happened or I did this and you were doing this. And again, at some point it's the finger pointing at the moon and, and you have to slow down. Like I did survive those events.

I think that there wasn't right or wrong in any of it. There was better or worse. And I think that we did better. We did the best that we could with everything that we had. And then even further now, like it's 2022, man, that was 12 years ago. And so it's like, I've had 12 years to sit here and think about these fucking things or try to find reasoning behind them of surviving them. And so, again, that's where I really believe in the power of psychedelics, just allowing you to access these subconscious memories, what we were talking about with, you know, me doing CPR on my son or these crazy weird circumstances that I lived through in my upbringing of just who I am and then surviving these horrific experiences to the surreal nature

of getting tattooed, you know, within, you know, days of this event that I'm explaining in Afghanistan. You know, all those are very inexplicable, you know, and you're subconscious. We have to process those things. And, you know, I believe, you know, I mean, all the details that have never mattered, like my entire life story from my upbringing to my injuries, to the things that I've overcome, like none of that shit matters, man. The only thing that matters is like, how did I feel about them? What were my, what was my emotional relationship with myself or those events? That's all that fucking matters. Why is that? Why is that? Why do you say that? Because, you know, it's, it's, you have to let

these things change you. If I just, if I'm doing it just to get better at doing that job, which is what most people do, like in that tier one special operations thing, like they're only doing this thing to try to make themselves better at it. Do you remember, Roger, can I ask you a question real quick? Do you remember the first time you held the girl's hand? Uh,

yeah, I guess. Yeah. I mean, it was either my wife or, you know, I had a crush on a girl. Like the first time I ever like gave a Valentine to a wife or you know i had a crush on a girl like the first time i ever like gave a valentine to a girl you know yeah i guess that's why why do you bring that up because

because i'm trying to fucking relate man i i i can remember the first time uh uh you know being 16 years old and sitting in a car and in in in french kissing a girl for the first time, you know, being 16 years old and sitting in a car and in French kissing a girl for the first time. I remember who that girl was. And I thought and and and I guess I'm trying to think that the details maybe don't matter. It was the way I felt. I felt this is the way you feel about it. It was such a unique. I was having so much fun.

Yeah. Yeah. And it's all emotional. And that came to me. And so you're saying that's the same with like tragedy too, the details. And maybe tragedy is not a fair word, but yeah, maybe. Anything traumatic. Anything traumatic.

Anything traumatic in our lives, it's like the details don't matter. So like when someone has something traumatic happen to them, like I've seen this with anybody, right? Like, I mean, if you talk to any Medal of Honor recipient and you ask them about their experiences. A lot of times what people want to know is like, I went left, you grabbed my right hand, I did this right over here, we did this. And it's just you're just talking about the finger, like the whole point of that entire event is that you survived it. But what were you thinking even beforehand? Like what was your emotion beforehand and how did that change? You know, how did it you know, I was asked to speak to a lot of special operations teams after my experiences because they're like, wow, you know, you live through this thing. And I think that your message of understanding our mortality and our relationship with that is very important for our guys to hear. And if you

could please come and speak at that. And so I spent a lot of time thinking about what good does me sharing my story have? Well, one, it honors the moments. Well, two, it's a timeless story of humanity. You know, it's like you overcome odds, you do these things. It's Greek tragedy in a way. But I think that the only thing- It's so timeless.

Your story is so timeless. It's like a romantic. Yeah. It's like crazy. It's so timeless. When I'm reading it, it just seems crazy it's so time and reading it just seems it could be any time period and i don't i don't mean for that to happen like i'm not trying to frame those things in that way but it's it's it's it's one of those things that i think the

only value of ourselves right like what i really try to impart to people that might be in those situations you know that they've been highly trained and selected. They're in these situations that they have to perform at high levels. I think the only thing that really matters with people is your resolve and your intention. I think that's it, man. That's what allows us to solve unsolvable problems. What's that mean, your resolve? Your ability to overcome things that have happened to you or to assimilate them into your lives? That's what allows us to solve unsolvable problems. What's that mean? You resolve your ability to overcome like things that have happened to you or to assimilate

them into your lives. That's resolve. Yeah. So, so like resolve is how vested are you? Like how, and that's the reason that people go through these special operations training schools is they're getting the resolve tested. You know, like, like I want to push you past what you think you can do or what you think your limits are, you know? And so like, why do people have good marriages, right? It's their resolve and their

intention. What is their intention of being married to that person? You know, how resolved are they? Are they willing to change for that person? All those things are the things that are important, you know? And that's the same thing, you know, just, you know, combat is normal life, but it's just everything, all the volumes jacked all the way up. Wow. You know? Wow. And it's like, you know, like every one of our days, like every day living is combat just at a much lower level. It's just that the volumes are turned down. And so, you know, our ability to interact with that is based off of how resolved are we to execute? How much are we willing to change to get see this thing through? And, you know, within special operations,

you need to be willing to die, like you need to be willing to sacrifice, martyr yourself for something greater than yourself. And when you do that, you see that in all things, right? So, you know, we were talking about Hunter,

you know, like what makes him such a good athlete. You can say nature, nurture all this thing again, but he, there's something in him. There's a drive in him of resolve. Running from some pain,

running from some deep. Again, again, that's these, these, these things that happen to us. Right. And, and, but he's like this perfect storm, you from some deep, again, that's these, these, these things that happened to us. Right. And, and, but he's like this perfect storm, you know? So, and, and I feel I was that perfect storm within special operations, particularly for that combat that I was discussing, you know, but

I'm also there for my, my son Oz, you know, and you know, it's just that resolve and that intention is everything what are your intentions are you doing that to wear a t-shirt are you doing that as an ego dance are you doing that because you're trying to save your infant son that you blame yourself for you know that that resolve and that intention is the magic it's hidden it's hidden magic in the everyday moments of our lives you know and i think the people people that are high functioning, you know, they just they tap into that and that becomes aligned with the nature and nurture of their reality. And there's something driving them beyond the superficial. There's something very deep in there, you know, of worth or of trauma or fracture.

And that's again, it's not sometimes that's, again, it's not, sometimes it's not health, it's performance, right? You know what I mean? You know, we break at our weakest link. And I mean, I've broken physically many times, you know, from injuries from my youth to my career in special operations to mentally, to, to psychically breaking from grief, you know? but we can all get stronger you know i mean you know we break to let the light in just like that's how i was going to finish the show we break to let the light in but those that will not break it will kill Yeah, 100%. not die and some of you have heard that story and i spent i'm now 50 years old and it wasn't till last night while working on the final notes of roger sparks that i saw this we will break to let the light in but those that will not break it will kill so remember that

please remember that fucking what a great line roger is that hemingway shit i don't know man i was googling around trying to figure out who it is and i'm constantly quoting and plagiarizing everything i'm like a like that whole shot a thing the tenderness comes from pain i love dropping that on uh like these really gritty tough you know special operations guys you know i'm like tenderness comes from pain man have you seen the light roger uh of breaking and letting the light in yeah yeah man of course man, of course. You know, I mean, it's, again, it always comes to us in ways that we don't think it is, you know.

It comes to you and your kids smiling at you, you know. I remember I was recovering from that paralysis injury. And we had just evacuated from Hurricane Katrina. I was stationed at a base not far from New Orleans. It's a place called Hurlburt Field. It's a special operations base. That's where we were living when I did CPR on my son and, you know, the whole thing. You know, the emergency room we went to was Fort Walton Beach.

But it's all right there. It's like Hurricane Alley and everything. It's right where, you know, Katrina was, you know, maybe like the eye of it was maybe like 50 to a hundred miles away from there, but we had evacuated and I was still in the process of, I had a Walker to learn to walk again, man. And, uh, I mean, I was probably taller than me. I'm a freak show. uh uh i mean i was doing

pilates like you know full mat routines of pilates like five times a day you know just trying to recover from this this injury you know and uh my young son at the time oz uh he was in a in a stroller but i was using that stroller as a walker too. It was like this super duper stroller walker thing. And I'm walking him around a neighborhood and he was giggling or something. I don't know what it was, but he was giggling. And I turned him around and I looked at him and he was smiling. And it's just like this fucking smile on his face connected with me so powerfully. That it was like, you know, it's like nothing, nothing else mattered.

And I think all of us need that in our lives, you know, whatever it is in our intentions, you know, like we all need something larger than ourselves to live for. And I do I know a large part of the people that listen to your podcast are professionally involved in health, vitality, and physical development. And I think that a portion that is often overlooked is service. And I mean, I don't want to get cliche about being in the military and thank you for your service and shit like that, because that was none of the reason of why I was there. I was there to use that medium to grow mentally, physically, and spiritually. But what I mean is, is we have to live past something beyond ourselves. Like in Viktor Frankl's book, The Meaning of Life, Viktor Frankl was a child during Nazi Germany. And I think, I believe that he survived Dachau, the concentration camp in Dachau. But he witnessed his family murdered.

And he spent, I think it was like a year or two years in a concentration camp controlled by the SS as a young boy. And after surviving those circumstances, he wrote a beautiful book, and it's The Meaning of Life. And he talks about people who can survive very difficult circumstances. And he was like, it was always the people that were living for others that lived. And as soon as that was taken away from them, they died, whether it was from exhaustion, starvation or whatever it was. And I think that that's what children are so beautiful about is they give us something much larger than ourselves you know um and i think that you can find that in ways if you don't have children that's fine i mean people find it in very cliche ways with with dogs and shit like that you know having animals but uh find something to serve larger

than yourself you know there's a dao, stop thinking and all your problems will end. Yeah. And when you, and when you, yeah. And when you, and you, when you serving something higher,

higher or something besides yourself in, in its totality, you know, when you're getting up in the middle of the night to check your son's blood, you, you, you're definitely doing that. Yeah.

Yeah. And it's just to live past yourself, like live beyond yourself. Like don't be good at something, be good for something. You know, I think that's a really powerful thing is to, you know, like we can all get really good at shit, you know, that's great, but you need to be good for something. Like what good is that doing for other people that you care for in your life? That's how you should judge success. You know, like success is not comfort. You know, we talked about that earlier. Like that's the biggest lie that we fucking have is that success

is comfort. You know, um, you know, it's just, you know, I've really desperation is a gift. You know, I think about the difficulties of my early life. I was desperate, just like I was desperate on the side of that mountain with those men. But it's our desperation that makes us great. You know, and, you know, a lot of the book, I quote a thing called the Hagakuri, which is a religious text that the samurai produced. And it's just filled with metaphor and shit like that. The quotes you chose are fantastic. Fantastic. Yeah.

you chose are fantastic fantastic yeah um but you know the book wrote itself i i feel like it's very unsuccinct there's a lot of stuff that we had to leave out of there but um you know it is it is it is unsuccinct it is you're absolutely right and it's it's perfectly beautiful like that it's cool i was never i was never jarred by it i was like okay here we go um yeah it was it was difficult to write you know because my mother is still alive i remember my my reaction that my mother gave me when she read the the the book she was like how could you do this to your father and my father had just died you know he died of lung cancer what part in there did she think was not i thought you were very loving just exposing just exposing everything

yeah i don't know but she's you know she's protective over him yeah yeah very you know very very much so and she's still you know she's still that grieving widow you know she spent her whole life with him and so i just the way i'm respectful to everyone in the book by the way i tried man to everyone it's very hard to write about combat situations because we were all seeing things from different perspectives and you know just mentioning that one man that was uh you know panicked people panic man and you know, panic. People panic, man. And, you know, people want to, you know, you know, posture in certain ways, but, you know, truly horrific, violent events bring out all of our emotions, man. And I think that we owe the truth when it comes to

those things. I think that that's the only thing of value, right? Is like to share as clear as a picture as possible. You know, I've received lots of comfort by reading World War I literature, like Robert Service Frost stuff, like Robert Frost stuff. Man, god damn, man. I mean, to realize what I've experienced, not only with the grief, but, you know, breaking mentally, like allowing grief to break you and say that that's OK. Like that is a part of the human condition, because on the other side of grief is joy. You know, when you let that shit go, it's fucking wonderful. But none of this is easy. It's all easy to talk about. But, you know, growth hurts anytime that you're fucking experiencing pain, just like training physically. wonderful, but none of this is easy. It's all easy to talk about, but, uh,

you know, growth hurts anytime that you're fucking experiencing pain, just like training physically, like when you're doing a wad or you're doing something and you're fucking digging deep and then you're at the point of your, your physical limitations, that is fucking growth. You know, and our emotions have that same capacity. You know, like when you're pushing your emotions to the point of fracture, that is growth. And that takes courage to do it. You know, and everybody, everyone can relate to the physical metaphor of this stuff.

But we are emotional and physical living creatures, you know, and it's like our emotional and metaphysical makeup of what we are is just as important as a physical, if not more, because the body does what the mind tells it to do. You know, I mean, I absolutely love, you know, I've become good friends with Laird and Gabby Reese, you know, Laird Hamilton. I love ice bathing. I love all that shit. I love, you know, shit i love uh you know breath hold diving you know free diving i love diving under the ice the whole wim hof bullshit because it's it's uh remarkable man have you met him i've never met him but uh i mean i feel like circles are doing this thing you know yeah yeah remarkable shit man good yeah yeah it's just and he's such an affirmation that the mind controls the body period that you know i mean he was crushed with grief of losing his wife you know i mean but grief is a lesson in grief and loss are part of life and let that shit change

you let it change you for the better don't let it break you and make you sour man you know like let feel the fucking pain and become soft from it you know it's all that weird bruce lee fucking dowdy chink stuff you know the soft is hard the heart is soft you know like uh but not recognizing your emotional capacity you know like we seek competition we do all this stuff, but use all those things as a. As as a tool to become a better fucking person, because if you're not doing that, you're just getting better and better at something. The fingers getting cooler and cooler, but the moon's still here, you know. But, yeah, allowing our experiences to change, I think, is, you know, my greatest gift to my story. You know, I mean, and it's just so interesting because of the human dynamic of having a special needs son.

Watching him thrive is amazing, man. He started racing cyclocross. I mean, he's a great fucking swimmer. He does these go-ruck events and he's just like this fucking stud, you know. And it's just, I think he's just this lesson that, you know, your body is guided by the strength of your mind, you know, and and that's not just sit around meditating, trying to bend spoons and shit. But that has to do with your intentions. Like, why? Why, you know, do you want to do the things that you do?

That determines the outcome. You know, I mean, I'm not the the outcome. I've started tattooing because of being tattooed in those moments, right after combat. And so when I tattoo people, I'm not the greatest tattoo artist in the world, but people want to come and share that ceremony in that moment with me because I want to be there for them. I want that experience to be cathartic because everything, every time I tattoo, it represents catharsis for me. How often do you tattoo? Once, twice a day during the week.

Like as soon as I'm done with this podcast, I've got a woman coming in here in Eagle River that I'll be tattooing. But when are you moving out of Alaska? When are you moving out of there, Roger? You know, we've talked about that. the community we live in is so tight-knit uh uh i mean like they the small micro brewery that's up here uh uh owns you know they named a beer after my book uh my son oz works at the local strength and power gym that they got here uh i mean it's just you have yeah yep yep people ask me all the time

when the fuck are you gonna get out of california i'm like dude i'm in such a good loop yeah exactly i mean my community is not i'm not i i've the zone i mean i see the zombies all around me and all the wackadoodles but but i used to be part of them you know i i woke up i i have belief that maybe they can wake up too. Everybody can change. And I think it's all right. When you look behind the curtain, the longer that we live, I think the wiser we become. We're not here for self-fulfillment. You're here to share your experience with others.

I remember Greg Glassman said this to me one time. We were looking at a hot dog vendor who was selling hot dogs, and he's trying to make money then we're looking at a musician who's playing music and he's trying to make money we were in san luis obispo and then we were looking at a fucking homeless guy and greg said to me your only value here on planet earth is what you can do to help your fellow man what you contribute and i saw two people who were contributing right the hot dog vendor and the musician and then you have the homeless guy and i'm thinking what the fuck is this guy contributing? And I guess what he's contributing is for people who haven't, um, who feel like for some reason they need to help someone who's down on their luck or who, or they, or they feel like they should give someone 50 bucks to go buy their next hit

of heroin. But it was just interesting. Where do you, you know, what are, what are these values? What are, what is our value to, uh, humanity? What is that? Like we're all life aware of itself, right? Like we're just this beautiful expression of life. We are life conscious of itself. And, and, uh, the only thing that separates from any of that bullshit is, is our ego. Now ego can be a good thing, but it also should be a very fucking bad thing. You know, it's like our ego keeps us alive as a mammal. Like if you think, you know, you're getting more food than me or, you know, like this and that, you can become protective and fight for the things that you think are yours. That's your ego fighting. There's a very powerful, beneficial thing to our ego. But at the same time, you know, within we talked about that Maslow's hierarchy of needs where we live in Western world.

The ego is a destructive thing because it separates us from our common man. It separates us and we just self-collect, you know, like we just we just that's where you have these huge differences in wealth and all this shit. You know, because it's like, why do you need eight billion dollars? You know, why do you need why do you need one hundred million dollars? It's really ridiculous. You know, it's like at some point you'd be a better person if you gave most of that away. You know, I mean, now the other people that you give that away to are probably going to fuck it up too, right? But it's like, you know, the whole point of life is to share that with other people.

But now if you've always been less than and you've always had this shit taken out of your mouth, you're like, fuck you, man. Like, you know, you're always fighting for that thing. And you're stuck in that dichotomy, that paradigm of what that is. But once you realize that, you know, life is a very self sustaining stroke for stroke thing, it just becomes beautiful. You know, and unfortunately, that takes us transcending ourselves, you know. And I mean, I feel very sure footed in the experiences of my life. But we always have to keep that beginner's mind, man. You know, it's like and that's where I think the ritual of exercise is beautiful. You know, there's a truth in doing push ups to collapse.

There's a there is a there's a truth and a beauty. Like what Henry Rollins, when he wrote that thing, what is it? The iron? Have you read that? No. Oh fuck, man. You got to read Henry Rollins, the iron. I ran into Henry Rollins in a bookstore in Berkeley once. Oh man. Yeah. So yeah, he's, he's a red guy. Cause he spoke a lot of truth. I think it's called The Iron or the Weight. It's a beautiful poem about exercise and just the inherent truth in that. Like 125 pounds of steel on a barbell, like that 125 pounds does not fucking lie. You know, and whether you love it, like it, hate it, that's it right there. Iron in the soul.

Fucking read that 10 fucking times before you go to bed, man. Is he still alive, Henry Rollins? Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. He's gotten involved in all kinds of meaningful work. He got involved in working for National Geographic and going around and interviewing fucking people in third world countries and shit. Check out what he's doing lately, man. Get him on the podcast.

He's a great fucking dude. Can I say something in defense of the people who are billionaires right ahead it's it's important that someone like um bezos wants to go to mars oh yeah without a doubt it's it's it's it's important to recognize that no matter how big the discrepancy of wealth is on planet Earth, that the poor people have never had more opportunity. They all have iPhones and cell phones that they didn't have 30 years ago. Yeah. And that to take from them is – I don't believe that that is the way. I don't believe that that is the way. I think that there's a magic here on the universe that if you despise the people who are wealthy, all that will do is keep you poor.

And I've said this on the show hundreds and hundreds of times. The universe will give you exactly what you want. And if you resent rich people or think poorly of them, the universe will never let you become rich because it doesn't because you resent those people and why would it let you become rich and so when when i don't think the feeling should be the sentiment should be when you see a man drive by in a lamborghini um wow what a piece of shit i think it should be like what an amazing piece of artwork imagine all the jobs that that's provided by this man creating this and someone had to paint it and someone had to make those custom tires and look at, I just believe that the, I don't know. You triggered me. You triggered me.

We were doing so good. Three hours and 40 minutes in you triggered me. There's this, just this disdain for the wealthy that I think is just so unfair. I'm not saying. Yeah, I think, I think it's a valid point and it brings up a lot of good discussion you know i mean i think that uh again i think people are upset with the wrong thing it's not the wealth right it's like you know what is that it's kind of funny like haters

are gonna hate right you know but it's just like in reality like what has made that person successful you two have that capability. You did. And again, we have to inherit that responsibility of like. Don't blame the rich guy for you being poor. I guess there it is again, back to what you were saying. Don't blame them. Take blame yourself.

I mean, here I was, you know, a skinny, tall kid with a lame leg that was never strong, never fast, never, you know what I'm saying? Like, but you have to have the courage to assume responsibility for yourself. And I think this is where it kind of. The pathway of crime laid out before you also, right? Yeah. I mean, I was desperate, you know, but that you don't have Martin Luther King without racial injustice. Right. And it's another misnomer also is

in privilege you don't have biggie smalls without his lack of privilege exactly you don't have henry ford without his lack of privilege and so people have to be careful saying that shit you don't have roger sparks unless his dad was um uh who he was among a mongol enforcer you don't you don't have roger sparks unless his dad was um uh who he was a mongol enforcer you don't you don't get roger sparks yeah i mean it's it's it's uh and i think that's the way that nature consumes itself right like it needs to be that way yeah because the wolf the wolf climbing the hill is the wolf you know but i don't mean to be mean because there i do have empathy for him but you have an extremely privileged man and he turns out to be Hunter Biden. And I feel sorry for him.

Don't get me wrong. What a fucked up life. I would not want to be him. What a fucking hard life. Mom dies. All the crazy shit that's happened in his life, his drug addiction. But be careful with people who are using this word

like so-and-so is privileged, so-and-so is not privileged. The privileged people have the easier path. I think we've done a three hour and 40 minute podcast that's saying that hey without personal suffering you won't be great correct yeah i mean yeah i really think that that uh you know embracing risk with courage that alone is a catalyst for grace and synchronicity and success like but people are very averse to risk and danger like They very much so are. They're very averse to discomfort. But it's only through embracing those things that we grow emotionally,

physically, whether it's a hard workout, whether it's a difficult conversation with somebody that you love. All of those things, that is where growth and success are, are in discomfort, period. And it's like, unless you are willing to shoulder and feel that, no one else is going to feel it for you. You know, the people that are privileged, you know, like that's going to be a self decay in itself. It's like we have to experience disadvantage. We have to experience, you know, injustice to truly grow. Right. Right. You also said that too, in podcasts I listened to you did, you did yesterday. Another thing people need to accept is life is not fair. Yeah. It's never been fair. No. And above anything. But that's not, and that can't be fixed. That's, that's, that's the world in homeostasis. You're

six, nine, and i'm five five getting into a playing seat is not fair for you and playing basketball is not fair for me it's just the fucking way it is yeah it's just like you just you know what becomes what you feel is your weakness becomes your greatness yeah period that's that is that is the that is the curse that is the gift of living courageously and uncomfortably is your your weakness will become your strength you just have to figure that out but life has a way of molding that around you you know are you ever fat did you ever get fat ever in your life you know it's i'm kind of hardwired where it's almost like i'm too gaunt you know like i i pig out i eat but it's like i yeah look at your cheekbones

it is something else yeah yeah i'm so uh like after we get off this i'm gonna go crush myself in the garage you know and that's just a sense of control i think that for whatever reason like in my life i've needed exercise as a sense of control and like i exercise i try to exercise point of exhaustion yeah me too i think yeah i exercise every night before even if i exercise during the day and it's 10 30 at night i'll go in my garage and still exercise for an hour i need to like crush myself before it yeah yeah i mean i've really done my best to teach my sons, both of them, that love, that metaphysic aspect of exercise, you know, and I've done an amazing job with my younger son. My older son, he likes it, but it's a different thing, you know, but I mean, I love ice climbing. I love mountaineering. I love all the bullshit

sports, you know, but I always try to use that as a medium just to develop myself. Like, if I go ride my bike, like, I want to, I want to taste, you know, what Henry Rollins is talking about with, you know, you know, iron in the soul. Like, I want to feel my limitations. Even if that's just me literally going to my garage and doing, you know, burpees. I want to do burpees for an hour. And want to taste my mortality i want to feel my my limitation of my physical physical ability so it goes emotional this is something i think is interesting that wow wow wow yeah it's like i'm always i get it yeah i'm always trying to touch my emotions and i think that's where sport and exercise where we're at right now

is such an interesting thing because we have such a hard, difficult time accessing our emotions. But I truly believe with these elite levels of performance and exercise, that is why we do it. Like the times that I've run hundreds, like I will run 100 miles or whatever. Like I do that because I'm trying to access my emotions. And what's even more interesting when you ask, that's a long road to fucking get to. But you know, it's like,

that's why we do these things. I hear you. Yeah. And then when we like, so when we transcend our physicality, we can access our emotions. When we transcend our emotions, we can transform into like that spirituality that we transcend

into the spirituality aspects of ourselves. And it's just using those things as a tool to develop yourself, you know, and we are all Bodhisattva in some way, like at some point, like a Bodhisattva within, you know, Buddhist religion, they're there to help others up to the point that they have evolved. And I definitely feel that way with my life story. Like I really enjoy, like I built a sauna complex in my backyard and I invite everybody I tattoo. I'm like, man, as soon as this thing's done fucking healing, you got to come and do this sauna ice bathing with me. And they're like, what?

You know, it's like I want to bodhisattva everybody in that thing, you know, because I want to share it. You know, I want to share every bit of it. You know. They had the choice to leave, but they stay and help. Yeah, you're acting out of compassion. You know, you realize the only benefit of your experience is to share that with others. You know. And I mean, I think that's the effort of your podcast, man. That's how I enjoy speaking about my life story is just about sharing your experience.

And I think that that's just it's a human nature thing, man. I've become involved in so many projects. You know, I mentioned this ayahuasca project. There's one that's heroic hearts. ayahuasca project. Um, there's one that's it's heroic hearts. You know, they, they basically find combat veterans, uh, uh, ayahuasca treatment centers, uh, you know, in Peru and Costa Rica, you know, they, there's all kinds of stuff. I developed this thing called a backbone network.com that what that was is, uh, uh, it's a, I believe the backbone of this country is combat veterans and, uh, not the bullshit people that, you know, they served and thank you for your service, but true combat veterans, you know, like they, they deserve a voice, man. They deserve to come on podcasts like this and share their truths because I think it's when we don't find value in our stories that we

dismiss our own pain and experience. You know, like you're like they minimize it. Oh, I didn't survive Bulldog Bide. I didn't get overrun by the enemy. I didn't do these things. But it's like if you think your life is threatened, you have something to share, man. You know, when I when I when I was 34 years old and I first started working for CrossFit, there were 300 gyms. This is 2006.

And I basically, I was raised in California, and I was raised to fucking hate police officers and hate the military. And it wasn't explicit. It was low-level, implicit, steady drip from the day I was born. Well, yeah, it's the streets are talking, right? Yeah, it's the streets. And hate this country, yeah, it's the streets are talking, right? Yeah. And hate and hate this country. Yeah. And when I got involved in CrossFit and I was shoulder to shoulder with cops and military, I'm like, oh, shit, these are just people. I've never even heard their story. I've been listening to the story about who police officers are and who the U.S. military is from fat, blue haired people. fat blue haired people for 34 years and it's fucking crazy it's fucking nuts and so so i agree with you like um combat veterans need to be heard it's a huge uh it's a it's a huge piece of this country and it would it would make us i think all saner and closer together it's like taking one end

of the blanket and bringing it over yeah yeah it's just you know grief shared is grief divided you know it's like you know combat veterans are not you know you know hard right-wing trump supporters you know it's like you know i think most people that experience high levels of violence they're the most you know you know they're they're connected with their humanity more than others you know it's like right we have all these cliches to things you know we have such cliches i mean hell i grew up you know in the environment that i did you know the pigs were the the enemy man you know right anytime we drove past a cop my dad would say shit like uh what do you call lent stuck to a cat's asshole? He'd say dirty fuzz.

You know, we'd be doing something. We'd drive past a policeman with his fucking radar gun out or pulling someone over or something. He'd say shit like, this is as my dad's like smoking a joint, you know, he's like, what do you call a penny in the bottom of a toilet? What? I'm like, I don't know. He'd be like, dirtyappa you just you're around with shit like that towards like you know any authority is the fucking enemy any authority is

the enemy and uh i mean fuck i can't say there's much wrong with that i mean i do believe you know in my worldly experiences that that we live in the best country in the world, you know, but are we oppressive? Fuck yeah, we are. You know, how do you think we got where we are? You know, you got to step on other motherfuckers to elevate yourself, you know, and, and I always, I'd always joke, you know, with the guys. And again, I was using my experiences, you know, in the elite levels of the military to learn about myself

and who I am and developing, you know, physically, spiritually, mentally, man. And you go to these very difficult, deprived parts of the world, man. And it's like, you want your $5 fucking mocha latte, whatever the fuck, this has to exist. There has to be complete deprivation for that you know and it's like yeah little chinese kids died for this exactly you know and it's just like you know it's like when you feel comfortable and warm it's at the expense of someone else period fucking period man you know and um you know it's it's part of life. Life feeds on life, feeds on life. It's like a fucking tool song, you know? It's just like life is a carnivorous fucking machine, man.

But I must emphasize this. The energy spent to come after me because I have a cell phone is better spent helping the person who suffered because of it. A hundred percent, man. Yeah. Without a doubt. Yeah. Yeah. And it's just the statement rising tides help all ships is a hundred percent true. The podcast space is super competitive. Those of us who help others, we all rise. We really, we really do. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's, you know, it's, it's, it's less than to try to rip other people down to set yourself up. It's less than to just point out problems without solutions. Yeah. It's like the world is the world. It's unfair. It's always going to be unfair, but man, you know what? Engage, engage with your fucking heart and give

it a hundred percent. And the more that you're honest with yourself, the more you're going to grow, the better you're going to make your world and the people you care for. It's just no matter what we do, the world is carnivorous. And, you know, it's great to be selfless. But at some point, you know, it becomes animalistic. It just is, man. And, you know, it's like, are we ever going to end war in our time? It's like, no, man. It's like, you know, you look at World War II, you know, the military industrial complex, Vietnam, fucking the lie of fucking Iraq, you know, you know, Afghanistan and how, you know, all of these, you know, defense contractors, you know, KBR fucking how we're building hydroelectric dams, like renewable energy plans for Afghanistan. Then we just fucking pull out. It's like our country has developed a, you know, socioeconomic model of projecting combat to sustain itself financially, period.

Wow. And it's like, yeah, we're just in this man. And it's the closer you look, the dirtier it is, man. But at the end of the day, we're all humans. Yes man. But at the end of the day, we're all humans. Yes. Yes. At the end of the day, we are all humans. Yeah. And it's life is going to go on as it is. There's always going to be, you know, the threat of Chinese, the shit going on with Russia and good guys or bad guys are just dependent on where you're fucking born. Right.

I mean, it's just the way it is, man. You know, and it's just, you know, but, you know, the more that we develop individually, physically, mentally, spiritually, whatever that is to you, the better outcome is for our loved ones. You know, it's just like that's just the way it is, man. You know, I mean, sure, the world could live without war, but we're never not going to be those primates with rocks in our hands. It's just the way it is, man. You know, and I do understand a utopia thought, man. I really dig that, man. You know, I think if everybody was just sitting around doing fucking acid. Great. Right. But at some point, that shit's going to wear off. You know, there's certain realities of just the way the universe consumes itself. You know, it's just there's nothing new with that, you know. But yeah, man, I mean, you thank you for allowing me to fucking talk to everybody.

It's probably been close to four hours now. Someone just wrote all four hours. We're at three fifty six. Thank you, brother. This is great. Yeah. Thank you. You have my phone number. There's anything I can ever do for you. Um, let me know. I'm, I'm, I'm in, uh, Santa Cruz, California. If you're ever this way, please let me know. Yeah. Uh, my mentor in tattooing a Scott Campbell, he's, uh, he's out there in LA. And so I try to connect there and I obviously love, you know, Laird Hamilton and Gabby Reese and working out in their pool and shit.

And so where are they, are they in Hawaii? Are they in Hawaii? They have a place out in Malibu, uh, but, uh, they've got a, uh, a place in, uh, Kauai as well. Okay. Uh, but, uh, yeah, their main hangout is, is right there in Malibu. You know, they've got a cool compound. And what's really cool about that is that it's really interesting. The cats that show up there, you know know it's like everybody from you know ufc cats to you know guys like myself to uh you know all the hollywood fucking weirdos that show up there it's a really interesting

place you know and uh malibu's a trip it's weird man you know i didn't you know i mean i grew up in you know how i grew up and so it's like you know experiencing like laurel canyon and all that shit it's just yes you're man it's fucking out there they think you're a trip exactly that's what's crazy is like those dichotomies attract each other right yeah ebony and ivory yes uh but uh yeah thanks again man and uh so as far as uh did we just want to get off or how you want to end this thing i'm just gonna hang up on you send you off into the alaska will nerds okay yeah please uh please send me uh uh links or heads up of how this is going to come out or is it just live now we're live we're if there's uh probably several hundred people have

already seen it and then it'll just you know it'll sit on my podcast station if there's uh probably several hundred people have already seen it and then it'll just you know it'll sit on my podcast station if there's anything you want to rip from it any time codes you want just send me a text i'll get you anything you want okay or you could rip it yourself just right off of youtube gotcha yeah sounds cool yeah if some reason uh i'm kind of i mean i feel i'm okay technologically but uh uh, you could send me a link or something that I could throw on Facebook, that'd be cool. And then, uh, maybe a small video. Give me a couple hours.

It takes a couple hours to process, but, but give me a couple hours and I'll for sure do that. And then, uh, maybe like a small, like Instagram clip or something to throw out there. I love it. Thank you. I'd appreciate it. Yeah. Yeah, please.

I'd love to throw a clip on Instagram with this thing, but, uh, yeah, I appreciate you, man. Next time I'm in Cali, I'll look you up and maybe you can murder me in a workout or something. Awesome. I'll have you just carry me. You do. Oh no, we'll do buddy carry. It'll be the strangest buddy carry ever. Oh man. Uh, yeah, I appreciate you, man. Thank you. Roger. Thanks. Thanks. Bye-bye. Right on. Thank you. Roger, thanks. Thanks for coming on, Roger. You're awesome. Bye-bye.

Right on. Thank you. I had an appointment at 930. It's now approaching noon. Holy shit. Travis, thank you. Vindicate. Vndk8.com for all your sub on podcast ceo shirts cool shit like that

eric thank you crazy generous thank you wow i feel incredibly inferior I feel incredibly inferior. And he has a 12 inch cock. Okay. Matt. Oh, it hangs to his knees.

Um, three or four feet down. Probably. Um, okay. Uh, I gotta go. Thank you. What? I gotta go. Thank you.

What? 15 more seconds. Thank you. Caleb Beaver. Uh, Matt Sousa is back in the country. Can't wait to see him on soon. Uh, tomorrow we have,

uh, Calvin, uh, what's Calvin's last name? Shoot. I forget. I apologize. Calvin.

Tomorrow's going to be a crazy show. Uh, tomorrow we have on, uh, Calvin Robinson, father, Calvin forget. I apologize, Calvin. Tomorrow's going to be a crazy show. Tomorrow we have on Calvin Robinson. Father Calvin Robinson. Yes. Then on the 12th we have Tommy G. Is that an affiliate owner? No.

He's the Kia gang guy. He's the one that steals Kias all over the place. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Brent Stephenson. He's a Ninja Warriors champion, I think, and he's also a flat earther coming on Thursday. I can't wait to hear. I want someone to convince me that the earth is flat.

Oh, we need an affiliate on this week. We don't have an affiliate. Well, next one's on until Sunday, looks like. Phillip Kelly, a CrossFitter who uh survived covid but fuck it was close on saturday i'm curious um to see how that goes it's kind of the opposite of everything i've been talking to you guys about okay okay ricard we have rock hard long that can't be his name it's ricard we have ricard long on uh sunday an affiliate owner okay oh and then and then the 17th we have on uh don fall ceo of crossfit then on the 18th we have a prediction

show for oh shit i thought the prediction show is tomorrow i'm not sure okay Okay. I have so many texts to deal with now. Caleb, thank you. Oh, we made it to four hours and one minute. Okay, great. Is this the longest show in history? Definitely. Longest show in history. All right.

Hey, it's not. Don't blame Danielle Brandon. Don't blame Danielle Brandon. Okay. Bye.