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I asked for positive news this week. What I got was surveillance, a global humiliation, and a man duct taped to his seat at thirty thousand feet.

We open with reporting that Homeland Security has been analyzing the financial data of American citizens, and that some units have used it to steer local police toward pretextual traffic stops. Banks have run keyword filters on transactions. Agencies have swept up bulk records from money transfer services. Credit reports, utility bills and location data get purchased outright from private brokers, which sidesteps the Fourth Amendment entirely. There is a term for where that ends up. Turnkey totalitarianism is a system where every pillar of mass surveillance is built and operational, waiting on one person to connect it. I could not steel man the argument that we are not already there.

From there we get into age and capacity in elected office, Apple's attempt to certify that a photograph is real, and why current AI produces novel output but not novel thought.

Then it lightens up. A competitive fitness scandal goes worldwide. An actor announces what he would do to people in a fight. A first class passenger gets restrained with zip ties and duct tape between Dallas and Newark.

We close with 163 missing children recovered in Florida in four days.

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Dan Rickert graduated from West Point and commissioned into the cavalry, running Bradleys and gun trucks through Iraq in 2008 before going to selection and finishing his nine years in uniform on a Special Forces team with 10th Group. He left the Army in 2015 and spent the next eight years at Palantir, moving from project management to international work and eventually to chief of staff on the defense side. He is now VP of Operations at Air Space Intelligence, the company the FAA selected to rebuild the software that runs the national airspace.

Much of this conversation is about what people get wrong about the defense industry. He argues that competition produces a better product for the people using it, that a human has to stay in the loop on any decision that matters, and that skepticism is healthy either way. We also worked through privacy and security, and whether the two actually have to be traded against each other.

From there we covered drone warfare and trench fighting in the same conflict, rebuilding an identity after the uniform comes off, and the work of modernizing air traffic control.

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This one airs on the 25th anniversary of September 11th. I'm not dedicating the whole episode to it. I don't tell people how to think or how to feel. But I do open with where I land on it now, a quarter century later, and why the reverence fading for people who didn't live it doesn't surprise me anymore.

Then the questions.

A 27-year-old learns through a DNA test that the man on his birth certificate isn't his father. He wants to know whether to tell the rest of the family.

A guy who has run audio at his church for 21 years wants to know how to finally ask to be paid without turning it into an ultimatum.

A future Naval Academy midshipman asks what a SEAL officer actually does on target, and whether the enlisted guys respect him.

Also covered: why we round the edges off pain as a species, what constant exposure to war footage does to a person, and why describing your own military service as vanilla needs to stop.

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Amanda Lindhout grew up in small-town Alberta and waited tables to pay for backpacking trips through Latin America, Asia, and Africa. She taught herself the job along the way and turned into a freelance foreign correspondent, filing from Afghanistan, Iraq, and Sudan with no network behind her and no one responsible for her if it went wrong. In August 2008 she flew into Mogadishu to cover the famine. It was supposed to be a one-week trip. She was ambushed on the road outside the city and held for 460 days. Her memoir about it, A House in the Sky, became a New York Times bestseller.

This conversation covers the whole arc. Why she kept choosing more dangerous places, and what she can see now that she couldn't at 27. What captivity actually looked like day to day. The escape attempt and the punishment that followed.

We also spend real time on the aftermath, which she says was almost as hard as the captivity. Complex PTSD. Going back to Somalia and why. Coming off the medication. Plant medicine. And why she stopped saying she forgave them.

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Michael was tasked with finding something uplifting. He failed. This is what a slow week for good news looks like.

We open on the flooding in Nepal and what you can realistically do when you live in terrain that gives you seven minutes of warning. One school got 14 minutes and everyone made it out.

Then the part nobody wants to say out loud: reading the news is taking something from you. I talk about how I decide what to let in.

National debt past forty trillion. Bonds selling off. Printing money and calling it something else. Blind loyalty to a party instead of judging what is actually being delivered. The Kennedy Center.

Roughly 800 wounded U.S. service members in Iran in six months, the classification that kept those numbers quiet, and a reported airstrike on a wedding.

The Lindsay Clancy verdict that never came.

Cities cancelling Flock camera contracts, 214 jurisdictions pulling them out, officers using the data to track people they should not be tracking.

None of it is a reason to quit.

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Nick Jones enlisted in the Marine Corps at 18 out of Olathe, Kansas. Mortarman, then scout sniper platoon, then selection and 2nd Marine Raider Battalion, where he came up through element member to element leader. Twelve years, five deployments. On March 8, 2020, his team went into the Qarachogh Mountains in northern Iraq to clear a cave complex and lost their team leader and their team chief. He was shot going back for them and kept fighting until he was pulled off the mountain. Six surgeries and eighteen months later he medically retired as a staff sergeant with a Navy Cross and a Purple Heart. He now runs the Talons Reach Foundation.

In 2019 he built a mountain warfare training package for his team in Montana. It got denied. The reason given was that they wouldn't be fighting in the mountains. Ten months later they were.

He proposed on top of Lone Peak and told his wife they'd build a family in Montana in ten years. They got there in one. Five years later she broke down on the drive back from Jackson and told him she had no life there. That conversation moved everybody to Wyoming.

Talons Reach Foundation: https://www.talonsreachfoundation.org/

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Recorded two of these in one week because when this drops I'll be in Maine at the Origin Immersion BJJ camp. So Michael gets another pass. Nobody knows what he does with his time anyway.

First question comes from a firefighter who watched a man beat a woman in a McDonald's parking lot. He called 911 from behind a block wall and did not physically intervene. He's been carrying it ever since. Good and bad is the wrong lens for that. Capability is the right one. What you can actually do under stress, not what you picture yourself doing. Range, training, tools, and why a black belt is not magic. Plugging holes matters as much as making them.

Second question is one I've never been asked. A 15-year-old found out his mother has an OnlyFans page because his baseball teammates were passing it around school. Live your life however you want. The consequences didn't stop with her.

A police officer who wants out and thinks nothing he does translates. It all translates. He just needs to stop telling himself otherwise.

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Casey Stumpf is a nurse practitioner and my sister. Years in emergency medicine and hospice, a stretch inside military medicine at Camp Pendleton, and now her own practice in Montana treating hormones full time — perimenopause, menopause, testosterone for men and women. She is one of roughly 4,100 providers in the country holding the MSCP certification. There are 75 million American women in some phase of menopause. The math does not work.

She is back to answer listener questions and to explain why estrogen patches are disappearing. The FDA says there is no shortage. Pharmacists say otherwise. Best estimate on a fix is two to three years.

She lays out what the 2002 Women's Health Initiative did to an entire generation of women, and why the black box warning finally came off. Testosterone for women, prescribed off-label because no FDA-approved formulation exists. GLP-1s and what they pull out of you besides fat. Hormone therapy after breast cancer. Vaginal estrogen, UTIs, and hip fractures. The suicide risk in perimenopause that standard screening misses.

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Brandon Spangler did five years in the Marine Corps. He broke his neck, crushed his lower back, and walked out with a VA prescription that turned into eight years of addiction. The last stretch was heroin. He got sober in 2013, started college from zero, and is now a licensed clinical social worker with his own practice for cops and veterans in northwest Montana. Travis Gribble spent 24 years in law enforcement, 16 on SWAT, and retired out of Mesa PD in 2022. He now works for the Boulder Crest Foundation.

He walks through the jump from pharmacy to street, detoxing cold turkey three times, and a month and a half living out of a truck in the Blue Mountains waiting on a bed.

The second half is the system. Why cops are carrying moral injury more than post-traumatic stress. Why a diagnosis turns into a cage. What five days of training did that years of therapy did not, the 400 to 600 traumatic calls a cop absorbs over a career, why the average officer dies seven years after retiring, and the retainer model that put a therapist inside a sheriff's office.

The Boulder Crest Foundation: ⁠https://bouldercrest.org/⁠

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Four questions this week...

An F-18 simulator is going into the coffee shop sometime in September. I don't know why either. Carrier landing competition to follow.

The opener is about reaching the age where you become the caregiver for your parents. Medical directives, DNRs, wills, trusts, and why the hard conversation needs to happen before you need it.

A 33-year-old sold everything, traveled the world for eight months, and came home with no next goal. I never had a plan either. Not knowing what comes next is fine. Being paralyzed by it is not.

A guy got promoted over his best friend of 22 years and won't have the conversation that could save that man's career and a large payout. What you allow in your presence is your standard.

Someone asked why I haven't covered the killing of Staff Sergeant Logan Melgar. Straight answer on what I make and what I don't.

And a listener found out his wife spent a year with a coworker. He is trying to save the marriage. I could not do what he is doing.

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John Constantine spent almost 23 years in the United States Secret Service. Fifteen of them on the Counter Assault Team — the assaulters who exist for the day everything goes wrong. Team leader. Instructor. Operations supervisor. He stood with a rifle next to four presidential administrations, worked in almost 90 countries, and finished out in the Dignitary Protective Division running foreign heads of state. He wrote a book about the part of it nobody sees. It's called Hallways and Stairwells.

He breaks down what actually happened at the Correspondents' Dinner, why the security plan worked even though the magnetometer checkpoint didn't, and how far that guy really was from the President. Butler gets the same treatment. The layers of security people never see. Why hunkering down has never worked, anywhere, ever.

Then it goes past tactics. Mission, men, then you. Getting swatted at his own house over a function fire and suspended for it. Refusing to send guys and guns overseas as a favor unless somebody put it in writing. Two thousand eight hundred agents doing the work of ten thousand.

And the part that almost killed him. His identity got ripped out with the job. His wife found him on the bathroom floor. He talks about the climb back.

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Michael is moving to Missoula, so this one opens with a resignation and gets worse from there.

A man in a garbage can is polling at 20% against Nigel Farage in Clacton, and his platform makes more sense than it should.

Term limits, and the unelected career staff who actually run the machine.

Early access to Truth Social posts for $60,000 to $100,000 a month. Trading firms have already signed up.

A president clearing north of two billion in his first year back in office, and why the silence around it is deafening.

A California mayor who pleaded guilty to working as an unregistered agent of China.

A former Marine home after four years in a Russian prison.

What prison is actually for. Punishment, incapacitation, rehabilitation, and where the line sits.

A carrier at sea 250 days straight, what that does to 5,000 people with no end date, and the guy I watched grab a fire extinguisher and jump.

Also: a four mile run, PT school, and a second wiener dog named Beans.

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Drew Miller is an Air Force Academy honor graduate with a master's and a PhD from Harvard. His dissertation was on underground nuclear shelters and field fortifications. Thirty years in uniform across active duty, Air Guard, and Reserve. Intelligence officer. Strategic Air Command, the Pentagon, and a DoD think tank. Retired colonel. He founded Fortitude Ranch, a survival community with eight locations, and the Collapse Survival Institute. His new book is Preparing to Survive in the Age of Collapse.

His model puts the annual odds of a collapse disaster between 16 and 57 percent. Bioengineered H5N1. The grid going down. The economy stops, and law and order goes with it.

We disagreed on a lot of this one. He wants superintelligent AGI outlawed and says he would nuke a data center to enforce it. I don't get there with him. We went back and forth on facts versus assumptions, on what a real fight with China looks like, and on whether this government is salvageable.

Also covered: the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, civil war inside states instead of between them, two million prisoners with no power, and surviving an AI takeover by being too boring to kill.

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Just me today. Michael also dropped some news on me — he's moving on in a few months to go better himself, so there's a change coming to Negligent Discharge Friday.

Three questions this week. All of them heavy.

A woman facing divorce asks whether military culture makes it easier for a man to disconnect from family life. Military marriages aren't a single lifestyle. They're an independent one. But the five people you spend your time around will pull you one direction or the other.

I talk about my own divorce. Nineteen years and eleven months. The writing was on the wall a decade before I made the call. My biggest regret isn't leaving. It's what my kids absorbed while I stayed. They were sitting on the stairs listening the whole time.

A 28-year-old with money, milestones, and no mountain left to climb asks how to get motivated again. I tell him he's aiming too low, and that the money trap gets everybody eventually.

An 18-year-old just found out about his dad's affair and ships to boot camp next June. Quick to think, slow to act. Fixing his parents' marriage was never his job.

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Mike Glover served 18 years in Army Special Forces, worked as a contractor for the CIA, founded Fieldcraft Survival, and wrote the national bestseller Prepared. He's been on this show before. A lot has happened since.

The legal case that consumed the last 18 months is finished. He talks about the week he spent locked up — teaching breathing drills in a holding cell full of hard dudes — what the arrest cost him, and how family and a small circle of friends carried him through. Fieldcraft dissolved. He bought the pieces back. Now he's rebuilding it from the roots.

There's also a long stretch on the bin Laden story — O'Neill, Bissonette, the recorded debrief, the point man, and litigation nobody needed. Plus Roberts Ridge, the Jessica Lynch raid, Tillman, and why drama in the special operations community has real downstream consequences.

TRT, alcohol, helicopters, faith, veteran suicide, and a tribute to a Green Beret they called Swede.

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No guest. Just Michael, a stack of conversation cards, and whatever the internet served up this week.

Opening cards: simple is not the same as easy, and failures are tuition payments, not a definition.

A flight instructor in Argentina jumps to his death mid-lesson. His student lands the plane alone.

The viral robot gun turret video. Reaction time, technique, and a full review of the dismount.

Big announcement: a full F-18 simulator is coming to the coffee shop. Aircraft carrier landing competition. $25 per entry. If you have ever flown an F-18, you are not invited.

The Blue Angels' 40-foot pass over Pensacola Beach, and why the investigation should be allowed to happen.

The Titan submersible documentaries. Carbon fiber, "seasoning," and 20 milliseconds.

Getting fooled by AI images and satire headlines.

A public meltdown caught on camera, and what a mental health crisis looks like from the outside.

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Jack Osbourne grew up with cameras in the house. The Osbourne's made his family the biggest thing on television, and he was earning seven figures by 15. He got sober at 17 and has held that line for over two decades. Diagnosed with multiple sclerosis at 26. Since then he's built his own lane — adventure television, paranormal investigation, two podcasts, and a purple belt in jiu-jitsu. Last July, his father played the biggest farewell show in rock history. Seventeen days later, Ozzy was gone.

This conversation carries weight and goes sideways in equal measure. Making serious money as a kid and learning the hard way that the people hired to protect it don't always deserve the trust. Grieving a parent while untangling the business that comes with a famous last name. The final concert — a living wake where his dad got to say goodbye on his own terms — and the week at home together afterward.

Then the throttle opens: the UFC card on the White House South Lawn, a month in the Australian jungle on 500 calories a day, ghost stories he can't explain, the Nazca mummies, a plan to buy a decommissioned aircraft carrier, and bringing OzFest back.

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Ross Schneiderman spent his career as a reporter and editor. Newsweek, The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, ESPN. He covered mixed martial arts, then ran a foreign desk working alongside Afghan and Pakistani correspondents. In 2016 he wrote a Newsweek cover story about Mohammad Gulab, the Afghan villager who sheltered Marcus Luttrell. He never went to Afghanistan. He never covered a war. He spent six years piecing this one together anyway.

For twenty years, Operation Red Wings has been told one way. Lone Survivor turned it into a legend.

He FOIA'd the documents. He read the MERC chat, the debriefs, the after-action reports. He interviewed SEALs, Green Berets, and Afghan sources who were there. What he found doesn't match the movie.

We go through it in order. The comms that were supposedly never made, and the records that say otherwise. The vote that never happened. The phone call, and who really made it. The stinger missile that wasn't. And why a story meant to honor four men became a recruiting tool built on things that weren't true.

This isn't about tearing anyone down. Many men died doing the best they could in a terrible spot and situation. This is about what happens when an institution picks the myth over the truth.

Politico Article: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2026/03/20/operation-red-wings-lone-survivor-luttrell-00833548

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Every other Friday it's just me and the inbox. This week the emails came in heavy, so we cover a lot of ground.

Two people in law enforcement, both strong personalities, trying to build a relationship that works. Where confidence stops and ego starts, and how to tell you've crossed the line. Why the toughest guy in the room still needs a place to put the shield down.

The difference between the Jewish faith and the Israeli government, and why we've lost the ability to talk about either one without painting with a broom. Being able to criticize your own team without getting thrown off it.

Moving a family across the country and a 15-year-old who won't sign off on it. When you engage your kids in the decision, and when you just have to be the father and make the call.

Twenty years of sustained conflict and what it actually did to our capability. Real reps, the word "sacrifice," and how warfare is changing.

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Kyle Morgan spent over twenty years in the Army. Infantry, then Green Beret, then more than a decade in the nation's premier special missions unit running hostage rescue. In 2015 he was advising the U.S. Embassy in Mali when terrorists took the Radisson Blu hotel. He built a team on the fly and went in. The award for that was the Distinguished Service Cross, second only to the Medal of Honor. Today he runs Blu Bearing, trains police and civilians, and serves on the board of Frontline Healing Foundation.

When the job ends the machine has already forgotten about you, and he'll tell you that isn't cruel because it has to forget you to keep moving. The guys who come apart are the ones still trying to replace something that can't be replaced. He didn't leave the way he wanted to. There was addiction, a DUI he hid, and an overdose that nearly ended it, and his old command circled the wagons around him more than once before he finally made it out. Sobriety and faith are what brought him back, almost five years of it now, and he spends his time pointing at the cost so the next guy doesn't pay it blind. He'll tell you he's more proud of the husband and father he is today than anything he ever did downrange.

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No guest today. Just me and Michael running through the week.

Conor McGregor goes down in 19 seconds, and why I can respect the athlete and have zero respect for the man. Paddy Pimblett's submission of the night. A man in Yellowstone launched ten feet in the air by a bison, and why you never treat a wild animal the size of a small SUV like a pet. The hot springs that have killed at least 22 people since 1890.

E. Jean Carroll collects her judgment against Trump, and the difference between criticizing an action and vilifying a person. The war in Iran, the cost, and the fact that nobody can tell you what we're actually trying to accomplish. Social media as the greatest propaganda machine ever built. A Georgia family selling their home so power lines can feed an AI data center. Flock cameras and how close the surveillance key is to being turned. And Ben Franklin, who we've apparently been misquoting this whole time.

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Matt Bissonnette grew up in a remote Alaskan village, read every SEAL book he could find, and made it all the way to SEAL Team 6. Fourteen years in the Navy, 13 straight combat deployments, team leader at the command, and one of the operators on the third floor of the bin Laden compound. In 2012, writing as Mark Owen, he published No Easy Day — and spent the next decade paying for it. The DOJ came after him for skipping pre-publication review, took every penny the book made, and left him on a 15-year payment plan.

We get into what he actually saw that night in Abbottabad, the audio-recorded debrief, and why the competing narratives don't hold up tactically. Then the aftermath: 10-hour DOJ interrogations, being cut off from his own community, and getting to the point of putting a gun to his head.

We also cover the hypocrisy of leadership selling their own stories, the award system, funerals he couldn't attend, and why he's now raising Wagyu cattle and self-publishing his third book, No Easy Way.

No Easy Way: https://mattbissonnette.com/

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No guest this week. Just me and the questions you sent in.

A guy 23 years into a marriage gets served divorce papers and wants to know how you start over at 43. I walk through the process itself — mediation over a courtroom, staying amicable, treating your ex like the person you fell in love with. Then the harder part. You've never been alone. You don't know who you are yet. Lean into that instead of running from it.

A question about the humor I use when a conversation gets heavy. Is it calculated or is it just how I talk. Answer: mostly the second one. But I get into when it works, when it doesn't, and the line between letting steam out of the pressure cooker and making things worse.

Demonstration parachute jumps. Somebody watched a jumper come in with a flag, catch a tree, and eat a controlled face plant in front of a crowd. I break down what actually changes when you add drag and weight, why the pro rating exists, and why you never fly over something you don't intend to land on.

And a 26-year-old who thinks he's falling behind. He isn't. Two things can be true — keep your foot on the gas, and stop robbing yourself of the success already behind you.

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JP Dinnell spent nearly a decade in the SEAL Teams. Three combat deployments. In 2006 he went to Ramadi with Task Unit Bruiser as point man, machine gunner, and lead sniper for Delta Platoon. Chris Kyle was in Charlie Platoon. He came home with a Silver Star, two Bronze Stars with Valor, and an Army Commendation with Valor. Task Unit Bruiser became the most decorated special operations unit of the Iraq War. Then he went back to work for Jocko as an instructor at Training Detachment. Now he's Chief Training Officer at Echelon Front.

This one is about the part nobody talks about. Twenty years after Ramadi, his platoon sat down together for the first time. Montana. Fly fishing, blacksmithing, and the conversations they never had. He watched men he looked up to carry weight he never knew was there. Their medic is fighting terminal cancer from a burn pit next to the building they slept in.

We get into the difference between the price and the cost. The price is what you pay up front. The cost comes due decades later, in marriages, in kids, in the men around you.

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Most of this one comes down to one thing. Choices have consequences, and you own them.

It starts with an email. A listener says the veteran community runs on lies and has an integrity problem, then sends it from an address that bounces. Transmit only. I read the whole thing and my response. A host who platforms a guest isn't endorsing them, and the size of an audience tells you nothing about the truth.

Then the news. Dustin Poirier gets arrested at an airport and threatens the officers, and we talk about how knowing a man's capabilities changes everything for the cop standing in front of him. An Air Force major gets himself arrested at the Capitol. Own it.

A pastor beats down a man who threatened his family, broken down like a fight — job title doesn't cancel your right to defend your people. A streamer provokes the wrong guy and gets dropped. And in Ukraine, low tech meets high tech: a rifle out the back of a Yak-52, hunting drones.

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My guest has a PhD from the University of Toronto. She taught at the university level, then at two prep schools for years. In 2017 she walked away from education after the system covered up the abuse of one of her students. She turned whistleblower, went public, and started digging into the brain science of what had happened. That work became two books, The Bullied Brain and The Gaslit Brain, and a long-running column for Psychology Today. Jennifer Fraser studies abuse cultures for a living.

We get into gaslighting and what it actually does to your brain. She lays out the dark tetrad — narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy, sadism — and the mask these people wear so well it fools the experts. How they read you, isolate you, and make you doubt your own memory.

We cover the lie that abuse is the price of greatness. Coaches who don't want to win — they want to hurt the kids. Why refusing a bad order is the real test of leadership. And the part that matters most: the brain is wired to repair.

The Gaslit Brain: https://a.co/d/018Vlq2z

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Four questions this week. Two about relationships. Two that aren't.

-A friend wants another shot with an ex after a long marriage. I've watched four couples try this. Two made it. Two didn't. The merry-go-round of unresolved issues, and why you do the work up front or you do it later when everything is breaking.

-Dating someone from your BJJ gym. What to weigh before you start it, and what Leah has seen when it ends. Starting over later in life. The narrative that all the good ones are already taken is wrong.

-June 28th is the anniversary of Operation Red Wings. How to explain that day to young people now that the story carries controversy. The sacrifice still stands.

-Last one comes from a civilian who thinks military pay is a joke, the VA fails everyone, and nobody should enlist. I had a lot to say about that.

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Fourteen years in uniform. Four with the Parachute Regiment, a decade in the SAS. Patrol medic and qualified mountain guide. Afghanistan, Iraq, and covert deployments. Jay Morton left in 2018 and went straight up the world's biggest mountains — two Everest summits, one of them solo.

Everest comes up, and it isn't pretty. He stood on the summit alone in 2017. Now it's a queue of paying clients short-roped to the top, garbage stacked at Camp 4, two hundred grand for the VIP package. Nobody walks out anymore. They fly — on some of the sketchiest helicopter rides you'll ever hear described.

We get into what nobody warns you about: leaving. In the unit, everything is built around you. Someone books the flight. You wake up knowing exactly where to be. Then it's gone, and you're staring in the mirror looking for the guy who used to handle all of it.

We talk about chasing a bigger number in a bank account, then realizing a month later you didn't care about the thing you bought. Status versus utility. What his sister, a hospice nurse, heard people say at the end — and what they never said.

Also in here: the reality TV machine, the hypocrisy of the silent-professional crowd, twelve coffees in a day, and where AI stops being useful.

Concept Expeditions: ⁠https://www.conceptexpeditions.com/⁠

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Nic McKinley went from Air Force pararescue to the CIA, then founded DeliverFund to fight trafficking with intelligence tools. Ryan Dalton was a trafficking attorney and federal agent at the State Department before launching Closed Horizon, a platform that crowdsources rewards to surface hard answers. Different roads, same fight.

Skip the spy-novel version of Epstein. The simpler read: a guy who moved money for people who needed it moved, and collected leverage doing it. That access is what kept him protected.

From there it runs downhill. How intelligence operations actually get funded. Why a broker like that turns useful, then disposable. What a criminal trial would have forced into the open. And why a dead defendant solves that problem.

It also hits the harder one. It's an era where anything can be faked and attention gets steered on purpose. Getting to the truth is its own job now.

I went in skeptical. I'm still skeptical. The corruption underneath is harder to wave off.

Look at the evidence and decide for yourself.

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Michael's in the studio and we're working through the week. We start with two Pasadena officers horsing around with loaded guns. One of them ends up shooting the other through the windshield of the cruiser. We talk about the accountability that comes with carrying a badge. One oh-shit can unwind a career of attaboys.

From there we get into the aircraft gifted by Qatar and whether it belongs in service as Air Force One. We cover the new Iran framework, what it cost, and how it stacks up against the deal that came before it. We talk about being able to disagree with your own side without burning the whole thing down.

Then there's the UFC event on the White House lawn — the timing, the optics, and fighter bonuses paid out in crypto. We close with the beagle raid at Ridgeland Farms, where the line sits between legal and moral, and what we're willing to do in the name of science.

Enjoy

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Matthew spent six years in the Navy as a Search and Rescue swimmer. Then fifteen years as a cop — Virginia Beach, then undercover narcotics in New Hampshire during the opioid epidemic. He worked under a different name for years. He wrote a book, The Journey to Midnight, about the night he planned to kill himself. Now he talks to cops and veterans about it.

This one covers why suicide is so high in law enforcement and the military. Trauma stacks up and you never get the time to process it. The "unfit for duty" label that ends careers, so nobody asks for help. A fatal wreck on Route 101. A man who shot himself three feet away. A two-and-a-half-year-old, a blind cord, and thirty seconds in a car that Matt still hasn't let go of.

His chief checked on him one day, then went home and killed himself two hours later. What he did with that is most of this conversation.

The Journey to Midnight: https://a.co/d/03SCujlF

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Five questions this week. No real through-line, which is usually how these go.

-A reader four years sober wants to rebuild the friendships he burned while drinking.

-A father of two wants the kind of relationship with his kids he never had with his own dad.

-A high school junior writes in about his 13-year-old sister and an eating disorder serious enough to put her in front of doctors.

-A guy three months into jujitsu can't get out from under bigger training partners. Size matters. Mat time matters more.

-And a sailor stuck under a former SEAL who got booted from the Teams and now leads by intimidation. I get into why he probably got kicked out, and how to manage two more years.

Enjoy.

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He was called the most dangerous man in Vermont. The governor said it on television. The truth is more boring and more alarming. Daniel Banyai is a former protection contractor and a Seventh-day Adventist who built a firearms training school called Slate Ridge in West Pawlet. He did it by the book. Federal firearms license. Explosives permits. Zoning. A school classification the town had handed out for 200 years. He welcomed anyone who'd show up and shoot straight.

Then it came apart. Neighbors who'd missed their window found a clause and reopened it. The town pulled the permit it had already granted. He fought to the state Supreme Court and lost. They demolished the buildings while he was locked up and made sure the materials couldn't be reused.

We talk about the year inside. Isolation. The shot caller. Getting beaten during the arrest that became a felony. We argue restrictions, religion, and a two-tiered system he says protects some and not others. The throughline is simple. Weaponized zoning can erase anyone. He happened to pick guns.

Since we recorded, a jury acquitted him of the assault charge in forty minutes. His words after: the system did not fail him here.

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Usually Full Auto Friday is just me and the questions. Not this one. JP Dinnell is in the seat — former SEAL, came up through Ramadi, now chief training officer at Echelon Front — and Michael is running the stories.

We start where it counts. Whether anything in BUD/S ever matched the field. It didn't. BUD/S is hard. It's also a controlled environment with a safety net. The real cost came later, with the guys who didn't come home.

Then Michael started pulling things off the internet.

A Texas plea deal that put a child predator back on the street in a day. A paraglider clipped by a Cessna over the Alps. A man in flip-flops trying to kick in a stranger's door. My son stepping up in at a grocery store. JP's daughter waiting around a corner with a bat. A gate agent getting screamed at, and what it takes to step into that.

A bank hostage standoff that ended the way those always end. And the Bitcoin I didn't buy at fifty cents.

The through-line is simple. Crazy exists. Have a plan. Be capable.

Enjoy.

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Rachel Cuda grew up the daughter of a Navy SEAL, raised on Coronado around the teams. She speaks Russian, Ukrainian, and German. She studied at the University of Tennessee, earned a master's from Georgetown, and wrote software at a startup before moving into defense contracting. At the Pentagon she led the data modeling and analytics line for the military's COVID task force. She married a SEAL officer whose grandfather gave the CIA thirty years as a case officer. In February 2022, Rachel Cuda joined the agency's Directorate of Operations. It was the job she'd wanted her whole life.

Two weeks after she started, Russia invaded Ukraine, and her languages put her in the middle of it. Six months in, a colleague strangled her with a scarf in a stairwell at headquarters.

Then the agency went to work on her. They told her she couldn't go to the police. They told her she couldn't tell her husband. They warned her that reporting it could put her in prison. So she went to Congress instead. We get into the assault, the run-around, the predators the agency shielded for years, and how one trainee forced the CIA to rewrite its laws in eleven months.

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Two questions this week, plus a video I've been asked about more than anything in recent memory.

I break down the paraglider that got hit by a plane and why this stuff almost always lands on pilot error.

I answer a man rehabbing from a spinal tumor who can't run, swim, or ruck anymore and is staring down a third surgery. I tell him about my own injuries, the rabbit holes I went down, and what actually got me out. I tell the story of waking up from emergency surgery, sneezing, and being sure no one recovers from this. They put your intestines back by shoving them in. Walking to the end of the block was the whole goal.

And I answer a Marine on hazing. What's training and what's just a broken person dumping their baggage on you. Where the line is. Why drunk, angry, and violent isn't preparing anyone for anything.

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Dennis Benigno started in 2001 as a New Jersey corrections officer at nineteen. He moved to the U.S. Park Police in D.C., then to patrol in one of Jersey's largest municipalities. Over fourteen years he made more than 1,500 arrests and ran over 10,000 car stops. He had to self-train to survive the road. When he realized the academies weren't teaching cops what they needed, he started teaching it himself. That became Street Cop Training, one of the biggest police training companies in the country, with hundreds of thousands of officers behind it.

He argues that 80% of line-of-duty deaths are training failures. Not bad luck. Failures you can trace back to the academy. We get into why the system box-checks instead of fixing the problem, and who benefits from keeping it that way.

He breaks down the passenger-side approach, the traffic stop that ended with a cop executed on camera, and the constitutional gaps most officers never get taught. We also get into the political machine that came after him, what it cost, and who actually showed up when it did.

Street Cop Training:

https://streetcoptraining.com/?srsltid=AfmBOorcJeLaNQvrs9WJ1mgjCfFiYR0JPzLxm8nm6On3DGf8qO0mnWof

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Jonathan Dickinson is the co-founder and CEO of Ambio Life Sciences, one of the world's leading ibogaine clinics. He's spent more than fifteen years on this — apprenticing in Tijuana clinics, running the Global Ibogaine Therapy Alliance, and writing the field's first clinical safety guidelines. He's a Mexico-licensed psychologist. He holds the only active export license for iboga root and led the first Nagoya-compliant export out of Gabon, where he was initiated into two Bwiti traditions. His team co-authored the Stanford study in Nature Medicine on ibogaine and veteran traumatic brain injury. Ambio has now treated over 3,000 people.

Most of what you think you know about ibogaine is probably wrong. It's not a high. It puts you flat on your back for twelve hours and asks for everything. It resets the body off opioids almost overnight. It seems to repair the brain in ways nobody fully understands yet — MS lesions shrinking, a guy walking in with a cane and leaving it behind.

We get into the cardiac risk, the deaths, the Trump executive order, and why the science and the ceremony might not survive being pulled apart. And we talk about the part nobody wants to hear: the medicine doesn't do the work for you.

Pick up Jonathan's Book here: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Ibogaine-and-the-Bicameral-Mind/Jonathan-Dickinson/9798888504680

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Thomas Massie just got primaried out, and it cost the most money ever spent on a primary. $32.6 million in ad buys. A guy hand-picked by Trump comes out of nowhere and takes the seat. Massie voted with the administration 77% of the time. His sin was the Epstein files. So we get into it.

We talk about getting that kind of money out of elections, and why the people who could fix it never will. We talk about AIPAC, foreign influence, and whether the question changes if you swap Israel for Egypt or China. Michael walks through where his generation is landing on all of it.

Then it gets lighter. Two F-18s mate mid-air and four guys punch out. A man hops a fence at Denver International and walks onto an active runway. A tourist throws rocks at a seal in Hawaii and finds out. And we close on a criminal monkey gang in Bali running a sunglasses-for-snacks racket.

Heavy up front. Stupid in the middle. Monkeys at the end.

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"Crike him." That's the call a tactical medic makes when a guy can't breathe and the clock is at zero. Mike Simpson is the doctor on the other end of that radio. He's a former 1st Ranger Battalion anti-tank section leader, a Special Forces engineer turned 18 Delta medic with 7th Group, and a board-certified ER physician who spent his last six years on active duty attached to JMAU providing trauma support to tier one units. He retired in 2016 after 32 years and now runs medical direction for Central Texas Regional SWAT while practicing urgent care.

We got into the real mechanics of trauma care — what actually happens between the front door of an ER and the OR, why a hundred tourniquets on paper cuts beats one missed arterial bleed, and the brutal physics of wounds incompatible with life. He walked through his own prostate cancer diagnosis and what every man over 40 needs to know about PSA screening.

We also got into his path from corrections officer to medical school, why he's writing fantasy novels now, and the conversation every operator avoids until it's too late — documenting injuries before you're out the door.

Enjoy.

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A soon-to-be 40-year-old wants to face his fear of skydiving and use it to teach his anxious five-year-old that fear is normal but it doesn't get to run your life. I break down the difference between gambling and accepting calculated risk, what to actually look for in a drop zone, and why pushing yourself smartly and incrementally beats trying to be a badass for an audience that isn't watching.

A guy who grew up homeless and couch-surfing wrote in about feeling like he came back from a war he never fought. We talk about why trauma isn't owned by anyone, why your past doesn't have to be your identity, and why if the community you need doesn't exist yet, you might be the one who has to build it.

Last question is about discipline. A husband, father, and plant manager who used to run ultras can't find the hours anymore and wonders if he's lost it. He hasn't. His life changed. The goalpost has to move with it.

Plus the book hit the Times again, and I'm headed to Virginia Beach.

Enjoy

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Alan Mack flew Chinooks for the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment for seventeen years. Chief Warrant Officer 5. Senior MH-47 pilot. Flight lead. Instructor. He was the pilot in command of Razor 03 on Takur Ghar — the aircraft shot up trying to insert a SEAL element on top of the mountain that became Roberts Ridge. He has logged over 6,700 flight hours, took rounds through his cockpit on Anaconda, ran fog approaches into walled compounds in Iraq, and helped write the procedures the Night Stalkers still use to land in zero visibility. After retiring, he commanded the flight detachment at West Point and spent a decade running emergency management for a New York county. He is the author of Razor 03 and the upcoming Chinooks in the Dark.

We cover the new Medal of Honor awarded to a 160th pilot and what it actually takes to earn one. The Anaconda shoot down — RPG, lost hydraulics, three cans of fluid, and a crew chief pumping a t-handle to keep him in the controls. Why he chose to dive at a Dishka instead of climbing. The myth around Extortion 17 and why the conspiracy doesn't hold up. How the unit trains pilots to fly through real lead. Air refueling at night in the weather. Cutting hoses with rotor blades. And the lessons every pilot — military or civilian — needs to internalize before the aircraft starts shedding systems on them.

Enjoy

Chinooks in the Dark: https://a.co/d/0cOy6d88

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Michael and I get into it on this one. Hantavirus headlines, the Doomsday Clock, wind turbines, the Epstein note, and a guy on YouTube paying his bills by getting stung by bugs.

I open by confidently passing along bad medical advice from two articles I read. Michael fact-checks me in real time. We agree it's a good exercise in why you should slow down before you repeat anything. From there we get into what Hantavirus actually is, why this isn't going to be another lockdown, and why I think people would push back hard if it were.

The Doomsday Clock is at 89 seconds. Not 90. Not 88. Two old guys in suits decided. We talk about why fear-mongering on a quarter clock face stops working at some point, and what's actually happening with all those wind turbines I just flew past for eleven hours that weren't spinning.

Then the heavier stuff. The "rape academy" story. Epstein's suicide note. Andrew Mountbottom. Why I don't believe anyone in his orbit is ever going to face accountability in this country, and what that says about a government willing to look away if the math works out for them.

Enjoy

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John Kiriakou spent 14 years at the CIA. He started as an analyst, went operational, and eventually ran counterterrorism work in Pakistan that led to the capture of Abu Zubaydah. He was the first U.S. government official to publicly confirm that the agency was waterboarding prisoners. For that, the Obama administration prosecuted him under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act and sent him to federal prison for 23 months. He lost his pension. He lost his career. Most of his kids stopped speaking to him. Today he writes books, hosts a podcast, and teaches a course on the history of terrorism.

We get into how the agency really works. Recruiting spies. Breaking into a house in a foreign country to plant a bug. The mentor who told him to walk up to a target's front door and sell him out to his face. Then we get into the part nobody at Langley wants to talk about. Torture. Rendition. The innocent people who got grabbed off planes and buses and never got their lives back.

We also cover Section 702, the Patriot Act, Iran, Iraq, and why no agency ever gives the power back.

Enjoy.

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Four questions this week. The kind that don't have clean answers.

A guy whose father murdered his mother is asking how to get back to who he was before. He's not.

A 28-year-old still living at home is watching his mom's cancer come back and trying to figure out how to spend the time he has left.

A man in his sixties wants to know how to bring up suicide with three friends he's had for 40 years before it's too late.

A 31-year-old in his first long-term relationship doesn't feel anything for the woman he's dating but knows everyone around him likes her. I talk about why the people you see online keeping it together aren't keeping it together. I talk about why the snapshot isn't the whole picture.

I talk about why the first therapist who wants to sell you his book isn't the last therapist you'll need to find. I talk about going right at the hard conversation instead of around it. And I talk about why bringing the government into a relationship you're already unsure about is the wrong move.

Enjoy

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Today's "episode" is the audiobook first chapter of my book: Drownproof. Thank you to everyone who helped make the launch such a tremendous success.

Hitting all of the "Best Seller" lists, to include the NYT, was quite frankly, incredibly humbling. You all made that happen, not me.

For those of you who have read or listened to it already, well, clearly today's episode is not going to be exciting for you! For those that haven't, this chapter is about a very formative experience in my young life that changed how I viewed my self in the world. That change in mindset altered the trajectory of my life.

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Justin Klahn is hard to put in a box. Twenty years inside Nike Innovation. Years embedded with JSOC units building gear that had to actually work. Time consulting with three-letter agencies, DARPA, and the Harvard Learning Innovations Laboratory. A run working directly for Kanye West. He calls himself a problem solver, and the resume backs it up. His new book is Innovator's Handbook.

We open on the divorce conversation, the kind of failure neither of us wished for, and what it takes to show up for a partner the second time around.

From there it gets wide. The competition mindset that separates the top of the JSOC food chain from everyone else. What it's actually like to sit in a room with Kobe, with Tinker, with Kanye. The Nike origin stories most people don't know — the real Jordan re-signing, the Pantry, the relationship between Phil Knight and Steve Jobs.

We dig into the supernatural. Faith. Conspiracy and control. How a guy who advises high-stakes operators stays open enough to consider anything but grounded enough to still get the work done.

And we end on the AI workflow he used to write a book in two weeks — and what that says about where the world is going.

The Innovator's Handbook: https://a.co/d/01Zqj9Q7

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Michael, my dad, and me. Three generations arguing in one room. That's the format today.

My dad watched Neil Armstrong walk on the moon live at twenty-two years old. He remembers the Iranian hostage crisis when it was happening, not when it was a movie. That perspective matters when we get into where we are now — the rhetoric coming out of the White House, the ceasefire that may or may not hold, a war nobody has explained the objective of.

We talked about the leaders we don't seem to produce anymore. Kennedy to the moon in ten years. Hungary voting out a hard-right prime minister by historic margins. Why most good people won't touch politics now — they'll destroy your entire family before you ever reach the ballot.

Then the stuff that piles up every week. California's rail to nowhere. AI versus actual brain tissue running video games. ICE changing tactics. Cancer research funding cut by thirty-one percent. Civil War monuments and what you do with history you don't want to celebrate.

And yes, my dad tried to break into the neighbor's house. And pissed himself at the rodeo. We get to that too.

Enjoy.

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John Shipley spent fourteen years carrying an FBI badge. Army aviator first — commissioned by his own father, a retired Vietnam-era lieutenant colonel — until a spinal cord injury at Walter Reed ended his flying career. He walked into Quantico in 1996, drew El Paso, and spent the next decade working narcotics and surveillance on the Mexican border. SWAT. Sniper. Bodyguard details for the FBI Director and the Attorney General. A father of two adopted kids. The kind of agent who refused a $27 million bribe because he didn't want the money — he wanted to keep his oath.

And then the government came for him.

One Barrett .50 caliber he sold legally to a county deputy years earlier ended up in a Mexican shootout. ATF traced it back. Prosecutors charged him with six felonies. What John didn't know at trial was that the gun store that brokered the final sale was an ATF informant — part of what would later be exposed as Operation Fast and Furious. They let the rifle walk. They knew. And when Mexico asked questions, they handed John up instead. He did two years in federal prison. An entire day of his trial transcript vanished from the record. Presidential executive privilege slammed down on every document that could prove it. John tells the whole story on his own terms — and he's still fighting for the pardon that would give him his rights back.

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Week one of the book being out in the world, and I still don't have the vocabulary for the support. Thank you. Genuinely. If you read it, an honest Amazon review costs nothing and helps more than you'd think.

Then we get into the questions. A 25-year-old lawyer writes in about imposter syndrome and getting put on a pedestal for a job he doesn't feel qualified for yet. My take: keep the imposter syndrome. Just find a response that doesn't escalate or deescalate, and move the conversation to them.

Next one hits harder. A Marine turned med student on the "vet bro" archetype, the guy in head-to-toe fatigues at the airport, and the social sandpaper that follows. Why one bad interaction outweighs a hundred good ones. Why comparative service and competitive suffering benefit nobody. And why the best counter is just being a good expression of what you used to be.

Also covered: what recovery looked like overseas vs. now, why special operations runs like a professional sports team, and my honest take on TRT, dosage, and chasing health span over lifespan.

Enjoy

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John Dudley is a decorated professional archer, two-time IBO National Champion, World Field Championship medalist, and the founder of Nock On Archery. He's spent close to 30 years inside the archery industry — competing at the highest levels across multiple continents, working with elite manufacturers, coaching everyone from beginners to national team athletes, and building one of the most comprehensive free archery education platforms on the internet through his School of Nock. He's also the host of the Nock On Podcast and turns 50 this June.

This conversation covers a lot of ground. We get into the physics and engineering limits of compound bows, why the industry is essentially robbing Peter to pay Paul at this point, and what it would take for someone with an outsider's mind to actually push the technology forward. Dudley talks about the trifecta of archery — mechanical, physical, and mental — and why the kids who aren't standout athletes are often the ones who thrive. We talk about the value of saying no, the cost of too much travel on your family, what Frank Zane taught him about longevity in fitness, and why his long-term goal is to pour every piece of knowledge he has back into the archery community before he steps away. We also get into reaching out to friends when you're struggling, the gap between knowing help exists and actually using it, and the transparency it takes to put your faults on paper. And haircuts. A lot about haircuts.

NockOnArchery: https://nockonarchery.com/

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Bill Clark is a former DEVGRU military working dog handler — one of the first brought into the program when it launched around 2002. He grew up in chaos. His father was a Vietnam-era Marine door gunner. His mother married five times. His stepfathers were abusive. He played Division I football, joined the Marines, switched to the Navy for a dog handler slot, and ended up spending 13 years at the command across 13 deployments. He ran over 350 operations and logged more than 200 bites. He survived late-stage colon cancer at 37 — linked to battlefield exposures — and now leads executive protection for Ethereum co-founder Charles Hoskinson, who is building what may become the largest stem cell treatment hub in America at his clinic in Gillette, Wyoming.

Dr. Bob Harmon calls himself a cow doctor. He started as a large-animal veterinarian out of UC Davis, got pulled into doing clinical trials for pharma companies, and then one day watched stem cells beat like a heart in a petri dish — no electrical stimulation, just cells that had been told what to become. That moment changed the trajectory of his career. He built a veterinary stem cell company that has now treated over 25,000 patients across 60 species. He developed stem cell therapy for the Navy's dolphins and sea lions. And he became the first person in the history of biopharma to take only veterinary data to the FDA and get approval for a human clinical trial. His company, Personalized Stem Cells, is now treating humans under the Federal Right to Try Act and the newly signed Wyoming Stem Cell Freedom Act.

We talk about the night Bill's dog Axe took a round through the skull and kept trying to get back in the fight. What it looks like to laze a door from 300 yards and send a dog into a compound full of armed fighters. How big pharma's animal and human divisions refuse to talk to each other. Why your own fat holds young stem cells at any age — even at 92. The difference between your own cells and donor cells. The ten COVID ICU patients who all walked out. How stem cells make their own morphine-like painkiller and could break the opioid addiction cycle. The TBI pilot study coming for veterans. And what it would take to get stem cells on the sideline of an NFL game or in a medic's backpack on the battlefield.

https://www.personalizedstemcells.com/

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Another week where nothing happened and everything was totally fine.

Kristi Noem's husband Byron has been living a secret life involving cross-dressing, fake breasts, webcam models, and a pseudonym — and the whole thing may have been leaked by an immigrant retaliating against DHS. Trump posts that an entire civilization will die tonight, issues an 8 p.m. deadline nobody can explain, then adds God bless the Iranian people at the bottom. We break down why NATO countries aren't obligated to help with offensive operations and why people need to actually read Article 5 before losing their shit. The military fires a dozen generals out of nearly 900 — could be discriminatory, could be trimming the fat, the why matters. Bullet forensics in the Charlie Kirk case come back inconclusive — not exonerating, not damning, just insufficient evidence on the fragment. Pam Bondi is out as attorney general. A megachurch pastor pleads guilty to molesting a 12-year-old and serves six months. A guy films himself torching a warehouse full of toilet paper in Ontario, California. Michael discovers bidets in Japan and won't shut up about it. And I talk about why the real cultural change in this country is going to come from the people running businesses and mentoring the next generation — not from anyone in Washington.

Enjoy

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Adam B. is an active-duty police officer in Ohio, a 17-year military veteran, and a former M1 Abrams tanker who deployed to Iraq and Korea. He grew up in the foster care system after being removed from a violent home in Cleveland at age four, was adopted into a rural family that changed his trajectory, and went on to serve in the Army, the National Guard as an MP, work corrections at the Cuyahoga County jail, earn a spot on a SWAT team, and build a career in patrol.

This conversation covers a lot of ground. Adam walks through what it was like growing up with 12 siblings in a house that got raided by the DEA. He talks about what drew him to the military, what it felt like to hold a dying child overseas, and why that moment still makes it hard to hold his own kids. He describes working the tenth floor of one of Ohio's roughest jails, responding to a domestic violence murder in front of three children, and why most patrol officers are dangerously undertrained compared to SWAT. Then the conversation turns to East Palestine. Adam was activated with the National Guard and sent to the site of the Norfolk Southern train derailment. He stood 200 yards from a controlled chemical detonation with no protective equipment. He watched a mushroom cloud rise and tasted vinyl chloride in the air. Within weeks, his appendix had to be removed. Three years later, he's dealing with memory loss, vision problems, and symptoms his doctors are still trying to explain. Norfolk Southern spent millions lobbying against the very safety regulations proposed after the disaster.

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Casey Stumpf is a nurse practitioner with 18 years of clinical experience spanning emergency medicine, military family health at Camp Pendleton, hospice care, and hormonal optimization. She holds a Menopause Society Certified Provider credential and a bachelor's in dietetics from UC Davis. She now runs a practice in California focused exclusively on perimenopause, menopause, and hormonal health for both men and women.

In 2002, a study got published before the researchers finished reviewing it. The media ran with one conclusion: estrogen causes cancer. For the next two decades, women were stripped of hormone therapy and told to white knuckle through the worst years of their lives. That same study actually showed women on estrogen alone had 18% less breast cancer. Nobody reported that part. Casey walks through exactly what happened, why the data was misread, and what six decades of fear have cost 75 million American women — only 5% of whom are on hormones today.

We get into the real mechanics of what perimenopause does to the brain and body, why testosterone is her favorite hormone for women, the connection between untreated menopause and Alzheimer's, hip fractures, heart disease, and divorce. She talks about sitting bedside through hundreds of hospice deaths and how that shaped everything she does now. We talk about our mom's end-of-life letter, our dad's refusal to age gracefully, and what it means to build your 80-year-old self in midlife.

https://theradiantwelltality.com/

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The Army just raised their max enlistment age to 42. I don't know exactly why, but I'd like to. I'm hearing from a lot of people who were considering joining and are now hesitating — and when the rest of the world's allies are saying they don't want to get involved, that tells you something about the moment we're in. This isn't post-9/11. The lines around the block at recruiting stations aren't there right now.

We also dig into the big one this week — what's the purpose of life when it's full of struggle and sacrifice? A listener lost his dad at 61. Never made it to retirement. I don't pretend to have the answer locked down, but I'll tell you this: my dad is retired and bored out of his mind. And my sister sat with hundreds of dying people in hospice — none of them wished for more stuff. Every single one wished for more time.

Then we close on negative self-talk and why "if a pro can make the shot, why can't I" is one of the worst things you can say to yourself. Not everybody is created equal. That's not pessimism — it's the truth. And the sooner you stop measuring yourself against the best in the world and start measuring against your former self, the sooner you'll actually enjoy what you're doing.

Enjoy

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Travis Pastrana is a 17-time X Games gold medalist, multi-discipline motorsport champion, and the founder of Nitro Circus. He grew up in a Maryland construction family steeped in military service and contact sports, won his first outdoor national championship at 16, bought a house the same year, and has spent the decades since competing in everything from supercross to rally to NASCAR to base jumping. He has had two knee replacements, a hip replacement, over 30 concussions, and once turned 40 fractures across seven bones in his foot into dust on an X Games landing.

We got into what it actually means to make decisions at speed — treating cliffs and trees like traffic cones when everyone else backs off. His Daytona 500 run. The NASCAR race where every teammate crashed out and his daughter read him the riot act for finishing 15th. What happened when a group from a certain Army unit showed up at his place and every single one of them landed a backflip on a dirt bike within two tries. The concussion research that found his brain operates differently than most. His seven-year-old daughter telling him she doesn't want to be the best at anything because the people chasing greatness don't seem happy. And the massive open-air wind tunnel he bought from a Mission Impossible set that he can't afford to power.

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Negligent Discharge Friday. Michael and I run through the week's headlines and somehow end up exactly where you'd expect.

We kick it off with a full arsenal update — throwing stars, a blow dart gun, and the nunchucks still need names. Then we get into the Alan Ritchson body cam footage. His neighbor jumped in front of his bike, pushed him, and found out what happens when you put hands on a guy built like a refrigerator in front of his kids. No charges filed. Self-defense confirmed.

A quadruple amputee professional cornhole player was charged with murder. He was driving a Tesla and shot a man in the front seat. We broke down the mechanics. We had questions. Serious ones. Also some less serious ones.

We got into Trump's public comments on Joe Kent and what Tulsi Gabbard said about intelligence authority during her congressional testimony. ICE is standing around airports while TSA agents haven't been paid in six weeks. Delta pulled its congressional perks. Iran apparently sent Trump a gift — oil and gas related. No one knows what it is. Michael's daily screen time is five and a half hours. He lied about it. Twice. On camera.

Enjoy

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Rich Hy is a police detective in the Special Victims Unit in Buffalo, New York, an Army Reserve drill sergeant, and the creator behind Angry Cops, a YouTube channel with over 1.5 million subscribers built over a decade of consistent work. He's a combat veteran with a civil affairs background, multiple deployments, and 21 years of combined service. He's also expecting his first kid.

We pick up where we left off the last time Rich was on. The Buffalo schools investigation he blew open landed with an outside law firm, and the results were exactly what you'd expect when the DA's office won't share files, the police department hides behind juvenile protections that don't apply, and evidence gets conveniently deleted. They found systemic issues. Nobody got held accountable. A principal refused a subpoena. A school withheld camera footage showing a second child in an attempted abduction. The investigation acknowledged the problems Rich raised and then did nothing about the people responsible.

We get into the Epstein files and why most people are reading them wrong. Rich breaks down the difference between investigative documents and verified evidence. We talk Malibu Fitness, Tim Kennedy, and what it looks like when you own a mistake versus when you try to talk your way around one. Rich walks through a case he caught involving a blind refugee found dead in Buffalo — what the media reported versus what actually happened. We cover ICE operations, the Minnesota shooting, why the how matters more than the what in enforcement, and what happens when politicians throw their own people into the meat grinder hoping for a bad headline. Then we get into taxation, the Revolutionary War starting over a one and a half percent tax, property taxes in New York, the death tax, drill sergeant stories, peptides, Iran, and Rich's new podcast Overserved.

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Full Auto Friday to round out the week!

A listener flew from San Diego to Kalispell to tell a woman she was his person. He laid it all out on a couch in my coffee shop. I walk through the two things that I think matter most going into a marriage — communication and patience.

A 30-year-old writes in paralyzed by fear. Lifting weights, jiu-jitsu, new restaurants, driving in cities — his brain goes straight to worst-case on everything. What is the difference between irrational and improbable, and why he needs to go talk to a professional who can help him rewire the path his thoughts are carving?

I answer a question on how to pick the right jiu-jitsu gym. My wife Leah's advice: look at the makeup of the mat. If it looks like society, you're in the right place.

And I finally tell the story of being on the CBS reality show Hunted — union hours, wardrobe continuity, and pretending to play hide and seek in a warehouse in Bakersfield for eight hours a day.

Enjoy

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Greg Anderson is a former Army Ranger and deputy U.S. Marshal with two decades in law enforcement and combat, a 3rd-degree black belt, and the owner of one of the most thriving Jiu-Jitsu academies in the Pacific Northwest. His first book, Courage Through Adversity, just dropped. He's also about to row to Hawaii.

The Row West Pacific expedition is a four-man team rowing a Ronic 45 from the U.S. coastline to Hawaii — no motor, no support vessel, roughly 60 days at sea. Greg explains why he bought the boat, what 3-on/3-off looks like when there's nowhere to stop, and what the trip is actually about. It's not the craziest thing he's signed up for, but it might be the hardest.

We also cover what happens when local government decides your Jiu-Jitsu gym is an illegal operation. The answer involves a $40,000 parking assessment, federally protected buttercups, and a mandatory ratio of rhododendrons to parking spaces. Greg pushed back. It worked.

He talks about the book — why he wrote it, what he was actually willing to admit in it, and why authenticity isn't a marketing word. Then we get into cops and Jiu-Jitsu, lying about military service, wealth building, and where he thinks the country is headed.

Greg's Book - Courage Through Adversity: https://a.co/d/02CV5tuu

Andy's Book - Drownproof: https://www.clearedhotpodcast.com/book

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Negligent Discharge Friday. Michael now has nunchucks. We're accepting name suggestions. Two names. Because there are two of them.

We got into Iran. The strike on the elementary school. Outdated intelligence. The difference between owning a mistake and talking around it. The authorized use of military force and how every administration since 9/11 has abused it. The draft being floated by a president who dodged Vietnam with bone spurs. Gaza and how you fight an enemy embedded in a civilian population. Mandatory service and why two years of serving something bigger than yourself might fix a lot of what's broken.

Then Snowden. Hero, villain, or somewhere in between. The surveillance state we already live in. The Patriot Act being one of the most unpatriotic things ever passed. AI deepfakes that take two days and $40 to build. A woman grieving the retirement of her AI boyfriend. And a guy in Kenya getting arrested trying to smuggle 2,200 ants in test tubes through an airport.

Enjoy.

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Erica Gaines came into law enforcement as the Knife Girl — selling switchblades at police conferences, making small talk with cops, building relationships she didn't fully understand. She had opinions. She thought shooting someone in the leg was a reasonable ask. Then she stepped into a use-of-force simulator. One domestic violence scenario, a shock pack on her lower back, and two minutes of chaos later, she walked out shaking. That experience rewired her. She's been inside this world ever since, running TacMobility — bringing neuroscience, stress physiology, and resiliency training to law enforcement agencies across the country.

Suicide is the number one cop killer in America. Not line-of-duty deaths. Not ambushes. Not traffic stops. Only half of agencies have any wellness program at all. Of those, only 23% are teaching actual resiliency skills. We get into what that gap costs — and why wellness and resiliency aren't the same thing, and confusing them is part of the problem.

We talk about internal law enforcement culture — why officers say the body armor on their back is for their own admin. Why cynicism becomes a slow leak that doesn't stop at retirement. Why the most important thing a cop can do might be building a social circle that has nothing to do with the job. We also get into dispatchers, women in law enforcement, human trafficking in Kalispell, and what happens to your identity the day you turn in your badge.

Tacmobility: https://www.tacmobility.org

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Listener Q and A to close out the week. Topics are heavier than usual, but that's how it goes sometimes.

-What's in the EDC fanny pack and why

-A guy who keeps getting knocked down asks if he should keep pushing toward becoming a Marine

-Family drama with the sister-in-law is bleeding into everything, how do you protect what matters without making it worse

-A man's mom just got a terminal cancer diagnosis. I lost my mom to cancer. I have regrets about how I handled the end of her life.

Enjoy.

Pick up a copy of my book Drownproof here: https://www.clearedhotpodcast.com/book

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Oscar Hagelsieb is a Mexican-American law enforcement professional known for his lengthy career in U.S. federal service focused on border security, organized crime and cartel infiltration. He grew up in a tough neighborhood on the outskirts of El Paso, Texas, the son of undocumented immigrant parents. His upbringing gave him firsthand insight into both sides of the border and influenced his decision to pursue a career in federal law enforcement.

Hagelsieb began his federal service as a U.S. Border Patrol Agent, where he worked in frontline enforcement along the U.S.–Mexico border. In that role he encountered families and migrants crossing for economic opportunity as well as experienced cartel-linked smuggling activity.

Building on his effectiveness and his deep understanding of local culture and language, Hagelsieb transitioned into undercover work, infiltrating narcotics and human smuggling networks tied to major Mexican drug cartels. His appearance and background were strategic assets in these operations, allowing him to navigate criminal subcultures and gather actionable intelligence that led to prosecutions.

Over time, he rose through the ranks to become the Assistant Special Agent in Charge (ASAC) of the Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) office in El Paso. In this senior leadership position, he oversaw complex investigations into transnational organized crime, cartel logistics, and cross-border smuggling operations, and managed both domestic and international law enforcement efforts.

His work and perspective were featured in the documentary Kingdom of Shadows, which examines the human realities of the drug war and cartel influence along the border, providing rare insight into the lived experience of agents operating within these conflicts.

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Four questions for today's Q and A that all center on responsibility and perspective. We start with a man in a movie theater watching someone try to enter through an emergency exit, his mind flashing back to the Aurora theater shooting and wondering ever since if he should have acted or done more. From there, a husband blindsided by his wife saying she's leaving and facing the reality of telling his two young sons. The third question comes from a man recovering from major surgery who feels useless and like a burden on his wife while he heals. We close by tackling whether it's smarter to openly acknowledge the risks young men and women face online, or ignore what is statistically unlikely but emotionally unsettling.

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Brad Colbert is a retired Marine Master Sergeant with 30 years of military and government service. He served with 1st Reconnaissance Battalion in Afghanistan in 2001 and during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, where he led Marines in combat and was later depicted in Generation Kill. After retiring from active duty, he continued working in support of the Intelligence Community before shifting his focus to leadership, resilience, and veteran advocacy through The Carry On Podcast and the Recon Foundation.

We talked about combat, responsibility, and what happens when the uniform comes off. A major part of this conversation was veteran mental health and the reality that too many men are still fighting alone. Brad is working to change that. This episode is about ownership, connection, and making sure the people who served don't suffer in silence.

Find Brad Here: https://bradcolbert.us/

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Young Michael dove deep on his internet research for this Friday. We spent an hour discussing a variety of topics, and as usual, he did not disappoint:

-Black Belts Freaking Out and Punching Purple Belts

-Do Weapons Fire By Themselves?

-The Reality of Steven Seagal Movies

-Social Media Comments and Arrests in Europe

-Helicopter Crashes into the Snow

-The Epstein File debacle

And much more......

Enjoy-

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Mark Greaney is one of the most successful thriller authors working today — a #1 New York Times bestselling writer who built an entire spy fiction universe with his Gray Man series and helped carry forward Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan legacy. His novels have become global hits, translated into dozens of languages, and turned into major motion pictures on Netflix starring high-profile talent. We dive deep into what separates hobbyists from career storytellers, why meticulous research matters, and how Greaney approaches pacing, character, and realism in a crowded genre.

In this episode, Greaney walks us through his journey from early drafts to international bestseller, the hustle behind sustaining a long-running series, and how real-world preparation — from travel to tactical training — feeds the kind of action readers devour but seldom see the work behind.

The Hard Line:

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/786216/the-hard-line-by-mark-greaney/

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This week's Q&A tackles a mindset I respect—but one that can turn on you if you're not careful. Two listeners ask different versions of the same question: can a "no quit" attitude become destructive? One is staying in a marriage he knows is unhealthy because he fears being labeled a quitter. The other can grind himself into the ground at work but doesn't know how to recognize the point of diminishing returns. The third question comes from a man caught in an emotional affair, wrestling with guilt and the weight of repeating the same mistake that fractured his own family.

Pre Order your copy of my new book "Drownproof" here: https://static.macmillan.com/static/smp/drownproof-9781250379610/

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Don't let your money sit around—put it to work with Stash. Go to https://get.stash.com/clearedhot to see how you can receive TWENTY-FIVE DOLLARS towards your first stock purchase and to view important disclosures.

After two years of legal battles and business upheaval, Mike Glover returns to the podcast with a clarity and perspective few men ever earn. Mike spent nearly two decades as a U.S. Army Green Beret and Special Forces sergeant major, deploying to combat theaters, leading reconnaissance, sniper, and operations elements, and later serving as a contractor for the CIA in high-risk security environments. When he hung up the uniform he founded Fieldcraft Survival, turning elite skills into real-world survival training and gear for civilians, law enforcement, and government clients — shaping an entire industry in the process.

In this conversation, we talk about what the last two years have actually been like — the legal pressure, the business fallout, and what it's like to navigate both in public. Mike lays out where things stand now, what he's learned, and how adversity changes your perspective when it's no longer theoretical. We also get into what he's building next, the direction he's taking in business, and what he hopes the future will hold.

Mikes Patreon: https://patreon.com/mikeglover

Mikes New Endeavor-leave email to be connected when he drops: https://longhaulsupplycompany.com

Pre-Order your copy of my book, Drownproof here: https://static.macmillan.com/static/smp/drownproof-9781250379610/

Today's Sponsors:

Montana Knife Company:

https://www.montanaknifecompany.com

David:

Buy 4 cartons and get the 5th free at https://www.davidprotein.com/CLEAREDHOT

This week's Full Auto Friday is a return to listener questions and some uncomfortable but necessary conversations. We talk about the fine line between being tough and being stupid, how to deal with shame and guilt after a DUI, what it actually looks like to keep moving forward when you can't see any progress, and how to reconcile regret over military service in today's political climate. This isn't about excuses, self-pity, or rewriting the past—it's about ownership, perspective, and doing the next right thing even when motivation is gone and the path forward isn't clear.

Today's Sponsors:

Firecracker Farm:

https://www.firecracker.farm use code CLEAREDHOT for 10% off your first order.

LMNT:

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Violence against public figures, politicians, and high-profile individuals is no longer rare or isolated — it's increasing, accelerating, and becoming more unpredictable. Threat reporting, attempted attacks, and successful assaults on protectees have risen sharply over the last several years, driven by political polarization, online radicalization, and the ease with which individuals can move from grievance to action. From lawmakers and candidates to commentators and executives, the modern threat environment is broader, faster, and far less controllable than most people understand.

In this episode, I sit down with Caleb Gilbert, founder of White Glove Protection Group, to break down the reality of personal protection — including where it works, where it fails, and why it's often misunderstood. We take a hard look at the mechanics of real-world security failures, including a detailed discussion of the protection dynamics surrounding the Charlie Kirk attack site, and why even professional protective details can be overwhelmed. We also cover what individuals can realistically do to improve their own personal security in an increasingly hostile environment — without illusions, guarantees, or false confidence.

White Glove Protection Group: https://whitegloveprotection.com/

Today's Sponsors:

Black Rifle Coffee:

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Brunt:

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Jarred Taylor from Black Rifle Coffee is the second guest to sit down in the new studio, and we kicked this one off by talking about branding—what it actually takes to build something real, why most brands fail, and how hard it is to grow without losing the core of what made it work in the first place.

From there, things went where they usually do. We broke down movies and TV through a tactical lens, talked about what Hollywood consistently gets wrong, and then spent some time on the "Wet Boys"—Jarred's online aviation squadron that flies simulated demos, builds digital airshows, and uses their downtime to antagonize the Air Force Thunderbirds on social media.

Today's Sponsors:

Hollow Socks:

Hollow Socks is having a Buy 2, Get 2 Free Sale, head to https://www.Hollowsocks.com today to check it out.

AG1:

Get a free AG1 Flavor Sampler and AGZ Sampler to try all the flavors, plus free Vitamin D3+K2 and AG1 Welcome Kit with your first AG1 subscription order at https://ww.DRINKAG1.com/CLEAREDHOT

Rob O'Neill is a retired Navy SEAL with more than 400 combat missions, deployments with SEAL Team Two and SEAL Team Six, and participation in some of the most high-profile special operations of the last two decades. He served multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan and has spent years navigating the complicated transition from service to public life. In this conversation, Rob joins me for an unfiltered, long-form discussion about his career, the brotherhood of the teams, and the personal cost that comes with telling parts of his story publicly.

We talk at length about Operation Neptune Spear, the mission to kill Osama bin Laden, and Rob's perspective on how the official debrief differs from his lived experience. Rob explains why he believes portions of the record are incomplete, discusses actions taken by members of the assault force after bin Laden was already dead, and why those details matter to him years later. These are Rob's firsthand accounts and interpretations, shared in full context and without editing for sound bites.

We also dig into Rob's ongoing $25 million defamation lawsuit, how it came about, and what it's like to defend your name after a lifetime spent operating in silence. This isn't a hit piece or a hero narrative—it's a three-hour conversation about memory, loyalty, accountability, and what happens when the story doesn't match the mission.

Today's Sponsors:

Montana Knife Company:

https://www.montanaknifecompany.com

David:

Buy 4 cartons and get the 5th free when you go to https://davidprotein.com/CLEAREDHOT

In this episode, I sit down with Luke Urick, the Executive Director, and Bryon Gustafson, the Deputy Director of the Montana Veterans Project, a Great Falls–based nonprofit that helps veterans rediscover purpose, camaraderie, and resilience through veteran-led therapeutic adventure trips in the Montana backcountry. We explore how challenging wilderness experiences can help veterans reconnect with themselves, their fellow warriors, and the mission that doesn't simply end when military service does.

We dig into why traditional approaches sometimes fall short, and how shared physical challenge, communication, and hard work in nature can catalyze healing in ways that matter long after the trip ends. This is a conversation about more than PTSD or buzzwords — it's about purpose, belonging, and veterans building new life chapters with intention and grit.

Montana Vet Program - https://www.mtvetprogram.org

Today's Sponsors:

Betterwild:

Betterwild is offering listeners up to 40% off your order at https://www.betterwild.com/CLEAREDHOT

Shopify:

Sign up for your one-dollar-per-month trial and start selling today at https://www.shopify.com/clearedhot

In this episode, I sit down with Caitlin V, a sex educator and author whose work focuses on intimacy, communication, and long-term relationship dynamics. Caitlin has spent years helping individuals and couples better understand desire, connection, and the often-unspoken issues that quietly erode relationships over time. We discussed how communication breaks down, why people struggle to ask for what they want, and how unspoken expectations erode connection over time.

We also talk about common misconceptions around sex, the real value of intimacy in long-term relationships, and what actually helps couples reconnect—not in theory, but in practice. This conversation isn't about shock value or trends; it's about understanding ourselves better, communicating more clearly, and building relationships that don't slowly decay in silence.

Caitlin's New Book - Harder, Better, Stronger, Longer - https://www.amazon.com/Harder-Better-Longer-Stronger-Science/dp/1401998038

Today's Sponsors:

Black Rifle Coffee:

https://www.blackriflecoffee.com

BetterHelp:

Listeners get 10% off their first month at https://www.betterhelp.com/clearedhot

In this episode I answer two listener-submitted questions that couldn't be more different. The first is a deep dive into immigration enforcement and the recent ICE-involved shooting in Minneapolis. I break down what authorities ICE agents actually have (and don't have), what likely happened tactically, and why this issue continues to expose just how divided the country is. No hot takes—just context, law, and reality as I see it.

The second question shifts gears to mindset and self-confidence heading into a military selection process. We talk about preparation beyond physical training, how confidence is built (not imagined), and how to show up ready when it actually counts. As always, these are my perspectives based on experience—not hype, not shortcuts.

Enjoy!

Today's Sponsors:

Fabric By Gerber Life:

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AG1:

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In this episode, I sit down with former federal employee and rural Colorado Fire Chief Erik Holt, who says his career ended after he reported what he believed to be clear evidence of election misconduct.

After nearly two decades in federal service, he accepted a Fire Chief position in a small rural district, rebuilding the department from the ground up. Within a year, it grew from five personnel to more than sixty trained firefighters. By every measurable standard, the department was thriving.

Then came the May 2023 election.

Following complaints from citizens, he reviewed surveillance footage from polling locations and says what he found raised serious legal concerns. Acting as a private citizen, and believing he had both a moral and legal obligation, he reported the findings to the District Attorney's Office.

What followed, according to him, was retaliation.

The newly elected board—some of whom were allegedly implicated—ordered him to delete surveillance footage. He refused. Bank accounts were frozen. Emergency services and payroll were disrupted. Days later, he was fired.

He filed a federal lawsuit asserting First Amendment protections, arguing that reporting election fraud should not cost a public servant their livelihood. While the court acknowledged misconduct, his case was dismissed without ever reaching a jury.

During the process, he says he uncovered troubling conflicts of interest inside the District Attorney's Office itself—raising serious questions about accountability, due process, and whether constitutional protections truly apply to those who speak up from inside government institutions.

He is now appealing his case to the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals after exhausting more than $150,000 of personal funds.

Erik's GoFundMe Link: https://www.gofundme.com/f/free-speech-retaliation-and-the-cost-of-integrity

Today's Sponsors:

Montana Knife Company:

https://www.montanaknifecompany.com

David:

David is offering listeners a special deal - buy 4 cartons and get the 5th free when you go to https://www.davidprotein.com/CLEAREDHOT

Young Michael dove deep on his internet research for this Friday. We spent an hour discussing a variety of topics, and as usual, he did not disappoint:

-Venezuela

-How lethal are JSOC elements?

-Will the US take Greenland?

-The unstoppable rise of Ai photos

-Grok undressing everyone

And much more......

Enjoy-

Today's Sponsors:

Hollow Socks:

For a limited time, Hollow Socks is having a Buy 2, Get 2 Free Sale. Head to https://www.Hollowsocks.com today to check it out. After you purchase, they will ask you where you heard about them. You can support our show and tell them we sent you.

Firecracker Farms:

Go to https://www.firecracker.farm—that's DOT farm—and use code CLEAREDHOT for 10% off your first order. Your taste buds will thank me.

Andrew Child is the co-author of the Jack Reacher series, one of the most successful and recognizable modern thriller franchises in the world. Working alongside his brother Lee Child, Andrew became responsible for continuing and evolving a character known for discipline, restraint, moral clarity, and decisive action.

Before joining the Reacher universe, Andrew spent years developing his own voice as a novelist and journalist, with a background that shaped his approach to structure, clarity, and storytelling. Stepping into an already iconic series required understanding not just the character, but the values and principles that made Jack Reacher resonate with millions of readers globally.

Andrew now carries the responsibility of maintaining the integrity of a cultural archetype — a lone figure guided by competence, accountability, and an uncompromising sense of right and wrong. His work has helped ensure the Jack Reacher series remains relevant, grounded, and consistent while continuing to grow its audience across books, television, and film.

Today's Sponsors:

Black Rifle Coffee:

https://www.blackriflecoffee.com

Helix:

Go to https://www.helixsleep.com/clearedhot for 27 percent off Sitewide.

Brunt:

https://www.bruntworkwear.com Use code "clearedhot" for 10 dollars off at checkout

This Episode was recorded 29 Dec 2025. I did not know, nor had no way of knowing that the upcoming Shawn Ryan interview was going to be cancelled the night before this episode aired.

We talked policy for nearly an hour before digging in to headline topics. If you are here just for the title topics, skip to around 1 hour and 15 minutes.

Dan Crenshaw is the Republican Congressman from the 2nd District of Texas. Prior to his political career, he served as a United States Navy SEAL for 10 years. On his 3rd combat deployment, he was injured by an IED (improvised explosive device) which cost him his right eye and left him with substantial damage to his left. He was medically retired due to his injuries, and shortly thereafter began his career in politics.

Most recently Dan has been in the news for ACCUSATIONS of insider trading, drunken behavior in Mexico, threatening Tucker Carlson's life, and attempting to silence podcaster and former Navy SEAL Shawn Ryan.

We talked policy for nearly an hour before digging in to headline topics. If you are here just for the title topics, skip to around 1 hour and 15 minutes.

Today's Sponsors:

Firecracker Farm:

Go to https://www.firecracker.farm and use code CLEAREDHOT for 10% off your first order. You'll thank me later.

LMNT:

Head to https://www.drinklmnt.com/clearedhot to pick up your free sample pack

This episode focuses heavily on the massive risk facing children on many of the most popular games targeted and marketed towards their age group, and parents. Specifically, Roblox, Minecraft, and the communication platform Discord.

Nic McKinley is a former military special operator and ex-CIA operative who founded and led two multimillion-dollar tech companies. A pioneer in building technical solutions to protect society from predators, Nic is passionate about solving society's most pressing issues through cost-effective technical solutions.

Nic grew up in Montana but left to join US military special operations as a US Air Force Pararescueman. After more than a decade in Pararescue, Nic worked in private intelligence start-ups before being recruited into a specialized unit at the Central Intelligence Agency that provided unique capabilities and expertise in response to the critical operational needs of the Intelligence Community.

With 30 combat deployments under his belt in both Special Operations and the CIA, Nic experienced the power of technology during the Global War on Terror and set out to use his skills and training with that experience to combat modern slavery.

In 2014, Nic founded DeliverFund, the only donor-funded solution to human trafficking that delivers proprietary data and technology to law enforcement, allowing them to take down human traffickers effectively. Along with DeliverFund, Nic founded a venture capital-backed software company and has a technology leadership consulting practice.

Despite being dubbed "The Real Jack Ryan" by VICE Media, Nic's most important role is as a husband and father leading his family in a life of service and adventure in Montana. When he is not in his office, Nic can be found on a lake, on the ski slopes, camping, climbing vertical rock or ice in the mountains, with his nose in a book learning something new, or spending downtime with his extraordinary wife.

Deliverfund: https://deliverfund.org/

Today's Sponsors:

Montana Knife Company:

https://www.montanaknifecompany.com

Shopify:

Sign up for your one-dollar-per-month trial and start selling today at https://www.shopify.com/clearedhot

Our Final Full Auto Friday for 2025! I'd like to say I went out with a bang, but instead I just tried to be consistent.

Thank you to everyone who submitted questions in 2025, I hope that my answers have helped someone out there. Don't forget, I'm an idiot, and my answers are only representative of my own experiences. See you all out there in 2026.

Today's questions:

-How do you deal with being hurt by those you love?

-How do you hold someone accountable without them being personally offended

-Are the SEAL Teams racist?

-Closing thoughts on 2025

Enjoy!

Today's Sponsors:

Brunt:

Listeners get $10 off their entire order with code "clearedhot" at checkout. https://www.bruntworkwear.com

Pique:

Go to https://www.Piquelife.com/clearedhot

Born and raised in the mountains of rural northwest Georgia, Chadd grew up obsessed with becoming a SEAL, but when the Navy discovered a rare but asymptomatic cyst on his heart, he was disqualified from entering BUD/s. Chadd refused to give up, ultimately tracking down a surgeon willing to perform a procedure deemed too risky by every cardiologist he previously petitioned.

Cyst successfully removed, Chadd went on to realize his SEAL dream, serving over the next decade as a Team Leader on multiple deployments to conflict zones across the world. He became a SEAL instructor. A Master Training Specialist. Chadd even served a stint as President Obama's bodyguard. Along the way, he battled PTSD and traumatic brain injury.

Now retired from the military, Chadd has found new life as an elite ultramarathoner — a spiritual quest for self-knowledge and mind-body mastery that has compelled him to tackle some of the world's most insane endurance slogs like The Revenant — a 118-mile footrace across south New Zealand with over 52,000 feet of elevation gain that not one person has ever successfully completed.

The 3 of 7 Project: https://www.3of7project.com/

Today's Sponsors:

Black Rifle Coffee:

https://www.blackriflecoffee.com

David:

Order a sample pack at https://Davidprotein.com

Traditional and straightforward today, a simple Q and A to round out the week. Of course, I only picked controversial and divisive topics, oh wait, not even close.

I did actually cover:

- A law enforcement officer developing hate for those he interacts with

- Why are so many Special Operations Vets talking smack online?

- What was the point of the 20-year GWOT wars?

- Do I deserve to seek treatment from the VA?

Enjoy

Today's Sponsors:

AG1:

Go to https://drinkag1.com/clearedhot to get a FREE Frother with your first purchase of AGZ.

Helix:

Go to https://www.helixsleep.com/CLEAREDHOT for 27% Off Sitewide.

Brent Tucker is a retired US Army Delta Force operator and Purple Heart recipient with a 20-year career in Special Ops. He served as both a Green Beret and a Delta Force operator, completing 13 combat deployments to Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and other undisclosed locations.

He is the host of the Tier 1 Podcast and the owner and founder of First Responder's Coffee, Cigar, & Cask Company.

Brent was recently sued by Rob O'Neill for 25 million dollars in a defamation lawsuit. Rob claims that Brent made false claims, stolen valor accusations, and conducted a "malicious and calculated smear campaign," claiming that Rob did not kill Osama Bin Laden.

Tier 1 Podcast: https://tier1podcast.com/

FRCC: https://frcc.shop/

Today's Sponsors:

Montana Knife Company-

https://www.montanaknifecompany.com

LMNT-

https://www.drinklmnt.com/clearedhot

Today is a traditional Q & A episode, answering listerner-submitted questions.

For those wondering how to submit a question, just shoot me an email: andystumpf212@gmail.com

Here is what I covered:

-Sexuality and Military Service

-Advocating for your parents' medical health/treatment

-Advice for battling burnout as a Law Enforcement Officer

-Imposter Syndrome and creative ways to practice tactical scenarios

Enjoy!

Today's sponsors:

Spartan Forge:

https://www.spartanforge.ai

Pique:

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Jeremy Ryan Slate is an authority strategist, bestselling author, and global speaker. He studied literature at Oxford University and earned both his BA and MA at Seton Hall University, where he focused his graduate research on Early Roman Empire propaganda. He is also the founder of Command Your Brand – the PR agency trusted by top founders worldwide.

He is the host of The Jeremy Ryan Slate Show, recognized by INC and Podcast Magazine as one of the world's top podcasts, and Jeremy Roman Empire, where he uncovers timeless lessons on media, power, and legacy from history's most influential empire.

Today's Sponsors:

Black Rifle Coffee:

https://www.blackriflecoffee.com

BetterHelp:

Listeners get 10% off their first month at https://www.BetterHelp.com/clearedhot

Young Michael has returned from his worldly travels. Is he more knowledgeable, sophisticated, educated, and cultured...Probably not. We spent an hour discussing a variety of topics, and as usual, he did not disappoint:

-Crime and Punishment, or lack thereof

-Travis Pastrana X-Ray and how insane he is

-UPS Airplane Crash

-The Best Christmas Present Ideas for Friends

And much more......

Enjoy-

Today's Sponsors:

AG1:

Go to https://drinkag1.com/clearedhot to get a FREE Frother with your first purchase of AGZ

Stopbox:

10% off AND a Free StopBox Pro when you use code "clearedhot" at https://www.stopboxusa.com

Aaron is an independent political candidate running for the US House seat in the WA-05 congressional district. Aaron has dedicated nearly 22 years of service to the United States, including combat leadership, foreign affairs, and diplomatic work at a U.S. Embassy. His military career taught him the value of service, teamwork, and accountability — principles he now brings home to Eastern Washington. ​

Aaron has deep local ties. He served at Fairchild Air Force Base and chose Spokane as the place to retire with his family. His wife grew up in Elk, WA, and both of their children pursued undergraduate degrees here in Eastern Washington. Their family's roots run deep in the Inland Northwest. ​

From the battlefield to the embassy table, Aaron's experience translates directly to civilian service: putting people first, making tough decisions, and building bridges between people and communities.

Croft4Congress: https://www.croft4congress.com/

Today's Sponsors:

Montana Knife Company:

https://www.montanaknifecompany.com

LMNT:

https://www.drinklmnt.com/clearedhot

As requested, a family get-together for this Friday's episode, with my wife, Leah, and my father, Vaughn. We solicited for questions and answered as many as we could:

-Family holiday traditions

-Why Andy is sane, and why Vaughn is crazy

-Children

-Experiences growing up

-Jiu-Jitsu in Costa Rica

Enjoy!

Hero BJJ Seminar: https://herobjj.com/retreats/leah/

Today's Sponsors:

AG1:

Go to https://www.drinkag1.com/clearedhot to get a FREE Frother with your first purchase of AGZ.

Stopbox:

Listeners are getting 10% off their entire order when you use the code "clearedhot." https://www.stopboxusa.com

As a Navy SEAL, therapist, paramedic, and firefighter, he's lived at the extremes of chaos and control—from overseas deployments to firefighting, from decorated service to deep meth addiction. His rock-bottom moment came when the pull of meth nearly prevented him from saving his young son during a public health crisis—a crisis that forced him to confront the war within. Dr. Tony Dice is now the CEO of Bishop & Dice Defense LLC, empowering veterans, law enforcement, and first responders to overcome trauma and reclaim their lives.

Emerging from addiction, Tony built a life rooted in truth, accountability, and recovery, creating the Holistic Change Model, a non-drug, evidence-informed approach that blends clinical insight with 12-step principles. His memoir, After the Trident, shares how this model helps heal the "invisible wounds" of those who serve, offering practical guidance for sustainable recovery and long-term life transformation.

Dr. Dice: Dr. Dice: https://linktr.ee/dr.dice

Bishop and Dice Defense: https://bishopdicedefense.com/

After the Trident: https://www.amazon.com/After-Trident-Battle-Secrets-Addiction-ebook/dp/B0FDX5FHV6

Today's Sponsors:

Black Rifle Coffee:

https://www.blackriflecoffee.com

AG1:

Go to https://www.drinkag1.com/clearedhot to get a FREE Frother with your first Purchase of AGZ.

Today is a traditional Q & A episode, answering listerner-submitted questions.

For those wondering how to submit a question, just shoot me an email: andystumpf212@gmail.com

Here is what I covered:

-My thoughts on the 25 Million Dollar Rob O'Neill lawsuit

-Advice for a Police Officer getting ready to patrol on his own

-Parenting suggestions for the jump from childhood to young adulthood

-How to deal with a Stepson who seems unwilling to do anything productive

Enjoy!

Today's sponsors:

Firecracker Farm:

https://www.firecracker.farm

Pique:

Get 20% off + a FREE rechargeable frother and glass beaker with your first purchase with my link https://Piquelife.com/CLEAREDHOT

Today's episodes are some of my favorites. I hate stories of just wavetops, and I love stories about people who refuse to give up on what they believe and have built. Don't sleep on this episode; there is much to be gained and learned.

Dan Ellis has been making performance footwear for 35+ years, starting his shoe-making career at Saucony, where he worked at their factory in Maine, learning each step in the shoe-making process. He went on to work for Adidas and Reebok, making specialized shoes for multiple Olympic and professional athletes. In 2005, DEVCOM (aka "Natick Labs") asked Dan to work with the Navy SEALs to develop a suite of boots, which turned into the brand OTB Boots. One elite unit nicknamed him "Bootmaker to the Good Guys", which is used today as a tagline for the OTB Boot Brand.

Today's Sponsors:

Montana Knife Company:

https://www.montanaknifecompany.com

LMNT:

https://www.drinklmnt.com/clearedhot

Originally, this was a traditional Q & A episode, and then at the beginning of the last question, young Michael decided to just walk into the room and crash the show. I suppose it is a mix of Full Auto Friday and a Negligent Discharge Friday.

Here is what we covered:

-How do I know when it is time to just give up on life?

-I need sleep aids at night. How can I still be prepared for a home invasion?

-Thoughts on hormone replacement clinics

-Struggling with identity and self-worth

Enjoy!

Today's sponsors:

Spartan Forge:

https://www.spartanforge.ai

Pique:

Get 20% off + a FREE rechargeable frother and glass beaker with your first purchase with my link https://Piquelife.com/CLEAREDHOT

Pre-order my book Drownproof here!! - https://static.macmillan.com/static/smp/drownproof-9781250379610/

Bear served 7 years as a Naval officer in the Special Operations community as a Navy SEAL. He founded Born Primitive in his garage in 2014, the same year he earned his commission. Bear balanced being active duty while building what would become a global brand with zero outside funding.

Prior to his service, Bear played Division I football at Yale University and also competed at the CrossFit Games. Bear became hell bent on creating Born Primitive Tactical after seeing the shortfalls in the gear he was being issued as an operator, while also seeing many apparel brands in this industry that did not actually support those who serve.

Born Primitive: https://bornprimitive.com/

Today's Sponsors:

Black Rifle Coffee:

https://www.blackriflecoffee.com

LMNT:

https://www.drinklmnt.com/clearedhot

Traditional and straightforward today, a simple Q and A to round out the week. Of course, I only picked controversial and divisive topics, oh wait, not even close.

I did actually cover:

- Does anyone actually use a pistol with a suppressor?

- How do I prepare my husband for the reality of kids?

- Anxiety from work is crushing me. I need some help finding options

- It's falling apart between my wife and I. I could use some help

Enjoy

Today's Sponsors:

AG1:

Go to https://drinkag1.com/clearedhot to get a FREE Frother with your first purchase of AGZ.

Helix:

Go to https://www.helixsleep.com/CLEAREDHOT for 27% Off Sitewide.

In addition to being a global executive and leadership strategist who has led $400M+ businesses at adidas and Reebok, driven global rebrands, and coached leaders from chaos and crisis to clarity and confidence, resulting in major transformation, Chad is a friend of 15 years. We met sitting at the negotiating table between CrossFit and Reebok, and then spent the next few years managing the newly minted relationship from each respective brand.

Chad is now the Cofounder of ACTIV8, which helps teams reduce friction, build trust, and perform at their highest potential.

https://chad.activ8myidentity.com/

Today's Sponsors:

Montana Knife Company:

https://www.montanaknifecompany.com

LMNT:

https://www.drinklmnt.com/clearedhot