Kelsi Sheren: War, Artillery, PTSD, and Love

00:00:00.000 | The following is a conversation with Kelsey Sharon, Canadian Forces veteran, artillery

00:00:05.220 | gunner who served in Afghanistan at 18 years old and came home with severe PTSD.

00:00:11.980 | She went on to found Brass and Unity, which creates unique jewelry, large part of the

00:00:16.840 | proceeds from which go to help rehabilitate the lives, limbs and mental health of veterans

00:00:23.200 | and first responders.

00:00:25.080 | She has a big personality, big heart and an intense passion for life.

00:00:30.200 | So when our paths happened to cross, I knew we needed to talk.

00:00:35.420 | This is the Lex Friedman podcast.

00:00:37.120 | To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description.

00:00:40.880 | And now here's my conversation with Kelsey Sharon.

00:00:45.560 | You mentioned that studying history had a big impact on you and that your grandfather

00:00:49.600 | was a World War II vet.

00:00:52.160 | The people that have gone through World War II in my family too, they don't seem to talk

00:00:56.000 | about it much.

00:00:57.000 | Like the worse the tragedy, the less they talk about it.

00:01:00.360 | I mean, it's understandable.

00:01:01.560 | I can respect that.

00:01:02.640 | But I don't think people fully understood the value in human stories over time and sharing

00:01:11.160 | that that certain civilizations don't have written language.

00:01:15.440 | The value in that being passed down is extraordinary.

00:01:19.240 | So we didn't really have that with the World War II vets, it seems like.

00:01:23.240 | Well, they kind of want to protect you from the pain.

00:01:27.240 | My grandmother went through Holodomor, which is the Ukrainian starvation of millions of

00:01:32.480 | people and then obviously went through World War II with the Nazi occupation.

00:01:39.800 | And same on the grandfather's side who, on my dad's side, the grandfather fought in World

00:01:46.480 | War II.

00:01:47.480 | They seem to not want to talk about those experiences to protect you from the suffering,

00:01:53.280 | to protect you from the evil that they've experienced, which is sad because the lessons

00:01:59.560 | from that history are not then propagated through you.

00:02:02.840 | And also there's something about the strength you carry with you knowing that that's in

00:02:07.320 | your blood.

00:02:08.320 | Those great heroes are in your blood and that suffering, overcoming that suffering is in

00:02:11.920 | your blood.

00:02:12.920 | - I would argue that's exactly correct.

00:02:16.120 | If you have someone you know that comes from your lineage that has done something super

00:02:20.680 | gnarly that's just been a badass in so many different ways, you want to know about that

00:02:26.120 | person.

00:02:27.120 | You have that person's blood in you.

00:02:28.160 | That's important to acknowledge.

00:02:29.480 | And when that isn't shared, I feel like it's just a detriment to that individual.

00:02:35.320 | - What do you make of World War II in terms of history?

00:02:37.960 | Do you think about those kinds of wars where two times more civilians died than the number

00:02:45.120 | of military personnel?

00:02:47.680 | So most of the war is basically just the death of civilians and the invasion of homes, the

00:02:54.080 | burning of homes, the bombing of homes, all of that.

00:02:57.080 | - World War II for me, I find that was the first experience where I became just obsessed

00:03:06.460 | with history.

00:03:08.080 | World War II really did it for me.

00:03:10.640 | I'm not sure if it's because of the dramatization of film and TV and the way that our generation

00:03:17.920 | has looked at it, but for me it was more than that.

00:03:21.800 | I felt a deep connection to it and I still can't figure out why.

00:03:26.180 | Like a pull almost.

00:03:28.440 | People joke around about those past lives and those things or those connections and

00:03:32.480 | there's something deeper within me that feels a pull towards that.

00:03:36.360 | And I'm not quite sure if it's because I had family that escaped Hungary once the Soviets

00:03:43.520 | came in, so thanks for that, or if it was because my grandfather served in it or for

00:03:50.080 | whatever reason.

00:03:51.080 | I just, I have this pull to it.

00:03:52.640 | And so when you think about the mass casualty of the civilian population, that's very difficult

00:03:59.840 | for me to wrap my brain around after being in a war and seeing when you have a small

00:04:05.280 | subset of civilians die, how much of an impact that has on that community right there in

00:04:10.040 | just a tiny area.

00:04:12.640 | So to try to wrap my brain around what happened in Europe and all across and all that, I really

00:04:17.800 | struggle with that because I don't know that I can comprehend what that would truly mean

00:04:23.680 | to somebody if I didn't experience it or see it for what it is.

00:04:27.960 | Does that make sense?

00:04:29.320 | Yeah.

00:04:30.320 | But so first of all, you're right, a lot of people are drawn to World War II for different

00:04:34.480 | reasons.

00:04:35.480 | So one is Hitler and Stalin trying to understand how it's possible to have that scale of evil

00:04:43.280 | in very different flavors of evil.

00:04:46.160 | It's almost fascinating that human nature can allow for that.

00:04:49.200 | And then also it's fascinating that so many people can follow leaders like that with the

00:04:54.240 | pride and with the love of country.

00:04:57.960 | And that's like, it's almost like this weird experiment.

00:05:00.200 | It's like, wow, I wonder if I'm the same, I'm made from the same cloth as those people.

00:05:07.960 | Like would I be a good German if I lived in Germany and was, you know, during the time

00:05:14.840 | of Hitler, would I believe that Germany has been done wrong?

00:05:19.240 | I'm Jewish, by the way, which makes me a little bit more comfortable talking about this.

00:05:24.640 | Is, would I believe in the dream sold by charismatic dictator who says that wrongs have been done

00:05:33.040 | and we need to correct those wrongs?

00:05:35.400 | That to me, this is the compelling thing that draws me to World War II, the human nature

00:05:40.760 | question.

00:05:41.760 | I would agree with you on that.

00:05:42.920 | I think there's a way to look at people like that.

00:05:45.400 | And at that time, there was no real, well, there wasn't a full understanding of the psyche

00:05:50.960 | the way that we're starting to.

00:05:52.320 | I mean, we still don't understand any of it, but it seems like the, you know, the time

00:05:57.960 | gap back then, there was no real understanding of sociopaths and narcissists and, you know,

00:06:04.800 | psychopaths and really what those traits were.

00:06:07.320 | And I feel like you, you know, people will follow blindly if they're given a good enough

00:06:12.280 | reason.

00:06:13.280 | Well, if you have an individual who is ranting and screaming at the top of his lungs in the

00:06:18.480 | middle of these town squares and he's getting this attention, it's human nature to want

00:06:23.640 | to understand and be a part of a group mentality.

00:06:27.560 | It's human nature to want to fit in.

00:06:29.280 | And so I don't know if it's more of people were at the beginning were just, this is the

00:06:35.120 | cool thing to do, or if it was they were genuinely terrified, or if there was an aspect that

00:06:41.800 | was like, this guy is saying something that resonates with me.

00:06:45.700 | There could be a lot of different things.

00:06:47.120 | I think it's unfortunate that we didn't get to, or no one got to really, you know, examine

00:06:54.080 | this individual's brain and this person and why they thought the way they thought.

00:06:58.680 | Because that's always been the biggest thing for me is I'm really curious about why people

00:07:02.520 | do what they do.

00:07:03.920 | Like deeply, deeply curious about it.

00:07:07.040 | I'm not sure who's more interesting, the people that follow Hitler or Hitler himself.

00:07:12.080 | So, I mean, the question that's coupled with that is, would history roll out in similar

00:07:17.480 | ways even if there wasn't a Hitler?

00:07:19.880 | You know, it's the people that created Hitler or did Hitler create the events of World War

00:07:25.280 | II?

00:07:26.360 | I think the people would be more interesting in my opinion.

00:07:29.680 | That seems to be the, that the charismatic leaders are all out there.

00:07:34.600 | The failed artists in the case of Hitler, they're all out there.

00:07:37.800 | And it's just when there's this environment of anger and fear, charismatic leaders can

00:07:43.200 | take over.

00:07:44.880 | And it doesn't matter if they're evil or good.

00:07:48.600 | It's like a roll of the dice in terms of history.

00:07:51.360 | What, how evil, how truly insane they are.

00:07:54.920 | Like I think Stalin was much more cold and calculating.

00:08:00.200 | He wasn't as insane as Hitler.

00:08:02.040 | Hitler was legitimately insane.

00:08:05.200 | Like especially later on in the war where he would do irrational actions, I would say.

00:08:10.480 | But that's like a weird roll of the dice.

00:08:13.680 | You could have gotten a totally different leader.

00:08:17.320 | Wanting to take over the entirety of Europe and then invading Russia.

00:08:21.960 | That's like insanity.

00:08:22.960 | Yeah, that just even, just the first part of that, wanting to take over Europe.

00:08:27.800 | If you really think about the scale, if you really sit down and go, he want, this one

00:08:33.000 | individual was like, I want all of this.

00:08:35.520 | If you really sat down and you were to sit down and put him and his traits that we know

00:08:39.920 | of into any sort of document nowadays that deems somebody a psychopath or a narcissist,

00:08:47.880 | this guy would set it on fire.

00:08:50.880 | He himself was so, I think so damaged.

00:08:54.560 | And he reminds me a lot of people now who struggle to find their way.

00:09:00.240 | He reminds me a lot of angry individuals who are told no, either by women or by business

00:09:06.240 | or by whatever the sector they're in.

00:09:10.480 | He reminds me very much of that like, what's the word I'm looking for?

00:09:15.320 | Just that individual who is just like, the world is shit and the world owes me everything.

00:09:20.520 | And just it's that mentality.

00:09:22.400 | He really came from that it seems like.

00:09:25.660 | And when you foster that too long, you get that.

00:09:28.400 | There's a book called, what is it?

00:09:31.280 | Man from Underground by Dostoevsky.

00:09:32.840 | I might be misnaming the book, but it's about the bitterness of a man.

00:09:37.880 | It's like it breeds within his mind and it just grows that bitterness.

00:09:41.840 | I mean, we all have that sort of resenting of the world when you're younger, when you

00:09:48.720 | have a choice, when you fail, do you blame the world or do you hold it's the Jocko thing?

00:09:56.120 | Do you hold it, do you carry the responsibility of that and become a better man or woman because

00:10:01.200 | of that?

00:10:02.200 | That's the decision.

00:10:03.760 | And in some sense, I mean, unfortunately, see that's because he took responsibility

00:10:09.880 | and leadership.

00:10:10.880 | - I know you can't say he wasn't a leader.

00:10:13.880 | - Yeah, so it's not that he's a failure.

00:10:17.400 | He's not a person, not a failure, but you can't say he's powerless, did not take action.

00:10:23.080 | I think he's just basically embodiment of the anger and the fear of people at the time.

00:10:29.640 | But the insanity of obviously many of my relatives, not just murdering them, but putting them

00:10:35.200 | in camps and torturing them.

00:10:37.440 | But many of those people, Jewish people were also some of the best scientists.

00:10:42.040 | The insanity of murdering some of the best Germans, it makes no sense.

00:10:49.440 | But so that's why it's fascinating to kind of look back at that time in history and think,

00:10:55.760 | are these the same humans?

00:10:57.800 | And also, are there echoes of that now?

00:11:02.000 | And is that going to happen again?

00:11:04.080 | Is there going to be a World War III in some other kind of way?

00:11:08.860 | Is there going to be some mass scale injustice in some other kind of way, which we're not

00:11:13.880 | yet?

00:11:14.880 | But because of our blindness and maybe not learning the lessons of history will allow

00:11:21.000 | it to happen again.

00:11:23.360 | And then obviously it's a very common thing to whatever political leader you don't like

00:11:27.960 | to call them Hitler.

00:11:28.960 | Of course.

00:11:29.960 | Which is, that to me, I got to tell you, when somebody calls somebody Hitler, the weight

00:11:36.320 | behind that has been completely lost in this generation.

00:11:40.320 | This generation does not understand what that truly means to call someone Hitler or a Nazi.

00:11:47.640 | Or Stalin.

00:11:48.640 | To be honest, the starvation, I've just been talking to a lot of folks recently, especially

00:11:54.800 | like North Korea, with the Yonmi Park, starvation.

00:11:58.120 | And I remember from my grandmother, it wasn't, I mean, time and time again, not having food

00:12:05.240 | to eat is the thing that people say is the worst.

00:12:08.880 | Everything.

00:12:10.120 | It's way worse than murder, not having food, and the places that takes your mind and the

00:12:16.320 | actions that forces you to do.

00:12:19.000 | That's terrifying.

00:12:20.000 | And all of that seems very distant in our history.

00:12:22.440 | Yeah.

00:12:23.440 | I love her.

00:12:24.440 | I watched that interview with her.

00:12:26.040 | She is, I want to talk to that woman so bad because when she was on Joe and she sat there

00:12:29.840 | and said, Joe's like, "Do you, have you done any therapy?"

00:12:33.320 | And she laughed.

00:12:34.320 | I was like, "Oh, that's my girl."

00:12:36.440 | It's such a fascinating, I mean, I would love for you to kind of talk to her and explore

00:12:39.840 | her mind because we kind of explored her story.

00:12:44.200 | And that's, there's power and importance to her story, but it's so difficult to understand.

00:12:50.440 | Like how does she become healthier and better even more so than she's already?

00:12:58.120 | She's recovered quite a bit.

00:13:00.760 | You know, she's found herself quite a bit, but I wonder, is she haunted?

00:13:05.600 | You're saying questions I want to ask.

00:13:07.040 | I mean, that's what I mean, because after being in a war, there are certain things,

00:13:13.320 | there's certain atrocities that you see that it doesn't matter the therapy that you do.

00:13:18.480 | And I don't care what all the special ops guys say.

00:13:20.440 | Like I know plenty of them that have a light switch and they turn it off and they can function.

00:13:23.840 | But I also know them when they've been out for 10 years.

00:13:26.680 | There's things that haunt people differently, but there's no way there's not something going

00:13:32.040 | on there deeply.

00:13:34.040 | Yeah.

00:13:36.160 | And there's also extra levels of complexity in her case, because I mean, this is what

00:13:43.080 | just looking at history about family is she spent much of her early life loving the dictator.

00:13:52.800 | Right?

00:13:53.800 | Yeah.

00:13:54.800 | We like the water or something.

00:13:55.800 | We like water or we like this because there is no like individual, like when they said

00:13:59.760 | there was no love or anything.

00:14:01.960 | But there is a love for the...

00:14:03.760 | Just that individual.

00:14:04.760 | Just that individual.

00:14:05.760 | And so, I mean, it's like the ultimate abusive relationship.

00:14:09.720 | Oh, yeah.

00:14:12.120 | But it's still love.

00:14:14.080 | You don't know the alternative.

00:14:15.320 | So it's not even...

00:14:17.360 | It's complicated because like, I wonder if she truly explored it, what you would find.

00:14:23.840 | Because the trauma, much of her trauma, I think comes from when she was escaping North

00:14:29.720 | Korea.

00:14:31.840 | Treatment by China.

00:14:34.040 | It's like the...

00:14:35.040 | And her mom.

00:14:36.040 | And when she had to witness within that and being helpless with that on her own.

00:14:39.880 | So it's like evil men essentially abusing her, trading her, and doing so nonchalantly,

00:14:45.800 | like it's part of just the way of life.

00:14:49.120 | That I wonder if she sees kind of...

00:14:51.160 | Yeah, it's so complicated because childhood...

00:14:54.480 | It would be normal to her because she didn't know any different.

00:14:57.560 | Exactly.

00:14:59.560 | I grew up poor, but I never sensed that.

00:15:03.480 | Because your parents didn't make you.

00:15:05.960 | Well, everyone else around was too.

00:15:08.600 | And so you don't notice it.

00:15:09.880 | I mean, it's a cultural thing.

00:15:11.720 | So the way you grow up, you only start to notice it when you compare yourself to others,

00:15:16.520 | when you learn of the alternative.

00:15:18.320 | That's a dark reality when you're abused.

00:15:22.800 | I wonder, I mean, you truly begin to suffer in some kind of way when you understand that

00:15:29.480 | you were being abused.

00:15:32.520 | That's a dark kind of thought that I wonder if you live your whole life just in that abuse,

00:15:38.720 | if you don't know better, that that's safer.

00:15:41.600 | That's like, what's a better life?

00:15:45.760 | Suffering and then learning that you were suffering or just suffering until your last

00:15:50.240 | days.

00:15:51.240 | There's two ways to look at this.

00:15:52.680 | I'd argue on one side that suffering and suffering until you die, you know no difference.

00:15:58.600 | So you can't have hope.

00:16:00.000 | You can't have this idea that there's better.

00:16:03.520 | And sometimes that's, keep that in its box.

00:16:07.280 | But then if you have kind of what you have with Park, where she knows now that there's

00:16:11.900 | different, she knows that there's better, then you run into those, what is the damage

00:16:16.200 | that has been done?

00:16:17.320 | What is going to be passed on as intergenerational trauma?

00:16:19.520 | I know she's a mom.

00:16:20.960 | So it's like now you got to look long term a little bit because now she's an influence

00:16:25.080 | on a child.

00:16:26.160 | And there's a positive to looking at both, I would say.

00:16:32.600 | And I know that sounds horrible for the living in trauma your whole life and just not knowing

00:16:36.520 | any better.

00:16:37.920 | But there's, I don't know if that saves the brain and the body and just that overall or

00:16:45.560 | if it actually would be better.

00:16:48.160 | Because there's no way to really find that out.

00:16:49.880 | I don't think.

00:16:50.880 | Yeah, I think.

00:16:51.880 | But the reality is when you give people hope and you make them realize that they're suffering,

00:16:57.160 | you're putting a burden on them.

00:16:58.700 | That's the first step on a long journey.

00:17:00.880 | And so, and obviously now that she knows that there's suffering, she wants to make people

00:17:05.360 | in North Korea currently suffer less.

00:17:08.720 | And that's an admirable goal.

00:17:10.680 | It's what we do to each other.

00:17:13.360 | It's try to like, when you see suffering in the world, you try to make it better.

00:17:18.000 | And unmask is probably in a long arc of history going to make for a better world.

00:17:25.080 | I'm hopeful at that idea for North Korea.

00:17:28.460 | I'm hopeful for that because you never want to leave individuals suffering when you know

00:17:35.160 | that they're actively suffering while you're just living your day to day life in the Western

00:17:38.280 | world just out grocery shopping and you see all this food and you know in the back of

00:17:42.080 | your mind, like that interview fucked me up a little bit, I won't lie.

00:17:45.080 | Like, and I had some of the girls in my office listen to it.

00:17:47.360 | They're just bawling because there's, we're all parents and there's this idea that not

00:17:54.160 | being able to feed our children, that just the idea of that damages the psyche.

00:17:59.080 | It brings up the pain in the chest, like just the idea of it.

00:18:03.240 | And so going to the grocery store for about a week after that, I just remember standing

00:18:07.120 | there looking and just going, "What the fuck are we doing?"

00:18:11.060 | But then there's that snap reality that comes into play and goes, "So how do we fix that?"

00:18:17.120 | You gotta take on China.

00:18:19.800 | That's never gonna happen.

00:18:21.960 | And the reason that's not gonna happen, it's happening again.

00:18:24.520 | So a Connie comes down through Afghanistan, Chinese are all through Afghanistan.

00:18:29.280 | Iran makes the deal with China for her, the roadway to get the oil.

00:18:33.560 | Well, that's done in the blink of an eye without anyone knowing.

00:18:36.560 | There's no way.

00:18:37.980 | There's just so much at play with China.

00:18:39.920 | They control such a large aspect of our world.

00:18:44.080 | Unfortunately, that to take and free North Korea, a drastic action would have to happen.

00:18:50.840 | And then your people would come in.

00:18:52.640 | It would be a mess.

00:18:54.240 | What do you mean your people?

00:18:55.240 | What do you mean your people?

00:18:57.040 | Your Russians.

00:18:58.040 | Did you hear what she said about Russians?

00:19:00.600 | Did you hear what she said?

00:19:01.600 | Russians?

00:19:02.600 | I love Russians.

00:19:03.600 | You know what I didn't love?

00:19:04.600 | The Russian recruiting video that came out.

00:19:06.400 | That shit was terrifying.

00:19:07.740 | Did you watch it?

00:19:08.740 | I told you about it.

00:19:09.740 | I didn't watch it.

00:19:10.740 | I didn't watch it.

00:19:11.740 | I'm sorry.

00:19:12.740 | Oh, shocker.

00:19:13.740 | The USA put out a recruiting video.

00:19:16.080 | And then like a day or two later, Russia put one out.

00:19:20.080 | And the recruiting video in the States was an animation of a female soldier with two

00:19:27.240 | moms and she was going to go change the world.

00:19:31.040 | Right?

00:19:32.040 | Russia came out with one.

00:19:36.080 | It's the character from like Rocky, essentially.

00:19:39.620 | And there are guys in the mud and just in the rain just fucking doing pushups, just pushing

00:19:43.120 | it out.

00:19:44.120 | They're just like, they see their boot.

00:19:45.280 | They're just like crushing things.

00:19:46.680 | And I'm like, and it's all like, and the deep Russian voice.

00:19:49.880 | I'm like, oh my God.

00:19:51.820 | Which one is better?

00:19:52.820 | Would you say?

00:19:53.820 | Which bothered you more?

00:19:54.820 | What do you mean by bother?

00:19:57.820 | Specify.

00:19:58.960 | So deception is a funny thing.

00:20:00.580 | Because when you're young and you're choosing to go to the military or not, it's not like

00:20:04.340 | you know, like none of us know what the best trajectory for a life is.

00:20:08.940 | For many people, going to the military is a really, makes them incredible human beings.

00:20:13.500 | Some of the best people in this world I know are soldiers.

00:20:16.340 | So it's, I'm not, I don't mean like it's somehow bad to go to the military.

00:20:20.340 | I think it's a great choice, but there is something, the honest truth is I just don't

00:20:25.780 | like marketing people.

00:20:28.540 | And so this is essentially a marketing effort.

00:20:30.580 | Yeah, it is a marketing effort.

00:20:31.860 | So which one do you like as a marketing effort?

00:20:34.140 | Better Russia.

00:20:35.140 | Yeah, I do.

00:20:36.140 | There you go.

00:20:37.140 | I do.

00:20:38.140 | Because Canada doesn't, you know what our recruiting videos are?

00:20:41.500 | It's like, I love it.

00:20:44.140 | They're the best.

00:20:45.140 | Sorry.

00:20:46.140 | Yeah.

00:20:47.140 | Oh, fuck.

00:20:48.140 | Here we go.

00:20:49.140 | It's starting.

00:20:50.140 | It started.

00:20:51.140 | Awesome.

00:20:52.140 | So Canada does these ones where it's like, it'll have a bunch of like soldiers doing

00:20:55.700 | movements and then they'll like snip it together really quick.

00:20:58.300 | And it'll be like a Navy one and then a guy jumping out of a plane and then it'll be like

00:21:02.220 | an artillery and then like an armored and it'll be like, join the Canadian forces today.

00:21:07.660 | And like, that's like their, their videos.

00:21:10.340 | So it's like very marketable, very palatable to Canadians who don't really want war and

00:21:16.060 | who don't really acknowledge their military in the first place and do everything they

00:21:20.020 | can to make sure that vets don't get any support when they come home.

00:21:24.220 | So they, I can see why that one is acceptable.

00:21:27.680 | What Russia did was meant to be more of an intimidation tactic in my opinion.

00:21:33.040 | I like that style better though.

00:21:35.100 | I think we need harder, I think we need people to be harder.

00:21:38.640 | I think it's acceptable and okay to say that our soldiers need to have a harder mindset,

00:21:43.540 | a stronger mindset, a better mentality and mental health support going into the service

00:21:48.220 | and a harder body.

00:21:50.240 | Because I know when you go to the US, I've also encountered plenty of soldiers that are

00:21:55.140 | 600 pounds.

00:21:56.140 | What are you going to do?

00:21:59.360 | So we should say that you, when you joined the military, you were in incredible shape

00:22:03.220 | or not maybe incredible.

00:22:04.980 | I was an incredible shape.

00:22:05.980 | It was the best shape of my life.

00:22:07.820 | Yeah.

00:22:08.820 | Yeah.

00:22:09.820 | So I'm okay with that.

00:22:10.820 | It's okay.

00:22:11.820 | I, you know what?

00:22:12.820 | I used to do sit ups.

00:22:13.820 | Like no, I would do sit ups in the morning when I was little until I could see my six,

00:22:18.100 | like I always had a six pack because all I did was train.

00:22:21.560 | But like if I couldn't like see it, I would sit there in morning cartoons and just do

00:22:26.240 | sit ups.

00:22:27.240 | And my mom and dad thought that was like normal acceptable behavior.

00:22:30.220 | So if you had like Instagram back then, you'd be a David Goggins.

00:22:32.800 | You would be just like screaming.

00:22:33.960 | Without the cursing.

00:22:34.960 | That cursing started once the military started.

00:22:37.160 | Okay.

00:22:38.160 | Got it.

00:22:39.160 | So I mean, people should know, they probably already know that you also competed in Taekwondo.

00:22:43.200 | Like you were an athlete of all kinds.

00:22:45.200 | I even saw rugby in there.

00:22:47.560 | Yeah.

00:22:48.560 | I was good at rugby.

00:22:50.320 | I played that for seven, six years, I guess you could say total.

00:22:55.960 | I think the worst injury I ever ended up having was I tore my right eyelid off.

00:23:00.880 | We were doing an exhibition game.

00:23:02.720 | I don't do exhibition games well.

00:23:04.240 | I don't do like for fun well.

00:23:06.160 | I don't do like-

00:23:07.160 | So you're very competitive.

00:23:08.160 | No, not me.

00:23:09.160 | So you're being funny.

00:23:10.160 | Ah, there it is.

00:23:11.160 | He gets it.

00:23:12.160 | You see, he's not a robot.

00:23:15.520 | What I was saying though to you was that we did an exhibition game and the team ahead

00:23:23.960 | was winning.

00:23:24.960 | The team we were playing was winning, which was annoying.

00:23:28.400 | And so there was an opportunity to take out a girl that was going one end of the field

00:23:33.680 | to the other and she just kept hitting tries left, right, and center.

00:23:36.840 | She was fast.

00:23:37.840 | So I figured if I just aimed her up like she's a target and I just run full force at her

00:23:43.200 | because she was a tall individual.

00:23:46.440 | If I do that, I'll take her out of the knees.

00:23:48.520 | So I did that.

00:23:50.800 | But what that resulted in was she put her tooth through her mouth guard and knocked

00:23:53.960 | out and she just stayed there.

00:23:55.480 | But when I stood up, I tore the right eyelid off and it was hanging from the inner corner.

00:24:01.000 | My mom was there because mom was my mom's my biggest fan.

00:24:04.840 | She was supportive of this.

00:24:06.760 | She's supportive of everything.

00:24:07.760 | She didn't miss a game.

00:24:08.760 | She didn't miss in anything.

00:24:10.920 | And I stood up and I kind of turned around and we already had a girl break her nose that

00:24:14.920 | day.

00:24:15.920 | So she was on the sideline with her nose sideways and just bloody.

00:24:19.040 | My mom was like, "I'll take her to the emergency after once the game's over."

00:24:22.800 | And so I turned around and looked at her and she just she almost vomited on the spot.

00:24:26.400 | And I was like, "What's wrong?"

00:24:27.680 | She's like, "Don't move your eyelids off."

00:24:30.080 | I'm like, "But I can see."

00:24:31.080 | Like I was trying to blink, but like it was just down so I could just constantly see.

00:24:36.080 | She's like, "We're just going to go to the emergency.

00:24:37.840 | We're just going to go there now."

00:24:39.640 | Was there blood?

00:24:40.640 | Yeah, there's lots of it.

00:24:41.640 | But I couldn't really tell.

00:24:43.200 | Okay.

00:24:44.200 | Were you okay with blood at that point?

00:24:46.200 | Yeah.

00:24:47.200 | Yeah, I've always been okay with blood.

00:24:48.200 | I mean I guess you did Tae Kwon Do and all that.

00:24:49.200 | Yeah.

00:24:50.200 | I didn't get knocked out very often.

00:24:51.200 | I didn't really, when I was younger in Tae Kwon Do, I was really good.

00:24:54.080 | I only lost a handful of times.

00:24:56.440 | So when I did lose, that was bad.

00:24:59.120 | But I never had like a broken nose or a lot of blood on my face.

00:25:03.520 | Like nothing like that really.

00:25:05.280 | So nothing freaked me out too much.

00:25:07.960 | Was there aggression there or just purely competition over skill?

00:25:12.400 | A mix of both.

00:25:15.240 | This was right after, not too long after my coach went to prison for statutory rape.

00:25:21.640 | And that was like how you talk about Park talking about how that was like she knew love

00:25:28.280 | because of that person.

00:25:31.080 | That person was like a god to me.

00:25:33.480 | And so when that happened, I was just an angry individual from that point on.

00:25:36.280 | So there was competition and aggression mixed in there.

00:25:38.680 | Oh, like it was betrayal that there's just somebody that was a symbol of love for you,

00:25:45.160 | could also be a very bad person?

00:25:46.680 | I used to eat, sleep, and breathe whatever that man said from four years old on.

00:25:52.040 | I lived with my coaches at a point.

00:25:54.600 | So I could train that much.

00:25:56.480 | I helped look after their daughter.

00:25:58.180 | I was at the club 24/7.

00:26:00.720 | Just the idea that somebody could do something like that, yeah, that really messed me up.

00:26:05.880 | Where were you on 9/11?

00:26:10.200 | I was 11 and I was in my parents' basement.

00:26:15.720 | In where?

00:26:16.720 | Ontario.

00:26:17.720 | In Ontario, Canada.

00:26:20.680 | What did you think of 9/11 at that age from Canada?

00:26:24.560 | Did it have an impact on you in terms of changing the level of evil you thought is there in

00:26:33.840 | the world today?

00:26:35.720 | Not initially.

00:26:36.720 | I remember it really vividly.

00:26:38.440 | I have a decent memory for certain things, it seems like.

00:26:42.440 | Stuff like that I stick with really well.

00:26:44.880 | I remember watching it.

00:26:45.880 | I was sitting on the couch and my mom called my dad because my parents are truck drivers.

00:26:51.480 | My dad was on the road, if I'm not mistaken, and he would go in and out of cities all the

00:26:56.200 | time.

00:26:57.200 | I think he was on the East Coast.

00:26:58.200 | My mom was a little panicky.

00:26:59.200 | She tried to get a hold of him on, I think at the time it was beepers.

00:27:03.760 | Yeah, so he would get a beep, he would go to a pay phone and call us.

00:27:08.720 | He was fine.

00:27:10.160 | I remember my mom being really upset and I couldn't quite grasp why she was so upset.

00:27:16.440 | I knew something really bad had happened.

00:27:18.680 | It's when I then saw the second plane go into the tower and I remember her just, the stereotypical

00:27:25.320 | hand over her mouth and she just felt sick and she just was so confused.

00:27:29.680 | I knew it was bad, but I didn't fully grasp it.

00:27:33.680 | We went to school that day and they had talked about it briefly.

00:27:36.760 | You could hear the teachers kind of reminiscing about it.

00:27:39.400 | There was a point that week that all of a sudden all of the children who were from a

00:27:47.560 | Middle Eastern family were not at school.

00:27:50.720 | I just remember them saying like a lot of people aren't coming to school, but it was

00:27:55.440 | in particular.

00:27:56.600 | I think parents were afraid once it got out that it was of a certain group.

00:28:02.320 | They were afraid for their own kids and fair enough.

00:28:04.320 | I mean, you never know.

00:28:06.400 | You don't know.

00:28:09.120 | I knew it impacted me enough that I did write.

00:28:11.240 | I remember the school was doing a memorial for it and I remember they asked, I wrote

00:28:16.280 | a poem and a reporter was there and I read it on air.

00:28:20.640 | I remember it was a very short one, but I remember I wanted to do something, but I didn't

00:28:28.400 | know why or for what reason.

00:28:30.720 | I knew I wanted to do something to honor it, but I couldn't grasp why.

00:28:34.720 | You eventually went to Afghanistan.

00:28:38.280 | Did that begin to plant the seed of thinking about conflict in the world?

00:28:43.840 | It's a good question.

00:28:45.200 | I've never thought about it that in depth.

00:28:47.120 | I mean, I've done 12 years of therapy.

00:28:48.680 | You'd think that would have come up, Dr. Pasi, but apparently not.

00:28:51.960 | We'll work on it though.

00:28:55.080 | When did the idea of war start entering your mind?

00:28:58.880 | Late high school, I think it was for me.

00:29:02.440 | I finished high school at 17.

00:29:04.360 | I moved away and went to college.

00:29:06.160 | I went to Algonquin College because I wasn't smart enough to get into Ottawa U. I was like,

00:29:11.880 | well, Algonquin she is.

00:29:13.800 | I just wanted to play sports and frankly, I wanted away from my small town that I was

00:29:17.840 | living in.

00:29:18.840 | I went through a bad high school breakup as a kid and that where you think that's the

00:29:22.560 | love of your life and you just can't bear to be anywhere near anybody.

00:29:27.560 | I moved away as fast as I possibly could.

00:29:31.560 | I didn't grasp it still at that point.

00:29:36.640 | Love and heartbreak.

00:29:40.480 | Why did you become a soldier?

00:29:42.640 | Why did you want to become a soldier?

00:29:45.280 | My parents told me from an early age, they always figured I would either be a cop.

00:29:49.720 | They didn't think military, but they thought it would be like a type A personality, possibly

00:29:54.200 | carry a gun situation.

00:29:57.840 | I'd never hunted before.

00:29:59.400 | We never had guns in our house.

00:30:00.400 | I was never exposed to weapons of any kind.

00:30:03.920 | If anything, it was the opposite.

00:30:07.000 | All the hunters on the property, all the deer would come to our property and all the hunters

00:30:11.000 | would be...

00:30:12.000 | No, I'm not.

00:30:13.000 | My mom would put salt licks out so that they wouldn't get killed.

00:30:14.880 | Your property was the safe space for the deer.

00:30:16.640 | Yeah, it was 17 acres of forest and we had two turkeys that used to walk up and down

00:30:22.200 | the driveway every day.

00:30:23.480 | We had bears in there.

00:30:24.920 | Nobody bothered them.

00:30:27.520 | There was no aspect of like, "I want to go kill shit."

00:30:30.120 | That was not like a thing.

00:30:31.120 | I had no idea I wanted to take anybody off the face of the earth or anything.

00:30:35.840 | I went to school and because I'm a history person, my parents has always made it really

00:30:43.440 | important that Remembrance Day is the thing in our life.

00:30:46.400 | So that's Veterans Day for you.

00:30:47.520 | So it's November 11th.

00:30:48.880 | And it's you go, you honor.

00:30:51.760 | I don't care if you don't want to go.

00:30:53.000 | I don't care if it's raining.

00:30:54.680 | You go.

00:30:55.960 | And so I went to the Remembrance Day ceremony in Ottawa that year, which was...

00:31:00.320 | It's our capital, which is...

00:31:02.320 | Yeah, it's our capital and it's really small.

00:31:04.840 | And so I went, but I took the bus and I was on the bus back to Algonquin and I met a lady

00:31:12.280 | who was like a World War II vet, really old lady.

00:31:15.640 | She had an Air Force uniform on and just like this row of medals.

00:31:19.160 | And I mean, I think you can tell by our limited to extreme interactions we've had over the

00:31:25.560 | short period of time, I'm curious and I'll just ask you.

00:31:29.200 | And so I just got up and talked to her and just started talking to her.

00:31:32.520 | And she didn't say like, I don't remember exactly her words, but she'd served.

00:31:37.520 | She was one of the first females to fly and all of these kinds of things that stuck in

00:31:43.400 | my head.

00:31:44.400 | And we just kind of kept talking and I missed my stop.

00:31:47.360 | And then I finished talking to her and I got back on the bus and went back to the college

00:31:51.960 | and walked into my small apartment where I had two roommates.

00:31:57.760 | These two guys I went to high school with, one of them I went to high school with, one

00:32:00.360 | was from out of town.

00:32:01.360 | And I just didn't like what I was...

00:32:03.840 | I wasn't happy.

00:32:04.840 | I wasn't doing what I wanted to do.

00:32:08.320 | And I didn't know what I wanted to do truthfully.

00:32:11.400 | Something just said, "Why don't you join the Army?"

00:32:14.640 | Like in myself, my self-talk was like, "Let's just join the military.

00:32:17.680 | Let's do it."

00:32:18.680 | Are you in general somebody that just follows the gut?

00:32:22.400 | Like when your heart tells you something, you go with it?

00:32:25.280 | For the most part, because I figured out, at least now I figured out what parts I could,

00:32:31.360 | what feeling I can trust and which one I can't.

00:32:33.280 | Which one's anxiety versus which one's my actual intuition talking.

00:32:37.160 | So why did you sign up to be an artillery gunner?

00:32:39.720 | Because they wouldn't let me be infantry.

00:32:42.240 | I mean, why would you want to be infantry?

00:32:48.640 | I mean, you're naming a lot of dangerous activities.

00:32:52.480 | Yeah, but that wasn't a thought in my mind at the time.

00:32:56.480 | My idea was if I was going to do this and I was going to put myself through the bullshit

00:32:59.760 | and the training and all of the hell and the pushups and the getting blah, blah, blah,

00:33:03.280 | screamed at, I wanted to do something that I know was actually going to be affecting

00:33:06.400 | something.

00:33:07.400 | And what I knew was making change or affecting or on the front lines was infantry, artillery,

00:33:11.480 | or armored.

00:33:12.480 | So I was like, "One of those."

00:33:13.760 | Can you explain the difference, infantry, artillery, and armored?

00:33:17.000 | Do you want like the layman's term or do you want me to actually explain, explain?

00:33:20.800 | Well, listen to your conversation with Jocko, especially.

00:33:23.080 | I love how you get into details.

00:33:24.720 | Okay, so let's detail this then.

00:33:26.560 | Okay.

00:33:27.560 | So infantry is your front line door kicking, you know, blasting the door open, running,

00:33:34.120 | and get the fuck on the ground, just that, that, that, that, that.

00:33:36.680 | They're the guys that, you know, double tap you in the face and they show up in the middle

00:33:39.880 | of the night and put a barrel in your head.

00:33:41.800 | Like those are the guys that are sleeping in the trenches, that are eating MREs, who

00:33:46.480 | are being shot at, who are being blown up, who are doing the dirty work and not sleeping

00:33:51.400 | and carrying the hundred pound pack and are side by side with your buddies in the trenches.

00:33:56.360 | I wanted that, that.

00:33:59.440 | They said I was too small for that.

00:34:00.920 | You were, sorry to interrupt, you were too small, under a hundred pounds?

00:34:05.720 | At the time I was about 103 and I'm five foot, like on a, if you roll my back out, like I

00:34:10.880 | really try, I'm five foot.

00:34:14.640 | At the time though, I think my license said 4'11".

00:34:19.880 | So you were too small for infantry.

00:34:23.160 | Yeah, they just, there was no mandate at which they said you can't be, but they said, you

00:34:28.480 | know, we don't want to put you through training that you're going to fail out of and then

00:34:31.160 | have to recourse you and then find a new job for you.

00:34:33.640 | And they want to try to, if this is what you're going in for, they want to have you follow

00:34:37.760 | through that path.

00:34:39.600 | So then there was armored, which are your tanks.

00:34:42.880 | So that's your movie like fury where your tank battles in, which we don't really do

00:34:48.200 | anymore, but you're rolling around in tanks.

00:34:50.160 | You got guys in the back or you're a driver, you're a turret gunner, which I would have

00:34:53.840 | enjoyed.

00:34:54.840 | But the idea of being in a closed metal box, something about it made me panic.

00:35:00.440 | So I was like, maybe not for me.

00:35:03.040 | There's of course power to that kind of a big gun.

00:35:06.520 | Well, that's why I went for the bigger one.

00:35:08.760 | Okay.

00:35:09.760 | By the way, I think Russia leads the world in number of tanks.

00:35:12.720 | They're still, it's very like, what is it?

00:35:15.800 | Alpha demonstration of like force.

00:35:17.920 | Like, look, we have largest number of tanks.

00:35:20.680 | You know what takes tanks out though?

00:35:22.120 | What?

00:35:23.120 | Some gasoline, some old batteries and a wire.

00:35:25.320 | Yeah, but tanks still look bad-ass.

00:35:27.240 | They look great, but they don't last.

00:35:29.400 | But so much of the military, like we said, with the recruiting videos, it's a display

00:35:33.320 | of power versus the actual implementation of power.

00:35:37.000 | Fair.

00:35:38.000 | Okay.

00:35:39.000 | Artillery.

00:35:40.000 | So I'm doing my best here.

00:35:41.000 | I don't even know what double tap means, which you said earlier.

00:35:43.360 | So it's double tap is like two shots to the face.

00:35:45.920 | Why two?

00:35:47.160 | To be sure.

00:35:48.160 | Okay.

00:35:49.160 | All right.

00:35:50.160 | You guys, taxpayers pay for the ammo.

00:35:51.160 | It's fine.

00:35:52.160 | But you don't want to do three because it's wasting the ammo.

00:35:54.160 | Well, now that's a waste.

00:35:55.520 | Okay.

00:35:56.520 | Double tap to the face.

00:35:57.520 | There's so much awesome terminology here or gruesome terminology depending on your perspective.

00:36:02.160 | Okay.

00:36:03.160 | So artillery.

00:36:04.160 | Yeah.

00:36:05.160 | So that's the hand of God.

00:36:06.160 | Sorry.

00:36:07.160 | No, I...

00:36:08.160 | That's intensely romanticized version, but okay.

00:36:09.160 | It is.

00:36:10.160 | Artillery, the hand of God.

00:36:11.160 | Because it will reach out.

00:36:12.160 | It's like F-18 pilots or bombers.

00:36:13.160 | You won't know they're there until they're there.

00:36:14.160 | And so for artillery, I really honestly didn't think artillery would be a fit for me.

00:36:15.160 | I didn't know much about it.

00:36:16.160 | They were just like, "These are what you can pick from."

00:36:17.160 | And I was like, "I'll go here."

00:36:18.160 | So in World War II, they used to have a gun.

00:36:19.160 | They used to have a gun.

00:36:20.160 | And they would shoot at the enemy.

00:36:21.160 | And they would shoot at the enemy.

00:36:22.160 | And they would shoot at the enemy.

00:36:23.160 | And they would shoot at the enemy.

00:36:24.160 | And they would shoot at the enemy.

00:36:25.160 | And they would shoot at the enemy.

00:36:26.160 | And they would shoot at the enemy.

00:36:27.160 | And they would shoot at the enemy.

00:36:28.160 | And they would shoot at the enemy.

00:36:29.160 | And they would shoot at the enemy.

00:36:30.160 | And they would shoot at the enemy.

00:36:31.160 | And I was like, "I'll go here."

00:36:32.160 | So in World War II, they used much closer artillery.

00:36:33.160 | So in World War II, they used much closer artillery.

00:36:34.160 | So it's the, we're called the Royal Canadian Horse Artillery because the Queen made us

00:36:35.160 | royal.

00:36:36.160 | So Canadian artillery.

00:36:37.160 | And we shoot these rounds.

00:36:38.160 | When you're in training, you shoot smaller ammunition.

00:36:39.160 | They're about 40 pounds.

00:36:40.160 | They go, I'm going to get this wrong, 20 K, 20 kilometers, whatever that is.

00:36:41.160 | They go, I'm going to get this wrong, 20 K, 20 kilometers, whatever that is.

00:36:42.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right.

00:36:43.160 | You're right.

00:36:44.160 | You're right."

00:36:45.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right.

00:36:46.160 | You're right."

00:36:47.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right.

00:36:48.160 | You're right."

00:36:49.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right.

00:37:10.160 | You're right."

00:37:34.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:38:02.360 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:38:30.560 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:38:58.760 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:39:28.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:39:29.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:39:30.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:39:31.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:39:32.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:39:33.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:39:34.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:39:35.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:39:36.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:39:37.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:39:38.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:39:39.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:39:40.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:39:41.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:39:42.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:39:43.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:40:09.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:40:38.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:40:39.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:40:40.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:40:41.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:40:42.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:40:43.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:40:44.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:40:45.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:40:46.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:40:47.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:40:48.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:40:49.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:40:50.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:40:51.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:40:52.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:40:53.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:41:19.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:41:20.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:41:21.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:41:22.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:41:23.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:41:24.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:41:25.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:41:26.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:41:27.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:41:28.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:41:29.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:41:30.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:41:31.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:41:32.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:41:33.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:41:34.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:42:02.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:42:03.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:42:04.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:42:05.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:42:06.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:42:07.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:42:08.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:42:09.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:42:10.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:42:11.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:42:12.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:42:13.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:42:14.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:42:15.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:42:16.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:42:17.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:42:43.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:43:11.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:43:13.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:43:14.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:43:15.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:43:16.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:43:17.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:43:18.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:43:19.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:43:20.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:43:21.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:43:22.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:43:23.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:43:24.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:43:25.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:43:26.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:43:27.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:43:53.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:43:54.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:43:55.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:43:56.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:43:57.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:43:58.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:43:59.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:44:00.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:44:01.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:44:02.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:44:03.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:44:04.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:44:05.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:44:06.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:44:07.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:44:08.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:44:34.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:44:35.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:44:36.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:44:37.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:44:38.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:44:39.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:44:40.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:44:41.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:44:42.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:44:43.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:44:44.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:44:45.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:44:46.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:44:47.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:44:48.160 | And they're like, "Oh, you're right."

00:44:49.160 | And it's not just like a heat from outside, it's like this radiation within you that is

00:45:08.040 | something I've never felt since.

00:45:09.040 | - You, just to take a small step back to the weapons training, what kind of guns did you

00:45:10.040 | train on?

00:45:11.040 | Because you also mentioned a rocket launcher.

00:45:12.040 | - I love Carl Gustafs.

00:45:13.040 | - What are those Carl G's?

00:45:14.040 | - Carl G's?

00:45:15.040 | - What's that?

00:45:16.040 | - What's a Carl G's?

00:45:17.040 | - My only experience with the rocket launchers is from the movie "Combat."

00:45:18.040 | - Oh, okay.

00:45:19.040 | - And I've seen "Commando" with Arnold Schwarzenegger.

00:45:20.040 | - Oh, yeah, and we've all discussed.

00:45:21.040 | I haven't seen that yet, and I've heard about it, and people have made me tell.

00:45:24.520 | Yeah, I know.

00:45:25.520 | - I feel like you haven't seen a single movie that's relevant to war and military, because

00:45:30.360 | every time anyone brings it up, you say you haven't seen it.

00:45:33.120 | - I don't have time to watch movies, Lex.

00:45:35.120 | - "Platoon," you haven't seen "Platoon," which is...

00:45:37.800 | - You're the scientist.

00:45:38.800 | How do you have the time?

00:45:39.800 | - I'm not a scientist.

00:45:40.800 | I just play one on TV.

00:45:41.800 | - Okay.

00:45:42.800 | - Sure.

00:45:43.800 | - So, what...

00:45:44.800 | Can you talk about the rocket launcher?

00:45:45.800 | - Carl G's.

00:45:46.800 | - And maybe any other movies?

00:45:47.800 | - Yeah.

00:45:48.800 | - Any other...

00:45:49.800 | - Yeah.

00:45:50.800 | - For both engineering, actually, to me, those guns are very interesting from an engineering

00:45:54.160 | perspective, too.

00:45:55.160 | - Well, they should be.

00:45:56.160 | They're fascinating when you take them apart, and you see how small the parts get down to,

00:46:00.280 | and how necessary every single little piece is to make that thing run.

00:46:03.800 | And even without the tiniest little BB smaller than a piece on there, an artillery gun might

00:46:08.960 | not run.

00:46:09.960 | So, we were trained on Carl G's, I think called M72s, which are disposable rocket launchers.

00:46:17.120 | I'll back up.

00:46:18.360 | So, Carl G's are around, I don't know the exact millimeter of the round.

00:46:23.680 | It's been a while since I shot them.

00:46:24.800 | We only did those in training.

00:46:26.680 | But essentially, it takes...

00:46:28.560 | Most people, one person can fire it, effectively hold it and fire it.

00:46:32.760 | It takes another person to load it.

00:46:34.400 | So, you put it onto your shoulder, and it weighs, I would...

00:46:37.440 | I don't know, 30 pounds, 40 pounds?

00:46:39.640 | - Oh, wow.

00:46:40.640 | - Can't remember.

00:46:41.640 | It's been a minute.

00:46:42.640 | It's been a minute.

00:46:43.640 | - But one person can carry it?

00:46:44.640 | - Oh, yeah.

00:46:45.640 | - Okay.

00:46:46.640 | I don't know.

00:46:47.640 | - It seems like a rocket launcher is a pretty intense kind of device.

00:46:52.440 | - It for sure is.

00:46:54.640 | I mean, it's the diameter, I can't even tell you the diameter.

00:46:57.640 | They're about that big.

00:46:58.640 | I mean...

00:46:59.640 | - And it goes on your shoulder.

00:47:00.640 | - It goes on your shoulder, and then it has a little sight that pops out that's almost

00:47:04.800 | like plastic-like, which is kind of funny, because it reminds me of like the little Green

00:47:09.800 | Army men.

00:47:10.800 | It just felt so flimsy to me.

00:47:13.080 | I was like, "This is hilarious."

00:47:15.240 | And then another person stands behind you and opens the hatch.

00:47:17.520 | And so there's this, there's these two levers, and you just kind of open it.

00:47:23.040 | And then the back end, which is flared, so it's just a tube, and then it's flared.

00:47:28.320 | That will open it and drop down, and you load a round into that, and then you load it back

00:47:32.240 | up.

00:47:33.240 | - Got it.

00:47:34.240 | - And you're never supposed to stand behind it, because the blast behind it will kill

00:47:36.800 | you.

00:47:38.040 | It's...

00:47:39.040 | Yeah.

00:47:40.080 | But in my case, when I fired it, it was me and another individual.

00:47:46.040 | It wasn't Sarah Pellegrin, but it was another girl that was smaller.

00:47:49.640 | And the person is supposed to wrap around your waist and tuck low and hold your stability.

00:47:54.040 | And we were just aiming at tanks that day, and they were just concrete heads, so they

00:47:58.560 | would just either, they would hit and bounce off or whatever.

00:48:02.480 | And so when my sergeant saw that, he just kind of looked at both of us and was like,

00:48:07.640 | "No, I'm just gonna..."

00:48:08.920 | And he got real low and just like wrapped both of us.

00:48:13.240 | And then we'd fire it, and it feels like you're getting punched in the side of the head on

00:48:18.100 | repeat by Jocko.

00:48:21.160 | You lose all your hearing.

00:48:26.080 | Snot comes out of your nose, and you're just kind of discombobulated for a minute.

00:48:29.760 | It's a real mindfuck.

00:48:32.960 | Is there any other kind of guns that, at that time, because you were new to this, you haven't

00:48:39.760 | shot guns when you were younger, that were really impressive to you in the training process?

00:48:44.520 | All of them, because I've never fired a weapon.

00:48:46.760 | So we had the C7s, which are like your M16s, I believe, the long barrel.

00:48:52.600 | The cute thing about those is when I have that slung, my barrel drags on the ground.

00:48:57.320 | So that's fun.

00:48:59.280 | And they shoot your 7.62 or your 5.56 round.

00:49:02.680 | I loved that.

00:49:03.680 | I preferred the C8, which was a short barrel, which is what the SF guys use, not because

00:49:09.200 | it's cooler looking, which it obviously is, but because it was functional for my body

00:49:14.080 | height and it didn't drag on the ground when I ran.

00:49:16.880 | I loved those.

00:49:17.880 | They're your personal weapon.

00:49:19.980 | Being an artillery gunner, if you're not an officer, at least in our unit, you didn't

00:49:22.820 | get a side piece.

00:49:23.820 | I didn't have a side piece, Lex.

00:49:27.720 | So I never had a handgun of any type.

00:49:30.840 | I fired those in training.

00:49:32.040 | You can't get over that side piece comment.

00:49:33.360 | Look at you.

00:49:34.360 | I was going to say, I know what a side piece is.

00:49:36.920 | You don't have to explain to me.

00:49:37.920 | But you're single.

00:49:38.920 | So how do you even have a side piece if you don't have a main piece?

00:49:41.760 | The joke would be the fact that we have a total misunderstanding what side piece is.

00:49:46.280 | Okay, great.

00:49:47.280 | So you didn't have a side piece as a non-officer.

00:49:48.280 | Right.

00:49:49.280 | So I never fired those much.

00:49:51.240 | We did grenades in training.

00:49:52.800 | Oh, cool.

00:49:53.800 | Yeah, grenades are fun.

00:49:54.800 | I love grenades.

00:49:55.800 | I have a massive one tattooed on me.

00:49:56.880 | I have them all over my office.

00:49:58.760 | How does a grenade work?

00:50:00.520 | There's the spoon and the pin.

00:50:02.360 | So the pin holds the spoon in place.

00:50:04.900 | When you pull that pin, the firing mechanism inside, as long as the spoon is up against

00:50:11.280 | it, it won't fire.

00:50:12.280 | As soon as that spoon goes, I believe it causes a reaction on the inside and you've got about

00:50:17.160 | five seconds to check it.

00:50:18.640 | You'd be better to ask that question too.

00:50:21.000 | I don't want me to get philosophical on this.

00:50:23.320 | But there's something about a grenade, because you're essentially committing suicide unless

00:50:30.480 | you get rid of the thing.

00:50:32.520 | There's something like-

00:50:33.520 | Or if you're unlucky and it just goes off when you pull the pin, which has happened

00:50:36.800 | to tons of people.

00:50:37.800 | So it just feels like a very kind of leap.

00:50:41.120 | It's a dangerous leap into the abyss every time you use the thing.

00:50:45.720 | Because when you shoot a gun, the gun is much less likely to malfunction in terms of all

00:50:50.600 | the possible ways it can go wrong.

00:50:52.480 | It just seems like grenade is like-

00:50:55.360 | Primitive almost.

00:50:56.360 | Yeah, it's primitive.

00:50:57.520 | It's also real, like in a way that like a bar fight, like being punched in the face

00:51:01.880 | is real.

00:51:02.880 | It's like you're here with a weapon of destruction.

00:51:05.920 | It's just you and the thing.

00:51:07.440 | You have to get rid of it.

00:51:08.720 | I don't know.

00:51:09.720 | Is that terrifying to you?

00:51:11.360 | Do people still use grenades in warfare?

00:51:13.760 | Oh yeah.

00:51:14.760 | Yeah, those are fantastic.

00:51:16.040 | The Taliban were throwing them over the wall at the airport in Kabul.

00:51:20.080 | People use them all the time.

00:51:21.080 | Because when you're in Afghanistan, if you're in a rural area, you're going from village

00:51:23.780 | to village and they're mud hut walls.

00:51:27.160 | They're tall, but you're walking through corridors and stuff.

00:51:29.240 | All you got to do is lob one of those.

00:51:31.040 | It's going to take the whole unit out that just walked by.

00:51:33.800 | They're accurate if you're close enough and they're effective if you're close enough.

00:51:39.760 | I love them though.

00:51:41.640 | I think they're fascinating to me because they're such a tiny little thing with such

00:51:47.720 | devastation.

00:51:49.320 | They just can cause such devastation.

00:51:51.180 | But for me, when I had them, some of the Canadians would make fun of me because when I did go

00:51:55.900 | outside the wire with the British, I had two right here.

00:51:59.320 | And I remember I put a piece of tape over the spoons because in my mind, I could picture

00:52:04.600 | myself searching someone and grabbing me and pulling that.

00:52:08.640 | And that would be me.

00:52:09.640 | That would have been like, "Yep, if anyone that was going to happen to, it was her for

00:52:14.200 | sure."

00:52:15.200 | So you were deployed to Afghanistan in 2009.

00:52:21.280 | And like we said, you were in great, no, perfect physical shape.

00:52:26.280 | Fucking epic shape.

00:52:27.280 | Epic shape.

00:52:28.280 | Six pack or I mean...

00:52:30.560 | Yeah.

00:52:31.560 | Okay.

00:52:32.560 | So you could do a lot of pull-ups and push-ups.

00:52:34.480 | Yes.

00:52:35.480 | Yeah.

00:52:36.480 | Okay.

00:52:37.480 | And well-trained, would you say?

00:52:39.720 | Were you already what like...

00:52:41.440 | No.

00:52:42.440 | No.

00:52:43.440 | No.

00:52:44.440 | I'll argue that point till I'm blue in the face.

00:52:45.800 | I spoke to recently, I actually spoke to my sergeant.

00:52:47.920 | He's not a sergeant anymore, but Sergeant Mark LeBlanc.

00:52:50.280 | He's in Africa right now on a deployment.

00:52:51.720 | He gave me a call the other day and I remember talking to him about this.

00:52:54.840 | And it's frustrating because we were at an active war.

00:52:58.760 | We were involved in an active war where the units that I were in were dagged red, which

00:53:04.240 | meant they needed people.

00:53:07.400 | So when you need people, things go quick.

00:53:11.140 | Whether or not that's right.

00:53:12.140 | I mean, you could argue that's the similar thing to what's happening in the world right

00:53:15.920 | now.

00:53:16.920 | We needed a vaccine.

00:53:18.080 | We got a vaccine.

00:53:19.880 | Is it the best it could be?

00:53:21.600 | Could it be better?

00:53:22.600 | Could it do more things?

00:53:24.040 | Sure.

00:53:25.040 | Probably.

00:53:26.040 | But with the time that we had, we did the best that we could.

00:53:29.360 | That's my logic on that.

00:53:31.060 | For me, I joined the military in November of 2007.

00:53:35.480 | I was in basic training in January of 2008.

00:53:38.840 | I was graduated basic SQ, which is all your weapons training.

00:53:43.120 | Your DP1, which is your trade-specific training.

00:53:47.520 | So whatever trade you're going to go into, whether it's infantry, armored, artillery,

00:53:51.440 | medic, whatever, that's your DP1.

00:53:54.200 | It's called different things in different units.

00:53:56.480 | And then I got posted to my unit in September.

00:54:00.360 | So January to September, I had done all my training.

00:54:03.320 | And I'm an English-speaking individual.

00:54:05.780 | I got posted to a French unit that only speaks French and had to learn all of the weapon

00:54:10.480 | systems, everything again that I just learned in that short time frame in French.

00:54:15.720 | This part of your story that you're telling this to Jaco is, one way to say it is very

00:54:21.480 | impressive that you had to learn all of this in French.

00:54:24.880 | So there's also the camaraderie, the social aspect of it, which is difficult probably.

00:54:28.840 | I didn't have any.

00:54:29.840 | That's, yeah, I didn't have any.

00:54:32.360 | But it's also making you a more effective soldier to be socially, for that cohesion

00:54:37.440 | to be there, right?

00:54:39.280 | But also just understanding the basic terminology.

00:54:42.560 | Correct.

00:54:43.560 | The right way to say something on the radio, the right way to run a gun, the right way

00:54:48.000 | to-- because you got to move with those guns.

00:54:50.200 | You got seven people.

00:54:52.520 | It's really magical.

00:54:53.520 | I'll send you a video.

00:54:56.160 | When we did some live fire in workup training in Texas before we left, we did a competition

00:55:00.360 | between the other gun to see who could fire 10 rounds faster.

00:55:05.680 | It is truly beautiful to watch an artillery unit fire a gun because it's like a symphony.

00:55:12.960 | Everyone has their parts and everyone knows and everyone's yelling, but they know why

00:55:16.440 | they're yelling and everyone, this guy's got to do this in order for this guy to load the

00:55:20.880 | round.

00:55:21.880 | It's just, it's beautiful.

00:55:22.880 | It really is.

00:55:23.960 | It is gorgeous to watch.

00:55:25.120 | I miss it deeply.

00:55:26.640 | Is there, by the way, for a gun, is there like one person responsible for the aim or

00:55:33.080 | like the specification of the location and somebody else that pulls it, presses the--

00:55:37.720 | The lanyard.

00:55:38.720 | Is that the lanyard?

00:55:39.720 | The button.

00:55:40.720 | Is there a button?

00:55:41.720 | It's better than a button.

00:55:42.720 | I'll show you in a second.

00:55:45.240 | There's your sergeant in charge and then they have their two IC.

00:55:49.840 | The comms come in to the sergeant and the sergeant is the, or your master bombardier,

00:55:55.720 | bombardier chef.

00:55:56.720 | Yeah.

00:55:57.720 | Sorry, what?

00:55:58.720 | Bombardier chef?

00:55:59.720 | What?

00:56:00.720 | Bombardier chef.

00:56:01.720 | Bombardier chef.

00:56:02.720 | Oh, that's the French.

00:56:05.040 | Master bombardier.

00:56:06.760 | It goes like private in the north, like in infantry or in a regular unit, it's like private

00:56:11.600 | corporal, master corporal sergeant.

00:56:15.320 | In artillery, it goes gunner, bombardier, master bombardier, sergeant, warrant, and

00:56:21.440 | off like that.

00:56:22.680 | So you have two people, but the serge is like, you don't move till he says move.

00:56:27.440 | You don't fire till he says fire.

00:56:29.160 | Like he's your guy.

00:56:30.160 | He'll give you the coordinates.

00:56:31.160 | He'll feed them to the guy that's doing the GPS, that portion.

00:56:35.000 | I really never did it much.

00:56:36.160 | I wasn't tall enough to see it.

00:56:38.280 | Like legitimately the way, how high it is up on the gun, like it was, I couldn't see

00:56:41.840 | clearly enough.

00:56:42.840 | It was not good.

00:56:44.500 | So obviously you have a big personality, you're a strong person.

00:56:48.040 | You don't say.

00:56:49.040 | And you have a big hat currently.

00:56:51.840 | I always wear a hat, Lex.

00:56:53.640 | You always, okay.

00:56:54.640 | It seems like your height and your size was a factor.

00:56:57.560 | Oh, for sure.

00:56:58.600 | How were you able to step up in all those moments?

00:57:02.720 | How difficult was it?

00:57:04.600 | I don't know that I realized it was difficult while I was doing it because that's just the

00:57:07.600 | way it's been.

00:57:08.600 | I've always been the short person.

00:57:10.000 | That's life.

00:57:11.000 | I would, nothing I can do to fix that.

00:57:12.580 | So there was no point.

00:57:13.580 | When am I going to whine about it?

00:57:14.580 | I'm going to break my femurs and insert things to make me grow a little bit.

00:57:18.040 | Maybe, maybe since you're in robotics, you can figure that out.

00:57:22.560 | That's your task now.

00:57:24.440 | Make me be five foot three.

00:57:26.200 | That'd be great.

00:57:28.640 | For artillery, really what it came down to was the unit, when I got there, there was

00:57:33.520 | only a couple people who spoke any sort of English and my sergeant was not one of them.

00:57:38.960 | But once he kind of started to get to know me a little bit, the best that he could, he

00:57:43.920 | started to put effort into making sure I could lift the rounds, make sure my capacity to

00:57:49.920 | do my job was there.

00:57:51.840 | And so he took me under his wing in that aspect.

00:57:54.320 | So he would take me to the gym with him and he would show me exercises that would specifically

00:58:01.120 | help me load the rounds.

00:58:03.800 | So pick the round up from the ground, pick it up like a trick to put your knee under

00:58:07.880 | it, use your legs.

00:58:09.480 | Instead of just pick it up, use your back, pull your back out.

00:58:12.400 | He would work on that.

00:58:13.860 | And then depending on the position I was running the gun in, if I was running the side that

00:58:18.840 | had the charge bags, I'll explain that in a second.

00:58:22.120 | But if I was running the side that had the charge bags, I could step up onto the gun

00:58:28.860 | and if I leaned inward enough with my right hand with the charge and I kind of kicked

00:58:34.640 | off, I could kind of jump and shove it up the tube.

00:58:40.360 | Got it.

00:58:41.900 | Almost enough.

00:58:42.900 | Yeah.

00:58:43.900 | If I was running the lanyard, which is the thing that makes it go boom, it's really easy.

00:58:47.360 | It's a long rope.

00:58:49.160 | You hook it on and you put it, your right hand on your hip and on your left and you

00:58:53.400 | hold it there and you just stare at your sergeant like this and you just wait for him to yell

00:58:57.400 | fire.

00:58:58.600 | And he points at you when he does it.

00:58:59.940 | And when you do it, you turn your whole body with it.

00:59:03.320 | And when you do that, it alleviates the, a misfire essentially because if you just pull

00:59:08.880 | it sometimes that's not enough.

00:59:10.240 | You got to really give it your whole body into it.

00:59:12.740 | And so he would train me on how to do things differently so that I could do them effectively.

00:59:18.800 | And I wasn't a shit pump.

00:59:20.800 | A what?

00:59:22.140 | So shit pump is a term that we use in Canada to call somebody useless.

00:59:26.040 | A shit pump is a useless soldier who is just, you're there and that's the shit pump.

00:59:32.120 | And so we all just deal with it, but somehow they're still there.

00:59:36.000 | Yeah.

00:59:37.000 | What were we talking about?

00:59:38.000 | The lanyard?

00:59:39.000 | Okay.

00:59:40.000 | Yeah.

00:59:41.000 | We were talking about artillery guns.

00:59:42.000 | So those things though, what you would find fascinating is just how they break down when

00:59:48.160 | you have to take one of those apart.

00:59:49.560 | I think your mind would really find it fascinating how a breach comes apart all the way down

00:59:55.400 | to like ball bearing size.

00:59:57.760 | And the only, and there's a way to just make that gun complete ineffective and all you

01:00:00.880 | have to do when you're on the charge side, there's a magazine that's a long linear magazine

01:00:07.040 | and it holds like 15 little rounds.

01:00:09.240 | If you just take that thing out, that thing's not firing.

01:00:13.080 | How many people does it take to move that?

01:00:14.840 | Like how easy it is to move that thing?

01:00:16.440 | To move a triple seven?

01:00:18.560 | Triple seven.

01:00:19.560 | I like it.

01:00:20.560 | That's what they're called.

01:00:21.560 | M777.

01:00:22.560 | Is a lot of the terminology crossover the same in English and French?

01:00:25.280 | Okay.

01:00:26.280 | I mean, M777 does, because it's an obvious howitzer I'm sure has a separate word, but

01:00:30.760 | like if you're running it, you're running it in French.

01:00:33.520 | So like when I'd be running the, when I'm doing the charge bags and I'm doing, I'm doing,

01:00:40.200 | you know, I'm loading everything and I'm getting that ready and that's my position that day,

01:00:43.920 | I'm also controlling the breach.

01:00:46.800 | So like how it opens, how it closes when it locks.

01:00:50.360 | And so, but you have to yell that as you do it.

01:00:52.860 | So you're yelling like, "Me libe, culasse, au revoir."

01:00:55.760 | Like you have to yell all these things, you have to learn them though.

01:00:59.140 | And so for a long time, it's, it was a little frustrating.

01:01:03.600 | I won't lie.

01:01:04.600 | It's really exciting.

01:01:05.600 | I took a lot of French, but I forgot all of it.

01:01:07.880 | But I think it's a beautiful, romantic language.

01:01:10.280 | It's a good language.

01:01:11.280 | If it's from Paris.

01:01:12.280 | If it's from Quebec, it's a...

01:01:13.280 | Yeah, that's true.

01:01:14.280 | It's a good language to fall in love with.

01:01:16.360 | Not as good as Russian, but I mean, English is, all right.

01:01:21.120 | I mean, Russian, is that like a love language?

01:01:24.320 | It is to me.

01:01:25.320 | I mean, because you're Russian.

01:01:26.320 | But like if somebody walked up to me, it was like, "Hey, Kelsey, I like you."

01:01:30.400 | I'd be like, "Oh God, he's gonna put me in a camp."

01:01:33.140 | That's because you don't understand love, Kelsey.

01:01:35.360 | I don't.

01:01:36.360 | We'll talk about that.

01:01:37.360 | Okay.

01:01:38.360 | How many people does it take to move the M777?

01:01:39.360 | It depends.

01:01:40.360 | If you're moving it by ground, you're moving it on a truck.

01:01:43.040 | And when you're moving it on a truck, you're hooking the back of it onto, you're hooking

01:01:46.840 | the front of the barrel onto one of those big transport looking trucks that has those

01:01:51.680 | cargo tents that's got soldiers in it.

01:01:54.000 | You don't wanna ever move an M777 by that way if you don't have to.

01:01:57.040 | The barrel's worth a million dollars.

01:01:58.680 | Wow.

01:01:59.680 | Okay, so this is like a serious piece of equipment.

01:02:02.120 | You don't wanna move them.

01:02:03.440 | Okay.

01:02:04.440 | When we got to Kandahar, we were there for a couple of days.

01:02:07.840 | We got flown out to the FOB we were gonna be at, Forward Observation Base.

01:02:12.120 | Kandahar is the safe space or was the major base in Afghanistan that we were at.

01:02:16.880 | There's things like Tim Horton's there.

01:02:19.160 | There's Canada House.

01:02:20.940 | There's a British side, an American side, a Canadian side.

01:02:23.320 | And that's where you see all the different countries in the world kind of come together.

01:02:26.960 | You would see Italians, you would see Germans, you would see French, you would see all these

01:02:30.520 | different uniforms and you never know who to salute 'cause you don't know what each

01:02:33.640 | thing means.

01:02:35.080 | It doesn't feel like a war zone.

01:02:36.400 | No.

01:02:37.400 | Oh God, no.

01:02:38.400 | There's a boardwalk.

01:02:39.400 | There's hockey there, floor hockey 'cause Canada had to have that.

01:02:41.880 | There's a Tim Horton's, a Subway, a Pizza Hut, a PX.

01:02:46.920 | I think there's a restaurant there somewhere but I never, I didn't get to go.

01:02:50.880 | You know, stuff like that.

01:02:51.960 | There's gyms.

01:02:52.960 | You can run around it.

01:02:53.960 | You feel fairly safe.

01:02:54.960 | You always have a weapon on you but you can, you know, live your life.

01:02:57.160 | When you get out to the FOB, the guns are already there.

01:03:01.680 | So those M777s get lifted by a Chinook.

01:03:04.600 | Normally if they're going by air, they go by Chinook 'cause they're heavy as hell.

01:03:07.800 | And Chinooks can hook them under the bottom and they fly them and then they'll drop them

01:03:12.200 | down.

01:03:13.200 | They have wheels on them but you don't need them if you're gonna leave it in place.

01:03:17.520 | Got it.

01:03:18.520 | And you're getting information about IEDs.

01:03:21.680 | You're getting a lay of the land as to what's been going on in the country for the past

01:03:25.000 | six months.

01:03:26.360 | And this, you know nothing.

01:03:27.520 | You're just like, this is your first time.

01:03:29.320 | You're getting deployed.

01:03:30.320 | So what was your deployment like?

01:03:31.680 | Can you tell the story of your deployment to Afghanistan?

01:03:36.840 | Like the whole deployment?

01:03:39.120 | Getting like actual deploying, not the deployment itself.

01:03:42.200 | What's the difference between the two?

01:03:43.600 | Well actually getting ready to deploy is a little different.

01:03:46.520 | So I mean the emotional buildup to it.

01:03:49.240 | Got it.

01:03:50.240 | And some of the memorable things that kind of you remember from that experience both

01:03:55.960 | on the excitement, I get to see battle, I get to be part of this and the fear and also

01:04:02.640 | like being surprised like with the Tim Hortons and all those kinds of things.

01:04:05.720 | So like the lead up before everything hit the fan.

01:04:08.440 | Okay, cool.

01:04:09.440 | So you're such a fascinating person, but yes.

01:04:13.560 | Something like that.

01:04:14.560 | I've been called many things.

01:04:16.760 | Yeah.

01:04:17.760 | That start with the letter F. Yeah.

01:04:19.280 | No, I don't know.

01:04:20.520 | I don't know many words with F. Okay.

01:04:22.400 | So the buildup to the deployment.

01:04:25.400 | So for the buildup for the deployment, I was in Quebec and my unit was deploying from Quebec.

01:04:30.760 | And at that time you kind of get your marching orders.

01:04:33.900 | You know you're deploying.

01:04:34.900 | I knew I was deploying before I even graduated.

01:04:38.600 | That's how much they needed people.

01:04:39.960 | So once I did all that training on graduation parade day, a couple men from Quebec in uniforms

01:04:45.240 | came over and said, you, you, you and you are all being posted to Bakhia Tse and you're

01:04:49.040 | going to deploy with us in April.

01:04:51.080 | So that's how I found out I was deploying.

01:04:52.680 | Why was there such a need for troops in Afghanistan?

01:04:55.520 | That was a well known thing that there's a scaling up of troops.

01:04:58.880 | 2007 on Canada really started taking a combat role.

01:05:02.960 | Before it was very much more a UN type deal where doing what we normally do in most wars

01:05:06.600 | where we just we wear blue and we don't shoot anyone.

01:05:10.780 | And so we're there to help.

01:05:13.220 | And so they were really, they were scaling up.

01:05:15.960 | And there wasn't a lot of people in those trades initially, I think when the war kind

01:05:19.760 | of started.

01:05:20.760 | So Canada really started to scale.

01:05:22.700 | And so when I got to Quebec, we've kind of found out, yeah, we're deploying.

01:05:26.980 | And it was a weird situation because I've never actually been at a unit on a non deployable

01:05:31.280 | unit.

01:05:32.280 | I don't know what they do day to day that's different from what I did.

01:05:34.720 | I just know what I did.

01:05:36.620 | So we would do things like in the morning, we would get up and we would meet for PT at

01:05:40.660 | 5am.

01:05:41.760 | And that would include going for a 10k run or playing ball hockey for a few hours in

01:05:48.180 | the gym or lifting weights together or, you know, just going on a ruck march, a long ruck

01:05:52.700 | march, just stuff like that.

01:05:54.460 | You would have a shower, you would meet, and then you would just sit around the regiment.

01:05:59.840 | You would just sit around the regiment and you would, if there was busy work, you'd mop

01:06:04.800 | the floors, you would clean weapons.

01:06:07.160 | There wasn't a whole lot until there was a whole lot to do.

01:06:10.860 | We did a lot for a while.

01:06:13.120 | And then we went away on workup training to Texas for a week.

01:06:17.260 | We came down here and we did live fire with our other troop that was going to be with

01:06:23.560 | us.

01:06:24.560 | Alpha had two guns and two guns has two groups of people.

01:06:29.840 | And so we all would go down to Texas and we did live fire here for a week.

01:06:34.400 | And I ended up getting gastro, which was awesome.

01:06:37.960 | So thanks for that.

01:06:38.960 | Oh, apparently there was, they were having water problems and sanitary problems.

01:06:43.080 | So everyone was getting it on the base.

01:06:45.600 | Okay.

01:06:46.600 | So it just makes your life way harder.

01:06:48.880 | I didn't get it towards the end, till towards the end.

01:06:51.160 | So that was fortunate.

01:06:52.560 | So we would fire live fire.

01:06:54.360 | We would go out to the middle of nowhere.

01:06:56.400 | The guns would be there and we would get offloaded truck of rounds and we would do live fire

01:07:01.840 | and we would practice just constant practice.

01:07:04.680 | What's that saying?

01:07:05.920 | Perfect practice makes perfect.

01:07:07.120 | Yeah.

01:07:08.120 | So this is essentially like a shooting range for artillery, for artillery, for long range.

01:07:13.840 | So what does practice look like?

01:07:16.240 | So you roll up in your trucks and you're, you know, you've got each group of people,

01:07:21.600 | you've got two trucks and then you've got like a medic vehicle and then you've got like

01:07:24.720 | an officer vehicle and a comms vehicle and you, you go to your perspective guns and then

01:07:30.520 | you offload your ammo and then you basically wait for them to send you like a, a fire mission.

01:07:36.920 | Wow.

01:07:37.920 | Get that together.

01:07:38.920 | They would call, they would say, "Mission, sit."

01:07:40.280 | So it'd be a fire mission.

01:07:41.560 | So we'd wait for that.

01:07:42.560 | And once we got that, then you all run like a bunch of scattered rats to the gun.

01:07:46.360 | Like it's like the greatest thing you've ever seen.

01:07:49.360 | And then you just wait.

01:07:50.680 | You wait for the call for the sergeant to say, and then you'll hear it because it's

01:07:54.040 | not headphones.

01:07:55.040 | You can hear it on a speaker and it'd be like, I'm not going to do in French, don't ask.

01:07:59.520 | It'd be like, so-and-so 10 rounds, fire when ready.

01:08:08.100 | And then you would get your rounds ready and everyone would have them ready.

01:08:10.280 | It would be in their perspective, respective positions and then you would wait and then

01:08:14.440 | they would say, "Fire when ready."

01:08:16.640 | And as soon as they say fire when ready, that means just start going.

01:08:19.680 | Just start.

01:08:20.680 | And then that's when the magic starts.

01:08:22.200 | You go to like the loop, like you shoot one or whatever.

01:08:25.400 | There's a reloading process.

01:08:26.400 | Yep, there's a loop.

01:08:27.400 | So what you would do, you get the fire mission, you would find out the rounds.

01:08:30.440 | The 2IC would be standing by the rounds and it was his job to make sure the amount of

01:08:34.120 | rounds that was told would be the only rounds that would go down range.

01:08:37.720 | And so he'd stand there and on each round, depending on the type of round, is a fuse,

01:08:42.720 | which gets screwed onto the top of the round.

01:08:45.240 | So they're about that big and it's just a point.

01:08:49.040 | And then you would have to put it on, give it a spin.

01:08:53.260 | And depending if it was a time release, you had a little, what do you call it?

01:08:58.080 | You get those at Ikea when you have to build everything.

01:09:00.120 | Allen wrench?

01:09:01.120 | Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:09:02.120 | Allen wrench.

01:09:03.120 | Yeah, you know what I'm talking about.

01:09:04.120 | Yeah.

01:09:05.120 | But like a big one or something?

01:09:06.120 | No, just a little one because it's a tiny little hole and you just got to click it to

01:09:07.120 | where it's supposed to go.

01:09:08.840 | And it depended on what the call was for.

01:09:10.560 | And it was a timer.

01:09:12.220 | When you said like wheel, you mean like a little thing then?

01:09:15.540 | Is that what we're talking about?

01:09:16.540 | No, no, I'm talking about the round itself.

01:09:18.100 | So you would put a fuse on top of the round.

01:09:20.500 | So you would unload the ammo and then you would put fuses on them.

01:09:24.380 | And the fuses are on the top and they're like a little, like an ice cream topper kind of

01:09:28.620 | thing.

01:09:29.620 | And you would spin those on.

01:09:30.620 | Oh, okay.

01:09:31.620 | Okay.

01:09:32.620 | And then once they're on, depending if it's a time release or not, you would take this

01:09:35.260 | little thing and you would move it, the top.

01:09:37.860 | And that would, it's almost like a little timer.

01:09:39.620 | Cool.

01:09:40.620 | Yeah, it depended.

01:09:41.620 | So you were assembling a bullet.

01:09:43.980 | Essentially.

01:09:44.980 | A very big one that goes up to my waist.

01:09:47.380 | Cool.

01:09:48.380 | Yeah.

01:09:49.380 | This is very cool.

01:09:50.380 | And you're a fascinating person.

01:09:51.380 | Okay.

01:09:52.380 | So just that you still, even years later, have all this in your memory.

01:09:55.740 | It's not all perfectly accurate.

01:09:57.140 | And that's what irritates me though, is because it bothers me when I can't remember things

01:10:01.300 | accurately.

01:10:02.300 | But I've had a lot of memory issues and problems after like having too many hits to the head.

01:10:08.700 | And this is from earlier in childhood or later?

01:10:11.260 | Both.

01:10:12.260 | Okay.

01:10:13.260 | Both.

01:10:14.260 | The military did not help it.

01:10:15.260 | Where was the hits in the head in the military?

01:10:17.860 | Well, when you have a car, it'll go stuff beside your face like this and it shoots around.

01:10:21.740 | It gives you a concussive blast.

01:10:23.460 | Also there's new research being done.

01:10:25.700 | I'll find out exactly what it is, but there's new research that's being done that shows

01:10:28.740 | that if you're an artillery gunner and you stand within a certain range of that gun,

01:10:33.500 | you get the same amount of concussive blasts.

01:10:35.300 | And there's a range.

01:10:36.300 | I had no idea, but you feel it when it goes off.

01:10:40.140 | You get hurt.

01:10:41.140 | Your whole body feels it.

01:10:43.820 | Your mind is fascinating because it's like literally the opposite of mine.

01:10:47.220 | One, you're able to speak very quickly, very clearly, very sharply.

01:10:51.420 | No, what?

01:10:52.460 | I talk too fast and I'm really loud because of my hearing.

01:10:54.700 | I admire that.

01:10:56.540 | I can't do any of that.

01:10:58.180 | And you listen extremely well and you're extremely attentive and you have a good memory.

01:11:02.580 | So anyway, it's just fun to watch you.

01:11:06.100 | I can tell you were a great soldier in just all different aspects of it.

01:11:10.020 | Thank you.

01:11:11.020 | I appreciate it.

01:11:12.020 | But what the heck we're talking about?

01:11:13.580 | Oh, build up to the deployment.

01:11:15.020 | How did we get to Texas?

01:11:16.460 | Because that was part of the build up to my deployment.

01:11:18.340 | And live fire, you got to...

01:11:19.740 | Did that feel good?

01:11:20.740 | Oh yeah.

01:11:21.740 | It's so good.

01:11:22.740 | What's the favorite?

01:11:23.740 | What's the best part about shooting artillery?

01:11:33.420 | What's the thing that feels good?

01:11:35.380 | Which part?

01:11:36.380 | Power.

01:11:37.380 | Well, the feeling of power.

01:11:38.700 | When is the best moment of the highest moment of the feeling of power?

01:11:43.660 | Is it the whole process that you love or is there like when you actually shoot it?

01:11:48.620 | It's symbiotic.

01:11:49.620 | It's a beautiful thing to watch.

01:11:50.860 | To know that a gun can fire and it takes kind of a dance to make it work.

01:11:56.500 | There's something about that to me that just got my heart racing.

01:11:59.940 | When you actually shoot the round and you see it go and you hear it, it's unlike it.

01:12:06.260 | You can't describe.

01:12:07.260 | I've never felt another feeling.

01:12:09.820 | I've also never been in like an F-18 or an F-16 or like any...

01:12:14.300 | I've never been in anything like that.

01:12:16.420 | And I've never...

01:12:17.420 | I'm trying to think of something else that would be comparable.

01:12:20.500 | I've never been in like a Formula One car.

01:12:22.460 | Those are the only things I can picture being that much for me.

01:12:27.060 | Because to shoot one of those and to know that you've done your job right means that

01:12:32.700 | you've helped.

01:12:34.580 | And that to me was really what did it for me.

01:12:37.840 | When you hear your sergeant say, "Mission accomplished.

01:12:41.620 | Target hit.

01:12:42.620 | Tired acquired."

01:12:43.620 | Then you're like, "That's a good feeling.

01:12:45.700 | That's the stuff."

01:12:47.060 | Quick pause.

01:12:48.060 | Take a break, Lex.

01:12:50.060 | Okay.

01:12:51.060 | So live fire in Texas.

01:12:52.860 | We're in Texas, by the way.

01:12:54.300 | Fort Worth or Fort Hood.

01:12:56.020 | One of them.

01:12:57.020 | Okay.

01:12:58.020 | So like it's...

01:12:59.020 | Is that close to a big major city?

01:13:00.020 | Do you remember visiting a city?

01:13:02.140 | Oh, God, no.

01:13:03.260 | We fly right into the tarmac and they're like, "Don't touch the snakes."

01:13:07.380 | And then they send you out to the field.

01:13:09.620 | Got it.

01:13:10.620 | Must see the only instructions.

01:13:11.620 | No, really.

01:13:12.620 | We went into a classroom and they're like, "These are the animals that are in the wildlife

01:13:15.900 | in Texas.

01:13:16.900 | If you see any of them, do not approach.

01:13:18.740 | Do not go pee outside.

01:13:19.940 | Do not squat down.

01:13:20.940 | It is snake season, people."

01:13:22.220 | And I was like, "I have to pee and squat down."

01:13:25.820 | Why Texas and from like Canada?

01:13:27.820 | Is it a simulation of Afghanistan?

01:13:30.820 | Yes.

01:13:31.820 | Okay.

01:13:32.820 | So then that's...

01:13:33.820 | Okay.

01:13:34.820 | So you're getting...

01:13:35.820 | And that's the way the live fire was seen in artilleries.

01:13:38.220 | Like you're trying to simulate certain aspects of what you might actually see in Afghanistan.

01:13:42.900 | I would think so.

01:13:43.900 | I mean, we...

01:13:45.740 | It looks like it's hot.

01:13:47.340 | Like you're out in the middle of nowhere.

01:13:50.380 | Very similar terrain.

01:13:51.820 | That's the first time we started to get to wear our tan boots and our tan, like our combat

01:13:56.340 | tan stuff before you couldn't wear that.

01:13:58.340 | So it gave us an opportunity to kind of break in how we were going to be doing this, what

01:14:02.100 | it was going to look like, how the guns were going to work and all of those lovely things.

01:14:06.540 | How do you go from there to being deployed?

01:14:10.220 | What was the next part of the journey?

01:14:12.280 | So then we go to Wainwright, Alberta, often called or referenced as Waynecock because

01:14:17.340 | it sucks so bad.

01:14:19.700 | It is a massive open space in Alberta, which most of Alberta is.

01:14:25.020 | And it's outside of a small town called Wainwright.

01:14:27.320 | And it is a Field X training area for all of the Canadian military.

01:14:32.800 | And it's where you do live fire, but you also do workup training.

01:14:38.120 | So you go out there for a month or two, I think it is.

01:14:40.500 | I don't remember the exact time we were there because it was just...

01:14:43.180 | You sleep in a tent, you're in your cot, you're in like full mission mode.

01:14:47.940 | And you go outside and we did this operation called Operation Maple Leaf, I think it was.

01:14:53.940 | And you put on these little suits, these haptic...

01:14:59.500 | You can feel when you're shot.

01:15:01.040 | And then there's a little screen in the front of it and it's got button options.

01:15:05.900 | And so it's to mimic, if you get shot, it'll say gunshot wound and then you have to choose,

01:15:10.620 | "Okay, do I do this or do I do this?"

01:15:12.420 | And depending on your response, person dies or lives.

01:15:15.540 | And they have other people who aren't on a rotation for deployment come and act as the

01:15:19.860 | Taliban and attack you in the middle of the night.

01:15:25.980 | - Is there a good understanding of the tactics that the Taliban used to attack?

01:15:30.580 | I mean, this may be fast forward to our conversation a little bit, but is there predictable strategies

01:15:38.500 | on the other side that are being used in Afghanistan?

01:15:42.340 | - By the Taliban?

01:15:43.340 | - By the Taliban?

01:15:44.340 | - Oh, 100%.

01:15:45.340 | They used suicide bombers, vehicle-borne IEDs.

01:15:50.780 | Their standard way to hit people really was IEDs and vehicle-borne IEDs, suicide bombers.

01:15:57.220 | They'd put backpacks full of an IED and then put toys around it and then just be like...

01:16:03.940 | - So they would conceal it certain ways and probably use civilians.

01:16:07.340 | - Oh, 100%, yeah.

01:16:08.940 | And women were a great way to get close to the soldiers because women seem non-threatening.

01:16:13.300 | When you see a burka walk up to you, you're not expecting an AK-47 to roll out of that.

01:16:18.940 | But there are great ways to get close.

01:16:21.340 | - Okay, so what is it, Wayne something?

01:16:24.340 | - Waynecock?

01:16:25.340 | - No, that's not how...

01:16:26.340 | - Or Wainwright.

01:16:27.340 | - Wainwright.

01:16:28.340 | - Okay, correct.

01:16:29.340 | - Let's go to Alberta.

01:16:30.340 | - Okay.

01:16:31.340 | I mean, we don't have to go to Alberta.

01:16:32.340 | No one wants to.

01:16:33.340 | - No, in our minds, in our imagination.

01:16:37.100 | So okay, so that's getting you closer to Afghanistan.

01:16:39.820 | - Right.

01:16:40.820 | - What was that like?

01:16:42.100 | I mean, are you getting anxious at this point?

01:16:44.060 | Is there a buildup?

01:16:45.060 | What are you thinking?

01:16:46.060 | Or is this just all part of the training?

01:16:47.940 | - For me, it was more part of the training.

01:16:49.820 | I was excited to go because I did know that we were gonna do some live fire.

01:16:54.700 | I did know that we were going to be doing more of the military type job I thought we

01:17:00.340 | were gonna be doing because up until that point, I had just done training.

01:17:03.900 | So I was learning how to march and salute and who to salute and not salute.

01:17:07.580 | That was the focus of...

01:17:08.620 | That was my experience of the military.

01:17:10.620 | And then the next experience was sitting in a regiment, just working out a lot and going

01:17:14.860 | for breakfast a lot and drinking.

01:17:16.380 | Like that was...

01:17:17.380 | I was like, "This is the army."

01:17:18.780 | So when I actually got to go to Wainwright, I got my first full taste of, okay, well,

01:17:23.740 | there's fire picket duty.

01:17:24.740 | So one person gets picked every night to do sentry.

01:17:28.540 | There's a little less sleep.

01:17:30.220 | You're eating out of a canteen now.

01:17:32.620 | You're drinking in a canteen.

01:17:33.620 | You're in your kit more.

01:17:34.620 | You're in your deployable kit.

01:17:35.700 | Now you're in your...

01:17:37.320 | You're wearing your tack vest.

01:17:40.260 | You're getting ready to practice having plates on.

01:17:42.260 | You're having ammunition on you.

01:17:44.340 | You've got your weapon with you all the time.

01:17:46.020 | When you're on base in Vacquezay in Quebec, you're just like an everyday job.

01:17:51.580 | Maybe you can paint a clearer picture to me.

01:17:54.140 | When was there an understanding that you're actually getting deployed?

01:17:56.540 | Was it just a sense that you're getting deployed or was this officially told to you?

01:18:00.780 | I was officially told on graduation day, "You're deploying in April with Vacquezay."

01:18:04.540 | Oh, there was...

01:18:05.540 | Okay, there's a date.

01:18:06.540 | No.

01:18:07.540 | I didn't even knew.

01:18:08.540 | What had happened is the reason that Vacquezay unit needed more people.

01:18:12.700 | They came to that and they picked five people.

01:18:14.620 | There was five English speaking people that went to Vacquezay.

01:18:16.820 | It wasn't just myself.

01:18:18.020 | There was a couple other people I knew that were English speaking that got put on other

01:18:21.340 | guns within the regiment.

01:18:23.320 | I wasn't with any of them.

01:18:24.880 | We all got split up.

01:18:29.420 | There was an understanding that we were going to always be deploying next year.

01:18:34.220 | It was like 2009, you're deploying.

01:18:36.140 | Whether you left in May or April, we were deploying because that was the rotation time.

01:18:41.580 | Each Canadian unit did between six and nine months.

01:18:44.580 | Then you knew right around that point, another base of individuals would then deploy.

01:18:49.500 | You would go on these rotations.

01:18:52.020 | Even when I was on my deployment then, I was slated to go again the following year, but

01:18:56.580 | towards the end of the year.

01:18:58.900 | There was always a rotation.

01:19:00.020 | If you were in a combat arms unit and you were in one that was a deployable unit, so

01:19:04.220 | if you were from Edmonton, a PPCLI, which were the Princess Patricia's, which were their

01:19:09.660 | infantry unit.

01:19:10.920 | If you were RCR out of Petawawa, Ontario, you knew you were deploying.

01:19:16.400 | If you were at Vacquezay, you knew you were deploying.

01:19:19.060 | There's combat arms bases and then there's like naval bases.

01:19:22.020 | I didn't know their deployment structure.

01:19:23.540 | I didn't know how they worked.

01:19:25.260 | I'm on the ground.

01:19:26.260 | Don't worry about the boats.

01:19:27.780 | I didn't know how the Air Force deployed.

01:19:29.300 | I knew Vacquezay was deploying in April.

01:19:32.260 | You were going, get ready.

01:19:36.060 | That was that.

01:19:37.060 | So you show up to Afghanistan.

01:19:39.060 | What is a combat arms unit look like?

01:19:43.340 | What's the situation look like?

01:19:45.220 | How much chaos is there?

01:19:47.660 | How much clarity about mission is there?

01:19:50.460 | What are your feelings about the whole thing?

01:19:52.340 | So when you leave, the day you leave, we left Quebec, we got driven to the airport and then

01:19:57.660 | we walked onto the tarmac and we load our own bags and we got on a plane and it's just

01:20:01.780 | empty.

01:20:02.780 | It's just, it's our plane, right?

01:20:04.340 | And you don't go right to Afghanistan.

01:20:06.220 | You go to a stopover point, which I don't know if I'm allowed to say where that is,

01:20:09.900 | frankly.

01:20:10.900 | So I just say it's somewhere overseas and you go there and you go there for a couple

01:20:15.580 | of days.

01:20:16.580 | I think it's like a day or two and that's where you get like your kit.

01:20:18.780 | That's where you get your bulletproof plates for the first time and realize how heavy those

01:20:21.380 | fucking things are.

01:20:22.380 | It's where you get your weapon and your ammunition, your first few mags.

01:20:26.580 | It's where you get your helmet and your vests and you get everything that you need while

01:20:31.340 | you're there.

01:20:32.460 | It's pretty nonchalant.

01:20:34.140 | It's hot as hell.

01:20:35.140 | It's your first time being in that kind of heat.

01:20:37.020 | So you just never stop sweating.

01:20:38.860 | The place we were in, it's just the second you got out of the shower, you were still

01:20:42.200 | wet after you got out.

01:20:43.420 | What the hell is happening?

01:20:44.540 | It's so humid.

01:20:46.100 | And I'm like, "Is this going to be like this in Afghanistan?"

01:20:47.660 | They're like, "No, it's not humid there at all."

01:20:49.180 | I'm like, "Why is it so bad here?"

01:20:51.180 | They're like, "It'll be fine.

01:20:52.420 | Don't worry about it."

01:20:53.940 | So and where we were there, it was kind of cute.

01:20:58.540 | We were like in a base within a base and they had like turf and we had like ice cream and

01:21:04.620 | fruit and you could go get on a computer.

01:21:07.920 | You could go make calls.

01:21:08.980 | You had showers.

01:21:09.980 | You had a real bed.

01:21:10.980 | It was very kind of okay for that point.

01:21:14.560 | And then you got all your stuff and then, okay, we're rolling out, which is about a

01:21:17.020 | five-hour flight.

01:21:18.020 | Again, my experience with helicopters is mostly from another Arnold Schwarzenegger movie,

01:21:23.380 | The Predator.

01:21:24.380 | Do you want me to say I've never seen it?

01:21:29.660 | I've never seen it, Lex.

01:21:30.660 | Do you feel better about yourself?

01:21:31.860 | You want to tell the audience all the excellent shows that you mentioned me offline that you

01:21:37.860 | watch instead, instead of Platoon?

01:21:39.980 | Listen.

01:21:40.980 | Yeah.

01:21:41.980 | Is Sex and the City, was that more important than Platoon?

01:21:44.940 | Oh, no.

01:21:45.940 | I've never seen that.

01:21:46.940 | Don't put me in that category.

01:21:47.940 | Did you just put me in a box?

01:21:49.620 | I did.

01:21:50.620 | I watch like Homeland.

01:21:51.620 | I watch a lot of documentaries.

01:21:56.060 | I like to watch real things more than just film.

01:22:00.500 | I did a little bit of film stuff when I got back into Canada.

01:22:05.420 | And I was like, once you've seen how it's made, I'm like, I don't want to do that.

01:22:09.860 | I mean, I'm the same way with superhero movies.

01:22:11.740 | It doesn't, I want something closer to reality.

01:22:15.860 | But then movies like Platoon reveal some deep aspect of reality without it.

01:22:21.180 | I did Superman, Man of Steel.

01:22:22.900 | Wait, sorry, what do you mean you did?

01:22:25.940 | I was not a military expert, but I was a stunt expert, even though I didn't actually have

01:22:31.220 | to do any stunts.

01:22:32.220 | It's just because I had previous military experience and they were going to have me

01:22:34.780 | as an extra as a military person.

01:22:36.620 | But if you have previous experience, they have to make it as like a stunt role, like

01:22:39.540 | so you get paid more.

01:22:40.540 | Got it.

01:22:41.540 | So I got to sit at a desk and I was in that, like, you'd see me like for like two seconds.

01:22:46.780 | So what you're saying is you were the mastermind behind that movie?

01:22:50.260 | For the entire thing.

01:22:51.260 | You're so accurate.

01:22:52.260 | Okay, great.

01:22:53.260 | Your representation of me is just fantastic.

01:22:56.420 | The combat arms unit in Afghanistan, the ice cream machine.

01:23:02.460 | What like when you actually get closer and closer to the mission, when does that happen?

01:23:08.060 | When I got to where we were before we were leaving to get on the plane, I don't really

01:23:12.620 | realize, I don't think I realized what the hell I was doing.

01:23:15.580 | Truthfully, like you're asking me all these, like, what did you feel?

01:23:18.420 | I was like, when I really think about it, if I sit there and really think about it,

01:23:23.740 | I was deploying, I was aware, I knew what I was going to do, I knew my job.

01:23:27.860 | But once we actually stepped onto that Herc to leave to get into the Afghan airspace,

01:23:33.500 | I think that's when it hit me.

01:23:34.900 | Yeah.

01:23:35.900 | I think it smacked me in the face so hard.

01:23:38.260 | And that's when the overwhelming just reality was that, oh, fuck.

01:23:46.180 | Oh, oh, oh, when they said, make weapons ready, put the barrel to the ground, put your helmets

01:23:54.060 | on, that's when they start flying tactically, which means they're going between the mountains.

01:23:57.780 | That means we're going to land soon, which means if you're flying like this, it's because

01:24:01.900 | RPGs can hit you.

01:24:04.460 | So that was my first moment of, oh, I could like just be shot down right now.

01:24:08.740 | Like, I couldn't, I didn't grasp it.

01:24:11.620 | I was, how old was I?

01:24:13.740 | 19.

01:24:14.740 | 19, yeah.

01:24:15.740 | Wow.

01:24:16.740 | Okay.

01:24:17.740 | So that's why I feel bad when I'm trying to explain to you, because it's hard because

01:24:20.260 | I don't know that I actually did grasp it until I was in the air getting ready to land

01:24:25.420 | in Kandahar.

01:24:26.420 | When was the first time you heard bullets, enemy bullets or enemy explosions?

01:24:33.300 | Well, when you're in Kandahar, when you're at CAF, you're fairly insulated away from

01:24:38.860 | the main walls.

01:24:39.860 | You would hear stuff go off or you would hear the rocket sirens would go off.

01:24:43.900 | So you would hear the and everyone just kind of got down on the ground and just waited

01:24:48.340 | for the all clear and then got back up.

01:24:50.800 | I didn't hear any actual live fire until I got to the FOB.

01:24:58.160 | It was more just a lot of noise.

01:25:00.340 | You would hear a lot of helicopters, a lot of planes going in and out of the base.

01:25:04.260 | So there was that sense you could feel the ground shake when they took off.

01:25:06.900 | But there was that sense, you know, things were going around, things were happening.

01:25:10.300 | You just weren't far enough, you were not close enough to the edges of CAF to see it.

01:25:17.020 | What's the FOB?

01:25:18.020 | FOB is a forward observation base, which is a small little base out in the middle of wherever.

01:25:25.100 | And that's specific to artillery?

01:25:28.380 | No.

01:25:29.380 | That's in general just an observation base from which combat...

01:25:32.580 | For infantry to go in and out of, for armor to go in and out of, special ops go in and

01:25:36.540 | out of them.

01:25:37.540 | They fly, they'll stop there.

01:25:38.540 | They'll pick people up or do whatever, then they'll go out.

01:25:41.140 | So it's a forward observation base is used essentially to have eyes in that area without

01:25:45.940 | having to be doing patrols every five seconds.

01:25:48.260 | But there's not, is it like, is there like medics there?

01:25:50.660 | Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:25:51.700 | So it was...

01:25:52.700 | Actual base?

01:25:53.700 | Yeah, I was, it's a, I don't call it an actual base.

01:25:55.820 | These sleep in tents and cots and it is, the walls are this mesh material that are filled

01:26:01.580 | with gravel and that's the walls.

01:26:05.500 | And then you have towers, you had five, I think we had five towers because the Americans

01:26:08.980 | ran four and we ran one.

01:26:10.860 | And so it was an American FOB, it's called FOB Ramrod.

01:26:14.780 | And there was a, were there Marines?

01:26:17.940 | No, I think they were the 101st.

01:26:20.380 | They were out of there.

01:26:22.020 | This is where I get dicey because I was moved a lot.

01:26:24.620 | So when people are like, "Who are you with?"

01:26:26.020 | I'm like, "I know what their patches looked like.

01:26:29.140 | I don't know the full ins and outs."

01:26:30.820 | And so I'm working on getting that back so that I can tell it accurately because I believe

01:26:34.140 | it deserves that type of respect.

01:26:35.820 | But that being said, I'm still trying to wrap my brain around all of this.

01:26:40.100 | Yeah, you almost have to go back and do research to understand the full details of all the

01:26:46.740 | things you were experiencing.

01:26:47.980 | And so I reached out to actually a bunch of people even before I wrote the book and I

01:26:50.900 | didn't get a lot of answers.

01:26:51.900 | Well, once I did Jocko, all the people have reached out to me and were like, "Hey."

01:26:55.180 | And I'm like, "Called you."

01:26:56.740 | So now I'm worried, that's why I'm doing the rewrite is I'm working on making sure that

01:27:00.420 | things are exact.

01:27:02.780 | And so there was infantry units going in at that FOB and it was a really tiny FOB.

01:27:08.380 | It was run by the Americans and then there was a tiny little corner that was the Canadian

01:27:14.220 | artillery unit.

01:27:15.980 | And the Americans, normally it's Americans shooting for Americans, Canadians shooting

01:27:19.740 | for Canadians.

01:27:20.740 | The rest of the regiment that deployed, so Bravo and Charlie, they were at Canadian FOBs,

01:27:26.020 | Massim Guard and another one.

01:27:27.380 | And these were huge FOBs.

01:27:29.260 | Yours was this tiny like three kilometer around place and we had this tiny little subsection

01:27:35.980 | of it and the rest was, so it was like this and then all American here.

01:27:40.340 | And when we got there, we landed, the guns were already there.

01:27:44.380 | So you ripped out the unit before you.

01:27:46.180 | So those guys were just leaving and we were just replacing them.

01:27:49.380 | So we knew the guns, they were Canadian guns, we understood how to run those, that was fine.

01:27:55.160 | When we got there though, we had come in on Chinook and Chinooks are super loud and they're

01:28:01.880 | like, "We're hearing protection."

01:28:03.120 | They don't, no, this is not reality.

01:28:07.300 | This is why I'm partially deaf now, it's not reality.

01:28:09.600 | - Sorry to take a tangent, but do you usually wear ear protection in any aspects of warfare

01:28:15.920 | of this whole process?

01:28:17.500 | - You wear comms, like you have a comm on and a radio if you're outside the wire.

01:28:23.060 | - So comms is that like a Bluetooth headset?

01:28:25.160 | - Yes, it's a Bluetooth headset.

01:28:27.040 | - Okay.

01:28:28.040 | - No.

01:28:29.040 | - Like from Nike or like from AirPod?

01:28:30.040 | - I was gonna say Adidas.

01:28:31.040 | - Okay.

01:28:32.040 | - Maybe Apple was involved at some point.

01:28:33.040 | I don't know, this equipment looked like it was from World War II.

01:28:36.040 | - So it's comms, but is that having ear protection?

01:28:39.520 | - No.

01:28:40.520 | - No.

01:28:41.520 | - And I didn't wear them.

01:28:42.520 | That's just what some people wore.

01:28:43.720 | People when you were as low as me, like we weren't privy to conversate, like we were

01:28:47.080 | just told what to do and you do it.

01:28:49.000 | So when you're doing like on the OP tower, you have a radio you pick up and you call

01:28:52.860 | in and then you put the radio down.

01:28:54.420 | But for hearing protection, I mean, I would put in earplugs, but those things are so violently

01:28:59.560 | loud that earplugs, they don't do it justice.

01:29:02.620 | - I feel like when you go shooting, there's certain kinds of earplugs that it blocks out

01:29:09.780 | the gut, like certain kinds of sounds associated with guns and you can still hear other types

01:29:15.220 | of stuff.

01:29:16.220 | The ones they issued us were these big things that had like a headpiece like here, but you

01:29:21.100 | have to wear your helmet when you're firing.

01:29:22.780 | - Right, so you can't have both on.

01:29:25.340 | Okay, so how much are you aware of the logistics of the whole thing?

01:29:29.260 | That's always fascinating with warfare, like in terms of setting up, you mentioned gravel

01:29:34.580 | and the fobs, like setting all those bases up.

01:29:37.740 | Were you seeing any of this or again, it's a 19 year old kind of just-

01:29:41.940 | - Well, it's not that I was oblivious.

01:29:43.620 | That's the one thing I would say I wasn't.

01:29:45.580 | I'm very aware of my surroundings.

01:29:47.180 | That's something that's always been taught to me from a very early age, 'cause I traveled

01:29:50.500 | a lot with my dad in the truck.

01:29:52.140 | And so my dad would be like, "You're gonna go into that bathroom and I'm gonna watch

01:29:54.940 | you come out and you're gonna watch everyone around you because people get kidnapped."

01:29:58.980 | Like that's just the reality.

01:30:00.700 | I was always very paranoid.

01:30:03.300 | - So you were paying attention to surroundings.

01:30:07.060 | - But the fob was already built up when we got there.

01:30:09.640 | - This is already like well-established bases already.

01:30:13.220 | - Established enough.

01:30:15.220 | - And that is one of the first times you've heard actual fire.

01:30:20.060 | - Yeah, that was like the, I mean, I'd heard it when we shoot and when we zero in weapons

01:30:25.060 | and we do all that stuff, but I had never heard it like that before.

01:30:29.980 | And then you would see the guys, the Americans would roll out every day and go on patrol

01:30:34.420 | and come back, roll up, come back, come back.

01:30:36.060 | And so you would see them, you would hear them, they would tell the stories, those types

01:30:40.060 | of things, but I never experienced it because we never got attacked, like our base never

01:30:45.660 | got hit.

01:30:46.660 | We were really lucky that way.

01:30:48.740 | There were other ones around us that were getting hit, but we weren't getting hit.

01:30:52.140 | But we were very fortunate.

01:30:54.780 | At least we didn't get hit when I was there.

01:30:56.340 | I believe the entry got, there was an attempt.

01:31:00.580 | There was an attempt at some point in the past, but I wasn't privy to that.

01:31:04.660 | But we were in the OP towers, so we had to do our own security.

01:31:08.180 | But because we were such a small subset of Canadians and we always had to have people

01:31:12.020 | running the guns and ready to run the guns at all times, we only had to man one tower.

01:31:16.540 | So you would do four hour shifts with a fire team partner in the tower, depending on whatever,

01:31:20.700 | but you would do it every day.

01:31:22.220 | So I would look out into the rest of Afghanistan at that opportunity.

01:31:26.980 | Otherwise it was just like your walls.

01:31:28.300 | What did it look like?

01:31:29.700 | Is it beautiful?

01:31:31.100 | Just the full landscape?

01:31:33.020 | Or is it-

01:31:34.020 | It was just where I was.

01:31:35.020 | There was mountains in the distance.

01:31:36.540 | It was just very sandy, very flat.

01:31:39.540 | And there was a couple of small compounds on the outside.

01:31:41.940 | It wasn't a lot to look at.

01:31:43.780 | There was a long road that you knew that got hit all the time.

01:31:47.180 | There wasn't a lot to look at.

01:31:49.940 | Such a strange place to be the center of superpowers over the decades.

01:31:56.060 | It really is.

01:31:58.900 | And the fact that the populace, the civilians are almost completely clueless to the full

01:32:03.340 | history of things in terms of globally, the geopolitics of it all.

01:32:08.060 | Yeah.

01:32:09.060 | Well, if you look at the location of it, right, on a map, it makes more sense.

01:32:12.260 | Right.

01:32:13.260 | You can wrap your brain around it.

01:32:15.460 | But I met plenty of people who had never even seen a picture of themselves when I was in

01:32:18.540 | that country.

01:32:19.540 | So I mean, how much more are they going to understand if they don't know what even exists

01:32:22.980 | outside?

01:32:24.780 | You tell a small story of taking a picture of a girl and showing it to her, an Afghani

01:32:31.460 | girl.

01:32:32.460 | Yeah.

01:32:33.460 | We were, I was with the British at that time.

01:32:35.460 | And we were on that operation that gets highlighted quite a bit.

01:32:39.580 | And we had stopped and we, the ICOM radios were pinging.

01:32:42.740 | And ICOM radios are a radio that we have an interpreter on that the Taliban, basically

01:32:49.980 | we can hear what they're saying.

01:32:51.420 | It's their comms.

01:32:52.420 | It's us tapped in.

01:32:53.420 | When it's really clear, they're close.

01:32:56.160 | When it's scatty and it's, they're far enough away.

01:32:59.500 | Normally, you know, they're not planning an attack, although you never know, really.

01:33:04.180 | And we were going door to door, kind of like what they're doing now.

01:33:09.340 | And we were pulling people out of their houses.

01:33:11.180 | And we knew there were, there was people in there that were active Taliban.

01:33:14.060 | And we knew the ICOMs were pinging.

01:33:15.420 | When we got in there, they had hidden all the women and kids and locked them inside

01:33:18.940 | the house.

01:33:20.460 | Because often nowadays, women, the women, they would hide things on them that they shouldn't

01:33:24.980 | have because no one would be ever there to search them because there isn't a lot of women

01:33:28.580 | on the front lines.

01:33:30.340 | But I got borrowed to go specifically search women and children.

01:33:33.580 | So they had me.

01:33:35.540 | And one of the little girls kind of snuck out and was kind of sitting near me.

01:33:39.540 | I was eating something.

01:33:41.020 | And I had like these little, these little candies.

01:33:43.140 | They're called little sweeties.

01:33:44.640 | The British have them in the ration packs.

01:33:46.020 | I don't know.

01:33:47.020 | They're good though.

01:33:48.020 | And she saw me eating them.

01:33:49.020 | And so I gave them to her.

01:33:50.900 | And then her brother came over and slapped her upside the head and took them from her.

01:33:53.940 | So then I just went over and slapped him upside the head and just pointed my gun at her while

01:33:56.740 | she ate them all.

01:33:57.740 | Because I was like, "No, you can have these.

01:34:01.180 | I'm going to stand here and make sure you do."

01:34:03.940 | And I remember asking, "Can I take a picture with her?"

01:34:06.780 | I asked the chirp, "Can you ask her, can I take a picture with her?"

01:34:10.620 | And she was very confused.

01:34:12.460 | When you look at the photo, you see her face.

01:34:13.940 | She's very stunned.

01:34:14.940 | She's very stunned.

01:34:15.940 | And it wasn't my camera.

01:34:17.620 | It was my officer's camera.

01:34:18.620 | It was a hot pink, fluorescent pink camera.

01:34:22.260 | So I pulled this huge pink thing and I'm like, "Let's take a picture."

01:34:27.420 | And so she stood there and took a picture, but then she grabbed the camera because I

01:34:30.300 | flipped it and showed it to her.

01:34:32.140 | And her eyes got huge and she grabbed it and she ran inside.

01:34:36.140 | And they're like, "Oh, that's gone forever.

01:34:37.980 | That's over for you."

01:34:40.140 | And then she came out and she kind of snuck out.

01:34:43.040 | And I went in and grabbed it.

01:34:44.040 | And the mom lifted up her burka and was showing me that she like shaved her legs to be more

01:34:48.940 | Western.

01:34:50.340 | And I was just, at that moment, I don't know that I could have realized how much that moment

01:35:00.260 | affected me, how much that moment would affect me later on in my life until it's been later

01:35:08.240 | on in my life.

01:35:09.240 | Yeah.

01:35:10.240 | There's little like glimmers like that in parts of the world that are basically, you're

01:35:16.900 | taking away everything from the populace, like freedoms and so on.

01:35:21.780 | And when you see that glimmer of humanity, like yeah, shaved legs or using technology

01:35:30.180 | for the first time, it's magic or like food, being presented with certain kinds of foods

01:35:35.500 | that you've never tried.

01:35:37.900 | You want to see true joy of discovery is you bring basically the American supermarket,

01:35:46.140 | anything from it to most parts of the world.

01:35:49.060 | And I remember even, I mean, we weren't like in poverty in Russia, just poor, but just

01:35:56.620 | the supermarket was full of joy.

01:35:58.420 | I thought I could just die happy in an American supermarket when I first saw it.

01:36:02.980 | And how old were you when you came here?

01:36:04.700 | 13.

01:36:05.700 | Did you speak English?

01:36:06.700 | Yeah, not well.

01:36:07.940 | I thought I never was good at languages.

01:36:11.420 | So it was very much like, why would I need to learn another language?

01:36:17.420 | It was that attitude.

01:36:18.420 | It was very like, doesn't, I don't need.

01:36:21.420 | Well, no, I think culturally, not in America, but everywhere else in the world, it's constantly

01:36:28.560 | kind of seen, it's a good thing to do to learn other languages, especially English, because

01:36:34.980 | it's like, that's the language of the world.

01:36:37.620 | And I just thought like, I don't need English to discover the beauty of the world.

01:36:43.100 | Like what it is, doesn't like I enjoy life.

01:36:45.140 | I enjoy soccer.

01:36:46.140 | I enjoy, I don't remember what else I enjoyed in life, but math, like, why do I need English

01:36:52.220 | for this?

01:36:53.220 | So that kind of attitude got me in a lot of trouble when I came here because I couldn't

01:36:57.460 | You were reluctant?

01:36:59.220 | Yeah, but also just couldn't speak well.

01:37:01.300 | And when you move 13 years old, it's middle school, you get made fun of a lot, you get

01:37:06.180 | bullied and all those kinds of things, which in retrospect is a very positive thing because

01:37:11.260 | makes you harder.

01:37:12.260 | I thought being Russian would be like hard enough.

01:37:16.300 | No, well, me, everyone is different.

01:37:18.660 | I mean, the part of the Russian thing is, it's kind of, I'm joking because if you know

01:37:23.980 | me, I admire being hard.

01:37:27.780 | I admire fighting and these kinds of things, right?

01:37:31.340 | These, what would you call them?

01:37:33.780 | People in all of its forms, martial arts, wrestling, all those kinds of things.

01:37:37.060 | But ultimately, I'm so much about love.

01:37:40.020 | I'm clearly sensitive to the world in some weird genetic way that it was important for

01:37:46.460 | me to harden up when I came here and I was in love with people and it's like, and everybody's

01:37:52.260 | being mean to me.

01:37:53.260 | And it's like, what?

01:37:54.260 | It's a little like, slap, like, okay.

01:38:01.740 | Life is not often fair.

01:38:03.020 | And then that's when for me personally, everybody has different journeys of hardship that are

01:38:07.660 | much, much more difficult.

01:38:09.020 | Like your story is much more difficult.

01:38:12.820 | I started to read a lot.

01:38:14.620 | It's like something happens, some kind of challenge where you start to think about the

01:38:17.860 | world, start to think about yourself.

01:38:21.220 | That can ultimately create really interesting minds.

01:38:24.740 | It can break some people, it can create interesting minds and it's ultimately your choice.

01:38:28.620 | But those people are weak and then they just need to be weeded out.

01:38:30.940 | I thought we talked about this.

01:38:32.260 | The strong will survive, the weak will die off.

01:38:35.780 | Yeah.

01:38:36.780 | Now you're talking Russian to me.

01:38:38.620 | I'm not speaking Russian.

01:38:39.860 | I'm just giving solid life advice.

01:38:43.860 | Just be harder and then everyone will be fine.

01:38:46.860 | Yeah.

01:38:47.860 | That's your inner David Goggins coming out real quick here.

01:38:50.460 | Okay.

01:38:51.460 | The Fob.

01:38:52.460 | Yeah.

01:38:53.460 | And then I was just explaining to you that the way it is run, you're going to love this.

01:38:57.300 | When we walked up to those tents for the first time, the people that were there before us

01:39:01.820 | left us a noose.

01:39:05.100 | I have a photo of it.

01:39:08.100 | Like hanging from the tent, like at the front of the tent, like, "Welcome."

01:39:11.820 | So you were also mentioning the dark humor of it.

01:39:15.180 | It was basically a funny joke.

01:39:17.500 | Correct.

01:39:18.500 | Yeah.

01:39:19.500 | It was funny at first.

01:39:20.500 | That's pretty funny.

01:39:21.500 | It was funny during the time.

01:39:22.660 | Now when I look back at it, I was like, "Come on."

01:39:26.660 | I mean, I get it because they had already been there.

01:39:30.220 | So afterwards I can see how it's funny.

01:39:34.520 | Now with like the suicide epidemic in the veteran community now, I'm like, "Oh, I don't post

01:39:39.180 | that photo."

01:39:40.180 | Really?

01:39:41.180 | So doesn't that dark humor still somehow help even when you're considering suicide?

01:39:45.580 | Doesn't that, some of it, somehow-

01:39:47.580 | Makes it copable.

01:39:48.580 | Somehow, yeah.

01:39:49.580 | It's like you're not hiding it.

01:39:52.860 | It's like humor is one of the way to reveal the reality of abuse, of suffering.

01:39:59.980 | If you look at, there's this photo that generates right around suicide prevention month, which

01:40:04.060 | is September.

01:40:05.900 | And it's always like a photo of Robin Williams and Bourdain and all of these other individuals

01:40:10.860 | who were comedians who all took their lives.

01:40:13.780 | And they're all smiling.

01:40:15.580 | And they're like, "This is the face of depression."

01:40:19.120 | There's a way our brains work where humor is a necessary part of survival, whether it's

01:40:26.500 | used for joyous things or it's used for ways to cope through life.

01:40:31.800 | For me in the military, humor was one of the things that helped get me through.

01:40:35.260 | And it still does to this day, frankly, because humor makes some of the horrific things I

01:40:43.620 | say not seem so horrific.

01:40:47.140 | And people can digest it rather than being like, "You need to be locked up somewhere."

01:40:52.740 | Yeah, that's why one of the aspects of Russian humor, there's a darkness to it because through

01:41:01.620 | it reverberates all the millions of people who died.

01:41:06.380 | And it seems like the only way to make sense of it is to joke about it.

01:41:10.300 | I still love it.

01:41:11.300 | Because if you don't, it'll break you.

01:41:13.740 | Something like that.

01:41:14.740 | Or also humor just seems to be the highest form of us humans and the human experience.

01:41:22.060 | It just seems to somehow accumulate the full thing, the absurdity of it, the unfairness

01:41:28.580 | of it.

01:41:29.580 | Because ultimately all of the suffering, it's all just apes fighting for power and love

01:41:36.180 | and somehow torturing each other in the process.

01:41:39.940 | Hello podcast listener, Lex here.

01:41:42.660 | Quick intermission to say that some of the names in the following story have been silenced

01:41:46.620 | out to protect their privacy.

01:41:49.900 | The story of witnessing, I think your first, somebody you met, somebody you saw, somebody

01:42:01.660 | you began to be close with, his life, him dying.

01:42:08.380 | Can you tell the story?

01:42:11.300 | Sure.

01:42:13.060 | That's no problem.

01:42:14.540 | I will tell you that I am going to leave some of the names out of the people because they

01:42:20.940 | have reached out and asked that I do such.

01:42:23.980 | I've also been informed of other things I forgot that happened during the thing that

01:42:28.460 | were way worse than I thought.

01:42:30.140 | So I'll try to add those in because that's new information to me because my brain has

01:42:34.660 | blocked it out.

01:42:35.660 | But I've been told, which is good because it's better detail.

01:42:39.740 | So we were doing a movement that morning and we were going from compound to compound.

01:42:47.020 | I was never told what we were doing.

01:42:49.740 | I knew what my job was.

01:42:51.180 | I didn't know the operational overview.

01:42:53.860 | I didn't know who we were looking for.

01:42:56.900 | I wasn't there for that.

01:42:58.060 | My job was specifically to look after the women and children and to provide support

01:43:03.340 | if need be.

01:43:05.060 | And when you have certain people, so the IE, the bomb dog handler and the bomb dog, and

01:43:11.460 | then you have the medics, and then you have like a female searcher, there's only one of

01:43:16.500 | those in each unit or if there's even one in each unit.

01:43:20.020 | I got passed between units so that they could have access to me for both.

01:43:26.180 | And we were kind of sitting and we were waiting for the all clear to move.

01:43:30.500 | And at that time, the compound wall I was leaning up against, I had my back up against,

01:43:37.740 | I wasn't facing the direct direction where it actually blew up.

01:43:42.180 | I had my back to it and I had happened to turn and look to the left.

01:43:46.940 | And on the right hand side, across the road of where we were leaned up against, was another

01:43:52.060 | compound two stories high, people inside, a sniper on the roof, and a spotter.

01:43:59.720 | There was a handful of us on this wall.

01:44:02.780 | And in front of me, there was a road.

01:44:07.660 | The road went straight.

01:44:09.580 | That compound's here.

01:44:10.580 | There's another road here on the right hand side in front of it.

01:44:13.380 | And then this road went along here.

01:44:15.340 | And this was a wide open space, just a huge, we hate those.

01:44:21.200 | You hate those because it's too much space.

01:44:23.800 | It's too easy.

01:44:24.800 | It's like fish in a barrel.

01:44:26.440 | You don't want to be in that field.

01:44:29.740 | Because there's too much line of sight.

01:44:32.100 | Line of sight, could be IEDs.

01:44:33.660 | It could be anything.

01:44:36.140 | And so when I was leaning up against the wall, we had sent a couple people ahead to go and

01:44:46.100 | clear the road so that we could all go along it and then clear the grape hop off to the

01:44:50.500 | left hand side.

01:44:52.460 | And you're doing that because they use those locations to put IEDs so that when you're

01:44:57.360 | going to search it, it's a better chance of you blowing into a million pieces, essentially

01:45:03.160 | why they love that.

01:45:04.640 | Put bombs in small places, send people into small places, small places go boom, they paint

01:45:09.000 | the walls.

01:45:10.580 | So we were just kind of sitting and waiting.

01:45:13.560 | And then I happened to turn and I was looking in that direction and I heard the ground shake

01:45:19.120 | before I even realized what I was seeing with my own eyes.

01:45:22.400 | The ground shook and I saw a big piece of a body.

01:45:30.420 | I think it was the torso just kind of fly through the air and land into the field.

01:45:37.820 | And as soon as that happened, all hell broke loose.

01:45:40.880 | It was like they were sitting and watching and waiting and they do that.

01:45:44.980 | And I say they, I mean the Taliban.

01:45:45.980 | They do that.

01:45:46.980 | They love that because then they can record it for propaganda and they can use it against

01:45:51.060 | us and they just love being able to take our people out.

01:45:55.260 | And we had the interpreter sitting beside me and he had the Icom radio on.

01:45:59.940 | And as soon as the blast went off, I heard just the scream of "Allah, Allah, Allah."

01:46:05.260 | Like I just, I heard it.

01:46:06.980 | And I knew what that meant, but I couldn't, I didn't understand what was about to happen.

01:46:13.940 | I couldn't, I couldn't wrap my brain around what was about to happen because I had never

01:46:20.780 | been outside the wire.

01:46:23.980 | And people are like, people say to me now, they're like, "No, no, there's no way that

01:46:29.260 | shit's true.

01:46:30.260 | There's no way that she was involved in that and then that and then in that and then in

01:46:33.420 | that."

01:46:34.420 | Well, let me explain.

01:46:35.580 | I was one person.

01:46:37.780 | I was being passed around to units.

01:46:42.260 | I was with a ton of different people.

01:46:46.140 | I had no comms and I was just being told where to go.

01:46:52.740 | And I just happened to be like a shit hit the fan magnet, it felt like.

01:46:57.940 | And then I found out later it was not just me, it was all of us were getting it.

01:47:02.300 | So that made me feel better because then I was like, well, I have a lot of survivor's

01:47:05.860 | guilt.

01:47:06.860 | That's like a thing that's still stuck with me.

01:47:08.380 | I've worked through a lot of shit, but survivor's guilt, that's a big one for me.

01:47:13.140 | Certain food is a big one for me.

01:47:14.660 | Certain food.

01:47:16.220 | Yeah, skin on food.

01:47:21.260 | So like chicken with skin on it?

01:47:24.700 | Just because of the biology of death?

01:47:27.260 | Just what's-

01:47:28.260 | Well, when you hold people's bodies in your hands with no gloves on, you know what that

01:47:32.100 | feels like.

01:47:33.100 | And when you touch raw meat again, it's the same thing.

01:47:37.180 | That's what that feels like when it's a dying or dead body?

01:47:40.380 | Well, my friend was blown into a million pieces, so I just had pieces of him.

01:47:45.660 | So there was no differentiator of like, this was his thigh or this was his torso or there

01:47:55.500 | was like, there was none of that.

01:47:58.020 | There was only one instance with the boot.

01:48:02.860 | But at that point, we had been in some firefights.

01:48:07.580 | We had been taking some rounds, but it was more like, we'd get hit and then we'd duck

01:48:14.740 | into a compound and we would set up and then we'd be firing.

01:48:18.500 | I wasn't really involved in a lot of the firefights until after this.

01:48:21.620 | After that, the rest of the week, I was angry and I wanted them all to go.

01:48:25.820 | And I wanted to be in every position to take them out myself.

01:48:28.580 | So I put myself in every position.

01:48:30.660 | So I made sure I was on the roof.

01:48:31.940 | I made sure I was there.

01:48:33.020 | I made sure, "Hey, you need something?

01:48:34.420 | I'll fucking run it.

01:48:35.420 | I don't care if I die anymore."

01:48:36.460 | Because as soon as that happened, my light switch went off.

01:48:38.820 | It didn't matter anymore to me.

01:48:40.900 | - Can you go through what happens?

01:48:42.500 | - Yeah, so- - Akbar, you were hearing these screams.

01:48:46.260 | - Yeah, so the IED went off and what had happened was they put an IED inside of a grape hut

01:48:54.340 | and the grape hut has rectangular holes in the wall.

01:48:58.580 | And there's just like one door and it's this tall mud hut with just all these like holes

01:49:03.260 | in it.

01:49:05.020 | And they had put an IED underneath a pile of sticks and had a metal detector.

01:49:11.220 | The Brits carry them.

01:49:12.220 | I've never seen, I think other countries have them, but I've only ever seen them use it.

01:49:15.980 | And that's how we were kind of detecting if there was an IED.

01:49:19.180 | We must have hit it, the sticks or something, and it set it off.

01:49:22.700 | And it just, it was over.

01:49:24.620 | There's no way he felt anything.

01:49:25.620 | And then there was another guy at the door, bent down on one knee, and he was facing and

01:49:30.900 | kind of watching for, and then a blast hit him on this side.

01:49:35.900 | And so it took him out and pulled his kit off, pulled his helmet off, pulled everything

01:49:38.660 | off, fucked him all up, big time.

01:49:41.260 | - This is one IED.

01:49:43.300 | - Yeah, but it was in a contained area and he was in the doorway, up and out.

01:49:49.940 | - Can you explain what an IED is and how does it work?

01:49:54.260 | - I can do my best.

01:49:55.260 | They're improvised explosive devices.

01:49:57.420 | They can be used pretty much out of anything to make anything.

01:50:00.780 | So garbage.

01:50:01.780 | When we got to Afghanistan, they did the IED meeting with us.

01:50:05.740 | They're like, "These are what we're finding."

01:50:07.420 | They would show us diffused IEDs.

01:50:09.380 | So they would see those big blue drums filled with gasoline buried in the ground.

01:50:14.260 | You would see a wire.

01:50:15.560 | It would go to a pressure plate.

01:50:17.020 | You hit the pressure plate, that would hit that, and it would go.

01:50:20.660 | You would see IEDs.

01:50:22.540 | Some of them are ridiculous.

01:50:23.540 | The engineering that went into some of these was hilarious because they were thinking.

01:50:29.700 | They were thinking to use everything they could.

01:50:31.940 | There was a cigarette pack they had used.

01:50:34.740 | They lined the inside with tin foil.

01:50:37.180 | And when you stepped on the tin foil, it had a piece of wire and it was enough of a spark

01:50:40.300 | to set off a line of batteries that we had thrown out that were all dead.

01:50:43.860 | When you fuse them all together, there was enough juice to make it go.

01:50:47.260 | Then they would attach that to like phosphorus or gasoline or whatever they could that would

01:50:52.100 | make a big boom.

01:50:53.980 | They would use...

01:50:54.980 | Yeah, that's why you never kick garbage on the ground.

01:50:57.900 | You'll never see me kick something on the ground.

01:50:59.940 | You'll see me walk around it always.

01:51:01.340 | If I ever see a pile of rocks or something that looks like it shouldn't be there, I won't

01:51:05.860 | walk near it, even now, because they use that pile of rocks to remind people there's something

01:51:11.900 | there.

01:51:12.900 | We don't know what that means, but we know that something's there.

01:51:14.900 | Very often, they would use anything, garbage, wires.

01:51:20.100 | We had to burn everything for a reason.

01:51:24.260 | It's so terrifying for the source of death to be little parts of the environment and

01:51:33.180 | then people that don't look like they're not dressed as soldiers.

01:51:38.500 | No, they are.

01:51:39.500 | It's like civilians and regular...

01:51:41.820 | Because then when you have to come back or even there, you're just surrounded by danger

01:51:47.460 | and then you distrust everything, essentially.

01:51:50.540 | That's the problem and that's why you have such PTSD issues with the soldiers we have

01:51:54.780 | now because you're in the environment in which it's very similar.

01:52:02.500 | There's this one IED.

01:52:03.980 | This one IED, I still don't know what it was, went off, body flew.

01:52:10.020 | The guy at the door, he kicked out.

01:52:13.420 | He was all broken and bleeding and a mess.

01:52:19.420 | At that point, the radio started going crazy.

01:52:22.340 | I could hear the guys yelling and screaming, trying to figure it out.

01:52:25.340 | Then you could hear the numbers being called.

01:52:27.140 | KIA, number, number, number, number.

01:52:29.660 | I don't know anybody's service number.

01:52:31.180 | I don't know what's going on.

01:52:33.780 | Next thing you know, mortar rounds start coming down and live fire starts happening.

01:52:38.980 | I'm like, "Holy fuck, things are popping off."

01:52:42.580 | I remember just looking at it and being like, "We need to go.

01:52:45.740 | We need to go now."

01:52:46.740 | I just got this like, "We're going."

01:52:50.900 | They're like, "Hold on, Burns."

01:52:51.900 | I'm like, "We're fucking going."

01:52:53.940 | I wasn't dealing with it well.

01:52:55.740 | They're like, "All right, all right, go.

01:52:57.780 | Go, go, go, go, go."

01:52:59.860 | We went and I helped out with that other individual, held him down, started doing medic work on

01:53:09.500 | him.

01:53:10.500 | He just kept saying, "Where's the medic?

01:53:11.500 | Where's the medic?

01:53:12.500 | Where's the medic?"

01:53:13.500 | He was in such a state of shock.

01:53:14.500 | I've never seen somebody's eyeball so big in my life.

01:53:16.700 | He's going, "Where's the medic?

01:53:17.700 | Where's the medic?

01:53:18.700 | Where's the medic?"

01:53:19.700 | I'm like, "He's good, buddy.

01:53:20.700 | He's good.

01:53:21.700 | He's good."

01:53:22.700 | Picture like a super thick Scottish accent though because these guys were just, oh, and

01:53:26.420 | when they talk fast, it's even worse.

01:53:29.140 | And then so I ran over and we jumped down into the ditch along the side of the road

01:53:33.300 | because the road hadn't been cleared.

01:53:35.540 | And we're running through these tall, they look like cannabis plants, but they're not.

01:53:42.300 | But it's just very thick bush.

01:53:44.900 | And I felt like I was running in slow motion.

01:53:47.420 | So if you picture one of your video games where like the tunnel vision and you can hear

01:53:51.300 | your breathing is like that and you're running and you can't move fast enough and you're

01:53:56.500 | like trying to get there.

01:54:00.420 | And we hit the road and the rounds are coming down and mortars are coming down.

01:54:05.420 | And they're like, "Okay, on three, run."

01:54:06.740 | So we run on three and we run into the compound, I mean, into the Great Putt.

01:54:11.660 | And I remember looking around and very seriously going, "Where is he?"

01:54:17.460 | Just genuinely asking, I think it was...

01:54:21.140 | Been messaging me and he's been incredible.

01:54:23.780 | He's one of the best soldiers I've ever served with.

01:54:26.960 | He was a higher up, so he was running part of this.

01:54:30.020 | He's messaged me and he was giving me some information.

01:54:32.300 | And he's like, "I was in there with you."

01:54:34.500 | And he goes, "I remember because you handed me the boot."

01:54:37.660 | And because I walked over and all the rounds were...

01:54:40.380 | We were being shot at, mortars were coming down, but it was this slow motion.

01:54:44.700 | And I remember walking over to the hole in the ground and seeing his boot in the ground.

01:54:53.900 | But it was...

01:54:54.900 | His leg was still hanging, just below his knee was still in it.

01:54:58.900 | But the boot was perfectly laced up.

01:55:01.500 | The boot was fine.

01:55:03.860 | And I just, I held it and I turned and I looked at the guys and I was like, "We could reuse

01:55:09.220 | the boot."

01:55:10.220 | - Now, that wasn't even...

01:55:16.420 | What is that?

01:55:17.420 | Was that actually an intelligent attempt at humor or was it some kind of deeply lost,

01:55:26.500 | like you were completely just lost?

01:55:27.740 | - I think my brain broke.

01:55:29.940 | I think that's the moment I call my light switch went off.

01:55:35.180 | - Did you understand that he was dead at that point?

01:55:37.700 | Like intellectually, you were just something that just broke?

01:55:45.180 | No emotion, like it just broke.

01:55:48.700 | - It just shattered.

01:55:52.620 | It shattered.

01:55:53.620 | I felt it happen.

01:55:54.620 | Felt.

01:55:56.020 | I didn't feel anything.

01:56:06.020 | It just broke.

01:56:08.500 | - And at that moment, because later there's some anger almost, at that moment, none of

01:56:15.140 | that.

01:56:16.140 | - I couldn't comprehend what happened.

01:56:17.260 | I knew he wasn't there anymore because they looked at me and said, "What's here is here.

01:56:23.020 | Start grabbing pieces.

01:56:24.300 | We need to fucking move."

01:56:26.460 | And so I handed the boot over, they took it, and then I started just grabbing anything

01:56:32.780 | out of the walls because those little rectangulars just had flesh hanging from it.

01:56:38.700 | And I didn't have my gloves on because I only used them to search.

01:56:43.020 | - So you want to bring everything back.

01:56:46.380 | - Everything.

01:56:47.380 | You didn't want to leave.

01:56:48.820 | - This is what, even if they're dead, do you want to save those you served with?

01:56:55.180 | - Yeah, because they deserve that.

01:56:57.220 | They don't deserve to have a piece of them drugged behind a truck for propaganda.

01:57:00.420 | It's not fair.

01:57:01.420 | - What did the others, I mean, was there just a focus on mission or was there a panic?

01:57:07.300 | - No panic with these guys.

01:57:08.980 | These guys were the most switched on motherfuckers I've ever seen in my life.

01:57:13.660 | We started grabbing and remind me, he said, "You know, you," that's not, he goes, "When

01:57:19.660 | people say that's the worst part of your day, that wasn't even the worst part of your day.

01:57:21.980 | Do you remember when you handed me the bag of intestines?"

01:57:27.180 | No.

01:57:29.700 | No, I do though.

01:57:34.700 | Thank you for that.

01:57:36.300 | - So there's parts you don't even, they're just not.

01:57:39.060 | - They don't register.

01:57:42.340 | Because I had some people contact me and be like, "You didn't tell it right.

01:57:45.780 | And war is subjective and war is from your perspective and war is messy and horrific

01:57:51.660 | and war is graphic and violent and painful."

01:58:03.340 | Your brain remembers what it wants to remember and your brain allows you to remember what

01:58:07.300 | it allows you to remember and there's reasons that you don't remember everything.

01:58:12.660 | And so we were getting, we were really getting hit.

01:58:17.660 | We were getting, it was bad.

01:58:19.860 | And some of the guys, machine gunners had come up to do cover fire.

01:58:23.340 | And I know we were calling in for air support to come pick up the guys because they had

01:58:30.340 | to go.

01:58:32.420 | And we just collected everything we could.

01:58:37.580 | But I did remember screaming, "We didn't get them all.

01:58:39.460 | We didn't get them all.

01:58:40.460 | There's no way we got them all.

01:58:41.460 | We did not fucking get them all."

01:58:42.460 | And I remember one of the guys looking at me being like, "We got them.

01:58:44.540 | We got them."

01:58:45.540 | I'm like, "We didn't fucking get them.

01:58:46.540 | We didn't get them."

01:58:47.540 | He's like, "No, we got them."

01:58:48.540 | And I couldn't say it enough.

01:58:50.780 | And so I grabbed as much as I could.

01:58:56.300 | I slung one of their weapons and it was just a twisted heap.

01:58:59.100 | And I had his helmet and someone else's helmet in my arm.

01:59:03.480 | And then I had my weapon in front of me and I was carrying it.

01:59:09.980 | And then we piled everything we had onto a stretcher.

01:59:13.700 | Those things are super fucking flimsy anyway.

01:59:16.700 | And there was a couple guys in front of us and there were a couple behind me and I was

01:59:20.060 | kind of in the middle.

01:59:22.540 | And we said, "Okay, we're just going to have to run.

01:59:24.380 | We're going to have to fucking run the road.

01:59:25.380 | We're going to have to run it.

01:59:26.380 | We're going to have to chance it."

01:59:27.380 | So we ran it.

01:59:28.380 | And that was the closest...

01:59:30.380 | Well, I guess not the closest, but it felt like it was the closest I could hear the whiz

01:59:36.100 | of the rounds going by me.

01:59:39.020 | It's a weird noise when they're coming at you than when they're leaving you.

01:59:44.020 | And so that slowed everything down for me.

01:59:47.900 | And then one of the guys accidentally dropped the edge of the stretcher and everything fell

01:59:51.460 | off into the ditch.

01:59:53.020 | And then we had to go back down and get it back up.

01:59:56.420 | So we kept running and we finally got back into the compound that that sniper was sitting

02:00:01.100 | off on the right hand side and we got all in there.

02:00:05.220 | And I know the...

02:00:06.220 | I think he said there was two flights.

02:00:09.020 | I only thought there was one, but apparently there was two flights.

02:00:12.660 | So he went on one, his body went on one.

02:00:15.380 | And then I think he said went on the other.

02:00:19.060 | And then they took off.

02:00:21.460 | And then when they leave, though, they rain hell down on anything they can see on the

02:00:25.660 | ground.

02:00:26.660 | And that is a beautiful sight because they had mortar rounds coming down and it just

02:00:30.460 | was getting really, really bad.

02:00:33.100 | And then as soon as the Blackhawks took off, all of a sudden it just stopped and went quiet,

02:00:41.220 | like deafening quiet.

02:00:44.820 | And we were sitting inside the compound and one of the medics looked at me and you could

02:00:48.660 | see and I still do it now and I'm working on not doing it, but I do it when I get really

02:00:53.580 | overwhelmed because I didn't have any gloves on.

02:00:56.700 | I had blood all over my hands and just like body and stuff.

02:01:00.460 | So he came over and he just gave me like sanitizer and I started rubbing.

02:01:05.340 | And so I rub, I do this when I'm stressed, I'll rub my hands.

02:01:11.180 | And I still can't do...

02:01:15.580 | I still can't eat food with skin on it.

02:01:17.940 | And I can't like salmon and stuff.

02:01:20.420 | Like I can't...

02:01:21.420 | Anything with skin, I can't touch it.

02:01:22.860 | And if I'm making meat at home, like for my husband and my son, I have like meat gloves

02:01:28.420 | and then I have like a fork and a knife and I'm like cutting it.

02:01:31.420 | Like I never touch it.

02:01:32.420 | I can't touch it.

02:01:34.700 | So there's something almost like the texture of the biology of a human flesh that just...

02:01:43.540 | That's at the level of...

02:01:45.440 | That's the level of your trauma.

02:01:47.140 | Yeah.

02:01:48.140 | And it's been...

02:01:49.140 | I mean, it's 2021.

02:01:50.140 | This was in '09.

02:01:51.420 | And I've worked on this like, and I mean, I've been in like treatment religiously just

02:01:57.180 | to be able to keep me alive for this decade.

02:02:00.460 | And so it's not like it's like, "Oh, I've never even tried to get better."

02:02:04.060 | It's like, I never used to leave my house.

02:02:06.420 | I used to call people that look like that horrific names in public.

02:02:10.260 | I used to want to kill people on a regular basis.

02:02:13.640 | I'm a fairly happy individual now.

02:02:16.380 | What about...

02:02:19.140 | You're talking about sort of skin and parts, but there's also just the fact that we're

02:02:25.580 | mortal and there's somebody close to you who dies.

02:02:31.140 | Who you watch walk up and then never come back out again?

02:02:34.260 | Yeah.

02:02:35.260 | It's like you're facing mortality in a very real way.

02:02:40.580 | In a way that's not the same as somebody dying from cancer in a hospital, although it has

02:02:46.020 | echoes of that because that's also absurd and it doesn't feel like there's justice to

02:02:52.020 | it in any kind of way, but it's so sudden.

02:02:56.300 | Have you been able to make sense of that, of your feelings about it?

02:03:03.540 | How do you feel about it?

02:03:05.380 | Or is everything just shrouded in this trauma that you're not able to just feel for the

02:03:14.220 | loss of a human being, like mourn the loss of a human being?

02:03:19.700 | I think I had...

02:03:22.380 | When I realized he wasn't there, when I realized that he...

02:03:28.540 | That was what was left of him.

02:03:31.900 | I found out afterward there was other parts that were outside and went back.

02:03:37.740 | I think he said went back and they got...

02:03:40.660 | They ended up getting the rest of him.

02:03:43.180 | So that made me happy because I just found this out this week.

02:03:50.060 | So that means you have a feeling like you still feel like parts of him were left behind.

02:03:57.860 | On the ramp ceremony, when I lost my mind, literally I lost my mind and I was screaming

02:04:07.900 | that he wasn't all in there.

02:04:10.260 | I'm happy now knowing that he was, but I held onto that for 10 years.

02:04:19.940 | The sandbags, the bulk of the weight is not from human flesh.

02:04:28.940 | He was a young kid too.

02:04:33.620 | I think it was his first deployment as well.

02:04:35.620 | He was a young kid and he was just going to clear the road for the rest of us.

02:04:45.620 | You know you're in war and you know that you're outside the wire and you know things could

02:04:49.060 | happen.

02:04:50.860 | You understand that to the extent you can understand that.

02:04:56.620 | When it's happening, it's something very different.

02:04:59.700 | Also maybe you can correct me, but there's something much more brutal about an IED versus

02:05:09.060 | like a bullet.

02:05:11.220 | Because a bullet, you still...

02:05:14.220 | Watching somebody close to you die from a bullet, you still get the basic humanity.

02:05:21.500 | So IED basically converted a human being into biological parts.

02:05:27.100 | Yeah, I mean, I don't...

02:05:33.620 | That's tough.

02:05:35.580 | That's tough because it's hard for you to remember them as a human.

02:05:43.620 | You remember them as parts.

02:05:45.980 | For me, that's how I remember him.

02:05:48.420 | I would like to...

02:05:49.780 | I have a picture that I post every year about him.

02:05:52.780 | I see that, but I don't put two and two together.

02:06:00.660 | Does that make sense?

02:06:01.660 | Yeah, no, it does.

02:06:03.220 | So even I, listening to your story, thank you for sharing it, first of all.

02:06:08.660 | It's fine.

02:06:09.660 | It's not my...

02:06:10.660 | It's...

02:06:11.660 | Well...

02:06:12.660 | I'm just the one to tell it.

02:06:13.660 | I was just involved.

02:06:14.660 | One set of eyes on this particular human being.

02:06:19.420 | But even I get angry.

02:06:20.940 | I can't tell if it's exhaustion or anger.

02:06:24.060 | I'm sorry.

02:06:25.060 | I look always exhausted.

02:06:26.060 | Oh, that's okay.

02:06:27.060 | You're into robotics, isn't that like your guys' thing?

02:06:30.740 | You guys are just always working on tech?

02:06:32.340 | I think because I feel so much for the world, I just don't do...

02:06:36.900 | We were talking about resting bitch face earlier.

02:06:39.540 | I just don't feel the need to maintain all the effort of the musculature for presenting

02:06:45.280 | myself to you visually.

02:06:46.620 | It's exhausting.

02:06:47.620 | It's exhausting.

02:06:48.620 | So I just focus on the feeling.

02:06:49.620 | No, hey, I...

02:06:50.620 | I'm gonna move back.

02:06:51.620 | Face show, whatever the hell it shows.

02:06:52.620 | Fair enough.

02:06:53.620 | Okay.

02:06:55.060 | Was there anger?

02:06:56.340 | Was there hate?

02:06:57.340 | Yeah.

02:06:58.340 | Can you just talk through your feelings of what you remember?

02:07:03.060 | Yeah.

02:07:04.060 | So after that operation with the British, I went back to the Canadians.

02:07:10.940 | And I didn't go back as even remotely close to who I was when I left.

02:07:16.540 | And that was really troublesome for a lot of people around me because the level of anger

02:07:22.180 | and hate that came out of me was palpable when I just walked by.

02:07:28.580 | I got shockingly quiet.

02:07:31.660 | You understand how you're learning how...

02:07:33.780 | You'd be terrified if you were quiet.

02:07:36.940 | And I don't know if hate and anger do that justice.

02:07:41.740 | I don't know another word, but I don't think those two words do it justice to the extent

02:07:47.820 | that I was feeling.

02:07:48.820 | Like I got to a point when I got attacked by a woman with some scissors.

02:07:54.780 | Like the idea crossed my mind, like I could bootstomp her to death and not feel anything

02:07:59.100 | about it in front of her, all of her family and her kids.

02:08:01.860 | Was it more like just not recognizing the basic humanity or was it legit hatred?

02:08:06.780 | No, it was legit hatred.

02:08:08.940 | But also I no longer saw those people as humans.

02:08:13.420 | It took one event.

02:08:14.740 | And when that happened, the rest of the operation, that was echoed in the way I was to those

02:08:21.180 | people.

02:08:22.180 | But to what level can you see those people as human?

02:08:27.020 | So this is where...

02:08:28.020 | Now?

02:08:29.020 | Well, like this is where things...

02:08:30.020 | Jaco shut down.

02:08:32.340 | Oh God.

02:08:34.780 | I still think I'm right.

02:08:37.300 | There's a Dire Straits song called Brothers in Arms.

02:08:42.380 | And actually, anyway, we're fools to make war on our brothers in arms.

02:08:48.620 | And I brought that up to Jaco because it's humans on both sides.

02:08:55.860 | But he said, not in Iraq.

02:09:00.900 | Like to him, he's like, no, that's the enemy.

02:09:04.580 | These are people who use the civilians.

02:09:07.700 | They rape, they torture, they'll do anything and they put evil onto the world.

02:09:13.980 | And then it's like, so there stood at that moment, like these two were humans and it's

02:09:21.460 | politicians waging war and it's kids on both sides.

02:09:26.620 | But then Jaco's like, no.

02:09:29.260 | He's not wrong.

02:09:31.260 | So which...

02:09:32.700 | Can you carry both things with you as a soldier?

02:09:36.220 | I think when I was a soldier, I could only carry one thing with me.

02:09:40.300 | I think my perspective has changed drastically, but not because I've lost the reality that

02:09:48.020 | they are the enemy, but I've gained my humanity back again.

02:09:54.020 | And that's what I lost when I was there.

02:09:55.940 | I lost all humanity.

02:09:57.140 | I lost all hope for humanity.

02:09:59.540 | He's not wrong.

02:10:01.260 | When he says the Taliban or like when he was in Iraq, but for me, the Taliban are evil.

02:10:08.460 | I still hold a spot of hatred for them that could set this building on fire.

02:10:15.220 | You don't...

02:10:16.220 | I don't know that anybody can fully understand that.

02:10:18.580 | When you watch what they do to women and to kids and they do it in the name of God, they

02:10:26.940 | are the enemy.

02:10:28.080 | They are less than, they don't exist.

02:10:32.220 | They're barely worth the bullets we put into them.

02:10:36.300 | But then because they use civilians-

02:10:38.420 | It gets dicey.

02:10:40.780 | So like then everybody becomes the enemy and how are you supposed to make sense of that?

02:10:47.100 | Like what...

02:10:48.100 | But here, Lex, you can't make sense of it.

02:10:50.100 | This is why.

02:10:51.260 | They've done a really good job of blending into the civilian population.

02:10:54.340 | They've done it intentionally.

02:10:55.420 | They've done it on purpose.

02:10:57.740 | So they're brilliant.

02:10:59.420 | This is why you guys couldn't beat them.

02:11:01.060 | This is why we couldn't fucking beat them.

02:11:03.420 | They use their people so effectively.

02:11:07.380 | They have no shame in that.

02:11:08.840 | They have no issue with that.

02:11:10.260 | They take no qualms with wiping a kid off the face of the earth if it means they can

02:11:15.460 | get close enough to a soldier to throw a fucking bomb into their tank.

02:11:20.260 | This is why they're effective.

02:11:22.100 | How do you beat them then?

02:11:23.900 | There's no winning that you just basically do policeman type work or you do your best.

02:11:30.900 | I mean, that's one way.

02:11:33.260 | So the other is you come from an artillery background.

02:11:38.620 | A fucking Hellfire missile hits the whole place off the face of the earth.

02:11:42.500 | You can't beat radicalism like that right now.

02:11:45.220 | The problem is we've let it go unchecked.

02:11:48.820 | We had it kind of in check for 20 years.

02:11:52.280 | We just shot ourselves in the foot, the chest, and the face.

02:11:56.820 | So the problem with force is it creates long-term hate because young kids and propaganda and

02:12:07.320 | like propaganda works.

02:12:09.140 | So you see your father, your brother die because of a bomb.

02:12:14.340 | It's very easy to convince that person that they died because of evil Americans and tell

02:12:19.400 | whatever story you want about America or Russia.

02:12:22.180 | That's the biggest problem.

02:12:23.380 | So it seems like there got to be better solutions because I mean, I talk about love, but it's

02:12:30.020 | honestly basically figuring out sneaky ways of empowering women, of educating people,

02:12:38.940 | and not in a--

02:12:39.940 | Not a cheesy way, but in a realistic.

02:12:43.620 | In the same level of mass warfare, but with love.

02:12:49.400 | So you're talking about DARPA budgets, DOD budgets, but do that where you educate and

02:12:56.020 | empower women by force.

02:12:59.620 | They want to learn.

02:13:00.620 | Right.

02:13:01.620 | I mean, you're not forcing anybody.

02:13:03.420 | You're setting them free.

02:13:05.100 | That's exactly it.

02:13:06.180 | Combat Flip Flops does this.

02:13:07.460 | They do this.

02:13:08.460 | They give literacy.

02:13:10.040 | They teach girls to read, nothing else, to read because as soon as you can read, you

02:13:15.860 | know what happens then.

02:13:18.220 | What's Combat Flip Flops?

02:13:19.580 | That's the scarf right there that's made in Afghanistan.

02:13:23.440 | So when you buy something from them, the proceeds go to literacy in Afghanistan for girls.

02:13:28.320 | They've given literacy to 800 girls over there.

02:13:30.760 | Yeah, they're really cool.

02:13:32.640 | Griff owns the one, he was an army ranger and his buddy, Lee I think is his name.

02:13:37.080 | They were on Shark Tank a long time ago, but they do shoes and I think they're called shamongs.

02:13:42.160 | I don't know how to say it properly.

02:13:44.760 | Built in Afghanistan.

02:13:46.040 | Yes.

02:13:47.040 | So the proceeds go back there.

02:13:48.360 | They do great work for literacy and you know as well as anyone, if you can teach someone

02:13:53.980 | to read-

02:13:54.980 | Good color.

02:13:57.080 | Dark like your soul, Lex.

02:13:58.080 | On the inside.

02:13:59.080 | Just on the inside.

02:14:00.080 | All right.

02:14:01.080 | The outside is just the suit.

02:14:02.080 | I feel like you think that's your suit of armor, but I feel like it's- See?

02:14:09.700 | What were you saying?

02:14:10.700 | Sorry, what were you saying?

02:14:11.700 | I was saying-

02:14:12.700 | Go on, I will allow this.

02:14:13.700 | All right.

02:14:14.700 | I think-

02:14:15.700 | I think there is room if you teach education.

02:14:20.940 | The problem is we've taken a massive step backwards.

02:14:24.820 | I know that the Taliban have just instituted this week, honor killings will be back, stonings

02:14:31.160 | are back and dismemberments as well.

02:14:35.260 | Holly McKay is the reporter that's been reporting that from the ground.

02:14:37.980 | She's still there.

02:14:39.340 | The way to pull people, in my opinion, out of something like that is through education.

02:14:45.220 | We just took all of that away, which is pretty horrific in my opinion because you've taught

02:14:52.700 | over 20 years.

02:14:54.420 | You're perfectly right, Lex.

02:14:55.560 | When you say that hate and violence won't work, it won't because you see dad get killed

02:15:01.580 | on the battlefields.

02:15:02.580 | Well, that 14-year-old little boy is going to pick up an AK-47 and go avenge dad's death.

02:15:06.340 | That's just the way it's going to be.

02:15:07.500 | Well, you think about it.

02:15:08.500 | You were there for 20 years.

02:15:10.340 | There's a couple of generations in there.

02:15:11.820 | There's another generation that's either grown up in this or has seen enough of this.

02:15:16.940 | They're always going to be a subset that think that we're the enemy.

02:15:20.540 | And fair, we haven't done always the greatest things.

02:15:24.420 | But the one thing that we have done that I did participate in was giving literacy, giving

02:15:28.820 | girls an opportunity, letting them know that you aren't second-class citizens.

02:15:33.820 | You can do things too.

02:15:35.700 | And that's why we have to look at war differently.

02:15:40.660 | There's times for violence.

02:15:43.220 | There's time for violence.

02:15:44.980 | And there's time for missiles.

02:15:48.100 | And there's time for detainees.

02:15:50.980 | And there's times for bag and tags and double taps to the fucking face.

02:15:54.180 | There's times for all of that.

02:15:55.940 | But there needs to be more time to educate.

02:15:59.500 | The problem is you can't educate if you're in a country where their culture doesn't believe

02:16:04.420 | in that.

02:16:05.420 | You're fighting so many different things.

02:16:08.700 | It's an almost an impossible situation.

02:16:12.700 | When you look at the 20 years in Afghanistan and we just pulled out, there's a sudden pull

02:16:17.300 | out of troops.

02:16:18.300 | What do you think about those 20 years?

02:16:21.780 | Let me ask a hard question, which is, was it worth it going into Afghanistan?

02:16:31.180 | And you're sort of, you're one person.

02:16:33.500 | My limited capacity.

02:16:35.140 | You have experienced specific set of extremely difficult things.

02:16:41.500 | You've met a lot of humans.

02:16:44.020 | You understand certain aspects of the way this war is carried out.

02:16:47.460 | But if you zoomed out at the big story, like you like history too.

02:16:52.460 | When you think of the history, a hundred years from now, we look at the invasion of Afghanistan.

02:16:59.380 | I don't even think you need to go far that back to know that it was, we went in on false

02:17:04.600 | pretenses.

02:17:06.320 | We did.

02:17:07.320 | That's not a good start.

02:17:10.460 | What's that saying?

02:17:11.660 | Future behavior is a good, was it past behavior is a good indicator of future behavior?

02:17:18.340 | So I struggle with that because when I first found out that the pull up was going to happen,

02:17:27.900 | I got really angry because my government skated the whole situation because he's having a

02:17:33.740 | snap.

02:17:34.740 | Canada's having a snap election.

02:17:35.740 | It's happening on the 20th.

02:17:38.220 | So that was beautifully planned by my government to hold no accountability, zero accountability.

02:17:46.900 | And the media won't talk about it.

02:17:49.140 | They reached out to me to do an interview about Afghanistan.

02:17:51.300 | And then I told them what was going on after I talked to my people that were on the ground

02:17:54.820 | and then they canceled the interview.

02:17:56.860 | When you say my government is American, you better at this.

02:18:00.780 | Like it feels like there's no accountability.

02:18:02.420 | No, no, no, no, no.

02:18:04.620 | The American government is a dumpster fire.

02:18:08.860 | I'm not saying I'm not saying that, but what I am saying is at least they sent people to

02:18:16.420 | pull people or pull some people.

02:18:20.300 | We sent no one to pull anyone.

02:18:24.420 | And I know for a fact, because I helped move a family, I was fortunate enough to be given

02:18:28.420 | an opportunity to help move a high value nine person family out of that country that worked

02:18:33.620 | in the government, that worked in prosecuting the Taliban, that were on the top of the list.

02:18:38.940 | I learned really quickly the ins and outs of things.

02:18:41.700 | And I'm really disgusted by it.

02:18:42.980 | I learned that Canada had the one email address that all Canadian Afghani or visa holders

02:18:48.700 | were supposed to email.

02:18:50.180 | Ottawa put two people on that email address.

02:18:54.020 | That's confirmed.

02:18:56.140 | Ottawa put no more than 70 people on the ground for that pullout and they were not allowed

02:18:59.860 | to leave the airport and they left well before the pullout date.

02:19:02.380 | They left on the Thursday before the Tuesday.

02:19:04.300 | That was the 31st.

02:19:07.340 | There were high value Canadian visa holders that are still in that country that are on

02:19:11.340 | the top of the kill list.

02:19:12.860 | Canada's not doing anything about it.

02:19:17.020 | I'm disgusted in the way my government has acted because number one, there's an active

02:19:21.740 | lawsuit with veterans against the Supreme Court of Canada right now.

02:19:27.540 | We are leaving our vets and our Canadians stranded over there and we are leaving the

02:19:33.420 | vets that have been maimed by this war in Canada.

02:19:38.020 | They're turned down for everything.

02:19:39.020 | I've been turned down for hearing loss.

02:19:40.300 | They're saying it's not military related.

02:19:42.820 | They have PIs follow me.

02:19:45.180 | This is normal behavior.

02:19:47.500 | There's a veteran named Brock who was told by Trudeau in a meeting that after he lost

02:19:52.860 | his leg, he was just trying to get a new prosthetic because it was just killing him.

02:19:57.180 | Trudeau stood up in a meeting and said, "You're just asking for too much."

02:20:00.620 | Less than six months later, he gave $10.4 million to an Afghan terrorist that was in

02:20:05.420 | the Canadian prison system.

02:20:07.540 | He won and got $10.4 of our million taxpayer dollars.

02:20:11.820 | So I don't know that American government's any better, but what I do know is that the

02:20:15.740 | absolute fucking machines of human beings that stepped outside of the chain of command

02:20:21.140 | to pull my family out for me, I know they were there.

02:20:25.260 | The British that stayed on the ground that I contacted to literally confirm my biometric

02:20:30.620 | data and passports to get that family moved, they weren't there.

02:20:33.740 | That family would still be there.

02:20:35.720 | That three-year-old that got the shit kicked out of him by the Taliban that I was trying

02:20:38.560 | to exfil, Canada left him.

02:20:44.140 | What is it about politicians and governments not willing to-

02:20:50.620 | Do their job?

02:20:52.140 | Well, not willing to do a big part of the job, which is you send people to war, these

02:21:03.300 | are heroes, and then you should spend most of the time repaying the debts to those.

02:21:12.900 | What is it about, why can't we-

02:21:15.780 | Because we're disposable numbers and we hire them out of high school when they're stupid

02:21:20.140 | enough to not understand what they're going to get themselves into.

02:21:24.500 | And then we blame it on themselves for making that decisions by volunteering.

02:21:27.980 | Yeah, but I mean, that still doesn't make sense to me.

02:21:32.100 | No, it's a cop-out.

02:21:33.100 | I mean, Trudeau, I feel like he is a good human being that wants to do good for, I mean,

02:21:40.220 | I want to believe that leaders want to do good by the heroes of this world.

02:21:45.860 | And I don't understand the system of delusion you have to live in to not understand who

02:21:54.420 | the heroes are.

02:21:55.420 | I refuse to believe Trudeau is somehow a bad person.

02:21:58.620 | You haven't met him though, have you?

02:21:59.620 | I don't actually, I'm speaking about Trudeau without knowing, but I mean, in general, think

02:22:05.340 | that way about leaders.

02:22:06.620 | I just think they surround themselves by people who delude them, who like-

02:22:10.700 | They're yes people.

02:22:12.420 | Yes people that lead them into a kind of reality that becomes detached from actual reality.

02:22:18.820 | And so they misunderstand the priorities of this world.

02:22:21.940 | They think maybe some kind of special interests, they focus on that versus like the humans.

02:22:28.900 | If you look back, was there a way we could have done something better in Afghanistan,

02:22:34.500 | assuming we do the invasion?

02:22:36.540 | So is it ultimately about taking care of the veterans, like investing more money in the

02:22:45.660 | education of women and liberating people who are suffering injustice in those parts of

02:22:53.940 | the world?

02:22:54.940 | Like what's the better way to do it?

02:22:56.060 | And one other aspect is on the US side paid over $6 trillion for the wars in the Middle

02:23:02.980 | East since 9/11.

02:23:03.980 | So the financial side as well.

02:23:06.260 | Is there something you can comment on things we could have done better?

02:23:11.900 | That's a loaded question because you're talking to someone who had no hand in what happened

02:23:16.620 | other than do this and do that.

02:23:18.500 | So I can go from my perspective, which is there was probably plenty of things that we

02:23:22.700 | could have been doing better.

02:23:24.900 | I think there was a lack of leadership from the get-go.

02:23:27.620 | I think the preparation that the Canadian military gave me was nowhere sufficient for

02:23:34.580 | a deployment of that level.

02:23:37.340 | Mind you, things happen.

02:23:38.900 | They didn't realize things would happen, but yet they happen.

02:23:43.820 | With little to absolutely no cultural idea was what I was walking into.

02:23:50.460 | Like when a male in the family grabbed the back of my vest because my hair was tucked

02:23:55.140 | and he thought it was a man going into a room with a bunch of women, I couldn't understand

02:23:57.780 | why he was attacking me.

02:24:00.300 | There was no real breakdown of this is what you're going into, this is the culture, this

02:24:05.580 | is why they do what they do, this is how they do it, this is how you should handle a situation

02:24:10.580 | like that.

02:24:11.580 | There was none of that.

02:24:13.220 | And something I speak about frequently and I think it's important to acknowledge is when

02:24:17.140 | you're doing any of that training, we are giving none of our soldiers proper mental

02:24:20.860 | health training.

02:24:22.820 | Tools in that fucking toolbox or ways or things to look for on their buddy.

02:24:28.780 | Because we've created a system and a problem where if you say that you're ill or that you're

02:24:34.060 | struggling with PTSD, you're done.

02:24:36.980 | No one's going to say that.

02:24:38.180 | They're going to keep struggling with it.

02:24:39.780 | And that's when you get loose cannons.

02:24:40.780 | That's when you get problems happen.

02:24:42.580 | So you get fractures start to happen in leadership.

02:24:47.140 | And that's being seen and has been seen now for a while.

02:24:50.660 | So in terms of what we could have done, say for a better way to go into the country, a

02:24:59.820 | better way to help the country, I can't speak to that as much as I wish I could.

02:25:07.180 | Because I don't know that I would have all the answers.

02:25:09.220 | What about withdrawal?

02:25:11.220 | Oh my God.

02:25:14.220 | That's a cover.

02:25:15.220 | Do you think more gradual?

02:25:18.980 | You think it's better to maintain presence there for indefinitely?

02:25:24.260 | I don't know about that.

02:25:26.060 | But I do know we have bases.

02:25:29.180 | We I say weeks I serve with them.

02:25:31.020 | Americans have bases in Japan.

02:25:32.860 | Americans have bases in Korea.

02:25:34.580 | Americans have bases in Germany.

02:25:36.360 | There's reasons there's bases everywhere.

02:25:38.420 | There's a smart there.

02:25:40.420 | There's an intellectual way to look at this.

02:25:42.400 | You want to be able to have eyes and ears.

02:25:45.340 | And have eyes and ears when you do things like you just did.

02:25:49.180 | The way that we pulled out of that country.

02:25:50.900 | That's right.

02:25:51.900 | The way that I hate saying American British because it puts like a blame on them.

02:25:54.980 | I say we because I'm a soldier.

02:25:57.260 | I'm a NATO soldier.

02:25:58.940 | The way we pulled out of that country.

02:26:01.700 | My five year old could have done it better.

02:26:03.900 | He could have said, Mommy, why are we not keeping that Bagram base?

02:26:07.820 | Mommy, why are we not keeping that base just until we get everyone else that we need?

02:26:12.580 | Why are we going to a civilian airport that we don't control, that we don't understand?

02:26:16.300 | Mommy, why are we doing this when there's only one road to it?

02:26:20.740 | My five year old would have that conversation with me.

02:26:24.660 | It was so poorly done.

02:26:27.280 | It was so poorly executed and no fault of the soldiers on the ground on their own.

02:26:31.740 | My God, I can tell you there's operators.

02:26:35.020 | I just call them A. I don't say who he is because he's told me not to.

02:26:38.460 | There's a guy named A. And there's another guy named R. And there's a few other names.

02:26:42.540 | There's a guy named D. And these guys, they gave everything to try to pull my family when

02:26:51.460 | no one else would pull my family for me.

02:26:54.580 | They just got me on the phone and said, I don't know who the fuck you're talking to.

02:26:56.740 | I don't know how many people you're trying to get a hold of here, but you've got everyone

02:26:59.400 | looking for your family.

02:27:00.400 | It's like I've gone to everyone I know.

02:27:02.580 | I've done stuff on Instagram.

02:27:04.060 | I've got a contact.

02:27:05.060 | The contact called me.

02:27:06.060 | I called them.

02:27:07.060 | I got, I was handling this family.

02:27:10.100 | And when they call you and say, we can't go back to the gate, my three-year-old just got

02:27:13.900 | beat up by the Taliban.

02:27:15.800 | And they say, what do we do now?

02:27:17.700 | I'm in Vancouver.

02:27:20.500 | Why am I being left to deal with this?

02:27:23.300 | Why is the civilian and ex-military population being left to deal with this?

02:27:27.740 | Why was this not thought out?

02:27:29.580 | We knew this was coming.

02:27:31.920 | We knew the time frame.

02:27:33.420 | Yeah, I ultimately blame, it almost starts at the top, always at the leadership.

02:27:38.500 | Sorry, this is the civilian leadership.

02:27:41.940 | I think probably the generals know the right thing to do here.

02:27:46.460 | Even if they're sometimes overzealous in terms of being, wanting to increase, I think the

02:27:51.460 | great generals understand what's needed.

02:27:53.620 | And then it takes great leadership on the civilian side to listen to the generals and

02:27:57.420 | understand that war is not just about like-

02:28:01.020 | It's not binary.

02:28:02.380 | Yeah.

02:28:03.380 | And it's not about the invasion and saying mission accomplished.

02:28:07.620 | It's not about the PR.

02:28:08.780 | It's about the full complexity of geopolitics.

02:28:12.500 | Can I ask you this?

02:28:13.500 | You can ask me whatever you want.

02:28:16.340 | I'm looking at a book that you gave me, Do the Fucking Work.

02:28:18.620 | It's very motivating.

02:28:19.620 | Good Fucking Design Advice.

02:28:20.620 | That's their company called Good Fucking Design Advice.

02:28:24.820 | That's great.

02:28:25.820 | I know, they're great.

02:28:26.820 | What's the website?

02:28:27.820 | Good GFDA.

02:28:28.820 | Okay, so the F is for friendship.

02:28:32.380 | Something like that.

02:28:33.380 | They are a design company.

02:28:35.420 | They've worked with Apple and Nike and this is their book.

02:28:37.620 | It's been published by HarperCollins.

02:28:39.420 | And it is really just, it's an incredible, they're an incredible company.

02:28:44.900 | They're artistically, like they're a design company.

02:28:47.420 | So you can see that.

02:28:49.580 | You can see it's a design company.

02:28:50.740 | Oh yeah, they signed it for you.

02:28:52.460 | And the pages are beautiful, but they have a saying and then a paragraph about each saying.

02:28:58.780 | Get fucking started.

02:29:00.740 | Obstacles are fucking opportunities.

02:29:02.620 | Fail, fail, and fucking fail again.

02:29:05.300 | Ask for fucking help.

02:29:07.340 | Show some fucking passion.

02:29:10.020 | Finish the fucking job.

02:29:11.860 | That's right.

02:29:12.860 | So we should send that to Biden.

02:29:13.860 | So I am...

02:29:15.380 | She said it, I didn't say it.

02:29:16.660 | Lex said it.

02:29:17.940 | I didn't say it.

02:29:19.060 | Lex said it.

02:29:20.060 | It's fine, I'll say it.

02:29:21.060 | I should also send it to Trudeau as well.

02:29:22.060 | So, but I mean, he probably wouldn't know how to read it.

02:29:23.980 | He just taught drama instead.

02:29:25.940 | So I'll send it to the previous four presidents.

02:29:28.980 | How about that?

02:29:30.100 | That's fine.

02:29:31.100 | We can also send it to them too, because they're all just as much at fault.

02:29:33.660 | And they, most of them have all the same last names, but okay.

02:29:38.740 | Let me talk about them quickly, because we did a mug with them and I was really excited

02:29:42.060 | about it.

02:29:43.060 | Not because it was a mug, I'm a mug person, but I'm a mug obsessive.

02:29:47.060 | I'm obsessive about my mugs.

02:29:48.460 | What's your favorite mug?

02:29:50.260 | Currently it's mine right now, the one that I have with them.

02:29:52.500 | Okay.

02:29:53.500 | The GMT mug.

02:29:54.500 | What does it say on it?

02:29:55.500 | Do you want me to read what it says on it?

02:29:57.620 | Yeah, please.

02:29:58.620 | Okay.

02:29:59.620 | I was really excited about it because we created this with them, with GFDA.

02:30:04.620 | I found out about them because my husband's office, Atlas Neck Brace, he had his very

02:30:09.740 | first office, he had one of their prints done and it was their original like, do the f-ing

02:30:14.300 | work.

02:30:15.860 | And I was really excited about them once I found out because I'm like, well, f- is my

02:30:20.980 | middle name and I want to make sure that I am going to-- whoever I work with, I want

02:30:28.140 | to make sure that I'm working with people that I believe in, that I believe what they

02:30:32.500 | stand for and I just think they're brilliant.

02:30:36.340 | So I got on the phone with them and I said, "Hi, I would like you to sponsor my podcast."

02:30:42.020 | And they said, "Cool, what's your podcast?"

02:30:44.340 | And I was like, "It's called Brass in Unity Podcast and I want to work with you guys somewhere."

02:30:49.540 | And they're like, "Okay, so like what are you thinking?"

02:30:52.300 | And I said, "You know, I'm looking to do-- I would love one day to do something with

02:30:56.900 | you.

02:30:57.900 | I don't know what it is, but I would like it to be something."

02:31:00.420 | And they said, "You know, we do like-- we have this book, but we also have like shirts

02:31:03.660 | and mugs with our sayings on them and prints."

02:31:06.340 | And so I was thinking to myself, I was like, "Well, if I just did like a mug with them,

02:31:11.140 | well then I could, you know, that could work for what my company does, which is it's a

02:31:15.260 | jewelry company and sunglass company, but it could be like an add-on kind of deal."

02:31:19.500 | These guys are really good designers, I can already tell.

02:31:22.540 | Yeah, I knew you would like this, that's why I brought it.

02:31:24.380 | So I'm like, "Certain people would appreciate this."

02:31:27.180 | And so my whole thing, my like hashtag is #WorkHardHelpHarder, and that's the whole

02:31:34.580 | concept of what I do now.

02:31:35.860 | And so we did a mug and it's called #FuckingHelpSomebody, that's their like first tag.

02:31:40.380 | And then the rest is, "Kindness is a wealth that increases as it is given away.

02:31:47.460 | What you get in return isn't passed between hands but felt between hearts.

02:31:51.180 | It's precisely because you've been at the bottom that you can raise others up.

02:31:55.500 | It's because you've," sorry, I'm reading a photo here, "You've been lost in the dark,

02:32:00.260 | you can lead others to the light.

02:32:02.500 | It's because you've fought with yourself that you can bring peace to someone else.

02:32:07.900 | You now have the strength because you've once struggled.

02:32:10.420 | The best you have to come from is the fucking worst you've had to take."

02:32:16.940 | So this is the mug there, and we're sold out of them, we just got a bunch of-

02:32:20.660 | What does it say, "Fucking Help?"

02:32:22.300 | Fucking Help Somebody.

02:32:23.740 | Fucking Help Somebody.

02:32:25.020 | And so we did, they were so gracious enough to sit with me and be like, "What do you want

02:32:29.900 | the copy to be like?"

02:32:30.900 | And I said, "What do you think I want it to be?

02:32:33.340 | What would you, if you could write one for me, what would it be?"

02:32:35.060 | And they're like, "It's going to be around lifting people up."

02:32:37.340 | And I was like, "Okay, cool."

02:32:39.060 | And they're like, "Do you want 'fuck' in the title?"

02:32:40.380 | And I was like, "Every other word if we can have it."

02:32:43.460 | And they said, "We'll just do once."

02:32:44.660 | And I was like, "Okay, compromise."

02:32:46.540 | And so we came up with that copy and we put it on a mug and we're going to be doing a

02:32:49.940 | shirt with them.

02:32:51.940 | The whole thing to me was that embodied what I stand for now and the healing I've gotten

02:32:58.860 | to now and the point I've gotten to now in my life because that fucking sandpit almost

02:33:05.100 | broke me.

02:33:06.100 | Like, off the face of the earth broke me.

02:33:11.020 | First of all, can we go through the full journey of that in terms of your psychological development?

02:33:17.380 | Who were you before?

02:33:19.780 | Who were you after?

02:33:20.780 | Can you think about that?

02:33:22.460 | Like, what was your...

02:33:23.460 | If you had to put a brain on the table before and after and try to analyze it.

02:33:29.580 | Well, they both have CTE.

02:33:31.140 | So we know that they're both bruised and gray matter is a little dicey on them.

02:33:38.700 | And it may sound the same and it's not.

02:33:40.860 | So I'll try to explain it to you.

02:33:42.700 | Before that, don't you laugh because I know it's coming.

02:33:47.300 | I was even louder, even more obnoxious, even more outgoing.

02:33:52.540 | I know it's hard to believe.

02:33:54.100 | This is you humble and quiet right now.

02:33:57.460 | This is normal me now.

02:34:01.180 | This is who I am now and I love that.

02:34:03.020 | But who I was before, I was, you know, motocross, taekwondo, tomboy.

02:34:12.500 | I didn't know how to dress.

02:34:14.900 | I thought that if you just wore like the same jeans and t-shirt all the time, that was like

02:34:18.020 | acceptable behavior as a woman.

02:34:20.380 | I wore skate shoes.

02:34:21.940 | I went to a Catholic school that I refused to wear a skirt at.

02:34:25.580 | I wore pants.

02:34:26.580 | I played hacky sack.

02:34:27.820 | I was so into sports.

02:34:30.340 | I cut and split wood with my dad on weekends.

02:34:32.580 | We heated our house that way.

02:34:34.380 | I would go in the transport.

02:34:37.260 | I stayed out of trouble for the most part.

02:34:42.020 | I think I was a fairly good kid.

02:34:43.260 | I was pretty angry though for most of my teenage life after my coach.

02:34:46.740 | I lost my way a little bit there.

02:34:49.660 | I was just crazier.

02:34:52.660 | But happy?

02:34:54.420 | I don't know if I was happy.

02:34:55.500 | I'm realizing that now.

02:34:56.940 | I think I was, I think anger overtook who I was and I think that's why I was such an

02:35:01.940 | angry individual towards my parents when I was in high school.

02:35:04.620 | So parents, was it a little rough relationship with parents?

02:35:08.860 | I mean, yeah.

02:35:09.860 | I mean, my dad was gone a couple weeks at a time.

02:35:12.620 | So my mom, stay at home mom, had to handle me and my brother.

02:35:16.100 | We're both competitive athletes at the time by herself.

02:35:19.580 | And when you come home and you have a daughter that just calls you like a bitch to your face

02:35:23.260 | because she can't, she's being bullied so bad that she can't understand why, but also

02:35:29.140 | doesn't know how to fix it, but has no other outlet anymore to kind of get rid of it.

02:35:34.980 | I was not nice.

02:35:36.060 | I was a really mean person.

02:35:37.300 | I broke my mom.

02:35:38.300 | I remember the day she stopped yelling.

02:35:40.260 | That's the day I know I broke her.

02:35:41.260 | I broke her.

02:35:42.260 | Did you have a source of discipline in your life?

02:35:46.220 | Maybe your dad, somebody who says you're being a bitch?

02:35:51.300 | Who would call me?

02:35:52.300 | Yeah, yeah.

02:35:53.300 | Oh no, no, no, no.

02:35:54.300 | My parents were incredible.

02:35:55.300 | My dad came from a family of a bajillion kids who lived in a farm with no running water,

02:35:59.580 | with super...

02:36:01.100 | My dad was brash and abrupt.

02:36:03.680 | So I've caught myself doing that once in a while.

02:36:05.560 | So if I did one thing wrong, if he was just in a mood, I would know it.

02:36:11.500 | So you weren't...

02:36:12.500 | Okay.

02:36:13.500 | So that anger just took different forms?

02:36:15.820 | It took different forms, but it mostly would be directed at my mom because I know she would

02:36:19.860 | take it and that was who I had.

02:36:22.660 | I feel bad about it to the day.

02:36:25.740 | She listened to the Jocko podcast and so did my dad.

02:36:28.180 | My mom promised me she would never read my book because there's certain parts.

02:36:31.700 | My dad on my deployment, when I called him and told him some of the stuff, he started

02:36:35.380 | crying.

02:36:36.380 | My dad doesn't cry.

02:36:37.380 | He just said, "Please never tell your mother this.

02:36:40.540 | Don't do that to your mom."

02:36:41.660 | My mom, my grandfather came from Hungary.

02:36:44.540 | He escaped when the Nazis left, when the Soviets came in.

02:36:49.420 | He wasn't great as a dad.

02:36:53.300 | My mom went through a lot as a kid and that was because her dad was in the war.

02:36:59.860 | That was because her dad didn't know any better.

02:37:03.140 | And she knew she couldn't be like that.

02:37:06.500 | So her way would be yelling.

02:37:10.340 | And then I hit about 16 and I wore her down.

02:37:13.140 | I broke her.

02:37:14.140 | I shattered her ability to think that she could have any sort of relationship with me.

02:37:20.140 | You wouldn't want to have had a relationship with me.

02:37:23.900 | The funny thing is you've rediscovered that now.

02:37:26.500 | Are you guys close now?

02:37:29.380 | Yeah.

02:37:30.380 | She's so funny.

02:37:31.860 | She's coming out to help out again.

02:37:33.380 | She comes out to help out with Jack all the time.

02:37:38.100 | My dad, they're still truck drivers.

02:37:39.980 | They're still on the road.

02:37:40.980 | They team drive.

02:37:41.980 | They have their little dogs and they go and they do their thing.

02:37:45.100 | I've had that relationship now.

02:37:47.740 | It's still strenuous.

02:37:49.540 | When I'm having a hard time, she'll be the person I'll take it out on because I know

02:37:52.820 | she can take it even though I know I shouldn't.

02:37:55.280 | It's like she's my safe space to be like blah about everything.

02:38:00.580 | And she'll just be like, "Well, that's not nice."

02:38:01.940 | I'm like, "Well, you're not.

02:38:02.940 | Fuck it."

02:38:03.940 | And I'll take it out on her.

02:38:04.940 | She knows I don't mean it and I try.

02:38:07.940 | But for whatever reason, she just takes it and-

02:38:11.860 | And it brings it out of you.

02:38:14.380 | Can you describe sort of the various characteristics, the shape of your PTSD, the trauma, how the

02:38:21.020 | anger and hate took shape in you in the seconds, minutes, hours, months, years after the full

02:38:30.900 | trauma of all the things you've experienced in Afghanistan?

02:38:34.700 | It's funny because Draco asked me something and it's made me – I've really been thinking

02:38:38.060 | a lot about it.

02:38:39.060 | And he's like, "Do you think if somebody of a leadership would have just sat you down

02:38:45.220 | and said, 'Hey, Burns, what you're feeling is okay.

02:38:49.900 | What you're feeling is normal.

02:38:51.660 | What you're feeling is what happens when you're in something like this.

02:38:56.740 | Do you think you would be where you are?'"

02:38:58.140 | And I said, "Well, I thought about it and I'm like, you know, I don't think I would

02:39:02.340 | be because I wouldn't have been medicated out of my mind.

02:39:05.700 | I wasn't able to process anything because I was just given medication right from the

02:39:10.620 | get."

02:39:11.620 | So for me, what happened was once that light switch was off, I was sent back to Kandahar

02:39:16.340 | to – Once the operation was over, we flew back to Kandahar like with the Brits.

02:39:22.460 | And then because there was deaths and we lost people on that operation, I had to go to the

02:39:26.900 | British side for the next, I think, three or four days and recant word for word what

02:39:33.140 | happened to a British MP who hand wrote statements.

02:39:36.340 | But we had to do that on repeat to make sure we all had the same story.

02:39:38.980 | And so nobody shot anybody in the back.

02:39:42.500 | And so that I don't think is a great way to do that after an after action.

02:39:47.560 | After action reports happen, but I don't think beating a dead horse and having somebody repeat,

02:39:52.060 | repeat, repeat, and then just imprint more and more and more.

02:39:55.660 | I don't know that that is a great way of doing that.

02:39:59.300 | And especially from a perspective of what are they, liability almost like legal, that

02:40:05.220 | perspective as opposed to the full perspective.

02:40:10.140 | For people who don't know, one is the over medication that you had to undergo.

02:40:18.340 | And then the other is the social isolation in terms of – I mean, more than what Jaco,

02:40:25.020 | you just mentioned, you also kind of mentioned that just being with other soldiers you're

02:40:32.540 | close with, just sitting there in silence and just sitting in that shared understanding,

02:40:39.660 | even that in itself communicates like these feelings are normal.

02:40:45.540 | Like you don't have to talk.

02:40:46.540 | You don't have to talk at all.

02:40:48.620 | And you were robbed of that as well, essentially.

02:40:51.780 | Yeah, because I was borrowed, I think Jaco had a name for us when we get borrowed.

02:40:56.100 | It was like – there was like a – I don't know what they call us, but it's like when

02:40:59.220 | you take a person and you put them in another unit, there's a name for it.

02:41:01.660 | I don't remember what it was.

02:41:03.200 | You never see those people again.

02:41:05.380 | But because I was in Kandahar, the doctors gave me the medication because I think I was

02:41:10.420 | the one who said, "This isn't right.

02:41:12.020 | I don't feel right.

02:41:13.020 | This is wrong."

02:41:14.020 | Because when I got back that night, there was supposed to be somebody there to pick

02:41:17.220 | me up to take me to the other side of the base and no one showed.

02:41:20.300 | So I humped on my kit back to the Canada house and I remember getting in the shower.

02:41:26.660 | And the rule was quick fucking showers.

02:41:29.860 | No water.

02:41:32.660 | I must have sat on that floor of that shower for half an hour, 45 minutes.

02:41:37.980 | I just held myself and cried.

02:41:39.740 | I didn't even know why I was crying.

02:41:41.460 | I just knew I needed to cry.

02:41:44.220 | I still this day.

02:41:48.220 | And when they sent me back to the FOB, they sent me back with all this medication after

02:41:53.700 | spending that time with the Brits.

02:41:57.900 | And they put me back on the guns, medicated it on my fucking tree.

02:42:01.340 | I almost shot someone.

02:42:02.740 | But they didn't tell my staff that I was on meds.

02:42:07.060 | So when the artillery gun was going off and I didn't run to the gun and I was still asleep

02:42:11.340 | inside the tent with the gun beside my head, they didn't know I was just drugged.

02:42:16.940 | They just thought I was fucking off somewhere, hanging out with some Americans.

02:42:20.180 | They just thought I wasn't doing any of what I should be doing.

02:42:24.060 | And then I remember the moment my sergeant, we did a night shoot and he's so funny because

02:42:28.900 | he called me, goes, "Ah, fuck, Burns, I remember this.

02:42:32.460 | Yes, you were standing there with me and I look at you and go, 'Hey, Burns, are you

02:42:36.700 | OK?

02:42:37.700 | Because your eyes are all fucked.'"

02:42:42.380 | And I looked at Sergeant LeBlanc and I just remember going, "Yeah, I'm good."

02:42:46.820 | And he's like, "I still remember that."

02:42:51.100 | And I'm like, "I know."

02:42:52.100 | And he goes, "They never tell me anything.

02:42:54.340 | Fuck, Burns, I did not know the drugs you were on."

02:42:57.140 | And as I was on all of them, he goes, "I know I walk in, you show me the bottles.

02:43:01.100 | Ah, fuck, Burns, you should not have been there."

02:43:05.340 | I guarantee he sounds just like that.

02:43:06.940 | You'll find out.

02:43:07.940 | He's brilliant.

02:43:08.940 | He's brilliant.

02:43:09.940 | Yeah, so what, I mean, I suppose this is a lazy way of dealing with trauma.

02:43:18.820 | And it's for the military in some sense.

02:43:21.580 | If you don't have a good program in place, this makes sense.

02:43:24.940 | But you should have a good program in place.

02:43:26.500 | Just like you said, on the mental prep side.

02:43:30.020 | Just any prep.

02:43:32.060 | Like training people, training people on the, I suppose to, I guess, train the fact that

02:43:38.140 | you're going to have somebody close to you blow up.

02:43:42.140 | Like you have to probably visualize that.

02:43:45.020 | You have to think through that.

02:43:46.020 | You have to have a process of how to deal with something like that.

02:43:50.180 | With that kind of trauma.

02:43:51.180 | And then that's it.

02:43:52.180 | So what's in the toolbox of a doctor's colleague?

02:43:54.180 | Exactly.

02:43:55.180 | I mean, and it's not like weakness, it's actually strength.

02:43:58.140 | It's like, you have to be mentally strong enough to process that.

02:44:04.060 | That probably takes a lot of training, but it's a great training.

02:44:08.660 | It's well worth it to protect your investment training.

02:44:12.860 | Right.

02:44:13.860 | That's a very cold but correct way to put it.

02:44:16.780 | I mean, it's cold.

02:44:17.780 | I thought you would appreciate the coldness of the way I articulated that.

02:44:22.380 | Well, yeah.

02:44:23.380 | I mean, I'm of two minds on this.

02:44:25.580 | I don't, I sometimes wonder what I would be like as a soldier, actually.

02:44:32.500 | I don't know.

02:44:33.500 | Because I love country and I love all the things you're mentioning.

02:44:36.540 | Like I could see myself probably dying for my country and also enjoying the skill of

02:44:42.060 | it.

02:44:43.060 | The very like OCD.

02:44:45.580 | Be very proficient.

02:44:48.100 | Yeah.

02:44:49.100 | But then also the human side, I fall in love with people.

02:44:53.340 | I fall in love with everything.

02:44:54.540 | So I don't know.

02:44:57.100 | I suppose you have to shut off the part of your brain when you're executing a mission

02:45:01.500 | that cares about other humans outside your close knit group.

02:45:09.940 | There's no time for philosophical thinking.

02:45:11.860 | I don't know.

02:45:12.860 | I suppose that's why it's better to be young.

02:45:16.180 | Young and dumb.

02:45:17.180 | You're not necessarily dumb.

02:45:19.260 | It's just like you were over that energy of excitement of proficiency and excellence is

02:45:27.620 | just higher than it is later in life.

02:45:30.740 | You're not dumb.

02:45:32.660 | I was not dumb, but I was naive, uneducated, not well trained and had an arrogance because

02:45:46.620 | we were told we were the fucking shit.

02:45:50.020 | You're amazing.

02:45:51.020 | Okay, I'm amazing.

02:45:52.780 | So I wonder, do they think if we do mental training-

02:45:56.260 | That makes you weak.

02:45:57.540 | Do you think the military thinks that makes you weak?

02:46:00.380 | Yes.

02:46:01.380 | And the reason I can say that is because it's obvious in the way that they handle it now.

02:46:05.820 | So if a soldier says, "Hey, I'm really struggling with that last op we were on, man.

02:46:09.620 | It's just really, it's getting to me.

02:46:11.300 | I'm having a hard time sleeping."

02:46:13.220 | They're going to go, "Okay, well, how hard of a time sleeping are you having?"

02:46:19.780 | And then you get that and you go, "Oh no, it's not that bad.

02:46:23.540 | I don't need anything for it.

02:46:24.700 | I'm just like once in a while I'm losing some sleep."

02:46:26.340 | They're like, "Okay."

02:46:27.460 | Because you know that pen moves, it's all getting written down and then you're degged

02:46:31.460 | red, which means you're not deploying again.

02:46:34.100 | And then you're not able to do the thing you love the most with the people you love the

02:46:36.660 | most.

02:46:37.660 | Right.

02:46:38.660 | But also, this is really difficult.

02:46:40.940 | And I'd love to talk to you about PTSD.

02:46:43.580 | Okay.

02:46:44.580 | Sorry, yes, I keep going off.

02:46:47.580 | No, please.

02:46:50.860 | So I'm hoping to launch a company in the engineering space.

02:47:01.260 | And I currently lead a few people.

02:47:05.140 | And it's always this kind of, like how much are you supposed to push people?

02:47:11.020 | Because people are, everyone is weak and lazy.

02:47:14.340 | Are you quoting our text messages from earlier?

02:47:17.580 | Yeah, exactly.

02:47:18.580 | Exactly.

02:47:19.580 | All I have is just quotes from you.

02:47:21.300 | That's okay.

02:47:22.300 | Tells me how much we've spoken in the past week, poor soul.

02:47:27.540 | I don't know what to do because sometimes people are really struggling.

02:47:31.580 | Really struggling in a way, it's the Goggins thing.

02:47:37.980 | Where's the line to where you're actually breaking the human being versus where you're

02:47:43.020 | breaking them at the places where they will grow back stronger?

02:47:48.700 | And that line is tricky to truly understand.

02:47:52.300 | I think the military errors on the side of like, they push them beyond all limits.

02:47:59.420 | Physical limits.

02:48:00.780 | Physical, but mental, they need to respect the mental more.

02:48:03.900 | They fuck with the brain a little bit.

02:48:06.100 | I mean, in basic training, they like scream in your face and to see who's going to crack.

02:48:09.660 | And they put you on sleep deprivation to see who's weak enough that they can't handle sleep

02:48:13.980 | depth.

02:48:14.980 | They do stuff to you.

02:48:16.300 | Like I know if you're a downed pilot, you have to go and you have to do this training

02:48:20.380 | and you'll get captured.

02:48:22.300 | It's like this whole thing and they fuck with your brain.

02:48:26.300 | But there's a line.

02:48:27.900 | There's a line.

02:48:29.660 | My issue is go to the line, cross the line, give them the tools to come back from the

02:48:37.300 | line.

02:48:38.300 | Right.

02:48:39.300 | Yeah.

02:48:40.300 | We don't do that.

02:48:41.300 | We don't.

02:48:42.300 | We know there's PTSD.

02:48:43.380 | We know there's such a thing.

02:48:44.940 | We understand there's anxiety and depression.

02:48:46.500 | We understand there's major depressive disorder.

02:48:48.100 | We understand that there are precursors.

02:48:51.100 | There are signs and symptoms.

02:48:52.360 | We understand that.

02:48:54.300 | So why are we not building enough of a toolkit, whether that be, I'm not talking medication,

02:49:00.820 | I'm talking, it sounds woo woo, but fucking trust me, it works.

02:49:06.220 | I'm talking meditation.

02:49:08.220 | I'm talking yoga.

02:49:09.780 | I'm talking about peer group support.

02:49:11.940 | I'm talking about if you go to your doctor and report this, you're not automatically

02:49:16.780 | going to be losing your job.

02:49:18.940 | Why aren't we giving the proper tools and the education needed?

02:49:22.320 | These things are not difficult to teach.

02:49:24.720 | They don't take a lot of time.

02:49:25.720 | They don't take a lot of money.

02:49:27.540 | The only time it takes a lot of money is when you want to medicate.

02:49:30.420 | We don't need to medicate you yet.

02:49:32.480 | You only need to be medicated if you're a danger to someone else or yourself.

02:49:35.380 | And most of the time, because of the way the system is set, you'll lie about it through

02:49:39.420 | your fucking teeth just so that no one touches you.

02:49:42.660 | - So from the perspective of the military, do you think you can still be a bad motherfucker

02:49:47.660 | and do all the mental work?

02:49:50.140 | - Yes.

02:49:51.140 | Some of the baddest dudes I've ever known are like, I gotta go to yoga.

02:49:55.780 | I gotta go meditate.

02:49:57.780 | I go do Aya with those guys.

02:49:59.420 | Why?

02:50:00.420 | Because they know that that's not okay to be like that in your life.

02:50:04.980 | - Can you answer the ridiculously big question of what is PTSD?

02:50:10.140 | Do you understand the basic characteristics of it?

02:50:13.820 | Is there universal characteristics from your own unique experience, from what you've understood

02:50:20.460 | about it?

02:50:21.460 | - Yeah, of course there are.

02:50:22.460 | So there's the basic things that a doctor looks for when they're diagnosing PTSD.

02:50:27.420 | I'm not a doctor.

02:50:28.420 | Let me make that fucking clear.

02:50:30.060 | But there are things that you look for.

02:50:32.280 | You look for insomnia.

02:50:34.020 | You look for anger and aggression.

02:50:36.060 | You look for people to fly off the handle.

02:50:38.220 | You look for avoidance.

02:50:40.660 | You can tell in somebody's body.

02:50:42.800 | People who can't sleep, if you can't sleep, you know that after a certain amount of time,

02:50:47.140 | they're just going to deteriorate.

02:50:49.500 | You know, sleeplessness triggers.

02:50:52.340 | - When you say avoidance, do you mean-

02:50:54.380 | - Avoidance.

02:50:55.380 | So like when I first got back to Canada, I avoided everybody that was Middle Eastern

02:50:58.960 | at all costs.

02:51:00.760 | No matter how much of a difference it made in my day, if I had to not go somewhere for

02:51:04.400 | one of the greatest events of my life, I wouldn't have went.

02:51:07.640 | - But isn't there some aspect there combined with the triggers?

02:51:11.500 | Maybe it's wise to avoid triggers even for your own personal health, well-being.

02:51:16.040 | - Well, that's it.

02:51:17.040 | For me, that was one of my triggers.

02:51:19.020 | So you have triggers.

02:51:20.680 | And then you also deal with things like sounds and smells.

02:51:24.480 | You can tell.

02:51:25.480 | You can tell when someone's triggered.

02:51:26.640 | A lot of vets don't like fireworks.

02:51:28.120 | It's like, "Okay, well, remove yourself from the situation."

02:51:31.640 | So there's other things within PTSD that kind of rear its head that with PTSD kind of attach

02:51:39.640 | other things.

02:51:40.640 | So like when I was diagnosed with PTSD, I think it was like four years later, I was

02:51:43.560 | diagnosed with major depressive disorder.

02:51:46.200 | And that was kind of a compilation of things that was just like a shit show there.

02:51:50.800 | - What is major depressive disorder?

02:51:52.160 | - Good question.

02:51:53.160 | - Is there an answer?

02:51:56.080 | - I don't have one.

02:51:57.080 | I was told I had it.

02:51:58.880 | - Okay.

02:51:59.880 | So I mean, what does your mind go through?

02:52:05.200 | Where are the places-

02:52:06.280 | - That my mind goes?

02:52:08.080 | - Your mind goes.

02:52:09.080 | - Like the dark places when I get triggered and when it was like really bad?

02:52:12.960 | - Yeah.

02:52:13.960 | - Okay.

02:52:14.960 | - Yeah.

02:52:15.960 | So you thought about suicide.

02:52:17.720 | - Every minute of every day.

02:52:20.180 | - What are the pros of suicide in your mind at that time?

02:52:23.560 | - At that time, the pros were no one has to deal with this anymore.

02:52:28.840 | I don't have to feel this way anymore.

02:52:31.120 | I'm a burden to my family.

02:52:33.120 | I'm a burden to the military system.

02:52:35.840 | I'm weak.

02:52:36.840 | I'm a bad soldier.

02:52:39.120 | I didn't do my job.

02:52:40.960 | I don't deserve to be alive.

02:52:42.320 | I don't deserve Veterans Affairs support.

02:52:45.180 | I don't deserve my, my parents don't deserve to watch me go through this.

02:52:49.340 | The guy I was dating didn't deserve to put up with the bullshit I put him through.

02:52:54.160 | The people who drive with me in cars didn't deserve to almost hit medians because I swerved

02:52:59.680 | because of a piece of garbage.

02:53:03.020 | People didn't deserve my racist outbursts.

02:53:05.220 | People didn't deserve, people didn't, I did not deserve to be breathing anymore.

02:53:10.320 | I should have died there and I wished I died there.

02:53:15.100 | - So self-hate there too.

02:53:17.220 | - Oh, just a moniker.

02:53:19.220 | - Not even a big deal though, right?

02:53:23.420 | - That's at the core of it.

02:53:24.780 | That's like this.

02:53:27.460 | So how do you escape from that place?

02:53:30.380 | How do you overcome that, those, that depression essentially at the core of the desire to kill

02:53:35.900 | yourself?

02:53:37.500 | What basic principles, I mean, we could talk about ayahuasca, but basic principles of like

02:53:44.900 | literally like how do you escape that moment?

02:53:48.420 | Yeah, previous to any of that I did from 2009.

02:53:52.180 | I got out, so I was medically, I was 3B medical honorable discharge in 2011, May 23rd, 2011.

02:53:58.420 | So I left the military then.

02:54:00.100 | And so it's been 10 years, just over 10 years.

02:54:02.740 | Oh my God, it's 10 and a half years.

02:54:04.500 | I just realized that right now.

02:54:06.060 | Oh my God.

02:54:07.060 | - Happy anniversary.

02:54:08.060 | - Thanks, man.

02:54:09.060 | Awesome.

02:54:10.060 | So I've been out for 10 years and I would say the reason I didn't kill myself for the

02:54:14.980 | longest time was the individual I was dating.

02:54:18.180 | That was straight across the board, that was it.

02:54:22.260 | For me, there was no relief for about six years of the thought of just kill yourself,

02:54:31.340 | kill yourself, kill yourself.

02:54:32.340 | It's easier if you just do it.

02:54:33.340 | Like that voice was so strong for that long, there was really no relief.

02:54:36.780 | What there was though was implementation of different medications, realizing they weren't

02:54:44.180 | working, trying different things, getting myself to a point where I could leave my house

02:54:49.540 | comfortably ish again and I wasn't triggered, which then allowed me to travel, which then

02:54:54.980 | allowed me to slowly try to go back to school, which by the way, it was a very bad idea.

02:54:59.900 | That was a bad idea.

02:55:01.300 | That was bad.

02:55:02.300 | I went too early.

02:55:05.100 | They started practicing active shooter drills in our school.

02:55:08.180 | It was bad.

02:55:09.580 | My professors understood.

02:55:11.660 | - School is full of triggers, it turns out.

02:55:14.140 | - It is when you live in Vancouver.

02:55:16.980 | - There's a theme to this conversation about your love for Canada.

02:55:20.900 | - Look at me.

02:55:21.900 | I love my fucking country.

02:55:24.140 | I am one of the most patriotic people you will meet in it.

02:55:26.740 | I think Canada is one of the greatest fucking places on the earth.

02:55:31.740 | I think in the past two years or three years, I have seen what I loved so deeply, so proudly

02:55:38.860 | preached about so...

02:55:50.380 | I'm so proud of what I did there.

02:55:55.020 | And I'm so proud of the country I got to represent because I was good at my job.

02:56:04.260 | - Being great at your job for a country you love, you just don't like some of the politicians

02:56:08.900 | some of the time.

02:56:09.900 | - It's not even the politicians anymore.

02:56:12.060 | It's the state of the country.

02:56:14.620 | I'm a second class citizen in my own country right now.

02:56:17.740 | I can't travel to see my parents within my own country.

02:56:21.220 | I'm not allowed to step foot in my son's school.

02:56:24.720 | I am not allowed to go to a restaurant with my family.

02:56:29.100 | I'm not allowed to leave Canada without, I told you all the stuff I have to do to get

02:56:34.460 | here.

02:56:35.460 | To even get home, I have to do the same.

02:56:38.300 | I'm watched by the RCMP.

02:56:43.020 | Neighbors rat you out.

02:56:44.900 | - So for somebody who fought for their country.

02:56:47.300 | - I hate it.

02:56:48.300 | It makes me so sad.

02:56:49.300 | - To be, to go through this process of what many consider to be power overreach by government

02:56:55.860 | in the face of this particular pandemic.

02:57:00.700 | - I always knew I had a hard time with, I loved Canada.

02:57:03.580 | The day I got spit on when I got home was not ideal.

02:57:06.140 | - You got spit on.

02:57:11.180 | - But the thing was, I knew long enough that if I just put one foot in front of the other

02:57:17.280 | and kept going to treatment and kept doing what my doctor told me to do, that I could

02:57:23.580 | pull out of this if I tried.

02:57:26.980 | I was told that I could do anything in my life.

02:57:29.820 | It didn't matter.

02:57:31.460 | As long as I tried.

02:57:32.460 | - Was trying really hard?

02:57:36.100 | - Trying was harder than breathing.

02:57:41.700 | It was exhausting.

02:57:42.980 | It was, I would be awake for like half a day and every minute of that day, I'd just stare

02:57:50.780 | at the wall and just want to kill myself.

02:57:53.900 | - That's what I've had people close to me who suffer from depression.

02:57:58.060 | It was like, it's unclear how to escape, but it's clear that you need to try something.

02:58:06.260 | They didn't want to even try.

02:58:07.940 | - Because you have no try in you.

02:58:10.940 | - I'm watching a person who has no energy essentially to do any of it.

02:58:16.140 | It's so hopeless, but you have to try.

02:58:19.660 | I think some of that has to do with all the different physical feats you had to do.

02:58:24.420 | When you have nothing left, you still keep going.

02:58:27.420 | That same weird drive when you're empty, you still keep going.

02:58:33.580 | - I wanted to give up.

02:58:34.580 | I tried.

02:58:36.740 | I did.

02:58:37.740 | I'm really lucky because it really was the one person that I'd wake up to every day and

02:58:44.220 | he'd be like, "Hey, so that new drug you're on, fun fact.

02:58:47.980 | If you don't go to sleep right away, you talk.

02:58:49.860 | When you talk, you just don't fucking stop.

02:58:52.900 | You go off about everything that's horrible."

02:58:55.620 | I'm like, "What are you talking about?

02:58:57.420 | No, last night, yeah, you took that pill.

02:58:59.220 | Guess what?

02:59:00.220 | You just didn't stop."

02:59:01.220 | I'm like, "I have no recollection."

02:59:02.780 | I'd get up in the middle of the night.

02:59:04.540 | I would cook food on a stove and it would be, "Hopefully we don't die," because I would

02:59:11.620 | have no recollection because of the drugs.

02:59:14.820 | The idea that when people say, "Well, just pull yourself out of depression."

02:59:20.340 | I'm a highly motivated individual.

02:59:25.880 | The idea of lifting my head up to turnover was daunting.

02:59:32.660 | - It's terrifying.

02:59:33.660 | It's like for somebody as driven as you to completely lose all of that for moments of

02:59:39.860 | time, for stretches of time.

02:59:42.380 | Fuck.

02:59:43.620 | My mind is a motherfucker.

02:59:45.740 | - It is.

02:59:46.740 | - I can't.

02:59:49.140 | For somebody like, I can't.

02:59:52.780 | I'm so grateful for people like you to be able to pull out of that.

02:59:56.540 | I've been always the opposite.

03:00:00.340 | I've been very fortunate to just always find joy and meaning in everything, even the stupidest

03:00:07.140 | shit.

03:00:08.140 | - Can I ask you something?

03:00:09.140 | - Yeah.

03:00:10.140 | - Was that just because of how you were raised, where you came from?

03:00:13.900 | Had nothing to do with that?

03:00:16.900 | - No.

03:00:17.900 | It was my own person.

03:00:19.340 | I honestly think it's the biology, this, because I had my parents, I'm very cognizant, have

03:00:27.660 | had nothing to do with that.

03:00:30.700 | They never understood this little engine I had.

03:00:33.860 | I always like just sitting, looking at people and just enjoying how amazing they are and

03:00:37.980 | just looking at, I think it's straight up just biology, whatever the neurochemistry

03:00:43.420 | is.

03:00:44.420 | I'm just getting a good drug.

03:00:46.220 | - You're just getting hits.

03:00:47.780 | - Yeah, I'm getting hits all the time from stupid shit.

03:00:50.780 | - I love that.

03:00:51.780 | - And it doesn't, and yeah, so that's why I can be, sometimes I'll talk very self-critically

03:00:58.580 | about myself, because that's almost makes me, it makes life more fun, it challenges

03:01:03.660 | stuff, it makes you more productive, but ultimately it's because I'm getting that.

03:01:06.860 | - You're getting the hits.

03:01:07.860 | - Yeah, I'm getting the good stuff all the time.

03:01:09.700 | - I wondered about that.

03:01:11.140 | I was thinking about that when I listened to you for the first time on, I think when

03:01:14.300 | you were on Rogan for the first time, water shouldn't do that.

03:01:17.300 | - Oh, it's not water.

03:01:19.180 | You shouldn't trust.

03:01:20.180 | See, this is the thing with the Russians.

03:01:21.180 | - It's Dasani, it's done by Coca-Cola.

03:01:22.180 | - Well, no, I had it resealed.

03:01:26.140 | - I mean, I didn't go that far, but now I'm really starting to question what's in this,

03:01:30.980 | but that's okay.

03:01:31.980 | - If I offered you tea, you should really be worried, but yeah.

03:01:35.140 | - Why?

03:01:36.140 | - I mean, that's a--

03:01:37.140 | - You don't drink tea?

03:01:38.140 | - No, that's the more famous way that Russians usually assassinate, they put poison in the

03:01:43.220 | tea, because a lot of Russians drink tea and, you know.

03:01:46.580 | - All right, well, I mean, there is a blade right there, so.

03:01:50.380 | - I thought it was somebody, Andrew Heuermann gave that to me.

03:01:54.580 | He's also a good, I don't know if you know him, but he's a cool--

03:01:57.020 | - I don't know all the people you know, I'm new.

03:01:59.380 | I'm new here, Lex.

03:02:00.380 | You're gonna have to--

03:02:01.380 | - I'll send instructions.

03:02:02.380 | - Yeah, you're gonna have to send, what does my friend say?

03:02:04.420 | He says he's an ex-operator and he'll message me once in a while and ask me something and

03:02:08.100 | I'll answer back.

03:02:09.100 | If I answer in the correct way, he'll go, "Candidate meets expectations."

03:02:14.260 | I'm like, "Fuck you, I'm not a candidate of anything."

03:02:16.820 | - Yeah.

03:02:17.820 | - Yeah, but yeah, it's essentially it.

03:02:19.260 | - Well, Andrew Heuermann is kind of a celebrity.

03:02:21.620 | Andrew, you should check her out.

03:02:24.340 | You're an interesting person, you guys should connect.

03:02:25.940 | He's a Stanford neuroscientist, was I think the number one podcast in the world in health.

03:02:32.780 | He's a--

03:02:33.780 | - Does he have on the beard?

03:02:34.780 | Does he have a beard thing going?

03:02:37.260 | - Yeah, I don't look at--

03:02:39.260 | - I'm knocking him down too.

03:02:41.180 | Does he have a beard?

03:02:43.060 | - I don't look at people's visual appearance, man.

03:02:45.180 | - You're full of shit.

03:02:46.180 | - No, I don't.

03:02:47.180 | Does he have a beard?

03:02:48.180 | I think he has a beard, yeah.

03:02:49.180 | - I think I know who you're talking about.

03:02:50.180 | - He's a very handsome gentleman.

03:02:54.020 | - I think I know who you're talking about 'cause I think I was looking at his stuff this morning.

03:02:56.540 | - Yeah, exactly.

03:02:57.540 | - No, seriously, on Instagram.

03:02:58.540 | No, no, no, okay.

03:02:59.540 | - You probably know him.

03:03:00.540 | - Yeah, I mean, I don't know him.

03:03:02.020 | - But he's very humble, very intelligent.

03:03:04.780 | Probably would understand, I'm very kind of poetic and so on.

03:03:09.580 | He's probably the most rigorous reference machine of science.

03:03:16.820 | He's a legit scientist.

03:03:18.260 | He knows every paper and everything has to do with the mind and neuroscience.

03:03:22.340 | - He would be fascinating.

03:03:23.340 | - Performance, yeah, yeah.

03:03:24.340 | He's much more, he's much more actually, and the focus is always on how to help.

03:03:31.980 | How that helps people, so like protocols.

03:03:36.500 | Here's what you need to do to get better sleep.

03:03:38.500 | - Yes, yes, I know who it is.

03:03:39.500 | - And he's like, here's like a thousand papers.

03:03:41.500 | And he just goes like, hammers nonstop.

03:03:47.620 | He spent a week in Austin.

03:03:48.820 | He's coming back and spending a couple weeks in Austin.

03:03:52.460 | We just hang out and it's like, you think that was like a teleprompter or something,

03:03:57.020 | the way he does his podcast.

03:03:58.260 | - He's just.

03:03:59.260 | - Yeah, but in person, he's the same.

03:04:00.860 | He's like, all right, this is intense, but I like it.

03:04:05.180 | - I like that.

03:04:06.180 | - Anyway, why did we bring him up?

03:04:08.820 | I don't know.

03:04:09.820 | - We brought up knives.

03:04:10.820 | We were talking about.

03:04:11.820 | - He gave it to me.

03:04:12.820 | That's right, PTSD.

03:04:13.820 | - Yeah, and then you're talking about poison and how you were poisoning me.

03:04:16.060 | And I said knives, we were talking about Russians.

03:04:18.460 | And then we were kind of talking about the brain and PTSD.

03:04:22.220 | I think for most people though, the biggest thing when they see somebody who's struggling

03:04:27.860 | with PTSD, their first reaction is how do I help them?

03:04:32.060 | Well, often just saying, hey, I'm here when you're ready to talk and you're going through

03:04:36.860 | something whether you want to talk about it right now or not, I'm here.

03:04:39.740 | And then keeping a close eye on behaviors.

03:04:42.620 | When you start to see somebody having four, five, six beers at night, let's ask why.

03:04:50.380 | When you see somebody, you can tell they're not sleeping.

03:04:52.420 | Hey, buddy, you sleeping?

03:04:53.420 | No, I'm just not sleeping.

03:04:55.900 | Instead of just going, oh, that sucks.

03:04:57.980 | Hey, why aren't you sleeping?

03:05:00.380 | You having nightmares?

03:05:01.380 | Are you just having insomnia?

03:05:03.900 | Are you just eating sugar before bed?

03:05:06.900 | Care enough about your people to just ask one follow-up question.

03:05:10.740 | Because often that's really all it takes.

03:05:12.780 | Because then somebody goes, somebody cares enough to ask.

03:05:15.180 | And then they'll just.

03:05:17.100 | - Yeah, just showing that you care.

03:05:20.140 | - Honestly, grocery store lineup.

03:05:22.580 | I'll say, oh, I like your dress.

03:05:24.500 | Oh, thank you.

03:05:25.500 | And then I'll go, how's your day going?

03:05:26.900 | They're like, actually, it's going all right.

03:05:30.380 | It's not as great as I thought it would be today, but I'm doing okay.

03:05:33.140 | But they'll give you, instead of, good you, instead of just giving you this fake false

03:05:36.940 | reaction, if you just show any effort in somebody that you care at all about someone's well-being,

03:05:44.100 | you'd be amazed, amazed.

03:05:45.100 | - Yeah, and some of that is just energy.

03:05:49.140 | The reason, honestly, I moved to Austin is some lady at a Walmart said, honey, you look

03:05:54.420 | handsome in that suit.

03:05:57.260 | But the care that she put in that, she just looked at me.

03:06:00.420 | It wasn't hitting at me or something.

03:06:02.460 | She was like, the love.

03:06:03.460 | - Just love.

03:06:04.460 | - Yeah, and I was like, oh, okay, I'm moving here, I guess.

03:06:07.620 | - That's so funny you said that, because I told my husband this happened, and it threw

03:06:12.300 | me off.

03:06:13.300 | There was an older lady at a store, and this was right after we got a brief period of no

03:06:18.900 | masks in Canada.

03:06:20.500 | Just like a brief.

03:06:21.500 | - It was like five minutes.

03:06:22.500 | - Oh, yeah, it was not even that.

03:06:23.940 | And I had come from an interview or something, so I actually had makeup on that day, and

03:06:28.660 | I had my hat, and I was just at the grocery store.

03:06:31.180 | She walked up to me, and she got real close, and I didn't know what was happening.

03:06:34.260 | And she got closer, and then she just grabbed my arm like this.

03:06:37.860 | She goes, I love that hat on you.

03:06:40.600 | And I looked at her, and I was like, she touched me during a pandemic, and she's old.

03:06:43.860 | Oh, my God, I love you, too.

03:06:45.180 | Thank you so much.

03:06:46.180 | I said, you're so amazing.

03:06:47.660 | And I just sparked a conversation.

03:06:49.100 | - Yeah, that's amazing.

03:06:50.100 | - It doesn't take much.

03:06:51.860 | - Yeah, at that little moment of genuine care.

03:06:55.340 | Maybe you can tell me actually the journey you took with ayahuasca.

03:07:01.780 | That's such a fascinating journey.

03:07:03.060 | So letting your mind go to different places in order to rediscover itself.

03:07:09.700 | What is it, like a rocket ship to somewhere else so you can land in a better place?

03:07:13.500 | - Here, how about I show you something that'll help your brain, okay?

03:07:18.180 | This is not for you to lift up either and show on the camera, 'cause there's leaves

03:07:21.140 | in it, like there's leaves in some pages.

03:07:22.860 | So just don't dump it out, 'cause it'll go all fucking everywhere.

03:07:25.940 | - Got it, got it.

03:07:26.940 | Instructions, I like this.

03:07:27.940 | - Yeah, well, you feel like you need them.

03:07:33.300 | Ayahuasca is a beautiful psychedelic that we have been so blessed to have on this earth

03:07:39.500 | that we have so underutilized and could be, I don't wanna say saving humanity, but just,

03:07:45.460 | you ever hear that saying, if you could just give everyone mushrooms one time, the world

03:07:48.700 | would be a better place?

03:07:50.140 | - Okay, so psilocybin is, I use for microdosing for depression.

03:07:57.620 | I did ayahuasca in January of this year, and I've, at that point, that was the last time

03:08:04.780 | I was on a pharmaceutical drug.

03:08:06.420 | I've been off everything ever since, 10 different ones.

03:08:09.980 | So if you backtrack a little bit, just so you'll understand, my doctor gave me the opportunity,

03:08:15.620 | Greg Passi, he is a veteran himself, served in Bosnia and Rwanda.

03:08:20.980 | He's a medic, he's a colonel, I think colonel lieutenant, he's gonna fucking punch me right

03:08:24.460 | in the face for that.

03:08:25.460 | He's high up officer.

03:08:28.260 | He's one of my saviors.

03:08:29.260 | He's like my old, I call him my old man.

03:08:31.220 | He's my favorite, and rides a Harley, like that kind of guy.

03:08:35.340 | - Nice.

03:08:36.340 | - Yeah, and he said, "You know, Kels, this is, I just don't, I was hitting a wall.

03:08:41.300 | I wasn't getting any better."

03:08:42.300 | And he goes, "How do you feel about cannabis?"

03:08:45.660 | And I was like, "I don't feel good about it because family histories or my parents always

03:08:51.380 | told me if I smoked weed, you know, it's just this perception."

03:08:54.060 | He goes, "I just want you to try it.

03:08:56.660 | Just, would you be willing to try it?"

03:08:58.340 | So I was like, "Okay."

03:08:59.340 | So I was willing to try it.

03:09:01.580 | Then I started going to these groups called Women Grow and learning about it, and then

03:09:06.540 | I realized, "Oh, I'm starting to sleep a little bit.

03:09:12.620 | I don't feel groggy in the morning.

03:09:14.780 | I don't feel like a bag of shit, and I also want to have a baby one day, and I can't have

03:09:18.460 | all this stuff in my system."

03:09:21.060 | So I started using cannabis, and then I started using it as a main medication, and I'd been

03:09:27.700 | using it now since 2014, got married, 15, 16, Jack was born in '16.

03:09:35.140 | 15.

03:09:36.140 | 2015, I started using it, and then I've been using it ever since.

03:09:41.100 | And that was the way I got off of all the pharmaceutical drugs, was keeping cannabis

03:09:46.500 | the constant, finding the right strains for me, and then slowly, with the doctor's advice

03:09:51.740 | and under supervision, going off of those medications.

03:09:56.420 | Cut to January of 2021.

03:09:59.580 | I had hit a really bad spell last year, and the year before was a really big struggle.

03:10:04.700 | I almost lost my company last year due to COVID, just like many, many millions of people

03:10:09.820 | did.

03:10:11.860 | And instead of me just laying down and taking it, I pivoted really quickly and called the

03:10:17.820 | factory and said, "Do you guys make masks?"

03:10:19.460 | They're like, "Yeah, we're making masks."

03:10:21.140 | I was like, "I'm going to call the Canadian government.

03:10:24.020 | I'm going to get my medical license, and I'm going to try to sell them masks and see if

03:10:27.660 | we can do that."

03:10:28.660 | And so we did that.

03:10:29.660 | We did 200,000 masks for Ontario hospitals, which ironically went to my entire community

03:10:37.860 | I was born and raised in.

03:10:38.860 | So it was really weird, and that kept us afloat long enough.

03:10:44.620 | We lost 200 retail locations that I all single-handedly spent five years going door-to-door getting

03:10:50.180 | myself.

03:10:51.180 | And we should say this is Brass & Unity Jewelry.

03:10:54.340 | Yeah, the jewelry and sunglass company.

03:10:57.260 | And I started-

03:10:58.260 | Speaking of which.

03:10:59.260 | Lexx looks like a serial killer.

03:11:00.260 | Lexx looks like a Brass & Unity sunglasses.

03:11:01.260 | I mean, you do look good in them.

03:11:02.260 | I won't lie to you.

03:11:03.260 | Thank you.

03:11:04.260 | Well, okay.

03:11:05.260 | We'll call them the Lexx.

03:11:06.260 | Those are now called the Lexx.

03:11:07.260 | Fuck the Gunner.

03:11:08.260 | They're the Lexx.

03:11:09.260 | I like it.

03:11:10.260 | The Lexx.

03:11:11.260 | I'm jumping around here, but just bear with me.

03:11:14.620 | My doctor suggested art therapy.

03:11:16.100 | Dr. Pasi did.

03:11:17.220 | And that's really how the company started.

03:11:19.140 | I bought beads and a pipe cutter and a hammer and a drill, and I fucked up our kitchen table,

03:11:23.260 | and I taught myself how to build jewelry.

03:11:24.940 | Because my husband was like, "You can do it.

03:11:26.860 | Go for it."

03:11:27.860 | I was like, "Okay, he says he believes in me, so I guess I can do it.

03:11:30.980 | No idea what I'm doing."

03:11:32.940 | And then got to this point where COVID hit and people lost companies, and we pivoted

03:11:38.860 | and we did what we could.

03:11:40.860 | And then I really started to go downhill psychologically.

03:11:45.380 | I found purpose again with this company.

03:11:48.980 | I found a way to help again.

03:11:51.220 | I found myself again.

03:11:54.660 | And then that was in danger of being gone again.

03:11:58.540 | So the company is 2015?

03:12:01.660 | I started building jewelry in 2015 under like a...

03:12:05.380 | It was called Her Wearables, and it was really small.

03:12:09.060 | I was just trying to make stuff.

03:12:11.460 | It wasn't supposed to be a company.

03:12:13.220 | And you were on a ton of medication throughout this whole process.

03:12:15.380 | Just nuked out of my tree.

03:12:17.900 | And my mom being the tenacious truck driver she is, she was driving her Kevin Hart's What

03:12:23.500 | Now Tour.

03:12:25.100 | And so she just harassed them, was like, "You need to meet my daughter."

03:12:29.380 | So he finally met with me.

03:12:30.380 | I saw the picture of you and Kevin Hart.

03:12:31.980 | That's cool.

03:12:32.980 | But he just gave me a good piece of advice.

03:12:33.980 | "Hey, if you're going to make this something, if you want it to be for everyone, you can't

03:12:37.460 | call it Her Wearables."

03:12:38.460 | I was like, "Cool."

03:12:39.860 | And then we drove home that night, and then he tweeted it out to people, to 24 million

03:12:44.180 | people.

03:12:45.180 | This was before he was like, "Who is now?"

03:12:47.940 | And that was a giant deal.

03:12:49.580 | And then my husband kind of looked at me and being, "He's so fucking brilliant."

03:12:52.420 | He looked at me and goes, "All right, yeah, we got to come up with a rename.

03:12:55.020 | Let me start thinking.

03:12:56.020 | Let me start brainstorming.

03:12:57.020 | You want to make this real?

03:12:58.340 | Let's make this real."

03:12:59.660 | And so we did.

03:13:01.200 | And he was like, "What do you think about we were doing Brass Collective Co, Brass this,

03:13:04.860 | brrrah, I just knew I wanted Brass in the name."

03:13:07.420 | And then he's like, "What about Brass and Unity?

03:13:08.580 | You're trying to unify people.

03:13:10.060 | Why wouldn't you do that?"

03:13:11.060 | I'm like, "Fuck me."

03:13:12.060 | Of course he came up with it like everything else.

03:13:14.060 | Yeah, it's a great name.

03:13:15.060 | Well, he's a brilliant person.

03:13:16.380 | It's annoying.

03:13:17.740 | So the idea of losing this thing that we had just built and just got me kind of functioning

03:13:22.260 | with was devastating.

03:13:24.860 | So I got this opportunity given to me by Griff, Combat Flip Flops.

03:13:29.940 | Again, Brady, my husband was like, "Hey, you should get sponsors for your podcast.

03:13:34.420 | Hey, have you heard of this company Combat Flip Flops?

03:13:37.020 | Remember we watched them on Shark Tank."

03:13:38.920 | And then I reached out.

03:13:39.920 | He emailed me back.

03:13:40.920 | He's like, "Yeah, we go together like peanut butter and jelly are companies.

03:13:43.860 | That sounds great."

03:13:45.500 | And then I was like, "Hey, also, do you think one of your owners would want to come on the

03:13:50.020 | podcast just like tossing it out there kind of like I did with you?"

03:13:54.340 | And he was like, "Yeah, I'd love to come on."

03:13:56.460 | And I was like, "Oh my God, Brady."

03:13:59.100 | And he came on the podcast and it went great.

03:14:01.180 | And then at the end of it, we stopped recording and he just kind of did this thing.

03:14:04.660 | He does this.

03:14:05.660 | He just like leans in real close, looks into your soul and goes, "How are you doing?"

03:14:10.660 | And they're like, "Great."

03:14:11.660 | And he's like, "How are you really doing?"

03:14:12.660 | I'm like, "I'm horrible.

03:14:13.660 | I hate everything.

03:14:14.660 | I'm horrible.

03:14:20.140 | I hate everything."

03:14:21.140 | Just this whole like waterworks happened.

03:14:22.140 | And he goes, "Listen, have you ever heard of Ayahuasca?"

03:14:24.220 | And I was like, "Yeah, like in movies and like psychedelics in the 70s."

03:14:28.860 | And he's like, "No, no, no, no.

03:14:30.540 | Let's like have a talk."

03:14:31.540 | And he goes, "I've got an opportunity for a spot.

03:14:34.060 | I'm going with this charity called Heroic Hearts.

03:14:37.180 | They have spaces in UK, Canada, and the United States.

03:14:41.740 | They're owned by an army ranger named Jesse Gould.

03:14:45.700 | They're really trying to help vets.

03:14:47.900 | And this has worked.

03:14:48.900 | Would you want to come?"

03:14:49.900 | And before he even said like, "Would you?"

03:14:51.780 | Before I even got like an invite, I was like, "Can I come?

03:14:54.380 | When can I-- When do we go?"

03:14:57.900 | And he's like, "Oh, it's in like three weeks.

03:14:59.940 | You can't be on any SSRIs.

03:15:02.460 | If you're on any, you're going to have to wean off."

03:15:04.020 | And at the time, I was on my last one.

03:15:06.620 | And so I was like, I called my doctor and I was like, "Listen."

03:15:10.340 | And he was like, "What?"

03:15:11.700 | And I was like, "Guess what I'm about to do."

03:15:13.660 | And he's like, "I'm gonna go do Ayahuasca."

03:15:16.380 | And he goes, "You're gonna--"

03:15:17.740 | He does this thing where he just goes, "All right."

03:15:22.740 | 'Cause he knows he's not gonna win.

03:15:25.060 | He knows I'll just fight him on it.

03:15:25.900 | - Let's just call that like the Jocko reset.

03:15:29.060 | - Yeah. - Because he does a--

03:15:30.780 | - Pretty much, yeah, exactly.

03:15:33.020 | And he goes, I said, "But here's the kicker.

03:15:35.300 | I have to go off of this medication."

03:15:37.420 | And he goes, "Well, you know we're supposed to do that

03:15:39.180 | in the summer months when the depression's not--

03:15:41.020 | You know, blah, blah, blah."

03:15:41.860 | I said, "Listen, I hear you, but I'm doing it

03:15:44.980 | whether you want me to or not.

03:15:47.060 | So I'm letting you know, hey, this is gonna happen."

03:15:49.980 | And he's like, "Okay, just try to do it properly."

03:15:52.060 | I was like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know the drill.

03:15:53.260 | I know the drill, whatever, whatever.

03:15:54.340 | I went to school to be a paramedic.

03:15:55.260 | I know the drill, I'll go off of it properly."

03:15:57.620 | But again, like drop that.

03:15:58.980 | Within a week, that stuff was, I was done taking it.

03:16:02.100 | And I was going through like the world's worst

03:16:05.020 | just withdrawals.

03:16:06.300 | It was like you were at a rock concert

03:16:09.220 | and your head was banging up and down,

03:16:10.780 | but you were sitting perfectly still.

03:16:13.180 | It was horrible.

03:16:15.060 | - But you had like a thing to look forward to

03:16:17.300 | with the sidewalk.

03:16:18.140 | - I had a light at the end of the tunnel.

03:16:19.900 | And I knew if I got to the light,

03:16:22.500 | was the worst that's gonna happen.

03:16:23.740 | Just get to the light.

03:16:25.060 | But at that point, like again, I had a son,

03:16:28.380 | I had a husband, I had a great company,

03:16:29.700 | I have a great house, I have a nice car, I have everything.

03:16:33.340 | Why did I wanna die every minute of the day?

03:16:36.540 | I was at that point again.

03:16:38.460 | And I'm like, this is God, something's gotta give.

03:16:40.980 | And so I went and I got there.

03:16:44.260 | And she is

03:16:48.620 | the most intense, beautiful, divine deity or entity

03:17:02.340 | or visualization, whatever you wanna deem ayahuasca as,

03:17:07.340 | Mama Aya is real.

03:17:10.140 | And she takes no prisoners.

03:17:13.380 | She shows you exactly what you need to see to help yourself,

03:17:19.420 | but she does not discriminate against

03:17:24.420 | whether you're ready or not.

03:17:25.980 | If you've ingested it, she's coming for you.

03:17:30.140 | And she's gonna be either gentle

03:17:32.580 | or she's gonna beat your ass.

03:17:34.380 | And sometimes that's what you need,

03:17:35.940 | but she does it in a way that is profound.

03:17:40.940 | - So what were some memorable, profound moments for you?

03:17:46.780 | What are the places it took you?

03:17:49.900 | These people had you meet?

03:17:52.140 | - For the first time, I got to be in a group of people

03:17:56.580 | who didn't judge me or question my service.

03:17:59.340 | They just respect me.

03:18:01.300 | That was number one.

03:18:02.940 | So that group I lost, I just found again.

03:18:06.020 | Big shocker, I was the only woman there again.

03:18:11.180 | Ooh, seems to be the thing for me.

03:18:14.920 | And so I was surrounded by all these special operators.

03:18:18.460 | Like these aren't like normal soldiers.

03:18:19.760 | Like these guys that I'm with are like bronze star,

03:18:24.020 | fucking purple heart, just the coolest people.

03:18:29.620 | People I've always wanted to be like, that's my buddy.

03:18:32.140 | Now I can be like, those are my buddies.

03:18:34.060 | Like those motherfuckers will go to bat for me.

03:18:36.620 | They will bend over backwards.

03:18:38.180 | They will exfil me out of anywhere.

03:18:40.060 | They will take a bullet for me.

03:18:41.660 | And these guys welcomed me in in a way I didn't expect.

03:18:45.860 | So that hit me weird right off the get.

03:18:48.260 | I was nervous and now I was just felt at home for a minute.

03:18:52.100 | And then when I stepped into ceremony,

03:18:57.140 | the first night, 'cause you do three nights

03:18:59.780 | over like Friday, Saturday, Sunday.

03:19:02.260 | The first night I was so nervous and so anxious

03:19:06.700 | 'cause you go up in ceremony and the shamans come in

03:19:10.580 | and they cleanse themselves.

03:19:12.180 | And then you get served the ayah individually.

03:19:16.420 | You go up, they give it to you.

03:19:17.980 | You can take your time and pray.

03:19:19.220 | You can do whatever you want and then you drink it.

03:19:21.540 | I was so just like, I got back to my mat and I sat there

03:19:27.380 | and I was like trying to keep it in,

03:19:30.020 | but I could feel that like heat come from my toes

03:19:33.100 | all the way up and you're like, your mouth starts to water.

03:19:34.940 | I'm gonna throw up, I'm gonna throw up.

03:19:37.140 | And I looked over to Griff and I looked at Bishop

03:19:39.100 | and I'm like, swallow it.

03:19:41.100 | I was like, okay.

03:19:45.180 | And you can't talk or anything.

03:19:47.540 | So I like my buddy, we call him the Viking,

03:19:51.220 | a soul Viking.

03:19:52.180 | He looks like a Viking.

03:19:53.580 | His head's tattooed.

03:19:54.700 | He's been on the show.

03:19:57.300 | He's so cool.

03:19:58.700 | He's sitting directly across like you and I

03:20:00.620 | and he can see me and he's looking at me

03:20:01.780 | and I'm throwing up and I do it about three times.

03:20:06.780 | And then the last time he just saw me and I couldn't do it.

03:20:09.260 | I just, I threw it up.

03:20:11.980 | And so I like to think that was her way of easing me in.

03:20:16.300 | So I didn't get like a full punch to the face,

03:20:18.820 | but I gotta, let me take your hand

03:20:20.860 | and show you what I'm gonna show you.

03:20:22.460 | We're gonna make you better.

03:20:23.460 | We're gonna take the pain away.

03:20:25.020 | - Aren't you supposed to eventually throw up

03:20:26.980 | no matter what?

03:20:27.820 | - It's not supposed to.

03:20:28.660 | Some people don't.

03:20:29.580 | You purge, yeah.

03:20:30.660 | If something's happening, you're going through something,

03:20:32.700 | yeah, you purge, but it doesn't have to happen.

03:20:34.860 | But this, I mean, within like the first 20 minutes, no.

03:20:37.940 | This takes like, you gotta sit and meditate for,

03:20:40.940 | or sit still basically and meditate in the pitch black

03:20:43.620 | for about 45 minutes before the effects even,

03:20:46.300 | before you even feel her.

03:20:48.180 | So it's very--

03:20:50.060 | - So here she figured out the right dose you need.

03:20:52.740 | - Well, because I did the same dose as everyone else.

03:20:55.620 | I think it was 20 mils, which doesn't seem like a lot.

03:20:58.320 | But when you've never done it, it is.

03:21:01.460 | So I felt like such a bitch.

03:21:07.380 | God, I felt like such a bitch.

03:21:09.260 | - Okay, that was the thought going through your mind.

03:21:11.540 | - Oh, you just fucked it all up.

03:21:13.140 | You ruined it.

03:21:13.980 | You ruined this again.

03:21:14.940 | You couldn't do this, right?

03:21:16.300 | - Yeah.

03:21:17.140 | - And so at that point,

03:21:20.700 | we went through the meditation part

03:21:22.820 | and the shamans were,

03:21:24.180 | they literally sing for like six hours straight.

03:21:26.740 | - So you said that you take it

03:21:27.780 | and then there's just what you're quietly listening to them.

03:21:30.940 | - Meditate and you wait and you wait

03:21:33.900 | and you're in pitch black,

03:21:34.940 | like can't see this far in front of your face.

03:21:37.100 | - Cool.

03:21:37.940 | - And you have a little puke bucket

03:21:39.380 | and then you have a little light that has a red filter on it

03:21:42.100 | that you have to get up to go to the bathroom

03:21:43.420 | to get out of the yurt.

03:21:44.260 | You use that so you don't turn lights on.

03:21:47.020 | And me, I brought like what?

03:21:50.180 | - No, it's just a cool visual of just a puke bucket

03:21:53.220 | and a little light for the,

03:21:54.700 | like I can imagine these like little lights

03:21:56.740 | going there once in a while

03:21:57.740 | and then the rest is just in darkness meditating

03:22:00.180 | with this singing.

03:22:03.020 | - It's so beautiful.

03:22:04.860 | I'll take you sometime 'cause trust me,

03:22:07.180 | I wouldn't offer if it wasn't the group I would trust.

03:22:11.980 | - Yeah, you had a very interesting group.

03:22:14.420 | So it's the heroic hearts people?

03:22:16.580 | - Yeah, heroic hearts.

03:22:17.420 | So yeah, this is my,

03:22:18.900 | Jesse gave us all these journals.

03:22:20.460 | They're like, you're gonna want these.

03:22:22.260 | So he gave us all these journals

03:22:23.620 | and now this is like my Bible,

03:22:25.140 | like my work, my everything goes in this with me everywhere.

03:22:28.660 | It's just this like silent reminder for me.

03:22:31.220 | And so heroic hearts does fantastic work.

03:22:34.980 | I'll get into them after.

03:22:37.060 | The thing with this group is there's such care.

03:22:42.060 | It's not like go do AYA and like you're done.

03:22:46.540 | There's like integration coaches

03:22:48.060 | and there's like doctors

03:22:49.180 | and there's like people to make sure

03:22:50.580 | that you're doing the work

03:22:52.660 | because AYA is just the gate.

03:22:55.260 | Now you have to take it

03:22:56.780 | and you have to implement it into your life.

03:22:59.620 | People don't do that though.

03:23:00.780 | - Did you do like integration?

03:23:02.660 | Did you do conversations with somebody?

03:23:04.380 | Did you talk to like, is there a process to,

03:23:07.460 | 'cause similar with psilocybin you mentioned,

03:23:10.340 | as I understand it's exceptionally beneficial

03:23:14.100 | for when you also do like talk therapy,

03:23:16.580 | like you couple that with the integration in some form

03:23:19.820 | where you talk through your experience

03:23:21.660 | and you talk through different things.

03:23:23.180 | Like that seems to be a really,

03:23:25.100 | you know, I need to do that more

03:23:26.420 | with basically every substance I take.

03:23:28.740 | Like if I get, which I have been every once in a while

03:23:31.660 | known to do a bit of vodka or whiskey or whatever,

03:23:34.340 | like do integration the next day.

03:23:37.580 | - Well, what did you learn?

03:23:38.460 | What did you get from that?

03:23:39.300 | - What did you get?

03:23:40.140 | Because you learn a lot,

03:23:40.980 | but you sometimes kind of just move on

03:23:42.660 | and you celebrate that that happened,

03:23:44.100 | but like really kind of think through it.

03:23:46.140 | Write it down.

03:23:47.500 | It's important because that's what this was.

03:23:49.940 | So the first night I'll give like a very,

03:23:52.820 | 'cause trust me, we could spend a whole podcast

03:23:55.300 | on both of the, all three of those nights.

03:23:57.020 | But the first night, the biggest thing that happened for me

03:23:59.580 | is I got to see my daughter, which was my first baby.

03:24:03.780 | And so people say, well, you know, blah, blah, blah.

03:24:07.220 | Fuck you.

03:24:08.300 | That was my daughter.

03:24:09.220 | And I'm very aware it was, I'm very conscious that it was.

03:24:12.580 | And at that point, she just eased me in enough

03:24:16.540 | to let me know and showed me enough that this wasn't it.

03:24:20.500 | This wasn't the end all be all.

03:24:23.500 | Where you are right now on this plane,

03:24:25.900 | on this dimension, in this life, this is a blip.

03:24:29.660 | And it is so minuscule to the big picture.

03:24:34.580 | And so she really did that by,

03:24:36.260 | she showed me just a black and then like a crack

03:24:40.180 | and then these vibrant colors that I can't describe

03:24:42.700 | because there aren't words.

03:24:44.100 | Alex Gray does really great art.

03:24:47.860 | And that is like been the closest thing

03:24:49.380 | I've been able to find colors.

03:24:51.380 | He's a famous guy who does ayahuasca and he's an artist.

03:24:56.380 | I think he's got stuff in New York as well.

03:24:59.020 | But she just, she eased me in and gave me some relief

03:25:04.020 | and showed me enough that I could go,

03:25:08.660 | I could wake up the next day

03:25:09.940 | and not wanna die the next day.

03:25:11.580 | And so what Heroic Heart said,

03:25:14.420 | because it gave us all these journals,

03:25:15.780 | they're like, the next day you kind of wake up

03:25:19.420 | and you do a meet, like a meeting.

03:25:23.420 | You do like a circle, all of us sit in a room

03:25:25.460 | and talk about what just happened the night before.

03:25:27.780 | People are crying and people are quiet and you just listen.

03:25:30.860 | And that's what you do.

03:25:32.260 | And then you write on your free time.

03:25:35.020 | So after that, it's like up to you what you wanna do.

03:25:37.540 | Do you wanna just go walk in the woods?

03:25:39.020 | Well, I chose to go find a fence post

03:25:41.340 | and lie on it for an hour.

03:25:43.500 | I'm not kidding.

03:25:44.340 | I lied there and stared up at these two eagles

03:25:45.820 | that were just in like the middle.

03:25:47.900 | I'll tell you where we were after and you'll be like,

03:25:49.620 | oh, okay, I get it.

03:25:50.900 | And then I found a forest and I just walked up with my book

03:25:54.980 | and I just lied there for hours.

03:25:59.980 | And then she all of a sudden started giving me

03:26:03.860 | what you call your downloads.

03:26:05.820 | So the stuff you learn,

03:26:07.540 | the stuff that all of a sudden you're remembering

03:26:09.260 | and these messages that come through.

03:26:10.980 | And that's what this is.

03:26:12.340 | - What kind of things are we talking about?

03:26:15.580 | - So my biggest thing that she tried to reiterate to me

03:26:19.940 | at the beginning of that first night was that I don't breathe.

03:26:23.180 | I just, I don't, I don't breathe.

03:26:29.860 | I don't fucking breathe at all.

03:26:32.940 | I just, one thing to the next thing,

03:26:34.540 | the next thing, the next thing,

03:26:35.380 | the next thing just to survive.

03:26:36.260 | I don't take a minute and breathe.

03:26:39.060 | And so she made, when I say she,

03:26:41.180 | and I say it because it's hard for people to understand,

03:26:43.180 | but I showed this to my husband,

03:26:44.460 | I showed it to my doctors and they're like,

03:26:46.740 | bitch, that's not you.

03:26:47.740 | You don't write like that.

03:26:48.580 | You don't talk like that.

03:26:50.020 | So like you can flip through it, but it was like,

03:26:52.900 | I'll just give, I'll just let Lex read for a second

03:26:58.180 | and just, I'll just do, here, let me do,

03:26:59.700 | I'll do an ad for Heroic Hearts.

03:27:00.940 | Heroic Hearts, here, I'll get my papers while you read.

03:27:04.500 | Connect to her, listen to her, open to her.

03:27:07.220 | Do you mind if I read some of these?

03:27:08.060 | - You can read some of it, yeah.

03:27:09.460 | Go right ahead.

03:27:11.060 | - The dark has lifted.

03:27:13.300 | - Judge my spelling and I'll punch you right in the face.

03:27:16.700 | - Well, there's like--

03:27:18.340 | - It's very sporadic-y.

03:27:19.700 | Sporadically written.

03:27:22.460 | - It's okay to be still.

03:27:24.100 | It's okay to be quiet.

03:27:25.780 | This is good, like, and these are over a stretch of--

03:27:32.140 | - That was the first, the first couple of pages

03:27:34.420 | were from the first night.

03:27:36.380 | This was just that weekend.

03:27:37.220 | - And you're just there laying looking at the eagles.

03:27:40.740 | - Yeah, with the pen just frantic as well, Lex.

03:27:44.260 | Not like writing where you're like, oh, I'm just writing.

03:27:46.260 | It's like, I had to get it down or I was gonna lose it.

03:27:49.980 | - You are warrior, you are power, you can.

03:27:56.940 | Choose now, breathe now, be now.

03:28:03.540 | Be present, be warrior, be strength, breathe.

03:28:08.540 | Be the strength, you are the strength.

03:28:13.700 | There's some soul searching going on here.

03:28:16.900 | This is incredible.

03:28:18.620 | - Yeah, we wait till you get in there.

03:28:20.660 | She gets deep, real aggressive, like--

03:28:23.740 | - Crack the door, for I am the light.

03:28:28.620 | The giver, the taker.

03:28:31.860 | I am warrior, I am life, I am air, I am water, I am fire.

03:28:36.860 | I am light.

03:28:40.740 | This will, this can, this will, this can.

03:28:48.140 | For I am warrior.

03:28:51.060 | For I am light.

03:28:55.220 | And there's a leaf here.

03:28:56.220 | What's the story with the leaf?

03:28:57.940 | - I don't know, I was walking and every single time

03:29:00.100 | over those three days, any time I went for a walk by myself,

03:29:05.100 | I would just hear like, take this,

03:29:08.620 | just almost as if a voice was standing there,

03:29:10.380 | be like, you need this, take it with you

03:29:11.980 | and keep it in your book, keep it, ground you.

03:29:15.220 | And it just goes on.

03:29:17.340 | - So this is from there.

03:29:18.540 | - Yeah.

03:29:19.380 | - It's cool to have, it's almost like time travel.

03:29:23.220 | - I have poppies from France too.

03:29:24.740 | When I did a 75th anniversary D-Day ride in France

03:29:28.580 | where we rode 600 kilometers on our road bikes for charity

03:29:32.060 | and we landed on the beaches of Juneau on the 75th

03:29:34.900 | and we got to go by the poppy fields

03:29:38.060 | and I'm like covered in poppies.

03:29:40.660 | And I have some in a book.

03:29:42.660 | I don't know why I do that.

03:29:44.180 | I just, I do that.

03:29:46.940 | - That's cool because like, these are your thoughts

03:29:49.420 | and those are the physical items

03:29:50.980 | as it really helps transport to that place somehow.

03:29:54.180 | Let the light in, let her in.

03:29:58.100 | - Yeah.

03:29:58.940 | And she would show me these visuals

03:30:02.820 | so my drawings are just like, ah.

03:30:04.940 | - Yeah, there's drawings here and you're seeing this stuff.

03:30:12.180 | - Oh yeah.

03:30:13.020 | I can't draw either so that's why they're so,

03:30:16.620 | I wish I could draw because if only I could translate

03:30:19.860 | what I could see visually onto paper.

03:30:22.900 | - And you're talking to her.

03:30:25.980 | - Yeah.

03:30:27.140 | - It's time, I'm here to listen.

03:30:29.500 | Is this Mama Aya?

03:30:34.580 | - Yeah, we call her Mama Aya.

03:30:35.900 | - Mama Aya, Mama Aya.

03:30:38.220 | So who are you seeing?

03:30:41.060 | Is this a woman?

03:30:42.300 | - So for me at first, it was just eyes floating in the sky.

03:30:46.060 | These unbelievably gorgeous, beautiful eyes

03:30:48.660 | that I, and I was like literally looking up

03:30:51.020 | at the top of the yurt and I kept going to myself,

03:30:53.100 | is anyone else seeing this?

03:30:54.900 | There's eyes in the sky.

03:30:56.500 | - Man.

03:30:57.340 | - Yeah, yeah.

03:30:59.020 | And so there's these eyes floating

03:31:01.940 | and they just kept looking at me

03:31:03.900 | and I remember when I kept telling myself like,

03:31:06.060 | oh, don't worry about it, there's nothing there.

03:31:07.460 | She would get angry.

03:31:08.540 | I'm right here, pay attention to me.

03:31:12.580 | And I'd be like, okay, like forceful, like very forceful.

03:31:17.540 | So at first it was just the eyes.

03:31:19.180 | The second night,

03:31:23.980 | I sound crazy when I say this.

03:31:25.700 | Great, that's gonna be my clip, I sound crazy.

03:31:33.700 | It's what I do when I get uncomfortable.

03:31:35.780 | I do weird hand gestures and movements.

03:31:38.060 | - Voices, I like it.

03:31:39.940 | - Yeah, I do, yeah.

03:31:41.140 | You would hate to be in my office

03:31:43.340 | 'cause most of the day it's just,

03:31:44.940 | this weird lunges and uncomfortable moments.

03:31:50.340 | She turned me into a wolf.

03:31:54.300 | I know I said it out loud, I hear it, I said it.

03:31:57.860 | - Yeah.

03:31:58.700 | - Head to toe.

03:31:59.540 | And her takeaway for me was,

03:32:04.740 | I am trying to be this pack leader,

03:32:06.780 | I'm trying to be this leader in my life,

03:32:08.380 | I'm trying to do these things,

03:32:10.220 | but I'm going about them the whole wrong way.

03:32:12.500 | So like when the shamans call you up

03:32:15.180 | to do their special prayer over you,

03:32:17.460 | you go up, you don't touch them,

03:32:18.900 | they flash their little light,

03:32:19.980 | you see the little light spot,

03:32:21.220 | you walk to the light, you sit down on the light.

03:32:23.940 | And then my shaman, he's so funny

03:32:25.820 | 'cause he's got this great tone in his voice,

03:32:27.540 | he goes, "How you doing, Kelsey?"

03:32:30.500 | And I'm like, "So, hi, yeah, I have a problem.

03:32:36.380 | "I'm a wolf and I need it to stop."

03:32:39.540 | And he'd be like, "Don't you worry, girl, I got you.

03:32:42.020 | "You ready?"

03:32:42.860 | And I was like, "Uh-huh, uh-huh."

03:32:45.300 | And so I'm sitting there cross-legged,

03:32:46.420 | I've got my palms out like this.

03:32:48.340 | And I had a really traumatic shoulder injury,

03:32:50.220 | so I don't just sit slanted like this,

03:32:51.860 | my shoulder's actually permanently detached

03:32:53.700 | and no one in the world will touch it or fix it.

03:32:56.020 | My collarbone comes out my back here.

03:32:58.420 | And I don't have any collarbone here.

03:33:00.860 | So nobody will fix it, no one will touch it.

03:33:03.660 | Even I've had specialists, I've had surgeries,

03:33:05.740 | no one will do anything with it.

03:33:06.860 | So I'm permanently down and forward.

03:33:09.620 | So I slouch.

03:33:11.260 | It's horrible.

03:33:14.340 | - Horrible functionally too?

03:33:16.860 | - Oh, there's nothing, I can't do a pull-up anymore.

03:33:19.380 | - Oh, so weak.

03:33:22.420 | - Oh, wow.

03:33:23.260 | - Oh, I'll show you how to do a push-up

03:33:24.420 | after you'll fucking throw up in embarrassment.

03:33:26.940 | Yeah, it's bad.

03:33:27.780 | So before I, though, chronic pain,

03:33:29.660 | like had to drink a bottle of CBD every day

03:33:31.900 | just 'cause the pain is so bad

03:33:33.220 | because the trauma in it was so bad.

03:33:35.340 | The surgery went wrong.

03:33:36.980 | The collarbone dissipated and no longer exists.

03:33:41.580 | And they're not sure how I lift things with it

03:33:43.740 | and do stuff with it.

03:33:44.900 | It's like overcompensation everywhere.

03:33:48.380 | My back, like my scapula like flares outward.

03:33:53.260 | I'm all messed up from it.

03:33:54.780 | And so I was in chronic pain.

03:33:56.420 | So he's praying over me.

03:33:58.340 | And all of a sudden, all I feel is this arm

03:34:01.180 | just start just fucking vibrating.

03:34:04.340 | And my hair is really long.

03:34:05.860 | And I feel somebody grab the back of my ponytail

03:34:08.500 | and snap my head back like this.

03:34:11.060 | And it felt like something was coming out of my throat,

03:34:15.460 | like being pulled out of me.

03:34:18.860 | And the takeaway that I end up

03:34:20.580 | in the whole of the rest of the night,

03:34:21.620 | there was a million other things,

03:34:22.580 | but the takeaway was

03:34:24.100 | you no longer need to bite.

03:34:30.100 | You may only show your teeth.

03:34:32.540 | You can be the leader that you want to be.

03:34:35.260 | You do not always have to be the traditional type of leader.

03:34:39.420 | You can be in the back of the pack.

03:34:41.100 | You have to watch the rest around you.

03:34:44.180 | Be mindful of those around you

03:34:46.540 | instead of just being up front.

03:34:48.300 | Be behind as well.

03:34:50.580 | Make sure that everything that you're doing

03:34:52.500 | is all being looked after.

03:34:54.540 | Because my thing was, I will rip your fucking head off

03:34:57.100 | if you just say the wrong thing to me before.

03:34:59.780 | The whole thing was you can just show your teeth

03:35:01.940 | and that is more than enough.

03:35:03.540 | Stop trying to be, stop trying to overcompensate.

03:35:07.180 | You don't need to do that any longer.

03:35:09.300 | And then I had this weird astral projection thing happen

03:35:12.580 | like where I was in my house.

03:35:16.060 | And there were these flyers all over my husband and my son.

03:35:19.940 | And I went ham on them.

03:35:22.620 | I shredded them to pieces.

03:35:25.140 | I was this protector.

03:35:27.700 | And it's crazy 'cause the guys told me after,

03:35:31.100 | someone would be like,

03:35:32.300 | "There were flyers all over you the whole night.

03:35:35.100 | They were just all over you."

03:35:36.220 | And I'm like, I was snarling when I was sitting there.

03:35:39.180 | The shaman had to be like,

03:35:40.820 | "I need you to try to calm your breathing."

03:35:43.220 | After I could, but before,

03:35:44.660 | I was attacking things beside me

03:35:48.220 | that people could see and I could see,

03:35:50.740 | but couldn't wrap my brain around that they were real.

03:35:53.380 | Like it was weird.

03:35:56.020 | It was crazy, man.

03:35:58.340 | - That's day two.

03:35:59.260 | - That's day two.

03:36:00.700 | - And so what's the big takeaway there?

03:36:03.780 | - My takeaway was I needed to be,

03:36:05.820 | I needed to stop trying to,

03:36:09.980 | stop trying to push everything too hard.

03:36:12.060 | Stop trying to force everything.

03:36:14.500 | It's all going to come.

03:36:15.660 | It's all going to happen,

03:36:17.420 | but you are too aggressive.

03:36:20.180 | You are too, you're trying so hard that you're missing,

03:36:24.460 | you're missing everything else.

03:36:26.100 | - Got it.

03:36:27.020 | That's just how to be a better human kind of thing.

03:36:30.340 | - Right.

03:36:31.180 | - This is getting intense.

03:36:34.820 | - Yeah, it gets aggressive.

03:36:37.020 | Yeah, it gets aggressive.

03:36:38.380 | - I mean, there's love and light still.

03:36:42.500 | - It gets better. - Love and light.

03:36:44.580 | Love and light, the warrior within is calm.

03:36:46.980 | She will test you daily.

03:36:50.420 | Show her respect.

03:36:52.140 | - So that's what I mean.

03:36:52.980 | You've read my book.

03:36:53.820 | You know I don't write like that.

03:36:55.340 | - Yeah, this is strange.

03:36:57.100 | - See, good, you get it.

03:36:59.540 | 'Cause people don't understand when I say I didn't,

03:37:02.580 | I don't feel like I wrote that.

03:37:04.740 | I feel like she gave me,

03:37:06.140 | like I reread this all of the time.

03:37:09.100 | - So I wonder, I mean, well, not obviously,

03:37:12.740 | but this is somehow part of you.

03:37:16.260 | - I think it's a part of me, obviously.

03:37:18.340 | - Reconnecting you somehow to that part.

03:37:20.460 | It kind of is incredible to think of

03:37:22.740 | what are the things that are part of us

03:37:24.540 | that we haven't really explored, you know?

03:37:26.820 | - And there's so many.

03:37:28.020 | We just get so caught up. - Nature.

03:37:30.260 | To connect to her, feel her flow through them.

03:37:34.300 | Use them for the strength for each day

03:37:37.180 | a new challenge will present itself.

03:37:40.300 | Love, light, breathe.

03:37:42.260 | - Sorry, I have too much hair.

03:37:44.940 | - Never enough, I used to have long hair.

03:37:46.900 | What about day three?

03:37:48.380 | - So day three is the stuff I talked about on "Jocko"

03:37:52.540 | when I got taken over to the other side.

03:37:55.180 | I almost missed that night too.

03:37:57.300 | I almost missed that ceremony.

03:37:59.220 | I got a false positive on my COVID test

03:38:02.500 | and I got a call from the medical clinic that night

03:38:05.940 | being like, "You need to come in.

03:38:07.820 | "You got a false positive on your COVID test

03:38:09.780 | "and if you're gonna travel, you have to,

03:38:12.900 | "we got to figure this out.

03:38:14.020 | "You got to come do blood work.

03:38:14.980 | "You got to come do whatever it is you need to do

03:38:18.300 | "if you want to get home, but you got to come do something."

03:38:21.140 | And so I didn't think I was gonna be in ceremony.

03:38:24.940 | I had to leave.

03:38:25.820 | So I left and they waited.

03:38:30.820 | They waited for me.

03:38:34.220 | And so I think the biggest takeaway

03:38:38.420 | from all of this for me was this isn't it.

03:38:43.420 | This isn't everything.

03:38:45.180 | This isn't the end all be all.

03:38:49.400 | You can fight through this.

03:38:50.900 | This is possible.

03:38:52.380 | It's gonna take work.

03:38:53.460 | It's gonna be fucking hard.

03:38:55.460 | It's worth it though.

03:38:57.340 | And if you just keep going in the right direction,

03:38:58.820 | everything that I wrote down, everything, every goal,

03:39:02.680 | it'll happen.

03:39:03.520 | - What about love?

03:39:06.980 | - What about love?

03:39:08.740 | - Tell me about your husband, Kelsey.

03:39:10.860 | - Okay, he's the best.

03:39:12.540 | - What role did he play in your life?

03:39:15.900 | - The most pivotal role.

03:39:17.420 | He kept me alive and made me feel worthy enough

03:39:20.380 | until I knew that I was worthy enough to be alive.

03:39:23.800 | - Can you dissect that a little bit?

03:39:26.300 | Like what, I mean, what role does love play

03:39:29.420 | in the human condition?

03:39:31.060 | - I think love is the only reason

03:39:33.680 | that we haven't destroyed ourselves.

03:39:37.420 | - I mean, we humans in general.

03:39:39.020 | - Yes, I think there is a subset of people

03:39:41.940 | where love will always be, love conquers all,

03:39:46.940 | but that's not always the reality.

03:39:49.660 | The reality is life is messy and humans are messy

03:39:54.220 | and the way we choose to deal with things are messy

03:39:56.500 | and complicated and difficult,

03:39:58.020 | but at the root of all good is love, I think.

03:40:02.460 | And for me, I was fortunate enough to meet my husband

03:40:07.020 | through a friend, which you listened to that podcast,

03:40:12.020 | so I don't know that we need to,

03:40:14.460 | unless you really wanna go into that story again,

03:40:16.460 | how I met my husband.

03:40:18.340 | - Well, the only part of that story,

03:40:20.580 | people should just go listen to the Jocko podcast,

03:40:22.540 | it's how you made him uncomfortable, I love it.

03:40:24.940 | - Well, okay, so how it works, let me explain.

03:40:26.680 | In the super cross and motocross industry, it's really small.

03:40:29.380 | The people who are professional,

03:40:30.980 | it's a small subset of people.

03:40:32.100 | It's kind of like Formula One, 21 cars, that's what there is.

03:40:35.700 | That's the amount of riders.

03:40:36.540 | - And we should say your husband is a motocross guy.

03:40:40.140 | - My husband was a professional super cross

03:40:41.740 | and motocross racer for his whole life.

03:40:44.100 | And he raced for Kawasaki and Suzuki.

03:40:48.500 | He lived in California and raced all down there.

03:40:51.160 | And when I met him, I met him at the tail end of his career.

03:40:54.100 | And so I went to Montreal with a friend of mine

03:40:58.220 | to see somebody that I was currently sleeping with,

03:41:02.220 | who was a friend of mine,

03:41:03.860 | and end up meeting Brady instead.

03:41:08.860 | - Yeah, and the funny moment in Jocko's podcast.

03:41:10.940 | - Which was saying that I was fucking him

03:41:13.140 | instead of just sleeping with him.

03:41:14.820 | And then Jocko's face exploded.

03:41:16.860 | - 'Cause Jocko was like, "Oh, sleeping."

03:41:18.580 | So he was trying to get details of the sleeping quarters.

03:41:22.980 | He was trying to get you to define,

03:41:24.500 | as a good interviewer would, "Oh, sleeping, okay."

03:41:26.700 | And then you were like, "It's fucking Jocko."

03:41:29.620 | (laughing)

03:41:31.140 | Or something like that.

03:41:31.980 | - It was something along those lines.

03:41:32.820 | - It was great.

03:41:34.020 | - But that's true, because in that industry,

03:41:35.820 | it's small, we all share.

03:41:38.660 | Trust me, this is what it is.

03:41:41.420 | And anyway, so I met him there

03:41:42.600 | and he had broken his wrist really bad.

03:41:44.900 | And this was before I deployed.

03:41:48.580 | So I met him and we stayed in touch and just became friends

03:41:52.860 | and just texted, that was it, nothing weird.

03:41:55.460 | And I was deploying though.

03:41:57.500 | So we disagreed, we'd be friends.

03:42:00.140 | We weren't actually talking

03:42:01.220 | about anything romantically at all.

03:42:03.820 | And then I deployed and we got talking

03:42:07.540 | and to know each other a little more, a little more.

03:42:10.580 | And then we decided that we liked each other

03:42:12.540 | and we wanted to try to give it at least a semi shot.

03:42:15.380 | And so when I got home from Afghanistan,

03:42:17.720 | I went and watched him race one of his last two races

03:42:23.840 | that he did professionally before he retired, excuse me.

03:42:26.940 | And it was a Montreal and one was in Vegas.

03:42:29.600 | And I hadn't seen him and he didn't really know me.

03:42:34.600 | We didn't really know each other.

03:42:36.420 | We met, I slept in the bed beside him

03:42:39.160 | because my girlfriend didn't wanna get in trouble

03:42:41.120 | from her boyfriend from sleeping beside a random dude.

03:42:43.820 | And then, yeah, we just, we started dating

03:42:49.140 | and he really slowly became my rock.

03:42:53.220 | And he understands trauma.

03:42:55.420 | He had some stuff happen in his life, in his family

03:42:57.980 | that he went through a lot of therapy.

03:43:00.620 | He went through a lot of shit.

03:43:01.580 | He went, he saw what traumatic situations can do

03:43:05.420 | to a family and to people

03:43:06.680 | and those that are suffering with it.

03:43:09.320 | And so he was well-equipped to handle me, thankfully.

03:43:14.320 | And it got to a point where we were doing the long distance

03:43:17.700 | back and forth, back and forth, and back and forth.

03:43:19.100 | And I finally got the call

03:43:20.140 | that I was gonna be released from the military.

03:43:22.620 | And I wanted to live near him,

03:43:24.580 | but I couldn't afford to live in British Columbia

03:43:26.260 | 'cause I was from Ontario and BC's like,

03:43:28.620 | it means bring cash for a reason.

03:43:31.180 | I'm like, there's no way I can live there.

03:43:32.340 | And then his family was like, come live with us.

03:43:35.340 | They had a big enough house.

03:43:38.820 | Trust me, it was fine.

03:43:40.420 | So I was like, okay.

03:43:42.300 | And so I went from like dating this guy long distance

03:43:45.180 | to over, you know, from 2009 to 2011,

03:43:48.260 | just back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.

03:43:50.660 | And then finally his parents were like,

03:43:51.820 | shit or get off the pot here with her.

03:43:53.260 | Like, come on, you know, it's obvious she loves you.

03:43:56.540 | And I would never say it.

03:43:58.160 | That word just as a love, like it was just like-

03:44:01.020 | - So you guys didn't say love to each other?

03:44:04.020 | - For a long time, for a long time.

03:44:05.260 | 'Cause I was dead inside.

03:44:06.500 | I didn't know what that meant because I couldn't feel.

03:44:10.860 | I didn't feel anything.

03:44:11.700 | He loved it because he like, we go do something,

03:44:15.040 | you would never complain about anything.

03:44:17.420 | You wouldn't say a fucking word.

03:44:19.740 | You would just sit there.

03:44:20.920 | And now you got all your feelies back

03:44:23.560 | and your emotions back and now you're too hot

03:44:26.060 | and you're too cold.

03:44:27.660 | Anyways, so yeah, he loved it.

03:44:29.580 | I was numb and dead inside.

03:44:30.860 | Seriously, when I call him back-

03:44:32.100 | - But were you still able to have fun together?

03:44:34.100 | That kind of thing?

03:44:34.940 | Like when you say there's no emotion,

03:44:37.340 | there's more emotion around the basics of like everyday life

03:44:40.340 | but you're still able to just like enjoy shit together?

03:44:43.980 | - I was enjoying stuff, but I wasn't-

03:44:46.020 | - Feeling. - Feeling.

03:44:49.060 | I was like, this is fun.

03:44:50.520 | - Yeah, right.

03:44:52.480 | - That was it.

03:44:53.320 | That was surface level like, Lex, this is fun.

03:44:56.680 | Like it wasn't-

03:44:58.160 | - There's nothing there.

03:44:59.440 | - No, there's nothing there.

03:45:00.280 | Hey, yeah, nothing.

03:45:02.280 | And so we went through that for a long time

03:45:04.000 | and then I lived with his parents and we lived there

03:45:07.240 | and that was, you know, goddammit,

03:45:09.160 | his family was so good to me because I was a nightmare.

03:45:13.040 | I was a nightmare.

03:45:13.880 | Couldn't cook certain food around me anymore.

03:45:15.640 | Couldn't go certain places with me anymore.

03:45:17.800 | Couldn't, you know, crowds were a hard no.

03:45:20.920 | We didn't do Canada today.

03:45:22.100 | And like, I just changed.

03:45:23.300 | I moved in and was like, shit's gotta change

03:45:26.860 | if you guys don't want me to kill everyone.

03:45:28.700 | Like, and they were willing and they were accepting

03:45:32.340 | and they were amazing about it.

03:45:33.960 | And then we finally said, okay, well, like,

03:45:36.220 | is this, we're good?

03:45:37.700 | We're like, I used to say like, I L you.

03:45:42.700 | Like I couldn't say love.

03:45:44.340 | It freaked me out for a long time.

03:45:46.580 | And then I finally said it and then that shit head

03:45:48.960 | said it like a month later and I was like,

03:45:50.720 | that's not fair.

03:45:51.560 | You should have said it the same exact time.

03:45:52.500 | I wanted the response.

03:45:54.360 | And he goes to treatment with me.

03:45:56.680 | He, whatever I need, he knows that like,

03:46:00.160 | hey, it's more for like him.

03:46:01.300 | I'm like, how do I handle her?

03:46:02.800 | - Yeah.

03:46:03.800 | - And then we moved out and we bought a house

03:46:06.480 | and then he took a sweet ass time.

03:46:07.920 | We were dating for four years before we were engaged

03:46:10.600 | 'cause just to be sure the crazy wasn't too crazy,

03:46:14.240 | he waited four years on that.

03:46:15.480 | - Smart man.

03:46:16.320 | - Right?

03:46:17.160 | Yeah.

03:46:17.980 | - Or you could say he's just a terrified of commitment,

03:46:20.140 | but both.

03:46:20.980 | - A little bit of both.

03:46:21.900 | Hey, when you were the guy on the posters

03:46:23.860 | that all the girls sign up to,

03:46:25.780 | that send all the dirty pictures,

03:46:27.180 | fucking why are you giving that up?

03:46:28.380 | It's easy.

03:46:29.220 | - Yeah, commitment is a real commitment then.

03:46:31.540 | - Yeah.

03:46:32.380 | - Okay, this is the Jaco reset.

03:46:35.960 | We talked about brass and unity a little bit.

03:46:39.940 | What's the long-term mission goal and dream of your company

03:46:44.460 | and the podcast of the same name?

03:46:47.620 | - So for me, what I've been trying to do with this company

03:46:50.940 | is create a community that can really work together

03:46:55.940 | to not only help vets first responders,

03:46:58.440 | but to really bridge the gap with the civilian population

03:47:01.440 | and letting them know what we kind of go through

03:47:03.520 | and why it is such a epidemic

03:47:05.780 | and why there is over 22 suicides a day

03:47:08.300 | and we are losing people, like it's going out of style.

03:47:11.320 | Like the amount of vets that are questioning

03:47:13.280 | the last 20 years of their life right now is terrifying.

03:47:17.780 | I work with organizations that are doing this outreach

03:47:21.480 | and they're overloaded right now,

03:47:22.480 | like they have never seen before

03:47:24.160 | because this whole thing is just, it's hit head here.

03:47:27.880 | And so what brass and unity tries to do is

03:47:31.240 | it is really just a vehicle to get the money in the hands

03:47:33.580 | of the people that are doing the work with it.

03:47:35.620 | I couldn't start a nonprofit

03:47:37.000 | because I'm not good at fundraising.

03:47:38.780 | I'm not good at being like, give me your money,

03:47:40.800 | I'm gonna do this with it.

03:47:42.920 | The least I could do was come up with a product

03:47:45.280 | that I know I could give to people or people could purchase.

03:47:48.600 | And if I gave pretty much all of the pro,

03:47:51.720 | like the actual profit from it to those organizations

03:47:56.600 | and I give them something to wear that is a touch piece

03:48:00.480 | or if they're out and somebody sees a bullet on the wrist,

03:48:03.080 | they go, "Hey, what is that?"

03:48:04.800 | It's a conversation starter.

03:48:07.020 | And that's exactly what it's been.

03:48:09.040 | And it's done its job as that.

03:48:10.800 | And so we, like I said, we are a way to get the vehicle.

03:48:13.680 | We're the vehicle,

03:48:14.520 | we're the money in the hands of the people.

03:48:15.720 | People don't always wanna just get a tax receipt.

03:48:18.440 | It's great to donate to something,

03:48:20.360 | great on you to do that,

03:48:21.660 | but most people have a selfish aspect, right?

03:48:24.320 | And that's okay.

03:48:25.320 | But if you can tap into that,

03:48:27.040 | you can then fund these charities properly

03:48:29.440 | and give them the tools to do their jobs effectively.

03:48:32.200 | Up until this point,

03:48:33.120 | they just count on people's goodness of their hearts.

03:48:36.280 | Hate to break it to you, humanity is rough right now.

03:48:38.860 | We need to look at something a little differently.

03:48:40.940 | - So these things spark, like jewelry sparks conversations.

03:48:44.580 | And then do you work with charities?

03:48:47.140 | - Yes, oh God, yeah, that's what I do.

03:48:49.020 | So my whole mission every day is I get up,

03:48:52.020 | I push jewelry and sunglasses on people and say,

03:48:55.500 | "But now that you're gonna wear that,

03:48:57.260 | now you're a part of the BNU Army,

03:48:59.100 | now you're a part of this community."

03:49:00.820 | - Speaking of which, let me put it right back on.

03:49:05.420 | Branded, this is a organic product placement.

03:49:08.220 | - Yeah, this isn't like marketing at all,

03:49:10.340 | nothing weird about this at all.

03:49:12.020 | And so we work with a lot of organizations

03:49:14.560 | and I'm very particular about where we send our money

03:49:17.060 | because there are,

03:49:18.020 | it feels like thousands of vet organizations right now.

03:49:21.460 | And if we were able to consolidate, it would be more ideal.

03:49:25.140 | I spoke about that on another show,

03:49:26.500 | but that's not currently happening.

03:49:28.020 | So I try to work with the nonprofits I know,

03:49:30.220 | number one, are not paying six figure salaries,

03:49:32.760 | which trust me, there's lots, a lot.

03:49:35.980 | Number two, I look at the actual resources

03:49:38.420 | that they're providing.

03:49:39.280 | And if they're going to be something

03:49:40.420 | that are gonna be useful, in my opinion,

03:49:42.380 | whether or not they're actually useful,

03:49:43.880 | and I just don't think they are, that's up for debate.

03:49:46.400 | I know it's worked for me,

03:49:47.500 | so I try to fund the things that I know

03:49:49.380 | have been helpful for me and the people I associate with.

03:49:52.580 | So that's why I brought all the paper

03:49:54.900 | because I didn't wanna be an idiot and forget anybody,

03:49:57.980 | that's really important because I get caught up in things

03:50:00.400 | and I think it's important to acknowledge.

03:50:01.580 | So number one, Heroic Hearts.

03:50:05.180 | We just started working to talk about them

03:50:08.740 | and really make them known,

03:50:10.160 | but we're gonna be donating to them as well.

03:50:12.260 | - Are they doing more stuff than the Ayahuasca thing?

03:50:14.860 | - Yeah, so their points are, I got Jesse to actually,

03:50:17.940 | I'm like, what are your talking points?

03:50:19.260 | 'Cause I need people to know exactly what you do.

03:50:21.780 | So veterans have had to take their mental

03:50:23.620 | and general health into their own hands

03:50:25.120 | due to the failure of the government system.

03:50:27.060 | So that is why they were created.

03:50:28.980 | But Heroic Hearts is a peer-supported

03:50:30.700 | mental health network involving full preparation,

03:50:33.480 | integration, coaching, and connection

03:50:35.140 | to vetted psychedelic treatments.

03:50:36.540 | So they don't just do AYA.

03:50:38.540 | They deal with psilocybin, ketamine, Ibogaine,

03:50:42.100 | but they've got protocols in place,

03:50:43.920 | they've got locations you go to that are safely vetted

03:50:46.900 | and they work.

03:50:48.100 | They've got over right now,

03:50:49.940 | Jesse said they have over 800 veterans

03:50:51.980 | on a waiting list for treatment.

03:50:53.580 | That's just before the spike of the end of this war.

03:50:56.560 | They have over a hundred,

03:50:59.320 | they've helped over a hundred veterans,

03:51:00.980 | including dozens of special operation vets,

03:51:03.360 | find effective care.

03:51:04.900 | They've now got branches in the US, UK, and Canada.

03:51:07.700 | And the biggest thing about them

03:51:09.360 | and why we talk about them is because

03:51:11.620 | the problem of psychedelics and the stigma around it

03:51:14.740 | is so significant, but because of great universities

03:51:17.500 | that are now stepping up and doing the research behind it,

03:51:20.060 | it is being legitimized.

03:51:21.340 | So like they're doing that.

03:51:23.060 | In Canada, there's a group called Theracil.

03:51:25.700 | They are currently fighting the government

03:51:27.460 | to get the rights for Canadians

03:51:29.300 | under section 56 of our laws

03:51:31.660 | to get compassionate care for psilocybin use.

03:51:35.020 | I've done a panel with them on that.

03:51:37.120 | Really great base out of Victoria, really smart people.

03:51:40.380 | One of the other bigger charities that we work with,

03:51:42.580 | and they're honestly,

03:51:44.020 | they were my first and foremost charity

03:51:45.560 | that I ever worked with.

03:51:46.440 | And they're a big component

03:51:48.380 | in the veteran community in Canada.

03:51:50.980 | They're called Honor House.

03:51:52.320 | And Honor House was started by honorary Colonel Al DeGenova.

03:51:57.320 | It was started because of a guy named Trevor Green.

03:52:00.060 | He was a Canadian soldier who deployed

03:52:02.740 | and he was, so Captain Trevor Green,

03:52:04.940 | sorry, Trevor, Captain Trevor Green.

03:52:08.100 | He got an ax in the middle of his head.

03:52:10.460 | A Taliban member came up and put an ax directly

03:52:12.740 | into his head when his helmet was off and he survived.

03:52:15.860 | He's done work with Invictus Games and Prince Harry.

03:52:19.320 | He has an exoskeleton he uses on the island.

03:52:21.940 | He's so cool.

03:52:23.260 | He hasn't changed one bit from like the infantry captain

03:52:26.620 | you expect him to be.

03:52:28.940 | And Al saw there was a need for vets

03:52:32.100 | and first responders to get treatment

03:52:34.540 | because there's no real home away from home for people.

03:52:37.540 | Picture Ronald McDonald for cancer and families.

03:52:40.420 | This is vets and first responders.

03:52:42.460 | And so their whole thing, and I'll read it.

03:52:44.680 | So I said exactly right.

03:52:45.740 | 'Cause I used to be on the board of their charity,

03:52:47.220 | but I ran out of time.

03:52:48.380 | So now I just consult.

03:52:50.020 | But they are a home away from home

03:52:52.420 | for members of the Canadian Armed Forces,

03:52:54.940 | veterans and first responders and their families

03:52:57.080 | to stay completely free of charge

03:52:59.720 | while they're receiving medical care and treatment

03:53:01.700 | in the Vancouver area.

03:53:03.540 | But since then they've expanded, since I've come on board

03:53:06.380 | and they've opened Honor Ranch, which is up in Ashcroft, BC.

03:53:10.020 | And it's 140 acres, 10 cabins and a main cabin.

03:53:13.980 | They do equine therapy and they're more focused

03:53:16.460 | on operational stress injury clinics.

03:53:18.080 | So sorry, operational stress injury

03:53:20.580 | within the veteran community.

03:53:22.260 | And they have specialists that do that.

03:53:24.180 | They have their own bracelet with us.

03:53:27.040 | So every time you buy an Honor House bracelet,

03:53:28.640 | all the proceeds go to them.

03:53:30.240 | They, yeah, and it's actually the green one.

03:53:33.680 | So that one, so when you buy one

03:53:35.280 | of those Honor House bracelets, they have those,

03:53:37.940 | they go directly to them, which is really amazing.

03:53:41.120 | They've been near and dear to my heart for a long time.

03:53:44.440 | You've got the All Secure Foundation,

03:53:46.480 | which is, these guys are super dope.

03:53:49.160 | I'm gonna read exactly 'cause Jen texts me.

03:53:50.880 | So Jen and Tom Satterly, I've had them both on the podcast.

03:53:54.580 | Tom was involved in Black Hawk Down.

03:53:56.420 | Tom is a Delta, have you heard of them?

03:54:00.260 | - Black, what? - No, of--

03:54:01.940 | - No, no.

03:54:03.300 | - So, okay, so Tom was involved in Black Hawk Down.

03:54:05.140 | It was one of his first operations.

03:54:06.980 | He's a Delta operator.

03:54:08.280 | And I asked her, I said, "Listen,

03:54:09.460 | "I'm gonna be doing these shows

03:54:10.460 | "and I think it's great that we talk about you more."

03:54:12.140 | So I said, "Give me your three points of importance."

03:54:15.420 | So the All Secure Foundation

03:54:17.380 | serves special operations combat families

03:54:19.600 | in healing from post-traumatic stress injury

03:54:21.540 | and secondary post-traumatic stress.

03:54:23.340 | So that's often what the wife or the other husband

03:54:25.560 | or the other spouse suffers from.

03:54:27.940 | And we're starting to see that

03:54:28.820 | be more and more of an issue now.

03:54:31.180 | So they also are devoted to rebuilding

03:54:33.140 | the couple's relationships on the home front

03:54:35.060 | after the separations of war.

03:54:36.580 | And 80% of their warriors went on, went,

03:54:40.060 | yeah, 80% of their warriors want their families

03:54:44.140 | to be more involved with the healing.

03:54:45.200 | The problem is, is very often,

03:54:47.880 | vets don't realize that they can have,

03:54:49.800 | or just because the system doesn't pay for it,

03:54:52.380 | actually have their spouse as a part of things.

03:54:54.580 | And the biggest thing that we find

03:54:55.860 | with special operations families,

03:54:57.180 | I think the divorce rate's like 95%.

03:54:59.260 | - Wow.

03:55:00.340 | - And so they work so hard with these families.

03:55:03.380 | They take them on retreats, these husband and wives,

03:55:05.340 | and they get them to connect again

03:55:06.560 | after being separated over such a long period of time.

03:55:09.600 | There's other places like Children of Fallen Patriots

03:55:11.840 | out of DC, where they fund education,

03:55:14.820 | university for people who have lost their parents

03:55:17.940 | in deployments, whether their kid's even born yet.

03:55:21.340 | If they're still in utero, they still pay.

03:55:23.060 | They do not care.

03:55:24.520 | Then you've got people like in Canada,

03:55:26.820 | you've got Vets Canada.

03:55:28.560 | You've got, in the States, you've got True Patriot Love.

03:55:32.020 | You've got, who else in the States is really great

03:55:35.920 | that we've worked with?

03:55:36.920 | I know there's a Green Beret Foundation, that's great.

03:55:39.100 | One More Wave gives amputees,

03:55:41.220 | teaches them to surf with amputees.

03:55:43.860 | Like, they're really great.

03:55:45.140 | There's so many organizations,

03:55:46.900 | but at the end of the day, I focus on a small subset

03:55:50.620 | because you cannot fix everyone's problems.

03:55:54.220 | The least thing, the least you can do for people is focus.

03:55:57.960 | If you can provide focus,

03:55:59.420 | you can provide the proper amount of funding.

03:56:01.220 | Proper amount of funding can get the proper amount of tools.

03:56:03.580 | Those tools can actually be implemented properly.

03:56:06.720 | And then those people can go on

03:56:08.260 | to hopefully have successful marriages and families.

03:56:11.660 | And we don't have to watch our parents

03:56:13.460 | drink themselves to death

03:56:14.460 | and wonder why daddy's yelling at mommy all the time

03:56:16.740 | and daddy storms out and leaves.

03:56:18.500 | Well, daddy had some shit happen in his life

03:56:20.260 | and mommy had some shit happen,

03:56:21.700 | but that does not mean that's who they are.

03:56:24.180 | - And yeah, so trauma has completely destructive effects

03:56:28.300 | on family and relationships

03:56:30.700 | and correcting that as ripple effects.

03:56:34.660 | - Oh, just astronomical ripple effects.

03:56:38.140 | Because the problem is we are so quick

03:56:40.860 | to tell people they're suffering from PTSD.

03:56:44.040 | We're so quick to give them drugs.

03:56:45.760 | We're so quick to kick them out of the military.

03:56:48.320 | We're so quick to let them be homeless on the street.

03:56:50.280 | We're so quick to let them fucking kill themselves.

03:56:52.280 | We're so quick.

03:56:53.200 | And then all of a sudden when a politician goes,

03:56:55.880 | veteran suicide's an issue, that's when it's a problem.

03:56:58.780 | Well, if you prevent the problem

03:57:00.120 | from happening in the first place,

03:57:01.440 | or you give people the right funding and tools

03:57:03.120 | to do the job, you won't have this problem.

03:57:05.460 | - Do you have advice for young people?

03:57:10.320 | Think high school students, maybe undergrads,

03:57:14.560 | college students about career, life,

03:57:18.080 | how to live a life they can be proud of.

03:57:20.080 | You've had one heck of a life.

03:57:22.760 | - Some of them are really cheesy, but they're true.

03:57:27.960 | Live a life you can be proud of, number one.

03:57:32.600 | If you wake up every morning and you hate what you do,

03:57:34.520 | change the fucking station.

03:57:37.540 | Do not live and stay in that perpetual cycle of bullshit.

03:57:41.360 | It's not worth it.

03:57:42.440 | It's not what you're on this planet for.

03:57:45.840 | You're worth more than that, than the monotony

03:57:48.480 | of waking up, going to work, hating your life,

03:57:50.960 | drinking yourself to sleep, and functioning.

03:57:54.120 | Do yourself a favor.

03:57:55.160 | The thing I scream about on the show so much

03:57:57.320 | is move your fucking body.

03:58:00.300 | Move your body.

03:58:02.540 | Get your blood moving.

03:58:04.200 | Allow your body to do what it's here for.

03:58:07.400 | Go for a run, go for a walk.

03:58:09.200 | If you can't run, walk to the fridge

03:58:11.320 | three times more than maybe you did before,

03:58:13.600 | but you're moving.

03:58:15.380 | Pay attention to the shit you look at.

03:58:18.440 | More now than ever, we are seeing our younger generation

03:58:23.160 | just be force-fed information from one side or the other,

03:58:27.140 | and none of it makes sense.

03:58:28.560 | None of it's understandable.

03:58:29.820 | It just causes chaos in the brain.

03:58:32.500 | Really pay attention to what you listen to.

03:58:36.520 | Something I've had to learn to do is make time for myself.

03:58:41.520 | All of this working 18 hours a day,

03:58:45.160 | not sleeping, just work, work, work, work.

03:58:47.240 | That doesn't work.

03:58:48.080 | That's not sustainable.

03:58:48.940 | It's not healthy,

03:58:49.780 | and it's not anything anyone should be doing.

03:58:52.180 | Balance is important,

03:58:53.820 | but if you're going to take the time

03:58:57.820 | to do something for yourself,

03:58:59.820 | don't make it sitting in front of the TV for six hours,

03:59:02.180 | eating a bag of chips, drinking a Coke.

03:59:04.980 | Make it, I'm gonna go for a walk,

03:59:06.940 | maybe listen to a podcast where I can learn something.

03:59:09.720 | Make it, I'm gonna go volunteer somewhere.

03:59:12.540 | Nobody does that anymore,

03:59:13.580 | but make it I can go volunteer somewhere.

03:59:15.220 | Honor House, they have no paid employees.

03:59:18.140 | They have one.

03:59:19.020 | Everybody is a volunteer.

03:59:20.500 | They're fucking phenomenal.

03:59:23.020 | Just do whatever you're gonna do.

03:59:25.980 | Do it with some fucking drive.

03:59:27.860 | Put some goddamn effort into your life,

03:59:30.500 | and pick something in a career

03:59:32.140 | that's gonna make you happy,

03:59:34.300 | not something that's just gonna give you six figures,

03:59:36.260 | 'cause that's not gonna make you happy.

03:59:37.460 | I can tell you right now, I have everything in the world,

03:59:40.380 | and the last thing I want is more things.

03:59:42.340 | I want less.

03:59:43.180 | I want the woods, and I want quiet,

03:59:45.700 | because that's what's important to me.

03:59:48.180 | I want my family to matter,

03:59:50.420 | the people around me to matter,

03:59:52.100 | and the small group I keep, that tight knit I have,

03:59:55.820 | I want them to wake up every minute

03:59:57.580 | knowing that they have a friend

03:59:58.700 | that they can call on the other line

03:59:59.860 | that isn't just like, how's it going,

04:00:01.820 | that can actually have a conversation,

04:00:04.260 | a meaningful, intelligent, caring conversation.

04:00:08.560 | We are just breeding these kids to be followers

04:00:12.660 | who digest bullshit, who reverberate things

04:00:16.560 | they don't fully understand, and have opinions on stuff

04:00:19.880 | they have no business talking about.

04:00:21.680 | - Yeah, with an open mind, humbly,

04:00:25.900 | think deeply about the world.

04:00:28.140 | - Correct.

04:00:28.980 | - How has your relationship with death changed?

04:00:32.660 | This is a Russian program, I have to ask you.

04:00:36.020 | So you've considered suicide throughout your life.

04:00:38.580 | You have been in the line of fire.

04:00:41.020 | You have witnessed death.

04:00:42.980 | You as a human being, a mortal one,

04:00:45.380 | do you think about your death these days,

04:00:49.740 | now that you have begun the journey

04:00:52.420 | with dealing with your trauma?

04:00:55.340 | Do you think about your death?

04:00:57.900 | Are you afraid of your death?

04:00:59.460 | - Well, you don't die, so that's why.

04:01:03.140 | - What do you mean, you don't die?

04:01:05.340 | - You move on.

04:01:06.860 | - Where do you go?

04:01:08.660 | - To another plane, and another vibration,

04:01:10.940 | and another whatever you wanna call it, this isn't it.

04:01:14.260 | This isn't all of it.

04:01:15.940 | This is a blip.

04:01:17.340 | This is a moment, this is a...

04:01:19.740 | I used to be afraid of death before the military.

04:01:22.820 | I was always afraid of dying.

04:01:24.620 | I don't know why, I had this irrational fear

04:01:26.980 | that I was gonna be kidnapped in my room.

04:01:28.740 | Like seriously, like irrational fear, like afraid.

04:01:31.460 | And it's funny, 'cause I talked to Michaela yesterday,

04:01:35.820 | and she said the same thing, and I was like,

04:01:37.780 | oh my God, I know what you're talking about.

04:01:39.740 | - Being afraid of being kidnapped?

04:01:41.180 | - Yeah, she had this fear that someone was gonna come in

04:01:43.460 | and take her out of her room.

04:01:44.900 | I had the same fear.

04:01:46.980 | - By a human being, or a monster of some kind?

04:01:49.180 | - No, I think by a human being,

04:01:50.460 | and I had this irrational fear that I was,

04:01:52.700 | that something was gonna happen to me.

04:01:54.940 | And like I said, I don't know if it's because

04:01:56.300 | my parents were always made me aware of my surroundings.

04:01:58.540 | People take people, this is a real thing that happens.

04:02:01.420 | And I was really small, and I looked like a little boy.

04:02:03.820 | My hair was like that when I was training.

04:02:06.220 | I had short, no hair, I had flat as a board.

04:02:08.700 | You would've thought I was a 12-year-old boy.

04:02:10.860 | And so my mom's like, people take people, sweetie,

04:02:12.900 | that's just the reality of life.

04:02:14.780 | You need to be aware.

04:02:15.620 | So I don't know if I had this ingrained in my mind.

04:02:18.100 | I was always training to protect myself,

04:02:20.500 | or fight someone off, so I was afraid

04:02:23.300 | of this irrational thing.

04:02:25.220 | And then I went overseas, and then I realized

04:02:27.380 | that I could just be literally there talking to you,

04:02:28.940 | having a conversation, and I could just be

04:02:30.260 | taken off the face of the earth.

04:02:32.140 | And there's nothing I can do about it.

04:02:34.660 | And then I adapted this idea that when it's my time,

04:02:36.820 | it'll be my time, but the difference is now,

04:02:40.140 | at least I know that if I do go,

04:02:46.740 | and I do cross, and I do move on,

04:02:51.460 | I know that I live my life the way

04:02:56.180 | that I always hoped I would be proud to live.

04:02:59.840 | - Can I ask you a dark question?

04:03:04.340 | - Yeah.

04:03:05.420 | - You mentioned Robin Williams,

04:03:07.500 | you mentioned Anthony Bourdain,

04:03:09.460 | and your own struggle with suicide.

04:03:12.100 | Why do you think they ultimately lost that battle?

04:03:17.100 | Why do you think they lost their lives?

04:03:19.340 | - Man, that's a loaded question,

04:03:21.580 | because you could look at everything

04:03:22.940 | from biomarkers in the brain to know

04:03:27.260 | if their serotonin and dopamine levels

04:03:29.140 | were crashed in the ground.

04:03:30.700 | There's biological reasonings for some people

04:03:34.340 | where they're born bipolar and they have,

04:03:36.380 | or they're schizophrenic.

04:03:37.380 | There's so many things we don't fully grasp about the brain.

04:03:42.380 | But what we do know from my perspective, for me at least,

04:03:47.220 | there really is no rhyme or reason

04:03:53.060 | why I survived and others didn't.

04:03:55.120 | Stuff and things don't make you happy.

04:03:59.140 | People don't always know why they're feeling

04:04:03.180 | the way they're feeling, but they also are not always

04:04:06.700 | willing to talk about it or be,

04:04:13.860 | they put on a good front.

04:04:15.060 | And if nobody knows any different, what do you expect?

04:04:18.300 | - And it's especially clear with the two of them

04:04:21.200 | that on the surface they're exceptionally successful

04:04:24.980 | in so many dimensions.

04:04:26.460 | And still that means nothing.

04:04:28.700 | Material possessions, anything really,

04:04:32.500 | is not, doesn't guarantee you happiness.

04:04:36.580 | - No, it doesn't.

04:04:37.660 | - Well-- - That's scary.

04:04:40.080 | - That's terrifying.

04:04:42.040 | But when it's good, that's what makes it joyful.

04:04:46.860 | Like that's what happiness is.

04:04:51.020 | It's like, holy shit, somehow amidst all the absurdity,

04:04:54.580 | all the things that you can't predict,

04:04:56.860 | you nevertheless feel really good.

04:04:58.940 | That's why I feel really fortunate

04:05:00.940 | to be getting this feed of happiness all the time.

04:05:03.840 | Well, to be or not to be, that's a good place to end it.

04:05:09.900 | Kelsey, you're an amazing human being.

04:05:13.280 | I'm really fortunate that you would spend

04:05:15.220 | your valuable time with me.

04:05:16.580 | As I said, you're so good at not just talking,

04:05:22.260 | but listening, so I definitely will listen to your podcast.

04:05:25.860 | 'Cause I can tell you're an incredible person

04:05:27.980 | as an interviewer and as a storyteller.

04:05:30.860 | So again, thank you for talking today.

04:05:33.580 | - Thank you so much, Bob.

04:05:34.860 | - Thanks for listening to this conversation

04:05:37.940 | with Kelsey Sharon.

04:05:39.260 | To support this podcast,

04:05:40.620 | please check out our sponsors in the description.

04:05:43.220 | And now, let me leave you with some words

04:05:45.340 | from Herbert Hoover.

04:05:46.580 | Older men declare war,

04:05:49.980 | but it is the youth that must fight and die.

04:05:53.220 | Thank you for listening, and hope to see you next time.

04:05:57.340 | (upbeat music)

04:05:59.920 | (upbeat music)

04:06:02.500 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

Kelsi Sheren: War, Artillery, PTSD, and Love | Lex Fridman Podcast #230

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