In this episode of the Joe Rogan Experience podcast, Joe sits down with two of his good friends, Evan and Matt, to talk about their love for coffee and how they got into it in the military. They also talk about how they built a massive coffee lab in their kitchen and the crazy things they do to make sure their coffee is perfect for the job they're doing. This episode is a must-listen, especially if you're a coffee lover like Joe and Matt! If you don't know who they are, you're not going to want to miss this episode. It's a firecracker of an episode, and you'll definitely want to check out their coffee lab at Joe Rogans' office to get a taste of what they're up to. Joe also talks about what it's like to be a Green Beret, a former Navy SEAL, and how he got into coffee in the first place. You won't wanna miss this one. Also, if you haven't tried Evan's coffee yet, you should definitely do so. He's a good friend of mine, and I think you're going to love it. Cheers, Joe! Check it out! -Evan and Matt -Joe Rogan Podcast by day, by night, All Day All Day by Night by Night - All Day on Joe's Podcast by Night All Day by Night by Matt and Evan Check out The Podcast by Day, by Night all Day, By Night, All day by Night, By Day, All By Night by Day All by Night By Night All By Day by Day by Nights, All by Nights by Day By Night By Day All By Nights, By Nights By Day By Day - By Nights All Day By Nights by Nights All By Days By Day by Day , All Day On Joe and Night by Nights By Night All Day Morning, By Days, by Day and Night, by Days and Nights by Days, By Hours, by Nights and Nights, by Any Day, Day by Days By Nights by Days by Day & Nights, Day By Days by Days All Day, by Nights , by Day... by Nights & Nights by Night... by Anyday, by Hours, By Any Day by Any Given Day, I'll See You, I'm Gotta Have Coffee? I'll Be With You? , I'll Have Coffee by Day With You, By All Day Podcast, I Can't Have It?
00:00:18.000I've known you guys for a long time and I've enjoyed your coffee for a long time, so I'm happy you guys could come on here and talk some shit.
00:03:26.000That's why, you know, I was like, if you just have to run fast, because if you're going to do something weird like this, you got to be able to run really fast, do a lot of fucking pull-ups and push-ups, and shoot really well.
00:03:38.000I think that was one of the things where I was like, man, I got to be really good at all these things because it's got to offset...
00:03:54.000We both had similar professions post-military as contractors, and I was in this fob, and I'm sitting there, I'm like, why the fuck is there this $50,000 espresso machine for a very small base in the middle of nowhere?
00:04:07.000Well, come to find three years later, I'm chatting with Evan, I'm like, yeah, dude, I don't know, the agency bought some stupid-ass espresso.
00:04:56.000I'm like, yeah, but we still need a grinder too, right?
00:04:59.000And that was something that kind of lived in not only infamy, that I'd gotten the entire logistic system to buy me this espresso machine from Italy.
00:05:48.000When I look back on it now, as a guy that's very vested in what's happening to my tax dollars, I'm like, what the fuck were these idiots doing?
00:06:08.000So, and I've got a myriad of them, but we had a field of up-armored vehicles that were really fucking expensive, like $500,000 a pop, give or take.
00:06:21.000We couldn't take them anywhere because...
00:06:25.000They were so obvious that it was a up armored vehicle that you just drive around and people would want to take pot shots at you for the fun of it.
00:06:33.000So you have these beautiful half a million to a million dollar cars that you can't use.
00:06:38.000So you got to go when we're working in the low viz capacity.
00:06:42.000It means, like, you're just trying to blend in, just not get shot, man.
00:06:47.000Like, let's just blend in, do our job, get the fuck out of here.
00:06:50.000But if you have a really expensive looking, like, G5 or something that's just really a G5 in the middle of fucking Baghdad in a war zone, people are going to want to take- What's the pressure washed and all clean?
00:07:17.000If you buy the most ridiculous and expensive vehicle in the middle of fucking war-torn country X, you're going to stick out like a sore thumb.
00:07:26.000And the whole intent of the mission is to blend in.
00:07:30.000So to my point, you'll have fields of shit that you can't use because some dumbass is pulling the trigger on your government tax dollars going, this looks good to me.
00:07:41.000Might as well just see how that looks.
00:16:43.000And so he was taking me down, you know, Cigar Street with whatever he's doing.
00:16:48.000And I was taking him down Coffee Street and...
00:16:51.000And so the geekiest conversation in America was taking place between Stephen and me as we're trying to eat steak in this bar in Dallas not too far from his office.
00:17:05.000But I think for every one of those, you actually find a niche subculture of people that also share your...
00:17:13.000You're saying passion for just obscure details and things.
00:17:17.000So when you're talking about wine or coffee, you do have some type of common kinship, I guess, because I get it.
00:17:25.000I totally get why people are into this one little thing and they want to go as deep and as interesting as they can.
00:17:32.000I totally get it because I'm like that with coffee.
00:17:35.000I never get bored of it if I go to Panama or Guatemala or Costa Rica.
00:17:39.000Coffee is so fascinating from every aspect, whether we're looking at it from the international historical consequences of this entire commodity, whether it's commodities trading, whether it's growing and processing the future of coffee,
00:17:55.000where is it headed, how are we optimizing the growing process so we don't run out of it, whether you're looking at it from a roasting or a drinking, all of that You can go as deep and as detailed as you want and it doesn't get fucking boring.
00:19:28.000So, like, none of the American politicians can fuck that thing up to the point where we can't go out there and at least enjoy it in a peaceful, in a way that's beneficial for everybody.
00:19:39.000I mean, They've done an amazing job of not fucking it up, thinking about how many people come there.
00:19:45.000Every year, people are constantly going to Hawaii, and they've somehow or another managed to keep it together.
00:19:50.000Well, I think it's pretty much America's vacation spot, where we're like, we'll take that island, so we have bachelorette parties, we can just roll out there and sit on Kauai for a couple days and drink margaritas.
00:20:01.000The thing that I was thinking about when I was flying out there, which is really kind of a morbid thought in some ways, where I was thinking about all the fat that has flown across the ocean so they can go eat more fat on the island of Hawaii, in the sense of just people and the obesity of just generally flying seven hours,
00:20:20.000landing on an island, and then essentially sitting and eating in a buffet, and then flying back.
00:20:25.000And I was thinking about the fuel That's being utilized to cart just general fat back and forth.
00:20:32.000That's what I was thinking about when I was flying to Hawaii in January.
00:21:38.000When you're there at nighttime and you hit the headlights and you just see thousands of eyes, you're like, whoa, this is crazy.
00:21:46.000Well, Axis breed like hogs, as you know.
00:21:48.000And I think a lot of people don't know in Texas with the exotics here, what happened over the last, you know, whatever, hundred years is the rains and storms wash out the high fences.
00:21:56.000And then you get the Axis that escape.
00:21:58.000And now they're like rampant where I live in hill country just an hour away.
00:22:31.000Yeah, which is so weird because elk used to be native.
00:22:35.000They used to be native here, but they were extirpated, and then now that they're back again, because they're not standard for Texas, they're now considered exotics, so there's no hunting season for elk out here.
00:22:50.000Have you immersed yourself at all in the Texas hunting culture yet at all?
00:23:14.000But the hunting out here is crazy, because some of the high-fence ranches, and we're talking tens of thousands of acres, and if you ask them, can you shoot a giraffe?
00:23:23.000They're like, everything's got a price tag, old boy.
00:25:12.000Yeah, because a lot of those animals, if they get out, like a Zedonk crossover, then you have like, you know, Red Stag and Elk can actually mate together and make a hybrid crossbreed.
00:29:59.000That's my favorite part about living in Texas is I live a bunch next to the hillbillies and I mean that in a complimentary sense but like my neighbor I don't know two months ago was like hey man I just killed a bison on this ranch I got like extra meat he gave me like 150 pounds of organic bison so I mean I love it because everybody's killing shit around here and you eat so good Well,
00:30:18.000at my studio in LA, I had three commercial freezers.
00:30:21.000So when dudes would come over, I'd give everybody meat.
00:30:25.000I gave meat to people that you would never think would be out there eating elk.
00:30:30.000Just never put your freezer on a GFI switch.
00:31:52.000And I would pack shitty coolers with dry ice and ice and they would last five days.
00:31:58.000So even with a Yeti cooler, a little bit of shade, you can stretch that out for, I don't know, man, you could get a week at least out of that stuff.
00:32:07.000But the funny thing is, with just meat in general, as far as...
00:32:11.000One of the questions that I was trying to ask you earlier was, when you're on that carnivore diet and you were eating nothing but meat, were you eating wild meat or were you also eating some beef and some other things in there?
00:34:58.000That's the only reason I'm motivated in life to be pretty good at business is so I can buy pretty good whiskey and be a fat fuck any time I go to a restaurant and buy the lobster roll that's $37.
00:35:40.000I've been trying, like I went strictly essentially vegetables and meat for probably the last six months just to see kind of what's going on.
00:37:55.000There's real benefits to not eating all the time because you give your body a break and you let your body digest food.
00:38:01.000And there's benefits to going into ketosis and your body goes into ketosis when it doesn't have glycogen anymore and starts eating fat and burning off the fat.
00:38:22.000They want to see how far they can push it.
00:38:24.000And so there's a thing where you're hungry, but you're like, nope, not until 6. I don't eat until 6. Yeah, that's a super aggressive internet minute fasting is weird to me when they eat for like two hours a day.
00:38:33.000I get it if it's like 12, but like 18, 20 hours, that's too much for me.
00:38:38.000We would be up in the mountains, cruising around, we were going shed hunting, and it's, you know, 4.30, 5 o'clock, and he's like, I can't eat yet.
00:40:29.000But if you're out there in the mountains and you're at 8,000 feet and then you have 100 pounds of elk on your back and you have to walk over this ridge and it's going to take you two miles to get to the truck...
00:40:59.000I mean, I've always made that joke when people are like having a donut and they're just like, I have no energy and they're chugging coffee.
00:41:04.000I'm like, eat some fucking good carbs and some meat and you're going to feel great.
00:41:07.000It's just, yeah, the diet in America is very interesting to me, especially when we travel and we're with some of the other guys that don't have the same dietary habits as us.
00:41:16.000And I'm like, you ate gas station burritos and a hot dog and that's what you had today.
00:41:35.000And I think that's where the intermittent fasting, at least for a lot of guys, it can really help because it's ultimately saying...
00:41:44.000I'm not going to take part in just the ease of all the food that's available all the time, and I'm going to take part in two or three hours a day or whatever it is.
00:41:51.000Yeah, just give yourself some discipline.
00:42:27.000But I think for MCT, I use a lot of MCT, and I'm not saying it's good whatsoever.
00:42:32.000I just want to see what the fuck happens to my body when I do nothing but good, when I say non-processed fats, wild meat all the way through.
00:42:44.000And then stick to it for two, three, four weeks and see how I'm feeling.
00:43:24.000Well, they were told that for the longest time.
00:43:27.000Well, first of all, there's real evidence that sugar and these companies that made sugar paid scientists to fuck with data to put heart disease and all these problems that people are having with clogged arteries.
00:43:42.000To push that off on saturated fat and to take that away from sugar.
00:44:05.000Well, unsaturated fats that come from vegetable oils, I think it's called linoleic acid, is fucking terrible for you.
00:44:12.000Not only is it terrible for you, there's real evidence that it makes you hungry.
00:44:16.000That you're eating it and there's no nutrients in it, so your body gets hungrier.
00:44:20.000Throughout human history, there's never been a time until recently where people got oils directly from plants in large quantities like that you know if you got oil from plants it was like oil from avocados like natural or you got your oil from you know beef fat or chicken fat or things that's natural for human beings right these saturated fats that are natural your body knows what to do with them your body doesn't know what the fuck to do with canola oil What is it?
00:44:50.000Your body's like, what the fuck is this?
00:44:52.000Your body gets a hold of some raw honey.
00:44:55.000Your body knows exactly what to do with it.
00:44:56.000But your body gets a hold of fucking corn syrup and that kind of shit.
00:45:31.000Your body knows what the fuck to do with that.
00:45:33.000But you get into seed oils and all these really heavily processed seed oils.
00:45:39.000There's real evidence that that is a giant part of what's wrong with the health of Americans today is these ultra-processed vegetable oils.
00:46:10.000You don't even have to be a rocket surgeon to figure that out, right?
00:46:14.000It's like, holy shit, obesity is an epidemic in the United States.
00:46:18.000We're eating a ton of processed food, and all the guys that I know that are healthy are eating whole foods for the most part.
00:46:23.000And it's not because you have more discipline or because you have more access or wealth.
00:46:28.000I know a ton of guys that are not very wealthy that eat whole foods, and they're feeding in certain windows, and they're still in the military, still doing fucking incredibly difficult missions, and they're really healthy.
00:47:55.000We're like ultra-processed seed oils, sugar, corn syrup.
00:47:59.000Yeah, preservatives, fucking gallons of preservatives, glyphosate on all our plants.
00:48:07.000There's also evidence that animals, and I've been getting into this lately, animals that eat these ultra-processed foods, then you eat them.
00:48:16.000Animals that eat ultra-processed corn, then you eat that animal.
00:48:21.000You're getting some of the bullshit from the corn and some of the bullshit from that.
00:48:24.000All these seed oil acids, you're getting these things in your body, too.
00:48:49.000It's like, no, man, like, those chickens are eating arsenic and they're packed in, you know, right on top of each other, shitting on each other everywhere.
00:48:56.000Like, I'd rather have a free-range egg.
00:49:06.000I think that the argument comes from maybe corporate impact in marketing where Americans will consume it without thinking and go, well, it's good because Jack in the Box told me that it's organic.
00:49:21.000Well, I think if there's any one thing in this country where there's a massive...
00:49:27.000Lack of understanding in terms of the way people perceive what's good and what's bad.
00:51:44.000Brown rice has also been reported high levels of inorganic arsenic, which is what I said, which is a toxin known to potentially cause liver, lung, kidney, and bladder cancer.
00:51:53.000Some arsenic is just naturally occurring mineral.
00:51:55.000But the inorganic kind comes from chemicals and pesticides.
00:51:58.000A researcher named Alan Aragon said, He's a very highly respected fellow.
00:53:49.000Just another reason why I shouldn't eat greens.
00:53:51.000But then there's other people that'll tell you that greens are super healthy for you and there's all these benefits to eating greens and that a certain level of...
00:53:58.000I think a certain amount of eating greens, there's a hermetic effect where your body is like...
00:54:27.000When the giraffes upwind were eating certain plants, the leaves downwind caught the fact that they were being eaten and they changed their taste profile.
00:54:40.000So they release a certain chemical that makes the giraffes discouraged from eating them.
00:54:46.000So these giraffes hated eating this shit.
00:54:55.000And they have to figure out how to survive.
00:54:57.000So nature has all these strategies for survival.
00:55:00.000And one of the strategies that plants have is they release these chemicals in order to make themselves taste like shit or even be poisonous.
00:55:08.000I've been hearing more and more of this, and it's interesting because when I look at what's going on with your gut, right?
00:55:15.000I was just having this conversation earlier with a retired Special Forces guy, a good friend of mine, and we were talking about our life in the military and what's happening in our gut biome, right?
00:55:27.000What's happening with the balance of your ecosystem down here.
00:55:32.000And we've lived this life of going overseas and overseas repetitively on a yearly, sometimes more annual cycle in these developing world countries and combat zones.
00:55:48.000We're nuking our gut every time we go over there and anti-malarials, anti-inflammatories, all of the different things.
00:56:09.000And so now, how much is happening down here?
00:56:13.000And when we're talking about plant-based or carnivore or paleo or any of these other things, how much is it really dependent on the individual and whether or not they were breastfed as kids?
00:56:23.000How many anti-inflammatories have they taken?
00:57:24.000And they'll tell you based on their own anecdotal evidence.
00:57:29.000The thing you need to know, though, about vegans is there's a number, I think it's more, there's a giant number of them that eat meat when they're drunk.
00:57:39.000I'm not even going to call those guys out, but it was interesting.
00:57:42.000My wife posted holding up like six fillets like a year or so ago.
00:57:45.000And man, a vegan, she got posted on some vegan page.
00:57:48.000And they just went after her like, I hope you effing die, you this, you that.
00:57:53.000And I was like, damn, she's just having a filet, man.
00:57:56.000But I think that anything on the diet side and fitness, it's super individualized for success because not everything that works for you would work for me.
00:58:02.000And I think a lot of people are too lazy to figure out and do the actual effort to see what best diet for them, their work routine.
00:58:39.000So if you're going to analyze your diet and you're going to really do it right, you've got to be disciplined.
00:58:45.000So if you're going to do it, you should really do blood work.
00:58:47.000You should really exercise and write down your routines and write down how you feel after you exercised and then try to figure out what you're doing right and what you're doing wrong.
00:58:56.000And that's one of the reasons why people like the carnivore diet is because it's one of the best elimination diets.
00:59:00.000You're basically taking everything out except meat.
00:59:03.000And then you kind of find out, hey, you know, my body doesn't react well to this.
00:59:07.000Or my, you know, my body has a real problem with that.
00:59:09.000Or some people it's caffeine, and some people it's just fucking whatever it is.
00:59:13.000It's like, you gotta find out what's fucking with you.
00:59:18.000Most people just, you know, they go to a doctor, the doctor prescribes medication, they keep eating the same old shit, but now they have chemicals in here that are supposed to offset whatever negative stuff that they have in their diet.
00:59:27.000I'm like, What's an interesting segue on that, too, because that's like, in part, some of the nonprofit stuff I do on this side is solely based on that, the individualized treatment for veterans, specifically in law enforcement, because you see a lot with the military, DOD, the VA,
00:59:43.000like you're saying, you show up, don't feel good, and it's a blanket treatment, right?
00:59:46.000Here's some antidepressants, here's all that, but it's a Band-Aid for a bullet hole, and if you're not actually...
00:59:51.000If you're figuring out what the cause is and you're treating symptoms, then the third and fourth order effects of those treatments are going to make that individual worse.
00:59:59.000Some of the issues they have, like I think I have PTSD, if that's a guy saying they're PTSD, they go through and they find out they have TBI and 40% memory function, short term memory function.
01:00:09.000And so now you go to cognitive therapy and you get the guys or gals working through it that way.
01:00:13.000But the only way to figure that out is through brain scans and blood work and actually focusing on the individual rather than being lazy and say, Here's some antidepressants when the whole time the issue was something completely different.
01:00:24.000And then you have budget problems, right?
01:00:27.000So the veterans hospitals don't have enough money to send you through all these different scans and all these different doctors and specialists and try to fine tune what's wrong with you.
01:00:36.000Well, I think that that's, you know, one of the things that we talk about a lot is our politicians, we'll say, our leadership.
01:01:20.000They hate paying for the after effects.
01:01:22.000They hate standing by their word in the sense of...
01:01:26.000Hey, we're going to take care of you, all your health problems, your education.
01:01:30.000We're going to start really fixing the VA system so there's long-term care.
01:01:37.000What most veterans that I know, what they have to do is they have to continue to lobby the government over and over and over for them to prove that what's happened to their body is connected to their service.
01:01:51.000The issue that I continue to see is that this is a lack of, one, it's a lack of experience for our politicians.
01:01:59.000They don't quite understand what war is and the long-term effects on individual soldiers.
01:02:04.000After decades of service, and I think hundreds of my friends, every one of us has some type of long-term effect from their service.
01:03:17.000During COVID, what was happening is that his leg was changing as far as the shape of it because he was growing an additional layer of bone where his leg was blown off.
01:03:29.000And he needed a new leg, but he couldn't get in to get a new leg.
01:03:34.000So he was confined to his wheelchair for almost six months during this process and he couldn't get an appointment.
01:03:41.000There's no reason why that should happen.
01:03:46.000We can't have the largest transfer of wealth from a taxpayer into the military-industrial complex in modern history without zero ethical argument as far as our entire political system, and then not continue to care for our veterans.
01:04:01.000There's just no way that we can do that as a society, because I think ultimately that defines us and who we are collectively, and it's not a good grade.
01:04:09.000Well, there's a long history of the United States doing that.
01:04:11.000Remember when people were coming back from the first Gulf War and they were having all these issues with radiation because they used that depleted uranium rounds.
01:04:20.000And they kind of denied, first of all, that they used them.
01:04:23.000They denied that this effect was related to that.
01:04:25.000And then birth defects and all sorts of weird radiation sickness issues that people were having.
01:04:31.000They were calling it Gulf War Syndrome.
01:04:32.000But they did their very best to not take care of these people.
01:04:37.000Well, you look from Agent Orange in Vietnam and the long-term effects of that and all the studies and research that's coming out right now with the burn pits and the carcinogens and how much cancer, but then they're like, ah, you can't really draw the conclusion that it came from burning shit for six months, you know?
01:04:52.000And to Evan's point as well, it's tragic, to be honest, that there's tens of thousands of nonprofits that are having to do the legwork.
01:05:00.000Without government grants or funding, the money is coming from people that are participating in philanthropy saying, I want to do something good for these guys and gals that have real issues.
01:05:11.000To Clint, he's missing his legs, and you're going to make him be in a wheelchair for months?
01:05:16.000For me, that's just absolutely unacceptable, and there has to be change.
01:05:21.000What about the story you were telling right before the show about your friend who lost her arms?
01:05:26.000One of her good friends, Mary, she's an EOD tech, had both of her arms blown off when she tried to catch some ordinance that they were going to dispose of.
01:05:37.000Essentially, she has a full-time caregiver, and she went to go see her family for, I believe it was a month.
01:05:42.000During that time, she didn't have the caregiver because she was with her husband and family, and they were taking care of her.
01:05:47.000Well, the VA determined after that stint that she doesn't need a full-time caregiver because she obviously was fine that month she was away.
01:05:55.000And this is a young lady, amazing person, just nubs.
01:06:35.000As we look back in history, and we look at Iraq in particular, and we look at the tens of thousands of service members that served in Iraq, to include myself, I don't know if they want to be reminded of that section of our history on a regular basis either.
01:06:54.000And so when we have amputees and we have health issues with the burn pits, that really I think is our cause that we need to talk about as our Agent Orange is, you know, I think Jon Stewart just recently brought it up and we're active in the Hunter 7 Foundation,
01:07:12.000which does a lot of research in this, but We're good to go.
01:07:32.000It's because if they acknowledge that it's a problem, they're going to have to pay for it.
01:08:14.000And how close is this to where you guys were living?
01:08:17.000In every one of the firebases I was at.
01:08:19.000Four and a half years is how much time I have on the ground in Iraq.
01:08:22.000In every one of my firebases, there was a burn pit.
01:08:25.000And not only that, you're going to have young privates out there with sticks rolling it over in the smoke with probably some knitted fake mask that they're wearing that they got.
01:08:35.000And they're the ones in there actually rotating the trash to burn it through completely.
01:08:38.000So they're completely subjected to that environment from a very long time.
01:08:47.000Really, really smart, you know, officers and contractors.
01:08:52.000The same guys that decided that, you know, the invasion was going to be a really good idea of Iraq.
01:08:57.000They're the same people making those types of decisions in the way that, you know, obviously, when we look at this now and we look back on it and we go, that's dumb as fuck.
01:09:08.000There was somebody in a series of people at that point in time in 2003 to 2009 in Iraq that were saying, this is a good idea.
01:09:17.000And that type of mentality, I think, is the same type of mentality today that says, this is a good idea for us not to fund the research to figure out what the fuck is going on.
01:09:31.000And when we talk about it, right, our voices are only so big.
01:09:35.000But I think if people knew what was happening with our generation of veterans, because, you know, I'm 43, you're 33, 34. 34. You've got all these guys that are coming up with strange cancers.
01:09:51.000One of Jocko's friends and our friends, he just died of cancer.
01:09:57.000Had a strange heart organ cancer or some kind of cancer in his back, and he just died six months down the road.
01:10:04.000And what's happening, and when we talk about the other foundations and people that are diving into some of this research, it's incredibly underfunded.
01:10:13.000They're starting to have this direct connection between the burn pits themselves and the chemicals that ultimately we're exposed to or were exposed to.
01:10:22.000And a lot of the cancers that guys are coming, when I say that, they're developing, I guess.
01:11:25.000If you're willing to spend a hundred thousand to a million dollars on a guy or a gal to train them up to do a specific job because you look at how much it costs to put them through training and school after school after school and then they get out and we're just like, have fun.
01:11:38.000Especially guys and gals like we're talking tier one units.
01:11:40.000I have friends that have done 16, 17, 18 deployments.
01:11:44.000And it's an injustice because they're willing to sacrifice their life, limb and body and eyesight for, you know, I guess the politicians to send them to war.
01:11:53.000But then it's a moral obligation as our society that we have to fight.
01:11:56.000Look out for them when they come back.
01:12:41.000Which is interesting because I think a lot of people that have deployed, if you said, hey, we got to get this trash burnt, we got to do it, we signed up for it, we got it.
01:12:50.000But then you got to give them the research and the medical clinicians that understand this going forward and after the fact to actually...
01:12:58.000Hopefully not die like this from cancer.
01:13:13.000I mean, but even landfills are fucking terrible.
01:13:15.000One of the things they're finding out when they're doing these satellite overviews is that methane, like they're trying to find the largest sources of methane and what's contributing to greenhouse gases...
01:13:27.000Landfills where you take all your food, they pour it into the ground, they just cover it up with dirt, and it's just leaking methane into the atmosphere.
01:13:35.000Like, I don't know what the solution is, but the solution's definitely not burn it right where the soldiers are sleeping.
01:13:41.000No, and I think that Now that as we continue to evolve, hopefully as a society, and we look at the way that we deploy service members overseas, we've at least identified this as a problem.
01:13:55.000But the big thing that I see is we have to continue to look at the problem, fund the research, and look at the direct connection between these types of activities, meaning burn pits.
01:14:08.000We're looking at burn pit and I'm saying, That's burn pit, but it's also...
01:14:12.000I know Tim, obviously, he's been on the podcast.
01:14:18.000But when we look at the long-term effects of, we'll call it the special operations community, because I'm obviously from that subculture, but sleep deprivation, anti-inflammatories, anti-malarials, burn pits, multiple rotations,
01:14:53.000Continues to evolve at least past these wars.
01:14:56.000We have to look at it as a collective and say, how do we turn everybody's attention within the VA system to directly take care of these guys in a very positive and impactful way?
01:15:09.000So we don't have people like Mary Dagg that get denied a full-time service caregiver.
01:15:21.000I'm actually going to call her after this.
01:15:23.000But yeah, at least give the resources and the funding necessary because I'm sure VA as an organization wants to do good and wants to do great things.
01:15:31.000I think that when people just say, the VA sucks, it's the wrong way to look at this.
01:15:34.000It's how do we critically think and solve the problem and put in process and a plan to go, here's the resources you need so we can fix the issues that are right in front of our face.
01:15:44.000Yeah, I couldn't imagine being a VA bean counter or being someone who works for a VA bean counter who gets the call that you have to cut the budget by X amount.
01:15:53.000So figure out where you're going to slash these benefits.
01:15:58.000And then you have to look at these people that you're talking to either on the phone or through email.
01:16:02.000You can't even look at them as a human.
01:16:03.000You've got to look at them as a number on a ledger.
01:16:07.000And then you have, you know, an incredible giving nation that backfills that need through, you know, nonprofit organizations.
01:16:16.000Yeah, I guess my only intent in that conversation is I think the government needs to do a much better job of leading the conversation than being towed around by the entire conversation.
01:16:50.000I think the last time I tried to schedule a VA appointment, it was going to take me 200 plus days to get in to see a physician, you know, about a shoulder injury.
01:17:11.000But there are a lot of people that have been directly affected by this that need care.
01:17:15.000And now we have the ability, I think, based on the current administration, to go see a primary care provider outside of the VA, which I think was a huge step.
01:17:28.000For us, having this company and what we're doing with it, it's a big part of the mission of how we run the company, what we're doing with the company.
01:17:39.000It is a huge part of our mission just in general.
01:18:00.000There's something to what you guys are doing that resonates with people that it's not just a coffee brand, but it's a coffee brand that supports first responders, military, veterans.
01:18:09.000And it means a lot to people, I think, because of that.
01:18:11.000Yeah, I think something I'm really proud of with the company, too, is giving a more, like, visceral understanding and perspective of the veteran experience, because before the company and kind of the commercials and stuff we did, I think there was a very singular perspective of what a veteran was.
01:18:25.000It was kind of the chest-beating, you know, chiseled Navy SEAL. Tattooed, bearded.
01:18:30.000Yeah, and while that exists, I think that it's good to shed light on...
01:18:34.000Hey, man, you're tattooed and bearded.
01:18:52.000And I think humanizing that a little bit allows people not to look at veterans like the two ways that I've seen a lot throughout the years are you're their Captain America.
01:19:00.000Or you're a pill-popping, depressed veteran that goes to bed every night beating your wife.
01:19:06.000And you're like, 90% of us are in the middle of just people that want to do, hopefully normal people, trying to do some extraordinary things in the name of a free society.
01:19:16.000I think it's just a cool thing that people like supporting companies like yours that do have a great message and that do do good things.
01:19:24.000It's a nice aspect that you guys can put that message out there and people understand what you're about and that this is a company that was really started by two guys who are veterans.
01:19:34.000I mean, it's a big company now, but Really just came down to you guys and your love of coffee and just deciding to do this and then start doing good with the money.
01:19:52.000Well, I mean, we're thankful that it means a lot to them because we wouldn't be in the position we are to kind of focus on the things that we think are matter and support the organizations that we do.
01:19:59.000And I mean, I think that's both of us's end user and end user experience is exactly what we want to have a great quality product and something that motivates people to wake up in the morning and kick ass.
01:20:10.000And if they didn't purchase it, we wouldn't be here doing what we're trying to do.
01:20:13.000There's also a thing about with you, Evan, it's so obviously authentic.
01:20:21.000There's a video of you roasting coffee with a frying pan over a fire.
01:20:42.000It's super fun, as I was talking earlier, right?
01:20:46.000I'm really fortunate just as an adult in America right now in so many different ways.
01:20:53.000But I get to do this coffee when I say I'm in coffee every day and I get to explore any piece of the entire aspect of coffee anytime I want.
01:21:05.000And get as detailed into it as much as I want.
01:21:09.000But the thing that I've found that is just as interesting, if not more interesting than coffee, is as the company gets bigger, you know, developing our ecosystem as a company.
01:21:28.000And as I look at our ecosystem and how we support different nonprofits and what we're doing in the company, it's an incredible high—well, it sounds like a commercial, but I love seeing this incredible high-quality product because I love going to these countries.
01:21:46.000Central and South America working directly with the farmers and then pulling it back through and then uniting the customer and the company as one in this really fucking cool ecosystem.
01:21:59.000And it wasn't something that I started out necessarily thinking about where, you know, I wanted to be in charge of a company of 400 people.
01:22:11.000I literally was roasting coffee in my garage because I was trying to find something else to do when the CIA told me that I couldn't work for him anymore, right?
01:22:29.000I deployed probably seven out of those nine years.
01:22:33.000I was angry, and I don't want to say that it was directly my fault, but the organization that I started with in Iraq and kind of went from Iraq to Afghanistan...
01:23:35.000I really thought about it It was hard for me to think about it, but I was most fearful of not being able to love my daughter because I didn't have the emotional capacity to do that.
01:23:51.000It was actually very scary because that's not the kind of person that I wanted to be.
01:23:57.000And we've all seen examples of people who are that and then realize it later in life.
01:24:02.000The saddest thing in the world is when you see a parent and then they have a grown kid that they fucked up because they did have all these other problems they never dealt with.
01:24:21.000I looked at it, and I knew in order to be a loving father, a good husband, and a good man, I had to change a lot of shit.
01:24:34.000I really had to have a very difficult series of conversations with myself and give myself a lot of fucking tough love.
01:24:45.000And starting a business was one of the things that I needed to do because it gave me...
01:24:50.000I couldn't work for anyone else after that.
01:24:52.000I was kind of done with working for other people.
01:24:58.000I was not necessarily searching for purpose, but I knew that I really wanted to do something with coffee and, you know, a wide variety of reasons that I love coffee.
01:25:09.000Black Rifle was an homage to my service rifle.
01:25:13.000And I found myself wanting to teach myself a new skill.
01:25:18.000And then what I wrote was a mission statement.
01:25:21.000And my mission statement was just a mission statement for my life in general, which was to transition out of government service and live a happy and fulfilling life.
01:25:30.000It had nothing to do with money, you know, running a company or hiring people.
01:25:36.000I just wanted to find how to be happy and fulfill myself outside of being a commando or a CIA guy, whatever that definition for myself was.
01:25:49.000But more importantly, as I've continued to develop myself, and I'm not saying I'm even close to being a commando It's a constant state of evolution to be a better man.
01:26:09.000And I also knew that all the lies that I told myself up to that point of, you know, I'm a Green Beret, so, you know, I'm less than a one percentile and I'm a fucking badass and I'm this and I'm that.
01:26:22.000All of that would have been a lie if I would have been a bad father.
01:26:28.000All of that would have been meaningless.
01:26:34.000Every one of my combat rotations, every one of my friends that has been killed or maimed in this war, it would have been a complete unjustifiable lie to myself to say, if I don't be the best man that I possibly can be...
01:26:50.000And work on it now, then all of that is for naught.
01:26:57.000So I literally after my first year in business, I was sitting in my garage and And I had sold everything that I had owned, you know, and I was chips in on this entire thing.
01:27:14.000And I didn't have anything left to sell.
01:27:17.000I didn't have, I was living in this shitty rental.
01:27:20.000My wife was, you know, packing boxes and roasting coffee.
01:27:24.000And I was getting kind of down on myself and I was crying on this Pelican case in my garage.
01:27:32.000And it was a distinct turning point in my life where I said...
01:27:47.000And when I say that, that's the conversation.
01:27:50.000That's the exact conversation I had with myself.
01:27:53.000And I've had that conversation almost every day in the last several years about just how can I continue to develop this ecosystem that meets my mission statement for my company that...
01:28:08.000Quite literally has nothing to do with money, but how do I continue to be positive impact in my environment versus negative, taking away or contributing to toxicity, which is, man, I don't want to have anything to do with that life anymore.
01:28:24.000There's a lot of people that have a problem with the way they are, and they make a decision to change, but they fall back into their old patterns because it's comfortable and because they're used to that.
01:28:49.000It's kind of recognizing that you have an addiction when you have an addiction.
01:28:55.000You know, when you have emotional or anger issues and you're just angry or whatever it is for no real reason...
01:29:06.000I think, one, you have to recognize that you have a problem.
01:29:08.000And I think, you know, I've continued to recognize that I have a problem.
01:29:14.000And it's like quitting a habit or anything that you're doing, whether it's quitting smoking or working through a very disciplined diet.
01:29:26.000And it's every minute you have the ability, sometimes every second you have the ability to make a decision and have a conscious effort to focus on improvement.
01:29:36.000And when I feel myself, because there are times when I feel myself sliding backwards a little bit into more of a negative Evan situation, And we do it all the time.
01:29:48.000And this is one thing I will say about the guys that we have together is it's not just myself.
01:29:54.000It's, you know, my friends in the military, they're called, it sounds so ridiculous, but it is.
01:30:01.000It's like we have our battle buddies, for lack of a better term.
01:30:04.000But Matt and Jared, our other partner, we formed a team.
01:30:11.000And the other people within our company that formed a team, We can talk to each other in a way that's very candid.
01:31:05.000And leaving one culture, one subculture of, you know, really tight-knit special operations group of guys, starting a business by yourself is difficult enough, right?
01:31:16.000I would imagine it's an extremely difficult endeavor.
01:31:20.000Doing it without your friends and people you can trust and people you can rely on, I can't even imagine.
01:31:27.000Because the things that we've had to go through in the last several years and the reminders...
01:32:04.000One, it's focusing on yourself, identifying you have a problem, looking at every minute and every second at times, depending on when it is, on how to be better, and then building a supportive team around you that understands What's going on and how they can continue to get you up.
01:33:16.000And I packed up, moved out of my house, broke up with my girlfriend at the time, drove to Utah in my Tundra in one bag and said, well, time to start over at 26, seven years old.
01:33:32.000But the second I landed in Utah and got in that Airbnb, I was like, fuck, all I got to worry about is the one bag of clothes I have and going to work tomorrow is something that I'm passionate about and that I love.
01:33:59.000You know, I see people that are involved in business and I see the conversations they have and it's almost like they're speaking some strange language, some fake language and they all get together and talk corporate talk and then they get out of there and they take these big...
01:34:15.000They take this big deep breath and they have a drink or they drive home because they're living bullshit.
01:34:26.000They just blow hot air and don't do anything, and they don't believe in their mission.
01:34:31.000And I think that's been the most impactful thing for us is we believe in it, and it's easy to be authentic or communication style between the team.
01:34:38.000And again, the hardest part is probably maintaining that cultural ecosystem in the company, especially as you scale it, because you want people to be authentic.
01:35:07.000Yeah, and I think to your point, maintaining mission focus, all of these things that we learned in the military, write your mission statements, maintain your mission focus, radical transparency.
01:35:50.000Because to me, it just says, this is stodgy, spreadsheet-driven bullshit where you've got a bunch of people that pontificate about things that they have no idea what they're talking about.
01:36:02.000And what they want to do is they want to run a company only for the profit versus the pursuit of authenticity under a real mission.
01:36:13.000I've stepped into corporate environments a lot and especially like finance guys are some of the worst fucking people ever in the sense of, you know, they're not funny.
01:36:26.000I've told bankers to get the fuck out of my office when they're like 15 minutes late just to get some like payback and how many times that they've screwed good people over and So the company itself, in the sense of any company and how you kind of create that environment,
01:36:43.000I don't like this standard corporate templatized system that people work through.
01:36:51.000It's confusing to me as well because you know when people are fake.
01:36:58.000You know when you're having a conversation with some executive and he's like, oh yeah, Susie, you're...
01:37:04.000You're an incredible asset to the company.
01:37:06.000It's like, you don't know who that person is.
01:37:30.000That's really what a lot of people are going through every day, just not having any real connection to what they're doing, where they feel good about it, they feel like they have a purpose, they feel like it makes...
01:37:45.000You know, and then when a lot of these people, when they wind up getting fired by their company, you know, after 30 years of working there, and they realize that they were nothing.
01:37:58.000I think a lot of people like kind of succumb to like that social construct and like this is what you have to do the nine to five kind of thing but not to be a fatalist but something like my positive mindset like we're all born terminal the second we come out of that womb we're gonna fucking die and I've always wanted to be super proud because you know I think there's certain aspects of the former jobs I had you have to kind of I agree and be comfortable with the fact that there's a high probability of dying and or life-changing events.
01:38:26.000And I think once you realize that it's not a matter of if it's going to happen, it's when.
01:38:31.000Whether that's when I'm 60 and have a heart attack or I live to be 90 or I die tomorrow.
01:38:35.000And that drives me every single day because I look back and go, I don't want to miss out on this fucking crazy thing called life.
01:38:42.000You have one chance to live this cool fucking experience, whether or not you believe in afterlife or not, but we're all going to die.
01:38:50.000And it's very bizarre for me that people don't take leaps of faith because they get so trepidatious in everything that they do.
01:38:57.000And they're like, whoa, whoa, what if?
01:38:58.000And they hate that uncomfortable feeling.
01:39:00.000We just fucking punch it in the face and go kid it.
01:41:16.000And I think that's applicable to anything and everything.
01:41:19.000If you wanted to get into music, you can find 20 minutes in the day or get 20 minutes less of sleep to practice your guitar or learn graphic design.
01:41:26.000I mean, the opportunity is out there, especially with the technological era.
01:42:35.000You know, if you want to have stronger legs, you know, squats aren't the best fucking thing in the world to do, you know, twice a week or once a week.
01:42:54.000Most people don't grow because they gravitate towards comfort.
01:42:56.000And that's one thing I will say about this is, you know, combat to me taught me so many different things about myself.
01:43:04.000But the one thing that it taught me was that life is finite.
01:43:08.000And in order to live, in order to live, you got to risk.
01:43:12.000You got to risk it and you got to suck a little bit.
01:43:14.000You know, for the payoff at the end, you know, that last minute of light that you have in this world, you don't want to be sitting there doing an audit of all the things you should have done.
01:44:07.000Now I can focus, I think, a lot more of my energy on how do we, you know, become a better father, how to become a better business owner, a better friend.
01:44:17.000But I didn't leave anything on the table in the previous 20 years.
01:44:22.000I didn't leave any of that shit on the table going, man, I really wish I would have done that.
01:46:04.000And then I realize, like, oh, but all that shit that they tell you about, like, ADHD and being hyperactive and not being able to pay attention, that's actually, you have energy.
01:46:13.000You don't want to sit in a fucking chair when you're 10 years old while some person who doesn't give a fuck about you or what they're teaching is just rambling on in front of you and you're just going crazy.
01:46:33.000Maybe he could fucking rocket out of this system.
01:46:36.000Maybe he's got enough energy to get away from the gravity of this bullshit that you're teaching them every day.
01:46:41.000So instead of saying, like, oh, this girl needs to be on medication, maybe that girl has a goddamn chance of escaping the hell that you live in.
01:47:02.000I am too fucking ADHD. But what that allows me to do is think in the clouds and be super creative and write and build content and music and all these things.
01:47:10.000And we had a really cool exercise in the business.
01:47:17.000And we all had to take this pretty intricate test.
01:47:19.000And it was the best one I've ever done.
01:47:20.000But it pretty much kind of tells you where you live as far as if you're like an ideator, a developer, and all these characteristics of your brain.
01:47:29.000And that's kind of how you build a team.
01:48:11.000And children are deprived of activity most of the day.
01:48:15.000And I should have been out portaging boats on like really nasty, you know, in British Columbia somewhere by some asshole dude that was, you know, here's 10 minutes worth of work.
01:48:29.000Now you're just going to work you into the ground.
01:48:32.000And when I say that, that's the level of, I guess, patience that I had for any of it in the sense of you can't sit a kid at a desk, or at least kids like me, for six or eight hours a day.
01:50:13.000Let's put them in front of a laptop and we're going to sit them there for six or eight hours a day or whatever it is.
01:50:18.000We're going to give them a lunch break.
01:50:19.000I was having this conversation with my wife.
01:50:21.000I'm like, this is a horrible idea that they're experimenting with kids.
01:50:25.000Just ultimately, you have to give them some type of...
01:50:28.000Pre-existing assignments, but you can't sit them in front of a laptop.
01:50:31.000The other thing is I don't want to teach my kids how to sit in front of a laptop for six hours a day to give them the discipline to do that.
01:50:37.000They were telling my daughter she had to eat lunch in front of the laptop.
01:51:31.000And at least now, the one shining star I will say to this is that hopefully we come out of this with the ability of some type of homeschooling system that actually works.
01:51:44.000Because the one thing about homeschooling for the nation is, what's the one stereotype of homeschooled kids that we've all kind of- Religious psychos.
01:51:57.000But now we're at least living in a time where hopefully this catches up and we can educate children from our home and maybe a balance between the home and the school that gives them some form of adjustment that works for them.
01:52:12.000That's the one thing I will say about this where I'm like, God...
01:52:15.000This has been a good thing from a perspective in my life, which is I don't travel as much.
01:52:25.000I've chopped a bunch of travel out of my schedule.
01:52:30.000I've been home with the kids way more than I have in the last five years.
01:52:35.000And it's forced us to look inside the family a lot more than, you know, on the go, constantly driving outside of the family, doing things outside of the family.
01:52:46.000It's really forced us to be, I think, a much tighter family unit with the four of us.
01:52:54.000And I'm always trying to find the positive in it regardless.
01:53:00.000We've all talked about it and we hear it on the fucking news every day.
01:53:03.000I will say the forcing function in all of this has made my family, I think, tighter, much tighter.
01:53:10.000I hope it has for a lot of other people, but I know it's been very detrimental to a lot of family units, too, because they have a lot of financial issues.
01:53:39.000And it really depends on what the struggle is and where you're at when you come into it.
01:53:43.000And I think for a lot of people, this is a real eye-opener about your health.
01:53:47.000And that's what I'm hoping, that more people pay attention to your body.
01:53:52.000There's a direct correlation between your health and your ability to overcome diseases.
01:53:57.000And I really, really hope that that message gets out there and that more people understand that if you are obese, if you do have a bad diet, these are things you can handle.
01:54:27.000Quite a few friends that had a cough for a day and felt like shit for two or three days afterwards and then we're done with it and we're working out five days later.
01:54:35.000Most all my healthy friends is that way too.
01:54:50.000Paul, I tested everybody, and we did this Comedy Store documentary, and I tested, he was the only one who tested positive for the antibodies.
01:54:59.000And I go, when do you think you got it?
01:55:34.000Take some vitamin D and zinc and C and just make that a priority.
01:55:38.000Make it a priority, whereas if you got sick, you're not worried.
01:55:43.000It's interesting, too, because a lot of things that people rely on as far as substances will absolutely go away if you follow a healthy diet and exercise routine.
01:55:52.000I mean, the euphoria and how I feel post-workout is one of the most amazing feelings I've ever had.
01:55:59.000So it's not only like a bodily function, it's a cognitive one as well.
01:56:04.000All the endorphins you get, and you're like, I'm ready for the day, and then you feel accomplished.
01:56:08.000I mean, it's like, incremental success makes great success.
01:56:10.000And those little wins throughout the day, and I think working out is one of them, more people need that feeling of, fuck, I feel good.
01:56:17.000Food is probably the most overused tool to deal with anxiety, and exercise is the most underused tool to deal with depression.
01:56:25.000And those two things, like, food will fuck you up if you just eat to calm yourself.
01:56:32.000And exercise will help you in a gigantic way if you use it to deal with depression and anxiety and everything else.
01:56:39.000So let me ask the question, though, because I've heard you talk about it on the show, which, why is it that we can't have that national conversation?
01:56:49.000Why do you think our, I mean, we just had the presidential debates last night, but why is it- Those were not debates!
01:57:22.000You can't say, hey, stop shoving sugar and fucking saturated bullshit and fucking oils and vegetable grease and all the crap and fucking all the nonsense that people stuff in their face.
01:58:16.000When you don't have that kind of sugar in your diet, the amount of gluten and grains and fucking nonsense that people eat today, it's so easy to get that fat.
01:59:34.000The subculture that we grew up in, right, in our 20s, when we were 18 to 20, 30, whatever it was, like, man, we would have guys slapping food out of your hands and going fatty, because in the middle, back in the day,
01:59:50.000and I'm not saying back in the day, right, I guess it makes me sound old, but...
01:59:55.000Dude, you could shame the shit out of people, and that's just the way it worked, which was, hey, fatty...
02:00:02.000And if you weren't meeting a task or, you know, task condition standard, you would have guys in NCOs, non-commissioned officers, in your chow line selecting your food for you.
02:01:37.000Yeah, but you know what's not nice is dying of diabetes, especially if it's coming from an empathetic position, where you're like, I'm saying this because I want you to live, which means I like you.
02:01:49.000And when you tell them that they're fat, all people like to consider is, like, you are shaming a person because of their body shape, and that's terrible, and that's awful.
02:02:11.000But there's very few ways to get through to someone.
02:02:15.000If someone's drunk, if they're a fucking alcoholic and they get drunk every night, and you pull them aside and go, hey man, You are a fucking drunk.
02:03:42.000I think that it's the same way that most of these policies kind of, they bypass logic.
02:03:49.000They go through some type of bureaucratic mechanism where somebody thinks it's a good idea.
02:03:56.000And typically this is going to be an officer that's looking to be promoted off of some merit where they're going to go, I'm going to change this.
02:04:04.000This is going to be a good thing for my career because this is where I'm going to hang my hat on this.
02:04:31.000I mean, these are like trained warfighters doing one of the most difficult jobs on the planet, and we're going to bring, you know, bureaucratic, like, weird fucking bullshit into it.
02:04:40.000It's like, no, we are training them to do the world's worst act, which is kill another human being in hopefulness that it's saving more human lives.
02:04:51.000You're getting trained with hand grenades, rocket launchers, guns to put night vision on and sneak into houses and shoot motherfuckers in the face.
02:04:58.000The danger is, if you do make it politically correct, you're going to cost U.S. service members lives.
02:05:04.000And then if you bring all this bullshit into it, then you're decreasing the survivability and the training that these guys and gals need to succeed and be a high-functioning unit to live.
02:05:30.000If you let that shit get in there, it's going to be like, people used to say, like, why does anyone care about what goes on in college campuses?
02:05:37.000This is not happening in the real world.
02:05:39.000Stop worrying about leftist ideology that's permeating in school.
02:05:43.000Well, look at what happened in Seattle.
02:05:49.000And if that shit bleeds out into the seals, you got real problems.
02:05:53.000Well, I... I think that's a really good point from the entire warfighter.
02:05:59.000When we look at the entire warfighter across America, we have a very small subsection of guys that carry the lion's share of the warfighting.
02:06:10.000And, you know, the special operations community, the infantry, and the combat arms.
02:06:14.000So when we look at that, it's a really small number of guys.
02:06:18.000And to Matt's point, it's the most politically incorrect profession in the United States, quite possibly in the world.
02:06:26.000Because what you're doing is you're taking human life.
02:06:40.000You have to have your warfighters that are out there, especially when you're America, you have to have the guys that are trained to go out at night and do this every fucking night and take it to every terrorist, every bad guy internationally to protect you in your sleeping beds.
02:07:24.000The people that you're opposing, these fucking dictators and all these different terrorist organizations, they're not playing by those rules.
02:07:32.000If you play by those rules, you're handicapping yourself.
02:07:39.000Yeah, and those types of people have no regard for human life, you know, and I've seen it personally, when politics get involved in wars, it kills people.
02:07:48.000I mean, I have a few instances where there were, you know, you can't drop ordinance on guys you just got ambushed by, because the local village said you can't use, you know, bombs from planes.
02:08:00.000And you're like, we, one of our guys just got shot.
02:08:02.000We killed the three that ran out the front door, but the six that ran out the back door, I'm just supposed to let them go live from an ethical perspective.
02:08:09.000They're going to go do this again, and I hope they don't go plant bombs and blow up a whole engineer vehicle and kill six Americans.
02:08:21.000Obviously, you need rules and regulations and ROE and things that...
02:08:25.000But that's where the training comes in.
02:08:27.000You're acting on an ethical basis on the ground.
02:08:29.000But again, I don't think anybody understands, if you haven't been there, how dynamic and complex some of these situations when it's completely dark, you're under night vision and a laser, and you're having to make moments...
02:08:41.000Seconds, milliseconds to make a decision whether you survive or you don't.
02:08:49.000And that goes back to the whole thing where you've got to look out for veterans and post-service because they're put in some very, very, very difficult situations.
02:08:56.000Yeah, when you're yelling at someone and giving out orders, you can't ask them what pronouns they use.
02:09:04.000I mean, you know, my Teamler and Squad Leader both got killed because of that.
02:09:09.000We did a call-out, and they said no one was in the building.
02:09:13.000They swore to a law and all this stuff, and we went in there, and we got hemmed up really, really bad.
02:09:18.000So, you know, there's no moral, like...
02:09:23.000The decision-making on their side as far as, well, better tell the Americans we are hard-pointed in this building with AK-47s and suicide vests.
02:09:30.000No, they're going to lie their balls off because they're trying to fucking kill us.
02:09:33.000Well, I think that when the expectation for the overall, you know, the warrior class, really what it is, for them to kind of adapt to this politically correct culture, we've seen it,
02:09:50.000I think, and I've seen it, especially when we look at some of the other countries that we actually have fought with, I think?
02:10:21.000And then, oh, by the way, our special operations have a hard time training with them.
02:10:24.000And there's a very distinct and huge difference between the proficiency and the way that they're utilizing their weapons and the way that we do it because of our culture.
02:10:32.000So our warrior class as a society, we really have to look at it and say, how do we protect them?
02:10:40.000You know, and if we're going to continue to maintain, you know, our sovereignty and security of the nation, we really have to create a place where these guys are not affected by the bullshit that goes on in the United States as far as,
02:10:56.000you know, woke cancer culture bullshit and We've got to protect them from this, and we've also got to just decide that these guys are trained at a high proficiency level to do something exceedingly difficult, and we want to keep them over there.
02:11:13.000They are a break glass in case of war, and now wars are just perpetual, essentially.
02:11:18.000So keep them separate from the rest of this because we really want those guys to be proficient so we can go to bed every night and kind of rest easy.
02:11:27.000One of the things you talked about, about where this probably came from, it's a reoccurring theme in Jack Carr's books as well, is that there's these officers that are career politicians, really, that are also in the military, and they're really just trying to advance their career.
02:11:49.000It makes sense as sort of an evil, sort of a bullshit artist that happens to be an officer and claims responsibility for all the good things and doesn't take responsibility for the bad things, winds up getting people killed or winds up being corrupt.
02:12:07.000It's often, and we run into it, and I've described it a lot, as you have a group of, and it can be non-commissioned officers or officers, and you have a group of guys.
02:12:21.000Non-commissioned officers are guys that have enlisted in the military, and they either went to college or didn't go to college, but they've enlisted and they've worked their way up through the ranks.
02:12:31.000Officers have gone to college, they've gone to either ROTC or the academy, and And there's two distinctly different ranking systems.
02:12:38.000So enlisted, I just go down, raise your hand, join the military, work your way up.
02:12:44.000The officers are typically in charge of the NCOs.
02:14:06.000They're not trying to do anything or say anything in order to get promoted.
02:14:10.000They're mission first, very capable and driven people that ultimately don't care if they get credit for what happens.
02:14:18.000And most of the time, those guys sacrifice their career and their promotions.
02:14:24.000Because they're going to always default to what's right.
02:14:27.000The me's are always going to default to what's best for me.
02:14:32.000And then what happens is those me's start to get a, they move up much faster and more effectively than the mission guys.
02:14:42.000And the subsequent effect of that which you see is you have the me guys that are moving up in ranks and then it is a massive you know downside to the guys that are mission first because they want to focus on their team and getting what they need to get done done and then they pretty much get out of the military because they're like ah I don't like this political crap.
02:15:05.000The retention on a lot of the really great guys and gals that serve, I think, is directly correlated to the me people because they're essentially all about professional progression rather than how do we do the best mission and then give the team...
02:15:51.000And it was essentially because an officer wanted to use his Rangers by Lancey or Air for whatever no write-up that he might get a Bronze Star for when the only thing that happened was risking the lives of Americans and special operation guys because you just made them move X amount of clicks farther on that movement to target,
02:16:09.000which, you know, Why isn't there checks and balances to eliminate those guys or to make sure that those guys get exposed?
02:16:18.000Because I would imagine that for the enlisted men and for the NCOs and for all the people that have the right thoughts in mind and the right intentions in mind, they would not want that to be there.
02:16:31.000And I would imagine that that's the majority of the people.
02:16:34.000I think that that's why the special operations community has such a high rate of volunteer because they're escaping the conventional military where there's more careerism in the conventional military.
02:16:46.000And when you go to the special operations world, There's less of that.
02:17:51.000In the special operations community, of course, I'm biased, but they create incredible leaders.
02:17:57.000They know how to really curate people's talent and put the right people in the right positions and then develop leaders.
02:18:05.000Well, that's why Jocko does so well, bringing that knowledge to business and doing all these speeches where he's so well sought after because they want to hear a real leader.
02:18:24.000And for my example that I made earlier, that was a one-off.
02:18:27.000I mean, the leadership that came out of Ranger Battalion, I mean, I couldn't have been more thankful to be a part of that unit.
02:18:32.000And you see a lot of those guys that work their way up through the ranks of Ranger Battalion move on to Tier 1 units and do have extraordinary heroic careers.
02:18:39.000And you can definitely tell the cultural differences from a special operations leadership to the conventional armor.
02:18:46.000And that's not a knock on the conventional, because I think if you raise your right hand, you're epic.
02:18:50.000I think there's some knots to be untied with some of the leadership and the career officers because there's a certain point probably when you pin a star, you're no longer an officer, you're a politician.
02:19:00.000You're a politician and you're appointed by politicians.
02:19:03.000So once you move up past a certain rank, you're essentially appointed by politicians.
02:19:08.000And which now every four to eight years, obviously there's a rotation in how you're selected, who is selected for what.
02:19:17.000So you'll start to see different aspects of the officer corps shift based on administration because it's led by the administration.
02:19:28.000And then it takes a few years and then ultimately it goes back and forth and back and forth.
02:19:34.000But, you know, to go back to your original question is how do you continue to develop that?
02:19:39.000I think the checks and balances are, it's a very traditionally based organization, right?
02:19:48.000The military is incredible at a lot of different things.
02:20:21.000Boy, that's probably a three-hour podcast in itself as far as unpacking that.
02:20:27.000There's some incredible, and not to take away from anything that's happening, but there are some incredible people that continue to serve in the most honorable capacity in the United States military day in and day out.
02:20:43.000They're mission-first people that we never hear about.
02:21:06.000Those are the guys that I really respect in the sense of, you know, we have our subculture and our friends, but, you know, the people we're trying to earn our respect for are the guys that we know have always served in silence, that are the silent professionals that continue to do the work day in and day out.
02:21:24.000And if we have their respect and we can continue to promote in different aspects of what they're doing in their mission, we do that all the time.
02:21:33.000And when we do that, what I mean by that is, you know, whether it's donating money or time or all the things that we try to do, we've shipped hundreds of thousands of bags of coffee overseas.
02:21:48.000To guys that are serving the country, to our friends that are in command-driven units that are doing really difficult work.
02:21:56.000And our little sacrifice that we make, and it's really not a sacrifice, our little commitment to them is just ship them coffee.
02:22:04.000How do we dedicate more time and money and encourage the good people that serve the country day in and day out that...
02:22:14.000When we look at this, when I look at the SEAL team memo, for instance, and I say, there's a guy up there that made some change because he wants to get a promotion.
02:22:25.000But that's not really going to change the teams.
02:22:49.000Well, that's the fear that I have of people that don't have an understanding of this that are involved in policy.
02:22:55.000You know, when you talk about people defunding the military, and when I talked to Tim Kennedy, and he talked to me about the stark difference between the previous administration and when Trump took over, and one thing, say good things are bad things about Trump all day long, but one good thing you can say is,
02:23:34.000There was no in ISIS camps that they wouldn't airstrike because of politics.
02:23:38.000And then when they transitioned over to kind of the ground force command level and said, what do we got to do to wipe ISIS? They go, here's the plan.
02:24:04.000And the idea that somehow or another these policies are dictated by people who don't understand what's happening there and not by military people, not by people that are on the ground.
02:24:16.000Why did I... I don't know exactly what the answer is to that, which is when you have professional politicians, and especially career politicians, that really, they're fundamentally corrupted by ultimately the military lobbying aspects of our country.
02:24:37.000They're going to be driven left or right in any one of these countries.
02:24:44.000And when I say that, Afghanistan is a really good example.
02:24:48.000How many days did it take us to overthrow Afghanistan or the Taliban in Afghanistan?
02:24:59.000So roughly 90 days after the towers went down, we invaded Afghanistan to overthrow the Taliban.
02:25:06.000It took us less than six months to essentially go from north to south in that country with a small contingent of special operations and CIA guys, roughly, give or take.
02:25:15.000And then you have a long-term war of occupation, which has lasted almost 20 years now.
02:25:22.000And we have the special operations units that essentially invaded, overthrew the Taliban, and then we have a long-term war of occupation, and we have several different administrations that have continued to increase troop size.
02:25:39.000And then Trump, like him or not, is saying, well, let's downsize our troop involvement in Central Asia or Afghanistan.
02:25:48.000I think the only bipartisan agreement that they've had in the Senate and the Congress in the last six months was to maintain troop levels in Afghanistan.
02:26:33.000I think, you know, and I think personally, yes, I think large-scale wars of occupation are about the transference of wealth from the taxpayer to the military-industrial complex, because I've seen it.
02:26:46.000A small-scale special operations contingent, as far as we'll use Afghanistan as the template, You can do a lot with a force multiplier, and it's by, with, and through your local nationals.
02:27:03.000And I think it's typically a more mature soldier that already has a mature and developed brain, too, by the way.
02:27:13.000You know, past the age of 24, typically special operations guys are a little bit older.
02:27:18.000And then you have a force multiplying effect, and ultimately you don't have a large...
02:27:23.000Large-scale war of occupation, which now you have 18-year-old kids that are driving around in tanks, that are flying around in big, robust C5 logistics, but it's less...
02:27:37.000It's more cost-effective to do that, and...
02:27:43.000I think it's also not as politically advantageous for politicians.
02:27:48.000So people love to support and celebrate the previous administration for all the great things that Obama did.
02:27:53.000Okay, but he increased troop levels in both Afghanistan.
02:27:58.000They say, well, he withdrew from Iraq.
02:28:00.000But no, we had another surge in Iraq after that.
02:28:03.000And we surged in Afghanistan after that.
02:28:08.000There's really not a coherent and logical argument that I can hear or that I've heard in the last 10 years that I've either been in Afghanistan or Iraq for a large-scale military occupational force in either one of those countries.
02:28:24.000So when you have a president that's saying, I think we should downsize our footprint, And you don't have the left or the right supporting that.
02:28:42.000And two, where are our media outlets and where are the other people saying, maybe we should break this down and look at it from the second and third order effects of a troop downsize.
02:28:55.000Can we still maintain the sovereignty and the security of the United States and At a more cost-effective rate, meaning less blood, less treasure.
02:29:11.000Because it's more cost-effective for us to have a special operations smaller contingent, and it's more costly to move big logistics, you know, tanks and airplanes and fuel and everything else.
02:29:27.000That's where taxpayers, you as a taxpayer, are essentially paying to fund all of that.
02:29:36.000And that's my two cents on it, at least.
02:31:51.000I have heard the argument, and it's to maintain stability because they don't want the state to ultimately collapse and cause a failed state, which then puts us back into the previous circumstance where the Taliban can continue to increase their power,
02:32:11.000ultimately developing a new terrorist organization or harboring terrorist organizations.
02:32:30.000You have Pakistan, obviously, and a few of these bordering countries, but you don't need a large scale occupational force to do what you're talking about.
02:32:37.000So what does the large scale occupational force serve?
02:32:42.000From my perspective, it serves the transference of taxpayer dollars from the taxpayer into the military-industrial complex.
02:33:03.000I don't think so, because I think that they've proven that they can, if the mission or the end state, and that's the other issue, what's your success criteria?
02:33:12.000So lay out the success criteria for Afghanistan.
02:33:15.000Have you ever heard the United States government's success criteria for Afghanistan?
02:33:31.000It's really easy to maintain a military footprint for an endless amount of time because you're always chasing a new definition for what it means to succeed.
02:33:47.000Minimum success criteria is something that you need to have on anything.
02:33:51.000What do I need in order for this organization to deem itself a success?
02:33:57.000The expectation for our politicians and our leaders is they have to publish minimum success criteria for any war they ever go into.
02:34:06.000And then once we meet that, there needs to be a post-effect plan as to how the hell do we get out?
02:34:14.000So do you think essentially what happens is the military-industrial complex or the lobbyists or the special interest groups, do they make agreements with politicians?
02:34:25.000Do they communicate with politicians and tell them what their goals are and here's where we're going to help you, this is what we want you to do?
02:34:31.000Like how do they get them all to agree on this?
02:34:33.000I think that they have a very complex way of organizing and funding think tanks the way that people think about war, the way they think about stability.
02:34:48.000So when you have access, and most of these companies, if you go to D.C., You know, drive around and look at what companies are inside the beltway.
02:34:57.000Look at what companies are publicly traded, publicly traded large companies within this type of industry.
02:35:08.000And their entire monetization strategy and how they make money requires war.
02:35:14.000So how they continue to grow their company and profit is Directly is related to how much war is being conducted.
02:35:24.000So if they have close relationships with all of the politicians within DC, and their entire monetization strategy is built on increased war...
02:35:34.000Do you think they're working for the taxpayer, any kind of withdrawal troops?
02:35:38.000When I say that, it's directly contradictory to what I think the majority of the public would like to see.
02:35:45.000I think the majority of the public would like to see a decreased footprint, decreased war, especially large-scale occupational wars, and they don't financially benefit from that.
02:36:03.000I would love for any politician to keep talking about this.
02:36:07.000It seems like he's at least the only president in our recent lifetime that's actually brought up the fact the military-industrial complex is actually influencing these decisions.
02:36:16.000I would love to have any politician, especially Trump or the president, talk about the military-industrial complex and how affected DC politics is and how effective we are in the DOD as a nation in funding overseas wars.
02:37:23.000I think it's a more cost-effective way, too.
02:37:26.000So if you have minimum success criteria, for instance, in the case of ISIS in Iraq, you have success criteria that are clearly laid out, which is defeat and destroy ISIS and eliminate any stronghold,
02:37:42.000essentially any occupied land that they have.
02:37:45.000You go to work and you take it all away from them, and then you're done.
02:38:10.000That is an absolute expectation that we should have for any politician voting yes, and we should hold our politicians accountable for strict adherence to the success criteria of any war.
02:38:23.000The problem is, is they keep changing every two to four years.
02:38:28.000They keep changing the success criteria.
02:38:30.000Well, that's endless war, and he's right about that.
02:38:46.000And the only thing that makes sense to me in this capacity is that...
02:38:53.000These guys all have a direct benefit where they're all being persuaded by the same organizations to keep the troops and keep the transference of wealth from the taxpayer into the military-industrial complex.
02:40:06.000And I'm sure there are a lot of people that would love to debate me over what's actually happening.
02:40:11.000You'd be hard-pressed to find people with two guys sitting across the table that have more experience, specifically in these countries, working in these countries.
02:40:20.000I have seven and a half years in Iraq and Afghanistan in my life.
02:40:23.000Seven and a half years in both military and as an agency contractor.
02:40:28.000And when I look at what we do in those countries, and I'm not thinking about it in theory, right?
02:40:47.000And this is what I've kind of looked and being able to reflect on it for the last five, six years since I left the military and the government.
02:40:57.000I've been able to reflect on it and really ask a lot of complex questions as to why do we keep doing the same thing over and over and over again?
02:41:05.000And it's frustrating because I understand what it takes to stabilize these countries.
02:41:11.000And I also understand what doesn't work.
02:41:13.000And we're doing a lot of shit that doesn't work.
02:41:16.000Well, and the hard part with that, I think, is there's been such a diversion away from the wars that no one's actively thinking about how many U.S. soldiers, men and women in the military, are currently deployed.
02:41:28.000There's so much going on in the nation that that conversation's not even happening.
02:41:31.000I'd venture to say most people are like, oh, we still got people in Afghanistan?
02:41:34.000And they're going out on missions and stuff, and it's like an injustice to not have those conversations about what's the end goal, what is the success criteria for Afghanistan, because I'm sure they want to go out and do their job, and they're willing to risk their lives for it, but what's the job?
02:41:50.000And you don't really see any of that coming out of what that mission, what the end goal looks like.
02:41:56.000And if there is an end goal, why are we there kind of thing.
02:41:58.000And I haven't heard it from friends that are on the ground.
02:42:03.000They have our international strategic counter-terrorist objectives, which is to deny sanctuary for any terrorist organization.
02:42:13.000And I'm sure that we could pull it up.
02:42:15.000But at the end of the day, we're occupying a foreign country with our military.
02:42:22.000We should be talking about this on a national level as to what are our goals, what are our objectives, what are our success criteria, and when the fuck do we get out of this place?
02:42:33.000We should be having that conversation on a regular cycle because guys are still dying.
02:42:38.000We're still spending a lot of money and we're still spending a lot of our time and lives with the men and women that serve our country.
02:42:47.000These people are still getting wounded and killed in places like Afghanistan and we're not having a national complex conversation about it.
02:43:27.000You're going to have kids that are going to Afghanistan that were, from the first wave of soldiers that were fighting in Afghanistan, you're having children.
02:43:43.000To me, as a guy that's served in both of those countries, and to me as a guy that loves our country, we really need to have that national conversation with everybody and say, this is a generational war,
02:44:21.000Not necessarily the patience, but how much more is really acceptable in And how do we elevate and have these complex conversations without the interference of people that ultimately profit from war,
02:45:22.000So instead of the government spending its time really investigating and looking at complex war plans and how we pull out of these places, you know, we're trying to figure out, you know, how we can change memos so we don't offend anybody.
02:46:26.000I think that it's one of those things, and you've talked a lot about it in your podcast.
02:46:30.000I think the expectation for us to expect more out of our politicians, I think, in sourcing different types of information from a wide variety of people, I think for us,
02:46:58.000Holy shit, do you think we should figure that one out?
02:47:00.000I don't know, but these are complex conversations that I think we should hold our leaders accountable for sticking to the hard problems and having those conversations versus these ridiculous sideshow white noise conversations that ultimately are just a distraction from From what we as a nation should be making our government do for us.
02:47:35.000It's almost impossible for a human being to look at the whole picture from above and see all these different factors that are playing against each other.
02:48:09.000Well, that's the worst thing ever is when politics stopped becoming a service to your country, it became political gain and monetary gain because you can get paid.
02:48:16.000Well, when you find out that politicians, they make $100,000 a year, but they're worth $100 million.