NATE LEWIS | Overcoming Injustice
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 17 minutes
Words per Minute
194.51996
Summary
Nate Lewis is the founder of The Innocent, a nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting and preserving the innocence of children inside the U.S. with a focus on child sex trafficking, exploitation, and sexual assault. He has a background as an executive at a leading global anti-trafficking organization and honed his expertise in international and domestic operations. He s worked with local law enforcement agencies and also not only domestically, but abroad in more than 40 countries. His experiences have profoundly shaped his passion and understanding of the global and domestic dimensions of trafficking and exploitation, which obviously fueled his commitment to address these issues on a national level.
Transcript
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It's hard to believe that in the year 2025, child sex trafficking is as prolific as it is today.
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How is it that with all the laws, legislation, and even awareness that we're still dealing with the torment of sexual exploitation with our sons and daughters?
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My guest today, Nate Lewis, has made it his life's work to combat and overcome the epidemic that is plaguing every corner of society.
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And not only that, he is a huge proponent of finding your own mission and pouring all in on that, whatever it may be.
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Today, Nate and I talk about the driving factors behind child exploitation, why you should address the societal injustices that you see in society today,
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the power of coachability and grittiness in your pursuit of your dreams,
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and why and how to protect yourself, society, and your children from the nastiness and perversion of modern culture.
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You're a man of action. You live life to the fullest. Embrace your fears and boldly chart your own path.
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When life knocks you down, you get back up one more time, every time.
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You are not easily deterred or defeated. Rugged. Resilient. Strong.
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This is your life. This is who you are. This is who you will become.
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At the end of the day, and after all is said and done, you can call yourself a man.
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Men of the Order, welcome to the Order of Man podcast.
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My name is Ryan Mickler. As you probably already know by this point, welcome here, welcome back, and welcome for the first time.
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If you're just joining us now, a very, very powerful conversation with you today about child sex trafficking, exploitation,
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the deviousness, and nastiness, and degeneracy that comes from some of these horrific, horrific stories
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and things that aren't real comfortable to talk about, but that we should.
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Got a good one lined up for you today, and just want to share before we get into it,
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They're dedicated to protecting and preserving the innocence of children inside the U.S.
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with a focus, unfortunately, on child sex trafficking, exploitation, and sexual assault.
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He's got a background as an executive at a leading global anti-trafficking organization.
00:03:08.500
He's honed his expertise in international and domestic operations.
00:03:13.480
He's worked with local law enforcement agencies and also not only domestically but abroad.
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And in 20 years of traveling and living abroad in more than 40 countries,
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that has profoundly shaped his passion and understanding of human trafficking.
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And these experiences have given him valuable insight into the global and domestic dimensions of trafficking,
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exploitation, which obviously fueled his commitment to address these issues on a national level.
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Through his leadership and tenure over at The Innocent,
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Nate is instrumental in driving critical initiatives to create safer communities.
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You're going to hear it in the podcast today for justice.
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And of course, that experience that he has really positions him as a key advocate
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in this unimaginable battle against child sex crimes.
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I'm looking forward to this conversation, but also at the same time,
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It seems wild in 2025 that we're talking about this kind of stuff.
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But I will follow that with, it's difficult to have these conversations.
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And so it's important that we do have these conversations.
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And so, yeah, yeah, I'll make it as easy as possible.
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I don't want to cause everybody to go to therapy after this conversation.
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I wish, because look, the reality is, is that there's tens of millions,
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if not hundreds of millions of men who talk about fighting against sex trafficking,
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You know, I probably could if I were to look in the history books because we weren't maybe
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as civilized or maybe even righteous or just self-policing as we are currently.
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But it's just wild to me, especially when I have kids.
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I've got three boys, obviously not as worried about the boys as I am about my little girl.
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I just, how is this even possible that we're talking about child sex trafficking?
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Well, and you mentioned in wrapping your head around it, I hope we never do wrap our head
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You know, the conversation between adults and children and united by sex should never wrap
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I also think that we shouldn't just pass over boys.
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And I think that it's important to educate, you know, as fathers, you know, like how do boys
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You know, we see tons of boys asking girls to send them nude photos, you know, and that's
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And so it may not be that your son's going to be the victim of it, but your son might potentially
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be the one that's kind of leading that behavior.
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You're not saying your son specifically, our sons in general, boys in general, you know?
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And so, yeah, there's, there's a lot to unpack, but it is, it is, it is shocking that we have
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And I do have ideas of why we're there and things that probably progressed, you know, all
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this that's occurring this day and age, you know, but like you said, it's been going on
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If, if I had to guess without being in the world that you are, um, it's just a proliferation
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I mean, we're talking about pornography and, um, basically that's it.
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Pornography and the sexualization of, of modern culture, whether it's entertainment or media
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or whatever it might be, um, I actually had a really good conversation with one of my boys
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And I said, Hey, uh, let's talk about pornography for a minute.
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And we talked about, and I said, what, what do you know about it?
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He's about that age that I was when I was introduced to pornography, but it was, it was
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And I think that's one of the bigger challenges, but I said, do you know why that's so bad?
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And I said, well, part of it is that it rewired, it literally rewires your brain.
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We have studies that show that it rewires your brain to start thinking about women from
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an objective standpoint that they are an object and no longer a human being that has emotions
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And he's got a, he's got a girlfriend himself and she's, you know, a cute young lady and
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like, you've got a girlfriend, you need to treat her like the young lady that she is.
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But also I have to have my conversation with my boys about, and my daughter about when it
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Like to be sexually and physically attracted to the opposite sex is a healthy thing.
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So it's a really weird line to walk with my young children.
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Well, and I'm glad you bring up that it is a healthy thing, but there's health, healthy
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They don't all have a relationship with drugs or whatever, but there is some sort of relationship
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And so I think that it's important to have those conversations because it's true.
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What I believe pornography does though, is it takes away that intimacy and that desire
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and the things that you're seeing is creating a false reality of what intimacy is or your
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We could get into the science behind the dopamines that are occurring similar to drugs, you know,
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and what that's doing and how the hits don't hit as hard.
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So you're searching for new things that are going to give you that fix and that type of thing.
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And, and just the access to pornography, like you were mentioning, used to be a magazine
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And now it's like anyone could find it anywhere at any time.
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So access the restrictions, there's hardly any restrictions, you know, on it.
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So it's, it's, um, we're, it's a monster for sure.
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And I do believe it is the gateway to a lot of people's addiction, to be honest with you.
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And like digital addiction, you know, Ryan, here's the, here's the interesting thing.
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I hope people understand that they don't think like, Oh, well, it's not actually
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I hope that word didn't trigger algorithms, but it's not that it it's, it's the, usually
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It's an entry point because it's a digital addiction that eventually could potentially
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Um, and the algorithms that are pushing younger content are forcing you to go younger.
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But potentially there are people who go, how the heck did I get here?
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I'm looking at like, you know, girls under the age of 20 now, like what?
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So there's a, there's a lot to unpack there as well.
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Like Hollywood at one point said, well, we should probably put ratings on our films,
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And at some point I had to like have my adult parent let me into an R-rated movie or whatever
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There's none of that going on in the internet right now.
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There's none of that and we'll get into hopefully talk about the social media and how they're
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enabling in the, you know, the risks and fears for children, what they're faced with in the
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I don't, I don't know if it's sexually driven for a lot of people or if it's just a financial
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It's, it's now become a commodity more than anything.
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Uh, you know, I, I think for example, I have organizations that reach out to me that
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want to want me to advertise their alcoholic beverage of choice, or I've had multiple, uh,
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companies that, um, offer gambling services where you can bet on what, whatever you want
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to bet on presidential elections, the latest college game, uh, who's going to break up with
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Now these companies will pay me thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars.
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I'm not going to promote it, but it's pretty tempting when you start to get the financial
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Well, good for you for standing strong in your beliefs, man.
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Um, yeah, I, I, it's frustrating because not only do we know it's not good for us and
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I've, I've, I've fallen to those temptations before I've been open about my alcohol addiction
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I've fallen into those temptations, but I can acknowledge that they don't serve me or
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So, I mean, that's part of the difference as well.
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I don't even know where you want to go with this, to be honest with you.
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Well, I guess the biggest thing is this is the most pressing question and this is one
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But I think at this point with what you guys are doing, um, Operation Underground Railroad,
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which I understand if correctly, you started with Tim Ballard.
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I remember him from Count of Monte Cristo, man.
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Well, Jim's been influential in my life on many different levels, but obviously it was
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He's like, calls me like, you know, you need to come down to Columbia.
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And so then my wife and I kind of started following what was going on.
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So I worked in film and television for 20 years.
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Started out, you know, at the bottom, worked hard, had some luck, and ended up working for
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And I ran basically their brand, kind of was the CEO of their production companies, whatever.
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And then I started my own and started adapting stories and screenplays.
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I always loved the true stories that kind of impacted me, Schindler's List or whatever,
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I want to impact people, you know, with true stories.
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Little did I know, it would take a huge turn later in life.
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I'd be impacting people with true stories of unfortunate events that occurred to human
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And so eventually, I kind of just, my wife and I, after I went and met with Tim and several
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people back then in the organization, it was just 25 people, still kind of small.
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And there were some amazing people, but it was also really the mission of what was going
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My first real kind of deployment was four months in.
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And, you know, we were dealing with some pretty disgusting things, child sacrifice, witch doctors,
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And that was like my real deep dive into all this.
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And this is kind of a beautiful story in the end.
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But this home who was taking care and healing these children who had survived, first and
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And I remember sitting in my hotel just like feeling all these emotions that shouldn't be
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And that was really the turning point for me in my life.
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It was like this evil that exists, and I'm here, and I'm going to spend the rest of my
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And credibly, this girl that was there, her name was ******, she had been taken.
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I mean, people need to hear this stuff, even though it's uncomfortable.
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But share what you can, and in respect to her as well.
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So I don't think it's wrong for me to share some of this information that's already been
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But they did drain her blood for a long time, so she got lack of oxygen to the brain.
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Like, is that a common practice to inebriate, for lack of a better term, the victims?
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They think it brings goodwill in these countries.
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It brings some kind of benefit to them, maybe good luck or fortune or whatever it may be.
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I don't know the details on this one with her and what they were using it for, but most
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But through this, though, I think it's important to know that, man, her smile was so incredible.
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Still, to this day, like, her smile was so inspiring to me, filled with joy, her presence, this energy,
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and just, like, physically, audibly, everything just exuding from her was just shocking to me
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I wasn't able to keep up a whole lot, because I'll tell you why I started my organization.
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We were able to serve these people food, the team from this country, and really the people
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I got a text on Friday, like, hey, we're going to be in the area.
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Wow, man, just a reminder of my why, and just this beautiful smile.
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And not only that, like, my wife doesn't, at one point, stop to, like, ask, hey, stop
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Like, we don't both need to be in therapy, you know?
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Yeah, at some point, you know, because, you know, years ago, I'd be like, oh, man.
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You know, for years, there's a lot of darkness and sadness, right?
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And at one point, she's just like, man, we're both carrying this way.
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I'm here to be with you and support you, but this is heavy.
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She knows, like, there's days that just, there's things that just get me for a couple
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And I'll share to a certain extent, and I'll hold a lot of things back, but she doesn't
00:19:01.160
really get to be part of the mission in the sense of, like, see it firsthand, right?
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Well, it sounds like she would, but maybe not as anxious to be involved as you.
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That's not an indictment against her or anything else, but.
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You know, this is what she does is take care of people.
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But, man, to see her transformation and see her truly just get to be part of the mission
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and see the effect of the time and the stuff that we get to be, and just to see her serve
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these people and these family and give, like, going on a mission trip, but at home, in a
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And to get her to come by, kind of be a part of the mission, it was just a, it was beautiful.
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And then just to reunite with, you know, she really, truly, I've talked about her on tons
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of podcasts, and I talk about her a lot, because she's so near and dear to me.
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How could you, first and foremost, be put through so much, just, and a lot of these
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children that were there that day, horrificness in your life, like, change your life physically.
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I mean, you can't do anything on your own, it's a **** story, and just to have so much
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joy, I don't understand where that comes from, but I want it.
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And so she has taught me, one, what do we need?
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Human interaction, we need relationship, we need people caring and loving, and she may
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not have a lot, and on the outside, she might look broken, but on the inside, she's full
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And the fact that I got to reunite with her after four years yesterday was pretty incredible
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That day, back in February in 2021, I made a declaration to fight evil for the rest of
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my life, you know, to complete different transformation from 20 plus years ago, and people ask, how'd
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Well, it's a long story, a long journey through my own experiences in life, but man, just facing
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There's been tons since then, but man, I hold somewhere special in my heart for her, and I
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hope that she can continue to inspire me and others through her story to really want to get
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involved with crushing evil that exists, that people are trying to ruin lives.
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So how do we intervene and get to be part of that, man?
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Let me ask you a question about this, and I really don't want to be insensitive, but this
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is a question that I hope you've never got before, because I want to be thoughtful in
00:21:30.880
With a young lady, I don't know how old *** is, but a young lady like ***, and I've seen
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your logo, which is, from where I sit, an obvious nod to the cross of Jesus Christ.
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Tell me about that, because I want to follow up on this question.
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Hey, man, I have my own way of getting through hard times, and I'll just be honest.
00:22:00.000
I don't know where else to find strength, to be honest with you, and I don't know where
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else to find peace and joy, and I've never publicly even stated that, but every single
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day, I have to put on armor, and for me, where that armor comes from is I have to get into
00:22:14.620
the word to really refocus me from the chaos that I endure throughout the day, and so the
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logo truly at first came to me, because at first it was a different name.
00:22:25.440
We were Innocence Rescue Mission, and it was sitting in a church.
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I know people are going to probably come after me for this, but this vision came on me, and
00:22:33.220
it really changed the name, but it was really, in a split second, it was The Innocent, and
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There's no way The Innocent is not available, or is available, but then I saw the T.
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With the I dot over the T, and I literally saw the logo.
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I was like, oh, that's cool, and then when I went home, first of all, I didn't leave.
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I told my wife, I'm like, go get the kids, and I sat down.
00:23:03.320
Isn't that such a great feeling when you have this idea, and you go on, and it's available?
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I've got like a thousand domain names that I own, but yours is significantly more righteous
00:23:11.900
than mine are, so mine are crazy and stupid, and some of them very inappropriate, so you're
00:23:18.960
Well, look, it wasn't even me, but I'll tell you, this was really kind of a cool part of
00:23:23.380
When I went home, I grabbed my kid's Corolla marker and a piece of paper.
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I was like, I've got to kind of draw that thing that I saw, and so I drew it with this
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marker, and you can even see on our logo, it's not a straight line.
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When I had designers trying to make it square and all this, I was like, no, you've got to get
00:23:38.940
rid of the perfections, it has to be imperfect, right?
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But really, it came to life, and I'm not an artistic, like I don't draw, but that was
00:23:47.760
the first version that's the same version that we use today, and it really, to me at
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that point, my kids said this, they're like, hey, that looks like a kid, and I was like,
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You know, this little image is like a little child, and that's truly who we're here to
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work for is The Innocent, and so when I say, oh, hey, I'm Nate with The Innocent, I work
00:24:05.180
for The Innocent, it's not an organization that I work for, it's actually The Innocent
00:24:09.680
Children, and I could go on about, you know, our mission is to protect and preserve the
00:24:16.220
I see in my own children, and I'm sure you do too, this, what is innocence?
00:24:21.660
You know, like we have to start looking at what is that, and then seeing it in our children,
00:24:25.940
it's this amazing, beautiful trust in things, and this belief, the sense of wonder.
00:24:31.720
Or I see it in my kids all the time, you know, and they're just curious or wonder, they'll
00:24:35.540
believe anything, and they haven't been betrayed and hurt, they don't carry baggage with them,
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and I think that that, as a commodity, that innocence is probably the most precious gem,
00:24:46.860
you know, our commodity on the planet, and what are we doing to preserve it?
00:24:50.660
We're preserving national parks and all these monuments and certain things, but, you know,
00:24:54.980
when are we going to start prioritizing our children?
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And it's not just our children, it's the innocence of our children.
00:25:00.500
And so I love that you asked me about that, and I have never been asked, I might have
00:25:05.480
been asked like in passing, or just like on a Zoom call, but never publicly, but I'm
00:25:12.620
pretty proud of that, because it just came to me, man, really, it's really just, people,
00:25:17.420
when they ask me whatever, I just say, well, the, I, innocent, but here's another cool thing,
00:25:22.300
the T, the I and the T, is really, the T is the beginning and the end, and the I is right
00:25:27.900
in the middle, and for whatever that means, I don't know, but there's so many different
00:25:33.620
I don't think that I really thought about like Jesus on the cross, maybe there was a
00:25:37.280
moment where it was like, symbolize the cross, and people have come, like asked me, like,
00:25:43.380
I was like, no, actually, I got rid of Innocence Rescue Mission, because people were confused
00:25:47.280
me with some sort of a religious affiliation, which we're not, you know, and so, and the
00:25:53.520
rescue was part of the name, and they're like, everything became about a rescue, and we're
00:25:57.500
not about, solely about a rescue, we're about preventative, and so, not even about arrests,
00:26:02.960
but how do we increase conviction rates and sentencing?
00:26:05.680
We're going into law enforcement and teaching them how to build the best cases, and now we're
00:26:09.800
going into the people and educating them and equipping them, and how are they going to be
00:26:14.480
loud, and the voices, and hold people accountable in office, and there's a lot more coming from
00:26:19.020
all of it, but great question, thank you for asking, yeah, it's what it is now, there's
00:26:29.900
I like it, man, it's a lot of symbolism, no, but you know, there's another question I
00:26:34.080
wanted to ask, and man, it's kind of a sensitive one, and I'm really curious what you say about
00:26:38.520
this, and I hope it comes out the way that I intend it, do you think a young lady like
00:26:44.440
with your spiritual conviction, it sounds like, do you think there's people like her, and
00:26:53.760
maybe others, that are supposed to go through things like this in order to help others, like
00:27:04.540
Wow, wow, wow, you just, you went there, and that's, that's a beautiful place to go to,
00:27:11.040
man, you know, I've questioned so many things about my life, and just life in general, and
00:27:17.220
people question faith, and spirituality, and why God would do this, and allow these things
00:27:22.720
to happen, and you know, that's a, that's a great question, I think I get asked a lot.
00:27:29.360
I have no doubt the things that God allowed me to go through in my life gave me the fuel
00:27:34.640
that I needed to pursue what I'm doing now, to hopefully protect children, so they don't
00:27:39.940
have to go through certain things, so in my own circumstance, I can say, for me, I do
00:27:46.040
think that it allows me to, to have, have a purpose, and maybe even a deep passion for
00:27:55.040
There's been so many things I've questioned, even my own family with health things, and
00:27:58.680
things like that, but the reality is, is, is, I, I think where I've come to with all
00:28:03.700
this is, you know, life is such a short time, I don't even care if you live 100 years, when
00:28:11.280
you're talking about eternity, which I don't really know how we can get into the real deep
00:28:15.860
conversation about time, and what that is, but when you're talking about eternity, and
00:28:20.940
everybody gets so hung up with what's right here on earth, and in our time, and in our
00:28:26.600
life, and we think that that's what's the most important thing, and we don't know, we don't
00:28:31.740
really, I don't know, personally, I have, can believe certain things, but I hope, I hope
00:28:39.020
that one day, never has to suffer for eternity, right, and that seeing those, those instances,
00:28:47.720
even in my own wife, you know, for the first time, and I saw a physical change, an emotional
00:28:54.040
change, there's, there's individuals, even in my kids, they didn't meet, but I did explain
00:29:00.080
to them, I didn't get too graphic, but where do we stop taking for granted everything about
00:29:06.640
our life, all the little things, the, the, you know, and I'm not talking about comparing
00:29:11.760
our life with other people, because that's a, not a good place to go mentally, but maybe
00:29:18.380
it's a reminder to how good we have it, because we forget how good our life is, and I hope and
00:29:23.880
pray that this time that has on earth, you know, the suffers, and the struggles, and you
00:29:29.880
know, these evil people that did this to her, hopefully they have to pay for eternity as well,
00:29:33.360
but I, I don't know if I can actually say that there's, that that's her mission, I don't
00:29:39.260
know, man, I struggle with that, I don't, I, I'm, I, I hate injustice, I hate that it's
00:29:45.640
so, feels so unfair, and so that's why I probably can't just declare it, because man, it doesn't
00:29:50.920
make sense, it actually pisses me off, to be honest with you, that somebody would do
00:29:54.520
this, and that somebody would have to go through that, live that life, but I do hold on to the
00:29:58.380
fact that maybe eternity, she's, she won't suffer, and that she gets kind of a, if, if there
00:30:03.880
is a heaven, you know, after a life, then she gets a free ticket in, and gets to live
00:30:11.540
in peace, man, and I don't know, that's a, that's a hard question to answer, to be honest
00:30:17.540
with you, because man, it just doesn't make sense, it just doesn't make sense, evil doesn't
00:30:27.000
Man, I know we're having a very serious conversation, and I want to pay that the honor it
00:30:31.400
deserves, but I also want to share with you something else that's very serious, it's our
00:30:36.140
Forge event, this is the first live event we've done in a little bit over a year and
00:30:40.540
a half, and I said event, it's not just an event, it's an experience, it's where men are
00:30:46.660
stripped of excuses, because we're making sure that's the case, comfort, and even
00:30:50.140
distraction, I mean, how easily distracted are you, and we're going to invite you to face
00:30:55.120
the raw truth of who you are, now, this is hosted by me, and Larry Hagner, with the
00:30:59.900
that edge, we've been both in this business of masculine leadership for over a decade for
00:31:06.600
both of us, but we're going to challenge you, challenge your body, sharpen your mind,
00:31:11.060
strengthen your spirit, and you're going to work alongside other driven men, you're going
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to tackle very real physical adversity, learn time-tested principles of fatherhood and
00:31:22.220
leadership and legacy, we've got instructors coming in, we've got presenters coming in, you've
00:31:27.840
got 60 plus other men coming in, we're going to be in a tight-knit group all working together,
00:31:32.940
we're going to test your edges and get you to have a very clear mission. Now, in a world
00:31:38.240
full of noise and weak standards and passive living, you're going to have a rare space,
00:31:44.440
and it truly is a rare space for you to deepen your brotherhood, purposeful growth, challenge,
00:31:50.880
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00:31:55.540
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00:32:00.360
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00:32:07.400
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00:32:12.900
The Forge is where you belong. It's going to be held May 1st through the 4th,
00:32:15.880
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00:32:22.140
everything else along with that. So if you go to themensforge.com, that's themensforge.com,
00:32:29.660
get signed up. We're two weeks out. We've got a lot of attendees. We're very excited. Speakers are
00:32:34.200
all lined up. We've made some changes based on some feedback, and it's going to be a very powerful
00:32:38.880
event. Go to themensforge.com. Do that right after the show. For now, let's get back to it with Nate.
00:32:45.880
So, yeah, I mean, it's hard. I, I, I guess I, where I land is feeling like, you know,
00:32:52.400
maybe that wasn't her mission because those are people doing things to her. You know,
00:32:58.380
she didn't make those choices, but also I can't help but believe that she's uniquely qualified to
00:33:04.720
endure the hardships that she'll have to just like I am. And my hardships are different than hers and
00:33:10.640
hers might be more catastrophic in some ways. And maybe mine are, I don't know. I'm not going to
00:33:15.280
compare myself, but I do believe that somebody like her and others that I've heard stories of
00:33:21.660
and met personally are uniquely qualified and capable of handling it. That's my experience
00:33:30.060
anyways. Well, I don't, I don't argue with that because when you feel her joy and see her smile,
00:33:35.500
it's one of the most beautiful smiles there is. I mean, I don't know how, I don't know how,
00:33:41.420
but she carries that. And again, that's super inspiring to me. Yeah. And so maybe she was
00:33:46.940
equipped with that because I, Lord knows, I have no idea how she finds that incredible peace and joy
00:33:55.180
deep, deep, deep, massive joy. And I, and I want to say this, I don't want people to get hung up just
00:34:02.260
on the story. That's just one story. Sure. It's impacted me. And I love, I love her and I love
00:34:08.280
the whole thing. I want to continue to support her. And, and, but there's so many kids. She just
00:34:12.000
represents one of those many that are out there. And I said to her yesterday, whether she could
00:34:17.240
comprehend or understand. And I said to the team, like, because of her, I don't know what I'll be
00:34:23.300
able to do. Um, and we don't even try to care about stats, uh, to be honest with you, but I hope that I
00:34:30.580
can make impact. I hope I can protect more children. Uh, I hope I can crush more evil because
00:34:35.920
of the impact she's made on my life because she has. And, uh, if that was, I know she doesn't care
00:34:41.920
about that. Um, but if that was, you know, what she had to, you know, play a small part in my life
00:34:47.800
to be able to focus me on a mission, uh, then maybe that was part of the plan. Uh, it still doesn't
00:34:55.080
feel right. It still doesn't make sense, but I'm, I'm going to do what I got to do. And, uh, you know,
00:35:01.380
I'm not going to stop, you know, and she's part of that man. If I get bad thoughts and I get it
00:35:07.320
defeated and I get just beat down, all I have to do is picture that face, you know, and there's no,
00:35:17.760
I mean, it's almost instant. It's almost instant that changes the feeling inside from hate, anger
00:35:25.460
to joy. Like it just transfers. I don't know how to explain it, man. Oh, she's just so cool.
00:35:32.100
This is so cool. I just feel honored to be part of it, man. I think you explained it well, actually,
00:35:38.080
I, um, I do want to ask and maybe shift gears a little bit here and come back to it, but I want
00:35:42.820
to take a side street for a second. I know there's a lot of men who are listening to this podcast and
00:35:47.440
love what we're doing and love what you're doing and, and really resonate with the mission.
00:35:51.920
But I also know there's a lot of deeply unsatisfied men out there. Um, maybe they're in dead end jobs.
00:35:57.180
Maybe they're not happy with the relationship. Their career isn't going as they thought it would
00:36:00.780
10, 15, 20 years ago. And they have this idea and it's not to start the innocent. It's just to start
00:36:10.640
a side business doing welding or web design or, uh, do some mechanical work on the side, like
00:36:18.420
photography, whatever, name it. And they're afraid to do it because they've got a job and they've got
00:36:26.200
responsibilities and they've got a mortgage and they've got kids and a wife and they've got all
00:36:30.560
this stuff. You did too. I want to know about that where you had this, this calling, you,
00:36:39.180
you felt it, you believed in it. And I think it's easy to gloss over and say, well, yeah,
00:36:43.780
you just felt it. And then he did it. I'm like, well, hold on. There's a whole other slew of
00:36:48.740
chapters that happened between here's what I was doing. Here's what I felt. And here's what I'm doing
00:36:53.620
now. And I, I want to hear that story because there's a lot of guys in your boat, depending on
00:36:59.380
what they want to do, uh, moving forward with their lives. Well, first I think you mentioned fear
00:37:04.520
and fear is usually a common denominator when it comes to stopping people from doing anything.
00:37:10.920
And then there's courage, which is in the face of fear, you do it anyways. There's so much
00:37:16.560
comfort going on in the world right now. We want to be comfortable. We don't want to step outside.
00:37:22.500
We don't, you know, they're everything's, I mean, look at Amazon makes it easy for you to not have to
00:37:27.180
go to the store. You can order in the comfort of your own home. I think we get wrapped up so much in
00:37:31.700
the comforts of life that we don't push ourselves. And actually I've known this because I've traveled
00:37:37.660
for 20 plus years to 50 countries and lived in foreign countries. I know like being uncomfortable
00:37:43.160
is where I grew the most. And I would say that to anybody who's out there potentially exploring
00:37:49.440
the possibility is you may not know what's possible because you may, and this happened with me too,
00:37:55.380
you may have a direction that you think you want to go, but you think might be impossible. And then,
00:38:01.040
and you start taking those steps, you actually start going into another area that your brain
00:38:06.500
couldn't even fathom or comprehend to even come up with an idea. And it becomes even better than
00:38:12.120
what you thought. But what is the risk versus reward? That's somewhat how I would answer that is,
00:38:20.500
man, you're, you're, uh, you're going to sit and stay where you're at and feel the feelings that
00:38:26.420
you're feeling, or there's potential for you to step outside that push yourself, grow, uh, take risk
00:38:33.580
and maybe potentially be rewarded in, in many different ways. And I know I can go down that
00:38:39.660
list of things, but you know, there's, there's, there's, there's also something about just having
00:38:44.780
faith, um, to me. Um, and Hey man, I'm, I was scared to death, right? I just, you know,
00:38:51.920
wasn't sure I got this idea. That's another cool story is like, Hey, we could do this in the United
00:38:57.140
States. How am I going to do it? I don't know, but we're going to figure it out. That's the other
00:39:00.500
thing is when people have told me even going into Hollywood, like, Oh, good luck, man. You know,
00:39:05.320
it's almost impossible. I've never, ever, this is probably some of the best advice I can give.
00:39:11.660
I've never, ever, ever accepted. You can't do anything ever in my life ever. Like I, I think when
00:39:19.320
you accept that you can't, you won't, I think that it's more important to figure out how.
00:39:25.480
So when you can figure out like, and you might come to a dead end and I've done this many times
00:39:29.600
in my life, dead ends, try another route, dead end, go another angle, keep giving. And here's the,
00:39:36.720
here's the, here's the reality. Here's some good advice too, that I was given early on from a really
00:39:42.100
important person in my life. But, uh, going into Hollywood, he said, uh, look, here's the only advice
00:39:46.880
I'll give you never give up because I'll tell you when you give up, you just confirmed that you're
00:39:52.900
never going to make it happen. But if you never give up, there's always a chance that it could
00:39:58.340
happen. You still have the potential and the possibility of things happening. And, uh, that's
00:40:04.420
really how I look at it. I, I don't think there's ever an answer where you can't make it until you're
00:40:09.420
dead. You know, honestly, you can, you can do it. I, I just think you just can't accept the fact that
00:40:15.580
no, I can't, you just can't accept that. So just, so just find a way. You don't have to know
00:40:21.220
the answers. You don't have to know the, how you just have to start taking those steps
00:40:24.900
in that right direction. And it will happen. It will start to, and then as you take this step,
00:40:30.180
you'll realize, Oh man, I need to take those steps, which I didn't even know I needed to take
00:40:33.660
those steps because I wasn't here yet, but you got to just start, just take that first step.
00:40:38.780
Honestly. Hey, if worst case you can step backwards right into the spot that you're sitting right now.
00:40:44.300
Yeah. Easy. No problem. Yeah. I I've, I've had a question earlier today of like,
00:40:49.320
what's the number one trait that I would teach my son. And, um, I thought about it a little while
00:40:54.360
and I thought coachability, like the ability to adapt and evolve and grow and learn and be humble.
00:41:00.200
But then as you're saying this, I don't think I would change my answer, but a close second would be
00:41:07.300
grittiness. Like the ability to drive on and in face of adversity and face of setback to not be
00:41:15.820
deterred, to get beat up literally and figuratively and still charge forward. Man, that grittiness, I think
00:41:24.340
is something to be, there's something to be said for that. Yeah. Yeah. You just don't accept the loss.
00:41:30.760
You know, just keep going until you win. I believe it. Yeah. A hundred percent, man. I'll tell you a lot
00:41:38.140
of my life, my dad started as young. I grew up in apple farms and the orchards. And you know,
00:41:43.780
when I wanted a new bike, he was like, great, I got lots of work for you to do. You can make that
00:41:47.720
and earn that, you know, I remember having the worst jobs. You know, my brother who was older had
00:41:52.720
the easier jobs, but he already was there, you know? And, but I remember that worth that work ethic
00:41:57.720
being kind of instilled in me at a very young age is like, Hey, you want something, you can get it.
00:42:02.760
You just have to work for it. So at the end of the week, literally, and I was making like $2.50 an
00:42:07.060
hour or something back then doing the worst jobs. Um, at the end of the week, I saved up a hundred
00:42:12.260
bucks or whatever it was to go buy that fancy new bike at shucks, whatever it was, you know?
00:42:17.480
And I was like, and it was so cool, but it was the first time in my life. I was like, man,
00:42:20.940
I can have anything I want. I just have to work for it. I truly, I just got to work whatever it is.
00:42:26.040
If some things are bigger goals and bigger obstacles, you just got to work harder,
00:42:30.360
you know, but you can make it happen. You can do it. Just, I, and I do throw this in there.
00:42:34.800
Cause I do think this is part of it. People always ask me how in the world did you end up
00:42:37.820
working on the biggest movies in the world and about to go work on the next biggest movie and
00:42:41.580
working with all these people and all this. And I was like, look, it was a little bit of luck
00:42:45.100
and a lot of hard work. So there is a little bit of luck sometimes. And people want to say like,
00:42:49.380
Oh, you're so lucky. Oh, you're so lucky. No, actually there might've been a couple moments of
00:42:54.580
luck or coincidence. Right place, right time. Sure. Right. I call it fortune. You know,
00:43:00.600
like luck, luck is too dismissive. Fortunate events means to me, if I were to, if I were to
00:43:08.600
describe it, it means an opportunity presented itself and you'd done the work to position yourself
00:43:15.700
to take advantage of the opportunity. Luck is like, you just scratched a lotto ticket and you won $10
00:43:20.080
million. Yeah. Fortunate events is there was a really cool opportunity that was presented to you
00:43:26.180
and you were in the position to capitalize on it. Absolutely. Absolutely. Right. I agree.
00:43:33.840
Yeah. Let's go back to the, to the first question I asked because there's a lot of guys who are like,
00:43:40.540
yeah, no, I know this is a problem or I, I have my own problems that I want to address in the world.
00:43:45.200
And I, and I say, tackle it like you'd be, maybe you wouldn't be amazed, but a lot of people would
00:43:50.480
how often people tell me you should talk about this. You should do that. You should do this. And
00:43:56.280
my response is you should do that. Yeah. It's obviously important to you. I'm already doing
00:44:02.040
my thing. I'm pretty happy with what I'm doing. I'm pretty fulfilled. Like, I feel like this is a
00:44:06.400
worthy cause. You should do that. So what do you say to a guy who either wants to get involved in an
00:44:13.040
organization like yours? Um, and that's a worthy goal, of course, or maybe they have their own
00:44:19.800
desires and ambitions that are righteous and worth pursuing. Yeah. Well, I think you're absolutely
00:44:25.660
right. And we get asked this question a lot as like, Hey, you would know you should target these
00:44:29.460
or you should do that. And certain things are all criticized, you know, of course, of course.
00:44:34.020
And that's kind of what I would say is similar to you. I always say is like, Hey man, I will support
00:44:37.600
your nonprofit. As soon as you started, I'm here, I'll team up with you, coach you, however I can help you.
00:44:42.680
And whenever you want, but we figured out what works for us, we're going to do it.
00:44:46.020
And, and so those individuals, you know, I, I think that one, I always start with education and I
00:44:52.000
want to, I want to, I do want to talk about this because there's people like you mentioned,
00:44:54.460
want to get involved with our organization in a couple of months, we're going to have ways and
00:44:58.020
resources and things for the people to get involved. Um, and I would say that for me, it comes with
00:45:04.640
education first and foremost, I think you have to understand it and you got to look at the source of
00:45:09.480
education. You know, you can't just follow people on X or whatever and see what's being posted and
00:45:15.080
then just regurgitate whatever it is. You know, we try to be fact-based evidence-based. All of our
00:45:21.600
quotes are sourced by credible sources. Um, but really deep dive into the, the, what it is that
00:45:28.920
you want to do. And sometimes that's not just reading in a book. That means jumping into it,
00:45:33.680
right? Like me being thrown into the deep end and child sacrifice with witch doctors. And then just,
00:45:39.800
you know, you learn more. And I've always said that, like when I was in the film business, people
00:45:43.380
were like, how did you do it? Do I need to go to film school? I was like, look, I went to film school.
00:45:47.240
It was great. It was awesome. I learned a lot. And there's some things I did learn that were very
00:45:50.720
valuable, but man, when I got on sets, there comes the real experience, right? There comes the things
00:45:57.760
and the people and the relationships that you can ask questions and learn from so much more. And so that's
00:46:02.060
what I say is like, you have to just do it. You know, like you'd have to just start it. You have
00:46:06.280
to get in it. And there is a lot of educating you can do. Um, but again, please go to really good
00:46:13.120
sources to get educated. And we're going to have some of that for you, um, soon as far as getting
00:46:18.020
involved with, with what we do specifically, it's difficult for the people until, you know, coming soon.
00:46:25.000
All my team is law enforcement. So they're either active duty law enforcement. We have some
00:46:29.200
retired law enforcement who have tons of experience doing these undercover operations,
00:46:34.260
running operations, either from the military into law enforcement. Um, but they're training.
00:46:39.140
We're building task forces throughout the United States. So we'll go into a community and we'll
00:46:42.480
bring together, you know, several five, six departments, several of their top investigators
00:46:47.080
together to go through this course. We do a live training, live operations, and we put them through
00:46:51.880
a real live operation. We're just consultants, advisors as they go through it. So when we leave,
00:46:56.260
they can continue to do this work when we move on to another state. So in order to really get involved
00:47:01.860
with what we do up to this point, you kind of had to be in law enforcement. You know, you, you know,
00:47:06.760
we get tons of departments reaching out to us and we had 18 in one week and just January. And so those,
00:47:14.080
the reason why we go that route is I understand the heart of a vigilante. Look, we have that feeling
00:47:20.260
inside of us, right? Like we want justice. We want to go. We love people like that. We just got to temper it.
00:47:25.560
Yeah. Yeah. Well, channel that energy, right? Like the reality is law enforcement has way more
00:47:31.480
authority and abilities to do things that the civilians can't like. There's just way more they
00:47:37.180
can do. Right. And then just building these cases, um, uh, to avoid entrapment, building strong cases.
00:47:43.820
So up until this point, they really, you couldn't be involved unless you were law enforcement, right?
00:47:49.100
Now we're going into a new area. Well, this is where I'm going to kind of focus my time. And we want to,
00:47:53.440
we want to, we will soon have a way for people to really get engaged and I'll lay it out for them.
00:47:58.300
But again, it goes back to education. How do you get qualified education so that you're aware,
00:48:02.560
you know, and then how do you kind of spearhead in your community, these efforts. And then
00:48:07.260
instead of doing a 5k show up to your city council where actual change and impact can be made,
00:48:13.480
right? By the leaders that you elected. And if they're not prioritizing children,
00:48:18.120
you should consider maybe not reelecting them and you should kind of look at their track record,
00:48:22.360
running yourself. Yeah. Yeah. Empower the people because the people I think right now are confused
00:48:27.660
that those in office that they put in office have the power. Now they have power, but the people
00:48:33.480
also have the power. If you're not getting the results that you want, and we see this across the
00:48:37.900
board, um, prosecutors, judges, whatever. Yeah. I'm calling them out because not all of them
00:48:42.060
are like this, but you know, you see these cases that are built pretty amazing. The guys that
00:48:47.320
are teaching the courses cases, uh, that are pretty good getting six months in a County jail,
00:48:53.700
that's unacceptable. And you know what it does? It deflates the drive of the men and women in the
00:48:58.540
front lines of this battle. Right. And so who's holding them accountable? No one for fear of their
00:49:04.380
job. Right. So now I think it's time for the people to kind of come together and really start asking
00:49:10.900
why in the world are we not prioritizing our children? We've got drug task forces. I know you've got
00:49:15.200
seven officers doing that, but do you have anybody proactively doing this? I know you've got a
00:49:19.280
reactive person to a cyber tip or 911 call. My daughter was raped, but who's out there proactively
00:49:25.040
going after these to prevent this stuff from happening. Right. And why not? And why are these
00:49:29.900
cases? And now if they have a legitimate process excuse, like, Oh, it was a legal search and seizure.
00:49:36.560
There was entrapment, whatever. Some defense attorney is going to try that one. Right. But if the case
00:49:40.700
is solid and this guy showed up to rape a child, come on. Full extent of the law. Yep. Full extent
00:49:47.320
of the law. What is going on? And people want to talk about like, well, we need stiffer laws. That's
00:49:51.740
great. And we do have some stiff laws that could be stiffer, but if nobody's going to uphold those
00:49:55.780
laws, the laws don't mean anything. Right. And so that's where soon, um, you know, I hope people
00:50:01.940
would get on our website, the innocent.org sign up for our newsletter. Cause we're going to be able to
00:50:05.380
communicate. Cause I can't get to a lot of people through social media. Uh, if you want to really
00:50:10.680
know, and you want to stay up to date on the trends and certain things like that, this is where we're
00:50:14.300
going to be able to really, we train and equip law enforcement. Now we're going to train and equip
00:50:17.640
the people so that we can have a power across the United States to, from the bottom up and from the
00:50:22.880
top down, hopefully I'm trying to declare the war for innocence. The war on drugs started in the
00:50:28.060
Reagan's right now. I think we need to, we need to put as much time, energy resources and build task
00:50:33.740
forces, just like the drug task forces. There's no risk right now. And I think it's time that we
00:50:38.680
have to create some risk. We have to start training, uh, law enforcement and the red tape and the,
00:50:44.440
the, the resources, the lack of resources that's out there. The right now, the people are saying
00:50:49.400
enough and they just need the Avenue. Like, okay, well, if the resources, the problem, the people
00:50:53.920
are going to fund it, you know? And if there's all this red tape, they can't even get a laptop
00:50:57.860
to process evidence, a high, like gaming computer, unless it goes through a six month process.
00:51:03.740
Uh, and we'll do it in six minutes. If it'll already be the order, we'll be placed and in
00:51:07.700
delivery 48 hours later, that's red tape that we can just cut, but we have to start prioritizing
00:51:13.620
this. We have to, we have to look at it that way. Like, why are we not building task forces
00:51:17.260
to, to go out and get ahead of this? There's 46 million survivors of child sexual abuse in the
00:51:25.640
United States right now. This has been going on for a while. I don't see it slowing down,
00:51:31.460
especially with the access of 37 million teens on social media. These predators aren't going out
00:51:37.260
into the playgrounds and the millions of cameras that are surrounding our neighborhoods. They're
00:51:41.740
trying to hide their identity online. They're going to groom and manipulate. And it could
00:51:45.920
potentially start by sending photos or me or this individual sending a photo that's going to start
00:51:51.840
destroying the innocence of an 11 year old. And then we could go into the whole conversation around
00:51:56.260
social media enabling, introducing 51 year olds to 11 or 14 year olds, which is absurd.
00:52:01.260
There's so many things that are occurring right now. And then they potentially now will get them
00:52:05.960
to meet up. But why are, why are we not doing anything? Cause they don't even know where,
00:52:10.300
if you're not living in this world, you don't even know where to look. We are constantly learning.
00:52:14.940
I don't know where to go. Right. And you shouldn't. And I'm glad I don't. Right. You know,
00:52:21.000
if you're not doing this work constantly, you, you know, we're learning from these guys. Sometimes
00:52:25.180
they'll be like, Hey, let's jump over to here. Oh, how did you find this? So I was like, Oh,
00:52:29.760
have you been on so-and-so? Hey, there's a sub whatever here. And you just, if you're not living
00:52:36.160
in this constantly, you're not up to date with the trends and you have to, you have to have somebody,
00:52:42.040
basically this is all they do. They don't do fraud, which none of them want to. And I can
00:52:47.260
explain a little bit of that. It cut me off at any time, but I think this is also important.
00:52:51.420
First responders, nurses, paramedics, police officers, firefighters, they, they approach
00:52:56.460
different, um, circumstances, but whether it's a fire or a car accident, when there's a child
00:53:03.620
involved, it's way more traumatizing to the individual. We know that, right? Um, you're dealing
00:53:09.720
with children. Makes sense. When you're dealing with children, a hundred percent of your cases
00:53:15.060
deal with children, innocent children that aren't choosing to go out and buy drugs or get involved
00:53:20.120
with gangs and that kind of thing. Like it's so hard on these men and women. And so eventually
00:53:25.580
in 2026, or maybe a little longer, we want to get a mental wellness program where we come
00:53:29.300
into departments. We have to start taking care of them because they're the turnover rate, but
00:53:34.000
the divorce rate, suicide rate, alcoholism, all those things, that's a whole nother area that
00:53:38.880
this kind of starts to affect. And I call it like the warfare that's going on out there
00:53:42.700
because if you aren't in the trenches 24 seven, uh, you're not going to be able to make as
00:53:49.700
much progress, but being in those trenches, man, you need the support system around you
00:53:53.280
as well. Um, it's a hard, hard, hard, hard deal to deal with. Even as a grown adult, I
00:53:59.120
can't imagine as a child dealing with some of this stuff, you know?
00:54:03.000
Well, and, and yeah, I even think about like with police departments, for example, I've
00:54:09.520
got, I've got close friends who are in, in law enforcement and have since retired from
00:54:14.680
law enforcement. I mean, these guys can't even get, uh, their, their, their chiefs or
00:54:20.380
their captains to foot the bill for some martial arts training, uh, once a week, you know?
00:54:26.880
And it's like, it's literally your job, physical confrontation. And, and what are you guys talking
00:54:34.360
about? Like, I don't even know technology. Like, I don't even know what you're talking
00:54:38.860
about over how to subdue a potential criminal, let alone now you're talking about creating
00:54:45.160
these additional task force for, um, child exploitation. It seems ass backwards.
00:54:53.700
Yeah. Like it's crazy to me. Well, that's where the top down needs to come. They need
00:54:59.200
the funding from the government to prioritize. Well, they have the funding, but we're spending
00:55:03.440
it on dumb stuff, man. Like, is that true or no? Oh yeah. Well, of course it is. I think
00:55:09.000
if you're not building task forces and prioritizing the training for law enforcement to go hunt
00:55:14.580
predators and traffickers, uh, I, I don't say the other stuff is dumb. I just think it's your
00:55:21.100
priorities are jacked up. Where are you spending money? You can't say it, but I'll say it. There's
00:55:26.240
probably two dozen cops here in my town, fairly small town, two dozen cops, give or take. And
00:55:31.460
they're pulling over soccer moms who are running late to drop their five-year-old off to soccer.
00:55:35.920
I'm like, bro, I can, I could show you eight drug houses right now. Like right now I can just
00:55:43.220
point there, there, there, there, and there. And you're pulling over soccer moms who are going
00:55:48.100
seven miles over the speed limit on state street. It's crazy to me. Yeah. It's so backwards.
00:55:54.260
Yeah. Well, and so, so just, so those street level cops, um, the, the level that we're dealing
00:56:00.720
with is the highest level of investigations. So these people are right. You know, they're
00:56:05.680
working, they're doing what they need to be doing. I get it. Right. And I'm not, and I'm not
00:56:10.680
beating those cops up. Like they're doing what they should be doing. I'm beating up the departments.
00:56:15.040
That's what I'm getting after. I get it. But also they need training school resource,
00:56:19.020
school resource officers also need training. They need to be able to identify this. Do you
00:56:23.400
pull somebody over? And if there's a child in the background that doesn't speak the same
00:56:27.080
language and it doesn't match up that that's your child or whatever, and some gives you
00:56:31.140
some story, maybe you should start questioning that, you know, like school resource officers
00:56:35.160
on the front lines inside of schools. Like they're, they're usually, if someone is going
00:56:39.040
to report something, it's going to be reported to them, or they're going to mention it. They
00:56:42.000
should know what to look for as well. That's what I'm saying. Why are we not prioritizing
00:56:46.100
this? I just, I don't understand it. And I think if the people get loud enough and demand
00:56:52.180
something to be done, maybe they'll take it serious. I hope they will take it seriously.
00:56:58.700
And so, yeah, there's a, there's, you know, gosh, man, it drives me nuts because there's
00:57:02.680
so much that could be done. It's not even like, oh, we got to come up with the idea. We've already
00:57:06.600
figured it out. We're, we're literally going into their neighborhoods. They get accredited
00:57:11.320
hours because you have to, as a law enforcement takes so many hours of training. They didn't even
00:57:15.820
have to like take that out of their budget. Now they actually free up their budget inside their
00:57:19.460
training budget. Here's the other thing. They don't have to build and pay for a task force because
00:57:23.260
it's five or six departments providing one or two or three individuals on a monthly or quarterly
00:57:29.480
basis, because it's really the guys back there on the computer that are building these cases,
00:57:34.380
building these cases to lead up to arrest day, you know, and, and, oh man, it's so easy to
00:57:41.360
channel and focus and redirect our energy and effort and resources. And then no one's doing it.
00:57:48.000
But why is that? Why do you think that, is that just, is it laziness? Is it ignorance? Is it
00:57:54.360
bureaucracy or politics? Cause I've talked with several of my friends who, like I said, are in law
00:57:59.580
enforcement and have been for a very long time. And they say, once you get to the higher echelons of
00:58:03.440
law enforcement, you're no longer, um, you're no longer a peacekeeper, a police officer. You are
00:58:10.000
now a politician. Yeah. And yeah. Oh man. I can't even get into all those, but everything you just
00:58:19.240
said, honestly, it's, it's, uh, it's so complex. I don't know. It's, there's a lot to tackle inside
00:58:28.100
that conversation, but it is basically everything that you just said. Like it's all of it. Some
00:58:33.300
probably weigh a little more than others, but well, you know, we, we got, we, we can use the
00:58:39.420
excuse for funding for a certain amount of time, but then you have to fight for the funding,
00:58:43.800
you know, like we need this over this. Um, and so I, I don't know, man, I will say that I want to touch
00:58:52.400
on ignorance. And I deal with this more often than I wish I had to deal with from people who are
00:58:57.280
elected at the highest levels. And I have two different cases that are two different ways of
00:59:02.600
approaching it and dealing with it. I can literally sit in a room with somebody and say like, Hey,
00:59:06.880
this is what we do. It's all free to you. We can, we've already done some investigations. Here's
00:59:11.460
some evidence that we have of how many people hit up our ad in 10 minutes, 24 hours in one week.
00:59:16.620
Here's the conversations we're having this and that. And I'll get somebody's like,
00:59:19.640
nah, it's not happening. And then publicly say, ah, it's not happening. Then I could pull up.
00:59:24.460
I got to interrupt real quick. You say run an ad. What do you mean by that? Just generally,
00:59:29.480
I don't want to give away any trade secrets, but just generally.
00:59:31.980
Uh, it's yeah. There's places that exist that are just pay for sex, right? So sites. And so what
00:59:41.640
we'll do is promote that we're advertising. Someone is for sale. They they're available.
00:59:49.640
So to speak as a, as a, a seller of that individual or as the individual, uh, it's both sometimes,
00:59:58.300
but mostly, mostly the work that we're doing. And when I get it, when we get into the organized
01:00:03.840
crime, it's somebody, there's two components. One, it's you are selling, whether it's your child
01:00:09.580
or you could say it's your child or whatever it may be, or you as a buyer trying to purchase
01:00:15.540
from somebody, but look, I'll tell you, I saw your reaction right there. Uh, unfortunately last
01:00:22.440
summer we arrested, uh, well, we didn't, we were part of, and my team is part of a massive, um,
01:00:29.300
ran scenario where we were able to, or they were able to arrest 13 individuals in about 48 hours
01:00:36.600
that were showing up because a mom was selling a seven, nine and 12 year old. Right. And there
01:00:41.920
were certain individuals that decided, ah, I'm not interested in the 12 year old. Now that's
01:00:46.540
common. They didn't even like bat an eye at it. And here's the other thing is, and there's a video
01:00:51.140
that we put out that like the, the tactical guys that are doing the takedown, they don't sit in the
01:00:57.160
back chatting with these clowns. Right. So they don't understand, but when they make the arrest and
01:01:01.760
they take their phone, they were more shocked at how many phones background was them and their
01:01:06.740
daughter or them and their family. Right. So like, these are the type of people showing up to these
01:01:11.520
things. Right. So the ad is us promoting what's available to the market, so to speak. Got it. So
01:01:18.280
I'll continue the conversations. So this individual continues to say, Oh no, you're saying, we're not,
01:01:23.720
we're not, we're not gonna, this isn't really happening. So I can point to the actual law in the
01:01:28.220
state of under the umbrella, tip of the umbrella, human trafficking, what falls under all the statutes,
01:01:33.600
exploitation, voyeurism, you name it. Right. Then I can go right to the jail that he oversees.
01:01:39.820
And I can specifically type in control F child, like search all the people that are, have a charge
01:01:46.280
relating to a child. Now some of them are child abuse or whatever, but you can look at all of them
01:01:49.600
and you can see the people in his jail currently, not previously right now that got arrested for
01:01:55.820
these charges underneath the human trafficking laws, statutes. And so for him to deny that it's
01:02:01.740
not happening, I love, I would love if this individual would just say, look, I don't, I don't
01:02:08.400
spend much time in this. So I don't understand it. Just, I know this is all you do for thousands of
01:02:14.000
days. You don't do anything else. Could you enlighten me? That's part of it. So I don't know
01:02:19.140
what's going on there, but another individual, different scenario, same example says, is it really
01:02:25.060
happening here? Well, I'm glad you asked. Let me turn my computer around and show you what
01:02:28.440
occurred. Wow. Response. Wow. We'd probably need a full-time person. Second response. We should
01:02:35.120
probably host one of these trainings. Third response. Maybe we should find a way to see if
01:02:41.540
this nonprofit wants to fund you part-time to proactively just do these investigations.
01:02:47.520
Mind-blowing, right? Coming from somebody who just was curious, like, is it really that big of a
01:02:52.240
problem? Show them the evidence. Yes, it is. Go to familywatchdog.us if you're watching.
01:02:58.440
Familywatchdog.us. Type in your area, like your address, and look at all the people who are
01:03:03.880
registered sex offenders in your neighborhood, and you can see their mug shots and what they're
01:03:06.780
arrested for and all the different degrees and all that stuff. I haven't done that. I should do that,
01:03:10.500
but I have not yet. So look, those are only the people who have been caught on a reactive case
01:03:16.280
for the most part. Registered as a sex offender, and there's a lot of them living in the communities.
01:03:21.200
There's more in that operation. I told you, the 13 arrested, you know, in like almost 48 hours.
01:03:25.640
That organization, and that's what the state patrol and lots of departments in one state
01:03:30.320
did for five years, did these undercover sting operations and arrested nearly 350 individuals.
01:03:35.120
And out of those 350 individuals that were arrested, how many of those were registered
01:03:39.600
sex offenders? Just take a guess. Out of how many did you say? 350 arrested.
01:03:46.100
Um, for other convictions is what you're saying. Well, no, they were just arrested for showing up
01:03:52.540
in these sting operations. Potentially. Oh, got it. How many priors you're saying?
01:03:56.420
How many, how many of those, when they showed up to meet for that date, got arrested,
01:03:59.960
they were already registered sex offenders? Uh, 70%.
01:04:04.780
Hmm. 3%. Why is that important? Yeah. Why is that important? Because when you go on that website,
01:04:13.160
yeah. And that website is going to freak you out. It's going to freak you out. I'm going right now.
01:04:19.860
That's why it took me a minute to answer your question. Cause I was actually looking in real
01:04:23.800
time, uh, in my area. So here's the thing. If you're going to, you're first of all, you're going
01:04:29.440
to be blown away all the people in your neighborhood that are registered sex offenders. Now you're going
01:04:35.700
to be even more blown away because if those are the people who hopefully are not in prison and maybe
01:04:41.040
not reoffending or getting smarter, but that might only represent a small portion of the people living
01:04:45.500
that are predators that haven't been caught. Right. And so, um, there's in my, so in my area,
01:04:53.240
let me look here. It's set. It's the fact that it's, my system is bogged down is scary to me
01:05:03.320
actually. Yeah. Cause it's not even like it's running very, very slow and I have decent internet
01:05:11.260
and there's three anecdotally. There's about three or four. If I just look at this map real quick
01:05:20.220
that are probably within a two mile radius. Yeah. And you're probably, I don't know where
01:05:26.680
you live, but if you go to small town, Southern Utah, yeah, small town, but even in small towns,
01:05:33.260
it happens when you get into the metropolitan area where people don't live spread out, they
01:05:37.740
live up and sky rises and the population is super dense. It'll blow your mind. Like type
01:05:44.820
in a, I mean, I've got, I've got a lot of like offense against child, um, other offense offender
01:05:53.840
home. It says that's predominantly what it is. Offense against child offender home. I'm not, I,
01:06:01.200
I don't want to take the time to look at that, but that's predominantly what it is in, in my area
01:06:05.260
here. Yeah. And if you zoom out a little bit and move the map around, it'll show you in those areas.
01:06:10.720
And, and so you can also see kind of more, more kind of rich areas of where this kind of exists.
01:06:16.620
Um, hopefully they're not by a school bus stop. You know what I mean? These guys living,
01:06:22.140
you know, point, but yeah. So I think educating people, even law enforcement is part of this whole
01:06:28.680
deal. Um, going back to the ignorance part, they just don't know. You don't know what you don't know.
01:06:33.980
Right. And so it's an opportunity for us to really share with them. Like these are case studies. We
01:06:41.540
were just in Texas and man, they were crushed it after we left. They just kept going and just kept
01:06:47.460
going. They still keep going. Um, and then I think that, uh, what I love to share with people is there
01:06:53.800
are so many agencies and men, women who can't, they're hungry to do this. They just need the
01:06:58.980
equipment. They need to know how and the best ways. And, and they'll go out and do it, uh, in that
01:07:03.780
town. And, um, it's kind of a city in, uh, Texas. They actually had at the County level, they had two
01:07:09.160
individuals. They were a hundred percent human trafficking officers. They don't do any of the
01:07:12.740
other. That's it. So at least they were dedicating people to this. They have billboards, human trafficking
01:07:17.960
call 1-800, you know, deal. So they're like, they're, they're making this a priority in their towns.
01:07:23.840
And I think that, you know, we just need to follow suit across America. Yeah. I, I, I, I
01:07:29.720
appreciate what you're saying. There are bigger fish to fry, so to speak, than, like I said
01:07:35.460
earlier, the soccer moms who are driving eight miles an hour over like, sure. Okay. Get, get
01:07:42.900
the Karens by all means. Sure. But let's deal with the real issues that are a greater threat
01:07:49.120
to our communities and to our young people. Let's do it.
01:07:53.840
We have to, we have to. Well, brother, how do we connect with you? How do we learn more
01:07:59.120
about this, your mission, what we can do, how we can get involved, how we can donate. Um,
01:08:03.720
I've actually got, I've got a couple of law enforcement, uh, officers who are now retired
01:08:08.980
who I have talked with that said they are lacking purpose in their lives after retirement. And I've
01:08:17.160
got a couple of people I'd like to introduce you to whether that happens or not. I don't know,
01:08:20.700
but I, I'm, I've got thoughts, man. So how do we connect with you?
01:08:24.340
Yeah, man, go to the innocent.org. That's our website, uh, on there. You can law enforcement,
01:08:29.560
click on the law enforcement tab. You can fill out that form with your law enforcement government
01:08:33.500
issued ID. That's just a verification that we're actually talking to somebody in law enforcement.
01:08:37.500
Um, we'll reach out to you, uh, probably first through email, then we can jump on a call.
01:08:41.900
We can kind of fill you in on what we, what we do and how we can come into your community. And then
01:08:46.060
maybe you can spearhead, you know, the efforts, uh, inside your communities community, click on the
01:08:51.260
community link. There's lots of ways. And there's more coming, uh, on that community link. You can,
01:08:56.080
we can create you a page and a QR code and you can start a fundraiser for your local community as well.
01:09:00.920
And, uh, there's a, there's a blue button on our page. That's the donate button. If I call it
01:09:05.640
become a protector, you know, for as little as $10 a month, you can literally as a force of people,
01:09:11.920
we can make impact. And I think that people kind of get this misconception. It's like,
01:09:15.940
there's $10 really make a difference. Well, it doesn't. If a thousand people do it, right. But if
01:09:21.700
multiple people or hundreds of people or a thousand people do that, we can make real impact here in the
01:09:28.280
United States. Right. And so those are just some of the ways of the really, I think the most
01:09:32.860
important way for us to communicate and give you the people, what you need is signing up for our
01:09:38.960
email. And the reason I say that is because we know that's going to get delivered to you
01:09:42.680
right through our social media and certain things. Like we can, I can do posts and videos and all that
01:09:48.320
stuff, but it's not very likely unless you're engaging constantly with our platform that some of
01:09:53.540
they just, I can't even pay to get promoted out there. So through that email, we're going to be
01:09:58.920
able to keep you up to date on a lot of different things and trends and certain things. Um, we have
01:10:02.980
a YouTube channel. We might start doing more videos on, um, but really just go to our website. You can
01:10:08.740
also contact us, you know, info at the innocent.org. And, you know, I really hope that you all listening
01:10:15.480
can, can kind of take charge or find someone in your community to take charge and spearhead these
01:10:20.380
efforts and, and, and make change locally. And that's the other thing is I really, I hope you
01:10:25.420
understand, like we've seen it. People donate money to a specific area and then they get to
01:10:31.220
actually watch the results in their own town and watch the news report on it, you know, or newspapers
01:10:36.380
or a community page or a Facebook page report on some of these things. And so you actually can have
01:10:42.340
impact in your own community, right? And your dollars don't have to go some foreign place. You can
01:10:47.720
actually try to hopefully your department, which I've seen very little departments say no to free
01:10:52.740
equipment and free training in their own hometown. Um, he'd be surprised. Well, yeah, but for the
01:10:59.600
most part, look, if it's not that specific agency, we'll go to the neighboring one and somebody's
01:11:03.880
going to tell you go, you know, um, just kind of get involved, get educated. Honestly, you can reach
01:11:09.860
out to us through the website anytime. And, you know, Ryan, I just want to say thank you to,
01:11:14.180
to you, you know, um, you know, you, you had us on, you talk about difficult conversations,
01:11:19.860
you talk about real conversations, deep conversations. And I wish there were more
01:11:24.340
people. You started by saying this is a hard conversation to talk about, but you're, uh,
01:11:29.940
you're not, you're not ignoring that and taking the easy route. We've talked a little bit about
01:11:34.240
that, but you're stepping into some dark areas, um, some real areas, some truth that I think we need
01:11:40.700
to talk about more. And, uh, so I thank you, man, just for, for being vulnerable and stepping out
01:11:46.720
of there and really just wanted to have those conversations. So thank you, man, to you.
01:11:52.320
I think it's important. You know, you, you've talked a lot about the idea and the concept of
01:11:56.500
protection. I don't know if you know, but our motto is protect, provide, preside. And some of us
01:12:02.000
will step into the fray like you're doing, where you're actually physically invested in the
01:12:07.260
protection of other people. And I would also say that sometimes you have your own things and part
01:12:14.780
of protecting is using your resources, even if it's $10 a month to be able to say, Hey, I can't
01:12:20.280
invest my time and resources that way, but I'm providing enough over here financially. And I've
01:12:26.860
got enough to take care of my family and I can help protect other people using the resources that
01:12:32.280
I've provided and created. And that is a form of protection. Is it better or worse? No,
01:12:37.060
it's just a form and we need all types of forms. So I can appreciate wanting to get directly
01:12:43.520
involved in going on undercover missions to some third world country as much as I can
01:12:50.320
appreciate somebody who's like, you know what? I got 20 bucks a month I can give to you to
01:12:54.440
help other people do that. It all matters. It all counts.
01:12:57.000
It does. It really does. I hope people get that $20, like times that by however many people
01:13:04.260
are going to view this, that's insane impact. And you know what? I can give jobs to these retired
01:13:09.220
cops that need a purpose again, to take the wealth of experience that they have. That's just sitting
01:13:14.700
around like building stuff in a woodshop, potentially let's get them activated to get
01:13:19.680
them re-engaged. Um, and they don't have to work full time. They could just come in as a
01:13:24.100
contractor to go out and go around and train other law enforcement officers with the experiences
01:13:28.880
that they have, you know, and share that knowledge, you know, the education piece. And so, man, I really
01:13:34.320
hope that people understand they really, their, their money can make a difference. It really can.
01:13:38.600
It can make an impact. And we promise we'll keep it here inside of our borders to protect our children
01:13:43.940
I had a thought as you were saying that, and I don't know if you guys have thought about this
01:13:47.220
at all, but when you were saying that, man, I wonder if there's some sort of initiative where it's like
01:13:52.880
sponsor, sponsor a cop where it's, you know, you have a family member or a friend or a neighbor
01:14:00.420
or somebody who is maybe retired law enforcement and you pay 10, 20, 50 bucks a month. And you're
01:14:08.200
sponsoring that individual to get the training, to get the resources, to get involved. So not only are
01:14:14.640
you giving back to the organization and what you guys are doing, but you're also serving the person who
01:14:19.760
you know, and love and care about. I don't, do you guys do something like that?
01:14:23.700
We do now, dude. I, I think, cause if I'm going to donate 20 bucks a month, let's say hypothetically.
01:14:31.580
Yeah. I, I believe in your, I believe in what you're doing, but if I'm donating 20 bucks a month
01:14:36.620
and I know that John, my neighbor, who's a, who's retired law enforcement, who I believe in love and
01:14:43.720
trust, and he's been a good neighbor. And I know that he's going to get, I'd be more inclined to do
01:14:49.500
that. I don't know. That's a thought. I love that, man. Thank you. Thank you. See,
01:14:54.640
we've learned from so many others. I just learned that from you. That's such a great idea. And I do,
01:15:00.320
I agree that people will fund that, you know, give re it's just makes so much sense. See,
01:15:06.640
this is the thing we talked about earlier. You just have to take the step because things will
01:15:09.760
happen that you can't even think will happen. You just basically came up with something that I do
01:15:16.100
believe we can do because people will support re-employing retired law enforcement to give
01:15:21.520
them a purpose and take their knowledge and just transfer it back to the younger generations
01:15:25.260
of law enforcement that are in the positions that have the authority to go do these investigations.
01:15:31.380
Like let's, we'll, we'll figure it out. We'll talk offline because I love this. We should come up
01:15:35.160
with a name like sponsor. So we'll come up with a name, but I love this man. Thank you again. Like
01:15:40.120
it's amazing. Yeah. Whatever I can do to help. I believe in what you guys are doing and I'm glad
01:15:44.720
to be able to have you on. I appreciate, I appreciate your work more than anything. I
01:15:49.160
appreciate the example that you set, you know, obviously you're doing great work and it's
01:15:52.760
righteous work, but there's so many guys who just need examples like you, whether they pursue this
01:15:58.580
or something completely unrelated. I love to hear stories from guys who are just getting after it,
01:16:04.360
who have a mission, have a calling or get clocked over the head with some idea. Sounds like maybe that's
01:16:09.820
more your, your case. And it's like, no, this is my life's work now. And the fact that
01:16:14.660
you're pursuing it. So I really appreciate you. Thanks for joining me today, man. Absolutely.
01:16:18.120
Thank you, bro. I hope to see you again soon. We will.
01:16:23.200
All right, gentlemen, Nate Lewis. I don't like having those conversations. It seems like we
01:16:27.440
shouldn't need those conversations, but clearly we do. And I'm glad that we have this platform
01:16:34.000
and I'm glad that you're here. I want to honor you for being here and tuning in every week because
01:16:38.460
without that, obviously we wouldn't be able to have these instrumental conversations to protect,
01:16:43.780
provide and preside, which is our motto and our way of life. It's more than just a motto.
01:16:48.760
So make sure you to connect with Nate. Obviously we gave you some examples of donating, getting
01:16:54.140
involved if you're in law enforcement. So there's opportunities to get involved if you choose to do
01:16:58.340
that. And then also check out the men's forge. It's coming up in a couple of weeks, May 1st through
01:17:03.700
the 4th, 2025, themensforge.com. All right, guys, you've got your marching orders. We'll be back
01:17:10.600
tomorrow for our Ask Me Anything. Until then, go out there, take action and become the man you
01:17:15.860
are meant to be. Thank you for listening to the Order of Man podcast. You're ready to take charge
01:17:23.480
of your life and be more of the man you were meant to be. We invite you to join the Order at