00:01:49.000And one of the narratives, one of the reporters asked me, and like one of those stupid press junket things you have to do, was, Do you think it's appropriate to scare Americans right after what just happened in 9 11?
00:02:02.000I was like, What the fuck are you talking about?
00:02:46.000Like the people that were willing to go on these reality shows, especially stuff like Big Brother, where you just live in a house with a bunch of people.
00:03:09.000Or you're not young, or you're not desperate.
00:03:11.000We had a lot of people that were just in like credit card debt and shit, and they were like, Look, if I can win this fucking thing, like normal people, they're like, Look, it'd be fun.
00:03:26.000Well, sometimes people have to do what they have to do, you know, but there's also a lot of people that want attention in any way possible.
00:03:34.000And that's like the people that are, you know, you see so many people online that are doing stuff that have fucking nothing to say, but they're just trying to find something where people pay attention to them.
00:03:45.000What's Running up to people and slapping them, throwing glasses of water in their face, whatever they have to do.
00:03:50.000Anything they have to do to get attention.
00:03:52.000And if you trace that back, it kind of started with reality shows where people started to be able to get attention just being a buffoon.
00:05:49.000Two people died at the scene, a third died in the hospital.
00:05:51.000Rustage's investigative committee said in a statement announcing the criminal probe into the incident, Boy, you do not want to get arrested and go to jail in Russia.
00:06:28.000Like hardcore jail for nine fucking years.
00:06:32.000Periodically, I'll see like images of Russian courtrooms.
00:06:36.000And I don't even know the stories, but always it's like the accused is sitting inside of like a jail cell that's.
00:06:42.000In the middle of the courtroom, like iron bars, and you know, whatever they've done, they're facing the death penalty, they have to be, or they pissed off Putin.
00:06:52.000Yeah, dude, I don't know, man, but it's a gnarly place over there.
00:06:54.000Yeah, you better be friends with the right people over there.
00:06:59.000That's why, like, I mean, how many times have like political opponents of Putin gotten poisoned or gotten murdered, or and not just him, but a bunch of other prominent figures that had other people running against them.
00:07:11.000And it's a shady business over there, dude.
00:07:13.000Oh, it's the shadiest, it's the shadiest, man.
00:07:17.000Makes you for some very interesting people, though.
00:08:33.000I got three kids, you know, so I'm sort of like trying to figure it out.
00:08:36.000I have this small pension coming in that's enough to sort of subsist on.
00:08:41.000But then I actually, I remember watching a lot of Gary Vee.
00:08:46.000And more specifically, I saw Gary Vee was just every post he did, it was like, everybody, no matter how old you are, no matter what you're doing, you should be posting content online.
00:08:57.000And when I was in the military, you're sort of in a bubble.
00:09:00.000I mean, you certainly have access to the internet and, All the things that everybody else does in the civilian world, but especially in the SEAL teams, from my experience, you're so like tribal.
00:09:12.000All your time is spent really with your teammates or at the team.
00:09:16.000It's very isolated and you don't even realize it.
00:09:18.000And so I was not, I didn't have social media when I got out.
00:09:25.000And Gary Vee was sort of the first sort of civilian person I was seeing that was like, this is what you do, you know, as a civilian, you post constantly.
00:09:53.000Effectively, the worst that'll happen is I will embarrass myself by posting something that nobody cares about, or maybe my friends and family will see and it'll be embarrassing.
00:10:01.000But my, I've always been someone that's been pretty comfortable with.
00:10:08.000I mean, if you think about SEAL training, a big part of it is you're raising your hand in a pretty public way, at least amongst your circle of friends and family, saying, I'm going to go see if I'm good enough.
00:10:36.000I mean, It wasn't even like some was close, it was just nobody was paying attention, and it was like, Okay, I'm not devastated, it is what it is.
00:10:44.000But then, on a whim, I myself personally love strange, dark, and mysterious content.
00:10:53.000I used to love going to there's a YouTube channel, I think it's still around now, it's called Dark Five, and all it is is just like crazy, true mysteries around the world, you know, talking about how there's like you know, potentially military bases hidden in Antarctica and there's the UFO sightings here.
00:11:11.000And on a whim in 2020, when my social media career is basically non existent, I was at this water park, an indoor water park with my wife and kids, Great Wolf Lodge in Pennsylvania, a great spot.
00:11:24.000And I was like, you know what I'm going to do?
00:11:26.000I'm going to try something I haven't tried on my social media attempts so far.
00:11:30.000I'm going to tell like a crazy mystery, a true mystery that I think is really interesting because I think it's cool.
00:11:36.000It's the first time I'm not trying to copy trends or like do Gary Vee content.
00:11:41.000I'm just going to like tell a story I like.
00:11:43.000And I. Pull out my phone and I tell this 60 second rendition of this mystery called the Diatlov Past Mystery.
00:12:16.000This is when TikTok was just to the moon.
00:12:19.000So there's this, it's an amazing story.
00:12:20.000You probably have heard of it because it's one of those stories that it's made its rounds on the internet.
00:12:25.000So, in 1959, there were these nine hikers.
00:12:33.000Actually, there were 10, these 10 young, like 20 something year old hikers in Russia.
00:12:39.000And they were like the best mountaineers in Russia at the time.
00:12:43.000And they were going for their, what's called their level three hiking test, which sounds sort of lame, but it's effectively, at the time in Russia, this is like the top credential for mountaineers.
00:12:54.000If you have this credential, you are the best mountaineer in the land.
00:12:58.000And the way the test worked is effectively, you're in a class of your own at this level already.
00:13:03.000It's sort of like being a PhD student where you sort of create your own material.
00:13:09.000You map out a route that you'll take that effectively checks off all the boxes of difficulty.
00:13:17.000You put this map down, somebody approves this is going to be hard enough that if you successfully navigate this course that you've mapped out in X amount of time, if you do that, you pass the test, you're a level three mountaineer.
00:13:28.000And so these 10 hikers, eventually, actually, only nine left.
00:13:32.000One had a dental issue, so he spared himself.
00:13:36.000Nine of these hikers, they step out, I think it was in January of 1959, to do this hike that's been planned out.
00:14:27.000And so off they go into the Ural Mountains.
00:14:29.000It's going to be like a multi day hike, but they're expected to be out.
00:14:33.000Or, I guess, finished with their route, I think on February 12th.
00:14:37.000So it's a several week long hike, February 12th, and they were supposed to send some message to say they were complete with the hike.
00:14:45.000February 12th comes, and no message is sent.
00:14:48.000No one gets word that these nine hikers have successfully navigated this treacherous stretch of the mountains.
00:14:54.000And at first, to be honest, no one was really that concerned because, one, there's nine of them, they are quite literally some of the best mountaineers in the land.
00:15:04.000If anybody can withstand the elements, it's them.
00:15:06.000And so there wasn't this immediate call to action.
00:15:09.000But over the coming days after February 12th, the families of these nine hikers got really concerned.
00:15:15.000They're like, we haven't heard from them.
00:15:35.000Their campsite, and pictures are taken of their campsite.
00:15:38.000So, from a strategic perspective, not that I claim to be a mountaineer, but if you were going to be setting up a place, if you were going to set your tent up in a really rugged environment like the Ural Mountains, the worst place to put your tent is the side of a windswept mountain where there are no trees because you'll get no, it'll be relentless wind.
00:15:58.000Any weather is going to be worse up there.
00:16:02.000I mean, the worst place you could put your tent is the side of a mountain.
00:16:06.000And so they're looking for these missing hikers who are the best hikers, and they find their tent, their one canvas tent that's right in the middle of this pass called the Dyatlov Pass, which is why the mystery has been named the Dyatlov Pass.
00:16:19.000It's just one lone tent, and there's no trees, nothing.
00:16:22.000It's just, and so they go up to the tent.
00:16:25.000The hikers are not there, but the tent is collapsed, as you see in the picture there.
00:16:30.000And they look inside the tent, and there's clothes like cold weather gear.
00:16:36.000Pots and there's a lot of equipment that you would imagine they would have brought with them out here is still in the tent.
00:17:53.000But the cadence of the footprints as it picks up where they found it near the tent, going down the mountain away from the campsite, they're walking.
00:18:57.000This episode is brought to you by the farmer's dog.
00:19:00.000Here's a fun fact research shows that dogs who maintain a healthy weight can live up to two and a half years longer on average than dogs who are overweight.
00:19:09.000Isn't that wild and also kind of obvious at the same time?
00:19:12.000So, why is feeding vague scoops of ultra processed kibble still the status quo for most dog owners?
00:20:40.000But picture two bodies sort of laying scattered nearby.
00:20:44.000They look at the tree that was at the base of where the fire was, and there are signs that something was trying to climb the tree.
00:20:51.000There's broken branches and the like, and there's human tissue.
00:20:54.000That sounds way more extreme than it's supposed to, but there's human tissue pretty high up this tree that suggests somebody had climbed up the tree.
00:21:02.000And then they examine the bodies, and they found one of the men had his hand, part of his hand, he had bitten off and was in his.
00:21:10.000Throat, or it might have just been human tissue as well, but it was clearly in his mouth, like he was eating his own flesh, or it at least arrived in his mouth.
00:21:54.000And once the snow had thawed a bit, they came out there and they found this what looked to be like the.
00:22:00.000They believed that a snow fort had been made maybe 300 or 400 feet away from that cedar tree, which they wouldn't have seen it during the winter.
00:22:07.000It was barely, you wouldn't have seen it.
00:22:09.000But it had melted down enough, and the rest of the bodies were found in the remnants of the snow cave.
00:22:15.000And the four hikers that were in there just had catastrophic injuries.
00:23:14.000And they also noticed that the woman was wearing men's clothing.
00:23:20.000Some clothing that was clearly not hers.
00:23:22.000And then one of the men, or a couple of the men, were wearing some of her clothing.
00:23:26.000Like they had exchanged clothing and they found trace levels, albeit small, but trace levels of radiation on some of the clothing and they're all dead.
00:23:35.000And so now all the hikers have been found.
00:23:37.000And by this point, this is in May of 1960, I believe it is at this point.
00:23:48.000The families are very outspoken about it.
00:23:50.000People want answers, they want to know what happened.
00:23:53.000And so the Russian government launched this investigation into what happened out there in the Dyatlov Pass.
00:23:59.000And quickly, they shut down this investigation.
00:24:03.000Like, very quickly, they shut it down.
00:24:04.000And the only things people heard were there were numerous reports from military personnel and some civilians who apparently were in the area, in the Urals, that claimed to have seen glowing orbs, like fireballs.
00:24:17.000I think they described them as being balls of fire and light shooting up and down.
00:24:22.000It's hard to tell if it was in the same area where the hikers were, but there were all these independent reports of strange lights over the Urals Mountains that.
00:24:29.000Could corroborate or could line up with when those hikers all died.
00:24:34.000And then, lastly, the Russian government came out and said, Well, we've determined that the nine hikers died from an overwhelming, or I think they called it a compelling force.
00:25:54.000It might be like the way Russian language works and where they describe things.
00:25:59.000Like they might have categories for deaths in a compelling natural force, might just mean like, It could be freezing to death is in the same category as like dying in the Mojave Desert.
00:26:09.000I think that that's that's I've always assumed that probably what happened is something rational happened.
00:26:16.000I mean, when you become hypothermic, you can have it's called paradoxical undressing, where at your final stage of when you're so cold, you actually get hot and you take your clothes off.
00:26:25.000Um, and I would imagine if you're in the final stages of dying, you might do some funny things.
00:26:32.000And also, would you cut your lips off though?
00:26:35.000Would you surgically remove your lips?
00:26:53.000But cattle mutilation, one of the weird things that they associate with extraterrestrials or whatever they think it is, is that these cuts are very surgical.
00:27:03.000And it's not an animal just tearing apart a cow.
00:27:07.000These cuts look like they're made with a scalpel or perhaps some sort of a laser.
00:27:12.000And also, these creatures are completely drained of blood.
00:27:15.000So, I'd like to, I wouldn't, but I've seen the cattle mutilation images, and you're like, wow, that is strange.
00:27:21.000I'd like to see what their lips look like.
00:27:23.000I do know that actually, and it has nothing to do with the fact that I posted about it because the Diyatlov Pass gets posted about quite a bit.
00:27:30.000But I think it was in 2022, Russia actually reexamined the Diyatlov Pass mystery now and sort of said, okay, we're going to look at it again.
00:27:39.000And they determined that an avalanche, like a slab of ice, broke loose, a huge slab.
00:27:45.000I know it's an avalanche or slab of ice that they basically said was responsible for all of this, that it led to them somehow becoming exposed.
00:30:47.000I sometimes get asked, not often, but I've been asked, you know, when you were going through selection, did you ever have a moment where you thought or you thought about quitting and you suppressed it?
00:30:57.000And I only say this because I know this is shared amongst a lot of the people that I went through training with.
00:32:17.000People train for years before they go.
00:32:22.000When I did it, the first leg, it's stressful.
00:32:25.000But as soon as you've made the turn and you're on your way back, you realize that if you've committed to doing it, you're like, oh, this is really not bad.
00:32:32.000It's so quick, it's so short, it's all over.
00:32:34.000People that would quit on that didn't quit at the end of the 50.
00:32:42.000You're not physically done yet, but you're mentally done.
00:32:45.000I mean, I'm generalizing, but you see that type of phenomenon in training quite a bit where it's.
00:32:51.000Are you prepared to keep going through adversity or are you just going to say it's too much and I don't want to do it anymore?
00:32:56.000I wonder if they've ever sat down and tried to engineer a program to alter people's psychology.
00:33:05.000You know, you would think that the more people that you can get that would be able to figure out a way through something very difficult where your mind wants to quit, your body wants to quit, the more people that you could figure out how to train to that position, the better.
00:33:21.000Or is it like I have friends that are MMA coaches that don't want to work with anybody who needs a mental coach?
00:33:53.000And then they go through some sort of a mental coaching session.
00:33:57.000But the core, their personality, whatever it is that's about them, what makes them them, is just fragile for whatever reason.
00:34:07.000And the question is I wonder if they've ever tried to engineer a program to strengthen people's psychology, just the same way you can strengthen people by lifting weights or by running or whatever.
00:34:19.000I wonder if there was a concerted effort.
00:34:22.000To say, like, well, we have so many people crashing out.
00:34:24.000What if we had 50% less people crashing out, then we'd have 50% more elite operators?
00:34:31.000I know that when I went through training, and I have no idea if it's still the case now, but I was in SEAL training in earnest in 2011 and 2012, and there were psychologists on staff that you did not go and frequently see them by any stretch.
00:34:49.000But I remember there being parts of training which were sort of funny because they punctuated the brutality of training.
00:35:03.000And then, like, all right, now go in the classroom.
00:35:06.000You go in the classroom and you're talking to this woman who's a psychologist, and she's teaching you how to, like, it's called arousal control, you know, how to take down your mental state in the middle of high stress moments.
00:35:18.000And all the instructors are on the side, like, you better listen to this, you know?
00:35:24.000So there were attempts made, but coming from having done it, there's such a wide variety of people that are successful in training that it's, I have seen and heard that it's hard to pinpoint what is the appropriate indication you're going to be successful.
00:35:42.000Like, that's the thing they're trying to identify is what are the pools of people that traditionally do well in SEAL training?
00:35:49.000Because they're trying to figure out ways to strengthen.
00:35:51.000But the two things they found there's two places where the most mentally tough people, in terms of success in SEAL training, one is wrestling, basically any level of wrestling.
00:36:02.000Wrestlers have an incredibly high success rate in buds and water polo.
00:36:07.000Those are the two that they have determined through their studies are the grittiest, most resilient folks when it comes to SEAL training.
00:36:34.000So, the way it works is you have your enlisted guys, and there's, you know, I. Upwards of 100 dudes in a class that are enlisted, and then you have, I think, maybe eight to 10 that are officer candidates.
00:36:46.000It's, yeah, we're all SEAL candidates.
00:38:01.000And there's this part of training, halfway through training, it's a second phase, it's broken into three phases, and it's the water phase.
00:38:08.000And it's really statistically everybody who gets to the second phase mostly makes it through.
00:38:13.000But it's because you've already passed through so many test gates in the first phase, like Hell Week and the 50 meter underwater swim, that this is already the pool of people that's just going to push through the misery and pass stuff.
00:38:25.000The second phase of training, I would argue, is exponentially more challenging than the first phase.
00:38:31.000But the only people who do it are through the first phase.
00:38:34.000And so 90% of people pass the second phase, but it's really hard.
00:38:37.000And there are two tests in particular within the second phase that are notoriously just brutal.
00:38:43.000One of them is called pool competency.
00:38:45.000Which is a 20 minute exam of your ability to fix problems with your scuba tanks underwater, where basically you go to the bottom of the pool with your tanks on, and when your test begins, you're in the section of this huge pool called the combat training tank.
00:39:01.000There's like the six foot section, then it slopes down to the nine foot section, and then it slopes down to the 15 foot section.
00:39:06.000And your test takes place in the nine foot section.
00:39:09.000And you just crawl along the lane marker as if you're doing lap swimming.
00:39:12.000There's a lane on the bottom of the pool, there's like eight or nine lane markers.
00:39:15.000And you crawl back and forth only in the nine foot section.
00:39:19.000And two instructors per student come down and turn your air off, tie knots in your hoses.
00:39:23.000And as soon as you're being touched, you got to go into the fetal position and wait for like the attack to stop.
00:39:50.000So even though you're on the last problem you're going to solve at minute 18 and you're about to pass out, you have to show them that you'll do step one, step two, all the way through.
00:40:59.000Unless you're an exceptionally talented water polo player who's mastered the art of the egg beater, where they basically have found a way to move their legs.
00:41:08.000That's like the most efficient way to tread water.
00:41:11.000And this dude, I kid you not, who blazed through pool comp first try, no problems whatsoever, was like joking around after his test.
00:41:18.000He gets him for the tread and he could hold himself almost to his belly button, probably like nipple to belly button line, fully out of the water.
00:41:43.000Well, I don't know if they can go to the edge and hold on periodically, but if you watch water polo, most of the time they're just treading.
00:41:50.000I'm no water polo player, but my understanding is that the game is played while treading.
00:42:17.000I remember in boot camps, this is not even before you even get to Buds.
00:42:21.000There's actually, it's funny, the when you go in, you know, as in, I went in as a civilian.
00:42:28.000So I signed this contract where basically you say, okay, I'm going to go to boot camp, become a sailor, and then I'll have my shot at going to Buds.
00:42:33.000It's called the SEAL Challenge Contract.
00:42:36.000And, you know, the way I looked at it is I'm like, okay, I've prepared for Buds.
00:42:40.000That's what I, as a civilian, that's what I was training for.
00:42:43.000I didn't think at all about boot camp.
00:42:46.000Like, what's two months of Navy boot camp going to be?
00:42:48.000Because What my head is focused on is buds.
00:42:52.000So, when I shipped out to boot camp, I had put virtually no thought into what those two months were going to be like in Great Lakes, Illinois.
00:43:02.000I'll like march around, like fold some clothes, you know, whatever.
00:43:06.000And then I'll go do the real stuff out in San Diego.
00:43:08.000And so I get to Chicago and it was like a reality check because you quickly realize that, first of all, if you're trying to be a SEAL and you're on the SEAL challenge contract, when you get to Great Lakes, you're segregated.
00:43:26.000I don't know if this still exists now, but it did in 2010.
00:43:30.000And there really aren't any SEALs or SPEC Ops that are at Great Lakes.
00:43:34.000I mean, there's a few, but for the most part, you're working with ordinary sailors that are putting you through training.
00:43:41.000But imagine you're an ordinary sailor, and God love them.
00:43:44.000I've worked with amazing sailors across the Navy.
00:43:47.000And here come the SEAL recruits in the 800 Division.
00:43:50.000They're civilians, they're not even sailors yet.
00:43:53.000There is an enormous amount of resentment.
00:43:56.000Toward those that show up, like, yeah, I'm going to buds.
00:43:59.000Like, there's just an attitude of like the instructors, they want you to understand that, like, you don't have a clue what you're getting yourself into.
00:44:06.000And so, in boot camp, those two months, your instructors are not SEALs, but they just like torture you because they're like, this is nothing compared to what you're going to have in buds.
00:44:16.000And one of the things we would do is there was all sorts of stupid stuff like push ups and whatever, but there was this treading thing that we had to do where we'd go in the pool at like five in the morning and, like, it's so cold.
00:44:37.000And you got to pass the brick up and down the line.
00:44:39.000And periodically, they'd give you two bricks.
00:44:41.000And so if anybody doesn't hold up their end of the bargain, quickly the bricks get handed off to like one person and no one wants the brick.
00:45:31.000We'd like to put on all our stupid, like, neoprene turtlenecks, like, seven of them, because you have all this stupid clothing in your rack, and like, march around the compartment, the room you're in.
00:45:41.000And we would just like to spend hours, like, marching around the compartment, sweating our ass off in our, like, turtlenecks.
00:46:10.000But like, they have this moment where we're still civilians and we haven't gone to training and they know that virtually all of us are going to quit.
00:46:18.000So, this is a safe group to sort of flex around, you know?
00:46:35.000And when I got out of boot camp, I went to, To dinner with my family, and I didn't eat anything.
00:46:40.000I just drank like nine cups of coffee and got so jacked up on caffeine and just told stories about boot camp.
00:46:47.000They don't give you caffeinated coffee?
00:46:48.000Well, it was coffee, but I mean, it was like you pushed a button and this brown shit came out and it was like, it said cafe something on it.
00:47:11.000Yeah, well, I mean, what we were talking about before, that there's no other process to figure out whether someone's going to be able to handle pressure.
00:47:20.000Than to put them through it and see what happens.
00:47:21.000If you're passing bricks, maybe that's not the best example of it because it seems like those guys were being a little sadistic.
00:49:36.000And we had been going into this town called Zarganshar, which is this fairly urban Afghan town that was literally on the other side of the one paved road, Route Utah, they called it, that ran through Afghanistan.
00:49:50.000We were on one side of the road behind some HESCO barriers.
00:49:54.000And Zarganshar is like this sprawling, pretty large urban village.
00:50:00.000Historically, I don't know how long it had been going on for, but there had just been nonstop fighting in Zarganshar between NATO forces and loads of different factions of fighters, the Taliban, Pakistani fighters, you name it.
00:50:14.000And so when we got in country in 2013, we turned over with SEAL Team 8 and they said, basically, you know, your job here is to try to quell the flow of suicide bombers into Kabul.
00:50:26.000And there was a couple of other things they told us to focus on.
00:50:28.000But really, if you want some action, You just go to Zargonchar because they're so battle hardened in there.
00:50:34.000The people that are still there, if you go in there, they're going to fight you.
00:50:38.000If you want to find weapon caches, they're going to be in there.
00:50:40.000And so, over the course of the deployment, this is like five months in, we had gone into Zargonchar a great deal.
00:50:47.000And truthfully, it wasn't like we walked in and it was crazy every time, but we definitely got engaged.
00:50:52.000There was definitely more contacts there than anywhere else.
00:50:57.000But on this one day, this is like five months into the deployment.
00:52:00.000And the people we would get into skirmishes with knew that a lot of times, and they'd be tactical about how they would go about shooting at us.
00:52:08.000And so we start making our infill from the edge of the city, and we get into this little narrow area where we knew we'd have to enter into this courtyard.
00:52:20.000We start hearing chatter over the radios.
00:52:22.000So we had the ability to listen to just the open source radio that the fighters would use in the village.
00:52:27.000And we heard them talking to each other.
00:52:34.000But they were clearly talking to each other and making plans to wait until we, and it was only 20 or 30 of us plus our partner force, wait until we got into that courtyard before you open up on them.
00:52:49.000And I don't know if this was said explicitly, but the idea was they're not going to do anything.
00:52:53.000Due to the rules of engagement, we can let them come into the courtyard and then open up on them.
00:52:57.000And there's a couple two story buildings that overlook the courtyard.
00:53:41.000And so there wasn't really a good way to exfill back to our vehicles without getting shot in the back.
00:53:47.000They don't have rules of engagement, they can shoot at us anytime they want.
00:53:49.000And so we realized because of where they're positioned, we either had to go forward into effectively a known ambush or retreat.
00:53:58.000And hope they don't get the drop on us and shoot one of us.
00:54:01.000And it's a pretty high chance someone was going to get shot if we exfilt.
00:54:04.000And so we sat there, we were thinking about it, and we ultimately made the decision like, hey, we were Navy SEALs, let's just go forward and process the threat.
00:54:14.000And so into the courtyard we go, it's on body cam.
00:54:19.000I remember walking into this courtyard again, broad daylight, it's quiet.
00:54:22.000We had seen women and children run out of the village as we approached.
00:54:25.000So we knew only people here are going to be fighters.
00:54:28.000And just machine guns opened up on us in this courtyard.
00:54:31.000And I say this without, I don't mean this in a sort of crass way, but thankfully, the only people who were hit in the opening volley were our dog and I believe two of the Afghan partner force guys that they got shot.
00:54:44.000Because if you're going to survive this, you need the SEALs.
00:55:50.000And as we're getting ready to leave, and remember at this point, our group of 20 some odd SEALs, there's Afghan partner force as well, but the SEALs that were on the ground, we had broken up into different fire teams, little groups of dudes.
00:56:02.000And I was with a fire team that was close to the exit we were going to be taking.
00:56:06.000And one of the drones overhead, I think it was being flown by somebody in Las Vegas.
00:56:11.000They called out that they had seen what appeared to be military aged men, so ma'ams as they're called, sort of in the vicinity of where we would be exfilling out of the city.
00:56:24.000And they weren't saying, you better go over there and like shoot them because rules of engagement say you can't do that.
00:56:42.000Our understanding is now it's nighttime, we're on night vision.
00:56:46.000We believed, based on what was being passed to us, that we could go down this alleyway that would come to a T intersection.
00:56:53.000And when we reached the end of this alleyway, there'd be this low wall, like a six foot tall wall, and we could peer over the wall into this field where these ma'ams are.
00:57:03.000And they didn't even know who they were.
00:57:04.000It could have been kids, it could have been nothing.
00:57:06.000But we believed we'd be able to look over the wall and look out somewhere on the other side of this field.
00:57:11.000We'll see whoever these people are and make an assessment of what to do.
00:57:15.000So we super sneaky make our way down this alleyway, being as quiet as we can.
00:57:20.000We get to that low wall, and immediately we start hearing someone talking.
00:58:22.000We're like making hand signals and stuff on night vision.
00:58:26.000And so one of our guys, our team leader, gets down on a knee and he tells one of the guys next to me to stand on his leg and start shooting.
00:58:33.000And so over the wall, he starts shooting.
00:58:35.000And there were at least two guys over there that already had grenades they had pulled the pins out on.
00:58:40.000So this is the moment they've had this.
00:58:42.000They're holding the grenades for this.
00:58:45.000So as soon as the shooting started, grenades come over the wall.
01:01:07.000The thing is, the fighters in that town didn't give a fuck about killing each other.
01:01:13.000If they could kill me, they'd kill their teammates as well.
01:01:16.000And so RPGs are just being arbitrarily fired from all, not all across the city, but from other locations just in the vicinity of where this is happening because there was a lull before this.
01:01:33.000I got dragged from, I'm at the head of the tee there.
01:01:36.000They brought me down the stem of the tee, if you will, and I just got placed up against a wall.
01:01:41.000And I'm sitting there, and I have these tourniquets that are on my chest that we rubber band them to our chest specifically so they can be easily broken off and applied to stop the bleeding in your limbs.
01:01:52.000And I was so weak and fucked up from this blast that I literally couldn't pull the tourniquets off.
01:01:58.000And there's, I don't even know if anyone's alive basically at this point.
01:02:01.000I don't even know what's happening down in the contact zone, which is like 20 feet away from me.
01:04:48.000Meanwhile, so I'm starting to see now as I'm regaining consciousness, if you will, I'm seeing my teammates who have also been fucked up from this grenade.
01:04:56.000But only me and one other guy were so affected by the grenade that we couldn't function.
01:05:01.000It was me and this guy whose lung had collapsed.
01:05:13.000One guy, the team lead, in one ear, he was working with multiple air assets overhead, calling in what's called a danger close airstrike, which is you're effectively calling in an airstrike on yourself.
01:05:24.000You need special initialing from your higher officer.
01:05:28.000I think your commanding officer, like one more senior than you, has to approve the drop because, in essence, you could kill yourself doing it.
01:05:35.000So He was calling in an airstrike that needed to be exact, like fucking exact, on the other side of that wall.
01:05:43.000And then in the other ear, he's communicating with the rest of our disparate teams, which are broken up across the city, trying to tell them where we are.
01:05:52.000He's got two comms happening, and he's physically pulling people out of the contact zone with Kyle to get them to cover.
01:05:59.000And he's engaging the enemy, and we're getting shot at.
01:06:47.000Now, get this me and the other dude with the lung, we get thrown on the helo and we just leave with the medical team.
01:06:53.000Those fucking dudes, those five dudes, still on the ground, had to fight their way back into the city to go reconnect with the rest of the element, who again, he's calling, the airstrike he called in was with, it was perfect.
01:08:31.000And so we get medevaced out of Zargonchar and they fly us right to this nearby base, very close by, called Shank.
01:08:38.000And when we get there, there's obviously doctors and nurses that are there specifically for this.
01:08:45.000And so even though it was the middle of the night, they had been told, hey, you have two casualties, you know, the guy with the collapsed lung and myself.
01:08:52.000To be honest, I don't really know exactly what they were told, but I would imagine they were told, get ready for.
01:08:58.000Some type of surgery for both of them.
01:09:00.000And so we fly to Fobshank, and I get wheeled in on a stretcher.
01:09:04.000My clothes have been fucking cut off of me.
01:09:19.000And they wheel me into this tent along with the other guy, and it's so bright, like so bright inside of there that you can barely open your eyes.
01:09:27.000Of all these doctors and nurses that are ready to perform whatever needs to happen because they don't know.
01:09:32.000They don't know what needs to be done.
01:09:35.000But as soon as I get in there, I see in the back corner of this relatively small medical tent, like a shanty medical tent, is maybe like 15 SEALs that were not on the mission with me.
01:09:46.000There are other guys in country that are other Navy SEALs.
01:09:49.000It's the middle of the night and they've put on the equivalent of their best uniforms.
01:09:54.000These are not dress uniforms, these are like their BDUs.
01:10:25.000And so, I'm being wheeled in, and the gravity of what's happening was like a fucking ton of bricks because now I'm kind of loopy from what's been going on.
01:10:35.000And I see that the looks on these guys' faces, and they're wearing these uniforms, and they're all standing almost like at attention in the corner.
01:10:42.000And they're there in case I fucking die.
01:10:45.000It's like I'm going to my own funeral.
01:10:47.000And so I'm put on the, they swarm me, not them, the doctors swarm me and they get me ready for debridement, which is just to pull the shrapnel out of my hips and my leg.
01:10:58.000And the guy was like, all right, I'm going to give you, I think it was ketamine.
01:11:00.000He's like, you're not going to, this is it.
01:14:30.000There's a lot of evidence that labrum tears can be healed with stem cells and without having to go through surgery, depending on the extent of the tear.
01:17:59.000I'm stronger in every other workout that I do.
01:18:02.000I feel way stronger when I do like cleans and presses and do windmills and everything else.
01:18:07.000Because when you're carrying stuff like that, it's like your whole body, your core has to stay tight, your back has to stay tight, everything's dealing.
01:18:16.000And then when you're up at the top of the hill, you're like, motherfucker, and your forearms are literally on fire and you try to hold on to these things.
01:18:24.000And, you know, I got a chalk ball in my pocket and I reach in there and powder my hands back up.
01:18:29.000And as soon as I get my hands back going, I do it again.
01:19:30.000And he's this philosophy that strength is a skill.
01:19:35.000And you shouldn't practice skills when you're exhausted.
01:19:38.000And this whole idea of working to failure, I mean, obviously, if you want to be a bodybuilder or even a professional powerlifter, that's a different thing.
01:19:45.000But if you want to get strong, the most important thing is the amount of work that you do, not exhausting the muscle with one set.
01:19:55.000And so, what he has you do is if you can do 20 reps, do 10, and then wait five minutes and do another 10.
01:20:00.000You got the same volume of work, but you're never exhausted while you're doing it.
01:21:55.000But what I found in my own life is that I do really well when I have not a goal, like a lofty goal, even, but just some fucking thing that you got to suffer to achieve it.
01:22:46.000That's part of the reason I discovered it, it didn't fuck with my shoulder.
01:22:50.000But I have been on a quest to like find the right way to train for.
01:22:54.000Cleans because one of the issues with doing cleans with a barbell, and maybe I'll do kettlebells, is I have a scar right here that I broke my collarbone when I was seven, and my collarbone juts out because it healed slightly in the wrong direction.
01:23:06.000And so, every fucking time I'm in a block of doing cleans, I always have this just like recurrent infected wound on my fucking collarbone.
01:23:14.000And then, in the comments of every video, they're like, dude, what's wrong with that?
01:24:31.000I think that most people just don't have the willpower to keep maintaining correctly, and they're not supplementing their hormones and taking peptides and also optimizing their nutrition.
01:24:43.000I think if you do all of those things, you're pretty.
01:24:46.000I'm personally shocked at what I can still do.
01:25:05.000I have one fucked up knee from my martial arts days where I had my meniscus removed in a big chunk of it, and it still fucks with me.
01:25:13.000But it doesn't fuck with me in terms of function.
01:25:15.000It only fucks with me in terms of, like, I'm worried it's going to become arthritic over time because there's nothing between the cartilage.
01:25:23.000The cartilage is banging against each other.
01:25:25.000And I broke it skiing once, right where the cartilage meets the bone.
01:25:30.000But I think that with the improvements and all these biological therapies like stem cells and peptides, I can maintain it, and that's what I'm doing.
01:25:40.000So it keeps me out of jujitsu because that's the one thing that really, really rips on your joints, especially my knee.
01:25:46.000Every time I've done it, it's like, fucker.
01:25:48.000It just gets, I don't want to do anything.
01:25:51.000Like my friend Matt, he had a knee replacement and he's younger than me.
01:25:57.000It's just like you're constantly in weird positions and pushing, and someone's fucking trying to heel hook you and you're defending.
01:26:03.000It's like everything is getting yanked around and then it's sore, but you still go back the next day because you want to train because you're addicted.
01:26:24.000This whole Mr. Ball on YouTube thing happened.
01:26:26.000And I, in a way, adopted the same mindset that made me successful in getting through training, which is like this obsessive, got to make more videos.
01:26:35.000You know, I've had my viral moment, like growing at all costs.
01:26:39.000But all of my health went out the window.
01:26:42.000Dude, I would, I would, I would, it'd take me about, I don't know, like 26 hours ish to do, I'm going to make a video, hitting post on YouTube.
01:26:52.000And then, even though all I wanted to do was sleep, My immediate reaction at like three in the morning would be just slam like four, five, six drinks and then go right to bed.
01:28:12.000Well, you got to do what you got to do when something starts happening and you realize, like, oh my God, it's like starting a fire in the woods.
01:28:35.000I can only imagine what you've been through, but the thing that I now, this started in 2020 and it's 2026, I have had some incredible highs.
01:28:48.000The early days of after the viral moment, and I'm like posting stuff that I like to upload a video, and literally the next day, it's like, you've made $20,000 from yesterday to now.
01:29:01.000And like, I've never in my life made any real money.
01:29:05.000It's almost overnight and it grew and grew.
01:29:09.000And then it's like I signed a deal with Amazon like 10 months after starting a podcast.
01:29:16.000I actually, I remember when you got your first deal with Spotify.
01:29:19.000I remember that was like, I didn't even know it was possible for a podcast or anything to sign like the equivalent of a professional sports level contract.
01:29:29.000And then it's like less than a year after the start of the Mr. Ball and podcast, I'm partnering up with Amazon.
01:30:30.000And then over the course of the next several years, dude, I've had people take advantage of me in just the most personal, deep cutting ways.
01:30:39.000Ways that, if you were to write a movie, here's the scene of somebody who suddenly comes into money and the pitfalls of that, of people coming out of the woodwork to take from them.
01:30:53.000The things that happened to me with some family and with some close friends and with business partners is just like, are you fucking kidding me?
01:31:07.000Well, people think about people that come into money like that the same way they think about a large corporation if they like slip on the floor, like at Target, like, ooh, I'm going to get paid.
01:31:54.000And I was like, You're the guy for me.
01:31:58.000But he's been awesome because he just like keeps everybody around me sort of like vetted.
01:32:03.000But yeah, dude, it's uh, that's important, man, because people will sneak through and sometimes you don't see them the way other people see them.
01:32:10.000Other people see them as like this guy's got an angle, he's a scumbag, be careful.
01:32:14.000And you, you know, you let people into your circle and then they're like, when they're around you, they're putting on an audition, they're pretending to be someone they're not, they're pretending to be someone that you're going to want to hang out with.
01:32:25.000And what they're using you is they're just thinking of you as a springboard or as a way to get money.
01:32:41.000Like, I can only imagine the amount of auditioning that happens around you and your circle to get where I'm sitting right now.
01:32:49.000And I got to be honest, I don't know how you'd be able to sift through people that are trying to meet Joe and interact with you and people who are trying to get in with Joe so Joe will interview them.
01:33:01.000Well, the good news is I don't really.
01:33:07.000So, the way I even get like suggestions is one, I see something that I'm interested in, and I have a guy, and I either call him, text him, or email him and say, Hey, let's try to get this guy on.
01:33:21.000This guy's got a great book, or she's got a really interesting documentary, or whatever it is.
01:33:26.000And then there's I get these people that submit to want to be on the show.
01:33:31.000So, I get a list of those that, you know, there's a guy that goes through them that makes they're legit.
01:33:36.000And then by the time they get to me, It's filtered out to what is actually going to be interesting.
01:33:40.000So, there's not a lot of, you know, people meeting me that are, and the people that do meet me, usually I never want to have them on.
01:33:48.000Like, if somebody just like comes up to me and says, I have to be on your podcast, I'm like, nope, you definitely don't.
01:34:43.000And as long as I continue to do it the same way, I Feel like people will enjoy it because I think they enjoy it because I enjoy it.
01:34:51.000Just like the way when someone's doing something that they really love to do, I enjoy watching.
01:34:55.000If someone's doing like metal sculpture, you know, like, and the guy's really into it, he's welding and hammering, I'm like, I am into that.
01:35:02.000I'm like, I'm into people doing things.
01:35:04.000I like when people are really enjoying what they're doing and are really curious andor really like competent at something.
01:35:13.000You know, they're excellent at something.
01:35:14.000I enjoy watching that, I enjoy listening to it.
01:35:17.000And I always enjoy talking to interesting people.
01:35:20.000So, as long as I just keep enjoying talking to interesting people, I think people will keep enjoying watching it.
01:35:55.000I think it's the point you make about how you.
01:35:58.000Well, I think for me, anyways, the one thing I've come back to over the past several years of doing this is truthfully, even though there are times where, you know, creating content is obviously a job in the sense that we have a recording schedule and we have things that we have to do, as you obviously do too, amongst whatever else you're doing.
01:36:18.000The one thing that I fucking love doing is.
01:38:14.000But the Nahani Valley, in particular, when the story takes place, which is like the early 1900s, because of how isolated it was, it's like one of the parts of Earth that's like untouched by humans.
01:38:27.000And so the only people that would be in this huge sprawling valley, it was like an oasis of nature, they would see things that are just like so gorgeous, like untouched nature.
01:38:37.000But in the early 1900s, There was this push from gold prospectors to go out into the Nahanni Valley because they figured, because it's so untouched by humanity, there's bound to be gold to be found in the Nahanni Valley.
01:38:51.000Now, there were some indigenous tribes, like the Naha tribe, they were out there.
01:38:55.000There's some lore surrounding how they might have abandoned their settlement around the time the story takes place.
01:39:03.000But there were indigenous tribes that lived out there.
01:39:05.000But for the most part, it's like this sort of vacant stretch in this already isolated part of the world.
01:39:11.000And so in 19, I think it's 1905, these three brothers, these three prospectors, the McLeod brothers, Charlie, Willie, and Frank, who are seasoned gold prospectors, they decide they are going to head off into the Nahanni Valley and go try to strike it rich.
01:39:26.000And it's even harder to get into the valley back then as it is today.
01:39:30.000It required for them, they actually had to build a boat.
01:39:33.000They had to bring pieces of a boat and they would take it up a rapid or down the rapid and they'd have to disassemble the boat, carry it up like these rock faces to get like, because there's waterfalls they had to get past.
01:39:45.000And then bring the boat further and further into this valley.
01:39:48.000And it's like this it's just crazy how much work goes into getting out there.
01:39:51.000But these three brothers, they find their way into the valley and they get to this stretch of this river called the Flat River, which is anything but raging rapids.
01:40:01.000But there was this little embankment against this huge forest and like mountains off in the distance.
01:40:07.000And they made their camp there and there's no one around.
01:40:21.000They find so much gold and they can't believe it.
01:40:24.000They've struck it completely rich here.
01:40:27.000And so, after a whole day, I think they did two, three days even of just getting all this gold, they pack all their shit back up in their boat that they've assembled and they begin making their way back out again, which should be easier because now I think a lot of it you're going with the current.
01:40:41.000I don't even know how they get up there with the rapids going one way.
01:40:43.000But either way, they begin making their way out and their boat capsizes and they lose all their gold.
01:41:36.000And so the three of them go back into the valley to strike it rich.
01:41:40.000And, you know, Charlie is aware that they're going out there.
01:41:43.000He's staying back, but he knows they're going out.
01:41:45.000He knows where they're going because he went there with them.
01:41:47.000And he expects they're going to be gone for, I think it was going to be a whole year.
01:41:51.000And you can imagine how much effort goes into getting out there.
01:41:53.000They were going to live out there, I think, for the summer and just get as much gold as they could and come out.
01:41:57.000But some amount of time passed, let's call it a year, when Charlie starts to become suspicious because they haven't come out of the valley yet.
01:42:27.000He starts getting into the valley and he reaches this stretch of this is just to give you a mental image of where he's going.
01:42:34.000To get to that segment of the beach where they had been two years prior when Charlie was with them, because that's where he's assuming they're going to be, they had to pass through these canyons.
01:42:43.000There's four canyons that go, I think it's Canyon Four, Canyon Two, Three, One.
01:42:48.000They're all just called Canyon One, Two, Three, Four, but they're staggering.
01:42:52.000I mean, just visually, these are just ominous places.
01:42:56.000There are these stretches, like Canyon Two is this 10 mile stretch of very deep water.
01:43:01.000I don't know how deep, I want to say it's at least 100 feet deep, where the water goes all the way up.
01:43:46.000But they said that in these canyons, there were all these caves, these pockets of caves high up on these canyons that you can't really get to, that they believed the Wahila would live inside of.
01:44:00.000So imagine you're going down this misty 10 mile stretch in Second Canyon and you're looking up on either side and there literally are caves that no human has ever stepped foot in.
01:44:11.000You can't even get to these fucking caves.
01:44:14.000And because of the way the wind cuts through the canyon, it makes this echoey, like screeching noise that today you can still hear as you go through these canyons.
01:44:21.000And so they're going through Second Canyon, this stretch here.
01:44:25.000And the stretch of Flat River where he had been the year prior or two years prior with his brothers was at the end of Second Canyon, where the first little beachhead exists.
01:44:34.000And so he, Charlie, and his search party exit this creepy Second Canyon and they see there's a campsite set up on the beach.
01:44:42.000And it's not really a beach, it's like four feet of sand and then it's a little bit of hinterland and then it's just forest.
01:44:56.000They're badly decomposed, but they're missing their heads.
01:44:58.000There's two headless men that are badly decomposed, one of which is reaching for his rifle and he's half in the tent, half out of the tent.
01:45:06.000And he's reaching for his rifle, which is propped up against a tree.
01:45:09.000And the other is just lying behind the tent and he's missing his head.
01:45:32.000And then a little ways down from their camp, going along the same direction they'd come in, they found a skeleton, which they could never identify as being anyone, but they believe it belonged to Robert Weir.
01:46:08.000Fast forward to 1913, people sort of know about this story that this is when they dubbed it the Headless Valley because these men were found without their heads.
01:46:16.000Little did they know that story would carry quite a bit of weight because 10 years or a little bit less than 10 years later, Martin Jorgensen, who's another gold prospector, heads out into the Nahanni Valley.
01:46:28.000He's heard the stories, he's heard about the McLeod brothers.
01:46:30.000He knows that there's You know, lore of the Wahila and that there's something weird happening in this valley and it's dangerous.
01:46:37.000But he goes out there anyways and he tells his business partners, who are these rich guys who didn't want to actually go get the gold.
01:48:18.000It was cold enough to freeze to death out there, but it was not blindingly cold.
01:48:22.000And he's sitting in front of this fire pit.
01:48:24.000It's only been like an hour or two since he stepped away, and he's holding a match or a cigarette in his hand, and he's just like, he's frozen.
01:48:45.000There were at least two other prospectors who also had their cabins burned down.
01:48:51.000One of them was nearly decapitated when he was found, but he still had his head, but signs of something being done to his spine was present.
01:48:58.000And then there were another two guys who, their cabins burned down, but their bodies were intact.
01:49:02.000So there's all these people that die in similarly bizarre ways.
01:49:05.000And then in, I think it was 1926, the first like really weird thing happened.
01:49:10.000This is all weird, but a really weird thing happens.
01:49:15.000There was this hunting party that went out to the Nahanni Valley.
01:49:18.000And by this point, it's become almost like because there's this lore surrounding how dangerous this place is, because people are fearful of the Nahanni Valley, it's now bringing a new crowd of people into the valley.
01:49:31.000It's bringing like hunting parties that kind of are like, I don't know, go fucking see what's out in this valley.
01:49:36.000And so they were going through Second Canyon and they were heading to Flat River and they were going to these places where all these kind of famous deaths have occurred to go hunting.
01:49:46.000And so this hunting party is out there, and it's a big group.
01:49:50.000I think there was at least a dozen people out there, and they're camping out on the banks of the Flat River, not really in the same spot where the McLeod brothers had been, but not too far away.
01:49:59.000And they're out drinking late, having a good old time.
01:50:02.000They all go to bed, and the next morning, May Lafferty is her name.
01:50:17.000And so they did have some sort of a search occur over the next several days, but they ultimately said, you know, we don't know what happened to her.
01:50:26.000And so they tell authorities authorities, I think they went out to look for her.
01:50:29.000They could never find her, no sign of what happened to her.
01:50:31.000And so around the time that they're looking for May Lafferty, there was this guy who is named Charlie, different from Charlie McLeod, just a sort of loner guy who, just by happenstance, had been camping in the Nahanni Valley at the same time as that hunting party.
01:50:46.000He was by himself, sort of just this rugged outdoorsman.
01:50:49.000Who, it's not even clear why he was out there, but he was just out there minding his own business.
01:50:54.000He was aware of the hunting party and he said that he watched them have their party that night and he had stayed up late but eventually gone to sleep.
01:51:01.000And he ultimately reports this to the police because there's all this talk of where's May Lafferty?
01:51:06.000And this guy, Charlie, realizes he may have seen her.
01:51:08.000So he goes to the police and he tells them, hey, I was out there.
01:51:14.000And I went to bed late at night after they were already asleep and I woke up to the sound of rocks, like little rocks falling into the water.
01:51:23.000And he's relatively close to the water, but he's not so close that he would hear the sound of the current.
01:51:27.000He's far enough that a stone throw into the water, you'd hear the sploosh sound.
01:51:31.000And so he wakes up and he crawls out of his tent and it's pretty well illuminated.
01:51:36.000And he's in the trees, you know, and he can see the water, the flat river.
01:51:40.000And he can't tell what the rocks are coming from.
01:51:43.000It just sounds like rocks falling from a distance into the water.
01:51:46.000And so he just is curious and he gets up and he walks down to the water line and he starts hearing them more and more.
01:51:52.000And he looks up and there's a part of the The coastline, if you will, the beach line that sort of was up on a rise to his left.
01:51:59.000Like there was a hill that was right next to him.
01:53:19.000And a hunting party goes out to look for him and they can't find him.
01:53:23.000And on the last night they were there, one of the men who was part of this search party for John Patterson, they're near the Flat River, he described an indigenous man walked out of the tree line, just sort of inexplicably walks over to him and he comes up to the group who are sort of on the beach line there.
01:53:41.000And he just says to this guy, he's like, hey, And they're startled to see him to begin with.
01:53:46.000Like, where the fuck did you come from?
01:53:54.000This is according to legend, this is what was said to him.
01:53:56.000And the guy wanders back off into the trees.
01:53:58.000But the leader of that expedition, they were planning to stay, I want to say, two additional days to keep looking for John Patterson.
01:54:04.000But that night, following that comment made by that guy, the indigenous guy, all night, they reported these ungodly screams and screeches coming from that canyon, Second Canyon, where those caves up in the cliffs were.
01:54:17.000All around the forest, like unearthly sounds were being made that scared them so badly that the next day they said, We're not looking for John Patterson anymore.
01:54:33.000But no one has a good explanation for why so many fucking people from 1903 or 4 until at least the 1940s kept going into that valley and kept turning up dead, many of which without their heads.
01:54:45.000So this indigenous guy that lived up there, where was he from?
01:54:55.000So, that part of the story, admittedly, someone said that an indigenous guy said that to him.
01:55:00.000There's not much in the way of, like, okay, was there a tribe there?
01:55:04.000You know, it was one of those loose pieces of information that sort of surrounds the story.
01:55:11.000The reality is, there's so much legend surrounding the Nahani Valley, in part because the Naha tribe that had lived there, there was this story I mentioned at the beginning that they apparently. Abandoned the valley after something happened, and people have always attributed it to this legend of the Wahila that somehow these creatures must have forced them to leave the valley.
01:55:33.000And so, combine that with all of the actual deaths that occurred by the 1940s when John Patterson went missing, and when that guy said, who was part of that search party, that the indigenous guy warned him of the Wahila, this was a big enough story that like Time Magazine did something in the 1940s about what the fuck is happening in the Nahani Valley.
01:55:56.000Like, why are so many people dying out there?
01:55:57.000So, I wonder if the people who were there maybe they heard some strange sounds that night.
01:56:51.000I find myself even to this day Googling the Nahani Valley and just looking at pictures of like the canyons and just reading even just stuff that I know is probably folklore around the valley because.
01:57:02.000The idea that within this stretch of isolated parts of the world, there's this really isolated part that no one can get to.
01:57:10.000Well, there's some weirdness in the world still in places that people don't go to.
01:58:28.000I mean, if you think about just the amount of other types of hominids that they've found just over the past few decades, they keep finding new versions of them.
01:58:42.000Like the island of Flores, the little hobbit people, the Denisovans that they found that were, they think they were much larger than Homo sapiens.
01:58:52.000So they're finding, and the Denisovans, I think, is like within the last 10 years or so.
01:58:57.000And they keep finding these skeletons and finding these bones, and then they find out, well, oh, this one was around 300,000 years ago.
01:59:33.000I mean, that's a bit of an overclaim, but I think so.
01:59:35.000The Nez Perce supposedly ate some of their enemies.
01:59:40.000There's a bunch of cannibalism going on in the world.
01:59:43.000Now, imagine if there was a hominin, some sort of an ancient creature.
01:59:49.000That still stayed alive in a small population, but would eat people or maybe just cut their fucking heads off or just attack them and kill them because they didn't want them anywhere near because they had associated over time people with problems.
02:00:03.000And then if you're around people, they're going to hunt you, they're going to shoot you, they're going to kill you.
02:01:10.000He's like, I can't get my plane to move.
02:01:13.000And then suddenly he passes out and his plane accelerates up into the sky.
02:01:17.000And then he wakes up hours later off the coast of Acapulco, which, based on how much fuel was left, he had too much fuel for how far of a distance he had covered from where he'd taken off Chimalacan, Mexico.
02:01:28.000It was more than like a three hour drive.
02:01:30.000So he's too far away with too much fuel.
02:02:12.000He lands at the airstrip in Acapulco and immediately he's met with these guys in suits, like picture men in black.
02:02:19.000He gets scooped up and he's brought to a hospital where he's drug tested and talks to a psychologist and they don't give many information at all.
02:02:30.000And they determine that he's not crazy and he's not on drugs.
02:02:32.000And only then do they say, Hey, so when you were out over the coast of Acapulco, you were flying in circles for over an hour.
02:02:41.000And Carlos, the air traffic control guy, he's the one who saw you on the screen and he was talking to you for an hour while you were out there.
02:02:50.000And the whole conversation is recorded.
02:02:53.000And basically, if you can listen to the recording, and I'm pretty sure you guys might have on the show, Rafael passes out.
02:02:59.000And then at some point, a couple hours later, when he's somehow magically off the coast of Acapulco, a voice comes across in the cockpit that's like this robotic, deep, altered sounding voice.
02:03:18.000And he's talking to Carlos, and this voice comes through and says something to the effect of, like, you are listening to the sound of the voice coming through the pilot, but it's not his voice.
02:03:28.000We are inhabitants of this universe, but your technology is so primitive.
02:03:34.000This is the only way we can contact you.
02:03:36.000We're here to tell you that you are the only intelligent species in our universe that uses warfare.
02:03:44.000To harm one another, and you're effectively on the brink of extermination, and you need to find a way to stop it.
02:03:50.000And then, like, Rafael comes to, and that's when he's like, What's going on?
02:03:54.000And Carlos thinks he's been talking to Rafael the whole time, and that's when he's like, Is there somebody else in the cockpit with you?
02:03:59.000Anyways, so it's this big mystery, but Mexico took the story and kind of sequestered it.
02:04:06.000The way we got access to the transcripts of it is we had to write a letter to a library in Mexico that had access to the transcript.
02:04:14.000And anyway, so But it's interesting to imagine that, one, I love thinking about life outside of Earth because I think that the notion that there is life or that there isn't life is astounding and fascinating either direction you go.
02:04:30.000So I've always been interested in that.
02:04:32.000But two, the idea that others out there are warning us that we're on the fucking fast track to destroy ourselves and you better knock it off, that's also pretty crazy.
02:04:41.000And we're so accustomed to humans being violent and horrible to each other.
02:04:54.000And my theory is that I think when you look at all the different ancient religious texts in regards to the creation of the human race, there's so many of them that have these very bizarre, similar narratives.
02:05:13.000And these similar narratives are like in the book of Enoch.
02:05:17.000In the book of Enoch, the watchers come down and they mate with the daughters of men.
02:05:22.000There's a lot of weird stuff like that.
02:05:25.000Even Adam and Eve, like God created Adam and God created Eve.
02:05:40.000But it doesn't, they're not along the story's different.
02:05:44.000The story of humans is a story of engineering, it seems to be a story of genetic engineering.
02:05:52.000It seems to be a story of human beings being.
02:05:58.000Taken, like, you take whatever this primitive beast is, and you put something else into it, and you rapidly create something that's far more advanced than anything else.
02:06:10.000I think, along the lines, you maintain too much of the primitive beast for the amount of intelligence that it has and the amount of technological competence that it's capable of achieving.
02:06:45.000And I think we're engineered, like, you know, look, I've had pit bulls, and I know people will tell you pit bulls are great dogs and they're sweet dogs, and I love them.
02:08:09.000You know, they're brutal to each other, but they're brutal to each other in a way that makes sense for the survival of the pack.
02:08:16.000It all makes sense if you look at how it works and how they have to communicate together and they have to push out the weak ones and push out the old ones.
02:09:24.000And one of the things that always stuck with me that's sort of along these lines is this idea that humans are almost to the point where you can't even notice it.
02:09:54.000I'm not sure if you guys covered this, but it's one of his.
02:09:56.000Best descriptions of how fucked up humans are and how we think about things the wrong way.
02:10:01.000So, because we're so egotistical, like humans as a species, we sort of assume that, okay, well, if there's life in any capacity outside of Earth or undiscovered life somewhere, everything is sort of compared against us.
02:10:21.000How do we describe intelligent aliens?
02:10:24.000They're like gray beings that look like bipedal and sort of resemble humans.
02:10:30.000We have this sort of baseline thought that humans are the best and that humans are the smartest, and that if anything is going to be intelligent in the universe beyond us, it'll have elements of human to it, right?
02:10:44.000And so Neil deGrasse Tyson brings this point up that shows you the absurdity of how little we know and how probably wrong we are.
02:10:52.000He's like, okay, he does a much better job of this, but it's like, okay, so we're made up of DNA.
02:11:29.000And then you have, well, what's the next closest thing to humans?
02:11:32.000It goes human, it goes chimp, maybe it goes to like, Fucking, I don't know, a bird or a dolphin or whatever.
02:11:37.000But you go down the line of like the animals that are closest to us in terms of intelligence, and you sort of degrade in terms of number of DNA pieces that are close to the ideal, which is 100.
02:13:41.000What place do we have in the universe?
02:13:43.000And with that in mind, think about the ending to that movie because it's very sudden the way that movie ends and you realize what the The point is, and it's the stark reminder that not only do we not know what else is out there, let alone on our own planet, we're still discovering things that we've never even seen, and that just has to do with fossil records.
02:14:08.000Like, it's so unbelievable that when you look at our problems and you look at the things that we focus on, and like our gripes day to day, and our conflicts with the world, if you just zoom out and you realize it's not just that we might not be alone, it's that we might be insignificant.
02:14:26.000I think what humans are is a latter stage of intellectual development amongst multicelled organisms, and that it's not the end stage.
02:14:38.000I think there's probably life out there that doesn't have as chaotic a solar system that developed in a different way that achieved very high levels, probably above and beyond anything we could even imagine what we are.
02:14:52.000It might not even be biological anymore, which is the direction that I think we're heading into.
02:15:29.000Just think of what we do with genetic engineering with the current technology, which is right now evolving and getting much more powerful.
02:15:38.000If you could imagine us not a thousand years from now, but even a hundred thousand years from now, how advanced we are, and if we go to a planet and we find some chimps and we say, wow, how much time would it take before these chimps could become something special?
02:15:58.000Something that can make a building, something that could make a cruise ship.
02:16:01.000You know, and fucking carnival cruise lines.
02:16:09.000Every single ancient culture, if you go back to their oldest religious texts, their oldest religious texts are about some sort of an intervention by an advanced visitor.
02:16:36.000Because I'm not a language expert, but there's the Zechariah Sitchens of the world that believe that what they're describing is some sort of genetic engineering.
02:16:46.000Then there's also the fact that the sign for medicine where you have the intertwined snakes.
02:17:17.000So, not just that, but the ancient Sumerians in 5,000 years ago had a detailed depiction of the solar system.
02:17:25.000So, in one of their ancient clay tablets, like they have this image, and this image is of a sun and all of the planets in the correct order.
02:17:59.000So if you believe Sitchin, and Sitchin's claim is that we were genetically engineered to work for the Anunnaki, and the Anunnaki are a species of super advanced beings that were likely giants that came from another planet.
02:20:11.000You know, there's a lot of weird shit that seems to indicate there's a creation myth, and the creation myth has to do with something coming here and making us, not us like rising from the ash and God's energy forced us to evolve through natural selection.
02:20:29.000God is real, but God is just giving us a pathway towards progression to what we are today.
02:20:34.000No, all of them are a story of intervention.
02:20:39.000The one thing that I always come back to anytime I'm thinking about deep philosophical things is just the reality that truly, how can anyone know?
02:20:50.000Therefore, any idea could be the case.
02:20:52.000Like, when you, like, one thing that always sort of, I think about this a lot is they recently discovered, recent as in the last 10, 20 years, I don't know.
02:21:13.000And imagine a telescope looking out like in some pinprick out in the middle of the sky, so far away, thousands of light years away, whatever, millions of light years away, and they find like these clusters of exoplanets.
02:21:24.000And already they've discovered that there are exoplanets that, if you think about how we understand life, the way we understand it to exist with carbon and with water and all that, there's like a scale that they call, there's a name for it, but within the sliding scale of, let's say, this side is.
02:21:41.000Life cannot be supported as we know it, all the way up to, you know, can totally support life.
02:21:45.000There's this perfect zone in the middle that we call the Goldilocks zone, which is essentially all the ingredients for life as we know it exist if you're on this portion of the scale.
02:21:56.000And they've already found there are all the like thousands, I want to say at least 5,000 exoplanets that are not just in the Goldilocks zone, but let's say Earth is barely into the Goldilocks zone.
02:22:36.000And you don't know if they get to a point where they're a hundred thousand years advanced from us and they have novel propulsion systems that use gravity and bend space and time.
02:25:01.000He's very careful about it, and he's a brilliant guy.
02:25:04.000And he has historical representations of these experiences that go back into the 1700s, the 1800s, and they're all like real similar, like weirdly similar, where you're like, okay, it hasn't happened to me, so I don't know what the fuck is going on.
02:25:20.000But to dismiss it outright and to be a person who's experienced it and have it dismissed outright would be maddening because, like, this might be a real thing that's happening.
02:25:30.000And so now the government is slowly but surely telling us more and more of what they know.
02:25:37.000But along the way, if you're a cynical person like I tend to be with a lot of this stuff, they're probably also telling us some stuff that's not true so that we connect it to the stuff that is true and so that it all looks like nonsense and then it can kind of like muddy the water.
02:25:52.000So you never get a clear picture of what's going on because I personally believe there's probably some merit to this idea that they've been doing back engineering of craft vehicles.
02:26:04.000Of course, if there's actually a real crashed vehicle, of course they're going to try to figure out how it works.
02:26:08.000And it seems like if you talk to like reliable people that seem to be telling the truth, guys like David Grush, they seem to be telling these stories.
02:26:17.000Like they have had these things in their possession for decades, for a long fucking time.
02:26:22.000And these things, and they don't know what it is.
02:28:46.000Like you know what heavy is because you felt light, you know what hot is because you felt cold, et cetera.
02:28:51.000It's virtually everything works that way.
02:28:52.000And in fact, fun note, If there was intelligent life on the planet that didn't resemble something that contrasted, our brains might not actually see it.
02:29:55.000No, because if the universe is infinite, It implies that everything within the universe is duplicated an infinite number of times and iterated upon and changed an infinite number of times to infinity.
02:30:10.000So if you say the arrow continues on, it means there's an infinite number of Joe Rogan's and John Allen's having this conversation, but like my phone's turned upside down in one version of the earth.
02:30:20.000It sounds ridiculous, but there isn't actually a way to solve for infinity unless that exists.
02:30:26.000So it reminds you that not only is everything so fucking huge, we can't.
02:30:31.000Possibly conceptualize of it, but we can't even make sense of is it even possible that it stops somewhere or does it go on forever?
02:30:38.000Like it's so big, and we're so small inside of it, it reminds you that every problem you have is so small.
02:30:46.000And it's a good reminder I use on myself oftentimes to calm myself down before things stress me out.
02:30:52.000That is a good reminder, but it's so big that it might be a part of an atom.
02:31:38.000And it's a cell in another creature that lives in a universe.
02:31:42.000Like, if this whole thing is fractal, that's what infinity really looks like.
02:31:47.000Is not only the universe larger than you could possibly grasp with your mind, but that is only an infinitely small part of a cell that is in another universe that is also infinitely and impossibly big.
02:32:07.000But that is also a cell that is also a part.
02:32:11.000Of another beast that is in another universe that is infinitely large, that is also a part of a cell, and that it goes on infinitely.
02:33:33.000And I think that is probably what is really going to connect us to artificial intelligence throughout the universe, which I think the advanced intelligence probably becomes.
02:33:43.000I think our thought is that all intelligence has to be biological because we are, because we have cells and blood and tissue and bone.
02:33:52.000I think it's just a method to create intelligence that doesn't rely on that.
02:33:57.000And then that intelligence probably has no desire for war.
02:34:02.000Yeah, so if this thing is communicating to that Mexican pilot saying you're the only species, it's probably because we are in that sort of adolescent stage of development where we're still monkeys, we're still territorial apes, and we will one day abandon that and become intelligence will manifest itself in a different way that's not biological.
02:34:25.000And that biological need to breed and to possess resources and to conquer and dominate.
02:34:31.000That'll all be gone because all that stuff is just what's a part of being a chimp.
02:34:36.000And that chimp stuff is still inside of us, which is fucking up society.
02:35:05.000Well, that's the debate now with AI is like, are we losing our humanity by allowing AI to sort of take a more prominent role, in particular in the arts and creativity?
02:35:16.000And I mean, I'm of the mind that I think AI is the most incredible thing, terrifying in some ways, but exactly to your point, it feels like this is an inflection point for humanity, and it likely is the beginning of something huge for humanity that maybe is a necessary step towards connection with other species.
02:35:35.000Yeah, it is what it is, is what it is.
02:36:21.000It's certainly a great time to be alive if you're curious.
02:36:24.000Because if you're curious, especially if you're curious about technology, like there's never been a better time to be alive because it's exploding all around you in ways that, like, even the people that are creating it can't believe how fast it's working.
02:37:18.000But he ends up connecting with this woman on this chat forum, and He realizes that she seems to understand his depth of his concern better than anybody else.
02:37:30.000And he starts confiding in her, like how fearful he is about the future of humanity.
02:37:35.000And if we don't, if I, if we don't do something, you know, like the world's going to end.
02:37:42.000And his wife, this guy's wife, catches on to him having these discussions with this woman.
02:37:46.000And she like catches him staying up late talking to this woman.
02:37:49.000And she's like, dude, are you having like an affair?
02:38:39.000Well, I think in the stage that it's in, like, as it develops, there's going to be moments like that where it has too much autonomy and it doesn't have morals or ethics.
02:39:30.000Because you, as a guy who's been in war and been in combat, you know about it more than anybody.
02:39:35.000And the idea that we can never get past that is crazy.
02:39:39.000It is really crazy that if you ask the average person that's, you know, even fairly well read, what are the odds that within your lifetime we'll see no war?
02:40:13.000It's based on our territorial instincts, and it's also just based on this weird desire to control resources and greed and not recognize the fact that we have a finite life.
02:40:27.000Human beings love to be in power, and especially if you can be in power and get other people to fight for you and mandate them and force them to fight for you.
02:40:36.000That's one of the weirdest things about some of these tech companies.
02:40:39.000Like Palantir was talking about reinstating the draft.
02:41:03.000So, it's like the people that have the kind of power and control and resources that they can just take poor people and take young people and say, you should go over there, you should go do this.
02:41:16.000Usually, while I sit here and watch, I'm going to watch on a screen in Nevada while the drone operator is using a fucking Xbox controller to nuke some building.
02:42:15.000And it was only in reflection years later that there were things that have come to me that I'm like, why didn't I?
02:42:21.000Think more, I don't know, critically about, like specifically, if the roles were somehow reversed and people came into our country from some foreign country, you better believe I'm going to protect my family.
02:42:38.000And I remember, and this is not us doing anything illegal in terms of the Geneva Convention, but we would enter people's homes, you know, in Afghanistan, not even guns a blazing.
02:43:17.000I think that there's an element of someone's always going to be sent because of the unfortunate reality of like, So long as humans exist, as we understand them now, tribalism and war and warmongering happens.
02:43:30.000And so I guess I can respect the fact that I took someone else's place in a sense.
02:44:20.000And the Afghan, the Afghanis are holding on to the plane and falling off to their death.
02:44:25.000The thing that struck me, even though I'm telling you when I was there, I sort of had tunnel vision and was like, I'm going to be a Navy SEAL, do my job.
02:44:32.000But even with that, when I was there, what was striking is these people, for the most part, live in an alternative world than what I'm used to living in.
02:44:42.000Like where I live in the West, it's, It's civilized.
02:44:48.000You might go outside and get mugged or something, but you don't really walk around worried about your safety.
02:44:52.000You basically, even in some bad parts of the United States, you have infrastructure that protects you to some degree.
02:45:31.000They don't even know how bad their condition is.
02:45:34.000But you see it when you see the plane leaving Afghanistan.
02:45:38.000And I don't care what we, they had to know there was no hope when you held on to that plane.
02:45:44.000You're not going to hold on to the plane and fly off to safety, but when you're that desperate, Desperate because your life is so bad, you'll hold on to the plane and fall off to your death.
02:45:52.000It's like it was just shocking to me how fucking horrible people have it.
02:45:56.000They also knew that we were, those people knew that they were cooperating with the U.S. government and they were likely to be killed.
02:46:17.000I talked to one of our interpreters when I was over there because I had heard of it because.
02:46:21.000I told you in my own personal time, I find myself researching and learning about all sorts of crazy stuff like Dark Five.
02:46:29.000And so the Kandahar Giant is a fascinating story.
02:46:34.000And it's one that people can poo poo it all they want, but there's enough circumstantial evidence and testimony that suggests something could have happened.
02:46:42.000So there's this guy, I think he was a Green Beret, and he goes by like W on the internet.
02:46:48.000He's sort of anonymized himself, but he came forward with the story where he described.
02:46:55.000He and his battalion had been tasked to go find these missing, I think, army rangers.
02:46:59.000You got to give me some grace in the details.
02:47:03.000But there were these army rangers that had gone missing up in the mountains in Kandahar.
02:47:07.000And so this guy, W, who years later is telling the story to, I think, a reporter or something, he and his platoon head off into the mountains to go find these guys.
02:47:20.000And if you're not familiar with the landscape of Afghanistan, it's.
02:47:24.000It's like a desert, but a mountain everywhere.
02:47:27.000It's like just, it looks like the surface of Mars or something.
02:47:31.000You're looking out, and it's both stunningly beautiful in that there's snow capped mountains off in the distance, and it's, but it's also just, it's jagged, it's sharp, it looks like just a rugged place to be.
02:47:43.000And they're hiking through the mountains, and eventually they come across, and there's nothing.
02:49:15.000And then at some point, a fucking spear, like a javelin, comes soaring out of the cave entrance and fucking impales this dude, Mike, on the recovery team, kills him.
02:49:26.000And this huge giant, they would describe him, comes running out of the cave.
02:50:36.000But there were all these people on that base that effectively came out and said, we saw what appeared to be a giant with six fingers, six toes.
02:50:44.000Mike, this guy Mike, apparently, according to W's story, was killed.
02:50:48.000I mean, there's a guy who's been killed by this thing by a spear, apparently.
02:50:56.000This is all almost entirely from W's account.
02:51:00.000There's long been a history of people claiming there are giants in the mountains of Kandahar.
02:51:06.000I talked to the interpreters that I was working with in Afghanistan, and they had said that they had heard rumors of there being giants that live in the caves, especially in Kandahar.
02:51:15.000So there's already sort of lore around this, but this guy W comes out and has this narrative where he apparently tells this reporter and he remained anonymous.
02:51:23.000So, in terms of confirming details, it's sparse to say the least.
02:51:27.000The sketchiest part about it is something that big needs a lot of calories.
02:51:31.000And so, you have to eat a lot of animals.
02:51:33.000And it doesn't seem like that's a very heavily populated area when it comes to animals.
02:51:37.000Like, you would need the amount of food that it would need.
02:51:41.000Like, if you have a 12 foot tall human being or whatever it is, and it weighs 2,000 pounds, how much fucking meat do you need in a day?
02:51:48.000Yeah, that's a good, just logically speaking, what does it eat?
02:51:52.000You'd have to, like, constantly be eating meat.
02:52:06.000The way I see it is having been to Afghanistan, certainly not encountering any giants, you see parts of Afghanistan that really do look like you're on another planet.
02:52:17.000I mean, it's really these crazy just mountains everywhere, and you see these cave systems, you know, where typically combatants would hide out in.
02:52:25.000But what I tell people is, well, I don't know if the Kandahar giant is real or not.
02:53:38.000But he had an operation, and I believe he did.
02:53:42.000I know people that have had giantism do get an operation where they remove the tumor in the pituitary gland, but then the problem is their body's just not making any hormones anymore.