The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - 160. Literacy and Strength ｜ Jocko Willink

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00:00:53.780 Welcome to the Jordan B. Peterson podcast.

00:00:56.100 I'm Mikayla. This is episode 12, season 4.

00:01:00.160 This episode was recorded on March 12th and is with the one, the only, Jocko Willink.

00:01:06.260 Dad has been on Jocko's podcast several times in the past, but now had the opportunity to reverse the interviewing role to learn more about Jocko's life and endeavors.

00:01:15.360 They discuss Jocko's experience in the military and war exploring time in the Navy SEALs, Afghanistan and Iraq, and much more.

00:01:22.200 Jocko Willink is an American best-selling author, podcaster, and retired naval officer who served in the Navy SEALs.

00:01:29.920 Jocko also has one of the most successful podcasts out there, the Jocko Podcast.

00:01:34.700 Please remember to rate and subscribe if you enjoy this content.

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00:02:43.760 Enjoy this episode.

00:02:44.640 Hi, everybody.

00:02:47.200 I'm pleased today to be talking with Jocko Willink, who I've talked with on his podcast on three separate occasions.

00:02:56.960 I don't think I've had Jocko on mine, and my memory isn't what it should be.

00:03:02.720 But I'm quite sure that so far when we've talked, it's been on your podcast.

00:03:06.700 So I thought I'd take the time today to get to know you in some more detail.

00:03:11.040 Jocko is an American author, podcaster, and retired naval officer who served in the Navy SEALs.

00:03:18.400 He co-authored the books Extreme Ownership and the Dichotomy of Leadership with fellow retired SEAL Leif Babin.

00:03:26.420 Did I pronounce that right?

00:03:28.900 It's actually Leif Babin.

00:03:30.580 Oh, so I didn't pronounce it right at all.

00:03:32.480 Leif Babin.

00:03:33.380 He hosts a weekly podcast with Brazilian jiu-jitsu practitioner Echo Charles called The Jocko Podcast.

00:03:39.300 He has a million subscribers on YouTube, and his podcast attracts many more listeners.

00:03:45.480 He co-founded the management consulting firm Echelon Front LLC and has extended his business development on a number of additional fronts.

00:03:53.260 His military service included combat actions in the war in Iraq, where he eventually commanded the SEAL Team's three task unit bruiser that fought in the battle against the Iraqi insurgents in Ramadi, and was honored with the Silver Star and Bronze Star for his service.

00:04:12.180 He achieved the rank of lieutenant commander.

00:04:15.240 Good to see you again, Jocko.

00:04:19.200 It's good to be here.

00:04:20.940 Yeah, I feel the same way, that it's good to be here.

00:04:25.360 I'm really looking forward to our conversation.

00:04:28.820 I'm glad that you were able to gut through that ridiculously long bio, and I felt that as you got to the end of it, you were breaking free of the chains of that reading.

00:04:41.040 So, I'm glad it's over with.

00:04:43.200 Yeah, well, it's so much better just to talk than to read in this sort of format.

00:04:47.920 But at least everybody who doesn't know already has some sense of who you are, some minimal sense of who you are.

00:04:56.400 So, tell me what's been happening online with you over the last couple of years.

00:05:03.180 Because we haven't spoken, I would say, it's got to be two years, I think, something like that.

00:05:07.840 And so, I've cast an eye on what's been happening with you on YouTube, and some of my staff have filled me in.

00:05:16.880 But I'm really curious, tell me about what's happening with your YouTube channel and your online activities, your podcast, and all of that.

00:05:24.360 Yeah, a few years ago, I started a podcast, that was actually, it was quite a few years ago now, it was in 2015.

00:05:34.760 It might have been kind of as the explosion of, prior to the explosion of podcasts.

00:05:40.720 In fact, I think I read something that said, at that time, it was like 17% of Americans were listening to podcasts, and that number's much, much higher now.

00:05:50.560 And I kind of got lucky, because at the time, Tim Ferriss had one of the most popular, still very popular.

00:05:58.860 But at the time, just because the numbers of podcasts that existed, his podcast was even more popular.

00:06:05.280 And I went on his podcast, and when we got done recording, and he pressed stop on the record button, he looked at me and said, you should have your own podcast.

00:06:15.080 And I kind of took that, you know, and noted it.

00:06:18.480 And then a little while later, I was on Joe Rogan's podcast, and he had, you know, obviously, another one of the most popular podcasts in the world.

00:06:28.560 And he told me in the middle of that podcast that I should have my own podcast.

00:06:32.380 And so when guys like Tim Ferriss and Joe Rogan are telling you to have your own podcast, you have your own podcast.

00:06:37.960 Now, I came to realize later that Joe Rogan actually would tell everybody to have a podcast.

00:06:42.560 So maybe, you know, he would tell everyone, oh, you should start a podcast.

00:06:46.800 Well, I actually listened to him.

00:06:48.400 And so I started that podcast.

00:06:50.100 And I would say I probably, if somebody would have asked, you know, what should a person do to make a good podcast, or maybe not a good podcast, but a popular podcast,

00:07:03.200 somebody would probably say, make it probably a half an hour to an hour, bring a bunch of different guests on so that you can hear a bunch of different people talking and, you know, talk about positive things in the world.

00:07:18.300 And so instead of doing any of that, what I did was I have a podcast that's between two and five hours long.

00:07:26.380 Oftentimes, it's just me talking, reading from a book, and reviewing a book.

00:07:31.880 And usually the books are about war or suffering or some kind of human atrocity.

00:07:37.560 And so that's what my podcast is.

00:07:39.520 And really what it boils down to is it's learning about human nature.

00:07:44.180 And for me, human nature is best revealed or most clearly revealed in times of suffering.

00:07:50.640 And one of the, I guess, pretty good monopoly on the market for suffering is war and right in there as well as, you know, human atrocities.

00:07:59.860 So I started that podcast.

00:08:01.660 And like I said, when I started it, there weren't that many.

00:08:04.940 There weren't as many as podcasts as there are now.

00:08:07.340 So it got some traction out of the gate and it kind of just stayed there.

00:08:13.300 So I was very lucky in that respect.

00:08:16.320 And I've been doing it ever since.

00:08:17.580 I've put out one podcast a week for five years.

00:08:21.300 I've only missed one week in there.

00:08:25.900 And that was when my best friend was killed in a parachute accident.

00:08:30.900 And so I didn't put out a podcast that week.

00:08:32.980 But other than that, I've been very consistent.

00:08:36.500 And then the YouTube channel is, well, it's kind of the podcast.

00:08:41.680 And then we do some excerpts there and little clips and stuff like that.

00:08:47.260 And Echo Charles, I forget what you called him in the bio, a Brazilian jiu-jitsu practitioner.

00:08:52.540 He's also a video guy.

00:08:56.000 And so he makes his little clips and puts special effects in them and stuff because he's creative and bored, which means...

00:09:06.600 It's a great combination for someone that you're working with.

00:09:10.000 It is indeed.

00:09:11.380 So I think that's what's been happening online for me and for the past few years.

00:09:17.320 Who's your audience, do you think?

00:09:21.160 Or do you know?

00:09:22.860 Yeah, I know actually quite well that my demographic is people.

00:09:28.780 It's people.

00:09:29.680 It's human beings.

00:09:30.720 Really, it's all over the place.

00:09:32.760 And when I go and do live events, I'll have just the entire spectrum of humans there.

00:09:37.960 Hey, look, is there a kind of a typical person?

00:09:42.300 Yeah, there's a typical person.

00:09:43.500 But we get everybody on the spectrum from the grandma to the little kids.

00:09:47.880 You know, I've written a bunch of kids' books and the little kids show up as well.

00:09:51.720 Right.

00:09:52.240 Pretty broad.

00:09:52.920 Pretty broad.

00:09:52.960 Pretty kids' books.

00:09:54.720 Yeah, pretty broad demographic.

00:09:56.820 That's...

00:09:57.340 I meet all kinds of people.

00:09:59.160 Everybody from a... 0.96

00:10:00.440 I'll meet a firefighter and then a hedge fund guy and then a stay-at-home mom and then a retired

00:10:08.080 Marine.

00:10:08.900 Just meet everybody.

00:10:10.080 It's...

00:10:10.640 And that's the audience.

00:10:11.460 Do you have any sense of what it is that's attracting people to your podcast?

00:10:16.540 I mean, you sort of approach that tongue-in-cheek in some sense for a dark topic.

00:10:23.380 You know, you concentrate on things that are pretty negative or they're pretty dark.

00:10:28.160 And so, as you said, that might fly in the face of any advice you'd get about what to

00:10:33.360 talk about.

00:10:33.800 But obviously, I mean, one of the things I've encountered is that there's a very...

00:10:38.080 There's a vast hunger for serious dialogue.

00:10:41.780 And I mean, one of the things that struck me always about your podcast was you often

00:10:46.240 read something that's very, very emotionally demanding.

00:10:52.140 Stark, harsh, rough, rough, and...

00:10:56.900 Well, and it's interesting to think about why people might be attracted to that.

00:11:03.000 What's your sense?

00:11:04.420 And also, why are you doing it?

00:11:06.040 I think that it's emotional.

00:11:19.260 I think that these are emotional topics.

00:11:21.620 I think these are things that people can be a little bit afraid of and a little bit nervous

00:11:27.840 about and being able to brush up against them a little bit gives them a little bit more

00:11:32.940 familiarity with them.

00:11:35.680 And therefore, when you see, when you come close to things that are that stark and dark

00:11:39.920 and horrible, it also makes you look up around at the present situation that you're in and

00:11:43.880 maybe it doesn't look as awful.

00:11:47.540 Yeah, so...

00:11:48.700 So there you touched on two things about knowing something about history that might be really

00:11:53.040 useful about human affairs, right?

00:11:55.220 One is that, I mean, it's a tenant of clinical psychotherapy that a voluntary approach to

00:12:02.860 what's frightening, threatening, even disgusting is curative.

00:12:07.660 It has to be voluntary.

00:12:09.200 And it can't be too intense, right?

00:12:11.560 Because if it gets too intense, it can actually hurt you.

00:12:13.960 But if it's voluntary and measured, that actually seems to strengthen people.

00:12:18.920 It develops resilience.

00:12:20.580 And I would say that's one thing that virtually all well-trained clinicians agree on.

00:12:25.220 Is that that kind of exposure, whether it's discussing old, difficult experiences in an

00:12:32.420 autobiographical manner, or whether it's actually going out into the world and facing things

00:12:37.420 that you're afraid of.

00:12:38.520 If you're an elevator phobic, for example, you might be faced with, confronted with the

00:12:43.160 necessity of at least looking at an elevator, which is something you might avoid if you're

00:12:46.640 phobic.

00:12:47.000 And then, so that's the first thing.

00:12:49.400 So there is some pronounced human tendency to be attracted to what's dark, because that

00:12:55.960 is a pathway to mental and physical resilience.

00:13:00.800 And then the second thing is, which I also think is extremely important, is it's useful

00:13:06.320 to cultivate gratitude, in my estimation.

00:13:09.220 And one of the ways that you can do that, because you take a lot of what's good in your

00:13:14.780 life for granted, it gets invisible, especially if it's predictable.

00:13:18.720 It gets invisible.

00:13:19.800 And that's unfortunate, because it's still rare and precious.

00:13:24.920 And if you know how terrible things can be, have been, or could become, then that can alert

00:13:32.440 you to how fortunate you are when all hell isn't breaking loose right now, everywhere

00:13:37.780 in your life.

00:13:39.480 So, you know, and you can also sort of learn some skill sets of how to handle these tough

00:13:48.360 situations when you get in them.

00:13:50.440 And if you can see that someone went through something that's much worse, and what did they

00:13:55.600 do to deal with it?

00:13:56.400 How did they get through it?

00:13:57.680 What did they think about?

00:13:58.620 What did they do?

00:13:59.920 You can say, okay, well, I've seen that before.

00:14:02.520 And the situation I'm in isn't quite as bad, but I know that that person took action.

00:14:07.880 I know that person stood up and made a move and made things happen and tried to move forward.

00:14:13.680 And maybe that's what I should do, too.

00:14:15.100 So you can definitely garner some skills from the past.

00:14:21.240 Right.

00:14:21.700 So that's a third element, is that it can expand your notion of human competence.

00:14:26.400 And that's, you know, I think that's partly, that's one of the reasons that people love

00:14:31.480 watching high-end sports performances, you know, because you think, well, look, there's,

00:14:39.260 that's what a human being is capable of.

00:14:41.000 Isn't that so remarkable?

00:14:43.140 And I am one of those.

00:14:44.740 And so that's a limit case.

00:14:46.320 But there's obviously, obviously room for me to develop.

00:14:50.140 And that's, that's something that's very hopeful.

00:14:52.760 And so if you are in dire straits, and you've seen that other people can get through that,

00:14:56.560 you think, well, maybe, maybe I could get through that if I could just learn how to do it.

00:15:00.840 But so I had a guy on my podcast who had written a book, his name was William Reeder.

00:15:07.300 And he had, he was a helicopter pilot in Vietnam, and he was shot down.

00:15:13.300 Well, he shot down two times.

00:15:14.480 The first time he was shot down, he was able to make it back to friendly lines.

00:15:17.060 The second time he was shot down, he was captured.

00:15:20.800 And he was captured in South Vietnam, which is actually worse.

00:15:24.240 You didn't want to get captured in South Vietnam, because then they had to get you to 1.00

00:15:28.000 North Vietnam to the prison, and getting to North Vietnam while you're patrolling through

00:15:32.340 the jungle for months on end is not a good thing.

00:15:37.360 And at one point, he's in a two foot tall bamboo cage in the jungle.

00:15:44.780 And he's, his legs are shackled.

00:15:48.880 And it's nighttime, and he's trying to sleep.

00:15:52.280 But he's having trouble sleeping because the rats are gnawing at the wounds

00:15:57.680 on his legs.

00:16:01.220 And so knowing that someone could suffer through that, and survive, and get through,

00:16:10.600 and make it out the other side, and then carry on with a completely productive life,

00:16:15.400 tells me that we are pretty resilient as a species, if we can dig deep and find that resiliency.

00:16:24.600 Yes, well, that's exactly the kind of story that also makes you much appreciative of the

00:16:31.460 fact that you have a bed in an air conditioned room, that in a, in a house in a town that's

00:16:37.360 not burning to the ground with rioters, and you have that every night.

00:16:41.580 And so you take it for granted, but, but it's still worth noting that it's a kind of miracle

00:16:48.700 compared to all the alternatives that might manifest themselves.

00:16:53.080 Yeah, I think people appreciate that.

00:16:54.720 I think people, you know, look, how many movies are have been made about war, countless movies

00:16:59.680 have been made about war, countless books have been written about war.

00:17:02.260 So human beings are definitely have some sort of a, I don't know if it's a fascination, or

00:17:08.240 at least an appreciation for the sacrifice, and the effort that goes into fighting a war.

00:17:15.000 And, and I will tell you, and I, I can't speak for everybody, but certainly me, and the kids,

00:17:23.900 I many of the kids I grew up with, and then many of the people that I served with, that's

00:17:29.340 what we wanted to do.

00:17:30.820 We had some kind, I had some kind of an instinct.

00:17:33.240 That's such a great thing for you to be able to say, you know, because there's, there, I

00:17:39.840 remember watching this kid once I saw him in Montreal, and he was standing, he's a big

00:17:45.200 kid, about six, five, I would think, and he was wearing these punk boots that were like

00:17:49.980 military knockoffs, essentially.

00:17:52.100 And he was standing there, he's about 17 or 18, and he's standing there on the corner of

00:17:57.720 this outdoor shopping mall, carrying these two pink shopping bags and looking completely

00:18:01.400 out of place.

00:18:01.960 And I thought, you know, if you went there and offered that kid a chance to go off and

00:18:06.940 have an adventure, you know, to have battle, he dropped those shopping bags and be gone

00:18:11.840 in two seconds, because he wants something more than to be, he's not built for that, it

00:18:16.100 was so incongruous, you know, he wasn't built for that.

00:18:19.200 And William James, the American philosopher said that we needed a moral equivalent to war.

00:18:25.320 Because war calls people to extremes, right, to, to, to, to the extremes in their life.

00:18:33.400 And there's something about that, that was obviously compelling, as you, as you say, it's

00:18:41.160 uncomfortable as well, to, to, to state that blatantly, because obviously peace is a desirable

00:18:47.960 condition.

00:18:48.460 But the question is then, well, how do you put sufficient adventure into the peace?

00:18:55.180 And that's a very, very, that's a very complicated problem.

00:19:01.040 Yeah, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's very true in the fact that in war, I was lucky enough

00:19:08.720 to go, and I was lucky enough to serve in, in combat, and to be in a position of leadership

00:19:16.840 in combat.

00:19:17.440 And in those situations, I was able to witness with my own eyes, on the one hand, the most

00:19:26.960 heinous and despicable acts that human beings can partake in.

00:19:32.700 And, and I was also able to witness with my own two eyes, these soldiers, Marines, the

00:19:40.220 guys that were in my task unit, making the most incredible sacrifices for their friends.

00:19:47.600 So, yes, there is an extreme to war.

00:19:52.200 And like you said, it's not something you wish on anybody.

00:19:56.180 And I had this conversation with Sam Harris a while ago, because he called me out and

00:20:01.540 said, you know, yeah, you're talking about how hard war is, and it's terrible.

00:20:05.120 But at the same time, you say it's the best thing that you have been through.

00:20:09.240 And I, I asked him if he'd ever known anyone that had cancer and survived it.

00:20:15.840 And oftentimes, those people will say, it's the best thing that happened to me, I wouldn't

00:20:22.380 wish it on anybody.

00:20:23.320 But I'm glad it happened to me.

00:20:25.460 And that's kind of how I feel about war, too.

00:20:27.580 I wouldn't wish war on anybody.

00:20:29.900 But I am, I wouldn't, I wouldn't trade it for anything.

00:20:34.880 So when you look, when you look back on your involvement in the war in, in Iraq, and your

00:20:44.020 country's involvement, what, what do you make?

00:20:48.420 How do you make sense out of it morally?

00:20:50.480 I mean, we're, we're in that domain right now.

00:20:52.820 You know, you, you, you tell, tell me already that you're pulled between these extreme views.

00:20:56.900 You don't wish war on anyone.

00:20:59.220 I'm, I mean, if you have, do you have a son?

00:21:02.640 Yes.

00:21:03.600 How old is he?

00:21:05.460 18.

00:21:05.900 I, well, so, so then you think, I presume, but I, or perhaps I wouldn't, I wouldn't deign

00:21:16.140 to presume.

00:21:19.060 If you could have what you wanted for him, would that be peace?

00:21:24.600 Of course.

00:21:28.340 Okay.

00:21:28.820 Okay.

00:21:29.140 Well, that, right.

00:21:30.360 Why?

00:21:30.780 Okay.

00:21:31.100 So, so let's do that a little bit.

00:21:33.020 Of course.

00:21:34.200 Of course.

00:21:36.120 But.

00:21:37.140 Well, right.

00:21:38.740 Right.

00:21:39.480 Exactly.

00:21:40.260 Well, the other thing, the other thing that you do, as far as, please correct me if I get

00:21:44.260 any of this wrong, but I mean, part of what you're also offering to people is the, is

00:21:50.760 the, the call of a kind of radical discipline right now you post on Instagram, you're the

00:21:58.180 times you wake up in the morning, correct?

00:22:02.260 Yes.

00:22:03.200 4.30, something like that.

00:22:05.660 And pretty regularly.

00:22:07.460 And I guess you do that to show people that you can get the hell out of bed at 4.30 and

00:22:13.660 get your day going.

00:22:16.000 And.

00:22:18.020 Yeah, maybe not.

00:22:19.260 I would love to tell you that I was that, um, had that much for, for thought into when

00:22:25.400 I started doing that, but I was on Tim Ferriss's podcast and he told me I should join Twitter.

00:22:30.740 And I kind of said, what's that?

00:22:32.680 And he showed it to me a little bit and he said, you really should join this.

00:22:36.320 It's a way you can communicate with people.

00:22:37.880 And I said, okay, fair enough.

00:22:39.360 So I signed up for Twitter and then whatever, the next day I woke up in the morning and didn't

00:22:45.760 know what to write or what to do.

00:22:48.060 So I just took a picture of my watch and you know, here I go.

00:22:50.900 And other people kind of noticed that.

00:22:53.060 And so that's kind of how that whole thing started.

00:22:56.700 But.

00:22:57.140 Yeah, well, it's not, it's not always the case that when you do something new and creative,

00:23:02.760 you know why you do it.

00:23:04.160 I mean, sometimes you have, you've, and even if you think, you know, why you do it, you

00:23:08.180 might find out five years later that there were 10 other reasons that you did it that

00:23:12.020 you weren't aware of at the time.

00:23:13.240 Like we live beyond ourselves all the time.

00:23:16.060 That's especially true if you're entrepreneurial and creative because you're changing who you

00:23:21.920 are all the time.

00:23:22.720 And there's no reason to assume that your understanding of yourself would keep up with

00:23:27.300 the changes.

00:23:28.720 So, so my, my take on my take on the Instagram posts was, well, what I just, what I just mentioned,

00:23:35.480 it's like, well, you know, yeah, you can sleep until 10 o'clock in the morning if you want,

00:23:39.900 but you can also get a jump on the day.

00:23:41.540 And I think part of what makes your, I think part of what makes what you're doing attractive

00:23:46.900 is that there's so little emphasis in our popular culture, especially, especially with

00:23:53.780 regards to the so-called mainstream media on discipline and responsibility, that there's

00:23:59.980 a tremendous hunger for anything that pertains to that.

00:24:03.720 And, well, and you have a right to be discussing that, I would say, because of your, because of

00:24:08.800 your background, which if nothing else required a tremendous amount of discipline.

00:24:15.520 Yeah.

00:24:15.940 And I ended up writing a book called Discipline Equals Freedom.

00:24:19.180 And I'm lucky that I wrote it when I did, because if I would have written it two years

00:24:23.640 later, everyone would have said, oh, everyone's talking about discipline now.

00:24:27.140 So yeah, discipline, absolutely.

00:24:29.920 Discipline does bring you freedom in life.

00:24:31.240 And that's something that I kind of figured out over time.

00:24:35.140 I didn't really.

00:24:35.460 So what do you mean by that?

00:24:36.780 Like, how, how did you figure that out?

00:24:38.420 And what do you mean by that?

00:24:39.460 Because they're often, and, and, you know, the, the classic sort of, uh, what would you

00:24:44.200 call it?

00:24:44.560 Romantic rebel is someone who has, is free from excessive order.

00:24:51.540 Let's say they don't see, they see freedom and, um, discipline as antithetical rather than

00:24:58.620 seeing one as a precondition for the other.

00:25:01.040 And so, so how did you learn that discipline was a precondition for freedom?

00:25:08.060 If I've, if I've got the equation, how did that manifest itself in your own life?

00:25:13.440 So we'll, we'll start off by saying this and look, I was a young kid.

00:25:18.520 I joined the Navy to go in the SEAL teams.

00:25:20.540 I went through SEAL training.

00:25:21.460 I showed up at a SEAL team, SEAL team one.

00:25:24.600 And when I got there and as I look back, this is a very powerful thing, even though it's

00:25:31.740 very simple when I was, so I'm 19 years old.

00:25:35.340 But when I show up at SEAL team one, I'm done with the basic SEAL training and I have a goal

00:25:42.880 in my head, which is that, which is this, I want to be a good SEAL.

00:25:51.440 That's what I want to do.

00:25:52.340 That's like, I don't know about anything else.

00:25:54.620 I, this is what I want to do.

00:25:56.560 I want to be a good SEAL.

00:25:58.360 That's what I want.

00:25:59.100 I want to be a good SEAL.

00:26:01.980 And so as a 19 year old with all kinds of energy, and we haven't talked about my childhood

00:26:08.040 yet, but I was kind of like a very rebellious kid.

00:26:10.260 When you talked about seeing a kid that looked like you could have handed him a, a, a, a club

00:26:15.440 or a battle ax, and he would have probably been feeling a little bit better.

00:26:18.860 I was like that.

00:26:19.880 I was constantly looking around for a club or a battle ax because that's what I felt like

00:26:23.800 I needed to do.

00:26:25.120 And it was beautiful.

00:26:26.220 Cause I was running around the, running around the woods as a young kid playing army.

00:26:30.880 And I just went and actually played army.

00:26:35.220 You know, that's what I ended up doing.

00:26:36.740 So I never really had to do, do, you know, force myself into some mold that I didn't want

00:26:42.060 to be into.

00:26:42.860 So I got to SEAL team one and now I, I just want to be a good SEAL.

00:26:48.000 That's what I want.

00:26:49.000 And so now that starts steering some of my decisions.

00:26:53.060 And, and for the most part, it steered my decisions in a, in a decent direction.

00:26:57.500 Now there were some times where, as I look back now, what I thought was a good SEAL was

00:27:04.260 a little bit off, but luckily it wasn't 180 degrees off.

00:27:07.240 It might've been off 30 degrees or 40 degrees.

00:27:09.480 And as I got older and more mature, and I figured out more about what that ideal should

00:27:14.900 look like to me.

00:27:15.800 And I could keep chasing that ideal.

00:27:17.240 That was good.

00:27:17.860 But even to be, even to be a 19 year old kid with a, with a 70 or 80 degree corridor

00:27:25.220 to move forward in is not a bad thing.

00:27:28.340 No, it's a gift.

00:27:29.880 It's a gift.

00:27:30.900 Exactly.

00:27:31.880 So then I'm looking around at other SEALs that were older than me and more senior to me

00:27:39.500 and trying to figure out which one of those guys is a good SEAL.

00:27:42.940 And what I realized was that the guys that were working harder for the most part were

00:27:51.560 good SEALs.

00:27:52.180 Now there were, look, there's just some people that are just way talented, right?

00:27:55.660 And we'd show up, you know, three minutes before a run or three minutes before we do

00:28:00.500 a shooting competition and they could just walk through it.

00:28:02.980 No problem.

00:28:03.700 Right.

00:28:04.140 And that's great for them.

00:28:05.840 It wasn't me.

00:28:06.440 I wasn't, I'm not that great at anything, but I saw other guys that might not be a great

00:28:11.520 at anything either, but they worked hard.

00:28:13.740 They showed up to work early.

00:28:15.480 They did the drills that they were supposed to do.

00:28:17.700 They had discipline.

00:28:19.640 And when you have.

00:28:21.020 Has amalgamated statistics.

00:28:23.520 I hope I get this right, but it's approximately correct.

00:28:27.060 If you work 10% longer hours, you make 40% more money.

00:28:33.420 Right.

00:28:33.860 And so, and, and I think your comments about talent are also dead on.

00:28:37.400 It's like in any field of enterprise, there are people who are phenomenally gifted.

00:28:42.360 And, and then if they work really hard, they're even more phenomenally gifted, right?

00:28:47.220 Those are the people who break records, but that talented part, hard work actually works.

00:28:56.100 And with virtually everything, it might not make you the best at whatever it is you're

00:29:02.300 pursuing, but it will certainly make you better than you are.

00:29:04.700 And, and then I have in this, I have this new book.

00:29:08.760 I hope you got a copy because we, did you get a copy?

00:29:11.960 Okay.

00:29:12.280 So I'm bringing it up for a particular reason.

00:29:14.260 I have a chapter in this book called, well, there's two that are relevant.

00:29:18.800 Imagine who you could be and then aim single-mindedly at that.

00:29:22.360 That's one.

00:29:23.020 And then the course, or what would you call a complimentary chapter is work as hard as you

00:29:28.980 possibly can on one thing and see what happens.

00:29:33.020 And that's also predicated on this idea that discipline is a precondition to freedom.

00:29:37.620 So, so you were fortunate, like you had this goal, right?

00:29:41.140 So that meant you had a goal, which is a really big deal because you could learn about goals.

00:29:45.520 You had a sense of what a higher mode of moral being that I would rather be a good seal than

00:29:52.720 the person I am now.

00:29:53.820 Well, it's a, it's a code of behavior and a way of perceiving.

00:29:57.120 So there's an ethic in that.

00:29:58.420 And then you said as well, you know, your conception of what good seal meant changed as

00:30:04.360 you matured, but that's also fine.

00:30:06.820 It wouldn't have changed unless you would have pursued that initial only partially accurate

00:30:12.240 goal.

00:30:13.080 And so that's also a really good thing for people to understand is like, if you don't know

00:30:17.640 what you're doing, aim at something, is it the right thing?

00:30:21.420 No, but it's better than just choosing.

00:30:23.820 So you aim at something and then as you aim and you move towards it, you're going to

00:30:28.660 find out why you're wrong.

00:30:30.040 And then you might recalibrate your aim.

00:30:33.240 And that's going to happen over and over because as you move towards a goal, it recedes or it

00:30:37.600 broadens or it recedes and broadens and otherwise you'd run out of things to do.

00:30:42.560 So, but anyways, back to the, back to the story, you're, you, you have this, this, this identity.

00:30:48.880 And you said it was, it was there in you all right from the beginning.

00:30:51.760 Cause you would play army in, in the, by yourself, even in, in the, in the, in the forest,

00:30:56.520 by your house, I presume.

00:30:57.680 And how, how old were you?

00:30:59.340 Do you think when, how long back can you remember having that as a fascination?

00:31:05.400 I do not remember wanting to do anything else.

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00:35:17.080 So would you say, is that as early as four, three, five, preschool, something like that?

00:35:28.620 Can you remember playing when you were that young?

00:35:31.520 I can't remember, you know, a specific age, but if I think back to, hey, that looks like

00:35:42.300 what I want to do, I remember I want to be a soldier.

00:35:47.620 And do you, okay, you remember when you were a kid?

00:35:49.940 I mean, I'm fascinated by this because, well, one of the things I really noted when I had

00:35:54.240 kids was how much their personality was there right from the beginning.

00:35:58.420 Like, my children are quite different.

00:36:00.640 They have their similarities, but they're quite different from one another.

00:36:03.040 And those differences were there right from the beginning, and they've maintained themselves

00:36:07.260 throughout their lives.

00:36:08.140 And so it's fascinating to see that that destiny, in some sense, is built right into the person

00:36:14.320 to begin with.

00:36:15.780 And so, well, this was built into you by all appearances.

00:36:20.320 And so it manifested itself in what attracted you, even in play as a child.

00:36:26.980 And that's the beginning of identity formulation, that play.

00:36:30.660 And so what was it about being a soldier that you think attracted you when you were a kid?

00:36:35.680 Like, what was it that was so compelling?

00:36:38.060 Because being a soldier is a multidimensional identity.

00:36:41.360 There's the physical combat element of it.

00:36:46.060 There's the strategic element of it.

00:36:47.580 There's the discipline, the camaraderie.

00:36:51.100 What were you playing, do you think?

00:36:55.840 I got to ask this.

00:36:56.920 I was talking to some folks at the Special Operations Command the other day.

00:37:01.260 And they asked me, they set me up with this kind of beautiful possibility or opportunity

00:37:09.500 for me to give some kind of an incredibly beautiful answer to this very question, you

00:37:15.680 know?

00:37:15.900 And there was something along the lines of, you know, at what point did the opportunity

00:37:22.860 to serve and sacrifice for your country reveal itself to you?

00:37:27.440 Something along that, those lines.

00:37:29.740 And all I'm thinking about is when I'm eight years old, 12 years old, 15 years old, I want

00:37:37.500 a machine gun and I want to go fight a war.

00:37:39.740 That's what I want to do.

00:37:40.600 I would love to tell you, I would love to tell you that I, you know, read some heroic book.

00:37:46.060 I read the Odyssey and realized that I don't need to read any of that stuff.

00:37:51.120 Well, that wouldn't be wrong if you were eight anyways, right?

00:37:54.120 I mean, that's why I'm curious about what it was so early, you know?

00:37:58.040 And so, okay.

00:37:58.900 So for you, it had something to do with weaponry, apparently.

00:38:01.980 I got to tell you a story about my father, okay?

00:38:04.300 And tell me if this, like, produces any echoes.

00:38:08.320 Before you go.

00:38:09.620 Yep.

00:38:11.120 Weaponry was like, sure, that's fine, but it could be a club.

00:38:15.640 It wasn't, it wasn't, I wasn't a kid that was obsessed with guns.

00:38:19.420 Okay.

00:38:19.680 It was, and maybe it was just, we're going to get out and, and run around with sticks

00:38:25.540 and try and hit each other or get into rock fights.

00:38:29.820 Did you ever have rock fights when you were?

00:38:31.540 Well, we, we had ice fights because it was Northern Alberta, but also dirt lump fights.

00:38:37.500 And now and then those would have rocks.

00:38:39.300 And I can remember, um, it was usually the Protestant kids against the Catholic kids.

00:38:45.580 I mean, there wasn't that much of a division between those two in our town, but the Catholic

00:38:49.520 kids had their high, their junior high and high school, and we had ours.

00:38:52.980 And so our gangs were separate.

00:38:56.280 And so we would have dirt lump fights in the vacant lots where buildings were being constructed.

00:39:01.400 And those were extremely exciting.

00:39:03.240 You know, now and then you'd take a dirt lump rock in the mouth, and that was a little

00:39:07.200 bit on the painful side.

00:39:08.520 And, but, but, but there's no doubt that it was extremely exciting.

00:39:12.360 And so, and, you know, I cut you off about your dad and the gun.

00:39:16.820 Oh, well, my dad told me something, and then this might be more relevant to, to, to guns,

00:39:21.540 but my dad collects single shot rifles, and he has a lot of them, like hundreds of them.

00:39:27.320 And he's a gunsmith and, and makes stocks and hand carves them.

00:39:31.220 And anyways, he's, he's an artisan in that regard.

00:39:34.560 And it's really, it's a, it's a real focal obsession.

00:39:38.660 He's a great shot.

00:39:39.820 He shot at the provincial level, which would be the state level in the U S but it was single

00:39:44.740 shots and, and he hunted.

00:39:46.840 And so we grew up on moose meat and elk meat and, and he brought elk into Northern Alberta

00:39:51.420 as part of a repopulation attempt.

00:39:54.780 Anyways, I thought for, I could never understand his fascination with, with guns because it

00:40:01.760 was really a deep fascination.

00:40:03.080 So it was, it was something that elicited my curiosity.

00:40:06.300 And at one point I realized that he only hunted with single shots.

00:40:12.860 So he had one shot at whatever he was hunting.

00:40:15.780 So it had to be a good shot.

00:40:17.440 And so he was pushing himself.

00:40:18.920 And then I realized, well, he was really obsessed with hitting the target, taking aim and hitting

00:40:24.260 the target.

00:40:24.940 And I, it was about that time.

00:40:27.260 I learned that the Greek word for, for sin, hamartia meant to miss the target.

00:40:32.160 So there's this tight alignment between taking careful aim at the center of something precisely,

00:40:38.680 and then bringing yourself into alignment so that you would hit that target.

00:40:43.480 There's a deep morality in that.

00:40:45.940 It's a morality of hunting.

00:40:47.300 It might be a morality of combat, and it's really deeply embedded inside of people.

00:40:52.120 And that was what had my father in his, in its, in its grip.

00:40:55.820 And so I would, I was wondering if the, if, if you're, if you're, uh, the automatic interest

00:41:04.980 that, that even the club elicited in you had something to do with that, that seeking, that

00:41:11.520 hunting, that, that target seeking.

00:41:13.820 Or if, you know, perhaps I'm barking up the wrong tree.

00:41:18.020 I would say.

00:41:21.900 No, but when you, when you were talking about getting hit in the head with a dirt clump and

00:41:27.000 whether you get hit or not, when you get done with that situation, you are in an elevated

00:41:33.460 state of mind because that was dangerous.

00:41:37.040 And it was very high level competition because even when you're throwing a baseball or, or,

00:41:45.460 you know, kicking a soccer ball around, there's no real danger in that situation.

00:41:51.520 But when someone's hucking dirt clumps at your head, you get a legitimate rush from that.

00:41:59.420 And it feels good.

00:42:01.960 And it feels.

00:42:03.300 It's exhilarating.

00:42:04.460 One of the most fun.

00:42:05.600 Yes.

00:42:05.880 If there's no doubt that it's exhilarating.

00:42:07.440 One of the most fun days I ever had as a child, this was less dangerous.

00:42:11.940 I, I, I lived next door to a policeman, an RCMP officer.

00:42:18.200 And we went out one day, I was probably about eight into my neighbor's backyard.

00:42:24.060 And she had green tomatoes everywhere, far more than she was ever going to eat.

00:42:29.760 And we had a green tomato war for like an hour and a half.

00:42:33.680 And he was moving them at a pretty good velocity.

00:42:36.300 So if they caught you, especially in the head, you know, you kind of remembered it, but it was

00:42:44.240 exhilarating and it was really fun to engage in that with him.

00:42:47.760 And I really do remember that.

00:42:49.760 And I do remember those, I hadn't until today, but I do remember those dirt lump wars and 1.00

00:42:55.000 there is an exhilaration in pushing yourself like that.

00:42:59.280 So, and I also don't, I don't want to give the impression that I was, you know, running

00:43:04.460 around with camouflage paint, going to high school, or I was, you know, I, I was doing

00:43:09.260 a bunch of other stuff too.

00:43:10.180 I played soccer.

00:43:11.200 I played basketball.

00:43:12.540 I, I, we had, you know, a bunch of different bands.

00:43:15.540 We played music.

00:43:16.400 I, I played bass in a band.

00:43:18.280 I sang in a band.

00:43:19.060 I played guitar.

00:43:20.080 We, we did all kinds of other stuff, but I was always kind of just in the back of my

00:43:26.200 mind, sort of wanted to do that job.

00:43:31.040 All right.

00:43:31.600 So you went to the seals and tell us about that a bit.

00:43:39.060 It was awesome.

00:43:40.520 You know, it's, you're, you're, you're making more money than you could ever figure out to

00:43:49.520 do with, you know, I'm 19 years old and I am the richest person that's ever existed in

00:43:55.100 my mind because I'm making whatever it is, however many thousand dollars every two weeks.

00:44:01.720 And, you know, my expenses were nothing.

00:44:04.580 And so you're just totally stoked.

00:44:07.440 You're getting, you got a great job.

00:44:09.060 You're working out, you're shooting machine guns, you're blowing things up.

00:44:13.280 You're hanging out with a bunch of, bunch of other guys that like to blow things up.

00:44:17.520 And you, you, you can fight each other at the drop of a hat.

00:44:21.280 And then you get done with a fight and you shake hands and then, and then you go eat

00:44:25.280 a steak.

00:44:26.700 And so you're just in this environment and it's perfect.

00:44:31.700 It's, it's freaking awesome.

00:44:34.160 So what was it like?

00:44:35.300 It was awesome.

00:44:37.120 That's what it was like.

00:44:39.380 It's funny.

00:44:40.280 You read accounts of the Navy SEALs and I've never read it as enthusiastic an account as

00:44:45.640 that account right there.

00:44:47.240 And so then how long after you, what happened after you were done your naval, naval SEAL

00:44:52.740 training, what direction did your military career take?

00:44:56.120 Yeah.

00:44:56.260 So I got done with SEAL training.

00:44:57.320 I went to SEAL team one.

00:44:58.240 It was 1991.

00:44:59.060 I just missed the first Gulf war.

00:45:01.260 I was all brokenhearted about that because this war had happened and I didn't know when

00:45:05.720 another one was going to happen.

00:45:07.560 And so what do you do is you train and we trained a bunch.

00:45:12.860 I did a bunch of SEAL platoons, which is you form up with a group of guys, you do a, a

00:45:19.360 training cycle together as a platoon, and then you go on deployment overseas.

00:45:23.080 And when there's no war going on, you go to other countries and you work with foreign

00:45:26.980 nationals and you train them on the skill sets that we have and learn some stuff from

00:45:31.940 them.

00:45:32.580 And then you come back and you do it again.

00:45:34.420 And then eventually from there, I, I, I went into a, where I became a trainer at SEAL team

00:45:39.980 one, um, and taught the tactics to the, the, the SEAL platoons that were now training to

00:45:45.620 go on deployment.

00:45:46.480 And I did that for a couple of years.

00:45:48.060 And then I got picked up for a commissioning program and became an officer in the SEAL teams,

00:45:52.460 which moved me up into a leadership position.

00:45:55.420 And then I did a couple of deployments as a, as a young SEAL leader.

00:45:59.640 Then I had to go to college.

00:46:00.580 The Navy sent me to college because in order to be an officer in the, in the Navy, you

00:46:04.560 have to go to college.

00:46:05.660 And I hadn't been to college.

00:46:06.980 Where'd you go?

00:46:08.140 I went to the university of San Diego.

00:46:10.320 You went to the university of San Diego.

00:46:11.780 What did you take there?

00:46:13.440 I was an English major.

00:46:17.500 All right.

00:46:18.000 So you finished college and then what happened?

00:46:20.400 You're not going to ask me why I was an English major.

00:46:23.080 Why were you an English major?

00:46:25.240 I thought when he hears English major, he's going to say, wait a second, here you are, this

00:46:29.380 guy talking about machine guns and blowing things up.

00:46:31.840 What in God's name are you going to go study English for?

00:46:34.060 I have to say that that thought did pass through my mind.

00:46:37.280 Okay.

00:46:39.080 Why was I an English major?

00:46:40.340 I was an English major because believe it or not, when you're in the SEAL teams, and

00:46:45.420 especially when you're in any officer position, you have to write and read all the time.

00:46:51.720 So when one of your troops does something and they deserve some kind of recognition for that,

00:46:58.740 you have to write them an award.

00:47:00.800 And if the award is written well, there's a much better chance that it'll actually be

00:47:04.600 given to the person that you're writing it for.

00:47:06.960 You have to write evaluations for your troops.

00:47:10.100 And the evaluations that you write is how your troops are judged so that they can be promoted.

00:47:16.420 On top of that, if you want to go do a mission, you have to write a concept of operations,

00:47:24.080 which is a document, which is five, six, seven, eight pages long, that you send up the chain

00:47:30.400 of command that then they scour through and see if they're going to approve your mission or not.

00:47:35.520 You know, that's so insanely important.

00:47:37.360 You know, I mean, one of the things I did a talk at Harvard four years ago, and I

00:47:46.420 pointed out two things to the students in the audience.

00:47:49.380 One was that a tremendous amount of civilization and effort had gone into producing the institution

00:47:57.580 that they were now part of, and that everyone who was part of that institution was hoping

00:48:03.400 that they would come there and learn everything they possibly could that was relevant and important,

00:48:08.560 and that they would be the best possible people they could be, and they would go out in the world

00:48:12.660 and do as much good as they possibly could.

00:48:15.620 That was the essential mission of the enterprise, and that was really the case.

00:48:22.080 And also that learning to write, in particular, was going to make them more powerful than they could imagine.

00:48:30.740 And a number of students came up to me afterwards and said,

00:48:34.140 I really wish someone would have said that to us when we first came here.

00:48:38.140 And it's the writing part of that, I kind of got obsessed with that when I was working as a professor,

00:48:44.300 and I'm working on a piece of software right now to help, which will launch soon, to help people write.

00:48:51.700 Because what I observed in my own career, and it's so interesting, the parallelism is so interesting,

00:48:56.860 but not surprising, is that nothing can stop you if you can write.

00:49:01.320 And it's for the reasons you just laid out.

00:49:04.060 It's like, when you write, you make a case for something, whatever it happens to be.

00:49:10.120 And if you make the best case, well, then you win.

00:49:13.620 And you get whatever it is that you're aiming at.

00:49:17.160 And so, you know, you said, maybe that's why I didn't ask you why you went into English.

00:49:22.200 I guess that might have been the reason, is that the utility of learning to write is so self-evident to me

00:49:28.040 that it could pass by without question.

00:49:30.260 But it's also interesting to think about how it fits into this broader, well, let's say,

00:49:36.500 at least partially military-slash-strategic way of looking at things.

00:49:41.020 You know, you describe the intense relationship between marshalling your arguments properly,

00:49:46.960 getting everything in order on the page, and making strategic progress truly in the military sense

00:49:54.180 that those things are tied together very, very precisely.

00:49:57.040 And it's obviously your ability to communicate as well that's, well, look what it's done.

00:50:02.740 You have your podcast, you have your YouTube channel, you have your books, many of which you self-published.

00:50:08.100 So that ability to communicate is, it's, I just can't understand why it's not presented,

00:50:14.100 especially, not entirely, but especially to adventurous, well, let's say young men.

00:50:19.080 We could say young people.

00:50:20.720 You're adventurous?

00:50:22.320 You want to make a mark?

00:50:23.880 Because you bloody well better learn how to write.

00:50:26.800 Because if you learn how to write, well, then you can think, and you can communicate your thoughts.

00:50:31.100 So not only are you deadly strategically, you become extremely convincing.

00:50:35.420 And then you can go and do anything you want, and no one will stop you.

00:50:39.040 And that's never told to people.

00:50:42.060 And I don't really understand why.

00:50:45.940 You know, you hear the pen is mightier than the sword, which is just a cliche unless it's fleshed out.

00:50:51.200 But the reason, you laid out the reasons perfectly.

00:50:55.020 Yeah.

00:50:55.320 You have to communicate what happened as well as having it had it happen.

00:50:59.220 Right, so you already connected the dots, but obviously, not only am I having to write and present my argument, I'm also having orders being issued to me, which are written.

00:51:12.940 I'm sure you've heard the term rules of engagement.

00:51:15.020 Well, rules of engagement is a 12-page document that is in a bunch of legalese, and I've got to translate that document to my troops, some of whom, you know, barely graduated high school.

00:51:31.920 And so I've got to be able to do that, so I've got to be able to read and then write and be able to then communicate and talk to the team and brief them in a manner that they can actually understand what it is I'm talking about and what it is our mission is and why we're doing this mission.

00:51:48.440 So that was why I decided to study English when I went to college and believe me.

00:51:56.220 And so that was a conscious decision.

00:51:58.240 Absolutely.

00:51:58.980 And with that end in mind, that it was.

00:52:01.320 So tell me exactly what the decision was with regards to studying English.

00:52:06.020 What did you know that, because it's not, as you pointed out, it's not self-evidently the most practical of pursuits and not necessarily what you'd expect someone with a military orientation to pursue.

00:52:18.460 Right.

00:52:18.780 Here's the thought process.

00:52:21.180 I want to be a good SEAL.

00:52:23.740 The good SEALs that I see can communicate, they can write, and they can read.

00:52:29.340 That's what I need to learn how to do.

00:52:31.080 I need to learn how to do that better so that I can persuade my chain of command that we need to do this mission or we need this piece of gear or this guy over here needs to get an award or he needs to get promoted.

00:52:44.220 All those things are done by being able to write and communicate properly.

00:52:48.680 Okay, so let's say you take the example of a SEAL who's got it all, but this literacy.

00:52:57.120 Okay, so what happens to him compared to someone who has all those skills?

00:53:03.640 Well, if he can't write well and he's in charge of six guys and one of those guys works hard or does something that deserves to be recognized, this is the responsibility of that leader to write that person an award.

00:53:21.620 Okay, so he can't reward his good workers, his good soldiers.

00:53:26.300 He can give him a pat on the back, but a pat on the back isn't going to get him promoted.

00:53:30.080 An award is actually worth some points towards your promotion.

00:53:33.880 And the people that are on that board that are giving that reward, they're never going to meet that leader and they're definitely not going to meet that guy.

00:53:41.360 There's no bias.

00:53:43.380 It's based on this piece of paper that you hand in.

00:53:45.960 You hand in this piece of paper, they read the piece of paper and they say award approved or award not approved.

00:53:50.140 Or you want to do a mission and you send that up the chain of command and it's the same thing.

00:53:55.920 It gets to a certain point where they're just looking at it and reading and trying to decipher this pile of junk that you put together.

00:54:02.960 And by the way, if I'm in charge and Jordan sends me a concept of operations that doesn't make any sense,

00:54:09.900 why would I possibly let you go out and execute an operation that I can't even understand what it is you're trying to do?

00:54:16.780 So it has a huge impact.

00:54:18.820 It has a huge impact.

00:54:21.220 Okay, well, I'm dwelling on this because it's upsetting to me.

00:54:24.640 I would say that young people in particular aren't stringently instructed that the ability to,

00:54:35.440 that literacy makes them powerful in every way they can possibly imagine, except the absolutely immediate.

00:54:41.980 And so it's just sad to me that it's not sold in that manner.

00:54:49.180 You want to be weak, stay illiterate.

00:54:51.940 You want to be strong.

00:54:53.360 It's like put yourself together physically.

00:54:55.560 Fair enough, man.

00:54:56.640 Get brave and street smart.

00:54:59.640 But then you could add some literacy to that and you're an unstoppable machine.

00:55:03.340 And so I concur 100%.

00:55:06.720 And, you know, you said being literate makes you powerful.

00:55:10.480 And throughout recent history, if we're trying to oppress someone, what we don't want them to be able to do is read or write or articulate themselves.

00:55:21.540 Right.

00:55:21.920 Well, we haven't even talked about reading.

00:55:23.740 You know, we just talked about writing and fair enough.

00:55:26.020 So, but obviously you studied English.

00:55:28.440 So you also read.

00:55:29.600 And so what's the advantage to that as far as you're concerned, practically speaking?

00:55:33.480 Well, obviously there are so many lessons that you can pull out of books and you, you can get to a point where nothing really surprises you because you've at least seen some indication of what can unfold through reading.

00:55:53.880 So, again, for me, it's very much focused on combat and war, but there's lessons that you learn and you say, oh, I've seen that before.

00:56:07.360 There's a book, it's a book called About Face, which I think the last time you and I talked, you were, I think you were writing the foreword for the Gulag.

00:56:18.100 And I was about to write the foreword to, I don't know if that's your favorite book, but I was lucky enough to be able to write the foreword for my favorite book, which was re-released because I was talking about it all the time.

00:56:31.200 And the book is called About Face.

00:56:34.620 And it's about a guy that was in the Korean War and then he was in the Vietnam War and his name is Colonel David Hackworth.

00:56:40.460 But I would read that book when I was on deployment, I would read, open up that book anywhere and I would read two pages or three pages before I'd go to bed if I was in my bed that night.

00:56:52.120 And there were so many lessons that correlated to what I was actually going through.

00:56:56.640 And a real obvious example was when he was in Vietnam, he's working with the South Vietnamese soldiers and therefore by proxy, the South Vietnamese government.

00:57:05.120 And guess what? They're all corrupt and they're not motivated and they don't have the right gear. 0.88

00:57:09.440 And here we are in Iraq and we're working with Iraqi soldiers and therefore by proxy, we're working with the Iraqi government. 0.81

00:57:14.600 Guess what? They're all corrupted. They're not well equipped.

00:57:18.400 And how did he deal with it? How do we deal with it?

00:57:21.580 So there's an example of when you read, you can learn and you don't have to go through the school of hard knocks.

00:57:29.500 You don't have to get punched in the face repeatedly with things that turn out to be situations that other people have absolutely gone through.

00:57:38.860 And the amount of the amount of the level of capability increases so much by seeing something one single time.

00:57:51.060 Well, if I see something one time, I'm infinitely better than if I'd never seen it before.

00:57:56.120 So if, if it's like those, you know, those little puzzles, they give you a little puzzle, some kind of a mind bender, right?

00:58:04.320 The mind benders only work on you one time. The riddle only works on you one time. 0.92

00:58:07.860 Then you go, I know the answer to that. That's the answer. You know, you never get fooled by that again.

00:58:13.000 So just knowing, just seeing it one time, you're infinitely better.

00:58:17.760 So when you read enough, you're capturing all these lessons. And, and you know what, it's, I got to say this.

00:58:26.020 It's not just reading. It's not just reading. And, and I learned this because as I started doing my podcast and many of my podcasts are just me reading books.

00:58:37.580 I realized how to read more intently, even more intently than I did when I was going to college and I was going to be, you know, writing a paper about a book.

00:58:49.780 And so I'd read it in a certain way, but even that reading was a little bit detached, a little bit detached.

00:58:55.960 It's because you're looking for a theme or you're looking for character development or what have you.

00:59:00.820 But when you read to learn about human nature and life, you, you, you detach less and you kind of put yourself in there and you experience it a little bit closer.

00:59:15.080 And then when you take a step back, you go, Oh yeah, I know what he was thinking right there. Cause I was right there with him.

00:59:20.680 And so there's a certain attitude. You kind of have to put yourself into the work and, and really read it with that kind of intensity.

00:59:32.020 If for lack of a better word, is it, is it possible for a human being to read intensely?

00:59:36.560 Absolutely.

00:59:37.520 Because that's what I try and do. I get there.

00:59:39.480 That's no different than, than, than acting intensely or playing intensely.

00:59:43.180 Of course you want to put the book on, you want to become that person that can rattle you up, man.

00:59:49.400 Especially if the person is thinking all sorts of things that you've never thought.

00:59:53.660 I mean, I love reading for that reason. I could pick my peers too, which I really loved.

00:59:58.880 It's like, well, you know, I have these people around me, but then there's these people who, who've lived before me and in different places.

01:00:06.220 And I can set them up on my shelf. I can enter into their world and I can benefit from everything they've thought and saturate myself with that person.

01:00:15.080 And it's, and it's very disruptive, especially if the person that you're reading has a mind that's more powerful and more well-developed than your own.

01:00:22.660 I mean, Friedrich Nietzsche spun me around for about three years and I was reading Jung at the same time intensely and the same thing, you know, it, it was very disruptive, but unbelievably useful, unbelievably useful to try on other people like that.

01:00:39.980 And you get the benefit of their entire life distilled into their, into their book.

01:00:45.160 You know, it, it, it's 30 years of work. I read this one book called the Neuropsychology of Anxiety, which is a, it's a great scientific work.

01:00:53.480 I think it's the greatest neuropsychological work of the last 50 years. It's very hard book. I think it has 1800 references, something like that.

01:01:02.880 And this guy, Jeffrey Gray, he actually read all those references and he understood them. And so it took me six months to read the book, but I got an entire education out of it.

01:01:12.900 I got to experience in six months what it took him 30 years to learn. Like what a gift that is. It's, it's, it's unbelievable.

01:01:20.440 I was, I was listening to an interview with, uh, Gary Kasparov, I think you said Russian. He was a chess world champion for 20 years, something like this.

01:01:30.920 And he, they asked him and the interviewer didn't ask him directly if he could beat this young, young guy named Magnus Carlson, who's the current kind of prodigy of chess.

01:01:44.080 He's just phenomenal and the highest chest rating ever, et cetera, et cetera. And he didn't get asked directly if he could beat him, but it was definitely implied if I remember the interview correctly.

01:01:55.240 And, and what was very interesting to me, Gary Kasparov, there was two things that I found interesting. Number one was, he said, he's younger than me.

01:02:04.660 And he didn't mean that. And like, that was an advantage for, for Gary. He meant it. He's younger than me. So he has an advantage.

01:02:12.800 Magnus has an advantage because he's younger. And I kind of thought to myself, well, that's kind of weird because this isn't a physical, this isn't a wrestling match.

01:02:20.540 This isn't a jujitsu match. Why would that help? And then sure enough, you learn a little bit about cognitive decline.

01:02:28.720 And Gary Kasparov is 57 years old when he did this interview. And guess what you start? Well, depending on who you are, but you start to see cognitive, cognitive decline around that time.

01:02:41.380 Hell, it kicks in at 25. Well, there you go. There's, you can, IQ is pretty unitary, but you can fracture it into crystallized and, and fluid.

01:02:51.340 And fluid IQ is what enables you to learn. And it declines from 25 onward. Crystallized intelligence continues to grow, roughly speaking,

01:03:01.140 because it's partly dependent on such things as vocabulary, which you can learn and which accumulate.

01:03:06.120 But interestingly enough, you know, you were talking about physically, the best way to stave off cognitive decline is not cognitive activity.

01:03:15.640 It's exercise, weightlifting and cardiovascular exercise can, will, is the, it's by far the most potent means of staving off cognitive decline.

01:03:24.660 So Kasparov would have the advantage in terms of experience, but the younger guy would have the edge on, on sheer raw brain power.

01:03:31.860 That's what I thought too. That's what I thought too. But guess what? It's wrong. And it's wrong for the exact reason that you just said.

01:03:41.200 So Magnus Carlson, when he's 11 years old, he gets to open up a book and see every single match and move that Gary Kasparov ever made.

01:03:53.420 Because that's what they do. They document that stuff.

01:03:55.700 And so what he got to do was what you got to do. You got to learn a person's 30 years experience in six months.

01:04:02.960 Well, this young kid, Matt, so, so this, where it might've taken Gary Kasparov, you know,

01:04:09.340 eight years or four years to figure out how to get out of some particular quandary on the chessboard.

01:04:16.000 Well, Magnus just opened to a page in a book and said, Oh, that, if I ever get into that quandary, I'm there.

01:04:19.700 And so what Magnus got to do is he got to start from here and build. And so I make this point from a

01:04:27.980 leadership perspective. We can do the same things as, as leaders. We don't have to figure all this

01:04:33.800 stuff out. We can jump up to Gary Kasparov's level, or at least get a baseline of what he knew

01:04:39.560 and, and win because we learned. It's very interesting to me.

01:04:44.860 Well, you think, and again, with regards to selling this sort of thing, you know, I'm stunned

01:04:50.260 that it's possible to make history boring. For example, people should be so enthralled with history

01:04:54.940 that they can't get enough of it. But with reading, you imagine you have this opportunity to learn

01:05:00.600 whatever you want from the greatest people who ever lived along that dimension. And, and

01:05:08.780 well, it's stunning to me that that is a hard sell. It's mysterious that, that it's, that,

01:05:22.620 that it isn't something that everyone is just clamoring for. I mean, that, to me, that points

01:05:27.060 to a devastating failure, inadequacy of the education system, a mysterious inadequacy.

01:05:32.880 Yeah. There's a, I think maybe the transaction isn't always clear for people. I always talk

01:05:41.100 about, well, if you're going to sell somebody, if you're going to sell somebody a book, you know,

01:05:44.700 if I'm going to sell you a book, Jordan, you've got to give me $20 and eight hours of your time,

01:05:51.500 right? That's what, you know, you're going to give me, you're going to give me $20 and you're

01:05:55.240 going to give me eight hours of time, which you would probably, you know, have other things that

01:05:59.980 you might need to do. And the transaction is not always clear of what you're going to get out of

01:06:04.500 that, especially when, look, you can spend a lot of time reading books and not get as much as you

01:06:08.320 might want. You might not get your $20 worth out of a book. So you have to be somewhat selective. Now,

01:06:13.020 luckily, it's not even that hard to figure out which books to read because there's so many reviews

01:06:17.820 and, and, and, and history about where these books came from and the, and the productivity that

01:06:22.820 they resulted in. So, but I think it's hard sometimes for, look, I can, I can only speak for

01:06:28.940 myself. When I was younger, it was really hard for me to figure out that transaction.

01:06:34.940 Yeah, fair enough. Like I had a librarian when I was 13 who told me what to read,

01:06:43.800 which is what a teacher should do, right? There's nothing a teacher can do for you. That's better

01:06:47.960 than say, well, here's 10 books that will change you completely. And who actually knows that to be

01:06:52.680 the case. And one of the things I'd really like to do, I I've toyed with, um, well, with the whole

01:06:59.500 concept of online education, one thing I'd really like to do is to divide up the variety of, of domains

01:07:06.440 of learning and identify the top 10 books in each domain. So to ask an expert, it's like, well,

01:07:12.300 you're a historian, you're a great historian. What 10 books are crucial? And I have a list on my

01:07:17.960 website, a list of recommended books. There's about a hundred of them that have been instrumental

01:07:21.680 for me. And lots of people have used that list to purchase books. So that's been really good,

01:07:27.480 but I'd really like to extend, extend and expand it. Yeah. I have the same thing on my website,

01:07:33.800 the books from the podcast and same thing, all kinds of those books get sold and it's,

01:07:39.620 it's beautiful to see, but the people that are checking the website or listening to the podcast,

01:07:45.120 they know that that those books have been through a filter. They're there for a reason they're there

01:07:49.300 because they're going to be worth that transaction. And I think that's a tough sell for, for a lot of

01:07:55.720 people. They can't figure out, maybe they've invested in books before and they didn't quite

01:07:58.840 get the return on investment that they wanted and buy two or three books and 50 or $60 and 20 or 30

01:08:05.200 hours. That's a great observation. I think, because one of the advantages to coming from a literate

01:08:10.940 background is that you do in fact, reduce the transaction costs because there's an infinite

01:08:16.540 number of books. I mean, well, no, there isn't, but as far as we're concerned, there might as well be.

01:08:21.980 And so the question of what to read really is daunting. If you don't know anyone who reads,

01:08:26.800 where do I start? And, and, and how can I not be a fool in doing this? So, 0.98

01:08:33.120 well, okay, back to English. So what, what were you reading when you were in university? Was it,

01:08:40.060 was it fiction novels? Was it nonfiction? What, what were you, what were you focusing on?

01:08:45.620 It was like your basic English literature. That's what I studied. And so I read everything. I read

01:08:52.620 everything, you know, from each one of the little periods and it took the various classes and, and

01:08:56.940 really as trite as this may sound, it was actually the, the most impact was from Shakespeare.

01:09:04.460 It was the most impact on, on multiple levels. And I'll tell you the primary level. And when I've

01:09:11.640 covered Shakespeare on my podcast, I explained this to people, people think, well, you know,

01:09:16.800 I didn't really understand, but I read it and understand it. And I, I, so I start off when I

01:09:21.720 talk about Shakespeare on my podcast, I start off by saying, listen, if you think you're going to just

01:09:27.960 pick up Shakespeare, open it up and read it and understand it, you're not going to, because it's

01:09:34.260 barely written in English. It's barely written in English. It's almost another language. And so 1.00

01:09:40.480 you're not going to be able to just pick it up and read through it. It's, it's, it's written in an

01:09:45.240 almost other language. So what you have to do is you have to start to interpret it. And so what I

01:09:50.060 realized with, with Shakespeare is number one, the weight of the words that these words were so

01:09:56.260 pregnant with meaning that you had to pull those words and parse those words and pull those words

01:10:03.880 apart to see all the depth that each individual word had. And then the way that they're put together.

01:10:10.400 And what was great about this was by the time I was back, cause then I went right back into the

01:10:15.080 SEAL teams and somebody would hand me a rules of engagement document. And that was written by some

01:10:19.240 lawyer in Washington, DC. And I'd pull it out and say, wait a second, this word, I don't know what this

01:10:23.260 word means. Let's pull this word out. Let's see what this, let's see what this actual definition

01:10:26.720 of this particular word is and how that changes my viewpoint of these rules of engagement. And how

01:10:30.760 can I translate that for my troops so that they actually know what to do? So that part for me was

01:10:37.840 from a reading perspective, starting to read Shakespeare and, and saying, oh, okay, you're not

01:10:43.380 going to understand this. And if you don't understand something, that's okay. You pull out the Oxford

01:10:48.740 English dictionary and you look it up and then you not just find out what the meaning of the word is,

01:10:53.700 but what's the root word and where does it come from and what kind of depth and what kind of...

01:10:57.700 Yeah. And that's really, that's, that's unbelievably useful to, to discover the connotation of words.

01:11:02.960 And the Oxford English dictionary is particularly good for that because you, you discover things that

01:11:08.900 you'd never guess by looking at how the word developed. I mentioned the word hamartia, like the fact

01:11:14.280 that the word for sin was derived from an archery concept was revelatory to me. It's like, that's

01:11:19.800 so cool. It ties this moral concept, abstract philosophy back down to something as, as primordial

01:11:28.080 as weaponry and hunting. And just the fact that that's the metaphor is absolutely fascinating. And

01:11:35.120 then there's the overlap in meaning that I already referred to. And virtually every word is like that

01:11:39.880 because word is an ancient artifact. It's like, it's, it's, it's like an, it's like an animal in

01:11:44.920 some sense. It has an evolutionary history and it transforms across time and each word kind of,

01:11:50.280 it carries the echoes of its past with it too, because each word, um, attracts other words in a

01:11:57.400 particular unique way. So it kind of lives in a word ecosystem as well. And the ecosystem contain

01:12:03.080 information about the history of that word. And you think, well, why is that important? It's like,

01:12:07.640 well, Hey, guess what? You think in words, you talk in words, you have all these archaic,

01:12:14.160 uh, what are these archaic entities, these words, these living entities that you use. It's like,

01:12:21.460 the more you know about them, the more you know about you, the more you know about other people

01:12:25.460 and the better you are at formulating and communicating your ideas. There's nothing left.

01:12:30.700 There's nothing lost in that kind of investigation. Nothing. There's nothing but gain there.

01:12:35.400 So, yeah. And that's, that was, so that was the, uh, that was the English road for me. And,

01:12:41.060 and it was good thing. I asked you that question. Yeah. Really, really insightful for you to come up

01:12:47.300 with that. Thank you. Thank you. All right. So, so, and you, did you have, did you enjoy university?

01:12:56.020 Did you find a community there? No. Okay. So when I was going to university, I was married. I, I had

01:13:01.960 two kids. When I got to university, I had three kids. When I left, I was not a university student.

01:13:07.380 I was in fact, in fact, I would sit in the front row during my classes. I would have three pencils

01:13:16.280 and three pens lined up and staged on my desk. I would be ready to take notes when the, when,

01:13:22.220 if the teacher said something I didn't understand, I'd be sitting in the front row, raise my hand. I

01:13:25.460 don't understand what you just said. Can you explain that? And, and meanwhile, you know,

01:13:28.620 I'm 28 years old and there's a bunch of 18 years olds in there and they just want to, you know,

01:13:33.920 go out and hang out with their friends. And I'm there, I'm in there to, I'd love to really sound,

01:13:40.700 come off sounding good and tell you that I was there to learn, but I was there to get A's,

01:13:44.100 which meant I did have to learn. So I went at it as a competition and I was competing,

01:13:50.440 not with the other students. I was competing with the teachers because I'm a little bit crazy.

01:13:54.160 Sometimes I would want to make sure that they couldn't ask me a question on their test

01:13:57.880 that I didn't know the answer to. So that's what I did. And so did I have fun? Maybe not.

01:14:04.320 And one thing I, when I got back to the SEAL teams, what I told the guys, I'd say, you know

01:14:10.900 what I learned in college? And they'd say, what? And I said, I learned never, ever, ever, ever get

01:14:15.860 out of the teams ever. Never get out of, sorry, get out of. Never get out of the teams, the SEAL teams.

01:14:22.160 Never get out of the team. Okay. Okay. Well, you know, I taught older students in Boston and

01:14:29.280 undergraduates and the undergraduates, especially in Boston, but also at the University of Toronto

01:14:36.140 were very, very bright and generally very hardworking. The older students were generally

01:14:42.460 not as highly selected, but man, they were committed. And most of them had had jobs that

01:14:49.800 they weren't thrilled with, let's say, and had a hunger for what education could bring them that

01:14:55.980 the younger people lacked. And so it does seem to me often, and maybe this is just because I'm

01:15:00.940 getting older, that after high school, it might be good for people who want to pursue university

01:15:06.840 to go do something that they're qualified for, which isn't much at that point, for a year or two,

01:15:13.520 so that when they do go to college or university, they understand just exactly what they're being

01:15:18.900 offered. Yeah, but I couldn't agree more. Working in the regular world will definitely make you

01:15:27.840 appreciate the opportunities that you may have if you go and learn more in the world.

01:15:35.080 All right. So you came out of university, you had three kids, you were married. What happens next?

01:15:42.320 I go back to the SEAL teams and go through the rest of my career. I showed up at a SEAL team.

01:15:50.960 September 11th had happened. So I show up at a SEAL team. I become a platoon commander at a SEAL team

01:15:56.360 and then go on deployment. I get done with that deployment. That deployment was primarily to Baghdad,

01:16:03.080 although we worked kind of all over Iraq. Got done with that deployment. I went and became

01:16:07.220 the aide de camp for the admiral that was in charge of all the SEALs at that point in time. And so that

01:16:14.040 was sort of an, well, not even sort of, it was a very administrative job, but it was also a huge

01:16:20.280 opportunity for me to get to see the SEAL community in the most broad way that I could. So I got to learn

01:16:29.840 a lot there. And then I went back to a SEAL team and was now what's called a task unit commander,

01:16:36.440 which is two SEAL platoons combined together. And I was in charge of two SEAL platoons combined

01:16:42.720 together, which is called a task unit. My task unit was called task unit bruiser. And we deployed

01:16:48.400 to Ramadi, Iraq. And that was in the summer of 2006, very tough fighting, very tough battle

01:16:55.860 and came home from that deployment. Hey, so could I, let me, let me ask you there. So can you tell

01:17:02.440 me, can you describe a typical day or a typical week? Like what was it like to be there? I like all

01:17:09.740 the details, what you get, tell me what happens when you get up in the morning, what did your day look

01:17:15.020 like? So we're there, we showed up there. And as soon as we got there and we knew going into it

01:17:23.160 in 2005, 2006, if you can remember watching the news in 2005, 2006, just about every day you would

01:17:30.920 see in the news that there was three soldiers killed in Al-Ambar province or five Marines killed

01:17:39.660 in Al-Ambar province or three Marines wounded in Al-Ambar province. And the capital of Al-Ambar

01:17:45.620 province is the city of Ramadi. And the vast majority of those casualties were happening inside the city of

01:17:50.800 Ramadi. And we knew that going there. And when you say we, you say we were deployed there,

01:17:57.100 who are you, you're obviously referring to the country, to your country, but what does we mean

01:18:02.480 when you make, when you say that? But when I say we, in this particular case, I'm talking about

01:18:06.600 my SEAL task unit. So I had, and that's how many, how many people? Yeah. So I had about

01:18:12.000 35 to 40 SEALs most of the time. And then another 60, around 60 support personnel. And these people

01:18:22.840 are armorers that, you know, can fix our weapons and mechanics that can fix our Humvees and intelligence

01:18:30.600 people that gather information for us and radio operators that can receive our radio calls. So

01:18:35.660 there's a big support network that goes with the, the SEAL task unit as we deployed.

01:18:42.100 And why was it a SEAL enterprise? What, what was specific about this deployment that, that

01:18:46.300 required this, the, whatever it is that the SEALs bring and what is it exactly that the SEALs bring

01:18:52.500 that's specific? So on this particular deployment at this time, at this point in time, SEALs were

01:18:58.160 deploying to Iraq all the time. We were, there was always SEALs in Iraq. My first deployment was in

01:19:04.740 2003, 2004. And we were in the beginning of that deployment, we were the only SEAL platoon there.

01:19:10.660 And then by this time, there would be many more SEALs. I forget what the number is, but

01:19:15.720 so we were in Iraq and we were conducting special operations missions. And in particular in Ramadi,

01:19:24.400 when we got there, so standard SEAL operation on my first deployment was get, gather intelligence,

01:19:34.740 from various sources. So, so through various sources, we would gather intelligence about the

01:19:41.460 location of a bad guy. Okay. So you had, you had a variety of people who were targets identified and

01:19:48.520 they were leaders of, of what made, what marked them out as bad? What were their characteristics?

01:19:56.980 These are, these are people, well, we want to talk about their psychological characteristics.

01:20:00.740 No, no, no. I mean, you might not be able to do a better job than that. I can tell you what they

01:20:04.500 were doing for a living was trying to kill Americans, trying to kill coalition forces, 0.89

01:20:09.200 trying to kill other Iraqis, trying to create chaos and mayhem for the interim government in Iraq.

01:20:14.520 These are. And were they generally leaders of leaders of a group that you would target or the,

01:20:19.280 are these people who were involved in the army on the other side or like put them in context?

01:20:24.800 Yeah. So there's no, there's no, I mean, the Iraqi army is actually on our side, right? So these,

01:20:30.220 the Iraqi army is our friends and that's who we're working alongside. And now early in the war,

01:20:36.080 not so much because the, the coalition forces made a decision to disband the entire Iraqi military.

01:20:44.940 Right. Right. Well, this is why I wondered if there were people with on the military,

01:20:48.800 to what degree there were people with military training that were facing you.

01:20:52.340 Yes. So since that happened a lot. And as a matter of fact, in, in the city of Ramadi,

01:20:58.580 there, there used to be a massive military Iraqi military base there. And so a bunch of

01:21:04.000 former Iraqi military lived there. There was a whole area that was called the, it was,

01:21:08.680 there was an area called the officer housing. There was an area in Ramadi that was called the

01:21:13.520 officer housing where Iraqi officers used to live. So, and I'm not nailing that name,

01:21:18.260 but it's something like that. So yes, there was, there was former Iraqi regime army people that

01:21:26.460 were out there fighting. There was also foreign fighters.

01:21:29.480 And so would they have their own little groups, their bands of people that were fighting with

01:21:32.920 them? You were talking, you were targeting leaders. I'm just wondering how people were selected.

01:21:37.280 So the seals were after specific individuals, generally speaking.

01:21:42.000 Yes. And here's what we figured out. If you only target the leaders, well, it's going to be a lot

01:21:49.760 harder to catch them because they're laying low and they're moving around and, and they try and,

01:21:57.120 they try and give misinformation about where they are and whatnot. So what we'd go and go out and grab,

01:22:03.020 you know, one of their lieutenants, grab one of their soldiers and find out where the lieutenant is,

01:22:06.820 grab the lieutenant and find out where the leader is. So we, there would be these cell networks,

01:22:12.540 these little, these little networks, and maybe they're a mortar cell and they're,

01:22:16.220 they're dropping mortars and they're a roadside bomb cell and that's what they're doing.

01:22:19.320 And so we would figure out who these bad guys were. And then through these various intelligence

01:22:24.260 sources, we would find out a location. Maybe it was a mid-level guy. Maybe it was a high-level guy.

01:22:31.080 Maybe it was a low-level guy. And then once we know their location,

01:22:34.500 we're going to get them.

01:22:37.420 What were the typical motivations of the people that you were pursuing? What were they fighting for?

01:22:45.220 So there's a variety of motivation. Some of the, you know, if you're a frontline,

01:22:50.200 guess what? If you're a 15 year old kid with no money, guess what's a good motivator? Money.

01:22:55.040 And you, and these, the insurgents say, yep. The insurgents say, Hey, we'll give you a hundred

01:23:02.920 bucks to go launch an RPG at the American base. So that's their motivation. End of story.

01:23:09.300 The higher you get up the chain of command, the more you're going to start leaning towards

01:23:14.460 legitimate jihadists that now there's jihadists throughout the chain of command. Don't get me

01:23:20.260 wrong. And I mean, hardcore jihadists. And, and I remember the first time I, I was in my first

01:23:25.800 deployment. The first time I saw a legit hardcore jihadist, you can tell that these, this guy hated

01:23:35.300 us. And it was very clear from the look on his face when we captured him, it was completely, he was

01:23:41.960 filled with seething hatred. So there's jihadists throughout the chain of command. And that guy was

01:23:47.340 like, so, so, so the jihadist motivation was, well, by definition, in some sense, a religious

01:23:54.220 motivation, but your experience of it was that it was primarily a visceral hate and hatred for what

01:24:00.180 do you think? I mean, obviously you're an occupying force, let's say, and no, and, and America is seen

01:24:06.500 at least among the jihadists of that time as, as a, a truly satanic force, I suppose. I mean,

01:24:14.940 what's motivating, what was your experience of what was motivating the hatred?

01:24:20.420 Yeah, it's, it's everything you just said, but I mean, you can trace it all the way back to

01:24:24.160 the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I mean, you can, they're, they're going to draw and see,

01:24:30.100 view, view the West as evil, as the great Satan. And, and so that's what.

01:24:37.180 What did you think at that point about the morality of the endeavor? I mean, because this is why I'm

01:24:43.820 curious, like, and please do correct me. I'm sure I'm wrong about many of the things that I think,

01:24:49.240 but it seems to me that the clearer your moral sense, when you're engaged in a battle,

01:24:55.960 the more likely you are all things considered to win, because you're not, part of you isn't going

01:25:01.940 to be fighting against you. Right. And I mean, in any enterprises like that, if I find that if I'm

01:25:07.660 involved in a prod project and I have reservations, then the part of me that has reservations, 20% of

01:25:15.160 me pushes against the other 80%. And then I'm only 60% as effective as I might be. And so whenever I

01:25:22.020 engage in an enterprise, I try to walk through it ethically and see, well, am I actually committed

01:25:27.580 to this? What qualms do I have? What, what doubts do I have? What resistances do I have? Because

01:25:33.380 that's going to make me weak. And so when you go into battle, I presume it's the same thing that you

01:25:39.040 have to believe. I know they say that soldiers also fight very hard for the guy who's in the foxhole

01:25:45.060 next to them. So there's that brotherhood camaraderie, but you go there as a representative

01:25:50.440 of your country as well, your nation. And, and there is that, there has to be that ethical dimension to it.

01:25:56.500 And so what, how did you guys deal with that?

01:26:02.860 Looking at what we're doing and, and what's, what's really interesting is even though when you

01:26:08.840 stare at it from a strategic perspective, when you say, oh, as a Western power, as this country,

01:26:15.920 we're going in here and we could argue all day long about whether that's a right call or a wrong call,

01:26:24.160 whether that's morally correct, or whether it's an immoral move, we could have arguments about that

01:26:29.040 all day. Yes. Well, they've been going on for 3000 years in the Middle East, right? Right. Endless 0.91

01:26:34.180 arguments about what's right. And, and here's what, here's what one of the nice benefits of being on

01:26:44.400 the ground is you get to see what's happening, what's actually happening. So what you see in Iraq,

01:26:53.140 when you're actually on the ground is for instance, in Ramadi, what you see and what we saw is

01:26:59.760 the Iraqi populace who are a bunch of normal people that want to carry out their lives and

01:27:07.920 raise their kids and run whatever business they're going to run. That's what they want to do. They want 0.61

01:27:14.520 to, they want, they actually want life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is what they want.

01:27:21.260 That's a normal Iraqi family. When we would, when we would go to an Iraqi family's house,

01:27:25.380 that's pretty much what you're dealing with. And amongst those normal people that just want to

01:27:33.680 live their lives in peace, there are insurgents and the insurgents want power. They want control

01:27:42.820 and they are willing to do anything to get it. And so when you see fathers beheaded and their heads

01:27:55.340 left in the yard of a family, because he had, you know, had relate, he, he was, he was working with

01:28:05.400 a shake that had said things against Al Qaeda. And now this guy is beheaded. There was a guy that was

01:28:12.980 skinned alive. There was torture. There was rape. So when you are on the ground and you see this stuff

01:28:21.640 happening and you see the local populace clapping and cheering, when you kill insurgents,

01:28:30.180 your strategic vision isn't quite in focus as much as what you're seeing right in front of you

01:28:39.920 with your own two eyes. And so therefore the 20% of you that might be arguing whether this is right or

01:28:48.780 wrong, when you see families slaughtered, you, you very quickly tell that 20% of your brain that

01:28:59.640 you don't, you need to look at what's happening right here. This is, this, this is, this is immoral

01:29:05.180 and we need to do what we can to help these people. And do you, did you feel then? And, and then again,

01:29:13.040 now, I mean, it's a quagmire, it's an ethical quagmire, the Middle East. And so it seems in some 0.91

01:29:22.280 sense that no matter what you do there, it's wrong. And, and I'm not trying to convince you of

01:29:29.620 that. Believe me, I'm, I'm really curious about this. You felt when you were there that you were on

01:29:35.340 the side that was doing the right things. Do you, um, and now when you look back, I mean, I don't

01:29:44.620 know what to make of what, what happened with the U S in the Middle East over the last 15 years,

01:29:48.940 I'm just as happy. And perhaps you are as well. There's less engagement in foreign wars now than

01:29:55.500 there was 10 years ago in the U S right. That seems to have receded to some degree. And that perhaps

01:30:01.460 that's a good thing. What do you think about the, about, about America's involvement in Iraq? What,

01:30:09.540 what conclusions have you come to? So you, you talked about this argument that you're going to

01:30:16.180 have in your own head. Well, you are also going to have that argument on a national level, right?

01:30:25.260 You're going to have a national level argument of whether this is the right thing or the wrong

01:30:29.260 thing to do. So my scale, my measure of this is if you are going to go to war,

01:30:40.620 if you are going to go to war, you have to make sure before you go that you have the proper will,

01:30:53.340 the proper will. And there's two types of will that you need to have. If you're going to go to war,

01:31:00.120 the first type of will that you need to have, if you're going to go to war is you have to have the

01:31:06.020 will to kill. You have to have the will to kill. And guess what? I am sorry to inform everybody.

01:31:14.640 It is not just the will to kill the enemy. Because when you go to war, war is an imperfect,

01:31:23.560 is an imperfect endeavor. And no matter how hard you try to just kill the enemy, you will kill

01:31:32.400 civilians. You will kill women. You will kill children. That is what is going to happen. 1.00

01:31:38.120 That is what is going to happen if you go to war. So you have to make sure you have the will

01:31:46.380 to do that. That sometimes you're going to drop a bomb and it's going to land and it's going to kill 0.75

01:31:52.900 women and children. That's what's going to happen. And anybody that thinks anything different 0.99

01:31:58.720 is naive and ignorant. We seem to let our politicians often convince us that that's possible, but it's not. 0.94

01:32:08.120 So you have to have the will to kill. And then on top of that, obviously, you have to have the will

01:32:15.640 to die. You have to have, you have to know and understand that if you embark in a war,

01:32:24.840 your sons and daughters are going to be killed. That is what is going to happen. And anybody that says

01:32:34.780 it's not going to happen is naive and ignorant. Now, I think before we go to war, oftentimes we 0.98

01:32:43.320 rationalize that we can mitigate the risk of killing. We can mitigate the risk of dying.

01:32:50.640 And for some reason, we think we can mitigate those risks down to zero, which is impossible.

01:32:54.520 impossible. So if you have the will, if you look at a situation and say, we need to do something here

01:33:05.400 for moral reasons, for national security reasons, we need to take action.

01:33:11.760 Okay. So let, so let me ask you a question there, if you don't mind.

01:33:15.560 Um, you know, whenever I have had to take difficult action in the past, so take to take a risk.

01:33:27.240 My justification for that. So what allowed me to organize my will, let's say was

01:33:32.940 a belief that inaction was a worse crime. So

01:33:40.620 I'm trying to think through

01:33:45.880 what it takes to conjure up the will that you just described, morally speaking.

01:33:54.560 And it's very difficult to talk about the morality of war, but it's absolutely necessary, clearly.

01:33:58.980 Do you believe that when in the situation in Iraq, do you think that the argument was laid

01:34:06.960 forth? It's, it's, it's such a, it's, it's, so there was a terrible attack on New York 9 11. And the response was

01:34:20.880 focused on Iraq. That's correct. So far.

01:34:28.300 Yes.

01:34:28.800 On Afghanistan immediately. And yes, thereafter focused on Iraq. Yes.

01:34:32.660 All right. It was never obvious to me why the focus shifted to Iraq.

01:34:38.980 Do you, do you have any sense of why that was? I know that there was a lot of thought at the highest

01:34:45.520 levels of the American government prior to 9 11 about Iraq. And so there was a plan that was already

01:34:52.240 in some sense in place for Iraq, but it isn't obvious to me why attention was shifted towards

01:34:59.680 Iraq in the aftermath, apart from the fact that that plan already existed.

01:35:04.000 I think the shift came from, I'm trying to think of some kind of a metaphor here, but you, you know, you've got,

01:35:16.220 you've got some rats in, you know, in the garage and the rats have gnawed through some of the wiring. And so you go

01:35:28.220 and you, you, you, you know, you try and kill the rats in the garage and you realize, you know what, this isn't the 0.63

01:35:33.920 only place that these rats seem could, could be. There could also be some rats over here in the basement

01:35:39.600 and we have wires over there too. We better go handle that situation as well.

01:35:46.800 You said that you were overwhelmed by the reality of the situation on the ground.

01:35:51.640 My first deployment to Iraq, we, we worked with, we, we, we just worked with SEALs.

01:35:56.200 Basically all the operations we did was just with SEALs. When we went back to Iraq in Ramadi,

01:36:00.320 we were ordered to work with Iraqi soldiers. Now the Iraqi soldiers were poorly trained. They were

01:36:08.780 poorly equipped. They had low motivation. Some of them were not very trustworthy and we were going

01:36:14.340 out into the worst battlefield on planet earth at the time. And it was, it was pretty hard to make

01:36:21.880 sense of that order. Right. But when I thought through the order, you know, why, why is, why is,

01:36:29.500 why is my senior leadership ordering me to do this? Well, the answer is quite clear after I thought

01:36:35.600 about it a little bit. Hey, the reason that we have to do this is because we need to work with

01:36:40.560 the Iraqi soldiers so that the Iraqi soldiers become proficient enough that they can handle

01:36:45.700 the security in their own country. Of course. Yes. Okay. So my, my, my senior leadership isn't telling

01:36:53.620 me to do something because they want me to die or want my troops to get wounded and killed. They're

01:36:58.520 telling me to do something because it's a strategic move where in hopefully two or three years,

01:37:04.680 the Iraqi military will be at a level where they can handle security in their own country.

01:37:10.480 Okay. Got it. Okay. That's part one. Well, when, when we got ordered to work with Iraqi soldiers,

01:37:19.040 it wasn't just, it wasn't just my SEAL task. And it was everyone, all coalition forces,

01:37:24.720 all American army and Marine Corps was getting told you'll work with Iraqi forces. And everyone

01:37:29.560 kind of had that nervous feeling, right? Hold on a second. You want me to have this person that has

01:37:34.620 a rusty AK 47 and a pair of sandals. You want that person to, to, to, to support me out on the

01:37:39.180 battlefield. That doesn't make any sense. And so what the American forces did was when they were

01:37:43.900 ordered to take Iraqi soldiers with them on an operation, then they would go out with a platoon of

01:37:50.760 40 Americans and they would take two Iraqis with them because they were told to take Iraqis

01:37:57.580 plural. So that means two, that's what we're going to do. And they'd leave them in the Hun V and they 0.96

01:38:02.300 go conduct their operations. Well, senior leadership got wind of this. And this obviously is not in the

01:38:07.800 spirit of what we were being told to do. You're not going to get a nation's army trained up by taking

01:38:13.780 two soldiers out. So the next thing the leadership said was, okay, here's the new order for every

01:38:22.000 one American that you bring out, you have to have seven Iraqi soldiers with you.

01:38:29.160 So they, so they imposed a ratio on us. Now Ramadi at this time was a complete war zone. Other parts of

01:38:38.300 Iraq were actually somewhat pacified. And in many of those pacified areas, that order actually made

01:38:45.180 sense. The, the, the Iraqis in some area, the Iraqi soldiers in some areas were actually capable of

01:38:50.900 conducting decent operations with very little American oversight. And the level of violence in

01:38:57.200 those areas wasn't that bad. So it was okay. Well, in Ramadi, it didn't make any sense whatsoever.

01:39:03.100 So I'm being ordered to take one seal for every seven Iraqi soldiers. Well, first of all, 0.98

01:39:10.020 because of the fighting was so bad in Ramadi, many of the Iraqi units only had

01:39:14.920 10 or 15 or 20 people in their platoon. So if I was going to send out seals, I would only be able

01:39:24.700 to send out two seals, 15 Iraqi soldiers. So now which two seals am I going to send? Am I going to send

01:39:31.500 the medic? Well, I want to send a medic for sure, but guess what? I also need to send a machine gunner

01:39:37.060 in case we get into a firefight. Well, what about the radio man that actually calls for help? What

01:39:41.520 about the point man that actually knows where we're going? What about the leader who's going to make

01:39:44.920 decisions out there? What about the explosive ordinance disposal guy that can dismantle bombs from

01:39:50.780 going off? So who am I supposed to leave behind? It doesn't make any sense. The, the danger to the

01:39:58.620 troops is so much higher in that situation. So what did I do? Did I say, Hey, that's what I'm being

01:40:04.380 ordered to do. No, I took all this into consideration and I, and I, you'll appreciate this. I wrote a

01:40:12.500 point paper up my chain of command, explain the situation of what was happening, explain the number

01:40:17.920 of casualties, explain the level of violence, explain the size of the Iraqi elements that we were

01:40:22.460 working with and said, can I please get a waiver for this and allow me to take however many seals

01:40:27.340 I've deemed necessary to take to be safe. And my chain of command read it and said, yeah, sure,

01:40:31.560 Jocko, do whatever you want to do. Thank you. So that's what you, what you, what you're, what

01:40:37.220 you're telling me is that you take what you're told to do and you take what you know to be the case on

01:40:42.820 the ground. And you try to do, you try to take both of them into account as much as possible.

01:40:48.180 Well, you're also shunting information back up the hierarchy, hopefully to modify their

01:40:52.580 decisions, the decisions they're making that aren't in accordance with the reality on the ground.

01:40:56.820 Right. Right. So you do, I mean, you do your best under the circumstances, but that, that makes,

01:41:01.480 that, that, that seems to be, that's, that seems to be a good answer.

01:41:06.000 But, but it escalates, obviously it can escalate higher than that, right? It can, the decisions,

01:41:12.040 the orders that we're being given can escalate to a point where maybe this entire thing that we're

01:41:18.480 doing, I think is wrong. Right. Right. Okay. So now we get into a situation where,

01:41:23.760 and the reason that I, I have to explain all these other things is because it happens very rarely.

01:41:30.180 It happens very rarely that, you know, someone in the military is looking at a decision that's

01:41:34.900 being made on a big scale and says, I think this is totally and completely wrong. Now I will tell you,

01:41:39.940 and I wrote about this in my last leadership book, Leadership Strategy and Tactics.

01:41:43.420 If you're being told to some, to do something that you believe is completely wrong. Well,

01:41:53.980 I would love to tell you that that's a black and white decision, but guess what? It's not. 0.90

01:41:56.980 Even that's not a black and white decision because Jordan, if you order me to go and assault a machine

01:42:04.140 gun nest, that's, that's on a Hill with my squad. And I know that this is a machine gun nest in a

01:42:10.540 bunkered position in an elevated position with interlocking fields of fire. And if we go up

01:42:15.040 that Hill, we're all going to die. And I look at you and say, Hey, Hey boss, I don't think that's a

01:42:20.840 good call. They're elevated. They're bunkered. They're interlocking. This doesn't make any sense.

01:42:24.880 And you go, no, Jocko, shut up and do it. And I said, no, I'm telling you, Jordan, this isn't a good 0.96

01:42:28.580 idea. And you say, no, shut up and do it. Now here's my decision point. If I say, you know what? 0.99

01:42:34.140 I will not do it. I will not do it. You know what you do? You go, cool, Jocko, you're fired.

01:42:40.720 And you get your yes, man, come over and your yes, man comes in. You say, go assault that machine

01:42:44.300 gun nest. And he takes the squad up and he gets everybody killed. So I surrendered my influence 0.98

01:42:50.520 when I, when I drew that line in the sand and said, no, and you doomed other people to death.

01:42:57.160 And I doomed other people to death. Now my boss orders me, you order me. And I say, okay, boss,

01:43:01.820 got it. You, you, you definitely want me to do this. There's no way out. Yes. You definitely

01:43:06.100 got to do it. Okay. All right, guys, here's what's happening. We're going to start. We're

01:43:09.960 going to get into a covered position. We're going to start maneuvering towards this thing.

01:43:13.160 We're going to see what kind of fire we receive. If we start receiving overwhelming fire, I'm going

01:43:19.280 to lock some of you guys in that position. And I'm going to send another squad over to the flank

01:43:23.800 and we're going to, we're going to take out this machine gun from nest from another angle,

01:43:27.020 or I'm going to hunker down in that position and we're going to call for air support.

01:43:30.240 So you're decomposing, you're actually decomposing the process then into micro elements and then

01:43:35.660 testing the micro elements. Then you can report back with that information. Yes. Right. Right.

01:43:41.080 Very smart. Very smart. We have to be very careful. So when you talk about, oh, I don't think we

01:43:46.920 should go into Iraq. I don't think we should go. Okay. So what am I gonna do? Hey, I don't think we 0.60

01:43:51.820 should go. Now, are there times where that might be the right decision? There are some times like

01:43:56.500 that, where maybe I think that me as a senior leader standing up and saying no to my boss is

01:44:04.600 going to make, you know, Jordan suddenly looks at me and goes, wait a second, Jocko has always been

01:44:07.820 a good guy. And now he's sitting here telling me, no, he's really serious about it. Maybe I,

01:44:11.680 maybe I'm not seeing something. Maybe I can get you to rethink your position.

01:44:16.720 That's a risky move though. It's always a risky move to kind of draw a line in the sand,

01:44:21.180 kind of an ultimatum because you use up your capital, you burn your leadership capital. It's

01:44:27.040 even worse than that. You just completely surrender your leadership guy. You don't even use it.

01:44:30.920 You, you, you obliterate it. It's gone. You have no more influence. You're done.

01:44:35.240 So we have to think very long and hard about those things. And so when it came, if, if I was,

01:44:42.740 I was never put in a position like where I didn't, where, where I thought that what we were doing as a

01:44:48.340 country was wrong. I'll tell you actually probably the closest I've come to that was, I think it was

01:44:54.560 1993. The, the massacre was unfolding in Rwanda. There was the, the, the, the, uh, Hutus were killing

01:45:05.500 the Tutsis by the hundreds of thousands. And I was on a Navy ship, um, off the coast of, off the coast

01:45:14.560 of Africa on standby to go into Rwanda as this slaughter took prey, took place. And we didn't do

01:45:26.180 anything. We didn't do anything. So that's the cost of not going to war there.

01:45:33.140 It's the cost of not going to war. And there's a very, you know, it's a very interesting,

01:45:36.200 I'm sure you've heard of the, the, the, the massacre that took, took place in, in Mi Lai in Vietnam.

01:45:40.420 Um, and, and one of the most interesting things in that reprehensible scenario is

01:45:49.540 what stopped it. What's the, so this is, this, this, this horror is unfolding. There's,

01:45:57.440 there's murder, mutilation, rape, just going berserk. A company of American soldiers is murdering, 0.67

01:46:07.200 raping, mutilating bodies, just absolutely heinous, absolutely reprehensible.

01:46:16.220 And while this is happening, a helicopter pilot comes in and sees what's going on.

01:46:22.700 And these guys have lost their mind. Really? The guys on the ground have lost their mind. The

01:46:26.540 helicopter pilot flies back to base. He walks into the tactical operation center and says,

01:46:30.920 Hey, they are killing civilians out there. The commanding officer gets on the phone and says,

01:46:34.960 Hey, stop killing people. And they stopped immediately. They stopped immediately. That's,

01:46:41.300 that's what tells you how important leadership is. Leadership is the most important thing on the

01:46:46.980 battlefield. And if you have a leader, that's going to let things start to go in this direction,

01:46:50.420 all it takes is one person to step up and say, Hey, everyone, stop what you're doing. This is wrong.

01:46:54.500 So you get a situation like Rwanda. We didn't really do anything. We didn't do anything. And what would 1.00

01:47:04.760 it have taken if, if we rolled in there and said, Hey, no more. Stop. Do they look around with their

01:47:12.580 machetes covered in blood and wake up of their neighbors and say, Ooh, wait, wait a second. Yep. Okay.

01:47:20.340 We're going to stop. So I'm not saying these are easy predicaments, but certainly, you know, the idea

01:47:28.980 of, are there situations where it's better to do something than nothing? Hey, I'll tell you what,

01:47:34.400 rolling into Baghdad and going into Saddam Hussein's torture chambers, which we did. And you see the,

01:47:40.680 the, the, the, the, the hook, there was hooks like hooks hanging from ceilings and, and, and drainage

01:47:50.660 where blood would drain in these torture chambers. You see that a couple of times and you think

01:47:56.760 I I'm okay with us being in here and getting rid of this guy.

01:48:03.900 I'm going to switch topics. I want to talk to you about your books. And I I'd like to know, look,

01:48:13.980 you said right at the beginning of this interview that you wanted to be the best Navy seal, good

01:48:18.720 Navy seal. That's what you said. You didn't say the best. You want to be a good Navy. The best was

01:48:22.720 aiming a little bit too high. Yeah. Yeah, I know. That's why I want, I wanted to get the words,

01:48:26.300 right. Um, what are you doing now? What you, I mean, I, I presume that, that your life is still

01:48:36.560 being lived in an expansion of that, the pursuit of that initial ideal. You've transformed multiple

01:48:42.420 times. You're a civilian. You you're, you're a communicator mass communicator in a variety of

01:48:47.280 different, in a variety of different ways. I think you mentioned, we were talking offline a little bit,

01:48:52.140 for example, that you have a clothing line. And I'm going to ask you about that because that's,

01:48:56.920 that's, that's a curious thing to me. Um, and that is, I'm definitely curious about that, but

01:49:03.280 like, what's your mission? And is that the right question? Is that an appropriate question?

01:49:09.900 So there's a, there's, there's a, there's a quality, let's call it. So as, as I, as I went through that,

01:49:21.340 that, that as I created in my mind, that ideal of, of what a good seal is, what is a good seal?

01:49:29.280 And, and I'm sure you could, I could say, okay, what do you think, Jordan? Oh, he's probably

01:49:32.740 strong and he's probably fast and he's probably smart and he's probably tactically sound and he

01:49:37.160 can probably shoot a weapon straight and all those things. Absolutely. All those things are there.

01:49:41.040 And as you would kind of burn away the, the, or, or if you were to set up a hierarchy of importance

01:49:50.580 of what makes a good seal, you might think that some people would think, oh, well, it's probably

01:49:57.220 being the best shot, or it's probably being the strongest, or it's probably being really good in

01:50:01.900 the water. All those things, all those skills that you think they might be, and you could talk to

01:50:06.600 different seals and they would all kind of, you know, some guy would say it's running. Some guy

01:50:10.900 would say it's strong. Some guy would say it's the best shot, whatever, best tactician.

01:50:16.560 But if you offered them one thing,

01:50:21.600 99.9% of seals would agree on what makes you a good seal.

01:50:27.940 And that is, you look out for your teammates.

01:50:38.340 You put your team above yourself.

01:50:42.280 Yeah. So that's a real inversion of the things that you just described, Dave, because

01:50:46.520 all of those things are dimensions along which you could be excellent in a manner that distinguishes

01:50:52.840 you from the group and elevates you above them. But you derive from that a claim that that should

01:50:58.800 all be subordinate to a reciprocity. And any seal that's a good seal would tell you that that would

01:51:07.860 be at the top of the hierarchy. You can be the best shot. You can be the best shot. You can be the best

01:51:12.980 diver. You can be the strongest. You can be the fastest. You can be the best tactician. If you don't

01:51:17.980 take care of your teammates, none of that, none of those other things matter. You, you're not even

01:51:23.880 wanted in the seal teams. That's, that's, that's what it is. So, well, do you think that, that seems

01:51:30.620 to me to be true for functional organizations in general is that, and, and certainly the people I've

01:51:37.280 seen, this is part of the reason why casual critiques of hierarchies annoy me so much, because

01:51:42.740 the people I've seen who are radically successful don't get there from power. They get there from

01:51:49.540 mobility, but also reciprocity. And yeah, um, 100% right. So when you say to take care, to look out for

01:52:01.620 and to take care of, I think you said to look out for what flesh that out. What does that mean in the

01:52:07.060 situations that you've been in? And how did that guide your behavior? It's a, it's a, it's, it's a

01:52:13.280 literal constant daily, hourly by the minute attitude, which is, Hey, my, my buddy needs me to,

01:52:24.000 to, to move over there and cover for that area. That's what I'm going to do. My buddy needs to me

01:52:27.960 to bring him some more ammunition. My buddy needs to me to help him clean his weapon. My buddy needs to,

01:52:32.580 you carry the boat. I need to pick up the boat. Cause we're moving across the beach.

01:52:35.620 All of these things. So what are you doing? You're, you're looking. So what, like you said,

01:52:40.840 moment to moment. So what are you doing? You looking for ways to be useful constantly?

01:52:46.140 How can I support my teammates? What can I give to them? How can I make them,

01:52:52.940 how can I make their situation better right now? And, and that, that guy that has that attitude

01:52:59.340 has going to have a great reputation in this. Yeah. Well, then you can think too, of course,

01:53:03.860 then the fact that you're outstanding on any number of dimensions, let's say that becomes an

01:53:09.020 asset of the team rather than something that's a competitive liability, because like, if you're

01:53:14.500 going to be looking out for me, and I really believe that the fact that you're stronger and

01:53:18.740 smarter than me is actually really good because now I've got someone who's stronger than me and

01:53:23.980 smarter than me, who's looking out for me. And so whatever competitive jealousy there might've been

01:53:28.280 there could be easily subsumed under appreciation for those positive attributes.

01:53:33.880 Yes. And we are going to work together because guess what? You might be the strongest, but I'm a

01:53:37.920 little bit faster than you. Right, right, right. And you might be a good shot, but I'm better in the

01:53:41.680 water than you are. And we're going to be in the water and shooting. So we're each going to have a

01:53:46.960 chance to be number one. Yes. So the reason I went to that.

01:53:53.720 And how long did it take you to figure that out? Like you said something interesting about

01:53:58.860 assembling the image of an ideal seal in, in your imagination. And so was that something that

01:54:05.620 were you consciously aware of doing that while you were doing that? Or did you see that you were

01:54:10.560 doing that in retrospect? Unconscious and saw that I did it in retrospect and the team, the, the,

01:54:16.800 the support your teammate is something that you hear immediately. And if you listen to it,

01:54:22.040 it's you, you can't miss it. Now guys miss it. Guys definitely miss it. But if your eyes are open

01:54:29.140 and your ears are open, you can't miss it. It's day one seal, basic indoctrination. You take care

01:54:34.900 of your swim buddy. They literally say that day one, they'll say, take care of your swim buddy.

01:54:39.260 And what does that mean in the, in the swim buddy context? What, what, how would that,

01:54:42.900 what does that translate to practically? That means before Jordan gets inspected by the instructor,

01:54:49.360 I take a look at Jordan's gear and make sure it's all squared away and say, you're good to go.

01:54:54.780 As opposed to seeing that your life jackets got a, a twisted strap and just sitting there looking

01:55:00.760 straight ahead. No, I want to make sure you're okay. That's actually, before I check myself,

01:55:05.000 I'm checking you. Before I check myself, I'm checking you. I'm making sure that you're good to go.

01:55:11.980 Gee, this is partly why these claims, the broad claims that are being made in the social world at

01:55:16.400 large now about hierarchical power being the fundamental attribute of society is so disturbing

01:55:24.180 to me because this, this, this is not true. It's literally not true. Only when a hierarchy becomes

01:55:32.660 radically dysfunctional does individual power come to dominate. The rest of the time, it's something

01:55:38.660 like what you're saying is that, and then that's, that's, that's, that's, and, and that's true.

01:55:43.720 Let's, you know, capitalism has a bad rap, let's say morally because of its selfishness,

01:55:47.980 but the functional organizations that I've seen that are business organizations, if, if the people

01:55:53.880 in there aren't motivated by the ethos that you're, that you're describing, no, no one bloody well

01:56:00.440 wants to work with them. No one wants to buy their material. No one wants to partner with them

01:56:05.000 across time. They don't even want to go golfing with them. So it's just not, it's, it's so not

01:56:10.860 true. It's completely not true. And that's, I mean, that's the essence of the books that I've

01:56:16.460 written about leadership is that story over and over again. I had a, I had a SEAL platoon commander

01:56:21.740 that operated via power, his, his authority and his power. That's how he operated. We did what he told

01:56:31.220 us because he told us to do it because he was the highest ranking guy and you better be quiet and

01:56:35.180 listen to me. And it's going to be my plan. And you all better just shut up and get on board with

01:56:38.880 it. And we had a, we had a mutiny. We had a mutiny in that SEAL platoon where we, we went to his boss 0.99

01:56:47.140 and said, we're not working with this guy. And he actually ended up getting fired. So everything you

01:56:55.520 just said, well, you, well, that's exactly right. Look, there's, there's no stable organization.

01:57:02.880 No organization can run stably across time. If it's predicate of operation is raw power.

01:57:09.920 And the reason for that at some point is that the people who are being tyrannized are going to band

01:57:16.440 together and say, no, we're not going to do this. We're going to take you out. And so if you don't want

01:57:22.960 to be taken out, you can't exercise tyrannical power. It's, it's the intrinsic weakness of

01:57:28.020 tyranny. And to, to confuse functional and competent organizations with tyranny is also to make a

01:57:35.240 mockery of the fact that this cooperative ethos is actually the dominating principle. If the, if the,

01:57:43.040 if the organization is functioning properly. Yeah. And as I pointed out, I actually lived through that

01:57:52.060 and I lived through the other end of the spectrum too. When that platoon commander got fired,

01:57:57.120 the platoon that commander that took his place was very humble, listened, had an open mind, gave us

01:58:04.600 ownership, told us to come up with a plan. And we love that guy. And that's the guy that I try and emulate

01:58:09.200 to this day. And we would have followed that guy anywhere. And it's, it's precise.

01:58:14.340 Right. And so that's not power. That's not power. It's precisely because he didn't

01:58:21.160 use his tyrannical power to, to drive us to do what he, what he wanted us to do.

01:58:26.660 Look, whenever I've been in a situation and wanted to get the best out of the people that

01:58:31.120 are working under me or with me for that matter, um, I cede as much responsibility and authority to

01:58:39.760 them as possible, partly because one of my predicates of operation is that if I'm going

01:58:45.900 to engage in an enterprise with you and I have to tell you what to do, and, or if I told you what

01:58:54.480 to do, you would do a better job. I should find a different person. All that is, is indication that

01:58:59.880 I chose the wrong person. If you're the right person, I'm going to grant you as much autonomy

01:59:04.140 as possible, partly because then you get to have your own domain, partly then because you're

01:59:08.440 self-sufficient, partly because you do better, but even more so because then you're fully committed

01:59:13.580 to the task. And I, I don't believe that anybody occupies a position of leadership for long who

01:59:19.860 doesn't know those things. And they're certainly not effective if they don't know them.

01:59:25.100 No, they're not. And I, I talk to leaders all day, every day in every, every possible industry that

01:59:32.720 you can think of. And it's, you know, one of the things that I end up saying a lot to leaders

01:59:38.480 is, you know, when we, if you're working for me, Jordan, and you come to me with a plan of how you

01:59:43.880 want to execute a project or an operation or a task, my goal, my goal is that we're going to use your

01:59:50.420 idea. That's my goal. My goal is that whatever you present to me, if it's, if it's going to get the

01:59:56.160 job done, we're good. We're going with it. You know, then at least the person can learn from what

02:00:00.900 they're doing and be better the next time. Right. If it's a minimally viable, why not let them run

02:00:05.540 it? Sometimes it's an emergency and you can't do that, but yeah. Yeah. And by the way, if there's

02:00:10.900 urgency and I can't do that. Okay. By this time you and I have built an up enough trust that you know

02:00:17.980 that if I say, Hey, we need to go over there right now, you go, yep. Got it. Right. Right. And so,

02:00:22.400 so we do get into situations like that happen. Right. And that's, that's something you don't want to do

02:00:26.420 too often because just as we discussed earlier, you burn up your leadership credibility,

02:00:30.700 by doing that. So you can use power if you're a leader, but, but judiciously and seldom, and you

02:00:36.500 need a good rationale and people have to trust you. And so that's the other issue is that we could,

02:00:41.780 we could think about the preconditions for trust, because if the organization isn't running on trust,

02:00:47.260 then everybody's at each other's throat constantly. And all there is, is backbiting and confusion.

02:00:52.440 And so to trust means I, I have to, I have to, I have to, what would I say? I have to have faith

02:01:00.240 in your motives and I have to see that you're doing your best to align your motives with mind.

02:01:06.120 And I have to believe that that's genuine because otherwise the enterprise isn't going to succeed

02:01:10.640 given all the other things it's going to have to face. Yeah. It's a, it's another, you, you know,

02:01:17.000 you bring up the term alignment. And when I work with companies, sometimes, sometimes we'll start

02:01:24.240 talking about alignment and, and, and quite frankly, in most cases, in vast majority of cases,

02:01:31.940 if you and I are at a company, if we go high enough, high enough up, what I call the, the ladder of

02:01:40.120 alignment, if we go high enough up that ladder, we'll get to a point where we're going to be aligned

02:01:45.400 because look, we're trying to, um, take care of our team. We're trying to provide a good service

02:01:52.260 to our clients and we're trying to be profitable. And if look, if that's what we're trying to do.

02:01:56.700 And 99.9% of the times, the companies that I work with, I have to talk them through this,

02:02:02.180 but I can say we can get to a point where we are aligned. Now what alignment has like a,

02:02:08.440 like a, like a, like a cousin or a, or maybe a step cousin called agenda where, where you've got

02:02:16.500 your agenda over here and I've got my agenda over here and you're trying to get more funds for your

02:02:20.660 department and I'm trying to get more funds for my department. And so we can kind of, sometimes it

02:02:25.260 can feel like our agendas we're not aligned. Yeah. Now, oftentimes I say, look, if, if Jordan's agenda

02:02:31.700 is to get more funding for his department so he can invest more and make more money for the team,

02:02:36.620 his agenda is aligned and that's great. I have no problem with your agenda. It's when, you know,

02:02:42.600 you're trying to create your own fiefdom because you're going to leave the company and you're going

02:02:45.660 to go do something else. And I start to sense that. And, and whenever, yeah, no, that's going

02:02:50.340 on underground and no one's really talking about it. Right. Right. When I get a company where they

02:02:56.560 can't come to a, they can't come to an agreement about something they can't, they cannot. So we walk them

02:03:02.620 up the alignment ladder and all of a sudden you realize, oh, wait a second,

02:03:05.260 this person's just trying to make money. And this really wants to take care of the team. Now I'll

02:03:11.540 tell you, I'll take them further up the alignment ladder and say, listen, if you really want to make

02:03:15.900 money and you want to take care of the team, guess what? If you have a good team that you take care

02:03:19.700 of, you're going to make more money. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But you can get aligned unless people are

02:03:24.320 starting to take care of themselves instead of take care of the team, which goes back to what we were

02:03:29.740 just talking about. Which is also extremely short-sighted in my estimation, because for a bunch of

02:03:34.700 reasons I, I line some of this out in, in this new book, this, I realized a long time ago that

02:03:40.800 there isn't much difference. There might be no difference actually, technically speaking in,

02:03:47.020 in taking care of yourself and in taking care of other people. And here's the reason. So you might

02:03:54.020 say, well, I'm one person and everyone else is a group of people. And so there's that competition

02:04:00.600 between me as one person and what this one person wants and the group, but that's not true because

02:04:06.600 I'm actually a group. And the reason I'm a group is, well, there's me today, but there's me over the

02:04:14.540 next week. And there's me over the next month. And then there's me over the next year and over the

02:04:18.940 next five years and over the next 10 years. And the me that exists right now can't betray the me

02:04:24.900 that's going to exist next week by doing something short-sighted and impulsive that will, you know,

02:04:30.460 produce a burst of impulsive pleasure, but will compromise the future. And so if I'm taking myself

02:04:35.980 into account seriously, which I'm an entity that has multiple incarnations, let's say across very

02:04:43.860 large spans of time, then I immediately have a community that I have to serve. I have to serve the

02:04:48.880 80-year-old person that I'm going to become. And the difference between that and serving 80-year-old

02:04:54.640 people in the community is negligible. It's the same thing. So if I'm taking care of someone in a

02:05:01.200 senior's home, for example, the difference between that and how I'm going to be taken care of when I'm

02:05:07.480 80 is negligible. And so there's no way out of the ethical demand of serving the group, even if

02:05:17.260 you're, even if your selfishness is, is, is of the most enlightened kind.

02:05:23.980 Well, that's one of the most beautiful things about this, about this whole thing, conceptually, is that

02:05:32.340 if I put the team before myself, if I put the mission and the team before myself, and by being a good team

02:05:40.900 player, I lift up Jordan, and I make you look good, and I give you the support you need.

02:05:45.480 The beautiful thing about this is eventually I'm going to win. I'm 100% going to win. And people

02:05:55.060 get short-sighted as you're talking about, where I think, you know what, if I can, if I can pull this

02:06:00.580 project away from Jordan, I can raise my head up and get some credit for this. The boss is going to

02:06:05.580 look at me and he's probably going to give me a promotion. And that, that might work once.

02:06:09.360 That might work once. Yeah. Or twice. And then my reputation is, oh, you don't want Jocko on your

02:06:15.640 team because he's the one that's going to be maneuvering around trying to make himself look

02:06:18.360 good instead of trying to accomplish the mission. Yep. So ultimately, if, if you take care of people,

02:06:25.120 if you're a good seal, if you're a good team player, you will win in the end. That's what's

02:06:30.340 going to happen. Yes. And you'll win, you'll win surrounded by people who are thrilled to death

02:06:35.160 that you won. And so, and that's, that's, that's a much better form of winning than to be

02:06:40.680 bitter and alone. Yeah. Because you've snatched something. Standing on the back of the fallen.

02:06:47.100 Right. Right. Absolutely. And, and the fact that it's, you know, you can only get away with that once

02:06:52.500 or twice is dead relevant because human beings are very sensitive to negative emotion. We remember.

02:06:57.940 And one of the things we really remember is betrayal. And so if, if you don't play the game straight

02:07:04.620 and you have to play the game over and over with the same people, then you're dead in the water and

02:07:09.500 then you're going to be in your own little hell. You're going to think, well, why does it, why won't

02:07:13.380 anybody play with me? And the answer to that is, well, you don't play fair. And people gave you a chance

02:07:18.840 a few times and you demonstrated that. And like, there's no coming back. So. Yeah. And the reason I

02:07:26.140 went off on this tangent is because you asked me. Your mission now. What am I doing now? You bet.

02:07:32.440 And I think that along the way in my career in the, in the Navy, I was so ingrained with the fact of

02:07:43.140 trying to be a good teammate. Yeah. That when I retired, I kept just trying to help people out

02:07:53.780 and say, Hey, you know what? I, I can teach you something about leadership. Do you want to know

02:07:58.880 something about leadership? I can, I can, maybe I can help you with this, or I can at least talk you

02:08:02.860 through and maybe I can share some stories of what I've learned about human nature. And, and that way

02:08:07.640 you don't have to learn those lessons by beating your head up against the wall. And, and then maybe

02:08:12.740 I can help you out with, Hey, putting some stuff together that you can take as supplements. And

02:08:17.780 that's going to make you a little bit healthier and stronger. And, and, and by the way, we're, we're

02:08:21.780 trying to rebuild our community in new England, where we came from, where we used to have a bunch of

02:08:26.980 factories making clothes and maybe we could rebuild that. And that way. Ah, so great. So there's the

02:08:31.960 question. And so, so tell me, tell me about that. So, because it's, it's kind of a surprise, right?

02:08:37.960 To you have a clothing line, I think, well, that's so, that's so funny. And that, that Jocko has a

02:08:43.560 clothing line. It's, it's so cool that that's the case and not, not expected. So I knew there was a

02:08:48.920 backstory there. So I don't imagine that it stems from an obsession with fashion.

02:08:56.980 You called it, dude. Okay. So, so what happened and why did you get interested in it and what's

02:09:01.900 going on? Okay. So, um, I was, you know, I started my podcast and I was interacting with people and I

02:09:09.880 talk about jujitsu a lot, Brazilian jujitsu. I'm a very big supporter of people training jujitsu

02:09:16.900 and mixed martial arts in general, but I am absolutely a jujitsu guy. So a lot of people started

02:09:22.340 doing jujitsu and they started training. And, and so they would ask me that the, the uniform for

02:09:27.300 jujitsu is called a gi and people would ask me, Hey, I'm starting jujitsu or I started jujitsu and

02:09:34.580 I need to get a gi. What kind should I get? And I knew from having gis over the years that gis were 1.00

02:09:42.640 made in China and whatever horrible slave labor scenarios are happening there. And, and I knew 0.92

02:09:51.880 that there was also one company up in Maine and I'm, I'm from new England as well. One company up

02:09:57.300 in Maine that was actually making these jujitsu gis in America. And, and I had seen them online and,

02:10:04.800 and the story was kind of presented online that this guy named Pete, he was a new England kid.

02:10:12.500 And saw all the factories get shut down. And we all, you know, we all did that. We all saw

02:10:16.660 when I was growing up, the factories, there was no one, there was no one in them.

02:10:19.700 Yep. And, and he saw that and he was also a jujitsu guy. And so he wanted to make gis,

02:10:28.240 jujitsu gis in America. As he started to go down that path, he realized that the material that

02:10:33.540 you would get to sew together a gi was not produced anywhere in America. So he decided he was going to get

02:10:39.380 a loom to weave this material. And he starts asking around and poking around and eventually

02:10:47.420 finds that in a 500,000 square foot abandoned factory in Lewiston, Maine, there is one loom that

02:10:53.380 hadn't been shipped overseas. And the woman that kind of owned it was planning to one day put that

02:11:01.760 loom in a museum. And he said, I'll buy it from you. And so he bought this massive loom, you know,

02:11:08.300 it's as big as a couple beds put together, weighs thousands and thousands of pounds. And he gets

02:11:14.280 some of his buddies and they go and drag this loom out of this factory and they take it apart.

02:11:18.780 What a cool find, eh? What a remarkable piece of equipment.

02:11:23.080 Completely remarkable. And he finds a guy, he finds people that knew about these things,

02:11:28.460 find some old timers. There was a guy named Lenny who's since died, but he used to work on looms

02:11:33.460 and he hired him and said, why? He says, what do you want me to do? He said, we got to make this

02:11:38.200 thing work. So he starts making, he starts weaving this material, gets this thing up and running.

02:11:43.840 So one day, and I'm following the story. I've been following, I've been following that story for

02:11:48.640 three or four years. And I'd actually reached out to him and said, Hey man, I know you're up in Maine.

02:11:55.080 I'm from, I'm from up there. Um, what do you think? You know, can I get some of your geese?

02:11:59.100 I'd like to like to have some of your geese and how much are they or whatever. And I wouldn't even

02:12:02.600 hear back from him because he's in Maine. These guys, you know, I make fun of him because he's up

02:12:08.400 in Maine. He's in Farmington, Maine, population 7,000. So anyways, one day I'm doing like a live

02:12:15.720 social media interaction with people. And someone says, Hey, I'm just starting jujitsu. What kind of

02:12:21.580 should I get? And I said, I'll tell you what, you should get an origin gi. And by the way, I said,

02:12:25.900 if anybody on here knows this guy named Pete Roberts that runs that company up there, if you

02:12:30.000 could please tell him, I want to talk to him, that'd be really cool. So a few days go by and I

02:12:34.660 get like a message that says, Hey, I reached out through my business connections and I found this

02:12:39.360 guy, Pete Roberts. Here's his number or whatever. Here's his email. So I say, all right, great. So we

02:12:45.340 set up a Skype call. This was a few years ago and we meet each other and we talk for four hours

02:12:53.140 and I come walking out of my office and my wife says, it sounds like you were talking to yourself

02:12:59.100 in there because we were just, you know, we, we were on the same page. So I ended up flying up to

02:13:05.400 Maine. We, we, we had a steak and we had a handshake and we merged and, and started working together.

02:13:13.860 And what was great was he had, he had this great people up there and was building these

02:13:20.420 keys, but he didn't have a platform. He's in Farmington, Maine. So there's not a bunch of

02:13:25.100 jujitsu studios in Farmington, Maine. Well, I had luckily a platform to talk to people.

02:13:29.560 Right. Well, and no matter how good your product, man, and everyone needs to know this, the world

02:13:34.340 will not beat a pathway to your doorway for your damn product. You need to pay attention to sales 0.99

02:13:40.420 and marketing and you can't be contemptuous of it. It's like, who the hell's going to buy something

02:13:45.120 they don't know about? So we shook hands, we started working together and once, so then we

02:13:54.080 started making jujitsu geese and believe it or not, you know, now we had a bunch of people that wanted

02:13:56.920 these jujitsu geese because they're the best in the world. They're made in America. They're made by

02:14:00.820 Americans with, with their American cotton and woven on American loom. So it's just, it's a beautiful

02:14:08.700 thing. It's a beautiful thing. And, and one day I was in the airport and I'm sitting there in the

02:14:16.420 airport as we're selling a bunch of jujitsu geese and I'm, I'm looking around and I, and I called up

02:14:21.280 Pete and I said, Hey Pete, I said, how many people do you actually know that do jujitsu?

02:14:26.240 And he said, he's like, I don't know, like maybe 50 or a hundred. And I said, how many people do you

02:14:32.080 know that wear jeans? And he said, everybody. And I said, why aren't we making jeans? And he

02:14:38.680 said, let me, let me go. So the next thing we did was we started making jeans because, because,

02:14:45.060 because the iconic American jeans that you wear aren't made in America, the iconic American jeans

02:14:54.020 that people think represent America, they're not made in America. And, and that's wrong. And,

02:15:00.040 and the other crazy thing about this is, you know, do you make good jeans? We make the best jeans in

02:15:05.920 the world. Do they have spandex in them? They do. They do. They have their, they have a little

02:15:10.100 bit of stretch in them. We've got a heavy pair and a, and a lighter pair and yeah, they're it's

02:15:15.500 great. And where can people find these? How do they look for them? Originusa.com. If you go to

02:15:21.880 jaco.com, you can find all this stuff. And, and, um, so we started making jeans. Everybody needs good

02:15:28.700 jeans. Then we started making boots and we're making everything we're making. You know, we, we,

02:15:34.580 we started making a bunch of supplements and that started from, I drink tea. Another shocking thing

02:15:41.200 you might want to know. It is shocking. I'm married to a Brit. And at some point I started

02:15:46.580 drinking tea. And so I started making tea and then I started making other supplements. And, and again,

02:15:53.740 it was like make high quality stuff that works and people need it. They want it. And we're doing that

02:16:02.060 thing of being a teammate of helping people out. So that I knew there was a good story in that

02:16:11.020 clothing. It's a great story. It's a great story. It is a great story. Absolutely. If you've ever seen

02:16:16.280 a, I don't know, maybe you could help me with my, with my personality. You know what I like about that

02:16:20.360 too? I've learned something in the last while. Like I, I noticed very much that people allow a casual

02:16:27.540 and unconscious contempt to stop them from, well, to elevate the status of what they're doing,

02:16:36.760 I would say, but also to, to allow them the luxury of not having to consider the importance of all the

02:16:44.760 things they're not doing now. And that stops them from taking opportunities. So, you know, well,

02:16:53.120 it's, I was watching the show last night, it was the devil wears Prada and it was about fashion

02:16:58.760 industry. And this girl who starts instantly thought of me. Absolutely. I thought that's

02:17:04.700 right. The Jock Jocko fashion special, but this girl, she has contempt for the fashion industry, 1.00

02:17:10.960 you know, and that's portrayed as a moral virtue. And I wasn't on her side to begin with. I thought,

02:17:15.560 no, you know, there's probably something to this. And what you should do is shut up and learn about it 0.98

02:17:20.340 before you criticize it, but it's more comfortable in some sense to have contempt for things,

02:17:25.200 you know, and it's so interesting to talk to you about your clothing line. You know, you saw

02:17:30.840 opportunity there in all sorts of ways and it fitted into this context of, let's say of being

02:17:37.200 a broader service. And because you didn't have contempt for it at all, at any level for the

02:17:41.980 machinery, for the manufacturing, for the fact of making clothing, for having your name associated

02:17:46.800 with that, for all of that, it, then it enables you to see an opportunity there and to do something

02:17:51.920 immediately and then to make an enterprise grow and work. And so that's another thing is that,

02:17:57.660 that, that casual contempt for what you can't do. That's a, that's a real ethical mistake.

02:18:04.060 Yeah. That one will definitely, I see among academics, you know, there's always contempt for

02:18:08.040 businessmen and, and, and, and the immorality of the capitalist enterprise. And then I see among

02:18:14.100 businessmen, you know, contempt for intellectualism and the ivory tower. And I think that's not doing

02:18:19.240 either of you guys much good, you know, because you both have something to bring to the table in

02:18:23.720 a real sense and some appreciate appreciation for what the other one knows that you don't is

02:18:29.560 well worth everyone's attempt. And then everybody gets to win too. It's like, well, great, man,

02:18:34.340 you've got this business enterprise, more power to you. And, and then you can say too, well, you know,

02:18:39.380 great. You teach all these people and you have this advanced learning and isn't the world better

02:18:43.860 because we can both bring that to the table. No need for, for that envy, not at all. Just,

02:18:50.120 it just contaminates things. Yeah. Unless you let your ego slide in there and you start to think,

02:18:57.840 well, I've been, I studied so hard and yet I'm only making whatever I'm making as a.

02:19:02.720 Yeah. Well, that's, that's a huge part. Look, it's a huge part of the culture war. I believe is that

02:19:07.320 there's a, there's a tremendous resentment in the university about the fact that, uh, high level

02:19:15.460 intellectual endeavor doesn't attract disproportionate salary when other occupations

02:19:21.320 do, but it certainly has no shortage of other rewards, you know, absolute job security being

02:19:27.740 one of them and freedom for that matter. So anyways, anyways, I'm actually, I've been surprised that

02:19:34.980 in the all, you know, there's all this talk in America right now about the divisiveness in America

02:19:41.300 and I'm, I've been surprised that the, the, the ego hasn't come up more often because you mean as a

02:19:48.760 topic as a, as a, as a causal effect. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Sure. You know, the fact that, well, I go to

02:19:57.120 have a conversation with someone and I just think that I'm right. I think that my viewpoints are right.

02:20:04.160 And your viewpoints are wrong and worse, worse, not just wrong, contemptible. That's like the

02:20:11.680 ultimate expression of raw, right? They're beneath my consideration, right? Yeah. And that's, that's

02:20:18.260 not good. That's definitely not good. How do I, how do I listen to anything that you say? How do I,

02:20:24.460 how do I find any common ground with you? If I think that what you think is contemptible. And so

02:20:30.280 therefore we can't have a conversation. If we don't have a conversation, we can't find any mutual

02:20:34.080 ground. And that means we can't find solutions to the problems that we're facing. And it, yes. And

02:20:38.800 it means when push comes to shove, we have to fight. Yes, it does. I'm here to tell you that's not a good

02:20:46.140 option. You know, that's a good place to stop. Fair enough. That was great, man. Thank you.

02:20:57.480 Appreciate it. I loved it. Well, thank you. Appreciate it. Yeah. So it's good to see you.

02:21:05.340 It's good to see you too. And I'm, it's so, it's so nice to see that, that all of what you're talking

02:21:10.760 about is finding its audience. I like the kids books too. We never talked about them.

02:21:15.860 Oh yeah. The kids books. I, I, I feel like, um, there is no more, there's no better gratification

02:21:25.020 for me than the handwritten letters, the, the, the emails that I get, but mostly the handwritten

02:21:33.160 letters from kids that are six, seven, eight, nine years old, just did my first pull up,

02:21:37.600 got an A on my math test. Oh, isn't that cool? It's right. Yes. How could you have anything

02:21:43.880 better than that to know that you were part of that? So, so tell me about that. Maybe we'll stop

02:21:48.660 with that. Tell me about that. Like, tell, tell me about the kids books. How many you've self

02:21:54.200 published them? How many have sold? Well, I, so I didn't, I didn't self publish all of them.

02:21:59.840 Okay. I, the first two went through normal publisher and what happened was, so, so the

02:22:07.420 first one is called way the warrior kid and, and basically I have four kids, myself, three daughters,

02:22:12.860 one son, as I was raising my kids, I couldn't really find books that articulated the values that I might

02:22:22.040 want my children to be reading about. And so I wrote my own books. So the first one way, the warrior

02:22:29.300 kid, it's a kid, he's bullied. He doesn't know his times table. So he thinks he's stupid. He doesn't

02:22:34.520 know how to swim. So he can't do any of the fun stuff that the other kids are doing. And he's,

02:22:38.500 he's getting bullied. This is common things that kids face. And he kind of breaks down last day of

02:22:46.040 school. Everything kind of hits him at once. And he goes home. And he remembers that his uncle is

02:22:51.360 coming to stay with him for the summer. And his uncle, his uncle was in the SEAL teams. And he presents

02:22:56.240 all these problems that he's having to his uncle. And his uncle says, listen, we can solve these

02:23:00.000 problems, but you got to commit. It's going to take discipline. It's going to take hard work.

02:23:04.360 Teaches the kid how to study, teaches the kid how to make flashcards, teaches the kid how to eat right,

02:23:10.400 teaches the kid how to work out, brings the kid to jujitsu classes. So he learns how to defend himself.

02:23:15.620 Kid goes back to school and he's, he's in a much better place. And, and so then that series carries on

02:23:21.420 with different types of situations that kids get into. And so I wrote the first one way,

02:23:26.640 the warrior kid, the second one marks mission. And then I had written a kid's book, a kid's book

02:23:31.960 called Mikey and the dragons. And, and I had written it, I finished it in August and I talked

02:23:41.620 to my publisher and I said, Hey, you know, I wrote this kid's book. I'm sorry. You know, it, sorry.

02:23:45.620 I didn't let you know earlier, but I really want the book to come out for Christmas. And my publisher

02:23:49.400 said, yeah, well, you know, that's not really going to happen. And I said, yeah, but I really

02:23:52.260 want it to come out by Christmas. And by this time, I think I'd written like three New York

02:23:58.500 Times bestselling books for whatever that's worth. So it wasn't like I was, you know, scrapping around

02:24:05.600 trying to throw this together. I had a pretty good vision of what to do here. And I said,

02:24:10.460 it's worth a lot. Yeah. So I said, please, can I, you know, get this thing published by

02:24:15.540 Christmas. And they, and they said, they said, there's no scenario where this book

02:24:22.860 by Christmas. And I said, I said, are you sure? And they said, yeah. And I said, watch this.

02:24:30.620 And so I started publishing about a week. Yep. I started my own publishing company. We finished the,

02:24:37.180 uh, the art inside the book and the book came out before Thanksgiving. And that was the beginning of,

02:24:43.980 of Jocko publishing. And so, yes, I've published it. And then I just wrote the, uh, the latest way,

02:24:51.060 the warrior kid book, way, the warrior kid for field manual. And, and again, the most rewarding

02:24:56.860 thing that happens to me on a daily basis is I get to open up letters from kids that are seven,

02:25:01.760 eight, nine, 10, 11 years old that just, you know, did their first pull up or ran a mile in a certain

02:25:07.480 amount of time or they. So cool. They like, it's so cool to see that because I mean, it's, it's an

02:25:14.940 unbelievably deep instinct that makes that satisfying. Like I have the same experience. I don't ever see

02:25:22.320 anything as satisfying as getting a message from someone who says, um, I've followed what you've

02:25:29.540 been talking about and here's what I've done. That's improved my life because of it. It's, there's a,

02:25:35.420 you know, when you read online comments, the negative ones are salient, right? They've got

02:25:42.280 potency, but, and people are wired to feel more negative emotion than positive emotion. It affects

02:25:49.460 us more, more, uh, we feel a loss more strongly than we feel an equivalent gain. Um, the one exception

02:25:57.440 to that might be those kinds of letters. They're so salient and it's really curious. I mean, that must be

02:26:04.500 the deep, that must be something like the deep instinct of fatherhood, that, that pleasure that's

02:26:09.080 intrinsic in watching someone who's younger, younger, generally speaking, not always, but generally

02:26:15.880 speaking thrive. It's so satisfying. And yeah, I think that goes back to the, to the concept of being

02:26:24.740 a good teammate. Yes, definitely. It's the deepest part of it. And you're helping someone get on the

02:26:32.000 correct path when they're eight years old and you, you know, when I write people say all me all the

02:26:37.120 time, the parents write me to the parents say, Hey, you know, thank you. I got more out of this book

02:26:43.500 than my kids did. Right. They, they say that as well, that the, the, the, the way that these books

02:26:49.140 come together, it's like, you're being a good teammate because you're putting someone on the right

02:26:54.060 path at a young age. I always, people say, I wish I would have had this book when I was right.

02:26:58.000 Right. Right. Well, yes, absolutely. Me too. That's a father between pages that it is exactly

02:27:04.480 that because the fundamental role of a father, as far as I can tell is encouragement. And I mean,

02:27:09.900 that technically is that you, your job is to instill courage in or to, or to, or to encourage

02:27:17.720 courage, I suppose in, in, in your children to make them resilient in that manner, to make them

02:27:23.600 confident in their ability to face the world, but also able to face the world. And that warrior kid

02:27:29.040 book, it's such a different approach to the problem of bullying. I, it reminded me when you

02:27:33.460 were talking about it, about the Simpsons, there's Nelson months is the bully in the Simpsons. And he's

02:27:38.280 quite a complex character actually. And if he bullies you, there's a pretty high probability that the

02:27:44.220 reason he's doing it is because you're doing something stupid and contemptible. So he's got this 1.00

02:27:49.240 kind of corrective function and he's not a bad kid, even though he's a bully. Some of his bully 0.79

02:27:54.980 compatriots are bad kids, but he's not, he's from a family that's not doing well. He has his reasons

02:28:00.240 for, for what he's like, but he is kind of a corrective, you know? And there's a scene too,

02:28:06.060 in the Simpsons where one of the teachers says to Ralph, poor Ralph, the children are right to laugh at

02:28:11.540 you Ralph, which is a hilarious line, but also absolutely terrible. But you know,

02:28:17.280 in your warrior kid book, the message there is

02:28:20.780 one way of dealing with your inadequacies is to rid yourself of them. And it isn't self-evident that

02:28:32.800 people who point out your inadequacies are your enemy. Now that doesn't mean that bullies can't

02:28:39.120 exploit, and it doesn't mean that bullying isn't reprehensible, but by the, by the same token,

02:28:43.820 you know, critics, a critic who points out a weakness has actually offered you a pathway to

02:28:50.620 development, a true pathway to development. So, and your, your attitude to the kid was, look,

02:28:58.520 kid, no one's going to laugh at you if you're the best swimmer, or maybe you don't even have to be

02:29:03.160 the best, but, but you could swim, you could be stronger, you know, you could, you could elevate

02:29:09.680 yourself. Yeah. It's, it's, it's, it's so fun to write these books because I mean, I got, first of

02:29:17.560 all, I got to experience it. And, you know, I always tell people, people say, oh, did you get

02:29:20.540 bullied? Cause I'm, I'm a bigger guy now. I was like, oh, when you're 10, you get bullied by 11

02:29:24.600 year olds. That's the way. Right. Exactly. There's always going to be somebody that's bigger than you.

02:29:27.460 Um, in the second book, the bully is like a psychological bully. His name is Nathan James

02:29:33.860 and Nathan, he's not physically threatening you, but he's, he's making fun of you and he's picking

02:29:39.860 on you and he'll take it to the point where he might, you know, feel some repercussions, but then

02:29:43.860 he'd be quiet. And so, you know, this kid, Mark says to his uncle, Hey, I'm going to fight this kid.

02:29:50.700 I'm going to fight him. And the uncle says, well, okay. If it comes to that, but before you fight

02:29:59.240 him. So that's when you published yourself, I presume. Uh, no, no, no. This was, this was still,

02:30:06.420 this was still, um, this is book two. Oh, really? Okay. Well, my mistake. I, I, I, surprising.

02:30:12.860 Well, that was a while ago. Do you think you could get a book like that published now?

02:30:16.500 I'm not a hundred percent sure. I've got another, I've got a, I wrote a novel that's coming out,

02:30:20.700 which, which you probably touch on, uh, which, which went through like multiple screenings to

02:30:26.000 make sure that it wasn't offensive and whatever else. Uh, Nathan James, the bully, he picks on the

02:30:32.400 kids, but he talks and, and his uncle, you know, the kid, Mark says, Hey, I want to fight this kid.

02:30:37.460 And his uncle says, okay, if it comes to that, but before you fight him, I want you to gather some

02:30:43.100 intel. He says, what do you mean? Gather some intel. I want you to collect some intelligence.

02:30:46.860 I want to know why he acts this way. And so he watches, he, uh, Mark watches this kid, Nathan

02:30:54.180 James for a couple of days. And he says, goes back and reports to his uncle, this kid, he, he doesn't

02:30:59.580 eat healthy. He eats potato chips, half a bag of potato chips. He's dirty. He doesn't change his

02:31:05.360 clothes. His socks don't match. He's got holes in his jeans. He's a slob, totally lacks discipline. 1.00

02:31:10.380 I think I should fight him. And then he says, well, why do you think he's like that? 1.00

02:31:16.780 You need to do further Intel. And I'm sure you can see where this is going. Eventually follows

02:31:20.980 him and realize the kid is kind of on his own. And the reason he has a bag of potato chips,

02:31:25.420 a half a bag of potato chips is because his mom's not home at night and there's no dad to be found.

02:31:30.600 And, and we don't even know what's going on, but he lives in some, in some apartment building

02:31:35.200 above a auto repair shop and, and maybe his jeans, wears the same jeans every day. Cause

02:31:40.180 that's the only pair he's got. And so instead of fighting this kid, maybe you should try and help

02:31:45.220 him. And that's where that goes. So yeah, there's a, there's another novel that I wrote,

02:31:52.100 which is coming out in the fall is, um, it, it, it's, it's, it's definitely going to be interesting

02:32:00.760 what the critics say about it. I'm looking forward to it. I'm looking forward to their, um,

02:32:05.960 their assessment. It's about a, it's about a, uh, two brothers. One brother is kind of a

02:32:13.280 handsome kind of street smart kid, smart, good looking. The other brother is, uh, got some kind

02:32:21.880 of a unidentified disorder, mental disorder, mental handicap, and basically is an autistic guy

02:32:31.100 and he's obsessed with washing machines and he works at a laundromat and, um, well, the,

02:32:42.180 the laundromat is eventually going to be up for sale. And the brother, the younger brother,

02:32:46.300 who's a little bit more street smart decides if that happens, my, my older brother is never going

02:32:52.880 to be happy again, because he's not going to have this laundromat. And he decides he's going to

02:32:57.200 do something to get money to buy that laundromat. And the only way he can figure out to do that is by

02:33:04.380 doing something that's not legal. So he goes for it and well, that's the story, but.

02:33:09.100 And that's coming out when?

02:33:10.480 Comes out in the fall. It's called final spin.

02:33:14.180 How long have you been working on that?

02:33:16.300 Huh? Well, I write about, I probably, I wrote an original draft of it probably

02:33:24.620 15 years ago and then just kind of set it aside. And then this is, then I, I dusted it off

02:33:32.280 because it never left my mind. Story never left my mind because ultimately it's about a, you know,

02:33:37.980 it's about, can you be happy? And what kind of sacrifices are you willing to make to be happy? And

02:33:42.200 what about people that are stuck in a rut? You know, when I was growing up, there was all these kids

02:33:45.700 that were smarter than me and funnier than me and better athletes than me. And, and I would look

02:33:51.900 around and they would get stuck in a rut.

02:33:54.300 Right, right.

02:33:55.420 And not really do anything. And it would be a little bit sad.

02:33:59.740 Yes, very.

02:34:00.400 And, you know, I was lucky enough, like you said, I, I joined the Navy and all of a sudden had a goal

02:34:05.780 and had an aim and wanted to be a good seal. And that was enough to kind of put me in the right

02:34:09.460 direction.

02:34:10.040 Yeah.

02:34:10.280 So what, what's next? What do you want, where do you want to take this? What's your ambition?

02:34:17.740 You're, you're, you're teaching people, you're communicating with them on a very broad level.

02:34:21.700 That's where do you, where do you see this going? If, if it went where you want it to go?

02:34:26.780 The, the, the ambition, the goal is to help more people, is to help more people, help more kids

02:34:31.880 become more confident, help more leaders do a better job of leading their teams, help people be

02:34:38.900 on a better path in their life, healthier and, and doing productive things in the world.

02:34:44.980 That's, I think the best thing I can do right now at this point.

02:34:49.140 Yeah. Well, that just seems like generally speaking, that just seems like the best, I think,

02:34:53.940 well, once it isn't clear why you would be motivated to do anything else. It's like,

02:34:59.640 that actually is the best thing. You talked about these letters. It's like, well, what could you do

02:35:03.860 that would be better than that? I mean, if you were as greedy as you could possibly be,

02:35:08.620 you can't get better than that. So it's so rewarding.

02:35:13.320 So, yeah. And, and again, the biggest reward is, is when you, when you get a letter from somebody

02:35:18.640 that decided they weren't going to kill themselves because they heard you talking on the podcast or

02:35:24.580 they read, they read the book, discipline equals freedom. And they said, wait a second, I'm trapped.

02:35:28.460 Why am I trapped? Trapped because I'm blaming other people. I'm trapped because I'm not sticking

02:35:35.080 to the things that I know I should do. Right. And they get on the right path. And, you know,

02:35:41.400 they always say you changed my life. And I always say, I didn't change your life. You did.

02:35:46.240 Which is the truth.

02:35:50.140 Thanks a lot.

02:35:51.900 Thanks for having me, man. Good seeing you.

02:35:53.520 Good to see you too.

02:35:58.460 Good to see you too.

The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - April 05, 2021

160. Literacy and Strength ｜ Jocko Willink

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