Jocko Willink is an American best-selling author, podcaster, and retired naval officer who served in the Navy SEALs. He co-authored the book Extreme Ownership and the Dichotomy of Leadership with fellow retired SEAL Leif Babin. He hosts a weekly podcast with Brazilian jiu-jitsu practitioner Echo Charles called The Jocko Podcast, which has a million subscribers on YouTube and attracts many more listeners. His military service included combat actions in the war in Iraq where he eventually commanded the SEAL Team's 3-Trait 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. He achieved the rank of lieutenant commander and was awarded the Bronze Star and a Purple Heart. He is a frequent guest on Dr. Jordan B. Peterson's new series, "Depression and Anxiety: A Guide to Healing from Depression and PTSD," which premieres on Daily Wire Plus on February 15th. With decades of experience helping patients, Dr. Peterson offers a unique understanding of why you might be feeling this way, and offers a roadmap towards healing. This episode is the first step towards the brighter future you deserve. Go to Dailywireplus.co/depressionandanxiety and use code "Podcast" to receive a 2-year plan that includes a surprise gift and 1 additional month of free shipping. Subscribe to Daily Wireplus on your favorite streaming platform. Go to nordvpn.com/Podcasts and use the promo code "Peterson" at checkout to receive 20% off your first month of the plan. You'll get 10% off the entire month, plus an additional month for two months, up to $99.99 and a maximum discount, and a discount on your choice of three months, and you'll get an ad-free version of the course starting at $39.99, and two months get two months of VIP membership, and they'll get a choice of VIP access, and she'll receive $39, she'll get $29, she gets two months and she gets that choice of two months is she gets four months, she says that she gets a choice, she also gets two of this is that gets that chance, she can choose she gets her choice, they also gets that gets a promo code and she also receives two of her best bet, she s she gets an ad? Thanks, Mikayla Willink.
00:00:00.960Hey everyone, real quick before you skip, I want to talk to you about something serious and important.
00:00:06.480Dr. Jordan Peterson has created a new series that could be a lifeline for those battling depression and anxiety.
00:00:12.740We know how isolating and overwhelming these conditions can be, and we wanted to take a moment to reach out to those listening who may be struggling.
00:00:20.100With decades of experience helping patients, Dr. Peterson offers a unique understanding of why you might be feeling this way in his new series.
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00:00:47.460Let this be the first step towards the brighter future you deserve.
00:00:53.780Welcome to the Jordan B. Peterson podcast.
00:00:56.100I'm Mikayla. This is episode 12, season 4.
00:01:00.160This episode was recorded on March 12th and is with the one, the only, Jocko Willink.
00:01:06.260Dad 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.
00:01:15.360They discuss Jocko's experience in the military and war exploring time in the Navy SEALs, Afghanistan and Iraq, and much more.
00:01:22.200Jocko Willink is an American best-selling author, podcaster, and retired naval officer who served in the Navy SEALs.
00:01:29.920Jocko also has one of the most successful podcasts out there, the Jocko Podcast.
00:01:34.700Please remember to rate and subscribe if you enjoy this content.
00:01:37.180This episode is brought to you by NordVPN.
00:01:55.340I don't know how this is allowed, but with NordVPN, you can unlock Netflix and your favorite entertainment websites.
00:03:33.380He hosts a weekly podcast with Brazilian jiu-jitsu practitioner Echo Charles called The Jocko Podcast.
00:03:39.300He has a million subscribers on YouTube, and his podcast attracts many more listeners.
00:03:45.480He co-founded the management consulting firm Echelon Front LLC and has extended his business development on a number of additional fronts.
00:03:53.260His 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.
00:04:12.180He achieved the rank of lieutenant commander.
00:04:20.940Yeah, I feel the same way, that it's good to be here.
00:04:25.360I'm really looking forward to our conversation.
00:04:28.820I'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.
00:04:43.200Yeah, well, it's so much better just to talk than to read in this sort of format.
00:04:47.920But at least everybody who doesn't know already has some sense of who you are, some minimal sense of who you are.
00:04:56.400So, tell me what's been happening online with you over the last couple of years.
00:05:03.180Because we haven't spoken, I would say, it's got to be two years, I think, something like that.
00:05:07.840And so, I've cast an eye on what's been happening with you on YouTube, and some of my staff have filled me in.
00:05:16.880But I'm really curious, tell me about what's happening with your YouTube channel and your online activities, your podcast, and all of that.
00:05:24.360Yeah, a few years ago, I started a podcast, that was actually, it was quite a few years ago now, it was in 2015.
00:05:34.760It might have been kind of as the explosion of, prior to the explosion of podcasts.
00:05:40.720In 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.
00:05:50.560And I kind of got lucky, because at the time, Tim Ferriss had one of the most popular, still very popular.
00:05:58.860But at the time, just because the numbers of podcasts that existed, his podcast was even more popular.
00:06:05.280And 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.
00:06:15.080And I kind of took that, you know, and noted it.
00:06:18.480And 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.
00:06:28.560And he told me in the middle of that podcast that I should have my own podcast.
00:06:32.380And so when guys like Tim Ferriss and Joe Rogan are telling you to have your own podcast, you have your own podcast.
00:06:37.960Now, I came to realize later that Joe Rogan actually would tell everybody to have a podcast.
00:06:42.560So maybe, you know, he would tell everyone, oh, you should start a podcast.
00:06:50.100And 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,
00:07:03.200somebody 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.
00:07:18.300And so instead of doing any of that, what I did was I have a podcast that's between two and five hours long.
00:07:26.380Oftentimes, it's just me talking, reading from a book, and reviewing a book.
00:07:31.880And usually the books are about war or suffering or some kind of human atrocity.
00:07:39.520And really what it boils down to is it's learning about human nature.
00:07:44.180And for me, human nature is best revealed or most clearly revealed in times of suffering.
00:07:50.640And 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.
00:50:55.320You have to communicate what happened as well as having it had it happen.
00:50:59.220Right, 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.
00:51:12.940I'm sure you've heard the term rules of engagement.
00:51:15.020Well, 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.
00:51:31.920And 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.
00:51:48.440So that was why I decided to study English when I went to college and believe me.
00:51:58.980And with that end in mind, that it was.
00:52:01.320So tell me exactly what the decision was with regards to studying English.
00:52:06.020What 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.
00:52:23.740The good SEALs that I see can communicate, they can write, and they can read.
00:52:29.340That's what I need to learn how to do.
00:52:31.080I 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.
00:52:44.220All those things are done by being able to write and communicate properly.
00:52:48.680Okay, so let's say you take the example of a SEAL who's got it all, but this literacy.
00:52:57.120Okay, so what happens to him compared to someone who has all those skills?
00:53:03.640Well, 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.
00:53:21.620Okay, so he can't reward his good workers, his good soldiers.
00:53:26.300He can give him a pat on the back, but a pat on the back isn't going to get him promoted.
00:53:30.080An award is actually worth some points towards your promotion.
00:53:33.880And 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.
00:55:06.720And, you know, you said being literate makes you powerful.
00:55:10.480And 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.
00:55:29.600And so what's the advantage to that as far as you're concerned, practically speaking?
00:55:33.480Well, 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.
00:55:53.880So, 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.
00:56:07.360There'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.
00:56:18.100And 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.
00:56:34.620And 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.
00:56:40.460But 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.
00:56:52.120And there were so many lessons that correlated to what I was actually going through.
00:56:56.640And 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.
00:57:05.120And guess what? They're all corrupt and they're not motivated and they don't have the right gear.
00:57:09.440And here we are in Iraq and we're working with Iraqi soldiers and therefore by proxy, we're working with the Iraqi government.
00:57:14.600Guess what? They're all corrupted. They're not well equipped.
00:57:18.400And how did he deal with it? How do we deal with it?
00:57:21.580So there's an example of when you read, you can learn and you don't have to go through the school of hard knocks.
00:57:29.500You 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.
00:57:38.860And the amount of the amount of the level of capability increases so much by seeing something one single time.
00:57:51.060Well, if I see something one time, I'm infinitely better than if I'd never seen it before.
00:57:56.120So if, if it's like those, you know, those little puzzles, they give you a little puzzle, some kind of a mind bender, right?
00:58:04.320The mind benders only work on you one time. The riddle only works on you one time.
00:58:07.860Then you go, I know the answer to that. That's the answer. You know, you never get fooled by that again.
00:58:13.000So just knowing, just seeing it one time, you're infinitely better.
00:58:17.760So when you read enough, you're capturing all these lessons. And, and you know what, it's, I got to say this.
00:58:26.020It'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.
00:58:37.580I 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.
00:58:49.780And so I'd read it in a certain way, but even that reading was a little bit detached, a little bit detached.
00:58:55.960It's because you're looking for a theme or you're looking for character development or what have you.
00:59:00.820But 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.
00:59:15.080And 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.
00:59:20.680And 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.
00:59:32.020If for lack of a better word, is it, is it possible for a human being to read intensely?
00:59:37.520Because that's what I try and do. I get there.
00:59:39.480That's no different than, than, than acting intensely or playing intensely.
00:59:43.180Of course you want to put the book on, you want to become that person that can rattle you up, man.
00:59:49.400Especially if the person is thinking all sorts of things that you've never thought.
00:59:53.660I mean, I love reading for that reason. I could pick my peers too, which I really loved.
00:59:58.880It'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.
01:00:06.220And 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.
01:00:15.080And 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.
01:00:22.660I 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.
01:00:39.980And you get the benefit of their entire life distilled into their, into their book.
01:00:45.160You 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.
01:00:53.480I 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.
01:01:02.880And 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.
01:01:12.900I 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.
01:01:20.440I 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.
01:01:30.920And 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.
01:01:44.080He'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.
01:01:55.240And, 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.
01:02:04.660And 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.
01:02:12.800Magnus 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.
01:02:20.540This isn't a jujitsu match. Why would that help? And then sure enough, you learn a little bit about cognitive decline.
01:02:28.720And 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.
01:02:41.380Hell, 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.
01:02:51.340And fluid IQ is what enables you to learn. And it declines from 25 onward. Crystallized intelligence continues to grow, roughly speaking,
01:03:01.140because it's partly dependent on such things as vocabulary, which you can learn and which accumulate.
01:03:06.120But interestingly enough, you know, you were talking about physically, the best way to stave off cognitive decline is not cognitive activity.
01:03:15.640It's exercise, weightlifting and cardiovascular exercise can, will, is the, it's by far the most potent means of staving off cognitive decline.
01:03:24.660So Kasparov would have the advantage in terms of experience, but the younger guy would have the edge on, on sheer raw brain power.
01:03:31.860That'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.
01:03:41.200So 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.
01:03:53.420Because that's what they do. They document that stuff.
01:03:55.700And 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.
01:04:02.960Well, this young kid, Matt, so, so this, where it might've taken Gary Kasparov, you know,
01:04:09.340eight years or four years to figure out how to get out of some particular quandary on the chessboard.
01:04:16.000Well, Magnus just opened to a page in a book and said, Oh, that, if I ever get into that quandary, I'm there.
01:04:19.700And so what Magnus got to do is he got to start from here and build. And so I make this point from a
01:04:27.980leadership perspective. We can do the same things as, as leaders. We don't have to figure all this
01:04:33.800stuff out. We can jump up to Gary Kasparov's level, or at least get a baseline of what he knew
01:04:39.560and, and win because we learned. It's very interesting to me.
01:04:44.860Well, you think, and again, with regards to selling this sort of thing, you know, I'm stunned
01:04:50.260that it's possible to make history boring. For example, people should be so enthralled with history
01:04:54.940that they can't get enough of it. But with reading, you imagine you have this opportunity to learn
01:05:00.600whatever you want from the greatest people who ever lived along that dimension. And, and
01:05:08.780well, it's stunning to me that that is a hard sell. It's mysterious that, that it's, that,
01:05:22.620that it isn't something that everyone is just clamoring for. I mean, that, to me, that points
01:05:27.060to a devastating failure, inadequacy of the education system, a mysterious inadequacy.
01:05:32.880Yeah. There's a, I think maybe the transaction isn't always clear for people. I always talk
01:05:41.100about, well, if you're going to sell somebody, if you're going to sell somebody a book, you know,
01:05:44.700if I'm going to sell you a book, Jordan, you've got to give me $20 and eight hours of your time,
01:05:51.500right? That's what, you know, you're going to give me, you're going to give me $20 and you're
01:05:55.240going to give me eight hours of time, which you would probably, you know, have other things that
01:05:59.980you might need to do. And the transaction is not always clear of what you're going to get out of
01:06:04.500that, especially when, look, you can spend a lot of time reading books and not get as much as you
01:06:08.320might want. You might not get your $20 worth out of a book. So you have to be somewhat selective. Now,
01:06:13.020luckily, it's not even that hard to figure out which books to read because there's so many reviews
01:06:17.820and, and, and, and history about where these books came from and the, and the productivity that
01:06:22.820they resulted in. So, but I think it's hard sometimes for, look, I can, I can only speak for
01:06:28.940myself. When I was younger, it was really hard for me to figure out that transaction.
01:06:34.940Yeah, fair enough. Like I had a librarian when I was 13 who told me what to read,
01:06:43.800which is what a teacher should do, right? There's nothing a teacher can do for you. That's better
01:06:47.960than say, well, here's 10 books that will change you completely. And who actually knows that to be
01:06:52.680the case. And one of the things I'd really like to do, I I've toyed with, um, well, with the whole
01:06:59.500concept of online education, one thing I'd really like to do is to divide up the variety of, of domains
01:07:06.440of learning and identify the top 10 books in each domain. So to ask an expert, it's like, well,
01:07:12.300you're a historian, you're a great historian. What 10 books are crucial? And I have a list on my
01:07:17.960website, a list of recommended books. There's about a hundred of them that have been instrumental
01:07:21.680for me. And lots of people have used that list to purchase books. So that's been really good,
01:07:27.480but I'd really like to extend, extend and expand it. Yeah. I have the same thing on my website,
01:07:33.800the books from the podcast and same thing, all kinds of those books get sold and it's,
01:07:39.620it's beautiful to see, but the people that are checking the website or listening to the podcast,
01:07:45.120they know that that those books have been through a filter. They're there for a reason they're there
01:07:49.300because they're going to be worth that transaction. And I think that's a tough sell for, for a lot of
01:07:55.720people. They can't figure out, maybe they've invested in books before and they didn't quite
01:07:58.840get the return on investment that they wanted and buy two or three books and 50 or $60 and 20 or 30
01:08:05.200hours. That's a great observation. I think, because one of the advantages to coming from a literate
01:08:10.940background is that you do in fact, reduce the transaction costs because there's an infinite
01:08:16.540number of books. I mean, well, no, there isn't, but as far as we're concerned, there might as well be.
01:08:21.980And so the question of what to read really is daunting. If you don't know anyone who reads,
01:08:26.800where do I start? And, and, and how can I not be a fool in doing this? So,
01:08:33.120well, okay, back to English. So what, what were you reading when you were in university? Was it,
01:08:40.060was it fiction novels? Was it nonfiction? What, what were you, what were you focusing on?
01:08:45.620It was like your basic English literature. That's what I studied. And so I read everything. I read
01:08:52.620everything, you know, from each one of the little periods and it took the various classes and, and
01:08:56.940really as trite as this may sound, it was actually the, the most impact was from Shakespeare.
01:09:04.460It was the most impact on, on multiple levels. And I'll tell you the primary level. And when I've
01:09:11.640covered Shakespeare on my podcast, I explained this to people, people think, well, you know,
01:09:16.800I didn't really understand, but I read it and understand it. And I, I, so I start off when I
01:09:21.720talk about Shakespeare on my podcast, I start off by saying, listen, if you think you're going to just
01:09:27.960pick up Shakespeare, open it up and read it and understand it, you're not going to, because it's
01:09:34.260barely written in English. It's barely written in English. It's almost another language. And so
01:09:40.480you're not going to be able to just pick it up and read through it. It's, it's, it's written in an
01:09:45.240almost other language. So what you have to do is you have to start to interpret it. And so what I
01:09:50.060realized with, with Shakespeare is number one, the weight of the words that these words were so
01:09:56.260pregnant with meaning that you had to pull those words and parse those words and pull those words
01:10:03.880apart to see all the depth that each individual word had. And then the way that they're put together.
01:10:10.400And what was great about this was by the time I was back, cause then I went right back into the
01:10:15.080SEAL teams and somebody would hand me a rules of engagement document. And that was written by some
01:10:19.240lawyer in Washington, DC. And I'd pull it out and say, wait a second, this word, I don't know what this
01:10:23.260word means. Let's pull this word out. Let's see what this, let's see what this actual definition
01:10:26.720of this particular word is and how that changes my viewpoint of these rules of engagement. And how
01:10:30.760can I translate that for my troops so that they actually know what to do? So that part for me was
01:10:37.840from a reading perspective, starting to read Shakespeare and, and saying, oh, okay, you're not
01:10:43.380going to understand this. And if you don't understand something, that's okay. You pull out the Oxford
01:10:48.740English dictionary and you look it up and then you not just find out what the meaning of the word is,
01:10:53.700but what's the root word and where does it come from and what kind of depth and what kind of...
01:10:57.700Yeah. And that's really, that's, that's unbelievably useful to, to discover the connotation of words.
01:11:02.960And the Oxford English dictionary is particularly good for that because you, you discover things that
01:11:08.900you'd never guess by looking at how the word developed. I mentioned the word hamartia, like the fact
01:11:14.280that the word for sin was derived from an archery concept was revelatory to me. It's like, that's
01:11:19.800so cool. It ties this moral concept, abstract philosophy back down to something as, as primordial
01:11:28.080as weaponry and hunting. And just the fact that that's the metaphor is absolutely fascinating. And
01:11:35.120then there's the overlap in meaning that I already referred to. And virtually every word is like that
01:11:39.880because word is an ancient artifact. It's like, it's, it's, it's like an, it's like an animal in
01:11:44.920some sense. It has an evolutionary history and it transforms across time and each word kind of,
01:11:50.280it carries the echoes of its past with it too, because each word, um, attracts other words in a
01:11:57.400particular unique way. So it kind of lives in a word ecosystem as well. And the ecosystem contain
01:12:03.080information about the history of that word. And you think, well, why is that important? It's like,
01:12:07.640well, Hey, guess what? You think in words, you talk in words, you have all these archaic,
01:12:14.160uh, what are these archaic entities, these words, these living entities that you use. It's like,
01:12:21.460the more you know about them, the more you know about you, the more you know about other people
01:12:25.460and the better you are at formulating and communicating your ideas. There's nothing left.
01:12:30.700There's nothing lost in that kind of investigation. Nothing. There's nothing but gain there.
01:12:35.400So, yeah. And that's, that was, so that was the, uh, that was the English road for me. And,
01:12:41.060and it was good thing. I asked you that question. Yeah. Really, really insightful for you to come up
01:12:47.300with that. Thank you. Thank you. All right. So, so, and you, did you have, did you enjoy university?
01:12:56.020Did you find a community there? No. Okay. So when I was going to university, I was married. I, I had
01:13:01.960two kids. When I got to university, I had three kids. When I left, I was not a university student.
01:13:07.380I was in fact, in fact, I would sit in the front row during my classes. I would have three pencils
01:13:16.280and three pens lined up and staged on my desk. I would be ready to take notes when the, when,
01:13:22.220if the teacher said something I didn't understand, I'd be sitting in the front row, raise my hand. I
01:13:25.460don't understand what you just said. Can you explain that? And, and meanwhile, you know,
01:13:28.620I'm 28 years old and there's a bunch of 18 years olds in there and they just want to, you know,
01:13:33.920go out and hang out with their friends. And I'm there, I'm in there to, I'd love to really sound,
01:13:40.700come off sounding good and tell you that I was there to learn, but I was there to get A's,
01:13:44.100which meant I did have to learn. So I went at it as a competition and I was competing,
01:13:50.440not with the other students. I was competing with the teachers because I'm a little bit crazy.
01:13:54.160Sometimes I would want to make sure that they couldn't ask me a question on their test
01:13:57.880that I didn't know the answer to. So that's what I did. And so did I have fun? Maybe not.
01:14:04.320And one thing I, when I got back to the SEAL teams, what I told the guys, I'd say, you know
01:14:10.900what I learned in college? And they'd say, what? And I said, I learned never, ever, ever, ever get
01:14:15.860out of the teams ever. Never get out of, sorry, get out of. Never get out of the teams, the SEAL teams.
01:14:22.160Never get out of the team. Okay. Okay. Well, you know, I taught older students in Boston and
01:14:29.280undergraduates and the undergraduates, especially in Boston, but also at the University of Toronto
01:14:36.140were very, very bright and generally very hardworking. The older students were generally
01:14:42.460not as highly selected, but man, they were committed. And most of them had had jobs that
01:14:49.800they weren't thrilled with, let's say, and had a hunger for what education could bring them that
01:14:55.980the younger people lacked. And so it does seem to me often, and maybe this is just because I'm
01:15:00.940getting older, that after high school, it might be good for people who want to pursue university
01:15:06.840to go do something that they're qualified for, which isn't much at that point, for a year or two,
01:15:13.520so that when they do go to college or university, they understand just exactly what they're being
01:15:18.900offered. Yeah, but I couldn't agree more. Working in the regular world will definitely make you
01:15:27.840appreciate the opportunities that you may have if you go and learn more in the world.
01:15:35.080All right. So you came out of university, you had three kids, you were married. What happens next?
01:15:42.320I go back to the SEAL teams and go through the rest of my career. I showed up at a SEAL team.
01:15:50.960September 11th had happened. So I show up at a SEAL team. I become a platoon commander at a SEAL team
01:15:56.360and then go on deployment. I get done with that deployment. That deployment was primarily to Baghdad,
01:16:03.080although we worked kind of all over Iraq. Got done with that deployment. I went and became
01:16:07.220the aide de camp for the admiral that was in charge of all the SEALs at that point in time. And so that
01:16:14.040was sort of an, well, not even sort of, it was a very administrative job, but it was also a huge
01:16:20.280opportunity for me to get to see the SEAL community in the most broad way that I could. So I got to learn
01:16:29.840a lot there. And then I went back to a SEAL team and was now what's called a task unit commander,
01:16:36.440which is two SEAL platoons combined together. And I was in charge of two SEAL platoons combined
01:16:42.720together, which is called a task unit. My task unit was called task unit bruiser. And we deployed
01:16:48.400to Ramadi, Iraq. And that was in the summer of 2006, very tough fighting, very tough battle
01:16:55.860and came home from that deployment. Hey, so could I, let me, let me ask you there. So can you tell
01:17:02.440me, can you describe a typical day or a typical week? Like what was it like to be there? I like all
01:17:09.740the details, what you get, tell me what happens when you get up in the morning, what did your day look
01:17:15.020like? So we're there, we showed up there. And as soon as we got there and we knew going into it
01:17:23.160in 2005, 2006, if you can remember watching the news in 2005, 2006, just about every day you would
01:17:30.920see in the news that there was three soldiers killed in Al-Ambar province or five Marines killed
01:17:39.660in Al-Ambar province or three Marines wounded in Al-Ambar province. And the capital of Al-Ambar
01:17:45.620province is the city of Ramadi. And the vast majority of those casualties were happening inside the city of
01:17:50.800Ramadi. And we knew that going there. And when you say we, you say we were deployed there,
01:17:57.100who are you, you're obviously referring to the country, to your country, but what does we mean
01:18:02.480when you make, when you say that? But when I say we, in this particular case, I'm talking about
01:18:06.600my SEAL task unit. So I had, and that's how many, how many people? Yeah. So I had about
01:18:12.00035 to 40 SEALs most of the time. And then another 60, around 60 support personnel. And these people
01:18:22.840are armorers that, you know, can fix our weapons and mechanics that can fix our Humvees and intelligence
01:18:30.600people that gather information for us and radio operators that can receive our radio calls. So
01:18:35.660there's a big support network that goes with the, the SEAL task unit as we deployed.
01:18:42.100And why was it a SEAL enterprise? What, what was specific about this deployment that, that
01:18:46.300required this, the, whatever it is that the SEALs bring and what is it exactly that the SEALs bring
01:18:52.500that's specific? So on this particular deployment at this time, at this point in time, SEALs were
01:18:58.160deploying to Iraq all the time. We were, there was always SEALs in Iraq. My first deployment was in
01:19:04.7402003, 2004. And we were in the beginning of that deployment, we were the only SEAL platoon there.
01:19:10.660And then by this time, there would be many more SEALs. I forget what the number is, but
01:19:15.720so we were in Iraq and we were conducting special operations missions. And in particular in Ramadi,
01:19:24.400when we got there, so standard SEAL operation on my first deployment was get, gather intelligence,
01:19:34.740from various sources. So, so through various sources, we would gather intelligence about the
01:19:41.460location of a bad guy. Okay. So you had, you had a variety of people who were targets identified and
01:19:48.520they were leaders of, of what made, what marked them out as bad? What were their characteristics?
01:19:56.980These are, these are people, well, we want to talk about their psychological characteristics.
01:20:00.740No, no, no. I mean, you might not be able to do a better job than that. I can tell you what they
01:20:04.500were doing for a living was trying to kill Americans, trying to kill coalition forces,
01:20:09.200trying to kill other Iraqis, trying to create chaos and mayhem for the interim government in Iraq.
01:20:14.520These are. And were they generally leaders of leaders of a group that you would target or the,
01:20:19.280are these people who were involved in the army on the other side or like put them in context?
01:20:24.800Yeah. So there's no, there's no, I mean, the Iraqi army is actually on our side, right? So these,
01:20:30.220the Iraqi army is our friends and that's who we're working alongside. And now early in the war,
01:20:36.080not so much because the, the coalition forces made a decision to disband the entire Iraqi military.
01:20:44.940Right. Right. Well, this is why I wondered if there were people with on the military,
01:20:48.800to what degree there were people with military training that were facing you.
01:20:52.340Yes. So since that happened a lot. And as a matter of fact, in, in the city of Ramadi,
01:20:58.580there, there used to be a massive military Iraqi military base there. And so a bunch of
01:21:04.000former Iraqi military lived there. There was a whole area that was called the, it was,
01:21:08.680there was an area called the officer housing. There was an area in Ramadi that was called the
01:21:13.520officer housing where Iraqi officers used to live. So, and I'm not nailing that name,
01:21:18.260but it's something like that. So yes, there was, there was former Iraqi regime army people that
01:21:26.460were out there fighting. There was also foreign fighters.
01:21:29.480And so would they have their own little groups, their bands of people that were fighting with
01:21:32.920them? You were talking, you were targeting leaders. I'm just wondering how people were selected.
01:21:37.280So the seals were after specific individuals, generally speaking.
01:21:42.000Yes. And here's what we figured out. If you only target the leaders, well, it's going to be a lot
01:21:49.760harder to catch them because they're laying low and they're moving around and, and they try and,
01:21:57.120they try and give misinformation about where they are and whatnot. So what we'd go and go out and grab,
01:22:03.020you know, one of their lieutenants, grab one of their soldiers and find out where the lieutenant is,
01:22:06.820grab the lieutenant and find out where the leader is. So we, there would be these cell networks,
01:22:12.540these little, these little networks, and maybe they're a mortar cell and they're,
01:22:16.220they're dropping mortars and they're a roadside bomb cell and that's what they're doing.
01:22:19.320And so we would figure out who these bad guys were. And then through these various intelligence
01:22:24.260sources, we would find out a location. Maybe it was a mid-level guy. Maybe it was a high-level guy.
01:22:31.080Maybe it was a low-level guy. And then once we know their location,