What is up, guys?

It's Andy for selling. This is the show for the real estate, Abide and the lies, the Thickness and delusions of modern society. Welcome to the motherfucking Reality. Guys, today we have Andy and DJ DJ The Fucking Internet. That's what we're going to do. That's what CTI stands for, Cruise the Internet. That's where we put up topics on the screen. We speculate on what's true, on what's not true, and then we talk about how we, the people, need to solve these problems going on in the world. Other times, you tune in, we're going to have Q&AF. That's where you submit questions and we answer them. Now, those questions can be about anything, but typically, they're about personal development, business, entrepreneurship, how to get better and kick ass in life. You could submit those questions a couple of different ways. The first way is-Guys, you can email those questions in to askandy@andyforsella.

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What's up, dude? Hey.

Got a special one here today.

We do. We have a fellow Missourian. Yeah. Are you from Missouri? Columbia? Yeah. Yeah. I thought you just had family there.

Well, I do, but that's because I grew up there. All right. My mom's in the same house.

I felt it when he walked in.

Yeah.

Felt the little Hoosier.

I got a good buddy of mine on the show today who's come all the way from Hawaii, Dr. Chris Free. What's happening, brother?

Hey, thanks for having me.

Chris has a new book, and it just came out. It's called Operator Syndrome. We're going to talk a little bit about this today. Let everybody know your background. We've been friends for a while. We talk frequently, but let's hear from you.

Yeah, sure. Where do you want to start?

How did you get to become who you are?

Okay. Well, we got to go back a long ways. I was six years old, and I was in Taiwan with my mother because my dad was a Vietnam veteran in Saigon, and my mom got it in her head that we should go be as close as possible. So my dad was not a combatant. He was an Air Force Doc. And so I guess what I'm saying here is I grew up in the shadow of the Vietnam War, and by the time I was a teenager, a young teenager in the 1970s, the Vietnam War had turned into a pretty much a cluster fuck for both our countries. And So my dad, as a physician, was very... He hated what he had seen and what had been done. And not that he was necessarily blaming any particular government or side, or it wasn't a political thing. It was just about the horror of war. So he took the family into the Quaker faith, and a tenet of the Quaker ethos is conscientious subjector status and a peaceful view of the world and approach to other people. So that was formative experiences for my childhood. And then also at the same time, growing up, I had a great grandfather, my great grandfather, who I tell a little bit about his story in the book, and the book is dedicated to him and the woman who saved him.

He was a veteran of the Spanish-American War. So he fought at the Battle San Juan Hill and came home, and we can go down that rabbit hole if you want. But he was one of my heroes when I was a kid, and so I would interview him and talk with him about his experiences in Cuba. His is the salient piece, or one of the salient pieces of his experience was what happened when he came home. Can I tell the story? Yeah, of course. The Spanish-American War in Cuba lasted about three months. It was a very short, low-intensity war by modern day standards, not a lot of American casualties, but they brought back tens of thousands of troops who were all sick. So they all had mosquito-born illnesses, dysentery, malaria, whatever. And they put up a few tents up at the top of Long Island, the very tip, Montauk Point. And they put up some tents, and they started bringing these sick soldiers home and mustard them out right there and had them in that camp. Up until they got better. And it was just a big muddy field, rows of tents, not a hygienic place.

And it became a national scandal, a national disgrace. And even the President went up and surveyed There was a woman, Mrs. Beane, Mrs. Jack Beane, who took her... She lived in New York City. She was wealthy. And again, this is 1898, so she's got a butler and a carriage, and she went up there, and she took my great grand father and four, five or six other men, and brought them to her home, and nursed them back to health in her house with her family there. For me, that was a really powerful narrative story. I'm not even quite sure what's the right word to use here. But he, and then she, I think he was there for about six weeks. I mean, this was not three days, and then you're gone. He was very, very sick. He believes she saved his life, and she gave him money to get home to Michigan, where he was from. And for the rest of his life. He talked about her and that effort, that civilian effort to save his life. So So when I was a young man, I wanted to, after college, I wanted to help veterans. I was never served, not a warrior, never put on a uniform, but I wanted to help those who did.

So I got a PhD in Clinical Psychology, and then I went my first last year of training, and my very first job was a Charleston VA, Charleston, South Carolina VA. So I spent 15 years working with veterans there, and that was what I wanted to do. I wanted to I wanted to be part of the solution. And part of my perspective today is we do have a VA, and the VA does some things very well, and it's obviously very important and meaningful to many veterans, but we have a very disconnected and indifferent society. So our soldiers, our warriors, our veterans, aren't really connected very well, or maybe I'll say it the other way around, our civilian society is not very well connected to the men who protect and serve everybody. I'm going to lump and include, not lump, I'm going to include in the men and women who I try to serve and honor, not just soldiers and veterans, private defense contractors who I've done quite a bit of work with, but also first responders, so law enforcement, EMT, firefighters, and so on.

That's what got you inspired to do the work that you're doing? When you started on your journey, did you know that you were going to do what you're doing now?

No.

How did it start?

I did 15 years at the VA, the VA system.

This is after you went to school and got your PhD? After my degree, right.

Here I am, fresh PhD, Clinical Psychology. I'm at the VA in Charleston, South Carolina, 1991, and I left in 2006. I love the patients I work I really appreciated, enjoyed, and most of the colleagues I had in the mental health service and throughout all of the hospital. But there were also some massive problems, systemic problems that I would say were more than anything policy, not about the individual's people there, but policy that was being set by our government and the leadership of the VA. And by the end of those, by 2005, I was demoralized because what I was seeing was we, as the Mental Health Service and much of the VA, we were doing at least as much harm as we were doing good in a lot of ways. And some of my research was oriented and geared to pointing some of this out, and it was not well received. It was not welcome by the VA. So we had a whole conversation about the VA and why I believe it has failed yet another generation of our soldiers and warriors.

You were putting out some criticism about how... From a place of, We need to improve, and they didn't want to hear it.

They didn't want to hear it. In fact, I got spanked for… I was a clinical psychologist, the therapist for full-time for about seven years. Then I started getting federal research grants from NIH, National Institute of Health, to study veterans and other populations with PTSD and anxiety and depression, depressive disorders. But also included in that, there were some studies. We did some studies related to how the system served individuals, served veterans, and some of the incentives to be sick. Essentially, the VA has a disability policy. People don't know this, but the VA spends more money on disability payments than they do on providing health care. It's not really even that close. It's a pretty It's a significant difference.

So they're just saying, Hey, you're messed up. We're just going to pay you.

That's right. You don't even have to get treatment to be able to receive that money. Many veterans do pursue treatment and do receive treatment, but they're not getting better, at least not as far as the VA can show. I was just reading a paper yesterday that even up to current day, present day, the number of veterans with PTSD disability who get better and then come off PTSD, come off that disability, is a fraction of 1%. So 99.99% of veterans don't get better from VA, PTSD care.

That's crazy.

What the hell? What are we doing? What are we doing? This is tragic. Why do we spend $13 billion a year on mental health care that cannot show any results? Would you You guys are your fucking businessmen. Yeah. You find once one of your important business units isn't producing any movement of the needle at all, and you're going to keep putting money into it? Probably not.

Well, I would just suspect that probably comes just like every other branch of the government, the money is getting funneled into people's pockets. Yes.

Here we have big government, and we've gone right now down the rabbit hole of the VA, which is cool. You could look at many different policies, no accountability for employees or little accountability for employees, little accountability for management, little accountability for the veterans. And so there's a book called Wounding Warriors, wounding with an I-N-G, as in it's still ongoing. And the subtitle is how Policy makes Veterans sicker and poorer. And it's a really good book, published in 2020 by a former West Pointer, who lost a leg in Falluja combat. And he and a Wall Street Journal reporter analyze the VA's policies, but they put it into real human terms. I mean, it's a page turner. It sounds boring and dry, but it's a page turner to read about how veterans lives are being affected. And in the book, there is a chapter. They interviewed me, and there's a chapter on some of my experiences in 2005, where we had done a study, and this sounds It's so almost obvious that I'm almost embarrassed to describe this. But we just took 100 consecutive men coming into our clinic, saying they were Vietnam veterans, and we evaluated them, and we did it, the whole thing.

Then about a year later, we did the... I mean, that wasn't part of the study. That was just clinical care. But we did a Freedom of Information Act request. We wrote directly to the St. Louis military personnel records, and we got their DD-214s, the one-page document that lists everything of their military career. And then we compared it, we compared that document to what they told us they had done during their career. Metals, deployments, training, all of that stuff. And there was a massive discrepancy between what people reported and what was actually true. I think we had five or six guys who claimed they were Navy Seals or Green Berets. They weren't. They were not. They were not. We also published a series of studies showing just very gross malingering and overreporting of symptoms in order to get the disability.

Because I know it's incentivized.

It's incentivized, exactly. They're rational actors. You put a great pot of gold out at the end of the rainbow, and people are going to go.

Yeah, they're going to figure it out.

They're going to figure it out, and they're going to go get it. And why shouldn't they? And many of these People needed help. I'm not saying we shouldn't give help, but why put it in the box of PTSD disability? First of all, PTSD is a very treatable disorder. Civilians get better from it. I've treated many civilians who got wildly better very quickly. Many of my patients at the VA got better. But then they say, Please don't document that because I don't want to lose my disability. I understand that. What It happened at some point in 2005, we submitted this paper. You guys heard of the book, Stolen Valor or the concept, Stolen Valor? Yeah. The Stolen Valor Act was inspired by and facilitated by a guy named Jugg Burkett, who wrote a book titled, Stolen Valor, in the late '90s. Jugg was a Vietnam veteran, and he noticed that just everywhere he looked in the 1980s and 1990s, there were people using the Vietnam veteran status as a way of getting things in society, elected to sheriff, advertising for a business, you name it, people who are appearing in episodes of 60 Minutes and such.

And he would do this Freedom of Information Act request, get the records, and then document that they were liars. They weren't even veterans, most of them. That's crazy. He wrote a book about this.

That's a lot more common than people think.

It's very common, yes. It is illegal now to do that, and it's illegal to wear metals you didn't earn, or to represent metals you didn't earn. But so Jugg Burkett and I became friends, and he helped me do the study. I worked directly with Jugg on this study in 2000. I guess we did the study in 2004, and we published it in '05. We had initially submitted the paper to the American Journal of Psychiatry, one of the top two psychiatric journals in America, and it got rejected right away with a very short review. Usually, you extensive reviews that in the peer review process is the quality control. But what they said was they didn't have any criticisms of the study. They just said this can't be true, because if it is, this upends everything the VA is doing. Therefore, it can't be true. We're not going to publish it. A few days later, I get a phone call from one of my mentors, one of the senior people in the field of PTSD, who was one of the directors of one of the There's a network of PTSD centers nationally, and he was the director of one of them for the VA.

And he called me and he said, You can't publish this paper. It's too explosive. If you publish it, it risks... Congress might cut our funding. It will harm veterans if you do this. And so we have a discussion, but he eventually said, If you do this, your career as a scientist will be over, severely damaged. And I basically I basically thanked him and said, But I'm going to publish it anyway. And we did. We submitted it to the British Journal of Psychiatry, and it got published. They took it, and they were like, Wow, we want this. Not only did they publish it, but they had one of the top British military historian psychiatrists, a mixture of both history and psychiatry, wrote a really eloquent commentary, companion piece to it. That guy now, by the way, has been nighted since So it's Sir Simon Wesley. I wrote that. And a few months after it was published, I got a phone call one night about nine o'clock saying, Hey, guess what? You're being investigated by the VA. I know it's nine o'clock at night, but we just sent you the questions you need to respond to, and we'll see us tomorrow morning at 07:00 AM in the director of the VA's office.

And so I show up there, and we had a conference call with people at central office in DC, and it was a witch hunt. They were looking, did I have IRB approval? Did I have R&D approval? Did I have this document sign?

It was basically-They're trying to find a hole anywhere.

Any technicality.

Show me the man, I'll find the crime.

Exactly. It's just like we're seeing left and right today. But this was 2005. Not that I was surprised by it, I'm going to say, because I had started to see more and more of this stuff coming my way. But guess what? Every I had been dotted, every T had been crossed, and they had nothing. They said, Okay, we're done. That was it. That got dropped. But then I'm getting phone calls and requests for interviews, BBC, The Economist, Wall Street Journal, LA Times, New York Times, Washington Post, and they're all calling me for interviews because people want to talk about this. And so what the VA did right early on was, I basically had a full-time, not a full-time, but there was a PR person who became my handler. Every request had to go through her. And not only that, but she had to be present at the interviews, and she had the ability to interrupt. She had the right to interrupt the interview. So if a question got asked, she had the right to immediately interrupt and say, No, he can't answer that question. And if I did answer a question, she had the right to say, Strike that.

He's not allowed to answer those questions. So that was eye-opening.

That's crazy.

That was like communism.

Exactly. It was censorship. Now, I do understand that organizations, when you work for an organization, you can't just go out and say whatever you want, especially if it's false or something like that. But I was speaking truth, and I had data, empirical data that supported everything I was saying. And after that, I was just fucking done with the VA. I left a few months later, and I was like, Well, I wanted to help veterans. Oh, well. But the VA is not really wanting my thoughts It was my idea, so I left the VA. At that point, I moved to the University of Hawaii, thinking I was done working with veterans, and I was for about eight years until this next chapter of my life developed.

And what happened in the next chapter?

So I had a really a weird job situation. I had a full-time job in Hawaii, but I got recruited away to Baylor College Medicine in Houston to be Director of a Director of Research programs at the Meninger Clinic, which is a very famous old psychiatric hospital. It used to be in Topeka, Kansas, and had now, just a couple of years prior, had moved and affiliated with Baylor College Medicine. So I was I was a tenured professor at BCM, and I was directing the research at this hospital. And so I moved to Houston, worked there for six months. Some shit happened. The economy changed. The research budget as a result changed. I was changed. No harm, no foul. I wasn't really good terms with everybody, but I decided to go back to my former job at the University of Hawaii. And when I did that, my immediate, the Chief of Staff at the hospital said, Well, in the chair of the department, so we'd like for you to continue your work here if you're willing to do this for a few months, four or five months, till we find your replacement. So I said, okay, and we agreed I would come back for one week every month.

Commute to keep the work going, and then, of course, doing some stuff remotely. It was nice because it fit with my research interests that matter for my academic career and my work at University of Hawaii, but they never found my replacement. I did that job for a decade, and Houston became essentially my second home. It worked out so well, we just kept it going. So every month for about 10 years, I was commuting. From Hawaii to Texas? Yeah, from Hawaii to Houston.

That's crazy, dude.

Man, did I wish I had a private jet back there.

Delta, Southwest?

Yeah, Delta took good care of me. And so I was making friends, and I am a so-called PTSD expert, and that was a little bit of the nature of what we were doing. And we were doing brain scans. One of our philanthropy, Anthropists, the McNair Foundation that owned the Houston Texans NFL team, funded a lot of our work, most of our work, much of our work. One of the things that they had bought for us was essentially an all you can scan coupon. So we had a deal at the Baylor College of Medicine Neuroimaging Center. We were sending every single patient that came into the hospital over there to be scanned as part of clinical, but also mostly research. I mean, this was all done under an IRB auspices. And so I started meeting people just in the community, not affiliated with the hospital or the medical school. And a lot of them, they were making friends with people, and some of them were One of them was a former SEAL, recently separated. And then there was another guy who was Army SF, and then one of the tier units on the Army side. And so I developed a small group of just friends.

But part of our early conversations were, Hey, you know stuff about veterans. You know stuff about mental health. So let's have some conversations. And that just began the conversation. So it was literally just informal conversations conversations over beer, coffee, or pizza. Essentially, the conversations pretty much all went the same way. Doc, Chris, what's wrong with me? I don't know what's wrong with me, but something is different. Something's off. I look in the mirror and I don't look the same. Even my face, physically, doesn't look the same. I don't have any energy. I don't have much motivation. I don't think I'm depressed, but I'm not sleeping. I'm irritable. My girlfriend doesn't didn't want me around very much, drinking too much. What's wrong? Okay, I got this. I'm a PTSD expert. I know how to help you. So I thought, and it turns out I didn't know what I was doing. They didn't have PTSD, not in the prototypical sense of PTSD. There was not the fear. There was not the fear reactivity. There was not the helicopter fly over overhead or fireworks. No problem. That didn't spark. That didn't get the pulse up at all. And there was no avoidance.

That's one of the other key features of PTSD, is avoiding those things, avoiding the things that will be reminders of military experiences, and war, and training experiences. So now, what the hell is going on? Just through trial and error, we started trying things. Let's get some testing done. Let's draw some blood. Let's Let's get your brain scanned. So I got brain scans on a small... Five of my friends through this deal we had, and started getting sleep studies, and it turned out, whoa, all these things I was not expecting to see. So all of my friends now in this circle are from special operations. They're not all Seals, they're not all Army. They're from different groups, but they all have the same pattern. Low testosterone, clear brain injury. The ventricles in their brain on an fMRI were atrophied to the point that they looked like 80-year-old men. They're 35, 38. Low testosterone in a brain. Their libido and their testosterone and their brains all look like 80-year-old men. These guys are studs. What the hell is going on here? On the sleep studies, they start showing as with sleep apnea, obstructive sleep apnea, which, again, I think of that as a condition that middle-aged, overweight men have.

So what the fuck? This is not PTSD. This isn't even mental health. This is physiological problems in multiple systems in the body. And as we figured these things out, and for those of you who maybe for the listeners and those of you who aren't familiar, if a man who has low testosterone, the effect of that is going to look a lot like depression. That man is going to be irritable. He's going to have insomnia. He's going to lose muscle mass. He's not going to feel motivated. He's going to be apathetic. He's going to be down. He's just not going to know what's going on. You treat that testosterone, and all that stuff pretty much goes away. There's many ways to treat low testosterone, so I'm not I'm not saying everybody needs testosterone replacement therapy, but you address that, you address the sleep apnea, you start doing some of the things that are good for the brain, and wow, game changer. So 2014, 2015, pretty soon, I have not just my friends, but I have their friends, and then their friends. So it was literally just a word of mouth snowball. If we go fast forward today, I have Probably consulted with about 500 operators over the last decade.

Some just two or three, four conversations, but some in dozens of conversations spread over many years. Of that whole group of people, I would say a large portion of them have been private defense contractors, who I do get paid for that work. I do that work through a law firm that's trying to help them with defense-based act claims. But same pattern, same exact pattern of injuries. That's what my book-So that's what operator syndrome is. That's what operator syndrome is. It's TBI. Well, before I even say that, we wrote a paper in 2020. Medical paper, we published it, and it was the International Journal of Psychiatry and Medicine, and it was me and a good team of people. But it was a very simple paper. Anybody who wants to read it can find it on the internet. Just type in Operator Syndrome. That paper is out there. You can download it easily for free, and it's just descriptive. So we literally wrote the paper for guys to read and for their spouses to read, so that they could start to at least begin to get a sense of, Shit, man, this stuff is not abnormal. This is normal for people who have had 10, 15, 20, 25 years in special operations.

So what is operator syndrome? Tbi, chronic pain, sleep apnea, insomnia, low testosterone, as well as other hormonal dysregulation. Estrogen levels often spike way up. In fact, there's a VA surgeon who reached out to me and said that after the papers published, reached out and said, That was amazing paper because it helped her understand why she's doing so many breast reduction surgeries in men coming out of ranger battalions or Air Force PJs.

They're gynecomastia.

Gynacomastia. Gynacomastia, yeah. Wow. I mean, think about that, how humiliating that must be to be a badass motherfucker, and then you're-Growing some boobies. Then you're going to be dressed. Yeah, man boobies. Then, of course, so operator syndrome, all those things which are very physiological, cellular, molecular injuries at that level. And then, of course, you do have depression, and anxiety, and anger, a lot of anger, addiction. Some have PTSD, most of some of the other symptoms of PTSD. And then what does that do? That just goes out in a ripple effect. It affects your family, your marriage, your sexual functioning, your emotional intimacy, connection with other people, and the transition out of the military. And then you got all the existential issues, the survivor's guilt, the horror of killing, the thrill and enjoyment of killing, which a lot of guys have and feel pretty guilty about having because you can't talk about that, typically, with most people.

Can I ask you this? Because I love this. I love this shit. I love it. Did you see a difference Looking at the Afghan withdrawal? Was there a difference in function or how these veterans, after witnessing that, was there a change in mental status? Is With the guys that you were seeing coming in, or guys you see now? That was, what, 2021, right?

Right. Dj, thank you for asking that question. I don't ask that question often enough, so I'm really happy to speak to that. I'll say a few words about what I saw about that. In the two months prior to our withdrawal, I did, I think, four evaluations via Zoom, via distance communication with Afghani interpreters who were in Kabul. So it was like this slow motion disaster that I could see coming because I was talking to these guys who are in Kabul, and they're saying to me, Help us, get us out of here. We are about to be overrun in a few weeks by the Taliban, and they're going to come and slaughter us and our families. Two of those guys, two of those interpreters took me around, and remember, this is a Zoom video, and they introduced me to all their family, their wives, their children, just trying to show how desperate they are. I don't know what happened to them. It rekindled some of my childhood experiences. One of my favorite babysitter, when I was about 11, was a Vietnamese man studying in the US, and in I don't remember what year it was, but he went home as the country was falling to the North Vietnamese.

He went home to be with his wife and his children. He was working on a dissertation at Mizzou, University of Missouri, right down the road. And he went home, man, probably mid-30s, went home and was picked up and murdered, executed by the North Vietnamese government. I don't know what happened to my guys that I was evaluating, but you could see it coming. They knew what was happening. They knew what was coming. They were terrified. They were absolutely terrified. And they knew what, apparently, our State Department and leadership in the US claimed they didn't know. We were saying, Oh, everything will be fine. The Afghan government will hold. The Taliban, they're not going to get in here.

Yeah, it took like a day.

Yeah. No, not even a day. They were there before we got out. So then I was talking. Months later, I evaluated and talked with extensively two different guys who were contractors, who were there at the airfield, literally during that time. So they described the firefights that were going on around the perimeter of the airfield the day before, very intense firefights with Taliban and other insurgents. One of them was near Abbey Gate when it blew up and killed those 13 Marines, plus dozens, maybe hundreds of Afghanis that were packed around that. And then they were a little bit later, they were sitting, or they were guarding one end of the airfield when the Taliban approach. So they were in an active gunfight. They were troops in contact moment when the bodies start falling out of the sky. Remember those the gas that were grabbing the wheels?

Yeah, the wheels were freaking crazy.

Those bodies were landing on their position. You're shooting it, you're engaged with the enemy, and boom, thud, splat. The State Department guys didn't get to sit at the ramp ceremony. They didn't get to participate in the ramp ceremony for those Marines. They were prevented pretty forcibly from being at that ramp ceremony. So how did this affect people? Well, one thing is, I mean, the story, I think just telling the story a little bit here gives you some sense of what was happening on the ground. I know a lot of guys for months afterwards that were sleeping two, three hours a night or less, because they were on the phones. There was a very organized effort from service members who were in the US and other places around the world, trying to get their buddies, their friends, the interpreters, the Afghani interpreters who they had known and trusted and worked with and closely and viewed as brothers. They were trying to get them and their families out. And many have gotten out, but many didn't. I still don't know how many Americans are or were, never got out of Afghanistan.

Well, they're certainly not going to tell us.

No, they're not.

They've treated those families of those 13 victims like total shit.

Yeah, they have.

It's demoralization.

So it's demoralization. Yeah. That's right. I mean, did that affect hormones? Did that affect mental health and pain? Yeah, probably, negatively. But that demoralization was just crushing. Now we have a generation of soldiers who are going, Why did we do What were these last 20 years about? And it's not just that their sacrifice was... Some of them feel that their sacrifice was wasted, but also asking the question of, Why Why did we lose so many of our brothers, both Americans and our Allied forces and our local forces? So that demoralization is something that I don't think most Americans see or really have an awareness of because our society is just so removed from the realities of our military and the men and women that serve.

Considering what's going on, it makes sense you would demoralize the military first or the veterans first. When you create a situation, let's just be real, like January 6, where they say it's something that it really isn't, and then you do the Afghanistan withdrawal right after that, that's going to be very demoralizing to any of the veterans that serve. Absolutely. For sure. Dude, you have, just to cap this on operator syndrome, and we'll get into the show. But you have a very interesting... The way you look at mental health is much different than what most of what we see on the internet as mental health. You and I have talked about this before. The therapy industry, for the most part-Industry is a good word. Yeah, it's not really geared It's geared towards getting people better. It's geared towards propagating customers and keeping them in therapy for as long as possible. At some levels, it's predatory. I'm not trying to discourage anybody from that. That's not what I'm saying, but I'm saying that there's good and there's bad. But your opinion on this or what operator syndrome is about, and I agree with you, is that it's actually inverse of what most people think.

Most people think that mental health, and correct me if I'm not saying this wrong, but most people believe it is mental, but you've discovered that it's actually a physiological thing in a lot of people.

That's my perspective. I think we put the mental illness up front and everything else is just background. I think we need to reverse the foreground and the background. Something that I feel terrible about when I really reflect back on my work at the VA was we never checked hormones. We never tested hormones. Ever. That doesn't mean that they weren't getting their hormones checked if something was picked up.

But that seems like it should be a pretty obvious process.

It should be a requirement, I would say. It should be step one. That should be one of the very first things that we do, and we don't. That's on the mental health field, because like I said, I've worked now in three different psychiatry departments. Psychiatry departments are pretty large. We've had probably 120, 150 faculty, and they're multidisciplinary. So psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, nurses, geneticists, neuroimagers, neuropsychologists, and more. Not once did I ever have an endocrineologist in any department I was a part of. Not once. That's not to say that there isn't research on hormones and psychiatric functioning, but that's just not at all.

Do you think the opinion of that... I feel like society has changed their viewpoint on things like hormone replacement therapy or just monitoring hormones over the last 20 years. I can remember when I was younger, how villainized testosterone was. I am of the opinion that it's villainized intentionally to keep men in a weak state, quite honestly. I think it's done for control.

Well, sorry to interrupt, but let me just say the American Psychological Association put out guidelines about five or six years ago, guidelines for how therapists should treat men and boys. Those guidelines are an abomination. Those guidelines encourage therapists, essentially to feminize men.

Yeah, well, that goes along with what I'm saying.

Toxic masculinity is now considered to be part of the mental health problem that we have. We got to somehow shake that out of them.

Yeah, while they're growing manboops.

While they're growing manboops. And that's boys and men. That's not just men.

A big problem with this mental health, dude, is that men aren't allowed to be men. That's real. We've dealt with culture so long in the last 20 years that has gone along with that where it's been villainized. And now you have women getting pushed in the face on the streets of New York every single day saying, Where's the men? Well, fuck, bro. You didn't want any men. You said you didn't need men.

Socially castrated them. Yeah. That's what it was.

Socially and now, chemically.

Yeah, right. I want to ask you this because I think this is a cool thing. I love the psychology.

That's where DJ went to school for.Psychology.Psychology?

Yeah. There's a saying psychology. Genetics loads the gun, environment pulls the trigger. Have you noticed any... Are there any genetic predispositions that you guys have noticed with operator syndrome? Of like, okay, these are some common denominators. Has that been a focus point at all?

I have not studied this. I don't think anybody specifically has studied it related to special operations. Sure. Not that I know of. But we certainly do know that genetics plays a large role in anxiety and depression and bipolar disorder and schizophrenia and addictions. So there's no question there is a significant role for genetics, and we're starting to identify even some of the genetic variants, that specific genetic variants that are implicated.

You're going to probably be more successful to getting PTSD. Yeah, right.

We've long known that if you have a parent with depression, you're more likely to have depression.

Also, you learn that behavior, too.

That's the environment.

That's the nature of nature.

The nature is the genetics, and the nurture is what you've learned, what society has taught you, and everything else that's been around you.

What's your opinion on victim culture?

Well, that's part of the heart of the matter right now, isn't it? We are not telling people to be resilient. We're telling people, Oh, you poor person. Oh, you need help. We're going to give you everything. Oh, you're downtrodden. You're struggling. We can't say to somebody, Work harder. That's not allowed anymore in our culture in so many ways. If you're-Or push through or get a little tougher, man.

Like, this is how it is. Yeah.

Cowboy That's what we're doing. We're on our way up.

Right. Look, before we get into that, yeah, there's situations where people are truly fucked up. Absolutely. That's not what we're saying. Absolutely. Yeah, but it's become a A badge of honor, dude.

There's real trauma, like going to war and having to do things that are necessary. And then there's losing your stuffed animal when you were fucking three and you're still crying about it. There's a difference. There's a difference. Yeah. There's a difference. Yeah.there's a difference.

There is. What message are we sending our veterans when we say to a veteran, Congratulations, you have PTSD, you're fucked for life, and you're going to get disability?

Here's a 80% disability.

Go home, be a psychiatric invalid forever.

And deal with this shit and be miserable.

Exactly. Because they're not getting better sitting on the couch. What's the most important thing for a person to feel alive and healthy and vigorous? It is having a sense of meaning and purpose. Just to call somebody an invalid and tell them they're done being productive members of society forever. We've just stripped them. We stripped them of their manhood, in a sense, if they're a man. We've taken away their mission and purpose and their structure, their daily structure. So, yeah, that's tragic. Yeah. I wonder why we have so many veteran suicides.

No shit. Or the biggest mental health crisis of all time. Well, we're enabling it because it's a massive fucking business. It's an almost $400 billion industry. Where do those customers come from? Do you actually think it's healthy to be on your cell phone nine hours a day? You're a human You're supposed to go out and do shit, build shit, create shit, have a sense of purpose, be thankful for where you are, exercise some personal development, some discipline.

These things- Accountability.

Yeah.

Take charge of your life.

Yeah, dude. We got all these people who are told by these therapists, Oh, you're broken. Oh, man, that sucks. Well, here, read these fucking passages and affirmations, and maybe you'll feel better. Like, dude.

Yeah, it's a terrible system. Real quick, I wanted to bring this up because right before we get into our headlines, you're a metal guy.

Oh, yeah.

Have you metal?

Have you seen his list? No. Okay, so I have a list here.

I didn't know that either. That's awesome. You didn't know that? No.

I didn't listen.

I didn't know you guys were stalking me.

That's okay. So this is Dr. Chris Fries, top 50. I have his top 10 here of the greatest metal bands. Okay. I just want to see if there's-All right, let's hear it. Any agreement in the room. So you got Black Sabbath at number one. No question.

I mean, that's easy. That's a no-brainer. I don't even think I've heard of some of these.

Iron Maiden?

You don't know Iron Maiden, bro?

I'm not a big metal guy. I like Danzig. I fuck with Danzig.

Danzig, yes.

That's an age thing.

That's all it is.

Yeah, that's probably true. Iron Maiden hit the scene in 1980-ish.

Okay. Deep Purple.

Early '70s.

Slayer. Obviously, I know Metallica. Metallica top five. Okay.

Is that accurate? Look, there are ages of metal. Chris is a little bit older than me, and I'm older than you. Right. So all these rankings are going to be slightly different. Okay.

Right. Actually, this is an old list. Okay. I've moved these every few months. I listen to a Motorhead now, and I'm like, Oh, I got to move them up. This was a snapshot. But yeah, that looks I got right. I might push Slayer up a little bit.

Slayer is good, no doubt.

I am Slayer. Every time I hear a Slayer album, I go, Oh, my God, they're even better than I was thinking.

What's your favorite Slayer song?

Song I couldn't say that, but Raine and Blood. Raine and Blood is awesome. I guess the album and the song.

Yeah, you got some albums here. You put where the greatest albums are, too. These are your top 10. Yeah.

Master of Puppets, that's for sure top 10 album.

For sure. Although Peace Sells, for me, it's tough. They're neck and neck. They came out in 1986, so both same year. Of course, Megadeath was Dave Mustain's band after he got ejected from Metallica.

That's a cool story. If people that don't know metal, you go read the original Metallica and the Dave Mustane and Megadeath story. It's cool.

Yeah. Mustain got rejected got ejected from Metallica right before they recorded their first album, which-Kill them all. Yeah, kill them all. And he co-wrote several of the songs, three or four of the songs on that album.

Kill them all is underrated, dude.I.

Agree.yeah..

Four Horsemen, man. That's a great song. That's the first-Seek and destroy. Yeah, that's the first Metallica album I listened to.

It was their firstMe, too. First album. It was just like...

Sounds like it's recorded in a garage.

I feel like this is just the best dog. You walk in his office, he's playing fucking...

Bro, we talk every week. We talk every week for at least an hour.

That's awesome.

I think this sounds funny, but I listen to heavy metal when I'm trying to work deeply. When I'm writing, when I'm trying to think, this is what I go to. I mean, sometimes jazz, sometimes classical. But if I really want to get in the zone and be productive, I'm putting on.

That means you're the same way. Yeah. You know why, though? I was just going to say this about Chris. Because at his core, he runs hot, as calm as he is. And that's the same for me. When I get into that zone, that's when I'm the It was creative, dude. And I start feeling like a bad motherfucker. I'm like, I can do anything. That's awesome. It's a cool feeling.

That's sweet, man.

It's a good list, man. I respect it. It's solid. Like I said, even though I don't know most of them, but I know a few of them on there.

Well, DJ, what Set the list aside. In the metal sphere, what would you... Is there other bands you would put up there?

Dj just started learning metal, bro. Yeah, I just got into it. When he started working with me four years ago.

Yeah, I just got into it.

You're like a metal mentor.

Yeah, it started like this. We were working out together and I started playing this shit. He's like, What's that? What's that? What's that? This is awesome. We were listening to a lot of Rage Against the Machine, Metallica, Danzig, Guns & Roses, stuff that's on my workout playlist.

Five-finger Death Punch.

Yeah, Five-Finger. All right. It's just all stuff like that. I don't know, what were you into before that? R&b stuff? Yeah, DJ plays the piano and sing. He's really, really good. Real good. That's awesome. Just to say this, I love pretty much all…

I like all music.

I do, too.

Rnb is one of my favorites. Classic rock, blues. I had a blues radio show when I was in college.

Oh, that's cool. Blues is cool, man.

Oh, it's great stuff. It's great stuff.

A B. B. King radio is one of my favorites on Pandora. When I'm chilling in the bar smoking, just chill vibes. Yeah, it's good stuff.

Is that all B. B. King or is it-No, it's just all Blues.

It's just all Blues. Nice. I like Frank Sinatra channel, too. That's a good channel. I can do a little Dean Martin. Yeah, bro. It's good stuff. It makes you feel classy. It does. Yeah, it tricks me.

I was listening to Chet Baker this morning on the ride in, he's a trumpeter. Cool, smooth, cool jazz. But he also did a little crooning, so he did a little singing as well as playing.

I like all music, too, man. There's really not much I don't like.

So How do you play? What music when you're playing?

Same thing, a little bit of everything. I'm a self-taught, but I could do some classical, do classical, more pop hits.

A little country?

I could do a little country, yeah.

Just simple, man.

Leonard Skinner. I can do a little bit of everything, man.

It's good. It's good shit. I had no idea. We had the Black Rifle Coffee Guys on the show, and we were hanging out at the house afterwards. Fucking Matt picked up the guitar, started playing.

I'm sitting there, it was JT.

Was it whoever? I think one of them picked up the guitar, and they started playing. I'm watching them play. I'm like, This is pretty good. This motherfucker starts singing, and I'm like, I had no idea I got an idea. And I'm sitting there like, What's going on?

I'm a good example of diversity and inclusion. A good example of it. All right, man. Well, guys, let's do some cruising. We got some stuff to cover. Guys, remember, if you want to see any of these pictures, headlines, videos, articles, links, go to andyfricella. Com. You guys can find all of that stuff there. So with that being said, let's get into our first headline. Now, we record CTIs. They come out Tuesdays and Fridays, right? And so there's going to be some gaps in coverage. But I wanted to re-address this of this big national event we just had earlier in the week, the ship crashing into the bridge. It's been a big story. Baltimore ship, Black Box data recorder taken by investigators as Search for Missing continues. So they recovered the Black Boxes. There's multiple of them on this massive cargo ship named Dolly. And the We're still doing recovery efforts, trying to pull through all of this. Here's the video of the ship crashing. This has been circulated as the actual video, right? I know there were some- There's some fake ones. There are some fake ones, but this is the official... This was from the stream time live, Baltimore cameras, supposedly, allegedly unedited.

Here's a clip.

What time of day?

This is 1:30 in the morning. 1:30 in the morning. Yeah, 1:30 Eastern time. Yeah. There's no audio on this, but you see it going. It's passing out. Then it loses power.

It's just a slow motion disaster.

It's going about nine miles an hour, and I'm not sure how much weight that thing- Where did this video come from? This is coming from Streamtime Live, Baltimore.

Because I saw... Okay, the power comes back on.

Power's back on. Then it loses power again.

So they don't know why it lost power yet.

I think they know why. I don't think they're saying why.

Thick smoke.

Comes out of the exhaust there. That is thick smoke. Loses power again.

This is when they're saying, Oh, fuck.

Well, they did send out a mayday.

Mayday's were sent out. And they-The recovery is light to be in.

You see a truck just went across the bridge.

Just right over. So one thing to notice here. During this whole time while they're going, and they were able to confirm this with the black boxes that were recovered. There's some interesting things with the black box. The bridge was under construction. You can see lights like right here, those pillar lights. Those are vehicles. Those are construction worker vehicles. The bridge was getting worked on. So one of the lanes going-They were on the bridge.

Were on there.

And so this entire time that it's losing communication, they already started the notification process, which is why there wasn't as many or more people on the bridge that went under because they were able to start closing down both lanes.

They were stopping traffic from going out. Correct.

So these are all construction vehicles here. And so during this process, everybody's just running to opposite sides, trying to get away from each side. But then it makes contact with the bridge. These are the last little few vehicles that go by. Now they're saying, Stop, stop, stop. They're holding the traffic.

The Did the workers see it coming?

Mm-hmm.

So they were scrambling but weren't able.

Some of them- Then it makes contact, bridge goes down.

Oh, my God.

Wow.

That was instant, too.

Yeah.

Now, Do we know who filmed this video?

That video was coming from off the dock. In one of the periods, it's just a static camera that monitors it. Okay. Now, So that's the clip of that, right? Now, the issue is that there was a report that was done that, apparently, allegedly, the Blackbox recorder stopped recording There's about a two-minute gap.

What?

Right. And then, don't take my word for it. Here's a clip. At 01:24 in 59 seconds, numerous The audible alarms were recorded on the ship's Bridge audio. About the same time, VDR sensor data ceased recording, however, the VDR audio continued to record using the redundant power source.

At around zero, one, 26, and two seconds, the VDR resumed recording sensor data.

During this time, there were steering commands and rudder orders recorded on the audio.

At around zero, one, 26, and 39 seconds, the ship's pilot made a general VHF radio call for tugs in the vicinity to assist.

About this time, the Pilot Association dispatcher phoned the MDTA duty officer regarding the blackout.

Around 01:27.

Yeah. So there's about a two-minute gap there from when it lost power. So there's two sensors. You got the audio recording that's happening. There's recording people's voices and the conversations both in the bridge room and then in the rear of the ship as well. But then there's a sensor recorder that records all of the mechanical inputs into the ship, the steering, the power. That went dark for two minutes. It's a two-minute gap, and then it cuts right back on right when they collided to the bridge.

Would that be because the power went out?

Well, so here's the thing. The audio recorder was on a power backup. The sensor should have been on a power backup per the NTSB regulations. Now, there's been some talks, but let's talk about the impact.

Well, I will say this. I want to say this, too. When these things happen, I usually get some feedback from people that were there. I did get a message from a guy who was a longshoreman who worked on that boat, and he had pictures to prove it. He was in the water right after it happened. He sent me a couple of the pictures where they were up on the boat from another boat, literally right after it happened. I know it was legitimate. He told me that that ship on the way into Port had a power failure. He said they worked on it in Port, and immediately after it left Port, it had another power failure. So he told me that this was an accident and that it wasn't a legit power failure. Because I put a poll up in my story that said, What do you guys think? An accident or intentional? Because a lot of people were saying it was intentional, and that's how he DM me. So there's that, too. Oh, yeah.

But the effects of it is real, right? They're saying that this is probably going to take anywhere from 5-15 years to rebuild that bridge at the cost of over half a billion dollars to the tune of $600 million to repair. Of course, we're paying for it. Taxpairs are paying for it. Biden has already made that promise.

How much is it going to cost to have that artery They were actually interrupted during that time?

That's the real damage because this port, it's the fourth largest port on the East Coast, ninth largest in the country. It's a massive input for the country. A lot of our vehicles go through there. To the tune, let me find the numbers. I got it in here. It was something like- Almost every car I've ever ordered from Europe goes into Baltimore. Yeah, it's almost like 900,000 or so a year are all coming through that port. What they're projecting, like this, Ryan Peterson, he reported on this. He says, This will surely cause even more cargo to shift to the West Coast, likely leading to congestion and delays. As we saw on COVID, even a 10 % or 20 % increase in volumes can lead to a compound feedback loop of congestion and delays. Most ocean freight contracts are signed between March and May each year. So many companies have the flexibility right now to sign contracts to ship their containers to the West Coast to avoid likely congestion and delays on the East Coast. Now, CNN puts this article out because there has been a lot of theories about this. Was this intentional? Was this an actual cyber attack?

Which are things that I don't feel like you can easily just throw off the table. But you obviously want to make sure that you actually have some evidence or something that can back up your theory. But CNN immediately puts this article out, calling out all of the typical people for being in conspiracy theories and how dangerous they are, calling them wild. Wild conspiracy theories about what supposedly had, quote, really happened were running rampant online. Now, Lara Logan- What do you think fucking happens when you lie to people over and over and over again? Yeah, exactly. It's their same war cry. All the claims, they're all baseless, entirely baseless.

That makes me think it was an attack.

Which further leads to That doesn't help calm the people. We don't trust you.

No.

We don't trust shit you're going to say.

We're at a point where everything the mainstream media says, we've found the opposite to be true over the last four or five years. And so when they come out and say this shit, it's like, Oh, well, If shit, I guess it was that.

Yeah.

Well, I was just going to add, the rush to say these claims are entirely baseless.

Yeah.

Then the next sentence, it says, Officials are investigating the crash.

How do you know?

How do you know they're baseless if I guess they're saying there's no evidence for these. That could be one interpretation.

There's also no evidence for you to say that it's not.

Yeah, that's right.

Exactly. Again, when you look at the history of MSM, even our intelligence, we don't trust you. There is so little trust right now. They have completely... That expectation of trust or the reasonable expectation that we can trust these news outlets or trust even our intelligence agencies to some degree It's gone. It's gone. When you come out two hours after this massive incident happens and immediately can jump on and say, Oh, there was nothing wrong here, nobody's really taking your word for that. We need a little bit more. That's the beauty of the social world that we're in right now is that people are able to put in different inputs. One thing that I've seen consistently from ex-members of intelligence agencies, the consensus was that if this wasn't an intentional attack, that's exactly how it would have been done, though. Does that make sense? If you were to try to do an intentional attack on America's infrastructure, structure, that would have been the standard play to do. It was executed perfectly, if that was. It's the consensus there. But here's the interesting thing. Why everybody was looking over there, there's always something else happening in the background.

I was able to find this story, and I thought this was very interesting. Literally that same morning rush time of news headlines and things rolling in, while everybody's focused on the Bridge, the United Nations comes out, and they declared that there is actually a genocide going on with the conflict in the Middle East. They put in a ceasefire in which the United States basically set out from voting on, which passed the ceasefire, 14 to 0, with the US abstaining from the vote. That's a big deal going on right now. A lot of people are not really talking about it, but the United Nations did.

They recognized it as an official genocide. As an official genocide. I saw the clip.

It's like, nobody's really talking about that.

Unfortunately, it's the only genocide in the world right now. Right. Sudan and Darfur and Weaher.

No one wants to talk about any of that.

None of that. Those don't count.

Or that we have more slaves in slavery now than have ever existed in the history of the world. Ever. People want to talk about what happened 400 fucking years ago. None of us did.

We weren't even here for it, but it's happening right now.

Yeah. I'm a fucking colonizer that caused slavery because I'm white. Motherfucker, our family didn't even come here until like 19, fucking '20.

Right.

Whatever.

Yeah. But that's an interesting thing. Netanyahu's pissed about that. He actually, the Israel Delegation, they had a trip that was planned here. They're supposed to be going to DC, I believe in like a month or so. They completely pulled out of that. Now there may be some communication issues between our diplomats and the diplomats of Israel.

I saw a thing shortly after Israel pulled out. There was a news story about Israel pulled out, and the US diplomats are confused, and they don't understand what's going on.

It's like, Hello. Listen, it's a tough ball to play because one minute you want to be on the side, and one minute, diplomatically, they're on the side, but then the next minute, they're abstaining from votes. They could have easily voted. An abstained vote is a yes The tensions are definitely rising between the US and Israel because Biden and Harris have both come out because, dude, the left has completely turned on them.

They've both come out and said, Hey, we've warned them. We've told them Biden got caught on a hot mic saying, I told Bibi, he better stop this shit. Did you see that? Netanyahu is like, Yeah, you know what? Fuck you. So now we have a situation where Israel is telling the US to fuck off, and the United Nations has decided it's a genocide. It's going to get interesting.

It'll be real interesting.

Because I don't see Israel backing off at all.

No, they have no intentions to.

No, I don't think they wanted to.

But yes, like I said, the search operation is still going on, I believe they're still looking for six people. There's six missing citizens right now.

Could I just... I'm looking at my phone because this story has been up all day on CNN. The lead story on the mobile CNN says, headline, Deadly Bridge Collapse Reveals a truth about immigration.

Oh, that's interesting.

Now we've changed the story. It's not about the bridge, it's not about the ship, it's about all of the people who remain missing, and I'm reading here, all of the people who remained missing were immigrants, outsiders who had come to the US from Central America for a better life. Fair enough. But this is a truth.

Well, that's because you let in 20 million of them, and you say it's 12. If that's true, Chris, know what this really was? This was white supremacy terror. Climate change. This was a domestic terrorist attack.

That's the implication.

And the win because of the climate change.

We did it. That's the implication. Fucking white people. Fucking white people, man. Fucking white people ruined everything. Came to make fucking chicken right.

It doesn't make sense, man.

Fucking racist white people tearing down the bridge to get six immigrants. Dude, these people think we're fucking idiots.

Yeah, they do.

Well, there are a bunch of idiots. They're I believe that. To be fair. Yeah. Nobody listens.

You guys, the term influence operation, do you think Americans understand that term?

No.

Do you think Americans understand the concept of an influence operation?

I don't think they understand that or propaganda, or they don't understand that Obama wrote out of the law that propaganda was illegal when he was in office. And we're being propagated at 100% propaganda since fucking COVID started. Full steam. Yeah.

Full steam ahead.

The goal here is to make people lose faith in the government so it will destroy their national pride. They don't want the American men to have anything to fight for. They don't want American men to have anything to stand for. If they can demoralize them enough by lying and propaganda and doing things like the withdrawal from Afghanistan or letting in 20 million illegals, putting people like Daniel Penny in prison while all these fucking criminals that are punching people in the face and killing people are getting out the next day. This is the demoralization of the American man for the intention to avoid some revolution.

That's what that's about. Combine that with... You talk about it with the- Which I actually think is just fueling that. Yeah, but like low testosterone. That's not unique to the- Everybody should be on testosterone.

Everybody should be on testosterone. A fucking I am drip.

Yeah.

2,000 milligrams a week.

Drink it. You know what I'm saying?

Breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Don't take my advice, though. I'm not a doctor. I'm joking.

But that's a real crisis. Maybe half that, though. A lot of the men, this is not just military or veterans.

Right. We have a crisis of men and boys on our hands.

100%.

What are young men doing right now? I know we've got more headlines.

Cutting off their dicks.

Well, some of that, yeah. But I think the bigger issue is they're not in the workforce. They're not in college. Colleges are 40% male, 60% females, undergraduates.

Shit, that'd be a good enough reason to go. Absolutely. That's enough for one and a half.

One and a half.

Bro, you can't even handle one. You need to shut up over there.

But that's the thing. Where are they? This is obviously a stereotype and a big generalization, but they're in their parents' basement playing video games.

That's right.

Playing video games. Mom, give you a video game.

Give me another hot pocket. Then they're on the internet being like, Fuck Andy and DJ.

They don't even wait for the shit to cool down. They eat it when it's hot. You know what I'm saying? I can see it.

What was that? Is that how you wait for that shit to cool down, bro?

No, I let mine cool down, bro, when I do eat them.

There's a good medium temperature.

No, if you follow directions, it has to rest for two minutes before you... At least two. At least two minutes. Yeah. Anyway. Let's get on that. You mentioned the influencer campaign.

Yeah, let's talk about that.

Influence operation.

Influence operation.

What's that? Just so everybody knows.

Well, influence operation is when the KGB decides we're going to undermine American society.

It could be CCP, too, right?

Yeah, just as an example. Just for an example. Kgb says, You know what? It's 1960, and America is our greatest enemy. Let's undermine their entire society. How do we do that? Well, let's Let's put some things into the educational system. Let's fund Greenpeace to stir up concerns about the climate change. In the '60s, we had books about how overpopulation was going to destroy the world. Now we're on the verge of a population collapse that's coming. So quite the opposite of what was predicted by so many people in the 1960s. But the idea of the influence operation is, let's destroy America from the inside by creating havoc. You already said it. It's like, let's convince Americans that their country is evil. Let's convince Americans that one group is better than another group, and they should hate each other and fight each other. And what better ways to do that than to create, then to undermine the idea of what we were doing during the civil rights era.

Right. Work that's already been done.

Right. We undid it. I think it started in the universities. I think they got into the universities and essentially influence operation, you start changing the minds of some influential people who go out and they become activists, no longer scientists, but activists who are spreading What is essentially a virus.

When they say a mind virus, they mean it.

A mind virus. Yeah, exactly.

It's ideology, man.

I've watched it happen in my life, dude. When I graduated high school, which was '97, damn, I'm 44 years old, bro. What the fuck? That's the math. That's why I'm fucking silver-ish and good-looking. You still look like a little boy. That's what it is. It is what it is, man. Get the fuck up. Put your fucking hat back on. It's an improvement. Dude, I watched this, right? When I went through school, there was no such thing as a participation trophy. We pledge a all the way through high school at the beginning of school every single day. Competition was taught. It was encouraged. Achievements were encouraged. They were celebrated. Desegregation programs were in the schools, all the schools. So that it taught inner-city culture, black culture, and white culture to go together. And everybody was getting along for the most part.

Bullying was okay? Yeah. Huh? Bullying? I said bring...

Yeah, bro. Like, real talk. There was It was okay to have physical fist fights. You got suspended for a day, and that was it. And then you shook hands, and it was over. Now, right after I graduated, they changed a lot of shit. They stopped deseg, okay? And what's the product of stopping desegregation after 20 years. You have a black community and a white community that do not know how to relate. They don't know. All these white kids that you see on the internet posting BLM shit, they're doing that because they think that's what they should do. If they actually understood, it wouldn't be the way that they... That's what makes them feel guilty. It's the white guilt. All that shit comes from the end of desegregation. And then they removed competition. Then they started villain capitalism and achievement. And the rich man and all this shit. Now we have a generation of complete fucking pussies that don't know how to operate in the real world for the most part. Now, there are some really good ones. There's the kids whose parents taught them right, but they're the minority now. Now.

And those parents are vilified for being- Too hard. Too hard, irresponsible because they're not watching their child every moment.

Yeah, it's crazy. Let their kid cut their penis off, and they're praised as a model.

Listen, dude, That's going to go down in history, no different. This has already happened in history, bro. Fucking Joe Biden said it yesterday. She's like, Berlin was the capital of progressive... No shit. That's what the fuck the problem was. That's what caused all this shit. Fucking people were doing all this crazy shit. They were cutting off their dicks. They were doing fucking... There was mother-daughter prostitution, kid prostitution, and pedophilia was normal. No shit. That wasn't the hype. That's not a good thing, Jill. No. We don't want that here. This has already happened. And so this era where parents are allowing themselves to bend the to this ideology and letting their kids make irreversible. Dude, those parents, 20 years from now, are going to be completely... First of all, they're going to be complete failures as parents. But second of all, they're going to be vilified and looked at like, what the fuck were you doing? Your kid cut off his genitalia. You allowed him to do that. You see what I'm saying? The good news is that now it's been banned in 30 states. A lot of states. I mean, dude, it's crazy shit. And this has already happened It's destroying lives.

It's not just the parents. It's organized.

The teachers. It's teachers.

It's organized medicine.

Dude, I think these people that do this shit, like legit, the medical doctors that do these things should go to jail. That's my personal opinion. They should go to jail. That's bare minimum. They're fucking doing it for money, bro. They're not doing it for the kids. If you listen to these detransitioners, they will tell them, Bro, they put me on hormones after one fucking Zoom call.

My surgery was scheduled for two weeks after that.

Yeah. Well, that's a little exaggeration. But yeah, dude, I mean, they're putting them on puberty blockers and hormones and shit off one consultation.

And they're shaming parents that don't play along with that.

Dude, some of them are legally removing the kids from their home.

Yeah, you lose your child.

This is crazy shit, dude. It's not going to go down in history as one of the biggest moral corruptions and tragedies that's It's never happened in human history.

Sacramento, California, I think, just declared itself a sanctuary city for children who want to transition.

Haven't they learned not to call themselves sanctuary cities for other reasons?

No. No, apparently not. They want that.

Yeah.

They want that.

It's insane. It's insane. What's Headline 2? Headline 2, let's talk about, well, like I said, you brought up the influencer operation. Let's talk about influencers. We also said something about immigration, illegal immigrants. So let's just combine the two. Venezuelan TikTokeer Lionel Moreno grimaces in his mug shot after being napped by ice for crossing into United States illegally than telling others How to on social media. We remember this guy. You remember this guy?

Oh, yeah. He's the guy who's holding money and waiving money on TikTok and telling people how to take advantage of squatter laws.

How to invade the United States legally.

How to invade the-Yeah, and he was real fucking tough on that first video.

Real tough. I mean, look at his fucking face. Real tough.

I would give a larger amount of money to punch that guy right in the fucking face. Just being honest.

Well, you know what? So This is him. This is the money video you were referencing, Chris. He's talking about how good he's doing. He's received so much heat online. People have been doxing him, put out his address. There's been pictures of his house that he got put up. This So this is him now with snot boogers going down saying that they're coming after me and talk that shit.

What do you say?

Can you go back to the prior photograph? Because the child looks different, too, doesn't he? Not so much.

Okay.

Yeah, no.

Actually, the child looks happier in a second picture. Let's go to the one where he's got snot because that makes me happy. That makes me happy to look at. After his cocky fucking shit the other day, that's what you get, dude. No. This is our country. It's not your country. You're not going to come here and fuck around with everybody. And dude, it's only a matter of time before the American citizen does something to people like you who are doing this shit. So I'm glad that people are going after them. That's what needs to happen. The law is not doing their job, and people need to start standing up for themselves.

100 %. So in that video, the one with the snot, one of the lines he said, he says, My people, they have gotten what they wanted. The envy has reached my family Everything that's happening is because of your evilness. They want to silence me. He also said something about- No, they don't want to silence you, dude. He says, I am in danger of death in the United States. I need protection. That's correct. I'm being persecuted. My account has been blocked because TikTok shut his account down also. Yeah, well. Because they're- You come here and you talk about taking people's homes, dude.

That's what they're going to do.

Yeah, TikTok. A spokesman from TikTok told David Mel, The platform doesn't allow users to promote criminal activities. Which is exactly what he was doing. Now, to your point, Andy, about American standing up. This is his mug shot, by the way, from 2022.

That didn't even look like him.

No, it's definitely changed. I guess that's just how good America can do for somebody. But to your point, though, Andy, about America sticking together. There's a video that has been circulating that I saw. You shared it to me, actually. It's freaking amazing. Let's check this video. Oh, yeah.

This is a good video.

What's wrong?

So you got two illegal immigrants. It's America.

It's a free country, guys. It's a free country.

We can film in America.

This is interesting. They don't want you filming their stuff in America. They're here illegally.

.

No? No.

Mexico or Venezuela?

Venezuela. No.

No. No? No. Okay.

So They're selling drugs out here, doing drugs out here.

This is the America.

This is America that Democrats want.

There you go. I told you.

Say it again. Again. That's what they think of you, America. As they're watching this, these guys over here, what did you say? They're throwing gang signs up, man, as if they own the country. But just like I'm sitting here. We're not worried about that, okay? We're just going to deal with what we got to. Whatever happens, happens. But I'm going to make sure that you're all right and that we're okay as well. Yeah, that's it. American people got to rise up. Man, we got to get Trump in 2024. It's unquestionably, that's all the Democratic Party stuff, man. This is what they brought our country to, and we got to stop it. As soon as Trump get in, it needs to be a mass deportation, and watch them here for the border.

Hey, we got a listener.

You must listen to the show.

We got a listener.

Dude, the temperature's changing, man. The temperature's changing. Because we're seeing it all over. You got these illegal immigrants who should not be here. New York City just passed a bill where they're giving them almost like $1,500 a month.

What are they giving to our American citizens?

If they promise to only spend it on essential items, okay. But Americans are sick of it. As long as they promise. Yeah, they promise. But Americans are sick of it, man.

Look at this picture. This makes me so happy. What a bitch. You're going to get on the internet and talk all this shit, and then you're going to show yourself crying with snack coming down your face. Fuck off, dude.

Yeah, 100%.

I love that video of those guys. For those of you that can't see the video, because we're still most of our listeners on audio, it's two white dudes talking to two Venezuelans. They're flipping them off. They're saying, Fuck you. They make a shape of a gun and then point at the guy like they're going to shoot them. The Venezuelans do. Yeah. The white guys are like, No, dude, we could film you. We're not doing anything. Then they turn the camera and there's these two black guys sitting in the car, older dudes. Those are the guys that said, Hey, man, we need mass deportation. If you didn't see- They were sitting there watching, making sure nothing happens. That's right. And they were protecting them. And, dude, and this is what we need. We need black people and we need white people who are American citizens to understand what's happening here and start standing together. That is what- And Hispanic.

Yeah, for sure. Citizens and Asian citizens. Yeah, everybody.

The main divide that they try to create is between white and black. But yes, we need all Americans to stand together. This is a message that we've been saying on this show for years. These people are going to try and take your shit. And if we don't stand together and we don't look out for each other, there's going to be major problems.

It's 100 %, man. Guys, jump in on this conversation. Down in the comments, let us know what you guys think. With that being said, let's get over to our third and final headline, headline number 3. Headline number three. Headline number three reads, Sam Bankman-Fried, sentenced to 25 years in prison for orchestrating FTX fraud. This just came out today. It was a big topic. I don't know if you call this a win, but let's dive into it. Sbf was sentenced Thursday to 25 years in prison for his role in defrauding users of the collapsed cryptocurrency exchange FTX. In a federal courtroom in Lower Manhattan, US, district Judge Louis Kaplan, called the defense argument misleading, logically, and speculative. He said, Bankman-Fried had obstructed justice and tampered with witnesses in mounting his defense, something Kaplin said he weighed in in his sentence sentencing decision. Bankman-fried, wearing a beige jailhouse jumps, struck an apologetic tone, saying he had made a series of selfish decisions while leading FTX, and, Threw it all away. It haunt me every day, he said in his statement. Prosecutors have sought as much as 50 years, while Bankman-Fried's legal team argued for no more than six and a half years.

He was convicted on seven criminal counts in November and had been held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn since. In a statement following Thursday's sentencing, Damian Williams, United States attorney for the Southern district of New York, said Bankman-Fried had orchestrated one of the largest frauds in financial history. Today's sentence will prevent the defendant from ever again committing fraud, and is an important message to others who might be tempted to engage in financial crimes, that justice will be swift and the consequences will be severe. Bankman-fried plans to appeal both this convention and A sentence. A spokesperson for his parents issued a statement on their behalf, We are heartbroken and we'll continue to fight for our son. I just want to know, this is my only burning question, because we're talking, I believe it was something to the tune of $8 billion. $8 billion. The company at one point was valued at $30 billion. But $8 billion of people's hard-earned money was given to this man. It all went to the Democratic platform, or a large majority of it did. Where's that money at? Is it going to go? What's the actual restitution on the people's part?

Sure, he's going to jail. He might get a salad tossed a few times, but where's the money?

Well, let's remember that Ghislaine Maxwell went to prison for trafficking miners to nobody. Right.

Well, no, this is no different. This This is the same thing. I believe that this dude was placed in a position to do that. This guy's an idiot.

He's a patsy.

Yeah, for sure. This guy's an idiot. He's a useful idiot. They played to his ego. They got him tons of money. He got to be around celebrities. Bro, he was so smug. Hit that troll of a girlfriend he had, too. Oh, fuck. Yeah. Fucking thought she was hot shit. They were on the internet on podcast talking about all this money they made and how rich they were and how they had this alternative lifestyle with 40 people living in a house, and they're all having orgies every night, and they were so smug about it. All the hot pockets. Yeah. They didn't earn a fucking single penny, and they took everybody's money And then they gave it to the Democrat, who very likely, the intelligence agencies or the Democrat, on speculating, placed this man in this position to do this. To do that, yeah. I don't think he's saying it because, dude, they know that he'll get killed immediately.

His butt hole is definitely.

Bro, I had the craziest conversation last night. I didn't even get to tell you about this. So there's this guy with this Ditty, this Puff Daddy shit. Oh, man, that shit's wild. I'm not going to say this guy's name, but this guy was very close to Ditty, very close. If I said who he was, you'd probably recognize his name. I spent two hours on the phone with him last night. This dude went from A to Z all the shit these people do. And it was insane. And I even told him, I'm like, Bro, I don't know that you should come on the show and talk about this because it's a lot of the shit that people speculate about. No shit. Dude, like Satanic codes and Freemasonry, all this crazy shit. He's like, Dude, look, man. He's like, They fucking kill people all the time. They don't even fucking think twice about it.

Dude, it was My understanding of the Diddy situation is that Diddy was essentially the Epstein for the rap industry. That's pretty much what I got.

Yeah, but there's these people everywhere. That's the thing. In all different industries. This is how they control all the shit. Right. Dude, we said this on the show a hundred times, and this guy who I was talking to confirmed all of those things. And dude, it was crazy, dude. It wasn't bullshit. He was crying. You could tell when people were full of shit, this guy wasn't full of shit. He was scared as fuck. And he's like, Bro, I'm afraid. They're listening to me right now. And I said, Well, if you're talking to me, they definitely are. But dude, it was crazy. He went through this Isaac Cappie shit. You know who that is? That guy that got killed after he started talking about all the people on Epstein's Island. He apparently committed suicide off the bridge. Oh, yeah. Dude, it was crazy shit. And he wants to come on the show, I think. But I don't know. I don't know. And plus, dude, I want to vet. I don't want them coming on just saying all this shit without proof. We got to have some evidence.

There's ways to do it. We could put a voice changer on them and dim the lights on them.

Give him a Kanye mask?

Yeah, give him a Kanye mask and deep in his voice.

Anyway, bro, it was so crazy. I walked in the house and I had to put it on speakerphone so that Emily could hear what was being said because I was like, I've never done that in my life, ever. I'm like, I just got to have someone hear this so that they know I'm not just making it up. It was fucking insane.

That's crazy. That's my biggest question. Because they know he stole the money. They knew he was stolen money before they even pressed submit on the fucking transactions. Will the people get their money back?

No. Fuck no.

Yeah, I think where is the money? That's my question. That's the question. You asked that, and that's the right question, I think. In 25 I was looking at a chart, I think it was in today's journal, Wall Street Journal, that I think 25 years for a financial crime is either number two or number three in terms of the longest length of a sentence.

They have to serve 80%, I think.

Is that correct? That's typical. Bernie Madoff was given 150 years. That was his sentence.

Did he steal as much as Sam Bankman-Fried?

That, I don't know. I don't think so.

I don't think so. I don't think so. Let's pull it up. How much did Bernie That's what I'm going to say, that Bernie Madoff steal?

Elizabeth Theranos was pretty far down the list. I think she got 11 or 12 years.

Yeah, dude. I think this guy's just an idiot, and he got placed in a situation.

I don't know. Madoff was way more. He had 20 billion. Oh, okay.

But this is second. He died, right?

Yeah, he died in prison.

Yeah, right. Don't steal people's fucking money.

This looks like a pornhub thumbnail, doesn't it?

He's He's going to have problems in prison. He's going to have problems in prison.

This ain't Shoshank redemption, bro. You're going down.

There's no chance this guy knows how to fight or anything.

Look at him. They forced him to take the picture. Yeah, he's going to have problems. Oh, man. I don't feel bad for him.

I don't either.

Why is the guy standing next to him? Why is there not a black dot over his face? I don't know. Who is he? Because it's weird. They're the four guys with black dots covering their face, so you don't know who they are. But there's that one One guy who doesn't look very friendly.

No, he doesn't look friendly at all.

Maybe that's his boyfriend.

He's taking all the cornbread.

Maybe they're a couple.

It's possible. He's taking all the cornbread for sure.

Sam does look like a little woman next to him. Whatever you want, baby. He's so scared. Sam's going to have to stock up all that syrup of jelly.

Bro, and the Kool-Aid packs, man. Where that shit is, there's a lipstick in there. That's real shit.

How do you know?

Bro, you ever seen 60 Days In? Or like, It's real shit, bro. That's real shit. They make you take the Kool-Aid packet, you dip your finger in there and you put it on your lips. It makes it like lipstick. It's real shit. You learn something Every day.

All right, man. Well, hey. Moving on. I don't know what to say to that.

Guys, jump in on this conversation down in the comments. Let us know what you guys think. With that being said, we got to our final segment of the show. We got Thumbs Up or Dumb as Fuck. Now, Chris, this is what we bring as a headline in. We line in, we talk about it, and we'll get one of those two options. But I figured, since we have a guest, let you guys choose which topic you want to do. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to just show a picture of two different articles, and then you guys can make the decision of what we're going to go, what rabbit hole we want to go down on. The first picture, first article, here's your choice. Oh, man. All right, so that's your first article.

Ouch.

Okay. Then Then your second article is this. One or two?

One.

Yeah, I agree. One?

Yeah. Damn. Two was really good. Was it? Two was good. But all right, let's go to one.

Well, what's going on in this two? I lose it. All right.

We're going with two, right? No, we're going with this one. We're going with one. Oh, you want the twins? Yeah.

It looks like a woman has two heads. What's going on?

She does. This is where we're going. Yeah. Oh, this is great. It's perfect.

Oh, this is the one you thought was good.

This is They're both good.

This was the one I was.

Okay, you want this one. All right, let's dive into it. Our thumbs up or dumb as fuck headline reads, Abby Hensel is married. Conjoined twin who rose to fame in reality show, Abby and Brittany, secretly tied the knot with an army veteran in 2021. So these twins, they are conjoined right at the upper thoracic cavity, but they share everything else. Everything else.

They got Two heads, but one body. One vagina. Yeah, I get it. One whole body, though.

Yeah, right. Okay.

There's not multiple. Just one vagina. That's what one body means. Okay, I got it. Yeah.

Two heads, though. But, yeah, so they were on a reality show.

They're probably lucky to still be alive.

Yeah, it's possible. Surgery is not an option. You can't really remove that. I don't know how you split a vagina.

All right, come on.

Let's go. What do you say?

What do you say?

He said, You split an Adam not an Eve. Oh, man. All right. An American teacher who shot to Fame on a reality TV series with her conjoint twin, quietly married three years ago, 28 years after captivating the world with an appearance on Oprah. Abby Hensel, now 34 from Minnesota, tied the knot with Josh Bowling, 33, a nurse and army veteran in 2021, according to public records obtained by today. Abby and her sister Brittany, one of only a few sets of disyphilus twins in history to to vive infancy, rose to Fame on their imponomous TLC show, which chronicled their major life events, including their high school graduation and job hunting. The pair share a single body, and from the waist down, all of their organs, including the intestine, bladder, and reproductive organs are shared. In a documentary filmed when the Girls were teenagers, their mother said they were keen to have children of their own one day, explaining, That is probably something that could work because those organs do work for them. Yeah, we're going to be moms, Brittany agreed. In another interview, Brittany reiterated their desire to have their own family, to have their own, saying, The whole world doesn't need to know who we are seeing and what we are doing and when we are going to do it.

But believe me, we are totally different people. Abby added, quote, Yeah, we are going to be moms one day, but we don't want to talk about how it's going to work yet. Abby's relationship with Josh, who is a father of one, has gone under the radar until now with the twins leading a quieter life out of the spotlight in the last 10 years. But here's a video from the wedding day.

I'm home in a tight Call that two for the price of one.

I don't think that's a deal. I don't think that's a good deal.

The reason I say that is not because they're weird or anything, but you got to listen to two sets of- That's two mouths now.

You know what I'm saying? It's like you got two complaints, two sets of rules.

Two people telling you to take out the trash. Yeah. Doc. We married the one on the left.

What's the other one?

Voyaging.

Does the other one get a husband or a partner as well?

That would be really awkward.

You know the original famous Simey twins who lived in the 1800s were two men that I think they were a little... I don't remember the details, but I think it was their torseos were connected, and they each had their own wives. They had children, and they were financially successful. They were, I think they were from Siam, the country of what was then Siam. I read about all this in the Guinness Book of World Records back when I was a child, but they had phenomenal lives. They had children and families and happy marriages and amazing.

I mean, look, dude, my take on it is everybody's got a right to be happy. You know what I'm saying? Absolutely. Yeah. And dude, can't help that you're born and different. And even if you're not born that way, when you can be different. I learned a lot of that when I got stabbed. When I got stabbed and my face was disfigured real bad for about a year a half, my face was swollen up like this big, like the size of a grapefruit off the side of my head. And it never went down. So I had not just scars, but I had an actual fucking grapefruit stuck to the side of my face for a year. And everybody treats you weird. Nobody would look you in the face. Everybody looked away. Nobody would make eye contact. And it taught me a very important lesson about people who have differences or physical disfigurements. Bro, those are people, too. They have hearts and they have brains, and they deal with this every day. You can make little jokes about it or whatever. It's probably awkward that they got to fuck the same dude and shit. But at the same time, it is what it is, and they're figuring out a way to make it work, and I think that's cool.

Absolutely. I agree. So who are we to judge? They look happy. Yeah, they do look happy. They do look happy. Yeah, and I think that's cool. And he looks happy. Yeah, he does. He looks like he loves it. It's all good, man. It's all good with Me? Yeah. Did you say they got they/then pronouns? Is that the fuck you said? Bro, you're going to hell. You're going to hell.

You're going to hell. It ain't even me, I know.

It's my dot.

My dot and fucking joke. I'm trying to be cool.

Hey, I think it's cool, bro. I give it thumbs up, man. Yeah, thumbs up.

Thumbs up? All right. Thumbs up. I think it's all right. Andy, Dr. Free. That's all I got.

Chris, thanks so much for coming on the show, man. This was a blast. Yeah, it's awesome.

Thanks for having me, DJ Andy.

Dude, if you guys want to know more about his book, check it out. It's available on Amazon. It's available in bookstores. It's called Operator Syndrome. I think it'd be very helpful for a lot of you guys who are struggling, maybe not just with PTSD, but just trying to figure yourselves out things that you can do, try to get to the root cause of the problem, and I think you get a lot of benefit out of it. Give it a try, Operator Syndrome. Dude, thanks for writing this book, too. I think it's awesome what you're doing. It's awesome work what you're doing. I think it's innovating how people are fixing themselves and getting better I just appreciate your friendship, bro.

Thank you. I appreciate yours, Andy. I would just say part of the idea of the book is it's a practical book. It's written for the community, but it's not just for operators and their families. It's also, I think, highly relevant to responders, law enforcement, firefighters, soldiers.

Or people who have dealt with chronic stress for a long period of time. Yeah. I mean, even CEOs that have built things and done things their whole lives. Your whole lives. Shit's hard, man.

If you're a warrior, the book may be for you. That was my intent.

Check it out, guys, for sure. And don't be a hoe.

Show the show.