Mister Ballin, aka John Allen.

John Allen. Yeah.

Welcome to the show, man.

Thank you for having me, man. I love your show. I've been watching this for years. You're. You're killing it. This is amazing.

I appreciate it. I appreciate it, man. It's been, I've been watching you. We connected in what, 2020? It was 2020 and you were heading up a nonprofit elite mate. Then communication fell off somehow. Obviously you were busy cause I checked about six months later and you have 2 million plus whatever it was, YouTube subs completely different than anything anybody else has done coming out of the SEAL teams. And it was just, it was really cool to see. And so it's almost like a new version of you now is what I feel like this is. And I'm excited, man. It's been a long time coming and I'm really happy to have you in the chair and honored and let's get into your backstory.

Yeah, dude, I am genuinely honored to be here because there are some legends you've had on this show that certainly in my time in the military, referencing some of your guests like DJ Shipley, that was a guy when I was in the SEAL teams. You're like, oh, wow, that guy's the guy. He's been on all the cool missions. And so to hear his backstory on your show was amazing. And I've been watching your show closely and yeah, we connected in 2020 and that was like really right before I started like being Mister Ballin and my God, it's just been a whirlwind of things that we talked about over breakfast this morning and I'm sure we'll get into today, but absolutely, it's wild to be here, man.

Well, thank you. Thank you. So let me start off with an introduction here. So John Allen, aka Mister Ballin. Mister Ballin, excuse me. American Internet personality, former United States Navy SEAL, host of Mister Ballin podcast Strange, Dark and Mysterious. 2023 released Mister Balin's Medical Mysteries. Founder of Mister Ballen Foundation. Mister Balin foundation was nominated for the Creator for Social Good award. Congratulations. That's amazing. Co founder of Ballin studios with Nick Witters.

Shout out.

Awesome, dude.

Next. The man.

Happy to be connected with him. What a cool guy.

Super cool.

And I love your guys backstory as well.

Yeah.

Husband to your high school sweetheart, Amanda Allen. Married almost eleven years and father to three kids. Congratulations. That's amazing. Over 8 million subscribers on the platform, nominated for YouTube streaming awards and the creator of the year, breakout creator and podcast categories received the most nominations for first time nominee.

It's crazy to hear all this, but, yeah, that's. That's all true and all good.

Yeah, that's all true and all good, but quite the career. And, wow, dude, your storytelling career is just. I've never seen a rocket ship like that before. That is very cool.

So, yeah, it's been wild, man.

Can't wait to dive into all aspects of your backstory. But before we do that, couple of things. One of them is, I got a Patreon account. They are obviously our top supporters and have helped me turn this into what it is today. They're the reason I get to sit here and interview you. So I give them a question every. Every episode. And this is from Darv Swery. Was there ever a story that you were telling that actually made your skin crawl?

Oh, man. There was one about. I can't remember the names because there's been so many stories, but this is a very famous story. There was this guy who was this. He's a teenager who kind of lost his mind, and he wound up killing somebody, which is bad. That's obviously very bad. But the story is that when he was on the run, he wound up finding his way into this family's house, and he burrowed his way into their walls and lived in their walls for, like, I think, a year or two before he was finally found. And when he was found, get this, we have the father who's got three young girls, I think, in the house. He opens up one of their closets. Cause he keeps hearing strange sounds in the closet. Cause it's where this guy was behind the wall. And he opens it up, and standing in the closet was this teenager who was wearing, I think, his wife's dress or something, and he was carrying a hatchet. And he's like, in the man's house, and he discovers this burrow hole into his walls that had been there for, like, a year. And so the father escapes with his kids, and this guy ends up getting arrested or whatever.

I think his name's, like, robert something or other. I can find it and we can link it somewhere. But basically, this psychopath, hatchet wielding maniac was living in this family's walls for, like, three years.

Whoa.

Might've been a year, but it was a long enough time. You're like, wow.

Whoa. So, wow. So there's another question. It's a really long question. So I'm not going to read the whole thing, but basically it's asking, is this, is everything 100% real? I mean, some of your stories are really they're outlandish. They're hard to believe. Are they in. I believe I've heard you say they're fact checked, and you have researchers, and it's all legit.

So the stories we find are. They're rooted in reality. I think that the parts that are, I guess the gray area are, like, people will come up with. They'll have some experience, like, it's their own personal experience about what they. What happened to them. Take, for example, famously, there's the. The Skinwalker ranch. It's a place out in Utah. Now, I'm forgetting where it is, but it's a very famous paranormal hotspot. And there are loads of stories that are, like, fact checked in the sense that multiple people witnessed something happening on this property, but there isn't actually a way to fact check if it really happened. You have someone's perspective about what they experienced, and so we'll get people's perspectives, and we'll present the story through their perspective. But we're not trying to convince you that what they did was absolutely. That happened. It's more like this is really what somebody experienced, and here's what they said, here's what they saw. So it's more like it's up to you to interpret for those types of stories. But the bulk of the stories are like, this is what happened. However, there are those povs where we're kind of relying on someone's perspective, which we have no way of knowing if it's true.

It feels credible, but we don't know.

I get it. I get it. Interesting. I got to interview the owner of Skinwalker.

Yeah, that's actually why I brought it up. I thought that you had interviewed somebody at Skinwalker Ranch.

Really cool guy, Brandon Fugal. But moving on, before we dive in, everybody gets a gift. I'm from you, John.

Thank you, man.

Probably the only reason you're here, that is. It's all good. I don't blame you.

Cause those things actually really want to be. So I actually, we came with a gift for you as well. So we have. This is from our original line of merch. We did. It's our most popular item. It's a crew neck that we don't really make anymore, at least not that version. So this is, like, the best item we actually sold. It's just a simple crew neck. Good material. Hope you like it, dude.

So this is in the vault?

This is in the vault.

This is the OG. Perfect.

It's a nice material. It's real nice.

It's getting framed there you go.

Put it on.

I'm gonna have you sign it. It's going in the SRS museum.

Nice.

Thank you.

Yeah. Hell, yeah. But.

All right, let's dig in. So we're gonna go through everything. We're gonna go through your childhood, your military career, your transition out. A big thing I like to cover is, you know, there's a lot of vets struggling these days, always has been, especially when it comes to reintegrating into society and into civilian society. And so I love talking about the transition piece. I think it brings a lot of hope. And then. And then something that I'm really excited about, and I'm sure you are, too, is to dive into the journey of what you're doing now and how you reinvented yourself into Mister Ballen. So let's just start a childhood. Where'd you grow up?

So I grew up in Quincy, Massachusetts. It's this blue collar town that's just south of Boston. Maybe ten minutes south. Fiercely irish, fiercely Catholic. Very. I said blue collar. Very blue collar. Like, people are proud to be kind of salt of the earth people. Fierce Red Sox following, like, New England. Sports were so important to my upbringing. I mean, baseball games, football games, basketball games. That was so important. But, you know, it's funny, my family, my two sisters and my mother and father, they're like super gifted writers and storytellers. Like, my mother was a. She was a radio host in Maine.

We're at Maine.

Like, it's some random part of Maine that I'm now forgetting. It's near South Paris, Maine. And now I'm forgetting the name of the town, but it's a small local radio station. And she was a journalist in Maine. And then she met my dad, who was a journalist in Boston. And like, my dad, you know, he's. He's won a Pulitzer Prize, which is like the top prize in journalism. And my. My older sister has won two Pulitzer prizes as well, in journalism. And my younger sister is a. Like, she's about to get her PhD. She's defending it in. In April. She works out of a Harvard lab. She's a scientist. You know, I have these brilliant people in my family, but in my upbringing, I was like the idiot because I just not, not. They didn't treat me that way, but I just. I didn't want to be like my family. I didn't want to be like a nerd. I guess it's very lame of me as a young kid to feel this way, but I think I rebelled essentially against my family growing up. I didn't want to follow the, get good grades, go to college and do all that.

I kind of just wanted to have fun with my friends. But ironically, it turned out later in my life, I would end up becoming a storyteller as well, just like my family. So I guess it comes full circle in that way.

Interesting.

But yeah, no, I. It's just a good, happy upbringing in Quincy, and sports were a big deal. I played baseball growing up, and I ended up graduating high school barely. I just didn't go to school. I didn't really apply myself.

What were you into? Why didn't you, why were you not into school at all?

You know, there's a culture of, like, I don't even know how to put it. So street fighting is a big thing in Quincy. To give you a sense of what it's like living in Quincy. When I was growing up, I mean, there were scheduled fights between teenagers to prove who was tougher or whatever. And so there was always this feeling of everyone's trying to best the other person, and everyone's trying to get the one up on somebody else. And really physical violence was a big part of my upbringing. I mean, fighting was a part of it. Like street fighting.

Whoa. So hold on. So are we talking, like, UFC type? Like.

Yeah, like scheduled?

Who would, who would do the schedule?

Scheduled as in, like, dude, 03:00 behind the dumpster, we're gonna fight like that?

I mean, was it like a beef or was it, you know, a lot.

Of times it was perceived beef. It was not real stuff. I think that a lot of the guys I grew up around, they wanted to prove themselves. And a way you did that was beating somebody up or getting beat up and, like, you know, sucking it up and taking it on the chin kind of thing. But so I was around people, and I was a part of the scene of people that were much more invested in fisticuffs than schoolwork. And I think it honestly really kind of derailed a large reason why I didn't do well in school is I was much more focused on being tough and fitting in with my friends and being popular, and that's what mattered to me.

What age did that start?

Like, 1212. Like, twelve years old is when you're introduced to, like, the roughness of Quincy.

What is your most memorable street fight?

Oh, I got the one. I have one that I told this story several times, and it gets a couple of laughs. It's pretty funny because I get my. Anyway, I'll tell you the story. So my sophomore year of high school. I had this study period in my schedule that I just was in this classroom with random students from every grade. And we just sat there and did our homework or whatever for 45 minutes. And there was this girl who sat next to me who was just some girl. I mean, she was friends with my sister, who was older than me, who was at school with me. She was a senior, I'm a sophomore. So she's friends with my sister, but I didn't know her too well, but I knew she was my sister's friend. And so I just sat next to her. And, you know, there was nothing going on between us whatsoever. We're not dating. We're not flirting. It's nothing. It's just we're sitting next to each other because we have this mutual connection in my sister. Well, somehow or another, it got out that I was sitting next to this girl in my study period.

And it got back to her boyfriend, who was very upset about this. And instead of, like, coming to me and being like, why were you doing that? Or were you doing that? I just got a phone call from, like, three other people saying, paul wants to fight. You felt what you're doing with his girlfriend? And instead of me being like, why? I was like, all right, let's do this thing. And so it got scheduled for. So we did this thing in Quincy called the powder Puff game. And it's like girls play flag football on the day before thanksgiving. And so our high school was North Quincy High School. And our rival high school was Quincy High school. Equal sized schools, similar cultures. And the powder Puff game, which is, again the day before thanksgiving, was when kids from Quincy High School and North Quincy High School also met up to fight each other. So you have this powderpuff game, and it's a known day for all these big fights between the two rival schools. And even though Paul and I were not from rival schools, it became like the main card of this particular powder puff day of fights was like, John and Paul are going to have this big fight over what's happening with his girlfriend.

And so anyways, in the lead up to this, this is weeks out. This has been scheduled in like October for Thanksgiving Day fight. And, you know, in the lead up to it, I was so cocky about how this fight was going to go. Paul, mind you, is significantly bigger than me. He's older than me. He's the captain of the hockey team. The dude's a beast, okay?

Oh, man.

And I'm like a twig, and I'm around other guys, my friends who are genuinely tough, who can hold their own and are, like, scary dudes. I was around them, but I wasn't one of them. I was kind of, like the fringe guy that was, like, kind of part of the group, but I just, I adopted this mentality of, I'm gonna beat Paul. I'm gonna beat the out of Paul. Like, that's what's gonna happen, you know? And so that attitude I had began to get noticed in school, and people bought it. They're like, oh, john's, like, hanging out with these guys. He's gotta be pretty tough. Like, he's gonna beat Paul up. And people began coming up to me being like, hey, dude, like, be easy on Paul. We need him for the hockey team. Like, he's the star player. Don't hurt him. And I'm like, I'll try not to hurt him. So the day finally arrived, actually, it's funny, like, in the week leading up to it, I started getting real nervous about this fight. No one knew that I was nervous, but I'm real nervous. And I remember going into my basement at my mom's house and shadow boxing like a fold up chair, getting ready for this fight.

It was so dumb. So I end up on the day I go to the field after school where this fight's gonna happen, and also where the powder buff game's going on. So there's hundreds of kids here, and it's in the middle of the forest. This is an unsanctioned sporting event. So it's like this hidden place in the middle of the woods where the kids hang out. And everybody knew, like, john and Paul are gonna fight. And so I get there, and I roll to this place with at least 50 people in my posse, just, yeah, you're gonna kill him, John. Like, let's go. And so I'm at the field with my buddies, waiting for this fight to start, and it was scheduled for, like, 330 or something. 330 comes around, and Paul hasn't shown up. And I begin just talking Paul to anyone who will listen. Like, this guy's pathetic. He's scared of me. He's not even gonna show up. This guy's a joke. And then, like, 30 minutes later, Paul shows up with one person with him, no posse hops out of his car and begins walking up the hill to me, and everyone's like, oh, he's here.

He's here. And I'm, like, getting ready, you know? And I'm standing up on this hill looking at him as he's coming up to me. And I have this line that I say, he's like, right, easy. He's like maybe 10ft away. And I'm like, while we're young, mother. Like, as if it had taken him so long to get here and then he beats the out of me. Didn't get a swing in. He had me on the ground knocked out in like 5 seconds. And I like come to looking around and everyone surrounded me like, you got knocked the up. So it didn't go well. And I would say that that fight, so many people were there and saw it that it became like a meme about me while we're young, John. Like, it was this whole horrible thing, but it humbled me in a pretty huge way. And I would say that that's when I began to think that street fighting might not be my thing. Maybe I should do something else with my life so I'll become a Navy seal.

Yeah. Yeah. Wow. How old were you?

1616. Yeah. That was a humbling experience.

I'll bet that was a humbling experience. Did you get in any more fights after that one?

Nothing scheduled. Nothing scheduled. Yeah. No, I think at that point I realized that maybe my fisticuff game was not as good as I thought it was.

I'll just defend myself from now on.

Exactly.

But wow. What? So, I mean, your parents are renowned journalists and they're probably not used to this.

I was like such an anomaly within my family. I mean, like, my family are so, you know, by the books, if you will. Like, get good grades, got good jobs, respected in their careers and there was no reason that I wouldn't have learned to be that way as well and. But instead they have this kid who's just like gone off the rails and is getting in fights and getting his kicked and just, you know, you know, breaking curfew every night and just kind of being like that trouble teenager. And I'm sure that I pissed my family off like mad. I was like the most insufferable teenager ever. Mostly because I just believed that I was just better than everybody and that I don't need school, I don't need any of this. Like, I'm just so cool, I can do whatever I want. It really wasn't until I actually went to college, believe it or not, even though I barely graduated, my mom, who's an amazing writer, wrote my college essay. Because I wasn't doing the application, I wasn't doing anything. And just being a good mom. She's like, okay, fine, I'll write your essay because you're not going to do it.

And she wrote this beautiful essay that I actually just read the other day. It's about my childhood best friend who passed away, but it's an amazing story. And so I sent it off to the school, UMass Amherst. And my grades were abysmal. I should not have gotten into the school, and the school contacted me to say, your grades are not really what we're looking for. But that essay was something else you're in. And so I got accepted to the school on the strength of my mother's essay and immediately failed out of the school. Immediately. I got in trouble so quickly. I was in a riot. This is in one semester, there was a riot that I was a part of.

What was in the riot about?

So it was so dumb. So here are the things I did in college in one semester. I've only been in college for a few months. I just didn't go to class. And when people say that, you think, oh, they probably missed a couple classes. I mean, I didn't go to class. I don't know how I thought I would ever pass a course by never attending one. But I didn't go to class. I got in trouble constantly in the dorm, but it was always, like, little things like noise violations or being slightly disrespectful to somebody who then reported it. Little things that made me look like a jerk. But I had so many that at some point, it has to get reported to the dean when someone has 30 plus violations and I had 30 plus violations. And so on the day that my grades came out, and I've been lying to my family, saying, oh, getting all a's killing it. A's and B's doing so good, the grades came out, and it was like, your son has a 1.016 GPA, which is a series of f's, and I think two D's and the two ds should have been f's, it was the teacher saying, I'm not giving you an f, so you don't have to repeat the course.

I also was kicked out of the dorm and was told, if you're going to stay at the school, which seems questionable to begin with, you can't be in the dorms anymore because you have 30 plus violations. You have to live off campus. And my family couldn't afford to just pay for me to go live off campus. Not to mention, I clearly am not capable of being an adult. And then on top of all that, at the same time, what I was beginning to learn at this exact moment, when we're meeting with the dean was. There was this riot at UMass Amherst that happened a couple days earlier that I thought was no big deal. I was just part of it, whatever. Our football team. So UMass Amherst has a division one football team, but it's division one aa, which means it's kind of, like, in a teardown from, like, the big time schools. And so as a result, people are very invested in the Umass football team. But it's more. It's a smaller audience, I suppose. Like, no one's going to UMass Amherst because they're like, I just want to support the football team. That doesn't really happen.

But you have people going to the University of Texas to do that because that's a big time program. But UMass Amherst is not that. However, in my freshman year, our football team just dominated. They outperformed better than anyone thought they would, and they made it into, like, a big bowl game or something. I forget what it was, but no one really knew. But apparently our football team was really good and they got into this bowl game and it wasn't even at UMass. It was in New York where this game was happening. And it was a good game and the team lost. Our team lost. UMass lost this bowl game, and it was aired on the Umass Amherst, like local tv, so all the students could watch it. And again, no one really cares about the football team. But for some reason, it was like, I think we should riot now that our team lost. And so there's this part of UMass Amherst. It's an area on campus called Southwest. I think there's five parts of the campus. It's a huge school, and if you look it up, the most densely populated place in the entire country in the United States is the southwest area of Umass Amherst, because they have these high rise dorms that are 25 stories tall, and they pack students into these dorms.

I mean, you are on top of each other. There's so many people in this area, and there's all these low rise apartments. I mean, it's a mini little city in the middle of western Massachusetts. And everybody in southwest has this reputation for being like, it's the party spot of UMass Amherst. And so people that want to go live in southwest, they want to go party. And so you have all these kids who are all riled up that have no parental supervision. Our football team is lost. It's 08:00 at night, and it was just like everybody just began going outside for no reason. We're all just standing around in the lot like, we should do something. And thousands of people are out here. And suddenly this kid, he climbs up on the cafeteria where there's this awning that kind of looked out into the courtyard in front of all these high rise buildings. So the dining hall, he climbs up and everyone's like, oh, what's he gonna do? And he goes, put this on YouTube. And he runs and jumps off of the awning. It's like 20ft up. And he's expecting the crowd to catch him, and they don't, and he just shatters his legs, just hits the ground, and you see him just crumple.

And we all just began cheering. And then the riot ensued, and it was just, like, chaos. People just began breaking stuff and running around. And in, like, an hour, they had riot police on horseback, hundreds of them, surrounding southwest, firing tear gas and rubber bullets inside. All the normal kids went inside their dorms. They're like, this is not a good time to be out here. I'm like, put my shirt around my face to protect against tear gas. I'm completely sober, by the way, completely sober. And I'm like, I'm staying. I'm not missing this. I'm staying out. But they had cameras recording everything. And so on the day that the grades have come out, I'm getting booted from the dorm. People began getting expelled in my dorm for the riot. And the way it worked is they had this anonymous webpage set up, the UMass police did, where anybody at the school could look at all these pictures from the riot, just random still shots from the riot. And if you knew someone, you could anonymously name them and they would get in trouble. And so it was like, anybody who had an enemy began getting named.

And I found three pictures of myself, clear as day on this website. And I definitely did not have friends at the school. I had pissed off a lot of people. And I'm like, someone's going to name me. It's going to happen. Like, it's going to happen. I'm going to get expelled on top of everything else. And so I had to turn to my dad, who's come up to talk to the dean about my grades and about getting kicked out. And afterwards, after he's heard all these horrible things about his son, I had to pull him aside and be like, and also, I was in a riot, and I'm probably gonna get expelled if I don't withdraw immediately.

Oh, man.

So I left school. I withdrew, and I went and lived in my mom's basement. And that's where I ultimately discovered I was being a big idiot and I turned my life around.

So you had mentioned that your mom, in her essay that she wrote for you to get into school, you lost your childhood friend.

I did.

Which, if she wrote about that, it must have been pretty dramatic. Can we visit that?

Yeah, we can. Yeah. So I. My best friend growing up was this kid named. We met when we were three. You know, I moved to this house in Quincy. He lived in the same street as me. And we were brothers for life. I have a cross I carved into my arm with him. We were like blood brothers, you know? And he tried to cauterize it because it would stop bleeding. And he ended up just burning it. So it's just a big burn that I call a cross on my arm. But he and I were like brothers. And he came from a household that was totally broken. I mean, as dysfunctional and abusive as you could possibly come from. And so in many ways, he was kind of adopted into our family. I mean, every vacation we went on was with us. Anytime we did anything was with us. And my parents treated him definitely like a son. But when he got older, like 18, he fell into, you know, drugs. I mean, his whole family is. I mean, not his whole family. There was plenty of people that were very, like, heroin addicts and all that.

And so he got addicted to at least heroin, if not something else. I mean, he was really out there. He ended up robbing my house, which I honestly forgive him for. It's just one of those. I mean, if you've been around people with serious addictions, they are not the person that they used to be. And then he overdosed. But he overdosed. He overdosed when he was 21. And at the time, I think he had like a twelve year old son. I mean, to give you do the math on that. So, yeah, just really sad. And the essay that my mom wrote was, you know, we looked the same. We have very similar looking. We had such similar attitudes and outlooks on life. But it's what happens when you grow up in a household that's totally broken and dysfunctional and abusive, and what happens when you're raised in a healthy household, by and large? I mean, that's basically what she was writing about without saying it is. Two kids, they have everything in front of them. One kid who's his environment is healthy and happy winds up succeeding, so to speak, and the other winds up dying.

And actually, the essay she wrote was before he od'd, but it was right when he was going in and out of jail for. There was this horrible article that came out that he robbed a gas station with a syringe that he told the guy was infected with HIV. I mean, this guy has fallen to a very low level. And then when he passed away, it was, in a weird way, kind of a relief. As horrible as that sounds, you just knew this guy's life was horrible. So, yeah, it's just the huge contrast and how our lives played out.

A lot of people are dealing with. With a loved one who has an addiction today. I mean, we see it all over the news. The fentanyl crisis, heroin. You know, when did you. And it creates a lot of codependency, you know, and so how many years were you guys? I mean, it sounded like he was basically part of your family dynamic. When did that start? When did the addiction start? What age?

Well, I mean, at a pretty young age, he began getting into smoking cigarettes, but as a ten year old, he definitely was taking some of his mother's pills. I don't know what they were when we were young. And it was kind of almost like a joke, like, I just grabbed something from my mom. I don't know what it is, that kind of thing. So at an early age, he was experimenting with things that you would expect older teenagers to begin with. And so by the time he was 1516, he and I were definitely going very different directions. I wasn't doing great. It isn't like I was having this really successful and wholesome upbringing. I was getting in street fights, getting my butt kicked and all that. But I was going to school, and I wasn't addicted to drugs, and I had loving parents and people around me. And so he. I don't know exactly when he became addicted to heroin, but I would guess it was sometime between 15 to 17.

So is that when you saw, I mean, did you separate yourself from that, or.

We. I felt really bad about it because I loved. I still do. You know, it's. This is a guy that I was so close with, but it just felt the more I hung out with him, the older I got, the more, frankly, uncomfortable I felt being around him. I mean, we were going to dealers houses so we could get his fix, you know? And I'm not doing that stuff. I'm just here. And it just felt so uncomfortable and dangerous, frankly. And so I began pulling away from him, probably 15 years old, 16 years old, probably around the time he became pretty addicted to drugs. And then I think he was 18 when he finally robbed my house. And that was actually the essay that my mom wrote was the end of the essay. Was him robbing the house. That kind of signaled the end of the relationship officially, even though he wound up calling a couple days later to apologize for it. Dude, you broke into my house and robbed my house.

Yeah.

So. But by that point, it was. We kind of knew it was over. And then when he passed away a few years later, I mean, not one person was like, I can't believe it. It's like, yeah, that makes sense.

Yeah. Yeah, that's sad. Let's move forward. Yeah, let's move back to. So you failed out of school.

Yeah.

You're a. You're a rioter.

A big piece of crap, basically. Yeah.

And so when did the military kind of show up on the radar? Were you into that as a child at all?

I was. I mean, I had GI Joes and I played with them. So, you know, on that level, I was. But I don't think I thought about it all that seriously until, you know, I mean, I was in 7th grade when 911 happened, and so I was definitely old enough to be very aware of the impact that had on our society. And then after high school, I saw a lot of my friends enlist in the marines and go to Iraq and go to the Middle east. And so I think that somewhere in me, I felt I had, like, a responsibility to serve at some point. I think I did feel that way just seeing my friends do it. But I don't think I had a plan necessarily. It was just this thought I had that maybe I should volunteer at some point. But when I came back home after my pathetic first semester in college, I moved back home and I'm living in my mom's basement. My parents are separated by this point. They got divorced when I was 13. But. So I'm living in my mom's basement, and I have just ruined this opportunity that was handed to me.

I mean, my mom got me into college. I'm not even paying for it. My parents are. And to show you how immature I was, I mean, I came home and I resented my parents for making me leave school because I had my friends at UMass. Like, what are you doing? You're taking me away from my friends. You know, you're so blind to the reality of the situation. Like, I screwed it up. That's why I'm home. But it took me a little while of being home and being resentful to come around to the idea that, dude, if you don't do something now, like, there aren't going to be more great opportunities. My parents clearly had reached a point where it's like, dude, get a job or go to school, but that's all you're doing. Like, you're on your own. You're 19, you're an adult. Like, you figure it out. And it was when I was at home in this formative time that I did end up getting a job at the local YMCA. I biked to work in the morning at like 04:00 a.m. To sit behind the desk and scan people's cards into the gym.

And then I would go into Boston, where I actually was going to UMass. UMass Boston. So it's a satellite campus of UMass Amherst, actually. But it's, it's a great school, but it's very easy to get into. And that's why I got into it. And so it's kind of like community college, if you will, of just commuting in and out during the day. But so I'm, you know, I got the job, my hourly wage job. I began going to classes, and I noticed that my parents were just happy that I was kind of being an adult for once. And it was probably the first time in my life that I felt like I was getting respect for something that I was doing that was mature. Most of the time I was clamoring for respect out on the streets by trying to get into fights or something. But to have said, I'm going to get a job and go to school and then do it, and then have your parents be like, hey, good job. Keep it up. I was like, oh, actually, that's pretty cool. I like being an adult. This feels good. It feels good being responsible.

And so I really leaned into school, frankly, at UMass Boston, I spent three semesters there where every day I got up at three and biked to my job and then took the train, the MBTA, the red line, if you're familiar. It's a famous subway into Boston. I would go to class and I got great grades. I really applied myself and got a's and b's, and it was like, great. I didn't know what I was going to do with my college degree. I was in philosophy and English for my two majors, which, to a degree I thought about maybe pursuing law school, and there was no pre law degree. And so those were kind of like the two things you could do to position yourself for law school. But I just realized I didn't really want to go to law school. I enjoyed applying myself in college and I enjoyed being mature, but I was like, well, when college ends. I don't think I want to be a lawyer. And that was when I went back to the military. I was like, you know, I've kind of always felt this. This want to volunteer and serve.

I wonder what I could do in the military. And it was at this time that my. My mother, who at the time was a librarian, she's like, the super sweet lady. She's like, yeah, you should talk to Susan's brothers. Susan is a very dear friend of my mom's family friend. She's, like an aunt of mine, if you will. So Susan and I knew she had two brothers who, you know, these guys are much older than me, and I just. Pete and Dave were her brothers. I didn't know anything about them. I thought they were in the military, but I didn't really know they're not part of my life. I just knew they existed, right? And my mom's like, yeah, you should talk to Susan's brothers if you're interested in the military. And I'm like, why? Like, why should I talk to them? Like, oh, they're retiring. They were Navy Seals. And I'm like, what? Like, Dave and Pete were Navy seals? Like, what? How? I didn't even know that. And so I wound up meeting them out of interest, frankly. I'm like, dude, I didn't know you were a seal. I thought you were just some random dude in the army or something.

And they're like, yeah, whatever, dude. Like, I was in the seals, like, devgirl guys, like, big time dudes. And it was just the most incredible experience. I went up to see them in New Hampshire at the shooting range they were at. Actually, there's a bigger story to this. I went up to this. This camp that Susan owned. It was like an art camp for kids, like, on this lake in beautiful New Hampshire. And there's all these kids running around, like, painting and playing their instruments. And it's like a summer camp, but up the road, literally up this little dirt road, is this, like, plywood shack that Dave and Pete built. And it's just a hangout spot for them in New Hampshire with, like, them and their team guy buddies. And I think a couple of them were from the CIA as well, but they would just go up there and hang out in the shack and, like, go shooting at this range, like, right near this art camp. And so that was where I was meeting them. And so I drive up to this camp, and I find Susan, and I see this cute art camp, and I'm like, oh, this is great.

She's like, oh, yeah, Dave and Peter, right up the road, they're waiting for you. And I'm like, oh, great. I've spent almost no time with Dave and Pete to this point. Again, there's people I knew existed. That was it. And so I know they're seals. And I'm driving up the road, and I'm very intimidated. I'm 19 years old, and I get to the top of this road, and I see this just terrible looking plywood shack, something you'd see on, like, deployments, some janky thing, like an outhouse somebody built. And it's big enough, you know, that's probably as big as this space. And I get out of the car, and I walk over to the door, and I didn't have Dave or Pete's number. They emailed me and said, come to this address on this day. And so I'm just going. And as I get close to the door, I can hear through the plywood the sound of grown men, like, inside. And there's more than just two people in there. It's a sea of people are clearly inside of this hut. And I'm this totally, like, green 19 year old kid. He's like, I want to be in the military.

Like, I'm kind of nothing.

I want to be a seal.

Yeah. It's like, I nod on the plywood, and there's just silence. And I'm like, hey, it's John, Jesse's son. And they're like, come in. And I open the door, and I look in, and there's no floor. It's just dirt. And there's all these upturned buckets that these dudes are sitting on, covered in tattoos. They're all just yoked, just jacked. And they're all looking at me, and there's still silence. And they were definitely with me, but they were like, who the are you? And I was just like, I'm Jesse's son, and I'm interested in being a seal, but meeting those guys, and they quickly brought me in, like, we'll tell you about buds. We'll tell you about training. We'll tell you about this. But the big thing that stuck with me is they're like, you know what? A lot of people go to the SEAL teams to kind of reinvent themselves, because just about anybody can try out for the SEAL teams. I mean, that's really generous, but a lot of people can try out for the teams, and it's just, who can make it to the end? You know, it's a meritocracy can you suck it up and make it to the end?

And if you do, you come out, like, born again, like the Navy SEAL version of yourself. And I felt like I had a lot of things I had screwed up in my time in high school and early college, and I was really starting to get in the flow of being an adult. These three semesters, of doing well at UMass Boston, that this idea of reinventing myself, of going through this trial and being able to come out the other side, not the guy that off in high school and college, but the Navy SEAL, John, like, that's what they'll know me for. And I wanted to serve already, so it kind of checked both boxes for me. Can be the best version of myself and can do what my friends did when they got out of high school at 18, I can go serve. And I became obsessed with the SEAL teams. Like, obsessed with the SEAL teams. I mean, I read every book that existed. I watched every documentary. I mean, I was fully committed to it. And I wound up after doing three semesters at UMass Boston. So at this point, I'm now two years into my college career.

They have this automatic reacceptance program at UMass Amherst, the school I screwed up in the first semester. And almost like a point of pride, I wanted to graduate from UMass Amherst just to kind of rewrite what had happened. And so I reapplied to UMass Amherst. I got in, and they gave me a whole list of rules that I had to follow because of my history, which basically was stay in the dorms. Ironically enough, you can't live off campus because you're going to cause too many problems. You're going to live in the dorms, you're going to do your classes, and you're not going to get in any trouble, and you can come back. And I did. I showed up, and I was totally buttoned up. I'm not screwing around. And actually, that's when I met my wife. So I met her. She's my college sweetheart, but I met her when I went back to UMass Amherst. And I told you the story before, but when I met my wife the first night I met her, this is right around the time I've just come back from New Hampshire. I'm freshly motivated to become a navy seal.

That's my life's calling. And I met Amanda, and we're just sitting in my buddy's apartment, just, like, getting to know each other. And she asks, like, what are you gonna do after college? And I was like, oh, I'm gonna try out for the SEAL teams. I wanna be a Navy Seal. And she looks at me. She just reaches under my arm and squeezes my bicep and goes, I don't know. It's funny. My wife has been. Amanda became my wife, but she totally looks at me as John the person, and not remotely the things that I've done with my life, which has been incredibly grounding. So she's been huge and just keeping me very baseline, very normal. But, yeah, no. I went back to UMass Amherst, met Amanda. We hit it off right away. It was like. It really was like love at first sight. I was with her 24/7 basically, when I got back to school, but I began in tandem, training for the seal teams.

What was it about her that drew you to her so much?

I actually don't even necessarily know. I think that she was unimpressed by me, and I'm not saying that other people were, because I hadn't done anything to that point. It was more like Amanda was able to view me, really as the person I am, not the person I'm presenting. She saw the real me and liked the real me and didn't expect me to be anything else. She was just real with me. I felt like I was talking to a real person that was not putting on an act. She also just was so nurturing and motherly, which I really liked. Not that I'm some needy guy, but I just felt like I was taken care of with her and that I could take care of her. It was very symbiotic. We looked after each other.

So you could be yourself without letting your ego take control.

Yeah, I think especially with young men. Not to make a broad, sweeping generalization, but young men are trying to kind of position themselves as whoever they think they're going to be. They want the world to see them for who they want to be at some point. And so there's a little bit of bravado that comes in. And with Amanda, she just was unimpressed by that. She didn't want to see that. She wanted to know me. And I was able to just let my guard down really quickly with her and be vulnerable with her. And she wasn't judgmental, and she was the first person I was ever around that made me feel that way. And it was like she's it. I want to be with her. And actually, I saw within a month of seeing her in college, I was just looking at pictures of her on her facebook or whatever, and there was a picture of her. She had just gone to South Africa for just like a semester or a month or something of studying. And it was clear from the pictures that Amanda didn't really do what the rest of her peers that had gone did.

They went out to clubs and partied and stuff. Amanda spent her time in South Africa finding stray dogs and cats and, like, bringing them into the vet, getting them lysed and de ticked and looking after neighborhood kids. It was like pictures of her with children, playing games with kids and playing with animals and just. It reminded me so much of Snow White, this woman who's just so wonderful, who just loves animals and people and just so loving. And I was like, that's the mother of my kids. That's who I want to be, the mother of my children. And here we are. We got married in 2011 right before I was actually in. I just finished boot camp and I was getting ready to go to Bud's prep in Chicago to get ready for seal training. And we got married in a courthouse in Waukegan, Illinois, in 2011. And so we're still married today. So 13 years.

Is she from Illinois?

No, that's where I was for boot camp. Graduation for boot camp. And she came out. Yeah. Okay.

Convenient. Married there.

Very convenient. Yeah. We basically eloped.

So let's rewind for just a second. Well, first, you've been married for almost eleven years.

Oh, 2011 to now. So it'll be 13 years in April.

13 years, yeah.

We have three kids. 13 years in April.

That's impressive, especially considering the fact that she's gone through your SEAL career. Not a lot of people make it out of there. Still married.

I don't know how either.

So now you have three kids. What would you say the secret is to a successful marriage?

I don't know. I mean, I can speak to my time in the SEAL teams, which, to your point, for those that are not aware of this, I mean, the divorce rate is sky high in the teams. I mean, the SeaLs are gone so frequently for training and deployments. That alone is a huge road, a huge hurdle for a marriage. If you're gone half the year, that's a big deal. Not to mention your job is dangerous and people die doing it and it's stressful and you carry it home with you and, you know, it's a whole thing.

And the culture, the culture's not drinking, relating to marriage.

Yeah. It's not good. And so I think, you know, I just feel like I actually genuinely loved my wife when I went into the teams and I felt like a lot of the guys that I knew who were married. It just seemed like they didn't know if they loved their wife yet, that they had just gotten married kind of recently, and it just seemed like they hadn't kind of figured it out yet. Granted, I had only known my wife. She wasn't even my wife when I went in, but I'd only known her for a year. But I felt so solid with her. I was so sure she was going to be my forever partner, that the distance when you get to the team and training definitely took a toll on our marriage, for sure. But her and I were both so secure, I think, in our relationship, I was so confident she was never gonna cheat on me and loved me, and it was reversed, even though I was in an environment where that kind of runs rampant. And I think that because we shared that trust for each other and we genuinely loved each other, that, you know, she's my number one.

And even though there's temptations and all these things all around you all the time in the teams, I just. I always felt like I wanted Amanda, and I still do now. And so I think ultimately, it's just. Cause I prefer Amanda over everything else.

You picked the right one.

Yeah, I think that's right. When then? How do you tell someone who the right one is? I don't know. I just got lucky.

The connection. Yeah, it's the connection. Not the looks, not anything else. It's the connection.

Exactly.

But rewinding real quick, you'd said that your parents split at age 13.

Yes.

A lot of kids. I mean, I don't even. I don't know what the divorce rate is nowadays, but I would. I feel confident in saying that it's probably higher than people that make it.

Yes.

And so how did you deal with that as a 13 year old, seeing your parents split?

It was tough. It was definitely hard, mostly because in kind of that cliche way leading up to it, me and my sisters. My younger sister was probably too young. I was 13. My younger sister was seven or six, and my older sister was 15. So me and my older sister, Evan, we were definitely seeing cracks in the marriage, and we talked about it as young teenagers, as the years kind of led up to the divorce. And then I remember I came home from. I was teaching snowboarding on the weekends at the time at this little. It's called Blue Hills in Massachusetts. It's literally a little hill in Boston that I taught snowboarding. And it had been such a fun day, just a good day at the mountain, you know, I love snowboarding and I came home, and I remember I was taking off my gear in the base of my house, and my mom came downstairs and said, your dad left. And I was like, well, what do you mean he left? And she's like, he's gone. He left. And it was like, well, what happens now? I don't really understand. And it took a couple of days for it to sink in that, no, he's not coming back.

He's gone. Like, the marriage is over. We know what's going to happen next, but it's over. And even though I was aware things were going poorly in the marriage, when that happened, no, that hurt a lot. That hurt a lot. And over the coming years, as that kind of played out, because basically both of them had done things to the other that resulted in the divorce. It was not a one way thing. It was kind of a two way street. Just watching them fight and be bitter with each other over the years and feeling like you almost had to pick sides was really difficult. And I think that at the time, I would have said, oh, this isn't affecting me. But I think that I was in an environment already that was pretty volatile. My friends are getting in street fights left and right. There's loads of underage drinking. And so my outlet became something I was already turning to. It isn't like they drove me to these people, but I, more and more and more was spending as much time as I could with people that were not necessarily the best influences on my life.

So I think that. I don't know if I would have been a goody two shoes and been great come the end of high school, had my parents stuck together, but I think it accelerated some pretty bad behavior. However, I think it led to what I'm doing now, because I needed to everything up to get myself back together again.

He left. How long would his. How long did it. How much time had passed before you'd see him again?

I think I saw him or spoke to him relatively soon. He went to see his family up in Maine.

He didn't disappear. He wasn't an accident.

No, no, what I meant is he had moved out. He's gone. He's moved out of the house. He's not coming back. And my mom, I don't think she even knew where he went. But there was an understanding that I'm gonna have a dad. It's just gonna be so much different now. And it was, you know, I candidly, you know, my relationship with my dad obviously suffered over the course of the time that I wasn't around him. You know, he made an effort to be in my life as much as he could be. But, you know, my mom and dad did not get along, and it made it. And I lived with my mom, so did my siblings. And so it's just kind of a stressful, you know, part of my life. I think I will say, though, that because of how difficult the divorce was and really seeing the effects it had on my younger sibling, I mean, she began, you know, she was sick, so I don't think she'd be embarrassed if I said this, but, you know, she began wetting the bed at six years old when she had stopped. Right. When our parents are getting divorced and you're seeing this kid who she can't process what's happening, she's sick, she doesn't know what's going on.

It's just mom and dad. And it was just so heartbreaking, even as a 13 year old, to see a six year old really struggle with something and it's coming out in wetting the bed or throwing tantrums, that didn't make any sense. And so now I'm. And maybe that's made me a better husband in some ways. Maybe that's what got me through staying with my wife through the teams, because I don't want my kids to go through what I went through with the divorce. There are far worse things that for kids to go through, but I feel like divorce is one that the parents have a lot of control over. I mean, you need to work on your relationship. That's how you keep a relationship healthy, you work on it. If you just think it's going to be the same for 50 years, you're wrong, you know, so I think that it's made me a super attentive partner, and it's made me ultra committed to my wife. So in a way, I'm thankful for the divorce because it put that perspective in my head, but I don't think that I'm actually thankful for it.

Did you have to. Did you have to choose as a 13 year old, or was the. Who you're going to stay with, or was the decision made for you?

I don't recall explicitly, but it definitely was more on us to make a decision. Except my parents weren't like, you better choose, make the right choice. They weren't like, they understood this is an impossible thing for their kids. I mean, my parents are. They did their best to navigate a really difficult situation, but invariably it came down to, where do you want to live? And I think that it was obvious. We were going to stay with my mom. My dad was gone. So much for work as it was. He was working at the Globe and doing all this extra work. The Boston Globe, the newspaper. So it was natural we went to my mom. It would have been odd if we had chosen my dad, and not for any other reason, that it just didn't seem right.

So two questions. First, being as a 13 year old, as a kid, you know, what advice do you have for a kid that's going to deal with that for anybody that's listening whose parents are separating, getting ready to get divorced, you got to.

Talk about your feelings. You got to talk to somebody. My mom pushed me to see a therapist when I was 13, and I remember it being really helpful as a 13 year old. I mean, I didn't even know what I was supposed to talk about. It still felt so new. But I wound up stopping therapy, mostly because it interfered with my need to go out and drink and get in street fights. But I wound up going back to therapy as an adult post getting out of the military. And immediately I was like, wow, therapy for me is incredibly effective. Being able to put out there how you're feeling and let somebody else help you work through it. You don't realize how effective that can be when you're talking through really difficult subjects. And I look back at 13 year old me and I wish I had stayed in therapy, not because I was such a train wreck, but I think some things would have been curbed. I think that I would have recognized the hazards of the people I was spending my time with and how the more time I spent with them, the harder it was going to get for me to navigate my life.

I was developing an enormous amount of bitterness towards my dad, mostly because I didn't see him, I wasn't living with him. And so in not being around my dad, it's easy to formulate things in your mind that aren't necessarily true about that person, but really all it is is sadness over losing what used to be, and it turned into bitterness, and I really directed it at my dad. I think as a kid, I should have been speaking to a professional about that particular feeling because I felt so bad about it, but didn't tell anybody that I was secretly hating on my dad, even though in many ways, the divorce was both parties created the divorce, it wasn't one person. So, yeah, therapy. I think ultimately, therapy would be my suggestion. And if not professional therapy, find someone you can trust and just be open and honest. And I know that's easy to give that advice, but it's the thing to do, in my opinion.

Yeah. Second question is, for parents who are getting into divorce and want to make it as easy as possible on their kids, what are some things that maybe could have made your life easier or helped you through that a little bit more? What advice would you give your parents?

Don't disparage the other person in front of your kids. Don't do it. It's so harmful hearing negative things about your other parent. It doesn't go away. It's left in your mind and you begin to think those things. And not that either of my parents did a lot of that, but it happened enough that it influenced the way I felt about my parents in a negative way. And it wasn't until I was much older and had kids of my own that I realized just how devastating it is to implant in your child's mind something negative about the two most important people in their lives. I mean, as a child, your parents are your world, and that shouldn't be corrupted, especially by the people who hold the power to be that kid's world. So no matter what they did to you or whatever you think they did to you, do not talk about your partner in front of your parents, like, say nothing, if anything, because your kid is just going to have profound ripple effects if they hear negative stuff about their parents.

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All right, John, we're back from the break. Pretty much wrapped up your childhood, and so I think we kind of left off with the SEAL team stuff. Going into buds, you had met with the guys who retired out of dev group and the shack, you had met your wife. She didn't think you were gonna make it. And biceps lacking a little bit, but. So let's just pick up right from there.

Yeah. So when I went back to UMass Amherst, so when I got re accepted to close out my college years, I really went from, I think I'm gonna be a seAl, or I want to try out for being a seal to that's what I'm gonna do when I graduate. And, you know, as you know, you know, there's more slots available to you in buds if you enlist versus going in as an officer for the audience, you know, there's only so many spots per year that you can even try out for the SEAL teams. And there's, like, you know, hundreds of spots per class for enlisted guys or gals who, you know, you can be 18 years old and you can raise your hand and you can enlist in the navy, and you can go try out their. There's loads of spots for those people. But for officers, for officer candidates, there's only a handful of spots per class, and there's only five classes a year. And the competition for those spots are so high. And to be an officer candidate, you need to have graduated college, got a degree, and be commissioned as an officer to then try out as a seAl.

And so keep in mind, I'm in college. I'm getting ready to graduate college. But in my head, because I'd done the research, my plan was to enlist once I graduate. So do not use my college degree, put it to no use, enlist in the Navy, and go try out for the seal teams. That's my big plan. And I knew this around the time I met Amanda, like, you know, beginning of my junior year of college, but I wasn't ready to tell my family about it just because it felt like such an intense departure from what I was doing, which was currently getting good grades and, like, being a good student. And John's gonna go to law school. Cause that's what he said he's gonna do. And so instead of being, you know, open about this new direction I wanted to take, I just stayed with the lie law school all the way. That's what I'm gonna do.

No way.

Yeah, dude. And so for those two years, I continued getting good grades. And then when it was time to do law school stuff, do your lsats and get ready, I initially began to say, oh, yeah, I'm gonna take the lsits next weekend. Yep. Oh, that's what I'm doing. And I just kind of sold this lie and then just didn't say anything about it. I expected and no one really followed up to be like, did you get your scores? Like, what schools are you applying to? What are you going to do in law school? They just kind of like, oh, I guess John's all over it. And then I graduated and people were like, huh? He hasn't really told us anything about law school. And, no, like, within a week of graduation, I was in my recruiter's office in Quincy, enlisted, trying to enlist or get ready to enlist to go to buds. And I came home from the recruiter's office and I said, all right, guys, I got to tell you, I'm not going to be a lawyer. I'm enlisting in the Navy to maybe become a Navy SeAL. And they're like, what?

I mean, what was the conversation like after that? Were they for it?

Were they like, truthfully, my mom was very for it in that way that she understands that, you know, her son could be going in harm's way. So she's not like, boy, this is the best thing ever, but very proud. You know, she's the one that told me to go talk to Susan's brothers. I mean, she knows she played a role in this. And I think that ultimately, by that point, I think my mom was happy to see that her son had kind of found a purpose. You know, I was very aimless and screwing off in high school. And then, you know, I find. I find a way to be a good student. She's starting to see that, but this was probably, probably the first time that she was seeing her son really make an adult decision. And whether or not she genuinely wanted me to serve, I don't know. But she was just proud and happy for me. My dad had a very different reaction to it. There's no doubt that he would have been, that he is proud now and was proud to a degree at the time. But I think from his perspective, it felt like, what if you don't make it?

Then what? Which is totally sensible.

Yes.

Because for those that don't know, if you enlist in the Navy to go try out for the SEAL teams, if you don't make it, which, statistically you won't, you are now an undesignated. Therefore, you don't have a job. You're an undesignated sailor in the navy who makes the lowest amount possible, and there's really no way to get promoted. You're stuck in your contract for four years. And so imagine being a college, like a college degree, 21 year old who's doing what an 18 year old with no college degree would be doing in the Navy. It's like you're screwing yourself for those first few years of your career, you know? And I think my dad fixated on not, you're gonna fail. That's not what he was getting at. It was more, he's such a. He's very pragmatic, you know, he's very sensible. He's rooted in let's make good decisions, which is a good thing to do. But to become a seal, it's not a good decision to try out, because everything says it's a bad decision. You're probably not gonna make it. And even if you do make it, you're probably gonna get killed or hurt.

And if you do, if you live through the teams, you're probably going to be divorced, you're probably going to be miserable, and you're probably going to have, like, chronic injuries. So there's lots of reasons not to do it, but it draws people that can look past that stuff and say, I'm still going to do it. And that's not who my dad is, and it's exactly who I am. And so we were very at odds with this decision. And, you know, before I told him about my decision to become a. Or to try out for the SEAL teams, he and I had really connected because I was going to UMass Boston for those few semesters. Granted, I went back to UMass Amherst, but when I was at UMass Boston, his work, the Boston Globe, was actually across the street from the campus. And so during my lunch break, when I'm, like, this model student now, which was making my dad so proud, we'd go get lunch together. We went to Kansas City together to go watch the opening day of the Red Sox game together. It's very close, almost like a rekindling of our relationship from the divorce when I was 13 to 1819.

We're spending a bunch of time together, and then I go back to U. S. Amherst, and then I graduate, and I break the news about the SEAL teams, and it kind of screwed up our relationship in a pretty big way. My dad and I, I think, again, just. He didn't want to see his son get hurt. He didn't want to see his son, you know, be stuck in the navy with a college degree and four years of enlistment ahead of him. And so he was kind of too focused on the downsides of the decision or the risks of the decision, and I was like, I know these are risks. I'm aware of these risks. I'm the one taking this chance. But I need you to see that I'm somebody that has the drive to do this. I don't have a track record to prove it, but you know me. I'm somebody that can really put my head down and struggle when I need to, and I think I can do this. And what I really wanted from my dad was just some level of, I think you can do this. I mean, again, he didn't.

He didn't have to do that, but that's what I wanted from him. And I became very upset that he didn't give it to me. And I think that by the time I shipped out for boot camp, it really had soured our relationship in a pretty big way. I think that the intentions were good from him, genuine concern and worry for his son. But I took it very personally. And actually, I will say that when I was going through seal training, there were times where I actually not was on the verge of quitting, but it was so hard and miserable, and I would think about, I can never face my dad if I quit this training. That would be the most embarrassing thing I can think of. The most, like, I told you so, and I couldn't have it. I could not have that happen to me. So, in a way, and I actually told my dad this. He knows this. We got a big fight a couple years after this about the whole thing, and I said, I was like, you know, in a weird way, you have provided me with the most profound motivation by basically doubting me in a loving way with the best of intentions.

But your doubts actually definitely fueled me to keep going. There were other things, too, but that was a big one, and so, in a way, I'm thankful for it.

Wow. I can relate to that. That's very similar. Very similar story. But back to you, what was. I mean, it sounds like the former seals that you had met with as a 19 year old played a big impact. What was it that really. I mean, with all the other places you could go. You could be infantry, you could be Green Beret. You could be forced reconnaissance. What year is this, by the way?

I met them in 2008.

Okay, so the war had been going on for seven years.

Yeah.

And why? I mean, did you explore any other options or was it just a little bit? This is where I'm going.

I mean, truthfully, I was pretty big on a video game at the time called SoCOm, us Navy Seals on PlayStation two. Great game. And so my understanding of special operations was the best in the business are the Seals. And I think that could still be true. I don't know. I'm not going to say that because your audiences, I have every branch. But at the time, I was very enamored with Seals in general. And so to me, it was obvious they were the top position I could get into, the top special ops. And so I also. I'm a person that once I've decided I want something, I actually don't want to go look at other options. I just want to do the thing I want to do, whether I'm right or wrong. And once I've identified my goal, it's like I don't want any outside influence. I just want to do it. And so I kind of had tunnel vision with the SEAL teams. But to your point, I think that there's truth in, you know, I wanted to serve. That's true. But I could have served in any part of the military I wanted to, and I would have accomplished that goal.

So that can't be the reason I went for the SEAL team. On some level, it's ego. Like, the SEAL teams are the rock stars of the military, at least at the time. They certainly felt that way. Actually, this is pre bin Laden raid, so this is actually. They were super cool, but not as cool as they got, but they were still very cool at the time. And I think that I really, by the time I was making that decision to actually go and give this thing a shot, I had. My progression was screwed up high school by being an idiot and getting in trouble and fighting and drinking, screwed up college for really the same reason. But then it's like I've got my life back on track. I'm getting good grades. I got my job. I've gotten back into UMass Amherst. I've met Amanda. I'm on a track here. And I just loved the idea of almost like the final form I was going to take was the Navy seal version of me, where it was the complete metamorphosis from complete up to upstanding citizen who's got a purpose in life? I knew that if I could become a Seal, not a soul was going to focus on all the that I had done wrong.

Like, people in my life, they were going to say, that's John the Navy Seal. So I didn't become a Seal to get that notoriety. I joined for many reasons, but that's definitely a part of it. If it was deciding between the branches, I would say ego and vanity and. And all that stuff played a huge role. But it's also like, I really did want. I wanted to go to war. And if we're getting. Since we're getting deep anyways, I had this weird fascination, and I think this is not as uncommon as I think it's not uncommon. Maybe it is. I wanted to die in combat. I wanted it. I wanted to be. I wanted to become a seal, go to war and die in a hail of gunfire. That's what I wanted.

Oh, before you even. Yes, before you even signed on the dotted line, you had decided that's where it ends.

Not because I'm suicidal, but because I viewed it as, like the ultimate. What's the word? Like, recreation of myself. I would become, like, the. The best possible thing I could ever be, in my mind at the time is like a hero who. That people would miss and appreciate because I just felt like I up so much at such a young age. I didn't really. At the time, it felt like a lot, but it's like, I'm a smart guy. I could have gotten great grades, probably could have gotten into a great school, probably could have gotten a great job, you know, if that stuff's good or whatever. And it just, it just felt like the seal teams and frankly, death in war. I even would tell. I told my wife this and she was, like, freaked out by it. You know, when I became a seal, it was even, it was even worse for her because she knew. My first deployment was to Afghan, Afghanistan. I only did two deployments, so I went to Afghanistan and I was, like, giddy about it. And I think that she was like, dude, don't die on deployment. Like, don't do that.

Don't go there with the intent of dying in combat. And truthfully. Yeah, dude, you told her that.

When did you.

That was a head case. Still am. But she. Yeah, I told her, you know, so I go through buds, I'm sure we'll go through the whole story, but I go through buds, I go to SEAl team two on the east coast, and when we checked in, we didn't know where we were going to go. It was like, we might go to Afghanistan, we might not. We don't know. And then when the word came in kind of last minute, which I think is somewhat par for the course for a lot of these deployments, it was like a celebration. I mean, I'm sure you can relate to this. To find out. We were gonna go to the show. We're gonna go to war. We're gonna actually go to war. And I couldn't help it. I told Amanda I was excited because of the prospect of being killed in combat.

Wow. Wow.

And I was like, I'm sorry to say that to you, but it's real, and that's where I'm at. And it definitely upset her.

I'll bet.

But it's like, here we are. I'm going. I'm going to. I would say, though, that right before I deployed, and I'm kind of jumping around here, but I actually did admit to her, like, the night before I was supposed to leave for Germany, I was like, you know what? Now I'm scared. Now that it's here, I'm less giddy about it. Holy shit.

I might actually combat because it's easy.

To, like, theorize, but when you're really gonna do it, suddenly it's like, oh, I don't want to do that. And so maybe. Maybe before I left, I reassured her that I'm actually a human being inside and I'll protect myself, you know?

Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Very interesting. That's. I mean, it's crossed my mind several times. I always wanted to. Just wanted to fight.

Yeah.

But going back, you check into buds.

Yeah.

Well, actually, even before that, what was your. It sounds like you had educated yourself. Very much so on the subject and what you were walking into. What were you. What did you imagine your biggest hangups were going to be going through training? Was it the 50 meters underwater swim? Was it hell week? Was it pool comp? What were you most anxious about? Feared, maybe, that you wouldn't complete.

So for sure, comfortability in the water was a concern. My mom is a amazing swimmer. Like, amazing. She's every day she swims, like, a mile and has been for her whole life. She's incredible. She trained me for the swimming side.

Really?

Oh, yeah. She's a. And she's a beast. The workouts I did with her were some of the worst workouts I've ever done in the pool. And she was, like, not winded at all. She's like, come on, let's go. Next set. Next set, next set. So she's incredible. But I could see how good she was in the water, and she could do, like, 75 meters underwater, like, nothing, and could come up, like, practically not even out of breath. And I couldn't even do 25. So in buds, you go through, you have to do a 50 meters underwater swim. And anyway, so I was really worried about the 50 meters, mostly because I actually didn't think I could do it. I thought, I can't even do 25, so how am I going to do 50? But bigger than that was like, there's a whole phase of seal training that is underwater training. It's the entire second phase, which is six weeks long or whatever it is. And I was like, you know what? I don't know how I'm going to do in that, but that's after I get through the first phase of training, which everybody fails on, which is, like, the really famously tough hell week, you know, get your kicked every day.

And so I was kind of thinking, like, if I can get through that part of training, by the time I'm at the water stuff, I'll be ready. And so I just convinced myself that the things I was going to be bad at, I would just figure out when I reached those points, and it was kind of true. I would say that when I got to second phase, you're like, well, I'm still terrified of doing underwater stuff, so it was still very stressful. But actually, I mean, overall, I think that I am somebody that I have probably a disproportionate amount of confidence in my own ability, which has helped and hurt me in my life. The fight with Paul, I was very confident in my abilities, but I did not have the abilities, and so I got my kicked. But with seal training, truthfully, I think a lot of people could make it through seal training. It really does come down to just how much can you take? It's not really a skill thing that, yes, there are some skill things you have to do to a degree, but a lot of it is just suffer.

How much can you suffer and for how long? And I knew I could do that. I knew that was something I was able to do, and I just went in with that attitude, like, I'll make it, you know, I'm not gonna quit, but water stuff might be a problem, but when I get there, we'll figure it out.

So even checking in, you had a tremendous amount of confidence.

I would say very humble confidence. I did not. I was not the guy that's like, oh, I'm gonna be a seal. It was more like, I'm so happy to be here. This is like the coolest thing ever. I really hope I make it. That's what I would say. But inside, I'm like, I know I'm not going to quit. At least I really believe I'm not going to quit.

What did you think when you saw all of the green helmets lined up at the bell? Of all the people that had quit just one class before yours, before I.

Went to California to go through seal training, I really did consume virtually every piece of content that was seal related. Books, tv shows, movies, you name it. And there was a lot less at the time. Now there's more, but there was a good amount. And I read it all. I've seen all the pictures, I've watched all the documentaries. And so when I arrived in Coronado, California, I remember being on the bus crossing the Coronado Bridge and just seeing Coronado for the first time. And it's so beautiful. It's like the most beautiful place. But I could see even from the bridge, you're looking way out, like, towards the coast, and you can see the beach where buds is happening. And it just seems so surreal to be arriving in the place where all these books and tv shows and movies that I've been watching on repeat for like, two years, they all happened basically here because I mostly was fixated on reading about buds. And then when I got to the compound, you know, the first thing I did was I, after, you know, running around with my little white shirt dudes who I was supposed to be there with, we went over to the grinder where the famous duck feet are and all the helmets and everything, and I just couldn't believe I was actually at the grinder and I could see real helmets.

And then that night, actually, when we got to California, the class who was in first phase started hell week, and I got to go to the beach and watch breakout for hell week. And it was, on the one hand, horrifying that I'm like, we are the next class that's doing that. We're going to be doing what they're doing in, like, a couple of months. And so that was jarring and intimidating and also seeing the people in your class. I mean, I'm an average sized person, and there are many not average sized people that start buds, including professional athletes left and right. And you're like, oh, my God. But it was so special to just see the helmets and the grinder, to see how we. To see, frankly, Navy SEALs, just everyday Navy SeALs who were not instructors that are going into the West coast teams that are right there. Just seeing them walking around, it was so like a dream come true. But like mixed with fear and anxiety and all that stuff. So I'd say like excitement was how I felt. Were you?

I'm glad you brought up that. There's always a lot of pro athletes. Pro athletes. Golden Glove boxers, division one water polo players, football players, people that have. Even other people that have already been to war and come back to become a SEAL. I mean, and you, no offense, John, but you're a 21 year old punk kid right out of college and I.

Felt like a 21 year old punk kid.

How did you, did you spend a lot of time measuring yourself up to.

Your peers?

Especially the guys that are in hell week now? I mean it didn't sound like you had time to meet any of them. But I remember showing up and seeing guys, grown men quit. I was 18. Yeah. And thinking, holy, if that guy quit. There's not a chance in hell I'm going to make this. But fuck it, I'm going to try.

I mean, dude, the intimidation was like so high. I mean I don't know when. What class were you?

240.

Okay. So I was two, eight, nine to start, 291 to graduate. And I think because they changed it recently, but I think we were one of the classes, one of the first classes that went to that dry side barracks for basic orientation. Does that ring any bells for you? Okay. They basically moved the whole first phase and pre first phase group over to this dormitory on the dry side of the base. So basically for the audience we were kind of isolated. So the buds compound is on one side of the road where the SEAL teams are and buds and all the crazy stuff happens. And then on the literal other side of this road, the Silver Strand road, there's this other side of this naval base which is not spec warfare, it's just a navy base but there's a barracks that they used for first phase. So early, early bud students and guys that are getting ready to start the class. And so I check in there and there's not much oversight. It's just a whole bunch of kids that have just arrived. So 250 brand new check ins that don't know anything and the guys that have been hurt in first phase but did not get far enough into training that they were able to roll forward into post hell week.

They were like they're going to start over on day one of butz. They're just waiting to class up again. And so you check into this environment where there's no people that have really progressed. You have people that have just checked in like you, who are pro athletes and these big, intimidating people, and you have the dudes that got hurt, let's say on day three of training, and they've been rolled back. So you don't know anything about how they got here. But all you know is the rollbacks have not passed hell week. They may have gotten to hell week, but they haven't passed hell week. And the rest of the group is nobodies. Like, we haven't done anything. We just got here. And so guess who has all the influence, all the rollbacks who have like five minutes of experience. And a lot of those guys went on to quit and that's why they got hurt at the beginning of training because they milked an injury to get out of training because it was so hard. And so they're like, taurus, they were never going to make it. But for a brief period of time when we checked in, we were their audience and we were a captive audience because we want to know what's the first day like?

Oh, you made it to day two. Tell me all about day one. Wow. And these kids were like, get ready. It's the hardest thing you're ever going to do, you know? And it's like, made it way worse because I went in thinking, holy, like, these guys are amazing and it's so hard. And then I got to buds and I'm like, oh, okay, it's hard, but, like, adults who came here with a purpose can do this, can do this training. If you're a guy that showed up that's like half invested, of course you're not going to make it. And that's who those guys were. A lot of them were.

Yeah.

Admittedly, though, there were a couple people that I met when I first checked in who did make it and went on to go to dev group and were like, incredible. And they were awesome because they didn't do that. They were like, oh, dude, you'll be fine. They were the only ones that were like, eh, it is what it is. You'll be fine. So it was a mix of, like, people talking it up and people who were cool.

Let's fast forward to 50 meters underwater swim.

I did it my first try.

You did?

I did, yeah. So I think that when I think about the 50 meters, so I couldn't do more than 25 meters. So one length of a pool when I was training on my own. But since you've obviously done it, too, I think that what happens is when you're forced to do it. You go in with a slightly different attitude. I mean, you have instructors that are like, do it right now or you're out of the course. It's very simple. Get in and do it, or you're gone. And so you jump in with, like, a. Like, I have to do it. I'm being told to do it. I'm not choosing to do it. I have to do it. And then when you make that turn and you begin the return 25, it's like you're hypoxic. You're totally done. And some people become euphoric, and I did, too. I became very euphoric. Oh, that's kind of great. Swimming through the water. And then they ended up just, like, pulling me to the end. And I came up, and I was like, actually, I feel fine. I feel fine, you know, but I think I was one of the lucky ones who became euphoric.

So I was like, I have to do this. And I made the turn, and I was, like, so up that it felt good. And then I came out of the surface, and I was good.

Moving into so 50 meters, the biggest. That's a big challenge. It's the first big hangout.

It's like, day one, I think. It's, like, literally day one. Is it two? It's very early.

Yeah, I knew. I don't think it was day one for us, but it may have been. I can't remember. That was 20 years ago. But that's a big hang up. There's a lot of anticipation for the 50 meters underwater. Moving into the next big hang up is the most feared event. Hell weekend. Let's talk about your experience in hell week.

So, I had a summer hell week, which is an important distinction to make for those in the know. So I had hell week in July or June. It was June. June of 2011.

Let me give some context. So there is this big rivalry, winter hell week and summer hell week. So the way it goes is winter hell week. They will utilize the cold to make you quit more so than a summer hell week, even though the water is still freezing. Yeah, it is pretty much the same all year round. It's just the. The air is colder. Summer hell week, you're gonna get your kicked more.

Yeah.

And they're going to physically exhaust you, knock the shit out of you more. And so it's. There is a trade off.

Yeah. I do think they attempt to even it out, but I think it's definitely the case that winter hell weeks get, like, the. That's harder, I think. Um, so we had a summer hell week, which I was very grateful for because going into hell week, I was like everybody else, very worn down from the first three weeks of training. Um, but, yeah, I mean, honestly, with hell week, it was obviously extremely challenging. I mean, it has to be, you're, you're awake for, you know, five and a half days or whatever it is. But at the same time, I think that one of the things that I had going for me from day one, probably through hell week, because I think that my outlook changed after hell week a little bit. And ill tell you why. But I was still very much in the honeymoon phase of being at buds. Ive only been here for a month and im doing something that I want to do more than anything else. And to have just the chance to be in hell Week was just really special. It felt like I was doing something that was so cool and so reputable and so important that I was nervous going into it and worried about it.

But also I felt very privileged to have a chance to just say I was even in hell week. I mean, there are plenty of guys that don't even get to hell week. They quit on day five or something. And then when hell week started, I would say it was almost a relief because obviously the way hell week works is they put you in a holding area, like 12 hours or 24 hours before you start. And they put us in the buds classroom, which is right near the beach. And we were just like watching movies and waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting. And then at some point, every class knows, they tell you to head out to the beach, and on the beach are these military style tents with cots in them. And you go out there and you sit in these tents and you're waiting for breakout to start. That's how all hell weeks start. And the instructors just come out of nowhere with flashbangs and, you know, fake rounds. They're firing off into the air from their machine guns. And I remember when breakout started, when our main instructor, this beast of a man, I'll give him a shout out, actually.

So he's his name. Anybody who is my generation from two 80 to like 295 knows who instructor he is. This dude's just an absolute beast of a human being. He's like, his chest is like this wide. Looks like a Navy Seal. If you said, what does a Navy SeAL look like? And you didn't know, you'd say that, that's what it looks like. He's the guy. He's so intimidating. But the thing about him is he was, like, ridiculously intense and strict and would be really nasty. But he was super fair. Everybody appreciated that. Would be very fair with you. If you did something right and you got called out for it and it was wrong, he'd correct it. So he was for the people. But remember, I saw walking past my tent carrying an m 60 in one hand. Both hands actually had two m 60s. He's walking past the tent flap, and I saw a glow, and I'm like, this little withered away, like, 150 pound dude that's, like, gotten his ass kicked for three weeks. And I was like, I can't believe it's gonna start. And then, like, all right, boys. Booming deep voice.

He's like, let's go. And he begins firing off his gun, and we all just stream out of the tents yelling, hoo ya. And running into the ocean. It was like, crazy, you know? And because you don't sleep for, you know, save for a couple of hours throughout the week, I mean, it all bled in. It's all blended in together to, like, this weird experience that I couldn't tell you when certain things happen on certain days. I remember breakout, and I remember, like, doing when you run around the base with a boat on your head, like, base tour, I think it's called. I remember doing rocking chairs as the sun came up, where you're. You're laying in the. In the surf and you're facing the ocean, so your head's on the sand, your legs are in the water. The tide's coming up to your nose and hitting you, and you're, like, rocking with your feet back to the sand, and then you come back down again, like, over and over and over again. Or you might have. You might be oriented the other way, but either way, every time your head goes back, the surf goes up your nose.

And I remember doing that as the sun was coming up. And that's day one is now complete. And I'm like, oh, my God. This is day one of five and a half. But, yeah, you just kind of keep going. And early on in our hell week, we had so many people quit. Not because it was hard, just because of fear and anxiety and anticipation. All these people quit, and it was like, I'm sure you remember this. It motivated me to stick around. The more you hear the bell, like, the more you want to keep going, because you don't want to be a bell guy. You want to be a seal. And so it was kind of empowering in the early parts of hell week when it's so chaotic and it's so noisy and hard that me and my buddy is right next to me. We're just, like, laughing because it's like, this is insanity. Like, what's even happening right now? Everybody's quitting and getting a fire hose in my face. It's just like chaos. So I think that I tried to appreciate the moment. It was horrible and miserable and all those things, but it was also like a dream come true in a way.

And so that kept me around. And then also, I was married, and I didn't want my wife, who had moved out to San Diego by this point, or she was about to, and reoriented her life to be a part of this with me. I didn't want to quit and be stuck in the Navy for four years. So I had that as a very powerful motivator. And then also my dad, you know, proving my dad wrong, that I could become a seal. It allowed me to get through hell week and relatively easily. Easily in the sense that I survived hell week.

You know, I guess, looking back, I haven't thought about hell week in a long time.

Yeah.

You know, it is a. In a weird way, it is a somewhat of a simulation of combat because you want to go. Nobody becomes a seal not wanting to go to war, at least not that I've met. And there's all this anticipation to get into war, just like hell week. That's the first big step. And then you get there, and you're.

Like, oh, this does suck.

But I'm happy to be here, and I'm glad we're in the moment in the fight here. And then a couple days goes by, and you're like, I just want to go home and get some hot chow. And I'm tired of the. And it is. It is a. The experience, although how different it is. It is. It is a good simulation. It's a good test.

I do think that's true.

You know what? Did you have any big hang ups in hell week? Did you have a moment where you're like, I don't care anymore. I'm done.

The only point that I would say, and again, I didn't come close to quitting. And I'm not saying that to be tough, but I definitely had moments of, I don't know if I can do this, like, physically. I don't know if I'm capable of doing this. And it was after our first nap. So you have, I believe it's two or three naps that are broken up into one or 2 hours that you don't nap the first 72 hours. You're awake for three days, then you take a nap, and then there's some other space of time, 24 hours or whatever, you take another nap. But these naps are horrible. I mean, for anybody that's gone any amount of time with real sleep deprivation, when you get to go to sleep, finally, you don't want to get woken up, like when you're in the middle of your REM sleep or your deep sleep, you want to sleep, you need to sleep. And the first time I took a nap, it was so amazing to be told, get in the cotton, sleep for 2 hours. You're lucky. You're like, oh, thank God. And you get in the cotton, you're asleep within, like, a millisecond.

But then waking up to the sound of your instructors, it felt like a Second later telling you to jump in the ocean. And you're like, that's what you do during hell week. You're constantly jumping in the ocean. That's buds, basically. But you dried off by this point. And it's really the first time in 72 hours or in the space of time that you've been going and going and going, that you're really dry now. And so to have to get in the water when you're dry and you're chafed from the salt water, it felt like acid being poured over your crotch. That was the most sensitive area. And if you want to see a guy who's just been through hell week, for the audience, look at their thighs, because they'll be like, four times the size of a normal thigh, because they're so chafed from rubbing together with all the saltwater and sand. And so you develop these just horrible lesions on the inside of your leg that's just chafe and then jumping in salt water. It really felt like battery acid being poured on my crotch. And there's actually, we had a professional photographer. I'll send you the pictures.

You can actually, you'll probably be looking at this as you're watching this episode, but there's a picture of us, of my class as we're running out of the surf. It's broad daylight. We're not even doing anything hard. We're, like, lightly jogging up the beach. But what people don't know is we've just woken up from our nap. And you can see in the picture, several people are actively crying. They're not screaming in pain. They are crying because it is so painful. And I was one of those guys where it was so painful, tears were welling up in my eyes just from pain, and I'm like, and now I have to do three more days of this. So that was horrible. That was the most pain I experienced in buds was the chafing saltwater post nap easily. But then, like, a minute later, give a freaking boat on your head and you're, like, doing the o course and you've forgotten about it and you just keep on going.

Yeah. Yeah. Would you say that not letting your old man down was your primary motivator?

At the time, it was less not letting him down and more proving him wrong, which is a distinction. It was like a pride thing. I would say that it was really an equal. It was a lot, my wife, because at the time, I felt like I had made a promise to her that I'm going to give this my best. Who knows what that is, but it's going to be my best effort, because if I don't and I don't make it through training, our life really becomes a big question mark. Not only will I be thrust into the navy as an undesignated sailor who makes no money and has no purpose, and we're kind of screwed, but we could get shipped to, like, Japan and be stuck there for a few years, and I just felt like my wife had committed to me and believed in me. And even though she made the comment about my bicep, she quickly adapted the mindset of he's going to do just fine. And so I felt like I really owed it to her, too. Not to make it so much, but to not quit. If you can't do something, and that's the issue, and you get dropped for that, I'm okay with that.

But if I quit, no matter how hard it is, I am letting my wife down. And that's what I wrote her name in my hat going into hell week. And so hers was, I owe it to her and our future family. And my dad was like something I couldn't shake. Like, I can't believe that mother doesn't think I can do this. I'm going to prove him wrong. So it was really my wife that I actively thought about. And then in my subconscious, I think I had, years later, I was able to see it for what it was, but at the time, it was like a subconscious desire to just be like, see, dad. I did become a seal.

Interesting, interesting. So let's fast forward to the. Did you have any hallucinations in hell week, by chance?

Yeah, when you paddle around Coronado on, like, I think one of the last nights of training around the world, it's called. You know, you've been awake for four days, barring a couple of naps, which don't do enough to reset you, and, you know, you're by yourself with your boat crew. There's five of you, six of you. How many people? Anyways, a small number of you. You're all delirious, and you have to paddle around, like, 18 miles of Coronado or whatever it is, and it takes all night, and no one knows what's going on because you're, like, hallucinating. And so we just start veering out into the middle of the ocean, and there's really no oversight either. I'm sure there is. I'm sure the instructors are managing it really, really well. But it just kind of feels like, how are they letting students who are basically insane at this point just go paddle out in the ocean in the middle of the night and just go around Coronado? But we were like, we were paddled underneath the Coronado bridge, and I was absolutely convinced and couldn't be told otherwise that there were cyclists biking off of the Coronado bridge into the water, not committing suicide, but somehow magically biking, like an invisible road into the water.

And I was like, dude, look at this. When did they put this in? Like, where's this road? And they're like, what? What? There's a troll over there. You know? So it's just. There's definitely a lot of hallucinations, for sure. And actually, even though this is not a first phase thing, one thing you said, did I have any hang ups in hell week? I actually have a huge thing that happened to me in third phase that did nearly in my mind, like, almost end my career before it started. So we get through hell week, you know, finish first phase, and then the second phase is dive phase. I'm sure maybe we'll touch on this afterwards. But third phase of Bud's training is really, at that point, you're going to be a seal. Barring a safety violation or making some really stupid mistake, once you've reached third phase and you got your red helmet, they call you basically a team guy. You're going to be a SeAl. So you're in, right? And so the instructors in third phase view you differently than the instructors in first phase, because now they're looking at you as a very likely potential teammate, and they, even though they're instructors now, are going to rotate back into a platoon, and they might literally be your teammate, not like your boss, but your teammate on actual operations.

And so they're viewing you differently, they're sizing you up differently. And so third phase, it's more about proving that you really deserve to be here and proving that you actually are learning how to be tactically sound as a seal. Whereas first phase is like a gut check. Are you tough? Third phase is, can you be a seal? And in third phase, a big part of the training is they send you out to San Clemente island off the coast of California, where there's this compound just for third phase. And it's four weeks of, you know, seven days a week training on, you know, ordnance or on, you know, we did shooting and we did explosives. But there is a week, your confidence week on San Clemente island that I think happens on your first week, and they bring you out to this field. This is, you're at, you're out at San Clemente, you know, you know, you got a few weeks to go. You're going to graduate. It's all going to be good. And they bring you out to this field and they have Cs gas. So tear gas. And this is for those who are not, who've never been, who've never experienced tear gas.

There's different scales to how much tear gas, but generally, once you inhale tear gas, it's like your ducts just open up and liquid begins pouring out of your face. You can't breathe. It's like your body feels like it's on fire. That's the gist of tear gas if you've never been, if you've never experienced it. And so in Navy boot camp, and I think in all boot camps, they make you go through the tear gas. You go into a gas chamber. You got your mask on, and they fire off a couple of pellets, these little baby pellets at CS gas. And you take off your mask and you put your recruit cup underneath your mouth as your snot comes out and you have to say your name or whatever, and you run out of the room, but it's short. You're only exposed to CS gas in boot camp for like 5 seconds. It's super short in buds. In third phase, you're going to sit here and take this entire canister for like three minutes. And the way they do it is they, and I know you've obviously done this. This is for the benefit of the audience.

They put you in this square where you're all, like, in formation, and you take a niece, you're all, all tied up against each other, and there's like 30 of us or 50 of us and the instructors have these pool sticks that you use to clean the pool with, but they remove the head and they tape on, like, multiple Cs grenades. And they got their, their gas masks on, and they're all laughing. They think, this is so funny. They got their cameras out, and they're like, all right, take a knee. And so everyone takes a knee in the field, and they're like, there's only one rule, don't run. And they hold out their CS gas. They hold their gas masks on, and it's a sea of white just encompassing the group. And I was on the edge of the square, and fight or flight kicked in and I sprinted without even thinking. I'm talking, like, I probably experienced he going. It was like 0.1 second into this event, and I am up and running and got absolutely speared by my instructor. Like, tackled hard to the ground, and then he had to hold me down because panicking, like, I felt like I was dying from my millisecond of CS scats, okay.

And I had to lay there. And he was a, get back in the group. Get back in the group. And I was like, no, I won't. Like, I was saying no. And he's like, are you dor'ing? And I was like, no, I'm just not getting back in that group. And they were like, didn't know what to do with me. And so I'm laying there mortified because my class, no one else ran. They're just taking it like champs, just like, dying from the Cs gas. And it was this long, long, long time. And at the end of it, it's like, the instructors were so, so proud of them. Not me, the class. They're like, good job, guys. You proved it. Like, you're so tough. Like, go jump in the water and wash off. And everyone's like, yeah, we did it. And I'm like, the guy that didn't do it. And so this is like day five of 30 of being out here full time, seven days a week with your class and your instructors, who, again, are looking at you as, okay, you've made it past the tough test, but can you be a seal? And this is like the biggest of red flags.

And so we ran back from this confidence test to the classroom, and we go in, and everyone sits down, and I'm, like, hiding in the back row, trying to show my face. And our most hated instructor. I still hate this guy. I'm not going to say who he is. I hate this guy. He comes in the room, he goes, where's Alan? He's like, you're a. He's like, if you're ever on my team, I will not go out the door with you. And no one here. No one in here should you. And I was like, great. This is day five. And my class, to their credit, they understood I was now a pariah. I was a pariah on third phase, completely. And most of the people who I spent my time with were like, I'm still your boy. Like, they stuck it out with me even though it didn't help them to be around me. I had to wear. So we wore our cami uniform during the day. I had to wear those UDT shorts over my pants to signify that I was a. And had ran from a CS guess. And so I am walking around with, effectively, a bikini over my.

My pants. And so it's a constant reminder of, like, you don't want to be like him. You don't want to be around him. But what it did for me is it was so embarrassing. Like, on a level that few things have ever come close that it forced me to just own it, to be like, yeah, I did run from the cs gas, and I wish I hadn't. What do you want me to do? You know? Like, I can't change what happened, you know? And so instead, I really poured my energy into. People are gonna think whatever they think about me. I'm just gonna try to do the best I can at the thing I'm being told to do. And as a result, my ego, like, fell to the floor, and I became, like, a really good teammate, you know? I don't even think I was a great teammate before that happened. I needed to be, like, aggressively, like, humbled to realize, like, I am playing a role at the SEal team. I am not the seal. I'm a guy. I'm gonna go do the jobs and help my team and do whatever I can, because it's all I can do at this point.

My reputation is dog now. And then it was like, we come back from the island. So, san clemente island. And weeks went by. We got past the cs gas thing, and then finally, when we wrapped up, I had done a good job on the island from that point forward, and people had kind of gotten around to, okay, that's fine. But I got back to the mainland, and no one knew anything about what happened out on our class's island trip. And very quickly, people from my class, alan, ran from the cs gas, and everybody knows what that means. And so, all over again, I came back to san quentin hotel coronado. And I had people being like, you, pussy, like, you, and it was like, great. And now I'm gonna go check into sqt and go be the best seal I can be. And everybody thinks I'm a p. That sucked. That sucked hard. But it was actually, I think, an important part of my journey into the seal teams, because it just showed, like, dude, it doesn't take much to this up. Like, you need to be a good teammate and be supportive and, like, do the right thing, and that's all you can do.

And I think it, like, forced me to do that.

Interesting. Wow, that's humbling. Very humbling.

I remember I was out to eat with a guy who I don't like who was in my class with me. He was one of the guys that began telling others about the CS guest thing, and I didn't tell my wife about it because I was embarrassed about it. I'd third phase go, well, let me tell you about how I ran from the cs gas. And I remember we're sitting at the table and there's, like, 20 of us at the table. It was a big, like, you know, post, you know, bud's graduation dinner, and this guy, like, made a whole story about what a. I was in front of my wife, and I wanted to kill this kid. And to this day, I hold a grudge against this kid for shaming me in front of my wife.

Wow. Wow. Did you have to wear the UDT shorts over the cammies the entire.

The entirety of third phase the entire time? Yeah. Although it lost its embarrassment by the end, it was just my uniform. Oh, there's Alan. He's got his UDT shorts on, man.

Man.

Yeah, it was tough. It was tough, man. I actually ran into. And this is. This is one thing. This is. I don't know what I think of this, but I ran into my instructor, who I really didn't like, who called me. Although, in fairness, from his perspective, I can understand where he's coming from. But I had heard he had just been demoted. I think he had, like, lost his bird or something because he had, like, some stuff up, and we didn't talk about that, but I was able to say, hey, what's going on? And I know I'm doing well in my life, and I'm looking at him, I know he's not doing so well. And I was like, hey, good to see you, man. Yeah, I'm out of the team, so what are you doing? Oh, cool, man. Nice. Nice to see you, bud. So maybe feel good.

Let's go back. Dive phase.

Yeah.

You were really worried about the underwater being comfortable in there. Pool comp.

Yep.

Pool comp is. I'll let you describe it.

Yeah. So I started with class 289 in, I guess, the spring of 2011. I finished hell week with that class, which is really. It marks basically the end of first phase. I think there's actually a couple of weeks that follow hell week now, but once you finish hell week, it's kind of like the end of first phase and you're getting ready to go to dive phase. But when I finished hell week, I had sipe. So swimmer induced pulmonary edema. It's a common thing in buds where if you are wet all the time, it can create this pink, frothy sputum in your lungs. I guess basically, it's a very buds specific injury where your lungs fill with fluid and it reduces your ability to breathe in all the way. And so you're, like, gassed. You'd never have any energy. And so I had sipe, and the reason I found out is when we were post hell week, just walking from place to place, because it's the only time in buds you're allowed to walk, is the week following hell week. The rest of the time, your class runs between evolutions all day long and usually with a 200 pound boat on your head.

But during walk week, post hell week, I wasn't able to keep up with my class who were walking, and I didn't know why. I'm like, I can't breathe. And so I get rolled. I get rolled into the next class for medical, like, you got somewhere. Induced pulmonary edema. You can't continue. You will start with the next class, 290, when they reach post hell week. So you'll start post hell week. And so it was a huge bummer to lose your class. This is the guys I went through boot camp with. And, like, these are my guys I went through hell week with. It was. It was a bummer to be rolled, but I get into class 290, and I love the dudes who are in that class. You know, I knew a lot of them. And we get into dive phase that I finished out, you know, first phase with them, and we went into second phase, dive phase. And second phase is it's a lot of easy underwater stuff and a couple of really hard underwater things. And the two really hard ones are the tread where you put 2080 tanks on your backs. Those are scuba tanks that are neutral in the water, but when you put them on, on land, they feel like they're about 100 pounds.

And you get in the pool and you have to put your hands up out of the water and you got no fins on and you do have a weight belt on and you got to tread with your head and hand or your hands out of the water for five minutes. And that's just a put out. It's a. It's a put out evolution, as they say, where there's no way to train for it. It just sucks. And you got to just keep doing it. And I was able to do that barely. Like, head is almost underwater as I'm finishing. But then when we got to the second hard part, which in my opinion is probably the hardest part of buds, is pool comp, I think it is because it's skill on top of grit. It's like you're combining a couple things at once. So for those who don't know what pool comp is, it stands for pool competency. And you go through these evolutions of movements underwater to learn how to scuba dive. The first one is, they call it OC one is its name. And all you do is. And that stands for open circuit one.

And the whole class has to pass it where you jump in the water, you got your scuba tanks on, and I think you basically just sink to the bottom. You breathe for a couple of seconds. Like, you give the okay to your instructor to show that you can do it, and you go back to the surface. It's like as routine as it gets, and then it's like, okay, you did that. Now we're going to do oc two. And it's like, now you're going to get in and do a front flip on top of breathing. And it's a progression of things that they teach you how to do. And they're all easy. It's like, some of them are a little complicated where you got to exchange gear with a buddy and then you got to do it with your glasses blacked out. But again, it's not stressful. It's just going through the motions of learning how to do stuff underwater. And then it's like, okay, now we're just going to do oc eight. It's called. That's actually all. It's called Oc eight. Yeah, pool comp, whatever it is. And you're like, how could it be so hard?

These first seven have been so easy. Like, this is just the next thing we're going to do. But no, OC eight is like a billion times harder than all of the others put together because it's basically like a drowning simulation. You have 20 minutes that you're going to be underwater, where probably about half of that you're going to be without air, where you go in the water and you have your tanks on, you get your weight belt on and you. You crawl to the middle of the pool where there's a lane marker in the middle of the pool in the ground. And you're told that you're going to basically crawl on your hands and knees from one end of this lane marker all the way to the end of the other lane marker, back and forth. So it's like, you know, a space of 20ft, let's say, and you're just walking, you're crawling back and forth and you can't really do anything except crawl around. And then at some point your instructors come down, there's two of them that work together and they start just with you ripping off your mouthpiece, tying knots in your hoses and ripping your weight belt off.

And anytime you get attacked by your instructor, you can't do anything. You fail the test. If you react to your instructor, all you do is fetal position and weight and you just hope you got enough air to do it. And then when the attack stops, you have to make sure it's done. And then you follow this procedure, which is the same every single time. You have to show your instructors that no matter how stressed you are, you can follow this procedure until you can't anymore. And I can even still do it now. It's like the first thing you do is, you know, you secure your air source. If you can't actually, now I can't. So I'm it up. But it's like you reach back, you turn your air on all the way. Quarter turn back, trace to your J valve. Flip the J valve up. Go to your straps, trace your straps. Make sure there's two inches here. Go down, trace here, here, here. There's all these things you check and a lot of it is like procedural, like make sure your strap's not twisted and, you know, make sure your hoses are good, but you have to follow it in a very particular order.

And if anything is missed, even if it's like your strap was twisted and you didn't, you didn't find that and you didn't fix it, even though it wouldn't have saved your life, that counts as a hit and too many hits, you fail the test. And so without air. Yeah, all without. I mean, you're going realistically probably 30 seconds to a minute without air. I would say, on average, between each hit and it's a 20 minutes test, so. But, um. I was so bad at this. I was so bad at pool comp. And it's from panicking. That's why the pure and simple I got underwater. I know the procedures. I can do them on land. Easy as pie. Like the easiest thing in the world. It's. You memorize it. It's the same procedures. No matter how extreme your problem is, even if they've, like, ripped your hoses out, the. The thing you've been taught to do, if you follow it, will eventually reach that point and it will fix the problem you have. It works every time. And I can do it, but put me underwater when I'm stressed out underwater and I forget everything. And I miserably failed the first four attempts.

Miserably. Like, I got rolled for performance. I could not pass pool comp. You get now, it's different. At the time, you were given four chances to pass pool comp in your class. And so it's like you have two attempts on one day and that's on a Friday, and then you have the weekend to practice, and then you do two more attempts on that Monday. And if you don't pass, you can't continue with the class. And so I failed the first two. Like, instantly I go down, I'm crawling, they hit me and I'm in service and they're like. And the thing is, you're breathing compressed air and you're only at 9ft of seawater or of water, but there's a risk of arterial gas embolism and age. I think that's what it is. Although it remains to be seen if it can actually happen in 9ft of water. But basically, when you're breathing compressed air, if you move really quickly to the surface with air in your lungs, I think it can perforate your lungs and can kill you. It's like an arterial gas embolism. If you look it up, age, it's a big deal. And so there's this rule in second phase that even if you're panicking, there is a real hazard if you try to rocket to the surface in the middle of doing these tests.

And I rocketed to the surface to the point where they're holding me underwater to get me from not going too quick to the surface. And I'm fighting to get to the surface, like 1 second into the test. And they film these tests. And so afterwards I'm sitting in the classroom reviewing the footage with my classmates, like, all right, Alan. Alan, your turn. Oh, Jesus. Dude, you are not looking good down there. So it went horrible, the first two attempts, and it went so badly that that weekend was horrible. I'm thinking to myself, like, I wasn't even close. I instantly panicked, like, I can't do this. I can't do this. That's what I felt like. And I think I was just very demoralized. I just. I really had convinced myself that this isn't for me. I cannot do this test. Not the seals, but this test in particular. And sure enough, Monday rolled around, and I had, like, the worst attitude. It was like, I'm probably going to fail. And what do you think happened? I failed the test. And so after failing those two attempts, they send you to a review board where basically your instructors and the people who run the phase decide your fate.

Are they going to roll you, or are they going to kick you out of the course? You know, there's a bunch of things they can do. And for me, I had already been medically rolled following hell week from the swimmer induced pulmonary edema. And the way it works in buds, at least at the time, is you're only allowed to be rolled a total of two times, one medically and one for performance. Even if you shatter your leg multiple times, and it's not your fault if it falls outside of that one medical role, you get kicked from the course. It's just the rules. And so I had already used my medical role for sipe, and now I've miserably failed pool comp, and I wasn't close. And the instructors who are viewing me, who are making this decision, they're the ones that tested me, and they're like, you were a panicky show down there. And they were very unsure about even giving me a performance role because they're like, dude, you got rolled once. Medically, you're not close on pool comp. We feel like if we give you this chance, you're not going to make it. Like, it's not worth it.

And they weren't even being jerks about it. It was just kind of like, we need to make a decision here. And so I don't even know what I said, but I clearly conveyed to them that I am so serious. Please give me another chance. Like, let me try again. And they did. They gave me another chance, obviously. And what I did is I went into the next class, so I got rolled a second time, and I had to wait. It was embarrassing, too. Being rolled twice is not something you'd like to be known for, because no matter what the reasons are, it just sounds like, really, you shouldn't be here, then you shouldn't have been rolled twice. But I classed into the next class at 291 and instead of being scared of pool comp, I kind of embraced the fact that I sucked at pool comp. And I went to my new class who've never experienced pool comp. They're just getting to second phase and instead of doing that gatekeeping bull that the white shirts did when I first got to Coronado, and they're like, oh, boy, I've done five minutes of buds. It's going to be so bad.

I was kind of like, I'm a panicky mess. I'm telling my new class this. I'm a panicky mess. If I wasn't, I bet pool comp would be very doable. So if you're somebody that's relatively comfortable in the water, you'll be fine. And I was able also, because I had done four attempts to actually show the class how to do pool comp because I've done it already, terribly. But I knew the procedures. And so I wound up being like, a source of help to my class. And it really endeared me to my class. They looked at me not as, who the is this dude who just keeps failing pool comp? And why is he here, too? Oh, that's cool. Like, he's helping us. And I took them out to a pool and we did the procedures and it gave me some. Not even confidence, but it gave me purpose within the class and it, it allowed me to. When it came time to actually do pool comp with this class, I just went in with a very different attitude. Although ironically, I go in with this new attitude, I'm like, I'm ready for this. You know, my whole life has brought me to this moment.

I'm ready. And I failed my first two attempts on things that were nothing to do with panic. It was just stupidity. Like, I didn't find a twisted strap and I failed the test for that one hit. That's it. I did an entire 20 minutes. I did the whole test and he's like, you did a great job. But since this is like your 50th attempt, you can't pass because you up the strap. And I'm like, okay. And so I go back in again. And it was the same instructor who. It wasn't the same instructor. It was a different instructor. And it was the same thing. I had missed a small thing and I didn't do the whole 20 minutes. I it up bad enough that he pulled me to the surface, but it was kind of like, dude, you know how to do the test, but you're screwing up because you're rushing. And so I had another weekend where I'm like, I can't believe I'm already about. I'm gonna fail it again. I'm gonna get kicked out of butts. This is it. And that was, like, the worst weekend of my life because I really felt ready for the test now.

I had now done 40 minutes collectively of pool comp. I'm, like, ready. And so I went in that Monday, and I can tell you that it's the only time in my life where it was a complete dude. If I have to die to pass this test, that's what I'm gonna do. And when I got in the water, I couldn't have been more calm. I got to my lane, and it was absolute flow. It was the easiest test. Honest to God. It was, like, relaxing. I was so focused on doing what I was supposed to do that all the nerves went, and I passed. And the guy that passed me, he at the time, had this reputation of being the hardest test, and he even was like, dude, you look like a guy who's done this seven times. He's like, you did a good job. So I passed that. And then, frankly, with the exception of the CS gas thing, which happened in the next phase, the rest of buds was, frankly, about what to be expected. Pretty easy. Hard, but doable.

Right on. So, graduation, you graduate. Actually, let's go to sqt. You get through SQt, you get your trident. Big deal.

Oh, yeah.

What did that feel like? Who's your first call?

So I was, as you know, when you're going through buds, so for those that don't know, you know, there really are a couple of moments in the entire, like, year and a half, two year pipeline of boot camp to actual seal that everybody knows are, like, the hardest parts of training. You have the 50 meters, you have hell week. You have pool comp. There's a few others. The tread actually is definitely gets some people as well. And there's some other things, too. And as a student, you're very aware of. Of those milestones. And so I was communicating to my family the weight of these milestones, and then when I passed them, my family knew that this is really significant. If he passed hell week, that's a big deal. If he passes pool comp, that's a really big deal. And so by the time I graduated, it was already a foregone conclusion. It was more just ceremony to get my trident. We knew I was our class. We all knew we would be seals, like, by the end of third phase. And so now it's just a matter of, let's get really good at this. Sqt seal qualification training is really just learning the actual tactics to a degree.

But I would say that even though I felt like a seal to some degree before I got my trident, the weekend of your graduation is just the most glorious thing. I mean, you have struggled and been miserable for so long, and there's so many opportunities to fail and have setbacks and not make it to. When you get. When you have to go to the dry cleaners to get the trident put on your uniform, you can't wear them yet, but you got to be ready for the next week because you're graduating on a Friday. You're going to be a seal on Monday. I remember I got the dry cleaning back and it had Allen and the trident, and I just put it in my closet, and for an hour, I just sat on my bed and stared at this uniform. I couldn't believe that it was Allen and a trident. Like, it was unreal. I think I took pictures of it and sent it to my family, but I'm pretty sure I called my dad. And not to be a dick, but to be like, yeah, I graduated on Friday. I'd love for you guys to come out and be a part of this thing.

And he was incredibly proud, obviously. And admittedly, by this point, I think that he was seeing that I was kind of. I'm a very different person than he is, and these are things that I want to do, and that's just who I am, and he's just very impressed. And, man, walking up to the podium or whatever it was, and they put your little trident in. It's not blood wings, but they put them on your shirt. It was a crowning achievement and one that it goes unrivaled in my life in terms of just pure achievement. It was just incredible. I wish everybody could experience setting that big of a goal for yourself and then working your face off and then actually achieving it. But publicly, it's like the most glorious thing in the world. You're like, I did it. I did it. It's so cool.

How was the wife?

So happy, so proud. I think also there's an element of when these wives go with their husbands to training, nobody knows who's going to make it. And so it's this weird almost holding pattern for the partners because they don't know what's going to happen. And a lot of them will not make it, and they'll have to go some other place. And so by the time you're going to be a seal, it's like the wives become more friendly with each other because now they know we're really going to be seals. Our families are going to be in the community. And so there's a lot of. There's stability that comes with it, and there's no more questioning whether we're going to even be in this community at all. It's just going to be, well, where do you want to go? Virginia or San Diego or Hawaii if you want to go to the SDB team. And so I think it was the first time that we felt like, okay, you know, we're adults and we have our life now, and we have the things we're gonna do and we can begin to build together. And it was exciting.

It felt like we had became adults.

Good. Good for you, man. On that note, let's take a break.

Let's do it.

We're done with training, and when we come back, we'll pick up at think you went to SEAL team two. SEAL team two, yeah, we'll get into that in combat.

Sick.

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That's all lowercase. Go to shopify.com, Sean now to grow your business. No matter what stage you're in, that Shopify.com Sean this episode is sponsored by Better help. It can be easy to ignore our social battery and spread ourselves thin, especially with social gatherings picking up after the winter. Maybe you thrive around people, or maybe you need some alone time. Therapy can give you the self awareness to build a social life that doesn't drain your battery. It's helpful for learning positive coping skills and how to set boundaries. It empowers you to be the best version of yourself. It isn't just for those who've experienced major trauma. Therapy with Betterhelp is just a good place to start when you want to understand you better. If you're thinking of starting therapy, give better help a try. It's entirely online, designed to be convenient, flexible, and suited to your schedule. Just fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist and switch therapist at any time for no additional charge. Find your social sweet spot with betterhelp. Visit betterhelp.com sean today to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp help.com sean. All right, John, we're back from the break.

You had just completed Bud's SQT, the whole training pipeline, and you're getting ready to check into Seal team two. So let's talk about what that check in was like for you.

Dude, the check in was the most intimidating thing ever. So SEal team two is located in Virginia beach. This is totally public, so it's in Virginia beach. And so we graduated SQt, so became Seals in September of 2011, 2012. Then we went to language school. So for a few months we did language school in San Diego.

Is that a new thing?

They did it briefly and it was so ineffective, I believe they stopped doing it. Language farsi. So, man, forgot farsi. Harvisanam. That's about the extent of my language. I can only speak farsi, but I can't. And I think, man dashui lotfan, man dashui. The one thing that I got really good was I would ask my instructor, can I please go to the bathroom? That's the only thing I said all the time. So I was like, back to my punk kid ways in language school. But anyways, I finished language school and honestly, it was awesome because it was like three months of getting to be a seal, but without any seals around you, it was just you and your class. So I'm top of the world, feeling really good. And as you know, a lot of guys that go to the east coast teams from getting their trident in San Diego, they drive. They make it a whole trip. They just drive across country, and they check in at the east coast team a couple weeks later because you're given a couple of weeks to get there. And so that's what me and my wife and my three cats did, or two cats at the time.

We just piled into our truck. We didn't even have a truck cover, which is so dumb, but we just put all our stuff, like Tetris in the bed of the truck and just hoped it didn't fall out. And we're driving the entire way across the country, and at night we would have to stop at motels and take all the stuff out because we were scared it would get stolen into the motel with our two cats that were, like, running all around. So it was a great trip. But we drove to Virginia, and when we got there, we had the option to. I had the option to check in at seal team two. So basically just say, hey, I'm here, and I'm ready to be a part of the team. Now either on, I think it was like that Friday that we got there or by no later than, you know, that Monday, let's say all that mattered is I had an opportunity because I got to Virginia a little bit early to check in. A little bit early. And I was told that if you did that, it's unlikely that the Seals who currently are at the team, that they would be there, that you'd have this vacant building.

You can go in, you can speak to the admin, check in, get your paperwork, and get the out of there before anybody sees you because you're brand new. You don't want to get into a conversation with people quite yet. I remember I was like, I'm going to go in early. I'm going to get this over with, and I'm going to go hang out with my family for a couple of days, and then I'll begin work on Monday. And so I pull into this parking lot, and so you get a. So, SEAL team two, it doesn't look in any way spectacular. It's just a, you know, three story building with barely any windows, big, gray, tan, just box. But it's surrounded by, like, all these fences and there's all these guard posts and stuff around it. And it's on a base. I mean, you've already gone through levels of security to get here, and now there's more levels of security for this somewhat, you know, ambiguous looking building. There is a SEAL team logo on it, but it doesn't look that important. But it's this really important place that's full of secret stuff. And so I'm parked outside of this other series of gates I'm going to have to go through to get to SEAL team two.

And I'm sitting in my black f 150, got my dress blue uniform on that I was so proud of, but now suddenly, I'm like, I'm such a imposter. I got no ribbons, you know, it's like my trident. And, like, my marksmanship from boot camp is all I have on my uniform. And I sat in that. That car staring at seal team two for probably, like an hour or two, just too scared to just go inside. But finally I was like, all right, you just got to do it, because it's going to be whatever it's going to be. And so I get up to the gate, and of course, I can't get it to open because I don't have the code or anything. So I'm, like, ringing the doorbell, you know, trying to get people's attention. And finally, the person on the quarter deck came out, and they're like, who the are you? What are you doing? They know I'm a new check, and I'm wearing dress blues, and it's a team guy who's dressed in civilian clothes. I don't know who they are. And they're like, yeah, get out of here, dude. Like, they're with me.

Just get out of here. And I'm like, all right. So I, like, go back to my truck. What do I do? Like, what do I do? Do I leave?

I can't get in.

And so finally I waited until I saw somebody else going in, and it was a guy dressed in civilian clothes. And I'm like, okay, it's just some random die. I'll just go with him. So I ran up, and I'm like, hey, dude, sorry. I'm just trying to get in here. And he turns to look at me, and I realize immediately this is not just some normal guy. He's dressed in civilian clothes, but he's got this massive deployment beard, and he has a scar running from this part of his face to this part of his face, like, fresh. It looks horrible. Just like an action movie scar across his face. Clearly this is a seal who's going back in, and he just came back from deployment, and he looked at me, and he's like, are you fucking new? Yeah, I'm new. He's like, all right, I'll show you around. So he ended up being cool, but he brought me inside, and it was like all the seals that had just got back from Afghanistan were here today, and they're in civilian clothes, and they're in their, like, op cammies. And I am the most obviously brand new Navy SeaL, and there was no other new check ins.

I'm the only check in. Nobody else was there. And so I got called into every team room, like, sing a song. Sing a song, john. Go ahead. I like singing songs. And then I got to introduce yourself. Oh, my God. And then I got to my platoon, and, you know, my platoon had just come back from this, like, pretty gnarly deployment. I mean, they. I think three or four people got shot. I don't think anyone got killed, but there was several people that lost legs and limbs. I mean, it was a pretty gnarly deployment. And the guy who had the cross of the cut on his face and IED had blown up in front of his face, and he ended up losing his eyes. He's blind now, or he's mostly blind anyways. So I'm, like, in this room with these guys that are literally fresh off the battlefield. They're not even in, like, a jokey mood, either. They're just annoyed that I'm here with them and they have to talk to me. And it was just so intensely uncomfortable being in that space with them because I just felt like. I felt like I had become a seal, and I felt really proud of that.

But there's a difference between you went through training and you've integrated into an actual Seal team, and they are so far apart. You know what I mean? And so it was just, like, crazy intimidating. It was a long day of being embarrassed, but I also felt like I had an advantage come Monday, because when Monday came around and all the new guys showed up, I was a sort of not new guy because I had been hazed all day Friday. So I got to walk in and be like, what's going on, guys here for day two? You know? But it was. It was wild. I mean, the. The check in day was. I remember all of it. It was just so, so intimidating. But then I would say that it was so cool to then eventually integrate and be a part of the team and to get to go into work and. And be a. Everybody knows you work there and you're supposed to be there and they want to work with you. Like, that's such a cool feeling to be in this really exclusive community that you're wanted and expected to be there. I mean, it just gives you this profound sense of purpose and accomplishment and getting to work with some of the most, like, just intensely competitive and successful people.

That are so good. It was awesome, man. It was awesome. I mean, there's huge downsides to the teams, but there's also huge upsides to being around such high performers and being a part of the team. Not being on the outside, but being in that team. It's addicting.

What part of the. So they were in the. They were at the very beginning of the cycle. So for those that don't know, maybe it was different. I was out by the time that you were in, but the cycle was pro dev, which is basically checking in off time, going to specialty school, sniper, breacher, whatever, comms, JTAC, all kinds of schools. Then you do your workup. That's what, six months? Six month workup where you're actually training within your platoon, getting ready to kind of go out the door. You know, you're working all the kinks out as a team. You're doing assault, you're doing land warfare, air ops, marops, all kinds of that kind of stuff. And then you move into, I can't remember what, sit where. You're basically. Now you might be working with an OdA team or a ranger element or possibly doing some integration work with Dev group, people that are going to be on deployment in the same areas as you. You're also. It's kind of on standby in case you have to go early. And so you got a full cycle?

I did. I got there when the platoon I was joining was actually returning from their last deployment. And so I got the nice long post deployment break, which effectively was pro dev, where I was able to go to a couple schools, nothing major, just like dive supervisor school or something. And then when pro dev started in earnest, I got to meet my platoon and everybody went to their schools. And then by the time the actual workup, unit level training, ULT started, I mean, I had known the team for four, five, six months, and ULT was awesome. I mean, my first ult with that platoon was. It was so cool, because now you're basically doing sqt all over again with all these different blocks of training, from jumping to diving, all this different stuff. But you're doing it with guys that have done it in war. And it was just fascinating to see the difference between pure schoolhouse stuff where this is how you do CQC, do it this way to. Nah, that's not how we do it. It's like if you're by yourself, you're gonna do a one man room entry. It's not allowed, but this is how you do it.

Or like, no, in this situation, you would do this. It's like you're seeing the reality of what they do and seeing it being employed in actual, like, training and seeing them defeating, you know, the people we were up against, the role players with these, like, cool guy tactics. It was like, so cool. Like, wow, they learned these things on the battlefield. And I was also just so impressed by the older guys because we had a really, really good group in our platoon of senior enlisted guys who were very experienced but very humble and kept the platoon completely in lockstep, nobody off. People were like, really good. They, they always cleaned their weapons. They always did the right thing. And so that's why we, I think, very likely got tapped ultimately to go to Afghanistan, because our platoon was just, I think we were very dialed in and they thought we could handle it.

When did you find out you were going to Afghanistan?

So we, so we check in. I checked in in December of 2012, and then I didn't deploy to Afghanistan until October of 13. So it was like, you know, basically. Was that a year? No, I checked in December of 2012, and then it was, yeah, October 13. What's the time on that?

Was it ult or what phase of the cycle was it?

It was ult. Okay, so latter half of. So we are deep into ult, and we actually were expecting to go to South America, and our platoon would get broken up into basically different j sets all over South America. So it was looking like a non combat deployment, an important one. Things to do, but not combat. But there was someone from team two, from our troop, so in our troop, there was three platoons. I don't want to get too technical, but we knew somebody was going to get to go to Afghanistan, probably, but we didn't know who. And it really came down to, out of the three platoons that were in our troops. So we were in one troop, there was Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, I was Charlie Platoon. It came down to which two of the three are going to get to go, and it just came down to performance. And there was a couple people that actually got in trouble that hurt their platoons chances. But ultimately it was maybe around the CQC phase. So, like, latter half of ult, that word came in. I remember I got a text like, we're going to Afghanistan and it's going to happen.

And we were only maybe a few months away from deployment. And I was so excited. I mean, that, that was just so exciting. And I think that only people that have been in the military and got to go to war could really understand the mentality of why you might be excited to do that, because obviously, war comes with lots of bad things, even for people that want to go. I mean, there's death, there's all these different things. But you spend all this time and energy training for war effectively. And to be given the opportunity to go employ the skill set that you worked so hard to train, that's pretty cool. It's morbid, but it's cool. And, I mean, that was the feeling amongst our platoon as we hit the jackpot. And when we went to Afghanistan in October of 13, I mean, we were going to a site that was relatively kinetic, but not kinetic in the sense that the guys who were there before us, they did get in gunfights, at least periodically. But when we got there, our internal leadership, like our senior enlisted guys and our chief, they were really, really good at writing these.

Basically, you need to put together like a permission slip and run it up the chain to say, hey, we have this thing we want to go do in this town. We want to do this operation. Here's how we do it. Here's why we do it. Here are the assets we need, and you send it up the chain. And if it gets approved, you get to go. And our leadership was so good at writing these little, I think they're called op words or whatever it is that we get approved for everything and to the point where, like, tier one guys would come, not a lot, but would come to our white side, you know, vanilla SEAL team to augment with us just to go on operations.

No kidding.

Yeah, just because we were able to get them approved, we were not some specialty unit. It was just like, we're getting approved left and right.

So you guys were getting it?

We were at least going out a lot. We were there, you know, October and it was winter, so the fighting season is lulling. But I mean, we definitely got into some stuff. I mean, I ultimately got hurt in a gunfight. That's how I left Afghanistan, so. But, yeah, no, it was.

Well, let's talk about. So you get what you wanted?

Yep.

Now you're in Afghanistan at war. What year?

2013.

2013. So a lot has happened. You know, in both wars, you're there. Lets talk about your first mission.

Oh, man. Yeah. So I went to Afghanistan as part of the first group from our platoon. So the way they send you out on deployment is you dont go all as a big group. Its too risky, I think. So you go out and wave. So it reduces the chances of guys getting killed all at once, basically. And so I went out with my chief, my OIC, and maybe two other junior seals. So it was like five of us. And we were under the impression that we would get to Afghanistan and we would meet SEAL team eight, who was at the site where we were. And really not much was going to happen. We don't even have our platoon here. Like, we can't go out and do operations. There's five of us, you know, and so we expected, including my senior leadership, to get to the site and just basically wait for the rest of our platoon to gradually come in over the following, you know, week or two. But we get to our site. And so to put in perspective where we were, we were in Logar province in Afghanistan, and we were in a place near Kabul.

It was along route Utah, which is one of. It might be the only paved road in Afghanistan, or it's certainly one of the few. And so route Utah gets ied constantly because it's like the one road. And you got a picture, Afghanistan, where we were, I mean, it's all mountains. So if you've been to, like, Nevada, that's what Afghanistan looks like. Just pure mountains and snow everywhere and just open space where you just see just these roads, this road that kind of goes forever and these little jangly trucks and mud huts. I mean, it's a very different world than the United States. But when we got there, we didn't expect to do anything. And we arrive at the fobs, the forward operating base where we just landed, called Fob Shank. And we very quickly linked up with a handful of the guys from team eight that were going to be at our site. So we didn't stay at a main base. We basically stayed at this, like, weird out station that was pretty far up route Utah, very close to Kabul. And my understanding, because I was not part of the team that actually wrote the missions or anything, I was just kind of like a new guy that carried a gun.

But the gist was we were there to try to slow down or stop suicide bombers making their way into Kabul, so find them before they get there and stop them. And team eight, the platoon that was there, they had recently gotten into, like, all these skirmishes, these gunfights in this neighboring village called Zarganshar, which is this very urban Afghanistan town that's pretty big. And it was. We could see it from our site. We have these, we're a little Hesco barrier, like, made up site off the side of the road. I mean, we're pretty exposed, but we've been here for. The site had been there for a few years, it was pretty well protected, but it was kind of like the middle of nowhere. And right across route Utah on the other side is Zargenshar. And that was a main place that suicide bombers would be held before they were sent up to Kabul. And so we knew that was a hotspot. And team eight had been going in there and getting in these really intense gunfights because the fighters in Sargent were pretty open about being fighters. They weren't really trying to hide the fact that they're in opposition to NATO.

And so you'd look into their town and you'd see dudes carrying AK 47s in the middle of the road. I mean, they're not even trying to hide from you. And also, this town, over the course of several years, had been the site of really intense battles between sof elements and these fighters. And so our team eight guys that were there, they had gotten into this horrible fight. Like, unintentionally. They had driven past Sargent and they hit an IED. Their mrap was disabled, so they had to stick with it for a while. They're getting shot at. They didn't have their nods, so they're out there at night without nods, which is stupid, but it's. This happened. And frankly, by the time we were seeing them the next day, they're like a week away from getting to leave Afghanistan. They want to get turnover operations done immediately so they can get the hell out of here. And so when we showed up, they were like, oh, great, there's enough of you. We can do a mission tonight because we have to do a set number of turnover operations before we can leave. And they wanted to get them done immediately.

They were just over it. They had had a rough deployment. I think they might have lost somebody. I'm not sure, but they were just over it. And we're looking at them, and we're fresh, fresh cammies, clean shaven. And these dudes look so ragged. And one guy, he had this horrible cut on his face, same as the guy from SEAL team two. And so we're like, all right, we'll do turnover ops with you guys now. And I didn't really know what that would even entail. You know, I'm thinking, okay, what is it? Was it gonna be like a little patrol around the base? No. We hop in one of their MATV's or whatever their m ramps or rgs, whatever they're called. Big up armored vehicles that are, like, bomb proof. And I remember I had bought all this special equipment for this deployment. Like, a brand new kid, and I had all this cool stuff. Stuff. And I thought, I'm gonna get there, and we'll have a couple of days. I can kind of put it together the way I want, and then I'll be all ready when my team gets here. So my kit wasn't built, and I arrived at Fob Shank.

So I'm in Afghanistan, and team eight guys are like, they don't want a small talk. They're like, get the car. Let's go to our site and do an op tonight. And so everybody else I was with.

This is same day, same day.

And so it's, like, midday, and so I'm running. This is a huge fob. There's all these ISO. What are they called? Isus, those big, like, you know, conx boxes. They're everywhere. I don't know where my stuff is. And so I began running around looking for Conx boxes where maybe my stuff was, and then I finally. And teammates waiting. The rgs are lined up. Engines on. Everybody's ready. My four guys, or the four guys I was with, they're in their vehicles, and I'm running around just looking for my stuff, and then I finally find it, and I open up my pelican case, and it's just random pouches. No, Molly's been done in it. Like, it's not ready. There's no. There's nothing. And so all I could do was grab my. My. My plates and slide them into my kit. I have nothing. I was a slick kit, and I just grabbed all my. And hopped in the rg and begin putting my pouches on as we're driving into, like, out into Afghanistan, out of the safety of this base. And the whole time, I'm like, dude, if we get hit right now, I am completely worthless.

I have nothing available to use. I don't have a radio. I don't have a gun. I have nothing on me. And we're, like, driving through these bazaars, these little, like, shopping centers that. I mean, everyone's dressed head to toe, and, like, the women are in the burkas, like, head to toe, and it looks like the middle east, and it looks like it's not the United States. This is a foreign country where you are, and you are not welcome here. You're not welcome. And there was a rule that you couldn't slow down beyond a certain speed because of the risk of ieds. And so you're cruising through these villages, and there are people that are standing, like, in defiance to you in the road. Like, they're ready to get hit by you. Not literally, but it's like no one's getting out of your way. Oh, here come the NATO forces. Let them go through. They don't like you. And so it's like everyone's looking at this vehicle like, you're the worst thing that's happened to us. And it was just scary. You're looking out these little, like, seven inch thick glass windows, and you're seeing these people, and you're seeing up close and personal that you are.

You are the enemy here. That's what it feels like. And I am. I was like, I feel so, so sloppy. I don't know what I'm doing here. And so we finally get to the site, the actual offsite, we had to go through, like, all these Hesco barriers to finally get in. And I'm looking around at where I'm going to be staying for this deployment, and it's underwhelming, to say the least. I mean, I knew it would be rag and bone, but it's a couple of tents and, like, some structure. I mean, it's like nothing. It's like this total ramshackle place with, like, a couple of huts around. And I'm like, this is it. Like, this is where we're going to be staying? And they're like, yeah, this is pretty good, you know? All right, and so the leader or the guy who was in charge of the team eight element, he's like, all right, so, you know, put your in your rooms. We had little, like, rooms we had that were horrible, but we went into our little rooms and he was like, come into the briefing room and we'll just put together an op word and we'll go out tonight.

And I'm like, okay, I don't know what this is gonna be like, but I'm here. So I went in my room and I did put my kit together, so I was, like, ready. And then that night, me and the rest of the guys, I was with just the other seals from team two. We went into this briefing room, and, you know, the only briefs I had sat in to this point were in training, you know, where it was, like, very, very professional. You had the instructor brief. You had, you know, the elements that were going to be in charge. They brief you what they were going to do, you know, no ones around when youre doing the brief. You mean, even in the jokeiest of environments, when it comes time for safety and going over the training evolution were going to do. Seals are pretty good about, like, keeping it very serious. And I walk into this briefing room and its like, dudes are just off. And that's not to say they were unprofessional. It's like they've been here a while. Like, to them this is nothing. They're like, shirts off. Like doing competitions with pull ups and stuff.

Like they're just goofing around and they're, let's gather up. Let's, let's go over this thing. And I'm like, okay, what's going on here? And we all come to the middle of the room and there's this table and a map and the guy who's got his shirt off, who's got long hair and a huge beard, he's like, all right, so let's, let's just go like these mountains over here. You know, a lot of times the fighters will sleep up in the hills up here. And so I think that if we're careful, we can maybe park pretty far off and walk our way up. Just carry a knife to keep it quiet if you encounter these guys. And try not to discharge your weapon if you don't have to. We're just going to go clear the mountain. And I'm like, so we're going to go to a mountain and we're going to execute people who are sleeping on the mountain that are fighters here. That's what we're going to do. And they're like, yeah. I'm like, okay, so that's the first mission I'm on. It was like, so surreal. It didn't feel like this could be the thing we're going to do now.

Admittedly, we go out on the Sop and like many ops, nothing happened. There were no fighters. There was no, like, secret combat stuff we were doing. But I remember after that brief and it was literally like that kind of short, just bring a knife and be ready to act quietly when you're out there and, you know, just be careful. You could step on an IED, you know, it's like, okay. And I went into my room and I remember praying that the mission didn't happen, that it, that it wouldn't happen. I'm not even religious, and I kneeled and prayed in my room that we did not go on that operation because I was completely convinced I was going to die. Like, even though I had gone in saying I want to die in combat, by this point, I'm terrified and I don't want to go out the door. I want to stay in my little chew. That's the name of your stupid little building you live in. And actually, it did get rolled 24 hours. So it was a relief that night that I got to sleep. But then the next night, we went out and going out, going out the door the first time, when you leave the safety of the Hesco barriers and you're out in the wild now, it was so exhilarating, but also equal parts terrifying at first.

And then it quickly became, over the course of the deployment, just so routine to be risking your life every time you leave the safety of the Hescos. And it's weird how I'm sure you deployed many more times than I did, but I found that that deployment so quickly, I just adapted to the lifestyle of being in a combat zone, safe place. I slept better than I ever had before because it's kind of like, what else is there to worry about other than live and protect your teammates? There's nothing else to do. Eat, sleep, go to the gym and live. So it's like you kind of enter into the Zen mode, but it only comes when you break from reality. And when you're there, at first, you're still in civilian mode, you're in reality mode, and it's really hard to turn into the savage you need to be to carry out a combat deployment. But once it happens and you flip the switch and become the operator, it's like you just enter this weird piece, and you're just, again, this is my one deployment to combat. But it was great. After the first few weeks of being there, all the fear was gone, and it was like, this is kind of an amazing thing we're doing.

And it felt important. I mean, it felt like the things we were doing, the people we were going after were genuinely bad people who had done horrible things, and we were doing stuff about it. It felt. Felt real. Towards the end of the deployment, I would say that people began. This might be commonplace amongst combat tours. It probably is. Again, I got the one, but towards the end, people are now like, okay, I don't want to be the guy that gets killed on the last day of deployment. Maybe cool our jets towards the end, you know what I mean? There was definitely an element of, ironically, at the end of our deployment, which is when I got hurt, we were beginning to say, hey, we're going out a lot, and that's great, but let's make sure we're doing this for good reason and not just looking for a gunfight, because I think a lot of times we would go out really with the intent of, hopefully, somebody bad sees us, engages with us, and then we can prosecute the target. It wasn't written up that way, but that was the gist of a lot of the times we went out to kind of see what happens, and I think that we all reached a point where, or a lot of us did, where we were just like, I don't know if I want to keep doing that at least as much as we're doing it.

It just feels like we're really risking it for little to no gain. That's how we felt. And then we went out, and, of course, I nearly get killed along with a bunch of other people and that. So, I mean, I don't know if you wanted to get into that. I can.

Yeah, let's. Before that. Before we get into that, I mean, what was. So you guys were going after IED manufacturers, suicide bombers, fighters up in the hills, if they're up there, yeah. Let's talk about the first operation where you and your team had an engagement.

It was so far away, but I heard a gun shoot. Like, I heard gunfire. We were, like, up on this ridge, miles away from the target. Me and the unit, the element that I was. The element that I was with was up on a mountain overlooking this village that other guys were going in and clearing, and so we just were at a distance. I had, you know, a rocket launcher if we needed it, but really we weren't doing anything. But, you know, gunfire started in the village, and we had to take cover behind our rg up on the mountain. And it was like, wow, we're taking cover. This is crazy. Like, it's really happening. And it's so funny, like, the first time it happens. And again, I know that your audience includes grizzled combat veterans that have done a lot more than I have, but again, my frame of reference is this one deployment. And at first, it was exhilarating to be shot at, and then it just became like, what's the word for it? You feel like you're just rolling the dice a little bit. And by the end of the deployment, it was a lot of resentment that you hear that gunfire, and really, it's the first couple rounds that are going to be the ones that are going to kill people because we are not going to be on the offensive due to the rules of engagement.

We're basically like, we're here, and if you attack us, we can do something about it, but only if you attack us. And so there were these operations we go on where all you're doing is like, man, I hope they miss that first couple that first volley, because that's the most accurate shot. They got the. They got the drop on you, and they can shoot you. And then it's like, a couple times when the shooting would start, I would immediately be out of breath. I hadn't moved or done anything. I'm just. I'm in place. I have not moved. And I'd have this, like, sudden I can't even breathe because the shooting has started, and I, like, I need to, like, almost reset, almost. In a way. Maybe I'm just not cut out for it, but it was, like, so intense, you know? So I.

Did that ever fade away?

No, it got worse. I'd say by the end of the deployment, I was definitely able to, you know, quickly get into the zone and do the things I was trained to do. But the anxiety when the shooting started, that first few seconds of, like, oh, my God, I hope no one got shot. And I'm completely out of breath, and it's like, I have to get back in the moment because someone could come around the corner and kill me. I got to get in my game. I remember at the end of that deployment, I just was like, I don't know if I'm cut out to do this. Are there people that get better at this? Because I feel like I'm getting worse. I'm accustomed to this now, and I'm able to do my job, but I feel like with every time we got in contact with the enemy, I'm getting worse at embracing what's happening. It's terrifying. I'm able to function and do the things I'm supposed to do, but the idea of doing multiple deployments that are like this or way worse, that takes a special breed of person. And candidly, I don't know if that's me.

How often was this happening? How many times are you guys going out?

So we had on our platoon there was, I think, like, 25 seals, and we went out with a partner force all the time. So there was always, like, 30 or ten to 30 Afghans that were with us. And I actually, I was in charge of the partner foist, you know, herding the cats, really. And we would go out maybe every third day over six months, sometimes every other day. And a lot of times we'd go out at, like, super early in the morning that technically was not nighttime, and it got it approved, but it was still nighttime. You'd have nods, but it's the morning, and it wasn't like every time we went out, we got shot at. Far from it. I think that we probably went on, you know, maybe 90 or so operations, you know, that you would call an operation of which, I don't know, 10, 15, 20 times. And I could be wrong because a lot of it blended together, but it was a relatively small number that were like, we got into a gunfight and some of them were from miles and miles away and it didn't matter, but technically we got shot at and that's why we ended up doing this thing over here.

But the ones that were, or I should say, there was really only one gunfight. That in my mind, because of how extreme this one was, it makes every other experience I had in combat on this deployment feel like actually nothing. And it was the night that I got hurt in Afghanistan. It's my last night in country. Might as well get into it.

Let's go into that. But let's start from the beginning. What was the operation about? What was, here's the brief. What were you guys doing?

So it was in that town, Zarganshar, the one that's right across the street from us, which kind of became the main place we would go.

When you say right across the street, are we talking 100 meters? Are we talking 1000 meters? Are we talking a couple clicks?

You know what it's probably like here's the road and it's maybe like a click off the road. That direction is so like, you know, a kilometer off the road is sargent, but you can see it from the road. There's no obstruction from the road and it's basically a walled. I remember it being walled almost like it was a security around the city, but I don't think it was. But it looks like this big walled in city, if that makes sense. And you can see it from the road. And we were much closer to route Utah on the other side. So we're, you know, 100 meters off the road on our side and Zargenshar starts like, you know, a thousand, you know, a click away from, from the road. So it's not right in front of us, but it's close. I mean, if there were engagement because the army would go in there sometimes and we'd see, you know, jets coming in and dropping casts. Outside of Zargensar, you have a front row seat, it's right there. But a lot of times we would go into Zargenshar, mostly because there was constant reporting that fighters were in Zarganshar because they really were not shy about being out in public.

And we would just kind of go in and if there was somebody that was a known bad actor that had done these horrible things, we're going to go find them. And a lot of times, in an effort to find this person, we get in engagements with other people or, or we didn't find anything and nothing happened at all. But it got to the point where towards the end of the deployment, it was starting to be fighting season again because it was the springtime and there was just way more activity in Zarganshar than anywhere else. And I think that we kind of got sucked into this idea of just going there because that's a place where stuff happens. We're going to get into gunfights, we're going to find bad guys, we're going to find suicide bombers, we're going to find all the things that were here to find and do. And this, ironically, on the day before the operation that I actually got hurt on, we had a big platoon wide talk where we basically were split, where half the platoon, me included, felt like we were doing too many let's just go get into a gunfight routines, which, again, it wasn't billed that way, but anybody who was doing these operations understood that's what we're doing.

And the other half felt like, dude, that's why we're here. That's the job. We're here to do the job. And so we were kind of not fighting, but definitely not on the same page with what we were going to do. And so word came out that we're going to do a stomp into Zargenshire and see what happens. And there was lots of reporting that there actually would be pretty significant numbers of people in the city, fighters in the city. And frankly, I was pretty annoyed about it. Not that I wouldn't do it. It isn't like I didn't want to do the job. It just was like, like, are we just going in to get in gunfights for the sake of gunfights? Are we going in because there's a bigger mission here? And I'm not saying that I wouldn't do one or the other. It's just, it's the end of the deployment. Like, let's be smart about it. And maybe that's just me not being a fit for the teams, which, frankly, I probably was not. You know, like, I'm sure there's a mentality where it's like, I don't give a what day it is, we're going out the door, and I'm sure that that works, too.

But we have this tension in the platoon about what we're doing and the next day it's like, we're going to go out and do it. And there was a lot of bitterness, I mean, from half the platoon. We're kind of like, what the are we doing? I feel like someone's going to get killed. So far, no one has, but someone's going to get killed if we keep doing this. And it just didn't feel worth it, you know? And so we go into Zarganshar midday and the whole day is a pretty big blur. But the gist of the story is we end up, and by the way, I think effectively we were told to just go in there and do a presence patrol. There really wasn't any. You're going to find this person and we're going to bring him in. It was do a presence patrol in Zarganchar, follow this route, see what happens.

So a very, very low level, unnecessary operation, I would say that got pushed through.

I would say. I would say that at the time, given how kinetic it was in Zargensar, it made sense for somebody maybe to go in there and stem the tide a little bit. But it did feel like we're like, we know there's gonna be gunfights in there, so let's go do it. That's what it felt like to me. And I was not part of the leadership that made the decision. For all I know, there could have been a great to go in, but I frankly have never debriefed it with those people since this deployment. So we go into Zarganshar and again, Afghanistan is full of these towns that are very spaced out with, the buildings are kind of far apart from each other. They're all mud huts and very small. It's a farming community mostly. It is a farming community for sure, but Zarganshar is just different. It still looks like Afghanistan. We're not talking about a real western city here, but for mud hut buildings and for the environment we were in, this was very urban. You had buildings right on top of each other. There was lots of alleyways and places that you did not want to be if you're worried about ieds and getting ambushed, that kind of thing.

And we, we ended up foot patrolling into Zargenshire. This is broad daylight. We're not getting contacted. We just walk right up to the outside of the town, actually has a wall around it, at least parts of it does. And so we walked right up to this wall. So we're basically just outside this wall that's maybe, you know, 6ft high, it's not super tall and just over this wall is the whole city buildings, second floor, second story buildings, everything. When we walked in, we expected to be shot at as we walked in. We're walking through an open field and our rgs are parked on the road right there. They know we're coming in, and they did, but they were very smart. The fighters were. They didn't shoot us because they knew we couldn't engage them. We were not allowed to do the first volley. So they let us walk into the city and we stopped behind this wall. And then we were listening to the radio of combatants radios. I don't even know how we do that, but we were listening to the radio and we clearly heard, oh, the fighters are, they're here. And they're saying, basically, they're saying their final words to each other, like, we're going to fight to the death now because the Americans are here.

Like, they're all saying their final words and prayers to each other. We're about to do a suicide mission. And they were in the second, a lot of them were in the second floor of the buildings right overlooking where we were. They knew where we were. We were basically pinned down without any gunfire. We can't go anywhere. And if we tried to reach, to retreat over the field back to our vehicles, like, they can just then they can open up on us and our backs are turned to you. And so it dawned on us as we're behind this wall, that we've kind of put ourselves in a tough position about. We didn't know they were in the second story. We didn't know they were there. And so we went in expecting to be able to maneuver between buildings and just kind of figure it out. But now it's like, we know there are dudes that know where we are. They know that we have to go forward at some point. And in a sense, we kind of had to walk into a known ambush. That wasn't the way it was billed, and it was not intentional, but we sat behind the wall, and our leadership is, like, walking up and down the line keeping their heads behind the wall.

Like telling us, just stay here, don't move. Like, if you got to take a piss, take a piss. Like, we don't know we're going to do yet. Just stay here. And our leadership were, they were amazing tacticians. Like, when it came time for, like, the shooting started, you wanted those guys around you. But it was clear that we had reached this impasse where there's not really a good solution here. We're going to probably get shot at if we go this way, and we just have to accept that. And so a decision was made, like, it's time to go forward, pass the wall into Zarganshar, and see what happens. And I definitely remember thinking, like, holy. Like, this is how people die. We're walking into a known choke point, and also, that's their thing. The way into the city from where we were positioned was an absolute choke point. The buildings kind of converged into a series of alleyways. Like, there wasn't a. There wasn't a good way to walk into the city. And so we, at some point, just kind of. There was. It wasn't like a big to do. It was just kind of like, all right, let's go.

And we start moving. It wasn't, like, crazy. We didn't, like, run with our guns. You know, it was just like, we're going to patrol. We're going to be checking all our angles and be ready to react as soon as we can. And we walked. I remember it being a pretty short walk from the wall into the city. We kind of got into this courtyard, and they opened up on us. I don't really know where they were. There was definitely a machine gunner straight ahead behind a corner. There was definitely people in the second floor. And in the initial volley, I say this with absolute respect for our counterparts, but thank God, the partner force, unfortunately, did get shot. Not fatally, but it was the partner force who were incapacitated. A few of them, plus our dog, got shot, but no seals were shot, and we only brought, like, half our platoon. And as you know, like the partner force, the partner force cannot really be relied on to take care of something like this. You need seals to do it. You need guys that are really trained. And so because we had our fighting force that were well trained, all healthy, we immediately took up positions and were able to kind of stand our ground and fight back this initial volley.

And our medic got to work on our dog. And the. The afghan partner force again, they all lived, but they all got. There was, I think, two guys who got shot, maybe three, and then a dog got shot as well. Dog survived, but this kicked off a six hour long, sporadic firefight throughout the city all day. And in a way, we kind of just got our kicked the whole day because it's like they had these tunnels underneath. We believed they had these tunnels that ran out and from under the city that they could escape very easily in. Some Odas had told us that they were running into that quite a bit, and so we'd get into these sudden exchanges with the enemy that you couldn't even really see where they were, and then they'd just be gone, like over and over again. And we began, our platoon and our partner force, we broke into these different elements and just kind of began, I guess you could say, clearing the city, but it's way too big to actually clear it. We were just kind of looking for these people at this point. Like, you've been shooting at us all day and we don't know where you are.

We haven't seen anybody. They just keep shooting and disappearing.

And so we were, are you guys engaging at all?

We're trying to, but we don't even have to shoot nobody. Okay. There were times where we would see somebody who literally was, like, shooting and then ducking behind a wall, and we would obviously engage that person, but a lot of time it was just, you suddenly hear gunfire and you don't know where it's coming from, and it's so urban, and we're also spaced out. It was a lot of times just take cover and wait. It was terrifying, to be honest. The whole time you're like, dude, there are fighters all over the city, it's nighttime, and every time, I mean, we were going into buildings, like, with only one other guy, I went into a whole, I went into a huge compound on my own, like, because there was nowhere else to go. I'm getting shot off the street, and I'm walking in thinking, I have no idea who's in here, but I gotta go. I'm doing a one man entry into this room, and so was everybody else. But over the course of like 6 hours, there was, I wouldn't say it was a constant gunfight, because it wasn't, but it was a constant presence of the enemy there, and we knew they were there, but we could not find them.

And finally, it's late as hell, it's 10:00 at night or whatever, midnight. This part I remember it fairly well, but you have to keep in mind, I was not on comms with the person who was talking to us. I don't really know what happened, but I know the result of what happened. Our fire team, so our fire team was a handful of Seals, and there's some partner force as well. We happened to be physically closest to the front of Zargenshar, where the entrance to Zargenshar was, and there was a drone or there was some unmanned aerial vehicle in the sky that was flying overhead, and it picked up on what looked like military aged men. So mams huddling behind a wall near the front of Zargenshar. And they have, you know, the person who's controlling it. I think they were in Las Vegas. They had no way of knowing if they were carrying a weapon. And I don't think at the time we were able to use that as positive id for weapons. You just, you could assume they did, but, you know, you don't know. And so it was like you have these suspicious men looking people huddling behind a wall on the way that you would be going to leave.

So perhaps they're waiting to ambush you or they're setting up an IED, who knows? So we happen to be the closest to these guys. And so our fireteam leader, who is, he's on DevGru now. He's a legend. I'm not gonna say his name, but he knows who he is. And if he's listening to this, you're the man. He's like, let's just go over and see what these guys are doing. And so we looked at our little grG map, and we figured out where we're gonna go. And based on where we believe these guys were huddling, we thought we could come down this alleyway and arrive at this other wall, the short wall. You know, it's a t intersection. You'll arrive at the short wall right in front of you. And in theory, you could poke your head over this wall and look out across this field, if you will. And on the other side, at the other wall that's like hundreds of meters away, would be these guys that have been spotted by the camera. However, somehow or another, it did not get relayed to us that these guys were not on that wall. They were huddling behind the wall.

We were walking up to a foot away from us, and so we didn't know that. And we were very sneaky. We made our way down this alleyway, and it's like totally silent. It's dark. We're on nods. It's a lull in all the gunfighting. It's silent, it's eerie. And we walk down this alleyway and we get to this t intersection where again, all we're going to do is poke our heads over the wall and just give, like, a sit rap on, like, who these people are. What are they doing? Do they look like a threat? What should we do? But instead. But I didn't see them because I wasn't the guy who looked over the wall. We get to this wall, and we've been so quiet that no one's heard us. And our team lead and one of the other new guys, they poke their head over the wall and they just come back down and they're like, they're right there, and they haven't hurt us by this point. So no one's making a word, no one's saying anything. We all just look at each other. And my team lead, he just gets down on one knee, and he looks at the other new guy, not me, the other new guy, and he just lightly taps his leg, stand on my leg and start engaging the enemy.

And so, like, in this. In the space of, like 2 seconds, it's like suddenly there's gunfire going this way. And these guys on the other side of the wall who were absolutely fighters, that's the other thing.

How many of them were there?

I think, well, when we were there, we thought there were two. So two people was our assessment when we literally got there. But after the fact, I've heard conflicting reports about there being up to seven people on the other side of the wall. There is a video of it, and it's grainy enough that there's no way that you could actually tell. But there was at least two. There could have been seven. I honestly don't know because what happens next is such a blur. When they peeked over the wall, they became. Our guys immediately knew, like, these are, they have guns. They're. These are combatants. And so he signals him, like, we have to engage, or they're going to engage us because they haven't heard us yet. And when we began engaging them, they were holding grenades, at least we believe, with the pins already pulled, like waiting for this moment. If you find us and you take us out, we're going to let go of these grenades and take you with us. And in the middle of this initial volley from our end going over the wall, these grenades, two grenades, at least I think it was two came over the wall, and one of them actually hit my shoulder and then bounced to the ground next to me.

And you got to understand that it's nighttime. I'm on night vision. And so for people who have not been on night vision, you know, it's like we had these. They're called Ans, PV 15s or something, where it's actually grayscale, so it's not green and yellow or whatever. It's like gray and blue. It almost looks hd, but with night vision, you can pick up infrared light that you can't with the naked eye. And the drone overhead that was basically providing support for us had a spotlight, an IR spotlight on the place where we were. So we're in a spotlight, but it's a spotlight you can only see on night vision. And they were flashing the spotlight because we're in the middle of a contact at this point, and they needed to signal to the other aircraft what was going on. And so they're, like, flashing the strobe. And so, as soon as this gunfire started, I'm standing in this relatively small, you know, spotlight that looks like a flashlight from God is shining down, but I can only see it on my nods, and it's flashing. And so as the light is flashing around me, I'm standing there, and I'm not shooting, doing anything.

I'm behind the guys that are engaging. And I watched this grenade come over the wall, and it was, like, in slow motion. And every time the light flashed on my nods, I would see the grenade, and then it would flash again. It would disappear, and I'd see it again. And it would disappear, and I would see it again when it hit my shoulder, like it was the slowest thing, even though it happened in a fraction of a second, because I'm like, that's a grenade, and I'm gonna die now.

You knew it was a grenade.

100%. Could not have been more clear it was a grenade. This is. It's. I tell people that in this moment, which went so badly, my brain was able to function at a level that it never has before. And I really believe it was like it was operating out of. You're actually on the brink of dying, and so your brain is doing everything it can to save you, and so it's like, hyper processing what's going on around you, and it makes time slow down. It makes every millisecond feel like ten minutes. And so I really did have this weird moment of knowing this grenade was about to detonate. And I didn't know if it would detonate here, here, here. Who knows? But if it detonates here, it's blowing my head off. I'm dead. And so I remember, as it came over, my first thought was, oh, my God, please detonate below my head so at least I can have an open casket funeral and my family can identify me. And so when it hit my shoulder and it began falling towards the ground, I was actually relieved. I was like, phew, it's gonna blow up here and still totally kill me, but my head will be intact.

My family can see me. And then it hits the ground, and I'm like, oh, I might survive this. And then all of us just kind of, like, turned and, like, did our. Because it's totally chaotic. No one even knew where the grenade went. And it's like we all kind of, like, turned, and then it detonates, and it just felt like someone had taken a handful of rocks and just kind of chucked them at me. It didn't hurt at all. But my recollection of what happens from this point until medevac is not the way that it actually happened. My memory is I fell to the ground, and I couldn't stand up again. I'm in the. We were in a. The alley we were middle in is actually where their sewage ran. It was like, you know, all the. And piss going through the. And so I fell into a puddle of, like. And I'm unable to move. I'm trying to pull myself forward. And the whole time, there was an active, extremely close quarters gunfight happening, because now those dudes are engaging back. Even though that's the thing people don't know is even if someone's been mortally wounded, like, immediately, they'll keep fighting, because that's just what happens.

And so we didn't even know if we'd even hit them. They were acting like they were totally fine. Yeah.

I mean, a lot of times, especially if we're using green tip, guys wouldn't even realize they were being shot.

Exactly.

Take 1015, maybe 20 rounds before it's over.

And so my memory, again is, like, I know this gun thing is. This fighting is happening like, a foot away from me. And I'm also aware of the fact that, from my perspective, there was an opening at the end of this. So it's a t intersection, right? So we were looking across the head of the t, thinking that's where they're going to be, and they're on the other side of the wall. I fall, and now I'm looking towards, like, the one side of the t, if that makes sense. I'm looking in that direction, and there was an opening in the wall where, in theory, the people that were engaging on this side of the wall, the bad guys, they could come around and come into the area where we are. And so I was thinking to myself, I'm probably bleeding to death. I can't move. And I was up like this, looking straight ahead, and I'm looking at this opening in the. In the fence, in the wall, waiting for a fighter to come around and shoot me, like, 100%. That's what. I'm either going to bleed to death right now, or another grenade is going to come over the wall, or someone's going to come in here and finish me off.

And I had just. I accepted that that was going to happen. And when I really couldn't move myself, what began running through my mind before I thought I was going to die was like, what will my obituary say? And not from a. Oh, boy, I wish it was more full. It was more just, like, factual. Like, I wonder what it'll say. Will it say John Allen or Jonathan Allen? Will it be in my local paper, or will it be in, like, a bigger newspaper? Will this be a news story, or will it be kind of forgotten about? Like, I was just thinking about it practically, like, hmm, I wonder what my funeral will be like. And so it was just, like, very matter of fact. I just knew for a fact I was going to die. But then the. Her medic, whose name is, who is a hero, like, in the truest sense of the word, there's six guys that have been affected by these grenades, like, concussed. I mean, I had shrapnel enter my leg and the backs of my legs and my hip, and I'm bleeding to death. And another guy, he had shrapnel enter his lungs and collapsed his lung, and so he can't breathe.

We had a guy who was so concussed, he couldn't speak. You know, he's, like, totally out of it. I think there was a couple of shrapnel injuries. I mean, everybody's hurt, but the one guy who wasn't badly hurt was our medic. And so instead of engaging the enemy, he basically went into practically a suicidal mission of just trying to protect the people that were hurt. Like, he was just grabbing guys. Didn't. Wasn't even trying to pay attention to what was going on and dragging them to safety, and he dragged me to safety, and he laid over the top of me as, like, bullets are coming in. And it's like, also, once the gunfire started, the other fighters in the city, they just began arbitrarily shooting, generally in the direction of the gunfighting. It's like, you could easily hit your own dude, but they don't care. So it's like, rpg's, and it's nighttime, and no one even knows where the shooting is coming from. And my medic is just calm as can be. He's a seal, too. He's laying over me. He's like, hey, it's gonna be fine, dude. All good. He's feeling my legs. He put tourniquets on my legs.

He's like, I think I got you stable. And then afterwards, my interpreter who I was very close with, his name's. He was, like, crying because he thought I was going to die. And he literally laid on top of me. He had no weapon, nothing, and laid on top of me until it was time to move just to protect me even further. But he kept going back down to pull guys out of the fray. And it would turn out that our JTAC, who was also with us, he ended up calling in an airstrike, and it basically hit the dudes on the other side of the walls. The threat was more or less neutralized, but there was still gunfire kind of coming in sporadically. But, yeah, he just went in and pulled everybody out, along with another guy who's not a medic, but he was the really badly concussed guy. He wound up going back in and pulled a bunch of guys out. And then the helicopter couldn't get in. It was such an urban environment, it was too risky with the gunfighting, that even the PJ's the best pararescue jumpers who could come in and do these types of extracts, they just couldn't do it.

And so we had to run about a mile through the city to the only place where they could extract us. And as we did, I'm tourniquetted and barely can walk. I'm kind of hanging on to other guys, and just people are shooting at us arbitrarily, like, as we're running almost like a movie, like running down the road, not even trying to, like, take cover, just get the out of here. And then we get in the helicopter. Me and the other really badly hurt guy, we hopped in the helicopter. It was like a hot extract. It was pretty gnarly. And I remember one of the guys on the helo, he said, do you want morphine? Because I was talking and lucid, but definitely was in and out a little bit. But I was aware of things, and I remember I said no, because I actually still believed there was a pretty good chance that I could still die from my injuries. And I wanted to be aware of what was happening. And I remember making that choice because I thought I was still going to die. And that's so profound to think I did that. But then we get to fab Schenk, the place that I arrived when I first got to Afghanistan, and we went to their field hospital, which it's like this big canvas tent, and we got wheeled in off the helicopter, and there's all these doctors and stuff and literally white scrubs where they're ready to do surgery on us.

And I remember when I got there, word had been passed to the other seals that were in country that two seals had been hurt fairly bad, and they're being brought to fob shank for treatment. And it just wasn't really clear, based on this exchange of information, how serious the injuries were. However, most of the country at the time had not been going on operations. We were one of the few that were out. And the live feed of that drone shot of this whole encounter was basically broadcast to numerous units across the country, including some that were in Fab Schenck, other seals. And so they're like, oh, like one of our, a couple of our guys are probably going to die. Like, we're going to witness someone arrive who's either dead or about to die. And so when we got wheeled into that tent, our teammates from the other SEAL teams had put on their best uniforms, which they're still field cammies, but it was like an attempt to be respectful. And they were standing in the back of the tent, like, away from all the doctors, just standing there to receive us, to, like, be there in support of us.

And it dawned on me as I was wheeled in, and again, I'm talking. I'm aware of myself. I know I've been badly hurt, but I feel like maybe I can survive this. And I looked over at those guys, and it immediately became clear to me why they were there. They didn't tell me why, but it was like, oh, they're here in case we die. Like, this is actually happening. This is probably the end of my life. And so I laid down on one of their stretchers, and a guy came over to me, and he's like, okay, I'm going to give you ketamine, and then we're going to get to work on you. And so he gave me ketamine, and I suddenly began screaming, I think I'm in San Diego. And then I don't remember. And I woke up in Germany. I had been transported to Germany, and I was there for a week. And luckily for me, once the bleeding had stopped, there really was nothing beyond that. I mean, I still have shrapnel in my legs, but it's not a big deal. And I was like, home. A week later, I'm pushing a shopping cart, hobbling, with a bleeding wound on my leg, through Home Depot with my wife.

Like, a week after that happened.

Holy.

No decompression. Stop. Nothing. Yeah, you're fine. Get out of here, buddy.

So you had said that this is not what actually happened.

True. Sorry, that's my recollection. What was missed is four years. It might even more than that. I think it was four years after this whole thing happened. Actually, let me back up after I came back. I got home from this injury about five weeks, I think, before my platoon was scheduled to come back home. So I missed the tail end of their deployment, and they got into a whole bunch of. And a bunch of guys did get hurt. We had, I think, eight purple hearts out of 25 guys, you know, one of which a guy got two. So that kind of reduces it a little bit. But it was a lot of close calls. And actually, there's another story I'll tell you, too. That's a very close call. But I didn't really see my platoon for five weeks. I would facetime them in Afghanistan, and it was like I wanted to be with them so, so badly. You know, it's like you feel like, oh, my God, I missed the end of my deployment, but no one really ever talked about what happened. It was almost like that night went so sideways and could have ended with, frankly, all of us being killed that we just couldn't even debrief it.

It just. And it was, like, sensitive, you know? And so we never talked about it. I didn't talk to the medic, who was one of my very close friends. I just did not talk to him for years after this. We went to the same team, and I didn't talk to him. And it would turn out he also was avoiding me because he had an enormous amount of guilt around the fact that on that deployment and the one before, he was the medic who worked on people who got hurt or got killed, but he didn't get hurt. And he always felt like survivors guilt, if you will. But we finally had this long awaited meeting that we both knew we needed to have. We went to this burger joint in Virginia beach, and this is, like, four or five years after the fact, and we finally talked about what happened. And it was very cathartic to talk it through with him, because clearly, we both had some demons from what happened. But the thing that me up. That now even me up is he remembers exactly what happened. He was there. He was there for the whole thing and was not so badly concussed that he doesn't have, like, his memory is clear.

And he said, he's like, you know, when the grenade came over? The grenade or grenades? I think there might have been two when it came over the wall, you know, after this speaking, he's like, after I realized I was okay, I looked around and it was like everybody was down. Everybody, like, no one's engaging. It's like there's random gunfire, and everybody's down except for me. And you're in this little tight alleyway. It's chaos. There's like a, you know, a foot of sewage that we're standing in. And he said, I just immediately looked around and tried to figure out who I could actually save. And he was like, I looked at you and I thought you were dead. I thought you were dead. And I looked at how much you were bleeding. You were face down, and I rolled you so that your face was out of the water. But he's like, I thought you were dead. And I actually triaged you. I basically said, I can't save him. I'm going to leave him where he is. And he's like, I worked on the other people, and it wasn't until actually, I think it was who physically came back down.

He's the guy who was super concussed. He carried me out, and I was unconscious and placed me down not even really far away from where all this fighting was happening. He just kind of put me up against a wall, and he went down into the fray to get more people. And that's when saw that I had my eyes open and I was alive. And he was like, oh, my God, it shocked me that you were alive. Just like the pool of blood you were under was so significant. I thought you were on a sheet of ice. But then I realized nothing was frozen. And that's when he went over and he felt for the bleed. And I had this huge chunk out of my, basically blown out, and I had a pretty big hole on the back of my thigh. And he was obviously worried about an arterial bleed, but he was able to get in there, put tourniquets on, and I don't even know how I got to the helicopter.

Holy. So you had a near death experience.

So when I was laying there, when was laying on top of me, doing the check for me, I'm sorry, when placed me there, and I didn't remember. I don't remember this happening. I just remember I told you I had that moment of thinking about my obituary that actually was probably taking place after had moved me to this point of safety. And it was right before came over and put tourniquets on me. So when I was having that moment of, oh, I'm dying, I think I literally was not being helped. I was actively bleeding. No tourniquets on, and I'm not doing anything to save myself. And I'm just, like, sitting there. And so I'm actively dying. And what happened is, first my vision went. I couldn't see anything, like, utter, complete blindness. And it's weird because my eyes are fully open and it's blind. And then my hearing went from, like, a helicopter sound, like, to silence, and I'm left in, like, a void. It was blackness and silence, and all I was left with was this very acute realization that you are probably seconds away from dying. And I thought about, what will my obituary say?

I also. I thought about my wife, and I thought about where she physically would be when invariably, that night, someone's gonna come to her door and tell her that her husband's dad. And I remember just being kind of sad about the fact that I didn't have kids yet. It felt like my lineage ends with me. And it was horrible. It was horrible because it was kind of, like, matter of fact. I guess we all have thought about our deaths. I'm sure. The thing that struck me was how easy it was to die, in the sense not the mechanism by which I'm dying, but rather, once you've been mortally wounded or you have some, I don't know if this has happened to other people, but I had, like, this mortal wound, and my brain was aware that you're gonna die from this. Like, you're gonna die. And it reminded me of when I was seven, in martha's vineyard on vacation, and I fell, and I broke my collarbone. I was rollerblading, and I fell. And I'm a seven year old. I don't even think I recall knowing what a collarbone was. But the first thing I said after I fell was not.

I didn't cry, I didn't throw fit. I just stood up and I said, I broke collarbone, my, for sure. And that's what happened. I'm a seven year old. And I knew it immediately when I was having those thoughts about what my obituary say and thinking about my wife. It was, like, not a question of, are you dying? It's. You're dying. And in a weird way, it's like, it was very natural, the same way it's natural to be alive and to talk and to breathe and to do all the things we do. Death is just as natural. And it was terrifying. Like, dude, your body is ready to shut down. It knows how to do it. You just haven't done it yet. And it put in me, when I came out of that and survived, a sense of urgency that I never had before. I felt like death was highly unceremonious. And abrupt, and it's going to happen probably like that down the road. And so you got now, and that's all you got. And it's cliche, but holy, did that change my life? Because when I came out of that, it really was like, I'm not going to wait to do the things that I want to try.

And if I it up along the way, I really don't care because everybody is going to have that moment where the lights are going out and the hearing's going and you're going, and that's it. And it could happen any minute. And then, like, for me, like, I'm 24 years old, I'm 24 at the height of my life. I'm in the prime of my life and I'm gonna die. And it's just like, there it is. See ya. It was weird. It was, like, so matter of fact. It became unbelievably profound to me that, like, that's actually how death works. It's very simple. Your body knows how to do it. You just haven't done it yet. So f cking. Go do some while you're still alive.

Great advice. Do you think there's a possibility you did die and your consciousness was just continuing on?

I don't know. I have thought about it a lot, and I think that because my sense of time in that moment is so screwed up because I was laying on the ground unconscious for some amount of time after the explosion or after the grenade detonated, and then at some point, I'm dragged over to this area where I'm being hell. It's like there was enough time that passed that I have no memory of that. Yes, I think that I probably was at least very, very close to death. And in fact, the doctors, after the fact, the surgeons in Germany told me that their best estimate was, had I not had a tourniquet put on, I probably would have died in about 30 seconds. That's how close I was to die. And so that was actually my second near death experience. But the first one doesn't really count. And I say it's near death only because I personally was there and I saw it. But the first one was earlier in the deployment, me. And actually, ironically, the same guy who had his lung collapsed, who. He and I rode the helicopter together on that second injury.

He and I, he was ahead of me and I was behind him. I'm sorry, reversed. I was ahead of him. He was behind me clearing a house in Afghanistan. So, like, we'd made all this noise because there was a tin door that we couldn't open, and we're, you know, jostling it. It's making all this noise. Dogs are barking. We finally get it open, and we, through some crash bangs into the. Into the structure. We knew there's a. There's a. There's somebody in there for sure. We knew he was in there. And finally we made entry. And I might have been the one guy or the two guy, but I was one of the first few guys into this dark structure. It's, you know, it's early morning, so it's still dark out. And there's a thing called, well, parallax, which I think. I think is the term for it, for where basically your eyes see this way, but, like, your gun sight, for example, is actually, like, an inch lower than your eyesight. And you actually have to account for the fact, I think. Anyway, so I'm making this complicated. My nods, actually are not in sync with where I actually am.

Looking from my eyes there, I think they're either lower or higher. I forget what it is, but it's a little bit different. Your actual sight line is here, but your nods, which look like you're looking here, are either here or here. And I forget which one it is. But the point is, if you're in a low ceiling environment, the opportunity to hit your head on the ceiling is quite high with nods on, because you can't quite tell how close you are to the ceiling. And when you first walked into this house, it's like, this tall entryway, but then stairs went down to this, like, low ceiling hallway, if you will. And I went in, and I just saw that was the direction to go. There's no lights in the house on my nods. And as I began going down these, like, two steps to this narrow hallway that's all pitch black, my nods hit the overhang, and I didn't know what I like. I hit it, and it confused me. But this is a, like, real time. We're really clearing this house. I can't just. Hey, hold on, guys. Let me fix my knots. And so I just turned and did what you're trained to do.

I turned, and I went to a stairwell, which was right next to me. And the guy behind me, he picked up the spot right behind me. I'm 510. Is at least six'three. He's a really tall. He might even be six'four. Really tall guy. Okay. He walks down this hallway, and immediately it's like there was a barricaded shooter with a. With a shotgun aimed just up the hallway. And he was aiming roughly at where he thought someone's head would be, but so tall. It hit him here. It hit his plates, and it was a slug, too. Destroyed his plates. He was able to, you know, engage. And so that guy was disposed of. But, like, is six foot three, and this was a black hallway. You can't see anything. The guy who shot was shooting blind. He did not know what he was shooting at, but he roughly aimed at where he thought someone's head was likely going to be. If I hadn't hit that overhang, I'm dead. Slug to the head. But it's like, I can't tell that story, really, because ultimately did get shot. And the dude got hit here. For him, it was about an inch away from his throat.

It was this horrible bruise he had, but he was super cool about it. But he ended up living through that, and he lived through the second one, but that one actually haunts me in some ways more than the other, because it's such an unknown. What would have happened if I had not clipped my knots? I would have gone down that hallway. Maybe he would have missed. Maybe he wouldn't have shot. I don't know. But all I know is got shot here. And when I stand next to here for. Is here for me, so, Brian, garlic.

Wow.

And I think about dudes who've done this repeatedly. I mean, I went to Afghanistan on the tail end of Afghanistan. The dudes, like, including you and your generation. I mean, you guys were in the Middle east when it was, like, in really intense, when the rules of engagement were way wild. I felt like, if this is what a relatively low key deployment looks like, I can't imagine doing 20 years of back to back deployments in the thick of fighting in the Middle East. I don't know how those dudes function now, because one deployment with my experiences felt like a lifetime, and that was one deployment.

Well, a lot of them don't function. I know, but let's move in. So you get home. How's your wife receive you?

So, it's funny, the process for getting me home, it was, like, so quick. I mean, I'm literally in a gunfight in Afghanistan, and then I think it was actually eight days later, I am home with absolutely no debriefing. Not that I think debriefing really does that much, but, yeah. So, in the military, you come back from deployments, and they give you a week of r and r at some resort, and they talk to you. You talk to a therapist, and then you go home. I didn't have that because this was not a planned exit. And so I'm just home, and I was so mad at everything. They call it being in the red. I'm sure you're familiar. I was saying earlier, when you go to a combat deployment, again, I have my one experience, but this is what I had. You enter into that primal mindset of eat, sleep, go to the gym, hang out with your friends, and don't get killed and kill the bad guys. Like, that's the gist of a wartime deployment. Like, it's very simple. Coming out of that is very hard. And when you go from actually being on the battlefield to a couple of days later with no transition, being around civilians and your wife, and you're just, like, doing stuff again.

The level of resentment for civilians was so high, I hated everybody. I'm like, you entitled piece of. Do you have any idea what I was just doing? That's what's going through my head. Like, you don't know the I've been through, but I had some that I've been through, and I felt, like, justified in thinking that way, but it was, like, so toxic. I couldn't interact with people without judging them for not having done the things I did, which is not a good way to live your life, because you just come off like a total. And it came out actually within a few days of being home. My wife, we're living in Virginia beach, and she's like, hey, we keep getting this message from the homeowners association about our rusted chimney cap. They want us to change it, and we're, like, broke. We have no money, and we can't afford right now anyways to drop $500 or whatever it was to go fix the chimney cap. And I was like, why does that even matter about a rusted chimney cap? Like, who cares? But we're in an hoa, and they care about that stuff. And so I remember a few days later, I got a call from the hOa, or not even.

We got another letter from the Hoa with a picture of our rusty cap, and it was worded like, hey, you know the rule is you need to have a fixed chimney cap. Here are some people you can call to get that done. And I'm like, no. I pick up the phone, and I call the woman who sent this letter, and I'm like, do you have any clue who you just sent this letter to? Do you know what I've been through? And she was like, sir, I don't know who you are. She doesn't know. But it was, like, in my mind, in me, I'm like, how dare you ask me to do this? It was so stupid. But all I was doing was fishing for conflict. Like, that's what I was doing. I wanted people to question who I was and what I've done in order to be like, do you know who I am? You know what I mean? It was totally, like, ego. I'm mad at everybody. But because I was actually physically hurt, I didn't go out and spew my toxicity as much as I would have. I just stayed home. And my wife, when I arrived at the hospital in Virginia, she met me there.

And actually. So my liaisons, you get what's called a care coalition liaison. Basically, when you get shipped off the battlefield because you got hurt, you get given a mentor, if you will, of another vet who got hurt at some point, and they're like, your rep, and they help you go through the VA process and everything. Do you know who Mike day is?

I do, yeah.

So he was my care coalition, unfortunately, obviously took his life. But Mike was awesome. Like, we got to the hospital, and the doctors and nurses had no time. For my wife, it was like, here's your husband. Take him home. Yeah. Pack his wounds. Figure it out. But Mike is like, what the are you doing? Like, he was literally talking to the nurses and doctors, being like, get the over here and teach her how to do it. Like, she's been packing her husband's wounds. Like, get over here and do it. And they're like, oh, sorry. And, like, for those who don't know, Mike day is, like, a legend. He was shot 27 times in Iraq and lived, like, every bullet hole, he tattooed where the bullet hole was. Actually, I did a bike ride with him in 2015 across California for charity, and he's just like, he was the coolest dude. So sad what happened with him. But Mike day, absolute legend. He made the transition as smooth as it could be at the hospital. But after he got the doctors to come over, my wife, who's seeing her husband for the first time, who, by the way, when the news came out, like, on the night of the injury, which actually, it's coming up, it was April 19 of 2014.

On the night that happened, in 2014, my wife got a call that something had happened to your husband, but they were trying to keep her in the loop, but unfortunately, they planted the seed that your husband could be dead, and then they couldn't get back in touch with her. So there was, like, this twelve hour period where she was told a serious thing has happened. I don't know what the language was, but it was clear to her that something serious has happened with your husband and will be in touch soon. Silence. And then it was like I was in surgery. I couldn't talk to anybody. I'm gone. And then I got shipped to Germany, and it was like I didn't even know how many days I'd been there. I think I was there for at least a day before I woke up. And this whole time, my wife has no idea what's going on with me. She's only been told something serious has happened. And then I think by, like, the twelve hour mark, my oic, who's awesome, his name is, I think he snuck a call and gave her some information that was like, I think he's going to be okay, but don't quote me on it.

But her experience with this injury was, like, the worst it could be. You're basically told the person you love is potentially dead, and now we'll just wait. And she, to her credit, she's living alone. We don't have kids. Our families are nowhere near Virginia. She could have immediately notified the entire family and been like, holy, like, comfort, comfort me, like, what's going on here? But instead, she was like, I don't know what happened, and I don't want to scare his family. And so for, like, 12 hours by herself, didn't talk to anyone and just waited. I don't know how you do that, knowing that you could be told in any minute that your husband's dead. But she waited, and it was the right decision, because when word came out, it was like, he's okay. He's in Germany. He's going to be fine. And so I give her enormous amount of credit for just being composed. She would have passed pool comp. She's very not panicky. She's the opposite. She should have been the seal, not me. But when Mike called over the surgeon to, like, no, show her how to do this. So I had these two wounds, basically, on my butt cheek and on my thigh that needed to be packed every day, multiple times a day, or they'd get infected.

And it fell on my wife. And so this doctor showed her how to do it, and she practically fainted because it's, like, so gross and, like, so it's so painful for me. Like, I can't help but be like, as you're doing it, you know? But, you know, that was her. She's like, all right, I'm gonna do it. After nearly fainting, she's like, okay, I'm gonna do it. And then for, like, a month, I mean, my wife was doing the nasty job of doing wound care. And, like, you know, I go to the bathroom, and I can't really clean myself. I can't really go to. I can't shower. It's like my wife did that. My wife looked after me, and then I had to go to this wound care appointment. This is like a month after being home. And so I go to Portsmouth hospital, which is in Virginia. It's like the va. It's the veteran hospital. And I have this scheduled visit. And now at this point, in no way am I on the brink of death. I'm completely stable, and now it's just, hey, you got these pretty nasty wounds on your leg. We just got to make sure they heal right.

And one of them wasn't really healing right. So I had to go, and I had to go into this appointment, and so my wife and I go into this appointment, and I check in, and I'm, like, hobbling. I'm still in a lot of pain. And the nurse brings me back to the exam room, and I am put on this, like, gurney. And because it's my backside, they're like, all right, you know, take off your clothes, put this gown on, and you're gonna lay on this bench, and then someone's gonna come in and take a look at you. And I'm like, all right. So I get naked, and I get my gown on, and I lay on the thing, and I'm like, the seat is, like, arched. My butt is, like, in the air. I'm basically nude. And all this stream of, like, e one, like, brand new recruit nurses who are great, but they have no experience. They come in, and they start poking and prodding at, like, my wound. And what happened again? Like, what's going on here? And finally, like, what the is this? Like, where's the doctor? Like, why are you guys in here?

Like, I am in the most compromised position. I'm in so much pain, and no, no one seems to know what's going on. Like, what's going on? And so the doctor winds up coming into the room, like, a minute later because I, like, threw a whole fit, and he's like, mister Allen, I hear you've been pretty rude to my staff. And I f lost my temper. It was, like, as far into the red as you could go. And now you've pushed me too far. And I basically, like, fought so much with this doctor that I stopped going to wound care, and it fell entirely on my wife. So she was a champ, and she took care of me for months until I was better.

Wow. So when your platoon came back, what was it like when you reintegrated with them?

It was awesome to see them again. We were so close as a platoon, I mean, from what I've been told, because I only had the two rotations. I did very different. I had the combat tour, and I had the South America, like, drug interdiction, whatever tour. The first one, the combat tour, my first platoon, we were like brothers, best friends. There was issues here and there, but really, really close. And then my second rotation, we were close, but it just wasn't the same. It was not the same camaraderie. But that first platoon, the older guys were saying, this is a special group. These are them talking. I've been in several platoons. This one's really special. And it felt that way. We got together immediately after that platoon came back, and people were so happy to see me. I was so happy to see them, and frankly, I was so happy to hear nobody got killed, you know, because they, at the end there, we had several guys on the platoon get shot and definitely nearly get killed. So it was great to see them again. And a lot of those guys rolled into the next rotation, like, certainly the new guys.

We were basically together for the next rotation, which was cool. But, I mean, the magic of that platoon, it dissipated as soon as we were home, because suddenly it's like everyone's got new orders. We're going different directions. It's a new chapter, and it kind of just ended. You know, I up kept in touch with a lot of those guys, candidly. A lot of those guys are no longer in my life, and we'll probably get into that as well.

What initiated you and the medic to revisit that experience?

Five.

Which is five or six years later.

I think it was four years later, actually. His wife, I recall reaching out to me and said, john, I know this is kind of out of the blue, but you need to talk to him. He's not doing well, and you just got to talk to him. And when I actually had maybe a year before this had a weird medical scare, which I don't think was connected to anything, I think he just had this freak liver issue, and he actually nearly died. But it was clear when he was nearly dying that he was just kind of falling apart as a person in addition to this horrible thing that was happening to him. And so I was kind of aware that was maybe not doing so good even when he got out of the hospital. And so when she messaged me, I was like, you know what? I want to talk to him. I want to go through what happened. We both were there for it. We're the only ones that can have this conversation. And so I actually told his wife, like, you know, kind of number, and I called him, and he was immediately receptive to the idea, like, yeah, let's do it.

Let's just go talk. And it was very important we talked because I think we both needed to just say it's okay to the other, you know, it's in a weird way, we both felt bad about the whole situation of not doing enough, you know? Feels bad it wasn't him. And it's. It was just a chance for us to just kind of be like, you know what? Dude happens, and we're okay, and we're good now. So.

So was it four years later you actually got the story of what actually happened?

Yeah.

So you had thought that for four years?

Yeah, I always.

What was that like? To realize, holy. It was completely different than a totally different reality?

Yeah. I mean, it was surprising, because I actually really believed my memory was super clear, because that was my memory. And when he was like, that isn't what happened. I looked down, and I thought you were on a sheet of ice at first, but then I realized it's this pool of blood, and I have all these other people to work on. And you seemed like the most far gone. And I was like, so you actively were like, I'm not going to work on John. He's like, I literally. I was like, you're dead. I'm going to work on the people that are alive.

And so that was like, wow.

Yeah.

At what point did you. We're running a little short on time, so I don't want to cover your second deployment, but I do want to.

Not much to it.

At what point did you decide this is, I'm done. I'm ready to try something new. I went to war.

Yeah. Yeah. This is actually a part of my story that I don't often get into because it's just a little bit complicated. But since we're deep diving, I'll try to make it relatively short. So I come back from Afghanistan, and, you know, I'm hurt, and I spend several months basically just rehabbing. The team was not asking me to go to any schools or do anything. It was like, go to your medical appointments, get better. And I was definitely. So I had, in addition to the shrapnel injuries to my leg, which actually wound up being the most minor of all of them, only because it didn't affect my ability to walk. The explosion from the grenade. According to my orthopedic surgeon, the blast very likely briefly dislocated both my shoulders, and it caused a slap tear in the labrum of both of my shoulders, and it caused just a lot of uncomfortability, and my arms just didn't work as well. I couldn't really do as much, and so I opted to get a surgery on my right shoulder called a biceps tendinesis, where they remove a piece of your bicep, and they reattach it to your labrum or something or your shoulder.

It's like a band aid that works, but long term does not provide a solution for the tear. It allows you to be functional, but it's like it comes with pain and not full mobility. But I really wanted to get back into a rotation. I wanted to do another platoon. I wanted to be a seal. And so I opted for the surgery because it was the fastest one to get me back into the team. And so I did the surgery, and it worked now, but the recovery was way longer than they build it. They're like, dude, you'll get the surgery, and in a month later, you'll be fine. Not true. Like, I got the surgery, and my shoulder was worse for about a year where I could use my arm, but just doing a pull up was impossible with this one and my left one. I never got the surgery on it because it was less bad, but it's. Anyway, I have serious shoulder issues, and I also, despite that, I was allowed to enter into another rotation because I basically hid my issues I was having with my shoulder. But I also noticed that I was having a really hard time sleeping.

I just. So I'm a sleepwalker. I am genetically a sleepwalker. My dad sleepwalked, and I didn't grow out of it. I continued to sleepwalk into my adulthood, and it sucks because it affects most nights that I sleep. But after I came back from Afghanistan, I noticed that my sleepwalking took a really intense turn, and it was just fear of death. Have you sleepwalked before, like, a serious sleepwalking event?

No.

Okay. In essence, you wake up, and you're aware you're awake, and there's also something that is of the utmost importance to you, and it's always bad. I've read a lot about sleepwalking. There's always some urgent item that was plaguing you in your sleep, and it's basically triggered you to wake up and for me, it became, someone's trying to kill me, or something's about to kill me. It's right behind me kind of thing. I began waking up in absolute, like, pandemonium, panic, and running as fast as I could and leaping off the second floor stairs down to the first floor to escape the upstairs that I thought someone was trying to kill me. And then I'd, like, run outside, and it was only then that I'm all the way outside, and I myself up. I had all these cuts and bruises on my legs from jumping down my stairs, like, repeatedly, from sleepwalking, to the point where I actually. Now I still do this, by the way. I have to sleep in certain parts of my house by myself because I'm such a liability as a sleepwalker.

But it's like, hold on, what does that mean?

Or I sleep in a room where I'm far enough away from the stairs. There's different rooms in my house I'll sleep in that are not with my wife because I'm violent and aggressive when I'm sleepwalking because I think I'm being chased or I think a bomb is going to blow up next to me. And so I began to notice that there were manifestations of, I guess, PTSD or depression, really, coming from Afghanistan. But I felt like I was so self aware that it's like, no way. I don't feel like I have PTSD. I actually feel like I'm proud of the deployment I did. I'm proud of what I'm doing now. I want to go deploy again, but it was like, I have issues with my shoulders that are becoming a big enough problem that it's hard to do the job. I have pain in my legs from the shrapnel, and I am now sleepwalking, basically living out these, like, near death experiences five times a week, at least still to this day, by the way, it's an ongoing issue for me that, in conjunction with just being so irritable about everything, like, everybody made me mad.

Everybody. And so I'm, like, this horrible person to be around during my second deployment, which was to South America, and, you know, honestly, I had, like, a breakdown in South America. You know, I got there, and I think that I really hadn't processed Afghanistan really, at all when I came back, because it was all about, like, get that quick surgery, get back into a rotation. Like, don't worry about the weird that's happening with your dreams and pain and this and that. Just keep going. Keep being a seal. But I arrived in South America. And when I got there, what actually really threw me off was I weirdly expected to get there and have it be lots of people who knew English, which was so ignorant of me because I could have very easily researched this and known. But I got to Peru, and it's, like, all Spanish speaking. They do not speak English in Peru. If they do, it's rare. And I arrived separately from the rest of the group because I was in this. I was in a school. I was in JTAC school. And so I show up to Peru on my own, and I don't speak Spanish or very badly.

And it was, like, such culture shock of being in, and I was like, it's not combat. What's this deployment even going to be? I'm, like, so egotistical. Like, who cares about this deployment? We're going to go sit in South America and do nothing. But then I get to South America, and I'm like, oh. I didn't really think about the fact that I'm going to be in a foreign country that really is foreign for months at a time, and my wife is pregnant with our first kid. Like, I suddenly was like, I don't want to be here. Like, I don't even know if I'm going to survive just sleepwalking here. I had all these weird thoughts of, like, what the am I doing here? Like, I kind of hate this job, and, like, what am I. What am I doing? And so I just, like, spiraled into, like, an ungodly depression in, like, the first few weeks I was there, and. And my teammates had to step in and take my gun away from me in my room in fear I would shoot myself. Yeah. No, I mean, frankly, dude, it's weird. I was so down in Peru in those first few weeks that I began hallucinating.

I was so miserable that I would be laying in my bed and would become convinced I was on a street corner in Russia. That's the recurring hallucination I would have losing touch with reality. I was so. I wanted to die. Candidly, I was like, I don't even know why, but I don't want to be here. And so that deployment, luckily, my teammates who were there, they were with me in Afghanistan, and, like, understood, okay? Like, it kind of makes sense this could be happening. And to their credit, they did not report back. Like, frankly, my horrible behavior. I was like, now that I'm out, it doesn't matter, but I was, like, doing drugs and all sorts of stuff. I was just being a piece of, basically just, like, I was drowning myself and isolating myself in my room and just being miserable. And they stepped in and basically did an intervention with me. And I had someone with me basically all the time, including my buddy, who literally stayed in the room with me to make sure I went to sleep at night so I wouldn't kill myself. And so when I came back from that deployment, also, my wife has our child now, it was like, I don't think I can do this job anymore.

I actually don't think I'm cut out for this job. I think I'm mentally and physically not equipped to do this. And I luckily, was at a point where I was getting transitioned to a teaching role. Anyways, I was not going to be deploying again, but really quickly when I got to the place, I was going to be teaching diving. So for ATC, my leadership, actually, one of the guys was one of my buds instructors who I loved. He was actually a second phase instructor who we joked about how terrible I was at pool comp because he remembered, he was like, you were really bad. But he's like, bro, you got to see somebody. You are up. You got to see the psych, like, now. And he was in charge of me, and he literally was like, you can't work today. You have to go see the psych. And I'll always be thankful for that, because it started me on a journey of realizing therapy was actually really useful for me. Not so much the military stuff. I went and saw a psych, and she was like, Jesus Christ. I went through what had happened in Afghanistan and all the things I've said here, and so ultimately, I was medically retired.

I think it was 50% of it was just mentally unfit, cannot do this job. And then it was like 20% for shoulders and 30% for this. But it wound up being pretty comprehensive. Like, even if you told me, I want to stay in, now that we've gone through all this, you're not fit to do this job. And so I was medically retired, and, you know, the. There's a whole another version of this, or there's a whole thing that happens afterwards, but for the sake of time. I had originally had been told I would have an exit date. My medical retirement would hit. Let's say. I think it was, like, the early parts of 2018 or something. I forget when it was, but there was some date far off in the future that I could eye. A year and a half from now, that'll be the day that I'm officially out. And from now until then, I'll be working in this teaching cell, teaching diving, which is very low key. I'm not going to deploy. I get to be home all the time. And it was like, great. It's like, okay, I have all this time.

I'm going to be fine. I'm getting the help I need and I'll get out and I'll figure it out. But then, in classic military fashion, it was like April of 2017. This is February 2017. I'm having this come to Jesus with my therapist and my wife, and we're like, okay, we're going to pursue medical retirement. A month later, I find out that actually your thing's going to run out in, I think it was like two months away. It was like, in May of 2017. So, like a year earlier than expected. You're going to get your medical retirement, but you're going to be out the door sooner than you thought. And that ultimately prompted what would become elite meat, the charity that I ended up forming, and then the mentorship program that I also co founded called Operators association, and then led to mister ball and stuff. So I'm going to pause there.

Well, John, let's take a quick break, and then when we come back, we'll get into elite meat and Mister Ballin.

Sweet.

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So elite meet is a charity, so registered 501, that's the denomination for charity that helps transitioning. We called them elite veterans, basically special operators, fighter pilots. And we kind of expanded it beyond that. But people who are transitioning out of those communities and we pair them up in a kind of networking conference y style setup with hiring managers and CEO's and people from business who are actually looking for, for people like this group of people. And the reason that that charity came into existence is because even though I think that today there maybe people feel a type of way about this, but generally speaking, special operators do, or special ops people, fighter pilots, they don't necessarily do a good job advertising to the world what they did and why it's applicable to other things. It's kind of like the, I don't talk about what I did because I don't want to be seen as someone who's not humble. It's a big part of the, the culture. But as a result, you have all these businesses that could really get a lot of value out of having, you know, some master chief Navy SEAL on their team or something, but they don't know how to find them.

And the master chief ain't about to come out and be like, hey, I'm ready to be hired. Here's all my skills. Here's all the my Navy SEAL stuff that makes me so hireable for you. And so what we ended up becoming was like the broker between the two. We're able to speak veteran, this type of veteran, and tell you what this job means and what they do in a way that the business businesses can understand and then vice versa. We can translate the civilian speak, business speak to the veterans, and I can speak special operations veteran. There's a culture to it, and I can tell you what this opportunity is. And so I didn't do this alone, and it came out of nowhere. When I found out my exit date was going to be much earlier than expected from the military, my medical retirement got pushed up. I began frantically trying to figure out what I was going to do for a job, and I had no idea. And I just thought, well, I guess I'll just go on LinkedIn, because I guess that's where people get jobs. At this point. I have no social media.

I have an email address called Chubbychihuahua something or other@hotmail.com. Dot. Like, I have been off the Internet for, like, 810 years or whatever it is. And I just was like, oh, LinkedIn, that's where you go. And so I went on LinkedIn, and just by pure happenstance, there was this guy named Jordan Selleck, who is this entrepreneur in New York City who was a, he was an investment banker, and he had transitioned into trying to start his own PE type of business, private equity business. I forget what he was doing, but he was, like, in finance, right? And he had a really good friend who was a fighter pilot who was struggling with his transition. Even though he had, like, gone to Harvard and had all these amazing credentials, he just wasn't quite able to translate his experience to the civilian world. And Jordan was, like, actively trying to help him. And one of the ways he was doing that was Jordan, who's a very extroverted guy who's like a master networker. He was just hitting up veterans on LinkedIn and being like, hey, how's your experience been transitioning out of the military? And what are some tips and tricks you can give me to pass on to my buddy?

Just, that's all he was doing. And he messaged me, and I'm like, oh, wow, like, who is this guy, like, this is so great. Like, oh, I'm really struggling. I don't know what I'm gonna do. And, like, I could really use some help. And he's like, oh, well, have you tried talking to people? I think that could help. And basically, Jordan kind of quickly took me under his wing a little bit, and instead of trying to get information from me because I obviously didn't have any about how to transition, he was like, I'll help you, too. I don't know you, but I'll help you, too. And so over the course of, like, a couple weeks, Jordan just all digitally recognized that my biggest fail point for my job search is I didn't know anybody. I only knew military people. I didn't know anybody on the civilian side, didn't know who to go, didn't know what companies did. I knew nothing. I'm, like, completely isolated in the military world, and he's like, you really just need to start meeting people. I will introduce you to people in New York. Come to New York. I'll round up all my connections in New York.

I'll tell them you're coming here. Bring a couple of your buddies who are transitioning out, and we'll just have a meeting. We'll see what happens. Because Jordan is just this guy. That's what he does. He's very good at saying, whatever, we'll just go do it. And little did he know that I would really run with this, and I would start rounding up all the people that I knew that were getting out of the teams or thinking about it and said, come to New York with me. We got to meet some people, like, come along. And Jordan really did the same thing with the business side. And so we had this spectacular first event, the first ever elite meet event in New York in March of, I think it was, like, 2017 or 2018, where Jordan and I, who were meeting for the first time in New York for this event, at least in person, we had our talks planned and were up there on stage talking to the different groups and setting up these. These, like, breakout rooms and stuff. And we're looking at each other like, this is more than just, let's get John a job by doing this and bring some people along.

There's, like, a marketplace for whatever this is because it was, like, so obvious that both sides needed to be talking to each other, and they were getting a lot out of it. And a few people got hired, like, out of this event. Not me. I didn't get a job, but other people did. And so pretty quickly, my job became being the CEO of this new charity, elite meet, where we take transitioning elite value and pair them up with hiring businesses that are, like, really high end. And for about two years, all I did was just ran a charity, and I was the CEO of the charity. And I'm like, a horrible CEO. I'm a good fundraiser. I can raise money. But I was so bad at managing people. I had, like, two employees, you know what I mean? It was too much. Like, two or two was too many, but it was good. Honestly, the charity did a lot of good, and it's still running. Right now, elite Meat is under the control of a woman named Megan Thatford, who's a longtime nonprofit professional, and they're doing great. But with Elite meet, this is how Elite meet led to everything else I'm doing.

It all started with meeting Jordan on LinkedIn. And then when we had this first event in the lead up to it, this first ever event in New York, we began making posts on LinkedIn, just kind of advertising, like, hey, if you are also a business person in New York and you want to swing by, send us a message, and, you know, we'll see if you're a fit kind of thing. And so I began to see what happens when you market on social media. And it was, like, really kind of cool that, wow, you can. You can kind of announce to the world you're doing something and people actually listen. And I. It just kind of planted in my mind that social media is a really powerful tool, and if it's harnessed correctly, it can do more than anything else can do for you. And Jordan specifically, was, like, a obsessed with social media. He was a big Gary Vaynerchuk fan. And Gary Vee is, like, all about posting, like, 57 million times a day on every platform. And so I was around that all the time. And after that first event went so well, and we're like, dude, let's make this a real charity.

Let's put some infrastructure around this. Let's host more events across the whole country. Social media is where we went to raise money. We posted stories on LinkedIn about these veterans and their experiences and how they could translate to the civilian world or what lessons they learned that are applicable to the civilian world. And they were really popular. And these are posts that Jordan and I were both writing, like, individually, but mine were really effective. And they were driving donations, not big donations, but enough to keep the business going and to pay a salary and to pay my employees. And I just social media and the Internet, that was my moment of, like, that's the thing I want to really lean into in my career, whatever it's going to be. And so I began experimenting, and this is where we're going to get into a very difficult subject for me. I began experimenting after elite meat had kind of steadied. We have good payroll, we have a good revenue. Solid. Like the company, solid. I began experimenting with posting content on not just LinkedIn, but other platforms. That was just my content, like, just personal brand, not.

I didn't even know what it would be. It was more like, okay, I have a little bit of experience on how to use LinkedIn, and I kind of get it now. Now I'm going to try to start my own thing, basically not forget about elite meat. Not at all. If anything, this brand might help elite meat. I'm thinking maybe they can work in tandem. I don't know. But I made the mistake of posting stories about my time in the seal teams in a way that came off as very braggadocious. Like, there was this time I was in Afghanistan, and you know what I mean? It was like, it just came off as, like, totally just a combat vet over here. Like, look at me. And I posted all the time on Instagram and LinkedIn about my experiences, and I thought they were fine. I thought what I was talking about was not sensitive, and it was not intended to make me think I was. I'm not trying to be Mister Navy Seal, but behind the scenes, every time I posted these things, these long form write ups I would do about some random experience I had in Afghanistan or something, America or buds or whatever, and there was always some, like, and this is what it translates to in business.

Like, there was a reason for it, but every post, they were being read voraciously. And I actually have, I think it was may of 2018. I forget the date. I was starting to feel like my personal brand, my Navy SeaL brand, was really starting to pick up. I had, like, 40,000 Instagram followers, and I just felt like this could be a thing. You know, I'm still doing elite meat and, like, very seriously, I haven't in any way forgotten about it. And I got a message from a guy that I would have called one of my very best friends that we deployed to Afghanistan together. When I say I have taken fire next to this person, I mean, literally, I have been crouched behind a wall right next to him as we're taking effective incoming fire together. Like, this is somebody that I would say is like a brother. And I got a message from him that was like, ten pages long, cutting me to pieces and not bull. He was taking things I was saying in these posts and rephrasing them so that they were true now, as if I was lying in these posts.

And to his credit, I definitely did kind of make the story more, I don't know, like, applicable. I kind of warped it slightly to really fit the narrative I wanted it to hit, but I wasn't going out there being like. And I'm the. The team leader, and I made this decision, and I'm the guy that did that. It was always, like, self deprecating, like, I was just a new guy, and this is only my experience, but it was being viewed as you're trying to make yourself out as bigger than you really were. I was there, and you weren't that guy, and it sucked so bad. And that was the beginning of a landslide of negativity. But as a result, actually, I would say that the big silver lining of the hate I received, or whatever you want to call it, the criticism or whatever, I still really felt like social media has. It's just this huge opportunity. You know, there's so many people making it huge on the Internet, YouTube or businesses or whatever. I was like, man, I still want to do social media. I just. I can't handle what's happening if I post about my own stuff.

And so after long talks with my wife, it became like, dude, you should just delete it and try something else. And so I deleted virtually everything that was kind of like the token seal stuff. I left a couple things on that were super benign and felt like no big deal, but 99% of it's gone. And then I began posting on TikTok right around the time that TikTok had become a thing in early 2020. And the reason I was posting there is I'm like, no seals are going to be on this app. This is a bunch of kids dancing. So here's an opportunity. And I tried so many different types of content on TikTok that did not work, ranging from, you know, news commentary to, like, reactions to sketch comedy, to all these different things. Just anything that wasn't seal stuff. I was trying other stuff, you know, nothing worked. And I literally had these two documents in my computer, and it was TikTok ideas and TikTok ideas, too, like, two different documents. The first document was all the stuff I had tried, you know, sketch comedy, whatever. None of it worked. Just super cringe, didn't work.

And I had this other one that just had Dyatlov pass written on it. It was just one topic. And it's because, personally, I really like strange, dark, and mysterious content. I find myself going on YouTube and being drawn to kind of, like, spooky, mysterious, true crime mysteries. That's the stuff that I like. I personally, that's the stuff I consume. And I remember I had that document. Dyatlov Pass is a very famous story about these hikers that go missing. In the 1950s, they were hiking into the Ural mountains to take this thing called their level three hiking test, which sounds really lame, but it's actually, like, the highest level of mountaineering in Russia at the time. And so these nine hikers were the best at mountaineering by far. They're like celebrities in mountaineering, and if they pass this test and become level three, it's a really big deal. But critically, these are people that are masters at being out on the mountain. They know what they're doing, and they go out on this trip. And this is the 1950s, so there's no cell phones or anything. They just had these checkpoints. They would have to hit where there'd be campsites set up and a team waiting for them.

And if they hit these campsites on time, it meant they covered the distance they were supposed to, and they'd get a check or whatever. You know, you're progressing exactly as you should. And they. I think they hit their first checkpoint, and then they did not hit their next checkpoint at the designated time. And then there's a whole protocol that gets spun up of sending a team out to go find them to make sure they're okay. And so the team that gets spun up, they end up tracing between the checkpoint they hit and the one they missed. They go all the way right to, like, the middle, and they find the campsite of these hikers, and it's up on this windswept mountainside that's all snow, and it's just a couple of small canvas tents, and there's no one in them. They've been cut open, but it looks like they've been cut open from the inside by a knife. And then inside the tents were stacks of some of their clothing neatly folded and placed all around the tent. There were a couple of shoes still in there so that, you know, one shoe was gone, one shoes here.

And then from the tent. And there's pictures of this, too. You can google dyatlov past pictures. There was a trail of footprints from these tents that went down the snowy mountain to this little crops of trees. And at the trees, there were these. I think I forget how many, like, two or three of these missing hikers that were deceased. They were nude or close to nude. And there were all these scratch marks on this tree that looked like an animal had been clawing at it. And I think one of them had actually gotten into a tree and passed away up there. And they'd all died of exposure, ultimately. But that was only, like, three of the missing hikers. And they followed the trail, the footmarks that went maybe a mile away to this snow cave that was not too far off. And inside was the rest of the hikers, and they were also all deceased. Some of them were missing parts of their face, but it looked like they'd been surgically removed, like the nose, the mouth, the lips, that kind of thing. A lot of them had exchanged clothing, so the women were wearing men's clothes and vice versa.

Some were wearing one shoe or none. And also there were trace levels of radiation on them or their clothing, but there's radiation in the cave also. At the same time this happened, the russian military was doing an exercise roughly in the area that these hypersonic. Neither knew the other was there. It just. It happened to be the same timeframe. And one of their senior leaders in the military did a report on this particular night where his unit had spotted all these lights in the sky hovering over the area where these hikers had all been found. He doesn't know about the hikers, and he's never made a report like this ever in his career. Like, this is a unique report. And he wanted to know if there was another military potentially doing an exercise in that area, because whatever they're doing, it's not us, it's somebody else is over there. And so that was routed up through the chain. And when they checked, they're like, oh, shoot. That was the same time as these missing hikers. What's going on here? The russian government launches this investigation into Dyatlov, and they have this famous conclusion that's so lame, but only adds more mystery, and I'm probably going to say it wrong, but the hikers, their conclusion was the hikers died from some unknown, unnatural cause.

End closed case.

That's it?

That's it. And so all it did is it just created rampant speculation that something paranormal happened here or, you know, whatever it was. And so I always thought that story was fascinating, mostly because the pictures associated with it are very creepy. They're pictures of the people and the campsite in the tree, and it's just this long standing. I mean, technically, it's solved, but it was unsolved mystery. And I. I posted about the Dyatlov pass, finally on TikTok, after all my other ideas had been exhausted. And the only reason I didn't do this one is it just felt like such a random departure from traditional, trendy types of content, like humor and sketch comedy and this and that, or my military stuff that I had stopped doing. This just felt so random that I wondered if people would ridicule me for being a grown man telling a ghost story basically on a kid's platform. I was like, you know what? What I have to lose. I'm probably going to stop doing content soon anyways, because nothing's working. And we were at this water park in Pennsylvania, my wife, me, my kids, and this is an indoor water park, and I decide to make this Dyatlov pass TikTok.

And so I'm in our little hotel room, and I threw together this crappy little video, just practically off the cuff, about dyatlovpass, and I post it. But because we're going to be in the water park, where it's going to be wet, I just left my phone in the room, something I never do but. But went to the water park, and, you know, several hours later, we came back, and I look at my phone, and it. It actually wasn't. I couldn't get it to open. It was, like, not working. And I plugged it in. Let's see if it was working. Finally turned it on. And I had notifications enabled on TikTok, which I don't now, but at the time, I did. And there were so many notifications from this video, likes, comments, posts, that my phone was, like, unable to handle the flow of traffic, and I couldn't get into the app. And then when I finally did, there was, like, 5 million views on this video, you know, in a matter of a few hours. And, wow. And, you know, for reference, before this point, I had never had a video surpass even, you know, ten or 20, 20,000 views, maybe 100,000 views.

But it would have been over years of time, so I've never gone viral. And now this is, like, the most viral you're gonna go. And even though I didn't know what it would become, I felt like I found something that could work on the Internet that is not military related, that I love to do. I love strange, dark, mysterious, and I love storytelling. And I was like, I'm gonna make as many of these stories on TikTok as I can and see what happens. And ultimately, what happened is the account blew up, and it became, you know, a pretty big account on TikTok when everybody's in the pandemic and glued to their phones. I'm like the token adult storyteller on the kids app. So I stood out quite a bit, and then I transitioned to YouTube around, like, mid 2020 just because it was a more monetizable platform, and it just took off. I mean, it was the same storytelling, but instead of 60 seconds, I just told stories that were 20 minutes long. And, you know, I just became the whole mister ballin thing, and I can't believe that's what I do now.

It's, you know, it definitely goes to show, you, do what you love, you know?

Very true.

Do what you love, and it will work. But, you know, takes a little work to find what you love. But, yeah, I remember we had that conversation some. It fell off then. I can't remember why I looked you up, or somebody told me about something happened, and I pulled up your. Your YouTube. I think it was YouTube. And I was like, holy. Like, this guy just started this.

Like, I couldn't believe it.

Like, he wanted to come on the show. Now he's got two or 3 million subs. I've been doing this for a couple years. I was like, whoa, that's incredible. And then so many things have been born out of. Out of your TikTok account, YouTube. You're on tours. You got a book coming out. From what I understand, you have a foundation, you have Ballin studios. I do have a question.

Yeah.

Your name's John Allen. How did Mister Ballin come in?

So I originally started an account on TikTok under the username John B. Allen. That was just the random username I had, but I didn't have any punctuation in it, and so it looked like J o h n B a l l e n, all kind of mashed together. And if you just glance at it, it looks like John Ballen. You wouldn't think, oh, that's John B. Allen. Unless you knew me, you'd think, that's John Ballin 416. That's who this person is. And that's important, because when I was doing my I'm Mister Navy SeAl stuff and getting a lot of hate, I, at the same time, kind of ironically, was getting all these young bucks that are trying to be seals, like I was back in the day, who are so desperate to talk to Seals and to get information, to get answers to questions and learn about buds, that I was getting so many incoming messages from aspiring wannabe Navy Seals that were very respectful. This is the opposite of hate. This is like, you're my idol. I want to be like you. And so they'd be very respectful in their Instagram DM's. They'd say, excuse me, Mister Ballen, I have a question about the Navy SeaL training.

Can you answer? And I got so many messages and I stopped correcting them. I'm like, my name's actually John Allen. And I was like, okay, so I just became Mister Ballin. And then I actually very briefly got shadow banned early on in TikTok, I believe I was shadowbanned, which means you're posting, but for some reason it gets like zero views and there's no real reason for it. And it was going on for like a couple weeks where I'd post and get one view or two views. When I was used to getting 1000 or 2000 on this, this first account, I was like, all right, I'll just make a new account. Clearly there's something wrong with it. And the first name that popped in my head was Mister Ballin.

Interesting, interesting. So what, what do you got coming out now?

So we have a graphic novel, our first official Mister Ballin publication, which is unreal. It is unreal. We have the best in business illustrator and the comic book writer who helps package the stories together. But it's a collection of just some new, some old stories. And that's coming out October 1 of this year. And it's an absolute passion project. It's going to be awesome. It's the strange, dark, mysterious delivered in book format for the first time. So there's that. There's also. So we did a live event. Well, we've done a couple of digital live events, but we did an actual in person comparable to stand up comedy, but stand up storytelling. Last October in Austin, Texas, I did just a one night show at the Paramount Theater in Austin, and that was awesome. Doing five stories on stage. I was so scared, but I've always wanted to do live something, and so that was great. And so we're thinking about maybe doing some more live events for sure. So stay tuned for live events. And then, yeah, we have, gosh, we have the ball in studios, which is kind of like the umbrella over everything.

And within that we have, you know, Mister Ballin foundation, and we've given over a million dollars to victims of violent crime and their families. And that's got its own team. And basically proceeds from Mister Ballin fund the organization and allow people to donate and 100% of their donations go out the door. Like, there's no overhead. If you donate $5. $5 goes out the door to victims of violent crime and their families. Just because we feel really strongly that, you know, we are profiting off of other people's tragedies. There's no two ways about it. And so we have to give back, literally, to the people that we're making money on. And frankly, it's been kind of wonderful to meet these people. That you get to meet them. Yeah, yeah. Indirectly, because we have an amazing. I do meet some of them. Not all of them, but I definitely meet some of them. And it's crazy. Cause, I mean, there's a guy named.

So you'll tell a story and then raise the money. Not necessarily from a stor. Whatever. You'll tell a story. A strange, dark, and mysterious story about a victim.

Yep.

And then raise the money. And then the money actually goes to that victim. And you. You meet them.

I would say that it's not one to one like that, but that has definitely happened. It's more like we have a constant initiative to seek out and fund other charities that are helping victims of violent crime in their families. And we do direct deposits to people, families from Uvalde. Like, we spent. We spent $50,000, like, within an hour of that happening, just to the bereavement center in south Texas. And then we sent another $50,000 to one of the families who just needed help with funerals and stuff like that. But we have definitely had videos where literally the people in the video received funds from the foundation. We've also had instances where kind of, after the fact, we've gone back and given money to some of those people as well. But it's more of, like, a constant effort by a pretty robust team over at the foundation, led by a woman named Lori Gift, who. She's been in the nonprofit space for years and years. She's amazing. She's an amazing speaker. Just awesome. And she's everywhere. She travels constantly, meeting different people, families, victims. She's been all these ribbon cutting ceremonies. She's like the best representation of the foundation.

And it's a huge part of who we are. We basically just push money to these people. That's what we do.

Man. That's incredible.

Yeah, so we do that and then. So ball in studios. We have our management business, so we have a couple other creators that. So we have Nick Crowley, we have Ryan Nexpo, who are big youtubers. We have bedtime stories who's actually my favorite YouTube channel. It's a UK channel. They're unreal. We're representing them. We have wartime stories as well, which is kind of like not a spin off of bedtime stories, but it's about war and history. It's really good. We're looking at some other people as well to bring under management. But, I mean, our thinking is, Ballin Studios, we want it to be the home of the best storytellers in the world, and not we want them. We want the best storytellers in the world to want to aspire to go to Ballin Studios. The same way if you're an amateur baseball player, you don't aspire to be, like some random independent baseball player. You aspire to play for the Red Sox or, you know. You know what I mean? Like, that's what you want to do. We want to show so much legitimacy and build up so much premium content and be everywhere platforms, live events, traditional, digital, that it's like no contest that Ballin Studios, that's where the best storytellers are, and that's where they want to be.

And everything they do is premium, and it's all premium storytelling. And so far, we've attracted some incredible people. And you know what? We're gonna hopefully continue that trend.

That's amazing. What aspect do you like the most? Do you like the live events? Do you like YouTube? Do you like giving back to the victims? I mean, what is. What really? What do you like? What do you get the most enjoyment out of?

I have this mantra that I really push hard on my kids that I think is a good one, and it's helped me out a couple times in my life, and it's this. Do things that scare you. It's not something I came up with, but I have. It was actually, it was a clip from Will Smith that made me think this. So Will Smith, the famous actor who famously slap Chris Rock, he went skydiving, and he filmed himself skydiving. This is years ago, and he tells this amazing story of his skydiving experience. He's an incredible storyteller himself, and he tells this story that's really funny. And it's basically him being terrified of going skydiving. Like, the day comes and his buddy wants to go, and he doesn't, and he's kind of giving his buddy a hard time. Like, we should cancel. But finally, they go up in the plane, and he's strapped to his instructor. And Will is doing a great job just highlighting how nervous he was and how horrible this was and how he didn't want to do it. And then finally his instructor was like, all right? They go to the door. The door opens, it's time to go.

And he's like, we're going to go on three, okay? And Will's like, all right. And he's like, one. And he just jumps, you know, whatever it is, just immediately goes out the door. And Will was like, immediately all my fears were gone. And it was like the most incredible experience. Sailing through the air for the first time. I mean, you skydive, it's like, it's incredible. And. And so he lands, and what he ends up saying, it's very poignant. He's like, you know, I discovered on that day that the best things in life are on the other side of fear. He's like, if you're scared of something, that means you probably want to do it and it's worth your time. It's the things that you're indifferent to that you don't want to do. Fear is a signal that it's something worth your time. And so I have found that when I find myself feeling terrified of a particular thing, for me, it's been like, live speaking has terrified me. I've always been scared of it, and it's made me realize that I probably need to do it at some point. Like, true on stage, live performance, I don't know what it is.

I've just always had this fear of doing that. And in order to live up to what my kids, what I tell them to do, I made a point as soon as Nick and I built up Ballin studios that I was like, I have to do live stuff because I'm terrified of it. And I think I'd be good at it, but I'm horrified to do it, but I gotta do it because that's the thing that, that scares me the most. And it was, dude, have you done a live performance yet?

I have not. Like a. Not an interview. I've thought about it, but I've done some. I was also. It's one of my biggest fears, and it still is. I feel great afterwards.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

I've done two or three of them.

Nice.

And I did. I did enjoy it. I did not enjoy the stress up to it, but it's like, that's just.

It is. The lead up is awful, but during and after, it's hard to beat that rush of having done that. And I think that's true of just about anything. You're scared to do that there is going to be, like, a rush when you do it. But for me, I would say that I don't necessarily enjoy the live stuff the most, but it's the most impactful in a positive way on my life, because I feel like it's an opportunity to reinforce to my kids, who are very aware of my stage fright, if you will. But dad's still doing it. Dad's still going up on stage doing it. He's still doing the thing that he's scared to do. And if that's the only thing that I pass down to my kids, I think that's pretty good. You know, dad can do it. I can do it. And so that's why I think that live stuff is my. That's the best thing I do.

That's perfect. I was gonna ask for a piece of advice, but I think that pretty.

Much covers just do things that scare you, man.

But, you know, couple more questions, we'll wrap it up here. But your parents, you know, you loved proving your dad wrong with the seal teams and both very renowned journalists. What do they think about what you're doing?

So, it's funny, after all that my older sister, my mother, and my father all work for Ballen studios. Yeah. And it's not like some token thing, either. I mean, my family are world renowned journalists and writers. And so my sister Evan is the head of the writers room. She writes the YouTube channels. At this point. She's, gosh, she's in charge of so many things at the studio, and she's unreal. So Evan Allen is like a killer. She's an awesome. My dad, he just came over as well. He's like, in charge of our collaboration with Amazon, where we have the medical mysteries co production. I mean, he's running that show and he's doing some writing as well. And then my mom, so Jesse Thuma, my mom, she came on, actually, she was helping me write posts when I was doing Navy SEAL stuff. And so she was really in the trenches with me when it started going really, really bad. And she actually felt really bad, as if somehow she had somehow inspired this hate or something. But she was really aware of how much that hurt me and all that. And so when I began doing this new thing, this whole Mister ball in thing, and I was beginning to think about doing a podcast.

So YouTube at this point is built. And, you know, it's pretty big. It's sizable. We're doing well. But we, Nick and I were thinking about a podcast, and we needed. There's just no way you can research and write a 7000 word podcast every single week. In addition to running a YouTube channel that puts out multiple pieces a week and all these different things. And so it was kind of like, well, I can write several of the episodes, but we need somebody else to do it. Like, I can't do. We will not have a podcast. We'll have to give up YouTube or podcast. And so my mom just began writing the podcast in the early days of the show, and it was a grind. I mean, and she was getting paid nothing. This is not like a job. This is. I'm helping my son out. And she crushed. Just wrote script after script after script. I mean, that podcast, the only reason we were able to keep doing it is because we had her in place. And so when the. When, you know, the deal came through with Amazon, when they wanted to license the podcast, it was like the coolest moment to feel like no one really knows it.

But it's my mom and me and nick and, like, a handful of other people, like my editor, Jeremy, who's awesome. There's more people. I'm probably forgetting them, but it's like this little team of just people who wanted to help. And my mom was, like, the biggest help, and we got the deal, and then she shifted to actual full time, like, paid, compensated very well for her time. But, yeah, they all are part of all in studios. And so the only one that's not is my younger sister. But she's, like, beyond brilliant. You know, she's literally defending her dissertation on April 15 for her PhD in something or other. She's a. She's a honeybee specialist. And her doctor, her husband's a doctor, and he's like, they're brilliant. They're just. They're not going to join ball in studios. They're going to go be brainy somewhere else. But, yeah, no, they're. They're all working for the. For the company.

Wow, that is. That is really cool, man.

It's weird. Yeah, it's weird.

Well, wow. You know, it's. We're gonna wrap it up here, John, but I just want to say, you know, thank you for coming down.

Yeah.

And, I mean, just. Your whole story is just super inspiring, from getting into special operations, your transition out, overcoming the injuries, the nightmares, the sleepwalking, the hate, you know, from the community that anybody who gets out and tries to build a business understands what that feels like. And from. I mean, just for everybody who's got an entrepreneurial mind, I mean, the most respected entrepreneurs in the world started from nothing, and you started from nothing, and you built an empire. And it's inspiring to me and everybody out there who has aspirations to start a business.

Well, thank you, man. And what you've built here is unreal. I mean, to your point, when you said you had checked on me, and then two years later, you saw I was at 2 million subs, I had a very similar experience with your podcast. Like, I was definitely aware of the Sean Ryan show because I watched it on YouTube. But then, you know, we kind of went into our own, like, gotta make content twenty four seven. And we blacked out everything else. And then when our podcast began spiking to the top of the charts, I was like, dude, Shawn's show is like, top ten. Always. Like, it was always. And then that's. That's not easy to do. You can. You can spike once or twice. But I always saw. I was like, oh, yeah, Sean Ryan's the top ten. And then I saw the other day, you're like number four right now. And it's. Dude, it's. I'm telling you, like, you have something special with this show because not many people are prepared to sit and listen to long interviews, but with your show, it's the opposite. That's what they want and that's not common, and it sets you apart from everybody else doing long form interviews because people don't stick around for that stuff.

And something you're doing is working.

Well, I really appreciate that.

Yeah, man.

Well, I wish you the best and continued success.

Thanks, dude. Thank you. Right on.

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