Kind: captions
Language: en
the following is a conversation with
kelsey sharon canadian forces veteran
artillery gunner who served in
afghanistan at 18 years old and came
home with severe ptsd
she went on to found brass in unity
which creates unique jewelry large part
of the proceeds from which go to help
rehabilitate the lives limbs and mental
health of veterans and first responders
she has a big personality big heart and
an intense passion for life so when our
paths happened across i knew we needed
to talk
this is the lex friedman podcast to
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in the description and now here's my
conversation with kelsey sharon
you mentioned that studying history had
a big impact on you and that your
grandfather was a world war ii vet
so people that have gone through world
war ii in my family too they don't seem
to talk about it much like the worse the
tragedy the less they talk about it i
mean it's understandable i can respect
that but
i don't think people fully understood
the value
in human stories over
over time and sharing that that certain
civilizations don't have written
language
the value in that being passed down is
is extraordinary but
we didn't really have that with the
world war ii vets it seems like well
they kind of want to protect you from
the pain like my grandfather my
grandmother
went through holler more which is the
ukrainian starvation of millions of
people and then obviously uh went
through world war ii with the nazi
occupation
and uh
same on the grandfather's side who uh
on my dad's side grandfather fought in
world war ii and they seem to not want
to talk about those experiences to
protect you from the suffering to
protect you from the evil that they've
experienced which is uh
sad because
the lessons from that history are not
then propagated through you and also
there's something about the strength you
carry with you knowing that that's in
your blood those great heroes are in
your blood and that suffering overcoming
that suffering is in your blood i would
argue that's exactly correct if you
if you have someone you know that comes
from your lineage that has done
something
super gnarly that's just been
a badass and in so many different ways
you want to know about that person you
have that person's blood in you that's
important to acknowledge and when that
isn't shared i feel like it's just a
detriment to that individual
what do you make of world war ii in
terms of history do you think about uh
those kinds of wars where uh two times
more civilians died than the number of
uh military personnel so most of the
wars basically just
the death of civilians and the invasion
of homes the burning of homes the
bombing of homes all of that world war
ii for me i find
that was the first experience
where i became
just
obsessed with history
world war ii really did it for me um
i'm not sure if it's because
of the dramatization of
film and tv and the way that our
generation has looked at it but for me
it was more than that
i felt a deep connection to it and i
still can't figure out why
like a pull almost uh
people
joke around about those past lives and
those things or those connections and
there's something deeper within me that
feels a pull towards that and i'm not
quite sure
if um it's because
i had family that you know escaped
hungary once the soviets came in so
thanks for that um or if it was because
my grandfather served in it or for
whatever reason i just i have this pull
to it and so when you think about
the mass
casualty of the civilian population
that's very difficult for me to wrap my
brain around after being in a war and
seeing
when you have a small subset of
civilians die
how much of an impact that has on that
community right there and just in just a
tiny area so to try to wrap my brain
around what happened in europe and all
across and and all that i really
struggle with that because i don't know
that i can comprehend
what that would truly mean to somebody
if i if i didn't experience it or or see
it for what it is does that make sense
yeah
but uh so first of all you're right a
lot of people are drawn to world war ii
for different reasons so one is hitler
and stalin
trying to understand how it's possible
to have that
scale of evil
in very different flavors of evil
it's almost fascinating that human
nature can allow for that and then also
it's fascinating that so many people can
follow leaders like that
with with the pride and with the love of
country
yeah and that's like it's almost like
this weird experiment it's like wow i
wonder if i'm the the same
i'm made from the same
uh cloth as those people like would i be
a good german if uh if i lived in
germany
uh and
was you know during the time of hitler
would i believe that
germany
has been done wrong i'm jewish by the
way which what makes me a little bit
more comfortable talking about this uh
is what i would i believe in the dream
sold by a charismatic dictator who says
that wrongs have been done and we need
to correct those wrongs
that to me is the compelling thing that
draws me
to world war ii uh the human nature
question i would agree with you on that
i think there's a way to look at people
like that and
at that time
there was no real well there wasn't a
full understanding of the psyche the way
that we're starting to i mean we still
don't understand
any of it but it seems like the you know
the time gap back then
there was no real understanding of
sociopaths and narcissists and you know
psychopaths and really what those traits
were and i feel like you you know people
will follow blindly if they're given a
good enough reason well if you have an
individual who is
ranting and screaming at the top of his
lungs in the middle of these town
squares and he's getting this attention
it's human nature to want to understand
and be a part of a group mentality it's
human nature to want to fit in and so i
don't know if it's more of
people were
at the beginning were just this is the
cool thing to do
or if it was they were genuinely
terrified
or if there was an aspect that was like
this guy is saying something that
resonates with me
there could be a lot of different things
i think it's unfortunate
that we didn't get to
or no one got to really
you know examine this individual's brain
and this person and
and why they thought the way they
thought because i that's always been the
biggest thing for me is i'm really
curious about why people do what they do
like deeply deeply curious about it i'm
not sure who's more interesting the
people that follow hitler or hitler
himself
so i mean that the
the question that's coupled with that is
uh would history roll out in similar
ways even if there wasn't a hitler you
know it's the people that created the
hitler or did hit or create the events
of world war ii
i think the people would be more
interesting in my opinion
that seems to be the that the
charismatic leaders are all out there
uh the failed artists in the case of
hitler they're all out there right and
it's just when there's this environment
of anger and fear
charismatic leaders can take over right
and uh it doesn't matter if they're evil
or good it's like a role the dice in
terms of history what uh how evil how
truly insane they are like us i think
stalin
was much more cold than calculating he
wasn't as insane as hitler hitler was
legitimately insane
uh
like especially later on in the war
where he would do irrational actions i
would say so that but that
that that's like a weird roll of the
dice you could have gotten a totally
different leader uh the the
wanting to take over the entirety of
europe and then invading russia that's
that's like insanity yeah that just even
just the the first part of that wanting
to take over europe if you really think
about the scale
if you really sit down and go he want
this one individual was like i want all
of this if you really sat down and you
were to sit down and put him in his
traits that we know of into
any sort of document nowadays that that
deems somebody a psychopath or a
narcissist
this guy would set it on fire
there's you know he himself was so
i think so damaged and he reminds me a
lot of
um people now who who struggle to find
their way he reminds me a lot of
angry individuals who are told no either
by women or by business or by whatever
the sector they're in
he reminds me very much of that like
what's the word i'm looking for just
that individual who's just like the
world is shit and the the world owes me
everything and just it's that mentality
he really came
from that it seems like and when you
foster that too long you get that
there's a
book called uh what is it man from
underground by dostoevsky i might be
misnaming the book but it's about the
bitterness of a man it's like it
breathes within his mind and it just
grows that bitterness i mean we we all
have that
sort of uh resenting of the world when
you're when you're younger when
you have a choice when you fail do you
blame the world
or do you hold it's the jackal thing do
you hold do you care the responsibility
of that and uh become a better man or
woman because of that that's that's the
decision and in some sense i mean
unfortunately
see that because he took responsibility
and leadership
he wasn't a leader yeah
so it's not that he's a failure he's not
a person not a failure but it's it's you
can't say he's powerless did not take
action i think he's just basically uh
embodiment of the anger and the fear of
people at the time
and
but the insanity of obviously many of my
relatives not just murdering them but
putting them in camps and torturing them
but many of those
people jewish people were also some of
the best scientists the insanity of
murdering some of the best germans yeah
uh is i it makes no sense but so that's
why it's fascinating to kind of look
back at that time in history it's like
and think
are these the same humans
and also are there echoes of that now
yes
and and are we is that going to happen
again is there going to be a world war 3
this in some other kind of way is there
going to be some mass scale injustice in
some other kind of way which uh we're
not uh yet like because of our blindness
uh and maybe not learning the lessons of
history will will allow to happen again
and
and then obviously it's a very common
thing to whatever political leader you
don't like to call them hitler
that that to me i gotta i gotta tell you
when somebody calls somebody hitler
the weight behind that has been
completely lost in this generation
this generation does not understand
what that truly means to call someone
hitler or a nazi
or stalin i to be honest the uh the
starvation
has i've just been talking to a lot of
folks recently especially like north
korea yeah
starvation and i remember from my
grandmother
it wasn't
any time and time again
not having food to eat is the thing that
people say is the worst
everything
it's way worse than murder
not having food and the places that
takes your mind and the actions that
forces you to do
that's terrifying and all of that seems
very distant in our history yeah i love
her i watched that interview with her
she is i want to talk to that woman so
bad because when she was on joe and she
sat there and said joe's like do you
have you done any therapy and she
laughed i was like oh that's my girl
it's such a fascinating i mean i would
love for you to kind of talk to her and
explore her mind because we kind of
explored her story right and that's
there's power and importance to her
story but it's so difficult to
understand
like how does she become
healthier and better
uh even more so than she's already she's
she's recovered
quite a bit you know she's found herself
quite a bit but i wonder
is she haunted
you're saying questions i want to ask
like that's what i mean because
after
being in a war
there are certain things there's certain
atrocities that you see that
it doesn't matter the therapy
that you do and i don't care what all
the special ops guys say like i know
plenty of them that have a light switch
and they turn it off and they can
function but i also know them when
they've been out for 10 years
there's things that haunt people
differently
but there's no way there's not something
going on there deeply
yeah but there's also extra levels of
complexity in her case because um
i mean this is what just looking at
history about family
is she spent much of her early life
loving
the dictator
right we like the water or something
like we like water or we like this
because there is no like individual like
when they said there was no love or
anything but there is a love for the
just that individual for that individual
and so i mean it's like the ultimate
abusive relationship oh yeah and
but but it's still love the experience
like you don't know the alternative so
it's not even
it's complicated because like
i i wonder if she truly explored it what
you would find because uh
the trauma much of her trauma i think
comes from when she was escaping north
korea
treatment by china
uh it's like the mom and what she had to
witness within that and being helpless
with that on yeah
so it's like evil men essentially
abusing her trading her you know and and
doing so nonchalantly like it's part of
just the way of of life
that i wonder if she sees kind of
yeah it's so complicated because
childhood it would be normal to her
because she didn't know any different
exactly and there's
like uh i grew up poor but i i never
sensed that
because parents didn't make you well and
everyone else around was too right and
so you don't notice it i mean it's a
cultural thing so the way you grow up
you only start to notice it when you
compare yourself to others
when you learn of the alternative that's
a dark reality when you're abused you um
i wonder i mean you truly and begin to
suffer in some kind of way when you
understand that you were being abused
that that's a dark kind of thought
that i wonder if you live your whole
life just in that abuse
if you don't know better that that's a
safer that's like uh what's a better
life
going suffering and then learning that
you were suffering or just
suffering until your last days there's a
two ways to look at this i'd argue on
one side that's suffering
and suffering till you die
you know no different so you can't have
hope you can't have
this idea that there's better and
sometimes that's
keep that in its box but then if you
have kind of what you have with park
where she
she knows now that there's different she
knows that there's better then you run
into those what is the damage that has
been done what is going to be passed on
as intergenerational trauma i know she's
a mom so it's like now you got to look
long-term a little bit because now she's
an influence on a child and
there's
there's a positive to looking at
both i would say and i know that sounds
horrible for the living and trauma your
whole life and just not knowing any
better
but there's
i don't know if that saves the brain
and the body and just just that overall
or if it actually
would be better because there's no way
to really find that out i don't think
yeah i think but the reality is when you
give people hope and you make them
realize that they're
suffering you're putting a burden on
them that's the first step on a long
journey and so and obviously she now
that she knows that the suffering she
wants to make uh people in north korea
currently
suffer less
and that's that admirable goal it's
it is it's what we do to each other is
try to like
when you see suffering in the world you
try to make it better and unmask that's
probably in a long arc of history going
to
make for uh
for a better world i'm hopeful
at that idea
for north korea i'm hopeful for that
because you you never want to leave
individuals suffering
when you know
that they're actively suffering while
you're just living your day-to-day life
in the western world just out grocery
shopping and you see all this food and
you know in the back of your mind like
that interview fucked me up a little bit
i won't lie like and i had some of the
girls in my office listen to it they're
just
bawling because there's
we're all parents and there's this idea
that
not being able to feed our children
that just the idea of that damages the
psyche it
brings up the pain in the chest like
just the idea of it and so going to the
grocery store for about a week after
that i just remember standing there
looking and just going what the fuck are
we doing
but then there's that snap reality that
comes into play and goes
so how do we fix that
you got to take on china that's never
going to happen
and the reason that's not going to
happen it's happening again so akani
comes down through afghanistan chinese
all through afghanistan iran makes the
deal with china
for her the roadway to get the oil well
that's done in the blink of an eye
without anyone knowing there's no way
there's just so much at play with china
they control
such a large aspect of our world
unfortunately that
to take and free north korea a drastic
action would have to happen and then
your people would come in it would be a
mess what do you mean your people what
do you mean your people you're russians
did you hear what she said about
russians did you hear what she says
russians i love russians you know what i
didn't love the russian recruiting video
that came out that shit was terrifying
did you watch it i told you about it of
course you didn't watch it i didn't
watch it oh shocker
um
the usa put out a recruiting video yes
and then like a day or two later russia
put one out
and the recruiting fruit video in the
states was a
animation of a a female soldier yeah
with two moms and she was gonna go
change the world
right russia came out with one
it's like it's the the character from
like rocky
essentially and there are guys in the
mud and just in the rain just fucking
doing push-ups just pushing it out
they're just like they see their boot
they're just like crushing things and
i'm like and it's all like and the deep
rush in the voice i'm like oh my god
yeah which one is better would you say
which bothered you
more
what do you mean by bother specify
so deception is a funny thing because
when you're young and you're choosing to
go to the military or not it's not like
you know
like none of us know what the best
trajectory for life is right for many
people going to the military is a really
makes them incredible human beings some
of the best people in this world i know
are soldiers so it's i'm not i don't
mean like it's somehow bad to go to the
military i think it's a great choice but
there is something
the honest truth is i just don't like
marketing people well
and so this is essentially a marketing
effort yeah it is a marketing effort so
which one do you like as a marketing
effort better russia
yeah there you go i do because canada
doesn't you know what our recruiting
videos are it's like um
uh i love it they're the best
sorry a yeah oh fuck here we go it's
starting it started awesome
so canada does these ones where it's
like um it'll have
a bunch of like soldiers doing movements
and then they'll like snip it together
really quick it'll be like a navy one
and then a guy jumping of a plane and
then it'll be like an artillery and then
like an armored then it'd be like
join the canadian forces today and like
that's like their
their videos so it's like very
marketable very palatable to canadians
who don't really want war and who don't
really acknowledge their military in the
first place and do everything they can
to make sure that vets don't get any
support when they come home
so they i can see why that one is uh
acceptable what russia did
was meant to be more of an intimidation
tactic in my opinion
i like that style better though i think
we need harder i need i think we need
people to be harder i think it's
acceptable and okay to say that our
soldiers need to have a harder mindset a
stronger mindset a better mentality and
mental health support going into the
service and a harder body
because i know
when you go to the u.s i've also
encountered plenty of soldiers that are
600 pounds
what are you going to do
so we should say that you when you join
the military you're in incredible shape
or
not maybe incredible
no i was an incredible show it was the
best shape of my life yeah yeah so i'm
okay with that
it's okay i you know what i used to do
sit-ups
like no i would do sit-ups in the
morning when i was little
until i could see myself like i always
had a six-pack because all i did was
train
but like if i couldn't like see it i
would just sit there morning cartoons
and just do sit-ups and my mom and dad
thought that was like normal acceptable
behavior so if you had like instagram
back then you'd be a david goggins you
would be just like without the cursing
that cursing started once the military
started okay got it
so i mean the people should know because
they probably already know that you also
competed in taekwondo like you were an
athlete of all kinds
they even saw rugby in there yeah i was
i was
i was good at rugby i played that for
seven
six years i guess you could say total
i think the worst injury i've ever ended
up having was i tore my right eyelid off
we were doing an exhibition game i don't
do exhibition games well i don't do like
for fun well i don't do like be very
competitive no not me
so you're being funny ah there it is he
gets it you see he's not he's not a
robot
what i was saying though to you
was that
we did an exhibition game and
the team ahead was winning the team we
were playing was winning which was
annoying
and so
there was an opportunity to take out a
girl
that was going one end of the field to
the other and she just kept hitting
tries left right and center she was fast
so i figured if i just aimed her up like
she's a target and i just run full force
at her because she was really she was a
tall individual if i just if i do that
i'll take her out of the knees so i did
that um
but that what that resulted in was she
put her tooth through her mouth guard
and knocked out and didn't just she just
stayed there but when i stood up
i tore the right eyelid off and it was
hanging from the inner corner yeah my
mom was there because mom was my
mom's my biggest fan
she was supportive oh she's supportive
of everything and she didn't miss a game
she didn't miss anything
and um i stood up and i kind of turned
around and we had already had a girl
break her nose that day so she was on
the sideline with her nose sideways and
just bloody my mom was like i'll take
her to the emergency after once the
game's over
and so i turned around and looked at her
and she just she almost vomited on the
spot and i was like what's wrong she's
like
don't move your eyelids off i'm like but
i can see like i was trying to blink
but like it was just down so i could
just constantly see she's like we're
just gonna go to the emergency we're
just gonna go there now was there blood
yeah there's lots of it but i couldn't
really tell okay
were you okay with blood at that point
yeah i mean i guess we did taekwondo and
all that yeah i didn't get knocked out
very often i didn't really when i was
younger in taekwondo i was really good i
only lost a handful of times
so when i did lose that was bad
um but i never had like a
broken nose or a lot of blood on my feet
like nothing like that really so nothing
freaked me out too much
was there aggression there or just
purely competition over skill
a mix of both i was
this was right after not too long after
my coach went to prison for statutory
rape
um and that was like
how you talk about park talking about
how
that was
like she knew love because of that
person
that person was like a god to me
and so when that happened i was just an
angry individual from that point on so
there was competition and aggression
mixed in there oh like it was betrayal
that this is somebody that is
was a symbol of love for you was could
also be a very bad person i used to eat
sleep and breathe whatever that man said
from four years old on
i lived with my coaches at a point so i
could train that much i i helped look
after their daughter i i was at the club
24 7. it just the idea that somebody
could do something like that yeah that
really messed me up
where were you on 9 11.
i was 11
and i was in my parents basement
and in uh where ontario in ontario
canada
what did you think of 911 at that age
from canada they have an impact on you
in terms of
uh changing
the uh
the level of evil you thought is there
in the world today
not initially i remember it really
vividly i have a decent memory for
certain things it seems like stuff like
that i'd stick with really well um i
remember watching i was sitting on the
couch and um my mom
my mom called my dad because my my
parents are truck drivers my dad was on
the road i'm not mistaken
and he would go in and out of cities all
the time and i think he was on the east
coast my mom was like a little panicky
so she she tried to get a hold of him on
i think she at the time it was like
beepers and
um yeah so he'd get a beep he would go
to a payphone and call us he was fine
and um i remember my mom
being like really upset and i couldn't
quite grasp why she was so upset i knew
something really bad had happened it's
when i then saw the second plane go into
the tower and i remember her just
like the stereotypical like hand over
her mouth and she just felt sick and she
just was
so confused and i knew it was bad
but i didn't fully grasp it we went to
school that day
and they had talked about it briefly you
could hear the teachers kind of
reminiscing about it there was a point
the that week that
all of a sudden all of the children
who were from a middle eastern family
were not the school
i just remember them saying like a lot
of people aren't coming to school but it
was it was in particular i think parents
were afraid once it got out that it was
of a certain um
group they were afraid for their own
kids and fair enough i mean
you never know you don't know
and um
i knew it impacted me enough that i did
write i remember i
the school was doing a memorial for it
and i remember they asked i wrote a poem
and a reporter was there and i read it
on air that's like i remember like
it was like
it was a very short one but i remember i
wanted to do something but i didn't know
why or for for what reason i just i knew
i wanted to do something to honor it but
i didn't i couldn't grasp why you
eventually went to afghanistan yeah
did that begin to plant a seed of
thinking about conflict in the world
it's a good question i've never thought
about it that in depth i mean i've done
12 years of therapy you think that would
have come up dr passi but apparently not
we'll work on it though i mean when did
uh like when did the idea of war
start entering your mind late high
school i think it was for me um i was i
finished high school at 17.
i moved away and went to
college i went to algonquin college
because i wasn't smart enough to get
into ottawa u
so i was like well
algonquin she is i just wanted to play
sports and frankly i wanted away from my
small town that i was living in i went
through like a bad high school breakup
as a kid and you know that where you
think that's like the love of your life
and you just can't bear to be anywhere
near anybody and so i moved away as fast
as i possibly could
and
i didn't grasp it still at that point
love
and heartbreak
okay why did you become a soldier
why did you want to become a soldier
my parents told me from an early age
they always figured i would either be a
cop
i would do they didn't think military
but they thought it would be like a type
a personality possibly carry a gun
situation
and um
i'd never hunted before we never had
guns in our house i was never exposed to
weapons of any kind
if anything it was it was the opposite
we just all the hunters on the property
like all the deer would come to our
property and all the hunters would be no
i'm not my mom would put salt licks out
so that they wouldn't get killed your
property was the safe space for the deer
yeah it was 17 acres of forest and they
just
we had two turkeys that used to walk up
and down the driveway every day we had
bears in there nobody bothered them
and so
there was no aspect of like i want to go
kill shit that was not like a thing i
had no idea i wanted to take anybody off
the face of the earth or anything
i went to school and because i'm a
history person i
my parents has always always made it uh
really important that remembrance day is
the thing in our life so that's
veteran's day for you so it's november
11th and it's you go you honor
i don't care if you don't want to go i
don't care if it's raining
you go
and so
i went to the remembrance day ceremony
in ottawa that year which was it's our
capital which is
yeah it's our capital and it's really
small and so i went
but i took the bus and i was on the bus
back to algonquin and i met a lady
who was like a world war ii vet
really old lady she had an air force
uniform on and just like this row of
metals and
i mean i think you can tell by our
limited to
extreme interactions we've had over the
short period of time i'm curious and
i'll just ask you
and so i just got up and talked to her
and just started talking to her and she
didn't say like i don't remember exactly
her words but she served she was one of
the
first females to fly and you know all
all these kind of things that stuck in
my head and we just kind of kept talking
and i missed my stop
and then i finished talking to her and i
got back on the bus and went back to the
college and
walked into my uh my small apartment
where i had two roommates
these two guys i went to high school
with one of them went to high school
with one was from out of town and i i
just didn't like what i was
i wasn't happy i wasn't doing
what i wanted to do
and i didn't know what i wanted to do
truthfully
something just said
why don't you join the army like in
myself my my self-talk was like let's
just join the military let's do it
are you in general somebody just follows
the gut
like when your heart tells you something
you go with it for the most part because
i figured out at least now i figured out
what parts i could like what feeling i
can trust and which one i can't which
one's anxiety versus which one's my
actual intuition talking so why did you
sign up to be an artillery gunner
because they wouldn't let me be
infantry i mean is it
why why would you want to be infantry
i mean this you're you're you're you're
naming a lot of dangerous activities
yeah but that wasn't a thought in my
mind at the time
my idea was if i was going to do this
and i was going to put myself through
the bullshit and the training and all of
the hell and the push-ups and the mama
screamed at i wanted to do something
that i know was actually going to be
affecting something and what i knew was
making change or affecting or on the
front lines was infantry artillery or
armored
so i was like one of those can you
explain the difference infantry
artillery and armored do you want like
the layman's term or do you want me to
actually explain explain
well listen to a conversation with giaco
especially i love how you get into
details okay so let's detail this then
okay so infantry is your front line door
kicking
you know blasting the door open running
and get the fuck on the ground just that
that that they're the guys that you know
the double tap you in the face and they
show up in the middle of the night and
put a barrel in your head like those are
the guys that are sleeping in the
trenches that are eating mres who are
being shot out who are being blown up
who are doing the dirty work and not
sleeping and carrying the hundred pound
pack and and are side by side with your
buddies in the trenches i wanted that
that
they said i was too small for that
so that's your side to interrupt you or
what too small under 100 pounds um at
the time i was about 103 and i'm i'm
five foot like on a if you roll my back
out like i really
try i'm five foot
at the time though i think it might my
license said 411.
so
so you were too small too small for
infantry yeah they just like there was
no mandate
at which they said you can't be but they
said you know we don't want to put you
through training that you're going to
fail out of and then have to recourse
you and then find a new job for you and
they want to try to if this is what
you're going in for they want to have
you follow through that path
so then there was armored which are your
tanks so that's your movie like fury
where your tank battles and which we
don't really do anymore but you're
rolling around in tanks you got guys in
the back you're a driver you're a turret
gunner which i would have enjoyed but
the idea of being in a closed
metal box
something about it made me panic so i
was like maybe not for me
oh there's of course power to that kind
of uh big gun
well that's why i went for the bigger
one okay by the way i think russia leads
the world a number of tanks they're
still it's very like uh what is it alpha
demonstration of like force look we have
largest number of tanks you know what
takes tanks out though what some
gasoline some old batteries and a wire
yeah but tanks still look badass they
look great but they don't last but so
much of the military like we said with
the recruiting videos it's a display of
power versus the actual
implementation of power fair
okay artillery so i'm doing my best here
yeah i don't even know what double tap
means which you said earlier so double
top is like two shots to the face why
two
to be sure okay
all right you guys the taxpayers pay for
the ammo it's fine but you don't want to
do three because that's wasting money
well that's now that's a waste okay
double tap the face there's so much
awesome terminology here or uh gruesome
terminology depending on your
perspective okay so artillery yeah
so that's the hand of god
sorry no i
that's
that's intensely uh romanticized version
but okay artillery the hand of god so
because it will reach out and touch you
from wherever we want
it's like it's like f um
f 18 pilots or bombers
they'll you won't know they're there
until they're there and so for artillery
i i really honestly didn't think
artillery would be a fit for me i didn't
know much about it they were just like
these are what you can pick from and i
was like i'll go here so
in world war ii they used much closer
artillery so it's the we were called the
royal canadian horse artillery because
the queen made us royal
canadian artillery and um we we shoot
these rounds when you're in training you
shoot smaller smaller ammunition they're
about 40 pounds they go
i'm gonna get this wrong
20k 20 kilometers so whatever that is in
your
mile things
and um
they have a casing on them and
they're much easier they're easier to
handle
the guns are smaller you need less
people for them they're basically what
you train on nowadays it's not what we
use overseas what we use overseas
now those things are beautiful those are
just a sheer work of
the engineering behind them just makes
my heart skip a beat yeah the
engineering on modern guns is amazing so
are we talking about machine guns here
so no you're talking fully automatic no
you're talking about an artillery gun so
what it is it's a 155 millimeter
howitzer that shoots up to up to 40
kilometers accurately 45
unrecorded and it shoots a hundred pound
round
oh
[Music]
okay
so that but there is still precision
accurate as hell accurate okay accurate
if the people behind it that are
shooting it and aiming it are accurate
okay uh so
so how
at which stage of the warfare do they
come in are they saving you like say a
bunch of people get uh raided a bunch of
the soul infantry get raided and then
the artillery saves them or are they the
first line of attack or what where are
they wh where does their artillery go
like the hand of god presumes because
it's
yeah yeah that's well that's it so
depending on the operation or whomever
is running it or how they want it done
sometimes if they just know there's
targets they'll use us
you know high value targets so we have
this round it's called the excalibur
round it costs about half a million
dollars per round it comes in a special
tube
that
is like sealed and locked and you have
to get permission from ottawa to shoot
it and it's only used for vip targets so
like we have vip for everyone and it
will
it's gps guided it's rocker propelled
and when you fire it
it will if if this is a wall
and somebody's standing on this side of
it we'll hit you right there we won't
touch that wall it will hit you pinpoint
it'll go right through whatever concrete
whatever and it will destroy
so it's basically uh the same thing as
being a sniper but with a much
more damaging we don't use that round
often i think it's only been used a
handful of times max in afghanistan that
i'm aware of again i haven't i wasn't
there from 2009 until 21. but i i know
people that still deployed in that in
those units and i don't know that it was
used very often but the regular rounds
so there's hg there's loom so he's high
explosive there's a loom you shoot that
it
explodes in the sky it lights up the sky
for the infantry below
um
and then there's shrapnel rounds that
will explode in the sky and the shrapnel
just rains down hell on you h e is what
you use normally
in my i'm trying to say this right
because i i know people squawked at me
about some of the stuff on jacob so i'm
trying to be very accurate in my
experience we used he rounds to wipe
people off the face of the earth when
the infantry needed us
so we would get a call
at any time and there's always two guns
together
so you never you never go solo gun ever
if you are it's there's it's sketchy and
there's a
bad shit's happening can you explain
that to those two got two people two
guns no two guns with each gun troops so
each gun troop has five to seven people
running a gun at all times oh wow it
takes a lot of people to run one of
those how much electronics is there the
gps like the computer system that's on
it itself i never ran that much but it
is completely technologically it's gps
guided
all you have to do is literally type in
the coordinates then you've got the two
big um there's a there's a technical
word for it but basically wheels and one
does the trajectory you know you do here
right and you're just kind of doing this
and you're watching the watching it and
once you hit your target that's you know
it'll tell you that's where you need to
hit do you know if there's any like ai
stuff like computer vision like where
there's cameras and they help you target
using
like all different kinds of cameras to
see through like the fog all those kinds
of things no we use um
the foo which are forward observation
office officers which are an artillery
individual that is
embedded with an infantry unit oh wow
okay they call from the front give us
their grid coordinates and basically say
like don't drop this on us
got it so well you know what not to sh
which parts not to shoot correct and
then there's no one moves
don't move stay still
but you can hear it coming yeah but you
can't hear it until it's too close so
like when i went sorry go ahead you were
gonna say no what's i was gonna say
what's the experience on the other
like what does it feel like to be maybe
infantry or underneath it underneath the
artillery
well i i had the rare opportunity to do
that
and i have a video i'll show you after
it's terrifying
because i know the people that were
shooting it and i know them personally
and i know what they're like as humans
and for the most part they're dialed but
you get the odd duck where you're like
i've seen people have an nd which is a
negligent discharge you basically get
charged for it you get a lot of trouble
because you can blow people up and i
it's like accidents happen and so i know
accidents can happen in stressful
situations and when i was with the brits
we had to call danger close artillery
and when it goes over top of you
it sounds like thunder and lightning so
you fire it
and it's not the stereotype that you
hear in world war ii where it kind of
like that
it's more of like a crackle
and then you just hear like a whiz and
it
shit just goes everywhere it's loud it
shakes the ground it shakes you it you
feel it
okay okay is there some more words you
can put to like the experience of what
it's like to be in the heat of of battle
there so what is i is there literally is
it hot is it are you talking about being
under it or shooting it under it oh yeah
it 55 degree heat you're you know that
you're waiting for it to be called you
feel an overwhelming excitement to start
because for me i'd never been under it
so i was like okay i had my camera ready
like i was a kid at a candy store and
i'm like i want to watch this happen
and
once you hear the crackle
i got really fearful my anxiety kicked
up
significantly
i i got to the point where
i got numb
like i was my nerves were on overdrive
so much that like my body would go like
numb like i could move but like my
nerves were numb if that makes sense
what what were the nerves like are we
talking about fear or is it just
anxious excitement anxious excitement
hopeful that they wouldn't blow it up on
us and there was this
there was this excitement that's hard to
describe because you don't want to be
excited that you're dropping bombs on
people
but when you just saw their faces and
they're shooting at you there's this
overwhelming feeling of
got you motherfucker yeah yeah
well we'll talk about that because
that's such a difficult thing
about wars you forget that it's other
human beings yeah because those other
human beings are doing really bad things
to you and so the very basic anger takes
over
um hate can take over
and then also just the excitement of
almost like video game like
you know
aspect of war like sport it's it's like
sport that all of those elements are all
baked in it's hard to be philosophical
in that situation it seems like
i've never played video games so i can't
compare it to that but like from from
like a sports perspective yeah i could i
could argue that like i felt like we won
there for a second
and it's
it's not just like a heat from outside
it's like this radiation within you
that is something i've never felt since
you uh just to take a small step back to
the weapons training
what uh what kind of guns did you train
on because you also mentioned a rocket
launcher
i love karl kristoffs
what are those what what are those carl
g carl g's
what what's that what's uh uh
my only experience with the rocket
launches is from the movie commando with
arnold schwarzenegger oh yeah and we've
all discussed i haven't seen that yet
and i've heard about it and people have
made me tell yeah i know i feel like you
haven't seen a single movie that's
relevant to war military because every
time anyone brings it up you say you
haven't seen it i don't have time to
watch movies lex platoon you haven't
seen platoon which is um you're the
scientist how do you have the time i'm
not a scientist i just play one on tv
okay sure so uh what can you talk about
the rocket launcher yeah and maybe any
other yeah for both engineering actually
to me those guns are very interesting
from an engineering perspective too well
they should be they're fascinating when
you take them apart and you see how
small the parts get down to and how how
necessary every single little piece is
to make that thing run and even without
the tiniest little bb smaller than a
piece on there an artillery gun might
not run
so we were trained on
carl g's um
called m72s which are disposable rocket
launchers
i'll back up carl g's are around
i don't know the exact
millimeter of the round it's been a
while since i shot them we only did
those in training
but essentially it takes most people one
person can fire it you know effectively
hold it and fire it it takes another
person to load it so you put it onto
your shoulder and it weighs i would i
don't know 30 pounds 40 pounds oh wow
can't remember it's been a minute it's
been one person can carry it oh
yeah okay
i don't know it just seems like a rocket
launcher's pretty uh intense kind of
device
it for sure is i mean it's the diameter
i can't even tell you the diameter
they're about that big i mean
and it goes on your shoulder it goes on
your shoulder and then it has a little
sight that pops out that's almost like
plastic-like which is kind of funny
because it reminds me of like the
little um green army men it i just felt
so flimsy to me i was like this is
hilarious
and then another person stands behind
you and opens the hatch and so
there's this there's these two um levers
and you just kind of open it and then
the back end which is flared so it's
just a tube and then it's flared that
will open it and drop down and you load
around into that and then you load it
back up
and you're never supposed to stand
behind it because the blast behind it
will kill you
it's
yeah but in my case when i fired it
it was me and another individual um i
want to say it wasn't sarah pellegrin
but it was another girl that was smaller
and the person is supposed to wrap
around your waist and tuck low and hold
your stability and we were just aiming
at tanks that day and they were just
concrete um heads so they would just
either they would hit and bounce off or
whatever
and so
when my sergeant saw that he just kind
of looked at both of us i was like
no i'm just gonna and he got real low
and just like wrapped
both of us
and then we'd fire it and it feels like
you're getting punched in the side of
the head on repeat by jocko yeah
it you lose all your hearing
you just like just
snot comes out of your nose and you're
just kind of discombobulated for a
minute
it's a real
mind fuck
is it is there other uh any other kind
of guns that um
in at that time because you were new to
this you haven't shot guns when you were
younger
that were really impressive to you in in
the training all of them because i i've
never fired a weapon so we had the c7s
which are like your m16s i believe
um the long barrel the cute thing about
those is when i have that slung my
barrel drags on the ground
so that's fun
and they shoot you know your 762 or your
556 round
i loved that i preferred the um the c8
which was a short barrel which is what
the sf guys use not because it's cooler
looking which it obviously is but
because it was functional for my body
height and it didn't drag on the ground
when i ran
i loved those they're your personal
weapon being an artillery gunner if
you're not an officer at least in our
unit you didn't get a side a side piece
i didn't have a slide piece lex um so i
never had a
handgun of any type i fired those in
training you can't get over that side
piece comment look at you
uh i was gonna say i know what a side
piece is you don't have to explain to me
but you're single so how do you even
have a side piece if you don't have a
main piece the joke the joke would be
the fact that we have a total
misunderstanding what side pieces okay
grace you didn't have a side piece as a
non-officer right so i never fired those
much we did grenades and training oh
cool yeah grenades are fun i love
grenades i have a massive one tattooed
on me i have them all over my office how
does a grenade work
there's the spoon and the pin
so this the pin holds the spoon in place
when you pull that pin
the firing mechanism inside as long as
that the spoon is up against it it won't
fire as soon as that spoon goes i
believe it causes a reaction on the
inside and you've got about five seconds
to check it you'd be better to ask that
question too
i don't want me to get philosophical no
you're not but there's something about a
grenade
because you're essentially committing
suicide
unless you get rid of the thing
there's something like or if you're
unlucky and it just goes off when you
pull the pin which has happened to tons
of people so it just feels like a very
kind of leap it's a it's a dangerous
leap into the abyss every time you use
the thing because when you shoot a gun
like the gun is much less likely to
malfunction in terms of like all the
possible ways to go wrong it just seems
like grenade is like
primitive almost yeah it's primitive
it's it's also real like in the way that
like a bar fight is like being punched
in the face is real it's like you're
here with the weapon of destruction it's
just you and in the thing yeah you have
to get rid of it i don't know is that is
that terrifying to you like p do people
still use grenades in warfare oh yeah
okay yeah those are fantastic the
taliban were throwing them over the wall
at the airport in kabul
people use them all the time because
when you're in afghanistan if you're in
a rural area you're going from village
to village and they're they're you know
they're mud hut walls like they're tall
but you're walking through corridors and
stuff oh you gotta
lob one of those it's gonna take the
whole unit out that just walked by like
it's they're accurate
if you're close enough and they're
effective if you're close enough
um
i love them though
i think
they're fascinating to me because
they're such a tiny little thing
with such devastation
they just can cause such devastation but
for me when i had them
the some of the canadians would make fun
of me because when i did go outside the
wire with the british i had two right
here
and i remember i put a piece of tape
over the spoons
because in my mind i could picture
myself searching someone and grabbing me
and pulling that and that would be me
that that would have been like yep that
if anyone that was gonna happen to
it was her for sure
so you were deployed to afghanistan in
okay
and uh like we said you were in uh great
no perfect physical shape fucking epic
shape epic shape six-pack or i mean yeah
okay
so uh you could do pull a lot of
pull-ups and push-ups and
[Music]
yeah okay uh
and well-trained would you say we were
you already what like no
no no i'll argue that point till i'm
blue in the face i spoke to him recently
i actually spoke to my sergeant he's not
a sergeant anymore but sergeant mark
leblanc he's in africa right now on a
deployment he gave me a call the other
day and i remember talking to him about
this and it's frustrating because we
were at an active war we were involved
in an active war where
we the units that i were in were dagged
red which meant
they needed people
so when you need people
things go quick
whether or not that's right i mean you
could argue that's the similar thing to
what's happening in the world right now
we needed a vaccine we got a vaccine
is it the best it could be could it be
better
could it do more things sure probably
but with the time that we had we did the
best that we could
that's my logic on that for me
i joined the military in november of
2007.
i was in basic training in january of
2008 i was graduated basic sq which is
all your weapons training your dp1
which is your
trade specific training so whatever
trade you're going to go into whether
it's infantry armored artillery medic
whatever that's your dp1 it's called
different things in different units and
then i got posted to my unit in
september
so january to september i had done all
my training and i'm an english-speaking
individual
i got posted to a french unit that only
speaks french and had to learn that all
of the weapon systems
everything again that i just learned in
that short time frame in french this
part of your story that we you you're
telling this to jocko is
one way to say is very impressive that
you had to learn all of this in french
so there's also the camaraderie the
social aspect of it which is difficult
probably it didn't have any that's
enough yeah it didn't have any but it
also make you a more effective soldier
to be socially
for that cohesion to be there right um
but also just understanding the the
basic um
terminology correct
and uh great way to say something on the
radio the right way to run a gun the
right way to
because you got to move with those guns
you've got seven people it's it's it's
really magical
i i'll send you a video we when we did
um some live fire in workup training in
texas before we left we did a
competition between the other gun to see
who could fire 10 rounds fast like
faster wow um
it is
truly beautiful to watch an artillery
unit fire a gun because it's it's like a
symphony everyone has their parts and
everyone knows and everyone's yelling
but they know why they're yelling and
everyone this guy's got to do this in
order for this guy to load the round
it's just it's beautiful it really is it
is gorgeous to watch i miss it deeply is
there by the way for a gun is there like
one person responsible for the
for the aim and the
or like the specification of the
location and somebody else that pulls it
presses the lanyard is that the lanyard
is there a button it's bet it's better
than a button you'll like it i'll tell
you in a second okay um
yours there's your sergeant in charge
and then they have their two ic
and so the comms come in to the sergeant
and the sergeant is the
or your master bombardier bomba de chef
um
yeah sorry what
a chef what
chef oh that's the french master
bombardier yeah so it goes like private
in the north like an infantry or in a
regular unit it's like private corporal
master corporal sergeant
in artillery it goes gunner
bombardier master bombardier sergeant
weren't on and off like that
so
you have two people but the sarge is
like you don't move till he says move
you don't fire until he says fire like
he's your guy he'll give you the
coordinates he'll feed him to the guy
that's doing the the gps that that
portion i really never did it much i
wasn't tall enough to see it
like legitimately the way how high it is
up on the gun like it was i couldn't see
clearly enough it was not good so
obviously you have a big personality
you're strong person you don't say
yeah and you have a big hat currently
i always wear a hat legs
okay it seems like your height and your
size was a factor oh for sure how were
you able to step up in all those moments
and uh
how difficult was it
i don't know that i realized it was
difficult while i was doing it because
that's just the way it's been i've
always been the short person that's life
nothing i can do to fix that so there
was no point when am i gonna whine about
it i'm gonna break my femurs and insert
things to make me grow a little bit
maybe
maybe since you're in robotics you can
figure that out okay
that's your task now
make me be five foot three that'd be
great um
for artillery
really what it came down to was the unit
when i got there there was only a couple
people who spoke any sort of english
and my sergeant was not one of them
but once he kind of started to get to
know me a little bit the best that he
could
he started to put effort into making
sure i could lift the rounds train make
sure my my capacity to do my job was
there and so he took me under his wing
in that in that aspect so he would take
me to the gym with him
and he would show me
exercises that would specifically help
me load
the round so pick the round up from the
ground pick it up like a trick to put
your knee under it use your legs instead
of just pick it up use your back pull
your back out he would work on that and
then depending on the position i was
running the gun in if i was running the
side that had the charge bags
i'll explain that in a second but if i
was running the side that had the charge
bags
i could step up
onto the gun
and if i
leaned inward enough with my right hand
with the charge and i kind of kicked off
i could kind of jump and shut and
shove it up the tube got it
almost enough yeah if i was running the
lanyard which is the thing that makes it
go boom
it's really easy it's a long rope
you hook it on and you put it your right
hand on your hip and on your left and
you and you hold it there and you just
stare at your sergeant like this and you
just wait for him to yell fire and he
points at you when he does it and when
you do it you turn your whole body with
it
and when you do that it alleviates the
a misfire essentially because if you
just pull it sometimes that's not enough
you got to really give it your whole
body into it
and so he would train me on
how to do things differently so that i
could do them effectively
and i wasn't a shit pump
uh a what
so ship pump is a term that we use in
canada to call somebody useless a ship
pump is a useless soldier who is just
you're there and that's the ship pump
and so we all just deal with it but
somehow they're still there yeah what
were we talking about the lanyard okay
yeah uh
we're talking about artillery guns so
those things though what you would find
fascinating is just how they break down
when you have to take one of those apart
i think your mind would really find it
fascinating how a breech comes apart all
the way down to like ball bearing size
and the only and there's a way to just
make that gun completely ineffective and
all you have to do
when you're on the charge side there's a
magazine that's a long linear magazine
and it holds like 15 little rounds if
you just take that thing out
nothing's not firing
how many people does it take to move
that like how easy it is to move that
thing to move a triple seven
triple seven i like it that's what
they're called m triple seven is a lot
of the terminology cross over the same
in english and french no okay
i mean m triple seven does because it's
an obvious howitzer i'm sure has a
separate word but like if you're running
it you're running it in french
so like when i'd be running the
when i'm doing the charge bags and i'm
doing
i'm doing you know i'm loading
everything and i'm getting that ready
and that's my position that day i'm also
controlling the breach
so like how it opens how it closes when
it locks
and so but you have to yell that as you
do it so you're yelling like my lib
coulas
like you have to yell all these things
you have to learn them though
and so for a long time it's
it's it's it was a little frustrating i
won't lie it's really exciting i took a
lot of french but i forgot all of it but
i think it's a beautiful romantic
language
it's a good language if it's from quebec
yeah that's true it's a good language to
fall in love with not as good as russian
but uh i mean second
english is uh all right
i mean russian really is that like a
love language it is to me i mean because
you're russian but like if somebody
walked up to me was like
hey kelsey i like you i'd be like oh god
he's gonna put me in a camp that's
because you don't understand love and
kelsey i don't we'll talk about that
okay
how many people does it take to move
them triple seven it depends if you're
moving it by ground you're moving it on
a truck and when you're moving it on a
truck you're hooking the back of it onto
you're hooking the front of the barrel
onto one of those
big transport looking trucks that has
those cargo tents that's got soldiers in
it you don't want to ever move an m
triple seven by that way if you don't
have to the barrel is worth a million
dollars
wow okay so this is like a serious piece
of equipment you don't want to move them
okay when we got to kandahar we were
there for a couple days we got flown out
to the fall we were going to be at
ford observation base kandahar is the
safe space or was the major base in
afghanistan that we were at
there's things like tim hortons there
there's canada house there's a british
side an american side a canadian side
and you know that's where you see all
the different countries in the world
kind of come together you would see
italians you would see germans you would
see
french you would see all these different
uniforms and you never know who to
salute because you don't know what each
thing means
it doesn't feel like a war zone no oh
god no there's a boardwalk there's
hockey there like floor hockey because
canada had to have that there's a tim
horton's a subway a pizza hut
a px
um i think there's a restaurant there
somewhere but i never i didn't get to go
you know stuff like that there's gyms
you can run around it you feel fairly
safe you always have a weapon on you but
you can you know live your life
um when you get out to the fob the guns
are already there
so those m triple sevens get lifted by a
chinook normally if they're going by air
they go by chinook because they're heavy
as hell and chinooks can hook them under
the bottom
and they fly them and then they'll drop
them down they have wheels on them but
you don't need them if you're gonna
leave it in place
gotta and you're getting information
about ieds
you're getting a land a lay of the land
as to what's been going on in the
country for the past six months and this
you know nothing you're just like this
is your first time you're getting
deployed so what was your deployment
like can you tell the story of your
deployment
to afghanistan
like the whole deployment
getting like actual deploying not the
deployment itself what's the difference
between the two well actually getting
ready to deploy is a little different so
i mean the emotional build up to it got
it and uh some of the some of the
memorable things that kind of uh you
remember from that experience both on
the
excitement i get to see battle i get to
be part of this and the fear and also
like being surprised like with the tim
hortons and all those kinds of things so
like the lead up before everything
should hit the fan okay cool
so
you're such a fascinating person but yes
something like that i've been called
many things yeah let's start with the
letter f yeah no i don't know i don't
know many words with f okay so with the
build up so the uh deployment so for the
build up for the deployment
i was in quebec and my unit was
deploying from quebec and at that time
you kind of get your marching orders you
know you're deploying i knew i was
deploying before i even graduated
that's how much they needed people so
once i did all that training on
graduation parade day a couple men from
quebec in uniforms came over and said
you you you and you are all being posted
to vacation and you're going to deploy
with us in april
so that's how i found it i was deploying
why was there such a need for troops in
afghanistan is that that was a
well-known thing that there's a scaling
up of troops
2007 on canada really started taking a
combat role
before it was very much more a u.n type
deal where doing what we normally do in
most wars where we just we wear blue and
we don't shoot anyone
and so
we're there to help and so they were
really they were scaling up and there
wasn't a lot of people in those uh
trades initially i think when the war
kind of started so canada really started
to scale
and so when i got to quebec
we've kind of found oh yeah we're
deploying and it was a weird situation
because i've never actually been at a
unit on a non-deployable unit
so i don't know what they do day to day
that's different from what i did i just
know what i did
so we would do things like in the
morning we would get up and we would
meet for pt at 5 a.m and that would
include
going for a 10k run or
playing ball hockey for a few hours in
the gym or lifting weights together or
you know just going on a ruck march
along rock mart should just stuff like
that you would have a shower you would
meet
and then you would just sit around the
regiment
you would just
sit around the regiment and you would
if there was busy work you'd mop the
floors you would clean weapons
there wasn't a whole lot until there was
a whole lot to do
we did a lot for a while
and then we went away on workup training
to texas for a week we came down here
and we did live fire with um with our
other troop that was going to be with us
so alpha alpha had two guns and two guns
has two groups of people
and so we all would go down to texas and
we did live fire here for a week and
i end up getting gastro which was
awesome
so thanks for that
apparently there was uh they were having
water problems and sanitary problems so
everyone was getting it
on the base okay so it just makes your
life way harder i didn't get it towards
the end till towards the end so that was
fortunate so we would fire live fire we
would go out to the middle of nowhere
the guns would be there
and we would get uh offload a truck of
uh rounds and we would do live fire and
we would practice just constant practice
what's that saying perfect practice
makes perfect yeah so this is a sensory
uh
like a shooting range for artillery for
artillery for long range so what does
practice look like
so you roll up in your trucks and you're
you're you know you've got uh each group
of people
you've got two trucks and then you've
got like a medic vehicle and then you've
got like an officer vehicle and a coms
vehicle and you you go to your
perspective guns and then you offload
your ammo and then you basically wait
for them to send you
like a
uh
a fire mission wow get that together
they would call they would say and miss
y'all sit so it'd be a fire mission so
we'd wait for that and once we got that
then you all run like a bunch of
scattered rats to the gun like it's like
the greatest thing you've ever seen
and then um you just wait you wait for
the call for the sergeants to say and
then you'll hear it because it's not
headphones you can hear it on a speaker
and it'd be like i'm not gonna do it in
french don't ask it'd be like
um
uh so and so 10 rounds
fire when ready
and then you'd get your rounds ready and
everyone would have them writer would be
in their perspective um respected
positions and then you would wait and
then they would say
fire when ready and as soon as i say
fire when ready that means just start
going
just start and then that's when the
magic starts you go like the loop like
you you shoot one or whatever there's a
reloading process there's a loop so what
you would do you get the fire mission
you would find out the rounds the two ic
would be standing by the rounds and it
was his job to make sure the amount of
rounds that was told would be the only
rounds that would go downrange
and so he'd stand there and on each
round depending on the type of round is
a fuse which gets screwed onto the top
of the round
so
they're
about that big and it's just a point and
then you would have to put it on
give it a spin
and depending if it was the time release
you had a little um
what do you call you get those at ikea
when you have to build everything allen
k allen yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah you
know what i'm talking about yeah and
then like a big one or something no just
a little one because it's a tiny little
hole and you just got to click it to
where it's supposed to go and it
depended on what the columns were and it
was a timer when you said like wheel you
mean like a little thing then
is that is that what we're talking about
i'm talking about the round itself so
you would put a fuse on top of the round
so you would unload the ammo and then
you would put fuses on them and the
fuses are on the top and they're like a
little like a
ice cream topper kind of thing and you
would spin those on okay okay and then
once they're on depending if it's a time
release or not you would take this
little thing and you would move it the
top and that would it's almost like a
little timer cool
yeah it depended so you're just
assembling a bullet
essentially a very big one that goes up
to my waist
yeah this is this is very cool and
you're you're a fascinating person okay
so that you just that you still even
years later have all this in your memory
it's not all perfectly accurate and
that's what irritates me though is
because i'm
it bothers me when i can't remember
things accurately but i have a lot of
i've had a lot of memory issues and
problems after like having too many hits
to the head
and this is from earlier in childhood or
later uh both okay both the military did
not help it
where was the hits in the head in the
military well when you have a car go
stuff beside your face like this and it
shoots around it it gives you a
concussive blast also there's new
research being done i'll find out
exactly what it is but there's new
research that's being done that shows
that if you're an artillery gunner and
you stand within a certain range of that
gun you get the same amount of
concussive blasts and it there's a
there's a range i had no idea but you
feel it when it goes off like it hurt
your whole body feels it
your mind is fascinating because it's
like literally the opposite of my one
you're able to speak very quickly very
clearly very sharply sorry no what
i talk too fast no that's perfect it's
my hearing i admire i mean i admire that
i can't do any of that and you listen
extremely well and you're extremely
attentive and you have a good memory so
anyways just fun fun to watch you at um
i can tell you were a great soldier
and just all different aspects of it
thank you
but what the heck we're talking about oh
build up to the deployment how did we
get to texas because that was part of
the build-up to my deployment and li-fi
you got to did that feel good
it's so good what's the favorite what's
the best part about like
shooting artillery like what what's the
thing that's that feels good which part
the well the full the feeling of power
when is the best moment of the highest
moment of the feeling of power
is it the whole process that you love or
is there like when you actually shoot it
it's symbiotic it's a beautiful thing to
watch to know that a gun can fire
and it takes kind of a dance to make it
work there's something about that to me
that just got my heart racing
when you actually shoot the round and
you see it go and you hear it
it's unlike it you can't describe
there's no i've never felt another
feeling i've also never been in like
an f-18 or an f like 16 or like any i've
never been in anything like that and
i've you know
i've never
tried to think of something else to be
comfortable i've never been in like a
formula one car those are the only
things i can picture being
that much for me because
to shoot one of those and to know
that you've done your job right means
that you've helped
and that to me was really what it did it
for me
when you hear your sergeant say
mission accomplished target hit tired
acquired then you're like
that's a good feeling that's the stuff
quick pause take a break
lex okay so live fire in texas we're in
texas by the way fort worth or fort hood
one of them well okay so like it's what
is that close to a big major city do you
do you remember visiting a city oh god
no we we fly right into the tarmac and
they're like don't touch the snakes and
then they send you out to the field we
got it let's see the only instructions
no really we went into a classroom and
they're like these are the animals that
are in the wildlife in texas if you see
any of them do not approach do not go
pee outside do not squat down it is
snake season people and i was like i
have to pee and squat down
why why texas and from like canada is it
a simulation of uh afghanistan
okay so that's okay so you're getting
and that's the way the live fire was
seen in artilleries like you're trying
to
simulate certain aspects of what you
might actually see in afghanistan i
would think so i mean we
it it looks like it's hot like it you're
out in the middle of nowhere
very similar to rain that's the first
time we started to get to where our tan
boots and our tan like our combat tan
stuff before you couldn't wear that so
it gave us an opportunity to kind of
break in
break in how we were going to be doing
this what it was going to look like how
the guns were going to work and all of
those lovely things
how do you go from there to being
deployed
what was the next part of the journey so
then we go to wainwright alberta often
called or referenced as wayne cock
because it sucks so bad
it is a massive open space in alberta
which most of alberta is
and it's outside of a small town called
wainwright and it is a field ex training
area for all of the canadian military
and it's where you do
live fire but you also do work up
training
so you go out there for a month or two i
think it is i don't remember the exact
time we were there because it was just
you sleep in a tent you're in your cot
you're in like full mission mode
and you go outside and we did this
operation called operation maple leaf i
think it was
and you put on these little suits these
uh hap they have haptic uh
you can feel when you're shot and then
there's a little camera and a sorry
screen in the front of it and it's got
button options and so it's to mimic
if you get shot it'll say gunshot wound
and then you have to choose okay do i do
this or do i do this and depending on
your response person dies or lives
and they have other people who aren't on
a rotation for deployment come and act
as the taliban
and attack you
in the middle of the night
is there a good understanding of the
tactics that the taliban used to attack
i mean this may be fast forwards to
our conversation a little bit but is
there a
strategies on the other side
that are being used in afghanistan by
the taliban by the taliban
ieds suicide bombers
uh vehicle-born ieds um
their their standard way to hit people
really was
ieds and vehicle board ieds suicide
bombers they'd put um
like backpacks full of an ied and then
put like toys around it and then just be
like
so they will conceal it certain ways and
probably use civilians oh 100 yeah and
women were a great way to get close to
the soldiers because women seem
non-threatening when you see a burka
walk up to you you're not expecting an
ak-47 to roll out of that and then
or you know but they're they're great
ways to get clothes
okay so
what is wayne something wing cock
no that's not how wayne right
so let's go to alberta okay okay so i
mean we don't have to go to alberta
nobody wants to no let's in our minds
in our imagination so okay so that's
getting you closer to afghanistan right
uh what what was that like i mean are
you getting anxious at this point is
there a build up
what are you thinking or is it just all
part of the training for me it was more
part of the training i was i was excited
to go because i did know that we were
going to do some live fire i did know
that we were going to be
doing more of the military type job i i
thought we were going to be doing
because up until that point i had just
done training so i was learning how to
march and salute and who to salute and
not salute like that was the focus of
that was my experience of the military
and then the next experience was sitting
in a regiment just working out a lot and
going for breakfast a lot and drinking
like that was so i was like this is the
army
so when i actually got to go to wayne
right i got my first full taste of okay
well
there's fire picket duty so one person
gets picked every night to you know do
sentry there's a little less sleep
you're eating out of a canteen now
you're drinking a canteen you're in your
kit more you're in your deployable kit
now you're in your
you know you're wearing um
your tack vest you're you're getting
ready to practice having plates on
you're
having ammunition on you you've got your
weapon with you all the time when you're
on base and that can't say in quebec
you're
you're just like an everyday job maybe
you can paint a clear picture to me
when was there an understanding that
you're actually getting deployed was it
just a sense that you're getting
deployed or was this officially told to
you i was officially told on graduation
day you're deploying in april with that
hits oh there were okay there's no date
they're like they they knew so what had
happened is the reason that
that could say the unit needed more
people so they came to that and they
picked five people there was five
english-speaking people that went to
vacation it wasn't just myself there was
a couple other people i knew that were
english-speaking that got put on other
guns within the regiment i wasn't with
any of them we all kind of got split up
and so
there was an understanding that we were
going to always be deploying
next year it was like 2009 you're
deploying whether you left in may or
april
we were deploying because that was the
rotation time so each canadian unit did
between six and nine months and then you
knew right around that point another
base of individuals would then deploy so
you would go on these rotations
and so even when i was on my deployment
then i was slated to go again the
following year but towards the end of
the year so there was always a rotation
if you were in a combat arms unit and
you were in one that was a deployable
unit so if you were from edmonton a
ppcli which were you know the princess
patricia's which were their infantry
unit if you were rcr out of
uh petawawa ontario you knew you were
deploying if you were at vacate you knew
you were deploying there's combat arms
bases and then there's like naval bases
i didn't know their deployment structure
i didn't know how they worked i
i'm on the ground don't worry about the
boats so i didn't know how the air force
deployed i knew that can't say it was
deploying in april you were going
get ready that was that so you show up
to afghanistan right what is a combat
arms unit looks like what's the
situation look like how much chaos is
there
how much clarity about mission is there
what are your feelings about the whole
thing so when you leave
uh the day you leave we left quebec we
got driven to the airport and then we
walked onto the tarmac and we load our
own bags and we got on a plane and it's
just empty it's just it's our plane
right and you don't go right to
afghanistan you go to a stopover point
which i don't know if i'm allowed to say
where that is frankly so i just say it's
somewhere overseas okay and you go there
and you go there for a couple days i
think it's like a day or two and that's
where you get like your kit that's where
you get your bulletproof plates for the
first time and realize how heavy those
fucking things are it's where you get
your your weapon and your ammunition
your first few mags it's where you get
your helmet and your vests and you get
everything that you need while you're
there it's pretty nonchalant it's it's
hot as hell it's your first time being
in that kind of heat so you just never
stop sweating the place we were in it's
just the second you got out of the
shower you were still wet after you got
out what the hell is happening it's so
humid and i'm like is this going to be
like this in afghanistan like no it's
not humid there at all i'm like why is
this so bad here like it'll be fine
don't worry about it
so
and where we were there
it was kind of cute we were like in a
base within a base and they had like
turf and we had like ice cream and fruit
and you could go get on a computer you
could go make calls you had showers you
had a real bed it was very
kind of okay for that point and then you
got all your stuff and then okay we're
rolling out which is about a five hour
flight again my experience with
helicopters is mostly
uh from uh another arnold schwarzenegger
movie the predator
i'm not do you want me to say i've never
seen it i've never seen it last year
yeah
no you want to tell the audience
the
all the uh excellent shows that you
mentioned me offline that you watch
instead instead of platoon listen
yeah that's
sex in the city was that more important
oh no i've never seen that don't don't
put me in that category did you just put
me in a box i did i watch like homeland
i watch no i watch like
i watch a lot of documentaries i watch i
like to watch real
real things more than than than just
film
i did a little bit of um film stuff when
i got back
um into canada and i was like once
you're once you've seen how it's made
like i don't want to do
yeah i mean i'm the same with superhero
movies it doesn't i want i want uh
i want something closer to reality but
then movies like platoon reveal some
deep aspect of reality without it i did
superman man of steel
wait you sorry you you were what do you
mean you did i was not a military expert
but i was a
a stunt expert
even though i didn't actually have to do
any stunts it's just because i had
previous military experience and they
were going to have me as an extra as a
military person but if you have preview
experience they have to make it as like
a stunt roll like you get paid more you
got it so i got to sit at a desk and i
was in that i was in that like
you'd see me like
for like two seconds so you're what
you're saying is you were the mastermind
behind that movie for the entire thing
you're so accurate okay
great your representation of me is just
fantastic the combat arms unit right in
afghanistan um the ice cream machine
what like when you actually get closer
and closer to the mission what well when
does that happen when i you know got to
where we were before we were leaving to
get on the plane
i don't really really i don't think i
realized what the hell i was doing
truthfully like you're asking me all
these like what did you feel how do you
like when i really think about it if i
sit there and really think about it
i was deploying i was aware i knew what
i was going to do i knew my job but once
we actually stepped onto that hurt to
leave to get into the afghan airspace i
think that's when it hit me yeah i think
it smacked me in the face so hard
and that's when
the overwhelming
just reality was
oh fuck
oh
when they said
uh make weapons ready put the barrel to
the ground put your helmets on
that's when they start flying tactically
which means they're going between the
mountains that means we're gonna land
soon which means if you're flying like
this it's because rpgs
can hit you so that was my first moment
of
oh i could like just be shot down right
now like i i couldn't i didn't grasp it
i was
how old was i 19 19 yeah wow okay
so that's why i feel bad when i'm trying
to explain you because it's hard because
i don't know that i actually did grasp
it until
i was in the air getting ready to land
in kandahar was the first time you heard
bullets enemy enemy bullets or enemy
explosions
well when you're in canada when you're
in kandahar when you're at cafe
there's you're fairly insulated away
from the main walls you would hear stuff
go off or you would hear the rocket
sirens would go off
so you would hear though
and everyone just kind of got down on
the ground and just waited for the all
clear and then got back up
i didn't hear any
actual live fire
until
i got to the fob it was more
just a lot of noise you would hear a lot
of helicopters a lot of planes
going in and out of the base so there
was that sense you could feel the ground
shake when they took off but there was
that sense you know things were going
around things were happening you just
weren't far enough you were not close
enough to the edges of calf to see it
what's uh what's the fob
fob is a forward observation base which
is a small little base out in the middle
of wherever
and that's that's uh specific to our
artillery
that's in general just an observation
base from which cramping tree to go in
and out of um for armor to go in and out
of special ops go in and out of them
they fly they'll stop there they'll pick
people up or do whatever then they'll go
out
so it's a forward observation basis is
is used essentially to have eyes in that
area without having to be doing patrols
every five seconds but there's not is it
like is there like medics there is oh
yeah yeah yeah so it was actual base
yeah i was a it's a
i don't call it an actual base you sleep
in tents and cots and it is
the walls are this mesh material that
are filled with gravel
and that's the walls
and then you have towers you had five i
think we had five towers because the
americans ran four and we ran one and so
it was an american fob it's called
ramrod
and
there was a
were they marines no i think they were
the 101st they were out of their
this is where i get dicey because i was
moved a lot so when people are like who
are you with i'm like
i know what their patches looked like
i don't know the full ins and outs so
i'm working on getting that back so that
i can tell it accurately because i
believe it deserves that type of respect
but that being said i'm still trying to
you know wrap my brain around all of
this
yeah you almost have to go back and do
like
research
to understand the full details of all
the things you were experiencing and so
i reached out to actually a bunch of
people even before i wrote the book and
i didn't get a lot of answers well once
i did jocko all the people have reached
out to me and were like hey
and i'm like called you so now i'm work
that's why i'm doing the rewrite is i'm
working on making sure that things are
exact
and so there was infantry units going in
out of that fob and it was a really tiny
fob
it was
uh run by the americans and then there
was a tiny little corner that was the
canadian artillery unit
and
the americans normally it's americans
shooting for americans canadian
canadians the rest of the regiment that
deployed so bravo and charlie they were
at canadian fobs massim guard and
another one and these were huge fobs
ours was this tiny like three kilometer
around
place
and we had this tiny little subsection
of it and the rest was so it was like
this and then all american here
and when we got there
we landed the guns were already there so
you ripped out the unit before you so
those guys were just leaving and we were
just replacing them
so that we knew the guns they were
canadian guns we understood you know how
to run those that was fine
when we got there though
we had come in on chinook
and chinooks are super loud and they're
like we're hearing protection they don't
you're not no that's this is not reality
like this is why i'm partially deaf now
like that's not real
so sorry to take attention but do you
usually wear uh ear protection in any
aspects of warfare of this whole process
you wear comms like you have a com on
like in a radio if you're outside the
wire
oh so comms is that like a bluetooth
headset yes it's a bluetooth headset
okay no like from nike or like um i was
gonna say adidas okay maybe apple was
involved at some point
i don't know this equipment looked like
it was from world war ii so there's
comms but is that having ear protection
uh like no no and i didn't wear them
that's just what some people were people
when you were as low as me like we
weren't privy to conversation like we
were just told what to do and you do it
so when you're doing like on the op
tower you have a radio you pick up and
you call in and then you put the radio
down but for a hearing protection i mean
i would put in ear plugs but
those things are so violently loud that
ear plugs they don't do it justice
either i feel like when you go shooting
there's uh certain kinds of
earplugs that you you it blocks out the
gut like certain kinds of sounds
associated with guns and you can still
hear other types of stuff so the ones
they issued us were these big things
that had like a
headpiece like here but you have to wear
your helmet when you're firing right so
you can't have both on
okay so how much are you aware of the
logistics of the whole thing that's
always fascinating with warfare
like in terms of setting up you
mentioned gravel and the fobs
like setting all those bases up were you
seeing any of this or again it's a 19
year old kind of just well it's not that
i was oblivious that's the one thing i
would say i wasn't i was i'm very aware
of my surroundings that's something
that's always been taught to me from a
very early age because i traveled a lot
with my dad in the truck and so my dad
would be like you're gonna go into that
bathroom and i'm gonna watch you come
out and you're gonna watch everyone
around you because people get kidnapped
like that's just the reality i was
always very paranoid
so
so you're paying attention to
surroundings but the fob was already
built up when we got there okay this is
already like well-established basis
already like there's there's established
enough all right
and that is one of the first times
you've heard
actual fire yeah that was like the i
mean i heard it on the when we when we
shoot when we you know zero in weapons
and we do all that stuff but i had never
heard it heard it like that before
and then you would see the the the guys
the americans would roll out every day
and go on patrol and come back look
back and so you would see them you would
hear them they would tell the stories
those types of things but i never
experienced it because we never
we never got attacked like our base
never got hit
we were really lucky that way
there were other ones around us that
were getting hit but we weren't we
weren't getting hit
so we were very fortunate
um at least we didn't get hit when i was
there i believe the entry got there was
an attempt
there was an attempt at some point in a
past but i i wasn't privy to that
but we were in the op towers so we had
to do our own security but because we
were such a small subset of canadians
and we always had to have
people running the guns and ready to run
the guns at all times
we only had to man one tower so you
would do four hour shifts with a fire
team partner in the tower depending on
whatever but you do it every day
so i would look out into the the rest of
afghanistan at that opportunity
otherwise it was just like your walls
what did it look like is it beautiful
just the full landscape
or is it where i was there was mountains
in the distance
it was just very sandy very flat
and there was a couple small compounds
on the outside it wasn't a lot to look
at
there was a long road that you knew that
got hit all the time
there wasn't a lot to look at
such a strange place to be the center of
superpowers
over the decades it really is
like and and the fact that the populace
the civilians are almost completely
clueless to the full history of things
in terms of globally the geopolitics of
it all yeah well if you look at the
location of it right on a map it makes
more sense right you can wrap your brain
around it
but i met plenty of people who had never
even seen a picture of themselves when i
was in that country so i mean how much
more are they going to understand if
they don't know what even exists outside
you tell a small story of taking a
picture of a girl and showing it to her
an afghani girl yeah
we were i was with the british at that
time
and we were on that operation that gets
highlighted quite a bit
and uh we had stopped and we the icom
radios were pinging and icon radios are
a radio that
we have an interpreter on
that
the taliban basically we can hear what
they're saying it's their coms it's us
tapped in
when it's really clear
they're close when it's scatty and
it's they're far enough away normally
you know they're not planning an attack
although you never know really
and we
we were going door-to-door
kind of like what they're doing now
and we were pulling people out of their
houses and we knew there were there was
people in there that were active taliban
and we knew the icons were pinging when
we got in there they had hidden all the
women and kids and locked them inside
the house
because often
nowadays women the women they would hide
things on them that they shouldn't have
because no one would be ever there to
search them because there isn't a lot of
women on the front lines
but i got borrowed to go specifically
search women and children so they had me
and one of the little girls kind of
snuck out and was kind of sitting near
me and i was eating something and i had
like these little these little candies
they're called little sweeties the
british have them in the ration packs i
don't know they're good though and she
saw me eating them and so i gave them to
her
and then her brother came over and
slapped her upside the head and took him
from her so then i just went over and
slapped him upside the head and just
pointed my gun at her while she ate them
all yeah because i was like
no
yeah like you can have these i'm gonna
stand here and make sure you do
and i remember asking can i take a
picture with her i asked the trip can
you ask her can i take a picture with
her
um
and she was very confused and when you
look at the photo you see her face she's
very stunned she's very stunned and it
was a wasn't my camera it was my
officer's camera it was a hot pink like
fluorescent pink camera so i pulled this
like huge pink thing and i'm like
let's take a picture like
and so she stood there and took a
picture but then she grabbed the camera
because i flipped it and showed it to
her and her eyes got huge and she
grabbed it she ran inside
and they're like oh that's gone forever
like that's it's over for you
and then she came out and she kind of
snuck out
and i went in and grabbed it and the mom
lifted up her burger and was showing me
that she like shaved her legs
to be more western
and i was just
at that moment
i don't know that
i could have realized how much that
moment affected me
how much of how much that moment would
affect me later on in my life
until
it's been later on in my life
yeah there's little like glimmers like
that in uh in parts of the world that
are basically you're taking away
everything from the populace like
freedoms and and so on and when they um
when you see that glimmer of humanity
like yeah
shaved legs or or or like using
technology for the first time
it's magic or like food being presented
with certain kinds of foods that you've
never tried i mean right you want to see
true like joy of discovery is you bring
basically the american supermarket
anything from it to most parts of the
world and they
i just i mean i remember even i mean we
weren't like in poverty in russia just
poor but just the supermarket was full
of joy i thought i could just die happy
in an american supermarket when i first
saw it and how old were you when you
came here 13.
did you speak english
yeah not well i thought
i was i never was good at languages so i
it was very much like why would i need
to learn another language okay it was
that attitude it was very like doesn't i
don't know
well no i think culturally in
not in america but everywhere else in
the world it's constantly kind of seen
it's a good thing to do to learn other
languages because especially english
because it's like that's the language of
the world right and i i just thought
like um
i don't need english to discover the
beauty of the world like what this
doesn't like i enjoy life i enjoy soccer
i enjoy
i mean i don't remember what else i
enjoyed in life but math like why do i
need english for this so that kind of
attitude got me in a lot of trouble when
i came here because i i couldn't
reluctant
yeah but also just couldn't speak well
and when you move 13 years old as middle
school
you get made fun of a lot you get
bullied and all those kinds of things
which in retrospect is a very positive
thing because it
makes you harder
i thought being russian would make be
like hard enough
no well me everyone is different i mean
the part of the russian thing is uh it's
kind of you know i'm joking because
if you know me
i admire being hard i admire
fighting and these kinds of things right
these um what would you call them
struggle in all of its forms martial
arts wrestling all those kinds of things
but i'm all ultimately like i'm so much
about love like i'm clearly sensitive to
the world in some weird genetic way
that
um
it was important for me to harden up
when i when i came here and i was in
love with people and it's like and
everybody's being mean to me and it's
like what
that it's like it's a little like
like slap like oh okay
like
it's not like life is not often fair and
then that's when for me personally
everybody has has different journeys of
hardship that are much much more
difficult like your story is much more
difficult
uh
is you know i started to read a lot it's
like something happens some kind of
challenge where you start to think about
the world start to think about yourself
that that can ultimately create really
interesting minds it can break some
people it can create interesting minds
and
uh to be weeded out i thought we talked
and then they it's
about this yeah the strong will survive
the week will die off
yeah
now you're talking uh russian to me i'm
not speaking russian i'm just giving
solid life advice just be harder and
then everyone will be fine
uh yeah this is your inner david goggins
coming out real quick here okay
the fob yeah and then i was just
explaining to you that
the way it is run you're gonna love this
when we walked up to those tents for the
first time
the people that were there before us
left us a noose
i have a photo of it
like it's a
like hanging from the tent like at the
front of the tent like welcome
so you were also mentioning like the the
dark humor of it it was is it basically
a funny joke correct yeah it was funny
at first that's pretty funny
it was funny during the time
now when i look back at it i was like
come on and
that was a poo
i mean i get it because they had already
been there and like so i
afterwards i can see how it's funny um
now with like the suicide epidemic in
the veteran community now i'm like
i don't post that photo really so
doesn't that dark humor still somehow
help even when you're considering
suicide doesn't it some of it somehow
somehow yeah it's like you're not hiding
it
it's it's like humor is one of the way
to reveal
reveal the reality of abuse of suffering
if you look at there's this photo that
generates around right around suicide
prevention month which is september
and it's always like a photo of like
robin williams and bourdain and all of
these other individuals who were
comedians who all took their lives and
they're all smiling
and they're like this is the face of
depression
there's a way our brains work where
humor
is a necessary part of survival whether
it's used for joyous things or it's used
for
ways to cope through life for me the
military humor was one of the things
that helped get me through
and it still does to this day frankly
because humor
humor makes some of the horrific things
i say not seem so horrific
and people can
digest it rather than being like you
need to be locked up somewhere
yeah that's why i mean one one of the
aspects of russian humor there's a
darkness to it because
um
through it reverberates all the
the millions of people who died right it
seems like the only way to make sense of
it is to joke about it i i still love it
because if you don't it'll break you
yeah something like that or also
humor is just seems to be the highest
form of
us humans in the human experience it
just seems
it seems to somehow uh accumulate the
full thing the absurdity of it the
unfairness of it the because like
ultimately all the suffering is like
it's all just apes
fighting for power and love
and somehow torturing each other in the
process
hello podcast listener lex here
quick intermission to say that some of
the names in the following story have
been silenced out to protect their
privacy
the
story of
and
witnessing
i think your first somebody you met
somebody you saw somebody you began to
be close with
his
life
him dying
can you tell the story
sure
that's uh no problem i will tell you
that i have i'm gonna leave some of the
names out of the people because uh
they have reached out and asked that i
do such
i've also been informed of other things
i forgot that happened during the thing
that were way worse than i thought so
i'll i'll try to uh add those in as
because that's new information to me
because my brain has blocked it out but
i've been
i've been told which is good because
it's better detail um so we were
we were doing a movement that morning
and we were going from
uh compound to compound
i was never told what we were doing
i knew what my job was i didn't know the
operational overview i didn't i didn't
know
who we were looking for i wasn't there
for that my job was specifically to look
after the women and children and to
provide support if need be
and when you have
certain people so the i.e the bomb dog
handler and the bomb dog and then you
have the medics and then you have like a
female searcher
that there's only one of those in each
unit or if if there's even one in each
unit i got passed between units so that
they could have access to me for for
both
and we were kind of sitting
and we were waiting for the all clear to
move and at that time
the
the compound
wall i was leaning up against i had my
back up against
i wasn't facing the direct direction
where
actually blew up i was
had my back to it and i had happened to
turn and look to the left and on the
right hand side
across the road of where we were leaned
up against was another compound two
stories high people inside a sniper on
the roof
and a spotter
there was a handful of us on this wall
and in front of me
there was a road
the road went straight
that compound's here there's another
road here on the right-hand side in
front of it and then this road went
along here and this was a wide open
space just a
huge we hate those you hate those
because it's too much space it's too
easy it's like
fish in a barrel you don't want to be in
that field
um
because there's too much
line of sight line of sight could be
ieds it could be it could be it could be
anything
and so
uh
when i was leaning up against the wall
we'd send a couple people ahead to go
and clear the road so that we could all
go along it and then clear the gray pup
off to the left hand side
we are doing that because
they use those locations to put ieds so
that when you're going to search it
it's just it's a better chance of you
blowing into a million pieces
essentially why they love that
put bombs in small places send people
into small places small places go boom
they paint the walls
so we were just kind of sitting and
waiting
and then
i turned happened to turn i was looking
in that direction and i heard the ground
shake before i even realized what i was
seeing with my own eyes
the ground shook
and
i saw
a big piece of a body
i think it was the torso
just kind of
fly through the air
and land into the field and as soon as
that happened all hell broke loose
it was like the
they were sitting and watching and
waiting and they do that and i say they
mean the taliban they do that they they
love that because then they can record
it for propaganda and they can use it
against us and they just love being able
to take take our people out
and we had the interpreter sitting
beside me
and he had the icon radio on
and as soon as the blast went off i
heard just the scream
i heard it
and i knew what that meant but i
couldn't
i didn't understand what was about to
happen
i couldn't
i couldn't wrap my brain around what was
about to happen because
i had never been outside the wire
and
people are like people say to me now
they're like
no there's no way that shit's true
there's no way that she was involved in
that and then that and then and that and
then in that well let me explain
i was one person
i was being passed around to units
i was with a ton of different people
i had no comms
and i was just being told where to go
um
and i just happened to be like a shit
hit the fan magnet it felt like
and then i found out later it was not
just me it was
all of us were getting it
so that made me feel better because then
i was like well that i have a lot of
survivors guilt that's like a thing
that's still stuck with me i've worked
through a lot of shit but survivor's
guilt that's a big one for me certain
food is a big one for me
um
[Music]
yeah uh skin on food
so like chicken with skin on it
oh just because of the biology of death
just
well when you hold people's bodies and
your hands with no gloves on
you know what that feels like
when you touch raw meat again it's the
same thing that's what that feels like
when when there's a dying or dead body
well my friend was blown into a million
pieces so i just had pieces of him
so there was no
there was no differentiator of like this
was his thigh or this was his torso or
there was like
there was none of that
there was only one instance with the
boot but um
but i i what i i
at that point we had been in some fire
fights and we had been taking some
rounds but it was more like
take around we you know get hit and then
we duck into a compound we would set up
and then we'd be firing i wasn't i
wasn't really involved in a lot of the
firefights until after this after that
the rest of the week i was like
i was angry and i wanted them all to go
and i wanted to be in every position to
take them out myself so i put myself in
every position
so i made sure i was on the roof i made
sure i was there i made sure if hey you
need something i'll fucking run it i
don't care if i die anymore because as
soon as that happened my light switch
went off
it didn't matter anymore to me can you
go through what happens yeah
you were hearing these
screams yeah so
the
id went off
and what had happened was they put an
ied inside of a grape hut and the gray
putt has rectangular wall um rectangular
holes in the wall
and there's just like one door and it's
this tall mud hut with just all these
like holes in it
and they had put an ied underneath a
pile of sticks
and had a
a metal detector the brits carry them
i've never seen i think other countries
have them but i've only ever seen them
use it
and that's how we were kind of detecting
if there was an id we must have hid it
the sticks or something and set it off
and it just it was over he there's no
way he felt anything and then there was
another guy at the door
bent down on one knee
and he was facing and kind of watching
for
and then the blast hit him on this side
and so it took him out and pulled his
kid off pulled his helmet pulled
everything off fucked him all up
big time this is one ied yeah
but it was in a contained area
and he was in the doorway
up and out can you explain what an ied
is and how does it work
i can do my best uh they're improvised
explosive devices they can be used
pretty much out of anything to make
anything so um
garbage when we got to afghanistan they
did the id meeting with us they're like
these are what we're finding that they
would show us diffused ieds so they
would see those big blue drums filled
with gasoline buried in the ground you
would see a wire it would go to a
pressure plate you hit the pressure
plate that would hit that and it would
go
you would see ieds
some of them were ridiculous the inju in
the uh the engineering that went into
some of these was hilarious because they
were thinking
they were thinking to use everything
they could there was a cigarette pack
they had used they lined the inside with
tin foil
and when you stepped on the tin foil it
had a piece of wire it was enough of a
spark to set off a line of batteries
that we had thrown out that were all
dead when you fuse them all together
there was enough juice to make it go
then they would attach that to like like
phosphorus or gasoline or whatever they
could that would make a big boom
they would use um
yeah that's why you never kick garbage
on the ground you'll never see me kick
something on the ground you'll see me
walk around it always if i ever see a
pile of rocks or something that looks
like it shouldn't be there i won't walk
near it
even now because
they use that pile of rocks to remind
people there's something there we don't
know what that means but we know that
something's there and very often they
would use anything garbage
wires
we were very we had to burn everything
for a reason
it's so terrifying to not
for the source of death to be
like little parts of the environment and
then people
that don't look like that they're not
dressed as soldiers
like civilians and like regular because
then you when you have to come back or
even there is you're just surrounded by
danger and then you distrust everything
essentially that's the problem and
that's why you have such ptsd issues
with the soldiers we have now
because you're in the environment in
which
it's very similar
so so there's this one ied so this one
ied i i still don't know what it was um
went off
my body flew
the guy at the door
um
he kicked out he was all broken and
bleeding and a mess um
at that point the radio started going
crazy like i could hear the guys yelling
and screaming trying to figure it out
and then you could hear the numbers
being called
k.i.a number number number number
i don't know anybody's service number i
i don't know what's going on next you
know mortar rounds start like coming
down
and like
live fire starts happening and i'm like
holy fuck things are popping off
and i remember
just looking at him being like we need
to go we need to go now and i just got
this like like i was i was like we're
going and they're like hold on burns and
i'm like we're fucking going like i
wasn't dealing with it well and they're
like all right all right go go go go go
go so we went
and we um
and i
helped out
with that other individual kind of held
him down
started doing medic work on him and he
just kept saying where's where's where's
he was in such a state of shock i've
never seen somebody's eyeball so big in
my life she's like where's where's
where's
the guy he's good buddy he's good he's
good picture like a super thick scottish
accent though because these guys were
just
oh and when they talk fast it's even
worse
and then so i ran over and we we jumped
down into the ditch along the side of
the road because the road hadn't been
cleared
and we're running through
these tall
they look like cannabis plants but
they're not but it there's it's just
very thick bush and i felt like i was
running in slow motion so if you picture
one of your video games where like the
tunnel vision and you're just you can
hear your breathing it's
like that and you're running and you
can't move fast enough and you're like
trying to get there
and we hit the road
and the rounds are coming down and
mortars are coming down
and they're like okay on three run so we
run on three and we run into the
compound i mean into the great putt
and i remember looking around and very
seriously going where is he
just genuinely asking i think it was
been
messaging me he's been incredible he's
one of the best soldiers i've ever
served with
he was a higher up so he was running
part of this he he's messaged me and he
was giving me some information and um
he's like i was in there with you
and he goes i remember because you
handed me the boot
and because i walked over and i all the
rounds were like we were being shot at
mortars were coming down but it was this
slow motion and i remember walking over
to the hole in the ground
and seeing his boot in the ground
but it was
his leg was still hanging like uh but
just below his knee was still in it
but the boot was perfectly laced up
like the boot was fine
and i just
i held it and i turned and i looked at
the guys and i was like we could reuse
the boot
no that wasn't even
what is what is that was that
was that actually an intelligent attempt
at humor
or was it some kind of deeply lost like
you were completely just lost i think my
brain broke
i think my that's the moment i call my
light switch went off
did you understand that he was dead at
that point like intellectually you were
just something is it just broke
no emotion like it just broke it just
shattered
it shattered
i felt it happen
i felt
i didn't feel
i didn't feel anything
it just
broke
and at that moment
because later there's some anger almost
at that moment none of that
i couldn't comprehend what happened i
knew he wasn't there anymore because
they looked at me and said what's here
is here
start grabbing pieces we need to fucking
move
and so um
i handed the boot over they took it and
then i started just grabbing anything
out of the walls because those little
rectangulars just had flesh hanging from
it
and i didn't have my gloves on um
suddenly used them to search and um so
you want to bring
everything back
this is what even if they're dead do you
want to save
save those you served with
yeah because they deserve that they
don't deserve to have a piece of them
drugged behind a truck for propaganda
it's not it's not fair what are the
others i mean was there just a focus on
mission or was there a panic no panic
with these guys these guys are the most
switched on motherfuckers i've ever seen
in my life
they
we started grabbing and
reminding me he said you know you uh
that's how he goes when people say
that's the worst part of your day that
wasn't even the worst part of the day do
you remember when you handed me the bag
of intestines
no
no i do though thank you for that
so there's parts you don't even they're
just not they don't register
because i had some people contact me and
be like you didn't tell it right
and war is subjective and war is from
your perspective and war is
messy and horrific and war is
graphic and
violent and
painful
your brain remembers what it wants to
remember and your brain allows you to
remember what it allows you to remember
and there's reasons that you don't
remember everything
and so
we were getting
we were really getting hit we were
getting it was bad
and some of the guys machine gunners had
come up to cover fire
and i know
uh
we were calling in for air support
to come pick up the guys uh because they
had to go
and we
we just collected everything we could
but i did remember screaming like we
didn't get them all we didn't get them
all there's no way we got them all we
did not fucking get them all and i
remember one of the guys looking at me
like we got him we got him i'm like we
didn't fucking get him we didn't get him
like no we got him and i couldn't say it
enough
and
so i grabbed as much as i could i i
i slung one of their weapons and it was
just a twisted heap and i had
his helmet helmet someone else's helmet
in my arm and then i had um
my weapon in front of me
and i was carrying it and then we we
piled everything we had onto a stretcher
those things are super fucking flimsy
anyway and there was a couple guys in
front of us and there was a couple
behind me and i was kind of in the
middle
and we we said okay we're just gonna
have to run we're gonna have to fucking
run the road we're gonna just have to
run it just chance it so we ran it and
that was the close well that was i guess
not the closest but it felt like it was
the closest i could hear the
the whiz
of the rounds going by me
it's a weird noise when they're coming
at you then when you're leave they're
leaving you
and
so they
that
slowed everything down for me and then
one of the guys accidentally dropped the
edge of the stretcher and everything
fell off into the ditch and then we had
to go back down and get it back up
and so we kept running and we finally
got back into the compound that that
sniper was sitting off on the right-hand
side and we got all in there
and i know the
i think said there was two flights i
only thought there was one but
apparently there was two flights
so he went on one his body went on one
and then i think i think he said went on
the other
and um
and then they took off and then when
they leave though they reign held down
on anything they can see on the ground
and that is a beautiful sight because
they had mortar rounds coming down and
it just it was getting really really bad
and then
as soon as the blackhawks took off all
of a sudden it just stopped
and went quiet
like
deafening quiet
and we were sitting inside the compound
and i
one of the medics looked at me and you
could see and i still do it now and i'm
working on not doing it but i do it when
i get really overwhelmed
because i didn't have any gloves on
i had blood all over my hands and just
like body and stuff so he came over and
he just gave me like sanitizer and i
started rubbing rubbing
and so i rub i do this when i'm stressed
i'll rub my hands
um
and
i still can't
i still can't do
i i still can't eat food with skin on it
and i can't like like salmon and stuff
like i can't anything with skin i can't
touch it and like if i'm making meat at
home like for my husband and my son like
i have like meat gloves and then i have
like a fork and a knife and i'm like
cutting it like i never touch it i can't
touch it
so there's something almost like um
the texture of the biology of a human
flesh that just
that's at the level of that's the level
of your trauma
yeah and it's been i mean it's 2021 this
was an 09
and i've worked on this like and i mean
i i've been in like treatment
religiously
just to be able to keep me alive for
this this decade and so it's not like
it's like oh i've never you never tried
to get better it's like i never used to
leave my house i used to call people
that look like that horrific names in
public
i used to want to kill people on a
regular basis i'm a fairly happy
individual now
what about
so you're you're talking about sort of
skin
and
parts and
but there's also just the fact that
we're mortal
and there's somebody
close to you
who dies do you watch walk up and then
never come back out again yeah it's like
you're facing mortality in a very real
way and if and uh
in a way that's not the same as somebody
dying from cancer in the hospital
although
it has echoes of that because that's
also absurd and
like
it doesn't feel like there's justice to
it in any kind of way but it's so sudden
like have you been able to um
make sense of that
of your feelings about it like how do
you feel about it or or is everything
just shrouded in this like
trauma
that you're not able to just um
feel for the loss of a human being like
mourn the loss of a human being
i think i had
when he when
i realized he wasn't there
when i realized that he um that was
the i that was what was left of him i
found out afterwards there was other
parts that were outside and
and went back i think i think he said
went back and they got they end up
getting the rest of him so that made me
happy because i just found this out this
week
uh
so that that mean so that means you have
a feeling like
you still feel like parts of them were
left behind yeah
on the ramp ceremony
when i lost my mind literally i
i lost my mind
and i was screaming
that he wasn't all in there i'm happy
now knowing that he was
but i held on to that for ten years
yeah this um
yeah the sandbags like like it's
the bulk
of the weight
is is not from human flesh
yeah he was a young kid too
it was i think it was his first
deployment as well like he was
he was a young kid
and
he was just
just going to clear the road for the
rest of us right like not like you know
you're in war and you know that you're
outside the wire and you know things
could happen
you understand that to the extent you
can understand that
when it's happening it's something very
different
also maybe you can correct me but um
there's something much more like brutal
about an ied
it's very vicious
versus like a bullet
because a bullet you still like
watching somebody close to you die from
a bullet you still get
the basic humanity
like so ied basically converted a human
being into sort of parts by biological
parts
a cheese crater yeah
versus yeah i mean i don't
that's that's tough
that's tough because it's like
um
because it's hard for you to remember
them as a human
you remember them as parts for me
that's how i remember him i would like
to i've i have a picture that i post
every year about them
i see that
but i
don't
put two and two to get does that make
sense yeah no it does
so i even i listening to your story and
you know um
thank you for sharing it first of all
but
uh it's not my it's
well i'm just the one to tell it i was
just involved one one set of eyes on
this particular
human being
um but even i get angry
i can't tell if it's exhaustion or anger
i'm sorry i look always exhausted oh
that's okay you're you're into robotics
isn't that like your guys's thing
you guys are just always working
i think
because i feel so much for the world i
just don't do we were talking about
resting bitch face
earlier i just don't feel the need to
maintain um all the effort of the
musculature for presenting myself to you
visually exhausting it's exhausting so i
just focus on the feeling no hey and
then let the face show whatever the hell
it shows fair enough okay
was there anger was there hate yes
can you just talk to your feelings of
what you remember yeah so
after that operation with the british i
went back to the canadians
and i didn't go back as even remotely
close to who i was when i left
and
that was really troublesome for a lot of
people around me
because the level of anger and hate that
came out of me
was palpable when i just walked by
um
i got shockingly quiet
and you understand how
you're learning that'd be terrified if
you were quiet
and i don't know if hate and
anger do
that justice i don't know another word
but
i don't think those two words do it
justice to the extent that i was feeling
like
i got to a point when i got attacked by
a woman
um with some scissors like the i the
idea crossed my mind like i could boot
stomp her to death and not feel anything
about it in front of her all of her
family and her kids
was it more like just not recognizing
the basic humanity or was it legit
hatred no it was legit hatred but also
i no longer saw those people as humans
yeah it took one event and when that
happened the rest of the operation that
was echoed in my in the way i was to
those people but to what level can you
see
those people as human
so this is where well like this is where
like jocko shut down um
i still think i'm right
there's a dire straight song called uh
brothers in arms
and um actually
anyway we're fools to make war on our
brothers and arms and i brought that up
to jocko because it's humans on both
sides
correct
but he said
not
in iraq
like to him he's like no that's the
enemy these are people who use the
civilians they rape they torture they
they'll do anything
and they put evil into the world and
then it's like
so there there stood on at that moment
like the these two
were humans and it's politicians waging
war and it's
it's kids on both sides but then jack
was like
no
he's not wrong so
which can you carry both things with you
as a soldier
i think when i was a soldier i could
only carry one thing with me
i think my perspective has changed
drastically
but
not
because i've lost the reality that they
are the enemy
but i've
i've gained my humanity back again
and that's what i lost when i was there
i lost all humanity i lost all hope for
humanity he's not wrong
when he says
the taliban or like he was in iraq but
for me
the taliban are evil
i still hold a spot
of hatred for them that could set this
building on fire you you don't
i don't know that anybody can fully
understand that when you watch
what they do to women
and do kids
and they do it in the name of god
they are the enemy they are
less than
they don't exist they're barely worth
the bullets we put into them
but then because they use civilians
dicey so like then everybody
uh it becomes the enemy and how are you
supposed to make sense of that like what
um
but here lex you can't make sense of it
this is why they've done a really good
job of blending into the civilian
population they've done it intentionally
they've done it on purpose
so
they're brilliant this is why you guys
couldn't beat them this is why we
couldn't fucking beat them
they use their people
so effectively they have no shame in
that they have no issue with that they
take
no qualms with wiping a kid off the face
of the earth if it means they can get
close enough to a soldier to throw a
fucking bomb into their tank
this is why they're affected how do you
beat them then is this there's no
winning that you just basically do
policeman type work or you do your best
i mean that's one way
so the other
is uh you come from the artillery
background a fucking hellfire missile
yeah the whole place off the face there
you can't beat radicalism like that
right now the problem is is we've
we've let it go unchecked we had it
kind of in check for 20 years we just
shot ourselves in the foot the chest and
the face
so the the problem
with uh force
is it creates long-term hate
because
young kids in propaganda and
like propaganda works so you you see
your father your brother died because of
a bomb
it's very easy to convince that person
that they died because of evil americans
and tell whatever story you want about
america or canada russia that's the
biggest problem so it seems like there
got to be better solutions because um i
mean i talk about love but
it's it's honestly
basically uh
figuring out sneaky ways of empowering
women of educating people of like
yes and like and not in a
not a cheesy way but not realistic like
like in the same level of like mass
warfare but with love so you're talking
about darpa budgets dod budgets
but like do that where you educate and
empower women
by force
they want to learn right i mean you're
not like forcing anybody you're setting
them free that's exactly it like combat
flip-flops does this they do this they
give literacy they teach girls to read
nothing else to read because as soon as
you can read you know what that happened
you know what happens then what's combat
flip-flops that's the scarf right there
that's made in afghanistan
so when you buy something from them the
proceeds go to literacy in afghanistan
for girls they've given literacy to 800
girls over there
yeah they're really cool uh griff owns
the one he was army ranger and his buddy
but lee i think is his name
they were on shark tank a long time ago
but they um they do shoes and
i think they're called schmongs chamongs
i don't know how to say it properly
built in afghanistan yes and then the
proceeds go back there
they do
great work for literacy and you know as
well as anyone if you can teach someone
to read good color
dark like your soul x
matches you on the inside just on the
inside all right the outside is just the
it's just the suit
i feel like you think that's your suit
of armor but i feel like it's it's
there
all right i think there is room if you
teach
education the problem is
we've taken a massive step backwards
i know that the taliban have just
instituted uh this week honor killings
will be back stonings are back
and um
uh dismemberment as well holly mckay is
the reporter that's been reporting that
from the ground she's still there
the way to pull people in my opinion out
of something like that is through
education
well we just took
all of that away
which is pretty horrific in my opinion
because
you've taught over 20 years
you're perfectly right lex when you say
that
hate and violence won't work it won't
because
you see dad get killed on the
battlefield well that 14 year old little
boy is going to pick up an ak-47 and go
avenge dad's death that's just the way
it's going to be well we think about it
you were there for 20 years there's a
couple of generations in there there's
another generation that's either grown
up in this or has seen enough of this
so they're always going to be a subset
that think that we're the enemy
and fair we haven't done always the
greatest things
but the one thing that we have done that
i did participate in was
giving literacy giving girls an
opportunity letting them know that you
aren't second-class citizens
you can do things too and that's why
we have to look at war differently
there's times for violence oh ho ho
there is time for violence and there is
time for
missiles and there is time for detainees
and there's times for bag and tags and
double taps of the fucking face there's
times for all of that
but there needs to be more time
to educate the problem is you can't
educate if you're in a country where
their culture doesn't believe in that
you're fighting so many different
things that you
it's an almost an impossible situation
when you look at the 20 years in
afghanistan and we just pulled out
there's a sudden pull out of troops
what do you think about those 20 years
uh well let me ask
a hard question which is uh was it worth
it
going into afghanistan
and you're sort of you're one person my
limited capacity you have experienced
specific set of extremely difficult
things
you've met a lot of humans
you understand certain aspects of the
way this war is carried out but if you
zoomed out
at the big story like
you like history too when you think of
the history 100 years from now we look
at uh the invasion of afghanistan i
don't even think you need to go far that
back to know that it was
we went in on false pretenses
we did we that's not that's not a good
start
what's that saying future behavior is um
a good was it past behavior is a good
indicator of future behavior right
so
i struggle with that because
when i first found out that the pull-up
was going to happen
i um
i got really angry
because my government skated the whole
situation because he
he's having a snap canada's having a
snap election it's happening on the 20th
so that was
beautifully planned by my government to
hold no accountability
zero accountability
and um the media won't talk about it
they reached out to me to do an
interview about afghanistan and then i
told them what was going on after i
talked to my people that were on the
ground and then they canceled the
interview
when you say my government is america
any better at this that like it feels
like there's no accountability
no no the government no the american
government
is a is
a dumpster fire i'm not saying i'm not
saying that but what i am saying is
at least
they sent people to pull people
or pull some people
we sent no one
to pull anyone
and i know for a fact because i helped
move a family i was fortunate enough to
be given an opportunity to help move a
high-value nine-person family out of
that country
that worked in the government that
worked in
prosecuting the taliban that were on the
top of the list i learned really quickly
the ins and outs of things and i'm
really disgusted by it i learned that
canada had
the one email address that all canadian
afghani or visa holders were supposed to
email ottawa put two people on that
email address
that's confirmed
canada put no more than 70 people on the
ground for that pull out and they were
not allowed to leave the airport and
they left well before the pull-out date
they left on the thursday before the
tuesday that was the 31st
there were high value canadian visa
holders that are still in that country
that are on the top of the kill list
canada's not doing anything about it
um
i'm disgusted in the way my government
has acted because number one
there's an active lawsuit with veterans
against the supreme court of canada
right now
um we are leaving our vets and our
canadians
stranded over there and we are leaving
the vets that have been maimed by this
war in canada
um
they're turned down for everything i've
been turned down for hearing loss
they're saying it's not military related
i they have pis follow me it's this is
normal behavior
there's a veteran named brock who was
told
by trudeau in a meeting that after he
lost his leg he was just trying to get a
new a new prosthetic because it was just
killing him
trudeau stood up in a meeting and said
you're just asking for too much
less than six months later he gave 10.4
million dollars to an afghan terrorist
that was in the canadian prison system
he won
and got 10.4 of our million taxpayer
dollars so i don't know that american
government's any better but what i do
know
is that the absolute
fucking machines of human beings that
stepped outside of the chain of command
to pull my family out for me
i know they were there the british that
stayed on the ground that i could
contact to literally confirm my
biometric data and passports to get that
family moved they weren't there that
family would still be there
that three-year-old that got the shit
kicked out of him by the taliban that i
was trying to ex-fill canada left him
what what is it about
politicians and governments not
willing to um
do their job
well
doing
not willing to do that was a big part of
the job which is like
you send
people to war
these are heroes
and then you should spend most of the
time
repaying the debts
to those right well what is it about why
can't we
because we're disposable numbers
and we hire them out of high school when
they're stupid enough to understand what
they're going to get themselves into
and then we blame it on themselves for
making that decision by volunteering
yeah but i mean that that doesn't this
still doesn't make sense so it's a
cop-out i mean trudeau
would i feel like he is a good human
being that wants to do good for i mean i
tend to i want to believe that leaders
want to do good by the heroes of this
world
and
it doesn't like i i don't understand the
system of delusion you have to live in
to not understand who the heroes are
like i refuse to believe trudeau is
somehow a bad person you haven't met him
though i don't actually i'm speaking
about trudeau without
knowing
but i mean in general think that way
about leaders i just think they surround
themselves by people who delude them who
like they're yes people who yes people
that lead them into a kind of reality
that uh becomes detached from actual
reality and so they they misunderstand
the priorities of this world they think
maybe some kind of special interest
they focus on that versus like the
humans
if you look back was there a way we
could have done something
uh better in afghanistan assuming we do
the invasion so is it ultimately about
taking care of the veterans
um
like
investing more money in the um
education
of women
and liberating
people who are uh suffering injustice in
those parts of the world like what
what's the better way to do it and one
other aspect is
on the u.s side paid over six trillion
dollars for them for the wars in the
middle east since 9 11. so the financial
side as well is there something you can
comment on
things we could have done better
that's a loaded question because you're
talking to someone who had no hand in
what happened other than do this and do
that so i can go from my perspective
which is there was probably plenty of
things that we could have been doing
better
um i think there was a lack of
leadership from the get-go
i think
the preparation that the canadian
military gave me was nowhere sufficient
for
a deployment of that level
mind you things happened they didn't
realize things would happen but yet they
happen
with little to absolutely no cultural
idea was that i was walking into
um
like when the man one male in the family
grabbed the back of my vest because my
hair was tucked in he thought it was a
man going into a room with a bunch of
women i couldn't understand why he was
attacking me there was no real breakdown
of this is what you're going into this
is the culture this is why they do what
they do this is how they do it
um this is how you should handle a
situation like that there was
none of that and something i speak about
frequently and i think it's important to
acknowledge is
when you're doing any of that training
we are giving none of our soldiers
proper mental health training
tools in that fucking toolbox or ways or
things to look for
on their body because we've created a
system and a problem where
if you say that you're ill or that
you're struggling with ptsd you're done
no one's going to say that they're going
to keep struggling with it and that's
when you get loose cannons when you get
problems happen so you get fractures
start to happen
in leadership
and that's being seen and has been seen
now for a while so in terms of what we
could have done
say for
a better um
a better way to go into the country a
better way to help the country
i can't speak to that as much as i wish
i could
because i don't know that i would have
all the answers um what about withdrawal
oh my god
that's a cult
do you think grab more gradual well you
think it's you think it's better to
maintain
presence there for
indefinitely like i don't know about
that
but i do know
we have bases we i say weeks i serve
with them americans have bases in japan
americans have bases in korea americans
have bases in germany there's reasons
there's bases everywhere there's a smart
there there's an intellectual way to
look at this you want to be able to have
eyes and ears you can't have eyes and
ears when you do things like you just
did
the way that we pulled out of that
country that's right the way that i hate
saying american british because it puts
like a blame on them i say we because
i'm a soldier i
i'm a nato soldier
the way we pulled out of that country
my five-year-old could have done it
better
he could have said mommy why are we not
keeping that bagram base mommy why are
we not keeping that base just until we
get everyone else that we need why are
we going to a civilian airport that we
don't control that we don't understand
mommy why are we doing this when there's
only one road to it
my five-year-old would have that
conversation with me
it was so poorly done
it was so poorly executed and no fault
of the soldiers on the ground on their
own my god i can tell you there's
operators i just call him a i don't say
who he is because he's told me not to
there's a guy named a and there's
another guy named r and there's a few
other named d
and these guys
they gave
everything to try to pull my family when
no one else would pull my family for me
they just got me on the phone and said i
don't know who the fuck you're talking
to i don't know how many people you're
trying to get a hold of here but you've
got everyone looking for your family six
i've gone to everyone i know i've done
stuff on instagram i've got a contact
the contact called me i called them i
got i was handling this family
and when they call you and say we can't
go back to the gate my three-year-old
just got beat up by the taliban and they
say what do we do now
i'm in vancouver
why am i being left to deal with this
why is the civilian and ex-military
population being left to deal with this
why was this not thought out we knew
this was coming
we knew the time frame
yeah i ultimately blame it it almost
starts at the top oh is it the
leadership sorry this is the civilian
leadership
uh i don't i think probably the generals
know the right thing to do here um even
if they're sometimes overzealous in
terms of being wanting to increase
i think the great generals understand
what's needed and then it takes great
leadership on the civilian side to
listen to the generals and understand
that war is not just about like it's not
binary yeah and it's not about the
invasion and saying mission accomplished
you know like it's it's not about the pr
it's about
um like the full complexity of
geopolitics can i ask you this can ask
me whatever you want
i'm looking at a book that you gave me
do the fucking work it's very motivating
good fucking design advice
that's their company called good fucking
design advice
that's great i know they're great
website because good gfda okay so the f
is the f is uh for friendship something
like that they are a design company
they've worked with apple and nike and
this is their book it's been published
by harpercollins and it is really just
uh
it's an incredible they're an incredible
company they
they're they're artistically like
they're a design company so you can see
that um you can see it's a design
company oh yeah they signed it for you
and uh the pages are beautiful but it's
they have a saying and then a paragraph
about each saying
get fucking started obstacles are
fucking opportunities fail fail and
fucking fail again right ask for fucking
help
show some fucking passion
finish the fucking job that's right so
we should send that to biden so i um she
said that i didn't say it lex said it
i didn't say it lex said it
i'll say it i should also send it to
trudeau as well so but i mean he
probably won't know how to read it he
just taught drama instead so i'll send
it to the previous four presidents how
about that that's fine we can also send
it to them too because they're all just
as much at fault so and they most of
them have all the same last names but
okay
let me tell you about them quickly
because we did a mug with them and i was
really excited about it not because it
was a mug i'm a mug person but
you are that's your bug obsessed i'm
obsessive about my mugs what's your
favorite mug currently it's mine right
now the one that i have with them okay
the gm
what does it say is it can i do you want
me to read what it says on yeah please
okay because i'm really happy about it
because
we created this with them
with gfda i found out about them because
my husband's office atlas neck brace he
had his very first office he had one of
their prints done and it was their
original like do the fucking work
and i was really excited about them once
i found out because i'm like well
uh fuck is my middle name and
i want to make sure that i am
going to whoever i work with i want to
make sure that i'm working with people
that i
believe in that i believe what they
stand for
and i just think they're brilliant so i
got on the phone with them
and i said hi i would like you to
sponsor my podcast
and they said cool what's your podcast
and i was like it's called brass
immunity uh podcast and i want to work
with you guys somewhere and they're like
okay so like what are you thinking and i
said you know i'm i'm looking to do
i would love one day to do something
with you i don't know what it would be
but i would like it to be something and
they said you know we do like we have
this book but we also have like shirts
and mugs with our sayings on them and
prints and so i was thinking to myself i
was like well if i just did like a mug
with them well then i could you know
that could work for what my company does
which is it's a jewelry company and
sunglass company but it could be like an
add-on kind of deal mm-hmm these guests
are really good designers
yeah i i knew you would like us why
products i'm like certain people would
appreciate this
and so my whole thing
my my like hashtag is work hard
help harder
and that's the whole concept of what i
do now and so we did a mug and it's
called fucking help somebody that's
their like first tag and then the rest
is
kindness is a wealth that increases at
it is given as it is given away
what you get in return isn't passed
between hands but felt between hearts
it's precisely because you've been at
the bottom
that you can raise others up it's
because
you've so i'm reading a photo here
you've been lost in the dark you can
lead others to the light it's because
you fought with yourself that you can
bring peace to someone else
you now have the strength because you've
once struggled the best you have
to come the best you have to come from
the fucking worst you've had to take
so it's this is the mug there
and we're sold out of them we just got
it what does it say fucking help fucking
help somebody fucking help somebody and
so
we did they were so gracious enough to
sit with me and be like what do you want
the copy to be like and i said
what do you think i want it to be like
what would you if you could write one
for me would it be and they're like it's
gonna be around lifting people up and i
was like okay cool and they're like do
you want fuck in the title and i was
like every other word if we can have it
and they said we'll just do once and i
was like okay compromise and so we came
up with that copy and we put it on a mug
and we're gonna be doing a shirt with
them but the the whole thing to me was
that that embodied
what i stand for now and the healing
i've gotten to now and the point i've
gotten to now in my life
because
that fucking sand pit almost broke me
like
off the face of the earth broke me
first of all can we go through the full
journey of that in terms of your
psychological development
who were you
before
who were you after can you think about
that like what was your
yeah if you had to put a brain on the
table before and after and try to
analyze it well they both have cte so
we know that they're both bruised and
gray matter is a little dicey on them
yeah um
and it may sound the same and it's it's
not so i'll try to explain it to you
before that
don't you laugh because i can i know
it's coming
i i was
even louder even more obnoxious even
more outgoing i know it's hard to
believe
this is you humble and quiet right now
this is this is like this is you like
this is normal me now this is who i am
now and i love that but who i was before
was
you know
motocross taekwondo
tomboy uh i didn't know how to dress i
thought that if you just wore like the
same jeans and t-shirt all the time that
was like acceptable behavior as a woman
yeah um i wore skate shoes i went to a
catholic school that i refused to wear a
skirt at i wore pants i played hacky
sack i
was so into sports i cut and split wood
with my dad on weekends we heated our
house that way
um i would go in the transport i
i stayed out of trouble for the most
part but
i think i was a fairly good kid i was
pretty angry though for most of my
teenage life after my coach i lost my
way a little bit there
um i was just
crazier but happy
i don't know if i was happy i'm
realizing that now i think i was
i think anger overtook who i was and i
think that's why i was such an angry
individual towards my parents when i was
in high school so parents
was a little rough relationship with
parents i mean yeah i mean my dad was
gone a couple a couple weeks at a time
so my mom
stayed home mom had to handle me and my
brother who were both competitive
athletes at the time by herself
and when you come home and you have a
daughter that just calls you like a
bitch to your face because she can't
she's being bullied so bad that she
can't understand why
but also doesn't know how to fix it
but has no other outlet anymore to kind
of get rid of it
i was not nice i was a really mean
person i broke my mom i remember the day
she stopped yelling that's the day i
know i broke her i broke her did you
have a source of discipline in your life
like
what like maybe like where your dad
somebody who says you're being a bitch
like who would call me like yeah yeah oh
no no no my parents were incredible like
my dad came from like a family of like a
bajillion kids who lived in a farm with
no running water with like super
my dad was brash and abrupt
so like i've caught myself doing that
once in a while so like if i did one
thing wrong if he was just in a mood
i would know it
so we you weren't okay so that that
anger just took different forms it took
different forms but it mostly would be
directed at my mom got it because i know
she would take it right and that was who
i had and i i feel bad about it to the
day like i still
she listened to the jocko podcast and so
did my dad and my mom promised me she
would never read my book because there's
certain parts i just
my dad on my deployment when i called
him and told him some of the stuff he
started crying my dad doesn't cry and he
just said please never tell your mother
this
don't do that to your mom my mom like my
grandfather came from hungary
he escaped when the not um when the
nazis left when the soviets came in
he wasn't great
as a dad my mom went through a lot as a
kid
and
that was because her dad was in the war
that was because her dad didn't know any
better
and
she knew she couldn't be like that so
her way would yet be yelling
um
and then i hit about 16
and i wore her down i broke her
i shattered her ability to think that
she could
have any sort of relationship with me
you wouldn't want to have had a
relationship with me
but the the the funny thing is you've
rediscovered that now so she is she are
you guys close now yeah she's she's so
funny she's coming out to help out again
she comes out to help out um with jack
all the time and
um
my dad they're still they're still truck
drivers they're still on the road they
team drive they have their little dogs
and they go and they do their thing and
i've had that relationship now it's it's
it's still strenuous like i still when
i'm having a hard time she'll be the
person i'll take it out on because i
know she can take it even though i know
i shouldn't it's like she's my safe
space to be like
blah about everything and she'll just be
like well that's not nice i'm like well
you're not fuck it like i and i'll take
it out on she knows i don't mean it and
i try
um
but for whatever reason she just
she takes it and um and it brings it out
of you yeah can you describe sort of the
various characteristics the the shape of
your ptsd the the trauma the how the
anger and hate took shape in you in the
in the seconds minutes hours months
years after
and after
the full trauma of all the things you've
experienced in afghanistan so it's funny
because draco asked me something and it
made me it's made me i've really been
thinking a lot about it and he's like
do you think if somebody of a leadership
would have just sat you down
and said
hey burns
what you're feeling is okay
what you're feeling is normal what
you're feeling is
what happens
when you're in something like this do
you think you would be where you are
and they said well
i thought about it and i'm like you know
i don't think i would be because i
wouldn't have been medicated out of my
mind
i wasn't able to process anything
because i was just given medication
right from the get so for me what
happened was once that light switch was
off
um i was sent back to kandahar
to well i once the operation was over we
flew back to kandahar like with the
brits
and then because there was deaths and we
lost people on that operation i had to
go to the british side for the next i
think three or four days and recant
word for word why
what happened to a british mp who hand
wrote statements but we had to do that
on repeat to make sure we all had the
same story and so nobody shot anybody in
the back
and so that i don't think is a great way
to
do that after and after action after
action reports happen but i don't think
beating a dead horse and having somebody
repeat repeat repeat and then just
imprint more and more and more i don't i
don't know that that is a great way of
doing that
um and especially from a perspective of
what are they uh
liability almost like
that kind of that perspective as opposed
to
the full
perspective i mean so for for people who
don't know
uh one is the the over medication
and that you had to undergo
and then the other is the social
isolation
in terms of yeah i mean
more than what jaco
what you just mentioned
you also kind of uh mentioned that just
being with um
with other soldiers you're close with
just sitting there in silence and
um just sitting in that shared
understanding even that
in itself communicates like
these feelings are normal like you don't
have to talk
and you were robbed of that as well
essentially
yeah because i was because i was
borrowed i think jacob had a name for us
when we get borrowed it was like there
was like a i don't know what they call
us but it's like when you take a person
and you put them in another unit there's
a name for it i don't remember what it
was
you never see those people again but
because i was in kandahar the doctors
gave me the medication because i i think
i was the one who said i don't this
isn't right i don't feel right this is
wrong because when i got back that night
there was supposed to be somebody there
to pick me up to take me the other side
of the base and no one showed
so i humped on my kit back to the
canada house and i remember getting in
the shower
and the rule was
quick fucking showers there's no water
i must have sat on that floor of that
shower for half an hour 45 minutes
i just held myself and cried
i didn't even know why i was crying i
just knew i needed to cry
and i still this day i
and
when they sent me back to the fall they
sent me back with all this medication
after spending that time with the brits
um
and they put me back on the guns
medicated out of my fucking tree i
almost shot someone
but they didn't tell my staff that it
was on meds
so when the artillery gun was going off
and i didn't run to the gun and i was
still asleep inside the tent with the
gun beside my head
they didn't know i was just drugged they
just thought i was fucking off somewhere
hanging out with some americans they
just thought i wasn't doing any of what
i should be doing
and then i remember the moment my
sergeant we did a night shoot and he
he's so funny because he called me goes
ah fuck burn zach go alist i remember
this yes you were standing there with me
and i look at you and go hey barnes are
you okay
cause your eyes are all fucked
and i i looked at sergeant leblanc i
just remember going yeah like i'm good
like just huh
yeah
he's like i still remember that and i'm
like i know because they never tell me
anything fuck burns i did not know the
drugs you were on
and as i was on all of them he goes i
know i walk in you show me the bottles
that fuck burns you shouldn't have been
there
i guarantee you sounds just like
that that's great he's brilliant he's
brilliant yeah so uh what i mean i
suppose this is a
lazy
way of dealing with trauma yeah and it's
for the military in some sense if you
don't have a good program in place this
makes sense
but you should have a good program in
place just like you said on the prep on
the mental prep side
like just any prep like training people
training people on the
as opposed to
i guess train the fact that you're going
to have
somebody close to you blow up
like you have to probably visualize that
you have to think to that you have to
have a process of how to deal with
something like that with that kind of
trauma and then that's it
exactly i mean and it's not like
weakness it's actually strength it's uh
like
you have to be mentally strong enough to
process that
that probably takes
a lot of training but it's a great
training right well worth it to to
protect your investment training right
that's a very cold but correct way to
put it i mean it's called i thought you
would appreciate the coldness of the way
i articulated that well yeah i mean i'm
of two minds in this i i don't
i sometimes wonder
like what i would be like as a soldier
actually i don't know because i love
country and i love all the things you're
mentioning like i could see myself
probably dying from my country
and also enjoying the skill of it the
the the very like ocd
like very proficient yeah but then also
the human side
i fall in love with people i fall in
love with everything so i don't know
i don't i i suppose you have to shut off
the part of your brain when you're
executing a mission
that cares about the hu about other
humans uh outside your close-knit
group
but like there's no time for
philosophical thinking i don't know i i
suppose that's why it's better to be
young
young and dumb
you're not necessarily dumb it's just
like you were over
that energy of excitement of proficiency
and excellence
is is just higher than it is later in
life sure
it's you're not dumb i was not dumb but
i was naive uneducated
not well trained
and
had an arrogance because we were told we
were the fucking shit yeah you're
amazing okay i'm amazing so i wonder do
they think if we do mental training that
makes you weak do you think they the the
military thinks that makes you weak well
yes and the reason i can say that is
because it's it's obvious in the way
that they handle it now right so like if
a soldier says hey i'm really struggling
with that last stop we were on man it's
just really it's getting to me i'm just
having a hard time sleeping they're
gonna go
okay well
how how hard of a time sleeping are you
having and then you get that wreath and
you go oh no i'm not it's not that bad
i'm not i don't need anything for it
like i'm just like once in a while i'm
losing some sleep like okay because you
know that pen moves it's all getting
written down and then you're dead right
you're dead red which means you're not
deploying again yeah and then you're not
able to do the thing you love the most
with the people you love the most right
i mean but also
this is really difficult and i i'd love
to talk to you about ptsd but like sorry
yes i keep going off no please no but
so i'm i'm hoping to
um
like
launch a company you know in the
engineering space and the and i
currently leave i've led a few people
and it's always this kind of
like how much are you supposed to push
people
because people are everyone is weak and
lazy
are you quoting our text messages from
earlier yeah exactly exactly i'm quoting
this all i have is just quotes from you
it's okay uh it tells you how much we've
spoken in the past week or so
i just i don't know what to do because
sometimes people are really struggling
like really struggling in a way they're
being they're like it's the the goggins
thing is like
where's the line to where you're
actually breaking the human being versus
where you're
breaking them at the places where they
will grow back stronger
like so and that line is tricky uh to
truly understand i think the military
errors on the side of like
they you know like push them beyond all
limits physical limits physical but
mental they don't they need to respect
the mental more uh they fuck with the
brain a little bit i mean in basic
training they like scream in your face
and to see who's gonna crack and
they they put you on sleep deprivation
to see who's weak enough that they can't
handle sleep death they'll they do stuff
to you like i know if you're a downed
pilot you have to go
and you have to do this training and
like it's you get captured it's like
this whole thing and
they fuck with your brain
but there's a line
there's a line
my issue is
go to the line cross the line
give them the tools to come back from
the line right
yeah we don't do that we don't
we we know there's ptsd
we know there's such a thing we
understand there's anxiety and
depression we understand there's major
depressive disorder we understand
that there are precursors there are
signs and symptoms we understand that so
why are we not building
enough of a toolkit
whether that be i'm not talking
medication i'm talking
it sounds
but fucking trust me it works i'm
talking meditation i'm talking yoga i'm
talking about peer group support i'm
talking about if you go to your doctor
and report this there's you're not
automatically going to be losing your
job
why aren't we giving the proper tools
and the education needed these things
are not difficult to teach they don't
take a lot of time they don't take a lot
of money the only time it takes a lot of
money is when you want to medicate we
don't need to medicate you yet you only
need to be medicated if you're a danger
to someone else or yourself and most of
the time because of the way the system
is set you'll lie about it through your
fucking teeth just so that no one
touches you so from the perspective of
the military do you think you can
still be a bad motherfucker and do all
the mental work yes
some of the
baddest dudes i've ever known are like
i gotta go to yoga i gotta go meditate
yeah i go do aya with those guys why
because they know that that's not okay
to be like that in your life
can you answer the ridiculously big
question of what is ptsd
like do you understand the basic
characteristics of it is there universal
characteristics
from your own
unique experience like from what you've
understood about it yeah of course there
are so there's you know there's the the
basic things that a doctor looks for
when when they're diagnosing ptsd i'm
not a doctor let me make that fucking
clear but there are things that you look
for you look for insomnia you look for
anger and aggression you look for people
to fly off the handle you look for
avoidance you can tell in somebody's
body people who can't sleep if you can't
sleep you you know that after a certain
amount of time they're just gonna
deteriorate
you know sleeplessness uh triggers
when you say avoidance do you mean
avoidance so like when i first got back
to canada i avoided everybody that was
middle eastern at all costs
no matter how much of a difference it
made in my day if i had to not go
somewhere for one of the greatest events
of my life i wouldn't have went
but isn't there some aspect there
combined with the triggers like maybe
it's wise to avoid triggers even like
for your own personal health well-being
well that's it it's for me that was one
of my triggers so that you have triggers
so and then you also deal with things
like um
sounds and smells you can tell you can
tell when someone's triggered a lot of
vets don't like fireworks it's like okay
we'll remove yourself from the situation
so there's there's other things within
ptsd
that kind of rear its head
that with ptsd kind of
attach other things so like when i was
diagnosed with ptsd it was like four
years later i was diagnosed with major
depressive disorder and that was kind of
a compilation of things that was just
like a shit show there what is major
depressive good question
is there an answer i don't have one i
was told i had it
okay so
i mean um
what does your mind go through where are
the places that my mind goes your mind
goes like the dark places when i get
triggered and when it was like really
bad
yeah okay yeah so um you thought about
suicide
every minute of every day
what are the pros of suicide in your
mind at that time what at that time the
pros were
no one has to deal with this anymore
i don't have to feel this way anymore
i'm a burden to my family i'm a burden
to the military system i'm
weak i'm a bad soldier i didn't do my
job i don't deserve to be alive i don't
deserve
veterans affair support i don't deserve
my my parents don't deserve to watch me
go through this the guy i was dating
didn't deserve to put up with the
bullshit i put him through
the
people who drive with me in cars didn't
deserve to almost hit medians because i
swerved because of a piece of garbage
people didn't deserve my racist outburst
people didn't deserve
people didn't i did not deserve to be
breathing anymore i should have died
there and i wished i died there
so um self-hate there too oh
not even a big deal though right
that's at the core of it that that's
like this um
and so uh
how do you escape from that place how do
you overcome that
those
that depression essentially at the core
of the desire to kill yourself
what um
what basic principles i mean we could
talk about ayahuasca but
basically principles of like literally
like how do you escape that moment yeah
previous to any of that i i did from
2009 i got out so i was medically i was
3b medical honorable discharge in 2011
may 23rd 2011. so i left the military
then and so it's been 10 years
just over 10 years oh my god it's 10 and
a half years i just realized
happy anniversary thanks man awesome
so i've been out for 10 years and i
would say the reason i didn't kill
myself
for the longest time was the individual
i was dating
that that was that was straight across
the board that was it
um
for me
there was no relief for about
six years of the
the thought of just kill yourself kill
yourself kill her it's easier if you
just do it like that voice was so strong
for that long there was really no relief
what there was though
was
implementation of different medications
realizing they weren't working trying
different things
getting myself to a point where i could
leave my house comfortably comfortably
ish again and i wasn't triggered which
then allowed me to travel which then
allowed me to
slowly try to go back to school which by
the way was a very bad idea that was a
bad idea that was that was bad
i went too early
they started practicing active shooter
drills in our school it was it was a it
was bad my professors understood
school is full of triggers it turns out
um it is when you live in vancouver
there's a theme to this conversation
about your love for canada i look at me
i love my fucking country i am one of
the most patriotic people you will meet
in it i think canada is one of the
greatest fucking places on the earth
i think in the past two years or three
years i have seen what i loved so deeply
so proudly preached about so
i'm so proud of what i did there
and i'm so proud of the country i got to
represent
because i was good at my job
being being great at your job for a
country you love you just don't like
some of the politicians some of the time
it's not even the politicians anymore
it's the state of the country
i'm a second class citizen in my own
country right now
i can't travel to see my parents within
my own country
i'm not allowed to step foot in my son's
school
i am not allowed to go to a restaurant
with my family
i'm not allowed to leave canada without
i told you all the stuff i have to do to
get here
to even get home i have to do the same
i'm watched by the rcmp
i'm
neighbors rat you out
so so for somebody who fought for their
country i hate it it makes me so sad to
be to go through this process of uh
what many considered to be power
overreach by government in the face of
uh this particular pandemic
yeah
yeah i always knew i had a hard time
with like i loved canada the day i got
spit on when i got home was not ideal
but
yes spit on yeah um
[Music]
but the thing was
i knew long enough that if i
just put one foot in front of the other
and kept going to treatment
and kept
doing what my doctor told me to do
that i could pull out of this
if i if i tried i i was told that i
could do anything in my life
it didn't matter
as long as i tried was trying really
hard
trying was
trying was harder than breathing
it it was exhausting it was
i would be awake for like half a day and
every minute of that day i just stare at
the wall and just want to kill myself
yeah that's what i've
had people close to me who suffer from
depression and it was like
it's unclear how to escape but it's
clear that you need to try some
something
and they didn't want to even try because
you have no try in you yeah you have no
no i'm watching a person who has no
energy essentially to like do any of it
and it's like so hopeless but you have
to try and i think some of that has to
do
with all the different physical feats
you have to do like when you have
nothing left you still keep going that
same like weird
drive when you're empty you still keep
going
um i wanted to give up i tried i
it's i did i'm really lucky because it
really was the one person that
i'd wake up to next
every day
and he'd be like hey so that new drug
you're on fun fact if you don't go to
sleep right away you talk and when you
talk you just don't fucking stop and you
go off about everything that's horrible
and i'm like what are you talking about
no last night yeah you took that pill
guess what you just you just you didn't
stop i have no recollection i'd get up
in the middle of the night i would cook
food
like on a stove and it would be
hopefully we don't die because i would
have no recollection because of the
drugs
the idea that
when people say well just pull yourself
out of depression
i'm a highly motivated individual
the idea of lifting my head up to turn
over
was daunting
that's terrifying it's like for somebody
so as driven as you to completely lose
all of that
for moments of time for for stretches of
time
fuck the mind is a motherfucker this is
uh it is
i i can't
um for somebody like i can't
i can't i'm so i'm so grateful for
people like you to be able to pull out
of that i i've
i've been always the opposite
like
i've been very fortunate to just
always find joy and meaning in
everything even the stupidest shit can i
ask you something yeah
do you think that's because you of how
you're raised where you came from
no
no it was my own person i i honestly
think it's uh the the biology the the
uh this because i had my parents i'm
very cognizant of had nothing to
uh do with that they they never
understood this little engine i had i
just i always liked just sitting looking
at people and just enjoying how amazing
they are and just like looking at
like it's i think it's straight up just
biology whatever the neurochemistry is
like i'm just getting like a good drug
you're just getting hit yeah i'm getting
hit all the time from stupid shit and i
love that and it doesn't
and
yeah so that's why i can be sometimes
i'll talk like so very self-critically
about myself because that's almost makes
me
it makes life more fun it challenges
stuff it makes you more productive but
ultimately it's because i'm getting that
like
i'm getting the good stuff all the time
i wondered about that i was thinking
about that when i listened to you for
the first time on i think when you're on
rogan for the first time water shouldn't
do that
oh it's not water you shouldn't trust
see this is the thing it's don't buy
coca-cola
well no i had to
oh well i resealed i mean
i didn't go that far but now i'm really
starting to question what's in this but
that's okay if i offered you tea should
really be worried but yeah why
i mean that's just
no that's the the
like the more famous way that russians
usually assassinate to put poison in the
tea because a lot of russians drink tea
and
you know all right well i mean
there is a blade right there so
wait that was somebody um
andrew huberman gave that to me he's
also a good you i don't know if you know
him but he's cool i don't know all the
people you know i'm new
okay i'm new here lex you're gonna i'll
send instructions yeah you're gonna have
to send what is what does my friend say
he says uh he's an ex-operator and he'll
message me once in a while and ask me
something and i'll answer back if i
answer
in the correct way
he'll go
candidate meets expectations i'm like
fuck you i'm not a candidate of anything
yeah yeah but yeah it's essentially well
andrew huberman is kind of a celebrity
andrew you should check her out uh
you're you're an interesting person you
guys should connect he's a
stanford neuroscientist was a
i think the number one podcast in the
world in health uh he's a
is he on the beer does he feel like a
a beard thing going
uh yeah i'm knocking him down too like
does he have a beard
i don't look i don't look at people's
visual appearance man of shit no i don't
i don't uh does he have a beard i think
he has a beard yeah he is i think i know
who you're talking about this is a very
handsome
gentleman
i think i know you're talking about
cause i think i was looking at his stuff
this morning yeah exactly no seriously
on instagram no no no okay probably no
yeah that's what i mean i don't know him
but he's very very humble very
intelligent yeah probably would
understand
like i'm very kind of poetic and so on
he's he's probably
the most like rigorous
um
reference machine of science like he's a
legit scientist like he knows every
paper and everything has to do with the
mind in your science like he would be
fascinating performance yeah he's much
more
he's
he's much more actually and the focus is
always on um
how to help how that
helps people so like protocols like like
here's what you need to do to get better
sleep yes yes i know who it is it's like
a thousand papers yeah and he just goes
like hammers nonstop i mean jesus
he um
he spent a week in austin he's coming
back and spending uh
a couple weeks in austin we just hang
out and it's like
you think that was like a teleprompter
or something like the way he does this
podcast
yeah but like in person he's the same
like all right
this is this is intense but i like it
anyway uh
why did we bring him up i don't know a
lot of knives we were talking about he
gave it to me that's right ptsd
and then you talk about poison and how
you were poisoning me and i said knives
we're talking about russians and then we
were kind of talking about the brain and
ptsd
yeah i think for for most people though
the biggest thing
when they see somebody who's struggling
with ptsd their their first you know
reaction is how do i help them
well often just saying hey
i'm here when you're ready to talk i
know you're going through something
whether you want to talk about it right
now or not i'm here and then keeping a
close eye on behaviors when you start to
see somebody having you know four five
six beers at night
let's ask why when you see somebody you
can tell they're not sleeping hey buddy
you're sleeping no i just i'm not
sleeping
instead of just going oh that sucks
hey why aren't you sleeping you having
nightmares are you you just having
insomnia are you just eating sugar
before bed like
care enough about your people to just
ask
one follow-up question because often
that's really all it takes because then
somebody goes somebody cares enough to
ask and then they'll just
yeah just showing that you care it's
honestly
grocery store lineup i'll say oh i like
your dress oh thank you and then i'll go
how's your day going they'll be like
actually it's going all right it's not
as great as i thought it would be today
but i'm doing okay but like they'll give
you instead of could you instead of just
giving you this fake false reaction if
you just show
any effort in somebody that you care at
all about someone's well-being you'd be
amazed amazed
and some of it is just energy the reason
honestly i moved to austin is some lady
at a walmart said
honey you look handsome in that suit
but like but the care that she put in
that she just looked at me yeah it
wasn't like hitting at me or something
she was like the love like just love
yeah i was like okay i'm moving here i
guess
there was uh that's so funny you said
that because i told my i told my husband
this happened and it was it threw me off
there was an older lady at a store
and this was right after we we got a
brief period of no masks in canada like
just like a
brief like five minutes oh yeah it was
not even that and i
i had come from like an interview or
something so i had actually had makeup
on that day and i had my hat and i was
you know just at the grocery store she
walked up to me and she got real close
and i didn't know what was happening and
she got closer and then she just grabbed
my arm like this
she goes i love that hat on you and i
looked at her and i was like she touched
me during a pandemic and she's old oh my
god i love you too thank you so much i
said you're so amazing i just and i just
sparked a conversation yeah yeah that's
amazing it doesn't take much yeah at
that little moment of genuine care
maybe you can tell me actually the
the journey you took with ayahuasca like
what
that's such a fascinating journey so
like uh letting your mind go to
different places in order to rediscover
itself like like
what is it like a rocket ship to
somewhere else so you can land in a
better place
here how about i show you something
that'll help your brain okay yes
this is not for you to lift up either
and show on the camera because there's
leaves in it like there's leaves and
some pages so just don't dump it out
cause it'll go all fucking everywhere
got it got it instructions i like this
yeah well you feel like you need them um
ayahuasca is
a beautiful psychedelic that we have
been so blessed to have on this earth
that we have so underutilized
and could be
i don't say saving humanity but just you
ever hear that saying if you could just
give everyone mushrooms one time the
world would be a better place
okay
so psilocybin is
i use for microdosing uh for depression
i did ayahuasca in january of this year
um
and i've at that point that was the last
time i was on a pharmaceutical drug i've
been off everything ever since 10
different ones so if you backtrack a
little bit just to so you'll understand
my doctor gave me the opportunity dr um
greg passi
he is a veteran himself served in bosnia
and rwanda he's a medic he's a colonel
colonel lieutenant he's gonna watch me
right in the face for that he's high up
officer um
he's one of my saviors he's like my old
i call him my old man he's my favorite
and um
rides a harley like that kind of guy
nice yeah and um
he said you know kels this is i just
don't i was hitting a wall i wasn't
getting any better and he goes how do
you feel about cannabis
and i was like i don't feel good about
it because family histories or my
parents always told me if i smoked weed
you know it's just this this perception
because i just want you to try it just
would you be willing to try it so i was
like okay so i was willing to try it
then i started going to these groups
called women grow and um
learning about it
and then i realized
oh
i'm
starting to sleep a little bit
i don't feel groggy in the morning
i don't feel like a bag of shit
and i also want to have a baby one day
and i can't have all this stuff in my
system
so i started using cannabis
and then i started using it
as a main medication
and i'd been using it now since
2014 got married
jack was born in 60
15 2015 i started using it um
and i've been using it ever since
and that was the way i got off of all
the pharmaceutical drugs was keeping
cannabis the constant finding the right
strains for me and then slowly with the
doctor's advice and under supervision
going off of those medications
cut to january of 2021
i had hit a really bad spell last year
um and the year before was a really big
struggle uh i almost lost my company
last year due to covet just like many
many millions of people did
um
and instead of me just laying down and
taking it
i pivoted really quickly and
called the factory and said you guys
make masks they're like yeah we're
making masks i was like
i'm going to call the canadian
government i'm going to get my medical
license and i'm gonna try to sell the
masks and see if we can do that and so
we did that and so we did
200 000 masks for ontario hospitals um
which ironically
went to my entire community i was born
and raised in
so it was really weird
and that kept us afloat long enough
um we lost 200 retail locations that i
all single-handedly spent five years
going like door-to-door getting myself
um i would just say this is brass and
unity jewelry yeah the jewelry and
sunglass company
and um i started a witch
it looks like a serious community
i mean sunglasses you do look good in
them i won't lie to you thank you well
okay we'll call them deluxe that's those
are now called the lex fuck the gun or
they're the lux i like it deluxe i'm
jumping around here but just bear with
me i i started my doctor suggested art
therapy dr passi did and that's really
how the company started i bought beads
and a pipe cutter and a hammer and a
drill and i fucked up our kitchen table
and i taught myself how to build jewelry
because my husband was like you can do
it go for it so i was like okay he says
i can believe in me so i guess i can do
it no idea what i'm doing
and then
got to this point
um you know where covet hit and people
lost companies and we pivoted and we did
what we could
and then
i really started to go downhill
psychologically i've
found purpose again with this company
i found a way to help again i found
myself again
and then that was in danger of being
gone again
so the company is 2015
we started i started
building jewelry in 2015 under like a
just it was called her wearables and it
was really small and it was just
i was just trying to make stuff it
wasn't supposed to be a company and you
were on a ton of medication throughout
the whole process
and my mom being the tenacious truck
driver she is she was driving for kevin
hart's what now to her
and so she got she just harassed them
and was like you need to meet my
daughter yeah so he finally saw the
picture of you and kevin hart that's
cool but he just gave me a good piece of
advice hey if you're gonna make this
something you can't really if you want
it to be for everyone you can't call it
her wearables i was like cool
and then we drove home that night and
then he tweeted it out to people wow to
24 million people this was before he was
like who is now yeah
and um that was a giant deal and then my
husband kind of looked at me and being
he's so fucking brilliant he looked at
me goes all right yeah we got to come up
with that rename let me start thinking
let me start brainstorming like let's
make you want to make this real let's
make this real
and so we did
and he was like what do you think about
like we were doing like grass collective
co brass this but i just knew i wanted
brass in the name
and then he said what about brass and
unity you're trying to like unify people
like why wouldn't you do i'm like
fucking name of course you came up with
it like everything else that's a great
name well he's a brilliant person it's
annoying yeah so the idea of losing this
thing that we had just built and just
got me kind of functioning with was
devastating
so i got this opportunity given to me by
griff combat flip-flops um
again brady my husband was like hey you
should get sponsors for your podcast hey
have you heard of this company combat
flip-flops remember we watched him on
shark tank
and then i reached out
he emailed me back he's like yeah we go
to together like peanut butter and jelly
are companies that sounds great
and then i was like hey also like
do you think one of your owners would
want to come on the podcast just like
tossing it out there kind of like i did
with you
and um
he was like yeah i'd love to come on and
i was like
and he came on the podcast and it went
great and then at the end of it we
stopped recording and he just kind of
did this thing he he does this just like
leans in real close
looks into your soul and goes how you
doing
and they're like great he's like
how are you really doing
[Laughter]
everything
just this whole just like
water works happen and he goes listen
have you ever heard of ayahuasca and i
was like yeah like in movies and like
psychedelics in the 70s you know and
he's like no no no let's like have a
talk he goes i've got an opportunity for
a spot i'm going with this charity
called heroic hearts um they have off
they have uh spaces in uk canada and the
united states they're owned by an army
ranger named jesse gould um
you know they're really trying to help
vets and this has worked would you want
to come and before he even said like
would you before i even got like an
invite i was like can i come when can i
when when do we when do we go
and he's like oh it's in like three
weeks um you can't be on any ssris
if you're on any you're gonna have to
wean off and at the time i was on my
last one
and so i was like i called my doctor and
i was like listen and he was like what
and i was like guess what i'm about to
do and he's like
am i gonna go to ayahuasca and he goes
you could he he does the same where he
just goes
all right
because he knows he's not going to win
yeah knows i'll just fight him on it
let's just call that like the the jocko
reset yeah because he does a
pretty much yeah exactly and he goes i
said but here's the kicker
i have to go off of this medication
and he goes well you know we're supposed
to do that in the summer months when the
depression's not like bringing you know
blah blah blah listen i hear you
but i'm doing it
whether you want me to or not so i'm
letting you know hey this is gonna
happen
and he's like okay just try to do it
properly i was like yeah yeah i know the
drill i know the drill whatever whatever
i went to school to be a paramedic i
know the girl i'll go off on the
properly
if i can like drop that within a week
that stuff was i was done taking it and
i was going through like the world's
worst
just withdrawals it was like
you were at a rock concert and your head
was banging up and down but you were
sitting perfectly still
it was
horrible but you had like a thing to
look forward to with the sidewalk i had
a light at the end of the tunnel
and i knew if i got to the light
what's the worst that's gonna happen
just get to the light but at that point
like i again
i had a son i had a husband i had a
great company i have a great house i
have a nice car i have everything
why did i want to die every minute of
the day
i was at that point again
and i'm like this has got it something's
got to give
and so i went
and i got there
and
she
is
um
the most intense
beautiful divine
deity or entity or
visualization
whatever you want to deem ayahuasca as
mama i is real
and she takes no prisoners
she shows you exactly what you need to
see
to help yourself
but she does not
discriminate against
whether you're ready or not if you've
ingested it she's coming for you
she's gonna be either gentle or she's
gonna beat your ass and sometimes it's
what you need but she does it in a way
that
is profound
so what were some memorable profound
moments for you what uh what what are
the places it took you
people had you meet for the first time i
got to be in a group of people who
didn't judge me or question my service
they just respected me
that was number one
so that group i lost
i just found again
um
big shocker i was the only woman there
again
seems to be the
the thing for me
and so i was surrounded by all these
special operators like these aren't like
normal soldiers like these guys that i'm
with are like
bronze star fucking purple heart just
the coolest people
people i've always wanted to be like
that's my buddy now i can be like those
are my buddies like those motherfuckers
will go to bat for me they will bend
over backwards they will x fill me out
of anywhere they will take a bullet for
me
and these guys welcomed me in in a way i
didn't i didn't expect so that hit me
weird right off the get i was nervous
and now i was just felt at home for a
minute
and then when i stepped into ceremony
um
the first night because you do you do
three nights over like over like friday
saturday sunday the first night
i was so nervous and so anxious
because you go up in ceremony and your
the shamans come in and they they
cleanse themselves and then you get
served the
ayah individually you go up they give it
to you you can take your time and pray
you can do whatever you want then you
drink it
i was so just like
i got back to my mat and i sat there
and i was like trying to keep it in but
i could feel that like
heat come from my toes all the way up
and you're like your mouth starts to
water my
throat i'm gonna throw up
and i looked over to griff and i looked
at bishop and they're like
swallow it and i was like
okay
and you can't talk or anything
so i like
my buddy um we call him the viking or
soul viking he looks like a viking his
head's tattooed he's
he's been on the show
he's so cool he's sitting directly
across like you and i and he can see me
he's looking at me and i'm throwing up
and
and i do it about three times and then
the last time he just saw me i couldn't
do it i just
i threw it up
and so
i like to think that was her way of
easing me in so i didn't get like a full
punch to the face but i gotta let me
take your hand and show you what i'm
gonna show you we're gonna make you
better we're gonna take the pain away
aren't you supposed to eventually throw
up no matter what it's not supposed to
some people don't you purge yeah if
something's happening you're going
through something yeah you purge but it
doesn't have to happen but this i mean
within like the first 20 minutes no
okay this takes like you got to sit and
meditate
for or sit still basically and meditate
in the pitch black for about 45 minutes
before the effects even before you even
feel her
so it's very
so here she figured out the right dose
you need
well because i did the same dose as
everyone else
i think it was 20 mils which doesn't
seem like a lot
but when you've never done ayatus
oh my god
so um
i felt like such a bitch god i felt like
such a bitch
okay that was the thought going through
your mind oh you just fucked it all up
you ruined it you ruined this again you
couldn't do this right yeah
and so
at that point
um we we went through the meditation
part and the shamans were they literally
sing for like six hours straight so you
said that you take it and then there's
just you just you're quietly listening
to them meditate and you wait and you
wait
and you're in pitch black like can't see
this far in front of your face cool and
you have a little puke bucket
and then you have a little light that
has a red filter on it you have to get
up to go to the bathroom to get out of
the you use that so you don't turn
lights on
and um
me i brought like what
no it's just a cool visual of just a
puke bucket and a little light for the
like i can imagine these like little
lights going every once in a while and
then the rest is just in darkness
meditating with this
with the singing
it's it's so beautiful it's cool i'll
take you some time because trust me you
would
i
i wouldn't offer if it wasn't the group
i would trust
yeah that's in you had a very
interesting group so it's the the the
heroic hearts yeah heroic hearts so that
yeah this is my
jesse gave us all these journals they're
like you're gonna want these
so he gave us all these journals and now
this is like my bible like my work my
everything goes in this with me
everywhere it's just this like silent
reminder for me and so heroic hearts
does
fantastic work um i'll get into them
after
the thing with
this group is
there's such
care
it's not like go do aya and like you're
done there's like integration coaches
and there's like doctors and there's
like people to make sure that
you're doing the work because i is just
this is just the gate now you have to
take it and you have to implement it
into your life
people don't do that though did you do
uh like integration did you do
conversations with somebody did you talk
to you like is there a process to
because i've uh similar with philosophy
you mentioned i i've
as i understand it's exceptionally
beneficial for when you also do like
talk therapy like you couple that with
the integration in some form where you
talk through your experience you talk
through different things like that that
seems to be a really you know i need to
do that more with uh basically every
substance i take like if i get which
have been every once in a while known to
do a bit of vodka or whiskey or whatever
like do integration the next day
well what did you learn what did you get
from that what did you get because you
you learn a lot but you sometimes kind
of just move on and you celebrate that
that happened but like really kind of
think through it write it down yeah
that's important because that's what
this was
so the first night i'll give like a very
cause
trust me we could spend a whole podcast
on both of the all three of those nights
but the first night the biggest thing
that happened for me is i got to see my
daughter
which was my first baby
and so people say well you know blah
blah blah fuck you that was my daughter
and i'm very aware it was i'm very
conscious that it was
and at that point she just eased me in
enough
to let me know and showed me enough that
this wasn't it
this wasn't
the end-all be-all where you are right
now on this plane on this dimension in
this life this is
this is a flip and it is
it is so minuscule to the big picture
and so she really did that by she showed
me just a black and then like a crack
and then these vibrant colors that i
can't describe because there aren't
words alex gray does really great um
art and that is like been the closest
thing i've been able to find colors
um he's a famous uh guy who does
ayahuasca
and
he's an artist i think he's got stuff in
new york as well
but um
she just she eased me in
and gave me some relief
and showed me enough that i could go
i could wake up the next day and not
want to die the next day
and so what heroic hearts did because
they gave us all these journals they're
like you know the next day you kind of
wake up
and you
you do
a meet like a meeting you do like a
circle all of us sit in a room and talk
about what just happened the night
before
people are crying and people are quiet
and you just listen and that's what you
do and
then you write on your free time so
after that it's like up to you what you
want to do do you want to just go walk
in the woods well i chose to go find a
fence post and lie on it for an hour
i'm not kidding i lied there and stared
up at these two eagles that were just in
like the i'll tell you where we were
after and you look you'll be like oh
okay i get it and then i found a forest
and i just walked up with my book
and i just
lied there
for hours
and then she all of a sudden started
giving me what you call your downloads
so the stuff you learn
the stuff that you were all of a sudden
you're remembering and these messages
that come through and that's what this
is
what kind of things are we talking about
so my biggest thing that she tried to
reiterate to me at the beginning of
that first night was that i don't
breathe
i just
i don't
i don't breathe i don't fucking breathe
at all i just one thing the next thing
the next thing the next thing the next
thing just to survive i don't take a
minute and breathe
and so she made
when i say she and i say it because it's
hard for people to understand but i
showed this to my husband i showed it to
my doctors and they're like uh bitch
that's not you you don't write like that
you don't talk like that
so like you can flip through it
but it was like
i'll just give i'll just let lex read
for a second and just i'll just do here
let me do i'll do an ad for heroic
hearts heroic hearts
here i'll get my papers while you read
connect to her listen to her open to her
do you mind if i read some of these you
can read some of it yep go right ahead
the dark has lifted judge my spelling
and i'll punch you in the face
well there's like um it's very
sporadic-y
sporadically written
it's okay to be still it's okay to be
quiet
this is a good like
and these are over a stretch of
that was the first the cup first couple
pages were from the first night
this was just that weekend i'm not just
there laying looking at the eagles
yeah with with the pen just frantic as
well lex not like writing where you're
like oh i'm just writing it's like i had
to get it down or i was gonna lose it
you are
warrior you are power you can
choose now
breathe now
be now
be present be warrior be strength
breathe
be the strength you are the strength
there's some soul-searching going on
here this is incredible
yeah we wait till you get to get in
there
she gets deep real aggressive like
crack the door
for i am the light
the giver the taker
i am warrior i am life i am air i am
water i am fire
i am light
this will this can this will this can
for i am warrior
for i am light and there's a leaf here
what's the story with the leaf
i don't know i was walking and every
single time over the over those three
days any time i like went for uh
a walk by myself
i would just hear like
take this like just almost like as if a
voice was standing there like you need
this take it take it with you and keep
it in your book keep it
ground you
and it just goes off this is from there
yeah it's cool to have
sort of it's almost like time travel
i have poppies from france too when i
did uh i did a 75th anniversary d-day
ride in france where we rode 600
kilometers on our road bikes for charity
and we landed on the beaches of juno on
the 75th and we got to go buy the poppy
fields
and i'm like covered in poppies
and i i have some in a in a book i don't
know why i do that i just
i do that
that's cool because like these are your
thoughts and those are the physical
items as it really helps transport to
that place somehow
let the light in let her in
and she would show me these visuals so
my drawings are just like
yeah there's drawings here
and you're seeing this stuff oh yeah
i can't draw either so that's why
they're so i wish i could draw because
if only i could translate what i could
see
visually onto paper
and you're talking to her yeah
it's time i'm here to listen
is this
mama aya yeah we call her mama aya mama
aya
mama i see what who who are you seeing
is this a woman
so for me at first it was just eyes
floating in the sky these unbelievably
gorgeous beautiful eyes that i and i was
like literally looking up at the top of
the year and i kept going to myself is
that anyone else seeing this
there's eyes in the sky
yeah
and so
there's these eyes floating and they
just kept looking at me and i remember
when i kept telling myself like oh don't
worry there's nothing there she would
get angry
i'm right here pay attention to me and
i'd be like
okay like forceful
like very forceful so at first it was
just the eyes
the second night
is i'm crazy when i say this
great that's gonna be my clipping down
crazy
it's what i do when i get uncomfortable
i do weird hand gestures and movements
um voices i like it yeah i do yeah
uh you would hate to be in my office
because most of the day it's just
[Music]
this i love it weird lunges and
uncomfortable moments um she
turned me into a wolf
i i know i said it out loud i said i
hear it i said it yeah head to toe
and her takeaway for me was
i'm trying to be this pack leader i'm
trying to be this leader in my life i'm
trying to do these things but i'm going
about them the whole wrong way
so like when the shamans call you up to
do their special prayer over you
you go up you don't touch them they
flash their little light you see the
little light spot you walk to the light
you sit down on the light
and then my shaman he's so funny because
he's got this great tone in his voice he
goes
uh how you doing kelsey
and i'm like
um
so
hi
yeah i have a problem um i'm a wolf and
i need it to stop
and he'd be like don't you worry girl i
got you you ready and i was like
uh-huh uh-huh and so i'm sitting there
cross-legged i've got my palms out like
this
and i had a really traumatic shoulder
injury so i don't just sit slanted like
this my shoulders actually permanently
detached and no one in the world will
touch it or fix it my collarbone comes
out my back here nice and i don't have
any collarbone here okay so nobody will
fix it no one will touch it even i've
had specialists i've had surgeries no
one will do anything with it so i'm
permanently
down and forward so i
slouch
um
it's horrible
so before i well functionally too oh
there's nothing i can't do a pull-up
anymore oh
so weak
oh wow oh you should i'll show you how
to do a push-up after you'll fucking
throw up an embarrassment
yeah it's bad so before i though chronic
pain like had to drink a bottle of cbd
every day just the pain is so bad
because the trauma in it was so bad the
surgery went wrong
the collarbone dissipated and no longer
exists like there's just and they're not
sure how i lift things with it and do
stuff with it it's like over
compensation everywhere like my
the my back fli like um
my trap my scapula like flares out where
it's i'm all messed up from it and so i
was in chronic pain so he's praying over
me
and all of a sudden all i feel is this
arm just start
just
fucking vibrating and my hair is really
long and i feel somebody grab the back
of my ponytail and snap my head back
like this
and it felt like something was coming
out of my throat like being pulled
out of me
and the takeaway that i end up in the
whole the rest of the night there was a
million other things but the takeaway
was
you no longer need to bite you may only
show your teeth you can be the leader
that you want to be
you do not always have to
be the traditional type of leader you
can be in the back of the pack you have
to watch the rest around you
be mindful of those around you instead
of just being up front be
be behind as well make sure that
everything that you're doing is all
being looked after
because my thing was i will rip your
fucking head off if you just say the
wrong thing to me before
the whole thing was you can just show
your teeth and that is more than enough
stop trying to be
stop trying to overcompensate you don't
need to do that any longer
and then i had this weird astral
projection thing happen
like where i was in my house
and there were these flyers all over my
husband and my son
and like i went ham on them i like
shredded them to pieces like i was this
protector
and
it's crazy because the guys told me
after like someone would be like
there were flyers all over you the whole
night they were just all over you and
i'm like i was snarling when i was
sitting there like the shaman had to be
like
i need you to try to calm your breathing
after i could but before like i was like
attacking things beside me
that people could see and i could see
but
couldn't wrap my brain around that they
were real like it was
fucking weird
this is crazy man that's day two that's
day two
and so what's so what's the big takeaway
there my takeaway was i needed to be
i needed to
stop trying to
stop trying to push everything too hard
stop trying to force everything it's all
going to come it's all going to happen
but you are
you are too aggressive you are too
you're trying so hard that you're
missing you're missing everything else
got it
that's just uh trying to be a better
human kind of thing right
this is this is getting intense
aggressive
yeah i get to grasp
i mean there's love and light still it
gets loving light
love and light the warrior within is
calm
she will test you daily show her respect
so that's what i mean you've read my
book you know i don't write like that
yeah this is strange
see god you get it
because people don't understand what i
say i didn't
i don't feel like i wrote that i feel
like she gave me like i re reread this
all of the time
so i i wonder i mean well not obviously
but
this is somehow part of you i think it's
a part of me obviously reconnect
reconnecting you somehow to that part it
kind of is incredible to think of what
are the things that are part of us that
we haven't really explored you know and
well there's so many
we just get nature to connect to her
feel her flow through them
use them for the strength for each day
and your challenge will present itself
love light breathe
sorry i have too much hair
never enough i used to have long hair
what about day three so day three is the
the stuff i talked about on jocko
when i got taken over to the other side
i almost missed that night too
i almost missed that ceremony
i got a false positive on my covet test
and i got a call
from the medical clinic that night
being like you need to come in you got a
false positive on your kova test and
if you're gonna travel you have to
we've got to figure this out you got to
come do blood work you got to come do
you know whatever it is you need to do
if you want to get home but you got to
come do something and so
i didn't think i was going to be in
ceremony i had to leave so i left
and
you know
they waited
they waited for me
and so
i think the biggest takeaway from all of
this for me was
this isn't it it
this isn't everything this isn't
the end-all be-all
you can fight through this this is
possible it's gonna take work it's gonna
be fucking hard it's worth it though
and if you just keep going the right
direction everything that i wrote down
everything every goal it'll happen
what about love
tell me about your husband okay
what role did he play in your life
the most pivotal role he kept me alive
and made me feel worthy enough to
until i knew that i was worthy enough to
be alive
can you dissect that a little bit like
what i mean what role does love play in
the human condition
i think love is the only reason that we
haven't destroyed ourselves
i mean we humans in general yes i think
there is a subset of people where
love will always be
you know love conquers all you know but
that's not always the reality
the reality is life is messy and
humans are messy
and the way we choose to deal with
things are messy and complicated and
difficult but
at the root of all good is love i think
and for me i was fortunate enough to
meet my husband
through
a friend
would you listen to that podcast so i
don't know that we need to
unless you really want to go into that
story again how i met my husband well i
the only part of that story i like
people should just go listen to the
jocko podcast how you made them
uncomfortable i love it i well okay so
how it works let me explain in the super
cross and motocross industry it's really
small the people who are professional
there's it's a small subset of people
it's kind of like formula one 21 cars
that's what there is that's the amount
of riders and we should say your husband
is uh as a motocross guy my husband was
a professional supercross and motocross
racer um for his whole life and
he
raced for kawasaki and suzuki he lived
in california and raced still down there
and when i met him i met him at the tail
end of his career
and so
i went to montreal with a friend of mine
to see
somebody that i was currently sleeping
with who was a friend of mine
and
end up
meeting brady instead yeah and the funny
moment in jacob's was saying that i was
fucking him instead of just sleeping
with him and then jocko's face exploded
and jocko was like oh sleeping so like
he was he was trying to get details of
the sleeping quarters that you're he was
trying to get you to define as a good
interviewer would oh sleeping okay and
then you're like it's fucking jocko
[Laughter]
or something like that that's great
it was great but that's true because in
that industry it's like we it's small we
all share trust me this is what it is
anyway so i met him there and he had
broken his wrist real really bad and um
i was this was before i deployed
so i met him and i we stayed in touch
and just became friends and just texted
that was it nothing weird and um i was
deploying though
so
we just agreed you know we'd be friends
we weren't actually talking about
anything romantically at all
and then uh i deployed and we got
talking and to know each other a little
more a little more
and then we decided that we liked each
other and we wanted to try to give it at
least a semi shot and so when i got home
from afghanistan
i went and watched him race
his last one of his last two races that
he did professionally before he retired
excuse me and it was a montreal when was
in vegas
and
i hadn't seen him
and he didn't really
know me we didn't really know each other
we you know we met i slept in the bed
beside him because my girlfriend didn't
want to get in trouble from her
boyfriend from sleeping beside a random
dude
and then um yeah we just we we started
dating and
he really slowly became my rock and
he understands trauma he had some stuff
happen in his life in his family that
he went through a lot of therapy he went
through a lot of shit he went he saw
what traumatic situations can do to a
family and to people and those that are
suffering with it
and so he was well equipped
to handle me
um thankfully
and it got to a point where we were
doing the long distance back and forth
back and forth and back and forth and i
finally got the call that i was going to
be released from the military
and i wanted to live near him but i
couldn't afford to live in british
columbia because i was from ontario and
bc is like it means bring cash for a
reason
i'm like to know i can live there and
then his family was like come live with
us
like they had a big enough they had a
big enough house
trust me it was fine
so i was like okay
and so
i went from like dating this guy long
distance to
over you know from 2009 to 2011 just
back and forth back and forth back and
forth
and then finally his parents were like
shit or get off the pot here with her
like come on you know it's obvious she
loves you and i would never say it that
word just as a love oh like it was just
like you guys didn't say uh for a long
time
for a long time
because i was dead inside
wow i didn't know what that meant
because i did i couldn't feel i didn't
feel anything he loved it because he
like we'd be go we go do something you
would never complain about anything you
wouldn't say a fucking word you would
just sit there and now
you got all your feelings back and your
emotions back and now you're too hot and
you're too cold
anyways so yeah he loved it i was numb
and dead inside seriously when when i
called him back were you still able to
have fun together that kind of thing
like uh like when you say there's no
emotion there's more emotion around the
basics of like everyday life
uh but you're still able to just like
enjoy shit together i was enjoying stuff
but i wasn't
like
feeling yeah i was like this is fun yeah
right that was it that was surface level
like lex this is fun like it wasn't uh
there's nothing there yeah no there's
nothing there's hey
yeah nothing
and so we went through that for a long
time and then i lived with his parents
and we
we lived there and that was you know god
damn it his family was so good to me
because i was a nightmare
i was a nightmare couldn't cook certain
food around me anymore couldn't couldn't
go certain places anymore couldn't
you know crowds weren't hard no we
didn't do canada today and like i just
changed i moved in and was like
shit's gotta change if you guys don't
want me to kill everyone like
and they were willing and they were
accepting
and they were amazing about it and then
we finally said okay well like if does
this is this we're good we're like i i
used to say like
i l you like i couldn't say love it
freaked me out for a long time
and then i finally said it and then that
shithead said it like a month later and
i was like that's not fair you should
have said it the same exact time i
wanted the response yeah and um he goes
to treatment with me he whatever i need
he knows that like hey he's more for
like him and like how do i handle her
yeah
and um then we moved out we bought a
house and then he took a sweet ass time
we were dating for four years before we
were engaged because just to be sure the
crazy wasn't too crazy he waited four
years on that smart man right yeah or
you can you could say he's just a
terrified commitment but both a little
bit of both hey when you were the guy on
the posters that all the girls sign up
to that sent all the dirty pictures
fucking why are you giving that up it's
easy yeah commitment is a real
commitment then yeah
okay this is the jaco reset
we talked about brass and unity a little
bit what's the long-term mission goal
and dream of your company and the
podcast of the same name
so for me what i've been trying to do
with this company is create a community
that
can really work together to not only
help vets first responders but to really
bridge the gap with the civilian
population and letting them know what we
kind of go through and why it is such a
epidemic and why there is over 22
suicides a day and we are losing people
like it's going out of style like the
amount of vets that are questioning the
last 20 years of their life right now is
is
terrifying the you know i work with
organizations that are doing this
outreach and they're overloaded right
now like they have never seen before
because this whole thing is just
it's hit ahead here and so what brass
and unity tries to do is
it is really just a vehicle to get the
money in the hands of the people that
are doing the work with it i couldn't
start a non-profit because i'm not good
at fundraising i'm not good at being
like give me your money i'm gonna do
this with it
the least i could do was come up with a
product that i know i could give to
people or people could purchase
and if i gave
pretty much all of the pro like the the
actual um profit from it to those
organizations and i give them something
to wear that is a touch piece or if
they're out and somebody sees a bullet
on their wrist they go hey what is that
it's a conversation starter and that's
exactly what it's been
and it's it's done its job as that and
so we like i said we are a way to get
the vehicle we're the vehicle we're the
money in the hands of the people people
don't always want to just get a tax
receipt it's great to donate to
something
great on you to do that but most people
have a selfish aspect right and that's
okay but if you can tap into that you
can then fund these charities properly
and give them the tools to do their jobs
effectively up until this point they
just count on people's goodness of their
hearts
i hate to break it to you humanity's
rough right now we need to look at
something a little differently so these
things spark like a jewelry sparks
conversations and then and then do you
work with charities yes oh god yeah
that's what i do so my whole mission
every day is i get up i push jewelry and
sunglasses on people and say
but now that you're going to wear that
now you're a part of the bnu army now
you're a part of this community speaking
of which let me uh let me
put it put it right back on branded this
is uh organic product placement yeah
this isn't like marketing at all nothing
weird about this at all and so we work
with a lot of organizations and i'm very
particular about where we send our money
because there are it feels like
thousands of vet organizations right now
and
if we were able to consolidate it would
be more ideal i spoke about that on
another show but that's not currently
happening so i try to work with the
non-profits i know number one are not
paying six-figure salaries which trust
me there's lots
a lot
number two i look at the actual
resources that they're providing and if
they're going to be something that are
going to be useful in my opinion whether
or not they're actually useful and i
just don't think they are that's a
that's up for debate i know it's worked
for me so i try to fund the things that
i know have been helpful for me and the
people i associate with
so
that's why i brought all the paper
because i didn't want to be
an idiot and forget anybody that's
really important because i get caught up
in things and i think it's important to
acknowledge so number one heroic hearts
we just started working um to
talk about them and really make them
known but we're going to be donating to
them as well are they doing uh more
stuff than the ayahuasca things yeah so
their points are i got jesse to actually
i'm like what are your talking points
because i need people to know exactly
what you do
so veterans have had to take their
mental and general health into their own
hands due to the failure of the
government system so that is why they
were created but heroic hearts is a peer
supported mental health network
involving full preparation integration
coaching and connection to vetted
psychedelic treatments so they don't
just do aya they deal with psilocybin
ketamine um ibogaine but they've got
protocols in place they've got locations
you go to that are safely vetted and
they work they've got over right now
jesse said they have over 800 veterans
on a waiting list for treatment that's
just before the spike of the end of this
war
um
they have over a hundred they've helped
over 100 veterans including dozens of
special operation vets find effective
care they've now got branches in the u.s
uk and canada and the the biggest thing
about them and why we talk about them is
because
the problem of psychedelics and the
stigma around it is so significant but
because of great universities that are
now stepping up and doing the research
behind it it is being legitimized so
like they're doing that in canada
there's a group called therasil
they are currently fighting the
government to get the rights for
canadians under section 56 of our laws
to get compassionate care for psilocybin
use i've done a panel with them on that
really great base of victoria really
smart people one of the other bigger
charities that we work with and they're
honestly they were my first and foremost
charity that i ever worked with and
they're a big component in the veteran
community in canada
um they're called honor house and honor
house was started by
honoree colonel
al dijanova it was started because of a
guy named trevor greene he was a
canadian soldier who deployed
and he was so captain trevor green sorry
trevor captain trevor green
um he got an axe in the middle of his
head
a taliban member came up and put an axe
directly into his head when his helmet
was off and he survived
he's done work with uh invictus games
and prince harry he has an exoskeleton
he uses on the island he's the he's so
cool he hasn't changed one bit from like
the infantry captain he you expect him
to be
and it was al saw there was a need for
vets and first responders to get
treatment
because there's no real home away from
home for people picture ronald mcdonald
for cancer and families this is vets and
first responders and so their whole
thing and i'll read it so i say it
exactly right because i used to be on
the board of their charity but i ran out
of time so now i just consult
but um
they are a home away from home for
members of the canadian armed force
forces veterans and first responders and
their families to stay completely free
of charge while they're receiving
medical care and treatment in the
vancouver area but since then they've
expanded since i've come on board and
they've opened honor ranch which is up
in ashcroft bc
and it's 140 acres 10 cabins and a main
cabin they do equine therapy and they're
more focused on operational stress
injury clinics so
sorry operational stress injury within
the veteran community and they have
specialists that do that they have uh
they have their own bracelet with us so
every time you buy an owner house
bracelet all the proceeds go to them
they
yeah and it's actually the green one
so that one so when you buy one of those
honorhouse bracelets
they have those they go directly to them
which is really amazing they've been
near and dear to my heart for a long
time you've got the all secure
foundation which is these guys are these
guys are super dope i'm going to read
exactly because jen texts me so jen and
tom satterly i've had them both on the
podcast
tom was involved in black hawk down
tom is a delta have you heard of them
no
so okay so tom was involved in black
hawk down it was one of his first
operations he's a delta operator and i
asked her i said listen i'm going to be
doing these shows and i think it's great
that we talk about you more so i said
give me your three points of importance
so the all secure foundation
serves special operations combat
families in healing from post-traumatic
stress injury and secondary
post-traumatic stress so that's often
what the wife or the other husband or
the other spouse suffers from we're
starting to see that be more and more of
an issue now
so they also are devoted to rebuilding
the couple's relationships on the home
front after the separations of war and
80 of their warriors went on
went um
yeah 80 of their warriors want their
families to be more involved with the
healing the problem is is very often
vets don't realize that they can have or
just because the system doesn't pay for
it actually have their spouse as a part
of things and the biggest thing that we
find with special operations families i
think the divorce rate's like 95
and so they work so hard with these
families they take them on retreats
these husbands and wives and they get
them to connect again after being
separated over such a long period of
time
there's other places like children the
fallen patriots out of dc where they
fund education um university for people
who have lost their parents um in
deployments
whether their kids even born yet if
they're still in utero they still pay
they do not care then you've got people
like um in canada you've got vets canada
you've got in the states you've you know
you got true patriot love you've got um
who else in the states is really great
that we've worked with i know there's a
green beret foundation that's great one
more wave gives amputees teaches them to
surf
with it with amputees like they're
really great there's so many
organizations but at the end of the day
i focus on a small subset because
you cannot fix everyone's problems the
least thing the least you can do for
people is focus
if you can provide focus you can provide
the proper amount of funding proper
amount of funding can get the proper
amount of tools those tools can actually
be implemented properly and then those
people can go on to hopefully have
successful marriages and families
and we don't have to watch our parents
drink themselves to death and wonder why
daddy's yelling at mommy all the time
and daddy storms out and leaves well
daddy had some shit happen in his life
and mommy had some shit happen but that
does not mean that's who they are and
yes so trauma has completely destructive
effects on
family and relationships and like
correcting that as like
ripple effects oh
yeah astronomical ripple effects because
the problem is we are so quick to tell
people they're suffering from ptsd we're
so quick to give them drugs we're so
quick to kick them out of the military
we're so quick to let them be homeless
on the street we're so quick to let them
fucking kill themselves we're so quick
and then all of a sudden when when a
politician goes veteran suicide's an
issue that's when it's a problem
well if you prevent the problem from
happening in the first place or you give
people the right funding and tools to do
the job you won't have this problem
do you have advice for young people i
think high school students
maybe uh
undergrads college students
about career
life how to live a life they can be
proud of
you've had one heck of a life
some of them are really cheesy but
they're true
live a life you can be proud of
number one
if you wake up every morning and you
hate what you do change
the fucking station
do not live and stay in that perpetual
cycle of bullshit
it's not worth it it's not
it's not what you're on this planet for
you're worth more than that than the
monotony of waking up going to work
hating your life drinking yourself to
sleep and functioning
do yourself a favor the thing i scream
about on the show so much is move your
fucking body move your body
get your blood moving allow your body to
to do what it's here for go for a run go
for a walk if you can't run walk to the
fridge three times more than maybe you
did before but you're moving
pay attention to the shit you look at
more now than ever we are seeing uh our
younger generation just be force-fed
information from one side or the other
and none of it makes sense none of it's
understandable it just causes chaos in
the brain
really pay attention to what you you
listen to
something i've had to learn to do is
make time for myself
all of this
working 18 hours a day not sleeping just
work work record that doesn't work
that's not sustainable it's not healthy
and it's not it's not anything anyone
should be doing balance is important
but if you're going to take the time
to do something for yourself
don't make it sitting in front of the tv
for six hours eating a bag of chips
drinking a coke
make it i'm gonna go for a walk maybe
listen to a podcast where i can learn
something
make it
i'm gonna go volunteer somewhere nobody
does that anymore but make it i can go
volunteer somewhere honor house
they have no paid employees they have
one everybody is a volunteer they're
fucking phenomenal
just
do whatever you're gonna do do it with
some fucking drive put some goddamn
effort into your life
and pick something in a career that's
gonna make you happy
not something that's just gonna give you
six figures because that's not gonna
make you happy i can tell you right now
i have everything in the world and the
last thing i want is more things i want
less i want the woods and i want quiet
because that's what's important to me
i want my family to matter the people
around me to matter and the small group
i keep that tight knit i have
i want them to wake up every minute
knowing that they have a friend that
they can call on the other line that
isn't just like how's it going that can
actually have a conversation a
meaningful intelligent
caring conversation
we are just breeding these kids to be
followers who digest bullshit who
reverberate things they don't fully
understand and have opinions on stuff
they have no business talking about
yeah uh with an open mind humbly think
deeply about the world
correct
how has your relationship with death
changed this is a russian program i have
to ask you so you've considered suicide
throughout your life you have been in
the line of fire you have witnessed
death
you as a human being immortal one
do you think about your death these days
now that you have begun the journey with
dealing with your trauma
do you think about your death are you
afraid of your death
well you don't die so that's why what do
you mean you don't die you move on
where do you go
to another plane and another vibration
and another whatever you want to call it
this isn't it this isn't all of it
this is a blip
this is a moment this is uh
i used to be afraid of death before the
military i was always afraid of dying i
don't know why i had this irrational
fear that i was gonna be kidnapped in my
room like seriously like irrational fear
like afraid um and it's funny because i
talked to michaela um yesterday and she
said the same thing and i was like oh my
god i know what you're talking being
afraid of being kidnapped yeah she had
this like fear that someone was going to
come in and take her out of her room
i had the same fear but a human being
or some kind no i think like by a human
being and i had this irrational fear
that i was that's like something was
going to happen to me and like i said i
don't know if it's because like my
parents were always made me aware of my
surroundings like people take people
this is a real thing that happens yeah
that was really small so and i looked
like a little boy my hair was like that
when i was training i had short no hair
i know flat as a board you would have
thought i was a 12 year old boy
and so my mom's like people take people
sweetie that's just the reality of life
you need to be aware so i don't know if
i had this ingrained in my mind
i was always like training to protect
myself or fight someone off so i was
like
afraid of like this irrational thing
and then i went overseas and then i
realized that i could just be literally
there talking you having a conversation
and i could just be taken off the face
of the earth
and there's nothing i can do about it
and then i adapted this idea that when
it's my time it'll be my time but
the difference is now
at least i know that
if i do go
and i do cross and i am
and i do move on
i know that i live my life the way that
i i always
hoped i would be proud to live
can i ask you a dark question yeah
because we
you mentioned robin williams you
mentioned anthony bourdain and your own
struggle with suicide
why do you think
they
ultimately lost about that battle
why do you think they took their lives
man that's a that's a loaded question
because you could look at everything
from from
biomarkers in the brain to know if their
serotonin and dopamine levels were
crashed in the ground like there's
there's biological reasonings for some
people where they're born bipolar and
they have or you know they're
schizophrenic there's so many things
we don't fully grasp about the brain
but what we do know from my perspective
for me at least
there really is no rhyme or reason why i
survived and others didn't
stuff and things don't make you happy
people don't always
know why they're feeling the way they're
feeling but they also are also are not
always
willing to talk about it or
be
they put on a good front and if nobody
knows any different what do you expect
and it's especially clear with the the
two of them that on the surface they're
you know
exceptionally successful in so many
dimensions right and still that means
nothing material possessions
anything really is not uh doesn't
guarantee you
happiness no it doesn't
well scary
that's terrifying
but uh when it's good
that's what makes it
joyful like that's what happiness is
it's like holy shit somehow amidst all
the absurdity all the things that you
can't predict you you nevertheless feel
really good that's why i feel really
fortunate to to be getting this feat of
happiness all the time
um well
to be or not to be that's a good place
to end it uh kelsey you're an amazing
human being i'm really fortunate that
you would spend your valuable time with
me
i
i as i said
you're so good at not just talking but
listening so i definitely will listen to
your podcast because i can tell you're
an incredible person as an interviewer
and as a storyteller so again thank you
for talking today thank you so much
thanks for listening to this
conversation with kelsey sharon to
support this podcast please check out
our sponsors in the description
and now let me leave you with some words
from herbert hoover
older men declare war
but it is the youth that must fight and
die
thank you for listening and hope to see
you next time