297 | Dr. Mike Simpson

[SPEAKER_02]: What shocked me more than anything is when I got to when I got to Ford hood when I PC has to Ford hood and I started seeing E eight's E nine's and oh six's with no combat patch and I'm like Where the hell if you you know this was you know IP CS in two thousand twelve I'm like you've had a decade [SPEAKER_02]: You know, to just go over for a little, I mean, you didn't even take the mail over, you know, you know, with the hell.

[SPEAKER_02]: And that's, and a lot of those people, a lot of those people hit out, stayed under the radar, or maybe they went over and they did a little, you know, they did a tour on the fob somewhere where, you know, their biggest brush with, with death was when the ice cream machine broke down. [SPEAKER_02]: And now they're right in policy. [SPEAKER_00]: Let's go. [SPEAKER_03]: Welcome to Citizen. [SPEAKER_03]: We've got a special guest today for the second time.

[SPEAKER_03]: Mike Simpson, how's it going? [SPEAKER_02]: Good brother. [SPEAKER_02]: Good to be here. [SPEAKER_03]: Um, wait, what was your last rank in the Army captain or major? [SPEAKER_02]: I retired as a major because you went and I, I sabotaged my records for the, for the, for the, oh, five board. [SPEAKER_02]: Because, uh, as I like to tell people, I didn't, one of two things was going to happen.

[SPEAKER_02]: Either I was going to, I was going to make a five, which was pretty probable because he told me I was going to make it. [SPEAKER_02]: And then I was going to have to decide if I wanted to stay. [SPEAKER_03]: when you were tapped up double-tamed, you had a medical degree, so. [SPEAKER_02]: I had two tabs, five combat tours, I had two BSMs, one with a V, I had an eye out of.

[SPEAKER_03]: an MSM so yeah no no no no do you I don't think that once you get to like e-eight or oh five the only thing to stop you if you got the credits do you like it's usually that sometimes is number of dealers yeah yeah [SPEAKER_02]: So I deliberately sabotaged my record and I didn't by deliberately sabotaging. [SPEAKER_02]: I didn't, you know, you're supposed to go through. [SPEAKER_04]: You didn't fill everything out. [SPEAKER_02]: You're supposed to sign.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, I reviewed my record. [SPEAKER_02]: They called me up and they were like, oh, Major Simpson, you haven't reviewed your record. [SPEAKER_02]: And I and looking through your record, you're pretty much a shoe and to get promoted. [SPEAKER_02]: And I said, I want you to specifically write on there that you and I had this conversation. [SPEAKER_02]: And I refused to come three miles to sign that form. [SPEAKER_02]: I'm like, I want that on there.

[SPEAKER_02]: Because I don't either I guess I either I was going to get promoted enough to make the decision to stay to keep that rank at retirement or I wasn't going to get it and then I was going to be pissed off when I looked around and saw the people that did get it. [SPEAKER_02]: So I did the George Costanza. [SPEAKER_02]: I am breaking up with you. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: And then I don't your desk actually. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, basically get some sleep.

[SPEAKER_03]: I don't remember what [SPEAKER_03]: God damn it. [SPEAKER_03]: I saw it recently, but somebody's coming out with like a little action figure thing, and it's George sleep it under his desk. [SPEAKER_03]: It's like a little tabletop thing. [SPEAKER_03]: It's really fun. [SPEAKER_02]: That's fucking epic. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I love that stuff. [SPEAKER_02]: That's an amazing episode. [SPEAKER_03]: So for those who don't know, you run us through your a brief history of Mike Simpson.

[SPEAKER_03]: pre-military and then get into the military and run through that. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so we'll pre-military there's not much to talk about because I was two weeks out of high school in nineteen eighty four but way before many of your listeners are probably even born. [SPEAKER_02]: I chipped off on an eleven x-ray a ranger contract.

[SPEAKER_02]: uh... went through basic uh... in our board school at four bending that was when all the individual range of a range of a tyrants had their own rip that was before regimental rip and before rasp and all this other stuff so i would the first battalion rip uh... at hunter army airfield was uh... assigned to a company one seven five i was there for four years i e t s and i did the s f guard thing which is what [SPEAKER_02]: Most people in the soft community were doing at that time.

[SPEAKER_02]: A lot of guys from division too. [SPEAKER_02]: We're jumping into these SF garg units or the LRS units. [SPEAKER_02]: So I was in twenty-a-th group. [SPEAKER_02]: Got mobilized during Desert Shield Desert Storm. [SPEAKER_02]: Mobilized but didn't deploy, but that was when I finally got to knock out SFAS. [SPEAKER_02]: I finished the Q Corps as an eighteen Charlie and went to language school. [SPEAKER_02]: decided I wanted to stay on active duty.

[SPEAKER_02]: Turned in my gear, signed into seventh group. [SPEAKER_02]: I was an eighteen Charlie and seventh group until ninety five I went to Fort Sam and knocked out the medic course and then did the rest of my time as an eighteen delta and I got I actually was in the medical school application and acceptance process when nine eleven happened

[SPEAKER_02]: had a crisis of consciousness, almost turned down medical school, had two different sergeant majors, pull me aside, slap me around, tell me I was an idiot, I need to go to medical school and come back, they said this war is not going anywhere, you need to come back as a physician who knows his ass from a home around. [SPEAKER_02]: So, went to medical school, did emergency medicine residency, went right back to the community.

[SPEAKER_02]: and I was assigned a j-sock in a tier one SMU at Bragg and I did six years with them prior to retirement and then ultimately I retired actually out of Fort Hood as the chief of emergency medicine in twenty what I guess you're a PA for a tier one unit or something or what were you doing there [SPEAKER_02]: So the way that it worked was, there is a medical direct support unit that falls under the JSON umbrella that provides far-forward cutting-edge medical support.

[SPEAKER_02]: And it's surgeons, emergency medicine physicians, the team leaders or PAs usually PAs that have extensive senior medical experience as NCOs, either in range of regimen or NSF.

[SPEAKER_02]: These are far and away the best [SPEAKER_03]: PAs that you're ever gonna meet and never gonna work with just all outstanding individuals all former seals former Rangers former eighteen deltas and what do you what's the what's the what's the job there I guess aside like compare it obviously other there's a similar billet and other places but what makes it

[SPEAKER_03]: I guess what's other than happy and tabbed up, what makes you different enough to be in that specific spot, because this tempo is quite a bit high. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, the selection process to get there, number one, the op tempo, and really the level of integration that we go through.

[SPEAKER_02]: So we're not like there's probably a half a dozen acronyms out there in various services for different [SPEAKER_02]: medical units that claim the special operations moniker and they're very much special operations adjacent.

[SPEAKER_02]: This is what I did was true integration of special operations medical personnel [SPEAKER_02]: right there to, you know, literally either be at the point of injury or get the hand off from the medic that's stabilized that person at the point of injury.

[SPEAKER_02]: So, you know, this is the level of integration not only while deployed, but also in training, because, and that's, we spend a tremendous amount of our time going around and augmenting, you know, when training exercises are going on. [SPEAKER_02]: So, you know, for that reason, there's one of the things that since I've retired and I've become a swat physician, there's multiple papers that have been written on.

[SPEAKER_02]: Medical assets that do not regularly integrate with tactical units during training tend to be ignored during real-world scenarios. [SPEAKER_02]: The Las Vegas, what was it, route, seventy-one or whatever. [SPEAKER_02]: That shooting was a prime example of that is that the tactical medical units actually showed up. [SPEAKER_02]: The scene commander had no idea who they were, said, okay, that's fine. [SPEAKER_02]: Go stand over there.

[SPEAKER_02]: When the area is secure, we'll come get you. [SPEAKER_02]: Because they weren't integrating themselves regularly during training. [SPEAKER_02]: And that's also true in the military, as I mentioned, these kind of special operations adjacent units that go by various names. [SPEAKER_02]: They don't integrate themselves during training. [SPEAKER_02]: They're kind of, I think a lot of them have the kind of two-cult train type mentality.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's like, [SPEAKER_03]: It used to be a lot like that with Air Force Special Operators as well. [SPEAKER_03]: It wasn't the attitude problem that was just being disjointed between the services. [SPEAKER_03]: It was a communication break. [SPEAKER_03]: When I was getting deployed to the surge, they changed it up. [SPEAKER_03]: Instead of sending so that what they used to do was, and I think they've gone back to it.

[SPEAKER_03]: Now what they used to do is they would send X number of dudes into theater, like J-Tax, TAC, and she liked that.

[SPEAKER_03]: PJ's obviously were doing their, they're working on their team, but in CCTs and J-Tax, [SPEAKER_03]: attack peas they would just send however many the battle space needed and they would go to the units and help them out but we got ours in advance like Jared Taylor was mine that's how we fucking met actually in two thousand seven for the surge so they sent him ahead of time and we trained with him quite a bit actually before we ever saw theater which is like invaluable

[SPEAKER_02]: It makes a massive difference. [SPEAKER_03]: Especially, I mean, I don't walk me through the benefits of doing it in the medical field, because I think everybody can understand why it would be good to have the guy calling your airstrikes integrated into your team, but explaining that part. [SPEAKER_02]: It's it's kind of one three different levels. [SPEAKER_02]: So it's on the individual level, the unit level and and the capabilities level.

[SPEAKER_02]: So for lack of a better term. [SPEAKER_02]: So they get to know me as an individual. [SPEAKER_02]: So they know a little bit more about my background that you're not full of shit. [SPEAKER_03]: So on those show of docks as XYZ they go do it. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, then I've actually seen ship over there. [SPEAKER_02]: I'm not, I'm not some fucking Johnny come lately. [SPEAKER_02]: It doesn't know what he's talking about.

[SPEAKER_02]: You know, the fact that, you know, I'll give you a great example. [SPEAKER_02]: I briefly attached to one of the squadrons for a while. [SPEAKER_02]: And when I first met up with one of their medics, come to find out he had gotten to seventh group about two months [SPEAKER_02]: after I had left seventh group, it was like, hey, your name does kind of sound familiar. [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, that's right. [SPEAKER_02]: You were in Ranger Regiment. [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, that's right.

[SPEAKER_02]: You went to uses and then you went to EM residency. [SPEAKER_02]: So he knew that I wasn't full of shit. [SPEAKER_02]: So I did know if nothing else, I knew the business end of a gun from the non business end of a gun. [SPEAKER_02]: I knew [SPEAKER_02]: If I hear clicky things, I need to get down and take cover somewhere. [SPEAKER_02]: I know not to be flagging everybody with my laser or my weapon everywhere I go.

[SPEAKER_02]: So as a minimum, I'm not going to be a detriment to that operation on the ground. [SPEAKER_02]: So that's what they learn about me as an individual. [SPEAKER_02]: Then on the unit level, they learn, oh, this is exactly, you know, this is what we come with. [SPEAKER_02]: This is what we've seen in the past. [SPEAKER_02]: This is how we've operated in the past.

[SPEAKER_02]: And then on the capabilities level, it's these are the things that we are comfortable taking care of that we're a hundred percent sure because it's been battle tested. [SPEAKER_02]: We can do it. [SPEAKER_02]: So we can provide stabilization to this type of casualty to that type of casualty. [SPEAKER_02]: These are the only things that we lack. [SPEAKER_03]: It's a new world now, man. [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, I don't know what the, I've seen the numbers.

[SPEAKER_03]: I can't remember off the top of my head, but the percentages of survivability of traumatic wounds from, I don't think Revolutionary War, the track, but from Civil War to World War I, World War II, and then to present. [SPEAKER_03]: It's wildly different, right? [SPEAKER_03]: Like one of the reasons we have numbers like, [SPEAKER_03]: So for a rack in Afghanistan, four thousand deaths and but like eighty thousand casualties, right?

[SPEAKER_03]: The reason it's not like fifty thousand deaths and thirty thousand additional casualties because of this new medicine basically, right? [SPEAKER_03]: Knowing to put your finger down into the leg hole, find the femoral artery, hold it, and then pack curl X in there until you can't pack anymore, is a relatively new invention to be honest, right? [SPEAKER_03]: Seems like something we should have figured out a long time ago.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so the big thing, the three, if I had, and again, I've been out for nine years now, so somebody might screet at this that, you know, there might be different data, which is good, by the way. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, well, and that's one of the reasons that they got their fucking improvement. [SPEAKER_02]: So until very recently, there were a couple of tactical exercises that I would take play, I would participate in every year.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I let the guys that run it now, I go, hey, I said, hey, man, I haven't deployed since, twenty, fourteen. [SPEAKER_02]: I've been out since, twenty, sixteen. [SPEAKER_02]: If you want me to come around and just sit in front of a room and give a talk until war stories, I'm happy to do that. [SPEAKER_02]: But as far as sitting on a lane and pretending, I know what's what the newest addition of the Ranger Metacamble has in it. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: I'm not your guy.

[SPEAKER_03]: Field medicine changes pretty quickly, right? [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, sometimes it doesn't for a very long time, but when it changes, it's very rapid. [SPEAKER_02]: When it changes, yeah, it's rapid adoption. [SPEAKER_02]: And the units that adopt more rapidly are more successful. [SPEAKER_02]: Of course. [SPEAKER_02]: And the big three, in my opinion, that we saw in GWAT that made the biggest changes were hemorrhage control.

[SPEAKER_02]: So that was turn against and wound packing. [SPEAKER_02]: That was one thing. [SPEAKER_02]: Blood administration far forward and surgical capabilities as far forward as possible. [SPEAKER_02]: Those are the things that made the most massive difference. [SPEAKER_02]: because the quicker that you can get somebody. [SPEAKER_02]: So if I can plug the hole, you need to put a turn it on or pack the wound, boom, stop the bleeding, replace the blood you've already lost.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm already ninety-eight percent away there. [SPEAKER_02]: The other two percent is having a surgeon on the other side of this wall that I can now hand that over to that they can definitively take care of that patient. [SPEAKER_03]: Are we still pretending like two inches above the wound is where a turnic it goes or is the book actually say go all the way up to the joint or to the armpit or the fucking.

[SPEAKER_02]: So you ask a hundred people you're going to get a hundred different answers, but I'm going to I'm going to tell you so. [SPEAKER_03]: Is there any utility to going lower than just all the way up in my arms? [SPEAKER_02]: Yes. [SPEAKER_02]: Yes, there is because there's less resistance because diameter equals resistance. [SPEAKER_04]: Sure. [SPEAKER_02]: So if I only go to inches above the wound.

[SPEAKER_02]: So the reason high and tight is the hasty turn to get right high and tight is the it's dark. [SPEAKER_02]: There's a lot there's bullets flying. [SPEAKER_02]: There's loud noises. [SPEAKER_02]: I don't have time to look for where that hole is. [SPEAKER_02]: So I'm going to go as high in the groin as possible. [SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to slap that turn to get on and I'm going to worry about where it is later.

[SPEAKER_02]: Then ideally, once you're in a safe place, shootings not occurring, maybe you can turn a blue light or a light light on. [SPEAKER_02]: Now you can go, oh, hey, here's the wound. [SPEAKER_02]: Now I can put a turn ticket two to four inches directly above that wound because you need less pressure. [SPEAKER_02]: There's more wound. [SPEAKER_02]: There is there is a little bit more salvageability to that limb.

[SPEAKER_02]: If if [SPEAKER_02]: If they are going to lose that limb, and that's not, of course, we used to think that was a hundred percent. [SPEAKER_02]: You know, they tell you if they're turning it down, you're going to lose it. [SPEAKER_03]: But now we know that's not what is it like, twelve or eighteen hours, depending on what it is now. [SPEAKER_02]: It's not, not quite that much.

[SPEAKER_02]: So the magic number, we know turn it gets are safe for two, likely safe for three, somewhere between three and six. [SPEAKER_02]: is the line in the end. [SPEAKER_03]: We don't know if I just hit the lens on like oxygen levels, it should like that problem. [SPEAKER_02]: It depends on a lot of factors. [SPEAKER_02]: You know what that's okay. [SPEAKER_02]: What vessel was injured? [SPEAKER_02]: What was your what was your health prior to it?

[SPEAKER_02]: What was the mechanism of injury? [SPEAKER_02]: How much surrounding how much of this surrounding structures are damaged? [SPEAKER_02]: After about six hours, you can kind of figure that that's probably not going to be salvageable. [SPEAKER_02]: It could be, but your likelihood rapidly drops off after that time.

[SPEAKER_02]: And that's why towards the end of the conflict, we start concentrating a lot more on turnicic conversion, on medics being able to recognize, okay, I've got this guy, I'm either [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, they're in an aircraft and an immature theater, and I'm on a four hour flight, or I'm, you know, the tactical situation doesn't permit extraction. [SPEAKER_02]: Now I need to make the decision. [SPEAKER_02]: Can this turn it be converted to a wound packing and a pressure dressing?

[SPEAKER_03]: Right. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: And then, and then, of course, that, again, that was another huge leap forward once we started pushing that down to the pointy care level. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, every new [SPEAKER_03]: Well, I guess it comes in ways, because sometimes the new tech increases survivability and sometimes it increases, like, limber tension, which is what we're seeing kind of now. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: Which is nice.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's, yeah, morbidity and mortality. [SPEAKER_02]: So, you know, two different things, most, you know, you're ideally you're always looking to address both, both morbidity and mortality. [SPEAKER_02]: Sometimes you have to make a choice, you know, between morbidity and mortality. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: Certainly.

[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: What I guess when you're operating in a unit like that, one of my buddies actually used to work at call Center for Army Lessons learned. [SPEAKER_03]: I don't know if I don't hear anybody ever talk about it anymore, so I'm not sure it even exists. [SPEAKER_03]: I'm sure it exists still because it's an expenditure in the DOD's not given up any money, right? [SPEAKER_02]: But it might go under a different name. [SPEAKER_02]: Somebody might have needed an order.

[SPEAKER_02]: Maybe, yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: And I wonder this [SPEAKER_03]: It was big in the early two thousands that trained the trainer programs and stuff like that. [SPEAKER_03]: They were big. [SPEAKER_03]: Like we would send dudes to SDM school or whatever, right? [SPEAKER_03]: Just thought we would send dudes to like a many fires school so they could learn more about call because we would do it in EIB.

[SPEAKER_03]: And that's the only time we would ever really call for fire even in our FTX is because when we were on a field problem, we had our thirteen's running around and they were doing that shit, right? [SPEAKER_03]: But we would be next to them. [SPEAKER_03]: But I kind of feel like cross-training on that is important because what if that do gets clipped? [SPEAKER_03]: If our FISO is clipped and our thirteen is clipped, then we're done.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, well tactical combat catches the carriers, one of those things that every soldier needs to know. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, so that's the other thing. [SPEAKER_03]: So what? [SPEAKER_03]: When I wonder is right now, when we're in kind of a down period and it seems like from the DOD's perspective, we're getting our ground troops ready for a near-peer war. [SPEAKER_03]: Okay, something like that happens, which is the right move because you can always train back to gorilla.

[SPEAKER_03]: That part is, that's the easy part of my penny. [SPEAKER_03]: Sure. [SPEAKER_03]: But training for near-peer, the big movements, the coordination and the logistics that are required to win those wars [SPEAKER_03]: is what we should be working on now. [SPEAKER_03]: And what I haven't seen, I've seen a couple of things that are happening in the military right now that are really good.

[SPEAKER_03]: One, Robert Irvine, that chef with the big biceps, the pros dude, and CZ, you know, Ramon Colon Lopez, right? [SPEAKER_03]: He and CZ are working to revamp the DOD's food program right now. [SPEAKER_03]: Like, if you walk into a defac, an army, I don't know about the Air Force, it's probably better. [SPEAKER_03]: I can't say, Navy might be a little better, better but gay. [SPEAKER_03]: If you walk into the army's defac, it's fucking garbage.

[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: There's like shit and plastic packaging. [SPEAKER_03]: That should never be in a military defac. [SPEAKER_03]: These are the most important professional athletes on Earth as far as work is concerned, right? [SPEAKER_03]: Like, LeBron James goes over twenty tonight. [SPEAKER_03]: That doesn't really affect me, but if my guys can't fight, then we might not exist anymore.

[SPEAKER_03]: So that's happening and he's been Irvine and CZ been working on it ever since CZ got out a couple years ago What I don't see what I haven't heard from my dudes is that Stuff like call is being brought back because I think it kind of got popular in the Vietnam era So you would go on a deployment and you would come back go on leave for three weeks and then come back and you would go to basic training Not as a drill sergeant necessarily, but as an SME on the theater and you would

[SPEAKER_03]: you would run training with the guys for a couple weeks or whatever that were in basic because they were getting ready to deploy. [SPEAKER_03]: I'll see any of that shit happening right now. [SPEAKER_03]: I don't see call or somebody like that or trade-ock or somebody like that.

[SPEAKER_03]: Taking all this tier one information that we've collected for the last twenty five tier one and two that we've collected for the last twenty five years and bringing it back down to the level of the bulk of the force right because that's kind of what a a w g did back in the day. [SPEAKER_03]: But I just don't see that happening right now and it seems like it's a good fucking idea.

[SPEAKER_02]: Well, in my opinion, and I think the writing was on the wall for a while, but it's been true, probably, as long as there've been standing armies, and I, for lack of a better word, I call it the hack worth effect, because he was the first person in modern parlance to bring it to everybody's attention, that peacetime militaries [SPEAKER_02]: are run by Pokes.

[SPEAKER_02]: He's time militaries are run because the people that understand that they have zero knowledge of war fighting, but they know what the regulations are. [SPEAKER_02]: They know how to put in a funding request for X, Y, or Z. They know how to write, you know, write an FM. [SPEAKER_02]: They end up running everything, right? [SPEAKER_02]: And we saw that during a lot of the Cold War, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: Now, [SPEAKER_02]: The soft units were off on their own, kind of doing their own thing, and staying above the fray on a lot of that. [SPEAKER_02]: And then lo and behold, what happens in the first two years of GWAT? [SPEAKER_02]: Hey, how come the rangers are getting in more firefights, but having fewer casualties, and then the casualties that they are having are surviving, what are they doing differently? [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, maybe we should take a look at that.

[SPEAKER_02]: Instead of all of the douchebags who work in building two that have been working in building two since they were a junior E six and now they're in E eight, you know, waiting to take a first sergeant billet somewhere else on Fort Benning, you know, why are we listening to these people instead of listening to the people that are at the tip of the spear? [SPEAKER_03]: There was a lot of slick sleeves in the early part. [SPEAKER_03]: Oh, yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: The G one.

[SPEAKER_02]: you know what what shocked me more than anything is when I got to when I got to Ford Hood when I PC has to Ford Hood and I started seeing E-H-E-Nines and O-Six's with no combat patch and I'm like where the hell of you you know this was you know IPCS in two thousand twelve I'm like you've had a decade [SPEAKER_02]: you know, to just go over for a little, I mean, you didn't even take the mail over, you know, you know, with the hell.

[SPEAKER_02]: And that's, and a lot of those people, a lot of those people hit out, stayed under the radar, or maybe they went over and they did a little, you know, they did a tour on the fob somewhere where, you know, their biggest brush with, with death was when the ice cream machine broke down.

[SPEAKER_02]: And now they're right in policy, you know, a lot of them, because it's, you know, a lot of the guys that were, you know, the, the true warfighters, [SPEAKER_02]: A lot of them stayed in past the period they would have normally got out during GWT because they were still a war on. [SPEAKER_02]: But as things started to wind down, it's like, well, the war's not on anymore. [SPEAKER_02]: So I'm going to leave.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to take all my experience and I'm going to go take a civilian job somewhere. [SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to retire and go fly fishing. [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, I did whatever. [SPEAKER_03]: It was, and I got out in October of, twenty-ten, and the war was winding down for the most part. [SPEAKER_03]: Our next two rotations were listed as train A and A, and then train IP and like now. [SPEAKER_03]: I don't know, dude. [SPEAKER_03]: I'm infantry.

[SPEAKER_03]: I'm not doing that shit. [SPEAKER_03]: Which is a problem, right? [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, I guess, it's not that anybody fucked up. [SPEAKER_03]: I don't think it's just kind of how it is because when we enter the GWAT, [SPEAKER_03]: We had a handful of generals, I guess, that had some combat experience in Gulf one and Panama, maybe Grenade if they were older guys, but they would have been really older at that point.

[SPEAKER_03]: But we didn't have any in charge field grade officers, right?

[SPEAKER_03]: They were majors and kernels that were [SPEAKER_03]: Battalion commanders and brigade commanders and Battalion and brigade S shop guys didn't they'd never been to war right so we didn't have that until what like two thousand five probably when those guys got promoted those little tennis and captains got promoted that was the first time we had actual and I don't mean to not call I don't I'm not saying there weren't war fighters, but they weren't experienced.

[SPEAKER_03]: That's just a fact, right? [SPEAKER_03]: So it took a little bit of time to catch up to that shit. [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah [SPEAKER_03]: to be honest, and that's just how it is. [SPEAKER_03]: So we've got to be better at planning for that, right? [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, even if it's things like early promote like, so I don't give a fuck if you've been in five years, two years, twenty years. [SPEAKER_03]: If you're capable of doing the job and that billet, you should get it, right?

[SPEAKER_03]: Whether it's a battlefield promotion for a green to gold or whether it's an officer battlefield promotion, like hey, [SPEAKER_03]: Lieutenant, you're showing that you can handle this between really well. [SPEAKER_03]: You got a company now. [SPEAKER_03]: Good for you, right? [SPEAKER_03]: I think that's I think there are men out there that are very capable of handling that. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: And we need to identify and promote them as rapidly as possible.

[SPEAKER_03]: Otherwise, in a near-peer war like that with an attrition rate, we're going to be fucked, right? [SPEAKER_03]: Because the main thing is coordination, competence and coordination of warfare as well wins.

[SPEAKER_03]: and if we're waiting for the pipeline to develop and wars like it's gonna be in twenty twenty five forward it's not world war one anymore it doesn't take three months to move a mile you know what I mean like we've got to be rapid with this stuff i really think that we need to start having some conversations about what the military is gonna look like ten years from now yeah or we're gonna be in trouble and the problem i mean you've got somewhere there's a room right now with a with a bunch of dudes in uniform whose job is to do that

[SPEAKER_02]: But the question is, are they echo chambering themselves? [SPEAKER_02]: Are they all just feeding in on the same misinformation? [SPEAKER_02]: Because in really in order to do that properly, you need to have four different rooms, completely isolated from one another, where they're all coming up with their own vision, they're all coming up with their own training plans, they're all coming up with their own op plans.

[SPEAKER_02]: And those all go somewhere so that regardless of which way we end up going, [SPEAKER_02]: You've got a plan that reflects that. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and I don't think they're doing that. [SPEAKER_03]: No, they're definitely not. [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, some of it happens, but then, you know, it at least twenty years later, and people are like, oh, the government was planning to do this, and we have a contingency for everything, my friend.

[SPEAKER_03]: If you see something that's a plan, [SPEAKER_03]: from like world war two era and you think that they were planning on actually doing it it's like not necessarily right there's there we have red cell teams whose jobs are by the way to make fucked up plans that's their only job is to make fucked up plans to the wheeler and how to combat them or whatever it is you know to be anyways so

[SPEAKER_02]: No, and you bring it, so you bring up red cell teams, and that was a, I did a podcast on it. [SPEAKER_02]: I wrote an article on it that was published in, actually, and it probably the only time I've been published in any type of medical journal. [SPEAKER_02]: And it was specifically on in the field of tactical medicine, the need to have somebody do red, what I call red hat stuff or red cell stuff all the time, which is no matter what you're planning for.

[SPEAKER_02]: There's somebody sitting in a chair on the other side of the room that says, [SPEAKER_02]: This is gonna be the opt for reaction to all of these actions So this is what you need to plan. [SPEAKER_03]: I watched top gun Maverick last night again because it's awesome by the way and when he comes in to start training the guys He's holding the F-A-T in manual and he goes I bet you guys know every single word in this book right? [SPEAKER_03]: Yep, so the bad guys.

[SPEAKER_03]: He's like hell. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, he goes. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, so does your enemy Yeah, exactly. [SPEAKER_03]: So you have to not that look [SPEAKER_03]: No matter what training we establish, the enemy is going to know to some degree about it, right? [SPEAKER_03]: So the purpose must be to build resilience one and then ability to rapidly adapt. [SPEAKER_03]: Those are the two, and look, that's what every fucking tier one and tier two selections all about.

[SPEAKER_03]: Everybody there can physically handle it. [SPEAKER_03]: Otherwise you wouldn't have been invited in the first place. [SPEAKER_03]: It's whether or not you can adjust to the circumstances and a big part of it is [SPEAKER_03]: start necessary movement, sometimes you just gotta get moving and figure that shit out, you know what I mean, because there's no time to sit around. [SPEAKER_02]: A good plan now is better than a perfect plan two days from.

[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, so it's like [SPEAKER_03]: Is the way, this is the thing that worries me, because I keep hearing my buddies down in seventh group. [SPEAKER_03]: They went to JRTC and it was like, it wasn't like a normal thing for us. [SPEAKER_03]: They were just like, you guys are an impeterate unit now. [SPEAKER_03]: So behave that way. [SPEAKER_03]: And they were like, all right, cool. [SPEAKER_03]: And that's fine.

[SPEAKER_03]: The DODs prepare for a near-per-war and they want to fold that in. [SPEAKER_03]: Those operators into the bulk force. [SPEAKER_03]: And I mean, good. [SPEAKER_03]: Fuck yeah, dude, right. [SPEAKER_03]: But my concern is that, [SPEAKER_03]: One of the things that has, so America changes its military style from time to time, but when we've been stagnant, it's not gone well, but when we've been intentionally asymmetric, we've dominated, right?

[SPEAKER_03]: So that is something that I'm very concerned about with this [SPEAKER_03]: bulk force training for a near-peer. [SPEAKER_03]: It's like we've we still got to be able to we still need I think this is a silly reference, but we still need Mel Gibson from the Patriot when he'd Luna takes out there. [SPEAKER_03]: We need a Shrek McFee. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, right.

[SPEAKER_03]: Luna takes when he Luna takes who it is going to be like, you know what fuck this and just go do something that helps when the war. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, and I I am very concerned right now that that's not having, but you know our guys will figure it out. [SPEAKER_03]: They typically do.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's [SPEAKER_02]: You know, going all the way back to task for Smith right when the army's got a tent up it's asked sometimes it's going to find out in a very painful fashion right as they did with task for Smith right so and then that became the motto for decades right no more task for Smith as they continue to do what got us into trouble with task for Smith right so

[SPEAKER_02]: you know what what's the old saying every you know no plan survives first contact with the enemy so if they become too rigid if they become too dogmatic if they try to conventionalize if they try to make everything algorithmic hey that's going to work great in garrison that's going to work great in channel training probably going to work great at JRTC but once the enemy gets a vote that's not going to work anymore and then the cream's going to rise to the top now

[SPEAKER_02]: The only the big downside to that is how much blood and treasure is going to be expelled. [SPEAKER_02]: in the realization of that that oh shit we've been training wrong for ten years or fifteen years or whatever it is.

[SPEAKER_03]: That's the big concern and it's not going to be you and me anymore it's going to be you know our sons are nephews yeah it's going to be the next generation but I don't want that I don't want I mean this this is forget about what I want this is the the desire of every man I think certainly every leader or every father is to not [SPEAKER_03]: have your kids have to go make your mistakes. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, like let's wipe those out.

[SPEAKER_03]: You can go make new mistakes and that's fine, but don't make the ones I made. [SPEAKER_03]: That's fucking state. [SPEAKER_03]: And if you do, it's my fault that you did it. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that's, I mean, that's supposed to be the whole purpose of institutional knowledge, right? [SPEAKER_02]: Is that we don't make, we don't recreate those. [SPEAKER_02]: We're gonna make new mistakes. [SPEAKER_02]: You know, I want, and like you say, I want my kids to make their own mistakes.

[SPEAKER_02]: want them to make my message. [SPEAKER_03]: Well, we do that genetically. [SPEAKER_03]: Like genetic memory is a real thing. [SPEAKER_03]: There's a reason that a cat wakes up and as soon as it's eyes open, it's ready to fight. [SPEAKER_03]: That's a very real thing. [SPEAKER_03]: Anyways, this episode of Citizen is brought to you by our title sponsor, Omaha Stakes Bestics in the Business the Oldest Butcher.

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[SPEAKER_03]: dot com slash trigger bros that's one STPH or m dot com slash trigger bros. [SPEAKER_03]: Now you're now you do what you do, uh, Dr. Mike, but you're also writing books. [SPEAKER_03]: So we've had on, um, honed back in the day, honed was, uh, finding your edge as a man over forty is talking about a lot of things you can do to, to, I guess, feel younger.

[SPEAKER_02]: yeah it was it was about it was a holistic it was a science-based but holistic approach to fitness and it was using all the knowledge that I garnered you know seventeen years as an operator and then of course having to be you know operator adjacent even as a physician and deploy you know in my forties deploying you know you know stacking up behind nineteen-year-old Rangers [SPEAKER_02]: and going through doors.

[SPEAKER_02]: I had to be in shape, you know, on into my mid to late forties. [SPEAKER_02]: And I had to figure out ways to do that because most of what you see in nutrition and workout plans, it's being sold to you from somebody who is probably genetically gifted and probably that's their only job. [SPEAKER_02]: You know, so they have twelve hours a day that they only have to worry about that. [SPEAKER_02]: So I wanted to write a book for guys in middle age.

[SPEAKER_02]: When a working a full-time job, have to find the time to work out, have to find a way to make nutrition work, to make sleep work, to find the supplements that they need to stay healthy. [SPEAKER_02]: And it spawned out of, I was getting emails and online questions all the time, hey, what do you think about this? [SPEAKER_02]: What about Tomrick? [SPEAKER_02]: Hey, what about magnesium? [SPEAKER_02]: What about this?

[SPEAKER_02]: Hey, what about, you know, CrossFit versus this, you know, Tabatas versus hit versus, you know, cycling versus other stuff, you know, you know, what should I be doing? [SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, I experimented a lot on myself. [SPEAKER_02]: I saw it out a lot of people guys like Drew Wingy who knew more than me and I ended up incorporating into that book and it was massively successful. [SPEAKER_02]: I sold over ten thousand copies.

[SPEAKER_02]: I was on the Amazon best cell list for I don't know how many weeks when it first came out. [SPEAKER_02]: And the great thing is that book still sells copies today. [SPEAKER_02]: And I still get emails from people, you know, hey, I've lost forty five pounds and, you know, and I'm, I mean, I just got my jujitsu blue belt and I'm doing this now. [SPEAKER_02]: I'm doing that now. [SPEAKER_02]: I never thought it forty six. [SPEAKER_02]: This was going to be possible.

[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I get those too. [SPEAKER_03]: The weirdest ones are like, when my lady will say, oh, this girlfriend of mine's husband saw this that you were talking about or doing. [SPEAKER_03]: And now he's doing this. [SPEAKER_03]: And like, oh, that's good, good for him. [SPEAKER_03]: You know what I mean?

[SPEAKER_03]: Look, some of the stuff is, and why I think it's important for people to share their whole [SPEAKER_03]: should one share your institutional knowledge and share your experiences because a lot of people don't fucking know and there's a lot of bullshit noise out there like you said tons of it like this dude that's got traps up to his ears yeah he's on gear one which is do what you want right if there's a safe way to fucking supplement your body for sure you shouldn't be on

[SPEAKER_03]: You shouldn't be stacking an avatar for fucking eight months at a time. [SPEAKER_03]: That's just do, but you're going to kill yourself, but you're going to make your heart explode, actually. [SPEAKER_03]: But there's ways to supplement your body. [SPEAKER_03]: And to be honest, most men need it because the average [SPEAKER_03]: The average twenty-one year olds testosterone today in America is the same as their grandfather in two thousand.

[SPEAKER_03]: And there's a litany of reasons for it. [SPEAKER_03]: Some of it, I think, is sociological with feminization and whatnot. [SPEAKER_03]: But I think feminization is actually downstream. [SPEAKER_03]: I think it's heavy metals, head injuries, plastics, all those hormones of food, all those bulls. [SPEAKER_02]: Sleep cycle, artificial lighting, screen time. [SPEAKER_03]: You know, all of these things, you know, microplastics, literally, it's really fun.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, they all play a role into it. [SPEAKER_02]: A lot of it processed food, you know, our, we as a site are diet, absolutely sucks. [SPEAKER_03]: I'll tell you this quick story on that on diet. [SPEAKER_03]: So, [SPEAKER_03]: I got to the army in late, twenty-ten, and felt like shit for like two, two, three years, right, felt like shit. [SPEAKER_03]: And I ate like shit too, to be honest, just like we all did back then.

[SPEAKER_03]: And finally went to the VA, got my levels checked, my testosterone was a one sixty-five, which is like a thousand. [SPEAKER_03]: That's a good ninety-year-old, basically, right? [SPEAKER_03]: And not every ninety-year-old, some of them would be in the four or five hundredths probably.

[SPEAKER_03]: even with the framing hand data they had some like August they went up to eighty I think so they had some eighty rolls that were you know higher up anyways [SPEAKER_03]: started taking testosterone in twenty thirteen. [SPEAKER_03]: But it was the androgyl stuff and that stuff was the absorption rate like twenty percent maybe. [SPEAKER_03]: If that if you're looking right so it's like it kind of got me up into the force which they considered to be fine.

[SPEAKER_03]: And I didn't know any different I'm like fuck I guess I'm just fuck now. [SPEAKER_03]: I knew that my level should be higher and I knew I felt like shit still. [SPEAKER_03]: But the VA was telling me they wouldn't give me anything to get it past where I was right then so I just went to a buddy mine. [SPEAKER_03]: It was a former athlete. [SPEAKER_03]: and started to dose myself with it.

[SPEAKER_03]: And I'm monitored, I got levels done all the time, so I wasn't going up to the fifteen hundred and stupid shit like that. [SPEAKER_03]: kept it between like, seven, fifty and eight, fifty, maybe up to nine hundred depending on where when I got tested, but at the time I was taking a full CC a week. [SPEAKER_03]: And now, that's a lot. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, but that was what was getting me there, right?

[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: And now through diet exercise and sleep, I take like point one, five, three separate times a week, right? [SPEAKER_03]: Stretched out. [SPEAKER_02]: And then you can do it that way. [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, different people do it different ways. [SPEAKER_02]: It's all about how you feel. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's and I so [SPEAKER_03]: Because some people don't get the crash.

[SPEAKER_03]: I've talked to people who go I am into the leg or the shoulder or the butt, and they do it once a week, and I'm like, do you feel it? [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, that's what I do. [SPEAKER_03]: You feel the crash and you're like, no, I never feel it. [SPEAKER_02]: I don't get a crash at all. [SPEAKER_02]: And I've been on it since about the same amount of time that you have. [SPEAKER_02]: I've been since, two thousand, twelve, two thousand, thirteen years.

[SPEAKER_02]: It was right after a PCS that I started, I started feeling it, and I needed something. [SPEAKER_02]: And I got on it. [SPEAKER_02]: And originally I was on a twice a week, [SPEAKER_02]: Injection among once a week now and I was I was told but do between point five and point six and I point five and that does just fine for him, but that's total or once a week. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, so I'm I guess I'm at [SPEAKER_03]: point four five.

[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: So you're actually less than I am. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: And what people don't understand, so my test is still like nine hundred now. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: Right. [SPEAKER_03]: Like I'm thriving at that level. [SPEAKER_03]: But that's a difference. [SPEAKER_03]: Like the sleep thing probably will help the most out of everything. [SPEAKER_02]: Different.

[SPEAKER_02]: Different bodies are different about about rate of absorption and and and how they metabolize it. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: when either body burns fat as alive. [SPEAKER_02]: I briefly, I had my own TRT practice for a while. [SPEAKER_02]: I was doing it by a telemedicine. [SPEAKER_02]: And I had one patient in particular. [SPEAKER_04]: Was that gray beard? [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: A gray beard performance academy. [SPEAKER_02]: So I had a guy who came to me and he was on, he was on like, . [SPEAKER_02]: seven, five a week. [SPEAKER_02]: And he felt like absolute dog shit. [SPEAKER_02]: And I did his labs. [SPEAKER_02]: And his extra dial was fucking off the charts. [SPEAKER_03]: So he wasn't taken like, uh, uh, an astronaut or anything. [SPEAKER_03]: Mm-hmm. [SPEAKER_03]: See, that's the other problem.

[SPEAKER_02]: Well, so we get, so that's a whole different rabbit hole. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: The hole in Astros all thing is a whole different rabbit hole. [SPEAKER_02]: So, but he was taken point seven five.

[SPEAKER_02]: his estradiol was pretty good that now he didn't have got to come asked you but he did he was having the somatic feelings that you felt like crap and I told him I said here's the problem you're getting so much testosterone that your body can't utilize it fast enough so it's converting it to estradiol [SPEAKER_02]: I said, you actually need to be on a lower dose. [SPEAKER_02]: So I lowered him down to point six. [SPEAKER_02]: He instantly felt better instantly felt better.

[SPEAKER_02]: I checked his extra dial levels. [SPEAKER_02]: They dropped. [SPEAKER_02]: We did that for a couple of months. [SPEAKER_02]: Then he was getting a crash. [SPEAKER_02]: So I ended up splitting in point three point three doing it twice a week. [SPEAKER_03]: It's all bespoke man. [SPEAKER_02]: He's fine.

[SPEAKER_03]: Like some some people have some people will develop a [SPEAKER_03]: thyroid issues over time as well and you have to like that that's easy it's armor or desiccated thyroid one or the two what whichever one works best for you that'll do it and Nash is all Can and that's just all is meant to deal with the body producing more not converting more right which is a mistake that I think a lot of these TRT clinics make they see they put you on a higher dose

[SPEAKER_03]: But what in my experience and look everybody's a little different, but in my experience what worked for me was lowering the testosterone dose, having a commensurate level of ACG dose in there to make sure my body is producing naturally, and then a very small dose of a natural is to take just to make sure that it doesn't go up, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and so [SPEAKER_02]: Again, this is a whole rabbit hole we can go down, but the whole anastrosal thing is if they're not symptomatic, they don't need to be very leery. [SPEAKER_02]: What we don't want is you don't want to go to somebody who is treating you by algorithm. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, because that's what that's the problem. [SPEAKER_03]: What's the stosterone in general is that framing him data that treated sixteen to eighty is the same.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yes. [SPEAKER_03]: You're not the same as anybody else. [SPEAKER_02]: And you don't want to be, you don't want to go to anybody who's going to, you should not be on anastrosal out of the gate. [SPEAKER_03]: Definitely not know. [SPEAKER_03]: You got to see how your body reacts. [SPEAKER_02]: See how your body reacts. [SPEAKER_02]: You need to know what your history is.

[SPEAKER_02]: And you need to know if you're symptomatic because I'll big a big portion of whether or not you're going to be. [SPEAKER_02]: Your body's going to react to those elevated. [SPEAKER_02]: Are you going to have a stradial. [SPEAKER_02]: Elevation and if you're going to react to it is genetic. [SPEAKER_02]: So anybody who says, OK, we're going to start you on this much testosterone and this much as it nasters all. [SPEAKER_02]: They don't know what they're doing.

[SPEAKER_02]: They're treating by an algorithm. [SPEAKER_02]: They've been given a laminated sheet. [SPEAKER_02]: They're doing it. [SPEAKER_03]: Well, that's the problem. [SPEAKER_03]: These clinics are popping up all over the place and some of them know what they're doing at some of them down.

[SPEAKER_02]: And on the other side of that coin, you'll see the never, if you're going, if you have a primary care physician and you want your testosterone checked and they're resistant to that, go somewhere else. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, because they don't know what they're doing. [SPEAKER_02]: Now, if you get it checked and if this phrase comes out of their mouth, you're normal for your age. [SPEAKER_02]: fire them.

[SPEAKER_02]: They're no longer your doctor because that's based on framing him as well. [SPEAKER_02]: By your age, they mean, sixteen to eighty and it's a moving goal post that's been moved over time because guess what average and normal are not the same thing, right? [SPEAKER_02]: The average BMI in the United States is more but it is basically obesity. [SPEAKER_02]: That's not normal. [SPEAKER_02]: That's what's average.

[SPEAKER_02]: Okay. [SPEAKER_02]: So these are the things you want to watch out for. [SPEAKER_02]: Another thing you want to watch out for and I've had multiple guys come to me with this. [SPEAKER_02]: My doctor said he wants to put me on testosterone for three months. [SPEAKER_02]: Then take me off for three months and see how I do. [SPEAKER_02]: We don't tell diabetics.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to have you on insulin for three months and then I'm going to take you off of insulin and see how you do. [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_04]: Okay. [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_04]: That's what's starting. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: We're addressing a hormonal deficiency. [SPEAKER_02]: Okay. [SPEAKER_02]: There's no, not only will you're not only, I'm going to tell you how you're going to feel that other three months worse than you fucking do now.

[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: Okay. [SPEAKER_02]: Because [SPEAKER_02]: the downside to being on testosterone and this is to it is going to shut down your own production. [SPEAKER_02]: But that's something that it's it's like guess what if you're not making enough. [SPEAKER_02]: Maybe that's just something at a certain age that you're just going to have to accept. [SPEAKER_02]: You just have to accept.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to be supplement you know just like [SPEAKER_02]: You know, I'm, I'm fifty nine years old. [SPEAKER_02]: I'm on T. I take no blood pressure medications. [SPEAKER_02]: I take no cholesterol medications. [SPEAKER_02]: I don't take any thyroid medications. [SPEAKER_03]: I don't take any other medicines. [SPEAKER_03]: I take the thyroid, armor thyroid. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: Right. [SPEAKER_03]: That's it.

[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: Other than the teen peptides, I don't take any other medication. [SPEAKER_03]: I take T. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: I fucking, I squat, I deadlift, I boxed jump, I do jujitsu, I do all those things. [SPEAKER_02]: I'm not compared to where I was physically a year ago. [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, we're shaped right now, largely to do with the schedule that I work now and some other things that have come into play.

[SPEAKER_02]: But, you know, and I don't like to compare myself against other people. [SPEAKER_02]: I'm still in the top ten percent of fifty nine-year-olds. [SPEAKER_02]: You know, so it is what it is. [SPEAKER_02]: So you know, if somebody tells you, oh, we're gonna, we're gonna put you on for a little bit, then we're gonna take you off. [SPEAKER_02]: That's a complete mess understanding of how often that gets set.

[SPEAKER_03]: Well, the FDA with regard to the moving goal pose, they pull that shit all the time. [SPEAKER_03]: They did a survey back in the day. [SPEAKER_03]: I think it was like, twenty ten time frame where they were testing food for heavy metals and shit like that. [SPEAKER_03]: And everything was way over the limit. [SPEAKER_03]: So what did they do? [SPEAKER_03]: They changed. [SPEAKER_03]: They raised the goddamn limit. [SPEAKER_03]: They changed it.

[SPEAKER_03]: Fuck man, that's not how that's supposed to work. [SPEAKER_03]: You decided what was healthy for human beings, and that's one of the primary reasons that we have so many heavy metals and everything now. [SPEAKER_03]: And when you, if you're out there and you haven't started this journey yet or you're just in the beginning, it's going to take you about a year to figure it out, right?

[SPEAKER_03]: Because you need to take test for three months at a minimum to see how your body reacts, and then you might have to dial in your extra dial maybe, not necessarily, right?

[SPEAKER_03]: And then, and then, [SPEAKER_03]: HCG and then you got to take a look at IGF one to your growth hormone to see how that's being affected because if you if it's if you're there's a couple things you can tell if you're If you're if your growth hormone is low and if your freeze testosterone is low even the your testosterone's increased your thyroid is probably fucked up [SPEAKER_03]: Right. [SPEAKER_03]: You probably need to do something.

[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, that's that's the most common one. [SPEAKER_03]: There's other stuff that causes as well. [SPEAKER_03]: So it's going to take you about a year of doing tests, taking the taking the peptides and the drugs and stuff to really get it ironed out. [SPEAKER_03]: But once you do, you're pretty much on cut. [SPEAKER_03]: Like I haven't had to change anything in a long time. [SPEAKER_04]: No, I have anything to do with it.

[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I get my levels done every three months. [SPEAKER_03]: I keep a really close eye on the semantics and like the physical symptoms and stuff like that if I'm having any or not. [SPEAKER_02]: And that's and you I'm glad you brought it up because that's another that's another red flag is I've had people come to me like well I've been on I've been on T for eight months when was your last lap eight months ago? [SPEAKER_02]: No wrong fucking answer.

[SPEAKER_03]: It should be at least every six months. [SPEAKER_02]: Well when you first start. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, it's three. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah [SPEAKER_03]: I do it every, yeah, I do it every three to start for the first year. [SPEAKER_03]: It should be every three a month.

[SPEAKER_02]: And then after that, you bump it up to six and the number of labs that I run for your first go around, your first set of labs and your second set of labs should both be a massive, massive set of labs because there's downstream effects from everything. [SPEAKER_03]: So, like B, you got to check the B, you got to check, obviously the thyroid, you got to check. [SPEAKER_03]: You got to check the markers.

[SPEAKER_03]: I would recommend checking all the markers for your prostate health as well, because the testosterone can affect that. [SPEAKER_03]: Like there's a whole panel and anybody that knows what they're doing should, like. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: Well, and okay, and that's you bring up a great point. [SPEAKER_02]: Anybody that knows what they're doing. [SPEAKER_02]: So you need to ask that person what training did you receive and how to do this?

[SPEAKER_03]: Well, what are some, I guess maybe you should publish this somewhere other than just this show, but there should be a list of like five or ten questions that somebody could ask their healthcare provider that lets them know that person actually knows. [SPEAKER_02]: There are some. [SPEAKER_02]: I do cover that on book in in home.

[SPEAKER_02]: I did cover that, you know, because I talked specifically about testosterone replacement and about how to kind of weed out whether or not your doctor's really qualified to be doing or not. [SPEAKER_02]: But you need to flat out ask him, you know, where, where did you get training and how to do this? [SPEAKER_03]: Because if it was in medical school thirty years ago, then I'm sorry, brother. [SPEAKER_02]: That's not it.

[SPEAKER_02]: You know, it's, you know, there, there are, there are training modules that you can go to that go are anywhere from two days to two weeks. [SPEAKER_02]: There are, there are, I'm using air quotes here, board certifications in it as well, that are, you know, I wouldn't trust that at all. [SPEAKER_03]: There's, it's, I, the reason is because they trained back to the pharmacology. [SPEAKER_03]: That's their job is to get you back to pharmacology in my opinion.

[SPEAKER_02]: not the ones that I'm talking about. [SPEAKER_02]: Well, that's good. [SPEAKER_02]: So they're a little bit better for that. [SPEAKER_02]: But you need to know where they got the training, what makes them feel that they're qualified for this? [SPEAKER_02]: Because a lot of people, you have two separate problems. [SPEAKER_02]: You have the one problem of doctors that are absolutely opposed to it and won't do it.

[SPEAKER_02]: And then you have doctors that want to do it, but don't want to take the time to get any real training in it. [SPEAKER_02]: So they go and they find an algorithm online somewhere. [SPEAKER_02]: They print it out and they tape it to their desk and that's how they're going to treat all of their patients. [SPEAKER_03]: No, man. [SPEAKER_02]: It's either one of those is the right answer. [SPEAKER_03]: It's an active and ongoing TRI. [SPEAKER_02]: Right. [SPEAKER_02]: And they don't.

[SPEAKER_03]: This little marker shows up. [SPEAKER_03]: Oh, I know what that is. [SPEAKER_02]: And you don't want to be rigid in how you do it. [SPEAKER_02]: You know, you need to be reacting to this in real time. [SPEAKER_02]: You need to treat every patient as an individual. [SPEAKER_02]: And you got to remember that you treat the patient like you were alluding to. [SPEAKER_02]: You treat the patient not the laps. [SPEAKER_01]: Right.

[SPEAKER_02]: So, you know, it's, oh, your lab's a great, but I feel like shit. [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, then let's address why you feel like shit and figure out why that is and we're going to address that. [SPEAKER_03]: We'll speak in a rigid and stupid. [SPEAKER_03]: You've got a fiction book now and you went through, you went or began the process of [SPEAKER_03]: going through publishers to do stuff, which is good fucking luck in the days, right? [SPEAKER_03]: So tell me how that went.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so a little bit about me, so everybody already knows a little bit about me militarily, but I've always been a colossal science fiction and fantasy nerd geek, whatever you want to lose or whatever you want to call us, right? [SPEAKER_03]: What's your favorite series? [SPEAKER_02]: Um, so my favorite series my favorite sci-fi book of all time is starship troopers. [SPEAKER_03]: Um, mind, uh, speaker for the dead the second.

[SPEAKER_02]: I was, you'd like to be for the dead better. [SPEAKER_03]: That's my favorite one. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: So Ender's game is is high. [SPEAKER_02]: Ender's game is it's at times. [SPEAKER_02]: I would say Ender's game ties starship troopers. [SPEAKER_02]: I think Speaker for the Dead is good. [SPEAKER_02]: I don't, I like Ender's game as a standalone book. [SPEAKER_02]: I like Speaker for the Dead too.

[SPEAKER_03]: Well, you know, he wrote, we actually had him on the show a couple years ago, Orson Scott. [SPEAKER_03]: No shit. [SPEAKER_03]: It was like, he, the reason he wrote Ender's game was so they get right Speaker for the Dead, because the purpose was like to me, it's kind of for you religious folks out there. [SPEAKER_03]: It's kind of like, [SPEAKER_03]: I guess a deconstruction of the good Samaritan parable, right? [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, that's a good way looking at it in.

[SPEAKER_03]: We're like people think the good Samaritan is about being a good neighbor or being kind of strangers, but Judea and Samaria were sworn enemies. [SPEAKER_03]: It was like Israel and Palestine now, right? [SPEAKER_03]: So this would be like a Palestinian finding in this really in a wholesome way and fucking helping them out with all of this. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, that's really a good point to do it, right?

[SPEAKER_03]: So the point of speaker for the dead, I guess, is something like that and then [SPEAKER_03]: everybody being forced to recognize the truth can make a situation better. [SPEAKER_03]: Right. [SPEAKER_03]: I think that's the underlying principle there. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: I like Ender's game was great. [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, that was like very what I actually got to obsess with two of these books at the same time. [SPEAKER_03]: That one in there forever wars.

[SPEAKER_03]: That's another great one. [SPEAKER_02]: I never read the forever wars. [SPEAKER_02]: You should read that. [SPEAKER_02]: That's great. [SPEAKER_02]: I should and you're not the first person to say that. [SPEAKER_02]: But have you read the the hope hubris series by over space time? [SPEAKER_03]: No, no, no, that's good. [SPEAKER_03]: Is that good? [SPEAKER_02]: That's a really good one. [SPEAKER_02]: It's kind of unusual.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's a little bit, he's a little bit too obsessed with sex in it. [SPEAKER_03]: Look, sci-fi guys are perverse. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: And then it kind of shows in this one, but it's good. [SPEAKER_02]: The seafood saga is also really good. [SPEAKER_03]: Have you seen? [SPEAKER_02]: I was in Anoch when I read the seafood saga. [SPEAKER_02]: And like half the glass of my Anoch class ended up reading it, too, because I was talking about it all the time.

[SPEAKER_03]: Did you ever read Andy Weir right from the Martian? [SPEAKER_03]: Did you read Project Hail Mary? [SPEAKER_02]: No. [SPEAKER_03]: That's a really good one to you. [SPEAKER_03]: They're actually so they made the marching into a movie obviously with Matt Damon. [SPEAKER_03]: I think Project Hill Mary got optioned as well, so they're gonna make that into a very close. [SPEAKER_03]: That's another one that I recommend not that we're talking about.

[SPEAKER_03]: I guess we are actually talking about fantasy books. [SPEAKER_02]: So you're a nerd. [SPEAKER_02]: Fantasy fantasy wise of course, you know, Tolkien, you know, the old. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, you know, that that's always gonna be my favorite.

[SPEAKER_02]: I guess it books the board the rogue series are really really excellent if you like those CS Lewis is in kind of more geared towards kids I guess but we're talking was a little more graduated probably yeah a little bit um there's a lot of really good ones out there [SPEAKER_02]: Um, anyway, so I was always, you know, sci-fi nerd. [SPEAKER_02]: I didn't play Dungeons and Dragons in high school oddly enough because the D&D kids wouldn't let me.

[SPEAKER_02]: It was like, you know, it was, it was kind of a seat taken type thing. [SPEAKER_02]: It was like, oh, no, no, no, you play football. [SPEAKER_02]: We don't, we don't want you hanging around with us. [SPEAKER_02]: So I didn't play Dungeons and Dragons until I was in Ranger Battalion.

[SPEAKER_02]: But, you know, I mean, think about this, you know, you're on a fucking, you're ex-filling from a live fire, and you're in the back of a Chinook, and all you're talking about is, hey, we gotta go back and get cleaned up so we can play Dungeons and Dragons. [SPEAKER_02]: This is what guys did in the game. [SPEAKER_03]: We had LAN parties, so we were all playing like Rainbow Six and shit like that.

[SPEAKER_03]: Just a bunch of dickhole, like, so we would go out on patrol, get into gun flights, come back, like four o'clock in the morning, and immediately everybody set up their laptops, so we start shooting each other and video games. [SPEAKER_02]: I was continually amazed that the Delta guys, all they ever wanted to do was play Call of Duty, and then all they ever wanted to play it on was the Newtown map. [SPEAKER_02]: That was it.

[SPEAKER_02]: It was Newtown map, Call of Duty, over and over and over and over again. [SPEAKER_02]: They would do that every waking hour that they weren't out on target and it always amazed me. [SPEAKER_02]: And I was talking about this. [SPEAKER_02]: There's another guy that you should, you should have on your show sometime. [SPEAKER_02]: His name's Randall Serals. [SPEAKER_02]: He's a retired SF Sergeant Major. [SPEAKER_02]: He and I were eighteen Delta's together.

[SPEAKER_02]: He was one class behind me going through the course and then we ended up being an A-Nock together. [SPEAKER_02]: He also jumped into Panama with Ranger Regiment. [SPEAKER_02]: And he runs a company now called the story ninjas. [SPEAKER_02]: Okay. [SPEAKER_03]: Wait, was he there with Traxle? [SPEAKER_03]: He probably would. [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, Traxle was also there, but what unit was he in? [SPEAKER_02]: He was in three, seven, five. [SPEAKER_03]: Oh, okay.

[SPEAKER_03]: I think Traxle was in the eighty second. [SPEAKER_02]: I think so. [SPEAKER_02]: I think. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: Okay. [SPEAKER_02]: Randy runs this company now called the story ninjas and basically he helps. [SPEAKER_02]: He's where he's worked at David Scott man.

[SPEAKER_02]: He's worked with a lot of people in editing and ghost writing and helping them tell their story and he worked with me a lot in the early days of the book, which I'll talk about and how that played into turning me away from traditional publishing. [SPEAKER_02]: But Randy and I were talking about how there's so many guys in the special operations community that are also nerds and we started calling them action nerds.

[SPEAKER_02]: These are guys that like, when they're not reading sci-fi or playing, you know, God of War on PlayStation, they're at the range or, you know, they're doing a three gun match or they're, you know, they're working to get their black belt and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. [SPEAKER_02]: These are guys who, you know, kind of live in two different worlds because the, you know, the whole [SPEAKER_02]: the fantasy world's reflect that type of lifestyle.

[SPEAKER_02]: You know, I've never been one of these guys. [SPEAKER_02]: You know, of course you have the stereotypical, you know, you know, the couch potato with thick glasses. [SPEAKER_02]: Actually, you know, that's the traditional nerd. [SPEAKER_02]: And that's a subset of nerds, but that's not all the nerds. [SPEAKER_02]: You know, I know quite a bit of nerds.

[SPEAKER_02]: You know, Ari Kinesen, who's really well-known, known along forcement and judicial community, massive nerds, massive dungeons and dragons nerds. [SPEAKER_02]: And I was always making up story, you know, sci-fi stories, fantasy stories. [SPEAKER_02]: I had a bunch of stories kicking around on my head for a long time, and I wanted to put him down on paper.

[SPEAKER_02]: Ultimately, what I ended up with is what you've gotten front of you the last dungeon crawler, but my idea was even though I had self-published home, [SPEAKER_02]: My dream was I want to go traditional publishing I want to be I want to be in airport book stores I want to go on good morning America and talk about my book I want to see my my book in you know on a on flashing up on a sign in Times Square and beyond the New York Times best cellar list

[SPEAKER_02]: And right away, I was told, no fucking way. [SPEAKER_02]: You know, that's absolutely just not gonna happen. [SPEAKER_02]: Traditional publishing is not for you. [SPEAKER_02]: You as an author are not what they are looking for. [SPEAKER_02]: And the story that you're telling is not what they're looking for because it does not have a sociopolitical message in it that is a message of the times. [SPEAKER_02]: You know, that's the big thing that we see now.

[SPEAKER_02]: What do we hear all the time now? [SPEAKER_02]: So I was talking about Starship Troopers now.

[SPEAKER_02]: Google Starship Troopers and the first three things I guarantee that you will see why Starship Troopers is problematic in twenty twenty five right why it embraces neo fascism you know shit like that that's why you hear they they take all these traditional stories and they want to put them into another form of media you know whether that's TV or film and they colossally fuck them up what and their excuses what we're updating it from modern audiences [SPEAKER_02]: No.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: There's no need to update classical stories. [SPEAKER_03]: You don't need to update principles. [SPEAKER_03]: No. [SPEAKER_03]: You know, I mean, like the idea from start, like you can call a startup troopers. [SPEAKER_03]: Neo, fastest all you want, but the idea of having to earn your citizenship through a civic action, civic duty is not new. [SPEAKER_03]: That's not a new thing. [SPEAKER_02]: Well, here's the irony.

[SPEAKER_02]: So in Verhoven made the movie in the nineties. [SPEAKER_02]: Verhoven hated the book. [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, that's what I've heard that. [SPEAKER_02]: And very often did think that it was Neo fascism. [SPEAKER_02]: That's why Dugi is wearing what looks like a Nazi uniform, right? [SPEAKER_02]: That's why it has that kind of look to it.

[SPEAKER_02]: But oddly enough, and even though he strayed wildly from the book, you know, as a purist, there are a lot of things about that film that I absolutely hate. [SPEAKER_02]: It stands on its own as an enjoyable movie because the basic concept, the basic premise of Rico's journey, of the hero's journey, that he has to, that he's this rich spoiled kid that didn't have to do anything, but he does it anyway. [SPEAKER_02]: He learns to be a part of something bigger than himself.

[SPEAKER_02]: He learns the value of citizenship. [SPEAKER_02]: He learns the value of being willing to lay down your life for the people to the left and right of you.

[SPEAKER_02]: that still is maintained in that story and that's why it's still a good film even though it's not as good as the book and it's actually totally different from the book in my opinion yeah so you know we did there been these problems for a long time with people who don't [SPEAKER_03]: either fit the demographic or their content, strays from the preferred narrative kind of gets shut down. [SPEAKER_03]: It happens a lot with nonfiction conservative. [SPEAKER_03]: Well, did.

[SPEAKER_03]: Now they're starting to catch back up a little bit, but yeah, for fiction books, good luck. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: Well, the irony is, and that's [SPEAKER_02]: One of the best sci-fi series in my opinion, it's other than the new track, which I don't watch. [SPEAKER_02]: But the original Star Trek, Next Generation, everything that spawned out in Next Generation.

[SPEAKER_02]: In my opinion, Deep Space Nine was one of the best, because the storytelling was just absolutely amazing, and they told it in serial format. [SPEAKER_02]: There's an episode of Deep Space Nine that deals with specifically with racism and sexism in early twentieth century America because they're writing for a science fiction magazine, but the female writers have to use their initials so nobody knows that they're a woman and you know, every Brooks is an African-American writer.

[SPEAKER_02]: Nobody knows that he's African-American. [SPEAKER_02]: They think that he's a white guy, right? [SPEAKER_02]: That was real in the early twentieth century. [SPEAKER_02]: Now the pendulum is swung the other direction. [SPEAKER_02]: You know, when I'm pitching this book and I'm literally being told, you know, if you adopted a female pen name, you might be able to sell this book to a publishing company. [SPEAKER_03]: The fuck outta here. [SPEAKER_03]: I was literally fucking told.

[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, what would be the point? [SPEAKER_03]: Like the only reason, literally the only reason. [SPEAKER_03]: to use a traditional publisher is because you qualify for the New York Times bestseller list. [SPEAKER_03]: That's it, because I guess there's some level of gravitas to say that Penguin publisher book or something like that, but they don't do, like what used to happen is they do the editing, which is very helpful, and then they do the marketing, which is very helpful.

[SPEAKER_03]: They don't do any of the marketing anymore. [SPEAKER_03]: They still edit, but they'll edit your story out.

[SPEAKER_02]: They do yeah, that's the thing is they don't edit for no, no, no, they don't edit for con they do developmental editing Yeah, yeah, yeah, you have to hire your own line editor because I know people that are published with the big publishing companies and they're like I had to bug it a line editor so that you know the person who's finds with your commas during the right place [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, and if you know developmental editing. [SPEAKER_03]: This is all the word.

[SPEAKER_03]: Hey, I think this might offend somebody. [SPEAKER_03]: We're gonna. [SPEAKER_03]: We're gonna chain like none. [SPEAKER_03]: No, the fucking hell. [SPEAKER_02]: That was the so the two things that I heard out of the game because I have it. [SPEAKER_02]: There is the protagonist of the book is male. [SPEAKER_02]: All right. [SPEAKER_03]: There is that's racist right off the bat.

[SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, so there's there is a there is a there is a there is a strong female character in the book. [SPEAKER_02]: I was told two things make her the main protagonist [SPEAKER_02]: which absolutely, and tell the whole story from her point of view and write it under a female pen name and you might have a deal. [SPEAKER_02]: And I'm like, that's not, that's not the story that I set out to write.

[SPEAKER_02]: I would rather, I would rather fail on my own merits than succeed by lying to people. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, that's, I mean, especially, I tell people this all the time. [SPEAKER_03]: There are two groups. [SPEAKER_03]: There are two groups of people that you cannot offend with an authenticity. [SPEAKER_03]: One is nerds that will fuck you up. [SPEAKER_03]: If you get the science wrong, or something like that, or if you're continuity.

[SPEAKER_02]: You get the science or the continuity in Canada. [SPEAKER_03]: If you're continuity is wrong, you're fucked, and then it's gun people. [SPEAKER_03]: You start saying clips, or have a gun that shoots forever with no fucking reloads or anything like that, or just dumb military shit that doesn't make any sense, you'll lose that audience immediately.

[SPEAKER_02]: So I'm gonna, so I'm gonna, this might be a little bit more in depth than people even care to hear, but so Gene Roddenberry, one of his big things, Star Trek, that he always told, yeah, creator Star Trek, World War II veteran. [SPEAKER_02]: The big thing that he always told his, his writers, he said, if you say a thing can do X and cannot do Y, [SPEAKER_02]: You cannot change your mind in two episodes for story convenience.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like once we, you know, if I dilute the him crystal does this, that's what it does. [SPEAKER_02]: If the transporter can do this, that's what it does. [SPEAKER_02]: You don't get to change that later. [SPEAKER_02]: And that's where in the new trek, when they did, again, this is most people are going to roll their eyes because I'm getting way too nerdy. [SPEAKER_02]: When Scotty said they could do transport beaming, [SPEAKER_02]: That's when they, they threw rod and bury completely.

[SPEAKER_02]: They threw the baby out with the fucking bathwater. [SPEAKER_02]: And it's like, well, nothing means anything anymore. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: Because now where we, it's, we were scurting, you know, we were, we were kind of writing our own adjuncts to the laws of physics before. [SPEAKER_02]: Right. [SPEAKER_02]: But now we're just going to completely ignore them.

[SPEAKER_02]: So it might as well, we might as well just instead of cap and curb, we might as well call him Gandalf, right? [SPEAKER_02]: Because it's just, it's just, it's going to do whatever it's going to do. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, that was one of the beauties of Battlestar Galactica. [SPEAKER_03]: They just said FTL and never explained anything about it. [SPEAKER_03]: Right. [SPEAKER_03]: Right. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, they never explained.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: So it's, you know, I loved the OG Battlestar Galactica. [SPEAKER_02]: They're both great. [SPEAKER_02]: Orny's. [SPEAKER_02]: It was great. [SPEAKER_02]: The series was fucking amazing. [SPEAKER_02]: You feel like you're on an actual naval ship, everything from the, you know, the speaker system that they talk into, the verbiage that they use. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it was really good.

[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, it was, it was just really one of the story was written pretty fucking long. [SPEAKER_02]: Story was written great. [SPEAKER_02]: That's one of the best side. [SPEAKER_03]: As far as, as far as sci-fi TV goes for, like, you can't really compare it to Star Trek, because there's so many different iterations. [SPEAKER_03]: I think deep, so based on the, the best one I grew with that. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: And then that's character development.

[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, the next generation for me was second, but maybe because I grew up with it. [SPEAKER_02]: I don't know. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: But yeah, Balsar Galacto is my favorite all-time sci-fi series. [SPEAKER_02]: It's amazing. [SPEAKER_02]: It's amazing. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: Really. [SPEAKER_03]: So the books out now give us a give me the brief on what it is. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: So this is a story as you can see from the cover.

[SPEAKER_02]: It takes place largely in New York City. [SPEAKER_02]: So this is a story about is a professor of history and archaeology at NYU. [SPEAKER_02]: His name is Franklin Barbarossa. [SPEAKER_02]: That's what everybody knows him as. [SPEAKER_02]: His name at birth, six thousand years ago, was Fogram Firebeard. [SPEAKER_02]: He is the last of an ancient race of dwarves.

[SPEAKER_02]: uh... and he survives today because uh... he has been tasked along with a few others to basically protect the human race protect the world from all this unbridled magic that is still out there that you know it's uh... that he makes the analogy in the book that you know it's basically human beings are toddlers wandering around a room of loaded guns and and sharpen knives and my job is to get them out of the way and destroy them so that they don't destroy themselves uh... because there's magical

[SPEAKER_02]: items out there, there's scrolls, parchment's, tomes out there that have spells that the human race could unknowingly plunge itself into thousands of years of darkness. [SPEAKER_02]: So his job is to find these things and destroy them. [SPEAKER_02]: And that's what he does. [SPEAKER_02]: And there's a little bit of a backstory there about an ancient evil that they fought once in this book. [SPEAKER_02]: You meet him as a character.

[SPEAKER_02]: You meet some other characters and [SPEAKER_02]: They're a little bit worried that an ancient evil might be coming back again. [SPEAKER_02]: So they're racing against the clock to put a team together. [SPEAKER_02]: There's like any good book. [SPEAKER_02]: There's a maguffin that they have to find that's going to be the key to basically saving the world. [SPEAKER_02]: So they're racing against time to do that. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, um, tasks by home. [SPEAKER_03]: I assume the book.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: So, uh, there was, uh, for, for lack of a better word currently, I'm just calling them the council. [SPEAKER_02]: So, six thousand years ago, there was the council. [SPEAKER_02]: And, uh, they asked for volunteers to be imbued with, with prolonged life and, and safeguard these objects. [SPEAKER_02]: And he was the first to step forward. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, that sounds like, uh, something I'm going to read this weekend.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and it's a relatively short read. [SPEAKER_02]: It's under seventy thousand words. [SPEAKER_02]: So I had a blast right in it. [SPEAKER_02]: And so far, I've gotten amazing feedback from the people that have read it. [SPEAKER_02]: Both of my personal circle and on Amazon where it's available. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I'm definitely going to check it out. [SPEAKER_03]: I've got a bunch of friends in the fiction business.

[SPEAKER_03]: Greg Hurowitz is one of my best friends actually. [SPEAKER_03]: You know him from the nowhere I'm in series maybe. [SPEAKER_03]: Did his had, I don't remember what it's called, something con in New York. [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, no, Galaxy Cone, I think is coming up. [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, it was thriller con thriller con, yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: I think I might go next year actually. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, that was pretty dope. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, a friend of mine went to it.

[SPEAKER_02]: There's actually, so on the nineteenth of July, there's the Austin Comic Con is actually going to be in Cedar Park. [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, cool. [SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to be where in Cedar Park. [SPEAKER_02]: I think at the HUB center. [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, cool. [SPEAKER_02]: So I'll be there in the morning in the afternoon of the same day. [SPEAKER_02]: Um, I'll be doing a book signing at a little local comic shop. [SPEAKER_02]: Uh, so I'll be publishing that on my social media.

[SPEAKER_02]: So I'm looking forward to that. [SPEAKER_03]: Check that out. [SPEAKER_03]: See if I'm in town. [SPEAKER_02]: Another person that you need to have on your on your show is his name is John Deloros. [SPEAKER_02]: So he is a science fiction writer. [SPEAKER_02]: He runs a website. [SPEAKER_02]: If you go to John Dell arose.com, arose literally spelled just like the rice. [SPEAKER_02]: If you go to his website, he blogs about it all the time.

[SPEAKER_02]: He talks about all the obstacles to getting published. [SPEAKER_02]: He talks about the gatekeeping that's involved and how they're gatekeeping conventional publishing, but then at the same time they're saying, oh, if you self publish, then you shouldn't even be qualified to winning any of these awards. [SPEAKER_02]: And it's a battle that he's been fighting for a while. [SPEAKER_02]: He talks about it all the time. [SPEAKER_02]: He's written some amazing books.

[SPEAKER_02]: He doesn't get the credit that he's do largely because, you know, he rattles cages and pisses people off. [SPEAKER_03]: Well cool, man. [SPEAKER_03]: Thanks for, uh, thanks for swinging by and talking about all this today. [SPEAKER_03]: I'm definitely looking forward. [SPEAKER_03]: I need a new book, some looking forward to. [SPEAKER_03]: I usually simultaneously read a non-fiction and fiction book, depending on what mood I'm in.

[SPEAKER_03]: And I try to keep one that you're going mostly on audible, but sometimes I like to break out the old. [SPEAKER_03]: I've got a couple of olds. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I haven't done audible for this yet.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm trying to [SPEAKER_02]: people are still asking me for an audible version of honed and uh... it's but i want to record it myself which means it is a lot more time in my long-awaited doing that yeah you pretty much for seventy thousand words you you got a set aside uh... probably five days and the studio five solid days and i got to pay somebody to edit so yeah well um... [SPEAKER_03]: Maybe you can raise some money by selling this book first.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: If you're going to Amazon right now and buy it, that'd be really helpful. [SPEAKER_03]: The last dungeon crawler by Mike Simpson. [SPEAKER_03]: Go check it out. [SPEAKER_02]: And if you're in the Austin area, I'll be at Adventures in Inc. [SPEAKER_02]: Comic Shop, which I believe the address is technically in Leander. [SPEAKER_02]: I'll be there in the afternoon of July night Saturday, July, Nineteenth. [SPEAKER_02]: I'll be doing a book signing there.

[SPEAKER_02]: So the brand new comic shop privately owned. [SPEAKER_02]: Guys awesome. [SPEAKER_02]: Eli's the owner. [SPEAKER_02]: He's a great dude and he agreed to let me do a book signing there. [SPEAKER_02]: And that's another obstacle that I so I went around looking for places through book signings. [SPEAKER_02]: Comic shops are fairly receptive. [SPEAKER_02]: Book shops not receptive at all. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, it's, I mean, yeah, they're not great. [SPEAKER_03]: Adventures in ink.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: It is a fifth one five two zero one Ronald Reagan Boulevard in lander. [SPEAKER_00]: Yep. [SPEAKER_03]: There's a copy shop right next door, of course. [SPEAKER_03]: There it is. [SPEAKER_03]: So yeah, go check that out too. [SPEAKER_03]: That'll be on you said July ninth. [SPEAKER_03]: July nineteenth. [SPEAKER_03]: Nineteenth. [SPEAKER_03]: Okay. [SPEAKER_03]: And what about? [SPEAKER_03]: Austin Comic-Con, you know what I think.

[SPEAKER_02]: Austin Comic-Con, same day. [SPEAKER_02]: Same day. [SPEAKER_02]: I'm gonna go to the Comic-Con in the morning, mostly to hand out flyers and kind of check things out. [SPEAKER_02]: And then I'll be, I'll be at the book signing in the afternoon. [SPEAKER_03]: I gotta see if any of my buddies are coming to the town for that. [SPEAKER_03]: I think the author's all right, cool. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I'll check that out. [SPEAKER_03]: And again, thanks for coming today.

[SPEAKER_03]: Always joyous chats. [SPEAKER_03]: Everybody go buy the book. [SPEAKER_03]: I know you guys are nerds and like the read books. [SPEAKER_03]: That's why we can do this. [SPEAKER_03]: So, thanks for coming and thank you all for listening. [SPEAKER_03]: This has been citizen.