25 Years Later - Be Worthy of the Sacrifice | Full Auto Friday | 9.11.2026
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This one airs on the 25th anniversary of September 11th. I'm not dedicating the whole episode to it. I don't tell people how to think or how to feel. But I do open with where I land on it now, a quarter century later, and why the reverence fading for people who didn't live it doesn't surprise me anymore. Then the questions. A 27-year-old learns through a DNA test that the man on his birth certificate isn't his father. He wants to know whether to tell the rest of the family. A guy who has run audio at his church for 21 years wants to know how to finally ask to be paid without turning it into an...
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460 Days in the Darkness of Somalia | Amanda Lindhout | Ep. 468
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Amanda Lindhout grew up in small-town Alberta and waited tables to pay for backpacking trips through Latin America, Asia, and Africa. She taught herself the job along the way and turned into a freelance foreign correspondent, filing from Afghanistan, Iraq, and Sudan with no network behind her and no one responsible for her if it went wrong. In August 2008 she flew into Mogadishu to cover the famine. It was supposed to be a one-week trip. She was ambushed on the road outside the city and held for 460 days. Her memoir about it, A House in the Sky, became a New York Times bestseller. This...
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Seven Minutes and Nowhere To Run | Negligent Discharge Friday | 9.4.2026
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Michael was tasked with finding something uplifting. He failed. This is what a slow week for good news looks like. We open on the flooding in Nepal and what you can realistically do when you live in terrain that gives you seven minutes of warning. One school got 14 minutes and everyone made it out. Then the part nobody wants to say out loud: reading the news is taking something from you. I talk about how I decide what to let in. National debt past forty trillion. Bonds selling off. Printing money and calling it something else. Blind loyalty to a party instead of judging what is actually being...
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The Weight of the Navy Cross | Nick Jones | Ep. 467
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Nick Jones enlisted in the Marine Corps at 18 out of Olathe, Kansas. Mortarman, then scout sniper platoon, then selection and 2nd Marine Raider Battalion, where he came up through element member to element leader. Twelve years, five deployments. On March 8, 2020, his team went into the Qarachogh Mountains in northern Iraq to clear a cave complex and lost their team leader and their team chief. He was shot going back for them and kept fighting until he was pulled off the mountain. Six surgeries and eighteen months later he medically retired as a staff sergeant with a Navy Cross and a Purple...
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You Fall to the Level of Your Training | Full Auto Friday | 8.28.2026
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Recorded two of these in one week because when this drops I'll be in Maine at the Origin Immersion BJJ camp. So Michael gets another pass. Nobody knows what he does with his time anyway. First question comes from a firefighter who watched a man beat a woman in a McDonald's parking lot. He called 911 from behind a block wall and did not physically intervene. He's been carrying it ever since. Good and bad is the wrong lens for that. Capability is the right one. What you can actually do under stress, not what you picture yourself doing. Range, training, tools, and why a black belt is not magic....
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The Zone of Chaos | Casey Stumpf | Ep. 466
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Casey Stumpf is a nurse practitioner and my sister. Years in emergency medicine and hospice, a stretch inside military medicine at Camp Pendleton, and now her own practice in Montana treating hormones full time — perimenopause, menopause, testosterone for men and women. She is one of roughly 4,100 providers in the country holding the MSCP certification. There are 75 million American women in some phase of menopause. The math does not work. She is back to answer listener questions and to explain why estrogen patches are disappearing. The FDA says there is no shortage. Pharmacists say...
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From the VA Prescription to the Street | Travis Gribble & Brandon Spangler | Ep. 465
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Brandon Spangler did five years in the Marine Corps. He broke his neck, crushed his lower back, and walked out with a VA prescription that turned into eight years of addiction. The last stretch was heroin. He got sober in 2013, started college from zero, and is now a licensed clinical social worker with his own practice for cops and veterans in northwest Montana. Travis Gribble spent 24 years in law enforcement, 16 on SWAT, and retired out of Mesa PD in 2022. He now works for the Boulder Crest Foundation. He walks through the jump from pharmacy to street, detoxing cold turkey three times, and...
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The Conversations Nobody Wants to Have | Full Auto Friday | 8.21.2026
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Four questions this week... An F-18 simulator is going into the coffee shop sometime in September. I don't know why either. Carrier landing competition to follow. The opener is about reaching the age where you become the caregiver for your parents. Medical directives, DNRs, wills, trusts, and why the hard conversation needs to happen before you need it. A 33-year-old sold everything, traveled the world for eight months, and came home with no next goal. I never had a plan either. Not knowing what comes next is fine. Being paralyzed by it is not. A guy got promoted over his best friend of 22...
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Butler, the Correspondents' Dinner, and the Truth | John Constantine | Ep. 464
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John Constantine spent almost 23 years in the United States Secret Service. Fifteen of them on the Counter Assault Team — the assaulters who exist for the day everything goes wrong. Team leader. Instructor. Operations supervisor. He stood with a rifle next to four presidential administrations, worked in almost 90 countries, and finished out in the Dignitary Protective Division running foreign heads of state. He wrote a book about the part of it nobody sees. It's called Hallways and Stairwells. He breaks down what actually happened at the Correspondents' Dinner, why the security plan worked...
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Vote For The Garbage Can | Negligent Discharge Friday | 8.14.2026
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Michael is moving to Missoula, so this one opens with a resignation and gets worse from there. A man in a garbage can is polling at 20% against Nigel Farage in Clacton, and his platform makes more sense than it should. Term limits, and the unelected career staff who actually run the machine. Early access to Truth Social posts for $60,000 to $100,000 a month. Trading firms have already signed up. A president clearing north of two billion in his first year back in office, and why the silence around it is deafening. A California mayor who pleaded guilty to working as an unregistered agent of...
info_outlineNormal Friday Q and A for today with three listener submitted questions:
Question 1: A 34-year-old white belt shares his early experiences in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, feeling both the thrill and frustration of starting something new later in life. What are some tips for new practitioners, advice for overcoming initial hurdles, and whether attending advanced seminars is beneficial or overwhelming for beginners.
Question 2: A recent adventure in Switzerland's Lauterbrunnen Valley prompts a listener to reflect on balancing thrill-seeking activities with parental responsibilities. Are the mental and emotional challenges of pursuing high-risk sports worth it? How can you ensure family safety and also set a courageous example for your children?
Question 3: A 27-year-old from the UK, navigating major life changes, seeks advice on becoming the best possible father and husband after an unexpected pregnancy shortly after leaving a career in finance.
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