From Ranger Battalion to the OR | Dr. Mike Simpson | Ep. 448
Release Date: 05/18/2026
From Ranger Battalion to the OR | Dr. Mike Simpson | Ep. 448
Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC
"Crike him." That's the call a tactical medic makes when a guy can't breathe and the clock is at zero. Mike Simpson is the doctor on the other end of that radio. He's a former 1st Ranger Battalion anti-tank section leader, a Special Forces engineer turned 18 Delta medic with 7th Group, and a board-certified ER physician who spent his last six years on active duty attached to JMAU providing trauma support to tier one units. He retired in 2016 after 32 years and now runs medical direction for Central Texas Regional SWAT while practicing urgent care. We got into the real mechanics of trauma care...
info_outline
Don't Let Your Past Be Your Prison | Full Auto Friday | 5.15.026
Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC
A soon-to-be 40-year-old wants to face his fear of skydiving and use it to teach his anxious five-year-old that fear is normal but it doesn't get to run your life. I break down the difference between gambling and accepting calculated risk, what to actually look for in a drop zone, and why pushing yourself smartly and incrementally beats trying to be a badass for an audience that isn't watching. A guy who grew up homeless and couch-surfing wrote in about feeling like he came back from a war he never fought. We talk about why trauma isn't owned by anyone, why your past doesn't have to be your...
info_outline
The Night Stalker They Couldn't Shoot Down | Alan Mack | Ep. 447
Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC
Alan Mack flew Chinooks for the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment for seventeen years. Chief Warrant Officer 5. Senior MH-47 pilot. Flight lead. Instructor. He was the pilot in command of Razor 03 on Takur Ghar — the aircraft shot up trying to insert a SEAL element on top of the mountain that became Roberts Ridge. He has logged over 6,700 flight hours, took rounds through his cockpit on Anaconda, ran fog approaches into walled compounds in Iraq, and helped write the procedures the Night Stalkers still use to land in zero visibility. After retiring, he commanded the flight detachment...
info_outline
Cruise Ships, Cover-Ups, and Cow Killers | Negligent Discharge Friday | 5.8.2026
Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC
Michael and I get into it on this one. Hantavirus headlines, the Doomsday Clock, wind turbines, the Epstein note, and a guy on YouTube paying his bills by getting stung by bugs. I open by confidently passing along bad medical advice from two articles I read. Michael fact-checks me in real time. We agree it's a good exercise in why you should slow down before you repeat anything. From there we get into what Hantavirus actually is, why this isn't going to be another lockdown, and why I think people would push back hard if it were. The Doomsday Clock is at 89 seconds. Not 90. Not 88. Two old guys...
info_outline
The Cost of Telling the Truth | John Kiriakou | Ep. 446
Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC
John Kiriakou spent 14 years at the CIA. He started as an analyst, went operational, and eventually ran counterterrorism work in Pakistan that led to the capture of Abu Zubaydah. He was the first U.S. government official to publicly confirm that the agency was waterboarding prisoners. For that, the Obama administration prosecuted him under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act and sent him to federal prison for 23 months. He lost his pension. He lost his career. Most of his kids stopped speaking to him. Today he writes books, hosts a podcast, and teaches a course on the history of...
info_outline
Learning To Suffer Well | Full Auto Friday | 5.01.2026
Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC
Four questions this week. The kind that don't have clean answers. A guy whose father murdered his mother is asking how to get back to who he was before. He's not. A 28-year-old still living at home is watching his mom's cancer come back and trying to figure out how to spend the time he has left. A man in his sixties wants to know how to bring up suicide with three friends he's had for 40 years before it's too late. A 31-year-old in his first long-term relationship doesn't feel anything for the woman he's dating but knows everyone around him likes her. I talk about why the people you see online...
info_outline
Bonus Episode - Drownproof Chapter 1 - Be the Author of your Life, not the Victim of it
Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC
Today's "episode" is the audiobook first chapter of my book: Drownproof. Thank you to everyone who helped make the launch such a tremendous success. Hitting all of the "Best Seller" lists, to include the NYT, was quite frankly, incredibly humbling. You all made that happen, not me. For those of you who have read or listened to it already, well, clearly today's episode is not going to be exciting for you! For those that haven't, this chapter is about a very formative experience in my young life that changed how I viewed my self in the world. That change in mindset altered the trajectory of my...
info_outline
Working for Kanye, Building "Items" for Delta Force | Justin Klahn | Ep. 445
Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC
Justin Klahn is hard to put in a box. Twenty years inside Nike Innovation. Years embedded with JSOC units building gear that had to actually work. Time consulting with three-letter agencies, DARPA, and the Harvard Learning Innovations Laboratory. A run working directly for Kanye West. He calls himself a problem solver, and the resume backs it up. His new book is Innovator's Handbook. We open on the divorce conversation, the kind of failure neither of us wished for, and what it takes to show up for a partner the second time around. From there it gets wide. The competition mindset that separates...
info_outline
Bladder Control and Geopolitics | Negligent Discharge Friday | 4.24.2026
Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC
Michael, my dad, and me. Three generations arguing in one room. That's the format today. My dad watched Neil Armstrong walk on the moon live at twenty-two years old. He remembers the Iranian hostage crisis when it was happening, not when it was a movie. That perspective matters when we get into where we are now — the rhetoric coming out of the White House, the ceasefire that may or may not hold, a war nobody has explained the objective of. We talked about the leaders we don't seem to produce anymore. Kennedy to the moon in ten years. Hungary voting out a hard-right prime minister by historic...
info_outline
How Fast and Furious Buried an FBI Agent | John Shipley | Ep. 444
Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC
John Shipley spent fourteen years carrying an FBI badge. Army aviator first — commissioned by his own father, a retired Vietnam-era lieutenant colonel — until a spinal cord injury at Walter Reed ended his flying career. He walked into Quantico in 1996, drew El Paso, and spent the next decade working narcotics and surveillance on the Mexican border. SWAT. Sniper. Bodyguard details for the FBI Director and the Attorney General. A father of two adopted kids. The kind of agent who refused a $27 million bribe because he didn't want the money — he wanted to keep his oath. And then the...
info_outline"Crike him." That's the call a tactical medic makes when a guy can't breathe and the clock is at zero. Mike Simpson is the doctor on the other end of that radio. He's a former 1st Ranger Battalion anti-tank section leader, a Special Forces engineer turned 18 Delta medic with 7th Group, and a board-certified ER physician who spent his last six years on active duty attached to JMAU providing trauma support to tier one units. He retired in 2016 after 32 years and now runs medical direction for Central Texas Regional SWAT while practicing urgent care.
We got into the real mechanics of trauma care — what actually happens between the front door of an ER and the OR, why a hundred tourniquets on paper cuts beats one missed arterial bleed, and the brutal physics of wounds incompatible with life. He walked through his own prostate cancer diagnosis and what every man over 40 needs to know about PSA screening.
We also got into his path from corrections officer to medical school, why he's writing fantasy novels now, and the conversation every operator avoids until it's too late — documenting injuries before you're out the door.
Enjoy.
Today's Sponsors:
Montana Knife Company:
https://www.montanaknifecompany.com
Better Help:
Sign up and get 10% off at https://wwww.BetterHelp.com/clearedhot