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[Assistant] I felt disgusted and resigned myself to an unprofitable death.


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[Assistant] I looked at the men from the fifth, who were regarding us with wonder and envied them for having retained diplomatic relations with the state of sanity.


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[Assistant] Their commander was hardly conscious now, but he had heard.


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[Assistant] He waved a hand weakly in our direction and grinned as though to say, you'll never make it, but there's no harm in trying. And of course, to a dying man, I suppose there was no harm.


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[Assistant] You think they're gonna do it? Yep, they're gonna do it. They're gonna charge this blockhouse, six guys, this blockhouse, this is just concrete blockhouse, massive machine gun fire coming from it. They're gonna charge this thing. That took bombs straight up. That took direct hits from bombs.


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[Assistant] They, they make a run for it. Back to the book. The shells drove us back to our crater.


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[Assistant] Once again walkie talkie had difficulty with the apparatus. He could receive but not send. Battalion was asking for positions. You'd better report back to command post. Captain said to me. But come back out. So. Lucky wants to go tell command post what's going on.


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[Assistant] You can imagine, there's just machine gun fire, mortars going off everywhere, he runs back, he gets back to the major.


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[Assistant] At the command post, how is it out there, Lucky? The major asked. Bad, sir, I said, adding nothing. For my notion of this battle was still a confused jumble of men and movement and explosions in which blistering hot, in which a blistering hot airfield was somehow involved.


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[Assistant] Then I rose and said, I better get back out. The Major nodded and waved, good luck.


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[Assistant] I took firm hold of my tommy gun and adjusted my pack, secured my map case and circled a pile of shell casings to return to the shell crater.


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[Assistant] It was my last warlike act. For the last time, I set my face toward the enemy.


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[Assistant] About a hundred yards out, a shell exploded in front of me. I veered to the right, another shell exploded in front of me. I veered more, another shell, another, but closer, four more, another, closer still, I halted.


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[Assistant] A horrifying fact became clear. I had inserted myself between the enemy artillery and their target.


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[Assistant] They were hunting something, perhaps the ammunition dumped behind me, and were walking their fire in its direction.


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[Assistant] There was no cover. To go forward was to die. I could only run away from this approaching death, hoping to get out of the target area before it caught me. I turned and ran.


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[Assistant] I ran with the heat shimmering in waves of, from the coral, with the sweat oiling my joints, and the fear drying my mouth, with the shells exploding behind me, closer, ever closer, the airfield, the air filled with the angry voices of shrapnel demanding my life.


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[Assistant] I ran with an image in my mind of the Japanese gunner atop his ridge, bringing each burst carefully closer to my flying rear.


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[Assistant] Chasing me across that baking table in a monstrous game of cat and mouse, gleeful at each greater burst of speed called forth by a closer explosion, and then tiring of sport, lifting the gun and dropping one before me.


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[Assistant] A shell landed alongside me, perhaps five feet away, but it did not explode, or at least I do not think it did. One cannot be certain at such time. There is a different space and time with fear.


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[Assistant] But there was a shale, a two foot blob of burning red, which struck the coral with a thunderclap and seemed to glance off into the air and go wailing away into the bay. With that, I called upon my remaining strength. And also, then, the Japanese gunner hit his target. The ammunition dump was hit.


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[Assistant] The war ended for me. I had been shattered. No good. A dry husk.


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[Assistant] Modern war had had me. A giant lemon squeezer had crushed me dry. Concussion, heat, thirst, tension all had had their way with me.


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[Assistant] I must have stumbled about, unable to speak, until at last I sank my knees beside two men scratching a foxhole in the sand. They were startled, as though from afar I could hear them discussing me.


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[Assistant] He can't think. What do you think's the matter with him? Search me. He don't look wounded. Maybe he got a near miss. Hey fella, what's wrong with you? Can't you say something? What do you think we ought to do with him?


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[Assistant] They rose and pulled me erect, got a shoulder, a piece beneath my armpits and dragged me like a dummy through the sand. Life's like a like, like a life sized doll in whom the spring had been broken. They dragged me to the doctor.


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[Assistant] A corpsman laid me on the blanket, tied a ticket to me. He thrust a needle into my arm which was attached a running hose to a bottle of liquid suspended upside down on a wire frame.


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[Assistant] The pair who had brought me crouched beside me. What's wrong with him, doc? One of them asked. I don't know, the corpsman answered. He's pretty beat up though. Blast concussion. I'm sending him back to the hospital ship.


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[Assistant] One of the pair looked longingly at the Tommy gun beside me. His glance seemed to say, you won't need that anymore. I told him with my eyes to take it.


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[Assistant] And he slung it over his shoulder with immense satisfaction. Then they left. They had their reward.


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[Assistant] Mortars were falling as they carried me onto the beach with about a half a dozen other casualties. We lay there and I wondered dully if the Jap gunners were to catch me after all.


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[Assistant] At last a landing boat took us aboard and roared off for the ship.


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[Assistant] The others were badly wounded. Some put out of pain by morphine, and here I lay in a corner, quietly retching like a frightened kitten, intact, my face unblemished, my bones unbroken.


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[Assistant] My spirit crept away from the eyes staring.


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[Assistant] From the staring eyes that fastened upon us as the boat was drawn up out of the water to the deck. People in white coats thronged the rail, and two of these at the center gazed with authority into the boat, searching for the wounded most in need of aid.


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[Assistant] I shrank from that expert stare when suddenly one of them pointed at me and said, Him. Get him downstairs right away.


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[Assistant] They grasped me, stripping me naked as they did and hurried me down a ladder, laying me on a table and again, thrusting a needle into my arm.


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[Assistant] With the liquid flowing into my body came the warm flood of returning self-respect. The dull dispiriting shame had disappeared the moment that pointing finger singled me out. I had been hurt. I was in need of aid.


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[Assistant] With a healing power of which he had no inkling, the doctor had restored my spirit to me.


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[Assistant] Each day for a week I ascended the ladder to the deck and gazed in morbid fascination at Peleliu a mile or so away. They were still fighting. One could hear the sound of the firing


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[Assistant] Each day, the news was bad. We were winning. But at a fearful price.


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[Assistant] Extermination had come to the Japanese 10,000 on Peleliu, and my regiment, the first, was licking its wounds on the beach.


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[Assistant] Of my battalion, a force of some 1500 men, there remained but 28 effectives when the command came for the last assault on that honeycomb of caves and pillboxes which the Japanese had carved into bloody nose ridge. In men and blood and agony,


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[Assistant] The most costly spit of land in the wide Pacific. When the command came, they rose from their holes like shades from...sepultures. And advanced. They could not run, they could barely walk, and they dragged their weapons. But they obeyed. And they attacked.


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[Assistant] They were taken from the line on the brink of collapse.


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[Assistant] He'd been hit by a mortar shell and blown to bits. White man had been killed.


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[Assistant] The artist was dead. A brave man. May he rest in peace.


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[Assistant] Captain Dreadnought fell, dead of a sniper's bullet.


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[Assistant] It had become a holocaust in the fullest sense.


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[Assistant] Scores of others in the battalions perished.


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[Assistant] There were those that have not been mentioned in this book. Friends who did not fit the narrative. Men whose faces I have not forgotten and whose bravery and sacrifice has deposited a vast spiritual credit for our nation to draw upon.


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[Assistant] These two fell wrestling that island rock from the grasp of its most tenacious defender.


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[Assistant] Sacrifice says, not the blood of your brother, my friend.


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[Assistant] When their men go off to war, they do not weep for their victims. They weep for them as victim.


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[Assistant] Heroes turn traitor, warriors age and grow soft, but a victim is changeless.


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[Assistant] And I'll close with the book there.


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[Assistant] And it's so humbling to hear of their sacrifice, and I say it over and over and over again, and I will continue to say it, that we must live lives worthy of their sacrifice.


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[Assistant] And all the soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines who as


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[Assistant] Robert Leckie said later in his life who fought or who foremost fighting.


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[Assistant] And remember that, that people, all people have good and bad qualities. And people make mistakes and they do dumb things.


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[Assistant] And yet those very people are capable of so much.


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[Assistant] Judge, and we judge, and we judge, and we cast stones.


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[Assistant] Who are we to judge when a man like Robert Leckie, Lucky Leckie,


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[Assistant] Who not only drank to excess and chased girls and pulled a pistol on his superior officer. And who got so nervous.


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[Assistant] And yet, he overcame that fear with more bravery in his heart than most of us can even fathom.


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[Assistant] Nothing more we can do to live a worthwhile life than to help people.


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[Assistant] And one more thing that we see in this book once again is the strength of human will.


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[Assistant] And yet we can't get ourselves out of bed in the morning. We can't move toward a goal we've set for ourselves.


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[Assistant] You remember what you are capable of if you mobilize your will. And if you keep moving forward, you keep advancing.


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[Assistant] So, Echo Charles. Yes. While I'm over here.


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[Assistant] Doing a little decompression. Maybe you could mobilize.


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[Assistant] Your will. Sure. To let people know. I don't know how to support this podcaster.


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[Assistant] The dysentery are hernia, you're pissing yourself, your friends are getting killed. You passed that test through some miracle.


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[Assistant] Let's do it again. Yeah. But to prepare you for the test we're gonna make you suffer more. And then so you get tested again.


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[Assistant] That's cool, but it doesn't matter, it's not the final exam. You're gonna do it again.


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[Assistant] And you know, again, I say this all the time, this is thousands and thousands and thousands.


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[Assistant] of people did this. It's not, it's not, that's what's important to remember.


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[Assistant] This isn't, this is a civilian. This guy was a civilian.


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[Assistant] This isn't the story of the singular hero. Right.


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[Assistant] This is the story of thousands and thousands of heroes, and this is the story of what people are capable of. People are capable of this! It's proven!


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[Assistant] And when you think you can't take anymore, guess what? You can.


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[Assistant] My point that even Echo Charles could employ the will.


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[Assistant] Got it. That's when they went to look at his hernia. They're like, hey, you gotta go back to front. Oh, but you got malaria. Suffer through that for whatever it is. Yea, yea. That's four days. Okay, now you can go back.


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[Assistant] And where would you recommend people get the krill oil that you speak of so highly?


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[Assistant] All my, all my prompts lead towards closure. That's my goal.


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[Assistant] Which is totally necessary. And also, also, if you, this book, I didn't, I don't know if I made it clear enough, the book that we read today is called Helmet for My Pillow. Bye.


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[Assistant] Robert Leckie, you can get that Amazon. You're gonna put it, Echo will have it on the website and when you click that and you buy it, boom, you'll be good to go. You will support the podcast, you will support the Leckie family in some way because they'll be somehow


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Being supported, right? Cause their own, I'm sure, this book. So, it's a good way to support this hero, this hero's family. And also, get The Pacific.


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[Assistant] I don't know if we can put that, I don't know how, but anyways. Like if you could put it on click through, unless maybe someone bought the DVDs. But, but watch that. And you know what, when you watch it,


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[Assistant] Like prep yourself mentally, and don't watch it while there's other things going on. Sit down.


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[Assistant] On a nice situation, you know, logistically with a good TV set.


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[Assistant] And a good speaker system. Yeah, and then watch the Pacific. And you only, they're like, maybe you can watch two at a time, maybe? What, two episodes? Two episodes, but watch them close together too, so you kind of maintain the continuity of the situation. Right. Because that's good too. And when you see it, man, it's just incredibly well done.


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[Assistant] Yeah, it's awesome. And then when you have the background of the podcast of the books and you read the books man, it's really powerful.


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[Assistant] You're more invested in the characters. And you realize that when you see Lucky Leckie in the thing, you have his whole backstory of his whole life when you've read the book. And it's awesome.


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[Assistant] See, so this is good. What I like about this is people gave you a suggestion, which I saw too. You looked at it, you explored it, and now you executed on it.


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[Assistant] So if there's any other good ideas that people have, they should post them. And so that way you can improve even more and we can improve and serve them better.


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[Assistant] And I was so happy that they were in short clips, and I was like, this is why we need more short clips. Because it's really convenient to go, what's this idea here? Boom, you see the name of the video, you go, here's the idea, I want to think about that idea. Boom, you're good to go.


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[Assistant] I bet, I, I don't know. Let's not just, let's not think about what's good to do and what's not good to do. We just gotta get to see what we're trying to do.


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[Assistant] Right, well that's one thing that's a little bit tricky about this is that...


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[Assistant] When I, when I'm thinking, when I'm talking, I'm thinking in the context of this giant two hour thing. So, sometimes it's hard to snip out something.


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[Assistant] And you lose a little bit, in my opinion. But, you also gain a lot because you can get it quick.


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[Assistant] And I wanna actually do that, I wanna get the sodium metal and I wanna throw it into the water.


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[Assistant] Well yea, we end up with like, a common, it's like hanging out with your friends basically. Like when I go on the road now,


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[Assistant] Because no one was sitting there, actually. And I was like, well, sometimes it seemed like the podcast was like, was me and Echo sitting in a room, alone.


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[Assistant] They have their own spins. This is what's funny is people have their own variations on the jokes and on the inside things and on what we're talking about. So it's all, you know, they've already taken stuff and spun it out somewhere. Now they're bringing it back to me. So I'm part of their right. I get in, get inside their game. So it's, it's pretty funny.


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[Assistant] Isn't it more like the podcast has a store? Cause I don't actually have a store. It's the podcast has a store.


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[Assistant] Yeaah, yeaah, but he's a deep half guard, he's got, cause he's, he's a bigger dude, but he's got a little bit of a difficulty.


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[Assistant] It goes beyond might have. It goes into actual moments of weakness. Not that you are in a moment of weakness. You're looking at actual donuts. They're in front of you. They're breaking you down mentally.


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[Assistant] So I'm gonna start thinking about that, what that's gonna be like. Yeah. And if you want recommendations of what particular moments of weakness you might have that need to be overcome, and there's a common theme, as Echo referred to,


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[Assistant] We will, and if it's gotta be something that I've dealt with before. Right? Right? Because I can't just make up some way of overcoming a weakness that I've never experienced. Now I've experienced a lot of weaknesses.


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[Assistant] But if you come up with something that I've never experienced, then we're gonna have to just forgo that one. Cause I'm not gonna make it up.


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[Assistant] Because there's three wake up tracks. A guy on Twitter said a number, a wake up track didn't work.


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[Assistant] But we're there, we had some reserve, we got some backup. That's what we're prepared for. I don't think anyone's made it to three yet. No one's made it to the wake up track three, they haven't been there yet.


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[Assistant] Yeah, some people say to me, hey, can you do one of you yelling? I'm like, well, I don't really yell a lot, man. Like, I didn't yell. I'm not a yeller. Now, let me rephrase that. If we're in the gym, and like I'm pushing someone, like an MMA fighter that's in a workout, and I'm like, come on, you know, I might raise my voice a little bit, but I'm not going to yell at you.


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[Assistant] You know what, it could be effective for certain instances. Right. Yes. And actually, like I've been doing some little videos in the morning, and I realized when I watch them,


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[Assistant] That I'm getting a little bit aggressive with the way I'm talking. And it's not, it's not like I'm saying, okay, I can, no, I'm just starting to talk and then I start getting, I start escalating my own situation because I'm starting to think about when I'm, when I'm saying,


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[Assistant] It means something to me. Right. So when I'm saying, eh, you know, you're wasting your life right now, I start thinking, I'm feeling that way. Because I know that there's someone that's actually wasting their life right now. And so it starts, you know, getting a little bit escalated. And so maybe,


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[Assistant] On Psychological Warfare 2, there'll be some situation that, that I personally escalate on.


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[Assistant] And maybe it isn't, but maybe it is. I tell you, judging from some of the, some of the reviews on Amazon, I'll read you one. After drinking Jocko White tea, I found I was overcome with the insurmountable urge to get after it.


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[Assistant] So much so, that I was able to defeat all my foes in a short amount of time.


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[Assistant] You know, I don't know what situation this individual's in, right? But obviously he's in combat situation. He's got foes that need to be killed and he's drinking from their skulls. And even in that really stressful environment, you know the T's help.


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[Assistant] Which is cool. I'm glad that it's helping him doing positive things against the enemies of good in the world. Also, good evening Echo and Jocko. I woke up weighing 115 pounds the day the white tea arrives. Two cups later I re-weighed myself and I was now roughly 250 pounds.


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[Assistant] So he more than doubled his body weight after two cups of Jocka White tea.


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[Assistant] I think my tea was a little loaded and obviously gave me more than the 20% increase in gains that was promised.


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[Assistant] And I don't think we actually promised anything. I didn't promise that. But I think it kinda speaks for itself.


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[Assistant] Also, Way of the Warrior Kid, I got the first hard copy.


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[Assistant] And I think I'm going to anyways. It's already been three hours. But, but. So. Young Mark is.


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[Assistant] He's gonna jump off this bridge. He couldn't swim in the beginning of the book. Now he knows how to swim, but his goal is to jump off the bridge into the river.


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[Assistant] And he's goes up there to do it and he's scared. He gets scared. He's not going to, he just can't jump. So uncle Jake.


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[Assistant] Who used to be a seal. Who's now with his young nephew trying to show him the warrior way. Goes up on the bridge and he said, what's going on buddy?


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[Assistant] He said in a calm voice, I don't know. I said, I'm just, I'm just, you're afraid, aren't you? Uncle Jake asked, but he wasn't even asking. He knew, he knew I was scared. There was no point denying it. Uncle Jake knew it as plain as day. Yes.


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[Assistant] I finally said in a quiet tone, too embarrassed that I was afraid. Then, to my surprise, Uncle Jake said, that's normal.


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[Assistant] What? I responded, shocked at Uncle Jake's statement. I said, that's normal.


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[Assistant] You're doing something you've never done before, so it's normal to be a little hesitant. It's called fear. It's a normal emotion, and it's okay.


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[Assistant] This made no sense to me. How am I supposed to control fear? And how would you know? You're not afraid of anything. Uncle Jake sat quietly for a minute. Then he said, I wish that were true. What do you mean? I asked him. Well, you said, I'm not afraid of anything.


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[Assistant] And that is just not true. Fear is normal. In fact, fear is good.


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[Assistant] Fear is what warns you when things are dangerous. Fear is what makes you prepare. Fear keeps us out of a lot of trouble. So there's nothing wrong with fear.


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[Assistant] So you have to learn to control fear and that's what you need to do right now.


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[Assistant] Okay, that sounds great and I would really love to make you happy and overcome my fear, but I don't know how. Uncle Jake thought about that. About what I just said.


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[Assistant] For a few seconds, and then he said, okay, well, the first part of controlling fear you have already done. And that is preparation.


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[Assistant] You've done plenty of preparation to be ready for this moment, to face this fear.


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[Assistant] Starting with dunking your head. All the way up to swimming all around and back and forth across this river. You've done little jumps off the river bank.


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[Assistant] And all that preparation works to help overcome the fear. Imagine how scared you would be if you still didn't know how to swim. You would be horrified.


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[Assistant] But you have prepared. Then why am I still scared? I asked Uncle Jake. Simple, he said.


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[Assistant] Because there's still an element of the unknown. You've never jumped off anything this high before, so you don't know what it feels like.


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[Assistant] People are afraid of what they don't know or what they don't understand, but you have prepared.


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[Assistant] You know it is safe. You know you are ready. It's just this last little bit of fear that has to be overcome. And you know how you do that? I have no idea, I told him. You go.


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[Assistant] Just go, I asked Uncle Jake, now partly thinking he was just joking. Yes, you just go. You see, fear lives in the moment. That powerful moment between when you decide you are going to do something and when you do it.


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[Assistant] Once you go, once you start, you won't be afraid anymore. You overcome fear by going.


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[Assistant] And it is the same in many aspects of life. Parachuting, talking in front of a crowd, taking a test, running a race, competing in jujitsu. The fear is in the waiting.


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[Assistant] Once you have prepared and trained and studied, there is only one thing left to do. Go. And that's it? Yes, that's it.


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[Assistant] As soon as Uncle Jake finished those words, he stood up, looked at me, yelled out, whoo yah, and jumped off the bridge.


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[Assistant] Just go, I thought to myself. I stood up, stepped up onto the edge of the wall, and looked down at Uncle Jake who had just come back to the surface and was looking up at me with a big smile on his face.


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[Assistant] With all my heart and lungs, I yelled out, hoo-yah! And stepped off the bridge, past my fear, and into the unknown.


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[Assistant] Dang, that was good, man. From the Way of the Warrior Kid. It comes out May 2nd. So, go. And. Go.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Order the book for, for you, for your kid, for your neighbor, for your nephew, for your niece, for the school, the library, whoever. Order them. So, the publisher that's making this book, we want them to know that they need to print a bunch of these.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They, they don't know that. And it's, they're not gonna print enough. It's the same thing that happened with Jocko White Tea, right?


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[Assistant] You can also pre-order. Discipline equals freedom. Field manual. Comes out October 17th. Seventeen, seventeen. Hmm.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That you asked for. So you can order that one too. And of course, extreme ownership. You can get that one. People buy it and then they buy it for their team and it spreads. So pick that up for you and your team up and down the chain of command. Extreme ownership.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Beyond that, if you want some direct action and interaction with your company that you work out, you can contact our company, Echelon Front, me, Leif Babin, JP Donnell, Dave Burke. We can get in the game with you. Info at echelonfront.com.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Lastly, if you don't know, we have muster002 coming up at the Marriott Grand Marquis in New York City, May 4th and 5th. Leadership, strategy, tactics, again, me, Leif, JP, Dave Burke, and of course,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And probably most important, Echo Charles. He's gonna be there. And he might try and hide.


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[Assistant] But he can't. Because none of us can, because there's no green room, there's no backstage, there's just all of us together getting after it. And of course, before the muster, you can find us. We're cruising.


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[Assistant] Is at Echo Charles, and I am at Jocko Willink.


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[Assistant] In this uncertain world. And it certainly is an uncertain world today. Filled with evil. All of you that walk away from the comforts of home and into the unknown. To face our enemies.


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[Assistant] Thank you to the firefighters, police and law enforcement, EMTs and the first responders here at home. Thank you for what you do day in and day out. Putting yourself at risk for us.


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[Assistant] And to everyone else out there, facing what you're facing.


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[Assistant] Challenges at work, and challenges with family, and challenges with yourself, and challenges in your head, and challenges with life.


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[Assistant] This is Jocko Podcast number 74 with Echo Charles and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening.


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[Assistant] When my dad would play Hank Williams Sr. on the 8-track.


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[Assistant] In his, I think it was a 1971 Barracuda.


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[Assistant] And he played that ta- that tape just over and over again. And I still know those songs by heart. And then you know I got- that was when I was a little kid. And then I got a little bit older.


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[Assistant] And like a lot of kids, all of a sudden I was listening to The Beatles. Sure. Elvis.


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[Assistant] Thought they were great. I still think that song, while my guitar gently weeps is a good song, but that wore out kind of quickly. And it was something wasn't there in that music. Something just wasn't quite there. The music didn't sound how I felt.


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[Assistant] And so it went into my ears at some point. And I said, dang. Alright. Better. Closer. Sure. Warmer. We're getting there. And then I watched around in the hard rock for a while. Hendrix. Led Zeppelin.


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[Assistant] And I can't help throwing it on a little Jack Black when I say that. If you watch that tribute that he did to them. And.


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[Assistant] That, you know, some of the kids that I hung around with in New England, they rode that train down to hippie-dom.


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[Assistant] You know, we're talking Crosby, Stills and Nash and Janis Joplin and the Grateful Dead and all that. I couldn't relate. Wasn't there. Didn't get there.


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[Assistant] Didn't seem to reflect the world that I was beginning to see myself. I got on the other train.


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[Assistant] Right? And, we're talking about Van Halen. Yes, this is the 1980s. You know, if you were, uh,


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[Assistant] Kid in America, age 13. We got issued the album 1984 by Van Halen. That was just a given you were gonna get that.


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[Assistant] Got issue, dive her down. Boom, you need to listen to this. This is rock and roll, people.


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[Assistant] This is Eddie Van Halen. Listen to that guitar solo. Eruption! Listen again. Do it again. Iron Maiden. Right?


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[Assistant] Actual song called Trooper. You know you gotta listen to that when you're a kid. And so now I'm heading in the right direction. I'm feeling it.


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[Assistant] And from there, I was definitely on the right train. Then it was Motorhead. And soon after, the Ramones. Boom. And then that leads to the Sex Pistols.


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[Assistant] Cause you're just going harder. That's what you're doing. That's what I was doing. Like, what's a little bit harder than that? What's a little bit harder than that? Sex pistols. Bodies.


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[Assistant] No feelings. They're singing songs. No feelings. Okay. I hear what you're saying. Louder. More anger. And then finally we get to Black Flag.


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[Assistant] My war, Side 2. Still one of my all time favorites, Minor Threat. Get a hold of a little band, another little band from DC called the Bad Brains.


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[Assistant] Some Detroit hardcore negative approach.


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[Assistant] And then, so I was, you know, I was kinda in the game, right? I was there. And so 87 rolls around.


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[Assistant] And one of my friends who is actually more of a metalhead at this time.


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[Assistant] And the cover of this tape was just a giant mushroom cloud of death and destruction. And above the mushroom cloud, in large old English script blazing across the top, it said, chromags.


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[Assistant] And then underneath the mushroom cloud, in a little bit smaller script in old English, it said, the age of coral. Okay. So I put it in my tape deck.


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[Assistant] And it's, the first track was called We Gotta Know. And let me just tell you the lyrics.


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[Assistant] Struggling in the streets just trying to survive. Searching for the truth just to keep us alive. Gotta break these shackles. Gotta break these chains.


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[Assistant] I did feel some shackles, right? You feel the shackles of things.


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[Assistant] The next song title had me a little concerned. It was, the song was called World Peace. As I was kind of, uh-oh, uh-oh. Red flag.


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[Assistant] And then I listen to the lyrics. Lyrics. All you hippies better start to face reality.


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[Assistant] Are you, all your far-fetched dreams of anarchy? Better start to see things the way they are, cause the way things are going, they won't be going far. World peace can't be done. It just can't exist. World peace can't be done. Anarchy is a mess. Okay.


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[Assistant] And the rest of the album kept up that assault.


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[Assistant] On my brain, on my attitude, and that was it. I had found something called hardcore music.


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[Assistant] And I never really left it. And I listened to Chromags and a ton of other hardcore bands from that time until now and that's pretty much essentially the soundtrack of much of my life and it had a pretty big influence on me and it was an attitude that I kept


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[Assistant] Which to me was pretty simple. Because to me, hardcore meant hardcore. That's what it meant. It's pretty simple. Hardcore in everything you do. Work hard. Be aggressive. Don't back down. Fight for what you believe in. Hold the line. And that's kind of what I did in my life.


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[Assistant] And, I don't know, like a year ago or something, somebody asked me something about, you know, on the interwebs. Someone said, oh yea, what band should I listen to?


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[Assistant] You know, I said, oh, blah, blah, blah, chromax, you know, check them out, whatever. And you might want to do that. And eventually,


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[Assistant] You know, it's uh, the internet is an incredible thing and eventually I, I, uh, uh, the founding member of the Chromax, a guy by the name of Harley Flanagan,


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[Assistant] He like reached out and said, hey, what's up, man? How you doing? And I had heard over the years, you know, that Harley was a jujitsu, jujitsu guy, black belch in jujitsu. And so, you know, he just kind of hit me up and


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[Assistant] Eventually, you know, we were talking and he said, hey, I got a book coming out. Send it to you. And I said, cool. Yeaah. And he said, man, the book's crazy.


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[Assistant] People know each other, I mean, like, you know, you know, after a show you talk to everyone, and it's the band members, it's people, everyone kinda knows each other, so I'd heard stories. But the book...


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[Assistant] When the reality behind the stories was, was way more intense and crazier than I could've thought it was. And there was one point when I was reading the book, I'm gonna read a little excerpt right now.


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[Assistant] When I started working on this book, I was staying in a hotel in the red light district in Amsterdam.


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[Assistant] The working title was the longest suicide note ever written.


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[Assistant] I was trying to document the madness from as far back as I can remember until the end.


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[Assistant] The story of my life as an insane suicidal joyride of rock and roll depravity and demise until the final crash and burn.


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[Assistant] It was gonna be a book that all the great fuckups never got to write cause they died first.


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[Assistant] So I began working on it. I figured the end would have come sooner than later. But I was wrong.


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[Assistant] And, once I got done reading the book, I reached out to Harley and I said, hey man, there's a lot in this book.


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[Assistant] That's crazy and the fact that you lived through it and the fact that you got through it and the fact that you got to the position that you're in now with your life, I think a lot of people can learn from it and it'd be awesome if you come onto the podcast and Harley said, let's do it. So.


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[Assistant] Yeah, it's awesome and I saw you, uh, several times when I was a kid and we were trying to figure out names of clubs where I saw you but


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[Assistant] That was pretty cool and it's pretty cool to be sitting here. I guess we're talking about, uh,


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[Assistant] 30 years later, you know, cause I was seeing you when I was in my teens, 14, 13, 15 around there and here we are.


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[Assistant] Yeah, I'm going to, I'm going to just kind of pull a little something here out of the book just to give a little bit of background. This is from Harley's book, hardcore life of my own.


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[Assistant] I was born at San Francisco General Hospital on March 8th, 1967 at the start of the summer of love. My mom's name is Rose Marie Fellu. Fellu. Fellu. And my dad's name was Harley Wayne Walker Flanagan.


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[Assistant] My mom was a hippie. My dad was a drifter. And somehow their paths crossed. Before the hippie days, my mom was into


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[Assistant] He worked all kinds of different jobs, everything from building a building super to a longshoreman. He was a charming guy with a thick Spanish accent. So that's the beginnings. Did you speak any Spanish?


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[Assistant] And when I was a kid, she was still a stripper. I remember going to work with her a few times when I was little. That was weird. Looking back on it now. There was even a short period of time


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[Assistant] When she was at Dominatrix, but that was later.


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[Assistant] It's hard to accept that your dad chose heroin and alcohol over you. It really does kinda hurt even now.


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[Assistant] I guess that might be one of the reasons why I turned out the way I did.


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[Assistant] My mom and me did a lot of hitchhiking and stayed with a lot of different people. A lot of crazy shit happened on those trips. At one point, a friend of hers was going to Europe and asked,


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[Assistant] Pretty much until I was about 10, but I come back to the States every year or so. We settled down in Denmark in 1971.


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[Assistant] It's a great place to grow up, but of course there's an underside too.


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[Assistant] And as cool as some of the things, and a lot of the people were, a lot of them were, at least some of them, were just fucking lost.


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[Assistant] And yeaah, all the kids were wild, what do you expect? I mean, we were just imitating the grown-ups. So as a result, I was getting laid and doing all kinds of other crazy shit before I'd even reach puberty.


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[Assistant] Did you completely think that was normal at the time? Was that just the way the world was? That's the way my world was.


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[Assistant] And that free school, that's, that's where you started mute. Is that where you started playing?


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[Assistant] Yeah, for sure. So, you were listening to, actually you got your first gig then, like, like you were playing little Santana covers, and Cool in the Gang covers when you were 6 or 7 in your school band.


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[Assistant] I went in the bathroom and my mom was throwing up all over the place. That kind of shit was a kind of come down.


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[Assistant] And this was more appropriate for me. It wasn't all peace and love. It was just more me.


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[Assistant] You know what's funny is I always tell people this about music.


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[Assistant] If you go to a guitar store anywhere in America and you put up a little flyer in there that says, you know, I need someone that can play every note on the following three albums, you know, and you pick complex, you pick rush and cart and there and two, there'll be, there'll be, you'll get 10 people that'll say, yeah, I can play all that stuff. I'll play, I'll play it for you right now. But there's,


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[Assistant] You had your first band called Little Big Boss. Was that in reference to you, I'm assuming? You must have been 10 years old.


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[Assistant] Yeah, and I mean, New York at that time, and like you said, I used to come down to New York sometimes when I was younger, and it was completely different, you know, in the mid-80s.


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[Assistant] Uh, just, it's, it's hard to, uh, if people go to New York now, it's just completely different. Yeaah, yeaah, yeaah.


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[Assistant] And going in the military for me was a rebellion against the, the norm, you know, was everyone's going to a, uh, go be a hippie, smoke dope, uh,


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[Assistant] Go to college, get a job, and I was like no, I'm gonna go be a commando and just get after it.


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[Assistant] I gotta, I'm just gonna go, like we were talking about your neighborhood, this is just kind of a sample of what you were living around and in.


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[Assistant] Back to the book, I remember one night lying there, hearing some chick down the street getting raped. And knowing there was really nothing to do.


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[Assistant] It was like a helpless feeling. You knew that if the cops got called it wouldn't matter because they probably wouldn't show up and if they did it would be too late and they probably wouldn't find her.


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[Assistant] Just because he was white, looked a little freaky and was walking down our block. I remember coming home one night and my aunt


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[Assistant] You've gotta figure a lot of these guys would hang out and huff glue and shit. And when you huff glue and you smoke a lot of dust, you get pretty grim and lean towards violence.


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[Assistant] So there's your, there's your surroundings, there's your environment.


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[Assistant] You know, as I was reading that, I was just thinking to myself, cause you and I, you know, in the scene, there was always guys that had dogs, right, and pit bulls. Everyone had pit bulls.


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[Assistant] Yeah, uh, but this whole time, as you're doing this, at the same time, you're still, you're listening to music, you're, you're going to shows all the time, and like you said, the bad brains show up, you know.


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[Assistant] You know, uh, you know, I think if you got to see the bad brains back in the day, you're lucky. And I mean, I remember seeing the bad brains and just being, you just, just sick.


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[Assistant] You hear a lot of crazy stories about HR. HR is the singer from the bad brains throat in the bad brains.


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[Assistant] But as crazy as HR can act at times, back in the day, he was inspirational beyond belief.


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[Assistant] He and the bad brains had the entire New York hardcore scene talking like fucking Jamaicans for the longest time. Everybody was like fire burning, blood clot hysterical.


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[Assistant] Bands like The Mob were so heavily influenced by them that the bass player started growing dreads and wearing a Rasta hat.


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[Assistant] A whole contingent of white rostas started popping up on the hardcore scene. They took things


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[Assistant] He used to be a javelin thrower back in high school. He was always athletic. So he had a bunch of scrawny punk rock motherfuckers and then this dude is up there that was an athletic powerhouse going completely ape shit and he could sing his ass off and he could hit notes. HR came out there with a purpose like he was on a mission. Every show I saw of theirs back then was amazing. I remember I saw him up in Boston one time and


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[Assistant] He was like going, there was, I guess like fire pipes or whatever, uh, uh, sprinkler pipes and he's leaping up and swinging on those things and jumping off in the crowd. It was nuts. He was a motherfucker.


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[Assistant] That's a rough follow up shot. So, meanwhile, you did a trip to England. This is the first time you saw skinheads before.


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[Assistant] And here's what they told you going back to the book. I always remembered what the Belfast skins told me. Teach America about skinheads. The first few friends of mine to shave their heads included


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[Assistant] The two-tone thing was happening with all the ska bands jumping off like the specials and selector and madness and they were all popular with the skinheads early on.


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[Assistant] The branch that went off and got the most press, which was the neo-Nazi skinheads.


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[Assistant] The original, the origins of the skinheads is actually


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[Assistant] Diego was Puerto Rican, as was Jose from the Mob. And so were a lot of skinheads that came around later. Even back in the Max's days, you had the Bad Brains, Pure Hell, the Influencer, one of the first real New York hardcore bands, and they were all black.


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[Assistant] And meanwhile, you know, at this time,


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[Assistant] Back to the book, I was drinking a lot, huffing, glue, taking pills and lots of LSD and whatever else. So, this whole time, that's what's just prevalent in the scene. Drugs.


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[Assistant] And I'll tell you where I got that philosophy from. In the SEAL Teams.


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[Assistant] Man, when I came in, it was like, the way that you kinda proved that you were tough.


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[Assistant] Five motherfuckers. And that's what it was. Yea. And when the war started...


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[Assistant] It's not like that stopped, cause that stuff still goes on, but it definitely, in my mind, in my mind I was thinking, and we still drank, and we still partied and got after it, but,


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[Assistant] At that time you kind of came up with the name of the Chromag. You came up with the Chromag's name and you started like tagging everything with the Chromag's and writing it everywhere. You had a kick ass band. It was like when we talked about my first hardcore band called Bronson's Children.


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[Assistant] So you started, you started coming, putting together the band and then things started getting a little bit crazy. You beat someone up who's some friend of someone else and all of a sudden you heard that you had like a price on your head.


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[Assistant] In San Francisco with a bunch of everyone's runaways, drugs, math


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[Assistant] Did you just think like, okay, this is what life is like?


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[Assistant] Yeah, well like, obviously I, I, I work with the police and...


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[Assistant] You know, so. And they gotta protect, you know, of course you see, oh, we always see the negative thing of cops beating someone down.


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[Assistant] You were, uh, you're conditioned from your childhood that


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[Assistant] Man, we haven't even gotten to like, the chromax yet, have we? Who? The chromax! Oh.


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[Assistant] You guys finally get together. Here we go, back to the book. It's been three years since Paris and you, so Paris the guy was, uh, he was the guitarist. Guitarist from the Chromags. Hooked up and started writing November 2nd, 1984.


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[Assistant] And on February 16th, 1985, the Cro-Mags went into Hi-Five Studios on 27th Street and Park Avenue and recorded 12 songs. The Age of Choral cassette, which is released on CD called Before the Choral.


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[Assistant] So that's 84. Yeah. That that's going down. Yes. And that's a good recording. I have that one too.


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[Assistant] I was into vegetarianism, but it took me a while to get into Krishna.


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[Assistant] I mean, I was living in a squat, I was vegetarian, I had no money and here was free vegetarian food.


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[Assistant] They also had a few preaching centers on the west side that me and John used to go to to eat.


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[Assistant] In the beginning, people didn't take John and Krishna seriously. It was kind of something the hardcore scene laughed at. But as my friends and me started getting into Krishna, it started to change. So you guys started getting into Hare Krishna. Yeah. Yes.


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[Assistant] Tell me the fundamental philosophies. I mean, obviously, Hare Krishnas are vegetarians.


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[Assistant] Okay. There's nothing that has to do with like, hey, we don't want to hurt things.


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[Assistant] It was recorded and mixed in under 100 hours over a 14 day period, January, February 1986.


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[Assistant] And, and now this is, you guys are, you guys are starting to get a big draw. I mean huge draws outside of New York City.


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[Assistant] So yeaah, for those of you that don't know crossover, when he's talking about that, that's the crossover from hardcore.


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[Assistant] And it's a weird run that you guys have, cause you guys, you guys-


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[Assistant] Okay, I didn't know you actually played there, but like that kind of venue. So that's, in my mind, you know, that's a legit band venue.


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[Assistant] Now this is the, so, you know, Age of Coral comes out, you guys are popular, you tour Europe, you know, you're getting after it, you're filling up places.


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[Assistant] Uh, best wishes, you're filling stuff, you're headlining best wishes, but you're playing with Motorhead too before. Yeah. You're supposed to play with Black Sabbath one time. Yeah. By the way, that would actually be the ultimate show of all time for me.


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[Assistant] I couldn't believe this. You come home from those tours. Yea, man. And you have no money. Yea, yea.


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[Assistant] Total record albums I had, and I loved music, I probably had like...


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[Assistant] 80 records, right? 80 records. On my computer right now, on my phone, I probably got 10,000 records. No ca- I got all kinds of songs, right? Every band that's ever existed, I got them on my phone.


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[Assistant] You end up trying to, trying to sue a little bit. I think you tried to sue the record company or something. You end up just going into legal costs.


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[Assistant] Uh, damn. So, you were trying to get off that label, and trying to get onto Electra. Damn, because Electra was huge.


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[Assistant] And, uh, then you end up, so with, uh, with Alpha Omega. Yeah. And by the way, I didn't say this, but you sang on Best Wishes. Yeah, I sang on that.


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[Assistant] Cause I got a kick out of it. Oh boy. Here he goes, back to the book. You know how you can always tell when a heavy band is starting to lose their edge when they start using a fucking keyboard? Yeah, we did that.


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[Assistant] Hey, you know what? I've seen, I've seen spinal tap twice.


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[Assistant] I think that's why I took everything to such an extreme. I don't think I cared if I lived. There were times I don't think I wanted to.


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[Assistant] I'm not proud looking back on it now. If anything, um, surprise, I survived.


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[Assistant] You know, I've seen some of my, uh, friends that...


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[Assistant] They, they start to, I think, get the same outlook. They start doing shit that is, uh,


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[Assistant] Not, you know, high survival rate activities. Yeaah.


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[Assistant] You know, here you go, back to the book. At one point, I was broke as shit. This is after you have three albums signed by a major record contract, toured all over the world, played with Motorhead, on tour.


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[Assistant] Here we go back to the book. At one point I was broke as shit and I got busted shoplifting food at a supermarket.


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[Assistant] You know what else I just realized that I completely bree- breezed over?


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[Assistant] No, the, the military. I've talked about this before. It's a beautiful thing. It's a beautiful thing for me.


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[Assistant] Yeah, but a lot of, a lot of fighters, you know, you know, a lot of UFC fighters and stuff and a lot of those guys have a rough time, you know?


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[Assistant] There's a buddy of mine who plays in a band called Slightly Stupid and they're actually a big band and they play in front, they're from San Diego and one of the guys, you know, he's got a little kid, he's a normal guy but he plays in Slightly Stupid and


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[Assistant] He was, you know, they just got back from tour and you know, I just said something to him about how it was and he goes, man, it just never gets old, you know, getting up in front of 10,000 people that are singing your songs, man. He said, it's just like unbelievable.


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[Assistant] You're going back the book here. You're, you're at that point, you know, you, this is the same time period where you're getting arrested for shoplifting and here we go. I was in a state of depression and the drugs helped me stay in it.


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[Assistant] Of course I was all into Alice in Chains and Nine Inch Nails and all that fucking depressed drug music, but even as fucked up as I was,


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[Assistant] There was this wheatgrass juice stand on mission, and I'd still make sure to go get a shot of wheatgrass juice everyday, cause I figured, hey, at least wheatgrass juice is equal to eating tons of vegetables.


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[Assistant] I'd go to music stores and pretend I was gonna buy shit and just play instruments. I'd hang out as long as I could and then leave. I actually got offered gigs while I was playing in stores. I got offered gigs for doing sessions for different producers but I'd be all fucked up and miss the session because I wouldn't know what day it was and then realize a day or two later I'd lose their business card or whatever. So you just can't get your shit done.


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[Assistant] Uh, then you move back, you move back to New York, and now you start kind of bringing it back together. I'd go for these long runs at night because I couldn't sleep.


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[Assistant] Your girl lived down by the Twin Towers and I'd run from there to Central Park and back on the way. I'd stop by Coney Island High on St. Mark's Place to see who was hanging out for a few minutes, say hi, then keep running uptown to the top of the park. I'd run a few laps around the reservoir, then turn around and head back down. On the way back down, I'd stop at Coney Island High again, and there would be the same people.


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[Assistant] Everyone's pretty much in the same place, just slightly more shit-faced. And I'd hang for a few more minutes, and then keep running.


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[Assistant] It was kinda good to see that as I was getting my shit together to see all these people not really doing anything but standing around getting fucked up as they got older and did nothing with themselves. It gave me motivation to keep my shit together.


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[Assistant] And one of the things that helped out with that. First of all, you guys got Def Jam. You guys got signed to Def Jam. Is that right?


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[Assistant] And around this time, you started your jujitsu career. Yes.


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[Assistant] Yeah, definitely, I actually, I might have told this story before, there was a badass marine, and...


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[Assistant] His name was D.A. That's what everyone called him. And D.A. in the military, D.A. is short for direct action. But that was his initials too. But it just worked. And he looked like a superhero. He was a total stud. And he was a gangbanger from, uh, Texas.


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[Assistant] And, but you know, he joined, he would be like you, right? But he joined, he was a black kid, but he joined the Marine Corps, and he was in force recon, he was a total badass. And I, and I said, hey man, you gotta come and try Jiu Jitsu out.


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[Assistant] We've talked about that on here, you know, people say like, oh, I was gonna get into this guy said something to my wife. What should I have done? I'm like, just...


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[Assistant] Grab your wife, go home and buy her, you know, a nice dinner.


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[Assistant] Now, as good as jiu-jitsu isn't as good as you felt doing it, you go on tour and just before you go on tour you break up with a girl at the time. Yeaah. Blah, blah, blah.


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[Assistant] Back to the book, without the feeling of being needed, I didn't feel I had much purpose in my life, I started falling back into fuck up mode.


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[Assistant] I was seeing several different chicks around at that time.


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[Assistant] I agree with you, and that's one of the reasons why I think going back to Jujitsu.


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[Assistant] Or boxing, or wrestling, or Muay Thai. But, when, when...


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[Assistant] And I think it was Tim Ferriss asked me this question, he's like, what makes a man or something like that? And I was like, to your point, for me, learning how to fight. So learning Jiu Jitsu.


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[Assistant] And going into combat. Those were the three things that I was like, okay, those three things.


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[Assistant] They were evolutionary to me. And they were the three things that happened where I said, okay, I don't have to walk around trying to prove myself to this guy or that guy. I know how to fight.


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[Assistant] I don't even need to impress that girl over there. I got a girl. You know? And I got, and I got mouths to feed so I can't act like an idiot.


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[Assistant] How, you know, when we're young and you're out there just to try and prove and, and protect.


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[Assistant] You know, Dean, Dean Lister, who's, you know, one of my friends and training partners and all that. But he's got some funny stories about Haiyan and he's like, Haiyan was fucking crazy. You know, like Haiyan's just like crazy.


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[Assistant] And there's, you know, all kinds of drama around it. You described it again as spinal tap, you know, just the rock and roll crap.


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[Assistant] You know, one of the, one of the paragraphs that you wrote in here is awesome. Talking about your kids and you say, and this is something I completely related to.


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[Assistant] My sons have grown up with Hanzo like an uncle, Igor Halls, Gregor, Daniel, Neiman, all the guys treat my boys like family. They've known their instructor, Magno Gamma since birth. He came to the hospital to see them hours after they were born and Hanzo they have known since they were days old.


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[Assistant] My eldest and I have been on Greyhound buses in the middle of the night, traveling hours away to represent RGA and Team Enzo Gracie.


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[Assistant] I have competed with my son's nationally ranked grappling submission and jujitsu events. One of my proudest moments was when we both competed at the same event. My son took first place in his division and I took second place in the expert master's division in the 30 to 35 year old age bracket, although I was 44.


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[Assistant] Hanzo joked when he first saw my son, this is the proof that even though the fruit is rotten, the seed can still be good. That's uh, yeaah. We all know that one.


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[Assistant] As good as it feels to surf, like as good, there's a really good feeling when you surf. As good as that feels, it feels just as good if not better to be paddling back out after catching a wave and see my son just, just


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[Assistant] And, and, you know, you see, you know, and I got a bunch of daughters too, and seeing them do, when they, basically when you see your kids kicking ass at stuff, man, it's...


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[Assistant] Going back to the book talking about your dad. My dad, my father died from a fire. So your father, and we didn't talk about him much, he'd gone away and then he'd like had intermittent contact with you over the years.


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[Assistant] When he died, you actually flew down to Texas to, uh, you know, basically to bury him.


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[Assistant] You're now, you were kind of wrapping up this book when you were writing it. And, and you know, you kind of closed it out.


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[Assistant] When you close it out, you said this at the end of the book. I guess part of being a father is learning how to eat a certain amount of shit.


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[Assistant] You do it for your kids cause they need you. You just throw a little on a little salt and pepper and maybe some Tabasco and smile cause you gotta be there for them.


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[Assistant] One thing my father said was, I've got all these years of experience- experiences that I don't know what to do with. And that's kinda how I feel with my boys. How do I come in for a graceful landing after so much fucking turbulence in my life?


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[Assistant] Hopefully I can guide them better than I was guided, or at least maybe they will learn from my mistakes. God knows I've made enough for everybody.


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[Assistant] If I remember correctly, you were, that was the kind of the end of the book and then you were moving on and then, and then 2012 comes along and


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[Assistant] There's like a hardcore fest, you know, they're kind of bringing back like, I don't know if it's like a reunion fest, bringing back a bunch of old bands and


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[Assistant] And they were gonna play. Yes. And you were like, okay, uhm, you know, I'm gonna go check it out. And you know what? I'll bring my bass, maybe we'll get on stage.


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[Assistant] Yeah, you show up and, and here you go. You're, you're walking through the place. You go to the, you get invited up the dressing room. Hey, come say hi. And then here we go back to the book. As soon as I walked in, I literally walked into the room, took two steps, the door shut and I got punched from behind out of the corner. I, my eye, I could see it was some big dude with tattoos. It was like, bam, he hit me hard.


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[Assistant] I was getting jumped by at least four or five guys, probably more. There was a bunch of people in the room. I think I counted seven or eight, although I couldn't even really count in all the chaos. At that point I reached into my pocket, I had a little knife.


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[Assistant] And I thought to myself, fuck these dudes, their intention is to fuck me up and they don't want no one to see it.


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[Assistant] I got one good kick in my right face, and I'm surprised it didn't knock my teeth out. One dude screamed, get on your stomach, get on your stomach, put your hands out in front of you.


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[Assistant] I saw Pete from Sick of It All in the crowd of people next to us with a freaked out look on his face. He was gesturing with his hands for me to calm down and stop resisting. He kept mouthing the words, Harley, chill, Harley.


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[Assistant] The blood was bubbling out of it. The fashion tendons were literally hanging out of my leg.


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[Assistant] That's why people started saying that it was a compound fracture. The cops cuffed me. They put me on a chair, carried me down the stairs, and put me in the ambulance. It wasn't until I got cleaned up in the ambulance that they realized it was a stab wound.


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[Assistant] So, and you kinda already talked about this, I mean, they basically arrest you immediately, it's total melee.


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[Assistant] On Rikers. Yeaah. Rikers Island for those of you that don't know from around the world is a jail. New York jail. Yeaah. Rikers Island.


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[Assistant] And meanwhile the media, you know, is putting out all these, uh, the version that's getting told to the media, which is that you instigated it and you were a horrible person, et cetera, et cetera.


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[Assistant] My life had truly become a nightmare. I remember at one point I was looking out through my window, through the gates. It was a beautiful sunny day and I could hear the birds and a butterfly flew past my window and I was like damn. Right then and there that butterfly represented freedom.


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[Assistant] What I wouldn't do to be free right then, I had no idea what was gonna happen. My lawyer told me I was possibly looking at two and a half years in jail.


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[Assistant] No joke, Prison Island. Yeaah, it's a no joke Prison Island. And at, you know, we always find the good in things. And you got a visitor that came to visit you. Yeaah. A woman by the name of Laura.


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[Assistant] And, uh, she was, she had interviewed you? Yeah. For what? For what website?


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[Assistant] But I do, you know, I just, the book gets it across and that's why.


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[Assistant] Like I said, I thought I was familiar with the hardcore scene, and factually, I mean, I went to CBGB's, I don't know f-


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[Assistant] Uh, hundreds of times when I was a kid, and all shows all over the east coast, Boston. Yeaah. So, but I still.


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[Assistant] Didn't recognize that there was this much chaos.


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[Assistant] I was really at the bottom. I could have easily spun out of control, but I said to myself, fuck that.


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[Assistant] I'm not gonna let myself go and do that to myself or my kids or give in and give the satisfaction to my enemies. I'm a black belt. I have more control than that now. I'm not who I once was. I'm stronger than that.


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[Assistant] Next court date, I wound up getting an adjournment.


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[Assistant] You at that point, you know, you kind of get back on track.


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[Assistant] And yeaah, there's still uhm, there's still hard times because at this point you're, you're losing custody of your kids. Yeaah. And that was, you know.


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[Assistant] Yeah, uhm. There was still one more.


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[Assistant] Thing that you had to overcome in the book.


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[Assistant] And, you know, sometimes, man, I just read a big chunk of the books that I'm reviewing because it's just a, uh, uh,


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[Assistant] The way it's written and the way it goes together and the story that it tells, I just don't really wanna change. And I just wanna put it out there, so I'm kinda gonna do that right here.


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[Assistant] After all the madness in my life and the recent drama surrounding Webster Hall, my arrest, losing my kids, starting a new relationship, getting my kids back in my life, and dealing with all the drama of family court, my mom was stricken with terminal cancer.


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[Assistant] After a major operation in what seemed like a recovery, things took a turn for the worse.


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[Assistant] Through it all, she remained supportive in my battle for my kids, and I started spending a lot more time with her.


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[Assistant] It's fucked up when you know your mom or dad is dying.


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[Assistant] You go through your whole life with all the baggage and shit that they put on you and all the shit in the world and your friends put on you and then there comes a time when you realize you have to put it all down.


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[Assistant] I was with her as much as possible during the last few months.


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[Assistant] We spent more time together than we had in years. We even left the city one day just a month before she died to spend some time at a horse stable.


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[Assistant] She loved horses and she hadn't been around them since she was a child. She said it was the most beautiful day in her entire life.


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[Assistant] And later, she spent the night, and then the next three nights at my apartment.


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[Assistant] We had such a good time that she completely forgot to take her pain medication.


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[Assistant] I hope I can face death with as much dignity. The way she has handled it, I've never seen a braver person in my life. She makes all the men I know look like cowards.


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[Assistant] Sadly, she only saw my kids twice during her last few months. But the time that they spent together was amazing and very meaningful and picked up her spirits.


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[Assistant] And I don't know, and I know that she took great comfort in the fact that I'm finally in a place in my life where things are coming together in a positive way.


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[Assistant] I just wish she could have been here with us longer.


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[Assistant] At the funeral, her ashes were carried out and placed on a table. They were in a box not meant to be buried. A beautiful statue of a crying angel.


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[Assistant] We all took part in reading from Bible verses.


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[Assistant] I held on to my son Jonah, and he cried quietly.


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[Assistant] My son Harley stood behind me with my girlfriend, trying to keep his composure as tears rolled down his face.


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[Assistant] At the end of the service, a slight drizzle of rain started again.


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[Assistant] When everyone was done consoling each other and people started walking away, I looked at the box sitting on the table surrounded by flowers with the hole in the ground beside it.


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[Assistant] Two cemetery workers arrived with shovels and a rake and I walked back and asked if I could cover her with soil myself as I had done for my father 13 years earlier.


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[Assistant] I explained that I didn't feel right about someone who didn't know my mother covering her with dirt.


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[Assistant] I thanked them. I took the box with the angel off the table. I kissed it. My sons kissed it. And I got down on my knees and put it in the ground.


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[Assistant] One of the cemetery workers handed me a shovel and I started to fill the hole.


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[Assistant] My youngest son, who'd been crying, came over next to me, got on his knees and started to help me fill the hole with his hands, grabbing pieces of soil and putting them in, picking out rocks, so none would damage her box as we filled it. And his tears stopped.


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[Assistant] I put down the shovel and we both finished by hand.


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[Assistant] And then I raked the soil over and we padded down the earth with our hands. And it was done.


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[Assistant] I didn't know what the end was gonna be, or what I wanted to say besides telling the story of my life and setting the record straight. But now it's so obvious what it is about.


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[Assistant] Look, no one has lived a perfect life.


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[Assistant] We've all made mistakes, we've all done things that can't be undone, and we've gone places that we should not have gone.


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[Assistant] What we've done, it starts with owning it and then getting on the right path and staying on the right path.


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[Assistant] It takes discipline and it takes humility and it takes courage and it's hard.


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[Assistant] What else can we do? Let the darkness completely consume us, live for instant gratification wherever we can find it, be overtaken by temptation and vice.


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[Assistant] That struggle with all these things, they're caught, they're drowning.


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[Assistant] Under the weight of pain and suffering and misery and addiction.


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[Assistant] And what Harley proves is that you are better than that.


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[Assistant] You are better and you can triumph over these dark forces. You can become better. You can be better.


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[Assistant] Why we have Echo here. One of the many reasons.


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[Assistant] I just realized there's no greater joy for Echo than when someone's on the podcast as a guest that wants to know about this stuff.


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[Assistant] Maybe you just need to have your own podcast called the Echo On It podcast.


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[Assistant] So you're saying that somebody might order something from another online retailer, but instead someone says, I'm gonna support the podcast. Yeah, fuck that, support the podcast motherfuckers.


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[Assistant] You say it a lot, and you put your tone on it.


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[Assistant] Yeah, they're not gonna watch three hours. Yeah, three hour podcast. If there's some point, oh, hey, jocular cool thing with Harley Flanagan. He was talking about this.


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[Assistant] Maybe you should do a bunch of excerpts of yourself talking about on it.


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[Assistant] Yea, sometimes people tell me to do a book review and it's already been done. Oh yea. If you're doing a real life- Do some soup.


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[Assistant] Yeah, I get a lot of requests like that. Then I have to look up and see which one it is and then send it back to him and say, hey man, I already did it on this one.


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[Assistant] You know, actually coming on top of this book, uh, there's a book out about HR right now from the Bad Brains. Yeah. And the reason I'm thinking of this is cause one of my buddies


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[Assistant] Who's into the podcast who was a hardcore kid growing up and his name is knocko but


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[Assistant] He's a, he's a cop in LA, and he was a cop in New York. And so...


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[Assistant] It's, I'm just thinking about that, like, here's a kid that grew up listening to the Cro-Mags, who's been like saying, kid, Harley, you gotta get her. He's a cop. He's a badass cop. And his, and his girl's a cop too. They're getting after it.


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[Assistant] I shouldn't have even said this. He's been amped about these coffee mugs we got. Or what are they called? Travel mugs? Travel mugs, tumblers.


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[Assistant] We'll have a special podcast for you to talk about that cup.


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[Assistant] And, uh, but also, by the way, when you click through Amazon, you can click through and you can buy this book right here. The book is called Hardcore Life of My Own. It is written by Harley Flanagan.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] On Amazon, you can also get some Jocko White Tea.


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[Assistant] Now, there's some things in the book that Harley


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[Assistant] He's tried them, but he does not recommend some of those things that he clearly states in the book. He literally says, I do not recommend, for instance, I do not recommend angel dust. I do not recommend.


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[Assistant] It's gonna get you a lot better results than anything, any of the supplements.


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[Assistant] I'm gonna tell you that right now. Uh, also, we talked a lot about jujitsu today, and we talk about jujitsu a lot. You know, jujitsu is a big, you know, jujitsu is a powerful thing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And there's a book, it's out right now. And it's geared, it's written, kinda written for kids. It's called Way of the Warrior Kid. It's available. Everyone that's bought it already, thank you.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I appreciate the support. Thanks for spreading the word. Thanks for letting kids get a little insight into life. And I'll tell you there's something about this book that is, that I, when I wrote it,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The, the debt, the father, the book is about a kid who's, you know, fifth grade, going through life. The father in the book doesn't have a role. Now you might think I'm a, you know, bad person for not giving the father the role, but


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[Assistant] You know, all he says, there's one line about the father in the book. He says,


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[Assistant] My dad's gone a lot with work and stuff. It's that ambiguous.


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[Assistant] And, and there's a couple reasons why I did that. And the number one reason is cause not everyone, not every kid has got a dad.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And that's why I did it. And there's another subtle reason, and you know, without going into too much crazy detail, the lead character in the book, his name is Mark. And he's actually named after Mark Lee, who was one of my guys, just an incredible


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Incredible person, incredible warrior, and he was killed in Iraq. And, you know, he was, he didn't have a dad. His mom raised him. And, you know, so, it was my way of saying look, you know, not everyone has a dad.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You can find out what the right path is, you can get on it, you can stay on it. And that's, that's why I wrote the book that way. And, and you know, it's, it's interesting because I've gotten asked many times over the years, you know, about what do you think about fatherhood and, and the important roles that fathers play. And again, you know, I go back to, for instance, Mark Lee's a great example of a kid that was raised, he didn't have a dad.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And his mom's a strong woman and an incredible person, and she raised a warrior. So, that's why I did that in that book.


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[Assistant] In being educated, because a lot of kids, myself included, when you're going to school, when you're...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] 10 years old or 15 years old, you don't care. You just don't care. And...


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[Assistant] It's, I want, I want kids to realize that it's beneficial to get stronger, faster, smarter, and better. So, that's it. Way of the warrior kid. Get it. And get it for your local library too. Because they need it. Because there's some kid.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That will grab that book in the library and it'll get him on the right path.


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[Assistant] Also, Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual. You can find it by itself in the Get After It section.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Also, there's Extreme Ownership. The book that kind of started all this stuff, by the way. Thanks. Appreciate it. It's about leadership.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And it's about combat. And it's about taking fucking responsibility.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But it's my fault. And I should have done, I made this happen to myself. So it's pretty, uh, and you wrote this book before, you were probably writing this the same, no you were writing this book the same time.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Even in that state, you always say, you know, it's my fault. I shouldn't, you know, hey, my, my dad was around.


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[Assistant] Yeah, and I thought that was awesome, you know, and again, you know.


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[Assistant] When you were talking about what you learned from your dad not being around and then how you apply that to help other kids that are in that situation, teaching them jujitsu and taking care of them and building relationships the best you can with your kids and with other kids that are around, man, that's uhm, that's exactly what you're talking about.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeaah. And that way they all get on board and now the whole team starts kicking ass. That's what you wanna do.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Up and down the chain of command. Then if you need more than that, you can hire our leadership and management consulting company, Echelon Front. We are the premier leadership consulting company in the entire world. So...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We're the ones that teach the, the methods and the techniques and the tactics and procedures from extreme ownership proven in combat. So you can email contact us info at echelonfront.com. We just had the muster number two in New York city.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Awesome event. If you missed it, come to Texas. July 13-14. Omni Barton Creek Resort and Spa. And again, forget about the spa. You're not going to the spa. Don't come to the spa. Not happening. But what will be happening is leadership.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We can be found actually on the interwebs, on Twitter, on Instagram, and in the Facebook. You're gonna find it there. Harley is at Harley F. Flanagan.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And Flanagan is spelled F-L-A-N-A-G-A-N. Harley F. Flanagan. Echo is at Echo Charles and I am at Jocko Willink.


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[Assistant] Awesome man. Well, uh, Harley, obviously thanks for coming on the show. Such a pleasure man. Thanks for the years of music that you gave to me and millions of other kids that needed to hear it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And thanks for making it through what you've made it through and coming out on the other side with a...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] With a positive outlook and a positive impact and a positive message that it's, it's never too late, that it's never too dark, and that we can always turn things around. As long as you're alive, there is hope.


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[Assistant] Thanks to everyone else that's listening and supporting and spreading the word. And as always to the folks in the military out there.


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[Assistant] And to the police and law enforcement and firefighters and EMTs and first responders, thanks for fighting the demons here at home.


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[Assistant] To anyone else that's out there, that's listening, that's


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[Assistant] And recognize that there is a way out. There is a path for you to take.


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[Assistant] It'll be a fight. It'll be a fight that demands.


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[Assistant] Focus and work and tenacity and of course discipline.


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[Assistant] That hard path, that hard path of discipline that will lead you to freedom.


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[Assistant] I never realized it was really unique until I was an adult and got out in the world a little bit more and realized that most people, um, anywhere near my age did not grow up the way that I did. So we lived in, um,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The mountains in Northern California. My dad was, uh, initially a miner, a gold miner.


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[Assistant] And he would go into old mine shafts and bring out ore that they would crush in a, in a small mill and then refine the gold down into bars that they would sell.


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[Assistant] And eventually he became a timber faller and a logger back in.


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[Assistant] 1987, I was seven years old. There's a huge forest fire that burned through Northern California. And I remember it vividly because one night there was just this wall of fire.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Rolling down on our house and luckily our house was spared but a lot of our neighbors lost their homes and after that a lot of logging came into the area because there was so much burned.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, the whole area. So, so this place is probably one of the most rural places in this country. Still, unless maybe you get up into Alaska. Uhm, it's in Northern California in the mountains. There's this gorgeous river valley there.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And it still doesn't have electricity. Um, the people that live there still just use some solar now or, um, generators, but no one had that back when I was a kid. So yeah, we grew up with.


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[Assistant] Uhm, no power, no telephones, no television. We used the old school, uhm, kerosene lanterns with the little thin glass globes and you would carry those from room to room. If you needed light, we would take them to bed with us at night and read by kerosene lantern.


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[Assistant] And we had a wood cook stove that we cooked on, uhm, just to get hot water. Our wood cook stove had coils that ran through it that the water would run through and warm it. So you would have to start a fire in the stove to have any hot water to warm it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So yeah, it was a, it was, it was interesting. I, I take power and things like that for granted now, but back then it was just normal.


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[Assistant] Yeah, we had, we had a few toys, but you know, I see the toys that kids have now and it definitely is very different. We had a few, a few old toys, but mostly we just lived outside. We just, outside was our, that was our playground, our toys.


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[Assistant] We always had a big garden. My mom, um, grew a, grew a huge garden and canned and froze, or well, didn't freeze. We didn't have electricity for a freezer, but canned and dried food. And we had our own milk house. Um.


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[Assistant] We raised pigs, which, that, that was kind of interesting too. My, we had a lot of pigs. My sister and I used to sleep outside in this, uhm, in the summers when the weather was nice. There was this old stone root cellar with like a loft that had open ends.


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[Assistant] And we would sleep up there whenever the weather was a little bit iffy and it was right over top of the pig pen. So we essentially grew up in a barn.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, we would wake up in the middle of the night with pigs squealing and turn our flashlights on and shine the lights down there and watch like litters of piglets being born. And these weren't even normal pigs, they were like wild boars that we'd caught. And bred.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And so they were all hairy and long snouts and they weren't like your fat pink pigs that you get that most people raise.


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[Assistant] There was a tiny little school that we went to. When I lived there, it was sort of the height of the population. There's less people there now, but there was the mining and the logging had brought in a few more people. And so the school that I went to had about 25 kids from K through eight, so there's maybe


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A couple of kids per grade, and we were all in the same.


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[Assistant] It was, there was like two rooms, the big kid's room and the little kid's room. And we were...


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[Assistant] So close because there were just a few of us and we were just, every, all of the kids that I grew up with had very similar upbringing to the way I did. So there are at least 25 other kids out there in the world who grew up exactly the same as I did. But we were this pack of just feral children, really.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, they just lived in the woods and swam in the river and, and uhm, did everything. And I have wonderful memories of that, which offset a lot of the


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Not so pleasant things that happened in that same time.


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[Assistant] Yeaah, we didn't have television and in the summers we were mostly outside in the river, uhm, in the woods. We would go down to the river in the evening and watch the bears catch salmon and


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[Assistant] But in the winter when it was cold and rainy, we read a ton. And I've got the best big sister in the world. She's a couple years older than me.


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[Assistant] And she was reading these just ridiculously age-inappropriate books. I remember her reading these huge novels when she was like 10 years old because


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We didn't have any money, and it wasn't like our parents went out and bought us the newest children's books or anything to read. We just read whatever happened to be laying around, and often times that was not what you would typically give a 10 year old to read.


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[Assistant] But so she would, she started reading to herself and then she would read to me.


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[Assistant] Before I was, you know, and eventually I became a very avid reader too.


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[Assistant] Uhm, but yeaah, that was, that was a big part of our life. In fact, uhm, Cormac McCarthy is also one of my very favorite authors, if not my favorite author. I think I, I read, uhm,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] All the pretty horses and the crossing when I was like 15. I'd read Blood Meridian by the time I was 16. I've read them all numerous times.