[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I mean, she managed and that it's key that you said that she managed to like get it to the ground because it wasn't a beautiful takedown or anything. She got in on her finally. She'd gotten stuffed a couple times. It was Holly was doing a really good job of keeping her at bay.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And Holly was obviously scared because even in the second round she got, once it was on the ground, it was just domination by Misha. And then...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Misha just forced that, then kind of dragged it in an ugly way, just kind of make got it to the ground. And once she got on the ground, she got her back, got her back, and then once she got her back, she got the choke in, once she got the choke in, Holly kind of tried to flip her off, like


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Even that was a little bit of a mistake. If Hollywood had just like stood and shook her off. Yeah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And you could see her instinctively started throwing, throwing punches at the end, I mean into the air in a different direction because that's her, that's her training instinct.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Okay, we'll talk about, give us a debrief on the McGregor Diaz fight.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah. But, but he's, his normal weight for fighting is 155. So McGregor's normal weight for fighting is 145. So he came up 10 pounds, but due to the late nature of the bout, they actually ended up fighting at 170.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And, and, one thing that Diaz is pointing out the whole week when they were getting interviewed and everything, he says that, you know, I have better training partners than you. Look who I'm rolling with. And look who he is rolling with. He's rolling with his brother Nick. He's rolling with Jake Shields, who's a beast on the ground. I mean, he's rolling with all those little badass wrestlers too. He's got, incredible.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, you got Corona there. I mean, these guys are getting after it. You know what I mean? Yeah. And so, uh,


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[Assistant] Who's, I mean, I don't know, I mean, he trained with Gunner or what's McGregor trained with Gunner, you know, Gunner's good and everything, but, but the thing is about the jiu-jitsu and about the training, the guys that you're training with all the time, that's


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The guy that you train with every day, that's what makes you good. Not the guy that comes out for a two week camp or a four week camp or a six week camp. That does not make you good at jiu jitsu. Might sharpen up one or two things, but it's not the life. It's not the deep.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Daily grind with the, with the masters, you know, that's what's make you really good. So, I think that, like I said, I mean, it's, it's definitely showed that jiu-jitsu definitely works. Uh, and it also shows you how hard it is to get good at.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] How much harder it is to get good at, at striking me. Misha, no, she was not dominating, but she was surviving.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Then Misha Tate is a grappler. I mean, Misha Tate doesn't have any


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Tremendous accolades as a grappler. She's a high level MMA grappler but she's not a world champion grappler.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yet, you know, she was able to hang because striking is a, for the most part, from a fought perspective, is a linear


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And so you have to learn it earlier and if you want to.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Make something of it. I mean, cause striking, striking has an element of luck to it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I don't care what you say. Striking has, I mean, when uh, when two MMA fighters go in the cage, there's not a guy that says, Hey, I can definitely knock this guy out. There's absolute luck. There's, you know, knockouts are seldom even in boxing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Where the whole object is to punch the other guy in the head and knock him out.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Whereas a rear naked choke is a rear naked choke. Like, you know, it's a rear naked choke. It is a very, very


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Jujitsu by itself is the all powerful thing because you can't discount the, the,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Dozens and dozens and dozens of jujitsu people.


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[Assistant] You do have to train everything. I mean, and jiu-jitsu takes the longest to learn. There's the most to learn. So you should start with it, but you gotta know how to box. You gotta know how to wrestle. You gotta know Muay Thai. Um, and that's the way it is.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What it's like going through those stories, through those types of training, cause it gets people excited and fired up.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There's, there's actually kind of a reason why I don't sit around and talk about


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Budz, which is basic seal, basic underwater demolition seal training. There's a reason I don't sit around and talk about it a bunch. Uhm, one of those reasons is because Budz is not the seal teams.


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[Assistant] At all. And it doesn't mean anything. And I try and say that as often as I can because I don't want people to get the impression that that the SEAL Teams is the


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And this isn't intentional, this is more a response to the question, but I don't tell stories to get guys fired up to join the military.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Ranger Battalion and SF is not the selection course to, that you go through to get into them. That's not what the job is. And you shouldn't be joining


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The military and shouldn't be trying to get into special operations because you want to do that training. You should do the training because you want to do the job.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Of being in special operations, and being in special forces, and being in rangers, and being in marsok, and being in the SEAL teams. You should want to do that job.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What it really boils down to isn't running or rocking or pull ups or swimming or any of that crap. It boils down to whether you have the two wills that I talk about that war is determined by.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If you're in the military, but the ultimate goal of the military is to kill the bad guys.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And if you're going to be in special operations, you're going to be on the tip of the spear of that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So you absolutely have to make sure that you have the will to kill.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And you also, obviously, if you're going to join special operations or you want to be in the SEAL teams, you have to have the will to die.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To die. And I would say put your life on the line, but no, I'm going beyond that. I'm talking about the willingness to die.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Because if you join special operations, or you join the SEAL teams, or you join any of the combat arms, in the Army or in the Marine Corps.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You will be asked to put your life on the line.


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[Assistant] And I mean the training, if you, if you have that will to kill and you have that will to die. The training?


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[Assistant] And that's why I really don't sit around and tell bud stories.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'm sure at some point I'll get, I mean there's funny things that happen in buds, I mean of course, but there's just, compared to like what happens in a seal platoon, they're just no big deal.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's a big, that's a big mistake. Maybe I can help some people out that are out there right now thinking, oh, I'd really like to go through that training.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Did Julie do that? Well when you get your trident, it has like three little...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Prongs that go out the back of it to stick it onto your uniform.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's kind of interesting to get this question. It's kind of strange to get this question because all the time when I talk about leadership, I talk about


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The direct approach is beating your head and punching someone in the face.


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[Assistant] So I'm always talking about using the indirect approach. So by its very nature, indirect is not straightforward.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'm not, and I'm not saying that I'm not intense, I'm not saying that I'm not straight forward, but I'm very, very careful not to go too far with either.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This is, this is like a fighter that's swinging too hard or being too predictable or just will stand and trade and take damage. And do damage.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Slip unseen into the weak areas and set my bombs and have them go off.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I just got this, asked this the other night by a relatively new client of mine. You know, are you going to get in their faces and in?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And he was one of the senior leaders and that was that you had this idea that I was going to come in and just get in their faces and tell them how screwed up they were. And I said no, I likely will not do that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then I said to him, I said, look, what if I told you that you were all screwed up and you're a failure at your job and you do, you're a weak leader?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Would you then be, feel like you really wanted to listen to me?


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[Assistant] If the best I could do to coach you was to tell you that you sucked as a leader and you were a failure at your job and you're screwing everything up.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And obviously the answers were no, no, no, of course not.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The way I'm trying to get you to change is by being abusive?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Why would I do anything that's going to inhibit?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] My goal, which my goal is to get you to change, get you to be a better leader. So if I slap you in the face,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The answer is it doesn't. Now, again, that doesn't mean that I'm never straightforward and that I'm never aggressive, but I calculate those moments.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I calculate those moments. There's a reason.


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[Assistant] I mean of course there's a situation where you have this beautiful relationship and you've built it with someone and you have this intimate trust with another human being. I don't think I have that with anybody.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But there have been situations in my life where I've had, oh, just complete utter trust with, you know, maybe there's three or four people that I have that with in my whole life, that I can just say, listen man, here's the deal. Don't get defensive, here's what's going on, here's what you need to adjust.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Very few people do you have that relationship in life. So you gotta use that


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Nuance. And that maneuver warfare. And it's the same thing with aggression. It's the same thing that this, we just read in this article.


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[Assistant] Don't yell at the Cheshire people. You're not going to be able to get what you want from them.


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[Assistant] And like I said, it doesn't just apply to those people, it applies to all people.


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[Assistant] And honestly, the preferred method of all is covert.


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[Assistant] The preferred method for me to get echo to do something different.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Is for Echo to never even think I had an opinion on it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Is for me just to sneak in there, behind enemy lines, plant the seeds.


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[Assistant] And let them grow and let echo come to the conclusion that you're going to change the way you're doing something. You're going to think differently about something. That's leadership. That's real leadership.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Telling you you're too intense and you're too aggressive. Guess what? You are.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Surprise is one of the most key components in a battle.


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[Assistant] That is what I'm asking you to do because that is how you get things done. That is how you get into people's minds. That is how you lead.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It never, the only time it works is like if you're handling a prisoner. Like literally, if I'm handling a prisoner, I'll be aggressive with them. If I'm trying to get command of a...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Any normal situation dealing with human beings, aggression isn't a attribute.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But it, it means that you're finding the balance with another person and you're, you're working with them and conversing with them.


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[Assistant] To bring them along into your way of thinking.


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[Assistant] It makes me nervous, because I think to myself,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I say this all the time. I mean, I say use the indirect approach. Don't, you know, get people's defenses up. I say this all the time. And yet someone can still come back and say, you know,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And therefore, since they're weak, they think I'm too aggressive. I can't believe how pathetic they are.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Sometimes it's called working on your how. You know, he's kind of saying, oh, they're, they've got a euphemism for it and, and,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In the business world, there's a big push on diversity, but it comes with diversifying away from intensity and male aggression.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Channeled in such a way that it's being utilized to further the goal. To further the goal. And you know who you get aggressive with? Yourself. You get aggressive with yourself.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And they're right. Like I'm glad I'm not losing my temper on people. Right? That wouldn't be good at all. That'd be bad. I have, you know, that would not be good for people. No, no, no. I don't think so either.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I think it, I think it does genuinely surprise people. Yeah. Because I look like a serial killer. I'm a big guy, whatever. And they expect that


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'm just gonna yell at everyone and then they'll do what I say. That just does not work.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, it's like you said earlier, when I'm talking about something that I care about, yes, I am definitely going to be intense about it, especially when it's something that is impactful to me, and something that means something to me, and to me, leadership does mean a lot to me.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Lead is an important thing to me. I enjoy it. And I like to see people succeed. So therefore when I talk about it, sometimes I get a little bit fired up and I get intense with what I'm saying.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So this is a question about, like I said, the Marine Corps Special Operations Command. It was formed in, I don't know, 2005, 2006 maybe.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And, and if you don't know, the army has its own special operations group.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, Force Recon was a part of the Marine Corps, but it wasn't broken off. And it didn't get the extra money and the extra funding and it didn't fall into the chain of command.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] of special operations. Gotcha. And so when they made Marsok, it did. So now they took a bunch of the force recon guys and


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Put them into a group and have their own funding and everything else. So, the bottom line is on this.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The Marine Corps is awesome and I love the Marine Corps and I think that this was long overdue. I think that the Marine Corps as a whole


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Fighting unit the world has ever known to be honest with you. I mean, maybe the in addition.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The airborne divisions from the army are also just highly capable.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The Marine Corps with its air, ground, sea, it's got command and control, it's got integrated intelligence, it's got everything, and it can use it all together, and so that makes it just an extremely


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Effective and efficient fighting force and they are highly disciplined. They are highly motivated. There's an incredible esprit de corps. So for me, this was long overdue and I think that


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I actually did a turnover with the...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] With the initial kind of Marsoc group in 2004 in Baghdad.


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[Assistant] And I had worked with the Marine Corps on, I had worked with Force Recon on multiple deployments when I was a younger SEAL.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And they took a bunch of those guys, a bunch of just legendary.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's a huge benefit to them is in the Marine Corps.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You're in the Marine Corps. So every Marine Corps, every Marine is a rifleman. They have the opportunity to work with big conventional infantry companies and platoons and battalions. So, so their guys will be very experienced.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I think that they are going to be, I mean, I think that the Marine Corps Special Operations Command is going to be an extremely capable force in the future. And I am glad to say the least that they will be defending our country and freedom around the world for many, many years to come.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Maybe not the way people picture martial arts nowadays, because when you picture martial art, people picture, you know, a guy with a gi on doing karate. That's right, that's the generic picture. To me, that's not, that's not martial arts actually.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Skills that it takes. And firearms are absolutely a martial art because it's something that you train. It's something that you get good at. It's something that you need to maintain your skill at. And


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It is absolutely a martial art. And to me,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's another piece of the puzzle. It's another thing that you should, you need to know how to do. And just like tactics that go along with shooting are an important part of being a warrior, you need to know how to shoot. And the training is very similar in my mind to martial arts training in that it takes, you know, repetition,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You have to know what the basics are and you have to repeat those basics and then you get more advanced and it's, it's about movement and getting efficient with your movement


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then you want to train it very similar to the way that you train.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Mixed martial arts or martial arts in general and that is, you know, you're going to have different threat levels and how you're going to deal with them and you want to deal with your weak side, you know, you sh- can you shoot with your off hand?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In various environments, in the low light, in the dark, in the rain, in the...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You wanna mix it up so you're used to all of it. You wanna be used to people at close range. You wanna be used to people at further range. And then once you get all those mechanical skills down, then you wanna train your mind around this thing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So that your mind knows how to utilize this skill when things are unexpected and when there's chaos and when there's mayhem going on.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And that's, that's one of the things that I really like about Simunition Training or Paintball Training or Laser Tag Training is it allows you


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Which is just like, you know, just like rolling in jujitsu or sparring Muay Thai or sparring MMA is you have to react to the person. It's no longer just a kata.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I love to take it once you've got the skills down and then you learn.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You've got the fundamentals down, then you take the advanced fundamentals, and then you begin to train to simulate combat. And this is, I'll tell ya, I had these uhm, I got these laser tag guns.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] For my son. I just got two of them at first.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Because they were awesome. There were these little nerf laser tag guns and you could shoot each other at


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So when I got these and as soon as I got two of them and I realized how good they were, I bought two more so I could go against my son and his friends and they could go against each other. And I taught my son like all the basic military maneuvers that he would need to know. And this is when he was maybe eight years old.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And so I taught him how to cover and move, I taught him how to get elevated positions, I taught him how to...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And so I had, uh, speaking, speaking of, speaking of the Marine Corps, I had a friend that, uh, was, was, came over the house one time and he was, you know, a Marine and,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We got in the conversation and all of a sudden, you know, my son comes out with the laser tag guns and my son's like, oh, you know, do you want to go?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And the guy's like, you know, yeah, of course, let's do it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] My son, you press the button on the thing and it counts down for 10 seconds and then it's on.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So, so 10 seconds, my son hits the thing, my son takes off out the door. So I'm watching the guy and I go, this guy's doomed. Because...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, you're going against a trained killer. So the guy comes out and...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And it's dark, right? But the guy comes out of the door and I'm watching him and he's kinda crouched a little bit and all of a sudden his gun, cause it all is, in this one system, it all takes place inside the gun. You don't wear a helmet, you don't wear anything, you actually are shooting the other person's gun.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And sure enough, my son had run around the block, gotten in an elevated position.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And as soon as he came walking out, my son started drilling him. And the guy's like, he freezes. It's interesting, like he freezes, he doesn't even think to myself, oh I'll take cover. No, he just froze and got drilled.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then as soon as he's standing there, he's kinda looking around, looking around, looking around, finally he sees my son, he starts to point the weapon up towards my son, my son just disappears.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then the guys, the guy starts kinda walking over in that direction and then 15 seconds later my son pops up on his flank and drills him again from behind another fence and a hole in the wall and anyways he ends up killing him.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And it's because he had the basic, the basic skills, basic infantryman skills is what it was.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, he would shoot and then move and that's what it boils down to. So that kind of thing is, is very important in as far as being a martial art.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And you should train, you know, that's another thing. You know, I said this to Sam Harris when I was on his podcast.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You live in a great neighborhood and you're well protected, you have an alarm system in your house and all that, and maybe you're never gonna have a problem.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now if that makes me sound paranoid, okay, let's just say you're not paranoid. And you don't think it's ever gonna happen.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's just good to know this stuff. And it makes you a better person, more reliable. It's a real skill set.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, I always was kind of bummed out about...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Basketball or football or baseball because those are the there are life skills involved in them. I don't wanna say that, but the skill itself.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Of throwing a baseball, of shooting a basketball, of throwing a football is not as valuable as a skill as


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Number one, a martial artist. You know, Muay Thai, boxing, wrestling, jiu-jitsu.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, there, there are a couple of things that I take. Number one, I take krill oil. I've taken it every day for probably.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Ten years, maybe a little bit longer. And I take glucosamine.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I've taken that every day for 10 plus years. I got, I had what my shoulder was bothering me.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Many years ago and someone said, Hey, take oil, take glucosamine.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I said, actually no, it wasn't krill oil. It was fish oil at the time.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But at the same time, I just started taking both and within a short period of time, my shoulder got better and it had been a nagging nine month injury.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I don't know which one of those two did it, but I'm never going to find out because I'm always going to take them both.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, I eat a lot of coconut oil whenever I get the chance. I like dipping things in coconut oil. Coconut oil is uh, if you get a taste for it, it's a really nice tasting thing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, so that's, that's the supplements that I take. Uh, you know, one thing that's been really cool is, is picking up a sponsorship from Onnit for the podcast.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, from Joe, uh, who's obviously been a big supporter. He's actually the reason that we're sitting here right now. It's because Joe Rogan, I mean, Tim Ferriss said the same thing, but Joe Rogan said, you need to have your own podcast. And I said, okay, here we are. Uh, and he was,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, real supportive, so I definitely like supporting him and his company, uh, with Onnit, but what's great is they make.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, I switched over to krill oil, I don't know, maybe like seven years ago or something. At some point I went from fish oil to krill oil. Yeah, apparently they're fun, it's like a little bit better or something. I think it's a lot better. Well, at least when you read about it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The thing that originally turned me on to fish oil was there was a guy that was a badass guy and he was 54.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But he was a competitive, uh, powerlifter when he was younger, and he was in really good shape. And this is probably when I was, well, what was I, 15 years ago or something like that, I was like 30 years old. And this guy looked young and healthy. And I said, you know, hey,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What do you do like, what's your main thing to keep you so young and healthy? And he said, I take fish oil every day.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We'll get you some krill oil. Right on. Thank you. Yeaah. And you can get krill oil at, uh,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] People probably want to know what supplements you take.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You don't get teased, but you lose credit for your skills based on your size.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Every person I ever roll with, you know, you get done rolling, they're like, man, you're strong.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And somebody, actually somebody put on Twitter that that I was right.


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[Assistant] There's like something about testosterone release or HGH or there's some kind of.


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[Assistant] In combat, even on my first deployment to Iraq, and it's something that I try to train out of people, and that was a tendency to relax.


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[Assistant] Once a target was secure or the vehicles were loaded and we were leaving the target area, people would have a tendency to let their guard down.


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[Assistant] Or ever, really. And in training, when I was running training, we always hit the platoons hard on target. But we always.


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[Assistant] We always hit them even harder after they left the target. Once they were patrolling back to base and their mind had already gone home and then turned off. And that's when we bring it to them.


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[Assistant] That's the mentality that you have to have is that it's never finished. It is never finished.


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[Assistant] But as always, you take that opportunity to make yourself


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[Assistant] Tune in to the podcast and listening to it.


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[Assistant] Thanks for subscribing and reviewing and spreading the word, telling other people about the podcast.


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[Assistant] And appreciate all that support from everybody. There's, uh, I know.


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[Assistant] All the stuff, equipment and what not. Me, I'm just showing up and talking. So, appreciate the support. So Echo's not coming out of pocket for the gig.


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[Assistant] If you want to connect with us, if you want to continue these conversations, if you want to ask questions, and we got some great questions tonight for sure. If you want to know what we're up to, you can connect to us through the interwebs on Twitter.


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[Assistant] At Jocko Willink and of course Echo Charles is at Echo Charles.


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[Assistant] And uh, thanks for leaving reviews of the podcast on iTunes. That's kind of how another way that the word gets spread.


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[Assistant] And of the book, Extreme Ownership on Amazon.com, that also helps us. And finally,


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[Assistant] At your apartment, at your house, wherever you are, at work or at play, get out there and get after it.


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[Assistant] So until next time, this is Jocko and Echo.


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[Assistant] This is Jocko podcast number 22 with Echo Charles and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo.


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[Assistant] A lot of times we take freedom for granted.


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[Assistant] Dystopian movie or some post-apocalyptic novel. This is real. Real life.


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[Assistant] Red is reserved for the lettering of the propaganda signs.


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[Assistant] Korean language uses a unique alphabet made up of circles and lines.


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[Assistant] It traces a bunch of people that defected who Barbara DeMack was able to interview once they left North Korea. But it traces their lives and what their lives were like.


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[Assistant] And one of the characters, and again I want to call the character, one of the people that's in the book is named Miran.


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[Assistant] And going to the book here, Miran's father was a POW and it talks about that Miran's father never talked about being a POW. But there's another fellow POW who wrote a memoir and in his memoir,


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[Assistant] I'm going to the book here. He said that men were housed in squalid camps where they were not permitted to bathe or brush their teeth. Their hair became infested with lice, untreated wounds swarmed with maggots. They were fed one meal of rice and salt water a day.


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[Assistant] Under the name Construction Unit of the Interior Department, new POW camps had been built near the mines. Coal mining in North Korea was not only dirty, but exceedingly dangerous since the mines frequently collapsed or caught fire.


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[Assistant] And that same former POW wrote, the life of a POW was worth less than a fly.


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[Assistant] Every day we walked into the mines, I shuddered with fear.


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[Assistant] Like a cow walking to the slaughterhouse. I never knew if I would emerge alive.


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[Assistant] About anything, the leader in North Korea at this time post-war is Kim Il-sung.


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[Assistant] His grandson now is in charge of North Korea.


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[Assistant] But at this time, I'm going to the book. After the war, Kim Il-sung made it.


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[Assistant] His first order of business to weed out foe from friend.


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[Assistant] He started at the top with potential rivals for leadership. He disposed of many of his comrades in arms who had led the struggle from Manchuria to unseat the Japanese, Japanese occupiers. He ordered the arrest of the founding members of the communist party in South Korea.


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[Assistant] They had been invaluable during the war. Now that they'd served their purpose, they could be discarded.


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[Assistant] Throughout the 1950s, many more were purged in what was increasingly coming to resemble an ancient Chinese empire with Kim Il-sung, the unchallenged master of the realm.


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[Assistant] Kim Il-sung then turned his attention to ordinary people.


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[Assistant] In 1958, he ordered up an elaborate project to classify all North Koreans by their political reliability, ambitiously seeking to reorganize an entire human population.


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[Assistant] The North Koreans were methodical to a fault.


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[Assistant] Each person was put through eight background checks. Your song bun, as the rating was called, took into account the backgrounds of your parents, grandparents, and even second cousins.


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[Assistant] The loyalty surveys were carried out in various phases with inspiring names.


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[Assistant] Intensive guidance by the central party was the first announced phase.


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[Assistant] The classifications became more refined in subsequent phases, such as the Understanding People Project between 1972 and 1974.


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[Assistant] And here's how they would be. Here's what life was like.


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[Assistant] North Koreans are organized into what are called inminban. Literally, people's groups.


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[Assistant] Cooperatives of 20 or so families whose job it is to keep tabs on one another and run the neighborhood. The Inman Ban have an elected leader, usually a middle-aged woman who reports anything suspicious to higher ranking authorities.


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[Assistant] It was almost impossible for a North Korean of low rank to improve his status.


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[Assistant] Now, we talked about this character, or sorry, the person, Miran, that's being talked about, and she talks about her father.


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[Assistant] Only later did she understand this was a survival mechanism.


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[Assistant] It was as though he had hammered down his own personality to avoid drawing undue attention to himself.


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[Assistant] Among the thousands of former South Korean soldiers who tried to assimilate into North Korean society, many slipped up.


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[Assistant] That four of her father's buddies in the mines, fellow South Koreans, had been executed for minor infractions. Their bodies dumped in mass graves.


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[Assistant] Being a member of the hostile class meant you would never get the benefit of a doubt.


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[Assistant] A sarcastic inflection when referring to Kim Il-sung or a nostalgic remark about South Korea could get you in serious trouble.


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[Assistant] It was especially taboo to talk about the Korean War and who started it. In the official histories.


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[Assistant] And there was nothing but official history in North Korea. It was the South Korean army that invaded, acting on orders from the Americans.


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[Assistant] Not the North Korean army storming across the 38th parallel.


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[Assistant] Anybody who remembered what really happened on June 25th, 1950 knew it was wise to keep one's mouth shut.


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[Assistant] Miran didn't have any particular artistic or athletic talent.


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[Assistant] But like her older sisters did, but she was a good student and she was beautiful.


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[Assistant] Members of the 5th Division of the Central Workers Party. Recruiter, recruiters who scoured the country looking for young women to serve on the personal staff of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il.


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[Assistant] If selected, the girls would be sent off to military style training camp before being assigned to one of the leadership's many residences around the country.


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[Assistant] North Korean girls her age didn't know what a concubine was. Only that whatever you might do to serve the leadership would be a tremendous honor. Only the smartest and prettiest girls would be selected.


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[Assistant] Disturbing. Now, another character in the book, and again I keep using that term character, you hear that?


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[Assistant] Even me. I'm sitting here trying to tell everyone, hey remember these are people, but I'm calling them characters. These aren't characters in a book, these are people.


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[Assistant] Was named Mrs. Song. And Mrs. Song, what's interesting about Mrs. Song is, she's a true believer.


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[Assistant] She's a true believer, and you're gonna hear some of this, but these folks that are raised in North Korea,


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[Assistant] North Korea is the best place on earth and that everywhere else is suffering and that because of their great leader.


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[Assistant] Their lives are better than anyone else in the world. And she truly believes that.


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[Assistant] And here's kind of what her attitude, here's what her life was like and her attitude was like. Mrs. Song usually went to work with one baby strapped to her back and one or two daughters dragging along behind her. Her children basically grew up at the daycare center. She was supposed to work eight hours with a lunch break and a nap in the middle of her shift.


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[Assistant] After work, she had to spend several more hours in ideological training in the factory's auditorium.


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[Assistant] One day, the lecture might be about the struggle against U.S. imperialism. Another time, it might be about Kim Il-sung's exploits, actual or exaggerating, fighting the Japanese during World War II.


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[Assistant] She had to write essays on the latest pronouncements of the workers party. By the time she got home, it would be 10.30 p.m.


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[Assistant] She would do her housework and cooking, then get up before dawn to prepare herself and her family for the day ahead before leaving home around 7am. She seldom slept more than 5 hours.


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[Assistant] Some days were harder than others. On Wednesday mornings, she had to report to work early for mandatory meetings of the Socialist Women's Federation.


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[Assistant] Friday night she stayed especially late for self-criticism.


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[Assistant] In these sessions, members of her work unit, the department to which she was assigned would stand up and reveal to the group anything they had done wrong.


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[Assistant] Mrs. Song would usually say, in all sincerity, that she feared she wasn't working hard enough.


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[Assistant] Mrs. Song believed what she said. All those years of sleep deprivation, all those lectures and self criticisms, the very same tools used in brainwashing or interrogations had wiped out any possibility of resistance. She had been molded into Kim Il-sung's


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[Assistant] Kim Il-sung's goal wasn't merely to build a new country. He wanted to build better people. To reshape human nature.


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[Assistant] Once in power, Kim Il-sung retooled the ideas developed during his time as an anti-Japanese guerilla fighter.


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[Assistant] As instruments, into instruments of social control.


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[Assistant] He instructed North Koreans that their power as human beings came from subsuming their individual will to that of the collective.


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[Assistant] The collective couldn't go off willy-nilly doing whatever the people chose through some democratic process.


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[Assistant] The people had to follow an absolute supreme leader without question.


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[Assistant] So they're being told through multiple channels, through every instrument


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[Assistant] Available newspapers, radio, television, all controlled by the state.


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[Assistant] And through all these, they're being told that they have to submit their individual will.


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[Assistant] And obviously this attitude is the opposite of individual freedom. And also you gotta remember from a leadership perspective,


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[Assistant] The way you maximize a team's effort.


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[Assistant] Isn't through a supreme authority trying to control everything. It doesn't work. That's why we have a little something called decentralized command.


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[Assistant] I want my frontline leaders to think. I want my frontline troops to understand what they're trying to make happen and use their free will to make it happen. Use their own brain to make it happen. So if you're in a leadership position and you realize that you're trying to control everything yourself, you're not getting the most effective performance from your team. And we're going to see this on a grand scale. And you know, we do see it on a grand scale.


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[Assistant] When governments try to control humans. It doesn't work.


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[Assistant] Now, it might seem crazy that you would buy into this propaganda. And here's a


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[Assistant] We laugh at the excesses of propaganda and the gullibility of the people.


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[Assistant] But consider that their indoctrination began in their infancy.


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[Assistant] During 14 hour days spent in factory daycare centers.


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[Assistant] That for the subsequent 50 years, every song, film, newspaper article, and billboard was helped, was designed to deify Kim Il-sung.


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[Assistant] So you're not just being told that this guy is the leader, you're being told he's GOD.


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[Assistant] In 1972, on the occasion of his 60th birthday, a traditional milestone in Korean culture, the Workers Party began distributing lapel pins of Kim Il-sung.


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[Assistant] Before long, the entire population was required to wear them on the left breast, over the heart.


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[Assistant] In Mrs. Song's home, as in every other, a framed portrait of Kim Il-sung hung on an otherwise bare wall.


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[Assistant] People were not permitted to put anything else on that wall, not even pictures of their blood relatives.


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[Assistant] The children were never to forget that they owed everything to the national leadership.


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[Assistant] North Korean children, they didn't celebrate their own birthdays, but those of Kim Il-sung on April 15th and Kim Jong-il on February 16th.


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[Assistant] When the time came, the children lined up in front of the portraits to express their gratitude.


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[Assistant] In unison, they would bend from the waist, bowing deeply with feeling.


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[Assistant] Thank you, dear father, Kim Il-sung, the children repeated as their mother looked on with satisfaction.


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[Assistant] Televisions and radios in North Korea are preset.


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[Assistant] So they can receive only official government channels.


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[Assistant] Still, the programming was relatively entertaining.


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[Assistant] Besides the usual speeches of Kim Il Sung, on a typical weeknight, you might have sports, concerts, television dramas, and movies produced by Kim Il, Kim Jong Il's film studio.


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[Assistant] On weekends, you might get a Russian movie as a special treat.


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[Assistant] The newspapers would occasionally run feature stories about heroic children who ratted out their parents.


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[Assistant] To be denounced by a neighbor for badmouthing the regime was nothing extraordinary.


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[Assistant] Now, what happens when the government tries to control everything and you take the freedom of the people away?


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[Assistant] Communism, obviously, and things are not as productive as they could be.


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[Assistant] That's what happens when there's no individual drive to succeed because if you're a farmer, once you plant your food,


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[Assistant] So what's your, what's your drive to grow the right amount of food or more food? There is none. Cause it's all just going to be taken away anyways.


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[Assistant] Yes. And so now, this is again, I'm breezing through chunks of this book to get to some of the highlights.


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[Assistant] Kim Jong-il, who by the 1980s was increasingly assuming his father's duties, offered on the spot guidance to address the country's woes. Father and son were experts in absolutely everything, be it geology or farming.


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[Assistant] Kim Jong Il's on-site instructions and his warm benevolence are bringing out, bringing about a great advance in goat breeding and output of dairy products.


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[Assistant] The Korean central news agency opined after Kim Jong-il visited a goat farm near Chongjin. So that's the kind of, that's the kind of headlines in the news.


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[Assistant] One day he would decree that the country should switch from rice to potatoes for its staple food.


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[Assistant] The next he would decide that raising ostriches was the cure for North Korea's food shortage.


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[Assistant] The country lurched from one harebrained scheme to another.


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[Assistant] The fact of the matter is that even if this guy was a brilliant- was a brilliant farmer, he's not taking into account the various terrain and the different climates and-


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[Assistant] Are in the area and who can get what done. Whereas if you let the free market.


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[Assistant] Decide what can be grown and let individuals decide and let freedom


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[Assistant] Without cheap fuel oil and raw material, it couldn't keep the factories running. Which meant it had nothing to export. With no exports, there was no hard currency. And without hard currency, fuel imports fell even further. And the electricity stopped.


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[Assistant] The coal mines couldn't operate without electricity because they required electric pumps to siphon water.


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[Assistant] The shortage of coal worsened the electricity shortage.


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[Assistant] The electricity shortage further lowered agricultural output.


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[Assistant] Even the collective farms couldn't operate properly without electricity.


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[Assistant] It had never been easy to eke out enough harvest from North Korea's hard scrabble terrain for a population of 23 million and the agricultural techniques developed to boost the output relied on electrically powered artificial irrigation systems and on chemical fertilizers and pesticides produced at factories that were now closed for lack of fuel and raw materials.


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[Assistant] North Korea started running out of food, and as people went hungry, they didn't have the energy to work, and so output plunged further. The economy was in a free fall.


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[Assistant] North Korea was the last place on earth where virtually all staples are grown on collective farms. The state confiscates the entire harvest and then gives a portion back to the farmer.


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[Assistant] But as harvest withered in the early 1990s, the farmers themselves were going hungry and began stashing some of the harvest away.


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[Assistant] There were stories from the countryside of roofs that collapsed under the weight of grain hidden away in eaves.


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[Assistant] The farmers also neglected the collective fields for their private kitchen gardens next to their houses or small, steep plots carved out of the side of uncultivated mountain slopes. Driving through the countryside.


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[Assistant] You could see clearly the contrast between private gardens bursting with vegetables, bean poles soaring skyward, vines drooping with pumpkins next to the collective fields with their stunted, stunted haphazard rows of corn that had been planted by so-called volunteers doing their patriotic duty.


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[Assistant] Koreans like to think to themselves as tough. And so they are.


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[Assistant] The propaganda machine launched a new campaign, playing up Korean pride by recalling a fable from 1938.


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[Assistant] As they called it, would later become a metaphor for the famine.


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[Assistant] And here's a, one of the statements that they would make. No force on earth can bar the Korean people from making an onward march for victory and the revolutionary spirit of the arduous march.


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[Assistant] And the D-P-R-K will always remain a powerful nation. Democratic People's Republic of Korea.


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[Assistant] And the government is saying, yeah, we're going to drive on. It's a tough road, but we're going to make it.


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[Assistant] Enduring hunger became part of one's patriotic duty. Billboards went up in Pyongyang.


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[Assistant] North Korean television ran a documentary about a man whose stomach burst. It was claimed from eating too much rice. In any case, the food shortage was temporary.


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[Assistant] Agricu- Agricultural officials quoted in the newspapers reported that bumper crops of rice were expected in the next harvest.


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[Assistant] When the foreign press reported on food shortages in North, in the North in 1992, the North Korean news service was indignant.


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[Assistant] And here's what the new North Korean news service had to say. The state supplies the people with food at a cheap price so that the people do not know how much rice costs. This is the reality of the northern half of Korea.


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[Assistant] All people live a happy life without any worries about food in our land. People are starving and the government is lying.


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[Assistant] If North Koreans paused to contemplate the obvious inconsistencies and lies in what they were told, they would find themselves in a dangerous place.


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[Assistant] They didn't have a choice. They couldn't flee their country, depose of their leadership, speak out or protest.


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[Assistant] In order to fit in, the average citizen had to discipline himself not to think too much.


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[Assistant] Then there was the natural human survival instinct.


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[Assistant] To be optimistic. Like German Jews in the early 1930s who told themselves it couldn't get any worse. The North Koreans deceived themselves. They thought it was temporary. Things would get better.


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[Assistant] A hungry stomach shouldn't believe a lie, but somehow it did.


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[Assistant] Along with the new propaganda campaign, the regime stepped up its extensive network of domestic surveillance.


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[Assistant] To complain about, the more important it was to ensure that nobody did.


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[Assistant] Now at this point further in the book, Miran has gone off to college to become a teacher and she shows up there.


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[Assistant] And this is what she deals with. The food in the cafeteria was even worse.


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[Assistant] North Korea was starting its Let's Eat Two Meals a Day campaign.


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[Assistant] But the school took it a step further and offered only one meal.


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[Assistant] A thin soup made of salt, water and dried turnip leaves.


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[Assistant] The cafeteria would sometimes add a spoon of rice and corn that had been cooked for hours to plump up the grains.


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[Assistant] One of Miran's roommates was so malnourished that the skin was flaking off of her face. She dropped out of school, and others followed.


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[Assistant] You know, it's uhm, it's crazy to hear how the people reacted.


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[Assistant] And so I'm going to start off with this announcement that was made. And I, this is long, a little bit of a long announcement, but just to get the tone of it is worth it. Here we go.


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[Assistant] The Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea, the Central Military Commission of the party, the National Defense Commission, the Central People's Committee, and the Administration Council of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea report to the entire people of the country with deepest grief that the great leader, Comrade Kim Il-sung, General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea,


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[Assistant] And President of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea passed away from a sudden attack of illness at 2 a.m.


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[Assistant] Our respected fatherly leader who has devoted his whole life to the popular masses.


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[Assistant] Cause of independence and engaged himself in tireless and energetic activities for the prosperity of the motherland and the happiness of the people.


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[Assistant] For the reunification of the country and independence of the world till the last moments of his life departed from us to our greatest sorrow.


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[Assistant] And what's crazy is you hear all these bureaucratic names. That's what's crazy about it. All these government organizations picking away at the people.


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[Assistant] Some of the reactions, the mourning that went through.


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[Assistant] And, and people like Mrs. Song, who is a true believer, this is how they felt. The old women wailed.


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[Assistant] Those waiting in line would jump up and down, pound their heads, collapse into theatrical swoons, rip their clothes, and pound their fists at the air in futile rage. The men wept copiously as the women.


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[Assistant] The histronics of grief took on a competitive quality.


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[Assistant] Who could weep the loudest? Who was most distraught? The mourners were egged on by


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[Assistant] The TV news, which broadcast hours and hours of people wailing, grown men with tears rolling down their cheeks, banging their heads on trees, sailors banging their heads against the masts of their ships, pilots weeping in the cockpit, and so on.


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[Assistant] These scenes were interspersed with footage of lightning and pouring rain. It looked like Armageddon.


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[Assistant] Our country is enveloped in the deepest sorrow in the 5,000 year history of the Korean nation, intoned an announcer on television.


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[Assistant] And they had these little mists that they'd throw out there, like this one. Here's an official release. When the great marshal died, thousands of cranes descended from heaven to fetch him.


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[Assistant] The birds couldn't take him because they saw that North Koreans cried and screamed and pummeled their chests, pulled their hair, and pounded the ground.


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[Assistant] In the pediatric ward, Dr. Kim noticed that her patients were exhibiting peculiar symptoms.


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[Assistant] The children she treated born in the late 1980s and early 1990s were surprisingly smaller, even smaller than she'd been as the tiniest kid in her elementary school class.


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[Assistant] Now their upper arms were so skinny she could encircle them with her thumb and forefingers. Their muscle tone was weak. It was a syndrome known as wasting.


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[Assistant] Children came in for constipation that was so acute, they were doubled over in pain, screaming. The problem was with the food.


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[Assistant] Housewives had started to pick weeds and wild grasses to add to their soups to create an illusion of vegetables.


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[Assistant] Corn was increasingly the staple again instead of rice. But people were adding leaves, husks, stems, and cobs to make it go further.


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[Assistant] That was okay for adults, but it couldn't be digested by the tender stomachs of children.


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[Assistant] The babies were in the worst shapes. Their mothers themselves undernourished, didn't produce enough breast milk for them. Baby formula was non-existent and milk was rare.


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[Assistant] In the past, mothers who couldn't produce enough breast milk would feed their babies a watered down congee made of, made from cooked rice. But now, most of them couldn't afford rice either.


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[Assistant] And here's Dr. Kim talking about the toddlers. They would look at me with accusing eyes. Even four year olds knew they were dying and that I wasn't doing anything to help them.


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[Assistant] Dr. Kim told me years later, all I was capable of doing was to cry with their mothers and their bodies afterwards.


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[Assistant] Dr. Kim hadn't been a doctor long enough to have erected the protective wall that would insulate her from the suffering around her. The children's pain was her pain.


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[Assistant] If she remembered any of the children who had died on her watch, she answered sharply.


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[Assistant] Now Miran has graduated from college and she's an actual school teacher.


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[Assistant] Actually, requirement of school teachers is that they need to know how to play the accordion.


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[Assistant] Which is like a transportable instrument, so therefore was considered to be a good thing because you could carry it on a march.


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[Assistant] So all school teachers had to play the accordion and they sang songs like this. And they would sing it with the class. Our father, we have nothing to envy in the world.


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[Assistant] Our house is within the embrace of the workers party. We are all brothers and sisters.


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[Assistant] Even if a sea of fire comes towards us, sweet children do not need to be afraid. Our father is here. We have nothing to envy in this world.


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[Assistant] Another one of the songs that they'd sing. Where have we gone? We've gone to the forest. Where are we going? We're going over the hills. What are we going to do? We are going to kill Japanese soldiers.


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[Assistant] And another classic that was taught in the music class is called Shoot the Yankee Bastards.


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[Assistant] Our enemies are the American bastards, who are trying to take over our beautiful fatherland. With guns that I make, with my own hands, I will shoot them. Bang, bang, bang. That idea of nothing to envy in the world.


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[Assistant] And, and again, you know, as you read through this book, you hear the people saying that they believed wholeheartedly that they had nothing to envy in the world. That this dismal life.


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[Assistant] And here's what the hungu would look like in school, according to Miran. Each child was supposed to bring from home a bundle of firewood for the furnace in the school basement. But many had trouble carrying it.


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[Assistant] Their big heads, rolled on top of scrawny necks. Their delicate ribcages protruded over their waist so small that she could encircle them with her hands.


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[Assistant] Some of them were starting to swell in the stomach. It was all becoming clear to her. Miran remembered seeing a photograph of a famine victim in Somalia with a protruding stomach. Although she didn't know the medical terminology, she remembered from her teacher's college course on nutrition that it was caused by severe protein deficiency.


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[Assistant] Miran also noticed that the children's black hair was getting lighter, more copper toned. It was always the same progression.


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[Assistant] First, the family wouldn't be able to send the quota of firewood. Then the lunch bag would disappear.


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[Assistant] Then the child would stop participating in class and would sleep through recess.


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[Assistant] Then, without explanation, the child would stop coming to school.


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[Assistant] Over three years, enrollment in the kindergarten dropped from 50 students to 15. What happened to all those children? Miran didn't pry too deeply.


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[Assistant] For fear, the answer she didn't want to hear.


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[Assistant] A decade later, when Miran was a mother herself, trying to lose her post-pregnancy weight through aerobics, this period of her life waited like a stone on her conscience.


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[Assistant] She often felt sick over what she did and didn't do to help the young students. How could she have eaten so well herself when they were starving?


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[Assistant] Is axiomatic that one death is a tragedy, a thousand a statistic. So it was for Miran.


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[Assistant] What she didn't realize is that in her, is that her indifference was an acquired survival skill.


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[Assistant] To avoid going insane, one how to learn to stop caring.


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[Assistant] In time, Miran would learn how to walk around a dead body on the street without paying much attention.


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[Assistant] She could pass a five year old on the verge of death without feeling obliged to help.


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[Assistant] If she wasn't going to share food with her favorite pupil, she certainly wasn't going to help a perfect stranger. And here's some.


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[Assistant] I guess I would say thoughts on a famine, or realities of a famine. In a famine, people don't necessarily starve to death.


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[Assistant] Chronic malnutrition impairs the body's ability to battle infection and the hungry become increasingly susceptible to tuberculosis and typhoid.


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[Assistant] The starved body is too weak to metabolize antibiotics, even if they're available, and normal, normally curable illnesses suddenly become fatal. Wild fluctuations of body chemistry can trigger strokes and heart attacks.


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[Assistant] People die from eating substitute foods that their bodies can't digest.


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[Assistant] Starvation can be a sneaky killer that disguises itself under bland statistics of increased child mortality or decreased life expectancy.


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[Assistant] It leaves behind only circumstantial evidence of excess morality. Excess mortality.


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[Assistant] Statistics that show a higher than normal deaths during a certain period. Yet another gratuitous cruelty.


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[Assistant] The killer, famine, targets the most innocent. The people who would never steal food, lie, cheat, break the law, or betray a friend.


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[Assistant] It was a phenomenon that the Italian writer Primo Levi identified after merging from Auschwitz.


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[Assistant] When he wrote that he and his fellow survivors never wanted to see another one again. One another again after the war because they had all done something of which they were ashamed.


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[Assistant] As Mrs. Song would observe a decade later, when she thought back on all the people she knew who died during those years.


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[Assistant] It was the simple and kind-hearted people who did what they were told. They were the first to die.


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[Assistant] By 1998, an estimated 600,000 to 2 million North Koreans had died as a result of the famine. As much as 10% of the population. By the end of 1998, the worst of the famine was over.


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[Assistant] Not necessarily because anything had improved, but as Mrs. Song later surmised, because there were fewer mouths to feed, everybody who was going to die was already dead.


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[Assistant] That's how the famine wrapped up, but to go a little bit in depth of what it was like once the famine was raging, people became homeless. Which was strange because


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[Assistant] In North Korea they never had a problem with homelessness because if you wanted food you needed to live in your home because the government would allegedly bring you food. Well once they weren't bringing food anymore there was no reason to stay at home. So now you had people going out trying to survive.


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[Assistant] And this talks a little bit about that, especially for the children.


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[Assistant] There were strange stories going around about adults who preyed on children. Not just for sex, but for food.


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[Assistant] Hayek was told about people who would drug children, kill them, and butcher them for meat.


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[Assistant] Behind the station, near the railroad tracks, were vendors who cooked up soup and noodles over small burners, and it was said that the grey chunks of meat floating in the broth were human flesh.


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[Assistant] The story's got more and more horrific. Supposedly, one father went so insane with hunger that he ate his own baby.


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[Assistant] A market woman was said to have been arrested for selling soup made from human bones.


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[Assistant] For my interviews with the defectors, it does appear that there were cases.


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[Assistant] In which people were arrested and executed for cannibalism.


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[Assistant] What did our wonderful leaders do during this?


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[Assistant] Here's how they handled the people.


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[Assistant] As the people started black markets and started growing these gardens and selling what they could to get, you know, people started to try and survive through exercising their personal freedoms.


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[Assistant] And here's one of the ways that, or here's their comments about this. This is coming from Kim Jong Il as well.


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[Assistant] As any of the world's strongmen, he understood perfectly the cliche that an absolutist regime needs absolute power.


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[Assistant] Everything good in life was to be bequeathed by the government.


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[Assistant] He couldn't tolerate people going off to gather their own food or buying rice with their own money.


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[Assistant] Telling people to solve the food problem on their own only increases the number of farmers markets and peddlers. In addition, this creates egoism among the people and the base of the party's class may come to collapse.


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[Assistant] From solving the problems themselves, which they have the capability to do. And I don't talk about it too deeply in here, but they go into the massive black market that was started. And those people that were surviving were people that were doing that. That were figuring out a way to make money.


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[Assistant] Kim Jong Il retaliated against that free market excessively to try and stop it. It was better that people die of starvation than they have the freedom to try and get their family to survive.


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[Assistant] And here's an example of what they did with one man that was trying to


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[Assistant] Back to the book. The man was accused of climbing electric poles and cutting copper wire to sell.


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[Assistant] The theft caused extensive damage to the nation's property and was done with the intention to damage our social system.


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[Assistant] It was an act of treason that aided the enemies of the socialist state.


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[Assistant] The prosecutor read, his voice bellowing through the scratchy speakers.


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[Assistant] Then a man acting as a sort of lawyer for the accused spoke, although he offered no defense.


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[Assistant] I have determined that what the prosecutor says is true.


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[Assistant] The accused is the hereby sentenced to death and the sentence will be carried out immediately decree to third man.


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[Assistant] The condemned man was bound to a wooden stake at the eyes, the chest, and the legs.


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[Assistant] The firing squad would aim to sever the ropes in order.


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[Assistant] Three bullets in each location, nine in total, top to bottom.


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[Assistant] First the lifeless head would slump over so that the body would crumple in an orderly heap at the foot of the stake. Neat and efficient.


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[Assistant] It would look like the condemned man was bowing in death. As if to apologize.


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[Assistant] A murmur went through the crowd, who thought the execution was excessive punishment for a minor theft. The electric lines weren't working anyways.


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[Assistant] The few meters of copper wiring the man had stolen probably had gotten him no more than a few bags of rice.


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[Assistant] A pity. He has a younger sister, somebody said. Two sisters said another. The man's parents must be dead.


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[Assistant] Clearly, he knew nobody with influence to intervene on his behalf.


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[Assistant] He probably had a poor class background as well. Maybe he was the son of a miner.


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[Assistant] Blood spurted out over the dirt, almost spilling onto the feet of the crowd.


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[Assistant] What do people do to stop this? You know, and you have rebellion in the world. You have people turned against the government in the world.


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[Assistant] But in North Korea, that did not happen.


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[Assistant] And here's why. The level of repression in North Korea was so great that no organized resistance could take root.


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[Assistant] Any anti-regime activity would have terrible consequences for the protester, his immediate family, and all other known relatives.


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[Assistant] Under a system that sought to stamp out tainted blood for three generations, the punishment would extend to parents, grandparents, brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, and cousins.


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[Assistant] A lot of people felt if you had to give one life, you would give it to get rid of this terrible regime. But here, you are not the only one getting punished. Your whole family would go through hell.


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[Assistant] So with the fact that they're going to, if you protest, they're going to kill everybody.


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[Assistant] So now the only thing you can possibly think of doing.


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[Assistant] And how they escaped, but I thought what was interesting.


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[Assistant] In fact, the most interesting sort of mental transition to make.


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[Assistant] Was from Mrs. Song and again she was referred to as the true believer. And her daughter had escaped. And made it actually to South Korea.


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[Assistant] And her daughter arranged to have Mrs. Song.


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[Assistant] But she visited China sort of against the rules, thinking that she was going to go back to North Korea.


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[Assistant] Because she truly believed that North Korea was the better place. She believed that South Korea was the enemy. And it was evil.


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[Assistant] And she spends some time in China, and when she's in China,


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[Assistant] She's staying in a house that, you know, her daughter set up for her to stay in and they have TV.


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[Assistant] Which, which like is miraculous to her. I mean, she's talking about it. She's saying,


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[Assistant] At a certain time the light would come on and it would make it chirp and that means the rice was now being cooked. And by the way, at this time they didn't have rice in North Korea.


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[Assistant] So there's this thing that just automatically cooks up your rice in the morning.


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[Assistant] And it was that combination of things that broke her.


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[Assistant] Because when she first saw that stuff, she said, oh, this is imperialistic. You know, this is capitalism, it's evil, they're trying to buy us and enslave us with their capitalism. That's what she'd been convinced her whole life.


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[Assistant] And I'm gonna close with this because after this it goes through the stories of how they escaped and what not. But this realization, this moment in time when her mind becomes free.


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[Assistant] And here's, here's how it goes. How much they all.


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[Assistant] How much had they all missed? Herself.


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[Assistant] Her daughters, locked away in North Korea, working themselves to death.


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[Assistant] We will do what the party tells us. We will die for the general.


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[Assistant] She had believed it all and wasted her life.


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[Assistant] Is it drugs or alcohol numbing your brain?


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[Assistant] A lack of discipline that prevents you from accomplishing what you want to accomplish.


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[Assistant] I'm not saying that there aren't things in life that we just have to do. There are.


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[Assistant] That's what happens when you don't ask questions. That's what happens when you believe authority all the time.


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[Assistant] And hey, this might come across as some people are sitting there saying, wait a second, Jocko, weren't you in the military for 20 years? You're damn right I was.


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[Assistant] And there was a definitely, I was a rebellious kid. And when I was in the military, I was always questioned everything that we did and why we did it. So, and I think that's one of the things that helped me


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[Assistant] Get to a leadership position and become a decent leader.


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[Assistant] Was the fact that I didn't just take everyone's word for it and say, oh yeah, that's what we're going to do. Okay. Right.


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[Assistant] No, you know what? We're actually gonna change the strategy. We're gonna change the tactics.


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[Assistant] What I was taught isn't working right now. We're gonna do it differently. Yeaah. We did that all the time. Yeaah. But this is a broader scale.


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[Assistant] This is a broader scale. This is life. Not just in the book, but life in general.


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[Assistant] Life in general, like what are you doing? Where are you getting your direction from?


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[Assistant] Make sure it's you that's got a hold of your steering wheel.


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[Assistant] Yeah, or you might find out that you've been sucked into a trap.


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[Assistant] You don't wanna be in. No. You gotta free your mind. You gotta free your mind. You gotta get out of that box, out of that cage. Yeah. Think of that. You know, I meet people now. And.


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[Assistant] It's so bizarre because, because I've traveled a lot.


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[Assistant] And I've walked with a lot of different kind of people.


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[Assistant] You know, from all different walks of life. And I meet people sometimes.


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[Assistant] And I think to myself, man, this guy's pretty awesome. He's got all this, you know, I wonder what this person's goal is. And sometimes I'll ask like, you know, what do you want to do? Or like, what do you, hey, I'll meet some kid or what you want to do. And some people say, you know, well,


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[Assistant] I wanna do, you know, I, I think they're, I think they're gonna come out with this giant dream. And they come out with like a little mediocre idea.


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[Assistant] I've talked to five people in the last six months.


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[Assistant] Because they were telling me their dream, but it wasn't big enough.


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[Assistant] You know, now you meet some people sometimes and they tell me their dream and I go, man, you ain't got a chance at that.


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[Assistant] Right, these people are like, you can achieve anything you want. No, actually, you can't achieve anything you want. If you could achieve anything you want, you know everyone would be...


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[Assistant] I mean, can't. That's what I mean. These people that are like, you can do whatever you want. No, actually, there's limitations to that. All people are not created equal.


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[Assistant] Some people are smarter than other people. Some people are better athletes than other people. Hey. Reality.


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[Assistant] It's sorta like North Korea. There's people that are trapped in a paradigm in their head of the world. They think that the world is this, is this thing that they live in.


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[Assistant] And I think to myself, man, you gots to get out.


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[Assistant] Cause my whole life, you know, the only guys I knew were Seals. I mean, that's just who I knew.


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[Assistant] And so when I got out and I started meeting other people, and I especially started working with big businesses and started meeting really


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[Assistant] Not just successful in terms of financial people, but people that have really done something.


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[Assistant] Like, in the SEAL teams, oh, well, you know, ay, I did.


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[Assistant] I did my silt platoon into silt platoon commander, you know, you do these certain, I did task unit commander, you do these things and that's what you do.


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[Assistant] But there's other worlds. I remember telling one of my seal buddies, we were out surfing and this is after I'd been out for like two years, I had this exact conversation with him. I said, Hey man,


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[Assistant] Like we were talking, we were out there surfing for an hour and for 58 minutes we're talking about the SEAL teams, the SEAL teams, the SEAL teams, the SEAL teams, and the SEAL teams.


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[Assistant] And then I said, hey man, the SEAL Teams is awesome. But just so you know, there's other things in the world.


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[Assistant] And it's stuff that I'm saying. My mind was in North Korea. My mind was just SEAGLE TEAM.


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[Assistant] And I'll tell you what, I'm glad it was. Because it made my life very simple.


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[Assistant] And you can do other things in the world. And so now when I meet people in different environments and different jobs and in each little, each little environment that I


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[Assistant] Poke my head into because we work in different industries all over different, you know, manufacturing and gas oil and, and financial.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Go to Boston. Go to LA. Hit the 405 North on a Thursday afternoon. Yeah, there's no doubt. There's so much out there and if you stay comfortable in your world,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You can fly around the world. You can do it. Yeaah. Just don't get trapped. Free your mind. Yeaah. Alright, let's get to some questions from the interwebs.


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[Assistant] See, I would have told this totally differently. I like if you wanna jack big steel, you wanna do jujitsu, you wanna jump off things, you wanna throw stuff around, get some krill oil so you stay healthy.


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[Assistant] One thing you do have to do is you have to let yourself rest enough that you can heal. Cause sometimes they get the sprained ankle and instead of lasting one month, it lasts 18 months. No kidding.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If you push, if you just won't let it heal, the thing is not gonna heal. So you have to let things heal. Now, but you can go through all kinds of


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[Assistant] Positions, you can work different transitions, but sometimes you get an injury, and if you're a jiu-jitsu person, you know what I'm talking about, like you get a weird injury that you can't do certain movements. Like a guy will have a hurt back, can't get on top, I can't be on top, I can't. So you just practice your guard.


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[Assistant] You have a hurt, you know, groin muscle. So you can't hold any guard. You have to work like side control only. Okay, cool. Escape side control or be inside control. So you can definitely


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Do those things. You just figure out what movements you can do. You figure out what training partners aren't gonna go psychopathic on you and just hurt you even worse. So that's important.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, just being in class and you're learning some new technique, you know, I find if, if I cannot roll, when I'm in class I'll like pay a little bit more attention to what the instruction


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And, uh, then I'll tell you, this is something, like I wear knee pads when I roll.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I think that they prevent some injuries from happening. And I just made a transition in my life, where I, I...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Whatever you can, and just keep training, and...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] No, they're neoprene. They're just like a wetsuit. Like a neoprene sleeve. Asics. Or Cliff Keane. Wrestling knee pads. That's what they are. And they're generally made of neoprene. Gotcha.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There's a little ego situation. If you're like, well, I've been training for 13 years, meaning I started 13 years ago, but I took a lot of time off. So you might catch me. Right? Yes. That's basically what they're saying. So just tell people like, I've been training for 13 years.


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[Assistant] And I'm not that good. Or, you know what? Let's see how good I am.


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[Assistant] No, you, I'm not saying go out there and you're gonna be able to kill it. You're not gonna be able to go like the super hard crazy rounds, not gonna work.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I hear people talk about like personality types and there's these tests and there's these categories and stuff like that. And honestly, I've never been familiar with that. Uhm. But.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, you can put people in different categories, but for me, when you put a person in a category by themselves, right?


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[Assistant] That's only 50% of the situation. The other 50% is the other people that they're working with.


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[Assistant] So, I wanna know not just what type of personality they have because that's a, that's a, like I said, that's half of the equation.


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[Assistant] And other people's personalities. How do they handle...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Slackers. How do they handle overachievers? How do they handle loudmouths? How do they handle submissive people? How do they handle aggressive people? Those are all different personality traits. I want to know, I want to see how people are going to handle other personalities. And then I want to also know how they're going to handle certain situations. Pressure. Conflict.


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[Assistant] Not just what their personalities, but how they're gonna react. Cause you can get people that are...


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[Assistant] A really easy example is people that are super aggressive, but they fold under pressure.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And you can get people that are super passive that fold under pressure. And vice versa. You can get someone that's super...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's what I want to know. I don't care what kind of personality you have. I mean, I do to an extent, but I want to know how it interoperates with the world.


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[Assistant] With the people and with the situations that you're gonna face. And how do you do that? You do that by observing them while they're dealing with other people and while they're dealing with pressure situations. That's just a reality.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And you can't, you can have an idea.


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[Assistant] You know, I won't say that you won't be able to predict it, but you'll get surprised. Sometimes you'll get surprised on a person that you think is all tough, and they fold.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Or a person that you think is weak and they're strong. So you will get fooled sometimes. A lot of times you're, you know, you're probably right 60% of the time, 70% of the time.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And so I, you know, the simple answer is that there's, there's so many different variables, so many different nuances that what you want to do is you want to know your people.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The R word. Relationships. Yeaah. That's what you need. That's how you get to know your people. And that's how you lead them correctly.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, I'm not sure if they mean in regards to how do you change your subordinate leaderships or if you are subordinate. I'm not sure what, which one of those it is, but regardless, it doesn't matter. Cause guess what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna lead.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's what I'm going to do, whether I'm on, whether I'm the subordinate guy or the superior guy.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Oh, we're gonna, I want to change things and make them a certain way. Cool. I'm going to do those things. I'm going to make those things happen. That's how you do it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And if you're doing the right things for the right reasons, your message is going to spread.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know how many bad seagull platoons I was in?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know why? Cause me and my buddies, we always had a good attitude, we always had the right attitude, and that spread to the other people that were with us.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And this is frustration. When you start saying to yourself which


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'm not saying this necessarily, but this kind of question is coming from somebody that wants change to happen, but it's not happening, so they're getting frustrated and they're thinking, they aren't on board, they don't care, they aren't professional, they're not motivated like me.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So this isn't about them though. It's about you.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] From any level in the chain of command. If you're leading.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If you're doing the right things, for the right reasons.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's gonna spread. So when I, the classic example, I talk about it all the time is, if you're exercising extreme ownership, if you're saying, you know what, I got this, it was a mistake made, it was my fault.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know what doesn't spread? Is when you're aggressive at people. Oh, actually it does spread but it's negative.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You can't get people to behave better because you wanna look good. It doesn't work. Yeah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now the other thing I've been saying lately, because people are surprised or whatever, or not surprised but they're concerned.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They don't see how it's gonna work so fast, and I say, you know what? It's not gonna work fast. It's gotta be, and here's the word, it's gotta be a campaign.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] World War One was not one battle. It's a campaign to win in Europe. It's a campaign to win in the Pacific.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It takes battle, after battle, after battle, and guess what? You don't win them all.