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The Joe Rogan ExperienceThe Joe Rogan Experience

Joe Rogan Experience #1247 - Andy Stumpf

Andy Stumpf is a retired Navy SEAL and is also currently a wingsuit world record holder. He hosts his own podcast called “Cleared Hot” that can be found on iTunes & Stitcher.

Joe RoganhostAndy StumpfguestJamie Vernonguest
Feb 19, 20192h 51mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

  1. 0:04 – 2:48

    CBD water, dream catchers, and how “outrage culture” took over

    1. JR

      Four, three, two ... Hello, Andy.

    2. AS

      (laughs) What's up, Joe?

    3. JR

      What's going on, buddy?

    4. AS

      (laughs) Not much, man.

    5. JR

      We're here drinking CBD water. I've never had CBD water. GT's Kombucha sent us some CBD water.

    6. AS

      My first sip was a few seconds ago and, uh, I didn't read that it said cucumber basil, so I was shocked by the taste, but I like it.

    7. JR

      Yeah, that's a weird combo, right?

    8. AS

      Yeah.

    9. JR

      Cucumber ... And it- it's called Dream Catcher, which makes me think of, like, (clicks tongue) white trash lady living in a trailer park with one of them things hanging over her bed. Right?

    10. AS

      Pa- partially broken on the inside.

    11. JR

      Mullet.

    12. AS

      (laughs)

    13. JR

      Weird cats. (laughs) If you have a dream catcher, most likely you have cats, right?

    14. AS

      I think you have to have one.

    15. JR

      It's part of the program. Yeah. Yeah.

    16. AS

      It's a package deal.

    17. JR

      It's like, you know what I saw, um, yesterday that, that is really rare? I saw a dude who was dressed up like a Native American who was not in fact a Native American. That's a risky move in this day and age.

    18. AS

      (clicks tongue) Yeah, I'm not gonna go there. Uh, I wouldn't-

    19. JR

      When we were kids-

    20. AS

      (laughs)

    21. JR

      ... you could be an Indian, like if you could play cowboys and Indians, you could be an Indian and they'd be like, "Oh, okay."

    22. AS

      "Yeah, no problem."

    23. JR

      "He's, he's, he's the Indian, this guy's the cowboy."

    24. AS

      (laughs)

    25. JR

      Normal shit. Today they will fucking come for you.

    26. AS

      That day is gone.

    27. JR

      It's d- day's over.

    28. AS

      Yeah.

    29. JR

      What happened?

    30. AS

      I'm not smart enough to answer that question, but-

  2. 2:48 – 5:35

    Returning to civilian life and finding “tribe” after the military

    1. JR

      Yeah. Di- did you ever, um, read any Sebastian Junger?

    2. AS

      I did.

    3. JR

      Did you read Tribe?

    4. AS

      Tribe is a great book. Yes.

    5. JR

      Yeah.

    6. AS

      Uh, read- read that off your recommendation, actually.

    7. JR

      Did it speak to you, like in terms of like your own personal experience?

    8. AS

      It made complete, uh, sense. I probably would've used different terms in different places throughout, but the concept that he was talking about absolutely made sense. I mean this, so the SEAL Team's one of the, whether or not people live up to this, uh, an argument could be made, but one of the key tenets is, you know, the brotherhood, which is, uh, just another way of talking about a tribe.

    9. JR

      Yeah. Yeah, um, I, I just felt like it was really interesting to me, like that book, that one of th- uh, th- the most moving part of it was how connected these people are when they're together and when they're at war and what that brotherhood, that camar- camaraderie means to them, and how they feel disconnected when they're back, eh, in, in regular civilization and they get depressed. It's like their life had been led at such a, such a, uh, uh, high vibration, intensity, so much, so much on the line. It's, it means so much. Everything means so much. There's so much dedication, so much commitment. And then to go back to their regular life is very, very difficult for a lot of people.

    10. AS

      (clicks tongue) Yeah. I, I don't think it would be unfair to say that some of the people that I served with, I probably have closer relationships than I do with my biological family, even probably ... I've shared (clears throat) , I don't know nec- not, th- it's not that the things that we shared were important, but the value in our connection was so tight, that it, honestly, tighter than my definitely biological family and potentially even my wife as well too and my own kids. And that's-

    11. JR

      Don't tell her that out loud.

    12. AS

      I think she understands it.

    13. JR

      You're gonna get in trouble.

    14. AS

      She gets it.

    15. JR

      You're gonna get in trouble. You're gonna get in trouble, bro.

    16. AS

      Uh, that's, well, I, I only get in trouble from my wife on days that end in Y, so nothing's gonna be new (laughs) about that. But, uh, but I think she also understands that because sh- I, I certainly have struggled. I struggled quite a bit ver- about the first 18 months I got out of the military. And I look back on it now and I think, uh, two pieces of it. One, I went from seeing those people that I shared those experiences with on a daily basis, so there's that everything you have in common. We talk about stuff the same w- I mean, I just know the ins and outs of those people, and then I became detached from them. And then I had, I used to have what I thought was a job that had, uh, uh, an immense amount of purpose and then that was gone too. So I lost a little bit of my identity and a little bit of the purpose. And at that same time, like I said, I come off that off-ramp of being in the military and I'm looking at the world, it doesn't make any sense to me at all. People are arguing about things and, uh, talking about how they're oppressed while they're standing in a Starbucks line paying for a coffee that costs more per ounce than a gallon of gasoline. You know? (laughs) Stuff that probably couldn't be, uh, you know, you could couch it in terms other than oppression and none of it made sense and you just, it's, it's rough when you get detached from that environment.

  3. 5:35 – 9:19

    Andy’s injury, medical retirement, and living with nerve damage

    1. JR

      Well, especially in your situation, you were wounded and you, you know, although you wanted to continue serving, you physically weren't able to anymore.

    2. AS

      I was for a while. So I got hurt in February of 2005. The 14-year, 15-year ... no, 14-year anniversary was earlier this month. And it took me about-... two years to work my way back to where I would become operational again. And I did one more deployment after I got hurt, and then at the tail end of that deployment, that was just the end of it. My body wouldn't tolerate it anymore.

    3. JR

      And this is because of the metal fragments, or, like, what did, what is it totally you, was it nerve damage?

    4. AS

      It was, uh, the ... So, I got medically retired, which is not based off of any one incident, hopefully. I mean, people who have, they get a- an IED strike and they'll become a quad amputee or a triple amputee. That's one incident that they're gonna get, uh, retired for. For me, it was more the culmination of a lot of things. So the gunshot wound obviously didn't help. Um, and then the operational history of exposure to explosive blasts, the concussive forces, all of those things just kinda added up. I went through a 30-day protocol where they baselined me and took a bunch of tests and basically came to the, you know, they write out a h- massive document of all the things that they were able to at least document. Like, for me, I can't get an MRI because I still have metal in my body from ferrous metal from the round that clipped a piece of rebar on its way to me.

    5. JR

      Oh, wow.

    6. AS

      And it clipped my sciatic nerve on the way in and they're concerned that if they image me, or what I've been told by the doctors, if they image me, it might react again with my sciatic nerve. Just pull a piece of metal by it and I'll be right back where I was. I'll have, I had drop foot for about six months. Could-

    7. JR

      And drop foot is when your, your foot just stops working?

    8. AS

      Totally hangs. I could always push down, but I couldn't lift it up.

    9. JR

      That's a thing that's happening now in MMA quite a bit. It's happened several times where guys get low calf kicked and there's something about c- chopping at the, the nerves behind the leg that, uh, guys' legs are just, their foot's going limp. It happened to Michael Chandler. Uh, it happened to Henry Cejudo.

    10. AS

      Are they recovering from it?

    11. JR

      Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's in the middle of the fight.

    12. AS

      Oh, so it's just a momentary.

    13. JR

      So they, they get kicked and then the, the leg just stops working and they, and, and they can't stand on it. Their foot just, that's literally doesn't-

    14. AS

      Yeah.

    15. JR

      ... doesn't react anymore.

    16. AS

      So frustrating. So for me, I got, uh, I got shot in the hip, high up on my left hand side, but by the time I had made it to the hospital, my single complaint was my ankle. I was telling them that, like, I, I didn't remember falling on my ankle. I didn't remember hitting my ankle, but it felt like somebody had taken a sledgehammer and just beat it into powder. And so they were very careful and then, you know, they cut my shoes off of me. They cut my pants off me and they ... The first thing they did was take an X-ray of my ankle and they're like, "Dude, you're totally fine." But it felt like it was destroyed because it was the nerve that got interacted with high up, it short-circuited-

    17. JR

      Mm.

    18. AS

      ... all the way down to the terminal point of the nerve. And for me, it never came back. I'm hoping that, obviously for the fighters, it eventually comes back, because I had drop foot for six months to a year. I eventually was able to start, uh, dorsiflexing my foot again. But I still can't feel my left leg from the kneecap down on the sciatic side. The far left hand side and as it wraps over the top, my foot is completely numb.

    19. JR

      And is this because of, um, the actual damage to the nerve or s- something touching the nerve?

    20. AS

      They don't know. That was an interesting part of being hurt as well, is talking to people who have decades of medical experience and having them look at you and go, "I don't know."

    21. JR

      Fuck.

    22. AS

      Yeah.

    23. JR

      Especially without an MRI, right? 'Cause they can't-

    24. AS

      They can't. And they, 'cause they're worried about it being pulled out. Same thing why the concussion history that I have, it's an estimate based off of operational history because they can't throw me in that same machine and image my brain.

    25. JR

      Oh, whoa.

    26. AS

      'Cause it's spinning magnets and they're-

    27. JR

      Right.

  4. 9:19 – 14:14

    Severe pain, medication spirals, and why MRI magnets are a hard “no”

    1. AS

      And it, and then there's metal all over, uh, the left hand side of my pelvis and I don't know how much you would have to move, but if it just clipped that nerve again, it, I mean, it was probably one of the more difficult times in my life. My leg felt like it was on fire 24 hours a day-

    2. JR

      Oh.

    3. AS

      ... which I could ignore during the daytime, but where it got me was at nighttime. I would lay down in bed and it just felt like I had dipped my leg in gas and just, and put a lighter onto it. So I was on high dosages of, like, gabapentin and Neurontin, which are central nervous system suppressors, so I started feeling the cognitive effect of that, so I backed myself off of that. Wasn't in a great phase of, of my life, so I was, of course, washing those down with massive amounts of alcohol. Taking three to four Ambien, staying awake, because my tolerance to all that stuff was so high. And the last thing I ever wanna do is go through that again, so I'm gonna stay away from the spinning magnets. (laughs)

    4. JR

      (sighs) Jesus.

    5. AS

      Just ... (laughs) 'Cause I mean, it, it might be a quarter of an inch and I'd be-

    6. JR

      Right.

    7. AS

      ... exactly right back where I was before.

    8. JR

      And there's no way they can go in and pull those fragments out?

    9. AS

      (laughs) So I'm, I'm laying in the hospital in, uh, Baghdad. In the night that I got hurt, uh, many other people got hurt. Eight people got hurt on that particular target. I was one of the least injured. There were people who immediately flown into surgery. A guy almost lost his arm, um, a guy took a, he was right next to an explosive blast that literally peeled back the layers of his ballistic helmet. He was conscious but blind. He had taken such a shot to his head, he got ejected out the back side of a building. There were some other gunshot wounds. So I'm laying in a hospital bed. I hadn't taken any morphine because I had watched too many movies and I thought if I had, I had auto-injector syrettes on me at all times, but I thought if I had jabbed myself, I was gonna start drooling. No experience with whatsoever. And the doctors finally start working on me and he says, "All right, you know, I'm, we're gonna take a look at this. I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna basically stick my finger in the hole." And I was like, "S- s- well, let's take a pause here, sir. Can I have some pain medication?" So he comes out and just juices me with morphine, first time I've ever had it. Was, I wish I would've taken it in the field. It did almost nothing. And they played around a little bit with the holes and then slipped me into an X-ray machine and said, "Do you want us to try to take this out?" And I said, "Well, what is that gonna entail?" And he said, "Well, because we can tell that there's ferrous metal in here, what we would do is we would knock you out, put a tube down your throat, lay you on your stomach and hold up a two-dimensional X-ray and basically just start slicing and pulling apart, slicing and pulling apart, looking and searching for these metal pieces and pulling them out of your body one at a time." And I said-... is there another option? He's like, "Oh, yeah, totally. The body will encapsulate it in calcium and as long as it's not touching a bone, you're probably gonna be fine." What the fuck, man? (laughs) Why didn't you lead with that option?

    10. JR

      Right. Well, d- did they think they were gonna be able to get them all out though if they did go in there and start slicing away?

    11. AS

      I don't know. And I don't know what benefit it would've had. I suspect it would've caused more damage-

    12. JR

      Mm.

    13. AS

      ... uh, than the actual injury itself. My hip is fine. Um, I still have never had a surgery. I've still never broken a bone. The only thing they ever did was put a gauze pad on my leg, and when the scab fell off I could start taking a bath again if I wanted to.

    14. JR

      Wow.

    15. AS

      Yup. They just left everything in there.

    16. JR

      Jesus. That's crazy. And it's all covered-

    17. AS

      It was bizarre.

    18. JR

      Wow.

    19. AS

      (laughs)

    20. JR

      So, if you do have an injury now, the, it's, is it a lot of guesswork? Like, if something's wrong with your leg, do they have to, like, go in there with a scope? Like-

    21. AS

      Uh, it depends-

    22. JR

      ... since you can't get an MRI, like, what if you blew your knee out?

    23. AS

      (sighs) They would have to rely on imagery technology that doesn't revolve around magnets.

    24. JR

      Wow.

    25. AS

      So pr- most likely ... I'm not too ... I think they gave me a CAT scan in the hospital, so that I don't think is magnet-based, and then two-dimensional X-ray.

    26. JR

      Well, it's interesting too because s- some of the therapies they're using on people for TBI is-

    27. AS

      Magnets.

    28. JR

      Yeah.

    29. AS

      But I don't think they're as powerful as an MRI. I mean, you can't even wear earrings in those rooms.

    30. JR

      Well, yeah, with an MRI.

  5. 14:14 – 19:50

    TBI, blast exposure, and the veteran suicide conversation

    1. AS

      There is a ... I don't want to say there's a rash of, um, suicides in the SEAL teams specifically. Obviously the number 22 is thrown out a lot when it comes to veteran suicides, but that's, that's-

    2. JR

      What is it, 22%?

    3. AS

      22, uh, veterans a day commit suicide.

    4. JR

      A day.

    5. AS

      It's, it's the number that is often touted. I- ... (sighs) I'm hesitant to say that number is accurate because if you look at how it was derived, it wasn't ... they could have done a better job of getting that number. And I, and I don't want to say inside of the SEAL teams that there's a suicide issue ill- even though I do know a few people that have committed suicide and they were the ones that I would least expect it from, but they were also the ones who had, uh, quite a bit of, uh, high operational tempo. And the one thing that I don't think, especially in the military medicine world, they understand well is traumatic brain injury and the impact it has long-term.

    6. JR

      Yeah.

    7. AS

      And how easy it can be. 'Cause you know this f- uh, I've heard you talk about it before, you don't have to get knocked out to get a brain injury.

    8. JR

      Right.

    9. AS

      And I know I've (sighs) c- uh, countless times where I either did something dumb or was just standing in the wrong place or had a hard parachute opening and I cracked my head against the metal risers, and your head hurts for the rest of the day.

    10. JR

      Yeah.

    11. AS

      And it's ... I've seen the change in behavior in some people, and I, I know the stuff that's tied to it as well, the low hormones, all of that stuff. There, that is happening, I think, at the highest levels in the military. Probably military-wide, but specifically those people who are kind of more on the front-leading edge of combat operations. And I think as a country we're in a, we're in a total unknown area because we're in w- a sustained period of war longer than we've ever been as a nation, and nobody knows the outcome of that. And people who I would've never guessed would make the decision to take their own life, I'll get a text in, "Hey, you know, so-and-so just went out into the woods." And i- uh, no other external injury, no other marker than obviously something happened in the geometry between their ears that caused them to make that decision. And I suspect it's from the repeated exposure to the brain injury.

    12. JR

      Yeah. It's something that people are just starting to understand over the last couple of decades. I mean, obviously, uh, there was a focus with that Concussion movie, and, you know, I don't know if you saw that Bob Costas was actually pulled from football, uh, and they, they had told him that he'd crossed the line because-

    13. AS

      The announcer?

    14. JR

      Yeah.

    15. AS

      Bob Costas?

    16. JR

      They pulled him. They pulled him from doing, uh ... what, what event was it? Was it from the Super Bowl?

    17. JV

      I think so, yeah.

    18. JR

      Because, uh, he was talking about traumatic brain injury and the, the realities of it. And they said, "You crossed a line." He's like, "I crossed a line by talking about reality?" Like ...

    19. AS

      In an honest and open pers-

    20. JR

      Yeah. Well-

    21. AS

      Yeah, that's not cool.

    22. JR

      I mean, that's what he does. I mean, that is Bob Costas' entire hook. But, I mean, he's, he's a brilliant guy. But this, uh, this problem was so poorly understood just two decades ago. So everyone's just sort of coming to this realization that ... I mean, according to Dr. Mark Gordon who have, I've had on, who works with the Warrior Angel Foundation Andrew Marr's, uh, s- um, set up-

    23. AS

      Mm-hmm.

    24. JR

      ... where they're helping all these veterans that have traumatic brain injuries, and I've, I've had m- Mr. Gordon on several times. He, he says that you can get traumatic brain injuries from things that don't even remotely knock you out.

    25. AS

      Yep.

    26. JR

      He's like, "People get them from doing moguls when they ski. They get them from-"

    27. AS

      (laughs) From your brain just rattling.

    28. JR

      Yeah. They get them from jet skis, bouncing around on jet skis. I mean, you can get it from a, a minor car accident, you can have a traumatic brain injury. And for guys like me that got hit in the head for years, who knows what the fuck is going on in there. You know? And for professional fighters, it's w- you know, it's almost inevitable. For football players, it's even worse. You know, for football players, they did some crazy study and I, I know we quoted it, and I don't remember what the numbers was, but it's some insane number, like in the high 80% of people from high school on through college and into the professionals, um, have TBI.... or CTE, or the some signs of, uh, traumatic brain injury.

    29. AS

      I'd be surprised if they didn't, given their-

    30. JR

      That's fucking crazy.

  6. 19:50 – 24:12

    Breaching, concussive waves, and how blasts ‘travel’ indoors

    1. JR

      Well, apparently blasts are a big one, right? Like blowing down doors and things like that.

    2. AS

      Yeah, it hurts.

    3. JR

      Even, even if you just step away and you brace yourself, the impact of just the air, the concussive force of it-

    4. AS

      Yep.

    5. JR

      ... is just devastating for your brain. Your, y- the human brain apparently is just so much more delicate and sensitive than anyone could have ever guessed.

    6. AS

      Well, and concussive blasts are a tough one 'cause they travel.

    7. JR

      Yeah.

    8. AS

      So if you're internally in a building and you find a door that's at the end of a hallway, even if you go all the way down to the end of the hallway and around the corner, the blast can still get you. 'Cause it will come down off the door, reflect off of the hallway, and still rock you.

    9. JR

      Jesus.

    10. AS

      Yeah. And this ... It's s- it's (laughs) ... I, I thought I had a good hiding spot more than once-

    11. JR

      (laughs)

    12. AS

      ... and did not have a good hiding ... You sit there and just like, "Beem." You're like, "Oh, that hurt."

    13. JR

      Oh.

    14. AS

      More than one occasion. Or, you're working with a bunch of assholes who take all the good hiding spots. You're like, "Goddammit."

    15. JR

      (laughs)

    16. AS

      And you just turn around and just ball up. (laughs)

    17. JR

      And there's not really much you can do about that, right? I mean, if you have to blow down that door, someone has to be there to detonate-

    18. AS

      Right.

    19. JR

      ... and you have to be close enough for it to activate, right?

    20. AS

      Uh-

    21. JR

      How are they doing it? Wirelessly?

    22. AS

      They might be doing it wirelessly now. When I was in, uh, it was called a NONEL, um, and it basically it's a f- or a shock tube. So, you put a charge f- wherever, a do- uh, a gate, a door, a wall, and you basically have to attach an initiator to it, 'cause the charge isn't gonna go off by itself. So you need a highly reactive charge to set off an explosive that is less reactive. You keep them separate, obviously, for safety, except for the main breacher. He probably has at least one hooked up so he can be really fast. But then you just extend that flash tube and it's ... They come in long reels, I mean, that you can get 30, 40, 50 feet, and each charge mathematically, we do math on it to determine the minimum safe distance, e- of every charge and it's written on the charge so you know how far you can get away. But sometimes you're in a situation where, like I said, you think you got an awesome hiding spot and the guy lays out the flash tube and he's getting ready to fire it off and you realize that you're staring directly at the charge and you have nowhere to hide.

    23. JR

      Oh, Jesus.

    24. AS

      And they're not gonna wait on you. So it's turn around, cover up into a ball, and eat it.

    25. JR

      Oh. Is there a best way to eat it?

    26. AS

      Uh, open your mouth and cover your ears. I mean-

    27. JR

      Really?

    28. AS

      Yeah.

    29. JR

      Open your mouth?

    30. AS

      Yeah, it allow ... In- since instead of overloading, uh, like your sinus cavities and your, uh, your, your ear canal, so you can cover your ears and open your mouth. It helps.

  7. 24:12 – 25:28

    BASE jumping pause: losing friends and reevaluating risk

    1. AS

      Yeah, I mean, you're jumping off mountains with a flying squirrel suit. If you're here, you, it's, you've obviously got it nailed.... I'm on pause for the BASE jumping for the time being.

    2. JR

      Did, uh, Mrs. Stump step in and-

    3. AS

      (laughs)

    4. JR

      ... put the kibosh on it?

    5. AS

      For the first time, she asked me to stop in-

    6. JR

      Whoa.

    7. AS

      ... uh, June of last year. But, of course, it was tied to a very close friend who, uh, did a jump, didn't go the way he wanted it to go, or anybody would. She happened to know him and it really was the, it was the first time that I seriously considered giving it up. I haven't touched a wingsuit since, uh, my buddy Alex died. And he was my main BASE jumping partner overseas on most of the trips that I'd done. And I- I'm not gonna say I shepherded him into the sport, but I was there with him on his first jump off of a cliff in Italy, the first time he put a wingsuit on. And it's, uh, that one stung a bit. So it's on pause, potentially forever as far as BASE jumping goes. I'll still skydive, but it's a, it's a question mark on the BASE jumping side of the house.

    8. JR

      That's so fu- Y- you do such risky shit in the sky. The guy's like, "Yeah, skydiving, that's no big deal. I'll skydive. I'll jump out of a fucking plane."

    9. AS

      That I would do with my eyes closed every day. That's the... And my risk ratio on that one is we're, we're all set.

  8. 25:28 – 35:24

    How skydiving actually fails: cutaways, reserves, and human error

    1. JR

      What is the risk ratio on skydiving? Like what percentage of those things go wrong?

    2. AS

      Incredibly low. Um, so they... You have a main parachute and a reserve parachute. I don't think there has been a true double failure, meaning your main parachute malfunctions, you cut it away properly and deploy your reserve parachute and have that also fail, in 20 some years. People die skydiving all the time. Well, not all the time, 'cause I guess it, you know, the population of people that do it is not huge. Uh, but I would say the vast majority of people who die skydiving, they, they kill themselves. They make a poor decision. Um, and most people who die skydiving die under perfectly functioning equipment.

    3. JR

      Really?

    4. AS

      So the, the canopy size, the main canopy that you're flying, the wing over your head, the smaller it is, the faster it goes, the faster it descends. But also, quite frankly, the more fun it is. But with fun, there's consequence. So there are canopies that you can initiate a turn, and if you initiate the turn too low, you cannot pull the canopy out of the turn. You will impact the ground at a high rate of speed regardless of what you do. And if you get under that canopy with not enough experience, obviously your odds of making a bad decision are gonna go through the roof. So most injuries and fatalities, at least from the stuff I have seen, is from people making, uh, poor decisions under good equipment or choosing to execute an emergency procedure, which would be cutting away your main parachute and deploying your reserve, either out of sequence or doing it too low where the reserve parachute doesn't have time to open.

    5. JR

      Ugh.

    6. AS

      To me, that's not a failure of the parachute system, that's the failure of the individual who is driving that parachute system.

    7. JR

      So if you have a main parachute and you jump out and you hit the main parachute and there's a malfunction, how do you cut it off to put, to get the other one?

    8. AS

      So there's two pillows, one on each side.

    9. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    10. AS

      The right-hand side, you literally (laughs) need to do this in the correct order, even though people have killed themself by going backwards. So you pull to full arm extension. You l- it's literally just a pillow with Velcro that has two cables, and the cables are what's actually holding the parachute on your shoulders. If you pull that out, the three-ring release system, which is basically just a load reduction system, unwinds itself, and your parachute's gone and you're going back into free fall. And you just pull the other pillow.

    11. JR

      Whoosh.

    12. AS

      It sounds worse than it is. And before I had my first cutaway, it was terrifying. And then after you have four or five, you're like, "Okay, I got this."

    13. JR

      You had four or five r- r- main parachutes fail?

    14. AS

      I think I'm at about seven right now.

    15. JR

      Jesus Christ, Andy Stump.

    16. AS

      (laughs) Well, I've been jumping for 20 years.

    17. JR

      Ah!

    18. AS

      (laughs)

    19. JR

      I don't wanna hear that, man.

    20. AS

      (laughs)

    21. JR

      God.

    22. AS

      I started jumping in '99.

    23. JR

      Ah!

    24. AS

      Statistically, I'm actually, I think, under. Uh, I think it's like one in every 888 jumps you'll have a malfunction or a gear failure. It's honestly, like it's, your first one is an emotional experience.

    25. JR

      I would imagine.

    26. AS

      You're se-

    27. JR

      What, what was the first one?

    28. AS

      Uh, deploying a parachute and just sitting there looking at it as it's... 'Cause they wanna open and you can, I can tell now a- within an instant of trying to deploy my parachute whether or not it's gonna open or not, just by looking at the shape, by sometimes listening to it and just seeing how it opens. Sometimes, I mean, so packing a parachute people think is really difficult. If you can fold a T-shirt, you can pack a parachute. Sometimes though, you, you know, you just get off with a jump and you only have 10 minutes to make the next jump. So you skip a few steps or you rush through a few steps.

    29. JR

      Is that what happened with you?

    30. AS

      Potentially. I may have skipped all of the nonessential steps and a few of the essential steps to get the parachute. (laughs)

  9. 35:24 – 40:49

    Why thrill-seeking can be therapy: recreating combat clarity

    1. JR

      What is it about people, and I mean particularly people like yourself, that love these thrills? Like, what are you getting out of that?

    2. JV

      (laughs)

    3. AS

      (laughs)

    4. JR

      What are you getting out of that other than this mad adrenaline rush? I mean, what is it? Like, what motivates you to keep doing that?

    5. AS

      Uh, (sighs) so I look back at it objectively. Yeah, I think wh- when I initially started pushing hard down that path, I was trying to replicate a head space or a feeling or a sensation that I had in my old job.

    6. JR

      Oh.

    7. AS

      So if you wanna talk about clarity of thought, and I think you and I, we might have talked about this the very first time that we sat down, stripping away all ancillary bullshit that has absolutely no meaning, but sp- for me at least spends, I spend 99% of my time worrying about things that have no impact whatsoever.

    8. JR

      Right.

    9. AS

      So you're sitting on a helicopter, pick the battle space that you're in, and you, you get a five-minute warning. And you really stop worrying about whether or not you have enough money in your checking account to cover your mortgage. And then you get a three-minute warning. And then you kinda stop worrying about whether or not you just had an argument with your wife, or you just sent off some snarky email. Then you get a one-minute warning, then a 30-second warning, and the closer and closer and closer you get-... everything is gone. And it is still to this day the, the sensation and state that I have been in that is by far ... I had no question about, uh, my purpose, and I had the utmost clarity that I've ever experienced in my life. And you get, you get used to operating in that headspace of just being in the moment, the first one to three seconds in front of you, nothing else matters. I'm gonna solve this problem and move on to the next one. This problem and move on to the next one. Well, then I lost that ability to do that, and it sucked because I liked operating in that headspace because it, it helped me deal with all the other bullshit in my life 'cause it reset for me my what matters and what doesn't matter ratio. I was able to get rid of like a ... I would describe it as just the white noise in my head.

    10. JR

      Yeah.

    11. AS

      Or another way I'll describe it is, like Jamie's got a bunch of levers that he can push up. I think in this, I'm included in this, I think most people are pegged out at a 10 almost all the time. They're fucking white-knuckling through life. But if you can get into that state where you have that clarity of purpose, clarity of focus, I felt like it pulled everything back to a three. And so that state helped me in things that had nothing to do with that activity, and it lasted for a long time. So when you're BASE jumping and you're standing on a cliff, and you're scared outta your mind, and you can't talk as your mouth is so dry, and you have a pee ring on your suit, which is why you always get dark suits, so people can't see your pee ring. And y- every alarm bell in your body is telling you, "Don't jump." And y- uh, I had the same experience. I wasn't worried about the checking account. I wasn't worried about what was going on in life. I was just living in that moment, and it helped me be a better dad. It helped me be a better husband. It helped me be better at any business decision that I need to make 'cause it allowed me to pull all of those stereo levers back down. So it's less for me, and I can only speak for me, it's less about, uh, thrill seeking 'cause I get that all the time. Like, "You're an adrenaline junkie." I'm like, "Ah," I enjoy, I'm an adrenaline enthusiast. I certainly enjoy that, but I actually like what I get from the activity more than the activity itself.

    12. JR

      What do you think is going on where people are pegged at 10 all the time with nonsense, and that's something that's life-threatening can bring it back to a three and offer clarity? I mean, there has to be something that you've discussed or thought about in depth.

    13. AS

      I just think it helps you control, alt, delete your hard drive a little bit. It helps by not having... Like, when I'm standing on a cliff, right before I get ready to jump, there is absolutely nothing that I am thinking about other than where I want to be in the next three seconds. And by being able to focus on something so singular, and maybe I don't, I don't meditate, but I've heard people talking about by being able to clear your mind, it helps them deal with everything else. I think there might be some connection there. Um, but I just, I just think that the removal of the noise that bombards everybody all day long, even for a little bit, helps you. It's, uh, you know, you, you have iPo- or not iPod, iPhone and heads- headphones f- for sure, right?

    14. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    15. AS

      Have you ever noticed, like, when you're listening to it, you listen at the same volume level, but then it do- doesn't seem to be as loud? So what do you do? You click it up a notch, right? And then you get used to that volume level, and then you click it up a notch, and then you get used to that volume level. And y- there's a receptor downgrade phenomenon. Your body gets used to it, so it adapts to it. But if you pull that stimulus out and leave it at that high volume but listen to it, like, two weeks later, it's gonna blow your ears out.

    16. JR

      Mm.

    17. AS

      It, it'll seem louder. It's not gonna blow your ears out, but it's gonna-

    18. JR

      Right.

    19. AS

      ... seem much louder than it would if you slowly just incrementally started adding that volume. So if it's, there's something in there that is allowing me, and I'm not recommending that anybody pursue therapy via the directions that I do, but there's something in there that's allowing me to, instead of add and add and add and add, that activity allows me to detach. And then when I come back to it, I realize, you know, it just, it just feels different for me.

    20. JR

      Mm.

    21. AS

      That's, and I don't know if that's a good description of the mechanism, but that's the best that I can probably describe it.

  10. 40:49 – 1:01:05

    Jiu-jitsu as a safer substitute: ego checks, drilling, and aging injuries

    1. JR

      Well, I know, uh, a lot of veterans come back and really get involved in martial arts. Martial arts apparently is, is good for along, uh, the same lines, the same sort of, uh, noise reduction.

    2. AS

      Yup.

    3. JR

      Uh, especially jujitsu when someone's trying to strangle you and you're fighting for your life, and they're mounting you and trying to lapel choke you.

    4. AS

      I'm familiar with this now.

    5. JR

      (laughs) Yes, he's doing it now.

    6. AS

      I'm six months in.

    7. JR

      Yeah.

    8. AS

      I don't know what you're talking about, being strangled or choked or having a huge person lay on your chest and just trying to breathe.

    9. JR

      Like Dudley?

    10. AS

      Oh my God. (laughs)

    11. JR

      (laughs) He's lying about being 220.

    12. AS

      He coulda said 219. I'm not even sure.

    13. JR

      He's lying.

    14. AS

      (laughs)

    15. JR

      There's no, I'm 200 pounds. He's fucking 18 feet taller than me. There's no way.

    16. AS

      Yeah.

    17. JR

      It j- uh, it doesn't even make sense.

    18. AS

      Well, I, I don't have enough experience with jujitsu to, to truly speak about, uh, the long-term benefit. But what I can say is this. If I stop BASE jumping, what I will replace that ab- activity with is more jujitsu because what you just described. When somebody is literally, when you're simulating murder-

    19. JR

      Yes.

    20. AS

      ... right, in your pajamas, and somebody is trying to choke you to death-

    21. JR

      Yeah.

    22. AS

      ... you are not thinking about anything else.

    23. JR

      About anything else. You know, one thing that I do do that's weird is that I, I have songs playing in my head. And-

    24. AS

      Well, you also probably have a few more reps than most people, so you can have that capacity for songs in your head.

    25. JR

      But they're weird songs like Christina Aguilera, I Am Beautiful. Like, sometimes that'll be playing if I'm rolling. (laughs)

    26. AS

      (laughs)

    27. JR

      But the song, uh, it's like, it's almost like, uh, it sounds strange, and I never talked about this before, but it's almost like a, like a mantra. Like, uh, I'll, I'll play certain parts of the song over and over again in my head so that I can think about that instead of the b- the actual, the actual training and the actual strangling.

    28. AS

      But you also have, I don't wanna use the term mastered 'cause I don't know if you can master it, but where you are, you are at a m- like when you roll with somebody, I was talking to somebody about this not too long ago.When I roll with a black belt, the outcome is preordained, right? Unless they bought their black belt at Macy's and they're pretending, in which case, I don't know. I still don't know enough if it might be preordained. But the difference in what I'm thinking about versus what would happen if you and I rolled, and what you are thinking about are- is gonna be massive. So, I don't have the hard drive space to sing Christina Aguilera. (laughs)

    29. JR

      Yeah.

    30. AS

      And you probably don't even remember half of the things that you do when you roll, or how you think about it, because you have experienced it so many times.

  11. 1:01:05 – 1:14:33

    Social media manipulation, polarization, and calls for violence

    1. JR

      Yes, that's a really interesting point, right? You know, I've been focusing a lot on w- like, the, what these people are doing in terms of social media and in terms of, uh, w- you know, what impact this has on our elections, on our culture, how they're being influenced. There's a woman, we, we, uh-

    2. AS

      Talk about privacy.

    3. JR

      Yeah, we booked that woman, right? Renee, w- what is her last name again? She's, she's got a phenomenal podcast with Sam Harris called The War of Information and, um, it's either The Information War or The War of Information. D'Oreste. D'Oreste, Renee D'Oreste. And she studied this, um, she studied these, these Russian troll farms and the impact they have and these fake accounts online. And what they'll do is like, so like for instance, they set up two rallies across the street from each other. One was a Texas pride rally and one was a Muslim rally.

    4. AS

      It's a classic pairing.

    5. JR

      And they do it across the street from each other on purpose so that they'll interact with each other.

    6. AS

      Oh, of course.

    7. JR

      So the people get there, there's no one organizing it 'cause no one, there's no real person on the ground because they're doing everything from Russia. And this is just one example. They do a lot of things with, um, with, uh, Black Lives Matter and Blue Lives Matter. They, they were having a lot of these-

    8. AS

      Interesting.

    9. JR

      They were, they were pairing them against each other. They were also, um, they had, uh, black pages that were supporting anyone but Hillary. This was their message, anyone but Hillary. Hillary Clinton does not support the Black community. We should vote for Bernie Sanders. We should vote for Jill Stein. We should vote for anybody but Hillary. And what they were basically trying to do was weaken the support that the Democrats traditionally have from the Black community.

    10. AS

      Hm.

    11. JR

      And they were, they were doing this through these pages, and there was not that many pages. When you find out there's like 80 pages or 100 pages they were running, but then you find out the amount of interactions that they had with it, and there's millions and millions and millions of interactions. So comments, likes-

    12. AS

      Yeah.

    13. JR

      ... shares, and then people are, this message that they think is coming from people from their community is actually coming from Russia, and it's actually a calculated attempt to sow dissent and to sow th- th- this conflict in America. And the idea is, and it sounded so crazy to me that like, uh, 'cause I wasn't really paying attention to it that much, but the idea is that they're trying to make us fight against each other about everything so that it fucks up democracy. So the idea is to undermine it.

    14. AS

      I would say that I think they've achieved that goal.

    15. JR

      Yeah.

    16. AS

      Whether or not they're responsible for it or not, but it certainly sends, seems like we're trending in that direction.

    17. JR

      It does. I, I can't remember a time where there's more conflict and more outrage and more people willing to, like, jump into the fray regardless of whether or not they're informed.

    18. AS

      What do you think about the people who keep calling for violence?

    19. JR

      It drives me crazy 'cause it's people who don't understand violence.

    20. AS

      I was gonna say the same thing. I see the people most often doing it are the ones that are the least experienced or familiar with what violence actually looks like.

    21. JR

      Well, there was a lot of that from Russia as well. There's a lot of fake Antifa pages. There was a lot of that. There was a lot of that where they were telling people that the only way to get people to understand is through violence and that you must be willing to do whatever you can by any means necessary. And violence is good if it achieves the desired result of peace and prosperity and making sure that progressive ideas get pushed forth. It's fucking crazy because people who don't know what violence is, it's like here's one thing people say. They'll say to a martial arts person, like, they'll see someone like a Jon Jones. "Like, if I was Jon Jones, I'd just fucking kick everybody's ass." Like, no, you wouldn't. No, you wouldn't, okay?

    22. AS

      Yeah.

    23. JR

      You know, and all the problems that Jon Jones has been in, one thing you should notice is never been in a fight. There's no street fights out there with Jon Jones, you know? I mean-

    24. AS

      I would bet he is least, the least likely person to engage in that activity.

    25. JR

      I bet you're right. Yeah, exactly.

    26. AS

      'Cause he doesn't want to do it 'cause he knows exactly the consequences, let alone the legal consequences of doing it outside of a cage.

    27. JR

      Exactly. But when you look at it from someone who has zero understanding, they're like, "Oh, if I was that guy, I'd be kicking everybody's ass." But no, you wouldn't because, like, violence, people don't just accept violence. You don't just hit someone to get away with it. They think about that shit forever and they try to get you back.

    28. AS

      Yeah.

    29. JR

      And either they hire someone to get you back or they get you back on their own or they wait for you to not remember it, and then they, they come around the corner and fucking brain you with a baseball bat. This is what people do. People don't like getting fucked up. If you kick someone's ass, they're gonna remember it. They're gonna... And this idea that you're gonna be able to suppress people by, by attacking them and hitting them with bike locks and, you know, and not letting them speak at universities that, you know, you're, you're, you're protesting at, it's, it's madness. And it's, it's, it's so confusing because it's not indicative of what I always thought of when I thought about left-wing people. I thought they were peace-loving people-

    30. AS

      Yeah.

Episode duration: 2:51:00

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