MrBallen Traumatizes Tom Segura | 2 Bears, 1 Cave
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100% Welcome to another episode of Two Bears, One Cave. My regular co-host is having his spine fused. And so while he's out, we have a great guest. If you're a fan of the strange, dark, and mysterious, don't forget to hit that subscribe button like you're slapping the tip of your penis on your partner's forehead. Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce Mr. Ballin. Dude!

All right. Very nice, dude. I love the care that was put into that intro. Thought about it. That's the move, man. Is that because you're Japanese? Why do you do that? I don't know. I don't know. Yeah, I started doing that. Like, if you're a fan of the Strange, Dark, and Mysterious, that's all we do. That's all we do. And then I end it with one of these. Like, all right, into the stories. And then I just...

I just never stopped doing it. I was watching that and I was like, cool, I like this. It feels kind of martial artsy. You know what's funny is I do that so often because I record all the time. I'm always making episodes and I routinely forget what I'm supposed to say that I've said a million times. I don't know what it is. You'll forget that thing? All of it. Really? When it gets to, if you're a fan of The Strange, Dark, and Mysterious, then you come to the right. And I'll just black out. I just black it out. I have to do like seven takes. For people that don't know, that are watching this right now or listening...

If they don't know, you, Mr. Ballin, have a wildly successful YouTube channel. Thank you. Where you tell stories about things that are strange, dark, and mysterious. True. And you have, like, what, 10 million subscribers or something? Just about. We're going to hit 10 million, I think, next week. Next week. I think it's next week. Yeah, soon. And what it is, is, like, it is, like, you sitting... And literally...

telling these stories like the the whole thing i because i was i was i was listening to you explain how you made this transition into this thing but the part i didn't i didn't get like is this just a field you always had an interest in like did you always like stories like this

Kind of. Like, I would say that the transition from, you know, being in the military to then, you know, telling spooky stories on the internet was not one I had planned. But I like personally was always drawn to like strange, dark and mysterious content. Yeah. Like.

that's the stuff I like to listen to and watch on the internet. The same, dude. The same. Like, I am your audience. Hell yeah, dude. I'm one of the four males, I guess, right? Because it's like 85% females love this stuff. That's what I always read. The true crime side, yeah. But oddly enough, so I've been told, our YouTube channel, according to some data scraping, actually it skews more male than is expected. Okay. Don't know why, but then our podcast, which is more true crime centric, has

heavily female. Oh, it is? Yeah, because the true crime genre is disproportionately skews female. Now, when you tell these stories, one of the things I got curious, because it's really well done, you're a natural storyteller, you convey the story in a really clear, um,

exciting way and you, you know, you follow, you follow along. Are you looking at any type of script off, off, off camera? Is this all memory? Like, do you research it and then kind of recap it? Like, is that how you, how do you actually put it together? Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, honestly, it's a little of both. So in the beginning, when I first started making these videos, which was like early COVID days, you know, I really just on a whim basically began filming these videos. One sort of spiked and before long, I'm like making content every week for this fan base. And when I would watch strange, dark and mysterious content that I liked, one of the things that sort of

It isn't that I didn't like it. I felt like it would be more connecting if the host was on camera. And it was like you were hearing somebody tell you the story. Because a lot of these channels, they do voiceover over dark imagery and video, and that's fine. But I just thought it's more engaging to hear some of these stories. It's a campfire setting. I was going to say, it reminds me of...

actually, I feel like when you're a kid and an adult tells you a story, you know? Yeah. Like, it's kind of like you just go, like, tell me... Like, my kids every night are like, tell me a story. And I'm like, I'm out of fucking stories, man. Like, I've been telling you... Yeah, dude. They're like, tell me a story of when you shit yourself one time. And I'm like, I've told you. I've told you the four times I can recall. And they just want more stories. But there is something about, like, your...

channel and the way you're telling these stories it does it feels like i'm like oh i'm like a kid watching an adult you know like and truthfully i there was no strategy for that other than it's how i would have wanted to be told a story and so in the early days yeah like the first couple of years from like 2020 to 2022 i mean when i was doing all the research writing everything i would create a script but the process of researching the story and writing the script out

I internalized the story. And so I would have a script on my laptop off camera. But you had already like, yeah. Right. So I would sort of like look at the script and then tell the story. But I would do it in bursts. And I would often do like multiple iterations where I'd change it a little bit. And it just sort of worked. It sort of put me in a position where from that point on, I had to maintain that style. And so I got better and better at...

Basically, I read a script in order to learn the meat of the story, and then I just tell it. And so for research now, because it feels like obviously there's an endless amount of stories out there, but you still have to get the story. Do you solicit stories? Are you guys just out researching stories? How do you actually get the story? I mean, in the early days, so again, when I was doing it solo, it really was just me on Google. I mean, just...

looking for crazy stuff with plot twists and whatever. And, you know, I was always cautious to make sure that we were finding stories that were not, you know, I guess proprietary. They were not somebody else's who own them. It was like public stories. That takes a little bit of work, right? A little. I mean, there's, I talked to a lawyer that sort of explained the,

the defensible, you know, story that you can use. And I sort of just stuck to the guidelines, basically something with, you know, that's been publicly reported on. That's more of like this happened and people talked about it versus here's my interpretation of what happened. That's sort of like their story. Gotcha. Um, but now we have, you know,

We have, I think, over 80 people that work for Ballin Studios. God damn. Well, we have a management business that we manage other storytelling creators who need their own infrastructure. We have, you know, a publishing division. We have we just got into live touring, which I do live touring, by the way. I've done one. But oh, my God, it's addictive. It's amazing. Yeah. You like it, right? It's incredible. Yeah.

But we have, you know, I want to say like 15 or 20 people that are just basically looking in different parts of the world. We have an Asian correspondent who's like only looking at like, you know, Chinese material that we wouldn't even know how to sift through to find stories. But again, they sort of fall into that public domain and it all gets filtered to our writer's room. And I work with the writer's room and we make scripts. And you have a second graphic novel coming out? We do. We do. This is the official cover art here.

Set it up right here. Yeah, so we did a graphic novel last year. Where Nightmares Live. Where Nightmares Live. This is the second one. I'm trying to put it in frame here. Yeah. It's a collection of nine stories. Half will be new, half are fan favorites, and it'll come out later this year. Well, let me ask you this, because you probably have some insight on this now from having done this for a few years. Yeah. Which is, so...

There's certainly a segment of the population, obviously, that loves this kind of thing, right? Like I said, I'm one of these people. When I go home and I...

want to wind down, I look for... I like suspense. I like thrillers. I like mystery. Crime. These are the things that engage me, right? My wife sits there and she goes, what's wrong with you? She's like, this is all you put in your fucking head? It's all this negative, dark shit. And I'm like, yeah. Calms me down. This is what I enjoy. And she's like, you're mentally ill. But like...

It's obviously not just, I always like, I'm like, do you think they made this show for me? Like the thing I'm watching? Yes. So what I'm interested in is what's your take on why you think certain people just are drawn to these types of stories? Um,

I think it's a little bit taboo in that I think that all of us, in virtue of being human, do sort of have in the back of our minds a little bit of a morbid curiosity. Because it's what's coming for us all. It's like death is on the horizon. And as much as we do everything in our power to kind of stiff arm that and not let that be a part of our lives, it's absolutely a part of our lives. It's a part of every decision you make. It's a part of everything. Your whole life is based around the fact that you're mortal. Yeah.

And I think that content that delves into dealing with people who die, especially in ways that are like scary, it taps into something that it makes you feel a type of way. Like the content...

true emotion from you. It's like it's touching on something that is big in your life versus if you scroll on TikTok, right? And I'm not dissing TikTok, but you're going to be hard-pressed to find a particular piece of content, no matter how viral, that genuinely evokes an emotional response where you remember that piece of content. And so I think that the whole category of true crime, strange, dark, mysterious, this kind of darker side of the internet...

It's just part of human nature to be naturally curious because no one knows what happens when you die. And then on top of that, we're all sort of basically afraid of death. And so hearing about stories where like the worst thing happened to somebody that usually is pretty relatable. You know, it's not common that, you know, the victims in these stories are like celebrities. They're typically normal people that just were in the wrong place at the wrong time. And like, you can feel like, oh my God, that could happen to me.

to me. And so I think that's why there's an interest, even though it might just be, oh, I'd like to learn what happened and what... No. At the core, it's because we all have this slightly morbid curiosity. It's part of being human. Yeah, I think you're right. I think also there's a part of you when you hear this crazy thing that your brain actually is like, that can happen. Your brain goes, that can happen to you. That could happen to somebody you know. And I don't know, some of that is like

I don't want to say exciting, but it just elicits something inside of you that sparks, right? You go like, oh, this is a... It shouldn't be relatable, but all of a sudden it becomes a relatable story because it happened to another person. Yeah. No, I think that if you...

in terms of you know content that that people are really drawn to it's the stuff that makes you feel something yeah like that's the stuff you're gonna recall and tell your friends about and often it's sort of like the the uh it's either really bad stuff the evocative like oh my god i can't believe this happened to him the dark stuff or it's sort of like the opposite like these incredible stories of resilience and like these one in a million somebody who like wins the lottery who was about to like go broke it's like those are the stories that yeah that could happen

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There's... God, there's... Are there stories... Because now at this point, you're so familiar with so many of them. You've told so many of these stories. Are there ones that stick with you that you actually think about? There's one, actually. I will tell it to you if you want to hear it. I do want to hear it. Okay, so this one... Actually, I usually don't tell this one on interviews and stuff because it's pretty graphic. But I feel like this is a good environment to talk about. This is all about graphics. This is all about it. Add extra details. Yeah, okay. So...

Off the coast of Scotland, about seven miles off the coast of Aberdeen, Scotland, is this huge structure. It's called Magellan, and it's an offshore oil rig. And for those who don't know much about offshore oil rigs,

The people who work on these rigs, who are known as roughnecks, they're doing arguably one of the most dangerous jobs in the world. I mean, these structures are like hundreds of feet off, you know, the boiling water down below. You know, it's constantly windy. All the structure is slick, like it's wet constantly. And, you know, if you fall, you know, you could fall literally hundreds of feet to the water or fall, you know, down at one platform to the next where there's often not railings barring you from falling, you know, 10, 15 feet below, right?

It's just this really dangerous thing. And then on top of that, the actual drill that sits in the middle of these oil rigs, these massive structures, they almost look like office buildings out in the middle of the ocean. There are these drills that go straight down into the ocean to get the oil. And periodically, there's this thing called, I think it's called a blowout, where basically it explodes and there's really not even a reason for it. And there's nothing you can reasonably do to protect yourself.

So these roughnecks who were like in these filthy, hot, like dangerous environments as this drill is pumping all this oil, it could literally just explode at some point. And if you're near it, you're done. Okay. So it's this unbelievably dangerous environment. Not to mention it's very austere. Like you're out in the middle of the ocean miles from land.

And so these roughnecks, like the downside is how dangerous it is. The upside is you get paid really well. So like that's why people do it. And so typically the people who work these roughnecks, they work for like months at a time and then come home again. And so in, I think it was December of 2000, there was this guy named Gordon Moffitt who was a roughneck. He was 41.

And he was working on Magellan, this offshore oil rig off the coast of Scotland. And he was a mechanic. And so he didn't actually work on drilling the oil. His job was to basically maintain the drill. And he had done many tours, you know, out at Magellan in particular. He'd stayed there for months at a time, come home like this is a guy who's a seasoned roughneck.

And one thing you need to keep in mind about how these drills work is they basically drill 24/7, the drill itself. And at any point it stops drilling, like if there's an issue with the drill, the people who own the drill are losing a lot of money. It's very expensive to operate.

And so this drill goes 24-7 until the oil runs out, which can be years at a time, but it must be maintained at all time. And so Gordon's main job was just at any moment while he's out at this rig, he could be called to do some sort of maintenance. And so he might have weeks where he does nothing, and sometimes he has five things to do in the middle of the night. So it's just sort of like the on-call job. That's Gordon's job.

And so he's, he finished up one of the basic routine maintenance things he had to do on this particular day. It was mid-December of 2000. And he goes back to his room. And so there's all these little bunks that are on the structure itself. He goes back to his room, he takes off his stuff. And then he suddenly gets a call saying that, hey, there's a new issue with the drill. This is the middle of the night. It's stormy outside. I mean, it's like a perfect setting for a horrible disaster. Okay. He gets a call and it's like, hey, there's an issue with the drill. We need you to come back and fix the drill.

I don't know the particulars of the issue, but apparently for Gordon, what he was being asked to do was relatively routine, but a little bit complicated. There was an issue where imagine this. Basically, this drill is this long tube that kind of runs from the very top of the drill.

And there's a circular hole that kind of goes all the way down the platforms itself. The drill fits down through all of it and goes into the ocean. And periodically there'd be an issue with the drill itself where the issue was sort of like in between platforms. There's multiple platforms to the oil rig.

And there'd be an issue where the mechanic, in this case, Gordon, would have to access directly access the drill, but he couldn't reach it from the platform he's standing on here. And if he went to the platform above, these are like mesh graded platforms. It's too far down to reach to it. So the only way to access this portion of the drill is to be put in a harness and basically lowered like in between platforms. Almost like a window washer or something, right? That's a great analogy. Imagine a window washer, except they're on this drill.

And so he's done this before. This is a routine thing. He goes out to the drill. There's all these guys that are standing on the platform that sort of sat right above where the issue was, which is down below, like 10 feet below them. And so he gets out there. And so the way that they run this –

This harness system is this thing called a mouse hole, which is so there's like imagine a huge platform that kind of expands the entire space that is the platform, like the oil rig. It's the entire width and depth of the oil rig. And in the very center is like this big cutout, the circle where the drill fits right through it. You wouldn't lower him through that, that space between the drill and the cutout because the drill kind of wobbles around. You can get crushed between it.

And so on every single platform, there's like 10 or 15 of them. They would cut these 10 inch by 10 inch holes that were sort of like two, three feet away from the central cutout. And they would like lower their harnesses through those so that basically people like Gordon could access these inaccessible places without being in a situation where you get smashed. So you're safe that way. Yeah.

And so he goes to the platform. Again, it's nighttime. It's very windy. It's storming. And they're like, hey, it's right down there. And he's like, okay. So he goes down one level to the platform right below. You know, he can see his colleagues, you know, 20 feet above him on the platform right above. And he's like, all right, send down the harness. And so they feed this harness.

just a three-point harness that's connected to a metal rope or a line and they put it right down through that mouse hole on the platform above him and that metal line that the harness is connected to feeds all the way back up to this winch that's controlled by a winch operator that's you know a couple platforms up in this you know glassed in sort of like overlook where they can actually see the whole platform they can see the folks on the upper platform they can see sort of uh gordon but they sort of have eyes on everything

And so they feed this harness down through the mouse hole. It gets to Gordon, puts the harness on, and then he gives the thumbs up to the folks right above him. And then they in turn, turn and they call out to the, the, the winch operator, like, Hey, you know, he's ready to go up. And again, this is routine for everybody. Yeah. So the winch operator hits start and the winch slowly begins to retract and

And slowly but surely, Gordon is lifted off the ground on the lower platform and he's brought up, you know, 10 feet or whatever it was until he could access the section of the drill that he couldn't before. And he, you know, waves to the guys at that point, says, I'm good. I can see what I need to do. So the guys above him, they in turn, they wave to the hoist operator like, all right, stop it. He hits the button. It stops.

And so now Gordon is where he is. You know, he fixes the drill. It's all, it begins to work again. Everything's great. And so he signals to the guys above him like, Hey, I'm ready to go back down again. Cause he is done. And so they turn and they ask the winch operator to go ahead and lower him. And so the winch operators like, okay, he hits the start button and then just kind of like starts looking off into space. Like this is his only job is literally pushing this button. That's all he does. And so he's not really paying attention. Um,

he didn't realize that he had not reversed the settings of the winch, that instead of flipping it to now when he hit start, it lowers Gordon. He had left it in retract mode. And so when he hit start, the winch began to continue to raise Gordon up towards the platform above him where that mouse hole is. And so now he's not moving quickly. This is a slow moving winch. It's like...

And it's like, you know, 10 or 15 feet until he would even get to the platform above him. So it's not like, oh my God, stop the winch. It's more like, come on, dude. Come on, Bill. Like, you know, what are you doing up there? And so the guys on the upper platform right above Gordon, they notice this, they turn and they're like, come on, dude. Like,

You screwed it up. Yeah. But the guy doesn't hear them. And it's so windy and loud out. And he's not really paying attention that he can't hear any of the commotion, the hoist operator. He's just like not paying attention. And so after a couple of moments, the guys on the platform and Gordon, they start to realize like he doesn't know this is happening and we can't get his attention. And he was several platforms above them. It'd be hard to get to him quickly. Yeah.

And so they have this phone that's right nearby that radios up to the hoist operator. And so the guy's like, oh my God, he's not stopping. And Gordon, by this point, is starting to scream. And so one of them, the guys right above Gordon, they run to this phone, they grab it, they call. The hoist operator answers it. And he's like, stop the winch. It's going the wrong way. And so the hoist operator, he's like, oh my God. And he hits stop. He turns around.

He turns it and he begins to lower it, but nothing happens. Well, it was too late. So what had happened in the space of time between them realizing this wasn't stopping and going to the phone is Gordon had been pulled...

all the way up to right below the platform. And the only way he was going to go is through the mouse hole, which is a 10 inch by 10 inch hole. And the harness had no quick release on it. It was actually hooked to him. It was like somehow hooked to him in the back, but basically it was pulling from his waist. And so this three point harness that he can't get out of

raised him up until his pelvis was pressed to the underside of this hole. And then slowly, as they finally got the guy on the phone, they pulled his pelvis through the hole. And so by the time the guy hits stop, the guy's spine, pelvis, and most of his torso had been ripped through. And unfortunately he made it and he made it. Wow. This is a really uplifting story. So this, this is what, this is the one you think about a lot.

I do because what they said about Gordon is when he reached the underside of the hole, when the winch is about to pull him through and he knows it. He knows it. And it's a graded platform. They're looking down. He had sprawled himself out, hands above him, feet below him, like trying to push himself away from the winch that's pulling him pelvis first into the small hole. And they watched as this dude is like doing everything he can to stop as his spine broke and his pelvis was slowly pulled through the hole.

So ultimately, they – yeah, so he died and they changed – Did that guy get a bad mark at work? Yeah.

The winch operator? They said, you didn't do a great job that night. You've got to pick it up next time. You're getting one checkmark next to your name. You're not getting a three. You're getting a two. Wow. Have better sex with Blue Chew. Blue Chew is the original brand offering chewable tablets for better sex. And starting now, Blue Chew is offering a combo so strong, it'll knock your socks off and your neighbor's socks as well. You'll have to move towns with the amount of noise you'll be making. Blue Chew Max has arrived, and it combines the active ingredients...

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But there's still progress to be made. 26% of Americans who participated in a recent survey said that they have avoided seeking mental health support due to a fear of judgment. I remember those days. I remember 2001 saying, I'm going to the therapist for the first time. And someone said, do not say that out loud.

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I talk about going to therapy because I want to break the stigma of mental health. I'm in couples therapy with my wife. We have a great marriage. We are doing this preventatively, preemptively, so that when problems arise, we have tools to handle them, and it works. It freaking works. She said the other day I was putting something in the oven, and I went,

Leanne, Leanne. And she goes, what did I do? What did I do? And she was behaving like my parents, the way my parents behave. And we were reenacting my parents' relationship. And I put it in the oven and we walked outside and used the tools we learned in therapy to get through it. She said, thank you for bringing that to my attention.

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We're all better with help. Visit BetterHelp.com slash bears to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P.com slash bears. That's intense, man. Yeah, that's a good one. The one I thought, I was watching your stuff, and I was watching the five guys that went missing. Oh, that's an old one. I know. That's an old one. But that's like, I watched a recent one too, but...

The unexplained, you know. I know. Yeah, actually, it's funny that so that story, which I don't remember the details. Great. I do remember the story. It's funny. I that was one of the early videos. And I had filmed that at like three in the morning. And I actually had a huge booger in my nose. Oh, nice. Oh, cool. And so that that video that I just couldn't stop. It's the booger video. It's the booger video.

But yeah, that's the Yuba County Five. The Yuba County Five. That's right. The Yuba County Five, which is the American version of the... The Dyatlov Pass. Yeah, Dyatlov Pass. Yeah, and as I recall, it was like five folks that had mental disabilities. Yeah, some type of special needs, but high functioning. Very high functioning, and I...

I don't know. I kind of forget. I remember. Okay, tell me. Yeah, well, I remember that it was that the five of them basically had, you know, some type of, like, they're high-functioning but with some type of disability. And...

They basically were five guys that really came alive together. Even though they had their own issues, let's say, with groups or in public settings, when they were together, they were great and they loved basketball. And they had a huge basketball game the following day, but they wanted to go watch a game, a college game, San Jose State or something like that.

And so they went to the game to watch it. And then it was like, now it's time to go back, drive back like an hour or something back, maybe more so that they could get some rest and be able to play in the game the next day. Right. And when one of them didn't show up,

One of the parents became concerned. By the next morning, all five had not returned home. So they alerted authorities, like these five guys didn't come home from this basketball game. And making this long story short, their vehicle was found 70 miles in the wrong direction up a hill, just parked, which had nothing to do with where...

how they should have gone home essentially. Right. And eventually one of their bodies is found, but it's found like in this, uh, like a cabin, like sort of makeshift sort of cabin, but it, the guy's wrapped in blankets, but there's, um,

you know, he had resources. Like that's what was found. They found clothes, military, like food rations, a heating source, firewood, kindling, everything to make a fire. So like kind of didn't make sense that this guy was wrapped in these blankets and had died from somewhat from starvation, somewhat from the elements because he had the resources to be eating. And so like, but that's one guy. And then,

Two more were found 10 miles in another direction and they had been, you know, eaten mostly. And then, so like these guys were found everywhere. Yeah. And it was this crazy, well, I guess it still remains this mystery of like,

A, why did they go in this direction? Is it as simple as a wrong turn? Doesn't seem likely. Odd place to have the car found, just like parked. Didn't seem like, in the video, the police said it didn't match what they would interpret as kind of lost driving, which is usually in the loop or something. But yeah, it's one of those stories where you hear that story and you're like, God, I want to know. I know.

what really led to this. But that's part of the thing, right? Those mysteries just kind of sit with you. You're an amazing storyteller, dude. No, well, thanks. I told that story and I'm like, wow, I forget what happened. And I'm just telling you your own story. That's great. You're like, that should happen to me, man. You do it.

I love these stories. My first job out of college was I worked for America's Most Wanted. Really? Yeah. So that was my first job. Did you go for that? Did they recruit you? How'd that happen? I did an internship the summer prior when I was still in college, and I worked for one of their spinoff shows called Final Justice. No kidding. So I was doing all that, and they hired me, and I was a researcher, so I would pitch stories. Oh, wow. So I'd be like, let's go get this...

And they were like, great. So yeah, you just pitch them crime stories, essentially. So I've always liked this genre. Dude, that's great. I didn't know that. That's awesome. Yeah, I mean, but I'm telling you, if you do enjoy these things, this channel is great because it's really like,

I don't know. I also think part of it is that we all, all of us have limited attention spans now, especially in this day and age. Yes. And the stories are very consumable, which is like, you might have like a 23 minute video and it has like three stories. Yep. So it means like, you're kind of like, you're getting the,

important parts of the story there's still like an arc to it and then there's some type of resolution either just the results or the you know the end climax of the story and i feel like you know if you see a video and it says like hour 38 you're like i don't know man it's too much yeah too much to commit to it's a lot it's a lot to commit to yeah it's uh it's funny that you said about the the yuba county five how you're left thinking like i just want to know what happened yeah

I would say that if anything, that is the sentiment that I have always felt, like being so drawn to like these stories, less for the morbid curiosity that I mentioned before and more, like I studied philosophy in college. You know, at one point I thought I'd be a lawyer and I used to love the thought experiments that you do in philosophy. These, you know, pretend you have a bow and arrow where you can shoot the arrow and it can go in any direction infinitely and it'll never stop.

Unless it reaches the edge of existence. It could be billions and trillions and unbelievable distances away, but the edge of existence is the only thing that will stop it. So either that happens or you can believe that the arrow continues infinitely because the universe is infinite. So those are the two camps you have to fall into.

And then the class is asked, like, which do you believe would happen? The arrow hits the edge of existence, a wall, so to speak, or, you know, the universe is infinite and it goes on forever, both of which present unique problems. The first being, you know, if you say there's a wall that hits the edge of existence, no matter how far away it is, as a human, we have to ask ourselves, well, what's on the other side of that wall?

It's not nothingness because that actually is something. It's not a void. That is something. It's not a black hole. That is something. We can't conceptualize of nothingness. And so it forces us to say, okay...

Well, then it's infinite. But if it's infinite, the word infinite implies everything in the universe has happened an infinite number of times and has been duplicated and iterated upon an infinite number of times, which means that there literally has to be, by definition of the word infinite, another Earth where the only change to the entire Earth and the history of Earth is that like that Oso's bottle is not on this table. And literally everything else that happened on Earth is identical from start to finish.

But it's like that string theory where it's like there's an infinite number of us everywhere. It's like both outcomes are problematic. And I loved not having an answer. But there is one. There is an answer. There is an answer. We don't have it. That's the same way of like right now, there are these exoplanets out there. They found like 5,000 of these planets that are called exoplanets that are in what are called the Goldilocks zone. So it's the perfect...

universal conditions, at least as far as we know it, that in theory they could have liquid water. They could support life, these planets. There's like 5,000, and many of them actually, like Earth, we're barely into the Goldilocks zone. We're barely habitable. But they found like 5,000 in this little, they've only begun looking too, that in theory could support life. They're too far away for us to get to. But no matter what, if there's life, it's happening right now. We just can't, we don't know about it.

And so, right, I'm thinking to myself, forget the time and space, you know, issue of like maybe times different at certain distances. Just imagine right now whether or not we know it, there is potentially other life on those exoplanets right now. Maybe they have cities, maybe they have stuff better than ours, but it exists.

or it doesn't exist, but there is an answer, but we don't have access to that information. And so I've always been fascinated by stories that force you to confront the limits of human understanding, like the Yuba County Five. There is an answer for that, but we don't have the information. There may or may not be life on exoplanets, but we don't have access to the information, but there is an answer. And I love stories that make you think about that. - You're so much smarter than Bert. It's so fun to talk to you.

Yeah, there is an answer. And that is the thing that like the other, like the types of stories too, that always like you had another one about this. It was a family where it was like a man, his wife and maybe one or two children. But the wife and the children went away for the weekend because he wanted to watch the Super Bowl. Oh, yeah. And when they got home.

you know, like the VCR was still recording. And so, and the kitchen still had like food, like ready to eat, like a sandwich was like ready to go. And they were like, Oh, he must be, you know, he must've run out or something. This is strange, but he's clearly was like just here. Yep. And then he just never appears. And the, the way that the story unfolds of like a body being killed,

I think it was a body was found. In California? Yes. I think it was thousands of miles away. And then DNA was used to confirm, I believe, right? Wasn't it the DNA confirmed? I do know. I think they confirmed that he, and this is an older one, that he was found thousands of miles away, like walking on the side of the highway or something. On the side of the highway. Yeah.

But like those things, so this guy, you know, he died. Yeah. But those stories where you're like, wait a minute, what's the fucking story is like the thing, right? Where you go, yeah, but there has to be some explanation for how and why he ended up here. I mean, it's almost feels like one of those like,

When the person decides, like, I'm faking my death today. Oh, yeah. You know, like those stories where you're like, oh, my God. Because, I don't know, we'll never actually really know. I know. What happened to that guy. Which is very frustrating. Yeah. By the way, when you look at the space stuff, do you ever go to, like, NASA IG and just look at the comments for anything they post? All of them are like, why lie?

Like, it'll be like a photo. They're like, hey, we just got this image from our, and they're like, why lies, AI? Dude, nobody buys it. Not one. Nobody buys it, dude. And you're like, god damn, like, most of the population is like, this is bullshit. Dude, it's crazy. Hey, we have a photo of Jupiter's moon. Bullshit. And you're like, okay.

Cool. Yeah. No, I mean, I want to believe it's real. You know, I do. But yeah, no, I love it. Here it is. Is that Katy Perry? Good Photoshop. Is that Katy Perry? Yeah. You know my favorite one? Because there's a lot of morons, obviously. My favorite is when there's any image of the moon and people go, where's the flag?

like like as if the moon is a football field it's very and like you would know you could see it all it's like it's equivalent of somebody showing a photo of earth and you being like yeah there's my house like no you're not gonna fucking see the whole thing dude like where's the flag obviously fake jesus christ

Some good green screen, y'all. It's just fucking insane. Yeah, dude. Yeah. Yeah, nobody buys any of it. That's so crazy. I mean, you can kind of see it with like the... Filmed at night in Arizona.

AI NASA. I mean, maybe. Maybe it's all a big ruse. Sure. It's a hell of a ruse. Yeah, my favorite part about that ruse is the amount of people participating. It's one of the best coordinated ruses in the history of mankind. You realize seven people can't agree on an appetizer, but all of a sudden we have fucking 40,000 people going like, yeah, we'll all keep this secret. It's cool. Yeah. Fucking, I wish I was that just blissfully dumb.

Just go along with it. What do you think about the Katy Perry, the five who went to space? Is that real? Did they go up there? Yeah, they don't even... But like...

That's the one that everyone's saying is fake. That's not fake. Which is not the moon. What are you talking about? It's because it's like, oh, we're just going to trash these five people, so let's call it fake. And also, the part that they get into disagreements are like, what's space, right? So how high up? Sure, I know they didn't go as far as our astronauts go. It's basically a trip that a really wealthy person, they can go extra high.

In a plane. Real high. Yeah. They didn't go to the outermost depths of space. Fucking Pluto. I get it. But people are saying...

I mean, I saw this guy who's like... His whole channel on Instagram is like... Everything that he shows, he's like, it's a hologram. You're like, it's not a fucking hologram, dude. He's like, look at the glitch here. And you're like, I don't think you understand how frame rates work on cameras, but that's an actual rocket going up and down. Yeah, I think they took their trip. Yeah. They were... They just got dunked on. I mean, that's what's happening here. It was like... Well, you also know that...

No one was ever going to really celebrate this. Yes, these five. Just 250 grand a ticket if you want to do this. That's insane. It reminds me of when the COVID celebrities did Imagine All. And everyone was like, what the fuck? Nobody cares. Nobody cares about these five. And they were making it seem like

these were like five researchers that finally got their shot this is for humanity yeah no just five rich people basically that's all it is who got to go up and do this yeah I think that's the main gripe is this is not for humanity this is a rich person's vacation and I like that they did what universities do when they do their pamphlets where they're like make sure we get an Asian couple blacks

Nice. We want people to know that we do it. Everybody's welcome. Well, it's for humanity. Yeah. That didn't go over too well. No, no. And they have to also look hot while they're doing it. I think that's a key to being an astronaut is you have to look really attractive. Make sure it's a form-fitting suit that shows off your...

Like hers is, Lauren's is clearly bespoke. Like it fits her so well. Yeah, it wasn't, she didn't just pick that one up. They measured her and they were like, yeah, we got it. It's part of the deal. Yeah, I don't know. It's, oh, it even says this. Look, it's a successor to Imagine Video. That's what it says in the caption there.

Yeah, that's what it reminds me of. Nice. It's exactly that. You hit it. You felt the vibe. Completely out of touch, inaccessible, unrelatable thing. You love to see it. Aren't you happy for us? No. No one is. No one is. Nobody's happy for you. You also, we didn't touch, but you actually started your videos doing stories of your Navy SEAL days. I did. Didn't go over well. So other SEALs, they get mad at like,

SEALs who are like talking about basically how bad ass it is to be a SEAL, right? Yeah. I mean, so there's like this, the thing is, is because I was in the SEAL teams and really I knew the culture firsthand, you know, despite what you see today where like you can Google Navy SEAL and there's a plethora of books and TV shows and movies and there's no shortage of people talking about their experience. And I'm not passing judgment at all. I did a lot of that myself. Yeah.

But despite that, there's actually a huge number of active duty Navy SEALs and former SEALs who are not going to say a word, who have done some of the most insane shit you could imagine. And they will never utter a word of it to anybody. And so when you're in the community, like you're very aware of that. Like you see firsthand, like my first day at SEAL Team 2. So SEAL Team 2 is on the East Coast.

So I finished like my two years of training or whatever it is. It's like this arduous, long journey. You finally made it. And then it's like check-in day. And like, it's been building to this moment. Like you've done all this stuff, but then you realize like, oh my God, like I have to walk into this like heavily guarded building where active veteran SEALs are. And I'm like the brand new guy who's done nothing.

So it's very intimidating. It's designed to be very intimidating. And so you go in in your dress uniform. So you stand out like an idiot because you have no rhythm. You've done nothing. So you have nothing on your uniform that suggests you've done anything.

But I went into SEAL Team 2 and I have to go through this the gate to get into the base. Then there's another fence that you have to get through. And then there's like there's another door to get into the building. It's this nondescript tan building. You can't even see inside of it. But it's like where SEAL Team 2 is. And there's a couple hundred SEALs per SEAL team and loads of support people. But there's lots of SEALs in this building.

And when I checked in, it was supposed to be, you know, like Christmas break. So I didn't expect to see that many active SEALs. I thought like I'd sneak my check-in day, kind of get my thing punched. And then I get to show up in my regular uniform a couple of days later, kind of blend in a little bit. But no, the platoon of SEALs, the 25 SEALs or whatever it was, that I was going to be joining their platoon had just come back from Afghanistan. It was like a rocky deployment. Nobody got killed, but a bunch of people got hurt.

And they had come back from the backside. Like, they came in the secret entrance that I didn't know about. And so they're in SEAL Team 2, and I'm checking in to their platoon. And they're, like, in street clothes. And, like, they got back from the battlefield, like, a week ago. And very kinetic deployment, like, doing lots of stuff. And so I finally get inside of SEAL Team 2, and I'm, like, petrified. And this guy walks down the hall, and he's got this, like...

comically like action figure looking scar that went from the top of his head across his face, over his eye, down his side. He is yoked beyond belief, like steroided out. Like you wouldn't believe he's like this huge guy and he's hulking down the hallway. And he had a,

Yeah.

That's what he says? And you're like, hi, I'm new. I'm joining your team. But these are the types of people that are in this guy. An IED had blown up in his face, and then he had gone on to save somebody's life. And it's just another day in the life of SEAL teams.

But there's like all these people that are like true superheroes in the SEAL teams that it's just a thing that you don't really talk about what happens in the SEAL teams. And it's not really to do with the sensitivity of it, like from a classified perspective, although certainly that's a component of it. It's much more like the trident, the insignia that you wear, the gold gaudy insignia.

it was built on other people dying, basically. Like the culture, the history, the pride around this brand, if you will, not to cheapen it, but around this brand was really built almost literally on people dying. Yeah. And doing stuff that's just unbelievably horrible. And...

for you, an individual, to go out and even in a sort of benign way, talk about your experience to the civilian public who just look at Navy SEALs as, oh my God, you're so amazing. You're capitalizing on, you know, other people's deaths. Even if you say, oh, I'm just using it to teach leadership or I'm just doing it to talk about adversity. Yeah.

in the active duty community, it's viewed as incredibly exploitative because anybody who's in knows the sacrifices firsthand that are being made. And you know the people that are never going to talk about it. And then if you get out and you're like, hey, I was a Navy SEAL. And you say it to non-SEALs, to civilians, they're going to look at you as if you're the superhero from inside the team who's never going to talk about it. Sure.

And so you're taught, I want to say like from day one of training to basically never talk about being a SEAL. Or if you do, it needs to be so downplayed that you're like trying not to talk about being a SEAL in relationship to the public. Yeah.

But there's a conundrum there because you put all your life into becoming a SEAL. It's this really difficult thing. And you finally become a SEAL. Then you go through these crazy experiences. I mean, I was only in for the shortest amount of time you could be a SEAL. So seven years. It's the shortest amount you can be a SEAL for. So I did like nothing. But in those seven years, like I've seen combat. I've been nearly killed. I've nearly drowned. I've done all these fucking crazy things.

And so what? I'm supposed to leave the military and never talk about those seven years? I mean, I guess there's people that do that. But also, you know, you also have the personality. Like some people, it's not in them to do that. Not even because of the way they view the rule, the unspoken rules of it. They just don't have the personality to do that.

Express it. Yeah, express it. That's definitely true. That's part of it, right? Like, it is like... Dude, it is the ultimate resume line in... I think especially amongst...

males like it doesn't matter if you're talking to like a super academic or if you're talking to like a total meathead somebody says seal both those guys are like no shit like every yeah they're like that's the coolest thing it kind of is the coolest thing I think my perspective on special forces also as I've gotten older the thing that I I used to just kind of like brand it as like oh badass yeah but you realize that badass is just kind of

this broad stroke doesn't really mean much. Sure. The thing that I think about now when I think about, cause I know a number of seals and other special forces guys is like, I go, Oh, this person has like, uh, I really think about their mental. Like I go there, they're mentally tough. Like they're, they're capable of, of hitting a switch or opening a door in there that not everybody, but that's the thing that I think about. Like this person, uh,

will push themselves harder than everybody else in this room like they they're willing to suffer more that's actually what you just said at the end i would i was going to say that it's actually it's all that's true there's like this this mental thing that you access when you go through training so the training i mean really it it's it's two years long of training but really there's six months of it which is called buds it's out in san diego it's the famous part of training

All it really is is putting you in increasingly stressful situations where there's also your peers are watching your performance. So it's the stress of being watched by instructors and your peers and doing the stressful thing over and over and over again where you have less and less sleep, you're more and more tired, you're more and more beat up.

it isn't that you gain the skill to put up with it. It isn't like you, you, you learn it and you gain it. It's either you fucking have it or you don't. And you will learn if you have it by the end of training. And,

And so it's like you realize there's this gear in you where you can suffer longer than the average person can. And that's what SEAL training teaches you more than anything else. I can withstand. You can withstand just horrors. Yeah. If you've done it before and they tell you during training that.

like this is nothing compared to what you're going to do like in actual combat and on deployments. And I remember thinking like, come on, like we're simulating drowning. Yeah. I'm going to be doing that every day out of deployment. Um,

But the truth is there were definitely times where, you know, on my single combat tour, I only did one that was combat. There were absolutely moments where I'm like, holy shit, that was right. Like this was way more stressful, more cold, more miserable than anything in training. And it's because I've accessed that before that I'm able to function. Your brain was able to like keep going. And then you look around and when I, so I got hurt and I got,

I have a grenade detonated near me and it nearly killed me and my teammates saved my life. But after I was in the hospital, they did this whole debrief with me where like they ask you, you know, what happened? You know, what could you have done differently? And my debrief point that was then put into like...

A couple of speeches that this commander gave was, to be honest, my memory of what happened on the night that the grenade detonated next to me. And there were seven of us in this alleyway in the middle of the night, middle of a gunfight. This thing detonates and it nearly kills me. And everyone's like hurt. Our medic is the one guy who's concussed but not hurt. And he's...

under fire, like dragging us to safety. We called in what's called a danger close airstrike where you have to get the initials of your commander, I think it is, where you're effectively calling in an airstrike on yourself because you're overrun. And it's like, try not to hit us, you know, but we're prepared to be killed because we have to take out the enemy. It's like this chaotic scene. My debrief point was in that chaos, even though I was sort of in and out of consciousness, all I saw was calm.

Like the JTAC, who's the guy in charge of talking to the aircraft. He's got two, he's got radios talking on both ears. He has his internal comms with like the people on the ground that are trying to figure out where we are. And he has this where it's like eight different aircrafts that are all flying above us asking, what do you want to drop? Where do you want to drop it? And he's also talking to the medic who's working on me. So he's got like eight conversations happening. He's like, all right, yep.

Hold on, Charlie 1. Yeah, go ahead and drop it over there. Yep, go ahead. Foxtrot 3. Like, calm as can be. Incredible. And I told the commander, my debrief point was like, the training works. Like, in the worst environment, calm is what ultimately came through. Everyone was just...

Yep, we're just doing the things we've been trained to do. This is what... Gunfire, explosions, calm. This is what fucks up most people in life, even outside of combat situations. In stressful situations, people don't stay calm. Yeah. They're not in combat, but it's like when things get crazy, it's like the whole thing is you come out of that usually if you're the one that can stay calm. Yes. And also...

when you're around other SEALs, especially older guys that have done multiple rotations that are really grizzled, it really helps you be calm because you're seeing other people just being calm. There's no panic response. Everyone's just like, all right, yeah, go in there. And in there is like active shooters. Just go in there and take them out. Just go in there and take them out. It's fucking nuts, dude. Can you actually, because this is what I was curious about, can you sign up for the Navy and go, I just, I want to go...

to bud school? Like can you just sign up? - Yeah. - You can. - You can. - You don't have to like serve time, like you know, be in there for a while as a regular, no. - No, it's sort of conditional though. So it used to be the case for the longest time that you had to join the Navy, become a regular Navy person doing whatever job, and then only once you were established were you able to like transfer and go try out for the SEAL teams, and if you didn't make it, you'd go back to the job you had. Now, really when I joined, which was in 2010,

That was right when they started this thing called the Navy SEAL Challenge Contract. They were trying to drum up support. It was right before the bin Laden raid happened. So there wasn't as much interest. I was actually, I was in Bud's when bin Laden was taken out and they called all the SEALs and everybody onto the grinder, this famous location where all the PT happens. And our commander was like, we fucking killed bin Laden. Everyone's like, yeah, like all these SEALs. And I'm like this brand new guy. I'm not, anyways.

That's pretty cool. Yeah, it was cool. So the SEAL Challenge contract is you go to boot... Once you pass a physical screening test to demonstrate you're fit enough, you basically go to boot camp where you have a kind of different boot camp than normal. It's a little bit harder, I suppose. And then after boot camp, you basically go directly to SEAL training. If you don't make it though, which a lot of people don't, statistically more than 75% probably won't make it. Those numbers are probably wrong, but it's a lot. Right.

you get recycled to what's called needs of the Navy, which basically means you have to stay in the Navy and do your enlistment or do your contract, but you don't have a job because you didn't go to a job. So the Navy basically says, okay, we need someone to paint stripes on the road in Japan. Fucking A, man. Like straight up. So it's like...

Now, that's not everybody, but it's a pretty crappy thing. But to close out what I was saying before, I got out of the military and I posted a lot of stuff about being a SEAL. Yeah. And I knew what I was doing was breaking this unspoken rule, but I was medically retired and it sort of cast me out of the military faster than I expected. I got kids, I married, a lot of excuses, but I was like, what do I do? Yeah. And I'll just talk about being a SEAL on the internet. Yeah.

So I dressed it up in my mind that I'm doing this to teach people things. When in reality, I'm trying to build a personal brand to make money to have an income because I didn't know what I wanted to do. And I got fucking disowned real quick. Really? Oh, hardcore. That kind of sucks, man. Yeah. But the thing is, I can't act like I didn't expect it to happen. Yeah, you kind of knew what was coming. 100%. And so even though I fucking hated the people who would send me these...

By the way, the hate that I got is different than typical online hate like that I'll get on YouTube or something.

These are people that want you to know who's sending it to you. That will like make a point to be like, here's my name. Here's where I live. Come meet me. Like it was, it's not like, oh, you suck. It's like, hey buddy, I'm the, I'm the chief over at a development group, SEAL Team 6. And I saw your fucking post. Why don't you shut the fuck up online? Wow. Yeah. Stuff like, I had a medal of honor recipient be like, you're a fucking clown.

Really? Yeah. That does suck, though. Yeah, it was humbling. But what it did is I deleted my SEAL content because I was like, well, this is a horrible idea. And transitioned to this. I'll tell that story about the Dyatlov Pass mystery. It went viral, and I was just fortunate enough to be here. Well, I'm glad that happened. Yeah, hey, you know, and now I do something that's totally divorced from...

the military, which is nice because it just allows me to have like a truly second career and not draft on the first one. Yeah. I, um, I, I have a few seal friends. My favorite thing is just to get a couple of drinks in them because they'll start telling better stories. I bet they're really good. Yeah. Cause you're like asking sober and they're like, yeah. And then you go here, have another. And then,

And then they're like, I'll tell you. So we were coming up on this ridgeline. And you're like, OK, cool. So my dad was a Marine. Nice. I think I knew that. And he said, there's no greater feeling than killing the enemy. Do you feel like that is also true? There is no greater feeling than when you get contacted. So when shots ring out. Yeah.

There's a combination of where's it coming from. Yeah. And that's sometimes very hard to figure out. Sure. And then when you realize that you and the forces that you have at your back, which is innumerable. I mean, you have like A-10 Warthog jets coming in. You got fixed wing, you got castle. You have everything. You have the arsenal of the United States at your back. All the toys. And when you realize that the people who are trying to kill you have been discovered. Yeah. And you now get to call in your armament. Yeah. And handle it. It's like, oh, we just won.

One of my friends told me that he was like, he goes, I had a different experience than you as an American. Because he's a SEAL. He's like, because when 9-11 happened, he goes, that experience for Americans stateside was kind of a universal thing. He's like, we were deployed. He's like, so it just, it was like, you know, it was news, but you didn't get to feel it.

And I was like, yeah, but so what happened? He was like, oh man, they gave us stuff that we'd never seen before. He's like, all this shit that like, you know, you hear about things are in development. He's like, those things, those weapons just showed up and they're like, go use these. He's like, we just got to like laser beam, mow down places. Like, I was like, oh, that's pretty cool. He's like, yeah. So my memory of nine 11 isn't like your, like what you experienced. He's like, it was just there. Like, here's all,

all the stuff. Go ahead and use it. I was like, wow, that's pretty crazy. Oh,

When we got to Afghanistan for, again, my one combat tour, it was like this little outstation that was, meaning it was not a big fortified base. It was like this little couple of tents and HESCO barriers. It was pretty small, but there was this underground bunker that had been basically building up over the course of the entire Operation Enduring Freedom. So the entire time NATO has been in Afghanistan for post 9-11 war, this bunker was being filled with

anything spec ops guys wanted because this was a spec ops outstation and so it's like this this little you can barely even tell it's a bunker it's a shitty like rusted door you open it up and it's just like this vault of every type of munition you could possibly imagine just as far it's like that that scene in indiana jones yeah where it's putting away the boxes so with the you know whatever it is it's like this unbelievable scene and we would go in there and like go shopping yeah for stuff we wanted to bring on our on our operation fucking cool yeah

It's crazy. That's so cool. Yeah. It's why every, this is like, you know, it's not as obviously as romantic as the movies, but this is why like every dude sees anybody, any spec ops thing. And they're like, this is the coolest. Like, it just seems like the coolest. Yeah. I mean, honestly, even when I was literally a seal, like I would be around these other guys that have been doing it for a while. Yeah. And you're just like in awe. Like some guys I'll say this. So like they're,

There's the white side and the dark side. Within the SEAL community, there's basically the white side, which is all the SEAL teams with the exception of SEAL Team 6. And then the dark side is SEAL Team 6. And it's basically, I was never a part of it, didn't screen for it. I've not been a part of it. So this is only what I know, knowing people over there and sort of knowing the process. But to become a SEAL Team 6 operator, and this is not secret,

You become a SEAL, a Whiteside SEAL. You go through BUDS, you do your two years of training, and you check into a vanilla team, so a Whiteside team, like SEAL Team 2 is a Whiteside team. And you have big mission sets, but it's...

The president isn't calling SEAL Team 2 to be like, go get bin Laden. The president is calling SEAL Team 6 to do these tier one operations, like the most sensitive that are no-fail missions. And so what you do is if you become a white side SEAL, so you've now, you're a percentage of a percentage of people that have made it to that point. You then have to deploy at least once. It's usually twice. And usually the expectation is you got to see combat.

After you finish, you basically go through this totally new screening process where if SEAL Team 6 has looked at your resume as a SEAL and has talked to people and thinks that like your reputation is good enough, you get the chance to go try out for SEAL Team 6.

It is a, apparently the guys that have made it through, it is arguably like 10 times harder than anything you did to become a SEAL. Because now the starting point is everybody's a Navy SEAL with probably combat experience. So how do we figure out who's the best SEAL?

amongst the SEALs. And so it's like this, it's grueling. Guys get like these horrible injuries. It's like these crazy long, it's like a year of training and like a handful of these SEALs make it through. So it's like 50 guys start, it'll be like 10 get through and like barely. It's like brutal. Those guys, you know who they are from the start. Like I, there's like, I'm not gonna say his name, but like there was a guy who was my, it's called my LPO, my leading petty officer. He was basically my,

My immediate report. So he was sort of in charge of the 25 of us. He was the guy who, if he were on an operation, he not only led it, but was like going in the door like with us. So he's like a boots on the ground leader. This dude was so good at fucking everything. He could...

Marksman. He was actually the guy on comms with nine different things going on in the middle of that disaster. There's just something different about some of these guys that go to SEAL Team 6. Those are two different classes of people. There's SEAL Team 6 guys, and there's guys like me. I look at SEAL Team 6 guys in awe.

They're the all pros. They're like the all pros of the all pros. That's incredible. Yeah. What was your injury? You said because it was a grenade went off? So at the end of the deployment in 2014, or not at the end, but towards the end, one of our missions or one of our regular operations was we were trying to sort of slow the tide of weapons shipments and...

suicide bombers making their way into Kabul, the big city in Afghanistan. And there was this town called Zargan Shah, which is, you know, it's mud huts everywhere and it's typical Afghani sort of architecture, but it was a very densely populated area that was kind of situated up against this mountain. And that's where a lot of the suicide bombers and weapon caches would be kept before going to Kabul. And so over the course of our deployment, we would go in there basically to

stop people or whatever. And it was very kinetic. We'd go in there, we get shot at. And there was just this one day after this is months of doing this. We're very familiar with the area. We go in and, um, we just got effectively ambushed. We sort of walked into an alleyway, uh,

And unknowingly, there were people up in the windows. They started shooting at us. A couple of our partner force got shot. Our dog got shot. But the SEALs were able to sort of take up positions and fight back. And over the course of like maybe five, six hours, there was like sporadic gunfighting throughout the city, village, whatever you want to call it. But it was one of those days where we just we never saw anything.

who was shooting at us. I mentioned to you before, like sometimes you really don't know. You don't know. They had the drop on us. They had all these, the fighting season had just begun. It was starting to get warm. And so there were like lots of extra fighters in town and they have these tunnels underground where they would just vanish. And so we're basically getting fucked up, like getting shot up. We can't find them. And it was getting to the point where we're like, well, this sucked. Like this was a bad day.

And so it's nighttime and we're getting ready to leave. And by this point, we had broken up into smaller teams called fire teams, where you're just like little clusters of SEALs and partner force. And...

Our drone overhead spotted what they thought were what they called military age men, MAMs for short. You can't see if they have weapons on them or not from the overhead. You can't actually positively identify weapons at all. You can suggest that you think they have it, but basically all you can say is, hey, there are some MAMs. They're positioned in a field that's sort of near where you're going to be X-filling, and it looks like they're setting up to attack you on the way out. And so our fire team...

uh just happened to be physically closest to where these guys were yeah and so we decided we would just you know it's dark we're on night vision just sneak over to this wall that sort of overlooked this field and based on the intel from this drone we believed we could get up to this wall poke our heads over and on the far side of this field like 100 yards away from us would be these ma'ams and we could kind of scope out who they were what they're doing and so we

We went down this alleyway that went right up to this like T intersection where the T right in front of us is the wall. We're going to be peering over into this field. We go down to the wall. And again, we're expecting to look over the wall, look on the other side, see these guys. But yeah,

When we got there, the intel was sort of backwards. And so, and it's all been filmed. Like we had people back home or back at the different bases watching us like, what the fuck are you guys doing? We get to the wall and we realized that we can actually hear these military age men. And there was at least several of them. They were combatants, but they hadn't heard us. And we are literally, this wall is maybe six, seven feet tall. That's all that separates us. This mud wall between these guys who are hunched up against walls

the wall, they're talking frantically. Like we didn't know what they were saying because we had sort of broken off from our main group. And so we're all on night vision. It's pitch black and they haven't heard us yet. And so we knew if, if we walk away, they could hear us. They're gonna shoot us in the back, you know? So our decision was, we're just going to engage them right now. We can see they have weapons and this is the middle of a, we've already been shot at, like we're, we're cleared hot. And so the guy I had mentioned before, who's went to team six, who's, he just, he looked over at the guy next to me, all SEALs.

He got down on his knee and he just, without making a sound lightly, he tapped his leg, like stand on my leg and start shooting. And so the guy next to me stands on my buddy's leg, peers over the wall. And as soon as he starts shooting these dudes on the other side of the wall, he's

they, in fear of being compromised, in fear of being found, were all holding grenades. And they had pulled the pin out of their grenades. So the way a grenade works is there's a thing called a spoon. It's like a little handle that you clamp down. And so long as the spoon is being held, whether the pin is in or not, it can't detonate. But if you pull the pin and then you let go of the spoon, which releases the spoon, it starts a timer and it detonates. So these guys were holding the spoon, but had pulled the pin out. Basically, if they die...

They'll let go of the grenade and they become a booby trap. That's the idea. And so we start engaging them. They don't pull the pin. The pins are out and they threw the grenades over the wall.

And I'm just like next to the guy who's shooting. And it's we had the drone overheads shining down this infrared spotlight on us that was flashing. It was it was a targeting sparkle. So it was like flashing in and out. And you can only see the light if you're on night vision. Otherwise, it would have been pitch black. And so under night vision, it's like it's light for a second, then dark, light, dark, light, dark. And I see this grenade coming over the wall and time slows down. It was like this.

full stop. It's like when you think you're going to die, your brain goes into hyperdrive. And so I see it in the light. It disappears. See it in the light. It hits my shoulder. And when it did, I'm like, that's going to blow my head off. I'm going to die here. It kept falling. I see it. It disappears. I see it. It makes it to like, and this is all in a fraction of a second. It hits like my leg and I'm like, oh, maybe it'll just blow my legs off and I'll live.

hits the ground and we were standing in like a sewage drainage and so it lands in basically and then it detonates we only managed to like turn slightly and you know my memory of what happened is not what actually happened i basically was it felt like somebody threw a bunch of rocks at me and then i was like sort of on the ground and i remember thinking like oh now i'm being dragged to safety and i couldn't believe i was alive when in reality that my medic he was the one guy who hadn't been totally taken out by the grenade

The guys on the other side of the wall, despite being mortally wounded, began shooting back at us. We had these other fighters in the town who began, like, they're going to fight to the death. And so they just began shooting arbitrarily in our direction, knowing they could be hitting their own people. They don't care. Like, RPGs are being fired at us. It's just like bedlam.

And all of us are down. And my medic would tell me years later when we finally talked about it, he's like, I looked over at you and I thought you were laying on ice. I was like, that's weird. And then he realized it was actually blood because it wasn't frozen out. And he's like, there's this massive pool of blood under you that I thought was ice.

But then I realized it was blood and I triaged you. You're dead. So you were, you had been opened up. Yeah, it hit my leg and my hip and I was bleeding to death. And so I was like unconscious, like on the ground, like immobile. My gun got like the front of the barrel got like blown off.

not entirely, but it damaged the gun significantly. So I was like out and my medic basically triaged and began working on the people he could save all while getting shot. I think he's up for the medal of honor, by the way, like what he did was incredible. Wow. Pulls everybody out. They went back and got me and found I was still alive.

They brought me to relative safety, which was like I described that T intersection. They brought us back down the stem of that T. But fighters are still like arbitrarily shooting roughly in our direction. It's like rounds are impacting around us. And it's just like we're about to get overrun. Nobody knows where we are because we're all spread out across the city. And so I'm just like I'm aware that I'm alive, but I'm losing blood. And I remember looking at my medic who was feeling my legs to try to find the bleed and

And he's like, you're calm as can be. You're going to be fine. Everything's fine. And I'm like, I'm 100% dying. And then I remember my hearing started to sound like a helicopter, like woof, woof, woof. And then it went silent. And then my vision went totally black. So I'm like in a void. I'm like in my head, but totally alive.

And all I could think about was a couple of things. I thought like, man, I wish I had started a family with my wife because I'm going to die now. Yeah. And then the other part was, I wonder what it's going to say in the newspaper about this. Not how heroic I was, but specifically, I wonder if they'll use my whole name, Jonathan B. Allen or John Allen.

And I was like, I wonder what he'll say. That was the thought you had. That was like the salient thought I had in my head. And then like seconds later, I kind of came back to my medic had put tourniquets on my legs like seconds before I would have bled to death. And then he, along with the other guys he had saved,

they like picked me up and like ran a mile like under fire to the helicopter that did a hot extract where they dumped us on the helicopter, which only had space for me and the other more really badly wounded guy. Those guys had to then go back into the fray to go reconnect with the team, knowing there's fighters everywhere and they fought their way back. I got to a tent. And when I got in there, there were all these seals that had found out.

seals that were not a part of our group. They were at this other base. They had discovered there's this like tracker where you can see on a computer screen what's going on. It's sort of in code. And they saw our call signs come across that designated two seals were being brought to this tent. They could be mortally wounded. And so when I got into this tent after being brought off the helicopter, there were all these team guys, seals that had put on their best uniforms and were sitting in the tent waiting to receive us in case we died. And

And so I get in the tent and there's all these surgeons and doctors and white, like ready to do whatever surgery needs to happen. And I'm looking over in the corner at these guys in their uniforms, which is odd. Nobody wears nice uniforms, like somber looks on their faces. And I'm like, Oh my God, I'm like, am I going to die? Like, I didn't think I was going to die. And then the guy's like, all right, I'm gonna give you ketamine. All right, bye. Get a mean. And then I like, like blacked out, woke up in, uh, in Germany where the, that a lot of guys get when you get hurt overseas, you go to Germany. Um,

And then you just wake up in Germany. Yeah. They had to do like a debridement where they pull the shrapnel out of you. And so I was like under drugs and woke up in Germany. And then I kid you not, like six days later,

Back home in Virginia, pushing a shopping cart through Home Depot. Wow. Like literally a week earlier, I nearly died and then I was back home. This reminds me of a mission I did on Call of Duty recently where we go into this home. Dude, I'm telling you. That's how you hurt your arm. Yeah. It was fucking crazy, man. Like I had to work my way through this thing. Enemy fire. It's a very similar story. It is. It's the same thing. Yeah. I guess we're both kind of vets when you think about it that way. It is. It's identical, dude. Yeah.

Yeah, dude. It's been really... It's fun getting to know you. Likewise, man. Your content... I hate that word. I do, too. The channel is very fun. It's totally addictive. Thanks, man. I was like, I'll watch one of these and fucking 12 into them. You cited some classics. That demonstrates you're in there. I'm in there, dude. And...

Very excited for the graphic novel, the second one. Where Nightmares Live, coming out end of this year. And you can pre-order that book right now, I believe. Yeah, if you go to book.ballenstudios.com, you can pre-order this book here. It's going to be great. The first one came out last year. It was a New York Times bestseller. This one's going to be even better. So book.ballenstudios.com. And for all things Mr. Ballen, I am Mr. Ballen on social media. You can go to ballenstudios.com.

And that's it. And yeah, there you have it. And if you want to know anything about Special Forces, just hit me up, dude. I'll tell you my experiences too.

All right. Thanks for coming, man. Thanks, man. We'll see you guys next week. Thank you, dude.