0:07

I'm Dan and I am 1/2 of the tracer Burnout team the better half the hand I'm Roger I'm Roger and I am the lesser half of the tracer burnout team nice equal portions are right um so do you guys want to go into a little bit about like who you are where you're from your military service what LED you to join the military um I know we have an enlisted and an officer here so try not to hold it against me yeah yeah see how the work got done yeah yeah so I am a well both of us are military brats both our dads were career army officers and so you know grew up all over the place um but I always called here in Fayetteville I always called it home cause it's it's pretty much where we always came back to we'd leave for a few years and we'd come back for you know a few years and then we leave for a few years and come back but I mean I always knew that I was gonna join the army like once I hit like 10 and figured out I couldn't be a ninja you know and after after you know over 20 years and you know all the all the deployments and everything there's really nowhere else I wanted to to come back to to call home other than other than Fayetteville so even though I was never stationed here at Fort Bragg Fayetteville's always been home to me and so I came back nice you can always be a ninja I don't know what you're talking about I don't I don't know if either one of us have enough cartilage left to be ninjas at this point but you know I thought that if Chris Farley could do it then I could do it that's right rest in peace I guess I was going about 65 tops yeah yeah perfect okay so again I'm I'm Roderick similar background to to Dan you know my my father was a career soldier as well spent much of my childhood in favor for Brang and Dan and I kind of joke around about this from time to time but you know people have asked me like is the army the thing that you always wanted to do and I guess the answer to that is I guess because I'm maybe it was a lack of imagination on my part I never really even considered doing anything else so it was almost more like it was just kind of in the background like well yeah that's what you do you join the army out of high school right so um I went the college route so I went to East Carolina the Harvard of Eastern North Carolina of course and did the RTC and commissioned and went in that way so my my career trajectory was a little different than Dan's but a lot of a lot of overlap there too so for my understanding you guys have known each other since then right so you guys have been best friends since your elementary school days yeah elementary school age yeah yeah I was I was a few houses up the street from Roger and we'd run around in the woods and play army when we were you know like you know in short pants totally true and now only one only one of you played army the other one played sign papers haha haha uh well playing yeah no uh so okay so how long were you both in the army I was in for 23 years and 11 days my last day on active service was August 31st, 2021 so anybody with a short term sense of history knows what happened on that day yeah that was a rough day yeah and then um for you I did 20 years in one month I wanted to stick it out for another year or two but we were getting kind of rolled into another move cycle and um my soon to be 14 year old has lived in nine different houses and so I kind of had to just throw the flag and and we called it at 20 years so yeah he says that but really it's because we're we both called it quits because we're both old and broken now yeah well I mean it's take it anymore yeah I mean that that that's absolutely true but I mean it's it's always a little more nuance right I mean there's always several you know well for most people there are numerous reasons why they choose to separate so yeah yeah no I can relate I I never would have gotten out if if it hadn't been me getting accepted into medical school I probably would have stayed in until they were like listen you're too old to do anything for us now haha um so during that time you both were in obviously quite a while a career um career folks but what uh so where were you guys stationed like were you guys only stateside any overseas time oh no I uh my first duty station was lovely upstate New York at Fort Drum and I stepped off the bus in shorts into like four and a half feet of snow uh I thought as a young kid and remember this is early internet days late 9 so yeah yeah so I thought that like all of New York was like New York City I was very wrong yeah very very very wrong but I mean I got stationed all over the states from from drum to Irwin to Benning multiple times every time I every time I was at Fort Benning I said this will be the last time I ever have to come here and I was so wrong and that's last words yeah yeah but um I also spent uh some time over in Germany and then of course I spent plenty of time in in Afghanistan so right Dan's heart really is in Afghanistan of course yeah I love to piece me there that's for sure yeah amen to that yeah no that's definitely sometimes not willingly but yeah um and then what about you where were you stationed at So Mo most of my career if if you were to tally it up would have been here for brag I did a little bit of time in Washington state it uh we call it JBLM now but Fort Lewis um year in Kansas which is normal for for career officers we do a year at Fort Leavenworth I did a year at Leavenworth as we like to say yeah um surgery time a couple other places but really I mean for brags always basically been the kind of the center I didn't I was never stationed overseas mostly cause my wife wanted nothing to do with that so what I did I did I did a year in Korea so I basically volunteered to go spend a year by myself in Korea versus bringing my family over and then making a multi year so sometimes you'll get choices like that um but yeah mostly it was my stuff being parked at Fort Bragg while I was traveling all over the world sometimes in really cool amazing exotic places and sometimes Iraq and Afghanistan so yeah little less amazing um yeah uh no that's that's interesting I I just recently purchased a property in upstate New York and when I went out there I was like you know I'm from the city so I I knew what upstate was and it was a little bit more country but when you get on the other side of the Adirondack you really it's Canada it's not yeah it's the backwoods of Canada anything north of Syracuse is Canada it really is I mean it's all dairy farms and yeah there's like llama farms up there bison farms but yeah it's there is a and right right now there's a bunch of disgruntled Buffalo Bills fans oh yeah well that would be that would be south of Syracuse but yes yeah I'm a Giants fan so I'm just always just every year I go in just waiting to hopefully be happy and it never happens um but yeah no I'm north of the Adirondacks more so on the Vermont side which is a little more modern and I was tricked because this house that I went to go look at was just redone completely modern and I got there and it was like walking into the 18th century but except with cell phones I was like oh this is this is different this is the other size or that's called folk that's called rustic rustic yeah yeah yeah sure rustic everything it's a it's a period piece yeah did it have any indoor plumbing uh most places didn't this was like one of the only houses that did yeah I was like okay even though there were city connections but everyone there was like septic and they had well water and yep and it was a little bit of a culture shock for me but a lot of the people who live there are you know about my age now so they're like second third generation inherited this house kind of thing or they're commuting to um like Essex Junction in Vermont so yeah uh yeah it was a very very interesting experience I had to call my mom and say it's not New York mom it's it's Canada maybe a little maybe a little like the main yeah yeah except yeah except all the nice people they're all pretty still they're still like typical New Yorkers but uh yeah anyway so um yeah so tell me about tracer burnout I I watched a few of your episodes and um yeah I just think for the listeners I think it'd be interesting for them to to hear what you guys do sure you wanna start then yeah so late one night while Roger was bored and lonely in Boston it's true it's true he he sent me a text he was taking part of a program up there and he sent me a text and asked me if I wanted to start a 5 0 1 c 3 helping helping vets and uh doing something and yeah just doing something and I just text him back and said call me and I I didn't think he was gonna call me back immediately but like I said he was bored and lonely so as I want to do he called me immediately and I said hey why don't we do a podcast cause this this had been something that I've been thinking about for for quite some time like long before I retired um the civilian populace has a very skewed vision of of what the military is and you know life life and service is like I mean they see a uniform but they don't see a person wearing the uniform right they see all the guys that are super awesome at at everything you know and then they see the the generals or admirals or whatever on you know Fox and CNN or whatever giving their five second paid hits uh to talk about whatever topic and then they see in the media the you know whether it's the news or whether it's TV shows or movies there's just the the broken veteran right who the VA screwed him over and he's got all sorts of crazy PTSD and you know he he needs more help than he can possibly fat right John Q and obviously those types of people do exist right cause we all know them but that's like point zero one % of the veteran population in this country of which there are millions and so I wanted to give a voice to that other 99.99% so that they could they could talk they could they could tell their story so that Hollywood didn't have to create you know something out of whole cloth which Roger will get into no doubt um but really so that they could they could tell their story talk about you know whatever in a in a way that is just two veterans talking right cause there are a lot of other outlets for veterans to sit down and talk about their service but some of them are perhaps well intentioned but missed the Mark and some of them are just very very dry I won't say which one but one of one of them one of cause when Roger and I started looking into this we realized that there were a lot more people doing this than we thought but there's one organization that you can record your story but they send you a a questionnaire and you fill out the answers to your question to the questions there and then you get on camera and you literally read what you wrote it's like that's that's very impersonal nobody's really getting anything from this it's very cut and dry and let's be honest kind of boring yeah so we wanted to do something a little bit different it took us many months and many long phone calls um to narrow down our our focus but we eventually got to where we are now where it's just veterans talking to veterans talking about time in service and it doesn't matter whether you were officer or enlisted it doesn't matter if you did three years or 30 years um we'll even talk to the Space Force if they exist I'm not sold they they do they do then I'm not sold but yeah that's that's essentially what it boiled down to is just veterans talking to veterans because veterans have a way of of talking to each other and opening up to each other that you don't get anywhere else like stuff you wouldn't even tell your your spouse or your parents or your kids you know because they they wouldn't get it they wouldn't understand or you don't want to burden them with some of your experiences um but talking to another veteran from a different era from a different service it doesn't matter veterans will connect with each other so sorry that that was a that was very long winded and yeah Roger take it away how could I possibly follow that up well I shall I shall do my best so yeah I mean the the idea for the podcast was definitely Dan's idea so Dan is a very intelligent practical gentleman non commissioned officer just the backbone of the army and so he had this really great idea and then me as the resident officer of the team had to take it to 11 so Dan's idea for making a podcast was two veterans sitting down one possibly two microphones and just talking it out and enter me so then it turns into oh alright we need to graph hire graphic designer to create a logo and then we gotta hire a patent copyright lawyer to register it with the feds and then we gotta do this and then we gotta do that then we gotta get a cloud service to be able to and and dance just standing there going what in the world have I gotten myself into yes haha that's that's that's a good way to put it yeah so that brings us to where we are today so and then Dan the aforementioned fictional movie so so kind of the seed that was planted for me and my heart on this whole thing would have been many years ago probably probably a decade ago or so and have you seen the Brad Pit movie Fury yeah yeah okay so so I haven't seen it but I remember when the preview for it came out and you know yeah like I said this is probably about a decade ago and I saw the preview and was like oh that is awesome they're making another war movie I'm sure it's gonna be wonderful and then I looked into it and realized that the entire movie is utterly fiction from the top to bottom fiction it's not it's not even loosely based off of real events it's a bunch of fake characters that take place during World War 2 with really great hair or something yeah and I just remember when when I found this out I just remember just stewing over it cause I thought of you know my both of my grandfather's right millions and millions of men and women who are under arms who went over to the Pacific or Europe during World War 2 and they all came home and they never spoke of it again they suck many of them suffered in silence many of them drank themselves to death there was no real it was that generation right I mean the greatest generation God bless them but that was kind of their stiff upper lip way of of dealing with these things and so all those stories that were never told went you know many of them went to their graves right just to to be kind of serious on the moment and so Dan and I kind of mold this over and realize it was so that was in my heart right like you know hey we need to do something about this enter into you know a year ago and we're kind of talking all this out these these stories they're worth telling and not only is it good for veterans to talk about these things in a almost a cathartic kind of way right but honestly I think it's good for a lot of our uh you know citizens and civilian counterparts to hear these stories cause I I think they deserve to know what's been going on as well so yeah that makes sense yeah I mean I agree I love talking to generation like veterans from past generations my step grandfather I guess you can call him was a Korean War vet and no one after him had joined the military so my mom started you know dating his grandson I got to meet him and he just opened up like stories he had never even told his kids and it was just simply because I had also served he got a kick out of telling me he's like oh your generation doesn't know struggle or your generation doesn't know you know weaponry issues and he tell these stories and it it was because of that reason um but you're right a lot of these stories um definitely don't get heard I used to volunteer at the inpatient clinic at the VA a lot of older veterans that are there and I would I just loved spending time with them um talking to like there's one guy Vietnam vet paralyzed and um his entire left side was paralyzed he was a photographer during Vietnam and um you know he thought he wasn't gonna get drafted cause he was in college and it was like the day he graduated and he got a degree in photo journalism they scooped him up send him right over to Vietnam like in the thick of it nice to capture kind of what was happening there and he was there for like six or seven months when his entire convoy was attacked and um he however he was thrown from the vehicle snapped his neck anyway so he had been an impatient almost that entire time he had no family and he himself was Vietnamese so it was a like internal conflict for him but it would have been such a he told me some things but I can't imagine how much more he would have expressed if he had a platform to to express that yeah and no I think it's good but a lot of civilians you know they they go to war send us overseas like they they make these statements they don't really understand what that entails yeah right the the human cost yeah right yeah that well I mean not just that but I mean it's like I said it's a skewed view right so they think the Air Force flies planes and drops bombs and the Navy you know sails ships and shoots cannons right well yeah but that's not everything yeah you know there are there are thousands of jobs in the in the military of across a whole bunch of different stuff I mean we've talked to to Coast Guard vets about you know drug interdiction and scientific exploration in the and Antarctica yeah yeah yeah and the North Pole both yeah both and we've we've talked to Navy public affairs officers and infant you know army infantrymen who got totally messed up in in Afghanistan we've talked to Vietnam vets who were Navy cormans or combat engineers we've even talked to a Navy LS do you know what that is as a as a Navy vet I'm sure you do yeah right yeah we were looking at her records and we didn't know what LS was we were sitting there going over it you know coming up with some questions and stuff to ask her we were like longshoreman yeah long snapper yeah so yeah she was a long snapper for the Detroit Lions no I'm just kidding yeah so I mean it's there's so much that that the civilian population doesn't know and yeah if if the only people that they see representing the military are the generals and the you know the jocks then the bros the bros as we call them yes right I mean or or like I said in the in movies and TV shows where it's just a you know a war veteran that's just out of his mind with with PTSD and having flashbacks and horrible things then no they have no idea what it is but that's what's portrayed to them on a daily basis so that's what they think it is yeah I always feel so bad sometimes just for fellow service members I just I wish they knew that their service is enough like they don't have to compare themselves to what the their friends their civilian family like what they see cause I think a lot of times and I had to like have this conversation with my family too because they see the glorified side of the military the Delta Force the the Beres and they see all the crazy dangerous situations that they've been in and that's automatically the Assumption of what you did and if you didn't your service was less less value yeah right and it's like those guys couldn't do those things unless they ate unless their paperwork was submitted you know correctly unless everyone else did exactly what they were supposed to do to support the mission yeah they have they have families their wives are giving birth to kids who do you think's delivering those babies who do you think's giving them the shots who do you think's filing the insurance paperwork who do you think is making sure that they get paid on time who do you think is shipping off the ammo who do you think is securing the perimeter around that area so that they can go in and do with you know whatever they need to do I mean who's flying them in and out of where they need to go and maintaining all those aircraft you know yeah so there's yeah and I feel like sometimes that's where I think that is why a lot of what we hear now cause I think the other side now especially with a lot of things that have been happening is s civilians are now seeing service members that might be you know inflating their service and it's just to meet this bar and as that comes to light because other veterans are exposing them this in fighting sometimes is the other side of service that that civilian see and they don't they don't really understand it and it you're you're right yeah I I think your platform your podcast is so needed and I'm familiar with some of the other um types of veteran interview style but I think you really do feel you know you feel a gap there for sure yeah and we're we're we're going for a kitchen table style discussion that's sometimes we use the word interview just because it's it's kind of an easy shorthand but it's really not an interview it's yeah it's like kind of what we're doing right now we're sipping coffee and just sitting and talking and it's very disarming as we've already established it you know people would open up to you that way and that's really what we're going for and I mean it helps it helps make a connection right because there are there are plenty of veterans out there that that struggle from a day to day basis and one thing that is missing in their their lives or a couple of things is one feeling heard right but then also making a connection and because once you separate from service that can be that can be tough because you're no longer part of that that team right the army or the military in general spends a long time breaking you down and then building you back up into what they need you to be but then when your time is up you can't just automatically transform back into a civilian so that that connection is missing that team is missing and so by by sitting down in a small room around a table and having coffee you'll forget that the cameras and the and the recorders are even on you're just you're just talking no that's that's awesome I mean I I did not do well when I first got out I struggled tremendously cause I went from like being team lead to just being a student at UCSD like and one thing that my taps instructor said which I honestly is what got me through a lot of that was you will never be a civilian you will always be a veteran and that just made me feel like I was still a part of something was because okay toys came from active duty but now I'm a part of this new veteran group that consists of not just the folks that I served with but everyone who has ever served and being a part of that like something greater was definitely something that helped me and I try to tell other veterans that like you hung up your uniform but now you're a part of this really awesome new community called Veterans where we can openly complain about stuff so we've earned the right to complain yeah we've paid our dues we are allowed to complain yeah um I'm curious so what are some now you mentioned a couple of the past interviews is there any other like really awesome interviews that you've had just things that have stuck with you whether it's really cool stories or something that's really like just touching um well I mean that each each person you talk to obviously is very different and the way that they relate their experiences um we talked to last Memorial Day our episode was with a Gold Star widow and some of her some of her advice for people that that are dealing with with grief was was very sound and and I go back to that you know pretty often thinking you know about dealing with loss and survivors guilt and things like that um some of the Vietnam vets have shared the same sort of story about about survivors guilt and do not wait to talk too long it took too long yes do not do not wait to have a reunion because no one understands what you're going through better than the people who are going through it too right um one of the Vietnam vets we talked to didn't didn't start getting getting some help until very recently and I mean that's a quite a while quite a while yeah he was he was in bad shape yeah um so yeah I mean each person has their own something different that they bring to the table and you know different ways they reflect on their experience so it's really hard to just pinpoint something in general I I mean I guess it depends on what you're looking for right yeah I mean I saved a couple clips which if it's okay with you guys I'm gonna play those oh wow yeah between here because there there were some pieces of a variety of episodes that I watched and I was like that is an amazing statement or that really hits home and I was like I gotta save this I gotta play this during the the interview I just I think that folks would especially veterans will um really you're you're providing a lot of value so I think that they're gonna be able to to take something back from from your podcast episodes but you had mentioned that you had originally when you were in Boston on that lonely night you had thought of like like we all do during our lonely time as we think of ways to help others and that non profit that you mentioned was it something similar to what the podcast ended up becoming or no that that's a great question thank you so I I I am happily married with four kids so I'm rarely lonely so I was I was traveling I was a paraplegic and traveling so I went up to Boston for the the Boston Red Sox have their Red Sox Foundation huge non profit and then within that there's a whole bunch of stuff going on the home base program is covers basically a mere you know a dozen or so things dealing with veterans and so within the home based program I was taking part in the it's a cute little acronym it's it's combat it's comprehensive uh brain health and trauma or something like that and I was up there doing a TBI and a PTSD like week long basically top to bottom uh medical and psychological screening this this is something that they they do for guys are either getting ready to leave or or have already separated and it was kind of kind of helping me with my um VA stuff so I was up there working through Mass General and even Harvard even has a couple of psychologists and stuff who like pro Bono volunteered you know once a week to come over and work with the some the guys and gals that are on this program so that's why I was in Boston the the other spark to all this was I was doing a for me it was a virtual cohort through the Honor Foundation which again is another really great organization nonprofit that it's it's like taps the you know separation but you know kind of beefed up and a little more geared towards gear towards career folks as opposed when I went through taps probably 80% of the people that were in there with me were you know first possibly second term enlisted folks who are you know highly technical and so they're in there teaching you how to do you know a transition into military from the military into civilian life to do a you know technical job honor foundations a little little more beefy than that so that was the the proximate cause for why I was in Boston at the time and kind of set everything off here gotcha okay I mean that makes sense I um I've heard of that program as a matter of fact I did cognitive behavioral assessments to determine quality of life at U C s d so it was a partnership between U C s d um and the VA so in San Diego if you've ever been the UCSD University of California at San Diego is directly next door like you don't even have to cross the street they share a parking lot uh to the VA and um because of that there are some joint efforts so the VA has like a research facility um that is kind of co founded by the UCSD okay so I worked the TBI clinic so veterans would come in of all different eras and I would depending on what the the neurologist recommended we would perform a variety of tests to understand um their function and their overall quality of life so based on whatever traumatic experience has happened can they function normally in society and it's not from like a mental health standpoint it's more so from like they have had traumatic brain injury or a lesion that has prevented them from speaking or you know using parts of their body and can they get around effectively and do they need help so I work with a lot of veterans who were um were disabled and um they they would come into that clinic and we would sometimes have folks that had been all over the country to be assessed and receive so you know treatment or uh medical devices from from non profits so those programs are are everywhere and they're so incredible especially when the non profits come in like big big organizations like the Red Sox even though I'm a Yankees fan I guess I'll give him some credit so whatever but um no that's awesome so what was your experience like going through that program so I mean it's it's very efficient there's I mean there's not a whole lot of wasted time cause you got a week so I mean it's they're putting you on the conveyor belt the first day or so is intake so you're sitting down doing a lot of talking you're doing I did I did a lot of imaging so MRIs uh cat scans all in a lot of the imaging they try to get that up at the beginning which gives them enough time to review it so by the time you're on your way out at the end of the week they've they've got a pretty good idea of what's going on um I I thought it was an amazing experience I've never really had the uh the red the red carpet rolled out for me like that before it was pretty great um yeah there's a lot of really amazing non profits but I mean we've even talked Dan and I've met and talked to a lot of people who've gone through you know Walter Reed so we even the the government side there there's a lot of really great care that goes on in this country so we we live in an amazing place yeah the thing with that is though that the care is there but if you don't go looking for it then you're not gonna get it so there there are there are a lot of good agencies and non profits and different organizations that are there and ready and willing to help and a lot a lot of times all you have to do is check a few criteria and the No. 1 across the board is be a veteran right yeah but if you don't go and look for it they're not just gonna show up on your front door yeah right yeah I have a friend of mine Marine veteran she is now a social worker she um started her like I guess education in California but now she's in New York and I've Learned a lot from her she's brought up things like the Cohens Veteran Network and given hour and all these free resources outside of the VA for veterans to get in that case you know in her case you know mental health resources which I've used I've gone to give an hour and it was extremely easy you get paired with a therapist and and sometimes the therapist is a therapist in training so they're not licensed yet but they're working in association with someone who's licensed but even then it's still awesome um awesome care and sometimes it's other veterans they just you know you get on and you see that you think you're expecting a student and it's this like 50 year old guy and he's like yeah so you know 30 years in the Marine Corps yeah and you're like oh we're gonna have a great conversation this is gonna be awesome cause you you understand it well there's there's a lot of those really great resources out there but at the end of the day I mean like we need to look after each other because when I when I was having my issue my TBI issues I call I literally called the the TBI clinic at Walter Reed I don't remember what it's called there's a cute little acronym for it and whoever answered the phone I kind of talked through the stuff with them and they said look man you can come up here and go through all this but I'll be God's honest truth with you you probably be better off reaching out to the home base program through the Red Sox Foundation and yeah so they actually unofficially referred me over there and I ended up getting top notch care there so cause whoever whoever answered that phone was like was an old retired guy who wasn't even a medical dude he yeah that was that was his job as to just screen people and make recommendations so yeah you know I um I wrote a book called Wellness Wisdom and warfare and I was talking to my publisher and we were trying to figure out ways like publish this and I was like I don't wanna do that this this shit's gonna be free like I don't wanna make a veteran buy resources that's completely the opposite of the point of writing this book so uh I made it free I just like 100 page book um just free download at the end of it has a list of resources from like um you know Outdoor Foundations and since doing this podcast I'm actually working on an update because I can add things like your podcast and I can add things like um the Big Fish Foundation and and there's a lot of other really awesome veteran run nonprofits that um that you know it's like hey your fellow veterans are a non profit that's outdoors based or is something that you like to do like Libo risk is one that I bring up often cause it's a well it's libo risk but it's a travel kind of retreat for veterans and it's all outdoorsy so they do retreats in Alaska and all over the world but what's built like a like Heroes Harvest yeah so exactly so it's like a wellness retreat but you know you're with a bunch of other veterans and you know like like you're saying you're already disarmed at that point because you're with your people hey guys I wanted to interrupt this video real quick and remind you that my free guide Wellness Wisdom and Warfare a Veterans Guide for Mastering Life is now available for download using the link in the description or if you go to my website jessevirga com slash free guide or it's under the podcast tab you can download it for absolutely free it's over 60 pages of just tips and tricks and things to help my veterans out there master their health master their fitness master their mental and spiritual health just things that I've Learned through my journey as just a veteran and that I've Learned as an educator and as a professional in multiple fields as an entrepreneur I put all these things in one place and I put it together for absolutely free so again link is in the description or if you head to my website jessevirga com you can download it for absolutely free right so no it's that it's making that connection right yeah no that's that's awesome so how long so your podcast has been around for a few years now or we that that phone call the the initial phone call was in the summer of it would have been late summer yeah late summer of 23 right okay and then our first episode did not come out until February of 24 we're creeping up on a year here yeah yeah okay that I mean that makes sense when you're hiring patent attorneys and copyright attorneys that probably makes sense from Hollywood Florida yeah yeah tell him about that then all right so gosh it took it took us a it took us you know a lot of long phone calls and texts and things like that to kind of narrow down our focus to see what we really wanted to do and how we wanted to go about it and then we you know formed an LLC and we needed we needed a logo and we had an idea of I mean it took it took us forever to figure out we knew what we wanted we just couldn't make it ourselves yeah but I mean it took us long enough just to figure out what the name of the the show is gonna be but yeah then we were like alright we need somebody professional to do up our logo and Roger found a um online a a place online and our contact there was Kevin Mcallister which that name ring a bell to you yeah yeah from for those that don't know from the Home Alone movies yeah and uh it was very very obvious with our first conversation with him that he was not from Hollywood Florida where the phone said he was coming from or New York City or who said that he was he was he was very obviously uh you know I'm guessing Bangalore yeah Rajeet from Bangalore or something like that yeah and he was and he and he was just the middleman right so we were talking to him telling him trying to describe what we wanted and then he was turning around and talking to a team that was somewhere else overseas trying to then tell them what we wanted and we gave him three or four shots and the product was varying degrees of god awful we we saved it just just someday we'll do a clip show or something yeah this is what we said we wanted and this is what we got it was so bad it was so bad it was so bad I'm surprised you went forward with it oh oh we no well with them we didn't yeah yeah it was we got half of our money back with their their hundred percent money back guaranteed wasn't so guaranteed but yeah but that's the story for another day but again you know veterans talking to veterans right we found a a veteran who is a a National Guard or reservist she's in the northwest somewhere Washington or Oregon National Guard or reservist but her professional life is as a graphic designer so we told her what we wanted she sent us back pretty close to what we have now um you know just kind of like hey we like this but can you make you know a couple of tweaks here and there and I mean she knocked it out of the park we love yeah so that's the beauty of of veterans right so we're veterans helping other veterans that's great but it's also that frame of reference so when we're trying to explain to Kevin Mcallister and Bangalore hey we want it to look like you're looking through night vision scope we want it to look like a tracer around is going from left to right across he has absolutely I may as well have spoken in Sanscrite to him but when I'm talking to this young woman who's in the Oregon National Guard she's like oh yeah I got you yeah yeah that's too easy oh gosh you know I um we're in the middle of bringing this back I have a company called Entrepreneur Headquarters and um I wanted to give veterans a place to advertise because there's so many scams out there and there's so many people who are claiming to be veteran owned businesses and it was just really starting to piss me off so I um created a database of businesses across the United States and everything's vetted I ensure that you're a veteran I ensure that you're licensed if you say you're licensed um and all that other stuff is a place to advertise cause there's so many times that I've been looking for things and I end up on fiver which is like an international platform for for graphic designers and at first I was like oh yeah this is cool this dude's in you know Bangalore and he can sleep while you know he can work while I'm sleeping and that's not what happens there's the language barrier is is crazy especially when you're trying to articulate something that's very US specific or military specific and chances are the person you're talking to is yeah so then there's not just the language barrier but then also the cultural barrier you know cause you're speaking from a military mindset and he's just speaking as a you know graphic designer got it right yeah but yeah at the the the veteran owned business tag uh is very widely used and there are a lot of scams out there um I do not know about other states because you you obviously have to file you know for your your paperwork in each state that you operate in yeah but in here in North Carolina it really is just a yes or no question and there is no sort of proof or anything given there's two questions is this a veteran owned business yes or no is it a disabled disabled yeah yeah yes or no yeah nobody checks so it's it's yeah yeah and I mean this is one of the most military heavy yeah North Carolina in the country uh yeah and you'd think there'd be a little bit more um proof necessary no not little less vetting in California it's my my application was actually just recently denied because I forgot to upload I uploaded my VA letter but it wasn't from 2025 cause it's like we're 2 seconds into 2025 and they rejected it like we need your most current letter um and it was an actual person her name is candy I was like alright California with a K and an I yeah I was like okay the last person I talked to his name was like Gus but I was like okay so candy emailed me and she was like I can't approve this until I get all 20 25 stuff so they're very they're very um particular here in California because you have access to so much including you know state contracts in California state contracts have a requirement 25% of the subcontractors have to be veteran women owned minority owned something in those like categories yep but what I was finding was we have like Temecula Talk which is the neighborhood kind of like it's like the next door but it's on Facebook okay but folks will go on there and ask for recommendations like has anybody used any of these services and a lot of people say oh I'm veteran owned and I looked at the business and it's like your great grandfather served and he cut the ribbon with you when you opened your business which is cool but he since passed and no one else after him who's a part of this business served so you can't use that veteran tag you shouldn't have even been using it to begin with but well then yeah then there's the then there's the uh the other one that's veteran founded so a veteran founded the business yeah and then you bought it from them or they sold it to you or whatever the case is yeah you know you did a corporate takeover of them yeah it's still veteran founded but there's no veterans in sight yeah I don't have a yeah I don't have any problem with the yeah I don't have any problem with the veteran founded thing as long as they're you know disclosing that up front right you know yeah yeah yeah anyway I wanted to make sure that there was um a little bit more transparency so I created this like little database it's open it's free it's open to the public um I share the list with people just cause um that's the whole point of it was to give some advertising out to to folks but it's not just better known businesses it's just it's basically businesses that I've vetted who have this claim to be something but yeah it's extremely difficult so how did you guys find the girl in um Northwest Pacific Northwest yeah so I in honor foundation uh peer of mine who is is an old Ranger Regiment NCO was also retiring and I mean I think when he had been a ROTC instructor at it was in the northwest I'm sorry Oregon Oregon State was something he'd been cadre out there for for the university and she had been one of his cadets yeah years ago and so I went into the the The Honor Foundation you know Slack channel and said hey y'all I I just got burned on with this silly company I got a need can anybody make any recommendations and two minutes later he was like here's Emily give her a call and we are off and running cause he cause I guess she'd studied it you know as an undergrad when he was in that's how he knew that she had that skill set so yeah so kind of shifting gears a little bit but how has it been since you've been out you guys serve twice as long as I did so how's how's what's that been like Len's been out longer than me so yeah um for the first I don't know 18 months I guess that that I was retired I went full retirement mode I mean like my first year I did not shave like the day I signed out on my terminal leave was the last day I shaved for a full calendar year well and if you go to if you go to our website your bio picture is my I'm sitting in the barber's chair getting my Rasputin beard cut yeah so I I went full retirement mode I I sat down and I started reading all the books that I had been you know meaning to read for for years and years and years but now I finally had time turned off every alarm that I owned like the only clock in the house I think he shot a couple yeah yeah the only clock in the house was like on the oven in my in my kitchen and then like on my phone you know I didn't have to be anywhere at any time in any uniform for the first time in you know my entire life and yeah yeah I went full shutdown mode well how did it feel to do that it's like so opposite of what you just did for 20+ years it was amazing it was it was amazing I would just I I would sit there and read from like the time I got up to when I was hungry and then I would eat and then I would read and then I I read some some great books I've been meaning to read some some of them massive um and some of them not so much but it was very relaxing it was very cathartic when I when I started when you know whenever the the mood struck me or I thought about somebody that I hadn't talked to in a while I didn't have to wait till I got off work where you know I would forget about it or something um I would just pick up the phone and call right like hey I haven't talked to you in like five years but I'm retired now and I was thinking about you so I just decided up and call you yeah so it it I used that first about 18 months to to totally decompress and to reconnect with people that I hadn't uh hadn't seen or or talked to in in quite some time and then at about 18 months uh Roger he got a text from me yeah and my reading spiral downward I know you're welcome because now I just now I spend so much time in front of a computer I'm continuing to develop you Dan you're doing fine yeah the career development begins retirement style yeah and then what about you Roger so I started terminal leave in July of last year and I kind of kind of the opposite of that I went I I literally signed out on leave one day mover showed up the next day moved from Virginia to North Carolina and then you know the following Monday I started a full time job doing some defense contracting stuff here in Fayetteville so I didn't even not only did I not skip a beat but I probably should have because I did that for about five and a half months and I ended up just resigning the job was fine I just I needed a break so I'm currently in between employment I just took the holidays off and kind of enjoying some of the time that you know like what Dan's describing um like I said I've got a family so I I need to I need to get back after but it was nice taking the holidays off yeah what's what's it like for your family it's a little bit of a culture shock like Dad's home now yeah to to to say the least so that's home with too much now with uh teen and pre teen girls more of them than that that's why I have a white beard cause I have three daughters so yeah yeah I probably need to get back into the workforce yeah no god bless their mother yeah uh having been a teenage girl at one point I can can say that that's the reason why my dad has a gray beard yeah hundred percent I was not no yeah I earn these stripes that's right so but um okay yeah that's so you guys are like recently retired I want I'm curious though um the 18 months that you spent kind of sitting around doing nothing and just permanent indent in furniture what was that like as it relates to um kind of developing this I so going back to like with me becoming that veteran and kind of you know unwinding and destressing do you think that was a big reason why you were able to transition so well if that's a fair Assumption is that time off um yes I I would I would say so um it was I mean I I grew up in service and then I you know I enlisted while I was still in high school and my dad was still wearing a uniform I had known nothing but the military my entire life don't get me wrong I loved it had some amazing experiences but finally there there was he's free there was yeah I mean in a in a way yes yeah and I could do whatever I wanted and I didn't really know what that was right so being able to decompress was massive for me um and just I mean it gave you a lot of time to to get rid of some of the stress realize that realize that you don't have to worry about some of these things anymore you know all all the stupid little things that well while you're in the military they're not stupid obviously you need to be in the right place at the right time the late the late phone calls you know but I didn't have to I didn't have to check my email all the time I didn't have to worry about about going on leave or going on just a four day pass and worry about getting a phone call that some soldier

did something stupid at 3: 52:27

00 in the morning yeah so yes it was it was great to to distress and get away from that and actually just have me to worry about yeah which was a yeah a first it's a yeah I was I was just gonna say Dan I don't know if he misses getting those late night phone calls that begin with you're not gonna believe this haha gosh uh but I have actually gotten I have actually gotten one of those phone calls when I was a drill sergeant and I I had already been a drill sergeant for 2 years and I was I was doing I volunteered to do the third year and I thought I'd seen everything then my partner called me up at like 3 o'clock in the morning and we had just picked up the day before oh wow the long day yeah

so yeah I was I was woken up at 3: 53:23

00 in the morning on day one of the cycle my partner who I had known for a couple of years now was like you are not gonna believe this and I was like I was like I'm on I'm on the way you know just tell me he was like no no no no no no no before you come in I need you to hear this so you don't lose your mind when you get here he was right I didn't believe it and then I went in and I saw it for myself yeah no yeah now we're curious Dan come on yeah I'm like are we ever gonna learn or can you oh I'm gonna I'll tell you I mean I don't I don't think it's a you know a secret or anything I don't want to give any names but yeah just this kid had had not told the truth on his entry form that he was on some medication and he went off the medication long enough so that you know whenever he did his you know testing and stuff at maps or whatever nothing would show up and the stressors of Day Zero turned out to be too much for him and he snapped and he strapped you guys you guys remember the L neck flashlights oh yeah yeah this kid with the red lens yeah took well lens storage in the bottom yeah this kid took the razor blades out of his safety razor attached duct taped them to his L neck flashlight and was running up and down Sand Hill

at 3: 54:59

00 in the morning butt naked except for his socks and his PT shoes just slashing himself up and down with it and I mean it's all superficial he's not doing you know any serious harm yeah and by the time I caught him he was you know covered in blood and everything and he's just saying over and over again Mom's gonna be so mad at me Mom's gonna be so mad at me it's like this is it that like block block checked I have now seen everything I have now seen everything did he claim to be Batman yeah I don't know we we tossed up in the fourth floor and and that was that was it for my end like jeez aw that was straight out of a Stephen King novel it's like the army version yeah yeah yeah it was just a it was it was just at the absurdity of it like what are you doing like what are you really doing here yeah you've been paying me enough for this yeah thoroughly impressed by some of the things that my sailors were capable of and I'm like I don't know if I should be upset or impressed at whatever this is supposed to be I'm not even mad yeah yeah just tell me how you did this cause I'm real curious so we make sure it never happens again but uh no that's um so since since tracer burnout how have you both um curious as how it's affected you like hearing these stories and I always ask friends sometimes when I need to vent like do you have the emotional capacity to accept what I'm about to say right now and I'm curious how how that's been like for you guys uh well yeah go ahead Dan you go ahead it's been a it's been almost a catharsis for me it's it's really helped with my personal transition out so I'm not really going cold Turkey if that kind of makes sense plus you know I was a civil affairs officer so we're we're talkers that so this I kind of have a gift for this anyway so I'm just having a blast yeah I think I think catharsis is the right word for it cause you know then in the military you just you suck it up and drive on right and after 20 something years of doing that you don't you don't really realize how much you've shoved down and swallowed and hidden in that you know that dark part of yourself that never sees the light of day because God knows what will happen if if it if it does and by talking to these vets soothing is not the right word but um it it it has helped me with you know some of the some of the things I've been carrying around I'm not the only one dealing with it yeah and but I I love history I love getting these stories on on record I love hearing these stories of from different generations and stuff and it knowing that whether it's whether it's Vietnam or or the first Gulf War or you know our our wars that you know the gwat and what not yeah we have a Panama coming up here oh wow yeah our next our next episode oh well yes yes our next episode is it is an operation just cause just fells I thought you were talking about about the current push for Panama yeah that's what I thought too and I was like oh no sorry no yeah I mean operation just fells yeah it um the the human condition doesn't change right mm hmm and that that is one of the overarching things is like you are you are not going through anything that that nobody has gone through before yeah it doesn't matter what your circumstances are mm hmm millions of people have gone through it before you and by listening to these stories it it kind of gives you that perspective that you you are not the first you won't be the last but here's how some people dealt with you know certain situations or or certain things that they drew on and maybe you can do that too yeah that moment to exhale is what I like to call it just the yeah let it all out but um no so where do you where do you both see tracer run out you know moving or it's still pretty new but I don't think it's that new consider so from what I've seen um and I'll I'll leave a link to your podcast in the description but from what I've seen it's a very well produced um podcast from all aspects not just the content and the the free flow of conversation but I I I thoroughly enjoyed um I I've probably I've listened to most of them in my car I'd had like a four hour drive the other day and I just had you guys on um but what kind of what's the future where do you where do you see it going so we're both laughing because Dan is a slickly produced corporate yeah when we put look I'll put it this way Dan's not really a tech inclined kind of guy so our our very close group of you know our our guy group when the two of us broke the news to them that hey Dan and I are starting a basically a tech company a podcast and we've got big big plans they all did the the spit take like Dan's gonna be running a you know editing software and doing a tech company so okay that's not your background obviously that's why we're all that's why we're laughing cause you know well you did a good job that's our tagline right we're not a slickly produced corporate product yeah it's it's a dan hunched over a keyboard right yeah we have I guess veteran style yeah yeah we have we have we have well I mean that's the infantry right we're we're pretty good at everything but we master nothing so yeah it could be duct taped in the background but that's fine yeah if I pound it with a rock hard enough and often enough eventually it'll work right yeah so I mean we we have come a long way already I mean if you if you watch or listen to our our first half dozen you know 10 episodes the the difference in the audio quality is is obvious the difference in the video quality is difference it no longer looks like an English dubbed you know samurai movie yeah I I have Learned a lot in that department we we figured we figured it out yeah but you know Roger keeps on reaching out to some amazing people and and and getting them to sit down and and talk to us and we want to keep doing it I mean we've already bumped up the the output to every two weeks um we we originally started every three weeks because he was still he was still you know in uniform sort of and in version of the time he was just most of the time he was just sitting in front of his computer like this and he had on his T-shirt his you know Army T-shirt yeah and then nothing else yeah you don't need to worry about that it's it's alright yeah uh but yeah we we wanna keep it going we wanna get as you know as many stories as recorded as possible and I mean I get it's not it's not just for us yes we enjoy doing it um and it wasn't really our stated goal when we when we first set out to do it but then like you talked about with the uh your step grandfather I think you said who was a Korean War vet yep who you know the rest of his family had never heard these stories before we didn't start out with the intent to record these stories for necessarily future generations but that is now an added bonus because now future generations can see like one of the Vietnam vets that we talk to he's got great grandkids and they're they're pretty young but he's an elderly man and he god willing he has many more years to go but by the time they're old enough to really understand he may not be around anymore for them to hear the story directly from him but now they can right now now his his voice is is out there telling his story of service there is a video of him to show him talking about his his time in uniform so they can put a face to the voice and and you know I put in pictures of time in service so they can actually see pictures of him you know in Vietnam or in Korea you know doing all this stuff so preserving those stories is has become a a big part of what we're doing too um but we we definitely want to keep doing that and yeah and I think we have a sustainable model yeah so to address your question a little more directly I I mean we can do this as long as we want to I mean the the overhead cost wise to maintain this operation is pretty low we have all the equipment everything we need uh so really at this point it's just it's putting the work in and and bringing guests on so we can and we're we're looking into uh I'll so our bread and butter of the show is is what we already do and that's sitting down with another veteran and and talking it out we're we're thinking about what are some other things that we can do what what additional content can we create that's maybe a little bit outside of of that but can I continue to talk about veteran military stuff that we care so deeply about and could also kind of help be the the hook that brings people into to the main event to mix metaphors yeah yeah I mean you're already providing so much value I mean the only thing that I can think of it's not much like I really do and I I enjoyed the podcast the first time we spoke I had only briefly seen a few of the the videos that you had posted on your Facebook page but I spent the last few weeks really um like listening and watching your stuff and so my my step grandfather passed away he was 2 Purple Hearts a 2nd airborne and I'm I'm sure this dude had so much more to say and I'm like that is such a lesson Learned that I'm hoping when I publish this episode cause I have a lot of West Coast listeners and we have Camp Pendleton and we have Navy Base San Diego um and then we have March Air Force Base there's a lot of um there's a lot of veterans out here that are previous wars um I see Vietnam veteran hats all the time especially when I go to the VA but like just out in town I live in a big like retired community right so I see them all the time and I will love to be like hey you wanna you wanna tell your story I know of a place haha so yeah yeah I think and I mean a lot of times a lot of the times it it has been great because the older generation has become more open about it right like so the the World War 2 vets the World War 2 vets came back and they just went right back to work right yeah The Korean War vets get forgotten about the forgotten war right because everybody had war fatigue from World War 2 Vietnam those guys didn't really want to talk about their service cause they were getting spit on and called baby killers yeah uh but the older generations have become more open to talking about it you know now because there's been other conflicts they've had decades to reflect on it and everything but we're now finding that a lot of the current generation of the GWOT vets there's that that sense of oh I don't have a story to tell a lot of that Roger Roger's actually been communicating with with one young lady who oh you know I I deployed but I don't have any you know cool war stories that's not the point that's not what we're it's it's your service it's not war stories with Roger and Dan that's not what it's called yeah yeah yeah I mean it's it's your service that matters it doesn't matter how long you wore the uniform you did it so that somebody else didn't have to and through the through that you know one enlistment or that 10 years you know whatever it was you took something away from that you you took experiences away from that you took an education away from that whether it was about leadership or fixing an airplane or you know whatever the case may be you took something away from your time in uniform and that deserves to be heard your experiences deserve to be heard your story deserves to be told and if you don't tell it then Hollywood is gonna make up a stupid movie about you know tanks Nazis and cool haircuts with Brad Pitt with Brad Pitt I was watching I saw this clip on YouTube one of the YouTube shorts and it was a Vietnam War vet and he was saying that during after World War 2 our you know our service members came home on a ship they had you know a week or two to talk to each other and unwind he's like for us at Vietnam we flew back he's like we had no one to talk to he's like so you went from war to your front doorstep in 24 hours and he was like and you didn't talk about it and I was like and obviously he's crying so like I'm crying and I'm like oh my God he's so right cause that's sometimes the case you go from this conflict zone and being in theater or even just having a really difficult time stateside and then you know you're you're home you're out you're the military has gotten pretty good about out processing soldiers now you you know depending on what the rule of the day is you have a year 18 months two years to sort of you know transition out of the military through a variety of different programs and stuff but yeah I mean we've talked to some of the older vets and they're like yeah man I got back from Vietnam and three days later I had my DD two fourteen in hand and I was calling my sister to to you know come pick me up at the bus station yeah yeah no I think that boots on ground time is is definitely important but I'm curious so if if a veteran is interested in being um you know on your podcast what's the process what does that look like for them uh first you gotta get in contact with us uh so you can do that through all the social medias because Roger is glued to that stuff um or you can go to the wait the website tracer burnout com and there's a little link there contact us and it'll it'll shoot us an email yeah that's the preferred way if if you can help it yeah so then okay and then you just reach out to them learn a little bit more and then schedule time yeah we we we like another thing we like to ask for from all of our guests is we they provide a DD two fourteen that does a couple things and yes we do ask them to sanitize any any personal information on there that we don't need to have access to but that does a couple things first and foremost approved service think back to our discussion about you know fraudulent veteran owned businesses you know kind of you know like that also it gives us kind of a baseline for the discussion so we can look and see okay this person was in this long this is some of the training they received it doesn't it doesn't tell the full story of course right but it it gives us something to start with there are some people who just aren't very talkative and so you you ask a question and they answer you directly and it doesn't really have that storyline to it yeah so we haven't had too many of those having having having the DD two fourteen help helps us kind of have some some questions to ask to kind of prod the the the question and answer along you give them the long wind up question and they're like yes yeah I was like that you only answer the question give nothing else yeah so I mean you know not interrogation yeah you know tell us about tell us about your time you know learning to you know churn ice in the Arctic you know uh tell us about what your experiences were in you know in Italy you know what is your least favorite aircraft to have to refuel in air yeah you know things like that you know and then you know there's always the the personal dynamic as well too you know what's it like being in the military with a with a special needs child you know right does your family have a history of service you know so a lot of times the answer is yes uh sometimes going back all the way to like Revolutionary War days uh but then sometimes the answer is just straight up no not that I know of you know like that's funny I was the first one that did it and that's just because I wanted to get out of you know where I was or whatever situation I was in New Jersey I'm just kidding God bless you in New Jersey yeah yeah no uh that's no that's awesome I um I used to do the interview question thing but as time has progressed I just decided to wing it well I mean I'm not as good as it than you guys are well I mean we also have the the the dynamic duo right uh but I mean it helps with our with our I'm more dynamic than you but yes our shared experience our familiarity with each other helps as well but then our with between our two careers we've we've got pretty much just a vast vast range of experiences to draw on so that that helps too some of them are even good yeah there there are a few good ones in there yeah there's some good experiences so are you guys do you guys have a podcast studio or is it um we took we took I'm I'm divorced and both of my kids are are you know in their 20s now and they're off you know trying to learn to adult and uh desperately so I I have a couple of spare bedrooms in the house and uh when when we got this uh this idea up and running I was like okay well I mean I can just pull everything out of one of the spare bedrooms and we can just set it up in here yeah and that's what we did I remember standing standing there in Dan's uh that that spare bedroom there's a bunk bed and a bunch of books and a bunch of just stuff on the floor and I was like yep we're turning this into a studio I again we are not sound engineers right we're complete neophytes in the whole thing so it we uh it's been a learning curve yes with with lighting and acoustics and the tech and you know soundproofing the windows of the light from from the outside you know and oh yeah Dan has a space blanket over the window that's awesome it's true no it's a nice curtain yeah so the blackout curtains are not as blackout as they should be uh so we had to come up with an alternate solution and I was like I got this yeah there's that 11 b coming out I can fix this yeah that's awesome no I I will leave a link to your podcast and your website in the description so folks can give you a listen and potentially become um some future guests I have a few people in mind that I think would um would really add to the value that you guys are providing that are um a couple of them have never been deployed but they are incredible human beings so we're doing a lot for the veteran community right now and then I have a couple of friends who spent more time in theater and have more time in combat than some of our Special Forces and I think that they would their stories are so incredible um convincing them to be on a podcast is gonna be interesting but out of all the podcast that they would be on I think yours would probably be the one that they choose no I mean it is it is completely voluntary we're not we're not gonna strong arm anybody to it and if it's if it's something that that I mean that's that's one of the things right we downplay our own service right because it's about the team not the individual right but then once you're not on that team anymore you know what are you doing for yourself and so I mean right that that is one of the very frustrating things is the you know uh I don't really want to talk about it right you know I don't have a story to tell yeah so and that's and that's exactly the personality of yeah a couple of my friends and I'm every time I talk oh that I I think that's true of a large portion of the veteran community because yeah you know you you self depreciate so yeah yeah they downplayed it for sure so yeah yeah there's a lot of obviously there's a lot of Marines out here Camp Pendleton is huge so there's a lot of folks who have gotten out and they either support by DOD contracting or becoming civilian employees and you know they're proxy they're the closest to whatever base they most likely served out of so I've met quite a few um like I go to Camp Pendleton all the time for the gym uh so I've had chats with some other folks that are in there and and you know that they did their time for sure but sometimes they'll come up and be like oh I found this picture for you and they'll show me and it's like them in theater like active engagement they're taking a selfie with their 50 cow you know at our generation type stuff my dudes yeah and it's it's hysterical cause you know I I was in the armory so I'm always yelling at those folks for doing dumb stuff with their weapons but uh and you know now I get to meet them out in the in the wild so one of the one of the favorite one of my favorite things that cause that after I go through all the audio that's when I send out the picture request list right and one of the favorite one of my favorite things that I got back was a short video and I mean they're in an active engagement and the the lieutenant I think it's the I think it's the lieutenant the platoon leader is on the radio like trying to call in fire or trying to call in close air support and you hear this crack ding and you just see his head jerk like this and then he goes right back to talking on the radio and he goes yeah I think I just got shot oh jeez yeah I I think I just got shot so he cause he's standing behind this wall that comes up to his knees just completely out in the open while the fire fights going on be nice to the lieutenant Stan we believe it or not we believe it or not we need them yeah like I said I think it's a lieutenant I I can't imagine an NCO being that dumb but I can imagine an NCO being that brave so yeah that's a no I'm haha we laugh but I can't imagine what that sounds like to a civilian like have you ever been an active engagement like and then you're just like oh what you missed well I mean I mean not just not just that not just the image of of the individual on the radio yeah but one of his soldiers was sitting there filming it oh yeah oh he was okay that's filming it like not combat camera this is this is this is private private Snuffies android right you know yeah private private Snuffies that should have been face forward towards the enemy not looking at whoever's on the radio gosh I have so many of those like poor quality images from the cell phones you buy out in town and you're like escorting and they're just like like in your motor razers but it's just you know us doing stupid stuff but you know you have to you have to you know do it do the best you can while you're out there accomplish the mission but have some fun while you're doing it I mean yeah that's that's awesome but the razor was my favorite cell phone that I've ever owned by the way I wish we could go back really oh yeah I wish we could go back I I have a you know you get like the junk phones out in town because your cell phone unless you have internet international plan doesn't really work so I've picked up so many of those and the images are so poor quality but I remember it like it was yesterday like snapping this picture and uh like I remember the first time I took a picture of an Afghan woman making bread and I brought it back and I was like this is why you don't eat the bread cause you know they make you the bread the bread yeah cause you know all the guys are chowing down cause they've been eating MREs and whatever the you know whatever d pack has and then you're like this is how the bread is made dude I'm not eating it because I don't think it's delicious I'm eating it because it is not delicious when you know where it comes from my you can't unsee it yeah yeah my my third tour in Afghanistan we were we were going through Kabul one day and we were on our way to drop off some muckety muck at some camp and we're driving past a whole bunch of what going through like the market right right and then off to one side is you know a bakery and they've got an elevated platform in there so that through the window you can see exactly how the bread is being made and I'd like I smacked my driver and you know yanked on my gunner and was like look left right now that's why you getting sick off of the bread yeah and they spread the word and nobody was eating the foot bread anymore no no nobody oh gosh yeah I've had a few of those and like you know when you have those um meetings with the folks out in town the town leaders and we were provide security services for them and um and the food they would serve you know it's all go the whole place like to me so much goat goat and sand like and uh and I'm just like do you have you seen these where it came from like they weren't like killed for the meal sometimes they died a natural causes and like they're not wasting the meat homie so don't put that put that down there's a reason why uh foods in the region are so overly spiced yeah yeah uh and it it's not necessarily to uh change the flavor it's all those spices kill some of the bacteria yeah that is that is in the goat that did not uh that was not slaughtered properly shall we say yeah yeah that's I got I got parasites from a goat in Iraq I was a young civil affairs officer alone and unafraid you know with a shake underneath a you know camel skin tent doing all the Lawrence of Arabia stuff Oof that was rough yeah I refuse to eat the local cuisine I grew up uh where I grew up in the South Bronx it was very much so like a Puerto Rican tech like area but um when more um refugees came in it's a lot of big Chaldean um neighborhood like Chaldeans came in they open up restaurants and um the halal places and stuff like that and that smell reminded me of that and I remember thinking it was weird even then as a kid and then seeing it I was like oh no this is definitely weird whether you're in New York or in their homeland it's you know do you you guys been doing it for hundreds of thousands of years but like for me I'm good haha yeah yeah sometimes you don't have the option to refuse yeah that's and that's I did not the P the peace offerings right cause they give it to you as like a way to that and that's gosh yeah my I was like thank you and you like put in your car you like a little cargo pocket you're like thank you so much for the bread I'm not gonna eat it right now or ever but you know I saw some thanks for the parasites yeah yeah especially when you're eating with you know everybody's eating this big communal meal with their bare hands yeah that that that's how I got it it's the the goat is just the goat is just flayed open on on the ground and it's laying on top of a big bed of saffron rice and everybody's just picking it off with their hands yeah yeah I took one for the team cause my NCA was like I ain't eating that I was like well one of us has to and so yeah I paid for it yeah you sure did that was your that should be on your DD two fourteen the the same thing applies by the way not with food but with the Koreans when when the Korean army goes out they they're gonna drink soju all night until they pass out oh and if you're and if if it's a if it's a military event you're drinking with them cause they will be thoroughly insulted if you don't and so me and my friends would draw straws like alright who's the designated drinker tonight yeah oh gosh soju is not not I've I've heard of it I have some army friends it's for me it seems like all of my army friends at some point in time in their career served in in Korea I don't know if that's like a mandatory thing for for folks but almost yeah yeah I've I avoided it like the plague yeah it is not anywhere I wanted to go so yeah that's it's interesting I mean in for for Navy you just have a coast and that coast dictates your entire career I'm a little bit of a caveat to that cause I got to go to South America and all these other places that maybe doesn't normally go but all the West Pack folks as we call them have at some point in time you know you do you do your Japan and all that other stuff and I just hear these stories and I'm like oh I'm surprised you survived and that was just on liberty so but anyway well thanks for for being here if there's anything else that you guys wanna wanna shout out or or anything else what uh what day of the week does your um do your podcast episodes come out is there a certain day of the week Mondays yes we release every other Monday so we're this is our off week so our next episode will be next Monday which is the is it the 3rd Dan am I doing uh 3 February yeah 3 February awesome yeah well thanks so much for being here I really appreciate you guys I'm super excited to uh to see this upcoming episode I'm trying to get caught up right now I think I've seen probably about half your episodes so yeah see I'm working backwards so the latest episode to the oldest episode and I haven't seen any decline in quality okay okay okay I'm gonna well it'll it will hit you when you get to there are there are two episodes back to back in particular where it you'll know so we we beg forgiveness on some of the learning curve but the the actual discussions within the episodes even in the early ones are really if I do say so myself I think they're pretty great so yeah just bear with us I think that's what I've seen I haven't really noticed or paid attention at all to the quality of the audio it's more so the content um and having sort of started a podcast I completely understand the the technical difficulties um so maybe I'm just a little bit more forgiving I guess I'll have to ask someone who isn't in the podcast world to give me their honest feedback but um at least for me cause I'm like oh yeah maybe I should ask someone who hasn't been on a podcast but I think they're I think they're great I don't know well thank you very much the difference between the Vietnam era vet and one of the big ones and in the World War 2 guys they all did the same thing combat wise and they all had the same mentality but the difference is is that when they came back they they came back on ships they had about a month or three weeks or whatever it was coming back from Germany or whatever theater they were in they were with their buddies and the guys they went over fought with and they had to they had the chance to debrief and talk about you know their experiences and and move through some of that stuff with people that actually understood what the hell I've been through Vietnam wasn't like that I came back by myself you know along with a bunch of other guys that I didn't know you know they just happen to be rotating back at that time from various parts some of them were in Saigon they were all over Vietnam they had hundreds of thousands of troops there at that time you know I came back you know with nobody really to talk to about it or share about it and nobody in the States understood it they just didn't understand what it was like to kill people it's not a good thing