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Are We Living in a Surveillance State? | Negligent Discharge Friday | 7.17.26 Jul 17, 2026

Show notes

No guest today. Just me and Michael running through the week.

Conor McGregor goes down in 19 seconds, and why I can respect the athlete and have zero respect for the man. Paddy Pimblett's submission of the night. A man in Yellowstone launched ten feet in the air by a bison, and why you never treat a wild animal the size of a small SUV like a pet. The hot springs that have killed at least 22 people since 1890.

E. Jean Carroll collects her judgment against Trump, and the difference between criticizing an action and vilifying a person. The war in Iran, the cost, and the fact that nobody can tell you what we're actually trying to accomplish. Social media as the greatest propaganda machine ever built. A Georgia family selling their home so power lines can feed an AI data center. Flock cameras and how close the surveillance key is to being turned. And Ben Franklin, who we've apparently been misquoting this whole time.

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What Happened on the Third Floor | Matt Bissonnette | Ep. 458 Jul 13, 2026

Show notes

Matt Bissonnette grew up in a remote Alaskan village, read every SEAL book he could find, and made it all the way to SEAL Team 6. Fourteen years in the Navy, 13 straight combat deployments, team leader at the command, and one of the operators on the third floor of the bin Laden compound. In 2012, writing as Mark Owen, he published No Easy Day — and spent the next decade paying for it. The DOJ came after him for skipping pre-publication review, took every penny the book made, and left him on a 15-year payment plan.

We get into what he actually saw that night in Abbottabad, the audio-recorded debrief, and why the competing narratives don't hold up tactically. Then the aftermath: 10-hour DOJ interrogations, being cut off from his own community, and getting to the point of putting a gun to his head.

We also cover the hypocrisy of leadership selling their own stories, the award system, funerals he couldn't attend, and why he's now raising Wagyu cattle and self-publishing his third book, No Easy Way.

No Easy Way: https://mattbissonnette.com/

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Over, Under, Around, or Through | Full Auto Friday | 7.10.2026 Jul 10, 2026

Show notes

No guest this week. Just me and the questions you sent in.

A guy 23 years into a marriage gets served divorce papers and wants to know how you start over at 43. I walk through the process itself — mediation over a courtroom, staying amicable, treating your ex like the person you fell in love with. Then the harder part. You've never been alone. You don't know who you are yet. Lean into that instead of running from it.

A question about the humor I use when a conversation gets heavy. Is it calculated or is it just how I talk. Answer: mostly the second one. But I get into when it works, when it doesn't, and the line between letting steam out of the pressure cooker and making things worse.

Demonstration parachute jumps. Somebody watched a jumper come in with a flag, catch a tree, and eat a controlled face plant in front of a crowd. I break down what actually changes when you add drag and weight, why the pro rating exists, and why you never fly over something you don't intend to land on.

And a 26-year-old who thinks he's falling behind. He isn't. Two things can be true — keep your foot on the gas, and stop robbing yourself of the success already behind you.

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The Cost War Charges Later | JP Dinnell | Ep. 457 Jul 06, 2026

Show notes

JP Dinnell spent nearly a decade in the SEAL Teams. Three combat deployments. In 2006 he went to Ramadi with Task Unit Bruiser as point man, machine gunner, and lead sniper for Delta Platoon. Chris Kyle was in Charlie Platoon. He came home with a Silver Star, two Bronze Stars with Valor, and an Army Commendation with Valor. Task Unit Bruiser became the most decorated special operations unit of the Iraq War. Then he went back to work for Jocko as an instructor at Training Detachment. Now he's Chief Training Officer at Echelon Front.

This one is about the part nobody talks about. Twenty years after Ramadi, his platoon sat down together for the first time. Montana. Fly fishing, blacksmithing, and the conversations they never had. He watched men he looked up to carry weight he never knew was there. Their medic is fighting terminal cancer from a burn pit next to the building they slept in.

We get into the difference between the price and the cost. The price is what you pay up front. The cost comes due decades later, in marriages, in kids, in the men around you.

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Choices Have Consequences | Negligent Discharge Friday | 7.3.2026 Jul 03, 2026

Show notes

Most of this one comes down to one thing. Choices have consequences, and you own them.

It starts with an email. A listener says the veteran community runs on lies and has an integrity problem, then sends it from an address that bounces. Transmit only. I read the whole thing and my response. A host who platforms a guest isn't endorsing them, and the size of an audience tells you nothing about the truth.

Then the news. Dustin Poirier gets arrested at an airport and threatens the officers, and we talk about how knowing a man's capabilities changes everything for the cop standing in front of him. An Air Force major gets himself arrested at the Capitol. Own it.

A pastor beats down a man who threatened his family, broken down like a fight — job title doesn't cancel your right to defend your people. A streamer provokes the wrong guy and gets dropped. And in Ukraine, low tech meets high tech: a rifle out the back of a Yak-52, hunting drones.

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We're Living in the Gaslit Era | Jennifer Fraser | Ep.456 Jun 29, 2026

Show notes

My guest has a PhD from the University of Toronto. She taught at the university level, then at two prep schools for years. In 2017 she walked away from education after the system covered up the abuse of one of her students. She turned whistleblower, went public, and started digging into the brain science of what had happened. That work became two books, The Bullied Brain and The Gaslit Brain, and a long-running column for Psychology Today. Jennifer Fraser studies abuse cultures for a living.

We get into gaslighting and what it actually does to your brain. She lays out the dark tetrad — narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy, sadism — and the mask these people wear so well it fools the experts. How they read you, isolate you, and make you doubt your own memory.

We cover the lie that abuse is the price of greatness. Coaches who don't want to win — they want to hurt the kids. Why refusing a bad order is the real test of leadership. And the part that matters most: the brain is wired to repair.

The Gaslit Brain: https://a.co/d/018Vlq2z

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The Devil You Know | Full Auto Friday | 6.26.2026 Jun 26, 2026

Show notes

Four questions this week. Two about relationships. Two that aren't.

-A friend wants another shot with an ex after a long marriage. I've watched four couples try this. Two made it. Two didn't. The merry-go-round of unresolved issues, and why you do the work up front or you do it later when everything is breaking.

-Dating someone from your BJJ gym. What to weigh before you start it, and what Leah has seen when it ends. Starting over later in life. The narrative that all the good ones are already taken is wrong.

-June 28th is the anniversary of Operation Red Wings. How to explain that day to young people now that the story carries controversy. The sacrifice still stands.

-Last one comes from a civilian who thinks military pay is a joke, the VA fails everyone, and nobody should enlist. I had a lot to say about that.

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Ten Years in the SAS - What They Don't Teach You | Jay Morton | Ep. 455 Jun 24, 2026

Show notes

Fourteen years in uniform. Four with the Parachute Regiment, a decade in the SAS. Patrol medic and qualified mountain guide. Afghanistan, Iraq, and covert deployments. Jay Morton left in 2018 and went straight up the world's biggest mountains — two Everest summits, one of them solo.

Everest comes up, and it isn't pretty. He stood on the summit alone in 2017. Now it's a queue of paying clients short-roped to the top, garbage stacked at Camp 4, two hundred grand for the VIP package. Nobody walks out anymore. They fly — on some of the sketchiest helicopter rides you'll ever hear described.

We get into what nobody warns you about: leaving. In the unit, everything is built around you. Someone books the flight. You wake up knowing exactly where to be. Then it's gone, and you're staring in the mirror looking for the guy who used to handle all of it.

We talk about chasing a bigger number in a bank account, then realizing a month later you didn't care about the thing you bought. Status versus utility. What his sister, a hospice nurse, heard people say at the end — and what they never said.

Also in here: the reality TV machine, the hypocrisy of the silent-professional crowd, twelve coffees in a day, and where AI stops being useful.

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What Does The Evidence Show? - Is Epstein Alive? | Nic McKinley & Ryan Dalton | Ep. 454 Jun 22, 2026

Show notes

Nic McKinley went from Air Force pararescue to the CIA, then founded DeliverFund to fight trafficking with intelligence tools. Ryan Dalton was a trafficking attorney and federal agent at the State Department before launching Closed Horizon, a platform that crowdsources rewards to surface hard answers. Different roads, same fight.

Skip the spy-novel version of Epstein. The simpler read: a guy who moved money for people who needed it moved, and collected leverage doing it. That access is what kept him protected.

From there it runs downhill. How intelligence operations actually get funded. Why a broker like that turns useful, then disposable. What a criminal trial would have forced into the open. And why a dead defendant solves that problem.

It also hits the harder one. It's an era where anything can be faked and attention gets steered on purpose. Getting to the truth is its own job now.

I went in skeptical. I'm still skeptical. The corruption underneath is harder to wave off.

Look at the evidence and decide for yourself.

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One Oh-Shit Unwinds Every Attaboy | Negligent Discharge Friday | 6.19.2026 Jun 19, 2026

Show notes

Michael's in the studio and we're working through the week. We start with two Pasadena officers horsing around with loaded guns. One of them ends up shooting the other through the windshield of the cruiser. We talk about the accountability that comes with carrying a badge. One oh-shit can unwind a career of attaboys.

From there we get into the aircraft gifted by Qatar and whether it belongs in service as Air Force One. We cover the new Iran framework, what it cost, and how it stacks up against the deal that came before it. We talk about being able to disagree with your own side without burning the whole thing down.

Then there's the UFC event on the White House lawn — the timing, the optics, and fighter bonuses paid out in crypto. We close with the beagle raid at Ridgeland Farms, where the line sits between legal and moral, and what we're willing to do in the name of science.

Enjoy

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