Another week where nothing happened and everything was totally fine.

Kristi Noem's husband Byron has been living a secret life involving cross-dressing, fake breasts, webcam models, and a pseudonym — and the whole thing may have been leaked by an immigrant retaliating against DHS. Trump posts that an entire civilization will die tonight, issues an 8 p.m. deadline nobody can explain, then adds God bless the Iranian people at the bottom. We break down why NATO countries aren't obligated to help with offensive operations and why people need to actually read Article 5 before losing their shit. The military fires a dozen generals out of nearly 900 — could be discriminatory, could be trimming the fat, the why matters. Bullet forensics in the Charlie Kirk case come back inconclusive — not exonerating, not damning, just insufficient evidence on the fragment. Pam Bondi is out as attorney general. A megachurch pastor pleads guilty to molesting a 12-year-old and serves six months. A guy films himself torching a warehouse full of toilet paper in Ontario, California. Michael discovers bidets in Japan and won't shut up about it. And I talk about why the real cultural change in this country is going to come from the people running businesses and mentoring the next generation — not from anyone in Washington.

Enjoy

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Adam B. is an active-duty police officer in Ohio, a 17-year military veteran, and a former M1 Abrams tanker who deployed to Iraq and Korea. He grew up in the foster care system after being removed from a violent home in Cleveland at age four, was adopted into a rural family that changed his trajectory, and went on to serve in the Army, the National Guard as an MP, work corrections at the Cuyahoga County jail, earn a spot on a SWAT team, and build a career in patrol.

This conversation covers a lot of ground. Adam walks through what it was like growing up with 12 siblings in a house that got raided by the DEA. He talks about what drew him to the military, what it felt like to hold a dying child overseas, and why that moment still makes it hard to hold his own kids. He describes working the tenth floor of one of Ohio's roughest jails, responding to a domestic violence murder in front of three children, and why most patrol officers are dangerously undertrained compared to SWAT. Then the conversation turns to East Palestine. Adam was activated with the National Guard and sent to the site of the Norfolk Southern train derailment. He stood 200 yards from a controlled chemical detonation with no protective equipment. He watched a mushroom cloud rise and tasted vinyl chloride in the air. Within weeks, his appendix had to be removed. Three years later, he's dealing with memory loss, vision problems, and symptoms his doctors are still trying to explain. Norfolk Southern spent millions lobbying against the very safety regulations proposed after the disaster.

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Casey Stumpf is a nurse practitioner with 18 years of clinical experience spanning emergency medicine, military family health at Camp Pendleton, hospice care, and hormonal optimization. She holds a Menopause Society Certified Provider credential and a bachelor's in dietetics from UC Davis. She now runs a practice in California focused exclusively on perimenopause, menopause, and hormonal health for both men and women.

In 2002, a study got published before the researchers finished reviewing it. The media ran with one conclusion: estrogen causes cancer. For the next two decades, women were stripped of hormone therapy and told to white knuckle through the worst years of their lives. That same study actually showed women on estrogen alone had 18% less breast cancer. Nobody reported that part. Casey walks through exactly what happened, why the data was misread, and what six decades of fear have cost 75 million American women — only 5% of whom are on hormones today.

We get into the real mechanics of what perimenopause does to the brain and body, why testosterone is her favorite hormone for women, the connection between untreated menopause and Alzheimer's, hip fractures, heart disease, and divorce. She talks about sitting bedside through hundreds of hospice deaths and how that shaped everything she does now. We talk about our mom's end-of-life letter, our dad's refusal to age gracefully, and what it means to build your 80-year-old self in midlife.

https://theradiantwelltality.com/

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The Army just raised their max enlistment age to 42. I don't know exactly why, but I'd like to. I'm hearing from a lot of people who were considering joining and are now hesitating — and when the rest of the world's allies are saying they don't want to get involved, that tells you something about the moment we're in. This isn't post-9/11. The lines around the block at recruiting stations aren't there right now.

We also dig into the big one this week — what's the purpose of life when it's full of struggle and sacrifice? A listener lost his dad at 61. Never made it to retirement. I don't pretend to have the answer locked down, but I'll tell you this: my dad is retired and bored out of his mind. And my sister sat with hundreds of dying people in hospice — none of them wished for more stuff. Every single one wished for more time.

Then we close on negative self-talk and why "if a pro can make the shot, why can't I" is one of the worst things you can say to yourself. Not everybody is created equal. That's not pessimism — it's the truth. And the sooner you stop measuring yourself against the best in the world and start measuring against your former self, the sooner you'll actually enjoy what you're doing.

Enjoy

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Travis Pastrana is a 17-time X Games gold medalist, multi-discipline motorsport champion, and the founder of Nitro Circus. He grew up in a Maryland construction family steeped in military service and contact sports, won his first outdoor national championship at 16, bought a house the same year, and has spent the decades since competing in everything from supercross to rally to NASCAR to base jumping. He has had two knee replacements, a hip replacement, over 30 concussions, and once turned 40 fractures across seven bones in his foot into dust on an X Games landing.

We got into what it actually means to make decisions at speed — treating cliffs and trees like traffic cones when everyone else backs off. His Daytona 500 run. The NASCAR race where every teammate crashed out and his daughter read him the riot act for finishing 15th. What happened when a group from a certain Army unit showed up at his place and every single one of them landed a backflip on a dirt bike within two tries. The concussion research that found his brain operates differently than most. His seven-year-old daughter telling him she doesn't want to be the best at anything because the people chasing greatness don't seem happy. And the massive open-air wind tunnel he bought from a Mission Impossible set that he can't afford to power.

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Negligent Discharge Friday. Michael and I run through the week's headlines and somehow end up exactly where you'd expect.

We kick it off with a full arsenal update — throwing stars, a blow dart gun, and the nunchucks still need names. Then we get into the Alan Ritchson body cam footage. His neighbor jumped in front of his bike, pushed him, and found out what happens when you put hands on a guy built like a refrigerator in front of his kids. No charges filed. Self-defense confirmed.

A quadruple amputee professional cornhole player was charged with murder. He was driving a Tesla and shot a man in the front seat. We broke down the mechanics. We had questions. Serious ones. Also some less serious ones.

We got into Trump's public comments on Joe Kent and what Tulsi Gabbard said about intelligence authority during her congressional testimony. ICE is standing around airports while TSA agents haven't been paid in six weeks. Delta pulled its congressional perks. Iran apparently sent Trump a gift — oil and gas related. No one knows what it is. Michael's daily screen time is five and a half hours. He lied about it. Twice. On camera.

Enjoy

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Rich Hy is a police detective in the Special Victims Unit in Buffalo, New York, an Army Reserve drill sergeant, and the creator behind Angry Cops, a YouTube channel with over 1.5 million subscribers built over a decade of consistent work. He's a combat veteran with a civil affairs background, multiple deployments, and 21 years of combined service. He's also expecting his first kid.

We pick up where we left off the last time Rich was on. The Buffalo schools investigation he blew open landed with an outside law firm, and the results were exactly what you'd expect when the DA's office won't share files, the police department hides behind juvenile protections that don't apply, and evidence gets conveniently deleted. They found systemic issues. Nobody got held accountable. A principal refused a subpoena. A school withheld camera footage showing a second child in an attempted abduction. The investigation acknowledged the problems Rich raised and then did nothing about the people responsible.

We get into the Epstein files and why most people are reading them wrong. Rich breaks down the difference between investigative documents and verified evidence. We talk Malibu Fitness, Tim Kennedy, and what it looks like when you own a mistake versus when you try to talk your way around one. Rich walks through a case he caught involving a blind refugee found dead in Buffalo — what the media reported versus what actually happened. We cover ICE operations, the Minnesota shooting, why the how matters more than the what in enforcement, and what happens when politicians throw their own people into the meat grinder hoping for a bad headline. Then we get into taxation, the Revolutionary War starting over a one and a half percent tax, property taxes in New York, the death tax, drill sergeant stories, peptides, Iran, and Rich's new podcast Overserved.

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Full Auto Friday to round out the week!

A listener flew from San Diego to Kalispell to tell a woman she was his person. He laid it all out on a couch in my coffee shop. I walk through the two things that I think matter most going into a marriage — communication and patience.

A 30-year-old writes in paralyzed by fear. Lifting weights, jiu-jitsu, new restaurants, driving in cities — his brain goes straight to worst-case on everything. What is the difference between irrational and improbable, and why he needs to go talk to a professional who can help him rewire the path his thoughts are carving?

I answer a question on how to pick the right jiu-jitsu gym. My wife Leah's advice: look at the makeup of the mat. If it looks like society, you're in the right place.

And I finally tell the story of being on the CBS reality show Hunted — union hours, wardrobe continuity, and pretending to play hide and seek in a warehouse in Bakersfield for eight hours a day.

Enjoy

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Greg Anderson is a former Army Ranger and deputy U.S. Marshal with two decades in law enforcement and combat, a 3rd-degree black belt, and the owner of one of the most thriving Jiu-Jitsu academies in the Pacific Northwest. His first book, Courage Through Adversity, just dropped. He's also about to row to Hawaii.

The Row West Pacific expedition is a four-man team rowing a Ronic 45 from the U.S. coastline to Hawaii — no motor, no support vessel, roughly 60 days at sea. Greg explains why he bought the boat, what 3-on/3-off looks like when there's nowhere to stop, and what the trip is actually about. It's not the craziest thing he's signed up for, but it might be the hardest.

We also cover what happens when local government decides your Jiu-Jitsu gym is an illegal operation. The answer involves a $40,000 parking assessment, federally protected buttercups, and a mandatory ratio of rhododendrons to parking spaces. Greg pushed back. It worked.

He talks about the book — why he wrote it, what he was actually willing to admit in it, and why authenticity isn't a marketing word. Then we get into cops and Jiu-Jitsu, lying about military service, wealth building, and where he thinks the country is headed.

Greg's Book - Courage Through Adversity: https://a.co/d/02CV5tuu

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Negligent Discharge Friday. Michael now has nunchucks. We're accepting name suggestions. Two names. Because there are two of them.

We got into Iran. The strike on the elementary school. Outdated intelligence. The difference between owning a mistake and talking around it. The authorized use of military force and how every administration since 9/11 has abused it. The draft being floated by a president who dodged Vietnam with bone spurs. Gaza and how you fight an enemy embedded in a civilian population. Mandatory service and why two years of serving something bigger than yourself might fix a lot of what's broken.

Then Snowden. Hero, villain, or somewhere in between. The surveillance state we already live in. The Patriot Act being one of the most unpatriotic things ever passed. AI deepfakes that take two days and $40 to build. A woman grieving the retirement of her AI boyfriend. And a guy in Kenya getting arrested trying to smuggle 2,200 ants in test tubes through an airport.

Enjoy.

Today's Sponsors:

Firecracker Farms:

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AG1:

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Erica Gaines came into law enforcement as the Knife Girl — selling switchblades at police conferences, making small talk with cops, building relationships she didn't fully understand. She had opinions. She thought shooting someone in the leg was a reasonable ask. Then she stepped into a use-of-force simulator. One domestic violence scenario, a shock pack on her lower back, and two minutes of chaos later, she walked out shaking. That experience rewired her. She's been inside this world ever since, running TacMobility — bringing neuroscience, stress physiology, and resiliency training to law enforcement agencies across the country.

Suicide is the number one cop killer in America. Not line-of-duty deaths. Not ambushes. Not traffic stops. Only half of agencies have any wellness program at all. Of those, only 23% are teaching actual resiliency skills. We get into what that gap costs — and why wellness and resiliency aren't the same thing, and confusing them is part of the problem.

We talk about internal law enforcement culture — why officers say the body armor on their back is for their own admin. Why cynicism becomes a slow leak that doesn't stop at retirement. Why the most important thing a cop can do might be building a social circle that has nothing to do with the job. We also get into dispatchers, women in law enforcement, human trafficking in Kalispell, and what happens to your identity the day you turn in your badge.

Tacmobility: https://www.tacmobility.org

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