John Constantine spent almost 23 years in the United States Secret Service. Fifteen of them on the Counter Assault Team — the assaulters who exist for the day everything goes wrong. Team leader. Instructor. Operations supervisor. He stood with a rifle next to four presidential administrations, worked in almost 90 countries, and finished out in the Dignitary Protective Division running foreign heads of state. He wrote a book about the part of it nobody sees. It's called Hallways and Stairwells.

He breaks down what actually happened at the Correspondents' Dinner, why the security plan worked even though the magnetometer checkpoint didn't, and how far that guy really was from the President. Butler gets the same treatment. The layers of security people never see. Why hunkering down has never worked, anywhere, ever.

Then it goes past tactics. Mission, men, then you. Getting swatted at his own house over a function fire and suspended for it. Refusing to send guys and guns overseas as a favor unless somebody put it in writing. Two thousand eight hundred agents doing the work of ten thousand.

And the part that almost killed him. His identity got ripped out with the job. His wife found him on the bathroom floor. He talks about the climb back.

Hallways and Stairwells: https://a.co/d/00SrmoEJ

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Michael is moving to Missoula, so this one opens with a resignation and gets worse from there.

A man in a garbage can is polling at 20% against Nigel Farage in Clacton, and his platform makes more sense than it should.

Term limits, and the unelected career staff who actually run the machine.

Early access to Truth Social posts for $60,000 to $100,000 a month. Trading firms have already signed up.

A president clearing north of two billion in his first year back in office, and why the silence around it is deafening.

A California mayor who pleaded guilty to working as an unregistered agent of China.

A former Marine home after four years in a Russian prison.

What prison is actually for. Punishment, incapacitation, rehabilitation, and where the line sits.

A carrier at sea 250 days straight, what that does to 5,000 people with no end date, and the guy I watched grab a fire extinguisher and jump.

Also: a four mile run, PT school, and a second wiener dog named Beans.

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Drew Miller is an Air Force Academy honor graduate with a master's and a PhD from Harvard. His dissertation was on underground nuclear shelters and field fortifications. Thirty years in uniform across active duty, Air Guard, and Reserve. Intelligence officer. Strategic Air Command, the Pentagon, and a DoD think tank. Retired colonel. He founded Fortitude Ranch, a survival community with eight locations, and the Collapse Survival Institute. His new book is Preparing to Survive in the Age of Collapse.

His model puts the annual odds of a collapse disaster between 16 and 57 percent. Bioengineered H5N1. The grid going down. The economy stops, and law and order goes with it.

We disagreed on a lot of this one. He wants superintelligent AGI outlawed and says he would nuke a data center to enforce it. I don't get there with him. We went back and forth on facts versus assumptions, on what a real fight with China looks like, and on whether this government is salvageable.

Also covered: the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, civil war inside states instead of between them, two million prisoners with no power, and surviving an AI takeover by being too boring to kill.

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Just me today. Michael also dropped some news on me — he's moving on in a few months to go better himself, so there's a change coming to Negligent Discharge Friday.

Three questions this week. All of them heavy.

A woman facing divorce asks whether military culture makes it easier for a man to disconnect from family life. Military marriages aren't a single lifestyle. They're an independent one. But the five people you spend your time around will pull you one direction or the other.

I talk about my own divorce. Nineteen years and eleven months. The writing was on the wall a decade before I made the call. My biggest regret isn't leaving. It's what my kids absorbed while I stayed. They were sitting on the stairs listening the whole time.

A 28-year-old with money, milestones, and no mountain left to climb asks how to get motivated again. I tell him he's aiming too low, and that the money trap gets everybody eventually.

An 18-year-old just found out about his dad's affair and ships to boot camp next June. Quick to think, slow to act. Fixing his parents' marriage was never his job.

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Mike Glover served 18 years in Army Special Forces, worked as a contractor for the CIA, founded Fieldcraft Survival, and wrote the national bestseller Prepared. He's been on this show before. A lot has happened since.

The legal case that consumed the last 18 months is finished. He talks about the week he spent locked up — teaching breathing drills in a holding cell full of hard dudes — what the arrest cost him, and how family and a small circle of friends carried him through. Fieldcraft dissolved. He bought the pieces back. Now he's rebuilding it from the roots.

There's also a long stretch on the bin Laden story — O'Neill, Bissonette, the recorded debrief, the point man, and litigation nobody needed. Plus Roberts Ridge, the Jessica Lynch raid, Tillman, and why drama in the special operations community has real downstream consequences.

TRT, alcohol, helicopters, faith, veteran suicide, and a tribute to a Green Beret they called Swede.

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No guest. Just Michael, a stack of conversation cards, and whatever the internet served up this week.

Opening cards: simple is not the same as easy, and failures are tuition payments, not a definition.

A flight instructor in Argentina jumps to his death mid-lesson. His student lands the plane alone.

The viral robot gun turret video. Reaction time, technique, and a full review of the dismount.

Big announcement: a full F-18 simulator is coming to the coffee shop. Aircraft carrier landing competition. $25 per entry. If you have ever flown an F-18, you are not invited.

The Blue Angels' 40-foot pass over Pensacola Beach, and why the investigation should be allowed to happen.

The Titan submersible documentaries. Carbon fiber, "seasoning," and 20 milliseconds.

Getting fooled by AI images and satire headlines.

A public meltdown caught on camera, and what a mental health crisis looks like from the outside.

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Jack Osbourne grew up with cameras in the house. The Osbourne's made his family the biggest thing on television, and he was earning seven figures by 15. He got sober at 17 and has held that line for over two decades. Diagnosed with multiple sclerosis at 26. Since then he's built his own lane — adventure television, paranormal investigation, two podcasts, and a purple belt in jiu-jitsu. Last July, his father played the biggest farewell show in rock history. Seventeen days later, Ozzy was gone.

This conversation carries weight and goes sideways in equal measure. Making serious money as a kid and learning the hard way that the people hired to protect it don't always deserve the trust. Grieving a parent while untangling the business that comes with a famous last name. The final concert — a living wake where his dad got to say goodbye on his own terms — and the week at home together afterward.

Then the throttle opens: the UFC card on the White House South Lawn, a month in the Australian jungle on 500 calories a day, ghost stories he can't explain, the Nazca mummies, a plan to buy a decommissioned aircraft carrier, and bringing OzFest back.

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Ross Schneiderman spent his career as a reporter and editor. Newsweek, The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, ESPN. He covered mixed martial arts, then ran a foreign desk working alongside Afghan and Pakistani correspondents. In 2016 he wrote a Newsweek cover story about Mohammad Gulab, the Afghan villager who sheltered Marcus Luttrell. He never went to Afghanistan. He never covered a war. He spent six years piecing this one together anyway.

For twenty years, Operation Red Wings has been told one way. Lone Survivor turned it into a legend.

He FOIA'd the documents. He read the MERC chat, the debriefs, the after-action reports. He interviewed SEALs, Green Berets, and Afghan sources who were there. What he found doesn't match the movie.

We go through it in order. The comms that were supposedly never made, and the records that say otherwise. The vote that never happened. The phone call, and who really made it. The stinger missile that wasn't. And why a story meant to honor four men became a recruiting tool built on things that weren't true.

This isn't about tearing anyone down. Many men died doing the best they could in a terrible spot and situation. This is about what happens when an institution picks the myth over the truth.

Politico Article: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2026/03/20/operation-red-wings-lone-survivor-luttrell-00833548

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Every other Friday it's just me and the inbox. This week the emails came in heavy, so we cover a lot of ground.

Two people in law enforcement, both strong personalities, trying to build a relationship that works. Where confidence stops and ego starts, and how to tell you've crossed the line. Why the toughest guy in the room still needs a place to put the shield down.

The difference between the Jewish faith and the Israeli government, and why we've lost the ability to talk about either one without painting with a broom. Being able to criticize your own team without getting thrown off it.

Moving a family across the country and a 15-year-old who won't sign off on it. When you engage your kids in the decision, and when you just have to be the father and make the call.

Twenty years of sustained conflict and what it actually did to our capability. Real reps, the word "sacrifice," and how warfare is changing.

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Kyle Morgan spent over twenty years in the Army. Infantry, then Green Beret, then more than a decade in the nation's premier special missions unit running hostage rescue. In 2015 he was advising the U.S. Embassy in Mali when terrorists took the Radisson Blu hotel. He built a team on the fly and went in. The award for that was the Distinguished Service Cross, second only to the Medal of Honor. Today he runs Blu Bearing, trains police and civilians, and serves on the board of Frontline Healing Foundation.

When the job ends the machine has already forgotten about you, and he'll tell you that isn't cruel because it has to forget you to keep moving. The guys who come apart are the ones still trying to replace something that can't be replaced. He didn't leave the way he wanted to. There was addiction, a DUI he hid, and an overdose that nearly ended it, and his old command circled the wagons around him more than once before he finally made it out. Sobriety and faith are what brought him back, almost five years of it now, and he spends his time pointing at the cost so the next guy doesn't pay it blind. He'll tell you he's more proud of the husband and father he is today than anything he ever did downrange.

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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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