Week one of the book being out in the world, and I still don't have the vocabulary for the support. Thank you. Genuinely. If you read it, an honest Amazon review costs nothing and helps more than you'd think.

Then we get into the questions. A 25-year-old lawyer writes in about imposter syndrome and getting put on a pedestal for a job he doesn't feel qualified for yet. My take: keep the imposter syndrome. Just find a response that doesn't escalate or deescalate, and move the conversation to them.

Next one hits harder. A Marine turned med student on the "vet bro" archetype, the guy in head-to-toe fatigues at the airport, and the social sandpaper that follows. Why one bad interaction outweighs a hundred good ones. Why comparative service and competitive suffering benefit nobody. And why the best counter is just being a good expression of what you used to be.

Also covered: what recovery looked like overseas vs. now, why special operations runs like a professional sports team, and my honest take on TRT, dosage, and chasing health span over lifespan.

Enjoy

Pick up a copy of Drownproof here: https://www.clearedhotpodcast.com/book

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John Dudley is a decorated professional archer, two-time IBO National Champion, World Field Championship medalist, and the founder of Nock On Archery. He's spent close to 30 years inside the archery industry — competing at the highest levels across multiple continents, working with elite manufacturers, coaching everyone from beginners to national team athletes, and building one of the most comprehensive free archery education platforms on the internet through his School of Nock. He's also the host of the Nock On Podcast and turns 50 this June.

This conversation covers a lot of ground. We get into the physics and engineering limits of compound bows, why the industry is essentially robbing Peter to pay Paul at this point, and what it would take for someone with an outsider's mind to actually push the technology forward. Dudley talks about the trifecta of archery — mechanical, physical, and mental — and why the kids who aren't standout athletes are often the ones who thrive. We talk about the value of saying no, the cost of too much travel on your family, what Frank Zane taught him about longevity in fitness, and why his long-term goal is to pour every piece of knowledge he has back into the archery community before he steps away. We also get into reaching out to friends when you're struggling, the gap between knowing help exists and actually using it, and the transparency it takes to put your faults on paper. And haircuts. A lot about haircuts.

NockOnArchery: https://nockonarchery.com/

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Bill Clark is a former DEVGRU military working dog handler — one of the first brought into the program when it launched around 2002. He grew up in chaos. His father was a Vietnam-era Marine door gunner. His mother married five times. His stepfathers were abusive. He played Division I football, joined the Marines, switched to the Navy for a dog handler slot, and ended up spending 13 years at the command across 13 deployments. He ran over 350 operations and logged more than 200 bites. He survived late-stage colon cancer at 37 — linked to battlefield exposures — and now leads executive protection for Ethereum co-founder Charles Hoskinson, who is building what may become the largest stem cell treatment hub in America at his clinic in Gillette, Wyoming.

Dr. Bob Harmon calls himself a cow doctor. He started as a large-animal veterinarian out of UC Davis, got pulled into doing clinical trials for pharma companies, and then one day watched stem cells beat like a heart in a petri dish — no electrical stimulation, just cells that had been told what to become. That moment changed the trajectory of his career. He built a veterinary stem cell company that has now treated over 25,000 patients across 60 species. He developed stem cell therapy for the Navy's dolphins and sea lions. And he became the first person in the history of biopharma to take only veterinary data to the FDA and get approval for a human clinical trial. His company, Personalized Stem Cells, is now treating humans under the Federal Right to Try Act and the newly signed Wyoming Stem Cell Freedom Act.

We talk about the night Bill's dog Axe took a round through the skull and kept trying to get back in the fight. What it looks like to laze a door from 300 yards and send a dog into a compound full of armed fighters. How big pharma's animal and human divisions refuse to talk to each other. Why your own fat holds young stem cells at any age — even at 92. The difference between your own cells and donor cells. The ten COVID ICU patients who all walked out. How stem cells make their own morphine-like painkiller and could break the opioid addiction cycle. The TBI pilot study coming for veterans. And what it would take to get stem cells on the sideline of an NFL game or in a medic's backpack on the battlefield.

https://www.personalizedstemcells.com/

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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. Help me become undeniable to the NYT: https://www.clearedhotpodcast.com/book

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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