Labor Day best of: Brian's best interviews of summer 2023

All right, the summer's over, but you can still be happy because we have a special edition of the Brian Kill Me Joe. This hour, we're going to bring back some of the interviews I think you like the most. And I want to share once again: Sergeant Israel Del Turo will be with us, author of a great book, A Patriot's Promise: Protecting My Brothers, Fighting for My Life, and Keeping My Word, and somebody who's a deep thinker that used to talk pure politics for the New York Times, now talks about values and the direction of the country, David Brooks. And he came on, it was off the really Atlantic piece off a book he's about to do called How America Got Me. A little bit.

We're kind of abrasive. New York's always been a little bit mean, but is the country going that way?

Well, David Brooks wrote a column about it. That's going to be a book. Here's my interview with David Brooks. David, welcome back. Oh, good to be back with you.

So David, what brought you to this point to write something so extensive and do the research dating all the way back to the end of World War II? Yeah, I've just over the last eight years I've been obsessed with two questions. First is why have we become so sad? there's rising depression rising mental health rise you know a third rise in suicide The number of people who say they have no close personal friends has quadrupled.

So, like, what's going on with our society? And then the second question is Why'd we become so mean? And so I have a friend who owns a restaurant. He says he used to kick somebody out of his restaurant every week for entitled behavior. I have a I ran into a lady who's a nurse, head nurse at a hospital.

And she said her main challenge is to keep her staff Uh 'cause the patients have become so abusive. that they want to leave the profession. And so this just sadness and meanness are like pervading our society and I just wanted to get at the roots of it.

So right some of it is social media and some of it you know, maybe some inequality. But to me, you know, for generations We've we grew up in a society that taught sort of moral skills like how to be kind to people, how to be considerate, how to disagree well. And no one's teaching the skills anymore.

So does that go on parents? And when my original concept when I started reading the story was this is going to go back to social media, especially when you talk about eight years, that's really the advent of the phone. And the way we communicate, the way we're in our phones, when we're around our friends and family, we don't even talk to the people next to us. And I thought that was the foundation of it, but you think it's deeper? Yeah, I think that's a big factor.

Um, you know, on social media there's like judgment everywhere and understanding nowhere, so everybody feels sort of alienated. But if you know the phones are everywhere around the world. Uh and the social and moral crisis are mostly America. We have it worse than anybody else.

So it's the interaction of phones with a deeper problem with the culture. And my basic story there is that our founders looked around and they said human beings are beautifully and wonderfully made. but we're also deeply broken and sinful. And if we're going to make a decent society out of people who have sinned. then we've got to do moral formation.

And moral formation sounds pretentious and pompous, but it's really just three things. Giving you a purpose in life. What are you directed toward? Maybe toward God or toward family or toward country. Second, it's restraining your selfishness so you can be a little self-disciplined in front of temptation.

And finally, it's just teaching Like basic moral skills, like How do I develop a friendship with you? How do I If I'm going to break up with a boyfriend or girlfriend, how do how do I do it without crushing their heart? How do I have a good conversationalist? How do I be a good listener? These are skills, like any set of skills, they need to be taught, and we sort of dropped the ball.

So you say Cub Scouts, Girl Scouts used to be a way of doing that, and you used to talk about some outside organizations. But fundamentally, if parents aren't doing it, you got to get it elsewhere. If it's a broken home, divorced home, single-parent family where they're working 50 hours a week, it's got to go somewhere else.

So you think we've got to set up some moral structures in our society? Do you think is that somewhat of a plan? Yeah, I think that's somewhat of a plan. I mean, I mean, I think our schools I mean, first of all, you're right, our families should be doing it. But, you know, families need to be embedded in communities where everybody's sending the same message.

And with fewer people going to the church or synagogue or mosque, they're not getting the message there. And then we've developed a culture, especially after World War II, Where we tell people, you're wonderful. You're good. And so you don't need moral formation. You're good just the way you are.

All you gotta do is look within and find the angel within. And that was sort of the self-esteem movement in the 1970s and 1980s. And so, all the institutions that used to really do moral formation, like teaching you how to be a decent person, how to show up well, they just got out of the. more formation business. And they got into the you do you business, self-affirmation.

we became a much more narcissistic and egotistical society.

So We need a moral shift, and then we need actual skills. I've actually spent the last four years working on a book which is coming out in the fall and it all I do is I collect skills, how do you become a good conversationalist? How do I listen to you with attention? When I meet you, what kind of gaze do I cast upon you? Like I have a buddy who's a pastor in Waco, Texas.

And when he meets somebody anybody he he knows he's looking at someone made in the image of god And he knows he's meeting someone. who was so important that Jesus was willing to die for that person. And I don't care if you're a Christian, Jewish, atheist, whatever, but looking at every person you meet with that level of respect and reverence is a... precondition for seeing people well. I mean, in other words, find the good in everybody.

I'd rather see more of the good than the bad. You could find either one, but you start with let's find the good. There's got to be something good about that person. Yeah, everybody you meet is more interesting than you on some subject. Everybody you meet is better than you on something.

So If you ask them the questions like what they really care about. You can have a great conversation and when you have a great conversation, people feel respected. Uh and you know somebody said In any conversation, respect is like air. When it's there, nobody notices, but when it's absent, it's all anybody can think about. Do you think we've hit different crises like this in our past?

I mean, I know that there's always a sense of loss of patriotism in our past. If you read back, you know, even leading up to the War of 1812, they write, you know, where's that spirit of 76? Where, you know, these people, you know, this generation isn't as tough as we were. I mean, and it just amazed the same thing leading up to World War I, right after the Civil War of the 1880s. They talked about how soft their kids were.

Do you think that we go through cycles like this, depending on the challenges our nation has? I think we do. You know, at the end of the 1880s, what you mentioned, it was like us when we were fearing we were losing the greatest generation. They were fearing they were losing the Civil War generation. And they did things to take care of it.

They established the Pledge of Allegiance. They established a lot of civic practices to try to give people sort of moral sturdiness. Basically, college football got started.

so young men could learn to be a little tougher. And so every generation is called upon to, I think, to Good. the moral challenges of their day and our particular day. It's this rise in depression, rise of distrust. a rise in the ability to be really be good friends to one another.

Now, how much of this, like when people look at depression and they look at some of the medications out there, and everyone wants to see a therapist and psychologist, like for example, if you're in a situation in your life, you got hit by Sandy, or if you're on the in Maui and you had your whole life destroyed, you don't have time to be depressed. You got to worry about the X's and O's of eating, surviving, finding out where I'm going to get, where your family is. There was a time in which we were scrambling to make a living. And the fact is, as a country, despite our dead and challenges that we have, We have a lot of luxuries that we never had, past generations didn't have. And when you don't have the things that are necessary for survival and success, and you look around and go, okay.

What makes me happy? I don't know because I know I can survive. I know I have a place to live. I know I have a job.

So, what satisfies me when you realize you don't know what that is, incomes of the depression, without that sense of urgency and survival? For example, in Ukraine, they're fighting so hard to survive, wondering about their loved ones. I don't know how much Prozac they need. Yeah. Yeah, that's for sure.

I mean, there are some cultures where they don't really knowledge of depression. I think, you know, I look at parenting and I think and the way we do schools. And a lot of the parenting in a lot of schools is based on a false idea. And that false idea is if I keep you, my child, safe. then you'll grow strong.

But if I I keep you too safe, you never learn to deal with setbacks, you never develop resilience and a friend of mine points to the fact that a lot of kids have peanut allergies now in schools and they can't serve peanut butter in schools. And why are there so many more peanut allergies in schools? It's 'cause we're protecting kids from enc encounters with peanuts. And so they become more vulnerable to the allergies. And so that's a sort of a metaphor for A better form of parenting.

And I think that's part of what's happened, part of that cultural shift is we thought, I just need to keep you safe, and then you'll be better. That's not the way you make people strong and resilient. And is your goal to make people aware of what's going on? And unless you take a step back and analyze society, you're not going to pick up. You can't change it unless you recognize it?

Do you have a are you are you chronicling this or are you looking to make this an action plan? I'm looking to make an action plan.

So, you know, the book that's coming out is called How to Know a Person. And I really walk people through. I didn't know the skills myself. If I want to make you feel respected, seen, heard, and understood. What you do every day on your job, you you talk to people.

I've got to become a really good conversationalist. I've got to become a really good listener. I've got to know how to ask questions. I've got to know went away when when I sense that you're being not you you're being a little scared because I'm being too probing.

So I've got to be patient. They're just all these social skills. And we don't teach them and so in the book especially I I just walk people through the skills and It's like, here's how you do carpentry, here's how you play baseball.

Well, here's how you relate to other people. It's a skill set. You know, I do do. I remember my kids, I go, the first thing you got to do is find out. Listen to people and let them know you care.

If they tell you they have a big game over the weekend, the first thing when you see them on Monday is, how'd you do? If you have a big test coming up, show them that you listen, you care, you do follow up. And on some level, they're going to say, I like that guy. I like that woman. You know, they care.

I don't know why I like them. I just get along with them. It's because they're asking questions to show that you're listening and that what they said mattered. Yeah, absolutely. I in my book I say there are two kinds of people, illuminators and diminishers.

The miniatures stereotype and ignore you. They make you feel invisible. But illuminators make you feel lit up. And they know what matters to you, like you said, and they say, well, how'd the game go? Or, you know, they'll say, How's your mom doing?

You know, they'll, or, you know, if you got a friend who's suffering, Sometimes you don't have to say anything. There's nothing you can say 'cause they're they're really going through something hard.

So you just show up. It's it's just the art of presence. I had a friend who's um Daughter got banged up bad in a bike accident. She said, You know what? The best thing that happened during the many months where she was recuperating.

Somebody came to our house, noticed we didn't have a shower mat in the shower.

So they went out to Target, they got a shower mat and they just put it in. And they didn't even say anything. They just did the practical thing. And they said, she said, that was so honoring. It was like.

They knew what I needed, they did what was practical, and they didn't turn into a big drama. Yeah, take action. I think a lot of it too, the pandemic, I'm interested to see what you thought the pandemic did for your concern about our nastiness as a culture and maybe our self-absorption because we were told as a country, stay home. Uh stay away. Don't go out to eat.

And in many cases, your job doesn't matter. Right.

So people got introspective for a while and they go, you know what? I think it brought everything to the surface almost like putting peroxide on a cut. It went right to the infection in many ways. Yeah, well it made me more less social. It took me months to get back into social life, so it it did not have a good effect on my social skills.

I it had the pandemic had a couple some good effects and some bad like I thought there would be a lot more rise in suicide during the pandemic, but it didn't happen. because people were staying home with their families and they were getting enough sleep.

So that was a a good effect. But there was a bad effect, especially on young people's mental health. If you ask people in 2019, do you feel persistently despondent and hopeless? It was like 21% said yes. After the pandemic, it was like 40%.

So just a sharp rise, especially for young people because of that isolation. And David, what's the response been to the column you put out? It's been uh overwhelmingly positive. I people I think people sense that You know, there's just something weird going on in our culture. Uh and Um, they're looking for explanations, and I don't know if my explanation is the whole one, like social media certainly plays a role, and but I think I.

I was pointing to a a piece that hasn't been played up as much, which is You know, we you get you get Our kid our parents, our grandparents, our schools, our churches. They don't just channel us through, they form us, they turn us into different kinds of people. And we need institutions that will do that for each successive generation. I hear you. David, great talking to you.

I look forward to your book. Hopefully, you'll come back on. We'd love to. We'd love to. You got it.

David Brooks, New York Times opinion columnist, op-ed columnist, I should say. David, thank you. All right, when we come back, well, for wrap-up this hour, take some calls. I'm going to go to some emails, I promise. You'll listen to the Brian Kilmean Show.

Educating, entertaining, enlightening. You're with Brian Kilmead. All right, my fellow Fox Across Americans, you've probably heard about Liver Health Formula Supplement many times, but did you know they already sold over 2 million bottles? Wow, and why is this so popular, you ask? It's because the American Liver Foundation says that a hundred a million Americans have fatty liver.

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So go to getliverhelp.com slash Jimmy now. Radio that makes you think. This is the Brian Kill Me Show. It occurs to me that much of the language debate is about acceptance and respect. If you're trans, give me a word, I'll call you whatever you want and I'll treat you respectfully.

But don't ask me to remember 14 new terms to describe where you are on your unbelievably nuanced spectrum. It's like, that's a sh way to make friends. I mean, imagine if I did that to you. Hey, Dub, you're a comedian. Oh, easy on the label.

Sure, I enjoy humor and paradox, and I'm not a fan of literal expression, but I also like walks on the beach and parks, and I feel like a fireman. Just having some fun. That's Dove David off talking about the ridiculousness. And by the way, this whole period that we're going through now, this whole trans can trans men play with women, it does lend perfectly towards any reasonable comedian. I'm just wondering: if there are comedians worth anything that doesn't see humor in the crap we're going through right now, of people saying in the debate taking place in certain blue states, where let's let a kid transition without being discriminated by.

Their parents and saying anything. Please don't tell me that comedians are too afraid to do that in a comedy club in Tucson or in Manhattan. Because this stuff that we're going through now isn't even interesting. We used to debate really interesting topics. We used to talk about what's going on with defense spending and how do we save Social Security.

Now there's, well, should an 11-year-old be allowed to transition without telling their parents? And if they do tell their parents, should they find the parents? And what if the parents want to stop it? Could they be sued by their kid? This is some of the crazy stuff that's happening in sports as well, where people are losing their job for speaking out and others are hailed for doing just that.

So just having a comedian talking from the news, it used to be hard to find humor in the news.

Now you just read it and say, is this supposed to be humorous?

So a little bit later on in this hour, we're going to talk to Sergeant Israel Del Toro. He's a patriot, and he wrote a book called A Patriot's Promise, Protecting My Brothers, Fighting for My Life, and Keeping My Word. And then we have a special edition. Guess what's happening now?

Now that summer's over and we're set and you're getting off the beach, possibly now, and getting set for, I don't know, a brand new week in fall, that would only have a. The NFL season to look forward to. College football finally underway, but now we are just a couple of weeks away from. A debate on Fox business. It'd be huge ratings.

I love, they picked a guy from Univision, I think. I don't know who that is, but I know Stuart Varney. From Fox Business, and I also know that Dana Perino, and they'll probably gonna probably do A debate that would be maybe focused more on the economy, but we're going to be talking about this week, what do you want to see in this debate you didn't see in the first one? And now who's going to emerge? Think about this.

How much has changed? Since the last debate, Nikki Haley, since he announced, has been under the radar, evidently grinding it out, blue-collaring it in Iowa, New Hampshire. Since the debate, don't think so. Does anyone not know how to say Vivek anymore? He was a lightning rod, picked fights with everybody, and they welcomed the fight and they raised their game.

Anyone who looked at Ron DeSantis saying, well, When he's not targeted, he looks like he's a guy in charge. The guy that I think will probably rethink sitting out many more debates, if in fact he does sit out this one. is Donald Trump. Because this is a positive. To get them in there talking about the issues, especially if things close down in Iowa, which some say they will.

Keep it here. From the Fox News Podcasts Network. I'm Ben Dominich, Fox News contributor and editor of the Transom.com daily newsletter, and I'm inviting you to join a conversation every week. It's the Ben Dominich Podcast. Subscribe and listen now by going to FoxNewsPodcasts.com.

A radio show like no other. It's Brian. Didn't kill me.

So, senior Master Sergeant Israel del Toro Jr., retired, is now unretired, back in action. He's the author of Patriots Promise: Protecting My Brothers, Fighting for My Life, and Keeping My Word. Sergeant, uh Del Toro, welcome back. Welcome to Brian Kill Me Chow. Thank you, sir.

Thank you for having me on. It's a pleasure and an honor.

Well, I mean, to put your life story together is unbelievable. It's going to be a great movie if anyone has any brain in their head that is a producer with some financing. But maybe, first off, with the amount of what you've already done and experienced in the military, what really pushed you to break precedent, 100% disabled, to go back in?

Well, you know, people Kept asking me because when I was during my recovery, you know, when I woke up, they said my military career was over and And they're like, What do you want to do? I was like, I want to continue serving. They're like, Why? Because I started to do public speaking, and they will say, Well, public speakers make good money, and they do. You know, some speakers.

you know, can make up to six figures for a forty five minute to an hour speech and And I j I would just tell him, it's like There's Thousands of people out there make great money and they hate their job.

So, why am I going to give up a job that I love? I love serving my country. I love being in the Air Force. I love being an operator, you know, tech tee.

So why am I going to give that up for a couple bucks? And that's what I did. You know, when they came back and gave me the option of of staying in and to re enlist I I jumped on um I had the opportunity. I was like, yes, I want to stay in.

So let's tell your story. You had a horrific upbringing. First year, dad dies suddenly, right? How how old were you at the time? I was 12 years old uh when my dad passed away.

What did it do to your family? Um well, you know uh No, it it crushed us. It really it crushed me, but I think it affected my mom the most. Uh, you know, I like in the book I talk how she lost her way. and how I try to bring her back.

not to focus on you know on us you know, and trying to continue to honor my that promise I made to my dad the night before he passed. you know, take care of your family and Um You know, unfortunately. One time, you know, see really gave it to me and and and Threatened me, Sandy if you continue to do the way you're doing uh I'll send you to a boarding school and you'll never see your brothers and sisters again. And You know, and that's when I realized, well I'll focus on my brother and sisters and I'll try once in a while to try and bring my mom back, but You know, it it just didn't work 'cause a year and a half later after my dad passed. Yeah, it was She was killed uh by a drunk driver.

Everybody handles grief differently. For her, it was to find another guy, dated all her friends, and finally with an 18-year-old, they're riding on a motorcycle. She's not wearing a helmet. He does. He goes into a coma.

She goes into a coma, horrifically injured. The last thing she says to you is ask for MMs. You couldn't give it to her. That's the last thing you've ever heard her say. And she passes away.

You find yourself the oldest in your family, and they didn't even want to tell you your mom was in an accident, right? I mean, you weren't old enough for them to tell you. They had to call another adult. Cops have to come into your house and call another adult to tell them to tell you. Yeah, that was tough, you know, when they came knocking on the door, like kicking out.

I want to say it was like bump. three o'clock in the morning, two o'clock in the morning. And an officer asked him, is he your mom? Is this uh Maria del Toros? Home was like, yes, sir.

It's like, is she home? I was like, I think so. Can you check? You know, I go check and like, no. I was like, what do you have?

Someone can call and uh, you know I'm asking what's going on. I had just, you know, I was about to graduate eighth grade. And, you know, so I was fourteen. And they're like, Well, we need to talk to an adult and they made me call Um Uh woman I think it was my aunt that called. And and they told her and They wouldn't tell us anything until my my aunt and my grandparents came to the house.

Definitely told us. And when she gets buried, you stay at the grave, and you're furious at her because now. Uh you were mad and I don't blame you. You're like, you know, I tried to get you to to reign your mom, you know, you tried to rein in, now I'm stuck, I'm going to have to raise a family. But in comes your grandhill, her father, to raise you guys, right?

And he's extremely strict. Yeah, but you know, my grandpa was very old-fashioned. You know, he's two generations behind. He was. That generation that believed You know, the boys.

We were outside doing the work, and the girls did not do sports, they stayed home. and cooking clean and It was tough for especially my sister that followed me 'cause she was into sports. She was a volleyball player and And trying to Be the mediator between that. It was tough, you know.

So, meanwhile, you have this tension at home. You're trying to be the leader. We also try to get your life together. You determine you're going to go to college, University of Illinois. Your teacher tells your counselor says, You're not going to go there.

Go to a community school. Not only do you go there, you get a full scholarship, and you're going. And you go in there and you put that acceptance and that scholarship in front of them. And you said, and you use an expletive, and you got suspended, but it was worth it, right? I got a month's worth of touching.

Yeah, most people don't realize that. You know, I went to a Catholic school, so my counselor was a priest. Oh, I didn't know that you were so worthy. No, it was so worth it was a month month long too, just to prove wrong, because I never accepted.

Well, people say my life is going to be I choose what my life's going to be. You know, and and and nothing's wrong with the junior college, but I always wanted to go to U.S. Illinois and And and to prove them wrong, it was a it was with that month-long detention. But you're not able to go. In the end, you had to take care of your family.

Your father, your grandfather has a stroke, and you pretty much got to take care of the family. And you give up that college education and start working and supporting the family. And you must be like, what is going on with my life? Am I star-crossed or what? Am I cursed?

Yeah, yeah, for a long time, you know, I I thought I was cursed 'cause any time I was on a hike Uh Brian. I just got knocked back back down and I did. I was like, why is this happening? Why why are you challenging me? You know, you know, asking God, why are you challenging me?

I'm only at the the time, you know, I was what, twenty years old? And I was like, in And I'm going through all this, I'm like, What's going on? And You know, maybe he had a plan. He was getting me ready for The day I got hurt and And prepare me.

So you're watching the Air Force, you're watching an Air Force commercial. You have one rare moment where you sit and watch television, you see it, and you go, I'm joining. You know, my youngest is 15, they can handle it, I'm going to join. And you join the Air Force, and you talk about how tough it was, but you loved it, correct? I did.

I I really loved being operator. You know, I grew up We grew up in the generation of Rambo. You know, who didn't want to be, you know, Ramble, you know, you know, have the long hair, chiseled body. You know, of course, now I don't have that long hair, and my son likes to say I have. more of a dad bot than just a body, but you know, that's I wanted to be that guy.

And that's why I joined my career field because You were that guy, you were making good. calling in those airstrikes, you know, for For special operations, you know, for scout teams, you know, that was who I wanted to be. But what happened but what happened in 2005?

So 2005, you know, December 4th, I was out on a mission with the scouts. And We had a high value target we had to capture or kill and a supply route that the Taliban was using that we had to dest destroy. And you know, I've been out there a couple of days and we're coming back to pick up the other half of our scout team. Um No more than twenty meters after crossing the creek do I feel this intense heat blast on my left side, and that's when I realized. Holy crap, I just got hit by an IED.

And It's funny people talk about how your life flashes in front of you and I never really believed that. But when I got hit, it was like a movie reel. You know, the old-time movie reels where you see lip images little by little? But for me, three distinct images were things that hadn't happened that were supposed to happen. Like me and my wife.

Finally, get married by the Catholic Church after our third attempt because every time we tried. I head down range. Second one was us honeymoon in Greece, because that's where she always wanted to go. which I still haven't done, so please don't remind Ronda. And lastly was most importantly was Me teaching my son how to play baseball because I was a ball player.

Right.

You know, that was. And that was something I wanted to do. And and that's something that clicked in my head, said, 'Cause I gotta get out of this truck. Uh, but when I got out of the truck, You're on fire. The whole body.

You couldn't get to the creek, right? I couldn't. I ran, but the flames overtook him and I collapsed, and I'm laying there and thinking this is it. I broke my promise to my family that I'd always come back. I broke my promise to my son that I'll never let him grow up without his head like I did.

But most importantly, I'm breaking my promise to my Dad. But I always take care of my family. And that's when one of my teammates tells me out, it's like, DT, you're not dying here. and we both jumped in a creek and the sound that I heard was the same sound. You hear when you put a hot pan in cold water, but instead of a pan it was my body.

Wow. The pain must have been overwhelming. What do you remember next?

Well, you know, it's funny, I didn't didn't the only thing I really hurt was like my leg. Uh but You know, as soon as I got hit, the the second half of my team that we were going to pick up, they get hit in a crossfire. And now they're calling back. asking for help is like Where's gunslinger, which was my call sign at the time? We need CAS, close air support.

So I had to figure out what to do. you know again honoring that promise to my dad you know these are my these are my brothers my brothers Yeah. I got to take care of them.

So My radios that I had were destroyed. My backup radios were off, and the truck that got destroyed.

So, luckily. One of my other teammates had a radio called an embitter. And I just told him, hey, get out of this frequency and repeat everything I say so he can get help in here.

So, just to reframe this, by the way, I'm talking to Senior Master Sergeant Israel del Toro. You've been burned from head to toe. You've jumped in the creek to put out the fire on your body, and you're still giving out commands. This is crazy. Yeah, you know uh And at the time, you know, I I was just I was just Trying to take care of my my my guys.

That's all I you know, honored. I promise. Uh I didn't think nothing of it. Uh you know i remember the medic trying to take care of me And I was like, No, I'm okay, okay. Yeah, my leg hurts.

But take care of Bailey, who was our gunner, who got thrown out blown out of the truck and the truck had rolled over his legs. As they focus on him, and get help for our guy. And and you know, I I try to do that and And I'm not I'll never be one to say that. You know, I had no fear. You know, once that last transmission went out, I guess the adrenaline started going down.

And I started having a hard time breathing. And I started getting scared. I was saying, Hey, where's this MetaVAT? Where's it at? Uh um Luckily my my dominic You know Found my spark.

I like to say we all have a spark that drives us. It's kind of funny saying the burn guy now saying do we have all have a spark? But We do. And he knew my son was my spark and he used that. to keep me up until the The helicopter Medevac landed.

I remember they wanted to carry me. And I was like, oh, hell no. It's like I walked into this fight, you know, and walked out.

So you walk into the fight and they put you into, because I don't want to cut you off, but we've got a couple of minutes left. They put you in a coma. And then you find out President Bush came to your side at Walter Reed. Yeah, you know, they put me in a college. I work at the Amazon Brook Army Medical Center.

I never got to go to Walt Tree, but.

Well you Yeah, you know, well, I didn't know. I was in a coma until I saw one of the guys getting a purple heart. And I was like, hey, did I ever get my purple heart? And they're like, you did? I'm like.

Well, where did that happen? I was like, well, what happened around you know, January time frame. And I was like, well, who gave it to me? It's like President Bush. I'm like Man, I wish I could have remembered that.

Um But it was cool, you know. My wife told me he stood in my room for 20 minutes. talking to me, even though I don't remember any of it. That's amazing.

So, when you come out of your coma, your next big worry, they say you're going to be there for years, you're only there for what, how long?

So, when I get out of coma, they tell me, you know, you're never going to breathe again, or you'll need a respirator for the rest of your life. I may not walk again. And I'll still be there for another year and a half and my military career was over.

Well Two months after they told me that, I left that hospital walking and breathing on my own. And then you worried. You're worried about when your son sees you and you're burned and you look different now. What are you worried about? You know, it it was I call it my darkest hour.

Because I never wished to die until that day when I saw my face. Because when yours is burned, They cover up the mirrors. And the day I saw myself uh My wife was helping me and my physical therapist was helping me. And I slipped and went on, put off the The tower off the mirror, and I broke down. And it wasn't a vanity thing that I didn't look like myself anymore.

It was more that if at the time I was thirty years old, If a thirty year old man thinks that he's a monster. What's a three-year-old son gonna think? You know, he was my spike, he was my everything. Yeah. And it took like 45 minutes.

until, you know, uh Gary, my therapist says, DT, all your son wants is a stabbed. That's all he cares about. And it calmed me down, but it was still in the back of my mind until the day I was seeing. And what happened? Uh And when I finally saw him, you know, walk in.

Yeah, my wife says Weddell, which is, you know, his nickname. They're like, hey, Bobby's here. And he comes running out. And I he ran like a little penguin and he's He comes out and sees me and stops. And all of a sudden, all this fear comes rushing back.

It's like, oh my God, he's terrified of me. and all he does is tilt his head to a side, Looks at me. Says Bobby. Like yeah, buddy. And comes up and gives me the most amazing hug I've ever had in my life.

The most amazing moment besides seeing them being born. I remember my wife's like, Don't hurt your dad. I'm like, call your woman, let me hold my boy, because I hadn't seen him since. August of 2005. Yes, but Gary was right.

All he wanted was his dad. He didn't care what his dad looked like, he just wanted his dad.

So, how that's amazing, that's the culmination. And where are you at today?

Well, you know, now I'm I'm here, you know, I retired in twenty nineteen, you know, living out here in Colorado Springs. And And and it joins My ranch, you know, I'm about 35 acres. Yesterday, people asked me. D T, how you celebrated the release of your book. That's like Well, and it kept my phone just kept blowing up and and I was like And I finally made a video.

I was like, this is what I'm doing, how to celebrate. I'm out here on my tractor. Cutting the grass. And that's just enjoying life right now, you know, hanging with my family, watching my son grow up and And go out and do Speaking engagements, because I feel sometimes people need to find their spark and hearing a story. And they can get it in your book, A Patriot's Promise.

He's a recipient of Purple Heart, Bronze Star, the Pat Tillman Award for Service, and he's still serving. You have no excuses after you read the story of Israel Del Toro Jr. It's an honor to talk to Israel. Thanks so much for your time. Congratulations on the book.

Uh thank you, Brian. Breaking news, unique opinions. Hear it all on the Brian Kill Me Show. Hey, welcome back. Just finishing up this special hour on the special edition of the Brian Kilmeat Show.

Thanks so much for listening on a Labor Day. And if you ever missed the show or if you have finally have a day off, your schedule is a little different, hopefully you are off, and you're listening to the show for the first time and say, I want to get it, just go to BrianKilmeatShow.com. It's a podcast, and it's one of the top podcasts in the company. And that's great considering a lot of people listen to it live, most do, and yet people still want to listen on the podcast. It's truly flattering.

Quick note: We've been talking about race, Nikki Haley, Vivek Ramaswamy making accusations. Jamel Hill of, I think it's the Atlantic.

Some magazine that she's writing on after being just expelled from ESPN. If you want to know about race in America and why we have no right to start claiming arbitrarily racism, think about how far we've come, which is one of the reasons why I wrote the President Freedom Fighter, Frederick Douglass Abraham Lincoln, The Battle to Save America's Soul. And that's why I wrote a book that's coming out. Don't worry if you haven't ordered it yet, but you can pre-order it. It's called Teddy and Booker T.

Two American icons play the path towards racial equality, and they did it across many headwinds. When we were doing separate but equal and Jim Crow, Booker T. Washington would not be held down, and Teddy Roosevelt would not be held back. And the way they combined, these are two stories in two Americans working together. It's a story I thought you had to know.

I could not wait. I've been working on this from before the last book. I can't wait for you to get it: BrianKillme.com or Amazon. Hey, thanks so much for being here. The special Labor Day edition of the Brian Kill Meet Show.

This hour, I'm going to be joined by two of my favorite people, the most interesting people I will ever meet. Tyrus, what he overcame in his life, what he became as a wrestler, bodyguard, and now as a commentator and stand-up comedian, live or in person in an interview setting or as a panelist. He's unbelievable. He shared his story with me. I got it in two parts for you.

And then Jordan Peterson. We sat down for as long as we possibly could. Two parts. We talk about happiness, what it means to be a man, life today, and what success actually is. And also about relationships.

Jordan Peterson, unfiltered, unedited, then Tyrus. Listen. It turns out new hires in 2023, according to a new study, are totally unprepared for work and life. Not saying everybody, but a lot of them. Psychologist and author Dr.

Jordan Peterson joins us now. Dr. Peterson, great to see you. Thank you very much.

So, when this study popped up, we thought you got to weigh in on this. They say that Gen Zers come in they're sincere, but if they have no necessary Instinct on what to do next. Find them a lot sitting idly by, waiting for instructions on what to do next. Does that make sense to you?

Something about this generation that would have trouble being self-motivated.

Well, I think that if you set up an education system that's designed To do nothing but demoralize young people and to convince them that their ambition is. Dangerous and well, even world-threatening for that matter, a manifestation of patriarchal oppression on the social front, and then a danger to the survival of the planet on the natural front. And you don't do anything to foster that ambition and to Channel it into a manner that might be productive and to tell young people why their ambition might be useful, then you're going to get exactly that.

So you hit what you aim at if you try hard enough, and the education system has been trying to demoralize people for 60 years. One of the things that really stuns me, you know, I haven't been able to figure this out yet. I've been trying to talk to Republican governors about this. I cannot understand why conservatives have been daft enough to allow the faculties of education to retain their hammer lock on teacher certification for the last 60 years. It's insane.

You mean the criteria to get the certification? Exactly. You have to be trained in a faculty of education to become a teacher. Why? They're the most woke element of the entire rotten university carcass, and they have the hammer lock on 50% of the state budgets.

You know, the conservatives are always complaining about the culture war. It's like, well, you handed all the young people. To the faculties of education, right? Their research is terrible. It's low rate.

Their students are generally very incompetent. comparatively speaking on the academic front, you know. It's foolish. And this is the outcome. It's not surprising.

And it's a way to work on the foundation. And when you have an RNC chair or a DNC chair, if you have an agenda, that's what to work on. Don't get Mr. and Mrs. candidate elected.

Start focusing on the direction you want the country in and find out how to give people an education that will allow them to, at the very least, think, but not what to think.

Well, the left-wingers in the 1960s were. far seeing enough, the more radical types, to envision a decades long march through the institutions, right? And one of their goals was the capture of educational institutions, and that's happened completely, and that's been absolutely abetted by conservatives who tend to get lost in the details. Um Well, then you think now you have young people who are demoralized and directionless.

Well, they're never taught anything about how to acquire a direction. You know, we did a study, I used this program I developed called Future Authoring. We did a study where we had three studies, actually, where we had university students sit down essentially for 90 minutes, 90 minutes, this was it, and write out a goal, a series of goals for their life, right? Who could they be in five years across seven important dimensions of their life and where might they be that would be terrible if they didn't get their act together? We dropped their dropout rate 50% and raised their grade point average by 35%, three separate studies.

Not me, I was lucky enough to keep working, but I had to work remotely. Everyone's life changed. And people took a deep breath and they said, Why am I in this job? Why is it necessary for me to do this? If life does stop, nothing will change.

It seems like. Our population got off the treadmill. And said Why get back on? And they're having trouble getting back on. When they get back on, they're not as motivated because they don't know why they're doing it.

And you said to me in the break on Fox and Friends this weekend: it's because they don't have goals, they don't have a vision. If you have a vision, that leads to happiness. Why? Because you have a mission, you have a direction, because you know what you want the end game to be. And that's back to your 15 minutes.

You put that 15 minutes and you find out what your end game is. Don't tell me you don't know. Work on it.

Well, it does two things: having a goal.

Well, if you have a goal and it's a collective goal. That unites people.

So a collective vision is what unites people because then everyone is heading in the same direction. Everyone regards the same things as positive. Everybody uses the same structure to protect themselves from anxiety and their emotions are aligned.

So a goal, a united goal, a collective goal, is what unites us. Then on the individual front, if you have a goal and you see yourself taking steps towards it, that is what produces positive emotion and positive motivation, that enthusiastic desire to get up and go. And it also stops anxiety because you either have a goal or you're fragmented. If you're fragmented, you don't know which direction to go in. That gives you too many directions.

That makes you anxious. That's what anxieties are. I don't even know where to go. I'm out. I'm out.

And I think that what you just said with that 15 minutes is so important because, especially with teenagers, just in college, just graduate, I don't really know what I want to do. What do you want to do?

Well, it's fine to know that, but you got to take action to solve that. To do that, you got to go take action to go find out. What does Dr. Jordan Peterson do? Why does he seem so fulfilled?

What about the guy down the block that owns a garage? Why does he seem happy every day?

Well, he always wanted to be his own business, go his own shots. He wanted to help people. But you have to go work at finding out what is effective. I think you have an obligation to make the most out of life. And I think people get the worm.

Definition on happiness. What is happiness? Happiness is not high-five and necessarily smiling. It's having a mission.

Well, it's also not the gratification of immediate desire. Like, there's actually two forms of positive emotion, eh? There's the emotion that you feel, let's say, after having a good meal, after a Thanksgiving dinner. And that's just satiation. But satiation puts you to sleep.

Right now it's pleasant because you don't need anything, but it isn't motivating. Motivation comes in a pursuit. You have to be pursuing a goal. And so then you have to figure out what your goal is. And it's not optional.

You know, the other thing for people to think about is, well, You know, you might say, Well, I'm the sort of person that doesn't plan. It's like, well, that's because you're afraid. That's part of the reason, and you should overcome that. But it's also the case that if you don't have your plan, Someone else has a plan for you. And whatever responsibility you abdicate will be taken up by tyrants, and whatever direction you don't provide for yourself will be provided by other people who don't have your best interest in mind.

That's how it works. Coming up after the break, more Dr. Jordan Peterson. You're listening to Brian Kilmead on the Brian Kilmead Show. You're with Brian Kilmead.

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The fastest three hours in radio. You're with Brian Kilmead. Hi, everyone. Thanks so much for listening. As promised, here's more with Dr.

Jordan Peterson. So, Dr. Peterson, I watch you too in the break. People like young men, especially, walking up to you, kind of your autograph, asking you a quick question.

So, you're helping people. And that must be a good feeling. A lot of people think: well, how do I feel satisfied? One of the things I think is universal is there's nothing better than helping somebody. And one of the things you can do when you have a family on a regular basis, you're training, you're solving problems, bringing them to practice, getting them to a better school, going doing your best to make an effort to be a good parent.

And that leads me to what would be an absence in my life without a family. It would just be, it would almost be like not having an appendage. And now I also see in America more and more people having less kids or no kids, decide not to get married or decide to be childless. And I respect everybody who makes that decision, that's fine. But do you think it points to a bigger story in the world today, in this country today?

Well, one of the Points that I've put forward that have become rather markedly popular is the notion that. The meaning that sustains you in times of trouble will be found as a consequence of adopting responsibility. See, and this is another thing conservatives haven't been very good at. communicating to young people because conservatives Tend to be Somewhat finger-wagging in their morality. You should do this.

And you know, fair enough, there are things you should do. But there's a better story there, and the story is the one that you started to outline, which is.

Well, if you look at what you have at hand when times get rough, let's say, which they certainly will, you'll find that most of the genuine self-esteem that you feel and the cessation of anxiety and the pursuit of happiness is a consequence of bearing responsibility. You bear responsibility for yourself over the long run, for your. Wife, or your husband, over the long run, for your family, for your community. And that's a reciprocal interaction, so you'll get paid back. By the people you're helping for doing that, but it also is an intrinsic thing.

But you don't do it for any reason, too. No, no, you do it because everything works if you do that.

So, the other thing, see, we thought for a long time, and this is actually could be laid at the feet of psychologists to some degree, that your happiness or even your mental stability is somehow an internal thing. It's psychological. But that's not exactly right. Your mental health and your happiness, so your freedom from anxiety and your happiness, is dependent on the harmony that you establish within the systems that you're embedded.

So you can't be sane and happy without a long-term partner. And the data on that is quite clear because married people are a lot happier than unmarried people. You can't be sane and together within a couple without having a family. It might be your parents and your siblings, but it should also be children because that, you have to knit that together. And then your family can't function without a functioning neighborhood and then a community and then a state.

And the sanity is the harmony between all those levels. It's not something you carry around inside you. And it's partly. Key to sanity being embedded at all those levels because none of us are capable in and of ourselves of regulating ourselves. Like when you and I are even talking right now, the communication regulates.

We regulate each other with the communication, right? You're saying things, I'm saying things, we're trying to keep it interesting, we're trying to move forward, you know, in a production. We're both emulated and intrigued. Exactly. Well, right, right.

So we have a container, which is the goal, and then there's interest being manifested. And if we do that right, we pull everyone in.

Well, that's a good situation, right? And then your emotions are well regulated when all of that is happening. That's key to that is responsibility. You know, we talked on the Fox and Friends episode about the fact that young men are turning more towards conservatism. And I really believe, and I've watched this a lot, that that's because they're starting to understand more explicitly the utility of adopting a heavy load of responsibility.

Now, I mentioned that, you know, I think the girls will go along with that in a few years. And I was thinking that through the other night. Boys go out with younger girls. There's a dichotomy between the political position of boys and girls that are the same age, but Girls the same age as high school boys aren't their peers. The boys are with younger girls.

The younger girls will change in that more conservative direction if the boys change first. That's what'll happen. Real quick on education, you talked about accommodations.

So, someone has ADD, they're told, dyslexia, other things. In the public school now, there's a lot of accommodations. I'm going to give you more time for your test or things to that nature. I have trouble tracking across the line. You think accommodations, in many cases, don't show progress, can be limiting.

Why? Well The problem with the accommodation hypothesis is something like the advantage is, well, You want to do what you can to help people who might have obstacles that could be overcome to learn. That's not unreasonable. But the problem with the accommodation hypothesis is.

Well what happens when you have an actual problem to solve? You're not going to be accommodated. You're not going to be accommodated in a workforce that requires genuine competition. Because if you're accommodated in a workforce that requires genuine competition, you're just going to be taken out. There's no time for that.

You might say, well, there should always be time. It's like, well, not if there are important things at stake.

Well, it's, it's, there's going to. That's foolish, right? Because when you're making important decisions, you're always balancing one catastrophe against another. You don't have the option that everything's going to turn out. And so the problem with accommodation, well, first of all, it's going to be gamed and it's being gamed like mad.

And second, it gives the person who's being accommodated to the wrong picture of the world to which they're going to adapt. Think about this with parenthood: how should you treat your kids?

Well, as a mother and father, you should be a proxy for the world. Maybe a slightly more merciful proxy. But basically, the message you send your kids about their behavior is the same message that the world is going to send them. It should be. Because otherwise, you're not preparing them for the world.

You know, so maybe your kid's annoying as hell to you and your wife, and you don't do anything about it because you think, well, we're all mercy. It's like that's just fine until your kid has to make a friend or, you know, deal with an adult that's not you, in which case they're going to get slaughtered. There's nothing merciful about that. And if you accommodate people beyond what the environment itself would allow, you misinform them about the... The world they're going to inhabit.

And plus, it can be gamed, and it's being gamed constantly. Yeah, and lastly. I just noticed too, as much as you know the crowds that you draw, you told me you're going over to the Middle East where you have this huge foundation. It's unbelievable what you've done. I always find, too, when you talk about yourself and your relationships.

You sound like you have the same issues that everybody has. Of course. But I think people, that also helps tell the Jordan Peterson story. I'm trying hard to be successful relaying what I learned, but I'm still dealing with the same stuff.

Well, it's important for people to know that people who are successful, let's say, aren't the people who are fortunate enough to have no problems. No one is in the category of fortunate enough to have no problems. People like that don't exist. Everybody deals with aging and death and severe illness. You deal with that and your wife at the same time.

Yes, yes, and my daughter too, all of us at the same time. And, you know, it's the case for everyone.

Now, you meet people now and then, and I met lots of people like this in my clinical practice who have so many things going wrong at the same time that, you know, it's just an unutterable catastrophe. But the fact that there are people like that and there are people who are clearly Clearly, experiencing higher levels of misfortune, say, than the norm, doesn't mean that the successful people are the ones who have no problems. It's just the successful people are the people who keep on going, and they're fortunate enough to be able to do that often, to keep on going regardless of what's being thrown at them. And that's in the nature of success, right? Don't take for granted one day that it's going to continue if you put your hand, take your foot off the gas.

Yeah, that as well. Online school, you and your daughter working together. What should we know, and how do we get it?

Well, we've got about 30 courses. Recorded so far in a studio in Miami. They look very good, they're very professionally produced. We are trying to find the best lectures in the world.

So, if you think you're a good lecturer and you want to participate, give that some thought. That's Peterson Academy. We hope we'll be ready to roll in November. We want to make sure that we have the best lectures that we can possibly provide on the most germane topics, and then we're going to ally that with a very stringent testing and accrediting system so that if you are a graduate of this particular institution, the people who hire you will know that you. Learned what you were to Aiming at learning and that you did the proper work.

And that's extraordinarily important because employers need to know that. Absolutely. Dr. Jordan Peterson, I know you had a few hurdles to clear to get here. I really appreciate your time.

I know our audience does. Best success coming your direction. And if you want to go see you in person, just go to. JordanBPeterson.com. There's some tickets on sale for a show I'm going to do in London.

I started this alliance. I'm participating in this Alliance for Responsible Citizenship, which we're trying to produce a worldview that isn't for the future, that isn't predicated on fear and compulsion. And so there are tickets on sale for London now at the O2 for the public part of that. Wow, you don't do things small. Dr.

Peterson, thanks so much. Hey, you made it to see you, sir. Thanks for the invitation. All right, how great was that? What I love most about Dr.

Jordan Peterson, he looks at your questions, he actually thinks about them as if he's never heard him before. I find it flattering. When we come back, another guy I find endlessly interesting. Tyrus, straight ahead. Brian Kilmeetcho, Labor Day Edition.

Keep it here. The more you listen. The more you'll know, it's Brian Kilmead. One more time, Joe. Hi, I'm Jimmy Fallon.

I'm Stephen Colbert. I'm Jimmy Kimmell. I thought when you said Jimmy, you meant me, Jimmy, but you meant Jimmy, Jimmy. I always mean you. But when you see Seth Meyers, who do you mean?

I mean, John Oliver. The five of us together for maybe an hour a day. Strike Force Five is the name of our. our podcast subscribe to it now So the five Talk show hosts who don't have a job because of the writer's strike, Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon, Stephen Colbert, John Oliver and Seth Myers have gotten together, put together a podcast.

So I just saw Tyrus at the App Store. We met, we go there all the time. And he was downloading the app to know to get the podcast. And I said, Tyrus, you want to come on and talk about it? Because you're on late night television with the number one show with Gutfeld.

Tyrus is here. Tyrus got that memoir out. He's got a new book he's working on too. But he's got a memoir that gives you an idea how he got to where he is today. What's your reaction to the five guys getting together just to talk?

You know, I I always support you, but um You were just completely dishonest with the American people. We go to the app store, you and I, we go for video games and stuff. Let's be honest. All right. This is the first I've heard of it.

What do you mean, really? They want to raise money. They want to raise money. Raise money. Yeah.

The five of them get together. How long will those egos last? I mean, I I get it, but even I always think when stuff like that comes together, it's like it's out of desperation. Obviously they want the strike to be over. Um, you guys have never heard of improv.

But, uh And get back to work, but it's a nice attempt, I think, together. You know, if they film it, maybe they can give us a little run for our money.

So, Tyrus, this is a couple of things. Do you know? Did you watch late night television at all growing up? Oh, of course. I mean, I watched Johnny Carson, I watched Letterman, Arsenio, Arsinio was good.

Arsenio was like, hey, we could do this too. And, you know, and I. Bill Clinton famously played the saxophone. He used to be where things happened. He had that.

And then, of course, Jay Leno was good. And.

So you watched it as much as I could, you know, being in school and stuff, eating, you know, it was only like Friday nights, but uh and then I watched more of the old Carson stuff. Because that's when it was just funny. When he had like Don Rickles on there and he had Sammy Davis Jr. on there, and they had the great TV actors from that day. And it would be someone who'd be unscripted.

Oh, it would just be fun. Everything now is such a promo.

Well, they can't work because no one to write their jokes for them. I think that should say a lot to the fans. You know, that should be like, you know, the stuff they say, they're just reading a teleprompter.

So, really, the ones you miss are the writers. Right.

So, maybe the writers should get paid more. If I remember correctly, Leno, when they went on strike. Took a week over and they said, I'm going to go back. I'm going to write my own stuff. He was writing his own monologues.

Yeah, because he was talented. And he's a workhorse. He's a workhorse. Like, you know, you think Carson would have ad lib. You know, but I guess the other side of it, it's a show of solidarity that we won't work while we're supporting.

But then. Then they go out and they do a podcast.

So they are kind of working.

So this is what bothers me. The history of television is competition. Today's show, Good Morning America, Carson, Joey Bishop. You know, you, Dick Cavett. And he stopped talking to you.

Done Rivers. They never talked again. You're going to come against me? I'm never talking to you again. Let him in the Leno.

Fractured the friendship fracture. Oh, really? You got the tonight show over me? I'm doing my own thing. Those are the days.

That's America. You're going to compete with me? These guys don't compete. They actually swap shows. I guarantee you, if any of them was in first place.

It'd be different. Let me tell you what we did. Let me tell you what the Gutfeld did because we, for whatever reason, don't get invited to the Emmys, right? Right, because we won't cut the check. Right.

But, um They knew better than to give the Emmy to the second best, which is probably Colbert. Colbert, I think, is the toughest competition we have.

So instead of that. They gave it to John Oliver, which was the lowest-rated show.

So we made HBO once a week. Yeah, we made. The late night Emmy. A participation award. And I am more prouder than that.

and I actually went into Emmy. Because we took the establishment and they gave it to the lowest-rated show. That's so interesting, yeah.

So that shows, although they pretend like we don't exist. But they weren't willing to give the they weren't willing to admit they were going to have to take the silver.

So I take that as that in itself is when they won't show up, when they refuse to take second, you're in their head.

So a couple of things. I don't know where you were. When Stephen Colbert first launched, he was getting zero ratings. The only reason he got ratings is because he just went all on the offense against Donald Trump. Right.

And they just won't even split it. Like, if you watch Leno, sometimes they'll do this thing with Jimmy Fallon, where Jimmy Fallon says, you know, my calves bother me. I need a break. And he'll walk out, and Leno takes over out of respect. Right.

And he'll come to his mom. You know what he does? Immediately starts hitting both sides. And guess what happens? Both sides laugh.

Yeah. Because it's an equal opportunity offender. Why do you see it ever coming back? There's because here's the deal. There's the the Trump hysteria.

There was a short-term spike in it. CNN went all in. All these media guys went in. All these journalists went in. And you look at the guys who were at the forefront of the.

of the attacking the Trump train. Um uh what's his name? On um CNN, Don Lemon went hard in the pain, so they're tapper. Jay, Jay kind of does the thing where he'll say something and then kind of like apologetically back out of it. But like Aconsta went all in.

He was all in. He was this nemesis. He had just nonstop. And when it was over. Wow, you've been in the gym, huh, bro?

Costa really bothered you. No, it's okay. It's okay, Eric. We can wait till the break. And look at that.

But once it was over, He went away. They gave him a show. It tanked out. You know, that's the thing. They all went in because, you know, Fallon had that great bit with Trump, President Trump's hair.

And he caught so much hell for it, but everyone was laughing. He had everybody. And they they bet on. The half the country, but they realize that the other half of the country who works and comes home at night, those are the ones who are sitting and watching 11 o'clock to laugh and go to bed.

So they just basically kind of spit in the face of half the country, and then they are shocked that their numbers went in the tanks because the people they bet on. Once the Trump thing was done, they didn't stay with him. They didn't come back. CNN is like battling with HLN.

So I was talking to Pierce. Yesterday, and he's friends with James Gordon. Yeah. And James Gordon had very creative stuff. Of course, he had to do his obligatory Trump's terrible, but he used to do plays.

Like, they used to stop traffic and do mini plays while the light was red and then come back. They used to do extraordinary things, but know what they said? The amount of money you're costing me to do this show, where Letterman used to thrive in that area, actually, the exact same show. I'm not getting the ratings.

So basically, they can't afford them anymore.

So he's like, I'll just go back to England. Things are changing right before our eyes.

Well, the thing is, here's what it is. When you when you come on at 12 midnight. The viewer is not trying to be scared or angered. They're trying to go to sleep with a smile on their face. And you want to make everybody laughing happy, and plays on the road I would rather hear than bashing a president that.

Half the country voted for it. Right.

Like it just, there was no money and sense in it. And then, uh, Some of his off the field stuff was a little weird. But again, it goes to the same thing where You mean in the restaurant when he blew up with people? Yeah. You know, but you get into this thing where you the best thing to do is make fun of everybody.

The Don Rickles philosophy is what I live my life by. I make fun of Trump. I even occasionally, although I don't make fun of you because that's all Gutfeld does. That's all he does. My role is to be like, why?

Why? Why? Tell me he's a good guy, man. What are we doing here? Right.

And if you can't convince him. I mean, I heard her shooting in the tent, but like throwing dynamite sticks in the tent is ridiculous. I was shocked when Perina, Perino took a shot at you. No way. Yeah, and I was like, what are we doing?

You too? Yeah, she took a shot at you. Justin, was I not informed of this? Are you trying to keep me when Dana Verino turned? Dana Verino hosts the show, and I believe it had to do with some level of creepiness.

And your picture popped up, and I just went, YouTube, Dana Viner. And too. Perino. I will have you know, last night when I hosted, there were no Kill Mead shots. Would you have taken them out?

Yeah, I see. Here's the thing: you wrote it. I write my own stuff. Oh, okay.

So, at no point was I gonna shoot who uh, I just don't understand it. Like, anybody who needs help, kill me is there because it's not like you're going home. Like, you know, you don't even have lunch breaks. Right, that's what I'm doing. I do eat on my desk.

Yeah, you do. You know, you say that's in my backpacks book? Yeah, that's good stuff in there. Tyrus, the last thing is: I had uh, I interviewed Greg twice in a half hour: one for Fox and Friends, and then one for the Saturday show for his book, Late Night. And in it, we bumped in in the Fox and Friends with all his hits on me, right?

And I said, Explain yourself. And we just went back and forth. People are writing headlines. Kill me gets his revenge, demands it. That's not what I said.

We're just having fun, explain it. But it goes to show you, even though we're in the media. Anytime you do something on Fox, they're not going to understand it. No, well, or they're going to try to. Crazy literal, yeah, yeah, like absolutely literal, yeah.

You know, because I said I was talking about uh, we were that we were talking about neo-pronouns, right? And basically, my philosophy on that is if you are spending time inventing things for yourself instead of competing, like if you're not doing well in school, then you say, Well, you're not a you're you identify as a non-school learner, you know, or whatever the hell it is. And I said, If my children came home with that attitude instead of doing their homework, they said, These are my pronouns, daddy. I said, Well, my pronoun would have been, I think I said butt whipping, but I was using the K-word, right?

Next day, Tyrus threatens to assault children. That's right, I saw that. I never read the article. No one read, no one read the article. Like, at least, at least when we had like the old tabloids, it'd be like Tyrus has a lucid affair with Batwoman.

You know, like cooler, right? Uh, Tyrus finally fit on alien spaceship. Hopefully, they'll keep him.

So, you know, but like, it's just that's the they try to go literal to try to get a thing, you know, and you going after Guffel, I think it's passwords. I think it's passwords. I'm retired. I happen to know a promoter by the name of Billy Corgan. You know, at some point, I think you got to say, with your UFC background and your clear, clear upper body strength, you just rip the microphone off the thing.

Right, right, yeah. I think it's time to call Gutfell out. Man to man, let's settle this in the ring and let's just make it happen. Do we make it early morning or less? Oh, you make it early morning.

Okay. Because that way it will be quick. And literally, as soon as you get done, we'll have your suit pressed and ready for you, and you won't miss any of your hits. You remember, Brian Killmey did the first five UFCs. That's what I'm saying.

I went to school. You went to school stuff. You hung out with one of the toughest human beings on the planet, Jim Brown. Like, you have complete advantage. Back in a moment.

It's Brian Killmade. If you're interested in it, Brian's talking about it. You're with Brian Kilmead. Former Secretary of State Condaleesa Rice, whose own story personifies what good education can do, called it a national humiliation. And for once, she wasn't talking about Kilmead's haircut.

So Tyrus, I can't. Give me a second to compose myself. Dana Perino. Dana Perrino. I'm the only person she's ever went after, ever.

Oh, and if you would have kept that going, you would have heard a slight why. Why? I threw my hands up. Why? What are we doing here?

Kill me, Zona. And here's the thing: she also used foul language. She dropped an M F her at the end of her For things, she was like. Not to do with me. No, she was jacked, too.

Like, she had done some planks or some pull-ups. Yeah, she was. She was, I had never seen this side of her. It was completely aggressive. And I don't understand it.

You guys worked together on the five that day. There was no reason for hostilities. I just, you know, I don't know. But this way, not only did I work, I worked the next day. Yeah.

And there was not even an acknowledgement of the shot given. She must be, she must think that I'm over it. I am not over it. I know what she assumes is because you get up early. I think Greg thinks the same thing.

There's no way he's going to see this. Yeah, but the problem you have eyes and ears everywhere. I do. And the problem is now it's on at 10 o'clock, so I'm watching the repeat when I'm coming to work.

So I see it all. And my self-esteem will never recover. I mean, let's just, what's going on with Dana? You and I are having a heartfelt thing about my retirement, and she talks about my calves. Oh, yeah.

What is with all the anger? I know, it's unbelievable. A guy who never skips leg day, like squirrels confuse my legs for trees. Like, it's just, it was just unbelievable. I don't want to put you on the spot, but after this, I have a few reads to do.

Do you want to go to human resources? You know what? No, because can you imagine running her in the hallway? She terrorizes me. There's two people I fear at Fox.

That's Judge Janine and Dana Prino. I always stay on their good side. There's one thing you'll never see Tyrus in the waiting room inside human resources to pile a complaint. I think they'd be like, are you kidding me? Your feelings are hurt.

Look at you. The other thing that I find fascinating is this guy, Alvar Anthony. I read a column yesterday by Nicholas Kristoff in the New York Times. Every Democrat hates it. And he said, what happened to the Democratic Party?

If you listen to the words, if you listen to what he said, this used to be the Democratic Party. He's going to bat for the little guy who says that they get taxed too much. Don't North of Richmond used to be a problem. That everything goes outside the joke when he said, if you're 5'3 and 300 pounds, I don't want to support your junk food. Besides that, he says everything else he said used to be the Democratic Party.

And then he got mad that the Republicans were saying, you're my anthem.

So here he is on Joe Rogan. I want you to hear some of it. When a person like yourself gets labeled a right-wing, left-wing fanatic, like right out of the gate. Both in like a week and a half. And yeah, at least I know I'm doing something right.

You know, why do people have to attack?

Well, I think it's just for whatever reason. I've been, I'm the subject matter the last couple of weeks. In everyone's defense, I probably haven't. I've waited for this opportunity, I guess, to really have a real conversation with somebody about whatever it is I am.

So people are just trying to find who's this Oliver Anthony guy and what is he and where does he work and who did he vote for and what's his family like and yada because they want to sort of build this image of whatever it is that the person behind the song represents for better or for worse. It's really funny to watch a my end. And because obviously I know what's true and what's not. And so, like, just even what I've skimmed through of people sending me, like, like, singing at the Super Bowl, like, how many people have formed an opinion about whether or not I should be paid to sing at the Super Bowl? Like, I'm not singing at the Super Bowl.

That's just something somebody made up. There's been hundreds of hours of people's time wasted probably talking about all these little like things that don't even exist. It's just somebody made them up and put them on the internet. And so, I'm just letting them ride. I think it's great.

I just think it's great, like, that at least the last couple of weeks I've been able to entertain everyone and get everyone's mind off all the other horrible stuff that's going on in the world right now.

So what do you think, Tyrus? What do you think about the phenom a week later? You know, I think the here's the point. And I think what happened to the Democratic Party is pretty easy. Bernie Sanders brought the socialism in and it just spread because now moderate Democrats are considered right wing.

Like Bill Maher has not changed his politics at all, but he's right-wing. You know, but it's not just him, it's everybody. You know, recently there was an article written about me how my net worth was, I think it was 5 million, but I had blown it all on poker and drugs. And nothing to do with that. And I just wrote back, sir, I've never played poker.

You know, it's just, they try to throw things on the wall for the reaction. You know, they get the reaction because usually if you say 10 bad things about somebody, they're hoping that the laws of averages, 40% of it will be right. And then you just connect the thing with feelings. And there's no facts and just anything that's said against the narrative because it's the progressive party now. And they're the minority, but they're convincing everyone that they're this giant thing.

But the voting bait, the blue collars have moving to Republicans. I mean, they've picked it up. If you're because of very simple things. When you go to the grocery store and your average bill for the last And let's take President Trump out of it. During Obama, grocery bills weren't ridiculous either.

So, if you averaged $150 a week for a family of four for groceries, and then all of a sudden that same grocery bill is now $300, you're going to have a problem. Because that money has to come from somewhere else. And then all of a sudden, your light bill's up 40% because the taxes to keep your light bill going, and no one, everyone talked about gas, no one talked about electricity. Electricity bills were killing people. Electricity.

Absolutely. At one point, you were looking at, and all of a sudden, your light bill was $85.

Now it's $285.

So now that's $500 that you're out now and you're not getting a raise. That's all that really they care about when their check comes and they divide it up. I got to pay for this, I got to pay for that, pay for that. And then they don't have anything left. What do we promote for Tyrus?

Oh, you know, I got my live events. You look it up on my Link Tree. And of course, Nuff said comes out in November. You can pre-order it now on Amazon and Barnes and Nobles. All right, good.

We'll promote each other's sports. And I will not insult you on air. Thank you. Only in person. Oh, you are going to love this hour.

How about being inspired by this great story of Sage Steel? But first things first, the man that really held the keys to success to help Michael Phelps win all he did and have happiness in his life, and Tom Brady. He's known him since college, and Tom Brady simply says without him, I'd have become the Hall of Famer that we all know he's going to be. Here's my interview with his life coach, one of the real stars at the University of Michigan. Greg Harden.

Breg, welcome.

Well, good morning indeed, young man.

Well, I'm pumped up already.

So, Greg.

Now, why is this the right time for you to write your books and unlock and let everyone know your secret to your success? Is it because Tom Brady colded a career?

Well, no, it's because people like Tom and Desmond Howard have been harassing me, bothering me. poking at me to get something done and put it out there so that people can see that it's not about sports. What I taught them is what I'm teaching anyone that will listen, and that is how to become the world's greatest expert on one subject. Yourself. And who taught you?

Man, that's a great question. God has a sense of humor, that's for sure. And I had to learn the hard way how to get out of my own way. And that's what we're trying to do is get people to understand that usually their limitations are self-imposed. And so I learned from, I had great mentors, I had amazing people in my life who signed up and believed in me before I believed in myself.

So, is this about success or is this about happiness? Oh, my man. See, that's a great question because a lot of people, when you ask them to describe success, If they don't include happiness, they're confused. Because you and I know. You and I know people who are extremely successful.

who are not happy. who are depressed and miserable, who might even take their own life.

So yes, success comes. when you are pursuing happiness, but the pursuit of happiness has to include trying to have amazing relationships. trying to be somebody that can can share with care, compassion, and concern who they are and what they want. How did you start using some of the principles at the University of Michigan? How did that come to be?

Well, I was invited to come in and talk about alcohol and drugs. And I told them 18 to 22 year olds don't need lectures about alcohol and drugs. They know more about it than we do.

So then I suggested that perhaps. or we could do some programming to teach people how to identify Self-defeating attitudes. and behaviors, the ways that I act. The ways that I might That could sabotage my dream. Everyone in an institution like a university has big dreams.

And so if we can teach people how to identify and eliminate Self-defeating attitudes. we increase their chances of success.

So we're talking about how to be the best possible version of yourself. I teach people, first become the world's greatest expert. And that's how it all started. And so if you can come in and talk to somebody about anything as minute as I'm dating a fool all the way till I'm, I hate myself, that's a wide, wide continuum of care. And so you've got to give people somebody to talk to about life and the pursuit of happiness, what's working, what's not working.

And so that's what we did. We created this model, which was now going to become be called behavioral health care. And we started it like years, decades before anyone else was talking about it. And could you give us an idea of this curriculum? Because it seems to be effectively the biggest name in sports for him.

As I mentioned, Jim Harbaugh, when he was a player.

Now he's a coach. He probably needs it more now. Tom Brady, who was buried in the bench at the University of Michigan, thought he made the bad choice. A guy ahead of him was actually, I think, the coach's son. And next thing you know, he becomes a starter, he's got to share the job with Drew Henson, becomes a sixth-round draft pick and the greatest quarterback ever.

He says this: Greg Cardin has and will always be one of the most influential people in my life. He has helped me with my own struggles, personal struggles in both athletics and life. What I learned from Greg is still a part of who I am today. When he writes that, what do you think? I immediately started thinking about how important it is to share with anyone that this book is not about Tom, it's not about me, it's about them.

And it's about them learning the same things I've taught and teach anyone that will listen. The first thing I had to teach Tom Brady at nineteen years old Is to stop worrying about what everybody else thinks. I don't care what your coaches think. All I care about Is what you think. I don't care if they don't believe in you.

All I care about is: do you believe in you? And then you teach them how to talk about controlling what they can control. I can't control what they think or how they operate or how they make decisions. What I can control. It's how I respond.

What I can control, what Tom Brady can control, is how he walks out on the field. And if he's in the sixth, seventh slot, he acts like he's a number one quarterback every chance he gets. I know he wrote about that in his book, too. That's the way he approached it. His practices were his games if he wasn't going to get in the game.

The name of the book that's your, you just mentioned your subtitle, How to Control the Uncontrollables and Thrive. I want everyone to hear a clip from you at 60 Minutes. It's Tom Brady and you talking about basically what you bring to the table, Cut 48. You know, he's probably the first person in your life that says, well, you don't deserve to really be on the field. He said that to you?

I don't remember if that's exactly what it says, but he said, look, there's a reason why the other guy is out there. Tom Brady went to see him when Tom was in college at Michigan because he was feeling badly. He's just frustrated. He's tired. And he knows that uh he has to do something different and he can't figure out what.

Don't go to Greg if you don't want to hear the truth. he will hit you between the eyes if he will. They told me this all the time, if you don't believe in yourself, then why is anyone else going to believe in you? What matters is his heart and his mind. You can't measure that boy's heart.

You can't measure his mind. And in that sport, all they do is measure. How high can you, how big are your hands? How much, how tall are you? How much do you weigh?

They don't even want to get to know the person. All you have to do is watch the combines to see that. You're the opposite, right? Yes, sir. I'm that guy that has the audacity to believe that.

While you can measure how high I jump and how much weight I can lift and how fast I am, you cannot measure my heart or my mind. They cannot, look, Brian, you know what you've done. I don't have a clue what you've done, but you know you don't look like what you've been through. You know that you have pushed yourself and when everyone questioned and doubted you and you rose above it. That's all we're trying to teach people is to do what the most successful people that we've ever heard of have to do.

They have to get outside of themselves. They've got to be so clear about who they are. And their self-love and self-acceptance has. To overrule wanting everyone else's approval and acceptance. I don't want to put down everyone who talks about this next generation not being tough enough, but I do know one thing pretty consistent.

in terms of clearing obstacles and scaring and scaling hurdles, that doesn't seem to be something they're thriving at, where they might have the great intellect, they might be a bit smarter, whatever you want to say. I think we've lost the toughness.

Okay. Well, I tell you what, I'm going to disagree with you politely. You ready? I think that we are Not taking any ownership for how we're training them. We pampered them, we spoiled them.

We set them up to be Privileged, and I don't want to. Why am I? I had a person mother call me and ask me why they did I didn't hire their son. Come on, man. But we have to begin to understand.

Yeah. These young people today are capable and qualified, and we've got to walk in and expect. Expect the best from them and push them. What do we have? That's my opinion.

Don't let him fail. Come on, man. Let them fail because I've got to learn how to manage failure. I've got, I'm teaching people how to manage success. Girl, you know we got to teach them how to manage failure.

And to understand that Failure, loss, grief, disappointment, trials, and tribulations are predictable and therefore manageable. Most importantly, How do you recover? When we talk about physical fitness, we understand recovery time. When we talk about training for mental fitness, That's to balance out our quest to remain mentally healthy, to not just wait until we're in trouble and in chaos, but to practice, train, and rehearse, being more successful than the average person at recovering as fast as I can. From the crisis and challenges I face.

Greg Horden's my guest right now. He's the author of Stay Sane in an Insane World. By the way, what did you say to that mom that called up and said, why didn't you hire their son? I asked. to perhaps Yeah.

consider calling someone else because that's not what we're going to talk about. I don't know you. I didn't interview you. Have your child call me and ask me why. Understood.

So I don't know if this really is exactly what you're talking about, but it just reminds me of what Mike Rowe said to me. You know, he goes out there and does dirty jobs and he deals with a lot of blue-collar workers who travel the country and find out what they're about. And he's amazed at how much happier they are than the Hollywood news community that he also hangs out with. He says, here, people not making as much, but they had a certainty in occupation and a pride in which they did, and which, for the most part, broadly based, and a pride in what they did, and they had balance in their lives. He goes, it's amazing to me how much happier they were.

How does that fit into your philosophy and policy? Kill me, you know, you're knocking that out the park. Think about what you're saying. We're talking about regular folks. Whose self-worth and self-esteem is not based on someone else's measurement.

It's not based on how much money they make. It's not based on whether or not they got an award. It's based on self-love and self-acceptance. Remember the person in your neighborhood who didn't have everything, but you couldn't wait to go to their house? Yes, because of that energy and the atmosphere and the attitudes in that house just drew you in.

So belief in myself. Belief in having a life worth living. That's not, doesn't come with money. It comes from something inside you.

So I imagine if it does do that, for example, the 48-year-old cop that retires, that identity was wrapped up in that uniform as a firefighter or cop, or somebody that retires or is no longer acting or performing, if their identity is wrapped up in their athleticism, like Tom Brady retires at 45 years old. I mean, if his identity is wrapped up in his occupation, that adjustment is going to be huge, let alone the 26-year-old who no longer feels as though any football team wants to sign him and was struggling to make a roster to begin with. Do do you g get a lot of those clients? Yes.

Well think about this though. Earlier you posed the question and I set you up just right. What we're talking about is teaching anyone that will listen. That's how I feel about me must not be based on other people's opinion. who I am.

Imagine telling a 19-year-old Tom Brady, a Charles Woodson, a Desmond Howard, a Michael Phelps. You've got to decide with or without. Football. Your life is going to be amazing. And once you believe that, Football becomes what you do.

Not who you are. You just happen to do it better than most.

So, so when you go up to a guy that's a six-stream quarterback at the University of Michigan, who's rail thin, who wonders if they made the right choice, maybe they could be in Tom Prady's case, I think he could have played baseball, some people said.

So, when his answer is, well, it's what you think of yourself. If his answer is, I don't think much of myself. You know, I'm not that good. Don't know many people on campus. Kind of 1,500 miles away from my family.

I don't, I don't, if his answer is, I don't have that self-esteem, then what do you say? You say, then that's what we're going to be doing. I can't tell you how to throw a ball. I can't tell you how to read defenses. What I can teach you.

is to believe in yourself without question or pause. to believe that your life has meaning and purpose. It may not be football. But we're going to find out who you are and who you want to become. And that takes work.

Cobra. You train to be physically fit. You have to train to be mentally fit. You don't just, you know, say, well, I came in and I saw Greg Harden and, you know, six months ago and I can't remember what he said. You have to get coaching.

You have to have, it has to be a recurring theme that you're going to work out on your mind. Understood.

And, you know, just because you're not going to win a Super Bowl, hold up the Lombardi trophy, it doesn't mean you can't be a winner in life, nor should you judge yourself on that. Last thing, I also think, too, for younger people listening to us right now, a lot of them say, I don't know what I want to do. I don't know what I want to major in. And my answer always has been, go find out. What does your neighbor do?

Are they happy? You know, what does interest you? Why don't you find out what it's like to own a business, a deli, a dry cleaner? What does it enable you to do? You want to be a lifeguard?

Go talk to a lifeguard, but you got to aggressively attack it. And even if you decide, hey, that's not for me, that's still a victory. But I ain't killed me, just stock just went up with me. Are you ready for this? You said exactly what must be said.

I remember I told God if I live to see 25, there must be some purpose. I hit 25 and say, oops. I made a promise. And so, okay, I've got to find my purpose.

Well, guess what my first purpose was? To find my purpose. Yeah. And to pursue it, to find out what clicks. to experiment like you said.

Bruh, you nailed it.

Well, Greg old did.

Well, I got news for you. You sold a lot of books. Greg Cardin, Motivating America, one radio show at a time, and one quarterback at a time. Stay sane in an insane world. Greg, congratulations on it, and great talking to you.

Thank you so much, sir. I appreciate you. All right, when we come back, I appreciate you. I will take your calls. And no excuses.

Get on the phone. Don't tell me you're at work. You worried me. He's so busy, he'll make your head spin. It's Brian Killmead.

You never have enough time to talk to a guy like Greg Harden, who's seen so much in his life and is very humble about it. Did not have the greatest start to his life, had problems with school, kind of pressure to excel, didn't know what direction he had, was a really good track athlete, and then he ends up using his life lessons to help inspire kids at their most vulnerable time. And they're all mostly elite athletes. If you're playing sports at the University of Michigan, you're a great athlete, even if you don't get off the bench. But what he did for people like Desmond Howard, what he did for people like Tom Brady, what he did for Michael Phelps and so many others that you may not know really pushed Greg Harden to write a book and go out and pick it up.

If you want to inspire somebody, by the way, it's a quick read. And the anecdotes of the people that you know make it really fly by because you know what they became, but you didn't know their hinge points in their life. His book is called Stay Sane. In an insane world. It was one of the interviews I did where so many people were texting me saying, What was the name of that book again?

So, I think we made some sales.

So, coming up next, somebody I've been dying to meet who had been watching for 20 years on ESPN, who we knew was full of controversy from the time she filled in on the view to some of the things she said in the pandemic. But we know she was fantastic on the air with great knowledge. Sage Steel. She finally turned around and said, ESPN Disney, I'm tired of being bullied. I'm going to sue you.

Don't know the details, but they have a settlement.

Now she's a free agent. And I think her first radio TV interview outside a podcast with Megan Kelly was here.

So my interview, two parts with Sage Steel, coming your way. There's a misnomer that ESPN is some liberal place. That is a lie. I know a bunch of conservatives that work at ESPN. I'm telling you what I know.

But the reason why I bring that subject up is because I think it's a mistake when a corporation tries to silence anybody. I think you let everybody speak. That way, the company doesn't get blamed for the positions an individual takes. The individual has to be culpable for the words that we articulate and the impact that it has ultimately on us. If I say something and it ultimately costs ESPN dollars, and as a result, ESPN says you got to go, they're not saying I have to go because of my politics.

They're saying I have to go because I compromised their bottom line. And I think that's the position all corporations should take, as opposed to trying to curtail or silence anybody because you think their individual words are going to be a reflection on the whole. It is not when you let everybody speak.

So Stephen A. Smith was really talking about Sage Steel leaving ESPN, both staples of that, of the 24 hours. Our Sports Network. And Stephen A. Smith knows, I just read his book.

He was suspended twice. One time he was fired. He was like, oh, they didn't like what he was saying. Got suspended for two weeks because he's in it, and he's in a debate show. Yep.

So Sage Steel was actually here. If you're watching Fox Nation, we're meeting for the first time. And we did have being both half Italian. You're a third Italian. I'm a quarter Italian, I guess.

A quarter Italian. Yes, something like that. Mom's half hours, half Italians. What does that make me? Your mom's a quarter, yeah.

Yeah, I would think, yeah, if we have to divide into thirds, you know, we're gonna do 23 to me and just solve this once and for all. What is your take on Stephen Ace kind of referring to your situation? I love that man. And I have worked with him from day one since 2007. And I have been a huge defender of his when he has been suspended because I didn't agree with the reasons why he was suspended at the time.

And that was a while ago too, but it was interesting being that it is his format is debate. At the end of the day, Stephen A is on record. We've had conversations about this. We often disagree about a lot of things. My whole point from day one is consistency.

And you cannot allow everyone else to talk about whatever they want that has nothing to do with sports on our airwaves, on our platforms, whether it's any of the ESPN or ESPN radio or even social media, and allow. And then the one person who happens to be me that speaks up about other things. And by the way, in the podcast with Jake Cutler and which all the comments took place, that was my off day, my own time, asking about things that were personal to me as a biracial woman with the vaccine, et cetera.

So I can have opinions on things that affect me. I'm not even talking about abortion.

So to me, it's just being consistent. You can't have rules for some and not for others. And by the way, as a parent of three, it works that way too. Consistency is all I ever wanted, and that's what's been missing. Right.

You had one thing to say, and if I'm misstating this, but you're biracial. Yes.

And you don't want to disrespect your white mom by saying that you're black or white. You're biracial. Yes.

And you brought that up with President Obama. You said, listen, why does he say he's black? He's got a white. Actually, I didn't bring it up. I was on the view.

Barbara Walters on live TV brought it up to me and said, Well, what's wrong? Why don't you, why do you have to say biracial? Our current president, this is in 2014, our president says he's black. Why can't you? And I, I'm like, show me the rule book.

What is this? And most importantly, why? Why does it matter? And this is in 2014 on ABC. No one had a problem with what I said then.

Fast forward to 2021 and there was an issue. I will always say it, Brian. I am so proud of all of me, of my black side and my white side. And to be told to choose is disgusting. It's wrong.

That has a whole race connotation as well. And I used to be afraid to speak about this, but when you're kind of beaten up your whole life about it, and then someone comes down enough, but I know from having spoken about it, the importance of getting it out there because there are so many people, biracial, young, old kids, girls, boys, who feel this way. I'm just not afraid, so I have to be there for them too. Why choose? The thing, and I heard you talking to Megan about this with Barbara Walters, basically almost got physical with you in the back room.

I mean, was she, she, was she, I know she ended up sadly having dementia. Sure, yeah. But was, I don't know if that was playing a role in that. I don't know. Listen, I said it kind of like jokingly because everyone who was there and witnessed it, and some of my friends were there, we were, it was just, we were.

Laughing. It was like I was speaking to you. You were like, Whoopi Goldberg might have a problem with it, but you said she was kind of. Whoopi was great. Yeah, she was, she was great to me the entire time.

I have a lot of respect for Whoopi, the human being. I really do. Hasselbeck said the same thing, by the way. And I love Elizabeth Hasselbeck. She's a friend of mine, and I have so much respect for her and what she went through for so many years on that show.

But when I, it was funny, and I said it in just because I was laughing that Barbara Walters back then elbowed me. And I, and then people took it. Sage Steele says she assaulted her. You people need a life. Like, stop.

I know. That's one thing. If you eventually ever come to Fox or anything to do with Fox, get used to that. Don't Google my name. But, you know, Sage, you've arguably had a challenge almost every day because you are the breadwinner in your family.

You're trying to raise three kids and you have your dream job at ESPN. Top five sportscasters, top three maybe in the country, doing one of the, I'm personally as a broadcaster, you're putting together these highlights, putting them together, knowing you're ad-lipping half of them, doing two things at once. You have to be competent in all these sports, international names, knowing on the fly. A guy scores 46 points, you better know how to say his or her name. I just have so much respect.

You get a tenth of the support people actually think ESPN anchors get. You're doing everything. Thank you so much. Number one, you're on television. You understand the pressure.

And our show is two hours live every day, breaking news. What people don't see, which is my favorite part, that whole hashtag BTS behind the scenes, is we are walking and talking while doing highlights. The studio is massive, and it is a physically challenging show, too. The directors, we are the best person. And someone in your ear.

And someone in my ear, which is why I'm crazy. But I think it helps me in this job. Right.

It's as close to sports. as being in sports. Because you have to do things, adapt in real time, make your own decisions, and the ramifications are tremendous. And you'll be doing it again. If you choose where you want another forum, you're not going anywhere.

But I want you to hear, everybody, to hear the crazy comments you made to former quarterback Jay Cutler, Cut 56. What's the bandaid for?

Well, I got my shot today. I respect everyone's decision. I really do. But to mandate it is sick and it's scary to me in many ways. But I have a job.

A job that I love and frankly, a job that I need. But again, I love it. I just, I'm not surprised it got to this point, especially with Disney. I mean, a global company like that. But I just, like, it was actually emotional.

Like, so, and it's funny, everybody else has their, yay, look, and here's my card. And let's like, you know what? You want to see what my face looked like when I had to do it?

So I get it to an extent that I think the mandate is what I really have an issue with. And I. I don't know. I don't know what comes next. And we basically got it because, you know, the same thing at Fox.

You know, we had to deconflict. Everyone had to go to separate studios. And to come back in, you had to get vaccinated, but you didn't lose your job. You worked from home. And then there was no disclaimer on this vaccine mandate.

It's one of the big stories today that we still go, and they're talking about putting masks on kids again.

So it's not over.

So you have to. That's what I was referring to, by the way, that two years ago: what's next? And now it's here. All of a sudden, Dr. Fauci has come out of his basement again, and we're listening again.

And oh gosh, COVID's not over. You're not listening.

Well, yeah, I shouldn't say we because you and I are not. And I think here's, I actually think millions of Americans, many more millions, maybe who quietly felt that way back a couple years ago, to me, I'm concerned. I don't think people are going to take it this time. It's on the way. Absolutely.

We know it. And you know what? They better not take it because if we as a society continue to just take these marching orders, especially when we are actually, we're following your science and we're listening to you. And now you're full of it. We all know.

And so, to bring it back, if we say yes again, if we allow it again, it's our own fault. Absolutely. And I agree with you. Have you ever, and by the way, Operation Warp Speed, if you see the technology behind it, get the story behind it. I think their objectives were pure.

I don't think it was to make Pfizer rich, it was to find a way out of this. The one difference between Trump and Biden: here's your vaccine. Make your own decision. He never would have mandated. Ask him.

He never would have mandated it. In the beginning, he said, Yeah, I got vaccinated right away. There were other people that didn't.

Now, why did President Trump get vaccinated? He told me, as soon as I called back and I saw some of my friends not in great shape in their 80s that were dying. And I said to myself, You know, we saw for a while people were being put into refrigerators because they didn't know what this thing was. They were killing them by putting them on respirators as part of the problem. Exactly.

So they were making it up as they went along. We know that now. They were killing them while dying alone, a horrific death. The families couldn't come in.

So you made the decision, I'll do it. Got to keep my job, but I don't have to be happy about it. And what did matter? I complied. That's the thing.

I can have an opinion and comply as long as I'm complying. And I did that. And what happened? Uh I was told um You can't whack the company. You whack the company.

You whack Disney. It's not going over well. And I said, but what do you mean? I'm giving facts. They forced it.

I do think it's sick, but I complied with it. And then the comments related to Obama, Barbara Walters, and my own view on how I feel as a biracial woman, that didn't sit over well. And there's a lot of people who are. People in the same conversation? It was all in the same podcast.

It all took place in the same podcast.

So that's when the phone started ringing. The agent called. And they said, in order to keep your job, you have to publicly apologize. And I thought it, trust me, trust me, I thought, because I knew that I was, wait, I'm just being true to myself, just like everyone else who's going on their own tangents on our airwaves, a big difference about, again, things that have nothing to do with sports on our own airwaves.

So I just thought, wait, where's this double standard? I don't explain it to me. And there was no explanation. And so I did it and I apologized. And then they released a statement.

And then I lost assignments and things that I had worked hard on weren't promoted and the domino effect. And it kept going and going and going. And at that point, it's one thing to apologize and move on, which is what I was told would happen. It's another thing. for the punishment to continue to be levied.

And that's where Again, a lot of years of things building up to this, but that's where I had to personally draw my line. There's never been a scarier decision I've made in my life because I knew the repercussions. When you stand up and when a lawsuit is filed, there's no turning back. There's no reconciliation usually. And that broke my heart because my whole life, when I started ADSPN, my kids were 11 months old, two and four.

They're now 17, 19, and 21. All they've known is mom at ESPN, and we've had a beautiful life there. I have zero regrets from any of it. From even back in the day when I stayed silent about a lot of things, I probably shouldn't have. But I'm not one to go way back to, let me dig this up.

That was my decision then onward. My decision now is obvious. I'm so sad it had to come to this. My goal now is to, if I continue to speak out and hopefully other companies are listening, especially with what we just talked about, with the potential, it seems like of COVID coming back. They have to listen to us employees.

It's my health, it's my body, my choice, is it not?

So I think that it's really now or never. And I just hope that by me doing this, I mean, I'm just one little annoying person with a bunch of curly. I hope that others aren't as fearful as I was for so many years. Because at some point, shame on the employers for doing this, but I do believe it's personal responsibility. And I couldn't continue to complain about something if I wasn't willing to take a stand as costly as it might be.

And it's been costly. Do you have any people listening right now without public positions have to put up with not, let's say, a shot or things they don't agree with, bosses that are abusive, situations where they're not promoted when they should because they say, I am the breadwinner. I have to suck it up and deal with it. It hurts your self-esteem. But what's your approach?

I got to make my house payments. I got to pay my bills. That's why. I don't have, I don't, you know, I don't have a cushion, a two-year cushion, to go find myself. Right.

A lot of times they just don't mix. And a lot of times that's why people can relate to your message that you had to suck it up and say what you had to say to keep that job because you care about your kids. And I got a lot of pushback for people saying, yeah, right. You're just like everybody else. You came out on your I'm sorry tour and you did it.

And you know, all the names, all the attacks, and that. And you know what? I understood it, but I was so desperate, and I wanted to be able to explain why I had to go ahead and do it and why I had to apologize because that's the first thing. Don't apologize. I had no choice.

Here's the thing: as a mother doing this, their fathers in town were divorced, but he's involved. But as the mother and primary custody, et cetera. They're watching me. And if I am encouraging my kids, I have two daughters and a son, but especially those girls, to stand tall and be strong and stand up for what you believe in and defend others, and then I sit sit silently, I couldn't do it. I was physically ill thinking about not practicing what I preach.

I just. Can't believe it had to come to this. But the stress of that moment when you had that meeting, it's almost like someone hits symbols in your ear. You're seeing what's happening. You're seeing your career.

Managers you thought had your back and friends. They all friends are. Listen, friends in quotes, right? And I actually think that's been a huge blessing because that's when you need-oh, and it's thin and it's a very small circle. And that's been painful.

I'm not going to be, I'm not going to sugarcoat it. And I am a super sensitive, emotional person, but it's been a huge blessing to know who really. And by the way, People who don't agree with me on many of these topics, but it's not about that. I like you, the human. I don't care what your job is.

I don't care what your opinions are. It's about the human connection and loyalty. Loyalty, I'm an Army kid, right? I mean, loyalty and integrity and principle matters. We come back a few more minutes with Sage Steel's, kind enough to be in the studio.

Wasn't able to do that. Was the ESPN let you? No, they would never let you come on Flux, would they? I'm not sure. I'm not Stephen A.

We're not Stephen A. There's one Stephen A. Bag and Womb. Newsmakers and Newsbreakers. Here at first on the Brian Kill Me Show.

Breaking news. unique opinions. Hear it all. On the Brian Kill Meat Show. We ended up getting married at West Point.

We were young and very naive. My parents pretty much disowned me and didn't come to the wedding or anything like that. They were in Panama and she called her mom to say, I'm going to have a baby. And her mom hung up the phone. There were many things that were said about what a relationship with a black husband would be and how you would end up being treated, et cetera.

And so how are her parents going to know she's okay?

So I believe it was once a month. Once a month. And once a month, I would pen a letter. Here's where we are. Here's what's going on.

Here's what we're doing together.

So that is a... Sage Steel's parents on NFL films, a great documentary. And I did not know this originally, but I was just listening that your dad was the first black football player at West Point. To play varsity football ever at West Point. Broke the color barrier.

Unbelievable. But they were talking about what it was like for them personally. What years are we talking about? They got married in 1971, so in October is 52 years for them. And it was just coming off of the civil rights era and Vietnam and such a difficult time.

And my mom's parents. disowned her a white mom for marrying a black man. And so that was the story that I did not know until NFL Films did that piece on me. That every month my dad would write to my mom's parents, who wouldn't respond, wouldn't pick up the phone to say, listen, you're not paying attention to her and you have disowned her. But I'm taking care of your daughter.

And that was that. Every time I hear it, I get, you know. You can imagine your last name aptly talks about your parents, right? Totally. And I've used the hashtag for thank you.

Here's the thing. I never. I never knew I was strong. I didn't know. And...

That's why when I said earlier I wouldn't change anything, all of these ups and downs and my dream job, because I had to realize my strength. And it's been a blessing. And now you're on your own. You got your settlement on your lawsuit. And if people want to know more about you, Sage, you can go to your website, sagedeal.com.

Thank you. All right. Thank you, Brian. And would I be able to talk to you still Saturday night at 8 o'clock? Yes.

All right. Thank you. Listen to the show ad-free on Fox News Podcast Plus, on Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music with your Prime membership, or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Mm.