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This one airs on the 25th anniversary of September 11th. I'm not dedicating the whole episode to it. I don't tell people how to think or how to feel. But I do open with where I land on it now, a quarter century later, and why the reverence fading for people who didn't live it doesn't surprise me anymore. Then the questions. A 27-year-old learns through a DNA test that the man on his birth certificate isn't his father. He wants to know whether to tell the rest of the family. A guy who has run audio at his church for 21 years wants to know how to finally ask to be paid without turning it into an ultimatum. A future Naval Academy midshipman asks what a SEAL officer actually does on target, and whether the enlisted guys respect him. Also covered: why we round the edges off pain as a species, what constant exposure to war footage does to a person, and why describing your own military service as vanilla needs to stop. Today's Sponsors: Firecracker Farm ⁠https://www.firecracker.farm Hexclad: For a limited time only listeners get 10% off your order with this exclusive link. Just head to ⁠https://www.hexclad.com/clearedhot⁠

Michael was tasked with finding something uplifting. He failed. This is what a slow week for good news looks like. We open on the flooding in Nepal and what you can realistically do when you live in terrain that gives you seven minutes of warning. One school got 14 minutes and everyone made it out. Then the part nobody wants to say out loud: reading the news is taking something from you. I talk about how I decide what to let in. National debt past forty trillion. Bonds selling off. Printing money and calling it something else. Blind loyalty to a party instead of judging what is actually being delivered. The Kennedy Center. Roughly 800 wounded U.S. service members in Iran in six months, the classification that kept those numbers quiet, and a reported airstrike on a wedding. The Lindsay Clancy verdict that never came. Cities cancelling Flock camera contracts, 214 jurisdictions pulling them out, officers using the data to track people they should not be tracking. None of it is a reason to quit. Today's Sponsors: Helix: That's https://www.helixsleep.com/CLEAREDHOT for 27% off sitewide. AG1: Go to https://www.drinkag1.com/clearedhot to get a FREE AG1 Flavor Sampler and AGZ Sampler to try all the flavors, plus FREE Vitamin D3+K2 and AG1 Welcome Kit with your first AG1 subscription order!

Recorded two of these in one week because when this drops I'll be in Maine at the Origin Immersion BJJ camp. So Michael gets another pass. Nobody knows what he does with his time anyway. First question comes from a firefighter who watched a man beat a woman in a McDonald's parking lot. He called 911 from behind a block wall and did not physically intervene. He's been carrying it ever since. Good and bad is the wrong lens for that. Capability is the right one. What you can actually do under stress, not what you picture yourself doing. Range, training, tools, and why a black belt is not magic. Plugging holes matters as much as making them. Second question is one I've never been asked. A 15-year-old found out his mother has an OnlyFans page because his baseball teammates were passing it around school. Live your life however you want. The consequences didn't stop with her. A police officer who wants out and thinks nothing he does translates. It all translates. He just needs to stop telling himself otherwise. Today's Sponsors: Ridge: For a limited time only head to https://www.ridge.com and use code "Clearedhot" at checkout for 10% off your order AND a chance to win Ridge's biggest sweepstakes ever Spartan Forge: https://www.spartanforge.ai

Brandon Spangler did five years in the Marine Corps. He broke his neck, crushed his lower back, and walked out with a VA prescription that turned into eight years of addiction. The last stretch was heroin. He got sober in 2013, started college from zero, and is now a licensed clinical social worker with his own practice for cops and veterans in northwest Montana. Travis Gribble spent 24 years in law enforcement, 16 on SWAT, and retired out of Mesa PD in 2022. He now works for the Boulder Crest Foundation. He walks through the jump from pharmacy to street, detoxing cold turkey three times, and a month and a half living out of a truck in the Blue Mountains waiting on a bed. The second half is the system. Why cops are carrying moral injury more than post-traumatic stress. Why a diagnosis turns into a cage. What five days of training did that years of therapy did not, the 400 to 600 traumatic calls a cop absorbs over a career, why the average officer dies seven years after retiring, and the retainer model that put a therapist inside a sheriff's office. The Boulder Crest Foundation: ⁠https://bouldercrest.org/⁠ Join the Cleared Hot Newsletter: ⁠https://www.clearedhotpodcast.com⁠ Take the Operator Code Assessment: ⁠https://www.theoperatorcode.com⁠ Today's Sponsors: Montana Knife Company: ⁠https://www.montanaknifecompany.com⁠ Firecracker Farm: ⁠https://www.firecracker.farm⁠

John Constantine spent almost 23 years in the United States Secret Service. Fifteen of them on the Counter Assault Team — the assaulters who exist for the day everything goes wrong. Team leader. Instructor. Operations supervisor. He stood with a rifle next to four presidential administrations, worked in almost 90 countries, and finished out in the Dignitary Protective Division running foreign heads of state. He wrote a book about the part of it nobody sees. It's called Hallways and Stairwells. He breaks down what actually happened at the Correspondents' Dinner, why the security plan worked even though the magnetometer checkpoint didn't, and how far that guy really was from the President. Butler gets the same treatment. The layers of security people never see. Why hunkering down has never worked, anywhere, ever. Then it goes past tactics. Mission, men, then you. Getting swatted at his own house over a function fire and suspended for it. Refusing to send guys and guns overseas as a favor unless somebody put it in writing. Two thousand eight hundred agents doing the work of ten thousand. And the part that almost killed him. His identity got ripped out with the job. His wife found him on the bathroom floor. He talks about the climb back. Hallways and Stairwells: https://a.co/d/00SrmoEJ Take the Operator Code Assessment: https://www.theoperatorcode.com Today's Sponsors: Black Rifle Coffee: https://www.blackriflecoffee.com LMNT: https://www.drinklmnt.com

Drew Miller is an Air Force Academy honor graduate with a master's and a PhD from Harvard. His dissertation was on underground nuclear shelters and field fortifications. Thirty years in uniform across active duty, Air Guard, and Reserve. Intelligence officer. Strategic Air Command, the Pentagon, and a DoD think tank. Retired colonel. He founded Fortitude Ranch, a survival community with eight locations, and the Collapse Survival Institute. His new book is Preparing to Survive in the Age of Collapse. His model puts the annual odds of a collapse disaster between 16 and 57 percent. Bioengineered H5N1. The grid going down. The economy stops, and law and order goes with it. We disagreed on a lot of this one. He wants superintelligent AGI outlawed and says he would nuke a data center to enforce it. I don't get there with him. We went back and forth on facts versus assumptions, on what a real fight with China looks like, and on whether this government is salvageable. Also covered: the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, civil war inside states instead of between them, two million prisoners with no power, and surviving an AI takeover by being too boring to kill. Join the Cleared Hot Newsletter: https://www.clearedhotpodcast.com Take the Operator Code Assessment: https://www.theoperatorcode.com Today's Sponsors: Montana Knife Company: https://www.montanaknifecompany.com Better Help: Sign up and get 10% off at https://www.betterhelp.com/clearedhot

Mike Glover served 18 years in Army Special Forces, worked as a contractor for the CIA, founded Fieldcraft Survival, and wrote the national bestseller Prepared. He's been on this show before. A lot has happened since. The legal case that consumed the last 18 months is finished. He talks about the week he spent locked up — teaching breathing drills in a holding cell full of hard dudes — what the arrest cost him, and how family and a small circle of friends carried him through. Fieldcraft dissolved. He bought the pieces back. Now he's rebuilding it from the roots. There's also a long stretch on the bin Laden story — O'Neill, Bissonette, the recorded debrief, the point man, and litigation nobody needed. Plus Roberts Ridge, the Jessica Lynch raid, Tillman, and why drama in the special operations community has real downstream consequences. TRT, alcohol, helicopters, faith, veteran suicide, and a tribute to a Green Beret they called Swede. Join the Cleared Hot Newsletter: https://www.clearedhotpodcast.com Take the Operator Code Assessment: https://www.theoperatorcode.com Today's Sponsors: Black Rifle Coffee: https://www.blackriflecoffee.com Brunt: For a limited time listeners can get ten dollars off at BRUNT when you use code "Clearedhot" at checkout. Just head to https://www.BRUNTWorkwear.com, and while you're there, enter THE BRUNT POTTY OF GOLD SWEEPSTAKES for your chance to win fifty thousand dollars.

Jack Osbourne grew up with cameras in the house. The Osbourne's made his family the biggest thing on television, and he was earning seven figures by 15. He got sober at 17 and has held that line for over two decades. Diagnosed with multiple sclerosis at 26. Since then he's built his own lane — adventure television, paranormal investigation, two podcasts, and a purple belt in jiu-jitsu. Last July, his father played the biggest farewell show in rock history. Seventeen days later, Ozzy was gone. This conversation carries weight and goes sideways in equal measure. Making serious money as a kid and learning the hard way that the people hired to protect it don't always deserve the trust. Grieving a parent while untangling the business that comes with a famous last name. The final concert — a living wake where his dad got to say goodbye on his own terms — and the week at home together afterward. Then the throttle opens: the UFC card on the White House South Lawn, a month in the Australian jungle on 500 calories a day, ghost stories he can't explain, the Nazca mummies, a plan to buy a decommissioned aircraft carrier, and bringing OzFest back. Today's Sponsors: Peluva: Use code "Clearedhot" for 10% off at ⁠https://www.peluva.com⁠ Bubs Naturals: Listeners are getting 20% OFF at ⁠https://www.BUBSNaturals.com ⁠by using code "clearedhot" at checkout

Every other Friday it's just me and the inbox. This week the emails came in heavy, so we cover a lot of ground. Two people in law enforcement, both strong personalities, trying to build a relationship that works. Where confidence stops and ego starts, and how to tell you've crossed the line. Why the toughest guy in the room still needs a place to put the shield down. The difference between the Jewish faith and the Israeli government, and why we've lost the ability to talk about either one without painting with a broom. Being able to criticize your own team without getting thrown off it. Moving a family across the country and a 15-year-old who won't sign off on it. When you engage your kids in the decision, and when you just have to be the father and make the call. Twenty years of sustained conflict and what it actually did to our capability. Real reps, the word "sacrifice," and how warfare is changing. Drownproof Conversation Starters: ⁠https://shop.clearedhotpodcast.com/⁠ Take the Operator Code Assessment: ⁠https://www.theoperatorcode.com⁠ Today's Sponsors: Willie's Remedies: Order now at ⁠https://www.drinkwillies.com⁠ and use code CLEAREDHOT for 20% off of your first order + free shipping on orders over $95. AG1: ⁠https://www.drinkag1.com/clearedhot ⁠to get a FREE AG1 Flavor Sampler and AGZ Sampler to try all the flavors, plus FREE Vitamin D3+K2 and AG1 Welcome Kit with your first AG1 subscription order!