The Psychology of Combat and Courage
This is the No Bell podcast where we talk about how to optimize your technology, life, and mind. We're joined by special operations veterans, entrepreneurs, investors, and others who have overcome difficulty to make it to the top of their craft by staying in the fight. Alright. Welcome to the Nobel podcast hosted by myself, Sam Alaimo, and Rob Huberty, and we are joined today by Lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman. Sir, welcome to the Nobel podcast.
Dave Grossman:Thanks, Sam. Thanks, Rob. And it's just Dave, and I wanted to be on board. You guys are doing some amazing things that I maybe hope to be able to address during the day and, during this time frame. It's it's good to see what you're doing.
Dave Grossman:It's good to be part of it. Thank you.
Sam Alaimo:Appreciate it. Let's start from the beginning as you as we usually do. Where did you grow up? Well, you know, my dad was
Dave Grossman:a cop, then he ended up moving to the nuke security program. Still thought of himself just no cop. And we moved like every 18 months, where North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, Nebraska, everywhere they had those nukes. Minuteman 1, Minuteman 2, Minuteman that's where we lived. And then I was in the panhandle of Nebraska.
Dave Grossman:It was 1974, January, February, March. I basically dropped out of high school. I had I had it completed. I got my degree, but I, I worked on a Wildcat oil rig in January, February, March in the Panhandle, Nebraska. The single most dangerous thing I've ever done.
Dave Grossman:12 hour shifts, 7 7 days a week, 12 hour shifts. Those guys couldn't spell OSHA, let alone comply. 2, 2, if just just what's near death incidents when things broke, and things were coming at me, and leap out of the way. Grew up in the martial arts, but that's my background. And then they found out I lied about my age, and it really freaked out.
Dave Grossman:And and when I turned 18, and in the summer of 1974, I enlisted in 82nd Airborne Division, infinitely safer than being on a Wildcat oil rig. And and the rest is history. I've had 24 years in the military, made e 5 sergeant, went to OCS, army, just a basic knuckle dragger infantry ranger type guy, and, and the army sent me to grad school en route to teach at West Point, and got my psych degree, and everything kind of flowed from that. My first book, and then follow on book, and, you know, that's that's the short version of this story. It's been a great ride.
Dave Grossman:I retired over 26 years ago. I've been on the road a couple of days a year. I'm the only person ever to be state certified in all 50 states to train law enforcement that believe every federal agency, a couple of 100 days a year on the road, and 68 years old, and, my prayer I'll do it for another 20 years. We'll talk about why, why we stay in the fight, and why we wanna stay in the game.
Sam Alaimo:Before we get there, I'm curious because the timing is interesting. That was right at the tail end or at the end of the Vietnam War. Did you since you were a kid, I mean, your childhood was through the Vietnam War. You probably saw everything that was happening in America with regard to the war, the treatment of the soldiers. Why did you still wanna go in?
Dave Grossman:Yeah. It was a crazy time. We had what was called the Volar army, and it was the first all volunteer army. The draft was shut down, and the druggies ran the barracks. If you didn't wanna do drugs, you had to fight.
Dave Grossman:And I grew up with a martial arts. I didn't mind fighting, but was a pain in the ass, and it was it was a crazy time. But that's all I ever wanted to do, was was serve. I remember at 1st grade, didn't go to kindergarten. 1st grade, I get the, the teacher did an icebreaker.
Dave Grossman:What do you give me when I grow up? I said, I'm gonna be a soldier. And that's all everyone wanted to do. And then I I we're we're the Vietnam vets all around us, and we wanted to know what combat was gonna be like. You know, we're ready to punch out, you know, we're just before the ranger bats have been stood up, so it was 80 seconds you had to punch out first anywhere, anywhere.
Dave Grossman:And and we had Vietnam vets all around us. We wanted to know what combat was gonna be like, and they wouldn't say. It's like this taboo topic. And and and what I figured out, if if somebody asks you about your sex life, hey, you know, how's the sex life? What position?
Dave Grossman:How's it going on? But if Masters and Johnson have scholarly studies, I say, you might tell them. So I went to grad school, you know, fast forward, captain Grossman, ranger infantry, head of the West Point. And I I asked, and and I got the answer. And and it turned in my first book, On Killing.
Dave Grossman:On Killing is a half a million copies sold in English, translated into into 8 languages. Google Scholar, scholar. Google.com. Look up any published work, See how many times been cited by other work. That's not the nature of scholarship.
Dave Grossman:This book's been cited over 3,600 times in scholarly works, translated in multiple languages, and and and if you ask people the World War 2 vets by the 100, Vietnam all those World War 2 vets are gone now. This is the 19 eighties. Vietnam vets by the 100, so many of them are gone now. And I would present to the reunions, conduct interviews and surveys, and and and they would tell me about what it was like. And I wrote my first book on killing, and I thought, you know, that's that's the heart of what's in combat.
Dave Grossman:But then I retired and, and like you said, it's it's it it was crazy times. Reagan became president, and it pivoted on a dime. We had the urinalysis program with the expeditious discharge program. The single most amazing thing I've ever seen in my life is how the president would come in and turn things around on a dime, from the goofy stuff we were doing. It was insane.
Dave Grossman:But it turned it around, and and so I I retired in December of 97, and I was trained law enforcement. And when the when 911 happened, nobody had any combat experience except law enforcement. The cops are in the fight every day. And and my presentation completely evolved. You know, the war began, I thought who the hell am I betraying these Green Beret and these SEALs with all this combat?
Dave Grossman:And I found out the more experience I have, the more the value of what you got to give. And my son just retired, air force combat controller, 9 combat tours, 3 bronze stars. My son just retired. This is the book I wrote. This is the what what's really at the heart of the matter.
Dave Grossman:You peel away the layers of the onion on combat. Both these books, on combat, on killing, marine corps, commandants required reading list. This is the book I wrote for my son going into the fight. And, my grandson's in Kuwait right now. Grandson in the army right now.
Dave Grossman:We're deployed to Kuwait. And this is the book, that he read before he enlisted it and and drove on. I wanted to make a difference. I wanted to contribute. It's what I wanted to do.
Dave Grossman:And we've really been able to do that. Now here's cool part. This book translated a bunch of languages. It was translated in Ukrainian last year. And in January of this year, 24, it received the book of the year award.
Dave Grossman:In May June, they brought me out to Ukraine. They're the Ukrainian government brought me out of May June. I'm training Ukrainian troops, across the nation. I've lived to Kyiv, 2 or 3 presentations a day. You know, if they bring too many people together, it becomes a target.
Dave Grossman:There were never had more than, 50, maximum 100 people together. I'm training them and and working across here, but this is the book that they locked onto, and the information about combat, slow motion time, tunnel vision, auditor exclusion, memory gaps, memory distortions. These are the things at the core. And I wrote the book on hunting, just recently came out, and I just had this curiosity. Sex has been done to death.
Dave Grossman:Anything I wanna know about sex has been written about. But combat, like, you don't hear the shots. How could we have had 500 years of gunpowder combat, not let people know that shots get beaten? Now here's the cool part. Hunters all experienced that.
Dave Grossman:He asked a hunter, hey, you know, you pull the trigger, do you hear the sound? Do you hear the sound? No. Have you ever talked to him about No. And we're all in our little silo.
Dave Grossman:Nobody's talking about these crazy things that are happening. The auditor how good we have had 500 years of gunpowder hunting and gunpowder combat? A lot of people know the simplest little stinking thing like auditory exclusion. So those were woven into my book on combat, and and that's kind of the, again, the the short story on the ride, but all began by wanting to know what combat was like, and and and enlisting, and wanting to be in combat, wanting to do combat. And the truth is, my worst cold war.
Dave Grossman:Not not much happened to me, but I've had the honor to interview more people who have been in combat than anybody in human history. All the interviews I did before I I retired to write my book on on killing, and then out on the road a couple hundred days a year, and every day, somebody comes up and says, this is what it was like for me. This happened. This happened. That didn't happen.
Dave Grossman:And And the ones that are a little different have a lot to teach us. So I mean, 24 years in the army, 26 years doing this, and it's my prayer. I keep doing it for another another 20 years. And once again, there's the the short version of of a long and weary tale of of what Grossman was trying to do and where we ended up.
Sam Alaimo:I read On Killing the first time, I think 4 years ago on a flight to Hawaii from Philadelphia. Yeah. So from the moment we took off in Philadelphia to LA to Hawaii, I read the entire thing. I probably took like 20 pages of notes. It it got my brain stimulated.
Sam Alaimo:Maybe for those who who have not read your book yet, I'd recommend they do. Can you give kind of the overarching premise and Sure. You tied in there at the beginning with the Vietnam vets not not wanting to talk about it. So anchor the book and kind of give up the overarching summary.
Dave Grossman:Well, you know, the heart of the matter is in World War 2, we found out most of our troops wouldn't pull the trigger. And SLA Marshall, did these interviews, and and everybody at the end of end of World War 2, we were 100% combat veterans. And Marshall said, hey, look, this is what's happening, and and we knew it, and everybody accepted it, and they dealt with it. And the problem was it was a training flaw. Right now, now, cruisers weapons almost always fired.
Dave Grossman:Key weapon like a BAR or a flamethrower, everybody knew it was shooting, it almost always fired. If there's a leader standing over your shoulder demanding it would fire, but left to their own devices, about 15 to 20 percent of the individual riflemen would pull the trigger. And at the end of World War 2, we knew it was true. There was no denying it. It's come under attack in recent years, but it it all fits, and we fix it.
Dave Grossman:If you've been in the US armed force, the problem was we taught people to shoot bullseye targets. We've got no known case any bullseyes ever attack in our troops. You've been in the US army since the Korean War, you never once shot a bullseye. Man shaped silhouette pops in your field. If you hit the target, target drops.
Dave Grossman:Stimulus response, stimulus response, like a pilot in a flight simulator, like a kid in a fire drill. Modern training makes killing a conditioned response. So here's the deal. If every living creature slams head on into this resistance of killing your own kind, you know, when we talk about murder, oh, look at that terrible crime that proves that mankind's a killer. Well, no.
Dave Grossman:We're a nation of a third of a 1000000000 people. That one terrible crime you heard about, 1 in a third of a 1000000000. Now if if you very, very roughly, in America, a 3rd of a 1000000000 people, we have 1 murder per day per state. Roughly roughly 50 murders a day. I you explain to me the 99.999999.
Dave Grossman:Who didn't kill anybody today? Divorce, infidelity, layoff, traffic accidents. It'll light down a provocation. Less than 1 in a 1000 will even try to take a life. Explain that.
Dave Grossman:So there's this whole array of physiological, psychological factors that can enable and restrain killing. And we know how to turn it on, and we know that the video games can be doing something very similar to kids. Now here's the thing, if just 1 in a 1000000 kill, 1 in a 1000000 in any given day, the murder rate has gone from 50 to to 320. Just 1 in a 1000000. And and you these little factors that can move it over, and we've seen violence explode at levels never seen before.
Dave Grossman:And that's why I'm such a big fan of of programs like you guys, and your zero odds, and your your your your dynamic. Let let me give an angle on this, the pivot on on these crime data that I think is so important. 1st, when when we talk about on killing, we we talked about how toxic it is. Every living creature has a resistance killing their own kind. Animals with antlers and horns, they're head to head in most harmless fashion.
Dave Grossman:Any other species that go to the side, they gut their gore. Piranhas sink their teeth anything that hits water except another piranha. They fight each other flicks at their tails. Rattled snakes will sink their fangs in anything except another rattlesnake, and they wrestle each other. So when we become frightened, when we become angry, the forebrain shuts down, the midbrain takes over, and this resistance kicks in.
Dave Grossman:We've all been enraged. We've been we've been red with rage. We've been overwhelmed with anger. Well, why don't you grab a steak knife and cut that throat? Why don't you just stab them and kill them?
Dave Grossman:We we we bring that resistance, and it's there and it's real. But here's here's the most important thing. There's so many ways. Interpersonal human aggression is the single most psychologically toxic thing anybody will ever face. Now don't cop a pity party here, but the DSM, the Bible of psychiatrists, psychology says whenever the cause of your trauma is human in nature, the degree of trauma is used to more severe and long lasting.
Dave Grossman:So I tell people, you tell me, you tell me, is there a difference between these two scenarios? Scenario 1, tornado hits the house while you're gone, put your family in the hospital. How do you feel about them? Thank God they're alive. Scenario 2, Criminals break out in the house while you're gone.
Dave Grossman:It systematically beat family in the hospital. Say, how do you feel? Any different? There's all the difference in the world. One's a one's a random act of of nature.
Dave Grossman:The other's an intentional malignant act by human beings. And so when we talk about violent crime exploding, we we got to understand that this interpersonal human aggression is so toxic, so destructive to our civilization and to our way of life, And in recent years, it's completely come unglued. So that's kind of killing on combat in a nutshell. But let me just show you guys that I really think this is, important stuff for y'all. Now medical technology is holding down the murder bay.
Dave Grossman:Cool. You get it. Docs are saving ever more lives every day. Tourniquets alone have cut the murder rate in half in just the last decade. Look look, if 20 to 30 people a day slap on a tourniquet, save a crime victim's life, we cut the murderer in half.
Dave Grossman:Now I teach our nation's largest fire and EMS service several times a year for over a decade. I said, Dave, we guarantee you, in our city alone, 20 to 30 times a day, we slap on a tourniquet and save a crime in our city alone. So you gotta understand 911 systems, medevac, the trauma. So between the 19 one good solid data point, UMass Harvard study, between the 19 sixties and the 19 nineties, medical technology cut the murder rate to a 3rd or a quarter would otherwise be. That is compare the murders in the in the nineties with the sixties.
Dave Grossman:You gotta take the murders in the nineties and multiply by a factor of 3 or 4. And the leaps and bounds of life saving technology. And then this, I read so mad that somebody said, your grandpa made 25ยข an hour. This job pays $25 an hour. You make a 100 times more money than your grandpa.
Dave Grossman:That's your BS meter going off. We all understand about inflation, we all understand you can't compare money, but we compare the murder rate, it's the same lie. And we're being lied to year after year. And I was I was at the the big FBI center recently where they do this data, and they're kind of primed for recalculating this, but this is this is like borderline Nobel Prize types of not your Nobel, but the real Nobel thing, borderline Nobel Prize, to say, let's get an accurate assessment of what's really happening. I've been to the White House twice, once as part of the president's roundtable, another to brief the vice president.
Dave Grossman:I told the vice president, just like we have inflation adjusted dollars, we need medically adjusted murders. And when we do that, it will absolutely transform the way we see the situation. The vice president said, what about aggravated assault rate? I said, sir, that's a good measure. And so you start holding people's feet to the fire, and then it changes.
Dave Grossman:We we make egg assault say, what do you want it to say? Where do you draw that magic line? It's like great inflation in the school. Oh, yeah. Oh, you want egg you want you you want egg assault?
Dave Grossman:Go down. We'll bring it down. Poof. But dad is dead. Murder is good data.
Dave Grossman:It's about the only good solid data we have. Everything else is judgment call.
Rob Huberty:Are you suggesting that something has changed in our society because it seems to say that, you know, either gun rates have gone down even though we see it in the news, although this life saving equipment suggests that's actually increased. Is that is that what you're suggesting?
Dave Grossman:Let me give you some data here. It really is important. This is the number of murders in America. It's just raw data. Now here's, 2,006, we had 17,000 murders.
Dave Grossman:Here we are in 2,008, we had 16,000. 2,009, 15,000. 2010, 14,000. 1000, 14,000. But then in 2015, 2016, it exploded.
Dave Grossman:Now we've seen jumps like that in the past, but when you allow for medical technology, who'd never do anything remotely like this. Now the FBI guys, 15, 16, what was happening, they call it the Ferguson effect. That crazy message that the criminals are the good guys, and the cops are the bad guys. This idea that that that that society breaks into the oppressor and the oppressed, and the cops are the oppressors, and the criminals are the oppressed, and the media coverage of the Ferguson episode, that that that drumbeat that says that criminals are the good guys. But then we had the George Floyd effect, and we haven't seen anything remotely like it.
Dave Grossman:So zoom out a little bit. Again, look at the data here. Now this is New York Times. New York Times says there is no precedent for what happened in 2020. So why did they bury it in the Sunday supplement?
Dave Grossman:Never mention any because it points the finger right back at them. Now this is a year over year increase decrease in murders. 19 sixties. Up this much, this so far. Bloop bloop bloop.
Dave Grossman:They all stack up. Down a year. Up up down a couple years. Hopefully, a lot of medical technology ain't down that much at all. Up, up, up.
Dave Grossman:Look at the 19 nineties. Down, down, down, down, down, but in the 19 nineties we doubled our prison population, and when you allow for medical technology, it ain't down at all. This ain't up as much. Now look at those few years. There is the Ferguson effect, and there's 2020.
Dave Grossman:That's the George Floyd effect. It began in May of 2020. The most horrendous year over year increase in murders we have ever seen in the history of our nation. Here's another Can
Sam Alaimo:you can you break down the logic a little bit? So if if it is Ferguson, if it is the the shooting in 2020 Yeah. What is causing the increase in murders? People thinking they can get away with murder?
Dave Grossman:Yeah. It's the media coverage saying the killer's a good guy, and and and the criminals are the good guys. But look look how it does the whole George Floyd thing. This George Floyd, you know, the the cops are evil, and they're killing innocent people. Yeah.
Dave Grossman:They they did something stupid. They're making a mistake, But the effect here's here's kind of a Pew Research COVID. Now the Pew there's the 19 sixties that we talked about. Right? Up, up, up, down, down, down, down.
Dave Grossman:And here's the 19 nineties. This is per capita. There's 911. 911 up this much, down the next year. Right?
Dave Grossman:And there's 2020. And it did not go down the next year. It went up another 4%. What we got is we got all time record number of cops murdered in the line of duty. All time last year, 2023, was the all time record number cops shot in the line of duty.
Dave Grossman:Now here's kind of a headline news. Fraternal order of police. 300, and because of body armor, because of technology, we didn't have a record dead, but we have never seen this many cops shot. So here's what's happening. I train conversation wide.
Dave Grossman:They said, we know how to not be assassinated. We know how to not be massacred. We we don't go to that part of town no more, and that part of town no longer has justice, and that part of town no longer reports crime. So let me show you another thing. Now the the media says, oh, yeah.
Dave Grossman:Crime is down. Bullshit. It's not down. It's exploding like nothing we ever see, and they won't even talk about it because it points a finger back at them. And what this means is we need you.
Dave Grossman:We need 0 eyes. We need smart people like you helping us. Throw technology at them problem. Throw money we're we're a rich nation. When things go wrong, we throw money at it.
Dave Grossman:And when the public begins to understand just how thinking bad it is, Let's start throwing money at this problem. So let me show you another one now. We have 2 crime reports out there. 1 is Uniform Crime UCR, where cops report to the FBI. And cops aren't reporting crime because they don't get that part of town.
Dave Grossman:And those guys are not reported. Murders get reported. But but the other crime report is the crime victimization survey. Every year, we phone thousands of people, and we ask, were you a victim of assault? Were you a victim of rape?
Dave Grossman:So here's here's these 2. Now, no, we don't have the the 24 date 23 date again. It's that far behind, but here's the change from 2021 to 2022. Now the the the the the cops say, uniform crime report, crime down, total crime down 2%, survey says up 75%. Homicide, funny thing, decade after decade, we call thousands of people, never once, so we say, yep, I was victim homicide.
Dave Grossman:Never once. Homicide victims, they can't speak for themselves. But rape, oh, down 6%. Survey says, up 58%. Robbery, oh, it's up 1%.
Dave Grossman:Survey says, it's up 47%. Here we go to ag assault now. Ag assault, as long as you don't hold people's feet to the fire, as long as you don't hold accountable, ag assault's a good measure. Hey, cops. Alright.
Dave Grossman:Ag assault's down 2%. Survey says up a 104%. Folks, it's out of control. We've never seen things remotely like this, and and the public doesn't know it. And when they know it, they'll start throwing money at this product.
Dave Grossman:Then what do we got? We got things like here's a here's a cop in the middle of all of this. Yeah. This is the guy at the Parkland School massacre. That's not a shooting.
Dave Grossman:Shooting is an Olympic sport. Shooting is our constant push to protect your right. Every time a criminal acts called the shooting, it should piss you off. This is a cop on duty at the Parkland School Massacre. He didn't go in.
Dave Grossman:Now he was acquitted, but he became a national villain. We we don't need warriors, see. We need we need protectors. We need we need guardians, see. We don't need that warrior spirit, and they come where they ask for it.
Dave Grossman:But here's here's 2 other people. This is the police chief and the SRO at Uvalde, Uvalde School massacre. They didn't go in, and they're both facing over a dozen felony charges because they didn't go in. They were told, we we don't want warriors. We want guardians.
Dave Grossman:We want protectors, and and you gotta find a balance in there. There's room for the warrior. There's room for the Navy Seal. There's room for you. You gotta teach us.
Dave Grossman:But at the same time, there's gotta be balance. Let me give you a layout on the whole thing. Heather McDonald, smart lady, wrote the book War on Cops. That's what it is, guys. It's a flat out war on cops.
Dave Grossman:Heather Heather doesn't have the the the George Floyd effect, the mini Minneapolis effect. She'll update her book. Best book out there right now is a book called Blue Lies, the the the war on justice, conspiracy to weaken America's cops. I wrote the foreword to it. It's got all the footnotes, all the in notes to understand what the hell is going on.
Dave Grossman:It's a war on cops. It's a war, on on justice. It is a lie campaign. This is the cops are evil, and the criminals are the good guys, and the criminals embrace that. And what we see is crime exploding, and it's not even being reported in many cases because the cops don't even go there anymore.
Dave Grossman:There's no go zones. Well, they don't even go and force a law because they're gonna get assassinated, murdered, executed. It's happening on the streets and people don't even know it.
Sam Alaimo:When we initially talked, you you you brought up the increasing violence in America. And I I guess, 2 questions. Number 1 is, have you done back the envelope math on what it might be without the advancements in medical technology? And then number 2, you said you had some recommendations on how people can approach it, can deal with the excess violence. So if you can answer both those questions, that'd be great.
Dave Grossman:The the thing to understand is it's multifactorial, and it's worldwide. During my presentations, I show the data around the planet. It's not just America. Now the Minneapolis effect, the George Floyd effect was America and Canada. We didn't see that much in Europe.
Dave Grossman:It was America and Canada. Every bump in violent crime America has Canadians do the same thing. I've been doing this for for tracking crime data for over 30 years. Canada, God bless them, is just trapped the same thing us. And and and it's worldwide.
Dave Grossman:Mexico is out of control. Files has exploded. Mexico has has a higher murder rate than than Iraq and Afghanistan put together. I would rather take my family on vacation to Iraq than Mexico, and this is new. This is new.
Dave Grossman:Oh, it's all psychotropic drugs. Was that what's happening in Mexico? Is is that what's happening? Jamaica or any of these other nations around the world, the violence has exploded. Is that the new factor?
Dave Grossman:And Interpol, I quote the Interpol data, right up until 20 years ago when Interpol stopped reporting the data because the nation didn't want people to know. It exploded, and we don't know how bad it's been for the last 20 years because they won't tell us. It's classified data around the planet of of what their violent crime rate is in all these nations. So here's what's going on. 1 is turning these killers into celebrities.
Dave Grossman:The the the media has turned these killers into celebrities. I could tell you the names. I showed the picture of the killers, and that would and and that would be wrong. We shouldn't we should never mention that name. There was a mosque massacre in New Zealand.
Dave Grossman:This guy live streamed himself in 2 different mosques, slaughtering people. The prime minister of New Zealand nailed it. She said, this man did what he did for notoriety, for fame, but we will not give it to him. She said, New Zealand will never save this man's name. New Zealand will never show this man's face.
Dave Grossman:New Zealand will not even give him his name. Boom. Somebody's got it. Make them nothing. Make okay.
Dave Grossman:The first week tells the name shows the picture. Boom. Shut it down. Turn in these killers, the one that we just had in Madison, Wisconsin. This girl who murdered 2 people in her school and wounded others and then killed herself.
Dave Grossman:This girl was totally whacked out on the Columbine killers. Listen to the same music, the same band, just totally whacked out. And they've been movies, turn these killers into celebrities. In my class, I show the Oxford Michigan School killer. Yeah.
Dave Grossman:The last the last quote in his little journal, I want the world to remember me. What's his motivation? The Parkland Florida School killer. He made his little manifesto, little videotape. And you're gonna know who I am, and it's gonna be great.
Dave Grossman:You're gonna know who I am. And what did he say? Then he said, I'm gonna commit a massacre. He said, I'm gonna be the next shooter. Shooting is an Olympic sport.
Dave Grossman:Shooting is a good thing. We take it's we take the most horrible crimes, and we call them shootings, and we're trapped by our own language. And and the shooters are the good guys. They're not killers. I'm a shooter.
Dave Grossman:I don't gotta be famous. I'll tell you what's coming next. I pray that I'm wrong. We're gonna see daycare massacres. We're gonna see school bus massacres.
Dave Grossman:The goal is is fame, so they gotta commit ever more evil crimes to be in the news. Hey. Elementary school massacre, it's been done 3 times. Now we got another one. You go to a daycare, murder all the kids.
Dave Grossman:Oh, yeah. Yeah. You'll be on the front page of every newspaper. Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Dave Grossman:I'll murder a school bus full of kids? Oh, yeah. Yeah. You'll get that'll do it. You'll be on the front page.
Dave Grossman:Oh, no. Terrible new crime. And the media will turn them into celebrities. And one of the major reasons for this I I work with a Secret Service agent, wrote the foreword to his book, and he talks about how many of these killers are motivated by fame, and the media feeds it to him. And then we've got this whole progress of of the idea that the criminals are the good guys.
Dave Grossman:Right up until the early 19 sixties, Hollywood operated by a code, and and the code said, we know the stories we tell have an impact on our society. I mean, come on. A 32nd commercial modifies a behavior. How much more does that hours and hours of stuff in between it? They said, we know the stories we tell of an impact, and we know we have a responsibility.
Dave Grossman:Tell stories with a positive impact. A lot of the code could be said in 3 words. Crime doesn't pay. Criminals must not be depicted in a positive manner. Law enforcement must not be depicted in a negative manner.
Dave Grossman:They knew a civilization could not survive if we tell our children cops are evil and criminals are good. And and they knew they had this impact. In that early 19th, they threw it away. So here's something important to understand. Defund the police.
Dave Grossman:What sane, rational human being would believe, get rid of all the cops? Empty the prisons. That's their agenda. Empty all the prisons. Get rid of all the cops.
Dave Grossman:It'll be better. How could somebody believe that? Well, here's the key. Right up until you're 6, 7, 8 years old, your dreams and TV and movies and reality are all the same. Look, you ever get dreams in real life mixed up?
Dave Grossman:But my son's pushing 50 now. My son asked my wife a while back, hey, did I tell you that? Did I just dream it? She oh, you must have dreamed it. I don't have you ever been there?
Dave Grossman:Well, for children, they cannot tell the difference. It's all real. So when they see somebody on TV being murdered, it's real. So maybe one of the most evil movies ever made, Denzel Washington, in training day. And Denzel, the most beloved black actor, plays a corrupt violent cop.
Dave Grossman:And they believe cops are evil. They've seen it. They were 2, 3 years old and they saw it. Denzel's a bad cop. They're all bad.
Dave Grossman:They personally witnessed cops commit evil evil acts, and and they believe it. And then the video games provide the killing it's all these things come together. The movies that provide that this this this soundtrack that says the killer is the good guy, the the criminals, and the cops are the bad guys. Record number cops shot the line of duty. Where the hell did that come from?
Dave Grossman:This narrative. This this this Marxist narrative. The world divides into the oppressor and the oppressed. And the oppressor is always evil. Look at October 7th in Israel.
Dave Grossman:The Palestine were oppressed. They do whatever they want. They can rape. They murder. They kill.
Dave Grossman:They're the good guys. They're the oppressed. The Israelis are the oppressors, and they deserve what they got. And so when cops are murdered out there, they had that coming. They deserve it.
Dave Grossman:And we fed these movies at a young age with this crazy, you know and again, think like a detective. Think like a scientist. What is the new factor? And see what they do is they point at the guns. Oh, it's the guns.
Dave Grossman:It's the guns. It's evil guns. So I throw a picture of an m one car being up there. 7,000,000 of these manufactured in World War 2. At the end of World War 2, they flooded the market.
Dave Grossman:Right up until 1968, any kid at any age could order m 1 carbine, high capacity, similar to that military weapon, and the US mail would deliver it to the house. Up until 1968, any kid to any age or or went through the mail. Now we're we're doing a change of that law. But there's not some evil new gun out there. The media knows they have this blood on their hand, and they gotta point their fingers.
Dave Grossman:So, oh, it's the guns. It's the evil cops. It's evil guns. Oh, it's them. And and and this sick message that that has taken over that their prison's full of innocent people, and we let them all go to be better.
Dave Grossman:That cops are all evil. Denzalls are bad cop. They're all bad. When we kill the cops and we get rid of the lawn, it'd be all better. What would it really be like if they had their way?
Rob Huberty:So one of the things it sounds like you're saying that has changed is technology, information availability so that the fact that there's more movies that have come out that have a message that, you know, the Internet and the exposure to these things, and you it's easier to become more notorious in these these settings. The fact that the news media is more I mean, it's ever present. Right? Like, you used to turn on the news at night, and that was it. Now you can look on your phone at any given moment.
Rob Huberty:So there's one question that I have is basically, like, if you if you'd use a different era of America, the 19 seventies, which I have been told by law enforcement and people was actually more violent than 19 seventies were. And I don't know that I would it wasn't alive then. I've been told that, though. Yeah. And I think that there was a zeitgeist in that point where movies started to tell a darker story of cops.
Rob Huberty:Yep. Like, Popeye Doyle was not he was a good guy, but, like, the 19 seventies cops didn't wear white hats like cowboys did. Right? Like, it wasn't Good Guy. It was it was more nuanced, and it and, you know, maybe the, you know, Popeye Doyle of Gene Hackman in the seventies in the French Connection evolved to Denzel Washington.
Rob Huberty:So some of the things that were the same were, like, movies did have this depiction. Right? That not necessarily I Popeye Doyle was still a hero, and that's that's a very like, Denzel Washington was evil. So that not the same thing. But there was an exposure to that.
Rob Huberty:Were the 19 seventies more dangerous?
Dave Grossman:Yeah. That's a big lie if you allow for medical technology.
Rob Huberty:Okay.
Dave Grossman:even if they get to compare. But see, there's the big lie. Oh, you know, the 19 seventies, you know, go back to that Pew report I showed you. Yeah. It's up, but it's still below previous years.
Dave Grossman:If we allow for medical technology, it's far far worse. We need medically adjusted murders. And we'll be able to understand how bad it really is. And we'll start throwing money at the problem. What we how we win World War 2?
Dave Grossman:We threw money at it. It. What we do during the Cold War, we outspent the Russians. What we do during the pandemic, we threw 1,000,000,000,000 of dollars at it. When the American public begins to understand how bad it really is, they're throwing money at this problem.
Dave Grossman:You know, my On Killing came out in 1995, 3 years before Columbine. And I said, we're gonna see a generation of juvenile killers like nothing we've ever seen before. There has never in history been a juvenile in a school commit a mobile homicide, and now they're everywhere. What is the new factor? And the Columbine killers watched the movie Natural Born Killers over 50 times.
Dave Grossman:Prior to the 19 eighties, it was not possible to watch a movie 50 times. Yeah. Some of us remember, you know, the the the big battle between Betamax and UHS, and and and but now you couldn't see a movie unless it was on TV, unless in at the theater, you couldn't see it 50 times. The Coliban Killers used a video game and rehearsed their massacres, put themselves in the god mode, and rehearsed killing innocent people. These are some of the new factors in the equation worldwide.
Sam Alaimo:Zoom in on one thing you said that is my wheels are turning on it. If you look at, like, the homicide rate in the state of nature, like in hunter gatherer days
Dave Grossman:Yeah.
Sam Alaimo:The estimation is men would kill other men at the rate of 25%. So one out of every 4 men on earth was killed by another human being. When you aggregate men and women, it was about 15% violent death rate. That is extraordinary.
Dave Grossman:Where do
Sam Alaimo:you get that from? Yeah. Azar got. Yeah. Lawrence Keeley, war before civilization.
Sam Alaimo:Yeah. They're going off the osteological archaeological record. Yeah. Spear point, sorry, metal points embedded in, backs, bone points embedded in spinal. So it's it's an interesting number and it it kinda makes sense given what you just said about someone between the ages of 0 and 5 Yeah.
Sam Alaimo:Who see violence on TV
Dave Grossman:Right.
Sam Alaimo:May begin to not have any sort of negative response to violence in reality.
Dave Grossman:Yeah.
Sam Alaimo:And I always wondered how you could have a hunter gatherer band whose sole mission was to eradicate the neighboring band, to to kill everybody they can.
Dave Grossman:Yeah.
Sam Alaimo:And it was because to them from the moment of birth, that was normal. Yeah. That wasn't abnormal. Yes. So what you're really talking about, I think, if I understand your premise, is that civilization has done a really good job of trying to temper that that that violence that we're so capable of through laws, through religion, through tradition, through custom
Dave Grossman:Through medical technology holding down.
Sam Alaimo:And then the evolutionary curve ball Yeah. Is movies and video games.
Dave Grossman:Yeah.
Sam Alaimo:Now it makes me wonder, like, the murder rate, I think you said it was 1 in 1 in a 1,000,000, was it? Yeah. So, like, 1 in a 1,000,000 Yeah.
Dave Grossman:We've we've we've got 1 per city per day. So it's 50 200 you know, a third of a 1000000000 people, we see roughly 50 a day.
Sam Alaimo:So compare it to 1 out of 4 human beings being killed. Yeah. There's it can get so much worse is what I'm trying to say.
Dave Grossman:Yeah. Quite right. Quite right. And, sir, Ed, you know, that really is a good point. I know about the data of the murder rate now, All of that other stuff.
Dave Grossman:You know, we wrote archaeological I've written archaeological papers, coauthored with archaeologists. And and and I talked about it in on killing, that the actual battle was a big shoving match. When one side just started to run away, that's when all the killing happened. And and it was the the the chariots and the cavalry. You know, cav, the force stirrups, they were very limited in their ability to protect energy.
Dave Grossman:And and the the early chariots didn't have a a a horse collar, so they actually choked the horse. And it's only good for, like like, 3, 4, 500 yards before the horse couldn't go any further. But they had this mobility advantage. And they were they when the one side ran away now you throw your shield away and run, you you can't catch him. He's running as fast as you are, if not more so.
Dave Grossman:But the the cavalry and the and the chariots, and from behind. It's so easy to kill somebody from behind when you don't have to look in their eyes. All that's in on killing. And yet throughout history, we we've seen violence. And we we saw, one it was a tragic event, archaeological event, in which a bunch of people have been buried.
Dave Grossman:They were primarily women and children, and they'd all been killed the same way, with a blow to the back of the head. Every single one of them. And, and you see, once again, you put them down, you hit them with the back of the head. You don't have to look in their eyes. Atrocity and combat are 2 different things.
Dave Grossman:And I covered that in on killing as well. Atrocity, you know, the Nazis, they didn't have to look everyone in the eye and kill them. They they the one person, they stripped them, and now you don't have clothes on. What? Who don't wear clothes?
Dave Grossman:Animals don't wear clothes. And then you you another person puts them in the gas chamber, another one goes and takes the bodies out, and there's this diffusion of responsibility that goes on there. But they they've gotta do that kind of thing. Atrocity and killing somebody face on face in combat. 2 different things.
Dave Grossman:And this tragic image of all these people, and somebody came and buried them, and buried families together. It's just the tragedy of the war tribe coming back to their home, finding all the wounded children dead. So, you know, good point. You know, we'd look out, but but to say that it's always been like that from a few perspectives, and we look at them, you know, the wounds, as he said. But a lot of that's, you know, I I've been involved with some of those papers.
Dave Grossman:I'm a little more complex than that. But you're right. We have been able to bring it down, and now it's back up again. And and that's a really valid point.
Rob Huberty:I feel like you teach every kind of police seminar. I I'm across the country and, you know, I would never police, but I interact with them and everybody knows you and probably has been to your seminars
Sam Alaimo:Yeah.
Rob Huberty:Or a lot. Right? And and is aware of your kind of message. And you said so many different things that lead into it. You know, one of which, if we decide to spend money, if you decide to address the problem, if you, you know, vilify 1 and, you know, if if not make hero, but, like, make those things more gray about who the good guy and the bad guy is that's bad.
Rob Huberty:A lot of this stuff is difficult to control as a society when, you know, maybe one side wants one way and another side wants another way. What are tangible things that you think that we could do right now? So our entire idea is our company is trying to do one small thing, and we're trying to take a step forward, and we're trying to be apolitical about it. Yeah. Right?
Dave Grossman:We have another piece of the whole equation that nobody could deny. I'm presenting a paper on this to a conference recently. And one of the effects of the video games and the movies and social media and cell phones is sleep deprivation. Now, there's nothing macho or tough about going without sleep. Any 10 year old girl in a slumber party can do it.
Dave Grossman:The professional thing is to manage your sleep. And I do I love the Nobel concept. The guy that doesn't ring the bell. The guy that got through. I do a piece on Ranger School prep, and I'm I'm I'd I'd like I'd like Quora.
Dave Grossman:I do a fair amount of work on Quora, and I kind of bounce ideas out there, get it get it, you know, we're able to get it get it crowdsourced, and and I'm working now on on a kind of tying it all together on preparation. There's a guy, you know, who talked about failing out his out of out of BUDS. Gonna be a Navy SEAL, and he dropped out. He said, I rang the bell. He said, I was physically prepared.
Dave Grossman:I was not mentally prepared for the suck. I was in great shape, but nobody ever taught me to suck and to drive on. And so how do you do that? How do you teach that? And the answer is fasting.
Dave Grossman:Fasting. Now in ranger school, you you go days without sleep and days without food. And and my ranger school was in 3 components. It extended Fort Benning stage, we had a mountain stage, and a jungle phase, and divided into thirds. At the end of that binning phase, I I I was I had the highest peer eval of anybody, and and everybody in the platoon peered me number 1.
Dave Grossman:We had all kinds of spot reports. I was kicking ass. And and see, I've been prepared for sleep deprivation. I'd work 12 hours a day, 7 days a week for for for months on end. But I was not prepared for food deprivation.
Dave Grossman:When I got up to the mountains, I just became another zombie. I was I was sucking. I I hit the wall. I I was prepared for sleep deprivation, but nobody had ever prepared me for no calories coming in the machine. And and the software goes out before the hardware does.
Dave Grossman:You can go a long time without food and and still metabolize energy, but the software goes out. And so the prep program revolves around extended periods of physical exertion combined with sleep deprivation and food deprivation. And you pre stress inoculate yourself. Now, again, there's nothing fancy about going without sleep, and we've all done that. But go at night without sleep, and and and a day without food.
Dave Grossman:Got a day, no food all day long, no sleep, The next morning, go do your road map or do that do that do that. You don't have to swim. Have you've had no food and no sleep for 24 hours, but nobody should know. You can oh, it's so hard to go into a food sea. No.
Dave Grossman:No. No. Nobody should know except you and your training buddy, and and nobody knows. And I do this a lot with young soldiers and infantry officer basic. They're gonna be infantry officers.
Dave Grossman:They're young, butter bars, second lieutenants. They finish infantry basic. They're going to ranger school. How do you prep for that? Well, you start at the beginning of infantry officer basic.
Dave Grossman:You and your you and your ranger buddy, you go in a Friday without food, and Friday night without sleep, and then on Saturday, go do a a Compass guided cross country march. And and, and and and then give you a few days a few weeks for your body to recover. Then go all day Friday, all day Saturday without food, and Friday without sleep. And now go push that envelope and do a long cross country compass guided march, or do that long swim, and keep pushing that envelope. Don't let your body don't let your body weight go down.
Dave Grossman:But do you you wanna learn how to suck? You really want to eat what's hard. What people don't want to do is to go without food. And if you can do that, if you could suck it up in your own personal training, then when you have to suck it up in ranger school, and I think the same would be true in buds, then you so much better prepared yourself to suck. But if you don't wanna do that, you don't wanna go without food.
Dave Grossman:I for religious purposes and health purposes, I I fast about once a week. I do a 36 hour fast. I I I we we got dinner, and then I go to bed. And the next day, don't eat anything all day long. Go to bed.
Dave Grossman:The next morning, I have breakfast. And and after ranger school, that's not very hard at all. But most people, it's it's impossible. And and and they they haven't built up there. So if you wanna be this Nobel Prize, you wanna be prepared to suck, your training program should incorporate no food, and make your body continue to perform without food and without sleep, and pre inoculate yourself, pre express yourself.
Dave Grossman:And and and and this is the key, but it comes back let's talk about going without sleep. We're in the middle of a global epidemic of sleep deprivation. Now sleep deprivation is a key factor in suicides. Right now, it is physically impossible for you to take your life. You can no more intentionally take your own life, than with your eyes, you'd look at the back of your head.
Dave Grossman:But what happens is this. You've got all these problems, finances and and and all these problems. But then you add alcohol. Alcohol has always been the catalyst that makes it possible to overcome the drive to self preservation. Got all these other problems, relationships and finances.
Dave Grossman:You had alcohol. Boom. But sleep deprivation does the exact same thing. And you're only drunk for a brief window. Your sleep provider goes on and on and on.
Dave Grossman:And sleep deprivation, it's just like being drunk, and we know this. So do an online search. Suicide and sleep deprivation. Boom. It comes right up.
Dave Grossman:And one of the best studies says not only is sleep deprivation a key factor in suicide, it's the most remediable factor. We can't do much about your your your finances or your relationships right now, but we can give you a good night's sleep right stinking now. Now children, suicide rate worldwide has exploded. Twin Eaters, 10, 11, 12 year old, teenage girls suicide rate has tripled in just the last decade. Now here's parenting 101 for the 21st century.
Dave Grossman:When you send your kid to bed at night, take their cell phone away from them. No cell phone, no laptop, no TV in their room. They've got to go to the room and sleep. A cop came up to me during a break in one of my classes. He said, I had one of those teenagers.
Dave Grossman:He said, she was a good girl. She was an A student. She said, dad, it's embarrassing. You You don't have to take my phone every night. You can trust me.
Dave Grossman:Family policy. If you're the charge, you go to bed. Okay. Keep your phone. I trust you.
Dave Grossman:She said a little while ago, she took her life. My little girl took her life. She said, We never knew the hell she was living in until we looked at the text messages on her cell phone. Night after night of ceaseless, relentless, vicious bullying. And he can't just ignore that.
Dave Grossman:We're not wired that way. He said, it was heartrending. She woke up all night long, night after night, trying to defend herself. He said I immediately understood my little girl was bullied to death. What I didn't understand until now, she was sleep deprived, tormented, and bullied to death in front of my eyes, and I let it happen.
Dave Grossman:He said, I can't ignore that text message in the middle of that. How can we expect our kids to? He said, the one thing on earth that I left for my little girl was take her phone every night, turn off all the bad stuff in this world. Who's gonna be your mama? You see, here's the thing.
Dave Grossman:Sleep is a biological blind spot. Our bodies don't know how to make us get enough sleep. It always happened naturally. It got dark every night. There was nothing to do.
Dave Grossman:It was dark. And and a little sex, a little talking, roll over, we went to sleep. We didn't have to make ourselves sleep. It happened naturally. Now the body needs 4 things to survive.
Dave Grossman:Air, water, food, and sleep. The body knows how to make us get enough air, food, and water. Don't worry about that for a while. It'll take over. But the body doesn't know how to make us get enough sleep.
Dave Grossman:It's a biological blind spot. And worldwide we're being hammered by this. Traffic guests have exploded worldwide. Decade after decade, we brought traffic down. Airbags, seat belts, medical technology.
Dave Grossman:Now, what is the new factor in the explosion of suicide? What's the new factor in the explosion of traffic deaths? We know what it is. Mental illness. Do an online search.
Dave Grossman:Sleep deprivation, mental illness. Boom. We're gonna do some of my mental illness. Sleep. And and traffic deaths.
Dave Grossman:Sleep. And suicide sleep. I trained just just, this year. I I do a lot of training on school safety. At the East Texas School Safety Conference.
Dave Grossman:Just just a hundred of the people responsible for the safety of the students said, we're gonna talk about violence in your school. But odds are pretty yet having a kid murdered. I bet you had a suicide. Bet you had traffic deaths. I bet you had mental illness.
Dave Grossman:And so what what do we do about suicide? Sleep. Well, my 2nd grade teacher told us cigarettes kill people. I went home and hid my dad's cigarettes. If we teach those kids three things, three things.
Dave Grossman:This is how much sleep you need at your age. You must sleep in total darkness. Your body is designed to sleep in total darkness and cut off caffeine shortly after lunch. We do these three things, we can completely dodge the bullet. As an adult, you need at least 7 hours of sleep a day.
Dave Grossman:If you are not getting 7 hours of sleep, you are literally eating yourself alive. Now, 7 hours of sleep, cut off caffeine shortly after lunch, and sleep in total darkness. Add a sleep mask. The Amazon storage sleep mask is my favorite. It has over 85,005 star reviews for a stinking mask.
Dave Grossman:85,000 reviews for a mask. The number 2 sleep mask, the one my wife likes it, is 60,005 star reviews for a stinking mask. Three things. We teach our kids. Here's how much sleep you need at your age.
Dave Grossman:Cut off caffeine, short. Now there's a lot more in the equation than the 90% solution of these three things right there. Now here's the key. Sleep deprivation creates chronic pain. We've all been there.
Dave Grossman:Had a bad night's sleep, we're hurt the next day. Sleep deprivation, a new factor in the opioid epidemic. Fentanyl's an opiate. Fentanyl kills 70, 80000 Americans a year. If not for Narcan, that number would be much higher.
Dave Grossman:We lose more people to Fentanyl every year than the entire Vietnam War. And and and and not just Fentanyl, but the other prescription opiates. Prescription opiates have always been there. Why are they the drug of choice? Why not meth?
Dave Grossman:Why not crack? Why does everybody want opiates? Because we're in the middle of a global epidemic of sleep deprivation, and and it's a key factor in chronic pain. And and, doc, I heard all the time, give me a pill to fix. You don't need a pill.
Dave Grossman:You need more sleep. And kinda knock off the damn caffeine after lunch to stop you getting deep cycle sleep. And so, yeah, so you wanna do something about opioid overdoses sleep. They want suicide sleep, traffic death sleep, mental illness sleep. This is the one area where we'll walk out that door and save the lives of kids in a school across America right now.
Sam Alaimo:Like, on the one hand, you have I agree with everything you're saying. There's a sleep deprivation, it leads to a lot of secondary effects that are horrific for the human condition. But on the other hand, you have you talked about Buzz, talked about Ranger School, sleep deprivation, food deprivation, chronic stress. Yes. These individuals are not doing fentanyl.
Sam Alaimo:So I guess what I'm trying to say is it's not just the fentanyl. It's not just the phone. There's something else going on there because there is positive, like you said, pre stress inoculate. It's brilliant. Yeah.
Sam Alaimo:There's something really positive about these hardcore forms of stress. There's something really negative about the other forms of stress and it's not just fentanyl. Fentanyl doesn't make anybody take it. There's something else missing. I think there's something deeper, something ritual, maybe, some guidance, some community.
Sam Alaimo:You wanna riff on that?
Dave Grossman:Our members worldwide. It's just worldwide. Oh, it's it's it's, you know, psychotropic drugs given to children. Is that what's happening in Mexico? Is that what's happening in Brazil and all these other nations doing online?
Dave Grossman:Go to go to go to Wikipedia. Look at global murder rates, and and and you'll see the the the murder rates worldwide. And they've exploded everywhere. Again, I've got the the I presented Interpol data, and, and 20 years ago, Interpol stops reporting the data because the nation did not want people to know it's classified. It's just worldwide.
Dave Grossman:So whatever your dynamic is but let's go back to sleep deprivation. Here's the key. We know the link between alcohol and violent crime. Without a doubt, we have 2 centuries and 10000 studies showing the link between alcohol and violence. I believe behavior.
Dave Grossman:The inhibitions go away when you're drunk. Drunk people do stupid stuff. Drunk people get in fights. We all know that. It it is it is scientifically valid.
Dave Grossman:But if sleep deprivation is just like being drunk, and it is in every other area, then this new epidemic of sleep deprivation may be part of the equation. The head of Netflix said their competitor is sleep. The corporate policy of Netflix is to steal your sleep. They don't care that they're killing people. The video games.
Dave Grossman:So one of my books, assassination generation. In in 2005, the state of California overwhelmingly voted to regulate children's access to violent video games. 2005, California and Silicon Valley said, we're good with this. Hollywood said, we're good with this. Arnold Schwarzenegger was governor.
Dave Grossman:Arnold signed the law regulating children's access to these these entirely attractive, addictive, desirable, violent video games. And the video game industry fought all the way to the Supreme Court. They said we have a constitutional First Amendment right. This is any game dedicated to any age, you cannot stop us. And they it's all in the book.
Dave Grossman:They conned 7 old men, 7 Supreme Court Justice, never played pong in their life, overturned the California law. Now where you cross the line into evil is when you fight to sell your stuff to children, and and you don't get the information out there. And and Netflix goal is is is to steal your sleep, and the video games are ever more desirable, immersive, and attractive, and and that's fine with adults. But when you when you fight to the Supreme Court to sell this stuff to children, time out. So this new factor worldwide is the the desirable movies, the social media that are ever more addictive.
Dave Grossman:The algorithm rewires it to make it ever more addictive and immersive. These incredibly immersive and attractive and desirable video games, and the video games are designed to put it in a flow state. We've all we've ever played the game, suddenly it's 4 o'clock in the morning, got no idea where the last day downwards went, it's time to get dressed and go to work. That they do that on purpose. They're called a flow state.
Dave Grossman:And they try to create those games where you lose track of of time and you become totally immersed in the game. And so this this entire industry is invested in this process of stealing our sleep and stealing our children's sleep.
Rob Huberty:An interesting thing with all that, you know, I grew up with video games. I know what you're talking about, and I don't, you know, I personally don't feel that they caused me any of those things. But I again, that's anecdotal evidence. That's my experience. Right?
Rob Huberty:I track my sleep every night, and the the it tells you basically, are you going to have a good day or a bad day? That's it. That's all. I mean, it's like, are you red or green today? And on days that you're red, what you find out is that if you have one drink of alcohol, just one, it massively changes your sleep.
Dave Grossman:Massive 1. You're seeing that with just one drink? 1. That's good data. That's good to know.
Rob Huberty:It's it's it's awesome data. And when you look at it as a group, I have a lot of friends who wear them, and we, like, compare our stats together. And it it causes everybody to sleep probably, like, 15 minutes more a day. It's not massive, but it it matters. And I think a depressive state kinda goes away with more sleep.
Rob Huberty:You're that's that's spot on. Yeah. But all of that being said, I think I have what I would call good sleep hygiene. You know, I I also have kids too. So I have young kids.
Rob Huberty:My oldest daughter is 10 years old. So some of this stuff, we we have we don't allow screens in their rooms and stuff like that. You know, how I chose my bed, how I did this. Like, I spent a lot of time and effort on that. And and the truth is I did it because I was super depressed.
Rob Huberty:Oh, it's so good. And and a lot of it you know, I've I've always exercised, so that's that's one thing that, you know, I've kind of consistently done. Even when I feel bad, I usually still kinda exercise. All of that being said, I'm doing this because I'm pursuing it because I realized that there are holes in my own life. Right?
Rob Huberty:How do you educate people to do this? So this is by a choice, and it was by I there was a hole in my life, and I was like, I need to fix myself. Yeah. How do we educate people to put this stuff away? There's we're so put the screens down as a parent.
Rob Huberty:I can make my kids, but, like, they could hide that from me as they get older. This is a fear that I have. Right now, I can control it. You know, I have I have 3 kids in one room, 1 kid in another room, and 4 kids. I can control their, you know, media consumption.
Rob Huberty:Right. How do we educate America to do this?
Dave Grossman:There's a website I recommend to everybody called screenstrong.com.screenstrong.com. And screenstrong.com is really leading the way on on on what we're doing. The cell phone addiction, they they take this medical addiction model and they apply it well. Detox and their whole family detoxes together for a period of time, they're doing a great job. But when they talk about the long term answer, and what truly my dad started smoking 1941 when he was 5 years old.
Dave Grossman:He said he plunked a nickel on the counter at the general store. Couldn't even look over the counter. Plunked a nickel on the counter. 5 years old. Bought a pack of Bolton Tobacco rolling papers.
Dave Grossman:Started smoking 5 years old. Hey, candy rot your teeth. Right? Cigarettes are good for you. It's his money.
Dave Grossman:Candy rot your teeth. They just bought it. Let them buy cigarettes. And they had cigarette ads that said, More doctors smoke Campbell's. Oh, and it said, At your dentist, I recommend Viceroy's.
Dave Grossman:And they really thought cigarettes are good for you. 55 years later, the cigarettes finally killed my dad. But the battle was with this this industry to admit their product did harm and to stop selling it to children. And we're in the same kind of battle outages. All this technology that steals our children's sleep.
Dave Grossman:And and to recognize that there's so many things kids can do, but adults can't. Alcohol, tobacco, sex, pornography, automobiles. There's so many things, guns. So many things adults can do, but kids can't. And there's industries out there trying to market their product to children.
Dave Grossman:That's where we draw the line. And so it begins like my 2nd grade teacher telling me cigarettes killed you. One home hit my dad's cigarettes. When our elementary teacher tells us, a a generation will grow up, and and we didn't ban tobacco. We're gonna ban this stuff.
Dave Grossman:All we're saying is don't sell it to children and admit that it can do harm, just like tobacco. So we've got a model there that we'd already build on.
Sam Alaimo:Maybe switch subjects here a little bit. I'm very curious about your new book on hunting. Sure. You mentioned briefly about account of the the hunter hunted model has kind of an impact on the human condition. Let's let's just dive into that however you want to.
Sam Alaimo:It sounds fascinating.
Dave Grossman:You know, there's there's a lot of fun. In On Hunting, we pulled together a lot of data. You know, we we talk about the the ecology of hunting. In in Africa, Kenya has completely banned all trophy hunting, and they're being slaughtered. There's no no money to to protect them.
Dave Grossman:Meanwhile, other places like Namibia, Namibia has drawn a circle around every village, said everything in this circle belongs to you. And so that crazy American, who will pay a $100,000 to shoot that lion, who's at the end of the loop life cycle anyway, that death by old age and nature is a horrible terrible death, and and at the end of the life cycle, this American is gonna pay a $100,000 to give a quick ethical death to this lion. And and and all that money goes to the village. And they've got they've got they're thriving, and the economy is thriving. And the only people who have given them money, and the only product they have to sell is the game.
Dave Grossman:And we we catch them at the end of their life cycle, and we we desire to do that, and we're we're harvesting own food and the wellness of that, but there's one critical component here. We have always been in the middle of the food chain. Now we have the gripping fangs of a predator. We have the the the forward planet eyes of a predator. We also have the chiseled teeth of a rabbit, and the grinding molars of a grass eater.
Dave Grossman:And throughout the history of our species, we've been in the middle of the food chain. The British government in India, between the year 191910, in one decade, 191910, over a 100000 people in India were killed by tigers. We've got the the crappiest stuff from run like hell rabbit genes built into us. We've also got the hunter dynamic of of lock on laser, you know, of of of we can go one way or the other. There's no fun to be prey.
Dave Grossman:There's no fun. We want to be the hunter, not the hunted. But what's happened, a lot of our society have opted to be the hunted. You know, when I talk about the wolf, the sheep, and the sheepdog, it's just a metaphor, but I got the US government trademark for the term sheepdog as a protector. I I coined it in my work.
Dave Grossman:And this idea of of of being the sheepdog, to be the hunter and not the hunted. And this is one of the major battles we're facing across our whole civilization, and we we got our sheepdog kids books. Got a sheepdog kids book, and then we got the follow on book, why mommy carries a gun. Yeah. If anybody in the family, mom or dad, grandma or grandpa, anybody carry a gun, here's what we want the kids to know.
Dave Grossman:You know, find a gun, stop, don't touch, 4 universal gun safety laws, famous sheepdogs throughout history, second amendment, all the safety things we want our kids to know. But but this this whole business of choosing to be the the sheepdog. So what's happening? One of the steps you take is buying a gun, and we've seen concealed carry permits explode. And now, you know, we've had all but 3 or 4 states with shall issue concealed carry, and now the Supreme Court has decided that shall issue concealed carry is the law of the land.
Dave Grossman:In California, they're firing their sheriffs. They're just putting sheriffs out of office to get concealed care permits over this one issue. And so with this battle, are we the predator? Are we the prey? Are we the hunter?
Dave Grossman:Are we the hunted? It doesn't matter whether you're out in the woods hunting. It's a mindset. Whether or not I am a victim, or I am a sheepdog, we're just standing up and protect what I what I love. And so this whole battle about hunting is really about who we are and what we are.
Dave Grossman:Our our our it's no fun to be the prey. People are miserable. People are miserable. But they have got this prey mindset. And and and we can embrace the hunter and not the hunted.
Dave Grossman:But this so much of what's going on in society, we look through that lens and get a better picture of who they are and what they're really doing.
Sam Alaimo:This isn't exactly tangential, but it's interesting, so I'll bring it up. Yeah. You bring you bring up sheepdog, wolf, and sheep, just anecdotal, but like going into the SEAL teams, for example, a lot of those guys weren't strictly sheepdogs. Yeah. A lot of them were wolves taught how to behave.
Sam Alaimo:Yeah. Yeah. And I think, you know, for for a lot of them, that was an asset, and that enabled them to kinda walk right down that middle line Yep. And be effective and then be upright and strong when things got really, really bad Yeah. Because they were built for that kind of situation.
Sam Alaimo:I mean, what what do you what do you think about that kind of that kind of dichotomy and turning wolves into something more noble? Yeah.
Dave Grossman:And truly, you know, when we talk about sociopathy, to be a sociopath, the the d the DSM tells us you cannot diagnose children with sociopathy, because all children are sociopaths. They they have no empathy for others. We keep trying to teach them empathy. Every 5 year old's a little sociopath there. They have no we try to teach them empathy.
Dave Grossman:What if somebody did that to you? How would you feel about that? You know, we try to teach them empathy, but the the the thing of it is that that there's this this line between being a sheepdog and a sheep, and there's a line between the sheepdog and the wolf. And and what we're really talking about is, you know, you really have a lot of of highly dispensed sociopaths out there. And they're they're they're they're they're functional.
Dave Grossman:They're they're they're functional sociopaths. A professor was studying sociopathy, and he realized, hey. I'm a sociopath. He said, I never let my grandkid was winning a game. I I'm vicious.
Dave Grossman:I'm a sociopath. But he said, I can change. I could be a better person. I mean, let my grandkids win a game. I can I can be a little easier on the people around me, and and the need is there that we make that decision?
Dave Grossman:And the most important thing of all, the difference between the sheepdog and the wolf is discipline.
Sam Alaimo:I think maybe we'll go to the the lightning round now. Shoot. You've got you know, your life has been jam packed, full career. How many books have you authored? 16.
Sam Alaimo:You've got something figured out. So, like, what are 1 to 3 things you do in the morning to prime yourself to crush the day?
Dave Grossman:I try to begin every morning with a prayer. God, let me do a good job today. Just just let me do a good job. Keep your hand up on me, guide me, and protect me. And then I I try to eat a light breakfast, and I try to dive right into work.
Dave Grossman:I've got an office in my home. I've got 2 good people that work with me. My employees keep me out of trouble. I'm on the road constantly, and, and I try to lead by example.
Sam Alaimo:What about a workout program at 68? What do you do to stay
Dave Grossman:Yeah. You know, my presentation is very much a workout. I'm always moving. I'll I'll teach 8 hours to g cops, 8 hours straight, and never stop moving. And and so life is your workout.
Dave Grossman:I grew up this stairs. I'm 68 years old. I grew up this stairs too at the time every single time. I walk fast. Wherever I go, I walk fast.
Dave Grossman:My knees and I I bike a lot. We got a a group of of older folks in the neighborhood. We call it ours our senile delinquent biker gang. I train with energy. My life is full of energy.
Dave Grossman:And choose to walk slow or walk fast. It's a conscious decision, but, you know, I try not to be judgmental, but I walk past people, and you know, walk slow, die fast. You know what? The research is there. Walk slow, die fast.
Dave Grossman:You know, just just make that decision to walk with energy, to lead your life with energy.
Sam Alaimo:Few things are as cognitively demanding as writing, so how do you get in this zone?
Dave Grossman:It's just blocking out time every day, focusing and concentrating, and concentrating, and I'm pretty good at it. I got people in the office with me, so again, you lead by example. They're here working, and I need to be here working. And for me, the mornings are usually high productive times when I really dig into to doing some good quality writing and try to tie it together. Yeah.
Sam Alaimo:What are a few books that changed your life?
Dave Grossman:The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien. I'm a huge geek. I'm just a huge Tolkien geek.
Rob Huberty:Yeah.
Dave Grossman:He's one of the great influencers of my life. The other great book is, Robert Heinlein's book Starship Troopers. There was a time it was on the FORSCOM officer's recommended reading list. If you had any 10 infantry officers together, 5 of them were trying to shove Starship Troopers down the throat of the other 5. But it's just it's just great story about, you know, this guy in Enlist, in a elite organization.
Dave Grossman:He goes to OCS. He becomes a leader, and then he he goes out and does great things. And it was like my life model. And so what? Starship Troopers and Lord of the Rings, those are the 2 most influential.
Dave Grossman:And, of course, I gotta I gotta say the Bible. It really is powerful. The word of God is alive and powerful.
Sam Alaimo:How can people follow you?
Dave Grossman:My website is grossmanontruth.com. And we're we're active in, in all the social media realms, and we've tried to put info out, LinkedIn and Facebook, and some of the others we're doing, but grossmanontruth.com.
Sam Alaimo:Genuinely appreciate your time, sir. Like, you've had a fascinating life, loved your books, and I appreciate the time.
Dave Grossman:Well, gentlemen, I I I hold you up. What you're doing is so important. It's a it's a growth industry. You don't know it yet, but it's it is huge. When the American population really begins to understand how bad it really is, they'll start throwing money at this problem, and and you will have the opportunity to see it like you're already doing incredible things, and congratulations on that.
Dave Grossman:But it's been my honor to spend time with you and your wonderful audience, and god bless you. God bless America.
Sam Alaimo:That's it for this episode. If you wanna check out more from the podcast, head to 0eyes.com/nobell, where you can see show notes, read more about our guests, and suggest guests or topics of your own. Until next time, stay in the fight. Don't ring the bell.