Best of Wednesday 2025

23:48Nobody wants to be abandoned, you know, and say like, okay, I'm going to go home. My kids and wife have disappeared or whatever. I know I'm already scared. Every time we have someone on who's speaking about like psychology, I think I have it. That's your OCD. What's so beautiful about this is that is, I mean, we're all on the spectrum. I mean, we all have like who wants to be abandoned, but it's not so much that we fear. Like anybody would say, I'm saying, OK, like you guys are going to go. The people go home. The people who love you aren't going to be there because they don't want to be there with you anymore.

24:22Well, that would be terrifying. But the person with borderline personality disorder fears it, whether it's real or whether it's not real. So, you know, and sometimes it's like, boy, this relationship is so painful for me that I can't be with you anymore. And so then that's real abandonment. But then the other one is like, no one's ever liked me. No one's ever cared about me. I just worry that people are going to abandon me. And so then what they start to do is, this is the first part of the criteria, frantic efforts to avoid the abandonment. What does that mean? It's constant texts, constant phone calls, constant seeking of reassurance.

25:01Then to the other person, it's like, how many more times do I need to tell you I love you? And it becomes actually the kind of behavior that then creates the self-fulfilling prophecies. It's like, I can't do this anymore. Yes. What I like about, there's lots of excerpts of dialogue between you and patients. And I'm I don't know why, but I'm blown away with how intelligent some of the patients are and how articulate. And some of them are downright confrontational with you, which I think is so brave and cool. I think there's something about the dynamic that makes that hard. Yeah. And one of your patients, a young woman, is like, you're not listening to me.

25:39Exactly. Yeah. I'm not like upset with myself in this moment. I hate myself across the board. Right. Like you need to fucking listen to me. And I'm like impressed and grateful that someone would have that conviction to push back against you like that. I tell patients, I said, like, if I've gotten it wrong, you've got to just tell me I've gotten it wrong, because otherwise I'm going to continue down this path, believing what I believe to be true. You too are also limited by your own experience. So, yes, you've learned from the DSM all these other things, you know how to look for them. Because you yourself can't necessarily relate immediately to a constant state of self-hatred.

26:16Right. It's a little inconceivable until it's detailed for you. Yeah. What does it mean? Yeah. Yeah. Like, because I think a lot of people go like, well, I hate myself often. Yeah. Or I feel like a failure sometimes or whatever. Lazy. So let's just imagine a binary world. Do you identify as male? Yes. Female? Yes. Okay. Now, how certain are you of that, those states? A hundred percent. Okay. What if I told you that you were wrong? What if I told you that, you know what, I actually quickly snuck a DNA test and you're actually XY and you're actually XX. Now, how easy would it be for me to convince you that you're female?

26:57It'd be impossible. Impossible. Male? I mean, I guess if you had proof. No, but not only that. Okay, so here's... Hold on a second. This couldn't be proven to you? It couldn't. No, but even if I had like, okay, here's your DNA. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. But exactly. And so even if I said, okay, here's some proof. Now you need to be convinced. I would pull my dick out and go, great, you're holding that. I'm showing you this. Right. Okay. No, but here's what I want you to do is you're actually wrong about yourself. You are actually female. What would the relationship between me and you be if I kept insisting that you had to see yourself as female?

27:35Well, you would be an adversary. You would be a threat. You would be someone that's living in certainly a different reality than I am. Exactly. Because there's nothing that I could do that would convince you to. That's the level of belief. Right. So I'm saying like I'm worthless and I am toxic. They use often this term toxic. Right. Doesn't matter what proof you present to them. Right. It doesn't matter. There is no separation from the isness of self-hatred. Meaning they're as convicted about that as they would be about their biological sex. Biological identity. And then if I say, okay, you know what, I want to start talking about self-hatred, it's as alienating as if it would be, I want you to start thinking of yourself as this other gender.

28:19So like, I know, I've got kids, I know who I am. You're not going to convince me out of this. We're wasting time in therapy because I don't want to talk about this. Yeah, so it's very hard to tackle, it sounds like. Well, that was the problem is that, so I thought, okay, so now what I need to do is tackle self-hatred. Why aren't any therapies tackling self-hatred? From episode 871 with Mary Claire Haver.

28:46For decades, when you look at why menopausal hormone therapy was developed, it was to treat a hot flash. And forever, the pathognomonic, the poster child symptom was hot flashes or what we call medicine vasomotor symptoms. What was never taught to me ever, and I learned like three years ago, was we have estrogen receptors in every single organ system in this body. And what I also was taught is in perimenopause, it's a slow, gentle decline. That's all I learned, one sentence. To decline until full menopause when you lose function. It is a rocking roller coaster. And your worst symptoms tend to be the ones like the mental challenges, the brain fog, the cognitive disorders, the frozen shoulder.

29:26All of it is peri and late peri and early menopause. That's when you're accelerating your loss of— Bone and muscle. Yeah, and the eggs, right? We were born with all of our eggs. A million, though. That was a shocker to me. So one to two million at birth. One to two million eggs. But isn't this weird? It's like that thing where you're born with all your eggs and— What's the thing? So really, your grandma's eggs are your eggs? Yeah. So like when your grandmother was pregnant with your mother, the egg that made you was inside of your mother inside of your grandmother. Yeah. So in some ways, women have always existed.

30:05So there's all this like knowledge, wisdom, and trauma. That they think that this imprinting that goes on through a traumatic pregnancy. Okay. So there are 6 ,000 women reach menopause every single day in the United States. And there are only 2 ,300 providers certified in menopause medicine. So once this occurs to you and you're going through it and you start getting serious about your own reluctance to go through this, which is a great motivator, how do you approach it? What do you start looking at? How do you even begin assembling what becomes the toolkit? Yeah. So I wish that I could tell you, you could confidently walk into your OBGYN, your family medicine, your internal medicine doctor, and have a reasonable, logical conversation about your plan of care in perimenopause and menopause.

30:52That is not possible right now. It is not the fault of the individual doctor. They may have been excellent in your birth and your pregnancy plan, you know, in every aspect, but because of the six hours, so right now they surveyed residents coming out like three years ago, only 30 % felt barely adequately trained to treat menopause. Like, yeah, it's, it's awful. So at least they're honest. So call ahead, you know, look on the Menopause Society website, which is menopause.org and see who has passed the test and is certified there. It's not perfect. Not every, you know, there's always people out there who aren't great doctors, but who took the test, but it's somewhere to start.

31:30We crowdsourced with my followers and And I've got thousands of testimonials and we organize them by country, city, and state to help people find. They don't pay me, you know, just to go find a provider who might be able to help you. And right now, it's pretty slick. There's some great telemedicine companies that have been developed, mostly female-founded, who saw a gap in care and they saw a need. And they developed these telemedicine companies to serve them in a possible way. So you don't have to live in Los Angeles or wherever. I have women calling me from New York, L.A., London, you know, the most well-connected you would think.

32:03Exactly. Who have the same basic questions and the same worries and the same fears and cannot find help as the woman sitting on the couch in Iowa. Yeah. Okay, so as you start focusing on it and kind of pledging to get competent in it and start helping and treating women, are you yourself even shocked with the amount of symptoms? Because I wrote down symptoms, and it's about the longest list of symptoms I've ever written. I was shocked, and most of that was driven by questions I got on social. You know, as my little social media platform was exploding, when 10 ,000 women ask you about frozen shoulder or palpitations or vertigo, you're like, they can't all be lying.

32:45Anecdotally, you're just starting to see these huge patterns emerge. Yeah, and I'm like, let me look into this. And so then I'm like digging, and I'm like, yeah, there's somebody who did the study. there's data. We've got clear data here. So I go online and I make a little video talking about the correlation between menopause and vertigo, menopause and frozen shoulder, menopause and palpitations. And the world goes crazy. I get 10 ,000 comments. Oh my God. Oh my God. Why didn't my doctor know? Again, we're doing a terrible job of teaching, but I was literally learning alongside my followers. As I learned, I'd make a video and teach.

33:17And that's what inspired me to write the book. And they were like, please write a book. I don't want to chase you all over social meeting. It's too complicated. Just put it all in one place. Frozen shoulder is, that is scaring me. Like my mom had it. My grandmother had it. One of my mother-in-laws has been dealing with it for the last six months. So this is a great, this is a great story. And I hope I get the lore right. So if I don't exactly, you know, but the, the, the story goes, the first study on frozen shoulder and menopause, I know it came out of Duke university. I read the paper and it was the head of OB-GYN and the head of orthopedics who both happened to be women.

33:49And it was something like they were sitting in the doctor's lounge or in the cafeteria and just shooting the breeze over. Can you believe all these women with frozen shoulder? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You think there's a correlation? I don't know. Let's look into it. Yeah. They started pulling charts and they were like, fuck me. Look at this. Women who are on HRT have a lower incidence of frozen shoulder and they have it, they do better. Yeah. If they get it. They're getting it, but they're getting it less than women who aren't and they're having a better course, right? Uh-huh. So they go to get it published and then would they go to orthopedic journals first nobody would touch it nope this can't be right nope this is an artifact nope nope nope so one of the menopause journals published it and so then i have a friend vonda wright if you follow her she's an orthopedic surgeon she does a ton of teaching and she wrote the paper on the musculoskeletal syndrome of menopause how's that all work what's the mechanisms there estrogen receptors and probably progesterone here as well are all over the musculoskeletal system we know but we know bones we got bones down right we've known about osteoporosis since I was a resident.

34:50I know that one really well. But what wasn't understood was tendons, muscles, and where the, you know, the connections between bones and muscles and how that all works together. And frozen shoulder is adhesive capsulitis. There's a capsule around the ball joint and the shoulder that gets absolutely adhesed and frozen. And it's an inflammatory condition. And so it's, you can't put your arm behind. Yeah. And it's very, very painful and you need early intervention, you need physical therapy, there's needling, there's all, they have to break it up, right? And that we can delay the onset and the duration and probably prevent several cases for women on HRT.

35:29And as you said, because there are estrogen receptors. Because estrogen is protective, so it's an anti-inflammatory. But my mom didn't even know that this was, I've never heard her once say she had that because of menopause. Well, no, most women don't know. Most orthopedic surgeons don't know. You know, we're working to change Change that. All of this is, that paper was written a year and a half ago. Oh, wow. Okay, so ringing in the ears? Yeah. So tinnitus, tinnitus, I still don't know how to say it correctly. Yeah, I had it for a minute and I didn't know what to tell people. I've had it once and man, you know.

36:00People kill themselves from it. It's maddening. It's a maddening. Maddening. Yeah. So again, this is an estrogen receptor problem. So there's, you know, and the vertigo is that the crystals break off quicker from, like, it's basically osteoporosis in the ear. Oh, wow. And the crystals break off and then float around and you're dizzy. But the tinnitus, you know, it's the inflammation around the nerve and around some of the auricular bones that is, they feel like is leading to it. And that women on, you know, all these studies say age match women, premenopausal women definitely have it less than post.

36:29And women on HRT are less likely to get it. Yeah, wow. What are some other symptoms? Dry skin. Yeah. Dry skin. So in the skin and tegumentary, you know, skin and the hair follicles. I like tegumentary. I've never heard that word. That's a nice. Let's see. Take a metric. And all the follicles and oil and sweat glands. It's the whole system, right? The largest organ in the body. It is. Most absorbent. So we see that we lose 30 % of our collagen. You don't have to tell a woman that. She knows. In the first five years of menopause, we can attenuate that with topical or systemic hormone therapy. Topical works better, actually, which is why I'm on my vanity cream.

37:07Is it like retinol? No, it's estrogen for the face. Wow. So it's compounded, but some people take the vaginal product and will mix it in their moisturizer and put some on their face. But you should talk to a doctor before you do it. You shouldn't do that. Don't do any compounding at home. So, yeah. Mix it up. Yeah. A little mortar and pestle. So you lose oil production in the skin. You lose thinness and the trans epidermal water loss is much greater. So you're just losing all of your barrier, your protection. So the skin is less healthy. Right. Besides looking worse. at a crazy rate. Yeah. Dry mouth, that's the same.

37:46Dry mouth, same thing. So mucus production, the salivary glands dry up, you know, and we have tremendous dry mouth. And dry eyes, dry mouth, it's the same kind of, you know. Guys, I don't want menopause. This is fucking miserable. From episode 967 with Malala Yousafzai. Now, I find this to be the most interesting part because it's so human. So, yeah, now you start this school in England, and it's a disaster, right? It doesn't—high school's not— I loved that school, by the way, but what was really challenging for me was making friends. Yeah. I was a completely different person when I was in Pakistan.

38:31I was— You were popular and outgoing. Funny and mischievous. I was in every competition, debate, singing. Playing cricket. Being a kid. Everything. But outgoing. And I had friends. I had so many friends. Yeah. Now at this new school, I felt like a stranger. I just thought nobody could ever know me. I could not be that old self of mine. And, you know, I would try to like, I would try to have a conversation with people. And it just like, you start and it dies quickly. Yeah. It's such a stressful moment. You know, you're like, I hope like somebody picks up this topic and it could be a funny thing.

39:12And it just, it just, it just fell flat. Yeah. Look, I mean, you had so much shit working against you. You're from another country. I can't imagine your English was bulletproof at that point. I mean, it was more like textbook English. Textbook English is very different than what people actually speak. Yes. You have the cultural thing. You know, the fact that you're famous, which is an awkward thing. You've also just been shot in the face. So you're not like feeling. A hundred percent. I became very like self-conscious. Of course. Even if like somebody's like looking at you, you know, we all look at each other and we all just think sometimes like, you know, what is that person actually looking at right now?

39:54Yes, of course. And usually they're not, but we just think that way. Yeah. But I think at school, yes, I was very self-conscious and I was thinking about the facial nerve damage on the left side because of the bullet. And I just thought like maybe, you know, I just was hesitating even to smile because I now had like a crooked smile. Yes. I was, yeah. Malala, when I had acne, I didn't want to go to school. Exactly. When I had pimples, I would not interact with anyone those days. It's hard enough. No. Yeah, this is impossible. And you have to sort of carry the weight now. People are looking to you to be like the voice of activism.

40:35And you're 15 and you're in a new place and people are expecting wisdom from you. Like that's too much. Well, thank God you were kind of delivering on that front because you're just, it's a mess at high school. Yeah. But luckily you are, you're rising to the occasion of the political stuff. You have to be an adult so fast. Making the speeches at UN. Like you're crushing that part of your life. Yeah. I mean, I just thought maybe at 15, this is where I'm supposed to be at these UN conferences, bilateral meetings with world leaders advocating for girls education, running a foundation. Yeah. I just thought maybe this is how my life is supposed to look like.

41:14I won't get this other thing. And to be honest, yes, I wanted all of it. Yes. I wanted to be a normal student at the same time, to have friends. To go to McDonald's. And to feel loved and to be able to express myself and to try new things. But somehow I thought that maybe because I'm supposed to live this activist life, it means sacrificing. It's one or the other. It's one or the other. Yeah. And I was like, okay, you know, of course, like I'm sad and I don't feel like myself. You were lonely, right? and lonely. But I thought, okay, this is how it's supposed to be. You did the cutest things to you.

41:54Like you enlisted on field day to run the 200 meter dash and came in last. I know. I tried everything. This is horrible. I know. It makes me love you so much. When this is going on and you're like struggling at school and you know, I think a lot of American kids, they would come home and like tell their parents and I feel left out. And did you feel like you could do that? Because I don't know how emotions were. No, I think when you are supposed to be this strong, brave, courageous girl, you feel you cannot complain about not having friends or like, you know, crying alone in the bathroom to get over this or feel like, oh, I wish like more people could talk to me in the school dining hall.

42:38No, I never really shared it with my parents. I would just go home and talk to my best friend in Pakistan. I would ask her about everything that was happening you know with in our neighborhood with our friends and how her studies were going and just try to like reconnect with my old life and I knew like that's just not a reality I'm not there but I used to just imagine myself being there and imagine what life would have been like if I were there so I like deep inside I just I wanted I wanted to make friends and just know like who is that true Malala you know that Yeah. And what would my life have looked like if none of these things had happened?

43:19So the day when I saw most of the students at my school talk to me was the day when I heard the news about the Nobel Peace Prize. Oh. So I had gone to school and I was not expected to like that I would get it. I was 17, yes. Yeah. I was in my chemistry class. The school's deputy head teacher walks in and calls me outside and tells me that I have won the Nobel Peace Prize. Oh, my God. And I'm like, wait, what? Yes. And I'm like, oh, thank you. Thank you. Yeah. As if it's like she did. But I actually went back to my class. I finished my whole school day. In hopes that people might engage with you and show interest?

44:02More faces were looking at me that day when you feel noticed. Yes. It's huge. But the day after, it was just back to normal. Everybody is looking the other way. They were all going to McDonald's and you weren't. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, man. What a bizarre—you're winning the Nobel Peace Prize and you're not getting invited to McDonald's. Like, none of this makes—this is too much. Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

44:38From episode 891 with Michael Lewis.

44:44People get pissed off because there's a lot of money at stake already. Oh, yeah. Those two companies are$30,$40 billion companies. It is sinister what we're doing to young men right now. Yes. It's not just with sports gambling. But we're creating young male anger at a fantastic rate. If you were going to set out to create as much young male anger as you could, you'd do a lot of things. We're doing a great job. We're doing a great job. We're doing a great job. Let's take away manual labor jobs. Let's take away the trades. Let's stop sending them to college. Let's get that suicide rate up. Let's, I mean, it's - Let's tell them they're evil and when they're from the minute they walk in the classroom when they're in first grade.

45:22Yeah. And then let's create an industry that preys on young male overconfidence. And testosterone and rites of passage and - All of that. Acts of bravery. Yes. And that has, with unbelievable precision, the ability to identify people who don't know what they're doing and get them to do as much of it as possible. Yes. At the same time, they can, with great precision, identify people who, the very, very, very few people who actually know what they're doing when they're betting on sports and kick them out of the casino. Yes. It's diabolical. Those algorithms, they can go, oh, this guy's too good of a gambler.

45:58He actually is making edge bets, the bets that have positive expected value. He knows something about golfers that we don't know. We can't take the bets. And he's gone. So they just say you can't do this? Yeah. They only want fucking— They're allowed to just say. Oh, yeah. They'll say, we'll either ban you. We gave. So we got a pro gambler who knew what he was doing to give us his bets to place. And we participated a little bit so it was legal. And we got booted out of everywhere in a matter of four or five bets. And it was even where we'd lost money because they could identify that the bet, even though the bet lost, it was a smart bet.

46:34That's like a bar that's only letting alcoholics in. You got to prove they're an alcoholic first. And then anyone who can manage their drinking, you get the fuck out of here. That's exactly right. If you're just going to drink water, we don't want you. Yeah, we want fucking addicts in here. How can this be legal? Well, let's go through it. Can we start? I was really fascinated with Dan Juan. He's a great character. Yeah. So Dan Juan started studying fans. Okay. Which no one had really ever studied. Right. And I think the reigning opinion of people who attended sporting events was a certain type of person.

47:04And through his studies, he found out, well, you know, you'd be surprised to find out that fans are, they donate more money. They're more politically active. They have higher GPAs. They're not the group you think they are. They're socially engaged. They're socially engaged. Yeah. And, you know, so they are, but they are not rational. Right. So now we get into that kind of Kahneman, Danny Kahneman take on these guys, which is what happens to someone's thinking when they're a fan? I mean, it's motivated reasoning, right? It's like you will systematically think your team is going to do better than you should think or your favorite players.

47:41You got half your brain in a really irrational space already because you are a fan. Well, I like when he puts it so simply. Like just the original proposition is come spend two hours with us. There's a 50 % chance that you're going to be very upset at the end of this. And it costs a lot of money. You see the bias right there. Like any rational person would be like, no, those are terrible odds if I'm going to spend a bunch of money. You say half the time I'm going to leave here totally upset. Yeah. Yeah. And so when you introduce gambling into this mind, it's already a mind that is – it thinks it knows things it doesn't know.

48:16He gets into the superstitions. Yeah. Like, you know, and I myself just did this. I went to a Detroit Lions game, the one they lost in the playoffs, and I hadn't been to a game all year. And I went, and it was like a big deal. and they lost and I'm like, it's because I fucking, I hugged the coach. He didn't want to hug me. He's like, why did I have to hug that fucking guy? Because he's on TV? I had this whole story. I'm like, oh, Detroit hates my guts. And I'm like, I'm kind of buying it. It's funny what gets studied by academics and what doesn't. And as he points out, he says like the fan was just sitting there waiting to be studied.

48:46It's such an important character in American life. And he said, but pinheads like me generally don't like sports. like they do it's it's like people were just turning a blind eye to it because they thought it was not worthy of attention right and for our podcast it's worthy of attention just to establish that the brain space in which this gambling industry is going to enter because they are targeting fans that's why it's very important to understand yeah right out of the gates that a fan is is doing some irrational thinking so most people who's who bet are a fan of the thing That's surprising to me already.

49:23I would assume most people who get into sports betting aren't fans, so they could be sort of objective about it. There are some who do that. Yeah. But it's— And they're kicked off. Overwhelmingly, they are fans. Wow. Yes. So what happened in this country is that back in 1992, Senator Bill Bradley, former New York Knick, had passed a federal law that forbid states from legalizing sports gambling that didn't have it already. And that grandfathered in Nevada, for example. And a couple of other little exceptions. Maybe Atlantic City? Maybe Atlantic City. No, they didn't. Not Atlantic City. Oh, they didn't have a sportsbook there.

50:00Then what happens is that because Atlantic City is not grandfathered, they don't have it, New Jersey gets upset they can't do it. And Chris Christie, governor of New Jersey, launches what seems to be a quixotic and futile lawsuit to try to get overturned Bradley's law. It succeeds in 2018. And in 2018, the Supreme Court says this law is unconstitutional. It's up to the states. Any state that wants to legalize sports betting can. And since then, 38 states have legalized it. Wow. Which create all kinds of weird natural experiments like, you know, Alabama doesn't, Mississippi does, and suicide rates go up in Mississippi and savings rates go down in Mississippi.

50:42You can see the effects of it. Yeah, bankruptcy. All that stuff. From episode 944, Seth Harp. There's a lot of crime in these secretive units. And one of the big types of crime that you see frequently is theft from military supply. And it's because there's an enormous amount of money and material, weapons, ammunition, things like gasoline, and just straight up cash. Yeah, talk about the cash, because I doubt people would know how much cash is entrusted to these people when they get in these countries to train these soldiers. They have to buy equipment. They have to pay people off. Like they do got to throw a lot of money around.

51:23That's the main thing that they do. Just like the CIA, the main thing that they do is throw money around. And there's just, there's hundreds of millions of dollars that get thrown around. I don't think people understand the scale of it. There's billions of dollars. A lot of it we know was stolen directly by the soldiers who are entrusted with these stacks of cash. You know, I interview military wives in Fayetteville who talk about how this is kind of a thing. You know, your husband comes back from a deployment and, you know, he's got several thousand dollars taped to his body when he gets off the plane.

51:55Yeah. Just skimmed off the top of the op fund is what they call it, the operations fund. Oh, wow. By the way, I would do it. I'm like, I'm going to give this bozo$60 ,000. This guy's a bozo. I'm going to take four. I mean, it's not hard to imagine how one finds himself skimming when you're giving it to shitheads a lot of the time. It's not hard to imagine, especially when you know, hey, there's almost no accountability over this. This is just a handwritten receipt that I'm signing off of. Nobody cares. I have a friend who's an FBI agent. He too has to pay informants and stuff. And he said, you know, every time we come back, there's a lot of, they have to polygraph after every single time they bring back the money.

52:30And I don't think that's happening here. No, I don't think so. No. There's so much less oversight over the military than an agency like FBI. Right. It's so huge. I'm also sympathetic to it. It's like when you're over there, it's like, what a fucking machine. that's trying to run and keep up. Yeah, and they spent a trillion dollars in Afghanistan. And so the cash is just a tiny fraction of that. Yeah. Yeah, hard to detect, I'm sure. But we do know of, you know, cases where there were several cases, quite a few cases of special forces soldiers being caught, arrested, prosecuted, and convicted for stealing six-figure sums of cash.

53:07So this is not just an inference or a suspicion. Do you know the most? Yeah, I saw one that saw a guy,$210 ,000. You know, I think, yeah. Actually, no, you know what? There's significantly more. Because there's all different kinds of diversion from the supply lines. There was one sport rag soldier who got caught smuggling$1 million in cash, a female soldier named Tanya Long. Go get it, girl. $1 million. $1 million that she was smuggling back in VCRs or some kind of electronic equipment. Oh, really? But she had taken that money. she and her likely with conspirators, co-conspirators, had taken that money not from the op fund, but through a kickback scheme.

53:49Whole different type of corruption that also exists. The war in Afghanistan was an incredibly corrupt enterprise. The Afghan client state was staggeringly corrupt. And it's no surprise that some of that blew back and rubbed off on our own people who were the ones pumping all the money into there. And one small part of it, but which ends up being important for the culture of the Green Berets, is the theft of cash. I was going to point to a study done that showed, or not a study so much as a count, of all the cases that had been adjudicated and they total$52 million in thefts that U.S. soldiers were convicted of stealing.

54:25Oh, my God. But that's just a drop. The conviction rate, I'm sure, versus incident rate is probably single-digit percentage. A final fact I can tell you about this is that the largest transfer of cash in the history of the Federal Reserve was, I think, 343 tons of cash. That's how much it weighed. $100 bills. They were put on planes and flown into Iraq. And all of it went missing. Billions of dollars. No. Whole pallets of shrink-wrapped cash went missing. Went missing? What does that mean? Here's what I know is accurate. It was the largest transfer of cash in the history of the Federal Reserve.

55:07And you wonder where it all went. All these, you know, shadowy fortunes that were made out of the war. And a lot of people that make a bunch of money and decamp for Dubai and never come back, well, they came up through the Special Forces or JSOC or the CIA. From episode 903, James Kimmel Jr.

55:30I have one. Great. I have one. Okay. So my apartment building currently is so disgusting. Like they're, this is so annoying. Randomly, nothing of mine is turned on, right? Like I'm not running any water or anything. But randomly, there'll be like water, soapy, like water, weird stuff coming up out of the tub into my tub. Also, it happened in the laundry room and it flooded the laundry room. It's been an ongoing thing. And I've had to say over and over again, this is unacceptable. This needs to stop now. Fix it. They keep sending in a plumber. The plumber's like, it's not clogged. I'm like, I know.

56:16Clearly, that's not what's going on here. What are you going to do? Like, what are we going to do? So that's my grievance. Okay. So they're and they're not reacting. They're not fixing this situation at all. Right. Okay. So let's just do it. let's just do it. So I'm going to add they're placating you. That's a trigger for me to keep it short. Shortish will just say that you've just begun testifying as the victim. OK, so imagine now that you're in a courtroom. OK, you could close your eyes for a second and just sort of picture the judge's bench and the lawyers tables and the jury box and maybe the defendant like is the landlord and they're over at their table and you're over in your your thing.

56:56You're in your at your table and there's a judge up there and you're now on the witness stand and you're testifying to what they've done to you and what's what what has happened to you and this could be something really significant so i've done this with people with serious sexual violence right murder people whose family members have been killed so it can be as big or as small as your life yeah but let's just stick with yours so you testify that that has happened and tell us how that has made you feel? Totally unrespected, disrespected. I pay money to live here and I feel that this is the basic level of care and hygiene that should be handled by the landlord quickly.

57:43Okay. So it's very annoying. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So let's, let's stop with the victim testimony for a minute and let's switch over to, so now you're going to play the role of the landlord. Okay. So the landlord was over at that table and now the landlord's walking up to the stand and sitting down. You're just sitting and watching. Yep. That's you as the victim, but now you are the landlord. So it's actually you in the witness stand. Okay. Okay. All right. So you've got to switch that role. Okay. And now you're a lawyer. Yeah. Very well paid, good lawyer. He's going to ask you. Jimmy Kimmel Jr.

58:24And his name's, right, Jimmy Kimmel Jr. Thank you. Thanks for that advertisement. And he's going to ask you, so what's your side of the story? Monica has complained about some water leaking into her building. She showed me pictures. It looks bad. I've sent the plumber in multiple times. Uh, the plumber doesn't know what's wrong. He's snaked the drain. Um, and it's, she's still, it's still happening. She's still complaining about it, but, um, there's not much more I can do. You would probably add that you, you, you're looking over like 18 units. There's one of you, you don't have access to everyone else's.

59:14the plumber thinks maybe if he chased down this problem and all these other people's units, I can't get them to agree to let the plumber in because they don't have an issue. There might be a lot she might feel like, you know, I'm doing really everything one person can do with these 18 units. And I keep saying the plumber and I'm as frustrated with the plumber as Monica is. And she somehow is holding me responsible as if I'm putting the subs in her tub. And I don't either have anything to do with it. We're on the same team here. Right. So you've just now, Monica, in your own role, you've just sat and listened to the defendant testify, both versions.

59:54How did it make you feel to, you know, hear the defendant's story? What was that like for you? I understand that there's a lot on her plate. She's just a person. She's not, you know, a machine. She can't just make sure something gets done because I want it done fast. And I still think, unfortunately, I do think it is her job to make sure that the building is run to code. So though I have compassion for her, I would still like the thing to be done properly. So how do you find as the jury, is the landlord guilty or innocent? I think she's guilty. Okay. I do think that, objectively. That's fair. You're the jury and you get to say what you want.

1:00:45You don't have to apologize. Well, I feel bad for her. And I do, which is why I think I can really do this objectively to some extent. Like, I don't think she's a bad person. So what should your sentence be? Since you found the landlord guilty, you're going to have to hand down a sentence. That's the problem. In the non-justice system, which is what this is called, or the miracle court, because there's a free app that you can use. Oh, cool. An audio-driven app where it takes you through all the steps more methodically than I'm doing right now. But in that, you do need to have a sentence. This part's hard.

1:01:22I definitely don't want her to get fired. Okay. So I'm not sentencing her with that. Can I suggest a sentence that I bet you would love? Sure. She has to have the same foam coming out of her tub and her laundry room. Whoa. Because now she'll be heavily incentivized to deal with the core problem. Unless foam doesn't bother her. Well, we'll find out. That's funny. That doesn't even cross my mind. Interesting. Because that's a very, I mean, what you did, Dax, is a very, you know, that's a very reciprocal type of view. And research shows that males are much more caught up in that than women who their empathy centers are more readily available.

1:02:05Males, it goes quiet. When somebody does something wrong, males just go towards revenge seeking. That's interesting. That's a process. Correct. That's right. So I have to deal with this, and you should have to deal with it too. My hunch is once you have to deal with it, you'll be motivated to fix it. Oh, I don't have that. And I wouldn't want to sentence her with that. Okay. I think I just say, oh, well. Which is basically what you've already done. Yeah. Which is actually something that does happen from time to time in these trials, as in some people will stop at right after the defendant has testified.

1:02:41They'll get some new insight by adopting the other view that was completely unexpected of them. And it'll be shocking to the person. They may find that they themselves were at fault. or that, you know, they understand at a very deep level why, and they might've done the same thing in the same circumstances. It is a workaround to force you out of attribution error because no one's going to get on the stand and go, I did it because I'm a piece of shit. I did it because I'm a selfish monster. You have enough integrity, even in your own court trial, to know that no one would do that. So in the absence of that, you really have to fill in what they could possibly have been motivated by or what their explanation is.

1:03:18And it will kind of inoculate you from attribution error. Right. And it also, I mean, what we find from the research is it will also reactivate, if it wasn't, your empathy. It's a different part of your brain. It's a different part of your brain that was silent, like I was saying, for males in particular. Yeah. So it reactivates that. And you gain some new insight. But not for everyone. And most of the trials go the whole way to the end. Yeah. But some people will stop at the defendant's testimony or where you're at right now. It's sort of almost like it wants to be stopped because you really don't have a sense.

1:03:56You don't have a punishment. But you did want to be heard. I did. And you got to be heard, didn't you? Yeah, it's true. And you're holding them to account in the sense that they had to come and be put on trial. Right. And I guess the sentence part is interesting because even though I still at the end, I'm like, yes, I think she is guilty of negligence. as a landlord, but when it comes to sentencing, do I think that's worth a sentence? It makes you start doing that. Like, is that really worth a punishment? Right. No. And in your case, because the case wasn't a super serious case, I mean, part of it's driven by the type of case that you just did.

1:04:35Yeah. If this was something, a romantic betrayal, like I'm going to be doing this next week on Dr. Phil with somebody who's lived through a romantic betrayal, like really bad. And there won't be an easy go through that. You know, that's going to be a seriously difficult thing because the pain of that betrayal. Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

1:05:06From episode 932 with Chris Faisal and Dave Mitchell.

1:05:13Here's the head of security for the Cali cartel. First, he tells me, let's meet at Seattle, but come alone. I'm like, I'm not coming alone. Are you crazy? I have to come with my partner. And then he says, okay, all right, you can come with your partner. And then he says, no Colombians, right? Because he was one of the guys that was paying off a lot of the Colombians. So he knew about the corruption. So if I see anybody who's even looks Colombian, the deal is off. Oh, wow. Even if they brought you, Monica, you might have stood too brown. So we're sitting there thinking like, head of security, the Cali Hotel, he wants to meet us an hour outside of Cali, telling us to come alone, telling me to come alone, and not to bring any Colombians.

1:05:54And we're thinking like, dude, this could be a trap. This could be an ambush. We weren't sure what to expect. We're not even supposed to leave the base. And then here we are going to go meet this counterintelligence officer. On a field. In the middle of a cane field, an hour outside of Cali. So it was pretty hairy. I think we outlined that pretty well in the book, how we felt, because honestly, we were pretty scared. Yeah. It's funny when we're there. Everything's funny now. At the time, it wasn't. But I looked at Chris. I said, Chris, have you ever seen that movie Onion Fields? This could be our Onion Field.

1:06:24What's the Onion Field? That actually happened in California. Oh, what happened? It's where some police officers were killed in the Onion Field. And they made a movie about it. Okay, so you meet with him. And do you like him? he's not at all what we thought, right? And just to backtrack a little bit, when he says, meet us at the Canfield at three o 'clock, right, we get out there at 12, before 12, right? Because we're terrified it's going to be an ambush or they're going to set us up and try to kill us or kidnap us or whatever. So we're out there in this blistering heat, like sitting around for three hours waiting, but we had a good vantage point.

1:06:59So at least we can see everything coming for a while. So if anybody came in and we were prepared and we were pretty heavily armed, Like I said, we looked like Neo and Trinity when they went into the government-controlled building to get Morpheus. We were loaded. But as we were there, we noticed we didn't see anybody. Nobody came. Maybe this guy's for real. Yeah. And I think we all have preconceived notions, right? So we're thinking, head of security for the Cali cartel. It's going to be like a really bad guy. Something out of the movies. Exactly. He's going to look a certain way. He's going to talk a certain way.

1:07:34And when we saw him, he was the exact opposite of what we thought, right? Came alone. He wasn't armed. You know, we made sure Davey patted him down. We checked the car. We were still wary for a trap. And he said our names first. We went to introduce ourselves. Yeah, he knew who we were. That was a hard play for him. They knew everything about us. They had nicknames for us. We were called Los Monos. What is Los Monos? Los Monos is a monkey. A monkey. But what they would use it for is if somebody is air-comflected. Like the gringos. We're the gringos. The gringos that spawned, they'll call them those monos.

1:08:13Oh, that's interesting. It's almost a universal racial slur. Yeah, for real. There's something comforting about that. That was what the cartel called us. They referred to us as the monos. But he talked real softly with a very low voice and very like the cadence. Was he even an imposing man or was he just a normal man? He was just very normal looking, the clothes that he wore, the way he walked, like not trying to make a sound or an impression. So I look at Dave like, man, this guy is like the exact opposite of everything that we thought. And then, of course, the first thing he says to us is like, hey, this is going to be a one-time meeting and it's going to be real quick because I got to get back to Cali because I'm on standby for Miguel, the head of the cartel.

1:08:53But as we started to talk and go over things, we ended up being out there three hours that first meeting. Oh, my God. Until it got dark. Was your mind being blown? Were you learning things that were unimaginable? It's like you open up the book. We learned more in those three hours than the whole year on the ground. Wow. Absolutely. Can you remember one of the most shocking things you heard during that? Well, there's one thing. I looked at him. I said, hey, I just need to know. Is DEA a threat? He looked at me just like a father would and says, you and Chris, you work very hard. Oh, so patronizing.

1:09:28No, you guys are hard workers. But no, the EIA is not a threat. And this is why. He goes, you and Chris can go out, talk to anybody you want to gather information intelligence. But at the end of the day, you don't have arrest powers. You have to deal with the Colombians. And that's where we got you. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, it all unravels a second. You got to get official. And by that point, we were very well aware of the systemic corruption that existed within not only the security forces, but in the government. But just talking to him and how plainly and how simply he would just put out there, oh, yeah, well, you can't deal with this person because he's corrupt and the cartel is paying that guy and we paid this guy and this and that.

1:10:13And it was staggering. It was overwhelming the amount of corruption that we were dealing with. Did you ask why should we trust you? Well, we did. We talked all about that. But then when we started to hear his story, right, and we talked about that, how he got involved in the cartel and that he couldn't get out. I'd have such a hard time believing it. Really, you don't have a choice. I guess you're right. You don't have a choice. And then also I think you'd be reasonable to conclude it's not worth them fucking with us. As he said, they're not a threat. They don't have to be appeased. They could be ignored.

1:10:48So why do this? They already know where you're at. Unless they want to kill. I would trust it because there's almost no incentive for them to be keeping an eye on you. They're already doing that. And plus, when we started to talk to him, and at that point, we were pretty well versed on the cartel and what they were doing. But talking to him, it just took us to a whole other level. But we would ask a lot of questions that we knew the answers to, just trying to vet them. And he was basically doing the same thing to us. Like, hey, you guys are kids. We were 30 years old at the time. He's like, you guys are here trying to bring down the head of the Cali cartel.

1:11:20I look at you guys. So he was like, how can I trust you? How do I know that you guys are going to be able to handle it? Yeah. And then he asked us, he goes, listen, it's not only my life, but my family's life. So it's my family's life is in your hands. Can I trust you? It's like you see in these old movies where you push the wall and it opens. Yeah. Highly sophisticated. So he tells us, look, there's supposedly, is there a big red desk in the apartment? Because there's these really sensitive documents. So we're looking around for latches. We're pushing. We can't find shit. And then one of our partners who's there, Jerry Salome, he comes and he picks the desk up and he just turns it over and it smashes on the marble floor and it breaks open.

1:12:02And in the back of the desk is a hidden compartment in a desk. How do you do that? With three briefcases. And in these briefcases, check this out. This is staggering. are all these super sensitive files, corruption-related information, letters from the president's office, you know, about money that they had donated. And there was a list of, check this out, 2 ,800 corrupt officials. Oh, my God. Just in those briefcases. 2 ,800. 2 ,800. Yeah, good luck finding the string. Exactly. So we find that that buys us a little more time. Then he tells us, look, he's in this secret compartment in the bathroom.

1:12:42He's hiding. He's in the bathroom. He's there. He's been there for the last 12 hours. How was he telling you this? On the phone? Well, we were going outside, you know, making phone calls. He was at a pay phone and we were at another phone about a hundred yards away. And we didn't even know. We didn't know we were that close. And then he would go back in and get more information to come out. As the head of security, he was able to get out and to relay, hey, I got to go check on my guys are telling me this. So it didn't cause a lot of attention. So finally, there are like four bathrooms in the apartment and we're knocking on walls.

1:13:16We're thinking, how the hell can there be a hidden compartment in the bathroom? Yeah. So finally, you know, we take measurements of the apartments below and above. We get the thing, we were in the bathroom. We go, this is smaller. This bathroom is smaller. This is the only one that doesn't make sense. Yeah. And we opened the sink cabinet and it hits the toilet. We're going days and days with our limited sleep. Oh, yeah, we're exhausted. We're beyond exhausted at this point. We're not at our best. We're exhausted. Chris and I, we're in the restroom, and we just, you know, you had the sink right here with the door right under it, and it doesn't open all the way.

1:13:54It hits the toilet. And we are so exhausted. We go, look at this. Who would make something like this? You're just just, man, of the construction. It's been horrible construction. This is what we said. And then we saw a little yellow hose over it. This is it. And that's when we started doing drills. So you start drilling into the walls, and you break three drill bits. Right. You run out of drill bits. Corrupt captain that was supposed to have been our liaison, who was the main source for him, he grabbed me by the arm. This guy was literally in a panic. And he goes, who's your source? Who's your source?

1:14:30How do you know this? How do you know this? Who's your source? I'm your business, bitch. And I said, no, there's no space not accounted for. And then once we started drilling through the walls, he looked at, you know, their lawyers for the government and said the Americans are doing. Yeah, prosecutors are doing unilateral action. So that's when they detained us. Some say maybe arrested us, but. They got everyone out of there. And he escaped. They had drilled holes right next to him. Imagine his experience in the wall. He's just standing there on the wall. Listening to you guys bitch about the construction quality.

1:15:08Oh, my God. Just wondering, like, what the fuck are they going to get out? I mean, I can't imagine what his body was feeling like. Yes, he was just, like, dodging. In there. Oh. And now drills are coming through. That's what I'm saying. Yep. Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

1:15:33The prosecutor is getting this information that the Americans are conducting an unilateral operation. He comes in, shuts the entire operation down. We're within a minute of accessing this compartment. This is no lie. You couldn't have drawn it up any better in a movie script if you tried. We were literally a minute away from grabbing this guy. And the prosecutor came in. He shut it down. He brought us out to the living room, took the keys, locked the keys to the door, put them in his pocket, typed up a formal complaint against us, and then escorted us and made us leave the apartment. Just full corruption.

1:16:06Wow. And we said, can we leave? No. I said, so we're arrested. No, you're not arrested, so you just can't leave. All right. Yeah. From episode 958 with Andy Roddick. Okay, so but with your height, that has to be a part of your serve, right? Because the crazy part about your game was you had this insane serve. Yeah. I like this detail of it. You had numerous different coaches over the years. And I do want to talk about that. I want to know how one, you're like, you got to break up with someone and hire someone. That's got to be a very stressful part of the experience. But as you hired coaches, your whole game was on the table except for the serve.

1:16:50The serve was to not be talked about. Is that right? It was to not be talked about. It was, yeah, it was. Proprietary. Were you afraid? Were you superstitious about the serve? No, I just knew it backwards. I knew the cadence when it started. I knew this little three count that I had. I knew the feelings of it. I knew more than they did. And I don't say that lightly because you will get to the coaches. And I was obviously always in pursuit of something new, something different, something additive. And also, don't talk about my serve. ever. Yeah. Is the origin of it true that you got really frustrated at like 16 and you served in a weird way out of anger and it worked?

1:17:30Is that true? That's true. I was playing my friend Marty Fish who ended up being a really good player. He was six in the world. And so we used to play this, basically all the kids who didn't get picked by the federation, right? So the people, not funded by U.S. tennis anymore. Okay. Kind of the throwaways. Yeah. We played at Crystal Palms apartment complex in Florida. and there were like six of us and out of that group, a couple of us made top five, top six in the world. But I was playing against Marty who was really, really good and at that point better and just got pissed off and I have like this little half motion of boarded tears, but it's not conventional.

1:18:08Right. Hit one irresponsibly out of anger and it went in. Which by the way, is the thing they tell you to never do anything, right? Don't try to kill it. Don't try to crush it. And you did. You're like, I'm going to fucking murder this ball because I hate it. And that was it. Had I won that day, had I been playing, had I been doing well with Marty that day, I wouldn't be here having this conversation. That's so crazy. And how do you, like when you recognize it clicked, do you then think like, okay, how do I commit this whole thing to muscle memory? Like I got to. Replicate. You just over and over again, you do it?

1:18:39Just started doing it and it was. And you didn't have to overthink it. It was immediately. Well, a lot of the muscles build it. Like your shoulder still goes over. It's just your feet is, it was different, but it was like, it, there was no time. and it literally took you, it went from, and there were some other things that needed to be adjusted, but yeah, I mean, you literally figured it out and then the year before, you're 40 or 50 in the world in juniors, which sounds good, but that means you're going to college. Yeah. And then four months later, it was, you're number one in Florida. One signed a Reebok deal.

1:19:06Okay, so this, one thing I just want to end on with your serve, which I find just so incredible. So you had the record for the fastest serve in history at 155 miles an hour. It has been beaten, but it's still only at 156. Wow. That's so massive. Like the service described in many of the things I was reading as unreturnable. Well, to most, except for the Avengers that came out in my career. But yeah, I mean, I wasn't a natural tennis player. I was like a work guy, but I could throw it. That was it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like I could make your life uncomfortable for a little bit. Okay, so you win the 2003 U.S.

1:19:46Open. you are I'm dying to go to the US Open no one will invite me let's do it okay whenever you just have to be a guest on this podcast oh great invite me and then let's you have to pay you have to you know earn your way you don't even you don't even have to do that oh I want to go I know why you want to go I want to try the that honey honey deuce yeah that's a cocktail yeah they basically invented a signature cocktail like that everyone pretends like has been around for a hundred years like a mint julep You put it in like eight years ago. It's not. Have you had a hundred years to the US Open?

1:20:20He's like, no, because I didn't fucking have one I was playing. It's a made up thing. But it's a real. What's in it? It's genius though. I don't know. I never had one. Oh, you got to buy it to find out. No, a little Chambord, Lemonade, Grey Goose, and Sprite. Yeah, I want that. I'll make you one and serve it on the fact check. No, I want it at the US Open. And then also. She wants to overpay for it. That's right. You can't imagine how well you know her. You literally know everything you need in over a month. It doesn't taste as good if you don't pay$28 for it. And if it doesn't have those little melon balls on there.

1:20:53Yeah, that's really cool. My favorite thing about that is they have these cups with like, you know, they have the honey deuce cups that have all the winners on them. It's like, oh my God, I know. But I know I paid$30, but I got this. Souvenir cup. I got a free cup. It's worth 75 cents. So I won. Yeah, I want that. I want that. I'm going to do that. I'm going to do that. I saved thousands by getting this. But also the U.S. Open's gotten so cool. Like everyone goes. It's definitely a social event. It's the Met Ball. It's the Met Ball of sports. It's the Met Ball of sports. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

1:21:24It's really, I do really, really want to go.

1:21:54We'll see you next time. Tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at Wondery.com slash survey.