Speaker 1: Anthony Moffatt or Harry as you've been known as Welcer
Speaker 1: to Straight Talk mate.
Speaker 2: Thank you Mark. Yeah, so pleasure to be here. So I.
Speaker 1: Like, I always want to know how someone's name goes
Speaker 1: from Anthony to Harry and your name, of course it Moffatt,
Speaker 1: But like, tell me how that occurred? How did you
Speaker 1: get that nickname?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so Harry came from an old Rodney Rude character.
Speaker 2: Harry Muff was his name, and a lot of people
Speaker 2: called me mof so it was Harry moff in the end,
Speaker 2: and I don't think there was much of a likeness.
Speaker 2: Wasn't that funny?
Speaker 3: But who named you?
Speaker 2: Bloke by the name of Ken Studeley on our essays
Speaker 2: selection course he made up a poem and a rhyme
Speaker 2: about everyone. He's one of the funniest guys who you'll meet.
Speaker 2: And yeah, he was one that gave me the night
Speaker 2: the name in the part and stuck. It stuck. Yeah,
Speaker 2: Well you resist these names and they stick hard.
Speaker 3: I don't they totally. So that would have been in
Speaker 3: like the eighties, nineteen ninety ninety nine.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, because I remember Rodney was he had a
Speaker 1: Radis show on TV show. I also remember Kerry closing
Speaker 1: his TV one of his programs now actually mid program
Speaker 1: because carriage isn't like the way he went on. But
Speaker 1: he was a funny barsad I remember him. And so
Speaker 1: you're in the mid nineties. You were let's call it
Speaker 1: trying out whatever the word is for essays.
Speaker 2: Yeah, attempting essays selection, and it hasn't changed a great
Speaker 2: deal as anywhere between five hundred and one thousand applicants,
Speaker 2: they pick one hundred and fifty odd and you go
Speaker 2: to Perth and out of that we generally get twenty.
Speaker 2: I still return to the unit today to mentor the
Speaker 2: new charges coming through, and the numbers haven't changed over time,
Speaker 2: which is good.
Speaker 3: So let's say that's in the nineties.
Speaker 1: He obviously weren't born in nineteen eighty because you would
Speaker 1: have been too young to be doing this. Were you
Speaker 1: in the military. What's that process? Joining the military then
Speaker 1: trying for essas? Were just decided one day at midday
Speaker 1: I saw the SAS TV shows series on Channel seven
Speaker 1: or Channel nine where it is, and I decided want
Speaker 1: to become an essays soldier. I mean, how does that work?
Speaker 1: I mean you become how do you become? Well, how
Speaker 1: do you get the instinct and the ambition to join
Speaker 1: the ESAs.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was a spark for me. I was going
Speaker 2: to be running out of full Ford for Hawthorne football
Speaker 2: team up until I was twelve years old. That was
Speaker 2: my dream, or open the opening the batting for Australia.
Speaker 2: But I saw the images you may remember Princess Gate,
Speaker 2: the Iranian embassy siege in the UK and nineteen eighty
Speaker 2: and that flickered across a grainy black and white television
Speaker 2: set and it just captured my imagination. And I read
Speaker 2: a bit in those days. I was reading from an
Speaker 2: early age, and I started reading some books about counter
Speaker 2: terrorism and anti terrorism. These are that was the golden
Speaker 2: era in the eighties, you know, the aircraft hijackings and
Speaker 2: et cetera. So it was in the geist, if you like.
Speaker 2: It was in the background, and I just thought, whatever
Speaker 2: they're doing looks awesome and sexy, and they're all dressed
Speaker 2: in black. And the more I dug, the more I
Speaker 2: was intrigued and the more I wanted to do it.
Speaker 2: So I joined that the Army in nineteen eighty six
Speaker 2: as a regular and when the SAS circus came to
Speaker 2: town and beat the drums. I signed up and went
Speaker 2: through started a selection process, pre selection into that one
Speaker 2: hundred and fifty proper selection, and then you go into
Speaker 2: a eighteen month odd reinforcement cycle, which is still part
Speaker 2: of the selection. So it's probably all in a two
Speaker 2: year process once you're in the system.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't mind just talking about it because I've always
Speaker 1: been fascinated with the process of being selected. And I
Speaker 1: guess you're also self selecting too, because correct you might
Speaker 1: decide I'm going to drop that as well. It's not
Speaker 1: just somebody saying you're the dude. You might say I'm
Speaker 1: not the dude. I want to go back to that
Speaker 1: in a second.
Speaker 2: But self selection is a really important part to grew insight.
Speaker 1: I can imagine because it happens in business too, and
Speaker 1: people think they're going to be an entrepreneur, but ultimately
Speaker 1: you self select yourself and or the market will tell
Speaker 1: you whether you can do it or not. But some
Speaker 1: people fail to self select out when they should, when
Speaker 1: they should be getting out. And it's not there's nothing
Speaker 1: wrong with selecting to get out of these things. Self
Speaker 1: selecting out, that's just what your instincts telling you. After
Speaker 1: you've gone through the process. It's not instinct. With our process.
Speaker 1: Process informs your instinct at the end of the day.
Speaker 1: But we'll come back to that in a second. Because
Speaker 1: it seems like you have a view on it, a
Speaker 1: strong view on it. But you were a like use,
Speaker 1: I think you said, regular soldier, Yeah, what does that mean?
Speaker 2: So you just join the ADF you going to any
Speaker 2: number of cores infantry. I went into signals core. You
Speaker 2: can be in catering, transport, artillery. And so the regular
Speaker 2: I suppose process is the military picks you and where
Speaker 2: you go, whereas the self selection part of the SAS
Speaker 2: is entirely voluntary and you hand yourself over to them completely.
Speaker 2: You don't really have much in the way of hands
Speaker 2: on your own destiny, whereas in the regular army you
Speaker 2: pick a call, you get put in, and then you
Speaker 2: start a career, regular career.
Speaker 1: In that way, it's pretty full on. If you go
Speaker 1: back forty years, which we are to be, for a
Speaker 1: young man to be reading articles about or reading articles
Speaker 1: about war and what's going on in the various territories
Speaker 1: war territories, it's pretty out there, pretty unusual. I would
Speaker 1: have thought back then, for because I don't know anybody.
Speaker 1: I had one mate, Andy Nolan. He became an SS guy.
Speaker 1: But that's the only person I know, And I don't
Speaker 1: even know how he became one. But he's just weird
Speaker 1: shit though. I can to you, Like when it used
Speaker 1: to rain really heavy down in rose Bay, he used
Speaker 1: to get into the after after having he's also an architect,
Speaker 1: but after having left the sas, he used to get
Speaker 1: in a like a one man canoe and get into
Speaker 1: the canals when the heavy rain.
Speaker 3: Was just to test himself, is that right?
Speaker 1: And go through weird tunnels you think, And like he
Speaker 1: was the most unassuming person in the world that you
Speaker 1: would never think he was a morement architect, but he
Speaker 1: went through the whole process. Yeah, a massive risk taker.
Speaker 1: And just every now and then when it's a heavy rain.
Speaker 1: You know, I did see him this is this is
Speaker 1: back in the eighties. He say, I've just been going
Speaker 1: down the canals and lunatic.
Speaker 3: What's wrong with you?
Speaker 2: Like what.
Speaker 1: Is wide sort of like effectively rapids because it's filling
Speaker 1: it with water down rose By and end up out
Speaker 1: in the harbor somehow. But it's I don't know anyone
Speaker 1: who thinks this way. Other than him, and now I'm
Speaker 1: meeting somebody else. What is it that makes you a
Speaker 1: or having such an inquiring mind that you start rooting
Speaker 1: me this sort of stuff and then makes you when
Speaker 1: you mentioned the circus comes to down, you know, the
Speaker 1: sas recruitment comes to town. What was it that made
Speaker 1: you feel as though, yeah, this is for me, I'm
Speaker 1: going to have a crack at this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've thought about this, and we've studied this in
Speaker 2: fact in the unit. But I resolve my thinking to
Speaker 2: it's an internal competitiveness, as an internal drive, which you
Speaker 2: would be very familiar with. It happens in the business
Speaker 2: what I see it in the business world in sports,
Speaker 2: and I think when the essays in particular, it's it's
Speaker 2: the opportunity to test yourself to see if you have
Speaker 2: what it takes. And you're not impressing anyone at that
Speaker 2: stage because no one really knows about it. It's very
Speaker 2: done in house, very much. But it's that just that
Speaker 2: drive to see you do I have what it takes?
Speaker 2: You know? And the more you read you go you
Speaker 2: think you question yourself, you know, is this would I
Speaker 2: would this suit me? And that kind of in a
Speaker 2: way attracts you even more some of the common characteristics
Speaker 2: that I've observed over time, high tolerance to ambiguity, and
Speaker 2: an appetite for risk taking. But it's generally quite measured.
Speaker 2: They kept within the informed risk informed, and also a
Speaker 2: competence level of risk within your own competence. You have
Speaker 2: a good sound understanding of the scope and limit of
Speaker 2: your scope and limitations.
Speaker 1: So it's not much as so are you saying though
Speaker 1: it's not reckless.
Speaker 2: I would say that, although.
Speaker 1: In other words, it's not like And that's actually quite
Speaker 1: an interesting point because I noticed in the briefing that
Speaker 1: I got that, you know, a lot of the stuff
Speaker 1: you talk about your book is the Fourth Pillar, your
Speaker 1: most recent book, the Fourth Pillar. But one of the
Speaker 1: things I noticed in the description of the book is
Speaker 1: modern Stoicism. So you know, what's interesting to me anyway,
Speaker 1: is that you just mentioned the word reckless. And we'll
Speaker 1: come back to that. And one of the headings of
Speaker 1: your book is Stoicism. And the Stoicism, of course, is
Speaker 1: a you know, thousands of year old virtue, you know,
Speaker 1: like going right back to the Stoics, and Aristotle talked
Speaker 1: about stoicism, but you talked about recklessness and then there's
Speaker 1: a an Aristotle himself talked about the difference between courage
Speaker 1: and recklessness is somewhere in between the two, the gold,
Speaker 1: the gold what he called gold mean, it's not in
Speaker 1: the middle, it's somewhere else.
Speaker 3: And for each individual it's different for everybody else.
Speaker 1: Someone might be closer to recklessness, and someone might be
Speaker 1: closest closer to courage. But it's definitely not recklessness. In
Speaker 1: other words, it's not and fearless is different to courage.
Speaker 1: And do they in the when you're training for the sas,
Speaker 1: do they go through this virtue type deal to start
Speaker 1: talking to you about these old school things that our
Speaker 1: old school I don't mean that in a disrespectful way,
Speaker 1: but old school virtues. Do you talk about these things stoicism, recklessness, courage,
Speaker 1: blah blah blah.
Speaker 2: We do now and back then it really was a
Speaker 2: matter of survival. And so if you were tough enough
Speaker 2: to wait it out, to run it out, to just
Speaker 2: persist and in a very pure stoic fashion, you know,
Speaker 2: just to be able to persist and put up with it.
Speaker 2: Stand your ground, stand your ground, don't complain. In fact,
Speaker 2: no one's listening anyway. It's a nail feedback environment, which
Speaker 2: is very, very harsh, and that's what makes something like
Speaker 2: tolerance to ambiguity very such a valuable measuring or measure
Speaker 2: of someone who's suitable.
Speaker 3: For virtue words tolerance.
Speaker 2: Yeah and so, yeah, and you do you need to survive.
Speaker 2: But these days I actually go back and teach applied
Speaker 2: ethics to our junior operators, not only for the moral
Speaker 2: challenges that they will face in their careers, you know, physical, mental,
Speaker 2: and moral in service. But back in those days, it
Speaker 2: was how how how hard you could go for how long,
Speaker 2: and what you could tolerate and put up with. So
Speaker 2: there's there's two kind of sides to that coin. My
Speaker 2: generation is the pure stoic, just put up with it
Speaker 2: and keep persisting. These days we have a more virtue
Speaker 2: approach to it, because we realize now that servicing this
Speaker 2: this kind of these kinds of units has a moral
Speaker 2: toll as well, and that gets mixed up with the
Speaker 2: mental health toll that it takes on people, or.
Speaker 1: With the final outcome, you know, like because you know,
Speaker 1: you don't want people being all these things and then
Speaker 1: walk out and their and their careers finished, and all
Speaker 1: of a sudden there are a wreck.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but inside that's correct exactly. And I'm as a
Speaker 2: psychologist now, I spend a fair bit of time in that.
Speaker 2: But I guess at the start of an sas soldier's journey,
Speaker 2: what we want is to give some guidance around what
Speaker 2: is reckless and what is controlled and informed. And I
Speaker 2: think we always want to select people who are probably
Speaker 2: going to lean towards the reckless part because some of
Speaker 2: the nature of the work is such that it's high risk,
Speaker 2: high consequence, catastrophic consequences not only for ourselves but for
Speaker 2: the people around us. So we need people to be
Speaker 2: willing to step into that space without question, without being afraid,
Speaker 2: a feared, or or without hesitation in most cases. So
Speaker 2: we want people who are probably that side of it.
Speaker 2: But I think the golden mean of Aristotle, if you will,
Speaker 2: it's a navigable space. What we also want is people
Speaker 2: to come back to a normal setting, a civilian setting,
Speaker 2: and readjust those parameters as well, And that takes a
Speaker 2: certain kind of person. We don't always get right, but
Speaker 2: I think we're pretty bloody good at it.
Speaker 1: So recently Donald Trump announced and Peter X announced that
Speaker 1: they're going to change their Department of defense to the
Speaker 1: Department of War and got all sorts of reactions around
Speaker 1: the world. And initially I thought to myself that might
Speaker 1: be good for recruitment, because recruitment is a big deal.
Speaker 1: For we don't have national service, and so recruitment is
Speaker 1: really a big deal important to have recruits. It's not
Speaker 1: saying you the whole country to join the army or
Speaker 1: whatever it is, whatever the military is, but you definitely
Speaker 1: want you've got to recruit and or retain as well.
Speaker 1: And maybe that has a bit of marketing appeal to it.
Speaker 1: But how does that fit into the narrative in a
Speaker 1: modern day, modern day in terms of the types of
Speaker 1: people might attract.
Speaker 2: Do you think, yeah, I think it's it can be
Speaker 2: a concern, and particularly in a nation like America where
Speaker 2: they're in a marshall footing your martial kind of culture.
Speaker 2: Australia not so much. I'm not sure it would fly
Speaker 2: well here. I get I get the idea we want
Speaker 2: to be proactive, I guess, and maybe at war rather
Speaker 2: than being defensive and on the back foot. And I
Speaker 2: heard a bit more and I think I've punched out
Speaker 2: a semi poem or something like that to Romance Donald
Speaker 2: but I don't know that it would make a marked
Speaker 2: difference on recruiting. That would be have to play out.
Speaker 2: I think what's important to state is during times of peace,
Speaker 2: recruiting naturally goes down. You know, the boys that turn
Speaker 2: out to want to go on the adventures and go
Speaker 2: to war seem to spike when that's imminent or in
Speaker 2: the in the news. I've had a few people say
Speaker 2: or ask me the question. You know it means Australian
Speaker 2: Defense Force in trouble and recruitings down and all the
Speaker 2: rest of But I'd say, look, you know, it's never
Speaker 2: as bad as it seems, never as good as it seems,
Speaker 2: and we probably need a more moderate conversation about it.
Speaker 2: But it's a lot of money to sustain a standing
Speaker 2: army that's not doing anything and not going anywhere. And
Speaker 2: if the example I give is at the end of
Speaker 2: World War One, a lot of the old guys were
Speaker 2: saying because a lot of men we died in World
Speaker 2: War One, and they were having a shot at the
Speaker 2: next generation coming through, saying they're all soft and weak,
Speaker 2: and you know they need to be trained up, and
Speaker 2: things like scouts and outward bound and you know these
Speaker 2: will will forced and all of these other things were
Speaker 2: invented to make to toughen up the next generation. And
Speaker 2: when the sixteen and eighteen year olds went off to
Speaker 2: Kokoda Track, they did a pretty bloody good job. And
Speaker 2: the young charges I see come into contact with regularly.
Speaker 2: I think Australia's in good stead. I don't think we
Speaker 2: should panic. If we do need to raise an army,
Speaker 2: we'll do so. Capability is still strong. This is the
Speaker 2: time to spend a bit of money on the on
Speaker 2: the hardware. And I think hardware being tech, yeah, tech
Speaker 2: and hardware and some decent chips and things like that. Yeah,
Speaker 2: But I think Australia, I think we should just calm
Speaker 2: the farm a little bit. On that. I think Australian
Speaker 2: the essence of the Australian soldiers still here and will
Speaker 2: serve our country well come the time.
Speaker 1: So do you think that essence that you're talking about
Speaker 1: cuts across Australian Australian values?
Speaker 3: Do you think? Because is that essence and Australian value.
Speaker 1: And given our immigration and our change in the sort
Speaker 1: of the makeup of our nation, and it's rapidly changing,
Speaker 1: probably faster now than has ever done. As past in
Speaker 1: terms of cultural changes, sense of nationalism, perhaps religious relationships,
Speaker 1: like at one stage pretty much a Christian nation.
Speaker 3: These days we're much more mixed.
Speaker 1: Then there's conflict overseas relative to some of the some
Speaker 1: of the religions relative to other religions, and that's pretty
Speaker 1: obviously we'll be talking about who might be talking.
Speaker 3: About we're thinking about at the moment. Do you think
Speaker 3: these things will.
Speaker 1: Ultimately create a bit of a chasm in our armed
Speaker 1: forces military?
Speaker 2: Yeah, potentially. I think there's parts of the military which
Speaker 2: have been maybe distracted by what's going out on going
Speaker 2: on out in society. So I give that. But to
Speaker 2: feel and have a strong standing Australian Army, we need
Speaker 2: about one hundred thousand people and I think there's well
Speaker 2: inside that many to service our military. And we'll always
Speaker 2: remember we're a small nation. Our GDP and defense is tiny.
Speaker 2: It's probably the budget of the first Marine Division and
Speaker 2: we're now one of Americas if not biggest aircraft carrier
Speaker 2: and the Marines increasing in numbers. So I think again
Speaker 2: there are challenges, there's no doubt mark from a broader
Speaker 2: society perspective, but I think I would like to see
Speaker 2: the kind of margins and the fringes. Discussions that I
Speaker 2: see in the veteran community go on just kind of
Speaker 2: keep our power to dry. I think we should take
Speaker 2: comfort that we will still be able to raise a
Speaker 2: strong army that's that will do its job.
Speaker 3: So do we need I mean, there's probably more war
Speaker 3: strategy question.
Speaker 1: And you know, I don't know if I'm oversetting the
Speaker 1: marqu here, but because you're you're on the ground guy.
Speaker 3: You're the guy who.
Speaker 1: Goes and does stuff like it's more tactical than you
Speaker 1: undertake a strategy outcome, but you're going to have to
Speaker 1: make changes.
Speaker 2: This is a strategic tool, a strategy.
Speaker 3: Go in there, but you've got to make changes.
Speaker 1: This didn't more get the way we wanted to work,
Speaker 1: and we've got to do this tactically and then make
Speaker 1: some quick change, a quick thinking.
Speaker 3: And as a group, do you think that we need
Speaker 3: as many.
Speaker 1: Regular soldiers, regular military people as we have done in
Speaker 1: the past, Given I'm not too sa I'm not talking
Speaker 1: about specialized people. I'm talking about regular guys and girls.
Speaker 1: Do you think we need as many these days? Given
Speaker 1: what's going on, giving the giving, given what we see
Speaker 1: in Ukraine, what we're seeing in various other places what's
Speaker 1: going on in the world at the moment as we
Speaker 1: have needed in the past, in other words, drones and
Speaker 1: all those other things.
Speaker 3: Is the World War potentially more technological?
Speaker 2: Well, definitely got technological very quickly back in the US
Speaker 2: Civil War, you know, So that doesn't change. I think
Speaker 2: that's expected strategically no matter what conflict we're going to.
Speaker 2: There's probably a good point to make here around the
Speaker 2: type of war that we might be engaged in. The
Speaker 2: wars that we've had recently and arguably since the end
Speaker 2: of World War Two have been wars of choice. Really,
Speaker 2: they haven't been wars that we've been invaded or we've
Speaker 2: chosen to a company America or a coalition or UK
Speaker 2: and they've been choice. They've been largely wars of choice.
Speaker 2: So they have a different a different context and a
Speaker 2: different requirement, especially when we're being asked for certain capabilities
Speaker 2: to travel overseas. And then there's wars like Ukraine, where
Speaker 2: that's not a war of choice for Ukraine, that's a
Speaker 2: war that arrives on one's doorstep and you need to
Speaker 2: do whatever you've got to do. And I don't think
Speaker 2: it's controversial to say that they find themselves in a
Speaker 2: pretty conventional situation and they need warm bodies. It kind
Speaker 2: of comes down to that, Yeah, the technology matters, and
Speaker 2: it's been amazing to watch that, hasn't it That the
Speaker 2: adaptation and the little drone shops underground and whatnot have
Speaker 2: been fascinated by that. That's just human adaptability. But at
Speaker 2: the end of the day, they need warm bodies defending
Speaker 2: a line dug in and it takes you back to well,
Speaker 2: the US Civil War, you know, where they started digging
Speaker 2: in and and that's kind of that was the precursor.
Speaker 1: So it takes me back to Breaking Rand. The first
Speaker 1: thing I think of, remember the Australian movie Breaking Around,
Speaker 1: I do, yeah, And I think that was like in
Speaker 1: the Boer War or something it was, and which is
Speaker 1: like eighteen ninety or somewhere in center anyway, and we're
Speaker 1: very famous movie for those people who haven't watched a
Speaker 1: great movie, one of the great films.
Speaker 3: At Australia.
Speaker 1: Government was actually able to well southtrat Gun was able
Speaker 1: to help one, but they were they were sitting in
Speaker 1: trenches and in those days communication was done by a runner.
Speaker 2: That's right. Now communication might be slightly different, but well,
Speaker 2: interestingly in the Ukraine k phones so it's landline.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it's like a box with the that's what
Speaker 3: I call it.
Speaker 2: And they're targetable and they're being used because there's electronic
Speaker 2: magnetic pulses and all this type of stuff being used
Speaker 2: blanketing out communications conventional communicator. There's runners are being used still,
Speaker 2: and notes and notes. So in the in the in
Speaker 2: the short in the battle space, the forward edge of
Speaker 2: the battle area, the fever as it was called, in
Speaker 2: those trenches, there's notes and runners being used between pits
Speaker 2: and those types of things. So comm's cord you might
Speaker 2: never have heard of that, but three tugs means safe
Speaker 2: to come and too. So all this these in a
Speaker 2: conventional war that's not of our choosing, you don't get
Speaker 2: to use the full remit of technology and capability because
Speaker 2: there's an enemy that's just the equal of yours.
Speaker 1: Certainly going to make that bing that yeah, you can't make,
Speaker 1: you can't meet that, you can't make any other presumption
Speaker 1: because more likely you could be wrong.
Speaker 2: And the gravity of that is a big deal exactly.
Speaker 2: And so those wars of choice that I've been involved in.
Speaker 3: And so which was have you been where have you
Speaker 3: gone to? So I served in the.
Speaker 2: Big Three team or Afghanistan and Iraq over eleven over
Speaker 2: a period about a dozen deployments and then other missions
Speaker 2: and other activities around them.
Speaker 3: And what was your role?
Speaker 2: So I started off as a six ICEE and then
Speaker 2: end up running what's that? A trooper? So I was
Speaker 2: in a team and I was the shipkicker, the junior
Speaker 2: guy in nineteen ninety one, and then I was in
Speaker 2: the unit until pretty much until twenty seventeen. In twenty fifteen,
Speaker 2: I finished up on the teams as a team commander
Speaker 2: or our bravo, the senior sergeant role in the.
Speaker 1: We're talking says correct? So what would your maybe the
Speaker 1: role is probably not the right word. What would your
Speaker 1: function be of your unit? Would be to go and
Speaker 1: do something, catch someone as surveillance what would have been?
Speaker 2: Yeah, all of those things and more so. We were
Speaker 2: special missions unit, so we greet or we address missions
Speaker 2: without precedent. So what's often means that problems and attacks
Speaker 2: on or threats to the national capability and national interests
Speaker 2: of Australia without precedents. You know, whether that's by terrorists,
Speaker 2: whether it's technical humans, war fighting, all of those things.
Speaker 2: So I've worked everything from one up by myself in
Speaker 2: the streets of some shitty a city in the world,
Speaker 2: to what would your mission be with the captive someone
Speaker 2: or to watch them be surveillance or something along those lines,
Speaker 2: to related to information and people, and then everything through
Speaker 2: to working is a thirty man troupe on a more
Speaker 2: conventional direct attack or direct a more direct active jumping
Speaker 2: out of helicopters and blowing things in the essays gets
Speaker 2: a bit confused at times by the imagery we see
Speaker 2: movies and the movies, yeah, and it makes us look
Speaker 2: very one dimensional, but we're not where, We're anywhere anything anytime,
Speaker 2: force and everything that that encapsulates.
Speaker 1: Do you have to in the course to become apart
Speaker 1: from be able to prove that you know you can
Speaker 1: you know you're not going to panic when you get
Speaker 1: go under water or whatever those things you see in
Speaker 1: the TV shows, apart from those things. In the learning process,
Speaker 1: do they what skills do they teach you apart from
Speaker 1: how to shoot and all those sort of things, but
Speaker 1: obviously combat whatever, But what other skills they teach, like
Speaker 1: engineering skills or you do a little bit of everything.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a little bit of everything like computer skills, code writing,
Speaker 2: language skills right up to paramedicine, surgery, all the weapons,
Speaker 2: all the things that go bang. We do your high
Speaker 2: altitude parachuting, which is everything. If you can imagine, as
Speaker 2: at its extreme, jumping from an airplane at twenty five
Speaker 2: thousand feet at night wearing five hundred kilos worth a
Speaker 2: kit sounds like a lot. It's a lot, and you're
Speaker 2: jumping on oxygen. So it's a highly technical, highly high
Speaker 2: risk event. To rebreathing underwater, rebreathing diving underwater and submarine release.
Speaker 2: And one thing Australia is really well renowned for is
Speaker 2: our long range vehicle patrols and capability and those three
Speaker 2: things amongst others. There really only means to get to
Speaker 2: the job. The majority of the SAS work is done
Speaker 2: in infill and extraction. The job itself is a whole
Speaker 2: other set of skills, and that's whether we take the
Speaker 2: expert and get them there safely, or we bring the
Speaker 2: skills and execute the mission on the ground as required.
Speaker 1: Are you're talking about that that transport vehicle that we've
Speaker 1: come from, the name of it. Now we've sent quite
Speaker 1: a few of them to the Ukraine, I think, oh.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, the as labs I think itself either, but
Speaker 2: so we but astraight as good at building those things.
Speaker 3: Is it because of our train H yeah?
Speaker 2: I think so. I think they we We were getting
Speaker 2: I D strikes in Afghanistan regularly and surviving a lot
Speaker 2: of them. So I think there was a I think
Speaker 2: there was a technology that just evolved in a local
Speaker 2: place and that's had a asymmetric kind of impact or
Speaker 2: certainly interest from around the world, and that technology spread.
Speaker 2: It's just v shaped holes, so I guess.
Speaker 3: At the bottom of the Yeah, the transport machine.
Speaker 2: It still goes bang inside. I don't know that. But
Speaker 2: but the vehicles, it's it's survivable.
Speaker 1: Morphs dispersus the vibration impact, the impact. So because you
Speaker 1: experience it yourself, ID is that's right?
Speaker 2: In two thousand I unfortunately it was in two thousand
Speaker 2: and eight drove over an I D which turned out
Speaker 2: what we think was an old Russian anti tank mine
Speaker 2: that was remote detonated, and a colleague of mine was
Speaker 2: killed beside me, and our interpreter lost effectively lost both
Speaker 2: of his legs in the blast. I was very traumatic,
Speaker 2: and you know, it's remarkable to think out of the
Speaker 2: dozens of strikes that we had in Afghanistan on the
Speaker 2: cars that we drove, very few deaths. I think we
Speaker 2: really had. We had two or three, I think it
Speaker 2: was over that time. A lot of injuries, et cetera,
Speaker 2: but high survivability. They went to vehicles we had. We
Speaker 2: had our own set of vehicles.
Speaker 3: And what happened to you? Did any happen to you?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I had fragged through the back of both legs
Speaker 2: and burnt. Actually the force blew a boot off of
Speaker 2: an army bootoff, just to give give you an idea
Speaker 2: of the force, which I don't need much idea, really,
Speaker 2: I guess. And I was actually okay. I had a
Speaker 2: bit of surgery and came back to the troop. But
Speaker 2: I contracted an infection. Most of Afghanistans covered in human
Speaker 2: feces and animal feces.
Speaker 3: Really and yeah, well you know, leveraging systems.
Speaker 2: They haven't had a huge sanitary advance there. But and
Speaker 2: they use a fertilizer actually, be fair to them, they
Speaker 2: use they reuse it for fertilizer. These are pretty humble existences.
Speaker 2: And so I got a staff infection, a goal and
Speaker 2: staff infection that kind of got up into my Yeah,
Speaker 2: it started there and I had to be repatriating in
Speaker 2: the end because it just that my testicles were swollen
Speaker 2: up to the size of a soccer ball and that
Speaker 2: started to get into my thoracic cavity and they were
Speaker 2: they were going to remove my leg, but they got
Speaker 2: into some heavy drugs back in in Perth. I was
Speaker 2: back just in time, thankfully, and over weeks it calm down.
Speaker 1: And would that have been a signal to you maybe
Speaker 1: it's time and how to hanging the boots up a bit?
Speaker 2: Yeah, well I was. I was forty at that age.
Speaker 3: Is there a retirement age do they forty?
Speaker 2: Is it? There's two retirement ages. One is around fifty
Speaker 2: five or so, yeah, and the other ones, the more
Speaker 2: realistic one is when the young fellas say, Harry Off,
Speaker 2: you were a bit slow, and a few times towards
Speaker 2: end and my time, the guys did turn around say mate,
Speaker 2: you're looking a bit slow.
Speaker 3: Oh really?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's and you do straight up and your
Speaker 2: ego wants not to hear that. But slow in terms
Speaker 2: of keeping up, you mean, yeah, definitely keeping up. You
Speaker 2: remember the backpack on absolutely, yeah, when you're getting gunshots,
Speaker 2: fighter you need everybody up in the line. And I
Speaker 2: never fell off or let anyone down, but there was
Speaker 2: a sense that it was harder than it should have been.
Speaker 3: And is that their job to tell you that.
Speaker 2: I think it's all about jobs to tell each other
Speaker 2: that it's you know the essays. Regiment's a prison yard
Speaker 2: you get to go home from. It's it's brutal, but
Speaker 2: there's a as am in respect. You don't have to
Speaker 2: be everyone's best friend, but you need to respect the
Speaker 2: fact that the bloke next to you has got what
Speaker 2: it takes to look after you and you'll have your
Speaker 2: back when it matters.
Speaker 3: Sounds like a footy team.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a lot like a footy team. I work
Speaker 2: in AFL and NRL teams and it is a familiar environment.
Speaker 1: And you want confidence that the guy next to you
Speaker 1: is not going to leave a gap, or if there
Speaker 1: is a gap, that he's going to close the gap.
Speaker 1: And then he's going to run up the line all
Speaker 1: the time with you, and every time you're up, he's
Speaker 1: going to run up.
Speaker 2: And we want to know too that if you're bleeding
Speaker 2: out in the AO that they're going to do their
Speaker 2: best to get your home as well. You know, that's
Speaker 2: a kind of a commitment that we make to all
Speaker 2: the families when we deploy as well.
Speaker 1: And when you did make this decision to leave, you
Speaker 1: mentioned a couple of times you have psychology qualifications. Did
Speaker 1: you do that during your army period or did you
Speaker 1: decided to go in to psychology after that.
Speaker 2: No. I took some advice of a man I call
Speaker 2: my kind of second far the Gary Kingston. I've mentioned
Speaker 2: him a lot, and in the book he once said
Speaker 2: words the effect of, don't let this place be everything
Speaker 2: you are. You know, it's not all you are.
Speaker 1: You're more.
Speaker 2: And he was a great proponent of educating yourself, whether
Speaker 2: that was tertiary or build a carpentry or whatever it was.
Speaker 2: Do something else, be something else. And I took that
Speaker 2: to heart, so I started studying seriously in the last
Speaker 2: ten years I was in the regiment. So often I
Speaker 2: would joke that I'd have a book from a university
Speaker 2: book out on patrol with us and be reading that
Speaker 2: digging a trench while I was having a break. I'd
Speaker 2: be finishing a Uni degree. And it didn't add any
Speaker 2: way to any any effort overseas. It actually gave me
Speaker 2: a distract, helpful, healthy distraction away from planning all the time.
Speaker 2: And it just so happened in twenty nineteen when I
Speaker 2: left the Defense Force full time the weekend or the
Speaker 2: week after I started, I was qualified and registered as
Speaker 2: a psych and I've been.
Speaker 3: So you did that.
Speaker 1: You do that that whilst you were in the military,
Speaker 1: That's right. Last two is online type call I tended.
Speaker 2: Psychology is a seven year degree, the last three of
Speaker 2: which you need to do face to face supervisions and
Speaker 2: all this type of stuff, so like as in an
Speaker 2: intern type thing exactly. Yeah, And so the military gave
Speaker 2: me a part time gig and helped me do that.
Speaker 2: And the military is pretty forgiving like that.
Speaker 3: But the military is great. I mean, the defense forces
Speaker 3: generally are great.
Speaker 2: That way it is now, Yeah, it is support people. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's much better these days.
Speaker 3: Is my psychology?
Speaker 2: Well it seemed to make a lot of sense to me.
Speaker 2: It was something else I was interested in. I kind
Speaker 2: of dropped out of UNI after year twelve. I didn't
Speaker 2: I was going to UNI, and then I thought, I'll
Speaker 2: join the army now, or do UNI and then join
Speaker 2: the army. That was the kind of conundrum, and I
Speaker 2: ended up doing the latter, doing the former. But yeah,
Speaker 2: it was a little bit underfinished business. I read a
Speaker 2: lot about psycholog Jean philosophy. They were kind of my staples.
Speaker 2: I found them fascinating, love the stories that went behind them.
Speaker 2: So yeah, it was kind of It's just natural for me.
Speaker 2: It wasn't I felt like and it makes very good
Speaker 2: use of my lived experience. Now when I work with
Speaker 2: mission critical teams or sports teams or hedge funds. I
Speaker 2: love working with hedge funds. I think they have a
Speaker 2: semi very similar vibe to them when they're up and
Speaker 2: running a private capital team or a deal team. You know,
Speaker 2: you've got a dozen young men and women who just
Speaker 2: want to shoot the lights out. It's the few that
Speaker 2: I work with. Sometimes they feel like a footy team.
Speaker 2: There's that kind of camaraderie in the trenches fighting. So
Speaker 2: I think that my background psychology pulls it together, gives
Speaker 2: it an evidence base, and allows me to tell stories
Speaker 2: and share hopefully my small w wisdom with those people.
Speaker 1: So when did you write Because your first book, I
Speaker 1: think this is your first book, eleven bats.
Speaker 2: My mates, Tommy, I should have called a bat's eleven
Speaker 2: because I'm a ship bats.
Speaker 3: But what is that about eleven bats?
Speaker 2: What's it's just an autobiography mark of my journey from Williamstown,
Speaker 2: Victoria to back to Victoria really where I ended up
Speaker 2: end up at the end of that book at the
Speaker 2: mcg doing an Anzac Days speech and the eleven bats.
Speaker 2: It was my habit to take a cricket bat every
Speaker 2: operation that we went on, every tour we went on,
Speaker 2: and a ball, I presume, and a ball, yeah, a
Speaker 2: few balls because they get a bit lost Sean balls.
Speaker 2: And we'd play cricket, you know, and we recreate or
Speaker 2: we'd even gather information. We use them to gather intelligence
Speaker 2: and bricket Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So you build rapport with
Speaker 2: the localists playing game of cricket and they become you
Speaker 2: a layer of an extra layer of defense. Or you
Speaker 2: go up to the street urchins who you know, you've
Speaker 2: thrown them a ball or whatever, let them get you out,
Speaker 2: and you might just say who's who's old mate over there?
Speaker 2: Who's he you know? And they'll look after you. They'll
Speaker 2: come to knocking and doing and saying this such and
Speaker 2: such as bad man, he's back in town and that
Speaker 2: type of stuff. When I was looking after Alfredo Ronaldo
Speaker 2: up in the hills of Malbusi in Team or Less
Speaker 2: Day he was the protagonist and the antagonist he had
Speaker 2: the militia up there. He was the most interviewed person
Speaker 2: on the planet at one stage, CNN, ABC, Fox, everybody
Speaker 2: was coming to interview him, and there was a conga line.
Speaker 2: So we set up this game of cricket and we
Speaker 2: needed to note everybody who came into seem because there
Speaker 2: were spies running everywhere from all corners, from Portugal to
Speaker 2: the US, et cetera, Indonesia and Indonesia, lots of them,
Speaker 2: and so we'd play a game of cricket and everyone
Speaker 2: was forced to stop. We got photos, got a bit
Speaker 2: of narrative from them, fingerprints where we thought there was
Speaker 2: a high threat, would just throw throw them a ball
Speaker 2: or give him a glass or something, just all in
Speaker 2: this of the ball it was, yeah, there was, there
Speaker 2: was all that kind of carry on.
Speaker 1: So that was your sort of is your go to
Speaker 1: eleven bats being a cricket side, that's right, eleven men
Speaker 1: eleven bats. But you've played around with that because is
Speaker 1: that something that was that you can that was your
Speaker 1: common denominator. I guess from most of your deployments.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I came home to cricket, to the apple Cross
Speaker 2: Cricket Club. Who I'm still available for selection?
Speaker 3: There he's calling out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was a place to come home and be
Speaker 2: moth not Harry, if that makes sense. And my cricket
Speaker 2: mates grew to unders really deeply understand that, and they
Speaker 2: didn't bug me about my military service. I could just
Speaker 2: come home, be one of the blokes, a handy up
Speaker 2: here into the breeze bowler, a normal human being. And
Speaker 2: I speak emotively about it because it played such a
Speaker 2: massive role in normalizing life for me.
Speaker 3: You know, how does that work?
Speaker 1: One minute, you're in Afghanistan and you're trying to work
Speaker 1: out if someone's going to blow you up or do
Speaker 1: something terrible, and you're seeing all sorts of crazy stuff
Speaker 1: and living with individuals who are.
Speaker 3: Same the same milk.
Speaker 1: Then you come back to Victoria and where everybody is
Speaker 1: just like running the local coffee shop and making baking
Speaker 1: and eggs and digging ditches for as a plumb or whatever,
Speaker 1: and your mates from school, I presume, and you create club.
Speaker 3: How does that transition work?
Speaker 2: It's bizarre, it really is. We talk about being away.
Speaker 2: I ended up referring to being away like being at home,
Speaker 2: and being at home like being away. That was really
Speaker 2: how it felt. That makes so much sense to me. Yeah,
Speaker 2: we go away to the unordered, extraordinary world where things
Speaker 2: that happened shouldn't happen we wish or wish they didn't.
Speaker 2: Then we come back to this ordinary world. You talk
Speaker 2: about post office, milk bars, and.
Speaker 3: It's all structured the morning, get a coffee.
Speaker 2: Control, Yeah, less unless you feel under control. But yeah,
Speaker 2: so I remember being walking the streets of Afar off country,
Speaker 2: being one of the most dangerous jobs I'd been in
Speaker 2: decades or in years, on a Friday night, and I
Speaker 2: knew I was leaving in the morning. We'd finished up,
Speaker 2: I did the handover, got on the plane and got home.
Speaker 2: And on the Sunday, I was sitting at home the
Speaker 2: family dinner in Australia with the kids and Daniel and
Speaker 2: my wife, and we were having broccoli mash s buds
Speaker 2: and lamb chops. That was my welcome home dinner, always
Speaker 2: my favorite dinner. And the kids are arguing and I
Speaker 2: just caught myself thinking, what the fuck, what's just going on?
Speaker 2: My head's still there because I'm going I wonder if
Speaker 2: John I got to mate in time, and I wonder
Speaker 2: if anyone got hurt on the particular part of the
Speaker 2: mission I knew. And it takes a week or two
Speaker 2: just to stop wanting to is everything okay? Do you
Speaker 2: need hand and dure walking the streets or jumping in out?
Speaker 2: So it's a very very hard transition. But my wife
Speaker 2: worked out very early on that I needed to get
Speaker 2: down to the club pretty quick too. That was it
Speaker 2: was a source of tension earlier now in that period,
Speaker 2: but in my career, our marriage. But it's remarkable how
Speaker 2: well that social setting would buffer those It would bring
Speaker 2: me back to Earth's decompression. Absolutely, it's a perfect word
Speaker 2: for it. Yeah, decompressing. So when I go back and
Speaker 2: mentor young men, now, I talk about your third thing,
Speaker 2: your first things, your family, your second things, your vocation,
Speaker 2: and really they get just wound up together inextricably. But
Speaker 2: you need a third, third thing and that is you.
Speaker 2: You know, buger the family, bugger the vocation. Where can
Speaker 2: I go just to be the real identity inside of me?
Speaker 2: Because in a lot of ways, the sas facade, if
Speaker 2: you're not careful, takes over.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you become that you become.
Speaker 2: That and that's let me sound strange, let me say
Speaker 2: that that's not an identity you want to carry around
Speaker 2: with you forever. That's something you want to be able
Speaker 2: to slip in and out of. And that's an agility
Speaker 2: that we talk about now, which is a discussion that
Speaker 2: we never had, and I think it's a really important discussion.
Speaker 1: That's an interesting point in terms of particularly business people
Speaker 1: or people just people generally when it comes to remaining
Speaker 1: relevant to society. If you see that as an important thing,
Speaker 1: that to some extent means that you can then follow
Speaker 1: how society is changing as opposed to just sticking in
Speaker 1: one spot and just being that person you think you are. Like,
Speaker 1: our brain is interesting, and you're, being a psychologist know
Speaker 1: more about this than me. But our brains a very
Speaker 1: interesting in terms of how we build a story about
Speaker 1: ourselves and everything we do and then ends up becoming
Speaker 1: affirmation of the story you built about ourselves.
Speaker 3: And then.
Speaker 1: And then sometimes we end up just living that life
Speaker 1: and get stuck as opposed to making use the plasticity
Speaker 1: of our brain to think of our life.
Speaker 2: I love the words stuck, by the way, it's the
Speaker 2: perfect word stuck in time, stuck in characters, stuck in family,
Speaker 2: stuck in event, or trauma, whatever, whatever.
Speaker 3: It is, including trauma. It's perfect, including trauma, and a
Speaker 3: lot of people suffer from this.
Speaker 1: But you know, our brain does have plasticity, and which
Speaker 1: basically means I can change things and change the story
Speaker 1: about myself and start affirming the news story about myself.
Speaker 1: And people often say to me, ask me about it.
Speaker 1: How do you stay relevant given changes? Like you know,
Speaker 1: one stage, I worked at a law firm and I
Speaker 1: mortgage business and then I'm broadcasting this type of stuff.
Speaker 1: And how important is the willingness for an individual to
Speaker 1: be able to You've done it to be able to.
Speaker 1: I might use it technical term, use our brain to
Speaker 1: actually stay relevant. Not me being relevant to an audio,
Speaker 1: it's just me being relevant to society. What can I
Speaker 1: contribute to my society? Not everybody, but my society. How
Speaker 1: important is that as a technique?
Speaker 2: I think it's very important. And you've a couple of
Speaker 2: things there. You know, the plasticity of the brain is
Speaker 2: a thing these days. It's labile is another term that's
Speaker 2: used that applies to all aspects of us as humans.
Speaker 2: We're never ever static. We're allostatic. We're navigating the world changing.
Speaker 2: You know, we're not a beat of strings or a
Speaker 2: straight linear line. We're kind of Depending on which philosophy
Speaker 2: you want to talk to process theory with Whitehead would
Speaker 2: talk about we're spiraling through space, changing every second, and
Speaker 2: that's true. You know, we're evolving or adapting as we go,
Speaker 2: which is the other point you raise. You are an adaptable,
Speaker 2: highly adaptable person. Not everybody is. There's a biology behind
Speaker 2: our personality and our psychology, and some people are more
Speaker 2: tolerant to ambiguity. You would be someone like that. Founders.
Speaker 2: I find work a lot with founders and also with
Speaker 2: individuals who started their own family offly high net wealth,
Speaker 2: so who might be a bit stuck in their family
Speaker 2: in the wealth and the intergenerational transfer, etc. But founders
Speaker 2: have a high tolerance to ambiguity and they're under the
Speaker 2: same I think, the same risk profile that they can
Speaker 2: get stuck in this persona that they've created for themselves.
Speaker 2: You know, the King of Collins Street or the King
Speaker 2: of Macquarie and the suit and tie and I say, well,
Speaker 2: when was the last time you went and had a
Speaker 2: Friday night at the footy with your mates? Your schoolmates,
Speaker 2: because most of our schoolmates are still good, close community,
Speaker 2: and it's not surprising to hear them say, oh, months ago,
Speaker 2: or I don't really catch up, or I'm too busy,
Speaker 2: or and Mark, i've sat new again. This is your
Speaker 2: area of expertise. But I've been surprised at how many
Speaker 2: I don't know. I'll make a generalization at sixty sixty
Speaker 2: five year old men who've sold their business for a
Speaker 2: life changing amount of money. To some it's twenty million,
Speaker 2: to some it's two hundred million, and their life around
Speaker 2: them behind the facade is atrophied, their relationships of atrophied,
Speaker 2: their health is atrophied, their social connectivity and all that.
Speaker 2: I can go on. And it's and they feel it.
Speaker 2: They feel there like a sense of loss almost or regrets,
Speaker 2: or they it's not as a happy time as they
Speaker 2: had been imagining. I shouldn't laugh, but it's so I
Speaker 2: don't think it's just as real. It's very real, and
Speaker 2: so I don't think it's necessarily just the remit of
Speaker 2: veterans or sports athletes have the same thing.
Speaker 3: Time.
Speaker 2: For every one hundred athletes, one of them will make
Speaker 2: life changing.
Speaker 3: Money and means or become a TV presenter or a.
Speaker 2: TV presenter exactly. But the other ninety nine who have
Speaker 2: sacrife everything to on the on the journey won't have that.
Speaker 2: So this is what do you say to them? Well,
Speaker 2: you've got the very first thing any human needs to
Speaker 2: do if they want to change is do and they
Speaker 2: have check where you at right now? And let's be realistic,
Speaker 2: But at.
Speaker 3: What point before they get to the retirement point?
Speaker 2: Or well, I can only go off when they first
Speaker 2: come to me if I'm working to them, and I
Speaker 2: do a bit more of that than I would have
Speaker 2: expected these days. But yes, a reality check, a fish slabe,
Speaker 2: wake up, you know, let's let's let's where are we at?
Speaker 2: You know? And there's any any number of means. And
Speaker 2: I'm from the Maslow kind of school of psychology where
Speaker 2: I'm not there to provide solutions, and no psychologists should be.
Speaker 2: We're here to get it out of you. As Plato says,
Speaker 2: all information exists within us. It's just us up to
Speaker 2: us to find it. And so I become the mid
Speaker 2: wife to your birthing, your your understanding of yourself. And
Speaker 2: I think with that facade to sometimes and as our
Speaker 2: lives atrophying, behind it the distance with there's a distance
Speaker 2: with ourselves that we create. And you alluded to that
Speaker 2: earlier about how we look for reassurance that we're on
Speaker 2: the right path. And I think when we the soldiers
Speaker 2: that I see, particularly special forces soldiers, if this is
Speaker 2: all they are, this, this, this character, if they don't
Speaker 2: have this kind of deeper sense of connection to community
Speaker 2: or to to citizenry, as the ancient Greeks might put it,
Speaker 2: then it's it's very hard work to kind of pull
Speaker 2: them back.
Speaker 3: Is it a trade off though, between and I have
Speaker 3: no idea, but is it I'm just wondering.
Speaker 1: Is it a trade of between the effectiveness of a
Speaker 1: particularly a specialized soldier like an s a says person
Speaker 1: and there identification of themselves as being this person. Is
Speaker 1: there a trade off between that being really effective at
Speaker 1: their job but therefore as a result of being less
Speaker 1: effective in terms of looking at the bigger picture for
Speaker 1: when the day they retire, And is there a sort
Speaker 1: of a process where it's when they're first starting, they're
Speaker 1: really effective when they're twenty eight, twenty on, whatever the
Speaker 1: age is when they first kick it off, and as
Speaker 1: they start to reach forty, does the army or does
Speaker 1: the defense forces try and do this for them so
Speaker 1: that they just become more effective as a citizen.
Speaker 2: The way I love it mostly, and we haven't done
Speaker 2: a great job of that with my generation, so I
Speaker 2: probably see more people stuck there. In fact, what you're
Speaker 2: talking about is exactly what the book is about. Oh cool,
Speaker 2: it's about the fourth pillar is the philosophical pillar. The
Speaker 2: other three pillars in any high performance program on the
Speaker 2: planet largely around the three pillars physical, psychological, and social pillars.
Speaker 2: And that's whether they mean to or not. That's and
Speaker 2: so the fourth pillar, I argue in the book is
Speaker 2: a philosophical pillar. To your question, we can do both
Speaker 2: at the same time, and we can learn from the Greeks.
Speaker 2: Here the agogies of the ancient Greeks, whether they be
Speaker 2: the Spartans or going back further pre Socratic Heraclitus times,
Speaker 2: when they grew warriors or soldiers, they went off to
Speaker 2: these agogies and they were schoolhouses to train not only
Speaker 2: military martial skills, but they learned erudition, history, geography, They
Speaker 2: learnt storytelling, dance, poetry and the reasons for dance and poetry,
Speaker 2: and they learned about a respect for life, and how
Speaker 2: to take a life, and the respect for that life,
Speaker 2: and how they're not in competition, they're actually mutually inclusive,
Speaker 2: and they learn about how to be a good citizen
Speaker 2: and what that means. The advantage that they had is
Speaker 2: that the warrior cultures were embedded in the society, because
Speaker 2: these are societies on more footings permanently, aren't they if
Speaker 2: you can imagine the Greek societies, and in some ways
Speaker 2: we still are today. But I think that we can
Speaker 2: learn some lessons, and I try to tease that out
Speaker 2: in the book. What are the lessons that we can learn?
Speaker 2: And as I said earlier, when I sit with young
Speaker 2: soldiers now, I try my hardest to make that point
Speaker 2: to them. You know, one of the first conversations I
Speaker 2: have with a young sas soldier is what your plan
Speaker 2: be That there's a twenty five percent chance you'll be
Speaker 2: dead inside ten years. It's not that dramatic, but there's
Speaker 2: a chance, a really high chance you'll be injured with
Speaker 2: a career ending broken back, leg or whatever the case
Speaker 2: may be, or lose a foot or and I and
Speaker 2: so you've got about a fifty percent chance of being
Speaker 2: here after ten years. So you know, what your plan be.
Speaker 2: The reality is that in this room of twenty five
Speaker 2: of you won't be here in three years time due
Speaker 2: to matters outside of your control, because that the job's
Speaker 2: tough like that, and so it's a bit of again
Speaker 2: a fish slab. This is where you're at. You're back
Speaker 2: to the bottom again. You're coming in and we expect
Speaker 2: you to be elite with guns, languages, and technology. We
Speaker 2: also expect you to be elite at personal administration personal life.
Speaker 2: Being connected to the community doesn't mean you have to
Speaker 2: go and serve on boards or anything like that, but
Speaker 2: it just means you have.
Speaker 3: To have a good sense to a member a cricket.
Speaker 2: I think it's as flippant as it sounds crochet cricket
Speaker 2: or Canasta club. As I say, three, get out and
Speaker 2: get let civilians reflect back to you that this is
Speaker 2: what you're coming you. Eventually we have to return to it.
Speaker 1: And I guess what you've got to teach them as
Speaker 1: an openness to be that person. Yeah, because a lot
Speaker 1: of them probably think, no, I can't be that because
Speaker 1: because that might create weakness in me. In my current job,
Speaker 1: my current role is I cannot have any weakness in
Speaker 1: me whatsoever, because I'm going out there against whoever.
Speaker 3: It needed, the enemy.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, I think you can be
Speaker 1: I'd be interested here what you got to say. I
Speaker 1: think you can be open but not be weak. I
Speaker 1: think actually openness to me is a strength. It makes
Speaker 1: you strongsolutely. Yeah, it makes you more of a whole.
Speaker 3: Person, which means you're probably stronger.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, And you want to combine the king and the philosopher.
Speaker 2: You know that the wisdom is embodied in the courage,
Speaker 2: in the ability to be able to switch from compassionate
Speaker 2: father and lover at home to a warrior who can
Speaker 2: be brutal and deliver violence when required. I hope I'm
Speaker 2: a kind of living of that. And the majority of
Speaker 2: sas soldiers that I've served with, I would say embody
Speaker 2: that they're compassionate, good men who are also able to
Speaker 2: do things that they're asked to do in the interests
Speaker 2: of the national national security.
Speaker 3: And so today the sorts of things you do, I
Speaker 3: presume hopefully this is the case you are doing. You
Speaker 3: go and do talks and this sort of stuff. People
Speaker 3: can book you to do a lot of speech, but
Speaker 3: like a.
Speaker 2: Talk to a group, yeah, yeah, do yeah, lecturing. I
Speaker 2: don't do a heap of keynote speaking, but I do
Speaker 2: a bit here and there. For corporates are pretty happy
Speaker 2: to hear or keen to hear the stories. But I
Speaker 2: do spend a lot of time with young soldiers. One
Speaker 2: thing I'd like to do is set up a program
Speaker 2: and an institute where soldiers from all across the journey
Speaker 2: from civilian to elder, without going into it too deeply,
Speaker 2: can come and discuss and share stories. And I think
Speaker 2: that's something that's missing. There's an old there's an old
Speaker 2: kind of proverb. I'll be very quick with the soldiers.
Speaker 2: Once would go away to war, they'd be away for
Speaker 2: a long time. It's along the lines of Homers return
Speaker 2: to Ithacus, you know, distances the Odyssey.
Speaker 3: But the.
Speaker 2: Warriors would you know, at sixteen, they'd be trained up,
Speaker 2: they'd go off to war, and then I come home
Speaker 2: and the young warriors wouldn't come straight home. They'd be
Speaker 2: left on the edge of the village and they would
Speaker 2: be left there to process the events, to celebrate the
Speaker 2: successes and commemorate the losses, to share stories about what
Speaker 2: they'd been through, and the village would come out to them,
Speaker 2: share food, and say when you're ready, we're here for you,
Speaker 2: and the elders and the spiritual leaders would come out
Speaker 2: and help them process and sit and listen to them,
Speaker 2: and then when they are ready they would come home
Speaker 2: and kind of decompression. This sense of decompressing and processing
Speaker 2: the experiences and I think in the modern world when
Speaker 2: it's such a bloody rush and this is not only
Speaker 2: for veterans, this is for our police, our emergency services.
Speaker 2: They live in the extraordinary world and it's something that
Speaker 2: we don't do well to bring transition them back to
Speaker 2: the ordinary world, which for anyone listening in the in
Speaker 2: the mission critical teams, it's a wonderful world. Back in
Speaker 2: civilian world, there's a great place to be and I
Speaker 2: think I'd like that's something I'll be looking at in
Speaker 2: the future. Well, we're not in the future. We're doing
Speaker 2: now to help to share those stories and I'm not
Speaker 2: sure what it looks like yet, but at the moment,
Speaker 2: it's a fireside chats and those discussions that you alluded to.
Speaker 1: And your two show says Stone, just explain what that is.
Speaker 1: That's obviously your business name, but what is it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Percy Sritie, who's one of the themes or one
Speaker 2: of the characters in the book. The Greatest, I think
Speaker 2: the greatest coach of all time owned a dozen world
Speaker 2: champions and gold medals and world championships out of a
Speaker 2: tin shack in Portsy. He was a prolific writer and reader.
Speaker 2: And he had a philosophy called the Stoton philosophy, which
Speaker 2: is a portmanteau or a blended word from Stoic, sto
Speaker 2: and Spartan, and that's the st that the ta n
Speaker 2: and he put those words together. He believed the Stoic
Speaker 2: philosophy was good, but it was found wanton in terms
Speaker 2: of an embodied philosophy. So the physical training aspects, he
Speaker 2: thought Spartan, the Spartan a go Gey approaches was the
Speaker 2: missing piece to Stoicism to make it complete for an athlete,
Speaker 2: which he believed was the purest and the highest order
Speaker 2: of humanity. And that's what I borrow that from my
Speaker 2: business name.
Speaker 3: And that's something obviously believe.
Speaker 1: It's funny you're just talking about a month ago about
Speaker 1: like a decompression process of putting pa outside the village
Speaker 1: and the village coming to them and letting people just
Speaker 1: sort of stay outside the village before until they're ready
Speaker 1: to come in. And you mentioned Odysseus or the Odyssey, Well,
Speaker 1: Homer's story allegedly it was Homer, who we don't know
Speaker 1: actually who wrote it. Let's say it was Homer. And
Speaker 1: it seems like that whole Odyssey was for Odysseus was
Speaker 1: a decompression process for him to get back into society
Speaker 1: back in Ithaca, because he just finished the Trojan more,
Speaker 1: he just came out of the Trojan War and and
Speaker 1: and between wherever Troy was and getting back to Ithaca,
Speaker 1: which is on the other side of Grease on the
Speaker 1: western side.
Speaker 3: Agrees, he had to go through a whole lot of adventures.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 3: And maybe do you do you have you ever thought
Speaker 3: about this?
Speaker 1: Maybe Homer was writing a story about decompression and getting
Speaker 1: back into society.
Speaker 2: I hope so, because that's that's the model. Yeah, well
Speaker 2: lutely do. And and you know the monsters, the cyclops
Speaker 2: and the sirens and all the temptations. The temptations are
Speaker 2: all the monsters of from within, you know, yeah, very
Speaker 2: Freudian kind of of So these are the monsters and
Speaker 2: the demons that he wrestles with to get home to
Speaker 2: his beloveds and back to being back to citizenry. And yes,
Speaker 2: I do, and I think that it's funny that it's
Speaker 2: not funny, it's it's it's curious that in other indigenous
Speaker 2: cultures they have similar stories about the warriors coming home
Speaker 2: and how they will depro There's a theory about World
Speaker 2: War One, which I think is very rubbery, that the
Speaker 2: ship trips home, that the trips home in the ships
Speaker 2: helped some veterans or some of the soldiers to prolong
Speaker 2: the long, long trips. I don't think the research backs
Speaker 2: that up, but it's again, I think it would have
Speaker 2: been helpful for some. And I'm not even sure that
Speaker 2: making room to process can can completely address anything. There's
Speaker 2: the bruised apples theory that you know, we you roll
Speaker 2: them down the stairs enough stairs and the bruises don't
Speaker 2: kind of heal. But I know another model I use
Speaker 2: is the oak table. You know, a veteran is like
Speaker 2: a beautiful, old, hundreds of years old oak table. You're
Speaker 2: going to take that over the ike every day of
Speaker 2: the week. It's battered and bruised and being burned on
Speaker 2: the corners and chipped. And Grandpa act I saw a
Speaker 2: bit off and add a new Bit's got lots of
Speaker 2: stories and lots of stories in Providence exactly exactly, and
Speaker 2: it's that patina that we all carry that we should
Speaker 2: be we should be really be embracing and the metaphor
Speaker 2: of the village or the metaphor of Homer for veterans,
Speaker 2: that that's kind of the staple to my stories. And
Speaker 2: as I said, it's not only I've realized now that
Speaker 2: it's not not only the mission critical teams, police, emergency
Speaker 2: services and first responders, but it's also athletes. I think
Speaker 2: it's a useful conversation and also think it's a useful
Speaker 2: conversation for burnt out private credit team. I got a
Speaker 2: number of forty year olds I'm working with at the
Speaker 2: moment that I'm saying, are you sure this is the
Speaker 2: right job for you? You know, you've you've shot the
Speaker 2: lights out, but it's taken a toll, you know, and
Speaker 2: you've got to stop and assess that at some stone.
Speaker 1: I know one forty plus year rold that you do
Speaker 1: look after and he's a mate. You need it say
Speaker 1: his name, but he has that name.
Speaker 3: Chair.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you need more of Harry. And by the way,
Speaker 1: you're lucky you've got Harry. Harry, thanks very much. I
Speaker 1: really appreciate it.
Speaker 3: And this is the fourth pillar. This sort of reading
Speaker 3: is not what generally.
Speaker 1: I would expect to get from a veteran an XSAS person,
Speaker 1: but the wisdom and from what we're just discussing because
Speaker 1: I haven't read the book yet, but the wisdom and
Speaker 1: the whole discussion around how we look at our lives,
Speaker 1: not as a veteran but as anyone who's retiring from anything.
Speaker 1: That's really important because I've been through that process myself,
Speaker 1: wondering we'll hang on a minute. I used to identify
Speaker 1: myself with a certain as a certain type of person,
Speaker 1: and I actually got quite ill for about three months,
Speaker 1: very sick and because because it was a full stop
Speaker 1: put in my career voluntarily, but I didn't realize how
Speaker 1: much I was thought I was that person, and it
Speaker 1: took me years to work it out. I'm lucky I'm
Speaker 1: much older now, but it took me a long time
Speaker 1: to work that stuff out. And I was one of
Speaker 1: the lucky ones because I had good support around me,
Speaker 1: et cetera. But I recommend someone read these things, and
Speaker 1: if you're a partner of somebody who's in the same category.
Speaker 3: This is a great type of insight. This type of
Speaker 3: insight is what we need to read. So thanks very much.
Speaker 2: Appreciate you, Mark, I appreciate it. Thank you.
Speaker 3: You're welcome.