The Psychological Cost of Being Entertained Lt Col Dave Grossman #566

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You're listening to Bulletproof Radio with Dave Asprey. Today's cool fact of the day is that our Neanderthal ancestors probably led no more violent lives than us humans, at least according to skull damage. And it looks like Neanderthals did experience plenty of head injuries, but they didn't get any more of them than other Stone Age humans. Rates of fracture and other bone damage in a large sample of them matches rates previously reported for human foragers and even for farmers in the past 10,000 years. And this was research conducted in Germany. It turns out men, as you might expect, suffered the bulk of harmful knocks to the head, whether they were Neanderthals or ancient humans. Maybe that's why they call us guys, hard headed. Statistical models run by the team indicate that skull injuries affected about 4% to 33% of Neanderthals and 2 to 34% of ancient humans. So maybe cavemen had thicker skulls for some other reason. Maybe just because it made them look cool. Well, because foreshadowing is my craft, you might imagine. We're going to talk about violence today. In fact, we are going to talk about more than just violence. We're going to talk about combat, we're going to talk about killing. We're going to talk about human biology, the way your nervous system works. With one of my. Actually, one of the most impressive authors that you may not have heard of, someone whose books just completely blew me away because of the science and the human behavior and just the humanness that was in them. I'm talking about a couple of books by Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, who's a retired U.S. army Ranger and a paratrooper, former West Point psychology professor who's the director of the Killology Research Group and actually developed that term, which is the study of psychological and physiological effects of killing and combat on the human psyche. He's written four novels, a couple of kids books, some nonfiction books, and especially on killing, which is a book that you absolutely have to read if you want to understand the full range of what killing, what's going on inside your brain. And I mean in terms of being a game changer, someone who's really led the field. He's been called upon to write the entry on aggression and violence in the Oxford Companion to the American Military History and even the academic press Encyclopedia of Violence, Peace and Conflict. And he's been traveling 300 days a year for two decades as a leading trainer for military, law enforcement, mental health providers and school safety. Lt. Col. Grossman, or Dave, as I'm going to call you, welcome to Bulletproof Radio. It's such an honor to have you on, Dave.

It goes the other way around. You know what? Yeah. We've broken through the log jam of the corporate media. I honor you for doing these podcasts as depth of information. I honor your listeners who are willing to take the time to dig in deeper, get a greater depth of information. We're in an amazing time when, when all the corporate log jams have been broken open and, you know, we've got, we got millions of titles on Amazon where people are self publishing and, and the process reviews them and the good stuff filters to the top. And it's an honor to be on board with you.

I want to know. I mean, there's. There's a lot of people who've been through the military, millions and millions. Very few of them become West Point professors or just so steeped in the science of studying the hardest and most personal, at least hopefully personal part of combat. What's going on in your body when you're actually doing the hardest work of being a soldier? What made you go there? Why is this where you put your life's work?

Dave? I enlisted in the army in 1974. Vietnam veterans were all around us, 82nd Airborne Division. We were going to deploy any minute. We'll be in combat anytime. And we had these Vietnam vets all around us and we wanted to talk about combat. We wanted them to tell us what combat was going to be like. And it's this weird taboo. They just wouldn't talk about it. And, you know, I thought at the core of the matter was killing. And so my first book, you know, here I'm getting my master's degree and read to teaching at West Point. I did my master's thesis, which turned into one chapter of my book on killing. And here's on killing in a nutshell. And it's important. People point some horrible crime. Oh, that proves we're all killers. That's literally one in a million. You explained to me the 99.9% of our citizens will go a lifetime, never kill anybody. Never tried to explain that. Divorce, infidelity, layoff, traffic accidents, and less than one in a thousand citizens in a lifetime will even seriously attempt to kill another person. Explain that.

So it's pretty rare.

Yeah. Inside most healthy members of our species, there appears to be hardwired resistance against killing our own kind. Sociopaths don't have that resistance. Healthy people have to be trained to kill. We found out in World War II that most of the troops wouldn't pull the trigger. It was a training flaw. Taught them to shoot at bullseyes. We have no known cases. Any bullseyes ever attacking our troops? If you've been in the armed forces since the Korean war. He didn't shoot. No stinking bullseye. Shot a man shaped silhouette, hit the target, target drop, stimulus response, stimulus, response, reward schedule. Like a pilot in a flight simulator. Like a kid in a fire drill. Modern training makes killing a condition response. And oh, by the way, the video games are doing the exact same thing to our kids. So the first book came out, half a million copies sold. Marine Corps commandants required reading on killing. And you know what I found out is.

I gotta pause you for one second there. So. Bulletproof radio listeners. This is required reading for you too. I'm not kidding. It's that good of a book. All right, keep going.

But you know, so pre 9 11, I retired 1998. I'm teaching cops nationwide, LAPD SWAT. They're in the fight every day. And then 911 happens. We got guys in the fight. And what I found out was, you know, World War II and Vietnam and interviewed a lot of World War II Vietnam vets. As you look at this distinguished noble gentleman, it's easy to lose track of the fact that he was 18 years old when this happened. And you know, World War II Vietnam for these 18 year old kids, children was a big deal. It was hard and it was really psychologically traumatic. What I found with law enforcement have fully prepared themselves and are lawfully using their skills with most of the military in this war today, a mature individual who's prepared themselves mind, body and spirit. Killing is just not that big a deal. What's really important is what came out in the next book on combat. Issued in the DEA academy, issued in the Marshals Academy. What are you going to experience at the moment in time? Tunnel vision. Why didn't somebody tell us we'd experience a tunnel vision? Auditory exclusion. Why didn't Buddy tell us his shots kept muted in the heat of battle? Slow motion time. Hundreds of people have told me they can see the bullet in combat. And I believe on several occasions they could point to where it hit. No way they could have done that. It's like airsoft. Slow up your track with your eyes. Mental gaps. Half of all trained seasoned cops have blackouts. Gaps in the memory. About about 1 out of 5 train season cops remember something that did not happen early in the war. One of our tier 1 spec ops medics asked me, said, why do so many of the wounded hallucinate? And so here we've got this, this. These amazing things happening in the heat of battle. If you're sitting here right now, set aside the fact somebody trying to kill you, Boom. Tunnel vision, auditory exclusion, slow motion time. Memory gaps, memory distortions. It would meet every definition of a psychotic episode. Just those things about cells would be traumatizing. But when you're warned about these things, then they're not that big a deal. And that's part of the book. But then it's what happens afterwards, and that's really the critical part. You touch a hot stove as a kid, how many times you touch a hot soap? Just once. Unless you're destined to be a paratrooper and jump out of good planes all day long. Just once. And you touch that stove, and we got the. Let's just talk, keep it simple. The human brain on top of the dog brain. And the puppy punches a hole through this green door, grabbed you by the throat, pees in your lap, said, don't ever touch that stove again. And it works. A hardwired network. When there's fear and pain associated with learning, bam. A hardwired network is established. Well, if you. If that was done touching a hot stove, how much more so from combat? So a state trooper gunfight. He's alive, victorious. A week later, he's sitting up in the bleachers with his wife, watching the daughter at a swim meet. His daughter's gun goes off when he doesn't expect it. Oh, heart pounding, gasping for bear, drenched with sweat. His wife thinks he's having a heart attack. It's not a heart attack. It's a panic attack. It is not ptsd, but it can become PTSD depending how you deal with it. Nobody warned that it might happen. Nobody thought of what to do when it happens. And so we warn people about what's going to happen afterwards, how to prepare themselves, how it can become ptsd, and how to prevent it. I teach about ptsd, and, you know, the vast majority of veterans do not have ptsd. A new greatest generation is coming home. I keep running veterans that think there's something wrong with them because there's nothing wrong with them. But we really do have somewhere around. Of the 3 million people in this war, maybe half a million have ptsd. And they need our help. And we're darn good at treating ptsd. We get better every day. I talk about that, but my work keeps weaving around my most recent book, Assassination Generation. And we know how to train soldiers and cops to kill. In my most recent book, I, I'm going to get you a copy of it. We want you to be able to take. I gave a copy to the president last February there. Every one of these killers, the one thing that all these killers have in common.

You're talking about people who are killing civilians.

Yeah. And you know the thing to understand is children committing mass murders in their schools. Multiple homicides committed by juveniles have never happened in human history until 1975 in Brampton, Canada. Double homicide by a juvenile in the school in Canada. 75, 79 double homicide by a juvenile school in San Diego for the 1970s for the first time in two, for the first time in human history. Two double homicides by a juvenile in the school candidate American 1980s, two double homicides by a juvenile school. One in Finland, one in America. And the 1990s it began to explode and then begin to understand is it's worldwide the worst juvenile mass murder in human history. The highest body count by a juvenile was Dennen in Germany. A 17 year old kid killed 15. We had a crime identical to Parkland, the Parkland killer. 19 year old high school. Right. So he's 19, he'll qualify for a juvenile hit parade. The Erfurt, Germany. 19 year old high school dropout comes in the school murders 17 people. The exact same crime as Parkland. 19 year old high school dropout. And what's happening is they commit these crimes as children and that generation moves up through the system. Remember, these crimes are incredibly rare. But what never happened before in human history is now everywhere. And here's the key, another dynamic that you got to wrap your mind around. The murder rate underrepresents a problem because medical technology is holding down the murder rate.

Ah, good point.

I teach cops in all 50 states. I train every federal agency. I've been a guest presenter in over 200 universities and colleges. I'm the guest criminal justice professor. So how do we measure criminal justice? Oh, the murder rate. Wrong. If we had, if we had World War II level medical technology in Afghanistan and today we'd have 10 times as many dead American troops. Wow. If we had Vietnam level medical technology in Iraq, today would have four times as many dead American troops. And the same thing is true in the streets. You know, an economist says, well, you know, he made, he made 50 cents an hour. And then today's money, that would be like $10 an hour. They automatically adjust whenever we say, well we had 100 people murdered this year. But if we had 1970s technology that number would be 400. That's what we need to start thinking and umass Harvard study Irrefutable data, peer reviewed journal. If we had 1970s medical technology, the murder rate would be four times what it is. And that data is 20 years old. The leaps and bounds of life saving technology in the last 20 years is astounding. So understand that we've been holding down the murder rate with medical technology, police technology, other tools. And yet the last couple of years, in 2015, we had the single worst year over year increase in homicides in the history of our nation. In 2016 it was almost as bad. Two years straight. 2017, it dipped down a tiny bit. It should be because of medical technology.

What's going on? I mean, you've studied this more than anyone else alive that I know of. Why is this happening?

My book, Assassination Generation. There's a couple of dynamics. And remember, we have what appears to be this hardwired resistance to killing each other. And for children to commit mass murders is unheard of. For children to commit mass murders in the schools, it's just unprecedented in human history. So when we, when we study these, these juvenile mass murders in the schools, they're one thing in common all the ones in Europe. Finland's had three juvenile mass murders in the school. There was one in Moscow. Russia's a totalitarian nation. Confiscated every gun and they couldn't stop a kid from getting a gun. Committing a multiple homicide last October in Russia, in Crimea, just three, four months ago now, in the Crimea, a college student came into this college and murdered 20 people. Did you hear about that one?

No.

They had their own Virginia Tech. Why didn't we hear about that? Last April, in China, In April, a man came into a middle school with a knife and murdered nine kids and wounded 10 with a knife. Good God, Google it, you'll find it. Why wasn't that in the news? Because here's what we got. The media will never turn the camera back on themselves. We know a thousand scholarly studies, Surgeon general after surgeon general, definitive statements that the violent movies and the violent television are the new factor in the equation. All the old problems are still there, they're still important. But we've got one new factor in the equation now. The knock on wood. Europe has brought these juvenile mass murders to a screeching hole. They still got a generation coming through the pipeline committing horrible crimes. But they brought the juvenile mass murder to this reach and halt. Japan, China, South Korea, all brought it to his creation hall by strictly regulating children's access to violent Video games.

Wow. That big of a deal.

California passed a law like the European Union, like Japan, like Canada, like South Korea. California passed a law regulating children's access to violent video games. And this is all in my book, Assassination Generation and the video game industry. You got to understand how much money this industry has. One video game, Grand Theft Auto 5, the year it came out, made more money than the entire global music industry. One video game made more money. Every rock concert on the planet, every musician, every cd, every download on the planet. But video game industry every year makes vastly more money than the global movie industry. And they spend vast amounts of money on lobbying, more than they ever dreamed of. And it's all about one thing, to keep selling their games to children. So cut back to California, home of Hollywood, home of Silicon Valley. Arnold Schwarzenegger signs the law regulating children's access to violent video games, overwhelmingly supported by the legislator and the video game industry fought all the way to the Supreme Court. We have a constitutional First Amendment right to sell any game to any kid. You can't stop us. You can't regulate any way, shape or form. And again, vast amounts of money. California sent a couple of junior lawyers. The video game industry put together the finest team of Supreme Court lawyers money could possibly buy. They had 82 journalism professors, media studies professors, who said there is no scientific proof that media violence causes violence. When the AMA and the APA are screaming from the mountainside. And here's academic malfeasance at the highest level when 82 journalism professors say there is no scientific proof. And the upshot is they conned seven old men. Seven Supreme Court justices, never played Pong in their life, overturned the California law, but the dissenting opinions are terribly important. And Clarence Thomas dissented. Maybe our most conservative justice, he said. He said, have you basically, have you lost your minds? He said, never in a million years did the founding Fathers say the First Amendment applies to children, especially not selling things to children, especially not selling garbage like this to children. You've created an entire new class of rights for an entire new class of individuals. Justice Even prayer, probably almost liberal. Justice dissentient. I believe it's the only time those two are dissented on the same side. It's not. This is not a left right issue. It's an informed, ignorant issue. And Justice Breyer said, have you even seen the games they're talking about? He said, what redeeming social value is there in a game where you have sex with a prostitute? They're murder in vivid detail and get your money back. He said, he said the brain scan studies are coming around the planet. He said, I'm not a medical expert, but I know who is. And these people the video game industry held up are not medical experts. Our entire medical community screaming from the mountainside. And so here's where we are today. Latin America is being eaten alive. They don't have that regulation. And all the other problems are still there, they're still important. America, we're being eaten alive. And the thing of it is, people say, I played those games, I'm not a killer. I watch those movies. I'm not a killer. Well, when I was a kid, I never buckled my seatbelt. I'm fine. Every kid I know, none of us buckled, our belts were all fine. Not every group that belt unbuckled died. But most of the ones who died had their seatbelt unbuckled. Not every kid that played the games became a killer. All of the killers have this one thing in common. This is a stig. One layer deeper though, what we're also doing is creating bullies. Vicious, vicious people who will troll and attack and mercilessly harm other individuals. Now the level of anger and violence in the Internet, in our politics, there's a new dynamic in there. When you were kids, even you ladies out there, we all played toy guns at one time or not said bang, bang, gotcha. No you didn't. So you smack him in your cap gun. It leaves a mark and he cries. Everybody gather around the hurt kid, try to convince him not to tell mom. Somebody gets hurt and every the play stops. A basketball game, a football game, one of players gets hurt and the play stops and the spans go silent. In healthy play, whenever somebody gets hurt, the play stops. In the video game, you blow your playmates heads off in explosions of blood. They writhe and scream and beg for mercy. Does the play stop? You get in trouble, you get points. This is pathological play, this dysfunctional play. Can we not tell the difference between bang, bang, a gotcha? Some gets hurt, the play stops. And the games that reinforce and reward us for inflicting suffering. So here's the key. People say I was bullied when I was a kid. It can't be worse than that. It's worse. Are the mass murders in the school worse when we were kids? Believe me, the bullying's worse. Do you remember, do you remember that kid who sincerely took pleasure in making you suffer? Remember that bully?

Yeah, I kicked his ass more than once.

Yeah, there's many, many more today. The bullies have bullies. The bullying is. And now we're seeing it come into where this whole political crudeness and this discord. Where is this violence all coming from? All the old bottoms are still there, they're still important. But we got one new problem out there and it's kicking our tail. This violent visual media inflicted upon children. We got the brain scan data, their brains treat it like it's real. Nobody should talk book banning, nobody should talk in free speech, nobody should tell adults what they can or cannot do. But violent visual imagery inflicted upon children is child abuse. Their body like it's real and they get immediate physiological response to it.

I remember, I mean I'm just old enough. I remember when I got Pong, I was really young, but I also remember sometime early 20s when Street Fighter came out. One of the first real violent video games that was. There are always ones you blow up other people, but they're little dots. This is when you rip out someone's spinal cord at the end of the fight and you get extra points if you splatter blood and light them on fire. And I remember playing that, I was whatever, 19 or something and just go, wow, this is really different. And looking back you can actually feel a difference. It pushes a different button and even kind of a shoot em up where it's, it's not that graphic.

You know, the Columbine killers today would be, would be right on the edge of 40.

Yeah.

You know, when we look at the, this massacre at the Mandalay Bay massacre in Las Vegas, we look at this church massacre in Texas, we're seeing a generation come up. And again, you know, we look at the Mandalay Bay massacre, the worst solo gun massacre in human history. The most horrendous body count by single individual was a, was a youth camp on the island In Norway. Yeah, 69. And in court he said he trained for a year on video games to commit his crime. He flat seven trained himself for a year on video games to commit his crime. And so we've got this worldwide dynamic. And here's the key. I don't care if it's Fox or msnbc, in the end they're all a corporation. They will never turn the camera back on themselves. The fact this is worldwide, the fact that crime identical to Parkland happened in Germany, the fact that the all time record juvenile mass murder in human history in Germany with the most rigid gun laws in Europe, the fact that we just had a mass murder in Russia with totalitarian gun laws and 20 dead in a college. The fact that a guy came into a school last April in China With a knife and murdered nine kids. Why isn't that in the news? Well, it's only in America and it's only because of our guns. Guns are part of the equation. But we keep pointing the finger at that to point the finger away from themselves. Their commercials are worth billions of dollars because they influence our behavior. But they will not accept any responsibility for what's in between the commercials. They're just the corporations.

We were having a conversation with my 9 year old son and my wife said she's an emergency room doctor by training and seen her share of messy violence, just usually not inflicted by humans, usually by automobiles. But what she said, she said, we don't want you seeing that because it's scary. And he's some kind of. I don't even know what it was. But one thing that had a war scene like a hobbit or some kind of movie, I don't know. And he said, but mommy, that's not scary at all. And I realized, I said, you know, Alan, there's a difference. And there's violence and then there's scary. I said, and violence, it can actually kind of feel good, but it hurts your heart. And that's why that's beautiful. Yeah, I think he got it. Yeah. Because it's not about fear, it's about violence. And there are different aspects. And the fact that violence actually can feel good, that's where bullying comes from. Just acknowledging that I felt it was important just to have honesty in that conversation with him. I'm like, that's why you can't watch those things. But I do make exceptions for when there's giant robots fighting giant robots. That seems okay, right?

Well, that's where the rating systems come in. You know, there's an angle in this. Right now Fortnite is eating our kids alive.

Yeah, My kids aren't allowed to touch that.

It's a T rated game. The people made the game. So you need to be 13 above to play it. Does anybody know that? Is it every time the screen comes on T13 above only? No. Did they? I was at the round table with the, with the president and the video game industry, this multi trillion dollar industry. And the president said, you know that the Parkland killer played video games 15 hours a day. It's one thing these killers all have in common. What can we do about this? They said nothing. I mean, they were very polite. You can't make us do nothing. We don't have to do nothing. I thought we're looking in the face of evil here. These are People who intentionally are marketing this stuff to children. And so let's take it one layer deeper and then let's look at the solution strategy.

Yeah, I really want to know.

Let's talk about sleep deprivation as an epidemic across our civilization. We are in the middle of a civilization wide epidemic of sleep deprivation. The video games are digital crack. Millions of people online right now and everything that happens is being recorded. We do this and 5% say, oh, good time to say it again, we quit. So they don't do that again. We do this and nobody quits. They do more of that. They know just they got the algorithms, they've got the colors, they've got the flicker rate, the plot, the pattern to make those games impossible to turn off. And the ever generation is more impossible to turn off. Research tells us 15% of all divorces in America, video games are the cause. The video games put you in a flow state. Suddenly it's three o' clock in the morning. God, no idea where the last six hours went and your spouse is sincerely ticked off. And the opposite of all of this is this epidemic of sleep deprivation. Now in the military, in the active duty military, we study every suicide intensely. And our suicides in that environment have nothing to do with combat. A non combat vet is as likely to take life as a combat vet. But a sleep deprived person can be up to five times more likely to take their life. Sleep deprivation is one of the greatest predictors of suicide. Now after 18 hours without sleep, you have impaired judgment equal to 0.08 legally drunk. After 24 hours of sleep, impaired judgment equal to 0.10 above legally drunk. After two nights without sleep, you are psychotic. Any graduate of Army Ranger school talk about hallucinations on the third day without sleep. Well, we're in the middle of this epidemic of sleep deprivation. Suicide rate, teen suicide rates doubled in just the last decade. Wow. In the last 15 years. Female tweens, they call them tweens now, below the teenage years, but yet, and they're in the double digits, has tripled in the last 15 years. These are little girls. 10, 11, 12. The suicide rate has tripled. And this is worldwide. So here's Parenting 101 for the 21st century. When you send your kid to bed at night, take their cell phone away from them, no cell phone in the room, no laptop in the room. They have got to go to the room and sleep. A cop told me, he said I had a good girl. He said she was an A student. She said, dad is embarrassing. You don't have to take my cell phone every night. You can trust me. So I trusted her. I let her keep her cell phone in it. He said, a little while later, she took her life. He said. He said, my little girl took her life. And I never knew. He said, I never knew health she was living in until we looked at the text messages on her cell phone night after night of ceaseless, relentless, vicious bullying. And she said, all night long, trying to defend herself, trying to find somebody to stand up for. He said, my little girl was sleep deprived, bullied, tormented to death in front of my eyes. I let it happen. He said, the one thing on earth I could have done for her is take her cell phone every night and let her turn off all the bad stuff in this world. He said, I can't ignore that text message in the middle of the night. I don't expect my kids to, you know, in the news, just today, a teenage boy, his mom took his cell phone away and he snuck down in the night to get his cell phone, and the mom stopped him. He lit his mom on fire and beat her with a baseball bat because she wouldn't let him get to his cell phone. We're seeing cases. We're seeing cases everywhere where parents take the kids video games and the kids kill their parents. These are unprecedented crimes. We're seeing horrendous. A detective came to me in tears. She said, in just the last six months in my little part of Illinois, I've seen five cases where boyfriends murder the baby because the baby's interrupting their video games. They smother them, they shake them. In one case, the boyfriend said, oh, I dropped the baby on his head. And the mother believed him. It wouldn't was supporting him until they showed him the autopsy of the baby. They peeled the baby's hair off from the skull and imprinted in the top of the baby's skull is a perfect imprint of the base of a video game controller slammed into the baby's skull. So what we're seeing is this powerful dynamic that we've got to protect our kids when they're young. And the addictive level of these things that interrupt us while we're doing these things. The violent interaction dynamics start when they're young, protect them when they're young. But here's what we got, this sleep deprivation. Now, we always knew that alcohol was a key factor in suicide. When the communists ran Russia, suicides were out of control. They locked down on alcohol and brought suicides way down. The communists collapsed. Free enterprise, alcohol for everybody. Suicides Exploded. In just the last couple of years, Russia has led the world in bringing down suicides. How'd they do it? Locking down alcohol. But alcohol creates impaired judgment. You make a bad decision, never get a chance to rethink it. For the most pervasive form of impaired judgment is sleep deprivation. And so the sleep deprivation is like a sleep deprived service member is five times more likely to take their life in some of the research. So we've got, we've got epidemic of sleep deprivation. Now the three killers of our kids suicides are up worldwide at levels we've never seen before except Russia. Right, Suicide zone in Russia.

Yeah.

And then what we've got is we've got traffic deaths. For decades, traffic deaths came down. Airbags, seat belts, medical technology. And now traffic deaths are up worldwide. And what we got is sleep deprivation created impaired judgment. If your kid is going to be behind the wheel tomorrow morning, they have got to get a good night's sleep. It is the most important thing you can give them. And then drug overdoses, the three major killers of our kids, drug overdoses, suicides and traffic deaths, depending on who you listen to. It goes back and forth as to which ones first, second and third. But they're all up, they're all huge. And the one thing you as a parent can do is get your kid a good night's sleep. In the meanwhile, these video games inflicted upon children is like shooting fish in a barrel. They don't have the discipline. The, the cell phones and the texting and the, and the social media, it's destroying adults. And here's a video game industry that all the way to the Supreme Court and I tell people they wouldn't buckle up their baby in their car seat if it wasn't the law. I'm a, I'm a laid back, leave me alone, leave me alone kind of guy when it comes to laws. And you can have sex my grandkids, I'm good with that. When it comes laws. And you can't sell alcohol or tobacco or firearms to my grandkids, I'm good with that. And they wouldn't buckle their baby in the car seat if it wasn't law. We're all good with that. So every major industrialized nation in the world has regulated children's access to violent visual imagery. Except America.

In addition to taking away cell phones and devices at night for kids, which is just a good idea, I've written some of the most copied and referenced articles on hacking sleep. And I can tell you, my kids, since they were in a Bedroom by themselves. They've never had a nightlight. They don't have a cell phone. They sleep in a blacked out room. They don't think the darkness is scary because that's what happens at night before bed. We have red lights in the house. Like a submarine.

Yes. Yes.

I make glasses. One of my companies makes glasses. And the kids will use those when we travel. And you know what? My kids sleep all night. They wake up to pee and they're right back. And that means I get to sleep. So hacking your kids sleep is kind of important if you, if you want to be sane. Right.

See, I teach all my federal heads, I teach all the military. I trained just yesterday I was in Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada training all the commanders of the security force squadrons. And that's one of the things I taught them. You've got to sleep in a truly dark room. And you know, I'm on the road, I can't always make my hotel completely dark. Combine our dark room with the sleep mask. Yep. And golden. And they're kids that sleep in the dark.

It's funny, you said a truly dark room. The name of that company started is called Truedark. And there's glasses you wear for an hour before bed that filter out all of the light that your brain thinks is daytime. So even if you are going to look at your phone as an adult to set your alarm or do whatever, it doesn't mess with your core wiring. And it's not just suicide. It's diabetes. That changes from that kind of stuff.

You can put your laptop and your cell phone on night mode, right?

Yeah.

And set the timer. It's always on night mode for me.

Me too.

I gotta just stay on night mode. But here's another angle. And I teach this to all my cops and all my military. Now we're teaching kids. I do a lot of school safety training and sleep hygiene is something we're gonna teach our kids. Truly dark room caffeine abuse. The military as of two years ago was essentially banned issuing energy drinks to our troops. The energy drinks are bad juju. We.

Six times more caffeine than a shot of espresso in one of those things.

We do blood toxicity tests on our suicide. You know what keeps coming up? Mega doses of caffeine.

Bad news.

Caffeine is getting in the way of their sleep.

And by the way, just so you know, I run a large coffee company, right. And I tell people stop drinking caffeinated coffee at 2pm always, no matter what. I would like to tell you have a caffeine nightcap. And I would probably make more money if I do that, but it's wrong. You don't do that.

And then when you need it, it's there for you. Yeah, if you're abusing it, it won't be there.

It doesn't work.

And I'll give you another one. The snooze alarm. The minimum nap is the 30 minute nap. It's not a good nap. It's a minimum nap and a 10 minute nap. If you don't, you're driving down the road, you hit his bottom, take naps. A 10 minute nap is, is, it's refreshing, but it does you no good. A 30 minute nap. You're blurry and grog. You don't get up because you're asleep. So what happens is the snooze alarm. It's an evil little button that makes you relive the worst part of every day over and over.

That's a great quote.

Do some research on the snooze alarm. It's like you're trying to train your body to take a 10 minute nap and your body can't do it. You will do physical mental harm to your body with a snooze alarm. As your body tries to adapt to 10 minute naps and you do a 10 minute snooze, another snooze, a third snooze. You just threw away 30 minutes of your day. You and everybody in the room with you.

Now, if you take a step back for a minute and you're listening to this interview, we've got one of the world's top experts on combat and killing and violence talking about sleep hygiene. You know how important that is?

Yes. And what else? Willpower. Willpower. You know, I give the kid a marshmallow. You can eat that marshmallow. I'll be back in two minutes. If you still have the marshmallow, I'll give you another marshmallow. That's one of the greatest predictors of success in life. Willpower. So it's the first act of every day to surrender to your body was the first act every day to hit the snooze button and surrender to your body. It's the first act of every day to get the hell out of bed and take charge. Muhammad Ali, one of the great champions in history, he said championship began every morning. The alarm went off. He hated running so bad, he put his running shoes on top the alarm. When he went to hit the alarm, he grabbed his running shoes. That's Champion level, self discipline. So I tell people, put the alarm, we've got to get a bed to turn it off or your cell phone put it on. 6: O', clock, 6:01, 6:02, 6:03, 6:04. By the time you get up and turn all those alarms off, you're up. And never touch a snooze alarm again. So there's a sleep hack that you can run with.

I love it. Instead of snoozing, having multiple stacked alarms is a very powerful sleep hack. The other one though, that for me in the last maybe eight or so years has changed my life. I have an alarm clock that knows when I'm already almost awake and then it wakes me up. And I don't have to have multiple wake up alarms like that for the first time in my life because nothing's trying to wake me up when I'm at the very bottom of a sleep cycle. And I've been pushing listeners to do that forever. I mean, I track my sleep every night with an aura ring. I can tell you the 2 hours and 52 minutes of REM sleep, an hour and 22 minutes of Delta and all that. But the way you wake up determines how you function all day long. And waking up 10 minutes earlier at the top of a sleep cycle, you couldn't do that until we had cool tech. But if your phone's next to you doing it, you're screwed if you don't control your phone.

Oh, you know what? But before we kind of tie this all up, the sleep thing I take, I wear the Fitbit, I tell all my military, all my cops. You've got to track your sleep. It's not going to happen naturally. It's a biological blind spot and it's a social blind spot. If you showed up to work drunk, we'd kick your ass. Show up to work sleep deprived because you played video games all night long, you need your tail kick. There's nothing cute about showing up work drunk or so hungover you can't work. There's nothing cute about showing up work sleep deprived because you played video games on social media all night long. Remember, you go into a flow state, you got to set a timer. There's nothing wrong with adults playing video games. Set a timer, play the game and then get a good night's sleep. Oh, I play a major massive metamorphic online orgasmic game. You can't do an hour or two a night. I tell them, okay, okay, decide now what's important. Your health important, your job important, your family important, or Is the game important? If that game is important.

It doesn't work. Dave, if you track your sleep, you've got a Fitbit look. If you're playing a video game for an hour or two before sleep, even if you're wearing the glasses that keep the light from affecting you, I track my deep sleep. You will not get good deep sleep. If you were out killing people or solving big problems for an hour or two before bed.

It.

It's too physiologically arousing.

That comes back to the Fitbit. I tell all my military, all my law enforcement, and you got the ring. There's other ways to do it, but let's come full around to the long term solution. Yes, every piece of technology had to be digested. We had automobiles for 50 years before some genius said, you know, kids probably shouldn't be driving these things. And so this media violence has blindsided us. Media violence on demand has blindsided us. And again, we've got Europe and Japan making major steps forward. But we've been around this block once before with the tobacco industry. The tobacco industry fought tooth and nail for 50 years over one thing, to keep selling tobacco to children. My dad started smoking in 1940. He was five years old. And hey, kid, you got money? You want to buy cigarettes, it's your money. And the tobacco industry fought tooth and nail to keep selling tobacco to children. I'll tell you, the day we defeated the tobacco industry, 1964, my second grade teacher told us cigarettes kill people. I went home and hid my dad's cigarettes.

I did the same thing.

You'd be surprised how many people I did this. And my dad taught me that wasn't a very good idea. But when our teacher told us we became the judges and the juries and the legislators, we didn't ban tobacco. We're gonna ban media violence. All we're saying is don't sell this garbage to children and we will educate a generation. My book, Assassination Generation, out from Little Brown. Huge publisher, major publisher, and virtually no reviews. We can't, we just can't get traction on it. Assassination Generation.

When did that come out?

Came out in. Not this last Christmas, but the Christmas before. Got it a little over a year ago.

All right, you listen to my show all the time and you know how important reviews are for authors. I always ask you to review Game Changers and I just crossed a 117. 5 star reviews thanks to you guys, which is a lot of reviews of reviews like that. If you like what Lt. Col. Grossman is sharing with you here, which is Mind blowing stuff. And we haven't gotten into the real stuff about sheepdogs and wolves. And we're going to get into that. But if you want to read that book, Assassination Generation, if you're a parent especially, it's worth your time to go do that and leave a review. Just anytime you read a book, just leave a review. It takes you a little extra time and it makes someone's day.

All right, so the long term dynamic is Stanford Med school pioneered a TV turnout curriculum. It's a 10 day take the, It's a bunch of, I mean hometown heroes. A bunch of teachers in upstate Michigan took the initial, just this initial seed of a curriculum and turn it into a K through 12 curriculum that's available online. And we detox the kids for 10 days. We educate them and we cut violence in half, we cut bullying in half and we raised test scores double digits. They're not sleep deprived, they're not being bullied, they're not being attacked. The fighter flight hormones flush out of their brain. Of course the test scores are doing better. And it's a revolution. Du Bois Wyoming put it in place in conjunction with state standardized testing to detox the kids before testing. And it works. But it was in January, Wyoming cold. The senior class asked permission. This is a K through 12 program. They asked permission to do it again in the spring when the weather was better, to throw all kinds of activity because they had so much fun. I was in Hurley, Wisconsin when they put the curriculum replaced the third year running. I was in their high school library. The librarian said, I mean, with this incredible look of wonder. She said, look at my shelves. She said, two thirds of my books are signed out. Every year we do this TV turn off. They sent out more books and they keep reading. It's not just a temporary thing. It puts them in that mode. And so the website that is takethechallengenow.net www.takethechallengenow. net It's a K through 12 TV thrown out curriculum. Individual teachers are running with it. Principals are running with it. School boards are grabbing it, running with it. It's basically shareware. If you can't chip anything in, they won't stop you. But, but if you can chip something in, please do. And take the challengenow.net and, and their curriculum. We will educate a generation. Just like tobacco. You went home and hid your dad's cigarettes. We're going to have a generation comes home and says, you know what? He shouldn't be watching that show. And we're Going to turn the tide on this evil industry. They fought all the way to the Supreme Court to sell grand theft auto 5 to any kid at any age. They said, oh yeah, we have self regulated, don't you worry, we regulate. What if the tobacco or alcohol industry told her that, yeah, don't worry, we don't need a law, we have self regulation. Evil, evil industry. This throat in front of the President and said we don't have to do anything about it. You can make us do it in the ground. It's not our fault and we're not going to do anything. So that's where we are today and some full cycle assassination generation. We got time to talk about the sheep of wolf, the sheepah.

We do. And what you're exhibiting here is that willpower and just being a warrior. And in your book on combat you wrote if you have no capacity for violence, then you're a healthy productive citizen. A sheep. If you have a capacity for violence and no empathy for your fellow citizens, then you're an aggressive sociopath.

A wolf.

But what if you have a capacity for violence and a deep love for your fellow citizens? Then you're a sheepdog, a warrior. Someone who's walking the hero's path. Someone who can walk into the heart of darkness, into the universal human phobia and walk out unscathed.

You know we have a sheepdog kids book right now. Go to Amazon, look up Sheep Dogs Meet America's Heroes. And this book, it's got the original sheepdog essay in the back. What you just read is a sheepdog essay that rocks their world. Starting at 5, they get it. A copy of the day told me his three year old made a reader to her. Every night I read it. My 9 year old granddaughter, the next night she wanted to read it to me, I read it. My 11 year old grandson, he read the essay in the back and two years later he read On Combat. There's nothing in On Combat I wouldn't want a kid to read. There's things that on killing I want him, a high school senior before he reads. But nothing on combat wouldn't want to read. The book is Sheepdogs Meet American Heroes by Grossman. My co author is an educator and a cop's wife and a wonderful story. She said, you should write a kid's book about the sheepdog. I said let's do it together and boom, here we are. So I'm so honored that you found that and I'm glad you liked that little clip. We really do. We wrap up the Sheepdog kids book by saying, you know, in nature they're born as sheep and that's all they're gonna be. And wolves are not really bad. Wolves are part of nature and dogs can't really save the day. But people are different. People can be whatever they wanna be. Have you got what it takes to be a sheepdog?

How do you. Is it a conscious choice? I mean, a lot of people listening to bulletproof radio, we're interested in performing better as a human being, having control of our biology. And I mean, are these profiles that are sort of immutable? I'm a sheep, I'm happy with the way it is. Or if you're a wolf, you're probably a total jerk and you know it. But if you're a sheepdog, is this something that, Is it genetic? Is it wired in, Is it our parents? I mean, your dad was a cop. I mean, where does it come from?

Anytime we look at the whole nature nurture thing, it's always both, okay? It's always both. You might have a predisposition this way. You know, one of the, one of the great researchers on sociopaths realized that he was a sociopath. He had all the biological dynamics and the genetics, but he was a high functioning sociopath. He said, I'm a jerk. I don't let my grandkids win at games. I like to win arguments. I've sublimated my sociopathy. But he says we also have. I would, I had good raising, I didn't become a violent criminal. I haven't ever beaten anybody up. But I'm not a nice guy. And he said, we also have free will. And I've made the decision that I can be a better person based on my own free will. I let my grandkids win games. Sometimes I relax a little bit during arguments. You know, as we become older, most of us become better people. That's why most of us met better grandparents if we were parents. And that's where that free will and, and growth dynamic for every human being comes in. So, you know, you are what you feed. Do you feed the sheep or do you feed the wolf or do you feed the sheep? Top? And our children, you know, we can't control that biology. Although even the biology we're now understanding, epigenetics. You look at epigenetics, you realize that the biology isn't as hard cast as we thought it was by any structure. And so all you can do in any world is do the best you can. You know, I try to teach all my Military and all my cops and when I get a chance by educators. Internal locus of control. There's only one thing in the universe you can change. There's only one thing you can control. It's yourself right now. Let go of the past. Don't eat you up. Let go of it. Turn it over to a higher power. Let go of what's happened on the global scale. There's nothing you can do about it. What can you do right now? That's the only thing on earth you can control. And if we give way to bitterness, if we give way to cynicism, if we give way complacency, that's the one thing we can control. And you've given the world a victory with your own hand. And we will not give them that victory. So we can't control those genetics, but we can do the best we can to raise our kids free. My grandson, we bribed him shamelessly to keep him media free. No tv, no movie, no video games until he was old enough to read. So he's at kindergarten reading, second grade level. He's, ah, buddy, you've arrived. We sat down, watched Mary Poppins next week. Gonna watch Cheated Chad. Oh, he wants to watch Mary Poppins again, you know, so protect those little ones and control everything you can control.

We do that same thing. And there's something I've noticed. I'd like to get your take on this, you know, with. With the deep studies of physiological stuff. When I show my kids Star Trek, the next generation from 30 years ago, or Mary Poppins, it's very different. You go to a modern movie, even one that's kid friendly, it seems like they're cutting camera angles about every one to two seconds, and it's actually jarring. And you can see the difference in the kids. What are the editing techniques doing to our kids?

Brains, you know, the body of thought on that. And I don't think anybody's got the hard data now. We got the hard data on media violence right over and over again. But it began with Sesame street. And Sesame street was bam, bam, bam, bam. Remember Sesame Street? You know, bam, bam. Oh, yeah. You know, the colors and the numbers and the kids riveted. And then the kid goes to kindergarten, and the kindergarten teacher can never in a million years compete with Sesame Street. And so we developed this dynamic of getting ever greater levels of exciting midbrain dynamics. And you say rapid cuts and rapid scene changes, and we no longer have that kind of intense narrative and that intense involvement. But I think there's potential. Again, what Can I control right now? I can take these movies and show them to my kids. I can take these TV shows. What a great example. I love the old Star Trek, Next Generation, those, some of the best science fiction, I mean science fiction, geek, science geek and, and, and what a great thing to give to your child. Choose what you're going to give your children. I think some of the old westerns, you know, you know, Bonanza and some of those things are, you know, you'd be surprised how you can go through scene after scene and nobody gets shot. They go through episodes and nobody gets shot. It's not about gunfights every time, you know, they're more slow paced, they're humorous, they're interesting, they build up these characters over time. You can't control these movies that are doing these things to you. So choose to give something else to your children. Choose to control the variable you can control with all your heart and all your soul.

I absolutely respect and appreciate that message. And as we come up on, on the end of our interview, I'm going to ask you a question that's, that's unrelated to combat and killing, but is related to life itself. Men's Health published an article about me this month where I'm talking about, you know, I'm, I think I can live to at least 180 and I can do it with my brain working and my body working because we've got some changes in technology. Like you said, just the medical already saying that our rate of death from trauma is going down. Our rate of death from everything else is going, it's not just going down now, it's going down precipitously over the next 20 years. I know because I'm friends with the people doing the work.

If you don't commit suicide.

Yeah, that's true.

We're in good shape.

Yeah, as long as a sleepy kid behind the wheel doesn't take you out. And the cure for that, by the way, is drive a heavy vehicle. Physics actually. I mean, for real, it's an anti aging strategy.

On your side. My wife wanted a Mini, I wouldn't let her.

Yeah, I think there's something to be said for that. I mean, we all want to save fuel, but honestly, if I'm going to hit somebody, I'd rather be in my pickup truck. Now on that note, how long would you live assuming you get your faculties going? It's a philosophical question, but I'm asking some of the most impressive people in the world this question. Tell me what you think about that.

I'm dedicated to longevity. I'm a huge science geek. My favorite website is sciencedaily.com I check it through every category every day. And every time I see something that's this supplement is having an impact on longevity. I look into it, I go to Amazon.com and I start taking it just like me. There's some really good stuff out there. One of these days I'll put a list together with the link for every one of them given their research, you know, starting with, with melatonin. And I got a great doc, he lets me have metformin. And that's, that's the only prescription thing that I take that is along the line. And of course statins if, you know, we, we've, we're keeping our cholesterol down, but I'm huge on that. And you know, I want to live at least long enough to defeat the video game industry. I want to see these bastards come. I'm dedicated for the long haul. I tell people I retired from the army 21 years ago. Waiting at home for me is My bride of 43 years, my high school sweetheart. I just turned 17. She was 15 when I proposed to her. We are from Arkansas. Two years later she had married a crazy army paratrooper. And I love her more than life itself. But I've been on the road two, 300 days a year for 21 years. I get on one, maybe two nights a week. Conjugal visitors, clean underwear, back in the road. Wow. There's only people on earth more precious than my bride of 43 years are my grandkids. And as we love our children, as we love our grandchildren, we're going to dedicate ourselves to walk out that door and give 100% every day that we're blessed with. I've been doing this for 21 years. It's my prayer I can do it for another 20 years. And every day I have the health and every day somebody wants to hear what I got to say, I'm going to go out there and do it. I've had one sick day in 21 years. H1N1 took me out for a day. Yeah, I, I really believe I've been blessed with the health. I'm, I'm pursuing that in every way that I can. And, and I, I, I, I, I don't know what the upper end is, but I'm shooting for it. You and I'll be there. Let's, let's get back together every couple years, right, and renew that dynamic of deter to live for the long haul. And then not, not out of some selfish need. Although seeing the latest science, if I would, I would live to be a hundred. I'd live be 180 just to read.

Sciencedaily.Com just out of curiosity, right?

In astronomy and quantum mechanics and dark matter, what is dark matter? What is that incredible dilemma out there? We live in astounding times as we defeat cancer and we defeat epigenetics is now being used to defeat Alzheimer's. And we know that deep cycle sleep is a key factor in preventing Alzheimer's. And I want to live and forever just to read the news every day, the good things. So I, I'm going to go for the long haul if I could make it 180. Not for any selfish reason, although, but to walk out that door and make the world a better place to the utmost of my ability, every day of my life, to fight the good fight, to be the sheepdog, to protect the flock, to confront the wolf every day of my life. If I could make to 180, I'd be there with you. So I don't know what it is, but I'm going to go for it.

See, that is the perfect anti aging mindset right there. Like you nailed it better than I could have said it. And so many people, when you say old, all they think of is wheelchairs, diapers, and not knowing their own name. And that's not how it is. You get it, man. Congratulations.

Make the investment now.

Yeah, beautiful. So well said. And thank you so much, Lieutenant Colonel Grossman, for honoring us on bulletproof radio with your life's wisdom. At least the small fraction of your possible life's wisdom. And I just got to say, for people listening, if you haven't read On Combat and on Killing, you are missing a huge swath of what we know about human physiology and psychology. These books are seminal works. They're fun and fascinating. You've got to read them. And if you're a parent assassination generation, it's worth your time. And what Dave just talked about there. I do this with my kids. I very carefully control their media. They actually do each have an iPad. They get one hour a week and they play physics simulation games and that's it. And they actually have audio books. They have iPhones with no SIM cards and no wi fi and. And all they do is play audiobooks, which is called storytelling. And that's all it is. And they're always in night mode, just in case you were wondering. And so you could do it. And it depends on their school. It depends on everything else, but it changes their brains. It's only, whatever, 13 to 16, 18 years of complaining about it. But after a while, the kids stop complaining. And if they could play too much, make them go rake or. Or shovel horse manure. It works every time.

No. You know, I've had countless people come up to me and say, I bless my parents, because they wouldn't let us have video games. My dad cut the cord on the TV on the first day of summer, kicked us out the door. Everyone said, I learned to read. I learned to play. I bless my parents. Nobody has ever said, I cursed my parents for the TV I couldn't watch. I cursed my parents for the video games I couldn't play. Never once have I ever heard that. And never once will you hear that. They will bless you for it.

Beautiful.

And thank you, my brother, for having these podcasts, for being larger than life, to making these contributions, to making our world a better place. We want to live the 180. Not out of any selfish motive. It's there.

Oh, yeah.

To take the gifts we've been given and make the world a better place. Maybe so, brother.

It's happening.

You.