EP. 4: "How Can We Know Truth?" with Ryan McBeth, U.S. Intel Analyst, Cybersecurity & Social Media Disinformation Expert

On this episode of "We're Not Blowing Hot Air," we explore life's fundamental question "How Can We Know Truth?" with Ryan McBeth – a U.S. intelligence analyst, YouTube personality, journalist and educator, and highly regarded military consultant on things like information warfare strategies and open-source intelligence. Ryan explains why and how propaganda and disinformation spreads like the plague on social media, which social media platform he considers a “weapon system,” and why I don’t need to be so concerned about nuclear war! Ryan’s wisdom and expertise stems from his rich educational background in systems and cyber security, and his 20 years in the U.S. Army, where he served in two-overseas-deployments as an anti-armor and heavy weapons infantryman. A lover of life and ceasing the day, Ryan enjoys a choice cigar and fine whiskey as much as training for a marathon. Discover more about courage, truth, how to spot destructive lies in the minefield of social media, in this important episode of “We’re Not Blowing Hot Air.”

Editor's Note: Due to some technical difficulties, the host's video has some gaps in this episode. 

About Ryan McBeth:

Ryan McBeth is a multifaceted professional with expertise in intelligence analysis, software architecture, cybersecurity and content creation. A prominent figure on YouTube, Ryan shares his knowledge of military, intelligence and disinformation topics, offering valuable insights to his audience. He also serves as an intelligence consultant for NEWSMAX, lending his expertise on various national security matters. Additionally, Ryan collaborates with Veloxxity, focusing on open-source intelligence (OSINT) and information warfare strategies. Ryan also works for a company that develops AI-powered drones that deliver crucial whole blood to wounded soldiers on the battlefield in his role as the Director of Integration at Texas AeroMedLab, which is part of the University of Texas at Dallas. With two overseas deployments as an anti-armor and heavy weapons infantryman spanning 20 years, Ryan has contributed his skills to Accenture Federal Services, where he developed cutting-edge C4ISR software. To contribute to a better world, he believes “in creating dilemmas, not problems and fighting back with knowledge.” When not immersed in his professional endeavors, Ryan may be out running, swimming or cycling, or enjoying his humidor and whiskey library.

Guest Website / Social Media handles:

• Twitter: @ryanmcbeth
• Instagram: @therealryanmcbeth
• BlueSky: @ryanmcbeth
• Reddit: /r/ryanmcbeth
• YouTube: https://youtube.com/@RyanMcBethProgramming
• For uncensored videos, check out Ryan's substack at: https://ryanmcbeth.substack.com
• Like Ryan's shirts? Get your own at: https://www.bunkerbranding.com/pages/...
• Want a personalized greeting?: https://www.cameo.com/ryanmcbeth
• Watch all of Ryan's long form videos: Military Equipment, Tactics and Strategy

Catch Oxygen Plus at @oxygenplus on TikTok and Instagram

Transcript

Lauren Carlstrom: 0:00

Welcome to the we're Not Blowing Hot Air podcast powered by Oxygen Plus. This season we're zoned in on mental wellness as we explore some of life's biggest, most important questions with fascinating guests. Get ready for a colorful, curious exploration of this thing called life with today's remarkable guest, james A Garfield. The 20th president of the United States said the truth will set you free, but first it will make you miserable. And he would know. Prior to fighting corruption within the government, garfield served as a major general in the Union Army during the American Civil War. Perhaps you too have experienced grief, sorrow or unhappiness because truth turned up her volume. I certainly have. It's hard to hear. I let down a friend, it sucked to walk in on a cheating partner and I bet it was pretty crappy for 16th century Nicholas Copernicus and 17th century Galileo Galilee to suffer such resistance and condemnation for their heliocentric beliefs from religious, academic and political authorities that the suppression spanned for four centuries. Yeah, the truth can hurt, be hidden for ages and upset the status quo, but the truth, like the sun, always shines her light and whatever misery may come, I want to pursue truth. Here's to going after it. Thankfully, I'm not alone in the hunt for truth. Ryan McBeth exposes lies about things that matter. A true patriot, he served more than two decades in the Army, with two overseas deployments as an anti-armor and heavy weapons infantryman. He also works for a company that develops life-saving drones for military combat. Among other things, he's an author, a content creator, and he has amazing information on his YouTube and Substack channel. I suggest you subscribe. You also might have caught him on Newsmax, where he serves as an intelligence consultant, lending his expertise on various national security matters. I found Ryan sipping whiskey and puffing a cigar on the Danny Jones podcast, where I immediately saw the true gift he is to our world. Immediately saw the true gift he is to our world. Let's welcome the entertaining and intelligent Ryan McBeth as we explore life's fundamental question how can we know truth?

Lauren Carlstrom: 2:34

Ryan, thank you for being with us today to talk about truth. Why are you so excited to be on the show?

Ryan McBeth: 2:43

I'm really excited that I get a chance to talk to you. I took a look at a number of your podcasts and I'm like, wow, this really is a person I want to talk to. It's not just that shade of lipstick. I am really impressed with what you've done with this podcast over the past couple of years and I appreciate you allowing me to have a drink and a little smoky treat while I do it.

Lauren Carlstrom: 3:04

A little smoky treat. I love that. Well, I'm on board with. I have some bullet bourbon. I didn't have any scotch whiskey in my closet here at work, but cheers to you for being here. I'm very excited and honored to have you on we're Not Blowing Hot Air being here. I'm very excited and honored to have you on we're Not Blowing Hot Air. I became a fan as soon as I really saw you on your first video and watched more, understood kind of who you are as a person and really like how your history and your interest fuel your present moment and what you do today and I was just very engaged with it and very impressed and just really honored and excited to have you here. So thank you.

Ryan McBeth: 3:52

The pleasure is all mine. I am so happy to talk to your audience about how to find the truth, or weapons or equipment or really anything you want to go with you want to go with, yeah Well.

Lauren Carlstrom: 4:09

Well, look it's. It's a bit scary out there. I'm not a huge fan of social media because I think it. I would rather be outside, in nature or with friends. I know that you have put a lot of your energy and attention into sharing your message through social media and I I'm just curious like what, um, what really got you going there?

Ryan McBeth: 4:29

with social media. Yeah, you know, uh. So I um, uh, an overnight success that took five years, right? My what? What got me going was that I I interviewed a guy when I was a software engineer. I interviewed a guy, I was a software engineer working for Accenture. I interviewed this guy and this guy, he knew the answers to the questions, but he just couldn't articulate them right. Why does a person become a software engineer? Well, because they like computers more than people, right? So how do we interview a software engineer? We put them in front of people. Whose idea was this? So I was interviewing this guy and the guy wasn't doing well and they blackballed, right, they wouldn't hire them. So I said I'm going to start a YouTube channel where I teach software engineers who have very few social skills how to get a job, and I'm like the James Bond of software engineers, right? So I'm very outgoing, very gregarious.

Ryan McBeth: 5:28

I started doing YouTube videos. I did that for about three years. My channel was about 5,000 people roughly. I would do programming videos get a couple of views. People liked it.

Ryan McBeth: 5:42

Then, one day, the war in Ukraine kicked off. I did two videos One on why Russian tank turrets pop off of their hulls when they're hit, another on why Ukraine hadn't been the subject of any cyber attacks. And all of a sudden I went from 5,000 followers to 100,000 subscribers overnight and I guess kind of what I realized is that programming is good and I still do some programming videos on occasion, like the Bitcoin video I showed you. But I think what I'm pretty good at is kind of getting technical information about how weapon systems work, how disinformation works, how cybersecurity works, getting that across to laymen works, how cybersecurity works, getting that across to laymen, and then that layman can listen to me and then they can go to a party and then go. Hey, you know why Russian tank turrets pop off their hulls. I mean, look, I'm not exactly a great I'm not Ronald Reagan great communicator, but I'm good enough to quote at the party and that's plenty for me. I'm happy that I was able to make somebody else happy and smarter.

Lauren Carlstrom: 6:51

Well, I think that's awesome. I would also venture to guess that it has to do with who you are in terms of an army man, your history, your love for the country.

Ryan McBeth: 7:03

Army men, your history, your love for the country. Yeah, you know, I spent 20 years as an infantryman Army side. I did two overseas deployments, a couple of other deployments as well inside the country and you know I joined the army to kind of get out of poverty. I grew up poor Irish family, lindenwald, new Jersey. My dad, he managed a warehouse, or eventually managed the warehouse, and I wanted to go to college and study computer science. My dad wanted me to be a carpenter. Well, can't get money from your father, get it from your uncle, right, and you know it's. The army and this country have given me so many opportunities to be successful and I've taken advantage of those opportunities and I guess this in a way, this is a way of giving back.

Ryan McBeth: 8:02

You know, I do love this country. I think we live in this absolutely amazing place and if I can make it a little bit better by teaching people how to spot Russian disinformation, we're challenging disinformation agents. Well, darn it, I'm going to do that.

Lauren Carlstrom: 8:16

I love it. Well, we're here today to talk about truth and what it is. I've heard you say before that truth has more of a structure, or like a ceiling, and lies don't have as much conformity to it. What do you think? How can we look at truth for the purpose of this conversation, as we explore how we can know it better?

Ryan McBeth: 8:40

That's a good question. That's a really deep question. I like to think I'm not that much of a deep thinker, but I can tell you that I'm going to call you out on that.

Lauren Carlstrom: 8:50

I think I again. I think you're a very deep thinker.

Ryan McBeth: 8:54

So I don't think you want the accountability perhaps.

Ryan McBeth: 8:57

Maybe. So I think part of it is. If you're, if you're trying to look for truth, I guess kind of the question you need to answer is are you looking for emotional truth? Are you looking for truthiness? That's something that Stephen Colbert called it truthiness, emotional truth is kind of another way of saying it and I honestly don't know if I made that up or not. I know Stephen Colbert made up truthiness.

Ryan McBeth: 9:19

I may or may not have made up emotional truth, but if you want to believe something so badly that you're willing to overlook that the facts don't support something, that thing you're supporting might not be true In some cases, that's fine. I might say, hey, the Washington Wizards are the best team ever, best basketball team ever. Well, categorically that's not true. But I'm a fan, right. So of course I'm going to root for the Washington Wizards. So that's kind of an emotional truth, right there, right. But for other things, like is Israel dropping cans of meat on Gaza that explode when they're open? There's an element of emotional truth there and you have to stop and think, even if you absolutely hate Israel and everything Israel stands for and you 100% believe that Israel would drop booby-trapped cans of meat onto Gaza, which is something they were accused of doing. You have to stop and say what tactical benefit do you get?

Ryan McBeth: 10:28

from doing that and I think, since so many people are so far removed from the military, they have no real concept of how the military actually works or why they do different things. So it's very easy to kind of slide into that emotional truth if you really don't know how things work outside of your own expertise.

Lauren Carlstrom: 10:51

Emotions can inform our worldview, for sure, I think. Factual data there's a lot of different, even beyond science. There's a lot of ways to find what may be truth. When we think about what is true, can we agree that, for the purpose of how we're going to talk about disinformation and how propaganda is used in our culture today, can we say that truth has to do with what some objective fact is? Is there a way we can look at truth where we can say it's beyond emotions, it's beyond personal preference? It's something that we can verify. And my next question is what are some ways we can verify that?

Ryan McBeth: 11:35

So I think you can, by verification and experimentation. Those would kind of be two things. Now, you're not going to go out and experiment with weapons or explosives, right, but it might help to do some kind of thought exercise. And that might be, let's say, the tins of meat in Gaza thing.

Ryan McBeth: 11:57

Israeli soldiers use a landmine, called an M-15 landmine, and they use these landmines to detonate tunnels. So the landmine is essentially a portable explosive. In the packaging of the landmine there are these fuses, and a fuse is a little thing that you put inside the landmine, well, to get it to explode when you step on it. But if you don't want the landmine to explode when you step on it, you just want to use it as an explosive to collapse the tunnel. You don't want the landmine to explode when you step on it, you just want to use it as an explosive to collapse the tunnel. You don't put the fuse in. Instead, you take the fuse, you throw it on the ground. You put something called detonation cord inside that fuse. Well, you daisy chain them and then you detonate them.

Ryan McBeth: 12:41

Now, that fuse box would be thrown on the ground and the Israelis kind of left them there, and that's how and since, if you turn them over, there's a little key on them, like a little tuna can gate. That's how people thought oh, these are cans of food, or at least that's how they thought they could trick people into thinking they're cans of food. So even if, objectively, you're looking at a can that looks like a food can, the next thing you have to say is what like a food can? The next thing you have to say is what does israel gain by killing people randomly who are hungry? Like what? Does it? Um, does it increase their tactical situation? Does it allow them to complete military objectives? So when looking for the truth, you gotta pause. You know, puts this, put, put any feelings and emotions you have on pause and you go okay, how would someone actually do this? And what do they have to gain? Now for the case of these tins of meat that were exploding, that actually were fuses.

Ryan McBeth: 13:39

In a case like that, you kind of look at it and you go like well, does Israel gain a tactical position? Do they get any closer to defeating Hamas by hurting innocent people who picked up a can on the side of the road? Not really. For the most part, and innocent people have been hurt. For the most part, those people were adjacent to a target and that, unfortunately, that's what we call NCV Non-combatant cutoff value, where you have to say like, all right, and this, believe it or not, is a thing in the military where you go okay, there's a number, and this number, the NCV, the noncombatant cutoff value is the highest number of civilians we can kill in order to destroy a target. That is a very strange calculus.

Lauren Carlstrom: 14:26

Yeah. I mean business has that too, like the FDA has it for a drug. Like how dangerous it can be.

Ryan McBeth: 14:31

That is fascinating.

Lauren Carlstrom: 14:33

I want to ask you more about that. I don't know everything about that I'm not in pharmaceuticals but I know that there's a certain level of toxicity or lethality that all of the pharma drugs really I mean that can be dangerous. There's a certain level of it that is toxic.

Ryan McBeth: 14:49

Yeah, I think I once heard that if aspirin were invented today, it would not be legal. I wasn't aspirin, it was Tylenol. If Tylenol were invented today, they'd be like oh my God, you can't have this stuff on the shelves, it'll kill people so yeah, apparently like tylenol is like I think what was it called rise syndrome or something like that, like you can't give?

Lauren Carlstrom: 15:13

yeah, there's like I might be pronouncing it wrong well, there's definitely, yeah, there's definitely some skeletons in the closet. I think around, but I so okay. So you're saying cc emotion. Try to think logically and look at a in this context, a geopolitical or some sort of strategy perspective or lens to see. Is what I'm looking at really, even like in the? Does it make sense? Does it have some validity?

Ryan McBeth: 15:45

And you might emotionally want something to make sense Like I know that you heard me on the Danny Jones podcast. One of the things that made a lot of people mad was when I said there's no such thing as a military industrial complex. Oh, my goodness, people lost their minds when I said that. But if you look at where things are today versus where they were in 1990, versus where they were in the 1950s, eisenhower gave a speech I believe it was his farewell address in 1961, where he warned America of what he called the military industrial complex, which are these military companies that were kind of influencing government policy.

Ryan McBeth: 16:26

And that might have been the case back in the 1950s, but by 1990, what did we get? Brac, base Realignment and Closure Commission. So we're closing bases left and right because it was after the first Gulf War, russia was defeated. We're like what do we do with this big army? Shut it down. So we started shutting down bases, we started drawing down equipment, we bought less equipment and now we're down to basically two shipbuilders there's only two companies that actually build military ships and five total defense contractors in aerospace. So what we had back in even the 1990s isn't really there anymore. What we had back in the 1990s isn't really there anymore. When you look at something like the profit of Lockheed Martin, which I believe was $6.7 billion, whereas Apple makes $97 billion a year, what business do you want to be in, do you?

Ryan McBeth: 17:21

want to be in the business of selling phones or weapon systems to be in. You want to be in the business of selling phones or weapon systems, but the military industrial complex, it's so ingrained in our consciousness that we have a very hard time letting go of it.

Lauren Carlstrom: 17:33

Is it outdated? Has it shifted into something more, maybe cyber?

Ryan McBeth: 17:40

I mean, I think that one of the differences is what's it called NCAA, nraa, the National Readiness I can't remember the darn acronym. One of the things that we do have is lobbyists from some of the defense contractors do help write some of our policy.

Ryan McBeth: 18:00

When it comes to things like parity Like we must have 11 aircraft carriers, we must maintain a certain kind of dominance with China, or parity with China on jet fighters or whatever but when you look at that you go like, well, who would be better to answer that question other than the people who work for the freaking company? There's a reason why you have pharmaceutical sales reps Like yeah, they're there to peddle drugs, but they're also there to educate the doctor. Like yeah, they're there to peddle drugs, but they're also there to educate the doctor. Like hey, you take this thing once a day, it'll prevent your patients from spontaneous decapitation, right, which I hear is really bad, like Hexagon. If you take Hexagon once a day, you'll prevent spontaneous decapitation.

Ryan McBeth: 18:42

Side effects may include your limbs falling off, but you kind of get the idea there, right, it might not be a bad idea to have experts, and if you don't think experts are good at what they do, hopefully you never need an expert witness at a court trial. Sometimes there's a reason why you have experts. So I would say another thing to avoid that entrenched thinking Like am I thinking this way? Because that's what I've always thought. I've always thought there's a military industrial complex.

Ryan McBeth: 19:11

So that means there is one now, even if Lockheed Martin only makes six points.

Lauren Carlstrom: 19:17

Why was that an issue for people that there isn't one or any more. It's not as big.

Ryan McBeth: 19:22

When you challenge people's assumptions about the way the world works, you better get ready for a rough ride.

Lauren Carlstrom: 19:28

Yeah.

Ryan McBeth: 19:29

You know, look it was, it was Isaac. It was in Galilee. Galilee was standing in front of the Catholic Church, the Catholic, and he was there because he had the gall to say no man, the earth moves around the sun.

Lauren Carlstrom: 19:43

You're not going to believe this, but that literally is in my intro that I just recorded for this podcast. I mentioned 17th century, galileo Galilei and how he? Was four centuries until Pope Pius, I think. Yeah, sorry about that In 1992 is when he finally said OK, all of the previous criticism we now accept. Well, yeah, there is About the sun being the center. Yeah, crazy.

Ryan McBeth: 20:13

One interesting thing when it comes to truth. Truth can be a moving target, especially if the way what you see as the truth works for certain situations. For example, newtonian physics. Okay, isaac Newton. Isaac Newton is a freaking man. People were accurately predicting when the sun was going to come up with Newtonian physics, and they were doing it for 200 years. But as we get closer to the speed of light, newtonian physics doesn't work anymore. Now does that mean Newtonian physics was wrong? Well, it doesn't mean it was wrong. It was right for those particular applications. But then we discovered new information.

Ryan McBeth: 20:59

So if you're kind of clinging to old truth, hey, if you go outside in the rain, you'll catch a cold, all right. If you go outside in the rain, you'll catch a cold, all right. Well, maybe back in the 17th century or something, they had no antibiotics or the houses were more naturally damp because of lack of insulation. So if you did go outside, you couldn't dry off fast enough. Now you can just throw our clothes in the dryer. Maybe you didn't have as many clothes to wear, so you might not change out of your wet clothes and you would catch a cold. I don't know. But truth can kind of shift and if you kind of stay in the mindset of well, this is the truth, because it's always been the truth, or it's been the truth as long as I've known it, that's kind of dangerous as well.

Lauren Carlstrom: 21:39

I love that and I think that actually let that be our working definition for this topic today as we discuss. How can I know truth? Because maybe it's an ongoing knowing, an ongoing relationship, like you and I getting to know each other. It starts here and then it gets bigger and larger and it can change too. So that's exciting, Okay, great. So now that we have that for our listeners and for ourselves, I'd like to go into. You've talked about a couple of things like IDC, the process for analyzing facts, looking at like probability and likelihood.

Ryan McBeth: 22:10

Yeah, I think that's ICD-203.

Lauren Carlstrom: 22:13

Okay, I think that's really interesting.

Lauren Carlstrom: 22:15

And then DIP, deceptive imagery, persuasion which is a form of propaganda that uses you take an image and or one would take an image and put false text over it. It's particularly used in social media. I'm sure right how. And then you have tools that you've mentioned in some of your videos, ryan, which again I'll just say are not only informative but freaking funny. You use Cyabra, you use Google, reverse image searches, social threat, intelligence, all these things. What are your tools in your toolbox when you see something online that you like use to deconstruct and say, hey, this isn't going on?

Ryan McBeth: 22:57

So I think probably one of the biggest toolboxes all the books behind you and these are just a small fraction of the books I have, and I actually have quite a few books in my Kindle as well. So probably one of the biggest tools is that. Well, shoot, I'm the tool, because this is literally my life. This is all I do. You know, I have a couple of hobbies I like to run, I like to ride bikes, but I work about 13 to 16 hours a day and even when I'm going running, I'm reading or I'm listening to a nonfiction book. So you know, the step one in your defense in depth, your defense against misinformation, is to be informed yourself, and that means read as much as possible, learn as much as possible about the entire world, everything from well, I mean, I have the adventures of Huckleberry Finn right here One of my favorites.

Ryan McBeth: 23:47

Yeah, really yeah To. I have. I have a book on Eros and Pompeii. Ooh, that seems titillizing. I think these are just two random books that I pulled off myself, right, yeah?

Lauren Carlstrom: 23:58

And, by the way, I just want to share, too, that Ryan has been. He had. Not only has he done a video on some of his favorite books, but also he gave we're Not Blowing Hot Air an exclusive list of his top favorite books that I'll share later on with our subscribers. So thank you for that, ryan. But OK, right, so inform yourself. That's your brain, that's your base.

Ryan McBeth: 24:18

Your brain base is to to actually look, to read as much as you can and know as much as you can. Know as much you can. That's your base, right? That's your foundation.

Ryan McBeth: 24:27

And then, for me, one of the one of the tools that I use is google reverse image search, and google reverse image search allows you to take an image and figure out the provenance of that image. Where did this image come from? So it might, you might take a look at this image and see all the possible instances where this image was posted, or even similar images. So that's one. That's one useful, um, that's one useful tool. Now, syabra is a paid tool. Uh, this is.

Ryan McBeth: 24:57

I think this normally costs about twelve thousand dollars a month. I actually don't pay for it. Syabra gives it to me for free. I just have to mention them when I use a tool. And Syabra is constantly scanning social media and it uses some secret sauce to determine whether accounts are real or fake, and there's certain software tricks they have up their sleeve to figure out whether accounts are real accounts or inauthentic accounts, and that is very useful when taking a look at people on social media who are spreading misinformation. So those are kind of like three layers of defenses there and the average person, they have access to two. Read as much as you can and use Google reverse image search if you're ever looking at an image that could be deceptive imagery persuasion which, by the way, talking about deceptive imagery persuasion, if you'd like me to do, that Please, yes.

Ryan McBeth: 25:54

The idea behind deceptive imagery persuasion is that you take a truthful picture and you put misleading text on it. And one example I always give is there's this famous Facebook post of a woman who said this is Betty White in her 20s. I don't know if you show graphics during your show, but I can send you this image, but Betty White in her 20s is gorgeous woman. She's kind of like you know 1930s pinup model looking thing, but it's not Betty White. But you want to believe it's betty white, right? Because who doesn't?

Lauren Carlstrom: 26:27

like betty white. Yeah, real, real jerks. Wouldn't like betty white.

Ryan McBeth: 26:31

That's an easy sell and there's, there's not a lot of um, there's not a lot of problems that you can encounter if you are wrong, that that isn't betty white, right, like the amount of proof that you have to do increases based on the level of the threat. If you came to me and said, ryan, someone parked in your parking space, I'm probably not going to ask you for proof. I'm probably going to take your word for that right. But if you say Ryan, hey, two knights are jousting outside, you say Ryan, hey, two knights are jousting outside, you're going to want to see some proof about that. Yeah, right, so kind of the level of claim, the severity of the claim. You need stronger and stronger proof to prove that claim is true.

Lauren Carlstrom: 27:17

Did a thumb just come up in front of your screen, by the way?

Ryan McBeth: 27:21

Oh my goodness, I'm sorry. I can't figure out how to turn that off I have a mac in time.

Lauren Carlstrom: 27:28

I just wanted to see if it was deceptive imagery that I was like that, for for some reason I can't figure out how to turn that off.

Ryan McBeth: 27:36

When you do the thumb ups, that they do the thumbs up I do thumb up like that I I think that sometimes my Mac will add a thumbs up on the screen.

Lauren Carlstrom: 27:48

I actually think, if I do, this or that.

Ryan McBeth: 27:51

it, like confetti, rains down or balloons come up, something like that Makes it rain. I can't. I've owned a Macintosh for probably about nine months now. I'm still figuring this thing out.

Lauren Carlstrom: 28:04

I think they call it a Mac now.

Ryan McBeth: 28:07

Yeah, you know what? That shows you how old I am right, because I grew up when they were like oh, I have a Macintosh.

Lauren Carlstrom: 28:12

A Macintosh yeah. Yeah.

Ryan McBeth: 28:15

That's amazing. I can render a 4K video that's 20 minutes long in about eight minutes with this thing, and it would have taken me at least 30 minutes on my, my old pc yeah, well, you've bridged like now you're on the creative side, you need a mac for yeah and if worse comes to worse, I use remote desktop. I remote into my pc. In fact, when I, when I did a recent video, I wrote some software to uh kind of prove that social media could actually shut down deceptive imagery like that.

Lauren Carlstrom: 28:47

How mad does that make you that they haven't?

Ryan McBeth: 28:49

We could actually stop or severely hamper disinformation on channels like Twitter, facebook and Instagram in about two sprints, and a sprint is like a development cycle, so normally that's a two week sprint, two week development cycle. We probably shut it down in about two weeks. You would use something called vector maps.

Lauren Carlstrom: 29:06

I want to say that again. So in two weeks we could shut down on all social media channels in the US, all disinformation and deceptive imagery.

Ryan McBeth: 29:17

I would say most disinformation. We could make it severely hard for it to spread. We could do that in a couple of ways. And two weeks I say two sprints. A sprint in software development, agile development is considered two weeks Usually. Sometimes it's three, but so maybe in about a month, maybe six weeks if the deadline slips, we could probably implement something that would, when you upload an image, it would take a look at that image, it would see how similar that image is to other images that were uploaded and it could create that data provenance for that image where you could say, hey, this image was actually uploaded back in 2016.

Ryan McBeth: 29:55

There is a famous picture of an Israeli girl writing on an artillery shell 155 artillery shell and people were passing this image around saying look at how horrible the Israelis are. They are writing messages to children in Gaza on this artillery shell. And I said they might be writing messages, but that image is actually from 2006. And the only reason I could do that is that I remembered it in my brain. But how easy would it be for a piece of software? It would be trivial. It would be trivial for a piece of software to take that image that you just uploaded, vectorize it and a vector map is sort of like a description of the picture but in mathematics, and take that vector map and see how similar it is to thousands of other pictures, millions of other pictures you could do that in seconds, but that's trivial.

Ryan McBeth: 30:49

Yeah, it would take longer to upload the picture than I think it would to actually compare with other pictures, so we could shut it down very quickly like that. That's one way of doing it, just by having data Providence and saying, hey, this person is claiming this thing happened recently. It actually happened in 2006. That's number one. Another thing we could do is we could create a cool-down time for things like how often you share something or how often you like something.

Ryan McBeth: 31:16

But how often you share something, that's kind of the big thing. Maybe you only get three shares an hour. If you want to share something, you better really like this thing, and that will kind of help prevent some disinformation from spreading. People will really want to have to use that share. So I think that freedom of speech is definitely a good thing and it's something that the government should not infringe upon. Now, private companies they can take certain steps into their own, certain things into their own hands to say, okay, we're not saying you can't say this thing, but we are going to put a little blurb on the bottom of your speech saying what this person is saying is contradicted by this information that we have here.

Lauren Carlstrom: 32:07

Yep.

Ryan McBeth: 32:08

So and that might kind of pump the brakes on disinformation just kind of in general.

Lauren Carlstrom: 32:14

I love it. Yeah, yeah, okay. Well, I want to go back to social media, but first of all, I think it's important to know that, like you've said in some of your videos and again I encourage all the listeners and viewers to go and watch them because they're funny and informative you love a little bit of thrill and excitement, danger, challenge being told that you can't the pursuit of life and liberty, you've said you love keeping people alive and, of course, truth, helping people know the truth, finding the bad guys and exposing them, kind of like, what do you have to say about that? Yourself out there as a public figure doing this stuff.

Ryan McBeth: 32:57

Boy, I've never, never really thought about that. I mean, I guess I guess what drives me is it is that, that love of country, I, I, uh, I'm just uh, I'm so happy to be here and I'm happy to be part of this, this amazing american experiment. Public figure, I think, kind of like as a public figure, I, I feel responsible to my fans, or people that watch my, my stuff, even if they're not fans, to kind of give them good information, give them the best possible information so that way they can make decisions. I still work today for an intelligence company called Velocity. I work part time. They basically they're, they're, they're my, my, my, my way of retaining the security permissions that I have. So I just do a little bit of work for them and I can still stay on that list right.

Lauren Carlstrom: 33:53

Yep the security clearance.

Ryan McBeth: 33:57

Yeah, the security clearance. Not everybody knows what that is.

Lauren Carlstrom: 34:00

Okay, I don't really. I just like to say it, I pretend like I do.

Ryan McBeth: 34:04

But I, I mean I want to be, I, I, um, I mean I want to be on the list.

Lauren Carlstrom: 34:07

I I do want to be on the list, but uh, I'm probably not gonna be.

Ryan McBeth: 34:11

There's like a year-long wait for that.

Lauren Carlstrom: 34:13

Okay, all right I'm still waiting.

Ryan McBeth: 34:15

I'm still waiting to be on raya if you know what that is, it takes the investigators about a year to clear you. All right, I think that for a guy who served his country which I kind of think is a weird thing to say sometimes, but for a guy who served his country I also feel like I can continue to serve. And I can do that by finding the bad guys. Now, I used to write something called C4ISR software. C4isr stands for Command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance. So my software found bad guys. And once I found those bad guys I'd give that information to my client and then my client would either continue surveillance or they would perform more kinetic actions to solve the problem.

Ryan McBeth: 35:02

And nowadays I use software tools to still find bad guys, sometimes kinetically, not here, but in other situations. But when I'm in this room here I can use my software that I've either developed or I've bought or I've worked with other companies on to find the people who are trying to destroy our country through disinformation and exposing them for who they are. So I guess that's kind of what I'm all about. If I'm going to use my celebrity for something, it's going to be as the loudest voice in the room to call out the people who want to destroy America.

Lauren Carlstrom: 35:44

Well, I for one, I'm grateful for it. I um, really the main motive I had in reaching out to you was you really helped me with an issue that I have been, like, subtly, but really quite strongly affected by since childhood. I was a bit of a worry ward as a kid and you know, I would worry about my mom and dad coming back from a party, making sure they got home safe, and also I'd think a lot about nuclear war and it like really worried me. I mean, I would cry at night, I would cry myself to sleep sometimes worrying about these things. And so you, you know, I was watching another podcast and there was somebody who was giving a depiction of what nuclear fallout would look like and how it would. All of the bombs would go off and everyone would be melting off their flesh, off their face, and I, you know I wanted to understand and read and all those things. So, but what you said I'm going to, I'm going to quote, I'm going to read you here Radiation isn't the boogeyman and you can deal with it If you know how, you know that if you are outside of the blast and thermal zone, you stand a good chance of surviving if you keep your head about you and you take shelter.

Lauren Carlstrom: 37:09

You also know how nuclear weapons are delivered and why they might be used and what for, and you know that EMP is really kind of an unknown factor in all of this. There's one thing I want to leave you with. It's this Don't be afraid of radiation, but have a healthy respect for radiation. If you keep in mind time, shielding and distance, you'll have all the tools you need to deal with the threat. And that really freed me. Like that was one of. That was a different video that you did, but you were talking about. You know what the truth is and you took issue with. Whenever you see video that you did but you were talking about, you know what the truth is and you took issue with. Whenever you see something that you don't see as truth, ryan, you call it out. That takes so much courage and it's beyond your intelligence. It's beyond all those things it's about. Like it's a decision that most people, I think, admire you for, but most people don't make.

Ryan McBeth: 38:05

Yeah, I can tell you that I don't think anyone's pro-nuclear war right Like, let's go to a nuclear war, and I can tell you that if there was a genuine honest-to-God full exchange there'd be a lot of problems. But in something like a limited exchange, which could theoretically happen, or if we're just talking about one nuclear weapon, you're outside of the blast zone, outside of the thermal zone, if you're able to take shelter. There's a seven to 10 rule that for for every seven hours the level of radiation goes down 10%. I mean radiation. Radiation is radiation because it decays when you have an unstable isotope.

Lauren Carlstrom: 38:44

I knew you were going to say isotope, by the way, because I watched your video, if you have an that.

Ryan McBeth: 38:50

That one I know which book you're talking about is the book that scared the pants off of everybody, yep, and you should be. You should have a healthy fear of this. This isn't something you want. However, uh, by understanding the science behind things, you can kind of take control, and one of the issues I have with a particular book that I believe you're referencing was radiation wasn't explained. And you know I have to travel to, actually I have to travel to. I might have traveled to Michigan soon, but traveling to California you should.

Ryan McBeth: 39:22

I think you get about five milligram of radiation. I'm trying to do that one from memory and that's like one chest x-ray. So pilots, they get juiced up like if a pilot got the the radiation dose that a nuclear power plant worker got, there would be investigations. Pilots get an enormous amount of radiation. It's because you're flying kind of above that protective blanket of oxygen wow, of the atmosphere that we have. So you're at 30 000 feet, you're a lot higher up. There isn't as much atmosphere protecting you from solar radiation. Um, you know it's one of the issues we have. Flying to Mars, there's a lot of radiation out in space right Now.

Ryan McBeth: 40:08

Radiation is radiation because you have an isotope. We have an element that is unstable. It has too many neutrons and so it tries to release these neutrons, either in the form of helium, which is an alpha particle, or an electron, which is a beta particle, or gamma rays, which occur when they split, or the neutron kind of heads off on its own, which is what you get in a nuclear reaction. So radiation means that isotope is trying to decay and reach a stable state. Now I don't know if you've heard the term half-life, but you might have an isotope like tritium, which has a half-life of 12.33 years. So if you ever have a tritium watch or a tritium sights on a gun, there's a reason why they're not as bright 12 years later as they were when you took it out of the box. The point of radiation is that it radioactive isotopes decay, yeah, and different isotopes decay at different rates. And if you kind of know like, okay, after roughly a week things are going to be down to safe levels, don't, don't splash in any puddles, but it'll be safe enough to go outside and do different things, if you kind of know that, then that kind of gives you a little more power.

Ryan McBeth: 41:27

And you know one of the fears I had when that particular book came out was that people were going to use that as an excuse to let Russia just walk all over Europe. Because, oh my God, what if Russia nukes whatever? And the next thing you have to say is well, what does that even mean? Russia nukes whatever. And the next thing you have to say is well, what does that even mean? What if Russia nukes? What does that mean? Is Russia going to detonate a city buster over Kyiv?

Ryan McBeth: 41:51

What tactical benefit did they get from that? Are they going to blow up New York? What benefit did they get from that? They don't get any benefit from that. About the only time I could see a nuclear weapon used in Ukraine would be a smaller tactical nuclear weapon which would be in the one to 10 kiloton range. Like a small nuclear weapon and some of the smaller weapons, you could detonate one at the end of an airfield and it wouldn't even break the glass at the other end of the airfield, and that's how small some of these weapons can be. But you might use a tactical nuclear weapon to explode over an enemy formation.

Ryan McBeth: 42:31

So that is a thing you can do. The Russians actually practiced this. We practiced it ourselves in the 50s. We would detonate a nuclear weapon and then tell troops okay, run through the blast area, and that blows a hole open to the enemy lines. And a second uh use case for a weapon in ukraine would be if ukraine manages to break through russian lines, russia could theoretically use a tactical nuclear weapon to stop their advance, probably an airdrop weapon. So the the, but the odds of them doing that are very, very low. Uh, I've said before, nuclear weapons really aren't that useful today, because one of the reasons we used nuclear weapons in the past was that we didn't have smart weapons. And now, if we want to drop a bridge, we can use a laser guided bomb. Back in the 1950s we weren't that precise.

Ryan McBeth: 43:20

Just lob a nuclear weapon in the area of that bridge and it'll take it out, but I'm glad that I was able to make you feel that no, legit, like it was.

Lauren Carlstrom: 43:29

Uh, it was awesome and you know it's all on that pursuit for truth and how we can grow and look at things and really understand our world better. So it was, it was amazing. I I think I would like to go into what our real, what the weapons are today that are being used, but first I think it's somewhat important to, as thoughtfully as we can talk about who is our enemy. Who do we really need to be afraid of now, today? You know, sitting here, I'm in Minnesota, you are somewhere on the East Coast. What's my threat? What's your threat?

Ryan McBeth: 44:12

What do we need to consider, if not worry about Boy? That's a really deep question. I've never been asked that question before. That's a really deep question. So the general strategic threats would be, in order of issue Russia, China, Iran and North Korea. Those are the four basic strategic threats. I would say another strategic threat might be general climate change and I'm not a climate guy, I'm not a super environmentalist, but the army has already identified that climate change could create the kind of mass migrations and the kind of civil disturbances that could cause the American military to be deployed to different places. So if climate change means droughts in certain areas or energy scarcity and that starts a war, the US or the UN could be called in as peacekeepers to stop those sides from fighting. So that's kind of the fifth issue there. And I think one big issue is terrorism and that threat, that specter of terrorism hasn't really gone away and are you putting that outside of the former enemies that you mentioned?

Lauren Carlstrom: 45:34

Are you coupling that with?

Ryan McBeth: 45:36

it. Yeah, I would Well. So the thing that actually kind of keeps me up at night, a couple of things keep me up at night. One of the things that kind of keeps me up at night. A couple of things keep me up at night. One of the things that kind of keeps me up at night is terrorism from Iran, iranian proxies inside the United States.

Lauren Carlstrom: 45:51

And can we just? For the benefit of listeners, because I recently, I mean really kind of understood what proxy wars are and how they're used by some of the major countries. Can you can you briefly explain what that is?

Ryan McBeth: 46:03

Absolutely so. You know, for for the longest time, a country like Iran, they didn't have the money to build aircraft carriers, they didn't have the money to build huge nuclear missiles, terrorist organizations or militias and have them develop a strategic footprint or a footprint inside of a country to destabilize that country and give Iran influence over that country. Lebanon is one example.

Lauren Carlstrom: 46:34

Kind of like pharmaceutical reps going in to talk to the doctors.

Ryan McBeth: 46:38

Yeah, I mean you could say that Pharmaceutical yeah, the people who were selling Oxycontin, they were trying to destabilize the industry, right yeah, yeah, the people who were selling Oxycontin, they were trying to destabilize the industry, right yeah. So, and then, ideally, then that doctor might talk to another doctor at his golf game and say like hey, did you see that pharmaceutical rep.

Lauren Carlstrom: 47:08

Their drug helps prevent people's heads from popping off right boots on the ground and citing well, finding the alliance, how they're connected and then giving the resources to execute a higher agenda.

Ryan McBeth: 47:14

Yeah, so these proxy organizations, in Iran's case the Houthis who are in Yemen. The Hamas is considered a proxy organization of Iran, even though technically they're Shia, they're a differentians and they kind of do Iran's bidding. If Iran wants to destabilize a country like Lebanon, they might tell Hezbollah okay, I want you to attack the parliament building this weekend and we would just drop a bomb on it, right? But we have aircraft carriers and we have other resources. Iran doesn't have that. So I think one of the things that kind of keeps me up at night is the idea that Iran could have proxy agents here living in the US who are waiting to be activated to go do some kind of terrorist thing.

Ryan McBeth: 48:17

I mean we've seen that.

Lauren Carlstrom: 48:18

We've seen that happen.

Ryan McBeth: 48:21

It happened in Chechnya at a school called Belsan. That was in Iranya. Uh the, at a school called belsan, uh, that was in iran, that was, uh, the chechens. I believe, um, but I recently islamic state launched an attack in moscow I just mean the fear.

Lauren Carlstrom: 48:35

The fear isn't it. The fear is grounded in some history.

Ryan McBeth: 48:40

Your fear is grounded in the history. I don't want to say fear isn't oh, oh, I'm scared of that. It is. There is a non-zero chance of something like that happening.

Ryan McBeth: 48:49

And while I am in no way criticizing our president or our current border policy, with our borders the way they are, one of the issues is that we don't know who's coming in. Is that we don't know who's coming in? And a lot of Chinese have gone into the southern border with Mexico, and some Iranians as well, and in the intelligence community this is what we call a clue, and that doesn't mean we need to shut the border down and put people in cages and arrest and deport, but it means we need to do something, at least know who we have coming in. Because if I were Iran, that's how I would bring terrorist groups into the country. Just put them in through people who are being smuggled across the border by coyotes, and now you have cells living inside of America. I didn't want to eliminate your fear of nuclear war and give you a new one, but you know, look if you're.

Lauren Carlstrom: 49:46

I'm not as scared because I subscribe to your sub stack and your YouTube channel now, right, and so I know I'm going to be able to see something coming now with a five minute or 20 minute video.

Ryan McBeth: 49:59

I sincerely hope I never have to make a video like that. But, I mean, you take a look at where you live in. You live in Minnesota right, and in Minneapolis there's the Mall of America right. Like what's what's? Is that good? Is that? I don't know you may have. I've never been to the Mall of America.

Lauren Carlstrom: 50:15

I won't say anything. I don't want to like hamper our tourism here to the state. It's not where I would shop. Actually, you know, maybe I'm a bit of a fatalist, because I've heard that if, like one tiny drop of anthrax was dropped, it would shut down the mall for like 70 years, or something crazy like that. You know? So like I don't know.

Ryan McBeth: 50:36

You got to be careful with the hyperbole.

Lauren Carlstrom: 50:39

Yeah, exactly, which is why you're my favorite now.

Ryan McBeth: 50:43

Yeah, one drop of anthrax could like. Well, we would detect it. You're my favorite now. Yeah, like he's had one drop of anthrax. Well, we would detect it. We have troops and all these troops do I think it's 37 series, I might be wrong about it 73 series, 73 series soldiers, 73 MOS series. They find and go after chemical weapons series. They find and go after chemical weapons. And we have a number of National Guard units that I can't remember their name right now, but these National Guard units are active duty National Guard and their whole job is to respond to nuclear, biological, chemical and radiological disasters. I know one of my fans asked me do a video about the dangers of a dirty bomb. The biggest danger of a freaking dirty bomb is to get hit by a piece of masonry when the bomb goes off. A dirty bomb is just a bomb, conventional bomb that's surrounded by radioactive isotopes. That thing blows up and you don't have an atomic explosion.

Ryan McBeth: 51:41

You have these radionucleotides that are kind of thrown everywhere and yeah, if you breathe one in, you might have some problems, but for the most part it's a weapon of terror, not really a weapon of mass destruction. Right, and we know how to find and clean up these radioactive isotopes. How do we know that? Because what does radiation do? Decays. What do radioactive isotopes do? They emit radiation. So we find the particle that's emitting radiation and we go oh okay, there's a particle of radiation there. We take a piece of tape, stick it on that, we survey the ground. Okay, that's clear. We survey the tape Yep, it's on the tape Put it in a biohazard bag and we put it in storage for the next 10,000 years or however long it takes to decay.

Ryan McBeth: 52:25

So in a case like that, we have national guard troops that know how to deal with radiological, biological, chemical and nuclear threats.

Lauren Carlstrom: 52:34

Well, I think, going back to like, there are enemies out there in the world, so they're. On the macro, big geopolitical players are also the proxy players. I think one could argue it's also within our mind that we can control the level of threat that we, you know, the information we take in, how we make sense of it and how we live our lives. Like, I'm not going to worry too much tonight about everything I'm learning today from you, but you know so. I just want to make sure I'm learning today from you, but you know so, I just want to make sure. So, to finish your point, the proxy, some of those players, a bit of the explosions that might happen, if we can say that word.

Ryan McBeth: 53:19

You know all the words that are taboo on YouTube. Oh, on YouTube.

Lauren Carlstrom: 53:21

Yeah, that's good enough, but, yeah, so any other thoughts on what your worries are today? Oh, on YouTube. Yeah, that's good enough. Yeah, so any other thoughts on what your worries are today?

Ryan McBeth: 53:31

Like as far as what we're dealing with, cyber security is a big worry, okay yes, I want to get to that, I have a very dumb house, and I do that for a reason.

Lauren Carlstrom: 53:48

So like broadband are you talking? Is that what, how?

Ryan McBeth: 53:49

how I don't I? I do have one alexa device and that is kind of walled off a little bit in my network and for the most part that's because if I'm handling raw meat I don't want to touch the timer on the microwave to you know, do like 15 minutes or whatever.

Ryan McBeth: 54:04

Alexa set a timer for 10 minutes. Yeah, uh, but other than that, I don't have any smart devices. I can't turn on my lights with my voice. I can't open my blinds with my iphone. Uh, I have a. I have a very dumb house, and one of the vectors in for any kind of uh, any kind of cyber attack would be all of the devices that we have on our network, because I can practically guarantee you that your voice activated coffee maker probably doesn't have the level of cybersecurity that you would expect.

Lauren Carlstrom: 54:37

So I'm just going to come cut to it. Should we, the people listening to this, make our houses and our cars dumber, more dumb, not as smart, or do you need to?

Ryan McBeth: 54:52

that depends on your level of risk or your your risk profile um you know, I uh, one of the things I've talked.

Ryan McBeth: 55:02

I've talked pretty openly about it I carry a gun. I'm not a gun nut, I'm not super into guns, but I carry a small pistol Because I've been threatened before. So my level of what I believe, what my perceived risk is, is probably different than the average person who isn't quote unquote YouTube famous or hasn't pissed off Iranians and Russians and Chinese and incels on 4chan, right, I would say in general, if you can live your life without an internet connected washer dryer, then you should probably do that. But then you kind of have to weigh like hey, um, it's nice to know when my clothes are done, because I live in a big house and I don't get the alert that my dryer is finished and then I haven't folded the clothes yet. So if you can kind of give yourself a reason why this thing needs to be connected to the internet, then yeah, maybe the advantage of having that device is worth the trade-off.

Lauren Carlstrom: 56:07

Let me ask oh sorry, go ahead. No, no, no, no, no, no. I was pretty much done. Okay, so everyone needs a VPN, yes or no?

Ryan McBeth: 56:21

So one of my sponsors is AI VPN. Plug it, plug it, yeah, yeah. So I I would say that, yes, with an asterisk. If you're traveling uh, if you're traveling and connecting up to the hotel wi-fi, it's, it's. You're not having sex without a condom, you're having sex with somebody else's condom. It is the most disgusting thing you can possibly do. Connect to a hotel network.

Lauren Carlstrom: 56:53

What about the airport? Same thing Any public network.

Ryan McBeth: 56:57

Any public network, you need a VPN. Just in general, it probably isn't a bad idea to have a VPN virtual private network. So a VPN virtual private network, it allows you to mask your location by using another computer. So you tunnel to that another computer and it looks like to the whole internet that you're coming out of that computer. Oh, by the way, companies can actually detect whether you're on a VPN because the frame size is a little bit smaller. This package was wrapped in something else before. It's a little bit slower, but if you travel I don't even use airplane Wi-Fi without a VPN that's going straight up to a satellite. I don't know who manages that satellite I would say that it wouldn't be a bad idea when you travel or if you want just that extra layer of security. Uh, especially if you, if you um. I guess one example is um, let's say something like uh, like, like netflix.

Ryan McBeth: 58:02

You know, right now netflix gets really angry at you if you're suddenly outside of a location. So if I travel down to a friend's house or something like that, in a different state, I want to be able to watch my Netflix. I might use a VPN to make it look like I'm still in Maryland. That way Netflix doesn't go oh hold up? Where are you? How come you're over here. So that would be another use case.

Lauren Carlstrom: 58:29

Are all VPNs the same, by the way, what's that? Are all VPNs the same, would you say? Because I know a couple like Splashtop, or whatever it's called, is owned by another one, and I use a different one.

Ryan McBeth: 58:43

So not all VPNs are the same. One of the things you kind of have to watch out for is know who owns your VPN, what country that VPN is based in, because, like, if you have, let's say, a VPN that is owned by China, you know, like that's now your data is going directly to China.

Lauren Carlstrom: 59:05

Can we just say do you want to plug your VPN then? So I trust that one Well.

Ryan McBeth: 59:10

I mean, my VPN is PIA VPN you can get a. Pia VPN slash to get an 83% offer this month only.

Lauren Carlstrom: 59:18

Really Okay, awesome, all right, I use Molded. By the way, tell me later if that's a good one or right now.

Ryan McBeth: 59:28

Look, let's say you were operating an intelligence agency. Wouldn't it be a great idea to start a VPN?

Lauren Carlstrom: 59:36

Brilliant.

Ryan McBeth: 59:40

Hey, use Spooky VPN. Spooky VPN gives you the top speeds, right. Hey, give it away for a dollar a month. Spooky VPN for a dollar a month. What's frustrating to me?

Lauren Carlstrom: 59:50

is the US government in some cases, are shutting down some VPN. Because I have VPN, I can't go to certain sites. Oh, certain government sites no no, I mean I don't know if maybe we should edit this part out, but crypto stuff. The government's really kind of against VPN, I think in general the US government, because they want to see data, they want to see what's going on with that stuff In that community. It's a challenge.

Ryan McBeth: 1:00:23

In the crypto community yeah. You know, I'm actually not aware of that. I know a little bit about crypto. I did send you that video the most amazing video, by the way.

Lauren Carlstrom: 1:00:33

Now we have to keep this apart. Like everyone, ryan does this really smart like spec script of a Seinfeld episode where he explains how a blockchain is actually made from a very, very geeky side. Geeky way, like with the nodes and all that.

Ryan McBeth: 1:00:55

It was really awesome, though, so it has all three episodes, Of course.

Lauren Carlstrom: 1:01:00

I had some more laugh out loud moments. I'm telling you it is really really well done.

Ryan McBeth: 1:01:07

He dresses as a woman.

Lauren Carlstrom: 1:01:08

I mean, you're a woman, you're.

Ryan McBeth: 1:01:09

Elaine, I'm actually. I happen to know my old boss. He told me that he believes the Russians actually assigned someone to me. So I have a handler. I have a minder who kind of watches what I do on the internet.

Lauren Carlstrom: 1:01:25

Hey, what's up Vlad?

Ryan McBeth: 1:01:27

But I'm actually really surprised they haven't found that yet Me dressed like Elaine, that's so good, I'm surprised about that.

Lauren Carlstrom: 1:01:36

When you said in your email, it wasn't that popular yet. I'm like you just got to re-blast it out to all your followers. You just got to re-blast it out to all your followers.

Ryan McBeth: 1:01:45

It's one of the issues that most people wouldn't get it, at least the software programming side. But what was kind of interesting was, as I was writing the script for that particular video, I was like, wow, this would actually, if Seinfeld were going on today, kramer would be mining crypto 100%, without a doubt right, yeah, yeah yeah, it's money for nothing. This is gold, jerry. I can tell you, in my head I've already I was like I would watch this. It was comical. Like it was like I would watch this. It was comical.

Lauren Carlstrom: 1:02:27

Like it was great. No training everybody. I don't know if I like you more as a comedian or an intelligence expert, like telling the truth and shaming the devil on social media. Yeah, it's funny. I've never been called a comedian before.

Ryan McBeth: 1:02:40

Oh, my God.

Lauren Carlstrom: 1:02:40

All right. Well, I don't know, Maybe your fans ask your fans if they think you're funny or more funny or more helpful.

Ryan McBeth: 1:02:54

I think some of the I think some of the humor came from. You know the fact that that what, what can Russia say about? You know, sometimes when I do videos, I'm like I'm wearing a bathrobe and you know I look like hell and my shirt has cigarette stains in it, my hair is messed up and the reason I I started doing videos like that was number one. It was usually early in the morning when I because I was working for accenture, so like I literally like rolled out of bed, just made a video, right, you know, because something happened last night. Oh, there was a new Ukraine, got a new weapon system. I'm going to make a video about it and kind of what I realized is that if I look like I'm a crazy person, what can Russia say? If I'm wearing a suit and tie and I'm trying to be very stiff and respectful and sound very seriously.

Ryan McBeth: 1:03:45

I'm taking you seriously. If I do that, then Russia can go oh, this guy is a CIA shill. But if I look like I just stumbled out of the basement and my walls are covered with red lines and string and pictures and JFK and all that stuff, if I look like that guy and I'm giving good intelligence, what can Russia say about me? Right, the word disarming comes to mind.

Lauren Carlstrom: 1:04:13

It's very disarming.

Ryan McBeth: 1:04:16

Yeah, in some ways that's a character and I also. I don't take myself too seriously, no not anymore. Like, yeah, there are times, there are times when I know when to be serious, like when I did my video where I analyzed footage from the October 7th attacks not wearing a bathroom. Right now, I know how to be professional. I'm professional right now. You did that, you did Really. I didn't see any of those videos, yeah.

Lauren Carlstrom: 1:04:42

So I had to make two versions, one for YouTube, which, by some miracle of God, I was how to be professional. You did that. You did Really, I didn't see any of those videos.

Ryan McBeth: 1:04:45

So I had to make two versions one for YouTube, which by some miracle of God got monetized by YouTube. I had to blot everything out, but by some miracle of God it got monetized. But on my sub stack I show everything uncensored and it's pretty graphic. I'm not showing these pictures because it's like I want to show dead people. Instead, I'm saying, all right, these Palestinian guys are posing with this dead body right here. You can see by the patch on their left shoulder that they're in the 5th Brigade. So that's kind of like. I'll show all sorts of depth on my on my sub stack and but but there's a reason behind it. Someone asked me to review a video that was like greatest hits, which is just Russian dudes just getting blown up by FPV drums. I'm like there's nothing. There's nothing to value. Here You're just showing people get killed, yeah.

Lauren Carlstrom: 1:05:45

Go play a video game if you want to do that?

Ryan McBeth: 1:05:48

Yeah, if you're, if you start to think it's fun, you need to seek psychological help, because that's not, there's nothing about this that's good.

Ryan McBeth: 1:06:00

I feel sorry for every Russian soldier that has to get blown up. You know what that sucks. It's war. One of the videos that I made God, I guess about two years ago, when I found out the TOW missile, which is a missile that I used to shoot in the Army. It's an anti-tank missile. When I found out the TOW missile was being sent to Ukraine, I made a video and I made it.

Ryan McBeth: 1:06:19

Creative Commons and I begged Russians to surrender and I begged Russians to surrender. Call this number up here, call the surrender hotline, because you're going to burn to death inside your tanks this missile is. I knew a lot about the capabilities of this weapon system we were giving to Ukraine and I felt sorry for those Russian kids who may not have wanted to be there and are going to suffer the consequences of a madman. And I begged these kids to surrender surrender. I can find the humanity in that. So if I'm just seeing a bunch of videos where russians are getting blown up not a lot there but if they're getting blown up and their arm flies off and there's a patch on their arm that says, oh, they're in the 75th motor rifle regiment, that's intelligence, that's. That's interesting to me, you know.

Lauren Carlstrom: 1:07:04

but the other stuff, like yeah, yeah, I don't, I'm not too into the whole death porn kind of thing yeah, you're more into life, clearly, I think, by the way you choose to live your life.

Lauren Carlstrom: 1:07:18

Um, I, I, so we've we've discussed about a little bit about the enemy, who it is, and and some of the kind of more modern warfare which I think you said cyber security or cyber tactics, social media. Tiktok, you said, is a weapons system. You said it is a weapon. Go ahead, no, you tell it. You're better than your quote. You're right here. Yeah, tiktok is a weapon. Go ahead, no, you tell it, you're better than your quote.

Ryan McBeth: 1:07:45

You're right here. Yeah, tiktok is a weapon system. You know, in the olden days, if you wanted to destroy a bridge, say, when you buy a drill, do you buy a drill because you want a drill or because you want a hole? Because you want a hole, right, want a drill. Or because you want a hole Because you want a hole, right. So if you destroy a bridge, are you destroying a bridge because you want to destroy a bridge? Or by destroying that bridge you can prevent the enemy from advancing across it, or you're preventing resupply, you're causing general economic distress which degrades the enemy, right. So in the olden days, if you wanted to destroy a bridge, you had to send a bomb, you had to send a missile to destroy that bridge. Now, why are you destroying the bridge? You're destroying the bridge to deny the ability of people to cross that bridge, which could hinder enemy movements. It could degrade your capability to resupply. So now, with TikTok, you could send students who you brainwashed to shut down that bridge. Now the bridge is still there and you haven't destroyed anything. You have plausible deniability for sending a weapon. But when you send a bunch of students to shut down the Golden Gate Bridge. You're a weapon system. What you've done is you've created economic disruption.

Ryan McBeth: 1:09:05

One of the things I've actually advocated for is to consider enemy disinformation agents combatants, which means they can be kinetically targeted. So if you are getting paid money to spread disinformation from the comfort of an office in whatever country you're in, we can put a hellfire through your window. Now, one of the things I've said is I can send you this graphic For years we've considered land warfare. For 100,000 years, as long as humans have had stones and sticks, we've been fighting on land. And then, by the Peloponnesian War, we're fighting on the oceans and then by World War I, we're fighting in the air. So we've already established that there's three domains of warfare and anybody fighting in those domains are lawful targets.

Ryan McBeth: 1:10:01

A soldier with a gun he's a lawful target. A sailor on a ship he's a lawful target. Sailor on a ship he's a lawful target. A person in a plane, a pilot in a plane that's a lawful target. So cyber, there's a domain of warfare now, and you could also say information is a domain of warfare, and that information domain weaves its way through the other domains of warfare.

Lauren Carlstrom: 1:10:27

Can you explain just how is cyber different in your vernacular versus information? Information war versus cyber war?

Ryan McBeth: 1:10:34

So cyber warfare is designed to degrade or disrupt enemy computer systems Okay, adversary computer systems. Okay, adversary computer systems. So I might launch a cyber attack that shuts down a computer system or destroys a hard drive or whatever Okay. Whereas information warfare means that I am targeting your brain, messaging, I am trying to get you to believe something and lead you toward a guided conclusion, to degrade our adversary Might.

Lauren Carlstrom: 1:11:01

I dare say what's happening right now in Palestine the student protests. Okay.

Ryan McBeth: 1:11:07

Yeah, I mean, I have no doubt in my mind that you know the the who. I'll say whoever is doing this. I can't prove exactly if there is a single agency that is directing students to protest in certain places. A lot of this stuff is done on a case-by-case basis. I know that. One example is the wildfires in Hawaii. After the wildfires in Hawaii, the wildfires just so happened to coincide with an American congressional trip to Ukraine, and one of the narratives that was put out by Russia was we're giving $700 checks to people in Hawaii, but we're giving X amount of billion dollars to Ukraine. And that wasn't true. Now it was true that we were giving $700 gift cards to people, because when someone has lost their entire home, they go to FEMA. Fema says okay, here's a $700 gift card, come back tomorrow. This $700 allows you to buy some clothes, get some sundries, get a hotel for the night. Come back the next day, we'll get you the aid you actually need. Fill out the paperwork. But somehow the narrative became $700, we're only given $700. And that is an information war designed to degrade America's faith in their government.

Ryan McBeth: 1:12:37

I'm going to Australia in a couple of months. In July, I'm going to give a conference, at the 2014 Emergency Services Conference in the Gold Coast in Australia. So spending $9,000 to give a speech for 20 minutes, right, I get my name in a paper, like on a research paper. Worth it, nice, worth it, totally worth it. So one of the things that australia is afraid of is china.

Ryan McBeth: 1:13:04

Uh, if there's ever wildfires in australia, uh, chinese disinformation agents might put out information saying go south, that's where the shelters are. So people go south and they run straight into a fire and they all burned to death. Why did they? Why did the government say that the shelters were in the south? Right? All you have to do is create a, a twitter handle that's similar to the government twitter handle, and get people to retweet what you're saying.

Ryan McBeth: 1:13:33

Yeah, you might have, like it could be like the, the new south wales emergency services, you know, at new New South Wales Emergency Services might be the Twitter handle, right? So then, if you're China and you want to cause disruption in Australia, just copy the logo from that and then call yourself China New South Wales Emergency Services, underscore, and then you start putting out information with hashtags that say outback fire or whatever, and now you have people retweeting information like well, the emergency services said go here. And now you have people running straight into a fire. Now people are upset with the government because the government told them to go south instead of north of the safety list. So that's information war. That's another component of information war, information war Okay.

Lauren Carlstrom: 1:14:25

So, and the best place for a lie to hide is within a truth, right? So like it's always probably going to sneak its way into camouflage itself and live in there. But like so when you think of those situations and people, that the heat is turned up, whether it be a fire that suddenly ascends upon a nation and the people, or a threat of a new type of weapon or warfare that's coming down on a people, or it's a political assembly, a demonstration that people have an emotional urgency to go to, yeah, we can learn to pause and think okay, does it align? Is this a rational way of thinking about what the truth is? Or we can turn off the social channel that we're listening to or find a different social media channel or person.

Lauren Carlstrom: 1:15:16

Like I guess what I'm asking you is how is the best way we we don't have you all the time on every video, every day of the week, to tell us when a new threat hits our nation. Like we don't have someone like you to kind of guide us how do we create our own inner guide to make sense of an incoming threat? I'll give you one more fun example from my life. One more fun example from my life I was in Hawaii when there was a missile that they said was coming oh yeah, yeah, oh, that must have scared the hell out of you.

Lauren Carlstrom: 1:15:48

I was, I was, I work constantly and I finally went on a vacation with. I was with my mom in a beautiful hotel on the beach. It was like I was working. The first three days. We finally took a yoga class on, like, near the beach. Someone comes running down the first time and just finally saw the sun and they're like a missile's heading our way.

Lauren Carlstrom: 1:16:08

Everyone go to the ballroom and so we went to the ballroom, which wasn't going to help us and and we are all gathered there and it turned out to be a false alarm, right. But like I had no idea what, my mom wanted to go to the hotel room to get her wallet so she could have her body identified. It was like there was no plan, there was no way for us to be prepared. The hotel wasn't ready, you know.

Lauren Carlstrom: 1:16:30

So like what, like in a real heated moment, like how, because we are living in that world. We are living in that world where it may not be nuclear war now that like melts our faces off, but it's some stuff. It's something on a bridge, it's something that happens in front of the Israeli embassy, it's something that happens that evokes emotion or urgency, and like I think the big question is do we completely shut down things like TikTok from our life, or do we? Or like parts of Twitter or like how do we really not be led without cutting out information, without cutting out news in a way Like what do you think is the solution?

Ryan McBeth: 1:17:10

It's a very good question. I don't I don't think you need to cut TikTok out of your life if you're using it for certain kinds of entertainment. I don't necessarily agree with TikTok. I do believe it's a weapon system. But if watching funny dance videos or cat videos on TikTok gives you joy, then maybe allow yourself to watch those cat videos. But when the cat starts talking about how Russia is going to win a war against Ukraine, then maybe you shouldn't listen to that particular video. So that would be one thing. The other thing would be to know what your sources are. So when it comes to things like breaking news, there are some channels that are better than others. If you have a reputable news organization, meaning a news organization that you pay for, that might be a better source than something where you're getting your information for free.

Ryan McBeth: 1:18:16

Eurasian Times, I believe, is oh my God it's a horrible website that's full of fake news. But you know, the fact is that if you're not paying for something, the product is you right. So I pay for two newspapers, three newspapers. I pay for the New York Times, I pay for the Wall Street Journal and I pay for Haaretz, which I only started paying for after the October 7th attacks because they had the best graphics on casualty figures. So if you're getting your news for free, that should be kind of a warning sign, because typically organizations that you pay for have armies of fact-checkers. They have experienced reporters who know how to question things. That would be a good, that would be a good starting point. Are you getting your news from something that you pay for, right? Okay, so that would be step one. I think the now there's also an issue with that too, because when did Israel lose the information war? They lost it in October 17th. That was when the Al-Arabiya Hospital. There was an explosion of the Al-Arabiya Hospital and the New York Times said Israel dropped a bomb on it without even really checking first. I did a whole video about that.

Ryan McBeth: 1:19:36

Another thing you might be able to do is just kind of go through ICD-203, which is the Intelligence Community Directive-203, which has a matrix in it, and that matrix kind of says all right, let's look at the probability of this thing being true. Just kind of use your reasoning. In the case of the outlier, it would be a hospital. You have to look at your reasoning and go okay, what is the likelihood that Israel would drop a bomb on a hospital? Is the likelihood that Israel would drop a bomb on a hospital? Well, if Daddy El-Badi was in that hospital and Israel really wanted to get Daddy El-Badi, yeah, they might drop a bomb on that hospital. They might have it go in through a specific window. It might be a smaller weapon. They might do that. So that's not out of the question. Is it possible that a bomb dropped from an Israeli plane might have gone off course at the hospital? Yeah, that's a possibility.

Ryan McBeth: 1:20:29

But then you go to the other side and go alright, what if it was an accidental? What if it was a deliberate attack by Hamas? Well, every weapon you fire at yourselves is one less weapon you can use against the Israelis. That probably isn't possible. But could it be a Hamas weapon that failed? As it turned out, it was an Islamic Jihad weapon that fell short of its target. And when you look at how 20-30% of rockets launched from Gaza fail and fall on their own territory. In the intelligence community this is what we call a clue, and maybe you know now. The New York Times didn't go through that process. They didn't go through that intelligence process. They looked at all the possible possibilities and put it into a matrix. So in some ways I guess there might not be any hope, because if the New York Times get it wrong, what are the chances you get it wrong?

Lauren Carlstrom: 1:21:24

I think I'm not speaking for my country, but I think there is a feeling of not knowing we can trust.

Lauren Carlstrom: 1:21:34

Even the news sources we might pay for or the popular ones we think are mostly doing their research are somewhat impartial. I think there's, I think like that's the overall fear and that's why people I think one of the reasons people love you but you're doing all that work for people, right, I mean you're like that's a lot of responsibility, like why can't we be more empowered to have this critical thinking level of like analysis that and that's probably not possible. We all have a day job. Right, you got to go to work.

Ryan McBeth: 1:22:06

You got to work at it. This is me between 13 and 16 hours a day. I love, you know, I one of the. I love consulting. I love traveling, because when I travel someplace I get to like not be at the computer. I can actually read a book or something like that, although I might be reading a book about, like you know, weapon systems or the latest report on iran's rockets, right, but at least like I'm not. You know feeding we call feeding the beast. You know youtube is this, this, this cookie monster, and you, always, you have to keep feeding it. Content, right, keep feeding the beast. When I'm home, I'm feeding the beast.

Lauren Carlstrom: 1:22:44

Well it's, I will say I'm not ending this podcast unless you have to. You still have a cigar going Number two, I noticed you still good. We might have to make this two-part podcast, but that would be amazing. Yeah, I think you're still doing a service. That's what I was trying to say when in your all of the effort that goes into creating your YouTube videos, your sub stack videos. Um, interestingly, you've pointed this out before. You're not on Tik TOK.

Ryan McBeth: 1:23:13

Um you.

Lauren Carlstrom: 1:23:15

You've have many false aliases that try to be you. I think that's amazing. So no one follow him on TikTok. You won't be getting the real Ryan McBeth, so yeah. So we were going to talk a little bit about more about TikTok how that's a weapon. You're okay with businesses using it. You're okay with people using it for enjoyment. You just think that they're stealing. I mean, I'm putting words in your mouth out. Are they taking all of our information? What are they going to do with it? Who cares if they know my preferences or what I like to watch? Is that really? That's not so much a threat, but it's how they're going to brainwash us. Is that correct?

Ryan McBeth: 1:23:58

Yeah, so that's that, not so much. Here's what I can say. The TikTok when? So China was sucking down information, and in fact there was. There was a situation in TikTok corporate a couple of people got fired over this where TikTok thought there was a leak, and so they looked at the TikTok locations of journalists, not to serve them ads, but to see if any of their employees had been in the same area as journalists. And that's something they can do, right, because if you have TikTok on your phone, tiktok knows your location Even if I turn it off, even if I say location services off um if you turn off location services, you you might be okay, but if, if, um, if you're connected to wi-fi, you know the data is still getting out.

Ryan McBeth: 1:24:56

Okay, and because wi-fi locations are a way to geolocate, it's, it's how I geolocated a doctor who who claimed he had gone to gaza, you know yeah, your phone never left the us, right, I figured that out, that was.

Ryan McBeth: 1:25:11

But and you know what's scary is, I bought that data. That was trivial, just I just bought that data. And I bought the advertising data for the phones that were in Northern Virginia because I was suspecting this doctor who claimed he had gone to Gaza and saw all these atrocities. I just bought all this data and I just filtered the data until I found a phone that was pinging from these three offices that the doctor owned. And then I was like, hmm, this phone never pinged at iad, it never pinged at dallas, which is a major international airport, never pinged at newark, which is a major international airport.

Ryan McBeth: 1:25:50

Something tells me you're not elementary. So, yeah, even if you turn location services off, you're connected to wi-fi. That could be an issue. Um, your phone actually isn't listening to you. That's one thing people think. Oh, I was talking with my wife about going to Italy and then I went to the bathroom and on my phone there were these ads for Italy. Well, it's because as soon as you got up to go to the bathroom, your wife Googled trips to Italy. And since her phone is associated with your phone and they're both coming off the same Wi-Fi node. It knows the two of you live in the same house. The microphone is not on listening to you all the time. That would drain the battery like that.

Lauren Carlstrom: 1:26:29

Myth buster I love it Okay.

Ryan McBeth: 1:26:31

Yeah, but I actually kind of can. So you had mentioned one of the dangers of TikTok. So let's say that one kind of scary thing Supposedly China, or supposedly TikTok, divested all of their servers and placed them in Oracle in Texas. They actually call it Project Texas at Oracle in Texas. They actually called it Project Texas. And so if you want to get technical TikTok, us is firewalled off in Texas and the TikTok version that they have in China is on ByteDance service in China. It's actually called something else in China and I can't remember the darn name for it right now because I was Dofang or um. I actually I have to do a video with uh jordan harbinger, uh, doyen. Doyen is the name of the uh the service in china, um, but like doyen is heavily restricted, doyen, like if you're under 14, I think you can only be on t, on TikTok, for like 20 minutes a day or an hour a day, something like that. It only shows like science experiments and like famous Chinese astronauts and patriotic videos.

Ryan McBeth: 1:27:48

Yeah, stuff like that. But whereas in the US, like hey, let's make the US dumber. But even if TikTok servers are technically split off from the ByteDance servers, China still owns a seat, they own a golden share. And if you're an executive sitting in your offices in the US and something comes down from corporate saying like hey, I need you to get me the profile information on the location of all of these users, all of these journalists that are in the US. I need to know where all these journalists were the past couple of weeks.

Lauren Carlstrom: 1:28:26

Are you going to say no to that?

Ryan McBeth: 1:28:31

I don't think so right, like you know, your bosses in China said hey, I want you to give me this information. I can tell you, the weakest man in the world is a 55-year-old white male who is an IT professional, because I guarantee you, he has two kids in college and he is not going to be able to get another well-paying job if he gets fired. So what are the odds that this guy is going to do whatever the heck people at corporate in China tell him to do? I would say it's probably pretty close to a hundred percent right, because if he gets fired, he's he's not getting another nice cushy job as a director of it for a. For a major corporation, right, he's too old, ageism is a thing. So you know if, um, for a major corporation, right, he's too old Ageism is a thing. Yeah, so you know if?

Ryan McBeth: 1:29:25

What I can see is if China wanted to grab information, location information for something like elicitation. Let's say, I'm China and I want to know about the F-35. All right, one of the things I might do is I might create an account on a message board that's mainly used by Lockheed Martin employees, or it's maybe a message board that's about the aerospace industry and I'm going to call my account Engineer Girl with three R's. And then I'm going to put a. I generate a picture of a cute girl in her early twenties with a couple of strands of purple hair, and then I'm going to post a message saying hey guys, I'm a student doing a paper on the radar reflective properties of the F-35. Can anybody help me out with this paper? I just need some specifics on whatever.

Ryan McBeth: 1:30:22

Now, most people are not going to give out secret information. There's always that one dude who sees engineer girl and thinks well, I'm going to help this young lady with her career. You know, guy's in his 40s, he's got a little weight on him. He's never going to talk to a girl. That looks like that in real life.

Ryan McBeth: 1:30:38

Why not help her out? That's elicitation, okay. So whenever, um, I actually, I uh, it's funny, she had just appeared in a video of mine I had this, uh, this Russian dissident reporter who works in Lithuania. She reached out to me because she was I've done work for her, uh, her news station a couple of times. And she reached out to me and she was like ryan, I'm gonna be in washington dc, uh, do you want to meet for dinner? And I was like.

Ryan McBeth: 1:31:04

I called a bunch of other russian journalists that I know the number one. I called my boss and I was like hey, by the way, someone who's lithuanian, who's a russian dissident, who works at an opposition russian radio station or tv station, just called me and asked me to dinner. Because that's like anybody who's in the intelligence community that should set off alarm bells. An attractive woman just asked me to dinner and she's from another country. This is how elicitation starts. And then I actually called around to a bunch of other Russian journalists. I know I'm like do you know this woman? They're like yeah, she's fine. And we had a nice dinner at a Georgian restaurant.

Ryan McBeth: 1:31:40

Russian journalists. I know I'm like do you know this woman? They're like, yeah, she's fine and we had a nice dinner at a Georgian restaurant. She just wanted to show me what Georgian cuisine is like. That's fun, sounds great. I think originally from Georgia, not Russia, but then she went to Russia and then went to Lithuania. So elicitation is where someone tries to get to know you and it is our natural desire to be polite, to be helpful to be, helpful.

Ryan McBeth: 1:32:04

Yeah, like hey can you tell me where 7-eleven is? Oh yeah, go down the street and turn right, right, hey, can you tell me what the radar reflective properties of the f-35 is?

Lauren Carlstrom: 1:32:12

yeah, yeah, it looks like a suitcase, you know like that playing in our goodwill right, right, and that I mean I mean sociopaths. Do that right, like manipulative people do that.

Ryan McBeth: 1:32:25

Right. When you go to a timeshare presentation, why do they give you free food and free show tickets, Right? Oh, they did all these nice things for me. Maybe I should buy their timeshare, Right? So what? Let's say TikTok wanted to elicit me. They had a Chinese spy. That was like. I want to get Ryan McBeth to tell me some secrets.

Lauren Carlstrom: 1:32:46

Do you know how you could get got? Do you know how?

Ryan McBeth: 1:32:49

Yeah, I'm going to tell you how you can get me.

Lauren Carlstrom: 1:32:52

All right.

Ryan McBeth: 1:32:52

So what? What I would do if I were China was I would hire somebody to bump into me. So it's probably not going to work with a 20-year-old, right. She needs to be a really attractive 40-year-old woman who is into triathlon and biking, right? So China knows that I'm going to different races or, because of location services is on my phone. They know that I ride this route every Saturday. You know, by my house I do 20 miles on my bike or 30 miles on my bike. I ride this route. So they can see that because the location service is telling me that they can hire somebody to come and ride a bike and have their bike break down. Of course I'm going to stop and help, because every cyclist does right.

Lauren Carlstrom: 1:33:42

So is it surveillance, reconnaissance and SRI.

Ryan McBeth: 1:33:46

Yeah, that would be a reconnaissance, that would be a type of reconnaissance right and hey, you want to go to dinner. Yeah, I'll go to dinner with you and you know, trying to just figure out where I am, how they can send someone to me. You know, one of the funny things that I'm really not into.

Lauren Carlstrom: 1:34:01

But how would they get you? I mean, you wouldn't, so you meet or you bump into her. What are they? How do they get you?

Ryan McBeth: 1:34:06

Relationship starts Right and then like oh, what do you? So why do you have to go to Tampa so often? Oh, what's in Tampa? Right, yeah, MacDill Air Force Base is in Tampa. What's on MacDill Air Force Base? Socom? Oh, so what's it like working in a SCIF? It's a Secure Compartmentalized Information Facility. Now, at this point I might be getting a little suspicious.

Lauren Carlstrom: 1:34:32

Because you've been trained to know right, Right.

Ryan McBeth: 1:34:35

All right, why are you asking about the SCIF? But that so not everybody might be as suspicious as me. So if you have TikTok on your phone and China knows your location and they think you might want to get the information from you, then you know that might be an interesting way of doing it. And again, what IT manager is going to say no to that? Nobody. Now you might say like, well, I don't do anything, I have. No, I don't have to worry about TikTok coming after me, I don't have to worry about China coming after me. I just like to watch cat videos.

Ryan McBeth: 1:35:08

All right, well, you like to watch cat videos, but you are a man who is also sexually interested in men. Let's say you're married to a woman. Are a man who is also sexually interested in men? Let's say you're married to a woman. You have some curiosity about other men. You watch some TikTok videos about homosexuality. Maybe you've talked with other men about sexual topics using the chat feature on TikTok or direct messaging or whatever. Now China has that information and then, 10 years from now, you decide to run for office, so it's collection.

Lauren Carlstrom: 1:35:49

It's collection of data. Right now. It's data collection yeah.

Ryan McBeth: 1:35:54

When it comes to handling human intelligence. There's a term called MICE, which means money ideology, and I see C is coercion and E is ego, right. So when that would be coercion, right, like we're going to coerce you into kind of working for us or following our policies, because we know all this information about all the weird sexual stuff you were talking to other men on TikTok. Wouldn't your wife hate it if she found out about that, right? So that would be one method of convincing someone to maybe do some things that are not in America's best interest, and that's something that's not going to happen on Instagram. An Instagram executive is not going to go after a guy, a future politician, although I guess theoretically that could happen, because in some cases, twitter was shutting down the opinions of some people who were going against the current administration.

Lauren Carlstrom: 1:36:56

And it could be hacked, right, Like you said, even Bitcoin 51%.

Ryan McBeth: 1:37:02

Yeah, if 51% of the servers all agree, then it doesn't matter what you say, you can change the whole blockchain. So, yeah, that's what's kind of scary to me about TikTok the fact that not only do they have all your personal data, but you might say, well, the servers are on the other side of the great firewall of China, but in reality, all it takes is one weak 55-year-old IT professional and you're sunk, you're done.

Lauren Carlstrom: 1:37:39

So I think for me, ryan, it kind of goes back to what we know to be true. We may not know the whole truth about what's going on in Israel or Iran or South Korea, whatever is going to happen next, taiwan, even in our own backyard, their own family, but we can know what we know is true about ourselves and hold onto that truth and and I think you know you have, you've mentioned on your videos, caroline, or when we you know, is that right?

Ryan McBeth: 1:38:15

Carolyn or Bueno. I probably pronounced her name wrong. Yeah, she's amazing.

Ryan McBeth: 1:38:20

She's better than me she's better than you, she is she when it comes to misinformation. You know I'm I'm neil degrasse tyson, right like you, you wheel me out and whenever a new rocket launches and I say, well, this, I'd like to see beyond the stars, right, like, that's kind of my, that's my thing, I give you, like this, surface level information. Carolyn Orbueno, she can dig really deep into things. She's very good at what she does. I'm just famous, that's it. You know people like the I'm the drunk uncle that people wish to go. Come to Thanksgiving day.

Lauren Carlstrom: 1:38:54

You play your role and it's awesome. But I just want to point out something she said that you actually brought up. You referenced her and I think a lot of us like we jump to a conclusion, maybe because of emotion but also because, like we just it's like that short circuit. We kind of we want to close a gap on how we think about something she said. When you can't tell what is real, many people respond on giving up an objective reality and instead choose to make judgments about what is true based on what they want to be true, to win the battle of a narrative. So it's either like a cognitive dissonance jumping to that conclusion, or it's because they feel like they have to have an answer.

Lauren Carlstrom: 1:39:32

When I looked at that video you shared about the college student who was crying because she saw Hasidic Jews, you know, and like it's about like coming back to yourself, like what is it inside yourself that feels so broken that you feel like you need to have some sort of outside answer from a political stance that's going on I think you said it before Like if you really are that upset or something about go see a psychiatrist. The season of we're not blowing hot air is about mental health. So being able to think about issues, having critical reasoning, without being pulled into this like this haze of emotion, I think is so important and I feel like that would. I hope that message can get out somehow, because a lot of people want to know no, no, no, no, no. Even me I go there, but like, really, like, can we just like breathe, try to breathe and calm a little bit, because what ultimately really can we control?

Ryan McBeth: 1:40:39

Well, you can. So when someone spits on you, does it? Does it make you mad? Someone spit on you? Would it make you mad? Yeah, no, it makes you wet. You make yourself mad, Right. So that's what you can control, you can control how you react to things Right of things Right. So that is one thing you can control.

Lauren Carlstrom: 1:41:03

I was in Kenya in a market and someone I was with was spit on and they, they had to control it.

Ryan McBeth: 1:41:13

Yeah, because we were Americans. Sounds like a fascinating. I want to hear that story. Your podcast no.

Lauren Carlstrom: 1:41:17

I just but that made me think of that exact thing, like you're right, cause they couldn't be mad. It was a wasn't our country, we were Americans, you know.

Ryan McBeth: 1:41:30

Yeah.

Lauren Carlstrom: 1:41:31

It was a different time, but I yeah that that's really that's so. That's just hitting me, I guess, is what I'm saying yeah, that point, yeah, yeah. We can control ourselves. That's what you me, I guess, is what I'm saying. Yeah, that point. Yeah, we can control ourselves. That's what you're saying we can control our reaction.

Ryan McBeth: 1:41:45

That's the one thing you can control.

Lauren Carlstrom: 1:41:48

Yeah Well, I think I just don't really have anything else to say. I did want to. I mean, I wanted to talk about a lot more things, like I wanted to know what you thought about people who think the moon landing isn't real. Keep going, screw it Really, for real, all right, moon landing.

Ryan McBeth: 1:42:12

Moon landing.

Lauren Carlstrom: 1:42:13

There was this guy that I was almost going to date, but then he told me he didn't believe in things like the world being round, or spherical, oblique sphere, an oblique sphere to be factual, or you know that that, like, maybe the moon landing wasn't real and I couldn't, I couldn't go on, I couldn't go any further than that. So how do we, how do we think about issues like that? So that's.

Ryan McBeth: 1:42:39

that's just kind of interesting. You know, there are some things you kind of have to trust science. I don't even want to say trust the science, because when you use the definite article, that that kind of implies that there's my science and your science, and my science is different than your science. There's just science. Science is constantly changing.

Ryan McBeth: 1:43:01

I've written about nuclear weapons, I've written about nuclear bombs. I have never once touched a piece of uranium or plutonium. You can own uranium, you can buy uranium, but I know uranium exists. Now I'm never once. But I know uranium exists. Now I'm not, I'm not a hundred percent sure it. You know, like I, I I've I've never encountered uranium, but at some point I kind of have to trust that. There's all this science about uranium, so I'm pretty sure uranium exists. When it comes to something like the moon landings, Um, I can, I can see why people want to think that something was fake. I think one of the things that conspiracy theories kind of give you is they give you control over a very uncertain world. Because if someone's going to tell you what's really going on with so-and-so, then it kind of gives a little bit of purpose to this crappy life that you have.

Ryan McBeth: 1:44:05

Like in the sense of, like you know most people, they get up, they go to work, they work all day at a job they hate. They come home they might watch a little TV, scroll TikTok or Instagram. Eat dinner, go to bed do it all again, right. Instagram. Eat dinner, go to bed do it all again, right. But but then when you go online and you go onto a conspiracy theory website or you see a conspiracy theory channel on YouTube, that opens you up to a whole new world.

Lauren Carlstrom: 1:44:33

It's sensational, yeah it makes you feel things.

Ryan McBeth: 1:44:37

Yeah, why is Harry Potter so popular? Did you ever read Harry Potter?

Lauren Carlstrom: 1:44:40

You know, I never did.

Ryan McBeth: 1:44:42

All right. Well, here with Harry Potter, he's a kid magician, right.

Lauren Carlstrom: 1:44:45

Well, I mean, I know what it is about. Yes, yeah.

Ryan McBeth: 1:44:51

So why was Harry Potter so popular with children? Well, children don't have any agency. Children don't even get to decide what goes into their mouth, right, they have to eat whatever their parents make them for them. But if you imagine that there's this whole secret world, where you're a wizard in this secret world and you have all this power over the adults that the adults don't understand, that's a very powerful fantasy, especially for a child, especially for someone who has no agency. So if you're someone who is working every day at the job you hate, you come home, your life sucks, you don't have enough money to pay your bills, it is really easy to fall into that trap.

Ryan McBeth: 1:45:32

That idea that there is another world out there, and this is that fantasy world, that Harry Potter world. So, when it comes to something like the moon landing, why were we going to the moon? We're going there for exploration. Exploration is pretty darn important, but what's another reason we went to the moon? Well, we went to the moon because we were in a race with the Soviets. The Soviets were our biggest enemy and we had to show the Soviets that we had superior technology to them. So if we actually hadn't landed on the moon, the Soviets would have provided proof.

Ryan McBeth: 1:46:14

You know that we hadn't been on the moon. Because they were watching that moon, landing like hawks, and they were going oh crap, we're actually on the moon. They were watching that movie, landing like hawks and they're going oh crap, they're actually on the moon. So there's that. There's also, um, there's telemetry data. I'm sure someone picked up telemetry data. But also, if you take a look at things like um, like uh, the contractors that were involved in constructing the lunar lander, the ascent modules, all this other stuff, these were thousands upon thousands, upon thousands of people who were involved in constructing the machinery that actually went to the moon. And sooner or later, someone's got to go into a bar and talk.

Lauren Carlstrom: 1:46:53

You know Well that's what you know and I did not do any research on this, so I have no background. But what the gentleman I was talking to said was that the One of the astronauts was interviewed on some and there's video of this. He said on like it was like Ed McMahon or like one of those shows back then, and that he and then he actually said you know, yeah, like it was all in Hollywood, we did it. It was like it was a set, you know, and like it's just, I think, what it begs the question is, what is our level Like? What are those things that we come back to that give us authority? What? What makes truth? What creates and defines truth for us? Do we believe the science, like you said, who built the lunar module or whatever? Or is it a testimony of an astronaut that purportedly said it was all fake?

Ryan McBeth: 1:48:00

Well, that's what you got to do, right? You got to go through ICD-203. You got to go through that intelligence matrix ICD-203, intelligent Community, directing 203. Anybody can download it. It's a PDF available for free.

Lauren Carlstrom: 1:48:14

Okay, great.

Ryan McBeth: 1:48:15

Yes, it is the standard. I'm sorry, it's the standard that the intelligence community uses to measure probability that something's going to happen or that something has happened. So what is the probability that the Soviets would? Let's back up for a second. What is the probability that the Soviets could detect us going to the moon? Well, the Soviets had systems that could detect intercontinental ballistic missiles being launched. They had spy satellites. They probably had spies inside the NASA program. So the Soviets probably knew everything we were doing going to the moon. If we hadn't gone to the moon, they probably would have said something. If we hadn't gone to the moon, they probably would have said something. So I would certainly say that the odds of the Soviet Union pointing it out if we didn't actually go to the moon is very likely Right, and that has a higher rank than when someone says well, an astronaut went on.

Lauren Carlstrom: 1:49:17

Johnny Carson, like the gravity, the gravitas, they did it all. Yeah, well, which astronaut was it? Is there any footage?

Ryan McBeth: 1:49:20

the gravitas. They did it all. Yeah Well, which astronaut was it? Is there any footage of that? I'd like to take a look at it. That's what it was, because, I mean, I've never heard of that.

Ryan McBeth: 1:49:32

I think he said there was so that could be deceptive, right, where you could have a picture of an astronaut on Johnny Carson and then overlaying that astronaut is text that said, on this date Buzz Aldrin went on Johnny Carson and told Johnny Carson that the moon landing wasn't real. Now people see that footage. They might even remember that episode of the Johnny Carson show where they remembered the astronaut was on the show. But this was kind of back before everyone had a DVR, right? Well, did he talk about that? I don't, and then maybe you might do a search. Oh yeah, buzz Aldrin was on the Johnny Carson show in 1971, right? So that's kind of how stuff like that can perpetuate. Buzz Aldrin was on the Johnny Carson show in 1971. Right, so that's kind of how.

Lauren Carlstrom: 1:50:25

That's kind of how stuff like that can perpetuate Another lie hiding in the truth. What about let's just jump to this subject that seems to be very popular in some of the big podcast circuits Aliens, ufos, how?

Ryan McBeth: 1:50:40

do you slice all that up for yourself? So one of the things that I did was a couple of months ago there was a testimony of a guy three guys in front of Congress who basically testified that alien artifacts were being worked on. And I actually don't remember the full context. This is like last year that I did this, but I actually used ICD-203 to kind of break it down and look at, like, all right, why do countries or why do species colonize other species? Right, like, why do you do that? And there's five reasons why. And like, one of the reasons that comes off is uh, resources is one thing, right, so you might go to another planet for resources, you might go for exploration, you might go for religion. Oh, you might go for defensive purposes I can't seem to remember the fifth one but oh, uh, was it research or studying yeah, scientific, yeah, scientific knowledge.

Ryan McBeth: 1:51:45

anyone might be ego like okay, let's say there were two alien species and they're competing with each other, just like the us and the soviets did, and they found out there's earthlings over here. Well, I want to be the first species that goes to earth, but when you look at the amount of resources that you need to do that, it's absolutely insane. For such little benefit and I've actually said that there's probably roughly even chance that we're not alone in the universe. But there's almost no chance we've been visited by an alien life, because if we had be, we'd be dead. And I say that because if you've ever read the Three Body Problem series of novels, you know there's.

Lauren Carlstrom: 1:52:37

Isn't that a Netflix show right now?

Ryan McBeth: 1:52:39

Yeah, it's a't seen it, although it's not like the books really okay.

Ryan McBeth: 1:52:43

So that's a good another good book worth watching, though it's worth watching okay, um, uh, there's this thing. It's on amazon prime. They have the original chinese one which is like 45 episodes or something like that, which is more accurate to the books. But the netflix show is worth watching, but the the uh, the free body problem, one of the the books. But the Netflix show is worth watching, but the free body problem.

Ryan McBeth: 1:53:02

One of the books in the series is called the Dark Horse and it kind of postulates that that if we, if there's kind of two horrors. The first horror is that we are alone in the universe. The second horror is that we aren't alone in the universe Because usually when someone tries to colonize somebody else, it doesn't work out well for the people being colonized. So my assumption and what I surmise is that, since technology can theoretically develop very fast, if an alien species ever encounters another alien species, you need to wipe them out, because they might wipe you out first. If you don't take that opportunity to wipe them out when they're at a lower stage of technology, they might come and colonize you one day. So I think any alien species that would have visited us would have killed us all, and they've had billions of years to do it.

Lauren Carlstrom: 1:54:08

Are you worried about the people who really believe they've seen or experienced something? And second question you can either answer that or what is the role of the government in allowing these stories to propagate?

Ryan McBeth: 1:54:24

I think it's freedom of speech. As long as you're not um, as long as you're not giving out classified information, you can say whatever you want, and you know that the, the, I did the video about that public appearance of like three guys in front of Congress.

Lauren Carlstrom: 1:54:41

Oh, I didn't see this one. Yeah, okay.

Ryan McBeth: 1:54:44

So I did a video about UFOs. I can send that to you after the show. But in this particular video I just kind of go over every single reason of why we probably haven't been visited by aliens. But this was an open, unclassified briefing, and if the US military had any knowledge about aliens it would probably be classified. So what these people were saying was unclassified data right and unclassified information. So if it was unclassified information right and unclassified information, so if it was unclassified information and if aliens exist to most likely be classified, then the logical conclusion is you know they, they think they, they certainly think they saw something right, but they can't tell you the truth. It cannot be true because I.

Lauren Carlstrom: 1:55:42

I'm not smart enough to follow that train of thought. So what is it? So what is it you're saying?

Ryan McBeth: 1:55:48

All right. So let's say that the military.

Lauren Carlstrom: 1:55:53

Is a military wanting people to believe that something's going on for a distraction, or because wanting people to believe that something's going on for a distraction or because they don't care? Like it seems like there's just a lot of attention on this matter, and I think that's what's interesting to me. Not so much like is it true or not? Are there aliens among us? Are they watching us coming up from the ocean? All those things. But like first of all, mental health, are these people OK? Like is this an OK way to kind of like have or live our day? And then, secondly, like what is the? Where is the military in this? Really like the US military?

Ryan McBeth: 1:56:31

Well, I didn't explain that correctly. So if, if, if, if aliens existed. So if aliens existed or we had alien technology, then that technology would certainly be classified. It's secret, top secret classification and in an open public forum you can't say anything. That's secret or top secret.

Lauren Carlstrom: 1:56:55

Okay, understood yes.

Ryan McBeth: 1:56:57

That's why you go into a SCIP youIP Secure Compartmentalized Information Facility. So the fact that these people were testifying in front of Congress in an unclassified environment is kind of proof that what they're saying isn't secret right.

Lauren Carlstrom: 1:57:15

Okay.

Ryan McBeth: 1:57:16

So if aliens exist, we would make that secret. Yes, yes, so if, they're talking about it, then they either don't know what they're talking about or they're making stuff up. Those are the only two possible outcomes.

Ryan McBeth: 1:57:29

They don't know what they're talking about or they're making stuff up, or they're making it up, or if they truly believe it. There are people who truly believe in various concepts. I believe I am a Christian and that when I die I will go to heaven. I can't prove that, but that's what I believe. There's other people who believe that they're Muslim, and on the Day of Judgment you have to walk across a bridge, over a lake of fire, and the bridge is wide enough. If you've done good deeds in life, your bridge is very wide, but if you've done evil deeds, your bridge is only the size of a thread. Well, I don't believe that, but they believe that. So who's right? Yeah, I certainly think I'm right, but I can't we're. Who's right? Yeah, I certainly think I'm right, but I can't. You know, we're dealing with unclassified information when it comes to aliens, and any evidence on aliens would certainly be classified. So these guys can't be right because they wouldn't be able to talk about it.

Lauren Carlstrom: 1:58:32

So maybe, as we come back to like what, how can we know truth and whether knowing the truth is important or not, whether it it matters, this seems like kind of a benign issue. It's not hurting anyone believing in aliens or believing that I'm gonna go to heaven, so it's not something that maybe. So it's like the truth that matters. Maybe is the truth that affects one another, each other. I'm asking, I'm trying to, I'm trying to come to my own understanding of like. How can we know truth? Like, what's the pursuit all about?

Lauren Carlstrom: 1:59:08

It seems to me like you're not attacking people on social media who are, like you know, believing in like that kind of thing, like being a Christian or whatever. But there actually are people, but they see it as a threat, not believing that, that truth. They don't want you to go to hell well, that's, that's good.

Ryan McBeth: 1:59:26

That's kind of a you problem yeah, yeah, yeah, right it's all, it's all like kind of like, what truth is what?

Lauren Carlstrom: 1:59:36

how we, how our flags of truth go up, our concerns about truth go up, about what we see as the ultimate. I'm trying to, I'm trying to make sense of my world. Ryan I, I don't actually know the answers here, but like it seems like it's kind of funny is it it's.

Ryan McBeth: 1:59:52

It's kind of you know, arguing about religion is kind of like saying, well, you know, my invisible man in the sky is way more important than your invisible man in the sky. Like, at this point, both of our invisible man in the sky is way more important than your invisible man in the sky. At this point, both of our invisible men in the sky are equally valuable or equally worthless. It's just what I happen to believe and I can respect your views and you can respect my views. I would ultimately say that anybody who wants?

Ryan McBeth: 2:00:18

to get up in front of Congress and testify that they saw alien technology. Ultimately, they are harmless, because is there going to be any actionable information taken on that? Probably not. What's the actionable information you take away from it? Are we going to get any new kind of technologies? Are we going to have some kind of alien technology that cures cancer or something like that? If that existed, well shoot, let's roll that thing out. Start curing cancer For me, for my life.

Lauren Carlstrom: 2:00:50

that would be great, right? I think it's important for me to know and I'm thankful to how you, how you look at, how you dice up what's true, because I don't want to give my attention to something that isn't maybe worth giving my attention to. I think the information economy, or like that's kind of the future, that's what is that our attention is what companies are going to be paying for in the future.

Ryan McBeth: 2:01:20

So if we're giving I really like that term, that's a really good term information economy.

Lauren Carlstrom: 2:01:25

I don't know if I made it up or not. I probably didn't.

Ryan McBeth: 2:01:28

I like it, though I'm going to start using that Because, when you think about it, we have a finite bandwidth for accepting data. Finite bandwidth for accepting data yeah, I guess one of the one of the reasons that, like some, some traditional networks, some traditional tv networks are so scared right, because if you're, yeah, you might have a tv show on, but you might also be browsing tiktok on your phone while the tv show is on. So what's getting your attention? It's probably not the tv show. There is a finite amount of bandwidth the person has to consume entertainment.

Ryan McBeth: 2:02:03

There might be a finite amount of things to worry about as well, you might want to start trimming those items to worry about down, yeah that's what I'm working on.

Lauren Carlstrom: 2:02:13

That's why you're here for me.

Ryan McBeth: 2:02:14

Worry about things, nuclear war. Yeah, worry about things that you can actually affect. Worry about things you can worry about things that, uh, that you can. You can actually worry about things. You can actually change and enjoy it.

Lauren Carlstrom: 2:02:24

And I think, as it's been said, that, like, as ai becomes more in charge of our, the workforce, we're going to have more free time, so all of like it is going to be a fight for our attention. So, like, even like right, I don't want to watch podcasts now that are about aliens anymore, like, I have a few of them and it was interesting and I learned and I expanded my mind, but ultimately I came to someone who is more like you, or I can like it. Just, it connects with me better, it makes sense, and then it frees me up. I feel better about my world, like there is a feeling attached to it. I don't want to like be ruled by my feelings, of course, but it does give me more of a sense of peace and like going back to, like the locus of control, which is like just within me. Yeah, so you know. Oh, go ahead.

Ryan McBeth: 2:03:12

No, no, no, please no. I wanted to hear this time I was going to say like well, that's the question, right? Do you want to be the kind of woman? Whose emotions control your actions or your actions control your emotions. Yeah, when someone spits on you, does it make you mad or does it make you wet?

Lauren Carlstrom: 2:03:33

I want to be the kind of woman whose spirit does I want to have, like that's an I don't know what that even means, even means yet but like I want it to be driven by, like a place of peace and love, for sure, and power. I want the power to be like there, in a way where, like I'm, it doesn't really matter what happens to me, I just, I'm just going to go with what I know to be true as long as it's not emotional. You don't like emotions, emotions are wonderful.

Lauren Carlstrom: 2:04:05

I'm the daughter of a therapist, so I was raised to know emotions, emotions are, I think unhealthy when they're not known, not nurtured. We push out fear, we push out anger. We don't deal with it, then it's just going gonna bubble up and eat us, you know maybe, oh, I've never.

Ryan McBeth: 2:04:26

Uh, you say that I'm, I'm a deep thinker and I I've never really. I uh, you know my my, you know I like this stuff, I like liquor, I like cigars, I like going running it doesn't have to be a certain level or uh, we are what we are.

Lauren Carlstrom: 2:04:45

We're biological beings that I think can have a spiritual experience, but it can be just walking on the beach smoking a stogie, if you call them those. Still, I don't know. Whatever it is it, this could be one I.

Ryan McBeth: 2:04:58

I guess probably the I felt spiritual in church back when I was younger I actually I used to go to church, but you know, I probably for me, probably one of the most amazing, maybe spiritual experiences I ever had was, uh, I was actually in training.

Ryan McBeth: 2:05:22

You know, I was, I was in a, um, I was in an armored vehicle and that particular day was the commander of this vehicle and, uh, I looked back and I believe that might have been second or third in line and we were doing like a company movement. So we had, uh, god, like fricking, 30, some gun truck and 30, some vehicles. And I look back and it's just this ribbon of steel, you know, behind me. I thought to myself, my God, this is, you know, this is the most beautiful sight in the world, like all of this American firepower ready to to stomp on the bad guys that would dare harm our country.

Ryan McBeth: 2:06:12

And you know the, the clunk of of a Humvee door, like an armored Humvee, one of the up-armored Humvees, the M5, oh, my God, 577, I can't remember the darn name of the darn vehicle, now it's been a couple of years. But the clunk, that clunk that the door sounds when it closes, or that the engine when it closes, or that the engine, um, you know, when I, when I did uh convoys, when I was a weapons platoon sergeant, um, or a platoon sergeant in a weapons company, that, uh, those movements, that feeling of being inside of my gun truck, like that was my happy place.

Lauren Carlstrom: 2:07:08

Well, that was uh.

Ryan McBeth: 2:07:09

Yeah, it has it has that wasn't like togetherness, right, it has like a community. It's yeah, yeah, you're absolutely right. It's it's being with your men, like at the time it was all men I know. For me, you know, being not just a soldier but a soldier in a weapons company anti-tank guy, I think the beauty that I found in that was what do they call it? Chi or the kung fu. Kung fu just doesn't mean hi-yah, karate, you know. It means means the ability of practicing something so much that you're really good at it. I think that's what it means. There's a beauty to even pouring tea. That's what the Japanese believe. They'll practice pouring tea until they're perfect at pouring tea. Or going on a podcast. I've got to go on a podcast 10,000 times to be really good at it. And for me, like I was good at what I did, I was good and I liked it and I think that's one of the things that I enjoyed about my time in the military. It was just that I was really good at this one specific thing.

Ryan McBeth: 2:08:29

And I look at stuff now, like I am an okay computer programmer. I don't think I'm a great programmer. I'm not an amazing programmer. I'm good, but I wasn't great. I'm a an amazing programmer. I'm good, but I wasn't great. I'm a pretty good YouTuber. I'm not amazing at it. I'm pretty good, but darn it. I was a great weapons platoon sergeant. I really was. I was really good at that job and I liked it. I told you the story offline that I had been with the love of my life and I had volunteered to do a mission. And she said if you go outside the wire and do this mission, you're not coming home to me. And I had to choose between my two loves and I chose the Army.

Lauren Carlstrom: 2:09:20

And ever since then I've never really what does the army make you choose that same thing.

Ryan McBeth: 2:09:27

Oh, so when, when this particular mission happened, I was, um, I was, I was what's called cure epic reaction force. So we were on this base and we're just like lifting weights, you know, eating steak. Lifting weights, I was jacked, I was swole, Right, but I hated it, Like I wanted to be back out on the road and some of that was, I guess, my own. I don't want to say mental illness, but my own, um, my own desire. Cause there there is, uh, you know, when you go from one forward operating base, another forward operating base and you didn't get killed that day, that's like a you lose today better luck tomorrow, right, and I wanted to feel that again.

Ryan McBeth: 2:10:10

And at that time they were looking for volunteers to do these road missions, these convoys, and I volunteered and I didn't have to volunteer. You know, sometimes the Army tells you to do it and you got to do it. But at the time I was like I'm going to volunteer for this particular mission. I volunteered and I got the position and I did it and I lost her over it, but it was. I don't know that. How can you?

Lauren Carlstrom: 2:10:34

come to that conclusion Can? We use your ICP 2024 to get there Like how do I Because, ryan, you have said this about your girl for so many podcasts that I've seen maybe three?

Ryan McBeth: 2:10:48

that.

Lauren Carlstrom: 2:10:48

I've seen you mentioned this, and so that's why I asked you about it offline and we said we were going to maybe talk about it, but you brought it up. So why do you make this assessment? Are you using the tools that you use when you look at a social media video to arrive at the conclusion that you're?

Ryan McBeth: 2:11:04

arriving at. Well, what was my conclusion?

Lauren Carlstrom: 2:11:06

That you lost her, that she gave you the choice and you lost her, because I think I asked you offline like have you ever even Facebooked her, looked her up?

Ryan McBeth: 2:11:18

Once many, many years ago, and I don't want to be that guy because, like, I don't tend to look back at things you know, like I can't, I can't change that, I can't change what happened.

Ryan McBeth: 2:11:29

And you know one good code and this is for all the guys watching this podcast If you ever come to a fork in the road, and one fork is the path of being kind of creepy and the other path is not being creepy, take the non-creepy path. That's the better path to take. So, yeah, you know I, I can't, I can't do anything about that, so I just choose to walk the non-creepy path. Right? I don't have a pretty good life, like you know I, I, uh, it's what it's. It's 10 45 where I life. Like you know I, it's what it's 1045 where I am right now.

Ryan McBeth: 2:12:03

And you know what I have to do tomorrow. I mean, I have to do some videos, but like I don't have to get up at 5.30 am to work out and scarf down some breakfast and get in the car and go to work, I have a pretty good life. If I want, I can stay up drinking until two in the car and go to work. I have a pretty good life. If I want, I can stay up drinking until two in the morning. I'll just do the rest of my work tomorrow. Not a big deal Right. So I think that, even though I didn't I didn't take the path of choosing her, which would have resulted in, you know, the house with the white picket fence and the kids running around and the dog and the minivan I think I'm doing okay because I have the marathons and the $2,000 triathlon bike and the the. I'm going to go to Australia to give a conference on security.

Lauren Carlstrom: 2:12:54

I'm doing okay, have you ever walked on a path where it diverges but then it comes back to the same path? I'm just saying because I just feel like that it's in my heart, like if there's part of something in your heart that's like I still want to know her what's going on. I don't think there's anything creepy in just picking up a phone or sending a text.

Ryan McBeth: 2:13:15

You know what's funny?

Lauren Carlstrom: 2:13:16

I'm laughing because many Just because I feel like I, just just because I kind of care about people and their happiness. That's why I feel like I have to say that no, no, I don't, it's funny.

Ryan McBeth: 2:13:28

Years ago I did. I met someone and I never dated female soldiers, but I think you know one of the I've. I've never had trouble like meeting people, like going to, like I'm the kind of guy I can walk into a bar and I can walk out friends with everybody in that bar. And I did. I visited Las Vegas and I met up with another podcast named Jake Bro, and Jake is kind of introverted and I'm like not introverted and I'm like not. So you know, we, I, I, uh, I was in, I was in burbank, california, and I realized, hey, you know, I'm southwest, 99 bucks, I can be in las vegas, I can meet up with jake bro, this other ukraine podcaster. We can go out, have a couple of drinks, make some content, I can write the whole trip off, right, and uh.

Ryan McBeth: 2:14:17

So I, I flew there and I took them out. Oh, my god, we had a freaking blast, we had a great time and, like I, I walked up to a bunch of girls that were there. You know they're women my age and they're in like a little little circle. I was like, hey, come on over and drink with me. And jake, what's your name, what's your name? And, and so, like the rest of you know, these girls were talking to us the rest of the night and I I think like kind of my deal is that like I'm not like looking to get you into bed with me, I'm looking to have fun.

Ryan McBeth: 2:14:46

I'm very much like you in that way.

Lauren Carlstrom: 2:14:47

I understand that.

Ryan McBeth: 2:14:48

Yeah, looking to have fun, right, like let's have fun tonight. So kind of one time it was before one of my last deployments. I was at an NCO school. I was at nco schools, at a sergeant school and, um, I met this, this woman and we, we had a great freaking night. And then like yeah, I'm never gonna see you again, right, and our paths diverge, right, and then I was in kuwait and I was like walking to the burger king on post and you know, I I get in line and this I looked at the woman's name tape.

Ryan McBeth: 2:15:21

I've seen that name before and you know I get in line and this I look at the woman's name tape. I've seen that name before and you know I said are you? And this woman turns around.

Lauren Carlstrom: 2:15:28

She goes hey, New Jersey is the same girl, so you're a hopeless romantic. I was in.

Ryan McBeth: 2:15:34

Iraq and I was at. Where was I? I was at Spiker. No it was Spiker Slayer.

Lauren Carlstrom: 2:15:43

Slayer.

Ryan McBeth: 2:15:43

It was the transient camp that goes in and out of Iraq. It was Slayer and I was waiting in line at the chow hall and I looked at my watch and there was this thing going to open. There's a woman in front of me and I look at the back of her hat and I'm like I recognize that thinking open.

Lauren Carlstrom: 2:16:00

There's a woman in front of me and I look at the back of her hat.

Ryan McBeth: 2:16:01

I'm like I recognize that name tape Like hey, new Jersey. She didn't remember my name. So, yes, our paths converge three freaking times, which was kind of weird. I'm thinking like is she stalking me? It's the weirdest stalk ever, right.

Lauren Carlstrom: 2:16:17

And that's it Nothing. On that one, nothing happened. That's that's it nothing. On that one, nothing happened. That's that's you know it's. Well, I think this is interesting content for your youtube and substack audience. I think you should maybe play this up more, this, this angle yourself.

Ryan McBeth: 2:16:31

Yeah, well, they're definitely gonna like this part of the show because I'll promote the.

Lauren Carlstrom: 2:16:36

I'll promote this you have all the rights to it.

Ryan McBeth: 2:16:39

I love it all right you know I that's always kind of. My thing is that I like I am a very outgoing person and, like you know, doing podcasts like or going on stage or talking I love being like on, like performing. It is exhausting. Um, like to be on and, you know, in character, even though I'm not in character in the sense of I'm the guy in the bathroom with the messed up hair.

Ryan McBeth: 2:17:05

I'm not playing that character, but the guy in the bathroom with the messed up hair is still me. It's just me. Turned up to 11.

Lauren Carlstrom: 2:17:14

Right now I'm at about a 7 yeah, there's intention behind it and that takes a lot. Yeah, can I? Oh no, go ahead.

Ryan McBeth: 2:17:23

No, you don't know um, the uh, I guess. Like it's kind of always been my thing, is that I. So one of the things I realized why I was successful in the military is that I could run and everybody liked me. And I've always been that guy that like, for some reason like people, just like me. I don't know what the heck it is, but I don't know. Like, that's always, that's always been my thing. I think it's actually one of the reasons I was a very poor leader, you know, because I did like your ship or everyone else is practicing leadership, and that only bit me a couple of times when I encountered other NCOs, other sergeants or even sometimes other soldiers who didn't like me. I don't know how to handle this. This guy doesn't like me. How do I fix this? I've never encountered this before. I didn't have any tools in my toolkit, you know, to deal with that well, you seem like you're liked.

Lauren Carlstrom: 2:18:26

Now you don't have that problem. Your fans love you you have some.

Ryan McBeth: 2:18:30

Yeah, I think it's weird.

Lauren Carlstrom: 2:18:32

It is weird, you know, like I thought I asked you, I asked you how, how, like big you were. And you said do you go to a grocery store and get noticed? You said everywhere you go. Yeah, I've had friends like that when I lived in New York who I would go out with them and they were internet famous or whatever and they would get recognized and I thought it was fun and cute. But again, that's a lot of energy Just having to give that.

Ryan McBeth: 2:18:58

It is and I don't mind it.

Ryan McBeth: 2:19:02

like some people are like afraid and uh, I think when I I was, I think I I had flown down to one podcast a lot of times when you know, as part of my rider because my agent has a rider if I go and I appear on a podcast, I have to fly business class. Um, I have to be picked up by a car at the airport. It doesn't have to be a limo, it has to be a car. So there's things that go in my rider and that's just the agency policy, which, believe me, I'm not. I fly Southwest, so if someone's going to fly me someplace business class, I'm going to take it.

Ryan McBeth: 2:19:38

So one time I was sitting in I think it was first class or business class and this guy, like he walks on the plane, he realizes it's me and he's like are you ryan mcbeth? I'm like, yeah. He's like, oh, my god, I love your work, but he's trying to get to his seat, right, because we're boarding the plane, and so like, like the the ste, this is flight attendants. I guess you call them now flight attendants, like they're probably used to famous people being in first class. They didn't know who I was, but I'm not that famous that a store. You know that a flight attendant's gonna know me, right, I'm not tom cruise, right? So, uh, but when the plane like leveled off to 10 000 feet. I used to ask the stories can you mind if I get a coin, because I have these, these challenge coins? Um, you look at my rack here. You know a challenge coin is, uh, it's like an attaboy that you give someone. You know it's, it's. It's less than a metal but more than a pat on the back.

Lauren Carlstrom: 2:20:38

Right, ok, and you give these out to people or people, yeah, I have Ryan McBeth challenge coins. Ok.

Ryan McBeth: 2:20:44

And so when the plane kind of got 10,000 feet, I asked when I go in the overhead and grab challenge coins for my bag, because I travel with challenge coins. And I went to the back of the plane I found my fan. I took his hand and I thanked him and I gave him a challenge point. And you know one of my things that maybe this is one of the reasons that I'm liked so much is that I've always believed that people will always remember how you made them feel.

Lauren Carlstrom: 2:21:09

They won't remember. You like yeah, well, it's a great, great quote, but that's good too. Yes, they remember how much you care, they care how much you remember, whatever that is, yeah.

Ryan McBeth: 2:21:23

So when you you know if somebody ever meets me ask me for a selfie, usually I just say do you want a selfie? Because usually guys are like too embarrassed but like, so like once I was at I was at the theater, I think I saw the barbie movie. Like I left the theater, I saw off and high, I did the barb and eimer thing I saw off and eimer and barbie the same day and I was coming out of Barbie.

Ryan McBeth: 2:21:43

I think I was coming out of the bathroom and a guy touched me which is don't do that. Yeah, that was kind of weird. That's when you go for your gun. The guy touched me and he was like are you Ryan McGrath? I'm like, yeah, well, he had like ran away from his family. Like his family was, you know, like like 100 feet away at the other side of the theater and they're looking at him like what are you doing? You know, and he's talking to me. I'm like you have to get back to your family. He's like oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ryan McBeth: 2:22:11

Do you want a selfie? Yeah, yeah, because a lot of times they don't, they don't know what to do. Just ask for a selfie. You'll probably say, yes, you know, don't touch people.

Lauren Carlstrom: 2:22:20

That's kind of like, that's kind of weird I think what's so interesting and important about you I don't want to use the word interesting. I think what's important about you is that is that that?

Lauren Carlstrom: 2:22:35

you that I know right, I wasn't going anywhere else that that you can bring people together, that you let people in, that they're let in too. It's disarming again and we're all up in arms literally right around the world with our social media positioning, positioning, and I think that's. I hope you are famous, I hope you are on the couch of, you know, conan or whoever it is. Now that's what he has a podcast, but, like, I hope you're on his podcast yeah, he finds you. You're on his podcast.

Ryan McBeth: 2:23:13

You're going out already yeah, I'm supposed, I'm uh. That's close. I'm supposed to go on some. Uh, there's a podcast of, I think, this guy, like he goes on, joe rogan and I can't remember the guy's name, which is kind of sad, is it, david colette? Uh ian I don't remember the guy's, the gentleman's name, but I'm supposed to go on. Uh, this famous comedian.

Lauren Carlstrom: 2:23:38

I think I think you're meant to be super famous, like in the sense of like. I hope you are, because it's like I feel like what you did for me, right With my popular war as a childhood thing, like it's just.

Lauren Carlstrom: 2:23:55

It's, I think, the message that needs to be heard, and you're also a lot of fun. The last kind of question about random talk, random topics. I really wanted to ask you. I know you're not political Really, neither am I but you are a patriot and you have military experience. How are you approaching what is your?

Ryan McBeth: 2:24:19

thought process for how you're going to cast your vote this coming presidential election. Boy, that's a good question.

Lauren Carlstrom: 2:24:25

It's my last one so you better make it good.

Ryan McBeth: 2:24:27

Yeah, you know, I think I would probably vote for the person that would best handle our foreign policy. Which presidential candidate would make America stronger in the eyes of our foreign adversaries? Because domestic politics, it's not the hokey pokey, it's not what it's all about. If you really want to affect change at the local level, you need to vote for your school board, you need to vote for your school board. You need to vote for your mayors, your local representatives, for your state government. The president can't really do much domestically. He can sign executive orders and things like that, but we have a choice. But we have a choice. We can either be the kind of America that is the example of what a democracy should be to the rest of the world, or we can be the kind of America that has a foreign policy of Calvin Ball, where the rules are made up and changed from play to play, and I think the kind of president who would display a strong, consistent foreign policy would be the person that I would tend to be more interested in voting for.

Lauren Carlstrom: 2:25:52

Follow-up question Can you define strong, because there's been moves that I think both potential candidates we have in the past have made that have been good and advantageous and disadvantage disadvantage to our country, yeah.

Ryan McBeth: 2:26:09

So when I think of strong, I think of Ronald Reagan or Harry Truman, I think of, I think of no, I'm serious Like I. Harry Truman said yes, drop that nuclear bomb on Japan, drop another one they didn't surrender. That could be a lot of things. There's one thing it was, and that was strong.

Lauren Carlstrom: 2:26:32

Strong in the military sense is what you mean.

Ryan McBeth: 2:26:36

Yeah, strong in the sense of foreign policies. I said that this could change in the sense of of foreign policies and I said that like, uh, and this, this could change in the next couple of months. But one of our, one of our problems is, like I said, it's calvin ball, where just ran.

Lauren Carlstrom: 2:26:50

All right, this is an army thing.

Ryan McBeth: 2:26:52

You ever read the cartoon calvin and hobbes?

Ryan McBeth: 2:26:55

I've like my brother did, yeah, so there was this cartoon called Calvin and Hobbes. It was about a child, I think an eight-year-old boy, and he had this stuffed tiger named Hobbes, and when parents weren't around, hobbes was an actual tiger and they would play games together. They'd build forts together. One of the games they played was something called Calvin Ball, and Calvin Ball was this sport where the rules are made up and changed from play to play, so the rules are constantly changing. Got it now under ronald reagan, like his rule was if you do something stupid, we bomb the crap out of you. Now, that might not be the best foreign policy, but it was consistent. You know, we, when Iran was threatening tankers in the Arabian Gulf, we re-flagged Kuwaiti tankers to with an American flag and we escorted those tankers to the Gulf. And you know, I think, when you, you know, just recently, we the Eisenhower battle group, I believe they left the Red Sea. I don't know how much I should talk about that, but we've removed some of our yeah, we removed some of our naval forces from the Red Sea, the Gulf of Adan, bab al-Mandab Strait, which is what the Houthis are firing missiles at freighters going through those straits. So the question is, did we win Right? We farmed a lot of XP learning how to shoot down Houthi missiles that were attacking freighters, and then it seems like a lot of our naval forces have left the Red Sea, they've left the Gulf of Aquabung. So does that mean the Houthis won? Does that mean that we don't need to escort ships transiting that strait anymore, because so many of them are going around the Horn of Africa, so we don't really need them anymore. Let's bring them back. Conduct maintenance, rearm refuel. Now I can tell you that one option and it's the option that we chose was all right we're going to shoot down missiles, we're going to play defense, we're going to shoot down missiles if the Houthis are fired.

Ryan McBeth: 2:29:14

Now what option would a Ronald Reagan or Harry Truman have chosen? Ronald Reagan or Harry Truman might have said let's just sink the entire Iranian Navy. We're going to send a message Right. That might not be the best policy. And you know one of the things I mentioned before I don't know if I mentioned this to you that Iran essentially has two different militaries. They have the IRGC, the religious military, and they have the Arkesh, which is their non-religious army. I mean, they're still religious, but they're not fanatics like the IRGC. Is the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, irgc. What would be sad about sinking the majority of the Iranian Navy is that a lot of Iranians would die, particularly ones who aren't crazy about their government. They just happen to serve in the Iranian Navy. That's not something I want. I have a lot of Iranian fans and I love every single one of them.

Ryan McBeth: 2:30:12

But that would send a message to Iran that look, if you use your proxies to attack international shipping, we're going to give you kinetic consequences that you might not want to handle. So that's kind of the position of strength. I'm not saying overthrow any governments. I'm not saying start any new wars. I'm saying you know what you want to do. This. You tell your proxies to stop. Or the next thing we target is your refiners. What would Ronald Reagan have done? Or what would Harry Truman have done? So if you kind of go with that, that's the position of strength. Right now. I don't necessarily see that. Right now we have Calvin Ball where the rules are kind of being made up.

Ryan McBeth: 2:30:58

We support Israel, but just today, what I found out was that we're not going to ship some weapons to Israel because we don't want Israel to go into Rafa and finish the fight, Because while they're finishing the fight, a lot of civilians are going to get killed A lot. So that's kind of Calvin Ball. What's our rules right now? Are we supporting Israel? Are we not supporting Israel? Are we supporting them with conditions?

Lauren Carlstrom: 2:31:25

Who's?

Ryan McBeth: 2:31:25

making the decisions.

Lauren Carlstrom: 2:31:27

Is it really the commander-in-chief?

Ryan McBeth: 2:31:30

Well, President Biden is the commander-in-chief.

Lauren Carlstrom: 2:31:34

Is he really making all the decisions?

Ryan McBeth: 2:31:37

Yeah, I think so. I mean I would not question his decisions. He is the commander-in-chief, all the decisions. Yeah, I think I mean I would not question his decisions. He is the commander in chief and you know, even, as you know, ryan McBeth, independent contractor, if I get a government contract, I'm going to give him the best possible. Just imagine me briefing the president. Can I smoke in here, mr President, you know.

Lauren Carlstrom: 2:31:57

I It'd be a good video. I think that's a new series you can do.

Ryan McBeth: 2:32:00

Mr, you know I It'd be a good video. I think that's a new series you can do. Mr President, you need some better liquor than this stuff. Wow, turkey, this isn't bourbon. Yeah, man, it's bourbon. Man, drink it, it's good for you. Yes, mr President. Yeah, he is getting information from his advisors, from the military and he is making the decision, and that is the decision that he's made and that's.

Ryan McBeth: 2:32:25

You know, roger, mr President, now it's kind of the military's job to kind of carry those decisions out. So that's, yeah, I think he is making the decisions with input from his advisors.

Lauren Carlstrom: 2:32:40

All right, thank you. That's the most politics I'm going to go right now. What else would you do you want to share with my listeners, your listeners, but our world?

Ryan McBeth: 2:32:52

Not our world.

Lauren Carlstrom: 2:32:54

Do you want?

Ryan McBeth: 2:32:55

to share. It can be anything.

Lauren Carlstrom: 2:32:56

It can be about your grandma.

Ryan McBeth: 2:32:58

One thing I'd want to share. It's that if you are looking to have purpose in your life and actually make a difference, consider the military as a possibility. The military kind of made me what I am today. The reason I'm in this house is that I have a VA loan and that with the VA loan I was able to get a house for no money down. The reason I have three degrees is that I got college through the military and if you're kind of on the fence about serving your country, take a look at it, give it a shot, even if it's just the Coast Guard. And you know, if you want to do your job every day can't get any better than the Coast Guard. Every you know I spent 20 years as a heavy weapons anti-tank infantryman. Never fired a live round enemy tank, not once.

Ryan McBeth: 2:33:47

I wasn't in the initial invasion of Iraq, so I never had a chance to actually fire a missile at a tank. But in the Coast Guard you do your job every single day. If you're good with computers, look at the Space Force. If you're into logistics or maybe if you want to fly, the Air Force has a huge problem with not having enough pilots, and one of the reasons is that we cut a lot of planes because we started to move a little more toward drones, so the feeder system of pilots into the Air Force kind of slowed down and nowadays, heck, you join the Air Force, you become a pilot, do that for eight years, get out and now you're working at Southwest or at United and you're making pilot money.

Ryan McBeth: 2:34:33

You can even stay in the reserves and still fly fighter planes or transports if that's what you want. If you want to have a lifetime brotherhood, look at the Marine Corps. If you actually genuinely, honest to God, want to see the world, like all those strange places like hey, I want to go to Taiwan, I want to go to the Philippines, I want to see exotic ports in Chile, join the Navy. If you want to enjoy your weekends, join the Air Force. One thing I would leave your listeners with is consider the military as an option, especially when it comes to kind of advancing your life.

Lauren Carlstrom: 2:35:18

Beautiful. I mean I am so glad you did that you chose the military. It helped inform you and shape who you are. So thank you for coming on today and for all the color that you bring to our world.

Ryan McBeth: 2:35:32

Well, thank you very much, especially the color orange, which is my favorite color, and cheers to you for inviting me on Bonne demont.

Lauren Carlstrom: 2:35:40

Bonne demont Cheers. Thanks for listening. Do us a solid and smash that subscribe, share and five-star rating button or link for the show. That way, more people can elevate their mental wellness as they explore some of life's biggest, most important questions with remarkable and fascinating guests. Oxygen Plus powers. This episode of we're Not Blowing Hot Air. Nice Guy Creative Services is our producer. Leslie Blennerhassett is designer. I'm Lauren Karlstrom, concepting and host. Arlene Applebaum is editor. Thank you, valued listener. Keep breathing easy. No-transcript.