This episode is sponsored by a company I've used for well over a decade and that is 511.
I wore their uniforms back in Anaheim, California and have used their products ever since.
From their incredibly strong yet light footwear to their cut uniforms for both male and female
responders, I found them hands down the best workwear in all the departments that I've worked for.
Outside of the fire service, I use their luggage for everything and I travel a lot and they are
also now sponsoring the 7X team as we embark around the world on the Human Performance Project.
We have Murph coming up in May and again I bought their plate carrier. I ended up buying real
ballistic plates rather than the fake weight plates and that has been my ride or die through
Murph the last few years as well. But one area I want to talk about that I haven't in previous
sponsorship spots is their brick and mortar element. They were predominantly an online
company up till more recently but now they are approaching 100 stores all over the US.
My local store is here in Gainesville Florida and I've been multiple times and the discounts you see
online are applied also in the stores. So as I mentioned 511 is offering you 15% off every
purchase that you make but I do want to say more often than not they have an even deeper discount
especially around holiday times. But if you use the code SHIELD15 you will get 15% off your order
or in the stores every time you make a purchase. And if you want to hear more about 511, who they
stand for and who works with them, listen to episode 580 of Behind the Shield podcast with
511 regional director Will Ayres. This episode is sponsored by Bubbs Naturals, yet another company
that I track down to bring on as a sponsor because I myself love their products. They are offering
you the audience of the Behind the Shield podcast a 20% discount but before we get to that I do want
to highlight a few of the products that I use myself. Firstly collagen. I am about to turn 50
and so my hair, my skin, my nails, not really a big concern when I was younger, definitely a lot more
of a concern now. However where I've really seen the impact is joint health and gut health and I've
been blown away that when I'm consistent using collagen, Bubbs collagen in this case, I see a
massive improvement in both. Another area I drink coffee, love coffee and in the morning I use the
halo creamer. Now originally I used the MCT oil powder but now they have the halo creamer which
has also got grass-fed butter in it, a lot more creamy if you're not trying to go for the vegan
option that they have as well. Now it's important to mention as well the altruistic element of Bubbs
Naturals. The origin story involves Glenn Bubb Doherty, one of the two Navy SEALs killed in
Benghazi and a good friend of the founders Sean and TJ. So 10% of every single sale goes towards
the Glenn Doherty Foundation. Now as I mentioned before they are offering you the audience 20%
off your purchase if you use the code SHIELD, that's S-H-I-E-L-D at bubbsnaturals.com.
And finally if you want to hear more about their products and Glenn's powerful story,
listen to episode 558 with co-founder Sean Lake. Welcome to the Behind the Shield podcast as always
my name is James Gearing and this week it is my absolute honor to welcome on the show
Hollywood special effects artist and CEO of Metasphere Industries, Brian Hillard. Now in
this conversation we discuss a host of topics with such an interesting perspective. From Brian's early
life, his journey into the world of special effects and movie makeup, the impact of AI on Hollywood,
veteran and first responder mental health, his work with Daniel Sundahl and most importantly how
he's bringing the world of special effects into therapies to help first responders and military
members overcome PTSD. Now before he gets this incredible and unique conversation as I say every
week please just take a moment, go to whichever app you listen to this on, subscribe to the show,
leave feedback and leave a rating. Every single five star rating truly does elevate this podcast
therefore making it easier for others to find and this is a free library of almost 900 episodes now.
So all I ask in return is that you help share these incredible men and women stories so I can
get them to every single person on planet earth who needs to hear them. So with that being said
I introduce to you Brian Hillard. Enjoy. Well Brian I want to start by saying welcome to the
Behind the Shield podcast. This conversation has been a long time coming. You and I connected
initially through O2X but have had multiple conversations since so I want to welcome you
onto the Behind the Shield podcast today. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. This as you said
long time coming and how crazy of a journey right like during when was that six years ago,
seven years ago and even something like that yeah pre-COVID right everything's pre-COVID these days.
Mm-hmm yeah I guess it's a new way before COVID. It's a new BC isn't it? It is absolutely 100%
before COVID. All right well where on planet earth are we finding you today?
I am in beautiful Holland Michigan. We're right outside of Grand Rapids so yeah I moved out here
three plus years ago and I'm sure we'll get into all that but originally from Virginia,
Richmond kind of Henrico County area is kind of where I was born and raised and then
parents were divorced so I spent a lot of time in the city but I also spent a lot of time
in the woods with my dad and I think that's where a lot of what we're going to talk about today came
from interestingly enough just spending time out in nature and rewilding you know has been a thing
for a couple of years now so I really think that's where I started to kind of cut my teeth on
who we are, why we are, how we're connected to all of this stuff and it's been a really cool journey
so I'm interested to kind of see where this goes today. Absolutely well let's go to Virginia first
so yeah tell me about your upbringing what did your parents do back then and how many siblings
did you have? My dad was a contractor general contractor for many many years he was a construction
dude his former military he was a marine his dad was a marine and I kind of broke the mold
because I never went into service but we'll get to the how I feel I and my team serve these days but
mom was she worked at Blue Cross Blue Shield for she umpteen years I can't even remember how long
she was there she retired from there and again divorced family right spent time with half my time
with mom half my time with dad my dad through a previous marriage had three other children
so in my younger life you know I had two brothers and a half sister that we spent time with
and then you know when I probably got into middle school high school a lot of us started losing touch
and then my mom had remarried they had a child so I have a another half sibling named Terry who's
still in Virginia has a family of her own so you know it's interesting right like the
years of your upbringing and growing into that adulthood how things just start getting scattershot
a little bit you know so yeah originally from Virginia and spent a lot of time
as I said doing city life and doing woods life which was a really cool kind of duality for me
so with the two generation marines that you had prior to you now you have this pretty interesting
mental health lens did you identify any issues of either of their service when you were younger
yeah my my granddad didn't talk about it a lot and I think he was of that generation like he was of
the world war two generation dad was the Vietnam generation he would get into those places where
he would talk about it but it was very disjointed like you could tell he wanted to bring something
up and kind of get it out but there was also times when both of them like I could see it like it
would wash over them and they would just be quiet and you could tell something was going on in there
and whether it was pondering old experiences or remembering friends that they had lost or whatever
I never really had really deep conversations with them about it but it was always there it was always
something that was and they were proud of it my dad I mean super duper proud marine I mean
absolutely interesting story too when he passed he passed seven years ago but my stepmom sent me a
bunch of his stuff so he had this really cool oak cut out marine plaque and it had the insignia on
it I mean it's probably yay big she sent me the original class photo from him and all of his
marine team which was pretty awesome and I've got some of that stuff kind of scattered around my
office but I took the plaque and I sat with it one day and we'll talk about a lot of this coming up
but I tend to meditate and breathe daily and I was in meditation and I heard my dad say
you need to give this to Brian and Brian Marin is one of my very good friends in life he's my
chief strategy officer at Metasphere former marine sniper and has gone through a lot of life in the
marines but you know hearing that from my dad you know and former marine to former marine I got it
so I packed it up and sent it out to Brian I'm like hey something's on the way you're really
gonna enjoy it I think when you get it and he got it and now it sits behind him in his office
so there's this this really cool energy of that military imprint for me although I've never
served at all it's always there and it's all I had I talked to a lot of people we used to work with
Navy SEAL team guys and their families and still do but I used to tell everybody like this was the
lifetime that I kind of recycled and didn't serve all the rest of them I feel like I did
so whatever the belief systems are out there that are listening to this you know energy is a thing
and where all these quantum beings just kind of experience and what we're experiencing so I
tend to believe that I've been there done that but that I was here for a different purpose this time
absolutely I think that's something that people struggle with when they transition out of uniform
is understanding that you can serve in a number of ways and it doesn't have to be holding a rifle or
you know running into a burning building you can do that and I did it and it was amazing but right
now we're having a conversation over a computer which is going to be heard by hopefully thousands
of people that will in turn help lots and lots of people so I think that's something that's
going to help lots and lots of people so I think that's it you know there's a hero element almost
almost an ego element not in a negative way but there's an ego attachment to you know the
professions are admired but the other silent professionals are the ones that are behind the
scenes trying to help in a different way yeah and I think you bring up a really good point too
because yes it does come from ego but you know believe what you believe on the psychology side
of all of it but ego channeled and targeted is good and it creates that hero persona like it we
want to go serve like our ego pulls us there right like it's this is what you're doing in this life
and I feel really attached to that too and I'm glad you brought up the whole hero thing too because
what we're doing currently which we'll get to a lot of it is based on hero's journey and heroin's
journey like what we do and what our path and purpose are with this life because I think
these days and times and it's all over the news as humans we've lost touch with the adventure
and our purpose and what all that means to us internally and we think a lot with our brains
right now which I know that sounds weird but I've been taught through my mentors over the years and
really tapped into it that heart thinking and spirit thinking is something way different than
having everything kind of spooling up in here and getting a little jumbled so I tend to really follow
what this thing says and what spirit says mine things that are connected to me so it's been
an interesting kind of way to peel back the onion for sure. Well when you look back because
I want to get to this I want to get to your kind of career journey and everything too but obviously
we are going to have you know I think a pretty interesting conversation about mental health and
the tools that you're bringing to this conversation people are going to be like blown away by the
concept but when you look back you had a divorce you know you had some other areas understanding
that our formative years are a big part of our overall mental health story were there elements
that you identify as contributing factors in your early life? Oh my god what a great question.
Through this conversation I commit to you and everybody listening just my own vulnerability
because I think we've lost touch with that a little bit right especially as men but you know
the female side of us is starting to you know kind of lose touch too just with what's going on but I
think being vulnerable and telling truth is absolute power and it's a superpower so yes 100
percent. You know I grew up there was some sexual abuse in the family there was divorce there was
drinking on both sides so you know mom found alcohol dad found alcohol my dad was a smoker
for many years and you know as we've been doing the research on the metaphor side of things
and you and I have had this conversation too the the genetics and the epigenetics of up-front
and the epigenetics of upbringing too brings such a giant piece to who we are like I didn't even know
five years ago what I'm beginning to learn now having spent some time with these amazing people
that I've been able to spend some time with over these past few years that genetic code comes from
generate like five generations back like things that might have happened to a grandmother or a
grandfather way back when we don't even know that it's happening to us and we're triggered by these
different things because of what they've gone through in their own life and how that kind of
imprinted into our DNA so that's been something for me professionally that we've been peeling
back to because it's exactly to your point the upbringing the rearing nature versus nurture like
all of that stuff definitely absolutely put me on the path that I'm on because I remember
James just you know hearing mom and dad fight the divorce happens and then you know my mom got
remarried alcoholic across the board he was an alcoholic he was angry alcoholic and we would get
into you know all of that and there was physical stuff going on there and I found solace within
myself and really started to kind of seek out for whatever purposes it was I started looking at
things differently and I started reading Dennis weightly and Norman Vincent Peale and all of these
authors back then that were putting out books like power of positive thinking and winning the
innovation game and all that stuff and I luckily had a wrestling coach in high school Tim Donahue
was his name and that dude introduced me to so many different things having to do with like
sports psychology and what psychology is really and how we can use it to perform and then like
I said at the beginning we you know lived in the woods at my dad's and I would go out into the
woods and sit against a tree and just start asking questions like not even knowing what I was doing I
was just asking the universe like what does this all mean and what am I going to do with all of
this stuff and it really just started to generate this question answer kind of learning cycle with
me and I remember so many occasions James in the woods with animals and the connectivity there
I'm writing a book and I've got this one specific story about this buck that my dad and I would hunt
and it was it was the legend story right like this deer is like 20 points and it's huge and
it's never been taken blah blah blah blah and he and I were out hunting one morning and
that damn thing showed up and I was like and you know having a little 410 rifle with me like I was
like I can't shoot this thing it's too beautiful you know and we had this interaction between the
deer and I and I take that forward and I think about it all day every day like it's something
so powerful being connected to something bigger than we are so then you know you look at childhood
and you look at rearing and all that stuff and absolutely it brought me to where I am right now
and kind of the cathartic nature of doing everything I've done you know like I've been
doing everything I've done you know like the creativeness of makeup effects so cathartic and
the idea of psychology and bringing tools to people that might have gone through some of the
same stuff I went through as a young person you know so so powerful and then knowing that you know
I might have this warrior lineage back there you know again believe what you believe but
knowing and kind of coming to the conclusion that this now is having learned all these things from
childhood and brought it through to high school years and college years and professional life and
all that stuff everything's a prologue man like everything's a prologue to that journey and we can
reboot ourselves daily if we choose to you know and and I could have dug a hole and jumped down and
covered myself over but for some reason something within me was like nope we're doing this like
let's do this and do good like do better for you but also do better for you so then you can go out
and share that with other people because your service like that's what you're gonna do so that
became really powerful for me. Well you talked about epigenetics I think we talked about this
in the car a few weeks ago but I actually just had a conversation with my dad and he was like
yeah you know there was there was certain things I think I don't know if he's talking about
obesity and diabetes in this particular thing he's totally mad about gut biome you can get him
talking for hours about that subject but he was showing again the epigenetics element of that
and the study again was probably done by more modern medicine so what I don't think was also
discussed was about reversing and this is what I heard I had a guest Alex Jaber on and she she had
a really interesting perspective of three generations of trauma through epigenetics if you are
a woman you know a young woman or and you you basically your grandmother could have been exposed
to trauma to have an immediate direct effect because if she was pregnant with your mother
well by that point your mother already has all the eggs in her cells as well so yes if she's
exposed to trauma that's two generations down for a pregnant woman that's two generations down for a
woman so your grandchild will actually have an you know a direct effect what gives me hope though
is if you study epigenetics the opposite is also true and we know you can reverse disease with diet
you can reverse you know addiction and some of these other things and therefore now you're not
just stopping the domino you're kind of pushing it back the other way right so I think that hope
element you know we took we hear of uh of genetics say oh I've got alcoholism in my family okay yeah
and it's that's nature and nurture but the good news is you are not doomed to be an alcoholic
you get to choose what happens from here on in well you know it's interesting that you bring that
up to and I 100 percent agree and that's why you know this human fusion equation thing came about
and I'll tell you more about that but I absolutely think to your point that we can recode the system
like it's it's electrical impulses right thoughts and all those things that we experience it's all
you know you think of the matrix and it's all electrical impulses that we're experiencing if
you can recode those things deliberately with intention and choose to act in a different way
absolutely I think you and I had this conversation Daniel Sundial and I absolutely had this
conversation that it frustrates us that in the mental health professions right now and even in
some of those spaces that are trying to be of service and help um AA for instance you are
lifetime labeled as an alcoholic it's a it's it's it's a curse like if you're looking at yourself
as an alcoholic and your help system has labeled you that where's the out like where is the where's
the getting better where is the I don't identify with this label anymore because I've done the work
to move through it and not be you know my great granddad who was an alcoholic or my dad who was
an alcoholic I mean you know I say this with all humility but I'm the poster child like my dad
he drank like a fish my mom drank like a fish I had a spout in college where I was a mess
and again for whatever reason the universe spirit was like dude change this and it's it happened and
things got put in front of me to allow that to happen whether it was I met a mentor or something
catastrophic happened and I had to change because you know if you don't you're going down the other
path so you know there's absolutely a way to recode the whole process and I think that's the
kind of secret sauce in the superpower nature of what we talk about currently is that to your point
a lot of people don't think that way a lot of people think that they're destined to do this
because they come from this or that they had this experience as a you know military professional
and now they're destined for this because of you know I'm getting you know administered all these
pharmaceuticals and I feel like a zombie and all those different things where I think doing the
work and doing it deliberately and with an intention to be better for yourself but also to be better for
the greater good and the community around you it's so powerful it's such a powerful thing and so I
absolutely agree I think we can do better and change it for sure I had a guest on a couple of
times Brian McKenzie who's big in the kind of breathwork world and a great conversation but
I remember him saying that he was in AA and AA seems to be incredibly successful for a lot of
people a lot of people but he got to a point where just like you said he wanted to shed the label he
was like I am good it's not like you know it wasn't fooling himself he was like I have this
new life I shed that skin completely and I just don't want to keep identifying as a recovering
alcoholic and I think you know yes and yes depending on what works for you but I think
yes depending on what works for you but knowing that's also an option if you truly you know can
look in the mirror and say it doesn't have me anymore like I have got past that then you know
of course there's the whole what they call it sponsor element you know if you're still staying
in you want to help other people but I think I think Brian had been clean for like 10 years
or something so at what point do you also say you know what I think I'm ready to just you know turn
the page and I think that's a healthy decision as well well and you know it's it's sad because
even us having this conversation there'd be people out there that'll hear this and be like wait a
minute you know and they'll they'll think the opposite way and to your point yes absolutely
there's there's that element of it where that system it makes sense and it's helped a ton of
people but I also think the openness of you know allow people to step away from it and to your
point you know step into the next chapter because that's a big part of what we've seen in my current
role is that there's so many different labels and the way that people carry those it becomes such a
shadow side of them and it's difficult for them to shed and they carry it all day and it affects
performance across the board like it affects their personal life their professional life
that you know if they have some type of pre-existing could be diabetic or could maybe
move into alcoholism or could do this it exacerbates everything you know so I am a
firm believer in shedding the labels just because you know we've taken post-traumatic stress
disorder and we don't even think about the word disorder anymore because of the connotation of it
like it's so evasive and you know we've talked to again many many special operations people
and their families and to call someone like that disordered I mean even in your fire profession
right if you're disordered and you can't be there for your team and you're broken and all that stuff
then what good are you right so we took that word and we're like it's done like we have to call it
something different because it has to imprint the idea of hope and that there is a way through and
that you can thrive through this and find that way to thrive through it so we've really started to
talk way differently and our semantics are different and the way that we kind of put words
together we've really tried to think about a lot because and again thinking not so much up here but
but does it feel right to drop the disorder from post-traumatic stress thousand percent because of
just the way that that word is seen and the label of it right so we've we do things quite a bit
differently around here which I which I wrap my arms around every day for sure. I about seven
years ago now I think it's right around the same time as the podcast started I started a page on
Facebook called the Dark Side Project and it was super early and it was just anyone that wanted to
just do like you said that courageous vulnerability I had one of my friends Mattie Furenza like in
tears in bed recording his first one I had other people that were you know we're doing okay and
they were explaining why they were doing okay it was it was great but I remember the very first one
was me I was in the gym at my last department and I said I have PTSD now that sounds so weird
because like you said semantics it's you know there wasn't even like a an extreme element to
the mental health impact now I was tired and I've been through so I had been exposed to a lot of
post-traumatic stress but was actually doing a lot better than a lot of people so again you have the
spectrum and I think yeah the the disorder term and I get it clinically that's I mean still stemming
from a car backfires and you you know drop to the floor and scurry under a table that's you know the
disorder they truly were talking about but I love I love the moral injury some of these things that
have emerged now where shame and guilt and some of these emotions that we feel that we shouldn't
because we're ordinary people being asked to do extraordinary things and a lot of times these are
natural reactions to these stressors that much more nuanced conversation I think is beautiful
absolutely 100% agree so we're going to talk about movie making in a second when you were a young
man talk to me about art was it was it central in your life at that point oh man yeah I I was
always an artist I was always drawing and painting and you know copying my Spider-Man comics or
whatever and at a young age if again for whatever reason just fell into loving horror films and sci
fi and I remember the first time I saw Twilight Zone it was just blown away because of the
idea of the storytelling but how fantastic it was and all that stuff and you know both parents
god love them they they were like okay so you know it was back in the day I aged myself a bit I'm
I'm 53 so when I was growing up it was you go to the video store you get your rentals right like
you go to Friday night and you get your stack and they all have to be back by you know next Wednesday
or whatever but we would go out and rent these horror movies and you know it just for that me
it was cathartic it was it was watching these fantastic sometimes gross things play out on
screen and it was like I know I'm carrying some stuff but watching this in this kind of venue
and having the ability to kind of tap into this as a experience and you know for me again learning
experience because for some reason it made sense to me so you know when I was young
I started asking a lot of questions as to how they were doing that stuff and special makeup effects
you know just came up and I fell in love with it from the time I was probably my last year
of middle school I guess just really started looking at it started getting fangoria magazines
just it meshed myself in it and then I watched Friday the 13th and it blew my mind because
how do you take an arrow and shove it through a dude's neck and have it look real
so I started doing all that research and found this amazing gentleman named Tom Savini who had
done Friday the 13th dawn of the dead like all these amazing kind of 80s you know slasher horror
films and there was a video that came out fangoria put it out many years ago called screen greats
and it was um like a story about Tom Savini like where he came from what his background was how
we started doing effects and I was dude enamored like every day I'd watch it and rewind it and
watch it and rewind it just trying to kind of figure out like what he was doing I would take
stuff from my mom like makeups and whatever and try to paint like scars and stuff it was crazy
back then trying to kind of sort out what all that was was your mom happy about that oh man yeah she
wasn't unhappy because I was not you know out in the world acting crazy like I sometimes tended to
do she knew I was in my room just kind of you know doing all the stuff she's like oh he's in there
you know painting using my lipstick again oh yeah using lipstick again what about Tom's backstory
just a jump in for a second what did you when you think back now were there any elements of
his early life that contributed to such a unique he was he was a marine um he was a combat photographer
um and he was in you know he was in uh Vietnam probably around the same time my dad was um
and he just really found the realness of combat photography and kind of he going through that
process he almost inoculated himself from gross right like you see it you shoot it you move on
but it's still you've seen it and it's real and it kind of builds your you know capacity a little
bit um so he would always say that you know as a combat photographer everything that he wanted to
create as a makeup effects person he needed it to look damn real like it needs to be photo real
hyper real and everything that he did that's what he did like he created something that looked
like you could walk out and it would be something that you would see real world but it was full on
designed sculpted molded painted blood put on it to make it look real so I think through his
you know kind of military side and then me finding that he grew up in you know Pennsylvania and
outside of Pittsburgh kind of had you know similar upbringings with siblings and that type of stuff
and then he found you know through his military service when he got back he had to start doing
stuff so he you know started working at a theater and found that that was fun and he started doing
the effects for the theater and then he just taught himself how to do everything and he was
always an artist he always drew and stuff but he figured it out um so I think his
his innovative spirit and just who he was really affected me and then when I found out that he had
done all these movies you know of course it was even bigger for me and then I tell this story all
the time but my um my fiance at the time this was back in uh man 1999 I guess 98 99 probably 99
probably 99 we were in a Barnes and Noble um and walking around and I picked up this fangoria
magazine because I was still you know imprinted into that whole world um I mean I'm just flipping
through the magazine and she comes up and she's like hey isn't that guy you tell me about all the
time so I flipped a magazine over and there was you know Tom Savini makeup effect school at Douglas
education center and I was like what so he started a school um he had partnered with this trade school
in Menessin Pennsylvania and they had gone to work and started this special makeup effects program
um first class had gone through so I called and within two weeks James was there visiting
and fell in love with the place because I was working at a um I graduated college and was
working at a staffing firm just wasting away knowing I was wasting away like what's the next
step here but having to make money after college you know blah blah blah so we went and visited the
college or the school and it was interesting because my path then was multi-fold right
thinking about going into the SEAL teams so I had spoken with a gentleman uh Don Mann
who was a retired team six guy he owned a group back then called Odyssey Adventure Racing and
I had been racing with Don doing his adventure races for a few years um so Don basically was
trying to recruit me to come into the SEAL teams through some adventure things that they had going
on at Odyssey so I had that on my plate I was thinking about Johnson and Wales like going to
culinary school and then I was about uh two years out of college and my dad and I were talking about
me maybe going back and getting my masters for sports psychology and then I had Tom Savini school
so I have four things that I was like what am I gonna do so I had all these things on my desk
and I did what any you know good thinking person might do I grabbed a quarter and started flipping
coins so I actually left it to fate I flipped coins and wound up that Savini school became the
last flip of the coin and that was what I chose to do for like professional career so I went to
Savini school in 2001 I think it was and did a 16-month intensive program there um got married
about a month after packed up a U-Haul dragged the car behind and you know stayed in LA for
almost 20 years after so it was just you know hero's journey right answering the call yep
that's what we're gonna do and just seeing where it went and it was one of the best decisions of my
life but then it's interesting too because all of those other three things they've always played a
vital role in just what I've done and what I've done with my organizations and my companies it's
always been there the team stuff has always been there the military stuff has always been there
I love cooking I feel like that's a very creative cathartic outlet for me too um and then you know
with the Savini school makeup effect stuff obviously that was a big part of my life
and then the sports psych stuff like the performance stuff how do we take this and you
know make this brain heart connection and be able to perform under these high tempo you know kind of
crazy situations that sometimes we find ourselves in and you know you and I've had that conversation
like as a firefighter and our military professionals and law enforcement like you never know
what that situation is going to be and if you're trained for it um probably going to be better off
and you know the outcome might not be exactly what you want but at least you've set your goals
your system up for you know maybe what's to come so I think everything kind of culminated into where
we are today. How hard was it to break into that industry you had the school under your belt was it
respected enough qualification that you were kind of welcomed or did you have the challenges that
other people in the acting world have when they moved to LA? It was a little bit of this both
right I um I'm like a pit bull and I tell everybody like I'll talk to a tree and try to get a
conversation out of it because I just I feel so connected to this experience and what it is and
people and places and things so I but even before I went to Savini school I started you know messaging
people however that was back then I guess it was through email I don't even think there was text
back then but you know I would reach out to people and ask questions and I remember even before I
went to Savini's uh I reached out to Greg Nicotero at KMB through email and I think I might have called
him a couple times but Greg's the executive producer now walking dead extremely successful
makeup effect shop owner extremely successful director producer um but I reached out to Greg
all those years ago and he and I had a conversation and I remember him saying
the biggest thing for you to do is to do your training then get out here like you're not going
to be able to do this where you are like you you got to make the move so again it was always
imprinted with that hero's journey piece right like you have to say yes and then choose the
adventure to move across the country and start something that you really have no idea what's
going to happen um at the end of the day so you know being a pit bull and talking to people and
being um very motivated to make it in the industry I feel like I set myself up for
better success because I was asking a lot of questions and met a lot of people
and I mean you know your network is gold right like the people that you know are going to tell
the people that they know and it just starts kind of cycling right so when I got out there I had
called the shops they knew who I was I had my portfolio and I landed and a week later I was in
the shops you know presenting to them my portfolio talking to them about my history and all that kind
of stuff and I think the the other thing that helped too was that I was a little bit older
um when I started uh because a lot of the people that kind of get into makeup effects it's it's
you know straight out of high school or early college and they just go out there and try to
to do it but I I had a mission and I felt like you know I had set myself up to make it but it was
difficult like the learning the industry you know as you said with the actors and and what they go
through with you know all of the auditions and stuff like that and you know waiting tables
waiting to get that big break makeup effects a little bit different because there are a few
shops in the industry um larger shops and smaller shops but you always wanted to work at the larger
shop because you know pay was better bigger films whatever um and I was fortunate like I was fortunate
to meet a lot of those people early and then my network just saw to it that I stay busy um and
you know it you trial by fire like you get out there and you think you know what you know and
then you start learning that oh you know what I learned back then like it gave me a really good
foundation but wow like the learning curve is very steep again so it was being open to that like
being open to learning about you know new materials new stuff meeting new people and just
having conversations with people um and being open to those conversations I think led to me
being pretty successful um so what about stories from your career that were memorable because I
wouldn't say that what were the biggest films because they might have been really boring and
shit to work on so what are some of the the biggest stories of your time in in the special effects
world man I it's interesting James because when I sit here and think about it even now
you know you close your eyes for a second you're like man the ones that affected me were
connected to what I feel like my history was it kind of brought me forward to those experiences
but also what we're doing now so we we worked on Lone Survivor um the Marcus Luttrell story
and I had an opportunity to kind of lead the life cast on Mark Wahlberg and a few of the other actors
that were in the movie and then you know we made all of the scars and all of the stuff that happens
to them throughout that whole film and knowing that Marcus Luttrell story knowing my connection
to Chris Kyle and starting the non-profit that I started years ago that film affected me big time
working on it in that way not just because of what we were bringing to it but because of the
kind of energy spirit attachment that I had to it previous because I had read that book and kind of
started uh Crusades 22 years before and then when I found out that we got Lone Survivor I was like
oh man like this this is going to be special and then one of the shop owners walked up to me and
he's like hey I want you to lead up all the life casting sessions on the actors and it just stuff
like that doesn't happen you know unless it's it's in the zeitgeist right like something's going on
to lead you there but you got to say yes to this stuff right so that Banner Brothers um we worked
on the Pacific we didn't work on Banner Brothers that was a little bit before my time but the
Pacific which was based on the Pacific campaign of our Marines in World War II so that was
um a pretty awesome thing to work on um there's so many and then you know big thing that people
will know now is that you know I had an opportunity to step in to play in a role in The Walking Dead
which was this the bloated well walker from season two and that story is crazy too because
Greg and I had gotten to know each other really well at that time and one of our other um
sculptors was supposed to do the role because he was the you know the body type that they wanted
they were going to make him into this big fat dude and it was going to work out um to where he
could wear the suit and whatever but he got he has crones and he had a flare up of his crones
so Greg was like well shit you know Hiller's in really good shape um we'll ask him to do it so he
came up to me in the mold shop one day and he's like hey I got a question come over here so he
you know took me over into the corner I'm like oh man what's going on he's like how would you like
to play one of the zombies in The Walking Dead for this upcoming up season I was like yeah I mean
what do I got to do so they had already life casted Jeremy kind of full body and he's like
Jeremy you know is about your size so we're just gonna sculpt it on those forms but we want you to
go out to you know the hot hot hot atmosphere of Petrie City Georgia and play the well walker and
I was like okay so it was it was the most exciting most stressful time of my life and it's just one
of those things that you look back on and people recognize it and they you know are excited by it
and I look at it as what an amazing adventure that it was but it also kind of it was a very
it was the next step to the next thing right I mean I've got stuff you know all over my walls
some of that stuff though you know just the memories of it all but yeah I think that you
know makeup effects led me to a lot of really cool things but it also has led me to kind of rethink
what we do as a as an organization to help people that might be going through a bunch of stuff
in life so you know it's funny it's almost come full circle because I kind of forgot about it
years ago when we started Metasphere and then it just it came back around about a year ago and
it's been a very interesting connect point right within the journey of this whole thing.
Amazing I'm glad I asked that question when you said Walking Dead immediately I'm sure you've
seen it there was a video that was going around a while ago and it was the auditions for Zodiac
or Zombies for Walking Dead one of the funniest things I've ever seen not mocking anyone there
they are doing a good job playing zombies but without the makeup one of the funniest things
I've ever seen. Well it's funny that because we were out there we were shooting the whole
Wellwalker scene and there was a bar that we would go to at night after we had all wrapped and the
town knew that we were there and Greg would do auditions at the bar so people would come in
and we would be sitting around having dinner they'd be having drinks and you know people would
walk in like doing their best zombie and they walk up to Greg and they're what do you think
was that cool and he's like I don't know I gotta see it again so it was almost like you know
walking the runway like people would clear out in the bar and people would kind of do their best
zombie walk and make the sounds and all that stuff and that's where we found a lot of the extras
you know Greg's like hey call production and get yourself set up and I mean you've seen the show
like all the extras that were needed a lot of them came through you know that bar that you know on
many many nights and Greg was like yep here's the number call them and get yourself involved
so yeah it's super cool just super cool. So I got another interesting perspective for you when I was
in my teens same exact thing you know arm full of videos and back then it was like oh do I do
VHS do I do beat em axe we had quite the selection back then and beat em axe was my dad was like this
is gonna be the future and then it failed oh yeah two years later but anyway but I got into
the horror movies and really like I mean I love the zombie movies film but also the the violent
slasher films and I remember literally one day just having this epiphany going and then I was
probably I'm guessing 18 19 by this point going what the fuck am I doing how am I being entertained
by people being tortured and mutilated and I always have this conversation because I switched
the complete other way and then then you put a uniform on you see horrible shit for real
and I've I it's very rare that I meet someone who was in military or first responder who really
likes slasher movies now ghost movies and I love the Japanese you know the the grudge and all those
are phenomenal but the you know oh let me you know let me just go and decompress for a bit while
watching a cabin full of teenagers you know raped and murdered that's not or sewn ass to mouth and
then yeah whatever it is right yeah good human centipede oh my god so what is your perception
of that because when you take a step back you're like how the hell did we get to the point where
after a hard day at work you want to unwind watching that stuff psychologically it's different
than fairy tales and monsters and witches and ghoulies you know that's rape torture murder
so what's your perspective of that yeah I years ago I was all about you know anything slasher
you know anything and again I think it's just the cathartic nature of it because we all carry
that shadow side of us and I think that to satiate that with something that's you know
innocent enough like watching the slasher film you know feed that thing a little bit so it doesn't
come out in all these other ways right like let's not beat our spouse let's not you know get in the
drugs let's not go do that because you know I know a lot of us have had those thoughts in our brain
where we're like I could go you know I'm angry enough right now where I could do some damage
so I think cathartically watching that stuff and again believe what you believe on the psychology
spectrum but for me it became that like I'm giving this shadow piece of me something that they need
right now so I don't act it out you know as a human because I saw like I saw my stepdad who would
drink and that monster would come out and you know it's it's fisticuffs it's it's all of that
physical you know battery kind of activity that was going on and I didn't want to go there like I
just I have not not been a violent person again in this lifetime I tend to be more compassionate
and I'll you know hug anybody and everybody so I'm kind of that guy which is another interesting
kind of dichotomy too because I do enjoy my horror films but you know years ago too I started to kind
of pivot from the slasher you know all that stuff to more of kind of the more psychological based
stuff like the Hannibal Lecter stuff and like the more kind of visceral stuff like you got to think
about it like what really is going on and come more the specter spooky gooey stuff you were talking
about but I do think that again as we begin to kind of see where the wraparound of all of my
experience has been I came from where I came from as a young person I spent a lot of time in the
woods I spent a lot of time fighting with a stepdad I spent a lot of time trying to sort out like
what life is about found makeup effects after makeup effects getting out to LA had this amazing
connected profound experience where I started a non-profit called Crusades 22 because I found
out that Chris Kyle had gotten killed and and James I again things happening for a reason
for a reason I had closed American Sniper on a Sunday afternoon texted my girlfriend at the time
who owned a flower shop down in Santa Monica said hey I'm gonna come down and see you in the morning
but I also want to sit down and see if I can find Chris and his contact information because I'd like
to have him be a part of this television show that I was creating at the time and the show was called
Endurance Warriors and it was predicated on the fact that we as humans hang all of these boundaries
and borders on ourselves and this show was about how we as humans can do so much more than we ever
thought we could mentally emotionally intellectually physically all the things so I felt Chris might be
a really good kind of co-host or a mentor or somebody so I want to reach out and just see
what his availability was so long story short got there that morning flipped open my laptop typed in
you know Chris Kyle found out that he had Craft International which was a training group that he
had put together for law enforcement and military for like pretty high-end tempo tactical stuff
clicked the button for the web page and his death notice came up he had just been killed that day
prior as I closed the book on American sniper fell apart like I had known I do my entire life I get
the chills thinking about it I'm wearing a shirt today it's crazy that I made a phone call to Don
Mann Don Mann picked up the phone who I had known for years he's like I know why you're calling me
what do you want to do and I was like I don't know what to do like I've been out here in LA doing
makeup effects I have got an adventure racing background I love the community because we race
with a lot of special ops men and women because you know getting out and wanting to do something
physically challenging they would get into adventure races so I met the community fell in
love with them so Don said I suggest we start a non-profit so we did and at the times it was
called Kyle's Crusades we transitioned it about a year later to Crusades 22 and we just started
doing the work working with special operators and their families so I was doing that along with
makeup effects and everything just started doing this I mean it's just started dovetailing into
itself right because as I was doing makeup effects and kind of going through that process of
enjoying horror and making horror and doing effects and all that stuff I would go home at night
and I would do sessions with somebody who had been in combat and you know lost a friend or more
and was now having trouble in their marriage because they couldn't reconnect back into that
having had the experiences that they had right so it was really interesting to kind of travel
both of those lanes and then when we got into the whole COVID thing about two years prior
as as Crusades 22 we started getting all of these questions asked to us about you know how do we
know that what you guys are doing is effective because we were doing yoga we were doing
resiliency training with people we were just doing kind of talk therapy with people and just
really trying to kind of tap them back into what their purpose was post service from military so
really doing a lot of deep dive into exactly the stuff that you and I have been talking about today
is what was your background and how were you kind of what was your nature nurture what was your
upbringing what was all that stuff and then asking these very pointed compassionate questions to help
that person start to kind of recalibrate what was going on up here but also you know kind of
to re-tap back into your heart space and all that stuff and we didn't have any quantifiable
qualifiable information we were just doing the work so again long story short COVID happened and
we having had these questions asked to us when COVID hit you know all of our donations just
you know tanked and we had to really think about what we were going to do as an organization
to kind of pivot or if we were just going to fold it up and do something different
so I got with my whole team and we we decided to create a for-profit organization which became
Metasphere and what we did with that was brought in another group that we now work with called
Between MD and they have a data package that we've loaded into our database and we've
loaded into the back end of everything we do and that data package is anything and everything that
we could bring in for biometric information health care information we're loading up a genetics and
genetics into it there's qualifiers and questionnaires in there is just kind of a starting
point to start working with people so we started grabbing data and started seeing kind of what the
process was with how do we capture this data and then feed it back into these actionable long-term
feedback loops for these individuals to show them that the things that we're doing and the things
that we're engaging in is actually making a difference and and then being able to track
that stuff right so that became how Metasphere kind of started getting its legs under it but
but it's always been you know these intermittent connections if not you know long-term connections
to all the other things makeup effects and creativity and all that other stuff that kind
of led us where we are today it's been awesome to see it build. So you were telling me about
this incredible fusion between the makeup effects world that you came from and the mental health
world. I know Daniel Sandal who's on the show years ago now probably he's probably one of my
first guests for the first year. I mean he anyone who who is in the fire service you're either
looking at Paul Combs art who's the cartoonist or you're looking at Dan's pictures and you know
that there's always going to be that one of at the back of the ambulance you know and the paramedic
looking broken-hearted and then there's the ghost of the person they try to save you know just so
so powerful but then also there's the demons there's the people that plague some of our men
and women in uniform. So walk me through how you began to take your skill set and apply it as a tool
into not overcoming but but trying to go through that trauma and forge post-traumatic growth.
Yeah yeah so I think it starts with how we begin how we began to build Metasphere and what all the
ethos was behind it because we knew that we had to start telling a narrative not only for us but we
had to help other people tell their own narrative because sometimes we get hung up in the story that
we tell ourselves and it could be a false narrative right like we're telling ourselves
these things about ourselves that we've been imprinted with through you know our parents
or our upbringing or society or whatever and the story became really powerful for us for
individuals and also cohorts of people because when you look at military background when you
look at fire when you look at law enforcement each cohort has a different thing but they're also very
similar so hero's journey became one of the main pillars that we were looking at for this kind of
metamorphosis activity that we were going to create warrior culture became another component
of the foundation and then like universal connectedness like how we are all connected as
humans but also what our connection is to the larger universe and energy and all that stuff.
So with those three things we kind of broke all that down and these five devices that we believe in
one is do hard stuff and be kind when you do it so in life you know as as buddhism says
it's a struggle it's a process it's chaos and there's also paths out of that chaos so how do
we learn that stuff but you got to do the hard things in order to learn lessons right and when
you're doing that hard stuff be a good human be compassionate to people love people be kind to
people so that was number one the second one was how do we optimize our sleep efficiency and our
rest and recovery because a lot of us are running around like a chicken with their heads cut off and
especially with like you guys in fire service and on shift work you know what a huge thing you got
to work on to try to figure out where my recovery where my sleep is the other one was physicality
and physicality being how you move your body but also the physicality of emotions and the physicality
of intellectualizing things and spiritualism and intellectual kind of thought about uh emotional
regulation and all those things because all of that comes from physical space right like if you're
going to try to regulate your emotions physically get on a meditation mat and breathe and do some
meditation so that became part of looking at us as a whole human the other thing that we started
looking at too was what people are eating and what they're putting in their faces hydration wise so
one of the o2x lessons that i learned you know many years ago uh what you're eating and what
you're drinking and then how we're imprinted into our tribe and our community right like what's that
mean for us like who are we surrounding ourselves with um that are support systems for us but we
also reciprocate that into all of it and then the other thing that we started really looking at was
what's the what's the ugly what's the stuff that we're not talking about that is locked in there
the shadow the inner demon and how do we exercise that how do we get that out of someone
via all of these different you know practical things that we're going to be doing with them
so we started to really kind of bring in the idea of how do we bring makeup effects into this
and and create something with an individual that engages them in the
uh opening kind of design process and the creation of having the opportunity to see
their shadow and their inner demon like what how do you do that so there's a process that we came
up with and it takes i mean and and you know another thing that we think about too that i
think we bring to the table that's a little bit different is challenging people to know that the
process is the process and practice is needed and that in order for you to get from point a to point
b it might take you four weeks it might take you six weeks it's not going to be you take the magic
pill and everything changes it's work right so we've come up with a system where we engage people in
their intakes we go through this process of hero's journey heroine's journey we tap them into
them into their own side of warrior culture from wherever they come from we talk to them about
universal connectedness and path and purpose and all those things we imprint into them some of the
lessons that we teach on some of those five key things and then we start to talk about now that
we've gotten you to this point what's the next phase what's the next paragraph that you would
write for the next chapter of your life right so really beginning to kind of engage in the journey
again and then at the end of all of that beginning to ask them what is the what's that thing or those
things that you are carrying with you that you would consider shadow that you would consider
something that's this inner demon that is holding you back from being able to kind of obtain
all of the things that you you know feel like are impossible because you just you're tethered to this
stuff so we sit down with them when we start to create what it looks like for them on them
through a makeup effect so for instance walking someone through a design process where
they're in a meditation they're being led through this guided journey and the prompts are how does
how does this shadow how does this inner demon manifest onto your body onto your face what does
it do to change your musculature what does it do to make you look differently as a human
are you a demon are you this are you that you start asking these questions and with them you
start to design what that look is and the idea is is that we take the person and we then transform
them through makeup effects into that shadow or that demon so we go through a whole design process
i and my team go through the sculpting the mold making process generating the prosthetics
and then we show up at the person's place very very ceremonial there's a fire pit burning
someplace very near we go through kind of the process of what this means and why we're doing
this having had you know six weeks or eight weeks of lead up to this so they know what they're
getting into like they know what's coming mirror comes in and we have them look at themselves in
the mirror we go through some q a with them then uh dear friend of mine mike platt uh who is a
neuroscientist at worton uh he's come up with a device it's called cogware and it's a qualitative
eeg device tracker so we put that on them and we start seeing kind of what's going on with their
brain waves and their brain patterns so we do that when they're in the mirror mirror goes away device
comes off makeup effects go on um and then once the makeup effects are on mirror comes back in
cogware goes back on and we start to see that there are significant changes in
that person and their personality because now they're presenting as the demon or the inner demon
or the shadow or whatever it is there's another interaction that we have and then we begin to your
point at the beginning of this conversation we start shedding the skin so as a makeup effects
artist you take the makeup off of the person so as we do that these giant pieces of skin are coming
off and we're throwing them into the fire so we're shedding the skin of this demon shedding the skin
of that you know inner shadow and we're burning it away so ceremoniously using fire to cleanse
and then we get them all cleaned up and we then we begin kind of the process of now that you've
gone through this very cathartic you know stepped into this supreme ordeal walk through that
threshold you got through that shadow piece you you challenged and persevered over the inner demon
now we can begin to kind of point you in the direction of what's the inner heroine now what's
the inner hero what's the next part of the journey where are we going right like and it and it opens
it up to this giant thing where it's almost that i always atone it to remember the construct in the
matrix that big white room and they can call in whatever they want to call in that's basically
what we're creating throughout this entire process is that now anything and everything can be created
in your own personal unique construct now that you've shed some of that stuff that was holding
you back and then we start doing the work for that purpose so it's it's been a profound experience
for a bunch of people that we've done it with um we're in the design phases with some people we've
done the entire process with people we're in the opening stages with some people um and it's it's
seeing kind of what the variances of each person's experience are as they start going through
this specific part of the process it's it's been powerful it's been super super powerful for people
and talk to me about the the fusion you have with Daniel Sandow then so Dan and I of course I
reached out to Dan a few years back and started to utilize some of his images on some of our
packets and stuff because I felt that the imagery and the artwork that he brought the creativeness
right of taking post-traumatic stress and you know that inner demon and that shadow and presented it
in these amazing pieces of artwork it affected me deeply I knew that it affected a bunch of people
that I knew deeply so I reached out and asked him how we could you know start to collaborate
so he and I have known each other for many years and then just a few months ago I reached out and
I'm like hey um I saw one of his the demon um standing over I think it was an EMS worker but
it was the demon and I was like man this would be a really cool
makeup effect to do on someone so I reached out to Dan and we started having this conversation
so we're going to probably start doing um based upon some of his artwork uh makeup effects that
will be physical representations of the artwork that he's created and then through his training
now that he's doing because he's going out and getting his um I think he's getting his certificate
in um psychology I can't remember exactly what it is but he's going to be a therapist for
you know folks that have gone through all kind of different types of trauma so we're going to start
working together to take this piece of what we do at Metasphere and kind of imprint it into what
he's going to be doing you know kind of in his future as well um so it's been a really cool way
to start to integrate and collaborate with him because it just comes from
this very creative very open space of art and uh you know it's very indicative of
um and pretty similar to um you know Nyko and how they're doing kind of the paper mache masks
yes so it's it's very very much that concept but I was talking to Eric Potter at two you and I
talked about Eric quite a bit um Eric's become a really good friend of mine and he's been a
really good friend of mine too and he was talking about knowing the lady that started that whole
premise of doing these masks and the masks that we wear and having that be kind of an art based
therapeutic thing that we can do um with our special operators and athletes that they can
get out that stuff and build this mask that represents their feelings and their emotions
and the pain and the triggers and the traumas and all that stuff so as Eric and I have been
kind of peeling this back too for this face-to-face idea uh he's going to be coming on and helping us
kind of work through a lot of the kind of back-end stuff um that might be happening with people as
they go through this because you know we're one group but we also know we don't have all the
answers and can't provide all the support but we do have people around us that are going to be
able to help us with the support but we do have people around us that can and they're really good
at what they do um so side note on Eric too uh Eric and I met a few years back at an event in LA
and I won't get into the minutiae of the story but um found out that Eric did Chris Kyle's debrief
when he came back from having to do some pretty horrid stuff uh over in you know combat and
I found out Eric found out I had a non-profit that was connected to Chris and I had built it
because I had heard of Chris's passing found out that Eric had worked with Chris in this amazing
capacity with the SEAL teams and then we just you know immediately had this bond and we've been
doing some work and kind of collaborating on stuff ever since so again it's just universal
connected this right like who knew that I was going to walk into this restaurant uh in this one
room where there was three people sitting and Eric and I were going to be able to have this dialogue
it just it doesn't happen unless it's supposed to happen right and I am a absolute firm believer in
things happening for a reason and and again you and I coming into you know knowing each other
through O2X and now having this conversation uh it's it's very very powerful for me and I don't
you know take it lightly that the conversation that we're having hopefully will you know affect
some other people out there and we can start helping bigger greater good right that's the
whole point absolutely yeah Eric the conversation with Eric was incredible you know the psychologist
for a lot of the SEALs and he also did uh Marcus Luttrell's debrief after as well so you know and
we didn't even go into that because again not only is it the SEALs it's also you know one man's
personal you know struggles so it's none of none of our business anyway but what we did talk about
was absolutely phenomenal so yeah amazing now just before we kind of transition some closing questions
you know you've got this incredible concept um you know the shadow self obviously is real you look at
any any you know kind of spiritual philosophy at all that's always present you know whether it's
the devil or the shadow side or whatever they want to label it um talk to me about some of the
success stories that you've had what what I think is so important about the mental health conversation
firstly is infusing hope I think the post-traumatic growth conversation is what we all need to be
having now that you are a more resilient person on the other side of this struggle
the other side is the toolbox I think you know I had I had someone I never named names but I had
a person on the show who swore blindly that their method worked on everyone they said everyone and
I disagree I'm sorry but I think that's bullshit there's no nutrition that works for everyone
there's no exercise plan that works for everyone you know and it's the same thing that's happening
with mental health but if it's one of the tools in a large toolbox that is phenomenal you know it
could be EMDR it could be equine therapy it could be psychedelics and now I'd never heard of this
until you came to you know it came to me when you had this most recent conversation yeah so talk to
me about some of the experiences that you've witnessed or some of the stories that you heard
going through this particular modality yeah and I'm glad you brought that up too because
as a organization our entire you know one pillar of the ethos is is that it's targeted for individuals
right like it's not a one-stop-shop we don't know all the answers if we don't know an answer to
something we're going to find it out we're going to put that in front of a person right but I think
what we did do was peel it back enough to know that some of the pillars some of the philosophy
some of the psychology some of the creativeness absolute vulnerability absolute hope absolute
trust like all those things became our anchor points for what we were doing and then once this
makeup effect idea started to happen it brought in all of that but it was also very individualized
per each of the people that we were doing it with right you know and and I've talked to some
people about it and they shrugged it off because it that's too heavy like that for me like you know
got to take a knee on that because that's way too far in the deep end but for the people that have
had interaction with shadow side and inner demon through makeup effects
I can't even put it to words like there's tears there's hugs there's compassion there's thanks
there's gratitude there's knowing that part of that thing that they were carrying be it shadow
or trauma or triggering or that combat experience that they had where you know I'm going to say it
like they wore a friend because of an ied and you know getting through all of that crap that you
carry because of the moral injury or the vision that you see every night before you go to bed or
whatever it was unlocking that box and allowing that stuff to come out interact with it right and
integrate the things that make sense and integrate the lessons sell them out and then you can get
to celebrate the fact that you've gone through this and this made you who you are right now today
and then being okay with the fact that you can also jettison and let go of the stuff that doesn't
serve you and your bigger purpose anymore that for a lot of the folks that we work with has been kind
of the the profound shifting of the paradigm for them because they felt like they had to carry
what it was like I feel morally injured and I feel like I'm here and this person isn't because of
you know enter all of the reasons why but now having gone through the process of
processing through all of the stuff the emotions the triggers the traumas the the mental aspect
of how you talk to yourself about all these things shifting the narratives breaking down the
paradigms recoding the system a little bit and then having gone through this very creative very
what's the word I'm looking for I mean it profound keeps coming up but I think that it's more
it's bigger than that it's it's the makeup effect gives you the opportunity to see something that
something that you know is inside of you but you just never could put your finger on what it was
and then now that you've had this conversation of this thing presents this to me and you see it
in the mirror dude people have been in makeup and they're bawling crying because they now can put a
label in a in an image to it but they also know as we kind of go back into the conversation a little
bit this is not your label this is not who you are right this is a piece this is an aspect of it
and this is something that we're now going to take and ask what's the lesson what's the integration
like much like you would do if you're doing plant medicine much like you would if you're going to
any psychologist or psychologist that's worth their you know paying that they're writing notes
with you have to integrate a lesson then it's okay telling people James that it's okay to let go of
some of this stuff those words hit people like a ton of bricks because they've never ever gone
through the process of getting to this and then getting to the point where you put your arms around
him you're like it's okay like let go all of that other stuff we've already done the integration
here you've done the work you know you you've lived that part now we're on to the next phase
right and oh and and allowing them through hero's journey uh kind of framework blast that portal open
blast that threshold open here we are now here's the hero here's the heroine we're we're facing
forward right um so that for me has been so impactful as you know a group that's kind of
come into doing this because we know that this is something that is different enough
kind of breaks down the paradigm a little bit but it's also one of those things too where
people talk about thinking out of the box a lot like we exploded the box there is no box
right like something like this you can't put it in that and try to you know make it do what you want
it to do like it has a will and a life of its own um and you gotta you gotta be okay with it you gotta
be okay with it creating itself and giving it breath and life so it's it's been a really good
process for the people that we've done it with but it's also been a really good process for us
you know like this has been a really cathartic thing to kind of figure out who we are like what
are we doing what's the main thing that we can bring to you know the mental health space and
helping people move through trauma and trigger and all that stuff and do it in a way where we know
we're bringing something that we feel is for the purposes of what we do effective and efficient
and does it in a way where we know that we also have connection to that person that you know I
get text messages daily you know and it's it's gratitude and it's thanks and it's hey just want
to see how you're doing and you know it creates the team and the tribe and they know that they have
a group of people that aren't just the groups it's like oh hey go do this and then they go away
you know like we we want to win bed and then that's kind of the idea of this whole thing
is that the embedding nature of what we do you have to do it like that's the way that you're
going to start creating change and breaking down the current systems and kind of relaunching
and recoding everything that we're doing right so it's it's been good it's been a really really
good process it sounds amazing and it's again so so out of the box I mean it really is but that's
what we need you know there's this a lot of the issues that you see in the fire services because
we've always done it the same way you know so we need the box breakers of the world absolutely
absolutely one little tangent before we go to closing questions yeah it's been interesting
from the actor's perspective the impact of ai and cgi on their you know their space now a lot of them
are doing green screen acting now I just had Captain Dale Dion recently in the masters of the air
and you know the set apparently was like this this all these real b
I think it was b52s with screens all the way around so they were actually immersed in you know
screens like they were seeing things but a lot of these guys got to give them credit where they're
acting in front of a giant screen that's just green pretending to be you know running from
whatever but also you hear about the intellectual property now you know oh they can literally
do one take with me and then they'll get that version of me to do other things and you know that
creatively obviously you know that there's an ethical issue there too yeah what about your world
as cgi has got better and better and better has it threatened the makeup artist or is there still
a kind of fusion of the two skills together it's always for me anyway and other people may think
differently but we started having this conversation James years ago like we saw that during the
years ago like we saw that Jurassic Park was coming we saw that you know there were cg dinosaurs
but you know at stands they also made a giant full-size Tyrannosaurus Rex they made full
walk-around velociraptors right like it was always the physical imprint because the actors would
always say I don't want to act with a tennis ball like I need something in front of me that I can
interact with and have this you know ongoing thing with as we film this so it's always been there as
like you know we're gonna makeup effects is gonna go away because of cgi and all that stuff and it
just it never has and I don't think it ever will because there's actors out there I'll use Gary
Olma as an example one of my really good friends in life Brian Sipe he was he's been in the makeup
effects industry for years but he was lead on Mandalorian for a long time he's led all kinds of
makeup effect shows Guardians of the Galaxy he used to be one of the main folks for Jennifer
Lawrence he was her personal for a long time for the Mystique makeup like just awesome dude but he
worked with Gary on Hannibal and I remember Hannibal like you know everything was pulled and
the whole Mason Verger character that Gary Oldman played Gary's like I want you to muck me up like
I need something in my mouth to make me talk weird so they went through this whole process of
how do you transform this person into this other person and have it be something that that person
can look at in the mirror and see themselves as something different right so as as they came up
with that whole makeup again as we kind of pivot this back into current that's always been something
for me is how can we utilize makeup effects to present something as a different personality of
a person and it's almost shamanistic in its imprint right because we're actually changing
the personality and the energy of a person through this art form right like we're changing the energy
and the spirit of who that person is so it's never been for us kind of a thing we've always been
kind of inviting to the whole idea of CG because it's it can be if it's done well if you see Lord
of the Rings holy crap like they took makeup effects and CG and they put it together and it's
seamless right because you got your orcs but you also got your you know eagles that are flying
that are oversized and you know what a great great great kind of measurement of all of those
things together but i don't think we'll ever really see kind of you know us as makeup effects
artists going you know away of the warrior because i mean it's it's it's it's too powerful
it's too powerful of a venue absolutely now what about moulage when it comes to training whether
it's military training or first responder but also if you're using makeup in this capacity we've just
discussed to you know manifest a shadow self and then and then try and peel that shadow self away
is there any potential at all of introducing a version of exposure to trauma to young first
responders through moulage so they're not seeing the horrors they're not hearing the actual screams
of the loved ones that really haunt us but maybe giving that realism not only for the injury
treatment for example but also micro doses of trauma to build up that potential resilience
we've done that there was we've did that um it's been a few years back we were working with a group
and and we created a little side company called battle scars and it was basically that like you
know having um it was law enforcement at the time because if you were to walk into a shooting um
kind of active shooter thing and had to administer first aid and you were the first on scene
you know we would you know things are bleeding you know we would have you know things and if you did
the compress right or the tourniquet right we turn the blood off and you you know save the person or
whatever so we've done that and we're actually working with a group now currently um starting
online some stuff but it's a group called um they're called lives they're in uk um and they
are doing some amazing work in uh that field where they're training rural ems folks to to come upon a
you know traumatic car accident or whatever and they're uh bringing us on to bring them exactly
what you just talked about so utilizing someone who in real life might be an amputee but as an
actor they could come in and we could do a makeup effect on their arm and their arm could be you
know severed in the car accident and the person has to go over and you know take care of and
respond to the injury um they have a room in the building that they're creating now where it's you
can create cold rain anything and it's it's vehicle driven too so you can drive a vehicle onto site
and have it be it's incredible what they're doing you should check them out they're called lives
amazing stuff amazing stuff and we're also going to imprint some of the biometric information into
that as well because as you know you know stress response starts happening as you're going through
some of these trainings how pivotal to be able to see what you're doing have the instructor be
able to look and see kind of what's going on with you real time hit the pause button take that
breath you're good like you're going you know we're going to ramp this up so get ready for it or
whatever the you know cadence is that they're going for and being able to show them biometrically
where they were within that training scenario it's it's awesome so they're going to start imprinting
some of that stuff too amazing well thank you for that i'll look into them definitely yeah
absolutely all right first of the closing questions is there a book or are there books
that you love to recommend it can be related to our discussion today or completely unrelated
oh man that's funny i have a book list in the back of the deck that i created for this human
fusion equation it's like three slides long what am i reading now currently that i am really really
into i'm looking at my bookshelf right now the creative act by rick rubin is amazing
uh we have been talking a lot about
longevity these past couple of years on on our teams and what that means so lifespan has been a
really big book for us by david sinclair um what else did i pick up very recently that i finished
up i just put it out there the baghvet gita was one of my gateways when it comes to kind of
doing what we're doing um as a organization and then i read a lot of uh books on shamanism there's
one called shambahala um let me grab it real quick because there's no way i'd be able to
spell it for you but it's this one the way of the sacred warrior shambhala okay
it's amazing it's amazing um and then i am a giant jonathan mayberry fan he writes um
he's all right it still writes comics but he he writes a series uh based on this character
named joe ledger and the first book i ever read of of jonathan's was called patient zero
and obviously it's a zombie book but the book is about um this guy joe ledger and his experiences
with this new kind of black ops organization called the dms um and it's it's so profound for
me and a lot of those books that i read through jonathan mayberry have become very lesson filled
for me that sounds weird but um i've i've got a lot of takeaways that i've gotten from jonathan
mayberry and he's actually in the book that i'm writing now um which has been a very very interesting
path for me to walk to so yeah i think those are probably the main ones right now i got there's
again there's again on the back of one of my decks it's just it's loaded with books but those are
the ones off the top of my head what's your favorite kind of zombie we have a spectrum from
sean of the dead all the way through to world war z there shouldn't be fast zombies i'm gonna go on
record and say that um i am a i'm a purist when it comes to that stuff i'm a remiro zombie guy
through and through so i like the i like the shambling kind of walking dead type of zombie
um and you know i'll go on record and say that you know greg and his team at kmb they continue to
create you know the best version of what i feel is that modern day zombie so yeah the shamblers i
think is my version how ironic was it that we use the term patient zero in covid and there was a
lot of zombieism going on during that time too i know yeah but irony doesn't fall far from real
right like that's very very interesting it's funny i was out in a conversation with some friends the
other day asking them about what their kind of cathartic thing was during covid and i got a
variance of different answers but my answer was um i would sit in the room where i was in at the
time living and i would watch disaster movies and it was mostly you know like old school mega man
you know some of the some of the asian um disaster films that were out there trained to busan i
watched but it's just you know cathartically knowing that something's going on out there like
you know feed the shadow like okay something's happening so let's feed you so then we can get
the work tomorrow and and be you know somewhat functional because we've we've gone through that
process of you know cathartically getting out what we needed to so we can keep functioning you know
yeah so what a weird time in our history that was i think there was a lot of shadow feeling feeding
by people that were supposed to be leading you know and and i've talked about this the autonomy
that should have been promoted the the ability to improve your resilience against a disease by
eating well by exercising by going outside by still communing with your loved ones because
it's going to get you whether you like it or not was completely you know it was the reverse it was
stay at home stay scared we'll tell you what to do but you can deliver fast food and alcohol while
you watch tiger king and it just couldn't have been a worse you know message for people so yeah
i think it was all shadow self and no growth well it's interesting as you bring that up too
because stay home stay scared we even during that whole time when we were kind of conceptualizing
what we were going to be doing you know further afield for metasphere it became how do we take
this fear-based stuff that we're being fed and and shift it on its head like what do we like yes
it's scary yes you know there's something out there that can take you out and new york's full
of dead bodies and all that stuff what can you do with this knowledge to help you step each foot in
front of the other and not only be resilient through the whole thing but figure out a way
to thrive through it like what can you do as a person to thrive through this situation so
learning from the fear learning from some of that stuff because you know you you got to do what you
got to do if there are pre-existing conditions and all that stuff but also i absolutely agree
what can you do to force multiply your experience even though you got you know the news people
telling you the you know you're you're dead in two weeks no matter what the fear-mongering was
crazy and i think that's you know part and parcel to kind of where we find ourselves now as a society
you know like we never have fully truly moved away from that you know and i think that's why
you know today we still hear of the mental health crisis and why that's such a huge thing and it is
it's worse you know i think because of it i already do yeah 100 but then you know to our
conversation and the conversations you've had with multitudes of other people what can we do
to be better what can we do to multiply effectiveness and optimize experience and all that stuff
hell with all the other stuff what can you do as an individual to help yourself which is then going
to in turn energetically imprint people around you you know and i think we've lost sight of that tribal
connectivity and kind of doing for us so we can do for others it's it's such a foreign concept of
people now it's crazy i always point out that we had a completely captive audience so there was no
better time to really address the physical health pandemic that we have i mean you know australia
england especially the u.s are getting fatter and sicker the mental health crisis the opioid
epidemic what a beautiful moment to say all right well you've got your attention we're going to
start addressing some of the issues and i talk about this no one took the soda machines out of
schools no one put real food back into school kitchens no one put money behind the p.e programs
the sports programs the arts you know what modes of expression no one bolstered local farmers to
to grow you know clean food again so we didn't have a bottleneck like we saw in like none of that
happened so there's your answer the people that you put all your faith in the people that we employ
to supposedly lead failed fucking miserably so it is up to you i hate that phrase no one's coming to
save you because people are people that wear uniforms like i used to wear are going to come
and save you but you need to be part of the solution as well yes that autonomy that i wish
people had that i put extra episodes during the the pandemic about it's up to each one of us to
learn more about how to eat better how to exercise mindfulness sleep you know community find a way to
mentor you know work on your own home and then walk outside your front door if we all do that
we can then force the needle but waiting for those fucking idiots that we have in dc and i'm talking
about both sides because it's spanned both governments absolutely you're just you're going
to be waiting forever so it's like having the zombie apocalypse and it passes and then you forget
all about what it's like to fight zombies yes yes well and i love that you bring that up too because
you know at the end of the day i've written a piece in my book and it's called you're in this alone
and and it's absolutely true because as a single autonomous human being it is up to you to make
your choices to choose to do whatever it is that you're going to do to act or not to walk through
the thresholds or not to make yourself better or not to eat good food or not to move yourself
physically or not right like it's up to you alone to make those decisions are people out there that
will support you and cheer for you and be your you know biggest cheerleader when you get the win and
all that stuff 100 but they're not going to be the ones that are making those decisions
for you to step into the breach and do some hard stuff and get that win right so i think to your
point being who we are and kind of living this human existence it is so up to us individually
individually to make those decisions and a lot of those decisions suck and they're hard and you know
it's difficult to get up at five o'clock in the morning and walk down to the gym and get your
workout in and then eat a good breakfast and make sure you're hydrating well like it can it can be
difficult but guess what this is life and life can be difficult but it can also be profoundly
awesome and joyful and the we how you get there the choices that you make the decisions that you make
i think that's where the sauce is is that some of those things that get us to those most beautiful
most divine joyful times in life we've done the hard stuff to get there done the work right we
practiced living life in a way where we operationalize ourselves and i think that's so so needed
especially to your point right now because you know yes first responders military are doing it
the law enforcement's doing it somebody will come help and try to save but you got to want to save
yourself start with right so that's got to be part of your mission so tell me about the book what's
it going to be about and what's the title if you have one man um the title working right now is a
cathartic a cataclysmic life the tau of human fusion because i feel like we as humans
we're a fusion reactor and as we act it predicates the next spark and the next fire and the next
explosion right so having something for us to catalyze and burn energy and create those fusion
reactions daily i think is important and i think that comes from making kind of cataclysmic
decisions right like deciding to leave a job because that job is not healthy for you because
it's filled with a culture that does nothing but bring you down and bring down the culture itself
cataclysmically the decision is i gotta leave right like there's something better for me out there
so making that decision but also putting things within your fusion reaction to make sure that
you leave the job but you're also doing things to make sure that you're optimizing your experience
as you do so it's a lot of that and it's it's very memoir based so i talk a lot about what we
were talking about earlier with you know kind of upbringing and nature versus nurture and some of
those experiences with the deer and being outside and all that stuff and then i wrap it each of
those memoir stories in a lesson so what i want it to be is you know not just me ranting about
you know we got to do better but giving actionable you know steps to do that and and be somebody that
can look at themselves in the mirror and go it's gonna be difficult but i can do it and and oh
brian's done some things in his past and gave some examples i can take an example of that and kind
of move myself forward and it's funny i started this book six years ago and put it back like it's
been on a hard drive and then as i was talking to eric potterat and talking to daniel and you and i
had our conversations and all that stuff and just doing what we've been doing on the medis for your
side i picked it up one day and i was like i'm gonna finish this damn thing and it's gonna be
something that's going to be for me first off but i'm also gonna intend to write it in a way where
it's my voice and it's my humor and it's my inflection and all that stuff but i also want it
to be something where people can read it and look at it and see similarities with themselves and then
see that there's actionable steps that they can take in order to kind of move themselves in a
in a different direction um it's permeated with medisphere stuff a lot of hero journey stuff's in
there so uh it's it's gonna be a juggernaut i might have to break it into two or three versions
of volumes because it's i was talking to sarah my better half the other night and she's like oh my
god this thing is long but and i and i i feel like part of that practice and part of that idea of it
takes a minute to do anything that's that's worth it in life right you know a long book and reading
through a book and doing the exercise that you're engaging you're you're grabbing a hold of something
that is maybe difficult because it's of its length um but you do it and i think you come out the other
side you know better for it so yeah that's what it's all about beautiful i'm looking forward to
seeing that come out so what about what about um movies and documentaries obviously you've you know
been a part of so many productions what is some of your favorite of those man documentaries i love
the social dilemma because i see that every day um with people that we work with like they're so
plugged into the device and they're they're addicted like you you can't walk out of a room without it
either in your back pocket people go to the bathroom with theirself it's like what is happening
like what are you doing in there um you know getting your likes on facebook or whatever i
i got off of social media years ago like i just have linkedin now and it's been such a good thing
so social dilemma was good um what have i watched recently documentary wise that i really love i i'm
a out myself i love project runway man i'm a giant project runway fan and when you say out yourself
is this an exclusive or you're just talking about just talking about the the idea of you know this
this guy who does what i do and one of my favorite things to do in life is sit on the couch at night
with my significant other and watch project one way it's just it's the it's the characters of it
it's the creativeness of it so i love it um i'm a big big mike flanagan fan um mike flanagan is a
uh horror director uh he's done a lot of stephen king adaptations um but he's got a show all of
his shows are on netflix but but one called midnight mass just affected me in such a way
uh there's a certain scene that happens within that show and series that i have a
a transcript of it in the book because it was so profound it was a question asked to somebody
within the show about what do you think happens to you after you die and the lady that gives the
answer like it's exactly what i would think in my heart spirit kind of brain process but to see it
emoted on a tv show it blew my mind and i it again uh emotional i was sitting on the couch
and sarah and i started crying because they're like holy shit this is exactly what we believe
so and the flanagan stuff pretty heady anyway like he always teaches a moral kind of spirit
lesson with his stuff i believe so that's been really cool um i still love walking dead you know
i know i kind of toot the horn but i still am a fan of kind of what they're doing with that and
kind of seeing what they're doing with all the little branch off extensions with everybody kind
of going and doing their other stuff um so many different documentaries i wish i could
think of you know the ones that have affected me in a pretty powerful way over the past few years
there was one that was about a um it's about a volcano in australia where they were taking people
to um visit the volcano and it was active remember that i think it was it was in new zealand i think
it was yes yes i saw on the plane for some reason yeah horrifying that was that was very very
very very interesting um and then i you know what's the one about the octopus the teeth my
oh yeah my yeah my octopus teacher wow amazing amazing yeah i'm a i'm a big documentary person
um and i've kind of pivoted into um not so much horror these days but i i love watching like really
old school sci-fi now um watch a lot of old stanley kubrick stuff like 2001 love um a lot of old
you know just kind of twilight zone stuff i keep watching over and over again and i hate and i'm
going to use the word i don't use hate often but i hate that hollywood has gone to having to redo
and reboot everything it's like oh my god like what where's the original ideas you know yeah i
mean when we made our two films out in michigan absolute original ideas you know yes inspired
from some things i mean covid was a giant inspiration when we made the first movie
because of just what it was but you know try to be original with the thought process and not redo
stuff so yeah when you see classic movies like poltergeist and waxworks and all this our um
um night at the wax museum or whatever being redone you're like what is happening like you
know have a have an original thought yeah absolutely yeah my my book i'm writing now is a fiction and
that's my goal like i want it to be a you know captivating book but i want it to be on the
screen because that's how you get to the most people and when you see what absolute shit gets
made these days you go you know what why the fuck not me as well i got a chance yeah i mean you have
that imposter syndrome and like ah but then when you really deconstruct it yeah like you could make
a life story of almost everyone's being on the show and it would be a captivating film you know
one and yeah i just watched when it was really sad because it was a great cast but i got i watched one
um god i forget uh i got to say michael keaton played like an old navy seal in it it was on netflix
and this kid this guy had lost his wife and child i forget now because it was that bad and then became
like a you know trained for vengeance and then the cia would like watching him like hey you're a
really good fighter you can come join the cia oh i don't know i'm watching this like which fucking
you know post vehicle accident eight-year-old wrote this like really you went into a boardroom
with this and they were like here's 20 million dollars go make it and i know that the cast was
phenomenal so they must have been pitched a slightly different version of how it ended up
but this is just it i'm not criticizing there's so many great films out there but there are so many
like you said rehashes or just the same cheesy story oh i'm a i'm a rugged detective and i drink
when i wake up and you know like for fuck's sake so this is what's enthusing anyone out there with
anyone out there with a with a story burning in your heart i'm i've come hell or high water i'm
gonna get this made into a show but well why not you i'll help you anyway i can so what have you
seen and i'll give you one of mine but what have you seen recently that's been kind of that
thing for you where light bulb kicked on i'd say one of the best pieces of television i've seen
a long time with michael keaton was um dope sick on hulu absolutely incredible and it wasn't just
the fact that it was a powerful true story every single character in that film it wasn't a
caricature but it was raw enough to make it believable and you everything from you know
there was one um girl who becomes an addict and her parents are devout christian and there's that
spiritual struggle it was i mean absolutely phenomenal so to me that's what if you're going to ask
a person to sit down for in this case it was like a you know what was that six eight hours of
television yeah i i mean i watched it again for the second time and i've tried to get beth macy on who
wrote the book and it's just about timing because writers are always writing um you know i mean it
was it was absolutely incredible so to me it shows like that it's still you know that was a true story
but the way the way it was presented it wasn't like a documentary they used drama they used
you know quote unquote fiction in some areas to draw you in and viscerally see how the corruption
and greed and arguably mental health in corporations creating these fucking sociopaths at the top of
these these businesses literally caused a national opioid epidemic so that to me is is a gold standard
of what television should be yeah i i saw there's a lot of good television out there and it's sad
because i think that the they're really good stories it's not sad it's different because a
lot of the good stories are going to the small screen you know like there's there's a lot of
really good storytelling but i did go see uh up and heimer uh when it was out and you know that's
where this thing came from because i got home um kind of just really because i knew the story but
didn't know the real story um of kind of what all went on and then what up and heimer's reaction
was to the whole thing because he really felt badly about the fact that they had created this
thing was then going to kill you know millions of people and he felt like they had done the
wrong thing and he started to kind of voice that you know very openly um but i got home that night
and really started to think about it and then went to bed and james i woke up the next morning it was
like it was like out of a movie and i had this dream where i saw all of these factors of this
thing kind of floating around and i was hearing like static of a radio and i saw a hand come in
and kind of tune the radio to like it was like this weird kind of 40s instrumental station i
was like okay and then all these factors started dropping into place and it was kind of the whole
human fusion equation about how we can take these different factors of who we are as people and all
the facets and aspects of who we are physically mentally emotionally spiritually all that stuff
and if we can pull one factor out of the equation and start to work on it put it back in then we can
catalyze our own fusion right like we can do better in any aspect of life and i woke up wrote
it down like the first draft of it and then this thing became what it became and it's a big factor
now in kind of what we're doing with the face-to-face stuff too so it's it's interesting that that
creativeness and the arts and film and television seeing them as for what they are is one thing
but allowing them to kind of permeate who we are like just getting to our soul and kind of let it
do what it does like for you the dope sick thing obviously it has struck a chord and you're like
got to do something different about this for me and the uppenheimer thing it was like oh it sparked
this creative thing for something that was programmable to go out and help people right so
it i think the openness of what that venue kind of offers us is huge because it it's definitely
the people that make it it's their own interpretation of what they're trying to kind
of represent and then it's up to us of course individually to kind of interpret that for us
but it's so special like it's such a really cool energy cycle that starts to happen you know so
that's awesome absolutely well the next of the closing questions is there a person that you
recommend to come on this podcast as a guest to speak to the first responders military and
associate professionals of the world i think a lot of the people that i would mention you probably
have had on daniel for sure eric potterat for sure have you had andy walsh on i don't think so no
yeah i don't think so i know i know i haven't i just don't think i've even heard of him before
andy walsh is a is a is a really good friend um he uh was creator of a group out in los angeles
called the liminal collective and um i'll send you some of their information but andy used to be the
lead performance psychologist at team red bull um and he's the guy that helped alex bomb garden
jump out of the weather balloon up in space and come back into the atmosphere like you know andy
helped him do all that stuff um just a d salt of the earth sweetest most compassionate dude
that and he's he's worked with special ops he's worked with all of the service professionals so i
think you would be an amazing person to have on um man who else i'm trying to think it's funny you
get on these you know these these calls and do these things and like everybody that you
have been talking about for years they just go out of your brain well i always tell people
yeah after after the fact if someone springs to mind then by all means send them you know
send this yeah yeah i'll absolutely text you for sure because there's a there's a few out there
that i can think of absolutely beautiful all right well then the last question before everyone
knows where to find you and all the things that we've discussed about today we'll discuss today
we'll discuss today what you do to decompress man i i do that every day i take big breaths all day
long um decompression for me is working out like i love my crossfit um it gives me an outlet
um and i try to do it wisely these days like i don't you know feel like i've got to
you know pick up all the heavy things all day i know my limits but i also know my boundaries
and how i want to push through them and that for me is a very decompressing type of thing um
meditation i meditate daily and i tap into my spiritual practice daily um not religious i was
born baptist and raised baptist but i'm more uh i hate to say it this way but it is more spiritual
and i tap into fully my native american heritage and my Cherokee background um and bring in a lot
of that um decompression for me too is being outside and being in the wild i mean it has been
ever since i was you know knee-high to a grasshopper as my mom would say um i just i take my shoes off
and um walk out into the grass and like bruce willis did in um you know die hard i make fists
with my toes and reground myself into mother earth you know and i look up and know that
you know above us is something very powerful and profound and i always tend to tap into that as
much as i can daily um and i write like i think my my my writing is is a really cool for me
decompression because it it pulls things and i i have a uh tbi myself it's a it's a chemically
induced uh traumatic brain injury through some of the chemicals that we used in the shops
and when i was younger you know wrote about this in the book but there were multiple concussions
uh multiple bike crashes and football and falling off of top bunks and getting hit in the head with
a baseball bat and all this other stuff and those they are they're always there right like they
they never really fully heal and then when i got into the makeup effects world um the hard metals
that we were using in the shops tended to open those fissures back up so i was actually presenting
some of the same symptoms as we were seeing with some of the operators that we were dealing with
that we're dealing with tbi and cte and concussion and all that stuff so i had to get busy practicing
you know how to better myself and kind of mitigate that stuff which i did so meditation and breathwork
has become a very vital thing for me daily um as has physical activity and then when i'm you know
love to cook and finding out good things to put in my body like that's always a nice decompression
piece too because you know we can always go out there and source a bunch of crap to eat but finding
the good stuff that's always fun so absolutely brilliant well for people listening then where
are the best places to find metasphere industries and then what about yourself you mentioned linked
in yeah metasphereindustries.com is the website there's a informational deck on there that you
can read and kind of see a little bit about what we're doing it's definitely the wave tops of what
we do and a lot of what we bring to the table purposeful it's it's the wave tops because when
we have conversations like this and start to really talk about what we do the light bulbs start going
on so what you'll read on the website is very high end on the kind of this is what we do and in order
to hear more reach out um linkedin's a really good place as well and then i have my number on all of
that like my mobile number is on the website it's on linkedin and i invite people text me call me
you know reach out and if there's anything that you've heard within this conversation that you
want to know more about i'd be absolutely happy to have a conversation and just see where it goes
so 100% brilliant well brian i want to say thank you so much it's been i knew it was going to be an
amazing conversation and it was i mean we've gone everywhere from childhood trauma to special effects
in hollywood and everything in between but i want to thank you again for your courageous vulnerability
it is so important and secondly just for being so generous with your time and coming on the behind
the shield podcast today thank you it's been a pleasure thank you very much we'll do it again
sometime