Ep. 74 • Mark Mason Part 1 • The Wild West Years of the SEAL Teams: 30 years in the breach.
Liberty RiskShow Notes
Fake Shore Patrol. Prank & hazing warfare. Glitter bombs. An Afghan donkey with absolutely no interest in the mission. And 30 years of Team Guy stories that only get better with time. We sat down with retired Navy SEAL Chief Warrant Officer Mark Mason for what was supposed to be one episode. Six hours of laughs and crazy stories later, we had to cut it in half. In Part 1, Mark takes us from growing up in a Pittsburgh steel town he describes as "The Sandlot directed by Tarantino" through BUD/S and into the wild world of the old-school SEAL Teams in the '90s. Elaborate prank wars. Impersonating Shore Patrol to spring a buddy from the cops. A stolen-lunch investigation where the criminals somehow became the investigators. The Brady Bunch used as an alibi. Tuna juice deployed as a weapon. Glitter-based psychological warfare. And one particularly impressive revenge package that spent six weeks traveling home from Guam. Eventually we make our way to Iraq and Afghanistan, where the stories somehow don't get any more normal. There are overloaded desert patrol vehicles, exploding equipment drops, an unfortunate misunderstanding involving the code word "avalanche," questionable battlefield improvisation, bureaucracy getting worked around in increasingly creative ways, and an Afghan pack donkey that repeatedly decided it had better things to do. Somewhere between all the shit talking and side quests, Mark also drops decades' worth of genuinely great lessons about leadership, ownership, dealing with problem people, letting your guys think for themselves, and why sometimes the best leaders aren't the ones who look the best on paper. It's three hours of old-school SEAL stories, war stories, pranks, terrible ideas, great leadership lessons, and friends remembering an era when apparently nobody was supervising anybody. And somehow... this is only Part 1. Part 2 will be released on Monday.
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Liberty Risk Hosts for this episode: ✖️ Ryan Williams - https://www.instagram.com/invictus5326 ✖️ Kevin Kent - https://www.instagram.com/therealkevinkent ✖️ Kris Groves - https://www.instagram.com/krisgroves_
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🏴☠️ Want to hang LIVE with Kevin, Nick & Ryan? Join the Liberty Risk Patreon crew: https://www.patreon.com/cw/LibertyRisk
🏴☠️ Want to hang LIVE with Kevin, Nick & Ryan? Join the Liberty Risk Patreon crew: https://www.patreon.com/cw/LibertyRisk