The Army just raised their max enlistment age to 42. I don't know exactly why, but I'd like to. I'm hearing from a lot of people who were considering joining and are now hesitating — and when the rest of the world's allies are saying they don't want to get involved, that tells you something about the moment we're in. This isn't post-9/11. The lines around the block at recruiting stations aren't there right now.

We also dig into the big one this week — what's the purpose of life when it's full of struggle and sacrifice? A listener lost his dad at 61. Never made it to retirement. I don't pretend to have the answer locked down, but I'll tell you this: my dad is retired and bored out of his mind. And my sister sat with hundreds of dying people in hospice — none of them wished for more stuff. Every single one wished for more time.

Then we close on negative self-talk and why "if a pro can make the shot, why can't I" is one of the worst things you can say to yourself. Not everybody is created equal. That's not pessimism — it's the truth. And the sooner you stop measuring yourself against the best in the world and start measuring against your former self, the sooner you'll actually enjoy what you're doing.

Enjoy

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Travis Pastrana is a 17-time X Games gold medalist, multi-discipline motorsport champion, and the founder of Nitro Circus. He grew up in a Maryland construction family steeped in military service and contact sports, won his first outdoor national championship at 16, bought a house the same year, and has spent the decades since competing in everything from supercross to rally to NASCAR to base jumping. He has had two knee replacements, a hip replacement, over 30 concussions, and once turned 40 fractures across seven bones in his foot into dust on an X Games landing.

We got into what it actually means to make decisions at speed — treating cliffs and trees like traffic cones when everyone else backs off. His Daytona 500 run. The NASCAR race where every teammate crashed out and his daughter read him the riot act for finishing 15th. What happened when a group from a certain Army unit showed up at his place and every single one of them landed a backflip on a dirt bike within two tries. The concussion research that found his brain operates differently than most. His seven-year-old daughter telling him she doesn't want to be the best at anything because the people chasing greatness don't seem happy. And the massive open-air wind tunnel he bought from a Mission Impossible set that he can't afford to power.

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Negligent Discharge Friday. Michael and I run through the week's headlines and somehow end up exactly where you'd expect.

We kick it off with a full arsenal update — throwing stars, a blow dart gun, and the nunchucks still need names. Then we get into the Alan Ritchson body cam footage. His neighbor jumped in front of his bike, pushed him, and found out what happens when you put hands on a guy built like a refrigerator in front of his kids. No charges filed. Self-defense confirmed.

A quadruple amputee professional cornhole player was charged with murder. He was driving a Tesla and shot a man in the front seat. We broke down the mechanics. We had questions. Serious ones. Also some less serious ones.

We got into Trump's public comments on Joe Kent and what Tulsi Gabbard said about intelligence authority during her congressional testimony. ICE is standing around airports while TSA agents haven't been paid in six weeks. Delta pulled its congressional perks. Iran apparently sent Trump a gift — oil and gas related. No one knows what it is. Michael's daily screen time is five and a half hours. He lied about it. Twice. On camera.

Enjoy

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