305 | Former Navy SEAL Rick Andstrom

Citizen Podcast

Tetherball Academy Media

Society & Culture, Education

5 • 1.8K Ratings

🗓️ 6 August 2025

⏱️ 86 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Former Navy SEAL Rick Andstrom joins the show to talk about rampant CTE injuries in the military, the importance of getting your testosterone checked as a man, his experience with psychedelics, and his cutting edge tactical training facility that simulates real world combat.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	because of traumatic brain injury and the exposure to repetitive blast injury.
0:03.4	It's, again, I've seen friends who were older than me that when I didn't make it the first time.
0:08.2	So it was about 10 years, but like a few friends I knew that I saw significant changes in their personalities in a negative way after about 10 years.
0:16.8	And it's interesting because it's the admiral of NSW, right, of the SEAL teams.
0:23.6	They have undiagnosed traumatic brain injuries and they're leading, right?
0:27.4	And I'm not saying they're all fucked up, but it does affect executive functioning and
0:31.5	decision making and all the other stuff that goes along with repetitive blast, you know,
0:35.9	endocrine stuff.
0:36.8	So we have everybody in that entire community that's dealing with some level of the effects and consequences of traumatic brain injury.
0:44.7	Let's go.
0:53.3	Welcome to Citizen.
0:58.3	We've got a special guest today, former NavyAL, Rick Anstrom. How's it going?
1:05.8	Awesome, man. Appreciate you having me. Yeah. Yeah. We just, we did a, uh, a drink of bros, what, two weeks ago. Yeah.
1:11.9	I don't remember. I can't keep track of what day it is. Uh, I know that if I'm in this building, it's a weekday, and that's pretty much the end of it. So let's get into your history a little bit before we get into
1:19.6	some of the things we're going to talk about today. Where did you grow up? I grew up in North
1:24.4	of Houston, a place called Kingwood. Kingwood. Yeah. I was born in Minnesota, but came down here when I was five. Why? Mom got divorced and remarried and brought my brother and sister and I down to Houston, get away from my dad, I think. What was Houston like back in the day? I mean, Houston was a shithole back in the day. I've tried not to go back as much as possible, but I've understood.
1:47.7	I mean, you know, it had its cool places when I was growing up.
1:50.0	I lived in a suburb north of it called Kingwood.
1:53.8	But Houston itself, it had cool little pockets, but it was still, it's just an unzoned area.
2:00.4	So you're driving through strip clubs and ghettos and nice areas, all kind of intermixed.
2:07.0	Yeah, I don't know much about Houston except for, what do you call it?
2:15.7	The woodlands, I guess is pretty nice.
	...

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