British Army Sniper on Who Really Killed Charlie Kirk | Ep. 280 | Pt. 1

Mike Drop

Mike Ritland

News, Personal Journals, Society & Culture, Politics

4.9 • 6.5K Ratings

🗓️ 24 February 2026

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Ted Shirley, a former British Army sniper with the Royal Welsh Fusiliers and author of Afghanistan Sniper: Trauma on the Frontline and Beyond, recounts his two brutal tours in Afghanistan’s Helmand Province, where he became one of the UK’s deadliest snipers. He opens up about the psychological toll of combat, including PTSD, addiction to the kill, substance abuse, and suicide attempts, and shares his perspective on the assassination of Charlie Kirk through the lens of his experience with political violence. Shirley ultimately reflects on his journey toward healing through therapy, plant medicine, and deep self-reflection, offering a raw but hopeful message about recovery after war. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	The Premier League is exciting.
0:04.0	It's exhilarating.
0:07.0	And sometimes it's...
0:11.0	So when you need something to help you ride the highest and loads of all that action,
0:17.0	grab a Coke to keep you in the game.
0:20.0	Time to refresh. Time for a Coke. Coca-Cola,
0:25.0	official partner of the Premier League. I decided that I was going to shoot this guy in the throat.
0:34.9	I squeezed the trigger and this round has gone through the side of his neck and he's
0:38.5	dropped to the floor. The images of that just would not leave me alone. On our sniper course,
0:45.3	three of the lads deployed before we did to Afghanistan and one of them got killed pretty soon
0:51.7	and it hit us really hard. It felt like one of our own had been killed
0:56.5	and I started to feel this anger. Every fibre in my body was filled with rage and I started holding
1:04.8	these particular men who were firing at me responsible. That day ended up for me being on the rooftop for 13 hours
1:13.6	and taking out five Taliban in this little courtyard area
1:18.6	where to the point where they're kind of just falling onto each other
1:21.6	this addiction to squeezing that trigger grew.
1:25.6	I'd never heard of PTSD before. From what you saw on the video of the Charlie Kirk assassination
1:31.3	from a sniper's perspective...
1:33.3	I don't think it was a train shot.
1:35.3	Did that match up with at all what you saw when you dropped that guy?
1:39.3	No.
1:40.3	What were the differences?
	...

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