Ibogaine, Iran, and the Epstein Files: A Recon Marine Gets Unfiltered | Ep. 293 | Pt. 3

Mike Drop

Mike Ritland

News, Personal Journals, Society & Culture, Politics

4.9 • 6.5K Ratings

🗓️ 29 May 2026

⏱️ 67 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Retired Marine Force Recon Gunnery Sergeant Ryan Kuperus closes out his conversation with Mike Ritland with the kind of honesty that makes people uncomfortable — and that's exactly the point. From a brutally candid take on the "silent professional" myth and what weak leadership actually looks like, to a raw account of his ibogaine experience in Mexico and what it revealed about his relationship with his kids, Kuperus doesn't hold back. He also weighs in on Iran, Israel, the Epstein files, and why he thinks the Monroe Doctrine is the only foreign policy that makes sense. And after nearly losing everything to a court-martial he should never have faced, he found his next mission: The Reason Outdoors, a nonprofit using hunting and the backcountry to pull veterans back from the edge — one hunt at a time. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	You know, I joked earlier about that I'm not good at being a silent professional,
0:03.6	which is absolutely the truth. But when you hear people say, oh, you know, silent professional,
0:09.5	silent press, especially in the soft community, right, that's what weak leaders tell their men
0:14.3	so they don't have to hear outside the box thinking. That's weak leadership. Is there a time
0:19.8	to be a silent professional? Absolutely there is. But is that all the time? No, it's not. That is what weak leaders tell their men and convince them. So that way they don't have to hear it. Right? They don't have to hear it because they get, they don't want to hear it anymore, right? But the outside of the box thinkers, right, by shutting them up and doing that, that's
0:39.8	that you're stymieing growth, your stymie innovation, right?
0:44.3	You're not allowing all these things that make us as the best warriors on the planet
0:51.3	who we are.
0:52.3	Yeah.
0:53.3	Because that's what wins wars.
0:54.2	Like that's at the end of the day,
0:55.2	that's a business that we were in, right?
0:56.9	Is winning of wars, right?
1:00.1	The current Sergeant Major Marine Corps,
1:01.6	he's not a warrior.
1:03.8	We need warriors in charge because,
1:07.6	God forbid we get into a, you know,
1:09.4	near peer, near peer, near peer, everyone's freaking out about that and all that stuff. Like God forbid we get into a, you know, near peer, near peer, near peer, everyone's freaking
1:11.5	on about that and all that stuff.
1:13.5	Like, God forbid we get into a near peer fight, and we don't have warriors as leaders because
1:18.7	we don't have them.
1:20.6	That's been this terrible shift over the last decade.
	...

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