Now, today is Memorial Day, and we are excited and honored to welcome to the show. Jocko Willink,

you know him, of course, decorated, retired Navy SEAL officer, author, and co-founder of

Echelon at front, where he's a leadership instructor, speaker, and executive coach who spent

20 years in the U.S. Navy SEAL teams. Jock, thanks much for joining the show. I really appreciate

it. Thanks for having me, Ben. Yeah, so let's talk about Memorial Day and what it means to people who've actually served a very small percentage of Americans at this point have served in the military. That's obviously changed over the course of American history.

Post-World War II, a huge percentage of Americans had served or new people who had served. It's a smaller percentage than ever. So how does it feel, you know, as a member of the military as a veteran, veteran when you look at americans and how we celebrate

memorial day how should we be celebrating memorial day well first of all i i think for those of us

that served and and saw the sacrifice with our own eyes i think for us every day as memorial day

i know that i think about the guys that i lost every single day you know mark lee mike monster ryan joe i think about those guys that I lost every single day. You know, Mark Lee, Mike Monster, Ryan Job,

I think about those guys every single day.

And the way that I try and remember them and memorialize them

is to live a life that honors their sacrifice.

And I think it's nice that America does set aside one day where everyone, people that didn't

serve, can think about these brave souls.

But I would definitely recommend to think about them more often than one day and think

about what their sacrifices meant for all of us.

You know, Jaco, it's kind of sad how because so few, as I say, people have now served in the military or know people who have served in the military.

It's basically just become a day off for a huge number of people. I have friends who live over in Israel where mandatory service in the military is just the way of life over there. And on Yom Hazikoram, which is their Memorial Day, there is something that I think is quite beautiful. and I'd like to see actually imitated here in the United States, which is at a certain point during the day, it's like 2 p.m.

They literally shut down all the traffic in the country in the country. They sound some air raid sirens. Everybody stops their cars. Everybody gets out of their car. And for about five minutes, everything in the country just stops. So you can pay homage to the people who have fallen in the line of duty. Obviously, when it comes to the United States, we should, I think that we need some sort of ceremony that's now attached to this,

specifically because so few Americans know what it's like to serve or even know somebody who served. Yeah, I think that sounds like a very moving event to have, and it would definitely

be fitting to have something like that in our country. So let's talk about the state of the military right now.

So one of the big problems that the military is happening is just recruitment.

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