Trans Army Black Hawk Pilot, Jo Ellis on DarkHorse
Bret Weinstein speaks with Jo Ellis, the transgender pilot with the Virginia National Guard who was wrongfully targeted by social media users as the captain of the Black Hawk helicopter that tragically crashed. Find Jo Ellis on X at https://x.com/JoEllisReally ***** Sponsors: Jolie: For your best skin & hair guaranteed head to http://jolieskinco.com/DARKHORSE to try it out for yourself with FREE shipping. MUD\WTR: Start your new morning ritual & get up to 43% off your @MUDWTR wit...
It's not just the facts that are inconsistent, but the person that they were hunting isn't you, right?
They were not the person who was gaming the system using transness to get ahead.
And I haven't found that person in the military either, because I am very sensitive to someone that might, right?
Like, as a trans person in the military, I don't want someone to make me look bad.
Hey folks, welcome to the Dark Horse Podcast, Inside Rail.
I don't think you're going to see this episode coming.
I have the pleasure and honor of sitting this afternoon with Joe Ellis.
Who might Joe Ellis be?
Well, Joe Ellis is Chief Warrant Officer 2 in the Virginia Army National Guard.
She is a helicopter...
A former helicopter mechanic.
We will get into all of those details.
But she became rather well-known all of a sudden, through no fault of her own, when she was falsely portrayed as one of the three pilots on the Black Hawk that hit the civilian airliner in Washington, D.C. Joe Ellis, welcome to Dark Horse.
Thank you so much for having me.
I'm excited to be here.
Yeah, I'm excited to have you here too.
Let me just set the stage here a little bit.
Please.
My audience knows pretty well where I've been, what sorts of circles I travel in, politically what my evolution has been.
They know that I have been both a staunch critic of what I would call trans activists who are trying to gain access in most cases to women's spaces and But that I have also been concerned that there are people out there who are genuinely...
Suffering from gender dysphoria do not have a straightforward way to address it that does not involve something that will put them politically at odds with others, and that we need to protect any person who is struggling with the discovery that they are not feeling at home in the body that they were born into and are not using this as a political bludgeon.
So when I heard the story of the helicopter that was flying too high, hit the airliner, and then almost immediately the story became one of diversity, equity, and inclusion, lo and behold, we were told there was a trans pilot on board and it became obvious to everybody on the right of center part of the spectrum
what the story had been that somehow an unqualified person had piloted this helicopter into the path of an oncoming flight and then I saw your video in which you explained that in fact you hadn't been involved with this and it became clear to me that you were not the villain that
That had been portrayed or the person who had no business on a helicopter.
And so anyway, I reached out to you.
And in talking with you, you and I have talked once.
I don't know how long the conversation was, but we've talked once.
And it occurred to me that you were the perfect person to make the case that the...
And I'm speaking only for myself.
I'm not speaking for you.
But the trans madness that I think we have watched is only part of the story with respect to trans people.
And anyway, I'm delighted to have you here.
And I understand it can't be a very comfortable position to be in.
And the story that brought you into the public eye is an uncomfortable one with which you had nothing natural to do.
It wasn't you weren't involved.
So anyway, let's talk about all of the various issues surrounding this.
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But do you want to paint a picture of...
Who you are and how you ended up doing what you do in the Virginia Army National Guard.
You know, tell us a little bit about you before the incident that brought you to public attention.
Sure.
Yeah, I've always felt like service was in my blood.
Many of my family members served.
My great uncle fought in the Battle of Bulge in World War II. My grandfather was in the Navy during World War II, actually lied about his age so that he could sign up early and was hunting submarines in the Atlantic.
My brother served in Iraq in 03-04 as an M1 tank operator.
And, you know, seeing all of that, when my time, my age, you know, I was finally old enough, I joined the National Guard.
That seemed to make the most sense.
I still wanted to have a civilian career and pursue.
IT, among other things.
And that allowed me to kind of do both.
And so I joined as a 15 Golf, which is a airframe mechanic.
So I can work on any aircraft, whether it's a helicopter or whatever.
And I've worked on, you know, fixed wing and drones.
But the state of Virginia only has Blackhawks.
So being a Virginia Guards member, I can only really work on those unless in certain deployment situations where I might cross train.
And then I went to Iraq in 2011. And while there, they asked for volunteers for door gunnery.
So I became a door gunner and flew many missions, many combat hours over Iraq, doing ring routes all across the state and earned the Air Medal, which is kind of the equivalent to a Bronze Star, but for the air.
Came back home and just started pursuing my life.
My civilian career and ended up getting a second job in the Army as a 15 Tango, which is a Blackhawk helicopter repairer, so very specific to that airframe.
You pull parts off, you put them on, you troubleshoot systems, kind of learn everything about the Blackhawk specifically.
And this was all kind of with the dream in my mind, in the back of my mind, to become a pilot one day.
And it only took me about 12 years to get there, and I finally got accepted and went to flight school in 2021 and went through training there, including SEER school, which is the Army's survival school, which includes very interesting training.
They call it stress inoculation training.
There was points in that training where I had kind of the epiphanies, I guess I would say, of being...
Trans.
I don't want to say I wasn't male because I don't live in a world where I don't acknowledge I was born a male.
It's pretty obvious from everything I can see that that's what it was, but something in my brain, it doesn't jive with that.
And so I like to use very simple examples of you're hiking in the woods and then, you know, you're wearing boots and they're not quite broken in.
Maybe they don't quite fit.
Maybe they're not quite the right size.
You deal with it for days, right?
And then someone hands you a pair that's broken in and fits to your foot, and it's like, wow, this is so much better.
Why was I dealing with those stupid old boots for so long?
And so that's kind of how I like to break it down in the most simplest forms.
Symptoms as far back as five years old, you know, stealing my sister's clothes and dressing up, things along that nature.
And so the whole time I'm in the Army, I'm also pursuing a career in IT. I've got 17 years as an IT professional working for Fortune 500 companies, Fortune 100 companies, and building that.
And I kind of was at a place where I achieved all the goals I had set out as far as civilian career, military career.
And it kind of came to this point where I could face this thing that had been this nagging issue for so long that I kind of thought would go away if I just gave it time and just...
Was more manly and did all the things, more successful.
Earned my degree while I was deployed to Kuwait, for example.
Everything I could think of to check all the boxes that it still didn't go away.
And so I went ahead and sought therapy and figured out what all of it was.
I was never really exposed to the trans topic until it really occurred to me what was going on with myself.
And so that's when I sought information and kind of just started.
Trying to understand what it all meant and what options there were and the degrees of treatment that you can get.
All right.
Well, I'm going to be a bit nosy because I think it should be done.
I think you can tell that I'm sympathetic to your predicament.
I can imagine what that would be like.
And I can, I think, detect your genuineness in the way you describe these things.
But please feel free to tell me if I cross a line.
And it's fine.
We don't have to talk just because I'm curious.
But sounds to me like you would have accepted, if it had just gone away, you would have been relieved?
Yes.
I am of the mindset that I don't think any trans person wants to be trans.
That truly experience gender dysphoria.
I think they would rather be what they call cis, which is for some reason confused with being a slur.
It just means not trans.
However you want to call it, biological, natural birth.
There's all kinds of terms.
None of them offend me.
I just want to make sure we're speaking in the same language.
Yep.
Yeah.
I think it's more complicated than that because I do think that there are some people taking advantage of the category trans in order to cross boundaries they wouldn't be allowed to otherwise.
But I agree with you.
Anybody who is actually trans and acknowledges this is signing up for, frankly, a very difficult path.
It's not it's not an enviable thing to go through life and have people questioning your, you know, your mental health based on the fact that you got handed a set of cards that puts you at a real disadvantage.
Yeah, I would say in spite of the dysphoria, and a lot of times I didn't know what it was, and so it would manifest itself in different ways.
I used to be very much overweight as a kid growing up, and so I thought, well, if I just get fit, right?
This will make it go away.
And that did help.
Like, there were a lot of things that helped and allowed me to continue on, but it never went away.
And so, you know, like I said, there's levels of treatment.
Sometimes getting your life in order might help and it might get you to a point where you don't need to transition.
I don't believe every person who suffers genu dysphoria should transition.
There's a lot of absolutism out there that if you have it, you must transition.
And I believe that's entirely false.
I believe there are degrees to everything, and some people might just need to acknowledge it, seek treatment, and figure out ways to cope with it because that works best for them.
Not many people that I know would want to throw away or risk throwing away a beautiful marriage, a relationship with a spouse and a stepdaughter, a career in the military, knowing that...
The next administration could ban it, right?
Those are all risks that I took because I believed that was better than continuing the risk of just coping with it the way I had been.
And I believe I am healthier and more mentally stable now than I was ever before.
And I can be more effective of a pilot.
And as just a person in this world, I can actually give more love now than I ever could before because I'm not dealing with the weight and the fog of this bullshit that's been in my mind.
Sorry, are we allowed to cuss in here?
Oh, absolutely.
Okay.
You're fully encouraged as often as necessary.
Well, fuck yeah.
Fuck yeah.
All right.
So this raises another interesting and I think important point.
You have transitioned and I am going to ask you if you're willing to tell me more about what that means.
I'm open.
But you also quite clearly have no regrets about it.
No regrets.
That's great.
All right.
This is important because I think for many people who have become alarmed at trans activists and, you know, I will say that the, you know, the extreme case for me is somebody, a guy, a sex predator who declares himself female in order to go to a women's prison.
I can't believe that civilization can't see through that con, and yet we've humored it somehow.
But for people who have been paying attention to that side of the story, we have also, especially for people who are inherently compassionate, there's the tragic element.
of people who were induced to transition early.
They were told that whatever dysphoria they had meant that they were definitely the opposite sex, that it necessarily required intervention with pharmaceuticals and surgery.
And so we've heard a lot about these detransitioners who regret their decision.
And then not only do they have to deal with the aftermath of having been physically altered in ways that will never be fully repaired, but they have to deal with having been suckered into a decision they shouldn't have been even allowed to make.
So knowing that somebody who has gone some distance, at least down this road, It sounds like has taken physical steps that one can arrive at a place where even having wanted the dysphoria to go away, having accepted it and transitioned in some physical way, you feel good about it. having accepted it and transitioned in some physical way, you You're glad you glad you did it.
I'm glad I did it because the dysphoria has been gone.
And I think that's important to stress.
The transition train, as I call it, has many small steps, whether it's acknowledgement, therapy.
In my case, being trans femme, doing your nails could be an expression of trying to reduce that dysphoria.
And many times in the very beginning, that's all it would take sometimes, just to ease that burden enough to put on my shoes the next day and go out into the world and focus on what I needed to focus on.
Once you crack open a door and some light shines through and you're in a very dark room, you tend to gravitate towards that light.
And there was never a point on that train where something didn't feel right.
And so I continued on.
There were things that I knew weren't right for me, so I didn't take them.
Certain procedures, the order of steps, how fast I moved.
There's a lot of decisioning to make.
Pretty methodical and technical, the way I work.
And so I approached this with a mindset of, I can definitely solve this without ever having to tell anybody that I'm trans.
I can just figure out a way to, I can mentally overcome it.
I can do all the, you know, strong-willed mindset stuff, you know.
It didn't work.
And so I was like, okay, so what is the smallest step I can take?
Well, I can maybe dress up at home in the privacy of my own room.
Okay, that actually feels really nice and it feels good.
It doesn't feel like cosplay.
I know that term is used a lot and I know what cosplay is.
I think we've all dressed up as something for Halloween or something, right?
It doesn't feel like you're that character.
I felt more like I was cosplaying whatever society considers masculinity or being a man.
I think there are women that have masculine, you know, mindset and tendencies and that's...
Great.
I think everything is a balance and a spectrum of behaviors.
But I felt like I was trying to be a guy in the eyes of other people and trying not to be discovered that I was like a charade.
Like I was trying to charade as a man.
So I would say things that other men say.
I would repeat things or behave ways that weren't authentic to me because I thought that would be a defense of...
Well, they won't know what it is.
And so sometimes things would come out, I'd be accused of being gay or whatever, or just being a really feminine guy or a very emotional guy, you name it.
It was the dysphoria, you know, seeping out of me and coming out when it just could not be contained.
And so no regrets.
I have not...
I've done what they call bottom surgery.
I've not received gender reassignment surgery.
I've done hormone therapy.
I've done facial feminization surgery, which I consider this to be elective.
It was not medically necessary.
It's something I just wanted.
And there are regrets to surgery that I've heard of.
Just like there's regrets to your everyday women getting breast augmentations, it happens.
Hip and knee replacements, there's regrets.
Someone regretting the treatment means it shouldn't be allowed, but I do believe there should be controls and processes in place so that way people are not being convinced it's going to fix them if they don't have other things in life in order, like health and wellness.
Do they have a good routine?
Like all the basics of a good human that you need to kind of move through this world.
Do you do hard things every day and overcome challenges?
Those kind of things I feel like need to be happening first before you can really address, at least in my mind, I could really address gender dysphoria.
And so that's kind of where I'm at.
People are conned into opioids and painkillers and they get hooked on those too.
So I just want to stress that...
It's more of a medical issue, maybe, and not so much of a trans issue.
If people are being talked into surgeries and getting them and it wasn't right for them, then that should be a concern, but not a concern over trans existence.
Fascinating.
I will also say, I can't judge anybody who is dealt a strange set of cards and has to figure out how to play them.
But there is something interesting, which is you're a tomboy.
I mean, you've definitely got some decidedly male interests.
Of course.
There can't be terribly many female helicopter mechanics, can there?
Oh, there are.
It's a low percentage, but there are.
There's plenty of female pilots.
They inspired me.
So I was always drawn to, you know.
Strong female leads, whether that be in TV and film or just even in real life examples.
And I always admired them.
And of course, envied.
I think gender envy was the big thing, too, is not understanding what that was.
Mistaking envy for attraction.
So while I am attracted to women, I kept confusing those two early on, especially during puberty.
I went through male puberty.
I have this voice.
It's no...
I'm not pretending like it doesn't exist.
Someone on Twitter called me Baritone Barbie, and I kind of laughed at that.
I was like, that's great.
I love that.
I love comedy.
I love stand-up comedy.
I'm a big fan.
So this stuff, I also acknowledge it's funny at times.
I also acknowledge the humor.
What do they say?
Tragedy plus time equals comedy or something like that, right?
Yeah, so I'm all about that.
Yeah, I have a lot of masculine interest because I was also raised thinking that that's what I was supposed to be and supposed to do.
So I did become conditioned to enjoy certain things, but I also found a love of cooking as a child and took culinary arts classes.
I kind of didn't limit myself.
I found anything I found interesting, I pursued.
One time I wanted to go, for example, I wanted to go on a sailboat.
I'd never been on a sailboat.
And my mind is, don't just book a sailboat ride.
Book a weekend course on how to be You know, certified as a sailboat, you know, basic keelboat.
So that's what I did.
I took a whole weekend and got certified in basic keelboat because I'd rather learn how it works and how it functions than just simply go for a ride.
And so that's kind of my mindset.
So I'm going to fly helicopters, but I need to know how they work.
I'm going to drive, you know, I have an Audi RS7 that I love to death.
I've replaced turbos on Audis.
I've done the work, too, and I think that's part of my overall mindset.
Yeah, it's kind of masculine, but women do those things, too.
Look, I'm all for it, frankly.
I'm married to an extreme tomboy who also likes to cook and things.
I like to dress up.
I like to wear dresses and do all that stuff, and there's a time and place for that.
General M.O. is more of a be a badass.
So that's what I try to be.
That's awesome.
And I also find it an important part of the picture that, okay, there was a part of you that felt pressure to be masculine.
But at the point that you accepted that actually you felt more at home as female, you didn't abandon.
It wasn't like you weren't actually interested in that stuff.
You're still...
Flying helicopters.
There was utility in it, right?
Changing my own oil is useful, and I've taught that to my stepdaughter, who is not trans.
She likes that she can do that.
She's 17, so when she breaks down on the side of the road because she drives an old clunker...
You know, it's not the guy getting out of the car, helping her.
She's popping the hood and checking the fluids.
And I just find that empowering.
And so I love that I've been able to pass that down.
I'm so glad my dad passed that to me.
And I took it further thanks to YouTube University, as I call it, and learned how to do engine swaps on cars as a teenager and all these different things that I just found fascinating, you know, how things work.
Very curious-minded.
Yeah, that's fantastic.
Just in passing, so many things have come up in what you've said.
I want to make sure just to note them.
It also sounds to me like you're quite a patriot.
Is that a fair assessment?
I used to brag about being a patriot until it was kind of co-opted.
That's interesting.
I come from the far left.
I don't feel at home amongst people who categorize themselves that way now, but my values still come from what I would call the hard-headed left.
I came from the right.
Very conservative, homeschooled Christian.
My dad worked for Christian Broadcasting Network.
He worked for Pat Robertson.
If that tells you anything about...
I came from the home of probably many of your viewers.
The same kind of home.
That's interesting.
Patriotism has been misunderstood, co-opted.
When I started saying, I was never embarrassed about being a patriot.
And it doesn't mean that I'm not disappointed with my country on the regular.
I am.
But I also know what a great place it is, and I know the potential that our founding ideals have.
And so I'm just not embarrassed about my patriotism.
But at first, when I would say I was a patriot, people are like, but wait, you're a liberal.
Right.
It's like, those are completely consistent.
In fact, the founders were radicals.
Right.
They just were.
Yeah.
They kind of overthrew a government, right?
They overthrew a government and they replaced it with a marvelous experiment that had just not been run before.
A prototype.
Yeah, they were radical progressives.
And now to defend their vision is conservative.
That's the natural order of things.
But anyway, interesting that you are an unabashed patriot.
You find yourself in the military doing what are traditionally understood to be masculine things.
You've seen combat.
Not only have you seen combat, but you've been a gunner.
So that's the front.
I mean, I'll discount it a little bit.
2011 was not the height of Iraq.
We were actually the last aviation unit there during the drawdown.
So President Obama ordered all assets out before, I think, the new year.
And so we were supposed to be there until about February, and then we left in December of 11. And so it was pretty quiet, but on the withdrawal, it got a little spicy.
Particularly in Basra, which was a more active area as far as just rockets every night.
So while I didn't see much during the day doing my missions and flights, at night, you know, it was hard to sleep because of all the rockets coming down on us.
Now, I know it's a little bit of a gray area because there's some moment at which you mentally accepted that you were trans, and then there's a process and various things that you did.
When in your history was that?
When I really realized what it was?
When you accepted it.
When you stopped thinking it would go away and started accepting that there was...
That was during flight school.
Actually, right before I went into primary flight training.
So all I had done at that point was warrant officer training and SEER school.
I was waiting to actually start flying the helicopter.
So I came to the realization...
During that time frame and then started flying aircraft while processing it and still managed to graduate with high grades.
And what year, roughly?
That would be 2021 until 2022. All right.
21 was Sears school.
Yeah, I was in a box, or should I say a dark, confined area for a very long time, very hungry and very tired.
If you know anything about Sears school, it's, you know...
POW type training and so high risk of capture as they call it.
And so I think if you just allow me to kind of deep dive, I think being so tired, being so hungry, not having kind of the mental fortitude to push it away in that state, it kind of started pouring in.
As this thing that I had been pushing away for so long.
And I hadn't done psychedelics, so I've heard similar stories of people who do psychedelics where they have these revelations or these kind of epiphanies and things like that.
And so I would say whatever state I was in physically and mentally because of the training must have been something similar to that where I could finally listen to what was going on and acknowledge that it existed.
And then...
I also told myself, like, I remember at that time I was like, oh, fuck.
Well, I'll have to deal with this after I get out of this school, I guess.
And so I put it in the back of my mind and said, all right, let me just finish this training.
Got out of that and sought therapy and then also started flight training and just kind of juggled figuring out what it all meant while also trying to graduate a flight school, which was a very intense, you know, training program.
And I've got to ask you.
Please.
The folks you were in the military with, you're still in the military with, you know, we didn't say it before, but when you mentioned that there is something funny about transness, I also have this feeling, right?
I'm perfectly ready to accept it.
I love a good trans joke.
Right?
It can't not be funny.
I have to laugh.
Otherwise, life is miserable.
I agree.
I'm all for that approach.
In fact, I think humor is the tool you need to address the most difficult areas in life.
It's observational.
It points out sometimes absurdity, and it also points out, I think, sometimes contradiction.
That we accept.
And so I always like poking fun.
Yeah, it points out things that we know but are not, you know, squarely in the center of our consciousness.
We know them and we're in denial about them or we don't realize that everybody else also knows them.
You know, that's the height of humor.
So anyway, it's great that you have that tool in your arsenal.
My guess would be it has a lot to do with how accepting you seem to be of your state.
But I am curious.
There was a time not so long ago when I'm sure the military is the last place you would want to be if you had to acknowledge such a thing.
But how did you find it in 2021 and on after you did acknowledge it?
Kind of like what I had said before, I thought, well, surely there's a way to beat this without having to come out or do anything where people would know kind of what is going on.
And in my mind, I was like, well, if I understand it now, then I can actually pursue fixing it, and that will be enough.
I'll be able to somehow squash this thing, find a way to live with it longer.
I remember at one point even kind of resigning to that.
I thought that was the way that I could do it.
I've done it for, at that time, I was 31 years old.
I was like, I can do another 31 years, right?
Something about knowing what it is and knowing that there's some things that help made it actually harder to continue living with it.
And so, you know, my spouse, after I think it was maybe another year, she was like, I can see it.
Your health is suffering.
You need to do this for you.
You need to not worry about me.
You need to not worry about other people or your family.
You need to take the steps you need to take that you believe is what you need to do and not worry about us.
And because so many times I knew there was things I needed to do, but I didn't want to do them because I didn't want to hurt anybody or push anyone away or risk losing things that I cared so much about.
And so it was really hard.
There was a time that was really difficult for me To decide to actually transition, which occurred.
So 2021, I realized that I didn't start steps towards transition until 2023. So if that tells you anything about how long I still wrestled with it to try to find a way other than, you know, it just didn't work.
Yeah, I can imagine.
But your colleagues in the military?
They think it's funny, but they accept you?
I don't even think they...
I mean, they'll laugh if I laugh.
I think they're nervous.
Obviously, they don't want to be offensive and stuff, but I try to break the ice with people.
I come in, I make the first trans joke.
I show them that they don't need to walk on eggshells around me.
Other women have been very accepting and welcoming into their space, even going further than...
I would ever think to try to make me feel comfortable, which blows my mind because I never want to make anyone feel uncomfortable.
And so I am still uncomfortable in women's spaces.
I prefer a gender-neutral bathroom.
My civilian job, when I go into the office, they have multiple neutral bathrooms.
And while they do have men and women bathrooms, I stay away from those because I don't feel comfortable in either of them because I don't feel comfortable going to the men's bathroom the way I look.
And then when I go to the women's bathroom, Don't feel...
I'm worried that I'm making someone uncomfortable, and I don't want to be that person.
And so if I ever have an option to do something else, being a pilot, I've learned how to hold it for a long time.
So sometimes I just hold it, and I just don't go.
I wait until I get back home, and I just use the bathroom at home.
But there are times when I have to use a bathroom that is gendered, and I use the women's bathroom, but I use it reluctantly.
But I don't know what else to do.
Recognizing that there is a genuine problem, right?
Women do have a right to their own space.
They do.
But how you solve this problem, I think we just need to acknowledge that there isn't a good solution where you can't provide, you know, gender-neutral bathrooms.
Right?
Mixed gender bathrooms.
Yeah, there's times when it's not economical.
There's not an actual space.
There's all sorts of things.
And I think it goes back to how I define myself.
I am Joe.
I'm not afraid of my legal name, which is Josiah.
I don't consider it dead.
I consider it alive because that's me.
That's part of me.
Joe was always a nickname.
Knocking off the E to make it a little bit more neutral is just something I did because I thought it made more sense.
If anyone called me Josiah, I would not scream at them.
I'm not upset.
It's still my name.
Because I appreciate myself for going through everything I did.
And I appreciate what my parents taught me and all of the different things that I've carried forward.
And I believe that name belongs alive and on record.
I don't want to change it.
Not everyone feels that way, of course.
But then I also don't believe that I'm a woman.
And I think that's the biggest thing.
I believe I'm a trans woman.
I don't know what that means to other people.
I don't think I'm a male.
I know I was born a male, so I can tell you, yes, I was born a male.
But there's something else.
I don't know what it is, the in-between, whatever you want to call it.
There's something else going on in my head where this presentation is so much more comfortable, similar to that boot I was talking about that didn't fit, and now I finally put on one that fit, and it's so much easier to hike.
I can move on with my life like this, whereas before I was tied down by You know, stuff that didn't fit.
And so I know you didn't know very much about me when I reached out to you.
You know I'm a biologist.
I'm curious.
It doesn't much matter to me one way or the other, and I'm aware of evidence of both types, but do you have the sense that what has happened to you, that the gender dysphoria that put you in this predicament is A defect?
I don't know if it's a defect.
The world would say that, and by everything I know, that logically makes sense.
Maybe not a defect, but a condition.
I think, and I am not a biologist, but in nature there are spectrums and gradients.
There are...
Creatures that change genders and take on different forms, and there are cultures that had people in society born physically male that took on female roles because they expressed those behaviors.
There is the intersex condition, which I immediately got genetic testing to see because I was just so curious to understand why.
Like I said, I would like to know how things work.
I don't fit the profile of intersex.
But then that led me down the road of, well, what else could it be?
Something in the brain.
And that's what led me to Robert Sapolsky's YouTube.
Well, he probably did it at a college, but they're on YouTube, about brain gender and how early evidence from cadavers of trans and cis people and brain size in certain areas and alignment of those things basically boils down to their...
There could very well be intersex of only the brain.
And to me, because of how my analytical thinking works, that makes the most sense to me based on everything I know from growing up and how I've existed in this world, that it has to be some sort of intersex condition of the brain.
And I'm not saying that's for all trans people.
I'm saying only for me, speaking for me.
That's what makes sense, and that's what allows me to move forward.
Having that.
And if science comes out or something comes out that tells me otherwise, then I will gladly listen to that.
But right now, that's all I've got is it's got to be some sort of spectrum.
And it has to do with hormone release while you're in the womb.
And to me, that just makes sense because we're all born at some point.
We're all female while in the womb.
And there's certain hormones that cause, whether it's organization or activation, I don't know the technical terms.
I'm just guessing.
Things to fire and things to not fire, right?
And why is it so crazy to assume that with all the things that we have, all the variances we have in birth, that whatever allows you to be trans could also be a thing that fired or didn't fire?
Well, I will add one nuance to that.
I don't think we aren't all female.
Throughout being in the womb, of course, we are arguably female or undifferentiated and headed down a female path early on.
But anyway, the caution I would give you is the fact that something shows up in brain structures does not mean that it is genetically It's a chromosome.
Yeah, genetic.
Right.
So I don't, yeah, I don't think this is a genetic defect, but I do think it has something to do with hormones and the brain development and kind of timing and, you know, action sequence and timing is what comes to mind.
Yep.
No, I think there's nothing far-fetched about that.
I do want to talk to you.
I actually assumed we would do it right at the top, but we should do it now.
Yeah.
The story that brought you to public attention is a very odd thing.
I don't know.
It sounds really good to certain people.
It fits their narrative.
It fits their narrative.
I agree.
It had to be very strange for you to suddenly wake up and find yourself reported as dead and having been involved in this terrible accident.
I would have appreciated a death payment from the military if that was the case.
I'm sure it would help.
So what did happen?
Do you know?
I mean, two things by that.
What happened that brought you into this story?
How did the mistake get publicized that put you on that helicopter?
And then how much can you tell us about what actually did happen in that accident?
I can give you my best guess for why I was targeted.
I don't even know if that's entirely true.
I know at some point I was being targeted, but I don't know if that's how it happened initially.
I did a essay for Smirconish.com, my old boss.
I used to be a digital media manager for him.
And so he has a SiriusXM radio show, Monday through Friday, long form, three hours.
And he offered, he said, hey, I know you transitioned and you're in the military.
And I would just love it if you told your story.
And I think kind of like you understood that I was not kind of the stereotypical case.
And so he wanted to show that story and showcase it.
And so I wrote an essay kind of outlining just very plainly my background and how I came to this and where I am today.
And then he invited me on to his program and we had a nice 20-minute segment that got released as a podcast anywhere where podcasts are available.
And I think the timing, because that was on Wednesday and the crash was that night.
So the timing of that put me...
In a nice, delicious SEO algorithm of trans Blackhawk pilot, Virginia.
Got it.
The Blackhawk originated from Fort Belvoir, Virginia.
So if you think about it, there's a lot of keywords there that could put two and two together and say, this is the best thing I can find based on your question.
So I think there's some AI things there.
At one point, AI was regurgitating that I was the pilot because it was reading what people were saying.
And then...
Echoing it back.
And then people were believing it, which blew my mind because I'm like, don't you realize AI only knows what people say and then it repeats it?
It doesn't go out and call Joe Ellis to make sure that she's still alive.
Right.
Right.
It just blows my mind.
People will trust so much stuff that is not true.
And people were saying, confirmed.
See, Grok confirms it.
You know, ChatGPT confirms it.
And my guess is it was a mix of that, maybe some...
Podcast transcript scraping by a bot.
I noticed that because I used certain other keywords in that podcast, my interest in Judaism and pursuing that and going to classes and stuff, there was a Pakistani article that really enjoyed the idea of being a twofer, a trans person they don't like, and also possibly a Jew they don't like.
So I broke the internet.
You can't be trans, military, pilot.
CrossFitter, Jewish, there's just too many things, you know, like there's too many things that people don't like about you.
If I add vegan or something else to it, I think like the whole world will implode.
Yeah, I think you're right about that.
Well, man, if that's just a straight up accident, I mean, you're just a cautionary tale at multiple levels.
Yes, yeah.
Yeah, I think it was a good rumor that kind of started circulating in really dark corners of the world because of me popping up on the internet the same day.
And then I think some people put it together and said, this is true.
Unnamed female pilot, right, was one of the things.
And then, of course, of course, the president's DEI comments that were vague.
I just know that it's DEI. Well, how do you know?
Well, it's my opinion, right?
And I'm paraphrasing.
But putting that out and then my article and then...
The rumor mill of the dark corners of the web, it was just so juicy.
And so many people loved it because it fit all of their narratives.
I mean, I saw Ann Coulter, Alex Jones, all the characters sharing this story.
And my mind was blown because the Daily Mail was the first people to actually call my phone.
Other than friends and family, of course, and military circles.
They hit the military circles really quick, and I got early warning through them because I guess algorithms work.
But, yeah, the Daily Mail called me and said, hey, we just want to confirm.
I was like, yeah, I'm alive.
Like, that's all it took.
But why would you do that if you have citizen journalists instead?
And we saw this with the Boston Marathon bomber.
I don't know if you remember that, but Reddit named...
The guy with the backpack, right?
Like in the whole Boston Marathon incident.
And it was totally false.
And there was people like being attacked, being targeted because Reddit said, you know what?
We don't need the police.
We can figure it out on our own because we have enough people out there and enough eyes.
Citizen journalism will win.
And I think there's times when citizen journalism is great.
And there's times when it's not like this, like when there's breaking news and it's very fresh and new that people can jump and you can stir up a mob.
And you can't please a mob.
You can only give them something to feed on.
And so I was their first course.
And then when the name of the female pilot came out, she was the second course, which was ridiculous.
Like, yeah, I shouldn't have been targeted, whatever.
She, deceased, should not be targeted.
And her families definitely don't deserve that.
And there was so much misunderstanding about pilot experience hours and how the Army conducts flights that...
As an aviator, Army aviator, I'm looking and I'm like, well, that's not true.
No, that's not true.
You know, they picked on our hours, saying 500 hours, and I'm not sure what the official hours are, but I saw 500 hours.
That's the equivalent of 20 days.
We fly maybe 100 hours a year.
That's five years.
Yeah.
So, you know, it's just ignorance.
And then bias, confirmation bias, and no accountability for what is said on the Internet.
Well, there's one other component of it, which is the benefit that comes to the person that breaks the story.
The closer you are to the moment of recognition, the more likely it is that your tweet or whatever is going to be, you know, hugely successful.
Engagement farming.
Tendency of people to see, you know, the dots that connect, right?
Oh, you know, trans, female, pilot, all of the things that you named, and to leap to the conclusion that it's the DEI story that they're familiar with, which is a story that is often real.
Right, where somebody isn't qualified and was promoted specifically because of some demographic factor.
So the desire to find that story before anybody else causes people not to check because they don't think they can afford the wait.
Right, because the clicks and the rage bait pays and the monetization of these big accounts.
That delete the posts once they realize they're wrong or maybe issue a retraction, which, you know, shocker, State of Virginia says that that's not good enough to not still be liable in a defamation case.
Retraction just helps for weighing and damages.
So, you know, holding people accountable is important.
I tried to report many posts and none of them were found to violate X's rules.
And I understand there's been a loosening of overly restrictive.
I like the best idea winning, but when the best idea is putting someone's family at risk, what do you do in that situation?
I wouldn't say I advocate for more regulation, but there has to be something that holds it accountable.
And a community note that shows up minutes or hours later and it still doesn't take the post down is troublesome.
You have to scroll down to see that note.
So you could still be sharing it and people could still be just believing what they want to believe, even with the correction underneath it.
Well, this is unfortunately a little bit like the bathroom situation where I don't know the good solution.
I certainly do not want to be nannied by some platform that's protecting me from stuff.
Even when the stuff turns out to be false, I'd rather...
Even just be able to reconstruct the history of what happened by seeing, here's a post that says something false.
Here's the community note that tells you how you know that it's false.
In your case, there's a whole other dimension to it.
It's not just a factual claim, but, you know, you've been accused of something, effectively malpractice in your own field, and you weren't even there.
And all of my old media, social media accounts were being shared.
My legal name was being shared, which means property records, right?
And so my civilian employer hired armed security, like, for the house, for where my girls are at.
Because I can take a punch.
I conceal carry, Second Amendment, like, not a big deal for me.
I defend myself.
Innocent people that are associated with me being targeted because they don't like me, like, there has to be something there.
There has to be some sort of accountability.
And maybe it's not censoring To where the story could never be wrong, but maybe it is holding them accountable after the fact to teach people not to be so loose on the keyboard.
You can do it, but there has to be consequences.
You can say something and it'll sit up there, but if you're wrong and you defame someone or you cause harm to someone, there has to be...
Accountability.
And I don't know if that happens in the legal system.
I don't know if that happens on the platforms themselves.
I don't know where that has to happen.
But something has to be done to protect people so that way the person with the biggest microphone is not just sending mobs at people.
Well, at the very least, I hope that when people hear this discussion, people who did share the story that painted you in an incorrect light will understand that they...
Got to not jump to conclusions because you're absolutely not the person that they were attempting, you know, you do not fit their confirmation bias.
We obviously haven't talked very much about helicopters or being a mechanic, but you seem like exactly the person you do want behind the controls of a helicopter because you care at a very deep level how the thing functions.
It's obvious to me that you take that role very, very seriously.
And the fact that you're trans is absolutely immaterial.
So for people, thank you for that.
People have demonized you falsely.
It's not just the facts that are inconsistent, but the person that they were hunting isn't you.
They were not the person who was gaming the system using transness to get ahead.
And I haven't found that person in the military either.
Because I am very sensitive to someone that might, right?
Like, as a trans person in the military, I don't want someone to make me look bad.
Right.
So that's interesting.
Yes, they are stealing more from you than they are...
Just generally.
So you would be inclined to see them even maybe to the extent others couldn't detect it.
So let me just ask you.
Obviously, the change in administrations and this administration's overwhelmingly negative view of DEI, a position that I share, is obviously Going to put your capacity to be in the military as a trans person in jeopardy.
So you must have complex feelings about what's supposed to happen now.
You want to tell us about them?
Right.
Yes.
The executive order.
Well, I knew based on what the president had said in the campaign trail that this was his intention was to do something about trans in the military.
And he says a lot of things.
He might act on one or two or none of them.
And so it's been one of those things where I hope he's just saying it and he's going to realize just like last time when he did...
So he banned trans in the first administration.
And so there was precedent there that he might do it again.
But also there was precedent that because...
President Biden had changed that executive order or repealed it and did another one.
There was also data that could support our service because we were finally allowed to serve.
And so now we're at almost 10 plus years of being allowed to serve openly.
And most of us are over 10 years of service, meaning we came out because policy changed and we were allowed to, not because we joined the military to get free health care.
I'm playing the long game if I'm trying to get free healthcare from the government, let me tell you.
I paid for everything out of pocket.
I'm a guard person, so I don't have access to most of the funding that active duty has.
I am a patriot.
I joined to serve, and the fact that they changed policy in a way that allows me to continue service and not get out was a godsend.
I was glad I can finally deal with this thing and be more of a more effective pilot.
In that cockpit because I'm not dealing with this shit anymore.
I've been able to take care of it.
And that's the kind of thing that we need to understand is that most of the trans-military people that I know, over 70 plus percent, are 12 years or more senior enlisted officers.
They're not E1s who joined with blue hair trying to get a free sex change, right?
It's really hard, you know, year plus long waiting lists to get anything like that covered by the military.
And we're just as effective as we were before.
And all we did was come out because they said we could.
Yeah.
I tell you, this puts me in quite a spot because on the one hand, I have said numerous times that as much as I'm concerned about genuinely trans people being I also do not want to see the military feminized.
And I'm just going to say all of the most aggressive stuff that I've said elsewhere, which is if you want a society that allows people to experiment with gender, etc., you need An extremely masculine military to protect them.
You don't want the military itself feminized in some, you know, political move to, you know, in pursuit of equity.
And I still believe that.
But I'm also confronted with somebody here that is exactly, you know, is a patriot.
He's highly capable, very good at their job, who is struggling with an extra difficulty that most of us don't have to wrestle with.
I don't want to see you excluded from doing something that you're excellent at.
I don't think America's better off if you're excluded from it.
So I now, confronted with that, do not know what to think about the policy and what it should be.
That people hear this discussion and they realize that whatever simple thing they thought was the answer, it's not nuanced enough.
There's something deeper here.
And I don't know if that will happen, but I do think you make a strong case.
Well, I think it's important to realize that there hasn't been data Officially, that suggests we make the military less mission capable.
There are arguments out there, and there are, you know, what people say, but there's no data.
In fact, the data shows overwhelmingly, because of the last 10 years of our service, that we are just as effective, if not more, because we're able to serve openly.
And you could say the same argument about Don't Ask, Don't Tell.
I was in when that was repealed.
Like, I remember the day it was repealed.
And that made the military more effective because you no longer had people that were patriots who wanted to serve their country but also had to deal with the bullshit of hiding who they are.
And I think that's very important.
I'm not saying we need to make it to where they get priority.
I'm not saying that we need to have policies that put them ahead of the line.
No flight test, flight exam, check ride, no gate that I went through, I did as a trans person.
I came out after the fact.
I met the standard.
And there was nobody putting women or black people ahead in that line.
We all had to meet the standard, and they were all rigorously testing us to that standard based on standards that existed.
I don't know of any policy that changed when it comes to my job that had anything to do with changing the standard to make it easier for someone to get ahead of someone else.
We all had to compete.
We all had to bust our ass, and we did it.
And we deserved to fly.
And there's people with $20 million worth of training, F-18 trans pilots that are effective.
They're test pilots.
They're multiple things.
Engineers.
If you care about costs and spending, why would you want to spend $18 billion replacing that kind of knowledge?
Because you're talking 20 years of service.
You're talking multiple people, maybe close to 15,000 people.
Just like with the COVID discharges.
Stupid.
They should be able to make that medical choice too.
So why discharge them and why discharge us?
Like, we came out because you said it was okay to come out and now you want to kick us out.
That's kind of fucked up, right?
Oh, it's wickedly fucked up.
At the very least, grandfathering you in makes sense.
But I think, you know, I'm now...
The obvious thing is there are two components to it.
One is merit.
This is the part that the right-of-center folks have gotten correct.
That a meritocratic system that...
Doesn't care what you are, what color you may be, whether you're male, female, trans, or otherwise.
That is, in general, the right answer.
It's the right answer here, except for one question, which is, does...
Well, no, I would say there are two questions.
One is, how likely is it that we can have a meritocratic system that is blind?
To these characteristics.
Truly blind.
I think it's possible.
And then there's a question, a secondary question, about what happens to the military if we...
I mean, I don't I don't know.
I don't know a lot about how the military is organized because I haven't been a member of it, but I've certainly seen it from the outside.
And it does strike me that for the same reason that the bathroom situation doesn't suggest an obvious answer, it's not obvious to me how trans people function in a military that is.
That is divided by sex.
Well, it's not always divided by sex.
So tell me how it is.
It would at one time have been.
How is it now?
So yes, at one time when women were excluded from combat arms and they were excluded from certain jobs, right?
It was.
And there's schools that I've been to where you're a co-ed in the same living facility, in the same bathrooms.
It's unisex.
Like, you're in there.
If I get shot down in a Black Hawk helicopter and I somehow survive the crash and my crew is a man and a woman.
I don't think we're going to care about the bathrooms we use.
Yeah, no, you're not.
And that's the mindset of service members.
We're all brothers and sisters and we're all out there looking after each other.
And so sometimes you got to go into the bathroom with your brother or sister and help them out.
Like there's nothing wrong with coexisting.
And I don't believe that means all situations, garrison and, you know, back home need to be co-ed, but it is possible.
And we have courageous and strong women that have charged the past showing that as long as they meet the standard, they belong in combat arms.
Not every woman or every man is cut out for combat arms.
I can tell you a hundred men that don't meet the standard either, and they're not there.
I can tell you that the biggest advantage, the biggest DEI, or whatever you want to call it, is who you know.
If you know someone who's in a decision-making place, right, that is the biggest advantage that anyone can ever have.
If you can make a personal phone call to someone and say, hey, can you check on my paperwork?
Hey, can you check this out?
Oh, do you know so-and-so who runs this program?
Can you put them in touch with me?
That's the advantage, is networking with people, building a reputation, and I agree with you, meritocracy.
So if it's a meritocracy, I'm at the standard.
And if you say it's a mental health question, well then...
Where do you draw the line?
Because there's people who have to deal with depression, there's people who deal with PTSD, and they are able to be evaluated.
Are they safe carrying a firearm or not?
I've been evaluated as well.
I've met that same standard.
It's not like they go, well, she's trans, so therefore we're not going to care if she's safe holding a weapon.
Do you think anyone in my command would want me running around with a gun if I was unstable?
Exactly.
Also, some common sense applies in favor.
And I think we suspend that sometimes because we don't understand what trans is or we're scared of it or because of the cartoon characters you've mentioned that do exist.
They do exist.
Or the few that do use it for advantage.
I think that's more common in civil society.
I think you're not going to find advantage signing up for the military, going through basic training, doing all those things just so you can get access to a woman's bathroom.
I don't think those people exist because the testing and the commitment and the sacrifice is too high.
Now, granted, there's always one person somehow that does it, but the same exists for cisgendered people.
Look at all of the scandals with sexual assault.
That was not because they were allowed to use the same bathroom.
There's nothing stopping a predator from walking in a woman's bathroom today.
So how are you going to enforce it even if you think that's the right answer?
It's just a big ball of mess, and I don't know how to fix it, but I can say that I am not the threat, and I deserve to be able to serve my country, and I will gladly serve it as long as they'll have me or until my body falls apart, and that I am a patriot.
I think that's very well said.
I do think the right answer is merit, and I will just add one other thing.
I'll be curious what you think.
But my argument has been...
Part of the problem is that you have...
I'm going to try not to caricature, but it's hard in just saying it simply enough that it's comprehensible.
There are these trans activists.
And these aren't people, in my opinion, who are campaigning for acceptance of trans people.
These are people using transness as a cloak.
And a lot of them aren't trans.
Right.
Not true trans.
Well, not even not true, but they don't even, they don't even admit that they are.
Like there's a lot of activists that aren't trans and they say they're not like that are advocating for stuff.
There are a lot of people advocating for stuff.
And then there are a lot of people who manifest as trans, but frankly, it's not compelling that they didn't just throw on a dress.
because it gave them political clout.
And the concern that I have is that folks like you, who are actually downstream of severe, unrelenting gender dysphoria, gave it a chance to clear up, it didn't clear up, you're simply playing the cards that you've been dealt, are very rarely showing up in opposition.
To the trans activists.
And frankly, I think...
Tell you why.
Say again?
I said I could tell you why.
Well, I'm interested to hear why.
But to me, this is a tragedy because what it does is it means that those people who, frankly, it's most people don't really know anybody who's trans.
So they see the trans activists because they're definitely the most visible.
And they assume that that's the entire phenomenon.
And so...
There really, in my world, there are two trans folks who have stood up and said, actually, no.
They've rejected the trans activism.
And that's Blair White and Buck Angel.
And, you know, but that's not a lot.
And anyway, you were going to tell me why it is that folks who are Well, one, it does allow us to get the care we need if there are people that are advocating for it.
There is advantage to that, whether we agree with everything they're advocating for or not.
The other thing is, we're living our lives.
Like, we're not activists.
Like, I fell into the public space because of a rumor that wasn't true.
And now you've got to listen to me.
I was not out there with a YouTube channel trying to advocate for a lesser degree of trans activism.
Just like I don't go out there and advocate for conservative values that I hold.
I just talk to people in my everyday life and share how I feel and how I think.
The other thing is, just like if you disagree with any movement, you're going to get slapped down.
You're going to be told that...
That you're hurting other people by saying that.
And I'm sure what I've said on this podcast will be used by that.
Because while I'm only advocating from my experience, someone's going to say that I'm saying this about all trans people.
That I'm saying they're all liars or whatever, right?
There's no shortage of the ability to take someone out of context these days.
And so where is my microphone other than folks like Blair White that have managed to build a platform?
Where's the microphone for Joe to say that on X or on the web and not be, because I'm not right enough, I don't fit into their category.
And because I'm not left enough, I don't fit into their category.
So therefore, my voice is just not interesting.
Well, and the activists will punish you.
And I've been through this over...
If I had a profile, I'd be punished.
You'd be punished.
Because you...
You do make such a strong case for a reasoned, nuanced interaction with the whole question of dysphoria and transness, and that is counterproductive for people who are using it as a weapon.
Right.
If I advocate that we need to consider healthcare for trans youth differently, then just do whatever you want.
Or if I advocate that there are some trans people that, for example, what if I said...
There are some trans people that aren't mentally fit to serve.
Does that get run by the far right as, look at this trans person saying trans people don't belong in the military, and then does that hurt my ability to advocate for what I know to be right, which is I deserve to be able to serve.
I've met the standard, and I still meet the standard.
So it's a very sticky situation, plus I'm currently serving, and being politically active is dangerous as someone who serves in uniform.
That's why it was so hard for people to find me on the internet when they were claiming it was me, because I use aliases and masks and layers of obscurity to try to keep me from perhaps being targeted for A, being in uniform, but definitely when I started coming out, like we saw, I'm a juicy target.
And the moment I stuck my head up and advocated that I should be able to serve, look what happened.
Yeah.
Well, you know, let's put it this way.
I'm very sympathetic to your point about...
You deserve to be able to serve.
But I also think the other point is equally important, which is that we who love this country want you to serve because it's good for us that you do.
And it's easily overlooked because there is a personal rights issue.
But the point is we should want the best people doing the job on our behalf, irrespective of the demographics.
That does point the way, but it's not simple.
Right.
Well, I guess, like, there's, you know, simple and easy are two different things, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, I guess it's straightforward in one sense, but how do you, at a policy level, how do you make the policy function?
It's tougher.
It's also not, you know, for the Trump administration, they've got a vast...
Base of constituents who are rightly, I think, terrified of DEI and what it's done to our strength as a nation.
And it is going to be very easy for them to overlook their errors.
That's why your story compelled me, because I saw the initial reaction to...
It's not even a reaction to you.
It was just a reaction.
To a trans woman who was thought to have been on this crashed helicopter, and then the reality of you is so different from that portrayal.
It just seemed it was in some ways, it's a tragic story one way or the other, but it's the perfect story to make the point.
It was very easy to misunderstand you.
Thank you.
And I think it's important to say that...
The military has been the most resistant to DEI from my experience.
I've been in 15 years.
So I've been around since, like I said, Don't Ask, Don't Tell was still a policy in effect.
It is probably the most resistant to some of the DEI things that I think have been a problem at the educational level and other institutions, maybe even the private sector.
There are troubling things going on when it comes to DEI, but I don't...
No, if that's only in civilian federal government.
I was a straight white man until I came out a couple years ago.
I did not see anyone getting ahead of me that didn't earn it.
And so that's why I struggle with this blanket DEI and this black and white thinking, because it's going to screw a lot of people, a lot of people that voted for Trump.
I have people in my family, friends.
Orbit that have all said similar things that you were saying.
Well, you should be the exception.
I said, well, if I introduce you to all other 8,000 to 15,000 of us, I bet you you'd have 8,000 to 15,000 exceptions.
Because the people that you don't like or the policies you don't like are not the trans-military people.
It is showing up everywhere else and other places, and it does exist.
But it's not us.
That's...
A really powerful and provocative point that the military, you would expect it to be exceptional in this regard.
You would expect, because it is metric-based and because it is tested on a battlefield regularly, you would expect it to be resistant where other endeavors have fallen.
To the madness.
So anyway, there's only so much that we can do by talking about it here, but I hope that it puts it on the radar of people who are thinking about how to address this very question.
You're not going to call up Elon and just ask him to whisper into the president's here?
Were I able to call up Elon, I might.
But anyway, I mean, you know, I joke.
I do know a number of people in this administration, and they will very likely see this, and if they don't, I'll point them to it.
Well, I really appreciate that.
I mean, I could go down the talking points that I was given by SPARTA, which is a trans-military advocacy group made up of currently serving trans people.
I would like to just point anyone to that resource if they're interested, because while I could say everything, I think your audience is the do your own research crowd.
And so I would ask them to apply that standard to this.
Apply it.
Use your own research and tell me where the evidence is.
And don't pick the biased research, because I can give you plenty of biased research that tells you trans women have no advantage in sports.
Right.
But that's bullshit.
So like...
It's nuanced.
Some might have advantage.
Some might not.
Some might have advantage only in certain sports.
But who wants to have that conversation?
Nope.
Just flat out ban them all.
And yeah, that's easy policy.
Well, I like your point about if there's a place to do your own research, this would be it.
Yeah, it's a good point.
Let's talk about a few other things.
I don't think I've ever...
There are thousands of hours of me on tape discussing everything under the sun.
I don't think I've ever said that I had a somewhat long-standing obsession with helicopters.
I really like, I mean, I'm a technically oriented person.
I came to really appreciate helicopters as sort of an improbable flying machine.
And I spent a lot of time with the X-Plane Flight Simulator, which is a flight simulator that uses blade element theory.
So it can model virtually any aircraft.
If the details of that aircraft are programmed incorrectly, it can simply figure out how the parts of the aircraft are going to interact with the air.
Right.
So anyway, it's a very good simulator.
It works for fixed wing craft.
It works for helicopters.
Yeah, I'm familiar.
Yeah, I guess I'm not surprised that you are.
So I spent a lot of time flying helicopters in the simulator, including Blackhawks.
Do you identify as a helicopter?
I do not identify as a helicopter attack or otherwise.
But anyway, so I like helicopters.
Yeah.
You obviously like helicopters too, enough to be both a pilot and a mechanic.
Yeah.
What can you tell me about what it's been like to work on them and fly them?
Amazing machines.
You know, the running joke is that it's a bunch of complex parts circulating around an oil leak.
That's a good one.
Yeah.
Yeah, they're crazy.
I mean, I fly airplanes too, so I kind of could speak to, I mean, fixed-wing tiny airplanes, Cessnas, but as doing both, the helicopter is so much more fun.
Like, especially the Blackhawk.
Like, oh my gosh, let me tell you.
The UH-60 being, you know, Igor Sikorsky, like, put it together, like, back in the 70s, and the fact that that airframe, while it's been updated, Still primarily exists in the same form that it did before.
It's just amazing to me.
Incredible machines, ungodly power, insane engineering and redundancy in the hydraulic systems.
It's a blast.
And so, yeah, maybe I'm a little selfish.
I want to stay in the military.
I don't want to be kicked out because flying helicopters is really cool.
Can I say that?
Sometimes owning a gun is cool.
It's not for any other reason, but it's fun to shoot.
And so I'm in the same boat with helicopters.
I love serving my country, and I love that I get to do something that's so fun and exciting.
It's also very dangerous, and I'm not going to pretend like that doesn't exist.
Granted, I'm only here today because of an unfortunate crash.
But yeah, flying them is a blast.
Low level, wheels almost touching the treetops, high altitude even sometimes.
You name it.
Such a blast.
I've flown the DC Hilo routes as well, and that's a really fun route to fly through the Potomac and over Arlington and just all those.
As a patriot, what gets better than flying to the Capital Region?
In routes that only certain aircraft are allowed to do, like military or whatever, general aviation doesn't typically get access all the way in, and we do.
Such an honor and a privilege, but also it's freaking exciting.
Yeah, I believe it.
And, you know, I'm glad to hear that that's your reaction.
I've never flown a real helicopter.
And, you know, I frankly thought at one point in my life I did...
Think about joining the military and flying helicopters.
Not too late.
It might be too late for the military, but it's not too late if you want to fly, though.
I mean, I don't know if you're familiar with the comedian Bill Byrne, but he got his helicopter license not too long ago.
Oh, I didn't know that.
Yeah, so you can do it if you get the time and the resources.
I always tell people, put it on a calendar, take a Discovery flight where you go up with an instructor and they kind of let you play with the controls in a safe environment.
And then when you land, you know, is it worth pursuing or not?
And I always tell people, at least take that first step and see what it's like, because you can sit and wander all day, but until you book a flight lesson and just try it, like you never really know.
And some people don't like it.
Some people it's too technical, it's too complex, airplane or helicopter.
And then it's kind of like, well, at least I scratched the itch.
I didn't, you know, die.
And I wasn't on my deathbed, you know, thinking like, oh, I never tried to fly a helicopter.
You can do it.
Go do it.
Well, let me ask you this.
Am I right that you should start with fixed-wing and graduate to helicopters?
That's a very expensive way to go.
Well, maybe, but...
You'd be better off just learning helicopters.
Helicopters being considerably harder to fly, it just seems to me that getting your bearings on a simpler aircraft makes sense.
It does if you think that airplane plus something equals...
It's not quite that kind of formula.
Yes, generally transportation flying would be easier in an airplane, but if you want to learn helicopters, it's just better to learn those because the aerodynamics are so different that a lot of the airplane stuff could mess you up.
So when we were in flight school, I had done about 20 hours in a fixed wing, so I had just enough knowledge.
To not have those airplane habits, but I still had some that got in the way of learning the helicopter.
Oh, that's interesting.
Because the aerodynamics are just different.
And so it would have been a benefit to come in kind of clean slate because I wasn't trying to translate, well, in an airplane we do this, well, in a helicopter you don't.
I remember, for example, we were on approach in a helicopter and he was like, well, slow down to 30 knots and...
Logically, I'm like, okay, I'll slow down to 30 knots.
But in my mind, in an airplane that I was training on before I went, 40-ish knots was stall speed.
So 30 knots, I was so hesitant.
And he's like, why did you stop slowing down?
I'm like, just something in me says not to go slower than this.
And it was airplane training of like, do not go below the speed, right?
So I would say...
If you want to learn how helicopters, learn them.
A lot of the aviation rules of the road are the same.
So if you learned aviation in general, like kind of the ground school stuff, that doesn't matter if it's helicopters or airplanes.
But once you start flying, if you want to do helicopters, learn those mechanics first.
All right.
I will take that under advisement.
Of course, you know, you can...
Find an airplane to fly.
It's much harder to fly a helicopter as a civilian.
That's why I fly fixed wing because it's like after I graduated flight school, I was like, I can't afford to rent a helicopter.
So I just do fixed wing for fun.
It's a rough topic.
Maybe it should be said that you are, I mean, I think this is frankly completely obvious.
You are speaking as an individual.
You're not speaking on behalf of the military.
People should take this as such.
So if they had misunderstood that, now they should get it.
But as a helicopter pilot flies the very same aircraft involved in the accident in D.C., you've flown that route.
You have a sense of what may have happened?
Not enough has come out.
All I can do is guess as if...
If I was in that situation, what would I anticipate happening based on the factors that we know?
And so that's the only thing I can do, which is speculating, right?
If you're open to it, I could do that.
I just don't know.
I'm open to it if you feel it is okay to do.
I just want to call out maybe some things that I've seen thrown around and talk about those of other people that have speculated.
As we mentioned before, 500 hours is actually almost or right around the same time you get selected for pilot in command.
So if that pilot had around 500 hours, she was considered more senior than people who just showed up from flight school.
100 hours a year is average for pilots because of funding and other reasons.
Blackhawks cost about $5,000 an hour that their rotors are running.
Not including other things.
So it's very expensive to train on these aircraft.
And more funding would allow us to fly more, which makes us safer.
Safety trends show that the more hours we fly in the Army, the less mishaps we have.
The less hours we fly, the mishaps go up.
I would also say that there's a debate out there about night vision goggles, I think.
Have you seen any of that kind of being speculated?
I have not seen it speculated in this case.
I have some history with this.
I was a bat biologist and I've used night vision.
But anyway, tell me what you've heard said and what you think of it here.
Army aviators don't always fly with night vision goggles.
If they were flying with night vision goggles, it reduces your field of view.
So it would be the equivalent of looking through two toilet paper tubes.
So think much more, you know, tunnel vision.
That aircraft, that jetliner, was on approach to land, from what I understand.
That means likely its landing light would be on, which is an extremely bright light, so that way the pilots can make out the ground.
If I was as close as it looks at all that time and...
I don't know if this is true, but if that landing light was pointed at me, regardless of night vision goggles or not, and I'll explain why, it would be overwhelming.
I don't know what they saw, I don't know what they experienced, but as someone who's been in the path of bright lights flying a helicopter, it can be overwhelming.
And so if you're wearing night vision goggles, they have automatic protection in them, so that way when it sees...
For example, an explosion or something, right, it flickers them off.
If it's not too intense and it's really bright, say, you know, other types of light, it can white them out.
And then you'd have to look underneath them or flip them up to see ahead.
If you didn't have night vision goggles and someone blinded you with your light, then it'd be like driving and there's a bunch of cars with their high beams on hitting you.
Or like the police officer with the bright light shining it.
You can't see what's behind it.
You know he's there, but you don't know his posture, his profile.
You can't see anything.
You're just blinded by a light.
And so that was kind of my first thought when I thought about the setup of the flight paths.
It's like, wow, that would be a really bright light.
Then there's the confusion with ground lights, which is an illusion that happens to pilots where, especially if you're flying about street light level or tower level or building level, which I think they were, like 200, 300 feet, all around D.C., right, there's a lot of lights about that height.
You could mistake an airplane or a light for an airplane.
If there was other air traffic in the area, you could say, yeah, I've got the airliner in sight, and you're looking at that one, not the actual one.
And there was no clear identification of which airliner.
So there's that groundwork as well of just thinking of all the situations.
And then there's who knows what else, right?
Incapacitation.
There's so many other factors, right?
Were they directed too close?
Should they have waited before proceeding?
Did ATC make a mistake?
Who knows?
I do know that once the...
Investigation is done.
You're going to have an entire picture of what happened because of the instrumentation on those Blackhawks.
They'll be able to show you on screen pedal positions, torque numbers, oil pressures, cyclic positions, and they will read the transcript of the internal communications.
They won't play them because when there's deceased, they consider it morbid to actually play the real voices.
What they'll do is they'll have actors come on and read it and time it.
To the simulation to show an accurate picture.
And then they'll distribute that to people like me, so that way I'll sit in a meeting, a safety meeting, and learn what happened, what went wrong, and how to prevent it.
Because the aviation community, anytime something happens, we're very keen to understand what's going on and what happened because most of our emergency procedures were written in blood.
These are things that happened that we had to write a new procedure for to prevent it from happening.
There could be many things that come out of this that changes doctrine and safety procedures across FAA and the Army.
And it could have been as simple as a string of simple errors that led to something unlikely that was catastrophic, which happens to an aviation.
It's unlikely, and it doesn't typically happen like this.
But stuff like this does happen.
We fly into birds all the time, for example.
Flying low-level, you hit birds, and sometimes they just hit the windshield and splatter, and sometimes they blinded the entire windshield, and sometimes they hit a rotor blade, and you start losing lift, and you have to make decisions quickly.
Or in the example of the airliner that landed on the Hudson, that was a bird strike that took out all the engines.
Very unlikely, but no one said the birds were DEI. Right.
That's a good point.
So let me ask you a couple questions.
I will reveal my ignorance here.
The anomaly that caused the accident approximately was the altitude of the helicopter.
That it was much higher than it should have been on that route over the Potomac.
Do we know what the stated deviation was?
I thought it was 150 feet high.
Yeah.
So I can tell you plus or minus 100 feet is a common standard.
Okay, that's good to know.
I don't know if that's true.
And also altimeters have deviation errors that they're allowed for up to a certain feet, which is why they would have relied on their radar altimeter.
The helicopter would also rely on the radar altimeter below 1,500 feet to understand where they were in relation to the water.
Water being an uneven surface would give them a variable reading as they flew across it.
So, when you say radar altimeter, you're talking about a downward-facing radar that figures out how far away the substrate is.
Correct.
And reports it to the cockpit.
That's got to be a little bit fraught because the substrate is not even over the Potomac.
It would be more even, but it's still a liquid and undulating, so you could get wave effects of some kind.
When it's only showing you what you've flown over, it's not going to show you what you're about to fly over, right?
And then you have your barometric altimeter, which is the one that's set based on an altimeter setting from your airports or your local weather, and that has allowed deviation as well.
So pilots, because we have both, we use them to try to get a best picture of where we are in relation to the ground.
Got it.
So there's no absolute because both of your mechanisms for judging altitude, One of them varies with barometric pressure.
The other one varies with the substrate below it and doesn't read ahead.
Technical errors as well, right?
The deviation that's allowed in the actual measuring of it.
So, like, you could still be plus or minus 3 on your radar altimeter even if you have a very even surface because it's allowed to have a deviation with measuring.
Okay.
And the flying over the Potomac.
I'm thinking, again, you just...
Don't be shy about telling me I've misunderstood something.
You're flying low.
You have to be flying low because you're on the approach of Reagan International Airport.
So you want to be below where those flights are coming in or going.
But being held very low in an urban environment like that, you've got to worry about stuff that sticks up, towers.
lines, stuff like that.
So, um, so there's presumably some band too low and you're in danger of hitting terrestrial objects too high and you're in danger of interacting with the incoming aircraft.
Um, and you have warnings that you set for those.
So that way, if the altimeter reads that, right, it'll ding or, or tell you high or low.
If you've busted whatever you've set in the cockpit as your kind of, you know, hard deck or ceiling.
Got it.
And over the Potomac, you'd presumably be better off because you could bias low.
Yep.
Except that there are bridges.
Right.
Okay.
And the altitude changes in those corridors.
So it varies where you're supposed to be based on where you are.
So, at one point you might be flying at 200 feet is the max height that you're allowed to and then another one allows 300 feet or 150 feet.
I don't have them memorized.
I don't know if those are actual variances, but I do remember along that route there being multiple altitudes to be at based on where you were in those routes.
And that's published.
It's public charted on the helicopter charts for DC.
All right.
And you have presumably seen the tracking.
Of the helicopter's progress over the Potomac, and I know nothing about what to make of this.
The track that we are shown has the helicopter seemingly improbably overlapping multiple aircraft before it finally hits the one that went down.
Have you seen that, and do you have an interpretation?
I have not, but my guess would be if you're looking at some sort of...
Flight radar or something, those aircraft were at altitude, not at 200 feet.
Right, right, right.
Absolutely.
Because it's very busy.
You have three major airports there that are all class Bravo airspaces.
So, like, very, very busy.
Okay.
Yeah.
Well, I wish you'd seen it because what is represented, and, you know, I've sort of discounted it.
I don't know what to make of it, but it seems improbable that the XY coordinates of the helicopter...
Are equal.
It overlaps these aircraft many more times than you would expect.
The Z, you know, the altitude being off, so there's no collision.
But nonetheless, it looks like an improbable level of interaction with aircraft in two dimensions.
I have not seen that.
I do know that if I wanted to hit an aircraft like that at that angle...
With the varying altitudes and speeds, it would be very difficult for me to do it as a pilot.
And so that's why I kind of go to needle in the haystack, throwing a dart, and having to hit a bullseye.
It would be very hard even if I wanted to do that.
It's very difficult.
Can you explain so that a layperson like, for example, me, could understand why it would be difficult?
Three-dimensional space, first of all.
Second of all, Actual altitude versus altitude reporting.
How would one aircraft really know what altitude the other one is at?
Because it's always going to be a delay.
Second of all, that aircraft was on approach to a runway and was, I guess, cleared to it.
And that Blackhawk, I don't know what clearance it had, but at some point I did remember that they said, like, oh, do you have it in sight?
Pass behind it.
If you're blinded by a light, and I keep going back to that, you might think you're passing behind it.
You might think you're clear of it.
100 feet is two seconds with a little bit of a hot air bubble.
If I'm flying over a water source, which has varying temperatures, you're going to have temperature radiating up off of that, which is going to push your aircraft up and your aircraft is going to sink as you fly across it.
Just like any other land, but water being a little bit different.
You're going to have that.
And there's times when you're flying and there's turbulence and you just jump up 200 feet in a second.
Interesting.
Did not know that.
Yeah.
Especially a small aircraft.
So that's the big thing.
You think commercial airliners, you really feel turbulence and yeah, they're huge.
But a small aircraft, I remember because I remember flying in flight school and my instructor yelling at me so much, you need to hold your altitude, you need to hold your altitude, and it's plus or minus 100 feet.
And I was at the extremes of that very often until I got really proficient at anticipating the, you know, turbulence and different things you're flying through and the temperature of the water versus the temperature of the land flying from land to water.
And you're trying to track whether it's VORs and you're doing instruments and you're trying to hold your given altitude.
Like it's not an exact science.
There's not a button that you press and the helicopter just flies exactly at a hundred feet.
It's just not like that.
Got it.
All right.
That is extremely helpful.
You've given me a lot more nuance to think about with respect to what may have happened there.
And I do hope we get a picture of it sooner rather than later.
And I would say there's other things that you have in the cockpit, too, for traffic avoidance.
So you have a civilian device called a Stratus.
I don't know if they did, but our unit does fly with a Stratus.
Or a Sentry, which is a foreflight product.
And that shows you ADS-B traffic as well on your iPad.
And it pushes it into there and also gives you collision avoidance warnings.
And so there is awareness there.
Just like in the crew brief, before you fly, you assign scan sectors for the pilots and the crew.
Like, you're supposed to look in these clock directions and tell us if you see something.
And there's a lot of risk mitigation and risk matrices that people go through up to three hours prior to takeoff time.
And so there's a lot of thought and preparation about...
How much fuel?
Do you have enough fuel so you don't run out?
Are you going to see traffic and avoid it?
How are you going to communicate?
And positive ways of communicating and like hours and hours of training for all of this stuff.
So it seems so unlikely, but at the same time, human error is the number one cause, I believe, of accidents.
And it happens.
Unfortunately, it happens.
Yeah, and I must say your description and it's...
Dovetails with what I've read about, do you have this aircraft in sight?
That's a trick question as far as I'm concerned.
I've done it.
I've done it.
I have the aircraft in sight, and then at 200 feet above me goes a Cessna.
I'm like, oh, well, you're talking about that one?
Right.
I was looking at that one that was over there.
And they said the same clock direction.
They're like, or not clock, they said a magnetic direction.
So like, at 300, do you have traffic in sight?
Roger, I've got it in sight.
You know, I'm going to come in behind them.
I'll make my approach.
It's all going to be gravy.
And then...
Right.
Like, it's rare, but it happens.
I have something in sight, but I don't know if it's the thing that you're talking about.
I can't read their license plate, you know?
Right.
You're going to have to give me a color, a make, a model.
And if it's at night, like, you're not seeing that.
You're not seeing anything but a blinding landing light.
Or an overwhelming noise.
And if they had passed behind it even at that altitude and that close, the turbulence from that aircraft would have been intense.
And I don't know what that would have done.
I don't know if they would have been able to handle that either and not get pushed down into the water.
Like, we're warned when there's airliners taking off or landing or flying near them how to dodge their turbulence because it is disruptive.
The Blackhawk is about 16,000 pounds.
An airliner, I don't even know, but they're way heavier.
And mass creates turbulence, just like boats and water.
The bigger the boats, the bigger the wakes.
And you're flying behind air wakes, and they sink, and they fall on your aircraft.
And downwash can take you out.
And so that's also another concern.
I feel like if the pilots had known, they would have never been anywhere close because not only traffic avoidance, but...
Downwash and turbulent avoidance as well.
Yep.
So it seems to me, and again, I'm just out of my depth here, you've got two phenomena.
You've got the airliner pushing the air out of the way and then the air collapsing back behind it to fill in the vacuum.
And you've got the turbulence from the engines.
Yeah, and then the helicopter creates its own turbulence, right?
A swirl of turbulence.
And you can fly into your own turbulence.
If you do a 360, you'll fly into your own turbulence, just like a boat hits its own wake.
Yeah.
I remember, actually.
It's a bit of a digression.
But back in the early days of the V-22, which is this sort of hybrid aircraft that lifts off like a two-rotored helicopter, and then the rotors tilt down and it becomes a fixed-wing.
Yeah.
Aircraft with giant propellers.
When that thing first came out, I mean, the Osprey is an incredible aircraft.
But they had a problem where they were falling out of the sky.
And it is a problem that, if I remember correctly, was anticipated by the X-Plane Simulator.
Because what was happening was those giant rotors were creating their own vortices and the V-22 would get caught up in its own turbulence and spiral down to the ground.
Am I telling a true story here?
Yeah, I think.
I'm not sure about the odds for you, but I know vortex ring state is a thing.
And so, you know, if people want to look that up and the idea of, like, effectiveness of rotors when it's hitting certain types of turbulent air, it's definitely a thing.
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, you know, the rotor depends on the air being still to create lift, and if the air is swirling because it's just been through the rotor, then the point is the amount of lift that you expect off it is a fraction if it's going in the same direction.
For sure.
Something like that.
Yeah, clean air is nice because you can cut right into it with your rotor, but turbulent air is a big thing, and hovering, right?
You're sitting in your own turbulence, sort of, in a way that creates that cushion effect and ground effect.
There's so much, when it comes to aerodynamics, it's fun to geek out on and watch videos, and I'm not an expert at any of it.
I know enough to be able to fly through it, but it's really cool when people show me all the math and science behind it that I can't do on my own.
Yeah, it's wild, and it's also wild when you start digging deep enough that it's not completely understood.
There's a lot about these designs that are empirically discovered rather than us having it so nailed at the level of theory that we can tell you how the aircraft is going to behave before it's been built.
I know that there's a lot that we could discuss.
You have a...
Rich life outside of your military and aviation life.
You've hinted at it a little bit.
Do you want to say anything about...
I know that you're very interested in physical health and fitness.
You want to talk about that?
Yeah.
Part of my journey of what I now know to be gender dysphoria was also just getting myself in shape because I thought that that would...
Make it go away.
I was unhappy with my body, so it must be that.
I used to be also very much overweight as a teenager and as a kid.
I don't fault my parents, but definitely science was being manipulated, I think, to encourage certain products like sodas and things like that.
So yeah, I found myself gravitating towards CrossFit and some of the stuff that the founder had done in terms of research and litigation against basically corrupted science was very inspiring to me because we're drowning in a sea of chronic disease as Americans.
Yeah, we absolutely are.
That's going to be...
The apocalypse, in my mind.
It's not going to be a zombie outbreak or a pandemic or whatever.
I mean, maybe because of chronic disease, right?
Like, you can't survive a pandemic.
That's definitely a thing.
We saw that.
But it's going to be the dialysis ward that's going to be the apocalypse.
You're going to walk down there and everyone's going to be on it.
And everyone's going to be having limbs cut off.
And it's going to be the most horrific thing.
And I... I saw something interesting.
You're the biologist, not me.
Type 3 diabetes.
The idea that Alzheimer's could be an evolution of that, diabetes and insulin resistance and things like that is very interesting to me based on what I know from just fitness in general and how diabetic symptoms can be reversed and can go away if you start following a proper healthy diet and exercise.
Sought training, so I did my CrossFit Level 1 and my CrossFit Level 2 trainer certificates, which also includes nutrition and kind of the understanding of chronic disease from a very basic level.
Because Greg Glassman said that the CrossFit gyms were lifeboats in that sea of chronic disease.
And if we could get people off the carbs and off the couch, then we would...
We would be able to reverse that.
And they don't even have to believe it.
But once they stop needing their shots and they start feeling better and looking better in the mirror, then they're going to come begging for it.
And I believe that I still am on a mission of educating people as I come across that are open to it, that there is another way than just...
Saying your parents had it, therefore you're going to get it.
And resigning to sitting on the couch and poisoning yourself.
They're willful acts.
So no one's forcing you to eat that donut, right?
I know we like to say that it's an addiction and we have no control over it.
These are willful acts.
You're not being forced to live this way.
And I know it's really hard to change human behavior.
And I'm not here to say it's easy because I've done it.
I know how hard it is.
To get off the carbs and get off the couch.
And so that's kind of why I'm inspired by Make America Healthy Again.
I don't know if we ever were, so I don't know about the again part, but there's some things in RFK Jr.'s platform that I see as, duh, like, why aren't we doing these things?
I don't know if there's government legislation that is the answer to it, but it's definitely calling out the problem.
We need to get fit.
We need to move.
And we're just going to get more and more unhealthy as we abdicate our responsibilities as humans in this world to AI and to sitting on our asses.
Yes, I would say, A, I'm a huge fan of the Make America Healthy Again movement.
Bobby's a friend of mine.
I'm persuaded that he deeply understands this issue and that although it's going to be sometime before America is healthy, that we can start moving in that direction right away.
We can make rapid progress.
I like your question about were we ever healthy?
There's certainly the problem overall is The novelty of our environment.
We're just not built to be interacting with the materials that we are interacting with.
And this is true at every level.
Even psychologically, we're not built for this environment.
Physically, we're not built for it.
And it's not inherently a legislative answer, but it has to be a...
There are going to be places where legislation is important.
Yep.
We certainly need information about where the novel elements are in our diets, in our homes, because those things, you can't control them if you don't know it's present.
Right.
Don't get me started on the food pyramid and nutrition labels and, oh my gosh.
Yeah.
I mean, that's why, like...
CrossFit so much because you record your data.
Fitness is measured as work capacity across broad time and modal domains, and so you should be able to chart out yourself getting healthier.
What's interesting about my transition is that I have data that shows where I've lost performance because of hormone therapy.
And so I can tell you percentages off of back squat.
I can tell you percentages off of running.
You know, I have them listed because I've been recording this for so long.
And it's just, it's been overwhelming, like, how helpful it is to be.
Aware of fitness in general and to be aware of where I am and how I'm trending as far as my ability to have work capacity.
We've got to do something.
We've got to get people moving.
As you get older in age, getting yourself off of the ground can be the difference between life and death.
In CrossFit, we call that a burpee.
We get down on the ground and we jump back up.
Seeing people and training people that could not do that.
To the point to where they could was so rewarding.
And it was so amazing to see how they came in more confident, happier, less depressed.
And it was fixing so many other things in the house.
Not only were they liking what they saw in the mirror, but they were becoming better people.
Yeah, the problem, the obstacle is that the...
Response of the body is not immediate enough.
If it was, everybody would get fit because they would immediately feel better.
But the fact that there's a delay on the response causes the reward structure not to spot it.
Instant gratification world we live in.
The donut provides the instant gratification, the burpees do not.
Or the shot, right?
Whether that's the...
I forget, Wagovi and stuff like that.
Like, I'm not saying that don't use that to get where you need to be.
But if you're using that because you're not going to eat right and you're still not going to exercise, like, it's still that instant gratification that I think we are scared of.
And we love, you know, the next new fitness trend that's going to be the end-all be-all when really it's not complicated.
You know, it's eat real food, mostly plants.
No sugar, right?
If you're familiar with Michael Pollins, he's an investigative journalist.
And then the CrossFit prescription, which is meat, vegetables, nuts, and seeds, some fruit, little starch, no sugar.
And it's all there.
It's all right there in the prescription.
And if you're a vegetarian, you can replace the meat with something else, right?
Whether it's some sort of soy protein.
But just getting enough protein, moving for a few minutes a day, you're going to sleep better.
You're going to be happier.
You're going to be a better spouse, husband, child.
Father, whatever it is, you're going to be a better person and you're going to be there for your children when you need to.
And I always laugh when people say, well, I would do anything for my kids and they're struggling with their weight, they're struggling with their health.
I said, well, would you get healthy for them?
Right.
I worry.
I used to be a huge fan of Michael Pollan's formulation, but I worry that actually it's too influenced by the food pyramid also.
That mostly plants.
It's not obvious to me that that turns out to be right.
Sure, sure.
And I think the idea there, from what I take from it, is the basics, perimeter of the aisle, eat things that either grow or have eyes.
You know, like, mostly plants is in, like, get your protein source and get your vegetables in, and that will cover most of your bases.
But sure, we could go into, like, performance and getting the 2% right out of a diet and stuff and really geek out on that, and there's going to be things that are different there.
Yeah, I would agree that we definitely don't want to risk going into, you know, the food pyramid that is not really set up for human consumption.
The food pyramid that was pure propaganda.
Yeah.
But I would say, you know, there's clearly a lot that's right with Pollen's approach.
Sure.
You know, shop the edge of the supermarket where the stuff is unprocessed, eat things your grandmother would recognize, that kind of advice is.
Is right on the money.
And I would add that although it is difficult to prove the superiority of food that is raised without pesticides and fertilizers, that long-term, that turns out to be an essential element of health, too.
You shouldn't have to even think about this.
But the poisons in our food, they have all kinds of implications for overall health.
And anyway, it's worth paying attention to.
I agree.
Yeah, there's a lot out there.
And I think sometimes that's overwhelming to the person who's trying to make one change in the right direction.
And so while I could knowledge vomit all over someone, all of my CrossFit stuff, what's going to get them into the gym or get them eating a little bit better?
Trade out your full calorie sodas for diet sodas and do that for a couple weeks.
Don't worry about anything else, right?
You got to start with those small habits.
I'd say don't do that.
I would say drink iced tea or water.
Sure.
I mean, that's where you want them to be, right?
But if you're trying to make small, meaningful changes, you know, there's another book that I really like that's Atomic Habits and the idea of tiny, remarkable changes and that the aggregation of 1% better every day will...
Lead to something by the end of the year that you never thought possible.
And, you know, it's a journey.
And you've got to vote for the person you want to be.
And sometimes a person struggling with weight, full calorie versus diet, is the gateway to health.
Right?
Maybe the next step is water or tea or whatever.
And it's fine.
That is where you need to be a good coach and you need to understand the client that you're teaching and work with them.
I would agree.
Get rid of all calorie.
Don't drink calories if you can help it because that's the easiest way to consume excess calories and typically those excess calories are sugar.
Put some stinking warning labels on those Dunkin' Donut coffees that are really milkshakes.
They're just milkshakes and there should be a warning that this is days worth of sugar intake.
Stuff that you would never be able to find in nature.
You know how hard it would be to find that much honey or that much berry and then actually consume it?
It would be impossible.
And now we have people basically just injecting sugar into their veins because it tastes great and they're told it's a coffee and therefore it's not a dessert, but it's definitely a dessert.
Yeah, the irony is that we are not programmed.
To spot the hazard of it, because for our ancestors, it would have been so unlikely to find that level of sugar that it's just not...
Well, and we're drawn to it, right?
Because, you know, like, it is a lot of calories.
Yeah.
And if you're in a wilderness or survival mode, you would be drawn to something that's, like, really delicious, right?
Of course.
Your ancestors, if there's one thing we can be sure of, it's that all of...
Almost all of your ancestors were food-limited almost all of the time.
Exactly.
All right, so let's see.
You mentioned that you've swapped out turbos on your cars.
Sounds like you like driving fast, too.
Is there a structure to that?
A little bit.
I mean, it's more just amateur, fun, hobbyist.
But yeah, I've got a 93 Nissan 240SX that I did the SR20 swap.
And I know this is going to be a bunch of gobbledygook for the two people that might know what I'm talking about.
And then I have a Audi S7 that I did a Stage 3. Turbo swap and tune on.
And then I have a Audi RS7 that I recently picked up that is currently factory, but it's a blast too.
And I like to go to local tracks and run the road courses.
So Virginia International Raceway is a well-known road course that shows up in the Grand Tour circuit all the time.
And I drive a couple hours to that and, you know, run the car all day and beat the hell out of it and try to drive it home.
And it's just, it's just fun to me.
I don't like compete or anything, but I just, it's so much fun to just drive fast and push yourself.
And, um, you know, it's exciting.
So basic girl stuff.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know, a little, a little engine grease under the fingernails.
I still get my manicures, you know?
Is that right?
Yeah.
All right.
Well, I mean, that's interesting.
And, and I, it is, uh, going to be a productive challenge for, um, A lot of people in my audience, you know, you're a supporter of the Second Amendment, a patriot.
You like driving fast.
You know how to swap out your turbo.
Yeah, I like my guns.
I like my fast cars.
You know, I like my whiskey.
I don't know what else to say.
I like fitness.
I like to give love to the world and to be a good example.
You know, if you want to dive down any other things, I'd be happy to.
If you just want to talk just general politics and have a conversation, that's fine too.
I'm not sure where you want to go with it.
Well, we've covered a lot of territory.
Unless there's something specific else, I think this is a good place to leave it.
I will say I... Appreciate your genuineness, which comes across, your openness to discussing all of these topics at a level of detail that has got to be unnerving.
And anyway, I do hope it advances the conversation because the conversation has become mind-numbingly two-dimensional.
And anyway, you provide exactly the right challenge.
Well, thank you so much.
I really appreciate that.
I didn't have an ex, but now I have an ex, so I guess if anyone is interested in following me, I do now exist on there.
I don't think I'm going to launch my own meme coin.
I know that's something that people who find themselves on platforms...
I do.
I do love crypto, though.
And if anyone wants to talk crypto, I used to mine crypto back in the day.
Like, I had a stack of servers, and I did all of that, too.
So if there's any crypto bros out there that want to chit-chat about that, I'd be happy to.
But yeah, otherwise, I'm just trying to use an unfortunate circumstance, an unlikely situation that I've been placed in where people like you that...
I respect and admire are reaching out to me.
And hopefully I can make something good of this and advocate for people that are patriots.
And I don't think other patriots want to kick those people out of the military.
I really don't think so.
And like I said to you on the phone, if I had five, ten minutes with someone, they would be sold.
They would be sold.
I want trans to be the least interesting thing about me or not something that we even talk about.
I'm not going to scream my pronouns at you.
I get them wrong sometimes, too.
I'm not going to try to force you to say something.
I'm not going to compel speech out of you.
You say what makes sense.
If you want to use a neutral term or a feminine term, I really appreciate it.
If you say dude, man, or whatever, like, okay, sure, but does that really make sense to you?
If it does, fine.
If you use my old names, that's fine, too.
I'm not really the alphabet mafia.
I don't fit into that group at all.
And so I'm not going to come after you or anything like that.
I'm not going to scream at you.
Let's have a conversation.
That's what I would say.
Well, I will just offer one correction.
In our household, dude has no gender connotation of any kind.
Yeah, and I don't think so either.
It's just some people have said, oh, sorry, I called you a dude.
I'm like, I don't care.
Like, it doesn't even bother me.
Like, dude is just dude, but yeah.
Dude is a highly useful term.
It's not for novices.
You have to know how to wield it.
And if you don't know, go find a Californian and ask them.
They can help you with it.
I mean, CrossFit was home in Santa Cruz is where it started.
And then I also like to skateboard and I go to skateboarding retreats.
So one more thing on the thing of things I do.
But yeah, dude and skating and the whole skate culture too.
So definitely.
All right.
You were going to tell us where to find you on X. Yes.
Joe Ellis Really.
Joe Ellis Really.
Very good.
You know, really me.
Yeah.
So Joe Ellis.
J-O-E-L-L-I-S-R-E-A-L-L-Y. That's correct.
Oh my God.
I am not good at spelling, but I survived that.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, thanks so much for joining us, Joe.
It was a great conversation and I wish you all the luck.
