In this powerful and personal episode of Frontline Voices, IRON Mike Steadman sits down with Matthew Brown, Navy veteran and founder of Chimney Trail Health, to talk about the often invisible battle veterans and high performers face: mental health. They unpack the power of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), the hidden costs of unresolved trauma, and the real-world impact of suicide in their communities. Mike shares a vulnerable story about personal loss and how it pushed him to seek help. Together, they discuss how to reframe thoughts, find sparring partners for the mind, and train like your life depends on it, because sometimes it does. Whether you’re a veteran, an entrepreneur, or someone struggling silently, this episode is a lifeline.
Recorded on April 8, 2025.
ABOUT THE GUEST:
Matthew Brown is the president and CEO of Chimney Trail, a mental health organization focused on preventing anxiety, depression, and suicide through cognitive behavioral therapy. A 2005 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, he served in key operational and strategic roles across the Navy, including command of the USS Scout. His military service and leadership experiences inspired the creation of Chimney Trail, now a trusted resource for the Department of Defense and Fortune 500 companies. He lives in Colorado with his wife and three daughters.
RELATED SOURCES:
- The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt
- Bowling Alone by Robert D. Putnam
- Website: Bowling Alone
FOLLOW THE GUEST ON SOCIAL MEDIA:
- LinkedIn: Matthew Brown
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
>> 'Iron' Mike Steadman (00:10):
Welcome to Frontline Voices, a podcast brought to
you by Stanford University's HooverInstitution, exploring leadership,
service, and solutions to some ofour nation's most pressing issues.
I'm your host, 'Iron' Mike Steadman,a Marine Corps veteran and
member of the Inaugural Classof Hoover Veteran Fellows.
In the aftermath of the COVID19 pandemic,a never ending 24.7news cycle, and
(00:34):
the rise of social media, one topic thatI'm excited to address is mental health.
Regardless of one's age, background,and socioeconomic status,
maintaining one's mentalhealth is a constant battle.
To join me in this discussion, I broughton former Hoover Veteran Fellow and
Naval officer, Matt Brown,CEO of Chimney Trail Health,
(00:56):
a behavioral healthcare companyspecializing in preventative adaptations
of cognitive behavioral therapy,commonly referred to as CBT.
For those of you unfamiliar, CBT isa form of psychotherapy that focuses
on the relationship between thoughts,feelings, and behaviors.
Having overcome my own challengeswith mental health and
(01:18):
witnessed its devastating effect inthe veteran community and beyond,
I knew Matt would be a good sparringpartner to have this conversation with.
I do need to give you a heads up and
warn you that at times we geta bit heavy and vulnerable.
To be honest, I even shed a few tears.
But I hope this discussion helps movethe conversation forward about how to
(01:40):
address mental health in our own lives andfor others.
As always, I hope you enjoyed today's showand look forward to hearing your feedback.
Matt, my brother, thank you forcoming on Frontline Voices.
How you doing, sir?
>> Matt Brown (01:54):
I couldn't be better.
Always fun to come on Iron Mike show,no matter which one it is.
>> 'Iron' Mike Steadman (01:59):
Yeah, we've had quite a different podcasts over the years,
but this one is a littlebit close to heart.
Anytime you see mepersonally hosting a show,
it means it's a subject thatI'm really passionate about and
particularly stuff that creates likean impact in the veteran space.
So, no, everything that we've been ableto do over the last few years with
the veteran Fellowship program, you know,reaching change makers, and then now with
(02:20):
this platform, complimenting that bybringing on voices such as yourself.
And I think today's conversation is goingto be really good because, you know,
we're trying to get out of the classrooma little bit with this show and
talk about kind of issues thatare affected by policy, but
kind of bringing thathuman component to it.
And unless you've been living undera rock like the last five years,
(02:42):
mental health is like, it's.
It's a real thing.
I think when I was first goingto the Naval Academy, right.
You have this perception, and I'm gonnaask you about this as we talk about
the challenges with mental health andbeing a veteran and stuff, etc.
And it was hard forme to really see when I was younger, but
(03:03):
now that you're starting to get older,you start losing classmates and friends.
And then as entrepreneurs,you every day is a battle.
All it takes is to wake up one day andsay, I don't want to compete anymore.
So I'm really excited to the insightsthat you're going to bring.
So I know I talked a little bit, butlet's go ahead and just kind of have you
introduce yourself to everyone and whatyou're doing with Chimney Trail Health.
>> Matt Brown (03:26):
You got it.
Hey, Iron Mike, thanks forhaving me on the show.
Grateful as always.
I'm Matt Brown.
I'm the founder and CEO of Chimney TrailHealth, and what we do is we create
preventive adaptations of somethingcalled cognitive behavior theory.
So you go to a psychologist, and
they'll give you something calledcognitive behavioral therapy.
And there's a ton of value in that.
And we wanted to essentiallytake that magic that's
(03:48):
happening inside the office and.
And present it in a more egalitarian wayso that everybody can do it, whether or
not they think that therapy is right forthem.
It's a really good way of sort of finetuning your own mental processes.
>> 'Iron' Mike Steadman (04:02):
Can you define CBT a little bit more for
our audience that isn't familiar with it?
I know, for one, like,I wasn't as familiar with it, but,
outside of the podcast,I'm a professional business coach, and so
I'm always diving into literature andstuff like that.
And I recently came across a bookcalled Socrates about Socrates and
him talking about.
They equated, like,his kind of philosophy with cbt, and
that got me thinking about you.
>> Matt Brown (04:23):
So you got it.
Yeah.So CBT, when you hear the word CBT,
what people are talking about iscognitive behavioral therapy, and
that is you actually go talkto a trained clinician,
and they step you throughthe principles of CVT,
which is essentially that we have a coupleof different modes of thinking, and
sometime our faster mode of thinking leadsto what they call cognitive distortions.
(04:48):
And cognitive distortions exist becausehuman beings are not inherently rational.
We always thought that wewere inherently rational, but
it turns out that we think in termsof things called prospect theory.
And so cognitive distortions come up, and
it's just unclear ways of thinking aboutthings that exist or might not exist.
(05:08):
And the good news for us is that there,there might be an infinite number of these
cognitive distortions out there, butfor most human beings there are 10.
And so if you learn about these cognitivedistortions through working with a trained
clinician in like cognitivebehavioral therapy, or
you work with us on our program,
we teach you about those distortions andthen you can overcome them.
(05:31):
And what it ends up doing is itends up like if you're having
really bad anxiety or depression,you're in this ruminative thought pattern.
If you learn these theories,it can arrest that thought pattern and
put you on a much healthier path.
>> 'Iron' Mike Steadman (05:46):
So, I want you to put your thought leader hat on for
me now because like 10 yearsago I never even heard CBT.
Then the first time I started hearingabout it was connecting with you.
And now I'm hearing it a lot more like,what changed?
Why is this so prevalent now?
>> Matt Brown (06:02):
I think it's prevalent now because there's this huge wave of interest
in stopping the stigma when it comesto talking about mental health related
concerns.
I also think that frankly, we've beensort of glued to social media and
that has exacerbated some of ourbehavioral health related concerns.
(06:23):
You might know Jonathan Haidt, Dr.Height from New York University,
and his great book the Anxious Generation.
This is leading people to have, okay, I'vegot kids that are tremendously anxious or
they're suffering some sort ofclinical level of depression.
What are we going to do about it?
And CBT as founded by Dr. Aaron T Beckout of the University of Pennsylvania,
(06:46):
it's been around for 40, 50 years,it's been around forever.
And it's one of those things that I love.
You're talking about operationalizingconcepts, this CBT is one of those things
that can be put to work,it doesn't need to live in an Ivory Tower.
You can roll it out 50 years of,of evidence based data and it's, and
(07:07):
if you practice it,you can get good at it.
It's just not that hard.
>> 'Iron' Mike Steadman (07:13):
When I was, I'm gonna take off my armor here and
get a little bit vulnerable.
So in 2023, it was the summer 23 andI was on a podcast like this, except
it was going live for an organization,got bunker called Bunker Labs.
And I got a call from my best friend andhe said, pick up the phone,
I need to talk to you.
And I couldn't talk to him causeI was live on the podcast.
(07:34):
And then I found out that one ofour friends had committed suicide.
He shot himself in the ass.
And I found out right then andthere on the podcast and I had to break.
I mean, I just couldn't do it.
I had to hop off.
I was like, I'm sorry, and stuff, etc.
And that put me in a very sad placebecause for us as entrepreneurs, you know,
(07:55):
we always do this kind of stuff, thinkingthat there's this long term outreach.
Outcome, that's what we're grindingtowards, that we're working towards.
But we had never imagined that whatif this is all we have, you know,
like in the grind?
Because make no mistake, Matt andI are still in the grind of building.
You agree, butyou start losing people, especially so
(08:15):
tragically like that it createdlike a existential crisis where
I start to kind of just reallylook internally, am I fulfilled?
Am I all these different things?
And I realized that, I was verydepressed because that happened and
I had to tell my teamthat I was depressed.
I told my partner Simone thatI was depressed as well.
And I went ahead and hiredan entrepreneurial mental health coach and
(08:39):
immediately started working with her.
And then during that time I start to.
I'd always kind of investedin the self help stuff, but
really leaning into kind of reading andjournaling and really prioritizing kind
of woo woo self care, but it matters,even if it's just getting a haircut and
a hot shave towel andI have self care Thursday that I do.
(09:02):
But it just brought that kind offront to front to mind for me.
And so much of what I've done isparticularly in this space of like veteran
entrepreneurship.
I've been trying to kind of redefine orshow other sides of veterans that's not
like, hey, we're all broken, we need help,the mental health and stuff, et cetera.
>> Matt Brown (09:23):
Yeah. >> 'Iron' Mike Steadman
as I'm getting older, I'm seeing more andmore people breaking down.
So yes to everything that you just said.
And first of all, thanks forbeing vulnerable in that way.
I think it's important that we feelfree to talk about that stuff when we do
at Chimney Trail Health,when we do our seminars and
(09:45):
we're teaching people about prospecttheory and cognitive behavior theory,
a huge chunk of it is actually solicitingstories from the people that are in
the cohort or the crowd that,that we're presenting this material to.
And what you discover very quicklyis that you are anything but alone.
That in every crowd there's two or
three other people thathave that very same story.
(10:06):
And on this podcast,there's only two of us.
And I have that story.
The whole company Chimney Trail Healthwas founded because I was a captain
of one of our Navy ships.
I rotated to be a part of Seal Team 17 fora while and I was in that job for
about a year.
And I got a phone call fromthe new captain of my old ship and
he Said our best young officer,
(10:27):
a guy that we thought was going to bethe chief of Naval operations one day,
had gone to Marine Corps Exchange and hebought a gun and he took his own life and
sat with his folks in a hospitalas he was passing away.
And it alters the trajectory of your life.
But what I think I've learned fromthis is that you can approach it
(10:48):
like one of two ways.
You can live in that andthen not do anything about it, or
you can do exactly like you did,which was start taking action.
You can find somebody tohelp get you through it.
I did the same.
And it sorta led to this journey, whichis introducing CBT concepts to people
before they need it ina preventive context.
(11:09):
And I think the more people learnabout it, the better off we'll be.
>> 'Iron' Mike Steadman (11:13):
So when we're younger, right, at the Naval Academy,
I was three time national boxing champ,two time most bio boxer captain,
my boxing team Marine infantry officer.
You felt like nothing could break you,right?
And you went through yourdifferent challenges.
But I don't feel like a lot of thosechallenges when we were younger were
that kind of existential type ofchallenges maybe for some people.
And I went through a lot atthe Naval Academy my sophomore year,
(11:36):
my mom had a stroke dealing with that.
Coming out of a single parent home,being in a tough environment like that,
going to Afghanistan, fighting a goodfight as an infantry officer, but
telling you, I don't know what it is,but like, and just being.
Maybe it's entrepreneurship,maybe it's just we're getting older or
(11:57):
what it is, but the battle againstmental health is a lot different at this
older age than I feel likeit was when we were younger.
>> Matt Brown (12:07):
So I'm gonna agree with you, but
then I'm gonna put a caveat on that.
So first of all,I know it feels different, right?
But when you're younger, you're justall ahead, flank, no matter what it is.
And it's almost like,you know, you just got so
much in front of you that youdon't have time to reflect.
In the psychiatric community,they call what, as you age,
you start to do this thingcalled surveying, that.
(12:28):
That's the word that they use forit, surveying.
And it's the process of reflectingon the years that have gone by.
And it's this process of tryingto figure out whether or
not the values that you have are actuallyconsistent with what you're living.
And the, and the bigger that delta,the more trouble that you have.
The problem is a lot of times weare really bad at figuring out what
(12:51):
that delta actually is.
Your values might be here, andhere's where you're living.
But for some reason, in.
Because of we're predictably irrational,you might end up feeling like you're over
here, and that leads to anxiety anddepression, all that kind of stuff.
And I think the big difference isthat you have to be more measured as
(13:12):
an adult in the way thatyou approach problems.
Let me ask you, how did you learn to box?
>> 'Iron' Mike Steadman (13:21):
Man.
In the ring.>> Matt Brown: It was a process.
Yeah.Yeah.
In the ring.
Tell me, walk me through it.
Like, tell me how.
Tell me how you learn.
Yeah. So, obviously at the Naval Academy, right,
you show up to the gym,you practice, you don't know how to.
You don't even know howto protect yourself.
Coach teaches you a couple punches.
Now, you spend the majority ofyour time shadow boxing, right?
Then you start moving to the heavy bag.
(13:41):
You train on the heavy bag.
You do your jump ropes,you do all the kind of basic training and
then your kind of physical training.
But we would spar consistently.
Every Tuesday andThursday, you would spar.
And at first it was hard because, you feellike you're making all this progress on
your shadowboxing, you're making allthis progress on the heavy bag, and
then you get in the ring andnone of it's translated.
>> Matt Brown (14:02):
Doesn't work.
>> 'Iron' Mike Steadman (14:03):
Doesn't work.
And one day I realized that this washappening, and there was another boxer.
His name was Chris O'Brien.
And me and him were like,he had this thick Boston accent.
One day he walked in, he was like,hey, yo, Mike, you want to spar?
I was like, sure, let's go.
We start sparring, andwe start sparring every day.
Hey, Mike, you want to spar?
We sparred for 30 days straight.
(14:24):
Probably not the best to recommend, butwhat it did was it got me comfortable.
Being in the ring.
That was a big part of that.
And I realized that, like, I needed toprioritize that, like, sports specific
training of sparring, because sparringis where everything translates.
You can be the best athitting the heavy bag,
you can be the best at doing the shadowbox and looking good on mitts.
(14:46):
But until you're under that pressure andyou find yourself in the ringer,
that's when it becomes real.
>> Matt Brown (14:52):
That's it, man.
Everything.It's all good until somebody gets punched
in the face.
And it's the same thing withbehavioral healthcare and
training on how to forge elite mindsets.
Imagine if you went to that boxing ringon your first day, and you were like,
hey, I want.
Hey, coach, I want to learn how to box.
And they were like, hey, here's an app.
You'd be like,what am I gonna do with this app?
(15:14):
I can't.
And that's exactly what's happening inthe space, is that there's an app for
that for pretty much everything in life.
But the problem is that you have to putin the work, and you have to do it.
So what we're doing at work every day isworking with our Chief Clinical Officer,
Dr. Leah Blaine, and
trying to figure out how do we createthat sparring experience for people?
(15:36):
How do we make it so that you're sparringagainst the part of your brain that's
feeding you informationthat's just not so?
And what we've uncovered is that you gottalearn about cognitive behavior theory.
You have to learn about prospect theory,but
just knowing about it is not gonnaget you the outcomes you need.
You have to get in the ring.
And so what we've done is wemail you these boxes, and
(15:57):
inside each box,there's a little activity.
And it's got fun little.
It's a high quality stuff.
It's, high quality tools foroutdoor activities.
But you do the activity andyou read about the material and the,
the combination of doing that is yourmental equivalent of being in that ring.
(16:17):
And that's where we're seeingthe outcomes, is people doing the work.
And that's the secret Elixir.
>> 'Iron' Mike Steadman (16:24):
So let me ask you this though, and
this is something that I've come to.
To think about, pontificate onwhat a lot of people don't know.
Well, they, Some do because I talkedabout my podcast was one of the when
I was at the Naval Academy, like I said,
dealing with my mom havingthat stroke issue, right?
I lost my first boxing match in front ofmy entire class, Plebe Summer which was
our intramural boxing tournament atthe Cat Naval Academy in 30 seconds.
(16:47):
Completely embarrassed, right?
So I had that happen.
And then when I went to Afghanistan, youspend all this time going to the academy,
training to be an infantry officer,you're fighting a good fight in combat.
The last month of our deployment,
I got relieved of command in combat fora bad operation that I led.
(17:09):
And that was another very dark place.
But so much of that happened early on inmy life that I feel like I was able to
build up some kind of mental resiliencethat I appreciate later because.
Because when I am going through hardtimes, I have these other areas of life,
these little dark places that I'vebeen able to bounce back from.
And when you deal with people, let's callthem high performers or whatever you want
(17:31):
to call it, right, that may or may nothave had that big significant miles,
that big significant,like gut check early on in life, and
they start dealing with it a littlebit later, they don't have.
I could only imagine going through someof the stuff I went through early at this
age and having a prostate at this momentin time and not have that to fall back on.
>> Matt Brown (17:53):
I think you're right.
I mean, you hear some peoplesay the obstacle is the way.
And if you can get through it early and
you sort of mature into this ideathat it's not the critic who counts.
Like we were talking earlier about,
like making sure that you're livingconsistent with your values.
Okay, you had a mishap in combat or youhad a bad decision that you wish you could
(18:16):
have done differently, but at this age,hopefully in your surveying process,
you're seeing, okay,the values gap was actually really tight.
Because in order to be in that position,to have to make that decision, good or
bad, to begin with, you had to doall these other things, right,
in order to be entrustedwith that responsibility.
And you know damn good and well thatif presented the same situation in
(18:37):
the future,you would not make that same mistake.
It served to, like,sharpen the sword, so to speak, and
make you a better officer anda more complete citizen moving forward.
And you won't be the first personwho's made a mistake in combat.
It's the most dynamic environment that,you know, outside of maybe space
exploration, that a human being can existin, and you certainly won't be the last.
(18:59):
And if you can piece that together,then I think you see, yeah,
my integrity is intact.
And that's really important topreserving your own behavioral health.
>> 'Iron' Mike Steadman (19:07):
And when people always ask me now, they say,
what would you tell your younger self?
I go back, say, forgiveness,because when you're younger,
you think you can conquer the whole world.
You can do all these different things.
But then you take a step back and
you realize, man,nobody had Afghanistan filled out.
That was a very hard dynamic.
They pump us up as Marine officers, right?
Very proud of my service.
(19:28):
But I do have to kinda give myselfgrace and recognize, like, hey,
that was a very hard, kinetic,kinda chaotic environment.
And you and I both know that, like,what's the saying that, like,
safety is an illusion,that the world has always been chaotic.
We just create systems andthings to make it feel more safe for us so
we don't have to deal with the realityof all this chaos at times.
>> Matt Brown (19:51):
That's it.
And, you know,I'm not a trained psychologist.
I'm not a licensed clinical social worker.
I'm just a ship captain that was tryingto make a difference in the space and
is working.
The good news is that I get towork with the best that there is.
And if Dr. Blaine was on with us today,she would take that example that you gave,
and she'd say, hey, at the time, you werewrestling with a cognitive distortion that
(20:14):
we see all the time in CBT calledpersonalisation and self blame.
And so that circumstance, whatever it mayhave been, you can own a piece of it.
Certainly you need to have accountabilityfor your part in whatever it is.
But the circumstances that led to that andthe results that extend beyond it,
you have to figure out how to dialin what, what is Mike's deal and
what was the circumstances.
(20:36):
And it takes practice to figure outhow to do that forgiveness exercise.
And I'm glad you did it.
That's an example to all of us.
>> 'Iron' Mike Steadman (20:43):
And back then I didn't really know how to journal, right.
I just had this rule that Ideveloped in boxing which was, hey,
when I decide I want to be the best boxer,I locked in, no alcohol, do your workouts,
really just kind of focus on that.
So when I got back from Afghanistan,that's exactly what I did.
No alcohol, locked in,went to the gym and was focused and
was able to get myself out of that space.
(21:05):
But now, and I think these are thingseveryday Americans are facing with because
I see it especially in communitieslike Newark and Harlem.
And then you visit SF,you visit some of these other places.
A lot of people out hereare self-medicating.
>> Matt Brown (21:18):
Yeah. >> 'Iron' Mike Steadman
cannabis, right, and it's real easyto think that these are other people,
but these are people withinour existing community.
People that look successful on paper andthey are, right.
But a lot of people are dealing with likevery kind of challenging, dramatic stuff,
and they're finding otherways to cope instead of.
(21:39):
Because I think even what we're talkingabout with like the CBT approach, right.
It still takes work.
But people even in an environmentthat cultivates that kind of growth,
you're right on the money.
And in CBT, they talk a lot about, you might have an automatic thought
process because the human being,the human brain is, is wired.
(22:01):
It's not wired for your happiness,it's wired for your survival.
And so you might be going along havingthese automatic thoughts that your brain
thinks are key to your survival.
And CBT teaches you to check on thosethoughts because they might not be true.
You have to evaluate them for rationality.
The example we always use is a bat anda ball together cost A$10.
(22:24):
The bat is a dollar more than the ball.
How much does the ball cost?
Everybody thinks it's 10 cents,it's actually 5.
But our brain operates inthese automatic states.
What we don't often talk about whenwhen either in therapy or in seminars or
wherever is that sometimes it's not theconscious thought process that we really
need to evaluate, it's our behavior.
(22:44):
So you might decide, I'm not touchingalcohol because I've been going through
a dark place andI know that that's self medicating.
I know it's bad for me, but you findyourself sort of automatically doing it
anyway or just like letting yourguard down and just self medicating.
And what Dr. Blaine would tell you if shewas here is she'd say that is the thing
that you need to catch.
(23:05):
It's like, hey,I'm catching that behavior.
And then in CBT, they talk about catchingand then checking the rationality of
it and then changing your mindif it makes sense to do so.
So if you end up drinking orself medicating or whatever,
that's something that the awakepart of your brain can catch and
then you can check on it and change.
>> 'Iron' Mike Steadman (23:27):
And well, I'm surprised,
this might be a little offensiveto some people though, right?
But as you get older,you start to learn these things, man.
There's alcohol all around the military,all around the military, and
nothing against people that drink, right?
That's not what I'm saying.
I'm just saying that you have thisdemographic that is dealing with some very
(23:47):
kinda challenging kinda lifestyle andstuff, etc.
And their whole way of decompressing isto go get hammered, on the weekends or
whatever, and then now they leave thatenvironment, they're going back to sports.
Civilian world.
And what are they doing?
Going back to those old habits, right?
And so just, you just get,I'm being honest here, y'all.
As I get older, I just start to lookat things a little bit different and
(24:11):
start to ask some kinda more,kinda challenging questions.
>> Matt Brown (24:15):
Yeah, I mean, a perfect example of this is what,
so Chimney Trail Health is the company,but
then we have a foundation thatClaudia Flores, another VFPer, she runs.
And her mission in life right nowis to go around to American Legion,
VFW, DAV, those sorts of veteranservice organization outposts.
(24:36):
And she's trying to bring inmoney to renovate those places.
Because if you walk in them right now,it's a bar or
a bingo hall or something like that.
And so you're not thinking about sort ofthe environment that we enjoyed going
through a program like Bunker Labs,
which was inspiring veterans to havethis entrepreneurial mindset and
give back in the community andstart serving in a different way.
(24:59):
You definitely aren't getting what folksare getting if they participate in the VFP
program at the Hoover Institution,
which is also inspiring thatsort of give back mentality.
You go into an American Legionin my hometown,
it's a bingo hall witha bar with cheap beer.
And it's a recipe for behavior that youwish you weren't participating in, but
(25:20):
you find yourself there anyway.
And it's funny that you mentionedthat this is a cultural thing because
I'll be out with friendsthat are in the service.
And it doesn't even matter if they're inyour peer group, they could be younger,
older, and if somebody hands you a beer,
there's this implicit expectationthat you're gonna participate.
(25:41):
And I don't even really,I don't like drinking at all.
And so my wife Jen, she alwaysmakes fun of me because she's like,
you always take that beer ifsomebody offers it to you,
even though I know thatyou don't enjoy it.
[LAUGH] And it's true,because it's hardwired into us.
So breaking that,it's a challenge and it takes, and
when's the last time youdid something alone?
(26:03):
Never, so why would you expect thatyou should do this journey alone?
>> 'Iron' Mike Steadman (26:06):
Yeah, And I host happy hours all across the country, right?
Host them here in New York City.
I do drink non-alcoholic beer, butagain, I'm just thinking again,
as I'm getting older, just being a lotmore aware, man, there's so many traps and
so many landmines, right?
And I'm not saying you have to be anentrepreneur to understand just how hard
the world is at time.
(26:26):
I just think we're more intuned, right?
Because those, we just feel it a lot more.
You feel exposed, right?
You lose that safety net.
But man, every time I walk out my door,I'm like,
look at all these landmines out here.
I see people high smoking weed all day.
And in my experience that's beencausing in my personal network,
from a lot of boxers that I've dealtwith over the years in Newark,
(26:49):
I have seen marijuana cause schizophrenia.
>> Matt Brown (26:53):
Yeah, yeah.
>> 'Iron' Mike Steadman (26:54):
People just start, while I'm not a doctor,
I'm not anything like that.
I'm just talking off of my ownkind of personal lived experience.
And so I'm just,I'm constantly trying to encourage vets.
I'm constantly trying to encourage youthI've dealt with at Iron Balance to avoid
those landmines.
>> Matt Brown (27:11):
I think you're right on the money.
I mean we do a lot about adjusting the waythat we talk about mental illness,
behavioral healthcare,the stop the stigma campaign.
And along with that,there's been this huge effort to sort of
introduce alternative modalities forgetting better.
And so you hear about ketamines orwhatever the psychedelic
(27:32):
medication happens to be orpharmaceutical intervention.
And in a controlled environmentwith the right people,
those things can be really powerful.
Because we always talk about theseruminative thought patterns that lead
to destructive anxiety and
depression would be like a personwalking on the surface of clay.
If you keep walking over that samesurface, you're going to dig a ditch.
(27:55):
And sometimes having that psychedelicintervention or that pharmaceutical
intervention, it can pull you up out ofthe ditch and put you back on flat ground.
And then you can do the workwith something like CBT
to reestablish positive thought patterns,or
if not positive, at least neutral andthought patterns based in reality.
But what happens is that folks don'tdo it in a controlled atmosphere.
(28:17):
Instead they start that self medicationprocess you're talking about and
they end up doing more harm than good.
Instead of resetting and getting on aneven keel, they just drop a nuclear bomb
in the middle of their thoughtpatterns and then it's hard to escape.
>> 'Iron' Mike Steadman (28:30):
So, okay, this is good because it's a podcast,
we're talking about this stuff.
This is free speech.
I'm not as informed as you, butI'm gonna share my view, and
please tell me if I'm wrong orwhatever, okay?
One of the things I worry about with somuch kinda medicating,
particularly people that are dealingwith mental health issues,
is in the Marine Corps,we say be brilliant in the basics.
(28:51):
Can you shoot, move andcommunicate, right?
In a civilian world, are you getting rest?
Are you drinking water, right?
Are you getting some movement in?
Are you breaking a sweat?
Are you having nurturing relationships,right?
Are you brilliant in prioritizing andamplifying those things first?
And then if that's not working, right,
(29:13):
maybe you're adding additionalkinda stuff in, right?
But that's not what I'm seeing inmy personal experience, right?
I'm seeing people that are really havinga hard time figuring stuff out and
they're kinda trying andexploring a bunch of different stuff.
And I worry that, hey man,let's prioritize the main thing.
(29:34):
I have a whole coach.
His name's Robert Hamilton Owen,shout out to Robert.
And I'm training forNew York City Marathon.
I also have a peak performancecoach I work with named Melissa.
And I'm always going, what's the one thingthat if I nail funnels everything else?
And for me it's getting in bed early andgetting up early,.
(29:55):
If I can do that, I'm not saying lifeisn't hard, but it's just I can face
challenges a lot differently when I'mtaking care of business on that front
versus when I'm not getting rest, I'm notworking out, I'm not hydrated, right?
It's really like going to war every day.
>> Matt Brown (30:13):
Yeah, I mean, and I don't know that, so
what you just described is basicallyall of us, I mean every single one.
If you can get brilliant in the basics,then you're covered.
I think the pharmaceuticalmedication side of this,
you'll never hear me saya cross word about it.
What I will say is a cross wordabout doing or for self medicating,
(30:35):
not having the rightintervention at the right time.
So if you wanna getbrilliant in the basics,
sometimes you need a pharmaceuticalintervention to level set so
that you can startreestablishing those patterns.
Because you've dug a ditch that's toodeep to climb out of yourself and
you could use a hand.
But all of that stuff needs to bein a super controlled environment.
And I think you would find thatmost psychiatrists would tell you,
(30:58):
at least the ones that we work with,
they would tell you that the idea is notto just be on these things indefinitely.
It's not to be on a pharmaceuticalintervention forever.
Some cases that might be necessary,but oftentimes it's not.
What it really is is to sort ofrescue you from that ditch and
then give you the opportunity to start inon those habits that you're talking about,
(31:20):
whether it's getting to bed on time,waking up on time, hydrating.
It's funny that youmentioned those things,
because we've got a waypointkit at Chimney Trail Health.
It's the third one in our series of fourthat we send out to the Armed Forces.
And the fourth one is setting a new habit.
And it's exactly that.
There's some resistance bands,there's an eye mask for sleep,
(31:41):
there's a water bottle for hydration.
It's all these basics that you sorta just,if you go to war, it's the best kinda
war because you can check in with yourselfat the end of that day and be like,
hey, did I do all those things?
And if you didn't, you could,you don't need to beat yourself up.
You can say, okay,let's get at it again tomorrow.
And get right back up on the horse.
>> 'Iron' Mike Steadman (32:01):
Yeah.
And again, like I said, I.
I appreciate you making space tokind of have these discussions now,
because sometimes it's like you can't eventalk about this stuff because people have
their own opinions.
But even when I did talk withmy mental health coach about it,
she is way more educated than,like, me, and
she did kind of make the sameargument that you did as well.
(32:22):
I just, for me as a coach, I'm alwaystrying to think about, like, man,
how can we cover down on these things?
But again, as I get older,I'm less reactive and more reflective.
And so being reflective, sometimes you dohear those different opinions and stuff.
Now, I remember how I said atthe beginning of this podcast how a lot of
what I try to do in the veteran spaceis push a lot more kind of positivity.
>> Matt Brown (32:45):
Yeah. >> 'Iron' Mike Steadman
I try to stay away from the heavy stuff.
So this might be one ofthe heavier episodes.
But, we talked early on about how suicide.
Another thing I wanna run by you and hearyour perspective on is, I love the word
excellence, and particularly thisconcept of normalizing excellence.
It's like the first episode I had withGreg on, we talked about what that means.
(33:06):
Whereas you see someone in a space, andthen all of a sudden it normalizes it for
you, that's possible.
You know, seeing Matt Brown,a veteran fellow at Stanford,
at the Hoover Institution, like,now I see that's possible for me.
Right.
But what's the reverse of that?
And for me, I think that in the veterancommunity in particular, is suicide.
(33:27):
Because for me,I don't feel like I really.
Growing up, maybe I was protectedfrom it or whatnot, but
I feel like being in the veteran space,going to a combat zone.
Like, you're constantly hearingabout suicide amongst veterans,
suicide amongst veterans, and
all of a sudden this option that youdidn't even know existed, now it's there.
(33:50):
Does that make sense?
Yeah, it does make sense.
>> 'Iron' Mike Steadman (33:56):
And I worry about that, is what I'm getting at.
>> Matt Brown (33:59):
Yeah. You worry about the exposure to it
becoming a risk factor all its own.
>> 'Iron' Mike Steadman (34:04):
Correct.
>> Matt Brown (34:05):
I worry about the same thing.
I don't know that the numbersbear out in terms of, like,
that being a legitimate risk factor,but it feels like it is.
It feels like the more that you hear aboutit, the more it's become normalized,
the more it.
But I think that we're living in a superdynamic time when it comes to how we
ingest information, our media diet, theway that we communicate with one another,
(34:27):
the isolation that people sort of selfimpose by staying recluse in their
apartment and just surfing through TikTokand Instagram all night, self medicating.
There are all these other risk factorsthat I think are contributing far more
than our awareness of it.
I think that the other piece is.
It feels like it might becomemore of an option, but
(34:50):
it's that we're just seeingwhat already existed.
Like we're seeing the resultsof sort of our behaviors for
the last 25 years, found manifest in thismoment of having to grapple with suicide,
whether it's in a veteran ormilitary community.
And frankly it's allthe communities because,
the most Recent Surgeon General, Dr.Murphy or Murthy, he said,
(35:14):
look, of all the health challengesthat we have as a society, Covid,
Cardiac arrest, car accidents,you name the thing, isolation,
mental illness the lack ofpreservation of our own behavioral
healthcare is what he consideredto be our greatest threat.
And so I don't know what to do about.
(35:40):
It's got to be in front of our face.
And then I think it's on all of us to makesure that it doesn't become a real option.
Here's the thing, if you feel like itis scientifically, this isn't like my
opinion or whoever, but if you feel liketaking your own life is the, is the right
option for you, because you know you best,every psychiatrist, psychologist,
(36:01):
licensed clinical social worker,chaplain, whatever, in the whole country,
whole world would tell youscientifically you are wrong about that.
>> 'Iron' Mike Steadman (36:10):
Of course. >> Matt Brown
we start that every one of our seminars.
We start with, with that because peoplefeel like they know themselves best.
So of course if I'm feeling it,it must be true.
And that just ain't so, yeah.
And the reason I like again, the reason I'm.
I'm talking about this cuz I've beenthinking about writing about it.
But how do you write about it in a way,like growing up,
(36:31):
how many people did youknow commit murder, right?
Like in your personal network.
>> Matt Brown (36:37):
Nobody in my personal network.
>> 'Iron' Mike Steadman (36:39):
Nobody. >> Matt Brown
Now, imagine if you grow up and
now it's ten people in your personalnetwork that's committed murder, right?
>> Matt Brown (36:46):
Yeah. >> 'Iron' Mike Steadman
probably like, man,who are you hanging out with, okay?
Growing up, I virtually knewnobody that committed suicide.
Right?Now I have lost count yeah,
and there's words a lot Iworry about of like, yo,
what is it about this environment,being military veteran and you can.
Try to blind yourself to that stuff asmuch as you can, but the older you get and
(37:07):
the closer it affects you, losing closefriends to these things, like to now where
you're subconsciously always worried whenyou don't hear from somebody, like, hey
buddy, yeah, just checking on you, makingsure you're good, doing a buddy check.
I feel like I have to be or we have to beway more prevalent about that versus like.
(37:30):
Before you're right, I mean, and you do you end up carrying that
load because heaven forbid somebody doesdie by suicide, die by their own hand.
And you're like, I could have taken thatphone call, I should have made that,
I should have sent that text message.
And there you have a cognitive distortioncalled should statements where you end up
shooting all over yourself trying to,trying to explain away,
(37:53):
why you didn't make that intervention oryou personalization and self blame
because you should have made that phonecall or whatever the case might be.
You're right, it's a huge cognitiveload to have to carry around.
Not just your own well being, but
everybody that you wentthrough military service with.
But honestly,it's not even just military service.
(38:13):
I mean the entrepreneurial communitystruggles with this high performance
organizations across the board.
We do a lot of work for Arson Young.
It's like a huge Fortune100 level company.
Their folks are working under tremendousstrain and they're front leaning.
I mean I'd never seen an organization thatcares as much about human performance and
(38:35):
the return on investmentof treating people right.
Just from a number standpoint.
They do it because it'sthe good right thing to do.
But they're also a company,so they got to meet.
It's a bottom line thing too.
But you really,you have to train yourself,
you have to train organizations to knowhow to intervene and be engaged and
(38:55):
create community, butnot own everything that you can't control.
>> 'Iron' Mike Steadman (39:01):
You got me a little emotional while you're talking, and
I'm gonna tell you why.
Whenever we go do these kind ofpublic speaking events, right?
And you do a mess night andthey got the table there for
the people that can't in room, right?
You always thought you'd be havingthose tables for people that,
we lost in combat, right?
>> Matt Brown (39:22):
Yeah.
>> 'Iron' Mike Steadman (39:23):
But sometimes now when I speak, I think of everybody.
The ones we lost in combat,the one we took through on life.
And when you talked about,I wish I would have text back or
I wish I would have done something.
When I was in this last year,I went to Nepal.
I went trekking Everest base Camp.
I did this big trek upto Everest base Camp and
I got a message froma marine I served with.
(39:46):
A fellow officer that basically was like,Mike, she drained the bank account.
I'm going through a tough time, yada.
I hadn't talked to this guy in 10 years,right?
And he asked if he could talk to me.
Right, and if I could send him somemoney to hold him over, whatever.
It was so weird.
I never, I didn't talk to him in 10 years.
(40:08):
I don't talk to him.
I come off that mountain.
That Marine committed suicide now.
>> Matt Brown (40:15):
Yeah. >> 'Iron' Mike Steadman
hit up a bunch of us, a bunch ofofficers that he served with and
seems like he was kinda up against it,etc.
But I still have his textmessage like in my phone.
And that's just like a random Tuesday.
Yeah.
>> 'Iron' Mike Steadman (40:31):
So it's just been weird these last few years having to just
again, I talk about getting older,way more prevalent and
I know a lot of young junior enlisted,sadly, they were dealing with that stuff.
Buddies taking their life really early,a very few couple years, getting out,
I cannot even list the number of namesanymore of people we have lost to this.
>> Matt Brown (40:57):
I share your sense of urgency when it comes to doing
something about it.
I try really hard to take experienceslike the one that you had,
I've had plenty, and channel thatinto getting this information,
this evidence-based modality offixing our thought processes.
(41:18):
I try to get it out toas many people as I can.
And the thing that really frustrates me,man, is that you got stories like yours.
And horrifyingly,that is not a unique story.
That's all of us thing.
And we'll try to roll thisout at different places and
they'll say, Chimney trail, health.
(41:40):
Your particular modality is not evidencebased yet and it's because the introducing
bibliotherapeutic principles throughthis kinesthetic learning activity.
It's all these big buzzwords, but
doing that hasn't been studied becausewe're the only ones that do it.
We have studied it ourselves andwe're collecting the data and
doing all this stuff but what drives meinsane is that folks are falling in love
(42:03):
with studying this problem.
Falling in love with the bumperstickers that say 22 a day.
Falling in love with sort of just beingmiserable about it rather than rapidly
iterating and trying to get to solutionsto make this problem disappear.
I say eliminate suicide.
And people are like, you never live ina world where you can eliminate suicide.
I was like, why we should be striving foranything less,
(42:26):
it's the most preventabledisease that exists.
Somebody dying by their own hand,we can make that go away.
Let's work at it.
If we never get there,it will have been a good effort.
And so that's what we're trying to do isjust channel that energy rather than sort
of becoming absorbed with self blame andall those sorts of things.
We just say, okay,how do we stop the next one?
>> 'Iron' Mike Steadman (42:49):
Now I know you and
I have been focused a lot talking aboutobviously the veteran community because
that's very near and dear to our heart,
particularly anybody thatserved in uniform but
we also have to be cognizant that like nonveterans are dealing with the same issues.
I'm not making this up.
I got a text today froma friend asking for
advice because her 10 year oldnephew tried to take his own life.
(43:11):
That was to date.
>> Matt Brown (43:13):
Yeah. >> 'Iron' Mike Steadman
it's very ironic because Ihave seen a lot more youth
suicide reading on the Internet andstuff like that.
So what are you seeing, what are youall seeing in the in for youth and
young adults and just civilians.
I mean we're all civilians now,let's be honest.
But you understand what I'm saying?
(43:34):
Yeah.
What you're saying is right.
So one of the things that droveChimney Trail from a good idea that maybe
should be a non profit for the veterancommunity into something that is
a scalable Delaware based C Corp thatis going to accelerate to the moon,
is that we read a statistic that1 in 10 children born today will
(43:56):
make an attempt on their own lifebefore they graduate from high school.
And to me when I read that, it waslike somebody just it broke my heart.
I couldn't believe it.
That, just seems 1 in 10 kids.
That means that there's more than one kidin every classroom in the United States
that is going to deal with this.
And we are, to our own peril,totally obstinate when it comes to
(44:19):
the very obvious reasons that we findourselves in this position to begin with.
Like nobody wants to renegotiate theirrelationship with their smartphone.
They don't want to double check howthey're behaving on Instagram Reels and
TikTok and you name the, I hate toname those two, but you get the idea.
It's the social media app Du Jour.
(44:42):
Nobody checks on the ready.
Essentially like unfettered access tofirearms and the advocacy of our second
amendment rights without a real discussionof our second amendment responsibilities.
I remember when I was a kid and I wantedto shoot a gun for the first time.
My dad made me go to the NRA totake lessons about gun safety.
(45:03):
And now I feel like every time I hearabout it, it's it's a, you know,
it's about how to get guns easier.
And I think there's some work thatneeds to be done there because,
70% of this stuff is happening by firearm.
And then the other piece is there's agreat book by Putnam called Bowling Alone.
And the premise of the book is thatwe've essentially lost the face to
(45:25):
face community.
We might be, video teleconferenceright now, but you and
I are having a real discussion andfolks that's absent in their life and
if they don't have a communitythat can stand in the gap and
challenge the thoughts that these folksthat are suffering are having about
themselves and the suffering personis just left of their own devices.
(45:47):
No wonder their first exit ramp is suicidebecause they just haven't had that
community exposure to sort of pushback on their distorted thinking.
>> 'Iron' Mike Steadman (45:56):
Yeah.
And I appreciate you even talking about,
gun violence because we are going to talkabout that on this show at some point.
But you and I both know the minute,somebody's having a hard time, right,
you haven't heard from first questions,where's the gun?
Does he have a gun?
>> Matt Brown (46:12):
Yeah. >> 'Iron' Mike Steadman
that wasn't the case.
Most of us out there,that's the first thing we,
we start thinking aboutthat comes to mind.
Now one thing I also wonder, right?
Like I'm watching the littleTaylor Sheridan shows, was it 1883?
And I think he got the other one 1923,etc.
But like, yo, life hasn't got like,we got a lot of abundance now, okay?
(46:36):
You can walk out the store,
get your mocha latte pretty muchanywhere in the world, right?
We have Wi-Fi, right?
People are making money now.
People are still struggling, butthere's a lot of opportunity, okay.
Versus what people hada hundred years ago.
It was literally the wild west wheremaybe a little bit more than a hundred
years ago, but it was not uncommonto lose lots of children.
(46:58):
You would have lots of children becauseyou already knew you would lose what.
But it seems like,we have life a lot easier yet.
More and more people are havingmental health issues.
So does that, that goes back to maybe whatyou're talking about that value imbalance.
Yeah. I mean, I think that checks out, right?
People were too busy to be self loathing,right.
Like they had put food on the table,
(47:20):
you couldn't be thinking about how youweren't, manifesting your complete
self and, and achieving thatmoment of self actualization.
If you had to chase a deer throughthe woods in order to eat,
you had to put food on the table.
So I think there was more likeindustriousness in your daily life.
You didn't have time to get into theseruminative thought patterns because
(47:42):
the ruminative thoughtpattern was in your stomach.
It was like, hey, man,you gotta eat, so get up and go.
Yeah.We have created space through our leisure
for particularly destructivemodes of thinking.
And if you don't know how to check it,
if you don't realize that you haveancestral thought patterns that.
Are not particularly usefulin a modern age, and
you have to learn how to control it.
(48:03):
It will eat you up.
It's distorted thinking, andit just needs retraining.
That's it.The good news is that it's, or
the bad news is that it's a pervasive,almost pandemic-level problem.
The good news is it's super brittle.
Once you learn the code,you can deconstruct it and
it will never attack you again.
>> 'Iron' Mike Steadman (48:24):
Yeah, and we're both older now.
Like I said,
I have the privilege of being a coachto a lot of successful entrepreneurs.
And a lot of people are strugglingwith very different challenges.
That thing, that success that wethought we'd have, it's very fleeting.
You see the coaches all the time.
One year they win a national championship,the next year they're about to damn
(48:47):
near have a mental breakdown duringthe postgame press conference, right?
And so, just, man,as we kinda wrap up here,
I would love you to kindagive our viewers, right,
just some, how do I say this?
Best practices, right, that they canstart to kinda implement on their own and
(49:07):
what you've learned at Chimney Trailto be kinda really good,
including my life in the basics.
I'm not saying that's the best thing, butI'm just saying when you go work out,
y'all know you feel a little bit better.
>> Matt Brown (49:19):
Yeah, yes.
So we start and end everything that wedo at Chimney Trail with one very clear
message, and we foot stomp it repeatedly.
It's that you have to become comfortable.
The number one thing you can do for
your own self-preservation isto challenge your thoughts.
You cannot let your brainjust do what it wants.
You have to be the captainof your own mind.
(49:41):
And that means that you need to challengeyour thoughts whether it's good or bad.
Sometimes you might havea good day at work and
then celebrate thatwildly out of proportion.
You have to check it with reality.
You have to,there's two systems of thinking.
Fastest, fast thinking heuristics, thetype of brain that drives from point A to
point B without you havingany recollection of it.
(50:03):
All of us have done that.
And then there's the slow thinking, whichis the part of your brain that's figuring
out how much you should leave fora tip at the end of dinner.
Whenever you're starting to get carriedaway, you have to engage that part of your
brain that you use at the end of dinnerwhen you're trying to calculate a tip.
You need to do the math andfigure out whether or
not what's causing the good orbad feeling is based in reality.
(50:24):
So challenge your thoughts.
And the good news is it's not like weighttraining, where you constantly need to be
putting more weight on the barin order to see improvement.
It's just something that you do,and it gets easier with time,
and you don't need toadd more weight to it.
You just challenge your thought.
You catch, you check, and you change,and you become better for it.
>> 'Iron' Mike Steadman (50:45):
You know what I tell people?
I'm a boxer, right?
So you gotta find sparring partners,right?
You just spar with your thoughts, andyou need to find sparring partners.
Even think about us, andhaving this conversation.
How many veterans, non-veterans, etc,
get to have these real conversationson a daily basis where you already
talked about loneliness,isolation, the remote work?
(51:06):
You can have people around you andstill be alone.
People at home,they got their families and stuff, but
they don't have that distance.
They don't have somebody that they canspar with outside of their spouse.
So I just think it's super important.
And like, I've told y'all, right, I'veinvested in mental health coaching, right?
I work with coaches on a regular basis,right, for that exact reason, to provide
that level of objectivity and allow meto spar with my thoughts a little bit.
(51:29):
So I appreciate you sharing that insight.
I'd be remiss, Matt, though, if we don'ttalk about what even brought us both
together in the first place,which is the Veteran Fellowship Program.
Can you talk a little bit about yourexperience there and what advice you have
to those out there that are wanting tolearn a little bit more about it and
whether or not they're a good fit.
>> Matt Brown (51:52):
There's no Chimney Trail Health without
the Veteran Fellowship Programas it currently exists.
We've got behavioral health preservationlegislation passed because of EFP's help.
We've done a ton of workthroughout our Armed Forces.
We have impacted so many lives.
We get email routinelyfrom people who say, hey,
(52:14):
I was having really dark thoughts andactually formulating a plan for suicide.
And I've decided to start thinking aboutthis differently as a result of having
been through this training program.
None of that would have been possible,certainly not at the pace that it's
happened, if it wasn't for the VeteranFellowship Program, Dr. Rice's leadership.
(52:35):
The board that actually comestogether to support the organization.
And Chimney Trail's specific case,
Admiral Gary Roughead really leaningin and taking an interest in the work
because he knew the seriousness of itfrom national security implication.
There's just so many brilliant mindsthere that are, that are just primed to
(52:57):
turn you loose if you've got the energyand the will to get something done.
So if you're working a big projectthat is gonna change the world and
you've got the guts to admit that toyourself, hey, I'm gonna change the world,
and you're crazy enough tostart the work of doing it.
VFP, I can't think of a better program,and
I'm trying every day to pay itforward what they've done for us.
>> 'Iron' Mike Steadman (53:20):
Well, Matt, we appreciate you coming on and
being my subject matterexpert on this subject.
I know it's a little bit heavy.
You got Iron Mike,had the tears come out a little bit.
But it's okay.
We're having real conversations, and Ithink there's something that I like about
podcasting, old school podcasts before,but got so performative, which was,
you would have these conversations.
So if people wanna learn moreabout Chimney Trail Health,
(53:42):
Chimney Trail Health, and they wannasupport Chimney Trail Foundation,
where do you want us to send them to?
>> Matt Brown (53:49):
You can just go to www.chimneytrailhealth.com, and
that's got everything you need.
You can reach out to me directly.
I'm at Matthew@chimneytrail.com,and I'll get you whatever you need,
put you in touch with the foundation,we'll get your company or
your command signed up forsome training, whatever.
We'll be there for you.
>> 'Iron' Mike Steadman (54:10):
Well, we appreciate you coming on with us today.
And as a reminder to all our listeners,
make sure you subscribe toFrontline Voices on Apple, Spotify,
or your favorite podcast host andplatform if you haven't done so already.
And we know a lot of youare also tuning in on YouTube.
So please, please leave us a review andshare your comments on this episode.
(54:30):
To learn more about our Veteran FellowshipProgram, head over to Hoover.org/VFP.
Until next time, peace, love,have a great rest of your week.
[MUSIC]
Welcome to Frontline Voices, a podcast brought to
you by Stanford University's HooverInstitution, exploring leadership,
service, and solutions to some ofour nation's most pressing issues.
I'm your host, 'Iron' Mike Steadman,a Marine Corps veteran and
member of the Inaugural Classof Hoover Veteran Fellows.
In the aftermath of the COVID19 pandemic,a never ending 24.7news cycle, and
(00:34):
the rise of social media, one topic thatI'm excited to address is mental health.
Regardless of one's age, background,and socioeconomic status,
maintaining one's mentalhealth is a constant battle.
To join me in this discussion, I broughton former Hoover Veteran Fellow and
Naval officer, Matt Brown,CEO of Chimney Trail Health,
(00:56):
a behavioral healthcare companyspecializing in preventative adaptations
of cognitive behavioral therapy,commonly referred to as CBT.
For those of you unfamiliar, CBT isa form of psychotherapy that focuses
on the relationship between thoughts,feelings, and behaviors.
Having overcome my own challengeswith mental health and
(01:18):
witnessed its devastating effect inthe veteran community and beyond,
I knew Matt would be a good sparringpartner to have this conversation with.
I do need to give you a heads up and
warn you that at times we geta bit heavy and vulnerable.
To be honest, I even shed a few tears.
But I hope this discussion helps movethe conversation forward about how to
(01:40):
address mental health in our own lives andfor others.
As always, I hope you enjoyed today's showand look forward to hearing your feedback.
Matt, my brother, thank you forcoming on Frontline Voices.
How you doing, sir?
>> Matt Brown (01:54):
I couldn't be better.
Always fun to come on Iron Mike show,no matter which one it is.
>> 'Iron' Mike Steadman (01:59):
Yeah, we've had quite a different podcasts over the years,
but this one is a littlebit close to heart.
Anytime you see mepersonally hosting a show,
it means it's a subject thatI'm really passionate about and
particularly stuff that creates likean impact in the veteran space.
So, no, everything that we've been ableto do over the last few years with
the veteran Fellowship program, you know,reaching change makers, and then now with
(02:20):
this platform, complimenting that bybringing on voices such as yourself.
And I think today's conversation is goingto be really good because, you know,
we're trying to get out of the classrooma little bit with this show and
talk about kind of issues thatare affected by policy, but
kind of bringing thathuman component to it.
And unless you've been living undera rock like the last five years,
(02:42):
mental health is like, it's.
It's a real thing.
I think when I was first goingto the Naval Academy, right.
You have this perception, and I'm gonnaask you about this as we talk about
the challenges with mental health andbeing a veteran and stuff, etc.
And it was hard forme to really see when I was younger, but
(03:03):
now that you're starting to get older,you start losing classmates and friends.
And then as entrepreneurs,you every day is a battle.
All it takes is to wake up one day andsay, I don't want to compete anymore.
So I'm really excited to the insightsthat you're going to bring.
So I know I talked a little bit, butlet's go ahead and just kind of have you
introduce yourself to everyone and whatyou're doing with Chimney Trail Health.
>> Matt Brown (03:26):
You got it.
Hey, Iron Mike, thanks forhaving me on the show.
Grateful as always.
I'm Matt Brown.
I'm the founder and CEO of Chimney TrailHealth, and what we do is we create
preventive adaptations of somethingcalled cognitive behavior theory.
So you go to a psychologist, and
they'll give you something calledcognitive behavioral therapy.
And there's a ton of value in that.
And we wanted to essentiallytake that magic that's
(03:48):
happening inside the office and.
And present it in a more egalitarian wayso that everybody can do it, whether or
not they think that therapy is right forthem.
It's a really good way of sort of finetuning your own mental processes.
>> 'Iron' Mike Steadman (04:02):
Can you define CBT a little bit more for
our audience that isn't familiar with it?
I know, for one, like,I wasn't as familiar with it, but,
outside of the podcast,I'm a professional business coach, and so
I'm always diving into literature andstuff like that.
And I recently came across a bookcalled Socrates about Socrates and
him talking about.
They equated, like,his kind of philosophy with cbt, and
that got me thinking about you.
>> Matt Brown (04:23):
So you got it.
Yeah.So CBT, when you hear the word CBT,
what people are talking about iscognitive behavioral therapy, and
that is you actually go talkto a trained clinician,
and they step you throughthe principles of CVT,
which is essentially that we have a coupleof different modes of thinking, and
sometime our faster mode of thinking leadsto what they call cognitive distortions.
(04:48):
And cognitive distortions exist becausehuman beings are not inherently rational.
We always thought that wewere inherently rational, but
it turns out that we think in termsof things called prospect theory.
And so cognitive distortions come up, and
it's just unclear ways of thinking aboutthings that exist or might not exist.
(05:08):
And the good news for us is that there,there might be an infinite number of these
cognitive distortions out there, butfor most human beings there are 10.
And so if you learn about these cognitivedistortions through working with a trained
clinician in like cognitivebehavioral therapy, or
you work with us on our program,
we teach you about those distortions andthen you can overcome them.
(05:31):
And what it ends up doing is itends up like if you're having
really bad anxiety or depression,you're in this ruminative thought pattern.
If you learn these theories,it can arrest that thought pattern and
put you on a much healthier path.
>> 'Iron' Mike Steadman (05:46):
So, I want you to put your thought leader hat on for
me now because like 10 yearsago I never even heard CBT.
Then the first time I started hearingabout it was connecting with you.
And now I'm hearing it a lot more like,what changed?
Why is this so prevalent now?
>> Matt Brown (06:02):
I think it's prevalent now because there's this huge wave of interest
in stopping the stigma when it comesto talking about mental health related
concerns.
I also think that frankly, we've beensort of glued to social media and
that has exacerbated some of ourbehavioral health related concerns.
(06:23):
You might know Jonathan Haidt, Dr.Height from New York University,
and his great book the Anxious Generation.
This is leading people to have, okay, I'vegot kids that are tremendously anxious or
they're suffering some sort ofclinical level of depression.
What are we going to do about it?
And CBT as founded by Dr. Aaron T Beckout of the University of Pennsylvania,
(06:46):
it's been around for 40, 50 years,it's been around forever.
And it's one of those things that I love.
You're talking about operationalizingconcepts, this CBT is one of those things
that can be put to work,it doesn't need to live in an Ivory Tower.
You can roll it out 50 years of,of evidence based data and it's, and
(07:07):
if you practice it,you can get good at it.
It's just not that hard.
>> 'Iron' Mike Steadman (07:13):
When I was, I'm gonna take off my armor here and
get a little bit vulnerable.
So in 2023, it was the summer 23 andI was on a podcast like this, except
it was going live for an organization,got bunker called Bunker Labs.
And I got a call from my best friend andhe said, pick up the phone,
I need to talk to you.
And I couldn't talk to him causeI was live on the podcast.
(07:34):
And then I found out that one ofour friends had committed suicide.
He shot himself in the ass.
And I found out right then andthere on the podcast and I had to break.
I mean, I just couldn't do it.
I had to hop off.
I was like, I'm sorry, and stuff, etc.
And that put me in a very sad placebecause for us as entrepreneurs, you know,
(07:55):
we always do this kind of stuff, thinkingthat there's this long term outreach.
Outcome, that's what we're grindingtowards, that we're working towards.
But we had never imagined that whatif this is all we have, you know,
like in the grind?
Because make no mistake, Matt andI are still in the grind of building.
You agree, butyou start losing people, especially so
(08:15):
tragically like that it createdlike a existential crisis where
I start to kind of just reallylook internally, am I fulfilled?
Am I all these different things?
And I realized that, I was verydepressed because that happened and
I had to tell my teamthat I was depressed.
I told my partner Simone thatI was depressed as well.
And I went ahead and hiredan entrepreneurial mental health coach and
(08:39):
immediately started working with her.
And then during that time I start to.
I'd always kind of investedin the self help stuff, but
really leaning into kind of reading andjournaling and really prioritizing kind
of woo woo self care, but it matters,even if it's just getting a haircut and
a hot shave towel andI have self care Thursday that I do.
(09:02):
But it just brought that kind offront to front to mind for me.
And so much of what I've done isparticularly in this space of like veteran
entrepreneurship.
I've been trying to kind of redefine orshow other sides of veterans that's not
like, hey, we're all broken, we need help,the mental health and stuff, et cetera.
>> Matt Brown (09:23):
Yeah. >> 'Iron' Mike Steadman
as I'm getting older, I'm seeing more andmore people breaking down.
So yes to everything that you just said.
And first of all, thanks forbeing vulnerable in that way.
I think it's important that we feelfree to talk about that stuff when we do
at Chimney Trail Health,when we do our seminars and
(09:45):
we're teaching people about prospecttheory and cognitive behavior theory,
a huge chunk of it is actually solicitingstories from the people that are in
the cohort or the crowd that,that we're presenting this material to.
And what you discover very quicklyis that you are anything but alone.
That in every crowd there's two or
three other people thathave that very same story.
(10:06):
And on this podcast,there's only two of us.
And I have that story.
The whole company Chimney Trail Healthwas founded because I was a captain
of one of our Navy ships.
I rotated to be a part of Seal Team 17 fora while and I was in that job for
about a year.
And I got a phone call fromthe new captain of my old ship and
he Said our best young officer,
(10:27):
a guy that we thought was going to bethe chief of Naval operations one day,
had gone to Marine Corps Exchange and hebought a gun and he took his own life and
sat with his folks in a hospitalas he was passing away.
And it alters the trajectory of your life.
But what I think I've learned fromthis is that you can approach it
(10:48):
like one of two ways.
You can live in that andthen not do anything about it, or
you can do exactly like you did,which was start taking action.
You can find somebody tohelp get you through it.
I did the same.
And it sorta led to this journey, whichis introducing CBT concepts to people
before they need it ina preventive context.
(11:09):
And I think the more people learnabout it, the better off we'll be.
>> 'Iron' Mike Steadman (11:13):
So when we're younger, right, at the Naval Academy,
I was three time national boxing champ,two time most bio boxer captain,
my boxing team Marine infantry officer.
You felt like nothing could break you,right?
And you went through yourdifferent challenges.
But I don't feel like a lot of thosechallenges when we were younger were
that kind of existential type ofchallenges maybe for some people.
And I went through a lot atthe Naval Academy my sophomore year,
(11:36):
my mom had a stroke dealing with that.
Coming out of a single parent home,being in a tough environment like that,
going to Afghanistan, fighting a goodfight as an infantry officer, but
telling you, I don't know what it is,but like, and just being.
Maybe it's entrepreneurship,maybe it's just we're getting older or
(11:57):
what it is, but the battle againstmental health is a lot different at this
older age than I feel likeit was when we were younger.
>> Matt Brown (12:07):
So I'm gonna agree with you, but
then I'm gonna put a caveat on that.
So first of all,I know it feels different, right?
But when you're younger, you're justall ahead, flank, no matter what it is.
And it's almost like,you know, you just got so
much in front of you that youdon't have time to reflect.
In the psychiatric community,they call what, as you age,
you start to do this thingcalled surveying, that.
(12:28):
That's the word that they use forit, surveying.
And it's the process of reflectingon the years that have gone by.
And it's this process of tryingto figure out whether or
not the values that you have are actuallyconsistent with what you're living.
And the, and the bigger that delta,the more trouble that you have.
The problem is a lot of times weare really bad at figuring out what
(12:51):
that delta actually is.
Your values might be here, andhere's where you're living.
But for some reason, in.
Because of we're predictably irrational,you might end up feeling like you're over
here, and that leads to anxiety anddepression, all that kind of stuff.
And I think the big difference isthat you have to be more measured as
(13:12):
an adult in the way thatyou approach problems.
Let me ask you, how did you learn to box?
>> 'Iron' Mike Steadman (13:21):
Man.
In the ring.>> Matt Brown: It was a process.
Yeah.Yeah.
In the ring.
Tell me, walk me through it.
Like, tell me how.
Tell me how you learn.
Yeah. So, obviously at the Naval Academy, right,
you show up to the gym,you practice, you don't know how to.
You don't even know howto protect yourself.
Coach teaches you a couple punches.
Now, you spend the majority ofyour time shadow boxing, right?
Then you start moving to the heavy bag.
(13:41):
You train on the heavy bag.
You do your jump ropes,you do all the kind of basic training and
then your kind of physical training.
But we would spar consistently.
Every Tuesday andThursday, you would spar.
And at first it was hard because, you feellike you're making all this progress on
your shadowboxing, you're making allthis progress on the heavy bag, and
then you get in the ring andnone of it's translated.
>> Matt Brown (14:02):
Doesn't work.
>> 'Iron' Mike Steadman (14:03):
Doesn't work.
And one day I realized that this washappening, and there was another boxer.
His name was Chris O'Brien.
And me and him were like,he had this thick Boston accent.
One day he walked in, he was like,hey, yo, Mike, you want to spar?
I was like, sure, let's go.
We start sparring, andwe start sparring every day.
Hey, Mike, you want to spar?
We sparred for 30 days straight.
(14:24):
Probably not the best to recommend, butwhat it did was it got me comfortable.
Being in the ring.
That was a big part of that.
And I realized that, like, I needed toprioritize that, like, sports specific
training of sparring, because sparringis where everything translates.
You can be the best athitting the heavy bag,
you can be the best at doing the shadowbox and looking good on mitts.
(14:46):
But until you're under that pressure andyou find yourself in the ringer,
that's when it becomes real.
>> Matt Brown (14:52):
That's it, man.
Everything.It's all good until somebody gets punched
in the face.
And it's the same thing withbehavioral healthcare and
training on how to forge elite mindsets.
Imagine if you went to that boxing ringon your first day, and you were like,
hey, I want.
Hey, coach, I want to learn how to box.
And they were like, hey, here's an app.
You'd be like,what am I gonna do with this app?
(15:14):
I can't.
And that's exactly what's happening inthe space, is that there's an app for
that for pretty much everything in life.
But the problem is that you have to putin the work, and you have to do it.
So what we're doing at work every day isworking with our Chief Clinical Officer,
Dr. Leah Blaine, and
trying to figure out how do we createthat sparring experience for people?
(15:36):
How do we make it so that you're sparringagainst the part of your brain that's
feeding you informationthat's just not so?
And what we've uncovered is that you gottalearn about cognitive behavior theory.
You have to learn about prospect theory,but
just knowing about it is not gonnaget you the outcomes you need.
You have to get in the ring.
And so what we've done is wemail you these boxes, and
(15:57):
inside each box,there's a little activity.
And it's got fun little.
It's a high quality stuff.
It's, high quality tools foroutdoor activities.
But you do the activity andyou read about the material and the,
the combination of doing that is yourmental equivalent of being in that ring.
(16:17):
And that's where we're seeingthe outcomes, is people doing the work.
And that's the secret Elixir.
>> 'Iron' Mike Steadman (16:24):
So let me ask you this though, and
this is something that I've come to.
To think about, pontificate onwhat a lot of people don't know.
Well, they, Some do because I talkedabout my podcast was one of the when
I was at the Naval Academy, like I said,
dealing with my mom havingthat stroke issue, right?
I lost my first boxing match in front ofmy entire class, Plebe Summer which was
our intramural boxing tournament atthe Cat Naval Academy in 30 seconds.
(16:47):
Completely embarrassed, right?
So I had that happen.
And then when I went to Afghanistan, youspend all this time going to the academy,
training to be an infantry officer,you're fighting a good fight in combat.
The last month of our deployment,
I got relieved of command in combat fora bad operation that I led.
(17:09):
And that was another very dark place.
But so much of that happened early on inmy life that I feel like I was able to
build up some kind of mental resiliencethat I appreciate later because.
Because when I am going through hardtimes, I have these other areas of life,
these little dark places that I'vebeen able to bounce back from.
And when you deal with people, let's callthem high performers or whatever you want
(17:31):
to call it, right, that may or may nothave had that big significant miles,
that big significant,like gut check early on in life, and
they start dealing with it a littlebit later, they don't have.
I could only imagine going through someof the stuff I went through early at this
age and having a prostate at this momentin time and not have that to fall back on.
>> Matt Brown (17:53):
I think you're right.
I mean, you hear some peoplesay the obstacle is the way.
And if you can get through it early and
you sort of mature into this ideathat it's not the critic who counts.
Like we were talking earlier about,
like making sure that you're livingconsistent with your values.
Okay, you had a mishap in combat or youhad a bad decision that you wish you could
(18:16):
have done differently, but at this age,hopefully in your surveying process,
you're seeing, okay,the values gap was actually really tight.
Because in order to be in that position,to have to make that decision, good or
bad, to begin with, you had to doall these other things, right,
in order to be entrustedwith that responsibility.
And you know damn good and well thatif presented the same situation in
(18:37):
the future,you would not make that same mistake.
It served to, like,sharpen the sword, so to speak, and
make you a better officer anda more complete citizen moving forward.
And you won't be the first personwho's made a mistake in combat.
It's the most dynamic environment that,you know, outside of maybe space
exploration, that a human being can existin, and you certainly won't be the last.
(18:59):
And if you can piece that together,then I think you see, yeah,
my integrity is intact.
And that's really important topreserving your own behavioral health.
>> 'Iron' Mike Steadman (19:07):
And when people always ask me now, they say,
what would you tell your younger self?
I go back, say, forgiveness,because when you're younger,
you think you can conquer the whole world.
You can do all these different things.
But then you take a step back and
you realize, man,nobody had Afghanistan filled out.
That was a very hard dynamic.
They pump us up as Marine officers, right?
Very proud of my service.
(19:28):
But I do have to kinda give myselfgrace and recognize, like, hey,
that was a very hard, kinetic,kinda chaotic environment.
And you and I both know that, like,what's the saying that, like,
safety is an illusion,that the world has always been chaotic.
We just create systems andthings to make it feel more safe for us so
we don't have to deal with the realityof all this chaos at times.
>> Matt Brown (19:51):
That's it.
And, you know,I'm not a trained psychologist.
I'm not a licensed clinical social worker.
I'm just a ship captain that was tryingto make a difference in the space and
is working.
The good news is that I get towork with the best that there is.
And if Dr. Blaine was on with us today,she would take that example that you gave,
and she'd say, hey, at the time, you werewrestling with a cognitive distortion that
(20:14):
we see all the time in CBT calledpersonalisation and self blame.
And so that circumstance, whatever it mayhave been, you can own a piece of it.
Certainly you need to have accountabilityfor your part in whatever it is.
But the circumstances that led to that andthe results that extend beyond it,
you have to figure out how to dialin what, what is Mike's deal and
what was the circumstances.
(20:36):
And it takes practice to figure outhow to do that forgiveness exercise.
And I'm glad you did it.
That's an example to all of us.
>> 'Iron' Mike Steadman (20:43):
And back then I didn't really know how to journal, right.
I just had this rule that Ideveloped in boxing which was, hey,
when I decide I want to be the best boxer,I locked in, no alcohol, do your workouts,
really just kind of focus on that.
So when I got back from Afghanistan,that's exactly what I did.
No alcohol, locked in,went to the gym and was focused and
was able to get myself out of that space.
(21:05):
But now, and I think these are thingseveryday Americans are facing with because
I see it especially in communitieslike Newark and Harlem.
And then you visit SF,you visit some of these other places.
A lot of people out hereare self-medicating.
>> Matt Brown (21:18):
Yeah. >> 'Iron' Mike Steadman
cannabis, right, and it's real easyto think that these are other people,
but these are people withinour existing community.
People that look successful on paper andthey are, right.
But a lot of people are dealing with likevery kind of challenging, dramatic stuff,
and they're finding otherways to cope instead of.
(21:39):
Because I think even what we're talkingabout with like the CBT approach, right.
It still takes work.
But people even in an environmentthat cultivates that kind of growth,
you're right on the money.
And in CBT, they talk a lot about, you might have an automatic thought
process because the human being,the human brain is, is wired.
(22:01):
It's not wired for your happiness,it's wired for your survival.
And so you might be going along havingthese automatic thoughts that your brain
thinks are key to your survival.
And CBT teaches you to check on thosethoughts because they might not be true.
You have to evaluate them for rationality.
The example we always use is a bat anda ball together cost A$10.
(22:24):
The bat is a dollar more than the ball.
How much does the ball cost?
Everybody thinks it's 10 cents,it's actually 5.
But our brain operates inthese automatic states.
What we don't often talk about whenwhen either in therapy or in seminars or
wherever is that sometimes it's not theconscious thought process that we really
need to evaluate, it's our behavior.
(22:44):
So you might decide, I'm not touchingalcohol because I've been going through
a dark place andI know that that's self medicating.
I know it's bad for me, but you findyourself sort of automatically doing it
anyway or just like letting yourguard down and just self medicating.
And what Dr. Blaine would tell you if shewas here is she'd say that is the thing
that you need to catch.
(23:05):
It's like, hey,I'm catching that behavior.
And then in CBT, they talk about catchingand then checking the rationality of
it and then changing your mindif it makes sense to do so.
So if you end up drinking orself medicating or whatever,
that's something that the awakepart of your brain can catch and
then you can check on it and change.
>> 'Iron' Mike Steadman (23:27):
And well, I'm surprised,
this might be a little offensiveto some people though, right?
But as you get older,you start to learn these things, man.
There's alcohol all around the military,all around the military, and
nothing against people that drink, right?
That's not what I'm saying.
I'm just saying that you have thisdemographic that is dealing with some very
(23:47):
kinda challenging kinda lifestyle andstuff, etc.
And their whole way of decompressing isto go get hammered, on the weekends or
whatever, and then now they leave thatenvironment, they're going back to sports.
Civilian world.
And what are they doing?
Going back to those old habits, right?
And so just, you just get,I'm being honest here, y'all.
As I get older, I just start to lookat things a little bit different and
(24:11):
start to ask some kinda more,kinda challenging questions.
>> Matt Brown (24:15):
Yeah, I mean, a perfect example of this is what,
so Chimney Trail Health is the company,but
then we have a foundation thatClaudia Flores, another VFPer, she runs.
And her mission in life right nowis to go around to American Legion,
VFW, DAV, those sorts of veteranservice organization outposts.
(24:36):
And she's trying to bring inmoney to renovate those places.
Because if you walk in them right now,it's a bar or
a bingo hall or something like that.
And so you're not thinking about sort ofthe environment that we enjoyed going
through a program like Bunker Labs,
which was inspiring veterans to havethis entrepreneurial mindset and
give back in the community andstart serving in a different way.
(24:59):
You definitely aren't getting what folksare getting if they participate in the VFP
program at the Hoover Institution,
which is also inspiring thatsort of give back mentality.
You go into an American Legionin my hometown,
it's a bingo hall witha bar with cheap beer.
And it's a recipe for behavior that youwish you weren't participating in, but
(25:20):
you find yourself there anyway.
And it's funny that you mentionedthat this is a cultural thing because
I'll be out with friendsthat are in the service.
And it doesn't even matter if they're inyour peer group, they could be younger,
older, and if somebody hands you a beer,
there's this implicit expectationthat you're gonna participate.
(25:41):
And I don't even really,I don't like drinking at all.
And so my wife Jen, she alwaysmakes fun of me because she's like,
you always take that beer ifsomebody offers it to you,
even though I know thatyou don't enjoy it.
[LAUGH] And it's true,because it's hardwired into us.
So breaking that,it's a challenge and it takes, and
when's the last time youdid something alone?
(26:03):
Never, so why would you expect thatyou should do this journey alone?
>> 'Iron' Mike Steadman (26:06):
Yeah, And I host happy hours all across the country, right?
Host them here in New York City.
I do drink non-alcoholic beer, butagain, I'm just thinking again,
as I'm getting older, just being a lotmore aware, man, there's so many traps and
so many landmines, right?
And I'm not saying you have to be anentrepreneur to understand just how hard
the world is at time.
(26:26):
I just think we're more intuned, right?
Because those, we just feel it a lot more.
You feel exposed, right?
You lose that safety net.
But man, every time I walk out my door,I'm like,
look at all these landmines out here.
I see people high smoking weed all day.
And in my experience that's beencausing in my personal network,
from a lot of boxers that I've dealtwith over the years in Newark,
(26:49):
I have seen marijuana cause schizophrenia.
>> Matt Brown (26:53):
Yeah, yeah.
>> 'Iron' Mike Steadman (26:54):
People just start, while I'm not a doctor,
I'm not anything like that.
I'm just talking off of my ownkind of personal lived experience.
And so I'm just,I'm constantly trying to encourage vets.
I'm constantly trying to encourage youthI've dealt with at Iron Balance to avoid
those landmines.
>> Matt Brown (27:11):
I think you're right on the money.
I mean we do a lot about adjusting the waythat we talk about mental illness,
behavioral healthcare,the stop the stigma campaign.
And along with that,there's been this huge effort to sort of
introduce alternative modalities forgetting better.
And so you hear about ketamines orwhatever the psychedelic
(27:32):
medication happens to be orpharmaceutical intervention.
And in a controlled environmentwith the right people,
those things can be really powerful.
Because we always talk about theseruminative thought patterns that lead
to destructive anxiety and
depression would be like a personwalking on the surface of clay.
If you keep walking over that samesurface, you're going to dig a ditch.
(27:55):
And sometimes having that psychedelicintervention or that pharmaceutical
intervention, it can pull you up out ofthe ditch and put you back on flat ground.
And then you can do the workwith something like CBT
to reestablish positive thought patterns,or
if not positive, at least neutral andthought patterns based in reality.
But what happens is that folks don'tdo it in a controlled atmosphere.
(28:17):
Instead they start that self medicationprocess you're talking about and
they end up doing more harm than good.
Instead of resetting and getting on aneven keel, they just drop a nuclear bomb
in the middle of their thoughtpatterns and then it's hard to escape.
>> 'Iron' Mike Steadman (28:30):
So, okay, this is good because it's a podcast,
we're talking about this stuff.
This is free speech.
I'm not as informed as you, butI'm gonna share my view, and
please tell me if I'm wrong orwhatever, okay?
One of the things I worry about with somuch kinda medicating,
particularly people that are dealingwith mental health issues,
is in the Marine Corps,we say be brilliant in the basics.
(28:51):
Can you shoot, move andcommunicate, right?
In a civilian world, are you getting rest?
Are you drinking water, right?
Are you getting some movement in?
Are you breaking a sweat?
Are you having nurturing relationships,right?
Are you brilliant in prioritizing andamplifying those things first?
And then if that's not working, right,
(29:13):
maybe you're adding additionalkinda stuff in, right?
But that's not what I'm seeing inmy personal experience, right?
I'm seeing people that are really havinga hard time figuring stuff out and
they're kinda trying andexploring a bunch of different stuff.
And I worry that, hey man,let's prioritize the main thing.
(29:34):
I have a whole coach.
His name's Robert Hamilton Owen,shout out to Robert.
And I'm training forNew York City Marathon.
I also have a peak performancecoach I work with named Melissa.
And I'm always going, what's the one thingthat if I nail funnels everything else?
And for me it's getting in bed early andgetting up early,.
(29:55):
If I can do that, I'm not saying lifeisn't hard, but it's just I can face
challenges a lot differently when I'mtaking care of business on that front
versus when I'm not getting rest, I'm notworking out, I'm not hydrated, right?
It's really like going to war every day.
>> Matt Brown (30:13):
Yeah, I mean, and I don't know that, so
what you just described is basicallyall of us, I mean every single one.
If you can get brilliant in the basics,then you're covered.
I think the pharmaceuticalmedication side of this,
you'll never hear me saya cross word about it.
What I will say is a cross wordabout doing or for self medicating,
(30:35):
not having the rightintervention at the right time.
So if you wanna getbrilliant in the basics,
sometimes you need a pharmaceuticalintervention to level set so
that you can startreestablishing those patterns.
Because you've dug a ditch that's toodeep to climb out of yourself and
you could use a hand.
But all of that stuff needs to bein a super controlled environment.
And I think you would find thatmost psychiatrists would tell you,
(30:58):
at least the ones that we work with,
they would tell you that the idea is notto just be on these things indefinitely.
It's not to be on a pharmaceuticalintervention forever.
Some cases that might be necessary,but oftentimes it's not.
What it really is is to sort ofrescue you from that ditch and
then give you the opportunity to start inon those habits that you're talking about,
(31:20):
whether it's getting to bed on time,waking up on time, hydrating.
It's funny that youmentioned those things,
because we've got a waypointkit at Chimney Trail Health.
It's the third one in our series of fourthat we send out to the Armed Forces.
And the fourth one is setting a new habit.
And it's exactly that.
There's some resistance bands,there's an eye mask for sleep,
(31:41):
there's a water bottle for hydration.
It's all these basics that you sorta just,if you go to war, it's the best kinda
war because you can check in with yourselfat the end of that day and be like,
hey, did I do all those things?
And if you didn't, you could,you don't need to beat yourself up.
You can say, okay,let's get at it again tomorrow.
And get right back up on the horse.
>> 'Iron' Mike Steadman (32:01):
Yeah.
And again, like I said, I.
I appreciate you making space tokind of have these discussions now,
because sometimes it's like you can't eventalk about this stuff because people have
their own opinions.
But even when I did talk withmy mental health coach about it,
she is way more educated than,like, me, and
she did kind of make the sameargument that you did as well.
(32:22):
I just, for me as a coach, I'm alwaystrying to think about, like, man,
how can we cover down on these things?
But again, as I get older,I'm less reactive and more reflective.
And so being reflective, sometimes you dohear those different opinions and stuff.
Now, I remember how I said atthe beginning of this podcast how a lot of
what I try to do in the veteran spaceis push a lot more kind of positivity.
>> Matt Brown (32:45):
Yeah. >> 'Iron' Mike Steadman
I try to stay away from the heavy stuff.
So this might be one ofthe heavier episodes.
But, we talked early on about how suicide.
Another thing I wanna run by you and hearyour perspective on is, I love the word
excellence, and particularly thisconcept of normalizing excellence.
It's like the first episode I had withGreg on, we talked about what that means.
(33:06):
Whereas you see someone in a space, andthen all of a sudden it normalizes it for
you, that's possible.
You know, seeing Matt Brown,a veteran fellow at Stanford,
at the Hoover Institution, like,now I see that's possible for me.
Right.
But what's the reverse of that?
And for me, I think that in the veterancommunity in particular, is suicide.
(33:27):
Because for me,I don't feel like I really.
Growing up, maybe I was protectedfrom it or whatnot, but
I feel like being in the veteran space,going to a combat zone.
Like, you're constantly hearingabout suicide amongst veterans,
suicide amongst veterans, and
all of a sudden this option that youdidn't even know existed, now it's there.
(33:50):
Does that make sense?
Yeah, it does make sense.
>> 'Iron' Mike Steadman (33:56):
And I worry about that, is what I'm getting at.
>> Matt Brown (33:59):
Yeah. You worry about the exposure to it
becoming a risk factor all its own.
>> 'Iron' Mike Steadman (34:04):
Correct.
>> Matt Brown (34:05):
I worry about the same thing.
I don't know that the numbersbear out in terms of, like,
that being a legitimate risk factor,but it feels like it is.
It feels like the more that you hear aboutit, the more it's become normalized,
the more it.
But I think that we're living in a superdynamic time when it comes to how we
ingest information, our media diet, theway that we communicate with one another,
(34:27):
the isolation that people sort of selfimpose by staying recluse in their
apartment and just surfing through TikTokand Instagram all night, self medicating.
There are all these other risk factorsthat I think are contributing far more
than our awareness of it.
I think that the other piece is.
It feels like it might becomemore of an option, but
(34:50):
it's that we're just seeingwhat already existed.
Like we're seeing the resultsof sort of our behaviors for
the last 25 years, found manifest in thismoment of having to grapple with suicide,
whether it's in a veteran ormilitary community.
And frankly it's allthe communities because,
the most Recent Surgeon General, Dr.Murphy or Murthy, he said,
(35:14):
look, of all the health challengesthat we have as a society, Covid,
Cardiac arrest, car accidents,you name the thing, isolation,
mental illness the lack ofpreservation of our own behavioral
healthcare is what he consideredto be our greatest threat.
And so I don't know what to do about.
(35:40):
It's got to be in front of our face.
And then I think it's on all of us to makesure that it doesn't become a real option.
Here's the thing, if you feel like itis scientifically, this isn't like my
opinion or whoever, but if you feel liketaking your own life is the, is the right
option for you, because you know you best,every psychiatrist, psychologist,
(36:01):
licensed clinical social worker,chaplain, whatever, in the whole country,
whole world would tell youscientifically you are wrong about that.
>> 'Iron' Mike Steadman (36:10):
Of course. >> Matt Brown
we start that every one of our seminars.
We start with, with that because peoplefeel like they know themselves best.
So of course if I'm feeling it,it must be true.
And that just ain't so, yeah.
And the reason I like again, the reason I'm.
I'm talking about this cuz I've beenthinking about writing about it.
But how do you write about it in a way,like growing up,
(36:31):
how many people did youknow commit murder, right?
Like in your personal network.
>> Matt Brown (36:37):
Nobody in my personal network.
>> 'Iron' Mike Steadman (36:39):
Nobody. >> Matt Brown
Now, imagine if you grow up and
now it's ten people in your personalnetwork that's committed murder, right?
>> Matt Brown (36:46):
Yeah. >> 'Iron' Mike Steadman
probably like, man,who are you hanging out with, okay?
Growing up, I virtually knewnobody that committed suicide.
Right?Now I have lost count yeah,
and there's words a lot Iworry about of like, yo,
what is it about this environment,being military veteran and you can.
Try to blind yourself to that stuff asmuch as you can, but the older you get and
(37:07):
the closer it affects you, losing closefriends to these things, like to now where
you're subconsciously always worried whenyou don't hear from somebody, like, hey
buddy, yeah, just checking on you, makingsure you're good, doing a buddy check.
I feel like I have to be or we have to beway more prevalent about that versus like.
(37:30):
Before you're right, I mean, and you do you end up carrying that
load because heaven forbid somebody doesdie by suicide, die by their own hand.
And you're like, I could have taken thatphone call, I should have made that,
I should have sent that text message.
And there you have a cognitive distortioncalled should statements where you end up
shooting all over yourself trying to,trying to explain away,
(37:53):
why you didn't make that intervention oryou personalization and self blame
because you should have made that phonecall or whatever the case might be.
You're right, it's a huge cognitiveload to have to carry around.
Not just your own well being, but
everybody that you wentthrough military service with.
But honestly,it's not even just military service.
(38:13):
I mean the entrepreneurial communitystruggles with this high performance
organizations across the board.
We do a lot of work for Arson Young.
It's like a huge Fortune100 level company.
Their folks are working under tremendousstrain and they're front leaning.
I mean I'd never seen an organization thatcares as much about human performance and
(38:35):
the return on investmentof treating people right.
Just from a number standpoint.
They do it because it'sthe good right thing to do.
But they're also a company,so they got to meet.
It's a bottom line thing too.
But you really,you have to train yourself,
you have to train organizations to knowhow to intervene and be engaged and
(38:55):
create community, butnot own everything that you can't control.
>> 'Iron' Mike Steadman (39:01):
You got me a little emotional while you're talking, and
I'm gonna tell you why.
Whenever we go do these kind ofpublic speaking events, right?
And you do a mess night andthey got the table there for
the people that can't in room, right?
You always thought you'd be havingthose tables for people that,
we lost in combat, right?
>> Matt Brown (39:22):
Yeah.
>> 'Iron' Mike Steadman (39:23):
But sometimes now when I speak, I think of everybody.
The ones we lost in combat,the one we took through on life.
And when you talked about,I wish I would have text back or
I wish I would have done something.
When I was in this last year,I went to Nepal.
I went trekking Everest base Camp.
I did this big trek upto Everest base Camp and
I got a message froma marine I served with.
(39:46):
A fellow officer that basically was like,Mike, she drained the bank account.
I'm going through a tough time, yada.
I hadn't talked to this guy in 10 years,right?
And he asked if he could talk to me.
Right, and if I could send him somemoney to hold him over, whatever.
It was so weird.
I never, I didn't talk to him in 10 years.
(40:08):
I don't talk to him.
I come off that mountain.
That Marine committed suicide now.
>> Matt Brown (40:15):
Yeah. >> 'Iron' Mike Steadman
hit up a bunch of us, a bunch ofofficers that he served with and
seems like he was kinda up against it,etc.
But I still have his textmessage like in my phone.
And that's just like a random Tuesday.
Yeah.
>> 'Iron' Mike Steadman (40:31):
So it's just been weird these last few years having to just
again, I talk about getting older,way more prevalent and
I know a lot of young junior enlisted,sadly, they were dealing with that stuff.
Buddies taking their life really early,a very few couple years, getting out,
I cannot even list the number of namesanymore of people we have lost to this.
>> Matt Brown (40:57):
I share your sense of urgency when it comes to doing
something about it.
I try really hard to take experienceslike the one that you had,
I've had plenty, and channel thatinto getting this information,
this evidence-based modality offixing our thought processes.
(41:18):
I try to get it out toas many people as I can.
And the thing that really frustrates me,man, is that you got stories like yours.
And horrifyingly,that is not a unique story.
That's all of us thing.
And we'll try to roll thisout at different places and
they'll say, Chimney trail, health.
(41:40):
Your particular modality is not evidencebased yet and it's because the introducing
bibliotherapeutic principles throughthis kinesthetic learning activity.
It's all these big buzzwords, but
doing that hasn't been studied becausewe're the only ones that do it.
We have studied it ourselves andwe're collecting the data and
doing all this stuff but what drives meinsane is that folks are falling in love
(42:03):
with studying this problem.
Falling in love with the bumperstickers that say 22 a day.
Falling in love with sort of just beingmiserable about it rather than rapidly
iterating and trying to get to solutionsto make this problem disappear.
I say eliminate suicide.
And people are like, you never live ina world where you can eliminate suicide.
I was like, why we should be striving foranything less,
(42:26):
it's the most preventabledisease that exists.
Somebody dying by their own hand,we can make that go away.
Let's work at it.
If we never get there,it will have been a good effort.
And so that's what we're trying to do isjust channel that energy rather than sort
of becoming absorbed with self blame andall those sorts of things.
We just say, okay,how do we stop the next one?
>> 'Iron' Mike Steadman (42:49):
Now I know you and
I have been focused a lot talking aboutobviously the veteran community because
that's very near and dear to our heart,
particularly anybody thatserved in uniform but
we also have to be cognizant that like nonveterans are dealing with the same issues.
I'm not making this up.
I got a text today froma friend asking for
advice because her 10 year oldnephew tried to take his own life.
(43:11):
That was to date.
>> Matt Brown (43:13):
Yeah. >> 'Iron' Mike Steadman
it's very ironic because Ihave seen a lot more youth
suicide reading on the Internet andstuff like that.
So what are you seeing, what are youall seeing in the in for youth and
young adults and just civilians.
I mean we're all civilians now,let's be honest.
But you understand what I'm saying?
(43:34):
Yeah.
What you're saying is right.
So one of the things that droveChimney Trail from a good idea that maybe
should be a non profit for the veterancommunity into something that is
a scalable Delaware based C Corp thatis going to accelerate to the moon,
is that we read a statistic that1 in 10 children born today will
(43:56):
make an attempt on their own lifebefore they graduate from high school.
And to me when I read that, it waslike somebody just it broke my heart.
I couldn't believe it.
That, just seems 1 in 10 kids.
That means that there's more than one kidin every classroom in the United States
that is going to deal with this.
And we are, to our own peril,totally obstinate when it comes to
(44:19):
the very obvious reasons that we findourselves in this position to begin with.
Like nobody wants to renegotiate theirrelationship with their smartphone.
They don't want to double check howthey're behaving on Instagram Reels and
TikTok and you name the, I hate toname those two, but you get the idea.
It's the social media app Du Jour.
(44:42):
Nobody checks on the ready.
Essentially like unfettered access tofirearms and the advocacy of our second
amendment rights without a real discussionof our second amendment responsibilities.
I remember when I was a kid and I wantedto shoot a gun for the first time.
My dad made me go to the NRA totake lessons about gun safety.
(45:03):
And now I feel like every time I hearabout it, it's it's a, you know,
it's about how to get guns easier.
And I think there's some work thatneeds to be done there because,
70% of this stuff is happening by firearm.
And then the other piece is there's agreat book by Putnam called Bowling Alone.
And the premise of the book is thatwe've essentially lost the face to
(45:25):
face community.
We might be, video teleconferenceright now, but you and
I are having a real discussion andfolks that's absent in their life and
if they don't have a communitythat can stand in the gap and
challenge the thoughts that these folksthat are suffering are having about
themselves and the suffering personis just left of their own devices.
(45:47):
No wonder their first exit ramp is suicidebecause they just haven't had that
community exposure to sort of pushback on their distorted thinking.
>> 'Iron' Mike Steadman (45:56):
Yeah.
And I appreciate you even talking about,
gun violence because we are going to talkabout that on this show at some point.
But you and I both know the minute,somebody's having a hard time, right,
you haven't heard from first questions,where's the gun?
Does he have a gun?
>> Matt Brown (46:12):
Yeah. >> 'Iron' Mike Steadman
that wasn't the case.
Most of us out there,that's the first thing we,
we start thinking aboutthat comes to mind.
Now one thing I also wonder, right?
Like I'm watching the littleTaylor Sheridan shows, was it 1883?
And I think he got the other one 1923,etc.
But like, yo, life hasn't got like,we got a lot of abundance now, okay?
(46:36):
You can walk out the store,
get your mocha latte pretty muchanywhere in the world, right?
We have Wi-Fi, right?
People are making money now.
People are still struggling, butthere's a lot of opportunity, okay.
Versus what people hada hundred years ago.
It was literally the wild west wheremaybe a little bit more than a hundred
years ago, but it was not uncommonto lose lots of children.
(46:58):
You would have lots of children becauseyou already knew you would lose what.
But it seems like,we have life a lot easier yet.
More and more people are havingmental health issues.
So does that, that goes back to maybe whatyou're talking about that value imbalance.
Yeah. I mean, I think that checks out, right?
People were too busy to be self loathing,right.
Like they had put food on the table,
(47:20):
you couldn't be thinking about how youweren't, manifesting your complete
self and, and achieving thatmoment of self actualization.
If you had to chase a deer throughthe woods in order to eat,
you had to put food on the table.
So I think there was more likeindustriousness in your daily life.
You didn't have time to get into theseruminative thought patterns because
(47:42):
the ruminative thoughtpattern was in your stomach.
It was like, hey, man,you gotta eat, so get up and go.
Yeah.We have created space through our leisure
for particularly destructivemodes of thinking.
And if you don't know how to check it,
if you don't realize that you haveancestral thought patterns that.
Are not particularly usefulin a modern age, and
you have to learn how to control it.
(48:03):
It will eat you up.
It's distorted thinking, andit just needs retraining.
That's it.The good news is that it's, or
the bad news is that it's a pervasive,almost pandemic-level problem.
The good news is it's super brittle.
Once you learn the code,you can deconstruct it and
it will never attack you again.
>> 'Iron' Mike Steadman (48:24):
Yeah, and we're both older now.
Like I said,
I have the privilege of being a coachto a lot of successful entrepreneurs.
And a lot of people are strugglingwith very different challenges.
That thing, that success that wethought we'd have, it's very fleeting.
You see the coaches all the time.
One year they win a national championship,the next year they're about to damn
(48:47):
near have a mental breakdown duringthe postgame press conference, right?
And so, just, man,as we kinda wrap up here,
I would love you to kindagive our viewers, right,
just some, how do I say this?
Best practices, right, that they canstart to kinda implement on their own and
(49:07):
what you've learned at Chimney Trailto be kinda really good,
including my life in the basics.
I'm not saying that's the best thing, butI'm just saying when you go work out,
y'all know you feel a little bit better.
>> Matt Brown (49:19):
Yeah, yes.
So we start and end everything that wedo at Chimney Trail with one very clear
message, and we foot stomp it repeatedly.
It's that you have to become comfortable.
The number one thing you can do for
your own self-preservation isto challenge your thoughts.
You cannot let your brainjust do what it wants.
You have to be the captainof your own mind.
(49:41):
And that means that you need to challengeyour thoughts whether it's good or bad.
Sometimes you might havea good day at work and
then celebrate thatwildly out of proportion.
You have to check it with reality.
You have to,there's two systems of thinking.
Fastest, fast thinking heuristics, thetype of brain that drives from point A to
point B without you havingany recollection of it.
(50:03):
All of us have done that.
And then there's the slow thinking, whichis the part of your brain that's figuring
out how much you should leave fora tip at the end of dinner.
Whenever you're starting to get carriedaway, you have to engage that part of your
brain that you use at the end of dinnerwhen you're trying to calculate a tip.
You need to do the math andfigure out whether or
not what's causing the good orbad feeling is based in reality.
(50:24):
So challenge your thoughts.
And the good news is it's not like weighttraining, where you constantly need to be
putting more weight on the barin order to see improvement.
It's just something that you do,and it gets easier with time,
and you don't need toadd more weight to it.
You just challenge your thought.
You catch, you check, and you change,and you become better for it.
>> 'Iron' Mike Steadman (50:45):
You know what I tell people?
I'm a boxer, right?
So you gotta find sparring partners,right?
You just spar with your thoughts, andyou need to find sparring partners.
Even think about us, andhaving this conversation.
How many veterans, non-veterans, etc,
get to have these real conversationson a daily basis where you already
talked about loneliness,isolation, the remote work?
(51:06):
You can have people around you andstill be alone.
People at home,they got their families and stuff, but
they don't have that distance.
They don't have somebody that they canspar with outside of their spouse.
So I just think it's super important.
And like, I've told y'all, right, I'veinvested in mental health coaching, right?
I work with coaches on a regular basis,right, for that exact reason, to provide
that level of objectivity and allow meto spar with my thoughts a little bit.
(51:29):
So I appreciate you sharing that insight.
I'd be remiss, Matt, though, if we don'ttalk about what even brought us both
together in the first place,which is the Veteran Fellowship Program.
Can you talk a little bit about yourexperience there and what advice you have
to those out there that are wanting tolearn a little bit more about it and
whether or not they're a good fit.
>> Matt Brown (51:52):
There's no Chimney Trail Health without
the Veteran Fellowship Programas it currently exists.
We've got behavioral health preservationlegislation passed because of EFP's help.
We've done a ton of workthroughout our Armed Forces.
We have impacted so many lives.
We get email routinelyfrom people who say, hey,
(52:14):
I was having really dark thoughts andactually formulating a plan for suicide.
And I've decided to start thinking aboutthis differently as a result of having
been through this training program.
None of that would have been possible,certainly not at the pace that it's
happened, if it wasn't for the VeteranFellowship Program, Dr. Rice's leadership.
(52:35):
The board that actually comestogether to support the organization.
And Chimney Trail's specific case,
Admiral Gary Roughead really leaningin and taking an interest in the work
because he knew the seriousness of itfrom national security implication.
There's just so many brilliant mindsthere that are, that are just primed to
(52:57):
turn you loose if you've got the energyand the will to get something done.
So if you're working a big projectthat is gonna change the world and
you've got the guts to admit that toyourself, hey, I'm gonna change the world,
and you're crazy enough tostart the work of doing it.
VFP, I can't think of a better program,and
I'm trying every day to pay itforward what they've done for us.
>> 'Iron' Mike Steadman (53:20):
Well, Matt, we appreciate you coming on and
being my subject matterexpert on this subject.
I know it's a little bit heavy.
You got Iron Mike,had the tears come out a little bit.
But it's okay.
We're having real conversations, and Ithink there's something that I like about
podcasting, old school podcasts before,but got so performative, which was,
you would have these conversations.
So if people wanna learn moreabout Chimney Trail Health,
(53:42):
Chimney Trail Health, and they wannasupport Chimney Trail Foundation,
where do you want us to send them to?
>> Matt Brown (53:49):
You can just go to www.chimneytrailhealth.com, and
that's got everything you need.
You can reach out to me directly.
I'm at Matthew@chimneytrail.com,and I'll get you whatever you need,
put you in touch with the foundation,we'll get your company or
your command signed up forsome training, whatever.
We'll be there for you.
>> 'Iron' Mike Steadman (54:10):
Well, we appreciate you coming on with us today.
And as a reminder to all our listeners,
make sure you subscribe toFrontline Voices on Apple, Spotify,
or your favorite podcast host andplatform if you haven't done so already.
And we know a lot of youare also tuning in on YouTube.
So please, please leave us a review andshare your comments on this episode.
(54:30):
To learn more about our Veteran FellowshipProgram, head over to Hoover.org/VFP.
Until next time, peace, love,have a great rest of your week.
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Amy Robach & T.J. Holmes present: Aubrey O’Day, Covering the Diddy Trial
Introducing… Aubrey O’Day Diddy’s former protege, television personality, platinum selling music artist, Danity Kane alum Aubrey O’Day joins veteran journalists Amy Robach and TJ Holmes to provide a unique perspective on the trial that has captivated the attention of the nation. Join them throughout the trial as they discuss, debate, and dissect every detail, every aspect of the proceedings. Aubrey will offer her opinions and expertise, as only she is qualified to do given her first-hand knowledge. From her days on Making the Band, as she emerged as the breakout star, the truth of the situation would be the opposite of the glitz and glamour. Listen throughout every minute of the trial, for this exclusive coverage. Amy Robach and TJ Holmes present Aubrey O’Day, Covering the Diddy Trial, an iHeartRadio podcast.
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