Wellness and Resiliency Are Not the Same Thing | Erica Gaines | Ep. 436

Erica Gaines came into law enforcement as the Knife Girl — selling switchblades at police conferences, making small talk with cops, building relationships she didn't fully understand. She had opinions. She thought shooting someone in the leg was a reasonable ask. Then she stepped into a use-of-force simulator. One domestic violence scenario, a shock pack on her lower back, and two minutes of chaos later, she walked out shaking. That experience rewired her. She's been inside this world ever since, running TacMobility — bringing neuroscience, stress physiology, and resiliency training to law enforcement agencies across the country.

Suicide is the number one cop killer in America. Not line-of-duty deaths. Not ambushes. Not traffic stops. Only half of agencies have any wellness program at all. Of those, only 23% are teaching actual resiliency skills. We get into what that gap costs — and why wellness and resiliency aren't the same thing, and confusing them is part of the problem.

We talk about internal law enforcement culture — why officers say the body armor on their back is for their own admin. Why cynicism becomes a slow leak that doesn't stop at retirement. Why the most important thing a cop can do might be building a social circle that has nothing to do with the job. We also get into dispatchers, women in law enforcement, human trafficking in Kalispell, and what happens to your identity the day you turn in your badge.

Tacmobility: https://www.tacmobility.org

Today's Sponsors:

Montana Knife Company:

https://www.montanaknifecompany.com

David: Buy 4 cartons and get the 5th free when you go to https://davidprotein.com/CLEAREDHOT

Tämä jakso on lisätty Podme-palveluun avoimen RSS-syötteen kautta eikä se ole Podmen omaa tuotantoa. Siksi jakso saattaa sisältää mainontaa.

Jaksot(758)

Cruise Ships, Cover-Ups, and Cow Killers | Negligent Discharge Friday | 5.8.2026

Michael and I get into it on this one. Hantavirus headlines, the Doomsday Clock, wind turbines, the Epstein note, and a guy on YouTube paying his bills by getting stung by bugs. I open by confidently ...

8 Touko 1h 5min

The Cost of Telling the Truth | John Kiriakou | Ep. 446

John Kiriakou spent 14 years at the CIA. He started as an analyst, went operational, and eventually ran counterterrorism work in Pakistan that led to the capture of Abu Zubaydah. He was the first U.S....

4 Touko 3h 20min

Learning To Suffer Well | Full Auto Friday | 5.01.2026

Four questions this week. The kind that don't have clean answers. A guy whose father murdered his mother is asking how to get back to who he was before. He's not. A 28-year-old still living at home is...

1 Touko 57min

Bonus Episode - Drownproof Chapter 1 - Be the Author of your Life, not the Victim of it

Today's "episode" is the audiobook first chapter of my book: Drownproof. Thank you to everyone who helped make the launch such a tremendous success. Hitting all of the "Best Seller" lists, to include ...

29 Huhti 31min

Working for Kanye, Building "Items" for Delta Force | Justin Klahn | Ep. 445

Justin Klahn is hard to put in a box. Twenty years inside Nike Innovation. Years embedded with JSOC units building gear that had to actually work. Time consulting with three-letter agencies, DARPA, an...

27 Huhti 3h 26min

Bladder Control and Geopolitics | Negligent Discharge Friday | 4.24.2026

Michael, my dad, and me. Three generations arguing in one room. That's the format today. My dad watched Neil Armstrong walk on the moon live at twenty-two years old. He remembers the Iranian hostage c...

24 Huhti 1h 12min

How Fast and Furious Buried an FBI Agent | John Shipley | Ep. 444

John Shipley spent fourteen years carrying an FBI badge. Army aviator first — commissioned by his own father, a retired Vietnam-era lieutenant colonel — until a spinal cord injury at Walter Reed ended...

20 Huhti 2h 57min

Windshield, Not the Rearview Mirror | Full Auto Friday | 4.17.2026

Week one of the book being out in the world, and I still don't have the vocabulary for the support. Thank you. Genuinely. If you read it, an honest Amazon review costs nothing and helps more than you'...

17 Huhti 1h 2min