This is one of our rawest conversations to date.
Fresh off a hard night of training, we sit down to talk about everything we’ve been carrying this year—illness, anger, burnout, fear, and the places where friendship gets thin but doesn’t break.

Tyler opens up about the cognitive chaos of round four chemo: losing control of his thoughts, detoxing from ATRA and arsenic, and clawing his way back into clarity. Danny shares the gut-level story of being marked AWOL on Veterans Day after almost 30 years of service, losing a $10,000 bonus, and the three-day emotional tailspin that followed. 

We talk about how men often “check the box” in friendship when they’re drowning, how jiu-jitsu becomes a ritual for survival, and why being “lost” isn’t a failure—it’s a season. We also look ahead: what it means to reinvent ourselves, cut the fat, and return to the roots that made this podcast matter.

If you’ve ever felt buried, misunderstood, or mentally fogged out… if you’ve ever carried more than you let anyone see… this one’s for you.

00:05 — Post-training exhaustion meets clarity
06:12 — Tyler’s ATRA detox and the feeling of losing cognitive control
13:40 — Danny’s Veterans Day AWOL story and mental shutdown
33:20 — “Some days you're the hammer, some days you're the nail.”
43:00 — The friendship strain neither of them wanted to admit
56:10 — Blue Belt theory: maybe this is the promotion
1:05:00 — Reinvention, holidays, pressure, and what comes next