Mike Drop

Major James Capers spent years after Vietnam running ambushes behind enemy lines, surviving an assassination attempt in Hamburg, and serving as a bodyguard to President Nixon before a general sent him home after receiving intelligence that his wife and son would be killed on a Saturday morning. But the moment that defines this episode happened after his bloodiest mission — when he was loaded onto a helicopter with his wounded men and his dead dog King, flown through a storm, and placed in a hallway with the bodies. Someone walked by and said this one is dead. Then another person stopped, looked closer, and said this one is breathing. They pulled him out and brought him back to the operating room. In this episode, Major Capers closes out his story — the ambushes, the training mission loss that made him retire, and what he believes about the country he fought for and would fight for again. Support Major James Capers https://www.instagram.com/major_james_capers_jr/ https://www.capersthedoc.com/ https://www.f

Major James Capers ran 50 missions in Vietnam as a Force Recon Marine — combat swims in shark-infested waters, a POW rescue that earned him his first Purple Heart and Bronze Star, and a four-day battle that left him wounded with his legs broken and his dog dead. He was one of the few African Americans in Force Recon, and fought his way into Combat Swimmer school when the commanding officer tried to send him home before he even started. He spent three months at Khe Sanh facing a Chinese division, and when the helicopter finally came in on his bloodiest mission, he put every man on board and stayed on the ground alone. President Trump called him personally to invite him to the White House to receive the Medal of Honor. In this episode, Major Capers walks through the missions and what it cost him to bring everybody home. Support Major James Capers https://www.instagram.com/major_james_capers_jr/ https://www.capersthedoc.com/ https://www.facebook.com/p/Major-James-Capers-Jr-100040737672030/ https://www.pritzk

Major James Capers led a four day mission in Vietnam that should have killed him. His unit was inserted, took heavy contact, and fought through the night with everything they had. He was wounded, his dog was killed, and when the helicopter finally came in to pull them out, he told the crew to take his men and leave him behind. President Trump signed a bill awarding him the Medal of Honor for what he did on that trail, outnumbered and outgunned, refusing to abandon a single Marine no matter the cost. In this episode, Major Capers sits down to walk through the mission, the decisions made under fire, and what it actually means to bring every man home when everything around you is falling apart. Support Major James Capers https://www.instagram.com/major_james_capers_jr/ https://www.capersthedoc.com/ https://www.facebook.com/p/Major-James-Capers-Jr-100040737672030/ https://www.pritzkermilitary.org/whats_on/holt-oral-history-program/james-capers-jr-major ---------- SPONSORS PARTICLE FOR MENCheck out Particle’s F

Retired Army Sergeant Major and Green Beret Terry Wilson closes out a conversation that covers everything from geopolitics to personal redemption. Terry and Mike dig into the Venezuela raid, the consistency problem with U.S. foreign policy, and whether fighting an ideology like Islamic extremism is even winnable. Then it gets personal — Terry reflects on rebuilding his marriage, watching his kids move forward after losing their brother, and how faith, not discipline alone, became the foundation that finally held. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Retired Army Sergeant Major and Green Beret Terry Wilson returns for Part 2 with some of the rawest conversation yet. From witnessing a Chinook go down in flames in Afghanistan to losing his son in 2020, Terry opens up about the grief he buried for years — and what it finally took to break him open. A brutally honest look at rock bottom, rebuilding, and the unlikely path that brought him back. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Retired Army Sergeant Major and Green Beret Terry Wilson spent 24 years in uniform with the 7th Special Forces Group, racking up 11 combat deployments and nearly 11 years total downrange. He is now the CEO of Tactical Edge Coaching and Consulting, where he works with high performance men to become better leaders in all aspects of their life. In this episode we get into the daily troops in contact grind of Helmand Province, watching a Chinook get blown out of the sky a couple hundred meters away, recovering bodies from the crash site through the night, losing a teammate to an IED within days, the brutal reality of the Afghanistan withdrawal, and hitting rock bottom after losing his son before faith and fitness gave him a way back. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Retired Marine Force Recon Gunnery Sergeant Ryan Kuperus closes out his conversation with Mike Ritland with the kind of honesty that makes people uncomfortable — and that's exactly the point. From a brutally candid take on the "silent professional" myth and what weak leadership actually looks like, to a raw account of his ibogaine experience in Mexico and what it revealed about his relationship with his kids, Kuperus doesn't hold back. He also weighs in on Iran, Israel, the Epstein files, and why he thinks the Monroe Doctrine is the only foreign policy that makes sense. And after nearly losing everything to a court-martial he should never have faced, he found his next mission: The Reason Outdoors, a nonprofit using hunting and the backcountry to pull veterans back from the edge — one hunt at a time. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Retired Marine Force Recon Gunnery Sergeant Ryan Kuperus returns for part two with some of the most harrowing combat accounts you'll hear. From a near-fatal friendly fire incident involving Cobra attack helicopters, to navigating an IED-saturated district center while rescuing a shattered sniper team, Kuperus pulls no punches on what it actually costs when leadership fails on the ground. He also recounts the operation that quietly identified a Taliban shadow governor in northern Helmand — the kind of mission that rarely gets told. The conversation shifts into a candid reckoning with the military's promotion system, the compounding damage of poor senior leadership, and why the men who fight hardest are often the ones the institution fails most. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Ryan Kuperus is a retired Marine Gunnery Sergeant with 17+ years in infantry, recon, and Force Recon. Medically retired after multiple combat deployments and enough kinetic stories to fill a book. From leading teams in Now Zad to pulling his own guys out of multiple IED strikes, this one gets raw fast. We talk leadership failures in combat, hunting, ibogaine, and why the system chews up warriors. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Former SAS operator Phil Singleton reflects on life after the Regiment. He shares his candid thoughts on the Falklands War, his decision to leave the SAS, and the remarkable journey that followed — from bodyguard work in Saudi Arabia to becoming a U.S. citizen, training American law enforcement with Heckler & Koch, and building his own international tactical training company. Now in his 70s, Phil offers unfiltered perspectives on geopolitics, Britain’s direction, America’s strengths, and the simple “Rastafarian lifestyle” he lives today. This episode closes with honest wisdom, humor, and hard-earned life lessons from a true warrior and veteran. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Former British SAS operator Phil Singleton shares hard-earned insights from his distinguished career. He offers a firsthand account of the 1980 Iranian Embassy Siege in London, detailing the planning, explosive entry, chaotic assault amid fire, and the realities of hostage rescue. Singleton also reflects on his experiences during The Troubles in Northern Ireland, the rigorous SAS selection process, endurance testing, and other deployments including Belize, Brunei, and the Falklands. With candid perspectives on leadership, adaptability, counter-terrorism, and the human side of elite operations, this conversation delivers unfiltered veteran insight and operational history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Phil Singleton spent years operating in the shadows — tier one SAS, Operation Nimrod, the Iranian Embassy siege — and then quietly disappeared into a second career training thousands of law enforcement officers across the U.S. as Training Director for Heckler & Koch. He doesn't carry a cell phone, doesn't chase recognition, and until now has been one of the most quietly consequential British operators most Americans have never heard of. This week Phil pulls back the curtain on what it really took to earn that winged dagger, what it was like to storm a foreign embassy in the middle of London on live television, and why — at 72 — he's perfectly content stacking bananas in a grocery store produce aisle with zero regrets. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In the final installment of this three-part conversation, Adam Schwarze lays out his policy vision with the same directness he brought to the battlefield. From making nuclear energy his Senate legacy to dismantling deficit spending and bureaucratic rot, Adam doesn't speak in talking points — he speaks from experience. The conversation also gets into opposition research, the corruption baked into federal elections, the U.S.-Israel relationship, term limits, and why the VA system may need a complete rethink. Raw, informed, and unfiltered. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Adam Schwarze—Marine infantryman turned Navy SEAL officer, Harvard-educated warrior-scholar, and Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in Minnesota—sits down with Mike for part two of a raw, unfiltered conversation. From completing BUD/S as a seasoned combat veteran to conducting 75–100 real-world ship boardings in the Middle East, Adam's operational resume is as uncommon as his path to politics. The conversation cuts through the noise on Iran, the lessons learned from splitting forces across Iraq and Afghanistan. Adam also breaks down the ground-level mechanics of running a grassroots Senate campaign in one of the few states where money and name recognition don't automatically win. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Adam Schwarze enlisted in the Marines three weeks after watching the Twin Towers fall live from his senior year English class and never really stopped fighting. Nine deployments, 70 plus countries, classified undersea SEAL operations, and now a grassroots Senate run in Minnesota with no establishment backing. This one gets into all of it, the rocket shots in Iraq, the brother who died in his arms, what it actually took to cross from Marine infantryman to SEAL officer, and why he believes boots on the ground in Iran could turn into another Middle East disaster. The conversation gets brutally honest about what veterans understand about Iran that politicians don’t. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Randy Rozzell returns to close out his conversation with Mike Ritland, pulling back the curtain on what it took to rebuild Naval Special Warfare's combatives program from the ground up. From hand-to-hand fights for his life on deployment to standing in front of admirals and master chiefs and admitting the Teams sucked at close-quarters combat, Randy held nothing back. He also opens up about life after the Teams — navigating the Covid fallout inside San Diego Fire, his journey to black belt, moving to Texas, and why he finally wrote the book he never thought he'd write. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Randy Rozzell—retired Navy SEAL, 22-year veteran, and former Chief of Naval Special Warfare Combatives—goes deep on the missions that defined his career. From a grueling five-day firefight in Marjah to covert operations he still can't fully detail, Randy pulls back the curtain on what it truly means to serve at the tip of the spear. He also wrestles with the harder questions: the cost of war, the weight of leaving Afghanistan the way we did, and whether it was all worth it. Raw, honest, and unapologetic. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Randy Rozzell is a retired SEAL Chief with 22 years in the teams, multiple combat deployments with Team Seven, the guy who rewrote how Naval Special Warfare teaches hand-to-hand combat. A small-town Texas kid who ran away from home at 14, fought his way into and out of BUD/S more times than most guys even attempt it, then went on to build one of the most operationally relevant combatives programs in special operations history — Randy's story is one of the most raw, honest, and flat-out relentless journeys I've had the privilege of putting on this show. This one's worth every minute. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

MACV-SOG operator Travis Mills continues sharing his extraordinary journey. He discusses running the One-Zero School at Long Thanh to train new SOG team leaders, the profound sense of purpose that emerged from surviving the FOB 4 sapper attack, his transition out of the Army, and decades of post-service work—and shares his straightforward views on current threats like Iran, nuclear proliferation, and the need for clear military objectives backed by decisive action. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Vietnam War veteran and former MACV-SOG operator Travis Mills shares raw, firsthand accounts from his time with the elite Studies and Observations Group. He details the extreme challenges of small-team reconnaissance insertions deep into enemy territory, the silent movement techniques essential for survival against overwhelming odds, high-risk missions blocking North Vietnamese supply routes, a harrowing first recon extraction under fire using McGuire rigs, and his intense personal experience surviving the devastating sapper attack on FOB 4 at Marble Mountain on August 23, 1968. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices