Security Halt!
Welcome to Security Halt! Podcast, the show dedicated to Veterans, Active Duty Service Members, and First Responders. Hosted by retired Green Beret Deny Caballero, this podcast dives deep into the stories of resilience, triumph, and the unique challenges faced by those who serve.
Through powerful interviews and candid discussions, Security Halt! Podcast highlights vital resources, celebrates success stories, and offers actionable tools to navigate mental health, career transitions, and personal growth.
Join us as we stand shoulder-to-shoulder, proving that even after the mission changes, the call to serve and thrive never ends.
Security Halt!
Dino Garner on Mentorship, Innovation & PTSD Recovery: From Military Service to Scientific Discovery
From the Front Lines to the Lab: Dino Garner’s Extraordinary Journey of Service, Science, and Support
In this captivating episode of Security Halt!, host Deny Caballero sits down with Dino Garner—veteran, innovator, author, and scientist—for a wide-ranging conversation on mentorship, resilience, and redefining purpose after military service.
Dino opens up about his remarkable life—from growing up in Europe and navigating cultural transitions in the U.S., to serving in the military and later making groundbreaking discoveries in marine biology and scientific research. He emphasizes the critical role of mentorship, personal development, and helping others as guiding principles throughout his life.
Together, they unpack the struggles many veterans face when returning to civilian life, the need for lifelong learning, and how innovation and empathy can drive new solutions for PTSD. Dino also shares compelling insights about the molecular side of trauma and why deeper scientific understanding is essential for creating lasting change in mental health care.
This episode is an inspiring look at how one man’s mission to lead, educate, and serve continues to evolve—and how every veteran has the power to turn pain into purpose.
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Chapters
00:00 Introduction and Personal Background
02:55 Life Choices and Mentorship
05:57 The Importance of Helping Others
09:01 Cultural Experiences and Early Education
11:59 Transition to American Education and Integration
15:04 Scientific Career and Discoveries
17:57 Military Journey and Life Lessons
23:47 Private Military Work and Philosophy
26:15 Innovative Solutions in the Military
30:01 Transitioning from Military to Civilian Life
36:52 Embracing New Paths and Lifelong Learning
40:47 The Importance of Helping Others
46:03 Exploring PTSD and Healing Solutions
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Produced by Security Halt Media
Security Odd Podcast. Let's go. The only podcast that's purpose-built from the ground up to support you Not just you, but the wider audience, everybody. Authentic, impactful and insightful conversations that serve a purpose to help you. And the quality has gone up. It's decent and it's hosted by me. Danny Caballero, dino Gardner welcome to Security Out Podcast. How's it going, brother?
Speaker 2:Hey, thanks so much, Denny. Wonderful to be here. I appreciate your invitation.
Speaker 1:Yeah, man, I love stumbling across great people on LinkedIn. I saw your profile. I'm not going to ruin it. I'll let you introduce yourself to the people, but you have, you're quite the man.
Speaker 2:I'm 10,000 years old, what do?
Speaker 1:you expect.
Speaker 2:Well, I have no children, like most of you all out there. So, um, you know, I've had a chance to do a lot of the fun things that I, uh, that I dreamed of as a child and a lot of other things that I picked up along the way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I just had my first one. But you're right, man. Yeah, congratulations, thank you. Yeah, when you don't have kids, you can run the gamut and you can do just about everything, and I realized that as soon as they come into this world, that's over.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're a slave for a long time. Yeah, you know. That's an interesting point because when I was nine years old, I grew up as a son of a fighter pilot and we used to go to these fighter pilot parties and they put us in a back bedroom. So I was snooping around everybody's drawers and some woman caught me looking through the Italian nudie magazines. She says, dino, come over here. And so I did. She sat me on the bed. She says you got two choices in life. You can get married, have a lovely wife, children, the house, the pool, a couple of cars, or you can have a grand life. So I have no children. Guess which I chose?
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh man, that stuck with you, that stuck with you.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, oh no. I had great mentors and people who gave me advice and very practical advice along the way, because they saw that I was different from the other kids.
Speaker 1:In what ways were you different when you were a little one?
Speaker 2:Well, I spoke several languages and I got along with everybody because I would walk up to people and just kind of yank them on the shoulder, on their pant leg, and say, hey, tell me your story. And so I was very curious and that bothered a lot of people because, well, also not only being curious but also finding I hate to say it finding fault in things and finding better ways of doing things, even as a child. So it wasn't too popular with the people who wanted to maintain status quo.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Obviously adults. They hate it when a child points out something can be optimized or could run more efficiently if you've done just a little differently.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, you know, when I was in the Army I heard that every day, that's what I was going to do next.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yep, that's why they just let me do what I wanted to do, and that's a whole different story, that's a whole different podcast. I think they do, and that's a whole different story. That's a whole different podcast, I think. But I had a great time doing it and I helped a lot of people and changed a lot of lives and ensured that people were safer, they were faster, they were better, they were smarter, they were more thinking, and so I hope that that's what I will leave behind, just having helped a lot of people.
Speaker 1:That's a great legacy to leave behind. Just having helped a lot of people, that's a great legacy to leave behind. Oftentimes we we try to focus more on like I want to be remembered a certain way. I want to change something and I want to mold it and honestly make a difference.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I just try to do the right thing all the time and, uh, just help people and it just turns out well for them and for me too, because I gain a lot of great energy and it increases my personal power by doing that. Now, it's not that I don't do it selfishly, I just do what I like doing and I love assisting others or helping them. You know, a big difference between assisting and helping. Helping is when you're drowning. You know I've done that. But assisting other people on a day-to-day basis is something I really love doing, because I feel we all have gifts in life and we're obligated to share those gifts in one way or the other. Now, if you're a serial killer, there's an exception.
Speaker 1:Please don't share your gift.
Speaker 2:Yeah, don't share your gift, but in general, everybody has a gift. Every person I've ever met in my life has shown me or Please, don't share your gift writing and editing books and again, just general communicating and getting people to share their stories so that they're no longer afraid or even worried about potential embarrassment out there, professionally or familially or personally. Yeah, so I try to break down those barriers for them.
Speaker 1:I think it's important to have somebody that can come in and help us identify what our strengths are, especially like our veterans coming out, because not everybody's aware of, like, what your true strengths are. Like. We have guides, we have, like, and it's somewhere behind paywalls ridiculously, yeah, pearson strengths and all those behind paywalls, ridiculously, yeah, piercing strengths and all those. But, uh, it's important to have somebody can come in your in your fear, in your world and help you identify those external it's not, you know, not talking about your nco, ncoer strengths.
Speaker 2:Your true strengths, yes, yeah, yeah someone who takes in, someone who can see the gifts in you and again, we all have them. So all you got to do is just take a look, uh, pay attention, ask a few questions and sit back and just let them blossom, let them share their story, and then it's not hard to assist another human being. It's really not. It doesn't take that much energy for all you selfish people out there who don't want to help anyone, who don't want to take the time because you're self-absorbed, but it really doesn't take that much time. And when you do that, it comes back to you in spades and I think that if you're the selfish type, then, hey, you will be richly rewarded, yeah.
Speaker 1:Mentorship and coaching are something that I talk about a lot, especially for our veterans to focus on. You spent a good portion of your life working to ensure somebody else could reach their potential, working to develop somebody, and I would beg to argue that on the outside, like that, you're still that person. You're still somebody that cares and wants to help develop somebody else. So understand that you don't have to be an expert in the field, you don't have to be vastly superior knowledge in one area or the other, but you just have to be willing to help somebody out in their current problems. That mentorship is vital and it gives you just as much as the person receiving it.
Speaker 1:It helps you grow as a person.
Speaker 2:Agreed Completely. Yeah, you know, you don't have to be an expert in anything. It's because life is on the job training. Yeah so you are always moving You're always improving. So just keep sharing what you learn along the way, and people will pick up on it. What works for them, they retain, what doesn't they discard and move on.
Speaker 1:In this grand life that you started focusing on as a young child. Where did life take you after your early years as a young kid in school? Where did you go?
Speaker 2:Well, first Dad was an Air force fighter pilot the f4 driver in vietnam. Mom was a designer. So I, when I was, shortly after I was born, just days after I, was kidnapped by grandma, my dad's mother. So I was on the lam with gram. I started out with life in a really curious fashion and, and so I think I was repatriated after a couple of weeks. Maybe it had been two days, I don't remember what happened.
Speaker 2:Different stories. So my grandmother you know the joke is she was feeding me spam and whole chicken. She was a North Carolina woman entrepreneur. All the Garners were and still are, so I repatriated and then we were shipped off to Germany, where my father already was. He was at the Han Air Base flying F-100s, and so I grew up there and we lived on the economy with a German family, and so my first language was German.
Speaker 2:Then we incorporated Spanish because my mother was Mexican, and then French and a few other languages. But growing up, learning being industrious and learning industry as a child taught me how to just do stuff. Don't complain about a thing, just get it done and then someone will pat you on the back at the end of the night and feed you your goodnight chocolate. So if you're having a tough time during the day, just suck it up.
Speaker 2:So I learned to work on the farm, and it was a working farm, working dairy farm. We killed pigs for bacon, butchered them. I witnessed all that. I was the chief wrangler of the roosters and the hens, all that. I was the chief wrangler of the roosters and the hens and the guy designed to go out and get the eggs, collect the eggs and take them back, and I was the potato catcher, so I'd go out in the fields and I'd fill my bag with potatoes.
Speaker 2:So I got to learn at an early age what it's like to work, being around great family people who supported you all the time and who genuinely loved you and taught you things, showed you how to do things. And so we were there for a few years. I spent 12 total years in Europe and I'm very grateful for that, because I was not raised in the American education system, which is entirely different from what we got in Europe. Yeah, and you know all the propaganda and stuff. So I just had I had such an, or developed such an open mind as a child, and learning different cultures and being able to understand the language put me in touch with people, and this was post-world war ii by 15 years. That's when I, shortly after I was born and so, growing up post-world war ii in europe, you get to be around a lot of people who are very grateful because it's still very fresh in your mind. I mean, think about 15 years ago from right now and everything is fresh in your mind. You can remember the horrors, the good parts, the great people, the unpleasant people. So it wasn't hard for people to have World War II still in mind. And I met a lot of veterans, not simply World War II but World War I as well, and to hear their stories. Normally they wouldn't say anything, but as again, I'd walk up to people and say, hey, tell me your story, and people would, they would love it. And because I was a great listener and I didn't tell them, but I was preparing myself to be a novelist in later life.
Speaker 2:And how old were you at this point, a novelist in later life? And how old were you at this point? I was starting out at two years old when I would walk to people and my opa would carry me around in a village and we ran into a very tall German World War I warrior and he was missing an eye and he had a hollow eye socket and I said, uh, opa, you know, let me reach in there and touch him. And and I asked him he was in german. I said can I touch you? He said yes, and I put my finger in his eye socket and and so I I. I learned at an early age that I was not afraid of monsters. Yeah, with all due respect to that gentleman, yeah, had a nice conversation.
Speaker 2:He told me about his a battle or combat in world war one yeah so the the education I got in europe growing up there first 12 years was unparalleled wouldn't trade it for anything. There were some really difficult times growing up because we were suffering from the bottom meinhof gang and other terrorist activities in germany in the 1970s. There were issues like that and of course, uh, when I was living at han, nikita khrushchev, russia, was pointing all of his missiles at our base. So there was that stress that I never knew of or felt. But my parents did, and I learned later on what it was like to live under the shadow of a Soviet missile strike or potential missile strike. So I had a grand, I had a grand upbringing. Then we came back to America and I we went to Montgomery, alabama, when my father was going to the.
Speaker 1:Yale War College? No way, maxwell. Yeah, that's actually that's where we're at right now, my wife's right now, in that very same school. Yeah, that's right. You mentioned that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Congratulations Well, you know Montgomery Well. Picture Montgomery in 1974. We integrated. I was in ninth grade. We integrated a previously all-Black high school. We integrated I was in ninth grade. We integrated a previously all-black high school, georgia Washington Junior High. And I quickly discovered that I was in ninth grade with a bunch of black kids who were 22 years old and had never seen a white person before. And this is America, deep south, george.
Speaker 1:Wallace Lots of wounds, lots of anger.
Speaker 2:Yep, yep.
Speaker 1:And I wouldn't even go in further. It was an eye-opening experience.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I can't even imagine dino, they love me. I would just I'd regale them in about four different languages and and um.
Speaker 1:We had a, we had a calculus you would not have survived in my school.
Speaker 2:I had a grand old time. I had a grand old time.
Speaker 2:Oh man, yeah, it was just a great upbringing. And so you know, fast forward, go through high school. I went to a public high school in Fort Washington, maryland, and then I went to some Cal College where I flunked out my first year of university. I got it all out of my system. Yeah, I'm not at all embarrassed to say because you know I, my two greatest mentors were both Nobel laureates uh Julie Axelrod and and Richard Feynman and uh Julie Axelrod. When I was an undergraduate at American University, when I finally got my stuff together after flunking out and then going to a community college Prince George's Community College in Maryland and I love that I would recommend to people who don't really care about going to a Harvard or Stanford, because you go to a community college to learn and to be taught and to experience things. It's a heck of a lot better than just getting thrust into a university of 50,000 kids as a freshman and you're in a room full of 400 other kids. You don't learn a darn thing. But at my community college I did well, so yeah, and then I got a full scholarship to American University in DC and also took classes at Georgetown, and that's when I blossomed.
Speaker 2:I became the first scientist in history to culture shark cells, and back in the 1980s there was a movement such that scientists felt that sharks didn't get cancer because they were completely cartilaginous. That's not entirely true. The cartilage calcifies over the years and they develop a bone-like structure. But what's interesting, in some of the experiments I did, it showed that cartilage has very special and unique properties anti-tumor angiogenesis factor, which inhibits the growth of tumors. Yeah, really, really great. So that is one of their reasons and mechanisms how they didn't develop cancer, certainly unlike we did. So other people had tried to use or develop a cell culture. So instead of using live animals, and so I just worked on it for a couple of years and I finally developed a cell culture. Took me five years to publish it because no one wanted to listen to a 21-year-old punk, but it's out there.
Speaker 1:Age discrimination.
Speaker 2:Dino, that's real age discrimination, you know by that time I had already gotten two other master's degrees and was finishing a PhD, so I didn't give a shit. I just thought you know the same thing I'd known as a kid. There are a lot of dumb grown-ups out there. They're prejudiced, they're insecure and I was not going to be that way. So the paper finally got published and someone sent it to me and I said why, what's this? I'd forgotten all about it. I wrote this yeah, pretty good, yeah, for scientists, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker 2:So I finished out my scientific career. I was at uh scripps institution of oceanography studying electroreception and sharks, and then went into the lab at university of southern california and stuck electrodes in single brain cells and had a great time. But you know, both of my mentors, feynman and Axelrod, said Dino, get out of science. You are a great technician, which means I was great at doing things in science, conducting science, practicing science. But you're going to kill a scientist because you hate scientists. You know there are passive-aggressive types and difficult to get along with, and me I'm not passive, aggressive, I'm active, aggressive and I speak my mind I talk about things.
Speaker 2:I've got an issue with you and I we're gonna, we're gonna have a little chat over here in the corner and they didn't like that. So, uh, and feinman and axelrod picked up on that early, early on, feinmannman, when I was at USC, and they just said, hey, get out. In fact Richard Feynman said, you know, he played the bongos. That was his thing. He'd go to strip clubs and play bongos. And he said, dino, you need to take up the congas. And so I did for relief, stress relief, because you could beat the shit out of a conga. Like I said, you would have killed a bongo, but congas would be about your style. So I did that for a few years, anyway, age 35, as part of a life plan. Yeah, let me back up Ninth grade in Montgomery, alabama.
Speaker 2:That's when I made out a life plan. I was going to become an airborne ranger. I was going to do marine biology, neurobiology, then airborne ranger number three and some kind of mercenary, but someone who helped people. I didn't want to go out there and just spray and pray, not my thing. Interestingly, I had read the book Jaws and then saw the movie. I said, all right, I want to be the marine biologist.
Speaker 2:But in the book Matt Hooper, my idol, got eaten by the shark and so I was heartbroken. But then when the movie came along, he survived and I said, holy shit, I want to be that guy. And then there was Red the Dogs of War, of course, by Frederick Forsyth, and said man, I want to do some of that stuff, but I don't want to hurt people. I want to kill the bad guys but I'm going to help people somehow, because in Africa, you know, these guys are just hurting. And so I did that and fast forward. I checked off all those blocks, did the marine biology and neurobiology, and then it was time to join the Army at age 35, get an airborne ranger contract. All my friends says what the fuck?
Speaker 2:Let me take your temperature, son, let's get a good blood workup on you. And I said I know what I'm doing. You know I've been dreaming about this for a long time. And what year did you enlist? That was February of 1994. No, actually it was 93, during the Black Hawk Down crisis.
Speaker 2:Yeah yeahawk Down Crisis and I was watching that on TV. God, I was getting my physical and so I reported for duty in February of 1994, made it through basic and advanced. Let me tell you about basic Going into it, I ran a 22-minute two-mile and I was a little chunky and so at the end, after graduating, even fast forward to airborne well, no, actually haven't gotten airborne yet. Advanced infantry training Then I got down to a respectable, I think, 14 minute two mile, which got pared down even more by the time I got through a ranger indoctrination program, rip. So I'll go to airborne school. You know it's all shuffle and I'm just thinking, god, and we have all these kids coming in from ROTC units, you know, poking fun at everybody, looking down at all the enlisted guys. I put a stop to that and go to RIP, ranger Indoctrination Program. Start out with 150 of the toughest kids in the Army. We whittled down to 75, and I was number two and I said I think maybe I can do this. I'm learning slowly, I'm not the best, not the fastest, not the smartest, I'm not the most thinking, but I could put all of those great characteristics and traits together at just the right time. Maybe 60% of this, 20% of that, 30% of that, but all come together 100% of whoop-ass. And that's what really worked, because you don't have to be the best at anything there, you have to be proficient at the right time. And I discovered that, of course, I was 35 years old. So, yeah, and so we get the first.
Speaker 2:And so I chose a first ranger battalion and wow, there's another culture shock going in with a bunch of kids who were thinking well, you're CIA, you're CID, fbi, you know just three-letter agencies ad nauseum. And I just went ahead and said I'm just going to do this, I'm not going to talk to a whole lot of people. I listened to everybody because those kids raised me as a pup at 35, and they were 18. So the 1st Ranger Battalion was just going through, just starting. Actually, they had been going through the expert infantryman badge competition and they'd been training for weeks, if not a couple of months on that. And so I was told that I would not be able to do that, and I said bullshit, I would not be able to do that and I said bullshit.
Speaker 2:So I went to my first sergeant. I said, hey, listen, I can do this. I'll make you look good, I promise, just blah, blah, blah. My team leader was right next to me and he was just seething and the first sergeant, van Houten, says let him. And I'm glad he did, because I had no training whatsoever, I just went through all those 50 stations, got perfect score, the highest one.
Speaker 2:Then I represented all the Rangers and the enlisted Rangers at the award ceremony and my EIB was pinned on by Colonel Ralph Puckett, later Medal of Honor recipient, and he had actually given me my certificate at RIP. He says oh, you're back, you're still here, because he knew how old I was back then I said yes, sir, I am, Thank you very much, good to see you again. And um, so the Ranger career was um, it was, it was the oddest because people let me do whatever I wanted to do. I didn't, I didn't, I wasn't sticking only with my squad. I hung out with the sniper guys, the um, the mortars, the AT guys. I got to learn everything just because I asked and because I did a lot for the company and for the guys. I did their taxes. I wrote love letters to their moms and their girlfriends and their wives.
Speaker 2:I was always engaging and just being again helping as much as I could, and so I learned a heck of a lot, and I went to ranger school too. Spent five months there, Went home without it, and I won't get into that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but it was fun. I've never been about certificates or diplomas or ranger tabs anything like that Loved to have gotten it yeah, but it didn't happen. Or ranger tabs anything like that. Love to have gotten it yeah, but it didn't happen. Five months in ranger school took 50 pounds off a 195-pound frame and then I ballooned back up to like 220, and then had a whole host of problems after that.
Speaker 2:But I jumped right into doing Merc work because I started a couple of international private military firms. Because I started a couple of international private military firms and then I got to learn what I really learned as a ranger and what I got to discard and made my own rules of engagement. I have hundreds, actually I'm being silly it's anything goes. When you go into combat and I did over 220 missions then I hunted poachers in Africa after that when you go in with the notion, a philosophy, whatever it takes, and one ROE, anything goes you're basically unstoppable, unless someone drops a hellfire on your head. You can do a lot that way and it kind of goes back to the Army. Army had too many ROEs, too many this and that, and it was designed to forge a huge team and of course I learned at the same time. I'm not a team player. I acted as a team player, but I'm not really one. That's why I got to work out with so many other different sections within the first Ranger Battalion.
Speaker 1:How many years did you do a regiment?
Speaker 2:Three years yeah, at the first Ranger Battalion and it was glorious. Hanging out with it was like going back to high school all over again and getting to do it right Helping people.
Speaker 2:And I mean helping them. I remember then Lieutenant Colonel Ken Keene, later general, saying he had a favorite, saying you see something needs doing, do it. And so I did it all the time. With all due respect to my fellow rangers, a lot of guys would be hanging out in bars and doing other silly stuff. I would always be doing something that helps somebody else or that that enhanced someone's life, or I'd be developing some innovative tool, say for the PVS-4 night sight for my M240G machine gun. You know it had that little single hole in it, like about a 2-millimeter diameter hole, so you couldn't see things during the twilight hours. So I grabbed one of those Canon, I tore apart a Canon lens and camera and took off the little shutters the leaf kind of shutters go like that, yeah, and I affixed that to the inside of the rubber part, the little cowling, and I could see at all hours of the day and night with that little aperture.
Speaker 1:You're going to be pissed. Somebody marketed that, somebody has that and they've been putting that out. That is.
Speaker 2:That is an item now that gets sold yeah, good, well, I'll tell you what I did in 1994.
Speaker 1:So uh, yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about.
Speaker 2:Yeah and I don't. You know, I also live by another adage you can do almost anything you want in life, as long as you don't care who gets the credit. Yeah, so I would not go after those guys. I would say good, I'm glad you took the work, because that is the way life should be. You shouldn't have to be capitalizing on everything that you do or give to other people. Just share the thing, people Just share the thing.
Speaker 2:And one of my good buddies, matt Lum, in Santa Barbara, california, said Dino, your life is like a Forrest Gump movie Because you just go along and do the silliest little things, like giving the idea for the smiley face or something. I can't even recall the other ones. But the life has been that way. And when you help people that way, you may not hear from them again ever, and that's fine. You may not even get a thank you. But I tell you what E equals MC squared. You take a tiny bit of mass, a great idea, you explode it and the energy that comes out of it is untold, ungodly. So you help other people in that way and they just keep paying it forward. So I'm glad to have been a genesis of many of those energy transformations and explosions it's beautiful and it's.
Speaker 1:It's not the first time. It won't be the last ingenuity at the uh team or gun team level leads to a great insight. I mean it's been. I mean you want to see some ingenuity? Go to a regular infantry company and see what those guys are doing to adapt and uh mold their equipment to meet their needs yes, ironically, in a ranger battalion you weren't allowed to do that stuff.
Speaker 2:You know, first sergeant would come by. I did about 10 other different things. Yeah, he came by and he'd say huh, and then he'd walk away. And then after a while, one of my team or squad leaders he said listen, dino, you need to stop doing this because you're confusing the first sergeant. You know you're confusing people. This is how we do it in the Army. It's a maintained status quo. We have enough time training Rangers to do what we want them to do, so don't pile on all this other innovative stuff that you have in mind. Just do your job so fine. So they still let me do what I wanted to do. So I got my honorable discharge from the army.
Speaker 2:I was broken man. I was tired and worn out and started two international private military firms and started escorting people out of hostile territories with someone else's money that was not my money and so I had their resources. They contacted me. What's interesting is that people throughout my entire Army career were watching me mostly civilians and I could feel them in the background and once in a while I'd get a message here like keep going, which is really cool. So I still don't know who the hidden hand was back then, but it enabled me to do some really interesting missions taking people out of the hostile territories, taking them into safe havens or hunting down persons of interest, which I love, because me I'm just a short, fat, bald, ugly dude and nobody pays attention to me. You know, you just get right up next to somebody and lights out, baby yeah.
Speaker 1:If you can say where are some places that you worked in.
Speaker 2:I wouldn't except Africa. Yeah, I got this far in life.
Speaker 1:Noted. Yeah, yeah, the bad guys.
Speaker 2:They're all dead anyway, so I don't care.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I got to imagine that that was not easy to set up. Like, what was that part of that? Was that also on the list of like hey, I want to, I want to do this wet work type?
Speaker 2:of stuff Not quite. Yeah, not quite it was a very dark Dino chapter. As a young kid, no, it was what you might glean from Dogs of War by Frederick Forsythe.
Speaker 2:So, that's really just about being in Africa trying to stage a coup and just killing bad guys and having a lot of civilian collateral damage too, and I wanted to avoid that. Nonetheless, I tell you about Africa. I had the coolest interview, job interview in the history of job interviews. Good man, the first year I had only gone there for a couple of months after a divorce. This was back in 2012, 2011, 2012. And I was going to stay just a couple of months, just blow a lot of money I just earned recently from some book sales and I'll just drink a beer and hang it out with a bunch of other crazy beer drinkers. And so that first year was just that. It was just coming down and DTMSing from a marriage and I knew I needed some kind of outlet. I didn't know exactly what it was, so, sitting in a bar one night just outside Cape Town, a guy came up to me and said hey, I've got a perfect job for you Now, somebody who probably knew me from somewhere I don't know. So he said you're going to go to the. He gave me sort of like GPS coordinates and so I went there.
Speaker 2:It was north of Johannesburg, near southern border of Botswana, north of Johannesburg, near southern border of Botswana, and meet up with these two Zulu warriors, and my life took a turn right there. I knew I was in for a grand adventure, meeting these guys and one of them I'll just call him Bognale Mr Dean, you go in this direction. And he's talking with his buddy for a while. He gets turned around. Mr Dean, you go in this direction. After about 10 minutes of that, I just said F it. I bisected between the far right and the far left, shot an azimuth to the horizon, and I moved out smartly and because he told me you need to find a couple of guys, a couple of bad guys, and he said, oh yeah, bring back their shoes. And so I set out. I didn't find anything. I was up like six total miles round trip. And I get back to them and Bonali says he grabs me by the shoulder. He says Mr Dean, you are past the test because you did not get eaten by any king, and that was the beginning of hunting poachers. He did show me a duffel bag full of shoes and boots and flip-flops. He didn't tell me where they came from. I can only imagine that they came from the guys who didn't pass the test. Yeah, it's a tough job test. Yeah, it's a tough job.
Speaker 2:It's also in the most beautiful country in and continent though I've not been in all of africa, I'd say in the world, besides antarctica, which I would love to go to someday but uh, yeah, africa was magical. I learned a lot and and more about my resilience, because I was hurting and I was tired and I was broken. And on those missions, which turned out to be even more magical than I thought, I was followed around by a troop of hyenas, and when you talk to other people about that, talk about the most unusual behavior, because hyenas avoid humans. Now my electric field and that's a whole different story was measured when I was in San Diego. My electric field was about four to five times larger than normal humans, so there's some interesting chemistry going on there. I know for a fact that other animals, especially predators, are very weary of me and those hyenas just sort of glommed on. The female was left nine o'clock 10 meters off me and everybody else was just surrounding me. In fact, there's that painting, right up there, I see.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was wondering why they had a painting of hyenas back there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so, yeah, that that was fascinating. They came out of nowhere on one of my first missions and they, they, just then. They would just fade away as I got closer back to my base camp. So it's been a it's been a grand life, and of course, I haven't even talked about the writing and having fun with that. No, let's dive into that.
Speaker 1:We have a little bit of time left. You know, being able to think that what I want our audience to take away from this is it's never too late. Your story, what you've highlighted, what you've shown us, is that you can have multiple paths in your life. You can choose to have different parts, be dedicated to different aspects, and you don't have to settle for one thing.
Speaker 2:That's right. I was in Africa at age 54. All my friends were going again. What the fuck those?
Speaker 2:are the same guys who, only 20 years earlier, when I joined the army at 35, said are you serious? I said yeah, you made a great point. Life doesn't end at 40 or 50 or 60. There's no such thing as retirement for me. I wouldn't know retirement if I swam a stroke in it or stroked a putt over it In retirement. I don't even know what it is. I'll just keep going until I kick and I think that it allows me, permits me, to share more of the gifts that I have.
Speaker 1:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:And I get so much satisfaction from doing that. I love it.
Speaker 1:It's important to, I know, for a brief second. For a while I told myself I did all this, spent all this time in the military. When I transition it'll be hard to do anything else. I just got to stick to what I used to do and just stick to that, and you don't have to. You don't have to stick to what I used to do and just stick to that, and you don't have to.
Speaker 2:You don't have to stick to that. I'm telling you right now. Look at you. You just blossomed into this. This is cool yeah.
Speaker 1:And it takes work. Your next chapter will take work, but it's whatever you want it to be. It doesn't have to be what that person did, or certainly not what I do or anybody else around you. You can decide. The moment you check out, the moment you ETS, you can start thinking about becoming a scientist, becoming a lawyer, becoming a doctor, and now more than ever, you need to know that education is accessible. You served. It's your benefits. Why not use them? Vr&e GI Bill. You can use all those benefits to go back to school and get that degree. Become a scientist, become a doctor.
Speaker 2:But what do you tell people? Because they've been trained to be team players. Now they get out there and be individuals and go for that. So how do you tell people like that? I've tried to tell them in the past. Hey, I did it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it doesn't work.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it doesn't work.
Speaker 1:Yeah, my approach to it is just being able to do this, because if I can talk with Dino Gardner for five minutes and show, just let him tell his story and highlight his path, just while somebody's driving to that next interview, maybe they listen and they hear. Holy shit, he was a scientist before he went to Ranger Regiment at 35? Why am I complaining? I'm only 27.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I got plenty of life left in me. You know what? Fuck this interview? Let me sign up for fucking school.
Speaker 2:I'm going to go be a doctor.
Speaker 2:When I say we should, we're obligated to help others. I think one of the side effects and byproducts is inspiration. Yes, and you'll never know that maybe you, you inspired somebody and it's not in your business anyway. You don't need to be, you don't need thanks, you don't need to be, you know, get that attaboy or the pat on the back for all the good you did big fucking deal. Just help somebody and walk away and if they come into your life, if they're meant to be in your life on some universal electricity, then let them. They'll become your friends, maybe lifelong friends. I've met some people like that and, wow, I'm just so grateful.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's about just being willing to. You know, like I said earlier, go once you're out, find your path, find your why, find your purpose and then, when you know that, when you're rooted and anchored into your purpose, your next mission help somebody else do the same, Yep, and then watch that person do the same for the next and next Look. We hope that somebody else is going to take up this mission, but the reality is no one's coming. The QRF is not coming. If you want the veteran suicide epidemic to end, we have to help each other. We have to help inspire the next generation of great military veteran leaders.
Speaker 2:So that means helping each other out.
Speaker 1:That's right.
Speaker 2:You know in different ways. Hey, can I talk about the two books? Yes, please, absolutely. Both of these were nominated for Pulitzer Prize, you know, which is kind of that's huge, that's fucking huge. One of them is called AeroMasters, celebrating a century of the American fighter pilot, and, of course, as I told you, I grew up in the atmosphere of the fighter pilots hung around them. For decades I used to fly in the backseat of high-performance jets like the A4, a7, f4, f14, f15, f16, fa18, even off aircraft carriers as a photographer. Wow, and so I. Aircraft carriers as a photographer.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:And so I got to do a lot and the first book I did I didn't like at all. With all due respect to the publisher, I just and you know the guy's a top gun they weren't too crazy about it either, in fact.
Speaker 2:I haven't heard from any of them in 30-something years. So I'm hoping to rekindle some wonderful friendships, because my partner, liz Vedder, and I we created this beautiful trilogy called Aeromasters, again celebrating a century of the American fighter pilot. And the first one is just a stunner 12 inches by 12 inches by two inches, thick, almost 10 pounds. But it's so stunning. All modesty aside, it's so beautiful. It is a museum quality piece and people aren't quite sure what to think about when they get it. They said you know we were, we expected to be impressed by your work, yours and Liz's but we weren't expecting to be overwhelmed and blown away by it. Why is it so good? Yeah, Damn.
Speaker 2:And so, yeah, so we got Aeromasters going and I just got approval, blanket approval, from the Secretary of the Air Force to go fly in fighters and frontline fighters again To F-15, f-15 Strike Eagle, f-16 Viper and to shoot the similar and dissimilar aircraft like the F-22 and F-35. So here I am, 65 years old, going to go pull Gs again. Hey, danny, if you don't hear from me after a few months, I'm going to call it a heart attack. I'll still be the happiest guy in the world, so I get to do that.
Speaker 2:So there's that book and then there's a new one. The most important to me, the most important book I've ever written, is called Silent Scars Bold Remedies, bold Remedies, and it's cutting edge care and healing for PTSD. Actually, it's not PTSD. I got to start to get that out of my mind. I relabeled it PTSX, post-traumatic stress injuries. X just denotes all types of injuries and TBI and US military, active duty military and veterans. So this book is really about and it's 900 pages it has literally everything, including experimental ideas and thoughts and research that you can think of regarding TTSX and traumatic brain injury. In fact, I'm working with a guy you know, a colleague and friend of mine, dr Mark Gordon.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, you know him and love him. This show.
Speaker 2:Yeah, wow, amazing. And so, as a scientist who studied neurochemistry, biochemistry at the cellular level, neurochemistry, biochemistry at the cellular level, I know for a fact that, as a psychologist or a psychiatrist would say, ptsd is just in your head and sorry, it's at the molecular level, even deeper than that.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, body Keeps the Score. Talked about that and that's the first book that I read that gave me that understanding. It's the first book that unlocked. There are so many things that we deal with that we don't understand are linked to post-traumatic stress of any sort of issue with your immune system, like you can, and you grew up abused if you grew up in a home where it was just nothing but violence, and you have all these stomach issues, gastrointestinal issues endocrine issues.
Speaker 1:Yeah, these are things that are happening as a result of post-traumatic stress. It doesn't have to be combat. That's the thing. This is this. Thousands of americans are dealing with this as a result of all sorts of horrible things.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like layoffs. Yes, absolutely Like a fucking layoff.
Speaker 1:Yeah, all sorts of things.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's stress everywhere.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And so that's why I want to just put a big plug for the molecular basis of post-traumatic stress injuries. Study those Put more money into it. Now we're fighting a psychology or the psychologist mafia and the psychiatrist mafia. They don't want that because they feel they'd be out of a job, but the fact is they wouldn't be, because we combine all forces. Everybody is going to be necessary. So, that book? Yeah, so that book should be out before Memorial Day. Oh nice, that one will be on Amazon. Arrowmasters is available from our website online.
Speaker 1:Okay, if you pause right now, go to the episode description. There'll be a link for Arrowmasters there for the other book as soon as it's available. Dino's going to send that link over to me and then I'll post that that I'll do a blog post about it, um, because I like writing uh, dino, it's been an absolute pleasure having you on. We could probably sit here for another two hours, because we you know we have to run it back for a part two because I want to really dive in.
Speaker 1:Oh that'd be wonderful two years of, um uh, being a scientist. When you go into studying anything, that is that remarkable.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah.
Speaker 1:When you're in the field of study, where you're studying cancer, you're studying like how we can improve upon something that is taking out so many Americans Like. That, to me, is a story that I'd like to hear, especially how you clash with other people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yep, oh yeah. If you believe in something and you know you're right, you know that you're accurate. Then fight for it. When people fight back, you know you're on the right track.
Speaker 1:Absolutely yeah, Dino. If folks want to get a hold of you and chat with you some more, where can they go?
Speaker 2:Come on in.
Speaker 1:I don't drink beer or alcohol anymore, but I've got plenty of tea and kombucha.
Speaker 2:Let's see Dino Okay Email address, For instance.
Speaker 1:LinkedIn or social media.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, linkedin, I'm on LinkedIn the name Dino D-I-N-O Garnere-o-s-n-g-o-l-f-a-r-n-e-r. Dino garner and uh, that's about it, because I don't do social media. I don't like any of that. You know, I love talking with you. This is great. It's been a blast.
Speaker 1:yeah, I'll, I'll put uh dino's linkedin on the episode description. Go ahead and pause. Go over there and send an an invite, connect with them, ask them to share some stories. Now for the real business. I kept it at the very end. I didn't put it in the very beginning.
Speaker 1:I need you to do me a favor. Head on over to Spotify or Apple Podcasts and give me a five-star review. Leave a few words, leave some encouragement and remember to like, subscribe and share. It helps me grow. It helps the algorithm. I truly appreciate it. Thank you, guys for tuning in. I'm Danny Caballero and this has been Dino Gardner, and we shall see you all next time. Till then, take care, thanks for tuning in and don't forget to like, follow, share, subscribe and review us on your favorite podcast platform. If you want to support us, head on over to buymeacoffeecom. Forward slash setcallpod podcast, buy us a coffee. Connect with us on Instagram, x or TikTok and share your thoughts or questions about today's episode. You can also visit securityhawkcom for exclusive content, resources and updates. And remember we get through this together. If you're still listening the episode's over. Yeah, there's no more Tune in tomorrow or next week.
