Season 2 · Episode 13
The Season Two Finale!
“It’s a raw, unfiltered look into the mind of a podcaster grappling with respect, humor, and the realities of veteran life.”
Misanthrope Radio Season Two Finale: The Ruthless Truth About Military Transition, Comedy, and Respect
In this episode, the host reflects on the challenges of mocking military service, the idea of "Operator University," and the emotional weight behind making fun of those who've served. It’s a raw, unfiltered look into the mind of a podcaster grappling with respect, humor, and the realities of veteran life.
Key Topics:
- The desire for a co-host to emotionally and humorously navigate the episode
- The difficulty of making fun of military service members without feeling disrespectful
- Critique of the cultural phenomenon surrounding former Tier 1 operators
- The concept of "Operator University" to legitimize military skills in civilian academia
- Personal reflections inspired by Eugene Sledge's book With the Old Breed
- The importance of respect for service members and their sacrifices
- The meta-awareness of creating a podcast finale that signals the end of the series
- Humor's role in processing complex emotions about military service and transition
Timestamps:
00:00 - Season two finale overview and intro to the co-host experiment
00:29 - Humorous chaos with family members attempting to join the podcast
01:28 - Reflection on the failed co-host idea and the episode's theme
02:25 - The unfulfilled plan to roast military veterans humorously
02:54 - Realizations about comparing later military careers to combat roles
03:23 - The internal conflict over making fun of service members
03:52 - Cultural critique of Tier 1 operators' post-service media presence
04:21 - Satirical description of tactical products and absurd military gadgets
05:12 - The question of respect and whether to mock those who served
06:03 - The shared disdain for military "appliances" and personal perceptions of SEALs
06:30 - Why mocking Sean Ryan, a Navy SEAL, feels wrong
07:22 - Imaginary interview with a Navy veteran about his service experiences
08:08 - The story of a Navy sailor’s humorous encounter and the risk of parody
09:23 - The challenge of creating entertaining content about military lives
09:48 - Reflections on cultural fascination with military figures and their media personas
10:18 - Eugene Sledge’s story and its influence on the host’s perspective
11:17 - The significance of Sledge’s book With the Old Breed and its raw honesty
12:08 - The scene of Sledge retelling his limited skills after war and the emotional impact
12:38 - The disconnect between military sacrifice and post-service opportunities
13:08 - The idea of a "college for operators" to legitimize their skills
13:57 - The fictional "Operator University" parody and satirical curriculum
14:27 - The deep respect for veterans' sacrifices and the difficulty in making fun of them
15:21 - The host's internal struggle with respect, humor, and societal expectations
16:21 - A reflection on the shared trauma and understanding among veterans
16:50 - Existing military training programs for college credit and their benefits
17:42 - The absence of higher education options for elite military operators
18:07 - The humorous pitch for "Operator University" as a parody
19:06 - The mutual respect for service members and the hope for better support systems
19:36 - The series and podcast finale announcement, moving forward as "The First Church of Lorenzo"
20:02 - Final thoughts on the episode's chaotic yet heartfelt nature
20:31 - Thanks to listeners, the show's end, and future plans
Resources & Links:
- With the Old Breed by Eugene Sledge
- HBO Series The Pacific HBO The Pacific
- Navy training credit programs → Navy College Program Office
Connect with the Host:
Mentioned in this episode
- Books
- People
- Eugene Sledge
- Sean Ryan
- Shows & films
- Links
Transcript
Auto-generated by speech recognition; may contain errors. Plain text · VTT
Welcome to the season two finale of Missing Throper Radio.
You know, from time to time, I think it would be nice to have a co-host.
Yeah, somebody to fucking do Missing Throper Radio with,
who has the same mindset and the same fucking general disdain for humanity.
I find myself wishing that I had a co-host,
to bounce ideas off of and fucking help me refine bits and, you know, make shit funny.
But more and more lately, I've been thinking about a fucking co-host because in this particular instance,
I need to be ruthlessly fucking shit talked.
I do. I need to have somebody here who I can explain what I'm going through with this fucking episode of Missing Throper Radio,
who will then fucking savagely shit talk me in the way that I deserve to be shit talked.
You know what? Fuck it. It's the season finale. Let's give it a shot. Let's try out this fucking co-host thing.
Hey guys, who do we have here? My mom. Fuck. Okay, I'm sitting here.
I've been waiting for so long for an invitation to come up in your studio. I'm so excited to be here.
I'll do this. Get her out of here. Mom, get the fuck out.
Oh, you're always so fucking fast.
No, nobody's trying to hear you fucking bullshit. Go on out of here.
You just want to tell your fucking fuck.
Mom, the fuck. Okay, that went badly. Who else do we have?
My dad's here? Okay. Fine. Send him in. Let's try it out.
Fuck. I'm sick.
I'm gonna stay a fucking sick.
No, dad, you gotta go. Get the fuck out. Get in the fuck out of here. I can't have people screaming and fucking
German on an American fucking podcast. They get the fuck out.
Jesus fucking shit.
A fucking co-host.
Let's be evidence, Stroke. This was never gonna fucking work. Fine.
I'm just gonna have to fucking shit talk myself. It was always gonna end up this way.
Here's the thing. I have a fucking great idea for a bit.
I've been sitting on this fucking idea the entire season because I knew that I
had a fucking fucking
fucking
fucking
fucking
fucking season finale.
So I can unleash this masterpiece on you.
This demonstration of podcast virtuosity that I was going to fucking bring you when I sat down
to actually fucking record it. I found that I couldn't do it. I couldn't fucking get there.
I couldn't wrap my mind around it. Yeah, I could do the bits and I could do the elements and I
could do the monologue and all that stuff. But when it came time to put it together, I couldn't
bring myself to ruthlessly shit talk other military members. I've talked about it several times over
the course of the last two seasons. I was in the Navy. And what do we do in the military? We ruthlessly
shit talk each other. But that's when we're talking among ourselves. That's what we do to fucking
pass the time or to take our mind off of the fucking awful shit that we happen to be doing
at that given moment. We fucking shit talk each other. This feels
like talking out of school. I'm ruthlessly shit talking other military members to you.
And that doesn't fucking feel right. So I can't do this episode. And I can hear jimin go screaming
in my fucking head. It's just a fucking podcast. It doesn't fucking matter. Put out the episode.
Put out the episode. Put out the episode. Okay, here's the gist of the bit. All right, this is
the road that I was going to go down more and more. I'm seeing little blips and little flashes
online, whether it's a Reddit or other apps where people are are kind of fucking mocking
the tier one fucking military operators like your Delta Force guys and your dev group guys
who are getting out of the service and they're fucking doing what they all fucking do.
It's becoming a fucking punchline. Do a stretch of time in Delta Force. Get out and fucking
write a book. Sell your story for a fucking movie. Come out with a product of some kind that has
the word tactical in the description because it is becoming a little bit of a cliche. That's what I
was going to bring to you this time. I was going to fucking sit down and roast these motherfuckers that
you hear on the Sean Ryan show telling their very formulaic fucking awfully similar stories. And
then hawking some kind of fucking product or book. This particular knife is made out of compressed
paper held together by cellulose. So when you do your fucking stab and when you do your fucking
stabbing in there, the blade breaks off and then it dissolves into their bloodstaring. I developed a
line of tactical spatulas. For when you're out there mining your own business grilling and you
look up and realize that your backyard suddenly become a battlefield, I developed a tactical wristwatch
that fires poison darts out of the watch face at unsuspecting enemies. I made a series of tactical
socks. They perform just like normal socks but if you find yourself needing to breach a door
quick fasten in a hurry, you take the sock off, you put the gray fabric toe on the gray fabric heel,
stick it to the door and 30 seconds later you threw that door like it ain't shit.
What a fucking asshole. Like for real, what kind of a fucking cocksucker would put together a bit
like that with the intention of roasting guys who fucking literally bled for our freedom? What a
fucking dick I am. And now I don't even have the fucking sack to play it for you. Just a fucking
drippy goddamn disgusting syphilis-ridden fucking badge. You know I fucking sit up here and I talk to
you about how I'm the greatest podcaster in history and no one should have a fucking show accept me
and I pride myself on being able to ruthlessly roast any topic, any person, anytime. But when I sit
down to do this fucking bit, I can't fucking do it. And I don't really understand why I've been in a
room with seals tons of fucking times. To be honest, they're kind of dicks. They always treated me
like a fucking appliance. So tell me why I'm in this fucking situation right now where I can't
make myself mock them publicly. Even shitting on Sean Ryan feels wrong. I've never fucking
balked at making fun of another fucking podcaster. But this guy's not just a podcaster. He was also a
Navy seal. He went over there in the name of your fucking freedom. It feels weird to make fun of
fucking Sean Ryan. Because if you had the opportunity to sit down across from some of the greatest
warriors in American history and talk to them in long form format, wouldn't you do it? Of course,
you fucking would. What's the alternative? He has what? Somebody like me on there to talk about my
fucking stories in the Navy? That would sound something like this. Back to the Sean Ryan show.
I have here with me a guy by the name of Lorenzo who served in the Navy. Why don't you tell me a
little bit about your time in the Navy? I had just gone to the ship. I was right out of boot
camp in A school and I show up there and I'm in the bake shop in there and I'm baking cookies
because that was my job. And then I looked down to my left because I could feel someone's eyes on me
and there was this little black guy down there looking up at me and he was grabbing onto my arms
and squeezing my arms and my forearms and then he goes, who the fuck are you? Like that. And I said,
I, my name is Lorenzo, petty officer and he goes, you go come to the boat all big and shit like that,
huh? You're gonna come to the boat all big as fuck? Okay, you hold on. And then he left and I was
still baking cookies and then when he came back he had a guy dressed all in tan all in like
khaki colors and he was yelling at him from behind saying, Johnson, no, no, god damn it. This is my new
guy. This is my brand new guy. You can't have him. You can't have him. And Johnson is yelling back at him
saying, he's our biggest fuck like that. He's just begging for me. He come here for me. Chief, you
don't know nothing about this. Oh no shit. God damn. And then Johnson said, get your shit,
motherfucker. You coming with me. And so I was walking with him and we were walking down a ladder
well side by side, but you're not supposed to do. Oh no shit. God damn. Yeah. And we're walking
down side by side and he's got his arm looped through mine like I'm escorting him downstairs
and he's looking up at me and he's going, you know, were you going right and I was like, no, no,
I don't know where I'm going and he's going, you know, were you going right? There's only one
place you're going right? You know, were you going and I said, no, I don't know where I'm going. And he
said, you coming home, motherfucker, you coming home baby with me. And I thought I was getting ready
to get raped. And but as it turns out, he just wanted me to work lifting stuff because I was big.
You see what I'm saying? How many fucking people are going to tune into something like that?
Nobody. Nobody's going to tune into a fucking podcast where Sean Ryan's talking to blue water
sailors. It's just not going to fucking happen. Our stories are not that fucking interesting. So of
course, if he has the ability to pull Tier 1 operators who've really been in the shit,
he's going to fucking pull him. Why wouldn't he? It'd be insane not to. Here I am a fucking
podcaster who tells you all the time don't bother listening to these other fucking shows.
They're dog shit that I'm all the fucking podcast you need. There's no topic for me off limits.
Lorenzo has no area that's off limits. Well, apparently that's not fucking true because as
I sit here tonight, my fucking fat ass is cloaked in fucking shame and failure for not bringing you
the episode that I wanted to because it comes across as disrespectful. And that's exactly what I don't
want to be. So I would think about it all fucking day long. How am I going to tell this story? How
am I going to do this fucking bit and point out that these Tier 1 operators are all basically doing
the same thing at the end of their military service. And it is a little bit fucking comical
without coming across as being disrespectful or ungrateful for the sacrifices that they made.
But night after night I came down here and sat and looked at my fucking computer screen with the
mic open and did a few lines or tried to come at it a different way. And my mind was completely blank
except for the weirdest fucking thing. The weirdest thing kept popping into my head and it took
me forever to figure out why Eugene Sledge kept popping in my head. I read a book a long time ago
written by a guy named Eugene Sledge. To my knowledge, he only wrote one book. It was called
with the old breed and it was a first hand account of his experience as a Marine Corps grunt
in the Pacific theater. Now I'm not going to this is not a fucking book review. I'm not going to tell
you that you should go fucking read the book or anything like that. Although it is very fucking good. And it was
one of two books used as the primary source materials for HBO's series of the Pacific. If you ever
watch that if you haven't, I'm sure you can fucking stream it. Anyway, the reason I bring up
eb Sledge's book is because there's a there's a scene in this fucking book that's always stuck with me.
It's a scene towards the end of the book when he is back from the fucking war in the Pacific. And if
you know anything about the Pacific theater of World War two, you know, it was fucking gnarly.
The shit that went on in the Pacific theater made the fucking European theater look like
fucking child's play. The Pacific theater was fucking crazy. So anyway, he goes and does his
things a marine does the island hopping in the fucking gnarly battles and the atrocities and
he sees all this crazy shit. And then he comes back from World War two and he doesn't really know
what to do with himself. So he takes his ass down to the fucking local university. I want to say it was
the University of Alabama, but I may also be wrong, but for the purposes of moving this fucking story
along, let's say it's the University of Alabama. He goes down to the University of Alabama. They're
obviously having some kind of admissions day where they're signing up all of these fucking veterans
from the war, getting them launched on a fucking degree plan or a degree path or something, right?
Anyway, he's standing in fucking line and they've got these tables all set up with these
perfectly pleasant people sitting there talking to all of these veterans as they're going through
the line. And he overhears this lady asking this one guy, hey, okay, what did you do in the war?
And he said something like I was an electricians mate in the Navy. And she goes, okay, well,
we have an electrical engineering program that would be perfect for you. Just fill out his paperwork
and step aside. Well, then it comes time for Mr. Sledge to step up and talk to the bride-eyed
blonde sitting at the fucking table. She looked at him and she said, what skills did you develop during
the war, sir? And he looked at her and he was overwhelmed by all of the people and all of the activity
and all of the shit going on. He clearly had some unresolved things going on in his mind. And he
wasn't doing well being around people at that time. And he looked at her right in her fucking eyes
and he said, all I learned how to do was kill japs. And I got really good at it or something like that.
Again, paraphrasing, going purely from memory here. She was dumbfounded. She didn't know what to say.
He realized he had made her uncomfortable and kind of embarrassed himself and he retreated,
turned around and walked out of the admissions fair. And every time I came downstairs to record
this fucking season finale of Miss Anthrop Radio Radio, with this particular fucking bit in mind,
I couldn't fucking do it. And I couldn't do it because of the deal with the old breed.
By Eugene Sledge, specifically the part where he looks at naive young lady in her stupid fucking face
and tells her the only thing he learned how to do in the Marine Corps was kill japs.
There's not that much of a difference between these guys today that we're hearing on the Sean
Ryan show and Eugene Sledge back then. So when it came time to make fun of the fact that they're all
fucking writing books and making movies and consulting on TV shows, when it came time to shit talk,
the fact that they all have some kind of fucking product that they're pushing, I couldn't fucking
make myself do it because what the fuck else are they supposed to do? What the fuck do we expect
of them? What fucking skills have they cultivated after a lifetime of fucking service that they can
take and fucking translate into marketable skills in corporate America? None. Almost none, I guess you
could say that they have better leadership abilities and they can think under fucking stress
better than most people, but as far as actual tangible fucking skill sets, what do they have?
What do they have? Not fucking much. So that is why they're fucking writing
writing books and that is why they're fucking making movies and that is why they're all fucking
making products that you can fucking buy and they're just trying to fucking survive in a world that's
fascinated by them but doesn't fucking understand them. I couldn't fucking do it. I couldn't sit down here
and shit on these guys as much as I tried as much as I want to do and I thought it was a military
thing. It's not. It's fucking Eugene Sledge. It's literally Eugene Sledge standing there in the
fucking courtyard at the University of Alabama overwhelmed by what's going on around him still dealing
with the shit that he went through overseas and having to interact with a public that didn't
fucking understand what he just fucking went through. I can't shit on him at all. As a matter of
fact, I would love to find a way to fucking help in some form or fashion like why isn't there a
college for them? You know, there's a program in the military where if you are an electricians
mate, for example in the Navy and you've been in 10 years and you have the rank of E5
send in your transcript that you can get from the training department on the ship and get immediate
college credit in a field of study that aligns with your job in the military. So if you're in
electricians mate, you could very well have almost an associate's degree just for your Navy service.
Without ever setting foot in a classroom, so when you finally go for that bachelor's degree,
you're almost halfway there just for having served. Do you think that they have anything like
that for operators? I don't know for sure, but I do know for a fact that one of the guys I was in
the Navy Reserve with who was a seal was absolutely fucking mind blown that they had a program like
that for us regular vanilla fucking Navy types. It blew his fucking mind. I remember joking
him at the time. I was like, what the fuck skills do you have that are going to translate to a
fucking degree program, bro? What underwater strangling? But it's true. It's not like there's a
fucking university out there for these tier one operators. You know, somebody once told me that
it doesn't fucking matter anymore what your degree is in as long as you have one. Okay, well then
let's get a hold of fucking Elon Musk and some other influential fabulously wealthy people and
make a university for operators. Welcome to operator university. Thank you for your interest in our
degree programs. We know you've served your country honorably and you are ready to transition
into the civilian world, but you are not equipped with all the tools you need to succeed.
That's where we come in at operator university. Take skills that you've developed and experiences
that you've had and turn them into college credit that can be applied to any one of our four degree
programs. You can get your Bachelor of Science in people's tabbing. You can get your Bachelor of
Arts in high speed and kidnapping or a Bachelor of Science in face shooting and finally a Bachelor of Arts
in blowing stuff up underwater. In today's workforce, all that matters is that you have a degree.
So take your experience, take your skill set, take your rank and take your service,
apply it to our programs and earn the maximum credit for the things that you're already good at.
Operator University, request your brochure for operator university today.
Yeah, there's nothing like that. They're probably fucking should be, but there's nothing like that
for them. I find myself sitting here and trying to champion the cause of a group of people,
like I said earlier, who treated me like a fucking appliance. They weren't nice to me, we're not friends,
but I can't make myself shit on them. I sure as hell can't, I can't do it publicly at any rate.
You said a group of military people around a fire pit with some fucking beer and we're going to
shit talk each other all day, but I'm not going to do it in front of you. All right, it's enough.
I'm not going to sit here and fucking ball wash military people and operators anymore onto the next segment.
Segment to some fucking finale episode this turned out to be Jesus Christ.
I didn't know that I had a fucking no no square, but I guess
shit talking to military is my fucking no no square. I really did come downstairs like seven or eight
fucking times with the most ruthless intentions. Anyway, this is the season two finale of Miss
and Throat Radio. It is also, I guess technically the series finale of Miss and Throat Radio.
I wasn't joking last episode when I fucking took my victory lap and said that I'm going to start my
own church. Miss and Throat Radio officially dies today and I will be moving forward as the first
church of Lorenzo. Unless I change my mind. I know no we'll see what happens. There's a long list
of fucking people that I should thank who've kind of inspired me and helped me out along the way
and encouraged me when I kind of got down on myself about the way this fucking show was going.
I should definitely thank those people. I'm not going to fuck off, but I want you to know that I know
I should. All right, thank you for joining me for this episode of Miss and Throat Radio. Tell a friend,
leave a review and be looking for season three episode one, hopefully in the very near future.
It may not be called Miss and Throat Radio, but we'll see what fucking happens. I could change my mind.
All right, until next time.