Laughter as Medicine with Jack Daly

Summary

In this episode of the Catapult Effect podcast, host Katie Wrigley speaks with Jack Daly, a retired Naval Intelligence Officer and author of 'Laugh Out Loud.' Jack shares his personal journey, including a significant incident during his service that involved a laser attack from a Russian spy ship. 

He discusses the importance of laughter as a coping mechanism, especially for veterans dealing with PTSI and mental health challenges. The conversation highlights the scientific benefits of laughter, practical steps to incorporate humor into daily life, and the critical need for seeking help and support.

If you need a laugh, make sure to grab a copy of Jack's book in the link below! I bought my copy as well.

Takeaways

• Laughter serves as a powerful coping mechanism for stress.
• Jack's experience with a laser attack led to significant career challenges.
• Veteran suicides are a critical issue that needs attention.
• Laughter can improve mental and physical health.
• Incorporating humor into daily life can enhance well-being.
• The mnemonic 'LAUGH' can help individuals remember steps to improve mental health.
• Seeking help is crucial for anyone struggling with mental health issues.

Resources:
Jack's Website
Laugh Out Loud

Credit: Tom Giovingo, Intro & Outro, Random Voice Guy, Professional ‘Cat‘ Herder

Mixed & Managed: JohnRavenscraft.com

Disclaimer: Katie is not a medical professional and she is not qualified to diagnose any conditions. The advice and information she gives is based on her own experience and research. It does not take the place of medical advice. Always consult a medical professional first before you try anything new.

Transcript

Katie Wrigley (00:01.132)
Welcome back to the Catapult Effect podcast. I am your host, Katie Wrigley. I have such a cool guest with me today. Jack Daly is the author of Laugh Out Loud, and he is also a retired Naval veteran as well. And I'm gonna let Jack tell you his story because I'm not gonna be able to do it justice. I was fascinated when we connected on Pod Match, and I'm just gonna let Jack take it from here. Welcome to the Catapult Effect podcast, Jack.

I am so excited to talk about laughter with you today.

Jack Daly (00:33.48)
Well, Katie, thank you. It's pleasure to be here with you.

Katie Wrigley (00:36.632)
So can you tell us your story of how you wound up finding the benefits of laughter?

Jack Daly (00:44.703)
Well, it's a long and notorious one. It happened April 4th of 1997. At that time, I was an active duty Naval Intelligence Officer, a lieutenant stationed on Vancouver Island. I was working as a foreign intelligence liaison officer to the Canadian military.

Katie Wrigley (01:03.65)
Mm-hmm.

Jack Daly (01:11.603)
But we have several US Naval bases up there in the Pacific Northwest area, including Banger, B-A-N-G-O-R Washington, which is our ballistic submarine, our nuclear submarine base. And there is also Everett, Washington, where we have our carriers and other ships, carrier strike group support vessels.

And then we have a Naval Air Station up there on Woodbury Island as well. So very big Navy presence in Pacific Northwest. I was stationed across the pond, so to speak, or the Strait of Juan de Fuca to be exact, on Vancouver Island at a joint Canadian military base called Esquimalt. It's easier to say than it is to spell.

Katie Wrigley (02:07.47)
I'm not even sure I can say it, but please continue.

Jack Daly (02:09.939)
Yeah. And before I departed Washington, D.C., when I was stationed at the Office of Naval Intelligence, I learned of a threat that existed up there to our ballistic missile submarines and our carrier strike groups out of the Pacific Northwest. And that threat was Russian and Chinese spy ships.

is probably the easiest way to say it, to be more elaborate. These ships are merchant vessels or commercial cargo vessels that rarely carried any cargo but always seemed to show up about the same time one of our ballistic missile subs or our carrier strike groups were coming or going being out to sea either for a deployment or exercise or whatever it might be.

So I went up there with this thread in mind and with no specific mission in hand, I was, took it upon myself to figure out what's really going on up here because the Office of Naval Intelligence was lacking the information that they needed to really put the picture together. So I went up for about, I was up there about six months after I transferred from DC.

And I studied the problem, did a lot of research, talked to a lot of people, went and took some pictures of some of these ships from the ground and went back to DC, briefed the leadership on what I believe the problem was and the best way to figure out what is actually happening. We needed more information. So I got my assignment while back in DC and that assignment was to take

high resolution imagery or photographs of one of these ships or more if the opportunity presented itself. So on April 4th of 1997, I jumped into a Canadian helicopter with my $30,000 brand new Kodak digital camera that I was testing for the Navy. And I went up because we had one of these Russian ships coming in by the name of the Kapitan man with a K, not

Jack Daly (04:39.519)
And it was a beautiful day. was a Friday. It was very sunny and it was clear as a bell. was unlimited visibility. So it was great flying weather. And I was photographing the ship as we did 360s circles around the ship.

Katie Wrigley (05:00.131)
Mm-hmm.

Jack Daly (05:02.563)
Several hours later, as I was preparing my notes to go to Australia on Sunday morning for a conference, my chief petty officer who was US Navy imagery analyst, he was the best in the Navy. got to hand pick him. He walked into my office and asked me if I was experiencing any eye problems. And I said, yeah, I think I got some grit in my eye or wind shear coming down the side of the helicopter.

I was sitting out with my legs dangling outside the door and, well, no, actually I was sitting in Indian style because I couldn't dangle them out. They'd probably be flopping all over the place. I was taking pictures with the visor up and I said, could be wind shear. could be some kind of nonsense in my eyes. I don't know. He looked at me, shook his head and he asked the second question, do you have a headache?

Katie Wrigley (05:35.619)
Right.

Jack Daly (06:00.767)
And I said, I do, feels like somebody buried a pickaxe in the back of my head. I said, I must be getting tired or whatever. And he took out a piece of paper from behind his back and he laid it on my desk and he said, you caught a laser in this photograph. Well, I grilled him to make sure he knew.

what a laser would look like on a digital camera, how a digital camera would be affected by a laser, what a laser would look like in a photograph. And he convinced me beyond a reasonable doubt that he knew what he was talking about. So I cautioned him and I said, I want you to hear my words very carefully. And I said, what you're telling me is a Canadian helicopter operating in US airspace taking photographs of a Russian spy ship.

Well, a US intelligence officer on board the helicopter was fired on by this Russian spy ship and they used a laser. I said, that amounts to an act of war. And he said, yep, you got it. So, George.

Katie Wrigley (07:09.966)
Time out, Jack. I want to make sure I'm getting, because I'm like, I'm really getting into this, but I want to make sure I'm fully understanding what you're saying. So you weren't actually aware that you got hit with the laser until this officer was reviewing the pictures you took, was able to see that there was a laser that was coming at the, so it was visible in this picture he showed you that it was coming right into the lens. So did the laser.

Jack Daly (07:33.106)
Exactly.

Katie Wrigley (07:36.098)
go through the camera lens and then into your eye and everything, or did it hit past that? Or don't you know?

Jack Daly (07:41.669)
It went into my eyes and at one point, because I was unfamiliar with the camera, it had a hard drive in it and the hard drive froze. And I had to put the camera down on my lap to rest it to let it catch up. And while I was looking at the ship with camera in my lap, I saw a bright white flash of light, which I mistook after many months of research.

Katie Wrigley (07:51.574)
Yep. Ooh.

Jack Daly (08:10.975)
I mistook it as a solar glint or reflection off bare metal or one of the bridge windows on the ship. So it was proven scientifically that that was in fact a laser that had been caught in that photo. So, you know, long story short, it made for a heck of a

Katie Wrigley (08:26.605)
Whoa.

Jack Daly (08:39.999)
Troubled career, I guess, is the way to put it, because this was one of those incidents that the U.S. intelligence community and the Pentagon said, this never happened.

Katie Wrigley (08:52.536)
course.

Jack Daly (08:53.193)
Make these guys go away.

So there was a significant cover up of the incident until about five weeks after the fact, it broke on the front page of the Washington Times here in the DC area. within about 48 hours, was all over the world. I got a call from my counterpart in Bahrain saying, Jack, what are you doing? You're supposed to be up there drinking beer and having a good time.

Katie Wrigley (08:56.285)
my god.

Jack Daly (09:24.895)
Your name is in every Middle Eastern newspaper and what you do for a living, yada, yada, yada. So that was extremely unsettling. And just the press coverage and the fact that it was an international story was very unsettling to me. First and foremost, because I knew it was going to probably end my career. Not a good thing for an intelligence officer to be all over the front page of a newspaper or anything else.

Katie Wrigley (09:40.29)
Well yeah.

Katie Wrigley (09:43.981)
Meh.

Katie Wrigley (09:51.048)
No. Yeah, I can imagine that kind of goes against the whole intelligence thing.

Jack Daly (09:56.315)
It sure does. So for the six following years, I was fighting almost a daily battle to salvage my career because I was called a liar. I was called a traitor. was told, said I made this all up, that I held my face over the barcode scanner in the grocery store. All kinds of nonsense was coming out of the woodwork. And

It was really hard to deal with at times. I really, really struggled emotionally and mentally to keep my head above water. And I was in a situation one day just before I retired where a defense security service agent had called me the day before, asked if he could interview me. I said, yeah, happy to do it, but you need...

you need to contact my commanding officer and you need to contact my lawyer. Next morning, he showed up at my desk unannounced. How he even got in the building was beyond me, but he showed up and he said, hey, I'm here to interview. said, no, you're not. He said, first of all, you haven't notified my commanding officer. Second of all, you haven't spoken with my attorneys. I'm not going to talk to you. So I sent him packing.

And the guy that sat in the desk next to me says, Jack, how do you do it, I said, do what, Kevin? He says, how do you put up with this stuff? And I thought, Kevin, I laugh. I have to laugh because if I didn't, I would cry and I would just make my eyes hurt worse than they already do. So the

Katie Wrigley (11:39.734)
off

Jack Daly (11:45.075)
The act of laughing kept my head above water. It was a coping mechanism for me to deal with all the nonsense that I was dealing with almost on a daily basis. And then I heard a news report one day back in 2019 about veteran suicides and active duty military suicides. And I was just flabbergasted. The number of veteran suicides in 2019

was almost 6,500 veterans plus another 500 active duty military members and 200 family members, spouses and children. And I was, it made no sense to me. My first question was what the heck is going on, especially with the vets. my first response to that question was, well, it's got to have something to do with PTSD is my guess.

Katie Wrigley (12:20.195)
Yeah.

Katie Wrigley (12:45.364)
Mm-hmm, absolutely. It's everything to do with that and unanswered trauma in the body is one of the most destructive states you can be in because you keep isolating. You feel like you're the only one and yeah, I'm glad we're calling out the suicide stats because it's important to keep talking about this so people understand how big this problem really is. This isn't something that we just keep talking about for the sake of it. This is we're talking about the people who have allowed you to live in a country that is free. Freedom is not free.

Jack Daly (12:47.165)
Jack Daly (12:55.881)
Yes.

Katie Wrigley (13:15.016)
And the only reason we have a free country is because of our military. So regardless of how you feel about war.

honor the person who is fighting for your country because they deserve your respect. Regardless of how you feel about fighting, about war, about politics, about any of that, you're still talking about human beings who feel compelled and drawn to stand up for their country, to be patriotic, to go out there and put their life on the line for you and your freedom. So please respect those people. And as a side note, we're not going to get into it too much in this episode, but most of the homeless people you see out there,

Our veterans, we are doing a terrible job of taking care of our men and women when they come back from battle for us. So that is a big part of the PTSD and suicide piece. That's why love, that's why I wanted to have you on here, Jack, is talking about laughter and how important it is. Please continue, I just wanted to chime in there for a second.

Jack Daly (14:11.423)
Sure, quite right. know, in the years since 9-11, there was a, the USO compiled a study back in 2021. In the 20 years since 9-11, there were over 30,000 active duty and veteran suicides in this country. That's seven times more than combat fatalities in the 20 years of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

That's mind boggling to me. So I got home that night, my wife and I had dinner after dinner, we had the news on and the same stats, the 6,500 veteran suicides came on the news and she looked at me and asked me, what's going on? said, I really don't know, but I'd like to be able to do something about it. And we have a very close friend, he was the best man at our wedding.

Katie Wrigley (14:44.174)
It's horrible.

Jack Daly (15:12.919)
And I served in a fighter squadron with him during one of my early tours. And he did several tours in Iraq the second time around. And he came home with some real demons that he was struggling with as a result of his tour of service over there. And I thought, well, if I could only help him, it would be well worth whatever effort I put into it. And Andrea asked me, she said, well, what did you do to deal with your dark days?

And as I had said to Kevin, I said, I laughed. had to. So I thought to myself, what could I do with laughter? Well, I wasn't going to be a standup comedian. I tell dad jokes and even worse now I tell granddad jokes. standup comedian was out of the question. And I thought, well, I'm practicing this daily ritual called savers, which was written by a young guy. Are you familiar with it?

Katie Wrigley (15:52.621)
Thank

Katie Wrigley (15:56.407)
Hahaha!

Katie Wrigley (16:11.488)
Yes, Miracle Mornings Hal Elrod. I do my savers every day.

Jack Daly (16:13.068)
Good morning. Okay, fantastic. And I thought, well, maybe I can do something with that kind of a model. So I took the word laugh and made a mnemonic of it. So the first letter laugh is go ahead and laugh. Find something to laugh about, regardless of what it is. It can be as silly or stupid or whatever. It doesn't matter if it makes you laugh. Go ahead and do it.

Katie Wrigley (16:23.011)
Yeah.

Jack Daly (16:39.507)
Then the second letter A for the word act. Get up off the sofa, get out of the barco lounger, go take a walk, go jog, do whatever it is that makes you feel good, that gets your body moving, gets your blood pumping, gets your brain energized. And then the third letter U for the word unplug. Put the devices down.

Put the iPad down, put the cell phones down.

Katie Wrigley (17:06.242)
Yeah

Preach, preach. Seriously, yes, unplug, keep going.

Jack Daly (17:14.847)
Take a walk outside and look at the sky instead of having your head down like that all the time. Casket makers are now having to build caskets that have a pump at one end. And then G, grow. Learn something new. If you always wanted to know how to crochet, learn how to crochet. If you want to learn how to do woodworking, learn woodworking.

Katie Wrigley (17:18.85)
Yes! Yes!

Katie Wrigley (17:27.839)
So bad.

Katie Wrigley (17:35.107)
Mm-hmm.

Katie Wrigley (17:41.154)
Yep.

Jack Daly (17:44.635)
If you want to take on the challenge of a Rubik's Cube, take that challenge on. And then the last letter, H, for humor me or somebody else. Make somebody else laugh because that's the highest form of laughter is to be able to make somebody else laugh. And as I was doing my research, writing the book, I found out that laughter is a proven cure, not necessarily a cure, but it's a helpful

medicine for the mind and the body and the soul. The neuropeptides that result from the act of laughter are very beneficial to the body. They help fight diseases such as cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and a litany of others. It helps your mind produce more

Katie Wrigley (18:20.812)
Yes. Yes.

Jack Daly (18:44.399)
endocrine processes that help clear your mind, that reduce stress. So it's got its benefits. And of the somewhat, I think it's as of 2022, there were over 85,000 self-help books written. And the only ones that were tested was about 15 % of them. And laughter.

proved to be the one that was tested that does in fact work. So it is the best medicine on earth.

Katie Wrigley (19:15.202)
Nice, nice.

Katie Wrigley (19:20.43)
Absolutely, and you know you probably didn't know this about me, but when I was disabled in 2018 I had a six month period where all I would let myself watch on TV and I like really strictly like social media wasn't as It was kind of bad, but it wasn't as awful as it is today with all the the outrage and it's back But I was very very careful like with how much I was on social media backed off of it a lot

I didn't need to be on there for my business yet. I'm like, this isn't good for me because I could feel myself hurt because I would tense up because I'd see something that would piss me off and then my body would hurt. And I made that correlation really quickly. And so there were six months where all I would watch were comedies because when I laughed, I didn't hurt as much. And I wasn't thinking about the pain because I'm getting a blast of endorphins in there and it's impossible to feel pain when you're also

laughing, the pain's gonna go away temporarily because your brain is occupied with the laughter thing. And did you come across the study that the National Institute of Health ran? And I may be off on the stats, but it was an eight week study. And they brought a group of individuals in and they had them, I think it was just 20 minutes a day. They had them doing something that made them laugh for 20 minutes a day and inflammation went down, pain went down.

and quality of life went up. And I can't remember the specifics, but it was significant. It was like 10, 15, 20 % reduction in pain and inflammation and like the same kind of level of increase in quality of life in only eight weeks. That's incredible.

Jack Daly (20:59.389)
That is incredible. believe I did read that particular piece of research, among several others that exist out there. One thing you've heard the term throughout your lifetime, I died laughing. Well, only one person has ever actually died from laughing and they had some serious underlying conditions. So that when they started laughing, it put too much of a strain on

Katie Wrigley (21:08.429)
Yep.

Katie Wrigley (21:16.418)
Yeah.

Jack Daly (21:28.275)
their existing condition and they did pass away. But it wasn't because of the laughter, it was the underlying condition. for somebody to tell you, I died laughing, no, you didn't, you're still walking and talking.

Katie Wrigley (21:42.252)
Yeah, or a laughter may kill me. Probably not. There's a slight chance, but statistically, probably not. Yeah, it's not gonna hurt you.

Jack Daly (21:44.697)
Yeah, probably not. Right, right.

But if it can serve as a coping mechanism for anybody, it doesn't just have to be associated with veterans or active duty military, anybody on the face of the earth who is suffering emotionally or mentally, take five minutes. you can't do this practice for an hour, if you can only do it for five minutes, if only you can do step one is laugh about something, please do it.

Katie Wrigley (22:08.482)
Mm-hmm.

Jack Daly (22:20.607)
It will help you. Life is too short to begin with. There too many stressors that we deal with on a daily basis, which seem to be growing more and more every day. Take the time to laugh because it will benefit you in the long run.

Katie Wrigley (22:39.896)
Thank you. That is fantastic advice. So what's your favorite way to laugh, Jack? What is your go-to to start to get the giggles going when you feel you need to do it?

Jack Daly (22:49.023)
Usually it is a YouTube video of a couple of my favorite all-time comedians Robin Williams being number one God rest his soul. I miss him

Katie Wrigley (22:59.468)
Yes, yes.

Right? Me too. The world lost a good man when he decided to part.

Jack Daly (23:07.903)
They sure did. then one of other, a lot of people probably won't recognize the name. I'm a little older as you can tell by the white on the top of my cabasa is a guy by the name of Foster Brooks. He used to imitate a fall down drunk and he was absolutely hilarious. He used to appear frequently on a show called the Dean Martin Roasts.

Katie Wrigley (23:32.397)
Nice.

Katie Wrigley (23:37.706)
Okay, I remember that show.

Jack Daly (23:37.821)
where they would all sit up at a table and there'd be a podium in the middle and the dais would have all kinds of stars and they would usually roast another star and he would show up as an old football coach or a drinking buddy or something and I cry still. I've left the same reels over and over again and I still end up laughing my head

Katie Wrigley (24:03.898)
yeah, there's sometimes where, I have to admit that it's the really inappropriate kind of borderline offensive, but it's usually offensive to my race actually, that makes me laugh the hardest. Like there is this line, I probably can't even get through it without giggling, but my gosh, now I'm blanking on the movie. It's got Charlize Theron and my gosh.

It's friggin hilarious and now I'm totally blanking on it. I'm gonna have to figure that out later, but. Basically, my gosh, it's gonna drive me crazy. I'm gonna have to look up this guy's name real quick because it friggin cracks me up. It is one of the funniest movies I've ever seen. I have to find. I know and that's not going to work because we're doing this right now, so bear with me one second. It's not going to take me much long. Of course I had to look up the one that's in more movies, didn't I?

Jack Daly (24:49.245)
You'll remember it tomorrow morning.

Jack Daly (24:57.001)
Sure.

Katie Wrigley (25:02.392)
Come on, I know it's here.

Trying to remember what year I think it's.

Katie Wrigley (25:13.518)
What is it called? The Long? No.

I'm, my gosh, of course that totally, all right. Well, the movie, I will find the movie and put the link into the show notes so people can go see it, but it's Seth Rogen, Seth Rogen and Charlize Theron are in this movie and Boys To Men is in there too and Seth Rogen plays a huge boy, he's a huge Boys To Men fan and so that's why he winds up at this event with Charlize Theron and he gets really mad at someone and he goes to lean and he leaves and he winds up.

go and ask over T-Kill down the stairs. If you hear one of the boys to Mankai, I can't, it makes me laugh every time you hear this voice go, crack her down. It kills me. It's so wrong and it's so offensive. And every time, every time I see that movie, I am dying. Like to a point, like if a friend watches it with me, they're like, okay. I'm like, that line, that line, kills me every time. It's just.

Jack Daly (26:00.339)
Ha ha ha ha ha

Jack Daly (26:12.383)
You

Katie Wrigley (26:15.37)
It's the comedic timing of it. just, it is so perfect. I really wish I could remember what the hell that movie is called, but it's Seth Rogen and Charlize Theron together in the movie. And my gosh, it gets me every time I do this talk.

Long shot, long shot. It's long shot. Yeah. Very funny movie. And he's like, there's a lot of other parts. I love Seth Rogen. I think he's hysterical. He's so funny. And he's really he and Charlize Theron are so good together in this movie. Yeah, I definitely recommend it if you want a giggle in there and

Jack Daly (26:39.593)
sorry.

Katie Wrigley (26:58.478)
That's one of the beautiful ways to use social media actually is go like, even if you don't like cats, they have some of the most hysterical cat reels out there that will have you like, I've lost hours of my life. I can never get back to just like falling into it for a while and just laughing my ass off. it's, yeah, there's one poetry slam cat or someone that someone's doing a poem and the cat's like going into beast mode and they, it's awesome. It's epic.

Jack Daly (27:27.539)
They're pretty comical.

Katie Wrigley (27:29.226)
Hmm animals in general are I Feel yeah, this has been great. So tell us more about laugh out loud and where can people find you Jack and find the book?

Jack Daly (27:32.446)
Yes.

Jack Daly (27:41.055)
Laugh Out Loud is on Amazon and the other electronic bookstores. So whatever your favorite is, can find it there. Both the ebook and paperback are on Amazon as well as most of the other sites. I'm currently working on the audio version and hopefully we'll have that out before the beginning of next year. Knock on wood. So that's a goal for me to get that out.

And if people wanted to reach out to me, I can best be reached at www.jackdaily.com. So jackdailyauthor.com is easiest way to connect with me.

Katie Wrigley (28:27.726)
Awesome. Thank you, Jack. And actually, before we wrap up, I kind of want to go back to the, my gosh, what is it called? The laugh being the, why, where's my, thank you, the mnemonic. My brain's apparently done for the day. Well, I think my brain's like, well, we were looking for humor, so let's just go ahead and have a few brain farts on this episode just for giggles, you know, just to add, just, you know, show people you're not so smart sometimes.

Jack Daly (28:38.68)
Noon market.

Jack Daly (28:45.941)
You can't answer the best of it.

Jack Daly (28:52.636)
Yeah.

Katie Wrigley (28:57.422)
But that mnemonic in there, what it's doing at a brain chemistry level, so laughter, it's going to be releasing endorphins into the body. When you take action, you're immediately starting to move forward. You're going to start to shift that energy. So by moving forward, especially if you do something that's going to give you a serotonin hit, the sun, dopamine, knocking off something on your to-do list, doing little things like that, you're going to increase the happy hormones in the brain.

Jack Daly (29:07.133)
Yes.

Katie Wrigley (29:25.418)
and you're gonna decrease the ones that are making you feel sad because they can't all be there. So the happy ones are gonna start to take over. And then remind me what the you was again.

Jack Daly (29:35.839)
unplug, put the braces down.

Katie Wrigley (29:37.248)
Unplugged. that one's self-explanatory. I don't even need to go into that one. Like there is so actually just to highlight Jack's point on the importance of unplugging. So there has been a huge uptick in mental illness 2010, 2012. There became a massive uptick in that. And that is when smartphones, especially iPhones, started to get to mass appeal. And most people were using them at this point in time, about one billion people on the earth.

are struggling with some sort of mental illness. That is 12.5 % just as a very rough number. That is ridiculous and it is all, not all, but most of it is due to these devices and what they're doing to us. And it's not just the device itself. It has its own little demons, but the stuff you're doing in the device is so bad. Put it down, walk away and see how much better you feel. All the shit you have to deal with in your life, it's still gonna be there when you're done taking a break.

So don't worry, that stuff's not going anywhere until you deal with it. Give yourself a break, unplug, make yourself laugh, you will have so much more energy to deal with it later.

Jack Daly (30:44.041)
You know, one of the other astronomical numbers that was part of writing the book as well is teen suicides. They're climbing at astronomical numbers because, and you know, I can be sued by whoever I'm sure for saying this, I think the exposure of the content that our teens are seeing on their devices these days

Katie Wrigley (30:53.494)
Yes.

Jack Daly (31:13.861)
are contributing factors.

Katie Wrigley (31:15.95)
Absolutely and the bullying the bull like it's so much easier to bully online than it was in person because it doesn't take the same set of balls to both bully someone and be mean and it's and They don't fully understand you can't expect the teenager grasp the concept of death fully their brains have not fully developed yet Adults don't fully concept fully grasp the concept of death sometimes

Jack Daly (31:26.983)
I watch.

Jack Daly (31:40.287)
I watched my younger daughter suffer through the bullying online and it was beyond the pale. And I say that because the, I'm not going to give him the benefit of saying he's a young man. The bum that she was chatting back and forth with actually challenged me. And I was like, okay.

Katie Wrigley (31:49.902)
Yeah.

Jack Daly (32:09.971)
You know? Show up at the door. I'll be waiting for you. Come on, bring it. You know... No. Yeah.

Katie Wrigley (32:13.26)
Yeah.

Katie Wrigley (32:16.778)
Wow. Yeah, man is not the right term. Bum, guy, a man, you are a man. Someone who is taking care of their stuff, is working through their whatever is going on, is taking care of business, that's man. You got to work to be a man. You can be bored and you're gonna die.

Jack Daly (32:33.457)
I would say that guy was probably scum of the earth is the best way to describe him.

Katie Wrigley (32:37.87)
If he's threatening you and your daughter, yeah. And I've been bullied in person. It was in my senior year of high school. It was horrible. Nothing makes you, a few things are gonna make you feel as worse as being bullied. It's nothing cool about it at all. All right, going back through the mnemonic on there and then the G was grow, yes.

Jack Daly (33:00.905)
grow, learn something new, something you've always wanted to learn but never had the time or took the time.

Katie Wrigley (33:08.236)
Yep, so what you do there is you're creating new neural pathways. I'm sure you go into this in your book too. You're creating new neural pathways and you're creating new neural pathways. You're going to be stimulating your brain in a different direction. You're going to be grabbing its interest, which again is going to pull you away from the negativity. And I remember H is humor. Really pay it forward and make someone else laugh.

Jack Daly (33:27.911)
Exactly.

Katie Wrigley (33:30.574)
I love it. Thank you so much for putting that book out there. And how did your eyes fully recover from the laser attack?

Jack Daly (33:37.887)
No, I haven't had a pain-free minute in almost 28 years The Canadian pilot had ended his flying career Because he He was exposed not as badly as I was to the extent that I was Because he had his visor down and he wasn't looking in the same direction that the ship the entire time like I was So he didn't get the exact direct hit That I got

So it's something I deal with on a daily basis. Some days it's harder than others. But you have to move forward. You have to forge forward. I look at the soldiers and the sailors and the airmen and marines that have come back from the last 20 years of war broken, no longer whole. And I thought, gee.

This is what I have dealt with is nothing compared to what they had to deal with So I you know Don't feel sorry for myself Most of the time, you know, there's there's some days when the pain so bad and all I can do Is sit in the dark. I can't even function. So those are the harder days to get through but I find something to laugh about And that helps me get through that day

Katie Wrigley (34:59.853)
Yeah.

Katie Wrigley (35:05.218)
That's awesome.

I think it says a lot about your character that you can really acknowledge what newer veterans are going through and the pain that they're in, but please don't diminish your own experience because you perceive they went through something worse. Trauma is trauma is trauma. What you went through, especially having to fight everything and I'm guessing everything after actually being shot with a laser was worse than the laser shooting itself because you had all that bullshit to go through.

Jack Daly (35:33.939)
Yeah, that was hard. There were a couple of events in my life prior to getting shot. I watched five of my friends die one night on an aircraft carrier. So that was hard to deal with as well. And that resonates with me every time I watch any kind of a military movie or a military show. I think about those guys.

Katie Wrigley (35:44.781)
Oof.

Yeah.

Katie Wrigley (35:55.778)
Mm-hmm.

Jack Daly (36:00.265)
You know, there are a lot of stressors in life and I guess my most important message that I could convey to anyone out there. Do not suffer in silence. Seek help. There is help available. There is help available for the veterans. There is a suicide hotline that they can call anytime, night or day. There are other suicide hotlines for anybody else that is in that.

precarious position Don't suffer in silence. There is help out there It's it's very very important to talk, you know No, that's good. I say it's very very important to talk to somebody else Even if they just listen to you for an hour or two and never say a word. Yeah

Katie Wrigley (36:30.712)
Yep. Yep.

Katie Wrigley (36:35.234)
Thank you.

Yeah, there's 988 every state. Sorry, keep going.

Katie Wrigley (36:46.177)
It is. You aren't alone.

Yeah, Yep, just have a safe space to be able to get out and 988 is activated in every state. So if you're like me and you have an area code from a different state, ask them to route you to the state that you're in. So you're getting local personnel or if you're making a call to 988 for someone else in a different state again, asked to be routed over to that state. And so this is something that has been activated in every state across the United States.

because of the major suicide problem that Jack has very eloquently outlined today. Teens, veterans, first responders are the highest risks, but they are not alone. And it's bullshit and we can stop it. And we stop it by making it easier to talk about, by getting more people to laugh, and by getting rid of the stigma that goes around asking for help. There's nothing wrong with you if you are suffering from trauma or if you have post-traumatic stress symptoms.

It means that you have been through some crap that your psyche wasn't meant to see, which means that you are human. That's all it says about you is that you're human.

Jack Daly (37:53.545)
Right? There's nothing wrong with you. No. You are not to blame, is bottom line.

Katie Wrigley (37:57.066)
No, not at all, not at all.

Katie Wrigley (38:03.788)
Yep, and whatever you had to do over there for service, you had to do to stay alive.

Jack Daly (38:08.967)
Absolutely.

Katie Wrigley (38:10.9)
And that can be tough from what I understand, but I don't want to go down a dark rabbit hole after we had such a great chuckle and everything. Thank you for ending that message to remind people not to be suffering in silence. That's so important. And once we wrap up, I actually have an idea that may help you with your eyes jacks. I'll run it by you. It's perfect, perfect, perfect synchronicity in my day from a conversation I had earlier.

Jack Daly (38:28.031)
Okay.

Katie Wrigley (38:34.552)
Thank you so much and thank you for your service to our country too, Jack. I have so much respect for veterans and I appreciate you and the work that you did for us from the bottom of my heart. Thank you.

Jack Daly (38:34.893)
Good.

Jack Daly (38:45.545)
Well, thank you. was an honor. Thank you.

Katie Wrigley (38:48.098)
And thank you to the listeners who joined us today. I know you have a lot of choices of what to listen to out there in the internet, and I am so grateful that you chose to listen to my show and take something you can integrate into your life. In this case, go out, grab Laugh Out Loud. We're going to put that in the show notes so you can buy it directly from this episode and give yourself a break and allow yourself to have a laugh. And until next week.

Jack Daly (39:11.485)
And please leave a review on Amazon if you purchase it from Amazon.

Katie Wrigley (39:15.852)
We will do that. Thank you for that. I will definitely leave a review when I buy it myself.

Jack Daly (39:21.343)
Thank you, Katie.

Katie Wrigley (39:22.446)
So until the next episode, please be well.