Fight-or-Fl1ght

Myles Levin
  • 5.0 (13)
  • Mental Health
  • Updated Weekly

Fight or Flight Voices from the edge. Lessons from the fire. We don't chase guests. We find people doing the work—quietly reshaping the worlds of design, sport, warfare, movement, code, commerce, and spirit. Olympians, generals, philosophers, founders, poets—names known and names waiting. Each arrives with something earned. A story formed under pressure. A decision made when nothing was guaranteed. These are not performances. These are transmissions. Our mission is simple: To amplify what’s real. To mentor what’s emerging. To hold space for those building BTR™ in their own way.

  1. 20h ago

    S2E38 | Glenn McMahon | He's built, sold, and saved brands for over 30 years. What most never learn.

    Donna Karan. Dolce & Gabbana. Giorgio Armani. St. John Knits, sold in 2013. Then interim leadership and advisory work across fashion, tech, hospitality, and luxury appliances. Thirty years. Build it. Sell it. Save it. Glenn identifies industry vulgarities and celebrates the imagination that moves audiences to enroll, not those who survive on forgettable transactions. Decisive. Gentle in delivery. Firm in the follow-through. Inside this episode: complacency as the industry's most uncomfortable truth. AG Jeans and the return to core. The pattern behind Nike, Lululemon, and Under Armour's repeated missteps. Why On, Hoka, New Balance, Kith, Aimé Leon Dore, and Buck Mason are winning through community over hype. Resale as real commerce. Runway economics, and why the math stopped working. AI as a tool, not a replacement for merchant judgment. Notable quotes:"There's no shame in asking for help.""Keep it simple. It's denim, stupid.""Patience." If you celebrate humanness, and what happens in collaboration, you already walk among us. Join our cohort. Welcoming ALL. Walk Worthy

  2. Aug 12

    S2E37 | 22Zero: Quantifiable Results, Peer-Led Trauma Resolution | Dr. Pamela Potts-Arnell

    Dr. Pamela Potts-Arnell serves as President/CEO of 22Zero, a peer-led trauma healing model built to resolve in two to four sessions, not months. Myles Jeffrey presses into whether that's possible, and whether it's responsible. The conversation moves through guided imagery and memory reconsolidation, the research pipeline behind the model (one published study, three in peer review, a joint study underway with Healing Springs Ranch, new university work beginning in Alabama), and the difficulty of getting the VA to take a serious look despite the data. It closes on the name itself, twenty-two veterans lost a day, the work aimed at zero, and Dr. Arnell's trip to New York, traveling in cohort with the 2026 NYC SEAL Swim, a 3.5-mile open-water endurance event founded by former Navy SEAL Bill Brown, running August 15th from Liberty State Park through New York Harbor and the Hudson River, benefiting Beyond the Brotherhood. "People aren't broken. They've experienced something that has been traumatic, and there's healing for that."

  3. Aug 11

    S2E36: Drew Forsberg — Navy SEAL, Beyond the Brotherhood, Man Under Authority

    Drew Forsberg served as a Navy SEAL, Class 243, SEAL Team 5, before becoming a father of four homeschooling on Oahu, and Executive Director of Beyond the Brotherhood.In this episode, Drew traces his path from Montauk fishing roots and California surf culture through 9/11, BUD/S, and the SEAL teams, then into the moment that tested everything underneath the uniform. In 2021, a vaccine mandate forced a choice between an oath to command and an oath to conscience. He filed a religious exemption, joined a First Liberty lawsuit, and later faced years of cumulative TBI, finally named, finally treated, finally understood.Drew's answer to where duty ends and defiance begins became the spine of this conversation. Identity is not a title. It is values, conduct, and stewardship, a north star built on faith, held under authority, still choosing conviction when conviction costs something.Drew now serves as Executive Director of Beyond the Brotherhood, a veteran-owned 501(c)(3) founded by Jimmy May. Drew and the team lead the organization's work screening and selecting Navy SEALs of character for their next mission in life through the SEAL² Process: Screen and Select, Equip and Engage, Assess and Align, Launch and Lead.Also covered: regenerative agriculture, jiu jitsu as therapy and discipline, SkillBridge partnerships, the real math of nonprofit leadership, and the 2026 NYC SEAL Swim, a 3-mile open-water swim through New York Harbor past the Statue of Liberty, open to Navy SEALs, veterans, and first responders.Learn more or get involved:Beyond the Brotherhood — beyondthebrotherhood.orgSponsor a Fellow — beyondthebrotherhood.org/donate2026 NYC SEAL Swim — beyondthebrotherhood.org/nyc-seal-swimThe Fight-or-Fl1ght Podcast — linktr.ee/fightorfl1ght

  4. Aug 5

    S2E35 | Capt. Robert V. "Gus" Gusentine, USN (Ret.) | NAVY SEAL. Warrior for Humanity.

    Twenty-eight years in the United States Navy. Twenty-six as a SEAL. Yes, the mission was the brotherhood of uniform. It was simultaneously greater. It was the people. The same mission, articulated differently. Command became craft. Craft was the "care". Capt. Robert V. "Gus" Gusentine served as Director of Operations for Special Operations Command Pacific and was the former Course Director of the Strategic Leaders International Course at NAVSCIATTS, training senior officers from AFRICOM, EUCOM, CENTCOM, and INDOPACIFIC. He wrote haikus on deployment. He went on to teach at St. Benedict's Prep. He became a painter whose work has been featured on PBS's Curate. Proof that art holds what comes after: unity, connection, the collective. This episode is stripped down. No sizzle, no filler. Just the man, speaking. Listen for what's said. Watch for what is not. Capt. Gusentine spent a career defending people he'd never meet. He continues to give that same care to everything he builds. In conversation. In canvas. In every room he enters. Service: to others. A believer in the moral economy: acting with integrity, expecting nothing back. My humanity is bound up in yours. For only in this way, can we become fully human. Walk Worthy.— Mj

  5. Jul 30

    S2E34 | SEAL. LAWYER. SWIMMER. FIGHTER. Bill Brown, Unedited.

    The swim is why we sat down. Bill Brown — Navy SEAL, Iraq veteran, attorney, and the man behind the New York City SEAL Swim — joins us for a conversation that started with the swim and became so much more. Service. Community. Perception. Mindset. The practical work of navigating today's complexities from a man who's already faced the hardest ones. Unedited. Unscripted. One man's journey to serve, support, inform, and love all that is dear to him. This conversation includes discussion of active, ongoing litigation. Bill's account. Bill's words. His fight, his story, told whole. In this episode:→ The New York City SEAL Swim — Liberty, Ellis Island, 9/11→ Life after the Trident and what identity means when the mission ends→ Adventure therapy as a healthy outlet for stress→ The transition every combat veteran faces→ Why speaking up matters The Swim: nycsealswims.comSupport the mission: Beyond the BrotherhoodVeteran mental health: 22ZeroConnect with Bill: linkedin.com/in/williambrown77Bill's practice: Parlatore Law Group — parlatorelawgroup.com/team/brown-jr-william-d Fight-or-Fl1ght. Real conversation. Real people. Real stakes. Our meditation for all - Desmond Tutu said it best: "My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together." Walk Worthy.

  6. Jul 28

    S2E33 | Calabria. Dr. Simonyan | CIA. Quantum Physicist. Bioterrorism. | BIONET: Is America Ready?

    What does a biological attack actually look like? Reality. It may feel and look like an outbreak. Like contaminated produce. Like a summer spike in gastrointestinal illness that public health systems are already calibrated to manage. Right now 4,173 Americans are confirmed infected across 34 states. Cyclosporiasis. A microscopic parasite. Linked to iceberg lettuce. Six times higher than this time last year. Natural occurrence. Probably. The question this episode is built around is harder than the headline. If a deliberate actor engineered something to operate inside that window. At scale. Optimized to look natural long enough to blur attribution. How would we know the difference? The difference between an outbreak and an attack is intent. And intent leaves no fingerprints. Two guests. One conversation. Both have spent their careers inside the architecture of that question. Laura Calabria is the Founder of Livian, a national security writing and advisory firm. Twenty years inside American national security intelligence. CIA Chief of Strategy within the Science and Technology Directorate. Chief of Strategic Communications within the Office of General Counsel. Chief of Staff at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. She knows how the system reads a signal. More importantly she knows how it misses one. Dr. Vahan Simonyan is the Chief Scientific Officer and Founder of DNA HIVE. Inventor of the cloud infrastructure the FDA uses for Next Generation Sequencing analysis. Twenty-five years across life sciences, biotechnology, bioinformatics, physics, chemistry, and nanotechnology. Author of nearly 100 published scientific papers. He built the science of detecting what a pathogen leaves behind in genomic data. Together they are building BIONET. A biological defense surveillance network designed to address exactly this class of threat. This conversation covers the difference between a biological threat and a kinetic one. What genomic biology enables in the wrong hands. COVID as a case study in preparedness versus assumed preparedness. China's investment signal and what the 2026 ODNI Threat Assessment tells us about adversary intent. The detection paradox. The political will question. And whether our institutions know how to act on warning signals before the event rather than after it. The 9/11 Commission Report named the greatest failure leading to September 11 as a failure of imagination. BIONET asks whether we are ready to do that differently in the biological domain. One hour and five minutes. No filler. No easy answers. Fight or Fl1ght. An independent podcast. Season 2. Episode 33. Published every Tuesday. Walk Worthy. linktr.ee/fightorfl1ght

  7. Jul 20

    S2E32 | Amy Toth — Setting the Standard for Product Excellence

    Good is a compliment. Great is a discipline. Most teams chase the first. Season. Quarter. Whatever the calendar demands. Few chase the second. Amy Toth does. Every time. In this episode, Amy — a technical design leader who built a Bra Center of Excellence from scratch — takes us inside the most unforgiving category in apparel. Millimeters matter. Bodies change. The engineering doesn't care about the mood board. We talk about feeding the commercial machine without letting it eat the art. Reading the noise. Protecting the origin story. Standing in the room and saying no, we're not using sponges, we'll find another way — and meaning it. Standardization. Consistency. Rigor. And underneath all of it: what is great design, actually? In this episode: Amy's journey from technical designer to industry thought leader. Building the Bra Center of Excellence from the ground up. Rethinking bra sizing and the case for industry-wide standards. The engineering marvel behind support, and why bras are more technically complex than most garments. How fit shifts with body composition changes, including from GLP-1 medications. Setting new precedent: the move to eliminate sponges and other outdated materials. Small brands' agility vs. large companies' resource walls. What separates emotionally resonant design from functionally forgettable design. Timestamps00:00 Introduction to Amy's journey and core values02:30 Humility and authentic relationships05:11 Building the Bra Center of Excellence07:10 Rethinking bra sizing and industry standards08:11 Evaluating design concepts for stakeholder buy-in10:04 The stage-gate process for apparel innovation12:10 Setting new precedent: eliminating sponges13:53 The complexity of bra engineering and fit15:50 Fit and body composition shifts from medical innovation18:23 Standardization challenges across brands20:52 When fitting happens in development24:17 Impact of GLP-1 and weight fluctuation on fit27:00 Niche brands thriving through focused innovation29:30 Deep customer understanding in design31:47 What is great design? Emotional connection and purpose Connect with Amy: linkedin.com/in/amy-toth-0509a820 Fight-or-Fl1ghtWalk Worthy.linktr.ee/fightorfl1ght

  8. Jul 14

    S2E31 |Timing, Coherence & Peak Performance. Imogen Roy.

    Natural and supernatural. Peak performance. Imogen Roy channels the ancients, buoyed by the rigor of a seasoned operator. Timing strategist. Business astrologer. Threshold guide. In her: Gestation | Growth | Renewal. Forget your WHY. Lean into WHAT. She leaves us with a question that won't let go. What if reality is a lot more loosely attached than we thought? Connect with Imogen: www.imogenroy.com

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5
out of 5
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About

Fight or Flight Voices from the edge. Lessons from the fire. We don't chase guests. We find people doing the work—quietly reshaping the worlds of design, sport, warfare, movement, code, commerce, and spirit. Olympians, generals, philosophers, founders, poets—names known and names waiting. Each arrives with something earned. A story formed under pressure. A decision made when nothing was guaranteed. These are not performances. These are transmissions. Our mission is simple: To amplify what’s real. To mentor what’s emerging. To hold space for those building BTR™ in their own way.

Information

  • Creator
    Myles Levin
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    69
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Myles Levin
  • Show Website
    Fight-or-Fl1ght