Building the Elite Podcast

Ricky Ditzel is a former Special Operations medic, a fourth-year medical student at Rush Medical College pursuing neurosurgery, and co-founder and chair of Special Operations Forces to School of Medicine (SOFtoSOM). 

Through SOFtoSOM, he helps veterans navigate the transition from military service to medical school, building mentorship networks and partnerships with medical schools across the country.

A 2023 Pat Tillman Scholar, Ricky’s work is a reflection of his commitment to helping others translate their military experience into a continued life of service in medicine.

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SOFtoSOM website - https://www.softosom.org

The SOFtoSOM invitational golf fundraiser at Devil’s Ridge in Holly Springs, North Carolina is coming up on November 16th.

You can purchase tickets or become a sponsor on the SOFtoSOM website, or by going here: https://givebutter.com/sts-golf-fundraiser-ove5xy

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Timestamps:

00:22 Introduction to Ricky Ditzel
01:03  What Did Rickey Ditzel Do in the Military?
02:45 Special Operations Forces to School of Medicine 
04:02 Selection Process Depending on the Role
05:27 What is the 160th, and What do They do?
06:55 5x5 Landing Area 
08:41 The New Guy Earning Credibility in Small Units
13:11 Moments That Solidified Views on Teamwork 
15:05 Finding His Way Back to Special Operations Command
18:13 Pro Tips for Getting Through The Ranger Assessment and Selection Program 
28:33 Special Operations Forces to School of Medicine 
37:01 SOFtoSOM While Serving
43:20 Where Does the Tuition Per Student Go?
47:15 What Could Civilian Medicine Learn from Special Operations?
53:58 SOFtoSOM Golf Tournament
55:48 Best and Worst Advice Ever Received 
57:32 One Book Everyone Should Read
58:29 Outro

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Professor Robin Orr is the director of the Tactical Research Unit and professor of physiotherapy at Bond University in Australia. Rob began his Army career as an infantry soldier in 1989, later serving as a physical training instructor, physiotherapist, and human performance officer supporting Special Operations. 

He now works with military personnel, police, firefighters, and first responders around the world, researching how to improve physical performance, manage heavy loads, and reduce injuries. His work brings together decades of military experience and more than 300 peer-reviewed publications.

You can learn more about Bond University’s Tactical Research Unit and Robin's work there at tru.bond.edu.au 


Timestamps:
00:22 Introduction to Professor Robin Orr
01:08 The Focus of Prof. Orr's Research and Career     
04:37 Findings of Studying Load Carriage
12:30 Operational Pack Weight 
14:21 Most Common Injuries in Load Carriage Training
15:55 Guidelines for Effectively Loading a Pack
18:17 Proper Hip Strap Application
19:20 Boot Recommendations
23:24 The Heavily Debated "Heel Lift"
26:33 Sock Recommendations
29:41 Foot Toughness and Blister Prevention  
34:34 Soft Plates and Changes in Armor 
36:56 What Matters in Female Armor?
40:07 Performance and Fitness Testing Accuracy
45:05 Mandatory Physical Testing
50:00 Central Components of Training Programs 
53:14 What has Rob Changed his Mind About Over the Years?
55:46 Best and Worst Advice Ever Received 
57:44 One Book Everyone Should Read
59:30 Outro

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In this episode, we're talking with Dr. Elizabeth Delery about what happens to your body when you’re exposed to sewage-contaminated water, such as the water in Coronado that’s heavily polluted by untreated waste from Tijuana. 

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Elizabeth Delery, Ph.D., is a neuropharmacologist and neuroimmunologist studying Alzheimer's disease therapeutics. Formerly an Assistant Professor of Microbiology and Immunology at Marian University Wood College of Osteopathic Medicine, she earned her PhD in Biomedical Sciences with a concentration in microbiology & immunology from Tulane University School of Medicine. She completed her dissertation on HIV neuropathogenesis at Tulane National Primate Research Center before pursuing a T32 postdoctoral fellowship at LSU Health Sciences Center. She's passionate about making science accessible and loves all things pathogens, especially the gross and gnarly!

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This is the second part of a two-part series about water contamination in Coronado. In the first part, we talked with Dr. Falk Feddersen about what’s in the water, how it gets there, how it moves up and down the coastline, and how his research forecasts contamination levels in Coronado to predict water quality several days in advance. 

Follow Dr. Delery: 

If you want to learn more about Dr. Delery and follow her work, you can find her on Instagram at @phdelery.


Timestamps:
00:00:23 Introduction to Dr. Elizabeth Delery
00:01:41 Dr. Elizabeth Delery's Education 
00:02:39 Tracking Exposure to Norovirus 
00:03:37 Norovirus: How Does it Work and How Do You Get it?
00:11:13 Timeline of Norovirus Symptoms
00:17:09 Building Immunity to Norovirus
00:18:35 Wide Variety of Virus Strains in Sewage
00:21:24 Treatment for Norovirus
00:23:45 Reducing the Risk of Catching Norovirus
00:29:02 Don't Expose Yourself to Poop Water
00:31:52 Vaccines Can Only Cover Certain Strains
00:35:45 Gambling with Getting Sick in BUDS
00:42:26 Seasonal Variations of Strains
00:44:15 Recovery from Norovirus 
00:46:24 Nutrition and Sleep for Immune System Strength
00:51:00 Impacts of Repeat Infections 
00:52:34 Food, Supplements, Witchcraft: Improving Immunity and Recovery Time
00:56:22 Advice for Pushing Through the Virus
00:59:06 Mental Toughness and Nutrition in BUDS
01:04:16 Toughing it Out Without Going to the Med Bay
01:05:19 Outro

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For BUD/S, SWCC, and Marine Reconnaissance students in Coronado, water quality issues are a constant concern and a major occupational hazard. Dr. Feddersen is one of the leading experts on what’s in Coronado's water, how it gets there, and what it does. 

Falk Feddersen received his Ph.D. from Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO) in 1999, followed by a position as a postdoctoral scholar for two years at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.  

Dr. Feddersen studies various aspects of coastal and nearshore physical oceanography that span waves, currents, turbulence, and biological processes. His research includes instrument development, observations, theory, and modeling. His extensive field work experience includes projects in La Jolla, Huntington Beach, Point. Sal, the Monterey Peninsula, Surf Ranch, Imperial Beach in California, Duck and New River Inlet in North Carolina, and the Virgin Islands.  

These projects have resulted in new insights into how nearshore processes unfold, including rip currents, internal waves, and wind effects on wave overturning.  Many of these findings are vital for understanding how pollution moves in the coastal ocean. 

His work has been supported by NSF, ONR, NOAA, other agencies, and private foundations.

Dr. Feddersen has developed disciplinary and interdisciplinary coastal oceanography courses at SIO at the graduate and undergraduate levels.

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This is the first part of a two-part series on the water contamination in Coronado. In this episode, we’re talking about how the contamination gets into the water, what’s in it, and how scientists model how it spreads and how severe it is on a given day, sort of like a weather forecast. 

In a few days, we’ll release part two, focused on the medical impacts of the contaminated water. In other words, we’ll be discussing what happens to your body when you have to splash around in Tijuana poop water. 

If you’re in Coronado and want to see how much sewage is in the water today, you can find Dr. Feddersen’s pathogen forecast model for Coronado and Imperial Beach at https://pfmweb.ucsd.edu/


Timestamps:
00:00:22 Introduction to Dr. Falk Fedderson
00:02:19  How much Sewage is in the Water in Coronado? 
00:05:19 Viral Gastroenteritis and Norovirus
00:08:18 The Movement of Sewage in Our Oceans
00:12:02 Treatment of Sewage: Worse Over the Past Two Decades
00:17:33 Do New DNA Tests Overstate the Risk?
00:18:44 Are There Airborne Risks?
00:21:05 Improvement on the Horizon for Tijuana  
00:24:41 Sewage Outflow Modeling 
00:26:24 Online Modeling and Beach Advisories
00:28:40 How is the Sampling Actually Done?
00:30:28 Outro

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Chris Brennan is a training, leadership, and human performance specialist who focuses on developing teams, leaders, and instructor cadres operating in mission-critical environments.

Through his consultancy, Omada Performance Concepts, he offers a perspective formed through experience, contemporary research, and human performance methodology. Omada’s proprietary frameworks and services are currently integrated within multiple mission-critical teams and organizations.

Chris served as a Patrol Commander and Trainer in the Australian Special Air Service Regiment across multiple deployed and training environments. His Master of Business and current postgraduate studies in Human Performance Optimization add academic rigour to those experiences, ensuring current best practice in adult learning and performance science.

Through Omada, Chris delivers emerging leader and instructor development programs across specialist policing, emergency services, the resources sector, military, and high-risk industry.

This is our second conversation with Chris discussing leadership concepts. If you’d like to listen to the first one, it’s episode number 113. Today, we’re talking to Chris about two important concepts: dynamic decision-making and how to structure debriefs effectively, efficiently, and consistently. 

More about Chris:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-brennan-omada/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/omada.performance.concepts/

Omada's Dynamic Decision-Making Framework:

Question 1 – What information do I need? (Where do I find it?)

Aim: Situational Awareness through Information Collection and Triage 

Orientates the leader and team to the information conditions and helps them understand the information that’s currently available, what information is needed, where there may be gaps in the information and where that can be sourced

Question 2 – What needs to happen with this information? (Who needs to know?)

Aim: Action and Communication

Turns actionable information into assigned tasks and establishes reporting priorities so that the team is aligned and moving with shared understanding of the situation. Reinforces information priority to those that need it the most, ie those in the team.

Question 3 – What is the plan and the expected outcome? (When will I reassess?)

Aim: Task Execution and Reassessment

Prompts execution of the plan, with the addition of a reassessment trigger. Every plan should include a defined point at which the leader asks whether the situation has changed and whether the plan needs to change with it.

Omada's IWIPE-A Debrief Framework:

I - Incident Summary

W - What went well?

I - Improves

P - Plan going forward

E - Equipment

A - Accountability

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Dr. Krista Scott-Dixon is a trained counselor specializing in the psychology of behavior change, with certifications including motivational interviewing, solution-focused, DBT, CBT, and trauma counseling.

She’s the author of numerous books and accredited nutrition, sleep, stress, and recovery courses. She is our go-to performance psych and works one-on-one with many of our clients seeking to sharpen the mental and emotional skills needed to handle some of the toughest training courses in the world.

She’s an invaluable resource for our clients and has played a critical role in the careers of many special operators. 

In this episode, we’re talking to KSD about the grieving process. Typically, we think of grief as the emotional state following a loss like the death of a friend or loved one, but the process is surprisingly similar to other forms of loss, such as the emotional impact of losing out on a major career aspiration, washing out of a selection course, or getting divorced. 

Additional Resources: What to Know About Grief and Loss

More about KSD:

Website - kristascottdixon.com

Coaching for SOF personnel - https://www.buildingtheelite.com/performance-psych-coaching/

KSD’s latest book, Applied Nutrition Coaching and Counseling - https://amzn.to/4xXhp0t

Timestamps:

00:00:22 Introduction to Dr. Krista Scott Dixon
00:01:24 Processing Grief in Death/Grief in Setbacks
00:11:47 Dealing with the Nature of Death
00:18:54 The Brain's Ability to Adjust to Loss
00:23:14 Clichés are Infuriating During Grieving
00:28:22 Excepting a New Reality 
00:31:50 Exposure to Grief in the Military
00:36:04 Unhealthy and Problematic Ways of Coping with Loss
00:41:57 Chemical Avoidance and Numbing in Grief
00:45:19 Communicating Death to Children
00:51:37 Advice on Helping with Others' Grief
00:58:20 Guidelines for Dealing with Grief from Selection
01:04:00 Curling into a Ball or Crawling into a Hole
01:06:01 The "What If"s and "If Only"s of Loss
01:08:02 Survivor's Guilt
01:13:43 Face, Accept, Float, Let Time Pass
01:16:21 Outro

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Dr. Robyn Nadolny is a Biologist and the Chief of the Vector-Borne Disease Branch at the Defense Centers for Public Health at Aberdeen Proving Ground, MD (DCPH-A). The flagship program of the Vector-Borne Disease Branch is MilTICK, a free, rapid tick-testing program for military beneficiaries. The results provide a tool in the diagnostic toolbox for military beneficiaries, and Dr. Nadolny uses the passive surveillance data generated to better understand changing tick-borne disease dynamics and mitigate risks to US Service Members and their communities. She is also working on tick-borne disease surveillance projects worldwide to support military communities. 

Dr. Nadolny came to DCPH-A in 2016 after completing her PhD in Ecological Sciences from Old Dominion University (ODU) in Norfolk, VA. She also holds a M.S. in Biology from ODU, and a B.S. in Ecology, Evolution, and Behavioral Biology from Beloit College in Beloit, WI. Her research focuses on the prevention of tick-borne disease through understanding and breaking tick-host-pathogen-environment cycles. Dr. Nadolny has co-authored over 30 peer-reviewed publications and is interested in the intersection of ecology and public health.

In this episode, we discuss the types of diseases that can be transmitted to military personnel (and anyone else) through ticks, how those diseases work, where and when the risk is greatest, and what you can do to protect yourself. 

To visit the MilTICK site, which you can use to understand the risk of tick-borne disease at your military installation and submit ticks for testing, go here:

https://ph.health.mil/topics/entomology/kits/Pages/HumanTickTestKitProgram.aspx

There are also many civilian labs where you can submit a tick for testing at a low cost. 

For example:

Pennsylvania Tick Research Lab: https://www.ticklab.org/

Old Dominion University, Virginia: https://sites.wp.odu.edu/tick-team/what-we-do/tick-testing/sending-us-your-ticks/

Ticknology: https://www.ticknology.org/order-test

Timestamps:
00:23 Introduction to Dr. Robyn Nadolny

01:48 What are the Most Common Diseases Spread by Ticks?

03:24 Lesser Known Tick-Spread Diseases

07:19 Alpha Gal: It's Not Just Beef Off the Table 

09:27 The Implications of Lyme Disease

14:16 How Does the Body React After Multiple Tick Bites?

16:06 Rates of These Diseases 

18:21 What Terrain Do Ticks Prefer? 

21:31 What Time of Year are Ticks the Worst?

23:13 Tick Life Cycles  

27:56 Soldiers Protecting Themselves from Ticks in the Field

33:19 Dealing with a Tick Bite in the Field

37:41 Prevalence of Diseases in Ticks

42:34 Vaccines for Tick-Borne Diseases for Pets and People

45:45 Treated Clothing and Repellents

48:21 Outro

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Dr. Alia Bojilova is a registered psychologist with a focus on resilience. 

She grew up in Eastern Europe during some of the most tumultuous times in recent history before immigrating to New Zealand at age 17. During her service with the New Zealand Defense Force, she worked as the Lead Psychologist and an Officer with the SAS. 

While serving as a UN military observer in Syria, Alia and her team were taken hostage, and she negotiated the release of herself and her team. 

She holds a PhD from the University of Waikato and studied the link between curiosity and resilience in special operations forces. 

Since leaving the military, Alia has served as coach and advisor to leaders and teams around the world, and across a wide range of sectors, including government, venture capital, elite-level sports, corporate services, and creative industries.

She’s the author of The Resilience Toolkit, available on Amazon.

More about Alia:

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexandrina-alia-bojilova/

Resilience Toolkit - https://amzn.to/4fa9DZH

Timestamps:
00:22  Introduction to Alia Bojilova
01:21 Lead Psychologist for New Zealand SAS
05:35 The Link Between Curiosity and Resilience
07:51 Resilience in Special Operators
12:38 Time of Service and Involvement in SAS
14:51 What Does "Military Observer" Mean?
17:04 Assessing for Curiosity in Training
19:22 Curiosity's Distinction from Openness
31:40 Common Signifiers of a Resilient, Curious Mindset
35:40 Olympic Athletes and Special Operators
37:13 The Phenomenal Gift of Being Taken Captive in Syria
54:01 One or Two Books Everyone Should Read
55:18 Best and Worst Advice Ever Received
56:31 Outro

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James Jensen is a former SAS Patrol Commander with a unique blend of scientific leadership theory and real-world, high-stakes leadership experience.

James served in the Australian Defence Force (ADF) for two decades, with fourteen years in the Special Air Service Regiment (SAS), where he held leadership roles during multiple combat tours in Afghanistan, Iraq, East Timor, and the Philippines. Throughout his career, he worked in some of the world’s most challenging and high-pressure environments.

With over 20 years of experience leading and working within teams in dynamic, complex settings, James has witnessed firsthand the transformative power of great leadership. He has seen exceptional leaders elevate teams and positively impact individuals' lives, and he's also observed the devastating effects of poor leadership on both people and organizations.

James’s evolution from a junior leader in East Timor to leading some of Australia’s most elite teams reshaped his understanding of what true leadership means. 

Today, as a sought-after consultant, James works with organizations across many industries, helping leaders unlock their full potential and inspire greatness in their teams. His leadership expertise is still highly valued by the SAS, where he continues to train and mentor the next generation of SAS leaders.

LEARN MORE ABOUT JAMES: 

K6 Consulting - https://k6consulting.com.au/

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-jensen-a56440172/

TIMESTAMPS:

00:21 Introduction to James Jensen
01:49 What Did James Do in The Army?
06:30 From Officer to Enlistment - How Did that Process Affect James?
09:53 Being Concerned with Being Liked in Leadership
11:23 W.I.N. - What's Important Now
15:07 Develop and Maintain the Role of Calmness
19:32 Can Calmness Be Developed or is it Innate?
22:43 Timing a Joke with a Crew
24:02 Better Decision Making as a Leader
32:48 Routine with Feedback = Behavioral Change
33:49 Leadership is a Profession
36:33 Individuals Functioning as a Unit
41:35 Best and Worst Advice Ever Received
42:51 James' Book Recommendations 
44:18 Outro

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Aaron is an active duty Pararescueman currently stationed at a Special Tactics Squadron as a Troop Chief. He is a Team Leader, Evaluator, Special Operations Combatives Program (SOCP) Lvl 2 instructor, and an Onnit Certified Trainer, with a focus on Tactical Durability.

Pararescuemen, or PJs, are the only DoD asset specifically trained, equipped, and employed to perform Personnel Recovery. They are Technical Rescue Specialists who provide gold-standard combat trauma medical care and evacuation in every environment and situation on the planet. They are trained in all methods of advanced employment and can employ from any vehicle, standard or non-standard, in the DoD and multinational partner inventory.

Aaron enlisted in the Air Force in September 2001 and entered the Pararescue training pipeline as a cross trainee, previously an Aerospace Physiology Technician. He has served in Special Tactics and Rescue Squadrons, both overseas and stateside. He has also served in Air Education and Training Command, where he was integral in the complete rewrite of the Pararescue/Combat Rescue Apprentice Courses and has intimate knowledge of the Assessment and Selection process and pipeline management. 

He has seen multiple combat deployments to Iraq, Africa, and Afghanistan in positions from team member to Senior Enlisted Leader. He takes great pride in the training and mentorship aspect of being a Troop Chief. Aaron is a Brazilian jiu-jitsu player in his off time.

You can learn more about Ones Ready and their Operator Training Summit at onesready.com

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