Secrets in Depth - Joe Dituri

On today’s episode I have the pleasure of speaking with retired US Navy Commander, and author of the new fictional thriller, Secrets in Depth. 

His name is Joe Dituri and his laid-back persona and colorful and exciting life truly make for an interesting episode. 

We’ll open our conversation by learning about Joe’s journey as an enlisted sailor to being commanding officer in charge of the Navy’s’ deep submergence unit.  

Next, we’ll unpack his transition out of the spec-op community and into the world of hyperbaric medicine.  

We’ll then hear how Joe’s involvement in a rollover car crash contributed to his researching Traumatic Brain Injuries, starting with his own. 

Later, we’ll dive into Joe’s work to help prior military servicemen and women overcome the debilitating effects of explosive concussions and why his unique approach of not just treating the psychological manifestations of the injury, but the actual physical, physiological root causes as well, has proven so effective. 

And we’ll wrap up our conversation by discussing Secrets in Depth, a Jack Reacher-esque style thriller that weave’s many aspects of Joe’s life into the main protagonist character known as “The Dragon Slayer”.

The Show Notes

Joe Dituri
http://drdeepsea.com/

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Transcript

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Joe Dituri: 0:09

Welcome to Grit Nation. I'm Joe Cadwell, the host of the show, and on today's episode, I have the pleasure of speaking with retired US Navy Commander PhD in Biomedical Engineering and author of the new fictional thriller secrets in debt. His name is Joe Dituri and his laid back persona and colorful and exciting life truly make for an interesting episode we'll open our conversation by learning about Joe's journey as an enlisted sailor to be a commanding officer in charge of the Navy's deeps emergency unit. Next one pack is transitioned out of the SpecOps community and into the world of hyperbaric medicine. Well then hear how Joe's involvement in a rollover car crash contributed to his researching traumatic brain injuries, starting with his own. Later, we'll dive into Joe's work to help prior military service men and women overcome the debilitating effects of explosive concussions. And why is unique approach of not just treating the psychological manifestations of the injury, but the actual physical and physiological root causes as well as proven so effective. And we'll wrap up our conversation by discussing secrets in depth. Jack Reacher s style thriller that weaves many aspects of Joe's life into the main protagonist character known as the dragon slayer. After the episode, be sure to check out the show notes for more information about Joe to Terry and his new book Secrets in depth. And now on to the show. Joe Dettori Welcome to grit nation. Hey, thanks. Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it. Yeah, thank you so much, Joe, for taking your time to be on my show. Today. I've been following your career been listening some podcast reading a lot online about Mr. Joe Dituri, aka Dr. Deep Sea. And for the listeners who may not know who Joe Dituri is, I was hoping you could introduce us to the guy who's a motivational speaker, former military commander in the Navy, and now an author. I appreciate the opportunity to do that. It's always weird talking about yourself in my opinion. But you know, I sit here guard guard. So I did 20 years in the Navy, worked my way up from an enlisted guy to an officer. When I retired, I retired as a Special Operations Command as a commander and decided that I wasn't going to do that anymore. I wanted to do something totally different. So I went back to school, I got a PhD in Biomedical Engineering. And now I work on and cure trying to solve traumatic brain injury among other things in the clinical research realm. Traumatic Brain Injury app has been near and dear to my heart, having had a couple and also have a bunch of friends that have decided to end their life, you know, because of traumatic brain injury. So, so yeah, I just wrote a book because during COVID, I was bored, and it's been sitting around for the past 15 years since I was in charge of deep submergence unit. That idea that books been rattling around in my brain. So I was like, okay, COVID not doing a whole lot of work. I'm teaching med school online. Let's write a book. I got a good idea. Yeah, no kidding. And we'll get into that book. I believe it's the secrets of the deep, which has just recently been secrets in depth. I'm sorry, secrets in depth. And you've also written another book, The Tao of underwater survival. And then also a children's book as well. That is my daddy wears a different kinds of suit to wear, because they're just fun books. Right? Yeah. Good. Good stuff. So let's, let's unpeel the the layers of the Joe Dettori onion slowly. Let's start with your childhood. Joe, you were born in New York, from what I understand. Born in Oceanside, New York. My dad worked for an Italian company. So I lived in Italy for the first four or five years of my life. I used to speak Italian don't do it anymore, and then moved to Long Island, New York, where we continue to, you know, grow up and I lived all my, I guess teenage years here joined the Navy when I was 17. Only because my mom would not let me go in the Marine Corps. That was my first choice. But thank goodness that all worked out. And then you know, was she asked me was that a processing technician worked my way up to get a commission and oh boy. So how did you get into the diving then in the Navy? I was on a submarine tender for my second tour. First tour was an aircraft carrier second tour was a submarine tender while I was on the tender I you know, I saw these guys were in Groton, Connecticut. So these guys that were just running around in shorts and shirts and you know, like the UD T's and the blue and gold UD T's and the blue and gold. Exactly. And I'm like, yo, what's up with that master diamond Donlin drags me aside and goes wait Don't just take anybody and I'm like, Hey, man, I was sailor to freaking corner on an aircraft carrier for crying out loud. I'm pretty good guy. Yeah, he's like, Huh, well see, made me a mud pump sent me over to Naval submarine medical research laboratory, where I worked on a saturation dive system and work the Trimec series of down decompression required if a submarine was saturated. So I worked on that with a great group of researchers. And like, I really, like I learned research at that point, like I, that's where I cut my teeth, and I didn't know anything. And then they're like, Hey, you're very smart guy. I want you to go to school. And I'm like, Well, I'm going to school at night. No, like, no, no, why don't you apply for the enlisted commissioning program? And I'm like, what, what? So the rest is history, man, just get up there and went school, got a bachelor's in computer science and then got commissioned in Special Operations Officer pipeline. So you were in for 28 years. And it sounds like a good part of that was with the with the SpecOps. And with, with a diving program, from what I understand, he did saturation diving, I worked at an enlisted saturation diving facility where we did all that research. That's where the Genesis chambers were. When Captain George Bond was Theorizing the, the possibility of doing cielab He did it there, Hawaii. So all of those chambers, just this still alive. They're still around, right? All that stuff. The Genesis Chamber all those all the people and stuff is all there. And then when I got commissioned, I was just a regular diver. They call it a basic diving officer, because I was 1140 special operations guy and then I was at two tours in the SpecOps community. And then I saw that they wanted me to go to EOD school, and at that point, I was like, I'm not going to EOD school. I got almost 20 years in the Navy. Why would I go to EOD school at this time because I was long in the tooth right? I was enlisted for 10 years and then you know, sure for a couple of years to stop it real quick there Joe for folks who don't know EOD is Explosive Ordnance Disposal school. We tend to Bandy about these these acronyms, you know being ex military, but yeah, EOD explosive ordnance disposal. So yeah, you said no to that. I said no to that. And then, you know, I was like, okay, the writing's on the wall. I think that entire community is going towards the Explosive Ordnance Disposal route, and less with the diving and salvage in mind countermeasures. So I popped over to the engineering duty diver community. So they sent me off to postgraduate school, I got a master's in astronautical engineering. It's funny, because they asked me, you know, just like ask any two people in a crowd and be like, Okay, you can go to school and get a master's in mechanical engineering, or you can go get a master's in Astronautical Engineering. I'm like, I don't even know what that is. But that sounds way cooler. It sure does. And for the layperson, myself included what is that? What is the difference? So Astronautical Engineering has to do with the, the things that you have to deal with as an engineer for space for spaceflight orbital mechanics, the fall rates, geosynchronous orbits, has a lot to do with satellites and satellite uplinks, but it also has a lot to do with life support stuff. So for me, everybody's like, Oh, well, you're all over the place. I'm like, Well, I'm all over the place, but I'm really in life support. I'm all over the place in life support, you know, so I just tried to, you know, I tried to make it fit me. And that's kind of what I did with my, my Masters is I kind of just found the right professor asked him to let me do the things that I wanted to do, wrote a couple articles did a couple of things. And that was great. You know, while my thesis was actually a statistical orbital determination, it's a whole bunch of math, it really doesn't matter. The physics and the physiology were not lost on me. And I wrote a bunch of articles and I became a speaker on that topic. Because it's like, how many guys are really savvy in space stuff? Not a lot. I can tell you that. So you know, Kay, never been to space wanted to go to space. So I said, Well, let me just try this. So you know, did the whole NASA astronaut thing application thing and they were like, you are? You are? You are too devilishly handsome to be an astronaut. That's they literally told me that I've heard that so many times in my life. They said you are better off being a steely eyed Dennis into the deep and I said thank you very much. So then I you know, went off and I did more engineering duty officer tours. From there I got to be the guy who's in charge of deep submergence unit the diving detachment we brought the one atmosphere suit online. We certified the pressurized rescue module. We replaced the mystic in the Avalon as the DSRVs and the rescue asset on scene. Deep Submergence rescue vehicles for those listening at home. Oh, I'm sorry. No worries. Yeah, so a lot of this sounds like it's it's building up to a point where you're going to eventually put it all down on paper during COVID It sounds like he got a little bit bored. You were I understand directed by the government to kind of like not put too much fat in there. So we're talking about a fact ditional book that you've written called secrets in depth, secrets in depth. Exactly. That it Okay, so your exploits my exploits, I, you know, the names have changed to protect the absolutely guilty, you know, and some of the stuff that actually didn't happen. So, in the book, people died that didn't actually die. You know, in the book, things happen, that didn't actually happen. But it's all drama. And it's a fun read. And, you know, some people were, you know, comparing it to like Jack Reacher sort of stuff. But I view it as the the, the protagonist is basically just that, more like the Bruce Willis hero now, kind of like the unwilling, unwilling, I don't want to be in the middle of this. This was not my gig. And you guys wanted me to go do some super secret squirrel mission, but it's not my required operational commitment, projected operational environment. Why would I go do that? Well, because the admiral told you to? Well, there's that. Well, very cool. And well, I'm sure we'll get a little more into the book as we go along. But it sounds like a pretty distinguished career in the military. 28 years. You you left active duty. How many years ago? Want to say it's going on? 10? Okay, nine plus, certainly. Okay. So you took a pretty solid foundation that the military provided for you and you transition that I think he said at a certain point at a master's degree, and now you're a PhD. So I'm a PhD in Biomedical Engineering. So all that life support stuff comes to play. And then when I retired, we were losing lots of people. And, you know, Admiral McRaven, calls me up and says, Hey, listen, when I need your help, I got I got 22 people a day killing themselves. Will you be on the presentation in the force and family for me? And I'm like, Yeah, I'll do that. I'll help. I was retiring. At that point. I was retired. And he was like, Can you help? And I was like, yeah, and then I was like, I can help more. I can help more, because we can fix this. Like, I'm too dumb to know that there's no cure for traumatic brain injury. I'm too dumb, right? So I just go, I learned a whole bunch of stuff. And I'm like, Well, what do you think? Let's try this. What do you think? I think that'll work. I think that'll work. I don't know, we're rolling dice, right? And we found that if you come at it, if you come at traumatic traumatic brain injury has three components to it. physical, physiological and psychological. Right. So if you treat one of them, you got you got those other two outliers, and it'll always keep coming back and re manifest itself, you'll relive that trauma, you will re injure yourself that hypoxic. Hypoxia to the brain is always going to be there. So if you treat everything simultaneously, what I'm seeing right now, and this is preliminary, and I'm a scientist, so you know, it's early. I'm telling you, I have a very small end. So I'm not claiming victory just yet. But we can't find any discernible record of somebody having a traumatic brain injury right now. Right? All that test scores are through the roof, that feeling great. Anecdotally, they're like, yes, thank you. You saved my life. And and you know, as the reportable stuff, we can't see anything. So, but it's really hard to discern. So really, we're not done yet. We have worked. Let's let's back it up a little bit. So yeah. Back then the Special Operations Command. You said we're having how many people killing themselves. At that time, it was 22. I believe it's gone up to 25 or 28. And then back down to 25 hours a day, a week, a day. So people that were in the Special Forces in all of our branches of service in general, okay, wanting to a day are killing themselves and why it why was that or why is that? I opine. Right. I mean, you're asking me my opinion. The answer is we don't know. But I opined that so backwards go to Vietnam, people would have a concussive blast injury, and they just wouldn't survive it. I mean, that would just, we didn't have the body armor back then. We didn't have the helmets back then. We didn't have the blast protection. We didn't have the, you know, the encasements and so forth. Now people were just shredded went by and they would not. They wouldn't survive it. And that'd be that but now, it's great because we're protecting them but it still scrambles the head. I know that I've been in a couple of explosions and, and they're not pretty. I mean, there's no, there's no easy way out of it. When your bell is rung, your bell is rung when you're done. Add on fire and your burn your lit on fire and burn. I mean, you know, it's so going, going going back to your your three legs of that traumatic brain injury stool or someone that survived a traumatic brain injury you said there was a psychological, a physiological and a physical physical. Okay, so So and let's if we could real quick Joe and again in layman's terms try to break down those three legs of the stool. So we'll start with the physical then that the actual mechanics of what happens when someone suffers a it sounds like an extreme concussion. Okay can I just kind of simplify it by saying something like a concussion can lead to to TBI traumatic brain injury, it's it's concussion, like Yeah, and multiple concussion syndromes can lead to a traumatic brain injury, it's, it's all in a definition, and I kind of really doesn't matter. But what it is, is, you're disconnecting a synaptic pathway, you're you go from here to here with your learning and knowledge and education, right? And then this node right here is broken the modem, the center of your head is broken. So that's where you go through all the time. And that nodes just broken for whatever reason. And do you know that it only takes 1.3 G, to break a synaptic pathway. So 1.3 times gravitational acceleration, that is a hard stop and a car against the seatbelt. Just just to be clear, right? That's that's what it takes to create a traumatic brain injury or break in a synaptic pathway, right? And if it happens to be a crucial one where it goes from the language area and out and you get it in that note, well, then you don't talk very well or you have speech difficulties or in my case, you have nystagmus and you know, he you have brain injury from being able to now you can't process your vision correctly. So it's it's multifaceted. It's like saying, It's like saying so to say traumatic brain injury is to say you have cancer. Well, did you have prostate cancer? Did you have melanoma? Did you have breast cancer? Did you have what? Music Theory Oh, my catch all term then when we say TBI, so we have the physical manifestation or the physical, actual reality that there's been a broken synapse, a pathway that relays information in the brain, then you said there's a physiological Yeah, so there's the chemical changes in the body, right? There's the there's the increase in something called interleukin, right? It's cytokines, these these inflammatory markers. So your body's immune response is to, you know, bring aid by the form of white blood cells, but it inflames everything. So once you have this inflammatory response, it actually reduces cerebral blood flow at that point. So you know, your our idea currently as researchers is that we should be increasing cerebral blood flow. So we're trying to do stuff that increases cerebral blood flow. And we'll get into that because I believe you're using hyperbaric again, drawing on some of your past experiences with diving and hyperbaric medicine to do so. And then finally, you said psychologically, we are overdeveloped, as, as humans, we are over developed in the frontal part of our brain, prefrontal cortex. Specifically, this is supposed to be a prefrontal cortex is supposed to be more executive function. But since it's over size, then under utilized, we store everything up there. It's like storing everything on your hard drive in that spot. Well, what we do is we store the lesson, which is important. And we store the pain, we store the lesson to the pain coupled together, what you have to do is you have to decouple the lesson from the pain, I don't need the pain of putting my hand on a hot stove, I don't need to have that with me the rest of my life, to know that I shouldn't put my hand on a hot stove, right? So decouple that and then store it where it's supposed to be stored in the medulla oblongata. Right? So it's just, it's rerouting where you're how you're storing this stuff. And you use an attachment technique. I mean, I I hooked up with a cognitive behavioral therapist who's a PhD in psychology, and she walked me through my traumatic brain injury and then moved it forward. So I said, That's it, you're hired. And trust me, I've been to a bunch of cognitive behavioral therapists, and none of them are worth a darn until I found one who was an ex military girl who went back and got a PhD. And she's working on her second doctorate right now, just to codify her process, which is terrific, so fantastic. And so you were tasked with helping the soldiers to be honest with you. I saw everything that was going on and the preservation and the force and family and I saw that they were only doing it from a psychological perspective. Gotcha. And I said, you're missing the point. I said, I'm not that smart yet, but I'm not that smart. But But I think we got to be doing this and in different avenues. And finally, I just came through this entire process on December of this past year. What I was sitting there going, Hey, I do not want to go to another funeral. But I call them my brain trust bunch of buddies of mine. We get together PhDs, MDS, you know, influential people, money movers, shakers, and we all talk, right? We just sit around a fire and tell lies to one another most of the time, you know, but as we're talking, it's like, hey, what do you want for next year, and I was like, I do not want to go to another funeral. I don't want to go to another funeral. I don't want to lose another guy. Like, and my guys challenged me. They're like, alright, what are you going to do about it? Mike? Huh? Wow. Why don't I just get the group that helped me with my traumatic brain injury? And maybe we can, like, Well, what do you need? Oh, my, ah, hold on. So we just kind of like, cobbled this together. And then it's like, oh, we can do an ex post facto, you know, study on this, and, you know, try and retro actively figure out what's going on. But you know, as researchers, we're really bad, right? A researcher, if you ask three researchers why why my potted plant is dying, one will say it's food, it needs food, the other will say it needs water, and the other will say it needs sunlight. But as researchers, we want to find out which one of those needs. Now, common sense tells you it needs all three of those. That's common sense. But common sense is not what we are about in research. So what we do is we put it in the sun for 24 hours straight. And then when the plant dies, our understanding is that sun kills plants. Right? Same thing with water. Same thing with food nutrients, right? So it's like, no, it's a combination. And that's why I was like, I got it. I'm gonna go back to that combination thing. I'm going to treat it all.

Joe Cadwell: 21:47

And you were treating this on yourself, because you had recently suffered a fairly significant brain injury. Yep,

Joe Dituri: 21:54

I was T boned. I drive a 1947 Chevy. And I got t boned. And when I did a loss of consciousness in the car, I was out for 2030 minutes. I don't know how long they don't know how long you know, nobody knows anything, except that I was out. Sure got to the hospital. And it was like, oh, yeah, you have a really good traumatic brain injury. You're jacked up what's going on? Um, I have no idea. So then I started getting on the road to try and repair it. And my initial thought was hyperbarics. And that was so this isn't just for frame of reference September 7 of last year.

Joe Cadwell: 22:29

Yes. Thank you for doing that. This is recent history. It's not yet been a year since you've suffered a rather significant TBI. And again, talking to you and listening to you. And looking at you, Joe, you seem like you're pretty well adjusted for having survived such a horrific event. So is this because of some of the protocols and procedures that you had adopted along the way of helping other people out?

Joe Dituri: 22:55

100%? Because so what I wound up doing was first I'm treating with hyperbarics. And then I got better. And then I wasn't treating the other stuff. So I got worse. So I'm like, I got worse. I got in my mind. I started spinning my mind around and I was like, you know, they tell you, they there are groups out there who pontificate going to let's just say going to Mexico and doing things that are not legal in the United States. psychotropics. So I did that, and do not do that, because that does not work. And I came back and I was sitting in my office right here in this chair. And I was literally bawling. And my friend, one of those movers and shakers in that group walked in, and he's like, it was like, October timeframe. And he's like, what's going on, man? And I'm like, I haven't slept in like six weeks. I'm spiraling man. I'm hurting. I'm hurting. Because one of the side effects of having a traumatic brain injury is altered sleep state, right? You can't sleep and when you can't sleep, man, it's a downhill, right? No. So the depression kicks in the crying the anger the I mean, I was such a stereotypical prefrontal cortex left side injury. And it was like, you could have written a book on it right? Like, oh, yeah, he's angry all the time. He switches from being angry to being sad and crying. You know, he has risk taking behavior. He has suspicious behavior.

Joe Cadwell: 24:19

And this is all post accident, obviously, is what you're before that you are fairly level headed. I mean, navy commander for 28 years, a PhD. And then after this, this traumatic injury, you begin to have some significant changes in your personality.

Joe Dituri: 24:37

And I'll tell you, I was I understand I understood at that time, despotism, right? I was like, I was at that point. I was at that point where I was like, Well, if this is it for me forever. Now I see. Now I see because I can't, I cannot function like this. This is not going to work.

Joe Cadwell: 24:59

It's not going to work. So The hyperbaric came into play right off the bat. It sounds like in for again, the layperson who doesn't understand this. Someone who goes into a hyperbaric chamber is put under pressure, the the atmospheres are increased the amount of pressure pounds per square inch and the chamber is, is increased, and you're breathing 100% oxygen at those depths for periods of time in order to hyper perfuse the tissues with oxygen. Is that sort of in a nutshell, what we're doing? That's exactly right. Okay, right. And what is the benefit to that? Medically speaking.

Joe Dituri: 25:30

So normally, your oxygen is transported to your tissues via the hemoglobin, right? So they can only carry a certain amount. But it turns out and hemoglobin are in the grand scheme of things large when it comes to the capillary bed perfusion when it comes to getting the oxygen out to all the little tissues that need it. And all the tissues that are swollen shut, all that ischemia, all that swelling that we talked about earlier, when you have a poorly perfused tissue, that means that the red blood cells can't even get to it. So what happens is when you use hyperbaric hyperbaric oxygen, it saturates your plasma, with enough sufficient amount of oxygen to support cellular respiration without having any hemoglobin in your system. So you don't even need hemoglobin during hyperbaric to transport the oxygen, you get enough from just the plasma. And plasma is really teeny compared to hemoglobin. And it weeps everywhere. So what it does is it increases cerebral blood flow like that's one of the known mechanism of action. It also creates something called neurogenesis. And neurogenesis is more just a it's it's the growing of new neural pathways,

Joe Cadwell: 26:41

which is a relatively new science, from what I understand, I think the old school of thought was we could never, you know, repair a brain which has been damaged, and that this neurogenesis is kind of an emerging field in sciences and medicine.

Joe Dituri: 26:56

It really is, it really is. And what you need is something called brain derived neurotrophic factor, which is this like lawn seed, you see the lawn, and then you water it with hyperbarics. And then you come out in a hyperbaric so and this is where all this stuff ties in physical, physiological, psychological, you hit it with neuroplasticity, you hit it with neurofeedback, which is upgrading and downgrading the brainwaves, you know, you hit it with that cognitive based therapy, you hit it with, you know, the physical therapy, you know, and you do all this at once, so that the oxygen is helping you the brain derived neurotrophic factor is helping you increase cerebral blood flow. So it's, you get this additive effect of healing, you know, and it's not rocket science. I mean,

Joe Cadwell: 27:41

it sounds to me like it's a whole brain whole body approach, a holistic approach to treating the patient as a whole, as opposed to just, you know, looking at the signs or symptoms, hey, this person's angry, let's give them some pills to kind of take take the edge off of that anger. So this sounds like you're on to some really, really good things. And without getting too deep into into the weeds, it sounds like Joe from from what I'm gathering, obviously, a very motivated person I've picked up a few times you, you have trouble just staying still you get bored, you push yourself to different levels. And when you do that, you are one of the things that you've done. One of the things I've caught on to is your motivating kind of guy. And you've actually been asked to speak as a motivational speaker to two groups over the years about your experiences in the military, and so forth. So what can you tell my listener now someone who is a blue collar workers, someone who you know, works in the field, and it's not always a sunny day, where do some motivational tips show that we can talk about to help them see through to the next level?

Joe Dituri: 28:42

All right, pretty easy and straightforward. I'll let you you and your listeners know I don't think I've ever said this before, but I got a 910 on last 80 And everybody's like, what, you have a PhD and I'm like I got a 9:10am I sad went to go into the Navy wasn't physically qualified. I have these molds all over my body. They're like, Huh, you got moles, you can't come in. And then somebody said you can have a waiver. Okay, what's the waiver? Now I learned the waiver. And then I went to go get commissioned and my eyesight wasn't correctable to 2020 and they're like waiver and I'm like waiver got it. Then we're building you know, deep submergence rescue assets. And I'm like, Hey, is there a waiver for this? Physical stuff, you know, the pressure depth test. And then by the time I got to SOCOM to build dry combat submersible, I was like waiver waiver waiver. I'm signing waivers by myself, right. So it's like, in life in general. There is a waiver for everything. There's a rule, and then there's a waiver to that rule. So my piece of advice to you guys is work around it, man. I understand that there's a rule, work around it. What Admiral McRaven said Is he says, You are allowed to break any rule you want because I make rules. He said you're not allowed to break any laws, you can break all the rules that you want. And we'll we'll fix that. So you see, I'm saying just like, bend the rule be aggressive push forward, you know, all this with the sense of doing something good in your life, Hey, man, you know, bend that rule, though don't wave, don't blink an eye,

Joe Cadwell: 30:17

it kind of falls in line with something I've always lived by and said, it's easier to get forgiveness than permission. But in the military, I do remember those waivers and a lot of things that, you know, you have to work around like you say, So, Joe. So yeah, getting that waiver getting around whatever obstacles are in your way. Sounds like a great plan. But I also picked up on something that from an episode I've listened to, you talked about load shedding, and I'm hoping you can explain to the listeners a little bit more on what load shedding is.

Joe Dituri: 30:48

So load shedding came out of my military days when I was an engineer on a ship. And, you know, what we have is a bunch of critical systems that have to stay online all the time. And then there's like ancillary systems, you know, like, like air, conditionings and ancillary system, who cares, I want the engineering plant to be running, but I don't care if the AC is working, you know, I'm saying so. But the overall the takeaway is just let the unimportant things slide. Right, let the things that are not it. Look, if you've got too much going on, you just let those unimportant things slide. But you got to know your core, you got to know your base, like, you know, like we said, the Navy honor, courage and commitment, right? I don't lie, cheat, steal or tolerate those who do. That's my core value, right. And if I, if I have that, and it's good, no matter what's going on me, no matter how much brief I gotta prepare for Congress, or how much what admirals yelling at me or somebody wants this or you know, the kid is going I you know, I didn't get my milk money today, just load shed the stuff that can't be dealt with at that point. And then just go back to your core values. But that takes a lot of soul searching and understanding what your, what your core values are. So it takes a lot of work on your part. But trust me, it's worthwhile. Because once you know, your center, boy, you're good.

Joe Cadwell: 32:05

And for so many people, I think a lot of listeners may be younger in still trying to find out what their center are. And for core values for someone, such as yourself, who's obviously lived a full and rich life and is seems like really in the spirit of giving back to to the community, we're assuming your core values, Joe?

Joe Dituri: 32:23

Yeah. So I went to grew up Catholic, right. So as I'm raising my children, I didn't raise them in a religious sense, but I raised them with a bunch of these core values. So you know, balance being the first core value, right? Balance, family consideration of others, those are the top three, and everything has to be in balance, right. So like balance is the most important. And then family, even family has to be in balance, right? Because like, Yeah, Dad comes to visit you and stay with you for a little while. Only in little amounts your dad living with you. 24/7. Right. You don't want mom to be there all the time, you know, family has to be taken in little bits. Sure. So balanced family consideration of others be assiduous. The Four Agreements, be impeccable with your word, you know, don't take it personally. So as I kind of grew, I made a whole list of them. And that's kind of the way that I'm that I'm working my life. And I add to it daily, and I, you know, I subtract from it, I'm like, well, we don't need that, you know,

Joe Cadwell: 33:26

right, for sure. And so how did you? How did you come up with these, I heard you reference the Four Agreements, which for folks who don't know, is a book based on ancient Toltec wisdom, and it's a fantastic read, I'll make sure and put it in the hyperlinks for the show show notes. I first came across that have the most random place, I think it was a an episode on HBO is Barry about the Hitman turned to actor. And I'd never heard of the federal four agreements. So you never know when you're going to cross paths with some, something like that. But yeah, so do you have a personal philosophy,

Joe Dituri: 34:06

you know, in the end, and you know, as I'm older, I'm mid 50s, right? Sure, right. So, as I grew older, I was like, none of this stuff matters, like happiness is on my list. And I moved happiness higher up. Because it's like, in all of this, if you decide to be happy, that's the best thing that you could do. If you can find a job that makes you happy. That's great. Because if you work your entire life, you work 30 years in a career that you just hate. You hate going to work. You're like, oh my god, you wasting your life, you know? So it is and this is what I'm trying to teach the kids now as their mid 20s. You know, whatever. And I'm like, Look, you need to start working on your own happiness. Find your happiness, find the things that make you happy. Find what excites you to get you out of bed in the morning because Trust me when you're 50 and everything hurts, it's like, oh, I need something to get out of bed for Well, I'm fighting for the kids, you know, okay, go get out of bed

Joe Cadwell: 35:09

need to have that passion. Now, recently, you have written the book The secrets in depth. And did you? You said you drew that from inspiration from your time in the military. What is the process when you sat down when you finally put pen to paper? What What was your, your process?

Joe Dituri: 35:27

So what I did was I threw up on paper, that's the God's honest truth. I just threw it up on paper. And then I kind of hired a guy who, who basically recorded a session, and he read everything that I had, and then asked me questions so that I'd go deeper. So now I have a depth of stuff. Now I have 70 80,000 words, right? And then I went to an editor, and they're like, Did you seriously graduate high school because you write like, you're in the fourth grade? No, my I now and I get that. But then she helped me and I mean, the whole editorial staff and team, you know, they're like, Okay, what are you trying to say? They call me on the phone, like, what are you trying to say? And then they'd massage it and they go, I go, Oh, that's exactly what I'm trying to say. That's exactly it. Right?

Joe Cadwell: 36:11

So what's the protagonist name in your your book?

Joe Dituri: 36:14

So Joe commis, a joker? Nice Italian boy from New York right man? Imagine that. Imagine that. Very similar, very similar looking to me very similar acting but no, no resemblance, really. Right. But so the the thought processes that there may be a book two and the reason that there isn't Book Two, we just kind of left it open. Because when I left there when I left deep submergence unit went to SOCOM. Oh boy, some interesting things happened. So that's where we literally put pen to paper on dry combat submersible. And you know, like, that's, that's the asset that we're using right now. It's really cool that we, we conceived of this on a napkin in a bar to Navy SEALs, me and a civilian engineer, and and named Jay Schroeder. And, and, boy, did we do some great things. And now it's a full program of record on and I was $1.6 billion$1.4 billion, whatever it is. It's really great. Oh, we did that. We did that on a cocktail napkin. Yeah, that's fantastic.

Joe Cadwell: 37:14

Well, we're gonna have to talk about that, hopefully have you back on to the show some other time.

Joe Dituri: 37:18

But more importantly, sorry, I don't mean to interrupt you. But more importantly, the next book that's in the hopper for Joe, is why my traumatic brain injury is the best thing that ever happened to me. Oh, so

Joe Cadwell: 37:29

that's the title of the working title of the book you're going to be writing. That is

Joe Dituri: 37:33

the working title and the one that I'm already throwing up on paper right now.

Joe Cadwell: 37:37

Well, let's explore that just a few more minutes, then. Why has a traumatic brain injury been the best thing for Joe?

Joe Dituri: 37:43

So we're treating traumatic brain injury here, right? And I'm, I'm learning the things that work and the things that don't work, right. And it's just like, I'm working with a bunch of physicians here. I'm working with my staff. We're all trying to push down the road. And you know, you have a kid that's laying in the chamber or getting some sort of treatment Neurofeedback something and he's very angry, and one of them reached up, grabs the speaker rips the speaker off the wall. And I'm like, and, and he's a 30 something year old kid. He's like, you know, 642 150 pounds ginormous. Right, but he's got a traumatic brain injury. So what my traumatic brain injury gave me was the ability to empathize. And instead of being upset about instead of being, you know, whatever, his mom was there, and she was in tears, she was absolutely in tears. So when he went off to the to use the restroom at that point, she was sitting there and she's like, what do I owe you for this, and I might just just come here, just just give me a hug. It's a mommy doing a friggin great job. I said, whatever. Just keep doing what you're doing. Don't worry about that. That's Twisted Metal, we'll fix that. You're okay. Right. So it's more of the human component, that empathy that I frankly liked, right? And that recent relevant experience with the traumatic brain injury gave me that, look, Joe, it's not personal, don't take it personal. Don't make it personal. And try and try and help just keep doing something every day. You know, you asked me about my if I have an overall philosophy and the one that I truly love by just came to mind. And it's like, I only need true nobility is not being better than your fellow man. It's being greater than your former self. So all I have to do is be better than I was yesterday, Hemingway, quote, I believe, isn't it? Exactly. Right. So it's like, all I got to do is be better than I was yesterday. I mess up. I'll be better tomorrow. I mess up. I'll be better tomorrow. I just keep getting better keep getting better. And if we all just did that. I mean, you know, Bill and Ted's Excellent adventures, they'd said, Just be excellent to one another. Really good philosophy, believe it or not.

Joe Cadwell: 39:53

Right up there with Socrates and Plato. We got Phil and Ted and Joe to Terry, this has been a fantastic The conversation. Where can people go to find out more about you and your work? And your book? Thank you.

Joe Dituri: 40:06

Yeah. www.dr deep sea.com dr. D. P sca.com. Or just Google Joe Torre. I'm on Facebook. I'm on Dr. Deep Sea, Twitter and all that. I generally don't do the Facebook and Instagram stuff. Occasionally I'm on there. But you know, you got to have somebody doing that nowadays, because that's the way you reach people. So, but secrets in depth is the name of the novel. And I would absolutely love it if you guys went out and really gave me a hard scrub and looked at it and what, hey, it's good. Or hey, Joe, you let this fall, you could have done so much better, let me know because we'll put that in the next book or the next book, you know.

Joe Cadwell: 40:44

All right. Well, I sure do appreciate your time. Thank you so much for being on the show today.

Joe Dituri: 40:48

Thank you very much. I appreciate being here. Thanks for the invite.

Joe Cadwell: 40:51

My guest today has been Joe Dituri author of secrets in depth. To dive deeper into the topic. Pun totally intended. Be sure to check out the show notes for this episode, or visit the show's website at grit nation podcast.com. If you enjoyed today's episode, please consider sharing it with a friend, family member or anyone else you think may get something out of it. If you haven't already done so I'd really appreciate it. If you could take one minute, I mean, seriously, one minute to rate and review the show on Apple podcasts or Spotify. Your input really does make a difference in helping other people find the show. And it keeps me motivated to continue putting out the content. I hope you like to hear. As always thanks for your continued support. And until next time, thank you for wanting to know more today than you did yesterday. And I'm gonna get your book. Oh, I

Joe Dituri: 41:39

really appreciate that. I really really really appreciate that it trust me it's one of those things. Yeah, I love it. When people say hey, I read your book. I'm like I'm always floored because yeah, like I said, my my English teacher from the 11th grade is probably rolling right now going you wrote a book. Oh my god. It