Charles Bethea

He's unemployed.

He's an army veteran who's served tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, if I recall correctly.

He's on his second marriage.

And he's incredibly lonely, so lonely that he told me this.

He would go to Walmart late at night by himself, not to buy anything, but just to feel proximity to other human beings, just to be close to people.

And that was just incredibly sad, hard to hear, but a really effective, I think, encapsulation of this guy's mental state as he seeks out a program that he hopes is going to make him into a stronger, more fulfilled and capable man.

I think that's right.

Kind of maybe older versions of something incel adjacent.

But men who had just gotten to a point in their lives where they found all sorts of blocks in their relationships, in their professional life.

They felt, you know, isolated and isolated.

They needed help getting out, but they're not, like many men, not inclined to go to therapy, didn't think that therapy was for them.

And so they instead start typing into Google late at night, like James told me he did, you know, words like lonely and anxious and afraid and maybe beta even, the opposite of alpha.

And so up turn all of these camps.

And James ultimately decided to click on Rise.

So there he is.

He's in the woods of Virginia.

He takes off his blindfold with the rest of the guys, and they begin what King calls the beatdown phase.

The beatdown begins about an hour into it.

They're low crawling, which is, I guess, a marine term for what it sounds like on your elbows, crawling up a steep gravel driveway.

And it's very hot.